The Moon Tartan: Quest of the Five Clans

by Raymond St. Elmo

  The man straightened at the stage-cue of my approach, combined courtly bow and doff of the One True Hat. At the low-point of the bend he retrieved the lamp. Then turned and proceeded down the hall. I followed, cautious for what might come behind, what yet lay ahead. He wore rapier on right side. Showy sort of hilt. Duelist, no doubt. Were I him, I'd not fence with such flags for cuffs.

  "Right," I declared, and moved up beside him. He gave a nod, then gestured onwards with the lamp.

  “Do you have a name?” I asked. For sometimes people do possess these things.

  He looked at me and grinned. “Anger.” Voice a low note on a flute, a thing of wind. Not the rough gravel-sound one expected of a ruffian lounging in under-street caves.

  Anger. Had I caught that right? He looked a cheerful sort, for a deadly sin.

  “And where does Anger lead?” I asked.

  That got a laugh. It rolled into the dark before us, beyond the lamp-lit circle we walked. The dark didn’t know what to think of it.

  "We go to Decoursey," said the man. "Old fellow. Wishes your acquaintance to make. Alas, constrained."

  I hesitated, near halting. The Decourseys were the Harlequin clan. Mad jesters, bad japesters, pirates despised as vampiric Mac Sanglair were feared. I'd slaughtered several the night I proposed to Lalena. Shot their leader in the knee, if you ask. Then she'd kicked a tune of snapping notes upon his bones. A wonderful night, all things considered.

  In hindsight I see that shared adventure gave her the courage to accept my offer of marriage. And gave me the courage not to run when she accepted. Strange, the things that push and prod us, lead and drive and harry us, towards daring to even begin to decide to love.

  Chapter 17

  In which the Hero Pauses to Recall Light and Domesticity

  I do not spend life wandering haunted castles, murderer’s alleys and bone-filled tombs, encountering monsters and maidens, mad-men and in-laws. It may seem otherwise. This narrative depicts an endless night-path down which I stumble, slashing and philosophizing.

  Illusion. I never magically jumped from Londonish to the mad castle, and then back. And in either location, there passed entire hours without riding wolves, wandering haunted tombs. There were meals to eat, pots to empty, windows to gaze from in worry and laughter, wondering where in the world my life led.

  Sailing to our island, Lalena and I kept to our narrow cabin, finding time for more than mere touch and desire, pant and completion. No, there followed long hours pillowed together, explaining our lives, our hearts. She told of dull childhood days behind light-smothering curtains, learning to knit, to embroider, to play harpsichord and piccolo. To sit straight, walk straight, speak grave straight sentences. And mad nights she wandered hillsides naked to wind and moon, her body thirsting till she pounded fists at tree-trunks in rage for what she did not know, and feared to find.

  I talked more, but told less. I described battles and duels, comic adventures where I played heroic fool. Making her laugh. My love for Lalena began with her laugh. I already worshiped her wise hair. But I did not speak of sorrows, of regrets, of my own thirsting rage. Such does not come easy for me. Bah. A weakling’s plaint. Revealing our hearts to another, is done with ease by none.

  But the loss of my life with Elspeth, with Stephano, all the friends I’d taken for welcoming doors in storm… I confessed to my bride that I could not put it to words. Not yet. I’d had a home; and lost it. With her I’d gained something new, something mad and beyond present understanding. I needed to live this new life a while before I put anything clear to words. She kissed me kindly, content with that. I suppose there are more ways to travel blind, than stumbling dark halls. Marriage must be such a path. One doesn’t see where it shall lead; but moves forwards in hope the end is light.

  And on the mad island itself came hours when I sat happily dull with a book, or dueled cup to cup with Mattie Horse. Fenced mad tales with Billy River, setting Vixen to giggle and Bellow to laugh. Howl to sigh, of course. Our last day Lalena and I wandered our wedding-present castle, exploring, laughing, holding hands. Strange, after weeks of joining together, exploring our bodies we could still turn sudden shy. Then she’d whirl about, else stare at the ground. While I stuttered, tripping on tongue and shadow.

