Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon

  He was pushed through the doorway along a stone-floored passageway, the ceiling barely above his head, and then into another small lantern-lit room where obviously the first constable and Nack had been kept, judging from the scatter of clothes on the floor. In this room he received an initial blow from the wooden club across the shoulderblades and a punch to the belly that made his knees sag, at which point the trio of toughs went about tearing the gloves, jacket, blouse, breeches, stockings and boots off him. He tried to fight once more, and then the club got him on the back of the head and that was all he knew until he felt his arms being pulled up nearly to the edge of having his shoulders dislocated from their joints.

  Now, hanging from the chains with his ankles locked into the irons, Matthew Corbett looked up toward the gallery and saw Julian sitting with Lioness on one side of him, Victor on the other and Cardinal Black behind him. The cardinal had a length of rope looped around Julian’s throat and had situated himself so that he might increase the pressure should Julian’s chin drop a fraction of an inch.

  “He’s come around!” Merda said. “Go to it, darling!”

  “I give the commands here, sir,” said Lash. The vice admiral leaned forward, his palms on his knees. “Well, Mr. Corbett! You shall be the last act of our entertainment for the evening. I’m sure the pleasure is all yours.”

  What use was there to struggle? The sweat was running down his face and burning his eyes. His backbone felt stretched into fiery pain. It occurred to him, oddly, that upon his death he would probably have gained two inches in height.

  Did he have a reply to this? Some sort of witticism that would delay the onslaught of those deadly blades? Something? Anything?

  No. He did not.

  Lash motioned to the musicians. The drumbeat began. The whistle started up, a different weird tune to escort Matthew to the grave.

  RakeHell Lizzie stood up, leaned over to touch the blades upon the earth so as to stretch her own muscles, and then she straightened up and advanced upon Matthew like a slinky cat.

  “Take him!” Montague called. “Carve his guts out!”

  But Lizzie was in no hurry. It was her performance—her last dance of the evening, as it were—and she was going to take her time. Which Matthew realized was to heighten his suffering, because the end would be prolonged. As the girl circled him, Matthew cast another look at Julian, who appeared nearly strangled by Black’s rope. The bad man could do nothing but sit and watch with the others.

  Hopeless, Matthew thought, and this time he knew it was true. But could he fight her off when she jumped at him? Could he get his teeth on her—

  She jumped.

  And she was fast. She wrapped herself around him, and though she was lithe and small-boned her weight further bowed his back and almost brought a cry of renewed pain from him. Before it escaped he caught it in his throat. She stared into his eyes and lifted her eyebrows as if expecting—or asking—him to beg for mercy. Matthew was determined not to do so, for what would it accomplish? He was not afraid of death—not very much, at least—but his impulse at the moment was to weep…not for himself, but for the waste of the beautiful Berry Grigsby who was now doomed to a further and irreversible descent.

  Lizzie’s claws were at his sides. They picked and probed at his ribs, but they did not yet draw blood. Matthew closed his eyes. He could shake his body from side to side, but this would simply increase his pain and it certainly would not shake her off. He felt her breath on his face…and then her tongue as she licked his cheeks.

  Up she climbed upon him, licking at his arms and then at his hands trapped in the manacles. It was just a matter of time now before the claws truly went to work, and what good had it been to try to save the life of Dippen Nack? The good man had made a blunder and the bad man had been right. It was just a matter of time, as the drum beat on and the whistle shrilled.

  She came back down. Her claws clamped to his sides, but again not yet drawing blood.

  He braced for the hideous pain.

  But suddenly he felt the pressure of the blades ease.

  He opened his eyes.

  RakeHell Lizzie was still staring into his face, but something about her had changed. He didn’t know what it was, or why, but something…her face…a softening…a departure of the desire to murder, just like that in an instant.

  Abruptly, the nude girl climbed off him and left him swinging in his chains.

  “Samson,” she said up to the gallery, “pardon me, but I believe you’re making a business mistake.” The music ceased, on a note of bewilderment.

