The Flame Is Green: The Coscuin Chronicles Book 1

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Mariella is the best in the world at such cures,” Tancredi said.

  “Mariella is the best in the world at such,” Dana agreed.

  Dana, who put on a much better appearance than Tancredi, went to sell the seven white horses, riding one, leading six. He went by his own cave on the way and changed to another bright green silk shirt, the one that was brighter than its brothers. When he had done this it was then into the afternoon of the day. He rode with his white steeds the seven miles to the Conde Prado.

  The Conde had a good thing going with white horses. When government guards had been accidentally dislodged from their saddles, and when the horses were consequently wandering loose, the Conde would find these horses and convey them back to the government for a fee. The guards’ horses were well-known and nobody else would be using them. And this arrangement, so long as there had been no serious accident when the guards had been dislodged from their saddles, was advantageous to everyone. The Conde was of the old nobility, but he had close contacts with the new.

  “Dana Coscuin,” the Conde said when he had scanned the situation with so close an eye that he made Dana nervous. “I may not buy and sell the same white horse twice within one month. The government buyer, though he is a cousin of mine, becomes very angry at this. You must admit that it is, in the words of the proverb, rubbing their noses in it.”

  “I have never sold you any of these same white horses before, Conde,” Dana swore truthfully to it.

  “Another man has sold me one of them within the month, Dana, the one you are riding,” the Conde said. “Five others of them I have bought before, but not within the month. The seventh and last one there I have not bought or seen before. He is not quite up to the others in quality. The world wears out, Dana, and white horses are not quite what they used to be.”

  “Take the six. I'll ride this fine one for a while yet,” Dana said.

  “With the government saddle and arnés? Do you know what you are about, Dana?”

  “No. What am I about, Conde?”

  Dana knew very well that there was no rule about not buying the same white horse within one month. The horse he rode was blood-flecked. It had been ridden by the more competent guard who had been killed by Tancredi. Mariella had wanted to scrub this horse, and Dana had said, no, leave it as it is.

  The Conde paid the fee for the six horses.

  “Dana, do you remember that you are to dine this evening with my niece?” the Conde asked.

  “What? She is your niece? Does that jumenta have kindred?”

  “Watch your talk, Dana!” the Conde cried angrily. “She is a shy and sheltered girl, and she had the grace to ask you, a stranger, to dine with her. You will speak of her with respect and you will treat her with respect.”

  A shy and sheltered girl? She whose eyes could turn to serpent eyes in a blinking?

  “I will treat her not at all,” Dana said. “I will dine with ruder and better people tonight.”

  “You will dine with her this evening, Dana, or I will have you dragged there. You are alone, and I have men in this place. Moreover, I am only half a government man and only half dissolute. There is also the fact that you have had an encounter today, or you would not have the white horses. You sit on your horse with some pain, I notice that. You are washed and dressed, but blood still comes through and stains the green shirt on you. The horse you ride is blood-flecked, and I worry that it might not all be your blood. I will find out about this. But you are not at your best or your most agile this evening, Dana Coscuin. You can be taken and handled. Go dine with my niece. Go now. You would not like it to be dragged there.”

  “Ah well, I'll go to her then,” Dana said. “I'll be there within the hour.”

  “And I trust to your native good manners. As I said, my niece, the Condesa Elena Prado y Bosca is a shy and sheltered girl. And remember one thing, Dana, remember it in your blood: I am one of those who shelter her.”

  So that was her name, Elena Prado. That would be Helen Meadows in English. Aileen Leana it would be in Irish. A wholesome name, surely. And the Conde had spoken with none or small gleam in his eye. Did he really believe that his niece was a shy and sheltered girl?

  Dana retraced part of the mule-road that he had walked one day just a month before. He came to the sector where he had dragged Elena about by the hair, where he had thrown her down and stood on her. He rode down to the house, to the Castillo in the valley. He knew now that his curiosity would have brought him here in any case. He knew that he had had this date filed on the inside of his head and that it would have come to the fore even if he had not encountered guards or white horses or the Conde Prado this day. Shy and sheltered girl, or she-snake, the girl was both, of course. Completely both, two persons in her. This could be as interesting as anything that happened in the Carlist Hills.

  The Castillo was larger than it seemed from above, and it was richer. Even the stable boys wore livery. They handled the white horse with government saddle, and they looked at Dana with veiled eyes when they did it. They knew, of course, that this green-shirt was a Carlist, and that the white horse had been robbed from a guard. It may be that they hadn't eyes as sharp as the Conde, though, to know that all the blood on the horse wasn't Dana's.

  Into the house then, boldly and without announcement. What, was there a bishop in this house as guest? But was he an old bishop or a new bishop? There were a certain few new Queen's Bishops in the country, men of no religion at all, but with a certain avidity for bishops’ incomes, and with a certain charm to give in exchange. This bishop was young, he had a great store of mocking intelligence in his eyes, he looked more French than Spanish, he had an easy worldliness about him — and he was altogether too young to be an old bishop.

  And they were all drinking brandy before dinner. This was not an old Spanish custom. The bishop was talking in French with a very young dandy, who was, however, Spanish, and they were talking like philosophers.

