Текст книги "The Banshee's walk"

Автор книги: Frank Tuttle

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter Fifteen

Buttercup slept through the whole wretched journey. I wasn’t so lucky.

I was nearly exhausted to the point of just sleeping where I lay myself, despite the cold mud. Instead I set a steady rhythm-push the torch ahead. Crawl back. Grab Buttercup’s wrists. Drag her forward. Crawl back to the torch. Push it ahead.

And repeat, over and over and over.

If the first time through the collapsed portion of the tunnel had taken hours, this one took lifetimes. But somehow, we made it.

I found an old blanket in a chest and wrapped the banshee in it, since the rest of the tunnel would allow me to stand and carry her. Still, she showed no sign of waking, despite being dragged and held and carried.

I hoped she wasn’t injured in some way I couldn’t see. There was no way for me to know what a good dose of that blue light might have done to her.

I pressed on. I nearly fell myself a time or two, just from carelessness and fatigue.

I was nearly to the stairs below the kitchen when I came to Gertriss.

She too was fast asleep, seated in a wooden chair, a sword across her lap. She was snoring, lightly and daintily.

I shifted Buttercup, checked her face. She was still in the grip of a deep slumber. For the first time I was glad-I wasn’t sure of a lot of things, but I was sure I lacked the strength to wrestle with a panicked banshee no matter how small her stature.

I covered Buttercup’s face with a fold of the blanket, just in case.

“No napping during office hours,” I said. I kept my voice low. Gertriss didn’t stir.

I nudged her right foot with mine.

Her eyes flew open.

“Easy,” I said, quickly. “No loud voices, no sudden moves. I brought company.”

Gertriss stood. Her sword clattered to the damp ground. I cringed, but Buttercup didn’t stir.

“I thought you were dead, Mr. Markhat,” she whispered. “What have you got? Is that a child? Is she hurt?”

“Me? Dead? I hardly ever get killed these days, Miss. And this is Buttercup. She’s probably older than all of us added together. And as for hurt, I don’t know-I think she’s just exhausted. We had quite a night.”

I shut up. Gertriss wasn’t listening. She’d pulled back a bit of blanket, and was getting her first good look at the not-quite-so-mythical banshee.

“Well I’ll be damned.”

“Miss, you’ll never get invited to any of the best society teas, talking like that.” I was ready to drop. “Think you can carry her upstairs? I’m spent.”

Gertriss lifted the blanket a little higher and went wide-eyed. “Mister Markhat-she’s starkers!”

“I’m going to go broke buying up wardrobes for naked women,” I said. My arms were beginning to shake. Hell, all of me was. “Burlap was the best I could do.”

Gertriss took Buttercup from me. Still, the banshee slept, not even stirring.

“Where are we going to put her? What’s she going to do when she wakes up?”

“Put her in my room. Can you get upstairs without raising half the House?”

Gertriss snorted in derision. “Nobody but the cooks stirring. Laziest bunch I’ve ever seen.”

We both started walking for the stairs. I could see light from above. Gertriss had left the trap door open. As we neared, clanging and clanking and voices sounded from the kitchen.

“Seems they had a party last night,” I said.

Gertriss nodded. “That was my idea. Keep that lot in the woods looking at the House. Was trying to give you a distraction.”

I managed a grin. “It worked. Remind me to give you a raise.”

We halted at the bottom of the stairs. I looked up them. My legs begged me to sit down for a year or two and rest.

“Up we go,” I said. I could smell bacon, hear it sizzle and pop, smell strong hot coffee brewing. “Remember, if anyone asks, Buttercup here is our secret love-child.”

Gertriss laughed, gently arranged the cloth so that Buttercup was covered, and we ascended wearily into the light.

We made it up to my room without raising a single eyebrow. Oh, the pair of cooks gave us a good sideways glare as we sidled around the cook-stove and I happened to snatch up a couple of biscuits and a handful of bacon to keep them warm, but neither of them spoke a word to us. Not even when I liberated a pitcher of clean water and a chunk of salted ham.

The House beyond the kitchen was quiet. Even the ever-present dogs, that lay slumbering three to a couch, did no more than glance our way as we passed.

I pondered that. I know they smelled Buttercup, who possessed the kind of body odor only lifelong non-bathers could achieve.

But they didn’t react.

