A groom for some rich family, he swaggered fine for a fighter. But he grasped knife as if to cut boot-leather. I sliced his throat butter-neat, and felt no more remorse to watch him bleed than a woodsman sitting on a sap-fresh stump.
The family for whom he worked took offense. He’d died in their livery; clearly an affront. Though I acted in self-defense, they had me arrested, whipped. My aunts washed hands of me; I was sent to the war as boot-black to junior officers. A humble position, but I had tasted pride in my potential. Stronger than drink. Camp-fire fights soon gave me reputation. A genteel Commander gave me position.
“God or Satan made you for a striker,” said the Commander. “I don’t really care which.” Wise ambiguity. A striker’s job is to bully frightened men to face toward the fight and not away. A striker wanders camp-fires silencing grumblers, challenging insubordination. Chasing down deserters. Hellish work, yet divinity made me for it. For I believe in duty. We should all face towards the battle, not away.
Granted, by the time I plunge towards an expostulating Abomination I no longer know any man’s battle but my own. I must be my own striker then. By God or Devil, the bullying of self is much the same.
But all that is biography, not belief. The same steps might lead to King’s Man easy as Supporter of the Commons. Life forces us into parts; but what story we make of it remains to our inner theatre. In war, I saw my role as machine-part. And the worth of the role in the faces of those machined. Grown men and proud veterans avoided my eye, stepped from my path. I had turned from person to thing.
Anger and terror run much alike through heart and spine. War, dueling, night-fighting; I’ve never felt the death-fear that groom knew. Still I have trembled, dry-mouthed, palms damp. Raging against the loathing I spied when I entered tent or tavern, searching for friend’s eyes.
From that, it was a simple step to despise every last wheel of the machine, greater and lesser. King, Lord, Alderman, Magister, Priest, Judge, General, Commander and Captain, down to the beggars in the alleys. Wheels, all. We were men and women surrendering our common humanity to the grand Mill of Civilization. And gaining nothing from the grinding, but lives worth less than a dog’s.
Some-when in the war I met Green and Black, abandoning my family name to become Gray. A jest I no longer recall. Drunk, no doubt. We held long bouts toasting the world to come; by which we did not mean the afterlife. Merely life after war, the current George and the changing of the century. Checking behind us first, for what King’s ears pricked.
The squid-creature below is raising the fox-girl high, as a street-preacher does his bible. He prepares to dash her upon the stones in dramatic conclusion. Before that I shall have landed heels-first upon his head. I dislike dropping from heights far more than facing foe with blade. With edge and point it is a matter of skill. But with a fall there always comes a dice-throw. Someday I shall twist a knee, break an ankle; and the Seraph’s spadassin days will be over. His life too, like as not.
Politics. Green and I championed the idea of the Nova Carta, a guarantee that all men and even some women shall have a voice in the kingdom. No more poor-houses, no debtor-prisons, no press gangs. No herding of families from farm cottage into ditches, from ditches to work-houses, from work-houses to graves or the holds of ships.
Black sympathized, acting Devil’s Advocate. At some point Green and I realized Black was no rhetorical opponent. No, he’d accepted employ with Satan to destroy the coming Eden. Ah, and we stood so close to regaining the Garden. Workers and farmers across the kingdom stood united for the promise of the New Charter. City guilds marched in approval. Bankers at banquets toasted the prosperity that came with an empowered working-class. Vicars in parish churches explained the holy purpose of Freedom, rolling their r’s royally. Crowds in streets and taverns read hand-bill copies of the Charter aloud, as news of victory fresh from the battle-front.
And then the Cause went to hell, I went to jail, Green joined Black, the New Charter became a radical French pox thought to poison children in their cribs. Crowds denounced it, priests reviled it, bankers shifted funds to ensure it remained forever enshrined as a folly of Jacobin madmen.
The frog-eyes note my downwards plunge. The creature stops mid-burble, waves a tentacle towards me as though I am the very subject of his sermon. Perhaps I am. Then my boots strike his head, which crunches with sound and sense of a leap into a barrel of cock-roaches.
