Tertius 30, 1670
Charouse, Montaigne
His Apartments

Dear sister,

You can blame Him for my silence over the last month, and although I rather doubt I shall be able to lay the storm of Evil passing over Montaigne at His door—though I assure you that I am thinking quite carefully over His last few missions to satisfy myself that I, at least, am guiltless—there can be no doubt that He is complicit in, and in some cases solely responsible for, the attack of several irritable spirits, property damage to a cathedral, the loss of a fine silk traveling outfit, and a number of bloodstains that required me to burn almost all of my lawn handkerchiefs and two brand-new linen shirts.

The last time I wrote you, I believe, He had just received orders from the Lady Queen to bear goodwill messages to Capendieu. I fear it is a sign of His waning favor in Her eyes that He's getting such pissant assignments, and if this continues we will soon be reduced to running the Montaigne post, which assignment would no doubt result in fewer people attempting to kill us but would make keeping His periwigs properly powdered much more taxing than it is already. Yet despite the petty nature of the mission, He managed, with His usual penchant for taking a simple task and making it something more suitable for a penny dreadful than a diplomat brief, to stumble across not one but two serial killers and return, if not entirely unscathed this time, at least triumphant over the powers of darkness, which this time, surprisingly enough, were not wearing clerical garb. Nor, I assure you, is the bullet scar that he seems to be taking great delight in showing to his various paramours in the city nearly so grave as he might otherwise lead you to believe, although I am beginning to wonder if, given the great deal of pleasure he is taking from its display, I shan't be obliged to shoot him elsewhere in his anatomy in order to both gain his lasting gratitude and the unique opportunity to show off a much more interestingly placed wound. But I digress.

The rather less than diplomatically dire mission to Capendieu, as I had started to write, could certainly have been disposed of by means of a ported letter, but we must leave it to nobility to turn the most trivial task into a costume production. To be sure, a quiet jaunt out to the country to visit a parochial lord might not have been so bad in and of itself, but She ordered Him to go with the Merry Misfits about whom I have written previously, an order that, I fear, both he and I received with identically crestfallen expressions. I do wish I knew why the Queen has chosen to tie our fortunes to a group of unkempt, ill-tempered foreigners; perhaps the attache d'affairs has finally registered a complaint against Him concerning last summer's unfortunate incident with the attache's son, the lamp-post, and the can-can dancers from the Folies; but certainly I have always been an irreproachable servant to the Throne, or rather to the family St. Cyr, which, alas, isn't nearly so close to the Throne as it should be, despite His hopes to reduce that distance by the width of a waistcoat and bodice, and thus it seems unjust to require me to share His penance.

The mission, as I was saying, was not one of earthshaking consequence to the future of the realm. He was to deliver the Queen's best wishes to Lord Galveston, the rather fossilized ruler of a bucolic corner of Montaigne called Capendieu. Fortunately for the potential success of this journey, the Tall Man and the Boy were both in jail and could not make the journey with us. We were, then, the Witch, Himself, the Yellow Sash — pardon, the Brown Boot, would that he had consulted me first about his choice of footwear, for the man is hopelessly devoid of fashion sense — the Pirate, two musketeers He commandeered in order to look more important, and, of course, your hapless brother, myself.

The journey passed as quickly as a trek across country roads in spring can go, but as we drew nearer to Capendieu we noticed that the farmhouses were curiously dark and silent. When this was called to His attention, he knocked on the nearest door and took over the place, paying far more than he should have for the owners' story and bed (the rest of us, as usual, had to make do). A demon was, we were told, on the loose in Capendieu, and had already dragged several villagers to a bloody demise. The Misfits promptly charged out to look around, but, finding no slavering beasts in the immediate vicinity, gave up and went to bed.

When we arrived in Capendieu, we stopped briefly at the church, where the acolytes confirmed the rumors. Diplomacy, however, does not wait even for demons or death, and so we made our way to Lord Galveston's tower. Like the lord himself, the tower was narrow, rickety, strong enough in its day but now perched perilously over the abyss. The niceties were attended to and then, out of nowhere, He volunteered to hunt down the killer.

Needless to say, I was shocked and dismayed. We are diplomats, not demon-hunters! When I remonstrated with Him later, He offered only the rather weak excuse that solving the crimes would be a diplomatic coup. I fear that His recent acceptance of porte, with the corresponding exposure to the Other Place that it entails, has turned His mind. In the past it was enough that I spirited Him out of bedchambers before angry spouses managed to break through the door; now it seems I must dog his steps while he fights gargoyles and wraiths — but I am getting ahead of myself. Suffice to say that I will be upgrading my personal armaments on the morrow.

