Old Tin Sorrows

4

I could not imagine things going awry, considering some scenes I've endured. Dellwood had installed me in a suite bigger than the ground floor of my house. The room where I stood boasted rosewood wainscotting, mahogany ceiling beams, a wall of bookshelves loaded down, and furniture for entertaining a platoon. A dining table with seats for four. A writing table. Various chairs. Leaded and plain glass windows unfortunately facing north. A carpet some old lady had spent the last twenty years of her life weaving, maybe three hundred years ago. Lamps enough to do my whole house. A chandelier overhead loaded with a gaggle of candles, unlighted at the moment.

This was how the other half lived.

Two doors opened off the big room. I made a guess and pushed through one. What a genius. Hit the bedroom first time.

It was of a piece with the rest. I'd never met a bed so big and soft.

I looked around for hiding places, squirreled some of my equipment good, some so it could be found easily and the rest maybe overlooked. I kept the most important stuff on my person. I figured I'd better hit the kitchen while the staff were still understanding. After I stoked the bodily fires I could wander around like an old ghost.

In better times the kitchen probably boasted a staff of a dozen, with full-time specialists like bakers and pastry cooks. When I dropped in, there was only one person present, an ancient breed woman whose non-human half appeared to be troll. Wrinkled, shrunken, stooped, she was still a foot taller than me and a hundred pounds heavier. Even at her age she could probably break me over her knee—if I stood still and let her lay hands on me.

"You the new one?" she growled when I walked in.

"That's me. Name's Sexton. Mike Sexton."

"Name's mud you don't show on time after this, young'un. Sit." She pointed. I didn't argue. I sat at a table three-quarters buried in used utensils and stoneware. Plunk! She slammed something down in front of me.

"You served with the General, too?"

"Smartass, eh? You want to eat? Eat. Don't try to be a comedian."

"Right. Just making conversation." I looked at my plate. All kinds of chunks of something I didn't recognize mixed up in slimy sauce, piled on rice. I approached it with the trepidation I usually reserve for the stuff they serve at my friend Morley's place, the city's only vegetarian restaurant open to a mixed clientele.

"If I want conversation, I'll ask for it. Look around here. It look like I got time to waste jacking my jaw? Been trying to carry it on my own since they threw Candy out on his ass. I keep telling the old skinflint, I need another pair of hands. Think he'll listen? Hell, no! All he sees is he's saving a couple marks a week."

I took a bite here, a bite there. There seemed to be mussels and mushrooms and a couple things I couldn't identify, and all damned good. "This is excellent," I said.

"Where you been eating? It's slop. I got no helper, I don't got time to fix anything right." She started tossing pots at a sink, sending sprays of water flying. "Barely got time to get ready for the next feeding. These hogs, you think they know the difference? Feed them hot sawdust mush, they wouldn't know it."

Maybe not. But I'd had old Dean cooking for me for a while and I knew good food when I bit it. "How many do you have to take care of?"

"Eighteen. Counting myself. Bloody army. What do you care, Mr. Nineteen and straw that broke the camel's back?"

"That many? The place is like a haunted house. I've seen the General, Dellwood, and you, and some old boy who was stoking the fireplace in the General's study."

"Kaid."

"And two women. Where are the rest? On maneuvers?"

"Wise ass, eh? Where did you see two women? That ass Harcourt sneaking one of his floozies in here again? Hell. I hope he is. I just hope he is. I'll have the old man put him on KP for a year. Get this cesspool cleaned out. What the hell you doing here, anyway? We ain't had nobody new here for two years. No honest-to-goodness guests in a year and a half, just in and outs from uptown, their noses in the air like they don't squat to shit like everybody else."

Whew! "To tell the truth, Miss... ?" She didn't take the hook. "To tell the truth, I'm not quite sure. The General sent for me. Said he wanted to hire me. But he had some kind of attack before... "

She melted. The vinegar drained out in two seconds. "How bad is it? Maybe I'd better go see."

"Dellwood's taken care of it. Says he just needs to rest. He got himself overwrought. This fellow Harcourt. He has a habit of bringing girlfriends home?"

