In the blue haze of the open sky above the vast ocean, there could still be heard the distant sound of rocks and sediment falling from the shattered cliff face where Levinson Manor once stood.
The white and grey of a receding foundation caved in and collapsed into tumbling debris that crumbled into the raging waves below, smashing into the razor strewn sea rock barrier. Where surf met stone there remained a graveyard of marble and whitewashed ruins of the palatial manor of a world of tomorrow that never came. The violence of waves and the pitiless march of time would wash and bleach away the memories of opulent ballrooms, gilded halls, and fairy dreams of young American heiresses. And it was there, cutting across the foreground of this distant scene of sediment cloud and destruction in the blue hue of the ocean, came two silhouettes. Propelled by a runaway train steaming across the deteriorating sea wall that was surrounded on all sides by the lapping green water, the two men engaged in the final act of their deadly duel.
Of what this was about now, here at the end, the last prince of a fallen civilization no longer could comprehend. What he saw, what he knew, was all up in the air. Nothing made sense anymore. However, what he did know was the one thing that had been thrown in his face his entire life. And that was that his father was a monster, his life was created, conceived, in a monstrous act. There was no escaping it, no running away from it. But what he could do was change it, change the legacy that was bequiffed to him. What he was fighting for now had nothing to do with George Crawley, and everything to do with the future of his House, of his lineage.
This fight, this duel, was the last obstacle, the last test. He would prove himself the better man by ridding his house, his family, of the last enemy. It would wipe away the red tint on the ledger of their name. Redemption, of nobility and pride restored to the House of Pamuk - long tainted by his accused father's evil deeds. When he entered his new life, it would not be as the bastard son of a rapist, but as a victor, a conqueror. He would be the man that ended the House of Grantham, broke the line of Lady Elfstone, and killed George "The Comet" Crawley – something that "The Necromancer" and all of SPECTRE itself couldn't do in eight years.
But, alas, like so many children of hated parents, were they trapped by the very vices and weaknesses of the monsters they swore they were nothing like.
Alemdar Pamuk was drawn in, deceived, by his own arrogance – indeed, the very arrogance of his upbringing and culture. For years, his entire life, was he drilled in the form of traditional Islamic swordsmanship. One might say, at the age of twenty-five, that he was the foremost expert in the art of the discipline. However, the obvious blunder he clearly committed – his bloodied face and busted knee evidence of not understanding the principle lesson of swordsmanship that his young foe rewrote the book on – 'The blade is not the only part of a weapon.' – came in second. His most grievous sin remained his unfamiliarity with any other form of swordsmanship.
Much like Kamal Pamuk looking upon Lady Mary Crawley's immense beauty and feeling an entitlement of station and upbringing to sate his dark carnal desires, his son made a similar mistake in matters of combat. He was raised to believe that the Islamic way was both superior and the true way of the sword. He did not bother to study anything else, to observe anything else. His self-believe and entitlement of being righteous were in his mind and heart. His studious understanding of his swordsmanship near scholarly. But Alemdar Pamuk, in combat, against an experienced and highly trained foe, lacked the imagination to adapt to changing and shifting situations. He became predictable and easily read by a master of many other forms of the sword from many other cultures.
George Crawley had fought a great diversity of foes – middling thugs, competent minions, specialized lieutenants, and dangerous villains that one could hardly imagine were real. He found out early in life that there were more to duels and fights than smashing swords together, throwing punches and kicks, and taking hits. It was a game of chess, of anticipation, stamina, and awareness. One could not brute force nor match the savagery of Alexander Grayson, the Prince of Wallachia, "The Dragul" – a four-hundred-year-old undead demon who was once the greatest warrior and swordsman in Christendom. Professor James Moriarty – Head and founder of SPECTRE – could anticipate strategies and foresee entire battles in a mind that saw the world in equations and calculus, an infinite universe of mathematics in which he held the keys. Kalem-dai Rao, the Stygian Sorcerer Supreme, with the Serpent Ring of Set – a master of illusion and subterfuge. His evil serpent ring entrapping the mind in a melodic entrancing haze so that his duel gilded ancient Egyptian blades became a multitude of glinting swords wielded by slithering and hissing scaly arms.
All of these stratagems and lessons from many scars and bruises came from George Crawley's learning of different styles and disciplines of sword and fist. One never knew that a simple lesson from Isobel Crawley – his grams – had stuck with him and saved his life many times. The idea that one should study other cultures, nor assume that the Grantham's traditions were always the right and only way. Since then, George had learned and appropriated many other peoples' fighting styles and wisdom, incorporating it into his life and skills as a fighter.
He never deified them, nor did he agree with all their teachings, for, indeed, they were also all human - with their petty prejudices and dark histories of which no people, race, nor culture of the world was exempt. But the youth learned, absorbed, and even admired, the other cultures that he had come into contact with and learned from - enhancing his understanding of what was in the hearts of all men … and what was in his own. Thus, such a diversity of the mind and thought had changed George's perceptions of the world, introducing him to different points of view. Yet, it also strengthened many of his long held believes and perceptions of humanity while in savage and strange lands, in the cruelty and inequity found within them.
This amalgamation and broad spectrum of the martial and mind was crucial in many a duel and battle with grave enemies. There were plans, strategies, and no shortage of cleverness involved. Simply giving a war cry, lifting your blade or fist, and springing into the breech, was perhaps the least helpful thing one can do. Fighting Alexander Grayson - the old demon - required agility, evasion, and a superiority of balance. The undead prince's fighting style being both savage and direct, known to easily succumb to fits of rage – especially when fighting George Crawley, the young lad who had and would stand between him and his reincarnating beloved - Ilona Tepes, Mina Murray, and … Sybbie Branson. Kalem-dai Rao was fought by 'grabbing him by the belt buckle' - get in close, suffocate him, stay on top of him, and not allow him to escape nor find space for the master magician to conjure illusions and mirages with his evil ring. For James Moriarty, it was straight chaos. It was essential to make one's self unpredictable, ungovernable by the rules and laws of his world of mathematical equations – an ever-shifting matrix of disciplines and fighting styles combined into an unrecognizable pattern.
