Lest Darkness Fall (7 page)

            "Not just now,"
said Padway, "but I may be in a few weeks. Do you think you can postpone
your suicide until then?"

            "I don't know. It
depends on how my money holds out. I have no sense about money. Being of noble
birth, I never needed any. I don't know whether you'll ever see me alive
again." He wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

            "Oh, for heaven's
sake," said Thomasus, "there are plenty of things you could do."

            "No," said
Fritharik tragically. "You wouldn't understand, friend. There are
considerations of honor. And anyway, what has life to offer me? Did you say you
might be able to take me on later?" he asked Padway. Padway said yes, and
gave him his address. "Very well, friend, I shall probably be in a
nameless lonely grave before two weeks have passed. But if not, I'll be
around."

-

            AT THE END of the week,
Padway was gratified not only by the fact that he had not vanished into thin
air, and by the appearance of the row of bottles on the shelf, but by the state
of his finances. Counting the five solidi for the first month's rent on the
house, the six more that had gone into his apparatus, and Hannibal's wages and
his own living expenses, he still had over thirty of his fifty borrowed solidi
left. The first two items wouldn't recur for a couple of weeks, anyway.

            "How much are you going
to charge for that stuff?" asked Thomasus.

            Padway thought. "It's a
luxury article, obviously. If we can get some of the better-class restaurants
to stock it, I don't see why we shouldn't get two solidi per bottle. At least
until somebody discovers our secret and begins competing with us."

            Thomasus rubbed his hands
together. "At that rate, you could practically pay back your loan with the
proceeds of the first week's sales. But I'm in no hurry; it might be better to
reinvest them in the business. We'll see how things turn out. I think I know
the restaurant we should start with."

            Padway experienced a twinge
of dread at the idea of trying to sell the restaurateur the idea. He was not a
born salesman, and he knew it.

            He asked: "How should I
go about getting him to buy some of the stuff? I'm not very familiar with your
Roman business methods."

            "That's all right. He
won't refuse, because he owes me money, and he's behind in his interest
payments. I'll introduce you."

            It came about as the banker
had said. The restaurant owner, a puffy man named Gaius Attalus, glowered a bit
at first. The entrepreneur fed him a little brandy by way of a sample, and he
warmed up. Thomasus had to ask God whether He was listening only twice before
Attalus agreed to Padway's price for half a dozen bottles.

            Padway, who had been
suffering from one of his periodic fits of depression all morning, glowed
visibly as they emerged from the restaurant, his pockets pleasantly heavy with
gold. "I think," said Thomasus, "you had better hire that Vandal
chap, if you're going to have money around the house. And I'd spend some of it
on a good strong box."

            So when Hannibal Scipio told
Padway "There's a tall, gloomy-looking bird outside who says you said to
come see you," he had the Vandal sent in and hired him almost at once.

            When Padway asked Fritharik
what he proposed to do his bodyguarding with, Fritharik looked embarrassed,
chewed his mustache, and finally said: "I had a fine sword, but I hocked
it to keep alive. It was all that stood between me and a nameless grave.
Perhaps I shall end in one yet," he sighed.

            "Stop thinking about graves
for a while," snapped Padway, "and tell me how much you need to get
your sword back."

            "Forty solidi."

            "
Whew!
Is it
made of solid gold, or what?"

            "No. But it's good
Damascus steel, and has gems in the handle. It was all that I saved from my
beautiful estate in Africa. You have no idea what a fine place I had —"

            "Now, now!" said
Padway. "For heaven's sake don't start crying! Here's five solidi; go buy
yourself the best sword you can with that. I'm taking it out of your salary. If
you want to save up to get this bejeweled cheese knife of yours back, that's
your business." So Fritharik departed, and shortly thereafter reappeared
with a secondhand sword clanking at his side.

            "It's the best I could
do for the money," he explained. "The dealer claimed it was Damascus
work, but you can tell that the Damascus marks on the blade are fakes. This
local steel is soft, but I suppose it will have to do. When I had my beautiful
estate in Africa, the finest steel was none too good." He sighed gustily.

            Padway examined the sword,
which was a typical sixth-century
spatha
with a broad single-edged
thirty-inch blade. It was, in fact, much like a Scotch broadsword without the
fancy knuckle-guard. He also noticed that Fritharik Staifan's son, though as
mournful as ever, stood straighter and walked with a more determined stride
when wearing the sword. He must, Padway thought, feel practically naked without
it.

            "Can you cook?"
Padway asked Fritharik.

            "You hired me as a
bodyguard, not as a housemaid, my lord Martinus. I have my dignity."

            "Oh, nonsense, old man.
I've been doing my own cooking, but it takes too much of my time. If I don't
mind, you shouldn't. Now, can you cook?"

            Fritharik pulled his
mustache. "Well — yes."

            "What, for instance?"

            "I can do a steak. I
can fry bacon."

            "What else?"

            "Nothing else. That is
all I ever had occasion to do. Good red meat is the food for a warrior. I can't
stomach these greens the Italians eat."

