Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon

  The woman writhed upon the constable in a parody of sexual intimacy. The claws touched here and there, but lightly, drawing not blood but cries from the helpless man. Matthew thought it could be upon him to save the constable’s life…but how? It was impossible! No, he had no recourse but to sit and watch, and squirm on the stone bench as the others seemed to be leaning forward for better views into the pit.

  And as he was thinking this, suddenly RakeHell Lizzie lived up to her name by sinking her claws into the man’s sides. While he screamed and thrashed to no avail, she drew the deadly gloves up along the bleeding sides to his armpits…and then she did it again, slowly and methodically. The claws left his sides and went to his face. In a matter of two seconds they had torn away chunks of flesh and the crimson blood streamed down in rivulets. She pressed herself against the bleeding body, her legs locked around his hips, and to the beat of the drum and the whistle’s eerie tune she began to shred the flesh from his back with long, slow strokes. Through his pain the constable tried to bite at her face but she was too quick for him; her head jerked from side to side, and Matthew saw the terrible smile on her twisted mouth.

  Now the claws really went to work. RakeHell Lizzie was so fast her movements were nearly a blur. Matthew realized how she had gained the musculature of her upper arms; it was hard work to butcher a human being, but she made it look easy. Before Matthew’s eyes the constable was being shredded to pieces, and though the man’s tortured body violently shook the chains he could not shake her off. His ragged screams filled the chamber but there was no mercy for him. He was doomed. Blood had pooled on the dirt below him and he was only a few minutes from being a ghost.

  A few minutes? No, not that long.

  The claws crisscrossed his chest, piercing deep. A mist of blood swirled in the air. The smell of it made Matthew’s temples pound and his stomach writhe. He must’ve shuddered as if he were fighting off sickness, because suddenly Julian’s hand was gripping his shoulder like a clasp of iron, and when he looked into the bad man’s painted face Julian mouthed a single word: No.

  RakeHell Lizzie dropped off the dying man. She stepped back a few paces to admire her work. Her head cocked to one side, deliberating.

  And then, like an artist completing her work, she darted back in. With a flurry of strikes that threw bits of flesh and streamers of blood into the air she opened up his stomach. All the blue-tinged, ruddy and pink-edged insides that the body concealed slid out from the gaping wounds, and at this someone—Montague?—gave a shout of appreciation for the kind of art he obviously admired. The constable’s hollowed-out body continued to thrash and writhe, but the mouth was open and the eyes stared blankly in the fish-belly-white face, and Matthew knew it was just the muscles contracting at the last moment of life. He looked down at his boots, his own face flaming red with shame behind the white powder of his masquerade.

  “Bravo!” said Merda, who accompanied his statement with hand-clapping. He was addressing Lash. “I admire your definition of small men, sir!”

  That brought a laugh even from Lioness. The music had stopped. Matthew didn’t wish to watch, but he could hear the chains rattle as the body was being taken down by the three men who had trussed the constable up.

  “Your Excellency!” It was Lash speaking. “Is the baron not one to enjoy such entertainment?”

  Matthew looked toward the vice admiral and saw that the Owl had leaned over to whisper in the man’s ear; he made a presumption that ‘the baron’ had been noticed averting his eyes from the bloodshed.

  “Not at all!” Julian replied, with the nudge of an elbow into Matthew’s ribs. “He, like I, am in amazement at the lady’s prowess. It seems to both of us that she should be a member of the profession. As long as she stays out of Prussia, I might add.”

  Lash shouted a laugh at what was to Matthew an odious witticism, but neither the Owl nor Cardinal Black allowed a smile to cross their faces. Both of them were staring daggers at Matthew, who gave them a nod of the head and then forced himself to gaze upon the result of the carnage below.

  The dead constable had been dragged aside and left lying. The men who had taken him down were gone, the pit’s door still open. RakeHell Lizzie was stretched out on her back in the dirt, her eyes closed in whatever state of repose she could find…which meant to Matthew that this spectacle was not yet ended.

  Suddenly another naked man was dragged in through the doorway, struggling against his three escorts but obviously weakened from having been beaten about the face.

