The Blood Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans

by Raymond St. Elmo

  But ignorant of the meanings, I saw only the signs, not the things themselves. Mere flower and thorn, dog and star, heart and skull. Statue faces keeping their mystery, same as for any stranger passed on the street. I walked in a ruin of message, the meaning lost. Alas that my friend Dealer could not be with me. No one knew the language of signs and symbols so well, nor so delighted in sharing.

  Granted, I’d have cut his throat when he finished.

  Or would I? I sighed, sat on sun-warmed grave-stone and felt murder unworthy of the day. Unsuited to this quiet ruined church, this perfected sky. Put aside blood-lust, suggested the wind. Here was warm sun and cool breeze, set in peace within the green-grass beauty of the Northlands. What more should a heart want? The stone beneath, fixed in holy sunlight, asked if I could not choose to sit fixed in peace as well, forgiving friends, forgiving enemies.

  No, I told it. Never and never.

  All one then, sighed the stone. It had seen the fire of battle, grief and thunder, and no doubt endless days of wind petting grass, clouds wandering sky. All one; live and love as you wish. It comes to grass and stone and ruin, by and by.

  Melancholy things, grave-stones. I should seek advice from busier rocks. A mill-stone, perhaps. Optimistic and productive. Grind on, grind on, it would counsel. I felt weary at the thought. Of late, I was the thing being ground, not the stone grinding. Had Elspeth betrayed me?

  There. Put to words at last. A soul-grinding question. Far more frightening than ‘Do I travel with monsters’? And more needing to be asked. I never dared in my cell. Those were not words to ask the dark, when chained and alone. No, they must be approached crabwise in sunlight, glancing sideways from what answer came to the asking. Had Elspeth betrayed me?

  I watched visitors walking the ruins, passing beneath the broken arches, sketching stones, holding hands. Families arrived in carts and carriages, set themselves to picnic. Birds circled, discussing winds, eyeing crumbs. Some corner of Melrose Abbey remained a living church. From that spot of defiance to time, ruin, and disbelief I heard singing. A pleasant sound, so long as one need not sing along. Had Elspeth betrayed me?

  Stephano might know. I recalled him carried from my cell, bleeding and gasping. Empty gesture, all that howling, kneeling, waving of knife and guilt. Do not tell me a pirate-valet cannot cut a throat proper. He left me to teach him the correct slice. And so I would, by and by. Ah, but first I might inquire. Had Elspeth betrayed me?

  But Stephano had growled she worshiped me. As he worshiped her, no doubt. And worship did not make for sure witness. He might kill her; but he’d keep eyes tight to her failings. A requirement of true worship. Had Elspeth been untrue?

  Green would know. He always knew such things. Whether he would tell, I doubted. He had a kind streak. At least, a wish to avoid pain, whether his or another’s. I could hear Green intoning ‘Dear boy, your Elspeth was a simple girl, loyal to your house and heart.’ And yet, our last meeting in his offices, had he not hinted at something? There is a traitor among us. Elspeth?

  Black crowed it. But malice made for testimony doubtful as charity or worship. Black sought what pain he could give a chained man. And Dealer said the same, but he was desperate to comfort his mirror that everyone wore a traitor’s face. Who knew, perhaps they did. I was now Traitor to the Crown. Second time to wear the title. Had Elspeth? Worn the face of a traitor?

  I recalled that face. Pale, for northern summers, where green hills rivaled eyes. Hair a holy fire burning atop her, pouring down shoulders, slipping out from bonnet. Taken down in bed it became red silk flame to warm one’s hands, till hands wandered elsewhere. What a tiny nose she’d had. I’d mocked it. A pink baby mouse of a nose. How could such a nose betray?

  A skirted creature sat on a headstone similar to mine, sketched at a brick mausoleum some distance from the abbey. A red brick construction that surely was the least interesting thing upon the premises. I suppose that was inevitable. Placed in a wonder of arches, time, belief and beauty, the human eye will focus upon the trivial.

  I studied her pert bottom, cotton-draped, stone-perched. That was inevitable too. And improper, I being newly engaged.

