Revenge of the Rose (11 page)

 
          
“Slaves!
By no means! They are free gypsy souls, like myself. Free to wander the great
highway that spans the world, to breathe the air of liberty. They merely take
their turn at the marching boards, as most of us must for some time in their
lives. They perform a civic duty, sir.”

 
          
“And
should they not wish to perform such duty?” asked Elric quietly.

 
          
“Ah,
well, sir, I can see that you are indeed a philosopher. Things so abstruse are
beyond me, I fear, sir. But there are people in Trollon who would be only too
pleased to debate such abstractions.” He patted Elric amiably upon the
shoulder. “Indeed, I can think of more than one friend of mine who will gladly
welcome you.”

 
          
“A
prosperous place, this Trollon.” The Rose looked through the gaps in the buildings
to where similar villages moved at a similar pace.

 
          
“Well,
we like to preserve certain standards, madam. I will arrange for your receipts.”

 
          
“I
do not think we plan to trade our horses here,” said Elric. “We need to travel
on as soon as possible.”

 
          
“And
travel you shall, sir. Travel, after all, is in our blood. But we must put your
horses to work. Or, sir,” he uttered a little snigger, “we shall not be
traveling far at all, eh?”

 
          
Again
a glance from the Rose stilled Elric’s retort. But he was growing increasingly
impatient as he thought of his dead father and the threat which hung over them
both.

 
          
“We
are only too happy to accept your hospitality,” said the Rose diplomatically. “Are
we the only people to join Trollon in recent days?”

 
          
“Did
you have friends come ahead of you, lady?”

 
          
“Three
sisters, perhaps?” suggested Wheldrake.

 
          
“Three
sisters?” He shook his head. “I should have known if I had seen them, sir. But
I will send enquiry of our neighbouring villages. Meanwhile, if you are hungry,
I shall be only too happy to loan you a few credits. We have some wonderful
restaurants in Trollon.”

 
          
It
was clear that there was little poverty in Trollon. The paint was fresh and the
glass sparkling, while the streets were neat and clean as anything Elric had
ever seen.

 
          
“It
seems all the squalor and hardship is kept out of sight below,” whispered
Wheldrake. “I shall be glad to leave this place, Prince Elric.”

 
          
“We
might find ourselves in difficulties when we decide to end our stay.” The Rose
was careful not to be overheard. “Do they plan to make slaves of us, like those
poor wretches down there?”

 
          
“I
would guess they have no immediate intention of sending us to their marching
boards,” said Elric, “but I have no doubt they want us for our muscles and our
horses as much as for our company. I do not intend to remain long in this place
if I cannot quickly discover some clue to what I seek. I have little time.” His
old arrogance was returning. His old impatience.

 
          
He
tried to quell them, as signs of the disease which had led to his present
dilemma. He hated his own blood, his sorcery, his reliance upon his runesword,
or other extraordinary means of sustenance. And when Amarine Goodool brought
them into the village square (complete with shops and public buildings and
houses of evident age) to meet a committee of welcome, Elric was less than
warm, though he knew that lies, hypocrisy and deception were the order of the
moment. His attempt to smile did not bring any answering gaiety.

 
          
“Gweetings,
gweetings,” cried an apparition in green, with a little pointed beard and a hat
threatening to engulf his entire head and half his body. “On behalf of the
Twollon weins-men and -morts, may we vawda yoah eeks with joy. Or, in the
common speech, you must considah us all, now, your bwothahs and sistahs. My
name is Filigwip Nant and I wun the theatwicals …” Whereupon he proceeded
to introduce a miscellaneous group of people with odd-sounding names, peculiar
accents and unnatural complexions whose appearance seemed to fill Wheldrake
with horrified recognition. “It could be the Putney Fine Arts Society,” he
murmured, “or worse, the Surbiton Poetasters—I have been a reluctant guest of
them both, and many more. Ilkley, as I recall, was the worst …” and he
lapsed into his own gloomy contemplations as, with a smile no more convincing
than the albino’s, he suffered the roll-call of parochial fame, until he opened
his little beak to a sky still filled with cloud and spray and began a kind of
protective declamation which had him surrounded at once by green, black and
purple velvet, by rustling brocade and romantic lace, by the scent of a hundred
garden flowers and herbs, by the gypsy literati. And borne away.

 
          
The
Rose and Elric also had their share of temporary acolytes. This was clearly a
village of some wealth, which yearned for novelty.

 
          
“We’re
very cosmopolitan, you know, in Trollon. Like most of the ‘diddicoyim’ (ha, ha)
villages, we are now almost wholly made up from outsiders. I, myself, am an
outsider. From another realm, you know. From Heeshigrowinaaz, actually. Are you
familiar—?” A middle-aged woman with an elaborate wig and considerable paint
linked her bangled arm in Elric’s. “I’m Parapha Foz. My husband’s Barraban Foz,
of course. Isn’t it boring?”

 
          
“I
have the feeling,” said the Rose in an undertone as she went by with her own
burden of enthusiasts, “that this is to be the greatest ordeal of them
all …”

 
          
But
it seemed to Elric that she was also amused, especially by his own expression.

 
          
And
he bowed, with graceful irony, to the inevitable.

 
          
There
followed a number of initiating rituals with which Elric was unfamiliar, but
which Wheldrake dreaded as being all too familiar, and the Rose accepted, as if
she, too, had once known such experiences better.

