The Mercury Waltz Read Online Free Page B

bottle off the bar. But these stones I got, showing them in his fist, can’t even crack that old glass that’s broken anyway.
    The urchins consult, then I got these, pulling from a pocket a palmful of lead marbles. But you got to give me fi’penny if you win.
    If I win, I’ll tell the man it was your stones. Arm cocked for the sling, two hard marbles at once and at once the window shatters, the tavern keeper erupts and They did it! Haden laughing in flight as the slapstick descends, as the urchins howl, as the men inside shake their heads at the petty foolishness of boys when the times are so dire, their own parish in the path of war already: and already, as the sun goes down, the fires begin in the streets.
    The flames dance like a lurid show past a cellarside window—this one broken, too, though half mended with stuffed rags, everything in this town is broken or mended—and Oh! Come away from there! his mother’s wail, she is always wailing, he has learned to pay her no mind. They say she is a harlot, they say she gave herself to a wandering spirit to birth this boy with his tangled pelt of hair and eyes yellow as a goat’s, the master of all goats, Pan himself upon some hillside made of foxglove and iron. But truly he is not a bastard, though his father is permanently elsewhere, a so-called soldier of fortune who left behind only a half-flat purse and a half-remembered name, Mundy, and the boy’s own name from a general of the greatest wars.
    This war is not a great one, though it is large enough to consume several townsfolk as well as the town’s bakery in the smell of roasting yeast, and send rude men tramping through its streets: like this one in a greasy uniform jacket and suspiciously elegant trousers, half a gentleman’s rig, but this man is no gentleman, nor the men that he calls his soldiers, as he calls himself a corporal: calling to Haden watching from the barred doorway of the tavern You, boy! Show me where’s the jenny-house in this place.
    For tenpenny I will, and, paid, he leads the way to the whores’ tired two-room, with its reek of arnica and beetle-browed madam. While his men troop inside, the corporal waits in the street, passing the time with a deck of playing cards, old French cards of hard-waxed paper, flipping through simple tricks as Haden stands beside him, rapt: Keep a good watch on that pale knave, now! Where’s he hiding at, eh?
    There, says Haden. No, now he’s there.
    You’ve sharp eyes , the corporal considering the comely face, that strange gaze Like a cat’s, eh? Little tomcat, what’s your name? but like a wary cat Haden then departs—
    —to reappear as the brigands’ band leaves town, falling into step beside the corporal as if he is used to a martial gait: neckerchief and red-tasseled shawl, his mother’s shawl knotted up into a bindle and Hola, says the corporal, it’s the tomcat! What, you want to join up with us?
    With you, and with no more ceremony than a nod and a drink from a wineskin, sour Rheinish gulped down like mother’s milk, he leaves the weary little warren that has been his only home; he never sees it, or his mother, again. Now he is called the corporal’s son.
    As a son he has certain liberties: to drink when he will from that wineskin, to wear a fine black-braided kepi, to eat his fill of coarse and bloody brazier-cooked meat, roughmeat the soldiers call it, but the corporal only shrugs: Wild cats, they eat what they can get. And he likes it, don’t you, Haden? The corporal likes that he has had a bit of schooling, can spell his name and read after a fashion, but there is always more to learn: how to ride pillion when a horse can be had, how often a grown man takes his pleasure, how to play all sorts of games—lansquenet, Shut-the-Box, hazard, he shows an especial talent for the cards, with his quick gaze and long fingers Just like a lass’s, sneers one of the soldiers, a ruddy-faced drunkard. He’s already your sweet little lass, an’t he,