“Huh?” Hudson’s ears had perked up. “What’s this about?”
“Oh, this should be interesting!” said Julian, with a pained grin. “Professor, my bottom half forbids it but my top half demands that I sit down.” Without waiting for permission he sank into the second leather chair, which was the nearer.
Matthew walked to the bookshelves and began searching. Where was it? Either his vision was impaired, or—
“I believe you’re looking for this.” Fell opened the middle drawer of his desk and brought out the copy of The Lesser Key of Solomon. “Take it, Hudson. Page through it, while Matthew explains the reason you are still among the living.”
Hudson took the book and opened it. “What the hell…?” he said almost at once.
“The professor—who I think at one time in his life was sane—is searching for a mirror that he believes can raise a demon from the underworld,” Matthew said, coming back to the center of the room. “Cardinal Black was after that book as well, since the professor seems to have bought up every existing copy. It’s a catalogue of…well, you can see for yourself. The professor—correct me if I’m wrong—has yet to decide on which denizen of the depths he will—”
And then Matthew stopped, because he had a revelation.
The jars of marine specimens. The etchings of the frightful monsters of the sea on the walls. The huge and deadly octopus that had eaten the head of Jonathan Gentry. The professor’s interest in biologics and especially marine life.
All those creatures, brought up from the depths. And in that book of demons, the descriptions of creatures even more bizarre, and dwelling at deeper depths. Matthew remembered Fell saying he had an interest in ‘the creature from another world’.
“My God,” said Matthew. “You’re a fisherman. And now…you want to catch the most bizarre and deadliest creature you can bring up. Is that what it is? Just to see what you can land, using that mirror as a hook?”
Fell smiled ever so slightly. “I’ve never thought of it in that way. But it does make sense.”
“It is insane!” Matthew had nearly shouted it. “The mirror does not exist! Even if there is a mirror that Valeriani created…it’s just a mirror, and that’s all! It’s no damned passageway from Hell!”
The professor’s expression returned to solemnity. “And you are absolutely and positively certain of that? So certain that you would defy the belief of centuries that there does exist the realm of Hades? You would defy the Holy Bible itself? You would attest that the descriptions of the seventy-two demons in that book amount to simple folly? Or someone’s madness?”
“Someone’s bad oyster, most likely,” said Hudson as he continued to turn through the book.
“I’m not going to argue theology with you,” Matthew replied. “I’m saying the idea of a magic mirror that can call up a demon to do the bidding of a human being is insane.”
“Your opinion. My opinion is that where there is smoke there is usually fire, and where there are nets thrown down there are usually fish. Or, in this case…these bizarre—and in some ways quite beautiful—creatures of the depths. Now what has saved your life, Hudson, is the fact that in exchange for letting Matthew go with Julian to retrieve the book of potions he has agreed—agreed, I said—to go to Italy and find a man named Brazio Valeriani, whose father Ciro created the mirror. If at all possible, the mirror can be found as well if it still exists. And after thinking this through I have decided that not only is Matthew going to Italy to find Valeriani, but I am going with him.”
“What?” Matthew asked. “I thought you’d be sending some of your men with me!”
“Those as well. But I wish to be present when the objects of our search are found.”
“Damn, what a mug on this one!” Hudson said as he appraised one of the more vicious gentlemen of Hell. He closed the book and returned it to Fell’s desktop. “I tend to agree with Matthew about this, but the sun of Italy will be a welcome pleasure.”
“Ha!” said the professor. “You’re going back to New York with Miss Grigsby. I mean to say…when she is able.”
