Lest Darkness Fall (20 page)

            Suppose, then, he decided to
work for a quick victory by the Goths instead of a quick victory for the
Imperialists. How could the Gothic regime be succored? It would do no good for
him to try to persuade the Goths to get rid of Wittigis. If the Gothic king,
whoever he was, could be induced to take Padway's advice, something might be
done. But old Thiudahad, worthless as he was by himself, might be managed.

            A plan began to form in
Padway's mind. He wished he'd told Thomasus to hurry back sooner. To keep
darkness from falling —

            When Thomasus did appear,
Padway told him: "I want a couple of pounds of sulphur, mixed with olive
oil to form a paste, and some candles. And forty feet of light rope, strong
enough to support a man. Believe it or not, I got the idea from the voluptuous
Julia. Remember how she acted when I fumigated the house?"

            "Look here, Martinus,
you're perfectly safe for the time being, so why don't you stay here instead of
trying some crazy scheme of escaping?"

            "Oh, I have reasons.
The convention should break up today or tomorrow, from what I hear, and I've
got to get out before it does."

            "Listen to him! Just
listen! Here I am, the best friend he has in Rome, and does he pay attention to
my advice? No! He wants to break out of the camp, and maybe get an arrow
through the kidney for his pains, and then go get mixed up with Gothic
politics. Did you ever hear the like? Martinus, you haven't some wild idea of
getting yourself elected king of the Goths. have you? Because it won't work.
You have to be —"

            "I know," grinned
Padway. "You have to be a Goth of the noble family of the Amalings. That's
why I'm in such a hurry to get out. You want the business saved so you'll get
your loans back, don't you?"

            "But how on earth am I
going to smuggle those things in? The guards watch pretty closely."

            "Bring the sulphur
paste in a container at the bottom of a food basket. If they open it, say it's
something my physician ordered. Better coach Vekkos to corroborate. And for the
rope — let's see — I know, go to my tailor and get a green cloak like mine.
Have him fasten the rope inside around the edges, lightly, so it can be ripped
out quickly. Then, when you come in, lay your cloak alongside mine, and pick
mine up when you go."

            "Martinus, that's a
crazy plan. I'll get caught sure, and what will become of my family? No, you'd
better do as I say. I can't risk innocent persons' futures. What time would you
want me to come around with the rope and things?"

-

            Padway sat on the Wall of
Aurelian in the bright morning sunshine. He affected to be much interested in
the Tomb of Hadrian down river on the other side. The guard who was detailed to
him, one Aiulf, looked over his shoulder. Padway appreciated Aiulf's interest,
but he sometimes wished the Goth's beard was less long and bristly. It was a
disconcerting thing to have crawling over your shoulder and down your shirt
front when you were trying to get the color just right.

            "You see," he
explained in halting Gothic, "I hold the brush out and look past it at the
thing I am painting, and mark its apparent length and height off on the brush with
my thumb. That is how I keep everything in proper proportion."

            "I see," said
Aiulf in equally bad Latin-both were having a little language practice.
"But suppose you want to paint a small picture — how would you say — with
a lot of things in it just the same? The measurements on the brush would all be
too large, would they not?" Aiulf, for a camp guard, was not at all
stupid.

            Padway's attention was
actually on things other than the Tomb. He was covertly watching all the
guards, and his little pile of belongings. All the prisoners did that, for
obvious reasons. But Padway's interest was special. He was wondering when the
candle concealed in the food basket would burn down to the sulphur paste. He
had apparently had a lot of trouble that morning getting his brazier going;
actually he had been setting up his little infernal machine. He also couldn't
help stealing an occasional nervous glance at the soldiers across the river,
and at the lily-covered pool behind him.

            Aiulf grew tired of watching
and retired a few steps. The guard sat down on his little stool, took up his
flutelike instrument and started to play faint moaning notes. The thing sounded
like a banshee lost in a rain barrel, and never failed to give Padway the
slithering creeps. But he valued Aiulf's good will too much to protest.

            He worked and worked, and
still his contraption showed no signs of life. The candle must have gone out;
it would surely have burned down to the sulphur by now. Or the sulphur had
failed to light. It would soon be time for lunch. If they called him down off
the wall, it would arouse suspicion for him to say he wasn't hungry. Perhaps.

            Aiulf stopped his moaning
for an instant. "What is the matter with your ear, Martinus? You keep
rubbing it."

            "Just an itch," replied
Padway. He didn't say that fingering his ear lobe was a symptom of shrieking
nervousness. He kept on painting. One result of his attempt, he thought, would
be the lousiest picture of a tomb ever painted by an amateur artist.

            As he gave up hope, his
nerves steadied. The sulphur hadn't lit, and that was that. He'd try again
tomorrow ...

-

            Below, in the camp, a
prisoner coughed; then another. Then they were all coughing. Fragments of talk
floated up: "What the devil —" "Must be the tanneries —" "Can't
be, they're two or three miles from here —" "That's burning sulphur,
by all the saints —" "Maybe the Devil is paying us a call —"
People moved around; the coughing increased; the guards trailed into the camp.
Somebody located the source of the fumes and kicked Padway's pile. Instantly a
square yard was covered with yellow mush over which little blue flames danced.
There were strangled shouts. A thin wisp of blue smoke crawled up through the
still air. The guards on the wall, including Aiulf, hurried to the ladder and
down.

