I weighed whether it stood impossible coincidence to meet Penn on the path? The boy’d spoken of the very cemetery ahead. Lived nearby, no doubt. And his description of vampires lurking within had given me the idea of tracking Black to his lair. If the other children seemed familiar, why, no doubt they were relatives. Was it even any great surprise that kindred to mad, modernist Zeit-Teufel were able to discuss Rousseau vs Hobbes when called upon?
Nothing surprises when the facts are known, I told myself. Continued down the road proud of these wise words. Perhaps I grew sane again. I looked forward to sanity. I’d live a dull life, I vowed. With no touch of fancy. I’d credit naught but what a man could kick.
I stopped at a rivulet that trickled beneath a small bridge. The water made tempting song, and I walked parched. Drat my dawdling carriage. It held drink and food. No doubt Bright and Green shared my whiskey and cold chicken now, laughing over the follies of my colonial person. I bent to scoop water, stopped.
“Why do you follow me?” I inquired.
“You doesn’t want to drink from that,” said Penn.
“Doesn’t I?” I growled. I knew I would hear good reason not to drink, and I thirsted. Perhaps best not to ask till too late. But spadassin training overruled. Sip not the suspect cup. More self-inflicted wisdom.
“Why should I not drink?”
For answer he pointed. Real hand, or puppet part? I couldn’t tell. I followed where finger led: the water trickling happy down the low hill of the roadside. Beyond waited a fenced overgrowth of stone and tree… I considered the stones. Lichen gnawing at faint lettering, shapes hinting weather-lost forms of wing and face. Ah. This happy little rivulet came chuckling and trickling through fields of ancient dead. Pooling in cloth-wrapped bones, seeping and dripping down hollows of wood and stone. A perfect tincture of corruption. Or else a vintage of life distilled to fine wine? One could look upon it either way: poetically or medicinally. But, could one drink it?
I shivered, declined. Overmuch like sipping from Lethe.
“Well, I must be at Widegate, at least,” I sighed, stood. Wiped hands on breeches, continued on down the road, seeking the cemetery entrance.
“Why are you following me now?” I asked.
“You owe me shilling,” declared Penn. “For a fog guide.”
“Upon my arrival at the art shop,” I pointed out. “You didn’t get me there.”
The boy looked crestfallen. Close seen, his eyes were white crystals, ice-jewels set into a boy’s head. Beautiful as the music of undersea bagpipes. I sighed for my soft heart and easy purse, pulled forth a shilling. He accepted solemn faced, inspected it.
“Scratched across the George,” he complained.
“Still buys beer,” I replied.
He nodded, pocketed the coin. Gathered willow bow and sticks together, pulled his robber’s mask up in sign of office. “If thou wilt go with me this day, I will give thee as merry a feast as ever thou hadst in all thy life."
“What?”
He shrugged. “I have to kidnap you to our camp promising we’ll have roasted ox, open wine barrels. There we’ll clash staves while minstrels sing songs of the green wood.”
I smiled. “Do you have roasted ox and wine barrels at hand?” Unlikely, but tempting. I’d skip the clashing staves and minstrels, songs of the green wood.
He shook head. “Just cold chicken and cider.” He crossed the bridge, dived into an ivy-tangled hole in the fence. I hesitated. Powers to confuse, I warned myself. Stay on the path. The boy freely confessed orders to kidnap. But, cold chicken. Cider… And I’d reached my destination. Easy to enter here, as at the gate. Ah, I followed. Ducked through the fence, passed ancient cypresses, roots wrapping old stone, old bone. To a clearing, afternoon-sun lit. Behold the merry robber band. Seated around a low stone tomb, already set with cup and plate. I could not help but laugh. They’d got ahead of me. No doubt they knew every shortcut for ten leagues. Only robber-queen Robin, her gormless partner Marion were missing.
The dog of mystery sat at tomb-table head. Gave an absent woof and wag of greeting, whilst keeping eyes firm upon a wicker basket. Chicken treasure chest, no doubt. The shadows laid cooling green hands upon my road-weary person. I sat.
“Whither wander Robin and Marion?” I asked. Expecting puzzled looks for this naming.
