The Wayfaring Stranger

by phantomwriter05

VOLUME I - In the Season of 1936 Eton and Collegian chaps fill the House of Grantham to chance just a glance at Downton's young roses, Sybbie and Marigold. But, in the seclusion of Crawley House, a demon somewhere in the past of Downton's heir looms like a dark cloud over young love's romance in bloom of a grand countryside summer. COMPLETE

1. Chapter 1

If you see () centered on the page, it's the name of inserted music, designed to give weight to the scene. It is totally optional if you want to go and Youtube it, or if you want to ignore it. It's there for enhanced experience.

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PART I

"There is a demon that lives in his past. A demon that lives off a hate … mmm … a powerful hate …"

The talk in the drawing room of Grantham House in London, in the summer of 1936, had stopped immediately. They were drawn to the smooth and continental voice of a young black man from New Orleans that addressed them. He had been sitting on the sofa in the crimson painted drawing room designed by Lady Grantham herself at the tender age of seventeen. He had quietly been whittling away a block of wood, carving some sort of mythical animal out of it. He had not said a word, but had heard everything. And in that time Jonah Robinson had not stopped smirking to himself as he quietly carved and sanded on a towel that Lady Grantham provided for him. Sybbie had been sitting right next to him, lounging back on the cushions as if she were some Egyptian queen. A group of titled and proper young suitors had madly gathered around her, all of them laughing at shit that ain't funny, and looking like bucks in heat, all of them trying to mount the fairy tale beauty like it was mating season. All night they had been crashing their antlers with one another for her and Marigold's attention. They had nothing to say but veiled insult and boisterous bragging of their superior athleticism and sportsmanship. All in the vain attempt of offering her heart an alternative, trying to turn her head away from the nonsense that was fed to her.

That being the nonsense that George Crawley was some sort of hero.

The largest problem that most people of a certain class and privilege in the British Empire had with George in 1936, still remained, that he simply existed. For most of the boy's life he had been as close to a figment of Lady Hexham's imagination as it got. George was spoken more often than not as a pulp character in his aunt's magazine, than an actual person. Having been exiled to America at the age of eight, shunned from high society by Lady Mary, before even getting to know other children of privilege. The youth's existence was fact, but relegated to a distant character of far off relevancy to the House of Grantham. For so many of the Peerage it had been an unspoken, universal, truth that Ms. Sybil Branson would be heiress someday of all the Downton fortune and swag. And as such, while George Crawley smuggled and worked countless jobs in New York to survive, had fought as a vigilante in New Orleans, and Bounty Hunted and raced on the Texas Border and in Mexico. Back home, Downton had become inundated with young suitors and their grannies and mamas. All in order to groom the lovely young girls reared so gently in the gothic manor castle for future brides. Their fortunes set to be harvested when their hearts were cultivated by the romantic whims of cultured lads with ancient names when the girls came of age.

It was in the eight years of George's absence from his family's life and home that Downton Abbey had become quite the societal destination. The Crawley family growing more popular the older the girls got and the larger the Downton Estate, as well as Lady Mary and Tom Branson's Motor Company, grew. It was common knowledge from plenty of American born Dowager Ladies that George Crawley "must simply" die soon. There was a wicked sense of excitement from coroneted Countesses and Duchesses at the prospect of the boy's half buried, sun bleached, skeleton lying somewhere in the Mexican desert even as they spoke.

So one could only imagine the sheer outrage, the blind rage of dowagers and their daughter-in-laws when decade old schemes fell to not when news spread like wildfire in London that George Crawley had returned. Having taken a sludge hammer to his mama's wedding day in the new year of 1936. And while high society swore to never forgive him for it, they had all put their ears out to the rumblings of the fee that the London Metro Museum was paying him. The rent on being lent an African Ruby that he battled a final duel with a Hausa Shaman for in the crypts of the St. Louis Graveyards in New Orleans. How much wasn't disclosed, but they did hear that it was surely enough for the youth to have bought all of Lady Mary's debt on the Estate. A prospect that troubled the gentry when he immediately suspended and began holding his mama's high county taxes hostage. The tenants and farmers were not happy to hear that George would not remove, the rancorously nicknamed 'Sherriff of Granthingham', Lady Mary as Agent of the Estate. But they were more grateful to feel the squeeze of the Grantham taxes disappear in such hard times. And while all of the leaders of the county were appalled that George, as Downton's new creditor, demanded Lady Mary pay off the estate's debt from her own profits and not the county tax. They all were intrigued by, what they would assume, was a new and eligible bachelor with money to spend.

But they were all disappointed by the cowboyish dressed young man with hard bitten 'Yank' accent and grown out curls. He was handsome in a very appealingly rugged way, charming to a fault, but thoroughly uninterested in society. His character was pocked with his late papa's apathy of societal rules and intrigues. Worse, he was as sarcastic and flickered in wit as Lady Mary Crawley. He spent his time with servants, farmers, and the common people more than he'd ever give a Lord or Lady the time of day.

It was a cardinal rule of the upstairs world of Downton Abbey that at no time, at any cost, was George called upon to solve a domestic problem within the house, nor to help in a similar situation. For fifty years the Grantham way of doing things, conducting business, both public and private, was to be gentlemanly, ladylike, and diplomatic. Eight years in America, formative years, some might have even said 'growing up', spent among hardships and men and women who lived through them had made the heir of Downton as implacably hard as the many troubles he had experienced. And it was upon returning home to Grantham County that he had very little patience or tolerance for niceties or the minutia of county society life. To be blunt, as was his specialty, George used a hammer for the family's usual clay sculpting style of social management.

If someone offered someone insult, George 'shark punched' them with unfiltered retaliation with a haymaker of confidence shattering savagery of wit. If someone did something apprehensible, George Crawley took them by the neck, like a spring chicken for Easter dinner, and throttled the apology out of them, as Larry Gray learned the hard way at his very last dinner at Downton Abbey. And to him, there was never a 'complicated' issue, only 'chicken shits' that avoid lasting solutions in favor of back stabbing in dark corners. Everything was black and white. He was blunt, ill-tempered, sarcastic, and utterly uninterested in the county's societal troubles. He saw the leading families countryside lives as silly and trivial, and he'd rather 'put two in the brain' than hear of their gossip. Simply put, the boy wanted to be left alone, and if engaging him in the troubles of society or aristocracy, he'd find the quickest and most terribly lasting solution to even the slightest problem. George Crawley was interested in justice and lasting deterrents, rather than tea and plotting.

The young man's politics was another point of contention.

For most young men of a certain age and class of privilege in England, if not in Europe as a whole, there were only three options which they could choose … Royalist, Socialist, or Fascist. George Crawley came from America not believing in either three ideologies, nor did he throw his lot behind Tory or Labour either. The boy was a Constitutionalist, a Republican, both in the American Political sense and the political ideology of his home. A great admirer of the Jacobite cause of old, a Catholic convert, and growing to despise the Aristocracy at such a young age, George Crawley refused to support the British Crown. It was especially true that George had a rather rancorous bias against the Windsor's fondness for scandal and Hitler.

Yet, the boy refused both Socialism and Fascism, for simply living in the American South for a time.

He had seen, quite clearly, what a bludgeoned hammer government could be used as against those the bureaucrats deemed 'unworthy' of the state's help. He had seen "Jim Crow" in effect in Democratic controlled Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He had gone undercover in New Orleans to Ku Klux Klan rallies and watched and listened to women such as Margaret Sanger and her Suffragettes as they railed openly against the "Degenerate Negro". These women, who had once fought for the vote, now held their end of the bargain with the late President Wilson and the Democratic Party. He watched them as they stood at pulpits, passionately and wildly did they encourage all true white women of conscious and morality to go out and vote against 'the animal' that was the Republicans.

As anyone should know, the "Grand Ole Party" was nothing but rich men in New York, unwashed 'niggers', and sketchy and trickster Chinamen. Together, this coalition of 'evil', most of which had been George's friends, would put women back in chains. So it was, hearing such hateful rhetoric, and fighting people like them on the Bayou and in over grown cotton fields of New Orleans. The boy having killed County Commissioners, City Councilmen, and even a senator, while they all wore the white hoods and robes of the Klan, had ensured that George Crawley could never trust in the Socialists and Fascists shared dreams of an all-powerful benevolent government.

The boy simply believed in Common Law, Free Trade Capitalism, and a British Republic. No Aristocrats, no House of Lords, no Royal Family, and no great state to champion the oppressed. All three sides from the titled peer to the leftist radical on the East End saw him as an anarchist, a Jacobin, and at worst a traitor to his class and name. An Aristocrat who was openly hostile to the Royal Family, a Catholic and friend of the Jew, and an enemy of the Nazi and Communist party? The word 'Rebel' and 'Traitor' was often used quite liberally in reference to George Crawley from the radical's meeting halls of White Chapel, feasting halls of Eton, to the club rooms at Cambridge and Oxford, and even to the private rooms of Buckingham Palace itself.

To their minds the Blue Bonnets had truly crossed the border upon the young Viscount of Downton Abbey's return.

Suddenly, in the boy's vivid display of apathy to their traditions and mindsets, all the plans that so many titled peers had for Sybbie and Downton Abbey, a robust agricultural powerhouse, supported by a very profitable motor company brand, was sank overnight. This cowboy, straight out of the pages of "The Sketch", was now destined to take control of a board long cultivated by scheming Gentry. It seemed an odd business considering the first time the mortified shocks came across their faces when in a Grantham drawing room or at a luncheon. All watching when George Crawley walked into a room and casually, without even acknowledging anyone, gave a cheeky pop to an unsuspecting Lady Mary's tight, sequenced or satin, hind end in passing. To this the woman would only scowl as she watched him engage his Uncle Tom or Grandfather about some matter important enough to bring him out of seclusion at Crawley House. The cheeky cupped clap to her bum had become a thing of tradition no matter whom was there, where they were, and what the woman had been doing. The off kilter disrespect of the action seemed unconscionable to the Peers when considering that Lady Mary Crawley was the class of many a ballroom and dinner table of London.

The self-made business woman and debutante, was the beautiful and impeccable authority on all things fashion and style. Lady Mary was simply a cornerstone of society. It had been why George's odd and contentious relationship with his mama was hard to fathom to the many that would kill to have her as their friend, much less their own mother. Yet, not only were the two cold as ice to one another, but were constantly sniping and insulting. If George had come across Lady Mary as she was doing something, the boy was content to jovially knock, smack, or tip the thing over, and leave her to clean it up with a look of near rage in her eyes. Other times if Lady Mary was sitting in the library for tea and George had come to collect a book or Ms. Sybbie, he'd casually flop down on the sofa and lay his head in her lap. She'd glare over her tea, watching her only child snore obnoxiously in pretending to nap as if she was simply some lounging pillow, knowing her annoyance of physical contact or familiarity without purpose.

