The Old Phoenix Tavern Read online

  Rupert straightened, to tower above her and reply, “I do not comprehend, fair damosel.”

  “Our accents are sort of thick, mutually, aren’t they? You sound a bit like Holger—here, Holger Carlsen, from Denmark, though he’s spent a lot of time in my own country, on a different hyperplane.”

  The two big men clasped hands. “I’m Rupert, of the Rhine Palatinate,” the Cavalier said, seeking to establish good relations. “My mother’s mother was a Danish princess—Anne, queen to James of Scotland and of England, two countries which have been close friends with Denmark since days of Hamlet, if not further yet.”

  Holger raised brows. “Hamlet?”

  Valeria shushed him, urged him into a seat, and took one herself opposite Rupert. “Suppose we swap information,” she advised. “We haven’t got such an awfully long time for that; better headlong than hesitant. You’re from the Rhineland, did you say, Rupert?”

  “By right of blood alone—a stuff more thick than water, goes the adage, but too thin to mortar soil in firmness ‘neath my claim,” the prince answered wryly. “At present, as the nephew of King Charles, I’m fighting on his side against revolt. Mine English friend and I were lorn in Wales, beset by Puritans and other dogs, when we got … guidance … to this happy place.”

  Valeria sat upright. “Wait a minute! King Charles—Puritans—you mean Roundheads?” (He nodded.) “When are you from? I mean, what date would you say it is?”

  “Why-y … I’ve lost track of what it is exactly— but August, sixteen hundred forty-four—”

  “Ahhh,” she exulted. A slender fist clenched on the arm of her chair. “How much do you know about the situation—parallel universes and all that jazz—Nothing, h’m? Well, look, Rupert, I’m from America. You know America, don’t you? Where I come from, it’s independent countries. And … when I left home, the year was 1974. Holger, there, left in 1950—but not the same 1950 as I was busy being born in.”

  Rupert grew most quiet. “This well’s too deep for Will,” complained Fairweather. Turning to Clodia, who was obviously furious that neither Rupert nor Holger paid her any special heed, he added slyly, “And eke for thee?” Her glance crossed his and came to rest.

  Taverner leaned back, ankles crossed, fingers bridged, altogether delighted. The fire was burning down. A gnomish figure bustled from the kitchen doorway to lay on more wood. The barmaid took empty vessels with an equal clatter, filled and returned them.

  “You’re from tomorrow, then,” Rupert said low, “as Clodia is from the ancient past; and distant lands?”

  “Not quite,” Valeria denied. “I’m not sure how well I can get the idea across, but I’ll try. Look, you were born into the world you know. It has such-and-such qualities—geography, astronomy, laws of nature, kinds of life; people, nations, societies; a past, a present, and a future growing out of these, Right?” (Rupert nodded.) “Well, imagine some important event had turned out differently in the past. A battle lost instead of won, that kind of thing. Give me an example.”

  Rupert’s bewilderment was yielding to fascination. He cast a look at Holger while he tugged his chin. Finally: “Well, say Prince Hamlet had not died in vengeance, thus making Fortinbras the Danish king, but had, instead, become the king himself. That dynasty had many English ties. He might have come and helped his kinfolk here to over-throw Macbeth, the Scots usurper. Once planted on the isle, the Danes might next remember King Canute, not long agone, and turn on Norman William when he came. Since Denmark only, of the Northern lands, had cannon then, however primitive—”

  “Hvad for Pokker?” burst from Holger.

  “Take it easy,” Valeria told him. “He’s from a different time-line…. I wonder, I wonder—” Fairly aflame with enthusiasm, she leaned forward. “Let’s get the theory of this out of the way first, shall we, Rupert?”

  Will saw his leader struggle for insight, remarked to Clodia, “I thank tha Loard I war not boarn to think,” and clinked his tankard against her wine-glass. She smiled straight at him. He choked, “I ne’er wot one could stagger in a chair.”

  Valeria was proceeding: “Well, if you can imagine history might have switched onto a different track, take the next step. That is, suppose both outcomes are real. One world where, uh, Hamlet died young; one where he went on to take the Danish crown and stop the Norman conquest. Both happened. Can you accept that?”