  My seventh day of sunlight and clean air, resurrected from hell by a clan of mad Scotsmen. I ought to return home, settle with friends and enemies. Particularly enemies. The Magisterium was set to vote upon the Nova Carta, the proposition to abolish the poor houses, abolish the press gangs, to grant suffrage to all men of the kingdom, regardless of birth or worth. And their wives as well, which God knows was contention itself. But Elspeth approved the idea. Not that I had taken her as wife.

  Green supported; Black opposed. The proof of Black’s crimes in the burned warehouse would have shifted the balance. Gone now. My arrest, not as a hero of the poor but murdering arsonist, cast this seedling of progress into final shadow, there to wither and die. Meanwhile, I languished in dark romantic comedy to the north.

  Absurd. A striker’s commission is to rouse the soul of duty, else strike down the deserter. I had a duty to return to the city and the cause. And yet, even the striker stands silent when the battle is over, the flag taken. The Nova Carta was lost cause, lacking even the consolation of glorious ruin. How much better to leave something like Melrose, than lie in the dirt, failed seed.

  Well, it would not be the only seed planted. I found I could believe so, sitting in sunlight and sky. The new century shone with promise of fire, of light. If there were chains, then there would come the rattle of chains. Enough links rattling became a song. Enough singing, it became thunder demanding storm.

  I laughed aloud. A week with the moon-mad, and I’d caught the fever of confusing what was true, for what should be true. But the Truth was this: defeat. The New Charter would fail. In substitute, a minor decree be passed that those in servitude be promised water and crusts each day, clerical services each Sabbath and final disposition of burial not to exceed costs to benefactor of .5 shilling per soul.

  I studied the girl on the farther headstone, sketching with energetic flourishes. She’d thrown off her bonnet, letting waves of brown hair bounce about, loose curls in a sculpted depiction of the sea. Since my engagement I found myself studying girls, women, females of every sort, shape and age, lamenting how they would never be mine without the breaking of a vow. I considered the married men I knew, who took mistresses. A common enough betrayal.

  Mistresses. If Elspeth had ever been Black’s, then I never knew her. And that was the end of all asking, sure as the stone I sat. I considered my fiancé. Did I know her? No. What of it? If I had never known my Elspeth, then this world held only strangers. No soul, no heart, was known nor knowable. I might well marry any random pretty face of nonsense name.

  Not that I’d seen Lalena’s face since we crossed the border, companied by cousins that preferred the night-road. I had a room in an inn, fresh clothes, a new rapier. I had no coin, but the clan walked easy with their purses, and I was honored guest. A guest of the sort to make my hosts huddle as I passed, whispering, laughing.

  Tonight came the Family Revel. At midnight came the wedding. Words overheard summed to prophecy that I would die in my marriage bed. A sound prediction. God’s sake, I was marrying a vampiric mad-girl. Not a full vampire, her cousins assured, thumping encouragement into my back and shoulders. Just a lonely child who goes blood-mad when angry or aroused.

  I should avoid arousing my new wife on our honeymoon. Without angering her. No, better: I should casually take the black mare for a ride, and spur for the hills, in full scream.

  I rose from the headstone, turned to read the name of my brief host. Illegible. An epitaph writ by wind and rain. Well, it was never the name that counted, only the soul for which it stood. Or so the family believed.

  I walked past the sketching girl, not because she had a fetching butt, just idle curiosity to see what face shared the beauty of the day. She leaned over board and paper, sticking tongue out to the side in concentration. I checked ears. Round. Checked teeth. Un-pointed
. A pleasant face, heart-shaped, framed by curls of hair…

  I looked about for my burned table-top, as if I’d just set it down. Gone. I tried to remember where I’d laid it down. Lost along the journey. Good, it had been a damned burden. But now I studied the girl herself, not the image of the girl. Close enough to twenty to have a few children, a few heartbreaks. Pale, not so much as Lalena. Arching brows. Hair brown as the chestnuts of my across-the-sea home.

  “If you are going to keep standing there, I’d best put you in the picture,” she growled. “And you shan’t come out at all lovely. You look like an aristocratic bear.”

  “I have a friend,” I said, considering my words. “I wonder if he knows you are here?”

