Soldiers of Paradise (32 page)

“Tastes like six months. Tastes like a year. What did you do, bury it while you were in?”

“That piece? That piece isn’t two days old. I just walked in and put it in my hat, slick as anything. That blind old parson never said a word.”

“Mmm. What’s it called?”

“Cheddar.”

“Mmm. Tastes like … excrement.”

“Hunh. You wouldn’t say that. Not if you were used to it.”

“Used to it? Excrement? I’ve been eating excrement ever since I was a boy. An expert. That’s why my teeth’s so distained.” Mock forced his knifeblade in between his molars and then pulled it out and frowned at it. “I can’t find the sense in it,” he continued. “Six months in jail, what for? It’s rotten. They should make it three months and serve it every day. That way nobody’d go near it.”

“Perhaps,” said a boy, “perhaps they don’t want us to know how bad it is.”

“You shut upl” retorted Mock. Then suspiciously, “What do you mean?”

“Perhaps it’s their secret, how bad it is.”

“Don’t you be smart with me. What do you mean?”

“Perhaps it’s envy of them, what keeps them up and us down. Envy more than force.”

“Shut your mouth,” commanded Mock. He lowered the two front feet of his chair until his boots touched the floor, and then he leaned forward across the table, glaring at the boy. “Are you trying to be funny?”

The boy dropped his eyes and clasped his hands around his mug of gin. He said nothing. Mock raised his knife and pointed across the table. But then he cried out, because the rats were passing back and forth along the floor, and one had bitten him in the ankle through a rip in his plastic boot. It was a slow, trusting, unsuspicious beast, and it stood on its hind legs looking up at him, as if curious of his bad language. Before he could be restrained, Mock brought his heel down and crushed its head.

“Watch that,” cried the landlady, a middle-aged slattern with painted lips and cheeks, and teeth stained blue from kaya gum. “That’s all I need. That’s murder on the premises, even if it’s only tenth degree.” She leaned over the stove to peer doubtfully at the furry, purselike body.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” said Mock. “What’s one more dead rat?”

“You can’t be too careful,” muttered the landlady.

Mock looked around the room. “Natural causes,” he observed. “Five witnesses. Six,” he said, frowning at Prince Abu, who sat in a corner with his cloak pulled around him. “Upped and died. Heart attack, I’d say. It’s common enough in these sad days.” He got to his feet and picked the rat up by its tail. Then he crossed the room, unbolted the door, and threw it out into the street. Rain blew in, and mud slopped over the sill into the room.

“Don’t just leave it on the doorstep,” called out the landlady. “Throw it across next door. I don’t want any questions tonight, not with you all dressed up. Not with that lot,” she said, motioning to the food on the table. “All those rats are numbered,” she muttered dubiously.

“Crap. That’s what they say. It’s a lie.” Mock bolted the door and turned back into the room, smiling. He limped as he came back to the table.

“You’ll come to a bad end, Jason Mock,” said the woman, shaking her head.

“That’s what the parsons claimed when I was born,” said the thief. “You think so too?” And without a muscle moving, his expression changed from a smile to a dark scowl. “Will I? I tell you it’s a short road for all of us, and the only thing that’s never sure until you know, is whether it’ll lead you to the scaffold or the stake, whether it’ll be this month or next. That’s all. Other than that, you can rest easy.”

During this outburst, the boy started to cry, gently, hiding his face in his hands. He put his head down in the cradle of his arms on the dirty table. The thief stood above him and clenched his fist in the air. “Nothing to cry about,” he said. “What’s there to cry about, Boy?”

“You leave him alone,” exclaimed another woman, younger and fresher than the landlady, but not much. “Haven’t you done enough?”

“What’s the matter, Boy?” repeated Mock harshly.

“Hush,” said the woman. “His papa swings tomorrow night.”

“What’s the charge, Boy?”

“Leave him alone,” repeated the woman, but the boy lifted his head and stared defiantly at the thief until the water hardened in his eyes and he could speak. “Robbery,” he said. “Aggravated by violence, so they say. I don’t believe it. He’s an old man. They picked him up with seven dollars and a book.”

“Book? What for?”

“He just liked the gilt along the pages,” said the boy. “It was just the pictures, that’s all. No harm in it. Starbridge nursery rhymes.”

