“And you ask of me because…”
“Last night’s victim was Lord Gould. The previous victim was the Reverend Kingsley.”
Ah. Kingsley was present the night Gould challenged me. I decided not to mention this.
“The Journal said Kingsley died of fever,” I pointed out. “Surrounded by children and sobbing servants.” Sobbing in relief, no doubt. The man practiced sermons on his household as the less-kindly doctors tried their physics on dogs.
“Did you expect his family to declare he’d been eaten by a vampire?”
I took the point. “True. Makes poor commentary on the state of his holy person, perishing in congress with unholy entities. And parishioners would clamor to behead the body, else he’ll rise again, appearing by nights at their windows delivering his longest sermons.” We both shuddered at the image. “Who else?”
“A ship captain named Marcelle. French, according to his papers. Died in a hotel.”
I sighed in relief. No one I knew, and not at the dinner.
“A spy, no doubt. Fallen to another spy. My political work has left me outside that art world these late months. Any other names?”
“A man named Richard Young. Swordsman, I’m told.”
Well. Ah. Hmm. A former student. Not present at the dinner. But no friend of mine. I broke his arm as he’d tried to backstab. Not in the lesson plan. No doubt he thought of me whenever the weather turned ill. Again, I felt disinclined to mention this connection.
“And you seriously believe the blood was drunk from their throats?” I scoffed.
“I am told no usual spillage surrounded the bodies,” declared Green. “How else explain?”
“The human mind seeks supernatural explanation,” I replied. “We look into fog and see faces. We hear thunder and later recall the shouts of angels.” I paused, picturing wings unfolding from a silhouetted back, stretching up and out, caressing stars… An impossible memory, thus proving my point. “Your victims were killed elsewhere. Once bled out, their bodies were returned to bed or chair or alley. Behold, death not by common cut-throat, but sinister night-haunt.”
“Why on earth such elaborate lengths to murder?” asked Green.
“So that watch-runners and thief-catchers seek vampires by moonlight, instead of mortal killer on the day-lit street.”
“Perhaps…” Green seemed half-persuaded. Within, I felt less sure. I reviewed the steps necessary to remove a man from bed, kill him, shake the blood out, replace him in his sheets. It required carrying bodies up and down stairs and halls, through doors unseen. Problematic. No, absurd. But so were vampires. She’s a drinker of blood but a good sort you love deep…
“Are you well, Rayne?” asked Green.
“Should I not be?” I asked, puzzled for the question.
“Ah, you have stared out the window for some time now. Aught amiss in the gardens?”
I glanced about. I stood beside the window. Hadn’t I been sitting, drinking coffee? There the cup sat, no longer steaming. My mind wandered of late. My head ached as though I were some neurasthenic recruit wincing at cannon-fire. I took a breath, collected myself.
“Vampires are nonsense,” I declared. “Superstition serving as symbol for society’s ills. We shape the world with these signs because we lack the courage to face the truths they symbolize.”
“What truth can a vampire symbolize?”
I sighed. “That we exist by devouring one another. That we are cursed by our own religious symbols. That mirrors refuse to show our faces, because we dare not see ourselves for what we are. That we live as though dead.”
“Very poetic,” admitted Green. “If to no point. Lord Gould’s chamber was locked from within. The only entry a window, three floors above ground.”
“Trivial obstacles,” I shrugged. “A rope. An extra key. An ivy trellis. A climb down from the roof.”
“As well, a naked woman of awful pallor and terrible teeth was seen standing beneath his window, smeared in blood. The sight threw two servants and a dog into screaming fits.”
I blinked. Well, yes, that went beyond metaphor. I could think of no easy explanation. Hoax? Hallucination? I settled for a shrug. “If the city frights itself with tales of vampires, why then, the imaginative and foolish will see these things o’night.”
“Certainly,” said Green. Paused, then repeated the word for lack of better. “Certainly.” He shuffled a paper, as if to shuffle subject. “When Black died, you asked me to tell you someday how he came to hate you.”
I stared out the window. Fog gathering. Or flowing in. Or descending? Perhaps it rose up from the ground, or out the mouths of sleepers. Had I asked Green to tell me of Black? Whatever for? I no longer recalled, nor cared overmuch.
