Revenge of the Rose (12 page)

 
          
“Are
there no exceptions? Must everyone constantly move?” asked the Rose.

 
          
“There
are no exceptions.” Wheldrake helped himself to a dish of mixed meats and
cheeses. “I must say that their standard of cuisine is excellent. One becomes
so grateful for such things. If you were ever, for instance, in Ripon and had a
positive dislike of the pie, you would starve.” He poured himself a little
light beer. “So we have our sisters. We believe Gaynor could be with them. We
now need an invitation to Duntrollin, I take it. Which reminds me, why have
they not asked you to give up your weapons? None here appears to sport a blade.”

 
          
“I
think they might be our next means of earning a season or two away from the
boards,” said Elric, who had also considered this. “They have no need to demand
them. They will, they believe, possess them soon—for rent, or food or whatever
it is they know people always prefer to liberty …” And he chewed moodily
on his bread and stared into the middle-distance, lost in some unhappy memory.

 
          
“Thus
by deep injustice is that
Unjust
State
upheld;

 
          
Thus
by gags of deedless piety old
Albion
’s
voice is still’d.”

 
          
intoned
the little poet, rather mournful himself. “Is there no luxury that is not the
creation of someone else’s misery?” he wondered. “Was there ever a world where
all were equal?”

 
          
“Oh,
indeed,” said the Rose with some alacrity. “Indeed, there was. My own!” And
then she hesitated, thought better of her outburst, and fell silent over her
porridge, leaving the others at something of a loss for conversation.

 
          
“Why,
I wonder, are we discouraged from leaving this paradise?” said Elric at last. “How
does the Gypsy Nation justify its strictures?”

 
          
“By
one of a thousand similar arguments, friend Elric, I’m sure. Something
circular, no doubt. And singularly apt, all in all. One is never short of
metaphors as one travels the multiverse.”

 
          
“I
suppose not, Master Wheldrake. But perhaps that circular argument is the only
means by which any of us rationalizes their existence?”

 
          
“Indeed,
sir. Quite likely.”

 
          
And
now the Rose was joining in with
sotto
voce
reminders to Wheldrake that they were not here as Detectives of the
Abstract but were searching with some urgency for the three sisters, who
carried with them certain objects of power—or, at least, a key to the discovery
of those objects. Wheldrake, knowing his own weakness for such tempting trains
of thought, apologized. But before they could resume the subject of leaving
Trollon and somehow gaining access to Duntrollin the outer doors of the room
swung inwards to reveal a magnificent figure, all ballooning silks and lace, a
mighty wig staggering on his head and his exquisite face painted with all the
subtlety of a Jharkorian concubine.

 
          
“Forgive
my interrupting your breakfast. My name is Vailadez Rench, at your service. I
am here, dear friends, to offer you a choice of accommodation, so that you may
begin to fit in with our community as quickly as possible. I gather you have
the means of taking quarters of the better type?”

 
          
Having
no choice for the moment, unless they were to arouse the Trollonian’s
suspicions, they followed meekly in Vailadez Rench’s wake as the tall exquisite
led them through the tidy and rather over-polished lanes of his picturesque
little town. And still, inch by inch, the Gypsy Nation rolled on along the road
it had beaten for centuries, creating a momentum that must be maintained above
all other considerations. And forever returning to the identical point of
arrival and departure.

 
          
They
were shown a house upon the edge of the platform, looking out over the walls
towards the distant walkers and the other snail-crawling settlements. They were
shown apartments in quaint old gabled houses or converted from warehouses or
stores, and eventually they were led by Vailadez Rench, whose sole conversation
revolved, like some tight-wrought fugue, about the subject of Property, its
desirability and its value, to a little house with a patch of garden outside
it, the walls covered in climbing tea-roses and brilliant nunshabit, all
glowing purples and golds, the windows glittering and framed by lace, and
smelling sweet and fresh as spring from the herb-beds and the flowers; the Rose
clapped her hands and for a moment it was clear she was tempted by the house,
with its crooked roof and time-black gables. Something within her longed for
such ordinary beauty and comfort. And Elric saw her expression change and she
looked away. “It’s pretty, this house,” she said. “Perhaps it could be shared
by all of us?”

 
          
“Oh,
yes. It has a family, you see. Quite large. But they had their tragedies, you
know, and must leave.” Vailadez Rench sighed, then grinned and wagged a finger
at her. “You’ve chosen the most expensive, yet! You have taste, dear lady.”

 
          
Wheldrake,
who had taken a gloomy dislike of this Paladin of Property, made some graceless
remark which was ignored by everyone, for all their different reasons. He
reached his nose towards a luscious paeony bush. “Is their scent here?”

 
          
Vailadez
Rench rapped upon a door he could not open. “They were given their documents.
They should be gone. There was some kind of disaster … Well, we must
be merciful, I suppose, and thank the stars we are not ourselves sliding
towards the board-hold and the eternal tramp.”

 
          
The
door was opened with a snap—wide—and there stood before them a disheveled,
round-eyed, red-faced fellow, almost as tall as Elric, with a quill in one hand
and an inkpot in the other. “Dear sir! Dear sir! Bear with me, I beg you. I am
at this very moment addressing a letter to a relative. There is no question of
my credit. You know yourself what delays exist, these days, between the
villages.” He scratched his untidy, corn-coloured hair with the nib of his pen,
causing dark green ink to run down his forehead and give him something of the
appearance of a demented savage prepared for war. While his alert blue eyes
went from face to face, his lips appealed. “I have such clients! Bills are not
paid, you know, by dead people. Or by disappointed people. I am a clairvoyant.
It is my vocation. My dear mother is a clairvoyant, and my brothers and sisters
and, greatest of all, my noble son, Koropith. My Uncle Grett was famous across
the Nation and beyond. Still more famous were we all before our fall.”

