Chapter Text
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” -Maxwell Scott, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
“And then it flew in the sky, like magic [...]. It was white, and it looked like a horse, except it had these big ol’ white wings on it. A flying horse. I couldn’t believe it, but it was there. It was really there.” -Eyewitness account, “WHITE KNIGHT SPOTTED IN GOLDFIELD,” Phoenix Weekly Herald, May 13, 1893.
Year: 1893 AD
The demon Crowley was in the midst of being caught red-handed in a lie when Aziraphale entered the pub.
Of course, this was nineteenth-century America, so it wasn’t a pub. It was a saloon. And Crowley wasn’t a barman, he was a barkeep. And, as Aziraphale strode through the beat-up batwing doors, he wasn’t a patron.
He was, it seemed, a savior.
“That’s him!” exclaimed Crowley. He was leaning over the counter, the front of his shirt twisted up in the fist of what appeared to be the meanest man in town. He braced himself against the polished wood with one hand and pointed to Aziraphale with the other. “The White Knight!”
Aziraphale, who had not expected to enter this drinking establishment with a finger pointed at him in accusation—and certainly not with his long-time adversary (sometimes accomplice, and occasional begrudging dinner companion) behind said finger—paused in front of the door. He had not a clue who this “White Knight” was and, though the fellow had a very gallant and estimable moniker, he was quite certain it was not him.
Aziraphale looked at Crowley. Crowley looked at Aziraphale. It had been over thirty years since they’d last seen each other, and it was clear neither had known the other would be here tonight.
“That’s me,” Aziraphale said without missing a beat. He smiled, genial and dazzling. “The White Knight, at your service.” He bowed with flourish and caught sight of Crowley cringing behind the bar.
Aziraphale righted himself and studied the ugly, fearsome man who had Crowley’s shirt in his grasp. He was tall, with a burn scar on one side of his face and a barrel chest that suggested he had more below his shirt than just skin and bone. Beside him were two even uglier, more fearsome men. All three were dirty and unshaven—although being dirty and unshaven was not at all uncommon in the American West, where the rudimentary civilisation had neither progressed beyond dirt roads nor toward regular baths.
For his part at least, Aziraphale was as clean as a whistle. His wool trousers were the color of cafe au lait, his shirt the delicate shade of a dove’s plumage. His waistcoat, soft and velveteen, was the same hue as the dust high up on the mountain above the town, and his hat was a thick white felt with a gold sateen band around the crown. He wore a sky-blue bandana around his neck, and his boots, made of calfskin, were the same color as his waistcoat.
None of it betrayed one speck of mud. Cleanliness was next to Godliness, after all.1
Aziraphale took two steps forward. The polished silver spurs on his boots reflected the light from the saloon’s oil-lamps like sunlight winking across a brook. They jangled merrily at his heels. At the center of each spur was an engraving of a pair of wings.
The man holding Crowley’s shirt released it and turned to take stock of the so-called White Knight. The other two turned to do the same, freeing up Crowley to gesticulate wildly behind them. He seemed to be miming that Aziraphale should assume a stern demeanor rather than continue with his elegantly folded hands and friendly smile. At least, that’s how Aziraphale interpreted his frantic waving followed by an abrupt cross of his arms and a pout that was, Aziraphale assumed, supposed to look like a scowl and not like he’d just been stung by a bee on his lower lip.2
In any case, Aziraphale got the memo. He furrowed his brow and frowned his mouth. He crossed his arms and puffed out his chest, and when he spoke, his voice had dropped an octave from its previous register.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
Behind the men, Crowley crossed his arms more tightly. He made his face look mean. Or, at least, he seemed to be trying to make his face look mean, though to Aziraphale it looked like he’d just smelled the hind-end of a horse.
Aziraphale tried not to laugh. “Er,” he stammered, deciding to also pretend that he’d smelled something foul. It wasn’t a difficult thing to do in a crowded saloon. “Whaddya want?”
Somewhere along the way he’d adopted an American twang. He tried not to shiver.