The applications of these mindsets had been no different in the fight with Alemdar Pamuk. George had drawn him in, lulling him deeper and deeper into the trap, before showing his hand. He was waiting for his foe to switch up, to show his true face, his true prowess. There were tiers and layers to a fight with the most dangerous villains and dastardly rogues. There was the opening phase, the shift, the offensive, and then the revealing of the true power - the special techniques and skills hidden till the right moment. George was holding back and holding back, waiting – slowly revealing his ability and competency, making the bastard prince over-commit to his perception of George before pulling the rug out with something completely different.
But it never happened.
The beautiful man with a face like an angel had shown George all he knew within the first phase of their fight. It was simply a repetition, a back and forth. He was disciplined, stalwart, an expert. Yet, he remained rigid and scheduled. By now, the big and terrible enemy that had done so much damage, that had sent so many men to their death, that put the lives of strangers of the town of Newport, Rhode Island in danger … had revealed himself to be a tourney fighter. The bastard prince Pamuk would be a champion at a garden party competition in which all the smitten young debutantes would tie their favors to his arm and their titled aunties and mammas would clap as he won match after match. He could become a Cambridge or King's College professor on the art of it, an instructor to fellow poshies with need of an exotic elective to impress their debutante or aristocratic conquest. But when it came to combat, when it came to an actual fight, George Crawley found that the man who puffed himself up to be the next "Bandit King" … was a sporting chap – at best.
It was then, crossing the final bridge – both physically and mentally - having gotten the full measure of his foe, George cut loose and broke down the façade. The eyes of Alemdar were wide and suddenly afear as he got all he had wanted and hoped. George broke his defensive posture and went into full assault. The swords rang hard and fast, vibrating and crying shrilly, causing the bastard prince's hands to ache and buckle from the force and ferocity. He was suddenly hard pressed in the explosion of a shifting matrix of different styles and moves that he had never seen before, didn't know existed.
He could hardly hold back the storm, being backed down as George struck high and then the middle, the straight blade of Lord Grantham's saber twirling and feinting in a speed so quick that it was almost a blur. The foe gave it to him, with all the intensity and mastership that he would've given a fight to Grayson or "The Necromancer" with Sybbie or Marigold – the girls he loved – on the line. The result was both a devastating and telling flex of power by the teenager of making Alemdar Pamuk regret deeply the want for a direct duel with George "The Comet" Crawley.
A pained and shocked growling gasp got lost in the stinging wind of the sea that whipped about their faces when the point of Lord Grantham's saber stabbed Alemdar in the shoulder in a sudden flurry of thrusts that he couldn't keep up with. Blood oozed over expensive black leather of gloved fingers as he pressed one hand to the wound and tried to fend off George with the other. But the youth knew his defenses, his technique, fore he had shown him nothing different - not even a variant. They began fighting high, with strikes and parries in front of and above their head, till Alemdar attempted a rout turning thrusting lunge at George's mid-section, which he thought undefended.
The youth sidestepped, knocking the lunge aside so hard that the painful vibration loosed Pamuk's grip on the hilt. Then, George used the flat part of the saber blade and struck hard the Ottoman's wrist from below. A terrible crippling pain shot up the beautiful man's arm as he felt the ancestral scimitar leave his hand and go spinning above. He watched with widened eyes as the scimitar of his ancestors was caught by the hilt mid-air, falling perfectly into the hand of George. With slick flourish of duel swords, the back of the curved blade of Damascus Steel ended up at the prince's throat, while the British saber was cocked back - the point resting inches from between his eyes.
It was over.
Alemdar Pamuk sank upon his knees, gazing into the cold and dangerous eyes of the foe that had tormented him and yet held the keys to his very future since before he was born into the world. It seemed a parable as it was a reality, fitting, that here, at the end of all things, it was "The Comet" himself that held his fate in his hands, that would level the final judgement on this hateful life. Just like Alemdar's descent, was he held at the mercy of two swords, two cultures, and two different worlds. One of his father and grandmother - Persian, Turkish, and Islamic. The other, of his mother - French, American … the West. Each sharp and deadly in their own right, and each held against him, used against him. There was perhaps the will of Allah in this, a story complete, finite. If this was the end, truly, then it was certainly foreseen, a possibility. Perhaps a life of tragedy was but cosmic poetry that even he might have respected. The whiff of the divine, the irony, heartened him in his last moments, and he might have laughed to his very grave at it all. And yet …
The final stroke never came.
George Crawley held his foe at his mercy, poised to strike the killing blow. He could cut his throat with the back end of the Ottoman's ancestral sword. There was nothing stopping him from lopping his head off - pressing the Damascus Steel right through the sinew and cleave the neck. Nor was there anything stopping him from impaling his head - put his grandfather's saber right between his eyes with a thrust and watch it come out the other end. Yet, still, George hesitated, holding his defeated enemy in thrall. Now, there was a conflict in him, shown in his eyes as he glanced down at the beaten man before him. It was then that there was showcased the true difference between the two heirs.
Alemdar would do anything, anything in the world, to win the love and respect of the handsome and exotic princess that raised him. Enslaved still to her devotion, her hatred, and her love for a monstrous son that she feared with equal ferocity. He allowed himself to be indoctrinated, to beg for the scraps left by a damaged and conflicted woman for just a spark of her absent love. That someday she would see him for who he was. Acknowledge him as everything that she and the rest of his family wanted him to be. He became her acolyte, her high priest, and the hand of her vengeance – this Persian goddess that he set his course and life by. Never thinking or believing anything else but what was told to him by his female elders.