There were also times when Mary would go up to ready herself for sleep and find a fully dressed George stretched out on her bed, Outback Fedora over his eyes, hands behind his head slothfully. To which Mary would spitefully allow Anna to undress her from her evening gown. Then, standing in her underwear, facetiously, she'd ask her son to schedule his inspections, that way she'd make a rather more exciting pick of lingerie for him. To which George, blindly, scoffed, saying that if he was after a good striptease he would go seek out his Aunt Edith, The Marchioness having the much better body of the two sisters. The admission only needled Lady Mary to a hard red blush of irritation and insult that a smugly smirking George knew was there, even if he couldn't see it with brim covered and closed eyes. Then, finally in her liquid satin nightgown, she'd slip under the covers and lay next to George awkwardly, defiantly annoyed as she stared at the youth who gave her no acknowledgement as they lay in the quiet darkness next to one another. But in the morning, it was as if he had never been there at all. She hated those mornings, for she could never resist the stinging sadness in his disappearance as she touched his long cooled imprint on her silk bedspread.

The truth was that, having been raised by the standards of Lady Violet, her granny, Mary had come to expect certain things of the world, especially of her children. She was raised and brought up with the only physical contact being a peck on the cheek with the hold of her hands, as intimate a touch by her parents as a kiss on the forehead or the rare hug in moments of extreme distress. And she expected, demanded, the same detachment that her granny had raised her to rely upon. Instead, George and Sybbie were quite the opposite of anything she ever wanted. They were both incredibly physical in their relationship with Mary, whether she liked it or not. George, in particular, got a kick out of 'manhandling' his mama in various ways. Whether it was pillowing his head on her lap, smacking her bum cheekily in greeting when he entered a room while her back was turned. Or worst … there was never a more mortifying moment for a debutante, a lady of high class, as when she was torn from the staircase by her children and was forced to endure such indignities.

All she had done, in light of one of George's biting sarcastic comments toward some very valued guests, was apologize for the boy's 'lack of civilization'. Then, with smug smirks, she saw both George and Sybbie give each other side eye in slight of her 'horrendous' snobby tone. Then, without warning, they turned, pulling Mary off the stairs, and onto the floor. There, George held her against him while Sybbie drummed and blew raspberries on their mama's belly. Meanwhile, George messed up her newly styled hair with the grinding of his knuckles. The commotion attracted Lady Grantham who tried hard not to laugh at the sight of her eldest child, cold and prim to a fault, now squirming to get free of her children who she was forced to 'rough house' with in front of the entire passing luncheon party. Finally, it had been the stern voice of a shocked and outraged Lord Grantham that had put an end to the whole episode, after Tom's attempt to break up the ganging up on Lady Mary resulted in himself being tackled and dragged to the rug by his giggling daughter. The pallid ice princess of High Street was enraged and furious as she struggled to her feet, completely humiliated by her own children in such a completely undignified manner.

She was rancorous as George laughed hard and uncontrollably at the way she looked, still lounging on the rug in front of the staircase. Furiously, Lady Mary wished to excuse herself, but couldn't, because, Luncheon was already served. She was forced to walk into the small dining room and eat as sweaty, blushed, and thrown about as if she had gone hiking on a rather arid and windy day. She could only seethe across the table as George, completely uncaring of his common appearance, pushed in for "a plate or two" at the high class lunch, just to see Mary's humiliation. Later, he ignored the chastisement of his grandparents, as he and Sybbie left for Crawley House, sarcastically agreeing of how awful it was that children actually did stuff with their mother. Afterward, when word got out of such a thing as children wrestling with their mama, and the greater sin of teenagers wrestling with Lady Mary, of all people, there was nothing but condemnation of George Crawley for such heresy against their goddess.

More frustrating still was that for some reason Lady Mary, despite given so many chances, outright refused to even speak of disinheritance. It seemed a sure bet that the queen of London Fashion Week would surely name Sybil Branson as her heiress of her late Husband's share in Downton. As well as making her adopted daughter full recipient of her parents motor company, by naming her sole beneficiary of her other late husband's partnership with Tom Branson. But to both schemes and influences of such, the woman out right refused. It baffled many that in a relationship so angry and toxic that Lady Mary still maintained that her son George was her sole and only heir to all of her assets. No one could see why, nor did it make any sense. But no one could get a word edge wise. Even Mary and George refused to speak of the odd quandary that nearly drove many on Belgravia mad. When pushed as to why he remained his mama's sole heir of everything, George would only feign ignorance, than scoff that if it was the case than he should run up and 'stake Dracula's ex-wife with a Holly branch' before she changes her mind. But quietly it seemed to be something that bothered even him as well. It was clear that the youth would seem more comfortable, expect, to hear that Lady Mary had given it all to Sybbie. But the truth of him being the unwavering heir to his mom gave him pause, made him rather angry, because, of the appearance of it all. It was an appearance that remained to hold him in stasis, a tool to give him false hope and designed to set him up for more heart break. So he saw it only as a trap, an illusion, he would not allow himself to fall into.

It was the appearance that somewhere, deep inside, his mom still cared about him.

But the main problem for everyone else by five months into George's return was the jockeying of what was left of their Grannies and Mama's schemes. Though, they did not stand to gain the full weight of assets that the Crawley family controlled, such as the Downton Estate or all of the motor company. There were still a bounty of prizes worth the time of dozens of strapping and collegian young men to be found at Downton Abbey. If it was not enough that not only were Sybbie, "The Star of the County Grantham", and Marigold, the main attraction of the Metropolitan Stage, were considered two of the most beautiful young women in the whole of the Imperium. But Ms. Branson held stock in her parent's motor company, as well as being her father's heiress in his controlling interest. And Ms. Marigold, though illegitimate, was a social jewel as the lead Prima Ballerina of one of the most famous ballet companies in Europe, and was the sole heiress of The Marchioness Lady Hexham's literary empire. It was a fortune built from the 'female empowering' magazine "The Sketch", and a string of mega-popular young adult novels of a character based on Marigold herself, beloved around the world by many a young girl. As such, the man that could make the gliding angel whose feet built the metropolitan Stage, or the mechanical genius with the face of a fairytale princess, fall for him would not only give him a lifetime of social points. But he'd gain quite the income upon the deaths of Lady Edith Pelham or Tom Branson.

With the endless waves of young handsome chaps that besieged Downton week to week, there was a never ending shot of youth and vigor in the manor house's halls. Both girls, best friends, sisters really, couldn't help but love all the attention. The potential of the fun found in the grandeur of a countryside summer was inescapable to their fiery young hearts. Even more excited were the girl's mamas and aunts, who were overjoyed to see their girls, who had been bullied in their past for parts of their paternity, were now so caught up in the romanticism of girlhood intrigue and first love in the backdrop of country color in bloom. And the girls, together, had never once kept it a secret. Tucked between her cousins, Rachel Aldridge slept much of that summer with a soft smile on her face in hearing of such whimsical romantic tales told in bed by a giggly Sybbie and Marigold.

Even Lord Grantham felt a certain pride in such care and love loran longing of dashing chaps after his much beloved granddaughters. To have his drawing room and library teeming with young men of breeding talking of racing, sports, and the like, had him grinning like a devil. He cherished each young man waiting on the Earl of Grantham, hand and foot, for a chance to talk, or to seek the council of some advice from such a great lord. Lady Grantham smirked in bed watching her husband always climbing under the covers with a smile on his face from the evening. He admitted that even he felt rather young again, or much as he did when they first met, with all the chaps from Eton and Oxford in his halls, chasing beautiful girls. But, while Lady Grantham allowed him to have it, she only felt melancholy. It was unsaid, but clearly felt that Robert was getting a charge from the young suitors, because, for once, he had something in common with a young man in his life. For the boy of their own had nothing in common or to discuss with his grandfather that didn't start with tension and end with a near shoving match. And in the dark, as Robert informed her of all the boys' schemes to hook Sybbie here and whisk Marigold there. Cora Crawley mourned for the life that their boy could've had, if they had all been just a bit stronger and less agreeable with Mary when she sent him to their grandmamma in New York all those years ago, after the deaths of Henry and the baby.

But eventually, at least in the summer of 1936, the many great romantic dalliances, dissolved into nothing. Fore, eventually, and quite unwantedly by him, in the end …

All roads led to George Crawley.

In most cases George was not the one to blame for this, as much as it was his cousins. The boy was, after all, a major part of Sybbie and Rachel's life. While all the youthful romanticism was happening at Downton, the laughing kisses in the sweet summer rain when the party of young aristocrats was drenched suddenly at local barn party of jig and drink. The oars and umbrella of a row boat down the picturesque country creeks. And the throwing rocks at windows to sneak out into the garden at night for private snogs. George was completely uninterested in their goings on.

("The Theme of Marco and Gina" - Porco Rosso)

The boy had loved fully once, without lent or hindrance. But he had lost her forever, lost her to an aunt's secret that destroyed his entire universe. Since then, unable to piece together shattered dreams of "Happily Ever After", the boy chose seclusion from all reminders of what was and yet could have never been. Many a night had at Downton with laughter and lively conversation of youthful ambition and love, was a brooding shadow at Crawley House. A regretful figure sitting in Matthew's chair watching the flames in the fireplace dance as if they were a ballerina he once dreamed of in his darkest nights. Some days, catching the groups of his peers with the girls he loved, laughing loudly, chasing each other through the woods and down the village streets energetically, only darkened the shadow of his broken heart. Many times they'd wave from afar at the dashing and brooding figure across the street, but the youth would only walk away with hands in his old leather jacket pockets without acknowledging them.

In the meantime he did anything to distract from the shattered and completely changed world he found himself return too. George Crawley, in those days, could often be found in the fields with the tenants, keeping the Estate at bay. He was working at Electrical plants and steel mills. In the back alley and industrial warehouses of London, bare-knuckle prize fighting against men twice his age and size. And always was he against the German Cultural Ministry, on the hunt for 'The Grail of Prague'. George did everything in his power to forget his once lofty dreams that had now drifted into ether like smoke rings in the dark. Nor had he the heart to see one who he had loved since he could remember in the arms of another. But while the boy himself and his intentions were to stay as far as he could from the joy of those he loved, as to not ruin anything. In the end his reputation and legend haunted all the countryside romance happening at Downton Abbey. One could start a stop watch on when, eventually, the dashing young lovers of Downton's roses would enquire of George "The Comet" Crawley. Then, it was only a matter of time till the question consumed everything.

It usually, for Sybbie, started on weekends. From Friday nights all the way to Monday, she spent them all with George at Crawley House or wherever he went in those days. And every weekday morning, like clockwork, even at a full house of suitors, the girl walked down in her nightgown with a bag to the house by the church where she'd eat breakfast, shower, and dress there. Every boyfriend, eager to see the county's crowned princess, saving her a seat and plate at the breakfast table, was always informed by Lord Grantham of his granddaughter's ritual. The constant and consistent snubbing by Sybbie, in favor of maintaining her close relationship with George, laced many a young man with all the growing sour moods of young love's violent seas of mistrust and jealousy.

For Marigold, it was the distance of her thoughts some nights, and her moods of deep sadness and depression in moments when she was shown great adoration and love by her courtier. She could never say, and would never say, what darkened her tender heart. But every person wishing to capture the picture of an Arthurian Lady all noticed the longing looks given to Crawley House in their passing. Or the heart stopping pauses when she caught sight of George out and about on business in the village or with his best friends from New Orleans and Sybbie laughing and palling around in London. Then they'd see the glassy and deep pain in her emerald eyes, and they'd know …

And it drove many a young chap insane.

