Read Online The Grail War by Richard Monaco - Free Book Online Page A

cooking food, cloves, perfume, and a sharp, faintly rank odor …
    “Is this an inn?” Valit asked.
    “Ah-ha,” said Rova, “yet none come to it to rest a night!” He turned to include Broaditch and Handler. “Now, when I stayed in the town of Naples, there was a stew there, the oldest and most magnificent in the country, with girls like angels from heaven … girls stolen and lured from the east, from the far north … He shook his head at the inexpressible wonder of it.
    “Was that the high mark of your life?” Broaditch asked him bluntly.
    “What’s that?”
    “The finest house of whores. Was that the high mark of your life’s ambitions?”
    “Could be worse,” Rova said, faintly defensive.
    They had entered a high-vaulted chamber lined on either side with canopied beds. Huge wooden tubs of per-fumy, steaming water stood every few paces, with men and women soaping and splashing.
    “What use will the memory of that be to you,” Broaditch said, very sober for a moment.
    “What use is any memory?” Rova wanted to know.
    Broaditch was now contemplating tender hands soaping him in a hot bath. With age such pleasures became almost profound, he thought.
    The richly gowned madam, in furs and silks, flanked by a stout ruffian, thick staff cocked over his shoulder, came grandly down the steamy aisle. Handler was uneasy.
    “This place be not for the likes of us,” he muttered.
    “Peace, friend,” Rova assured him. “So long as coin be in fashion here, so am I in fashion.”
    “How did he come by his money?” Valit whispered to Broaditch, or perhaps only to himself, as Rova walked ahead, all smiles, to greet the puffy-faced woman. “It’s known he has more than one of his station rightfully should.” As he said this his face (or so it seemed to Broaditch) showed a strange, sarcastic, intense contempt, and that same, subtle slyness, as well.
    “This place be not for the likes of us,” Handler repeated as his son looked at him with obvious scorn.
    “Speak for yourself, old fool,” he muttered. “What might suit me, you’d never dream.”
    Broaditch was just turning around. He’d just heard a deep moan from behind the curtains of a bed across the aisle. The sound smacked more of the rack than delight, he thought. It repeated over the music that was just starting again in some nearby chamber. Violas, reeds, and a tinny drumbeat. A grinding dance tune.
    Handler suddenly sat down on a footstool, bent forward, and expelled one brief splash of vomit on the tiled floor. His son shook his head. Broaditch, after hesitating, parted and curtains and the general candlelight softly glowed on the scene within: a young nude woman lay beside a silver-haired, bony man (on the massive bed that could have slept half a dozen), whose eyes were very wide and unblinking, as if he stared at some wonder up in the canopy, a dagger tilted in his chest, rocking slightly, blood jetting weakly like a failing fountain. The blade flashed soft light over the bed, the terrified woman, and the harsh face still in the act of withdrawing behind the rear curtains.
    Broaditch took in the bright, dark, snapping eyes, bushy hair, and instantly recognized him and instantly said, “Lohengrin!”
    He stopped there, staring with an expression of weary resignation.
    “Your mouth has just slain you and this slut, you blocky oaf.”
    And he leaped forward in one terrible motion (and Broaditch’s mind thought: this is death .) across the mattress, snatching up the dagger (a sudden bloodjet as it came free), and striking a terrific claw-like slash at Broaditch’s throat that barely missed as the big man flung himself back with surprising agility, whipping free his own dirk, crouching, ready, in the aisle.
    Lohengrin, leaning out, saw a number of interested spectators and pulled back, cursing and hissing at his escaped victim. “It would be better for you to cut out your tongue! If you speak, I will give you the worst death you could