The Drawing of the Dark

'Ah I'm not familiar with the famous poets, I'm afraid.'

'Obviously. He's published books, and has been personally complimented by King Charles himself!' He sat down on a hamper. 'Draw me a glass of the burgundy, will you?'

'Coming up.' Anna disappeared for a moment, and came back with a glass of red wine which she handed to him. 'So what are you to this poet?'

Werner pouted his lips and shrugged deprecatingly. 'Well.. .a colleague, actually. It seems he somehow got hold of some bits I wrote when I was a younger man -adolescent stuff mainly, not a patch on what I've done more recently - and he said.. .I'm quoting him now, mind you.. .that it showed a lyric grace the world hasn't known the like of since Petrarch.'

'Since when?'

'God damn it, Petrarch was a poet. What do I hire such ignorant girls for?'

Duffy, newly scrubbed and feeling much less like an illustration of the Wages of Sin, trotted down the stairs and stepped into the hall, where the smell of hot stew still hung in the air. 'Anna!' he called. What are the chances of getting some breakfast, hey?'

Werner got to his feet. 'We've packed up breakfast,' he snapped. 'You'll have to wait until dinner.'

'Oh, that's all right,' Duffy said with an airy wave, I'll just sneak into the kitchen and see if I can't dig something up.' He peered more closely at the innkeeper. 'My, my!

Aren't we adorned! Going to sit for a portrait?'

-'He's been visiting somebody who admires his poetry,' Anna explained. 'Some old bird named Petrarch, I believe.'

'Yes, he would be getting old these days,' Duffy assented. 'Poetry, eh, Werner? Some time you'll have to put a funny hat on and strap a pair of cymbals to your knees and recite me some of it. You got any dirty ones?' The Irishman winked hugely.

The bells in the tower of St Stephen's Cathedral rang while Duffy was speaking, and Werner pointed vaguely in their southward direction. 'It's ten o'clock you sleep until, eh? Well, enjoy sleeping late while you still can.'

Duffy knew Werner was expecting him to ask what he meant, so he turned back to Anna. 'Seen Piff around? I'm supposed to -'It may interest you to know,' the innkeeper interrupted coldly, 'that I'm having three bunks set up in your room. Four, maybe! Every day more soldiers are arriving in town, you know, and it's our duty to see that they're lodged. You don't object, I trust?'

Duffy grinned. 'Not a bit. I'm an old campaigner myself.'

Werner gave the Irishman a hard stare, then turned and walked away toward the stairs, his ostrich-plumed hat bobbing behind his neck on a string like a bird on a difficult perch.

When he had disappeared Anna shook her bead at Duffy. 'Why can't you ever be civil to him? You're only going to lose a good job.'

He sighed and reached for the dining room doorlatch. 'It's a terrible job, Anna. I felt more worthwhile cleaning stables when I was twelve.' He swung the door open and grinned back at her. 'As for Werner, he strikes me as the sort of person who ought to be annoyed. Hah. Poetry for God's sake.' He shook his head. 'Say, I think Piff left a package in the kitchen - food and stuff, could you look? I'm supposed to visit her father this morning and give it to him. And serve me a cup of the morning medicine in the dining room, hmm?'

She rolled her eyes and started for the kitchen. 'if the Turks weren't sure to kill us all before Christmas, Brian, I'd worry about you.'

In the sunlit dining room Duffy crossed to his habitual table and sat down. There were other patrons present, beering away the hours between breakfast and dinner, and Duffy looked around at them curiously. The half dozen at the largest table were mercenary soldiers from the troop of Swiss landsknechten that had arrived in town a week ago, hired, it had turned out, by Aurelianus; and in the corner behind them sat a tall black man in a conical red hat. Good God, a blackamoor, thought Duffy. What purpose can have brought him here?

Unprecedented numbers of people had been entering the city during the past weeks, and the Irishman had noticed that they tended to fall into three groups: most were either European soldiers of one sort and another, or the wagon-roving, small-time merchants that thrive on the economy of war; but there was a third type, odd, silent individuals, often evidently from the barbarous ends of the earth, who seemed content to look worried and stare intently at passersby. And the first and last groups, Duffy reflected, seemed to cluster thickest in the Zimmermann dining room.

'Ho there, steward!' bawled one of the landsknechten, a burly fellow with a gray-streaked beard. 'Trot out another round for us, hey?'

Duffy was leaning back now, staring at the friezes painted on the ceiling, but desisted when a wooden mug ricocheted off his shin.

'Wake up,' the mercenary shouted at him. 'Didn't you hear me call for beer?'

The Irishman smiled and got to his feet. He reached out sideways and, taking a firm grip on an iron candlecresset bolted to the wall, wrenched it right out of the wood with one powerful heave. Clumping heavily across to the mercenaries' table, he hefted the splinteredged piece of metal. 'Who was it asked for beer?' he inquired pleasantly.

The landsknecht stood up with a puzzled curse, dragging his dagger. 'You're hard on the furniture, steward,' he said.

'No problem,' Duffy assured him. 'I'll hang your skull• up there instead, and no one will notice the difference. Have to use a smaller candle, of course.'

The other man relaxed a little and cocked his head. 'My God.. .is it Brian Duffy?'

'Well...' Duffy stepped back, 'more or less. You know me?'

'Of course I do.' The man slapped his dagger back in the sheath and pulled his baggy, sleeve up past the elbow, revealing a wide scar knotted across his hairy forearm. 'You've got the other half of that scar on your shoulder.'