But, “Ach, those two are old sorts,” said the girl in dress, braided red hair like to Sionnach’s. Ears pointed in shadow to hers as well. Yet blue eyes like to another… I stared into those day-sky eyes and trembled. At last turned away shamed. A child not twelve. But I knew those eyes, in bed and dream and heart. How?
She grinned to say she knew, and wouldn’t tell.
“Fond of mysterious comings and goings, those old ones,” agreed Penn. He uncorked a jug, lifted with delicate hands. “All of ‘em touched as, as,“ he struggled to fill cups while considering metaphors of insanity.
“Mad as moon cats dancing on mirrors,” suggested one.
“Crazed as pepper-sniffing fairies,” offered another.
“Brain’s cooking a lamp oil soup with gunpowder spice.”
“Mad as dogs on a summer noon!” shouted Penn.
The bandit dog turned vast sorrowful eyes upon the boy. He sighed, she sighed. Penn nodded, shredded chicken from a bone, tendered these fragments of apology. Which she accepted.
I watched others drink the cider before tasting my own. What a horror of a mind I have, to think of children poisoning me. Yet, it was wise. True wisdom is a horror. Learned that in the war, or somewhen before.
“Mad as bagpiping squid?” I tried.
“Oh, those aren’t mad, much,” said Penn. “Just dreadful noisy. The old ones go ever so deeper and higher and farther.” He waved arms up, sideways and then backwards, to designate these separate dimensions of madness.
Old? The two in green cloaks? Well, to this crowd the first hair on chin marked ancient wisdom. I felt ancient as the stones about us. Comforted my aged self with chicken and cider.
The snake girl hissed to the dog, who nodded. She had not spoken. Girl I mean, not dog. She produced a flute, began to puff soft song. I sipped cider, waiting for minstrels with lutes, singing of the joys of the robber’s life beneath the forest green. Instead the red braided girl I designated Youngest Grace, began to sing. No language I knew, but my mind filled with images of shadowed woods, of forest creatures peering out from leaf and bush, dancers in a green world of burrows and nest, bird song and insect song.
Shivered, as these images united to a vision of sun’s light shining through green canopy, goldening a forest glade. Great trunks rising for cathedral pillars upholding arches of green light and leaf. Moss-covered stones lay about the clearing; stones weightier with time and meaning than memorials in any hallowed burial ground. Figures moved in and out of the stones and trees, dancing to the piping, the song, the sun’ bright gold. Chasing one another laughing, tumbling to the grass, perching upon the rocks shouting mad poems to the sky. Else sitting solemn and silent, faces joyful with some mystery of heart and breath. Faces like to the bandit children, and Sionnach and mad Teufel, and others I could almost recall… Eyes and lips haunted by mysteries not mine to share.
Sunlight shifted within the vision forest, and two figures appeared upon the clearing edge. Tangle-haired children, heads tilted, eyes bright, listening to stone and light, earth and wind and laughter. Their shadows stretched across the grass. Some misgiving made me shake head. The vision disappeared. I sat at the stone table, chin near on chest with dreaming.
In step to the fading dream, a night-jar in branches above our heads piped opening notes to the growing cricket-choir. Joined in with nightingale and crake. A pleasant, calming evensong whose meaning wrenched my heart. Evening?
Twilight.
Chapter 18
On the Orders of Flower
I leapt up. All song stopped. What the hell was I doing? I had to find Black’s tomb, behead him. And whatever unholy naked succubae of blood and
desire who shared his grave bed. By sane sunlight, if I hoped to succeed. How had I lost so much of the day?
I considered the tomb-table of children and dog. They stared back, eyes unfathomable as moon-cats dancing upon mirrors. Well, these had delayed me for their own theatre. To turn me from my purpose? Pointless to ask why, or what, or who or how.
I turned to the maze of gravestones, ancient trees and winding paths. Should I wander about till I stumbled into a tomb labeled ‘Black’? No. Best seek the cemetery entrance. Phineas and the carriage surely awaited me there. Green could guide our steps after. The red braided bandit rose, prepared to declaim, declare, distract.
“Grace,” I named her, warned her. “Hinder me not.”
