the substarosta's casebook 5 - and the ugly

 

 

Chapter 5 And the ugly

 

“I’m not taking you into the Sign of the Three Goats!”

Floriana, currently in the guise of Florek the page, nursed a mead in some resigned resentment at her husband’s protectiveness.

True, the Sign of the Three Goats had a reputation so bad that ‘disreputable’ was left far behind, and ‘wretched hive of scum and villainy’ barely scratched the surface. However, there had been some efforts to clean up a tavern once known as ‘The Church,’ for errant husbands to claim to have been at the church to wrathful wives, and since there had been a brawl in the Three Goats, which had involved Kazimierz and Mariola, there had needed to be some structural repair as well as cosmetic upgrades... or as Dawid Starski, Floriana’s husband had put it, they had been forced to paint the new section of wall required where Kazimierz had thrown a pimp of juvenile prostitutes through the window, taking frame and part of the wall with him. The structure had never been sturdy to start off with.

That, however, was merely incidental, a minor incident in the day of a substarosta. And they were supposed to be covering the more up-market taverns in any case.

“Warszawa has kindly let us know,” Starosta Młocki had said, with biting sarcasm, “That they believe a gang of thieves has fled before the justices in the city and are headed our way. They specialise in taking by surprise those who are half-cut and robbing them, beating those who protest.”

Which was why Floriana was sitting in the Sign of the Golden Bells, one of the most prestigious inns in the city of Większy-Bydlin, which Dawid believed was above the touch of the thuggish thieves, whilst he went to shake down some of the regulars of the Three Goats, who might have information on the newcomers.

When the six thugs with heavy clubs came in, Floriana’s eyes lit up with unholy glee. So much for keeping her safe.

“Right, gi’s orl yer valuables!” said the leader.

“Throw down your weapons and put your hands behind your heads and march straight to the jailhouse,” said Floriana, standing.

“Ho! You want to make a fight of it, you snotty little szlachcic?” demanded the leader.

“You are wrong,” said Floriana. “You ask, ‘Do you want to make a fight of it, my lord, you snotty little szlachcic, sir.’ And as I am of the Raven banner, the answer is, ‘Of course,’ as there’s precious little other entertainment in this tavern, because the band can’t play anything but French ballads and the singer’s vibrato is so extreme it makes her look like a blancmange.”

She took the time in which she was speaking to edge to the end of the table so that only one thug could come at her at a time, unless they went over the table. Her back was to the wall.

“Here! What’s wrong with my vibrato?” demanded the singer, offended.

“If it stuck to your voice, nothing,” said Floriana, whose eyes were watching the brigands. “It’s just that it threatens to vibrate everything out of the top of your French gown.”

“I was enjoying that,” said another of the patrons. “I had a bet on with myself that she’d lose a teat if she went any higher. Did you need to deputise a constable, my lord?”

“If you’re volunteering, I won’t turn it down,” said Floriana. The thugs had begun to move. Her new ally picked up a chair and smashed it, taking up one of the legs, and leaping agilely to the tabletop beside her.

“Now, let’s see you villyuns try to hurt the little boy,” he said. “Name’s Dawidowicz,” he told her. “Your brother and his page saved my son’s life and got a load of stolen furs back for me; Substarosta Bystrzanowski is your brother, isn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Floriana.

“Can’t mistake that hell-ring in the eyes, my lord, even though your hair’s lighter,” said Dawidowicz.

The leading brigand flicked a finger at two of his men to take down the furrier, whilst he himself advanced on Floriana. He paused, briefly, as the twin hiss of two sabres being drawn signalled that the boy he thought he was about to bully was not unarmed;  but how good could a slender youth be against the strength of a man?

He did not understand the whirling of the two blades, and he was still wondering briefly where to strike the youth with his club when he no longer had a club, because he no longer had a hand holding it. He had little time to ponder on this before the thoughts drained out of his head with the blood as the other sabre swept through his neck. Floriana took sabre drill seriously; and if she was not in the same class as Mariola, she was good enough to outclass any brigand with a club.

Dawidowicz had taken a few lumps but was battling away valiantly, and most important he was preventing any of the thugs from climbing on the table.

Floriana considered, and used the Cossack dancing she had learned to leap up beside him. They tacitly set their backs together and Floriana’s whirling blades quickly accounted for two more. Dawidowicz was keeping another occupied, and the final two, seeing no sense in selling their lives, started to back away.

This was when the door opened.

 The newcomer was Dawid Starski, who took in the scene in an instant.

The two thugs going the other way heard twin hissing blades behind them, and froze.

“Going somewhere, precious?” said Dawid, genially.

The thugs slumped, dropped their clubs, and put their hands behind their necks. Floriana moved in on the one fighting Dawidowicz, and he surrendered too.

