The Blood Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans

by Raymond St. Elmo

  The beast only waited my attention. It leaped. I jumped aside, crashed into stone, banging my head. The dog flew past. I staggered to rescue the girl but there was no girl. The growling dog stood alone, staring about. Head whirling, I turned into either direction. No one. I studied the dust of the dark floor. One set of footprints. One set of dog prints. No girl prints. No dress upon the ground. No smell of blood.

  I put my back to the wall, trembling, attempting to make sense of the dark, the girl, the dog, myself. The beast stood hackles raised, growling and grumbling. From down the hall came boot steps, a glow of lights. The hunters, making a cautious advance. I shook myself from whatever dream had seized me.

  Hunters. I should find side passages, circle around them. They’d set guards at the door, who’d wait slack, thinking themselves safe. I could fight my way out this haunted stink. Excellent. First I needed a weapon. I would have to waylay a hunter. The farther they went, the thinner they’d spread… logical thoughts, but my mind kept wandering away. Where had the girl gone? Not fled. How could I see her eyes closed? Impossible. She had been some vision in my head, nothing more. Dream, spurred by hunger and weariness. A dream the Dog of Mystery attacked. Then the dog too was dream.

  I watched as it sniffed the dark, growling low. It lifted leg, peed against old bones. I doubted its un-reality. Was that the same as believing in it? The creature stiffened, pointing to the dark.

  Far down the hall she appeared again, red dress bright as blood’s first spurt. For all she stood in a narrow world of black. She beckoned me to follow. The dog growling and cursed. Behind me the hunters whispered, inching forwards.

  I walked on, wanting to see the girl up close. To continue my test of the reality beneath the dress, her coppery-salt taste. She floated painted on the air, eyes wide and mad. She held out her arms, backing away as I approached.

  The dog rushed between us again. It halted, howling and growling. She turned her mad gaze upon it. She frowned, and spoke in some language I did not know. There followed argument. I understood the dog’s side. He warned the girl away. She stamped a foot, not wishing to be scolded by a dog. She threw arms in the air. Making dramatic proclamation of rights and intent. The beast snarled: try it, bitch.

  A side-passage blew cool wind and silence. I turned into it, hand against the wall, leaving the two creatures to their debate. The light of the hunters approached. I longed to ask them what they saw. Perhaps there was no dog, no girl.

  Perhaps there were no hunters. In which case I was just a madman fleeing the shadows of his mind, deeper into night. My bare feet drew the cold up from the earth, sent it in waves towards my heart. I was weary. Battle marches can go only so far till you stumble and sag, find yourself staring up at the sky, waiting for the enemy or your commander to slice your throat.

  I’d always found the strength to go on. I did so now. I followed the wall, farther than the bounds of the Cathedral crypts. Paths, halls, holes everywhere, endless. Clearly I wandered deep in the catacomb labyrinth that worked its secret way beneath the city, like worm-rot beneath the sound-seeming floor of the daylight reality.

  The Catacombs. I knew my way through parts. Not a man could say he knew it all. But the man, ghost or dog who stepped within and came out again, knew not to wander lost without light and blade. I stumbled through black night, feeling for pits before me, attempting to follow the flow of air.

  It led me deep and far under the earth, where are stored dead things of no use to the sunlit world. Bones, mostly. Stones, carved with words and faces I could trace with fingers, finding dates and phrases, frowns and fixed eyes that withheld their meaning. Twice I saw lights, sought to approach, but they danced away. Once in the distance I saw the red figure of the girl again, fleeing before the dog, grown a great shadow-beast with glowing eyes, furnace for mouth. At length and finally I reached an end. It was a cool stone slab with no path beyond. I sat upon it, doubting the strength to rise again.

  At least I had followed to the end, I thought. The path quit before I ever did. With the curiosity of indifference I felt across the stone slab, traced flat surface chiseled to draw a face, a chest, shield, sword. Some knight’s burial stone. Legs crossed in sign he died crusading.

  I lay me down beside him as a brother, and slept.

  I woke thrice. First to a slithering on stone. Tales filled these tunnels with cannibal trolls, giant pigs and ancient British headhunters. No snakes that I recalled. I opened eyes surprised to see that I could see.

