The Drawing of the Dark

'Hello, Bluto,' Duffy said. 'I've told the girls you're to get free bock till ten.

'Till ten? What happens at ten?'

'You start paying for it.'

'I'd better get busy then. Oh,' Bluto spoke more quietly, 'I finished checking the stores this afternoon. There's about a hundred pounds of black powder missing.'

The Irishman nodded. 'Nothing else?'

'No. Oh, maybe. One of the old forty-pounder siege bombards seems to be missing, but the armorer probably miscounted them when he made the list back in 'twenty-four. I mean, how could anyone carry away a gun like that?'

Duffy frowned. 'I don't know. But I'll keep my eyes open. You haven't seen Shrub around, have you?'

'Yes. He's in the kitchen. I saw him peeking in here a minute ago, looking scared. Where are your Vikings?'

'In the stable, drinking and singing. I'm hoping that if I keep sending beer out to them they'll stay there, and not try to join the party in here. Oh no, what are those shepherds doing to that guy over there?'

'Baptizing him with beer, it looks like.'

'Excuse me.

Twenty minutes later Duffy sank exhausted onto a bench in the corner and signalled to Anna for a pitcher. He had put down so many uprisings in the still noisy room that people within earshot of him - not a great distance, to be sure - kept a wary eye on him; the rowdier drunkards were shaken and, in some cases, pulled down from chandeliers or out from under tables and told to stop it by their more sober friends.

Shrub edged his way nervously through the crowd, leading a tall, dark-faced man who wore a heavy cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. 'Mr Duffy,' the boy said before darting out of the room, 'this gentleman wanted to see you. He's a Spaniard.'

He looks more like a pirate than a gentleman, the Irishman thought, but I may as well be civil. 'Yes, sir?'

'Can I sit with you?'

Duffy's pitcher arrived then, giving him a more tolerant outlook. 'Very well,' he said, 'pull up a bench. Have you got a mug to drink from?'

The Spaniard swiped an empty one from the nearest table. 'Yes.'

'Then have some beer.' Duffy filled both their mugs. 'How can I be of service to you? Uh, the boy was mistaken, I assume, in describing you as a Spaniard.'

'Eh? Why do you say that?'

'Well, you're stretching your vowels, but your accent's Hungarian. Or so it seems to my possibly beer-dulled ears.

No, damn you, you're correct. I'm Hungarian. But I think it's your eyes that are beer-dulled if you don't recognize me.

The Irishman sighed, and with some effort focused his attention on the man's shadowed face, expecting to recognize some old comrade-in-arms who would probably want to borrow money.

Then his stomach went cold, and he suddenly felt much more sober; it was a face he had last seen on that awful morning in the late summer of 1526 when Duffy, wounded and exhausted, had breasted the broad tide of the Danube and dragged himself onto the north bank. The Turkish banners had been flying over the conquered town of Mohacs behind him, and sixty thousand slain Hungarian soldiers were being buried on the battle-furrowed plain. That morning, on the river's north side, he had met the army of John Zapolya, for whom Archbishop Tomori and King Louis, both at that moment being laid unmourned in unmarked graves, had not waited. The battered Irishman had described to Zapolya the disastrous battle and rout of the previous afternoon, and Zapolya, shocked and angry, had within the hour led his army away westward. Duffy had rested in the woods for another day and then beaten a furtive, solitary retreat to the south, over the Alps to Venice. Years later he heard of Zapolya's subsequent defection to the Turkish side.

'By God,' he breathed now, 'how do you dare come here? After you sold your homeland to Suleiman I never thought I'd see you again.. .except perhaps over a gun-barrel or sword-point.'

John Zapolya's eyes narrowed, but his sardonic smile didn't falter. 'My loyalty is and has always been to Hungary, and it has been for her welfare that I have done everything.. .even this tonight.'

Duffy was still appalled at the man's very presence. 'What are you doing here tonight?' he asked. 'And why do you evidently suppose that I won't shout to this roomful of people the fact that this "Spaniard" is the man they've practically come to equate with Satan?'

'Well, lad, first because I've got a short-barrel monk's gun levelled at your stomach under the table. Yes, I'm afraid it's true. And second, there are four of my men in the alley out back, in what appears to be a hay wagon.

Duffy sighed wearily. 'And what is it really, John?' Zapolya sipped his beer, keeping his eyes on Duffyand his right hand under the table. 'Oh, it's a hay-wagon, but it holds more than hay.'

'Damn it, John, can't you -

Very well, take it easy. There's a siege bombard in it, loaded with a forty-pound ball of iron. Its barrel is laid horizontal, pointing at this building, and my men are carrying slowmatches.'