Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon

  “Karlo! Sie haben unsere fehlenden Falle gefunden?” the second man in the room called.

  “Ja! Diese beiden Manner haben sie genau hier!” was the reply fired back.

  “They were delivered to our room by mistake,” Julian continued. He held the case up before the Prussian’s face with his left hand. “You do speak a bit of English?”

  “Yes, I do.” The man opened the door wider and reached out to take the first case from Julian. “Marvelous! I had fear we would not—”

  “Interesting you should use that word ‘fear’,” said Julian, who had dropped the case down to reveal the wicked pistol in his right hand that had been hidden behind it. Four barrels of hell were aimed directly at the Prussian’s forehead. “It’s my middle name. Put your hands behind your head and back into the room, please.”

  The man’s eyes seemed to Matthew to have sunken down even further into his face and if possible had gotten even blacker. The thin mouth curled. “If this is a robbery, you should know—”

  The Prussian ceased talking when his own case was slammed into his mouth. He staggered backward, making a choking sound, and fell full-length upon the floor’s polished oak timbers.

  At once Julian and Matthew were inside the room and Matthew had shut the door. “Latch it!” Julian said, but Matthew had already known to do so. In for a penny, in for a pound, Matthew thought, but he feared a pound of flesh might be in the offing.

  The man sat up from the floor, his face contorted with rage and blood already staining his mouth from a split lower lip. Suddenly the second, taller and thinner Prussian came into the room from the suite’s second chamber; he was also wearing a sleepgown, this one white with a black diamond design, a large lace-puffed collar and as near to a clown’s costume as Matthew could imagine. This man had been removing his white makeup and had been interrupted with only half of the task finished, for the left side of his face was the ghastly color of a fish-belly and over the eye on that side remained the crimson arc of an eyebrow. He had a small brown skullcap of hair and ears that were best covered by his gigantic white wig, which currently burdened a wigstand upon the room’s central table and had the selfsame bruise-colored tricorn perched atop it.

  Clown Face took one look at the intruders and sprang for the corner of the room, where Matthew saw the red-and-gold embroidered bellpull ready to be used to summon a servant from below. As the man reached for the pull, Matthew had no choice but to throw the case he was holding. It was not a direct hit to the head but enough of a glancing blow to the shoulder to knock the man spinning, at which point when he righted himself he saw more clearly the pistol Julian was brandishing and he became a clown-dressed statue.

  Julian stood over the man on the floor. “Count Pellegar, I’m guessing?” There was no reply. “I think so, since you seem to be the one in charge. Count, I just hate it when people don’t do as they’re instructed. It makes things turn messy very quickly.”

  “Du kannst meinen Arsch kussen, du Schwein,” said the Count, who wiped his mouth with a sleeve but never took his ebony eyes off Julian.

  “That doesn’t sound very diplomatic. I know you speak English but I’m not so sure about Baron Brux. English?” he asked the second man.

  “Antworte ihm nicht, Jendrik,” Pellegar said.

  “Dear me,” said Julian. He glanced quickly at Matthew, who was more intent on watching Brux to make sure he didn’t try for that bellpull again. “I think we have a failure to communicate. But I do have a solution for that.” He placed the pistol downward on Pellegar’s bald skull.

  “Ha!” the man laughed with what was nearly a snort of derision. “You wouldn’t dare to fire that thing in here! Half the inn would knock that door down, and for some reason—some very small but important reason, I am sure—you would not care for that, sir.”

  The man had spoken with no trace of a Prussian accent. “You’re English,” said Julian. “Why the Prussian masquerade?”

  “No masquerade. Born English. Raised and educated in Prussia. Served honorably in the military, and so honored with a title and an estate. And you, I assume, are both common shits of thieves who’ve somehow profaned this establishment with your presence and…oh fuck it, I’m standing up.”

  He did, and Julian stepped back a pace but still kept the pistol levelled at him.

