The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers (28 page)

By now the waiter’s progress had taken him almost to the centre of the Table of Honour.

‘Here sits Uckermark,’ said the waiter, putting down a parchment. ‘The corpse master. I know him well. He stuffed my grandmother three years ago. Still she looks as good as new.’

The waiter moved a single place closer to the centre. He stood with the starvation cage just behind him and scanned the parchment in his hand.

‘Young sir,’ said he, ‘are you by chance a victim of anaemia?’

‘So I’m told,’ said Chegory doubtfully.

‘If a doctor told you, it must be true. An Ebrell Islander, thus it says here. Chegory Guy by name. The name is your own?’

‘It is,’ said Chegory.

‘Then here you sit,’ said the waiter, and with a flourish he deposited Chegory’s prescription in the place to the left of Uckermark’s.

‘Then whose place is that?’ said Chegory, as the waiter deposited the next parchment.

‘This?’ said the waiter. ‘This place belongs to a lady fair who suffers from ... let us say insomnia. That is the polite way of putting it, is it not?’

Then he winked, which was quite unprofessional of him, then went on his way.

Chegory wandered off to find Uckermark, but had not yet located the corpse master when trumpets flared and silenced all chatter in the Grand Hall. In came guards bearing naked scimitars. Then the Empress Justina entered upon the banqueting chamber. She waved gaily to her subjects as she made her way to her place.

Which was...

Which was the central seat at the Table of Honour.

Right by that assigned to Chegory Guy.

But surely, surely...

‘A mistake,’ said Chegory, as someone grabbed his arm. ‘There’s been a mistake.’

‘You’re telling me,’ said Juliet Idaho. ‘Come on! Don’t keep the Empress waiting!’

So saying, the Yudonic Knight steered Chegory toward the Table of Honour. He drove his fingers deep into the young man’s bicep.

‘Remember what I told you!’

‘Stabs,’ said Chegory. ‘Yes, yes, stabs, I remember, not to touch, no steel, no touching. Eat with my fingers, everything, fish, soup, the lot.’

‘Eat soup with your spoon, fool!’ said Idaho. ‘But the rest with your fingers, certainly. One hand on a stab, and that’s it! Wwwhst! Off with your head! See the muscle?’

‘I see it,’ said Chegory.

He saw the scimitarists standing to either side of the starvation cage and knew they were the muscle to which Idaho referred. They could be upon him in a moment. Slicing off his head!

‘So watch yourself,’ said Idaho, his threat pitched low, meant for Chegory’s ears alone.

Then he gave the Ebrell Islander a push which sent him staggering forward. The Empress Justina smiled on him. At all three tables the guests were standing by their chairs. Waiting to be seated. Chegory felt dizzy. Panic-stricken. He longed to run, flee, sprint from the pink palace and bury himself forever in the deepest part of the underworld.

Chegory reached the table.

A servant pulled out his chair.

What now? Presumably the Empress would seat herself, then her guests would take their places.

Chegory waited.

Beaded sweat rolled down his forehead.

‘Sit!’ hissed Uckermark, his mouth but a fingerlength from Chegory’s ear.

What was right? To sit, or not to sit? Surely he couldn’t—

‘You’re guest of honour,’ whispered Uckermark frantically. ‘You! Sit sit sit!’

Chegory sat.

The rest of the guests followed suit with a great scraping of chairs, soon followed by a swelling murmur of remark, expostulation and outright gossip. Still the Empress was standing. Was something wrong? Chegory risked a quick glance over his shoulder. The muscle to either side of the starvation cage had not moved. But it was there. Ready. Waiting. The muscle was in the form of two huge men with bullock-breaking thews, their faces impassive as they stood leaning on the hilts of bare-bladed scimitars, the points of which rested on blocks of cork to preserve their sharpness.

Still, still the Empress stood. The chair to her left was empty. Was she waiting for another guest?

Round the table there was a regular tinkling clatter. What? People were pulling off rings, brooches and other baubles. Tossing them so they fell amidst crystal glasses, polished silver, white porcelain. Chegory, who was ignorant of the customs Justina’s father had brought with him from Galsh Ebrek, was totally incapable of fathoming the import of this simple ceremony.

