Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [181]
“Oh, he is, sure.” He sighs. “No, I’m not kidding. There’s something about him. When I was a kid, we used to have this story. It’s one of those old Irish things, that seems to be just local.” He puts out the Gitane and lights another. The room is misty with his smoke. “My granny used to tell it as ‘Sir Milk-and-Blood’ in English. She didn’t speak much Gaelic, but I thought the name had to come from old Irish and I looked it up. I found something that sounded right in Cornish—Malan-Bloyth.”
“You said he was German.”
“My granny’s story had him come from High Germany, which was probably Saxony, and finding the Holy Grail. But Malan-Bloyth wasn’t a knight-errant seeking the Holy Grail, as he was in the Sir Milk-and-Blood version. His name means, as close as I can give it in English, The Demon Wolf…”
“For the love of God, what a bunch of crap,” says Patrick, sitting down with a sigh on the corner of the iron bed. He looks about, as if for escape. “Holy Jesus, I could do with a cup of decent tea. Why the hell are you telling me a kid’s story?”
“To pass the time. To take our minds off things. I was talking about this bloke.”
“The German bloke?”
“My point is, he reminded me of the hero in my granny’s story. Red eyes, and very white skin. That was why he was called Sir Milk-and-Blood. He was a supernatural creature, a son of a Sidhi man and a human woman. In granny’s version of the story, he was looking for the Holy Grail. In the other version, he’s looking for the Magic Cauldron of Finn MacCool. You know…”
“I don’t bloody know. I was never that interested.”
“It’s the sort of thing a patriot ought to know.” He manages a smirk, to show he speaks in fun, but Patrick chooses to bridle anyway.
“Maybe. And maybe a patriot wouldn’t keep going on about some poor bloody English kids he couldn’t even know were on the damned tram.” Patrick finishes his whisky and takes another Gauloise out of his pack. “So this is the bloke we’re waiting for. What is he? A bloody werewolf?”
“Some believe that he was.”
“I’m not talking about the fairy story. I’m talking about the real bloody bloke. What’s he got? Leprosy?”
“Maybe. I first met him in the Med, off the coast of Morocco. He was with Captain Quelch, another damned renegade, on that boat that almost got blown out of the water off Cuba the other day—The Hope Dempsey. We were dealing with some kind of volatile cargo, nobody ever said what it was, but I could guess, of course. My job was to check the boxes and pay over the money. I was always a better quartermaster than I was a field soldier…”
“Tell me about it,” says Patrick, glaring disgustedly into the rain. He hears a movement on the uncarpeted stair and rises from the bed.
The two men wait, but it’s a false alarm.
“Well, he’s a cold fish, by the sound of it,” says Patrick. “What else do you know about him?”
“Not much. He’s some sort of German prince, but everyone calls him ‘Monsieur Zenith.’ He spent a lot of time in the Far Atlas, speaks their languages, does business with the Berbers. They say he has one of those big villas in Las Cascadas. But Donald Quinn told me he lives in Egypt most of the time.”
“Why is he interested in that?” With his unlit cigarette Patrick indicated the newspaper parcel.
“It’s his price. The movement arranged it.”
“Well, let’s hope he brings cash,” says Patrick, scratching at his bottom and sighing. “I don’t know about you, but I could do with some sunshine. Another few days and I’ll be on a beach in Florida, soaking up the rays.”
“What happened isn’t that important to you, is it, Pad? You’ve already forgotten it.”
“No point in doing anything else,” says Patrick. “An incident in the ongoing struggle. You can’t make it not have happened. A bad dream. Leave it behind, mate, or it’ll fester for ever. Or go and see a bloody priest and get it off your bloody chest. Jesus Holy Christ! You’re no bloody fun any more. I’ll be damned glad to see the back of you!” And he begins that agitated pacing again, so that