by Douglas Draa
A day passed and he hadn’t died, and where before he felt as though a stone were caught in his throat, now it felt more like a cork. He tried to speak to himself but still could not, which was for the best, as two brigands passed by the oak, singing and play-fighting with the two halves of the crosier. They could have killed him with the halves, but one got the chance only to hit him in the face when they found him hiding in the tree.
“We’ll take what you have,” said the one with the long greasy hair and the pretty blue eyes. Carloman could not speak. If he could, he would have said that he had nothing, which was true, but not true enough to avoid a head cut. The second, the one with the clean clothing and the broken teeth, struck Carloman in the forehead. It was only half the crosier, and the brigand was far less well fed than Carloman and his strike could only do a daze.
The brigands were run down by the horsemen of Lothair as they approached the city from the dark of the woods. Hooves snapped the molested remains of the broken oaken reliquary and the skinny bodies of the brigands, and would have the body of Carloman had he not been silent and dazed in the oak hollow.
More horsemen swept by him, and men on foot, and things on wheels, but Carloman did not see because blood crept over his eyes. For the rest of the day he heard the strange sounds of the fight: the hard, alarming smacks of arrows entering bodies, the squeals; the cries of grown, bearded, German men begging not to be killed, weeping as they died, vomiting, going mad.
Few saw Carloman in the tree, and those who did thought he was dead. There were dead, hacked men at the walls of Milan who looked less dead than Carloman in the hollow.
Lothair had come not in days as Louis had explained but hours, and so was the length of the fight, rather than months. Soon he heard nothing in the direction of Milan but perhaps some final moans, or wind. Carloman rubbed blood from his eyelids and saw enough to emerge from the woods and wander toward Milan.
The ground became marshy before the walls of the city and a panicked bowman from a tower asked Carloman what his name was. His throat had swollen and he could not breathe very well, and he certainly could not talk, but he raised his hands in the air. He thought to himself that he really was no longer dazed, but had been telling himself otherwise so he wouldn’t have to think. Now Carloman was thinking and could not understand where he went wrong.
They opened the gates and Carloman walked through them, imagining he’d be struck down.
The bowman, quivering, hooded in leather the color of that secret relic’s skin, greeted him at the gates. “Are you Louis’s or Lothair’s?” Carloman shrugged and pointed at his big throat.
“You’re mute,” said the bowman. “You’re not armed.” Carloman shrugged again. “You look more like a swineherd than a fighter.” Carloman didn’t shrug, he pointed at the blackening slug-mucus that covered his face.
“I’ll take you to the well,” the bowman said, “Your head is drenched in sword-water.”
The bowman led Carloman through the city, which appeared to have been neither captured nor preserved. Woodsmen had been called to strip hauberks from the dead. Lonely horses snuffed and leaned trembling against the walls of buildings. At the well Carloman slapped stinging nose-benumbing November well water onto his face and it reformed the gore back into blood. He revealed liplike swellings on his forehead between which a tongue of crust stuck. His breath was easier; he’d unplugged blood from his nose, but he still could not speak.
The bowman followed Carloman carefully as he returned to the church of Saint Ambrose, where before his crypt the archbishop knelt. “I found a mute,” the bowman said, weaving about behind Carloman. A little glass reliquary stood atop the crypt and housed fourteen molars, and on the floor two shrouded, not-odorless corpses lay.
“This is Carloman, good bowman,” the archbishop said, “son of Lothair the first the king of Italy and the Emperor of the Romans, and of—of his mistress Doda.
“Listen to me, Carloman,” the archbishop said, shooing away the bowman, “Your brothers Louis and Lothair have died and Milan belongs to neither of them.” The archbishop peeled the shrouds from the faces of the two bodies of Louis and Lothair. Carloman wished to say that he would take Milan but he could not. “And a message from your mother has come.” The archbishop from the sleeve in his mail removed a page of vellum and offered it to Carloman, who shrugged.
