chapter 11: Marry the Night
- Location
- Patriarchova
11. Marry the Night
The last of the throng shuffled out the front gate. The two men who brought up the rear each held a rifle. One held his weapon up toward the sky, as if he thought the crackling yellow flames of the nearby woman's impromptu torch would reveal a winged demon about to descend. It was, Jonathan reminded himself, not such an irrational precaution. The last of Musgrave's victims were likely dying already, even if Wamuu had left any uninjured, but who was to say there'd be no final act of spite from a vampire clinging to the outside walls? The second man, Jonathan was more irritated to see, was facing back toward himself in the castle gate. The barrel was pointed downward, but angled so that it could be raised at Jonathan with a single, easy motion.
"I'll offer again," Jonathan said, doing his best to ignore the man with the gun pointed his way, "I can escort you back to Windknight's Lot. It's most likely safe now, but I'd rather be sure."
"We'll handle ourselves." The man pointing his weapon back said firmly. "We're armed now. We can-"
"They saved us, idiot!" The man gasped in pain and nearly dropped his rifle as Poco's sister loomed up beside him and stomped her foot down on the toe of his boot. As he swore and glared at the teenager, she looked up at Jonathan herself and gave him an exhausted, half-apologetic look. "Thanks again. We'll stay out of your way while you finish searching. I'll make sure. Come on now," she grabbed Poco by the shoulder and pulled him away from Speedwagon, "we need to go home and figure out how we're going to get by now."
"Do you think we can move to London, with Mr. Speedwagon?" Poco asked. Speedwagon smiled humbly and tipped his bowler.
"WHAT? Don't you know what happens to girls in the city?" She growled at her brother, making him recoil and look down at the snow.
"Sorry. I wasn't thinking," Poco mumbled. Speedwagon was now giving the girl a thoughtful look. Reluctantly, he looked back at Poco and nodded his head sadly.
"Come along. And the next time some frigid snob from Oxford comes here wanting to poke at the ruins, we'll eat him first!"
As the torch-bearing crowd left their tracks across the fresh snow away from the castle, Wamuu and Erina stepped back inside, forming a circle with Jonathan and Speedwagon. Erina was wearing both of the other Englishmen's coats, and still shivering slightly. Wamuu had dried her off as best he could, and she was keeping her ripple breaths going to counteract the cold, but Jonathan knew they'd need to light a fire soon. He'd have made them follow the villagers back home for the purpose himself, if it wasn't such a long walk through the freezing night. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close. She rolled her eyes a little, but squeezed him back. He was relieved to feel that she was still as warm as ever.
"Now," Wamuu said, voice echoing around the stone hallway as he led them back into the castle, chains swishing behind him, "we will find the mask."
…
Jonathan's feet sloshed ahead of Erina's, each step dragging through the ankle-deep water. It was warmer here, deep inside the castle, but any water still should have frozen by this point. He watched his lamplight ripple off of the murky liquid that filled the narrow, stone hallway, thinking.
"He poured this in here. Probably this last evening."
Erina followed silently for a moment. "This is probably it, then? Some extra protection for the place he hid his mask?"
"Most likely." Jonathan suppressed a grimace as he imagined how the battle might have gone, had they pushed Professor Musgrave back to his inner sanctum. Most likely, he'd have frozen them to the floor from around a corner, not even showing himself until they'd lost their feet to frostbite. Or, failing that, dashed ahead of them on his icy heels to set traps and prepare ambushes, while they fought their way through the painfully cold water behind him. "Though if he was preparing for a fight here, maybe he'd have hid the mask somewhere else? Somewhere out of the way?" He shook his head helplessly. "No, you're probably right."
Their lanterns lit up a wider patch of floor ahead, and a dry stone wall some yards across it. "It's been years since I read about this fortress," Jonathan said as he led the way through the aperture which had probably had a wooden door centuries ago, "but I think this is where the knights and squires who trained here were dined. A mess, I suppose you could call it, since there was nothing like a great hall."
"I see," Erina said as she sloshed up beside him inside the wide, nearly pitch black room. It was large enough that their lanterns could barely reach it all. A moment later, she raised hers higher, and shot a suspicious look to their right. "Why would he have set the table, though?"
"What?"
Jonathan looked where she was pointing her light. A great stone slab, long and high enough to be a dining room table, filled most of the right side of the room. A pair of heavy wooden chairs – centuries old by the look of them, but still strong – sat at either side of the slab. On the table between them sat a pair of brass goblets, glinting in the feeble light, and two plates filled with something Jonathan couldn't make out. Stranger still, each of the chairs seated a limp, moldering skeleton.
"Are those…why would he just put them here?" Erina asked. Jonathan looked back at her, and saw that her eyes were wide with more than just the cold and the effort of breathing it away. Her knees were bent, ready to run.
"They might not have looked like that an hour ago," Jonathan thought out loud as he squinted at the fleshless corpses. Wamuu had told him vampire slaves couldn't survive long without their masters, just as the master would soon die without its mask. He hadn't said what form that death would take, however. Perhaps this was the state it reduced them to? Although…why would these two have just been sitting here while the battle raged upstairs?
He took a step closer, holding out his own light, and he now saw the tarnished glint of rusted iron where it fell on the skeletons' chests. Armor. Plate armor, no less. One of the skeletons was of a very large man, nearly as tall as Jonathan himself, if not as wide shouldered, whose body save the skull was all hidden in thick plating. The skeleton seated across from it was likewise armored, though in lighter plate that Jonathan could see spots of bone through the joints of, in patches that would have once been covered in mere padding. This figure was slighter, and a long tangle of desiccated white strands still hung from a few patches of mummified skin attached to the back of the skull. The rusty, cloying smell of blood stung Jonathan's nostrils before he'd even seen the contents of the vessels arranged on the slab between them. The cuts of meat on the platters, he simply averted his eyes from.
"What on Earth…?" Jonathan stared from skeleton to skeleton, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. That these were Elizabethian era corpses, he had no doubt. The skulls had been scrubbed fastidiously clean, save for the smaller one's scalp, but his lamplight showed enough dirt and dust on the rusty armor that he was sure they'd been buried in it. The blood and flesh on the dishes before them, though…like a little girl arranging her dolls around a table and setting out a tea party, only with refreshments cut and bled from live villagers.
