The Serpent Garden - Judith Merkle Riley

by The Serpent Garden (epub)

  “Take me home, Robert,” I wept. “I want to go home. I’ve had enough of grand things. I want to be home in the House of the Standing Cat again.”

  It was well past midnight by the time we got to the tall old house on the Pont au Change. I was frozen through and glad to see when I looked up at the fourth floor windows that there was a light in our room. “Look up there, Robert. Nan’s there. She’s waiting for us.” Nan might even have supper kept warm for us, and it would be warm and cozy, and she’d exclaim over me and tell me how worried she’d been and everything would feel all right again. Inside, we found that the landlady wasn’t there to give us a candle to light our way up the stairs, but by now we were very practiced in climbing in the dark. With our hands on the walls, we went right up as neatly as a pair of owls. There was a bit of a glow, as if from rushlights, coming from beneath the studio door, but when I got to the door it wouldn’t open, even though I pulled the latch and pushed on it.

  “Robert, help me push. The door is stuck shut. Nan, have you latched it? Come and open the door,” I called, knocking softly, so as not to wake the other tenants in the building. We leaned on the door, and gradually it moved just a little bit, as if something were stuck behind it. There was something dark and slippery on the floor, coming from beneath the door. Then all of a sudden, it felt as if whatever was blocking the door had moved, because it opened wide from my pushing, and something snatched me inside and blocked the door behind me. I could see the ruddy light of several rushlights propped about my workroom that there was a big, dark puddle on the floor seeping out under the door, and also behind the door a hand nearly as white as my plaster ones, but coming from a sleeve attached to a dress all soaked in blood and unrecognizable. The body lay on its face, its headdress torn off and grayish hair mixed with dark all tangled where there was still part of the head for it to be attached to. There were apron strings, still tied neatly at the back of the waist, but red, red. Jumbled brains lay on the floor, as if something had been eating at them. Nan. Oh, Jesus, Nan, all mangled and dead. Waiting faithfully for us, she had met this horrible end.

  “Blood,” I said, all shocked, and I could feel coldness coming over me.

  “Why yes indeed, it is blood,” said a voice from the shadows. I knew at once who was in the room with me. I saw boots, I saw a heavy cloak, and I saw a white, puffy face with lines, all standing in the shadow by the fireplace, which was empty with the ashes scattered. All through the room, I could hear a steady drip, drip, drip. My skins of oil were slashed, my colors scattered everywhere, and the brushes I had made all tramped into the mess of oil and turpentine and dye powders on the floor. Drawings torn and crumpled, lay all about as if scattered in pure rage, and I could see my half-finished panel of the queen at Abbeville slashed across from pure malice. Plaster limbs lay shattered on the floor, as if a great slaughter had taken place. My chest of treasures was upended, my books lying open on the floor among tumbled cloth and Nan’s half-done knitting. Behind the evil figure, in the half light at the window, the wicker cage still hung, the birds inside silent, huddled together in fluffy little balls, with their feathers puffed out.

  “Septimus Crouch. How did you get here?” demanded Robert, from behind me.

  “You’re surprised to see me? No more than I am to see you,” replied Septimus Crouch. “You seem to have taken the long way back. A pity you weren’t entombed. I had hoped for it. No, Ashton, don’t even think to touch that sword. Hey there,” he said, suddenly speaking into the dark of the room. “You; yes, you. Take the sword-o from him. No, not the hand, you fool, the sword, that thing-o there at his side. You hold the hands, so he can’t move. I want to talk to them first, before you take them apart.”

  All in a flash, I saw the most terrifying shapeless thing, only vaguely human, detach itself from the shadows. It was a full head taller than any man living, and flames came from its nostrils. Crouch fixed it with the gaze of his evil eyes, and I could see the white all around the rims of them. Then I saw it flash and change, moving like a lightning strike, and then I could see Robert struggling in its coils, as if in the grasp of a giant serpent. Then I heard an eerie chattering and grumbling sound answering it from the corner and realized there were two of them in the room. I could hear the huff, huff of the second one’s breath, just like the bellows of a blacksmith’s furnace, and see the glow. It was standing in the corner diagonal from us and opposite Crouch, waiting impatiently. I could feel its irritation, rolling off in waves, like a strong scent. I was so terrified, I couldn’t decide whether to try to flee or to throw up.

