Argument: a trip snuck under the walls to the smell of shit and a line of faces.
We snuck under the walls and snuck ourselves to the tunnel – this funnel to our way in and under passing guards and their barriers, villains and their worriers and on and down, in, over and up to the city.
“What will
become of me?
When will the beaks drop off the birds?
When will I be more than
rollicking words?
“Which way
can I travel?
Six months a continental shift
from A to B to see
the greyness lift…
“Who will
I meet and know
beyond a knowledge of their name?
Who will I contend with
in lowly fame?
“Who can
I half-fully
be and become and be right now
and tomorrow and then
fall in the slough?”
***
We ran to the left – or was it right? – and walked the straight line of the wall we knew curved in our spirit and stroll along the solid, great and grey-filled wall.
“Lathy
[…I asked…]
where are we bound?
This is such a straight barrier
I cannot imagine
a change in ground?”
And then a sewer with burst opening – bars spread sluttish to let us in – we crawled to the stinking flood and floating shit and sodden stoor the sewer gave out.
“Wait up!
What about them:
the ponies, the camels and men
we’ve left with our treasures?
What about them?”
“Shoosh, boy.
Treasure is means
to end only; our arrival
spent more limitless cash
than I could buy.”
***
Give or take three years, it had been four years eight months two days since Lathy had removed his armour – I saw him as green iron, green steel, green reflection on the face that snuck through the metal, the green bronze and mossy titanium – but then, but then…
No giant but I
towered over him –
his shrinking armlets
scrawled and so formless
and leglets sparrow
shaped, and childlike skin
with no blemish but
the armour chafing
wounds and pressure sores.
As such – the novelty in removing his limbs – arms, legs and thorax, head and feet – amused me no end.
“Quiet
you halfwit you
and take my breastplate safely
through this open sewer
and block your nose.”
Shit covered Lathy and me, squeezed through the drain and effortlessly dragged what might have remained on the other side.
“Now then –
what then? what next?
Where do we go but nowhere
slowly in the sewer
system and maze.”
“Follow.
Follow. Listen.
for the clank of armour battered
off these shitty sidings
and old brickwork.”
***
We had snuck under the Castle Walls, deep beneath the topmost tower and walked the ground of this Underground – we passed the beggars and the cokefiends, the dealers’ hats and conmen’s purses filled with the purses they’d snipped from the goodmen – good and clipped of pronunciation.
“We’ll find
those clapping hands
and listen to them carefully
to wallow in the clean
adulation.”
Lathy focussed on the applause – what more could he want?
The whole Underworld before us – an Underground of low ceilings and caverns where the people waited for the Aboveground to forget them – and what a shadow of villains to forget.
I spoke to many by their fires as we passed them by – I gathered names and epithets:
Troll-And-Troll-By; Troll Hazard of Trace; Troll Hazard of Tritrace; Chafe Litter.
Obloquium; Rince Pytcher; Jeffrey Gods Fo; Nichol Hartles; Simon Soone and Soon Agon.
Grene Winchard; Proctou; Commitour of Tidinges; Gyle Hather; Bawd Phisicke.
Mounch Present; Cole Prophet; Cory Favell; Dying Thrift; sweet Esen Droppers.
Choplogyke; Unthrifte; Ungracious; Nunquam; Ingratus; and the others.
They smiled as we walked by and ran a hand over guns and knife hilts and spat their cliché to the floor.
“Not clowns!
[…I said…]
These ones all laugh
when they find it appropriate
and they look at us bright
with all-wide smiles.”
And maybe, this once, for once and always I liked it down here – all at home and homely, domesticated and coolly happy to be home where the danger lies around itself.
“The Cage
was like this place
and Sick Brian and the others
all a-one and a-pair,
all warm blethers…”
But undergrounds grow darker – Lathy crept unsure – he never hunted in his memory for the Cage we had come from – his eyes and shitty forehead under new-restored armour greening his way sweated beads and trails past his nose.
These men, his body suggested, are designed to take from you – removed from the city they pass on to you the chorus and take your charms from you.
“Think: trust
begins with ‘T’ –
ask them for a cuppa, squire; talk
as if we know them all.
You see? You see?”
And then he sang quietly under his breath, a comfort song in fear for his life.
“It’s a trial, a threat
of judgement from the corner
the lack-of-light
boot-of-car, backed-off-light
that threatens me, so
I comfort myself –
what way? what ho!
“Take a shoulder shudder
tie it up in a bag
of cloud, a cloud of rags,
of course, a shroud
of birth and comfort
and hug the bag –
be twee and warm.
“Then smooth the tears
on foreheads, sweated
through exertion, smiling
that borrowed beguiling grin
and let the world in!
Let the world in…
Let the fuckers-
shithead-bastards in…
“The alleys to be covered
in chintz and cushioned.
The paths to be camerad
photographed and mentioned
in hourly dispatches
of the trustworthy.
“A murder cannot happen,
my murder cannot happen
when the deathsquads –
neds and foolheart bastards –
lead a fight wearing out
their dots and stripes
in rainbow rations.
“Yes, this comfort is
a noble thing.”
They moved in to us – the low roof above us giving way to the high roof beyond and the thousands (so Lathy claimed) drew a circle around us – I laughed at the inevitability of it all.
“Such fun
to be dangered
and circled, merry-go-rounded
in this carnival dark
of grand villains!”
A leader – unimportant who – took to the front of us and drew ten men in a line – see the firing squad waiting to send us to the god of our choosing.
“Take aim, boys,
[… one gunman serenaded…]
to fire just like
our boss ‘ere, Dyer,
has said to do
and show the bullets
into eyes and faces
and cover all other
body parts’n’places
in some bullet shot
and shoo and snot.
Don’t miss now.”
I smiled – Lathy piled his misery and terror and shit-faced sweat and torture to a mountain.
And the triggers were pulled.
prev - 3.1 Walls and Gate
next - 3.3 Lathy in the Underworld
