When the waiter had gone, he looked across the table at me. For the first time I looked at him, to really see him. He would be thirty pounds heavier than me and four inches shorter, but little of the weight would be fat. His beard was dark and streaked with a bit of gray. His face was brown, wide and strong, with contemptuous, amused eyes, as if all he saw about him was ironically amusing. His hands were thick and powerful, hands that had done a lot of work and some fighting, too.
"Put it down that we're two ships that pass and show our flags and each goes on his way. I like the way you carry yourself, lad, and I'm not one to drink alone nor talk to myself, although God knows it is all there's been a time or two."
He looked at me sharply. "You're no seafaring man, although you could be. Are you here for long?"
"A day or two more," I said.
I'd chosen the seat in the corner, and he sat opposite, but neither had a back to the room, for we sat in a sort of corner off the main room.
"Where are you for, then?"
"Plymouth. It's a place on the coast of what was once part of Virginia. They be calling it New England now, or they are starting to."
"Aye, I know the place. A psalm-singing lot, isn't it?"
"That's the latecomers. The first ones were an easier folk." The wine bottle was cold and the wine nicely chilled. He filled my glass, then his. "Yet it is not my country. I live in the mountains in the west of Carolina."
He shrugged. "Names! I have heard them used but know nothing of the land. How do you live?"
"We hunt. There is much wild game. We plant crops. It is a wild, beautiful land."
"Savages?"
"Aye, if you wish to call them so. They have their own way of life, which is good for them. I could live it, although I should miss books."
"Ah! There speaks a man of my own heart! I sensed it in you." He lifted his glass. "You would not guess, but twenty-odd years ago I studied at Cambridge and was nearly always at the head of them all. I was destined for the church."
"What then?"
He shrugged again. "What? A woman. I was young, and she was older but not wiser. We were discovered together ... Nothing had happened, worse luck, for we were not believed, and her husband set some ruffians on me to kill me."
He finished his glass and filled it again. "I was alone when they came; but I was strong, and they believed me a harmless student, and I killed two of them with my blade and had to fly. And here, after more than twenty years, I am."
He looked at me across his glass, eyes twinkling with that same ironic amusement. "You should know my name. Or at least the one by which I am known. It is Rafe Bogardus."
"A good name. Mine is Kin Ring Sackett."
He smiled. "It is too bad, you know. You are a man I could like."
"Too bad?"
"Aye, and if I did not need the money, I'd not do it. I really wouldn't."
"Do what? I am afraid I do not know what you are talking about."
"No? You of all people should know, Kin Sackett, because you see, I have been paid to kill you."
I was astonished. "To kill me?"
"To kill you. Here ... tonight."
Chapter XVII
It was my turn to laugh. "Finish your wine," I said.
His eyes were cool, suddenly wary. "You think I shall be drunken?"
"Of course not! But you so obviously enjoy it, I think you should have your fill of it before you die."
The laughter went from his eyes, and he measured me coolly, carefully. "Sackett, it has been said that I am the greatest swordsman in Port Royal, perhaps the greatest in Europe."
"I do not doubt it, but you are not now in Europe, nor are all the great swordsmen in Port Royal. After all"--I gestured widely--"they are mostly rabble. They cut and slash. What do they know?"
"And in Carolina?"
"Swordsmen are rare. We live by the musket and pistol there."
"So?"
"We shall see. And a pity, too, for you are a rare companion, and I was looking forward to talking to you of books and writing men, of magicians and satyrs, of gods and heroes. You spoke of a family?"
He dismissed them with a gesture. "That is long ago. They have forgotten me."
"Then I shall not have to worry."
"Worry?" He was scowling now.
"About sending word to them that you are dead, nor disposing of your belongings--if you have any."
"You are a fool," he said irritably. "You speak like a child."
But half my glass was gone, so I lifted it to my lips, tasted the wine, and put the glass down, and I took my time. No doubt he was a superb swordsman. No doubt he was confident. There were few good swordsmen in Virginia, Carolina, or Plymouth in these days, for men who were swordsmen had not yet begun to come across the sea. There were fighting men like Capt. John Smith, only he had returned to England. No doubt Bogardus, if that was his name, felt sure of winning.
I had rarely fought with a sword, yet from earliest childhood my father had trained me as his father had trained him, and I had the added advantage of working as a boy with Jublain, Jeremy Ring, and, above all, with Sakim. Not only was the Moslem a superb swordsman, but his style was entirely different from that of Europe. Therein, I hoped, would lie my advantage, if such it was, for he would be unprepared, I hoped, for that style of fencing.
But that I must conceal at first. I must seem orthodox and careful, defending myself as best I could and allowing him to believe I was more clumsy than skillful, then suddenly to try a trick upon him unused in the West.
The difficulty might be that at some time he had served in the Moslem countries and knew all that I knew. It was a risk I must take. Even if he knew, he might not expect such moves from me.
"Do you do this sort of thing often?" I asked. "I mean, do you kill men for money?"
"Why else? I am not such a fool as to kill them for amusement or just to be killing. It is simply I have found it more restful than piracy and an easier means to a living. If it is conscience you are thinking of, I have none. Men enter the world to die. I merely expedite matters."
"Or have them expedited for you."
He shrugged. "So far I live."
"Shall we order something to eat? If you are to die, I would not have it said you were hungry when you went out."
We ordered a meal, and I sat back in my chair and looked at him. He seemed undisturbed, but this I did not believe, for I was accepting the situation with more ease than he could have expected. He had thought to surprise me, and he had, yet my recovery had been swift and complete, and I was much less disturbed than he must have expected.
Now I was proposing that we dine, and he must have been puzzled by my reaction.
"You see," I continued, "your comment that you intend to kill me can be nothing but mildly interesting. Since I was a child, those of my family have been constantly threatened with death. I was born on a buffalo robe in the heat of an Indian battle with a swordsman standing above my mother to defend her during her labor.
"Since that day I have never known one in which my life was not in danger. Naturally you cannot expect me to be alarmed by your statement that you intend to kill me. Actually it greatly simplifies matters."
He scowled at me. I expect he had believed his calm statement would frighten or alarm me, and my manner irritated him. "Simplifies? What do you mean by that?"
The wine was good. I was no judge of such things, lacking experience, but to me it tasted well. "It is obvious, I should think. Here I have been attacked a number of times and from all sides, unexpectedly and in numbers. Now I no longer have to concern myself with that. Now I know my attacker. I know where the attack will come from and by whom. It makes it very easy."
"You will die nonetheless."
I laughed. "Who can say? You know what you can do, and that is very helpful. You are no doubt skilled, or you would not have survived, but I, too, have survived, and I think in a harsher world than yours."