OLD MONEY
Circa 1895-1907
The Old Order was surely dead, when it happened that the world was presented with the meagre handful of days that sat before the Celebration Day denoting the Birth of Our Lord. In those days, the snow that lay heavily upon the ground would turn red with the blood of the innocent. But that was not all, as it was certain that there was more to come.
And so the 20th of December would ever be a date to live in infamy - many would not see it coming, though those others would suspect they secretly held this opinion always.
#
Dear old Bearer was a good dog. He did exactly what his master said, yet the beatings would come, every night, with the big stick, leaving matted hair and congealed blood upon its surface. All Bearer wanted was love. All he got was pain.
Yet - and despite all this, there were those brief moments of affection that filled Bearer's heart with joy, the kind of joy only a dog could feel. He was wanted, and all he had to suffer was the odd whack on the back from a stick.
Of course Bearer knew no better. His master, however, did - but he would never show it. For Thaniel was a man of principle, and that principle extended to cruelty to others, with some occasional flashes of generosity to the kind that would provide for him. He was a solipsistic man, with more than a modicum of business-led vanity to warm his craggy, pockmarked face. He wasn't this way from a lost love, or a cruel Father and absent Mother. No, Thaniel was just a bastard, through and through.
Thaniel was born into money, all the way from the Old Country, where his GrandFather was said to have spent many a day taking the bread from the needy. Sure there was privilege, but there was also the curse - the old family curse of the creature, man-like, who would come one day for the son of the Father.
Both Thaniel's parents disappeared, as did his GrandFather some time ago. The deaths of the Mantovaras became mystery, fell into intrigue and eventually ended as fear. Thaniel himself knew it was nothing, but he had grown up with the mantle of faith that the curse was real, which was enough to have kept him awake as a child.
It was way back then that he learned to be cruel - sleep deprivation would make the sanest man mad, eventually. Connect that with the fear, and Thaniel was destined to be the particularly sadistic man he was on this very cold, snow covered day. And soon that day turned into night, where Thaniel would come to understand the meaning of pain - and of the family curse.
When young, Thaniel had always taken advantage of his position - the privilege that came with inbuilt wealth and the height of the pecking order it put him upon. He used that money to buy beatings for his peers - he would steal women away from colleagues with the promise of riches, only to leave them penniless and destitute. The snow ran red then too, as his cruelty knew no bounds.
Eventually those same people would work for him, in the Mills and the Workhouses, with barely a nod to health and safety. His record of work-related deaths was higher than the average, but money took care of that problem too, be it bribes to the Inspectors, or a legal pay-off to the families of the deceased. There was nothing Thaniel could not survive, escape from or pay his way out of somehow to someone. He began to believe himself invincible, and practice did not seem to knock that confidence - not one iota. If he wasn't so bilious, he would be as handsome as the Fallen Angel himself.
Mostly the public referred to him as the Demon of Delbury Parade - though never to his face, as it was even said that he paid for some similar minded people to disappear, by the knife, buried many leagues away - where no one would ever find them again. So, when the knock came upon his door, what followed was remarkable.
The man who stood on the heavy stone doorstep was fairly young - out of youth, but not yet middle aged. He held himself confidently, shrouded in what appeared to be a form-fitting dark cloak - and there was a playful, generous look to his features. The eyes. Oh the eyes! They were like the pit of Hell, pooled into pupil and iris of both staring oculars.
"This is the residence of Thaniel Mantovara?" asked the man, in a tone of voice that compelled an answer.
Thaniel gave it, "Yes? What of it?"
"I represent an interested party in some - thing - you are part of. Some satisfaction is required, I am afraid, Thaniel."
"What? Oh, talk to my Solicitor in the morning. Now go away." Thaniel made to close the door hard in this upstart's face, but the man merely held up a leather-gloved hand and Thaniel halted.
"It is you who must settle the debt, Thaniel. You and you alone. I have come many miles -"
"I don't care how far you've come!" interrupted Thaniel.
"I have come many miles to relay a story to you, and I will be heard, Thaniel. Also you will listen. Such is your fate, Thaniel. And such is mine."
"I don't listen to the working class." dismissed Thaniel with a sweeping hand, though his veneer was visibly cracking.