  “Oh? What mistake would that be?”

  Lizzie walked away from Matthew, through the blood and insides of two butchered men, and looked up at Lash with her gloved claws crossed in front of her chest. “They came here to get the book back for Professor Fell. The professor must want it very badly. Why not give him a chance to make a bid?”

  “What?” Victor had nearly screamed it. “That’s outrageous!”

  “I protest against this delay!” Krakowski said, standing up. “Kill the man and let us continue our own business!”

  “Damn right!” Merda chimed in. He was on his feet as well, but it hardly made a difference. “Lash, you’ve got all the bids you’re getting!”

  Lash was a moment in replying, but his reply was to Lizzie. “Go on,” he said.

  “You have what you’ve wanted,” she answered, referring obviously to the airship plans. “But…there’s a second book he wants.” She pointed with the blade of an index finger toward Cardinal Black. The way she’d spoken the word ‘he’ was with a hint of a foul taste in her mouth. “Why not keep one of them here and send the other back to the professor? Let Fell offer a bid, and make him include that second book in the offering.”

  “This is not acceptable!” growled Lioness, who also stood up. “I came here and presented my bid in good faith! You cannot change the rules now!”

  “I agree!” Montague’s sallow face was pinched with a scowl. “The rules for this auction were set up long ago!”

  “One moment.” Cardinal Black released the rope from Julian’s throat. He wore a ghastly smile. “This proposal has merit.”

  “No no no!” Victor shrieked. “I’ll not stand for it! Rules are rules!”

  Lash regarded the others, then stroked his beard as he gazed upon RakeHell Lizzie, who seemed to be at least halfway returned to her less violent identity of Elizabeth Mulloy. “My house,” he said. “My rules.”

  “Well spoken, sir!” said Julian as he rubbed his throat.

  “Shut,” Lash told him. He returned his attention to Elizabeth again as Merda muttered curses and Victor let out an unintelligible holler. “And which one do you propose to send, dear? I would think it would be Corbett, as from what I know about Devane, we would never see him again.”

  “Yes. It would be Corbett.”

  “Insanity!” Montague raged. “You’ve lost your senses, Lash!”

  “It’s an outrage!” Lioness seethed. “I protest this act of betrayal!”

  “Everyone shut.” Lash stood up. He put his hands on his hips and took a stance as if he were captain of the ship and the rest were unruly crewmen at the point of mutiny, which Matthew even through the pain of his bowed back thought was probably an accurate assessment. “Listen to me and hear me well!” Lash’s voice was not a bellow, but it had strength enough to drown out the mutterings, ragings, seethings and curses. “I say it will take Corbett one week to go to Fell, secure a bid and return. At least, that’s what I’ll give him. I’ll also supply one of my private coaches, two drivers and a bodyguard. He can start out before dawn. The rest of you can make your decisions now: if you want your offerings returned and to be sent on your way, you are welcome. As Elizabeth said, I have what I wanted from the Prussians. Therefore the next highest bid will be the winner. I am still contemplating such. If Fell makes a bi
d I feel to be—”

  “This is damned treachery!” Victor shouted. “If you’re intent on creating enemies, you’ve made a hell of a start! I’ll make sure my guild exacts full payment!”

  “—feel to be inadequate,” Lash went on, “it shall be rejected. Even with the object of the cardinal’s desire.” He walked toward Victor amid the stone benches. When he reached the man he produced a small pistol from within his medalled naval jacket and cocked it.

  He levelled it at Victor’s head. Victor’s eyes widened, but he had no time for any further reaction.

  The shot blew a sizeable chunk from Victor’s skull. Blood spattered into Julian’s face. In an instant the body had slithered down as if the bones were turned to jelly.

  “One less enemy, it appears,” said Samson Lash after the echoes of the gun’s roar had faded. He waved the pistol’s barrel beneath his nose to smell the pungent perfume of its blue smoke. “I dislike threats. Now it also appears our friend Victor is no longer a valid participant in this auction. Any further questions or comments?”