  “I suggest you not struggle,” said Sir Septimus to Robert Ashton. “They have been very impatient lately. And it’s their first trip out of the house since…ah, well, under my command. Green, green, but they’ll get used to it. That foolish old woman tried to hit one of them with her lantern, and just look what happened, before I could even order them to stop.” I looked down at Nan, too frozen with terror even to weep, and around at the devastation of my work, and at Robert, coiled up so tightly in the black thing that all I could see was the flash of the whites of his eyes.

  “You monster,” I said.

  “Monster? My dear Mistress Dallet, I assure you, I am far beyond being a mere monster,” Crouch purred. “The very imps of hell are at my command. I have become Evil Incarnate.”

  “Why? Why me? Look at all this. You’ve ruined everything.”

  “Oh, I haven’t ruined everything. At least, not yet,” said Septimus Crouch. “You still walk and talk. So does Ashton. You had best tell me where you have hidden it while you have yet the power.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. Don’t you dare touch me,” I said.

  “You still keep your mask, you sly, scheming little vixen? The poor innocent with the vicious depths. How deviously you plan, how ingeniously you conceal yourself. What you have not realized is that you cannot deceive me. The mystic mirror has shown me what you really are—your plots, your diabolical cabals.” His eyes seemed to glow with some strange, knowing malice. So penetrating was his look, I began to wonder if there weren’t something I was scheming about, just because he was so sure of it. I felt the dirtier for his looking at me. “And as for touching you,” he went on, “I wouldn’t dream of it. See these delightful, if somewhat uncouth beings here? One of them is barely restrained by my word from strangling the appalling little turncoat, Ashton. Just look, he’s turning quite purple, or at least that part that I can see.” Horrified, I could see that Robert was slowly being crushed alive.

  “No, no. Not dead yet, you fool,” said Crouch imperiously to the thing. “You wait until I, Septimus Crouch, have ordered it.” Again, the fierce stare and commanding power flowed from his eyes. The thing made a sort of belching, squealing noise and loosened itself a bit, and the top of Robert’s face turned from purple to crimson. The other black thing seemed to writhe in a sort of suppressed eagerness, making the same curious, impatient noise in response to the first creature’s irritation. Their noise made the birds in the cage nervous. They smoothed their feathers and stared out with their little eyes, tipping their heads to see better. “This other one, the woman, is reserved for you,” Crouch gestured to the thing in the shadows with a condescending wave. The glow of red showed at its nostrils. With all the spilled paint and turpentine in the room, I suddenly wondered that these things hadn’t set it on fire with the sparks from their breath. “I shall have it pull you apart joint by joint until you tell—or, no, I see your face. Perhaps Ashton should be pulled apart first, while you look on.”

  Keep him talking, my mind said. I could feel something strange rolling off the hellish things, and my hair stood on end the way it does before a thunderstorm. Talking, yes, talking. Anything.

  “B-but how, how did you get here even faster than we did? It’s impossible,” I said. Crouch smirked. There was a long, silent pause. Behind him, one of the birds hopped from the perch. Its feet made a scratching sound as it walked on the cage bottom.

 
“The large entrance, had either of you been intelligent enough to consider it, was obviously much shorter than the small one by which we came,” Crouch gloated, his malicious eyes on my face. He turned to Robert, still buried in the monster’s coils. “Yes, Ashton, more intelligent. Education, my years with antiquities, they mean something. I recognized our own way into the chamber as an ancient aqueduct. Roman, without a doubt. Did you notice the terra-cotta tiles? How little you see. But the great entrance beneath the eagle was fine and wide; I knew at once it was the path by which I should remove myself. I was not surprised to see it ended in Bellier’s house in the rue de la Harpe. An old servant stood in my way; he stands no more. How easy to elude the fools of the Priory. And once above the surface, I summoned my hell servants here, and had them carry me here before the Helmsman could find this place.” He paused again to inspect me, where I stood, paralyzed with terror, but my mind working like a windmill. He strode in front of the huge, wavering black thing, which seemed to tower to the ceiling like a column of smoke. “How dreadful you look, Mistress Dallet. Did you dig out with your fingernails? It certainly looks like it. With the application of superior intelligence and the service of these two abominations, here, I have not so much as disarranged a hair.” The dark thing behind Crouch made that strange squealing noise again, and the other one twitched and uncoiled partway, in order to squeal back. It was a horrible sound, worse than fingernails on slate. It made my whole body shudder. I could see Robert’s whole face now, still half strangled—looking, his eyes wide with horror as he watched the scene in front of him. Crouch turned, fixing his evil glare on the thing, and it was quiet.

