The Clockwork Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans

by Raymond St. Elmo

  “How’d he get up there?” she wonders.

  I dismiss that. “You get on the bar, grasp the window ledge, get a foot to the lower beam, hop to the next. That’s no mystery. Question is, what’s he reading? That’s no book I ever owned.”

  “Oh, that was just Cowper,” says a man’s voice. “Think it’s called ‘Upon Going Mad’.”

  I turn. A newcomer stands on the stairs, though I heard no step. I consider waving sword at him, but why? He’s busy yawning, finger-combing hair, buttoning shirt. Clearly just risen. A rough half his face shows the waxen gloss of old burns. The other side is scarce better for crisscrossed scars. More blade-work, I judge. The fellow is tall, thin as scarecrow’s skeleton and his every sleepy move makes me want to put back to wall, weapon drawn. He shows no interest in the room’s scattered dead.

  Em hops over the corpse of the axe-faced man, to land a chicken-peck kiss upon the newcomer’s whiter cheek. He gazes about, sniffing. Not at the three bodies. Dammit, he eyes my breakfast. I put hands to either side of the plate to declare ‘mine’. Though I lack fork and mug to consummate ownership.

  “Did I hear the clock, love?” he asks Em, giving an absent minded hug.

  “That and a pistol,” says Em. “Surprised either poked your snoring self from dreams.”

  “Don’t start, woman” he growls. “I’ve nae had a drop of coffee.”

  “Start? I started an hour past, man,” she growls back. Prepares to add boot-stamp, but the fellow whose face she shot away is leaking across the floor, turning sawdust to muck. She looks down, shakes head for the mopping needed. Settles for placing hands to hips in sign of Firm Attitude. “You best not be thinking you shall sleep all day whilst I labor,” she scolds.

  I turn away. I should not. These two are clearly, obviously, patently, demonstrably dangerous lunatics. Yes, but newlywed lunatics holding domestic discussion. I see affection in their anger, the uncertain testing of what can be said. Fears of stepping one word too far. I know where they stand. And I do not mean the gore-drenched floor. So I turn, observe a crumpled piece of paper now beside my plate. I look up, spy the shadow of a hand wave from rafters.

  Ah. Behold the Mysterious Note. No spadassin’s day is complete without one. I shall read it after breakfast. The smell of eggs and coffee are stronger than death, blood and mystery. Let’s investigate breakfast first.

  I hear your thoughts. You think it callous I consider breakfast in the presence of fresh death. And you are correct. It is insensitive to the holy fire that is Life. An insult to our common humanity, for all that the departed would have pissed upon my corpse, taken an ear for souvenir. Therefore in solemn honor of this morning’s dead, you may forgo a meal.

  Bah. The truth? Yes, my hunger is lessened. I am callous; but no monster. I have lived days of war eating raw rats. Since then each day’s eggs and bacon are the sweeter for it. I do not mock the dead. But I dare not leave this lunacy till I know from what I flee. Might as well break my fast. The boy in the rafters recites more poetry.

  “Hard lot! Encompassed with a thousand dangers. Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors, I'm called if vanquished to receive a sentence worse than Abiram's.”

  Silence. Then, “Who’s this Abiram?”

  Em and her man Ed are whispering. Exchanging firm opinions, not yet at war. Arms crossed, faces forwards, words along the lines of ‘well you did this.’ The other replying ‘well and what about when you promised that?’ Something in me prays they will halt, will consider. Cease words and embrace. Bring me fork and cup. Ed turns from his wife, addresses the rafters.

  “Abiram is a biblical fellow. Earth opened up and swallowed him.”

  “Cor,” says the voice above. “Like to see that, I would.”

  The voice is familiar. A boy’s, reedy and sweet.

  “Penn Zeit-Teufel?”

  Silence. Then, “Maybe?”

  I sigh. Another mad in-law. A frequent guest in my house. Did he follow me? No, he’d been in the rafters before I entered. Naught surprising there. His family were like cats; mattered not where you passed them last, they’d trip your feet on the path ahead.

