The Harlequin Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans

by Raymond St. Elmo

  No. And yet, what had Elspeth’s ghost said? “I never did naught that I knew would bring you harm nor shame, Rayne Gray. I was of your house, and if I knew Jeremy Black first, that was the destruction from which I turned.”

  “That part is true, Rayne,” offered Dealer. “El considered you a feeble-minded innocent she vowed to protect with tooth and claw. Wouldn’t consider leaving you to marry me.”

  “You proposed to my housemaid?” I shouted.

  “Once a month, thereabouts,” he affirmed. Then, “Well, you weren’t going to.”

  Strange, to think that the girl, no, woman, I’d sheltered, had seen herself as sheltering me. I kicked at the stone angel at my back. “Elspeth’s ghost told me if I ever had, she’d have laughed in my face.”

  “Did she?” Dealer asked, face brightening. “Oh, I so hope that stung.”

  It had surprised, in truth. What can I say? I hold a high opinion of my mirror. “I didn’t kill her, you know.”

  Dealer turned about in his cage, faced away. An uncomfortable silence followed. Black and I exchanged looks. Were we ready to leap upon each other? No, we were going to glance away while poor Dealer composed himself. I studied the scudding clouds; Black returned to jabbing at his thigh. At last Dealer spoke, to the wicker bars.

  “Of course I knew you didn’t kill her. Even poor Stephano can’t have meant to do so. But, you kept her from me, Rayne. You kept her beyond my life as completely as if you struck her down. You don’t know the joy I felt each dawn, when I thought ‘soon Elspeth will say yes’. When I heard she was dead… hope died. Joy died. The point of life died. It was murder great as when you burned her portrait.”

  “He burned what?” shouted Black. “Why the hell would you do that?”

  “It bothered me,” I retorted. “You got her navel wrong.”

  We glared at one another. I balanced the weight of the butcher-blade. He toyed with the dagger. Dealer recovered his composure, interrupting our excellent menacing.

  “It is as Jeremiah says, Gray. Elspeth did not work against you, for all he pushed her. However the explanation Master Black offers of his long hatred was not all the truth. One small item remains, a mere drop that overfilled the cup, no doubt.”

  “Be silent, you chattering thing,” snarled Black, and gave the birdcage a shake.

  Dealer rolled bouncing off the cage walls, unconcerned.

  “In the war, there was this girl named Weasel,” he laughed, upside down.

  “Rabbit,” I corrected, same moment Black said “Lapin.”

  “The very bunny,” declared Dealer, rolling upright. “One wonders from whence came the title? But Jeremiah beat her for sitting upon your lap, listening to your war tales.”

  Black closed dead eyes, ceased shaking the cage. Dealer hooted in malice.

  “As he slept drunk she took revenge. Carved the letter ‘C’ upon his ass. Elspeth herself told me the tale.”

  “Elspeth and you discussed Black’s buttocks?” I shouted. Clearly I knew nothing of the woman, nor my friends nor enemies, nor aught of my own life. The fog had not come these last few months. No, I’d spent my life in it. Of a sudden I began to laugh, leaning back into the stone breasts of the angel behind. I laughed till tears came, till laughter bounced from stones, wind-chased across the burial fields. The dead waited kindly till the fit passed. I shook my dragon-helmed head.

  “Ah, Jeremiah. And Dealer. When you died I swear I regretted above all, just the lost chance to share over wine and bread how my life has changed. For the woman I met, the chance I’d been given.”

  “We wouldn’t have appreciated,” brooded Dealer. “What a sad crowd of bachelors we made. And what would Elspeth have said?”

  “She wished us well,” I whispered. Recalled Elspeth standing upon the road that goes past life, hair a wind-ripped flag of determined red. She’d found her path, stamped it with a pilgrim’s staff. “El’s ghost gave her blessing, in a dream.”

  “Poetic, for all it sounds unlikely,” said Dealer.

  “It sounds absurd,” countered Black. “As does this entire night. I weary of it.” How casual he stood, in mere dramatic gesture, not preparation to attack. Yet knife at ready. I lowered visor, prepared for his leap. One last question.

  “Where is Lalena?” Again, the two exchanged glances.

