In his Mother's Name

K.A. Corlett

    Time out of time -- bitter winter in the Massif de Jura. The Vicomte's body hangs by its arms from an old fir, flayed by two sword strokes. He has made enemies amongst the Franc-Comtois nobility. Around him, the snow is stained red. Crimson congeals on my young master's lips, too, for blood has been forced down his throat.

    In the name of God, how will I tell his mother?

    Raise him, necromancer. The fanged demon who has dogged him from childhood stands nearby, hungry to claim him. This is the perfect opportunity, for my young master is stripped of defences.

    I draw my circle, but it is too late; the Vicomte is too damaged. It is a veiled blessing. Better this than the way of the devil.

    Flash forward seven nights, and I am standing in his empty tomb, the splinters of his coffin scattered beneath my boots like so much brittle kindling. Seven -- it can't be so. A vampire rises in three, like the Christ. And a simple corpse does not wait to be asked a second time. But this -- it can only be the work of the Black Goddess Herself.

    "He walks!" The blood-drinking devil, still waiting, laughs and seizes me by the hair. "Now we have him, Antoine -- we are all the family he shall ever need!" The creature's teeth gleam grotesquely in the darkness.

    I stare, frigid to the core, knowing his mother loved him like a tigress. He was a good man. I will make it my business that she never learns the truth. I don't expect the Vicomte, should we find him intact, to thank me.

*    *    *

    I woke from the old dream with a shudder, and gave my befuddled head a shake. Logically I knew the year wasn't 1792, but it felt as though I'd come two hundred years in a span of seconds. It happened every time he was nearby. I never got used to it.

    Aye, he was coming. I could feel it in my spine. The dead give off a pulse, but the Vicomte's was fit to rattle your teeth. Well, and I'd known the bugger since he was days old, not that it served as any comfort. Some evening soon I'd walk in and find him on my sofa, or maybe he'd just yank me into an alley -- I never cared to dwell on it. Everything depended on his state of mind.

    It was my vocation to look after things in his absence, for which he paid me handsomely, or rather his investments did. In truth our arrangements had very little to do with money.

    As it turned out it was his frozen hand that jolted me awake one night in the silence of my bedroom. "Charming place you have, Tony," he rumbled, slowly loosening his hold on my voice box.

    "You're looking well, Vicomte," I managed to rasp.

    "I have been worse," he allowed, sitting back a bit and watching me fold my arms -- slowly -- behind my head.

    "What are you calling yourself these days? I'd like to get it right." Maybe it was my servant mentality, but I could never bring myself to call him Maximillien, his given name.

    His face was a sliver of moon with gleaming teeth. "My patronymic sufficed in Montreal, but it is too tedious to hear these Ontarians mispronounce it. My mother's maiden name will do nicely."

    "You think they'll make out any better with that? You'll sound like a bloody German, or worse still, an Englishman."

    His grin expanded, no sharpies. I was in luck. "Two syllables are easier to correct than five, mon petit Irlandais."

    "And I'm sure you'll set them straight."

    "Mais bien sûr."

    We stared, appraising one another for a while. Neither of us had changed much with the years. We never did.

    "So, I find you between engagements, Tony, yes?"

    "As between as ever I get."

    "No wife this time, no children, no corpses to raise?"

    I shook my head, knowing it was unnecessary; he nearly always did his homework. He braced a hand on the other side of my body, leaning into me a touch. His long ebony braid slithered over one shoulder. I glanced down to where it pooled on my torso. "I have recently acquired a small pub, and I have need of a manager. Do you object?"

    I frowned up at him. "Real estate? Small business? Doesn't sound like you, if you'll pardon my saying."

    "Perhaps I am feeling bourgeois, hmm?" He shrugged, smile receding.

    "I guess we're in business, then, Mr. Lambert." I made sure I said it like a Limey.