“My thanks, good Dawidowicz; will you come to have your bruises tended, give deposition, and receive a day’s pay for a special constable?” said Floriana.

“Gladly,” said Dawidowicz. “Er, what about the dead ones, my lord?”

“We’ll send constables to take out the trash,” said Floriana. She turned to the barkeeper. “Sorry about the mess.”

“Think nothing of it... my lord,” he growled.

“Florek, you whelp! Can’t you stay out of trouble?” roared Dawid, beyond grateful to see his wife cheerful and unwounded.

“But, my lord! I thought you sent them from the Three Goats to entertain me,” said Floriana, opening her eyes wide.

“Whelp!” he said. And her eyes laughed at him.

 

 I've a two-part story about Adele after this

the substarosta's case book 4

 so, someone mentioned Jan settling in and I managed to pull off a story  to do so; French smut having been seen as a problem in England, I assume it was not appreciated elsewhere either. Interestingly, in France, pictorial pornography was shocking but written smut was considered fine. though there were people deemed to have gone too far, viz the Marquis de Sade. Anyway, on with the story which proves there's one born every minute, and fraud is nothing new. 

 

 

Chapter 4 The Good, the Bad, and the Smutty

 

“This is Jan Syruć; don’t be put off by the name, he’s a half-Syruć as you might say,” said Klemens Młocki, introducing the ginger-haired, clean-shaven man. “He’s our new assistant.”

“I thought it would be preferable to working for my brother, even if I have to take a dip in pay as substarosta’s assistant,” said Jan. “Imagine my joy to find I’m paid more to expect more appreciation.”

“Welcome to the team,” said Dawid Starski. “I’ve just been confirmed as second sub-starosta, so you’re filling my shoes. My page is my wife, which a Raven banner way of doing things, even as Lew Krasiński is actually Mariola Bystrzanowska, the one real Raven amongst us, and the rest Ravens-in-law by acquisition, marriage, casuistry and jiggery-pokery.”

“I’ve heard of the White Ravens,” said Jan.

“What’s the briefing, boss?” asked Floriana Starska, otherwise known as the page, Florek.

“I had word that there’s a heap of pornographic pictures in from France being sold on the black market,” said Klemens. “And whatever you think of pornography, and that it is in no ways more explicit than the Rubenesque ceilings in many a magnate’s palace, it’s the association with crime which makes it a problem; men like looking at intimate pictures, and it funds criminals to sell the pictures.”

“Maybe it should be legal,” said Dawid.

“But where do you draw a line?” asked Klemens. “There are some subjects which are frankly disgusting, like with children or animals, but with a picture of a young prostitute, when do you judge her to be a child? And yes, I’m more aware of that because of Antonin Syruć, who was loathsome. Not to mention the old man and his proclivities in assaulting the horse of the statue of Jan Sobieski, or the hippocampus in the fountain.”

“My family are moderately loathsome,” said Jan, apologetically.

“Not your fault,” said Klemens.

“What are we looking for?” asked Mariola.

“Furtive men in bars, down alleyways, looking for money to change hands in exchange for small packets, about the size of plates from a magazine,” said Klemens. “Try outside the brothels; most brothel owners won’t let them operate inside and bring trouble on them.”

“You can patrol with me, Jan; call me Lew when we’re out,” said Mariola. “It’s the worst kept secret in Poland but some people still don’t know I’m Mariola. I believe the unlawful elements refer to me as ‘Bystrzanowski’s poison dwarf,’ because they’re afraid of my swords.”

“I heard what you did to my father; anyone with any sense is afraid of your swords, my lady,” said Jan.

“I hope you don’t have a problem with me,” said Mariola.

“The opposite. He wasn’t much of a father,” said Jan.

 

Evening in the city was a time when the shadows came alive with those who were out on illicit business as well as those with legitimate concerns. A pair of prostitutes started to approach two figures in kontusze, and one grabbed the arm of the other and steered her away. She met with some resistance but Mariola grinned to hear the hissed words, ‘Starosta’s office... mad Raven,’ which broke through the resistance and the two girls moved rapidly away, casting dirty looks at the pair.

“Wise call, Nutka,” said Mariola, recognising the one who had initiated the avoiding manoeuvre.

“Have a quiet night, my lord-lady,” said Nutka.

“Nutka! If you know anything about Parisian pornography, I’ll pass the word to blink if you’re not too aggressive,” said Mariola. “And  pay for information.”

Nutka came cautiously back.

“I had word that some is for sale but that it was all a swindle,” she said.

“A swindle? In what respect?” asked Mariola.

“Well, I might have heard of someone who bought a packet of pictures to bring ideas into a brothel, but he might have discovered that all but the top ones were nothing but plain paper underneath,” said Nutka. Mariola handed her a coin, and laughed.

