jwaneeta

Clustering Round Young Buffy
Chapter 4
Giles, Spike, Angel, Andrew





There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at their flood, do something, or cause something else, or encourage other things to nip along smartly -- I forget which. But specifics don’t impede Rupert Giles. You can bung the Watcher down the Well, but you’d have a dashed difficult time getting the Watcher out of the boy, if you take my meaning. I saw Drusilla, a stake was in my hand on the instant, and the action became general.

“Wait!” yelled Spike.

“Oh, no,” moaned Andrew.

"Soul! Soul! Soul!" added Spike, waving his hands.

Angel eschewed discussion, being a vampire strongly inclined to action rather than words, and simply knocked me billfold over bow tie.

“Be not afraid of your office, Watcher,” intoned Drusilla, as my vision whirled and spectral canaries twittered in my ears. “Do what you must. I wear the palm. You send me to God.”

“Just so,” I replied, surging up and going my best, and Angel deposited me on the tiles again.

“Stop! Rupert! Hang on! She’s got a soul!” shouted Spike.

“Oh God the faces oh God,” gibbered Andrew.

Angel reduced my status as a threat by sitting on my head. The swift execution of my duty encountered a snag. And somewhere, secret rivers ran down to a sunless sea, I suppose.

“Dru," choked Spike. “What? How? Where? Why?”

“Is the Watcher sending me to heaven?” asked Dru.

“Not at the moment,” replied Angel, employing the full immobilizing potential of his massive bulk.

“We should talk this over maybe, pet,” added Spike.

“I am Sister Immaculata.”

“Of course you are. Does that soul work all right? Any massacred nuns in there?”

“Spike! What a thing to say. I am the portress here. I guard the door and make sure nobody kills my sisters. When I have done my penance for years and years, Our Savior will bring me to heaven in a chariot of fire, and Saint Catherine will carry my train. And all the cherubim will shoot things at me, and the Blessed Virgin will cover me with her mantle forever, and the gates of --“

“Good plan,” said Spike. “Has anyone tried to kill your nuns, love?”

“Not yet,” replied Dru, giving Angel a severe look.

Andrew was swaying, chalky about the lips and gills. “It said, the woman he loves is with the nuns at Port Royale. I didn’t – I couldn’t – Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Spike. It’s like a magic eight ball!”

“Aha!” barked Angel. "I knew it."

“Andrew,” said Spike warningly.

“It’s starting to talk to me all the time,” whimpered Andrew, wringing his hands in a transport of spineless panic. “It’s like that ear weevil in The Wrath of Khan. It’s the greater of two weevils! It’s taking over my mind! Help! Free me by death! Make it stop!”

“What,” inquired Angel, “have you done this time?”

“Ahhhhhhh,” said Andrew, and folded to the floor.

“The pilgrim has fallen,” said Dru, “upon our threshold. He is ill and poor, but the charity of Port Royale shall not want. He will lie down in green pastures and we will restore his soul. I learned how, all by myself. Bring me your huddled masses. Mass is at six."

“Heard about the huddlers,” said Spike. “Got a bed for him, then?”

I made a noise of outrage, which Angel silenced by brutal application of the Giles-flattening technique.

“Enter and be welcome,” sang Drusilla, gliding off down the dark hall like a ship under heavy sail. Angel carried me bodily after her, and ensured the peace of the establishment by clamping a vast paw over my mouth.

“Here you will find rest,” Drusilla informed us, throwing back several crumbling bolts and displaying a mummified sort of bunk room with every evidence of lunatic pride. “The cloister begins at yonder grate, so no peeking. We shall sing Terce at dawn. You will hear us sing Terce at dawn.”

Spike, with his unerring ear for babble, correctly interpreted this as an order. He deposited the fainting Andrew on a musty bed and faced Drusilla respectfully. “Wouldn’t miss it, my lark.”

“Daddy should go away, though. His tummy is growling like a tiger.”

“Dru, knock it off,” snapped Angel, wounded. “I’m not going to attack your stupid nuns. I bet you haven’t even got any.”

“Wicked!” hissed Drusilla. “Get thee behind me, Daddy, for you are a liar and the father of lies. Psst, psst, psst.”

“Now, no need to fight. Dru, lovey, think you could spare a moment from nun-guarding to chat tomorrow?”

“I am Sister Immaculata.”

“Sister Immaculata,” repeated Spike patiently, “can we pencil in a sitdown? We have lots to catch up on. I’d love to know where you got that pretty soul, for starters.”

You had to hand it to Spike: a century’s skill at tireless enabling and nutter control had not deserted him. Drusilla smiled radiantly. “I shall ask permission of Mother. She will be happy that my family has come to visit at last. But mind you watch over Angel, my Spike. Don’t let him be naughty.”

“I promise.”

“Damn it --" began Angel.

"And no bad words, no filthy talk from either of you." Drusilla shook a white finger. "This is a holy house. May the angels – the real angels -- cherish you and watch over your dreams. Rest in peace, my darlings, and stir not on pain of death. I will kill you like spiders if you wander and creep. Salve Regina, mater misericordiae... "

And so singing, Dru took herself off. We heard a distant door rattle and clang, and then silence fell like a shroud. Ominosity of the first water, perhaps? You tell me.


