by Glenn Cooper
Jojo shrugged, Marie shrugged, and the negotiation was over. Soon the two women were left alone.
“There’s a basin of water there and a cloth which isn’t too dirty. You can sleep in the raw or you can use one of my nightgowns. There’s wine over there. Help yourself. Downstairs, off the main room there’s a privy that basically dumps into the moat. That tells you a lot about this fucking place.”
Emily began to slowly undress. Her cotton skirt had wooden buttons that had made the passage, and her top, a cotton pullover, was also intact. The same wasn’t so for her cotton bra that, missing its plastic clasp, flopped uselessly under her shirt.
Jojo laughed. “Same exact thing happened to me. But I was worse. My skirt had a metal zip and it fell off completely.”
“My pantyhose didn’t make it,” Emily said. “Or my wristwatch and rings.”
“I was so fucking pissed off,” Jojo said, nodding. “It was bad enough getting murdered but I was wearing some really good jewelry at the time which went missing. I wonder where all that shit goes?”
“It seems that nothing metallic or synthetic survives the passage,” Emily said, peeling off her bra.
“Give it here. I’ll have the smithy make me a clasp. Near enough my size,” she said, inspecting Emily’s breasts.
Emily thought it best to give it freely under the circumstances.
“Have you been here long?” Emily asked.
“You mean in Castle Pathétique or in Hell?”
“Both I suppose.”
“Hell, for about five years now. This dump around four.”
Emily began washing herself. The water was cold but felt good. “What happened to you, if I might ask?”
“My boyfriend’s best friend shot me.”
“Goodness. Why?”
“I ripped off his stash. Seems a bit harsh, don’t you think, killing someone for stealing their dope? I was in La Courneuve when it happened and out I popped in the same spot here. You probably know how it works, right? I mean it didn’t look a fucking thing like La Courneuve. It was more like a shitty village. Well, because I’m a young, attractive woman, I had all the scum of the Earth trying to get a piece of me but I eluded the lot of them for a time. Once I worked out how things go around here I knew, I just knew, that my boyfriend was going to be settling the score and that scumbag who killed me was going to be arriving in the area any time.”
“And did he?”
“He did, with his baggy pants on the ground, ’cause the snaps were gone. Really comical, that look on his bastard face, seeing me coming at him with a big piece of iron. I crushed his skull real good. Hope he enjoys the next fifty million years in a rotting room.”
Emily slipped into Jojo’s nightgown and poured a cup of wine. She sipped at it over and over, hoping for some numbing. “What did you do to warrant coming here?” Emily asked.
“In Mali I was a hooker, you know. I killed a few johns there. I thought it was justifiable homicide and all but I guess it wasn’t justifiable enough.”
Emily finished the wine and said, “I’ve got a lot of questions, Jojo, but I’m terribly tired. Do you think I could get into bed now?”
“Hop in. Don’t worry about your questions. We’ve got all the fucking time in the world.”
Francis, Duke of Guise and master of Castle Guise, was given the news of Emily’s arrival the moment he awoke in his chamber above the great tower hall. Two of his concubines were still sleeping under the covers and he roughly kicked their rumps out of bed when it was clear that it would be no ordinary day.
“Not dead?” he asked the bearded soldier, as a manservant hastily dressed him.
“It seems not, my lord.”
“How remarkable. You say she’s young?”
“Yes.”
“And pretty?”
“In my opinion, yes. Very pretty.”
“Was she violated?”
“Not to my knowledge, my lord. Certainly not in our company.”
“And how much did D’Aret pay?”
“I was told five hundred crowns.”
“A huge sum! I’ll have his head if it was poorly spent. And what of Marot?”
“He took one of Clovis’s spears as we passed through a forest.”
“That ancient bastard. I swear I’ll gut him one day and use his intestines for sausage jackets.” Guise dismissed the soldier with a backhanded wave. “You are my captain now.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
Guise had died in his prime, cut down by an assassin’s sword, though in truth he passed away six days following the assault, over-bled in his sick bed by his surgeons. In his day he had been considered a titan, a most un-French, French lord owing to his extraordinary height and his blonde mane, which had set tongues wagging about foreign, perhaps Germanic blood in him. He was also ruthless, a man who, when crossed, was certain to extract a terrible revenge.
