Blood and Blooms Part 1

'Edwardian-Georgian Gothic? Why, that's just not kosher!' '
—Lady Florence Craye, in a moment of thorough revulsion

BLOOD AND BLOOMS
A Jeeves/Blackadder crossover

PART I

'Jeeves?'
'Yes, Bertram, my radiant Hyacinth?'
'Why d'you s'pose Aunt Dahlia is so keen to drag me down to old Worcestershire?'
'Forgive me, sir, but I was under the impression that you enjoyed visiting your aunt.'
'Yes, but for a funeral, Jeeves? For some stern old army toff that I never even met? Seems a dashed ghastly business. Anyway, I thought she'd be worried that I'd make an ass of myself during the wake. End up offending the old bird's widow or knocking over the wreaths.'
'I believe Mrs. Travers' familial affection for you allows her to overlook any prior indiscretions,sir. Furthermore, it is quite a significant occasion. The deceased was a decorated General who stood in high regard, not only in your aunt's circle, but within the ranks of the military as well.'
'Big war hero, was he? I thought chaps like him all endeavoured to die on the battlefield, shielding puppies from Huns, or something like that.'
One of Jeeves' eyebrows twitched. 'That is… quite a romanticised appraisal of military life, sir.'
I frowned, catching my manservant's sudden sober tone, which put one in mind of a clement, shimmering spring abruptly turning glacial. Flopping the old onion down on a pillow, I allowed myself to sink into a sulk. I hate funerals. Sometimes I've heard more well-meaning souls insist that they are celebrations of the dearly departed's life. If indeed they are, then the ecclesiastical among us have made a right bally mess of it. Black, stiff Sunday best, the dreary droning of requiems and eternems, as the d. d. is shut up in a box and heaved into a dank hole in the ground. I never liked the idea of that last element—such a frightful way for one to see out eternity. There's a C word, Jeeves would know it... creating? Cerrating? Anyway, the jist of the whole process is that aforementioned d. d. is set upon a funereal pyre, the body smouldering away like so much driftwood, thus letting the spirit free to make a break for the cerulean splendour of the celestial plane. So much more liberating than all this six-foot-under rot.
The last, and only, funeral I had attended was that of my parents. Dreadful business, utterly dreadful. Suffice it to say, funerals in general did not recommend themselves to the Wooster sensibilities.
With his usual brand of slightly supernatural intuition, Jeeves must have picked up on this last unhappy thought, as I felt a set of wondrously strong arms snake about the midsection. The clement spring thawed out again, and the lovely large head that rested itself upon my shoulder pressed its lips to me.
'Please do not distress yourself over the upcoming ceremony, Bertram. You will be surrounded by those who love you. I shall endeavour to never leave your side.'
As I liquefied leisurely in his embrace, I silently hoped that Jeeves had commited to this last declaration not only for the length of the dreary proceedings, but for the rest of the whole mortal coil. Even the bits of it pertaining to Wickhams, Cheesewrights and emerald-green knickerbockers.