“Can you not read?” Carloman shrugged again, this time wondering if she dictated her letter to the cook, or if not when she herself had learned to read. The archbishop read, “My dear son Carloman, by the grace of God I have lived in your absence, but your father’s wife remains here with her ministers and will not leave, as she is awaiting orders from your father’s son the Emperor who means to overtake and use our home for a defense of Milan which your father’s son Lothair means to acquire. I suspect that she instructed you to leave here but she tells me very little and will not let me go. Please return to me at once. Your mother.”
All the bones but the naked toothy skull of Saint Ambrose were clad in white waves of vestments; his hands were covered in delicate gloves of white and gold. A third hand whose fingers had been bent in the shape of a cross lay upon his pectoral cross. Carloman pointed at it.
“It is not his,” Angilbert said, “His two hands are on him. That is why it did not preserve my lord. It is the hand of a criminal, no doubt. A curse upon it.” Carloman wanted to explain that Saint Ambrose had three hands, one for each person of the Trinity, but his neck was too busy relearning to swallow. He wanted to explain that if it was not a relic of Saint Ambrose then it should not be in the company of his bones, but he pointed at the hand and stepped closer to the archbishop.
“Would you take it from me? Is the son of the emperor a moon-guest?” Archbishop Angilbert, Carloman surmised, meant to tell those who wanted the hand that it was worthless, and those who wanted to see the hand that seeing it was worth a very dear sum.
The archbishop had no weapon, but mail weighed him down. Carloman took the hand from atop the bones of Saint Ambrose and fled the crypt. The archbishop momentarily attempted a hopeless pursuit, despairing at the stairs.
Carloman left Milan to he who wanted it. He could not find a horse still living who had not been driven by what it had seen in battle to hate men. He walked from the fetid and barren city and into the woods, where the intermittent smell of boils replaced the pervasive smell of kill. To avoid all closeness to huts and inns was to avoid closeness to that old smell.
Once in a while Carloman felt the hand where in his tunic it was hidden.
By the time he reached the home of his mother he could speak, but only in the merest, hoarsest croak. She spun flax by her window when she saw him walk from the woods, but even though she’d dropped the spindle so carelessly that her threads unskeined she was not let from her bower to greet him.
Instead, as he for the first time since his injury pointed his chin above his throat to make himself look happy and victorious, his father’s wife Ermengarde greeted him, saying “My dear and righteous boy, you must have seen such glorious battle as to return so infirm, for though your body has become dark with wounds, I see your soul through it, bright as the shining edge of a blade. Do tell me what’s become of my Emperor.”
She came close to him and put her arms on his shoulders and her fingers close to his throat. His hoarse whisper entered her ear: “Emperor Louis repelled his brother. In celebration he forgot to send word. We were far away from need of help.”
“It so worried me that I received no news.”
“I would have Burgundy.”
“Your brother Charles has unfortunately claimed it,” Ermengarde whispered back, though her voice had been unmolested.
“I do not have a brother,” he answered quietly. “But tonight we’ll feast and await your victorious son.”
Ermengarde was happy to empty the larder of the bastard and his mother. The kitchen sa
t in the outer ward and was built on the burned remains of the old kitchen. The skinny little cook was twenty or so and had tried and failed to teach Carloman to read. While Ermengarde stayed with them he put meaty boiled bones of boar with currants on a plate in a basket and tied it to the thread of linen Doda dropped from her bower window at night.
“I have something for you,” Carloman whispered to the cook, whose lips currants had dyed, “an ingredient.” From his tunic he removed the bog-brown hand with the compass rose fingers.
“Not enough to last us the month, I’m afraid,” the cook said. He looked wearily at the hand, hunger clouding an immediate, grotesque reaction.
“Wrong,” whispered Carloman. “Stew it and feed the stew to my father’s wife and her ministers, and you will see how bountiful the larder becomes. Do not remove the bones from the stew, but do not reveal them to my father’s wife, and do not serve my mother tonight at all.”