But mostly it was the stories, the tales of adventure, villains, and heroics in places with strange names and landscapes unbelieved and fierce. In these fanciful stories of far off, swashbuckling, high adventure in Depression stricken America there came a turn of intense competitiveness from the lads, a time honored impulse that bled green in envy by every young buck in the forest.

The confrontations were never overt, but planned, schemed, sometimes by their mama's or grannies. They were invitations to societal activities that required athletic prowess of some sort. They were Point-to-Points, Archery, fencing … and many other competitions that were planned to be sprung on their guest. Yet, they could never comprehend the level of disinterest that George Crawley had for such things as Ethel Parks, his House Keeper, read to him while they ate at the kitchen table together. He had no interest in 'triple dates', or 'tagging along', with Sybbie, Marigold, and their army of suitors. The boy had grown up around hard men, poor and gritty, who found delight in simple things. In a childhood that had only known plenty of danger and daring, going to an archery meet at a societal garden party was not his idea of "a good goddamn time". Most of these things were declined with a simple "Not on your life" over the phone to Lady Grantham who relayed the invites through notes to Ethel when the housekeeper walked up to Downton with Sybbie's laundry.

George Crawley had taken a great pride, and shown it, in not caring what other people thought of him. But for all of the boy's apathy for the standards of others, there were people in his family that did care what other people thought of him. If George had been told that, he'd leave no doubt that it was true. Yet, he could never have guessed that one of those people was Tom Branson himself. It would be easy to say that Robert Crawley, particularly, cared what people thought of his Grandson and heir, based solely on the reputation of his family. But one could hardly put serious money that his Uncle Tom was on his case of reputation and pride in the matters of the summer of '36. Fore, in George's many refusals to call on invitations out with Sybbie, Marigold, and their friends, there was a growing concurrence among some of the chaps at the Downton dinner table that called into question the boy's valor, if not the very truth of the stories told. Tom, knowing the truth of his nephews many abilities and shows of incredible valiantry, having been rescued personally by his nephew in Mexico, took umbrage with such slanderous taunts of his daughter and niece's suitors.

But George never saw the need to defend himself from those who just didn't know what they were talking about. But when Tom Branson went to confront his nephew, who was clearing a quarter for Yew Tree Farm with scythe in hand, George simply stared blankly at his uncle. After imploring his nephew to take up the gauntlet and prove the arrogant prigs wrong, the youth just stared at the Irishman for a long moment as if he had lost his 'damned' mind. Then, without answer, George wiped his forehead with the back of his work glove and continued his scything with a shake of his head in disbelief, muttering bitterly of his want for a new family.

The awful truth was that one could chalk it up to a feeling of threat from the youth whose deeds were predicated on feats of daring and boldness that were near impossible to replicate. And Jonah Robinson knew exactly what it was which bothered other young men about George, always had, no matter what country they were in. But it became a common problem when he returned to Downton, especially from the upper class and collegian chaps in pursuit of the wealth of beauty and finery of the women of the House of Grantham. They were all athletic, sculpted from marble, and had a dash to them that caught Sybbie, Marigold, and even their own mamas eyes quite guiltily. But no matter how bold they were, how hard they pushed their physical competition, none of them could replicate the severity or gallant valiantry of George Crawley. Or as Thomas Barrow put it … "The Lads couldn't 'out crazy' Master George." When it came down to physical and mental prowess in feats of audacity and sheer daring, they all ran a distant second to the Heir of Downton. It embittered the many suitors chasing after Sybbie and Marigold, causing them to make quite the fools of themselves trying to challenge George to competitions the youth had no interest in.

The fact was that their limitations, and the lack of George's, came from upbringing and environments. The young Crawley hero was who he was, because, he had to be. When one's friends were about to be murdered by a cultist preacher, or when you're about to be ridden down by Ku Klux Klan members on horseback, or in a gunfight with Mexican Pistolero's, you learn a certain 'Do or Die' mentality. You learn to take risks to get to the next risk, push one's own self in order to achieve the seeming improbable, because, there was no alternative. And once you learn to live that way, as George had, there was no going back or dialing down that instinct. Every chap that came through Downton with Marigold on his arm, off to pursue Sybbie, looked near Olympian. They were charming to the girls, and won the heart of Lord Grantham in the least. But in the end, they would never be what George was, because, they were lucky. And if they hadn't been such competitive tossers, mad with lust and envy for the girls of Downton, than they'd be very grateful, indeed, to know that their combined experiences of life would never breed a desperate prowess that could ever 'out crazy' George Crawley.

Of course, being George's oldest friend and companion from their very first meeting on the snowy November streets of Manhattan in '30, Jonah knew that there wasn't a brain among the five of them gathered around Sybbie tonight, making veiled comments of insult of his friend. The young owner of the very popular night club "The Runaway" knew that it was all bravado. They simply didn't know, these titled young men in their private schools of Eton and Harrow. They had no idea what was out there. They didn't know what it takes to be the kind of person that he had to be, that George was, what was inside someone to live through what they had. So after speaking, not truth, but fact, he continued to whittle. He didn't want to take it any further, knowing that he, as well as George, did not like to talk about what happened in the past. But from the silence he knew that there would be no getting around it. So, quietly, he looked up when he was asked, mockingly, what he meant by George Crawley having a 'demon' living inside him.

The young man corrected, it wasn't inside, no sir, he said that George Crawley had a demon living in his past. Riding in the backseat while he's driving, and every time he checks the rearview mirror, he sees her there staring back at him. To this there was an, uneasy, chuckle that came from the crowded drawing room. He had a humoring look on his handsome face as he slowly looked around at what everyone assumed was a joke. Using 'she' in terms of this "fearsome" demon inside George Crawley's past. He took a deep, simmering, umbrage to the idea that they thought he was joking. That if he was young, black, and in Lord and Lady Grantham's drawing room, friend of Ms. Sybbie and Marigold, it must mean that he was their court jester. They thought him some simple Black American clown spouting out 'Monkey Shines', invited tonight for their amusement. But he let them laugh. He let them go just to the cusp of getting back to their conversations, before he stood up casually. Then, humorously at first, he began to tell the group of such "hard" young peers a story.

It was a good one too …

Her name was Lillian Bordeaux. Her mama named her that, because that was what she was drunk on when her daddy ran out on his bill. See, sometimes when you run out on a whore in New Orleans, they don't put what you left behind in the "lost and found" box, at least not usually. But there was quite a few 'donations' to the church left squealing and crying on the steps. But this girl's mother, she wasn't some poor whore bumming off a few drinks from an unhappy farmer or lonely bayou shrimper in her momma's ratty Flapper silks. Lillian's mama was one of those 'Painted Ladies', higher class than some of the folk even in the very room where the story was being told. They were courtesans, hosts, escorts, but the word "whore" was never spoken, even if the service they provided was the same. But these women were the kind of girls photographed on the arms of the most important congressmen, senators, and millionaires throughout the South. Most of them good Southern Belles were nothing but cordial and sweet to them. But every Sunday they prayed that those beautiful and refined women have the strength to endure being eternally chewed by the great beast at the very center of fire and damnation.

But Lillian Bordeaux was special, because, she wasn't supposed to exist. It was the one rule of their business, their life blood, and that was discretion. It was considered in poor taste, sacrilege, for the women to hold any leverage against their clients. Or they'd all feel the wrath of the local government, who tolerated their existence, barely. As long as the boys down in Baton Rouge got a discount on special occasions, or the use of their favorite girl whenever they were in town, they'd let the whole thing slide. But the seeming epitome of 'blackmail', or the threat of it by classy woman or even sharp eyed enemy, was to have a little girl running around the most affluent streets of New Orleans with the face, the eyes, and the mannerisms of one so highly placed in Southern Society.

Yet, her mama would not go to 'Granny Cottonmouth' in the backstreets of the French Quarter to get her "Special Potion". All the girls were nervous and unsure about her decision, yet, they stood by their friend, growing heavier with child. Yet, the madam could do nothing for it either. Her own child, of clearly mixed race, which she placed at the foot of the Catholic Church, was now unbeknownst asking her own mama to spare the baby in her belly which she loved so much already. Feeling that she had already let down a daughter that had unknowingly followed her into this dark world, she could not take from her a child, nor order the death of her own granddaughter. Both mother and grandmother cried tears upon holding that fine baby girl five months later. The mama, because, her baby was born as lily white as the governor's daughters themselves, ensuring that she would never know the cruelty that her mixed race mama had all of her life. And the grandmother cried, because, she got to hold her own blood in her arms for the first time, whether the baby's mother knew it or not.

For the next twelve years, Lillian grew up under the protection of a group of refined but hard women. From their tutelage there was not a finer jewel in all of New Orleans. Everyone who met the girl loved her. She was generous, compassionate, and had so much heart. She had learned it while growing up in a home filled with such lovely women that hid their shame and guilt of what led them to this life of glamour, secrets, and scars from clients with such dark instincts in the throes of sin with creatures so fine. But in the night, lying next to them in bed after a client left or in the shared bubbly tub, she heard all their stories and confessions. And when they were over, "Baby Girl" was always good for a hug, a kiss, and a cuddle. Their tales and the sorrow in them, made her love even harder, and they responded in kind with a deep attachment to a girl too dangerous to exist, and yet too pure to turn away.

But as she got older, and the admirations for the charms she possessed grew, so did the recognition of her likeness to the long time Senator. He was a man, powerful in the Democratic Caucasus in Washington, who had his eye on governorship. He had fled home in order to guard against J. Edgar Hoover looking into his part as a local leader of a certain secret society that burned crosses and bombed Catholic Churches. And it was by ill chance that both Lillian and her mama ran into this man at the Woolworth that sat across the street of his brand new election campaign office. The senator knew, with just one glance, the specter of death coming for his political career that was standing by the sweets counter. He knew who she was, the girl with nut brown ringlets and white bow, smiling with his beloved mother's face at the charming young tween clerk who always had some turn of phrase on the mind to make her giggle.

Lillian had made a frightened noise as her caramel kettle corn spilled on the floor when the old man snatched her by her arm, unable to control the anger and outrage of her sheer existence. She cried for her mama, but when the woman, diplomatically, came to defuse the situation, he slapped her with a loud and humiliating smack that sent the classiest of women to the floor. All he could do was shake the life out of the girl again and again, nothing but hate in his soul for one who was supposed to have been washed or scraped out in blood from between her mama's legs. He might have done more in his dangerous tantrum, if the young clerk of Lillian's age hadn't taken a broom and jabbed the handle between the old man's legs from behind. He let out a canine like yelp at the aggressive stab at his testicles. He threw the sobbing little girl to the ground, but when he reached for the clerk, he was quickly repulsed with painful raps to his knuckles by the clerk that wielded the broom like an expert swordsman.

