Murder in Black Letter
Copyright© 2025 by Poul Anderson
Chapter 13
The restaurant was small and quiet. Corinna and Kintyre had a corner table, where the light fell gently.
“By rights we should have a Genever apéritif,” he said, “but I’m convinced Dutch gin is distilled from frogs. On the other hand, Dutch beer compares to Hof, Rothausbräu, or Kronenbourg.”
“You’ve traveled a lot, haven’t you?” she said. “I envy you that. Never got farther than the Sierras myself.”
A little embarrassed—he had not been trying to play the cosmopolite—he fell silent while she glanced at her menu. “Will you order for me?” she asked finally. “You know your way around these dishes.”
He made his selections, pleased by the compliment. When the beer came, in conical half-liter glasses, he raised his: “Prosit.”
“Salute.” She drank slowly. “Wonderful. But this may not be wise on top of two whiskies.”
“It’s all right if you go easy. Take the word of a hardened bowser.” He searched out an inward weariness on the strong broad face. “You could use a little anesthesia.”
“Well—” She set her glass down. “Bear with me. I promise not to blubber, but I may get sentimental. Or maybe even hilarious, I don’t know. I’ve never lost anyone close to me before now.”
“I understand,” said Kintyre.
“And please help me steer clear of myself,” she added. “I would like to talk about Bruce, and otherwise about wholly neutral things.” She managed a smile. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. You’re the Machiavelli specialist. Our theater did Mandragola last year. Tell me, how could the same man write that and Il Principe?”
“Actually,” said Kintyre, “I would be surprised if the author of The Prince—or, rather, the Discourses on Livy, since The Prince is really just a pamphlet—I’d be surprised if he had not done sheer amusement equally well. One of the more damnable heresies of this era is its notion that a man can only be good at one thing. That versatility is not the inborn human norm.”
“I’ve often thought the same,” she said. “I suppose you know Bruce changed his major to history because of you. He took one of your classes as a freshman. Now I see why.”
“Well,” he stalled, and hoisted his beer.
She shifted the conversation with a tact he appreciated: “But how did you happen to get interested in it, in the Italian Renaissance yet, with a name like yours?”
“I served time in one of those private schools back East,” he said. “The Romance languages master got me enthusiastic.”
He paused, then continued slowly: “I entered Harvard, but Pearl Harbor happened in my sophomore year. I was in the Navy the whole war, the Pacific; fell in love with the Bay Area on my shore leaves, which is why I came here to live afterward. But during the war I had a lot of time to read and try to think where this world was going. To the wolves, I decided—like Machiavelli’s world—I suppose that’s why I feel so close to him. He was also studying the problem of how the decent man can survive. He spoke the truth as he saw it, because he didn’t think that civilization should be encumbered with nice-nellyisms that the barbarians had already discarded. Wherefore he became the original Old Nick, and the very people—us, the free people, whom he could warn—won’t listen, because we think he speaks for the enemy!”
He braked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to orate at you.”
“I wish more men had convictions,” she said. “Even when I don’t agree. Everybody respects everybody else’s sensibilities so much these days, there’s nothing left to talk about but football scores.”
“You’re very kind,” he said. “Ah, here come the appetizers. Pay special attention to the characteristically Dutch delicacy, Russian eggs, but don’t ask me how they came by that name.”
Later, after much talk, some of it with enough laughter to tell him she was a merry soul in better days:
A ruby spark lay in their glasses of Cherry Heering. “This isn’t Dutch either,” said Kintyre. “However.”
“Do you know,” she said, “I begin to understand the old idea of a wake. Getting the clan together and having one fine brawling celebration. It’s more an act of love, really, than drawing the parlor curtains and talking in hushed voices.”
“That’s the Latin who speaks,” he said. “We Protestant races are cursed with the tradition that misery is a virtue.”
“But you, you Bostonian Scot or whatever you are—I hear a trace of accent—you approve.”
“I left Boston for the Pacific at the arthritic age of nine.”
“What was the reason for that?”
“My father was a marine architect. He was laid off in, uh, 1930. Being an imaginative man, he spent his savings on a schooner, hired a Mexican crew, and we all lit out for the South Seas. For seven years we lived on that schooner.”
“Bruce told me you were a sailor.” Her eyes were very bright upon him. “But how did you make it pay?”
“Miscellaneously. Sometimes we carried cargo and passengers between islands. The passengers were usually Kanakas, and those who didn’t have money would pay us in food and hospitality when we got where we were going. Father wasn’t after riches anyway. His main enterprise was to gather and prepare marine specimens, for museums and colleges and so on. Toward the end, he was making a name for himself. Well, we never saw much cash money, but we never needed a lot either.”
Kintyre held his glass to the light, tossed it off and followed it with a scalding sip of coffee. Why was he speaking of this? He had barely mentioned his youth to anyone else, except Trig, who was the friend of a dozen years. Trig had led him into the dojo, hoping that its discipline of mind as well as body would strangle the horror. But Corinna had the story out of him in a matter of hours, not even knowing what she did.
He had taken her for Morna last night.
“What happened?” she asked. Her tone said that he needn’t answer unless he wanted to.
“A typhoon and a lee shore,” he said. “I was the only survivor.”
He took out a cigarette. She folded her hands and waited, in case he should want to say more.
“That was in the Gilbert Islands,” he continued after the smoke was curling down his tongue. “The British authorities shipped me home. The guardianship was wished onto a cousin of my mother’s. So I went to the boarding school I spoke of, and summers I worked at a seaside resort. Don’t feel sorry for me, it was quite a good life.”
“But a lonely one,” she said.
He grinned with a single corner of his mouth. “‘He travels the fastest who travels alone.’”
“I understand a great deal now.” She held her cup so lightly that he grew aware he was in danger of breaking his. Tendon by tendon, he eased his fingers. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Bruce was always puzzled by you. As I imagine most people are. You don’t seem to belong anywhere, to anything or anyone. And yet you do. You belong to a world that foundered in the ocean.”
It jarred him. Not given to self-analysis, he had imagined he lived a logical, well adapted round of days.
“Sometime you’ll build it again,” she said. “Oh, not the physical ship, you’ve more important things on hand, but a personal world.”
And again it was a blow, to be shown himself as alien as a castaway from Mars.
“Please,” he said, more roughly than he had intended. “I don’t find my personality the most interesting object on earth.”
She nodded, as if to herself. The long hair swept her flat high-boned cheeks. “Of course. You wouldn’t.”
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