Dinner with a Werewolf

[IamLEAM1983]

Archie smirked and eyed his own plate. "I'd have to say my waistcoat is starting to feel a bit snug around the midriff... Not needing much to feel full is both my gift and my curse," he explained, his smirk widening into a grin.

He was about to add something else, when the urge to yawn overtook him. He managed to do so silently, one gloved fist pressed against his mouth, after which he managed to curb the urge to stretch by pulling his spine as straight as it could go. After that followed a bit of head-shaking to keep his thoughts clear.

"Good Heavens, I think the food, the wine and last night's lack of rest have worn me out!"

He eyed the ice bucket, realizing that they'd managed to down about one bottle each and that neither of them had noticed when the waiter had snuck in to add a refill. Holden picked up one of the empty bottles and gave Lowell a wry look. "Are you sure that wolf of yours hasn't dozed off somewhere? I know my own instincts - which aren't too shabby if I may say so - didn't flinch when someone snuck this in..."

Holden then stood up, the re-settling mantle of exhaustion, the food and the alcohol further loosening him up. "I think now would be the time for me to mention that I've a number of fireplaces this werewolf could consider to be rather inviting after a good meal, and a few good bedrooms that have yet to be converted to office space - including my..."

This time, however, he couldn't stop himself. His frame produced pings and rattles as he closed his fists and extended his arms, the hinge of his jaw completely dropping open as he noisily inhaled.

"Ugh, apologies - my own. Because I'm bloody knackered and couldn't hope to care about conventions at this time."

[TennyoCeres84]

With the contagious nature of yawns, Crystal repeated the gesture and smiled, stretching as she rose from her seat. "That offer of fireplaces and beds sounds excellent right about now." She scoffed, cheeks flushed from the alcohol. "As for your yawn, I'm not offended. Let's pay the bill and head on out. I doubt they'll mind we take that bottle of wine with us."

[IamLEAM1983]

As expected, no real resistance was opposed when the spy and Deputy Chief offered to pay for the unspent bottle. In contrast with their reaching the restaurant, Holden was mostly silent the whole way through. However, there didn't seem to be anything resembling unease or any sort of lasting streams of thought hiding behind that silence. He was content, more relaxed than he'd been in a long time, most assuredly grateful - but also generally exhausted. Part of his silence had to rest on the fact that he was doing everything he could to stay focused on the road ahead.

Despite all that, he seemed to reach inside himself to find a few meager reserves. He had enough left, after a few steadying breaths, to see Crystal inside.

"Just a moment," he immediately said, "I shall fetch the telephone for you. Your daughter deserves to know where you intend to spend the night, at the very least..."

In a bit of an old-fashioned display, what he recovered from a small coffee table near one of the twin staircases was a gilded rotary phone, as landlined as could be in 2025 and looking more like the sort of antiquity you should've placed in a glass case, one of those gilded creations from the early days of the speaker-receiver design. He could've tried to pick up the phone itself with one hand and the receiver with the other, but instead lifted the whole thing on a little platter that had seemingly been designed for just such a purpose. In the early days of land-lines and personal telecommunications, it stood to reason that Bagley had been alive and able to traverse at least half a corridor with the thing in hand, judging by the amount of neatly-bundled copper wiring that was pushed behind a potted fern. As for himself, Archie used the same basic motions to drop his gibus on the entrance hall's coat hanger.

[TennyoCeres84]

"Thank you, Archie," Crystal responded, picking up the receiver. She was inwardly amused at turning the little wheel with her fingertips to the corresponding numbers and letting it turning back in place. The phone rang a few times before being picked up.

"Hello?" Andrea answered.

"Hello Andrea, how was your date with Colette?" the werewolf mother inquired.

"Just fine. The movie was hilarious, and then we went out for pizza. Colette's hanging in the living room. How was your date with Mr. Holden?" she asked, sounding a little impish.

"Quite enjoyable," she whispered with a chuckle.

"Will you be coming home tonight or...?" her daughter trailed.

Another chuckle followed. "I'll be staying here for the night, Andrea."

The young woman laughed lightly. "Wow, that went fast. I'll see you tomorrow then," she responded.

"I'll see you tomorrow. You have a good night. I love you," Crystal replied.

"'Night. Love you, too."

Crystal hung the receiver up and looked to him. "Again, thanks for letting me use your phone."

