Rose Peddals, Hurrah!

Copyright 1986 David E. Cortesi

Had a passing Jolian swan glanced down, or a wheeling Grimlian raven for that matter, it would have seen the tallest of the three, a dapper elderly man with a cane, speaking earnestly to his companions; would have seen them, a young woman of great beauty and a young man with a forceful jaw, squaring their shoulders, taking deep breaths, looking at each other forthrightly, and in general preparing themselves as for some great endeavor, before all turned and strode stalwartly into the portico.

"Now, none of your Jolian frivolidy today, miss," the Grimlian border guard told Polly Hannay, who had smiled at him as she stepped up.

"And don't you try scaddering rose peddals," admonished an officer in shiny black, a stocky and determined woman, who stood behind the guard.

"Why, officer, I would never," protested Polly, laying her sincerest hand athwart her bosom.

"See you don't," the guard said, "and show forth your passpord."

"It's just here, in my bosom with your gaze," said Polly. She reached between her lapels and then, after a silvery giggle, brought forth not the lime-green folder of a Jolian passport, but a fluff of rose petals. She tossed the pinch up and drew breath to puff, but the scatter fell incomplete when the senior officer, whose name was Molly Bedinum, stepped quickly forward and popped Polly in the tum with a rock-hard fist.

"Yough!" said Polly, and doubled up.

"Peddals, ptah," said Molly as she whipped opened a canvas sack so that Polly could pitch in, which she did headfirst.

"Oh, my impulsive dear," murmered Sir Huckle Bracken, who was third in line, to Frank Phlox who had been second but now became first as Molly Bedinum hauled the sack behind the counter.

"Step up, step up," said the main border guard. "Show your passpord, young sir."

Frank was incoherent. "I, you, she, he, you," he said, waving at the sack that was departing, hopping and yelping, at the glossy boot heels of Molly Bedinum, through an unmarked, grimy door.

"This is Grimlian soil, young sir," the guard cautioned. "A procedural madder endirely. Unless," and he squinted more closely at Frank, "the young sir is with thad person?"

"Why, she's yike!" said Frank, as Sir Huckle rammed a bony knuckle into the small of his back, "Yes, a total stranger. Never saw her before. Not here."

"We are being quite stern with they who display Public Leviddy, young sir."

"Yes." Frank's eyes went to the unmarked door. "What becomes of them?"

"Another department, sir." Stamp! "Have a severe visid, sir."

Sir Huckle strode onto the windy granite Plaza of Arrival and looked out across the Avenue of Achievement. "Well, Frank, my niece very nearly landed us in the soup. My word, what a dreary prospect."

"You think they'll keep her such a long time, then, sir?"

"What, Polly? We won't let them keep her. Why do you ask?"

"I'm sorry, sir, you spoke of a dreary prospect, and..."

"Isn't it? That was once the Garden of Sport and Leisure, if you please." He waved at acres of cracked clay across the untrafficked Avenue. "Everyone used to promenade here, from the king on down. Rufract loved the Garden, the silly old fool; he spend all his Saturdays here betting on the ponies and ogling the girls." The old gentleman peered into a greener view than the present one, then recollected himself. "Well, we should be on our way."

He began to stride down the Plaza toward the only visible cab, a tattered affair with a dispirited horse and a driver who seemed to be asleep.

"Never go to the track with a monarch, Frank," he tossed over his shoulder. "It'll ruin you. Old Rufract didn't handle money, of course, so someone else had to place his bets. 'Bracken, go put a Pund for me on that one with the white stocking,' he'd say. And when the brute came in, Wonzy, the old boy's Privy Purse as he was then, would be right there to take the ticket, but if it didn't, try and find him. Ah, if I'd known then what Wonzinas was capable of... Here, you!" He rapped on the cabby's knee with his cane.

The fellow drew his sackcloth coat tighter, but opened one eye. "The sirs will go away?" he asked mournfully.

Sir Huckle was already climbing into the cab, heaving and blowing fierce puffs through his moustache, so it fell to Frank to deal with the driver.

"We want to go ..." He looked toward his mentor, but Sir Huckle was guiding the toe of his artificial left leg through the narrow doorway of the cab. "See here, driver, where does your government detain people. Hold them."

