tampered | Log: Ongoing

Log: Ongoing

When: Friday, October 17, evening
Rating: PG
Characters: Armand

amadeodivenezia and Cain Hargreaves

misterblackbird
Summary: Armand has made a request for people's stories and Cain has agreed to oblige him.
Log:

A piano bar, a Friday evening, and a teenage boy with a video camera. What could be odd about the picture? Perhaps it was that the auburn-haired boy with the deep brown eyes appeared to be seventeen at most, and that if one were being generous? Perhaps. Perhaps it was that the boy was a vampire over five hundred years old, a truth hinted at by the inhuman grace of his movements, the utter smoothness of his skin, and the peculiar glassy sheen to his fingernails.

Armand appeared lost in thought or contemplation of his camera, though his thoughts were a million miles and half a millennium away. It would be better if memory faded with time, it would be a mercy. Armand could remember everything from those lost days in Venice, and what he was remembering was the most lost thing of them all.

"...then this unkindness must be in my nature, Armand. It will not go." Two simple sentences to confirm the worst of his fears. What had once been in Venice could never be again.

It was an agony of synchronicity to then hear from Anita that Lestat had played the role of supplicant with her that Armand had played with Lestat and with as much result. He felt no sorrow for Lestat's loss, but rather a remembered sorrow for how it had felt to be cast aside after begging to be kept. Doubtless Lestat had not begged; he was ever braver than Armand.

Lux was a better place to be for Armand than his own home. He needed this moment away from those he knew and those who knew the ones he loved. He needed to lose himself in the present rather than the past and regret.

Let Cain Hargreaves' story be a good one. Let it be filled with emotion, be it pain or joy or rage, but let it be something to sweep him away from his own thoughts.

[ooc: My apologies, Caru for the lateness. Long work day FTL.]

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It was a strange request to be asked to tell a story by a stranger. It seemed more like something out of a fairy tale or a legend: the stranger is asked by a stranger to tell a story, and the story begets another story, which begets another story.

He had agreed to tell a story, and had thought almost immediately of one he should like to tell. But even now, pushing open the door to Lux, he was reconsidering.

There were stories that would reveal too much, ones that would require too much explanation, and ones that would tell without his intention to tell. The implications could be immense. Perhaps the story of the vampires-who-were-not in their tower--but that one involved that doctor, as did the ordeal with the stolen eyes, and the lady painting the portrait of her son. And talk of vampires seemed to be all too popular at the moment. How tedious to bring it up again.

Perhaps the story he'd meant to tell all along, or if not it, then the story of the lion's crest, or the story of Ester with the marked hand.

He had too many stories, he thought to himself, and couldn't resist a flicker of a rueful smile.

There was a youth near his own age--no, younger by his face, which was unexpected--with a small bulk of machinery. Somewhat out of place, that bulk, but it was his camera, perhaps. Lenses and necessities.

So he approached quietly, as one would any table in the room, to ask a chair.

Armand looked up from his camera when it became clear that the young man was approaching his table. This must be his appointment, Cain Hargreaves. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but it was not this slightly anachronistic air. Certainly Armand knew blood drinkers who had not let go of their favored times and modes, but Cain was assuredly human.

This was promising already.

"Cain Hargreaves?" Stand, smile, do not offer the cold hand, remember appearances and to put his guest at his ease if that were possible - all things that came easily with practice. It did not take the mind gift, only a willingness to dissemble.

He smiled in answer, of course, politely. It had rather been the pot calling the kettle black when he'd accused that a collection of recorded stories was eccentric. He realised this better now, still riffling through his memories. Strange how it had suddenly come to matter so much what story he told.

"I am, yes. And you must be Armand, whom I spoke to on the Network. A pleasure to meet you in person."

"I am Armand. Please, make yourself comfortable."

It was all remembering the steps of a familiar dance - the courtesies, the smile, remembering not to stare because every human was uniquely fascinating.

"Is there anything you require before we begin? A drink perhaps? Storytelling can be dry work."

"Thank you," he replied, sitting down opposite him. "Coffee, perhaps, given the hour." And he glanced quickly for the eye of a passing waiter.

Formalities, formalities. At least he was as polite as he had seemed on the Network. That was always something of a relief. And then, as ever, curiosity struck.

"Forgive my asking, but is that your camera?"

"It is." Armand took his seat again and picked up the camera with a fond smile for the clever device. "Would you like to look at it while we wait for your coffee?"

The waiter had already had Armand politely decline anything more than a glass of water which sat untouched on the table, so he turned his attention to Cain for his order.

"Café noir, please." No cream, no sugar, which was an old habit.

