End of the Century

by Chris Roberson

  It was Mervyn Fawkes, inexpertly wielding a long sword, the blade a brilliant shade of red, so thin that when turned on edge it seemed to disappear entirely from view, a scabbard on the ground at his feet. Facing him, a Sam Browne belt under his frock coat, a long scabbard hanging from it, was Jules Dulac, in his hands a sword with an equally whisper-thin blade, but glowing faintly bluish white instead.

  It was clear that, of the two, Dulac was the accomplished swordsman, and Fawkes the uneasy amateur. Time and again Fawkes lashed out with his blade, snarling with rage, only to have its point turned aside easily by Dulac's own sword. Dulac, for his part, continued to shout the same question over and again, a repeated refrain.

  “Where is it?”

  So intent where the dueling pair that they failed to note the arrival of Blank, Miss Bonaventure, and Taylor, much less the mayhem they had engendered amongst the patrons and employees of the Crystal Palace. The trio stopped a short distance off, wary of the long thin blades the two swung, one with such mad abandon, one with clinical precision.

  “Where is it?!”

  Dulac's mouth was drawn into a tight bloodless line, his newly clean-shaven jaw set. There was nothing of the slightly dissolute celebrant Blank and Miss Bonaventure had met the night before to him now, only the steely gazed warrior that Blank had glimpsed beneath. The theft of the crystal chalice, which evidently he felt himself pledged to protect, had spurred him to renewed vigor.

  “Where is it?!”

  Still Fawkes refused to answer, only howled wordless screams of rage as he lay about him on all sides with the red blade. Finally, his lack of skill caught him wrong-footed. Dulac smacked Fawkes's red sword to one side with his own blue blade, and then surged forward, planting a kick directly in Fawkes's midsection, knocking the wind from him.

  Fawkes crumpled over with a groan, and though he retained his grip on his red sword's hilt, the blade was driven by the force of his fall into the very concrete of the floor beneath their feet, halfway to the hilt. Before Fawkes could regain his feet and draw his sword back out of the stone, Dulac stepped forward and smacked his arm with the flat of his blue blade, dislodging his hands from the hilt. Then with another well-placed kick Dulac drove Fawkes back and away from the sword, which still protruded halfway from the hard floor as if it had always been there.

  Suddenly, the dynamic of the duel had changed. Fawkes was on his knees, clutching his bruised chest and struggling to catch his breath, while Dulac stood over him, menacing him with the point of his whisper-thin blue blade.

  “Now, talk!” Dulac shouted. “Or I'll cut you in two, just like you did all of those poor women and men!”

  Tentatively, Blank and the others approached the pair, careful not to startle them.

  Fawkes looked up, a clever gleam in his eye. “You won't do it,” he sneered at Dulac. “If you want the chalice so badly, you won't kill me before finding out where it is, or you'll never see it again.”

  “Don't test me,” Dulac snarled, but Blank could see that Fawkes's words had found their mark.

  “I do hate to intrude,” Blank said gently, “but my friends and I would like very much to know just what the devil is going on.”

  Dulac had evidently noted their approach but paid them little mind. Now, as Taylor stepped closer to the red sword protruding from the concrete, reaching out to touch the impossibly thin blade, Dulac snapped, “Don't touch that!” Then he turned to Blank, his expression grim but weary. “This man has stolen something I have spent a great many years protecting, and I need it back.”

  “What?” Fawkes said. “You protect the Grail? Absurd!”

  “The Grail?” Taylor repeated, eyebrow cocked.

  “Of course, you stupid fool,” Fawkes spat. “What else did you think this was all about?”

  Dulac looked to Blank and his companions, and sighed. “All right, ask your questions, as you seem better able than I to get this pile of dung to speak. But find out for me where he's hidden it, or you'll all answer to me.”

  Blank nodded and turned to the kneeling Fawkes. “Well, let's have it man. First, it's clear that something in your experiences in Colney Hatch suggested to you this obsession with the Grail. What was it?”

