fonts:
Georgia
and Verdana.
|
fonts:
Georgia
and Verdana.
|
Chapter Ten: Messages in Stone
"She'll kill me," Sean moaned again and stalled in his tracks. He turned on his heels and started away from his parents.
Or would have done, but his brother was too quick, his arms too long. Sean found himself hooked by his elbow like an unlucky tuna.
"She will kill me," he whined again as Adam reeled him in and pushed him forward down one of the subterranean tunnels that formed the hallways of Thomas Cross' underground castle. "Don't you even care about me?" Sean sobbed, reaching for his longest suit.
"Yes," Adam agreed, both his elegant hands still pushing against middle of his brother's back. "It is likely."
"That you love me?" Sean asked hopefully.
"Both," Adam's soft baritone sounded at the young man's back.
Having met the brick wall, Sean tried a more familiar gambit from his childhood. "Father," he began. This was an address reserved for High Holy Days, or the equivalent--much more serious than his usual, "Pops."
"Father," he called again at his Dad's broad back that seemed to be continuously retreating down the dark hall, and had done since they started this travesty. "Adam's being mean to me."
"Aire ye still breathin'?" the Highlander's gruff brogue rumbled back towards his son.
"Yes?" Sean answered though he nearly kenned such was unnecessary, except for the pace of the delivery.
"Then he's bein' kinder by far than is warranted," came back the punch line.
Damn! Sean would not have thought there were so many rumbly "r's" in the whole universe. He wondered the sonics did not bring the roof down on their heads. He noted that Ram would kill him two more times, to no avail, then he asked, "Where are we going, anyway?"
When nobody answered, Sean sat down suddenly on the cold carved stone of the hall and began to weep in frustration and fear--and just for effect.
"Oh, come on," Adam had started whining too. "You're the one so set on being a man, Seano. So far I haven't seen anything I wouldn't call 'boy.' "
"I'm not going," Sean pouted. He wasn't about to be shamed out of this. He was beyond being dishonored after what he'd done. "Kill me here and take my head to her."
Adam crouched down, estimating where best to put his arms to lift the boy.
"Adam!" Duncan barked. He had come back to see about the commotion, only to find the two of them on the floor. He motioned the Eldest Immortal towards him. "Leave him," Duncan tapped the com in his pocket. "Thomas invites us to the barn to see his mules practice."
Adam began his retort, but it died in the light of the Scot's dark eyes. The lanky paramour nodded his understanding silently and both men left the boy to himself in the cold, dark--and now empty--hall.
"Not funny," Sean called out five minutes later, when he began to suspect they weren't coming back. "Hey!" he called to the dumb stone walls, "I don't know this part of the complex."
"Well, okay, then," he levered up and dusted his jeans off, squinting in the low light. "If that's the way you're going to play it, just see if I care. Not like you haven't ever done something awful, either one of you. I wouldn't be here now if it weren't--." But he didn't really have his father's excuse, which was love, when his own excuse was only hate. He was going to die from this and neither of them cared enough to even stay around and watch him go.
And all this time he'd thought they really and truly loved him.
"Dahm!" he howled suddenly with far more volume than he meant, and quite a bit more desperation, but his only answer was a muffled harmonic reflected back from the walls.
The walls.
"Oh, My God!" Sean screeched as he began running. He'd had the sudden notion that they had led him down here to bury him alive.
That grizzly notion was still pounding a long time later when his legs gave out beneath him and deposited his exhausted carcass to the floor's cold stone. It was so dark and he was so scared and he'd never been here before...
...unless he had doubled back on himself in panic as he'd rushed down this corridor and that. Right, left, down, up it all swirled in his memory like a morning fog. And all he could determine was that he was more lost than he had been when they'd first left him here.
Sean willed himself to stop panting. Adam was right. He was acting like a foolish little boy. It simply would not do. Hadn't he defeated his fine father at swords? So, if it wasn't a real rescue. It might have been. Wasn't he married and widowed all in one sad year? Hadn't he--?
It sounded like something a rude child would call another on the playground, when he thought the grownups weren't around to hear. It sounded like something a beer-sotted laborer would say to a buddy.
Motherfucker, he thought, not able to say it aloud, not able to actually believe it.
Not his fault, really. How could anyone be held to account for the whims of a dragon? How was he to know who he'd set upon? All he knew was that the monster had stolen his wife, and fucked his wife, and knocked up his wife, and then--
--torn his wife to shreds, murdering her with its own bloody--
Hands? Claws more likely, or some other monstrous appendages that lay outside even the worst nightmare.
A shaft of light shimmered in the periphery of Sean's vision. Dear Lord, he'd been running so blind, he'd nearly missed the way out!
Wait a moment...
Yes, oh of course. That's why the light's so dim down here. Sean stood up shaking his head at how foolish his fear had made him. He was in the portion of the tunnels that had been shut down since Dahm and Pops had blown the top off the grotto at Christmas.
Three months ago, Sean reminded himself. He had been in some sort of sleep or fugue since, since what had happened.
Damn! He supposed he would have to learn to call it something, if only for later reference. The Assault.
Maybe. He wasn't ready for words like sodomy or rape. He was still working on Motherfucker.
Later reference--that was a laugh. How much later could he expect to have?
Sean made his way toward the sunlight. No matter how skillfully Tom lit the rest of his lair, it never was quite authentic. This was sunlight, no doubt about it. And the only sun would have to be coming from the enormous hole in the roof of what had been a lovely tropical pool.
The MacLeod heir--if legalities weren't already in the works for disinheritance--stepped through the stone archway into the ruins of the grotto and--
Splash. The pool had cracked and drained, but there were still puddles in the uneven remnants.