  And there was an abadesa there, an abbess, a mother-director of nuns. Here there was no doubt at all: she was a new Queen's Abbess. She showed too much bare neck and shoulder and bosom to be an old abbess, too much ankle and calf. She was painted and curled. She was clearly a loose woman of no religion, but perhaps of considerable income and holding. Her presence bothered Dana more than it would bother a Frenchman or a Spaniard.

  Another Conde, another Count besides Prado was there; but was he an old count or a new count? Dana did not understand the Spanish scene well enough to judge. The Conde Prado was both an old and a new count: old in title, new is his dealings and adaptability. This one was less of a man.

  There were three young men there (one was the philosopher who talked to the bishop), and three young women, contemporaries of Elena, and all seemingly of the small nobility. And finally there was Tia Teresa, an old aunt or good-woman whose being there made everything as it should be.

  The Conde Prado arrived last. He seemed relieved to see that Dana was there. There was something about him — Judas eyes they are called — that did not usually become him. He had been finding out things and dealing.

  Thirteen persons there to dine, and they went in to dine in what to Dana was candle-lit splendor. Ah, there must have been a hundred candles burning there, racked up in threes and fives and sevens and nines in their portavelas, all long and white and new and just lighted.

  Twelve persons turned to the elegant food, and Dana froze them all at mid-reach. Out of sheer devilry, he called them sternly back to things of God.

  “Is Spain no longer a Christian country?” he asked loudly. “With a bishop here, shall the table go unblessed?” The bishop flushed. He was a glib man, and his glibness nearly failed him. But only for an instant. He didn't quite remember the grace for table, but he did know a rather dirty parody of it. This he began —

   — but the Conde Prado cut him off before he had uttered three wrong words. Then the Conde said the correct grace, powerfully, seriously, and with a curious recolle
cted reverence.

  “We remember it so seldom,” Elena said when her uncle had completed the grace. “Thank you, Dana. Thank you, my uncle. Hear, all of you: this is my special guest, Count Dana Coscuin of County Kerry in Ireland.”

  This was neither the shy and sheltered girl now, nor was it the she-snake. There was real merriment in Elena's eyes, and the mockery was of a friendly sort.

  “That is strange,” the new bishop said. “I know the real Count of Kerry, and it is not this man. I know the real Count from London and Paris and Madrid, but he has told me that he has never set foot in Ireland in his life. I believe that he is wise there. Draw money from the place, yes, but not go there even for money.”

  “You, perhaps, mean the Count of the usurping line,” Dana countered the man. “But it is not true that he has never been in Ireland. I have seen him there, and I have never heard of him being out of there. He is, in fact, a seven-year-old boy. I, however, am the Count in the true line. The other, the usurping line, is no more than three hundred and twenty years old.”

  Dana could lie as well as a new bishop could. Besides, as in all Bantry Bay families, there was a family legend that the Coscuins were descended from somebody rather high: a count, it may be, or even a king.

  And the dinner was good. Roast goose that recalled Bantry Bay to Dana. Had the Irish geese already slipped south to Spain, and the first week of Autumn just past? And if not Irish, how could the goose be so flavored?

  There were galletas, but not the hard galletas that they ate in the Carlist Hills. These were light and godly, Spanish muffins! And honey: had Irish bees flown all the way to Spain? Or had Irish honey been transported? Wine of the Country! It hadn't the elegance of the French; it hadn't quite the wantonness of the Italian; it had the integrity that both lacked. A boy from Bantry Bay would hardly be ignorant of Spanish wine. This had always been one of the most delectable things to come in by the Back Doors of the World.

  “They will hang nine Carlists in Pamplona Tuesday,” one of the young men was saying (and he was looking at Dana with friendly understanding, as if to warn him of something), “and I do wish they were hanging nine hundred.”

  “They are hanging nobody in Pamplona, or any other place,” Dana said easily. “I would know it if they were.”

  “How would you know it, boy?” the bishop asked. “Non-Count of County Kerry, who are you?”

  “Dana is my guest,” Elena interposed, “and nobody will ask him further who he is.”

  “Nevertheless, there is Carlist mischief coming very near to us,” said the doubtful Conde, the Conde who was not Prado. “There was a guard killed this very noontime. His killer will hang, this I pledge, if we must take the entire Carlist Hills apart to find him. There are those who aid the Carlists. There are those who shelter them. I tell you that we will uncover all these seditioners and that we will hang them also. If there is an enemy of the Queen's Government near at hand, let him flush in the knowledge that his death lines are already drawn.”

  Dana Coscuin flushed, but not at the words of the doubtful Conde. He had not even been listening to them. But there was something of Elena Prado that came across to him, that flustered and shook him completely. She was more than just a little brown-skinned girl. There was an elegant coolness in her voice, though she spoke less than did her guests. There was an inexpressible kindness about her. Dana knew from all the warnings that he was capable of receiving that it was a false kindness. Well, so it was; so was every kindness that is of this world. There was frosty passion in the girl, and duplicity of great depth. There were the eyes than danced with something between glare-ice and gray fire. The light eyes, and the heavy black-blue hair! And there was great amusement in her.

