Torquetil glanced pleadingly at Jean Martine; the merchant stifled a smile. "We must get Your Excellency into some dry clothes," he said. "My carriage is on the road, not far from here. It is at your service."
"Come along, monsieur," said Torquetil with exaggerated gentleness. He lowered his voice. "It is not well that the common folk should see you like this."
There was a sudden bustle at the back of the small crowd, and three ragged children burst forth. "We found it, we found it!" they cried. One of them carried de Maillet's ebony cane.
"Splendid!" de Maillet said. "Give them a little something, Torquetil." The servant tossed them a few coppers; they scrambled for them wildly. "And what about my parasol?" de Maillet said.
Torquetil looked sad. "Alas, monsieur, your wonderful parasol, so strange and colorful! The winds, the terrible winds, have blown it all to pieces; it is all cast down and wrecked."
"I see," de Maillet said. He was silent for a moment, then heaved a heavy sigh.
Martine cleared his throat. "If Your Excellency should care to visit my father's warehouse in town, perhaps we could find you another."
"Never mind," de Maillet said stoically. He polished the pebble across the front of his soggy waistcoat and dropped it into his pocket. Seeing him do this, the children pointed at him and giggled behind their hands.
"They laugh," de Maillet observed. "Posterity will laugh. Thus am I answered." He leaned heavily on his cane, then turned to go Torquetil helped him up the slope.
Suddenly de Maillet stopped and squared his shoulders "And what if they do?" he demanded. "At least, if they laugh at you, then you know you are still alive! Eh, Torquetil?"
Torquetil smiled. "Just as you say, monsieur." He brushed sand from his master's shoulders. "Let us go home. The cook has promised: no more curries."
THE LITTLE MAGIC SHOP
First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October 1987.
The early life of James Abernathy was rife with ominous portent.
His father, a New England customs inspector, had artistic ambitions; he filled his sketchbooks with mossy old Puritan tombstones and spanking new Nantucket whaling ships. By day, he graded bales of imported tea and calico; during evenings he took James to meetings of his intellectual friends, who would drink port, curse their wives and editors, and give James treacle candy.
James's father vanished while on a sketching expedition to the Great Stone Face of Vermont; nothing was ever found of him but his shoes.
James's mother, widowed with her young son, eventually married a large and hairy man who lived in a crumbling mansion in upstate New York.
At night the family often socialized in the nearby town of Albany. There, James's stepfather would talk politics with his friends in the National Anti-Masonic Party; upstairs, his mother and the other women chatted with prominent dead personalities through spiritualist table rapping.
Eventually, James's stepfather grew more and more anxious over the plotting of the Masons. The family ceased to circulate in society. The curtains were drawn and the family ordered to maintain a close watch for strangers dressed in black. James's mother grew thin and pale, and often wore nothing but her houserobe for days on end.
One day, James's stepfather read them newspaper accounts of the angel Moroni, who had revealed locally buried tablets of gold that detailed the Biblical history of the Mound Builder Indians. By the time he reached the end of the article, the stepfather's voice shook and his eyes had grown quite wild. That night, muffled shrieks and frenzied hammerings were heard.
In the morning, young James found his stepfather downstairs by the hearth, still in his dressing gown, sipping teacup after teacup full of brandy and absently bending and straightening the fireside poker.
James offered morning greetings with his usual cordiality. The stepfather's eyes darted frantically under matted brows. James was informed that his mother was on a mission of mercy to a distant family stricken by scarlet fever. The conversation soon passed to a certain upstairs storeroom whose door was now nailed shut. James's stepfather strictly commanded him to avoid this forbidden portal.
Days passed. His mother's absence stretched to weeks. Despite repeated and increasingly strident warnings from his stepfather, James showed no interest whatsoever in the upstairs room. Eventually, deep within the older man's brain, a ticking artery burst from sheer frustration.
During his stepfather's funeral, the family home was struck by ball lightning and burned to the ground. The insurance money, and James's fate, passed into the hands of a distant relative, a muttering, trembling man who campaigned against liquor and drank several bottles of Dr. Rifkin's Laudanum Elixir each week.
James was sent to a boarding school run by a fanatical Calvinist deacon. James prospered there, thanks to close study of the scriptures and his equable, reasonable temperament. He grew to adulthood, becoming a tall, studious young man with a calm disposition and a solemn face utterly unmarked by doom.
Two days after his graduation, the deacon and his wife were both found hacked to bits, their half-naked bodies crammed into their one-horse shay. James stayed long enough to console the couple's spinster daughter, who sat dry-eyed in her rocking chair, methodically ripping a handkerchief to shreds.
James then took himself to New York City for higher education.
It was there that James Abernathy found the little shop that sold magic.
James stepped into this unmarked shop on impulse, driven inside by muffled screams of agony from the dentist's across the street.
The shop's dim interior smelled of burning whale-oil and hot lantern-brass. Deep wooden shelves, shrouded in cobwebs, lined the walls. Here and there, yellowing political broadsides requested military help for the rebel Texans. James set his divinity texts on an apothecary cabinet, where a band of stuffed, lacquered frogs brandished tiny trumpets and guitars. The proprietor appeared from behind a red curtain. "May I help the young master?" he said, rubbing his hands.
He was a small, spry Irishman. His ears rose to points lightly shrouded in hair; he wore bifocal spectacles and brass-buckled shoes.
"I rather fancy that fantod under the bell jar," said James, pointing.
"I'll wager we can do much better for a young man like yourself," said the proprietor with a leer. "So fresh, so full of life."
James puffed the thick dust of long neglect from the fantod jar. "Is business all it might be, these days?"
"We have a rather specialized clientele," said the other, and he introduced himself. His name was Mr. O'Beronne, and he had recently fled his country's devastating potato famine. James shook Mr. O'Beronne's small papery hand.
"You'll be wanting a love-potion," said Mr. O'Beronne with a shrewd look. "Fellows of your age generally do."
James shrugged. "Not really, no."
"Is it budget troubles, then? I might interest you in an ever-filled purse." The old man skipped from behind the counter and hefted a large bearskin cape.
"Money?" said James with only distant interest.
"Fame then. We have magic brushes -- or if you prefer newfangled scientific arts, we have a camera that once belonged to Montavarde himself."
"No, no," said James, looking restless. "Can you quote me a price on this fantod?" He studied the fantod critically. It was not in very good condition.