“That was a bloody day,” I sighed. “I regret each drop spilt, excepting only Jeremy Black’s.”
“Indeed a strange night. But in return for my tale, you said you would reveal some dark truth about Pierrot.”
My head ached. In war and work I have taken a good many blows to the skull. Inevitable but the fastenings within must loosen. No doubt my brain rattled about each time I tipped my head. Best not move it without reason. No nodding yes, no shaking no. No thinking overmuch.
“No idea what I meant,” I admitted. “I escaped from gaol during the riot, and went into hiding. I met strange folk. As one will, loitering on rooftops, lurking in sewers. I must have made a strange figure myself. The murder of Elspeth, the betrayal of Stephano, the burning of my house… These things haunted me, drove me. Much of where I went, what I did, I can’t seem to recall.”
The fog beyond the glass now obscured buildings across the street. Boys with lamps would be calling out to serve as guides, taking hand and coin of trusting strangers. The knowing blind leading the uncertain blind. How else could life be?
“At some time in hiding I crossed a clan of French actors who dabbled in piracy and acts of mad jest. Harlequins, they called themselves. Pierrot Decoursey was their chief.” A sudden image of a bridge at night. I stared down at flowing water. Who stood beside me?
Green put fingertips together in pretense that he plunged into thought. Or hell, maybe he did so dive. “Perhaps they took offense? Doubly so, that the deaths that night were placed upon their late leader?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps. People will collect these grudges. I kept a list myself.” A lesser list after that bloody night. I had avenged myself upon all my greater foes. Perhaps from that lack of hates came this present feeling of something missing… A sad thought, that anger could be a need of my soul.
“What has that night to do with Gould’s death?” I asked.
“Only the connection to you,” considered Green. “And this taste of something… uncanny. It defied nature how Pierrot came to mimic you. You beheld it yourself. Could there be association between the recent murders, and these Harlequins?”
“Peers we were each to each, and cared nothing for princes waiting at the door. The least of our blood was royalty in the measure of our love. All others, plaything people.”
“I don’t recall the quote,” replied Green.
“What quote?” I wondered.
Green stared at me. At length he pushed coffee aside, poured himself a glass of wine. Sipped. He prepared to remark something. A knock at the door spared me his sagacious observings. Phineas opened the door, poked head within. “Beg pardon sirs, but Master Rayne has an appointment with the Joiner’s Guild at 11:00.”
Green frowned. “You have been eavesdropping, I assume?”
Phineas bowed in reply.
“And do you believe in vampires, man?” asked Green.
Had my valet not worn his damned tinted spectacles, he must have shown us a young man’s face, a young man’s mind marking young man’s opinion. As was, he presented the knowing eyes of a devil, giving his words unfair dramatic weight.
“I know vampires for a fact, Master Green.”
Chapter 3
The Duties of Host and Guest and Ghost
In the rumble and bump of the carriage-ride to the Joiner’s Guild, I did all I could to recall the evening when Gould challenged me. Ten men present. Two now dead. I’d quarreled with both. What of that? I spent my days quarreling, arguing, chiding, goading; herding flocks of rich and poor towards a common goal. Nothing unusual about the dinner. Salad, soup, kidney pie. Rich men in a rich room bedecked with silent servants, candlelit silver. A ghost’s disembodied head rolling about beneath the table, but I’d brought him with me.
I’d known Gould for foe. But I strove nowadays to convert enemies, not slay them. Far more trouble and pain, I point out. And so I accepted the invitation determined to enspell a dining-room of banker-lords with a vision of glorious business opportunities within an empowered working-class.
Dinner had been ambush, prepared with malice. By the salad, I felt outnumbered. By soup I’d made a defensive stand, defining empire’s commercial glory as the product of the joined hands of lord and yeoman. The table shuddered in revulsion, as did the servants standing by. At the pouring of brandy I yielded the battle-field to the silk flag of Status Quo. The point of this invitation was not to dine nor inquire, but display me for a stuttering fool of a stumbling colonial.