“Wrong.” Hudson put his hands on the edge of Fell’s desk and pushed his face toward the professor. His eyes darkened. In an instant he became a fearsome ogre. “I was on fucking pins-and-needles waiting for Matthew to come back. Thinking every day and every night he’d been killed. Couldn’t sleep, had to drink myself into a stupor. And thinking about Berry over there in that house being turned into the Nashes’ pretend daughter, and unable to do a thing about it. Maybe everyone has a different opinion of what Hell is, sir, but I can tell you that for me, Hell is having to sit on my hands while people I care about are out there at risk. So…you’d better load up the muskets, sharpen the swords, call in the sharks or whatever else you do to kill people around here, because you’ll have to kill me to keep me from going with Matthew on this…venture,” he said, finishing with a slur of sarcasm.
The professor stared into Hudson’s eyes. For a few seconds Matthew thought they would come to blows right then and there. At last Fell broke the impasse and looked over at Julian.
“Not me!” Julian said, lifting his hands. “I’m not going to any damned Italy, no matter what you say!”
Professor Fell seemed to wilt in his chair. In a matter of seconds he was transformed from the master of his world to a frail old man in a crimson cap and robe that screamed too loudly of wealth and importance. He looked to Matthew as if he needed to take out his teeth and call for a hot toddy.
“I’m going,” said Hudson, taking advantage of the obviously weakened moment. “That’s the end of it.”
Fell stared at his hands. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and in all honesty very weary. “All of you, get out. Go to the tavern and the hospital. Or do as you wish. Matthew, do you want to go see her?”
“I advised against it until he’d gotten some rest,” said Hudson.
“Yes. I see. All right, Matthew. Tomorrow morning. I’ll have Firebaugh meet you there, say around nine o’clock. You’re still in the house on Lionfish Street. Whatever you need, ask at the tavern.” Fell waved a hand for them to go. Julian stood from the chair with an arm up from Matthew. Before they reached the stairs, Fell said, “I will have you know that I believed in both of you, Matthew and Julian. I think you have done the impossible…but I believed in both of you. Good work.”
They descended the stairs and left the house.
On the walk along Conger Street to the square, Matthew wondered why it was that he could feel a twinge of pity for an old man who had committed so many murders and evils, but who was in essence trapped in the creature of his own construction and had to play the part out to its bitter end.
thirty-five.
It was as cruel and heartbreaking a sight as Hudson had warned it was going to be.
Frederick Nash, the appointed mayor of Fell’s village, sat in a chair in the front room, watching the procedure in stony silence. His wife Pamela would not deign to enter the room, but stayed in her bed in the back. Matthew sat watching Lazarus Firebaugh as he perched on a stool before the shell of Berry Grigsby, she seated upon the flower-printed sofa splashed with morning sunlight that streamed through a window, and conducted his examination.
Matthew felt tears burning at his eyes. He had had a good sleep, had enjoyed a hot bath, had shaved and dressed in clean clothes and a frayed but serviceable gray jacket—likely also from one of the guards killed in Black’s raid—and met Firebaugh at the Nashes’ door precisely at nine o’clock. Matthew’s knock at the door had had to be delivered thrice and with increasing strength, for when Nash had peered out the window and retreated Matthew figured that Pamela in her own depths of madness had begged him not to give up their daughter Mary Lynn to the possibility that she would be—as their real daughter had been—taken away from them.
But the door had been opened, Nash had allowed them in without a
word, and Matthew had said in a voice that trembled more than he would’ve liked, “Bring her out.”
The young woman who sat on the sofa amid the printed flowers was a long way from the one who had walked amid the vibrant gardens of New York. Her face was pale white and reddened with garish rouge, all the freckles and natural beauty of her skin powdered over, her copper-colored hair with its healthy hints of red covered with a brown wig of curly ringlets and childish ribbons that this morning was slightly askew and all the more false in its tilted inclination, her eyes dead…dead…deader than dead…sunken down into purple hollows, her body squeezed into a violet-hued gown with an explosion along her throat of once-pink and white ruffles that were themselves tainted with the gray of age, all wrong…all so terribly wrong.
And there was an odor from her. A scent of what Matthew could only describe as rot. Not overtly so, but more like an apple that has been cut open and left to shrivel in an unbearable sun.
