ARCHIMIMUS: The Life and Times of Lukitt Bachmann by Gray Clio

Author:Gray, Clio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Balintore Books
Published: 2021-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

‘Know what I found most extraordinary about tonight?’ Alameth said later, when all tales had been told, and everyone had retired to their beds.

‘What’s that?’ Lukitt asked, standing at the window, watching the snow falling outside, the lights in their neighbours’ windows going out one by one, feeling a little drunk, not quite ready for sleep though it was almost two in the morning.

‘Your Ben Ali,’ Alameth said, as he climbed into his bed, removing the warming pan that had almost gone cold, so late had they all stayed up.

‘Not my Ben Ali,’ Lukitt corrected, ‘but Ulbert’s.’

‘But he was a real man?’ Alameth asked. ‘And that was a real tale?’

‘It was,’ Lukitt answered, turning back from the window, ‘told by Ben Ali to Ulbert except, of course, for the end.’

Alameth sighing as he moved himself onto his back, put his hands beneath his head, eyes open, staring at the ceiling as the candle flickered on the cabinet by his bed.

‘I just think,’ he went on slowly, ‘that if it’s true…’

‘It’s true,’ Lukitt said, moving to his own bed, beginning to disrobe. ‘I could tell you the how of it if…’

‘Please don’t,’ Alameth remonstrated quietly in the near darkness. ‘I know you’ll be able to take the mystery out of it, but I don’t want you to.’

Lukitt stopped in the middle of taking off his socks.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, obscurely offended, Alameth turning onto his side, looking at Lukitt in the glimmering light.

‘You wouldn’t have let it lie,’ he said. ‘You’d have found it all a load of bloody hooeh, as Lucknaught put it, as would Ulbert. The two of you would have gone ferreting out the whys and wherefores of how it really happened. But me? I’m happy with the tale as it is. I want to keep the extraordinary alive.’

‘Even if it’s not the truth?’ Lukitt countered, Alameth closing his eyes, Lukitt seeing a small shrug of Alameth’s shoulders as he pulled his coverlet about him.

‘I mean,’ Alameth said, replicating Ulbert, ‘that the most extraordinary part of the story was Ben Ali himself, willing to lay down his life for a man who wasn’t even his friend.’

Lukitt continued removing his socks.

‘Would you have done it?’ he asked quietly.

Alameth didn’t answer, a long exhalation indicating his slip into sleep.

But Lukitt knew the truth of it: Alameth would have stayed, and would still stay despite all that had happened to him; whereas Lukitt would have walked on into the night and left that rallion old man to his fate.

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