And there comes a time when one needs must explain why one is sane. In fact, why one cannot go insane. To ride at night as prisoner-guest of mad monsters is frightening. To watch them tear through human beings, even night-robbers, is an experience to provoke hysteria, prayer and flight into sheltering madness. Unless one has spent long days in such conditions already.
It happened some fifteen years past. I was a man-sized boy, thinking myself a man. I had already resigned as striker, been sent into battle to die. Come back to hear the first whispers of the name Seraph.
A doomed skirmish went as the devil planned. In the aftermath I played dead. The French played they believed me. They piled we-brave-Englishmen upon a cart, trundled us off to Le Despoir. An old well in the Normandy countryside. They’d been dropping corpses within for months. English, German, Spanish, anyone lacking French uniform. I suppose this saved the trouble of burial. They knew not all were dead when dropped.
They saved me for last. Then a ‘un, deux, trois’ and I flew, falling, tumbling to hit with a damp soft hammer-strike upon fresh corpses overlaying the older dead, who in their turn settled into a mud of mold, bones and watery slime half-alive for its constant contact with the remainders of life.
I thought I drowned. A green light shown down from the circle of the well thirty feet above. I struggled to swim to the light. But it was not water choking my lungs, but stench of rot, of decay, thick as cloth, solid as a hand covering nose and mouth.
Faces of various dead stared open-mouthed in surprise, or grinned in welcome. Things writhed about in the corruption. Worms, flies, maggots, rats. Skeletal hands still half-gloved in flesh reached up to the sky, grasping at clouds.
Far, far above I saw faces peering over the edge of the well. Too distant to mark expressions, either of pity or delight. Silhouettes against the sky, faceless, unknowable, beyond my little world. How wise and powerful they seemed. The thought came that though they had thrown me here, yet they wished me good fortune, to be brave, to find my way. When I realized the stones rang with my screams, I ceased. When I beheld my hands raised beseeching pity, I lowered them.
My mind, soul, body: three pillars to the temple of a self devoted to survival. No doubt exactly as those upon whose corpses I presently sat, their temples overthrown. My turn now. In a month someone would rest atop my remains, summoning the determination to survive.
When I had done with vomiting, I took strips of shirt, bound them across my mouth. It did not help, but gave the illusion of helping. It put a mask between me and the carnival-crowd of putrefaction. I struggled to stand, found that doing so sank me to my waist in bones and corruption. I settled for placing my back against the stones of the wall, sitting with my weight evenly spread.
In the days that followed I became convinced I shared the well with another being. I do not count the rats and worms, flies and such. Those seemed so closely bound to the death about me that they were not truly alive; mere extensions of the process of decay.
But by nights I heard words, felt the seething floor shiver. A hand would push aside a corpse, and the face of a man stare out, a swimmer come up from deep waters.
Whether he was real or the phantom of a mind in a fever of horror, I cannot say. He only appeared at night, never rising free of the corpse-soup. By day I disbelieved there was any such creature. At night I believed, and kept a heavy thigh-bone close, in case he seized me from beneath, a pike pulling a duckling below a quiet lake.
When he appeared we spoke words of a sort, at one another. I did not know his language, nor he mine. I named him Dante for his long-faced scowl. I spoke to him of poetry, of war and women and rats. I had grown clever at catching rats, striking sudden while they fed chuckling.
Dante would listen, plucking bits of black flesh. He’d chew, making guttural observations while savoring different delicacies of human eye and face and entrail. What he spoke of, I do not know. Devoutly wish to never know.
I determined to climb out. I sharpened rib-bones upon the stones, used skulls to hammer these pegs in cracks between the natural rock, the rough-set stones of the well. I saw signs that others had tried this before me. The signs petered out halfway up.
I searched for what might be of use. Little to find but an occasional tin buckle, a bronze button. I sharpened these against the stones, turned them to weak chisels for digging holes in cracks. Then to place a sharpened bone, stand upon it, begin to work higher.
I found no bone could be stood upon long before snapping beneath me. Each day I worked higher, then set about to replace each of the bones beneath. Tedious labor. I ceased in the afternoons, when the Watchers above were active. If they saw my work, it would be a matter of dropping a rock upon my head to end it.