Carloman sought his mother, but her chambers had been locked, and Ermengarde and her ministers did not know where he could find the key, nor did they seem at all to feel any urgency on the question.
“Brave pious victor,” Ermengarde’s minister entreated Carloman as he sat by his mother’s door, “My lady begs you come and eat with us.”
“I will not eat until I see my mother,” said Carloman.
“Perhaps you will find the key where you lie and weep,” the minister guessed.
They had not fed her in Carloman’s absence; only the cook had, and he had done so furtively. Carloman had not heard his mother but he knew someone was within her bower eating and sending down what the cook sent up.
Carloman awoke in the cold stony corridor, aching and awash with drool his neck in sleep could not manage. In the gray other-wall light of dawn Carloman found the ministers and Ermengarde still largely on their chairs in the dining hall. One minister had fallen into the lap of another at the next chair; one had submerged his face in his stew. Ermengarde had over the course of the night slid down her chair until her back was on the seat and her knees were on the floor. Carloman rifled through the folds of their clothing and found the key to his mother’s bower in the pouch of the very first of Ermengarde’s servants to whom he inquired about it.
Doda was spinning when Carloman greeted her. She leaped up to embrace him and threw her distaff out the window.
“I imagine we are in need of a war chest in which to bury your father’s wife,” Doda said as she hugged her son. He spied from the window the bowls, the cauldron, and the cook, digging.
“What is he doing?” Carloman whispered.
“He has a cauldron that is no longer fit for use,” Doda said, “A cauldron, he said, and bowls.”
Carloman went by horse to a carpenter and his son who built him a dozen coffins in a morning. He returned by horse and cart with a pyramidal load, where his brother Charles, sweating and white, waited with Doda and the cook over the yawning grave into which the cook had thrown the cauldron and the bowls.
“Your mother has explained to me about what became of my mother,” said Charles, who turned his crown in his hands, who was alone and without ministers of his own. “And the archbishop of Milan has written to me about my brothers and about—” Charles pointed at the cauldron, but did not explain what he was looking at. “I have never wanted quarrel with you and I mourn my mother’s choice to cross you and lead you into our quarrels.”
“I have certainly served my purpose though, my dear father’s son,” Carloman whispered. “Now you are Emperor of the Romans.”
“What did my mother promise you?”
“Burgundy,” said Doda.
“He deserves more than that,” Charles said to her, begged. His gaze had not risen yet from the hole the cook had dug. “Would you forgive me if you were to take Lotharingia? My brother gave it that name but he is dead and you may of course call it what you wish.”
“It will keep its name and I will be king of it,” Carloman whispered.
In the end Carloman was the hoarse, whispering king of Lotharingia, which was larger and more populous than Burgundy, and though Charles was Emperor of the Romans he never lifted a finger against his father’s son. Charles knew that under the ground that Doda’s bower window overlooked was buried a cauldron, and that burnt to the bottom of the cauldron were the bones of a hand that could not be scraped or scoured loose.
▲
SWEET OBLIVION, by Andrew Darlington
They’d killed him once, they’d killed him twice, they’d killed him three times. But he refused to die. This time, when they kill him, they must be certain he stays dead.
“It seems you’re not being entirely truthful with us here” says the interrogating officer. “You were drinking Mr Hemming.”
“A Bud. One bottle. Well within the limit.” Just a suggestion of hesitation hovering between each quiet pronouncement.
He listens with such calm detachment, Dom wonder if he’s listening at all. And when he does betray reaction it’s a barely disguised cynicism. “But you were drinking. Something you’ve had problems with before. Let’s say, you’ve not been entirely truthful with your employer, have you…?” Isn’t DCI Plod supposed to say “sir”? or do they drop that courtesy for low-life’s?
“Yeah, yes—OK, hands up. But none of that means anything here. What I saw, what I did, had nothing to do with any of that. You must believe this.”