"I would, very much so. How does it work, especially in the dark? You said it was suited to dim light, and most cameras I know wouldn't be able to capture an image of anything in the dark."

Armand flipped open the LCD screen for the camera and turned the display on so Cain could see the image in the screen before holding the camera out for him.

"My understanding is that the lens is manufactured to take in as much light as possible and that the electronics that process and store the information are of high enough quality to process even minimal information."

He twitched a shoulder in a hint of a shrug. "Or so I understand. I am still learning about digital technologies. Film and videotape were the standard at home."

He leaned across and studied the image displayed there, brighter than the room.

"I see," he said, which was perhaps a lie.

Certainly, superficially it made sense: a specialised lens and a specialised method of recording the image, so to speak. As ever, there was that mixed sense of wonder and frustration he felt. It was not an uncommon feeling for him by far in the City.

Still looking at the camera and its image, he went on: "That's far more than we had, I assure you. We had photographs and the occasional novelty of zoetropes or sequenced pictures flipped by. Though I know a handful of people were experimenting with moving pictures, I'd not seen more than a few seconds of it before I came here and fell into a world full of it. This is far more advanced than I'm sure most anyone in my would could ever dream of."

Armand nodded but did not offer that he remembered zoetropes and daguerrotypes and tintypes. He had sat for a tintype in the late 1800s that had only recorded his image in the poor lighting because of the luminance of his skin and his ability to remain absolutely still.

He preferred modern technology.

More interesting to him, though, was that Cain spoke of such things from the past as though they were from his present.

"I do not understand how it is that time and years seem to be more suggestions here than something immutable." It disturbed him to think of going back to another time. The past should stay past and gone.

"It is rather like a collision of times and places here. If I were to come from the same world as some others here, I'd be their great-grandfather, or even great-great-grandfather. I admit it, I come from the past compared to most people here. I don't understand how it's possible either, though I seem to be living in the middle of it."

He was quiet a moment in thought. He had tried to untangle this riddle before, and his answer made sense to him, though there would never be proof of it.

"We credit or blame the City with bringing us all here. It may be the City, it may be the supposed 'deities', or it may be something greater and worse that brings us here. Regardless, from what I've observed, it seems like every moment in time is the present to this place. I certainly wasn't pulled out of the past, though my world and my time is the past to most of the rest of the people here. It was my present, and I was drawn into this place, which also the present, though it seems like the future to me. It is complicated, I know, and I've tried to think of some comparison for it but I've found nothing."

The waiter came swiftly by and set a cup beside him.

"Perhaps the popular analogy of time as a river would serve. Regardless of what point in the river you draw the water from, the water remains water and the river remains a river." He thought about it for a moment and shook his head. No, that wasn't good enough.

"Time has never been such a question to me before. It passes, we move with it, and that is all the question that was ever needed. Now time has become a mystery."

"I've tried to invent some likening to cloth, but it doesn't hold together. There is simply nothing like it. I absolutely agree: it has become a mystery."

He studied the table a moment. He'd tried to make dozens of likenings and ideas fit, but none quite suited. It was a singular place and a singular skill this place had. And singular people, likewise. Well, then. With that in mind, he looked up again with a smile.

"But did I come here to discuss theories of the City or did I come to tell you this story?"

"The story, but first, a moment." Armand screwed a small tripod to the bottom of the camera and set it on the table to capture Cain's face in partial profile.

When he was satisfied with his arrangements, he nodded once to Cain.

"When you are ready, I would be pleased to hear your story."

He cast a glance at the camera. "Is it working?"

His hands were resting on the table, and the coffee cup was nearby. He spun it a moment. How far back to begin?

"I'm not from the same world or age as you, you and I both know that. So I'll tell this story as best I can, but interrupt me should I confuse you and I'll footnote myself. I've learned that's unfortunately necessary."

Glancing back up at his companion he went on:

"It was summer, fairly the height of the season. My sister, Merryweather, and I were out walking in Hyde Park, as we often did. You seem like you may have traveled. If you have, I hope that you've visited London. And I hope that in your world the parks in London are there. There seemed to be nothing peculiar. We had spoken to friends, friends had spoken to us, the weather was fair, if cool for the time of year. I don't remember now if we were preparing to turn towards home again yet or not, my house being in Mayfair.

"But before we could even consider beginning to go home, we were stopped by an elegant, but eccentric lady. Or, rather, Merry was stopped by this elegant and eccentric lady.

"The lady was fairly elderly, and dressed to her station, though I couldn't help noticing that her hair was done up more like a young lady's than a grande dame's. She was probably the widow of some baron or viscount, or possibly the unmarried daughter of one. The maid who was with her certainly called her 'Lady Grace'. Although her behaviour seemed not quite like that of a lady."