The ugly man to the left, whose name was Johnny Two-Fingers,3 looked Aziraphale up and down. He began to wrinkle his own nose, until the three of them had quite the matching expressions.
“Where in the Sam Hill did you come from?” sneered Johnny.
“Oh!” Aziraphale exclaimed, returning gratefully to his English accent. “Certainly nowhere near there.”4
Johnny sniffed. “Ya look like you been shit out by a golden goose, partner.”
There were chuckles from the other patrons. Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, who was looking less and less like he’d smelled something foul and more and more like he’d got something stuck up his nose. Johnny came face to face with Aziraphale, so close that Aziraphale could smell his rancid breath, which accounted for at least half of the saloon’s overall stench.
“Gaw,” said Johnny, his eyes trailing up to the hat. “Lookee here. Even his hair is gold.”
“If’n’ it were,” said the ugly man to the right, whose name was Gudder, “we’d go an’ mine it.”
That got a full-bellied laugh out of the crowd. Someone hiccuped in the back corner.
Johnny Two-Fingers had been born with an extra finger on each hand. He used one of these now to flick at the top of Aziraphale’s hat. Aziraphale gazed upward, where a new smudge of dirt had appeared underneath the brim.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Crowley warned. He was obviously attempting to recall the White Knight’s violent reputation; Aziraphale had never once resorted to physical violence for any sort of slight.5
“Shut up,” said the man in the middle. The biggest one, with the scar. He had beady black eyes and heavy black brows, and he wore a black felt hat with a braided leather rope around the top. His name was Brando Jessup, and in another half-century or so the stereotype of the Wild West Villain would be based on men like him.
He came up to Aziraphale. It took him two strides where it would have taken another man three. Johnny Two-Fingers skittered out of the way to make room for him. Brando was a head taller than Johnny, and Aziraphale had to lean back slightly to keep his face in view.
“Brando Jessup,” introduced Brando, and then, to Aziraphale’s surprise, he held out his hand. “Nice ta’ meet ya.”
He smiled.
For such a rough-looking man, Brando Jessup’s teeth were in remarkably good shape. Fairly straight and decently white and, perhaps most impressively, all accounted for. In fact, behind the dirt and the beard and the scar, he was quite a handsome fellow. And Aziraphale suddenly realized that he had no reason to bear ill will against this man, except perhaps to take issue with the way he’d manhandled Crowley’s shirt. Though, recalling the last time he’d seen Crowley and the spiteful way the demon had treated him, Aziraphale decided not to take much issue with it at all.
He smiled back and shook Brando’s hand.
“You’ll have to forgive my friends, here.” Brando had a smooth voice, as deep and rich as molasses. “They don’t take kindly to strangers, ’specially ones with your…” he gave Aziraphale a lingering glance, “reputation. But they’re more bark than bite, I promise.”
Aziraphale glanced at the other two men. He suspected this was a lie, mostly because of the number of scars each of them sported, but also because Crowley was vehemently shaking his head behind them.
“All is forgiven,” Aziraphale replied. “And you’ll have to forgive me as well. I didn’t mean to intrude upon your evening. Actually, I was just hoping for a drink. I’ve had a rather long journey, you see.”
That he had. Heaven had called him away from his thriving bookshop in London Soho to investigate the goings-on of a small gold rush town that had seen a sudden increase in “evil doings.” Which was a vague assignment, in Aziraphale’s opinion, but he wasn’t in the habit of questioning authority. And now that he’d seen Crowley here, the increase made even less sense. Crowley hadn’t managed to increase the level of evil in an area since 1692, when he’d passed out drunk on the streets of Salem Massachusetts and accidentally possessed three young girls after they’d poked at him with a stick to wake him up.
“I can see that,” said Brando. “Your accent,” he continued, when Aziraphale looked at him quizzingly. “You’re not from around these parts.”
“Ah, no. I hail from ‘across the pond,’ as it were.” Aziraphale tried and failed not to sound homesick. “I’m only in town for a spat. Actually, perhaps you can help me.”