“Use the dessert fork, not the soup spoon,” reminded the ghost beneath the table. “Don’t slurp the brandy, sip it. And sit up straight, you clumsy bear.” I aimed a kick, struck something. The shipping magnate across me started, pained and angered. There went the import cartel’s support for labor rights. I pretended fascinated attention to our host.
“The Celtic tribes are savage revenants,” Lord Gould informed us. “A man may tolerate inferior creatures properly darkened by Sun and God, quarantined to wastelands beyond the ocean. But the pale dirty face of an Irishman affronts. It dwells too near civilization. It resembles too close the face of a true European. Wise Romans walled them out, Saxons drove them west. Vikings set them to till and drudge.”
The table sat silent, looking from Gould to me. He spoke for my benefit. I listened, if not for his benefit. I toyed with a spoon bearing the man’s family crest. An effeminate, emaciated lion. Wouldn’t bet on the beast against a badger.
“Ignorant bore,” sighed the ghost beneath the table. “Irish monks were copying Plato when his Saxon ancestors danced naked round trees.”
“Did they really?” I asked. I pictured Gould so dancing. The image gave him a certain dignity he lacked in dinner clothes, goading me to wrath. The man smiled, supposing at last I grew wroth. In fact I spoke to Dealer’s head at our feet. It visited me at times, chattering of art and meaning. Only I heard his comments, he being figment of my damaged mind. Poor figment; present at the feast, yet unable to partake. His fault, I add.
“History declares it,” Gould assured. He hefted brandy, sipping courage and eloquence as bee gathering flower nectar. “Past time, sirs, to take Britain’s west and make of it a place of light and civilization, not potato crofts and beggar villages.”
I turned the spoon this way and that, trying to catch in the reflection the view behind me. Someone lurked beyond the night-darkened French windows, spying upon this bright dinner gathering. I’d caught a hint at the soup. Now we sat at brandy, and still only the briefest glimpse of face. Bah. Even the most polished spoon is a failure as a mirror.
I surrendered spoon, considered the gathering. Faces blank as those in dock-side tavern when one pirate insults another past pardon. I’d not come for fight, but to charm rich men into dreams of the coin-crop they’d reap if the poor starved less, purchased more. My particular target was Kingsley down the table. A Broad-Church priest, Christian Socialist; he bubbled mad with ideas for reforming spelling and labor and the orders of angels in Heaven. The Charter needed the support of just such vicars, priests, ministers, pastors, preachers, clerics, friars, bishops, deacons and all the ecclesiastic fauna of holy investment.
“I seem to recall some scripture forbidding the taking of a neighbor’s land?” I asked.
“Cursed is he who moves his neighbor's boundary stone,’” quoted Dealer’s head. “’And all the people shall say, 'Amen.' Deuteronomy something-or-other.”
“Cursed is he who moves his neighbor’s boundary stone,” I repeated happily. How useful, to have a head full of knowledge at one’s feet. A bother as well.
Kingsley kept a shaggy prophet’s clump of hair atop his own head. He shook this periwig church in sorrow for my error. But his eyes glinted same as any pirate in flame-shine of burning ship. Well, the banner of his opinion was surrendered to Gould. I saw that, and sighed.
“The weeds of my garden, the fox in the field, the thief in the alley, the Paddy crofter eyeing my horse or my daughter,” listed Kingsley. “These are not neighbors, and own no boundary, for they have no place in this world but what I grant without forethought to my duty.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Gould assured. “But we would not wish to offend a guest.” He turned to the table to express his disinterest in offense. “I believe Mister Gray’s mother was Irish?”
“Well, this isn’t going to end well,” chuckled Dealer. “Has the ass spent a week practicing sword?”
“Oh, he’s no tyro,” I replied. “I’ve seen Gould do quite well with saber. In bouts.”
The room stared silent. My remarks were out of context with the dialogue. What was the dialogue? Ah, my mother. I turned a smile to Gould, charitable to make a saint smile.
“Only Irish on her mother’s side,” I pointed out. “Her father was Mohican.” The name meant naught to the table-gathering. Well, it meant little to me. I explicated. “A wild forest savage of the colonies.”
