The Old Phoenix Tavern Read online

  Life rang in the Dutchman's voice. "Then you find you are not broken?"

  "After being in your company, sir," replied the Englishman, "how could I surrender?"

  Taverner had come to stand unobtrusively nearby. Our glances crossed. He hesitated a moment before he stepped over to me. His words ran low and fast. "We've got to observe the restrictions, you know. You wouldn't want us to lose our license, would you?"

  "God, no," I said.

  Taverner made a fending gesture. "Not God. Absolutely no idea of that. But we do what we can, the wife and I. We do what we can."

  The Englishman and the Dutchman had risen to shake hands. The movement brought them in full view of us. "An honor, sir, and an enlightenment," John Bull declared. "I trust we will have more encounters."

  The painter's straightened shoulders slumped. He looked away. "Not for me, I think," he muttered in the tongue of his childhood. "Never and never."

  The Englishman bit his lip, started to say something, thought better of it, and addressed the landlord instead. "Goodnight, good friend. Thank you for very much." He took hat and umbrella and stumped from us.

  The painter stared after him. "Beware of darkness," I heard him say. "Everywhere darkness. No, the white sun and the huge stars—But what when they burn out? What then?"

  He shook himself, cackled a laugh, tossed off his absinthe, and retreated from my sight, sinking back to look into the fire. For a while he had been almost happy.

  Villon, who had watched, took the lute, strummed, and concluded his piece.

  Christ, Prince of losers, behold how we

  Are burning heretics, hanging Jews

  In this thy name for the fear of thee.

  Even the dead have much to lose.

  I thought his mind had slipped back to his medieval realm, until I remembered what world it was whereon Winston Churchill now opened the door. The envoi sums up the entire ballade.

  Table of Contents

  contents

  A Midsummer Tempest

  House Rule

  Loser's Night