No Good Deed 94 (WMDN)
By Ewan
- 321 reads
My pocket watch displayed a quarter of eleven and the blacksmiths forging a thousand swords in my head showed no inclination to desist. Therefore, I resolved to make for the saloon bar, there being no recourse but to try the ancient Pliny’s remedy, viz. a hair of the dog. In all honesty I would have preferred to drink what was left of the drummer’s samples in my carpetbag. Since the hideous portmanteau remained in what the Enterprise was pleased to name a stateroom, that is to say the sanitorium of Miss Winona Shepherd and her nurse, I could not do so.
The crouch-back was at his station and the Saloon Bar was bereft of custom save myself. I offered a silent prayer of thanks that Cattermole’s own condition had kept him to his bunk. Augustine Bearce, or Coble or whoever he was, paused in his shuffling of bottles of spirits on one of the lower shelves behind the bar-counter,
‘A beer? Perhaps not. Something stronger, I’ll warrant,’ he lifted a bottle of murky spirits as like as to a Suffolk pond’s water as to encourage me to ask if he had such a thing as a bottle of brandy. I was quite astounded when he produced from who knew where a bottle of quite acceptable Armagnac. Bearce poured me a sufficiency for me to discern at least the half of Cardinal du Four’s forty virtues in one glass.
Bearce looked from side to side and over my shoulder. The bar was quite deserted save for his presence and mine own.
‘Put the case – and I admit to nothing – that you and I had met before. That we both had other names to go by. Do you find it strange? What age am I? What age are you?’
His diction was pure, and he did not sound drunk.
‘What do I care how many years your footprints have marked the earth?’
‘You do not, naturally enough. Miss Pardoner, for it is she, what age might she be now?’
‘Why, on a good day she might pass for thirty. What of it?’
Bearce smiled and refilled my glass before pouring one for himself.
‘She is of the family Jedermann, remember.’
I took another fierce swallow. Truly it was a crime to treat such a fine cognac so.
‘There are several families like theirs. Mine is one such. So, I ask you again. How old am I?’
The man’s face was no more wrinkled than it had been London more than a dozen years ago. It meant nothing, some were wizened by life before they reached thirty. If I had been inclined to answer him I might have said that he was past sixty, although sprightly for it.
He nodded. ‘I see. Would you like me to describe the storming of the Bastille? We played catch with De Launay’s head before we put it on the pike. Or would you like me to tell you of the time I met Nicolas Flamel the day after he erected his own tombstone?’
I shook my head at the man’s haverings and gestured for another measure of spirits.
‘Again, I put the case, that had you and I met before, I should be most surprised that you looked no older than you did on that putative first encounter.’ He gestured at the glass before me. ‘After all, you are no abstainer from strong drink, and, I’ll warrant, life has not been easy for you here in the United States.’
In the latter, he was quite correct. However, who is so vain that they spend their days before the mirror, counting the signs of their mortality? Besides, I had no clue as to what he was trying to convey. I resolved to remain only as long as the Armagnac lasted.
Bearce placed his glass carefully on the bar.
‘You see, Mr Moffat, there are families like the Jedermanns and like mine… and there is you. We follow you, with good reason. Where do you come from? Did those foolish experiments really do something? Did Enoch make someone like ourselves by accident!’
His voice had risen in volume to great degree and he was near foaming at the mouth.
‘I doubt very much that I am anything like you, Sir.’ I said and left the bar.
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