  She studied the red tomb, checked her sketch, added a few lines. “Pleased to hear you have a friend. More so to hear he has one. He needs it, the gormless git.”

  She did not ask who I meant. The aristocratic bear approached.

  “Why are you drawing a lump of brick and old stone, instead of the usual arches and mausoleums, pillars and architectural wonders?”

  “You ask such plain questions, Rayne Gray,” said the girl. “It must go strange to mix with a family that can no more give a straight answer than can a cat.”

  “An indirect answer. Are you family?”

  She turned from her sketch, met my gaze. Eyes brown as her hair and sane as the sunlight. Brows in completed arches, contrasting with the ruins. “Pah. Me? I’m not near mad enough. They’d have to form a new clan. ‘The Plain-White Tartan’, perhaps. At revels we’d be put to a table by ourselves, to talk of weather and shoes.”

  I shivered in relief. At last, a fellow witness to the lunacy of the family.

  “I would dearly love to sit with the dull,” I confessed. “A week with these creatures, and my head whirls with words and the rules of words and the naming of names for things that are the same as the moon.”

  She laughed. “The Mac Sanglair are not the maddest of the clans, by far.”

  “But have you seen the Harlequins?” I demanded. “What in God’s good name was that?”

  She snorted. “The de Courseys. Wayward creatures. Pirates, by trade, but not the strangest of the lot. How about the Clockmakers?”

  I tried to remember. “Haven’t heard of them. Harmless as they sound?”

  She went back to sketching, considered her answer. “Quite dangerous, actually. Though not of evil intent. Those of the Clock Tartan can spin dials, tis said, and be in last Tuesday or next Thursday easy as you’d go to tea.”

  I weighed those words. She took the madness of the family rather at face value. She scratched her nose with her charcoal stick, leaving a fleck of black. “How about, the people of the Scaled Tartan? I wager you haven’t met them yet.”

  I recalled the moonlit catacomb. “Coils of snake leading up to girl waggling ciochan?”

  “Ah, well, you have, then.” She rubbed nose in thought, smeared the gray to gain the nose-tip of a fox.

  “Then there are the Moon Tartans,” she brooded. “Go all beastly, as their souls require or the moon desires. Most of the new clans are that way. They’ve found some thing to half-be. Choosing a name to fix themselves to some idea of a dream of a ghost of a whisper from the wind.”

  I studied the girl, doubting her right to wear the Plain-White Tartan. Had she clearly declared she was not family?

  She continued, shaking head at mausoleums and memories. “Most of them move in and out of half-worlds now, instead of living in the world itself. Parts of broken parts, when once they were part of the whole.”

  She stood, placing sketch-board upon the grass. Brushing wrinkles from her skirt, dust from her behind. “Now stand, Master Gray, for I’ve a bit of wisdom for you.”

  Was she taller than I’d thought? No. But the fetching quality lay shadowed by something that arched over and behind. The determined look, perhaps, inspiring the sunlight about her. “I am standing,” I pointed out. I let hand slip towards rapier-handle, casual as an itch.

  “Ah, so you are.” She held up four fingers, counted upon them.

  “First: never believe the dead are stronger than the living. The grave-touched draw strength from the blood and breath of life. They scrape by on ash and embers. ‘Tis the living that hold the flame.”

  I considered these words. The theory ran sound. Only mere observation complicated the issue.

  “Second,” she continued, “never believe the mad are wiser than the sane. He who makes a beast of himself, escapes the pain of being a man. And so loses the wisdom.”

  Excellent. As the sanest man in ten thousand miles, I rejoiced to hear it.

  “Third. Never believe a name has power. You may name the stars or waves or faces in the mirror, but they will not own you for master when you call. They are the things themselves, never the name of the thing. So also, you.”

  She turned away. “Good luck to you, then.”

  I blinked, feeling no wiser. “That made three. Wasn’t there a fourth?”

  She stopped, spoke without turning. “Ah. Right enough. Well, fourth, then. You cannot come out this alive, Rayne Gray. Too many seek the prize you’ve set to bed. And the prize herself is a drinker of life, same as you. Can a man challenge his reflection?”

