To Rescue Tanelorn (50 page)

Begg looked around for footprints. The snow had already obscured the trail. By the way she lay half in the gutter and half on the pavement, Lady Ratchet had met her death as she entered the square.

“By God, sir,” exclaimed the policeman, “it’s like she ran into Jack the Ripper and Mr. Hyde at the same time. What do you think she saw, sir?”

“Oh, I’d guess something much worse than either,” said Seaton Begg.

Old Blood

At one in the morning, Boxing Day over and snow continuing to fall, Begg, wrapped in a heavy Ulster and fur cap, stood in the darkness of an archway on the third floor of a Sporting Club Square mansion only five blocks from his own. Begg’s stoicism was famous, but tonight he felt his age. At last he heard a soft footfall in the snow outside. A door opened almost silently. Light steps sounded on the carpeted stairway, and at last a tall figure in full evening dress appeared on the landing, stepping forward with a latchkey held out in its bone-white hand.

Then Begg revealed himself.

“And did you enjoy the Messiaen, Monsieur?”

A death’s head whirled round to confront him. The eyes were covered with thick, round tinted lenses, as if sensitive to the faintest light. Gauntly handsome features showed amusement as Begg struck a match to reveal his own face.

“The Messiaen had its moments, you know,” said the albino. “But the English play French music impossibly badly. Good evening, old neighbour. You see I’m back in my chambers. We last met in Mirenburg when you did me a great service.”

With a movement of his head Begg let his old adversary open the door. A small oriental man appeared and took their outer garments, showing them into a sparsely furnished Japanese sitting room.

“A drink, Sir Seaton?” The albino removed his dark glasses to reveal crimson orbs whose strange light threatened to reach into Begg’s very being.

“If you still keep that St. Odhran Armagnac, Count Ulrich, I would love some.” Begg’s own eyes held steady, meeting the albino’s.

“I’ll join you!” To his servant: “Bring the St. Odhran” and then to his friend, “Well, Sir Seaton Begg, explain this small-hours melodrama!”

“You know my interest in the histories of our family’s various branches and my special fascination with our common Central European ancestors. If you would spare me a little time, I would tell you a story?”

“Late as it is, Sir Seaton, I’m always glad to listen to your yarns. A detective tale, is it?”

“Nothing less. It concerns an event frequently recorded in poetry, plays, novels and films all across that part of Europe where Slav meets German. Perhaps you recognize this doggerel?

“A call to the Cautious, a Word to the Wise;

Tonight’s the Night when Crimson Eyes,

His face bone-white and his Mouth blood-red,

Disdains the Body, but tastes the Head.”

Count von Bek laughed easily. “Some
Rauber und Ritter
nonsense? It means nothing to me. I have never been, as you have, fascinated by the patois and folklore of the streets, Sir Seaton.”

“The poem’s from Mirenburg.” Accepting a glass from the servant, Begg paused to enjoy its aroma. “Your family’s real home for centuries. Until Wäldenstein was absorbed into Austria, then Germany and then Czechoslovakia, the Saxon von Beks played a pretty important part in local politics. The legend I know from German literature is ‘Karmesinangen.’ The French called him Le Loup Blanc. Your family is closely associated with that and several other enduring Middle European legends.

“A recurrence of albinism is said to manifest itself every two generations through the maternal line of Lady Rose Perrott, kinswoman to Anne Boleyn, who married Count Michael von Bek in 1560 in Mirenburg and gave birth to albino twins, Ulrich and Oona. The albino line is traced back, people believe, before Attila, before the Romans, but like the story of your family’s special affinity with the Holy Grail and a black sword carved with living runes, the tale is comparatively recent. The event on which the poem is based took place in 1895 when Mirenburg was terrorized by a sequence of appalling murders. The victims were slain by a sword making a singular wound and leaving horrified corpses oddly coloured. A group of Rosicrucian exiles had obtained a jeweled cup they claimed was the Holy Grail and summoned a demon to help celebrate an unholy ritual. The ‘demon,’ drawn some say from Hell itself, was none other than a revived Count Ulrich von Bek, otherwise known as ‘Crimson Eyes,’ whose life-span is far longer than a common mortal’s, thanks to his sword.

“Not a demon at all, but an avenging angel! It is the von Beks’ duty to defend the Grail at all costs. Mirenburg legends say the family has a destiny to achieve the resolution of God and Satan.” Begg savoured his St. Odhran.