Squish, squish. Sean hated the way the dank water pumped between his toes.
Sploooosh! Down he went into a larger puddle, the brackish water drenching him thoroughly.
"Motherfuck!" Sean cursed, spitting out some particularly nasty slime which had insinuated itself into his open mouth as he fell.
"Yes?" a sonorous voice answered him, from the exact center of the room.
Oh, Holy Shit. Sean's palms smacked down on the wet shards and he pushed up, shaking from marrow to skin.
"Sean? Is that you?"
"No." Sean hardly realized he'd answered, he was so busy planning his retreat.
"Will it make you feel any better if I tell you I'm not going to hurt you?" Ram's lovely alto lilted higher and rustled the motes which floated above her in the single, eerie column of light which formed an ethereal pillar at the grotto's heart.
Sean turned away from the sound and dashed for the entrance through which he'd come.
Spaaalaaash! Face forward into another, larger pond of a puddle.
That hadn't been there before. What the--?
"Sean, I know your fondness for bouncing and thrashing and such, but wouldn't it just be easier to walk over here?" Another soft question lofted his direction, like a forgotten song.
Like a siren! Sean picked himself up, shocked he had covered half the distance to the little hillock where Ram lay in the middle of a forest of gravestones. He was so sure he'd headed for the exit. Siting on that very point, he dashed away from her.
Kerspluuuush! Again, with the puddle--.
"If you are very careful standing--" the voice sounded just above his head.
Sean jumped up and fled like a wounded deer with the scent of wolf too near.
One, last herculean effort and he fell, exhausted, beyond the lintel of the stone door.
And when her hand stroked through his hair, he had no more breath left to scream.
"Feeling better now?"
Sean pushed up on his elbow. She was right. He did feel better. He must have been sleeping. As his eyes came into focus, he got a clearer view of the room. There weren't nearly so many puddles as he thought, just a few scattered over the floor of what had been a free-form pool with volcanic rock sides. Some vagary of the explosion, the Quickening between his parents, had raised the center of the pool into a soft hilly island. Dotted over the surface of the island were rectangular stones, very old by their look. These were the "headstones" he thought he saw.
Ram's back was towards him. She was leaned over one of the stones, trailing her long fingers over one of its corners and laughing softly.
Sean knew better than to ask how she had kept him here despite his best efforts to flee. One of those "magic broom" things Adam was always going on about. Maybe, like a cat, she would play with him before the kill.
"I cannot kill you, Sean," Ram did not turn towards him. She seemed to be talking to the stone. "I promised Mary that I would let no harm come to you that was in my power to prevent."
"Was that right before you killed her?" Sean couldn't believe how cruel and soulless his words sounded, how very much they mirrored his own rage, now grown gelid in the afterwards of his fear and his grief and his shame.
"Yes it was, Sean." Now, Ram did turn her profile to him, with her lids lowered. "I must warn you, though. I am clutching--brooding--pregnant," she stammered a little, looking for a term that would hold some meaning for the halfling boy. "Any threat you make against the safety of my children will be your last action in the world of the living."
Sean sat up all the way. "If that is so, then why didn't you kill me that day when--." No, he didn't yet have a word for the awful thing he'd done.
"That little scuffle by the Christmas tree, you mean," Ram answered lightly.
"Little scuffle!" Sean stood up. "I raped you!" The word picked itself.
Ram's laughter started quietly, but was soon echoing around the cavern, caroling like a bell.
"Mother!" Sean sputtered indignantly.
"Forgive me, Sean. I am sure you will lie, one day, with a woman you love, and then I am sure that your incapacity will be resolved."
"What?" Sean tried to sort the words, all the while wondering how he could be more ashamed for not having done something awful.
"Well, it was most cruel of you to blind me and then scare me," Ram continued on in soothing, tired tones. "If you want the rest to believe you mounted me, then I will not say otherwise, Sean, but the truth of the matter is, you, that is your--well, anger can take you just so far in such things, and--neither Malak nor myself could arouse you past your ire."
"Then I didn't--"
"No, Sean. But if you wish me to say you did--."
"No," Sean answered. "But you killed Mary!" Now that he was innocent, a new perspective had made him judge again.
"Yes, I did," Ram answered solemnly.
"Damnit! Look at me!" Sean felt himself grow strong again.
Ram's long back lifted up and she turned towards him, her blind eyes wide. "I am afraid you have made that impossible for the moment."
Sean gagged.
"Oh, dear," Ram spoke to herself. "Just when I think I'm looking all right again."
"You said you were pregnant," Sean stammered. None of this was making any sense and he was too newly unafraid to be anything but rude.
"You are not the father, Dear, if that is your question," Ram closed her eyes.
"I remember Uncle Mark--"
"Exactly so, Sean. He is the father." Ram turned back towards the stone and leaned over it again, stroking one of the edges and nodding her head.
Sean felt as if the "island" were beset with a seaquake. "But they're dead. All dead!" He fell to his hands and knees, trying to come to balance. "Why did you kill her?"
"Because she asked me to, Sean."
"I don't believe you," Sean gasped. He felt as if he were strangling on his own tongue. "Why?"
"Because Mary wanted Piper to live. Because she loved you so, Sean. She could not stay with you, but she left you her most precious gift, before she went to live with Malak forever," Ram bowed her head. "And if you want to punish me for that, you will have to wait another hundred days until I am delivered."
Sean collapsed on his belly, his forehead crashing down on his crossed arms. "Shut up! Just shut up! I don't want this! I can't stand it!"
He felt her cool breath against the back of his neck as she spoke, " I am sorry, Son. Sometimes Destiny drives us past any reason to that place where we were born to go, and not all our strength, nor all our prayers will have it otherwise."