The dagger pierces a frog eye while I roll past. But feet remained trapped in the creature’s slime, as a bird in the fowler’s lime. A tentacle grasps me, twists, I struggle to retrieve the dagger. The fox-girl screams in rage and fear. The Wolf-man circles, snapping jaws in dramatic safety. But past him lunges a deer-headed being wielding an ancient wall-ornament of a spear. The newcomer dodges the snake-riot of tentacles, plunges the shaft deep into the burbling maw.
The Abomination convulses, shivers, stills. I am dropped next to the fox-girl, who rolls towards me, grasping my person as a rock in stormy seas. Truly I am not. Her silk dress is torn, revealing a fascinating surplus of teats. Those smaller, extra breasts astound; I stare like a boy.
“My god,” she moans. “You saved me. You saved me. You saved me.”
At this moment the hall door is flung open, slamming each half against stone. My wife strides in, stops at the stair-top to behold the entire idiot tableau. I struggle to stand, the fox-girl still clinging to my side moaning her ecstasy of gratitude.
I meet Lalena’s eyes. Sky-blue buttons turned night pools. Eyebrows so thin and blond one only guesses their position. Arched in surprise? Or frowning in a V? Her teeth show sharp and prominent. She wears red kilt and circlet, sign of rank for the Lady of the clan. The long strands of her hair wave wind-blown, though no breeze dares the hall. I struggle to peel the fox-girl from my side. She clings tighter. The task will require salt or boiling water.
The deer-man pokes the frog-corpse with the spear, though it rapidly puddles to foul dissolution, passing a month of rot in a minute. I consider him. He has a perfect stag’s head, eyes set to side so that he must turn slightly to consider me. The small antlers and thin wrists imply a yearling.
“Sir Stag, I owe you my thanks,” I say. Best move the proceedings into formal mode. Beside him stands a shaggy-haired man, bare-chested. Fresh wound upon the shoulder. I realize with a start it is the Wolf-man. Changed in form. Well, I knew some of the family could so transform. Cousin Coils, for one. The Man-wolf surveys the decaying Abomination, the moaning fox-girl, the victorious stag; then turns and walks away. His stride displays the dejection of defeat. He knows he fooled none with heroic jaw-snapping.
Behind remains the Minotaur, still horned, animal-faced. He holds an axe, and stares in consideration whether our fight continues past tentacled interruption. He begins to speak, stops, turns to Lalena still standing at the stair-head.
The body of a cat-thing lands with a wet crunch upon the stone floor. He jumps, waving axe. A second aberration leaps down, flees mewling into shadows. Last comes Cousin Chatterton, landing cat-neat at the table-head, rapier at ready. The Minotaur steps back, places axe upon the floor. Wise of him.
Again I attempt to peel away the limpet of a fox-girl. “You saved me,” she moans.
“Shut up,” I say. Her eyes fly open. Green as spring fields of clover. I prefer the blue of Lalena’s; eyes of day-sky given in tribute to night’s child.
“What?”
“I didn’t save you, you brainless chit. The fellow with the antlers did. Now get the hell off me.”
She unfolds from my person realizing she clasped a serpent, instead of her hero’s hand. “What?” she tries again.
“And put some clothes on,” I add, pushing her away. She gasps, tugs tatters together, staggering backwards through the decay of the Abomination.
“Doe,” says the deer-man.
“What?” I ask.
“Doe,” she repeats, and shivers, and suddenly in the puddling Abomination stands a girl in leather jerkin and r
iding breaches. She twirls the spear to show she can, then grins. She has hair straight as Lalena, black not blond. The same wide lips, strong chin. Cousins for sure.
Lalena. I turn in desperation to my new wife. I want her to see I am not the least interested in these females. Bah to extra teats. Away with hair like a scarlet sheet on the shoulders of a spring-fresh whore. Did she witness how I rejected the fox-creature’s thrust of body into mine? And this forest-creature version of herself? Nothing to me.
But my wife is standing with a hand to mouth, shaking. My heart sinks. Lalena feels betrayed. She is a mad thing, dangerous as a tiger, delicate as a lily. There can come no words to sooth her heart’s anguish. A sound breaks forth from between the masking hands. It rings through the weird castle hall like a bell, a horn-sound, a mad fairy song.
Well, my new wife is laughing at me. I consider this awhile, and decide it may be for the best.