“Old folk tales, Sir Seaton. How people love to chill their blood! So much more mysterious and romantic than the prosaic truth! Regrettably, we have little time to chat further. I’m off on my travels tomorrow.”

“I would imagine your business here is over,” agreed Begg. “There’s talk Barbican fled to the Caymans.”

“By coincidence, exactly where I’m bound, Sir Seaton.” The albino drew a case from his jacket and offered Begg a thin, brown cigarette, taking one for himself when the investigator refused. “I’m growing too soft for these London winters.”

“The tale continues,” Begg went on equably. “It seems a City and Wall Street consortium came by an old von Bek family heirloom mislaid in 1943 when the Nazis arrested the count in Mirenburg. A Polish officer sold a cup which, it was said, could heal or even raise the recently dead! The potential profit from such a thing was enormous. But it would only display its powers in the presence of Barbican Begg, its steward, who tried to sell his interests to shore up BBIC. Well, as you know, members began to die pretty regularly, first in ones and twos, then by the boardroom-full. Every man who helped set up the vast BBIC fraud was being wiped out. In 1895 the Mirenburg press noted that Crimson Eyes never killed a woman, a child or an innocent. Crimson Eyes could not kill old Lady Ratchet. He let her run away and eventually cross the river into Esher. Her poor, baffled brain was addled once and for all. She locked herself up.

“Ironically, she had nothing to fear from Crimson Eyes. Neither she nor I knew that the von Beks had kept their Sporting Club Square flat. She ran into you while she was leaving her taxi and you were trying to catch it, because you were late for a supper concert at the Wig-more Hall. You did not even recognize her! But she knew you. She saw your eyes. She thought she had met her nemesis and she died of shock. Or, you might say, she died of guilt…”

Trained to hide his feelings, Count von Bek could not suppress a slight, sardonic smile. With a sigh, he sat back in his chair, his moody red eyes staring thoughtfully into the amber of the glass. “So it’s done at last. Apart from your nephew, of course, who seems to have taken the cup with him. I had not realized he was still in England until last week.”

“Hiding at Lady Ratchet’s. She’d grown to resent him. He believed she’d betray him. If he has the cup, you, presumably, have the sword?”

“A grotesque old family relic, really. Would you like to see it?” The albino’s voice had taken on a peculiar edge.

“That would be a privilege.” Begg’s own voice was steady as steel. Rising, von Bek swiftly crossed the room to open a door in the wall. From within came a distant murmuring like swarming bees. Von Bek stooped into the space and withdrew an ornate broadsword, scabbarded in heavily worked leather. A huge sphere in the hilt glowed red as the slender albino came to stand before Begg with the long scabbard stretched upon both white palms. “There’s our famous Mittelmarch blade, cousin. A rather rococo piece of smithery, you’ll recall.”

“Perhaps you could slip it from the scabbard?” Begg suggested evenly.

“Of course.” Frowning, von Bek changed his grip and drew out a few inches of the blade. His arm shook violently. Now the sound became an angry alien muttering. Seaton realized he looked upon a living thing. He sensed something horribly organic about the black metal within which red words swarmed, words in an alphabet Begg had seen only once before on three broken obsidian tablets buried in a tomb below a temple in Angkor Wat. Those runes bore no resemblance to anything else on Earth, and Begg could not free his eyes from them. He was in their power. Inch by inch the blade slipped from its scabbard, taking control of the creature who held it.

Then with an enormous effort of will, Begg broke from his trance to shout: “No! For the love of God, von Bek! Master your sword, man!”

He stepped back, watching as the albino, his red eyes blazing in their deep sockets, battled with the blade until at last he had resheathed it and fell exhausted back into his chair. The sword continued to mutter and shriek in thwarted lust.

“It would have taken your soul,” said von Bek coolly, “and fed me my share.”

“I remembered that,” said Begg. “I know the secret of your longevity. We have the murder weapon, eh? The chief motive was retribution. And we know the method. Barbican and company needed your experience when the Grail stopped ‘working.’ You were invited to London and came ashore at Marriage’s Wharf. As you realized what BBIC were up to, you took it upon yourself to ‘balance the books.’ I can’t say I approve.”

“You have evidence for any of this?” Von Bek lit another drugged cigarette.

