Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero (20 page)

    The lutenist stood up. His second B snapped around like a coach whip and whined softly.

    “Louis Cedarn,” he said, holding out his hand.

    “Oh, right. William Beaver. Pleased to meet you. Lovey.”

    Cedarn looked at me strangely.

    “Actors do call each other ‘lovey’, don’t they?” I checked anxiously.

    “Not the ones I’ve met. But don’t ask me. I’m new here, monsieur.”

    “Are you French?”

    “For a limited period only,” said Cedarn in a low growl, before adding quickly, “Beaver Beaver You write for the broadsheets, don’t you?”

    Your author felt quite proud at this recognition from a foreign talent, and confirmed it.

    “The stuff you come out with sometimes” said Cedarn.

    “You are familiar with my work?”

    “I have bowel movements like the next man. Passes the

time. That article you wrote about Rupert Triumff’s homecoming and discoveries.”

    “Sharp journalistic scrutiny? Fluid articulate prose? Consummate handling of factual material enmeshed in a lyrical weave of wit?” I suggested.

    “‘Bollocks’ was the word I was searching for,” said Cedarn, “and that was just the tone. Your facts were pretty threadbare. He had two ships, not six. He was away for three years, not two”

    “Must’ve got my notes muddled there,” stammered I.

    “Yeah, right. As for the stuff about what he found. I don’t know where you got that from except, maybe, the bottom of a cask of musket.”

    I cringed painfully, and stammered, “You’ve no idea what it’s like. Deadlines approaching editors balling you out and screaming for exclusives copy-choppers wanting glitz and glam and sex.”

    “That would explain the stuff about ‘dusky aboriginal maids’ then, would it?” asked Cedarn.

    “Yes. Sorry. I”

    I broke off and thought for a moment. I looked more closely at the scruffy lutenist.

    “Why are you so concerned about it?”

    Cedarn shrugged.

    “I um know him,” he said. “Quite well. He was awfully upset by the stuff the papers came out with.”

    I leaned forward with a keen, bright look in my eyes, as my journalistic instinct went into overdrive.

    “You know him? You don’t know where he is, do you?” I asked. “The whole blessed City is after him I mean What’s he really like? Did he tell you anything? Does he, you know,
dabble
?”

    “No. And no and so on. I haven’t seen him for ages.” Cedarn sat back down and secured the loose B. He strummed the courses and began to twist the pegs into tuneful obedience. He seemed to me anxious, as if he had nearly undone himself with a slip of the tongue.

    “What are you here for?” he asked sharply as the strings wailed into harmony, urgently changing the subject.

    “I’m known for my” I replied, and stopped. If nothing else, I had recognised that I was in the presence of a man to whom bullshit was transparent. I didn’t want to push my luck, or get off on the wrong foot. “They’re looking for standup acts to please the rabble at the interval. Just a little divertissement, really. I want to broaden my horizons. The papers aren’t my first love. I have ambitions to be a comic.”

    “Well, you’re a funny guy,” said Cedarn, mordantly.

    “Yeah?”

    No, said Cedarn’s threatening look. I felt small and grubby. I sighed. This wasn’t going the way I had imagined things would go. I glanced around, trying to identify the nearest exit I could slope out of. The wings and flies were a forest of flaking, painted coulisses and jumbled chunks of mise en scčne.

    “Hang on,” said Cedarn, softening. “How do I know? I haven’t heard your stuff.”

    “Would you like to?” asked your loyal servant, me, Wllm Beaver, re-igniting his smile.

    “Not on an empty stomach. What’s the deal here?”

    I moved back across the apron to the lutenist, and said, “I spoke to Mister Gaumont last week, in the Boar’s Head. He seemed to like my one-liners.”

    “Had he been drinking?”

    “Like a fish. But I look at it this way Is the audience ever sober?”

    Cedarn chuckled.

    “No. Never,” he said. “That’s a promise. So what did Gau

mont tell you?”

    “That he’d give me a spot in the interval as a warm-up for the third act. Ten minutes, he said. Politics, social comment, penis jokes. As long as I didn’t pillory the Queen or mention the Triumff scandal, he said it would be fine.”

    “It will be. I’ll find him for you.” Cedarn said, getting to his feet and holding out the Service-issue lute to me. “Look after this, will you?”

    I took the lute like a trainee animal-handler with a turtle phobia.

    “Thanks,” he said.

    “I understand there’s also to be a visiting company,” I said. “The Wooden Oh troop have been flooded out, and-“

    “That’s right. They’ll be here before noon to set up. A stay of execution for the Swan Players. I don’t think they’ve even learned their lines.” Cedarn said, pausing on his way to the tiring room, and turning to regard me and my lute-husbanding skills.

    “Look,” he said, “could you do me a real favour?” The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd, the eldorados of my life, were so close, I could almost taste them. They didn’t taste very nice in point of fact, but I was sure I would get used to them. Like scotch. I was damned if I would let anything jeopardise their acquisition at this eleventh hour. I was determined to know the right people, make the right moves, grease the right palms, and do just about anything and everything I could to endear myself to anyone and everyone who could bunk me up the ladder of stardom, one rung at a time (though I drew the line at getting anything pierced, and other peoples’ beards brought me out in a rash).

    I smiled Cedarn a smile so broad each point ended in an ear-lobe.

    “Anything,” I said, selflessly.

