Page 121 of Confounding Oaths
She nodded her agreement. “I could. But I have learned the hard way not to wish for things I do not need, or that I already have.”
“‘I wish you well,’” I murmured. “You realise I can do nothing with that?”
“Might you not do whatever you want?” the lady ventured. “Albeit for yourself, rather than for me.”
The thought galled me. I am a loyal servant of the Other Court, after all. I am a being defined by my function and my place and have never once harboured any secret desires for a different life. “You are a strange child, lady.”
“And you are a very strange dog. But I think I am glad I met you.”
I did not return the compliment. I said simply: “I wish you well,” and permitted myself to fade from her sight.
Chapter Twenty-five
Barryson’s funeral was a fewdays later. It was to be a small affair, just the Irregulars, the Caesars, and a few people from the Folly.
He was a heathen, of course, and so was not to be laid to rest in a churchyard. The mourners gathered on a jetty jutting out onto the murky waters of the Thames and his body was laid in a cheap rowboat piled high with kindling, a musket laid beside him. A musket that technically remained the property of His Majesty’s army but not a single person there gave a damn about His Majesty in that moment.
No priest was present—the faith of the old north was not popular in London and there was no time to bring a specialist from Newcastle, which meant the service such as it was fell to Captain James.
“I’m no man of God,” the captain said, his back to the water and his eyes to the crowd. “Nor of any gods. Nor words, now I think of it. But I fought with Barryson five years and so there’s that.”
In the run-up to the event, Mr. Caesar had offered to help him prepare a more polished speech, as had Kumar, but he’d rejected their help. Not how it was done, he’d said.
“He told me once,” the captain continued, “that his family went back to Ragnar Lodbrok, who I’d never heard of. But he said the name meanthairy trousers,and I thought that fit. And if his ancestors really did come from the north in long ships and burn Northumberland then, well, I reckon he went out in a way they’d be proud of.”
There were murmurs of agreement from the Irregulars.
After a moment’s reflection, the captain went on. “He was loyal. He was a laugh. He had my back. And most importantly, at the very end, he took the fucker with him.”
This last phrase passed around the Irregulars like a chorus or a prayer. A low, sincere echo ofhe took the fucker with him.
Once the captain had finished speaking, the assembly took turns to say their personal farewells. When Miss Caesar and Miss Anne made to approach the boat, their father checked them.
“Best not to,” he whispered. “He fought a bear and lost. You should not have to look.”
Miss Caesar and Miss Anne exchanged glances, and then took one another’s hand.
“I think,” said Miss Caesar, her words less certain than her tone, “that we might have to, in fact. We are old enough to see terrible things.”
The elder Mr. Caesar was not wholly convinced by this, but his wife laid a hand on his shoulder and nodded. So the sisters joined the line of mourners and approached the body.
A human corpse holds no horror for me personally. I am uncomfortably aware that you are all made of meat and mucus and so having that reality exposed to daylight in no way serves toheighten my disgust at corporeality. For mortals, however, things are different. And so it was that the Irregulars, in preparing Barryson’s body for its send-off, had done their best to conceal the ways in which it had been mauled and mutilated by the beast he had reciprocally slain. A clean jacket had been fastened neatly over the wreckage of his chest, and his mangled arm had been severed from the few threads of sinew that were holding it in place, leaving a sleeve pinned smartly in place in a manner much reminiscent of the late Admiral Nelson.
Still, he was dead, and his body substantially less complete than when they had last seen it, so it remained something of a shock for the young ladies.
“I didn’t really know you,” Miss Caesar said to him—it seemed a poor opening but had the virtue of being an honest one. “But you helped me anyway. And I’m—”
“I’m sorry you’re gone,” Miss Anne filled in.
There didn’t seem much else to say. Still, the girls lingered at the back of the line and thought, as all young things must do eventually, about death.
“If it pleases you, ladies,” said Boy William, appearing at Miss Anne’s elbow. “We’re about to fire the boat. You might want to stand clear.”
There were, in theory, ordinances against launching flaming barques onto the Thames, but in the opinions of all those there gathered, those laws could go fuck themselves. Captain James set sparks to the tinder—which in the absence of matches took slightly longer than was dramatic or decorous—and, when it caught at last, pushed the boat out into the water.
It was not, in the end, so very spectacular. Setting an inferno on water is difficult and unlike my own homeland, the physical laws ofyour world give no weight to theme. The boat burned, but by daylight the fire was pale and it quickly grew small on the river. By the mercy of whatever god was overseeing such things that day it did not rain, but the sky was grey and around the little band of mourners the business of London went on quite as normal. You mortals are insignificant things, and your deaths are insignificant. Especially when viewed from above.
Eventually, Barryson drifted out of sight, and the mourners turned away. Mr. Caesar, however, kept watching until Captain James laid a hand on his shoulder and drew him away.