George Crawley, on the other hand, had seen 'The Great Trap' long before, as he saw it in action now. The youth had the foresight to defy his family's expectations, to reject their platitudes and legacy. He rejected the history and traditions of the House of Grantham that the Dowager Countess and her eldest granddaughter held so dear, that those of their class and society thought utmost important. At first, he did so out of spite and anger – to damn all gentlemen and great ladies, the matriarchal values of their Household that slandered him, left him to die, and blamed him for many ills of their world. Then, and now at this very moment, it was with a clear eye and open mind that he rejected his elders and forebearers. Fore, if he were to capitulate to their demands, their plans, to make his future that of all they dreamed, then all of what happened here today and in this very instant would seem right.
This duel would make sense to the indoctrinated and programed young peers of the class that the young Lord of Downton was born into. That in the halls of Harrow and Eton, they were taught the values of the preservation of old traditions and the regality of the status quo. These ancient and exclusive schools, the patriarchs and matriarchs of these old crumbling noble families, had only ever told their sons what to think. They were their vessels and legacy of continuing the world they controlled as they would leave it. Thus, Alemdar Pamuk was right to fight George Crawley, as equally as it was right for the Lord of Downton to kill the bastard prince. Fore, in the minds of the old nobility and aristocracy, this was the way of their world - divorced from the gentrified rules and petty morals of common men. That names, histories, and legacy mattered more in the end than anything else. The wheel ever turning in stagnated progress, laying down the same centuries old trap for the new generation.
Yet, George Crawley was his own man, had his own mind that was not in step – in open defiance – of the matriarchal dogma of Lady Violet and Lady Mary. Indeed, before George ever touched a blade, was shown how to throw a punch, the boy was taught not what to think … but how to think – both critically and for himself. The Dowager, his Donk, and his mamma's anger, their disappointment, in him and his values had come from being blinded by what they believed was supposed to be done, rather than what should be done. What was thought – for centuries – not what could be thought.
Thus, because, George Crawley did not fit the mold of the perfect heir, the chap in the top hat and tails strutting about posh streets with the rest of the future of their class, they thought something wrong with him. That, in time, everything would be lost – that everything done and accomplished as stewards and caretakers of Downton was for naught. That the House of Grantham was to be no more. But it was not true. It was simply that George Crawley had a different point of view. Perhaps not an accepted nor respected one in the eyes of the women of his family and the rest of the upper classes … but it was what he deemed as right.
Some insight, or perhaps understanding, of the mind and languish of Alemdar was in a lightened look from the implacable Comet Crawley. Plenty of men and monsters had tried to kill him in the past. They all had their various reasons. Moriarty wanted an ancient evil power. Alexander Grayson wanted the woman he loved back – in any incarnation of her. Fu Manchu believed in racial superiority and world domination. In all of these cases, George Crawley had simply stood in the way of those goals. But very rarely had he fought in such a battle as this, when the main crux of this violence, of so much death, was all to kill him. That such zealotry, such desperation, from a man he never met had to be something personal, inherent to their upbringing. That this extremism was bought only by pain - long and never ending. That this battle, so desperate and cruel, was something that neither asked for.
The decrypted monuments and ruined palaces of a gilded age undreamed and long forgotten were the two young men's battlefield. Their weapons: the rusted and neglected heirlooms of noble families that bitterly regret their existence. And the conflict of which they engaged one another had so very little to do with their own lives, wants, and dreams. They were mirror contrasts trapped in a struggle of a decaying and dying world of yesterday, pitted against one another in the mires of obligations to duties and traditions of societies that had long cast them out. Alemdar Pamuk – the bastard fighting for his legitimacy as a prince. And George Crawley – the true born son of a noble line and family that was treated as a bastard.
They were both trapped in an endless circle of violence wrought by the mistakes of those who had no bearing on their lives. A monstrous father who died when his bastard son was barely two years old. A young mother – cold, selfish, and unkind – who long abandoned her rightful and trueborn son out of some misplaced self-hatred of trying to save him from her own perceived wickedness. A princess of a fallen civilization whose love for a son was mingled in an endless poison of hate for what he had done to her as both her child and her lover. A son cursed by the fear of a father he never met, destined to fight over and over again the battle he should've fought with Kamal Pamuk on a cold day in 1913 to protect the woman he loved deathlessly. And while Alemdar was dominated by these questions of legacy and honor as things offered but kept out of his reach. George Crawley saw 'The Great Trap' of noble titles and the domineering expectations of their anointment that he spent his life trying to shake.
There was still hesitation in the young Lord of Downton's posture. His instinct, his mind, battling itself. He knew the logic, perhaps even the wisdom, in killing his foe. To put an end to a life of danger, of always looking over his shoulder. Yet, still, when he looked at the man before him – angelic, young, fancy, and unassuming – he was filled with pity. This was not a hardened warrior, a killer of men. This was a pampered and continental chap raised in great opulence, forced into this unsuited role. He was someone who had been used and abused by a woman caught in the mires of her own evils and the snares of conflicted feelings for the very monster she bore. He was no more responsible for what happened here today than George was for the immature lust and selfish vanity of his own young mother one horrible night long ago. They both were the victims of two women's weakness and arrogance. And George was resolved to break the chain, the cycle of violence perpetrated by values and beliefs that had pitted two strangers against one another in the name of both their societies outdated values. Fore, there was no point to this fight –
There was no point to this man's death.
"Do you yield?!"
"What?"
"Do you yield?!"
A flash, not of valiantry, extremism, nor fey recklessness of the martyr, but of humanity, came across the beaten man's eyes.
'I – I … I yield … sir!" There was a shame in his voice.