The house of Guise had reigned supreme throughout the sixteenth century. Francis’s father, Claude, the first Duke of Guise had been given a ducal seat by the king. Staunchly Catholic, no one group feared the Guise dynasty more than the Protestant Huguenots, whom the Guises sought to annihilate at every turn. Francis’s eldest son, Henry of Guise, had founded the militant Catholic League and, inspired by the writings of Machiavelli, had perpetrated the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris that had caused the deaths of seventy thousand Protestants.
Guise intrigue continued after death. Francis arrived in Hell to find his father busily seeing to improvements on an old castle on the River Marne near the earthly spot of the family seat. Claude had assembled a group of newly arrived cronies to attack the local lord’s castle. The lord was a rough old codger who had clung to power there since his fourteenth century arrival. The coup d’état complete, Claude had petitioned the king for recognition and had received it. Francis, upon his entry to Hell, was initially embraced by his father with talk of creating a dynasty capable of taking the king’s throne one day, but Francis, a duke in his own right, was not content to play second-fiddle to his father. Now, thanks to the malicious machinations of his son, Claude lay headless in a state of profound and agonizing decay in a warehouse by the river.
When Francis’s son, Henry, also came Down, his father, fearing his equally ruthless son, had Captain Marot take Henry’s head before he could cause trouble. There could be only one Duke of Guise.
Francis rejected one outergarment after another, sending his servant scuttling back and forth to his wardrobe until he was clad to his liking befitting the occasion. He possessed the only large mirror at the castle and he checked himself before making an appearance in the great hall. Though tall and slender in physique the layers of garments made him appear fuller-figured. A long-sleeved tunic, pulled over the head and fastened at the neck with a silver brooch was topped by a sleeveless pale blue surcoat, which was in turn topped by a royal blue embroidered and fur-lined mantle. His legs were sheathed in white hose attached to his belt under knee-high lounging boots.
In the meanwhile, Marie had rousted Emily from Jojo’s bed. Bleary and utterly disoriented, Emily was rushed through some basic morning ablutions. When she asked for her clothes she was told they’d been taken during the night and burned.
“Why?” she asked indignantly.
“They were very ugly,” Marie told her, equally indignant, “and not suitable for a duke.”
Jojo was watching Emily’s makeover from her bed, amused by the spectacle.
She taunted Emily. “They dress old school here, you might as well get used to it. Francis likes to remove a lady’s clothes like he’s peeling an artichoke. That’s the part that takes a while. The screwing part is over in a flash. He’s got no staying power which is a blessing if you want to know. By the way, I hope you like it doggy-style.”
Emily trembled and seethed at the same time. “I’ll kill him if he lays a hand on me.”
Jojo melted into laughter. “Go for it, girl. Power to the people.”
> Emily’s more immediate battle was with Marie who kept fighting to add successive layers of under and outergarments and finally wore her down by screeching like a wounded bird until Emily was virtually immobile inside a casement of cotton, taffeta, damask and ermine.
“Bloody hell,” Emily said, getting a look at herself in a small, wooden-framed mirror that yielded a somewhat distorted image. “I feel like I’m off to a mad fancy dress party.”
“Don’t you go getting yourself butchered too quick now,” Jojo said, waving her off. “You and me have a lot of talking to do. While you’re off, I’ll be here, swanning about, enjoying my holiday from the little royal cock.”
In the light of the day Emily was able to get a better look at the castle. It rose above her, gloomy as the morning, gray blocks of stone, dry-laid into walls and towers without visible attempt at style or decoration. It was purely functional, a fortress, plain and simple. Dull-faced men were laboring in the baileys, chopping wood, tending to goats and chickens, butchering and hanging sheep. They snuck glances at her but seemed too fearful to look harder.
She took a deep anticipatory breath before entering the duke’s tower. Inside the great hall, one would not have known it was daytime. Without windows the hall relied on candles and oil lamps and their choking, smoky haze made her cough. There was a massive unlit hearth and standing before it a long banqueting table. At its middle, seated alone with a spread of food, was the Duke of Guise pretending not to notice her.
“My lord,” Marie said, “I have the special girl.”
The duke speared a hard-boiled egg with his knife and ate it without looking up. When he was finished chewing he raised his gaze and then his eyebrows.
“Bring her here.”
Marie pushed Emily forward until she was standing at the table opposite him. Her reaction to him was primal, akin to a small rodent happening upon a sunning lizard. His long, dry face and moist lips had a distinct reptilian quality and when he fiddled his tongue to dislodge a strand of meat from his yellow teeth she felt a spasm of nausea.
