Overtime. Part 31

'Specifically. And there's the Chastelain de Coucy,' said the Chief Warden, as if to himself, 'on tenor crumhorn. Blow that thing!' he added.

'Chief Warden!' The half-man's voice was suddenly as hard as diamonds. Black diamonds, industrial grade. 'Look at me when I'm talking to you.'

The Chief Warden turned smartly and smiled. No worries about looking that half-skull in the eye; not in the circ.u.mstances. For it had occurred to the Chief Warden that, if his collection of Blondel records still existed, then Blondel too must have existed; and if he had existed, then he must, somehow or other, have got out of the Archive. In which case, sang the Chief Warden's heart within him, I'm going to get out of this mess somehow or other, quit this b.l.o.o.d.y awful job, find another copy of the 1196 White Alb.u.m and retire.

'Have you any idea,' said the half-man, 'how serious an offence it is to attempt to pervert the course of my justice?'

'No, sir.'

'Well,' said the half-man, 'it's very serious. So don't do it, d'you hear? Leave it out completely. Understood?'

'Sir.'

'Splendid. You, whatever your name is.'

Pursuivant lifted his head from his notebook and clicked his heels smartly under the table. 'Yes, Your Highness?' he said.

'Is that the court record you've got there?' the half-man enquired.

'Yes, Your Highness.'

'Hand it to me.'

Pursuivant closed the notebook and pa.s.sed it over. The half-man took it, flipped it open, and took hold of several pages between his teeth. Then he leaned his head back and pulled. The pages ripped away from the spiral binding, and the half-man stuffed them into his half-mouth, chewed vigorously with his half-set of teeth, and swallowed.

'Yuk!' he said.

'Sir!' Pursuivant shouted. His eyes were so far out of his head that he looked like a startled gra.s.shopper. 'You can't do that!'

The half-man looked at him. Of that look there is nothing to say, except that a few hours later Pursuivant showed up at the sick bay waving a studded club and demanding to have his memory wiped.

'Next time,' the half-man said, 'don't use pencil, it tastes horrible. Shut up, Julian, you'll sprain your hands. Now then, Chief Warden. John,' he corrected. 'Or rather, Jack, my old son. Why didn't you tell me you were a Blondel man?'

'Well, sir .

'Tony,' said the half-man. 'Call me Tony.'

'Well, Tony,' said the Chief Warden, 'I wouldn't have thought ... In the circ.u.mstances, I mean

'Nonsense,' said the half-man. 'Just because I don't hold with the feller personally doesn't mean I can't admire his music. And I may only have one ear, but it isn't made of tin. Is it really Gace Brule on drums?'

The Chief Warden nodded. 'There's this incredible riff,' he said, 'in the bridge section in Quand flours et glais...'

'Cadenet on vocals?'

'They do this duet,' replied the Chief Warden, 'in San'cfuy beiha...'

There was silence for a while, broken only by two - one and a half - men humming. Julian looked at each other and shook his heads sadly.

'Anyway,' said the half-man, with an effort, 'this court finds insufficient evidence of the charges alleged and rules that these proceedings be adjourned sine die with liberty to restore.' He tried to wink but, naturally, failed. 'And let that be a lesson to you, Chief Warden.'

'Sir.'

The half-man rose to his foot. For the record, he moved in a strange - you might say mysterious - way; the half of his body which was there moved as if the other half was there too. 'All rise,' he said. 'Come on, Julian on your feet. Go and make a cup of coffee or something. You too, whatever your name is. Go and see if you can raise that blasted driver on the radiophone. Now then, Jack...'

The Anti-Pope and his previous life shrugged and went to look for a kettle. Pursuivant, mentally exhausted, found a cupboard under some stairs and went to sleep in it. From the Chief Warden's office came the sound, in perfect Dolby stereo and highly amplified, of Blondel singing L'Amours Dont Sui Epris.

If anybody - apart, of course, from the man and a half in the office - joined in the second verse, n.o.body heard.

The waiter who brought him his iced coffee and a gla.s.s of water looked familiar, and Blondel asked him his name.

'Spiro,' the waiter said.

'Yes,' Blondel replied, 'but Spiro what?'

'Maniakis,' the waiter replied. 'Is it important?'

Blondel shrugged. 'Did your family use to farm down near Mistras, a while back?' he asked. The waiter looked at him. 'Do excuse my asking, but you remind me of someone I used to know.'

'Really?' The waiter gave him an even stranger look. 'A hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty years ago, my mother's family lived in a village near Mistras. What of it?'

Blondel suddenly remembered who the waiter reminded him of. 'Sorry,' he said, 'my mistake. Sorry to have bothered you.'

The waiter shrugged and walked away, whistling. The tune, incidentally, was a very garbled recollection of L 'Amours Dont Sui Epris, which the waiter had learned from his great-grandmother. Blondel finished his coffee quickly and left.

A tiresome sort of day, so far, he said to himself as he wandered back towards the Town Hall; and it had been just as well that he'd noticed the door marked Staff Only, No Admittance in that split second before the oil rig blew up. It was good to be out of the Archives again, but disturbing that he'd heard someone singing the second verse of the song. It could just have been a coincidence, of course; but he had the feeling, although he had no scientific data to back it up with, that coincidences didn't happen in the Archives. Something to do with the climate, perhaps. Another missing person to look for, too. Just one d.a.m.n thing after another.

He looked at his watch. In twenty minutes or so he planned to sing the song under the ruined Crusader castle on the promontory; then (a.s.suming no response) he ought to be getting along to the 1750s, where he'd pencilled in a couple of Rhine schlosses to round the day off with. Then, with any luck, bed, with the prospect of looking for two characters lost in history instead of just one to look forward to. Well, it doubled his chance of finding something, if you cared to look at it that way, although it could be argued that twice times sod all is still sod all.

He decided to walk down to the promontory by way of the market, just for the h.e.l.l of it. It was nine months and seven hundred years since he'd been here last - the time before that had been fifty years in the future, but that had been years ago now - and he liked to see what changes had been, or were to be, made in the places he visited. Had they filled in the enormous pothole in the road just opposite the Church?

He had stopped to buy a packet of nuts in the market and was just walking up the hill towards the steps when somebody waved at him - just waved, as if to say h.e.l.lo to a not particularly close acquaintance - and walked on. This was, of course, an extremely rare occurrence. He looked round and tried to find the face in the crowd by the motorcycle spares stalls, and was just about to write if off as another very distant cousin when the wave came again, causing Blondel to drop his packet of nuts.

Oh bother, Blondel thought.

'h.e.l.lo?' Guy said.

In the darkness, something moved; something small and four-legged. Guy, who was not the sort of person who readily backed down from positions of principle, nevertheless began to wonder whether he'd done the right thing. La Beale Isoud wasn't his cup of tea, but at least she wasn't four-legged and didn't scuttle about in pitch darkness. Not so far as he knew.

'h.e.l.lo?' said a voice in the darkness. 'Is there somebody there?'

'Yes,' Guy replied, feeling that his line had been stolen. 'Er...' he continued.

'Make yourself at home,' said the voice, and something in its tone implied that it really meant it. 'Don't mind the rat,' the voice went on. 'It doesn't bite. It's a cousin of a rat I used to know quite well, actually.'

'Oh yes?'