Sean knew she was saying something to him. He heard each word as clearly as he had done their long summer walks on the beach, but they made no images, no meanings for him. He heard their pity and their love of him. He heard the camaraderie in the tones that said his mother understood his suffering, firsthand.
He rolled over onto his back and looked up into her poor, ruined eyes. "Did you hate me?"
Ram reached for him, touched lightly to gauge his position and then scooted her thighs under his head, her fingers winding through his curls. "How could I hate you, Sean?"
"Because of how you got me," Sean closed his eyes and followed the tracks of her hand over his scalp. "Because of what I did? What I tried to do."
Ram did not answer at first. There was only a deep sigh and then a thoughtful silence.
"Your father brought you out of the grave and into the light, against all odds and at a very serious price to himself, to his honor as he perceived it then. You have suffered greatly all this long, sad year of your time with Mary. You saw your sweet friendship distorted and torn by time and fate and a great many other things you could not change. And in the face of all that hopelessness and your own great grief, still you sought to claim a proper vengeance, in her name," Ram's praise ended.
"In the face of such glorious endeavors," she sighed again, "one can hardly do more than surrender as graciously as possible."
Sean rolled on his side, nestling his cheek into her thigh. "It's nice of you to say so," his words slurred sleepily over the s's. "But I know you don't believe it."
"I can scarcely think that Fate cares anything for my beliefs, Sean," Ram answered.
"You're not a bad old worm after all," Sean stirred and mumbled in his sleep.
"Well," Ram spoke over the sleeping lad, to the darkness beyond the dusty column of light. "You can stop skulking in the shadows and get the boy down to Piper before she talks Gawain into bringing her up here in a bucket of brine. For her nature, she has shown remarkable reserve to have waited so long."
The Highlander stepped forward into the light and lifted his exhausted heir carefully, never breaking the boy's slumber.
When the sound of the Scot's heavy tread had damped down to silence, Ram turned back to her stones. She struggled a bit rising, seeing her left arm was nearly a third gone now and no help at all--nor did her advancing gestation help her agility. Gauging the sun on her upturned face, she reoriented and returned to the largest stone in her collection on the hillock. There she lowered herself carefully and returned to studying its edge, chuckling now and again.
"He's right you know."
Ram jerked up from her crouch. "Adam? I thought you'd left with your brother and that spouse of yours."
"Not such a bad old worm," Adam continued. "Not a particularly truthful--What are you cackling on about there?"
Ram's fingers stopped gliding down the edge of the stone. "He never said 'old.' Oh, you haven't seen my library."
"Your what?" Adam folded his long legs and settled down beside her.
"Well, I've been going out of my mind with boredom," Ram reached for the opposite edge of the stone and started down its length. "So Tom and Gawain got together and arranged for Gay's ogham collection to be shipped here, so I could read it, in exchange for correcting the translations."
"Uggam?"
"Oh, dear. Don't tell me you've forgotten your Bardic skills, Adam."
"Guilty," Adam's shrug was lost in her blindness.
"Ogham," Ram corrected him. "Sort of Nortic, neo-pagan graffiti. Formally, it's used on headstones, but these are way markers and the 'gravings cover several centuries. Here--" She reached out her hand, palm up and waited.
Adam placed his hand in hers and she pulled it down to the stone edge, letting his sensitive fingers touch the edge. It was marked down the entire length with finger-width dents, running across the angle of the edge. They were grouped in two's and three's, some perpendicular, some angled.
"Oh," a very old memory flashed, "the tree thing. Let's see: Birch, Oak--ummm--gorseberry?"
Ram rubbed her nose and smiled. "Very good. What does it say?"
Adam thought a moment. "For a good time call--."
Ram sank back and laughed hysterically. When she'd caught her breath, she remarked. "Actually, it nearly does say something to that effect. At least the under-graving says to ware the buxom ruadh at the rim of the eastern forth, because Hagar got a rash the last time he visited."
"No," Adam grabbed his middle and toppled down beside her, roaring.
"Well, it's been marked over by the Lord of the eastern forth, and a challenge added to whichever scoundrel dared be so bold about his wife--and a curse, too, I think, but I cannot quite make it out, under the lichens at the top of the slab."
Adam took a deep breath and sighed loudly, "Oh, my. Are they all like that?"
"No," Ram tucked her maimed arm close to her chest and pushed up. She pointed to a smaller stone standing upright just at the edge of the light circle. "That one is a sad story. It comes from Hadrian's wall just below the granaries at Birdoswold. The graver was searching for someone, something, the length and breadth of the English Isle. Every time he passed this stone, he left another message. Always to the effect of 'not yet,' over and over, year by year, until the markings just stop, somewhere near the top."
"Perhaps he continued his messages on another stone nearby," Adam moved to the stone and tried to decipher the tree language, though, unlike Ram, he could not tell when each message was written.
"My thought exactly," Ram bent over the stone she'd been reading and began picking the lichen's out of the grooves. "Poor Thomas. I made him send an archeologist to what was left of Hadrian's masonry. It is the best preserved portion of the wall as it turns out. No other markings like this stone, though. Other Ogham, of course, but not this message."
"Maybe he found what he was searching for," Adam suggested.
"Does anyone?" Ram's dark pronouncement was delivered so softly, it was hardly audible, even in the exaggerated acoustics of the damp cavern.
"Sooner or later, I suppose we all find our Grail," Adam continued, "or it finds us. What do you think?"
Ram was silent.
"Mother?" Adam ran his hands over the stone and its steadfast message, the proclamation of hope, or hopelessness. He couldn't quite decide which. "Ram?"