Edited 2008-10-19 03:16 (UTC)

"She rushed up to my sister at a great pace, with her maid chasing after her and declared, 'Oh, Kitty, my darling Kitty! Is it really you? When did you return from India?'

"Nothing we said could convince her otherwise. She was certain that my sister was her granddaughter. Even her maid couldn't convince her otherwise. She immediately invited Merry to her house in the country for a week.

"Merry, being as she is, wouldn't want me to refuse, and the pleading look on the maid's face was too much. But it seemed to me to be dishonest to let this lady believe my sister was her granddaughter.

"All the same, I did accept the invitation, and we went to her house for the week.

"At first, it was idyllic, if tedious. Merry and Lady Grace spent every moment together, and most of those moments seemed to be spent in the kitchen. They were either making gingerbread or a cake or cookies. It was becoming almost like a strange farce or like a fairy tale, this strange old lady and the girl she mistook for her granddaughter.

"Of course you can see the turn coming already: it was idyllic at first. It was perhaps midweek when we were visited by a Lord George who burst in on a tea party.

"Lady Grace seemed undisturbed by him, and she offered him any number of the things she and Merry had baked that day. He shoved it all aside and began demanding that she sign over her fortune and house to him. He'd even had the necessary papers drawn up and was waving them over the teacups. The lady called him "Georgie Porgie", much to his displeasure, and seemed hardly to understand what he wanted. He seemed more unstable than she, grabbing at her wrist and threatening he.

"He was quite obnoxious, obviously, and tiresome, and rather spoilt, I thought. For all that Lady Grace seemed lost in a bit of a delusion, Lord George was perhaps worse. I was tired of hearing him, and I'm sure the other were too, so I caught him with the handle of my cane. I could hardly resist finishing the rhyme:

"Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie.
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
But when the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.

"Not that that pleased him any more. My very presence confused him. And as if to add insult to injury, he collided with one of the housemaid who splashed him with soapy water. He left, of course, shouting about how he'd be certain to return, and our tea party went on as though nothing had happened.

"Lord George did not concern us and Merry and Lady Grace carried on like the long-separated relatives they were supposed to be. Although, my presence seemed to escape the lady entirely. Once she asked Merry who her friend "Mister Blackbird" was. I let her call me by that, "Mister Blackbird". Perhaps I was feeling sympathetic and playing into her delusion, I don't know. But she, and the staff, too, began to refer to me as 'Mister Blackbird'. I rather liked it."

Armand sat silently through Cain's recounting. His posture and attitude said that there was nothing in the world but the story and its teller.

"Mister Blackbird" had a charming ring to it, he decided, and rather fit the young man with the dark, dark hair and gold-tinted eyes.

"What became of Lady Grace?" he asked, as Cain paused. "Did you and your sister see her again?"

He paused to sip from his cup.

"We did. We were to see her for a while longer. It's here that the complexities begin. It was clear that the whole household was playing into these delusions, and I was seeing only half-truths. And one evening during our stay I questioned the butler about it.

"As it turned out, Kitty--Miss Catherine--died three years ago. A photograph proved that the two girls, my sister and Kitty, did look similar, but by no means identical. Lady Grace lost her son and her daughter-in-law to illness, and so doted on Kitty after their deaths. And when Kitty died in an accident, Lady Grace retreated into this dreamworld. She baked cakes every day for Kitty, and waited for her return. So this mistaken identity was quite a godsend for them. They hoped that we'd maintain the illusion with them, and I promised that we would.

"Lord George, meanwhile, our esteemed guest, was Lady Grace's nephew and only surviving relative--therefore, also her heir. I was surprised that the butler was so candid about this, but it seemed Lord George was deeply in debt. Perhaps it isn't so surprising, knowing his personality. But to get out of his debt, he intended to claim his inheritance and sell the house. He had been bold of late. Even the servants were becoming concerned over how much longer they could endure against him.

"Merry and Lady Grace were busy every day in the kitchen. I'm not one for sweets, and Merry wasn't often permitted in the kitchen at home. So imagine her surprise in seeing a massive sugarloaf in the lady's kitchen. You may never have seen a sugarloaf before. It's sugar, obviously, melted and pressed into a sort of a cone when it's shipped from the sugarcane plantations and refineries. It's made quite hard and solid, and very heavy. To use it in one's cooking, one has to crack a piece off with a pair of sugar nippers and melt it. And they intended to use a goodly piece of it for jam the next day.

