BEYOND POVERO: CRABCLAW Prelude

[VAN]

"Don't worry about Gertie Fild. She can take care of herself plus she better goes by herself to get such stuff."

[alhoon]

"Great. Perhaps we should see this man." Fild doesn't correct the girl on his race.

''Will your master want to see the shipwrights first?''
She looks at the big house they stand just outside.

"I am my own master lass. Alfonse may be higher in the social ladder for this place, but I don't call him master. I call him ally and possibly friend."

[steveflam]

GERTIE
AND GEM THE HOUND



With Gem trailing her, Gertie goes round behind the harlot's hut and waits along a grimy boardwalk that runs between the quayside and the city walls.
After a couple of minutes, rickety shutters open in a window on the back of the hut and the harlot leans out. She motions for Gertie to draw near.
''I'll want a denier for my time and the stuff I'm telling you. And you'd better not be a spy for the Mummers' enemies. If you are, at least forget my face, okay?"
After Gertie hands over the coin, the harlot tells her,
"What you need to do is go to the west side, outside the walls. Hike down the road going south a little ways, till you get close to farms and pastures. You'll come to a roadhouse near the big boundary stone. It's at the roadhouse you can meet more of the canting crew, if you buy a drink for yourself and one you pour out into the nearest spittoon. If someone asks what you are doing at the spittoon, just say it's for your absent friend and then you bare your arse to the barman. No, I'm not joking. Really, show him your bare rump. Mummer rules.''

Gertie thanks the harlot. "I am no spy, I assure you, miss. See ya!" She turns and finds Tom quickly, relaying her intentions before following the harlot's directions to the Roadhouse.

[ewancummins]

HILL QUARTER
BESIDE UNWYNE HOUSE

"Great. Perhaps we should see this man." Fild doesn't correct the girl on his race.

''Will your master want to see the shipwrights first?''
She looks at the big house they stand just outside.

"I am my own master lass. Alfonse may be higher in the social ladder for this place, but I don't call him master. I call him ally and possibly friend."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Sir Dwarf. I thought you were his guard. The nobs...err...gentlemen and ladies, they all have guards. Some of them hire fancy guards. To show off, like. "
She looks down the street, pointing to a section of the wall that separates this quarter from the quayside.
"They pay the gatewatchers too, to collect tolls and keep out the...um...riff-raff. "
She grins."But I get in because everybody likes fresh crabs and shellies. Including gate guards."

[ewancummins]

GERTIE
AND GEM THE HOUND



With Gem trailing her, Gertie goes round behind the harlot's hut and waits along a grimy boardwalk that runs between the quayside and the city walls.
After a couple of minutes, rickety shutters open in a window on the back of the hut and the harlot leans out. She motions for Gertie to draw near.
''I'll want a denier for my time and the stuff I'm telling you. And you'd better not be a spy for the Mummers' enemies. If you are, at least forget my face, okay?"
After Gertie hands over the coin, the harlot tells her,
"What you need to do is go to the west side, outside the walls. Hike down the road going south a little ways, till you get close to farms and pastures. You'll come to a roadhouse near the big boundary stone. It's at the roadhouse you can meet more of the canting crew, if you buy a drink for yourself and one you pour out into the nearest spittoon. If someone asks what you are doing at the spittoon, just say it's for your absent friend and then you bare your arse to the barman. No, I'm not joking. Really, show him your bare rump. Mummer rules.''

Gertie thanks the harlot. "I am no spy, I assure you, miss. See ya!" She turns, and with Gem, follows the harlot's directions to the Roadhouse.

GERTIE's trip takes her up along the riverside quays, over a guarded bridge where a squad of six armed watchmen insist on poking through her belongings (good thing her jewelry share is locked up on the ship, guarded by Sixt-- these guys on the bridge keep mumbling about gold and silver as they root in her sack) and then wave her on to the western shore.

The west side looks boggy and crowded, with many people milling about clusters of huts and sheds that stand partly sunken in wet sand. Gertie's feet squish in the mud. The folk here seem as rundown as their homes. Everything stinks of fish and filth. Sullen, pinch-faced kids peer at Gertie from around corners. Smoke rises from an alley cookpit where two ragged men are roasting what looks like a dog-- they wave at Gertie and grin idiotically, drooling.

