Fanuilh by Daniel Hood (ebook reader with highlight function TXT) 📗

his shoulders, knowing either he would have to stoop or the short old man stretch to accomplish the feat.

"Tell me, goodman," he asked while he tied on the cloak, "who was the young fellow that was here yesterday?"

The servant grimaced with disgust, and probably would have spat if he were outdoors.

"That one! A conunon player, from the Golden Orb Company, rabble all! Lons is· his name, sir, and he plagues the lady unmercifully, all because she let him sing a few songs for her once. Most disgraceful, he is. He fits the old list, good sir, you know: 'vagrants and sturdy beggars, rogues, knaves and common players.' A very rogue, he is!"

Liam smiled at Lares's vehemence, but the old man did not notice.

"He was lurking about earlier, sir, but I happened to mention in a carrying tone that you were visiting the lady, and he skulked off in high dudgeon, I can tell you! A right rogue, that one!"

His cloak secured to his satisfaction, Liam shook his head in proper disapproval at Lons's knavery, and left before he laughed.

Once again he felt good in the rain, daring it to penetrate his snug cloak and patched boots. Even though it was a fair walk from the Point to his garret, he arrived with little more than a few drops on his face and hands, and decided that he had never spent money ·so well.

Mistress Dorcas was waiting for him in the kitchen, a folded piece of paper clutched in her hands. She handed it to him, apprehension clear on her face.

"It bears the Aedile's mark," she whispered fearfully, still mispronouncing the word.

Annoyed, he tore the paper open and read the note quickly. Coeccias's unruly scrawl invited him to the same tavern they had visited the evening before, the White Grape, and suggested a time.

"Is all well, Master Liam?"

"No," he said grimly, "I'm to be executed tomorrow at dawn." He went up the stairs without another word.

The hour Coeccias had set was only a little while off, but he took the time to put away his writing case, talcing out the maps and placing them on the table. When he went downstairs, his landlady was still holding a hand to her chest, breathing heavily.

"Y'ought not to say suchlike," she scolded. "I thought my heart would leap from its seat, to hear of such, even in jest."

"Well, why else would the Aedile summon me if not to execute me?"

"Faith, I know not, Master Liam, but y'are very wicked." He was almost at the door when she regained enough composure to be nosy. "What was his discourse?"

"He wanted to dine with me," Liam called over his shoulder as he left. "The condemned's last meal, he called it."

He shut the door on her leaping heart.

Coeccias was not at the tavern yet, but the White Grape was almost full and Liam was glad to catch the last open table. The girl who brought him the wine he asked for looked at him strangely, recognizing him from the night before and that afternoon.

Sipping the vinegary wine, he rested his elbows on the table and surveyed the customers of the inn. They were quiet, respectable types, not so rich as to belong in the quarter further up the hill, but not given to the noisy dens lower down by the harbor. They sat close to their tables and talked in low voices that suggested sobriety and mildly serious talk, not secrecy. He thought he and Coeccias had probably looked that way the night before and would look that way tonight, and wondered how many more nights they would look so before they had found Tarquin's murderer.

Or before we give up, he mused over a particularly sour mouthful. If the dragon will let us give up.

He did not want to think about Tarquin, or Fanuilh, and cast back to his afternoon with Lady Necquer. She was a pretty, refined young innocent, such as he had forgotten existed. Years at sea and in foreign lands had left him unused to dealing with Taralon's well-bred, though he had once been counted high in their ranks. Her problems interested him. They were different from his own, problems of the living, not the dead, and he turned to considering them.

This Lons, a mere player, hounded her, undoubtedly out of passion, because of her pale beauty. A part of him did not blame the man, but mostly he disliked Lons's arrogant voice and handsome face, as well as his rude presumption.

The man was an actor, traditionally one of the lower classes. The list Lares had quoted was from an old law, naming players and the others as undesirables who might be subjected to various fines and punishments just for being what they were. The law no longer stood, but the old prejudices still survived. Though Liam did not share them, he understood them, and knew it must be painful for Lady Necquer to be plagued by one she must consider beneath her.

She must unwittingly have led the boy on, asking him to sing for her and probably showing the same warm approval as she had shown his stories.

Of course, she doesn't think I'm likely to pester her like Lons, because I've such an innocent face.

Liam grinned ruefully into his cup, and looked up to see Coeccias.

"Now what brings such sunny summer to your visage, Rhenford? Have you flushed our quarry?"

Shaking his head, Liam gestured the Aedile to a seat, which he took with a wry smile.

"No, just enjoying a joke at my own expense."

"Then the day has not gone well for you?"

"No worse than yesterday."

Coeccias eyed him curiously and gave his order to the serving girl.

"You should not drink the wine here, Rhenford. The best they have in the house graces the wooden board over the door."

"I'd noticed."

The girl brought Coeccias a mug of beer, and he sipped from it before speaking in a low tone that seemed to fit the quiet tavern.

"Had you no luck with Marcius?"

"I have an appointment with him tomorrow.