The Drawing of the Dark

'And this.. .Liaison broke up because you were too old to compromise and didn't care to starve your logical -'

'Well, no. Not this one'.

'Oh? It was her decision, then?'

'No. She -' He glared defensively at the Irishman. 'She was burned at the stake.'>He sighed heavily, and turned right at the corner of the inn instead of pressing on toward the Rotenturmstrasse. Soon he had come round into the inn's stableyard, and he leaned on a clothesline pole for a few moments and looked reminiscently about.

I see Werner hasn't re-roofed the stalls that were blown up by that petard, he noted. I wonder if he still thinks I was responsible for that. Probably he does. At least somebody patched the fence where Zapolya's damned forty-pound iron ball passed through it. And over there's where the northmen were quartered.

He crossed the yard to the stables and saw that there were still several straw-filled bunks against the back wall. Almost without conscious thought he rolled into the lowest, closed his eyes and was soon asleep.

With the lucidity typical of afternoon dreams, he was sitting across a table from Epiphany. Her hair was still more dark than gray, and her expressions and gestures hadn't yet lost the careless spontaneity of youth.

Though he couldn't hear his own words - in fact could apparently only speak as long as he didn't try to listen to himself - he knew he was talking earnestly to her, trying to make her understand something. What was it he had been trying to make her understand, that long-ago morning? Oh, of course! That she'd be mad to go through with her planned marriage to Max Hallstadt - that she ought instead to marry Duffy. He paused in his speech for a sip of beer, and had a moment of difficulty in regaining the thread of his faultlessly logical argument.

'Oh, Brian,' she said, rolling her eyes in half-feigned exasperation, 'why do you only bring these things up when you're sick, drunk or tired?'

'Epiphany!' he protested. 'I'm always sick, drunk 'or tired!'

The scene flickered away, and he found himself shoving his way into the vestibule of St Peter's Church. Several of Hallstadt's friends were there, evidently posted for the specific purpose of keeping the Irishman out if he should attempt to get in and disrupt the wedding.

'Come on, now, Brian,' spoke one - what had his name been? Klaus somebody. 'You're not a part of this picture anymore.

'Out of my way, you poxy toad,' Duffy said, in a voice loud enough to turn heads in the nearer pews. 'Hallstadt! Damn your eyes, you won't -'A fist in his stomach doubled him up and, silenced him for a moment, but then he had lashed out with a punch of his own, and Klaus was jigging backward at an impossible-to-maintain angle, and colliding with the baptismal font...

The yard-tall pillar with its marble bowl tottered, leaned

- as Klaus rolled off to one side - and then went to the

floor-tiles with a terrible echoing crash. Holy water splashed up into the faces of appalled ushers, and shards of marble were spinning across the floor. Another of Hallstadt's friends seized Duffy by the arm, but the Irishman shook him off.

He took a step up the aisle. 'Hallstadt, you son-of-a-whore, draw your sword and face me if you're not the eunuch everyone takes you for!'

People were leaping to their feet, and he caught one glimpse of Epiphany's veiled, horrified face before a hardy altar boy felled him unconscious with a tall iron crucifix.

Then he was simply falling through a vortex of old scenes and faces, over the muted babble of which he could hear an older man's voice raised in strong, delighted laughter.

* * *

Chapter Eighteen

When he opened his eyes he was in deep shadow, and the wall of the inn, which he could just see from where he lay, showed dark gray around the yellow of the windows. God, he thought blurrily. Just a dream this time, was it? It was bad enough to go through those unhappy days in early 'twenty-six, without having to re-live them in my dreams. Ah, but at least they're my memories; better a dozen such than one of those damned dreams of that moonlit lake -which you were risking, drinking all that cursed beer. Stick to wine, lad. He rolled to his feet, slapped straw from his doublet and combed his hair with his fingers, then took a deep breath, let it out, and started toward the building.

From habit he walked in through the kitchen's back door, and caught the red-booted Marko snitching a sweet-roll from a cupboard. 'Marko,' Duffy said, stopping. There was something he'd meant to ask this boy about. What had it been?

'Werner said .1 could have it,' the boy said quickly. I don't care about your damned pastry. Uh. . .oh yes, you've been bringing food to Gustav Vogel. I understand?'

'I was for a while. Werner said I didn't have to anymore.

'Well who is?'

Marko blinked. 'Is what?'

'Bringing the old man food, you idiot.'

'I don't know. Why can't he go out and scavenge it, like everybody else?' h

The boy dashed out the back door, leaving the Irishman wearing a scowl of annoyance and worry. C