A Clockwork River, page 40
His hands, when Jacky took them, were clammy. His eyes sparkled with an eldritch luster and mist spiralled visibly from his cheeks. But he had become docile and let Jacky coax him to a deer trail that fed into a path for human beings. “Extra gents,” affirmed Samuel. “Berry ingrate bee’s knees. I will shed for a minuet inn these rook, garb’s dichter.” He tripped over rocks and tree stumps and negligible pebbles and twigs and eventually encountered an entirely invisible obstacle that nonetheless sprawled him out face-first on the ground. Jacky turned him over onto his back and undid his shirt. Blood seeped out from the scratches on Sam’s face. His skin was icy to the touch. Although the cut along Sam’s ribs had scarcely broken the skin, its ragged edges had turned the dead gray of dead ashes in the center of an inflamed, crimson blotch where the coals were still burning. Beyond this patch, the skin was clammy and white, like the underbelly of an amphibian.
Jacky’s own face turned white. She did Sam’s clothing up again with trembling but intentional fingers and gazed at her unconscious companion for longer than was medically necessary before she bent down and kissed the corner of Sam’s mouth. Then she stripped off her outer clothing to pad the top tube of the bicycle and, after about half an hour of comic failure which I will not describe to you for fear of disturbing the gravity of the situation, succeeded in draping Sam over the velocipede’s gigantic, steel frame. It must have been cold work trundling this load uphill through powdery snow with no coat on, but Jacky did it with a will and was warmed by the exertion. The tires slipped in snowdrifts and on the patches of ice that became more frequent as they ascended the slope. Also, Sam’s limp body kept threatening to slide headfirst off the frame, and Jacky was often obliged to pause and readjust him.
She had hoped for a ride as the day wore on, but no carts came down the lonely mountain cow-path. The intermittent flurries became great, feathery flakes, and the going, never easy, was becoming impossible for a slight, exhausted and ill-equipped youngster, but at last, Jacky arrived at an unassuming accumulation of unlovely timber-and-wattle houses where there was an inn, notably sagging at one end, accessed by a creaking gate in a long fence that gave onto a courtyard full of carriage ruts in frozen mud. An artist who overloved the letter “l” had burned the words The Happy Lllama into the signboard.
The Mallow Hill post coach sat by the inn’s front door with its wheels deep in the courtyard’s profoundest and most venerable ruts and its driver erect in his box doing calisthenic exercises. As he puffed and squatted and swept his arms from one side to the other in his big, sheepskin coat, two rough-looking men, with fumes of inferior tobacco curling out from around the cob pipes clenched in their jaws, were banging with hammers on the iron rim of the right front wheel. Stationed at the inn’s front door was a large, vicious-looking, and obviously frustrated, alpaca, straining its neck not nearly far enough to reach the thatch roofing over the porch, which sheltered two empty rocking chairs and a backgammon board on an upright barrel. The pieces were laid out in a half-finished game that was black’s to lose. As Jacky wheeled Sam up to the door, the alpaca paid him little heed, but he eyed the bicycle very much as if it were an abominable interloper and its rival for the affections of a comely camelid female. Twisting back its lips from uneven teeth, the animal emitted a hideous bray and spat a warning gob of spittle right onto the velocipede’s bell, which emitted a tinny chime. A bony woman with a checkered kerchief tying back her thinning hair came to the door, brandishing the baker’s peel with which she drove the reluctant beast out of the way.
“Well?” she asked, eying her prospective guests with very little sympathy.
“We need a room,” said Jacky. “My friend’s not well.”
“You’ll have to pay for it,” reminded the innkeeper.
“Naturally,” said Jacky offhandedly, as if payment from an unconscious man draped across the top tube of a bicycle and a coatless, teenage boy who had recently been sleeping in a leaf pile were not a thing that could possibly be doubted.
“Drunk?” wheezed the hostess, homing in to inspect the velocipede’s cargo.
“Not at all,” protested Jacky. “He’s had a bad fall.”
The hostess plucked a cob pipe from her withered bosom, packed it with low-grade shag and went to beg a coal from the wheelwrights. Energetically puffing from her skinny lips, she returned to the front door and banged on it with the baker’s peel, shouting, “Posy! Come here, you lazy slut!”
