The Clockwork Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans

by Raymond St. Elmo

  “Who knows how things end? Why, we of the Clock Tartan know. And how things begin, for that matter. We know the road ahead and behind.”

  “And yet you seem no happier for the knowing.”

  The worn fabric of his face makes slight but measured recoil. Ha, he’d expected me to scoff at his arcane knowledge, not at the worth of such knowing. But wherefore should I doubt, clay-soul that I am? In the last year I have seen men transform to beasts. Gossiped with ghosts, fought a fellow wearing my face comfortable as hat. Worn magic armor, sat to tea with a possessed doll. And the most high magic yet: declared ‘I do’ at a wedding. Let this antique traveler be future-wise as Ezekiel, St. John and Nostradamus, it shall not widen my eyes by a blink.

  Glocken frowns. I’ve just skipped pages of scripted debate over reality’s rules. Lines where I championed dull materialism, he portrayed Initiate to Mysteries. Ripped from the play now. He chews dusty lip, then flips ahead to Act III: Of Things Practical and Politic. Raises a finger.

  “Hark to the cathedral bells, Mershon?”

  I listen. “No.”

  He frowns, taps fingers. “Bother. Wait a bit.”

  We wait. My stomach growls. His fingers tap to the ticks of the mantle clock. And then through the walls comes the sound. Across the city, the great bronze bells. Tolling of death, loss, lament.

  “Is that for me?” I ask. “I’m flattered.”

  The Glocken shakes head. “Alas, no. His Majesty has succumbed to sudden ague.”

  I shake head in thimble-deep lament. I care naught for the mad old tyrant. So long as the New Charter has his royal scribble… But has it?

  “The Charter,” I demand. “Did the king sign?”

  The Glocken shakes head, displays his rotted ivories. “Put aside, with other business of state that must now await his successor.”

  Damnation! I half rise. I must be off to find Green. He’d know if the Charter were inked before royal death-rattle. But Green has dodged me all week. Unlike him. Perhaps he had wind of trouble. If he let all our work hang while he played whist with Furst, I’d use his hide for parchment of the next Charter’s draft.

  Was it too late? We could invoke the Magisterium. Call favors from the Aldermen’s Council. But to what purpose? The guilds and houses must vote again, after the long ceremony of mourning an old George. Then sitting a new George no doubt mad as the last… I sit again, glaring at my foe. Damnable prophet, accursed oracle.

  “Could you but go a few days back,” sympathizes the Glocken. “You might move the King. The charter would be found signed and sealed.” He reaches into pockets. Again I tense, again he sniffs at distrustful souls. Behold more flotsam from time’s storm. A bronze key. He places it beside the crystal.

  I poke it with a finger. Sea-green as some fragment of ship-wreck centuries past. I’ve seen it before.

  “Looks the same as the one from out the puzzle box.”

  The Glocken nods. “It is the same. This very moment it is at once in grand-nephew Zee’s pocket, and in a vault of a bank, and the grave of a Duke. Other places, no doubt.”

  I shake head, declining to scoff, declining to accept. Glocken waits, sighs for my lack of wonder. His turn to poke the object.

  “Time is a path,” he declares. “Men and dogs walk a day’s journey forwards each 24 hours. But we Glocken travel at far different pace, in what direction we choose. The traveler requires only the right door; the door requires only this key.”

  I sit silent. Absurd claim. And yet, rumors spoke of this Clockmaker magic. Spun a dial, pulled a lever and off they trotted to last Tuesday, easy as ride to evening tea. Consider the crystal bauble. Fetched yesterday from a house burned to ash a year past. And the scrap of obituary from tomorrow, wrapped about a wedding ring lost months ago, then put beneath a sapling oak while Julius Caesar marched past.

  “So you offer me a key to last week?”

  “Or to next year. To the coming century if you dare journey so far. With this key and the right door, you may wander the paths of time as you would the halls of your house.”

  An amazing thought, to explore the years before life’s start, beyond life’s end. Though the turns ahead called me more than the road passed... The New Charter. The labor of many lives. Mine, for one. What would sprout from our planting? Surely a world of light and freedom. Wide marble plazas where folk walked in peace. Gardens and towers dedicated to life, to joy, to knowledge. All the world turned to the Isle of Utopia. Oh, certain to hold a flaw or three. To every Eden, its snake. But a damned better world than the prison-asylum work-house of this age.

