THE PERSECUTOR'S TALE


We were the usual sort of travelers on the Empire's high roads: unspeaking people bound on unguessable business, united only by a direction of motion. If not for the interruption of our journey, I do not think we would have noticed one another at all. I except myself, of course; but my observations are not detected by their subjects. They would be valueless otherwise.
We stopped at a small inn, with just enough rooms for our party; there were no other guests, and the innkeeper freely admitted that guests were rare. This had nothing to do with the quality of the house, which was excellent; but the city of our destination was only two hours farther by the high road, and the cars did not normally even stop.
Tonight, though, Midwinter's Eve, wet snow clogged the tracks, and ice coated the catenary, threatening to bring the wire down. It would be much better that we pause short of our goal than possibly be trapped all night in a powerless car.
There were protests, as is customary when an Imperial service performs less than flawlessly, but they quieted when the motorman assured us that our stay would be paid for by the Ministry of Transport; and they ceased when we saw the inn.
It was of the same stone as the mountains around it, with embrasures and round mock-towers at the corners; it sprawled in a manner that suggested intrigues of design but never vulgar randomness. From its leaded prism windows lights shone soft and amber and warm—from our car, in the storm, to call the effect seductive is no exaggeration.
The innkeeper met us at the car, sweeping snow from the platform, and led us inside; as he did so, a young man hitched a pair of mules to the rings on the car's front end. He handed the whip to the motorman, who cracked it once smartly, and the beasts pulled the car around a tightly curved side track—"spur," the word is—toward a small shed at the inn's rear.
The interior was as well appointed as the exterior had been. There were tapestries and paintings on the walls, intricate parquet floors with carpets in the complex southern style, simply styled furniture scarred with long use. Nothing was remotely modern, and wear showed on every surface, yet the effect was not one of disrepair but of the comfortable patina of age.
A member of our company, a centurion just returned from the Empire's northern frontier, looked in some awe at the massive ceiling beams, and commented that only far beyond his posting could trees of such girth still be found. Another traveler, an electrical engineer, pointed out the paths for wires to the iron candelabra, holes drilled with hand augers long after the beams were raised.
Our host affirmed this, showing us how the candle-holders had been altered for wire and glasslamps. We were impressed (as the innkeeper expected), and not merely with the age of the structure. The times before electricity seem to us, centuries later, as alien, feral, dark in more senses than one.
The only staff at this time of year were the innkeeper's family. His son, who had hitched the mules to the car, now ported our bags, refusing more than modest tips, though there was of course no electric lift. His daughter bustled from room to room, making down beds and checking plumbing for proper function. And his wife was preparing dinner, hot potato-and-mushroom soup followed by a cold collation of sliced beef and mutton. The bread was fresh, from refrigerated dough. Sparkling water came from a spring somewhere on the inn grounds, and the wines were more than good enough. It was said by several of us that the Empress's own chefs could have done no better on such short notice and without their army of potboys and scullery maids, and I believe that to be true. The family were solid gold, sturdy people, of the sort once called "the hearth-brick of the Empire."
After dinner our party, and our host, sat in the great hall before the main fire, with mugs of hot buttered ale. Snow piled against the windows, and occasionally a gust of wind made whispers and creaks and sucked sparks up the chimney, but it was not hard to forget that there was a storm outside, that we all were kept from appointments in a city leagues away. The glasslamps in the hall were dimmed and tapers lit, both in token of tomorrow's solstice and to conserve generator fuel, and the glimpse recalled of featherbeds upstairs seemed something from a dream.
The innkeeper appeared to notice that our thoughts were straying, and as he refilled our mugs he spoke of this being the longest of all nights, before the shortest of days (touching on the legends of that day), and encouraged us to use up some of the long dark hours in pleasant conversation. Thus it was revealed, gradually, who we were.
I have mentioned the frontier soldier, and the engineer, who was an instructor at a cantonment University. There was another centurion, of the famous 29th Guards, in his violet undress uniform; a young chymist, partner in a firm and of obvious prosperity; a traveling justice, robed in white, with her two clerks in black and gold. I introduced myself as a journalist, which no longer draws the disapproval it did when I was young and beardless, and tonight seemed even to impress my companions.
