Part 7 (1/2)

*You sure about that, Stirling?' shouted Horatio. *Maybe it was a visitation from the bottle. Too much port can have that effect.'

The reverend reddened and carried on. *A great angel came from the clouds and roused me from my bed.'

*What did this angel say?' mocked Horatio, making no attempt to disguise his disbelief.

*He said, ”Stirling, you must tell the people of Pagus Parvus to beware, for the devil has come among you and he is tricking you with his wiles and his filthy lucre.”'

*Wiles and filthy lucre?' laughed Elias Sourdough. *What language does he speak? Is this angel from a foreign country?'

*Money,' said Stirling impatiently. *The devil is among us and luring us with his money.'

*There's only one devil in this town and we don't see his money,' said Job Wright, the blacksmith, and he pointed in the direction of Jeremiah's house. At the same moment the upstairs curtain twitched and Stirling wondered if perhaps he should have gone a little further up the hill.

*Not Mr Ratchet,' he hissed, then raised his voice, *but Joe Zabbidou, the Devil's p.a.w.nbroker.'

He said this with great feeling, at the same time shaking his clenched fist at the sky. There were gasps all round and Stirling realized that finally he had their full attention. Unwilling to lose this advantage he hurried along.

*Joe Zabbidou has come to us without warning, appearing from nowhere in the night, to entice you all into his shop with his fancy goods.'

Ludlow, who was watching all this from Horatio's doorway, raised his eyebrow. *Fancy goods? A chipped chamber pot. Hardly.'

*What does he intend to do with us?' asked Lily Weaver.

*What does he intend to do with us?' repeated Stirling out of habit.

He had not antic.i.p.ated this question when he had been preparing his speech. He had not thought that he might be challenged. He couldn't recall such a thing when he was in church; granted most people were asleep then.

The silence was deafening.

*Erm, well, let me see, ah yes, once he has lured you he will take you over to his side, the Dark Side.'

Unfortunately for Stirling, this was where he lost his tenuous hold on the audience. Pagus Parvians did not consider the Dark Side in any way threatening. They had not forgotten those long Sunday sermons from years ago when the reverend bored them half to death droning on about the very same subject. They began to shuffle their feet and talk to their neighbour or walk away. Desperately Stirling tried to recapture the moment. Jeremiah had promised him a case of the best port.

*If you go over to the Dark Side, then you will be lost forever and will burn in the fires of h.e.l.l.'

*At least we'd be warm,' shouted Obadiah, and the crowd laughed.

*Do not jest about the devil,' warned Stirling, in a final attempt to hold them. *You never know when he is listening.'

*Hang about, Reverend,' said Ruby Sourdough. *Here comes the beast himself. Why don't we ask him about this Dark Side?'

Joe was indeed coming down the street at his usual jaunty pace. He had the grip of a mountain goat. Right now one or two of the villagers were wondering whether his shoes did in fact conceal those telltale cloven feet.

*Morning all,' he called and smiled. *Did I hear someone mention my name?'

Although Stirling was not being taken seriously, it did seem to some a rather curious coincidence that Joe had turned up at this particular moment.

*'Ere, listen to this, Mr Zabbidoof,' said the youngest Sourdough, at the front of the crowd. *Stirling says yore the devil come 'ere to burn us all in 'ell.'

Stirling protested immediately. It had never been his intention to actually confront Beelzebub, merely to slander him in his absence. *I didn't say that,' he protested hurriedly. *It is a sin to tell a lie, lad.'

*Yes 'e did,' said Elias Sourdough to Joe. *'E said you were gonna loor us wiv your tricks and wiles.'

Joe smiled. *I have no tricks. You know what I am, a p.a.w.nbroker. Have I ever pretended or acted otherwise? As for wiles, you are welcome to come and look for them. Perhaps they are in the window?'