Finally, having been stabbed in the gut and balls several times, he caught the handle. With a hard yank, the senator pulled the clerk forward, grabbing him by his work apron. But he grew angrier when the boy quickly snatched him by his own collar, twisting it fiercely in a strong death grip for one so young. Both raised their fists to strike each other, till the flash bulb of a reporter's camera stopped them. Slowly, filled with hate, the old man released the clerk, who pushed the old politician off him with aggression in front of a growing crowd of onlookers.

The boy helped the girl up, standing in front of her protectively, while the old man took a long moment to give an incredibly charming campaign speech about 'the community' working together to raise the children with good values. But when he walked up to give a showy lecture of pure honey to the girl huddled fearfully behind the clerk, the boy stopped the old man offering her back her kettle corn. He called the old politician a "Cracker Ass Honkey" to a tide of laughter from the reporter's pool, and told him to 'keep stepin', motioning to the door. There had been a black hole of sheer hate in the old man's eyes that made his bastard daughter flinch, but the clerk was unmovable, hard as nails, staring him down coldly. When he finally left it, there was a practiced smile as he invited the press to come see his new campaign office. But not before matching eyes with the young clerk, giving an audible crunch of the young girl's sweet kettle corn.

The incident was in the paper and on the radio. The girls of the balconied building right there in the center of the Cultural District, began to worry. It would get ugly. The police, the sheriff, maybe even the State Troopers would come. And lord only knew what would happen then. But instead, they were approached by a shadowy figure in the night. No one ever saw his face, nor knew his name. But they had heard of him, had heard him, on random stations of the local New Orleans radio in the middle of the night. He was always preaching, sermonizing about things that didn't seem 'Christian' to anyone, and yet, they liked the sounds his words made, like lathering honey down your insides. The stuff he said on those nights, it seemed to make 'hella sense' in such a dark and hard Depression the poor were losing to every month. This 'Preacher' told the madam of the mighty power of the Senator's anger at the ladies. He was looking to round up his boys in white hoods and sheets to pay them a visit. But the women didn't have to worry, that he could convince the senator, a member of his congregation, his anger should not be against anyone but himself and his sins … but only for a price.

He wanted the girl for one night.

Her mama fell to the floor in sobs when she heard that the madam agreed. She was a girl, only twelve years old, it wasn't right. It ain't fittin, she had sobbed. It just wasn't fitting for her girl, their girl, not their baby girl. Most of the girls were Lillian's age when they were first touched in that way. Usually it came from a curious male cousin in age with them, a drunken uncle, or simply for coin to eat for the night. But they all couldn't stand the thought of selling their little girl's sweetness, her innocence, just to protect their own lives. But the madam, cold as ice, soul dying, knew that Lillian would survive it. The girls that bore her blood were strong enough to survive anything. Then, when the time was right, they'd take all their money and send her somewhere far away, somewhere where no one could harm her again. That night they all snuggled to Lillian, lying next to and around her, touching her, petting her, kissing her. The girl felt so sad, not for herself, but for all of them.

A few days later, in the sweltering evening, men came to collect Lillian. They wore white robes and carried candles. About their necks were replicas of some religious symbol that had been popping up all over the city in the past few years, ever since poor Mrs. Martha Levinson had been murdered up at old Amantha Mansion outside of town a month after the Stock Market crashed. It was that of a scorpion, made of jet, in set with ruby eyes. It was of a design seen only in ancient drawings found in Darkest Africa, and in carvings etched by runaway slaves in the caverns of many Caribbean and West Indies Islands. The women, grudgingly, met the demands of this 'preacher' who requested that the girl be dressed in her finest communal dress, and her head dawned with a matching lace veil. When these acolytes collected her, they placed her on a white steed they brought with them. They had chosen their moment wisely, as a city wide festival was on the cusp, and as they walked down the street they paraded her virgin visage to the backdrop of sparklers and fireworks over Bourbon Street. To their appearance there was many a host of cheers and clapping from onlookers, mostly drunks, playboys, and party girls. No one did a thing to stop them. Most not even knowing what horror they were cheering for as the girl's mount was led by to thunderous and jovial applause that kept in spirit with the strange, absurd, and certainly supernatural character of one of the oldest cities in the New World.

They walked her so far down winding and abandoned streets that she had lost all sense of direction, realizing that her senses were being assailed by the fumes burning from the candles they carried. Eventually, they arrived, through a back street of dirt and forest path to a large Victorian mansion, forgotten, off the beaten path. It was tall, rotted, and its yard over grown. All around, hidden and lying in the tall grass, were abandoned children's toys. They were pretty little dollies with eyes poked out, abandoned kites, and smashed rocking horses. Everything about the house was certainly a thing that resided within a young girl's nightmares, certainly in the noises that the creaking and whistling mansion made in the heat of the night. There, they led the horse past the broken and ruined picket gate to where a girl looked in fright at what awaited her. Fore in the doorway was a tall and imposing figure lit by Tiki torches and shadowed by distant fireworks.

Standing in the yard of tall grass and broken children's toys were dozens of figures in tall pointed hoods and sheeted robes of white that they wore over polyester trousers. They sang a low, moaning, song in a bass and trembling harmony as they led the girl over the overgrown walkway toward the front porch. There stood two men. The one in the back wore the silk red robes and tall hood of "The Grand Wizard" of the Ku Klux Klan. He was leading his 'brothers' in a slow and haunting hymnal that didn't sound anything godly to the girl. But, surely, the most frightening thing that the girl ever saw was right in front of her …

("O'Death" – Ralph Stanley)

Waiting for her in front of the house stood a … no, not a man, it wasn't a man by any recollection of God's own creation. It remained a tall figure, practically statuesque in the veiled moonlight and shadowed neon of exploding colors in the distant sky. The thing, the being of some sort, did not flinch an inch. He wore dark, dark, robes that were stained. Some said that they were white once, but that he had dipped them in the blood of his heathen sacrifices for so long that they remained stiff in a deep blackish crimson. He was humbled, a man of charity, for his cloth seemed poor, worn down to threadbare and the clinging sweat soaked material in the Southern Louisiana night said that he wore nothing underneath. But the most frightening thing of this large and imposing figure wasn't his height, or the strange stillness in his posture. It was the adornments that decorated him. It began with the great golden, jet, and ruby talisman that he wore about his neck. Lillian had seen it around his followers before, but the one he wore was different, it felt different. The scorpion of Jet, lined and accented in gold, with two piercing ruby eyes, looked and felt truly ancient. Carried from Darkest Africa to the Caribbean where plenty of slavers, then plantation owners, and finally slaves themselves, became open to its power and, one by one, fell into its bloody jaws of darkness. To what magic the seemingly living item held, the girl knew not, nor did she ever wish to see the power it commanded. But worst of all the things this frightening Shaman wore …

It was his mask.

Cut from the Nubian Tree of the ancient Serengeti, feeding off the blood of a thousand generations of tribesmen that had watered the man-eater, the root of all evil in men, the mask was ever weeping deep red viscous from unseen pours. Stained red, the rest of its color came from the chipped paint of purple and green that clung still to the carved reptilian scales that collected and diverted the weeping blood like Venetian waterways. Slowly they dripped down the many spiked trim of the mask, which accented the horned rims that stuck out just above the brows. But the most frightening detail remained the eye slits. For in a mask so detailed, it was what was missing that made it most terrifying of all. And that was, though, it was worn upon a face. To look into the open eyes slits, one could see absolutely nothing. Not iris, not whites, or even the outline of a person's eyes. The slits were as empty and dark as if there was no one at all which adorned the abomination.

In the human senses, in our knowledge of right and wrong, it is never truly known, or if so, it is hotly debated, what the equivalency of evil was. The long and drawn out arguments of if humans were ultimately good or if they were untrustworthy beings, could and would be had for many long years ever after all of us are dust. But that night, in the shadow of dead things, in the yard filled with items of rotted innocence, no debate was needed of what evil was and would remain in sight of such a creature, an escaped minion of hell, if not the very progeny of Satan himself.

Suddenly, the story stopped for a moment. And then, as if on cue, for dramatic effect, a roll of thunder smashed through the hollow halls of Grantham House. Everyone jumped suddenly, not seeing it coming, when all of them were engrossed in a story that was too horrible, strange, and frightening to stop. It was known by now that, whatever point Jonah was getting too, he was going to get there regardless of if Lord and Lady Grantham wanted him too or not.

But in the summer night of 1933 New Orleans, a young girl let loose her bladder on the back of a white horse. She wept at the fear and the humiliation of such an undignified feeling of urine running down her legs, a girl raised and tutored by the very class of the old city. It seemed an odd reaction, but so very human in light of everything around her. But the masked figure only consoled her, touching the wetted skirts, and petted her paternally. Then, slowly, he lifted her effortlessly off the horse and collected her in his arms. Suddenly, so close to him, she felt a sickness, a dizzying faintness that had come over her. Her senses were assaulted by flashes of sights, loud chattering tribal noises, and voice of a thousand generations clamoring in her ears and in her mind. It overwhelmed her with the mask, its dark eyes of endless abyss, watching her unwaveringly just inches from her own face. Then, with a little whimpered shutter, the girl was carried like a new bride through the threshold of the screeching and cracking mansion doors.

After a few minutes of quiet, The Grand Wizard watched in puzzlement as two of his men began climbing under the house with long chains and hooking them to the rotted foundations. When he questioned them about why they were, now, attaching those chains to two pickup trucks, the large and tall young men replied, humbly, that the 'Preacher' told them to do it. Though suspicious, the leader of the Klansmen did not question it. For now, the power that this Voodoo Priest had was helping him, but in the end, once he got what was promised, he was going to put a stop to all of this heathen nonsense.

Other hooded and robed figures helped the two other "Klansmen" with the task of setting up to collapse the mansion once the 'deed' was done. Meanwhile, the senior most of the acolytes strolled the overgrown yard, hearing the croaking of frogs, the chirping of crickets, and the rustle of rodents from the forested outskirts into the tall grass. He had yet to realize that he had gone way too far from the rest of the party while following what he thought was a darting figure. He thought it too big to be an animal, moving from the trees and into the yard at a swift lit. For a long few moments he wandered into the middle of the side yard, almost out of sight from the crowded front. However, his draw was set upon the third floor overlook, where a frightened scream of a young girl echoed hollowly through the thick evergreen ringed property. Suddenly, as a chill slithered down his spine, and a flash of fear went through his heart at the sound the girl made, something sprang up right at his feet. It was a shorter figure that moved like lightning on the cultist. With a hard snap of a fist, he hacked and choked silently when his throat was jabbed hard. Then, in a head rush of pain, he felt someone dislocate his knee joint with another strike. With a wrap of their smaller leg around his undamaged one, he was swept and rolled into the tall grass. A shadowy figure fell upon him with brutal punches, their thuds covered by the night noises and distance from the front yard.

When the customary glance of a curious Klansman passed without event or notice of the missing cultist, the shadowy figure glanced up from the tops of the blades. A young boy of age with Lillian had covered his face in black shoe polish to camouflage him to the night. His head was covered by a black headscarf that was pinned in the style of a British War Nurse. He wore a double breasted moleskin coat and denim trousers that were absolutely brutal in the muggy night, but it gave an extra layer of protection from the elements of the Louisiana bayou bush. Sweltering in a full buttoned coat, the young rebel wiped his absolutely soaked brow, before he turned behind him and began to give bird sounds to the woods.

