A Song Of Stone

Chapter 3

The castle has a full reserve of memories, their living on a special sort of death. The lieutenant stalks the night black plains, the men she left here fall one by one asleep, our servants clean and gather what they can then retire to their quarters, and you, on a chaise with rugs, sleep fitful before a dying logfire. I cannot sleep; instead I pace the three rooms and two short corridors we've been restricted to, carrying a small tricerion to light my way, restless and unsure, and looking from moat to courtyard. On one side there is a moon, half veiled by ragged clouds, shining on the damp sheen of forested hills where mist is gathering. On the other side I see the fitful flicker of a spitting garden torch reflecting on the stone surrounded cobbles and the well. Even as I watch, that last torch splutters and goes out.

I saw so many dances here. Each ball brought every one of note from counties upon counties away; from each great house, from each plump farm, from over the wooded hills around and across that fertile plain they came, like iron filings to a magnet drawn: sclerotic grandees, rod backed matrons, amiable buffoons ruddily ho hoing, indulgent city relations down for a little country air or to kill for sport or find a spouse, beaming boys with faces polished as their shoes, cynical graduates come to sneer and feast, poised observers of the social scene cutting their drinks with their barbed remarks, dough fresh country youths with invitations clutched, new blossomed maidens half embarrassed, half proud of their emergent allure; politicians, priests and the brave fighting men; the old money, the new money, the once monied, the titled and the expleted, the fawnshy and just the fawning, the well matured and the spoiled… the castle had room for all of them.

The great hall resounded like a skull, abuzz with wheeling thoughts, dissimilar and same. The patterns of their music took them, held them, there in its gloved hand, at once fused and confused, and scattered them about the brighter hallways, their laughter like the music for a dream.

The halls and rooms are empty now; the balconies and battlements hang dim, like handholds in the voided dark. In the darkness, in the face of memory, the castle seems now inhuman. Blocked windows mock with the view they no longer afford; here there is a stair's stone spiral disappearing into a blank ceiling where an old tower was levelled, long ago, and here cramped rooms open randomly off one another, implying a passageway, centuries abandoned and reshaped, an appendix within the castle's bowels.

I sit in a tall open window overlooking the moat, watching rising tide of mist flow up and round to engulf the castle,

• great slow wave of star obscuring darkness upon darkness that unfolds itself from out the forest with a geological inertia” and then pushes down upon us.

I recall we danced, those many years ago, and left the ball to see the night, together on those lit battlements that faced the airy dark. The castle was a great stone ship abright and cruising on a sea of black; the plains sparkled with lights, quivering in the intervening air like strings of stars.

We took the air there, you and I, and by and by, took each other's breath, and more exchanged.

“But our parents…'you whispered when that first kiss gave way to allow a mutual gasp for air and the incitement to the next. “But if somebody sees…”

Your dress was something black; velvet and pearls if I recall, scooped brocade to its front which, cupping your bosom, gave way beneath my hands. Exposed to the night and my mouth, your breasts were moon pale and down smooth, their aureoles and nipples dark as bruises, raised, thick and hard as a little finger's topmost joint; I sucked at you and you leant back, clutching at the stones, drawing the night in sharply through your teeth. Then, in a tiny, unexpected flood, a thick sweet taste came upon my tongue, like a premonition, like some involuntary resonance with the male's expected donation, and in that pallid light two shining beads of your milk shone, one tipping each of those tiny blood raised towers.

I devoured those pearls, slaking a thirst the more achingly intense for my utter ignorance of it until that moment. You gathered up your gown and skirts yourself, insisted that the winding stair door be bolted, then I laid you across the slates, beneath the stars. Was it then I really loved you first? I think it was, my sleeping one. Or perhaps it was later, in a calmer state… But I'd count that less; I'd prefer it was just lust. That seems more creditable, simply for being so helpless in the face of its own blood charged demands.

Love is common; nothing's more so, even hate (even now), and like their mothers everyone thinks theirs must be the very best. Oh, the fascination with love, art's profitable fixation with love; ah, the startled clarity, the revelatory force of love, the pulsing certainty that it is all, that it is perfect, that it makes us, that it completes us… that it will last for ever.

Ours is a little different, by consent. We became by all accounts and they were many, and various and frequently creative notorious; unwilling if unbowed outcasts long before our failed attempt to become refugees. It was our decision, though. Not for us that tawdry fascination, the cosy comfort of the crowd, their bedded warmth in shared exclusion. We see the world with two eyes, tuned for its ambivalence, and what arrests the eye of the small minded, liberates the mind of those with a broader view. This castle makes its mark upon the earth by being no longer part of the world from which it's raised; these stones inflict themselves upon the air with hard demand that's free to join that higher level only by not joining any rest. We took that as our premise; what else?