  I lay in a chamber of stone and dust, which did not surprise. I turned my gaze about the room. Niches in the walls held skulls, bones, rot. Moonlight now shown down from a ceiling crevice. The statue of an angel centered the scene, catching the silvery beam. The angel sat deep in thought, chin on hand, facing a distance beyond dust, bone and shadow. A strip of cloth wrapped about his forehead, binding and blinding his eyes. Where wide wings should rise, remained two stubs of broken wings.

  I considered the faint light. A crevice high in the roof, source of the wind I’d followed. Too high to reach even were I to stand upon the blind angel. That slithering sound again. I pictured chains in a blanket, dragged across brick. The chamber had only the one doorway. I studied the dark beyond it. Two eyes wavering, hesitating. A hint of face. A girl. I did not confuse her with Lalena, who moved on charming legs. This newcomer swayed luxuriously into the chamber on great coils. Below her dainty waist came the trunk of a serpent.

  At full strength I would have run. Armed, I would have fronted. As is, I lay and watched. Admiring how she collected her lengths of coils like the train of a bride. She circled the blind angel, sniffing, hunting. The angel stared past her, smiling faintly. She looked about the room till her eyes came upon me.

  She smiled, not faintly but a wide grin showing teeth. Her wild white hair tossed about, caught in a wind separate from any reality but her own. It tangled the moon beam in coils of blue and silver, complex as embroidered silk.

  She swayed, gently balanced, pushing forwards towards me. I lay patient, deciding I dreamed. Yet even in dream, I studied how best to kill such a creature. The neck looked no stronger than a girl’s, nor the arms. The strength would lie in the coils. Well enough. I would seize the throat.

  Her breasts were wide and dangling, dancing with the sway. I found myself watching them move left, then right. Absurd for a reptilian species, yet harmonious. Behold a statue of a woman, a bust merged with the pillar upon which lesser creatures merely rested.

  She bent towards me, sniffing. I stared up, waiting till her pretty neck came in reach. I wondered if I had the strength to throttle such a creature. Did not want to. She was pretty, in a fashion entirely proper to a tunnel of bones. I was the monster here, a creature far from my world. Granted if she wrapped a single coil around me I would do as monsters do. I would strangle her as she pressed her bobbing breasts to my face.

  The image made me laugh. She backed away, unsure what mad creature she’d stumbled upon. I debated whether to continue pretending this a dream. I knew it for reality. Chill stone under my ass, pains and bruises upon my body, my mind, my soul. Hungry and cold, and staring at the moon-lit breasts of a snake-girl? Of course I laughed.

  Safe beyond my reach, she stuck two fingers behind front teeth and whistled like a sailor, a sharp high sound that made me twitch. A signal to others.

  Time to run. I struggled to sit. The knight beneath the stone might have struggled so. My limbs lay cold, lay weary, lay hollow. I fell back upon the stone slab. The girl-snake observed the failure, shook her head. She reached to the ground, picked something up. The One True Hat. I’d tossed it aside. Hats seemed affectation in the dark. She considered it, then put it on her head. There it perched at once fetching and absurd. She muttered to herself, and exited.

  I closed eyes, listening. If the creature attacked I might as well fight here as anywhere else. I doubted it meant to attack. I doubted I had the strength to stand. I slept again.

  The second waking was to snufflin
g. I would have lashed out but my arms tangled in weariness, all strength spent on the journey here. Hot panting breath in my face. Not monstrous. Nor mistakable. A dog. I got a wet lick of a kiss. Ugh.

  The beast settled at my feet, twitching and panting. It stared into the dark, head pointed to the doorway. On watch. I felt comforted, returned to sleep.

  My third waking came to the distant sound of song. I lay in dark; the moon had set, monster and dog departed, unless I had dreamed moon and monster and dog. But now in the distance I heard soft singing, saw the glow of approaching light.

  A march of candles down the hall. My dark-drowned eyes blinked at a line of figures walking in stately procession towards my chamber. They sang in whispers, no words I knew. Perhaps just pum, pa, rum pa pum. To march through dark beneath the earth, past the dead and the forgotten, bearing light, alive and singing… What would the words matter? The meaning shouted from the motion, the light, the song. A meaning alive with message too deep for words. I shivered, found myself sitting up.