Gem barks.

Not lingering in the slum, Gertie moves on south to where a sunken road runs parallel with the river. The road rises and the hovels fall behind Gertie. She notices fences running off to the west, which slice the poor quarter off from a region of southwestern farms and pastures.
And there, just ahead, a big stone pillar, heavily weathered, rises on the inland side of the road.
Past that a short hike, partly hidden by a swell of earth, stands a large, low house of wood and stone. Gertie hears horses neighing from someplace in the house or one of its outbuildings.

Getting closer, topping the rise in the road, she sees the oversized signboard hung out on the side facing the road, which runs right by the big , low structure. The board depicts a green , furry creature with a doglike head, long man arms, and a squat body. Gertie has never seen such a beast. The creature in the painting holds some sort of globular object, maybe a melon.

[steveflam]

GERTIE AND GEM AT THE ROADHOUSE

Gertie finds a place to tie GEM to and enters the Roadhouse. She looks around and walks over to where the harlot said she should and begins her

ordering and such until she has to show her rump.

[ewancummins]

GERTIE AND GEM AT THE ROADHOUSE

Gertie finds a place to tie GEM to and enters the Roadhouse. She looks around and walks over to where the harlot said she should and begins her

ordering and such until she has to show her rump.

The Roadhouse of the Green Monkey holds a fair sized crowd today: laborers in rough tunics, floozies in cheap finery, caravan guards with unlaced gambesons, the help, and an odd assortment of other guests. But no obvious aristocrats.
The slow buzz of conversation lifts and falls but never dies out.
The short man behind the bar--taller than Fild but still wee for a human--pours GERTIE's drinks for her after she slaps some coins down on the heavy counter.

Gertie drinks her first dram of rum. It tastes horrible! Too-sweet and yet it burns. She feels her face heat up.
She suppresses a cough. Poor Gertie is not used to drinking anything stronger than water with a dose of wine or vinegar in it.

Then she pours her second order into the nearest spittoon.

A hulking man with a low forehead and a dangerously stupid look on his face ambles over. Floorboards creak under his booted feet.
"Don't like waste of good grog. Why girl dump it?"

The little barman watches Gertie as the brute approaches, but says nothing. He polishes the counter.

[alhoon]

HILL QUARTER
BESIDE UNWYNE HOUSE

"You know what? That about the guard is not a bad idea... "
Fild turns to Alfonse. "Alfonse, how much would you pay to hire a guard of my caliber? I come with all the equipment you know I will buy and I have worked for... a couple of noble families you know very well.
Now, seriously, posing as your guard could earn you points perhaps. But I don't know what real bodyguards wear here." He turns to Oona without waiting for Alfonse to reply.
"Do the bodyguards wear tabards or something? Does sir Alfonse need a coat of arms or something that I should display?"
Then he looks to Tom. "Perhaps if Tom dresses a bit better he could pass as a valet or something? And we're new here, good fancy clothes, the really expensive kind, would look good on you Alfonse and would get us places."

[steveflam]

GERTIE AND GEM AT THE ROADHOUSE

Gertie finds a place to tie GEM to and enters the Roadhouse. She looks around and walks over to where the harlot said she should and begins her

ordering and such until she has to show her rump.

The Roadhouse of the Green Monkey holds a fair sized crowd today: laborers in rough tunics, floozies in cheap finery, caravan guards with unlaced gambesons, the help, and an odd assortment of other guests. But no obvious aristocrats.
The slow buzz of conversation lifts and falls but never dies out.
The short man behind the bar--taller than Fild but still wee for a human--pours GERTIE's drinks for her after she slaps some coins down on the heavy counter.

Gertie drinks her first dram of rum. It tastes horrible! Too-sweet and yet it burns. She feels her face heat up.
She suppresses a cough. Poor Gertie is not used to drinking anything stronger than water with a dose of wine or vinegar in it.

Then she pours her second order into the nearest spittoon.