Chapter 6
In the Court of Bones and Roses
I stand at a country gate, gazing at the house of my parents. The town of Maidenhead waits down the road, beyond a bend of woods. Counting windows I might tell which room is mine; perhaps even spy my young self looking out, wondering at strangers by the gate.
“Where are we?” asks Lalena.
It becomes a metaphysical question. A few weeks of married life and I grow used to certain things. My wife enters my dreams easily as walking into a garden. Not that my dreams are usually gardens.
“In bed, I suppose, wrapped about each other.” A wonderful thought, that beyond the seeming world is a bed, where past all pain and sorrow you lie in peace; held tight, tight by one who loves.
“You snore,” observes my wife. She turns face to sun, as she does in dream. And in life, of late. A long-dead wizard wedding-gifted us a tomb of sunshine. Since then she dares walk by day, vampiric though she is. Brave of her. Sun’s light is a fire to dare, in life or dream.
“Well, you fidget,” I retort. “You toss and turn and strike me about the head.”
“Do I really?” she asks. The accusation fascinates her. Who knows how they sleep till they lay with another? And I am first that ever lay myself beside her. A holy honor, if a deadly risk.
My parent’s house is taken by mist. The fog carries the smell of battle and powder. A rumble of thunder, too cruel to be Heaven’s. The dream falls fast to bloody fields and cannon-fire. I grab Lalena’s hand, hurry us down the road. But ahead I spy a farm house where a girl and a dog toss a blue ball with white stripes. I stop in horror. Anywhere but there. I pull Lalena off the road into the trees. We flee through sparse forest, sunlight greening to old copper as it filters through the canopy of leaves.
I run now with boy’s feet, shoeless and nimble. Why did I ever exchange these wonderful limbs for the clod-feet of a man? I leap fallen trees, dodge beneath brambles, sly and quick as wind, as rabbit, as thought. Beside me runs a girl, seven at most. Her long hair follows as a solemn flag, refusing every chance to tangle. I stop, struck by the vision of my wife at seven. She halts, examines me.
“You look a savage native,” she declares, prim as the pout of a preacher’s maiden aunt.
I consider my person. Shirtless, shoeless, rough cotton pants. Shoulder-long hair, darker in childhood than man-hood. Skin brown as if I bathed daily in summer sun and coffee. I recall my grandfather was a Mohican. Ran wild in leather pants through these same trees, or so claimed Mother.
Lalena stands a pale elf-child, strands of yellow wire for hair. Eyes button-round, two blue puddles reflecting October sky. I can think of nothing to babble but what I feel.
“I hope we have a daughter.”
She goggles open-mouthed, then whirls round about. Hiding her face, her feelings. What an idiot girlish thing to do. I consider pulling her hair. Yes, I think I will. I do it. Give those over-serious locks a hard tug. She shrieks. I run. She chases after.
* * *
Sunrise began with a funeral. In a life of violence, I am not used to buryings. It is a housekeeping task I’ve left to others. In war I stood to the back of services, daydreaming of beer, of women, of all things the shut of a casket declared done. In peace-time I declined the funerals of those I slew. Attendance would be cruel faux-pas. My parents perished as I sailed from home. All my adult family had been Elspeth and Stephano. I was denied her funeral. But I shall attend his; by and by.
We gathered at dawn in the great hall, where stood a half-dozen in the silver-blue tartan of the Moon Clan. Standing apart from their cousins of the Blood Tartan, who numbered full dozen. I watched for trouble, spied no hostile eyes. The clans stood at peace; for the nonce.
There remained no particle of the Abomination; only chill wafting from the stones where it died. But the dead beast-man lay upon the table. I recalled him rushing the tentacles with a torch. A brave end. Then, he’d had the look of an ape. Now in death he lay an old man. Such little difference between the old and the ape-like. For both the ears stand out, hair becomes a fringe of mane. The back hunches, teeth yellow, eyes sink deep. The hands folded upon chest looked wrinkled paws. Arthritic, perhaps.
Beside him lay the two cat-like aberrations. Furred bodies, low foreheads, faint chins. A plentitude of teeth. Neither men nor beasts, I decided. Nor yet some halfway creature between. The aberrations were less than human. It did not bring them closer to true animal.
