Barwick watched the dusty street, the aimless people, sharpening his razor without noticing that he did so.  Drought drew people to the city like flies to a corpse, of which there were plenty of late, and the wind covered them with a layer of grit and grime.

"Terrible times," he said.

Few could spare the coin for a shave or cut.  Did it themselves, and his practiced eye saw the horrid job they made of it: hair cropped at odd angles, two-day stubble, unruly beards.  Terrible times indeed.  With so little business, his own debts grew greater, so much so he might have to sell the shop.  No doubt his father grumbled in his grave, sensing his son's failure.  Barwick strapped the blade back and forth, earning it a wicked edge.  For what purpose?  Shaving himself offered little comfort and no coin.

Hot wind swirled down the street.  In answer, hands gripped hats and handkerchiefs covered faces, backs turned to avoid being flailed by the flying grit.  A dry winter before, now a drier summer.  So dry the ponds lay empty, the river but a trickle compared to its usual current.  Some said fish up north walked about in hopes of a decent hole to swim in. Bloody unlikely, he thought, but certainly the river stank from the dead fish gasping on bare rock.  He sniffed and frowned, began to return to his shop, when he saw the carriage.

Unusual, carriages rattling down the Greenbrier.  Tradesmen he saw mostly, and clerks who toiled at middling jobs, and wagons loaded with goods.  But a carriage.  In these times, so fine a pair of horses could only mean money.  The carriage itself was black dressed in gold trim, heavy curtains hung to protect the passengers from the dust.  Its driver wore a dark woolen suit despite the heat, a tall hat pulled low over his eyes.  Barwick squinted against the setting sun.

The driver glanced down at the carriage, as if hearing some voice, then pulled the horses to a stop in front of Barwick's door and stepped down.  His white-gloved hand turned the door handle and pulled it open.  Black inside, the angle of the sun all wrong to provide any light.  Barwick set aside his razor and smoothed his apron.

A hand from within the carriage beckoned him to approach.

Stepping closer, he noticed the hand was ungloved, the fingers thin and pale, upon them a single gold ring with a red stone, dull and dark like blood.

"Come inside, my good man," came the voice of an older man, one to Barwick's ear sounded educated and well spoken.  A gentleman, certainly; perhaps even nobility. He felt the cool air from the carriage, even from where he stood, yet it was too dark for his eyes to penetrate the shadow.

"Please, my lord," he said, keeping one step away from the carriage entrance.  "How may I be of assistance?"

"I wish you to attend to me with blade and scissor, of course, as is your trade."

Barwick smiled.  "Of course, my lord.  Please step into my shop and I promise you a most satisfactory experience."  He stepped back and extended his hand, striking his most professional stance.

"Nay, I wish to have you work here inside my carriage so I need not face the afternoon dust."

Barwick frowned.  "Please, my instruments are in the shop."

"Bah, bring them here.  I have an important appointment and I wish to look my best.  Are you an honest tradesman or not?"

He straightened at that.  His father had worked this shop before him, and his own son would follow some day, if business improved and the shop didn't end in the hands of his creditors.

"Indeed, sir.  We Barwicks have barbered here for three generations and never have I heard spoken an unsatisfactory word about our work."  Bold words, to what must be some noble, yet he felt obligated to defend his honor, and that of his father.

"Then demonstrate this expertise to me, here, in my carriage," the man replied.  "Bring scissor and razor and whatever other instruments suit your purpose.  But hurry, man.  I have a pressing engagement."

The driver leaned over.  Pulled low as it was, his hat hid much of his face.

From the shadow, Barwick made out a hawk nose and eyes small and cold like diamonds.  He felt the fool.  Money was money, and times were too hard to pass up a coin or two, not with his landlord, grocer andhis wife's own physician demanding payment.  The gentleman, if satisfied, would tell his friends and business might improve.

"Aye my lord.  I will return."

The carriage driver nodded and turned his attention to the animals.  Barwick gathered his best scissors, two razors, his latherer and other articles.  He pulled two towels from his steam basket, burned his fingers and dropped them into a bag.  He returned to the sunlit street.  A few urchins tried to pet and pester the horses, but an icy glance from the driver sent them scurrying to their mothers' aprons.