***


We had little of peace, divine or otherwise, as the night faded to morning. As soon as his dudgeon cooled Angel, true to form, gave himself over to torments of guilt, and shared them with us at weary length.

“This is what I did to her. This is the judgment. She’s come full circle, bricking herself up alive in this place. How will she get blood? I did this. I did this. She’ll starve in here, or worse. It never ends. My hands will never be clean. What I did to her …”

A better man would have been moved by Angel’s genuine suffering and remorse, but I’d heard it all before and was not, as it happened, a better man. I was a tired man and a peevish. “Yes, yes, you’re the villain here. For pity’s sake, go to sleep.”

“I –“

“Angel, tell someone else. Tomorrow, and far from me.”

“How did she fetch up with a soul?” asked a recumbent Spike of the ceiling. The windows were shuttered and we lay about on the rickety cots like soldiers in a field hospital. Andrew tossed feverishly in the corner. “It’s not likely she ran afoul of your lot, Angel, but she sure didn’t get it in Africa – those trials nearly killed me. Dru wouldn’t have a chance.”

“Spike’s got a doctorate in soul-having now,” sighed Angel bitterly.

“Yeah, well, at least I give it some thought now and again, instead of wearing the stupid thing like a hairshirt and losing it every six months.”

“Is no one interested in sleeping?” I sought a new position on the straw mattress that proved every bit as unpleasant as the last dozen. “I know I am. Interested in sleeping. We’ll tackle the threat of Drusilla when next we meet.”

“Giles,” said Angel quietly, “if you raise a hand to Drusilla I’ll break you up like a cardboard box. She’s my doing, my responsibility. If anybody’s going to dust her it’s me.”

“Well, no,” said Spike. “That would be me, actually.”

“Oh, right. I can see that happening.”

“For the love of God, leave it,” I implored.

Andrew bolted upright, eyes bulging. “The woman he loves is at Port Royale. The woman he loves is on the Rue Des Martyres. The woman they love is on the hill. It's eating my brain now. A hard rain is gonna fall. Oh for quietus, with a bare bodkin!”

This outburst put an effective stopper in the conversation, for all of five minutes, then the bell for Terce rang. It seemed wisdom to toddle along for the performance. Souled vampire nuns bear watching, you see.

***

The plaintive strains of chant filled the church, putting to rest any idea that Dru lived with figments. We could not see them behind the high lattice that separated the consecrated from the profane, but they sounded healthy enough.

Spike paid little attention to the beauties of song, being engaged in examining the statuary and fonts and things with profound unease. "Look at the face on that one," he shuddered, indicating a fierce sort of prophetic bloke with a burning book. "The eyes follow you, don’t they? How can she stand it here?"

"Sshhh," scolded Angel, who seemed to find the chant absorbing. "Quit wandering around. You’ll break something, or catch on fire."

"Ow!" Spike snatched his hand back from the holy water, fingers smoking.

The chants ended. A nun-shaped object, bulky in form and silhouetted behind the lattice curtain, called us over.

"Welcome to our home. Sister Immaculata will see you in the parlor after supper." The object shifted and I felt a wave of... shall we say censure? Disapproval? Naked scorn? Something nunnish, anyway. "It is good to welcome her family for a visit. At long last."

Angel hung his head. "It's complicated. We didn’t --"

"Thank you," I said. "Thank you, Madame la nun."


***


"Dru, look at you. That’s a very handsome... robe-thing you’re wearing. Such a nice veil, too."

"It’s white," Drusilla informed us, without great necessity.

"So, love," began Spike, taking charge of the conversation, "is this really the place to hang, you think? Don’t the pictures and crosses give you the whimwhams? Haven’t they twigged to you being a vampire, or that you’re... well... "

"It is a convent, Spike," said Drusilla. "One more crazy nun isn’t even noticed."

"Ah. Do you think they might notice that you’ll never die?"

"Of course I’ll die!" Drusilla laughed. "One day I’ll fall down, and they’ll hold a mirror to my lips, and then they’ll put a wreath of roses on my head and bury me below the altar. On the third night I'll steal away and find a new convent, and start again."

"I suppose that could work," said Spike -– rather politely, for him. He was absolutely a different fellow with the ladies.

"But why?" I asked. "What is the motive?"

Drusilla looked solemn. "Because I must save as many as I killed – the soul told me. I must suffer with joy, and win down blessings for the lost, and then all will be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. And grandmamma is sad in purgatory; she will need an age of prayers and sacrifices to climb out."

Angel scoffed. "Purgatory. Darla?"

"Purgatory. Darla."

"Oh, come on, Dru."

"What’s the deal with purgatory?" asked Spike, interested. I’d noticed he was extremely keen on the subject of punitive eternity, and the strict avoidance thereof. “Meant to read up on that. What does it do? Is it a pocket dimension maybe? Does it have any fire in it?"

