Arcanum Part 64

Felix joined Sophia at the window as she peered down into the courtyard. She pointed at the man in the rich cream-coloured cloak.

"Is that him?" she asked.

Felix nodded. "His excellency Spyropoulos, ambassador of the Eastern Roman Empire."

The ambassador had gold thread embroidered into the hem of his cloak. It glittered as he walked towards his entourage.

"I'm sorry I missed him," she said. "Something came up."

"I can't be trusted to deal with ambassadors now?" Felix watched as the ambassador, a tall man with tightly wound oiled black hair, snatched his reins from the child slave acting as his retainer. "He has a temper."

"What did you say to him?"

"That I couldn't lend him half a dozen hexmasters to put down a slave revolt."

The Byzantine slapped at his slave with the back of his hand, and followed it up with a kick for good measure. The boy fell to the ground, cringing, and Felix felt his hand slide to his belt.

"How did he take it?"

"Badly. It must be a very big slave revolt to need the services of six hexmasters." Felix glanced at Sophia's face, and at the serious expression she wore. "Do you think I should ask him to stop that?"

"It's hardly the boy's fault," she said, tapping her lips with her finger. "Perhaps I should go down."

Felix looked at the ambassador's fine white horse and the five other riders with him, dressed in Roman-pattern cavalry armour. They all had young men or boys as retainers, and none were exactly dressed for the climate. Their short tunics and sandals seemed wholly out of place. "We're not supposed to threaten the ambassador or his retinue. It's not done."

"Even if he beats a child to death in front of your eyes, in your own courtyard?"

Felix struggled with the catch on the casement, and finally managed to open the window.

"Ambassador? Ambassador Spyropoulos?"

The ambassador was so intent on stamping on the boy's huddled legs that he didn't hear at first. One of the other riders gained his attention and pointed up to the solar.

"Yes, most illustrious prince?"

Felix murmured to Sophia. "How come you never call me 'most illustrious'." Then he raised his voice. "You shame yourself and me with your conduct."

Spyropoulos looked momentarily perplexed. "The slave? You concern yourself about a slave?"

"Yes, ambassador, I do. Stop kicking him. Now."

Glowing with his exertion, the man stepped back.

"How much?" asked Felix.

"My esteemed prince?"

"The boy. He's a slave. I'm buying him from you. Name your price." He felt Sophia's hand on his arm. He smiled.

"Keep him. One less slave to rebel against the emperor." Spyropoulos spat at the boy and took up his reins again. "Is our business done, my noble prince?"

Sophia leant in to Felix. "He doesn't mean it, you know: 'most illustrious'."

"Yes, I know." Felix smiled, then called down again. "It's done, ambassador."

He watched the Byzantines ride away towards the Hel Gate, the horses' iron-shod hooves clattering and sparking on the flags.

"We could have done with those horses," he said. "Instead, I have a slave."

"Trust you to think about horses."

"You're not sore, are you?" he asked her. Below, the boy started to uncurl like a bruised flower, eyes blinking at the twin thoughts that he'd been both saved and abandoned.

Sophia moved awkwardly. "My, you know. Tusch."

"Arse?" suggested Felix.

"Yes, that. I won't be sitting down all day."

Felix smirked. "You had the fattest, most docile nag left in the stables and it barely broke into a walk."

They returned their attention to the courtyard. The slave-boy had finally found his feet, and was looking around at the high walls, sniffing the the cool damp air. He limped first in one direction, then another, not knowing what to do.

"Someone needs to go and take care of him," said Sophia.

"Wait. I want to see what he does."

"Isn't that ..." she frowned, "...cruel?"

"He's free," said Felix. "Is freedom cruelty?"

"The boy's hurt."

Despite his evident discomfort, the boy circled the courtyard. A servant came out of the kitchen, on the way to the well for water. She broke step when she saw this under-dressed child, and kept a wary eye on him as she hauled on the rope.

Felix studied the woman thoughtfully. "That well," he said, "might come up from the caves below the fortress that Master Thaler discovered." He glanced around at Sophia. "Do you think that's possible?"