  Wrong for child to witness slaughter. An education, I’d called it. Such had been mine. From the theatre balcony where he perched now, I’d witnessed the Theatre of Blood and Death performed with blade and blow, memorizing all the script. Still, that was young Ray Mershon, fever-dreaming of war and duel. The boy Penn was a quieter sort. Frail as a thing of sticks and strings, eyes wide in innocent wonder…

  Yet able to watch three men die and then recite a bit of poetry. Did Penn perch up there now as friend, or foe? He’s of the Clockmaker tartan, no doubt descended from this ancient Glocken still snoring at my table. I sigh, unroll the note Penn dropped beside my plate. There passes a long moment wherein I consider the message and the meaning. Not a poem; and yet concise words quite as moving:

  “They are Espada. Run for your life.”

  ‘They’? I look from the note. Meeting the eyes of Em and Ed. Ah. Of course. Them.

  * * *

  I count Chatterton Espada as friend. True, at first meeting we’d struggled mightily to kill one another. Failing to achieve either’s death, though we did slay a chair, a table, a warehouse. In sober consideration Chat is mad, sad and dangerous to stand over-near. Last of his clan, tale declared. He’d slain every last other Espada. But it takes no long study of Em and Ed to spy the familial style of form and step. I sit in a room with two supremely dangerous creatures who bear the name my obituary records as ‘perpetrator’. Granted, Chatterton could still be my prophesied death, in some knife-twist of fate. Do I prefer ending at his friendly hand, or mad Em-and-Ed’s? Neither. I schedule myself to perish of a surfeit of love in Lalena’s arms, completing a feast of time richer than the dustiest Glocken might reckon.

  And yet…two Espada? God in Heaven, one doesn’t die of old age loitering in a room with such. Their very shadows flicker with blood-shine flame. Time to decamp. Farewell, breakfast I never knew. I stand. Em and Ed cease lover’s quarrel, turn heads as one to consider me. Unblinking. I now fascinate them. I try a smile, a cough. Shall I dash for the door, or saunter whistling confident tune?

  Before I do either, comes commotion at the front. In marches Melody the Mad Puritan, leading four men stamping heavy boots to declare Authority. The Dockside Watch. Chest plates, helms; short clubs in hand. Lead-filled bludgeons that can shatter the ribs of a battleship. The black-shrouded Puritan halts the parade beside the two corpses at room’s center. She points down. In accusation? In conversational interest? The watch look from the corpses to the Puritan. She says naught. She is content to point down. The captain looks about for clue or cue. Em sighs, skips and trips to stand beside the silent pointing Puritan.

  “’Twas terrible,” she declares, shivering all her skinny form. “This dead fellow with face gone to red flowers started it all, all. Menaced our custom he did, with eye and tooth, devil’s grin for a shark. Whilst this other and that other they marched forth and back shouting ‘Behold our swords!’ Oh, the lightning lingered wonderful, making all an ominous silence overhead, you should so have heard. The battle went terrible, horrible, frightening, murderous and slaughterous, for all their poor dear dead and hell-damned hearts.”

  The watchmen consider her words, the wringing hands. Behind her Ed shrugs, taps head. Though he stands at her back, she senses the slight. Stamps boot-heel at his bare toes. Ed anticipates, steps back. From the rafters a child chuckles. The watchmen nod, give it up. They begin poking corpses, searching pockets.

  The tavern door invites my racing heart. I shall exit stage, leaving the Lawful and the Mad to finish this morality play. And so I step casual, while Em describes this thrust of sword, that volley of pistol. Her story doesn’t fit events as they happened, nor any sane set of actions anytime among all human history since Abiram. She describes a ballet of declaiming lunatics who cut one another down after long speeches, performing pirouettes of blade and song.


  Meanwhile the Mad Puritan remains a statue of grim attitude, pointing to floor and corpse. Hard not to suppose she directs the departing spirits towards Hell, else the basement. I direct my steps to the door, far from hell as feet can take me. The watch captain is still shaking the bee-buzz confusion of Em’s narration out his ears. He searches for anyone sane, dismissing the Mad Puritan, the sleepy smiling Ed, the child in the rafters, the crouched man at the hearth.

  “You,” he turns, halting my sly escape. “Know these fellows’ names?”

  I pause. I wear periwig, low hat, chain mail shirt that adds a bit of girth. No astonishing disguise, but these fellows show no sign of knowing me. I consider the naming of names, the faceless corpse, the obituary in my pocket and the mad rules of prophecy. Suddenly all is clarity and sunshine. Before me opens a safer path than any suspiciously inviting door. I join with Mad Melody, point down to the faceless man upon the floor.

  “Ha, your lordships, I know that fellow there. That were Rayne Gray himself. Used to call his evil person Ray Mershon. Worked in this very tavern as a lad.”