"One of them has a sword," Erina pointed out, as she stood at Jonathan's side and grasped his hand with her free one. He looked at where she was indicating with her light, and saw the naked, tarnished blade leaning against the smaller skeleton's armored leg. It was a hand-and-a-half Scottish baskethilt, and through the rust Jonathan could see there were letters engraved on the blade just above the guard.
Realization struck him. Slowly, Jonathan backed away from the macabre display. Even after all he'd seen, all he'd adjusted himself to these last two weeks, this felt like encroaching madness. If he and Erina left this room, would they find that it had never existed outside of the imagination?
"That's Luck," he explained in response to Erina's anxious expression, raising a finger off of his lamp handle to point at the half-legible word, "the sword. These are Sirs Bruford and Tarkus, of Scotland."
Erina looked up from the corpses and stared at him sharply. "What…the Sir Bruford? Take care, your highness, you must beware, the lucky Scott with the beastly hair?"
Jonathan nodded weakly, looking back at the remains. "There was only one, to the best of my knowledge. They were buried here after Queen Elizabeth had them executed, but why would he do this?" Even as Jonathan spoke the words, he realized the probable answer. Dishes full of blood. What gives a vampire the power to keep living, after it's died? Mary and Elizabeth's tragic rivalry had been one of Musgrave's specializations. He had told them himself that he'd chosen Windknight's Lot for a reason.
"Start ripple breathing again," Jonathan said, even as he paused between words to fill his own chest, "I think he was trying to resurrect them."
Erina choked on her ripple breath. "What?" She let go of Jonathan and took a massive step back away from them, sloshing loudly through the icy, ankle-deep water.
Jonathan shook his head. "I don't know it for certain. And I don't think he could have succeeded, even if that was his aim. Wamuu never said anything about vampires doing that. But I'd rather not take chances."
He was reluctant, for just a moment, before setting his lamp down on the table and extending a pair of fingers toward each limp skull. If it turned out that Musgrave had somehow managed to bring back the centuries-dead, could Jonathan really just send them back to the grave without asking a single question of them? He told himself that anyone brought back by a vampire would probably wake up as vampires themselves; a pair of monsters with no more in common with the legendary Scottish knights than the creatures that attacked them at the town hall had with the modern villagers they'd once been. But…would it still be worth it? Even twisted into a monster, what might a resurrected Sir Bruford or Tarkus be able to remember, and willing to speak? No. No. That would be a monstrous crime against the knights themselves. A cruelty that no amount of petty curiosity could justify. He breathed in deeply, out sharply, and stabbed his fingertips into each bony brow. To his relief, there were no flames or smoke, and not a hint of motion or sound. The sworn swords of Queen Mary had remained, despite whatever Musgrave attempted, at rest.
"I think this is enough for me, Jonathan. I'll find Speedwagon and Wamuu and then wait back by the fire."
Jonathan pulled his hands away from the skulls and looked back up at Erina. Her face was dusty, and her hair disheveled and hanging down over her forehead. There was a sharpness, a desperation about her that Jonathan had seen all too much of from so many people in recent days.
"Erina," he said, standing upright and sloshing toward her himself, careful not to move too fast. She looked all too easy to startle, at present. "Is everything alright?" He stopped in place after hearing the words, and then started feeling almost as worried for himself as he was for Erina if this was really starting to seem normal. "Let me rephrase that. Did something even worse just happen?"
"Well," she said, reluctantly, "I just." Her lips twitched upward in the lamplight, but didn't manage to smile. Just grimace. "You were caressing those skulls so…tenderly…I was worried for a moment."
Jonathan felt like he'd been struck with a hammer, as the realization that Erina Pendleton might have been afraid of him sunk in. "You mean," he said, his voice quieter than it had been before, "worried that I'd gone mad?"
"Yes." She nodded her head a little too hard, as if relieved he had said it instead of her. "Or that I was. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that to you. This is just…everything tonight, it's all too much."
Jonathan came closer, leaving his lamp on the stone table and lowering his head tenderly. Erina splashed back toward him, wrapping her arms around his chest and squeezing tightly, her warmth and ripple heating him in the cold keep as he hugged her back.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into her hair, "maybe I really am going mad myself."
"You're not, really, please, don't worry!"
She squeezed him harder, nuzzling her blonde hair into the base of his neck. After a long, silent embrace, they released each other. Erina shifted her lantern into her other hand, to give her right one a rest after holding it away from Jonathan's back.
"I was just thinking, when I tested those bodies. About a lot of things, but one of them was what Professor Musgrave said about this place." He paused, eyeing the two hundred year old skeletons, and the sword that the Scottish government had been wanting back for as long. "He came back to the place he'd excavated. He tried to use his powers, even though he thought them evil himself, for some sort of…well, archaeology." Jonathan was sure, irrationally perhaps, but sure nonetheless, that Professor Matthew Musgrave had been acting on similar thoughts to the one that slowed his own hand a minute ago when he exhumed the knights.
"Jonathan, what are you trying to say?"
He looked back at Erina again. "I'm not sure. But…he only sent one vampire to my house, when he could have sent half a dozen. He could have fled down here and frozen us in this water instead of running to the lake. He must have been planning to do just that, when he poured it all down here, but he changed his mind."
"He also said," Erina continued, thoughtfully, "that he remembered loving his wife. It sounded as though he…well, I don't think he missed that exactly, but that he wasn't happy about not being able to miss it."
Jonathan nodded his head. "Yes. One of the mask wearers we fought before seemed all too content with her new situation, but the other one was also struggling with it in her own way. She also had something of a death wish, in the end, though that didn't stop her from fighting us."
They were both looking at the bodies again, and moreso at the grisly banquet laid out between them.
"They are still the same people, then, even with whatever the masks make them do?" Erina asked, sounding as disquieted as Jonathan felt.
"I don't know." He thought about that momentary reluctance he'd felt to flood Bruford and Tarkus with the ripple, that small temptation to exploit the masks' power instead of destroying it immediately. Was that the part of him that would survive, if he were to succumb to the spokes of a stone mask or the bloodsucking fingertips of another vampire himself? Would the vampire version of Jonathan Joestar be him? Would he be inside of his mutated, bloodthirsty carcass, his identity pruned away into a vampire persona, or would he be dead and gone with some other consciousness in possession of his body and memories? When those spikes impaled a man's brain, did they actually kill him before bringing him back to life?