[IamLEAM1983]

Archie didn't reply verbally, settling with a quick shake of his head and some sort of vaguely cheerful and dismissive low-key grumble. He set the phone back down and chose not to mention Andrea's friend. True to his nature, he intended to keep the girl's name close so he'd have the pleasure of surprising her with an appropriate greeting at a later date. Privately, he was amused by the fact that this advanced century still dug in France's sensual linguistic repertoire for first names.

Giving a satisfied sigh, he clasped his hands together. "Well, there we are. If my instructions have been followed, my fireplace will have been lit about half an hour ago. I am understandably lacking in women's bedtime garments, while I shall wait for our actual retreat under our covers to change. The kitchen should be fully stocked, if Bucky has not razed it yet, and I am more than disposed to offer you a digestive of some persuasion. I've a selection of ports, sherries, cognacs and, of course, the usual beers and more typically modern vices and poisons of this day and age."

He tented his fingers together. "I do believe I've enough stamina to also offer an aural digestive, to coin a phrase. I haven't had the pleasure of stroking the old bow for more than solitary evenings, as of late."

[TennyoCeres84]

"That sounds delightful. I always did like a man who could play music," Crystal stated. "A mini-concert is a good way to round out the evening."

[IamLEAM1983]

"I've always thought it was," agreed Archibald. He stepped aside, adopting an amusingly deferential posture as he gestured towards the double doors that were framed by the staircases. "If Madame would deign to seat herself in the Huntsman's Room..."

If she'd visited the manor in its museum days, Crystal would remember that this particular location in the house was a favorite of Archie's. He didn't have a recognizable living room and instead operated on the more European and aristocratic concept of housing several "Drawing Rooms" and small reading areas, essentially miniature dens packed with bookshelves and appropriate seating arrangements. The Huntsman's Room, however, was a space that had been designed to stand as the mansion's proverbial heart, as it stood in line with the front entrance and was easily accessible from everywhere in the mansion's corridors. It was Holden Hall's own little emotional nexus, of a sort, and it had previously been used as a display area for the most cherished of the Clank's trophies and personal items.

Nowadays, very little remained of the space's former glass cabinets. The crimson wallpaper was the same, however - carefully tended to and re-applied once every decade, the dark wooden appliqués adding texture and a bit of a mysterious glow to the perpetually darkened room. It didn't evoke anything threatening, however, the darkness surrounding the space's own fireplace merely seeming inviting and intimate. Plush, high-backed leather seats waited in front of the roaring fire, while ferns and more personal displays crept in as close as safety permitted. The Huntsman's Room was where the Clank kept his cabinet of spirits, and it also stood as the shrine to the animals he'd killed, the brushes with wildlife that he'd had. All of the elements of a Colonial hunter's trophy room were there, but there was something... different, about it all. Crystal would eventually realize, on her own terms, that each mounted head had its story to tell, and that each animal had given its life in the pursuit of a just and simple cause. Here was one lion that had terrorized weaponless villagers in 1897's India, and there was a rhinoceros that had been driven mad with pain by lesser and incompetent hunters over a period of years. Archie had killed it to end its suffering and to protect nearby tribesmen who used the same watering hole it had.

Under the head of an ibex, Crystal would see a small certificate, about the size of a cheque. The Royal Conservation Society had enjoyed horrendously generous quotas in the years of the White Hunters, enough to decimate entire populations - and there were Archie's numbers, well beneath the quantities of animals he could've felled. One lion. One water buffalo. One cheetah. One silver-backed gorilla. Only one of each, and it felt as though each had been carefully selected. None of the tally marks had the exact same kind of ink on them. Holden had spent a long time searching for the perfect prey; animals he felt he could pursue ethically.

Atop the fireplace was one of those idiosyncratic Victorian rifle models that had been built in the heyday of the Clank frenzy, a Holland & Holland Witchhunter model. If Lowell had ever studied hunting the way mundanes did, she'd know this particular rifle was priceless. Selling it could cover Archie's maintenance regimen or potentially fund the Hall's operations for fifty years or more, but there was obviously no such notion in the old spy's mind. As lovingly enshrined atop the mantle as the rifle was, just underneath a pastoral scene that looked to have been painted in Waterhouse's years, there was an item that seemingly mattered more, judging by how polished the case's brass edges were. Inside it, the hunk of polished wood looked a bit battered, more than thoroughly used.

