“Me?” Duffy felt vaguely frightened by the sudden conjunction of drinking the Herzwesten bock and visiting the Zimmermann Inn. For the first time in five months he felt his sense of independence begin to waver. Maybe none of this, he thought, from Bobo’s death to Ebers’ beer-fetching mission, was accidental. “But good God, Eilif, I’m your most recently acquired man! A dozen of your old wolves deserve the post more than I do, and they’ll probably mutiny if I’m put over them.” There was shouting from the other end of the room, and the sound of splintering wood.
“To hell with that,” said Eilif carelessly. “They’ve tried to mutiny before, and with a lot more cause than that. I have a talent for putting down mutinies. Besides, you are the man for the job—few of my lads have had the years of experience you have, and you’re lots smarter than they are.”
“And for you to refuse,” Vertot pointed out with a smile, “would almost constitute a mutiny right there.”
“Duffy knows that,” snapped Eilif.
“Of course,” acknowledged the Irishman. “And I’m not going to refuse.” He looked away and saw Ebers, a cask under one arm, elbowing angry drinkers out of his way as he struggled back toward the table.
“The beer arrives,” Stein pronounced, getting to his feet. He drew his sword with a ringing rasp of steel and confronted Ebers’ pursuers. “What he has done was by my order!” he shouted. “Back, you dogs, unless you want to leave here carrying your livers in your hands.”
The gang of irate landsknechten fell back, grumbling about the privileges of rank. Ebers set the cask on the table and saluted. “Mission accomplished, sir.”
“Well done. Draw yourself a cup and then go away.”
“That’s settled, then,” said Eilif, who had opened the tap and was filling several cups from the steady brown stream. “You’ll accompany me to the Zimmermann in the morning.” He turned the tap off and set one of the filled mugs in front of the Irishman, then commenced wiping up the puddle of spilled beer with a crust of bread.
“Right.” Duffy took a deep breath and drained half the mug at one draught. Damn, he thought. The stuff is good. Eilif, chewing with relish on the soggy bread, seemed to be of the same opinion.
Fenn stumped up to the table, pivoting expertly on his wooden leg. “What’s the riot here?” he inquired, grinning wolfishly. “I run a quiet, family-type place.”
“We know you do, Fenn, and that’s why we brought your excellent beer over here for safekeeping,” Duffy told him, “away from those damn drunkards.” By way of punctuation he drank off what remained in his cup and refilled it.
“Am I to understand you are buying the whole cask?”
“That’s right,” confirmed Stein. “In celebration of Duffy’s promotion to lieutenant.”
“Hah!” barked Fenn, pounding his peg leg on the floor in what was evidently a substitute for slapping his knee. “Duffy? The human wineskin? A wise move! That way you’re sure to have Dionysus and Silenus and Bacchus watching over you.” The Irishman looked up suspiciously at the last name, but Fenn was just laughing good-naturedly. “This calls for a song!” the host shouted.
There was scattered applause at that, and a slight quieting of the steady din of voices, for Fenn’s songs were popular. “Give us The Signifying Monkey,” bawled one soldier. “No, Saint Ursula Going Down for the Third Time,” yelled another.
“Shut up, you rats,” said Fenn. “This is a serious occasion. Brian Duffy has been promoted to the office of lieutenant in the company of Eilif the Swiss.” There were cheers, for despite Duffy’s predictions of mutiny, he was liked and respected among the troops. The one-legged man moved quickly, with a gait like a barrel being rolled on one corner, to the counter on which sat the wine kegs and his harp. Picking up the latter, he caressed a long, soft chord out of the instrument; then he smote the strings with the first notes of the old goliard song, Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi.
Fenn sang, and nearly the entire crowd raised their voices in approximate harmony in the chorus, shouting the ancient lyrics that celebrated the vagaries of Fortune’s wheel. Duffy sang as loudly as the rest, after pausing only long enough to drain his refilled cup so that he might beat time with it on the table top.
When Fenn finished the song, the company showed no intention of ceasing to sing the choruses, so the host shrugged and began it a second time. Duffy sat back and filled his cup once again with the brown beer. He sipped it thoughtfully.
Just as certain tunes will bring clearly back decades-old memories, and occasional untraceable aromas call up long-forgotten emotions of childhood, so the taste of the beer, combined with the antique goliard melody, was prodding some sleeping memory of his, something pleasant he’d forgotten long ago. Usually reluctant to rouse his faculties of recollection, he pursued this one elusive scrap with all the recklessness and single-mindedness of a drunkard.
Then Eilif was blinking up at him with an expression of puzzlement, for the Irishman had risen to his feet with a shout that broke the back of the song, which had been limping a bit by this time anyway. He glanced around at the merry and curious faces, and, raising his foaming cup, called something in a language no one in the room understood.
“That’s Gaelic or something,” Fenn said. “Ho, Duffy! None of your barbaric tongues here! You’re lucky I don’t make everyone speak God-fearing Latin in my house.”
The Irishman seemed to see that no one had understood him, so he laughed and strode up to where Fenn stood, and held out his hands for the harp.
The host laughed uncertainly, as if not entirely sure he knew who this was; but after only a moment’s hesitation he let him have the harp. Duffy took it, and his fingers played softly over the strings, wringing out soft flickering snatches of melody, like music faintly heard from far away. He looked up, started to speak, and paused. Then, “Aperte fenestras!” he called.
“Hah!” Fenn was delighted. “Latin I asked for and Latin I get. Didn’t you hear him, you clods? Open the windows!”
Puzzled but drunkenly willing to go along, a number of the mercenaries leaped to the several narrow windows, unlatched them and pushed them open. Duffy turned to a heavy door behind him, slid back its bolt with one hand and drove it open with a forceful shove of his boot. It couldn’t have been a door Fenn intended for use, for there was the sound of boxes falling on the other side, but the host just laughed as the western breeze swept through the room.
Then the Irishman began to play, and it was a quick, darting tune in which tension and menace were tempered by a strong note of exhilaration. There was in it the wary excitement of crouching in the chill of dawn, fingering the worn grip of a trusted weapon and eyeing the near gap from which the enemy would appear; the cold-bellied, dry-mouthed thrill of charging a horse down a dangerously steep slope; and the wonder of standing at the bow of an outward-bound ship, watching the sun sink ahead over uncharted seas. The room became almost quiet as the soldiers harkened to the music, and much of the haze of drunkenness was sluiced out of their eyes as if by the fresh breeze.
A certain tune had been building up in the background of his playing, and now he brought it to front and center, giving full rein to the alternately regal and elfin melody. His audience stirred with recognition, so the Irishman began to sing, in the language Fenn had described as “Gaelic or something.”