  Oh, the Elena would be death-danger to Dana, but how had Magdelena Brume known that she would be? How had the forever-loved Magdelena known of Elena Prado at all?

  “The most dangerous of the Carlists is the woman Muerte de Boscaje,” the Queen's Abadesa said, the new nun who showed too much bare neck and shoulder and bosom. She said it with a certain cruel querulousness that Dana could not place. “She is the killer and the doxie of killers. She stirs the sleepy Carlists up like wild animals, and she brings younger ones into that mean fold.”

  “Let the name of that vile woman never be mentioned in this house!” Elena cried with such violence that everybody recoiled. Except Dana.

  He had been shaken by Elena's mere presence a moment before, but there was nothing in her simulated anger to shake him. He came to know her rather well in a rapid moment there. There were three of her, really; and no one of her ever appeared unmixed. He read the real name of the apparent molten fury in her gray eyes: and the name of it, again, was amusement.

  “I apologize,” said the Abadesa. “I almost forgot, for the moment, in whose house and presence I was. No, it is not a name that a shy and sheltered girl should hear and I greatly regret that I spoke it.”

  “Ah, by the elegant eels of the outer isle, you are all daft,” Dana cried in his own amusement and apparent crudity. “I myself would like to hear much more of this devilish woman of whom I know no more than the hint of the name. Muerte de Boscaje, is she? What an air of musty mystery there is about it! I would like to hear much more about this woman, and I would like to hear it from you, Elena.”

  “Dana Coscuin, I have warned you,” the Conde Prado bawled out in real anger. “I will not have my niece subjected to such crudities.”

  “Be quiet, my uncle,” Elena spoke in the elegant coolness of her voice. “Dana enjoys peculiar sanctuary in my house and in my heart, and he enjoys it forever. He can say what he wishes to say. Whatever things he says, it will not be as if another person said them. You will all understand that Dana is very special to me and that he will always be so. And now we will leave the board and go to the salon.”

  It had been a large and excellent dinner. Even in Queen's Spain of the new ways, there were still old elegances left. There has to be the full old growing even for the parasite to feed upon. And these were not ordinary people here. They were extraordinary people, for all that they had gone twisted and compromised. There had been levels and levels of talk that Dana did not understand at all, that he would have to sort out later.

  All left the dinner and went to the drawing room where they were followed by the wine, coffee, and cigars — long thick cigars for the men, long thin cigars for the ladies. Even these innovating adherents of the Queen had not yet adopted the cigarette from Turkey and Egypt and France.

  “There are corners of my castle that I must show you, Dana,” Elena said. “Come, Dana. The rest remain. I will return to my duties as hostess within a quarter of an hour.”

  Dana went with her through a variety of rooms and corridors. Elena carried a fine candle lamp over her head. It was heavy and ornate, with an agate base.

  “This is the master chamber,” she said at one great room. “Do you know that very extensive changes must be made in your own person, Dana? But if he found you worth recruiting, then we find you so too. We have done very well with some of his selections. The only change we will insist on is a total one, Dana. This, of course, will not affect your wonderful person and personality. It is in this master chamber that you will be ensconced when you come back to my castle as Master.”

  All three persons were in Elena at once as she shimmered and shifted by candlelight.

  “This is my heart outside my body,” she said at another large and richly cluttered room. “It is my body, the extension of my body, my own place. And you may enter any time you wish, any way you wish.”

  “Horses, horses’ hoofs,” Dana said, “and you have no late guests coming?”

  “Only a party of uninvited late guests, Dana, but I believe that both of us have been expecting them. But is it possible that your hearing is better than mine, Dana, and I am listening for them all the time? They must be at a great distance then, since I do not hear them. There are two ways that I can do this, Dana: one of them is very dra
matic and I hate to forego it. That one is for me to wait for the Queen's Constables to enter, for me then to confront them with my brace of long goose-necked pistols, to perform a very showy shot to prove that I am in earnest (I am a wonderfully showy pistol shot), and to let you escape while I hold both guests and constables at gun point. Did you really not expect to be tracked here for the guard's murder, Dana, and you riding his own white horse here boldly?”

  “Of course I expected it. I believe your uncle the Conde feels badly that he has played Judas in informing on me, but how else could it have been done? And I know that the code of the Constables is that only three men should come for one man. However showy a shot you are, Elena, I am sure that I am the more effective. I would have, I will have dead by me these three constables, one false bishop, one false nun, one false count — the latter three of late decision. And it may be that I will have one dead girl who is three girls in one.”

  “No, Dana, you will not have me dead tonight. Your curiosity about me is too steep to have me killed so early. The attraction I begin to spin over you is too strong for you to have me killed ever. You have waited too long for that part. I have you now and I will change you as I want to. But my own curiosity, and the attraction that you spin over me are too strong to let them put an end to you. With the two of us, Dana, the play has hardly begun. But I will not have any promiscuous killing in my castle. For one thing, Dana, you use up so much of the golden future that way. Think of the empty days and weeks when we have no killing at all to occupy us. No, Dana, you will leave here quite soon, unkilled and unkilling.”

  “I cannot trust you, Helena,” Dana said, and he put his hands about her throat.