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She scratched her head. 'Do I?'
'Yes. Don't you remember? He bought up all the debts and bad accounts that were your legacy from that worm-gut son of a bitch Hallstadt, may he be turning on a spit this minute in hell.'
Epiphany was shocked. 'Brian! Max was your best friend once. You shouldn't hate him.'
'It's because he was my best friend that I do-did-hate him. I wouldn't have minded so much if a stranger had taken you from me.'
She put a hand on his arm. 'Don't dwell on all the stuff that's behind us. We can still spend our twilight years together.'
'Twilight years? I don't know about you, lady, but I'm as nimble and sharp as I was at twenty-five, which wasn't all that long ago.'
'Very well,' she said with an indulgent smile. 'Our early afternoon years. Oh, God.. .do you really think it's a possibility, after all this time?'
'After all this time,' Duffy asserted, 'it's an inevitability.'
He leaned forward and gave her a kiss, and it lingered past the point of being perfunctory. Gently transported by the dimness, and the brain-fumes of an afternoon's wine-drinking, he was at last in the arms of Gustav Vogel's impossibly attractive daughter; and he had, unnoticed, become again the Brian Duffy of 1512, whose glossy black hair did not yet have to be grown long in the back to cover a knotted white scar.
They fell back across the bed with the ponderousness, and something of the sound, of an old stone wall collapsing, and Epiphany pulled her mouth free and gasped, 'You're on duty tonight, aren't you? And dinner is probably being served this minute.'
'Damn duty and dinner,' the Irishman muttered thickly; then, 'Oh, hell, you're right,' he said. 'Easter evening, the drawing of the bock, is what Aurelianus specifically hired me to watch over. For the money he's been paying me I guess I owe this much to him.'
He stood up reluctantly and looked down at Epiphany, who in the diminishing light was an indistinct figure stretched across the bed. 'I'll be back sometime,' he said.
'I hope so,' she answered in a small voice.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
Crowded into a shadowy corner, Duffy and Aurelianus watched three beer-crazed shepherds jigging on one of the tables while nearly everyone in that quarter of the dining room sang and clapped in accompaniment.
'Don't you think you should get those men down from there?' Aurelianus asked anxiously.
Duffy shook his head. 'No. The celebration spirit would only break out in some other activity, like maybe pitching beer mugs through the window. They're just enjoying themselves, and they're paying you for the beer. Why interfere?'
'Well.. .all right. You're the chucker-out, after all.' The old man leaned against the wall, apparently a little bewildered by the rowdiness of the bock celebration. 'Are you quite up to all this?' he asked. 'Have you rested up at all since our underground enterprise last night?'
'What? I can't hear you in this pandemonium.' Aurelianus repeated his last sentence, louder. 'Oh! Don't worry about me, I'm fine. These days it takes more than a few hobgoblins to disorder me.'
'Good. It's a wise tolerance to cultivate.'
'It's what? I didn't - God help us.' Duffy shoved several people aside, spilling their beer in all directions, and, taking a flying hop over a table, bowled off their feet two mercenaries who bad begun trading knife-thrusts. Before they could roll to their feet the Irishman had unsheathed his own dagger and cut, with two quick flicks of the blade,
their belts, so that their hands now had to be occupied with holding their clothing together. They left The room, red-faced, accompanied by howls of laughter.
'Mr Duffy!' Shrub cried, waving from atop the bar.
'In a minute, Shrub,' Duffy called, for on the other side of the room a suddenly irate merchant was slapping his wife and calling her vile names. Muttering a quick apology, the Irishman snatched up a brimming mug from a table he passed, and then dashed its foaming contents forcefully into the face of the misogynist shopkeeper; the man had just been filling his lungs for another burst of abuse, and was choking now on a couple of ounces of beer he'd inadvertently inhaled. Duffy lifted him from his chair by a handful of hair and gave him a resounding slap on the back, then slammed him back down into his seat. 'There y'are, sir,' said the Irishman cheerfully. 'We don't want any of our patrons choking to death, eh?' He leaned down and said more sharply but in a whisper, 'Or getting their ribs kicked in, which will happen to you if you touch that lady again or say any more insulting things to her. Do I make myself clear? Hah? Good.'
'Mr Duffy!' Shrub called again. 'There's a man to see you -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.