“And the recipient doesn’t dare come in to report the fraud,” she chuckled.

“I suppose that is funny from your point of view,” said Nutka.

“I don’t make the laws, I only enforce them,” said Mariola.

Nutka sniffed, and scuttled off with her largesse, before Mariola could change her mind.

“Nutka has professional ethics,” said Mariola, to Jan. “She hasn’t an honest bone in her body in as far as a quick score of cash is concerned, but she never rolls her clients, and would probably even pick up and return the wallet of a client if it fell from his clothing during a transaction. But she gives value for money, and by all accounts is enthusiastic at her work. She would probably hand in a wallet with a lot of money, but would likely extract a finder’s fee; and as that’s more honest than many, it’s what you’ll get.  She posed as a nun asking for Maundy money – not that it was her idea – but she thought she was robbing the rich, not realising it took from the poor. She isn’t clever, but she is shrewd. I actually quite like her, in small doses. And she’ll turn in nasty criminals for free, though we always tip her.”

“There’s more of a relationship between the law and criminals than you’d realise, isn’t there?” said Jan.

“Informants are useful,” said Mariola. “Now, I’m going to try Bandy Benek’s brothel, because he has a known association with Nutka and has the imagination to consider using dirty pictures to help his clients to get in the mood.”

“I’ll be guided by you,” said Jan. “I’m getting an education.”

 

The brothel was a quiet, detached house in a back street, of a similar era to the one occupied by Mariola and Kazimierz, from the time when Większy-Bydlin was a small suburb outside Bydlin-Stary, though by no means as ornate or as large. Mariola oozed through the door like a shadow, with Jan in her wake.

“Hello, Benek,” said Mariola.

“Mother of God! The law! I ain’t done nothin’!” declared the bandy-legged little man.

“I understand someone sold you a fraudulent packet of Parisian beauties,” said Mariola.

“Dirty little cheat, yeah. Uh... It ain’t no crime to buy a packet of mostly plain paper,” said Benek.

“What, one on top as a tease?” said Mariola.

“You got it,” grumbled Benek. “And not even that smutty.”

“So, who sold it to you?” asked Mariola.

“Sleazy little creep with a Warszawa accent,” said Benek. “About your height, my lord, darkish hair, beard and moustache western fashion, sniffs a lot.”

“Marks at the top of his nose?” asked Mariola.

“Yeah, you know him?”

“Wild guess from the sniffing; syphilis,” said Mariola.

Benek spat.

“Dirty bastard; glad I never let him go with any o’ my girls,” he said.

“Obliged for the information, neighbour,” said Mariola, leading Jan out.

“You didn’t pay him?”

“He was willing to spill the beans in indignation but had not come to tell us voluntarily,” said Mariola. “And he doesn’t need it like Nutka does.”

 

It was Dawid Starski who brought in the man they sought, after Mariola had taken back a description.

Investigating a small riot with his page, he discovered a dozen or so men in an ugly mood, and one of them had produced a rope, and another a ladder.

“Come on, break it up,” said Dawid. “Oh, ho! We have a seller of smut, a purveyor of pornography, a vendor of venality. And tough luck to you all, the law wants him.”

“I never been so grateful to see a flatfoot in all me life,” said the little man.

“You’re going down, you know,” said Dawid. “Once for selling smut and once for defrauding your customers.”

“Will we get our money back?” asked one of the lynching party.

“You jest!” said Floriana. “You broke the law; be happy not to be pulled in for it. Look on it as an expensive lesson about accepting a deal that looks too good; it probably is.”

The crowd dispersed.

“So, what happened, you ran out of imported pictures?” asked Dawid.

“Naw,” said their captive. “I bought one pack in Warszawa, and I figured that if I made up twenty packets with one of the twenty pictures on top, I could make a good thing of it. I suppose I can’t bribe my way out of jail?”

“No, but you can talk your way into more time for trying bribery,” said Dawid.

“I should have stayed honest,” said the man, regretfully.

 

 

the substarosta's case book 3

 Just a shortie today; unless I suddenly come up with another, or another Adele, I'm going to risk starting The Scholar's Sweetheart of the Brandon Scandals, I have 13 chapters so far. 

 

Chapter 3 A hole is a hole is a hole, as they say

 

 

“What can I do for you, my lord brother?” Klemens Młocki looked on Timofey Syruć with some wariness. The Syruciowie were, according to Kazimierz, a regular plague; and though Timofey was not, of himself, a problem, there had been a sufficiency of problems caused by the family. Timofey had written a will in which his daughter, Regina, was willed into the care of the court if anything should happen to him, though the cousin responsible for sundry ‘accidents’ was now dead. Karol Syruć had been caught out in the cloth-smuggling and slaving operation, and though his daughter, Wiridiana, and her husband were exemplary citizens, and paid for a number of family bastards to be educated, the family as a whole had caused enough trouble for Klemens to be less than effusive in his greeting.

