Young Doctor Eszterhazy
- Автор: Дэвидсон Аврам Джеймс
- Серия: Dr. Eszterhazy #10
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Детективная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Young Doctor Eszterhazy». Краткое содержание книги:
“Why?”
“Well. . . Count Calmar ... it has been my experience that... no people, really, wants to be governed by another people, whether it is governed ill or governed well.”
Magnus muttered that the Frores really did not want to be governed at all. Then the mutter died away. Then he half-turned. “You spoke of visiting the ladies. Where... may one ask... as a visitor... are the ladies whom one may visit? Not one of those ‘nice, quiet places, like a boardinghouse for parsons’ widows. I have in my mind Turkish Gypsy girls with wild, black manes, and for a music there would be drums and concertinas and timbrels, and a wine as red as ox-blood.... Eh?”
The Slovatchkoes, third-most numerous (after the Goths and Avars) of the peoples of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, were divided in their opinion of the Brigand Boustremovitch. Some still admired their old image of him. Some no longer did so. Some had never admired him at all. Their patriotic painter, Karpustanko, had depicted him with large and lustrous eyes, a heroic stance, and vast curly mustachioes worthy of a bashi-bazouk, but time had taken toll. The large eyes were now less lustrous than bloodshot, the stance had declined into bowed legs and a dropped chest, and the mustachioes were limp and greyed. Furthermore, he who had once had his nest in a cave whence he preyed upon Turks and Tartars — and, incidentally, upon anyone else who passed by and had not purchased protection — now dwelt in a decayed once-palace in a nearslum section of Bella, and had done so ever since giving his parole and obtaining, with Imperial reluctancy, the Imperial pardon. Did he pass his days reading Boethius The Consolations of Philosophy? No he did not; he had never heard of Boethius, and, save for a faltering and seldom exercised acquaintance with the big red rubrics in the mass-book, the Brigand Boustremovitch could not read. The Secret Police (uniform: regulation sky-blue trousers, with a crimson tunic) spasmodically reminded the Ministry of Justice that “the reformed Brigand, Boustremovitch,” had a finger (seven or eight fingers) in criminal conspiracies of several sorts, kindly see attached document. The Ministry of Justice eventually invariably instructed the Secret Police to “continue its most valuable reports, Faithfully theirs, [squiggle].” Translation: “We would rather have him in Bella collecting an illegal tax on radish-wagons (for example), than back in the Glagolitic Alps mounting mounted irregulars. Again.” Gradually the Secret Police had grown bored. And so had the Brigand Boustremovitch. Often he had thought, wistfully, of breaking his parole and absquatulating for, say, Bulgaria, whence he would harry the Greeks. Or the Turks.
But the years like great black oxen trod the earth, and he had done nothing.
Ignats Louis —
Ignats Louis, groaning softly from a very recently returned pain to which he had long, at irregular intervals, been a martyr, stood studying an immense sheet of parchment on a table before him. Enter his Prime Minister.
“Your Royal and Imperial Majesty may perhaps wish to ride the Whitey horse this afternoon.”
“No he doesn’t perhaps either. Oh God, I am being punished for my sins!”
“But the people will expect it, your —”
“The people must bear the disappointment, oh Holy Souls in Purga—”
“But I have taken the liberty of having him saddled, Your —”
“Then take the liberty of riding him yourself. Oh. Oh. OH!”
“My consitutional advice —”
“Stuff your constitutional advice! I shan’t leave the premises — except of course to visit the dear little kiddies in the ’spital-house as usual —”
The First Minister still lingering and seeming about to press further, the Presence, bifurcated beard bristling with rage, addressed to him the following words, of perhaps dubious constitutional aspect: “Out you jumped-up burgomaster! You hangman morphadite and whoreson hostler: OUT!”
