Things Will Never Be the Same Read online

  I drop my pack to the ground and slowly hold up a signal-jack and wave it back and forth.

  “Be damn me,” says one of the men, “but he’s turning this way.”

  “How does he stop it?” asks the other, looking for shelter from the approaching apparition.

  And with a grating and a great screech and plume of powdered ice, the thing turns to us and slows. It is a ship, long and thin, up on high thin rails like a sleigh, with a mast amidships and a jib up front, and as the thing slows (great double booms of teethed iron have fallen from the stern where a keelboard should be) the sails luff and come down, and the thing stops three feet from me, the stinging curtain of ice falling around me.

  “Who flies Frobisher’s flag?” came a voice from the back. Then up from the hull comes a huge man and threw a round anchor out onto the frozen Thames.

  “I,” I said. “A man who’s seen you come by here these last weeks punctually. A man who marvels at the speed of your craft. And,” I said, “an apothecary who needs must get to Oxford, as quick as he can.”

  The huge man was bearded and wore furs and a round hat in the Russian manner of some Arctic beast. “So you spoil my tack by showing my old Admiral’s flag? Who’d you sail with, man? Drake? Hawkins? Raleigh, Sir Walter Tobacco himself? You weren’t with Admiral Martin, else I’d know you, that’s for sure.”

  “Never a one,” said I. “My brother was with Hawkins when he shot the pantaloons off Don Iago off Portsmouth. My cousin, with one good eye before the Armada, and one bad one after, was with Raleigh.”

  “So you’re no salt?”

  “Not whatsoever.”

  “Where’s your brother and cousin now?”

  “They swallowed the anchor.”

  He laughed. “That so? Retired to land, eh? Some can take the sea, some can’t. Captain Jack Cheese, at your service. Where is it you need to go, Oxford? Hop in, I’ll have you there in two hours.”

  “Did you hear that, Gram?” asked one of the men. “Oxford in two hours!”

  “There’s no such way he can do no such thing!” said the other, looking at Captain Cheese.

  “Is that money I hear talking, or only the crackling of the ice?” asked Captain Jack.

  “Well, it’s as much money as we have, what be that, Gram? Two fat pounds you don’t make no Oxford in no two hours. As against?”

  “I can use two pounds,” said Jack Cheese.

  “But what’s your bet, man?” asked the other.

  “Same as you. Two pound. If you’ll kill me for two pounds,” he said, pulling at his furry breeks and revealing the butts of two pistols the size of boarding cannons, “I’d do the same for you.”

  The two looked back and forth, then said, “Agreed!”

  “Climb in,” said Captain Jack. “Stay low, hang tight. Ship’s all yar, I’ve got a following wind and a snowstorm crossing north from the west, and we’ll be up on one runner most the time. Say your prayers now; for I don’t stop for nothing nor nobody, and I don’t go back for dead men nor lost bones.”

  The clock struck ten as we clambered aboard. My pack just hit the decking when, with a whoop, Jack Cheese jerked a rope, the jib sprang up; wind from nowhere filled it, the back of the boat screamed and wobbled to and fro. He jerked the anchor off the ice, pulled up the ice brakes and jerked the mainsail up and full.

  People scattered to left and right and the iceboat leapt ahead with a dizzy shudder. I saw the backward-looking eyes of Frizier and Skeres close tight as they hung onto the gunwales with whitened hands, buffeting back and forth like skittleballs.

  And the docks and quays became one long blur to left and right; then we stood still and the land moved to either side as if it were being payed out like a thick gray and white painted rope.

  I looked back. Jack Cheese had a big smile on his face. His white teeth showed bright against his red skin and the brown fur; I swear he was humming.

  * * *

  Past Richmond we went, and Cheese steered out further toward the leftward bank as the stalls, awnings, booths and bright red of the Royal Pavilion appeared, flung themselves to our right and receded behind.