  “Your wife is within the chapel,” said Black. Again choosing words with caution. “One might say she awaits you.”

  I began edging forwards. Black would rush upon me, seeking to put the dagger in the seam between helm and breast plate. I would swing where that required his hand…

  Black put knife away, reached down, grasped the birdcage by its top. I gaped, watched as he stepped past, continued down the path as though we’d concluded our street corner encounter; and now he must be off. I glanced in all directions, searching for some last trick.

  Black turned, not for sudden attack but mere last word.

  “Gray?” he called. “One thing you may take as warning or gloat. There was good reason that necromancers, mesmerists, revenants and ghosts alike waited out here on the steps.”

  “What? I asked. “What reason?”

  Black glanced to his own mausoleum, and his dust-filled body shivered. It was Dealer’s head that at last gave answer.

  “Your wife, Rayne. She scares the bloody hell out of everyone.”

  With that Black turned and walked into the night. Chatting with the head in the cage.

  “Think he’ll make it?” asked Dealer.

  “Not this time,” answered Black.

  I watched them disappear. Feeling an absurd wish they would remain. I welcomed dinner table advice and company. Not for tonight’s feast. I turned and entered the mausoleum.

  Chapter 22

  Master of Five Clans

  Poor Jeremiah Black. Built a glorious mansion for the eternal rest of his dust and ashes; and now those remains were sent packing down the road with no more property than burial shirt and a chattering birdcage. Evicted same as some poor rent-farmer muttering curses at laird and banker.

  I walked wary through the opened portal of dark iron, and into a lamp-lit hall. Another door on the far end. Between me and that door, a figure in Harlequin tartan. Father Bright, no less. He faced away, but turned at my footfall. Glanced at me, then resumed watching the far door, as though what lay beyond worried more than what approached. Surprising. I came upon him dressed as bloody-armored vengeance. The dress was no costume; I meant to kill him. And he must know it. And yet, he scarce gave me glance?

  “This business has not gone well,” he whispered. To me, I would suppose. “Not well at all.”

  “You have driven my wife mad,” I pointed out. Approaching slowly, awaiting trap, trick. “She’s quite dangerous in that frame of mind.”

  Bright shook head. “You lecture a Decoursey on ‘frames of mind’? Bah. Madness, what is that? Your wife is mad. I am mad. You are mad yourself, Master Gray.”

  “I alone of all earth’s beings, am entirely sane,” I declared. “Your enspelling is over. So also, other things. Your fool plot. Your idiot life.”

  Bright laughed. “You stand by night in cursed armor within a tomb seeking your lunatic vampiric love, and yet insist you are sane as banker or baker? No, good sir, night’s mirror reveals you lunatic as any soul howling through the gate bars of Bedlam. And yet, the fact remains, this business has not gone well.”

  And so help me, the man wrung his hands, returned to staring at the far door.

  I stepped closer. Bright was neither undead remnant nor vampiric Sanglair; but I did not underestimate him. Harlequin held strange powers of thought and dream; and all the family alike possessed a mastery of talents akin to magic. Their only weakness: they did love to talk. They lived to strike poses by dramatic light, the better to declaim for family applause and hiss. One could slaughter a dozen upon a stage, if one were quick and they determined to get lines said first. I stepped closer.

  Bright sighed; turned, drew saber.
I measured how this would go. Without armor, he could move more swift than I. His saber had far greater reach. But he could never parry my great butcher-sword, and this armor had few weak points. Were I him, I’d dance around, tire me, poking from safety into joints between armor… Of course, being a harlequin his first instinct would be to distract while servants crept behind.

  I whirled and swung, carving night air and shadow. Nothing else. Tricked. I stepped sideways to avoid the lunge Bright must be making upon my back, then turned, swung again, cleaving more night-air and shadow. The swing of the heavy blade near sent me tumbling. I recovered, whirled to seek my foe.

  He knelt on one knee, offered the sword hilt first.

  “Who are you swinging at?” he asked.

  “Who are you surrendering to?” I demanded.

  “I’m surrendering to you, you ass,” he explained. Waved the sword hilt. “Take it, or take my head. Just stop spinning about. It makes me giddy.”