Thrice came a rain of bodies into the well. I huddled in a ball, arms wrapping my head. Twice there were living among the newly-thrown. One was dying; I held his hand as Stephano held Elspeth’s. He found as peaceful an end as anyone finds in battle or bed.
The second hurt his leg in the fall; but showed no other injury. He spent a long time screaming at the skull mouths open to welcome him, the skeletal hands reaching up to welcome him, the rib-cages with rat-infested hearts open to welcome him. Our well rang with his screams.
I tried to speak, to calm, to show that I was no brute of corruption, no monster but a man like him. I pointed upwards, to say that together we could, we would, climb forth from this place.
He grabbed an arm-bone and thrashed at me, the dead fingers flailing. Then he fell screaming, unused to stepping on the half-liquid surface of the dead. He continued best he could, screaming, thrashing, chasing me about the well. I did not strike back, had no wish to hurt him. Far, far above us, I heard the echoing laughter of the Watchers.
He screamed till his voice grew raw and night-dark fell. I huddled against a wall, thigh-bone club ready. He lay silent, shivering; I drowsed as one does on guard-duty, till his creeping approach alerted me. I parried the weak strike with my club, then struck till he lay quiet. He breathed, slightly, but I could not defend him from the rats craving warm flesh. I said my sorries, and struck him till his breath stilled.
Days passed with no fresh rain of dead. I worked to within ten feet of the surface, giddy with hope. Till I looked up and saw a face looking down. It surprised me so that I tumbled from my perch. I fell without injury, yet lay looking up in defeat. A face lay silhouetted against the sky, staring down. One arm extended, as though reaching down to pull me out.
I expected shots to be fired, rocks to be dropped. Nothing. Just that gaze down into my pit. After a while I shouted up at the gazer. I might as well have bellowed at the sky. A day later I set to work again, defiant. The figure watched, unmoved. Perhaps it waited my success. Perhaps upon my rising from the pit, they would welcome me to the world as a man and a brother. Perhaps.
At last I finished a line of cracks and holes rising within reach of the top. I waited till night, filling a shirt-bag with fresh bone-pegs. I began my climb. Standing upon the second peg a hand reached out from the tangle of bones and rot, grasped me by my foot. Dante, wishing me to stay, to share the pit with him. Not to climb, but dig deeper into death, into the madness below.
I did not scream, did not jump. I reached, jabbed a bone-peg deep into his grasp. There came a gasp, a scurrying and I was free. I took another peg, continued with my work.
Perhaps it was just a random bone upon which my foot caught. I did not, do not wish to believe in a being able to live so far below life. Nor picture them reaching to pull me down so that we might keep company in madness. I worked my way up the line of pegs, step by careful step up through the dark. From above, I began hearing cricket sounds, the breath of wind in branches. The face of the watcher grew closer, clearer, a shadow-man holding out his arm to pull me over the top.
I reached the edge of the pit, placed trembling hands upon it and found within me no strength to pull myself over. I pressed body close to the stones, feeling the world tremble with each heart-beat. I wa
ited, gathering breath, knowing the bone-peg upon which I stood would not last many heart-beats.
The face of the Watcher grew clear. He was three days dead, one arm extended over the edge of the well. I heard a bird trill, realized dawn lay upon the surface of the world, and I pulled myself up and over the edge to meet it.
I scrabbled to stand again as a man. I studied this new world of sky and trees and wind. A pleasant place, though bodies lay scattered about. As below, so above. The keepers of the well had been slain in some skirmish. I considered what clothes and weapons to confiscate, what route to take back to the war, what whiskey would best wash away the taste of raw rat. I considered the elaborate art of stepping on solid ground and fainted.
Mere luck I didn’t fall back into the well.
So fifteen years of war and death later, there in the moonlit road watching vampires slaughter highwaymen, I felt no hand dragging me down to madness. I observed Mattie-Horse drink from a throat as though he held a goblet, not a struggling man. I admired Lalena’s dive upon their leader, who fired at the moon, fumbled for sword. She wrapped legs about him firmly as she had done her horse, and put teeth to throat and ripped. He screamed at the by-stander sky and died.