A leisurely stretch of time ensued, during which Jacky began seriously to feel the chill, before the door opened again and let out a firm-fleshed blonde with big, sleepy, hazel eyes that betokened recent rising. From the sheepskin slippers that lovingly embraced her slender ankles, alabaster calves rose after the manner of pornographic statuary to the brocade hem of her colorful dress, which began just above her knees and was belted very tight above the generous curve of her hips, but was left very loose about the bodice which Posy had not bothered to tie up all the way, so that the creamy bulges of her bosom appeared to be near winning a victory over the noble efforts of the laces to restrain them. From under the tousled, bed-fresh mane of yellow hair that streamed out around her oval face, with its bee-stung pillowy lips and mocking eyes, she glanced contemptuously at Jacky then turned her slender neck to examine the young man on the bicycle.
“Had an accident,” clarified the old woman. “Says they can pay.”
Posy squatted to look Sam in the face, a posture in which her hindquarters swelled fetchingly against the thin fabric of her dress. The hammering of the wheelwrights abruptly ceased. “He’s very handsome,” declared Posy in a throaty voice of sympathy. “We can’t very well leave him in the cold, can we?”
“No luggage?” asked the old woman disapprovingly. “All right then,” she snapped, “get him upstairs while I stable the velocipede.”
With a strong, fluid gesture that suggested some experience in handling men’s bodies, Posy lifted Sam off the bicycle and, with Jacky’s assistance, got him up a narrow staircase smelling of tallow into a low room underneath the eaves. “Get a blanket around yourself,” she ordered Jacky, but the latter refused and stood close by while Posy’s agile fingers unbuttoned Sam’s shirt with a nimbleness that suggested some experience in divesting men of their upper garments.
“He fell off the bicycle onto a sharp rock,” explained Jacky. The long, pink nail at the end of Posy’s forefinger traced a path from the hollow of Sam’s throat, across the chain from which the lock and key were suspended, to the ragged, gray wound surrounded by its circle of fire, with a languid ease that suggested some experience in caressing well-formed, masculine chests. Jacky did not like the familiarity with which the serving wench handled Sam’s body, but the really pressing matter was that the patches of gray dead and red inflamed skin were both larger than they had been.
“Onto a knife, you mean,” murmured Posy. She spread her palm flat across Sam’s chest to feel his weak heartbeat; his breath was barely sensible. Posy light-fingeredly moved the lock away from the wound with an agility suggesting some experience in lifting men’s personal articles.
“A poisoned knife at that,” added the old woman, who had noiselessly appeared at the door with a bowl of hot potato soup. As Jacky began to slurp it, she kneeled by the bedside to make her own, brisker inspection of the wound. “This’ll be extra,” she threatened Jacky, “and no guarantees. Fetch some boiling water and my cups,” she commanded the girl.
A few minutes later, the wench returned with a tray bearing some small, glass cups, a lit taper candle, a pot of salve, a lancet and a pot of steaming water. “That’ll do,” said the old lady with satisfaction, rolling up her sleeves and washing her hands in the hot water before she rubbed the salve thickly all around the wound, held the first cup over the flame in order to burn out the oxygen, and clapped it over the wound. At once, the skin underneath it became livid and bulged up to fill the container. The gray skin turned black and burst, and a thin, yellow fluid leaked out. After the old woman pulled off the cup with a plummy popping sound and lanced the blister, she milked out a teaspoon of yellow pus, threaded with red streaks of blood and black streaks of some more ominous substance. She scraped away the exudations with the flat of the lancet’s blade, gathered them in the cup, and gave it to Posy. “Take this round to Pinky’s,” she said. “Pinky’s the man for poisons, and won’t squeal.” Repeating the procedure three more times, she washed Sam’s wound clean, bandaged it with lint, buttoned his shirt back up and tucked the covers closely round his neck.
“He may make it,” she said sternly to Jacky. “Maybe not.” She shook her finger threateningly. “You’ll have to pay, either way.” With that she stomped off down the stairs to attend to the inn, whose needs were many and various and too much for one old woman to handle by herself. She had scarcely commenced boiling water for the complimentary breakfast gruel when Posy ducked in through the kitchen door, wrapped up in furs an innkeeper’s wench could not conceivably afford and with bright red flushed spots standing out vividly and very attractively on her snowy cheeks.
“You’re back in a hurry,” declared the old woman. “Fill that bucket with oats, will you?”
It was beyond Posy’s powers to remain ignorant of this request, so she floated the bucket to the oat bin while a head of steam gathered over the iron pot her grand-aunt stirred witchily with a long, wooden spoon. “It seems Pinky is looking for some fellows,” explained Posy carefully, “some fellow in a yellow tunic riding a bicycle, in fact.”