The First Minister, thinking enviously of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, bowed deeply and abjectly, and got OUT. Ignats Louis, with a groan and a whimper, returned his attention to the chart on the table. Gradually his moans ceased. Attention to his family tree never failed to soothe him. His finger fondly traced the Lineage in all its ramification, including those marked (morganatic), (illegitimate), (non compos mentis), and — none the less Royal, none the less Imperial — (insane). So.
Maurits Louis m Matilda Gertrude. So. Ignats Salvador m Amelia Carolina. Quite correct. So he had. Salvador Ignats. Theresa Matilda. Hmm. Well, he had not exactly married her, Salvador Ignats, but he certainly would have if he had not already had two living wives in the dungeons; a stickler for the canon law if there ever was one, Salvador Ignats.
All these monarchs had had their little idiosyncrasies, God bless them. Maurits Louis changed his uniform four or five times a day, but could never be persuaded to change his underwear at all; Ignats Salvador changed his underwear constantly and his trousers fairly often, but wore the same waistcoat and jacket months on end. Maximillian III Ignats considered it his constitutional duty to ride round Bella throwing largesse of, so he thought, gold coins to the throngs; actually his purse was kept purposefully filled with newly-minted extra-heavy copperka constantly coined for the purpose. Salvador Ignats spent most of his time in churches — eikons he could not learn to love — “Mamma, why are there so many ugly saints?” was his, perhaps, most well-known theological comment — but he had an absolute passion for the votive paintings which crammed the crumbling, smelly chapels of the Old Town. His favorite was said to be the so-called Pathetic Exemplum of Makushushka Daughter of the Master Chimneysweeper Brut sc hBeing Saved from a Sinking Rowboat by the Personal Intercession of the Archangel Angelo [the Prince-Archbishop of Bella, for roundly insisting that there was no Archangel Angelo, was forever after referred to by Salvador Ignats as “that freemason”] Limned in Minimally 37 Colors by the Master Limner-Painter Porushko, Believing without Cavil in the Faith which Was Given to the Saints. Lucky, lucky Porushko! When votive painting had been scarce, he had done cigar-box covers; now he was enabled by Royal and Imperial patronage to spend six years and six months depicting — of course in advance! — the deathbed of Salvador Ignats: with its many, many figures of men and of women and of angels. Did it not remind one of the Greco’s Burial of Count ?
Not very much.
Presently Ignats Louis rang a bell, the bell was answered by a Gentleman-in-Waiting, a middle-aged nobleman of many quarterings; “Listen, sonny,” said the Presence, “tell the Grand Almoner that today for my gifts to the sick kiddies besides the posies let’s have some chewy sweetmeats and some of the teeny-tiny toys, hey?”
“Certainly, Sire.”
“And, oh, sonny?”
“Yes, Sire?”
The Presence went deep in thought. “Say. Sonny. Where is it, a place called something like . . . ah . . . Frorela . . . maybe . . . ?”
The Gentleman-in-Waiting was at no loss for words. “I could go look it up in the Postal Gazette, Sire.”
The Presence, regarding this as something akin to brilliance, beamed. Nodded. The Gentleman-in-Waiting began to withdraw. Paused. “Sire. My humble obedience: Where?”
As it happened, the Brigand Boustremovitch had for some while been planning an action involving a recusant boss-fishmonger unwilling to pay his racket-assessments in full and on time. On hearing the proposal of Bruto and of Pishto-the-Avar, the Brigand immediately saw how neatly his planned action would fit, and, placing two fingers into his mouth, gave a brief whistle to summon his henchmen. The negligent fish-dealer could wait... or, likelier, be entirely forgotten, in view of what was now to be a great change of scene for Boustromovitch: with buckets of ducats he would never need to bother with kettles of fish again — he might even skip, or skip through, Bulgaria, and head thence into Turkey-in-Europe (or, for that matter, -in-Asia), turn his coat and swear fealty to the Sultan and purchase the rule of a sanjak, or a pashalik like Little Byzantia, the southernmost semi-province of the Empire. In his suddenly-quickened mind he saw himself the founder of a dynasty, a new khedive, a new Obrenovitch or Karageorgevitch. . . .