Moon-Curser's Night
While waiting for some info to come in on YBB, I went ahead and decided to post this...just so's I can stop THINKING about it and go back to concentrating on YBB!
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"By the middle of February I was seriously inconvenienced by you…"
--Moriarty to Sherlock Holmes, THE FINAL PROBLEM
The tiny pellets of ice, flinging against the worbled glass of the bedroom window, stirred the boy out of his fitful sleep.
His first reaction was to feel cheated of the warm comfort of the thick quilts his mother had stitched together with Aunt Elizabeth. Nicholas slept on, as warm as a hot water bottle in their shared bed. His older brother envied him. Nicholas was a year younger, but somehow, he never seemed to worry. He was already Martin's size and getting bigger. He was even losing his baby-teeth faster than Martin was.
Martin rested where he was, the bed pleasant enough in the cold February night. Ice clicked and spat like cats against the window.
There was a time when patience meant nothing. Martin finally slipped out of the covers and donned his dressing-gown over his night-robe. The slippers that were his aunts' Christmas gift fit warmly about his feet. He belted everything tight and pushed the bedroom door open. His was six years old; sometimes he was still mistook for a precocious four year old. His soft round face only helped that along.
The hallway was deathly quiet to his roaring ears. He slid into the narrow walkway as easily as he'd slid out of the covers, and made his way to the small sitting-room. The sight of the fire burning low in the grate always soothed him; his parents had grown used to that habit, but he for one did not understand it.
"Well, Martin?"
Martin blinked. His father was sitting up in the battered sofa, a blanket about his shoulders. He stared, and his father smiled; the firelight caught on the creases deep in his face.
Martin had seen the chromolithographs of his mother and father at their wedding, eight years ago. His mother to his mind still looked the same. But his father looked almost as worn as his grandfather in the firelight.
"I couldn't sleep," Martin confessed. "I'm sorry."
"Come over here, then. We can sit up together." His father held out a part of the blanket, and Martin was glad to snuggle up. "And you needn't be sorry for not being able to sleep at night. I'm afraid you get that honest. I never could sleep some nights myself."
"But I'm sleepy. Why can't I sleep?" Martin wondered. He rubbed at his eyes.
His father only shook his head, at a loss. "I took it from my mother." He said. "She always said it was the tides that caused us to be that way."
"How do the tides make us not sleep?"
His father laughed without a sound. "I don't know. But the moon, if you could see it, is growing full, and the tides are pulling. If it weren't for the ice, we'd have a perfect night for moon-cursing."
Martin stared up at the man, a strange thrill in his chest. Moon-cursing. It sounded strange and marvelous at the same time. "Moon-cursing," he repeated to himself.
"That's one of the names of the smugglers who would be sailing right now."
"How do you know so much?"
"I hardly know much, Martin. But your grandmother's people were known for their smuggling." His father's large hands reached up and gently stroked the soft, dark hair at his ear. "They survived on the art for generations. I've chosen a legal form of livelihood…but I suppose blood will out." He leaned his head back on the divan. "There's something of a smuggler left in me, perhaps. And in you."
"Why would they break the law?"
"There are always men who want the quick dollar as opposed to the slow shilling…and there are people who know nothing else but what their own fathers taught them. I know people—I work with people—who only know the thrill of what they do. That's why I'm glad to be just a Yarder. I have enough on my plate without being a policeman for the entire world!"
Martin thought about it in comfortable silence. "Sometimes Mama is angry at you when you get home. Because you're a policeman."
"Martin…you know what it is I do."
"Yes, sir."
"You know what I do isn't safe."
Martin hadn't thought much about it. "You get hurt once in a while," he said slowly. "And mum gets angry."
"She's not truly angry, Martin. She's frightened when I come home hurt. And I can't blame her for the way that makes her feel. I do whatever I can to make sure she doesn't feel that frightened. That's what it comes down to. She's angry because she's frightened, and when I get hurt, she's frightened." He patted his son on the back gently. "And she has a right to be." He shook his head, making the cloth of his dressing-gown rustle softly. "I'd rather spend my nights here with you lot."
"Even if you had to walk the floor when we're not feeling well?"
"Even if."
Martin realized with a sense of surprise, he was still small enough to snuggle up against his father's ribcage and there was plenty of room left over. "You used to tell us stories, when we were little."
"You have a good memory." His father said wryly. "Ever since you were born, we'd be up walking the floor-boards with you in our arms when the moon was full."
"When did you stop telling stories?" Martin buried his face in his father's side.
"You started sleeping the night through."
"I miss them." Martin's responses were difficult to combat; he kept his sentence structure too short for one to find loopholes in them. Has to be the Cheatham in him.
"What, do you remember them?"
"Mm-hmn. You said that where Grandmother lived, there were castles scattered all over the land, and many of them had crumbled to ruin…" Martin paused to yawn. "You said that there were nights called, 'werey-wolf nights' where people locked up their doors and windows, because men who had sold their souls to the devil were donning wolf-skins and riding on Devil's nights in search of prey." For all the alarming content of his recollection, he was rather undisturbed by it.
