Utterback’s lashings were cut, and he stood swaying for a moment as he contemplated his crabbed, swollen, empurpled hands. Then, his useless hands at his sides, he walked up the stair to the ground floor of the gaping keep, where a table and a number of chairs waited before the keep’s ancient carved fireplace. The bandit and his captive sat, and for all appearances began what seemed to be a civil conversation.
In the meantime, my bonds were cut, and I looked down at hands as swollen and useless as those of Lord Utterback. For the first few moments they were numb, but as soon as the blood began to beat through my veins, the numbness was replaced by piercing pain. I was determined not to be an object of mockery to my captors, and I tried not to cry out, and attempted not to hunch protectively over my tortured hands—I stood with my hands clasped in front of me, and clenched my teeth, and blinked back the sudden sharp tears that filled my eyes.
My eyes cleared, and before me I saw one of the outlaws, a young man in a slouch hat, with a scarred face and a contemptuous sneer. I straightened, and returned a defiant look. The outlaw laughed at my pretensions, and walked away. I busied myself with brushing away mud and gravel from my skinned knees.
Utterback and Sir Basil concluded their conversation, and both stepped out onto the stair. The outlaw grinned broadly and addressed the crowd. “I am pleased to record that Lord Smotherback has agreed to pay us a generous sum in return for our hospitality!” The bandits raised a cheer, followed by a moment of polite applause for Utterback’s magnanimity. Sir Basil paused to join in the applause, then turned back to his audience. “So generous was he that my lord shall be quartered in the Oak House, where he shall enjoy all the rude comforts the Toppings can provide, and where he shall be given writing materials so that he can write to his father, the Count of Shylock.”
A stoic, ironical expression lay on Utterback’s dark face as he listened to the mangling of his father’s title, and he was then led away by a pair of bandits through one of the gaps in the fort’s curtain wall. Sir Basil surveyed his remaining captives.
“Perhaps I shall have one of the magistrates now?” he said. He pointed at Gribbins. “That one, then, who crawls like a dog. He and I had best make an arrangement before he succumbs to his honorable wounds.”
Gribbins, who had been wheezing on all fours since being hit by the robber, was picked up by a pair of bandits, rushed up the stair, and dropped into a chair. Sir Basil jauntily swung a leg over another chair, and the two began to speak.
I watched the conversation while I massaged warmth and feeling into my hands and arms. The outlaw spoke, and Gribbins replied, and then the outlaw spoke again. Gribbins’s high, peevish voice answered. “Sirrah, I am an ambassador! An ambassador to the royal court! You shall release me at once, or the King shall hear of this!” He gaped a moment as he realized his error. “The Queen, I mean!” He waved an admonishing finger. “The Queen shall hear!”
I winced. Everyone but Gribbins could see where this was bound.
Sir Basil, for his part, affected surprise. “You call upon royal protection?”
Gribbins seemed very pleased with himself. He folded his arms. “Ay! In the Queen’s name, you must release me at once.”
Sir Basil rose from his chair and turned to his audience. “The gentleman calls upon the Queen!” he said. “And well must he be situated between her fine white thighs, to call upon her instead of his royal majesty!”
There was a laugh from Sir Basil’s claque. The toothless old bandit in the big boots raised quivering hands. “Nay!” he cried. He quaked in mock terror. “Not the Queen! Call not upon the Queen!”
“Not the Queen!” cried the bandits. And they all began to moan and wail, and stagger about as if in bewilderment and terror. Their pleas echoed from the fort’s mossy stone walls as they beat their breasts and begged Gribbins for mercy.
I could imagine the sequel all too well. I tried to think of something that might alter the course of events, but my inspiration failed me. I clenched my teeth and tried to resign myself to Lord Utterback’s god of Necessity.
Gribbins reddened, but maintained his attitude of defiance. Sir Basil watched his men with a leer of approval, and then made a gesture, and they fell silent. He cocked an eye at the apothecary, and put a hand to his ear.
“Sir Ambassador, I hear not the Queen. Nor the King. Nor their armies. Perhaps Their Majesties have abandoned you? Or should you call louder?”
Gribbins’s answer was firm. “I will not bandy words with you, sirrah. I am an ambassador and you must release me.”
Sir Basil turned back to his audience. “Despite his ambassadorship, this gentleman is by profession an apothecary, which is to say a mountebank. What fine have we established for a self-confessed mountebank?”
“Ten royals!” came the answer.
“Ay, ten royals. And the gentleman is also an alderman, which is to say a man who lives well on money he has taxed out of the people. What is the fine for a self-confessed tax collector?”
“Twenty-five royals!” shouted the bandits.
I winced at the numbers. A skilled workman might earn twenty royals in a year, and Gribbins doubtless earned more, but he would not earn it all at once, and I guessed that it would be rare for an apothecary to have thirty-five royals lying about in cash, even if his home hadn’t been looted. And if he didn’t have the money, then whoever raised it on his behalf—wife? brother? son?—would go to a moneylender and agree to an interest of a hundred or hundred fifty percent, perhaps more, considering how scarce cash would be in Ethlebight at the present.
Sir Basil spun and threw out an arm toward Gribbins. “And the gentleman is also an ambassador!” he said. “No ambassador has ever enjoyed our hospitality before, so I know not what fine to ask. But I understand that the task of an ambassador is to lie to the King, and then to send the King’s lies back home, and to carry such lies back and forth, and to otherwise be a procurer for lies. So, what should be the fine for pimping lies?”
“Twenty royals!” said one bandit.
“Thirty!”
“Fifty!”
“Fifty!” Sir Basil laughed. “Ay, make it fifty!” He stepped toward his audience and leered at them knowingly. “And the gentleman ambassador has called upon royal protection.” He spread his hands. “What, my friends, is the penalty for calling on royal protection?”
“Double the fine!” they all shouted in joy.
“Ay! Double the fine!” Sir Basil swung toward Gribbins, who only now was beginning to show comprehension of his situation. Sir Basil held out a cupped hand, as if asking for a tip. “That is a hundred seventy royals, master apothecary. How do you intend to pay?”
Gribbins’s face was a mask of horror. “I cannot pay,” he said.
“Have you no friends?” Sir Basil said. “No wife? No sons?”
I knew that Gribbins owned a house, with his shop on the ground floor, but it couldn’t be worth more than fifty royals. And even if he mortgaged it, it would pay only a fraction of his ransom, and leave his family in debt. He probably invested in merchant ventures, but these would only pay off at the end of a voyage, and very possibly had gone up in smoke during the corsairs’ attack.
Doubtless these same calculations were whirling through Gribbins’s mind. His mouth opened and closed, as if he were trying various arguments and rejecting them before they quite got out of his mouth. If only, I thought, he’d tried that approach earlier.