"Sorry," the echo of Speedwagon's voice against the stone walls brought Jonathan back to where he was, "I got here a minute ago after I heard voices, but didn't want to interrupt anything."
Speedwagon was standing in another doorway, holding up his own lantern. He looked a little damper and dustier than the last time Jonathan had seen him, but otherwise healthy.
"We'd have appreciated some sort of notice," Erina said, but she didn't sound as snappy as Jonathan expected her to. Beneath the reproachful expression, he thought she might actually be relieved to see another living human.
Speedwagon put his hat to his chest, letting his murky blonde mullet flop out. "Sincerest apologies, then." He raised it back onto his head, pushing his hair partway under it again. "You wouldn't happen to have seen Wamuu, though?"
Jonathan shook his head. "Wasn't he with you?"
"Well, he was."
"It isn't like him to just disappear like that, is it?" Erina asked.
He and Speedwagon both started to say no, but caught themselves at the same moment.
"Not…usually."
"Well, sometimes he does, but not when he's said he'll be watchin' your back. At least, not until now."
Erina looked back and forth between the two of them, seeming anxious again. "There…couldn't still be any vampires left, could there?"
Speedwagon held out his hands blankly. Jonathan said "I don't think so, but one of Musgrave's was there when we went after Lamkin. If she wasn't his only vampire friend, then there could be some here who aren't dependent on Musgrave either."
"Enough to get Wamuu without him even getting a chance to make any noise?" Speedwagon looked skeptical. Jonathan shrugged, and shook his head. No, Speedwagon was right, that seemed distinctly improbable. It was with some relief that they then heard another, louder set of sloshing footfalls coming toward the same door Speedwagon had entered through.
"My apologies, Speedwagon," the nightman said as he waded into the dining room, "perhaps I failed to get your notice when I turned back toward the kitchen area." He turned his semi-luminous blue eyes on the table, and the bodies around it. "Is this an English ritual?" He asked.
Jonathan stared at him. Beside him, Speedwagon and Erina did the same, albeit the former seemed less outraged and more amused.
"Excuse me?" Erina asked.
"No, then." Wamuu looked back at the arrangement with a neutral expression. "I didn't think so. Your people seem to prefer burying the dead and leaving them there. I wondered if this was a ritual exception of some kind."
Jonathan thought of the testimonies he'd read about the Mexican peoples, and the jewelry-covered bones of their ancestors they still displayed and worshipped in broad daylight in some remote places where the Aztec and Mayan traditions remained strong. Wamuu probably had never been to England before, or at least not in hundreds of years. It was a reasonable question, taking all that into account. "I think he might have been trying to reanimate them," he said. When Wamuu looked thoughtful, Jonathan continued, "Can vampires actually do that? Even just potentially?"
"I've seen vampires with a variety of powers. I have never seen that one."
Jonathan supposed that was a small comfort, though he'd been hoping for a bigger one. Wamuu stepped around in front of the others, addressing the rest of the group. "Dawn will come soon. I know I need rest. The rest of you probably need it more. We can search more effectively tomorrow night."
Speedwagon nodded his head. "Wish I could say I was good for the walk back to the carriage, to get the 'victals, but I don't know I'd make it halfway around the lake."
Wamuu looked at Jonathan and Erina. Jonathan, after realizing the implicit question, looked at Erina as well.
"It won't be the first time I've had to sleep on an empty stomach," Erina said, "and I mean more recently than when I misbehaved as a child. I'll be alright." She sighed, letting her exhaustion show itself fully for the first time since she'd finished drying herself before the hearth they'd lit upstairs. "Let's just…go back where it's warm. I've never had to keep ripple breathing this long, and I'm…well…chilly."
"Eh, business as usual for me," Speedwagon said with a shrug, "at least, that's how it was before business really took off." He indicated his bowler hat. Jonathan was too drained, distracted, and – yes, now that the subject had been raised – exhausted to give him so much as a dirty look. Instead, he just looked at Erina, and then back at Wamuu.
"We'll set out the cloaks again, for blankets," Jonathan said, "Hopefully the rest of the wood will be dry by now." Unlike the others, Jonathan hadn't missed dinner in his adult life. In fact, he wasn't sure he could remember ever going this long without food in his childhood either. His empty stomach was bothering him far more than the cold. His ripple-to-waves pattern was still strong and even, despite the exhaustion, even as Erina and Speedwagon were maintaining it for ever shorter periods and beginning to shiver again. Still, he knew he couldn't count on his own constitution holding up for the entire walk back to Windknight's Lot without sleeping first. Hunger was the lesser of two evils.
"Upstairs, then," Wamuu said. There was something to the nightman's expression that Jonathan found disquieting, but in the dim light of their lanterns it was hard to be sure, "We'll end this mask come night."
…
They stood beside the carriage, watching the last bits of skin and flesh turn to ashes and flake off of the bones to darken the snow. The sky was clear, and it hadn't snowed since the previous night. The sun was half-hidden behind the rim of the crater valley, but enough of its rays still fell to do the needed work.
"I hope that's all of them," Erina said, somberly, as she looked along the line of ashy skeletons. They had all had flesh on them, before Jonathan and Speedwagon carried them out into the sun. The villagers would have to identify them the best they could when it came time for the burials. Cold, Jonathan had thought, but he couldn't dispute Speedwagon's calculation. The risk of any of Musgrave's former victims still being even just barely animate when their families reclaimed them was not one worth taking. It was a good thing they'd eaten the biscuits and apples they'd brought before the grisly work; Jonathan doubted he was the only one of them who'd have lacked the appetite afterward.
"Hopefully Wamuu will remember where he left any others, when he wakes up," Jonathan said. He hesitated a moment, casting a guarded look back up at the fortress walls. "Whenever that is."
Erina continued her tight-lipped watching of the skeletons, but stepped sideways along the coach to lean against Jonathan. He embraced her, and she loosened a little. Standing against the other side of the carriage door, Speedwagon kept his own eyes on the bones as well, moving his gaze pointedly away from Jonathan and Erina.