Adam approached her cautiously. She was lying over the stone, her cheek against the rough slab. He sat down quietly beside her. "You were very good to Sean, Ram. I know you lied, though."
The blind eyes opened. "So hard to tell whether you mean to complain or extol."
"Both, I suppose," Adam wondered if he shouldn't leave. He knew his presence here must bother her exceedingly --probably more than being alone would. The entire MacLeod family had taken their turn with her, but he had been the first.
"Well, I didn't tell you the truth. Why would I do any differently for your brother."
Adam tried mightily to understand, but her words might as well have been little scratches on stone. "But you admitted that I raped you."
"And that was a lie," Ram sighed and pushed over to her back, the odd, pearlescent globes staring blankly straight up into the light. "But it's all to the same purpose. Like the stone says, 'not yet.' "
"But Sean remembers what really happened," Adam complained.
"And so do you--or at least you did--until you grasped on the slightest suggestion to divert you from your pain," Ram closed her eyes and basked in her thoughts and the odd spotlight effect of the sundered grotto.
"Will I ever know the truth?" Adam asked simply and entirely out of character.
Ram leaned back towards the stone and mimed carving with her fingers--the oak, holly, birch arrangement, the "not yet" sign.
"It isn't an answer, Ram."
"We had a fight," she shrugged. "You were very upset. I told you the truth and you tried to kill me. I killed you instead."
"It was something you did?" Adam felt his pulse quicken and his breath grow short.
"Partly," Ram said.
Then she said something else. It seemed as if she were finishing her sentence, as if she might just be telling him that truth again, but all Adam heard was a rushing like a wave breaking, over and over, on some troubled shore.
"It seems I'll be passing by that stone a few more times yet," he said finally. The rushing stopped and all he heard was a quiet sob off to his left, in the inky darkness. "Ram?"
"I'm just tired," her disembodied voice floated back. She was somewhere between the hillock and the door, and moving away, by the sound.
"Don't leave," Adam started after her.
"No more questions," Ram pleaded.
"I think I know what happened with Sean, and it is much as he remembers, but--"
"It is exactly as he remembers," Ram's silhouette reappeared out of the darkness as she reached the hallway door.
"But that isn't possible," Adam argued.
"Nevertheless," Ram sagged against the stone frame.
Adam caught her up in his arms, ignoring her rather imaginative and thoroughly descriptive objections.
"You know," Adam got his first words in only after they'd reached Ram's bedroom, and then only after he'd loped down to the galley and brought back something tasty to stuff in her mouth. "Uncle Mark came to ask me for your hand in marriage. I asked him how he was going to accomplish that when he no longer existed in the flesh, and he told me he would find a way."
Ram wiped her mouth, all crumbs, and continued the disgusting, eyeless glower she'd begun when he picked her up so disrespectfully.
"When Malak bedded Mary," Adam slid the plate of pastries over the hunter green quilt, closer to the fuming drake. "Mark entered Mary and remained there.
"And the only thing that fits, if Sean's tale is right--it must have been--," Adam tried to quiet the sense that he was losing his mind. "Did Mark somehow take Mary's body and return, like what happened after Malak was torn apart in the field saving Mary two decades ago?"
"I could have walked," Ram grumbled around a mouthful of danish.
"And the difference would have been that Mary was not a true dragon like Malak, and her body was dying when he--when he borrowed it. So Mark would have been running out of time when he found you under attack. He dispatched Sean and repaired the damage that had been done and then--?" Adam paused, hoping Ram would fill the rest in for him.
"If I weren't blind, I wouldn't even be here," Ram made a motion like lifting a glass. It was just the sort of brief, imperious gesture that one gives a servant who has been remiss in the settings.
Adam placed the glass in her hand and waited for her to swallow and whatever other stalling tactic she had planned. "Well?"
"Oh, all right," Ram set the glass down beside her on the bedspread where it proceeded to tip over.
"Oh, no you don't," Adam grabbed glass and quilt, dropping it on the floor, and replacing it with a new spread. "Question still on the table, Ram."
"And aren't you a little old for the lesson on where baby dragons come from?" she snarled. "What you think happened, happened. The quickening at consummation nearly burned down Tom's house and I woke up with soot in my nose, acid in my eyes, and a dead body on top of me." Ram shuddered visibly. "And my arm broken and--I think I would have been all right, but I was so panicked that I ran, and that tore something, and, and--well, then I was halfway down the stairs beyond the pantry, and I passed out.
"You know the rest. There isn't any more to tell."
"Oh. Oh, I see. How incredibly clever," Adam bent down and retrieved the wet quilt. "Mark is coming back as your son."
"I'm glad you're amused," Ram said, giving every indication that she was anything but.
"I'm sorry, Mother. It must have been terrible for you."
Ram smiled, but it was a twisted, unhappy expression. "I came up to the main house as Malak. I suppose I meant to honor him, or to be him one last time, because I had lost him forever and always, and I was feeling lonely. I knelt down to sing the threnody in full hierophant, in lith, in winged ascension.
"But I found I could only pray for myself. I had worked tirelessly down the ages and lost so much on the way and I had finally fulfilled that promise I had made so long ago. I thought, I hoped, I prayed that I might--," she paused and made a hollow, ugly sound that was nowhere near a laugh.
"You see, I prayed for a sign that I might be forgiven, that somehow my actions might allow me to be ransomed from damnation.
"And there was my son before me, beautiful beyond measure. I was so suddenly enraptured and so open, that I could not speak. I only shone my gaze upon him, to give him the full measure of my gladness that he should be the sigil of my redemption.
"That was how he blinded me: I could not close my eyes."
