"Will you deflower me tonight?"
"If you got a petunia, I'll take it from you. But if you mean copulation, no. Not tonight."
"Why not tonight? I'm alone again on my honeymoon."
"Tonight is not the right night."
"There will never be a right night," said Poo. Somehow she had discovered, with the aid only of a phone book in a language she did not understand, that seamstresses would come up to one's hotel room and make dresses for one while one waited.
She could also order jewelers that way, too. And, of course, food. She was going to try that great English delicacy of bangers and mash.
If Poo had to be left alone again this honeymoon night, she did not know what she would tell her mother.
"Five thousand pounds," said Remo.
"I should tell my mother five thousand pounds?"
"No, you get five thousand pounds not to tell your mother a thing about what goes on and what does not go on in our marriage."
"The first night that would be a good sum. It is not unusual for couples not to consummate the first night. It does happen. But we are into many, many nights now. Now we are beginning a disgrace." Poo's moon face quivered. A tear came down one eye. She covered her face in shame.
"How much?"
The hands lowered. "We have to be talking ten thousand pounds at least. And what is the tribute you're getting for this service?"
"I don't get the tribute. It all goes to Sinanju."
"It all goes to Chiun."
"It goes to the House of Sinanju. I am a Master of Sinanju. It goes to Chiun and me, I guess."
"I am married to a Master of Sinanju who does not even know whether he gets tribute or not. Is that what I married?"
"Divorce is possible. You can have that for a solution, Poo," said Remo, reaching the door.
"Divorce is impossible in the Sinanju ceremony. No Sinanju Master has ever gotten divorced. It isn't done. It is," said Poo, pausing before that inviolate supreme word of Sinanju, "tradition."
"There must have been one Master who got divorced. I'm sure there was," said Remo, feeling the outer edges of panic kiss his nervous system.
"You should know," cooed Poo. "You had to read all the scrolls to become a Master. If you can find a divorce in the history of Sinanju, let me know. Until then, think about how you want to divide the tribute with Chiun. It is my impression you do most of the work in the current service to America."
"How do you know that?"
"Everyone in Sinanju knows what goes on in the House of Sinanju. It's a major topic of discussion. Am I right? Do you do most of the work?"
"We never figured out who did what, Poo. It works. There is nothing better than something that works. So long."
"But for whom does it work?" asked Poo as Remo shut the door behind him. He had to remind himself this girl was only twenty years old. What would she be like at twenty-one? What would she be like at forty, if he ever wanted to live that long?
No divorce, he thought. Because I am a Master of Sinanju, I am married to this woman forever. And yet he was sure there had to be a divorce somewhere in four thousand years. It was probably covered up. That's how those things worked.
But he had been poring over the scrolls more now than ever before, and every time a Sinanju Master was married, it was duly recorded. And every time a Sinanju wife died it was duly recorded, as was the departure of a Master. No Master ever recorded a separation. Every wife died married to a Sinanju Master, from the Great Wang to the Lesser Gi. Even Chiun's wife had died.
Poo was Remo's forever. And vice versa.
Remo arrived in Bath, in the southwest part of England, and ran into more English plainclothesmen than attended a royal wedding. It was a strange sight to see cars backed up at roadblocks for miles. Men with walkie-talkies occupied virtually every building.
Remo was spotted as someone who didn't belong there as soon as he entered Avon county, home of the town of Bath.
He brought with him only a bamboo satchel containing a Sinanju parchment.
A bobby stepped in and courteously asked him what he was doing in these parts, and what was in the satchel.
"Something to read," said Remo. The bobby examined Remo's passport.
"You say you're visiting the mineral baths. May I ask why now?"
"Keeps me young."
"You're about twenty-eight, aren't you?"
"Would you believe you're off by at least twenty years?"
"Really?"
"Yeah. I'm eight," said Remo.
The bobby was not amused. Plainclothesmen desperatly looking for something, anything, closed in on Remo. Remo had stepped out of his taxi at the roadblock and the driver was now indicating he never saw Remo before, did not know the man, and Remo was just another fare who hadn't paid yet.
"This isn't a laughing matter, Mr. Williams. Our prime minister has been kidnapped in this area, and we regret that certain precautions must be taken. These precautions may limit your freedom."
"Fine, just tell me where not to go and I won't go."
"I'm afraid, Mr. Williams, we cannot let you in this area."
"And I'm afraid, old boy, I'm just going to have to go in."
"Then I will keep your passport."
"Frame it if you will," said Remo.
"We're going to have to stop you physically."
" 'Fraid I can't let you," said Remo, and whistling, walked past the bobby in the high blue hat. Apologizing, several plainclothesmen warned they would have to stop Mr. Williams. Apologizing, Remo said he couldn't let them do that.
He whipped out the scroll and tried to get his bearings. From the center of the little resort city, he knew where he should go to look. But he had to get to the baths themselves first.
Several arms reached out for him, and he let his body respond to the air pressure ahead of the hands so he could dodge the hands while thinking about something else. It was more an absentminded gesture than a calculated move, letting the body itself do the dodging as he walked down the road reading the scroll of Master Wa, who had been hired by Emperor Claudius of Rome to make sure a plot against him did not develop within the legions occupying Roman Britain.
It was always a threat, Remo had learned from the scrolls, that some praetor would march his legions back from the frontiers and take over Rome. Caesar had done it. Others tried to do it, and this period of turmoil within the Western world, of plots and counterplots revolving around a corrupt and debauched center of authority, had proved to be what would be later called "one of the golden ages of Sinanju."
For as Master Wa wrote:
"No emperor slept nor senator spoke without fear of death in the night from the hand of an assassin. Sinanju, naturally, was the most in demand."
Remo felt an officer whiz by him as his body curved out of the way of the officer's lunge. The officer went forward on the dark country road, skinning his hands painfully.
Chiun had selected this scroll. He knew Mr. Arieson would be in Bath. Why?
Was Mr. Arieson seeking out Remo? And if so, why? Obviously Arieson and the House of Sinanju went way back. But how?
And what were the mysterious techniques Mr. Arieson used to avoid blows? Two more British policemen swung out at thin air. Did Mr. Arieson use techniques like Remo's, only more advanced?
No. Mr. Arieson would have been dodging the air currents Remo had created back at Little Big Horn if that were the case. And what about the helmet and chest protector the Israeli archaeologist said were perfectly new, punctured using a technique more than two thousand years old?
Remo hadn't even seen the helmet and chest protector. But there they were when his blows landed on metal aboard the USS Polk.
"Stop that man. Stop him," came a voice from behind.
"We're trying. He's made of air," answered one of the policemen.
"Then bloody well follow him," came the voice. Remo nodded. That would be all right. They could follow him right up until he decided they might be in the way. And so Remo walked into the old Roman town of Bath, reading his scroll, certain now that Arieson was in some way taunting him. Arieson was trying to tell him something by coming to a city where Sinanju had worked. After all, hadn't Arieson phoned him, calling him "boyo"?