"Wamuu said there were four masks brought to England," Speedwagon said, "so, I suppose there'll just be the one more adventure after this?"
The three were silent. The sun slid further down behind the craggy hills, only a sliver of it still lighting the valley.
"I don't know," Jonathan said, looking down at the snow as he held Erina tightly, "I suppose the sensible answer would be yes, but speaking honestly, well…"
The other two looked at him. Jonathan found himself struggling with the words. With the very idea he wanted to convey, and with the question of whether he should even consider the subject at all.
"I never much doubted I'd be anything but the next Baron Joestar. There's my studies, but that…well, how much can I really care about archaeology just for its own sake after this?"
"You want to go looking for MORE masks?" Erina asked, glaring at him in shocked disbelief from her perch against his side.
Jonathan shook his head. "No. At least, I don't think so. But…to just go back to the way things were before? To pretend none of this ever happened?"
Speedwagon nodded his head slowly, raising a hand to straighten a lock of hair that had come looser than usual. "I've been thinking the same, honestly. Clara, Kenny, Tattoo, and all the others've still got to eat, of course, and I've got to do what I've got to do to make those ends meet. But, well." He sighed and looked back at the bones. "I just feel like the world's gotten so much bigger than I'm comfortable with, and I'm not sure how to shrink it again." He looked up at Erina. "I suppose perhaps I ought to change professions. I got the healing touch now, and the hottest blood in London or anywhere else probably. At least one of those things ought to pay better. Think I'd make a good doctor?"
Erina couldn't repress her chuckle entirely. "Well, you've got better bedside manner than most doctors I know. But…well, maybe you'll be better at it than me with more practice. Your lungs are bigger than mine, after all. But you have to understand, healing someone else with the ripple is much harder than healing yourself, unless they can channel it as well. It makes a difference with my patients, but not usually a big difference on its own. And it's no use at all against deep infections, sicknesses, or tumors." She looked at Jonathan. "Otherwise, your father would be on his feet again. Along with everyone else in the wards."
"Jonathan healed me right fast, not too long ago."
"So could some of the monks who taught me. That was why I first believed in the ripple, actually. I'd heard stories about the faith healers in the mountain temple, but I didn't believe them until I saw a master sendogi heal a gangrenous arm in just minutes." At the other two's inquiring gazes, she went on. "Swami Straizo came to the field hospital my father and I were working at. There was a patient we had, an Italian, who'd been hurt out in the wilderness and came back already festering. The infection was gone in five minutes of ripple breathing. The bone was healed back together after ten. It certainly made a believer of me, and the Italian for that matter; as far as I know he's still at the monastery. But there was only one other monk who could heal other people anywhere near that well, and that was Master Tonpetti himself."
Jonathan was silent. There was a sort of uncomfortable, quiet acceptance that he had managed to come to work with, from his middle teens onward. When the weak, sickly Joestar heir had suddenly, over the course of mere months, become the largest, strongest, and healthiest boy in his class or any of the other classes for that matter. When he played his first game of college rugby, and shrugged off two of the opposing team's leading players with minimal effort. He had always tried to train his body, of course. As a child, he'd resented his weakness, and despaired at his slight stature and poor coordination. He'd exercised and trained himself for years before the onset of puberty, and he'd never stopped since. But most of the change come on so suddenly, and with so little adjustment of his lifestyle at the time, that some part of Jonathan had always been afraid he'd somehow cheated and was going to have to give it all back someday. And now, just because of the size and structure of his lungs and heart, and whatever other factors mattered for the ripple, he was once again being compared to masters of the art when he'd only barely started to learn.
"Maybe you could make more of it." Erina continued. "I've been afraid to, more than anything else. The kind of attention I might draw, if people in government here in England or somewhere like it knew…well, I suppose you're more of a risk taker than I am, Mister Speedwagon."
Speedwagon guffawed. "Am I really hearing this from the woman who jumped off a balcony into an 'half frozen lake in front of a bloody vampire without any idea if it would work or not?"
"Well…" Erina stammered "…that's a different sort of risk."
"Hmm. I suppose." He looked about to say something else, before changing his mind. "Well. You'll go back to nursing yourself, then?"
Erina was still for a moment. Her dainty shoulders eventually rose a little, and then limply shrugged down again. "Well, I'll be looking out for more vampires whatever it is I'm doing. One can't exactly unlearn about them."
Jonathan's thoughts returned to the mask he'd carefully disabled, still laying on the desk in his bedroom. Was he supposed to change focus, now? Find a different ancient mystery to study? Pretend to be a historian or archaeologist of any note, when he'd parted ways with a four thousand year old man who knew an entire world of secrets hidden behind the veil of recorded history?
"I don't think I can go back," Jonathan finally spoke again.
"Your choice I suppose, then," Speedwagon said, "my family've still got to eat. And, well, as far as vampires go, I could probably do more to keep people warned that they exist if I'm doing something other than roaming around the world like a madman who no one would listen to."
"What if," Jonathan said, after thinking for a moment, "your family's housing and dietary expenses were all accounted for?"
"'Scuse me?" Speedwagon cocked his head.
"A man from your neighborhood saved my father's life once, and mine. My father made sure he and his own son never starved. I haven't kept track of which of us has saved the other more times at this point, but if there's any risk of failing Father I'll gladly assume the balance is in your favor."
Speedwagon was silent for a moment. "Wait a second there, JoJo…you're talking about Dario Brando?"
Jonathan nodded. "Dio's father by blood, yes." He regretted naming Dio as soon as he'd done it, as he felt Erina's reflexive flinch. He hoped to change the topic with his next breath, but Speedwagon spoke faster.
"I'd been wondering what that was all about, but all this time I was too polite to ask. Are you seriously trying to tell me that Dario FUCKING Brando – pardon the aristocratic dialect, Miss Pendleton – saved you and your father's lives? Just out of the goodness of his heart, eh? If that man ever helped anyone in his miserable excuse for a life, it had to have been by accident, and he probably regretted it after!"
Petting Erina reassuringly, and giving her an apologetic look, Jonathan replied "What Father always told me was that when our carriage slid off the road coming back from London – the same accident my mother died in – Dario saw us and risked falling himself by climbing off the road down the muddy slope over the river to help. It was too late for mother, but the only reason Father and I didn't bleed to death or die of cold out in the rain is because Dario Brando came and helped us."