"Oranges and lemons, pudding and pie, and all the people around her helped hold up her dream world. She couldn't bear harsh reality. She smiled the smiles of a young girl and gave me a bunch of lilacs when she went out to pick currants hand in hand with Merry.

"Kitty also turned out to have been quite the correspondent in the past three years. There's something odd about being shown the letters of the person supposedly sitting at your knee. Merry played it well, or well enough for Lady Grace, smiling and nodding at the right times. Kitty was kidnapped by pirates in the South Seas, or met fairies in the woods on Germany, or the Indian King falls in love with her at first sight. They were strange letters, written in childish handwriting, postmarked quite recently and, most oddly, smelling faintly of soap.

"Now the shadow really falls on this kingdom of sugar and light. Because the next day, Lord George was found dead in the garden. His skull was crushed. Quite possibly, he was killed instantly, though there seemed to be white sand in his hair, which no one could explain. There was little blood, but his valuables were missing. The police put it down to a mugging. Lady Grace seemed to have forgotten she had a nephew at all. And, perhaps strangest of all, the batch of cookies baked the day before were gone and replaced by a jar of jam.

"Of course it was fairies, according to Lady Grace, and Merry was quite delighted to have fresh jam.

"But jam made in one night, in the house of a lady who can forget her nephew in the same night, the night he is killed should make anyone wonder. Nevermind the white sandy crystals clinging to his hair.

"I went down to the kitchen to look around and crouched there at the kitchen fire was a housemaid with a bundle of papers in her hand--and a man's pocket watch and wallet beside her. They were George's, almost certainly, and the papers that she had were the ones he'd been waving at us so recently.

"I caught her wrist just before she threw the papers into the fire, but she wasn't about to surrender them easily. Being that close to her I caught a scent from her hands and her dress: the same soapy smell that clung to Kitty's letters. I gained the letters and let her go.

"How could I not make the assumption that this same maid was responsible? A maid might have childish handwriting, unrefined and unpracticed. Certainly the letters smelled of the soap she used. Why was she burning George's possessions and papers? Was she the one who had killed George?

"As these words were leaving my lips, a voice came from the garden door behind me:

"'No one was killed. There is no room for death in my lady's world.'

"The entire household staff, all of them, the butler, the housemaids, the cooks, the footmen, the grooms, the gamekeeper, all twenty-four of them were gathered there are the door, staring down at me and smiling slightly. All gathered together like twenty-four blackbirds.

"It was rather impressive their cooperation. They'd been keeping up these appearances for so long, perhaps it was second-nature. Perhaps this wasn't the first time this sort of thing had happened.

"But here were my thoughts, and I laid them before them: the weapon used to kill George is probably not in the house. The police took careful note of anything that seemed to be missing. No trace of blood was found in the house. Indeed, the kitchen was spotless. Not so much as a mouse was found. It was so perfect as to be...unnatural.

"They all stirred at that. Now I was the threat.

"Then I revealed what I'd found: the sand in George's hair wasn't sand at all. It was sugar--refined sugar, as might be found in a sugarloaf. Perhaps the murder weapon was the sugarloaf I had seen just the day before.

"That upset the maid who'd been by the fire. In tears she admitted to having beaten George to death with the sugarloaf. She said that she'd learned to read and write only with great difficulty and had begun writing the letters as Kitty to cheer up her mistress. She said that she'd gotten the rest of the household involved to keep the secret. And, she said, she had killed George because he was a threat to her lady's happiness.

"That was how far these servants would go to protect their lady's dreamworld: they would take responsibility for her crime."

Armand's eyes gleamed with delight at the direction Cain's tale had taken. Oh, but this was exquisite. The details, the servants, the sugar loaf.

And the flavor of this man's storytelling. He already wanted more and he knew that the tale had not yet reached its end.

He had leaned forward slightly in his seat and nodded to Cain without speaking, urging him to continue.

Cain was undeniably delighted in having such an eager listener. It wasn't often that he was able to tell his stories. It reminded him of his own time and place, of the things he'd done, of his successes.

"Merry had left the jar of jam in the kitchen, and in it was the last bit of evidence I needed.

"The sugarloaf had been melted down and made into jam to hide the murder weapon. And it had very nearly worked...except for a strange red spot--a bright red spot, just near the glass of the jar, far too bright to be a currant.

"It was the same color as the garish nail polish Lady Grace wore. How strange that it should be in the jar.

"Then the full story came out, piece by piece: George had broken into the house to try and threaten the lady one more time, but this same housemaid had heard him and tried to stop him. Lady Grace herself had gotten involved in the struggle with him. That was to be Lord George's real undoing.