    "Tsk, tsk, my old friend." His face came dangerously close, clear eyes glinting. "Would you mock my mother's name?"

    "I think I'll just call you Mr. L."

    "Fort bien. Yes, I will tolerate that."

*    *    *

    The Crossbow was a sweet little pub, a tad dingy with her dark velvet and smoking fireplace, but he knew what I liked. We had the university and professional crowds -- lots of townies, too -- and live music Thursdays to Saturdays. The Vicomte left most of that and the beer selection to me. He imported some French wines you could only get from the Jura Mountains -- professors, lawyers, CEOs liked to ask for vin jaune, once they found out what it was. Every now and then, if the mood took him, he'd do some bar tending, maybe have a word or two with a patron. He spent most of his time in the back office, though, when he was in. If anyone came looking for the owner, they'd have to get past me. As a rule they didn't get far.

    He usually showed up after the kitchen closed. It'd be something like, "Tony, would you...?" with one of his little gestures as he disappeared behind the closing door.

    One night he sat turning a wineglass in his fingers, sizing me up over its rim with his wolf eyes. They used to be hazel, once upon a time, but they'd gone the colour of glassy amber with his change. And colder, certainly that. "Alors, Tony Ó Braonain--how do you like this little collection of matchboxes on the Thames, hmm?"

    I felt my eyebrows converge. "A wee bit bland as cities go, but it'll do."

    "Yes, perhaps."

    "Why?" I laughed. "Thinking of putting down roots?"

    He set his head to one side. "You so nearly read my mind, Antoine."

    "Even God Almighty doesn't bother -- "

    "What if I told you I was thinking of a house?"

    I exhaled a slow, drawn-out breath. "I'd say houses don't travel well."

    "Humour me, my friend." Draining the contents of his glass, the Vicomte set it on the desk between us. He reclined in his chair, steepling his hands and tapping his index fingers against his lips. At length his eyes regained their focus and he sighed. "If I were to make a home for myself after these many years, Tony, there would be but one thing I'd long to have in it."

    "Your harpsichord didn't make out so well after 1801, as I recall."

    That won me a thin sarcastic smile. "Hardly. But I do speak of a lady."

    By increments it dawned on me what he was getting at, and he could tell by my expression that I didn't care for it.

    His teeth were showing now -- ah, but he had a horrible art of grimacing. "Some time has passed since I've seen her, Tony. I left her in your arms, I believe. Dis-moi -- how has she been?"

    The son of a -- I checked myself before I even finished the thought, and his grin grew that much wider. The devilspawn wanted a portrait of his mother, the last Comtesse de Porte-Noire.

    "Why, my dear old necromancer -- you don't approve." He folded his arms across his chest. "You don't think I can look on her face again without--" One hand rose expressively and fell back in place.

    I cleared my throat. "You're hard, Vicomte, but not when it comes to her."

    He blinked, saying nothing.

    "Do you still have nightmares?"

    Again, silence. And finally, "Where is she, Tony -- or do you know?"

    I stood up, pushing back my chair.

    The Vicomte sat there, watching me. He didn't glare, just looked, chin lowered, eyes utterly motionless. You could have drawn his mouth with a ruler. The expression was all too familiar, but rarely in two hundred years had it been turned on me.

    I twisted away, starting for the door.

    "Yes," he growled, "I still have them."

    "So do I," I muttered over one shoulder, pulling the door closed behind me.

*    *    *

    Everywhere blood, blood and fresh death. Death several days old, too. And in the corner, her: crimson dried to wine on lace and yellow brocade. The sharp tang of copper, cold and metallic in my nostrils, down the back of my throat. It was thicker here, it seemed, behind closed windows, than on the Place de la Révolution. Like a dancer he rose in the middle of it, stepping over the bodies of two Paris guards. Before him he held --

    I lunged out of bed, retching. I'd lied about this particular nightmare. Memories I'd had, happily blunted by time. "Shite," I shuddered softly, bending over the toilet.