Speedwagon's stare was hot, hard, and disbelieving. "Well," he said, "I can't imagine why your father would be lying on that man's behalf, so I'll have to assume this was an honest misunderstanding. That just fits with everything else, doesn't it? I never met a man both as selfish and as lucky all at once as Brando. Time and again he made sure he wouldn't live the next fortnight, and somehow something always happened to get him off right free. If anyone but him had that sort of luck they'd have gotten out of East End and never had to turn back, but it just had to go to the one man as was best at WASTING good fortune in all of London. Every time he got handed something – every last bloody time – he pissed it away trying to get something else, or just because he couldn't be bothered to put any work into it. Clara and mine's own mama and papa, they let him talk them into investing in that rubbish hotel he bought with what I suppose was your lot's money. Then the next thing you know Dario had Scotland fucking Yard – pardon the recurring use of continental vocabulary, Miss Pendleton – raid what to the best of our knowledge was just a normal hotel, and that was it! He never so much as said sorry! Was the same as anything else he lucked into. His health, his looks, his wife. Ruined everything he touched, drank it away, or just got bored and forgot about it!"
"So, then," Erina's voice spoke now, to Jonathan's freezing horror, "he was basically the same as his son?"
"Almost." Speedwagon's bushy eyebrows narrowed. "I only knew Dio as a boy, and briefly earlier this December. But I know there's one important difference between the two, and that's that Dio's as cunning as Dario was stupid."
Erina nodded. Vociferously.
When he looked back and forth between his companions' faces, and saw them tilting their heads in unison – saw the look of relief on Erina's face in particular when she heard Speedwagon talk, the expression of someone who'd been desperate to be believed – Jonathan felt his breath catch in his throat. He'd been desperate to change the subject for fear of making Erina uncomfortable. Now, Erina looked more at ease with Speedwagon than she ever had before, and yet Jonathan realized that he was still desperate to change the subject. Why?
"Well, yes," Jonathan said, affecting what he hoped might pass for a nonchalant expression, "for all his many, many faults, Dio certainly has a brain."
Erina and Speedwagon each gave him an inquiring look. Not skeptical. Not interrogative, exactly. Almost more like…forgiving?
"Well," Jonathan said, his voice sounding quieter in his own ears than it usually did, "he is set to graduate valedictorian. And the d…"
He looked back and forth between their faces again, and once again a memory struck him, so hard he nearly felt an impact on his skull. A rugby field, surrounded by whooping and hollering Hugh Hudson students and hangers on. Himself and Dio, clapping each other on the back. "Good block," Dio said, referring to the feint Jonathan had just pulled before passing the ball to Dio for the final touchdown, "I told you, defense is your strong point." Jonathan smiled back at his foster brother, who stood at the center of the cheering circle that surrounded both of them. "With my brawn and your brain, we really are unstoppable." Dio raised a golden eyebrow at him, and grinned a playful grin that reached to just below his eyes. "You mean with my brain and your brawn." Jonathan chuckled, shaking his head and looking down at the snow. "Well, if you insist." The crowd parted, and the school newspaper reporters streamed in. The Joestar brothers' dazzling victorious play. Gentle giant Jonathan, and brilliant and debonair Dio. "What can you tell us about your relationship with Jonathan, Dio?" One had asked after a slew of other questions. Dio repeated his playful grin, and embellished it with a half-ironic chuckle. "Well, that's sort of an embarrassing subject." Everyone laughed. Jonathan laughed with them.
"…epartment of law…" Jonathan closed his mouth. He hadn't been ripple breathing, but he was suddenly hot and sweaty in his tattered winter jacket. Erina was starting to look concerned. "Sorry," Jonathan said quickly, "I think I didn't get quite enough sleep."
Jonathan stared back and forth between the other two. They looked back, stopping only to blink the cold out of their eyes. He knew one of them would have to start talking again, but the only thoughts in his mind were ones he feared to acknowledge. Speedwagon looked like he was about to ask a question, but stopped. Had Erina given him a warning glance, just then?
"We should stable the horses," Speedwagon finally said, "it's getting colder."
The three remained silent as they led the animals into the relative warmth of the fortress' entry hall. As Speedwagon got to work with the rope and the feed bags, Jonathan found his thoughts growing harder to deal with. He could think them later, reassess half a lifetime of memories in the comfort of his home, when there was no longer a mask to destroy. For now, just to escape the silence, he said "I was serious before. If you – either of you – want to keep pursuing this after Wamuu leaves England, I can certainly afford it. I was planning to travel quite a lot as it was, with my field of study."
Erina looked at him, curiously. "Are you serious about this, Jonathan? Just…drop everything else and do this forever?"
"Not just this, no. Speedwagon was right; we won't be much use to anyone unless we keep a foot in the door to…well, to where most people live. There's no reason to stop living in England, and doing what we were otherwise doing." He stopped and looked over at Speedwagon. "Or…something in a different vocation, but still here. But I know I can't stop following the masks now, and when we think there's a worthwhile expedition to go on, well…we can?"
Erina looked down at the flagstones as she pondered. "I think I don't have much of a choice, if I was planning to spend more time with you regardless." She looked back up, and gave him a nervous smile. "Which I was. And…I really do think I'd go mad if I had to spend the rest of my life keeping all this to myself. Just living alone with the ripple was hard enough."
Jonathan smiled back at her, a little guiltily. Their eyes met, and both of their nervous expressions thawed and blossomed into proper smiles. They grasped hands, and then Jonathan turned to Speedwagon. The man looked uncomfortable again, in a way that Jonathan still couldn't for the life of him parse. Seeing that he was on the spot, Speedwagon leaned against the nearest stone wall and shook his head.
"I don't think I've really got much personal say, do I? I told Clara I'd do whatever it took to keep us fed, and then extended that promise to the rest of the family we've got together since. If that's part of your offer, well, like I said, not much of a choice."
Jonathan sighed, and smiled wider. "That much financial support comes without strings. I'm sure you and Clara can make better use of it than the late Mister Brando did, after all. I don't want you to stay a part of this unless you want it yourself." He kept his left hand on Erina's, and turned his body further outward toward Speedwagon. "So, you are welcome to participate. You don't have to decide right now, of course."
