The Irishman stood up, trailing smoke. “Then we’ll have to rely on the homesickness of the Janissaries.”
“Tell me, are Bugge’s Vikings proving to be of any use in the defense?”
“Well, no. Von Salm says they’re unsuited for disciplined warfare. I suppose they’ll be useful if it does come to hand-to-hand fighting in the streets, but right now they’re just sitting idle and frustrated in a lean-to by the north barracks. You might as well have kept them living here.”
“I couldn’t. It seems one of them mauled Werner and pitched him down the stairs, and he insisted they be thrown out. Bugge denied it, but Werner was adamant. Poor fellow still limps.” He tapped the ashen head off his snake. “You know, I still have hope that they’ll figure in this in some significant way. They were sent here so... purposefully...”
“They’re a bunch of old men.”
“Yes. This is a war of old men. Oh, I know Suleiman is only thirty-four, and Charles isn’t yet thirty, but the conflict is old, the true kings are old—and I am perhaps the oldest of all.”
Unable to think of a reply, Duffy turned to leave.
“Will you have a drink with me tonight in my room?” Aurelianus asked.
“No,” said the Irishman, recalling what had prompted him to leave five months ago. Then he remembered the harp-playing episode of the previous night, and he shrugged fatalistically. “Oh, why not,” he sighed. “I’m not really due back at the barracks till noon tomorrow. What time?”
“Nine?”
“Very well.”
Duffy left the chapel and made his way back to the dining room. The Zimmermann was too far north and west to attract many soldiers these days, and it was haggard citizens that filled the tables around him. A new girl was working, and he signalled her.
“I’ll have a bowl of whatever Anna’s got in the pot,” he told her, “and a flagon of Werner’s burgundy—oh hell; forget the wine, make it a flagon of beer.” Speaking of Werner had reminded him that he’d intended to talk to Aurelianus about Epiphany’s job. I’ll tell him tonight, he thought. “Say, does Bluto come in here anymore?”
“Who, sir?”
“The man in charge of the cannons. He’s a hunchback.”
“I don’t think so.” She smiled politely and went on to the next table.
Duffy sat quietly waiting for his beer, savoring the weirdly wheaty aftertaste of the snake—which he’d ditched before entering the dining room—and ignoring the curious stares of the citizens around him. When the beer came, he poured himself a mug and sipped it slowly. After a while he noticed Shrub helping to carry steaming plates out to the tables.
“Hey, Shrub!” he called. “Come here a minute.”
“Yes, Mr. Duffy?” said the stable boy when he’d delivered a plate and made his way to the table.
“You’ve been bringing food to old Vogel? Epiphany’s father?”
“I did for a few days, but he scares me. He kept calling me by the wrong name and telling me to get liquor for him.”
“You don’t mean you just stopped? Holy—”
“No no!” the boy said hastily. “I got Marko to do it. He’s not scared of crazy old men.”
“Marko? Is he the kid with the red boots?”
“Yes sir,” assented Shrub, obviously impressed by the idea of red boots.
“Very well. Uh, carry on.”
Perhaps as an apology for her shortness with him earlier, Anna had the new girl carry out to Duffy a capacious bowl of the stew, and he laid into it manfully, washing it down with liberal draughts of cool Herzwesten Light. At last he laid down his spoon and struggled to his feet; he looked around the room, but there was no one in the scared-eyed crowd he knew to say good-bye to, so he just lurched to the front door and out into the street.
To the plodding Irishman the whole outdoors seemed far too bright—though gray clouds hid the sky and made a diffused glow of the sun—and the breeze was too cold, and the yells of the ragged children were unbearably loud. How many hours of sleep did you get last night, Duff? he asked himself. Well, I don’t know, but it was something less than adequate for a tired, middle-aged soldier with a primordial king riding on his shoulders like the Old Man of the Sea.
He sighed heavily, and turned right at the corner of the inn instead of pressing on toward the Rotenturmstrasse. Soon he had come round into the inn’s stable-yard, and he leaned on a clothesline pole for a few moments and looked reminiscently about.
I see Werner hasn’t re-roofed the stalls that were blown up by that petard, he noted. I wonder if he still thinks I was responsible for that. Probably he does. At least somebody patched the fence where Zapolya’s damned forty-pound iron ball passed through it. And over there’s where the northmen were quartered.
He crossed the yard to the stables and saw that there were still several straw-filled bunks against the back wall. Almost without conscious thought he rolled into the lowest, closed his eyes and was soon asleep.
With the lucidity typical of afternoon dreams, he was sitting across a table from Epiphany. Her hair was still more dark than gray, and her expressions and gestures hadn’t yet lost the careless spontaneity of youth.
Though he couldn’t hear his own words—in fact could apparently only speak as long as he didn’t try to listen to himself—he knew he was talking earnestly to her, trying to make her understand something. What was it he had been trying to make her understand, that long-ago morning? Oh, of course! That she’d be mad to go through with her planned marriage to Max Hallstadt—that she ought instead to marry Duffy. He paused in his speech for a sip of beer, and had a moment of difficulty in regaining the thread of his faultlessly logical argument.
“Oh, Brian,” she said, rolling her eyes in half-feigned exasperation, “why do you only bring these things up when you’re sick, drunk or tired?”
“Epiphany!” he protested. “I’m always sick, drunk or tired!”
The scene flickered away, and he found himself shoving his way into the vestibule of St. Peter’s Church. Several of Hallstadt’s friends were there, evidently posted for the specific purpose of keeping the Irishman out if he should attempt to get in and disrupt the wedding.
“Come on, now, Brian,” spoke one—what had his name been? Klaus somebody. “You’re not a part of this picture anymore.”
“Out of my way, you poxy toad,” Duffy said, in a voice loud enough to turn heads in the nearer pews. “Hallstadt! Damn your eyes, you won’t—” A fist in his stomach doubled him up and silenced him for a moment, but then he had lashed out with a punch of his own, and Klaus was jigging backward at an impossible-to-maintain angle, and colliding with the baptismal font...
The yard-tall pillar with its marble bowl tottered, leaned—as Klaus rolled off to one side—and then went to the floor-tiles with a terrible echoing crash. Holy water splashed up into the faces of appalled ushers, and shards of marble were spinning across the floor. Another of Hallstadt’s friends seized Duffy by the arm, but the Irishman shook him off.
He took a step up the aisle. “Hallstadt, you son-of-a-whore, draw your sword and face me if you’re not the eunuch everyone takes you for!”
People were leaping to their feet, and he caught one glimpse of Epiphany’s veiled, horrified face before a hardy altar boy felled him unconscious with a tall iron crucifix.
Then he was simply falling through a vortex of old scenes and faces, over the muted babble of which he could hear an older man’s voice raised in strong, delighted laughter.