A tear ran down the bastard prince's bruised cheek as he answered. In that instant, everything that Pamuk thought he was and had been his entire life evaporated in front of him. The hardened warrior, the master swordsman, was entirely human – afear at the point of a blade. All the conviction and training, the fervency and devotion, to his name and house, went away when death was but an inch from his jugular. It was then that he betrayed all he ever knew for just one more breath, one more minute of fighting off prostrating at the hand of the destroyer. And it was then that there was no skilled onslaught nor sacred sword technique that could've beaten the bastard prince more than he had himself in that terrible moment …
Fore of all the things Alemdar Pamuk was taught, drilled, like an attack dog … how to face death was not one of them.
"Do you foreswear your oath of vendetta against Lady Mary Josephine Crawley?!" George demanded.
"I –" He paused.
"Do you FORESWEAR her?!" He brought the edge of the Damascus Steel blade closer to the man's throat.
"I so foreswear!" He cried.
"Do you swear to never take up arms against the House of Grantham nor any of their loved ones!"
"I do!"
"hal tuqasam 'alaa tahmil alsilah abdan dida eayilat ghiranthami!" George reiterated aggressively in a feral Arabic, knowing the legitimacy his foe as a Muhammadan would see in speaking it – swearing by it.
"'aqsim biallah aleazim 'aniy lan 'ahmil alsilah maratan 'ukhraa dida bayt ghrantham wala dida 'uwlayik aladhin yuhibuwnahum , wallah 'uqsim bidhalika!" The man shouted in a rushed panic as the point of Lord Grantham's saber began pricking the skin between his eyes.
"SWEAR TO ME!"
George roared with a ghoulish, almost demonic, voice that stole the very soul from the older man upon his knees as he cocked back Robert Crawley's saber.
"I swear it!"
His penance came swiftly and with great anguish when the Damascus Steel blade of his own ancestral sword was lifted from his throat and ran deeply across his angelic face – marring it for all time. The scream that the man let out was gruesome and horrific as a deep crimson gash, like a black red paint, marred the masterwork of a countenance of true exotic beauty. A diagonal slash was slowly cut into his face by George Crawley, from brow, across the bridge of his nose, and ending on his opposite jaw line. When he removed the blade, the once beautiful and angelic figure fell in light headedness from the physical torment of his mutilation. He covered his face, clutching it as if to close the horrible wound.
"That's so you don't forget it, or the men you've sent to die today!"
George pointed the scimitar at the man writhing atop the rocking passenger car. Then, with a swipe of the ancient sword, he removed the Ottoman prince's blood from the blade with the force of his wrist flick. With a flourish, he held the sword in a reverse grip as he stalked away, leaving its once owner sobbing and snarling in pain on the floor. He picked up the discarded ornate Arabic scabbard and sheathed the sacred blade – taking the ancient and ancestral scimitar sword of the Royal House of the Ottoman Grand Sultans as a trophy of his victory and that of the last Romans over their foes. And it is so here marked that even till this very day it remains on display as a trophy of the exiled heirs of the fallen House of Grantham.
George walked over where his own pack of fine, supple, and well-travelled leather still lay. He picked it up and sheathed Lord Grantham's saber in its metal scabbard that was harnessed to the side of his pack. Slinging it over his shoulder with a rattle of sword, cushioned tap on his lower back of Lady Grantham's Worth wedding gown, and clap of the evil tribal mask attached to the flap clasp, the youth paced to the edge of the passenger car to survey what was below. Farmland now stretched far and wide as the train continued on an elevated track - putting the coast and town of Newport behind them. The gridded acres shifted and crisscrossed, the rich dark soil of tilled mounds in lines created optical illusions as they rushed by on either side of the tracks that lay between the fields. It was then that George turned back to the prince, who was peering at him through his bloody fingers. He was stalwart then, tall and lean – his tussled raven locks caught high on the wind. The glimmer, the remembrance, of Camelot and Round Table was found in his fair and noble countenance as he fixed the man with a hard and cold glare of steely justice.
"You tell that Persian Witch: That twice I've had her family by the throat today and twice I've slackened my grip. Next time -" George pointed the pommel of the ancestral blade at the mutilated prince.
"I'll wash your House from history with your blood."
With that, George Crawley leapt backward off the runaway train and disappeared out of sight.
Alemdar Pamuk's mouth hung open, paused, frozen in shock. Then, with every ounce of effort he could muster, the man crawled forward to the edge of the passenger car – the gashed scars of his blade pinching him as he slid across the cloven aluminum. When he got to the edge of the compartment, he squinted through the salty wind that tormented his open wound upon his face and glanced down and away where the youth had leapt off. At first, he didn't see anything, any sign whatsoever of his foe. But eventually, tracking across the endless farmland, he caught the sunlight flicker of a rusted metal body.
And there, speeding parallel to the rail line, was a beaten and well-worn powder blue Chevy pickup truck half loaded down with loose hay. Pamuk had no idea how long it had been shadowing them, following them, or if, indeed, it was the Comet's plan all along for it to meet him outside of town. But whatever it was, Pamuk glanced down into the bed of the truck and saw George Crawley laying within the straw where he landed. Once on board, he saw the youth hammer the back window of the truck cab and give a thumbs up. It was then, with an audible roar of the pickup engine, that the truck began to accelerate ahead at full throttle, passing the compartment cars and moving in stride with the locomotive engine.
Like two horses on the last leg of the race, did the powder blue Chevy and black iron Russell locomotive stride nose for nose. The truck bounced and rocked on the uneven trench of the sloped ground beneath the elevated gravel tracks that was raised above the fields. The Chevy's side view was dominated by the machinations of the train's crankshaft and connecting rod in their powerful cycling of wheels that were now glowing red and smoking from the friction of the high speed. They screeched shrilly while their sparks bounced off the driver's side window like an old man-of-war broadside cannonade. Eventually, in the charring punishment of sparks and hellish heat of the friction, the Chevy suddenly swerved on a dime. From the trench they turned on a narrow dirt tract surrounded by brambles. A thin aluminum gate of bars made an audible ring as the front bumper of the truck hammered right through it and onto a small farmer's private dirt road. It was in that moment, as train and truck went their separate ways, that the foe of the once royal house saw fit to give his enemy and their legacy a fitting tribute in parting.