Speedwagon adjusted his hat, and looked first one way and then the other in the half-dark hall, as if seizing up an invisible crowd. "Oh…well, alright! Your offer's got a scent to it I can't deny, even if I didn't want to otherwise. This nose can smell good investments, it can, and right now it's telling me that this is an opportunity I've got to take."
He stepped back toward the other two and extended his hand. Jonathan took it with his free right hand, and shook it firmly. Speedwagon flashed him a toothy grin. Jonathan's smile broadened.
"Hold on," Erina said, leaning against Jonathan's side to look closer at Speedwagon herself, "I thought you said you could smell evil?"
Speedwagon gave her a very patient look and pointed to his nose with his free hand. "Well, I've got two nostrils don't I?"
Just then, Wamuu's voice echoed through the hall, bringing all three of their attentions to the stone staircase at the end he'd just entered from. "Good evening. There is more good news." He reached under his ripped, perforated, and bloodstained cloak, and pulled out a handful of jagged stone shards much paler than the native rock.
"What?" Speedwagon spoke first as all three of them dropped their jaws and raised their eyebrows. "When did you-"
"Fate favors us, tonight moreso than ever before." A meaningful glimmer flashed across his eyes as his gold-flecked lips smiled. "When I woke up and found you away and the sun not yet blocked, I made another search of the flooded section. The water is frozen, now, and must have pushed what was hidden beneath it upward as it turned to ice. I tested it to be sure it was no trick, and then destroyed it."
"Just…just like that?" Jonathan gasped. Truth be told, he'd been hoping for Erina to be present for the sundering of Musgrave's mask. She was the only member of their party who hadn't yet seen one's destruction.
"I've learned not to wait, when I have that freedom," Wamuu said.
Jonathan's eyes narrowed just the smallest fraction. "Is that so?"
The other two looked at him, curiously. Wamuu's face retained its smile, but remained otherwise unreadable. "I don't always have that freedom."
Jonathan supposed there wasn't much he really could say to that. He took a small step back, still clutching Erina in his left arm and holding Speedwagon's hand with his own right one. Wamuu advanced into the hall, still smiling, chains hanging freely down from his cropped yellow hair and bronze circlet and over what was left of the hood behind his neck. "There is no need to stay here longer. I'm sure you would all like to return home." He stopped in the middle of the hall and faced the trio, filling the center of the chamber like a larger-than-life statue. "But, I could not bring myself to interrupt your intimate moment, though I was on the staircase all along. You have moved ahead faster than I expected."
"Erm…come again?" Erina sounded as uncomfortable as Jonathan felt. On his other side, Speedwagon released his hand and said "What were you expecting?"
For a brief, but very heavy moment, Wamuu remained still, seeming as he often did to have really become unmoving stone. He broke the silence again by nodding his craggy, bejeweled head to the hall entrance and the night sky beyond it. "Come with me. Tradition holds that these matters should be discussed beneath the sky."
"Tradition?" Erina asked, still sounding confused.
"Your tradition, you mean? The nightmen culture?" Jonathan couldn't help but be excited, even if he was also unnerved. Ever since he'd met Wamuu, he had wanted to ask him more about his people. How they lived, where they lived, what languages they spoke among themselves, and so many other things. He'd been hoping Wamuu would finally give him a chance, once the masks and their wearers were all accounted for, and fearing that he might not.
"Yes." Wamuu led them out across the stone floor, and toward the snow and starlight. The sky remained clear, letting those faraway specks of white light and narrow sliver of late December moon fall upon the looming hills and slowly rising fog above the lake. "I once tried to follow the laws and customs of the day-tribes whose lands I passed through. There are so many, and they change so often. Over time, I realized that your people are seldom content with them yourselves." He shrugged, looking down sadly. "The ways of my people may be no better, in the eyes of fate. The makers of the masks did come from among us. But they are the best that I have to follow, and to judge daymen with."
"Ohhh," Speedwagon exclaimed, clapping his hands together as his boots left their first pair of tracks on the powdery snow, "like when you made me and Dio go at each other with just our bare hands?"
"You and…what?" Jonathan looked at Speedwagon and then back up at Wamuu, but the latter simply nodded yes before continuing.
"There is a story we always told." Wamuu stopped walking, and turned around to put his back to the rising mist and the crescent moon above his horn in front of them. "Some still tell it, though your astronomers have made others doubt its truth." There was no condemnation in his words. No judgement or sympathies evident as he spoke of each party in the dispute. Just exposition. "According to our story, in the beginning there was only Earth."
It took a moment for Jonathan's mind to catch up to what he was hearing. A creation myth. That hadn't been what he was expecting at all.
"Earth, who lay alone in darkness, did not move, and did not act. She was alone, and lonely. Finally, she called out into the darkness for company, and Moon heard her." He tilted his head upward, radiant blue eyes reflecting the distant white glow from above as it fell past his headdress and horn. "Moon's light fell upon her, and lit her body for the first time as they embraced. Earth loved Moon for his power and clarity. Moon loved Earth for her kindness and warmth. They were happy together, for a time, but something was still missing."
He turned his head eastward, to where the last traces of daylight just barely tinted the sky from behind the crater rim.
"The two called out, together, and Sun came to join them. Where Moon was reserved and Earth gentle, Sun was wild, passionate, and swift. Every word and action burning hot, and then passing away in a moment. When Sun and Moon's light both fell upon Earth together, she was finally able to give birth. All life was born from the union of the three. The plants and animals took most after Earth-Mother. Humble. Frugal. The daymen, after Sun-Father. Spreading everywhere at once, covering the world, but burning out after only a short time. The nightmen are like Moon-Father. Elusive, unchanging, and powerful. When Sun-Father is awake, Moon-Father can hardly be seen. When Sun-Father sleeps, you can see that Moon-Father was never away, only hidden among the other's light or shadows. So it is with our peoples."
He looked back at the three of them, and his smile returned. "Two men and one woman, sharing all that they have, pledging their futures to each other, and each others' to themselves. Nightmen believe that this is the way to complete ourselves. By our customs, you are now married."
The mist roiled silently, and the moon and starlight trickled down onto the unmoving snow. Jonathan turned his head toward Speedwagon, to see him still staring blankly at Wamuu. On Jonathan's other side, Erina had both hands on her chin, paralyzed in thought. No one said anything.