The last ring was, temporarily, discarded.

Then, and only then, did Justina sit, exhaling a happy sigh as she ensconced herself in the chair next to Chegory Guy. He stood instandy, as a sign of respect.

‘Sit!’ said the Empress in a peremptory tone. Then, as he complied, she went on (more mildly): ‘Silly boy! You didn’t think you could run away, did you?’

To Chegory’s surprise, even at banquet she spoke in Toxteth. Now all acknowledge that the language of Wen Endex is good enough for war, at which the Yudonic Knights are expert. Yet it is entirely unfit for social intercourse at the highest levels, for it lacks the subtle honorifics and diminutives by which the ever-hinting Jan-juladoola allows lessers in their every utterance to honour betters and betters to impress upon lessers the inferiority of the latter.

‘My lady,’ said Chegory, ‘I exist only to serve.’

This he had hastily rehearsed but a few moments before, and - better still! — he had rehearsed it in Janjuladoola. For ‘my lady’ he used Janjuladoola’s ‘thayalamantalajora’, which translates literally as ‘goddess surpassing’. From the nine forms of‘I’ which were available to him he had chosen (correctly) the word ‘varacasondundra’, literally ‘myself a worm’. It came out perfectly.

Still, even though the Ebrell Islander surprised the universe by choosing language proper and words correct for this pretty little offering, it must be observed that what he came out with was cliched and unoriginal in the extreme. But then, Chegory Guy had no prior experience in dealing with imperial power, and must perforce fall back on stereotyped dialogue stolen straight from the legends of hero-princes and such.

While young Chegory was still complimenting himself on his successful survival of the first of his many trials in the halls of grace, Justina’s albinotic ape Vazzy was brought to the table and installed in the previously empty chair to the left of the Empress. On this occasion the installation included the attachment of the creature to its specially weighted throne by means of leather ankle cuffs. At the last banquet, Vazzy had indulged his passion for staging tournaments at table once too often, and Justina had at last come to the conclusion that a rampaging ape is not an ornament to an evening’s entertainment.

Once installed, the imperial favourite regarded Chegory quizzically, then extended its paw.

‘Well, Chegory,’ said the Empress. ‘Where are your manners?’

Chegory sought for words but found none, therefore did but stare at Empress and ape, acting for all the world as if his tongue had been tied after the manner of the torturers of Lower Sladvonia. Given his lack of social sophistication, his attack of verbal constipation is understandable. After all, the hero-prince legends which had supplied his dialogue till then make no mention of the niceties of protocol which arise when a common rock gardener has social intercourse with an ape imperial.

‘Go on!’ said Justina. ‘Give him your hand.’

Chegory was to - to what? Cut off his hand and present it to the ape as a token of fealty? He looked around wildly. Guards in their frowning menace stood but a footfall away from him, their scimitars at the ready. Vazzy rescued Chegory from his indecision. The pink-eyed ape lunged, grabbed Chegory’s hand and hauled on it. Chegory hauled back. Sweating. Panting. Biting his lip. His thick Ebrell Island fingers were now directly above Justina’s lap. They were but a finger length from — from—

Gods!

‘You silly boy!’ said Justina, with a windchime laugh. ‘Shake his hand and he’ll let yours go!’

Shake his hand? Why? Chegory had no idea, but nevertheless jerked the ape’s paw several times. To his relief, Vazzy then released him. Chegory snatched his hand away as if it had been scalded. He slumped back in his seat. A solicitous attendant mopped away the sweat now streaming from his brow. Chegory endured these ministrations without protest, then realised a waiter was questioning him.

‘What?’ he said.

Chegory was startled by his own over-loud voice, by the note of shark-flavoured brutality in the single vocable. A moment later he realised (to his horror!) that he had asked his question in his native Dub, instead of phrasing his query in fragrant Janjuladoola or (second-best, surely - but the Empress used it) good honest Toxteth.