Probably because they were accustomed to her presence.

Once I closed the door behind me, I crossed to the big cushioned chair and collapsed down into it. Gertriss laid Buttercup out on the settee, kneeled on the floor beside her and fixed me in a piercing Hog stare.

“That was mean of you, sneaking off like that.”

I munched biscuit, gulped water.

“Had to. Two bodies would have been spotted.”

The word she gave in response was not a word which Mama would approve.

“So what happened? What did you see?”

I laid it out between bites. The soldiers, the sorcerers, the excavation, Buttercup, the face in the sky. All of it.

I had hoped it would make sense, when I laid it out. It didn’t.

What the Hell had I seen?

“We saw the flash and heard the thunder,” said Gertriss. “Rather, they saw the flash, and we heard the thunder. I was in the tunnel, convinced my boss was dead.”

I groaned inwardly, knowing I’d never hear the last of that particular jibe.

Buttercup shifted in her sleep. Gertriss watched her for a moment, then wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“I hate to say this, Mister Markhat, but if we’re going to keep her indoors she’s going to have to have a bath. Soon. Now.”

I nodded. The food and drink was settling in. I was fatigued, but not quite ready to collapse anymore.

“Might be easier while she’s asleep.” I hated to do things that way, but Gertriss was right-we’d never be able to keep her hidden when a blind man could smell her from thirty feet away.

“I’ll go get bathrobe and some soap,” said Gertriss. “Lots and lots of soap. Why don’t you start a warm bath.”

I rose. “You handle her by yourself?”

“I think you’ve seen enough naked females for one night, Mister Markhat. You can sit right outside the door. And you come in only if I holler-call, understood?”

“Understood.” I got my aching feet out of my boots and padded back toward the fancy hot running water and the iron bathtub.

Marlo showed up, grumpy and glaring, before I finished filling the tub. I hauled Buttercup back to my bedroom and laid her on the floor and shut that door behind me before I let Marlo in my room.

The first thing he did was scrunch up his nose. “Damn, what have you been rolling in, Finder?”

“Trouble. Is that coffee for me?”

He handed me the cup and frowned. “You ought to have told the Lady you was back.”

I gulped it down, burning my tongue in the process.

“I figured word would get around. Anyway, as you pointed out, I need a bath. We’ll talk after that.”

“What’d you find, out there? Anything?”

“Too much. A couple of hundred men, I figure. Wagons. Horses. Wand-wavers. Oh, and something came up out of the hole they were digging and blasted a fair-sized chunk of the Lady’s timber flat.”

He just nodded, like that sort of thing went on all the time out here in the wholesome country air.

“I reckon they’re still watching the roads.”

“I reckon they are.”

“So what you gonna do about that, Finder?”

“Me? I’m going to change clothes and eat some more ham. And if people will let me think, I’ll do that too. In the meantime, everyone needs to stay indoors.”

“Horses and goats and cows got to be fed.”

“Not by me they don’t. Thanks for the coffee. Tell the Lady I’ll be downstairs shortly. Until then, nobody so much as sticks their nose outside, got it?”

“Skin left at first light to tend his bees. Ain’t seen him since.”

I was tired.

“Better find another bee-keeper.”

He snorted and stomped off. I slumped down onto the couch and seared the rest of my throat with the coffee.

Gertriss returned as I swallowed the last drop. She was clad in a dressing gown she’d probably found in her closet, because Darla would never have given her anything that much too small.

She bore an armful of towels and cloths and bottles. Judging from the number of soaps and shampoos and perfumes, I decided Gertriss was going to try and introduce poor Buttercup to the entire gamut of female make-up in one frantic go.

She saw my lifted eyebrow.

“Oh, hush. I won’t do anything to the poor creature she doesn’t want done.”

“Considering it’s entirely possible she’s lived her life in the forest without ever seeing a bathtub, that’s a potentially dangerous statement to make.”

Gertriss shook her head. “She’s tiny and maybe she’s not entirely human, Mr. Markhat, but I think she knows what a house and a bath is, from somewhere, even if it was a long time ago.”

“You’re the one with Sight, Miss. I’ll take your word for it.”

Gertriss sorted through her stack and pulled out a pair of dark pants and a plain white blouse and a few unmentionables. She put them on my couch.