The last of us to speak was a spare man, gaunt in fact, in a well cut suit of red and black chequy, the sort that had been most fashionable in Inner Courts some years ago. His watch-chain was of heavy silver links, his cravat of white silk. In a voice that was quiet but by no means soft, he introduced himself as a persecutor for the state.
There was a pause in sound and action, and then all present—save the innkeeper—did those small, half-conscious actions that outrun thought. The Guardsman reached toward his weapon baldric (which was empty, of course). The frontier soldier muttered something, apparently a complex oath to some minor god. The justice turned slowly to face the persecutor, stroking her black blindfold at the left temple, while a clerk whispered into her right ear. I stroked one finger minutely against another.
The first of us to speak was the engineer; he seemed very thoughtful, though I was not certain what he was thinking of. "That could be a dangerous admission, in a company of strangers," he said, and we waited in the pause, but he said no more.
The chymist, heedless, did. "Surely you're retired, lord sir. No active persecutor would admit the fact, knowing that one of those present—" and then he seemed to hear the ice cracking under him, and was silent.
For a long moment wind whistled, fire crackled on without us; then the innkeeper rang his ladle on the kettle of ale. He said, "Please, enough silence. It's a pleasure for me that you're my guests; I'll not have you sleeping here displeased. My lord persecutor."
"Yes?" said the gaunt man, his eyes level and his body calm.
"You've dampened all our spirits with your revelations. Do you not consider that…unjust?"
I spoke of thin ice; here was a man who danced on warm water. I watched the justice; her tongue moistened her lips. I observed the two soldiers; their poses told me that they were still armed, unseen.
The persecutor said, "You, sir, asked me to speak."
The innkeeper did not flinch. "To make conversation, not stop it. I ask you…is it just?"
"No," said the gaunt man, quite clearly. "It is not just. You have a forfeit in mind, I think?"
"I do, lord sir. Surely you have traveled widely, surely seen things we have not. Would you tell us a tale?"
"About what?"
"About what you like." Our host faced me and said, "Of course, sir author, you know the legend of tales told on this night."
I nodded, though I knew none such. And I caught the innkeeper's look, and I scanned the hearthside circle.
One might have supposed to find us all preparing to make excuses and retire upstairs, to the safe isolation of stone walls and thick down comforters. Not at all. There was an expectance that whispered like the stormwind in the flue, drawing up sparks.
Our host dipped more ale, stirred up the fire, and I understood; we would hear a ghost story, told as such stories should be to a circle of warmth, and we would sleep well. I wondered what stories the innkeeper's children had heard, growing up in a lonely inn.
The persecutor looked long at me, as if waiting for some professional cue as to the proper forms; but we all know that tales begin at the beginning.
"There was a young person, of influence and prosperity and a devious intelligence," he said, with gathering tempo. "I'll call him a ‘he,' for language's sake, but you'll understand that he could have been, might have been a she.…
"He came to decide that, in just one case, for just one act, he was above the law."
Yes. This was just the place to begin.
"…but the crime, while horrid, was beyond the reach of ordinary law."
"Murder?" said the chymist, leaning forward in his chair.
"Not murder," said the frontier centurion. "For murder there's hanging, or the reaching blades."
"Or electrocution," said the electrical engineer.
"Horrid," said the persecutor, "but secret, for the young man and his lover conspired, and deeds were done in darkness, and things were thrown into deep water. With her he pursued a course of silence. It was mutual blackmail, of course."
I had seen the two legal clerks touch, earlier; now they touched again.
"And then one night he reached out for her, and touched skin, but not her skin; he felt the dead skin of serpents. He opened his eyes, and dead bare bones looked back. And he knew that the persecutor had come for him, and worse, he knew by whom he was betrayed."
The clerks drew apart. The justice moved her head from side to side, as if waiting for a whispered word from one of them.
"The young man screamed."
Wind cried.
"And when he was done screaming, however long it was, he opened his eyes again…and he was alone in the room."
The soldier from the frontier said, "And so he fled?"
"No. At the time, he knew better. As I say, he was very intelligent. He sought…redemption—"
"Good," said the engineer.
"—but he sought it as an armor of virtue, a sword of righteousness…a medal of good conduct."