  Fawkes shrugged. “A book of ancient poems was the first clue, I suppose. Then I happened to speak with another patient who had become obsessed with the work of the pre-Raphaelites. My experiences on the floating island had made it plain to me that there was more to the world than what presented itself to our eyes, and if one myth were true, why not another? And what myth made reality could be more powerful than that of the holy cup, the Grail, capable of curing any wound or of raising the dead back to life. I thought for a time, wrongly, that the Grail itself was only a metaphor, an encoded formula such as those later used by the alchemists, and upon my release from Colney Hatch I attempted a few…experiments…to rediscover the formula from first principles, using as my guide all of the repeated references in the myths and legends to heads on platters and severed hands and arms. But my experiments failed to produce the desired result, and so I continued to research.”

  Fawkes rubbed his bruised ribs gingerly, clearly relishing the memories.

  “In the British Museum,” he went on, “I found a handwritten note in the margin of Thorkelin's transcription of Beowulf, which mentioned an episode in a fragmentary thirteenth-century manuscript of Snorri's edda. A Geat adventurer, perhaps an original of Beowulf, traveled to Britain and battled against a warrior who later traveled to find a magic tower or chalice that could restore the dead and heal wounds. The note mentioned that the final resting place of the chalice's guardian was believed to be in Iceland. Naturally, I shortly thereafter journeyed to Iceland, and spent the next years hunting for the guardian's tomb. Along the way I met and married an Icelandic woman, who was warm beneath the sheets and skilled in the kitchen if perhaps not as handsome as she might have been, and she later gave me a son, Hiram. For a time, it seemed that I would settle down and raise my family there in Iceland, my hunt for the Grail abandoned in failure, but then just before all hope was lost I managed to find it. The tomb of the Grail guardian! And within, even more amazing, the body of the guardian himself, in a remarkable state of preservation. At his side lay a strange sword, which no one but I was able to draw from its scabbard, the blade so thin it could only be viewed from the side, glowing with the red fires of the pit. The red blade could slice through any material, no matter how dense or strong, and so I brought it with me on my return to civilization.”

  “What of your family?” Miss Bonaventure asked, meaningfully. “Your wife and son?”

  Fawkes shrugged. “Still in Iceland, I suppose. You see, when I returned to the home I shared with my wife and child, the strange sword in hand, I was no closer to finding the Grail than I'd ever been. I had found the resting place of the guardian, it was true, and salvaged his supernatural sword, but while I'd established the veracity of the Grail legends, I had not found the Grail. I had hoped in the guardian's tomb to find some clue to the location of the chalice itself, but had found only frozen stones, a lifeless body, and a sword.” A smile tugged up the corners of Fawkes's mouth, and a crazed gleam lit his eyes. “A short while later, though, that all was to change. In an English-language newspaper, I happened to read a brief article about an archaeological expedition by my old ‘friend’ Peter Bonaventure, in conjunction with the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, in which a crystal chalice-like object had been unearthed. And unearthed from Glastonbury Tor, which in ancient times, the Somerset Levels flooded, had been an island, just as in the fragmentary poem Thorkelin cites.”

  Fawkes's chest rose and fell as he swelled with pride.

  “Only I had the vision to put the pieces together. Only I recognized just what it was Bonaventure had found. The next day, I left my wife and son behind and boarded the next ship to England. When I arrived, I journeyed at once to Taunton, sure that Bonaventure's ‘chalice’ could be found in the offices of
the Somerset society. But instead, I found only the report the fool had filed and that he had taken the treasure back with him to London.”

  “And you killed the custodian to learn this,” Blank said, matter-of-factly.

  “What of it?” Fawkes shrugged. “He interrupted my research and got only what he deserved. In any event, I took the next train to London, found Bonaventure's home, and then with the irresistible edge of my magic sword cut my way into his storage, there to find the Grail itself.”

  “Damn your eyes,” Dulac hissed. “And damn me, as well.”

  Fawkes pursed his lips, shooting the sword bearer an annoyed look. “Yes, I had the Grail, for all the good it did me. I couldn't seem to make it work. I tried a few more experiments, as I had done ten years before, but simply couldn't make it function.”

  The pieces of the puzzle slotted together in Blank's mind. Fawkes had mentioned ‘experiments’ he had performed after leaving Colney Hatch in 1887, inspired by the Grail legends of heads on platters and severed limbs. Ten years later, he had duplicated those experiments, this time with the crystal object he believed in his madness to be the Grail itself.