  “But why come here? Why destroy…everything?” My Nan, my life’s work, all, all. Though I knew I had to, I could barely speak. My voice came out all scratchy, and my body felt first hot, then cold.

  “You’ve hidden it well,” said Crouch. “It was convenient of you to come back to tell me where it is.”

  “What is it?”

  “The book, the book, you abysmal, covetous, devious little nit. Did you think you could hide it from me forever? It is the last thing I need before I claim my throne—here, and in the infernal.” Crouch’s eyes seemed to swell as he spoke, and I could see whites all around the tops of them. He was totally insane.

  “Th-the book?” I stammered stupidly.

  “The book your treacherous husband gave you to hide.”

  “I—I don’t have it…”

  “I think you may remember soon.” Stepping carefully, so that both creatures were in his line of vision, he lifted a finger at the second fiery-breathed creature, then fixed it with his eye. “Here there, you, beast, grab that woman-o by the arms. And don’t go breaking her carelessly the way you did the other. I’m tired of your slovenliness.” He flicked his gaze at the thing that held Robert. “And you, I want you to begin dismembering that dismal wretch you’re holding, slowly, now, while she’s watching.” Robert gave a horrible cry as the thing holding him began to uncoil from him and change its shape.

  “No!” I screamed, as the second shape, squealing and grumbling, began to move. My voice frightened the birds in the window behind Crouch. They began to flutter about the cage, crying shrilly. The frantic movement and sudden sound distracted Crouch, who turned to see what it was, leaving the moving creatures both behind his back. His fierce glare removed from them, they paused, huffing glowing red, and silently began to change their shapes. I could feel my eyes open wide in amazement. The empty thing was moving in the wrong direction—away from me toward Crouch’s exposed back. He heard the rustle as it passed over the crumpled papers on the floor and whirled back to face the creatures.

  “You there,” said Crouch, as he saw the dark, flaming thing unwrap from Robert, letting him drop to the floor in a limp heap, “don’t you get anything right? Move! Grab that woman-o, I say. And that man. I want you to pluck off his arms, then hers.” His face was arrogant, his eyes bulging and lunatic. He pointed his hands at the thing near Robert, and his white beard quivered as he spoke. But the things were on either side of him. He could not look at one without taking his eyes off the other.

  The things were stock-still, towering there in the center of the room, their flaming breath heaving, as if deciding what to do. They looked at him with their fierce little red eyes. My skin crawled with horror, the blood stopped in my veins, and I was utterly, utterly still. All I could hear in the room was breathing—the soft huff, huff of human breath, and the deep, whoosh, whoosh sound that the fiery-breathed creatures made.

  Then the first one began to ooze, silently, slowly, toward him. When Crouch fixed it with his eye, the other moved behind him. He backed up. They moved sideways. They’re playing with him, the sudden thought came to me. Crouch flicked his gaze from one monstrous creature to the other. Glancing arrogantly up and down the first one, he looked disgusted, and then clapped his hands at the creatures. “Hey, hey, you damned beast-os, do what I say-o, quick, quick. Who is master here?”

  Then I heard the most terrible, deep gurgling, creaking kind of sound come from way inside the black things. It seemed to be a word. “Belphagor,” they said.

  After that it was very confusing, because I could see those two big repulsive things must move toward Crouch bit by bit with the flames shooting much farther out of their nostrils and also their ears, as if they were enjoying Crouch backing and frantically shouting orders at them. Then they became sort of shapeless, oozy blobs, and Crouch stopped screaming orders and just screamed the unearthly screams of someone who is being disemboweled alive.

