BLOOD, BLIGHT AND BALLISTICS (b)
Ayer Town 3057.7.18
“So what’s the story behind the passage?” Seama managed a conversational tone as they plodded along by the light of Aldo’s generously offered lanterns but actually he was not much in the mood for idle chatter. There was something about their journey that made him feel ill at ease. He wasn’t at all sure whether it was to do with tunnels in general – he had never liked them – or to do with this one in particular. “It seems fairly ancient. You’d have thought I would have heard about it somewhere along the line.”
Tregar grunted. He was making heavy weather of the steep incline with the poison of the alcohol still doing unpleasant things to his insides and to his head.
“Aye, ye’d have thought so.” He belched. “I feel sick.”
“Well make sure you keep it in,” Seama warned him. “Bad enough being down here in the dark without you making a mess to tread in.”
Tregar grunted again and plodded on.
Seama plodded after.
“So, the tunnel then?”
“Look alright. But if I am sick it’s your fault.” Tregar stopped plodding and took a few deep breaths. “It was made by Iskandar, second and last. Heard of him?”
“I’ve seen his name in lists. Wasn’t he something to do with the Landsman’s Charter?”
“Er, don’t know. I’m not really too good on proper history – I just remember the stories. The human stuff, ye know. I think it was something like five or six hundred years ago if that tallies.”
“It does. Fairly significant piece of legal history but probably not particularly memorable. What’s the story?”
“Well this Iskandar was quite popular as king’s go, known affectionately as ‘The Old Dog’ but not because he was a faithful sort. Fact was, he was a bit of a hound and everyone knew it. His one weakness – ha! one weakness: whenever have they had just the one? Anyway, his weakness was for the young ladies. There was a constant stream o’ them even when he was in his teens – a regular philanderer, you’d call him. His wife on the other hand was a one man woman, utterly devoted, beautiful as a summer night, but more importantly, scary as hell.”
“Why scary?”
“Well, it might have been a bit of prejudice coming out but as she was some sort of Masachee, and from Lusk of all places, naturally the scandal mongers decided she must be a witch. While Iskandar was always the nation’s favourite his wife was mostly hated by everyone, whether she deserved it or not. You’ve got to wonder why he married her – except for the looks, of course.
“Now, early days of the marriage Iskandar behaved himself pretty well, but as the years passed by, you might guess, the young lassies again began to catch his eye. His big problem was the Queen - Layala was her name - she had a jealous streak wide as the Misium and a lot more powerful. And because everyone else knew about his affairs, very soon so did she. Story has it the queen’s maids were disloyal little minxes, to both parties. It was no surprise at all that they got to hear about it whenever the King made his little trips into town, where he’d been and who he’d been seen with: the servants always do. And this lot were devilish quick to make sure the Queen heard the bad news too. Wanted to see her embarrassed, I guess. Of course that led to real trouble. Layala, in a tearsome rage, out and threatened Iskandar, right in front of the privy council, to have done with his wicked ways or she would end them herself. No one could say why he was so weak – perhaps he knew her for the witch rumour made her and was just plain scared – fact was he jumped to her demands like a whelp te its master. The poor lass who’d last erhm... benefitted from the King’s attentions was taken down into the market square, flogged till she bled and then sent on her way with not so much as a penny to buy a day’s peace. Iskandar the while, in some sort of terror of his wife, pledged himself to mend his ways.
“All well and good, but, as ye ken, the pledging and the doing are mostly different things. There’s never been a lack of young lassies in the world and always plenty with a fancy to bedding the rich and the powerful. So, the temptation was always there that might cause an Old Dog to stray, and the danger was there too. That’s when he came up with his brilliant plan.
“There was work going on to make the palace kitchens bigger and to dig another well shaft. So, while they were at that, he commissioned the builders to do a bit extra for him. In the case of direst need, he told them, to ensure the safety of the royal family, he needed an escape route. Whether they believed that or not, I cannot say. I don’t suppose they were particularly loyal but I daresay all the extra money he promised got the tunnel dug pretty quick and more or less kept secret.
“Of course all that money was spent for the one purpose only: to get Iskandar into town and to his trysts without anyone getting to hear of it. The house at the end of the tunnel wasn’t an inn in those days, more like a close house for the King’s agents and he reckoned they’d be the last people to betray him.”
Seama snorted at that. “I don’t suppose they had anyone coming in to do the cooking and the laundry then?”
“Aye, you see the flaw, Seama. Of course the servants were sworn to secrecy too but it takes only the one. However, things seemed to move along in the King’s favour for a few years at least and there’s four or five dalliances to keep him amused. That three of these girls disappeared unexpectedly should have given him a warning but mebbee he wasn’t too worried what was happening to them if only he was allowed to continue.
“Naturally enough Layala had gotten to know all about it. I guess the whole nation was waiting for her to do as she’d threatened, and common rumour about the missing girls was rife. Question was, did she pay these lassies off and send them away, or did something much nastier happen to them? No one knew but, as long as naught was said, the King felt free to carry on his career.