Adam wished he could say something comforting, almost as badly as he wished he could leave.
"What does it matter if I lied to Sean?" Ram said evenly. "Anything he might have done to me after that could not have been more horrible than that single instant when he made me see that my damnation would be everlasting.
"Go away," she said suddenly, "there isn't anything you or I can do about this. It is as it has always been, the only difference being that I understand it now, and, understanding..."
Adam hesitated at the door and turned back.
"...and understanding it--well, you might say I have reached the top of the stone and have not even the heart to change the last NOT YET message into...
"...NEVER. "
"Oh, Honey," Sweet Lucille warbled to the oldest being on Earth. "Ah'm so sure we can't do this without some of that pink stuff. If you don't mind." The First Lady of Seacouver smiled so sweetly Adam had no choice but to obey.
So, while Lucille stood in the long hallway that circled the Seacouver Fair Arena and pressed the flesh with her subjects, the lanky Immortal went to slouch online at the concession stand. The air was full of all the smells of an ancient market. Adam was put in mind of a particularly peculiar event on the edge of the Sinai back in--.
"You buyin' or memorizin'?" the scruffy gentleman woke Dr. Piersen out of his daze.
Adam ignored the slur. "The Mayor's wife will have one of those cotton things and a lemonade, please." He handed over his charge chip and the man ran it under the scan.
"Can't interest you in burger, Mister?"
Adam's long nose wrinkled and he shook his head.
" 'Fraid they're the losers in the earlier goes of the draft pull?"
Adam grimaced at the greyish meat patties, bubbling in a scum of God knew what. "Not unless by 'pull' you mean the Iditarod," he commented.
"Move along," the concessioner waved him off. "I got customers waitin'."
"And more's the pity," Adam murmured as he made his way back through the knot of well-wishers and adoring fans of the inestimable Mrs. Mayor Dawson.
"Now, Honey," Lucille accompanied him down the hall to the nearest stairs up. "HorseMaster Thomas is off somewhere hiding and Mr. MacLeod is not disposed to be sociable, so it's up to you to see to it that I'm well informed about this pull thing. I'm to give the trophy, you know, and it would be such a shame if I didn't show the proper appreciation."
"I'll do mah best ma'am," Adam replied in his terrible attempt at a drawl. All the while he mentally reviewed what little he knew of the competition. All the usual horse resource persons were busy with Tom's mules and Duncan was in a Celtic snit, if not a full-blow Gaelic humour. Oh, the Highlander was a far cry from the Gathering enraged warrior who tried to drown Old Adam, not three month's earlier. He was pleasant enough, just distant as the star bespangled heavens.
And there he was, stooped over some clan project or another on his lap slate, more or less hiding in the shadows of the V.I.P. box that hung over the end of the arena and roofed the in-gate.
"Oh, don't get up on my account," Lucille's melodious tones shook Duncan out of his task and drove him to his feet, bowing courteously.
"Oh, my, First Lady Dawson, don't you look a picture," MacLeod's dour countenance brightened suitably.
And she did, at that, thought Adam. He hadn't really noticed. Lucille was a cotton candy to the Eldest Immortal all air and Sweet and, well, pink. He should have been ashamed to pay so little attention to the wonderful woman who had seen him through some salacious and sultry evenings, once upon a time...in a galaxy far, far away. But, yes, Duncan was right. Mrs. Dawson was dressed in a lovely spring shirtdress of palest beige silk underneath and a full skirt of peach flower petals in a sheer fabric that floated and swirled a charming compliment to her perfect sloping hips. All of this topped by a pale picture hat and lace gloves. Which was in no way to leave out those signature breasts--even buttoned up to what would have been proper for a nun, the Sweets looked--well, not like a nun, surely.
Oh, Mizz Scarlet, Adam thought, are we ever dolled up for a garden tea, or what.
Duncan finished with the polite conversation and returned to his back row seat beneath the tricolor bunting and Adam held Lucille's chair.
"Oh, this is so exciting!" Lucille exclaimed as the first teams started entering the arena. "My God, they're so big. Oooh, tell me which are which."
Behind them, MacLeod snorted, "Foolishness."
"All right," Adam ignored the Highlander's avid disinterest. "If this were prize-fighting, then these would be the heavyweights."
"They look like monsters," Lucille smiled widely and waved back as one of the driver teams acknowledged her.
"They weigh a ton or more," Adam said.
"Each team is a ton?" Sweet asked.
"Each horse, Lucille," Adam corrected her.
"So which one are the Friesians, Adam?"
"No, Lucille," Adam chuckled, "Friesians don't pull. They're riding stock, and much too small to--."
Sweets waved a program under the Old Man's too-wonderful nose.
"Oh," Adam grumbled, reminding himself not to speak outside of his knowledge base. A fine black pair of Friesians had won the lower weight competition earlier that day. "I stand corrected. They don't pull as heavyweights, though. They don't weigh more than eleven hundred pounds."
"I see," Lucille fanned herself with the program. "So the black team there--."
"Those are Shires," Adam pointed to a fine team of blacks with white stockings and brilliant red silks in their braids, all their brasses shining like gold. "The red brown horses with the light bellies, manes, and tails are Belgians. The greys with all the silver tack are Percherons. The big bay teams are Clydesdales. I think those two teams are from the six horse hitch that was in the parade yesterday. Yes, that one--" he indicated an enormous blood red beaste with black mane and tail and snow white feathered stockings, "--is the wheel in the hitch."
"Wheel?" Lucille asked as another team of Shires stomped in, shaking the ground, their hitches jingling like bells, chink, chink, chink, with each ponderous step.
