The Flame Is Green: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 1

by R. A. Lafferty

  Then a thing happened that is completely without explanation. Dana Coscuin, always so courteous to ladies of whatever sort, committed a series of acts so startling and so removed from his regular character that there is no accounting for them. He was seized either by total madness or by sanity on a plane that is canted in regard to our own. In some way, the lady had the aspect of a snake or of some thing worse than a snake. And all the while she was one of the genuinely pretty ladies of the world.

  Dana caught the lady by the hair of her head and began to drag her about the road by it. “The hair at least is real,” he said loudly, “even if the girl is not.” But he continued to drag her.

  With gleeful fury he flung her on her back in the roadway there. There was no fear in the lady's eyes: only defiance and — what? — yes, a touch of amusement. Have snakes alway responded so disconcertingly?

  Dana stood upon the girl with one foot on her mound and the other on her throat.

  ‘Nobody has ever conquered her,’ Magdelena Brume had once said of this very nameless lady. ‘It may not be,’ Dana said to himself now, ‘but I have scored first discomfit on her.’

  There was murderous glee in Dana, and momentarily it was the false snake itself that he ground under his heels.

  “You will really injure me,” the lady spoke with some strain, since her throat was still under Dana's heel. It couldn't be that the lady in her extreme straits was laughing at Dana with her eyes. No, it must be that the eyes of Spanish ladies and Spanish snakes differ from other eyes.

  “Stand off me, man,” the lady said in a small voice now, “and I will do anything you say.”

  “Get up then, and disrobe,” Dana told her.

  The lady, the girl, disrobed smoothly and quietly, letting her clothing fall in the dust of the road, and stepping clear of them. Dana began to wonder who had really scored discomfit here. The girl was slim and brown, muscled smoothly like a boy, and yet quite breasty, and boned like a young woman. She still wore her gloves, a supreme elegance by which she already partly defeated Dana.

  ‘She is no lady, she is a cheap boney jade,’ rough Brume had once said of this very girl here. It may have been so. Or it may have been that rough Brume had never seen this girl in her bones.

  ‘She is death-danger to you, Dana my love,’ Magdelena had once said of this same girl. And Magdelena of the Mountain was to be trusted such as are no more than three saints in Heaven.

  The girl's back was empurpled with old scars. She had been whipped, scourged almost to death at some time.

  “Take off your gloves,” Dana said, and the girl dropped her gloves in the dust. Aye, she had once been hanged up by the thumbs and beaten.

  But where was the death-danger from this bare girl? Dana went through the clothes in the dust of the road. He looked at the girl.

  “You have nothing hidden?” he asked.

  “What would I hide?”

  “Robe yourself again then.” But the girl found combs with her clothes and was fixing her hair first.

  “Dana Coscuin,” she said, “dine with me one month from this evening.”

  “In that house in the valley?”

  “In my castle in the valley.”

  “It may be that I will dine elsewhere that evening.”

  “It will be that you will dine in my castillo that evening, or I will have you found and dragged there.”

  Dana Coscuin was singing his way along a mule-road in north Spain, and the road might or might not take him to the town of Estella. My Name is Dana Coscuin was the name of the song, and Dana sang it boldly for all the world to hear. But he sang it not quite so boldly as he had sung it a little earlier.

  He felt that he had been neatly defeated by a young girl in her bare brown skin. That the girl had been snakeish now seemed like a crooked noon-dream. He did not even know the name of this girl, but many persons must know it. How was it that nobody had ever passed into the Carlist Hills without encountering her? And how was it that nobody had ever conquered her?

  And Dana still could not explain his rough and unusual behavior towards the girl.

  IV

  HIGH HILARITY, BLOOD AND DEATH

  Dana was finally in the high Carlist Hills. He was on the mountain there that is highest of any in the world except Ararat, and is only one cubit less high than that. He was quite near the place where a great arm, hand, and flag, all turned to stone, might still be seen. And the flag was, of necessity, the Carlist flag. He was at the Rock that was clearly fundamental, though that first Spanish stranger had admitted that it might be fundamentally wrong.