She arched brows, nodded in assent for the naming.
“A pretty enough word. Graced then I am for the day, sir knight. And if you are wise you shall let me grace you with brief wisdom.”
I raised arms in defiance of further delay. She took it for raising arms in surrender.
“Do not cross the grave fields,” she advised. “You’ll be half the night going in circles. Take the fence hole back to the road, follow round the turn to the front.”
“That is all?” I asked. Returning to the road made excellent sense. Suspicious sense.
“’Tis all I can say.” She bit red lip in consideration. The gesture near broke my heart. Who did I know who bit lip so? She added, “Excepting… you will meet at the gate two who mean you well, and will offer further counsel.”
“Right.” More advice. More time-wasting theatre. I considered the band of bandits. They meant no harm. But that did not mean they did aught of use. The mad have their own measure of purpose.
I bowed. “My thanks for the hospitality of the green wood,” I said. You collection of moon-cats mirror dancing to bagpiping squid, I thought but did not voice.
I turned, hurried through tree and shadow to the fence, emerged by the trickling Stream of Death. Followed the road. Empty of man or beast. A cold wind blew off the river, sending tree-branches to shiver. I sighed to see my shadow stretching long, a sundial gnomon pointing to fast approaching night. And then I laughed, and threw hands in the air again, in defiance and defeat. Inevitable but I’d find myself seeking an unholy creature on her time. His time, that is. Well enow. I have always done my best work by night. No doubt same as she. As he, I mean.
Stone arch ahead, and a gate. Wide as its name. No carriage awaited. I wondered if the funeral procession had entered while I feasted with mad children. Further on I might have to pay an angry piper. A metaphor brought to life. In a cemetery, no less.
No piper, no carriage. But two cloaked figures stood as wardens before the arch. I drew rapier, approached young Robin Hood, dreaming Marion. Faces still masked, but no weapons drawn. Good. Past enough of that.
“Go home,” I told these children. “Go do your kitchen chores. Wash dishes. Feed chickens. Cease waylaying dangerous strangers.” I added a hand wave. “Shoo. Shoo.”
Neither blinked. Neither looked defiant, nor insulted. The girl pulled away her mask, as did the boy. They stared at me not as children playing bandit, but ancients of stone, contemplating a being they considered the child. Of a sudden all cricket song stopped. Every last evening bird flew silent, or sat in branches quiet. Even the river wind giving cloaks stage-theatre drama ceased, sudden as told ‘be still’.
“Rayne Gray, hear us,” whispered the girl. Voice low, and solemn. “First and foremost: harm none past this gate, no matter how they glower, how they growl. Save only they strike first.”
Poor advice, to my mind. I breathed now by striking first, in battle or tavern. I shrugged to say, we shall see.
“Second,” whispered the boy. “Trust all that will show their eyes. Trust none that will not.” Would have sounded properly mad had he so spoke while hiding eyes. But no, he fixed them wide and white upon me. Crystal circles like to Penn’s.
“Thirdly,” offered the girl. “A griffin stands ally ‘gainst all dark. A lion must serve his master, for good or ill. Turn no back to harpy, to gorgon. Alas, there is no telling of a dragon.” This advice had no immediate utility. She reached beneath cloak; I prepared to strike down a pistol. But no, here came a bundle of flowers.
“When you find grave or face forgot, place rosemary for remembrance. Give memorials a pansy for thought. But as you pass by a dark grave, keep fennel close, and columbine for love.”
Something in this order of flowers recalled… Ah, always back to Hamlet. I bowed, accepted the bundle, reciting.
“There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts. There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you, and here's some for me.”
“A most lettered spadassin,” laughed the girl. “But let rue stay where it lies. We’ve a surfeit of late. Good fortune to your feet, your sword, your eyes, Master Gray. Now go fetch who you forgot.”
I shook head at that. “I am not here to reclaim, lady; but lay a thing to rest.” I wondered what these creatures knew of Black, and Sionnach, and Bright and Teufel, the girl Kariel in the bell tower… Bah. The whole troop probably met nightly in some basement, plotted the next chapter in the tragicomedy The Confusion of Rayne.
