The Harlequin Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans

by Raymond St. Elmo

  He shook head. “We expected you hours past. They ran when the sun set. Didn’t fancy dicing here by dark.”

  “But you didn’t fear ghosts?”

  He grinned for pain and fun. Excellent fellow. “Wanted to take on the Seraph.” Then groaned, holding hands to side. “Didn’t think you up to reputation’s snuff.”

  “Who hired you?”

  Silence, but for the tap, tap of my point.

  Then, “Banker types. No names. Just good clothes, busy faces.”

  Likely again. A coven of bankers wanted me dead. Coven? Pack? What was a gathering of bankers? A barrel? Vaulting? No, something more reminiscent of stomachs and vultures. Ah.

  “When did this gullet of bankers hire you?” I asked.

  “A week past.”

  I laughed in disbelief. He took the sound for pending evil. A look of fear crossed his face. Agony and change of angle to the world had held fright back till now. “So, you going to finish me?”

  I considered. He was hors de combat for tonight, or for good. Might bleed to death, else the wound infect. Wasn’t coughing blood. Always a good sign. I shook head. He struggled to rise. I sighed and helped him up, awaiting the clever knife. Didn’t come. He kept both hands to side, holding the wound.

  Full night lay about us. Owls swooping, moths flittering, bats fluttering. First shine of moonrise touched the wind-shivering tree branches.

  “Rest, wait till the moon gives more light,” I suggested. “Then follow the path to the road.”

  “I’m not dawdling a minute,” said the man. “I’ve already beheld things here I’ll see when drunk, till I drink more. I’ve done all I was paid to do, and that near cost me life.”

  I shrugged. Considered asking what he’d seen. Decided not. Considered wishing him luck. Decided not, again. The man was a street swordsman daydreaming of glorious homicide. So was I. But I had respectable nom de guerre.

  “You didn’t kill the Seraph, ‘Captain’. Best return your pay.”

  He staggered down the path, hands to stomach. Did not turn, yet gave riposte. “Weren’t paid to kill. Told to blood you.”

  “What?”

  He stopped. Turned face I could not read in the dark. Looked twisted, perhaps in pain. Else in fear. “We were told to just cut you. Set you bleeding, then scamper.”

  He disappeared down the dark path. I stood rapier at ready, whirling to look in every direction. How easy to wonder innocently why anyone would want me bleeding as I walked in search of a blood-drinking monster.

  I did my best to tighten the bandage about the slash. No doubt I stank of blood. Recalled running through French forests pursued by winter wolves. Drawn by the red drops I’d painted upon the snow. I continued up the path. Pointless to say one feels watched, when walking by night through a graveyard. What unimaginative soul would feel alone?

  Ahead waited a light. A candle, set in glass upon a headstone. A pleasant flicker, too weak to spoil night vision. My eye traveled to the writing.

  Mary B, Wife.

  B. 1780 D. 1797

  What a plain name, plain stone, plain fate. Two numbers framing all a life. Seventeen, married, dead. Perished in childbirth, most like. No mention of child; assume it lived. No poetic quote nor scripture? Well, but stone cutters charge by the letter. No doubt Mary’s husband had bills to pay, a newborn to raise. Perhaps grief weighed too heavy to lighten with stone quotation. Or perhaps he’d already proposed to the midwife. But someone had felt grief at the math’s summation. And so came here today, lit this little prayer light. I considered confiscating the candle. Poor style, and little worth. Instead I took the bundle of flowers from coat pocket, deposited the columbine with a non-dramatic bow. For Mary, the babe, the faceless widower. For love. Turned and walked on.

  Need marriage be bound with love? I wondered. Never observed my parents romance, assuming they had such. Many a couple share a practical purpose for the common bed. No doubt so living the more at peace, for sensibly beating hearts. Yet I wished Mary and her man a glorious story, a love for eternity. A damned brief eternity. They would have still been learning one another’s bodies and minds, all the preferences for blanket and morning ritual when they parted. Shame, that.

  I reached a fork in the path. The left choice sloped upwards. Alderman Jeremiah Black would never lie in some plot of goat grass. It’d be a stone manse with a fine view, his name carved in ebony above the door. I took the path upwards.