  Skizz was the only sound; we sat still in the middle of the noise and the objects flickering on and off, small then large then small again, side to side. Ahead, above the River, over the whiteness of the landscape and the ice, the dark line of cloud grew darker, thicker, lower.

  Skeres and Frizier lay like dead men, only their grips on the hull showing them to be conscious.

  I leaned my head closer to Captain Cheese.

  “A word of warning,” I said. “Don’t trust those two.”

  “Hell and damn, son,” he smiled. “I don’t trust you! Hold tight,” he said, pulling something. True to his word, in the stillness, one side of the iceboat rose up two feet off the level, we sailed along with the sound halved, slowly dropped back down to both iron runners, level. I looked up. The mainsail was tight as a pair of Italian leggings.

  “There goes Hampton. Coming up on Staines!” he called out so the two men in front could have heard him if they’d chosen to.

  A skater flashed by inches away. “Damn fool lubber!” said Jack Cheese. “I got sea-road rights-of-way!” A deer paused, flailed away, fell and was gone, untouched behind us.

  And then we went into a wall of whiteness that peppered and stung. The whole world dissolved away. I thought for an instant I had gone blind from the speed of our progress. Then I saw Captain Cheese still sitting a foot or two away. Skeres and Frizier had disappeared, as had the prow and the jibsail. I could see nothing but the section of boat I was in, the captain, the edge of the mainsail above. No river, no people, no landmarks, just snow and whiteness.

  “How can you see?”

  “Can’t,” said the captain.

  “How do you know where we are?”

  “Dead reckoning,” he said. “Kick them up front, tell ’em to hang tight,” he said. I did. When Skeres and Frizier opened their eyes, they almost screamed.

  Then Cheese dropped the jib and the main and let the ice brakes go. We came to a stop, in the middle of the swirling snow, as in the middle of a void. Snowflakes the size of thalers came down. Then I made out a bulking shape a foot or two beyond the prow of the icerunner.

  “Everybody out! Grab the hull. Lift, that’s right. Usually have to do this myself. Step sharp. You two, point the prow up. That’s it. Push. Push.”

  In the driven snow, the indistinct shape took form. Great timbers, planking, rocks, chunks of iron were before us, covered with ice. The two men out front put the prow over one of the icy gaps fifteen feet apart. Cheese and I lifted the stern then climbed over after it. “Settle in, batten down,” said the captain. Once more we swayed sickeningly, jerked, the sails filled and we were gone.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Reading Weir,” he said. “Just where the Kennet comes in on the portside. If we’d have hit that, we’d of been crushed like eggs. You can go to sleep now if you want. It’s smooth sailing all the way in now.”

  * * *

  But of course I couldn’t. There seemed no movement, just the white blank ahead, behind, to each side.

  “That would have been Wallingford,” he said once. Then, a little further on, “Abingdon, just there.” We sailed on. There was a small pop in the canvas. “Damn,” he said, “the wind may go contrary; I might have to tack.” He watched the sail awhile, then settled back. “I was wrong,” he said.

  Then, “Hold tight!” Frizier or Skeres moaned.

  He dropped the sails. We lost motion. I heard the ice-brakes grab, saw a small curtain of crystalline ice mix with the snow. The moving, roiling whiteness became a still, roiling whiteness. The anchor hit the ice.

  And, one after the other, even with us, the bells of the Oxfor
d tower struck noon.

  * * *

  “Thanks be to you,” I said, “Captain Jack Cheese.”

  “And to you—what was your name?”

  “John,” I said. “Johnny Factotum.”

  He looked at me, put his finger aside his nose. “Oh, then, Mr. Factotum,” he said. I shook his hand.

  “You’ve done me a great service,” I said.

  “And you me,” said Captain Jack. “You’ve made me the easiest three pounds ever.”

  “Three!!” yelled the two men still in the boat. “The bet was two pound!”

  “The bet was two, which I now take.” The captain held out his hand. “The fare back to London is one more, for you both.”