“First offense?”

“Eighth. He’s been branded on both cheeks, and over his heart ten months ago. This time he’ll swing for sure. The inquest is tomorrow morning.”

“And … ?”

“And nothing,” said the boy. “He was a drunken old pig,” he said, his eyes filling up with tears again.

“Then what’s to cry about?” Mock grinned. “Now I once had a mother and two brothers. Not recently. Larceny was in our horoscopes. Look here.” He showed his hand. His palm was covered with a strange tattoo. It looked like a spider’s web.

The boy stared up at him. “Fuck you,” he said slowly, savoring the words in his mouth before he spat them out.

Mock grinned. “That’s all right then. That’s the attitude you want. Remember that.” And he struck the boy on the ear so that his head snapped back.

Abu was sick of the high voices. He had sat there drinking the whole afternoon, and now he made a motion with his hand to bring the landlady over to his table.

“How much do I owe?”

The woman squinted. “Eighty cents.”

Abu picked out some coins from his pocket and selected a silver sequin. “Can you change this?” he asked. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything smaller.” He put it down on the table, and the woman reached for it. But her fingers hesitated at the last moment, and she drew her forefinger around it in a circle on the surface of the table without touching it. “You’re a slick one,” she remarked, eyeing him closely. “Where did you get that?” Abu was finishing his wine.

“Seven dollars change,” said the woman, still without picking up the coin. “And my risk if it’s stolen.”

“There’s no risk,” answered Abu. “Seven dollars is fine. Really, it doesn’t matter.”

She was still looking at him. “Where did you get that coat,” she asked. Then, not waiting for a reply, she called out, “Jason. Come look at this.” And the thief came over, smiling. But when he saw the money on the table, his expression changed. Again, it changed by itself, without him moving a muscle.

“Look at that,” said the woman. “Not particular about the rate, either.”

Mock bent down and took a fold of the prince’s cloak between his finger and thumb. Then he reached out and pushed the hood back from Abu’s face, and bent forward to look at him, so that Abu could smell the rotten cheese still on his breath. The man seemed puzzled momentarily, until he saw the golden earring in the prince’s ear, and then his eyes took on a misty, distant expression, as if he were trying to remember something. “Let me see your hands,” he said.

When Abu laid them out along the tabletop and Mock reached down to turn them palmside up, all the people in the little room came and stood around him in a circle. And when the prince looked up timidly into their faces, he was surprised to see no malice in their eyes, only a kind of wistful melancholy. But he could feel the tension of their interest slip around him like a net as Mock pulled back his fingers. He had not washed for days, and for days he had slept in his clothes in places like this tavern. But still, the dirt upon his palm was as insubstantial as a dirty cloud with the shining sun behind it. The people stared at him.

“What are you … doing here?” asked Jason Mock, finally, after a long silence. He had jerked his hand away, as if the sacred flesh could burn him. Abu could barely hear him when he spoke.

“I wanted something to drink.”

“That’s true enough,” said the landlady. “He’s drunk enough to float a boat. He should thank me for diluting it. I should charge him extra for not killing him.”

The edge of this speech cut through the net around him, and Abu could feel the tension loosen as people started to whisper and talk. But Mock still stared at him, and Abu thought he could see some weary fire of hatred kindle in his eye, though he spoke as softly as before: “You’re a … spy, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“And all the time I was just talking,” continued the thief. “All that talk about the gallows, you must have thought: That’s closer than he guesses. But a man can say a thing, and know it to be true, and still not believe it. By God, what wouldn’t I give to die in bed, in a real bed.”

“I’m not a spy,” insisted Abu, but the thief talked without listening, as if to himself.

“Starbridge,” he said. “Starbridge. Are we really such a threat to you, that you have to search us out and find us here? Is there something in this room you think is too good for us to have?”

“You have nothing to f-f-fear from me,” said Abu. “I’m—I’m on your side.”

“Our side.” With movements as soft and melancholy as his voice, Mock pulled a pistol from his belt, cocked it, and primed the charge.

“My God, Jason,” hissed the landlady. “Not here …” But then she was quiet when the thief turned to scowl at her and show his teeth. Nobody spoke, but the circle widened around Abu to give the man room to fire.

