The Belly of the Bow f-2 Read online

  There was one thing about normal family life that he was fairly sure of, however: in unhappy homes the cooking is usually lousy, and vice versa. On that basis, Gorgas Loredan and his family were as happy and contented as they looked. And, since he had no idea where his next good meal was coming from, he made the most of this one with all the professional thoroughness of the lifelong student. If his hosts were offended or amused, they showed no sign of it. If Loredan was deliberately trying to create images of normality about him, then as far as keeping a good table as befitted a man of his position went, he’d done a good job.

  When the last plate had been cleaned off and taken away, the wife and children discreetly withdrew in the approved manner and left the two men alone. There was a well-laid fire in the hearth, with a kettle simmering over it to provide hot water for the spiced wine, the chairs were deep and comfortable and a fine chessboard stood conveniently at hand on a rosewood pedestal, though Alexius somehow had the feeling that it had never been used. Normally a heavy meal and a warm fire would have sent him straight to sleep, but he wasn’t even feeling drowsy. He nodded his thanks as Gorgas handed him a cup, and took a careful sip. The stuff was quite hot, almost black, highly aromatic and extremely sweet.

  ‘Welcome to Scona,’ Gorgas said with a grin.

  ‘Thank you.’ Alexius took another sip. The aftertaste was ever so slightly stale. ‘You’re the second person to say that to me. Maybe you know why I’m here.’

  ‘Me? Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, well. I thought, since your sister had me brought here-’

  Gorgas’ mouth set in a dry imitation of a smile. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know the half of what my sister does. All I can say is, if she fetched you here, it’ll be for a good reason. Good for her, of course, and for the Bank. But I’ll do my best to see to it that your stay here’s as pleasant as possible. Which reminds me, where are you staying? Has Niessa had you installed in one of the lodges at the Bank, or have you been slung out to make your own arrangements? Actually,’ he added, ‘if it’s the latter it’s a good sign, if you see what I mean. From your point of view, that is.’

  Alexius’ mouth twitched. ‘I asked one of the clerks at the place I was taken to if he could recommend a good, cheap inn. To be fair to him, it’s cheap.’

  Gorgas laughed. ‘If it’s the Wildcat in Cat Street, it’d be cheap at half the price. It is the Cat, isn’t it? Well, in that case, I’d like it if you’d stay with us here. No, really,’ he added, as Alexius made polite noises. ‘The Cat’s one of the Bank’s inns and really, you don’t want to stay there. I’ll send my boy round there in the morning for your luggage.’

  Alexius decided not to protest. True, there was something he could not quite fathom about this house that made him feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, he had no difficulty whatsoever in isolating any number of things about the inn that made him feel very uncomfortable indeed, ranging from the fleas to the certain knowledge that he wouldn’t have enough money to pay the bill after the first week. Mental discomfort, he decided, may be a cruel thing, but sharing one’s bed with half the bugs on Scona was just as bad and rather more immediate. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’re being extremely kind.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Gorgas replied, meticulously sprinkling cinnamon powder into his cup from a small pointed spoon. ‘Sadly I’m in no position to say that any friend of my brother’s is a friend of mine, though not from any lack of goodwill on my part. How’s the fire doing? Are you warm enough?’

  ‘I’m fine, honestly,’ Alexius answered. Just fine, he added to himself. And thank you for not pointing out that I keep shivering, because it’d be embarrassing to have to explain that these shivers have nothing at all to do with how cold it is. ‘Please excuse me if this is a rude question,’ he went on, ‘but haven’t you put on a little weight since I saw you last?’

  Gorgas pulled a mock scowl. ‘You’re a horribly perceptive man, Patriarch,’ he sighed. ‘The truth is, I’m getting to the age when men start to slow down and thicken out. I’m told the condition is incurable. You, on the other hand, are obviously pickled in wisdom and likely to keep good almost indefinitely. They do say scholars only come in two sizes, short and round or long and thin, and the latter category’s like the strips of dried beef you take on long journeys.’

  Alexius smiled from the neck up. ‘Your sister’s just taken me on a long journey,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I do hope she doesn’t mean to eat me.’

  ‘Not in the sense you mean,’ Gorgas replied, straight-faced. Then he leant forward, resting the points of his elbows on his knees, his hands cupped under his chin. This man has the biggest hands I’ve ever seen, Alexius noticed. ‘If you want to know why you’re here, my guess is that those two merchant friends of yours – Venart and something or other, I forget the girl’s name – have been dining out on stories of their friend the great wizard, and my sister’s heard about it. She’s very fond of collecting things she believes may come in useful at an unspecified future date, and I imagine you fall into that category.’

  Alexius’ expression stayed fixed. ‘But I’m not a wizard,’ he said. ‘There’s no such thing as wizards. I’m sure a – a businesswoman like your sister must know-’

  Gorgas shrugged. ‘Niessa knows all sorts of obscure things,’ he said. ‘Quite possibly – and no offence intended – she knows rather more about what you are and what you aren’t than you do. Or maybe she just wants someone who’s widely believed to be a wizard, which is probably every bit as useful as the real thing, looked at from the practical point of view. In any event,’ he added, rubbing his broad cheeks with his fingertips, ‘if I know Niessa the worst she’ll do to you is keep you hanging around and maybe be a few weeks late paying your expenses. After all, she’s a banker, not a wicked queen.’

