The Dreadful Tales of Mr. Dreadful

 Here’s the next bit of the tale… I’ll post some more tomorrow.

Chapter One – A Wayward Child

As I dangled from the penny hanger I began, for the first time since leaving home, to muse upon my former life and how it had amounted to dangling by my armpits on a rope in the back room of a stinking inn in some filthy backwater town. It was also at this time that I began to consider writing my memoirs, if nothing else as a warning against those who believe adventuring to be full of romance and glory. And so, dear reader, this is my life.

 

My name is Gustav Berthold Ferdinand, and I am (or rather was, we’ll come to my disownment later in the tale) the youngest child and third son of the Ferdinand Merchantile House. I was born, I have been told, on a winter morning with a blizzard ravaging the estate with my mother cursing the day she decided to let a man into her bed (though apparently she did this with all of her five children) and my father drinking himself silly in the library (likewise). As you may surmise from my name the family originated in Bütonia and thus are in general a dour lot, which of course made my childhood a crushing bore.

Leopold, my eldest brother, was due to inherit the estate, the fortune and the right to trade in the family name. Pieter got himself married to some vulgar woman from one of the lesser Merchantile Houses after a night of indiscretion which led to the first of her many pregnancies, and not all Pieter’s I might add. My sisters, Clothilde and Gretl, are both empty-headed and were married off to the sons of good families as soon as they were old enough for it not to be considered monstrous.

And finally we have me, Little Gus as I was called until I was old enough to wield a sword. As the youngest of the lot my future prospects were grim, I stood to inherit precisely nothing and my career prospects amounted to clerk, military service or the priesthood, none of which appealed to me.

                To say that I rebelled would be an understatement. Of course I did all the usual things in my childhood like not turning up to my classes, putting frogs and spiders in places which I sincerely believed would terrify my mother and sisters (the actual result was usually a sound thrashing), but it was when I was well into adolescence that I truly began to see what I could do in the world. The nearest large town was the imaginatively named Marktberg and unfortunately that was a good forty miles away, but there were plenty of villages around and there’s probably many a bastard child born to some buxom farmer’s daughter which shares my curly blond hair and piercing blue eyes. When I did get a chance to go to Marktberg though I grabbed it with both hands and would spend days on end carousing and gambling in the seediest of the high-class establishments, of course there was also the times spend against an alley wall with some whore or other and the night time dashes (sometimes with my breeches still round my ankles) away from the local militia. And it was on one of these jaunts into town that I first met Rudi.

“What’s a pretty boy like you doing in a low class dive like this?” the heavy-set and massively scarred mercenary had growled as I stood at the bar

“Just drinking with my friends,” I replied indicating the rest of the dashing young rakes who were with me, “and we’re only interested in the fairer sex so go find some other poor bastard to violate.”

The man had laughed uproariously, “you think I’d want to bugger some gilded brat when I’ve got the pick of the wenches in this place?” he flashed a wink at the woman behind the bar, who smiled and adjusted her already low-cut kyrtle so she seemed on the very verge of overflowing, “no, my lad, I was merely wondering why people such as yourself would be in a place like the Black Rat… ‘cause you’d best be careful in case you have an accident.”

Naturally I wasn’t standing for any of this and so took the only course of action available to the young and rich in a place like this. I fled with my friends in tow. I honestly expected the man to give chase but instead he simply laughed and assured me that we would meet again. Had I known his prediction would come true I’d never have gone to town again.

It was nearly a year later and I’d almost forgotten my experiences in the Black Rat when I felt a hand on my shoulder while looking out a decent whore or two.

“Hello boy,” the man said before I’d even turned around, “I told you we’d meet again.”

Needless to say I was enraged, being interrupted when I was on the verge of hiring the evening’s fun was bad enough but having this hulking ribald actually touch me was the final straw.

“Unhand me immediately!” I cried, “or, so help me, I’ll–”

“You’ll what?” a voice hissed close to my ear, I felt the point of a blade against the small of my back.

“Now, now, Magpie,” the big mercenary said, “we don’t want to scare the lad, just take him for a drink or two is all.”

I was unceremoniously marched to an apparently abandoned house and shoved into a chair. The men remained silent as they poured some vinegary smelling wine into goblets and sat down opposite me, another man wearing a much patched robe entered from another room and looked at me curiously before joining the others. The large man, who I could only assume was the leader eventually broke the silence.

“Right then, let’s get the introductions out the way. My name’s Rudi and I’m the leader of this merry band. The fellow with the hood is Magpie,” the man who had threatened me in the street nodded, “and the inky here is Harald. What’s your name, boy?”

Of course I resented being called ‘boy’ I was nearly twenty after all and, in my eyes at least, fully a man. “When my father hears about this he’ll have you in gaol faster than you can blink!” was my reply. The man introduced as Magpie went for his dagger, but Rudi held him back. “No need for that,” he said calmly, “we just have a little proposition for you. Why don’t you have a drink to calm your nerves?”

I took the proffered goblet and knocked the sour wine back in one go, it was awful stuff but I had to concede it did have a calming effect. Before I knew it I was chatting merrily with them like they were old friends, I even asked for more wine. I have a vague memory of being given some papers to look at and putting my name to some of them but most of the night went by in a blur and the last thing I remember was being put to bed in the old house’s back room.