The Harlequin Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans

by Raymond St. Elmo

  “Sit and wait,” the boy commanded, leading me to a stone bench. I considered rebellion, then laughed and sat. One meets veterans with eyes no longer level. The hands moving to no sensible purpose. Their words jumble, expressing thoughts torn as wind-worn flags. Scars cover their wounds, but the harm remains to mind and spirit. No doubt I’d joined their ranks, led by kind tugs to sit by the fire, a tankard of weak beer carefully placed into my grasp. Well enow. Bring on the beer.

  The boy put finger to lips. “She’s fetching the other,” he whispered. “Don’t wander off or they’ll eat you.” He turned, ran into the fog.

  I considered these words, particularly ‘eat you’. What would? Wolves? Cannibals? Formless fog beasts who’d wrap mist arms about me, sink white teeth into flesh, tearing while I slashed useless against their mist forms. Nonsense. But I decided to sit quiet. For politeness sake.

  The view before me rang familiar as a favorite bell. A fountain of stone centered by a lion. Why, I sat in my own garden. But it had grown large and strange. A wonder of roses now painted the air, a scarf of perfume drawn across the nose, tickling. And from where did these old tombstones come? William Blake, no doubt.

  “So I turn’d to the Garden of Love, that so many sweet flowers bore.

  And I saw it was filled with graves, and tomb-stones where flowers should be.

  And priests in black lenses were stealing my senses…

  That last line sounded wrong. I puzzled over the words, till two figures marched out the mist. Young girls. One I recognized. The snake child from Convent Garden who’d vanished into a basket. She guided a taller figure, perhaps thirteen. The two creatures made a study in white, framed in white fog. Paper-white hair on the snake girl, bone pale skin on the elder. This newcomer wore blue silk dress with high white collar. Pale blond hair straight as pins, as shafts of light spearing storm clouds. It made my head whirl, that hair, the unearthly straight strands. I started to stand, sat again.

  The snake girl guided the older as I’d been guided. Pushed her to sit upon the bench beside me. That done she studied us both, in critique of the overall art.

  “What do you think?” I could not help but ask.

  She hissed and blew, whistled and whispered in long reply. Reminding me of Swan’s conversational style. Her amber bead eyes focused on mine, warning me: mark these words. I nodded head in promise to recall each hiss. She sighed, shook head. Turned and walked into the fog. How everyone kept appearing and disappearing! No wonder my head swam.

  The girl in blue and I sat silent, staring at the mist for a curtain at play’s intermission.

  “I’m not thinking she can speak your tongue,” remarked the girl at last. “It’s often so with the Skalen.”

  I nodded as though that were sense. Who knew but it was?

  The fog glimmered bright, rippling, twisting, swirling. Sun unable to pierce the curtain, but setting it to glow. We sat silent, in a sea of light. I felt at peace.

  “I’ve been told not wander away else I’ll get eaten,” I remarked.

  “By what?” asked the girl. Curious, not frightened. What a graceful thing is a girl’s voice at childhood’s end. A boy at that age has a jesting, breaking, cracking quack for a voice. Particularly in front of girls.

  “I wasn’t told,” I admitted. “No doubt the mystery increases the power of the commandment.” I waved hands in the air, adopted deep voice of divinity. ”Wander not, else thou be eaten by…” I left it unfinished.

  The girl laughed. The sound shook me. My wounded head whirled, near sent me tumbling. I stared at the fountain to steady my mind. Old stone, a lion snatching jaws at a stream of water that never flowed. Poor thirsty lion. We sat silent. I watched forms appear and disappear in the white glow, never sure if they were real, or phantoms of my broken mind.

  “That fountain looks familiar,” observed the girl. “I’ve seen it, I know. But when?”

  “It’s mine,” I told her. “Was here when I bought the house, before it burned down. Still there for the rebuilding. Caesar only knows how many times that beast’s seen conflagration.”

  “Well, the tombstones are mine,” declared the girl. “Those are ald family names writ upon ‘em.” A northern burr spiced her voice. Fetching. I eyed her from the corner of my eyes. A bit of bust. Lady’s silk dress, but bare feet poking out from under the hem. No longer child, not yet woman.