  “Bleib einfach,” Pellegar said to Brux in a quiet, almost casual tone. “Diese Situation ist bereits unter Kontrolle.” Brux nodded, and then the baron sat down in a chair, crossed his thin legs and smiled at Julian and Matthew as if this were an occasion of great amusement.

  As Julian considered his next move, Matthew took a quick look around the suite and saw immediately that to call it grand was a huge understatement. It was thrice as large as their own quarters, the bedroom separate from the sitting room. The black leather furnishings were the same but there were more of them, and more lanterns as well. Off to the left beneath a hanging tapestry of wolves and hunters stood a small but beautiful harpsichord on thin and graceful legs, painted gold with red trim and with pastoral scenes decorating the inside of the raised soundboard lid. A large blue bowl of apples, clementines and parsnips sat on the table beside Brux’s chair, and behind him was a window that afforded a view of the snow-covered city to the south, even now the flakes continuing to blow up against the glass and whirl away.

  “So,” Pellegar said, as he dabbed at his mouth, “did you come in here to stare at us like idioten? What is it you want?”

  “I presume your ship just arrived?”

  The count shrugged.

  “And you made a stop before you came here?” Julian said. “I presume also you stopped there to learn where you were staying for the night?” Julian didn’t wait for an answer because he knew it wasn’t going to come. “Whose house was that?”

  “Whose house where?”

  “No!” said Matthew suddenly, making Julian jump. Matthew drew his pistol from beneath his cloak, for he’d seen that Brux was reaching for an apple from the bowl and it wouldn’t do to get one of those in the face. Brux looked at him blankly. Matthew recalled some of Dahlgren’s language, but only the little bit: “Nein!” he said, and waved the pistol back and forth until Brux smiled again and settled the hand back against his chest as innocently as a dove alighting on a church ledge.

  “Whose house?” Julian repeated, his own gun steady.

  “I’m going to sit down, as my tailbone is somewhat bruised.” Pellegar backed away from Julian and took a seat on the room’s sofa. He stretched his legs out and laced his fingers across his chest. “I have no idea who you two miscreants are and it appears this is not a robbery…or, not exactly a robbery. You have come here to steal information, yes?”

  “I know it’s the house of an admiral in the Royal Navy,” said Julian. “I want the name.”

  “I want a large portion of weisslacker and a plate of wheat crackers to materialize before me, but one doesn’t always get what one wants. Now what are you going to do? Shoot us for a name?”

  Matthew’s gaze found the brown satchel that Pellegar had been carrying sitting on a low table nearer the harpsichord. He said, “Let’s take a look at this,” and walked the few paces to fetch it. The item was much heavier than expected when he picked it up. There were two metal snaps, both with small keyholes. “It’s locked,” he told Julian when the snaps would not budge.

  “Where’s the key?” Julian asked Pellegar, who had not moved an inch on the sofa but was still smiling blandly, as was Baron Brux.

  “I will tell you,” said Pellegar, “that you are playing with fire, and if you do not leave this room immediately I will make sure both of you are burnt to crisps.”

  “Oh, will you?” Julian walked purposefully forward and placed the pistol’s barrels against Pellegar’s mouth. The man did not shrink back, but continued to smile up at his interrogator. “I won’t shoot you,” Julian said, “but
if you don’t produce that key your teeth will be lying all over this floor and—alas—your beauty cream will no longer be of assistance.”

  Pellegar pulled his head back a few inches. “Er will den Schlussel zum Koffer,” he said to the baron. “Ich werde gehorchen. Mach dich bereit.” Brux gave a grunt and a nod.

  Pellegar stood up and Julian retreated two paces. “Easy, sir,” Pellegar said softly. “We wish no violence.”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Indeed.” Somehow, Matthew didn’t like the way that was said. He watched as the count reached behind his head with both hands and unhooked a clasp at the back of his neck. He offered to Julian a small gold chain draped around the fingers of his right hand, an equally small key dangling in the air. “My regards,” he said, his bruised mouth twisting.

  Julian reached out to take the key.

  Count Pellegar dropped it before Julian’s hand could get there.

