Vellum (61 page)

And it's 1936 and Seamus Padraig Finnan is looking in the mirror at a face that hasn't changed for the last twenty years, not so's ye'd notice it at all. It's strange it is, uncanny, but there's a lot that's strange and uncanny in Seamus Finnan's life, full as it is of voices and visions, the whole babbling confusion of them such that sometimes he's not sure if he's awake or dreaming. It makes him a little distant from everyone around him, but then sure and he sort of prefers it that way. No one to hurt ye or be hurt by ye. And it makes it easier to do what he has to do now, being without a family and all, no wife and children to worry for him, to beg him not to go, no, not to be so daft. Let Spain sort its own problems out, they'd say. Ye've got mouths to feed here, bread to put on the table here, without going off to wave yer red rag flag at the fascist bull. No, Seamus doesn't have a family like that. Just…maybe just…a brotherhood of sorts.

“Sure and the Dukes, though proud now,” Finnan says, “shall soon be brought down by a marriage they've already made, one that will end with them cast down from power, down from their high thrones, thrown from their grand ivory towers. And then the curse of those who wore the crown before—the curse they swore in their own fall from those same ancient seats—will be fulfilled.”

Henderson is turning, as if hearing the madman's rantings for the first time. Finnan cocks his grin, blows him a kiss and shouts it:

“Aye, ye fookin cunts. The Covenant will fall.”

Glasgow to London by bus, the seven of them, smoking cigarettes the whole journey and looking out the window at the dreary gray scenery. And then it's Party headquarters and the comrade there giving Seamus the money for all of their tickets onward—returns, though God knows why; they'll not be coming back any time soon. So they land in France (and it's strange being back, going back to France and back to war, the way he swore he never would) and head straight to Paris for a night in a wee pension. By train to Perpignan the next day, down close by the border. They cross the Pyrenees on foot, and there's a French border guard on patrol, but he just stands out on the hillside looking the other way as they sneak past, and whistling the Internationale. From the frontier town Figueras, where the Yugoslav Tito's in charge, to the Karl Marx Barracks in Barcelona and finally, at last, to Albacete, headquarters of the International Brigade.

“I'll tell ye this,” says Finnan. “There's none but I can show them shelter from the storm to come. I know these things, how things will go. So let them sit, thinking they're safe and sound and feeling bold with swords of fire in their hands, surrounded by the high-flown sounds of unkin words of power; it will not stop their fall from grace to ground.”

The training isn't so much basic as bloody elementary. There's no butts, no machine guns when they arrive and half the boys have never even handled a rifle before, so Seamus somehow ends up showing them the ropes, drilling them and such. Open order, advance by sections, fire a few rounds. Equipment, munitions, is precious, rare, arriving in dribs and drabs; a couple of old Lewis guns for firing at aircraft, French Chauchats that Seamus views with cold contempt, and the rifles that they get at first, well, ye have to put the butt on the fookin ground and use yer boot to get the bolt out 'cause sure and ye can't fookin get it out with yer hand. What he wouldn't give for a Lee Enfield.

Chinchon, the 11th of February. They get twelve hours training on the Russian water-cooled Maxim machine gun and the next morning they're sent up the line to the Jarama Valley, into the Jarama, fifteen thousand men in four brigades against thirty thousand Germans, Italians and Moors all fitted out with the best kit that Hitler and Mussolini can provide. But they have something that those fookin fascists and conscripts and mercenaries don't. They have a cause worth fighting for in a Republic to defend and in a brotherhood of clenched fists raised against fascist salutes.

Mucho fuerte, the Spaniards say. Mucho fuerte.

“Ye see,” he says, “the fighter they now train against themselves, this prodigy, is one that nothing can withstand. Ye hear me? Nothing.”

Henderson stands at the circle's edge, the toe of one boot touching salt, staying, for all his unkin might, on the safe side of Finnan's binding where the Cant can't touch him, where the words are just words, so he thinks. Not quite.

“His flame will put the fookin lightning flash to shame,” snarls Finnan. “Son, his roar'll make the thunder of the skies sound tame, and shatter Tridents in the sea.”