George Crawley sat up just enough so that Mr. Pamuk could catch the middle finger with his thumb extended as he disappeared into the horizon of a trailing cloud of agricultural dust.
For a long time Alemdar Pamuk stared out in the distance till the train carried him far out of sight of the rusted truck and dust cloud. Then, with a sob that encompassed many feelings and pains, the man rolled onto his back and looked up into the sky. For the anguish had not blinded him to what was obvious. He had lost. The one fight, the endless war, that he had been training for fifteen years, it came and went. The verdict never in doubt, not once, that he was completely and totally over his head. His grandmother and he had severely underestimated their foe to a frightfully perilous degree. It was only by God's grace that he had not met his fate this day. It was only by the unlooked-for mercy from Crawley that he was still alive – though the terrible and intolerable pain upon his ruined visage felt the very opposite of good will.
Yet, he did not leave the fight only marred in the face … he left with a marred sense of himself. So quickly, so easily, had he surrendered, foreswore everything that he had built his life around. However, a part of him - from that hour forward - questioned the validity of his convictions for that defining battle of which he had lost so handedly. Perhaps, it was simply that his heart was not in it. That somewhere deep inside he knew that this was not a defining moment for him. That the cause of which everything was held dear was an empty jihad, his life fighting a straw man in the service and memory to an empty chair of an indifferent master. There was no matching George Crawley in combat prowess, nor in his sheer intellect – at least as Alemdar was now. But in his new vow – sworn on the name of Allah himself – he saw a new path, a new understanding.
He would deliver his own message to his grandmother rather than the Comet's. That message being that he loved her, loved all of her, all his life, and would do so till his dying breath. But he would take what was rightfully his, whether she approved or not. A bastard with a scarred face meant nothing when the riches of Mid-East oil could buy so much - wives, mistresses, titles, and prestige. It was then that Alemdar Pamuk found solace in his experience of near death, in the unlooked-for mercy of a foe with a different point of view of the world and of honor.
Fore, all the money in the world could buy many things of dreams and fantasy. The purchase of an ancient and grand English Country House, the endless invites to grand societal dinners as the exotic and mysterious foreign guest during the Season. It could buy many an elite doctorial hand – steady and experienced – that could fix a face, make a scar less noticeable and prominent. Beauty untold – both in decoration and female companionship – would be available, inescapable with both fixed face and an unfixed income that was limitless. Wine, food, pleasure, was readily given and ordered at all times of the day and night whether in Rome, Paris, or London.
However, the years of gouted delicacy of company, flesh, and glamour, wanes. The nights become long and close in their dark pitiless guard about the heart. The applause of the fashionable Wimbledon crowd in their finery of the new champion stings the soul in the sight of masculine triumph allotted. Darker and more desperate the proclivities and vices become in the urge to escape the nightmares, the memories, of missed opportunities and absent purpose of a life unlived. Every night looking in the mirror and seeing nothing but the mark, the mar, the scar, left behind in remembrance of vows sworn that are regretted little by little, day after day, in a decadent and unfulfilling existence surrounded by unchecked want and struggleless gain. Then, even the richest food tastes like ash, the rarest wine like sulfur, and the youngest, sweetest, and most exclusive girl's pleasure as unattainable as the comfort of a frigid stone. Till all that was once done in mercy, pity, and honor, was the very venom that poisoned a soul with regret and hatred.
But it takes more than one enlightened mind to change the world, and it takes more than a moment's mercy and a show of honorable nobility to undo a lifetime of indoctrination, self-pity, and envy. It takes both parties to stop and break the wheel, the cycle of violence, and duty to dying traditions of an old world and thinking. Yet, when all the pleasure and distraction of a life of plenty, comfort, and unearned opulence runs dry, when regret and shame remain, all that is left is the echoes and hauntings of an old life, an old faith, and programed abuse. Then, all that was sworn – even in the name of the holiest of holy – is but a stopgap to destiny. The need of redemption, to sate the very madness in the blood and mind, all that deprives sleep in the dead of the night with cries of what is undone, what must be done, leads down only one path.
Thus, it was, that evils set in motion by a stolen kiss, by girlish lust, and by fey feelings of abandon - in the isolation of an anteroom where a Della Francesca painting sat on display for centuries - ruled the fortunes of all. And indeed, would time – years – go by without a thought of this day and its fateful duel. Yet, a warning unheeded becomes a premonition, a premonition becomes a certainty, and certainty … an inevitability. Alas, a show of mercy, a noble deed nobly done, was but a delay.
It could've ended that day –
It should've ended that day –
1913
The Village of Downton
There are few events in this universe that are ever so dreadful and filled with darkness that they are felt through time and space - like ripples in a pond. So rare, in fact, that those who do detect their ripples are considered prophets, for their muddled translations of what will be is often interpreted to be many things of similarity to the barbarism of human nature throughout history. Yet, it is the rare exception that one event looms so darkly over many things. The direct correlation of an action yet to be taken whose consequences are broadcast so directly. Was it a string of doom tied by such lovely and delicate fingers? Or yet, could it be a warning from God himself - the final sign to turn away from sin or be damned forever?
No one that early morning in the quiet country village ever thought of such things. But to those who sought the shadows of the early morning watch noticed a dark cloud that lingered evilly upon their doorsteps and window sills. Some wraith that was deemed to have an evil purpose which moved through their cobbled and stone streets, rejecting the old lore and myths of the passing of the witching hours of devil's delight. And upon this morrow it brought with it the mischief of Bald Mountain wherever it passed. It was something that was felt down to the very soul by those that were awoken by the low hum of a taught cord of fate.
