CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

 

 

Saturday unfurled itself.

 

 

    Absent that special morning were the usual breakfast-time comments such as "This tea tastes like dish-water", "Where's my bacon?" and "Just a few more minutes". Instead, curious remarks crossed London's breakfast tables, remarks like, "Is this the fly edge or the hoist edge?", "Have you seen my best ruff?" and "Get that taper away from the bloody Catherine wheels!"

 

 

    It was Masque Saturday, and the City was preparing to have an Extremely Good Time, which was fine provided your concept of an Extremely Good Time involved flags, patriotic songs and a potentially lethal combination of fireworks and alcohol.

 

 

    The morning poured itself across the City, robust and fullbodied. Apart from a few determined individuals, who were resolutely intent on properly finishing off Friday (most of these were to be found in the Rouncey Mare), London was up, and busily getting on with Saturday, which was going to be fun with a capital eff.

 

 

    Sometime around dawn, the City streets had begun to extrude bunting: bright, flapping, tricolour bunting that apparently had been pulled from the shadows of each street corner the way stage conjurers produce coloured hankies from the mouths, ears or armpits of surprised volunteers from the audience. Suddenly clad in miles of bunting it had not known it contained, the City could do little more than applaud the trick with a mystified expression on its face.

 

 

    After the bunting came the flags, thousands of them, hung, tied, wrapped or otherwise suspended from every available surface above the streets. Pennants and streamers swam like eels in the breeze, banners and gonfalons swung like veils from gutter-lines and eaves, burgees and swallowtails snapped like whips from chimneys and wash-ropes, Guild and Union emblems hung resplendent in the morning light.

 

 

    Every household seemed to have found a flag, pulled it out of an attic box, darned it, and hoisted it to the roof. Anything fitted the bill: jubilee jacks, crosses, ensigns, pennoncels declaring "Happy Birthday" or "Merry Christmas", oriflames, quarantine burgees, and clubhouse guidons. The winds crossing London found themselves unexpectedly detained by new acres of bagging, furling cloth. The noted wit and bon viveur, Sir Thomas Decretz, declared that the City-folk had suddenly become damnably vexillopathic, but rather underscored this quip by making it while he was rummaging through an ottoman for his Uncle Albert's regimental banderole.

 

 

    Apart from the very real danger that the entire City might take off if there was an unnecessarily strong gust of wind, there were threats from other quarters. Caches of unexploded fireworks mined the City more thoroughly than any bombardier could have planned. It would be a miracle, particularly given the anticipated alcohol consumption, if they all went off as intended.

 

 

    Members of the City fire brigades sat around in their stations, grimly sipping coffee, and preparing to intercede when the merrymaking in the streets turned from "Ooohh!"-ing and "Aaahhh!"-ing to "Er, wasn't that your house?"-ing.

 

 

    Detachments of Militia routinely stopped platoons of troops hauling artillery into the streets.

 

 

    "Isn't that an excessive number of guns for a salute?" the Militia men would ask, resignedly, but there was no gainsaying the enthusiastic troops.

 

 

    "Of course we haven't been authorised," they'd say, "but it's the Masque Holiday, innit?"

 

 

    "Aim for the sky," they were told.

 

 

    "Of course we will," was the response, as the soldiers handed round rum for the umpteenth time, continued down the street, came back for the cannons which they had left behind and smiled, completely unreassuringly, at the Militia.

 

 

    A profusion of floral sprays decorated every surface not occupied by a ratty flag or a box of festive explosives. Somewhere, vast meadows, glades and dells must have been denuded of flowering undergrowth. The demand for bouquets was so great that by the time the florists got to Denmark Hill, they were putting up nettle nosegays, which frankly lacked in everything except effort.

 

 

    Triumff led Doll and me, your reliable servant, Wllm Beaver, from the Swan to a tea shop called the Conifer in Skitter Lane. Since before six, it had been doing a roaring trade in sweet tea and filled cobs with all those up early on flag-hoisting, spray-nailing or firework-priming expeditions, which was nearly everybody.