There was Crowley again, limbs flailing like he was caught in a tumbleweed.
Aziraphale blinked a few times. “I’m… trying to find some information. And if I’m not mistaken, you seem like a chap who keeps abreast of the goings on here in, ah, Goldfield.”6
“Lemme pour you that drink,” interrupted Crowley, who looked as if he would have jumped right in between them had the bar not been in the way.
“I do keep a close eye on this town,” Brando said, ignoring Crowley. “Whaddya need to know?”
“Well, I’m told that there’s been an increase of nefarious activity in this area.” Aziraphale folded his hands in front of his waist. “Would you happen to know anything about that?”
Brando Jessup continued to smile. Johnny and Gudder, however, glanced at one another in confusion.
“You know… iniquitous behavior?” Aziraphale prodded. “Malevolent happenings?”
Behind the bar, Crowley reached underneath his sunglasses and pressed a thumb and forefinger to his eyelids.
“You’re talkin’ about evil, partner,” clarified Brando, the only one of the three who hadn’t looked as if Aziraphale was speaking a foreign language. “Is that right?”
“Indeed,” Aziraphale sighed. He supposed if “evil doings” was the best Heaven could come up with, he shouldn’t expect better from a pack of uncultured cowboys.
“Well, now,” Brando said, “not sure who you been talkin’ to. But I don’t see why there should be any evil goin’ on round here. Folks in this town, they’re decent people. Churchgoing people. Sure, we like to have a drink every now and again—and sometimes again, and again—” there were a few low chuckles, “but everyone ‘round here knows that at the end of the day, they gotta follow the Code.”
“That’s right,” piped up Gudder. He seemed to be one of those people that was perpetually chewing on something, even when there was nothing in his mouth. Which was intriguing, as he lacked all the teeth that Brando Jessup had retained. “They know better’n to break the Code.”
Aziraphale frowned a little. He had no idea what was meant by this “code.” If he wasn’t a being of goodness and light, he would have cursed the Archangel Gabriel for leaving him ill-prepared for this assignment.
“And what code would that be?” he asked.
Brando spread his arms. “Why, the Code of Brando Jessup.”
His smile widened, and the saloon became something it had not been all evening: silent.
“Barkeep,” called Brando over his shoulder. “How’s about you pour Mr. White Knight here that drink? On the house.”
Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, who was setting an empty glass on the counter and reaching underneath to pull out a bottle of amber-colored liquid. Crowley’s eyes flicked from Aziraphale to Brando and back again.
“You’re the proprietor of this establishment?” Aziraphale asked.
“Partner,” said Brando, putting one arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders, “I’m the proprietor of this whole town.”
Aziraphale glanced around at the other patrons’ faces. He found… fear.
“I see,” he said, carefully.
Brando steered Aziraphale toward the bar. People started talking again, and the music started back up. Aziraphale hadn’t even realized there had been music before, but now he noticed an old, skinny man with a feather in his hat tinkering away at the upright piano on the other side of the room.
Aziraphale sat on a stool at the bar; Brando, Johnny Two-Fingers, and Gudder loomed around him. Just as Aziraphale made to take the drink Crowley had poured, Johnny swiped it up and downed it in one go.
“Ah.” Johnny slammed the butt of the glass on the counter. “Well, seems ya had your drink, so you’d best be on your way.”
Aziraphale was still processing the rudeness of the gesture when Johnny’s face suddenly found itself acquainted with the surface of the bar. Brando, who had introduced them, pulled Johnny’s head back up by his hair.
Blood poured from both of Johnny’s nostrils as he howled in pain.
“Now, now, Mr. White Knight here is our guest,” Brando said calmly, as if it was Johnny’s own fault that his nose was bleeding. “We should treat him with a little respect, don’t you think?”
“Y-yes, Brando,” mumbled Johnny through his hand and the blood in his mouth.
“Why, we ain’t so different, him and us.” Brando nodded toward Aziraphale, who was still reeling from this violent display. “He keeps the peace, and so do we. Another drink here, barkeep. And a rag for Mr. Two-Fingers.”