I watched them turn and walk away, dramatic lines delivered. I felt a wrench of loss, as though abandoned upon some empty sea shore. Wind and evening resumed their lonely song. I turned to the cemetery gate, hesitated.
“Do you know where Alderman Black’s tomb is?” I shouted. Could never hurt to ask.
The boy glanced back, but did not speak. His shadow stretched across road and field and graves and world. A trembling of the evening light set it shaking like flame. His sister cocked head, then smiled wicked as witch bending over baby’s cradle.
“You need not search overmuch, Master Rayne. Enter the gate. The right grave will find you.”
Last word won, they turned and wandered down the road.
* * *
Forests calm my soul. I am no creature of the woods, the fields, the fens and thickets. I know right well I belong on a busy street corner coughing smoke, dodging carts across shit-slick cobbles, smiling at the dogs, the maids, the butchers and bakers. But where better for a man of violence to feel at ease, than where he least belongs?
I had visited Widegate once. Years past, curious to see what I felt before my great aunts’ grave. I came and felt a satisfied indifference. A patch of grass not wide enough to feed a goat, named by a stone. By then I’d changed my last name from the stone’s Mershon. I considered the grass, and understood the aunts and I had never made a family. A relief to each. No doubt they’d feared I’d pine for parents, press my child’s wet face to their dry dresses. The idea never occurred.
Widegate cemetery made no woods, for all that I walked shadowed by trees, spying through scrub and bush, tracking small animals rustling leaves. Nor yet was it a town; though I followed a bricked path lined by cold stone houses, doors shut tight. This cemetery stood a place of parts, but not in opposition. It made a graceful whole. Peaceful, at least. I wandered it a full two minutes before anyone tried to kill me.
The attacker waited high in a tree shadowing the path. Excellent hiding, I did not mark him. But neither did I walk directly beneath his branch. He was forced to crawl farther to be suitably placed to drop upon me. This sent down a small rain of bark and curses. I stared up in sympathy, taking a few paces sideways to torment him.
He edged out farther, rapier catching on smaller branches. I stepped back to the other path side. He wiggled backwards, cursing. I made as if to go forwards, he near dropped; I stepped back again and he overbalanced, toppled.
He landed well. I lunged soon as he hit the ground. So help me he parried, leaped back. I might have rushed upon him, keeping the initiative. But while I knew none waited behind the tree nor close about, I feared a bolt from the shadows farther on. Best tread careful, I decided, and he leaped forwards, near impaled me. He was enthusiast
ic.
Where I was impatient. My night-vision helped. And I had not been perched in a tree god-knows how many hours. Turns a man stiff in the joints. He made an absurd lunge that left him open. It achieved a side slash across my arm. I shrugged and thrust through the ribs, coming close enough to kick him for luck.
He lay moaning on the ground. And laughing? That was new. Not easy to laugh with sword thrust to side. I put point to his throat, considered the face. Not one I knew, nor felt I had ever met. A relief, to be honest. I introduced myself.
“Rayne Gray. You?”
He considered. “Call me… the Captain.”
I sighed. He looked shamed. “Aye, I know. But what’s a swordsman without a name? Just a ruffian. How many beer rounds and burials did it take for you to be greeted as Seraph?”
Devil take all would-be spadassins. I labor day and night to persuade the people of the earth to act in their own interests, to covet sense and value science; to speak their voice in court and bank and the day’s journal. And the only least fire I ever sparked, was this interest in holding a bloody sword under a striking nom-de-guerre.
I picked his bloody rapier up, intending to toss it to shadows. Jeweled hilt? I put it through my belt. Stepped back, tended to my arm. A slash of little threat. Still I cursed. The shirt was ruined. I bound my wounded flesh with cloth I carry for such sad purpose. Pondered carrying thread and needle for wounded shirts.
The ‘Captain’ wiggled to the tree trunk, sat himself upright. I returned attention to him, tapping ground with point to express impatience.
“How many are you?” I asked.
“Were four,” he admitted. “Supposed to wait you here.”
Four attackers would have changed the math. I would have lain on the ground now, skewered but not laughing. I looked about. “Where are the rest?”
The Harlequin Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans Page 16