Her entire body seemed to Matthew to have shrunken, to have withered, as if the Nashes in their will to fit Berry into the clothes and identity of their deceased daughter had actually done a witchcraft on her, reshaping her to suit a moldy mode. He could hardly stand to look at her; he felt the need to either strike at Nash or get out the door and vomit in the yard, but he did none of those things. He simply sat and endured the sight, as Firebaugh took from the pocket of his coat a small black leather pouch he’d procured from the hospital on Lionfish Street not far from Matthew’s house.
Firebaugh unbuttoned the pouch and out of it brought a small brown bottle and an eyedropper. He opened the bottle, as the false Mary Lynn Nash grinned at some errant thought slipping through the dazed mind and worked her fingers together, back and forth as if trying to solve some puzzle that had no solution. Firebaugh put the eyedropper in the bottle, drew out clear liquid, and said to the young woman in the effigy of a lost child, “Open your mouth, please.”
She just grinned and worked her fingers. The horrible dead eyes of the painted doll stared through him.
“Your mouth, please,” Firebaugh repeated. He tapped her chin. She reached up and tapped her own as if this were the grandest game on earth.
“Mary Lynn?” Nash’s voice might have issued from a tomb. “Open your mouth for the man.”
She blinked, opened her mouth…closed it…opened it again, and silver threads of saliva drooled out.
At that point Matthew had to lower his head.
“Tongue out,” said Firebaugh. When this was not obeyed, Firebaugh said, “Tell her, please,” to the mayor.
Nash did. Her tongue flicked out and in a few times. Firebaugh was able to put upon her tongue a few drops of the liquid. Then he sat back as the white-powdered face frowned and she said, “Nassssteeee” as someone with half a brain and tied to an iron bar in a madhouse might speak it.
“The cure?” Matthew asked.
“Not yet,” Firebaugh said. “A test to see what cure is needed. There are conflicting formulas in the book. I must be sure before we begin.”
In the tavern yesterday, as Matthew put down a meal of vegetable stew, fried corn, turnips and biscuits washed into his belly with good strong ale, Hudson had sat across from him at the table and said, “An interesting tattoo on your hand. I think I’ve missed a lot.”
“This tattoo saved my life. I’ll tell you about it when it’s no longer so pressing in my nightmares.” He had paused in his copious consumption. “I met someone who knows you, by the name of Gideon Lancer.”
“Giddy? You met him? Well, that’s a shot to the head! I understood he became the sheriff in some little hamlet.”
“Whistler Green.”
“Ah! Yep, Giddy was quite the comrade in those days. We joined the agency at about the same time. He was the only man who ever knocked me out with one punch. Also…he stole the only woman I ever really loved. Rebecca Houghton. Now there was a woman! Old Giddy!” Hudson shook his head and smiled at a memory. “I’ll have to look him up sometime.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of going to Italy, are you?”
“No longer thinking. It’s decided.”
“Don’t you have better things to do in New York?”
“No,” said Hudson.
“This seems to have become a repeating refrain, but I can take care of myself.”
“Of course you can!” Hudson reached for his own mug of ale and downed a swig. “No doubt about that! But…dealing with demons…that might be something you’ll need help with.”
“It’s ridiculous!” Matthew scoffed. “Fell must be half-crazy and fully desperate! To go all that way searching for a mirror? Insanity!”
Hudson took another drink before he replied. “What if it’s real?”
Matthew stopped with a spoonful of corn at his mouth. “I’m sorry, but I thought I heard an utterance of lunacy from somewhere near.”
“No. Think on it. What if it’s real? Now don’t speak and don’t roll your eyes like that. You and I both know there’s plenty out there that can’t be put into little boxes and tied up with neat little bows. You yourself have experienced some uncommon—and unsettling—things, have you not?”
Matthew knew Hudson was referring to an incident in which a wealthy dying man had hired Matthew to hold Death at bay until he could make amends with his estranged daughter. “Some things I can’t explain, I grant that,” he said.