He strains against the cutting wires, Finnan does. Blood trickles down over his hands.

“These gods, these new lords of the world,” Finnan says, “they have the power to make the earth shake. But as ye'll come to understand, ye fookin angel cunt, he has the power to make the sleeping giant wake.”

And stumbling into their ruin, Finnan thinks, like fools, they'll learn how different it is to serve humanity than to rule.

He shakes his head, a hoary giant, the heart of Seamus Finnan, of Prometheus, beating inside him like a drum.

“Against my foes may such titanic themes and cyphers come—”

“Aye, so you hope,” says Henderson. “You really think that anyone will ever rule the Dukes?”

“I
hope
?” laughs Finnan. “No. I say what will be done. They'll suffer even more than me.”

“Why are you not afraid,” the bitmites hiss, “hurling such words about?”

Henderson hears it and steps back, a new look on his face replacing the contempt. He looks closer at the pattern of the black technology of blood and ink scrawling all over Finnan's battered body, peering at it until his look resolves into a recognizable expression. Fear.

Finnan answers the bitmites, but he's looking straight at Henderson.

“What have I got to fear when death has not been fated, not for
me
?”

“
They might inflict worse suffering than this,” the bitmites hiss.

“Let them do their worst; it's what I would expect.”

“It would be wise to pay respect. A drastic—”

“Worship and pray,” says Finnan. “Flatter yer rulers, each of them in turn. These Dukes don't frighten me. Let them do anything they want to me. Sure, let them have their triumph this short time. They'll not be ruling long.”

He flicks his head—
what's this I see?

“Well, if it isn't the Dukes' errand boy, the tyrant's lackey. Sure and he's got some grand new message for us, I suppose. How goes the war against reality?”

A shape of leathery black against the white of frozen carcasses and frosted metal, plastic strips swinging behind him, the scribe of the Covenant, architect of what was meant to be heaven on earth.

Metatron.

A MINISTER OF THE GODS

No. 1 Company and No. 2 Company had already been beat back from Suicide Hill, as they called it, but Finnan and the lads had held it for another day. It was only when No. 4 Company broke under the shrapnel of antiaircraft fire—sure and without sending word to them—it was only then that the fascists managed to get round them, and even then they might have held out if it hadn't been for the fookers that rose up out of the dead zone in front of them, their hands raised in clenched-fist salute and calling Kamerad, Kamerad, singing “The Internationale” as they came forward.

“Keep firing,” Seamus had shouted, voice hoarse with the smoke and all the shouting over gunfire of the last day. “Fire, for fook's sake. Fire!”

And some of them did, but some of them didn't in the chaos and confusion and then it was just too late, sure and the fascists were on them, overrunning them, and all hell broke loose. At the end of it there were twenty-nine left out of a hundred and twenty, herded together, and Harry Fry, the Company commander, wounded with a fookin dum-dum in the arm. Sure and the Geneva Convention means fook all to these fascists. Seamus watched the second-in-command, the Aussie, Ted Dickinson, march up to a tree and about-face when they found his papers on him, told him he had to fight for fascism now or die.

“Salute, comrades,” he said, as the gunfire cracked.

They march now, for Navalcarnero, twenty miles southwest of Madrid, the Moorish cavalry in their long robes and fezzes forcing them on with the slap of a saber on head or shoulders, their thumbs tied together with wire. One man reaches to his pocket for a cigarette and he's shot dead there and then. Phil Elias, his name was.

And finally they arrive, get shoved into cells, nine men in each of three small, barren rooms.

The interrogator has an Oxford accent.

“By Jove,” he says, “jolly fine mess you've got yourselves into, what what?”

“You schemer, bitter as bitterness itself, who gave such honor to these momentary mortals that live for a day, you thief of fire.”

Metatron steps into the circle as he intones the words. It's ritual, invocation, and Finnan feels the identity stirring, straining inside him.

“The Covenant demands you name this union which you brag will
throw us from our throne.
”

He raises a hand as if to stroke the air and involutions of black smoke, vapor or dust, rise through the air toward it, circling, shrouding. It's his show of power, of control.