"Not since a couple years back. What the hell you asking all the questions for? Ain't none of your damned business what we do or who we do it with."

She had a thought. She stopped dead still, stepped away from the sink, turned, laid a first-class glower on me. "Or is it your business?"

I didn't say. I tried to slide around it by offering her my empty plate. "Wouldn't be a little more of that, would there? Just to fill a couple empty spots?"

"It is your business. The old man has another fantasy. Thinks somebody's out to get him. Or somebody's robbing him." She shook her head. "You're wasting your time. Or maybe not. Long as he's paying you, it don't matter if you find something, does it? Hell. Probably better if you don't. You can rob him yourself, taking money for nothing. Till the fantasy wears off."

I was confused, but covered it. "Somebody's been robbing the General?"

"Nobody's robbing him. The old boy ain't got a pot to pee in, not counting this damned stone barn. And it's too damned big to carry off. Anyway, if somebody was robbing him I wouldn't tell you word one. Not no outsider. I don't never say nothing to no outsiders. They're all a bunch of con artists."

"Commendable attitude." I wiggled my plate suggestively.

"I got my hands in dishwater up to my elbows and you don't look like you got no broken legs. Get it yourself."

"Be happy to if I knew where."

She made an exasperated noise, made allowance for the fact that I was new. "On the damned stove. Rice in the steel pot, stew in the iron kettle. I worry about the old boy. These fancies... More and more all the time. Must be the sickness. Touching him. Though he always did think somebody was trying to do him out of something."

Wouldn't say a word to an outsider. I was proud of her. "It isn't possible somebody might actually be robbing him? Like they say, even paranoids get persecuted."

"Who? You tell me that, Mr. Smartass Snooper. Ain't nobody in this whole damned place wouldn't wrestle thunder-lizards for him. Half of them would take the disease for him if they could."

I didn't make the point, but people work kinky deals with their consciences. I had no trouble imagining a man willing to die for the General being equally willing to steal from him. The very willingness to serve could set off a chain of justifications making theft sound completely reasonable.

She'd figured me out in fifteen minutes. How long would it be before word spread? "You ever have a problem with pixies or brownies?" The countryside suffered periodic infestations, like termites or mice. The little people are fond of baubles and have no respect for property.

"We had any around here, I'd put them to work."

I figured she would. "Dellwood hinted that the General has a prejudice against doctors. In his condition I'd think he'd be ready to try anything."

"You don't know that boy. He's got a stubborn streak a yard wide. He by damned made up his mind when the missus died, he wasn't never going to trust no quack again. And he stuck."

"Uhm?"

She wouldn't talk to no outsider. Not her, no siree! "See, he loved that girl, Miss Tiffany. Such a lovely child she was. Broke all our hearts when it happened. They laughed at him, he was so much older than her. But he was her heart's slave, him that never loved a thing before. Then Miss Jennifer came. She was in labor so long. He couldn't stand to see her in pain. He brought in doctors from the city. After Miss Jennifer finally came, one damned fool gave Miss Tiffany a damned anticoagulant infusion. Thought he was giving her a sleeping potion."

A big mistake and an especially stupid one, sounded like. "She bled to death?"

"She did. Might have anyway. She was a frail, pale thing, but you couldn't never convince him."

Mistakes that cost lives aren't easy to understand or forgive, but they happen. Despite what they want us mortals to believe, doctors are human. And where there are human beings, there's human error. It's inevitable.

When doctors make mistakes, people hurt.

Easy for me to be understanding. I hadn't known and loved the General's wife.

"Changed his whole life, that did. Went off and spent the rest of it in the Cantard, taking out his grief on the Venageti." And when generals make mistakes, lots of people hurt. "You going to hang out here all day, youngster, you better roll up your sleeves and get washing. Round here we don't got no place for drones."

I was tempted. She had plenty to say. Still...

"Maybe later. If it looks like I'm wasting my time, I might as well wash dishes."

She snorted. "Thought that would get rid of you. Never knowed a man yet with balls enough to wade into a mountain of dirty dishes of his own free will."

"The lunch was great. Thank you, Miss... ?"

Didn't work this time, either.