  “I need a napkin,” said Julian, his voice unusually shaky.

  “Are you planning to murder us all?” Lioness’s gaze was fixed on the pistol. “If you are, I will say—no threat implied, sir—that our affiliations might wish to remedy their losses.”

  “Murder you all? Of course not! I see that the rest of you are hard-nosed people of business who understand my position. And…that you understand your own positions…no threat implied, madam. Besides, Victor offered a terrible bid. I nearly dispatched him right there in my study.”

  The childlike voice of Miles Merda piped up. “I don’t give a fuck. My bid’ll stand up against anybody’s.”

  “Let me understand this,” said Krakowski, whose head might have still been befuddled. “You are asking us to wait in London for one week until this boy comes back? And not until then will you have decided who has won the book? But…sir…what if the boy does not come back? What if when you let him go, he is just simply gone?”

  Lash spent a moment holstering his pistol underneath his jacket. “Simple answers,” he replied. “If Corbett does not return, the book goes to the winner here. Mr. Devane becomes another dance partner in this arena, I will give you all a feast by which to remember this event, I will see you off at your various sailings and all will be well with the world.”

  “I do not like it,” said Lioness. She lifted a hand that was almost as large as Lash’s and showed her palm in order to prevent the reappearance of a pistol. “But I do not fail to appreciate the fact that you wish as much gain as possible for your possession. Therefore I protest only in spirit.”

  “My spirit thanks yours,” Lash said, with a slight bow. He gazed around at the others. “Any more objections?”

  “I have a comment,” came Matthew’s tight voice. He felt as if either his shoulders were about to pop free or his back about to break and possibly both at the same time. The smell of the blood and intestines around his leg irons was a sickening miasma. “If I’m to take a trip,” he went on, painfully, “my first step should be getting down from here.”

  “Oh!” Lash pretended to give a startle as if he’d completely forgotten. “Pardon me, young man! Where are my manners? Get him down!” he instructed the guards. “Corbett, we’ll bring you a washbucket and a glass of the fine Armagnac to calm your nerves. You may rest and dress at your leisure. That suit you?”

  “Of course,” said one gentleman to another, though the naked former was near passing out and could not bear to set eyes upon the hollowed-out corpses that lay in the dirt on either side of him. The guards unlocked the leg irons and the manacles, at which moment Matthew found he was hardly capable of walking and sank down into the bloody mess, where he gave a bone-wrenching shudder and from his stomach boiled up most of the night’s dinner, in particular the steamed mussels and the fried cauliflower. He was hauled up by the men and guided toward the pit’s door, whereupon in his state of delirium he stepped on the face of Dippen Nack and again fell, was again sick, and heard Lash laughing up in the gallery as if watching a comedy of Shakespearean proportions.

  Thus, then, went Matthew through the door and again into the bare room where the clothing of a Prussian baron and two dead men lay scattered on the stones. A moment after the door was closed and he heard a key turn in its lock, he sank down to the floor. Under the lantern that hung from a hook at the ceiling, Matthew brought his knees up to his chin and wept in the grief of his own personal tragedy.

  twenty-one.

  Had it been an hour before Matthew heard the key unlocking the little room’s door for a second time? The first had been when one of the guards had brought a bucket of water and a cloth for him to wash the gore of dead men off himself. But time had lost its bearings. He recalled that Victor had requested a coach return at midnight to pick him up, but was it now past that haunted hour? It seemed to Matthew that every hour would now be haunted, for Berry was surely doomed. Professor Fell was not going to give up even one copy of The Lesser Key of Solomon, and certainly not to Samson Lash nor to Cardinal Black. Matthew’s bargain with Fell had been to locate Brazio Valeriani in exchange for the chance to get the book back and find a chemist to save Berry. Just the chance, not the certainty. So Fell’s part of the bargain was done, and when Matthew returned to Y Beautiful Bedd the coach’s driver and the bodyguard would likely be pulled apart by red-hot pincers and the whole episode of the potions book put aside in favor of the impending voyage to Italy, with Berry’s sanity an unfortunate liability in this game of thugs.

