The table on which the shepherds were dancing collapsed then, spilling the three fuddled jiggers against the bar, which fell over against the wall with a multiple crash. Shrub leaped clear, but landed in a dish of roast pork on another table, and had to flee from the wrathful diners.
A little while later Duffy saw Bluto edge through the front door, and waved. The Irishman opened his mouth to shout that he’d squared it with the serving girls about Bluto’s free beer, then decided that such a statement, shouted across the dangerously crowded room, could only cause a riot. I’ll tell him when I can whisper it to him, Duffy decided. I wonder who this man is that Shrub tried to tell me about.
A youth with black curly hair was slouched against the wall, and pulled his hat down over his eyes as Duffy sidled past. That’s what’s-his-name, the Irishman thought, Jock, the lad Aurelianus sent out last night to keep an eye on that precious king of his. I’d swear I’ve seen him somewhere outside Vienna. Where?
Duffy tried to pursue the memory but was distracted by the necessity of rescuing one of the serving women from an old priest turned amorous by the evening’s heady brew. After encouraging the clergyman to recall the dignity he owed the cloth, Duffy lifted a mug from a passing tray and drained it in two long swallows.
“Here, here! Pay for that, sir!” came a voice from behind him. He turned and Bluto grinned at him.
“Hello, Bluto,” Duffy said. “I’ve told the girls you’re to get free bock till ten.”
“Till ten? What happens at ten?”
“You start paying for it.”
“I’d better get busy then. Oh,” Bluto spoke more quietly, “I finished checking the stores this afternoon. There’s about a hundred pounds of black powder missing.”
The Irishman nodded. “Nothing else?”
“No. Oh, maybe. One of the old forty-pounder siege bombards seems to be missing, but the armorer probably miscounted them when he made the list back in ’twenty-four. I mean, how could anyone carry away a gun like that?”
Duffy frowned. “I don’t know. But I’ll keep my eyes open. You haven’t seen Shrub around, have you?”
“Yes. He’s in the kitchen. I saw him peeking in here a minute ago, looking scared. Where are your Vikings?”
“In the stable, drinking and singing. I’m hoping that if I keep sending beer out to them they’ll stay there, and not try to join the party in here. Oh no, what are those shepherds doing to that guy over there?”
“Baptizing him with beer, it looks like.”
“Excuse me.”
Twenty minutes later Duffy sank exhausted onto a bench in the corner and signalled to Anna for a pitcher. He had put down so many uprisings in the still noisy room that people within earshot of him—not a great distance, to be sure—kept a wary eye on him; the rowdier drunkards were shaken and, in some cases, pulled down from chandeliers or out from under tables and told to stop it by their more sober friends.
Shrub edged his way nervously through the crowd, leading a tall, dark-faced man who wore a heavy cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. “Mr. Duffy,” the boy said before darting out of the room, “this gentleman wanted to see you. He’s a Spaniard.”
He looks more like a pirate than a gentleman, the Irishman thought, but I may as well be civil. “Yes, sir?”
“Can I sit with you?”
Duffy’s pitcher arrived then, giving him a more tolerant outlook. “Very well,” he said, “pull up a bench. Have you got a mug to drink from?”
The Spaniard swiped an empty one from the nearest table. “Yes.”
“Then have some beer.” Duffy filled both their mugs. “How can I be of service to you? Uh, the boy was mistaken, I assume, in describing you as a Spaniard.”
“Eh? Why do you say that?”
“Well, you’re stretching your vowels, but your accent’s Hungarian. Or so it seems to my possibly beer-dulled ears.”
“No, damn you, you’re correct. I’m Hungarian. But I think it’s your eyes that are beer-dulled if you don’t recognize me.”
The Irishman sighed, and with some effort focused his attention on the man’s shadowed face, expecting to recognize some old comrade-in-arms who would probably want to borrow money.
Then his stomach went cold, and he suddenly felt much more sober; it was a face he had last seen on that awful morning in the late summer of 1526 when Duffy, wounded and exhausted, had breasted the broad tide of the Danube and dragged himself onto the north bank. The Turkish banners had been flying over the conquered town of Mohács behind him, and sixty thousand slain Hungarian soldiers were being buried on the battle-furrowed plain. That morning, on the river’s north side, he had met the army of John Zapolya, for whom Archbishop Tomori and King Louis, both at that moment being laid unmourned in unmarked graves, had not waited. The battered Irishman had described to Zapolya the disastrous battle and rout of the previous afternoon, and Zapolya, shocked and angry, had within the hour led his army away westward. Duffy had rested in the woods for another day and then beaten a furtive, solitary retreat to the south, over the Alps to Venice. Years later he heard of Zapolya’s subsequent defection to the Turkish side.
“By God,” he breathed now, “how do you dare come here? After you sold your homeland to Suleiman I never thought I’d see you again... except perhaps over a gun-barrel or sword-point.”
John Zapolya’s eyes narrowed, but his sardonic smile didn’t falter. “My loyalty is and has always been to Hungary, and it has been for her welfare that I have done everything... even this tonight.”
Duffy was still appalled at the man’s very presence. “What are you doing here tonight?” he asked. “And why do you evidently suppose that I won’t shout to this roomful of people the fact that this ‘Spaniard’ is the man they’ve practically come to equate with Satan?”
“Well, lad, first because I’ve got a short-barrel monk’s gun levelled at your stomach under the table. Yes, I’m afraid it’s true. And second, there are four of my men in the alley out back, in what appears to be a haywagon.”
Duffy sighed wearily. “And what is it really, John?”
Zapolya sipped his beer, keeping his eyes on Duffy and his right hand under the table. “Oh, it’s a haywagon, but it holds more than hay.”
“Damn it, John, can’t you—”
“Very well, take it easy. There’s a siege bombard in it, loaded with a forty-pound ball of iron. Its barrel is laid horizontal, pointing at this building, and my men are carrying slowmatches.”
“If you’ll pardon my saying so, John, none of this makes any sense. Why should you risk your life sneaking into Vienna, and then settle for just killing me and blowing up this inn?” Keep him talking, Duffy told himself; play for time and maybe some drunk will lurch into him, spoil his aim for one precious second.
“Don’t play ignorant with me, old Duff,” said Zapolya with an easy smile. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know what this place is, and who you are.”
“Why must everyone speak to me in riddles?” Duffy complained. “What is it you want? Why are you sitting in here if you’ve got a damned siege-gun levelled at the back door?”
“Keep your voice down. I’m sitting here because I’m a dispensible piece in this game, a rook they’re willing to sacrifice for a solid checkmate. I’ve been sent here—at great personal risk, as you’ve noted—by my master, Ibrahim, to offer you a very high, very powerful position in the Eastern Empire.”
The amorous priest reeled by behind Zapolya’s chair in pursuit of one of the serving women, but earned a mental curse from the Irishman for failing to collide with the traitorous Hungarian’s chair. “Position?” Duffy sighed. “What sort of position?”