  I considered her tombstones. They did not belong in my garden. They crowded it, old drear monuments, old drear epitaphs. Graves past numbering. “Do you have much family?” I asked. “All I have is a head that rolls behind me, chattering of art.”

  “No, does it really?” asked the girl, impressed. Then turning suspicious. “That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

  “It’s annoying, it is. One more thing that sounds a wonder, till you curse it for tripping your feet as you walk down the hall.”

  “Ah,” said the girl. “Well, I come from a right large and very annoying family. We number as the stars. Indeed, some of the night luminaries are counted sept and kin.” Her voice turned singsong. “As are many a sea wave, and your wiser winds of mountain vale and desert dune. Not to forget men and women, beasts and birds and stranger things.”

  I considered this claim. No more unlikely than my bodiless head. More grandiose. But why not? We sat in the realm of dreams. Grandness suited the occasion. Who’d wish to dream of small rooms, watered wine and grocery receipts?

  “Sounds a fun lot at weddings and such,” I offered. I pictured a host of mad figures sitting to a feast table of infinite length, a gathering of family without beginning or end. I studied the girl’s hair by the corner of my eye. Yellow as the morning’s daisy petals.

  She kicked the ground. Bare toes dug at the pebbles. A perfect ivory-carved foot. Was she constructed like Penn? If so, an artifact of beauty. And laughter as well. No part of a girl is so comic as that line of little pink toes. Now she growled, the toes arching in little pink rage, balancing a pebble to hurl at the sky.

  ”Family! Ach. I’d trade them all for your sensible rolling head. Cousins and aunts and nephews and uncles and all the tribes. We quarrel from dawn to sunset, then sulk till sun’s rise again. I love them deep as ocean’s depths, but really I’d push half the tribe into a volcano were they fool enough to stand by one with me behind.”

  I nodded. “When you are my age, you will appreciate them,” I exhaled in wise tones. In truth, I knew as much of family as I did of volcanoes. One grasps the general idea, then builds upon it.

  She snorted a laugh. Cute sound, ejected out delicate nose. “Your age, boy?”

  “I’m grown man,” I asserted. And then wondered. I watched my own bare foot dig into the pebbled ground. Legs no longer than hers. I held hands up, marveling. Smooth things all but veinless, like unto Penn’s. “I will be soon enough, anyway.”

  “Pfff,” scoffed the girl. It made me angry. I frowned at her. She parried the frown, riposted with scorn. Eyebrows so pale one must trace with finger to know whether they arched in amusement or slanted in anger. I near reached to so do. Lips red as fresh blood. I weighed leaning forwards, kissing her. She tossed her yellow sheet of hair.

  “Don’t even be thinking it,” she growled. But then she blushed, looked aside.

  We sat in silence again, staring at the fog, thinking about not thinking it. Did she scoot a bit closer?

  “When the tree behind us burned down, we worked to dig the stump out.”

  She glanced behind, beheld the great black circle.

  “Ah. I can picture it,” she decided. “A great dark oak, branches stretching into the sky same as the roots reaching into the earth.”

  I nodded. “We found a bronze box beneath those very roots.”

  She cocked head at that. “Really? Buried ages past?”

  I nodded. “When hereabouts stood forest, beyond the wooden walls of the town of Lud.”

  We stared into the fog, picturing a forest. It was quite easy to do.

  “Well?” she
asked, kicking feet.

  “Well, what?” I replied, kicking a pebble. Went nowhere.

  “What was in the box?”

  I grinned. “What box?”

  “Pffff,” she snorted.

  “I wonder how long we have to sit here,” I complained.

  “Me, too,” she said. Then, “Why are you here?”

  I tried to recall. Why, when, what? These words received handfuls of fog in reply. Something about a basement, a play, a dancing dragon. Dream images fading upon awakening, leaving only the feel of the dream’s music, a sense of wonder and loss.

  “I think… I was looking for someone.”

  She scooped a pebble with expert toes, kicked it bouncing against the lion’s head.

  “Bet you can’t do that twice,” I scoffed.

  In reply, she scooped a pebble with expert toes. Kicked it bouncing against the lion’s head.

  “Bet you can’t do so once,” she sniffed.

  “It’s a stupid trick,’ I said.

  “He can’t, then,” she told the lion. It grinned. And it was my lion.