  In the instant that Julian’s eyes left Pellegar’s face to follow the key down, the count exploded into action.

  His left hand clamped to Julian’s gun hand to twist the pistol aside, while the right hand made half-a-cup and slammed with terrific force into Julian’s chin. His tricorn went spinning off. At nearly the same time, Baron Brux picked up the bowl of fruit and flung it at Matthew, who suddenly found himself being assaulted by apples, clementines and parsnips to the head and shoulders; but right after them came Brux himself, who moved not like a drowsy joker but like a deadly juggernaut. Matthew realized his own gun was reduced to being a club, for he neither wished to murder anyone nor to fire a shot that would bring the management…but even as he prepared to bash Brux across the head with the implement the baron kicked up and out, the force of the violet-colored slipper knocked the pistol from Matthew’s hand, and then the small table Brux had picked up in his rush across the room crashed across Matthew’s right shoulder in a blast of breaking furniture. Stunned by this unexpected onslaught, Matthew fell to his knees.

  Equally stunned was Julian, who in the few seconds after the half cup of a hand had made the stars shoot fire in his brain had taken a blow to the center of the chest that robbed him of breath and a following strike to the left side of the neck that paralyzed his arm on that side. His pistol was lost. It dawned on him through his pulse of pain, as it did at the same time to Matthew, that the bizarre costumes of these two had disguised the fact that they were highly trained military fighters and possibly assassins in their own right.

  The whiffle dust had become a tornado of thorns. With brutal efficiency Count Pellegar drove a knee into Julian’s midsection and slung him around in a circle before crashing him over the nearest sidetable. By this time Matthew had already taken another glancing kick to the side that he feared had broken ribs, but he got an arm up to ward off the kick that would’ve caught him in the face. He was trying to stand up when Brux grasped the back of his neck and under an arm and threw him with surprising strength into the harpsichord, which collapsed underneath him with a musical groan and caterwaul of splintering spruce and snapping wires.

  Pellegar picked up Julian’s pistol, quickly examined it with true interest, and then walked across the room toward his fallen opponent as calmly as if strolling in the park on a summer’s morn. He kicked the shambles of the broken sidetable out of his path and leaned down to put the barrels against Julian’s head as Julian struggled to his knees.

  “I don’t think,” Pellegar said, “that anyone here will begrudge my killing of a common robber.”

  Baron Brux cried out in pain.

  The baron had been coming in to deliver another more deadly kick when Matthew had twisted around in the ruins of the harpsichord and found his hand closing over a wire broken loose from the soundboard. The thickness of it indicated a use for lower notes, but Matthew thought it would now serve a higher purpose. He lunged forward, whipped out with it and drew a crimson line across Brux’s pallid forehead.

  With the baron’s sharp cry, Pellegar’s attention ticked toward the source and Julian chopped the gun hand away and hit him in the right knee with everything he had. Pellegar staggered sideways, his small teeth clenched and red whorls coming up on his cheeks, but he still had hold of the gun. At once Julian was up, mindful that if he let his pain slow him he was dead, and smashed Pellegar in the jaw with his fist, following that with another blow to the temple. As Pellegar fell backward against the wall he swung out with the pistol to crack Julian’s ribs but Julian was already upon him and trapping the pistol with his weight.

  Brux was backing away from Matthew’s makeshift whip. He retreated until he stepped on the huge wig that had fallen with its wigstand to the floor; he picked up the wig and held it like a shield before him, and Matthew realized that damned pelt could stop a rapier and it could also smother a face beneath it. Brux came in again and Matthew saw his eyes were judging distances in preparation to throwing the wig at him and rushing in. Now Matthew backed away, judging his own distances. When he got where he needed to be he stopped, and that was when the baron came at him like a whirlwind.

