The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [50]
176
Fourteen
Dinner, which to Sarah's surprise came before noon, was a very different matter from the elegance of Louisa's five o'clock meal - or the rough and ready friendliness of Mario's evening table for that matter.
To start with, the great hall was crowded and noisy.
There were long trestle tables running down the sides of the hall with a very mixed bag of diners. Those at the head were clearly the gentlemen of the household (each attended by his own personal servant); prominent among them were the cavalieri, the knights who formed the officer corps of the castle garrison; the men-at-arrns themselves had their own table and were making by far the most noise, toasting each other in large goblets with loud bantering cries; while at the lowest end of the lowest tables sat the lesser servants, brought their food by kitchen ,scullions. Dogs roamed around the thickly strewn rushes on the floor, on the lookout for titbits of the many different meats on offer.
At the high table sat the Barone and his sad, silent wife.
The Doctor (with his neatly trimmed white beard) was on their right, as an honoured guest from far off Inghilterra, with his page Jack behind him, poised to pour his wine or otherwise minister to his slightest need. The black-177
clad Maximilian Vilmius sat on their left, massive and morose, eating little and saying less.
It was Sarah herself who had chosen to be called Jack (an English name from way back - wasn't the original Jack Straw one of Wat Tyler's bunch of rebels?) on the principle that it was bad enough having to pretend to be a boy – but an Italian boy…!
‘It is most kind of you, Signore, to allow me to see your library,’ the Doctor was saying. ‘I have been received with considerably less courtesy in many of the great houses of Christendom I have visited in my quest.’
Sarah was queueing up behind their hosts’ personal servants at the serving table to replace the jug of water and the bowl she’d held for the Doctor to rinse his hands at the end of the first course – the second looked to be much the same as the first: a plethora of meat – but she could still hear the conversation quite clearly.
‘We have some fine books, though few of them are printed,’ replied the Barone. ‘A number of them come from Spain, where I spent my youth.’
‘It is the esoteric knowledge of the Arab world that I seek,’ said the Doctor; and Sarah could have sworn that she saw Vilmius’s head jerk round, but at that moment her elbow was jogged as Vilmius’s page, a grinning bull-calf 178
with terminal acne, pushed past her, jumping the little queue.
‘Watch it!’ hissed Sarah, as water splashed out of her jug and onto her leg. He glanced down and gave a coarse snigger. Sarah followed his look. It certainly appeared as if she d had a very different sort of accident.
She came forward to the table, treading heavily on Pimple-face’s foot. He let out a bellow loud enough to make all at the high table look round; and was rewarded by a clip over the ear from the Barone’s servant.
Stupid, stu-u-upid! thought Sarah as she returned to her post under the glower of her new enemy. Why join in? They were here for a purpose.
She concentrated on the conversation again – and was horrified at what she heard. The Doctor had launched into a dissertation on alchemy, for Pete’s sake, some stuff about the mystic marriage of the Sun and the Moon – Sol and Luna, as he called them. What did he think he was doing, showing his hand like that? And look at Maximilian, fixing a glittering gaze on the Doctor which looked more dangerous than the knife he was gripping like a dagger.
‘You pursue the Great Work, Doctor?’ he said.
‘Alas, only as a scholar and a seeker of truth, Signore.
Such mystic arts as the transmutation of base lead into noble gold are reserved for more practical souls than I. For my 179
part, I hope to find my way to the world behind this mortal world of appearances. Where, as Raymond Lully says in his Compendium Artis Alchemiae, “certain fugitive spirits condensed in the air in the shape