Chatterton stood to the road-side, sword at ready, face impassive to the light of the murdered moon. Our eyes met. I wondered whether he was as mad as his red cousins. If not, in what pit did he learn the dread art of sanity.
Chapter 20
Baths, beds, and the Market of Dreams
No further night-slaughters. Perhaps word spread down the road: yield the way to fanged highlanders. Wisdom that scarce needed voice. We stopped before dawn at a riverside inn showing only a dim lamp within the window. The sort of establishment that asked no question of travelers. And if they had inquired whether we wanted help loading barrels of smuggled guns or rum, I’d have nodded satisfied to find myself in a pirate tale.
Mattie Horse rapped and tapped until the innkeeper peeped out. They exchanged words, the door opened. A man in night-clothes waved his ancestor’s musket. I pulled Lalena from its aim. She stared at me as though I were doing something exactly as pointless as I was doing. Chatterton laughed. Who knew, perhaps the man could even speak.
No guns were fired, but fires were lit. We settled inside to food and drink and baths. I had not washed in a long arc of the earth’s circle about the sun. My presence upwind spooked horses who didn’t twitch an ear at a vampire’s scent. It hurt my feelings.
I was shown a room to myself. Excellent. I did not wish to sleep with unholy blood-thirsting bed-mates. I wondered if my companions would request quarters in the cellar, something close to earth and worm. But no, Lalena took a room opposite mine. She said no word to any, merely requested her bath be drawn, and retired within.
I spied servants bustling, observed coins and words go from Billy River to the innkeeper. Clearly, the red highlanders were familiar customers. That reassured me. Highwaymen might be fair game. I have killed such myself. That I scrupled at drinking their blood, scarce gave me right to judge. But I would not stand by to see an inn massacred.
I peeled rags, shuddering at what lay revealed. Lesions. Lice. Fleas. Scars. Well, the scars had mostly been there before. I had not seen them recently. When did I get this jagged burn down the arm? I demanded scissors and mirror, took a breath, and looked the philosophical bear in the face. I did not scream, for all that I gazed into a wilderness of elf-locks and prophet’s beard, eyes fixed wide beholding night-shadows, night-horrors, frighted reflection.
Well, to work. Clip, cut and slash the brush of imprisonment away. The wash-water was carried out, foul and black, then returned for further ablutions. The inn-servants bustled in and out, fascinated to watch the great clump of mud take on the appearance of a man. The inn-keeper’s wife herself took the razor from my trembling hand, and scythed the prophet beard away. I washed a last time, feeling that I emerged from soap and razor a ship-wreck survivor from the sea.
Cleaned, I locked the door, locked the window, locked myself into the bed. There I slept as one dead till I woke to Lalena bending over me.
Disconcerting. Not just because she was a vampiric creature of unholy thirst. But because she woke me from dream where she and I spoke. To talk to someone in a dream, then awaken to continue the conversation, is disquieting. As though reality were less a matter of substance than context.
I’d dreamt we walked together in sunlight. Down the High-Street transformed to a long open market. Folk I knew from peace and war, childhood and war, social life and war, now manned booths of strange goods, or squatted before rugs with wares laid about for display.
A man I recalled lying dead before me, in fair duel on a summer day seven years past, sat cross-legged selling a scattering of sea-shells. He still held the rapier meant for my heart. Now he tapped it at different shells, pointing out the charms of each.
I bent low, in no fear he’d strike. I considered the shells. Each a thing of porcelain grace, flowers from a fairy sea-garden. I wanted one as gift to Elspeth. I searched my pockets, found them empty. Stephano had taken all. I sighed, wondered what my valet-pirate would buy.
“I am sorry,” I told the fellow, patting flat pockets. I searched to remember why we’d fought. He’d challenged me, after I’d mocked a tariff meant to fatten him with others’ hunger. He’d worn a white silk shirt. I recalled the cloth, how red bled through white like fire through paper. I was glad he’d changed shirt since. “Sorry, I repeated, and turned away.
Lalena waited, considering the day. She wore Black’s velvet cloak. Below showed the hem of a night-dress. She offered her face to the sun, enjoying the warmth, the light. Day revealed blue eyes, hair yellow-blond. Each strand thick and straight as straw in a new broom.