  Matthew dropped the harpsichord wire, reached up with both hands to the full extension of his arms, grasped hold of the hanging tapestry and brought it down upon Brux’s head. The baron flailed blindly, Matthew stepped aside to let the man pass and slam against the wall behind him, and then Matthew saw an implement that could be put to good use. He picked up a broken leg of the harpsichord and clubbed Brux on the head with it before the baron could get free of his entanglement with medieval hunters and wolves.

  Julian and Pellegar were locked in combat with the pistol between them. They struggled in silence with deadly purpose. A hand with fingers outstretched to jab his eyes darted at Julian but he jerked his head to one side. Julian returned the compliment by twisting his body and slamming an elbow into Pellegar’s face, but the man was a tough nut. With that in mind Julian’s next move was to ram a knee upward as hard as he could into the count’s groin, and a second time when the first reward was only a grunt of pain and a muffled Prussian curse. On the second knee to the nutcase Pellegar’s knees began to sag. Julian wrenched the pistol free, swung it barrels-first into the side of the count’s head and saw the man’s inkwell eyes go blank, all the ferocity draining out. A second and third strike with the pistol to the brainpan sent Pellegar to his knees, but incredibly the man held onto consciousness and began to try to crawl for some kind of cover.

  Matthew had to hit Brux again with the harpsichord leg to put him down, and at last the baron lay still under the tapestry.

  Pellegar was crawling across the floor, making gasping noises. Still dazed by all this violence and with a pain in his side as if his ribs had been staved in, Matthew watched as Julian walked over to pick up the fallen wig. Something about Julian’s face had changed; it had gone gaunt, hollow-cheeked and severe, but there was no wildness in the eyes and that was what frightened Matthew the most. The bad man—one of Fell’s killers—was in the room with him, and from this point on it was all cold-hearted business.

  Julian kicked Pellegar in the side to throw the man over on his back. Then Julian straddled his chest, crushed the wig down upon the count’s head, and holding the wig firmly with one hand he began to beat the mound of Pellegar’s face with the butt of his pistol…once…twice…again…again…on and on as red bloomed up on the wig and Julian’s face gleamed with sweat.

  “Julian! Don’t!” Matthew called, his own voice a croak, but the bad man was beyond hearing.

  Pellegar’s legs still twitched on, and methodically Julian beat him to death with the pistol butt though it was hard to say if the man perished by beating or being smothered. When the legs stopped moving, Julian lifted the wig to look at the misshapen face, his own expression utterly impassive. Then he covered it over and beat the dead man some more, as if now content to hammer a spirit until it fled from the room to the better climate of Hell.

  At last Julian st
ood up, and as he approached Matthew the New York problem-solver shrank back from him because there was yet death on his face. Julian pulled the tapestry off the moaning Baron Brux and knelt down to give him the same treatment as the count had gotten, but he stopped and rubbed the tortured shoulder that did not want to lift any more heavy pistols.

  Julian looked into Matthew’s eyes and said, “Take out your dagger and kill him.”

  “I…can’t…murder anyone…”

  “Worthless,” said Julian. He wiped sweat from his forehead. “Then give me the dagger and I’ll kill him.”

  “Julian…no, I can’t—”

  “Oh, shit!” Julian answered in disgust. His eyes had found something he could handle. He reached into the rubble of the harpsichord and with a quick yank brought out a thinner wire suitable for a strangulation. Then he sat down behind the semi-conscious Brux, locked his legs around the man’s midsection and in so doing trapped Brux’s arms at his sides. He wrapped the wire around the white throat and began to pull the ends against the middle.

  Matthew had to turn away. He had witnessed violent death before, of course, and had looked such in the face many times, but cold-blooded murder was something else. Even his execution of Count Dahlgren had not been exactly murder—or so he wished to believe—because his cutting of a rope during a storm at sea was not necessarily the man’s death sentence, though it was hard to fathom that Dahlgren did not go down seven leagues to eternity. And Matthew would have even spared the life of Tyranthus Slaughter, if he’d had the choice…but this…this sickened him and sent a shudder up his bruised back as he heard the hideous noise of a windpipe being crushed and the heels of violet-colored slippers weakly beating the floorboards.