“There’s no must about what I believe, or choose to disbelieve. Speculation doesn’t enter into this. And there’s a question of credibility. You were drinking. It’s in your bloodstream. You’ve got a history of substance abuse, although you lied about that to get your license. Which, of course, is another offence. You’re in deep deep shit, no two ways about that.”
The DCI pauses, as if waiting for another chip to be inserted into his brain-slot, and triggered.
* * * *
One step at a time. First step is to find some kind of regular work. A discipline, a framework to structure time around, to build up from. What comes next will work its way out from that point. Not much of a plan. But a plan. A structured program. One step at a time. Mr Sharma’s not too discriminating. He needs drivers. He doesn’t do background checks too thoroughly. He can’t be arsed to go through all that inconvenience. It’s not strictly necessary to lie, not exactly, just to be a tad economical with the truth. At worst, what he pays brings in enough to keep him in booze.
Until this. He’s strayed into someone else’s nightmare. This derails everything. This flushes all those flimsy plans down the pan.
“Are you happy with the way your life’s worked out?” says the barfly with the e-cig. The smell of stale liquor lingers.
“Are you suggesting something is wrong with my life?” A shrug as old as time. Social drinking turns to need. And need becomes habit. His skin itches. And beneath the skin, it itches too.
“See her, she used to work in a Florida bar.” He indicates the girl behind the bar. “Says the astronauts used to call around. She once served drinks to Buzz Aldrin. He was not a heavy tipper. Can you believe that? She tells me this stuff. Why disbelieve her? Things aren’t always exactly what they seem. Some things go deeper than surface appearances. I look at you, I recognize things. Me and you both, we’ve waded through heavy crap and come out the other side.”
“I’ve never met a rocket-jockey. Not knowingly. I’ve been to some pretty strange places in inner space though. You recognized that right.”
“You know something, Dom? I’ll tell you. This is the golden age. The best of all possible worlds. Sure, your life’s gone down the shitter. But you’ve got plastic in your wallet. You’re here and now, in this comfortably upholstered bar with a comprehensive range of the exotic intoxicants of the world within reach. Enjoying the company of good companions. A snooker table. A Hi-Def TV with the sound down. Karaoke Friday nights. The stuff of gluttons and sybarites. It co
uld be worse. And I’ve got something in a wrap for you to make it even better. You interested…?”
“Every culture in the world dances. Every culture in the world uses intoxicants. It’s what makes us human. You know, my wife texted me. I’m on my way to see her. I need something to help.” Liquor is the soundtrack, you don’t see it as a downer, instead, its the antigravity that lifts you. That enables a degree of functionality, even when you’re crippled inside.
* * * *
There’s a dead TV in the garden, tuned to Proxima Centauri. It’s that kind of estate. The situation is awkward. This house had once been his home too. Until it all went wrong. She admits him coldly. Her face withdrawn, blonde hair combed back into a plait that hangs over one shoulder. He looks around, unsure how to react. As though he’s the interloper, the salesman pushing solar panels, cavity-wall insulation or triple-glazing. A resented presence. There are photos on the mantelpiece. But none of him. The palms of his hands are moist. He feels the need for the wrap thrust deep in his pocket.
“Do I get coffee, Rachel? You texted me. You wanted to see me.”
“Not me. Not exactly. Someone is looking for you. A Mr Matsu, to do with an incident. Something you were involved in. You know what this means? They traced you through the taxi firm. You no longer have the right to reference this address.”
He nods. “I know. I had to quote a place of permanent residence. Transients don’t have such a thing. But my name’s still on the joint tenancy agreement. It’s a small, but harmless lie.” If this was a grittier more socio-realist sequence in a tele-Soap, all this dialogue would be scripted. The pauses and hesitations rehearsed for calculated effect. The director would want a shot of pathos next, a futile gesture for reconciliation. “I thought maybe you wanted me for something else. We were good together once” he manages weakly.