  Alexius nodded. ‘Thank you for the reassurance,’ he said. ‘I’ll admit I was worried. But tell me, I’m never ashamed to admit my ignorance: I really know next to nothing about Scona and this Bank of yours. Your sister said something about being at war. I didn’t realise that banks fought wars.’

  Gorgas leant back and folded his hands behind his head. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is by way of being a very long story. I’ll be happy to tell it to you now, but it’ll keep till morning if you’d rather.’

  ‘Now will do fine,’ Alexius replied. ‘If it’s no trouble.’

  ‘A pleasure.’ Gorgas smiled. ‘But first, my guess is that you’d be very interested indeed to know if I’ve got any news of my brother, but you didn’t like to ask, in case – well. Am I right?’

  Alexius dipped his head. ‘Understandably enough, I think. But yes, I’d dearly love to know what’s become of him. I only knew him for a short time, but-’ Alexius hesitated, then closed his mouth. Gorgas nodded.

  ‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that my brother’s very much alive, disgustingly healthy and, as far as I can tell, as happy as a lamb in his new profession, which is making bows, of all things.’

  ‘Making bows?’ Alexius repeated.

  ‘Making bows. You know, as in bows and arrows. Apparently he’s very good at it and earning a comfortable living, up to his ankles in shavings and his wrists in glue, in the mountains here on Scona and ostentatiously having nothing to do with his sister or myself. I expect he’d like to see you, though, so I’ll see about having a message sent to him. Or better still, perhaps you’d best write him a letter. Otherwise he might assume a message from me is some kind of game and refuse to hear it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Alexius said. ‘If you don’t mind doing that, I’d be very grateful.’

  ‘My pleasure. Now, I was about to start the history lesson. A drop more wine before class? Good idea, I think I’ll join you. Now then. I think the best place to start would be the beginning.’

  In the beginning (according to Gorgas Loredan) there was a large triangular spit of land jutting into the sea. The distance across the base of the triangle, which was reasonably flat, is ten days
’ ride; but that’s virtually the only flat land on the peninsular; the rest of it’s taken up with mountains of varying degrees of bleakness, and nobody in their right mind would want to live there if they didn’t have to. Unfortunately, however, the ancestors of the people who now occupy the Shastel peninsular didn’t have the choice. They were thrown out of their own country by some wild and woolly tribe or other – second cousins of your own plainsmen, so I believe – and settled in the mountains because horsemen couldn’t go there. By the time the horsemen had gone away, they’d been there over a century, and so they stayed.

  Now, it’s in the way of things that some people do better in life than others, and after a few generations there were a few families who’d done well, and a great many more who hadn’t, and there’s nothing unusual in that. What made the settlers in Shastel different was the fact that over the years they’d become – what’s the word I’m looking for? Not superstitious. Religious, perhaps? No, that’s got the wrong associations. Pious, maybe, or at least they were all very moral people, terribly concerned about right and wrong and thinking deep thoughts about spiritual matters when they weren’t killing themselves trying to scratch a living. In any event, those families who’d become better off than their fellows came together and decided that it wasn’t right that they should have more than they needed while others didn’t have enough; not only was it rather terrible and wicked, it also offended against what their philosophy saw as the fundamental principle of balance and equilibrium – I don’t know why I’m telling you this, because of course you know all about it. Isn’t that where your own system of philosophy originated, and the study of the Principle? Anyway, that’s all rather above my head. The upshot as far as this story’s concerned was that they decided to pool all their surplus resources and endow a great and good Foundation, which was to last for all time and devote itself to the two things they held to be most worthwhile: helping the poor and working out a coherent code of morality and ethics.

  This Foundation was given the name of the Grand Foundation of Charity and Contemplation, and its development and management were entrusted in perpetuity to the twenty leading families of Shastel. They built a magnificent place called the Hospital in the valley at the foot of Mount Shastel itself; it was big enough to house up to five thousand needy people and five thousand scholars, and it was open to everybody. People who couldn’t make a living, or who wanted to devote their lives to philosophy and learning, could just turn up at the gates and have board and lodgings for as long as they wanted, with nothing to pay and no obligations.

  (‘It sounds like a good idea,’ Alexius murmured.

  ‘It was a splendid idea,’ Gorgas replied. ‘They always are.’)

  Anyway (Gorgas continued) the Foundation’s endowments flourished, and the noble houses carried on adding to them, and soon there were no more poor and destitute families to be taken in and looked after; but the ones who were already there were starting to get restive, cooped up in the Hospital with nobody but the scholars to talk to. They said they were very grateful for everything the Foundation had done for them, but they didn’t want charity, they wanted the chance to work and make something of themselves, and everyone agreed that that sounded like a very good idea, too.

