“Big-talking pile of suet. Go home to mama; I do not waste my time on you.” Dello Bosco gave a theatrical Italian gesture of contempt, spun on his heel, and began to stalk away.
Magister Stephen seized him by the shoulder and hauled him back. White around the lips, the Englishman grated, “Dare to prove your boasts, little man, or I will kill you on the spot. Contest with me, and we shall see which of us can put a question the other cannot answer.”
“What stake will you put up for this, ah, contest of yours?” dello Bosco said, wriggling free of the other’s grip.
Magister Stephen laughed harshly. “Ask what you will if you win. You shall not. As for me, all I intend is flinging you into a dung heap to serve you as you deserve for insolence to your betters.”
“Wind, wind, wind,” dello Bosco jeered. “As challenged, I shall ask first. Is it agreed?”
“Ask away. The last question counts for all, not the first.”
“Very well, then. Tell me, if you will, the difference between a mermaid and a melusine.”
“You have a fondness for monsters, it seems,” Magister Stephen remarked. “No doubt it suits your character. To your answer: these German heralds have a fondness for melusines, and draw them with two tails to the mermaid’s one.” Dello Bosco shrugged and spread his hands. Magister Stephen said, “My turn now. Why is the bar sinister termed a mark of bastardy?”
“Because all English speak French as poorly as you,” his opponent retorted. “Barre is French for ‘bend,’ and the bend sinister does show illegitimacy. Any child knows that bars, like the fess run straight across the shield, and so cannot be called dexter or sinister.” Magister Stephen did his best to hide his chagrin.
They threw questions there at each other in the street, and gave back answers as swiftly. Magister Stephen’s wrath soon faded, to be replaced by the spirit of competition. All his wit focused on finding challenges for dello Bosco and on meeting the Italian’s. Some of those left him sweating. Wherever he had learned his heraldry, dello Bosco was a master.
Magister Stephen looked up, amazed, to realize it was twilight. “A pause for a roast capon and a bottle of wine?” he suggested. “Then to my chamber and we’ll have this out to the end.”
“Still the belly first, is it?” dello Bosco said, but he followed the Englishman back into the inn from which they had come several hours before.
Refreshed, Magister Stephen climbed the stairs to the cubicles over the taproom. He carried a burning taper in one hand and a fresh bottle in the other. After lighting a lamp, he stretched out his straw palliasse and waved dello Bosco to the rickety footstool that was the little rented room’s only other furniture.
“My turn, is it not?” Magister Stephen asked. At the Italian’s nod, he said, “Give me the one British coat of arms that has no charge upon the shield.”
“A plague on you and all the British with you,” dello Bosco said. He screwed up his mobile face in thought, and sat a long time silent. Just as a grinning Magister Stephen was about to rise, he said, “I have it, I think. Did not John of Brittany-the earl of Richmond, that is-bear simply ‘ermine’?”
“Damnation!” Magister Stephen exploded, and dello Bosco slumped in relief.
Then he came back with a sticker of his own: “What beast is it that has both three bodies and three ears?”
Magister Stephen winced. He frantically began reviewing the monsters of blazonry. The lion tricorporate had but one head, with the usual number of ears. The chimaera had-no, it had three heads and only one body. The hydra was drawn in various ways, with seven heads, or three, but again a single body.
“Having trouble?” dello Bosco asked. In the lamplight his eyes were enormous; they seemed almost a deep crimson rather than black, something that Magister Stephen had not noticed, and that only added to his unease.
The hot, eager gaze made him want to run like a rabbit-like a rabbit! He let out a great chortle of joy. “The cony trijunct on the arms of Harry Well!” he exclaimed. “The bodies are disposed in the dexter and sinister chief points and in base, each joined to the others by a single ear around the less point.”
Dello Bosco sighed and relaxed once more. Still shuddering at his narrow escape, Magister Stephen cudgeled his brain for the fitting revenge. Suddenly he smiled. “Tell me the formal name of the steps to be depicted under the Cross Calvary.”
But dello Bosco answered at once: “Grieces.” He came back with a complicated point of blazonry.
Magister Stephen made him repeat it, then waded through. “Two and three, Or a cross gules,” he finished, panting a bit.
“Had you blazoned the first and fourth ‘a barry of six’ instead of ‘azure, three bars or,’ I would have had you,” dello Bosco said.
“Yes, I know.” Yet even though Magister Stephen had given the correct response, the feel of the contest changed. He was rattled, and asked the first thing that popped into his head; dello Bosco answered easily. Then he asked a question so convoluted as to make the one before elementary by comparison.
Magister Stephen barely survived it, and took a long pull at the wine jar when he had finished. Again, his opponent brushed aside his answering sally; again, he came back with a question of hideous difficulty. The cycle repeated several times; at every query Magister Stephen’s answers came more slowly and with less certainty. Dello Bosco never faltered.
The lamp in the little room was running low on oil. Its dying flickers made dello Bosco seem somehow bigger, as if he were gathering strength from Magister Stephen’s distress. Every time he hurried a question now, he leaned forward, hands on his knees, waiting for the Englishman’s stumbling replies like a hound that has scented blood.
He handled Magister Stephen’s next question, on the difference between the English and Continental systems for showing cadency, with such a dazzling display of erudition that the Englishman, desperate as he was, wanted to jot down notes. But there was no time for that. Stretching lazily, dello Bosco said, “I grow weary of the game, I fear. So, then, a last one for you: tell me what arms the devil bears.”
“What? Only the devil knows that!” Magister Stephen blurted.
At that moment the lamp went out, yet the chamber was not dark, for Niccolo dello Bosco’s eyes still glowed red, like burning coals. When he spoke again, his voice was deeper, richer, and altogether without Italian accent. “I see that you do not know, in any case, which is a great pity for you. Nor is it wise to bet with strangers-but then, I told you you were a fool.”
Dello Bosco chuckled. “And now to settle up the wager. What was that you said? ‘Damn me to hell if you do, sir’? Well, that can be arranged.” He strode forward and laid hold of Magister Stephen. His grip had claws.
Dello Bosco had not mentioned the Mountain by the Dark Wood outside Firenze, or the Gateway there, or the writing above it. “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate,” Magister Stephen read as he was dragged through. Even in such straits he was observant, and cried, “No wonder you said you knew Vergil well!”
“Indeed. After all, he lives with me.”
Then the lesser demons took control of their new charge from their master. To show their service, they bore his arms: Gules, a fess or between three frogs proper. Magister Stephen found that very funny-but not for long.
PILLAR OF CLOUD, PILLAR OF FIRE
I’ve written seven stories that feature the exploits of Basil Argyros, a fourteenth-century Byzantine official in a world where Muhammad was monk rather than prophet (see also “Departures” and “Islands in the Sea” in this volume). Six of those stories appear together in the collection Agent of Byzantium (New York: Congdon amp; Weed, 1987). This is the seventh. Chronologically, it fits between the second and third chapters of Agent of Byzantium. Like the others in the series, however, it is intended to stand by itself as well.