“The end of it came when the latest young lass got ideas above her station. Some people said she was the image of the Queen in the first days of their marriage, some said she made herself up that way quite deliberately. Whatever the case, the King fast became besotted with the wee hussy, couldn’t deny her a thing and couldn’t countenance the thought of the Queen doing something against her. Eventually the girl was daft enough to go that one step too far: she wanted the King to divorce his wife and marry her instead.
“I guess he havered and hawed at first: a drastic step to think o’ taking even if the Queen had been your average sort of woman. Fact is she wasn’t anything like average and not at all normal. But the young lass kept up her campaign, and our Iskandar got to dreaming of a new wife, and finally the lure of the girl proved just too much. Almost as if she’d put a glamour on him hersel’ the King found he had no will left to resist. One evening he sends his girl a message saying he’s made a decision, and that if only she’d wait for him he’d come along later that night to give her the news.
“Back in the Palace Iskandar has dinner with his wife, completes his evening’s duties and then trots off to his bed in the normal way. I guess he was in a graether of anticipation waiting for the servants to finish their tasks and go off to their rooms, but soon as he may, away he goes, down to the cellars, quick through his contraption, and then off along the Old Dog’s Back Passage, where we are now.
“Now this is the bit that’s hard to be sure of, as whatever happened, it happened behind closed doors. What we do know is that sometime after midnight the Captain of the King’s Guard and twenty o’ his men, warned by an anonymous message that the King was in danger and where he might be, turn up at the close house ready to fight a battle if need be. But all they find, just come through the doorway out onto the street, is Queen Layala, hair draggled, clothes covered in blood and in a terrible state of anguish, screaming and sobbing.
“‘Where is the King?’ the Captain demands and lays hands upon the woman to shake the truth out of her. ‘What have you done?’
“Well the Queen wasn’t having any o’that. With the strength o’ a man she threw him off and stood there, straight and still, defying them all. And her deadly gaze fell upon them one by one, as if she wanted to be sure they would all mark what she said.
“’What have I done, you ask,’ says she, ‘Nothing but love him. Nothing but try to give him the prize ever he sought. He was my husband, King of Pars - the reason for my life. And you, his loyal subjects, you call him the Old Dog and you laugh at his foolish ways and revel in my misery. Well no more! If you want the Old Dog you will find him within. Do not expect too much. I have given him all I could and yet it was not enough. Never enough. And now it is over.’
“In rush the guards, in rushes the Captain, to find the King seated at a table, head dipped to examine whatever lay on the board before him. But they were too late. His life-blood, in a pool all around him, poured from a dozen wounds in his chest and his neck. On the table lay a leathern bag with the contents all spilling out: a pigs liver, an emptied flask, sticky to the touch and the severed hand of a young woman. You can imagine the horror of the Captain but he was a strong man and not to be deflected from his duty. He was quick to understand that the Queen had been practicing the blackest of all arts, that she’d destroyed the girl and that the King was mortally wounded. Ignoring the blood he came in close to see if anything could be done. “My King,” he begged, “What crime is here?” And sure enough the King was not dead but clinging on to his ruined life as though there was something more he had left to do. There was barely a twitch of the hand to beckon but the Captain understood and he stooped to listen for the King seemed to have something to say before the end. With his one, final, ragged breath, Iskandar, King of Pars, made certain his wicked wife would be condemned by all and reviled throughout history. ‘She promised me love and life,’ he said, ‘she gave me only blood.’
“The story goes that at her trial she cursed the court for its blindness. The King’s brother, Rúhandar, she said, was at the root of the all the rumours that dogged their marriage and made a mockery of the truth; she would gladly face even the ugliest death, she said, rather than drag out her days among such fools and villains. They hung her in the market place and the people brought wood and oil and rosemary and burned her corpse to drive out the evil she had brought. Rúhandar took the throne, as was his right, and set a law that never after, for shame or otherwise, could a King of Pars be named for Iskandar. It is a fact also, with or without a law, never after did a king of Pars even think to marry a Masachee.
“Now that, my friend, is the story of the King’s Back Passage.”
“And the reason for the pub’s name, to boot.”
“Aye, nice to get it all sorted isn’t it?”
“Quite a horrible tale really. You wonder what was the truth behind it.”
“Seems pretty straightforward te me.”
“Nothing to do with men and women and witchcraft, if that’s what it was, could possibly be straightforward. And nothing in history ever happened exactly as we remember it. Misremembered detail, unreliable witness, the problem of interpretation: history is very much what we make it.”
“Ye’re no fun.”
“Maybe. Contraption?”
“Thought you’d come back to that. If we can get going again – and oddly enough I do feel a little better after all that – we should come to it in ten minutes or so. Let’s say it’ll be a surprise fer ye. Meanwhile, now I’ve done with my story-telling, I think it’s your turn. So what’s the news on this spell and what it’s doing to the castle? Feel no pressure but just make sure ye tell me everything, then maybe I won’t sound so stupet when Mador starts quizzing me.”
Next will be Blood, Blight and Ballistics (c) COMMENT?
Previous was Blood, Blight & Ballistics (a) Beginning is “The Preface”
Wilf Kelleher Jones
wkj fantasy
A Song of Ages
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