“Do it clearly,” he says. “Without riddles. In exact detail. And,
Prometheus,
do not make me make a second journey, or you will see that we are not amused by such—”

“How pompous and puffed-up with arrogance,” spits Finnan, “in yer Cant. Sure and how fookin fitting for a minister of the gods. New, new are you to power, and think your hold is fast, eh?”

The angel twitches. Finnan scrutinizes him, reading the set of his jaw, the furrow of his brows. Shoulders stiff with the weight of war upon his shoulders. He looks tired, worried. Things aren't going well. Finnan can see the fucking tension niggling at the angel's twitching fingertips, the unconscious fidget of someone trying to hold on to control. If ye've seen shell shock, if ye've seen the way the mind plays with the body, then ye know that sometimes in those subtle actions that another man might not even notice, sometimes there's a truth that's trying to be told. Trouble in the ranks? Deeper than that, he thinks. Trouble at the
top
?

“
Well,” he says, “I'll tell ye this, man. I've already seen two powers thrown from those same heights, and soon shall see the third, your present master, hurled headlong in shame.”

At the word
master,
Metatron blinks and Finnan feels a certainty in what he's saying; it's like looking at a sonar screen and seeing that first blip. The Voice of God, the scribe of the Covenant has…doubts. Sure and Seamus has known enough crises of faith his self to recognize one in another person's pursed lips.

“Esta tarde todos muertos,” they say. This afternoon you all die.

And the death wagon rolls away.

They put the prisoners to work at a railway terminal on the Lisbon–Madrid line, a distribution center where they can see the stuff that's coming in from Portugal, from Britain, sure, from fookin
Britain,
tins of sardines, Lewis guns, you name it. It's designed to break them, make them see that everything they do is futile, everything they're fighting for is pointless, they can't win, not with their own homeland caring not a jot for Spain's Republic, leaving it to fend for itself against Franco and his Falangists backed by all the power of Rome and the Third Reich.

After the death wagon leaves, another thirty or so bodies on it, the guards smile.

“Esta noche todos muertos,” they say. Tonight you all die.

They parade the prisoners out in two lines in the camp's yard, each of them given a single cigarette as men with cameras click to capture the fine treatment they're being given, show the world the way these noble knights of the black shirt behave with honor and integrity. For sure and isn't that what this Fascism's all about? Going back to the old ways of ancient Rome and the Teutonic knights and Spanish chivalry, tradition and the spirit of the warrior. The photographs don't show the lice crawling across their bodies. A cigarette each, but not one of them is given a match.

“Mañana por a la mañana,” the guards say in the evening, promising that tomorrow morning it won't be just another thirty on the death wagon, though it is of course, only another thirty, in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening.

Ninety men a day.

“You think that your new lords will make me quake in fear,” says Finnan. “Far from it. Go on. Crawl back the way you came. You'll get nothing out of me.”

Metatron has to fight to keep his rage from showing. It's a luxury he can't afford, unlike this blind fool rebel with his fire inside, this Prometheus who'd give humanity the power to burn the world, who doesn't understand, who
will not
understand, that what he rails against is reason, order. O, but no. He sees the shining light of reason as tyrant, sees the nameless and faceless deus on the empty throne as wicked king, not as the one true king of every soul, the one legitimate power of all the primal archetypes the unkin wear, of all the warriors, poets, hunters, scribes. It's men like this that make the Covenant necessary in the first place. Revolutionaries. How many revolutions end in blood and bodies and in fire, the fire that they love so much they want the world to know its terrible beauty? And Metatron should know. He remembers Gabriel, streaked with blood and soot after Sodom and Gomorrah.

But that was different. It had to be done, he thinks. Desperate times call for desperate measures and now…He tries not to think of Gabriel sitting on a throne that should be empty.

“It was this insolence,” he says, “brought down upon you everything you suffer.”

“And I wouldn't swap my chains for yours,” says Finnan. “Better, I think, to serve this rock than be a lapdog leashed to Dukes. This
insolence
is only right to such an insult of a god.”