A Blue Bird replied.

From their station at the front of the rundown mansion, the Klansmen and cultists frowned at the out of season and time of day bird calls. They began to look around, a slow sinking in their guts, feeling it coming. It started with a low thumping of a bass drum from somewhere in the pitch black tree line. Slowly, the drumming got louder and louder, till it was joined with an angry clattering and slamming of instruments and tools together to create a deafening wall of sound in the night. Then, when it was at its peak noise, the first human noise was let loose. It was vicious and terrifying war cry of pure aggression and violence that no Klansmen had ever heard before. Then, more and more voices joined the adrenaline filled chanting, caterwauling, whooping, and wild American Indian ululating. The heathen noises that the demons gave seemed almost inhuman as the branches of the tree line shook wildly. It was a mixture of adrenaline, fear, aggression, and rage all wrapped up in a violent hate for even the very smell of the Ku Klux Klan's robes. Eyes wide behind pointed hoods, the men slowly backing away from the sheer echoing noises that enveloped them, sending corkscrewing sensation down their spines. Quickly, the Grand Wizard, a veteran of France, shouted for his men to stay together. He knew, and wasn't surprised, that one of those 'damn whores' was friends with the Guerilla band of outlaws that they had been chasing with no success and mounting casualties since January.

They must have tipped them off of to the bargain the Madam made with the Preacher.

But it was when the first sound of objects in the dark, cutting through the air, landing at their feet with hard stabbing noises into the soil and flicking through the tall grass that the breaking of the morale started. They couldn't make out what it was that was swishing and zipping by their ears, landing sharply by their feet. That was till the first moment that the man next to them let out a howl. Then, they saw the silhouette of an arrow shaft sticking out from his shoulder. Suddenly, in the swishing and sharp rattle of flying objects landing all around them, they realized that the 'savages' were firing "Night Arrows" at them. The muzzle flash of rifles, pistols, and shotguns could be seen and tracked in the dark. They held fast, those carrying ceremonial shields with the Klan insignia held it high as arrow heads plunked two or three shafts thick on their surface. But when the first four of their numbers fell, shafts through the throat, abdomen, and head, they all fell back into the mansion that had been forbidden to be step inside while the Preacher observed his ceremony.

Meanwhile those who didn't flee to the ruins ran for the trucks they drove in on. But just as they reached them, the two Klansmen that had started the project of attaching chains to the mansions foundations, removed their hoods. They revealed themselves to be just a couple of boys, teenagers, that were also Black. The shock and confusion of the contradiction caused the others to pause in disbelief. The first Klansman got buckshot from his own double barrel shotgun, from the rifle rack in his pick-up, right in the face from one of the teenagers. With darkness shadowing their faces, both boys peppered down the Klansmen trying to get to the trucks. Taking the lords name in vain, the other Klansmen forgot all brotherhood in sight of the bloody crossfire of arrows and buckshot, and stampeded into the mansion where they locked themselves inside. They attempted to return fire, with what few guns they had on them left, at the tree line. Expertly aimed archers were dropping shafts through the broken windows. Their targets were the cultists whose gilded scorpion talismans could be seen easily in the shadowed ruins, and Klansmen whose muzzle flashes could be tracked.

But while the overall plan to subdue the larger force was working, the main objective was still in issue while Lillian remained helplessly at the mercy of the Shaman at the top floor. It was that notion that propelled the youth in headscarf and jacket from the tall grass. He rushed forward fearlessly. Bullet impacts from Klansman kicked up dirt by his feet, while allied arrows sliced the air above his sweat soaked headscarf. He made for the clay drainage pipe that had rusted supports that were caked with dried mud. Adrenaline from running right through the crossfire without hesitation gave him the 'hops' to make the jump, using his foot to propel himself up a little higher to grip the stained white cylinder. The pipe rattled loudly as the tween vigilante used his legs to climb the shaky gutter that hadn't been looked after since the Yankee Occupation nearly sixty years ago.

Hearing a loud commotion, the Grand Wizard had sent one of their pistols up the stairs to check it out. And when passing a second floor guest bedroom window, the youth was surprised by a boy in white robes and tall hood that threw open the decayed shutters. It had been the young vigilante's luck that the Klansmen was a fellow kid, had never shot his weapon at a person this close before, and was certainly not expecting the younger to be right there. The tween's right cross was quicker than his enemy's grandfather's rusty six shooter. The boy clocked his hooded adversary hard, before taking his gun hand in a vice grip by the wrist and yanking the teenager, hard, over the edge. The son of the County Commissioner did a flip on the way down and landed hard on his tailbone. He gave a violent bass cough and writhed in in the tall grass in crippling pain.

When he finally reached the third floor, the boy saw that the chipped and rotted whitewashed balcony overlook of the master of the house's bedroom was treacherous. So he balanced onto the railing, before leaping toward the bedroom window, using the ancient gutter to propel his boot soles through the brittle window. The smashing glass was thunderous in the large hollowed bedroom as he knocked down an old vanity and cracked mirror of a once great Southern Belle of the "Old South". He made a somersaulting roll forward with the reckless momentum of his leaping force. And when he halted it was at a crouch, hand planted on the dusty floor. His cerulean eyes were alert and, with a six sense toward danger, found what he was looking for …

And so much more than even the hardiest of grown men could stomach.

The room was lit by candles. Their scent was waxy and overpowering, the candelabras surrounding the perimeter of the room. In the soft glow of the dimmed light, there was a large, primal, occult symbol drawn in blood on the middle of the floor. In the corner he saw a dozen corpses of beheaded swans and doves, drained and strained of every last drop of blood into a bucket. Above that evil symbol was a great society Belle's luncheon table, kept for more intimate teas, able to seat maybe four or five. On it was a young girl, her dress was ripped right down the back to the top of her skirt as she lay face down upon it, her entire bareback was completely naked and exposed. Her whole upper body was heaving in deep suffering, staring off into space as she bit hard onto a leather strap folded into her mouth. Her wrists and legs were tied down by long ropes that netted at the base of the table. She mewed and squealed in terrible pain, tears falling down her eyes.

There were many things that the boy would've predicted when he got here. He had steeled himself for some great and horrible depravity being done to such a lovely and vulnerable young girl. But what he saw was not what he was expecting, and it stopped him in his tracks. To him, what he saw that night would haunt him ever after …

It was so much worse than he could've ever dreamed.

Behind her, the Hausa Shaman, the Voodoo high priest, still wore his robes, was unexposed to violate the girl's soft flesh. Not a finger or appendage touched her as she lay across the table. Instead, he huddled close, like a venomous spider wrapping his future feast in a web. In his hand lay a paint brush. Its hair was delicate, finely tipped, and exquisitely crafted. It was one that a person could find with great difficulty in the orient, in possession of ancient orders of monks. It took a certain kind of person to wield such an item. It was for one whose hands were meant for calligraphy or of the most delicate dedication to the deepest accuracy of the smallest detail. Quietly, effortlessly, without acknowledging the battle raging outside between Bayou Outlaws and Klansmen, or even the new arrival, the frightening figure delicately continued. He gently dipped his brush into an ink pot and then, with machine like fragility did he tap the excess off the brush before he glided his hand carefully to his canvas, the girl's naked flesh. As he dabbed and swept, the girl made a muffled noise, chomping hard onto her leather bit. The boy saw, with a pause of the most dumbfounded look of disbelief, that the Shaman was drawing, etching, some sort of writing on the girl's back, from shoulders to just above her soiled skirts …

An ink pot of sizzling acid took the place of an artist's paints.

They were pictures of scorpions and snakes, entire scripture of some ancient and dark religion on her back ribs. As the boy arrived, the "Preacher" was in the middle of drawing a large and detailed picture of the Nubian Tree, man's bane, from the bottom edge of her lower back to the very tops of her shoulders. With every brush stroke of the wide and detailed branches of the visage, the girl's supple flesh sizzled and reddened in deep burning acid that made her squeal.

The masked Shaman had looked up just in time to see three gunshots fire. He stumbled back when one went right through his diaphragm, the other through his chest, and the last had, finally, knocked him on his back. The power of the bullet slamming into his forehead hit like a hammer. There was a snapping and crackling of pressure fissures that ran down where the bullet's hole smoked on the red, purple, and green ancient mask. There was not a death rattle, or even a grunt, as this creature of another, darker, world slammed hard against the wall, sliding slowly down into a limp and lifeless position.

For a long moment a young boy stood at the ruins of the shattered window and broken vanity. In his hand was Matthew Crawley's smoking Webley Revolver. It had been used at Amiens, sent home with him from the front to the Downton hospital, and given by him to Lady Sybil Crawley before she left to Ireland for self-protection. For years, and even after escaping back to Downton with it in her coat pocket, it never left Lady Sybil's nightstand drawer till her death. Years later her twin by appearance and nephew by blood couldn't remember ever drawing it, or firing it. It was just something that he did, it was just gut instinct. He walked slowly forward, looking down on the lifeless corpse that slumped against the wall.

It had been months since the last time that the boy had seen it, the creature, only pretending to be human as far as anyone was concerned. Then, he had been hiding with his friends in the hedges of Amantha Mansion as the Shaman gave a fiery sermon from the front porch of the large plantation house. Dozens of cultists and Klansmen were spread in formation out on the front yard, their white robes and hoods shadowed by the Tiki torches planted on the lawn. All of them were singing in unison some dark hymnal that wasn't Christian at all, as they observed the burning of a cross with a charred skeleton crucified to it. And while they marched in synchronized dance, the many silhouettes of picked apart skeletons were hanging upside down from the old willow tree in the front lawn of the expansive estate. They had been Amantha Mansion's staff, her maids, footmen, cooks, and tenants. They were tortured, mutilated, and left to rot there for almost three years. That was till a group of young boys finally came in search of the missing Martha Levinson and found her grounds overrun with evil. It was in that night that plans changed. They had ran from New York, from a Knickerbocker senator's Pinkerton thugs, all the way to New Orleans in order to find Martha Levinson, to get money to board a ship bound for England, and put the chaos of the Depression behind them. But after all the years of her missing, the boys had finally found her, or what was left of her charred skeleton tied to a brunt cross. After that, after seeing what had been done to the place that Cora Levinson had been raised so gently for the first fourteen years of her life, there would be no going back to England, to Downton. There was justice to be done.

Now, standing over the Cretan's corpse, his father's smoking revolver in hand, it felt like justice to George Crawley.

The girl was in an incredible amount of pain when George removed her leather bit. From the second that her mouth was freed, she begged the young clerk that had always made her laugh at the sweets counter, manically, to cut it off, the skin on her back. She squealed loudly in painful sobs that it hurt so much. But her rescuer told her that it was going to be okay, not to touch it, as he sawed her hands free with his Harlem switch blade. The girl's eyes were flooded with tears for every emotion that fell over her, shaking her head with whimpered pleading for him to rip the skin off her back. Her body shook with her sobs at such an incredibly torturous pain that had been done to her flesh. But the boy kept holding her hands, wrestling them to his chest, telling her not to touch it, that it was going to be alright, that he knew someone who could help.