  “What? What fare?” they asked.

  “The bet was two hours to here. Which I have just done, from the tower bells in London to the campanile of Oxford. To do this, I had perforce to take you here in the time allotted, which—” and Jack Cheese turned once more to me and laid his finger to nose, “I have just done, therefore, Quod Erat Demonstrandum.” he said. “The wager being forfeit, either I shall bid you adieu, and give to you the freedom of the River and the Roads, or I shall drop you off in your own footprints on the London ice for a further pound.”

  The two looked at each other, their eyes pewter plates in the driven snow.

  “But . . .” one began to say.

  “These my unconditional, unimprovable terms,” said Captain Jack.

  We were drawing a crowd of student clerks and magisters, who marveled at the iceboat.

  “Very well,” sighed one of the men.

  “The bet?” It was handed over. “The downward fare?” It, too.

  “Hunker down in front, keep your heads down,” said Jack Cheese and took out one of his mutton-leg pistols and laid it in front of him. “And no Spanish sissyhood!” he said, “For going downriver we don’t stop for Reading Weir, we take it at speed!”

  “No!”

  “Abaft, all ye!” yelled Jack Cheese to the crowd. “I go upstream a pace; I turn; I come back down. If you don’t leave the River now, don’t blame me for loss of life and limb. No stopping Jack Cheese!” he said. The sails snapped up, the ice brake lifted, they blurred away into the upper Thames-Isis.

  We all ran fast as we could from the center of the ice. I stopped, so did half the crowd who’d come to my side of the river. The blur of Captain Jack Cheese, the hull and sails and the frightened popped eyes at gunwale level zipped by.

  The laughter of Jack Cheese came back to us as they flashed into the closing downriver snow and were gone.

  And here I had been worried about him with two sharpers aboard. Done as well as any Gamaliel Ratsey, and no Spanish sissyhood, for sure. I doubt the two would twitch till they got back to London Docks.

  The students were marveling among themselves. It reminded me of my days at Cambridge, bare seven years gone.

  But my purposes lay elsewhere. I walked away from the crowd, unnoticed; they were as soon lost to me in the blowing whiteness as I, them.

  * * *

  I sat under a pine by the River-side. From my pack I took a snaphance and started a small fire in the great snowing chill, using needles of the tree for a fragrant combustion; I filled my pipe, lit it and took in a great calming lungful of Sir Walter’s Curse.

  I was no doubt in the middle of the great university. I didn’t care. I finished one pipeful, lit another, took in half that, ate some saltbeef and hard bread (the only kind to be found in London). Then I took from the apothecary pack, with its compartments and pockets filled with simples, emitics, herbs and powders, the document with the seal.

  I read it over, twice. Then per instructions, added it to the fire.

  I finished my pipe, knocked the dottles into the flame, and put it away.

  The man’s name was Johan Faustus, a German of Wittenberg. He was suspected, of course, of the usual—blasphemy, treason, subornation of the judiciary, atheism. The real charge, of course, was that he consorted with known Catholics—priests, prelates, the Pope himself. But what most worried the government was that he consorted with known Catholics here, in this realm. I was to find if he were involved in any plot; if suspicions were true, to put an end to his part in it. These things were in the document itself.

  To this I added a few things I knew. That he was a doctor of both law and medicine, as so many are in this our country; that he had spent many years teaching at Wittenberg (not a notorious stronghold of the Popish Faith); that he was a magician, a conjuror, an alchemist, and, in the popular deluded notion of the times, supposed to have trafficked with Satan. There were many tales from the Continent—that he’d gulled, dazzled, conjured to and for emperors and kings—whether with the usual golden leaden ruses, arts of ledgerdemain, or the Tarot cards or whatnot, I knew not.