  I dug at a pebble, flipped it with my foot towards the traitor. The stone flew through the mist, vanished. The girl laughed. The lion grinned. I sat fuming. Why must girls always act older? Forever giving kindly, lordly, motherly advice. Showing off. In Keeper’s tavern the barmaid Griselda drove me mad. One mere year older, but she’d lean forwards placing mugs upon a table, and customers would return the view with tips and whistles. Patting her behind as she turned. I put hand once to the very same ass and she’d near knocked me into the cellar by way of the floor.

  “So why are you here?” I asked.

  She considered, shifting restless. Did she move yet closer? I could now almost feel her shoulder touch mine, the fold of her dress brush my leg. A bit of the smell of her. Soap, I caught. Flowers. A touch of blood. Surely that last was me.

  She swung legs back and forth, forth and back. Toes kicking pebbles, digging a trough beneath each foot. “I came looking too. But I sit here now and for the life of me I can’t recall what I came to find. How annoying! One sees the ald folks do so. Come into a room scratching heads, picking things up, putting them down. Poor things wander out again. When they arrive elsewhere they’ll remember, and start off on the journey down the hall again. And again. And again.”

  She brooded on an infinity of ‘again’s, then concluded. “But I feel sure it’s a person I’m seeking.”

  I weighed all that. “Tall, short, fat, thin? Old, young, friend, foe?”

  She shook head. Amazing how the lines of hair did not tangle. “I try and try to recall. But all I can think of is, well, is…” She left it there, put hands to face in embarrassment.

  “What?” I asked. Her lover, I decided. Some dandy in mustachio and cape. French accent and a snuff box. Ruffled shirt, cruel heart. She peeked out from between her hands.

  “A bear,” she confessed.

  I laughed loud. The stone lion grinned. “You sit here waiting for a bear?”

  She tried to frown, but her own laugh wanted out. It shot out her nose like a musket ball. She gave up, fired the rest through the red mouth, the rose lips. Her teeth were long, white as spikes of fresh snow. We watched one another laugh till it stopped dead. Turned to blushes. We darted eyes away.

  “Ach, then now,” she demanded. “Who is it you await?” A fair question. I had no answer. Probably no one. Some lack in life formed a hollow shaped as person, and I waited for fog or dream to fill the hole. Till Penn returned, guided me back through mist and dream into the day’s duty.

  “Do you believe in vampires?” I asked.

  She froze. No more leg kicking, no more rustle of dress. I now sat next to a statue of a girl.

  “Ach no, not a bit,” she declared at last. She said something to herself in another language. Gaelic, maybe. Then added, “And if you knew the beasties as I so do, you wouldna believe in them either.”

  Bah. Back to being older and wiser, just for her bits of breasts. Enough. I stood.

  “I’m bored with waiting,” I declared. “Let’s explore.”

  She tilted head to side. “Think we should?”

  “No, but let’s do anyway.”

  She bit white teeth into red lip. Thinking of governess’s scoldings, getting her dress dirty. Then she grinned. I took her hand to help her rise. I wondered if she’d snatch it from me, slap my face. She did not. We stood holding hands that second. A long trembling second. Then, hands still clasped, turned and walked into the mist.

  Chapter 10

  In Sun’s Shine, in Storm’s Shadow

  I hold few memories of my father. He stood fifty feet tall with a voice that shattered stone. He could lift me till my raised hand brushed fingertips to the angels painted upon the dining room ceiling. He loved storms. For a farmer invested in overseas shipping this seems folly. But storm will come, welcome or no. Why not take pleasure at the smell, the sound, the sight?

  I remember him best standing against the tall garden windows, watching the march of clouds. Throwing open the front door to welcome in the rolling thunder, the first dust-drop smell of rain, the caress of wind that soon becomes slap. He was a man enjoying a favorite play, a connoisseur of lightning clap and torrent, following line by line the script of tempest.

  Lesser to storms stood his love of weaponry. A peaceful farmer, but his house passed for an armory. The walls decorated with ancient two-handed swords taller than me, and thin steel foils that’d snap were a child to stab the wall. If my father knew how to fight with such, he did not live to teach me. Nor about farming, shipping, dancing, romances domestic or casual. Not whether poetry suited a man or corrupted the soul. Not riding a horse, tying a cravat, lighting candle with flint and steel. Not when to trust a cold stranger nor suspect a smiling friend. Nothing of being man nor husband nor father nor farmer. Upon his death I received no sword nor candlestick, neither a foot of land nor half an American penny. From my father I have a love of storms. I take that for my inheritance.