            Padway had planned his
course so carefully in his mind that he went through it almost unconscious of
the individual acts. Over his brazier were two little pots of molten wax, both
already pigmented. He plunged his hands into the scalding stuff and smeared his
face and beard with dark green wax. It hardened almost instantly. With his
fingers he then smeared three large circles of yellow wax from the other pot
over the green.

            Then, as if he were just
strolling, he walked up to the angle of the wall, squatted down out of sight of
those in the camp, ripped the rope out
of the lining of his cloak, and
slipped a bight over a projection at the corner of the wall. A last glance
across the river showed that the soldiers over there had not, apparently,
noticed anything, though they could have heard the commotion inside the wall if
they had listened. Padway lowered himself down the north face of the wall, hand
over hand.

            He flipped the rope down
after him. As he did so, a flash of sunlight on his wrist made him curse
silently. His watch would be ruined by prolonged soaking; he should have
thought to give it to Thomasus. He saw a loose stone in the wall. He pulled it
out, wrapped the watch in his handkerchief, put it in the hole, and replaced
the stone. It took only a few seconds, but he knew he was being insanely
foolish to risk the loss of time for the sake of the watch. On the other hand,
being the kind of person he was, he just could not ruin the watch knowingly.

            He trotted down the slope to
the pond. He did not throw himself in, but walked carefully out to where it was
a couple of feet deep. He sat down in the dark water, like a man getting into
an over-hot tub bath, and stretched out on his back among the pond lilies until
only his nose and eyes were above water. He moved the water plants around until
they hid him pretty thoroughly. For the rest, he had to rely on the green of
his cloak and his bizarre facial camouflage for concealment. He waited,
listening to his own heart and the murmur from over the wall.

            He did not have long to
wait. There were shouts, the blowing of whistles, the pounding of large Gothic
feet on the top of the wall. The guards waved to the soldiers across the river.
Padway didn't dare turn his head far enough to see, but he could imagine a
rowboat's being put out.

            "
Ailôe!
The
fiend seems to have vanished into thin air —"

            "He's hiding somewhere,
you idiot! Search, search! Get the horses out!"

            Padway lay still while
guards searched around the base of the wall and poked swords into bushes barely
big enough to hide a Sealyham. He lay still while a small fish maddeningly
investigated his left ear. He lay still, his eyes almost closed, while a couple
of Goths walked around the pond and stared hard at it and him, hardly thirty
feet from them. He lay still while a Goth on a horse rode splashing through the
pond, actually passing within fifteen feet of him. He lay still through the
whole long afternoon, while the sounds of search and pursuit rose and ebbed, and
finally faded away completely.

-

            Nevitta Gummund's son was
justifiably startled when a man rose from the shadows of the bushes that lined
the driveway to his house and called him by name. He had just ridden up to the
farm. Hermann, in tow as usual, had his sword halfway out before Martin Padway
identified himself.

            He explained: "I got
here a couple of hours ago, and wanted to borrow a horse. Your people said you
were away at the convention, but that you'd be back sometime tonight. So I've
been waiting." He went on to tell briefly of his imprisonment and escape.

            The Goth bellowed. "Ha!
Ha! You mean to say, ha! ha! that you lay in the pond all day, right under the
noses of the guards, with your face painted up like a damned flower? Ha! ha!
Christ, that's the best thing I ever heard!" He dismounted. "Come on
in the house and tell me more about it. Whew, you certainly stink like a frog
pond, old friend!"

            Later, he said more
seriously: "I'd like to trust you, Martinus. By all accounts, you're a
pretty reliable young man, in spite of your funny foreign ways. But how do I
know that Liuderis wasn't right? There is something queer about you, you know,
People say you can foresee the future, but try to hide the fact. And some of
those machines of yours do smell a little bit of magic."

            "I'll tell you,"
said Padway thoughtfully. "I can see a little hit of the future. Don't
blame me; I just happen to have that power. Satanas has nothing to do with it.
That is, I can sometimes see what will happen if people are allowed to do what
they intend to. If I use my knowledge to intervene, that changes the future, so
my vision isn't true any more.

            "In this case, I know
that Wittigis will lose the war. And he'll lose in the worst possible way — at
the end of years of fighting which will completely devastate Italy. Not his
fault. He's simply built that way. The last thing I want is to see the country
ruined; it would spoil a lot of plans I have. So I propose to intervene and
change the natural course of events. The results may be better; they could
hardly be worse."

            Nevitta frowned. "You
mean you're going to try to defeat us Goths quickly. I don't think I could
agree to such —"

            "No. I propose to win
your war for you. If I can."

-

            IF PADWAY WASN'T MISTAKEN,
and if Procopius' history had not lied, Thiudahad ought to pass along the
Flaminian Way within the next twenty-four hours in his panicky flight to
Ravenna. All the way, Padway had asked people whether the ex-king had passed
that way. All said no.

            Now, on the outskirts of
Narnia, he was as far north as he dared go. The Flaminian Way forked at this
point, and he had no way of knowing whether Thiudahad would take the new road
or the old. So he and Hermann made themselves easy by the side of the road and
listened to their horses cropping grass. Padway looked at his companion with a
bilious eye. Hermann had taken much too much beer aboard at Ocriculum.