The Drawing of the Dark

'What have you got there? Oh yes, Pietro Moncio's book. Have you read it?'

'Yes. As a matter of fact, it was Moncio and Achille Marozzo I was dining with this evening.'

The old man blinked. 'Oh. Well, I haven't used a sword myself for a number of years, but I do try to keep up with developments in the art. That copy of della Torre there, in the dark vellum, is very rare.'

'It is?' remarked the Irishman, walking back to the table and refilling his glass. 'I'll have to sell my copy, then. Might make some money. I wasn't real impressed with the text.'

Long cobwebs of aromatic smoke were strung across the room, and Duffy fanned the air with a little portfolio of prints. 'It's getting murky in here,' he complained.

'You're right,' the old man said. 'I'm a damnable host. Perhaps if I open it a crack...' He walked to the window, stared out of it for a moment, and then turned back to Duffy with an apologetic smile. 'No, I won't open it. Let me explain quickly why I called you in, and then you can be on your way before the fumes begin seriously to annoy you. I've mentioned the Zimmermann Inn, of which I am the owner; it's a popular establishment, but I travel constantly and, to be frank, there is often trouble with the customers that I can't control even when I'm there. You know - a wandering friar will get into an argument with some follower of this Luther, a bundschuh leftover from the Peasants' War will knife the Lutheran, and in no time at all the dining room's a shambles and the serving girls are in tears. And these things cut into the profits in a big way -damages, nice customers scared off, tapsters harder to hire. I need a man who can be there all the time, who can speak to most customers in their native languages, and who can break up a deadly fight without killing anybody - as you did just now, with the Gritti boys by the canal.'

Duffy smiled. 'You want me to be your bouncer.'

'Exactly,' agreed Aurelianus, rubbing his hands together.

'Hm.' Duffy drummed his fingers on the table top. 'You know, if you'd asked me two days ago, I'd have told you to forget it. But.. .just in the last couple of days Venice has grown a little tiresome. I admit I've even found myself missing old Vienna. Just last night I had a dream - Aurelianus raised his eyebrows innocently. 'Oh?'

'Yes, about a girl I used to know there. I Wouldn't really mind seeing her - seeing what she's doing now. And if I hang around here those three Gritti lads will be challenging me to a real combat in the official champ clos, and I'm too old for that kind of thing.'

'They probably would,' Aurelianus agreed. 'They're hot-headed young men.'

'You know them?'

'No. I know about them.' Aurelianus picked up his half-consumed snake and re-lit it. 'I know about quite a number of people,' he added, almost to himself, 'without actually knowing them. I prefer it that way. You'll take the job, then?'

Oh, what the hell, Duffy thought. I would never have fit in back in Dingle anyway, realistically speaking. He shrugged. 'Yes. Why not?'

'Ah. I was hoping you would. You're more suited for it than anyone I've met.'

He knotted his hands behind his back and paced about the cluttered room. 'I've got business in the south, but I'd appreciate it if you could start for Vienna tout de suite. I'll give you some travelling money and a letter of introduction to the Zimmermann brewmaster, an old fellow named Gambrinus. I'll instruct him to give you another lump sum when you arrive there. How soon do you think that can be?'

Duffy scratched his gray head. 'Oh, I don't know. What's today?'

'The twenty-fourth of February. Ash Wednesday.' 'That's right. Monico had a gray cross on his forehead. Let's see - I'd take a boat to Trieste, buy a horse and cross the tail end of the Alps just east of there. Then maybe I'd hitch a ride north with some Hungarian lumber merchant; there's usually no lack of them in those parts. Cross the Sava and the Drava, and then follow the old Danube west to Vienna. Say roughly a month.'

'Before Easter, without a doubt?' Aurelianus asked anxiously.

'Oh, certainly.'

'Good. That's when we open the casks of bock, and I don't want a riot in the place.'

'Yes, I'll have been there a good two weeks by then.'

'I'm glad to hear it.' Aurelianus poured himself a cup of the sauternes and refilled Duffy's. 'You seem familiar with western Hungary,' he observed cautiously.

The Irishman frowned into his wine for a moment, then relaxed and nodded. 'I am,' he said quietly. 'I fought with King Louis and Archbishop Tomori at Mohacs in August of 'twenty-six. I shouldn't have been there; as an Austrian at the time, Hungary was nothing to me. I guess I figured Vienna was next on the Turk's list.' No sense telling him about Epiphany, Duffy thought.

The wine was unlocking Duffy's memories. The sky had been overcast, he recalled, and both sides had simply milled about on opposite sides of the Mohacs plain until well after noon. Then the Hungarian cavalry had charged; the Turkish center gave way, and Duffy's troop of German infantry had followed the Hungarians into the trap. That was as hellish a maelstrom as I ever hope to find myself in, he thought now, sipping his wine - when those damned Turks suddenly stopped retreating, and turned on the pursuing troops.

His mouth curled down at the corners as he remembered the sharp thudding of the Turkish guns and the hiss of grapeshot whipping across the plain to rip into the Christian ranks, the whirling scimitars of the weirdly-wailing Janissaries blocking any advance, and the despairing cry that went up from the defenders of the West when it became evident that the Turks had out-flanked them.

You obviously have luck,' Aurelianus said, after a pause. 'Not many men got clear of that.'

'That's true,' Duffy said. 'I hid among the riverside thickets afterward, until John Zapolya and his troops arrived, the day after the battle. I had to explain to him that the idiot Tomori had attacked Without waiting for him and Frangipani and the other reinforcements; that nearly everyone on the Hungarian side - Louis, Tomori, thousands more - was dead, and that Suleiman and his Turks had won. Zapolya cleared out then, ran west. I ran south.'

The old man stubbed his smoking snake out in an incense bowl and reluctantly exhaled the last of the smoke. 'You've heard, I suppose, that Zapolya has gone over to the Turkish side flow?'

Duffy frowned. 'Yes. He just wants to be governor of Hungary, I guess, and will kiss the hand of whoever seems to own it. I can still hardly believe it, though; I've known him since 1515, and he was making raids against the Turks even then. Of all the things I would have sworn were impossible'