"Well," Erina finally broke the silence, "you are both quite handsome." Her voice fell a little. She took in another breath, and tried to continue. "And responsible. Really, not a bad catch?"
Jonathan tilted his head at her.
"Sorry," she said, shrugging her becloaked little shoulders.
"Come on now, it was a really nice sentiment, and I personally appreciate it very much!" Speedwagon trotted over and rested his hand on Erina's free one. She took hold of it, with a half smile and just a hint of an eye roll. "Don't be like that, Mr. Joestar." He put his free hand to his chin, and scratched it thoughtfully. "Or…would that be Mr. Speedwagon-Pendleton-Joestar?"
Jonathan stared down at him. Cocked his own head. Speedwagon started looking nervous.
"And why," Jonathan finally asked, "would your name come first, Mr. Pendleton-Joestar-Speedwagon?"
"We do not have surnames," Wamuu said, his tone and expression unchanged, "do it however you want."
Speedwagon was the first to start laughing. Erina followed just a breath later. Jonathan started with just a murmuring chuckle after her, but before long was laughing the loudest of them all. Wamuu remained silent.
"You are serious, though?" Erina finally managed to ask as the other two finished recovering. "And…erm…sorry for laughing, it's just…I don't think any of us knew how to r-"
"I know. I predicted your reactions." Just as when he'd described the astronomical controversy before, Wamuu was matter of fact, unperturbed. "Perhaps I should have waited until you rested after returning home. No matter. If this commitment between three continues, you will remain married in nightman eyes. If it ends, you no longer will be, though traditionally there would be another to officiate then as well."
"Oh, the hell with it," Speedwagon removed his hat and turned to face Jonathan and Erina, clasping an arm around the shoulder of each despite the awkward differences in height, "we've been through too much together to get divorced, official or not! And you know what, JoJo, Erina? When you've had your first baby, I'll be the best father a man could hope to share the job with! Assuming you're both alright with sharing it?"
"I…can't believe I'm saying this," Erina said, "but, well. I'd love you to be the sort-of-father of our children."
Jonathan looked over at her. "Children is a rather plural word." He sighed, and chuckled again, shaking his head. "But I never could deny you."
He looked back at Wamuu, unmoving, moon and starlight glinting distantly off his bronze circlet and golden ear and lip rings. He looked back down at the top of Erina's flaxen head. He didn't feel married. But, then, he wondered if standing on a church altar and having a legal certificate in his pocket would make him "feel" that way either. He had no frame of reference. Church weddings, as any man of his education knew, had not always been the way of his ancestors. Legal documentation of such, of course, was far more recent still. He would have to wed Erina by English law and custom, of course, and he supposed he couldn't think of anyone else besides Speedwagon to be their best man. But, for all purposes besides property rights and preserving the Joestar reputation, would they be any more personally bound then than they already were?
Were they more bound now, after Wamuu's pronouncement, than they had been an hour before it?
What did any ritual or ceremony actually do? Jonathan supposed that if he'd been a more religious man, he'd have a ready-made answer to that question. And somehow, blasphemous though many of his peers might find this thought, he decided he was grateful that there wasn't an answer for him.
Erina looked up at him, and he leaned down to kiss her on the lips. He felt Speedwagon's hand pat him fondly on the shoulder. He wasn't sure what to think about Speedwagon's part in their lives, of course, but for the time being…well, he wouldn't be a bad assistant father at all, so long as he and his sister made certain life changes.
"We should head home," Jonathan said, remembering that – whatever else they'd be dealing with in the coming days or beyond – they were still halfway across the Midlands and nearly out of supplies, "I'd rather be back by morning, as long as the weather's this clear."
"Aye. My lot might be worried if I'm not back by then or so myself," Speedwagon nodded sagely, replacing his hat on his head.
"I told my mama and papa that it might be 'a couple of days,'" Erina said, "so I don't think they'll be more worried than usual until at least tomorrow night. But, I'd just as soon let them know I'm alive sooner if we can."
As the other two returned their attentions to the coach – after a final hug and kiss from Jonathan, in Erina's case – Jonathan turned back toward Wamuu. He remained in place, still, face unchanged.
"Will you be coming back with us, this time?" Jonathan asked.
"Yes. There's room in the coach. I am sure you have more questions for me."
Jonathan nodded. "Yes. You could say that." He held back other words. For now, he smiled cordially, and then followed the others back to the castle entrance to help prepare for the road. He stopped after a few steps. Slowly, he looked back around at Wamuu. The nightman was watching them, face still impassive.
"Jonathan?" He felt Erina's fingers on his arm as she noticed him lagging.
"Go on ahead for now," he said, patting her fingers with his other hand and nodding her back after Speedwagon, "I think there's something I should talk to Wamuu about before we embark. I'll be with you in a moment."
Erina looked puzzled, but didn't press the issue. Once she'd slinked away toward the gate after Speedwagon, Jonathan – feeling more sure of himself, now that he'd made a commitment of sorts – strode back up to Wamuu.
"Yes?" Wamuu took a step closer through the snow-covered grass and shrubbery himself, breaking his posture for the first time since he'd finished the story of the celestial bodies.
Jonathan took in a deep breath of cold, damp air. "I didn't want to bring this up in front of the others, in case I was wrong, but thinking about it more I really don't believe that I am." He let the breath out, locking his eyes on Wamuu's. "You wandered away from Speedwagon last night, and somehow found yourself on the floor Erina and I had claimed. And then, this evening, you suddenly found the mask."
"Yes. Why?"
Jonathan felt his gaze harden into a glare. Wamuu was silent, but something about his face looked like a deliberate challenge. He took in another deep, careful breath. "What about the curtains?"
Wamuu blinked, his head tilting a little to one side. "Which curtains?"
"The carmine ones, back at my house. Last night, you mentioned that they would conduct the ripple well. How much time did you and Speedwagon spend investigating those when you were dragging Dio through the house?"
Wamuu straightened up again. "Ah. I think what you really want to ask is why I have been lying and withholding information from you."
Jonathan let this second inhalation out much more slowly. "Well," he said, wondering if he should be relieved or afraid, "that is a refreshing dose of honesty from you."