*    *    *

    I was still queasy the next morning as I leaned on the counter of the fine art storage facility, waiting for the clerk to find the Comtesse's portrait in his archive. He was taking his bloody time, and it was doing wonders for my constitution.

    "It was a Greuze, Mr. Brennan?"

    "That's what I said."

    "Do you have -- " The lad was getting rattled. My bill of lading was already spread on the counter.

    He reached down beside him and brought out a thick binder, paging through it.

    "What seems to be the problem?" I asked.

    "Just a moment, sir," said the clerk, disappearing with binder and BOL.

    I sensed an impending invitation to cappuccino. I wasn't disappointed.

    "Nice fern." I sat back in my leather chair, surveying the glassed-in chic of the manager's office. "Too bad it's dying."

    "Mr. Brennan -- " He was easy enough to peg, an aging art school grad, shoulder pads too big, chin stuck out too far, clunky glasses perched on the end of his nose.

    "You water it too much."

    His gaze flicked to the plant a moment, his lips slightly agape. Then he was leaning forward, clasping his hands on the desktop. "Now, Mr. Brennan, about the painting--"

    "Care to enlighten me as to how it disappeared from your warehouse -- lock, stock, and paper trail?"

    This had to be his genuine look. "I assure you, our tracking system is state of the art."

    "I'd say it leaves much to be desired, boyo." I folded one hand over the other and cracked my knuckles. The sound contrasted nicely with my gentlemanly attire.

    He withdrew to the other side of his desk, vague eyes darting side to side behind his unnecessary lenses.

    "I'd suggest you point me in the right direction. A list of your lucky dealers would suffice."

    The manager spread his hands in protest. "Mr. Brennan, surely you -- "

    "I don't leave bruises," I told him.

    His list was state of the art.

*    *    *

    "Are you losing your touch, mon vieil ami?"

    It wasn't the first time the Vicomte had dislocated my shoulder, or come close. And it wouldn't have seemed like old times without the alleyway, I suppose. I groaned, rotating the joint until it popped. "It's my night off," I grunted, falling against the brick wall at my back.

    "Ah, but you are working on something." He knew. Jesus and Mary.

    "Maybe it's none of your business."

    Even as a human boy he'd had a stare that could bore through granite. He wasn't probing my mind -- I'd felt the ghosts of others slithering behind my eyes, but never him. Still, he was too close, passing his hand over the short grey waves of my hair. "Respect," was all he said. "Respect, Tony."

    Well. There was something in that. He left me to think about it, too, disappearing far faster than my eye could track him. I wandered around a while, wondering if he'd ever really forgiven me my part in raising him. The roots ran deep.

*    *    *

    "Elle est magnifique, necromancer, yes?"

    I refused to put out my hands for his offering -- the gaping head of his mother, severed by the guillotine.

    "Si belle, si belle," the Vicomte murmured over and over. Turning from me, he caressed those colourless lips with his own. Two dancing steps and then he sprang without warning to the corner where he'd positioned her body, settling its crowning glory back in place. "Restore her, Antoine." He balanced the Comtesse's head tenderly, stroking what the executioner had left of her hair. "I, her son, can only give her more death."

    I shook my head, spreading my arms wide.

    Like a great cat he leapt. My back hit the floor before I could blink, knocking the breath from me. "No?" He shook me like a cloth doll, blood teeth exposed and dripping.

    "It cannot -- " I gasped, drawing air. "She is too broken, Vicomte!"

    He dropped me, twisting once again to look on her. He crawled like a spider across the bloodied carpet to her feet. "Oui, and you won't make that mistake twice, will you, Antoine?" The blades of his shoulders shifted, plates of bone beneath the thin fabric of his shirt.

    "Let her have peace." I pushed myself up on one elbow.