  Through the doorway came a child, candle raised. Wild tangled hair, ragged clothes. The boy from the puppet-theatre who declaimed of lost glories. No doubt the same as the mud-larker lurking beneath a hat on the bridge. In limped the old sailor, followed by the dog. Tail wagging, pleased with itself and the world.

  I rubbed eyes, wondering what dream came now. But no, I sat awake as ever in a life of night-alarms. I watched the last figure enter, holding a lantern in her skinny girl-arms. She swung it back and forth, sending shadows flitting bat-like. She circled the statue of the angel, past the others, to stand before me scowling.

  “You owe me a shilling,” said Flower.

  Chapter 14

  On the naming of things, and the things themselves

  I searched a pocket, found the scratched shilling. I surrendered it to the beggar-child. She accepted it solemn as a first-communion wafer. Disappeared it to a pocket. That ceremony concluded, she turned and set the lamp on the head of the blind angel. He continued smiling into the distance. The boy pulled a bag from across his back, as did the old sailor. They set their candles about, and to my wonder and drool they produced food. Rolls of fresh bread, cooked ham, chicken, apples, boiled potatoes. Two bottles of red wine in dark green bottles that clinked in joy.

  We sat to table around the knight’s slab. If he was ever a real soldier he could take no offense. When my hunger-shrunk belly felt filled, I felt strong enough to lift a finger, trace across the letters of the slab. A name, a motto.

  Hic Q. Jacet

  Sieur Claire d. Courcy

  Chevalier d. Espiritus y Ombre

  I turned to study my dinner hosts. So many questions to ask. Why did our paths keep crossing? How had they found me in this dark place? Had they seen the snake-girl? And who slaughtered the attackers at the puppet-theatre? Did they know Lalena and the Bird Man? Chatterton the Teary Mad man? Best begin simple.

  I studied the old sailor. Bony and bald, with grizzled beard. Green eyes shining by candle-flame. Feverish-seeming. He trembled faintly, a plucked fiddle-string of a man.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  He poked a candle as though sharing a joke. With it, not me.

  “Hmm. Call me Light,” he decided.

  “That’s not a name.”

  “Why, neither is Seraph,” he countered.

  “The late Seraph,” I corrected. See, I jest easy as candles. I turned to the boy.

  “And do you have a name?”

  There came sniggers from Flower, a smile from Light. The Dog of Mystery yawned. The boy looked down to the floor.

  “Brick,” he decided. I followed his gaze to dust-laden bricks.

  “You keep your real names secret,” I told the old sailor. Well, I have known many a thief, whore and assassin do the same. And some from far lands who consider their true names as treasure to be guarded, shared with few. A personal matter.

  But girl and boy shook heads. The Ancient Mariner laughed. The dog eyed the ham, indifferent to the word for ham.

  “No we do not,” declared Light. “Ah, you will be told that nonsense. ‘A name is a magic secret, the house-key to your soul’. They will say it so, looking wondrous wise. Bah. Never believe it. Defy it! Names are chains. We are the thing itself, not the name of the thing, nor ever the idea of the thing.”

  A fascinating answer, leaving me no wiser than before.

  “Ask the dog her name,” suggested Brick.

  “What she is called,” corrected Flower.

  “What we call her name, then,” sighed Brick.

  “That’s not the same,” argued Flower.

  “It’s same as the same,” countered Brick.

  “You mean it’s like the same,” pointed out Flower. “That’s not the same as the thing.”

  Right. The dog. I turned to the beast. I owed it honor and thanks, by any name. It had guarded me the long night past. Now it sat on haunches at the funeral-table, twitching ears to follow the conversation, eyeing the food. Did it understand? Perhaps if I addressed it, it would reply in human voice. I sat in a half-world between dream and death, life and sunlight. Feasting with the mad. Here impossibilities abounded. The creature and I exchanged looks. Her large brown eyes plead: ask my name, ask my name.

  “My thanks to you, good lady,” I said solemn as face and voice could be ordered. “I am Rayne Gray. To whom do I have the honor of addressing gratitude?”