The violin stood out in the midst of all this girded luxury, the same way Archie's earnestness over dinner stood out from the personality his body, clothes and posture suggested. You'd have expected him to have a Stradivarius at the ready, and here was the kind of little fiddle that had probably been bought from one of Britain's humbler instrument sellers. You could've imagined a dock hand playing on this thing more than a dressed-up aristocrat. The wood was faded in calculated places, however, indicative of long, long years of almost religious playing. The chords' wooden arch was cracked and looked about ready to start splintering off, but it was still neatly cared for. The excess strings had been clipped off, the bow's pegs looked to have been properly oiled recently...

Archie didn't just maintain that little violin. He worshipped it.

Silently, as if the preparations for a formal concert actually involved shucking off his shoes and spats and trading his morning coat for his smoking jacket, Archie adopted a slightly cozier style. He didn't look at Crystal even once as his now slipper-clad feet silently whispered over the Persian rug. He retrieved the instrument from its glass case in slow and intimate gestures, almost as if it were a holy relic of some kind. For a moment, he looked as though he were about to rest his chin on the black guard piece and start playing, eyes half-lidded. Something stopped him, however, and he make a slight tsk sound.

"No," he said, "this won't do at all. First, the stage must be set. One moment..."

As silently as before, he made his way to the spirits cabinet and poured two glasses of what looked to be cognac. Once that was done, he returned towards Crystal and handed her one of the glasses. Then, slowly, as if the violin were a sleeping infant that could wake up if disturbed, he sat down on the chair next to Lowell's. He took a sip and allowed himself to gaze upon the crackling fireplace of the Huntsman's Room, the fire dancing on his brass plates, making them almost appear to be made out of solid gold.

"There was a young boy," he began softly, "who was born in a grand and stately house. He was told by his parents and caretakers that it was to be his entire world. He was told that the manor would be all he would ever need, that all the adventures in the world could be had in its gray walls, stretching between the Medieval darkness of old and the pale, lifeless light of his waking days. On some days, and favoring the tales of his mother, this was true. The boy dreamt of nixies and air spirits, of the faeries of old and of fearsome immortals, and he placed himself in their midst."

He scoffed. "The boy was foolish, but his heart was in the right place. He had long since heard of the family's past glories, and knew that his father's father had defended his peasants' interests. He knew that throughout all time, his family had cared for those who were less fortunate. The land was theirs, and it was his, because they had all been kind. The boy was... troubled, however. His desire for adventure made him a selfish one in the eyes of Canterbury's simple folk.

The boy was barely six years old, that his restlessness had given him the perspective of a child twice his age. Something, however, was missing. Something to spark the wick and light the flame..."

Archie fell silent for a moment, his eyelids lowering not out of fatigue, but rather a peal of fondness. In the golden light of the fire, Archie's features looked entirely and fully alive with memories. A little more, and you'd have sworn he'd stopped ticking and producing little pings and clatters.

"It was on one of these dreadful Christmases, the kind of which the boy's uncle had the secret - filled with prematurely sleeping adults and talk of Parliament reforms - that the mummers came to Canterbury. Not simple carolers, mind you - traveling playwrights and actors, several of which carried Gypsy blood in them, none of them interested in the typical fare of religious mysteries and parables. They stopped in the plaza and waited a whole night for the lords and ladies to arrive, for the old mouse to wake up and Hiram and Jocasta to wake up their boys...

It was there, Crystal, that the boy first felt the touch of magic. Not simply via, but also the magic of feeling one's own heart soar. Inspiration had taken root."

Archie closed his eyes and raised the violin to his shoulder, standing up in the same gesture. His entire armature seemed revved up to the point where superhuman feats of dexterity would have been possible, but all he had to do was play. All that sudden flexibility, all that energy, was poured into his body and instrument. A strangely melancholy air began to rise, and it'd be a few moments before she'd realize Archie was threading the traditional air for We Three Kings with the moody lyrical flights of a Gypsy arrangement. It might have sounded heart-wrenchingly sad on the surface level, but something started to peek through as he played, sometimes bending back and forth along with the languid pace.

Hope seemed to show up in timidly caressed strings here and there, one melody shyly, sneakily slipping through another. It was strangely fitting, like hearing an Irish jig from afar, while walking away from a piece designed to suggest boredom, imprisonment, the melancholy of a solitary childhood. He suggested hills as he played, made the jig take up more and more space, even as his posture changed. Where Archie had looked just about ready to shed dignified tears with his instrument, a smirk was now playing behind a look of studious application.