"And yet you will listen to this. May I come in?" The man did not wait for a reply. He pushed in and found a comfortable chair by the fire. He neither removed his cloak nor his hat and gloves, while his smile continued close-lipped, as he recounted a tale to the mystified Thaniel, who found himself suddenly recumbent upon the floor, awaiting the hypnotic dissonance of the mellifluously mysterious man's oration. The man stroked the head of Bearer, who settled into a peaceful sleep at the touch.
#
It was upon the approach, generations ago, to the date in question that Petr Mantovara, GrandFather of Thaniel, committed his sin. But Petr's story did not start there. It started a million miles away from where it sat that day.
See, Petr was certainly generous to a fault. He was often called upon it, by his peers, who only wanted what they personally felt they deserved or were entitled to, without conscience interrupting their endeavours. The one thing the rich and privileged abhorred more than anything else was a conscience. Petr continued, however, unabated. It was not their place to teach him how to live, he decided.
So he continued, generosity a word hard-wired into his being. His peers hacked away at it, but it remained - as strong as the rock upon which he would sit, contemplating existence through the falling of the sun beyond the horizon.
One day while he sat upon that rock, he was greeted by a man who systematically set against that rock, smashing it metaphorically to pieces, and along with it the purity in nature that was Petr Mantovara. One could say, in fact, it was murderous.
"Petr Mantovara?" asked the man, quite certain he was right, "We have a mutual interest, by which I mean we have an opportunity to deal. How does this sit with you?"
This man was sure of himself, exuding a confidence obviously beyond his means. But Petr was generous, and to a fault. He gave his reply swiftly, and within a week they were business partners, in an import-export endeavour. It was more accurate to say it was a business of promissory contracts though, as no actual commodity would move directly at the hands of Mantovara Keanley Enterprises, but the promise of what was to be shipped, by others. It required minimal capital, had no central office to speak of, nor the need for warehouse space. Both men became richer from it, and with this money, Petr continued his generosity of spirit.
Everything was fine, moving on relentlessly and picking up clients as it grew. That was until the Inspectors were called in, mysteriously, to go over the accounts. And what they found was a fabric of lies, of confidence trick upon deception upon mockery. The numbers were absurd, and on top of it all, good Mr Keanley had disappeared. There was nothing for it and Petr was convicted of fraud and sent to prison, where his nature was slowly and cruelly tarnished along with his reputation.
He desperately tried to hold onto his sunny nature, but the rich and opulent rarely got a fair slide in prison. He was treated like an animal, kicked and cut - they turned a great man into one of them; a darkly cloaked molester of honesty, of truth and graciousness.
Eventually, when Petr left prison after those long six years, he returned to his home - his place amongst the privileged, though he be forever turned by his experience.
And they all laughed at him. They threw him out of their Clubs, out of their Restaurants. He was blacklisted, being a convict.
But this he could all take, as long as he had his home and his faith that things would return to their rightful place. What he could not take were the truths that became evident, particularly by the drunken mutterings of a number of men who Petr used to call peers, if not on occasion friends.
What they talked of was deception and of lies, of controlling the fate of one like them. It soon became evident to whom they were referring. It was to Petr Mantovara himself.
What had they done? Why were they so cheery about something so tragic? And then a voice resounded like a death knell in his soul, a voice Petr recognised and cursed in the lonely six years worth of nights in his cell - the man who would be Mr Keanley.
"He lay in that cell for six years!" laughed one.
"I know! And they say he would sit in his own effluence, crying into the night!" This was followed by a cacophony of tumbling laughter and the occasional clink of wine bottle.
"And those men we sent to thrash him? He has permanent scars, or so I am told! Haha! Oh, how I wish I had been there to see it?"
"And all because he wouldn't relax, put his feet up for a while! Well, it's a lesson he won't soon forget!"
And right there it began in the cold, cold darkness. Revenge.
The blood sat like posies upon the delicate snowdrifts, soaking through to the soil and cursing it for evermore. Because of it, Petr could no longer remain in the Old Country, so vanished soon after the incident, knowing he could never return to where he had come from. He boarded a ship to wherever it would take him, and eventually came ashore somewhere new.
He was still Petr Mantovara, just not the same one who had left the Old Country. In this new place, he tried to rebuild his life, to marry and have children, and create a new reputation - but it would never be that easy. Not after the Old Country. Not after what he did to his tormentors.
