Читать книгу Kitty & Cadaver - Narrelle M Harris - Страница 10

Melbourne, Australia, 2014

Despite its desperately humble origins, the evening meal Yuka assembled was well received. With Yuka’s history of sourcing meals in the cheapest way possible, this was considered a terrific success. Laszlo even went so far as to compliment her sincerely, an event which left Yuka speechless with embarrassed pleasure and Laszlo gruffly carrying dishes to the sink to hide his face.

As further distraction from the awkwardness of the exchange, Yuka laid her damaged sticks on the table. ‘I need new ones.’

Sal brushed a curious finger over the pulverised tips.

Yuka shrugged. ‘The dead under the market woke. I put them back to sleep.’

‘And you’re only telling us now?’ Sal wasn’t amused.

‘If it was serious, I would have fetched you. They and the energy that woke them sleep again. Now I need more sticks.’

Before Sal could argue the point, Steve, leaning back in a chair with his hands behind his head, drawled, ‘You know what those old burial places are like, Sal. Folks shift a few bones, build a car park or a shopping centre right over the rest and think that’s it. They don’t hear the dead spinning in their graves.’

‘It’s not funny,’ Sal said.

‘Naw, ain’t funny,’ Steve agreed. ‘Ain’t nothing too serious either. Some bones are just bones remembering flesh for a space. No evil in it. Hush ‘em down, like Yuka said, and it’s fine. You know it, Sal. You’re just on edge. Let it be.’

‘I can’t be the only one on edge, Steve. How can you-?’ His throat closed up before he could finish the accusation.

Steve leaned forward, dropping his hand over Sal’s fingers splayed on the tabletop. ‘I’ve been with this band since before Alex and Kurt. I’ve seen people I love die. I’ve seen ‘em be eaten by the dark, and by monsters, and you know I’m not being merely poetical when I say that. But I keep going because if I give up, I watched people I love die for nothing.’

Sal’s chest rose and fell in a shuddering sigh. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m trying.’

‘I know you are. Try to breathe. The world’s full of restless things, but it don’t mean they’re all trying to eat us. Let’s get our heads around the new gig, sort out our rehearsal schedule. Tomorrow, we’ll get Yuka’s sticks and we’ll scout for new talent.’

Not replacement talent. Never replacements. Whoever they found to join them – if anyone – they would change the band and make it something new. It’s how the band had worked for seven hundred years, since the first piper and drummer joined forces to protect their city. Band members came and went; the name of the troupe changed with the changing leaders, but the band endured under the Grandfather’s Axe principle. The component parts had changed over and over again, yet the troupe maintained an historical continuity.

That’s how each generation had explained it to the next, at any rate, and every Minstrel who ever joined embraced the philosophical paradox, because who would remember every single person who had ever been part of it, who were recorded into the oral history and carefully stored journals, if not them? They had to be the recorders of their own history, since the rest of the world generally had no idea who they were or what they did. They worked for nobody but the balance, they answered to no-one but each other. They did what must be done and moved on, generation after generation, with nobody but themselves to know that the singer who had closed a ghoul in a tomb in Zagreb in 2002 had any connection to the medieval piper and drummer who had sealed a guilt-ridden god in a stone jar in the Thames.

Yuka had recovered from Laszlo’s praise enough to help him dry and stack away the dishes he’d washed. While they took care of the domestic chores, Sal and Steve drafted a potential set list and a rehearsal schedule.

As Steve, Sal and Yuka worked through the set selection in more detail, Laszlo, who knew none of the songs, cradled the violin Steve had earlier handed to him. He’d spent hours polishing and tuning the instrument, and played some of his old repertoire on it, wondering what he’d done to be worthy.

The ‘fiddle’ that Steve had retrieved from the trunk was the same he played that terrible day in Erdõdülõ. It was very old, the back elaborately carved with birds and vines. Whoever had made it – and it wasn’t a Micheli or Amati or any of the other early known luthiers – had been a genius with both wood and music. The violin was beautifully balanced and modulated. Laszlo had been lucky enough to hold and play a Stradivarius in his time, an exquisite instrument. This faded, battered, beautiful thing was ten times the instrument that Stradivarius had been.

Well, for a start, it was unlikely the Stradivarius had ever been used to sing trees into weapons to stake vampires or ignite the air itself.

Laszlo ran his finger gently over the fretboard, and wondered if the old violin knew it had been used to help kill two men who had cherished this instrument as part of their heritage: who had loved each other and their little daughter as fiercely as they had loved their not-famous yet somehow infamous band.

As the last members of that infamous band reached the end of a song, Laszlo asked into the hush: ‘What did that man Malone mean about “what they say about you”?’

‘We got a reputation in the business,’ Steve said. ‘Musos like to have us as their support act. It’s a word of mouth thing.’

‘But why?’

‘Word spreads about a band like ours,’ Sal said, like it was a lecture he’d heard before but never given. ‘There’s magic in our music, even when we’re not singing spells. If you sing enough magic into the instrument, it will seep out no matter what you’re doing.’ He nodded at the violin. ‘That one has almost four hundred years of music and spellwork in it.’

‘No offence to your playing, Laszlo,’ interrupted Steve, ‘but a six year old could’ve played that day and it would’ve helped.’