But first they had to get out.

They were running out of time. He was checking a pocket watch, knowing that they had a limited window, before his men executed "Plan B". The original thinking was that they could run off the Klansmen and then rush "The Preacher" with numbers. But things changed when the Klan and Cult held up in the mansion. In response he got seven minutes before they 'scorch earth'. As he thought about what they were going to do, he apologetically rebound Lillian hands together. He didn't want her to wildly pick, scratch, or claw off the skin on her back, risking more permanent damage from the acid.

But just as he had taken her by the hands to lead her somewhere, there was a noise that echoed loudly through the bedroom. It was a scattering and clacking noise of hundreds of arachnid legs skittering in the walls. Then, with a swish, darkness swept over them. It was like as if some great shadow of a godlike figure was cast over the room. The flames on the candelabras flickered violently till they doused themselves, leaving only sauntering plumes oozing into the blackness of the room. Drawing his father and aunt's weapon from his hip once more, the boy pivoted back to the wall to find that the preacher was gone. Suddenly, the revolver was swatted to the ground, the old Liverpool metal rattled on the old boards loudly as it bounded under the table. A huge boney hand with long fingers, and even longer fingernails, grabbed the twelve year old's head fully, palm resting above his nose, his fingers clutching to the back of the skull like falcon talons. With a shout of pain and surprise, the masked Shaman lifted the young boy off his feet and into the humid hell of the ruined bedchamber. There were two large holes in his chest and diaphragm, the exposed flesh was pink and red, but no blood flowed from it.

But for the mask, it was as pristine and undamaged as if it had just been cut from the evil bark of the Serengeti.

The girl ran to a corner of the room, covering her eyes while curled into a defensive ball. While the boy grunted, blindly kicking, building momentum, trying to get to his adversary. The Preacher looked over his enemy. He commented that the youth, even with face covered in shoe polish, raven curls cowled by headscarf, had a touch of destiny to him. Then, as if being struck by lightning at the very first meeting with his chiefest opponent, he felt something cold run through his blood. Something he saw long ago, when he was a boy, when this life found him. He spoke in shock to the warning given to such powerful visions of purpose from the spirits that entrusted him with the mask.

"The Lady and the Lawyer …"

"What did you say?"

Everyone in the Grantham drawing room turned to Lady Mary Crawley who halted the story. She stood from the couch, where she had been lounging, pretending to be far away, uninterested in the story. But the truth was that she, in fact, felt as if she was right there in the thick of it. Her heart was in her throat till she heard the words of the Shaman from Jonah Robinson's mouth. The young club owner just stared at his best friend's mother. She realized that she had made herself the center of attention in the room. It had escaped her, her true feelings, her shock and purpose, to hear that, that nickname, from a stranger's lips. To have everything that came with the oldest and purest of feelings overcome her in a phrase, and know that someone, or correctly, some thing, had spoken them. It turned her stomach, made her feel that everything she held dear, everything that kept her darkened soul stitched together was under threat by the vocalization of her one true love by something so evil.

But in the ruins of a New Orleans mansion, the trepidation of the old warning, had given the creation of such a union of prophecy a chance to build momentum. George twisted his body and gave a swiping kick right across the Shaman's mask. Then, lifting his leg over its turned head, the boy chopped his heel hard on the back of the Preacher's neck. Finally, he put both feet in a vice grip around the Shaman's neck and twist till his momentum flipped the man over onto the floor. His grip on the boy's head lost when he was face planted on the floor.

While the preacher found his feet, the boy gave a swift demonstration of foot work, like a cocking gun, before getting into a fighting stance. For the four years that George Crawley had been in America the boy had smuggled whisky from Red Bank, New Jersey to Spanish Harlem. He had helped build almost hundred stories of the Empire State Building. Prize fought boys older and twice his size in Hell's Kitchen. He had swung a hammer for twelve hours on a Memphis Chain Gang, and spent the rest of his time swinging his fists at older boys in the prison yard to protect his friends. By the time that George Crawley had arrived in New Orleans on New Year's Eve of 1932, the boy's arms were like iron. And since he had chosen to fight the Klan and the Cultists here, there had been barely anytime for that iron to rust.

So it was that no one could say that George Crawley didn't have "The Squabbles" when he fought the Cultist Preacher.

He went fist to fist, eye to eye, with the personification of evil on this earth. Both of them fighting over a frightened young girl against the decayed walls of the once bedroom of a king of the cotton trade before secession. George went to the body, then the face, and slipped out of the way of the big haymakers. The boy was slippery like a colored boxer, fought like a Chinaman, and hit like a sledge hammer with targeted punches. But in the night, in the dark, after everything that he saw, George had forgotten one thing … he was still a boy.

Again and again, in his anger, he tried the impossible task of matching his opponent's savagery, hitting him with everything he had in punishing haymakers. George had lost all sense of himself, fueled and determined by the loud and amused whooping the preacher was suddenly giving after taking every hit the boy landed. When the boisterous evangelist asked the panting youth if he was getting tired, if his auntie needed to come give him a nap, it only fueled the boy's rage. At one point, the Shaman stood by with his arms open, and allowed George a free barrage. He landed shots in the ribs, the kidneys, and the face. Though, stumbled in the surprising ferocity of one so young, in the end, the twelve year old youth had done considerable damage, but it was not nearly enough to finish the job.

By the time that the boy had realized that he should've fought smarter, his guard was broken by a rocketed fist. He took hit after hit in a fury of haymakers, his opponent not bothering with jabs or faints. He backed the boy hero down with straight, unfettered, punches. He drove George back on his heels with a relentless volley of knuckles. He was bigger, stronger, and had more savagery in his wicked soul than a young boy, born of such love, could ever find in his own. The vigilante blocked what he could, redirected and countered in the way of Wing-Chun he had been taught in London. But he was no match to stop the freight train that steam rolled him.

The only thing that could be said for the boy was that he always got back up.

Blood was running down his mouth and nose, his eye was swollen shut, and he was covered in dust. But George Crawley, whatever hit he took, always picked himself up out of the filth. He had countered with a right cross that gave a rattle to the mask, but that was all it did in effect. Eventually, it was a hit to the stomach, a knee to the face, and then a large merry-go-round swing of the boy off his feet that got him. When the preacher let go, George went crashing over the table and face planting on the rotted bedroom boards among the debris.

He coughed a wheezed and painful glob of blood that shifted dust in a cloud. His hand quickly looked to stabilize himself, to push him back to his feet, when he felt something. A bottle rolled under his palm. He frowned at what he saw it was. But before he could do anything, someone grabbed the back of his upturned moleskin collar and lifted him into the air. The preacher gave a sigh at the bloody and cut up youth. For good measure, he punched the boy in the swollen eye which caused him to jerk and wheeze in immense pain. The Cult leader lamented that it was a shame to have to kill George, when they could've really used someone so trained in the Chinese arts out West to build the railroads. To that the boy, quietly, started to mumble something. When he was informed that the Preacher couldn't hear him, George only mumbled more. Finally, having enough, the Shaman brought the boy close to him with a shake of the lapels that he was holding him up by.

"Where's your paint, Mr. Picasso?" he grunted clearly.

Suddenly, in the boy's left hand, he flung the contents of the abandoned ink pot into the exposed eye slit of the Nubian mask. The acid immediately fizzled and sizzled as it ate ancient paint and burnt black the wood. A loud and terrible scream echoed fiercely through the room as most of the liquid seeped into the eye hole. George was dropped like a sack of potatoes with a loud thump on the warped floor boards while the Preacher screamed. Sizzling steam pouring out of the dark eye slit.

Summoning all of his strength, George got to his feet and charged. He propelled his shoulder right into the midsection of the Preacher, sending the man stumbling backward. Stepping back, George wound up and hit the man with the hardest Haymaker he could. It landed right in the damaged eye, sending the Cult leader even further backward. And finally, for the Coup De Gras, George leapt, taking hold of the overhead door frame to the balcony, and used his swinging momentum to put both boot soles into the Shaman's mask. With the final hit, the screaming man stumbled and fell onto the overlook balcony. With the force of a grown man's dead weight hitting the floor, the whole balcony, sixty years of decay, gave way like fools gold on a weight scale. With a loud and thunderous clatter, the debris of the overlook deck ripped boarding from the house as it crashed three stories down in a cloud of dust and wood eating insects.

For just a second, the boy stood at the precipice, looking down from the great hole in the wall. It was hard to see in the dark, but after everything, he wanted to know that he got him this time. But as the moments passed, he knew that there was no time. Any sane person, in any sane situation, would feel confident that a three story drop from a mansion with a jagged rain of rotted planks would do the trick. But then, George had shot him dead once before, and he still got back up. With a shake of his head, the boy gave up his watch to rush back into the room. After recovering Sybil and Matthew's revolver, holstering it once more, he noticed that one of the debris from the over turned table was a long and coiled bullwhip. He shuttered at the thought of what the Shaman had wanted with it in relation to his helpless captive tied to the table. He clipped the coiled whip to his old surplus AEF utility belt, before he had grabbed Lillian who was still crouched in the corner with her face covered. There was no expression on to her, when the boy moved her hands down. She was in complete catatonic shock from the ordeal and torment she just suffered, and worse, of the things she just saw.

They had burst through the bedroom door, George leading the emotionless young girl down the hall toward the main staircase by the hand. The stairs protested with every thunderous footstep of the two tweens as they descended quickly. The boy's plan had been rather simple. They'd get to the first floor, find an abandoned room, and slip out the window. However, that plan ran into a snag when they got to the steps between the first and second floor and found that a group of Klansmen, led by the Grand Wizard himself, were just on their way up to investigate the falling third floor deck. Both George and the Klansmen halted, stumbling and startling when they came face to face, nearly crashing into one another. Surrounded by unarmed men, the only man with a weapon was the Grand Wizard who wore his Granddaddy's Confederate Saber from his days riding with General Forrest in Mississippi. The man drew the ceremonial weapon, urging his men forward with it.

George unclipped the bullwhip from his belt, and with a frightening crack, the boy snapped it at the surging men. The first charging soul at the youth put his hands up defensively. A deep bloody gash slashed his wrist, palm, and forearm. The pain and force caused the Klansman to slip and fall over the railing landing with a cloud of filth on the floorboards hard. The boy turned and shouted for Lillian to run as he swung the whip overhead and caught the second man by the ankle. The boy pulled hard, sweeping him off his feet. He rolled down the stairs taking the third unarmed Klansman with him. Both tumbled down the steps till they fell through the bottom rung, disappearing into a dark hole in a cloud of dust. The girl looked about to wet herself, standing frozen in the midst of violent commotion. But it was when the Grand Wizard made a rage filled lunge at the girl that she was broken of it. With a snap that sounded like a gun shot, the taut leather of the whip slashed deep down across the leader of the Klan's face. It ripped in twine his red silk hood and revealed a deep bloody gash across his face. The girl's eyes grew wide when it revealed that the Grand Wizard was, in fact, the Southern Politician that had attacked her at the store, the man who had caused all of this, all her suffering and pain in the first place … her father.