  A man, who was either an old bandit or an old priest, was instructing Dana Coscuin and several other young men in a keep of tall rocks that was not far from the town of Estella in Northern Spain. The old man was dressed in black, and the young men called him the Black Pope.

  “We have the odd cases of unimportant things giving their names to more important things that extend hundreds and even thousands of years before them,” the old man was saying. “We have, for instance, the case of the name ‘America’ which is given to the Western Continents. It is said to have been named for an Italian man of little more than three hundred years ago. Yet the Western Continent had been known by its own name for more than two thousand years. The Greeks called it Amoiro-Ge, the unlucky land or the unlucky world. The Latins called it Amaraqua, the bitter land. The Irish called it Amharc, a sight or a vision.

  “It is much the same with the Carlist thing which we propound and sustain. There are some who say that Carlist is named for some Charles or other who was king or who aspired to be king in a somewhat recent time. But the Mountain named Carlit has had its same name for half the age of the earth, and it is a high-rising monarch of our Carlist Hills. But do you know that in the Caucasus Mountains there is another manifestation of this mountain and that it is also named Carlit? Did you know that in ancient times in the Caucasus there was a realm named Iberia which is also the same name as our own realm? Did you know that these two realms were joined underneath the earth by a tunnel sixteen hundred miles long? And that these two mountains were but two of many peaks of the same great mountain?

  “Do you know that in the Slavic tongue a Karlik is a dwarf? It is, however, a massive and ponderous dwarf, larger than a giant. It is the Mountain Dwarf. I myself am of this Karlik blood. We will maintain and spread this strong Mountain Thing with its beliefs and its insights.

  “There is a town named Val Carlos in our Carlist Hills. This would seem at first sight to mean Charles Valley. But its real meaning and first form, is Val Charla, the Valley of the Word or the Valley of the Discourse.”

  “The real meaning and first form of Carlist is Charlatan,” one of the other young men mumbled in a low voice to Dana Coscuin.

  “The word Carla means a colored cloth, and perhaps it means a flag,” the old bandit or old priest went on lecturing. “I suspect that it means the oldest flag in the world. In the sky there is the star-group named the Charles Wain (Osa Mayor, the Big Bear), and it is said to mean Charlemagne's Wagon. But it is the vehicle of a higher King than Charlemagne. This is the vehicle which we in our humble way are called upon to use. And it is also the vehicle of the King of Heaven.

  “For the Carlist Thing is the King Thing, the Bold Thing, the Sky Thing. It is the tree with some of its branches in our hills and with its roots in Heaven. Every King is really a King Charles, since Charles means King. But no King will rule us on Earth unless he is in the image of the King Himself. In our codex, variations of the name are often used for those who walk in truth, as Karl, Kirol, Cyril.”

  It seemed as though a stir of recognition went through several of the young men at the name Cyril.

  “Do you know as much and as little about the Count Cyril as I do?” the mumbling young man mumbled to Dana.

  “I know my mentor and kinsman quite well,” Dana lied, “but in my present — ah — exile, I am not always in touch with him.”

  “I see t
hat you know as little about him as I do,” the mumbler mumbled. There was this thing about the mumbler: he was very tall; he reminded one of a mountain even, with the rockiness of his face and his steep lines, but he had what seemed a low small voice. He was not massive, but he was long and powerful and pinnacled. He was named Tancredi Cima and he was a Sardinian.

  “Why Estella?” the old lecturer asked with a sort of ringing bronze that he gave to all his rising intonations. “Why are we centered in the region of Estella? My young men, I do not know why. The town of Estella and the musty mountains about it are anciently the center of this indoctrination and discipline. The name Estella once meant Star: that one character has been lost out of the name merely indicates how ancient it is. There was a Star here that came down on a Mountain — and what does that mean? It means that all mountaintops are brothers, and that instructions from Heaven are received on the mountaintops only. Indeed, the Arabs call Mount Sinai by the name of Gebel Kharluf or the Carlist Mountain.”