To Jonathan's surprise, Wamuu's lips turned up in a smile. "I was planning to talk to you the next time we met. I thought I should give you some time after this battle before explaining. If you know enough to be confronting me now, though, there's no point in making you distrust me even more by not answering."
"The fresh ham that went missing," Jonathan said, "Dio accused me of grossly overeating the next day. And it was already sunrise when I sent you and Speedwagon away."
Wamuu nodded yes. "I stayed in the building's shadow, and then snuck back inside through a ground floor window when no one was watching. I slept in the cellar and left the following dusk."
"And the mask. You found it last night, and kept it a secret."
Wamuu didn't bother to answer. His expression told Jonathan, quite plainly, that it was because there was simply nothing to add to that subject.
"Why? What are you actually doing?" Jonathan paused, wondering if perhaps he should trust his intuition this far or not before deciding that it had been right so far. "And what does it have to do with me personally?"
Wamuu stepped up beside him. He started to flinch when the nightman raised his enormous, tan-skinned hand, but he simply placed it on Jonathan's shoulder. Not grasping or restricting. Just resting it there, like his father sometimes did.
"When we first met," Wamuu said, "and I saw the mask in your room, I was going to destroy it and leave, no matter how you felt about it. But you blocked me."
Jonathan raised one eyebrow. "Well, it was very important to me."
"That is why you tried to block me. I expected that. But for you to succeed at stopping my arm?" Wamuu's bright blue eyes with their catlike gleam were boring into Jonathan's like moonbeams now, harder than they ever had before. "No dayman can block me. No dayman could ever block me."
"I…well, I've played a lot of rugby."
Wamuu shook his head, almost contemptuously. "I stayed in your house because I had to find out if my suspicion was right." What he said next took Jonathan so completely by surprise that he nearly asked Wamuu to repeat himself. "Was your mother a healthy woman?"
"Erm." Jonathan took a moment to recall all that his father had told him. "She was often sick, I think."
"Nerve problems?"
Jonathan stared. "Did you steal a diary of Father's?"
The hand on Jonathan's shoulder leaned in just a little bit harder, and Wamuu's smile returned. "No writing," Wamuu said, "only pictures. Especially the painting in the studio."
Wamuu's other hand rose up, and extended its pointer finger toward his face, touching the skin right at the top of the spiral-shaped marking that adorned it. He moved it along the spiral, tracing his finger along the faint, tattoo-like pattern. Geometrically perfect, and a light blue in color.
"What are you…"
And then, Jonathan put his hand to the back of his neck, right where it met his shoulder. Wamuu released him, and grinned.
"No. But that's…how…?"
"What do you know about her life before she met your father?"
Jonathan's mind was reeling. He wanted to protest, but Wamuu's question was the only comprehensible thing to latch onto. "Born Mary Holloway." His voice was quiet. "She was born in South Africa. Her own mother came back to England when she was a baby, after her husband died." He paused. "Father said she didn't like to talk about her parents. I've thought perhaps the story might have been half-true, to prevent a scandal."
"Probably." Wamuu shook his head, and strode slowly toward the lake, encouraging Jonathan to follow him. He walked along weakly, almost involuntarily. "If a dayman leaves a nightwoman with child, it will die early in the pregnancy. Her body will absorb it before it can develop. If a nightman leaves a daywoman with child, the pregnancy will kill her, unless she has enough skill with the Sunfather's Unseen Hand to strengthen her body against the strain without killing the baby."
"But…if the baby is part nightman…how does the ripple not kill it?"
"I have only met four who survived until birth. They were more like daymen, in how their bodies processed the ripple. It caused them sickness throughout their lives, and all of them died young. I never thought one would be able to have a child of her own, until Speedwagon and I broke into your house."
Jonathan didn't speak. He couldn't speak. His hand remained on the star shaped birthmark he shared with his mother, the mark that had had him declared a demon by the first person who'd ever laid eyes on it. Wamuu turned around to face him head on again, now half embroiled in the lake fog.
"Our strength, with their freedom to walk beneath the sun? Our vitality, conducting the ripples of the sun without cost? The first generation twilight men have most of the weaknesses of both peoples, and few of the strengths. But you?"
"Wait." Jonathan managed to choke out. His mind was spinning, but it was still working. As the events of his life bombarded him, he managed to concentrate on the last two weeks and focus. "When you gave me the ripple…?"
"I didn't know what would happen, but I had to try. I knew it would not kill you, if the sun itself caused you no harm, but I was delighted when I saw that you really could use your body's power to store and channel its ripples in the way that I hoped. Excuse me for a moment."
Wamuu's eyes rolled back, and his arms fell limp. Jonathan recognized the buckle of his knees just before he fell to the snow beside the lake's edge, chains and ragged coat spread out all around him. Jonathan looked up into the fog, and stared across the steaming waters. His entire life. His entire life. He tasted blood. He had bitten one of his cheeks. When Wamuu got up again, Jonathan saw a gleam of reflected moonlight beneath his eye that hadn't been there before. A bit of melted snow he'd rolled onto, or…?
"I've fought for almost four thousand years," Wamuu said as he loomed back onto his feet, "but I gave up any hope of winning almost half as long ago." His voice was calm again, expository and matter of fact. "The pillar men killed my mother and fathers before I could remember their faces. They destroyed our culture. I meant to devote my life to revenge. To hurt them as much as I could. Inconvenience them. Slow them. Return just a small part of the suffering they've inflicted, until I die of old age or am killed by their slaves. That is the best a mere nightman can do. But I think…I hope…that a being like you can do better than that."
Jonathan was still looking out over the lake, toward the village hidden behind the fog. "Pillar men," he repeated.
"That's what we call them, now. The ones responsible for the masks stopped being nightmen a long time ago." Jonathan felt Wamuu's hand on his shoulder again. "I have much more to tell you. About them. And you. And why I have been doing as I've done since meeting you. I think you've heard enough for tonight, though."
Jonathan's head bobbed, very slowly, upward and then down again. He couldn't remember the last time, save perhaps the night he'd been ripple activated, that he'd bit into something not even his curiosity could chew.
"Return to the fortress. Help the others prepare for the journey. I want you well rested before I tell you more."
TO BE CONTINUED ->
