Milord Sir Smiht, the English Wizard

Avram Davidson Milord Sir Smiht, the English Wizard

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) was one of the most idiosyncratic talents to write science fiction and fantasy. He was at his best writing short stories, and some of his best have been collected as The Avram Davidson Treasury (1998). Also well worth tracking down are Peregrine: Primus (1971) and its sequel Peregrine: Secundus (1981), plus the collection of stories about a wizard detective, The Enquiries of Doctor Esterhazy (1975), from which the following story comes.

The establishment of Brothers Swartbloi stands, or squats, as it has done for over a century and a half, in the Court of the Golden Hart. The inn, once famous, which gave its name to the court, has long since passed off the scene, but parts of it survive, here a wall, there an arch, and, by sole way of access, a flight of steps (so old had been the inn, that Bella, Imperial Capital of the Triune Monarchy, had slowly lifted the level of its streets around about it). The shops in the Court of the Golden Hart are an odd mixture. First, to the right of the worn three steps, is Florian, who purveys horse-crowns, though the sign does not say so. (All, in fact, that it says is Florian.) There is nothing on display in the window, the window being composed of small pieces of bull’s-eye glass set in lead, a very old window, with the very old-fashioned idea that the sole duty of a window is to let light in through a wall. What are horse-crowns? Has the reader never seen a funeral? Has he not noticed the crowns of ostrich plumes – black, for an ordinary adult, white for a child or maiden-woman, violet for a nobleman or prelate of the rank of monsignor or above – bobbing sedately on the horses’ heads? Those are horse-crowns, and nobody makes them like Florian’s.

To the left of the steps is Weitmondl, who makes and sells mother-of-pearl buttons in all sizes. However great must be the natural disappointment of the fisher in the far-off Gulfs of Persia when he opens his oyster and finds no pearl within, he can still take comfort in the thought that the shells, with their nacreous and opalescent interiors, must find their way to the great city of Bella, where Weitmondl will turn them into buttons: all the way from the great buttons which adorn the shirts of coachmen down to the tiny buttons which fasten children’s gloves.

Facing the steps in the Court of the Golden Hart is the shop of Brothers Swartbloi, who are purveyors of snufftobacco.

There are other shops, to be sure, in the Golden Hart, but they are of a transitory nature, some of them lasting a mere decade. Florian, Weitmondl, and Brothers Swartbloi are the patriarchs of the place; and of them all Brothers Swartbloi is the oldest.

The shop contains one chair, in which scarcely anyone dares to sit, a wooden counter, and, behind the counter, a wooden shelf. On the shelf are five stout jars, each the size of a small child. One is labeled Rappee, one is labeled Minorka, one is labeled Imperial, one is labeled Habana, and one is labeled Turkey.

Should anyone desire a snuff of a different sort, some upstart sort of snuff, a johnny-come-lately in the field of snuff – say, for example, Peppermint! Wintergreen! or Cocoa-Dutch! – ah, woe upon him, he had better never have been born. Words cannot describe the glacial degree of cold with which he will be informed, “The sweet-shop is across the Court. Here we sell only snuff-tobacco.”

One day comes Doctor Eszterhazy to the shop in the Court of the Golden Hart. He is not walking very fast, in fact, as he has been following someone, and as that someone was taking his own good time, it may be said that Engelbert Eszterhazy, Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Jurisprudence, Doctor of Science, Doctor of Literature, etc., etc., was walking decidedly slowly. The man he was following was tall and heavy and stooped and wore a long black cloak lined with a dull brown silk. Now, long black cloaks were not then the fashion, and Lord knows when they had been. It would be supposed that anyone who wore one did so in order to create a certain impression, to draw upon himself a certain amount of attention. In all of Bella, so far as Eszterhazy knew, there were only two other men who went about in long black cloaks. One was Spectorini, the Director of the Grand Imperial Opera. The other was Von Von Greitschmansthal, the Court Painter. And both had their long black cloaks lined with red.

To wear a long black cloak and then to line it with brown . . . with brown . . . this indicated an individualism of the very highest order. And, as he could scarcely in good manners stop this strange man on the street and confront him with his curiosity, therefore he followed him. Down the Street of the Apple-pressers (no apples had been pressed there in decades), left into the Street of the Beautiful Vista (the only vista there nowadays was that of a series of dressmakers’ shops), down the Place Maurits Louis (containing six greengrocers, two florists, a French laundry, a café, and a really awful statue of that depressed and, indeed, rather depressing monarch), and thence into the Court of the Golden Hart.

And thence into the establishment of the Brothers Swartbloi, SNUFF-TOBACCO.

One of the brothers was behind the counter. He looked at the first newcomer, from as far down as the counter permitted him to observe, all the way up to the curious hat (it was made of black velvet and bore a silver medallion of some sort; and, while it did not exactly appear to be a cap of maintenance, it looked far more like a cap of maintenance than it did like anything else). And he – the Brother Swartbloi – permitted himself a bow. The first newcomer drew from his pocket an enormous snuffbox, set it down, and uttered one word.

“Rappee.”

The brother took up a brass scoop, reached it into the appropriate jar, removed it, set it on the scales, removed it, and emptied it into the snuffbox.

The quantity was just enough. One hundred years and more in the business of estimating the capacities of snuffboxes gives one a certain degree of skill in the matter.

The tall man placed on the counter a coin of five copperkas (the snuff of the Brothers Swartbloi does not come cheap) and a card, allowed himself a nod of thanks, and turned and left.

His face was craggy and smooth-shaven and indicative of many things.

When the door had closed behind him the Brother again bowed – this time more warmly. “And in what way may I help the August Sir Doctor?” asked he.

“By supplying him with four ounces of Imperial.”

Small purchases at Swartbloi’s are wrapped in newspaper, when not decanted into snuffboxes. Larger purchases are wrapped in special pleated-paper parcels, each supplied with a colored label. The label shows a gentleman, in the costume of the reign of Ignats Ferdinando, applying two fingers to his nose; his expression is one of extreme satisfaction. These lables are colored by hand by old Frow Imglotch, whose eyesight is not what it was, and the results are more than merely curious: they are proof of the authenticity of the label and of the product.

“I had the honour of seeing the August Sir Doctor some months since,” said the Brother, “when I was at Hieronymos’s” – he named Eszterhazy’s tobacconist, the source of the famous segars – “obtaining of our usual supply of Habana clippings for our famous Habana snuff-tobacco. I am wondering if the August Sir Doctor is giving up segars in favor of snuff . . .?”

He was a dry, thin sort of man, with a few dark curls scattered across a bony skull. Automatically, Eszterhazy took a sight reading of the skull, but it did not seem very interesting. “Ah, no,” he said. “It is for one of my servants – a saint’s-day present. However, were I to take to taking snuff, be assured that it would be the I-have-no-doubt-justly-famous snuff of the Brothers Swartbloi. Who was that gentleman who was just in here?”