It was strummed to the music of many a terrible tomorrow that weaved a great calamity of spirit that was to befall on many things good and wholesome in this country life. They found themselves sitting up, surrounded, and invaded, by an unshakable and deep cold that lay heavily against the ember glows of the last midnight fires. The roosters did not crow, lark did not sing, the bells did not chime, and fissured cracks climbed up the old church. All through the day a pervasive chill swept dauntingly over the countryside in a wasteland bereft of heat or goodwill amongst the denizens of this fair country who felt a dark shadow pass over their hearts.
But they were all but the collateral damage of the greater fallout of the main target of such harsh fate that touched this place of beauty and peace. Never before or after had something so fermented by such dark purpose come amongst the living to leave a scar upon human souls. Fore it passed like a wild beast after its prey, pushing aside the normal, the unimportant, and the regular people. Its intended target lay within the heart of the village, in the very center of the small community. It moved and creeped over covered wagons filled with milk canisters and whispered its warnings through the rustle of the spring trees that quivered and quaked in the foul wind of looming doom.
And it was there, past a pastoral green gate to a stone driveway, which it found the cozy, homely, Regency country house of elegance and beauty. It had been abandoned for many long years, till recently. Then, the new owners had brought compassion, love, and a deeply warm hearth that was the envy of most. They entertained many times on quiet luncheons and spring afternoons to the peaceful satisfaction of their beloved guests who felt a strong sense of home in their halls. It was always a wholesome place of safety and balance. But now it was invaded by ill figures that bore the darkest of warning. It would be the final one gifted to the owner of the house to put a stop to what would happen this very night.
Fore on the morrow a curse of hate and malice would forever follow, like a shadow, to doom the ones he loved.
Sleepless restlessness was stilled by a deeply dreadful draft that chilled hardily over the many smooth surfaces and pale blue walls of Crawley House. Though the sun was but minutes from rising there was a strange pause of time that held the very world it seemed in a constant state of twilight. Though the sky was lightened in the coming of dawn, the cold and dark remained in the house. Lanterns and fires were lit, but it only whisked weakened plumes of sauntering heat that dissipated. All light seemed trapped within shadowed cells, its rays carrying no visibility into the void that swallowed all sight in the shuttered rooms.
Mr. Moseley, the Crawley family butler, looked to the fire with confusion. His breath came visible with each shutter at the odd business before him. In all his middle age he had never seen anything like it. They were in the height of spring, the flowers in bloom, and yet this morning one would think a blizzard of a first rate would be blowing. And while a strange frost had wilted and covered Mrs. Crawley's beautiful flowers, there was no snow in the air nor on the spring ground. Yet, worst of all to this cold, was the feeling he had of some fantastical plutonian hand that reached out from its subterranean kingdom to haunt them. There was not a creak, flicker, or imagination's folly that he hadn't jumped at that morning. He knew that there was something wrong, something terribly off, about what was going on. But for all his instinct he was yet to guess the meaning or the reason for it - if he ever suspected that there was a reason in the first place.
He dismissed it at first hearing. Mrs. Bird was up long before him, complaining of the lack of heat in the world, much less the seemingly refrigerated ice box that was their master's house. But as he poked the log, dropped more coals into the flames, he heard it again. It was heavy, sliding, and thumping feet that slowly stalked. The first thought was fleeting, almost missed. It was something of Mrs. Bird being a 'healthy' woman, but certainly not heavy enough, or discourteous, to be so loud when both the Master and his mother were still asleep for the next half-hour.
Then the skin of his scalp prickled when he felt - saw from the corner of his eye - something tall cross slowly behind him in the corridor toward the stairs. What he then knew, suddenly, were boots on hard wood and tile. He felt himself freeze in place, the temperature in the home dropping greatly than it already was. He was shaking uncontrollably, a whimper escaping as the tall looming figure stood unmoving in the hall, eyes drawn toward the stairs.
No one saw the single tear of fear on Moseley's cheek when the sound of boots shuffled slowly down the hall. A great indecision welled deep in his heart when the first sliding thumps of feet on stairs echoed through the hall. A shaky hand reached for the fire poker as their ascent continued. Quietly, frightened out of his mind, he clutched the iron weapon. But as he stood, the butler was halted by the sight of sand … over everything.
Like the great wilderness of biblical text, granulated sand of the most ancient desert covered the sitting room. He looked to the mantelpiece clock and found that it was frozen, its hands not showing the early morning hour, but late evening. It was frozen to the time, to a moment, a place, far, far, away where the evil fruits of tonight would bare great darkness for many years afterward. Quickly, he opened a shutter only to find his eyes nearly bulging out of his sockets. Everything, the entire house, was engulfed in a blinding sandstorm. An eerie orange light from within the storm engulfed his figure as he watched an entire English country village completely engulfed in a typhoon of a desert storm.
He shuttered uncontrollably as flashes of lightning - obscured by the sandstorm - illuminated the Crawley sitting room in blinding light that had no source from within the orange abyss. Without a thought, the man immediately closed the shutters. His chest was heaving, his lungs felt on fire, as he slammed his back against the shutters as if to brace them from the impossibility of what his eyes were showing him. But then, he heard the intruder again.
On shaky feet, not sure how to process what he was seeing, the butler shuffled quietly toward the sound of feet upon the steps. Mr. Moseley comforted himself that he'd have to take it all one step at a time. So, he sidled behind the sitting room wall, listening to the ascent. He closed his eyes, his breath visible in congress with the sound of heavy predatory feet, like the drum's call of execution that was in rhythm to the thunder of his heart. He was ready to spring, thinking that even if he was unsuccessful, the tussle would at least wake the house and spook the prowler from the grounds. Then, they could worry about a sandstorm in Yorkshire. Finally, he took a long frothing breath, and turned to look at this intruder that had somehow entered the home.
But there was no one there …
The sound of the ascending steps, the tall figure that walked slow and menacingly past him, was nowhere to be seen or heard. Moseley was left slack jawed and found himself almost blacked out in a stupor. When Mrs. Bird found him she was frowning, walking next to the balding man holding tightly to the fire poker.