No matter to the family. I stood a silent outsider, watching grief touch faces of either clan. A tremor, a grimace, a quick gasp. Tears in eyes, shakes of the head. I had forgotten the holy words. Peers we were each to each, and cared nothing for princes waiting at the door. The least of our blood was royalty in the measure of our love. We feuded and laughed, each of us all the world to each.
The cousins wrapped the dead in sail-cloths, placed them upon a bier. Quiet procession then wound through the hall, up far stairs. Those of the Blood Tartan and the Moon sharing alike their sacred burden. Candles marked our path through the castle, bright lonely stars leading I-didn’t-know-where. Chatterton followed after, playing soft dirge upon pipes.
I recalled the old sailor Light, describing Chatterton’s empty village. Hollow houses, fresh graves. How many of his own had Chatterton wrapped in sheets, placed into earth? Not a thing to ask, nor ever want to know.
At the forefront Lalena marched solemn and sad. I considered hurrying to her side, taking her hand. Best not. She walked in formal mode, the Lady of her clan. Beside her strode the fox-girl in blue-tartan, silver circlet binding red hair. She tilted her head up at times, clearing away tears. Behind the two came the Doe; lacking tears but walking so lost the Minotaur must take her arm at times, lead her gently on. Moving, that kindness from such rough creature.
We traveled dark hallways to doors opened wide for dawn and sea-wind. Through a courtyard, a final gate leading past castle walls. I expected to tumble into the sea. But no, we came to a garden of roses and headstones. I stared astonished. Beyond ran a long narrow valley, of grass and trees worthy of some dale a thousand miles south.
No sight of the sea, though its waves surrounded us, besieged us, shouting to the wind beyond castle wall and valley slope. Here waited a fresh grave. I wondered who dug it. Billy River and Mattie Horse, perhaps. They’d handled the schooner as master sailors. No doubt they also served the clan as sextons, blacksmiths, lawyers, architects and chemists. The family were mad, but the least of the blood could astonish with mastery of some craft, of language or art so arcane as to merit the label ‘magic’.
The dead were given to the earth. Returned, as the saying goes, we being but clay. No one mourned the old man by particular name, this being family. He was old Uncle Ape; he was Aiseag Mac Tier; he was Wise-eyes. To the Minotaur he was Friend; to the Doe he was Father;
The fox-girl lay down a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and said farewell. Then the two cat-things were laid with Ape, respectfully. Only then did I see the remaining aberration appear. It slunk from behind a headstone, slouched on paw and hand to stand beside the fox-
girl. It pressed its face into her side, as if to hide.
The fox-girl laid one hand upon the creature’s back. Another upon the sheeted forms of its kind. She whispered words I did not hear. Words not meant for me. She wore dignity and sorrow sure as her circlet. I felt ashamed to measure her figure, counting the curves of breasts.
At last she stood, and began to recite, and those about whispered along, save I, outsider. Strange words overcoming the sea-wind shouting beyond the sheltered valley. Kin to the play-speech of Flower and Brick. Perhaps some part interrupted by gun-shot.
The candle-flame folk, shadows of passing clouds.
Wind’s children, carrying song, whirling dust, wandering on.
Too real for naming, too free for taming,
We are the seal cries, the wild geese laughter.
No beginning, no ending, safe in the heart of hereafter.
Last came a reading from Common Prayer, more afterthought than ceremony. The Minotaur and Billy River set to filling the grave; the family turned back to the castle.
We entered the great hall. Worry wrinkled the eyes of the Moon Clan. I spied the young man-Wolf considering exits, the positioning of red tartans. The Minotaur did the same. Pointless. They were outnumbered. And having seen them fight I doubted even an equal number could best the Blood Clan. Their darting eyes implied they thought the same.
“Sit,” said Lady Lilly-Ann Elena Mac Sanglair. Well, there was room at table for a clan and a half. All sat. Save Chatterton, who remained a nonchalant threat leaning against a pillar, studying dust in a sunbeam.
Family business, I decided, and seized the seat next Lalena before Billy River could claim it. He rolled eyes, snarled incisors and claimed Mattie-Horse’s seat.
“Now, cousins,” said Lady Lilly-Ann Elena Mac Sanglair, placing hands upon the spot where the dead had lain. “What do you here? Why did you attempt the murder of my lord?”
The Moon Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans Page 4