Farrell asked, “What about Ben? I have to talk to him, I have to do something about Ben. What the hell do you think I should do?” For a moment Julie’s hands tightened on the back of his neck, cool as new leaves, but holding him hard enough that he could feel the smooth callouses on the sides of her drawing fingers. But she only said, “Call me at work,” and kissed him again, and—as neatly as Sia ever hemmed his memory or Nicholas Bonner made time clear its throat—they were smiling through her screen door; but he turned away first, never knowing how long she leaned against the door afterward, and a pair of early stars were pricking into view above the Waverly as he sat in Madame Schumann-Heink, wishing he were just arriving at Julie’s house and wondering what to say to Ben. I can’t go back there until I think of something.
Eventually he drove away from the university streets, down below Gould, past the freeway, almost as far as the Bay, to eat ribs and sausages hot enough to cause double vision and cauterize polyps, in a diner slightly bigger than a camper truck. The decor was the same as in his student days—framed railroad timetables and signed photographs of almost-familiar singing groups—and the sour-tempered daughters of the sour-tempered black couple he remembered were still yelling at each other in the kitchen. Farrell found this immensely comforting and overate out of several kinds of hunger.
Standing outside the door, breathing carefully to test his charred sinuses, he heard a rough, friendly voice, sounding almost at his ear: “Hey there, old Knight of Ghosts and Shadows.” Farrell turned and saw the man he knew as the Saracen Hamid ibn Shanfara crossing the street toward him, in company with Lovita Bird and two of the musicians from the King’s Birthday Revels. One was tall, with long, thinning brown hair and the bovinely enduring expression of a Flemish St. Anthony; the other looked like a happy satyr, redbearded and bowlegged. They bowed formally to Farrell, there in the tarnished light of the rib joint, as Hamid made introductions. “This is Messer Matteo dei Servi, and this here now mauvais sujet and generally worthless type is Brother Felix Arabia.” Farrell bowed back and asked them whither they were bound.
“Armed combat class,” Hamid answered cheerfully. “Come on along with us. Nothing on public TV tonight except cooking and dog-walking, anyway.”
“Armed combat,” Farrell said. “As in clash of broadsword on buckler. Shivering of lances. Yield thee, caitiff.”
The satyr Felix Arabia grinned at him. “Thursday nights, seven-thirty. Best show in town, for the money.” He cocked his rowdy head at the saint. “He’s serious about it, he’s teacher’s pet, just about. Hamid and Lovita and me, we’re not really in the class, we’re just his occasional cheerleaders. Groupies.” He made a baton-twirling gesture, which somehow contained the hard twinkle of an invisible sword.
Farrell found that he was walking with them, Lovita Bird’s arm through his and Matteo dei Servi saying shyly, “Actually, I’m not that good, not enough time to practice. I think of it like a discipline, like a philosophy. It’s great for my concentration.” The long, cumbersome bundle that he and Felix took turns carrying kept nudging Farrell’s side coldly, like an inquisitive shark.
Farrell asked, “Who teaches this stuff? Where on earth do you find people who know about medieval fighting techniques?” Felix Arabia looked mildly surprised. “Man, everybody in Avicenna is insanely knowledgeable about something. Especially fighting. Any kind of combat master you want—armed, unarmed—they’re all over the place these days. Like wandering samurai in Kurosawa movies.”
“Lute players, now,” Matteo dei Servi said. “Lute players are tricky to find. Good lute players.”
Felix Arabia said, “Speaking of which,” and for the rest of the way they took turns urgently coaxing Farrell to join their consort Basilisk. When he pointed out that he could only play one instrument well, while the rest of the group—except for the Lady Criseyde, their percussionist—were clearly at home with half a dozen, he was reassured by Felix, “Listen, we don’t need any more damn sackbuts and serpentines, but we have got to have a lute.”
And Matteo said, “People expect a lute, anything older than Mozart, they just do. We’re starting to play a lot of non-League jobs around town, and they always ask.”
“Paying gigs?”
Felix and Matteo nodded eagerly. Hamid chuckled, and Lovita squeezed Farrell’s arm, saying, “I’m his agent.”
Farrell said, “We’ll talk.”
The combat master lived in a fat, battered Victorian at the end of a torn-up street, isolated on three sides by construction moonscapes and on the fourth by a half-completed freeway tributary, so that the effect was of a ruinous old molar clinging on in a skeletal jaw. The front door was open, and Farrell’s companions led him into a high, cold room, empty of all furnishing or decoration, save for the rubbings and engravings of weapons and armor pinned to the walls. Five men, dressed alike in padded ski clothing, including boots and heavy gloves, were moving stiffly to stand before a goat-bearded little man in a blue polo shirt and faded chinos. When he turned to nod curtly to the newcomers, Farrell saw that his eyes were a bright yellow-gray, an African parrot’s eyes.
Two of the students wore conventional saber masks; two others had on motorcycle helmets with tinted bubble face guards. The face of the fifth man—a slighter figure than the rest, as far as Farrell could judge through the quilted jacket—was entirely hidden under a steel helmet like an upsidedown carafe, the lip of which extended down to cover the wearer’s neck. Where the handle should have been, the pointed visor jutted out, bucktoothed and blank. There were slits in the visor, but Farrell could see nothing through them.
Lovita nudged him, whispering, “Your Lady Murasaki, she made that one. Big old thing weighs more than she does.” The five men were now ranged before the combat master, peering warily at him over the painted shields on their arms. All but one of the shields were kite-shaped and wooden, four feet or more in length; the lone exception, shaped like a flatiron and obviously as faithfully ponderous as the steel helmet, belonged to the same slender man, whose limbs appeared almost too frail to support the rigors of authenticity. Farrell asked Hamid, “Did she make the shield too?”
The Saracen shook his head. “Henryk Tourneysmith made it last year for William the Dubious. William must have gotten tired of dragging it around.”
Matteo dei Servi had unwrapped his bundle of medieval paraphernalia and was changing clothes hurriedly as the little instructor moved nimbly among his padded pupils, sharply tapping a bent arm to bring a shield up to nose height, gripping and turning a shoulder until it made a right angle with the shield. “Bend your knees, I pray you, sweet lordlings. We have spoken of this before.” He had a dry, hot voice, rich with impatience. “Right hand on the hip to keep the shoulders straight.” He walked around the man with the steel helmet and shield and nudged him vigorously behind the knee. “Feet flat, knees right out over the toes. Ought to be like sitting in a rocking chair by now.” The man staggered and seemed for a moment about to crumple. The combat master said, “If you were properly balanced, I couldn’t do that,” and went on to correct the next student.
Hamid said softly to Farrell, “His name is John Erne. He’s been doing this for years, and it is the only connection he has with the League. Doesn’t dance, doesn’t feast, doesn’t take part in anything but this. He won’t even fight in the tournaments anymore.”
“What does he do the rest of the time?”
Hamid shrugged. “No idea. Man could be a dealer, man could be running a day-care center. I think he’s a closet investment counselor, but I can’t prove it.”