Marcus Florian: A Fragment

Marcus Florian sat forward in his armchair with his elbows on his knees and his young tousled head bowed over the single sheet of a letter. He allowed the growing darkness to creep towards him from the recesses of his great grandfather’s library, renowned for its peerless collection of legal textbooks and manuscripts. Both of his forefathers had followed the profession but Marcus had rejected it, preferring more esoteric pursuits. He was the very opposite of bookish and had not frequented this room since, as a child, he had entered illicitly in search of the more scandalous and prurient material which had long been locked out of sight. He sought refuge now, and the comfort of knowledge which did not belong to him and could no longer help him, but which was nevertheless there. The air around him was stale, heavy and hard to breathe, requiring great shuddering gulps that tasted of dust washed down with lightly salted water. The sound of the branches outside, like small stones being thrown against the window was silent, and soot clung to soot in the chimney, waiting to fall. As the shadows circled him and the moon cast him in its final spotlight, Marcus could hear only the rising of his own blood pressure to a near scream as he stared at the signature and seal at the bottom of the paper he held tightly in both hands. It read as follows:

 To: Marcus Florian Esq.

Sir, you know me as both an acquaintance and as a rival. We have competed in all of the arts and occupations of a gentleman from stage to stadium and I have invariably been the victor. However, although I might sing more sweetly and run more quickly, shoot more accurately and play more tunefully I could not, as you know only too well, surpass you in one respect. You and only you could win the special affection of our mutual friend Monsieur Patrice Reynaud of Paris. Oh, your secret was always safe with me because I shared it, but you wouldn’t share him. Instead you flaunted him, at the theatre; at too many of the events we both attended and even, how dare you, in my own home when I was kind enough, as so often in the past, to invite you. I took you aside there, as you will recall, and I warned you in no uncertain terms to stop taunting me. But you did not listen. I warned you that if I could not have him, if you would not share a little of his grace with me, then I was quite prepared to kill him. You laughed, as I remember. You thought that I had indulged in too much wine and banter. You were wrong and you have only yourself to blame. The deed is done, the boy is gone, and I am no longer tortured by my own desires and your callous mockery. I know that you have not inherited the legal mind of your fathers, but you will know surely enough that you cannot use this note against me, that you have no evidence because you would never dare to shame your family name with such sordid details and that, therefore, I have committed no crime that can be proven as such. I repeat; you have only yourself to blame.

Edmund, Duke of Buckley

Eventually Marcus roused himself, stumbled toward the fireplace and fumbled for a match. He lit the execrable note and watched it burn, turn in to something delicate; dancing, glowing as it floated slowly towards the grate. One more moment and then he turned and left the room and his home. He carried a fully loaded pistol and a hunting knife and rode at speed towards the Duke’s estate. Marcus knew that the Duke would be expecting him and would be prepared to counter a reckless act of vengeance. His enemy knew not only of the extent of his love for Patrice and that it far exceeded the petty and provocative displays of which he had been accused, he knew also of his temperament and that this had, unlike the wisdom to direct it, been passed down to him.

There had once been a formal dispute over land between their fathers and it had been resolved, to nobody’s surprise, in favour of the then Duke of Buckley, widely renowned for his aggressive avarice. However, Joseph Florian, by then a successful barrister and a man quite unaccustomed to defeat, used all the means at his disposal to unearth some transgression, however minor; some slight legal loophole in the operation of the Duke’s affairs. What he found was not what he was looking for, but it more than sufficed to ruin the Duke’s reputation. Edmund, he discovered, was the illegitimate offspring of an affair between his father and one of the household servants. Had he not been an only child his existence as a relation would almost certainly have been denied altogether. As he was an only child, the Duke attempted to prevent Joseph from making the matter public, but his legal suit was bound to fail this time. Joseph, his own status by no means enhanced in the public eye as a result of his actions, still considered himself duly avenged, but the Duke ensured that his own enmity was carried on by his young son. Edmund dutifully goaded and despised Marcus, who had little interest in the fight and who sought time and again to make a friend of his given enemy. As a boy who, unlike Edmund, was not entirely in his father’s mould, he strove by outward means to win Edmund over, but every game was turned in to a duel until the pattern became set and Marcus, as a young man, simply tired of it. In this way he had not taken Edmund’s threat to kill Patrice seriously, and neither had he deliberately flaunted his love. Edmund’s hostilities and small victories alike bored him and in doing so forced his enemy to greater and greater lengths in order to draw out that quality which would serve his own ends. This he had finally done, and with Marcus determined on revenge and without care for his own life, he had only to wait for the decisive duel to come to him.