The Guardsman swirled the butter in his ale, and adjusted his baldric and beribboned jacket.
"And he found the things he sought…but none of them was the thing he wanted. He had opportunities to become a dead hero, but he was not ready for that.
"And sometimes, on his cot, in the deepest night, snakeskin would brush his cheek, and the persecutor's bone mask would hover above him. And so he marched to the leaden drum."
Several did not comprehend; the Guardsman explained the phrase to mean the abandonment of a sound military career. In his voice there was something like relief.
A faint, rapid rustling came from somewhere overhead. The persecutor drank some ale and said, "Having found the honor of symbol inadequate, the young man decided to forget honor. He submerged himself in physical things—and I do not mean the fleshly lusts; sex was far too spiritual for him. I mean artifice, technology. Glass and wood and steel, the mechanical mysteries—"
"There is an owl in the rafters," the young chymist said, pointing into the dimness above. We all looked up. The owl is the bird of knowledge, legend says. And of judgment. But that is only legend. What can owls know of the sins of men?
"Indeed there is an owl," said the innkeeper impatiently. "And there is a cat. They share the mice. He's a good owl, my owl; you needn't cover your ale. Please, lord sir, continue."
"I second that," said the electrical engineer. "Could mechanical illumination dispel your young man's darkness?"
"Strange that you should say that," said the persecutor, "for he fancied once to trap the persecutor with carbon arcs and charged wires, and smokes and noise produced by chymistry. And one night his traps all erupted, and he hurried downstairs. He stood at the door to the snare room, hearing the whine and explosion, staring in at the smoke glowing blue-white…but he could not go in. He could not bear the thought. So, in his nightclothes, he turned and went out the door.
"There, under the moonless sky, robed all in black with gloves of snakeskin, stood a figure who looked back at him with an eyeless face.
"Then at last he fled, naked."
"It is not justice," said the centurion from the northern marches, "to drive a man mad. It is not justice, whatever law may say; it is—"
"Persecution," said the gaunt man. "And that is what it is called."
The innkeeper's wife appeared, carrying a tray of light sugared pastries, which were more than welcome.
The persecutor ate his sweetcake without haste, then cleaned his fingers elaborately on a linen napkin. He began again. "The man fled more than a locale. He fled himself. He changed his name each time it was asked, wore clothes twice and burned them, became a thousand travelers on a thousand roads."
"What," I said, "did he give as his trade, and how did he earn his way?"
The persecutor looked at me sharply; but he had examined us all as he spoke. "He had studied many things, and desperation hones cleverness. He was always one who could be here come morning and gone come night."
I nodded. So did the circuit justice.
The engineer said, "Were his trades all honest ones?"
"No. And he admitted this, in those western regions where it is admired. I think you are wondering how this could be, with persecution on him; you misunderstand. The law forbids us to intervene, or even to inform an ordinary constable. If he had been caught, I should have visited him in prison." The persecutor plucked at his clothing, removing invisible crumbs from the red and black squares. "Many persons under persecution choose to multiply their identities; very often it is the last phase of events. For when night after night the persecutor continues to appear, the subject knows, first, that he cannot escape the state; second, that whatever he may call himself, he is the same thing within…the evil knows its territory. And there is a third thing that he comes to know…that a person without an identity is dead. We all need some ‘I,' even a collective ‘I' such as a flag or a uniform."
The Guardsman said, "I'm proud of my uniform. And the discipline of…" He stopped, looked around, then was silent, embarrassed, but not without dignity.
The persecutor did not respond. He said, "In time, as happens, he came to see black cloaks by daylight, though of course only his mind put persecutors inside them. He began to wonder, obsessively, which of the people he saw in the day put on robes by night to haunt him."
"And he attacked one?" the chymist said. "You drove him to further crimes?"
"No. That has never happened."
"I wonder why," said the chymist, with what was doubtless meant to be a deep, wise irony but sounded only as petulance.
There was a pause, until the wind and the whisper of falling snow had erased the echo of the chymist's outburst. The persecutor said, "There is no question that we drive our victims. That is the whole object. Some are driven to extraordinary measures, and this young person was one such. In the persecutor's presence, under a half moon, he—"
"Was redeemed?" I could not tell who had spoken.
