Normally this whole place was swarming with stable-boys, but now, and for the next hour or two, they’d be busy with ball duty: taking the horses of the arriving guests and leading them to stalls in the duc’s better stables. So a fire in this hearth would be detectable only as a bit of smoke coming out of a chimney, which was not an unusual sight on a cool March evening in seventeenth-century Paris.
But he was getting ahead of himself. This was a long way from being a fire. Jack began looking about for some tinder. Straw would be perfect. But the stable-boys had been careful not to leave anything so tinderlike anywhere near the forge. It was all piled at the opposite end of the stable, and Jack’s chain wouldn’t let him go that far. He tried lying flat on the floor, with the chain stretched out taut behind him, and reaching out with the crutch to rake some straw towards him. But the end of the crutch came a full yard short of the goal. He scurried back and blew on the tobacco some more. It would not last much longer.
His attention had been drawn to the crutch, which was bound together with a lot of the cheapest sort of dry, fuzzy twine. Perfect tinder. But he’d have to burn most of it, and then he’d have no way to hold the crutch together, and therefore to conceal the existence of the sword-so, if the attempt failed tonight, he was doomed. In that sense ‘twere safer to wait until tomorrow, when they’d take the chain off of him. But only to chain him up, he supposed, to a whole file of other galeriens -doddering Huguenots, most likely. And he wasn’t about to wait for that. He must do it now.
So he unwound the crutch and frizzed the ends of the twine and put it to the last mote of red fire in the pipe-ashes, and blew. The flame almost died, but then one fiber of twine warped back, withered, flung off a little shroud of steam or smoke, then became a pulse of orange light: a tiny thing, but as big in Jack’s vision as whole trees bursting into flames in the Harz.
After some more blowing and fidgeting he had a morsel of yellow flame on the hearth. While supplying it more twine with one hand, he rummaged blindly for kindling, which ought to be piled up somewhere. Finding only a few twigs, he was forced to draw the sword and shave splints off the crutch-pole. This didn’t last long, and soon he was planing splinters off pillars and beams, and chopping up benches and stools. But finally it was big and hot enough to ignite coal, of which there was plenty. Jack began tossing handfuls of it into his little fire while pumping the bellows with the other hand. At first it just lay in the fire like black stones, but then the sharp, brimstony smell of it came into the stable, and the fire became white, and the heat of the coal annihilated the remaining wood-scraps, and the fire became a meteor imprisoned in a chain-for Jack had looped the middle part of his chain around it. The cold iron poisoned the fire, sucked life from it, but Jack heaped on more coal and worked the bellows, and soon the metal had taken on a chestnut color which gave way to various shades of red. The heat of the blaze first dried the moist shit that was all over Jack’s skin and then made him sweat, so that crusts of dung were flaking off of him.
The door opened. “Ou est le marechal-ferrant?” someone asked.
The door opened wider -wide enough to admit a horse-then did just that. The horse was led by a Scot in a tall wig-or maybe not. He was wearing a kiltlike number, but it was made of red satin and he had some sort of ridiculous contrivance slung over one shoulder: a whole pigskin, sewn up and packed with straw to make it look as if it had been inflated, with trumpet-horns, flutes, and pennywhistles dangling from it: a caricature of a bagpipe. His face was painted with blue woad. Pinned to the top of his wig was a tam-o’-shanter with an approximate diameter of three feet, and thrust into his belt, where a gentleman would sheathe his sword, was a sledgehammer. Next to that, several whiskey-jugs holstered.
The horse was a prancing beauty, but it seemed to be favoring one leg-it had thrown a shoe on the ride over.
“Marechal-ferrant?”the man repeated, squinting in his direction. Jack reckoned that he, Jack, was visible only as a silhouette against the bright fire, and so the collar might not be obvious. He cupped a hand to his ear-smiths were notorious for deafness. That seemed to answer the question-the “Scot” led his horse toward the forge, nattering on about a fer a cheval and going so far as to check his pocket-watch. Jack was irritated. Fer meant “iron,” fer a cheval as he knew perfectly well meant “horseshoe.” But he had just understood that the English word “farrier” must be derived somehow from this-even though “horseshoe” was completely different. He was aware, vaguely-from watching certain historical dramas, and then from roaming round la France listening to people talk-that French people had conquered England at least one time, and thereby confused the English language with all sorts of words such as “farrier,” and “mutton,” which common folk now used all the time without knowing that they were speaking the tongue of the conquerors. Meanwhile, the damned French had a tidy and proper tongue in which, for example, the name of the fellow who put shoes on horses was clearly related to the word for horseshoe. Made his blood boil-and now that James was King, Katie bar the door!
“Quelle heure est-il?”Jack finally inquired. The “Scot” without pausing to wonder why a marechal-ferrant would need to know the time went once again into the ceremony of withdrawing his pocket-watch, getting the lid open, and reading it. In order to do this he had to turn its face towards the fire, and then he had to twist himself around so that he could see it. Jack waited patiently for this to occur, and then just as the “Scot” was lisping out something involving sept Jack whipped the chain out of the fire and got it round his neck.
It was stranglin’ time in gay Paree. Most awkwardly, the red-hot part of the chain ended up around the throat of the “Scot,” so Jack could not get a grip on it without first rummaging in the tool-box for some tongs. But it had already done enough damage, evidently, that the “Scot” could not make any noise.
His horse was another matter: it whinnied, and backed away, and showed signs of wanting to buck. That was a problem, but Jack had to take things one at a time here. He solved the tong problem and murdered the “Scot” in a great sizzling cloud of grilled neck-flesh-which, he felt sure, must be a delicacy in some part of France. Then he peeled the hot chain off, taking some neck parts with it, and tossed it back into the fire. Having settled these matters, he turned his attention-somewhat reluctantly-to the horse. He was dreading that it might have run out through the open stable doors and drawn attention to itself in the stable-yard beyond. But-oddly-the stable-doors were now closed, and were being bolted shut, by a slender young man in an assortment of not very good clothes. He had evidently seized the horse’s reins and tied them to a post, and had the presence of mind to toss a grain-sack over its head so that it could not see any more of the disturbing sights that were now so abundant in this place.
Having seen to these matters, the gypsy boy-it was certainly a gypsy-turned to face Jack, and made a somber, formal little bow. He was barefoot-had probably gotten here by clambering over rooftops.
“You must be Half-Cocked Jack,” he said, as if this weren’t funny. Speaking in the zargon.
“Who are you?”
“It does not matter. St.-George sent me.” The boy came over, stepping carefully around the glowing coals that had been scattered on the floor when Jack had whipped out the chain, and began to work the bellows.