 

 

    Behind its leaded, sooty windows lay a modest chamber where even the air seemed to have been stained brown with tannin. A rich mix of camomile and lavender filled the room, oozing out of the steamy clouds that billowed from the hearth kettles. Two dozen or more patrons sat in the dim booths, smoking, draining china cups of hot brown fluid, and discussing such things as the subtleties of halyard tugging, the bannerol versus the pencel as a patriotic statement, and whether a privy would offer sufficient protection in the unlikely event of, hypothetically let's say, all twelve Grand Combustive Number Four Sky Rockets being ignited simultaneously.

 

 

    "A pot of Assam and a plate of fruit cake," Triumff told one of the serving girls, once he had got her attention away from a conversation about waft, waif and flaunt.

 

 

    "Excitin', innit?" she asked him with glee as she took his order.

 

 

    "You've no idea," he said with a thin, artificial smile.

 

 

    Triumff took Doll and me to the back of the shop, and installed us in a booth that hid us from the street windows and casual glances.

 

 

    "I'm not sure I should be associating with you," I mumbled wearily as the tea arrived. I gingerly kneaded my bruised, swollen face.

 

 

    "Your choice," said Triumff, passing me a steaming cup, "but drink this before you go. You've had a rough time, and your nerves need calming."

 

 

    Your humble servant took the cup, silently, and sipped, deep in thought. Triumff and Doll began to devour the cake in a way that suggested eating had just become a timed sport.

 

 

    "You're a member of the fourth estate, Beaver," said Triumff through cake crumbs. "I assume, therefore, that you can string a word or two together. I have a story for you. It'll make your reputation, and I'd be obliged if you took it down for my sake."

 

 

    I looked at him, any amount of curiosity, and any number of questions in his expression.

 

 

    "By tomorrow, I might be dead. I'd be happier about that if I knew someone was going to relate the truth after my death," said Triumff.

 

 

    They ordered a second pot and another cake. I produced a pencil and my notebook.

 

 

    "Tell me all about it, then," I said.

 

 

At Richmond, grumpy workmen did the rounds and shook fried moths from the lantern boxes. There were over four thousand lantern boxes, so that meant a lot of moths, not to mention the number of stubby wicks that had to be tweaked to ignition readiness.

 

 

    Behind them came the groundsmen, raking up fallen leaves and a not inconsiderable number of dead moths from the dewy lawns. The park braziers sparked and burnt with a strange, lepidopterous odour.

 

 

    The cavalcade began to roll through the Palace gates: carts and wagons laden to axle-warping with foodstuffs, wine, and enough theatrical equipage to put on the complete plays of Jonson simultaneously. Gaggles of musicians flocked in with the carts, some playing jaunty tunes on their instruments as they strolled along. The carters gave the players sour looks; they had been on the move since four in the morning, and the last thing they felt like was a jolly almain. Palace stewards bustled through the mob, organising, advising and directing, each of them beginning to realise, with a sick feeling, that what had looked terrific on paper was going to be a logistical nightmare in practice.

 

 

    Rain-clouds admonished the sultry skies, but their threats were empty, and the sun seemed to have got all dressed up for the occasion, roughly pushing aside all hints of inclement weather.

 

 

    It was going to be a fine Saturday, no matter what. Twenty miles south of the Capital, amid the slumbering corn fields of the North Downs, Giuseppe Giuseppo clambered down from the wagon he had been riding in, and looked out into the middle distance. London seemed as far away as the sleepy sun. Out here, on the Downs, there was nothing but the breeze, the nodding corn, an occasional droning bumblebee and the promise of the perspective-eating trackway.

 

 

    "Well?" he asked the carter, one Chub Blackett.

 

 

    Chub proffered a clump of torn-up cowgrass to his horse and said, "Sure and be as right as rain in a day or twa."

 

 

    Giuseppe swallowed hard, and wondered if his command of English was failing him.

 

 

    "I have to be in London at once," he reminded Chub, smiling.

