Аврам Дэвидсон - Peregrine - primus

At that very moment there was a sound of shouting in the street and a rattle of stones fell against the walls, and Eudoxia, shrieking in terror, flung herself upon Peregrine, spilling his wine.

“Tear her to pieces with sharpened oyster-shells!” a voice cried, one seeming not entirely devoid of clerical intonations. “Remission of 57,000 aeons in Purgatory for he who tears off the first piece!”

The mob growled. And another voice declaimed, “Stone her! Stone the foreign slut Eudoxia, the doxy!”

“All East Nubians are Monophysites, if not worse, if worse there be!”

“Stone her!”

Screams and cries of alarm and terror began to resound from the other chambers of Eudoxia’s establishment for wine-tasting and conversation. From the street came an hysterical shriek of, “Flay the undoubtedly heretical denier of perfectly lawful clerical incelibacy, and thus the enemy of wholesome family life”: this, in a female voice.

And, “Burn her alive after tearing her to pieces with sharpened oyster-shells, for taking the bread out of the mouths of native-born and doctrinally honest prostitutes!” shouted another woman.

Eudoxia hissed her scorn. “Oh, that bitch, Zoe, she has the ugliest girls in town at her house, she’s always hated me— Save

me! Save me! What do I pay trade-taxes for?”

This consideration had evidently entered the mind of at least one other person, for in a sudden lull in the shouting and tumult of the mob, and while the other denizens of the house came running in, in sundry states of disarray, followed by Claud and Appledore, a voice outside was heard

“Get home, now! Get on about your business! Return to your requisite and productive occupations, and terminate this unlawful assembly, or I’ll call the cohorts!”

The silence was short-lived. “Down with Stingy Gus!” someone shouted. And, “Let’s raid and burn the Bursary!” shouted someone else. The voice of Stingy Gus continued to be heard, and was now heard calling for the cohorts, but in a rapidly diminishing tone, as though coming from someone engaged in quickly quitting the scene.

“Deposed is Augustus the XXV, protector of Monophysitism!’’

“Down with the crypto-Donatist, Augustus the Penurious!”

“Let’s burn all the tax-bills and proclaim a generous and leisure-loving Caesar!”

“And one whose anti-Monophysitism is beyond question!”

“Redeem from mammon the Church of Saint Epaminondas of Epididymus!”

Peregrine, meanwhile, had led both staff and patronage of Eudoxia’s establishment into the rear atrium, each of whom, or each pair of whom, he had bidden by gestures to carry along a bench. Out front the unity of the mob was being threatened by a sudden revival of the question of the Procession of the Third Person of the Trinity. Peregrine began to pile the benches on top of one another, and against the wall.

“Ask Bishop Buffo, here— It’s his ward, ain’t it? Ask him, go on, ask him, ask him don’t the Holy Spirit proceed from the—” And another and even louder voice, perhaps anticipating and not relishing Bishop Buffo’s reply, declared that that prelate would eat an unspeakable substance with a rusty spoon.

Peregrine clambered up to the top of the wall, having prudently thrown several cloaks’ thickness over the broken glass embedded there, and beckoned for Claud and Appledore to hand him up more benches. And in another several seconds, Eudoxia and her ladies had climbed up, climbed over, and climbed down into

the dimness on the other side.

t t t t

The other streets had been drained of traffic by the activity, and there was almost no one about in port when the fugitives came galloping down upon the docks. A figure jerked up from slumber on the deck of a vessel moored to the quay, and began to intone, “Passage now available for all downstream ports, with connections for the Danube and the Euxine Sea! Sailingbarge Homoiousios now loading! New, low prices, and— Oh. It's you. And you. And you, too. Also But who are you?”

“Religious refugees,” said Peregrine, briefly. “Cast off!”

“Fares payable strictly in advance,” said Eugenius. And he declined to consider offers to take it out in trade. However, as the young lady explained, who had been assisting Claud, reasons of convenience oft-times obliged her to remove her clothes, but reasons of prudence forbade her from ever removing her savings. Eugenius accepted two bracelets and an ear-bauble from her in return for deck-passage, and was in process of assessing the tariff for the matron Eudoxia and her other associates in the wine-tasting and conversation trade, when Peregrine interrupted.

“These details can wait, wool-master,” he urged. “There are great civil disturbances disturbing the peace of Nimrunna, and the populace is making mighty use of the word heresy, wherefore—”

The Eddessan, with a whoop, hiked up the skirts of his robe, and scuttled down the deck betimes to set in the rudder, calling over his shoulder, “Cast off, there, boy! Cast off —O Sweet Suffering Serpent, against Whom Ialdabaoth did raise up the heel of man!” But the mooring lines had tightened more than Peregrine’s ’prentice-boy hands could quickly loosen, and the ship’s owner moaned with fear, “O Sweet Prunicos Her pudenda! Hasten, hasten, lad!—else we be but butchers’ meat, for do I not now hear the approach of the Caesar himself, accompanied by at least one cohort?”

Not only did they hear him, they almost immediately saw him, and would-have seen him sooner, had not the Caesar him

self, previously and penuriously ordered two out of every three lamps on the quays to be extinguished after the tenth hour. He came into sight at a rapid pace, slapping the sides of an enormous and enormously laden dray-horse, and behind him could be heard at least one cohort, which might have made a more rapid progress, did they not pause every few paces to smite the stone paving with the butt-ends of their spears and chant, “Christ conquers!’’ Discipline, however, was discipline.

“Passage! Passage!” shouted Stingy Gus, on perceiving the vessel about to shove off.

Eugenius at once ceased his moans, crisply ordering, “All hands fall to and load passenger’s baggage, look lively there, avast!” The bags were exceedingly heavy, and they clinked. “That will be five bezants for Your Highness’s passage, and five bezants apiece per bag, payable in advance,” said Eugenius.

The long jaws of the Caesar clamped shut, to unclamp immediately and say, “Extortionate! Cite me a soother sum, else I shall strive to reach an accommodation with the yonder troops.”

“They don’t call you ‘Stingy Gus’ for nothing, Stingy Gus. Well, well, I shall abate one bezant per bag, subject, however, to demurrage, bottomry, flotsam, jetsam, perils of other princes and potentates, mutiny of the master, mates, or men, as well as ambush, adumbration, hypothecation, usurpation, pilot charges in shoal waters —the vessel now being heavy-laden with your gear—and all other perils of the seas, the shallows, and the inland waters; got that line loose, lad? Drop her then and jump, else swim.”

Stingy Gus looked longingly from baggage to shore, then, a spear whistling through the air and thudding into the deck not an hand’s span away from him, he yelped, and dove into the cubby-hold for cover. And the vessel swung into the stream and into the darkness.

t t t t

The deck was wet with cold dew when Peregrine, who had the dog-watch, awoke and shuffled forward, rubbing his eyes and scratching his crotch; and relieved himself at the stern. “You

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can get some sleep now,” he said to Eugenius.

The Eddessan’s grunt was faint, but scornful. “Why, you have spent all of a day on this river, and you think to be able to pilot at night? Though you were my own son, and cradled on this current from the day of thy chrismation, I’d not trust the vessel to thy sole charge at night. Nay, nay, sit here beside me and take the tiller so that I may rest my arm; then by and by we come to a safe cove for anchor: then I will try for sleep, leaving you to stand guard.”