Abu dropped his eyes and looked down at the table and the silver coin still lying there. He picked it up and rubbed it drunkenly between his fingers, wondering whether he would hear the noise first or feel the shock. He thought: The palmist said I was to die by fire. A fraud. Or perhaps not, he thought, because someone was shouting in the street outside the window, and someone hammered on the door. “Open up!” someone shouted. “Open. In the bishop’s name!” A man was beating on the door, and not just with his fist, but with a stick or something, the sound was so loud.

Mock seemed not to hear it. He brought the gun down so that it pointed at the prince’s head, but before he could shoot, the other thief had grabbed him by the wrist, and the boy stepped forward too, to restrain him. The knocking grew louder, and there were several voices shouting in the street. The landlady opened a door back into the house, and she and the other woman vanished through it. Abu staggered to his feet, and as the front window shattered from the blow of a stick, and as the two thieves struggled and swore over the gun, he and the boy followed the women back through the house and out the back door into an alleyway between two buildings, where the mud slopped almost to their knees. In a moment their clothes were coated with sweet rain, and Abu opened his mouth to let some in. His throat was dry.

They climbed up out of the mud onto the gutter’s rim, and the boy took his hand and led him into a maze of narrow streets, where the evening was not punctured by a single lantern or a single lighted window. They ran quickly over the uneven stones, as quickly as they could, for there were sounds of pursuit behind them, and voices shouting in the dark. Someone blew a whistle, and from time to time around them whistles answered, some far away, some not so far. Episcopal patrols were talking to each other in their strident language, and they ran until they couldn’t hear it anymore.

Two high houses had collapsed against each other out over the street, forming a kind of arch. In the partial shelter of one wall, the boy stopped to listen. Abu listened too, but could hear nothing but his own coarse breath, and there was no light anywhere, except the phosphorescent rain. The city seemed as empty as an empty field, yet Abu knew that all the houses here were stuffed with abject life, though it made no noise, lit no lantern.

Then suddenly from a tower high above them came the sound of someone laughing. It was an eerie chattering noise, out of place because laughter, though not actually forbidden, was circumscribed in Beggar’s Medicine, this close to the prison. Yet even the fiercest soldier of the purge, even the most conscientious magistrate couldn’t have made a case against this laughter, unless perhaps for simple disturbance of the peace, because the ratio of noise to mirth or joy or gaiety was so high. It had the form of laughter, but not the content.

Yet even so, perhaps there was still some echo of subversion in it, because the boy started to smile. “Now I know where we are,” he said. He plunged back into the mud, under the arch. And at a juncture in the road, where the brickfront of the houses was kept from falling by long wooden poles jammed in the opposite gutters, the boy paused. Under a triangular tunnel of scaffolding there was a crack in one wall, wide enough to admit them. But first the boy pulled a brick loose from the mortar and threw it inside. Abu could hear the rats scamper and scream, yet still when he passed in through the gap, the boy’s hand around his wrist, he could feel them underfoot, stumbling clumsily against his boots. It was perfectly dark, but the boy pulled a pocket torch, and by its soft red light they groped their way inside and back through a dozen deserted rooms. The plaster on the walls had crumbled down to lath, and lay in heaps on the muddy floor.

They passed through corridors as complicated as the streets outside, up stairs, through rooms, until in that house or another they reached rooms progressively less dilapidated. They passed rooms full of people. Abu could hear soft conversations through closed doors, and occasionally voices raised as if in high-pitched anger. Light shone above the transoms. But always, out of several closed doors, the boy picked one that led, not to the sound of voices or to light, but to another dark corridor lined with closed doors. Or they would pass through a series of square unfurnished rooms with a closed door in the middle of each wall, and Abu would know there was some life behind two out of the four, but the boy always chose a door that led them through another square unfurnished room.

Finally they stopped before a door identical to all the rest, set in a wall of grimy, rose-patterned paper. Here the boy shined his flashlight over Abu and looked him carefully in the face. Then he turned and began drumming softly on the door with the heel of his hand. Abu was soberer now, but still he couldn’t distinguish any rhythm to the knocking, or any effect either, for the sound of talking on the other side of the door went on uninterrupted. The boy tilted his hand so that his knuckles sounded on the wood, but still nothing happened. After a while he stopped, and shone the light in Abu’s face again. He seemed unsure of what to do.