  “I have caught your interest,” observes Glocken. “Excellent. Your door is just up the stairs of this establishment. Awaiting you. Go then, hero.”

  Determine the threat? Behold the threat. This temptation to cross a fatal gate, letting the twin Judas goats of curiosity and ambition walk me into the slaughter-house. More deadly than the killers waiting signal to fall upon me here and now. The family lived half in dream. They know what words entice the unwary ear. And yet, the king must sign the Charter… I parry, delay.

  “Why this gift?”

  The man twists mouth and eyes, face an old cloth wrung to drip gray water. I am reminded of scarecrows too long standing ‘neath sun and storm. The Glocken is a construct portraying humanity in the last stage of dissolution. He sighs.

  “No mystery to that. Our mad elders have danced you before the family for a new master of the clans. We of the Clockmaker tartan ask if you have the courage to walk the paths we dare.”

  Clan nonsense again. Would they never leave off? I consider the quiet room, the waiting killers.

  “And if I take your gift, face the challenge?”

  “Then you perish today content, after rescuing your life’s work, glimpsing the glories it will bequeath the coming age.” He smiles his lemon-peel grin. “Or not. But as posthumous gift, you shall receive the backing of the Clockmakers.”

  “And if I decline key and door?”

  “Then you perish today at the hand of the Espada, failing all tasks.”

  “Espada?” I blink at the name. Best man at my wedding. “Chatterton kills me?”

  The old man frowns. “My fault. I could not find scissors when I cut the paper. Tore it with fingers, else you’d have seen the name of your killer.”

  Absurd. Chatterton Espada is close friend. And yet, famous among the family for the slaying of his closer friends, his nearer kin. I shake head, unconvinced.

  “I will consider your offer.”

  The old man replies sharp. “You have no leisure for consideration. This day marks road’s end for the Seraph. The gift I bring is funeral offering: to set aright your life’s work, and see what rises from seed sewn upon your grave. With this key you may spend days gazing upon the fields of tomorrow. But when you return to this day, this tavern, then the clock shall sound last compline.”

  I do but smile. My funeral bell has tolled oft enough, I do not send to see who declares me dead. Devil take the funeral wine, but I once attended my own eulogy. So I will not accept that today I must die. I merely might. Same as every battle charge. Move on to what interests, not frights: shall I take this sly ancient’s offer? Rescue the Charter? Journey between the hours, viewing another, better world?

  “No,” I declare, and prepare for battle.

  The old man sighs, leans back in chair, closes eyes in sorrow. Excellent. I am allowed last words. A rare thing, dealing with my in-laws.

  “Your folk love to entice the unwary into mad doors and dance,” I say. “But you have no tune to draw me in. To hell with your clans, your plans, your schemes. I’m married now. No magic key shall lure me from her, no prophecy of doom shall fright me from her.”

  I rise, draw sword, place it upon table as line demarking death between me and the Clockmaker clan. I wait for his urine yellow teeth to snarl. Now he will straighten that old body like a battle flag, cursing my clay soul, summoning killers and curses upon the troublesome outsider.
I wait… while he sits, eyes closed. My stomach growls. I scan the room. No doubt mechanical men shall fall from the ceiling, bronze lions slash through the walls. Worth seeing, I admit.

  They do not. The Glocken continues to lean back, eyes closed. I shift weight, feeling absurd. An actor who has delivered thundering lines, but his fellow players ignore the cue. Should I pick up the sword, repeat my defiance? The old man makes a puffing sound from weary gray lips. Signal to attack? No, a snore. The Glocken has fallen asleep. I stare about. Not a soul in the room gives us glance. Why should they? An old gentleman napping in tavern chair is scarce remarkable.

  I sigh. Of course they’d find a way to steal thunder, deafen defiance. I’m a master fencer. But the family are past-masters of stealing scenes. Forget blades; I should have studied stagecraft past one mere summer of Coriolanus.

  I pick up the bronze key, green with time as some ship’s bell centuries upon the ocean floor. I weigh it in my hand. Quite heavy. I tap it against the table. It makes a clear chime of a ‘ting’. In echo, the clock upon the mantle sounds its own bell, loud and clear as angel trumpet. Once, twice, thrice.