"What's the matter, Mr. Moseley?" She asked sharing the view of the shadowy staircase from over his shoulder.
Her voice caused the Butler to nearly jump out of his skin at the sight of the beak nosed cook. He barely recaptured the poker before the iron instrument clattered to the floor heavily. He bobbled with it desperately, not wanting to wake the house … or rouse 'another's' attentions. Finally the shaky butler regained all of the poker and a part of himself. Taking a step away from her, the middle-aged man did a double take. Throughout the whole performance, the old cook did not once flinch or move in amusement or protest of the show the jumpy man put on in his anxiety.
"Have a care, Mr. Moseley! You're acting worst then my late husband when I'd greeted him in the mornings." She chastised
"I … I, well, I …" He pointed to the stairs where the figure had been heading toward the Master's room.
But once again, not only was no one there, but there was no evidence that there ever had been anyone there in the first place. Then, he led the old cook to the sitting room where … there was nothing amiss. The fear of the sand caked book shelves, chairs, sofa, and mantle was replaced by the absolute terror of seeing that everything was normal. It looked as if the butler was ready to run out the door and flee from the house. But the front door was completely locked and bolted as where the shuttered windows as he had left them the night before. And more so would he find a frigid spring country morning with no sign of sand anywhere. After a long moment, Mrs. Bird made an exasperated noise, patting the panicked butler on the shoulder.
As she walked away, the older woman muttered that it was much too early for this.
The bedroom of Matthew Crawley was filled with a roaring quiet that was deafening. In the dark and frigid silence one might even hear voices within their own head they never knew were there in the first place. The young solicitor had always liked a quiet house and was deceptively cross when he didn't have it. But to be inside it on this early morning at the peaks of dawn, one might have found themself in the middle of a void of a singularity. There was no sound, no movement, not even of breathing from the sleeping figure buried under covers. As the man slept, a hard white smoke clouded from nose and mouth. In the shadowy glow, an unseen and unfelt breeze snuffed the last embers of coal from his bedroom fire, engulfing the room in a sliver of pale orange light from a sandstorm many years in the future.
The dapper chap looked as pale as death in the unusual and sudden cold of high spring. His left arm lay underneath him in sleep, and yet his right was extended outward. He was reaching for a nightstand where a discarded tome of "A Princess of Mars" lay open to the page that he had been reading. But clutched in his hand was a photograph that he dare not frame nor display openly. In it was a beautiful young woman of such refine look of splendor. Her dark hair was curled and pinned back in Edwardian fashion, a feather sticking in the bun. She wore a shoulderless silk and lace white gown that was layered to the floor. Her long delicate arms were clad in silk opera gloves and an oriental fan was in her grip as she sat posed on an opulent chair.
It was a rather odd gift that Cousin Violet had given to him, considering their relationship as well as his with Lady Mary. But the Dowager insisted that now that they were family - as if they hadn't been before - that they should have at least some pictures of each other. To that she gave Matthew the most glamorous picture of Mary, taken at her Debutante Ball several recent years prior. But as to the others, the Dowager seemed to have 'forgotten' the pictures of the other Crawley girls. To her mistake, she vowed that she would give them to his mother in due time. The young man was sure he didn't know what the meaning of the whole thing was, but yet … he still hadn't told anyone that he had the picture. He guessed that he would have to pony up Lady Mary's beautiful "Coming Out" photo when Cousin Violet delivered the rest.
But the odd thing was that she hadn't provided the other photographs to Mother, and so Matthew hadn't found the need to tell nor relinquish his one of Mary. Like a purloined letter, he had taken to keeping it on him at all times, hidden from Mother and Moseley. Stranger still - if he was going to insist on lying to himself - he found an odd new compulsion of looking at it more and more. He was not yet ready to speak the truths of a heart already desperately smitten, but he would continue to carry on the fiction of friction between them, even as he clutched her picture onto sleep.
But that was what awoke him as he flinched in sudden pain. His mind was lost in dark dreams with faceless figures and lost details that, all the same, drained the color from him. Alert in his confusion, the man looked to the sharp pain. On his finger was a cut that leaked a steady stream of blood. Pulling his hand closer, he saw - with strange chill of the mind - that it had been Mary's picture that had cut him. After the dreams and the restless fear they wrought, it gave him a deep pause. Fore on her lovely face was smeared blood.
Without much thought of all around him, he made a startled noise of protest. Quickly, Matthew took his sleeve and tried to wipe away the blood before it stained the gloss. But each time he did, it only smeared it, made it worse. He cursed under his breath, sitting up trying to find something to clean her off with. Yet, he suddenly noticed that the blood stain was growing - it was starting to leak everywhere. With a hard glare, he suddenly realized that it was because the blood was not coming from his finger … It was coming from the picture. The young and beautiful Lady Mary was weeping tears of blood. All at once Matthew Crawley came to realize that it was neither his nor her blood that she was weeping.
It was the blood that would be spilled because of what would happen that very night.
Suddenly, a thunderous thwack landed at his door that shook his bed. He quickly sat up straighter. His alertness gave his crystal eyes a hawk like gaze while his muscles tightened like a spring. A deep terror welled inside him as he balled a fist, ready to strike out of confusion and anxiety. Slowly, with a whining creek, the door slid open. His eyes widened to saucers as he watched a tall man pull himself out of the hall. He was on the floor and could not stand. There was something pathetic to his look as he dragged himself desperately across the hallway floor and into the bedchamber.