            Padway sighed. He resigned
himself to living on an unbalanced diet until — well, why not? He could at
least inquire into the costs of domestic help.

            Thomasus found a
serving-wench for him who would cook, clean house, and make beds for an
absurdly low wage. The wench was named Julia. She came from Apulia and talked
dialect. She was about twenty, dark, stocky, and gave promise of developing
tremendous heft in later years. She wore a single shapeless garment and padded
about the house on large bare feet. Now and then she cracked a joke too rapidly
for Padway to follow and shook with peals of laughter. She worked hard, but
Padway had to teach her his ideas from the ground up. The first time he
fumigated his house he almost frightened her out of her wits. The smell of
sulphur dioxide sent her racing out the door shrieking that Satanas had come.

-

            Padway decided to knock off
on his fifth Sunday in Rome. For almost a month he had been working all day and
most of the night, helping Hannibal to run the still, clean it, and unload
casks of wine; and seeing restaurateurs who had received inquiries from their
customers about this remarkable new drink.

            In an economy of scarcity,
he reflected, you didn't have to turn handsprings finding customers, once your
commodity caught on. He was meditating striking Thomasus for a loan to build another
still. This time he'd build a set of rolls and roll his own copper sheeting out
of round stock, instead of trying to patch together this irregular
hand-hammered stuff.

            Just now, though, he was
heartily sick of the business. He wanted fun, which to him meant the Ulpian
Library. As he looked in the mirror, he thought he hadn't changed much inside.
He disliked barging in on strangers, and bargaining as much as ever. But
outside none of his former friends would have known him. He had grown a short
reddish beard. This was partly because he had never in his other life shaved
with a guardless razor, and it gave him the jitters to do so; and partly
because he had always secretly coveted a beard, to balance his oversized nose.

            He wore another new tunic, a
Byzantine-style thing with ballooning sleeves. The trousers of his tweed suit
gave an incongruous effect, but he didn't fancy the short pants of the country,
with winter coming on. He also wore a cloak, which was nothing but a big square
blanket with a hole in the middle to put his head through. He had hired an old
woman to make him socks and underwear.

            Altogether he was pretty
well pleased with himself. He admitted he had been lucky in finding Thomasus;
the Syrian had been an enormous help to him.

            He approached the library
with much the same visceral tingle that a lover gets from the imminence of a
meeting with his beloved. Nor was he disappointed. He felt like shouting when a
brief nosing about the shelves showed him Berosus'
Chaldean History
, the
complete works of Livius, Tacitus'
History of the Conquest of Britain
,
and Cassiodorus' recently published
Gothic History
complete. Here was
stuff for which more than one twentieth-century historian or archaeologist
would cheerfully commit murder.

            For a few minutes he simply
dithered, like the proverbial ass between two haystacks. Then he decided that
Cassiodorus would have the most valuable information to impart, as it dealt
with an environment in which he himself was living. So he lugged the big volumes
out and set to work. It was hard work, too, even for a man who knew Latin. The
books were written in a semi-cursive minuscule hand with all the words run
together. The incredibly wordy and affected style of the writer didn't bother
him as it would have if he had been reading English; he was after facts.

            "Excuse me, sir,"
said the librarian, "but is that tall barbarian with the yellow mustache
your man?"

            "I suppose so,"
said Padway. "What is it?"

            "He's gone to sleep in
the Oriental section, and he's snoring so that the readers are
complaining."

            "I'll tend to
him," said Padway.

            He went over and awakened
Fritharik. "Can't you read?" he asked.

            "No," said
Fritharik quite simply. "Why should I? When I had my beautiful estate in
Africa, there was no occasion —"

            "Yes, I know all about
your beautiful estate, old man. But you'll have to learn to read, or else do
your snoring outside."

            Fritharik went out somewhat
huffily, muttering in his own East-German dialect. Padway's guess was that he
was calling reading a sissy accomplishment.

            When Padway got back to his
table, he found an elderly Italian dressed with simple elegance going through
his Cassiodorus. The man looked up and said: "I'm sorry; were you reading
these?"

            "That's all
right," said Padway. "I wasn't reading all of them. If you're not
using the first volume ..."

            "Certainly, certainly,
my dear young man. I ought to warn you, though, to be careful to put it back in
its proper place. Scylla cheated of her prey by Jason has no fury like that of
our esteemed librarian when people misplace his books. And what, may I ask, do
you think of the work of our illustrious pretorian prefect?"

            "That depends,"
said Padway judiciously. "He has a lot of facts you can't get elsewhere.
But I prefer my facts straight."

            "How do you mean?"

            "I mean with less
flowery rhetoric."

            "Oh, but my dear, dear
young man! Here we moderns have at last produced a historian to rank with the
great Livius, and you say you don't like —" He glanced up, lowered his
voice, and leaned forward. "Just consider the delicate imagery, the
glorious erudition! Such style! Such wit!"