Before I continue on, perhaps I should clarify some of the particulars of the above tableau. Most of the readers of the Wooster chronicles would have envisioned the previous conversation taking place in the lounge room of our little flat. The staging would probably follow like this: self plonked cosily on the chesterfield, favoured b. and s. on a tray at self's elbow, with self's valet standing stalwartly off to the side like the palacial (or glacial?...) guard of some old world Empress. Now, I'm not saying that many a jolly afternoon hasn't passed in such a manner. But, as it happens, this afternoon did not. Seeing as I have assurance that those perusing these lines do not regard the intimate relations of free consenting men a criminal offence, let alone a mental illness (By Jove, what would poor Doc Glossop make of it!), I am free to relate the actual state of affairs. Where self was really cosily plonked was betwixt the mussed blankets of self's bed. To be precise, in the agreeably powerful-yet-tender clutches of self's valet. Upon the inauguration of our little union, Jeeves had impressed on me the importance of discretion. To those parts of England scanned by the public eye, we were still regarded as no more than gentleman and gentleman's personal gentleman. To the quieter, more intimate corners of the Empire, where the harsh discords of the lark give way to the nightingale's song (a certain corner of Berkeley Square, mostly), we had become as dippy for each other as any two yearning hearts could be.
(Hard to imagine, what? A towering paragon such as Jeeves being sweetly, soppily in love with a dope like me? Truth be told, I'm still pinching myself. What's more, I've awakened a suprising penchant for pet names in him. None of that Bassett-esque 'schmoopy schnuggums' business, mind you— most of them reference sonnets and odes and such that I used to yawn over at Eton. Usually his endearments send me scurrying to the extensive library in his lair, eager to decipher their meaning.)
That morning, the very moment I had replaced the receiever to the telephone and updated Jeeves on Aunt Dahlia's orders re: lugging my indolent hide to her place for the funeral, something of a sparkle had entered my man's dark eye. The next thing I knew I was being hauled, bridal style, in a bed-wards directon. Given the circs, valet-turned-paramour and I had deemed it best to spend the remaining hours before hie-ing hence to Brinkley Court indulging our passions to the fullest extent. Once we were under the same roof as others, all corporeal urges would have to subsist on Anatole's culinary ecstasies.
Though caille en sarcophage and moules à la crème Normande might at least have been a decent consolatory prize, my mind was on neither as we whizzed along in the Aston Martin the next morning. Nor was it on the doubly delectable activities of yesterday. All I could ponder were the looming last rites of the sad old blighter who I would only know of as a cold corpse. It is not easy to cloud the Wooster brow with melancholy thoughts, but being made to confront the kicking of the bucket in such an up-front way makes all other ugliness pale in comparison. Were it not for the warmth of Jeeves' tweed-enrobed form squished up against me, my courage would have surely buckled, sending me speeding back to the metrop. with all the agitation of a hound-pursued fox.