“You bring your chaperone again,” she growled.
I turned. Behind paced Lucy, Dog of Mystery. She loomed large, almost monstrous. Better fed by dreams. Her gaze still wise, beseeching for love and ham. But keeping an alert eye on Lalena.
Who sniffed in disdain. We walked on holding hands, not as lovers but shy children just met. We paused to consider wares that seemed trash of infinite significance. Here stood a table where Dealer presided over a scattering of apples. Starved, I reached for one. Lalena stopped my hand.
“A red apple for what is past,” she told me, voice solemn. “And green the present. All your future is in an apple-pip. Yet green will make the stomach ill, the red may house a worm. The seed must be given to the grave. Bury each pip deep, if you would see the morning.”
I laughed, seeing the family resemblance twixt Lalena and Flower. That same solemn face when sharing moon-mad words. Dealer sighed. No sale. We exchanged looks, shrugged. Lalena and I walked on.
Far ahead I spotted a child, sweeping the street before us. I wished to hurry up to her, but paused to laugh at Alderman Green hawking shards of broken glass. The remains of a cathedral window, perhaps, or the guts of a dozen kaleidoscopes. Green wore a grocer’s smock over his Alderman’s robes. It looked absurd and hot. He grinned at our attention, began his barker’s speech.
“Glass of blue shall open the past, if you gaze by sunset light. Crimson shows a hidden love. Rippled crystal reveals tomorrow. Look to a mirror-shard to find a foe.”
I reached for a crystal clear as January ice. Held it to an eye, and stared within. The world before me distorted, twisted into a hole in the earth, a stairway winding down and down beneath the earth. My future. But that was anyone’s future, I prepared to complain. Lalena grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me. I stared into her face, and awoke to continue staring into her face.
“Beware what you purchase in the Market of Dreams,” she advised. Sitting on the bedside, peering at me serious as the surgeon. She was dressed precisely as I dreamed, in Black’s velvet cloak, over white night dress. The long straight hair curtained down, tickling my face. There was no help for it but to bat at the strands, cat-like.
“Stop that,” she complained. But she flushed. I felt c
ertain she did, though fading rays through shutters shown red upon her already. Sunset. She reached, undid the cloak, leaned forwards. I stared down the inviting doorway of her night-dress, where soft white delights invited. I sat up.
“The most embarrassing question in the world for a spadassin,” I declared. “But how did you get in my room?”
Lalena smiled. “Know you not, my kind can turn to wisps of smoke, drift through key-holes?”
“No. But I know your kind can demand the key of the inn-keeper.”
She pouted, opened a hand to reveal the iron key.
I sniffed. She smelled of soap and girl, clean silk. No hint of grave or night-blood. She studied me studying her, darted eyes away, returned them roundabout. Nervous? A maid who comes to your bed may be so. But not a creature of the night, thirsting. Perhaps this was mere madness of the creature, to feign shy virgin. Or ruse, to draw me close.
Touch would tell. I reached, ran a finger along a faint sketch of a brow. She trembled, half closed eyes. I let my hand trace down, searching through the free-hanging hair, discovering a collar-bone. She shut eyes, nostrils flared.
I let the back of my hand trace curves of silk and shadow. A firm point rose out from thin cloth. I scouted with a finger, circling, considering whether it meant to entice me, or trap me, or truly was a maiden nipple rising in desire.
Lalena opened eyes, and they were not the dark pits of a mad blood-drinker, but a trembling girl deciding to stay or run. Then she reached hands to buttons. The night-dress fell to her waist with a sigh. Unless I sighed as it fell. She leaned forwards, eyes squeezing tight, and bumped lips against mine, a mis-steered canoe crashing into the dock. Our teeth clicked, wine glasses in toast.
I pulled my head back, while she kept hers fixed, eyes battened down for storm. I placed a hand behind that curtain of hair, guided our lips together again, boat to dock in proper form. Lips pressed, and breasts pressed. Her hand flapped a bit about my back, then pulled me tight. She felt no stronger than any girl stirring with desire. Reality, or monster ruse? Best investigate further down. I let my lips wander the smooth neck, kissed a porcelain neck, then on to the swelling of a breast.
The Blood Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans Page 15