Another hot wind blew down the street, the stink of dead fish and garbage and human sweat strong in the air as the sun fingered its way down behind the hills west of the city.  Barwick swallowed and wiped his brow.

"Hurry, man," came the voice.  "I have important matters to attend to when the sun falls, and I prefer to look my best."

"Aye my lord."

He stepped into the carriage.  For a moment he could see nothing, such was the change from the glare of the day to the carriage gloom.  Before his eyes adjusted, the door shut behind him and he heard a click of metal against metal.  "Oh my," he said.

"Never fear," came the man's voice, amused at his discomfort.  "It is only to keep away the awful nature of the day.  Terrible times, wouldn't you agree?"

"Aye my lord," he replied slowly, as if the words were new and alien to his tongue.  "Terrible times."

His eyes adjusted to the dark.  The curtains were imperfect devices, he now saw, with lines of daylight revealed along the edges.  Gone was the smell of rotting fish and dust and all the rest that came to mean the drought.  A different smell here, in the cool air, of leather and horse and polished wood, to be sure, but something also he could not quite identify, something that tickled at his mind like a dog worrying at a piece of meat.  Finally his eyes adjusted enough that he saw his client in the opposite corner dressed in a dark suit and a hood and with a face lost in shadow.

"And now, my man," came the voice.  "You must attend my needs."

"How, my lord, in such close quarters?  My shop is most comfortable, with a chair and light so I can do my best work, and--"

"No.  Here it will be."  Barwick's work with upper class was occasional, yet he recognized the velvet words and the hardened truth beneath, the threat of what happens to those of a lower class who fail to obey.  The dark man chuckled to himself, softening the blow.  "I will turn and remove my hood."

"But it is so dark.  May I open the door?"

"No."  A hard word, one without velvet.  "You claim to be a master craftsman.  You should find the face familiar territory, then.  I promise the map of mine is little different than those other lands you have traversed."

Barwick pulled his basket closer and began to rummage among his instruments. First he wrapped a cloth around the man to protect his fine clothing.  "The cut first, my lord, or the shave?"

"Only a shave, I think.  Time grows short."

Barwick took the warm towel from the bag and wrapped it over the man's face from behind, trying in the dim light ensure the man's nose and mouth remained unblocked. This was the time he usually made small talk with his customers, as his father had taught him. The weather, the gossip of the street, the chatter of everyday life.  Nothing seemed appropriate.

"Is my lord a stranger here?" he tried.

"I am a stranger in no place," came a muffled reply.  He had covered some of the mouth.  "But if your meaning is do I live in your city, then no.  I go to visit the Baron de le Breton this evening."

The baron lived in a brooding house on the hill above the city, a thing of dark stone, turrets, broken towers and a gate of iron.  The man, known for his small charities, rarely emerged and never entertained, or so went the stories from the few summoned to do the small and large tasks necessary to keep such a place from falling apart.  Barwick patted at the towel, letting its heat soak into the man's skin.

"The baron is a good man," he said.  "You are lucky to be invited.  It is said he sees few and does not even attend the royal court."

A short bark of laughter.  "Invited?  He does not expect me."

"Ah."  Barwick hesitated to voice his doubts, for the man could be a baron or a true lord or even some higher royalty.  No doubt they knew their own business.  He removed the towel and began to churn up lather for the shave.  The carriage was filled with the smell of soap and astringent and the sounds of his brush whisking in the bowl.  He brushed lather on the chin.

"My lord, you will need to close your mouth and eyes, lest I make a mistake in this light."  He assumed the man had done so and finished his lathering.

And then, the blade.

He strapped it a few times despite its fine edge.  Customers expect a certain experience.  You play a part, his father had said, even strapping blades that were perfectly sharp, keeping the shop smelling of the things on the shelves.  A greengrocer waters his produce, a clerk carries a pen at all times.  And so went the world.  Do what is expected of you, his father insisted, and do it well.

Blade in hand, he reached from behind and prepared to shave.  Bending close, he could see the pale skin, almost ivory, even in the dimness of the closed carriage.  He put the blade to the neck.

"I begin now, my lord.  Please do not move."

"Continue, then, and talk to me as you work."