Dealer interjected. I wished he would not, it distracted. “The natives of New Jersey were Lenape. Wigwams. Some good pottery. Gray, I smell brandy up there. When you over-turn the table upon these asses, can you spill a cup down here?”
That briefest glimpse of a face at a window again, this time from the room’s far side. The spy shifted this way and that about the house. But why? Surely they could not overhear. Only observe faces, tilts of head, smiles of contempt and threat. Perhaps they sought the proper angle to fire pistol. A difficult kill, and in my professional opinion taking overlong. Was I the target? The room was a collection of the rich, powerful and unloved. I among them. My choice, I suppose.
At length I returned attention to the table. Gould now stood. By the expectant air our host had said something of deadly significance. Something to hush all breathing, set faces tense... and I’d missed it. Would it be manners to ask him to repeat? Gould sought to goad me to a challenge. Brave of the man. I should be kind to his sense of drama, avoid confessing how boredom had turned my attention elsewhere.
I dropped my spoon, bent below the table to retrieve it. Faced Dealer’s head resting upon the soft Persian carpet.
“What did he say?” I whispered. “Missed it.”
“You’re absentminded nowadays,” noted the head. “Let’s see. He called colonials a ‘mongrel race of criminals, madmen and foreigners’. Quite right. Then insulted your mother. True words, possibly. Then declaimed upon the late Irish slattern Elspeth.” Dealer scowled. “Gut him for that last.”
I nodded, retrieved spoon, returned attention to room. A pale face peeked from a corner of the French windows. Best not look directly upon it. But I had no interest trading glares with Gould. I decided to address the candles. They stood as honest, upright tapers.
“’A mongrel race of criminals, madmen and foreigners’,” I quoted. “Quite insulting. Makes us sound like the royal family.” The candles flickered amused. But growls rose about the table.
“Hold your tongue, Mister Gray, if you cannot hold your liquor,”
I gave the candle a nod, turned to consider the room. No servants armed. No weapons drawn. Gould stood flushed. A quarter drunk, I’d guess. This would come to challenge, then, not sudden murder.
“What a collection of spineless, effete, greedy fops,” I sighed, and stood. Gould grinned. Was he so confident? He m
ust have spent a month at practice. That, or he intended to cheat. I considered overturning the table. But what idiot gesture. His servants would be set to cleaning, not Gould. It is never the masters who pay for drama. Always the servants.
I put hands to the table with a sigh, as though about to declaim. Then vaulted across. A near-perfect spadassin move. Well, an elbow knocked a candelabra. Ah, and a boot kicked Kingsley as I passed. Still, I landed the other side upon my feet. Servants exclaimed. Gould stared outraged at this absurd act of indecorum. A gentleman does not leap the furniture at formal dinner.
But I stood before him. Tall as I, if less broad of shoulder. We met eyes, waiting for the other to strike the first blow. A servant approached to defend his master. Gould waved him back. Good for him.
“You have violated the most sacred rule of civilized peoples,” I informed Gould. “Your duty as a host. I was guest in your house. The poorest crofter in Eire would be ashamed to so insult a guest. You don’t have civilization. You have the manners of wealth. A kind of golden shit-grease you smear across your bodies, in substitute for human clothes.”
Gould struck me across the face. I allowed this, then returned the blow. He took it well. The room relaxed. Slaps meant challenge and duel, a polite and stylish homicide. There followed the naming of seconds, the appointing of place and time and genteel weaponry. Nothing of pirate knives, slammed fists, smashed chairs…
* * *
My carriage arrived at the Joiner’s Guild; I ceased recollection. Back to work. Here I would be sat to another table, where we would flatter one another for our work in service of Heaven, Liberty and Higher Carpentry Rates. And yet, recalling the dinner with Gould, I now regretted how it ended. It should not have come to formal challenge. No; I should have slaughtered the room. How fitting to gut Gould with his own crested silverware. Then I’d finish Kingsley off with a candlestick, quoting something about light shining in darkness. Then chase after the shipping magnate, eviscerate him with a salad fork…
The Harlequin Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans Page 2