“In debt to Pinky,” sighed Aunt Bets. “Well, well, can’t be helped. I hope you told him to keep the bloodshed out of the inn.”
“I told him nothing,” stated Posy with a proud toss of her head as she pitched in the groats. “I think the dying one is very handsome.”
“Handsome!” shrieked Aunt Bets, gathering a handful of Posy’s beautiful hair to prevent her running away while she rapped her skull with the wooden spoon. “And for that you’ll bring the Grimp brothers down upon our heads? They’ll burn down the inn around our ears!”
“Oh, rubbish and listen,” scolded Posy. She sashayed out of striking range and shook her tremendous lustrous mass of hair out around her shoulders. “It is not the man’s life Pinky is after – though he’ll cut the poor thing’s throat out of habit, if we give him half a chance. It’s that thing around his neck.”
“Nonsense,” pronounced Aunt Bets authoritatively. “Isn’t worth a crown. My plan is to confiscate the velocipede – it should cover the room until the handsome one is well enough to leave it, if he recovers. Butter and salt, please.”
“That’s fine. I don’t think they’d part with the lock for a few night’s lodgings,” said Posy dreamily. “There’s a price on it in the capital.”
“A price, eh?” asked the old lady. “Enough to hire some decent help?” she continued pointedly, shuffling across the room with a spoon. “At my age too – I should be eating white bread in the corner instead of scurrying to the butter dish. What price exactly? Now cut the apples.”
Posy danced up to the knife block and tossed the paring knife gleefully into the air, where it turned five times before she caught it by the tip between her thumb and forefinger. She whipped the knife into the breadboard, winked with one beautiful, hazel eye and whispered a number into her aunt’s ear.
“This is the jackpot!” wheezed the old lady, clapping her hands and letting the spoon sink tragically into the bubbling gruel. “You’ve pinched your last apprentice, Posy! We’ll pack it all in and retire to the seaside!”
“I will arrange a gigolo for you,” said Posy authoritatively, yanking out the knife and beginning to peel an apple in a utopian frame of mind. “One… two… no, four gigolos to attend to you.”
“It is thoughtful of you,” cackled the old woman, picking another spoon out of a nearby container of kitchen utensils. “But at my age, three will suffice – enough for bridge, and the dummy can massage me with fragrant oils while we play the hand.” She tossed the second spoon in after the first and slammed a lid down over the cauldron as if to prevent them joining forces and returning to the world above.
“You’ll have the finest gin,” sang Posy, chopping apples with a will. “The fanciest sun hat. A cathedral of songbirds.” She lifted the lid of the cauldron and fed apples into its mouth, then tipped in salt from a paper bag. “Bridge and sunshine till your dying day.” With that, she joined hands with her great-aunt and danced ring-around-the-cauldron until the old woman confessed she had lost her breath.
“Even without Pinky’s assistance, the man is in a bad way,” admonished Aunt Bets, recovering. “Make him drink this”—referring to a steaming bowl, full of steeping, noxious-smelling herbs—“it’s marvelous purgative. Also, it will help him”—with a broad wink—“sleep. Wonderful medicine, dopewort. The young one will want breakfast too; I dare say the stew was just enough to prevent him keeling over.”
Posy blithely slipped the bowl of gruel and the medicinal infusion onto a tray and blew herself a kiss in the cracked, steamy mirror hung above the stove. Already, she imagined herself gliding, not with a tray through a shabby kitchen, but with an armful of roses onto a high proscenium where, dressed in a green, chiffon cloud, with a heaped-high hairdo garlanded with pink pearls, she coldly received the admiration of the crowd. Humming a waltz, she arrived at the top of the stairs and rapped impatiently with her elbow. Hearing a dolorous “come in”, Posy plumped herself down on the bedside and commanded Jacky to eat the gruel, which would be good for him. “And how is the patient?” she asked, feeling Sam’s cheek and letting her fingers wander thoughtlessly to the collar of his shirt.
“He’s breathing better,” admitted Jacky.
“When you’re done eating, you can help me lift up his head,” said Posy, “and we’ll give him his medicine.”
Jacky left the bowl immediately and cradled Sam’s head while the wench spooned the greenish vinegary fluid into Sam’s mouth. Much of it dribbled out the corners, but Sam swallowed in his half-sleep and seemed to be better for it afterward, as Jacky noted, stroking Sam’s hair after breakfast.