In sight of the face as sharp and hateful as the devils, the girl fled from it.

But when George tried to cover her retreat, the last Klansman, now in a berserker's anger, took the violent snap of the whip, catching it across his arm, letting it coil tightly till it was soaked in his blood. He used every bit of his good ole' boy old man's strength to yanking his arm forward, ripping the weapon from the boy's grip. With a wild hate he flung the whip all the way up to the third floor steps. Though ceremonial, the blade of the saber still buried deep into the step where George once stood. The boy leapt back as the Confederate cavalry saber swished and slashed at the slippery youth who retreated back to the second floor landing. He had a hankering to reach for his father's gun and finish this. But George, even under stress, didn't think once of settling for shooting another man tonight. Instead, he saw something else on the wall. Swiftly and smoothly moving out of the way of a vertical slash, the boy leapt onto the seat of a chair and pulled something from the wall. In his hand lay one of two cutlasses that crossed over an old French Coat of Arms of an old family's tribute to its seafaring history before the Louisiana Purchase.

Though dulled and rusted, it did its job when the boy parried the old man's thrust. The Captain of the University of Auburn's fencing team and a boy trained in the blade by an old Science Pirate danced and clashed. What was started in front of the register counter of a Woolworth had come to its climax on the landing of a decaying Southern mansion. They moved up and down the second and third floor stairs, pushing and retreating in a flash of blades. As the two fought, their large silhouettes were visible from a large section of missing wall on the second floor, seen from the yard and the evergreen forest, illuminated by a blood moon above the grand finale of the fireworks show. The boy's comrade's halted their arrow volleys at the sight of the shadowed duel framed by colored lights that projected their shifting and dueling silhouettes larger than life on the trunks of the evergreen woods.

Even now, as then, the most endearing smirk of pride touched Jonah Robinson's lips at the sheer daring and audacity of his friend. It was of these moments that one understood the appeal of George Crawley's swashbuckler nature, which the British Aristocracy didn't seem to understand, but caused many a good young boy to willingly follow his lead to the very gates of Hell itself. There were very few men, much less boys of twelve, which would, single handedly, storm a haunted New Orleans Mansion, fight a Voodoo Priest toe to toe, and engage in a sword duel on the steps of a grand staircase with a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

And all of it to rescue the daughter of a mixed race whore.

But it was mid-fight, the two blades of two direct descendants of Confederate War Heroes locked together. An already tired, beaten up, young boy held on with all his might in gritted teeth against a hateful old man, both face to face between their crossed blades. But their duel subsided when they heard something heavy and scratching from the third floor. When both looked up in unison, they saw that a young girl, fierce in anger, fear, and anxiety was pushing, with all her adrenaline, a roll top desk to the foot of the staircase's ascent. The girl had enough. It was the pain in her back, the pain of the loss of innocence, and the pain in her heart for the way that her own father looked at her, which fueled such a rash action. George was only warned a moment in time before the girl, with a scream of anger, shoved the roll top desk down the stairs. It had came flying, wildly and quickly, down the steps. George leapt for the pommel of the stair railing as the third to last step sent the desk airborne. When it landed, it gave a loud sound that echoed with a warping smash. Suddenly, the entire second floor landing evaporated under the Grand Wizard's feet. With one last look at his bastard daughter, the only one of his children that inherited his much beloved mama's face, the man disappeared into darkness with a long echoing scream.

Quickly, sobbing loudly in the receding madness of her rage, the girl helped George. The boy was dangling from the railing over the abyss of two floors and a wine cellar below. When he got back to the tenuous footing of the third floor stairs, he just shot the girl a double take. Looking down, he whistled with disbelief as they both shared the sight of the endless darkness below. But the pondering nature of the current state of their lives was cut short by the sound of revving engines of pickup trucks. Alertly, George checked his Great-Grandfather Levinson's pocket watch. The only thing saved from the worker's riots in Cincinnati, days after the Stock Market fell. He quickly took Lillian's bound hands, and they ran back up the stairs. The boy only stopped to pick up the disarmed whip from earlier. The truth was that George always had a last ditch effort in mind, but hoped to God that he'd never have to use it.

His prayers weren't answered.

While both tweens fled back into the master's bedroom, outside the captured trucks of the Klansmen were gunning full speed adjacently from the middle and two sides of the house. Their tires smoked, slinging gravel, as all three trucks were held back by three heavy, dockyard, chains. The metal links clinked tautly from the beds of the old Fords and Chevys. The entire mansion began to shake and split as the vehicles began pulling the decayed foundations of the old mansion in three different directions, with the Klansmen, Cultists, and George and Lillian still inside. The old plantation house was starting to give way when the two tweens ran to the hole in the wall of the bedroom where the deck used to be. The girl began to breathe heavy in building panic at the sight of nothing but an old oak tree in front of them and the ground three stories down. When the house began to collapse around them, Lillian was in the middle of asking her gallant champion if he could hold her, claiming to be scared. But George, instead, answered by taking her hand and roughly pulling her into his chest. He wrapped an arm under her rear end, and watching the room split up, the boy leapt through the hole in the wall.

The girl's scream was buried by the thunder of the collapsing old house that disappeared into a cloud of dust. But from that dense fallout both George and Lillian came swinging out of the cloud. At the last moment, having leapt with all of his might, the boy, with one hand, slung the bullwhip. The coiling bloody leather wrapped one of the branches of the oak tree. When both tweens fall was caught in the momentum of the secured whip on one of the lower branches, something snapped in George's shoulder. He let out a grunt of pain that caused him to let go of the whip. Both boy and girl went flying in the air, landing with a hard and rolling thumps as they hit the ground. Once more a snap erupted from George's shoulder as he landed. Dust and pollen of the unkept yard rose under the illumination of the blood moon overhead of a Summer Night in New Orleans.

When George got his head right, he found himself staring into the face of a cracked and sunburnt dolly, naked and abandoned in the field. There was a pang of sentimental sadness that tore into him in sight of it. He knew and loved a young girl, an odyssey's journey away, back home that collected and loved dollies. And he knew that it would break her heart to see one so neglected and broken. For the young ballerina's endless compassion and propensity to love deeply didn't stop at people, but for toys as well. Some might have called it childish, but for George, it was one more thing that he'd love forever about the girl who was his very future, a girl who waited for him when all of this would be over. He commented tiredly to the eyeless doll that his shoulder was jerked back in place by landing from what separated it … "Damn miracle" he muttered as he cradled his arm and slowly found his feet.

When the vigilante got his bearings, his surroundings were overwhelmed with a deep silence. The Klansmen and the Cultists were crushed underneath the old mansion, and it seemed that his men had stuck to the plan. He found himself alone, but for the motionless young girl lying face down on a filth covered string puppet of a Spanish flamenco dancer. She was unmoving, when the boy approached, seeing the ugly and swollen marks of the acid etching on her silky flesh. In the distance he heard the sound of horse hoofs, and if he squinted he could make out the torch light of more Klansmen coming. Placing his hand on her belly, the boy let out a sigh of relief to feel it going up and down on his palm.

("Wayfaring Stranger" – Rhiannon Giddens)

With a quick look down the track at the growing light of galloping ghosts in tall hoods, the boy grunted, shoulder clicking, as he removed his jacket. He draped it over the girl's shoulders to protect her raw bare back from the elements. Lifting her, with some effort, across his shoulders, the young boy quickly rushed away. He ran and hopped through rustling tall grass and under the cover of the darkened forest as the first Klansmen on horseback was arriving at the house.

George Crawley, a boy of twelve, beaten, bad shoulder, and eye swollen shut, carried that poor girl for five miles in the heat of a Southern Midnight. Moving through thick bayou bush, swamp, and tall forests, he didn't stop, even at the many close calls that night of torch wielding Klansmen blindly wandering the wilderness and country roads in vain. The boy used moonlight and the lanterns left in the windows by sharecroppers to help guide George and his Merry Men in the night on their raids and ambushes. But the boy would never burden them with his troubles. Though they were hospitable to a fault in their meager means, he did not trust, after several close scrapes, that he wasn't being tracked. By the time that the first light of day touched the tops of the forest around the ancestral home of Martha and Cora Levinson, a group of worried young rebels, gathered on the whitewashed Gothic Mansion's expansive front porch. They spotted a torn up and filthy wayfarer stumbling badly down the Plantation's gravel path of bowing trees. Quickly, they all ran down to meet him, arriving just in time for George to collapse in a heated cloud of gravel dust with the tormented and unconscious young girl still across his shoulders.

Then, Jonah Robinson let the air sit in the Grantham's London drawing room.

He was witling again, blowing wood dust off the wing of his dragon. After a moment he looked up and saw the entranced and confused looks all around. He gave an amused noise as he folded his knife back into its handle. Lord and Lady Grantham seemed lost in their own heads in a dark world, a story, they had never heard before. Cora had read of George's exploits before as written by Edith. Robert had also read the stories, but had found it all rather fanciful. He didn't call his daughter or Grandson liars, but as a soldier, he knew that some 'war stories' tend to get overblown over the years. But it seemed, at least to Robert, the details that were often omitted in these stories of New Orleans didn't ground the story, but, instead, seemed to make even less believable than before. Edith was stoic and unshakable. There was a tolerance to these things built deep inside. After all, Lady Hexham had heard and published plenty of George's adventures in America, and particularly in New Orleans in her magazine. The boy's friends, Jonah in particular, who had been party to many adventures, had told her of George's exploits. Though, she had always felt that there were some things that they held back in telling her, some truths that no one could understand that wasn't there. But of all the people in the room, it was Mary that didn't have anything to say about it. She seemed completely unreadable, coldly distant, staring at Sybbie who seemed stuck in the world that she was never allowed to see.

The entire family, at the time, had heard of the 'Bush Wars' going on in New Orleans. But when Cora, Edith, and Marigold were determined to go down there to help the American FBI save George and his friends from being annihilated by an army of three chapters of the Ku Klux Klan gathering, it ignited a fire storm. There had been a gigantic clash in the family about the incident long after its climax. For many years afterward, those who went to New Orleans, to save their only boy, ever held it against those who stayed.

Lord and Lady Grantham nearly divorced over Robert's refusal to come due to bitter feelings against his own grandson and heir. His exclamation that the boy got himself in the mess and he could, jolly well, live with the consequences of his 'damn fool Crusade', had earned Lord Grantham a vase thrown at his head by his wife. Lady Edith made no illusion that she was terribly disappointed in both Tom and Mary for not coming to help, especially Mary. The boy's mother had never been convinced, even till this day that the tales coming out of America about her son were true. And Marigold was simply heartbroken that Lady Grantham and her 'Aunt' Edith were the only ones willing to go rescue George.

Sybbie had allowed herself to bare the same ill will toward George at the time. Like her Donk, both had their hopes of his return jilted for years, and it bred bitter feelings in the wake of his absence in their lives. In those years, the pretty little thing with a bow in her hair allowed others to poison her against her best friend and adopted brother. But since their fierce reconciliation upon his return, the girl was haunted by guilt of not going to New Orleans, of listening to her mama, her governess Sarah Bunting. Of taking to heart the many dowagers and grand Ladies of society that filled her head with such story book tales. Believing their nonsense of her great purpose in life as 'the sensible one' of the family, and there toxic lectures about someone she loved so deeply since she could remember.