"In a two horse hitch," Adam tried to remember exactly what Thomas had told him about the mules. He was a fair rider, but his knowledge about driving was sketchy at best. "One horse is the dull, steady, oaf of the pair," he turned around and stared at MacLeod. "And the other is the wiry, speedy, brains and spirit of the team."
"I take it the steady one is the wheel," Lucille guessed rightly.
"Right," Adam agreed. "In a six-horse hitch, he's just there to stand still, so the others have a fulcrum to turn around." He looked again over his shoulder at MacLeod, but this time it was not as a joke. "In a two horse pull, though, it's the kick horse that gets the sled going, then the wheel picks up the weight and then they pull through together." Adam smiled and nodded, surprised he'd never made the connection before, a sort of a four-footed validation of his place in the world.
The sled, a large wooden platform about twenty feet by twelve feet wide was dragged into the arena behind someone's precious antique tractor. None of the teams shied at the old engine's noise. Many of the men pointed their teams away from the center of the arena, so that their steeds would not grow nervous in anticipation.
While the ring crew loaded the blocks onto the sled, Lucille noticed something strange about the drivers. "Adam? Why do so many of them have something wrong with their hands?" Hardly a man among them didn't have some leather and brace affair on one hand or the other.
"See that yoke in the front of the sled?"
"Yes?"
"See that ring at the center of the yoke? Well, if you look over at the hitches--."
Lucille looked. Instead of being hitched to a wagon, there was only a crossbar connected to the tugs of the harness. It dragged on the ground behind the horses. She noticed there was a steel hook on a short chain attached to the center of the bar.
"Well, the most dangerous job on a pull is the man who drops that hook into the ring on the sled. It's done at the last minute, right before the team lunges forward," Adam finished explaining. "It's a good way to lose a finger."
"Wow," Lucille stared in awe. "They're really serious about this."
"It's not like any of these teams have ever, or will ever, see the business end of a plow," Duncan interjected.
"Whatever," Adam shrugged his deceptively wide, if bony, shoulders. "If it weren't for these competitions and these foolish patrons, there would be no more Shires or Perchies or Clydes or--." He ran out of breeds, though there were at least six more in the draft category that he knew of: Canadian Draft, Dutch Carriage--.
--But the competition began as the first team backed, snorting and fidgeting, into position before the sled, and any further commentary was momentarily delayed.
It was a superb Belgian team, shiny green silk woven into the top braid of their tails, their white manes clipped close, roached even with the line of their necks, so as not to interfere with the harness, Adam supposed. In times past, when these behemoths were used in the fields, the very best draught was thought to be a cross between this breed and Percherons. In modern times, however, such impurities were not tolerated. The great red horses backed towards the sled--called a "boat," for no apparent reason--and its three ton load of granite stones. Four men, each wearing very expensive latter-day recreations of farm gear, 'ralls and such, gathered round the team, two at the horses' heads, one on the long reins, and the last, lifting the ring on the boat yoke and waiting for the hook to come within reach of his other hand.
A quick movement, almost too fast to follow, and the hook was down into the ring. Almost simultaneously, the hook man jumped sideways out of the boat's path, and the men at the bridles also backed away as the driver whistled up the team with a shrill pipe and a harsh, "Gwannn!"
The lead horse mis-timed, being late to the lunge and the wheel had to wait until the lead leaned forward again. Then the boat's inertia surrendered to the ponderous beastes and the boat lugged forward--ten, twenty, twenty-seven feet.
"Whoa," the driver coughed out the command and the Belgian team slacked back, waiting for the hook to be released and for their turn to go back and wait at the arena wall.
Lucille fanned herself with a program. "Oh, my, my," she commented breathlessly. "This is really something."
When the cheering had stopped, the next team was announced and a stunning pair of greys moved forward for their turn at the preliminary weight. The arena reverberated with cheers and stomps as the greys slid the boat easily and trotted a brief, showy path back to their place in the queue.
"They're very good," Lucille poked Adam when he failed to applaud.
"It's early, Lucille. These are all champions. It will be several hours before the winner is known."
"They must practice a lot," Sweet said.
"It's all they do all year long," Adam informed her. "It's a full time profession and most farms keep ten teams training at all times."
"There's money in this, Adam?"
Adam smirked. "Let's just say it's more than the Mayor makes."
Lucille's lush lips made a perfect circle.
"It's a sign of where we've come to," Duncan grumbled from the back of the box, not looking up from the project on his slate. "My money's on the Shires," he added, pointing to the far wall, where a gigantic pair of blacks waited nervously. He leaned forward and handed actual cash to the First Lady of Seacouver. The Highlander did not trust the chip exchange system.
Lucille waited for Adam to cover the bid, which he did after several tours of all the pockets in his "I'm being invisible" grey suit.
One team after another, they were all wonderful, and only two teams failed to pull the requisite 27'6" in at least three tries. The last team, one Shire cross, and the other an indeterminate breed, apparently mismatched by size, fairly flew the boat over the line and then some. No matter their tack was an odd collection of old pieces, they were in prime condition, groomed lovingly, all the gear cleaned and oiled, though it was very old.
"That's my pick," Adam announced after they were done. He'd heard about this pair, the diminutive lead, the sweet wheel, the elderly driver who actually plowed with the pair when he wasn't borrowing a trailer and taking them to the pulls. They were clearly the crowd favorites, even to those in the some five thousand attending who did not understand the true genius of the odd pair. They did not need to understand. They felt it so clearly, they called the team by their separate names, Mutt and Jeff.
"But where is HorseMaster Thomas?" Lucille asked as the last team finished.
Adam shook his head. "They evidently won't let him compete with the mules. They are the wrong weight for this division in any case. He was pushing the envelope to think they'd let him in to the Big Pull."