Several wearisome nights of playing "bait" ensued; I will spare you the overwhelming tedium of describing them. I wisely spent most of my time tending the fire and brandy in His suite while they walked back and forth trying to look vulnerable to attack. Nor will I mention at much length the assault on Lord Galveston's tower, which left the Pirate under the lord's bed and the Yellow, er, Brown Boot's rope dangling from the lord's battlements, while He did His best to distract the guards. Despite rather colorful speculation that the decrepit Galveston was a fiend in disguise who drank blood to invigorate himself every night, he turned out to be an innocent man. No, in the end it was not such foolhardy antics, but rather simple questioning and deduction, that led Him and the Misfits to a cave not far from the village, where they braced themselves to face the demon. It was, therefore, something of an anticlimax to learn that the demon was merely an escaped circus lion, still trapped in its wooden fetters. The Witch promptly adopted it, though He suggested making a gift of it to the Queen, for which I am grateful, for a monkey, horses, and the inevitable jackass (or jackasses, as some few walk on two legs as well as four) are all the wildlife a civilized man can stand.

However, the killings did not stop with the capture of the lion, which was in fact innocent of the bloodshed. As one might expect, the trail of blood led to the church, where the Misfits and He found false walls in the basement that led to a torture chamber and a number of corpses trapped in oubliettes. It was when He, again showing a regrettable lack of concern for personal safety and the state of His wardrobe, climbed down into an "occupied" oubliette that the gargoyles flanking the torture chamber came to life. Fortunately, the rest of the Misfits were not so headstrong, and had stayed above while He engaged in His ill-advised exertions, and it was their bullets that finally blew the stone creatures into rubble. Unfortunately, one of the two musketeers was gravely injured, although as it turns out he has survived.

Yet all was, still, not well. The next morning one of the acolytes was missing, the blood and disarray in the chapel indicating foul play, and the Misfits promptly pulled out weapons and began searching for the culprit. A trail of blood led to a stained-glass window that depicted a creature with bloody hands, so the Pirate stationed himself outside with a gun aimed at the hapless glass, waiting darkly for it to make one wrong move. The rest of the group went upstairs to the roof, where more gargoyles — to date motionless, despite nights staked out watching them — were stationed.

There they found the acolyte's body, and moments after they stepped onto the roof, the gargoyles rose and attacked. The Pirate promptly blew the window into shards, no doubt thinking to pre-empt any reinforcements it might muster. He does have a notable weapon, and I believe the Brown Boot felt a distinct pang of gun envy. The Witch bludgeoned one of the gargoyles into dust with her rolling pin, as I recall, rather to the chagrin of the gunmen, whose bullets were effective but, really, not so much more than a mere kitchen implement. It is no wonder that He keeps his distance from her, which you might ascribe to her country of origin but, I believe, has more to do with her rather dire ability to turn everyday items into weapons of self-defense. Perhaps if more cooks and kitchen maids had learned that skill, I would have had an easier time keeping track of Him back when He was an adolescent visiting his uncle.

The gargoyles were dispatched but by now the Misfits figured out, in an unlikely deductive leap (but they do say even the Witch's pet monkey Dante could pen the works of Voltaire, given enough time, quills, and ink), that the creatures were possessed by restless spirits, rather than animate in their own right, and that the spirits were in fact those of the dead trapped below in the oubliettes. They kept a close eye for some time until a priest, Father Diego, arrived to lay the spirits to rest.

For all of this, the group was well rewarded by Lord Galveston, who granted each 10 acres of allod in Capendieu and a rather large sum of money, all of which had to be promptly turned over to the palace upon returning to Charouse, although I do intend to have a few words with the accountants there to see if I can secure at least part of His land for Him again, since as He already has an estate, it is likely that He will need a loyal servant to oversee the allod in the future, which would not be contrary to my own retirement plans.

One would think, after all of this, that Theus would permit us a quiet journey back, but such supplications make God laugh.

Perhaps it was this brief brush with effective religion that made Him decide to look up Jeanne Espair again, but I suspect it had more to do with the notable lack of beautiful women or men in Capendieu that made Him decide to drop by on the young lady while returning to Charouse. To His dismay, the rest of the Misfits also promptly declared their desire to see her again. And, to make matters worse, the Tall Man and the Boy had ridden hard to rejoin us, arriving at the same time we were ready to return. They, too, decided to visit the Maiden, the Boy with intent to give Him a bit of romantic competition, I believe. We set off, leaving the injured musketeer behind to recover but taking with us the lion in a horse-drawn waggon which I felt, when I procured it for Him, would come in useful on his allod, although what I will do with it in Charouse unless I can retrieve a few acres, I have no idea.

As we rode, we encountered peasants fleeing their village and telling tales of the walking dead. After some debate, and no doubt still euphoric over their success and new (but doomed to be transient) wealth, the Misfits and He decided to investigate the rumors. He was less interested in heroics this time, perhaps because this time their investigation threatened to come between him and a lovely woman, but in the end the rest of the group prevailed and turned toward the haunted village.