“The blade doubtless matches the wounds, but I’m not sure we want to release it into the world, do we? You are right, count. I am unable to arrest you, but it has given me some satisfaction to solve this case and confront, as I had hoped, such an unusual killer. At a stroke or two you have considerably improved the probity of politics and business in this country. Yet still I disapprove of such actions.” He would not shake the pale hand when it was offered.

With a regretful shrug, Count Ulrich turned away. “Differing times and cultures refuse us a friendship. Can I offer you some more of the St. Odhran?”

But Begg, oddly depressed, made his excuses and left.

Returning home through the old year’s snows, he reflected that, while one act of barbarism did not justify another, he could not in his heart say that this had been an unrewarding Christmas. He looked forward to returning to the warmth of his own fireside, to opening the black trophy case Lady Ratchet had brought him, to stare with quiet ecstasy into that blazing miracle of confirmation, that great vessel of faith and conscience: the Grail, of which he was now the only steward.

SIR MILK-AND-BLOOD

SIR MILK-AND-BLOOD

(1996)

“W
HAT’S THE TIME
,” he says. “Pad—what’s the time? My watch has stopped.”

“Four-thirty,” says Patrick. “Shouldn’t he have turned up by now?”

“He’s always on time. He’ll be here. God knows I’ll be glad to get the release.” He reaches for his cup. “It’s bothering me, Pad. I can’t get rid of it.”

“You’re bound to feel bad. After all, your brother—”

“Yes. But it’s the kids, see…”

“There are no ‘innocent victims’ in a war,” says Patrick. “Not in this war, anyway. You always reminded me how many of our children died to make them rich.”

“Pad, I don’t ever want to do that again. I didn’t join to kill kids.” As he looked at his companion’s frowning face he knew he was saying too much. Even if you thought it, you never said it.

“Well, it’s not likely either of us will have to do it again,” says Patrick, ignoring this breach of etiquette. “In a little while we’ll have our new passports and can be out of here. Anywhere we like, so long as it’s not Ireland or the UK. We can go to America. You’ve got relatives there, haven’t you?”

“They read the papers,” he says. But, anyway, he thinks, he won’t be free there. He’s ashamed to see his family. He already knows what they think of him. There isn’t a news channel in the world that hasn’t shown the pictures of the ruptured tram, the children’s bodies thrown everywhere, the weeping mothers. And his and Patrick’s unshaven faces staring crazily out at them, their eyes reflecting the harsh flash of the camera. “By God, Pad, don’t you wish you’d never got into this?”

“I don’t think like that,” says Patrick. “Since I was thirteen all I’ve ever done is this. I mean what else is there? What would you be doing now, if you hadn’t joined the movement?”

“I was going to be a schoolteacher, God help me, before I got into politics.” He lights a Gitane and goes to stare through the streaked grey window at the rain falling into the filthy water of the canal basin far below, where all six of the city’s great underground waterways emerged into daylight and met at the infamous Quai D’Hiver. “I thought I could do more good in the movement.”

As soon as he and Patrick were identified as the surviving bombers and their photographs had been published, they left London and traveled all the way to Paris from the Hook of Holland on a barge. It had taken a couple of weeks, but after a fortnight the authorities assumed they were far away from Europe. As it promised, the movement looked after them. Now their orders are to stay put until their “release” comes. They have been told who to expect. When he arrives, there will be no mistaking him.

“I just wish it hadn’t happened,” he says.

“Jesus, don’t you think I wish that, too! But it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t my fault. And your bloody brother died a hero’s death. It’s him you should be grieving for. You think too bloody much. You have to put it behind you. Now, stop moaning on, will you? Honestly, it’s really not cool to start up like this.” Patrick seemed to regret the harshness of his tone. “You know that as well as I do.”

He knows he’s condemned to silence for the rest of his life. Once you join the movement, you never retire. You’re “released from active service” and that means the movement looks after you until it needs you again. He has never before longed with such passion to be free of it all.

“Well, look at it this way, we got a bit of collateral. That thing will make it easier for us, eh?” Patrick goes to the table and hefts the heavy newspaper parcel.