    The Vicomte spun, his eyes rimmed in crimson. "I know only the sword, Ó Braonain." I thought he might finish me then; the death force rolled from him in waves, hazing the gory edges of the salon. But he took flight, passing clean over me, lighting on the broad windowsill that overlooked the street. Raising a single stained finger, he trailed it along the pane. "Get out, necromancer, while there is still darkness to cover you. I will precede you to the eastern mountains, no matter how fast you ride."

    I was on my feet now, and he was looking through me. A howl tore from his throat. The notes keened high only to plunge with the bass earthquake of his voice, ripping at my insides.

    I woke sitting on the edge of the bed this time, face pressed into my hands. I was making a real bags of this. I had to find that goddamned portrait before he did, for the more he thought on it, the madder he would surely grow.

*    *    *

    I spent my days running down leads. Nothing ever just disappeared; everything left a residue. Unfortunately I was running up against a lot of limestone walls with heavy growth on them. In this climate ivy was much hardier than ferns.

    One afternoon I found myself in the campus art gallery, chatting up one of the administrators. She was clever, dark-eyed, and Bengali by descent -- Chatterjee, it was -- with incredible legs. I never minded when the skirts got short. She couldn't tell me a thing I needed to know, but it was pleasant talking with someone I didn't feel compelled to rearrange. On the way out she took me through their Europe room, since I'd mentioned some French masters, and maybe because she enjoyed my company just a little. They had a travelling Van Gogh exhibition, some of their own Degas, Klimt, even Kokoschka. I was favourably impressed, and might have shown more interest under other circumstances.

    "But wait, Mr. Brennan," she smiled, laying a hand on my arm. "You were asking after Greuze? We may just have something through here." We passed beneath an archway, and I stopped cold. I must have looked like someone had shot me between the eyes. "Mr. Brennan?"

    I sucked in my breath. It wasn't her, but there he was on the wall, the Vicomte himself. Tanned and hazel-eyed, raven hair pulled back in a smart queue. He wore that audacious half-smile that even in life had dropped a veil over his thoughts. The portrait had hung in their Paris townhouse, to remind the Comtesse of the son who wouldn't come to the city for the winter season, her taciturn eldest who wouldn't marry. "Goddamn," I whispered softly.

    "Striking, isn't he?" She crossed her arms, tilting her head to one side. "It's been authenticated as a Greuze, but the subject -- "

    I leaned forward to examine the bronze plate beneath the piece. Jean-Baptiste Greuze, it read, circa 1785. Young French Nobleman in Black. Courtesy J. Vine.

    "Who's J. Vine?" I demanded, trying not to sound rude.

    She looked at me wide-eyed. "Jarvis Vine? Are you new in town, Mr. Brennan?"

    "I don't get out much."

    That smile again, with a slight shake of her head. "The Vine family practically built the university, hell -- the city! They've owned a piece of just about everything over the years. Mr. Vine's quite elderly now, very frail. He's the last of the line." She nodded, imagining him to herself, I suppose.

    "Fair play to you, love!" I cried, taking her hand and giving it a fervent kiss. "Had I a firstborn, he'd be yours."

*    *    *

    "I couldn't get to Vine that evening, and I was only half-paying attention to drawing the Guinness when the Vicomte slipped in. He appeared to be in a bartending mood, but he hadn't much to say, which was unsurprising.

    After darts a couple of the boys at the end of the bar got a little mouthy. It was Mother F -- in' this and that, and I could see the Vicomte's tongue working over his teeth as he watched them.

    "You want them to go, Mr. L.?" I asked him. "I'd be more than glad to -- "

    "Pas de tout, Tony," he said softly, crossing his arms in front of him and continuing to stare.

    One of the fellows was laughing, hard. Then he hiccupped. A spurt of blood shot out of his mouth and into his pint. He clapped a hand over his lips, then drew it away again. It came away wet and scarlet. His eyes shot up in alarm, finding the Vicomte's.