  * * *

  “Should we worry it grows dark?” I asked. Phrased as a trifle. Nothing of should we fear how the bright mist fades to dusk, the wind mutters while tree branches thrash in alarm, and thunder follows behind like the baying of hunting dogs?

  The pale girl considered, sniffing the air. “Ach, they play with the weather. That’s not good. They will seek to harry us to some dark point.”

  “Who?” I asked. A sane question in mad setting. Pointless as mad question in sane setting. Perhaps a banking conference where one gravely asks ‘why can’t fish waltz as well as dragons?’

  “Oh, the damned Harlequins,” she sniffed. She spoke as I; in tone of trifles. But her hand clasped mine the tighter, worry edging her voice. “All the family wander dreams. Some live entirely within. But the Decoursey will make hay and havoc. They lurk on paths, delight to send one screaming. They are quite good at it. What dismal mastery, to turn another’s dreams to, to,” she hesitated at the naughty word. “To mierde.”

  “Sound bloody shits,” I offered. She fired another nose-laugh. Clearly her mouth and nose warred over the propriety of mirth. Nose demanded ‘let laughter free’, while mouth stood prim for puritan silence.

  After laugh, she grew thoughtful. “We are cold to them. So they play cruel japes, gathering what crumbs of attention they can.”

  “Better feared than forgot?” I offered. Thinking of the lonelier types who came to Keeper’s tavern. A few cups down and they’d growl curses upon absent wives, former friends. Glaring about, hoping for some fool to meet eye and argue the past.

  She cocked head at that. Impressed. “Exact so,” she agreed. I felt wise. What an education is a tavern. She continued, eyeing the fog as though all her tribes and kin lurked just within, listening. Likely they did.

  “My Harlequin cousinry are masters of thought and dream. In the waking world they can bespell an unguarded mind. Our family does not value such gift. What use has it, save mischief? Better t
o turn beast like the Mac Tier, else dwell in beautiful sea caves like the Mac Mur. Befriend eldritch monsters of the dark as do the Scalen. Even play with clockwork like the silly Glocken.”

  I sighed, lost in the tangle. Same as Methodists and Presbyters slamming doors to Uncle Baptist and Cousin Anabaptist, whilst Brother Lutheran and Sister Quaker frowned upon Aunt Calvinist who refused to sit with Nephew Catholic for all the harps of Heaven. Drive one mad to keep names and quarrels straight. You’d be mad to bother.

  Thunder rumbled. Wind ripped the fog curtain to tatters, revealing storm-shadowed countryside. By dim light we beheld a country lane. To our left dark woods, to right dark fields. I shivered in fear, in excitement. We walked on, the girl chattering, skipping at times. I understood that she was not lamenting her family’s ways. She enjoyed reciting their faults and feuds, sure as my father enjoyed storms.

  “My Da worked to ban the Harlequin from the revels. Bad blood flows twixt Harlequin and Sanglair since. And yet, say what you wish, the Decoursey keep an open door to all the kindred. While the other clans barricade both heart and hearth. We grow ever more fearful of our own faces. Poor mad Harlequins! They judge they’ve naught left to fear.”

  Ahead a fence ran beside the path. Beyond sat a farm cottage, facing the road in sign of welcome to what life sent. It looked a wonder of domestic peace, for all it stood painted in storm shadow. Before the cottage, a girl child played ball with a dog. She waved at sight of us. Dog and child rushed to the fence.

  “Papa’s come home from the war,” declared the girl, turning smile to the cottage. The dog barked, sharing the news, the joy. The child tossed the ball. Dog leaped to catch. The child looked us up and down. “You’re holding hands,” she declared. “Are you sweethearts?”

  My hand was immediately left hanging, cold and embarrassed. My companion whirled, looked in all directions but mine. Crossed arms, unsure where to put her hands. I put mine in my pockets.

  “I am just helping this boy through the fog,” she explained to the dog. The dog wagged tail, understanding.