“You’d better go get some fresh air,” counseled Aunt Bets, looking in an hour later. “Why, there is no sense in a young lad full of life moping at a sickbed. We’ll take care of him a while.”
But Jacky refused. After sundown, when the roistering began, she would not go down even for a mug of apple ale. Only on the third day, when Sam was showing signs of active life and Aunt Bets and Posy had given many demonstrations that they held nothing so dear as his health, did she agree to take a little air. Once Aunt Bets had seen Jacky to the door, Posy pulled the covers down from Sam’s neck and began carefully to undo the laces holding together the front of his tunic. The cut on his ribs was already knitting together. The skin around it was a flush, rosy, infant color. The lock and key, warm with the heat of the young man’s body, rested in his armpit. Posy lay down beside him and rested her head with a sigh on the young man’s bare-skin chest, which she felt rise and fall with his deep, even breathing. He emitted a small, unconscious moan, and Posy raised herself up on one elbow to look at him fondly. Her tangle of blonde hair spread over him like a golden cloud. His eyes opened, and he looked back at her a moment; then he smiled dreamily and his arms opened too. Posy willingly lay astride him and slipped her gentle hand under his collar. Her fingers closed about the flesh-warm steel chain as Sam buried his face in her neck and gathered her body against him. His eager, unabashed mouth brushed across her throat as Posy’s hands fluttered thrillingly inside his collar. She kissed him warmly on the mouth.
“Rosie,” murmured Sam when the girl withdrew herself, a little winded. His eyes were piercing and intent, but as if looking through her at something in the far corner.
“Posy,” she corrected indulgently, kissing him again. With the lock secure in her apron pocket, she sat for a while at the bedside, stroking his cheek and watching him lapse back into his recuperative slumber. She kissed him on the forehead, laced up his top and drew the covers back up to his chin. “You have a good sleep now,” she whispered. “We’ll watch you till you’re well.”
When Jacky returned, she discovered Posy sitting, a model nurse, by Sam’s bedside, looking dreamily out the window with her hands folded over her apron.
“How has he been?” Jacky asked.
“Out of danger,” beamed Posy. “Did you see a bit of town?”
“Just the market and the ironmonger’s stall,” said Jacky. “I sold the velocipede; you’ll have your payment for the room. We appreciate the care you’ve taken,” she added in fervent gratitude.
“You took the bicycle to the market?” Posy asked. “Oh dear.”
“You’ll have your money,” repeated Jacky.
“It is just that it might be risky to walk with such a distinctive bicycle around a town like this,” clarified Posy. “There are some rough elements about, you know – low elements that are not above theft.”
There was a pounding at the front door of the inn. “Pinky!” enthused Aunt Bets at an unnatural volume clearly audible in remote parts of the house. “Pinky, so good of you to come! You don’t usually roister till after sundown.”
A rumbling voice like a boulder falling down a cliffside answered her, but too low and faraway to make out words. In any case, Posy was already up and getting Sam out of bed. “The fact is,” she hissed to Jacky, “there are some rough characters in town looking for two young men with a bicycle.”
Inside the minute, Sam had his boots on and was being ushered down the back staircase, supported under the armpit on either side, while Aunt Bets dawdled up the front stairs saying in a quavering voice, “You can check the rooms if you like, Pinky. I’ve been in the kitchen all day and haven’t seen a thing; no sign of Posy, the lazy slut. Is it debts? Is it larceny? Any chance of a cut?”
There came a low chuckle reminiscent of an earthquake and cleated boots thudded on the treads, which squealed in protest to carry such an obviously massive individual to the second story. But Posy and Jacky and Sam were already out the kitchen door and tossing Sam over the back of the conveniently located alpaca, who appeared perfectly obedient to Posy’s imperious commands. Ducking behind a bush, out the back gate and down a lane, the little party hid themselves in a ditch by the highway leading up into the mountains. Just as the serving wench had predicted, a convoy of exhausted men soon came walking up it, casting aching glances at the houses they passed, as if every plume of smoke from a cheerful fireplace were a personal taunt; behind them came stoical draft horses carefully placing their hooves on the frozen mud of the road, each one pulling a rough wagon whose cargo lay hidden under an orange tarpaulin and whose driver sat so contentedly wrapped in buffalo rugs and beaver hats that it was impossible to believe anything could tempt him from his situation.