  A distant scream tore the night song of cricket and crake. I looked back. The ‘Captain’, I decided. Perhaps as he rushed for the gate, fiends upon his bloody trail. More likely the man stumbled into a fresh dug grave. Explanation needn’t always be fantastical. In daylight, it needn’t ever be.

  I wished him luck, declined his rescue. He’d cut me. It yet ached. If his cries continued I might review the terms of our social contract. But no sound followed but wind winding tree branches with whispers of laughter. I went on. Hereabouts plain stones and crosses yielded to statues. Angels by the host. Collapsed in bronze sorrow, else rising on stone wings of faith. Staring thoughtful with marble eyes, else hiding faces in folds of chiseled wing. Some leaned ‘gainst crosses and pillars as guards on picket duty. Shapely woman seraphim, and Olympian muscled cherubim, and child cherubs waiting impatient for parents’ return.

  The path twisted past a great ivy-tangle. Within waited a warrior angel. Vines wrapping tight to bind, to smother. Weathered stone face, carved of dust and gray sand. Writing at the base, burned away by rain and years.

  ‘171_ … in memory of the warriors of the battle of’.

  No more remained. Nor much of a face. I stopped to study the hand. Jutting forward, empty fingers wrapping air. I smiled to read that gesture: presenting sword prior to bout. I took the captain’s rapier, placed hilt into the fingers. Fit fine. No doubt the original blade had long gone to war again. Or a pawn shop.

  ‘Give memorials a pansy for thought’, the mad child had instructed. Gravely, one must add. But a haunted night-cemetery made proper battle field for mad children. Best follow the veteran’s advice. I drew the flower bundle, dropped the pansies at the base.

  Walked on, leaving flowers and extra blade. A war memorial? Pointless. If we truly remembered wars, we wouldn’t have wars. Yet better to build reminders than shrug to time and bloody inclination. If nothing else, stone soldiers looked noble by moonlight.

  Brooding did not keep my mind from noting I was followed. A twist of branch, a crunch of gravel. Keeping far behind, not attempting to catch up, nor cut my throat from behind. Which hinted something waited ahead.

  I scanned what I could of the winding, night-shadowed path. Angels yielded to packs of loyal dogs, weeping Virgins. Sorrowing lions, griffons en garde. I stopped to consider a marble griffon perched beside a mausoleum door. Eagle and lion parts harmoniously joined. Impossible there should not be such creatures in the day-lit world.

  “Good work,” I told it. “Keep watching my back.”

  At which praise, the statue chuckled pleased.

  Chapter 19

  On Past Styles of Death and Hat

  My first true teacher was a seminarian who did not doubt. No, he entirely disbelieved. Master Clive confessed his heresy one day when I returned from tavern work brooding on the words of the barmaid Griselda. She’d confided a trembling urge to abandon mortal clothes, don a nun’s eternal black shroud and wimple. Therein to spend life in prayer and service to the poor, the leprous and non-English. She encouraged my twelve-year old mind to consider souls and watchmakers, shadows and the starry sky, to confess the reality of the Divine Plan. How else explain the beauty and order about us?

  I’d been mopping vomit in a half-riot of beer and curses, pissing and laughter. I leaned on mop, considered reality. I pondered all the beings past the thick air of fire-smoke and pipe-smoke and river-fog and man-stench. Through this dirty air the window light shown upon faces flushed with ale, eyes weary with care. The drunken smith, the angry baker, the muttering old sol
dier in the corner…

  And I was moved. I am not a dainty soul. Tavern riot suits me fine, for all the mopping. I knew these drunks for more than fools with too many cups down. The baker could have broken my bones for visiting his daughter by night, but only sighed and cuffed. That blind man mumbling old war songs? Major Dark, a master swordsman in his time. The scowling Keeper himself, tapping cudgel to palm in sign the room’s riot best quiet? I knew him for a low-grade saint.

  Of a sudden, Griselda herself stood revealed as holy truth. Thirteen and buxom as a bishop’s whore, she winked at toothless lechers while pondering stars and souls. How could there not be divine plan in a creature so paradoxical, yet so complete? Even the sun’s struggle through smutty window glass became a war of Light and Dark, World and Spirit. How had my eyes never seen this glorious battle before? I went to Master Clive half inclined to seek God’s salvation, or at least closer rapport with the verse of John Donne.