“I’ll need those when I’m done,” she said. She shot a look toward the closed bedroom door. “Is the bath ready?”

“Ready and waiting. You sure you don’t want me there? Or maybe Serris, one of the female staff?”

She shook her head. “They’d gawk and stare and treat her like a monster or an Elf. She may be wild, boss, but she’s not stupid. She’d sense it. And I don’t think she’d like it.”

I rose. “Look. Modesty is well and good. But we don’t know what she’s capable of. So if she wakes up, and trouble starts, you yell, you understand? I’ll fight with one eye closed and the other pointed at the ceiling.”

She grinned. “I will. Here goes.”

“Good luck. Don’t look her in the eye.”

“It’s a bath, boss. How hard can this be?”

A quarter of an hour passed. I changed my filthy clothes for fresh ones and wiped off the worst of the filth with a wet face cloth. Gertriss assured me through the door that all was well.

I wasted a few minutes trying to peer outside through the thick window glass. I could tell it was daylight, and see smudges of green, but an army flanked by parades of leaping clowns could be down there and I’d not have seen a thing.

The windows were meant to swing inward so archers could open them and fire through them. These windows would swing no more, though-the hinges were gone, replaced with a solid and thoroughly immobile peacetime window-frame.

Which left us with no way to lob unpleasantness down on miscreants in the yard. Or to even see miscreants. The thick glass would stop the bolt from all but a siege piece, but now that none of them would open we were half-blind and helpless.

I heard a splash. Gertriss murmured, her voice soft and soothing. I knocked gently on the door.

“She stirred a bit, boss, that’s all. Still asleep.”

“You almost done?”

“Getting there. You’ll be able to raise tulips in this bathwater. Her dirt has dirt.”

I didn’t reply. I’d hoped Buttercup would sleep through being bathed and dressed. Now I was beginning to wonder if the little creature would ever wake up.

Had she caught the edge of a spell I couldn’t see, out there in the woods? I had no idea what else that wand-waver’s globe could do, other than emit sticky blue light. Had he had time to rattle of a spell before his head met the first of many tree-trunks?

I didn’t think so. But with wand-wavers, it was never safe to make assumptions.

More splashing. Gertriss assured me again all was well.

And why was Buttercup here, anyway?

Was she really a banshee?

Sure, she was able to do those strange little hop-skips and howl. But she’d howled when Serris had tried to jump, and Serris was alive.

She’d not howled when the wand-waver died. That seemed a bit un-banshee-ish. The legends claimed banshees could sense death, and the lore was adamant that when a banshee howled, death was at hand.

Maybe all those old legends were exactly the sort of bunk I’d thought from the beginning.

Which, if true, meant I knew exactly nothing about banshees or Buttercup.

Music started up downstairs. Music and hooting and stomping. The artists were at it again, right after breakfast, while the woods ran thick with hidden soldiers bent on errands which might include mayhem and slaughter.

I shook my head, more envious than angry.

I heard another splash, from behind the door.

And then tiny Buttercup awoke.

The banshee howled. She didn’t give it her usual slow buildup-no, she went from silence to ear-splitting shriek all at once.

I went deaf. I clamped my hands over my ears.

And then the cry went silent. My ears rang, but I could still hear a sort of burbling whistle, muffled and lent a gurgling quality as though it were being issued from under a body of water.

Gertriss cried out. I hit the door.

Gertriss had Buttercup’s face submerged in the tub. The tiny banshee clawed at her with arms and legs alike. Gertriss held on, but was clearly losing her grip on the tiny creature’s wet, slippery body.

I rushed to the tub. “Blanket blanket blanket,” shouted Gertriss. I saw a nice thick blanket laid out on a vanity and grabbed it, and had almost managed to fling it over Buttercup when she freed herself from Gertriss’s grasp and launched herself from the tub in a wide, tall fountain of hot soapy water.

“Buttercup!” I called out, hoping she would respond to my voice. Instead she fled, darting away from me, her tiny hands rubbing at her eyes beneath her tangle of dripping hair.

I lunged. Gertriss lunged. We caught the banshee between us, held her for an instant.

But only for an instant. The effort cost me my shirt. Gertriss’ already brief night-gown was ripped from one shoulder. I felt Buttercup tense, felt her start one of her magical banshee side-steps. I managed to grab her left forearm and go with her, slowing her down and preventing her from traveling more than a few steps toward the door.

