Quest of the Five Clans: the Harlequin Tartan

Chapter 6

The High Street had its adventures, of course. Its moments of edging into danger, daring a finger-poke to some object of fascination. A tar-black corpse dangling from his gibbet, or a cavalry major's war-horse on parade. The front door of the City Gaol, the window-bars back of the Bedlam. The door-knocker of a house said to be haunted. These acts always ended with turning and running. Not out of fear, but in a sense of completion.

In theory I lived with my father's aunts, who owned a respectable brick house south of the city. They assigned me a tutor by day, and tavern work by night. My aunts held strange views on the natures of boys. They considered it frivolous for us to sleep. My twenty-four hours were best spent in work or study. The Aunts gave me all the attic of the house, ignoring me entirely so long as teacher and tavern-keeper pronounced themselves satisfied.

By the tradition of neglected children I should have been abused and bruised, grown wan and thin from cold, work and lack of love. No, I prospered fine. My parents dwelled across the sea while war and revolution took their course. Their house was set aflame, my aunts announced. At first I did not take this as word of their deaths. No, I pictured my parents now getting by in a grand country house comfortably ablaze. One would learn where to step, how to best breathe smoke and ash. Continuous rebuilding would be required. Warm in winter. I envied them, but preferred the city.

My tutor was a student wavering between a practical clerical future and poetic ambitions leading towards laudanum and damnation. Poor tortured soul, but he solaced himself in books. He was a walking fire of print-love and ink-debauchery, a lecher of literature, a book ravisher to make librarians gasp in lewd appreciation. Master Clive I called him, for he was tall and solemn as a church-warden so long as the aunts were about. On their absence he'd leap onto a chair reciting Milton. At Satan's fall he'd tumble down, crying out to Seraphim and Cherubim, Angels, Archangels, Powers, Thrones and Principalities... Ah, but he was a wonder to match any puff-cloud angel-nobility. For the languages he knew, for his love of each word. For the pieces of poem and play, line and declamation he breathed out, happy you should then breathe in. Afire; and the sparks of his love of words and the learning of words and the caress of words caught in the listener's hair, ember-wound the path to the brain.

While Keeper, my master in tavern-work was sober and dull, large and leather-smocked. Capable of cudgeling quiet a riot of rowdies; yet kind to those he considered his own. When he understood I dropped plates for reason of being raised by aunts who considered sleep luxurious nonsense, he gave me a cot in the cellar. Halving my wages, but that was fair. I considered myself paid in coin of rest, and felt rich.

Keeper's tavern by day: an orderly place of coin, drink, chat, coin, drink, chat, coin, drink, chat. All attempts to incite drama or comedy were quick stamped upon by Keeper's cudgel or the frowns of workers who desired only that life's playwright script for them 'they rested quiet all that day'. If their souls hungered for wonder, their minds and bodies thirsted more for beer and peace.

But at night a different clientele entered; or else a different mood entered clients. Then came men and women laughing, growling, stamping feet and arguing loud to announce their presence onstage, openly seeking audience and theatre, quarrel and love.

No time for sleep then; nor would I have laid me down upon a feather bed. The tavern at night served for stage to a dozen plays enacted at once. Seductions, revenges, screamed boasts, whispered admission, sly thefts and sudden downfalls. In the back and forth from kitchen to tables I beheld all the separate parts of human copulation, challenge, betrayal, murder, confession, contrition, and redemption. Shuffled like cards so that my boy's mind must puzzle what connection lay between a man crying to the fire and a girl's bodice torn, a knife drawn and a beer downed; a sweet song sung followed by a curse; two old friends sitting separate, eyes to the floor.