Laszlo believed it. He remembered too well the power of the song swelling out of the violin, and how he had merely to follow its lead.

‘When a Minstrel band plays support, it’s a golden ticket for the main act,’ Sal said. ‘No matter how good or bad the headline act is, we play and the audiences love them.

‘The gigs are always the best. Merchandise sells faster,’ Yuka added.

‘That’s why we only play shows when we need the money, even though we always need the money,’ Sal added the old joke with a faint smile. ‘Great power must be used wisely.’ Then sadness enveloped him again, because the person who used to tell that tired joke was dead.

Laszlo wondered if he should say something comforting, or change the topic – but Sal scrubbed at his face again.

‘You know we have to send half of what we make for Gretel.’

Steve shifted his bass from his knee to the floor. ‘You don’t need to worry about Gretel. We’re going to take care of her.’

‘How? Where’s she going to end up? Your niece can’t babysit her forever; nobody knows where her birth mother went after she handed Gretel to Alex and Kurt. We can’t look after her. We couldn’t keep either of her fathers alive, we certainly can’t keep a child safe on the road.’

‘I said,’ Steve said with sharp emphasis, ‘she’s gonna be fine. I got it under control.’ He met Yuka’s glare. ‘And don’t you start with me, Yuka. We heard all you and Sal had to say about the irresponsibility of Kurt and Alex wanting kids way back then. It’s done. A hundred told-you-sos won’t change the situation.’

Yuka’s challenging glare didn’t falter. ‘Being right does not make me happy, Steve. But I don’t see why Harper can’t-’

‘It ain’t on Harper to be a mom to that girl just ‘cause she’s babysittin’. Harper’s just a kid herself.’

‘Is Gretel safe?’

‘She’s takin’ good care of Gretel for the time being. Quit frettin’.’ Steve angrily pulled the bass back onto his knee. ‘So given that Gretel’s fine, and given that we have six days to pull a show together, I suggest we get on with rehearsing these songs. Laszlo, have you heard enough to start working out harmonies yet? Sheet music’s right there on the table. Sal, you get to forgettin’ the rhythm part and get to rememberin’ the lead, that’ll be a whole lot more help here.’

A brittle silence followed, then Sal swallowed and started picking out the notes of the first song. He stopped again.

‘I didn’t think they should have had Gretel. That doesn’t mean I don’t love her. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do what’s best for her.’

Steve released a hissing breath. ‘I know that, Sal. I know Yuka loves her too, even though she don’t say so.’

Yuka narrowed her eyes at him, but didn’t deny it.

Sal plucked out a simple melody on the strings. ‘She’s going to need protection.’

‘She’ll have it.’

‘From us, I mean.’

Yuka scowled at Laszlo’s startled expression. ‘From those who would use her to get to us.’

The melody Sal was playing remained gentle but strong. Steve began to play a bass line through it.

‘She’ll be protected,’ Steve said.

‘Will this have any effect from this far away?’ Yuka asked, beginning a quiet beat anyway, her hands against the skin of her smallest drum, marking a sweet-sounding rhythm.

‘It’s her song. It’ll find her,’ Steve said.

Laszlo listened to them, and to the words that the three of them began to sing.

Heave a sigh, baby girl

Don’t you cry, baby girl

Your daddies are guarding the door

He lifted the violin to his chin and raised the bow. The melody was simple, and this old instrument was full of magic. It couldn’t hurt; and he was one of them now.

Laugh out loud, baby girl

Be strong and proud, baby girl

Keeping you safe is what your daddies are for

Laszlo drew the bow across the strings, harmonising. The song was sweet and uncomplicated, as lullabies should be. It reminded him of his own long estranged children, and he poured his heart into the next two stanzas. He didn’t know if he had any music magic of his own, but the violin had enough for both of them.

Sleep after rehearsals proved a challenge in their crowded hostel room. Sal kept them awake again with muttering, reading aloud from the poems and epitaphs written in his notebook; then later, with his nightmares. He’d had them almost nightly since they’d lost Alex and Kurt. Since he’d had to behead Alex, to keep his best friend dead. Cut out his dead heart. Stuff his mouth and heart cavity with garlic. Burn the body. To be sure.

It took four days before Sal had been able to sleep at all. The nightmares were only better than the insomnia-induced hallucinations in that Sal could at least wake up from nightmares. That tiny speck of comfort was hardly enough, when Sal whimpered and cried out in his sleep and everyone woke fractious and unrested. By unspoken agreement, nobody ever talked about it. Nobody knew how to make Sal feel better. They hardly knew how to make themselves feel better.

Breakfast – toast and butter cadged from the ‘take this leftover food’ shelf in the hostel’s communal kitchen – led to rehearsals. Laszlo was getting the hang of the set list and finding his place in the music.

Sal was more confident with Alex’s old part in the lead too, but often as he was hitting his stride, he’d falter, stumble and end in a jarring mess of notes.

Steve called time out seconds before Sal began to smash his guitar to splinters.

‘I’m gonna get some air. You might want to go get your sticks, Yuka. Then we better check out the venue, see what we might need. Then we’ll try rehearsing here again,’ and Steve stalked outside.