  “The Seraph?” puzzles the watchman. Kicks the body in doubt. “I thought the rogue bigger. Richer. Harder to kill.”

  “They always sound bigger, richer ‘n harder to kill in tales,” I affirm. True as God’s ruth and wine’s truth. There comes a stirring by the hearth. The form bent to catch the fire’s warmth, now turns, looks up. Gives sad gasp. “Young Ray Mershon? Dead?”

  Strange to hear it declared by one who seems to care. I study the old face. Worn, wrinkled, familiar. I blink. Why, it is Keeper himself, my old tavern master. His eyes stare useless, milk-filmed with cataracts. Well, he’d kept complaining how light wasn’t what it was in days passed. Griselda forever nagged him to try some holy shrine for healing. I argued for spectacles. He told us both to shut it. Spent profits on candles till the tavern glowed like a wedding chapel.

  “Ray dead,” sighs old Keeper. The declaration gives me shivers. “And after all these years.” The man shakes head, then stops. Suspicion arranges the wrinkles of his face.

  “Here now, don’t I know your voice? Who are you?”

  The answer comes easy. “Chatterton Espada,” I declare forthright. Obituary writ, prophecy fulfilled. And now my murder is complete.

  Chapter 9

  A Bell Not Tolled

  I turn from my sad demise to recount the rest of Chatterton’s tale. For the death of the Espada Clan, and my token murder touch upon one another. If not as lovers then as two halves of torn obituary.

  I sat staring down at my sleeping cousins, twined innocents in one another’s arms, nestling in the straw.

  “Going to cut their throats?” asked a voice behind me.

  That was Kariel. Girl had the cat-habit of appearing where she wished. Exact as family, though she was no clan I knew. I’d first met her when I was ten or so. I liked to slip from sight of the elders and wander up-mountain. I’d find a ledge looking out over the valley, lift arms and grab at the sky. Your mountain wind is the original breath of life. Cold and clear as glass. The clouds, the birds, the shadow and light, they shimmer and shift with the wind’s dance. Standing on a mountain with hands high, I felt I shaped the world itself. Ah, even an Espada must weary of only shaping death.

  And so came a day I wandered up mountain and there she sat. A girl-child near my age, ten years thereabouts. Perched high on a ledge. Chin on hand, staring down at the cottages of the valley. Two wings shoved behind like cloak dropped untidily to the grass.

  We talked. Acquaintance comes easy twixt beardless boy, breastless girl. She wouldn’t say aught of where she lived, what she did. I’d ask, and she’d chatter of birds, of winds, of sunlight. Tell of crevices in the mountains none but the winged could reach, where flowers danced for Wind’s joy alone.

  But I shared all I knew of life and heart and family. I had no secrets. No secret but her, I suppose. It was long before I told any of my clan of the girl upon the mountain. She never came down to the valley. I’d seek her as I felt. Sometimes I’d climb to find only cloud, wind, stone. Then I’d stand on the ledge alone, knowing she was present. The girl’d become the world, just to tease me. The clouds her wings, the birds her eyes, the wind her laugh.

  The thought would come that I’d made her from these things. Standing on a mountain, waving arms, longing for life, I’d drawn Kariel from the things of the sky as a conductor draws music. Or again, perhaps as she sat on her lonely perch contemplating the earth, she’d shaped and pulled me from the stone, dirt and blood of the valley. ‘Tis no mystery that we all begin as the creation of others. Later comes the time when we create ourselves.

  I visited less oft as I moved up the clan tables, gathered victory stars upon the wall. Months would pass before I found time to seek her out. My hands shewed veins, my chin sprouted hairs. Saw her less, yet found myself fencing cousins thinking of her curls of hair. Feeding goats, recalling her wind-born laugh. Lying in bed dead weary yet picturing Kariel’s eyes. Brown as coffee they were; as chocolates, as rich garden earth. Eyebrows arched and twitching like bird wings. Especially when I bragged of some new weapon trick, some bloody victory.

  We’d kiss, not much more. Came a day we sat looking down at all the world as though it were a pet dog at our feet. The wind sang and the clouds danced just to make us laugh. I asked her to lie with me. She took my hands and held them tight, kissed my nose and said she’d be bloody double-damned if she’d bed a fellow full of dreams of murdering his own kith.