“I’ve experienced some things I can’t explain, as well. So…before we both go off talking about insanities and impossibilities, we should consider the very real fact that we don’t know as much as we think we do about this world and…yes, and the world beyond. No one does, until they die. Demons coming up from Hell through an enchanted mirror? You can believe what you please, or not believe, but I swear I wouldn’t bet my life that such a thing doesn’t—”
“Matthew?”
The timorous voice had come from someone standing to Matthew’s right side. He looked up into the face of a small, slim man nervous in appearance, dressed in a white blouse, black suit and waistcoat, all that seemed a bit grimy and in need of cleaning. He had gray hair tied back in a queue with a red ribbon, thin gray brows and the sharp blade of a nose.
“Matthew!” He grasped the younger man’s shoulder as if seizing hope itself. “Thank the saints! Alla fine! You’ve come to get us out!”
“I’ve seen this gent around,” said Hudson over the rim of his mug. “Who is he?”
“Giancarlo Di Petri, Alicia Candoleri’s manager.”
“Who?”
“Manager to a great star of the opera!” Di Petri drew himself up to his full height, which was still diminutive. “Were you not at the performance that horrid night?”
“If it was an opera performance, I can believe it was horrid,” Hudson answered.
Di Petri gave Hudson a glare that would’ve wilted a stone rose. His attention turned back upon Matthew, his hand still clutched like a white leech to Matthew’s shoulder. “Please! Please! Tell me you’ve come to help us! Madam Candoleri has faded to a ghost and Rosabella is hardly stronger. We’ve all been tortured here by these classless men! When do we escape?”
“Yes, sorcerer,” Hudson said. “When do they escape?”
“Di Petri,” Matthew began, “listen…I can’t get you out right now. It’s not in my power.”
“But…before you left…you said—”
“I know what I said. At the moment and for the foreseeable future, I can’t do anything for you. I’m sorry. Now…maybe at some point I can talk the professor into—”
“No, you cannot,” Hudson interrupted. “Don’t even speak it, because it will not happen.” He looked up into the stricken face. “Sir, Matthew has just returned from a gruelling journey. He would help you if he could, and so would I. The truth is that neither of us can get anyone here out. This place may have only a wagon as a front gate, but it’s
locked up tight. That’s all I can say.”
“Surely…surely there’s a way to—”
“No, there’s not,” Hudson said flatly. “Nice to meet you. Go away.” He picked up his mug and finished the ale off in two more swallows.
Matthew saw the pain and disappointment in Di Petri’s face. The man looked as if he were about to burst into tears. Matthew cursed himself for ever thinking he could get anyone out of here, and double-cursed himself for saying such a thing.
“All right,” Di Petri said quietly. “Capisco. Si. I understand.”
As the man began to slink away like a wounded dog, Matthew reached out and caught at a cuff. “Wait,” he said.
“Oh my God,” said Hudson.
“I have a question for you,” Matthew told Di Petri. “Do you know your wines?”
“My…vino?”
“Yes, vino. The Amarone wine. What region of Italy does it come from?”
“Amarone? It comes from the province of Verona. The Veneto region, near Venice. And you are asking, why?”
“Just a question,” Matthew said. He kept hold of Di Petri’s cuff. “If I can do anything for you, I’ll try. But I can’t promise, and don’t go telling Madam Candoleri or Rosabella about this. Understand?”
Di Petri nodded. With great grace, he pulled his cuff free. His face was blank. “It was pleasing to see you again,” he said, giving a short brisk bow. And to Hudson: “Please know that the opera makes gentlemen of barbarians. Possa tu camminare al sole tutti i tuoi giorni.” With that, he turned his back and departed the tavern.
“I think I just received an Italian curse,” Hudson said, but Matthew figured Di Petri was too much of a gentleman himself to have stooped to curses. “What’s this about the wine?”
Cardinal Black Page 40