For a few bars, Crystal would hear the old airship shanty quite clearly, the kind of ditty the boatswain would've started to keep the coal-shoveling engineer on key with the rest of the crew. Then, faster than before but just as smoothly, undertones from the East took root, the violin sometimes sounding a bit like a Chinese zither. Archie opened his eyes, however, and sat back down.

"Now, some years have passed, and our boy is a man. He is in India as we speak, and he finds himself faced with his most fearsome foe to date. It isn't the headmistress he knew as a boy, nor the headmaster who whipped his fingers to a pulp, nor his commanding officer or any wildebeast from Mumbai's country regions... Can you guess which terrible foe I am speaking of?"

[TennyoCeres84]

"No idea," Crystal said with amused, pursed lips. "Who or what was this terrifying foe?" she asked with interested curiosity.

[IamLEAM1983]

"Why, fever, of course," he said, speaking the word as if temperature increases and uncontrollable shivering were the hallmarks of some sort of supervillain. "The dreaded affliction of these humid, sun-blasted jungles that played havoc on the man's unapologetically British composure! In the gloomiest corners of the fort, you could hear cries for help rising forth out of parched throats that would never be sated. What could your wolf have done, in the face of gibbering madness, I wonder? What would you have done, if you had been one of these women with tiger blood in them, a weretiger as can only be found in these parts of the world... Plagued with sweat and insects and madness - and unable to kill it. Unable to confront it."

He scoffed lightly. "Today, your knight in shining armor would have been the fort's resident epidemiologist, or whoever else could have wielded the Petri dishes and microscopes needed for your survival. Back then? You had old wives' tales and the natives' understanding of Herbalism to thank for your continued existence. That was when you had stood as one of the open-minded foreigners in India. When you did not? Oh, my dear, then the Thugee's true, maddening visage came for you in your sweat-stained covers, when the Weeping Ones did not..."

Despite having the violin's bow in hand, Archie didn't stand up this time, instead using his fingers to pluck something out of the instrument. It took a while, but he hesitantly added the bow to his strangely discordant strummings, eventually crafting a fittingly... diseased version of Little Willie John's Fever, the bow adding a shivering, deliberately uncertain waver to the lyrics' track. It was as if instead of being a jazzy and suggestive tale of infectious love, the song had always been a kind of paranoid dirge for actual affliction - the bow shivering over the chords, hiccups in the notes evoking painful tension in the muscles. The bars for You give me fever were distorted, the Clank's features momentarily looking as though something nightmarish and delirious had crossed his mind and he'd barely managed to stop himself from screaming.

He played the whole song through in this strange, almost nauseating registry, bits and pieces of traditional Indian arrangements poking through here and there, and then transitioned to something he more caressed over the chords than actually played - an inhumanly quiet version of Camille Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre.

"When the fever broke, the man found that the world was upside-down. The grave's exhaustion washed over him during the day, to the point where he wondered if some aborigenal vampire had not snuck in with the midwives and passed on its curse. It took two weeks for Civilization to return to his bones and flesh, two weeks of phantasmal shadows and brilliant stars in the darkest of nights. He had wasted away, and so had his mind - and now it dined on the stuff of his childhood, in the absence of any stamina for adult material. Vampires of the West in their silken capes were projected in the fronds and the secret paths of great predators, wild horses glimpsed at by night turned into kelpies and brook horses in his exhausted mind. Otherwise, he slept the sleep of the dead, awash in lurid dreams that carried the scars of the fever's madness."

A smirk touched his fce. "You might as well say he lived his old age before its time. All of the naps he would've had as a retired officer, he took in those two weeks. All of the lack of patience for things of youth and vigor, all of the soliloquies and expressed regrets... Instead of fattening himself up, he regained his physical prowess. Instead of quiet oblivion, he and his peers earned their revenge."

[TennyoCeres84]

"That's quite the experience," the dark-skinned woman noted with a bit of amazement in her voice. Crystal leaned back in her seat and smiled softly. "With our vaccines and medical treatments, such a delirious fever seems like it would be found in some darkly mystical book. Yet, your music brings it forth to me. However, I'm glad you recovered, and you're here with me now."