  “It was you,” Blank said, drawing his sword-stick from the cane, the silver-chased handle in his fist. “You killed those women all those years ago. The one found in the Thames, the one in Whitehall, the arm in the Lambeth blind asylum and the leg under Albert Bridge and the body in Battersea. You were the Torso Killer.”

  Fawkes regarded Blank with a weak smile. “Ah,” he said. “You were in the papers then, weren't you? I thought I recognized your name.”

  Blank lunged forward, intent on driving the point of his sword-stick into Fawkes's heart, and was stopped only when Miss Bonaventure took firm hold of his arm and dragged him back. Blank looked to her, eyes flashing. “Why did you stop me?!”

  “Besides the fact that I suspect you'd regret it later,” Miss Bonaventure answered, “I think that he might take issue with the action.” With a nod, she indicated Dulac.

  The man held his blue-bladed sword aloft, intent on slicing down and through Blank if he carried through with his thrust. “I don't blame you, Blank. But until I find the thing I'm after, I'm afraid no harm can come to him.” He turned and snarled at Fawkes. “After I get it, I'll be the first to help you cut him up, if you like.”

  “Oh ho!” Fawkes chuckled. “Is that meant to be some sort of enticement for me to comply, then?”

  Before Dulac could answer, Taylor cleared his throat to get their attention. “Um, fellows?”

  Blank turned and looked in the direction that Taylor was staring. The Crystal Palace was now all but deserted except for their little company, and so it was somewhat surprising to see a new figure standing in the open doorway. Tall and thin, completely hairless, his expression unreadable behind his smoked-glass spectacles, it was the figure they had pursued and faced the night before.

  “Oh, no,” Dulac said sadly, shaking his head, looking like someone who had just come upon the fallen body of a dear friend. “Not this.”

  Without speaking, the strange figure strode directly towards them, his hands at his side. There was no sign of his hounds and their incarnadine teeth and claws, Blank noted with something like relief.

  “Hey, now…” Taylor said, as it became apparent that the figure was walking right towards him. He backed away, hand on the handle of his holstered revolver.

  Too late, Blank realized that the strange figure was not walking towards Taylor, but towards the red-bladed sword buried in the concrete a short distance from him. Before any of them could move to intercept, the man in the smoke-glass spectacles reached down, wrapped his long-nailed hand around the sword's hilt, and easily drew it from the concrete.

  “Damn,” Taylor cursed beneath his breath.

  The sword's hilt nestled in the man's fist as if it had been made for it. With the red sword in one hand, the man reached up and pulled the smoke-glass spectacles off his face with the other. His eyes were revealed to be flashing red, like pools of liquid fire.

  Dulac shook his head sadly, raising the tip of his blue blade. “It doesn't have to be this way, Pryder. We need not face each other as enemies for the Red King's sake.”

  Blank understood little to nothing of what Dulac said, but it was clear that the red-eyed man would not be giving any response that might clarify. Instead, wordlessly, the white-skinned figure lunged forward, driving the point of the red sword towards Dulac's chest.

  Dulac parried the blow with the flat of his blue sword, and riposted, but the red-eyed man handily smacked the blue blade away. Back and forth the pair danced, as their blades rebounded again and again with a strange humming sound.

  “Blank!” Miss Bonaventure shouted.

  He turned and saw that Fawkes had taken advantage of the momentary confusion to take to his heels, racing off, deeper into the Crystal Palace. “After him!” Blank shouted, and gave chase, Miss Bonaventure and Taylor following close behind.

  “Stop right there,” Taylor said, leveling the barrel of his LeMat revolver at Fawkes.

  The chase had led them here, to the Medieval Court where Blank and Miss Bonaventure had originally found Fawkes two weeks previously. He stood now before the same tapestry, dating from the century after the Norman conquest and in much the same style as the Bayeux Tapestry, and only now did Blank realize that it depicted a scene from the Grail cycle, a trio of knights standing before a vision of the cup.

  Blank had his sword-stick in hand, Miss Bonaventure beside him in a martial stance, while Taylor stood with his pistol pointed unwaveringly at Fawkes's back.