  The dog blinked, looked to Flower, looked to Brick, looked to Light, finally to the blind angel. It wiggled in joy. Then reached out a paw and placed it casually over a portion of the ham.

  “Oh no you don’t,” declared Flower. “You always choose food names so as to claim the food itself.” The beggar-girl turned to me. “Call her name Lucy. She’s been a soldier and a nurse and lots of other things but she’s just a dog not a proper cousin.”

  “It can get confusing, even to us,” added Brick. “Some of the family shift, and others exchange or borrow. They tangle so one doesn’t know when one is talking to a cat or an aunt.”

  “I can always tell,” declared Flower. Brick made a face, shook his head slightly to signify ‘no she can’t she just thinks she can’.

  “Can. Too,” growled Flower.

  I nodded to this nonsense, addressed the dog.

  “Madam Lucy, I thank you for your succor in the night.”

  The Dog of Mystery nodded as though this was only just. Her eyes plead with me to distract the others while her paw pulled a portion of ham towards the edge of the stone table. A fair request. I turned to the old sailor.

  “You were at the puppet-show,” I said. “What happened? Who attacked you? And why? And how did you survive?”

  The man waved a hand grandly, to dismiss alley-way murders as social trifles. “The four ruffians were after us. Hirelings of some clan, no doubt. I believe the baker was yours.”

  “He fired right beside you and missed,” laughed Flower. “Then you made him shoot himself in the foot. Hop, hop, hop.”

  Flower and I enjoyed the memory a moment. Then I returned to subject. “Why would your family set killers upon you?”

  The old man considered. “Ah. Hmm. Disagreements? Some argument at table years past, perhaps. About who slighted whom at Great Aunt’s funeral. The family is proud and quarrelsome. And this city’s become a bit of a chess board. Maybe one of the night-side clans wishing to stamp their foot. Dramatic creatures, the sunless. Angers them that have the daylight world to ourselves.”

  “They were sent by the Bloody Lady,” insisted Brick.

  “Not her way of doing,” countered Flower.

  I gave up on who and why. Useless words in this chamber. “What are you people?” I asked. “A secret society? Bavarian Illuminati? Jacobites? Jacobins? Gypsies?” I studied the boy’s fox-tipped ears, swallowed all pride and added “Fairies?”

  Flower fidgeted, not liking the topic. “Bavaria is boring. Jacobites, ils sont fou. Jacobins, ha! Bliadhna Theàrlaich. As for the Romany, between
us some marrying, some fighting. We know them, they know us. They aren’t us.” She scowled, reviewing the list. “And fairies are fake.”

  “Not all of them,” corrected the boy. Brick. “Peablossom is real.”

  The girl looked affronted. “Peablossom is a -“. She uttered a long string in whatever language they slipped into for private matters. Gaelic, I was sure.

  The old man sighed. “Don’t talk so, of cousins.” He turned to me. “There’s a good deal of mixing with the Fay, of late. And other peoples less pleasant. Some of the clans are more them than us, nowadays.”

  “Clans. You are all from the north,” I decided. I took a sip from the wine bottle, wanting to down it in a breath. I was not so foolish. “Scotland.”

  “We are from where we wish,” said Flower.

  “We go where we wish,” agreed Light.

  “And we are who we wish,” Brick finished. “We are the family. The true folk. We take no names for ourselves, except as crowns of summer laurel.”

  I sipped, nodded as though drinking water and hearing sense. Instead of absurd declarations from trash-picking children, theatrical quotes beyond the bounds of their existence. Yet… perhaps they were faded nobility. Some antique family bereft of land and title, wandering in poverty, yet keeping formal traditions, court mottos ancient as de Courcy’s bones beneath us.

  I recalled Brick’s theatre-speech. ‘So proud a thing, to be us’. I shivered, touched by a glimpse of time and blood lines, ancient glory shared, hoarded, faded… gone. No matter. Whether ancient history or present theatre, it came to nonsense. ‘Where and who they wished to be?’ They were beggars huddled in dirt and dust upon a grave below the streets, feasting on food stolen from some manor’s kitchen. I tasted the wine again. Familiar vintage.