Davy

I wore new clothes that day at Hamden, a new shouldersack for my horn that Mi

In the i

Almost as soon as I entered the taproom after engaging a room for the night, a dark boy made friends with me, and I spotted him for a si

That rapier was a beautiful wicked thing, less than two feet long, light and delicate, scarcely half an inch at the widest point, of Pe

There were two of these, Father Bland and Father Mordan, one fat and one thin, one greasy and the other a bit dry and scurfy. Father Bland himself remarked that they represented the good bacon of religion, and everyone obligingly laughed except Father Mordan the lean one who stayed in character, that is to say grumpy. I’d hardly have taken any of the crowd for pilgrims if the landlord hadn’t tipped me off, and I learned that some were really just travelers who had joined the group for safety or sociability.

“Compliments of Father Bland and Father Mordan,” said the boy in greeting me, “and will you drink wid us now or a little sooner?” I hadn’t heard much of the Nuin accent at that time. Nuin people don’t travel very often outside their own land — Nuin has everything, they say, so what would they gain by it? I guessed the boy to be near my own age, though he acted older. There was a slightness and a delicacy about him that suggested the femmme, but without weakness. I remember in the first half-hour I knew him I wondered if his little games with the rapier might not have a practical side, as a way of discouraging anyone who might misunderstand his nature.

“Honored,” I said — an item of social jazz that I happened to remember from Mam Laura’s coaching. “Honored and delighted to drink anyone under the table or else join him there.”

“Nay, we’re a soberish crowd,” he said. “Everything in moderation. Including, I insist, moderation — but that’s a point I can seldom get across to my elders.” He was watching me with unca

“Davy — that is, David — of — well, of Moha — I mean—”

“David de Moha?”

“Oh lordy no!” I said, and noticed that everyone in the taproom had shut up, the better to enjoy our private conversation. “I just meant I come from Moha, back along. My last name’s — uh — Loomis.”

I’m sure he believed, for a while at least, that I was giving a false name, and he wanted to help me with it. He took me over to the others, introduced me as David Loomis with the nicest casualness, pushed me into a comfortable chair, called for fresh drinks — all as if I were somehow important, I couldn’t think why.

From scraps I heard before they went quiet, I knew Father Mordan, the thin dry one, had been instructing the company concerning original sin, a regular duty which he’d pretty well wound up for the day — anyway he was ready to acknowledge Michael’s presentation of me with a smile. The smile would have quickly hardened the grease on a flaming plum pudding, but he meant it kindly; some people just happen to be born with vinegar for blood and lemons for balls, that’s all it is.

“Rest yourself,” Michael said to me, “and look us over, man, the way you might care to travel wid us a little distance, or all the way to Old City if you’re a-mind. We start for there tomorrow, last part of the Loop Journey, back home to our own honest beds and beans and bosoms.”

I couldn’t have said no to Michael, and anyway it was what I wished. I loafed there while we talked and sang the day into night. There were two or three fair singers, and a girl with a lively guitar; with my horn, it made an evefling of music, and I drank enough to help me avoid noticing how far it was from Rambler standards. Nay, it was only the drinks and Michael that kept me from going mad with homesickness — no other word; homesickness for a cubby-hole on wheels with no destination except the next village down the road.

Except for Michael and the two priests and one other, those pilgrims have become dim in my memory, and I’ve forgotten the name of the one other. He was a fine old gray gandyshank drink of water with droopy four inch whiskers on his upper lip that made you want to ring him like a bell, but he seemed to be a good deal of a scholar, so you let the impulse slide. When Michael introduced us he said on a soft sigh: “Mmmd.” Michael told me later that this is how you say “Charmed!” in Oxfoot English, which is what the gandyshank spoke. I don’t know why they call it that — there’s very little real bull in it, and hardly any English.

Of course I’ll always remember Michael’s face winking at me, late in the evening, when we had to tear off a Murcan hymn to please Father Bland, for the wink gave me a feverish need to talk to him privately and learn whether I had met another loner of my own kind, even a heretic. Once the thought entered my head, it seemed to me that Michael had been feeling me out along that line, as subtly as a wild creature tasting the breeze, ever since we’d met.

He gave me the opportunity that night, late, slipping into my room with a candle he didn’t light until he had closed the door. “May we talk, David Loomis? Something on my mind, but send me away if you’re too beat and want to sleep.” He was still fully dressed, I noticed, including the rapier.