  So the Foundation decided that the best thing would be to lend the poor people enough supplies and equipment to allow them to go back outside the walls and support themselves. It was generally agreed that if a family was given enough food to last them five years, and the basic tools and equipment, it was perfectly possible for them to turn the wilderness into good, productive farmland, by building terraces, clearing forests, draining marshes and diverting rivers. That was how the peninsula had been settled in the first place, with hope and goodwill and a great deal of hard work. That sounded like a perfectly splendid idea, and so that’s what they did. The Foundation became a bank and lent the pioneers everything they needed – it couldn’t be an outright gift, everybody agreed, because if they gave away their endowment to this generation of the poor, who would provide for the next generation, and the one after that? – and the loans were secured on the allotments of land that the pioneers were given.

  Of course, it was understood from the outset that it would be a very long time before they’d be able to pay back the capital of the loans, but that was fine, nobody was in a hurry provided that the Foundation still got enough resources to continue its work in both its fields of endeavour, charity and contemplation. So it was decided that repayment of the capital would be postponed indefinitely, and all the pioneers would be expected to pay would be interest; and to make it fairer still, the interest wouldn’t be calculated in the normal way, as a percentage of the capital, because that might prove more than the pioneers could afford. Instead it was agreed that after the first five years, by which time the land ought to be ready and in production, they should pay back a set proportion of everything they produced – so much grain, so much wine and wool and what have you. In the end they settled on a seventh part, because it seemed reasonable to expect surpluses of that order from half-decently run holdings. And everybody concerned felt that that was an extremely good idea; quite possibly the best yet.

  (Gorgas Loredan paused and took a long drink; then he wiped his mouth and continued.)

  A hundred years later, of course, the full extent of the disaster was obvious to everyone. Three generations had gone by and none of the pioneer families had even made a start on paying back the capital; the one-seventh share they had to pay the Foundation Bank exactly cancelled out their surpluses, and no matter how hard they worked they were still stuck at subsistence level with no prospect of ever being able to improve their position. Meanwhile, there was a constant stream of produce flowing in through the gates of the Hospital which couldn’t just be left to moulder away in the jar; it had to be lent out to the poor, or else the whole charter of the Foundation would become meaningless. So lend it out they did; and anyone who didn’t want a loan was reasoned with until he did, because the books had to balance and the good works had to be done. And what with the new loans and the general effect all this was having on the people who weren’t debtors to the Foundation, who had to buy their seed corn in bad years out of their own pockets and pay for their own ploughs and do their ditching and terracing at their own expense, it wasn’t long before the Foundation Bank had mortgage stones in nearly every boundary wall in the peninsular, and more and more funds coming in each year to be invested in charity, or else.

  That was when the first debtors’ revolt broke out, and the Foundation couldn’t understand it. So they asked their scholars and moral philosophers, who’d had plenty of time to think about these things and came back with the reply that human nature is basically rotten, being prey to ingratitude and envy and sheer abstract malice, and the more you help people, the more resentful and ungrateful they get. And when that happens, the philosophers said, all you can do is treat them as you’d treat spoilt and spiteful children, and give them a good thrashing for their own good. Otherwise, they argued, the Foundation would be failing in its quasi-parental duty towards the people it had adopted, and for whose welfare it was entirely responsible.

  Now the debtors (by this time they’d started being known as heptemores, which is the word for ‘seventh-parters’ in the old language) had plenty of men and idealism, but no weapons or resources to sustain a war; and when they showed up outside the Hospital gates they found that the Foundation, which by this state was calling itself the Grand Foundation of Poverty and Learning, or the Grand Foundation for short – although people always seem to refer to it as the Foundation – had somehow come by a pretty substantial supply of weaponry and the like; it turned out that the upper echelons of scholars had suspected for some time that this sort of thing might happen and had been getting ready. They’d bought or made large stocks of weapons and armour – ever such a lot of armour, all to improved and scientific designs – and it turned out that they’d been drilling the Poor (that’s the people who st
ill lived in the Hospital, five thousand families) into a kind of standing army. So when the heptemores refused to disband and go quietly home, they were able to give them a very substantial thrashing and do them a world of good; according to the best sources, about a thousand killed and three thousand more wounded or taken prisoner, while the Foundation’s losses were negligible. It seems like you can’t keep a good idea down, at least not once it’s started to take hold.

  After that, of course, things had to change a little. The old Hospital was pulled down and the stones put towards building a huge castle right up on the top of Mount Shastel, big enough for a garrison of ten thousand men and the treasury of the Foundation; and since works of that kind do tend to cost a lot of money, they had to increase the share they took from a seventh to a sixth, and the debtors stopped being known as heptemores and became the hectemores, which means ‘sixth-parters’ and is really rather easier to say. Of course, these measures did solve the problem of what to do with the surplus income in future years, once the castle was paid for, because instead of being obliged to find poor and needy people to lend it to, they now had a standing army to feed, pay and quarter, as a legitimate expense of the Foundation incurred in carrying out its work. For a long time, in fact, it was undoubtedly the finest army in the world; the best trained, the best equipped, made up of people brought up from childhood to be soldiers for the Foundation. Until, that is (and here Gorgas’ face creased into a big, fierce grin) my sister came to Scona and changed all that.

  Alexius sat up, startled.