"Oh, dear," Lucille sighed. "All that work. They're very big mules," she added.
"Lucille," Adam leaned in close. "Together, they hardly outweigh one of these horses. Thomas was trying the impossible. We can't fault him for failing. It was an intriguing idea."
There was a commotion under their feet and Adam stood to look over the railing and down towards the in-gate. Then he sat down, laughing. "Well, don't count Tom out," he announced. Through the ingate pounded the team of Cross Mammoth Mules, high-stepping trot, the sorrel and the black. Thomas stood balanced on the cross beam like water skier behind a power skiff. He was dressed in a pale beige saddle suit, white stock, almond gloves, looking very much the Edwardian gentleman.
The mules were gorgeous, their hides polished to satin, white and red ribbons braided into their manes (Grant's contribution, no doubt), but they were mules after all.
The crowd erupted with laughter and some outright booing.
Thomas paid no heed.
Down on the arena floor, the drivers left their teams and gathered in the center, shaking their fists, pulling rulebooks out of their 'rall pockets and generally howling their objections to the poor ring steward and the three judges. And this was before Tom had finished his showy circle of the show ring. He reined the mules down to a walk and then halted them at the center. He stepped off the crossbar and put the team on a "stay" command.
"Is there a problem, gentlemen?" HorseMaster Cross said loudly enough to be heard around the entire building.
From their vantage, Adam could not hear much else, but he could tell by their stances that they were arguing this or that point in the rule book, and he knew from something Thomas had said earlier, that there was actually no particular mention of mules being excluded.
"What's the problem?" Lucille asked.
"Well," Adam replied. "It looks like they're arguing about the weight now."
"Why does that matter?" she asked.
"The mules have an unfair advantage," Duncan was no longer lost in his project.
"But I thought you said--" Lucille complained to Adam.
"If there is a tie, then the lighter team will win," Adam explained. "And it's well known that mules pull more weight in comparison to their own body weight."
"But they won't make it to a tie because they are so light," Lucille retorted.
"And that," Adam nodded, "is exactly what I imagine Tom has argued--and successfully by the look of it."
Thomas was even now walking back towards his team. But one of the drivers had found something in the rulebook that helped his case and was waving it under the poor steward's nose.
The steward called Tom back and their bowed heads touched over the rulebook. Thomas nodded curtly and returned to his team.
"Oh, oh," the Mayor's Wife noted.
The mule team trotted towards the in-gate and then halted.
"It has been ruled," Thomas nearly shouted. "That I cannot hitch my own team and drive as well."
Adam looked down at the tiny blackman in the miniature saddlesuit, looking like a pony class all by himself.
"Adam Piersen," Tom sounded the name so everyone heard it.
Adam fought his inclination to cringe. Up to now, he'd only been the First Lady's escort, maybe a bodyguard, but even twenty years later, Seacouver still remembered the Gay Rights poster boy by name.
"Yes?" Adam tried to keep his voice even and unassuming.
Then, in front of God and everybody, Thomas brought the house down with his soberly rendered request:
"Will you be my hooker?"
It took a good ten minutes for the crowd to regain its composure. The time was well spent by Adam, trying to pay close attention to Tom's instructions, and all the while trying not to think of how precious--nay, life-sustaining--his elegant hands were to him. He took off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves.
The ring steward signaled them and Tom backed the team towards the boat. Adam picked up the ring with his right hand and leaned over double, reaching for the approaching tug bar and its treacherous hook.
"Easy, easy," Thomas' soothing tones were as much for Adam as the mules.
Adam caught the hook and Tom backed the well-mannered team one more step.
The hook dropped perfectly into the eye and Adam dropped them both. Tom timed his command to the instant when Adam let go and the red lead leaped forward, breaking the sled loose as the larger black mule picked up the full weight and drove forward while the red mule caught up and they finished in tandem.
The mules were so excellent they needed only one pull to cross the distance and they were splendidly matched, one to the other.
But no one noticed any of the mastery that the Cross mules displayed.
Adam had rather distracted their attention, flying twenty feet over the back of the lead mule and, face-forward into the sawdust. He came up, spitting dust and waving off the steward's concerns.
"Did I forget to mention about jumping out of the well after you drop the hook?" Thomas said as they led the mules back to their waiting spot, in front of the Mayor's box. "That boat comes forward awfully fast with this team."
"Do tell," Adam commented.
They parked the team facing the sled. Big Black just dozed, but the Red Lead watched everything, snorting and stomping and nudging the wheel, until the larger mule nipped him and told him to be still.
It was going to be a long afternoon and they needed to conserve their energies.
"Here," the Highlander offered a glass of lemonade to Lucille Dawson.
Lucille's pale hand patted the folding chair beside her as she took the glass in her other hand. "The greys and the Clydesdales failed," she whispered. "Tom's mules took two tries, but they're still in. That leaves Mutt and Jeff and the Shires and Tom for the next pull. They're up to five tons," she added. "So many stones."
Having caught up on the news, Duncan leaned over the rail and gave a thumbs up to Adam and Tom.
Adam answered with a "V" sign.
The Highlander was probably the only one in the arena who knew what the sign really meant. In the Middle Ages, archers were the main ordinance of any army. If the enemy caught your archers, they cut off the first two fingers of their right hand, to render them useless as weapons. The "V" sign was given by the archers at the start of a battle, indicating they were still un-maimed, still strong.
Duncan MacLeod had thought to be back before the break ended, but the crush at the concession stands said otherwise. He'd almost missed the finish. This would be the weight that broke two, if not all, of the teams. "If none of them make this weight," he informed Lucille, "then Tom comes in third."