  I stared confounded. “Well, you can’t surrender.”

  “I can, I do,” he insisted. Took breath, raised voice. “In the name of all the Harlequin tartan, I, Bright Decoursey, nephew to the late Pierrot, do formally renounce all call to vengeance for the death of Pierrot Decoursey and his son Pedrolino before him.”

  “Why?” I asked. A sensible question, I think. I remain unsure.

  “Because you’ve won, for all that you’ve lost.’

  “Explain.”

  “Must I?”

  I stepped closer, waving butcher-blade in answer.

  “Very well.” He took breath, considered. “Long ago, the Sanglair led the banishment of the Decoursey from family gatherings. It was great insult. No,” he corrected himself. “It was great sorrow. You have ached with loss for your wife, have you not, Rayne Gray?”

  I kept silent.

  “Shall I describe that sorrow for you?”

  I tilted dragon-helm to say he might, for all he never could. My love for Lalena was music beyond the tune of his small, tin, self-involved penny-whistle soul.

  “Your mind seeks distraction,” said Bright. “You stare at things, chew at things. Pick them up, put them down. You wander within your house, within your head, lost in both. Everything repeats a weary circle. Eat, drink, sleep, wake, work, sleep. Sleep is the only escape. But one pays for sweet dream, with each dawn’s cold reminder that the world has gone hollow. You are hollow. Something is missing within your chest. Missing within the world. You are a fragment. An amputated thing longing for when it lived completed. You are neither alive nor dead; a mere ghost in your house, within your mind.”

  “Windows,” I whispered. “I could only rest beside a window, looking out.”

  “Breathing. It becomes desperate labor. At times impossible. Solitude is a horror. You feel buried alive. Yet the voices of company torment you, a cacophony of idiot chatter. Easiest to sit dull for hours, pretending to be dead. You lie still, imagining you are dead. You hold your hand into the fire, for the blessed pain that takes the mind from the circling agony of loss.”

  “Well,” I said. And could think of nothing else. He shifted weight, hand holding the saber trembling. “Well,” I repeated. taking a deep breath of tomb air, cold dust. Then, “Poetically put,” I admitted. “What of it? You inflicted this pain upon my wife. Upon me. Unwise, to boast in surrender.”

  Bright took breath, shifted weight from the stone-pressed knee.

  “The Harlequin wish to be rejoined to the family,” he announced. “No more to war against all the clans. The hearts of the family are bound to one another. In life, in dream, in breath. Our separation is the very hell that you have now endured.”

  I growled. Family quarrel. Naught to do with me. Let their mad lairds and clan gatherings decide who sat at what table. Did Lalena await me beyond that door? Then why linger chatting with this ass? I should strike his head away, like some king of old. But the injunction remained: ‘strike none, till they strike first’.

  If I accepted the surrender, would the Harlequin cease tormenting us? Killing him achieved an equal end… Or not. I recalled the departing figure of Jeremiah Black, holding Dealer’s head in a bird cage. It would suit a Harlequin to return as mocking ghost. If not, some brother would take the stage, delivering soliloquies, vowing brave new vengeance.

  “If you wished peace, why this idiot conspiracy?”

  Bright stared at me puzzling for the ignorance of the question.

  “You killed our Laird and his son. We had right and duty to vengeance by trial. Even your Sanglair and Mac Tier allies admitted as much. Though they aided you as they could, the cozening cheats.”

  My voice descended to hiss. “What trial is there in tormenting my wife, Harlequin?”

  He shifted weight again, searched for words to explain family mystery to outsider. “We stole your memories, each of the other. Intending that when you met again, either you must slay your wife as monster; else she devour you as evening meal. Either result would count for Harlequin victory. But if you both survived, breaking the enspelling, then to you went the victory.”

  I recalled Lalena in the midnight garden. Blood-drenched, empty-eyed; naked to the moon. If I had run to her shouting of my love, would she have embraced me? If so, in love or hunger? Both, most like. On my wedding night I near died. If now she drowned deeper in madness, perhaps there could be no return…

  I stared down at the creature that parted Lalena from me just as we began to build our life together. Raised the blade to kill. Bright stared up with eyes wide. Mere curiosity delayed the strike.