He grew his hair and dyed his beard, took to wearing meagre clothes, while trying to provide for those in need, sometimes to the detriment of his own family. No matter how much he tried, though, that generous, altruistic man was forever lost, replaced by a desperate and cruel one.
And soon came the day of retribution. Upon a fundraising event Petr found himself a part of, he was noticed by some people at the rear of the hall. They called and muttered to him in an old tongue, but Petr pretended not to notice. That was until one of those insistent men grabbed him and lifted him bodily onto the wall. Petr lost his breath and his back stung from the pressure.
"You are Petr Mantovara! You killed those men, men I knew, who were innocent of all wrong-doing, yet you hacked them to death, like they were nothing but animals!" The man spat into Petr's face.
A crowd was forming about them. People were becoming confused and quickly the Police came to break it up, but not before one of the women spat a curse at Petr, in the language of his homeland, "I curse you and your kind that you may yet taste the bite of the gallinipper's teeth, and be brought down by its powerful claws, so that no sign or remnant of your accursed bloodline remain, nor your body be interred after death, to be taken by the creature as recompense for its and your actions!"
Those words resounded about the streets of the City for a goodly three days, until one night, Petr Mantovara of the Old Country disappeared. Some say a large creature, with devil eyes, claimed him from the street he would walk upon daily. Others claimed they saw the man being led away by another, darker clothed man. Whatever the truth, his pregnant wife would never see him again. Consequently, she died in childbirth - another bloody victim of Petr Mantovara - but not before bringing forth a son; that being Thaniel Senior. Oh, but that one was a tale for another day.
#
"Well? Are you changed by what I have told you?" asked the dark clothed man. The fire crackled a punctuation to the silence that followed. He had delivered his story, completing his obligation.
"Why tell me of a story I neither recognise nor care about?" insisted Thaniel Mantovara, trying sleepily to get to his feet. It was as though he was floating in a dream of motion-sapping energy, every step harder than the last.
"It is your story, is it not? I can tell you it doesn't belong to me." expressed the man.
"Riddles! Just get out of my house!" insisted Thaniel.
"First I would ask you to look out yonder. See what you deserve." gestured the man with long thin arm to the curtained window.
"What are you talking about?" asked Thaniel, now more confused than ever.
"Look out of the window, Thaniel. You will understand." Suddenly the man stood, his cloak tight about him, waking Bearer who had been resting at his feet. He seemed taller, and his face more angular than before, like a deception had lifted or a façade exposed. Thaniel looked as instructed out of the window - and immediately dropped to his knees.
This began the man laughing, a kind of chittering sound, "Now you see, Thaniel, that the story I gave you was nothing but a distraction. See as the Police come in their numbers, following the definite bloody footprints to your door, along the way to witness the horror of a man of privilege and class, and the undefinable evil he can perpetrate. Don't worry, Thaniel. It will all be over soon." And again came the chittering.
Bearer looked up at the man who had been so kind to him and licked his hand. For him, love came in many different forms - but love was love and Bearer appreciated it. With a flurry of darkness, the man vanished up into the flue and out of the chimney, just as the Police burst into the house, armed to the teeth.
#
Thaniel Mantovara, the last of the Old Country Mantovaras, was led from his home, now become a charnel house, back through his own bloody foot marks, through the swathes of thick red blood which melted away the thick resting snow all about the yard, to the awaiting Police Wagon. It was like the very soil was cursed to bleed, from the decapitated folks once of the Mantovara household, and some innocent passers-by included just for good measure.
Somehow Thaniel himself was drenched in that same blood, and it soaked into his skin, deep into the pores, as though he had bathed in their blood, even as he slayed them. Upon the thicker snow that still remained, were the words 'Happy Christmas!' written in blood and entrails. He was nothing if not thorough, it would seem.
His subsequent trial was cut and dry. Within months of continual mistreatment, beatings and all manner of cruelly concocted criminal curses of his fellow inmates, Thaniel Mantovara painfully climbed the steps to the gallows, coughing through internal bleeding, where he continued to cry and curse at the man - the creature that had caused this to happen. Seconds before the hood went over his head, Thaniel was sure he spotted that same man, that tall man with wit and smile, of angular and sharp features, open his mouth just a little bit, to reveal the rows upon rows of sharp teeth - but any chance of recourse was surely too late. The lever was pulled and Thaniel Mantovara experienced once and forever the longest drop.
So the curse had claimed yet another victim - and the world continued to turn.
END
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