The driver looked up ... left ... right, but found no guidance. He looked at his feet. At last he looked back at Frank. "The sir wants, maybe, please, a woman?"

Sir Huckle was settled in. "No, no, no, driver: to prison."

"Ah, to prison." He clearly found this homier ground. "The civil, sirs, or the poliddical?"

"Political, I imagine," said Frank.

"Nadurally. Domesdic or foreign?"

"Foreign."

"Of course. The young sir will step in and we will go Nowhere."

"Where is this?" said Polly Hannay to Molly Bedinum.

"You heard me," said Molly as she shook out the burlap sack and began folding it. "The name is a small joke of the First Minisder, to tell the tedious relatives he finds you Nowhere, so maybe they cease to bother him." There was a lump in the folds: Polly's reticule. Molly fingered the silver mesh and said "Very preddy."

Polly, rising quickly from the squeaky cot and reaching, said "I'll thank you to give me back my --" but was too late.

Molly popped open the clasp and the smell of roses arose. She turned her head aside and squeezed the bag shut; stepped back, hooked the cell door with her left foot, and swung it to with a crash.

"This," said Molly through the barred opening in the door, "is enough to hang you, silly foreign woman."

"Oh dear," Polly said, holding hands to cheeks in pretty horror, "Oh dear oh dear."

"Oh, my," said Frank, leaning out of the cab window and looking up, and up, and further up the beetling walls of the Palace of Correction, all arrogant buttresses of sooty-black sandstone and dolorous gargoyles wearing pigeon-streaks.

"Nowhere, foreign sirs," called the cabby. "Goodby now."

"Oh, poor Polly," said Frank. "How that architecture must crush her. Sir Huckle, we must rescue her."

"Patience, Frank; your fiance is a Bracken, and Brackens are hardy. She's perfectly safe, so long as they don't poke too deep in her purse. Let's have a recce. Not yet, you." Sir Huckle hooked his cane on the cabby's elbow.

Then Frank stiffened. "That's all right, sir, he can go. Here, driver."

"What do you mean, Frank? We may still need the cab, and anyway," he lowered his voice, "you're giving him far too much; that's sixteen Wonze, nearly a Pund."

"It's all right, sir," hissed Frank, winking, stepping hard on the older man's instep. It was the left, artificial, instep, but perhaps the wink was noticed, for Sir Huckle unhooked the driver who inspected the coin, sniffed sadly, and drove away.

Frank looked both ways; other pedestrians on the broad street were few and distant. In the portico to their left the uniformed guards stood in a formal posture, heads bowed. "All clear, I think. Sir, look up there, between the fifth buttress and that ghastly thing like a cow with tooth-ache. Do you see what I do?"

"By Glee, my boy, I do. I do." Almost invisible against the overcast, a thin skein of violet smoke drifted from the roof high above. "What a stroke of luck, Polly's being arrested; it's led us just right."

"Oh, dear, what is that awful thing with the spikes," Polly asked as two guards in black, under the stern eye of Molly Bedinum in glossy black, marched her into a large, cluttered, echoing chamber.

"A device of correction," said Molly. "Nod for you just yed. Today we make a Grimlian of you, with this." She produced a large, flanged, copper ball; really a species of diving helmet, Polly saw, with a hose to the top and a small window set in the front. The guards, under Molly's stern direction, quickly strapped her into a heavy chair under a single bright light. Then they waited, Molly tapping a finger on the helmet in her arms, for long minutes.

"Shall we tell riddles?" Polly asked hopefully. "Riddles often help to pass the time." But Molly only glared at her. "Perhaps later you'll feel more like it," Polly said.

Then a door boomed hollow and booted feet advanced from the shadows: it was a small, portly man with a waxed moustache in a black uniform of elegant cut. Molly Bedinum came to attention before him. "The prisoner is ready for doloration, First Minisder."

The First Minister walked all around Polly, then said "She is very slighd, nod like our women. A few days in our air withoud her supply of rose oil will do the trick, perhaps?"

"Perhaps, First Minisder, but we cannot wait. There are more ad large than this frothy one. We must make her dudiful, for questions."

"Ah. Very well, proceed."

Molly stood before her and lifted the helmet.

"Say farewell to frivoliddy, woman."