"Who are you going to send down to find out?"

"I'll ask for volunteers."

The woman at the well was now speaking to the boy, who clearly didn't understand a word. She didn't give up, though, her mouth-movements becoming more and more exaggerated as she attempted to make herself understood.

"The lad can work in the library. Master Thaler speaks Greek, doesn't he?"

"Among a dozen other languages." Sophia stretched her back, but continued to look out of the window at the courtyard. "I do too."

The boy was standing close to the kitchen woman. He was pointing to the rope, and she was laughing, shaking her head. The bucket emerged, and her strong arms lifted it clear. She poured the contents into the pail she'd brought, and left the other on the ground, surrounded by coils of rope.

She was halfway back to the kitchen when she turned and beckoned the boy to follow her. He tried to hurry, despite his thin legs being stiff with injury. She waited for him all the same, and he trailed beside her skirts as she was lost from view.

"You were late back from the library. Something's happened, hasn't it?" Felix rubbed at his shoulder.

"You'd better sit down." Sophia declined to do the same, but instead poured them both a cup of watered wine. "Master Wess had to intervene at the bridge this morning. A farmer had found some Bavarians hiding in his barn."

"Not more Bavarians." Felix pressed his forehead against the table. "We're going to run out of towers to hold them all at this rate."

"It's not like last time, Felix. It was two families. They were fleeing Simbach."

His head came up. "Fleeing? Are things that bad there?"

"So Master Wess says. Their earl has decided that as well as sending spies against us, he's going to rob his own people." Sophia walked back and forth beside the length of the table. There was something distracting about the swish of her skirt as she turned.

"Can't we leave the Bavarians to deal with him?" Felix asked her. "Who's on the throne instead of Leopold?"

She stopped briefly. "No one knows. This Fuchs seems free to do whatever he wants."

Felix pulled a face. "We don't have enough soldiers to patrol the river bank."

"We have to do something, though. If all of Simbach decides they've had enough, we're the first obvious place for them to go. And then Fuchs will follow them."

"My father would be choosing what he was going to have for lunch about now," murmured Felix, looking at the surface of the wine in his cup, and at how it shivered with each of her footsteps. "Then perhaps thinking about an afternoon's hawking. Ask me again if I want things to go back to the way they were?"

"They can't, Felix, and we're left having to do something about this." She stood behind him, and rested her hands on his shoulders. Gently, as if she might damage him otherwise. "Fuchs has already sent spies here to find out what we could do to him. He's testing us."

Felix leant back into her touch. "We can't do anything to him. I'm sorry for the people of Simbach, but what do they expect us to do?"

"They expect us to help them."

"With what? We don't have an army, Sophia. We don't have hexmasters and we don't have men-at-arms and we don't have horsemen and we don't have crossbowmen. And even if we had, I wouldn't want to waste their lives like my father did at Obernberg." He twisted around in his seat, despite the pain this caused him. "We have to choose which battles to fight. We don't have to fight this one. Not yet, anyway. We're not ready."

She stepped back, let her fingers slide off him. "We can't ignore it."

"We're not. We're arguing about whether we can invade Simbach when we haven't even repaired the water system." He slumped back onto the table. "If Fuchs crosses the river, then yes, we'll have to force him back, somehow."

"Wouldn't it be better to think about that now?"

"Yes," he groaned. "But I can't magic up an army I don't have. And I'm not hiring mercenaries I know what'll happen if I do that. We'll be able to protect ourselves by next spring. We'll have militias by then, and enough arms and training for them to make anyone worry. We'll have troops we can move quickly through the palatinate when we have to. It'll just take time, that's all."

"Simbach doesn't have a year, Felix. Neither do we." Hands that moments ago had been gently touching him were now slapped on the tabletop with force. "We've been given this information. We haven't had to work for it, and it's cost us nothing. Surely we have to do better now than just sitting around waiting for something horrible to happen."