  Fawkes did not turn around, but continued looking up at the tapestry before him. “I was sure that Lady Priscilla held the answers I sought, that her studies of the ancient myths had given her insight into how the Grail could be used. But then the so-called ‘League of the Round Table’ rebuffed me, and I was forced to seek out those that had worked with her.”

  “Why?” Taylor demanded. “Why go after the others and not me? I knew more than Cecilia ever did, or Brade. I'd read all of Lady P's notes and could have told you anything you wanted to know.”

  Fawkes glanced back over his shoulder, a wry smiled on his face. “Well, the magic sword of the Grail's guardian can cut through anything, but I don't think it could stop bullets.” He nodded towards Taylor's pistol. “And since you were the only one of the bunch to keep your own armory of firearms, you were the very last on my list.”

  Taylor drew back the hammer of his revolver with his thumb.

  “Hold on!” Miss Bonaventure said, laying a hand on Taylor's forearm, lowering his aim. “Look!” She pointed back the way they'd come.

  The red-eyed man was advancing on them, his scarlet-bladed sword in one hand, the other reached out towards Fawkes. It seemed to Blank, in that moment, that the red-eyed man didn't seem to be menacing Fawkes, but instead looked as if he were racing to protect him.

  With Taylor's attention off of him, Fawkes reached up and grabbed a fistful of the tapestry in either hand and, hauling down, yanked the fabric from the wall. Behind was revealed a small alcove, evidently intended for display purposes. Within was a small object, no larger than a pint glass, a smooth-sided cylinder than tapered at one end. It seemed to be some sort of milky quartz and glinted like a diamond in the early afternoon sun.

  Blank rushed forward, intent on tackling Fawkes to the ground, fighting the instinct to run the murderer through with his sword-stick. But before Blank could reach him, Fawkes wrapped his hands around the crystal, and something strange began to occur.

  “Strange” in this instance being a relative term, Blank knew, held in the balance against swords that slice through steel and strange men with glowing eyes of fire.

  The crystal began to radiate light like an electric bulb, accompanied by a low humming noise. As the hum increased in pitch and volume and the light grew ever brighter, Fawkes looked up and met Blank's eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “I've done it!
” Fawkes cried. “I don't know how, but I've managed to…”

  Just what he thought he'd done, Blank would never know, because in that instant the sound reached a deafening level as the light swelled to a blinding flash, and in the next instant, the crystal was clattering to the ground, with Fawkes nowhere to be seen.

  The red-eyed man slowed momentarily, seeing the crystal fall to the ground, but only altered his course, continuing to race ahead, this time with the evident intention of snatching the crystal from the ground.

  “Don't let him get it!” shouted Dulac from the far end of the concourse, holding his bleeding shoulder. “For the love of god, don't let him at it!!”

  Blank and the others hadn't a single notion what was transpiring around them, but they knew that the red-eyed man bearing towards them was no friend of theirs, and Dulac was clearly the enemy of their enemy, so their own allegiance was obvious. Blank raised the point of his sword-stick and stepped in the red-eyed man's path.

  “Blank, no!” Miss Bonaventure cried, but it was too late. Besides, Blank knew what he was in for.

  As the red-eyed man closed the distance between them, Blank ducked to one side and lunged forward, piercing the other man's thigh. A normal man would have crumpled in pain at that moment, but whatever else he was, it was clear that the red-eyed swordsman was no normal man. Ignoring the silver-bladed sword protruding from his leg, he reared back and skewered Blank on the point of his red sword.

  Blank hung for a moment on the blade, unable to breathe.

  Then the red-eyed man dragged his sword out. As Blank's blood and viscera spilled out onto the floor before him, the red-eyed man batted him to one side with a long-nailed hand, as casually as a man swatting a fly. Then he wrenched the sword-stick from his leg and tossed it aside.

  Taylor stepped into the breach, raising his LeMat pistol, and with a ruthless efficiency fired again and again, striking the red-eyed man nine times squarely in the chest, then when the .44 caliber slugs were depleted he fired off the 28-gauge shotgun shell from the shorter barrel, hitting the man square in the face.