“I... well, strictly speaking, it’s not a crime,” said Syruć, shuffling his feet. “But it’s odd; and I understand that starostowie look for odd things, which might be a symptom of something else.”

“True enough,” said Klemens. “So, what is this odd thing?”

“Oh, had I not said?” asked Syruć.

“No,” said Klemens.

“It’s the holes, my lord brother,” said Syruć.  “Holes in one of my fields,” he clarified.

“You mean, sink holes? As if there are underground mines or caves, or an underground river?” asked Klemens.

“No, nothing like that,” said Syruć.  “Just... holes. They appear overnight, as if someone is coming along with a spade to dig one or two holes about three feet deep, and a foot or two across. Apparently at random but all in the same field.”

“As if stealing a root crop?”

“Well, in a way, but there’s no crop in that field. It’s heavy clay, and I wanted my steward to arrange to have the entire surface dug over, and drains put in, the way the English and Dutch do it.  You know, with buried chips of gravel, making ways for the water to flow away.”

“I believe they are called French drains,” said Klemens. “Very useful in this heavy clay, as is digging marl into the clay itself.”

“Yes, and I’ve bought in marl, and chippings for the drains, and I suppose I can incorporate the holes into what needs to be dug, but why would anyone dig holes, not ditches, and randomly across the field?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll come and have a look,” said Klemens. “It’s a damned silly time of year to dig holes for the sake of it, though I can understand that you want the drains dug before spring planting, and the marl dug in as well, but the ground must be frozen solid.”

“It is pretty solid,” admitted Timofey.  “I know Jan was not looking forward to having it dug.”

“Your steward?” asked Klemens.

“Yes, a poor relation; the bastard son of Antonin Syruć, who was slain by Lady Mariola.”

“Ah,” said Klemens. “He has a few brothers and sisters I believe, in Sokołowski’s school.”

“I don’t know.  I can’t take on every bastard my relatives have sired,” said Syruć. Klemens  fought not to sneer, knowing that Władysław Solołowski had, with less wealth than Syruć, taken under his wing sundry bastards of the traitor whose lands became his, and other orphans. And took on the szlachta and peasant orphans used and trained to steal by a wicked szlachcic. Moreover, Władysław would have found a way to care for them even without a grant from the king and the fact that there were szlachta willing to pay quite extortionate school fees for their offspring, especially if kept out of the public eye.   

“I have my daughter to think of,” said Syruć, defensively.

“To be sure,” said Klemens. “And an unfortunate upbringing as well. And none of my business. Let us go and look at your holes.”

 

 

The field in question looked as if half the city had turned out to dig random holes. Someone had left a measuring tape behind. Several holes looked as if they were following a line.

“That’s half the work done for a drain,” said Syruć, waving to it. “But why? Jan said he had not started work yet.”

Klemens began chuckling.

“Oh, I suspect that he has begun work, but in a way to spare your peasants much hard labour,” he said.

“What? I do not understand,” said Syruć.

Klemens sighed. It must be hard for Jan Syruć to be subordinate to his less clever relative.

“Let’s go and speak to him,” he said.

 

 

Jan Syruć did not have the immediate look of his relatives, though that was partly because he had ginger hair and was clean-shaven.

“Brilliant idea of yours, to get people digging for treasure, to save the peasants some work,” said Klemens. “How on earth did you get so many people to dig up the field?”

Jan Syruć gave a shy smile.

“Oh, it was not hard,” he said.  “I spoke to a few people about how Karol Syruć hid a fortune from his smuggling on his cousin’s lands, thinking that the authorities would not look for it there.”

“That’s plausible,” said Timofey Syruć. “It would be just like Karol.”

“So, the near ditch?” asked Klemens.

“I picked up some old books cheap, you see,” said Jan. “And mentioned around that he was supposed to have left instructions as to how to find the treasure, and I drew a number of maps, and wrote instructions about how to line up two landmarks, but not how far along in the field the lined up landmarks might be, and I paid a stall holder to let it be known the books had come from his estate, sold off by his daughter. And he did me proud, he dropped a word in the ear of a number of people as if they were the only ones he told.  I was going to give it two more nights, and then set our people to work; and with the snow, we can dig that in as well, as fertiliser.”

“Brilliant!” said Klemens.

“Er, indeed, most commendable,” said Timofey Syruć. 

“Well, sir, as you’ve come over, I can let it be known that it was found, and the Starosta has it,” said Jan. “That way, they won’t interfere after work has begun.”

“Good thinking,” said Klemens. “If you ever get tired of being a steward, I could find you a job in my office.”

“Thank you, my lord; I might consider it,” said Jan.

 

Klemens rode back to the town hall, chuckling.