“You’d be Gráinne?” he asks, pronouncing it almost right, like he’s been practicing. Which was awkward since I’m never going by that name at the Tearsheet.
“No,” says I, giving him a wink to put him at his ease, and making a glance at the other fella.
Which is where it all went sideways. This new fella is one of those literal-minded sorts so tediously common in this nation, who actually believes what he hears. He’s not looking at me, supposing it were indelicate to gaze upon a naked lady, so he doesn’t collect the wink. “I beg your pardon,” he says, ever so polite, and clambers to his feet, moving well, with an eye on the door.
Increasingly displeased, is my dim fella about this turn of events, the more he thinks about it. He has no scruples about looking at a naked lady he’s bought and paid for, so he takes in the wink and the glance, and even more displeased they make him. He pushes off of me and turns around just in time to see the new fella thoughtlessly getting between him and his baldric, which he’s slung over the peg beside the doorway. Suspended in that, of course, are the scabbards containing his rapier and his dagger. The new fella’s still looking about himself in that way people do after they’ve been Sent somewhere for the first time, it’s all new to him, he doesn’t appreciate that it’s bad practice to come between a knight and his arms—doubly so when the knight’s buck naked and just had a perfectly good fuck interrupted by a nasty surprise. My customer moves, fast, dropping one shoulder and barreling into the new man from behind, catching him in the ribs and giving him a good bash. It wouldn’t have been an equal contest had the new lad been looking him in the face, and on his toes, but as it was the blow staggered him out of the way. While he was pivoting about and getting his balance, my customer made straight for the door and pulled his dagger out of its sheath—the chamber being far too small, you’ll understand, for the rapier to be of any use.
Well, to that point in the proceedings, the new arrival might’ve been in a bit of a daze, but the sight of bare steel in another fella’s hand snapped him out of it in a trice, and suddenly wasn’t he moving with marvelous speed and sureness, as if he engaged in naked dagger fighting several times a day. Rather than stepping back, as an ordinary person might’ve, he moved toward the knight and got in close, stifling his movement even as he was drawing back to stab. Then something happened too quickly for me to follow it, and next thing I know the dagger’s clattering on the floorboards and the Saxon has the knight’s arm all twisted about in some manner of wrestling hold, I reckon. The knight tries to squirm out but the visitor pushes a bit harder, and I can hear something threatening to give way in the shoulder joint. “I yield,” says he who’s clearly got the worst of it. The new lad lets him go, but not before kicking the dagger across the floor, out of reach. I snatched it up so there’d be no more such foolishness, and clasped it to my breast. Rarely have I enjoyed such spectation at the Tearsheet. The new lad was so fine to look at and the other fella was so dull, and I haven’t got out to a bear-baiting or even a play in the longest time. To watch naked men have a go at each other with weapons is better than either. Makes me homesick, so it does.
“I humbly apologize for this misunderstanding,” says the Saxon. I couldn’t recognize the accent. His teeth were gorgeous. “And for my unmannerly arrival.” He said unmannerly as if it weren’t a word used to coming out of his mouth. So I figured he were from a place where manners aren’t important but he’s trying to respect the occasion, and I liked that well enough. Enough to want to keep seeing him naked, anyhow.
So I take the dim fella’s purse, help myself to my newly augmented fee, toss him his clothes, and give him a wink. “Be changing outside now,” I say, and send him off.
That makes it easier to stare at your naked Saxon.
“Gráinne,” he said. “But you don’t go by that name. I understand.”
“You’re not one of them locals,” I observe.
“What gave it away?” he asked. I like a bit of dry humour. I laughed.
“So tell me, then, who are you and what is it brings you here? Who Sent you?”
“Classified,” he said.
“Never heard of him. Perhaps a Cornish name, is it? Protestant or Catholic?”
“’Tisn’t a name,” he said. “It means I cannot tell you. I am under orders not to tell you.”
“Are you? How’s your master expect you to get anything done, then? Once you’ve answered my questions to my satisfaction I’ll give you this extra money the fella left, and get you some clothes, both of which you’ll be needing. We’ve some extra shirts and drawers around for our favorite customers, since things do tend to get nicked here. But you’ll get no help from me until you answer my questions. Right idiot your master is if he thinks it works any other way.”
Clearly the fellow’s never been Sent before; he got a caged-bear look on his face, and I felt for him, but obviously it’s not safe to do anything until I know more. I’m passing as Protestant Irish, it’s my excuse for being in London instead of back home, but Protestant Irish is a hard act to play without giving it the full Puritan extreme and that’s not safe either. I have to watch my back all the time. I needed to know where his sympathies were.
And then he uttered such an idiot claim: “I’m here for a purely economic concern,” he says. “It’s just financial, I’ve got no political or religious affiliation.”
“Is it Protestant money or Catholic money you’re after?” I ask.
“It does not matter,” he says. “Not where I come from.”
“Where in God’s name do you come from?” I ask again. “May I go there with you? Because in the name of Our Lord’s mammy, if I could be someplace where money’s got no religion and religion’s got no money, I’d be a happier woman.”
He sits on the bed beside me, turned a little away so I can’t see his front so well (I did try to peek though). He said he would tell me as much as he could—anything that wasn’t “classified.” And here’s what he told me. I’ll make it as brief as I can, but it was quite the long chat we had about it:
He is from the future, from a land that will become an English-speaking nation some day—but not a part of England! So their accursed language triumphs, but they themselves do not. The fuckers lose most of Ireland as well, turns out. I don’t know how long it will take this to happen, maybe ten years, maybe a hundred. I pressed him for details, especially about Your Grace’s legacy of course, but he said he couldn’t give me any unless I let him get dressed, which I wouldn’t. It was great crack to see how uncomfortable he was being naked.
“Guess you don’t do that much in the future,” I teased him. “Thought that would be a constant across the ages—how bawdy-houses work.”