"—maimed himself, in a bloody and dreadful manner that I shall not describe."
"This has been known to happen," said the justice, in a high, clear voice. Her face was tilted down, and she stroked her blindfold with the fingers of both hands. Her clerks drew back from her.
The centurion from the frontier said, "And was blood enough?" His right hand gripped his left wrist. I have heard that northern men keep a small, thin knife hidden there. "Was it enough? Finish the tale."
"The tale is finished," the persecutor said softly. "It has no proper end. No, Centurion, blood is not enough. Blood is nothing, flesh is nothing. Flesh and blood are wracked with iron, in the halls of physical justice. But iron cannot touch the spirit that sets itself above justice. Thus, I."
The Guardsman said, "Spirit," not loudly, as if he had never heard the word.
"Suppose," said the gaunt man, his face flickering in flamelight, "that a god appeared on earth, and said, ‘I offer you absolution. It is a gift; there is no obligation. I forgive you, it is done.'
"A strange idea, I agree. But supposing there were such a god, what would we people do? Take the offer, no doubt. And then return to the pleasures of evil…and take it again. Steal, be absolved. Kill, be absolved. We all know the value of things that cost nothing—and if gods did make the world, they must know it too.
"So a price would have to be established. A transcendent price that one would have to try and pay…and which one could afford to pay only once in one's life."
The engineer spoke. "And in the absence of a god…when is the price paid?"
The persecutor stood up. His movements were stiff, as with cold, though it was pleasantly warm in the hall. Perhaps he had been still for too long. He went to the fire and gazed into it. "In the absence of a god, there can be no absolute. I know…when I see, and hear.
"And that…s the end…of my story."
The frontier soldier stood then. "Please pardon my rudeness, but I have been accustomed to a different sunset. I shall be retiring now."
"No rudeness in it," said the innkeeper. "If you rise before I, do come down to the kitchen for early tea."
The centurion bowed slightly and went up the stairs.
"I too am tired," the justice said, and rose on her clerks like crutches. "Good night to you all."
And then the rest of us followed, one by one: "Good night…my friends." "Good night and untroubled dreams." "Good night."
As I went upstairs, I heard the innkeeper say, "Do retire, sir, before you fall asleep; a bed will favor your back much more than that chair." And then he walked out of the hall, leaving the Guards centurion sitting straight and alone, looking at nothing.
Overhead, feathers rustled. "Who?" said the owl. "Who?"
I turned at the landing and closed the door of my room behind me.
The room was small, but very neat. A small lamp was lit on the nightstand; a bit of beef and cheese and a covered cup of warm tea were there as well. The crisp bedclothes were turned back and looked inviting. But.
I opened the inner lining of my kit bag and took out what was hidden there; put on the shapeless cloak, the skullbone mask, the long gloves of black snakeskin, and the heavy silver ring with its swirling fire opal. A tiny silver pipe went into my throat.
My step has always been light, and our innkeeper kept his doors oiled and true. I opened the one I sought without a sound.
The only light in the gaunt man's room came from the bedlamp. He was reading in bed; the book slipped from his fingers, slipped down the sheets to the floor as he pulled the blankets up. He reminded me of a picture in a book I had read as a child: a drawing in red and black of a little old woman who has heard a noise in the night. It is odd that I still remember it so clearly.
"I heard your tale," I said, the pipe in my throat buzzing and trilling.
He stared at me, as he had looked at all of us in the hall, wondering now the other side of the question; but the mask hid my face, the cloak my body, the throat-pipe my voice. And his eyes were drawn irresistibly to the opal, which blazed in the dim electric light. Perhaps, he would be thinking, I had been none of the guests; a window-peeper in the snow. Or the innkeeper, or the owl in the rafters, or a spirit in the fire. The persecuted think amazing things.
He nodded a little, but did not speak; and I said, "You seem to have learned many things, in your travels."
He found his voice; it was firm, more to his surprise than mine. "It was said that I was intelligent."
"You have recognized who pursues you."