  My teacher nodded at these thoughts. They were old friends to a seminarian. And so he brought forth his treasure of ancient Rome: Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura. A long poem celebrating the worth of observable life, the rejection of the Unknowable. Wisdom not in faith of things unseen, but in celebration of exactly what is seen.

  “What gods may be, are as the stars,” declared Master Clive, pacing forth and back. “Infinitely happy. And infinitely far.”

  He declared he embraced the meaning of religion, while believing none of it. No paradox nor hypocrisy in so doing, he assured. A man may love stained glass, and church organ thunder. Quiet candles, hymns and bells. And calls to kindness to one’s neighbor. Yet no ecclesiastic toolbox need be carried along to affirm the worth of the world, or the works of human hands. A hymn is writ by man, and sung by men; the very bells rung by men; all a cathedral is built by men; and so stands as a thing of holy meaning to Man.

  I understood him exactly; or supposed I did. I carried his declaration of joyous disregard of Heaven’s opinion to war. There it served me fine. To view reality as all things seen, in defiance of all things hidden, comforted me in battle as rosary did for soldier to the left, prayer book to the comrade on my right. They grasped comfort in a distant and doubtful world. I grasped the reality of this world. And I judged it good, even in battle field and charnel-pit.

  True, that grasp on reality had weakened of late. Not for encounters with mechanical dragons, automaton boys, snake girls and magic boxes. Zeit-Teufel’s wonders inclined me all the more towards practical philosophy. In his arc-lights, the world’s form showed so sharp and real it brought tears to eyes, needing shields of tinted lens.

  Nor could I yet entirely believe dead Jeremiah Black had pressed knife to my throat, hissing in my ear as gloating, grinning corpse. That was delirium, as was Dealer’s rolling head. A figment I must confront as real, the better to lay to rest as brain-fired madness.

  But the naked night creature, so very dangerous, so very sorrowful… As Blake would say, she forced me to see by another metaphysics entirely. And so when the stone griffon chuckled, I felt unsure. Might a statue not laugh? Why not? I spoke to it.

  Why not? Well, because it was a damned stone. Chiseled to form the idea of creature of impossibly joined parts. Griffons do not exist. Stones do not laugh. And so I disbelieved, yet stared open mouthed, perilous near to accepting.

  I only noticed the man sitting in the statue’s shadow when he scraped flint to steel, lit pipe. I was already drawn. I near struck. I’d taken his chuckle for the griffon’s. He’d caused me to doubt sanity and Lucretius. I’ve killed for less.

  But what a peaceful act, lighting pipe. He sat so still, he might have slain before I knew my death blow. Yet instead of blood’s hot copper tang, the air filled with the pleasant smell of Dutch tobacco. I considered a lunge anyway on spadassin principal and pique. But recalled the admonition: strike none first, no matter how they glower. So I waited, as at cards when another has the deck. Perhaps he distracted while foes crept behind? Best not begin whirling about, watching all directions. He puffed pipe, sparks casting faint light to his face.

  A scarred leather boot of a face, graced with grin that said I’ll steal your watch and kiss your wife. Wide hat with turkey-cock feather, brim low over deep-set eyes. A fanciful shirt, the sleeves widening out as they approached wrist, till the folds hung for flags celebrating style of a century past. Ornate rapier on the stone step beside him.

  “Back again, are you?” he observed. Low voice, accented. Not of other lands, but older times.

  I puzzled at this observation. “No, this is my first passing by.” I was not so lost as to be wandering in circles. He nodded. Which made no sense. I’d told him he was wrong.

  “But this time perhaps you will take the advice?”

  I did not puzzle at that, I flat argued.

  “No. I have not refused your advice before. I receive plenteous advice. Baskets and barrels and bellies of advice. Trunks of counsel, bags of admonitions, observation, directions. Strangers stop me on the road to give me advice. They throw it through my windows to stimulate the economy. But never you.”

  I said this, and then had the absurd idea I’d seen that hat before. What a strange madness, when all you see is infinitely familiar, endlessly significant. Perhaps the hat once offered advice. About fashion. No doubt I’d ignored it to my sorrow.

  The man nodded again, contrary to the sense of my words. Dammit! How could a spadassin hunt monsters in a cemetery in sane and sensible mind, with these lunatics running about, assaulting with riddles and mysterious looks?