 
          
“Your
fall, sir?” asked Wheldrake, very curious and taking to the man at once. “Your
debts?”

 
          
“Debt,
sir, has pursued us across the multiverse. That is a constant, sir. It is
our
constant, at least. I speak of our
fall from the king’s favour, in the land my family had made its own and hoped
to settle. Salgarafad, it was called, in a rim-sphere long forgotten by the Old
Gardener, and why should it be otherwise? But death is not our fault, sir. It
is not. We are friends to Death, but not His servants. And the king swore we
had brought the plague by predicting it. And so we were forced to flee.
Politics, in my view, had much to do with the matter. But we are not permitted
to the counsels of the steersmen, let alone the Lords of the Higher Worlds,
whom we serve, sir, in our own way, my family and myself.”

 
          
This
speech concluded, he drew breath, put one inky fist upon his right hip, the
second, still holding the bottle, he rested across his chest. “The credits are,”
he insisted, “in the post.”

 
          
“Then
you can be found easily enough, dear sir, and reinstated here. Perhaps another
house? But I would remind you, your credits were based upon certain services
performed by your sister and your uncle on behalf of the community. And they
are no longer resident here.”

 
          
“You
put them to the boards!” cried the threatened resident. “You gave them up to
the marching boards. Admit it!”

 
          
“I
am not privy to such matters. This property, sir, is required. Here are the new
renters …”

 
          
“No,”
says the Rose, “not so. I will not be the cause of this man and his family
losing their home!”

 
          
“Sentiment!
Silly sentiment!” Vailadez Rench roared with laughter that held in it every
kind of insult, every heartless mockery. “My dear madam, this family has rented
property it cannot afford. You
can
afford it. That is a simple, natural rule, sir. That is a fact of the world,
sir.” (These last addressed to the offending debtor.) “Let us through, sir. Let
us through. We uphold our time-honoured Right to View!” With which he pushed
past the unfortunate letter-writer and drew the puzzled trio behind him into a
dark passageway from which stairs led. From the landing peered bright
button-eyes which might have belonged to a weasel, while from the stairs
another pair of eyes regarded them with smouldering rage. They entered a large,
untidy room, full of threadbare furnishings and old documents, where, in a
wheeled chair made of ivory and boarwood, a tiny figure sat hunched. Again only
the eyes seemed alive—black, penetrating eyes of no apparent intelligence. “Mother,
they invade!” cried the besieged householder. “Oh, sir, you are cruel, to
practise such fierce rectitude upon a frail old woman! How can she walk, sir?
How can she move?”

 
          
“She
must be pushed, Master Fallogard! She will roll as we all roll. Forward, always
forward. To a finer future, Master Fallogard. We work for that, you know.”
Vailadez Rench stooped to peer at the old woman. “Thus do we maintain the
integrity of our great Nation.”

 
          
“I
had read somewhere,” said Master Wheldrake quietly, stepping a little further
into the room and inspecting it as if he truly intended to make it his home, “that
a society dedicated solely to the preservation of her past, soon has only her
past to sell. Why not stop the village, Master Rench, so that the old lady
shall not have to move?”

 
          
“You
enjoy these obscenities, I suppose, sir, in your own realm? They are not
appreciated here.” Vailadez Rench looked down his long nose—a stork offering a
parakeet only disdain. “The platforms must
always
move. The Nation must
always
move.
There can be no
pause
to the gypsy’s
way. And any who would
block
our way
are our
enemies
! Any not invited to
set foot on our road but who tread it in defiance of our laws—they are our
deadly
enemies, for they represent the
many who would block our way and attempt to bring to a halt the Gypsy Nation,
which has traveled, for more than a thousand times, the circumference of the
world, over land and sea, along the road of their own making. The Free Road of
the Free Gypsy People!”

 
          
“I,
too, was taught schoolboy litanies to explain the follies of my own country,”
said Wheldrake, turning away. “I have no quarrel with such wounded, needy souls
as yourself, who must chant a creed as some kind of primitive charm against the
unknown. It seems to me, as I travel the multiverse, that reliance upon such
insistencies is what all mortals have in common. Million upon million of
different tribes, each with its own fiercely defended truth.”

 
          
“Bravo,
sir!” cries Fallogard Phatt with a wave of his generous quill (and ink goes
flying over mother, books and papers), “but do not elaborate on such
sentiments, I warn you! They are mine. They are my whole family’s, yet they are
forbidden here, as in so many worlds. Do not speak so frankly, sir, lest you’d
follow my uncle and my sister to the boards and the Long Stroll to Oblivion.”

 
          
“Heretic!
You have no right to such fine Property!” Vailadez Rench’s lugubrious features
twist with dismay, his delicate paint glowing from the heat of his own offended
blood, as if some exotic fruit of
Eden
had bloomed and given voice simultaneously.
“Evictors must be summoned and that will not be pleasant for Fallogard Phatt
and the Family Phatt!”

 
          
“What
remains of it,” grumbles Phatt, suddenly downhearted, as if he had always
anticipated his defeat. “I have a dozen futures. Which to pick?” And he closes
his eyes and screws up his face as if he, too, has sipped a dragon’s diluted
venom, and he lets out a great keening noise, the cry of a wronged soul, the
despairing voice of a creature which sees Justice suddenly as a Chimera and all
displays of it a mere Charade. “A dozen futures, but still no fairness for the
common folk! Where does this Tanelorn, this paradise, exist?”