The Drawing of the Dark

'It's because he was my best friend that I do-did-hate him. I wouldn't have minded so much if a stranger had taken you from me.'

She put a hand on his arm. 'Don't dwell on all the stuff that's behind us. We can still spend our twilight years together.'

'Twilight years? I don't know about you, lady, but I'm as nimble and sharp as I was at twenty-five, which wasn't all that long ago.'

'Very well,' she said with an indulgent smile. 'Our early afternoon years. Oh, God.. .do you really think it's a possibility, after all this time?'

'After all this time,' Duffy asserted, 'it's an inevitability.'

He leaned forward and gave her a kiss, and it lingered past the point of being perfunctory. Gently transported by the dimness, and the brain-fumes of an afternoon's wine-drinking, he was at last in the arms of Gustav Vogel's impossibly attractive daughter; and he had, unnoticed, become again the Brian Duffy of 1512, whose glossy black hair did not yet have to be grown long in the back to cover a knotted white scar.

They fell back across the bed with the ponderousness, and something of the sound, of an old stone wall collapsing, and Epiphany pulled her mouth free and gasped, 'You're on duty tonight, aren't you? And dinner is probably being served this minute.'

'Damn duty and dinner,' the Irishman muttered thickly; then, 'Oh, hell, you're right,' he said. 'Easter evening, the drawing of the bock, is what Aurelianus specifically hired me to watch over. For the money he's been paying me I guess I owe this much to him.'>'Potentially. Some time during the next couple of days we'll have to go fetch him, bring him inside the city walls.

He hates the confinement, you see, of streets and gates and masonry - especially in his sick, wounded condition

- and he'd prefer to stay out in the woods until the last possible day. He is safe now, what with a dozen of our pit-summoned defenders circling over his cabin, and Suleiman an easy three months away, but Antoku's tricks have me worried - I'd sooner not take any chances. We'll bring him inside within the week.'

A sick hermit living in the woods, Duffy thought. I've never heard of him, but he's a greater king than the Emperor, Charles V, eh? No doubt, no doubt! Hah. Just another sad old phony, like those British shopkeepers who claim to be druids, and dance, rather self-consciously, at Stonehenge every midsummer's eve.

Duffy sighed. 'Yes, for double my salary I'll watch over this old king of yours - just so these.. .what? "Pit-summoned defenders'?.. .keep their distance.'

'They're on your side.'

'Still, I don't want to meet any. And what do you mean, Suleiman three months away? He's further off than that.'

'Not much further. His advance scouts left Constantinople today. He won't be more than a month behind.'

'Today? How can you know already?'

Aurelianus smiled tiredly. 'You know me better than that, Brian.'

The street door rattled and creaked open, and the hunchbacked figure of Bluto bulked against the late afternoon glow. 'Damn,' exclaimed the Swiss bombardier, 'I thought I'd be the first in line. I might have known you two would be here before anyone else.'

Aurelianus pushed back his bench and got to his feet. 'I was just chatting with Brian. I'm not much of a beer drinker, actually - my share of the bock is all yours.' He bowed and walked quietly out of the room.

Bluto crossed to Duffy's table and pulled up the bench at which Aurelianus had been sitting. 'Speaking of beer...'

Duffy grinned. 'Yes. Anna or Piff is in the kitchen. Why don't you have them pour us a last pitcher of the schenk beer, eh?'

'Good idea. My God, what happened to your face?'

'I was attacked in my sleep by mice. Go get the beer.'

Bluto did, and for twenty minutes the two of them sipped cool beer and discussed the possible Turkish lines of attack, the weak points in the city wall, and various defense arrangements.

'Charles has got to send reinforcements,' Bluto said worriedly. 'Pope Clement, too. Can it be they don't see the danger? Hell, Belgrade and Mohacs were costly defeats, yes. They were the stepping-stones to the Holy Roman Empire. But Vienna is the damned front door. If the Turks take this place, the next spot to hold the line will be the English Channel.'

Duffy shrugged. 'What can I say? You're right.' He poured the last of the beer into Bluto's cup.

Shrub and a couple of the other yard boys had come in with ladders and were hanging cagelike grilles over the wall cressets. The hunchback watched them. 'Really expecting a wild crowd tonight, aren't you?'

'Evidently,' Duffy agreed. 'Back when this place was a monastery they used to drag kegs out and have the bock festival in the street. It got pretty berserk sometimes. Easter, the bock beer, and Spring are all the same thing in everybody's mind, and they really dive into it head first after a hard winter.'

Bluto drained his glass and stood. 'Say, Duff, it must be half past four now. When should I make sure to be here, to be at least among the first in line?'

'I don't know. Supper time, I guess.' He too stood up and stretched, yawning like a cat. 'Maybe I'll trot downstairs and ask Gambrinus. See you later.' He ambled off toward the cellar stairs, secretly hoping to get another advance taste of the Spring beer.