“Buttercup! It’s me. Corn bread man. Slayer of wand-wavers. Calm down. We’re not here to hurt you.”

She turned toward me, one hand still rubbing her eyes. I thought perhaps she recognized my voice, thought she was calming down. She even stopped trying to twist her arm away from my grasp.

So when she stepped close to my waist and then head-butted me right below my belt-buckle, I wasn’t prepared to dodge.

I didn’t. I sank to my knees. Gertriss made a grab, but the banshee made a faster little dancing step and she was gone.

Gone. Out of the room. Gertriss went wide-eyed.

“Where-?” she began.

“Other. Side. Of door.”

We both heard crashings and thuds and footfalls from my front room. Gertriss snatched up the blanket and charged through the door.

I followed with somewhat less energy and verve.

Buttercup was frantic. She was running into walls, knocking over furniture, tearing cushions off the couch, looking anywhere, everywhere, for a way out. She wasn’t howling anymore. It took me a moment to realize that mewling sound she was making was crying.

I struggled to stand upright. I forced my voice to some semblance of normalcy.

“You know me,” I said. The banshee hurled a lamp at the wall, started clawing at the wood. “Buttercup. Listen to me. I am not going to let anyone hurt you.”

She began to strike the oak panels with her fists. Her back was to me. I walked slowly toward her, and when I was close enough I laid a hand on her shoulder.

“You know me,” I said. “Remember? Corn bread? The woods?”

She whirled.

I tried to smile. I managed not to step back.

I reached forward, pushed her hair out of her face. She managed to open her eyes. It was only then I realized they been stinging from the soapy water. “See? It’s me. You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

Gertriss wisely stood very still, and remained very quiet. Buttercup’s eyes darted toward her, and her mouth turned down in a tiny pout.

“That’s Aunt Gertriss,” I said. “She’s nice too. She was just giving you a bath. She has clothes for you too. Pretty clothes.”

Buttercups’ gaze turned back toward me, and she smiled, and took my hand.

“Good,” I said. “Now then-let’s put this gown on you. Gertriss? Very slowly?”

Gertriss took a small, slow step.

Buttercup snatched my left shoe off the floor and managed to fling it right toward Gertriss’s face. Gertriss deflected the shoe with the blanket, which she then flung at Buttercup, and Buttercup managed to move herself and me right behind Gertriss, where the banshee grabbed Gertriss’s dressing gown at the neck and gave it a good furious banshee yank.

Gertriss shrieked, and her dressing gown fell. Buttercup giggled, and at that very moment Fate arranged for my door to fly open and for Darla, my Darla, to walk in.

For a moment, all was stillness and silence.

There was Gertriss, mostly naked. There was Buttercup the freshly bathed banshee, completely naked and hanging onto a Markhat who was naked from the waist up. The floor was covered in cast-off clothing of both male and female varieties. Obeying some capricious law of garment behavior, a pair of Gertriss’s bloomers was hanging from a lamp.

Darla merely nodded at me, raised her right eyebrow and put her left hand on her left hip.

“I see you’re keeping busy, darling. I didn’t knock because I was told you were mortally wounded. I’m pleased to see you’re not. Yet.”

Momma Hog stepped into my room, joined by Evis, who was swathed from head to toe in yards of pure black silk.

Mama gobbled something incomprehensible at Gertriss, who wrapped herself in the blanket and fled for my bathroom.

Evis broke into hissing vampire laughter. He doubled over. He did manage to hide his mouthful of fangs behind a black-gloved hand.

And then Darla marched past Gertriss, pushed Buttercup gently aside and kissed me on the lips.

“So dear, tell me all about your day.”

I seated Darla on my right and Momma on my left. Gertriss wound up beside Mama, who was still clearly not in a mood to forgive Gertriss’s earlier state of dishabille. Buttercup tried to sit in my lap, but hopped up on the huge empty dining table after Darla fixed the banshee with her trademark icy stare.

Evis fidgeted in his chair right across the table from me. Even buried beneath a tent’s worth of silk and wearing tinted spectacles, the light was obviously causing him great discomfort.

Lady Werewilk herself had shooed her idling household staff out of the kitchen, which had taken on the role of gathering place for all of her displaced servants. She hadn’t had to ask twice after word got around that the funny man dressed all in black was a halfdead from town.