"Why?" Lucille turned to stare at her favorite Scot.
"He stipulated to five-thousand pounds as the weight of his team," Duncan explained. He'd run into the harried steward in line at the stands.
"Then Mutt and Jeff will win," Lucille reasoned that the Shires far outweighed the mismatched favorites, even though they were hardly the fictitious two and a quarter tons of Tom's mule team.
The tractor left the arena, finished with its repair of the pull ruts. The forklift moved another five gigantic granite stones onto the boat.
It was far from the mythical "ten ton pull," which Duncan tended to think was a myth or a wet grass field or some other variant that made it untrue. Still, at half the mythical weight, in this deep arena of sawdust and river sand, if any of the teams managed it, he would be very surprised.
The Shires went first, missed the hook and then couldn't make half the distance, even with two more pulls. The wonderful black pair seemed to know they'd lost, though their driver went to great pains to show his approval of their fine performance. He did not, however, have the same patience with his son, the hooker, who had lost their chance for them.
So it came down, at the last, to the two unlikely teams of Mutt and Jeff and Tom's mules.
Mutt and Jeff were exhausted. Their sleek coats were all crusty with arena dust and salt crystals. Their driver thought a long moment and then gave the steward the head down shake of his billed farmer's cap that signaled a "by."
The maneuver caught Thomas a little flat-footed. He put his arms around the wheel's neck and talked tactics while the lead ducked under his partner's chin and tried to get in on the conversation.
"All righty, Lads," Thomas stepped back. "This is for all the marbles, let's make it count."
Adam stepped forward, spit on his hands and rubbed them together. He lifted the eye and waited.
Tom drove his team from the ground now, not standing on the bar. He sent them a wide warm up loop around the end of the arena and then brought them up beside the boat and its agonizing weight of stones. "Huhhh," he gave them the halt sound. Both mules ducked their heads down and backed obediently towards their trial.
Adam crouched down on his long legs and reached for the hook. There. He dropped it and jumped sideways.
Before the ring and hook hit the ground, Thomas urged the team forward.
The Lead went down so far, his belly touch the ground and his hind hooves dug in, nearly forward of his shoulders. He didn't look like he was pulling, so much as swimming. The enormity of his effort to kick the sled loose was everywhere evident: every muscle in rigor, every breath a bray, ears straight sideways. He launched and kicked hard, making a sound like a scream and, while the arena went silent, craaack, the boat jerked and the Wheel groaned into action.
"Uh, uh, uh," Every throat in the coliseum strained with the two. Six feet, eight feet.
The Wheel stood up straight again and bit the Lead sharply, just ahead of the hame, to calm him. The smaller red mule was in a fit from the effort. The Wheel backed up for the both of them, while the Lead found his senses.
"Adam?" Tom called to his hooker. "Unhook."
Adam came to his own senses and disengaged the pair so they could do another loop and stretch their legs between tries. The message was just so clear to him that he unconsciously reached for the edge of the nearest granite block, thinking to find a confirmation graven there.
He waited for the next try, holding the eye as if he'd done hooking all his life. His body automatically tensed and lowered as the team backed towards him, and the hook, and then he jumped to the lead side and out of the way.
The hook and eye hit the ground, for the first time in the competition for this team. They'd mis-timed.
Thomas let the team pull, but he did not urge them to extend beyond the three feet they managed. A disappointed, "Aw!" echoed around the arena.
Adam unhooked them and Tom led his team away by the bridle of the frantic red mule, who had all but lost it. He parked the team near the wall and ran his hands over the red mule, front to back. Then he just stepped up in front of the Lead and asked, "Can you go again?"
And not an ear in the stadium missed that simple question. Nor did any, hearing, question that Tom should ask just exactly this.
Nor did anybody question that the answer was, "Yes."
For the last time, Tom ran the team past the boat and backed them towards Adam.
Adam did his very best hook up to now and Tom called them forward at exactly the right moment.
And everyone held their breath. Not a few of the oldest among them knew they were watching the mule equivalent, weight for weight, of the mythical "ten ton pull."
It was a disaster. The Lead dove forward, inches from the ground, striving with all that was in him to "kick" the boat free. He might have been right that he could try again, but there wasn't enough left to succeed.
"Easy, Adam," Tom called out to the red mule.
Hearing his master's voice, the Lead gave his last, best effort, and the sled bumped forward.
But the red mule went down and fell sideways in the harness, still digging, uselessly, in the dirt.
The audience stood, to a man.
"Whoa, Mac, whoa!" Thomas screamed, but the Wheel never heard him.
Bent over double, his sable muzzle grazing the ground, the black Mammoth Wheel picked up the entire weight of the sled and his partner and moved, digging and leaping, forward again and again.
"Mule! Mule! Mule!" they screamed with each new, impossible lunge.
And Mac made them a victory that none would soon forget.
It was all pandemonium after that. Duncan leaped down twenty feet to the sawdust and rushed to help Tom and Adam with the twisted harness that was hanging the frazzled Lead. Mutt and Jeff's driver joined them, steadying the Wheel and praising him for his fine showing.
The Lead was finally freed from the harness and staggered up sheepishly to a thunder of applause that shook the coliseum.
"Adam and Mac, huh?" MacLeod yelled over the roar of the crowd.
But Master Cross pretended not to hear.
Just a note: Such an incident as described here did happen with a horse team in Connecticut about twenty years ago. The ten ton pull is not documented as having been accomplished, but all pull fans know about it. Mutt and Jeff exist, but this is not their names. They are a perfectly wonderful and talented team that nobody could beat when they pulled ten years ago.
to be continued...