  “I dare not say what limits God has laid on His creating,” Rupert breathed. “But how can this be?”

  “Two whole universes … two whole space-time universes, stars, galaxies, countless planets—differing in a single detail, and of course in the consequences afterward—Except it isn’t like that, really. These universes have always been distinct, from the beginning. It’s just that this is the first point where the differences between them get noticeable. Besides, we haven’t got merely two universes. Nobody’s proved, in my world, whether there’s an infinity of them, or whether the number’s finite but enormous—N factorial, to be exact, where N is the total number of matter and energy particles that exist… . You can picture the cosmoses as lying parallel to each other, like the leaves in a book. That isn’t strictly true, either; they occupy the same space-time, being separated by a set of dimensions—”

  “Hold on, Valeria,” said Holger. “Have pity. You’re close to losing me overboard, and poor Rupert looks as if he’s going down for the third time.”

  The girl relaxed and laughed at herself. “Sorry. You’re right. Uh, Rupert, think of it this way. A lot of different worlds. Some almost the same as yours, some totally alien to it. In some, for instance, there’s a kingdom of England, A.D. 1644; in others the date is different; in still others, the kingdom never existed. Even the laws of nature may vary. What’s possible in one world is not in another, and vice versa. You follow me?”

  Rupert ventured a smile. “Through quicksands, marshes, brambles, rain, and night.”

  “And if a person knows how, he can cross between them,” Valeria continued. “You savvy? After all, this is a pocket universe you’re in.”

  Rupert drank deep. “At least its beer speaks comforting of home,” he said to Taverner, “though sweeter, like a long-forgotten dream.”

  “I know what’s sweeter, aye, a sugartit,” Will whispered. He squeezed Clodia’s hand. After a glance at oblivious Rupert and Holger, she gave a shrug, which quivered in numerous places, and fluttered her eyelids.

  “You are from … elsewhere, Mistress… Matuchek?” Rupert asked. “That name is from Bohemia, like me.”

  “Elsewhere and elsewhen,” she said, “though the words aren’t especially meaningful in this context. That is, I don’t belong to your future. I doubt if your world will look remotely like mine, by the time it reaches its own 1974. Certainly neither world of Holger’s will.”

  Rupert stared at the Dane, who puffed his pipe before explaining in a diffident tone: “Well, you see, I’m a peculiar case. I belong—I was born in—a universe where the Carolingian myths are true. You know, Roland and Oliver and the rest.”

  “You’re too modest,” Valeria said.

  “No, I just don’t want this discussion to get worse complicated,” he replied. To Rupert: “Never mind how, I got cast into an altogether different time-line—a time-line where magic doesn’t work, except maybe in areas like ESP—oh, again, never mind. I’m trying to find my way home. I have had nothing to go on except a spell which carries me through space-time barriers, all right, but doesn’t have any direction to it. After a lot of mishaps—the last was with a clutch of Aztec gods, and I barely escaped in one piece—I’d picked up enough assorted hints and clues that I could fumble myself to this inn. By my good luck, Miss Matuchek was here.”

  “I don’t believe that was pure coincidence,” Valeria said. “However, let’s skip that. The point is, Rupert —Holger’s twentieth century and mine are quite alike, rationalistic, industrialized, the Western countries mostly democratic. Only they’re quite unlike, also. For instance, in both of them, th
e USA and Germany were on opposite sides in the First World War. But his Second World War, that he fought in himself, was against Germany too—and Japan and Italy—while mine, that my parents fought in, was against the Saracen Caliphate. I suppose the differences were mainly due to paraphysical forces. Either they’re as weak in that adopted cosmos of Holger’s as he thinks, or else nobody there has discovered how to degauss the effects of cold iron, as they did in my world about 1900.”

  “Anyway,” Holger said, “on her Earth they’ve made a science and technology of magic—”

  “Paraphysics,” she corrected. “Or the Art, if you prefer.”

  “Whatever. She’s being very nice to me, giving me some valuable pointers. Maybe she can do the same for you, Mister—Herr—uh, Prince Rupert.”