A hulking man with a low forehead and a dangerously stupid look on his face ambles over. Floorboards creak under his booted feet.
"Don't like waste of good grog. Why girl dump it?"

The little barman watches Gertie as the brute approaches, but says nothing. He polishes the counter.

Gertie sighs and turning her back to the man, looks back. SHe loweres her pants and wiggles her rump at him, hoping this is what the harlot meant.

She is ready to pull up her pants in a hurry.

[ewancummins]

HILL QUARTER
BESIDE UNWYNE HOUSE

"You know what? That about the guard is not a bad idea... "
Fild turns to Alfonse. "Alfonse, how much would you pay to hire a guard of my caliber? I come with all the equipment you know I will buy and I have worked for... a couple of noble families you know very well.
Now, seriously, posing as your guard could earn you points perhaps. But I don't know what real bodyguards wear here." He turns to Oona without waiting for Alfonse to reply.
"Do the bodyguards wear tabards or something? Does sir Alfonse need a coat of arms or something that I should display?"

"Like colored stitchery of animals and crowns and swords and stuff? The Lords all put cloths like that on poles sticking off their ships. And sometimes their men wear colored patches on their tunics. But lots of merchants and shipmasters and such hire guards and don't dress them up. "

[ewancummins]

GERTIE AND GEM AT THE ROADHOUSE

Gertie finds a place to tie GEM to and enters the Roadhouse. She looks around and walks over to where the harlot said she should and begins her

ordering and such until she has to show her rump.

The Roadhouse of the Green Monkey holds a fair sized crowd today: laborers in rough tunics, floozies in cheap finery, caravan guards with unlaced gambesons, the help, and an odd assortment of other guests. But no obvious aristocrats.
The slow buzz of conversation lifts and falls but never dies out.
The short man behind the bar--taller than Fild but still wee for a human--pours GERTIE's drinks for her after she slaps some coins down on the heavy counter.

Gertie drinks her first dram of rum. It tastes horrible! Too-sweet and yet it burns. She feels her face heat up.
She suppresses a cough. Poor Gertie is not used to drinking anything stronger than water with a dose of wine or vinegar in it.

Then she pours her second order into the nearest spittoon.

A hulking man with a low forehead and a dangerously stupid look on his face ambles over. Floorboards creak under his booted feet.
"Don't like waste of good grog. Why girl dump it?"

The little barman watches Gertie as the brute approaches, but says nothing. He polishes the counter.

Gertie sighs and turning her back to the man, looks back. SHe loweres her pants and wiggles her rump at him, hoping this is what the harlot meant.

She is ready to pull up her pants in a hurry.

The barman looks at Gertie and grins.

Laughter breaks out among guests sitting at the bar.

The big brute ogles GERTIE's rump a moment, then glances down at the spittoon, and then turns to face the barman and shakes his head.
"I guess she don't like the grog."

[steveflam]

GERTIE AND GEM AT THE ROADHOUSE

Gertie looks at the barkeep, "It's for my absent friend," and pulls up her pants.

[ewancummins]

GERTIE AND GEM AT THE ROADHOUSE

Gertie looks at the barkeep, "It's for my absent friend," and pulls up her pants.

The barkeep waves away the big brute.
"Absent? Oh, I thought your friend was waiting for you in the taproom."
He flashes what Gertie takes for a thief sign with his off hand held low , almost flat against the bar, and waggles his cleaning rag toward a door in the wall behind the bar counter.
"You can go on back. Mind the second step."

[steveflam]

Gertie signals back to the barkeep discreetly and nodding, heads on back the way he told her.

[ewancummins]

Gertie signals back to the barkeep discreetly and nodding, heads on back the way he told her.

THE TAPROOM

GERTIE finds the door to the taproom unlocked. Pushing it open, she makes out the dim outlines of sunken chamber big enough to park two wagons side by side and lined with alcoves and racks full of kegs, casks, and amphorae.
It smells faintly of lime.
No one standing in the open, but a dim light like a candle shines from one of the alcoves in the back wall.
The short staircase leading down creaks as she descends--mindful of the second step-- but otherwise silence covers the room. Not even a mouse squeaks.