 

 

    "As if," said Chub, scowling as his panting horse refused the cowgrass.

 

 

    "Sir, I don't think you understand. Forgive me if my English isn't making my purpose clear. I must be in London with all haste. It is vitally important."

 

 

    "As if," replied Chub, stroking the sweat-drenched flanks of his weary workhorse.

 

 

    "But-" said Giuseppe.

 

 

    "Listen now, mister. This horse has run as far and as fast as it will and no more. If I put the lash to him now, he'll drop rightly dead at once."

 

 

    "But-" added Giuseppe.

 

 

    "Innt no point complaining. I can gets you to London for Sunday, like enough. If yorn wants to get theres sooner, you's must have to pace it out yournsel."

 

 

    Giuseppe mopped his brow with his cuff and studied the horse. Its chestnut coat was sheened with perspiration. Chub had been driving it at a gallop since they had left the coast.

 

 

    It looked back at the Italian traveller with fathomless dark eyes, and Giuseppe knew that further argument was useless.

 

 

    "Free the horse from the harness," Giuseppe instructed the carter simply.

 

 

    Chub looked at his passenger for a moment with handshaded eyes, and then obeyed without comment. He led the horse away from the wagon to the roadside, where it began to graze in a half-hearted way.

 

 

    Giuseppe climbed onto the driving board and reached over into his luggage. After a moment, he produced the little, potent book and a small felt bag of coins. He tossed the latter to Chub, who caught it smartly.

 

 

    "What's this?" he asked.

 

 

    "For the cart. Now I recommend you look the other way. Over there, for instance," Giuseppe said, indicating the misty distance beyond the corn, which Chub dutifully began to regard.

 

 

    "And don't look back until I'm gone," Giuseppe added, turning the fragile, wriggling pages of the notebook.

 

 

    Chub had had a funny feeling about the Italian since he first met him, so he obeyed the instruction unswervingly.

 

 

    He looked out over the Downs, across the corn to the point where it met the sky. Bees hummed past. Behind him, he heard, although he did not want to hear, a muttering of Latin phrases, followed by a creak of wagon-wood. The air around him, around the Downs, seemed fulminous and heavy, suddenly, charged with an electrical murkiness, and there was a smell of syrup, or was it molasses?

 

 

    Then there was the sudden rattling of a wagon in motion, a rattling and a squeaking, but no hoof-beats. His horse started, nostrils flaring, but he shushed it down with an experienced hand, his eyes never leaving that distant spot. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

 

 

The noise of the wagon receded and was gone.

 

    Chub slowly turned around. He was alone with his horse in the middle of the golden ocean and the early morning.

 

 

    "As if," he murmured to no one at all.

 

 

Lying on the nape of the Downs, on the London Road, Smardescliffe is, if you didn't know, pronounced "Smarly", and has been since before they started taking preparatory notes for the Domesday Book. On Masque Saturday, however, the only thing pronounced about it was the anti-Goetic fervour that throbbed in all Smardescliffian veins.

 

 

    By the church gate, opposite the cross of St Cunegund (the patron saint of being patronising), on the village sward, the Mayor stood in conference with the Baker, the Butcher and the Landlord of the Cat and Stoop. The Mayor had leant his pitchfork against the gate for the time being, but the other three had fast holds on their own makeshift weapons, variously a rusty haulm shear, a pig stick and a cooking apple on the end of a piece of string. Frankly, the Landlord of the Cat and Stoop wasn't quite sure what he was going to do with the be-stringed apple in the event of a fight, but he wanted to show willing, and, besides, he felt that the confidence with which he hefted the thing suggested it was a devastating, exotic weapon, whose secrets he had learned from some far-travelled great-uncle, and which could bloodily rout any foe in seconds, in the hands of a trained expert, ie him.

 

 

    The Butcher, a vast man, who looked like one of his bled carcasses dressed up in an apron, was rhubarbing on about deviltry, evil times and making a stand. Blood-letting was first nature to him, and he was secretly very pleased that this national emergency had come along and given him an excuse to bluster and threaten people with a piece of sharp iron.