  And then to argue about my coat! It was a French officer’s coat, I bought in cheap market of Edinburgh. With her money, she having married a pauper. But I’d had just such a coat in my house. Ashes now, unless some canny looter sported it in taverns. We’d proudly worn such in the war, trophy for right damage done to enemy officers. I’d won several but they were of a rule too small. This from Edinburgh fit fine.

  My bride explained we were in the North where folk preferred the French or Satan before the English. They would not smile at such a trophy. I explained how deeply I disinclined to care. She pointed out the poorly knit rips, the suspicious stains. All the better for a trophy, I countered. We didn’t speak for an hour. Our first quarrel. Not the last.

  Before I took ship south again, I visited the crofters settling to the valley beyond the castle. I spent a long day with them sharing beer, listening to tales of the clearances of the poor from the domains of the rich. I told of the New Charter. They knew of it, but it held no hope. They saw such as a struggle for English city-workmen, not Celt countrymen. I wanted to argue. But they smiled with faces weary with the words of politics. The reality near crushed their lives already.

  So I settled for sharing what advice I had for dealing with the mad clans. Pointless. Long neighbors to the Mac Tier, they advised me back in sarcastic riposte. I left with their blessing, their eyes pitying me as a mad sheep, honeymooning a wolf.

  I will not speak of when Lalena and I embraced, and then I turned and boarded the schooner. Not yet. I speak now of dull daily things, to remind I do not always walk haunted dark. More often I’ve stood in sunlight and yawned. But if our parting was in sunlight, it was a thing of solemn tear, heart-hid fear. Words not said. She believed I would learn to smile at her remembered face, declining to return. I dreaded that world and wind would not let me return.

  That ship south to the shores of the Mac Tier went slow, crowded and conversational. We labored to encourage Howl to see himself a fit chieftain for his tribe. He’d fallen into the melancholy-well again, staring at walls, the ghosts of fathers. I confided to Chatterton the business with a gun. Little use, that. Chatterton was not a man trained in comforting others, save the final comfort. He kept busy staring out to sea, seeing wings and eyes and a girl’s face in racks of clouds. Sometimes I saw them too.

  But leaning over ship’s railing, watching waves and gulls, the cloud-mountains marching… Chatterton told of his life in the lost clan of Blades. How he’d come to be the last standing in a valley of dead. How he’d slain this sly aunt, and cleverly defeated that beloved uncle.

  The telling made me edge away, hand checking for knife. I have lived war and duel, but nothing so clearly and finally murderous as Chatterton’s. I’ll share his words another time, when the narrative threatens tedium. Now I seek to remember things of ordinary life, to insist that much of my tale is entirely dull.

  True, the tale now follows a creature named Anger through damned grave-tunnels. But shortly after, Flower (correction: The Demoiselle) and I visit a bank. In gray day’s light and the bustle of clerks. We will stand in line before a counter, impatient for someone to attend. What is more prosaic than that? And earlier we stopped at a coffee-house, argued with a servant concerning the cream, which was clotted.

  So then. That said, let us return to striding through the dark and the dead, understanding this is only interlude between moments of sunlight, tedium and sanity. It isn’t always thus.

  Chapter 18

  The Knight of Dust and Light

  Anger and I traveled the underworld. Above existed conceptual crowds, life and light, bells and birds choiring down from smoky sky, carts and dogs battling for the streets. Below, existence limited itself to two men in a circle of
lamp-shine. We pushed aside curtains of stench: rot, shit, mold, mist rising from warm pools of sewage, bitter chemical smells of oil and acid. A closed reality of faint music: single notes from a drip of gutter-runoff; tinkling trills of water-spill playing no melody known. Deep church-organ muttering of wind wandering lost. The steps of someone following.

  Slow soft steps, keeping beyond our light. But stone tunnels carry sound, even breath. Anger halted, turned. Good. I’d half-decided my guide led me on, knowing enemy tiptoed behind. I have a doubting heart, I confess. No, I boast. All men, all beasts, all flies should frown in suspicion at steps in the dark. The stars themselves should so frown. Who knows but they do.

  We halted; the steps halted. Waiting for us to continue. A familiar game in forest or city.

  “Bah,” growled Anger. “These snake-holes are more trafficked than the streets above. Best we go on. You watch behind, and I ahead.”

