Still. Was there not somewhere in Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania where the tally-stick was still in use? What had this to do with a degree of Doctor of Literature? Eszterhazy decided to adopt for his little motto, Often pause and turn aside. And, having paused and turned aside, he recollected that the tally- stick was still in use in the hills behind Gro. Gro. What... ? He consulted his scrapbooks. This, what: and in the Late Pre-Christian Era Gro prospered from the Slovatchko Pilgrimages, as the then-pagan Slovatchkoes passed through on their way to a sacred grove where they worshipped their Twin Gods: Chamibog the Dark and Byellibog the Bright. Ah, yes, that Sacred Grove again. Peasant unrest again. It was time to look into it again. It was time to consult Grekkor again; Grekkor was an ox-drover who had advanced to being a cattle-buyer, knew the region behind Gro, the Preez country, in and out. Grekkor was often in Bella, was he in Bella just now? He was. And that afternoon he came and brought Eszterhazy up to date on the dam.
The work on the dam was proceeding, but it could not be said that the work on the dam was proceeding in all respects smoothly. An official, or at any rate a semi-official, protest had come from the priest of the chapel in the grove — officially the Chapel of Sts. Ulfilas and Methodius. Was this ancient shrine, dedicated to the holy missionaries to the Goths and Slavs, was it to be drowned and flooded in order to enable (so the complaint went) the dung-locks of sheep to be spun more expeditiously . . . and more cheaply? But Prince Preez had perhaps been anticipating this, perhaps Prince Preez had already spoken words into ecclesiastical ears: at any rate directions were given that shrine and chapel be removed to higher ground: and, as these directions came from the Bishop, that took care of the objections of the priest. Further remonstrances, that the people were all accustomed from the most ancient times to affix certain bits of cloth to the trees in the grove when they made their petitions and said their prayers, and that they would no longer be able to do so if the trees were flooded and drowned — these remonstrances were met with pontifical censure of a sternness which had not been anticipated. Such customs were superstitious, such customs were heathen and pagan and perhaps even heretical, such customs were best abandoned, and the sooner they were abandoned the better. Penitence, prayer, and charity did not, could not, should not depend on such rites and rituals. The Bishop did not indeed say, Off with their heads!; bishops could hardly say such things nowadays; but there were things which bishops could say nowadays; and this Bishop said them: those who persisted in making agitations on the subject (this Bishop said) could hardly expect to apply for dispensations to marry their second cousins. And, as the people in those parts very often did apply for dispensations to marry their second cousins, in order to keep old-time properties within the family, resistance ceased.
Or, to employ another terminology, resistance went underground.
Dr. Eszterhazy listened. He asked, “And so the people —?”
“They won’t work on that dam. Goths, Avars, Slovatchkoes, none of them people will work on it. Brought up a team of navvies from The City,” Bella being understood, “and almost directly, they downed tools and made their own way back. I don’t know exactly where in Hyperborea they found the bunch of backwoodsmen they got working now —”
Eszterhazy’s face showed his surprise. “What? Oh, but surely the Hyperboreans are just as prone to superstition as —”
“Oh, more, far as that goes, sir. But they have different superstitions! ” Oh. Well. Hmm. Ifes. They had. An oak-grove by the river’s brim a simple oak-grove was to them. And nothing more. “So. And so the people in the mountains close around? Have they offered any violence? Any —”
“ ‘Offered,’ yes. But, well, the Stockholding folk, they’ve got the Rural Constabulary on guard. And then Prince Preez, he’s got his own men on guard, too. Mind you, no, they won’t do a lick of work themselves on this
dam. But they keep the others, the locals, from interfering. Prince Preez, he can’t call out the corvee no more, but ...”
Prince Preez. As far as living in the country, in his own country, was concerned, Prince Preez could hardly need spend a kopperka from one year to another. Food, wine, wood, even woolen and linen cloth, all were supplied by his own tenantry as part of rent. But Prince Preez did not care to spend all his time on his estates, in his house in Avar-Ister, his house in Bella. More and more often of recent years Prince Preez, glossy-red-faced Prince Preez, liked to travel to Vienna, to Florence, to Paris. To tarry on the Riviera. To turn a hand of cards. Throw a cup of dice. . . .
To live ... as it was called.
All this was increasingly costly (Prince Preez did not always win!) and Prince Preez could not pay the costs by giving the railroad a wild boar, however neatly gutted, or even a score of wild boar; his foreign hotels would not take homespun or hogsheads of sour crout or souse; he could not trade his own vineyards’ bullblood wine for champagne. He could not cover the stakes at the casino with cordwood, game, venison, or veal, or ever so many wagonloads of barley. All this required cash. Therefore Theobald Dieterich Gabriel Mario Maurits, eleventh Prince Preez, had given a 99-year lease to the new Company, wherefore the new Company had made him a Stockholder in the Stockholding and as soon as the Stockholding produced profits the prince would receive Dividends in the form of cash. Cash.
Until then? Until then, nothing.
Hence the huntsmen of Prince Preez and the herdsmen of Prince Preez and the housemen of Prince Preez, lots and lots of them, in their linen and leather livery of red and brown, with their boar-spears and their muskets and their shotguns and their whips and their dirks and their axes and their cudgels: and all on guard. Night and day. Day and night.
But scarcely had Eszterhazy assimilated this, gotten the picture of it formed in his mind, when — “And then there’s them gingerbread men, sir.”
“ ‘And then’ — what? There’s what? ”
So it was that Engelbert Kristoffr Klaudius Eszterhazy, with his baccalaureate, his licentiate, and his (by now) four doctorates, learned of the peculiar — and, rather, pitiful — form of protest to which the people of the mountain had been reduced. Grekkor thought perhaps they had used their children (their very small children) to smuggle these mute protests past the piquets and patrols . . . could there be a milder or a more moderate protest than these edible dolls which it was customary to enjoy in the Sacred Grove? — leaving, of course, a piece behind, uneaten, perhaps by way of quit-rent for the privilege — a more humble reminder? Hardly ... though ... even so . . . how even small children managed to get past the lines of guards, with their fires and their torches and their lamps and their lanterns, was a wonder. It was a great wonder.