  The men at the bar turn, drawing swords. One, two, three. The man in slouching hat stands, rapier in hand. The signal to attack has rung.

  Chapter 8

  Blood, Breakfast, and the Gaping Earth

  I have never met William Blake, though he dwells in my city. Not a famous poet, nor ever like to be. Friend and foe alike mock how I place him upon the same shelf as Milton, Pope, Villon and Dante. They ask what can appeal in verses writ for children? I know right well, but seldom say. It would sound brass boasting to admit I have had Divine Revelation, and find the vision confirmed in the verse of the prophet Blake. Excepting we pilgrims who know the truth, crowds can only mock. Else throw stones. Either would annoy me, pilgrim that I am.

  Here: I will share the secret. You shall stand no wiser for the hearing. Deep truths must come as revelation, not poetic fancy. But: in William Blake’s verse is caught angelic laughter and chuckles of devils, for all that he disavows Heaven and Hell alike as fevers of the human brain. From out his poems shine the light of a world aflame with meaning. And the world he reveals is no spirit-fog, no second land behind altar curtain. It is this world seen true. Each beast of the field is a separate angel, every face in the street an ancient text; every factory chimney a mouth to hell. Every separate grain of sand is a holy relic of Eternity. A flesh and blood tiger seen by the light of reality, is revealed a thing so wrought of deadly grace that only devils dare serve as fitting metaphor. That is Blake’s revelation; and it is no poetic fancy. It is the very world outside your window. Go look now, and see.

  Not that all Blake’s visions are bright glory. Some are dark as Stygian night.

  “What the hammer, what the chain,

  In what furnace was thy brain?

  And when thy heart began to beat,

  What dread hand, what dread feet…”

  Picture a windup devil. Not Milton’s tragic dramatic Satan. No, forge a far different creation within the smithery of your brain. Imagine a demonic machine of gear and wheels, of measured steps and furnace mouth that devours all before it. Remorseless, relentless. Beautiful in its perfection of merciless consumption. That windup devil is the future we’ve set in motion. William Blake and I fear that devil. You’d best fear it too.

  * * *

  With the tap of the key, the clock chimes, the placid room stirs. Across the tavern, the man feigning sleep now stands, stretches, tipping back hat to reveal face thin as axe blade. His eyes narrow upon me. The three quiet men at the bar draw swords, turn towards my corner. One sidles left, another right to flank my position. No more hurry in their murdering than in sipping their beer.

  “Gentlemen,” I say, rising. Drawing rapier. I consider the still-snoring Glocken. Did he set these killers upon me? I should slice his throat, as payment for any cutting of mine. But I may have the wrong of it. Twixt politics and in-laws, I can scarce tell who plans my death one day to next. Anyways the Glocken is an old man napping. A fragile, weary thing. Best shift the coming slaughter from his nap. Quite kindly of me. And wise, the stairs offering better defense. I edge towards the stairway.

  “Indeed it’s him,” declares the man on the left.

  “The Seraph,” concurs the middle one.

  “The very man,” concludes the one to the right.

  Major Dark whispers across the years. “If time allows, study your foe. What makes ‘em tick”? I consider. Eyes intent, not wide in fear, nor narrowed in hate. No wolf-grins to fright the cornered rabbit. No taunt, no pretending I first offended them. Serious men then, not tavern bullies. They serve today for coin. Won’t strike in haste, and shall retreat if I gain advantage. Behold honest laborers approaching task. They’d teamed at murder before.

  They trade last looks to ensure each stands ready. Indifferent to my rapier. Will they fence me with their short heavy swords? That would be almost fair, not to mention amusing. But no, they keep proper distance. Giving time for the fellow with the axe-face to produce pistol, cock it. Yawning to say ‘to work, then’.

  “Nothing personal,” says the middle of the three. A frequent claim, always annoying.

  “You’re thinking to murder me,” I point out. “That’s more personal than kiss or tumble.” Blinked my eyes. “You teasin’ tart.”