  Properly guarding the rear meant keeping only half an eye on Anger. Not that I did not trust him. As it happens I did not trust him but it was not personal. His gentleman-ruffian appearance made for refreshing honesty. Was he the specter of the man whose skull I’d plucked from the wall months before? Absurd. In the world above I’d dismiss the suggestion with a sigh, a quote from Spinoza, a reminder we stood at the dawn of the 19th century not the 10th. In sanity’s sunshine I’d declare Anger just another mad member of Lalena’s tribe, mimicking a street-ruffian of past era.

  But we were not on the sidewalk in Spinoza’s analytical sun, nor even Voltaire’s tavern table. In these catacombs analytics did not rule, but Hermes Trismegistus. As William Blake might say, in such place one sees by a different metaphysics. Ghost my guide was, then.

  We approached faint light that absorbed our speck of lamp-shine. Air become near breathable. We stopped, stood in the entrance to a wide chamber, high-roofed and solemn. One single sun-beam slanted yellow upon a statue centering the room. Dust-motes twined within the beam. They caught the eye, as if pattern hid in the steps of their dance. This light descended upon a broken-winged angel sitting in thought, hand to chin. Eyes bound with dirty cloth. Well, I knew that statue, this chamber. I’d slept here, feasted here, months before when the sunlit world above hunted me as near to death as any other sleeper among the graves.

  I returned now rested, healed. Married, even. Clean clothes, coins in pocket for beggars and beer. I held title to a castle on a rock in stormy ocean. I’d become an initiate into a strange world of shape-changers, dream-wanderers, a noble elite of wandering poets. Married, I repeat. My old view of reality, lost with my previous life. A strangeness had been unleashed into the world. I had as well. I remembered the very key’s click, opening my shackles.

  And yet for all the life-changes, I stood no closer to bringing down Alderman Black and his cabal of pirate-merchants than when I lay here in rags and hunger. No, I’d wandered still farther from my goal. While I pleasured in vampiric concourse, chatting with possessed dolls and melancholy wolves, befriending mermaids and mad in-laws, Black had put mind and hand to practical action. The building of ships and mills, the bribing of Aldermen, the consolidation of the ownership of the mechanism of law and finance. No doubt he’d doubled his locks, tripled his guards.

  Definitely time to admit duty, face foe. Leave off with circling, knife drawn but hand hesitating. No more words but ‘lay on’ then. I entered the grave-chamber vowing to defy whatever new theatre the family staged to entice my soul from practicality’s path.

  In a corner of the chamber rested the grave-stone where I’d lain spent of life as the bones beneath. Then awakened to feast with Flower and Brick, Lucy Dog of Mystery, and the ancient mariner Light. Folk strange as their designations. No; stranger.

  Now upon the cold-stone feast-table lay an armored knight. Candles set about, but the armor shone not. That armor declined to shine. It brooded, stained by dent and fire, by blood and years of wet furious strife. No paladin’s story-book armor. Behold a construction of steel plate forged in the smithies of Hell. Not for heroics but butchery. The sword lying across the chest: a heavy straight-razor of a butcher’s axe. Jagged as a steel lion’s jaws, stained as floor and soul of a slaughter-house.

  I waited for the knight to rise enraged at disturbance. I disliked the cut of that butcher’s edge. When he rose I’d move back, let the fiend twirl till I could rush within the blade’s circle, reach the back, inserting knife between helmet and plate…

  Anger glanced at me, my change of footing. “Man, be at peace. There’s naught inside that but shadow, but dust.” Perhaps.

  I approached the thing, knife defiant against shadow, against dust. Listening behind in case Anger attacked me, or the person that trailed the tunnels attacked him. Unless this knight of dust and shadow himself rose, slashing his butcher-blade at all, furious for his disturbed eternity.

  Strange armor, that. I have seen all the parts and pieces our grand-fathers decked upon themselves, before bolt and musket-ball made steel less battle-worthy than cotton. Suits of armor make stylish ornaments for mansion corners. But no knight of old wore aught like this spiked and jointed devil’s shell.