    In an unmarked sedan chair, parked unobtrusively down a rent-passage behind the Swan, Serjeant Clinton Eastwoodho lowered his telescope and noted down the time in blue pencil in his blue-pencil log.

    
Eleven forty-six
, he wrote. U
nknown subject entered Swan sev
enteen minutes ago. Believed to have spoken with Agent Borde.

    Eastwoodho underlined the word
spoken
. He sat back in the darkness of the shuttered box, and sucked grape juice through a straw from his Service-issue flask. The bourbon he’d laced the juice with at a frozen five-thirty that morning crept sluggishly into his body like warm quicksilver.

    He stretched, as best the box would allow, and reached over to his waiting telescope. Then, with a snap of his hand, he lunged around and drew his pistol from the holster on the seat nail. The all-steel weight of the ten-shot pinfire harmonica felt good in his hand, and a frighteningly brief blur was all that linked its position in the holster to its place in his hand.

    The scent of gun-oil wreathed the close air.

    “Boom boom boom boom,” he breathed, through his teeth, pointing the massive handgun through his spy-slit.

    “I gotcha, punk,” he murmured. “Do you feel opportune?”

    Eastwoodho lowered the gun. The view through the spyhole had suddenly got interesting. A blond gent in Frenchie clothes, carrying a lute, had just emerged from the Swan, and hailed a sedan. Already, he was moving off down Pawket Street towards the Colchester Road.

    “Oi!” bellowed Eastwoodho from the sedan chair.

    The two army bruisers, who were leaning on the wall nearby, smoking roll-ups, leapt up and accelerated away with the chair.

    “That chair! Follow it!” yelled Eastwoodho through the sideflap.
Officer Eastwoodho. In Pursuit. First and Pawket
he wrote on his message slate and tossed it out of the window to his runner.

    The chair-boys he was chasing were good. They jogged into the slow lane on Skinner’s, and then cut a daring sharp right across the traffic onto Mermaid. A keg-wagon had to break sharply as they cut it up, and almost jack-knifed. Traces and wiffleboards tore loose, and upset barrels exploded on the road. His own chair-men were highly trained and fitted with the latest in anti-slip boot soles. They leapt the debris, dodged the prancing horses and the bellowing drover, and banked hard into Mermaid.

    Ahead, the quarry rounded into Cordwainer Street, the chair leaning out dangerously with the torque. Eastwoodho lit his blue-lensed lamp, hung it out on the roof of the chaise, and began ringing his handbell. People stopped and looked. They got out of his way quickly, and he liked it like that.

    From Cordwainer, they really picked up speed, and began to close on the suspect vehicle. The runaway’s men were panting and red in the face. His CIA men were known for their high performance and road-holding. Eastwoodho had his gun ready.

    Without warning, the quarry cut left into Swithen’s. Eastwoodho’s vehicle overshot, did a heel-brake turn, ran backwards, and pelted off after it. A dangerous corner down into Craven Hill almost had them spinning out. The right shoe of his front runner pattered out across the cobbles, but he managed to right himself and keep up the pace. Eastwoodho rang his bell so hard, the clapper flew off out of the window.

    They drew alongside the quarry: chairs and runners bobbing and thundering down Broderers Lane, neck and neck. Eastwoodho leaned out of the window.

    “Pull over!” he yelled. The blond man in the other chair looked across at him and shrugged in confusion.

“Me?” he mouthed.

    Eastwoodho reached for his gun, but heard his front chairman gasp in alarm. The end of the lane was the site for an occasional market, and Friday was one of those occasions. The stalls narrowed the lane width to single file. The thoroughfare wasn’t wide enough for both speeding sedans.

    “Brakes!” screamed Eastwoodho. They skidded, and knocked sideways into a stand of vegetables.

    Eastwoodho screeched, leapt out of the pranged chair and spat out a lump of rogue aubergine.

    The quarry had fared no better. Trying to pull clear, it had caught on the awning of a lace-maker’s stall, and the chairmen were currently trying to reverse out of a pile of ruffs. Eastwoodho ran across to them with his gun braced in a straight-armed, two-handed grip.

    “Hands up! Now!” he snarled. The chair-men obliged, and the sedan thumped heavily onto the cobbles.

    “You in the chair! Step out! Keep your hands where I can see them. Step out and place your hands on the hood. Now!”

    The blond man in French clothes clambered out of the sedan as instructed.

    “Trying to give me the slip, eh, punk?” Eastwoodho began. He narrowed his papercut eyes.

    The blond wig slipped off.

    “I think that was sort of the idea,” smiled I, Wllm Beaver. “Now what happens?”

⁹
Lady Scritti of Trabant, after the first night of Titus Androgynous.
¹⁰
Cyril Scrope Esq., after three bottles of sack.

¹¹
I honestly do not know, but he sounds like the most tremendous twat.

More of what happened on Friday

(which includeth a great, great 
SECRET
).

At roughly the same moment, as the disjointed strokes of noon began to peal out across the City from an unnecessary number of clock-towers, another sedan came to rest in Oxstalls Lane, Deptford, and the fare climbed out and awarded his chair-men a handsome tip.

    “Suck a peppermint comfit after eating garlicked sirloin, and you might pick a few more fares,” he said.

    The fare was dressed all in black, with a high, goffered collar, and a felt cap scrunched low on his head. It was turning into quite a warm day, and the clothes were heavy and hot, but Louis Cedarn preferred their stuffy weight to the possibilities of discovery, followed by death and several other unpleasantnesses that he could amply imagine.