After some unpleasantness between Himself and a mouthy peasant during which His companions narrowly averted another Bloody Riposte by coldcocking the farmer, watches were set up over the homestead from the discreet distance of the deceased or otherwise vanished farmhands' quarters. I chose to stay at the village inn to guard His possessions against thieves and other heartless marauders, but I was unable to avoid several moment-by-moment retellings by the Tall Man later, retellings which, I might add, featured him rather prominently given that everyone else in the group informs me he was dallying with the Witch in the cemetery when the action was taking place. Be that as it may, it seems the dead did, indeed, rise that night, and led our group on a midnight trek across field and dale without killing even one peasant. Rather shaken, but surprisingly undaunted, the group decided to stay in the village to put an end to these spirits, as well. Their sense of urgency grew when they learned that a young girl at one of the farmhouses was being drained of life by the touch of one of the ghosts.

Let it not be said that nobles and foreigners are incapable of learning from experience. As it had taken the offices of a priest to quiet the spirits of Capendieu, He sent Brown Boot packing off to fetch Jeanne, which could well have been a transparent ploy to bring a pretty girl into the scene, save that he entrusted it to that weak-minded gunman instead of making the journey himself. So the Brown Boot took off to fetch the fair maid, torn between chagrin at missing out on the action and delight at the opportunity to nestle close to a lovely lady for a day or two in the saddle, and the rest of the group began to stake out the farmhouses where hauntings had occurred: the Pirate and the Tall Man at one, and the Witch and the Boy at another. The remaining musketeer, Louis, and Himself staked out the cemetery in the center of town.

As it happens, ghosts rose at all three sites, and all three groups fought against them. Two of the groups — those at the farmhouse — defeated their foes. However, Himself and Louis caught the wraith that seemed to be in charge of all the rest, a pistol-carrying spirit that seemed immune to any weapon — indeed, insubstantial to any object — except another bullet.

Shots were exchanged, and the wraith was gravely wounded — good heavens, do forget I wrote that — but it, in turn, seriously wounded Him and Louis. The two chased it to the edge of a forest, and then turned back to have their wounds tended.

A day or two passed in relative peace while the two remained in the care of the village herbwife and the others patrolled. The Brown Boot returned with Jeanne, who swiftly took control of the situation and rode, with her escort, from farmhouse to farmhouse. I did not accompany them, so I can only report what I have been told, but apparently in addition to the rather mundane priestly task of sprinkling the graves with blessed soil, which in itself is somewhat remarkable inasmuch as Jeanne is female and the clergy thus denies her the role of priest, though clearly they are mistaken, but not only did she do that, but she also healed the ailing girl in what the others tell me appeared to be a visible miracle. Rather to my surprise, He has quietly suggested that Jeanne may be the fourth prophet whose coming has been foretold — rather a startling flight of religious fancy for a red-handed Montaignan, much less one whose opinion of the clergy is rather lower than His opinion of His boot-black (indeed, I would hazard to say He values His bootblack considerably more than the clergy, indeed) — but I would hesitate to spread that too far and wide, as it is equally possible, and likely to be said, I expect, that she is a witch, herself. Be that as it may. As they rode the circuit back to the cemetery in the village, they again encountered the wraith and two of its skeletal minions holding the village herbwife captive. The group quickly rallied to the herbwife's rescue with guns, swords, and rolling pins, but it was when Jeanne called upon the power of Theus, or so I am told, that the wraith vanished.

They finished their circuit of grave-blessing, and the next morning found a barrow in the woods which was, they guessed, the origin of the wraith. That, too, was blessed, and as the wraith did not return thereafter, they considered themselves again triumphant against the forces of evil, or at least against the risen dead.

There is little more to tell. We again headed home, this time with Jeanne and her brother as well as the lion, and the group reported directly to the queen, feeling that these incidents of walking dead were of notable import. Thus Jeanne has been presented at court, and the queen seems to be paying close attention to the maiden's fear that some great evil is sweeping across the land, but I am waiting to see what the church proper has to say about all of this. In the meantime, He has taken it upon Himself to see the girl and her brother properly housed — He claims He has no designs on her, although I find that so out of character for him that Cook, the upstairs maid, and I have a small pool going predicting when He will break down and lay siege to the "fourth prophet's" maidenhead. The Brown Boot has fallen in love with another woman — one of those faery-folk from Avalon, He tells me — and the rest of the group awaits the queen's orders, which she has suggested will come soon, and will quite possibly take the group out of Montaigne to see whether this evil has arisen in other countries or if it is, like the revolution, a vintage of our own pressing.

Ah, from the sound of it, He is back, and shouting something about She. Or is it Sidhe? Either His grasp of grammar has suddenly failed him, or I am about to be asked to discover what it is that faery prefer to drink for tea. The social rounds begin again, and thus, my sister, I must close this, with affection,

Your brother,

Pierre