"Ebullience will never die," Polly piped, and the helmet thumped down on her shoulders. "Ouch!" she said, as from within a bucket.

Molly waved, a guard twisted a tap, and violet fumes filled the helmet and hid Polly's face in the window.

"It was Wonzinas, the one who calls himself First Minister now, that did the mischief," Sir Huckle announced. Frank frowned and nodded at the party of uniformed Grimlians across the room, one or two of whom had looked up from silent contemplation of their steins of sour beer at the sound of the old man's jovial baritone. The other tables in the chilly dining room of the Royal Grimlian hotel were empty.

"Well, it was," Sir Huckle continued in a lower voice. "No sooner did Rufract turn up his toes than Wonzy announces they're to have deepest mourning. Dark clothes, a solemn curfew, and -- this was the mischief -- funeral pyres on every street corner, to burn a special incense.

"Now, the Grimlians then weren't a bad lot. Left to themselves, they'd have done much as we do: give the old boy a decent wake, get 'im into the ground and the crown onto his son, and get on with life. But they thought old Wonzy's notions for a high funeral celebration were very tony, the latest thing in pomp. So they stood around in their best suits and smelled that damned purple smoke, and the corners of their mouths went down and they looked at their feet, and ever since, when anyone says 'frog,' they all hop. Before they could turn around young Rufus had put his X to a paper that gave the country to Wonzy, and it was a crime to laugh in the street or work less than sixty hours a week."

Their table creaked as a beefy soldier leaned both fists on it. "And is solemnidy and hard work so bad, strangers?" he rumbled.

"Also obedience to proper authoridy?" said another, leaning over Frank.

"Efficiency and no back talk?" said a third.

"Decorum and dedication to national goals is bad?" said the fourth.

"No!" replied Frank stoutly. "Or, wait," as he tried to work out the right answer to the inverted questions. "Yes! I mean, solemnity and decorum and all that are fine on solemn occasions, and bad when that's all one is permitted to be. And hard work is grand when it's work you want to do, and awful if it's something you don't care about doing or think shouldn't be done. And willing obedience to an ideal feels jolly good, but coerced obedience to a despot must feel dismal. And -- what was the other thing?"

"No back talk from subversive foreigners, maybe," said the largest soldier, as all four closed in on Frank. "Closed mouths on smard people," said another, putting a hand on Frank's shoulder; Frank shook it off and backed away, only to find the heavy table behind him. Another arm reached out; he cuffed it away. A fist shot out; he blocked it. Two reached for him from opposite sides and grabbed his upper arms but from a pocket behind his lapel he managed to snatch out a handful of rose petals, and flung them in the faces of his assailants.

They froze and watched the petals drift down. The tallest pointed solemnly at a petal on his shoulder -- then flicked it to the floor. The four looked at Frank, at the petals, at each other. One's lip quirked. One winked. One said, "Rose peddals." One said "Ptah." Two seized his arms again; one pulled his lapels open to trap his arms; the biggest drew back a fist.

Sir Huckle laid the narrow blade of his sword-cane lightly against the neck of this soldier and said, "Don't move, please, or you will be badly hurt. You two, let him go. Thank you. Frank, just slip over here, please." Frank stepped away. "Good night, gentlemen. I've left an eight-Wonze coin on the table; please enjoy another beer with our compliments. Come, Frank."

They climbed the stairs in wary silence, but as they entered their bleak, dusty room, Frank could no longer contain himself. "Sir, that's twice! Twice that rose petals have failed us. I thought the rose was a specific for the Grimlian Dolor. What's wrong?"

Sir Huckle sighed. "It's my fault for bringing you two delightful children with me without teaching you a proper skepticism. Frank, the essential oil of our Jolian roses will counteract the Wonzinian incense, even in the small amounts evaporating from a few fresh petals."

"But they had no effect! The soldiers laughed, only laughed."

"Frank, you haven't yet encountered a Grimlian who was under the influence of the Dolor. No one who is could laugh at anything, much less your your petals, nor would have enough initiative to taunt you."

"But, if they are not subdued by it, then they must be protected somehow?"

"Indeed."

"But then they must support its use on their fellow citizens -- knowingly?"

"Indeed."

"From their own self-interest!"

"Indeed."

