"And he leans against my shop!" The beefy type didn't sound too solid, either. "Stand away, I say!"
Matt remembered something about medieval plagues and people accused of carrying them. He staggered upright, fishing in a pocket. "No, no, I'm all right." He pulled out a quarter and dropped it into the bowl. "Just a little dizziness; it was a hard trip, you understand.. ."
Why had he thought of medieval plagues?
The beggar's other hand closed on the quarter, scooping it out of the bowl with a satisfied hiss; but the tradesman spat an oath and snatched it out of the beggar's hand. He held it about two inches from his eyes, staring at it, his eyes bulging. Then he looked up at Matt, his eyes wide with a sort of horror, and maybe loathing. Matt suddenly realized he wasn't exactly dressed for the occasion. The others he saw all seemed to be wearing the same sort of basic outfit, with variations-a short tunic over hose, with some sort of cloak over it. It was the variations that gave Matt heartburn; they ran the gamut from about the seventh century to the fourteenth.
Most of them went barefoot. Some had cross-gartered sandals. Some wore shoes, but they were pointy at the toes. And the hats ran from a simple hood to the beefy individual's puffy beret.
"What manner of man is this?" a new voice growled. It belonged to a muscle-bound type in cross-gartered hose and a leather apron, with an interesting assortment of soot smudges and singed hairs in place of a shirt, and an even more interesting hammer-a squarish block of iron with an oaken handle. Now that Matt noticed it, there were two more members to the group, one with a quarterstaff and the other with an adz. And they all looked hostile.
"He's an outlander, isn't he?" Quarterstaff grunted.
"Mayhap," Puffyhat answered, "but he appeared in front of my shop when I had scarce glanced down at my counting-board. And look at his coin - have you ever seen such?"
The quarter passed from hand to hand, to the accompaniment of rumbles of amazement and suspicion.
"'Tis too polished," the blacksmith opined. "'Tis as if a king's statue could be shrunken down to the size of a coin."
"And such exactness, such precision!" Matt recognized a professional tone in Puffyhat's voice; he must be a silversmith. "'Tis in all ways wondrous. He who cast it must have been a wizard!"
"Wizard!" The knot of men fell totally silent, staring at Matt.
The ridiculousness of it hit Matt suddenly. He felt the tender glow of his own twisted humor and straightened slowly, fighting temptation. As usual, he lost.
He flung his arms straight up and started chanting in his most orotund tones, "Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers set forth upon this continent a new nation..."
They backed off like kids in a dentist's office, arms up to protect their faces. Matt shut up, hands on his hips, grinning around at them, waiting to see what happened-which was nothing, of course.
Slowly, the townsmen lowered their arms and looked up, unbelieving. Then their faces reddened with anger, and their arms came down the rest of the way with fists on the ends. They moved in.
Matt stepped back and back again, till the stucco wall pricked his back. The mob started shouting, "Vile, impotent wizard!"... "We'll teach you to curse your betters!" ... "Foul sorcerer!"
Sorcerer? Somehow, that had an ugly sound.
But "wizard" was another matter - and so was being used for a punching bag. Matt stabbed his forefingers at them, one after the other, right, left, right, chanting:
There was a loud pop! Matt found himself facing an empty street, with a handful of gawkers on the far side.
He blinked and shook his head. It couldn't be. But where had Puffyhat and his friends gone? Matt looked around for a porch.
There wasn't any in the vicinity, but there was a low wall about fifty feet down to the right across the alley, with four huddled, moaning shapes on top of it.
One of them looked up-the blacksmith. He stared at Matt. Matt stared back.
Then anger wrenched the smith's face, and he jumped off the wall with a howl, running straight for Matt, his hammer swinging up.
Puffyhat and the boys jumped down to follow him, bellowing gleefully.
So did everyone else on the street-letting the smith lead, of course.
There was no time to think. Matt stepped back, curling his left arm as if he were holding a book and thrusting up an imaginary torch with his right.
They kept coming-a howling mob, charging the stranger who chanted in an arcane language.
They were twenty feet away and still coming, but he had to catch a breath, because he was suddenly working uphill, pouring sweat, feeling as if he were, trying to twist some huge, invisible field of forces that had suddenly enveloped him. He blurted out the last line:
Thunder split the alley, and men screamed. Matt squeezed his eyes shut.
When he opened them, the street was filled with bodies-the living kind, crawling with lice and festooned with rags. Every beggar in town must have been there all of a sudden-though Matt did wonder why there were so many Orientals in a medieval European burg. And weren't those Hindus, down on the right there?
The beggars straightened up slowly, mouths gaping open, staring around, gawking at each other. Then the screaming started again. But it was all under a tidal wave of excited babbling.
Matt came to his senses with a start. When you fill an inside straight, cash in. He leaped into the crowd, forcing his way through with elbows and boots. Hands groped at his belt every inch of the way, trying to find his purse. He thanked Heaven they didn't know about pockets and clapped a hand on his wallet as he twisted through the last rank into the clear. Then he took one deep breath and started off walking, fast.
There was a sudden, ominous silence behind him.
Matt kept on walking.
Then someone yelled, "There goes the sorcerer! Don't let him get away!"
The mob gave one huge, delighted howl, with the thunder of hundreds of running feet underneath it.
Matt wasn't about to try the wizard act again until he'd learned who wrote the script. He ran. The beggars gave a lusty bellow and charged, delighted to be on the chasing end for a change. Matt reminded himself he'd been a track star in high school and leaned into it. But high school had been a long time ago.
Matt didn't try to figure out where the beggars had come from; he was too busy panting. He dimly realized that he'd called for them-but just now they were calling for him, and he wasn't exactly eager to oblige them.
Fortunately, the beggars weren't in any great shape, either. Matt had specified something of the sort. He had about a two block lead when he turned the corner-and ran smack into the gendarmes, mounted on war horses and wearing ring-on-leather iron mail.
The grizzled man in front leaned down to snag an arm as Matt went by. He had a very snug grip; it swung Matt around to land smack against the flank of the horse. "Here now," the man growled, "where d'ye think you're running?"
"That way!" Matt pointed the way he'd been going. "I'm trying to leave my past behind me!"