 
          
There
were meals and speeches and performances, tours of the oldest and quaintest
parts of the village, small lectures on its history and its architecture and
how wonderfully it had been restored until Elric, brooding always on his father’s
stolen soul, wished that they would turn into something with which he could
more easily contend—like the hopping, slittering, drooling monsters of Chaos or
some unreasonable demigod. He had rarely wished so longingly to draw his sword
and let it silence this mélange of prejudice, semi-ignorance, snobbery and
received opinion, of loud, superior voices so thoroughly reassured by all they
met and read that they believed themselves confidently, unvulnerably, totally
in control of reality …

 
          
And
all the while Elric thought of the poor souls below, pressing their bodies
against the marching boards and sending this village, in concert with all the
other free gypsy villages, in its relentless progress, inch by inch, around the
world.

 
          
Unused
to gaining the information he required by any means less direct than torture,
Elric left it to the Rose to glean whatever she could and eventually, when they
were alone together, Wheldrake having been taken as a trophy to sport at some
dinner, she relaxed into a mood of satisfaction. They had been given adjoining rooms
in what they were assured was the best inn of its sort in any of the
second-rank villages. Tomorrow, they were told, they would be shown what
apartments were available to them.

 
          
“We
have survived this first day well, I think,” she said, sitting on a chest to
remove her doeskin boots. “We have proven interesting enough to them so that we
still have our lives, relative liberty and, most important now, I think, our
swords …”

 
          
“You
mistrust them thoroughly, then?” The albino looked curiously at the Rose as she
shook out her pale red-gold hair and peeled off her brown jerkin to reveal a
blouse of dark yellow. “I have never encountered such folk before.”

 
          
“Save
that they are drawn from every part of the multiverse, they are very much of a
type I left behind me long ago and like poor Wheldrake hoped never to encounter
again. The sisters reached the Gypsy Nation less than a week before we did. The
woman who told me this had it from a woman she knows in the next village. The
sisters, however, were accepted by a village of the forward rank.”

 
          
“And
we can find them there?” Elric knew so much relief he only then realized how
desperate he had become.

 
          
“Not
so easily. We have no invitation to visit the village. There are forms to be
observed before we can receive such an invitation. However, I also learned that
Gaynor, of whom you spoke, is here, though he disappeared almost immediately
and no-one has any notion of his whereabouts.”

 
          
“He
has not left the Nation?”

 
          
“I
gather that is not easily done, even by the likes of Gaynor.” There was
suddenly an extra bitterness to her voice.

 
          
“It
is forbidden?”

 
          
“Nothing,”
she echoed sardonically, “is forbidden in the Gypsy Nation. Unless,” she added,
“it is change of any kind!”

 
          
“Then
why was the boy killed?”

 
          
“They
tell me they know nothing about it. They told me they thought I was probably
mistaken. They said they felt it was morbid to study the garbage heaps and
think one saw things lurking in them. In short, as far as they are concerned,
no boy was killed.”

 
          
“He
was trying to escape, however. We both saw that. From what, my lady?”

 
          
“They
will not say, Prince Elric. There are subjects forbidden by good manners, it
seems. As in many societies, I suppose, where the very fundamentals of their
existence are the subject of the deepest taboos. What is this terror of
reality, I wonder, which plagues the human spirit?”

 
          
“I
am not, at present, looking for the answers to such questions, madam,” said
Elric, finding even the Rose’s speculations irritating after so much babble. “My
own view is that we should leave Trollon and head back to the village which
accepted the three sisters. Did they know the name?”

 
          
“Duntrollin.
Odd that they should accept the sisters at all. They are some kind of
warrior-order, I understand, pledged to the defense of the road and its
travelers. The Gypsy Nation is comprised of thousands of such mobile cantons,
each with its peculiar contribution to the whole. A dream of democratic
perfection, one might suppose.”

 
          
“Were
it not for the marching boards,” said Elric, disturbed, even now, to know that
as he prepared himself for rest, the great platform on which all this existed
was being pushed gradually forward by emaciated men, women and children.

 
          
He
slept badly that night, though he was not plagued by his usual nightmares. And
for that small mercy he was grateful.

 
          
Breakfasting
in a common hall, still hygienically free of any sign of a real commoner,
served by young women in peasant frocks who found their work amusing rather
than arduous, like children in a play, the three friends again shared what
little they had discovered.

 
          
“They
never stop moving,” said Wheldrake. “The very thought is hideous to them. They
believe their entire society will be destroyed if once they bring this vast
caravan to a halt. So their
hoi polloi
,
whatever their circumstances, push, with or without the help of horses, the
villages on. And it is debtors and vagabonds and defaulters and creators of
minor grievances who make up the throng walking on the road. These are, as it
were, middle-class offenders of no great consequence. The fear of all is that
they should join those at the marching boards and therefore lose their status
and most chances of regaining it again. Their morals and their laws are based
upon the rock, as it were, of perpetual motion. The boy wanted to stop walking,
I gather, and there is only one rule where that is concerned—Move or Die. And
Move Forward Always. I’ve lived in Gloriana’s age, and
Victoria
’s, and
Elizabeth
’s, yet never have I encountered quite such fascinating
and original hypocrisies.”