"But that's infamous!"

"I wish you and Polly could inherit a prettier world, my boy, but there it is."

Frank turned away abruptly to stare out the streaky window. "So all the petals and vials of attar we smuggled are of no use against the true powers in this place."

"Not directly, no."

"In fact we are here, hazarding our safety and Polly's, on a fool's errand."

"Not quite. Frank, look at me." The older man put a hand on the shoulder of the younger, who looked at him bleakly. "In fact, our enemies have prepared their own defeat and our victory. All we have to do is claim it."

"Oh, Sir Huckle, I would like to believe that."

"Then while you unpack your climbing apparatus from the false bottom of our trunk, I'll explain how it can be so."

Polly sat, hands folded in her lap, on a stone sill below a tall, paned window. She was alone in a corridor on the topmost floor of the Palace of Correction. No one guarded her; she had been told to wait until she was called, and she would obey. While she waited she examined the stone floor with mild interest. Occasionally a tear slipped out of the corner of her eye.

Nothing moved in the corridor except a cockroach; to judge from the profound silence, nothing more moved in the rest of the building. It was so quiet that Polly could hear the rustle of her own dress as she breathed. That tiny noise and -- others. There were the faintest of clicks, the weakest of rasping scrapes, and the tiniest of slaps as it might be of a palm clutching a sooty cornice far, far away. Gradually these tiny noises grew until they were clear above the rustle of her breathing, until an especially audible click frightened the cockroach and it ran into a crack. At last the sounds became unmistakeably those of someone climbing through the darkness outside the window -- although if Polly heard them at all, she paid no attention.

Frank might have, indeed should have, climbed past and never looked in the window, but he had peeped around the buttress into each lower window and seen only empty corridors, so he also peeped into this, the last before the dark ascent to the roof.

He almost failed to recognize Polly, because the window glass was rippled and dirty, because the light was poor, but most of all because her hopeless slouch and immobility were so unlike his fiance's normal bearing. Even when he had negotiated the buttress and could tap on a corner pane with an outstretched arm, she remained in her dejected slump.

Had she turned, she would have been able to see Frank as he worked his way to the window ledge. Once he slipped, and with a scrape and clatter that was quite audible in the corridor, disappeared from view, but he rose again like a dim moon over the ledge. He peered left and right, trying to see if anyone was in the corridor, then scratched at the glass, then tapped several times, then rapped with his knuckles: Polly didn't turn. Then she did turn, but away from the window. She had heard (though Frank could not) the distant sounds of a door thrown open and of boots on stone. It might have been Molly Bedinum, who had told her, "Wait here until I come for you," but the booted steps faded away in the distance and Polly lost interest.

Frank lost patience. He wound a dozen turns of line around his fist for padding and punched a pane: lightly, with no effect; harder, and it cracked; harder still and it fell in chunks with a rattle. This, Polly heard. She turned and stood watching with glum attention as he broke away sharp bits from the corner of the pane and reached through to unlatch the casement. He swung it out, swung himself in, dropped lightly to the floor -- and his heel landed on a shard of glass that slipped and he sat down hard. Polly looked down on him, fingertips covering her lips, as if she were trying to remember something.

"Polly?" Frank whispered as he scrambled to his feet, "Polly, what's the matter?" He clasped her shoulders; she only looked at him, wide-eyed.

"It's Frank," she said, as if explaining something.

"Polly, what have they done to you?" He gave her a little shake, then an embrace to which she yielded limply.

"It is Frank," she explained over his shoulder, "What a pity."

"Polly, we must hide; we can get you away." He held her away and tried to catch her eye.

"Oh, no," she said. "I am to wait here until she comes for me, and then be hanged. Oh, Frank, it's all so sad." And a tear ran down her cheek.

"Oh, those devils," Frank cursed. "But wait, I have ... oh, no." From his breast pocket he drew a single, wilted rose petal. Frantically he plumbed and patted all the many pockets of his stalking jacket, while Polly drifted back to the window sill and sat down again.

Somewhere down the corridor a door banged open and a distant rumour of voices came to them. Polly stood up and looked attentive. "It is she," she said.