They had just left the tram at Waterloo Bridge. Tony was going on a stop or two, would leave his bag under his seat and then get the train at Charing Cross. When the bomb went off they had both been thrown flat by the blast and as they got to their feet, trying to catch their breath back, it was as if they had had a vision. The glass of the silversmith’s was blown out and all the stuff in the window had been flung everywhere, apart from the one heavy object that had been central to the display and hadn’t shifted or been damaged. An instinct developed from a lifetime of looting moved Patrick to grab the thing and then run for it. When they met up later, they discovered that Tony, sitting downstairs at the front of the tram, still had the bomb on his lap when it went off.

“Have another bloody drink, man.” Patrick pours whisky into two glasses. “Go on.”

“It doesn’t work for me.”

“God, you’re a bloody morbid bugger! You’re bound and determined, aren’t you?” Patrick drains his own glass and takes the other. “It’s a waste of time! Put it behind you, mate.” He moves about the little room with impatient, aimless steps, as if his body tries to escape even as his brain tells him he has to stay. “This is guerilla warfare. Nobody wants the civilian casualties, but sometimes they happen. I don’t have to remind you. You taught me. Was it our fault that the bomb went off too soon? If your stupid brother had set the bloody timer right none of us would be in this jam now!”

“Well, he’s dead. And so are ten other people, mostly kids. Going home from the pictures on a Saturday night, looking forward to their tea.”

“Oh, man, will you stop it! You’re making it worse for yourself. Nobody was supposed to be hurt. The bomb should have gone off when the tram was in its shed. The sheds were supposed to be empty. The orders were clear. No casualties. Just do maximum damage to the turning plates. Our job’s to disrupt travel and communications, not kill kids.”

“But we did kill kids. And I can’t get them out of my head. I can’t stand the thought of another day of this! Oh, Jesus God, I want to be free of it, once and for all.” Again he saw the disturbed disapproval on Patrick’s face and fell silent.

“Well, you will be, any minute now.” Patrick showed great self-restraint. “Who is this bloke? You know him, don’t you?”

“He’s a German, I think. I’ve been in the same company as him once or twice.” He tried to keep his tone normal or at least controlled. “There was something odd about him. You can’t tell how old he is. But he must be older than he looks. Mick says he was the youngest colonel in the SS.” He sat back down in his chair, feeling a little better for talking. It took his mind off the bombed tram.

“After the war he went to South America and he was in Spain for a while and North Africa. He’s been running guns for as long as I’ve been in the movement. And he’s helped us with other stuff, of course. He was our main contact with Libya until that went sour. You could call him a soldier-of-fortune, a mercenary—I think he’s nothing but a renegade. He has no loyalties at all. No cause, no religion and, as far as I can tell, no damned conscience.”

“He sounds a superior sort of chap,” says Patrick, emphasizing his consonants the way they do in Kerry to announce sarcasm.

“Oh, he is, sure.” He sighs. “No, I’m not kidding. There’s something about him. When I was a kid, we used to have this story. It’s one of those old Irish things, that seems to be just local.” He puts out the Gitane and lights another. The room is misty with his smoke. “My granny used to tell it as ‘Sir Milk-and-Blood’ in English. She didn’t speak much Gaelic, but I thought the name had to come from old Irish and I looked it up. I found something that sounded right in Cornish—
Malan-Bloyth.
”

“You said he was German.”

“My granny’s story had him come from High Germany, which was probably Saxony, and finding the Holy Grail. But
Malan-Bloyth
wasn’t a knight-errant seeking the Holy Grail, as he was in the
Sir Milk-and-Blood
version. His name means, as close as I can give it in English,
The Demon Wolf
…”

“For the love of God, what a bunch of crap,” says Patrick, sitting down with a sigh on the corner of the iron bed. He looks about, as if for escape. “Holy Jesus, I could do with a cup of decent tea. Why the hell are you telling me a kid’s story?”

“To pass the time. To take our minds off things. I was talking about this bloke.”

“The German bloke?”

“My point is, he reminded me of the hero in my granny’s story. Red eyes, and very white skin. That was why he was called Sir Milk-and-Blood. He was a supernatural creature, a son of a Sidhi man and a human woman. In granny’s version of the story, he was looking for the Holy Grail. In the other version, he’s looking for the Magic Cauldron of Finn MacCool. You know…”

“I don’t bloody know. I was never that interested.”

“It’s the sort of thing a patriot ought to know.” He manages a smirk, to show he speaks in fun, but Patrick chooses to bridle anyway.

