SIR MILK-AND-BLOOD

(1996)

“WHAT’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…”

“No,” says Monsieur Zenith. “I don’t want to see it. Not quite yet. I know what it is, believe me. I’ll wait. Until you’re gone.”

“So you trust us?” says Patrick. He looks expectantly towards the guitar case. He is very anxious to leave. His companion, however, sits quietly in his chair, and his nod to his old acquaintance has a reconciled, almost submissive air. He makes no effort to prepare himself for departure.

“To be who you say you are? Of course I do! Who else would claim such a crime?”

“Jesus God Almighty,” says Patrick. “Crime is it? I can’t stand another damned moralist. I’d be prepared to bet you’ve just as much blood on your hands as we have.”

“Oh,” says Monsieur Zenith lifting the case onto the table. “Infinitely more, no doubt.”

This confession of complicity, as he sees it, relaxes Patrick a little. He gestures to the bottle and glasses. “A drink, pal?”

The albino moves his head a fraction. No. His strange, almost angelic face turns to the window and notes that it is overlooked by nothing.

“You brought cash I see,” says Patrick. “And travelers cheques, like we asked, I hope?” He hesitates as the albino rapidly snaps open the case’s catches and begins to lift the lid. There’s a walkman or something in there, playing what sounds at first like modern North African music. The noise deepens until it vibrates all the glass in the room and makes Patrick feel faintly ill. Some sort of alarm, perhaps.

Then the case is fully open. It is lined in red velvet. The whole of its length and much of its breadth is taken up by an enormous broadsword. The thing is so impossibly ancient its iron has turned jet black. And along the length of the blade runs a series of disturbing red runes which, even as he watches, seem to move and reshape themselves constantly, in unison with the strange, deep howling which springs from the trembling metal. In the hilt what looks like an enormous ruby pulses in harmony with the sword’s unnerving voice.

“What the hell is that?” Patrick valiantly demands, trying to guess where the money’s hidden.

The albino seems amused. For a moment, he has a panting, wolfish air to him as he reaches both hands towards the case.

Somehow the black sword, almost as tall as he is, settles into Zenith’s grasp, its voice changing to one of profound satisfaction as it unites with its master. It shudders as if with eager anticipation. Now, with a new calmness, Monsieur Zenith turns towards the seated man, and there is still an element of compassion in his flaming red eyes.

The whole world fills with the sword’s rising song. The runes race and whirl, forming and re-forming to create whole new languages of power as they writhe up and down its black length. The universe trembles. The room fills with darkness. That same darkness floods out of the window and silences the Quai D’Hiver.

As Patrick begins to vomit uncontrollably, the albino smiles.

“It is your release,” he says.