“I’m sure you’d all enjoy a bit of privacy,” said Lady Werewilk, before she opened the door to the hall. She’d impressed me by not treating Evis as anything but another guest in her home. She’d even inquired as to any special accommodations she could make on behalf of Evis.

Evis had politely declined.

Once we were alone, we all swapped stories.

Darla and Mama, it turned out, had both received messages that claimed to be from Lady Werewilk. The message was the same to both, short and simple– Markhat is dying. Come at once.

No details. Nothing but that. Mama had been determined to set out, on foot, at that very moment, but Darla had convinced her to head to Avalante before leaving Rannit.

Which brought Evis, genteel halfdead, aboard. Upstairs, Evis had told me in a hushed voice that he’d also brought Victor and Sara, the married halfdead couple I’d met some months back. Victor and Sara were lurking somewhere shaded, out in the forest, waiting for night to fall before coming to the House themselves.

He never stated it, but I knew they’d have a good look around on their way. They’d spot the army of watchers. Vampires would be able to sneak right up to campfires and have a good listen without raising an alarm. Maybe we’d get lucky and someone out there would mention a name or two.

Once Darla and Mama had demanded to see Evis at Avalante, they’d relayed the message they’d received. I was touched to learn that Evis had simply ordered a carriage brought around. No delays, no consulting with his superiors at the House.

I’d need to get him an extra nice pair of mittens for Yule.

Darla, Mama and Evis had then made their way from Rannit to House Werewilk in a carriage emblazoned with Avalante’s crest. I wasn’t even sure if Momma and Darla knew they were being flanked by two more halfdead. And I wondered if the Avalante crest on the carriage left the men in the woods leery of carrying out an ambush.

Evis and Mama and Darla denied ever seeing any hint of the secret forest army.

That didn’t sit well with me. Marlo had seen them. I’d seen them. They were as thick as briars out there, and weren’t taking great pains to conceal that fact-so why hadn’t Evis or his vampire shadows detected even a hint of snacks on the hoof?

There was only one answer to that, and it raised the hair on the back of my neck.

Sorcery.

Sorcery cast by someone who knew me and my associations well enough to bring us together at Lady Werewilk’s big oak table with just six short words.

Mama and Darla saw it too. Evis took a moment, maybe because his own lexicon of mortal enemies is much longer than any of ours.

“Hisvin. The Corpsemaster.”

I just nodded, unwilling to speak the creature’s name aloud.

Darla’s face went dark. “Has to be,” she whispered. She squeezed my hand. She’d had her own brush with Hisvin, the same night I walked with the huldra. We’d neither of us ever forget, ever be able to forget.

It’s a hell of a bond to share.

Mama made growling sounds in the back of her throat.

“I should have seen the lie in them words,” she muttered. “I knowed good and well you wasn’t dead.”

Darla managed a smile. “I didn’t think so either. Not in my heart.”

Buttercup scowled at Darla and tried to slide off the table and wiggle between us. Darla pulled her into her own lap instead. Amazingly, the banshee not only tolerated the act, but smiled and settled against Darla.

Evis’s chair legs made a loud shrieking on the floor. He pushed it back into a shadowed corner and propped his hands against his chest, gloved fingertips together. “What a fascinating creature,” he said, quietly. His dark spectacles were fixed upon Buttercup. “She seems to be quite taken with you, Finder.”

His grin was wide and toothy.

“He’s been sneaking around feeding her corn bread since we got here,” added Gertriss, without the least hint of accusation.

Darla smiled at me. “Now that’s enough, both of you,” she said. “Markhat can’t help it if women find him charming. I myself do, at times.”

Mama snorted. She was clutching a dead bird in either hand, and she was careful to keep them both between her and Buttercup.

“That there ain’t no normal livin’ creature,” she said, putting a lot of rasp into it. “There’s old magic in its veins. Old dark magic.”

Buttercup responded by turning up her nose at Mama and resting her head on my chest. Darla laughed, and stroked the banshee’s hair.

“Poor dear. He’ll only break your heart.”

I sat Buttercup upright and shoved a biscuit in her hands. She took it and began to nibble, watching us from beneath that mane of clean but wild yellow hair.

“All right. It seems fairly obvious who brought you here. What escapes me is the why.”