  “Why surrender now?”

  “Have you not listened?” demanded the man. “We live year to year tormented with longing to be rejoined to our kindred. The same fire you endured brief months. But never will the family accept us after such bitter words and deeds have passed. Only a master of the clans might declare all feud ended.”

  “Fascinating, if naught to do with me,” I declared, and prepared to strike. But from beyond the far door came a scream of pain, of terror, cut short. Bright closed eyes.

  “I thought them all dead,” he whispered. “She moved so fast.”

  We listened, breathes held. What came next was no scream. A sweet laugh, worthy of a milkmaid rushing barefoot across dew-wet grass on a summer morning. It made me shiver. Bright looked at the door, back to me. Spoke now in a rush to get all last words said before sword struck or door opened.

  “Listen, man. You have been given the armor forged by Fulgurous himself, last worn by the father of the Harlequin. Gifted with title and key to the Isle of Gathering. The old ones dance about you. These are signs past argue. You are claimant to Fulgurous’s title.” He took breath. “Master of the Clans.”

  “Fulgor the Mechanical Dragon?”

  “No, you fool. May I stand? My knee is killing me.”

  “Not yet,” I declared. “In agony is brevity. You want me to be master of your clans? I’m not even of your family.”

  “That matters little. It but requires five of the clans to affirm. The Sanglair stand by you, the Mac Tier respect you. The Clockmakers hint you are important to what must come. The Skalen are… curious. But what of the poor lost Harlequin? Accept their surrender, accept their backing.” His voice broke, for the pain in his heart and knee. “I speak for my clan. Let us return, forgiven, forgiving.”

  I stood for several heartbeats, considering. The man had done me harm. I didn’t feel forgiving. And yet, his mind was too strange for me to hate. Black and Dealer, Green and Stephano. I’d known their hearts, their minds. One can only truly hate those close to us.

  ‘Truly?’ asked a voice in my head or my helm. Had I known my old friends, my old enemies? Had not everything revealed that I had not understood those close to me at all?

  “This doesn’t seem a night destined for revenge,” I sighed, and lowered the butcher blade. “Pity. I came wonderfully dressed for it.”

  I reached, took the hilt of the offered saber. Considered tossing it away. A petty g
esture. I tapped the idiot on the head, returned it to him. He struggled to rise. I walked towards the far door.

  “Where, where are you going?” stuttered Bright. “Don’t go in there.”

  “My wife waits within. She needs me, as I her.”

  Bright shook his head, not in negation but to free it of dreadful memory. “We tried to restore her. We lost control. She swims too deep in madness. She killed my kin, her own cousins. Man, she will slay you if you pass that door.”

  “So they said at our wedding,” I replied. “Yet the night passed well enough.” I put hand to door, recalling all her moods, our few fights. Laughed. “You should have seen her when I wouldn’t throw away my old coat.”

  Chapter 23

  In the Lair of the Vampire Queen

  I expected to find Lalena in pose of mad despair. Scrabbling at walls with broken nails, an animal desperate to escape the trap of a broken mind. Else huddled in a dark corner, whispering poetry to spiders. Unless she waited spider-like herself, in some quiet sarcophagus staring with empty eyes, empty thoughts, till prey passed close. Whatever the scene, it would rend my heart with pity. And with fear.

  But no. Lalena sat in a high throne of black marble. Proud and naked, bloody and brooding. Pale breasts and thighs anointed red. At her feet lay the throne’s evicted king; a shattered statue depicting Jeremiah Black, sometime Hades, Lord of the Dead. The noble onyx face frowned, contemplating the turns of fortune’s wheel. Farther from the throne lay more broken forms, not of stone. Three or four bodies, depending how one summed the pieces.

  The ornate chamber stank of blood and entrails, murder and madness. Rush lights and candles confusing the eye with flickers, casting a shadow-court to attend the queen. I considered the sad dead Harlequins. ‘We lost control’, Bright had whispered. Served them right. Down with tyrant sorcerers. Near evil as bankers. I stepped over the just fruit of oppression, stood as the next petitioner before the throne.