 

 

    The Baker hadn't even cut so much as a thatch spray with his shear, let alone another person, but he was quite buoyed up by the Butcher's bullish gusto. He stood, legs apart, shear over his shoulder, eyes hooded, imagining that he cut quite a heroic, dashing figure. He didn't, of course. He looked like a skinny Baker trying to look relaxed about struggling with a heavy piece of rusty metal. But no one told him. "Live and let be" is the Smardescliffe village motto.

 

 

    The Mayor had thought about telling the Baker he looked like a prat, but he was staring with ill-disguised fascination at the Landlord's cooking apple. He had even blanked out the Butcher's unstinting and inflammatory monologue.

 

 

    Eventually, as the Butcher paused to draw breath and wipe the drool from his lips, the Mayor spoke.

 

 

    "I quite agree, Master Butcher," he said, having no idea what he was agreeing to. "In these dark times it is our duty as seniors of the parish of Smardescliffe to stand together and defend our lands, our country and the honour of our Queen against the vile perculations of Beelzebub, whose infamy has risen to plague this fair isle."

 

 

    "And on such a day as this," put in the Landlord of the Cat and Stoop, swinging his apple dangerously, "when we should all be celebrating the coronation of our Gloriana. Why, it makes my blood fret and boil." He punctuated his comment by slapping the apple hard into his open palm. They all looked at him. They all wondered.

 

 

    "They say London has already fallen," said the Baker, shifting the shear to his other shoulder with a wince. "Demons prowl the very streets, eating people. Bedevilment is abroad. The Queen, I hear, is besieged in her Palace, with only the Royal huscarls around her, blading off the Hadesborn scum."

 

 

    "Would I were there, by the side of the noble huscarls, for the honour of Her Majesty," the Butcher said, twisting his pig-stick significantly in the clenched meat of his fist. There was something unpleasantly rectal about the gesture, and the other three looked away.

 

 

    "Our duty is here, defending our own parish against the foes of England," the Mayor reminded them all, examining the privet of the church hedge.

 

 

    "Of course," said the Butcher.

 

 

    "If we cannot look after our own, then we have no business taking our war to London," said the Mayor.

 

 

    "Of course," the Butcher nodded.

 

 

    "The Queen expects as much. If each town looks after its own sanctity, then Her Majesty may rest easy. She will have an intact kingdom to rule once the danger is passed."

 

 

    "Of course," said the Baker, assuming the Butcher had forgotten.

 

 

    "You can wager that the damn folk over in Nether Pluxley aren't doing as much. Like as not, they're all hiding under their beds," said the Landlord of the Cat and Stoop. The apple smacked into his hand again. The Butcher looked down at his pig-stick and wondered a bit more. Pluxley, incidentally, is pronounced Plexcliffe.

 

 

    "That's Nether Pluxley for you," said the Baker, quite getting into this macho posturing bit. "Shirkers."

 

 

    "Shirkers," they all sneered in agreement.

 

 

    "Well," said the Mayor, "we have militia stationed at every entrance to the village, and everyone is braced for any attack. We all know the signs to look out for. The moment the demons appear, they will be destroyed."

 

 

    "Bled dry," affirmed the Butcher gruffly.

 

 

    "Sheared," added the Baker enthusiastically. The apple slapped around into the Landlord's palm again.

 

 

"Indeed," said the Mayor.

 

    "Reminds me of the Armada watch," ventured the Butcher. "Alert night and day, signal fires waiting to be kindled. Hungry for marching Spaniards to drive off."

 

 

    They all nodded. The Butcher was forty-six, and the threatened Armada was four hundred years previous, but no one wanted to point this out to the Butcher. There was a dried sheen of something on the pig-stick, which quite curtailed comment.

 

 

    "I almost might wish the Spaniards had invaded," added the Butcher in the silence.

 

 

    The Mayor looked at him.

 

 

    "I relish a good fight," the Butcher told him.