“If-he-wanted us dead, there’d be no need to call us together first.” Darla made vague wand-waving motions with her hands. “He could just say poof, and we’d be gone.”

Mama nodded grudging assent, still keeping her suspicious Hog eyes fixed on the biscuit-gobbling banshee perched happily in Darla’s lap.

I nodded. “Well. Let’s assume for the moment that you-know-who lured you out of Rannit. I’m sure the Corpsemaster has his reasons. Unfortunately, there’s only one way to find out what they are.”

“You don’t mean that.” Darla’s hand closed on mine.

“I’m afraid I do,” I said. “I’ll wait ’til dark. Perhaps Mr. Prestley will step out with me. If that’s acceptable to Avalante, of course,” I added.

Evis waved a gloved hand dismissively. “I’m not here on behalf of Avalante,” he said. “I just happened to be visiting in the neighborhood and decided to drop in when I heard music. But I will be only too happy to accompany you later this evening.”

Mama made a snorting sound. “How you plan to find that devil, boy? You know where he is?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea, Mama. But that won’t matter. He knows exactly where to find me.”

“I don’t like it. We all ought to pile back into that fancy wagon and head for home, right now.”

“We wouldn’t make it a mile.”

“Boy, I told you I didn’t see nobody in them woods. Not a soul.”

“You’ll just have to trust me on this, Mama. They’re out there. None of us are going anywhere until this mess gets sorted out.”

Mama cussed. “What’s all this about things buried in the woods, boy? And what’s that there critter got to do with it?”

“Her name is Buttercup.” When I spoke her name, she looked up at me and smiled. Maybe she did understand speech, or was learning. “And I told you all I know. There’s a couple of hundred men out there, digging a big hole not three miles from here. Something came out of it and ruined a lot of timber. We were too busy running to see much more than that.”

Darla shivered. Buttercup gave her a quick hug.

At least the scratching and clawing had stopped.

“She’s really a banshee, isn’t she?”

I shrugged. “Beats me. She can howl loud enough to wake the dead. She can move without moving. And the people around here have been seeing her for at least thirty years, more or less.”

Darla produced a comb from somewhere, and began to gently pull it through Buttercup’s hair. Buttercup started when the comb first pulled, but after Darla let the tiny creature see and sniff the comb, she closed her eyes and let Darla begin to work out the tangles.

I ogled. “How do you do that?”

“She knows I don’t mean her any harm. Maybe she didn’t always live in the wild, either. Did you, Buttercup, honey? Did you ever live in a house, ever comb your hair and wear pretty gowns?”

Buttercup smiled, but didn’t open her eyes or reply.

“You ought not to make a pet out of that there thing,” said Mama.

Darla ignored her. Mama fumed.

“If the boss hadn’t brought her inside they’d have put her in a sack by now.” It was Gertriss who spoke, and her words only worsened Mama’s funk. “Banshee or not, it doesn’t deserve that.”

Before Mama could reply I asked Darla again about the message that had brought them all to Werewilk.

Delivered by a courier, one of the outfits downtown. She’d signed for it and even tipped the runner, who was the usual fleet-footed teenager with the pointed red messenger’s hat and traditional yellow shirt. Ditto for Mama.

Neither of them had thought it odd that two messengers had been dispatched, with their runs timed so that they would reach Mama and Darla at precisely the same time.

Next, I quizzed Evis about Toadsticker. He calmly but flatly denied it had any ability whatsoever to throw lightning around or yank full-grown wand-wavers out of their saddles.

I mentally chalked that small bit of arcane theatrics up to Hisvin as well. He’d find it amusing, no doubt, to saddle me with a reputation for wielding some fearsome magic sword.

Evis began to snore softly. Mama excused herself, claiming the need for a nap, but I suspect she intended to bully the nearest bunch of artists out of their beer. Gertriss and Darla remained. Gertriss because she dared not face the wrath of Mama alone, and Darla because she was hoping to talk me out of seeking Hisvin later.

I’d spent the night fleeing monsters in a midnight-dark forest. I’d crawled through tunnels, squeezed through stinking mud. I’d slain one wand-waver and saved one banshee and ruined one new brown shirt.

So I put Darla’s hand in mine, and I leaned back in the big old chair. I joined Evis in slumber land, just as the band started up somewhere in the House.