Exasperated, Felix got up and kicked his chair away. "What do you suggest then? Are you going to lead your neighbours up to Simbach and rout the earl?"

"Felix, I don't have to. How many men does this Fuchs have? A score? Two? How many men and women in Simbach are fed up with his pillaging? They don't need an army. They need hope and a leader. That's it. That's all." She bent down and righted his chair, pushing it back under the table.

Felix felt she was missing the point. "Simbach is in Bavaria-"

"There is no Bavaria, Felix! It's gone. Even Byzantium is coming to you for help: if they can't kill enough slaves, they'll go the same way as Rome did. You spend hours staring at that map when you know it's meaningless." She reached across and snatched it up, shaking it at him. "Carinthia is only real because the people who live in these inky scratches are happy to call themselves Carinthians."

"And not because I'm their prince?"

She lowered her arms, put the map back down on the table and smoothed out some of the creases she'd caused. "What made us most of us turn to you rather than Eckhardt?"

Felix was prince because his father had been prince, and his father before him, all the way back to Alaric. Yet Sophia was asking why people followed him.

"I ... don't know." His high dudgeon was burst like a pig's bladder. "Do you?"

"Yes," she said, "which is why you're going to do something about Simbach. You can offer them something better than they have now. If they want to get rid of Fuchs, you'll help them. It's your nature."

"What can I offer them? Honestly?"

She put her back to him for a moment and reached into her bodice. When she turned again, she was holding out a piece of parchment. "I kept the original," she said. "This. This is enough. You could raise an army in a valley bottom or on a mountaintop with this."

He took it from her it was warm from the heat of her body and opened it. The words he'd written almost casually, carelessly, stared out of the page at him. All those who call themselves Carinthians will be subject to the same laws, the same taxes and the same freedoms granted by Carinthia, without favour. At the stroke of his pen, he'd upended a thousand years of the privilege of wealth and land and status. His own included. It hadn't seemed like that at the time, but it was still the right thing to have done.

"You really think so?" he asked.

"Yes. That and a bargeload of weapons. We can take Simbach in a single night, and not lose a man if you're prepared to extend that guarantee across the river. Tell them you'll divide the earl's lands among them. Appoint a mayor. No more Fuchs, and no more homeless townspeople drifting into Carinthia." She took the paper back, and turned away once more to stow it inside her clothing.

"Just tell me it'll work." He had no idea. But she was convinced, and that counted for a lot: for everything, in fact.

"If it doesn't, we can try something different. Perhaps a more ..." Sophia considered her words, "usual response."

"Well, I suppose we should call for Master Ullmann," said Felix. "As for those Bavarian families: let's see if they have the stomach for a fight."

65.

What would have happened if she hadn't followed Frederik Thaler up Goat Mountain? Would they all be dead by now? Would Eckhardt still be feeding his appetite with Jews, or would he have run out of them and moved on to other game? Had her decision been a whim or had she been guided as part of a greater plan? Was her meeting with the prince, and the fine dresses and unaccustomed authority that had followed, an accident, or had the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had used her to save His people?

Sophia thought that some sort of sign might have been appropriate: a burning bush; a pillar of smoke; an angel; a still, small voice. A talking ass, even. It wasn't much to ask. Instead, all she had was the indisputable fact that, when she spoke, people listened, including all the men who'd previously only ever frowned at her for being too intelligent, too well-read, too opinionated, to make a good wife: exactly those qualities that made her useful necessary even to Felix.

She had plenty of time to entertain such thoughts on her walks between the fortress and the town, but at least she no longer had to worry about her father: since falling in with Thaler, and losing some obscure bet with him, he was mostly out of trouble and more or less content.

She was at the quayside, to talk to the bargemasters, who were taking their sudden unemployment badly. It was still early, but if she could find one of them sober, she'd count herself lucky.

Most of them were rumoured to be found in the beer cellars at the bottom end of Wheat Alley, and beer cellars weren't somewhere that Jewish men ever went, let alone good Jewish women.

Chapter end