 

 

    The Mayor nodded in agreement, and wondered how easy it would be to oust the Butcher from the Parish Council. Then he wondered how hard he'd have to jab his pitchfork in order to penetrate the Butcher's blood-scabbed apron. After that, he wondered how much he'd have to pay the Baker and the Landlord of the Cat and Stoop to corroborate a story of the Butcher suddenly going berserk through demonic possession. Not much, he concluded.

 

 

    Then, a sudden shout was heard in the lane, and they all looked around. The Verger was sprinting down the bank from the high road, the hem of his robe gathered up in his hands, his hairy white calves scissoring frantically.

 

 

    "D!" yelled the Verger as he approached across the Sward, sweat dripping from his nose.

 

 

    "D!" he added as he fell against the gate, panting.

 

 

    "D what?" asked the Mayor, reaching for his pitchfork.

 

 

    Regaining his composure, the Verger turned to look at them. His face was blanched white with terror. The Mayor took a step back. The Butcher curled his lips into a snarl. The Baker almost dropped his shear. The Landlord of the Cat and Stoop slapped his apple.

 

 

    "DEMON!" completed the Verger, and fainted. As he hit the ground, he extended a telling finger helpfully towards the north road into the village.

 

 

    "Slap him," suggested the Butcher, "repeatedly."

 

 

    But the Baker caught his arm and turned his attention to the road. The cart thundering down the track had no horse, but the gentle slope could not explain its accelerated progress.

 

 

    "By Our Lady," said the Mayor, gawping.

 

 

    The Butcher, the Baker, the Mayor and the Landlord of the Cat and Stoop took up their weapons and blocked its path.

 

 

    "Stand ready now," hissed the Butcher through fused-together teeth.

 

 

    "I'm ready for anything," said the Baker, who wasn't.

 

 

    The Landlord of the Cat and Stoop spun his apple in slow, hypnotic arcs.

 

 

    Giuseppe Giuseppo halted his careering wagon before the four armed men. It skidded up five feet from them. The harness, which had been mysteriously suspended in mid-air in front of the cart, flopped to the earth. The air was heavy with a syrupy aroma. The Mayor, the Landlord, the Baker and the Butcher all distinctly heard the snort of horse-breath. The Baker sensed that his bladder control was about to knock off for the weekend. He held out his shear, crossed his legs, and hoped that he retained some vestige of macho posing. He didn't, but, no one noticed.

 

 

    They were all too busy looking at the foreigner on the horse-less wagon.

 

 

    "Good day," said Giuseppe Giuseppo with a warm smile, rising from his seat. "I am Giuseppe Giuseppo, late of La Spezia. I must apologise for my unseemly mode of transport, but I am in haste, and must be in your fair City of London with all despatch. Is this the road?"

 

 

    "What business have you in London?" asked the Mayor, coldly, the pitchfork shaking in his hands.

 

 

    "Nothing less, in truth, than the life of Her Majesty, your Queen."

 

 

    "Get the bastard!" squeaked the Mayor.

 

 

    The Baker pitched forward, overbalanced by the weight of the shear. The Butcher pretended to trip, and accidentally drop his pig stick, and cursed profusely. The Mayor lunged at Giuseppe, who ducked. The pitchfork smacked smartly into the side of the wagon.

 

 

    "Demon!" declared the Mayor, running out of breath and pitchfork handle at precisely the same moment, and therefore hitting the side of the cart with stunning force.

 

 

    "Are you all right, sir?" asked Giuseppe Giuseppo in concern.

 

 

    Then a cooking apple on a piece of string struck him soundly in the face.

 

 

    Dazed, Giuseppe fell backwards off the cart, his head glancing off the edge of the off-side front wheel. By the time he hit the ground, he was unconscious.

 

 

    The Baker helped the Mayor to his feet. The Butcher looked at the Landlord, who shot him a wide, cocksure grin that quite belied his astonishment.

 

 

    "Very impressive," said the Butcher.