“Maybe. And maybe a patriot wouldn’t keep going on about some poor bloody English kids he couldn’t even know were on the damned tram.” Patrick finishes his whisky and takes another Gauloise out of his pack. “So this is the bloke we’re waiting for. What is he? A bloody werewolf?”

“Some believe that he was.”

“I’m not talking about the fairy story. I’m talking about the real bloody bloke. What’s he got? Leprosy?”

“Maybe. I first met him in the Med, off the coast of Morocco. He was with Captain Quelch, another damned renegade, on that boat that almost got blown out of the water off Cuba the other day—
The Hope Dempsey.
We were dealing with some kind of volatile cargo, nobody ever said what it was, but I could guess, of course. My job was to check the boxes and pay over the money. I was always a better quartermaster than I was a field soldier…”

“Tell me about it,” says Patrick, glaring disgustedly into the rain. He hears a movement on the uncarpeted stair and rises from the bed.

The two men wait, but it’s a false alarm.

“Well, he’s a cold fish, by the sound of it,” says Patrick. “What else do you know about him?”

“Not much. He’s some sort of German prince, but everyone calls him ‘Monsieur Zenith.’ He spent a lot of time in the Far Atlas, speaks their languages, does business with the Berbers. They say he has one of those big villas in Las Cascadas. But Donald Quinn told me he lives in Egypt most of the time.”

“Why is he interested in that?” With his unlit cigarette Patrick indicated the newspaper parcel.

“It’s his price. The movement arranged it.”

“Well, let’s hope he brings cash,” says Patrick, scratching at his bottom and sighing. “I don’t know about you, but I could do with some sunshine. Another few days and I’ll be on a beach in Florida, soaking up the rays.”

“What happened isn’t that important to you, is it, Pad? You’ve already forgotten it.”

“No point in doing anything else,” says Patrick. “An incident in the ongoing struggle. You can’t make it not have happened. A bad dream. Leave it behind, mate, or it’ll fester for ever. Or go and see a bloody priest and get it off your bloody chest. Jesus Holy Christ! You’re no bloody fun any more. I’ll be damned glad to see the back of you!” And he begins that agitated pacing again, so that neither of them hears the soft knock. A second knock and Patrick is rushing for the door, dragging it wide.

“I told you he’d be on time.”

And there he is. He would be a little less terrifying if he wasn’t smiling.

“Well, thank God, at bloody last!” says Patrick, studying the tall stranger with nervous resolve.

Although it is only late afternoon, Monsieur Zenith wears perfect evening dress. Thrown back over one shoulder is an old-fashioned scarlet-lined opera cape and on his head is a silk hat. His eyes are hidden by a pair of round, smoked glasses which further emphasize the pallor of his skin. He has a long head with delicate bones and his ears seem to taper. He has an almost feminine mouth, sensitive and firm. In one white-gloved, slender hand is an ebony cane, trimmed with silver. In the other, he carries what appears to be a long electric guitar case which he now stoops to rest on the floor.

“Good evening, gentlemen.” He speaks in a soft accent that is difficult to identify. “Such confidence is flattering. I believe you have something to show me?”

Patrick backs into the room as Monsieur Zenith carries in his burden, puts it down again, takes off his hat, closes the door carefully behind him and nods a greeting. Slipping a slender silver case from his inner pocket, he removes a small, brown cigarette and lights it. He comes immediately to the point. “I have your release, gentlemen. But first I must be sure that you are who you say you are and that your circumstances are as they have been described to me.”

“What do we have to bloody prove?” says Patrick. “That we blew up a Number 37 tram in the Strand? The movement knows who we are. They sent you, didn’t they?”

“Not exactly. I volunteered to come. I had heard about that—” he gestures with his cane at the parcel on the table. “And when I learned what I was to receive for my services, I put two and two together. So that was your bomb on the Number 37?”

“It was,” says Patrick, dropping his cigarette to the boards of the floor and crushing it out. His companion is silent. Monsieur Zenith removes his smoked glasses and lifts a pale, enquiring brow.

Patrick now takes note of the albino’s ruby eyes which burn with suppressed pain and melancholy irony.

Caught for a moment in their timeless depths, Patrick feels suddenly lost, as if his entire universe has fallen away from him and he is absolutely alone. Gasping, he turns and almost runs towards the table, tearing at the newspaper. “You’d better have a look at this cup…”