ooOOoo

The greetings and salutations at Brinkley Court were somewhat tempered, in light of the sad occasion. Other guests were staying for the ceremony, mostly wizened old family friends, Aunt Dahlia's hunting chums, and dour military types who could give Aunt Agatha a run for her money in the devouring-of-innocent-fluffy-creatures department. One silver lining amongst the morass of leaden c.s was the appearance of Tuppy Glossop, one of my nearest and dearest, who had likewise been dragged along by my cousin Angela. He was far from pleased to be stuck with the mourners, and we latched onto each other to whinge mutually.
'Bertie, do you realise that as we speak, the Drones are holding their annual wardrobe-raiding parties?' He lamented to me that evening in the garden room. 'The contestant who nicks the most ladies' undergarments gets their yearly bar tab paid for by the rest of the club!'
I clicked my tounge, thinking of my long-suffering coz and being privately grateful that Tuppy was shielded from such a diversion. (My mind also roved to the well filled stock room of Eulalie Boutique, but only briefly.)
I did eventually manage to track down the beloved sister of my late father, and ask her as tactfully as possible why she had invited me to the funeral of a man who had lately been unknown to me.
'Because, you blistering cold sore, not only was he one of the greatest Generals who has ever served Blighty, but his family and the Travers have been friends and neighbours for centuries. He introduced me to your Uncle Tom, taught me how to ride a horse, and he also looked after your second cousin George during the Great War.'
'My second cousin George?' Did the sprawl of my extended family never end?
'Your Grandmama Wooster's kid brother's son. Lovely singing voice, could really swing a paintbrush around, but otherwise the greatest pea-brain I ever knew… well, until you blessed this family.'
'And is this George chap among the mourning party?'
'That would be logistically difficult, seeing as he bought it from a round of machine-gun fire at Flanders.'
This further reminder of mortality did nothing to bolster my s.
The morning of the big day came, and Ma Nature spared no cliché. The old girl opened with an overture of ethereal mist cloaking the countryside, lifting to a grey overcast sky and the silvery drizzle of Sping rain.
We shuffled along into St. Sebastian's, the charming chocolate box of a stone chapel just on the outskirts of Market Snodsbury. Jeeves, Tuppy and I claimed a pew right in the back of the packed church, squashed in worse than a certain small, nutritious saltwater fish into its tin. It seemed like half of the British aristocracy had seen half of the British army hightailing it to the sombre shindig and thought it was a spiffing idea to gatecrash. Standing Room Only doesn't begin to describe the crush. I asked Jeeves why such a high-ranking official had deemed this small building the best venue for such a turnout, and my man informed me that the General had given very 'particular' (read: barmy) instructions before his passing.
I tried not to look at the elaborate mahogany coffin that stood before the altar. Happily, there were a few gargantuan dress hats and a huge bouquet of delicate, star-like flowers sitting atop the horrific vessel, both of which helped in its concealment. I had never seen an actual dead body, but being in the same room as one was not something I wanted to make a habit of. I tried to focus on the monotone of the grey-haired parson, and made a game of staring alternately at my left and right shoes. All in all, it was not as grisly an experience as I had forboded. Jeeves must have mistaken my bowed head for grief, for at one point, I felt the slightest movement of his hand over mine. Nobody in the elbow-to-nose crowd noticed or cared, and covertly, we interlaced fingers.
The procession and burial were given with full military honours. The booming salutes, sea of umbrellas, strident drumming and ashes-to-ashes-ing is something I'm sure you can infer.
My first impulse was to get the deuce out of the eerie cemetery, back to Brinkley Court for the savoury repast of the wake. But Aunt Dahlia seemed determined to be the last mourner at the graveside. I had seen so little of my favourite aunt during the whole occasion, and it had not really occurred to me how sorely she might be missing the d. d. As the crowd thinned, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and remained by the good woman's side, trying not to think about what lay underneath the grass.
Finally the graveside was divested of all but three. Jeeves held his generous sable umbrella over myself and my aunt. The latter tossed a bunch of pale, indigo-tinged flowers upon the fresh grave.
'Poor Uncle Anthony. May he now find true peace, whatever plane of existence he's biffed off to,' she sighed.
'Oho, so he is a member of our bloodline?' I asked.
'No, you dolt, but we was as good as. Loved us too dearly, he did. He never married, you see, never had a family of his own.'
'What's with the bluebells?' I asked her, indicating the little garland she had placed on the soil, probably sounding a bit too much like an annoyingly inquistive three-year-old.
'I believe those are hyacinths, sir. Known formally as Hyacinthus Orientalis, native to Asia Minor, they are classified in the family of Liliaceae. Being a cousin of Lilium longiflorum, they are a most fitting funerary—'
'Hyacinth? I say, Jeeves, wasn't that the name you called m—'
'Yes, sir, Hyacinth was a divine hero of the Ancient Greeks, who had his own cult located in the Peloponnese. It is for him that the plant was named.'
'Ah. I see. There you are then. Righto. Jolly good.'
'He grew them after the war,' the aunt in our midst continued, valiantly trying to block out the Wooster white noise. 'They were his favourite flower. Look, there's even one engraved on the tombstone.'
I followed her pointing finger to the relief at the apex of the marble slab. Indeed, it was a geometrically pleasing festoonment of the pretty little blossoms, destined forever to bloom in their cold white form, unlike the asymmetrical organic matter that lay beneath. It took me quite by surprise. I had expected something a little more militaristic, like a regimental crest of two crossed dead Germans, emblazoned on a mound of dead Germans. But such was not to be.
Beneath it read:
Here lies General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett VC DSO KCB
10th July 1869 – 29th March 1933
Aged 63 years.
"The damp stands on the long green grass
As thick as morning's tears,
And dreamy scents of fragrance pass
That breathe of other years."
—Emily Brontë