 

 

    It bloody was, wasn't it? thought the Landlord of the Cat and Stoop, but he didn't say anything.

 

 

Bells had started ringing across the City. As it had been decreed that all the belfries of London should mark the festival at six in the evening, the cacophony was a little premature. The most likely explanation seemed to be that parish bellringers in north London had decided to get in a little last-minute practice, and their peals had set the whole place off in a frenzy of not-to-be-outdone ringing. Even the Sisters of the Justified Madonna had got out their tambourines. Under a table in the Rouncey Mare, Boy Simon awoke, and couldn't believe how loud his hangover was.

 

 

    On Thames Street, de Quincey led Mother Grundy through the seething crowd and the campanological onslaught. According to a clerk at New Hibernian Yard, Lord Gull was due to inspect the Militia watching the bridge.

 

 

    En route, de Quincey and Mother Grundy had been forced to abandon their carriage at Wafer Lane due to the congested traffic, and they hurried along on foot, pushing their way through the press, ignoring the hundreds of attempts to sell them flowers, flags or fireworks.

 

 

    "Not today!" de Quincey told the umpteenth hawker with a sprig of nettles. Up ahead, he could see the Militia post. There were six men there, each holding a halberd and a sprig of nettles. As they saw de Quincey approach, they tried to hide the sprigs in embarrassment.

 

 

    "Where's Lord Gull?" snapped de Quincey as he made it through the crowd.

 

 

    The men shrugged.

 

 

    "Where is he?" de Quincey repeated with more urgency.

 

 

    "He's gone," said one of the pikemen. "He was here, but he went, not five minutes ago."

 

 

    "He took a wherry down Richmond," said another, kicking his sprig out of sight discreetly behind a box of firecrackers on the kerb, "for the Masque."

 

 

    De Quincey spun around, lost for words.

 

 

    "Then what now?" asked Mother Grundy with astonishing calm.

 

 

    "Richmond," replied de Quincey.

 

 

    There wasn't a waterman in sight on Three Cranes Pier. A queue of hopeful passengers stood on the boards, having their names taken by a young girl, who occasionally turned and wailed "Oars!" futilely at the empty river.

 

 

    "Oy!" they said as de Quincey pushed past.

 

 

    "Police business," de Quincey growled back. He reached the girl. "How long?"

 

 

    "Name?" asked the girl, her pencil poised above her fares book.

 

 

    "How bloody long?" screamed de Quincey.

 

 

    "Twenty minutes, at the very least," she said, "It's a busy day. It's Masque Saturday."

 

 

    De Quincey took off his cap, then jumped up and down on it.

 

 

    "No need to be like that, I'm sure," said the girl, moving on.

 

 

    "De Quincey!" His name rang out across the pier. De Quincey stopped jumping and looked. Mother Grundy stood beside a battered old dorey, which was up-turned on the pier like an exhausted turtle, an exhausted turtle with holes in its shell. "Give me a hand with this," she ordered. Her words were as sharp as a rapier thrust, and just as chilly.

 

 

    De Quincey left his trampled cap, and hurried over. "What good's this?" he whimpered. "It's got holes in it, and there are no oars."

 

 

    Mother Grundy fixed him with a look that had driven three generations of Ormsvile Nesbit children to school, no matter how brilliant their acting.

 

 

    "Do you always go to pieces in a crisis, Mr de Quincey?" she asked.

 

 

    "I don't know. I haven't been in many."

 

 

    "Help me with the boat."

 

 

    "But-"

 

 

    "It's got holes in it, and there are no oars. I know. Complain in the rain and you just wet your head."

 

 

    "I'm sorry?" asked de Quincey.

 

 

    "It's a saying," Mother Grundy explained, "and not a popular one in this City, I'll be bound. Perhaps this one will be easier to understand: find a way, not a fault."

 

 

    De Quincey looked down at the dorey, and almost grizzled for the first time since his sixth birthday, when a horse had eaten his new kite.

 

 

    "My mother used to say that," he admitted. "I never knew what it meant."