I pace these corridors while you sleep by the empty fire (the ashes like a pool, the furs and rugs that cover you the same colour). The clouds roll quietly in around us, damp smoke of what liquidic fire I cannot say. A transient current within the air brings the sound of a distant waterfall from the hills, and only the night finds final voice, in that black space a white, noise booming; meaningless.

Morning finds the lieutenant returned to the castle; the mists disperse like a crowd, dew hangs heavy on the forest and the sun, late rising above the southerly hills, shines with a wintery weariness, tentative and provisional as a politician's promise.

The good lieutenant takes her breakfast in our chambers; an old flag I imagine she does not know it is our family's own arms has been thrown across the oak table to provide a cloth. She looks tired yet animated, her eyes red and her face flushed. She smells a little of smoke and intends to sleep for a few hours once she has eaten. Her roasted, toasted fare is served on our finest silver; she holds and uses the sharp and glittering pieces of cutlery with a weaponly dexterity. The gold and ruby ring upon her little finger duly sparkles too.

“We found a few things,” the lieutenant replies when I enquire how went the night. “What we did not find was as important.” She gulps down her milk, sitting back and kicking off her boots. She puts her plate on her lap and her grubbily stockinged feet on the table, selecting and spearing morsels from on high.

“What was it you did not find?” I ask her.

“Many other people,” the lieutenant tells us. “There were a few refugees, camped out, but nobody… threatening; nobody armed, nobody organised.” She picks a few more mouthfuls from her plate of meats and eggs. She gazes ceiling wards, as if to admire the painted wood panels and embossed heraldic shields. “We think there may be another group around. Somewhere,” she says, then narrows her eyes as she looks at me. “Competition,” she says, smiling that cold smile of hers. “Not friends of ours.”

A soft egg yolk, surgically isolated from its surrounding white and the bed of toast it lay upon by previous incisions, is lifted intact, yellowly wobbling ~ on the lieutenant's fork and directed towards her mouth. Her thin lips close around the golden curve. She slips the fork out and holds it vertically, twirling it as her jaw moves and her eyes close. She swallows. “Hmm,” she says, collecting herself and smacking her lips. “The last we heard of that happy band they were in the hills, north of here.” She shrugs. “We couldn't find any sign of them; it may be they've headed cast with everybody else.”

“You still intend to remain here?”

“Oh, yes.” She puts the plate down, wipes her lips on a napkin, throws it on the table. “I like your home very well; I think the boys and I can be happy here.”

“Do you intend to stay long?”

She frowns, takes a deep breath. “How long,” she asks, “have your family lived here?”

I hesitate. “A few hundred years.”

She spreads her arms, “Well then, what difference can it make if we stay a few days, or weeks, or months?” She digs between two teeth with a ragged fingernail, smiling slyly at you. “Even years?”

“That depends on how you treat this place,” I say. “This castle has stood for over four hundred years, but it has been vulnerable to cannon for most of that time and, nowadays, could be destroyed in an hour by a large gun and in a moment with a wellplaced bomb or rocket; from inside, all one might need would be a match in the right place. The effects of our tenure here as a family unfortunately has no bearing on yours as occupiers, especially given the circumstances prevailing outside these walls.”

The lieutenant nods wisely. “You're right, Abel.” she says, rubbing one index finger beneath her nose and staring at her smudge grey socks. “We are here as occupiers, not your guests, and you are our prisoners, not our hosts. And this place suits our purposes; it's comfortable, defendable. but it means no more to us.” She picks up her fork again, inspects it minutely. “But these men aren't vandals. I've told them not to break anything and if they do it will assuredly be clumsiness rather than insubordination. Oh, there are a few extra bullet holes about the place, but most of any damage you might see was probably caused by your looters.” She wipes something from the tines of the fork, then licks her fingers. “And we made them pay quite dearly for such… despicable desecration.” She smiles at me.

I glance at you, my dear, but your eyes are averted now, your gaze cast down. “And us?” I ask our lieutenant. “How do you intend to treat us?”

“You and your wife?” she says, then watches keenly. I display, I hope, no reaction. You look away, towards the window. “Oh, with respect,” the lieutenant continues, nodding, expression serious. “Why, with honour.”

“But not to the extent of honouring our desire to leave.”