  “He is a cheerful liar there,” the mumbler Tancredi mumbled. “Does he believe that all of us are untraveled?”

  “The star that is our town cannot be pictured and cannot be seen,” the old man was saying. “It becomes an interior illumination in our flesh. Yes, I know that the star is commonly pictured. Sometimes it is pictured as a five-pointed figure, sometimes as a six-pointed. These are not really representations of stars, though. They are cult figures; they are charms; they are (and this is the truth of it) boxes to catch stars in. In our most peculiar way, and working at it for many centuries, we have been partly successful at catching a star.

  “The illumination of the star is one simple bright message: that there is one father, God, and that we are all brothers and sisters, both in blood and in love. Man, who is each man, is made in the Image and is given Dominion. It is required of each man that he rule over himself in justice, and that he rule over the world in justice. If every person were to rule, there would be no conflict. There are as many aspects of the world to be ruled over as there are people in the world. The conflict comes when some person refuses to rule. Each of you, each of everybody, must rule the entire world in the fullness of his own aspect.”

  “The Guardia,” Tancredi mumbled, “the guard has come closer than it must be allowed. You and I, Dana, must do something about the guard.” This was when Dana had been in the Carlist Hills for about a month.

  Tancredi was not standing near Dana at this lime. He was standing some fifty feet away and there were perhaps a dozen young men lounging in between; but Dana was the only one who heard the mumble. There was (and Dana would discover this again and again) something intensely directional about the puzzling voice of Tancredi Cima. It would go through walls even in the low tone of it; it would fly to the intended ear like a bird.

  Tancredi shuffled away from the scene to the old lecturer's left, and Dana Coscuin to his right. They descended by separate paths from that highest place. They went down opposite cliffs of a gorge; and white horses were traveling on a slippery grassy path below them.

  There were seven guards of the Queen's government riding on seven white horses. These guards had traveled in large or small bands into the high Carlist country to intimidate the opposition to the Queen's government for five years. But there had been only an invisible opposition, irregular, relentless, sometimes murderous, always uncanny. Whether it was intimidated by the incursive guards is doubtful.

  The guards seldom encountered human persons at all, not on the roads, not in the hills, not even in the towns. All the little houses of the small towns were always closed tight to them; even the loudest knocking and calling would not open any doors or discover any persons, not even at brightest noontime.

  There was a discrepancy in the sizes of the settlements and towns. In the larger towns and cities, there were always correct numbers of persons going about their daily business, and these seemed open and respectful of the guards. The people of the cities and the big towns, except Estella, even went out of their way to inform the guards of their total loyalty. But the Carlist opposition did not roost in the cities or even in the larger towns, except Estella.

  This opposition was strong but invisible in the small towns, in the farmsteads, in the mountains, in the sheep-hills, in the remnants of the monasteries (some of them had withdrawn from their own destruction up to natural rock walls and caves for their rooms), in the very old and very minor nobility in their small castle-houses, in the lives of mule-drivers and woodcutters. This opposition had a certain wealth that was so well-hidden that the government had never been able to dig it out or confiscate it. And the opposition had a centuries-old stubbornness.

  “Really, there are no Carlists left alive in Spain, not one,” a government general, one of those charged with the extirpation of the Carlists, had said. “They have left a few ghosts behind them, though, and these give some unease to the faint-hearted.”

  And two ghosts were descending by opposite cliffs above the heads of seven guardsmen on seven white horses.

  “The Carlists are somnolent,” another government grandee had said. “They sleep in the high rocks like snakes. Should one come too close and too unwary on them, however, they still strike like snakes, like poisoned lightning.”

  Like lightning? Not really. Not like swift lightning. Like very slow and sleepy lightning. They were an electrical body and they were highly charged, but they discharged very casually with their lethal leakage.

  It was like lazy lightning that Tancredi and Dana came down the cliffs.

  There were seven white-horsed guardsmen, not bunched up to be taken easily, but paced out at intervals, and alert. Seven.

  No. Six guardsmen now, and seven horses.

