Eszterhazy supposed her to have been either mother or mother-in-law, or possibly the invariable “extra-aunt”; had she been mistress or wife, certainly she would long ago have been dropped off the Bear-Tooth Crag, with a couple of pig-irons (to be retrieved later) on each leg. But —
“She was my wet-nurse,” said Prince Popoff, whose arcane talents evidently included telepathy; “of course I need a wet-nurse now the way I need another orifice in my fundament, but I can’t get rid of her.”
“Doubtless she is very faithful,” murmured Eszterhazy.
Popoff scratched his thatchy chest, gave a deep grunt. “You think so?” he next asked. “I assure you she would poison my zoop for a penny if she thought she could cheat my sons the way she cheats me. I shall douse you with wine,” he said, pouring a nice slop onto the be-sopped table-cloth, and a bit more into his guest’s glass. This was old high courtesy, mountain style, and was supposedly to put Eszterhazy at his ease, and make him need not worry if he slopped some himself; how tactful, yes? Not according to the Uniate Exilarch, Venerable Joachim Uzzias, D.Th., Ill, who declared it to be a pagan libation, and had written a pamphlet denouncing it. The Uniate Exilarch never ventured within a hundred miles of the mountain principalities, for the princes would certainly have burned him alive on general and hereditary principles before the government could have interfered; perhaps to display his scholarship or perhaps from prudence, the Venerable had published the pamphlet in Ancient Armenian, doubtless to the edification and enlightenment of any Ancient Armenians who could read it. The modern Armenians, most tactful of living men, had bound their presentation copy in tooled morocco, and deposited it in a mesh-fronted bookcase, the key to which was immediately lost, in their Guildhall, in Bella. And had peacefully gone on about their business of roasting and grinding the best-grade coffee, washing carpet-wool, goat-hair, and hog-bristles; cleaning the rugs of all the best houses in Bella (the worst were lucky to have their trod-mud floors covered with fresh rushes twice or thrice a reign), including those of Jam Jam Sahib; and processing a certain quality of millet much favored by the Town Tartars for feeding to their cage-finches — but perhaps no more for now of the Armenians, excellent people; they scarcely enter this account at all. Sometime maybe. Maybe not.
“Really?” enquired Eszterhazy, the nanny having re-entered with the hot bread and re-exited because there was not enough of it. “One is certainly told that the servants of this ancient house —”
been here forever,” said Prince Yohan, a trifle mechanically; “or, at any rate, a very long time.”
“—are famous for their loyalty and devotion.”
“To the ancient house,” said the prince, starting to slurp his zoop. “Not to any particular member of it. Wait! Let me crush ye some peppers, else the zoop will be bland as maize-pap,” he made a gesture — several gestures, in fact — and a pestle of malachite began to grind in a mortar of chalcedony (both, perhaps, once graced the table of a Grand Comnenus in Trebizond, before the horses and riders of Ottoman the Turk had galloped out of the east. . . and galloped . . . and galloped . . . and galloped . . .) — the mortar and pestle ground: no visible and corporeal hands ground with them. Certainly not those of the rustic prince, which rested prominently a ways off, on the table. This prince awaited the response of Dr. Eszterhazy, his guest.
There was no response.
The reputation of these minor semi-sovereigns for magic was of course well-known. Well-known.
“Take,” invited Prince Yohan, concealing his disappointment, if any. “Take some on your spoon and stir it about in the zoop.” His eyes roved round the setting on Eszterhazy’s side of the table. “What!” he exclaimed. “They have given you no spoon? Animals! My father would have had them impaled . . . well, my grandfather . . . certainly my great-grandfather —”
The prince began to whistle, snap his fingers, stamp his foot. “Pray do not bother, Your Vigor,” said Dr. Eszterhazy. ,
“But ye must have a spoon!”
“Certainly. And as you have told me often enough that your guests have the liberty of your kingdom, I shall take the liberty of taking yours.” Eszterhazy indicated. With his finger. Did he crook his finger? He did something with his finger. And His Vigor, Yohan, Prince Popoff, watched dismally as his spoon slithered across the table, mounted into the mortar, gathered half a load of crushed peppers, and slithered across the rest of the table, coming conveniently to a stop-slither at Eszterhazy’s hand. Who calmly stirred it into his zoop, then lifted the stoup to his lips, and drank off its contents.
“Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Delicious! Ah, there is nothing like a good, old-fashioned stoup of zoop!”
Said his host, at last meeting his eyes, “You have learned much.”
“And still have much to learn,” was the reply.
The prince gave, this time, a merely minor grunt. “Well, as ye have heard, as I have said, ye have, we both have, the liberty of — Well, I shall see what I can do for — You can read the Szekel runes, my guest?”
“Those, and others.”
“The language of the Old Men and the Dead.”
“Both.”
“Essential. And — Aramaic?”
“Yes. Though it depends a good deal on the characters used. The Hebrew ones I read with fair ease. The Nestorian, rather less so. And as for the Jacobite, I must first transliterate. Then I have comparatively little trouble.”
“All right. And as for the medieval Latin and Greek, I am sure I need not ask. So. In the morning —”
“If you don’t die in your own dirt by then,” interrupted the old wet-nurse, entering with a tray pressed to her bodice. “Some of them pots hasn’t been cleaned since Sobieski was King of Poland and Tessie was King of Hungary; much you care. Here. Sweet and sour sow. Certain, I culled the raisins with my own fingers. Who else ’ud do it? Not them high and mighty wenches, who creeps in and out of Someone’s bed on their filthy feets. Ah —”
“Put it down, Wetsy,” directed the prince. “And you may retire tomorrow and on full pension, as well you know.”
She may well have known, but know it or not, she made no reply, but addressed her next remark to her one-time nurseling’s guest.
The old woman had set a second dish down, evidently a pasta pudding with fat, spices, and honey; and she put her hands on her hips and looked at him. “So tell me, Sir Philosopher,” she said, after a moment, “be’s it true that some wiselings such as you, they are a-seeking for to make a machine which it will fly?”
The pudding, the sort which he would have killed for when a boy, looked impossibly heavy, and might have killed him now. There was a bason of small apples; he would numble one of them for his dessert; and in the meanwhile, the longer he could keep the conversation off the pudding, the better. “Yes, Mother,” he said — and such a look she flashed at him! He had best remember not to “Mother” her again — “it is true. Some of them are seeking.”
She asked, with every sign of sincerity, “Why don’t they study trees? Shrubs?”
He asked, a bit puzzled, “Why? Are there trees and shrubs which fly?” She nodded, curtly, as though this itself was a matter well-known, and of not much interest. “Oh. How can one tell . . . which, I mean?”
“One goes and learns,” she said. Prince Popoff ate silently. “One can tell... oh, by the way the knots are formed ... for instance . . . and by the way the trees reach towards the sky. And the way the shrub-twigs behave.”