Crowley already had the second glass half-poured. He set the drink in front of Aziraphale, then looked at him over the top of his sunglasses. The sunglasses themselves were considerably rounder and thinner-framed than the ones he’d worn the last time Aziraphale had seen him. The eyes, however, were the same. Gold and copper and bronze, nearly glowing with intensity in the low-lighted room.
Despite the volatility of the moment, Aziraphale felt himself calm, just a tick.
Crowley pushed his glasses up his nose. He tossed a bar rag in Johnny’s direction. Johnny caught it and pressed it over his face.
“That’s why we got the Code to guide us,” Brando continued. “But sometimes keeping the peace requires a… firm hand.” Aziraphale blinked back to him and saw his gaze was keen. “I’m sure you agree.”
Aziraphale frowned. “I—”
“Oh he agrees,” Crowley cut in. “Fastest gun in the West, him.” He nodded confidently to where the White Knight’s guns might have been, at Aziraphale’s hip, where currently there was only an elegant camel-colored concho belt adorned with repousse silverwork.
Crowley grimaced.
“Is that right,” said Brando, with a lingering glance at Crowley. The demon quickly took up polishing the nearest glass he could find.
“Oh, yes indeed,” Aziraphale said hastily. “So they say, anyway.” He too side-eyed Crowley, who polished the glass more fervently. “Though I prefer not to enter any drinking establishment with weapons on my person.” He thought a moment, then added in a bit of a stage whisper, “Saloon owners tend not to appreciate the resulting mess.”
Brando chuckled. “Good thing I own this one.” He thumped the bar with a large, calloused hand. It vibrated, clinking all the glasses on the shelf below it. “Though I doubt you’d find any reason to use your guns here. As I said, this is an upstanding town. We know how to prevent any wrongdoing.”
Aziraphale glanced at Johnny and his broken nose.
“Oh, I’m not talking about this fella’s lack of manners,” Brando said, waving a hand in Johnny’s direction. He gazed at Aziraphale with his black, beady eyes. “I’m talkin’ about real wrongdoing.”
“Ah,” Aziraphale replied, certain that Brando Jessup wouldn’t know ‘real wrongdoing’ if it smashed his face into a bar. “And how is that?”
On the other side of the counter, Crowley stopped polishing his glass.
“Gudder,” said Brando, “tell Mr. White Knight here how we punish Code-breakers in this town.”
Gudder stopped chewing long enough to answer. “Send ‘em to the mine.”
“Labor, Mr. White Knight,” Brando clarified. His eyes glittered in the lamplight. The one behind the scar was partially obscured by whorled, reddened skin. “Hard-working, honest labor.”
There was a crash from the center of the room. The music cut off again, and all eyes turned to a man who had thrown back his chair and stood from the nearest table.
“Honest labor,” the man echoed bitterly. He swiped up his drink, finished it, then rolled the empty glass back onto the table. “How can you say that, when ain’t nobody you send up there ever comes back?”
He stumbled toward them. His fellow tablemates tried to pull him back, but he shrugged them off.
“Tell ‘em, Brando,” he slurred. “Tell ‘em what happened to my Tommy!”
Brando was watching him with something like amusement in his eyes. “You’re drunk, Mr. Whitehead.”
Mr. Whitehead shook his head, which was, indeed, white. “I ain’t that drunk.”
“It was an accident with Tommy.” Brando’s voice was as easy as anything. “You know that.”
“Yeah. They're all accidents.” Mr. Whitehead's eyes were bloodshot, his face covered in a sheen of sweat. “You know, the missus cried her eyes out every night before she—get offa me!” His friend at the table had tried to pull him back again.
“You wanna settle this the old-fashioned way?” Brando cocked his head. “That what you’re askin’?”
Behind him, Johnny abandoned his bleeding nose and grappled for his gun. He swore as the revolving chamber clicked open and bullets spilled onto the floor.7
Meanwhile, Gudder began cleaning his fingernails with a pocket knife.