  The door was opening.

  Matthew had no further reason to fear whoever was coming in. He had washed himself as best he could, leaving the bucket’s water stained red, and then dressed again in the atrocious garments of a clownish baron. At least now he had no need to wear white facepaint and balance a weighty wig on his noggin. He stood back from the door as Elizabeth Mulloy entered, bearing a silver tray on which rested a glass of amber liquid: the French Armagnac that had been promised to him.

  She had returned to her civilized persona. She was freshly scrubbed, fragrant of a cinnamon-based perfume, and wore a sea-green gown decorated with pink curlicues around the neckline. Her arms were adorned by sea-green gloves up to the elbows.

  In spite of himself, Matthew found himself continuing to retreat from her. There was not a stick of furniture in the chamber, so nothing to use as defense if the tiger jumped out of the cat once again.

  “Your Armagnac.” She held the tray out until he took the glass. “How are you?” she asked.

  “A good question. I’m not quite sure.” Matthew lifted the glass up toward the lantern light to look for anything suspicious that might be floating in it.

  “It’s not drugged,” Elizabeth said. “He doesn’t want you sluggish.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Just past two o’clock. And snowing heavily outside again. The others are in the parlor. Samson has said he’ll feed them a good breakfast at dawn for their troubles. Anyway, some of them are playing at cards.”

  “A delightful picture,” said Matthew with a sour smile. “What about Julian?”

  “He was taken upstairs. I believe they’ve given him the room next to the doctor. Locked him in, of course.”

  “Of course,” Matthew said. He frowned. “So…why are you here? Why didn’t one of the guards bring that?”

  “I wished to speak with you.” She held the tray down at her side. Matthew tensed, thinking she could probably cut his throat with its narrow edge if she liked.

  “Well, I do like speaking better than killing.” He took a sip of the Armagnac, found it good and strong and just what he needed for a shot of extra courage. Still, he kept retreating until his back was nearly wedged into a corner. “Speak,” he said. “I seem to be at your disposal.” Instantly he thought that was a very poor choice of words.

 
She nodded, and for a silent moment she just stared at him with the soft brown eyes that had so recently appeared intoxicated with murder.

  “You,” she said, “are a total fool.”

  “I bow before your appraisal.”

  “I’m serious. Do you know how many men I have killed—slaughtered—in that pit?”

  “I don’t wish to know, thank you.”

  “You would have been number eight.”

  “Must be my lucky number,” Matthew said. His next drink almost sapped the glass. He realized that if he pushed himself into the corner any further he would be stuck until the New Year.

  “It comes upon me,” she continued. “I have to have it, as other woman must have…well, whatever they must have. I live in a different world, Matthew. My world…few would understand it.”

  “Fine. As you say.” He wondered about the use of his name. She seemed awfully familiar to have been gutting two men and then climbing up his own body not too long ago.

  “I was jarred out of my state tonight,” Elizabeth said. “My state, being my condition. I was jarred out of it, and I had to think of something to save your life…from myself…and from Samson and that thing who calls himself a cardinal.”

  Matthew was taken aback. All he could think to say was, “Huh?”

  She came toward him. Did he cringe? Probably so, but she came on anyway. And when she was almost in his face she peeled off the glove from her right hand and showed him the tattoo of a stylized eye within a black circle embossed between the thumb and the forefinger.

  “When I climbed up on you,” Elizabeth said, “I saw the tattoo on your hand. You’re a Black-Eyed Broodie, the same as me.”

  If God had not fixed Matthew’s teeth to the gums they might have fallen from his mouth at that instant, or his mouth opened in amazement so wide an army of flies might have gotten in, set up camp, and buzzed happily for the space of time it took Matthew to recover from this shock.