The master of the house wished to address him, but could not find any voice to do so, as if it had been stolen from his very chest. He was a tall chap, beautiful as a painting of an angel, with an exotic foreign dash and deep regal eyes. He was truly a young girl's fairy dream. But the man that Matthew looked upon was ghoulish compared to how he had been in his youth. His face had a terrible scar that ran across his Michelangelo inspired visage, marring a once beautiful countenance. But now, the old wound accompanied fresh violence of what looked as if this man had been beaten terribly by a vicious wild animal. But the most horrid of his grievous wounds was that of some small but razor-sharp oriental throwing star, forged in a four-pointed shape with some holy symbol etched at its center, was deeply embedded in his left eye. Its appearance and the slop of blood that leaked with parts of his iris made Matthew Crawley as pale as a month-old corpse - freezing him under his sheets and covers in sheer gruesome horror.
This foreign prince charming, with long black coat of red lining, pulled himself to the foot of Matthew's bed. Groaning, moaning, he made the most miserable and chilling of noises that the young man ever heard. He seemed to be desperate to get away from something or someone. After each pull of bloody trail he left, he turned and held up a black leather gloved hand to ask wordlessly for mercy or reprieve in a silent yield from a duel.
"Please!" He wheezed with a broken voice.
He was speaking to the heavy footed and menacing figure that pushed open Matthew's door with a weapon in hand. This silhouette gave the young solicitor a deep pause. For, though he was in the shadows, he knew the face, if not the name or where he had come from. It was a young man of Mary and Edith's age – tall and just as handsome as the figure on the floor. But there was nothing Johnny Foreigner about this one. He had grown out waving curls of black and sharply haunted cerulean eyes. He wore a double breasted peacoat of beaten mahogany leather whose collar was done up in the back. The youth had the look of Lady Grantham to him, the eyes and hair, and – certainly - the face.
But it was a fair face that was also damaged
His right eye was squinted shut in incredible pain as a deep and gruesome freshly taken inkvine slash trailed above brow and down to his cheek bone. There was also blood pouring from his side under leather peacoat. His breath was gasped in pain with each step that correlated with the stab wound to his left lung. He walked with just a stoop and stagger as he carried some sort of ancient club of Egyptian antiquity taken from a smashed museum case. It was clear what the staggered aggressor was going to do with the Medjay weapon. But that wasn't what frightened Matthew the most about this figure. It was the look in his eyes. There was a sleepless hatred and rage that almost blackened any 'divine spark' within them. He didn't seem a man … not even a wild animal. He seemed a demon born of Hell - soulless, unhinged in drunkenness of blood and untamed darkness of violence.
"No! Wait, Wait!" Prince Charming begged and pleaded hoarsely holding his hand up helplessly.
Suddenly, at just a blink, a very familiar and known face appeared.
"Darling, darling, listen to me! That's enough! Enough! You've won, you really have … please, listen to me! Just walk away, for God sake, listen to me! Don't do this! Let Shrimpie, let the Foreign Office deal with him! You won, don't … please, darling, I love you, please! LISTEN TO ME! don't do this! George!"
Matthew had never seen Sybil so emotional, so desperate for someone to hear her. Her hair was done up glamorously, her dress was gold, beige, and jet. She looked like she was ready to dine with the king in all of her Mamma's jewels and finery. And yet tears were streaking down her face, her gloved hands pressed against the black-haired youth's chest. For a moment the man was slack jawed at how similar the two looked. They really could've passed as almost identical twins, the youth's skin more tanned and his features masculine and rugged. But it was almost looking at a gender bent mirror between the two. But it disturbed Matthew to see the deeply upset girl fall to her knees, begging her twin not to do what they all knew was coming.
But the beautiful angel's pleas fell on deaf ears of an unsympathetic figure. He rolled over her like tank treads toward the beaten Prince Charming. There was no remorse, pity, or care in the figure that darkly advanced with only hate and rage in his heart. He was wild and unkempt in his blackening soul, a dark vessel that had taken over a person of great worth and heroism in a moment of deep weakness and pain. There was no reasoning with him, getting to him, finding the boy Sybil had loved all his life and even before it.
He was going to kill the angelic foreigner at the foot of Matthew's bed.
"Look, Look … it's gone." Prince Charming blew pathetically into a fist and then opened his palm as a magician that performed a disappearing act. "I recalled the Fatwa, the bounty is over, you won … alright, you're no longer a wanted man! See, that's fine … it's fine, now. Please … no … no! Don't come any closer! I'm begging you, I call peace! Peace between us! Lady Mary's insult to our House has been absolved! Her crime …"
He never got to finish his sentence.
A life hunted for a mother's sin, the people he had killed that had been sent to kill him, a childhood never lived, years of always looking over his shoulder. He remembered every misstep he made, mistake that got someone hurt, the friends he couldn't save, and the murders he didn't even know he committed to save a woman who was just acting. The clubbed weapon was lifted with a hate that was filled with many long years of mistakes and unwinnable scenarios that followed a car accident the day he was born.
Then, the youth swung down hard to end the long and hateful rivalry between two Noble Houses born in the foolish lusts of youth on this very night to come.
Suddenly, Matthew gave a startle at the sickening crunch of impact. He sat up in his bed, expecting to see a spray of blood stain his bed spread, to hear the repeated grunts that came with what he imagined beating a man to death sounded like. But, instead, he found nothing. His room was completely empty, as if nothing was amiss. All the emotions - the terror, the quaking of his heart, all evidence inside him had shown that something had happened. Yet, he found his room empty. It should've all been equated to a nightmare - a very vivid and horrible nightmare. Yet, when Matthew looked down …
Lady Mary Crawley was covered in blood.
Editorial Note
The finale section of this chapter was taken from the now deleted one-shot "Drunken Lullabies" which was - actually - the very first thing that I ever wrote for Downton Abbey six years ago and is the impetuous for the entire story series in all it's permutations over the years I've been writing it. It was written before I was even finished with my first watch through of Downton Abbey ... before I even knew George existed as a first-time viewer. And I've spent years since trying to answer the questions I had about who this person was that Matthew saw - beyond knowing that it was he and Mary's son.
It felt right to repurpose and reedit it so that it could become a lynch pin of the prologue to the story universe that this one small section spawned, despite never being posted till many years later.