Marcus knew the grounds and buildings of Edmund’s castle well enough. He climbed over the perimeter wall which, though neglected, crumbling and grown over with moss and weeds stood stubbornly marking its owner’s extensive territory. Marcus then made his way around a wood so dense and so entangled with roots and branches that it made a wild, more forbidding prospect which no man, however determined, could successfully penetrate. Thus detained but undeterred, he headed on towards the East wing of the castle; a turreted granite-grey monstrosity bilious and bloated with age and stained darkly with ancient running sores. The moon was now obscured and he felt the clashing currents of air as it built in to storm clouds above him. The ground, like a chained guard dog, seemed to growl, buck and snap at his feet as he ran toward the trap doors of the cellar. He was still some distance from the lighted windows and could only discern familiar outlines. As he pulled hard on the door handle there was a sickening crack as of violently splintered wood and simultaneously a hand grabbed him close to his throat and another wrenched the pistol from him and held it to his head.

He was ordered to turn around and there confronted one of Edmund’s men, a servant boy who had been ordered to stay out on watch all night. Marcus assumed that the alarm would be raised and that he would be dealt with, but he had seen this boy before, noticed him, smiled at him or perhaps favoured him at some time in the past. The boy stared very closely at him now so that their mouths almost touched. Both were breathing hard as the storm raged around them. The gun was removed from Marcus’s head and traced down his body before being pressed slowly back in to his own hand. Wordlessly, he was led away from the cellar towards a door at the back of the main house which opened into a dark passageway through which he came, by and by into the central hall.

The initial shot was fired from the first floor landing and this grazed the top of Marcus’s right arm, spurring him on, as if this were needed. The fight with five of Edmund’s guards took him up through the floors towards the turret and he was provided with just enough light, just enough opportunity to get there. By the time he did, there was only one shot left, and even through his rage and growing fear he felt that this too had been designed to happen and he marvelled at his acquiescence in the play, his willingness to let vengeance finally overtake him. At this point he heard Edmund’s voice, his laughter and most infuriating of all his cruel imitation of poor Patrice’s last cries: ‘S’il vous plaît Monsieur, s’il vous plait: please, I beg you, ne me blessez pas, don’t hurt me. Je vous en prie, Monsieur Edmund. Je ferai tout ce que vous voulez. I’ll do anything you want; anything.’

Marcus sped angrily after the voice up the stone staircase, lit now by brilliant flashes of white light from outside as well as by the rows of spluttering candles circling up towards the dark room emitting sounds flattened by thunder. He hesitated in the doorway and then, revealed in an instant, he saw the Duke and his valet; a coward who slipped behind his master and was shot as the Duke wheeled away still tormenting him with false cries for mercy. Marcus reached for his knife, launched blindly in to the room, caught the Duke from behind by his sleeve, wrenched up his arm and swung the dagger round towards his throat. At the moment that darkness was again dispatched, his blade had already left its track and Marcus saw reflected in the mirror, the only adornment above the cobwebbed fireplace, his own reflection and behind it, face up on the floor; that of Edmund disguised as his man. In a reflex movement, his left hand released the wrist and he caught the drooping frame, leaning it gently back against his own. His bloody hand and arm had not moved and neither had his horrified expression as it was revealed for the last time by a parting flash of lightning behind that of his murdered lover.