    "You ought to have that looked at, my friend," suggested my employer. He turned to me. "Remind me to say a prayer for the gentleman, yes, Tony? Perhaps when the Mother is done being fucked, She will be well disposed to him."

    The patron's buddies bundled him out the door with a wad of napkins pressed to his gob, and the Vicomte withdrew to his office.

    After a few minutes I followed him in. "Still given to chivalry, I see."

    He didn't acknowledge me right away -- he was practising a walking meditation, up the wall and across the ceiling. It was a highly precise series of movements requiring perfect placement of the feet. He usually did it when something was getting to him. At length he descended to the carpet and gave me his attention, one eyebrow arched high. "Chivalry at my age, Tony?" His smile was thin. "I merely exist to serve the Dark Goddess."

    "Yeah," I retorted, watching as he put his shirt back on. "Shiva suits you way better than Mr. L." He was an odd specimen. The long perpendicular scars drawn by the killing sword had never left him. By rights they should still be open wounds, but his mother had stitched him up pretty for the tomb. His blood-drinking harridan Goddess must have taken pity and done the rest.

    He glanced in passing at the plane of his torso. "Sometimes I dream of her, sewing."

    "The Comtesse."

    "Of course." He finished with the final button.

    "It still eats at you, Vicomte."

    His eyes iced over. "Particularly when it is chafed."

    I never missed a cue to leave.

    "Tony," he snarled at my back.

    "I know," I said. "I know what you could have done." Skulls were like eggshells to him.

*    *    *

    I should have opted for a little B and E that night instead of sleeping. He who hesitates floats on a sea of blood.

    The painted eyes of the Comtesse de Porte-Noire looked on her eldest, who crouched naked in the great hall of his ancestral home. Down his back, nearly to the floor spilled his hair, matted with life fluid and other things. There was no sound here save my hollow footfalls -- nothing moved. David might have rendered him in that moment, a son of the aristocracy turned sans-culotte, but the prize that he balanced on the end of his sword was not meant for la Révolution.

    He offered her the head of an immortal, the old demon who'd brought him the eternal bloodlust. He'd come all the way to the Jura for it, and it had cost him; all over his body skin and muscle could be seen knitting back to the bone.

    Perhaps in his madness he sought absolution for what he'd become, or some manner of perverse balance. A head for a head? I knew it would never satisfy him. Had he lived, he might have mounted the scaffold with her. At rest, he would never have known the sight of her defiled corpse. We'd denied him peace, the devil and I.

    "Vicomte?"

    He spun, leaping, and all I saw were hot coals burning in a face that was ribbons of flesh. And that torn mouth, aye God, with its daggers--

    In my bed my eyes opened to a tangle of useless hands and fingers, raised to ward him off. My subconscious had spared me the details for too long, I guess. I should have remembered every time I looked in the mirror -- son of a whore. My hair had been tar-black until that night, the last time he'd looked on her picture. I resolved not to sleep again until I'd seen Vine.

*    *    *

    The place was over on Rosedale where the hoity-toities lived, a great limestone monster with a turreted tower on its northwest wing. Though I'd worked in finer, she was handsome.

    "I'm sorry, Mr. Brennan, but Mr. Vine is -- "

    "No he's not." These Canadians apologized for everything. They rarely meant it. I pulled a little something from my breast pocket and dangled it in front of the housekeeper's nose. She was myopic, you could tell. "Tell him I'm here about the lady in the picture, love. He'll see me."

    But of course.

    "Well, well, Mr. Brennan, I'm afraid you've found me out." Jarvis Vine was very ripe as men go -- his face was still slightly pink but collapsing upon itself, going featureless in the way of old people and babies. We sat in wicker chairs on his bedroom balcony as the evening blew in. He didn't seem to mind the chill. "Eastern France is a passion of mine, you know. I used to hike in the Jura when I was a young man. Beautiful old chateaux." He smiled. "I'm ninety-five now." Vine pushed himself up, a touch palsied but not bad. He leaned his elbows on the railing, surveying the expensive Japanese landscape of his dusky yard. "Thing about quiet places, Mr. Brennan -- "

    "Tony."