  “I don’t even believe in vampires,” I told the night. “I but put the hypothesis to test and rest. I predict I will reach the center, answer the riddles, and discover the truth to be a gullet of bankers in grand conspiracy of coin and court. No damned ghosts, no magic box, no –“

  I stopped, silenced by the recollection of the woman in my garden. Of a sudden I understood what moved me more than her mad beauty: her sorrow. She’d been a funeral fire that radiated not light nor heat, but loss and despair… Scoff all I wished. I believed in her.

  The pipe smoker grinned at these words, the said and unsaid. What an agreeable sort. He reached, produced a lantern, bent pipe to wick, puffed till flame sprouted. Then placed pipe into a crack of the griffon’s beak, where it stuck to comic effect.

  “Anger,” said the man, tapping his chest. I took it for name not concept.

  “Rayne,” I said, tapping my chest. The name of the concept of myself. Anger laughed. He reached for his rapier and I did not strike to kill; but the decision came close. He marked the near strike, shook head, gathered lamp, set off down the path. His back to me, as if I were not sword-drawn and half mad, eyeing every move.

  “They shall shout we cozen,” growled Anger. Voice a thing of low, whispery beauty. “But treaty declares only that none of family interfere. Though all sides have put foot across the lines, the treacherous things. But I,” he thumped chest, “I stand as you. Not blood of the blood, but outsider caught in their weave. ‘Tis no oath breaking if such as us help our fellows out the tangle.”

  This would be where I scratched head, befuddled by the words. But I could see the sense. “Different groups contend,” I declared. “One led me here. One sought to turn me back.”

  He shook head. “No, both intended you here. But one would have you come by day, finish your work, return to a fine dinner. The other would have you meet your quarry face to face, though it be by night.”

  We reached a fork in the path. Right upwards, left downwards. He pointed upwards. “What you seek awaits at this path’s end. But if you will now heed counsel you once declined, then take the other way.” Nodded lamp to left.

  “Why?”

  Lamplight turned his grin to jack-o-lantern joy. “Because whether they act themselves or lead another to slice, they’ll see your throat cut if you take the straight path. Man, trust me upon it.”

  Likely. But how did the other path help? And if it came to trust, I didn’t. Not
this man. Yet I trusted the hat. Also the griffon with the pipe. If they vouched for him, I should give the left path a chance. Did I just decide by trusting a hat and griffon?

  He took my bewilderment as consent. Turned, strode down the path. I sighed, followed after. Night wind set coils of mist tangling our feet. Call of owl, night-jar. Bark of a fox. Pleasant smells of rot and growth. From behind, whispers of shadowing steps. I looked back. Naught yet in view. We followed a narrow lane lined with statues worn faceless by time and vine. Shapes only hinting lost features. Ahead awaited a chapel of brick. The door stood open, candlelit within. Quite friendly by graveyard’s measure. We halted before the steps. Anger’s sleeve-draped arm waved towards the doorway, the gesture saying after you.

  No, after you, my own arm insisted. So we stood waving, and the enemy struck. I hadn’t heard a breath, but Anger threw the lamp. I thought he did so at me, and leaped aside, prepared to kill now that first strike was granted. But the lamp struck a dark-clad fellow behind me, knife raised. Impossible, but all a host had rushed up the path without my hearing.

  Shadow-men, of the kind half-remembered in Teufel’s basement applauding a puppet play. Dark of clothes, faces painted moon-white as Elizabeth’s courtiers. But before them as leaders stood kilted persons in brighter cloth; masked and cowled to hide face and eye. Swords out and waiting. I considered the kilts. Diamond patterns, dark devil-masks… Harlequinade.

  “You violate the pact, Enguerrand,” declared their leader. “No blade nor hand shall hold back now.” Well, I knew that voice.

  “Father Bright,” I laughed. “Drawn, and no longer talking peace?”

  For reply the man moved saber point through night air, drawing up figures, reckoning sums. He sighed at what the final reckoning would purchase, shook head.

  “So much trouble for a petty clay-parts thing as Rayne Gray. Entertaining, I suppose. Some of the family even cheered you in this bout. Romantic souls, you understand. Pitying the incompetent Figaro stumbling into treasures and beds beyond his bloody mind, muddy hands.”