He felt the blade meet foam and skin so smooth that there seemed to be no stubble, no imperfections.  The man wanted conversation.  His mind stumbled over several possible topics and discarded each.  Desperate, he latched onto the one obvious topic on every man's lips.

"My lord, all is in anguish from the drought.  As you said, terrible times. It is the work of the devil himself, they say."

The words felt wrong even as he uttered them.  Never mention religion, his father had always said.  But the man only laughed.  "No.  I think not.  Blame him for much, but not this.  Tell me, have many died here?"

Barwick swallowed, then shaved another line up the neck.  So smooth, like marble.

"Yes, my lord," he finally said.  "Many deaths."

"One of your own, I believe.  I hear it in your voice."

His only daughter.  A cold, dry winter, the cough breaking her tiny body and his wife now unable to bear more children.  The baron sent food and condolences, even a bit of coin for the cost of a decent funeral.  A kindly man, if reclusive.  He told the stranger of the loss, choked at the mention of it and anticipated some commiseration.  There was none.  He finished the neck, all but a single line of foam, before the man spoke again.

"She was beautiful, your daughter?"

"Aye my lord.  Beautiful.  An angel."

He felt the man's hand on his wrist.  "Mary you called her?"

"Yes, my lord.  How could you know?"

The bony hand disappeared again in the dark.  "Continue."

Barwick eased the blade up the smooth neck.  How could the man know?  While waiting outside, he had the notion that this was no ordinary person.  A lord, perhaps.  And yet so many men he had shaved, from commoner to the baron himself, enough to know every contour of the neck, every variation, every place where a blade might catch or skip or nick the grainy skin, the lump in the throat.  This neck was too smooth, like shaving marble.  His hand hesitated halfway up the neck on the final strip of foam.  The smell of this place, beneath it, reminded him strangely of the night his Mary died.  He felt a tear in his eye and wiped it away.

"My lord, excuse me, but I am curious as to your name since you have mine."

"It is of no concern.  My name is my own."

Barwick hesitated still.  "And the baron, my lord?  It is said he is sickly of late.  I am surprised he would have a visitor, and I doubt your chances of being accepted at the gate."

"He will have little choice," he said.  "They never do."

Quiet set in, as if the street outside the carriage had been muffled by cotton, distant and fuzzy. Barwick realized that he held the blade at the man's neck still, that his hand was pressing the steel against the smooth skin.  A normal client would have joked at such a thing, a jest with a trace of real concern, the kind any man makes when another holds sharp steel at his throat.  From this one, nothing.  His father would be rolling now in his grave at Barwick's failure, of holding the steel tight against the skin as he now did.  Always the customer, his father told him.  The world is vast and its problems many, but all that matters is the patch of skin beneath your hands.  Barwick shook his head, focused, slid the razor up its final path.  Then the chin and face.  An eternity of shaving.

Finally, the thing was done.  He pulled a second towel from the bag, wrapped it over the face and wiped off the foam residue.

"Finished, my lord."

"Excellent."  There was the faint impression of a hand rubbing the neck and face, of pale white against pale white, then as quickly gone.  Then he felt a heavy coin pushed into his free hand. "Quite excellent.  I would say exciting, but excitement is a thing I have not seen in more years than you can imagine.  And yet I did enjoy the uncertainty of it."

"Uncertainty?  I don't understand, my lord.  Is there a problem?"

"No, my man.  Speaking only to myself.  I must be off now.   My meeting with the baron, you understand."

Barwick gathered his instruments, pushed them into the sack.  "Yes, my lord. Thank you for the payment.  It was an honor to serve."

An amused chuckle came from the dark corner.

"Truly, my lord.  Please, tell your friends.  If I may be so bold, business is difficult these days for an honest man.  Tell them of me."

The door opened from outside, the final orange and purple rays of the sun visible outside the carriage.

Another chuckle, the man now lost in the shadow.

"No, those of my acquaintance have little interest in your services.  But perhaps we shall see one another again.  I found it, entertaining."

The servant held out a gloved hand, drew him from the carriage by his elbow without a word. Barwick glimpsed a face drawn tight around the skull, of eyes hard and indifferent as to his existence.  Standing in the dusty street, he watched the carriage as it rattled toward the baron's home high on the hill, then returned to his shop, strapping his blade as he walked.
 

-end-