Mr. Whitehead, caught somewhere between vengeance and self preservation, pursed his lips.
“No? Well that's just fine.” Brando looked around the rest of the room. “Somebody take Mr. Whitehead outside and dunk his head in the trough.”
A few people chuckled, and poor Mr. Whitehead’s friends corralled him out of doors.
Brando then gestured to the piano player, who somehow, even with the commotion, had dozed off on the bench. “And somebody wake up Mr. Feathers!”
More laughter. Glasses clinked. The music began again as Mr. Feathers was revived, going straight from snoring to playing in less than half a second.
“Don’t mind Mr. Whitehead,” Brando said, turning back to Aziraphale. “Sad situation, there. Bad luck’s what it was.” He rubbed his lips together. “Now, partner. Sun’s goin’ down, and I expect you’re about ready to turn in. If you’d be so kind as to finish your drink, me n’ the boys’ll get you all settled at the inn for the night. Then you can be on your way back home by mornin’.”
Aziraphale and Crowley glanced at each other again. A lot could be said in a glance, and even though Aziraphale was three decades out of practice, he had somehow returned easily to impeccable interpretation of Crowley’s. He supposed the thousands of years of doing so prior had given him an advantage. It had come back naturally. Like riding a velocipede.
Memories spilled from his mind, twisting around his chest, constricting it briefly. Of other glances, in other places, at other times. He breathed in and out, willing them to loosen. He needed to focus on the task at hand.
Despite the fact that he would have given just about anything to go back home this very instant, Aziraphale knew he wouldn’t be on his way anytime soon. Because Crowley’s glance had told him what he’d already suspected: that Heaven’s reports of evil in this town had nothing to do with Crowley, and everything to do with Brando Jessup.
He smiled at the man with the scar.
“Spendid,” he said.
Footnotes
1 Or so Aziraphale liked to say. Crowley, who had never quite understood why demons had to be dirty to do evil, preferred to say that “cleanliness” was next to “basic hygiene.” return to text ↩
2 The White Knight, as legend had it, was a clever and formidable vigilante with a fast horse and an even faster pistol. He went from town to town rooting out injustice and cleaning up crime, and he’d recently been spotted—to the relief of the townspeople here, and to the enragement of the three men in front of the bar—on the road to this one. Of course, Aziraphale knew none of this at the moment. The legend had been invented one week prior by Crowley himself. return to text ↩
3 As an angel and demon, Aziraphale and Crowley both had an affinity for knowing a human’s name without being told. And while Aziraphale always politely refrained from using a person’s name before they were properly introduced, it was one of Crowley’s favorite pastimes to do just that—ideally in passing interactions, such as at the grocer, tailor, or any other consumerist enterprise. At a bookshop, for example. It really freaked people out. return to text ↩
4 “Sam Hill” had become a popular euphemism for “Hell” by the mid-nineteenth century, to the dismay of Samuel Hills everywhere. Supposedly it had stemmed from a man of the same name who’d had a penchant for colorful swear words. To an angel and demon, this was rather humorous; demons weren’t known for swearing at all. The worst swear you were liable to hear in Hell was usually some form of “God bless you.” return to text ↩
5 There had been a few close calls. Notably, the time he’d acquired his copy of the Wicked Bible was a near thing. Not that he was particularly fond of Bibles in general (the Wicked Bible’s misprint of “Thou shalt commit adultery” was the least of the Bible’s overall inaccuracies) or was in any way in favor of adultery, but there was something to be said for having a “complete” collection. He’d nearly devolved into fisticuffs with King Charles I himself before he remembered his miracles and simply hid one from his human eyes. return to text ↩
6 Aziraphale wouldn’t have believed the name of the town if he hadn’t been around Earth for six thousand years and seen just how inspirationally lazy humans could be. Creation had to have its opposite, and apparently, so did creativity. return to text ↩
7 Counterintuitively, grappling with six fingers was a lot more difficult than grappling with five. return to text ↩