"You remember all that, then?" His father whispered soft as a feather. But Martin was already sliding from wakefulness with the touch of his father's warm hand rubbing his back.
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The little boy's breathing lulled in sleep; his recounting of fairy-tales had stumbled and blurred with his voice as, without knowing it, his father's gentle touch had sent him into the slumber he had wanted. Geoffrey stopped stroking by degrees; he rested his hand on his son's shoulder but he failed to wake. Poor boy, he thought. Night is hard enough without having to bring nightmares into it. He stared into the flames of the battered fireplace in silence, as he'd done before his son's sleepy shamble into the room.
A puff of cooler air drifted across the floor. Geoffrey pulled himself out of his own hypnotic state to see his wife leaning against the jamb, a loose throw around her shoulders and her hair spilling down her back and shoulders like a waterfall of black silk.
"And what are you smiling at, Inspector?" She asked softly, the smile in her voice.
"You." He answered. "I couldn't sleep." He glanced down, ruefully, at the sleeping bundle wrapped against his chest. "Nor could Martin, at first."
"However did you get him to succumb?" Clea Marie Cheatham Lestrade stepped lightly in her slippers across the floor, missing that one squeaking plank on instinct. She knelt and rested a small hand on her son's back, against her husband's.
"I just started stroking his back." They spoke softly in the firelight. Clea was smiling as she reached up to touch her husband's face.
"It works for cats," she agreed. "Let's see if we can get you into bed, Geoffrey."
"How, without waking him back up?"
"Oh, ye, of little faith…" Clea smiled, and began stroking Martin's small shoulders. "Slide out," she whispered.
It took something that resembled a balancing-act and a lot of breath-holding, but very gradually, Geoffrey slipped upward and over the back of the couch. Martin mumbled once, softly, but remained buried in the cozy warmth of the blanket still heated by his father's body.
"Very good." Geoffrey smiled and bowed from behind the couch to his wife.
Clea rose by degrees from her son. She smiled. "Now what's got that look in your eyes, Geoffrey Lestrade?"
"I'm thinking," he said in the same voice, "that you haven't changed a bit. You're as gorgeous as ever."
"And I'd say you were as sleep-addled as ever." She retorted. The blanket tucked snugly around their oldest son. "Come to bed," his wife said softly. "You're better than a warming-pan and it's chilly in there."
"Yes, dear." A shadow darkened his face as he reached up to touch her cheek.
"You're thinking of the case?" Clea guessed.
"I wasn't good enough at the meeting." Bitter salt coated his voice as he spoke. His wife slid inside his arms and rested her head against his collar bone. "Clea, I couldn't…I couldn't convince them that…we should be working with the Tinkers."
"You think the Tinkers can truly help us?"
"Padriac's tribe can. They spend part of the year in France; they're in France right now. We've established that they're an easy source of information between ourselves and the crime rings we're against." Clea felt his head bow; his lips pressed against the top of her head. "It doesn't matter," he said faintly. "I'm just the regular Inspector. If I were Patterson or Gregson, I'd know how to speak."
It was an old wound. Clea understood that, due to stature and colouring, her husband had been selected for subterfuge among many different races. It had given him an arsenal of bizarre experiences, and a degree of sympathy for those who did not normally have a friend in the eyes of the law. He believed in the people he was usually spying against; people few of the others really knew them other than in the context of "outsiders from the law."
"I mourn for the world that doesn't value simple speaking over a clever tongue." Clea circled her arms about his neck and kissed him lightly on the lips. "At any rate, come to bed. You have one more night with us before you go off, and I'm already missing you."
"But I haven't left yet." He smiled, wanting to be convinced.
"I know." She kissed him again.
They gently closed the door after their sleeping son. There was no sound on the other side of the door. Clea pulled her husband close and drew him to the bedroom. He bent her head and kissed her hair again; was surprised when she pulled him into her arms.
"Clea?" he whispered as thin as a July breeze.
"What is it?" She whispered.
"Martin." He wrapped his wife in his arms until their dressing-gowns wrinkled against each other. "He was remembering stories I'd told him back when he was a year old--maybe as old as two." She felt his frown in the darkness. "He remembered all of that. If I'd known…! I wouldn't have told him a thing."
"Were they so terrible, Geoffrey?"
"No, perhaps not but they were…vivid." He didn't know how to explain it. "There were…hunts, that the gentry activated. I suppose it was part boredom and part need to establish control…the priests called it meetings with the Devil, but they were careful not to say that too loudly." He took a deep breath. "The hunters would wear wolf-skins, and they would hunt down something…it was a cult, I suppose you'd call it a version of the Ku Klux Klan. It wasn't always a wild animal that was being hunted."
