The dining-room at the Black Prince was so small you could have spat across it, and by the look of the walls many former guests had. There were only five tables. The doddery innkeeper had a couple-three slaves for kitchen help but evidently didn’t trust them to wait on table, and did it himself. Recalling the good-smelling, orderly, spacious Bull-and-Iron made it easy for me to despise this tavern, just like an aristocrat.
The Bull-and-Iron, now, was a fine brick building at least a hundred years old. The story was there’d been a lot more clear land around it when it was built, and Old Jon’s father had sold off most of it for a big profit after the new stockade went up to accommodate the city’s expansion, and land values rose. The Bull-and-Iron had fifteen guest bedrooms upstairs, no less, not counting the one for Old Jon and the Mam, nor Emmia’s where I’d left my childhood. Downstairs, there was that grand kitchen with two store-rooms and a fine cellar, and the taproom, and the big dining-room with oak ceiling-beams fourteen inches wide and charcoal-black, and tables to seat thirty people without crowding. Maybe I remember the cool taproom best of all, and the artwork above the bar, a real hand-painted picture just full of people in weird clothes, some riding astraddle of railroad trains and others herding automobiles or shooting off bombs, but all sort of gathered around in worship of a thundering great nude with huge eyes and the most tremendous boobs, like a shelf under her chin. She sat there with her legs crossed showing all her immense white teeth and being adored, so you knew it was a representation of the Old-Time pagan festival of St. Bra. The painting carried the Church’s wheel-mark of approval, or Old Jon couldn’t have displayed it. The Church doesn’t object to art-work of that type in the proper place, so long as it’s decent and reverent and shows up Old Time as a seething sink of scabrous iniquity.
But the Black Prince at East Perkunsvil — hell, the only mural was a spot in the dining-room wall the size of my head where plaster had fallen and nobody’d ever possessed enough alimentary tubing to replace it. The only respectable mural, I mean. They had the other kind of course in the privy out back. One of our Old-Time books mentions some of that kind found in the excavated ruins of Pompeii: the style hasn’t changed a bit.
There were seven of the pilgrims, the usual number because it’s thought to be lucky — Abraham had seven disciples — there are seven days in the week — and so forth. East of the Hudson Sea, pilgrim bands often head for places less sacred than Nuber, usually shrines that mark where Abraham is said to have visited and preached, and those groups, especially in Nuin, are larger, often lively and full of fun. Itinerant students join them for mischief and company, and a crowd like that can stir up a really joyous commotion on the roads. The band at the Black Prince was different — unmistakably a religion-first company, all except Jerry, and from the look of his parents you got the impression that he would take some holiness aboard when they got to Nuber, or else. The other pilgrims of the group have become almost faceless for me in memory — three women and one man. One of the women was young and quite pretty, but all that comes back is an impression of timidity and a very white face; I think one of the two older women was her mother, or aunt.
“The ruins belonging to the Old-Time city named Albany, which we saw a few days ago, near the modern village of that name,” said Father Fay, “are the last we shall behold on our way to Nuber.” He was doing all right with the bacon too, for such a gentle man. “This region we are now traversing is said to have been mostly farm-land in ancient pagan times, so no great monuments are to be expected.” Father Fay’s baritone was rich, smooth, surprisingly strong; it made me think of warm honey dripping on a muffin, and when I looked again, bugger me blind if they didn’t have muffins, real corn muffins, and fresh out of the oven, for I saw the vapor rise when Jerry opened one up and slapped the butter to it. “The truly mountainous territory of Katskil was left in ancient days, as now, more or less in its natural state.”
“I’ve often wondefed, sir,” said Jerry’s father, “what is the source of Katskil’s prosperity. One doesn’t expect to see wealth in a mountain country.”
Sam murmured to me: “Levannon — tell by his accent.”
“It’s their southern provinces,” said Father Fay. “Rich farming land south of the mountains, all the way to the mouth of the great Delaware River, which I believe marks the entire boundary between Katskil and Penn… My conscience troubles me. I fear I may have neglected to point out some of the more instructive features of the Albany ruins, for I am always deeply moved by the sad splendor—” Jerry was full of squirm, and watching me in a weird warm pop-eyed way — “and also the dignity to be sure, of the antique ruined architecture seen at low tide — ah, and by moonlight too!”
“Ma,” said Jerry.
“We were fortunate to have moonlight. One feels often the guidance of a heavenly power, on these pilgrimages.”
“Ma!”
“That door over there — you know perfectly well—”
“Naw, I don’t have to. I want—”
“Jerry, the Father was speaking.”
“It’s all right, Mam Jonas,” said Father Fay with practiced patience. “What does the boy want?”
“Ma, I don’t want my muffin.” (Why would he? — he’d already had two, one when nobody was looking except me.) “Can I give it to him over there?”
Damned if he didn’t mean me. 1 felt my face get as red as my hair, but that subsided. I half-understood the little devil wasn’t just being a gracious prince favoring a humble subject: he actually liked my looks, and was drawn to me in one of those fantastic surges of childhood feeling.
“Why,” said Father Fay, “Mam Jonas, this is the beginning I spoke of, blossoming of a truly Murcan spirit.” And Father Pay sent me a wink in a helpless manner, an open request to play along while Jerry got it out of his system.
The introduction of official sanctity embarrassed Jerry and cramped his style, but he brought over the muffin very prettily anyhow, as the whole gathering blinked at us. Ever wake up in a cow pasture and discover that the critters have formed a ring around you and stand there gazing and gazing, chewing and chewing, as if you’d put them in mind of something, they can’t think what but it’ll come to ’em in a minute? I took the muffin and did my best thank-you, and Jerry ietired, face blazing, speechless. The pilgrim lady who I’m certain was somebody’s aunt said: “Aw, isn’t that sweet!” Jerry and I could then exchange glances of genuine sympathy because it wasn’t practical to murder her.
“In viewing such ruins,” said Father Fay, “and especially by moonlight, one feels always, one says to oneself, ah, had it only been God’s will that they should be a little wiser, a little readier to heed the warnings. Such marvelous structures, such godless, evil beings!”
“Father Fay,” said the pretty white-faced young woman, “is it true they made those great buildings with the flat tops out there in the water for — uh — human sacrifices?”
“Well, Claudia, of course you must understand the buildings were not then submerged.”
“Oh yes, I know, but — nh — did they—”
“One is unhappily forced to that conclusion, my dear Claudia. Often indeed—” I think he sighed there and had another muffin; I’d finished mine under Sam’s stern and reverent eye — “often those buildings are no mere squares or oblongs but have the definite shape of the cross, which we know to have been the symbol for human sacrifice in ancient times. It is saddening, yes, but we can find reassurance in the thought that there is now a Church—” he made the sign of the wheel on his breast, so we all did — “which can undertake the true study of history in the light of God’s word and modern historical science, so that its communicants need not bear the burden of old sins and tragedies and the dreadful follies of the past…