“Correct!” she says. “You're my local knowledge, Abel. You know your way around these parts.” She gestures upwards and around. “And I've always had a thing about castles; you can give me a guided tour of the place, if you like. Well, let's be honest; if I like. And I do like. You wouldn't mind, though, would you, Abel? No, of course not. I'm sure it would he a treat for you as well. I'm sure you have lots of interesting stories you can tell me about the place; fascinating ancestors, famous visitors, exciting incidents, exotic heirlooms from faraway lands… Ha! For all I know the place even has a ghost!” She sits forward, the fork waved in her fingers like a wand. “Does it, Abel? Does the place have a ghost?”

I sit back. “Not yet.”

This makes her laugh. “There you are. Your real treasures are things the looters weren't interested in; the place itself, its history, the library, the tapestries, ancient chests, old clothes, statues, great gloomy paintings… all still intact, pretty much. Perhaps while we're here you can educate my men; give them a taste for culture. I'm sure my own aesthetic senses have been heightened already, just talking to you and sitting here.” She clatters the fork down on the salver. “That's the thing, you see; people like me get so few opportunities to talk to people like you and stay in places like this.”

I nod slowly. “Yes, and you know who I am, who we are; there are books in the library listing the generations of our family, and portraits of most of our ancestors on every wall, but we don't know who you are. Might we inquire?” I glance at you; your gaze has returned to the lieutenant. “Just a name would do,” I tell her.

She scrapes her seat back, flexing her shoulders, arching her back, and stifling the greater part of a yawn. “Of course,” she says, linking her hands and stretching them against each other. “What you don't realise, until you become part of one, is the way that units in the front line the grunts, the squaddies take on nicknames. They leave their civilian names behind with their civilised personalities; they become another person, after training. Maybe it's a sort of shamanistic thing, like a lucky charm.” She grins. “You know; the bullet with your name on it will have your non com handle printed thereon, not the real one, the one your buddies call you.” She snorts. “You know I've forgotten the real name of every man in this squad? Been with some of them two years, too, and that seems like a very long time, in the circumstances?” She nods. “But, their names… Well, there's Mr Cuts “

“He alive?” I suggest.

She looks at me oddly, then continues. “He's kind of my deputy; a sergeant in his old unit. Then there's Airlock,

Deathwish, Victim, Karma, Tootight, Kneecap, Verbal, Ghost Ah!” she smiles suddenly. “See; we have a ghost already!” She sits. forward, flicking the names off, finger by finger. “…Ghost, Lovegod, Fender, Dropzone, Grunt, Broadleaf, Poppy, Onetrack, Dopple, Psycho… and… that's all,” she says, sitting back, closing up, crossing her arms and legs. “There was Half caste, but he's dead now',

“Was he the young man on the road yesterday?”

“Yes,” she says quickly. Then is silent for a moment. “You know the strange thing?” She looks at me. I watch. “I remembered Half caste's name, his old name, civilian name, when I kissed him.” Another moment's pause. “It was Well, it doesn't matter now.”

“Then you killed him.”

She looks at me for a long time. I have out stared many a man, but those cold grey globes come close to besting me., Eventually, she says, “Do you believe in God, Abel?”

“No.,

What must be one of the lieutenant's smallest calibre smiles is dispatched. “Then just wish that you aren't ever dying from a stomach wound when there's nobody around armed with anything better than a skin plaster and the sort of painkillers you'd use for a mild hangover. And nobody prepared to put you out of your agony.”

“You have no medic?”

“Had. Got in the way of some mortar shrapnel two weeks ago. Name was Vet,” she says, yawning again. “Vet,” she repeats, and puts her arms behind her head, as though in surrender (her gaudy jacket falls open and, within her army shirt, the lieutenant's breasts press briefly out; I suspect they might be, like her, quite firm). “Not because he was long serving. Still, you take what you can get, you know?”

“So, at the end of this, what ought we to call you?” I ask, thinking to break her out of such dreadful sentimentality.

“You really want to know?”

I nod.

“Loot,” she tells me, passing bashful. Another shrug. “After a while, you become your function, Abel. I am the lieutenant, so they call me Loot. I have become Loot. It is what I answer to.”

“Lute, with a U?”

She smiles. “No.”

“And before that?”

“Before?”

“What were you called before?”

She shakes her head, snorts. “Easy.”

“Easy?”

“Yes. I used to say, "Easy, now," a lot. It got shortened.” She inspects her nails. “I'll thank you not to use it.”

“Indeed; the jibes that suggest themselves would be… eponymous.”

She regards me, narrow eyed for a moment, then says, “Just so.” She yawns, then rises. “And now I'm going to sleep,” she announces, stretching her arms. She stoops to gather up her boots. “I thought we might the three of us take a walk, later on; into the hills,” she says. “Maybe do some hunting, this afternoon.” She passes me by and pats me on the shoulder. “You two make yourselves at home.”