    He nodded, giving me another brief smile. "Thing about quiet places--you never know what you might find. What you might fall in love with."

    I shifted, leaning back in my chair. At the sound of the wicker creaking he turned to me again, bracing his arms behind him. "Porte-Noire sits up there, in the Jura -- have you ever been?"

    In my peripheral vision I saw a shadow pass along his hallway, or maybe it was just the light waving in the old leaded glass panes of the balcony doors.

    "Don't mind that," said Vine. "Just a little trompe l'oeil." He laughed quietly. "Like Porte-Noire -- a magnificent ruin, but you could imagine her in her day! As I was saying, Tony, I fell in love. I sought every fragment of her history I could dig up. Money buys some pretty fine research. My little grad students found me something tangible, my boy. Just one portrait, at first -- but where there was one, there was bound to be a family."

    My spine had been humming since I'd come in. I stood up, leaning against the rail too, trying hard to concentrate on his words.

    "When I found out the Comtesse was here, Tony -- here!"

    I blinked.

    "I know what you're thinking, son. And yes, we rich geezers have a finger or two in every pie -- "

    I couldn't help smiling at that.

    "Forgive me, Mr. Brennan, but I couldn't do without her!"

    "You're not the only one," I said.

    He got a rum expression on his face.

    "How many have you found?"

    He cleared his throat. "Three, if you include her. There is the Comte -- presently on loan to a Paris gallery, and we may have a line on the second son, Gilbert."

    My eyebrows came together. "That would make four."

    He frowned. "Ah yes, Tony, you're astute. Of course you've seen the young nobleman down at the university, and made the connection. All painted by Greuze during the same period."

    I tilted my head. "You don't care for the Vicomte?"

    "Ah," he sighed, shaking his head, "him." Vine's look grew positively queer. "Well there was no need to have him here, you see, once--"

    It was like someone took my spinal cord and touched cattle prods to both ends. I was through his bedroom and down the second floor hallway before old Vine could spit, throwing open doors.

    "Mr. Brennan!" he called in alarm, and his housekeeper came running. Vaguely I heard him shushing her as I thrust back another portal.

    The room was dark and thick with incense-smell. One candle sconce was lit at the far end, and its meager light cast dancing shapes on the red gallery walls. Pictures upon pictures, papyri, portraits loomed and receded. And in a recess to my left, farthest from the glow, hung the Comtesse de Porte-Noire, the thick auburn waves of her hair falling about her intelligent, lovely face. Below her crouched a shade, its head cocked like the blackest of carrion fowl.

    "Vicomte?" I ventured, and the shadow lunged. My head made a sharp crack as it met the rising floor.

    "Please, Maximillien!" It was the voice of Jarvis Vine. Electric light blared, blinding me utterly. "Please! Mr. Brennan is a -- "

    I blinked, eyes watering, at the face that hovered centimeters above my own, its teeth bared in a macabre grin. "Maximillien?"

    "Bonsoir, Tony."

    I pushed him off me and he sprang to his feet, offering me a hand up. I stared at those white, preternatural fingers, scowling.

    He began to laugh. It seemed like I hadn't heard the sound in a century. "I told you that I was thinking of a house."

    "You dirty bastard," I said. "You goddamn rotten sonofabitch."

    "Ah," beamed our host from the doorway. "So you know one another."

The End

In his Mother's Name© 2004 by K.A. Corlett

K.A. CORLETT is an unrepentant Canadian who writes novels, short stories, and sundry other nasty bits. Her fiction has appeared in Agrippina Magazine, Dark Regions, and Blue Food. Enter K.A.'s online lair at www.kacorlett.com. She'll be waiting for you, along with all the things that lurk in her basement.

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