"According to the maid, George had finally had enough of his aunt, and he told her again what had happened three years ago:

"Three years ago, Lady Grace had told Kitty that if she wished hard enough, Peter Pan would take her flying. She wished, and leapt to her death out of her bedroom window. Distraught, Lady Grace couldn't accept the truth. And now, enraged at being reminded of it, of being reminded of her responsibility for Kitty's death, she beat George to death with the sugarloaf. She could not accept the truth.

"The maids cleaned the kitchen, the cooks melted down the sugar and made the jam, the footmen and the groundskeepers carried George's body to the garden, and then they feigned surprise at finding his body in the morning. All to protect their lady.

"All twenty-four of them, like the twenty-four blackbirds hidden in the pie. They'd all conspired for so long it was innate for them.

"The butler offered to give himself up to the police. The cooks offered to smear a hammer, borrowed from the groundskeepers, with pig's blood. The gamekeeper offered to find it."

"I, of course, refused. After all, the real murder weapon was nowhere to be found and everything I'd proposed was only speculation. The proof was vague at best: a red spot in a jar of jam. No one need turn themselves or anyone else in to the police.

"And onto the fire went Lord George's papers."

"Merry and I left for home shortly thereafter, with our jar of jam and another invitation to come and visit again.

Unfortunately, I dropped the jam on the cobblestones just after we arrived at home. The invitation, however, still stands. And I am sure that once I return home, we will take the Lady Grace up on it."

He paused a moment, the end of the story. And then, almost as if a coda, some epilogue, he said quietly, half to himself, his gaze turned inward:

"Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing.
Wasn't that a dainty dish
To set before the king?"

Armand leaned back as the tale drew to a close. He was delighted with Cain, which, as Marius, Daniel, and probably Lestat would attest, was not necessarily a good thing.

Listening to Cain speak was to have the pleasures of nostalgia without the pain of real memory.

But there were questions, of course. Always questions. "Why did you truly keep your deductions to yourself? Was it pity or a sense of justice or was there another reason?"

"I suppose you could call it a sense of justice. I had no real quarrel with Lord George, as tiresome as he was. Nor did I have any real affection for a half-mad old woman who had, in a fit of greater madness, killed her own nephew. Nor did I think the conspiracy of servants was in the right.

"But having seen the lengths to which those servants would go was enough. For those who knew they were living a lie, that was punishment enough. And the lady herself knew her own guilt. She remembered Kitty's death and mourned it every day. If she so recalled that, perhaps she would recall Lord George's death with equal clarity in the depths of night. They were punished enough, all of them. And to break their mad kingdom would have harmed Merryweather as well."

Armand wondered if he would have been so merciful in the same situation. Possibly. Lady Grace was not an evildoer to his estimation, though. Her intent had not been evil, only the results.

"Which harm to Merryweather concerned you? Had she grown attached or did she see the deception as you did?"

He looked aside a moment, smiling a little. How clear was it, his weakness to his sister and her whims and desires?

"She saw the deception, or her part in it at least. But she was more sympathetic. She said that it made her sad to think about the real Kitty, but she was glad to make Lady Grace happy. She had very quickly grown very attached."

It didn't take one with the power to read minds to know that about Cain; the story itself made his feelings for his sister clear. It was nothing Armand could relate to, though he had seen it played out by humans many times.

"Which concern truly swayed your decision, then?" he pressed. "Was it the thought that they were punished already, or your sister's wishes?"

"Can it not be both?" he asked over the rim of his cup.

As evasions went, that was one that Armand brushed off almost as though he hadn't heard it. "Which held the greater weight?"

Why so pressing? Why so desperate to hear the decision fall to one side or the other? Cain resided forever in the middle of things, in the grey fog between dark and light--Hargreaves, 'grey grove'. With his cursed name and cursed past there could be no clear distinction, no real good. There could only be bad things done for noble reasons.

"Neither, then. Or else both, because they're mutually inclusive. I knew the truth. To set the police on them and punish them with the law would have also upset Merry. To let them live with their own punishment and their knowledge that I knew what had happened would also protect Merry."

For all that Armand existed in the grey, for all that he had danced on both sides of the line to see that little was as simple as black and white, still he wanted black and white. He wanted clear choices and stark contrasts. They just never came without something happening to dispel the illusion that things were ever that simple.

"You sound like someone accustomed to making such decisions. Do you have other stories like this?"

A risky question, given the nature of some of the stories and what they would reveal. This story was innocent by comparison. If he were to tell more, he would have to choose carefully, or else edit his own stories.

But who here could contradict him? No one now.

"I do, and more than a few of them."

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Log: Ongoing

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