  The Carlist instructors had conveyed a great deal. They had been through one mountain war. The older ones of them had been through two. They were canny and competent, like — well, like rough Brume who had once been a Carlist instructor but was now playing a loner hand seventy miles distant. And the recruited young men had brought a great deal with them: Tancredi had, certainly Dana had; and a corpus of tricks and tactics was being created daily.

  Five guardsmen riding now. And two of the seven white horses had no riders.

  The situation in Spain as to the Government and the Revolution against that Government was unusual. Isabella II was Queen, and she was fifteen years old. Her mother, Maria Cristina, had been regent for most of the twelve years of the reign. Her uncle, Don Carlos, had claimed the throne, and in his behalf one of the Carlist Wars (1834-1839) had been waged. It had been waged badly and it had been lost. Don Carlos had never been a great favorite with the Carlists; he was not near Carlist enough for them. Remember Charles IV. Remember Charles III. They had been Charleses, they had been men.

  Four guardsmen riding now, and three of the seven white horses had no riders. Were all the guardsmen fools then, to be knocked off one by one? Not all. An effort was always made to send out at least one competent man with even the smallest patrol. In a seven-man patrol, the competent man usually rode in third place, and he rode there now: third of four, where he had been third of seven. He knew now that something had gotten the last three men, but the man riding behind him didn't know it yet.

  The Carlist Revolution (which thrived on defeat) was the upside-down revolution. The Carlists, the rebels, were conservative, monarchial, religious, agrarian, traditional. The reigning Government in Madrid was innovative, anti-religions, shrilly mocking of morality, looting, uprooting; it was many of the things that are commonly called revolutionary.

  Maria Cristina, it was said, was depraved. Isabella II, it was said, was precocious from her ninth or tenth year, and the men she was precocious with ruled Spain. The people of Spain did not love these high women, and they did not love their strong men who really ruled: General Espartero for his long time, and Narvaez after 1843 when the then thirteen year old Isabella was declared of age. In some ways she was certainly of age.

  Three guardsmen riding
now, and four of the seven white horses had no riders. The third of those guardsmen was plagued by harassing ghosts and by the incompetence of his men. Well, he waited out one of the ghosts and took him at almost the right moment. He shot Dana Coscuin, who turned a faster back to him than you might believe; but he shot him at too great a distance and with metralla too light: it was fowling shot, or a little less than fowling shot. The guardsmen sometimes shot recalcitrant peasants in the pants with this light shot, but they did not often kill anybody with it.

  Tancredi killed that competent third guardsman, though, and he killed him with heaver shot than fowling shot. These were the only two bits of gunfire in the whole melee.

  The first and second guardsmen, riding back with inquiring shouts, were disposed of.

  There were six guardsmen trussed and gagged along the way, and each with a small or great concussion. So leave them to be found by someone. And one guardsman was unfortunately dead. Let the perpetual light shine upon him; he was of Christian clay. Tancredi now rode one white horse and he led six others; Dana Coscuin lay in mortal pain across one of them.

  Tancredi rode to the most hidden stead in all the high hills. Tancredi's girl friend lived there with her many fathers and uncles and brothers. But, as was usual, only the girl Mariella was at home.

  Mariella shut the seven white horses up in a white cave. She took the mortally wounded Dana Coscuin across her shoulders like a long sack of barley, carried him to a shady place, stripped him buff, laid him across her lap, and began to extract the fowling shot or less than fowling shot from his back and rump with tenacillas or tweezers. Mariella had often extracted government shot from her fathers and uncles and brothers. In their unspecified business, they very often ran athwart of government men. After Mariella had removed a hundred or so pellets of shot from Dana, it was found that he was not, after all, mortally wounded.

  Mariella carried him to a huge barrel of water and dumped him into it. She sloshed him around in it vigorously, churning him up and down in the water by her grip on the hair of his head, kept after it till he was pretty well free of the crusted blood. She lifted him out then, laid him out on a flat rock, and anointed him with wine, olive oil, and bull grease. She stood him on his feet, dressed him, kissed him, and announced that he was cured forever.