  Very well, then. But as benighted superstitious men had written my instructions, I had to ask myself what would a man dealing with the Devil be doing in part of a Catholic plot? The Devil has his own devices and traps, all suppose, some of them I think, involving designs on the Popish Church itself. Will he use one religion ’gainst ’nother? Why don’t men stop and think when they begin convolving their minds as to motive? Were they all absent the days brains were forged?

  And why would an atheist deal with the Devil? The very professors tie themselves in knotlets of logic over just such questions as these.

  Well then: let’s apply William of Ockham’s fine razor to this Gordian knot of high senselessness. I’ll trot up to him, and ask him if he’s involved in any treacherous plotting. Being an atheist, in league with both the Devil and the Pope (and for all I know the Turk), he’ll tell me right out the truth. If treasonable, I shall cut off his head; if not . . . should I cut off his head to be safe?

  Enough forethought; time for action. I reached into the bottom of my peddler’s pack and took out two long curved blades like scimitars, so long and thin John Sincklo could have worn them Proportional, and attached them with thongs to the soles of my rude boots.

  So equilibrized at the edge of the River I stood, and set out toward my destination which the letter had given me, Lotton near Cricklade, near the very source of the Thames-Isis.

  And as I stood to begin my way norwestward the sun, as if in a poem by Chideock Tichborne, showed itself for the first time in two long months through the overcast, as a blazing ball, flooding the sky, the snow and ice in a pure sheen of blinding light. I began to skate toward it, toward the Heart of Whitenesse itself.

  * * *

  Skiss skiss skiss the only sound from my skates, the pack swinging to and fro on my back; pure motion now, side to side, one arm folded behind me, the other out front as counterweight, into the blinded and blinding River before me. Past the mill at Lechlade, toward Kempsford, the sides of the Thames-Isis grew closer and rougher; past Kempsford to the edge of Cricklade itself, where the Roy comes in from the left just at the town, and turning then to right and north I go, up the River Churn, just larger than the Shoreditch in London itself. And a mile up and on the right, away from the stream, the outbuildings of a small town itself, and on a small hill beyond the town roofs, an old manor house.

  I got off my skates, and unbound them and put them in the pack.

  And now to ask leading questions of the rude common folk of the town.

  * * *

  I walked to the front of the manor house and stopped, and beheld a sight to make me furious.

  Tied to a post in front of the place, a horse stood steaming in what must have been forty degrees below frost. Its coat was lathered, the foam beginning to freeze in clumps on its mane and legs. Steam came from its nostrils. That someone rode a horse like that and left it like that in weather like this made me burn. It regarded me with an unconcerned eye, without shivering.

  I walked past it t
o the door of the manor house, where of course my man lived. The sun, once the bright white ball, was covered again, and going down besides. Dark would fall like a disgraced nobleman in a few moments.

  I rang the great iron doorknocker three times, and three hollow booms echoed down an inner hallway. The door opened to reveal a hairy man, below the middle height. His beard flowed into his massive head of hair. His ears, which stuck out beyond that tangle were thin and pointed. His smile was even, but two lower teeth stuck up from the bottom lip. His brows met in the middle to form one hairy ridge.

  “That horse needs seeing to,” I said.

  He peered past me. “Oh, not that one,” he said. “My master is expecting you, and cut the merde, he knows who you are and why you’re here.”

  “To try to sell the Good Doctor simples and potions.”

  “Yeh, right,” said the servant. “This way.”

  We walked down the hall. A brass head sitting on a shelf in a niche turned its eyes to follow me with its gaze as we passed. How very like Vergil.

  We came to a closet doorway set at one side of the hallway.

  “You can’t just go in, though,” said the servant, “without you’re worthy. Inside this here room is a Sphinx. It’ll ask you a question. You can’t answer it, it eats you.”

  “What if I answer it?”

  “Well, I guess you could eat it, if you’ve a mind to, and she’ll hold still. But mainly you can go through the next door; the Doctor’s in.”

  “Have her blaze away,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” said the servant. “I’ll just stand behind the door here; she asks the first person she sees.”