  It took Matthew a few seconds to recognize who it was. When he did he gave a gasp, his body involuntarily shuddered and his first impulse was to leap to his feet, but again Julian’s iron hand gripped Matthew’s arm to hold him in his place.

  “Steady,” Julian whispered. And then: “You know this man?”

  “Ja,” Matthew answered, dazed. He cast off the pretend language. “Yes.”

  Down in the blood-stained pit, the men were chaining up Dippen Nack.

  “God save me, I never did a thing again’ ya,” Nack was blubbering through a mouth swollen by the impact of hard knuckles. The ruddy-faced little bully’s right eye was completely closed and a goose-egg of a knot adorned his forehead. “Never a thing, I swear to Christ!” he said, and when he broke into a sob the mucus ran from his nostrils down onto his white and hairless chest.

  “Make him beg!” Victor called out. “That first one went too easily!”

  With a pitiful cry Nack broke loose from his captors, but one leg had already been trapped by a manacle and so all he did was fall into the blood and guts left by the previous victim. He was hauled up, stretched out and his wrists cuffed to the chains above him, then the other leg was locked in the second iron and he was shackled and ready for the kiss of Lizzie’s blades. The guards once more took up positions of watch within the pit.

  Matthew again gave a shudder. He had never been able to stand Dippen Nack—who could, but his mate in stupidity Gardner Lillehorne?—and yet…God, this was a terrible way for any man to leave the earth, sobbing and trussed up for the slaughter, soon to have his insides sliding down his legs like so much wet garbage. Matthew put a hand to his forehead, both to think and to determine what he should do, for it seemed to him that sitting watching these murders along with the others made him too much of a bad man for his comfort.

  “Listen to me,” whispered Julian, leaning close to Matthew’s ear. “I know you by now and I know what you’re thinking. Firstly, drop your hand before you rub the powder off that scar. Secondly, you can do nothing. Hear me? Nothing. Nod your head that you understand.”

  Matthew dropped his hand, but he did not nod. He had already scarred himself with a deeper mark by sitting still while that first innocent man was murdered…now, to sit still a second time knowing what was to happen? Dippen Nack or not…it was a mark of cardinal black against his soul.

  The drumbeat started up again, slow and methodical. The penny whistle began a different tune, but still eerie. Matthew saw RakeHell Lizzie turn over on her belly and begin to crawl toward Dippen Nack, and Nack shook his chains and screamed like a little child, his pudgy nude body ripe for the slashing.

  “Mark this,” Julian whispered, but now with grit in his voice. “You say anything, and we are dead. Your ladyfriend is lost forever. So whatever you’re thinking in that primrose garden of your mind, come back to reality. Hear me?”

  RakeHell Lizzie was up on one knee. She held her deadly gloves out toward Nack and clacked the blades together…clack clack…clack clack…

  “Swing on him!” Merda called. “Go to it, dearie!”

  She stood up from the bloodied dirt. She circled him, as she had the first man, as Nack whimpered and fought weakly against chains that would not be broken.

  Then she leapt upon him.

  Once more she climbed up his body and then shimmied back down to peer into his swollen face. Her leg
s locked around his hips. The claws caressed his cheeks, and this time she kissed his forehead as a prelude to murder.

  Matthew felt near passing out. The chamber swung about him. Merda clapped his hands in time with the drumbeat and Krakowski followed suit. Matthew looked toward Lash, Cardinal Black and the Owl, who were all leaning slightly forward in anticipation.

  Nack let out a scream, because one of Lizzie’s claws was travelling down his chest—slowly, slowly—drawing lines of blood in their wake.

  “Sit still,” Julian hissed.

  Sweat was on Matthew’s face. Bad man or good man? To speak out…what good would it do? It was a hopeless situation…to speak out…hopeless…Nack was doomed…to speak out…he and Julian would also be doomed…and Berry lost in the grip of her insanity…hopeless…

  “Please…please…I ain’t done nothin’!” Nack begged, and once more he screamed as RakeHell Lizzie’s other glove travelled down his chest and more lines of blood bloomed.

  Hopeless.