But in the end it was for the five Eton chaps gathered around the beautiful heiress of "Branson and Talbot Motors" that the story had been really told. They had spent weeks bragging and playing up their great skill in athletics. They had competed in society competitions, titled women and their debutante daughters sitting at white cloth tables in their finest garden dresses and hats, clapping politely, tying their 'favors' to their arms to anoint them as their champion. That was the extent of their knowledge of daring. The top hats and tails they wore as school tradition of fine young gentlemen was what they knew of 'dashing'. And the son of a poor sharecropper outside New Orleans had enough of hearing them say things about a young man, his sworn brother. He was done with them making sneering comments on things which they couldn't comprehend.

They were clearly intimidated by the story, they all adjusting their tuxedo coats and clearing their throats. It was exactly what Jonah wanted, expected, in the first place. There was a look of pure indignation on their faces. The young man, then, gave a slow and factious clap as he paced toward them causally. There was a sweeping look around the room by the young club owner at the other guests, the adults in the room. Lips pursed, eyes glared, and a face of mocking amusement, the tall young black man didn't stop till he was clapping inches from the alpha of the group's face. Then he stared the young Englishman down.

"Is that what you're expecting to hear?" he asked. "Hmm? When you hit a target with your cute little bow and arrow …?" He looked out at the women of the dinner party. "They all clap, sipping Champagne and orange juice, dolled up for you big, strong, boys?" Jonah brushed the teen's shoulder off with a swish of his fingers. He leaned in a little closer. "Is that what you think I heard after I killed three men that night with my long bow? Do you think anyone clapped when I bulls-eyed a shaft fifty yards from a tree line? You know, I don't think a mother of six, with a feed store to run. I … you know, I really don't think that respectable woman of the community is gonna give me the credit, tie little purple ribbons around my arm, for landing that shaft right through her husband's throat?" He tilted his head. "You think their four boys is gonna find in their hearts more or less fondness for colored folk, because, some uppity nigger done killed their cracker ass daddy and made their whole family destitute?" The glowering eyes of Eton's Head Boy were staring straight ahead.

Jonah just gave a smug, "huh", as he paced back.

"You think I'm a funny man … don't ya? My boss and business investor, Mrs. Edith, winds me up, her silly monkey, and I smash my cymbals together for her and Ms. Marigold's amusement?" He asked in confrontation. "I says "he gots that demon inside him" and you all laugh, think I'm making some monkey shines?" He made a mocking accent of a colored actor in a minstrel show. "But you ain't laughing now, are you boys?" He asked rhetorically. "You're thinking, wondering, if what I just told you was true …" He pushed. When he didn't get a response he just nodded.

"Well let's just say it is … just for a moment." He turned around and paced toward them. "Let's say it happened, with poor little Lillian Bordeaux getting her back defiled by a vicious and evil creature that you would never want to meet in your dreams, much less in real life." He nodded. "What do you think it takes to fight something like that? You's men ain't ya? Ya'll Big and tough, now? With your best girl's pretty little favors around those big and strong arms, like Hercules? You think you'd stand and fight him, go a few rounds with 'The Preacher'?" He leaned in, jerking his head inquisitively. When they didn't respond, the young club owner just nodded. "Naw …" He scoffed. "You'd do exactly what we all did when we came across him, you'd run." He answered with first-hand experience of engagements and raids ending when the Nubian Mask came out of the midnight fog off the Mississippi.

"We all ran … all but one of us. Yes sir, only one of us ever stood his ground." He looked out the window for a second whimsically.

"When he saw that mask, he always ran toward it, not away from it." the youth scratched his cheek. "Their first fight he got him an eye." He tapped just under the socket as he turned toward the room. "The second time they fought, it was after the FBI hammered the Klan when we fought them at the "Siege of Amantha Point". Escaping that night, The Preacher took something precious from him as a last ditch hostage. He challenged him to come get her back, to meet him for a duel. He dressed his hostage up, nice and fancy for the festival and tied her to the top of a Marty Gras float." The young black man gave a mirthful chuckle of admiration.

"You remember that don't you, Lady Grantham?" He turned and pointed to Cora. "You remember how he came swinging down from a Bourbon Street banner, head scarf on his head, yo'daddy's rebel saber across his back?" To the memory, Lady Grantham simply nodded quietly. Her eyes troubled in the flash of the incident through her memory that she had tried hard to forget. "Yeah, yeah, Sure …" Jonah confirmed scratching his sideburns as he continued back toward the young chaps. "That time, he got him the preacher's hand. But once again he escaped." He lifted up the hand that the hero had taken off the masked evil of New Orleans. The young club owner strolled back toward the Eton chaps, putting his hands in his pockets.

"The last time they fought was just before he came back here, hasn't been that long at all. See, after he beat the Preacher again, they lost track of one another for several years. But they ain't never forgotten or forgiven what happened in New Orleans. And before he came home to England, there was unfinished business for both of them. That business led them down into the midnight tombs under the St. Louis Graveyards by the river front. They fought for a family jewel, an African Ruby the size of a ..." He showed them his fist. "It was the very thing that started this whole thing, started when Mrs. Levinson came home to Amantha to retrieve it, to save her family, and found the Shaman and his cultist waiting. She, her staff, tenants, and everyone she knew was tortured and killed when she refused to tell the Shaman where the jewel was." He explained. "Now, after seven years, it finally came to a head. The two of them grappled, boxed, slashed, and stabbed at one another. I don't know what, exactly, happened down there, he never told me. But I know that when it was over only one of them came out of that tomb." He tilted his head condescendingly to future members of the House of Lords.

"You see, boys, you don't seem to understand something, here … so let me, let me tell you what it is." He clapped his hands together and placed his fingers under his nose pensively for a moment. "You ain't never, in all of your lives, gonna see what that preacher is and can do." He chuckled mirthfully. "You ain't ever gonna see what he had done to people, the twisted mutilations, the horror and depravity that he delighted …"

"Mr. Robinson, I'm sure …" Robert began.

"Reveled!" Jonah talked over Lord Grantham as he looked the future Duke in the eye. "The things he reveled in, they're things that would turn your ball hairs white, boy." He spoke quieter. "That thing is as pure an evil as anything that God tried to shield us from when he created this here world." He replied. "And somewhere deep below the surface of New Orleans, someone killed that thing. Beat it to death with his own two hands." He chuckled to himself with a shake of his head. "How do you think he did that?" He asked. "Do you think that George "The Comet" Crawley was just more good than that thing was evil?" Tension was in his face the closer he came to the Head Boy.

Suddenly, he turned next to him. "Sybbie, you best done call the Pope, I think you Catholics got another candidate for sainthood!" There was nothing but mocking in the young man's tone as he squared up to the young aristocrat again.

"Naw …" he shook his head. "Naw, he wasn't no damn saint that night, not down there." The youth shrugged. "It was, because, he was meaner than that thing was. He had a hate in him that was more powerful than it was evil. George Crawley's got a demon living in his past, and for just one night she caught up with him, took control of the wheel, and drove him down there." Jonah was ominous as he was deadly serious. "It's a hate, more powerful than any of your ambition for the money of these here young beauties tonight." He nodded. "She takes different forms. Sometimes, the demon is a baby girl with her mama's pale skin, her daddy's blue eyes, and spoiled disposition to be the center of her big brother's life. Sometimes she's got blonde hair, an angel's face, and being picked apart on silk sheets by old Knickerbocker crows. But most of the time she's sitting in this room, with that cold look on her face, acting like she ain't hearing a word anyone says."

Jonah never looked, but all eyes, somehow went straight to Lady Mary Crawley.

"You're right, me and George, we might not be any damn heroes." He admitted. "But you boys better quit acting like ya'll are hard." The boy challenged the group of Eton's finest. "Cause, you ain't never seen what it takes to be it." There was a long pause as he looked unflinchingly into the young aristocrats eyes. They were still as statues for a long time, till the alpha of the group of boys finally flinched. He swallowed hard, eyes flickering to Lord Grantham for a second of asking for some sort of help, trapped in point blank range of unfiltered American candor. The shame of the nonverbal flicker toward Lord Grantham was not half as worse as letting the young nightclub owner see it.

The Black youth made a snorted noise of interest as he slowly eased back in the tension filled party room of the London Season. He blew the dust off, one last time, on the figurine he carved at one of the Viscount's lackeys in taunting, before he walked away. They all watched the handsome young man as he handed the carving of the noble family's sigil over to Lord Grantham, gifting it to him in a bow of mock gentlemanly fashion. Without having to be asked or hinted of such, Jonah had decided to go.

"It might not seem like it …" Lady Grantham said to him. "But I'm grateful, we all are, that you stand up for George." She said full heartedly.

To that, the young man only gave a hearty chuckle. "Me, standing for George?" he asked. "Hell no, George can take care of himself." He said humorously. "If you think I told that story to gain sympathy for the swashbuckler, you didn't hear it right." He announced to the room as Thomas Barrow handed the dapper Entrepreneur his coat.

"I don't understand …" the Countess frowned.

The tuxedo wearing youth slipped the coat on with the Grantham's butler's help. "It's a warning, Your Ladyship." He said loudly. He gave a good look across the drawing room. "You might think that I've made up half of the things I've said tonight. But I ain't gonna argue with you, because, I'd pay good money to see those boys over there finally push their luck too far." He fixed his collar. "Is it true? Is it Monkey Shines? Who knows … but I'll tell you this boys … keep pushing. Treat these fine young ladies over here wrong, keep talking that crazy mess about George Crawley not being shit, and by all means try to prove it …" He put his hat on, sliding a finger across the brim smoothly. With a tip of his hat he walked out of the drawing room with one sentiment.

"Eventually, you might just get exactly what you asked for."

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Acknowledgements

"Wayfaring Stranger - Rhiannon Giddens"

"Dancy's Dream - Restless Heart"

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Disclaimer

Nothing in this story is meant to push or make a modern political statement. This is a story set in the American and British Empire of the mid-1930's as is the politics, language, and social understandings of that time period, a simply fact of recorded history. Please keep that in mind before you try to storm the review section on a crusade for better … lunch meat or whatever people complain about in historical fiction.

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Author's Notes

Believe it or not I was actually thinking of holding this one off till Halloween. But since I'm dealing with massive writer's block for the conclusion of, not just one, but two other Downton stories, I decided to post this scrapped opening to a chapter of something.

This will be a two part story. For those waiting on the conclusion of the other two Downton Abbey stories in this continuity, don't worry, the second part of this is already written. Both parts were written as one and I broke them up to save on word count.

This is just more character study and examination of a few character's relationships with George after he returned to Downton from America and before he left for the Spanish War, North Africa, Mandatory Palestine, and the frontlines of France. I had a few "George in New Orleans" tales stored up for years. This one actually had context to something else, but become its own thing rather quickly.