  But then the screaming stopped short and there was just a crunching, slurping sound as those two things huddled like smoky mounds over what was left of Septimus Crouch. Behind the things at the window, the birds sat on the perch, stretching their necks and peering with their curious little eyes at the movement beneath their cage. Robert was lying like a limp rag on the floor, groaning softly. I ran to him and tried to grab him up, but he shook his head, and we huddled still and silent against the wall, our eyes wide with horror, as the two shapeless blobs tore apart the remains of Septimus Crouch and bits of him started disappearing inside them, so I think they were eating him. The curious grumbling and squealing of their conversation had an eerie tone of pleasure and satisfaction to it, and then I was sure they were eating him because I could see them pass each other gory bits and bones the way you would offer a dinner partner a pheasant’s wing or some other nice part of a dish, to make the evening more agreeable. After not much of him was left but his clothes, they sort of mopped up the blood puddle he had left the way you would sop up gravy with bread, except they used his cloak, and ate that too.

  Robert was shuddering all over and muttering almost inaudibly over and over again, “Dear God, God in heaven, God, God,” but I hadn’t a word left in me. We could hear a sort of contented humming sound coming out of the imps as they spat out a couple of the smaller bones. We made ourselves very small against the wall, as far as we could from the door, just so they might leave without noticing us, but they just pressed themselves through the far wall when they were done and flew away, leaving a bad smell behind them.

  “Are your bones broken?” I whispered, still fearful they might hear us, even though they were gone.

  “I don’t think so,” said Robert, lying still and feeling his limbs. “But, God, I hurt.” He pulled his shirt up, and I helped him undo his points so we could see what the thing had done. The dark stains of bruises were spreading on his belly, up his ribs, down his arms. “Close,” he said. “Close. I thought it would strangle me. But every time Crouch spoke, it loosened up. I don’t think it liked him. Except, perhaps, as dinner.”

  “Robert—Nan, my Nan is dead.”

  “We need to get out of here before the Helmsman comes.”

  “No, Robert, Nan. She must have a Christian burial.”

  “No, we must flee. Crouch is gone, and who would ever believe us? The Helmsman will accuse you of the murder, Susanna.”

/>   “Of my own Nan? Never. Who would ever believe it?”

  “It doesn’t matter what people believe. The Helmsman is the greatest lord in France, and what he says is what everyone will believe. Then he’ll have you, and all within the law. We’ll have to hide you and get you out of the country as soon as possible. If only…a diplomatic mission…only the king’s orders could supersede his…”

  “I won’t leave Nan.”

  “You have to.”

  “She would never leave me. She died for me. Just look at her poor, cold hand there, just…” But as I looked closely for the first time at the horrifying hand, I saw something flash briefly in the flickering rushlight. A hair-thin gold band on the corpse’s finger. “Robert, is that a wedding ring I see there?”

  “Oh…yes, you’re right. A ring, a very narrow ring. But Nan was a widow, wasn’t she?”

  “Nan never wore a ring, Robert. She wasn’t married…no, that can’t be Nan’s hand. Robert, can you turn over that body and look at the face for me? I…I can’t bear it.” Robert groaned again as he stood, stepped around the ghastly dark puddle of blood, and turned over the corpse with his foot.

  “Susanna, it’s your landlady. And look, there’s money in the blood beneath her. That’s how Crouch got in here. She took the money to let him in.” Warm relief rushed through me, and I started to cry. “Nan must still be out looking for you. No, no, don’t cry now. The worst is surely over. I’ll find Nan for you.” Robert drew me up and embraced me, patting my head, my face. “See here, I’ll take you to my place and we’ll clean up. Then I’ll find Nan. I imagine she went to the White Queen’s servants to inquire for you and then couldn’t come back in the dark. She’s safe, she’s well. It’s you who must be out of here before the Helmsman comes looking for you.”

  “I can’t go without Nan.”

  “I’ll hide you while I find her, Susanna. Before the Helmsman thinks to follow her to find you.” I sat down before the ashy hearth of my own fireplace and put my head in my hands. “Don’t you understand, Susanna? We have acquired the most powerful enemy in France, save for the king himself. The Connétable de Bourbon commands a great force; he makes his own law. He can do anything to destroy us.”