ooOOoo

Jeeves sought to console me further by suggesting reading material. Since the liturgical whatsits about the holy K. of H. did very little to reconcile me with the idea of death, he placed into my hands a tome entitled 'Short Treatise On God, Man & His Wellbeing' by his Dutch philospher idol. He said, with a somewhat optimistic tone, that Spinoza was at least more graspable than that Kant chap whose 'Critique Of Pure Reason' I had once dabbled in (mostly, I say in my defense, out of pure morbid curiousity). I was merely glad to have something with which to hide behind, lest any of the scarier old military types attempted to get matey with me. I got through the first two chapters or so, and it wasn't too bad. The ideas about the Essence of God and the Substance of Man did tickle the noggin. That being said, I felt he could have done better than writing the bally stuff out as if it were the offspring of a mathematics lesson and the ramblings of a deranged mystic. Once he came to the bit about Wholes and their Causes I drifted right off.
'WOOSTER!'
I spasmed awake, the back of my head smacking into an unfortunately placed terracotta pot. As the waking world returned about me, the sound of Tuppy and Angela arguing amongst the ficus plants registered in my ears, as well as the sight of Jeeves and Aunt Dahlia standing over me expectedly.
'Mrs. Travers has something she would like to show you, sir.'
It was now early evening. I stared down at the book, open on a page detailing the finer points of Providence and Things, and admitted defeat.
We followed her from the garden room, upstairs to the far end of the Court. She led us into a bedchamber on the third floor, spacious but disused. Apart from the primordial specimens of furniture about the room, there was an haphazard clump of items which, from the lack of dust, looked to have just been deposited there recently.
'Much of Uncle Anthony's estate has already been settled, and apart from the silver he bequeathed to Tom, these are the objects he has left us. Some of them have already been claimed, but I would like each family member to take something in honour of his generosity.'
I examined a collection of taxidermied pigeons sitting on the dresser, glass eyes leering creepily.
'Who's taking these?' I asked.
'With any luck, the bin man,' my aunt replied through her teeth.
As I semi-consciously began poking around the mass of curios, I caught wind of her voice again:
'Take your time. Have a good look around and let me know afterwards what junk you'd like to take off my hands.'
Then, fainter, I heard her mutter:
'Jeeves, I entrust you to not let him keep anything too revolting.' I had a feeling she was casting an eye on those pigeons again.
'No, madam.'
'Very good. Happy hunting.' And off she popped to herd her other guests.
This room had been deprived of all its light bulbs, the only source of brightness being a kerosene lantern that our hostess had placed on the mantelpiece of the small fireplace. In the waning light, surrounded by the personal effects of a dead man, I suddenly felt a bit Gothic.
Jeeves was flipping through some musty, gilt edged books piled upon the bed.
'Most surprising that a strategist and man of combat such as Sir Melchett should be enamoured of the works of the Brontë sisters...'
His train of thought derailed when he beheld the vermillion smoking jacket that his jubilant young master had just disovered.
'Oh, sir…'
'Isn't it just corking! Oh, could you picture me welcoming guests to the flat in this number, perhaps paired with a jaunty fez?'
'I'm trying not to, sir.'
'A bit big about the shoulders, but I'm sure you could bring it in a little, what?'
