Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [11]
Deciding this event was sufficiently strange to merit more than his usually brief attention, Elric turned towards the small, red-headed individual who was picking himself out of a ditch at the edge of the silver-green cornfield, looking nervously up at the sky and drawing a rather threadbare coat about his little body. The coat would not meet at the front, not because it was too tight for him, but because the pockets, inside and out, were crammed with small volumes. On his legs were a matching pair of trews, grey and shiny, a pair of laced black boots which, as he lifted one knee to inspect a rent, revealed stockings as bright as his hair. His face, adorned by an almost diseased-looking beard, was freckled and pale, from which glared blue eyes as sharp and busy as a bird’s, above a pointed beak which gave him the appearance of an enormous finch, enormously serious. He drew himself up at Elric’s approach and began to stroll casually down the hill. “D’ye think it will rain, sir? I thought I heard a clap of thunder a moment ago. It set me off my balance.” He paused, then cast a look backward up the track. “I thought I had a pot of ale in my hand.” He scratched his wild head. “Come to think of it, I was sitting on a bench outside The Green Man. Hold hard, sir, ye’re an unlikely cove to be abroad on Putney Common.” Whereupon he sat down suddenly on a grassy hummock. “Good lord! Am I transported yet again?” He appeared to recognize Elric. “I think we’ve met, sir, somewhere. Or were you merely a subject?”
“You have the advantage of me, sir,” said Elric, dismounting. He felt drawn to this birdlike man. “I am called Elric of Melniboné and I am a wanderer.”
“My name is Wheldrake, sir. Ernest Wheldrake. I have been traveling somewhat reluctantly since I left Albion, first to Victoria’s England, where I made something of a name, before being drawn on to Elizabeth’s. I am growing used to sudden departures. What would your business be, Master Elric, if it is not theatrical?”
Elric, finding half what the man said nonsense, shook his head. “I have practised the trade of mercenary sword for some while. And you, sir?”
“I, sir, am a poet!” Master Wheldrake bristled and felt about his pockets for a certain volume, failed to find it, made a movement of the fingers as if to say he needed no affidavits, anyway, and settled his scrawny arms across his chest. “I have been a poet of the Court and of the Gutter, it’s alleged. I should still be at Court had it not been for Doctor Dee’s attempts to show me our Graecian past. Impossible, I have since learned.”
“You do not know how you came here?”
“Only the vaguest notion, sir. Aha! But I have placed you.” A snap of the long fingers. “A subject, I recall!”
Elric had lost interest in this vein of enquiry. “I am on my way to yonder metropolis, sir, and if you’d ride one of my pack animals, I’d be honoured to take you there. If you have no money, I’ll buy you a room and a meal for the night.”
“I would be glad of that, sir. Thanks.” And the poet hopped nimbly up onto the furthest horse, settling himself amongst the packs and sacks with which Elric had equipped himself for a journey of indeterminate length. “I had feared it would rain and I am