"Oh." Clea said softly. Her arms never changed their grip about him.
"Quimper's father was quite involved with it. That meant, his son was too." Sons. Old, painful memories flashed in the deep. "One day, at the summer estate in Portsmouth, he and my brothers decided that they would play at having a Wild hunt." Clea watched as her husband's features dissolved into the past. "I was small, I had a twisted foot. I can't run very fast."
"Oh, my God, Geoffrey."
"They couldn't use the horses; the men were already out on their version of the hunt. But some of the dogs were left behind, and they knew to obey Quimper." He swallowed dryly. "They obeyed Armoricus, too. Paul…I suppose Paul really did think it was all just a game. He was too trusting that way. But he could see at night like an owl, and it was because of him I couldn't shake them off."
"And you don't care about dogs to this day." Clea supplied in an unsteady voice.
"No. I finally got to the barn, where the dogs weren't allowed to go; the horses didn't like them, and I was hoping my father was still there. But he'd gone home. Perhaps he was even part of Ivo Quimper's hunt. I don't know. But I climbed to the hayloft. Quimper hated—hates--heights, so Armoricus went after me."
"Is that how you broke your leg?" Clea could feel his heart drumming against her breast. Her own was rapid.
"Yes." He shivered a little, wanting to leave the memory. "I was tired, Clea. I was telling Martin all kinds of stories that night because the sound of my voice seemed to soothe him…I don't think I told him any of that, but I must have told him something about the Wild Hunt. I shouldn't have said a thing."
"You aren't the only one who told him inappropriate stories, love." Clea pointed out. Inwardly, her heart hammered. "I think I was reading parts of the suffragettes' newspaper when it was my turn to sit up."
He snorted, and gave her a rueful look. "Really."
"Well, I needed something that would keep me awake," she pointed out. "Some of those women are utterly ridiculous. Thinking women are too good to fight—really." She obviously still carried a disgruntled recollection.
He looked like he wanted to laugh, but cobwebs of guilt remained in his eyes. "I'm just going to be very very careful about what I say around that boy from now on."
"Martin doesn't seem to be upset, Geoffrey." She squeezed him a little tighter. "That's the important thing."
"Clea, I do love you," was all he said to that, and he was returning the kiss she placed on him with enthusiasm.
"What happened after your leg was broken?" Clea asked. "You've started the story; it couldn't end there."
"I was sent to live with my grandfather for the rest of the summer." He admitted. "It was really the only time I spent much time across the Channel. My father did not approve, but that was the only time I think my mother ever defied him." He shook his head in wonder still. "Honestly, I don't think she even consulted him…she just…sent me across to Brest and I stayed there until they ran out of excuses."
"You sound like you liked it," Clea offered.
"It was…restful." He said succinctly.
"I can imagine. You must have been angry for a long time."
"I was at first…but my grandfather was a bit of a patriot—strange but a lot of smugglers are—he'd point out that the small ermine will fight a fox."
"Hmn…Quimper does remind me of a fox." Clea answered softly. "Clever like a fox, too clever by half, until his cleverness chokes him."
"He can't live forever." Her husband knew her own feelings for the man.
"Come to bed," she repeated softly. In moments they were back under the covers, but as Clea listened to the sound of her own breath against her husband's neck, she knew his mind was very much elsewhere from sleep; his thoughts were on the world outside the sleet-driven window outside their bedroom.
She knew he hadn't spoken of the entire case they were on. Clea was an Inspector's wife, and as ignorant as any other's on what their husbands were doing until after the fact. But he was worried. She felt it in the depth of his embrace, and the way he held her without moving, like she was something that would get up and leave forever.
Which had almost happened. They had spent so much time facing the possibility of his death, they weren't fully prepared for the idea of losing her. Nicholas' birth had been a hard one, with complications that had nearly been the end of mother and child. For all the trauma of his arrival, Nicholas had faced existence with unconcerned aplomb; Clea was back to her full strength but she had learned a lesson about mortality in herself, and Geoffrey would carry an ice-chip of fear in his heart for the rest of their lives together.
Clea wished for a daughter, but Geoffrey was unconvinced that she should put herself at risk for motherhood again.
"How long do you think you'll be gone?" She asked. His mind was on the job anyway.
"Hopefully, no more than a day once we get there." He admitted. "I'm just not…looking forward to it. At least the weather will have warmed up…" He paused to stretch suddenly. "But…after that, we'll be waiting on the word from Those Above on how we're to go after this gang."
"Something to be grateful for." Clea reached up to stroke his hair. "We'll miss you." She leaned up to kiss him on the lips.
"I'll be back as soon as I can." He kissed her back. She began combing his hair and neck with her fingers; he made a contented sound and managed to melt deeper into her arms. She smiled against his neck, and kept going. What worked for Martin could work for his father. She was still smiling when he slipped off to sleep without knowing it.
OK, That's it for a while...We're getting some fanfic cleaned up on the shelves!