  “Perhaps,” Valeria said dubiously. “A lot would depend on your background. Is it science-oriented like mine? How much math do you know? That kind of thing.” She braced herself with a drink before adding: “Also, to tell the honest truth, I’d want more information about you. No offense intended, but you could be serving some cause I’d think it was wrong to help.”

  “Or maybe I would not take help from you,” Rupert snapped. “What are you doing here, in boy’s disguise?”

  Valeria smiled. “My, you really are from a different milieu! Well, I don’t mind explaining, if the explanation will make any sense to you. In my home, this is perfectly ordinary female dress for a rugged outing. And as for my purpose, I’m on a field trip, collecting material for a master’s thesis. It’s not so long ago that people in my universe first managed to cross into others. We’re still measuring the parameters—”

  “How lawful are your thaumaturgic arts?” Rupert demanded.

  She bridled. “Completely legal.”

  “Wait, I think I see what he’s after,” said Holger. “You remember, Valeria: I told you how in my world, the Carolingian one, that is, elves are mostly enemies to man. Maybe something like that is true for Rupert.”

  The girl spent a moment thinking, before she nodded at the prince. “Okay. Listen, please. Where I come from, there’s nothing inherently good or bad about the Art. It involves a set of forces. We can use them morally or evilly, wisely or stupidly, same as anything else. Why, my father’s a were-wolf, my mother’s a witch, and they’re two of the dearest people you’ll ever meet. Some of my best friends are halflings.”

  Rupert had likewise invested time in thought. “I pray your pardon, Mistress Matuchek,” he responded. “I stand myself in debt to Oberon.” (She started, and gave most intent attention to his speech.) “This ring I have of him and of his queen—and from one other—led me here tonight. Ere then, I’m told, its brilliance blossomed high, as we approached that steam train which we seized and drove this day from Yorkshire into Wales.”

  “Now, wait a little,” Holger protested. “Oberon I know something about; ja, the English Civil War too—in fact, I seem to remember reading about a Prince Rupert who was in it—but steam trains?”

  Valeria leaped up. She shivered in body and voice. “Hold it! I may be onto this paradox. Gimme a minute, will you?”

  Her pacing shoes clacked beneath the crackle and rumble of fire. Its light wove through candle-gleam, soft over Rupert’s tautness, Holger’s puzzlement, Taverner’s glittering-eyed observation.

  Will nudged Clodia. “Mesim a taele’ll shortly start to wag what I know well, an’ would but brush thee off,” he murmured. “We got a common language, thou an’ I. ’Tis oanly partly spoaken with tha tongue. What zay we steal away an’ practice it?”

  Valeria whirled. Her finger stabbed at Rupert. “You talked about Hamlet and Macbeth—as if they were both real,” she cried. “Contemporaries, even. You said you’d met Oberon and … Titania … yourself. Well, did Romeo and Juliet ever live? King Lear? Falstaff? Othello? You mentioned cannon in Hamlet’s time. How about, by God, how about a University of Wittenberg already then? Did they have clocks that struck the hour in Julius Caesar’s days? Was Richard the Third really a hunchbacked monster? Did Bohemia ever have a seacoast? Does withcraft work?”

  To each flung question Rupert nodded, as if these were blows hurled upon him.

  “Okay, then”—Valeria tensed—”do you know the name William Shakespeare?”

  “Of course,” Rupert said dazedly. “He was the great Historian.”

  “That’s it!” Valeria turned to Holger. “If, if you could start in a world … where the Carolingian romances are the literal truth … why not the plays of Shakespeare?” she stammered. “It figures, it figures. They’d’ve been technologically a little ahead of my world since an early period—though just in certain areas—still, their Industrial Revolution commencing in the seventeenth century, and maybe getting tied in with Puritanism—” Swinging back: “Oh, Rupert, we’ve got so much to talk about!”

  Holger shook his head. “I think I better go work those problems from the textbook you gave me,” he said.

  “Of course. Poor dear. I’ll come help you later on.” She stooped to brush her lips across his forehead. “But I’ve got to talk to Rupert as well. Don’t you see? Besides Shakespeare being an idol of mine, I always had sympathy for the Cavaliers. Maybe that was schoolgirl romantics; and anyhow, the issues may not be identical in Rupert’s home. I doubt very much he could absorb the kind of instruction you’re getting. But at least, I must have a certain hindsight over his period. It’s possible I can counsel him, influence events a tiny bit for the better. I feel obliged to try.”