  He frowns displeased. His friends to left and right laugh, as friends will do. The axe-faced fellow grins, taking pistol-aim at my chest. Then pauses, while grin expands to opened circle, yielding a drool of blood, a weak gasp. He turns to stare behind, where Em stands as a pleasant shadow. In one arm she’s holding a plate of eggs and bacon balanced atop a keg of coffee. Awkward, but she needs the other hand to grasp a butcher knife. The blade has disappeared up the man’s ribs.

  The three killers turn at his gasp. At which idiot mistake I lower my estimation from ‘professionals’ to ‘amateurs’. I lunge, point taking the middle fellow in the throat. Fellow to the right jumps back, but fellow to the left chops down, snapping my rapier with his heavy blade. I nod approval for the move. Well, that and curse. I grab Major Dark’s chair, thrust it legs forwards. Hearing the Major’s ghostly laugh. I all but see him sitting in the chair, madly pleased for the morning’s entertainment.

  My opponent stumbles back, cursing. I toss chair and ghost after him, scoop up the fallen man’s short blade. He’s still gurgling, but grasp on hilt and life weakens. The standing attacker kicks aside the chair, waving blade, keeping out of range. Delaying till his friend can flank me. But that ally has turned, charging towards Em. She stands over the twitching body of the axe-faced man. Still balancing plate and coffee pitcher in one hand. In the other she now holds the dying man’s pistol. She fires point-blank into her attacker’s face. Blood splashes to the bang, the man cries out, staggers, topples. The coffee pitcher almost topples, but Em turns a pirouette, bows low, rises up and my breakfast rests steady in her hands. I consider a ‘hurrah’.

  The remaining ruffian backs from me, waving sword at the corpse-scattered room. He reckons sums, sees math has turned against him. No fool, he breaks towards the door. Em ducks under his parting slash, hops over a body and lands beside my table. She lays plate and coffee-keg down with satisfying thump. I can think of naught to say but things of simple truth.

  “I need a fork, woman. And mug for the coffee. I can’t drink burning coffee out the jug. Cream will suffice, no sugar.”

  She sighs, rolls eyes. Turns gaze upon the still-snoring Glocken, gives his bald pate a tentative tap. He does not stir for the touch, nor more than for the pistol shot.

  “You paying for his breakfast too?”

  I consider, shake head for no. Selfish of me, but I am breathing fast; inhaling stench of gun-powder, death-emptied bowels and hot blood. Might as well be back in war and France. The fellow stabbed in the throat still twitches. Should I bind the wound? No, jugular’s torn. He’ll be cooling in a minute. Em pays his last bloody gasps
no more mind than a cat would a carrot.

  I consider her, the room. The cloaked fellow crouched by the fire shows no interest in blood nor death. He rubs hands before flames, hiding face. He seems sinister. The surviving attacker has reached the door, stops to stare back, mouth open. He seems forlorn. We survivors oft do.

  “Mistress Melody has gone for the watch,” says Em. Melody? She must mean the Mad Puritan. Unsuitable label. Em sets Major Dark’s chair upright again. Dark’s ghost still chuckling. A rustle in the rafters. I look up.

  “You up there,” I call.

  Silence. Then a voice. “Who?”

  “You.”

  “Me?” A child’s voice. Well, I knew there was no space for grown man.

  “There’s a book I left up there years past,” I tell the voice. “What’s the title?”

  “That?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a book.”

  “Yes. Which?”

  Silence, and a scrabbling as the creature crawls across the beam.

  “Now what’s a child doing in my rafters?” Em asks, frowning skywards. “Don’t hold with kinder in taverns. ‘Tis sin, it is.”

  “Not a bit,” I reply. When is she going to fetch cup and fork? “Taverns are educational.”

  She gifts me reproving look, wiping a spot of blood from hand to smock. The dying man on the floor thrashes weakly, grasping her dress hem. She kicks the hand aside without a look, growls upwards.

  “What are you about up there, boyo?” she demands.

  “Reading, you mad harridan,” replies the boy.

  “Oh, I shall thump your behind for that,” vows Em. “Come down at once.”

  “Shan’t.”

  “Shall,” she stamps.

  In reply the high voice declares, “Here’s your book then.” In solemn tones he recites. “Man disavows, and Deity disowns me, Hell might afford my miseries a shelter; Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all bolted against me.”

  Em and I frown together. She at access to the rafters, me at the words.