  The helmet bore the shape of a blunt dragon’s head, black and grinning. I tried to picture battle wearing such. One would stumble half-seeing, slashing butcher-blade through friend and foe. Until heat and weariness won the tourney, drove the walking fortress to the ground. Then would come a dagger twixt helmet and breast-plate.

  Granted, if such as this appeared on a modern battle-field a fresh-enlisted farm-boy with a musket would take one down first. Or a decent crossbow bolt, fired close. I lifted the visor with point of knife. Within, the prophesied dust and shadow.

  “He’s over there,” said Anger.

  I turned, looked about. Chamber, statue, dust, empty armor. Sun beam through which dust motes did their planetary dance. The very symbol of eternal, restless beauty. The motes moving, shifting, forever almost forming a figure, even a face…

  “Ah,” I said.

  * * *

  Nobility is not of breeding. A truth witnessed in war, and the politics of peace waged as war. Ambitious breeding reaches for the ideal of nobility; settles for manners. A worthy thing, manners, when not a bother. But the real Nobility goes where it will, having naught to do with cloth or class. I have seen it in a horse delivering a dead rider to camp. In an ancient farmer standing on a stool, reaching down a tin box, offering a wanderer a biscuit. In an Irish maid championing a stray dog before a bully of a butcher.

  And I have beheld nobility in a sun beam. I stood before a noble. Of that I was certain. For all he shimmered mere dust in sun’s shine. Bright remainder of dead centuries, this tomb his castle, this light his throne.

  The spirit spoke in whispered words of incomprehensible wisdom. Which is to say, in no language of sense. Almost, I laughed. Yet another speech to hear and not comprehend? Some cousin to Latin. Antique French? No, German hid within as well.

  So I stood solemn-faced, nodding at words I could not follow, considering what thoughts could come from motes spiraling a beam of sun. Which composed the mind: the dust or the light? The dance of both, perhaps. What wisdom could such have for me, a thick thing of clay and cloth, blood and wedding band? Well, what wisdom did I possess for him?

  I pondered what truths I might share with a shaft of light. I am damned wise in this world, in the sorrows and joys of life. Yet others forever impose their wisdom upon me. Surely I possessed my own revelation? Not that I knew my revelation. But I vowed in that gray chamber to find it. I’d declare it to the world as angelic messenger. Is not seraph an order of the heavens? I’d shout my unique meaning to myself and to all shadows of light and dust that had ears to hear.

  Anger raised hand, turned to interrupt these important thoughts.

  “Sieur De Coursey says you have an enemy within the city above.”

  I shewed him empty hands and honest eyes, to declare no foe of mine is fault of mine. These things happen. An honest man will beget ene
mies, if he walk by day, by night or stay home a’bed.

  Anger snorted. “He says this particular foe is a descendent of his line. Blood, flesh, heart of his.”

  I stared at the stone slab upon which the armor rested, the epitaph worn not from rain or wind, but mere dust of years. Sieur Claire d. Courcy

  Well, then. Another relative. What does a spadassin do for excitement before he meets his in-laws? But the Decourseys wore the Harlequin Tartan nowadays. And this spirit, some ancient shadow of that despised line? I tapped hand to knife, considered how one best fought a sun-beam. Nonsense, of course. Only the family kept leading me to such considerations.

  And one of the family led more oft than all others. The very creature who’d drawn me here today. Past time she made her entrance onstage. I turned to the dark of the chamber exit.

  “It is rude to eavesdrop,” I observed.

  There followed silence, while Anger, sun-beam and blind angel waited. At last a high voice declared from the dark. “Am not.”

  “Flower,” I said. “If you would care to join the assembly?”

  She said naught. I recalled her new laurel-crown of a name. “If the Demoiselle would deign to grant us her presence, we would welcome her wisdom.”

  After long dignified pause, in marched the gangly, proper puritan page, former Flower, present Demoiselle. She sniffed to say ‘I enter because I choose so do. I was never caught.’

  More gabble of ghostly tongue. Anger leaned against the blind angel and laughed, highly entertained. The angelic statue kept his silence. Perhaps it grinned slightly. The Demoiselle bowed to Cousin Sun-light, greeted Anger as Enguerrand; courtly as please-a-prince. Ignored me entirely. She spoke rapid in the same tongue. Wretched little polyglot.