  But when had that ever stopped him from doing what he knew to be right?

  The claws made circles over Nack’s belly. In a matter of seconds Nack—for all his boasts and bullying and prideful strutting—would be on his way to becoming a sack of dead meat.

  No, Matthew thought.

  He stood up, and as he did Julian grabbed at him but he shook the hand off.

  “Stop this!” Matthew said.

  The drumbeat and the whistling abruptly halted. All eyes—even those of RakeHell Lizzie—turned upon him.

  “Oh dear God,” Julian muttered, and lowered his head.

  “My name is Matthew Corbett,” was the next thing from Matthew’s mouth, and it seemed extraordinarily loud in the chamber, echoing around the walls. Matthew had an instant of thinking himself to be utterly insane, but he steeled himself and plowed onward. “I am a member of the Herrald Agency,” he decided to say. “Right now this house is surrounded by armed men. It is useless to continue this…if I and the man before you are not allowed to leave—with the book of potions in hand—they will storm this house and—”

  Cardinal Black was on his feet. He came toward Matthew like a walking storm.

  Julian stood up. “This man killed Baron Brux and took his place! He forced me into this!” Even as practised an actor as he was, the desperation in his voice was evident. “But what he says is true! The house is surrounded!”

  As Cardinal Black reached Matthew, Lash and the Owl were on their feet. Lash struck the Owl with an open palm on the shoulder and the white-suited security man hurriedly left the chamber through its archway to presumably check outside. Black stood before Matthew, yanked off the high wig, spat into his hand and rubbed the spittle across Matthew’s forehead, wiping off the powder and revealing the scar he had seen in their encounter at Y Beautiful Bedd.

  Cardinal Black smiled. On that weirdly elongated face it was more of a grotesque leer.

  “Indeed it is Mister Corbett,” Black said. His eyes went to Julian. “And here we must have…Julian Devane, I presume, with a shaved head? Making inquiries of Geoffrey Britt…we knew you were in London, nosing around. And here you are, the both of you.”

  Trapped in the spider’s web, he might have said.

  Matthew saw that the others were all now on their feet, some watching in bemusement and others more concerned according to their temperaments. Lash settled himself back down upon the stone bench. “I’ll be damned!” he said, with a whoosh of breath that could’ve filled a mainsail. “You two have got some cannonballs in your breeches! Look at them, friends! Come here to join our auction under false pretenses! What happened to the real Prussians?”

  Julian lifted his chin. He gave a smile that said he was not dead yet, and far from it. “We carved them up and threw them in the gutter with the other pieces of shit. By the way, they had execrable taste in clothing.”

  “Matthew?” A weak voice called. “Matthew…where are you?”

  It was Nack, calling from the lip of the grave with RakeHell Lizzie still entwined about his body.

  “Here,” Matthew answered, though he still stared into the merciless eyes of Cardinal Black. “We’re going to get out of this house, lest it be attacked by the thirty men out—”

  “Only thirty men?” Lash interrupted. He gave a short, harsh laugh. “Why not fifty? Hellfire, why not one hundred?”

  “He’s lying, isn’t he?” Montague asked, with a measure of fear. “I didn’t bargain for this!”

  Lioness reached out a long arm, roughly took hold of Matthew’s chin and turned his face toward hers. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air. “He’s lying,” she said. “I can smell it.”

  “Really?” Matthew had a fire in his belly now, and his painted eyebrows went up. “Why would we be so stupid as to come here alone?”

  Beside him, Julian gave a cough and sounded for a moment as if he were choking.

  “They have come—alone—to steal the book back for Professor Fell,” said Black, speaking to all the group but to Lash in particular. “Tell me this, Devane: what happened to Mother Deare?”

  “Dearly departed,” was the reply.

  “I thought as much when she didn’t meet me as planned. So Fell still has the book I wanted…which is a great shame and angers myself and my master.” A thin finger traced a Devil’s Cross on Julian’s forehead. “Soon to be departed, yourself.”

  “Well,” said Julian with a shrug, “every dog needs a master…and I had a looksee in that tower at your work on a small boy. I’d like to have five minutes in a room with you to show you how a big boy fights.”