Another nod. "Yes…I showed that tonight, didn't I. You're…myself. I—I'm sorry if what I did tonight was…wrong, or offended—"
I waved my unringed hand. "This has been known to happen," I said, and saw him start, and recalled that the justice had spoken those words. Well. It would not matter. "And do you then know what it is that I am looking for?"
He still clutched the sheets, and stared at his knuckles and wrists like a schoolboy looking for notes cribbed there. Then he looked up at my ring, and then at my black pit eyes.
He said, "No, I do not know." A pause. A breath. Faintly I heard his heart. "But I am willing to take whatever you have for me."
I smiled, though of course there was no outward sign. I extended my ringed hand.
He could not take his eyes from the flickering stone. He bent his head and kissed it lightly.
I brushed the ring against his bare throat, touched a trigger. The fang moved softer than a whisper. His grip on the bedclothes relaxed, and he toppled with a sigh and a rustle of linen.
His face, half-hidden, smiled childishly.
I returned to my room, disrobed, coughed up the silver pipe, and packed the things away. I wrapped myself in a velvet bedrobe and sat by the window to sip the tea and watch for dawn. On such nights I need no sleep.
The morning was bright and crystal clear; and as we all sat at an enormous breakfast the motorman appeared, with the news that the high road was cleared all the way to the city.
I cannot say our pleasure was undiluted; we could think of few finer places to be snowbound. But there were reminders of this business and that, and soon bags were brought down, and good-byes said to the innkeeper and his family (and more tips paid), and we were all standing on the trolley platform.
The gaunt man stood somewhat apart, looking down the tracks with mingled puzzlement and eagerness, talking with the trolley motorman. "Yes, sir, your ticket is valid to the city," the motorman said patiently. "Yes, these are all the bags you arrived with…No, sir, the service doesn't mark coach tickets with the passenger's name.…"
The electrical engineer listened to this as he finished a sweetcake. He licked jam from his fingers and brushed crumbs from his nose, and whistled without a tune.
"I think he's a bit mad," said the chymist. "Tries his best to ruin our evening, and this morning acts as if he barely remembers. What he did, or us, or his own—"
"He told a scary story, and it scared you," said the frontier solder pleasantly. "Who knows what he really is?"
"Maybe even a persecutor," the Guardsman added. "Anyway, you ought to spend a night awake in the dark once in a while. Good for the spirit." The two centurions resumed a spirited discussion of favorite weapons.
One of the legal clerks sat on a large bag; the other stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. They were not looking at one another…but perhaps after long service to a justice one's own eyes become less essential.
I felt a hand brush mine, with a surprisingly intimate touch, and I turned to face the justice. She carried a silver stick, and wore a white silk blindfold. "My best to you," she said, in a voice only I could hear.
Perhaps it was only her custom before traveling. Surely so, for she spoke also to the gaunt man, who kissed her hand, and then touched his lips to her bandaged eyes. I noticed the white cravat was missing from his throat.
The motorman rang the bell, and the party filed aboard. I was last, and before I stepped into the car I signaled to the driver; he nodded and closed the door, and the car pulled away without me, its spidery pantograph singing a long fading note on the pristine air.
The innkeeper came out to sweep the platform. Without surprise—I wonder what could surprise him—he said, "You'll be staying a little longer, sir?"
"Yes," I said. "My appointments are postponed a little while. I shall travel on later."
"Pleased to have you, sir." He paused in his sweeping. "Did the thin gentleman board all right?"
"Yes, he did."
"He was all questions when he woke this morning, as well as waking late."
"You seem to have answered them well."
He began to speak, I believe to say an automatic "Thank you, sir," but after a moment he said instead, "My good wife and I have raised two children from birth. The questions were not wholly strange."
He leaned upon his broom, and looked with me toward the now-distant trolleycar. "It's Midwinter's morning, sir. This is the day, they say, that journeys end."
I moved a finger slightly, stroking it across another. The gesture would mean nothing to anyone not a persecutor. Only those who wear the opal ring know that it has two triggers, two fangs, two venoms.
The other brings death by convulsion, often breaking bones.
We call it Remembrance.
I have used both, according to need.
I said, "That is the legend…and also the day when lost things are found again."
We went inside, where the fire was warm, the beds were inviting, and the owl slept.

Copyright © 2004 by John M. Ford