  Will climbed to his feet, Clodia undulated to hers. “Beg pardon, loard,” the dragoon said. “Thou wilt not need me moare?”

  It took Rupert a second to pull his mind their way. Then he grinned a trifle, rose, and bowed. “I must not,” he responded. “Ladies e’er go over princes.”

  “But … princes … they go over commoners,” said Will reluctantly; for Clodia was thrusting curves at his master.

  Rupert clapped the soldier’s back. “And commoners o’er ladies, on this night. Myself, I’ll be discoursing till the dawn. May weariness not soften hardihood.”

  “Nay, zir, I be quiate firm in my resolve.” Will took the woman around her waist. She sighed toward Rupert. His look had returned to Valeria and Holger. Clodia snuggled against the man she had. They slipped upstairs.

  Holger voiced a harsh chuckle and sought his books. Valeria and Rupert settled themselves for conversation. The landlord listened.

  EPILOGUE

  They were many gathered this evening, to sit before the innkeeper’s fire, enjoy his food and drink and regale him with their tales. Valeria Matuchek leaned against the bar, a pint in her fist, the better to oversee them. A few she recognized, or thought she did—brown-robed monk at whose feet lay a wolf, gorgeously drunk Chinese from long ago whose calligraphic brush was tracing a poem, rangy fellow nearby whose garb was hard to place but who bore a harp, large affable blond man in high boots and gray leather with an iridescent jewel on his wrist, lean pipe-smoking Victorian and his slightly lame companion, wide-eyed freckle-faced boy and Negro man in tatterdemalion farm clothes, coppery-skinned feather-crowned warrior who held a calumet and a green ear of maize—but of the rest she was unsure. Several were not human.

  Being impatient to hear everything that could be spoken and translated before they must depart, she finished her turn rather hastily:

  “Yes, I came back through that universe, and spent a while learning how things worked out. Earlier, I’d gone to history books elsewhere, for background. Evidently this had to be the time-line where the romantic reactionaries do better than any when else. And… this Charles the First was either a wise man from the beginning, or chastened by experience. “

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure how much difference it’ll make in the long run. In my history, Prince Rupert—well, he didn’t simply help invent the mezzotint, he became a scientist, a sponsor of explorations, a founder of the Royal Society…. I don’t think that in any cosmos he’ll sit smug on his victories. And
they’ve got a new world a-borning there too, the real New World, the machine—science itself, which matters more; reason triumphant, which matters most—no stopping it, because along with the bad there’s too much good, hope, challenge, liberation—

  “Well. ” She drained her tankard and held it out for a refill. “Nothing ever was forever, anyway. Peace never came natural. The point is, it can sometimes be won for some years, and they can be lived in.

  “Enough. I hope you’ve enjoyed my story. “

  HOUSE RULE

  That inn beyond every world, the Old Phoenix, first appeared in my Shakespearean fantasy novel A Midsummer Tempest. Elsewhere I have acknowledged "its relationship to works by John Kendrick Bangs, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, Hendrik Willem van Loon, Lord Dunsany, Edmond Hamilton, and others, as well as the origin of all in a common daydream." It also commemorates certain cheerful pubs, here and there around the globe. Still, to the best of my knowledge, nothing else is quite like this place, where you may meet anybody whatsoever. I have returned to it a couple of times and hope to do so again.

  -o-o-O-o-o-

  Look for it anywhere, anytime, by day, by dusk, by night, up an ancient alley or out on an empty heath or in a forest where hunters whose eyes no spoor can escape nonetheless pass it by unseeing. Myself, I found its doorhandle under my fingers and its signboard creaking over my head when I was about to enter the saloon of a ship far at sea. You cannot really seek this house; it will seek you. But you must be alert for its fleeting presence, bright or curious or adventurous or desperate enough to enter, the first time. Thereafter, if you do not abuse its hospitality, you will be allowed to come back every once in a while.