  Disheartening words, but said as challenge.

  “Yes?”

  “Good answer, man. Now go and touch that lump of red brick I’ve been sketching.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that is some ritual of lunatic stage-drama. More of the family. I touch that crypt and something uncanny happens. I’ve lost all thirst for the uncanny. God give me beer and bread and boredom, to the end of days.”

  She stamped her foot. “Well you have to.”

  “No I don’t”.

  She crossed her arms, started to shake. I feared I’d upset her. But no, she was laughing. She turned about, came to stand before me, looking up to the face of the aristocratic bear.

  “Well, perhaps you will when you must.” She still had smut smeared across her nose. I considered wiping it off, perhaps with a kiss. Alas, engaged.

  But she stood tiptoe, granted a chaste peck to my left cheek. “That for luck.” Gave a chaste peck to the right. “That for light.” Handed me a roll of sketched paper. “This for Chat.”

  She turned and walked away.

  I headed down the road to the inn. Though the day was getting on, I noticed more traffic heading towards the Abbey than away. I stepped aside to let a gypsy wagon trundle past. On the top perched a scarfed child playing a lute. He strummed, hummed, stared at me, said something incomprehensible. The driver slowed to take in the view and my measure. We nodded warily.

  Here came a rider out from a monk’s illuminated parchment, all in shining armor, complete with lance. I stared astounded, not the only one to so do. As he passed he waved hand in greeting. I felt an urge to tug my forelock, refrained.

  Cloaks and robes of different color and cloth. One must guess the meaning of the robes, from the pattern and design. Ecclesiastical, economic, fantastical, academic, doctoral, clerical or astronomical? Else mere party mummery.

  The tartans were more difficult. Daily dress, or mad mimicry? So many different colors, weaves. I had it on faith they meant something, designated a clan, a blood line, a history of feud and fire and faces. Who knew but the wearer, what the pattern meant? Or the faces either.

  I reached the inn, wondering where Lady Lilly-Ann Elena Mac Sanglair stayed. Not here. Bad luck to see her before the wedding. Ah, but what would be seen thereafter? My pale corpse, draped across the marriage bed, throat opened to the bone. What a tragic tableau that’d make. With what expression on the face? Satisfaction or horror? Which would a man prefer? Satisfaction, of course.

  I stood in the common room, spied Chatterton at a table. Carving away, of course. I came around to the side rather than behind, because it was said to be bad luck to come up on a sudden behind Chatterton holding knife. N
ot that he stirred. He had a cup beside him, half full. Or it had him beside it, half empty.

  I studied the new-carved face. Heart-shaped, framed by hair-waves, over-arching brows. I unrolled the sketch beside it. I expected a brick tomb. No, here showed quick lines displaying the very same face. Smiling, distant as a star.

  Chatterton studied both. “She’s here, then,” he concluded. He looked about the room as if she might be hiding by the fireplace.

  I sat. Sighing with satisfaction to so do. I worked to retain the joy of sitting and walking and blinking in sunlight, of real meals, and wine, and firesides. Alas, after a week thrill faded to routine. Such is life. One should be chained in a cell a week each year, to keep the joy of ordinary things.

  “I have a request of you, Master Chatterton,” I declared, waving at the tavern girl, mimicking the pouring of liquid down my throat. The creature was sixteen, skinny as a broom and a holy torment to Mattie and Billy, making shy giggles that refused to signal preference for either.

  Chatterton took the sketch, rolled it to a ball, tossed it to the fire. Surprising me.

  “I need a best man,” I told the fire, watching the image of his love burn. Rather like the table-top in the warehouse when we fought.

  Chatterton considered me. He had a long, horse’s face that considered a man the way a horse might, that wasn’t his horse. Debating whether to kick, acknowledge or ignore. Well, I wasn’t offering a lump of sugar. The girl brought my beer, giggled to see what I’d do. I ignored her, is what. Engaged. I sipped the beer.

  Chat lifted his glass, clanked mine. “Tis an honor to be asked, and I accept with pride. Shall point out, I’m already writ down as a pall-bearer for your burial tomorrow evening. Puts a burden on a man, these social duties.”