  Lash laughed again, the booming voice circling the chamber. “Listen to him go on! But you won’t get your five minutes, sir. In fact, your clock is fast ticking down.”

  “Matthew!” Nack called. “Please…I’m beggin’…get me out of this.”

  “Kill ’em all and be done with it!” said Merda. “I’m wanting some desert to go with my dinner.”

  “Yes,” Victor added, as he sat back down on his bench. “Finish them all.”

  “Patience,” Lash said. “We will wait for the Owl to return. Hold your place, Lizzie, I doubt your dance is done for the night.”

  Julian sat down and stretched his legs out over the bench below him. “You do understand, Lash, that Matthew and I brought you what you wanted. Doesn’t that mean we win the auction?”

  “You were not invited,” said the vice admiral. “You brought what the Prussians offered. I’ll take it, with my thanks. Otherwise, I will continue to consider who wins the book and the services of Doctor Firebaugh. The end,” he added.

  “Of both of you,” said Black.

  In the space of a few minutes, as Nack continued to struggle weakly and Lizzie clutched to him like a leech, the Owl returned. “I sent some men out into the park,” he told Lash, while his head slowly turned nearly over his shoulder to take in Matthew and Julian. “The first report is that there are no footprints in the snow. If there’s a raiding party out there, they are hiding up in the trees.”

  “An invisible raiding party, I presume,” said Lash. He stroked his flame-streaked beard. “So much for a delay to our entertainment. Musicians, begin. Lizzie, continue.”

  As the drum and the whistle started up once more, RakeHell Lizzie’s claws went to work again on Nack’s chest. Nack screamed out Matthew’s name…once more…and a third time, his voice rising to heights of utter terror…until the blades slashed his throat and the blood filled his mouth and spilled over in a torrent.

  Matthew looked down. Cardinal Black seized his jaw and twisted his head toward the unholy spectacle of Dippen Nack’s body being opened by the gore-clotted blades.

  At last, as Nack’s insides tumbled down from the steaming cavity to the dirt, the bloodied RakeHell Lizzie fell off him and sat on her knees a distance away, her head bent forward and sweat
shining on her back. Nack was already dead, but his body trembled on in spasms of muscle making the chains rattle their own weird tune. To add to the horror, Matthew realized the final sound from Nack’s mouth was the cry of his name, begging for help that would not be given.

  “Well done,” said Lash. He motioned for the musicians to stop and at the final note he led the applause. RakeHell Lizzie remained on her knees, obviously winded by her efforts. “Dear?” he asked. “Are you able to dance with two more?”

  She breathed in and out a few times, and then she answered, “One.”

  “Good enough,” Lash agreed. Again he stroked his beard as he regarded the false Prussians. “All right,” he said, coming to a decision. “Let us prepare Mr. Corbett.”

  twenty.

  Matthew regained consciousness as his arms were being stretched above him and secured by the wrist manacles. The pit spun about him, his eyes were unfocused and his brain dazed by the blow that had been given to him on the back of the head, but even so he realized the three men—whether the Owl’s security men or Lash’s attendants, what did it matter?—had not yet trapped his ankles in the irons, and so he fought.

  It was a losing proposition. One of the men hit him in the ribcage with the same short wooden club that had previously clouted his head, the pain blew the air from Matthew’s lungs and the next blow from a fist to the side of his jaw rocked his head and sent him once more into a haze. He felt the irons clamp around his ankles. His spine was stretched by the tension of the chains above, and so his naked body was bowed slightly forward as had been the other two men who were torn apart this night.

  “Wait a moment until he recovers.” It was Lash’s voice, seemingly speaking from a great distance. “We want him fresh.” That brought a spate of sadistic laughter from the assembled killers, and in his state of disrepair Matthew thought he had reached the position of being a low-hanging apple on a tree, ready to be turned into pulp.

  He had been taken from the gallery by the three men—Owl’s or Lash’s, whomever—and marched down a set of stone steps, then across the bloody pit where RakeHell Lizzie sat on her haunches watching him, her taut nude body gleaming with gore and the sweat of her exertions.