Avram Davidson
Duke Pasquale’s Ring
For many years now Avram Davidson has been one of the most eloquent and individual voices in science fiction and fantasy, and there are few writers in any literary field who can hope to match his wit, his erudition, or the stylish elegance of his prose. His recent series of stories about the bizarre exploits of Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy (collected in his World Fantasy Award-winning The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy, and just this year re-released in an expanded and updated hardcover version as The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy) and the strange adventures of Jack Limekiller (as yet uncollected, alas), for instance, are Davidson at the very height of his considerable powers. Davidson has won the Hugo, the Edgar, and the World Fantasy Award. His books include the renowned The Phoenix and the Mirror, Masters of the Maze, Rogue Dragon, Peregrine: Primus, Rork!, Clash of Star Kings, and the collections The Best of Avram Davidson, Or All the Seas With Oysters, and The Redward Edward Papers. His most recent books are Vergil in Averno, the collection The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy, and, in collaboration with Grania Davis, Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty.
In the vivid and evocative story that follows, one of the Doctor Eszterhazy stories, Davidson lovingly crafts a milieu as rich and multi-layered and intricate as the finest mosaic, introducing us to a king without property and to a sinister man who has some sinister ways of getting what he wants . . . and demonstrating in an unsettling fashion the wisdom behind the ancient warning, Touch Not the Cat.
The King of the Single Sicily was eating pasta in a sidewalk restaurant; not in Palermo: in Bella. He had not always been known by that title. In Bella, capital of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, he had for long decades been known chiefly as an eccentric but quite harmless fellow who possessed many quarterings of nobility and nothing in the shape of money at all. But when the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and all of southern Italy being the other one) was rather suddenly included into the new and united Kingdom of Italy, ostensibly by plebiscite and certainly by force of Garibaldean arms, something had happened to the inoffensive old man.
He now put down his fork and belched politely. The waiter-cook-proprietor came forward. “Could the King eat more?” he asked.
“Im[belch]possible. There is no place.” He patted the middle-front of his second-best cloak.
“What damage,” said the other. His previous career, prior to deserting a French man-of-war, had been that of coal-heaver. But he was a Frenchman born (that is, he was born in Algeria of Corsican parentage), and this was almost universally held to endow him with an ability to cook anything anywhere in Infidel Parts better than the infidel inhabitants could. And certainly he cooked pasta better and cheaper than it was cooked in any other cook-shop in Bella’s South Ward. “What damage,” he repeated. “There is more in the pot.” And he raised his brigand brows.
“Ah well. Put it in my kerchief, and I shall give it to my cat.”
“Would the King also like a small bone for his dog?”
“Voluntarily.”
He had no cat; he had no dog; he had at home an old, odd wife who had never appeared in public since the demise of her last silk gown. The bone and extra pasta would make a soup, and she would eat.
With the extinction of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies something had gone flash in the old man’s brain-pan: surely Sicily itself now reverted to the status of a kingdom by itself? Surely he was its rightful king? And to anyone who would listen and to anyone who would read, he explained the matter, in full genealogy, with peculiar emphasis on the four marriages of someone called Pasquale III, from one of which marriages he himself descended. Some listened. Some read. Some even replied. But, actually, nothing happened. The new King of Italy did not so much as restore a long-forfeited tomato-patch. The ousted King of Naples did not so much as reply. Neither did Don Amadeo, King of Spain (briefly, very briefly, King of Spain). On the other hand, Don Carlos, King of Spain (pretended or claimed), did. Don Carlos was an exile in Bella at the moment. Don Carlos perhaps heard something. Don Carlos perhaps did not know much about Pasquale III, but Don Carlos knew about being a pretender and an exile. He did not precisely send a written reply; he sent some stockings, some shirts, a pair of trousers, and a cloak. All mended. But all clean. And a small hamper of luncheon.
By the time the King of the Single Sicily had dressed in his best and gone to call on Don Carlos, Don Carlos was gone, and—to Bella, as to Spain—Don Carlos never came back.
That was the nearest which Cosimo Damiano (as he chose to style himself) had ever come to Recognition. Stockings, shirts, and trousers had all worn out; the cloak he was wearing even now. And to pay for the daily plate of pasta he was left to his semi-occasional pupil in the study of Italian, calligraphy, and/or advanced geometry.
“To see again,” he said, now rising, and setting upon the tiny table a coin of two copperkas.
“To see again,” said the cook-shop man, his eyes having ascertained the existence of the coin and its value. He bowed. He would when speaking to Cosimo Damiano refer to him in the third person as the king, he would give him extra pasta past its prime, he would even donate to a pretense-dog a bone which still had some boiling left in it. He might from time to time do more. A half-cup of salad neglected by a previous diner. A recommendation to a possible pupil. Even now and then a glass of thin wine not yet “turned.” But for all and for any of this he must have his coin of two copperkas. Otherwise: nothing. So it was.
D. Cosimo D., as sometimes he signed himself, stooped off homeward in his cloak. Today was a rich day: extra pasta, a soup-bone, and he had a half-a-copperka to spare. He might get himself a snuff of inferior tobacco wrapped in a screw of newspaper. But he rather thought he might invest the two farthings in the merchandise of Mother Whiskers, who sold broken nut-meats in the mouth of an alley not far off. His queen was fond of that. The gaunt and scabby walls, street-level walls long since knocked bare of plaster or stucco, narrowed in towards him as he went. The old woman was talking to another customer, not one who wanted a farthingworth of broken nut-meats, by his look. But Mother Whiskers had another profession: she was by way of being a witch, and all sorts of people came to see her, deep in the smelly slums where she had her seat.
She stopped whatever she had been saying, and jerked up her head to D. Cosimo D. “Gitcherself anointed?” was her curious question.
“I fear not. Alas,” said D. Cosimo D., with a sigh.
She shook her head so that her whiskers flew about her face, and her earrings, too. “Gitcherself anointed!” she said. “All kinds o’ work and jobs I c’n git fer a ’nointed king. Touch fer the king’s evil—the scrofuly, that is—everybuddy knows that—and ringworm! Oh my lordy, how much ringworm there be in the South Ward!” Oft-times, when he was not thinking of his own problems alone, Cosimo wondered that there was not much more cholera, pest, and leprosy in the South Ward. “—and the best folks c’n do is git some seventh son of a seventh son; now, not that I mean that ain’t good. But can’t compare to a ’nointed king!”
And the stranger, in a deep, murmurous voice, said No, indeed.
Poor Cosimo! Had he had to choose between Anointing without Crowning, and Crowning without Anointing, he would have chosen the Holy Oil over the Sacred Crown. But he was allowed no choice. Hierarch after hierarch had declined to perform such services, or even service, for him. There was one exception. Someone, himself perhaps a pretender and certainly an exile, someone calling himself perhaps Reverend and Venerable Archimandrite of Petra and Simbirsk had offered to perform . . . but for a price . . . a high one . . . it would demean his sacred office to do it on the cheap, said he. And, placing his forefinger alongside his nose, had winked.