"Oh, don’t worry about purgatory, Spike. You’ll go straight to heaven, because of the fishies."

"Oh, them. Hey, brilliant," grinned Spike.

Angel shifted impatiently, with a generous helping of this is drivel evident in his expression. "Let’s get down to cases. Dru, where’d you get that soul? Is it safe?"

"Angel’s asking if it’s bolted down," translated Spike. “I think maybe he likes this new look of yours. Or is it your old look? Anyway, watch your step."

"You’re a pig, Spike," said Angel disgustedly.

Dru touched a hand to her brow, a swift, ritualized movement, like a coach using sign language to communicate with a batsman. "My soul came to me on an ocean of tears, like Aphrodite on her seashell. I was missing my boys, oh, so very much. I got it back so we could be a family again, for I knew you would never return to me if I stayed as I was." A shadow crossed her face. "But once I got the soul, I saw that we could never be together the way I’d hoped –-the old days were wicked, and they were over. My eyes were opened. It was very sad."

"That’ll happen," said Spike sympathetically. "Souls take a person that way."

"But where’d you get it?" pursued Angel. "How’d you find it? What did it cost?"

Dru’s bloodless face seemed to glow. "It was grace, pure grace. It fell from heaven like a star, and lodged in my heart. In that hour I put away my dollies and all childish things, and could see through a glass darkly."

"What? Somebody just gave it to you?" Spike sounded shocked, and not a little cheated.

"Well, not exactly, my Spike. There was a --"

The door to the parlor burst asunder, and Drogyn’s little brother Ardryn stood amid the wreck, brandishing a sword and looking distinctly homicidal.

"I know the truth now, traitors!” he cried. “I have found you out! Forward, men! Death to the kinslayers, and death to this house!"

"Dru," said Angel and Spike in the same breath. "Run."


***


I once read a Council paper about Clan Aurelius which compared them, in terms of chaotic escapes, to the Barrow Gang. It must be confessed that I redlined the description and wrote "sensational" in the margin, blighting a promising career on the vine thereby, but what followed in the parlor of the Port Royale convent convinced me that I had done the author an injustice.

You’ve seen Bonnie and Clyde? Read the book? Seen the opera? The memory of Ripper is not what it was, perhaps, but I retain a vivid impression of repeated flight, headlong and overthwart, when the close-knit band of desperados confronted John Law. Take out the bullets and banjo music, and that is precisely what followed in the convent parlor of Port Royale.

"Attack!" cried Ardryn, as a phalanx of bucklered warriors flooded the room.

"Rawr!" cried they.

Drusilla’s face went bumpy under her veil as she sprang wide of a descending blade. Spike thrust her behind him.

"Dru, get, out!"

Drusilla’s response was lost in the din.

"Slay everyone and salt the earth!" piped Ardryn. In retrospect, he may have been at that magical age when youth flowers to manhood, for there was an unmistakable cracking in his vocal timbre. "Burn it all!"

Spike decked an assailant and helped himself to seconds. "Angel! What about Andrew?"

Andrew had been left behind on his cot of madness, a fact that had momentarily slipped my mind.

"Go, go, go!" roared Angel, heaving a dainty chair.

Spike took Drusilla’s hand and fled. I thought it as well to follow.


***


Night fell and the convent of Port Royale burned. We watched it from a hillock, Drusilla and Spike and Andrew and I, and our mood was, well, mournful. That bloke who watched the Assyrians sack the sheepfold must have felt much the same way.

After fetching Andrew we’d scampered off into a convenient sewer, and spent the day hanging about in the muck, waiting for Angel’s footfall. It never came. When night fell we clambered topside, and waited for the beloved footfall again, and again found ourselves denied any hint or suggestion of same.

"He’ll show up," said Spike. He watched a section of Port Royale roof collapse and send sparks swirling up into the night, his face a picture of bewilderment and woe. "Probably got lost down there, the stupid sod."

"Spike, we should be going," I said gently. He gave me such a sharp dose of golden-eyed wrath that I amended, "In a bit."

Drusilla covered her face with her veil and began to cry.

"Don’t cry, fearsome Drusilla,” said Andrew. "Luminous beings are we. He has become more powerful than we can possibly imagine."

"Daddy," wept Drusilla.

"Shut him up, Giles," said Spike, turning away.

"Peace, Spike. We must be gentle with Andrew, at least until the effort breaks us. It was your miserable magic spyglass that drove him mad, after all."

Andrew caressed the object in question, a little crystal orb that sparked and glowed under his fingers. "I love you," he crooned.

"We wait," said Spike. "Angel will come back. He always fucking does."

"I suggest we wait in a less exposed area, then, for your sakes."

"I won’t go!" exclaimed Drusilla, raising a tearstained face. "However will he find us, in this world or the next, if we hide from him?"

"As problems go, finding you isn’t exactly huge," said Buffy, stepping from a copse or thicket of concealment, with Angel leaning heavily on her slim shoulder. She favored us with an exasperated shake of the head. "You guys really need to get it together."


TBC