The waiter repeated his question using the politest forms of Janjuladoola imaginable, yet still managing to convey a weary sense of infinite superiority:

‘Mead, sir? Or wine?’

‘A - a physician has prescribed mead for my anaemia,’ said Chegory, stumbling slightly as he rendered this simplicity in Janjuladoola. He had conceived an immediate fear of the waiter, which was quite natural given the waiter’s massive sense of superiority and Chegory’s increasing nervousness.

‘Those doctors will over-prescribe!’ said Justina. ‘Give him the wine, it’s much safer.’

‘My lady has a degree from the College of Medicine,’ murmured the wine waiter, ‘therefore one trusts her judgement implicitly.’

The qualification in question was an honorary degree, but the waiter made no mention of this as he poured wine for Chegory (the guest of honour), then for the Empress, and then (since the ape was in possession of a medical certificate signed by the Veterinarian Imperial) for Vazzy.

‘Thank you,’ said Chegory, truly grateful that the Empress had descended (as it were) from her seat amidst the stars to deal so expediently with the waiter.

He congratulated himself for saying his thanks in Janjuladoola. Then was horrorstruck. He had used the familiar form! He had said efkarindorenskomiti, the word by which a friend thanks a friend, or (for this is a very familiar form indeed!) which a lover uses to supplement a kiss just a few moments after orgasm. The word he should have used to express his thanks was (of course) dundaynarbardina-dorsklo, for thus and only thus should a slave or similar address a power imperial.

Such lapses of etiquette are not to be taken lightly. In the court of Aldarch the Third (who, for all that can be said against him, is ever at pains to improve the manners of his people) many have been instantly executed for lapses in protocol far less extreme. But the Empress Justina merely laughed. She was delighted!

‘I’m so glad we’re getting to know each other better,’ she said.

Though she spoke in Toxteth, her words implied that she had caught every nuance of Chegory’s Janjuladoola. So what could he say? That he didn’t mean it like that at all? ‘Thank you,’ he said, helplessly.

Only this time he said it in Toxteth, a language which offered him far fewer opportunities to make those social gaffes which are almost inevitable when an inept linguist endeavours to grapple with the delicious intricacies of Janjuladoola.

Before Chegory had a chance to embarrass himself further, Justina’s white ape hooted in pleasurable anticipation. A white-faced figure gorgeously adorned in robes embroidered with moray eels and scorpion fish was approaching the Empress. However, the ape was to be disappointed, for Aquitaine Varazchavardan remembered what had happened at the last banquet, and halted well out of ape-grabbing distance.

‘Hello there,’ cooed the Empress Justina, with a sly smile upon her lips. ‘What can we do for you today, young man?’ Varazchavardan was not young, otherwise he might have lost control of his temper there and then. Instead, the albino tic sorcerer cleared his throat and said, as banquet protocol compelled him to:

‘My most honoured lady, as Master of Law I ask on behalf of myself and of your assembled guests that we be excused the ritual of confession.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Justina. ‘What do you think, Chegory'? Should we spare the man confession?’

This comment most naturally brought the attention of the Master of Law to bear on young Chegory Guy, who could but stare helplessly at Varazchavardan. The terrified Ebrell Islander looked for all the world like a dormouse surprised by a cobra.

All Chegory could think of was the scene Downstairs where the sorcerer had fought his way free from the Malud marauders who had taken him prisoner. Varazchavardan had sent fire shooting outwards from his body, with dual consequences. First, the elderly pirate holding a knife to Varazchavardan’s throat had let him go. Second, the liquor with which the floor was awash had ignited, causing the sorcerer to be almost instantly engulfed in flames. Obviously, he had survived.

Equally obviously, to judge from the look he gave young Chegory, he remembered.

‘Well, Chegory?’ said Justina gently. ‘Do we spare him confessions or not?’

‘Sp— spare me,’ said the terrified Chegory. ‘Please!’

‘He spares you,’ said Justina to Varazchavardan. ‘Isn’t that nice of him? One day, we must spare you not. I’d be most interested in hearing your confessions, Vazzy darling. Most interested.’