Von Bek by Michael Moorcock

Author:Michael Moorcock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S/Saga Press
Published: 2024-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

I embark upon a business career. The prospect of a flying navy. The coming of the New Age and how we plan to exploit it to our advantage. We begin to raise Capital.

NEXT MORNING AS I sat at my breakfast, into the taproom came St. Odhran. He wore a blue Nankeen housecoat to his ankles, a Chinese brocade cap and Oriental slippers making him look for all the world like some successful Mogul returned home with his fortune and bearing not a scrap of similarity to the mercenary rogue of his own description. His demeanour was that of an amiable English buck, some overbred but not undereducated frequenter of White’s or Goosetree’s, a crony of the Prince Regent. I had met this type (and its Colonial imitators) before and had learned not to underestimate the English dandy. That dandyism at its best pretended a bored and foolish foppery which disguised sharp wit and resolute courage. While I was in America I had heard them dubbed Macaronis, on account of their taste for exaggerated foreign fashions, and even Washington had had a touch of the same style.

So here he came, with a hint of lavender and rosewater, into the taproom where Frau Schuster served hot chocolate, cheese, ham, sausages, boiled eggs, gingerbread and anything else one desired. St. Odhran had the good manners to refrain from asking for one of those dishes with which the English ensure the bad temper of their fighting men, in much the same way as Berserker Northmen were given strong mead, or certain Polynesian tribesmen are said to be insulted and humiliated by their wives on the eve and morning of an important battle. The English, I now know, eat mashed fish and devilled sheep’s hearts to guarantee a bad digestion (and consequent irritability). It is their abominable cooking which has given them half the world as their Empire.

My friend was a veritable Encyclopaedia of little bows, graces and gestures: a smile here, a brace of nods to myself and Schuster, a few legs made in the general direction of a skirt or a mobcap, and then seated across from me on my right, he praised Herr Schuster’s militaria, expressing interest in the Copperplate (which Ulrica, it emerged, had water-colour’d) upon the panelled walls and asking if the landscapes were, like the trophies, of specific memories. He listened carefully with half-bent head as my old Sergeant listed the scenes and his own recollections of them.

St. Odhran was impressed, he said, by the wide extent of this veteran’s travels. He smiled gently. “Most Wäldensteiners seem to feel little imperative to go beyond their own borders, perhaps because they know already that the rest of the world is unquestionably less perfect.”

“One thing perfection brings, Herr Chevalier,” said Schuster readily, “and that’s boredom. To grow up in the certain knowledge one shall never know serious threat, nor yet much discomfort, has its own enervating influence. We Mirenburgers send our sons abroad as often and as soon as we can.

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