Frank looked around desparately. The broken glass would give him away even if the open window did not. He had a mission to complete, but he couldn't leave Polly to the mercy of that Grimlian woman again, not in this condition. Her condition -- "Wait, I have it," he said aloud. He knelt and gripped Polly by the elbows. "Polly, dear, you must obey me," he whispered fiercely.

"What, you too?" she asked, apathetically.

"Yes!" he hissed. "You must go and find the censer."

"The censer?"

"Yes. Sir Huckle says it's probably in the basement, like a boiler." He swung a small pack from his shoulder, scrabbled in it, laid a small, heavy, brass box in her lap. "Here it is, the attar bomb. Find the censer, put this inside it. Then get well away."

Boots were clicking around the distant corner. "I'll draw them off." He folded her hands over the box, which was ticking quietly like a fine watch. "Wait until we're gone, then go." The boots were louder. He kissed her forehead, whispered "I love you," and walked, whistling, toward the corner. Polly half-raised a hand as if to wave.

Molly Bedinum, two guards in tow, came round that corner on Polly's right. Frank pantomimed surprise, then turned and began to run back the way he'd come.

"Afder him!" shouted Molly, and the guards ran; Molly strode after. Polly turned her head to watch as Frank and his pursuers passed her. They turned the left corner, and at once there came from beyond it a scrabble of feet and a startled shout. Frank burst back around the corner toward Polly and Molly, followed by one guard, then by the second, limping. Molly moved to block him; he feinted left, right, and just dodged her reach. All three pursued him around the corner on Polly's right, and the clatter of their feet faded in the distance.

Polly stood and, holding the attar bomb before her like an offering, walked off slowly and steadily in the opposite direction.

"To old times."

"Old times."

"Ahhh. Well, First Minister, I'm honored you could see me at this late hour," said Sir Huckle Bracken.

The First Minister set down his glass and resumed his seat behind his desk. "As a madder of fact, Bracken, when you came hammering on my secredary's door I was jusd thinking of sending for you. Evenings are dull ad the Royal Grimlian, I thoughd; why nod bring Sir Huckle and his young companion around for a chad."

"How extraordinarily thoughtful of you, old fellow. I would have brought the lad, but in fact I left him sleeping. Young people make such an adventure out of travel, everything new and all that, quite wore him out."

"A shame, you musd introduce him to me another time. Bud perhaps he was nod the young person you wanted to discuss, yes?"

"Ah, Wonzy, you read me like a book. It's this silly young niece of mine, who simply had to make a romantic gesture, most inappropriate and a discourtesy as well. Your border people popped her into prison, as well they might have done and I hope it's taught her a thing or two. But she's only a youngster, and I told her mother I'd look after her and, well, I wondered if you mightn't be ready to parole her to me. Eh?"

"Hmmm. I fear id will nod be so simple. You see, the girl was in possession of quide a quandidy of condrolled subsdances. Enough, I am sorry to say, to consdidude a charge of Undermining the Gravidy of the Sdade. It is a piddy," and he spread his hands, "But we musd hang her."

"I say, Wonzy, that isn't funny."

"Indeed nod; I wepd when I signed the order."

"Surely an appeal ..."

"I am the appeal board; go ahead."

"Ah. Of course. What exactly did you have in mind?"

"There is the matter of rectifying our border with South Mirthly, a question on which you have some influence, eh?"

"First Minister, this is a matter of state, not ..."

"So swanlike a neck to be sdretched."

"Now, see here, Wonzy ..."

"A momend." The First Minister got up and walked to the door of his office. It was a tall door, covered in green leather quilted with rows of brass-headed nails, yet through it had been leaking a steadily rising din of running feet and shouts. The First Minister threw open the door.

It opened onto the rotunda of the Palace of Corrections. Around the balustraded mezzanine that circled the hall a gaggle of guards, egged on by a breathless Molly Bedinum, was pursuing a slender young man in tweeds.

Several things happened almost at once as the First Minister was stepping out into the rotunda to get a better view. Some of the guards got the idea of doubling back to meet their quarry in his circuit. Frank, perhaps anticipating this, hopped up to sit on the balustrade itself, then leaped out into space. As he dropped onto one of the flagpoles that projected from the mezzanine floor there was, somewhere below them all, a muffled thump, but nobody had time to think about it. Frank wobbled and could not quite secure his balance on the quivering pole. He dropped to hang by his hands, then dropped to the floor and landed with a yelp. He began to scramble to his feet but yelped again, clutched his ankle, and rolled to lie at the feet of the First Minister.