'I regret to say, sir, that if you entrusted me to take to that object with a pair of scissors…'
Several arguments such as this followed the course of our little rummage around. The evening wore on, until the light outside was no more and it was night-time proper. A small voice in the back of my head (one possibly imbued with Jeeves' Dutch philosopher) that had been hollering about how dashed immoral it was to poke around a dead man's effects, grew steadily louder. I was just about to drag myself into a standing position and tell my man so (he was currently examining an old service revolver and looking unnervingly pleased with it), when a little glimmer of tarnished gold, made almost umber in the light of the lantern, caught my eye. Turning again, I could now see it winking out at me from under the bed.
Dissenting against what better judgement I had, I reached a trusting hand inside the cobwebby cavern. Satisfied that no pointy beasties lurked within to make a supper out of my treasured mitt, it closed around what felt like a cold metal handle. With a great heave-ho, I dragged something heavy and bulky out into the weak lantern-light.
Jeeves had crossed the room to assist me. The discovery was a big lacquered wooden chest, its smooth finish made chipped and weathered by the ravages of old Poppy Time. It, like the room's indigenous furnishings, was caked in a fine film of dust.
Suddenly, the moralising, philosophising voice in my head took leave of the Wooster corpus and appeared before me in solid Jeevesian form.
'I do not believe this is one of the articles eligible for acquisition, sir.'
I grinned a canary-stalking grin at him.
'Come now, Jeeves, I know you want to take a little peek as much as I. How can curiousity kill the cat if it's not out of the box?'
His reprimand gave way to a brief moment of confusion, at which I took the liberty of lifting the lid from the casket. With a giddiness heretofore known to me only as a schoolboy in the pilfering of gingernuts, I took a peek inside.
Sitting upon the top of its contents, swathed in yellowed tissue paper, was an item of clothing. Carefully lifting it and crumpling away its wrappings, I recognised a pale, gossamer evening gown in fair shades of blue and violet. The unabashed femininity of its silky, flowery design was more than made up for by its considerable size.
'By Jove, this must have been made for a girl who could crush Honoria Glossop with one fist…'
'Sir…'
Astonishment was written upon the face of my valet. Which made me take heed, for though astonishment may cross my own face every other week, it takes a phenom-thingummy of the miraculous, once in a blue moon variety to rattle Jeeves in such a way.
Stacked neatly beneath the gown was a series of small canvases and bristol boards. Jeeves had picked the top one off the pile, and was drinking in its contents mutely. Wordlessly, he turned it around to show me the painting upon it.
There, in vivid, saturated oils, sat a portrait of a young man in the swamp-green togs of a lieutenant of His Majesty's Armed Forces. And if it weren't for a few minor differences in bearing, hair colour and the overall shape of the chin, he could have been Bertram Wilberforce Wooster himself.
As I gawked at this ghostly doppleganger, something caught Jeeves' eye on the back of the bewitching canvas, and he managed to find his voice again.
'Th… there seems to be something written on the back in pencil.'
He squinted in the dim light.
'"Self-portrait: by Lieutenant The Honourable George Colthurst St. Barleigh MC, Christmas 1914."'
I smiled the grand smile of the illuminated.
'Cousin George!'