 

 

    "Then learn, Mr de Quincey," said Mother Grundy.

 

 

    Together, they overturned the dorey and slid it down into the water. It began to sink, quickly.

 

 

    "Get in and bail," Mother Grundy instructed.

 

 

    "Okay," said de Quincey, meekly.

 

 

    "Hey!" cried the girl on the pier.

 

 

    "Is for horses," Mother Grundy told her. The girl frowned and looked around at the queue, who all shrugged.

 

 

    "My feet are getting wet," said de Quincey, bailing for all he was worth.

 

 

    "Then bail harder," Mother Grundy hissed, climbing in beside him. The dorey went down another three inches.

 

 

    "Oh God," said de Quincey, soaked by the spray he was making. "If I'm bailing, I can't row, and I can't row anyway because there aren't any oars!"

 

 

    Mother Grundy just stood in the stern. She said something quiet and complicated. The boat sank a little more.

 

 

    "Hmph," said Mother Grundy, "it works all right on the millpond back home. Perhaps the spirits of the Thames are a little hard of hearing."

 

 

    She said whatever it was again, louder.

 

 

    De Quincey fell over as the dorey suddenly began to move. It shot away from the slip like a skimming pebble, bouncing off and through every wave of the river. A foamy wake sprayed out behind them.

 

 

    "Uh uh" said de Quincey, struggling up in the violently shaking boat, but he was too wet to do any better.

 

 

    "That's more like it," smiled Mother Grundy.

 

 

    "By Our Lady," breathed the girl on the pier. The queue all nodded in agreement.

 

 

    Upstream, in mid-Thames, Gull consulted his notebook itinerary. Facing him, the two watermen heaved on the wherry's oars.

 

 

    "Fast as you like," said Gull. "I have many things to attend to."

 

 

    Both watermen felt like exchanging rude remarks, but their fare was a big man, and he wore his sword like he knew how to use it. They nodded instead, but there was deep and multiple meaning in the nods.

 

 

    "Begging your pardon, sir," said one of them, suddenly catching sight of something astern.

 

 

    Gull raised himself from the bench seat and followed the waterman's gaze. Three hundred yards behind them, de Quincey was approaching the wherry in an oar-less dorey with only a thin, grinning old lady for company. De Quincey wore an expression that was part child's glee and part complete bemusement. There was no obvious motive power for the dorey, but it was coming at them as if it had been shot from a cannon, skipping the water like a porpoise.

 

 

    "Easy oar," said Gull in astonishment, getting to his feet. Both watermen had already forgotten they were meant to be rowing anyway.

 

 

    The dorey hove alongside and stopped abruptly, causing de Quincey to sit down again hard. Its sudden lack of forward motion was met by a resumed downward motion.

 

 

    "Permission to come aboard," said de Quincey, a glazed, inane look on his face.

 

 

    Gull and the watermen helped de Quincey and the old lady to hop across onto the rocking wherry.

 

 

    The dorey sank.

 

 

    "Mr de Quincey. Please explain everything," said Gull sternly.

 

 

    "Mother Grundy can do that," said de Quincey, flopping into Gull's seat, and emptying his boots over the rail. "Mother Grundy can do anything. Lord Gull, Mother Grundy."

 

 

    Gull turned to the old lady, but she waved him back, peering intently after the bubbles that marked the dorey's departure from active life.

 

 

    "In a moment, Laird of Ben Phie," she said, before sprinkling the water with a handful of flowers from her purse. "Father Thames, I thank you for your aid. Flow softly on in peace."

 

 

    "What are you doing?" asked Gull.

 

 

    "Being polite," she replied.

 

 

    "You won't get a straight answer out of her, chief," said de Quincey. "I haven't yet, and I've been with her for hours. Careful now, or she'll issue you with a saying."

 

 

    Gull wasn't listening.

 

 

    "When you've finished being polite to this body of water, try being polite to me," he said.

 

 

    "There isn't time," said Mother Grundy, turning to the Captain of the Royal Guard. "We have a nation to save."