"Jolia forever," he said brightly, "I surrender," and lay back panting as the first of the guards galloped up.

"Get manacles on him," Molly snapped.

"Manacle thad old fool Bracken, as well," said the First Minister. "We'll have the helmed on both of them, and then we'll see."

"Your pardon, First Minisder, but who is this Bracken?"

"The fellow in my office, of course."

"Your pardon, First Minister, but there is no one there."

Sir Huckle Bracken came across Polly Hannay in a hallway behind the rotunda. "Polly dear," he began, and stopped as she walked right past him. "Oh," he said, and stepped in front of her. "Here, now." He plucked a pinch of rose petals from a pocket of his vest, rolled them briskly between his palms, and held his cupped hands before the young woman's face.

She sniffed. Sniffed again. Leaned forward and sniffed, and inhaled deeply. Opened her eyes wide and said "Oh, Uncle!" and hugged the old man, who said "There, there. There, there," and patted her back.

"Oh, Uncle," she said into his cravat, "It was so awful, they were going to hang this person and I felt so sorry for her but I couldn't do anything about her and she was me. And I couldn't even care when Frank came, and -- oh! Uncle, they must have caught Frank!"

"So they did, my dear, but they won't hold him much longer. Let's go get him back, shall we? And on the way, we'll open all the windows we pass."

"What do you mean, nod there? She was censed widless; she musd still be there. Look again." Molly Bedinum slammed the door of the questioning room in the face of the dismayed guard and returned to the side of the First Minister, facing Frank.

"It's useless," the First Minister said. "He claims not to know about the old man or the girl; says he broke into the building for a prank." He waved to a guard. "Put the helmet on him. We have to get to the bottom of this."

The helmet was shoved down to Frank's shoulders. Molly Bedinum opened the gascock with a vicious yank and fumes began to hiss into the helmet.

Not purple fumes.

A pink vapor was filling the helmet, a delicate rosy gas that didn't hide Frank's face in the window. It could be seen that he was sniffing and smiling broadly.

"What!" Molly exclaimed. She snatched the helmet from Frank's head ("I say!" he protested, and rubbed an ear) and sniffed its contents.

"Rose peddals! Ptah!" she shrieked, and hurled the helmet at Frank, who caught it and offered it to the guard to sniff. "First Minisder, we must hang him!" She snorted. "Hang them all!" she whooped.

"Yes!" wheezed the First Minister, nodding vigorously. He snickered. "Oh, yes, hang it all!" And he collapsed giggling on Molly's shoulders, and she on his, and they slumped down back to back on the floor, whooping and laughing hysterically as tears rolled down their faces. The guard's face was scarlet and his cheeks bulged with suppressed laughter. Frank thumbed his nose at the guard, causing him to collapse in helpless giggles, and walked out of the room.

He found Polly and Sir Huckle in a nearby corridor opening windows, and joined them. While opening windows in the topmost corridor (as they passed the one through which Frank had entered, Polly pulled his head down and kissed him soundly) Sir Huckle pointed out that a large crowd of bewildered, but jovial, people had collected outside in the dawn light. They went down to the grand front steps to greet it, stepping over hysterically-giggling guards and clerks on their way.

"You see, Polly," explained Sir Huckle, "the incense in the air was for the common folks; it kept them dazed and biddable and, incidentally, dolorous, just as you were."

"Ugh; how awful. But that Molly person and the rest weren't dazed at all."

"Quite true. The ones who ruled took a counteracting dose in a monthly tablet, to push them up as much as the fumes in the air kept them down. So when, thanks to you, the incense fumes stopped, their antidote continued. With the air clear, they become helplessly manic, and will stay so, I imagine, for some days. Meanwhile, the attar of roses now pumping out of the censer is stimulating these good people, whom we must now greet." He fumbled in a vest pocket, and pressed something into her palm. "Go ahead, my dear."

So Polly stepped forward and hurled a puff of rose petals as high as she could, and the crowd, or at least those near enough to make out what she had done, shouted "Rose peddals, hurrah!"