  Those were not words to speak to an Espada. We scarce met with our cousin clans now, lest they speak so and bring us to wrath. Wings or no, who was this chit to question the Tempering? I pushed her away. Had she been kin I’d have pushed her off the mountain. I went home angered.

  Came the time Da and I sat by the fresh grave of Aunt Charlotte. She’d taken a cut that turned bad. Infection finished her. My Da’s sister, twin to him in heart and mind. Ah, Char was a fierce ‘un. Taught me to throw an axe proper. Hadn’t been axe that cut her, just knife. Not mine. My uncle Alexander’s, her half-brother. He declined a star for the win; said blood infection was no victory he’d ever claim. We thought that right of him. Uncle Alex was an honest sort. When the Ending came I cut his throat quick and fine; and not a sand-grain of reproach in his eyes.

  Looking at the grave, thinking on family gone to dreams and earth, I found myself telling Da of Kariel. He did no chiding not to talk fancies. He listened, nodding. I described her wings, and his eyes grew wide. I stuttered over Kariel’s hair, so like fresh curls of carved wood, so like tangled sea-waves it made me want to trace the curls and curves with a finger. He grinned at that, but did not say why. At last I took heart and spoke of her chiding not to shed kin’s blood. I expected thunder, but he took no offense.

  Understand, I wanted to hear him denounce her. She spoke against the Tempering, called it murder. One heard the other clans spoke so. Aye, whilst keeping proud silence of their own paths to mastery. But Da looked down at Charlotte’s grave. Described the years she’d spent as a circus tumbler.

  “Has a fear of heights she’s worked past,” he recalled. “Can walk a rope thirty feet up, juggling knives. She’s a brave one.”

  “Is?” I asked. “But she’s dead now.”

  “As all shall be who aren’t dead yet,” scoffed Da. “Same as all the clan. Same as the clanless. No doubt same for your angel-girl. Risks what she has for what she believes. If not, pretty wings are wasted on her. When we are wise, boy, we know what we love. When we are brave? We live for that love. That the price of the Tempering may be death, makes it a thing of worth. You want a valley of dancers too dainty to spill wine or blood?”

  I thought high of my Da. I pictured him speaking so beside my own grave, praising my courage to the cousins as he had Charlotte’s. While aunts and cousins rejoiced, glad of our shared blood, for all it spilling… Aye, a vision to move an ambitious boy’s spirit.

  He did no forbidding I speak to Kariel
again. No fool, he. Ma had been dead set against Da; till her own folk forbid her step with him. Ha, that tumbled her to his bed. But mam left the valley with the bairns as the Tempering grew fierce. Never returned. Charlotte said she’d joined the Sea Cousins. Da said she walked now in dreams beneath the waves. Well, she threw herself from the cliffs to the sea. A boy understood that.

  No, it was myself who issued firm orders never seek Kariel again. So of course the creature began pestering me. She’d sneak about the valley, lurking where I’d spy her shadow. Upon a roof, else leaning against a tree, arms crossed, frowning. It vexed. No one else complained of her presence. Day I won my fifteenth star, I saw her in a tree branch, spying. I threw a rock at her. Not to harm, just to chivy her away. She swore in a tongue I never heard before. Didn’t spy her after that. But I felt her about.

  And the Tempering grew fiercer, a blacksmith’s hammer striking faster, harder, beating out every thought that was not of fire, death, and victory stars. My heart beat to that hammer-strike. I breathed to prove myself worthy of the pride in my cousins’ eyes. I won in challenge and duel past all, and it was a glory to all. Till I sat at the elder’s table, youngest ever to so do. They jested I’d cut their throats with the soup spoon. Made me blush proud. I longed to tell Kariel. Hoped she spied from windows. One day I skipped chores, went wandering up-mountain. There she sat on her ledge, hand on chin, staring down. I had the mad idea she’d been sitting there same since I first met her.

  I stopped a bit away. She stuck out her tongue at me.

  “Go away, boy,” she said. She put thumbs beneath forefingers, gave me a gesture Uncle Kit called ‘the figs’. Tossed hair, looked away.

  I weighted returning the welcome. Perhaps stick out tongue, waggling ears. But I now sat with the elders, putting away childish things. So I folded arms, leaned against the mountain and studied Kariel. Years had changed her same as me. She sat now more woman than girl. Arms folded under proper bust. The white dress hung shorter, for legs grown longer. She kicked bare heels against the mountain ledge. Scowling at sky and earth and my measuring gaze.