At that everyone burst into raucous laughter. Stirling scowled, picked up his box and slunk away.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Fragment from The Memoirs of Ludlow Fitch Stirling's performance in the street was the talk of the villagers for three whole days. As far as they were concerned, the reverend's humiliation was just one more in the eye for Mr Ratchet (who had watched the entire scene from his window, barely concealed behind the curtain) and another victory for Mr Zabbidou. The battle lines might as well have been drawn in the snow.

There was no disputing Pagus Parvus had given Joe a warm welcome. It could be measured almost from the moment he defied Jeremiah Ratchet. This initial enthusiasm had not waned a” just the opposite, it had increased immensely. Now at the very sight of him the villagers behaved as if he were royalty. I swear upon my evil Pa that I witnessed more than once some fellow kneeling before him. Poor Joe, he could not go from one end of the street to the other without being stopped a dozen times by well-wishers enquiring after his health and his business and even Saluki. Joe was always polite. His manner was consistently warm and friendly, but I could tell that this adulation was beginning to trouble him.

*I did not come here to be venerated,' he mumbled.

As I lay during long sleepless nights the same question turned over in my mind: *What did you come here for?' I knew by now that things were not, and could not be, as simple as they appeared. A man arrives out of nowhere in an isolated village and hands over money from a bottomless source for worthless objects and secrets. It didn't make sense to me, but whenever I tried to ask Joe about his past he refused to engage and immediately talked about something else.

I wondered whether Joe's aversion to all the attention was modesty and I paid little notice to his discomfort. While he tried to avoid the limelight, I bathed in his reflected glory. When I walked the streets of the City I was n.o.body: in Pagus Parvus I was prince to Joe's king. Of course, Joe was the one they wanted to talk to, his was the hand they wished to shake, but they spoke to me too, if only to say good morning. It made me smile. If they had ever seen me in the City they would have crossed to the other side of the road.

Perhaps it was the fact that the village was so isolated which made Joe (and me) even more special. But, special or not, I had a feeling that as long as Jeremiah Ratchet was in Pagus Parvus it wasn't going to be enough.

Our days were always busy. I had my jobs to do and Joe had his, but we were never rushed. Being in the shop sometimes felt like being in another world where everything happened at half speed. I never saw Joe make a hurried movement; there was no urgency to his life, but, for all that, it was difficult to shake off the feeling that we were waiting for something to happen.

In the late afternoon, when it was quiet, Polly and the Sourdoughs would have been and gone, we would both sit by the fire and enjoy the warmth and the comfort it brought. At such times I couldn't imagine ever returning to the City.

*I'm never going back,' I said to Joe one night.

*Never say never,' Joe replied quickly. *All things change.'

Certainly my fortunes had changed. In my eyes Joe was the father I had always wished for. I had new clothes which he had given me. As for my rags, we both enjoyed watching them burn on the fire. At least once a fortnight I relaxed in front of the fire in a huge tin tub filled to the brim with hot water, and every day we had two decent meals. The Pagus Parvians had proved most hospitable and hardly a day pa.s.sed without some sort of food parcel being left on the doorstep: rabbits, pigeons, sparrows (a delicacy in these parts, marvellous stuffed with onion and alium) and occasionally a whole chicken from the butcher's.

*Bribes,' laughed Joe. *They think if they feed me I will change my mind.' He didn't, but he still threw the meat in the pot.

As the harsh memories of my previous life faded my mind started to play strange tricks on me. I began to worry that life was too good. Surely a boy such as I, with my past and the crimes I had committed, deserved punishment not reward? Joe tried to rea.s.sure me.

*It's common enough to think like that,' he said, *to feel unworthy of good fortune, but have you forgotten what I said to you about luck?'

*You said we make our own luck.'

*Exactly. You made yours by coming here. Now you work hard and you deserve what you have.'

*But I never intended to come here,' I insisted. *It was chance that Ratchet's carriage was outside the Nimble Finger.'

*But it was you who chose Jeremiah's carriage.'