ooOOoo

'Who, sir?'
'Aunt Dahlia was telling me about him earlier, my grandmama's kid brother's son. He was in the war with Uncle Anthony.'
'By which you mean Sir Melchett, sir.'
He took another look at the painted likeness. 'It is quite unsurprising to hear of your blood relation to this gentleman. Such a striking likeness.' I saw something that seemed distantly akin to lust shimmer across his noble features, and for an extremely surreal moment I felt jealous of my own dead look-alike of a second cousin.
Brushing it off, I reached once again into the chest, wondering what surprises would unfold in the subject of old George's second painting. Bating my breath, I gazed upon a rather watery daub of the Seven Sisters. (No, not female septuplets, but those chalky white mountainous dealies by the sea in the South Downs.) Likewise there were some still lifes and sun-drenched figures in white trousers, as well as a rather off-putting scene of a brave young tommy standing over the body of a nun in a hellish blackened warscape— that one I replaced quite quickly.
Towards the bottom of the pile sat something a bit more promising. Two classically-styled male nudes entwined passionately, with a quiver of arrows and an errant strand of red silk billowing off the shoulder of the taller.
'Jeeves,' I intoned with something of a purr, 'What do you make of this?' I handed him the canvas. Another emotion fluttered its way on and off his physiog, this time not as readable as before.
'This is a reproduction of a famous painting by Jean Broc, sir. I have seen the original at Poitiers.'
'Oh? And what is it?'
'It is entitled "The Death of Hyacinthos".'
After enquiring to Jeeves about the similarity of this name and the name of the hero-come-flower he had mentioned, he replied that they were indeed one and the same, proceeding to fill me in on the posish of this doomed figure. I sat at his feet, eager disciple that I am, as he told all.
Apollo, Greek God of all things warm and shiny, had fallen daffily in love with the young shaver. Being something of a clever clogs, versed in science, music and athletics, he taught his fresh-faced, eager beau everything that a paragon of the ancient world should know. (I suspect that Messr. Sunshine had some sort of deal going with his uncle Poseidon, and was supplied with a constant bounty of fish to feed his marvellous brain.) Anyway, two hearts entwined, Apollo teaching Hyacinth, all seemed to be well. But it turned out that Zephyrus, a rather mean-spirited cove with what you could call a messy family tree, wanted Hyacinth for himself. As he had dominion over the West wind, he decided to use his powers for a downright wicked end. One day the two lovebirds were out playing at discus. Apollo gave the thing a good chuck for Hyacinth to catch, and the cad Zephyrus blew the discus off-course, causing it to wallop poor Hyacinth right in his curly crown. As the youth lay dying, the God of the Dead came to claim him, but instead Apollo turned him into the very flower that Aunt Dahlia had placed on Uncle Anthony's grave.
'Of all the bally, nerve, Jeeves!' I exclaimed when he had finished the story (having used a much prettier rhetoric than I). 'I hope that that Zephyrus weed… um… well, I hope he at least lost sleep over it.'
'I'm certain he did, sir.'
I picked up the canvas of the tragic pair again, this time comprehending what the painter was trying to get at. Damned shame. So much promise lost so young.
Then, as I examined it further, I saw that Jeeves had been quite right in saying that this had not been the original masterpiece. Smeared across small sections of the paint was some kind of pale wash which made the colours run in places. It was as if a waterlogged brush had been flicked at the completed work, leaving a light pattern of little marks upon it.
I wondered when my gentle coz had painted this one. Perhaps in the trenches, with inferior equipment? I flicked the thing over to check the date.
'Jeeves!'
'Sir?'
'Are all canvases supposed to have note-books affixed to the back?'
Said n. b., bound in leather and almost as aged and battle-worn as Aunt Agatha, had been affixed within the frame of the canvas' back with some sort of putty. With one gingerish motion, I managed to easily pull it free of its fixture. Opening up the first jaundiced, stain-blotched page:
'"The Personal Memoirs of Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett.'"
My manservant and I shared a Look. With a definite captial L. If raiding a dead man's posessions was slightly less than righteous, then I definitely felt the great overtone of wrongness in the notion of invading a dead man's private thoughts. Especially ones that had been squirreled away so vigilantly. But since that crate had opened, Jeeves and I had begun to make a string of tantalising discoveries. Dare we relent just before approaching the Whatsit de Résistance?
Fading into earshot came the braying bellows of not only Aunt Dahlia, but of Angela and Tuppy as well. Their shoes clacked ominously closer to the door. Jeeves began smoothly and flawlessly replacing the paintings and the frock, seeing to it that the chest was then tucked neatly back under the bed.
Thinking quickly, I stashed the journal beneath my jacket, and assumed the best un-canary-eating expression I could muster.
When the ancestor asked me if I had found anything of Uncle Anthony's that I wanted, I told her I would sleep on it. We were ushered fussily off to bed, and a hint of a scowl marked Jeeves' countenance as he caught sight of the prize I had smuggled away.
'Oh, come now, I know it's not exactly respectful, but neither is pinching an eighteenth-century cow creamer,' I tutted as he poured me into my heliotrope pyjamas.
'I suppose that is an equitable rationalisation, sir,' he responded soupily.
'Besides,' I beamed, riding this new wave of superiority, 'You never know what Uncle Anthony could have intended for this book. Perhaps he wanted, one day, to tell his story to the world. We may just have saved him from obscurity and given him the gift of immortality! We could do likewise for Cousin George if we ask for his paintings!'
'As you wish, sir.'
'Besides,' I chuckled, well pleased, 'Would you rather I keep this, or ask Aunt Dahlia for that vermillion smoking jacket?'
I was met with silence this time. Perhaps my smarminess was doing more to cheese him off than my purloining of a private document.
As I clambered into bed, I readied myself to do some late-night research into the mind of the man who had been farewelled that day by so many. Before tucking into his writings, I looked expectantly to Jeeves, who in a moment of overt sourness, denied me my usual good-night kiss before heading downstairs to his own lodgings. In fact, the icy 'good-night' uttered by my man had a wind chill of minus eight.
I tchah'ed at the closing door, refusing to let it get to me.
'You'll keep, Reggie,' I muttered, and then proceeded to tuck into the elegant copperplate-ish handwriting awaiting me on the antiquated pages.

ooOOoo