“Has she eaten?”
Marie replied that she had not. He then asked whether she spoke French.
Emily was determined she wouldn’t be cowed by him. She replied in French with all the defiance she could muster, “I’m standing right here. Why don’t you ask me yourself?”
“Leave us, and wait outside,” he told Marie. With rather delicate fingers he plucked a pickled onion from a plate and slowly chewed on it, making a show of ignoring her. Finally he said, “One does not speak to one unless invited to do so.”
“Your rules, not mine,” Emily said.
He cackled, sending a plume of onion breath her way. “You are unique in more ways than one. Sit down.”
She had to smooth out the puffed-up fabric of her clothes to sit. As she squared off against him she defiantly crossed her arms over her chest.
“Take food if you are hungry,” he said.
“I don’t suppose you have tea.”
“Tea is rare. We have none.”
“Coffee?”
“I do not know what this is.”
“Two more reasons to hate this bloody place,” she muttered in English.
“Do not use foreign tongues in my presence!” he fumed. “Tell me, what is the present year on Earth?”
“2015.”
“Time does pass. How old are you?”
“Thirty-two. How old are you?”
“Again, impertinence. I have not invited a question.”
“Again, your rules,” she countered.
“How is it that you have come to Hell without dying?”
“You wouldn’t understand it because I don’t understand it. Suffice it to say that it happened and I’m not best pleased about it.”
“No one is happy to come here. But the strong and the clever find a way to survive. The weak and the dim-witted fare less well. Which are you?”
“Guess.”
“You are a rare little birdie. What is your name?”
“Dr. Emily Loughty.”
“A woman who is a doctor? I am glad I did not live in your time. But perhaps you can lance a boil for me.”
“I’m not that kind of a doctor.”
He squinted his confusion. “I hear you were attacked by Clovis. Did you see the filthy bastard with your own eyes?”
“I saw a number of men who fit the general description of filthy bastards.”
“Clovis has but one eye.”
“Not ringing a bell. Who is he?”
“Clovis, son of Merovech, ruler of the Frankish kingdom a thousand years before my time on Earth. To last this long in Hell one has to be crafty. Today he rules little more than a few patches of forest but he survives by roaming the countryside, stealing from me and my allies, and selling his services to the lords of Germania.”
“Well he killed Phillipe Marot who was quite decent to me, so this Clovis is no friend of mine.”
“Marot is not dead. I am sure he wishes he were so but he certainly survives in some piteous state of perpetual agony.”
Despite the tough façade she wanted to show, her lip trembled. She wanted to scream. She wanted out. She wanted to go home.
The duke seemed to pounce on her fear. “I believe that a rare birdie such as yourself would certainly suffer and perhaps perish in this harsh world of ours without the protection of a powerful prince. You are fortunate that my man, D’Aret, secured your position at Castle Guise.”
“And what position is that?”
He called out for Marie to come and fetch her and said, “Why, on your hands and knees in my bed, of course. I will show you when I return after a day or two of hunting.”
Emily lapsed into English again. “We’ll bloody well see about that you filthy cockroach.”
9
At the first light of day, after a small breakfast, Solomon Wisdom escorted John down the hill to the river. John’s head hurt from his drubbing and the wine, his shoulder was stiff, but his toothache was the biggest problem. He thought about trying to pull what was left of his troublesome tooth but decided to leave it alone for now. He’d just deal with the discomfort.
Wisdom showed off his wealth and power by revealing his private sailing vessel moored at a floating dock. At the water’s edge John bid farewell to Dirk and told him to return to Dartford and wait for him there, after which the young man extracted one more promise to help him reunite with Duck. A crew of a dozen men raised the canvas sails and the ship began to make its way against the current.
The vessel, a forty-footer, was a shallow-draughted wherry with a squarish single gaff sail. The scooped-out deck was open and uncovered. There was a bench near the bow which John and Wisdom occupied while the crew piloted the vessel and scanned the banks of the Thames for trouble. John kept his sword on his belt and his loaded flintlock in the bag by his feet.
The river was still tidal this far east and the water smelled brackish. A few small boats were about, casting nets, but otherwise the river and its banks were deserted. Wisdom pointed up the hill toward his house seeking a compliment and he was pleased when John told him it was indeed a fine building. As they progressed westward, signs of settlement increased. On both north and south banks of the river John saw a number of small villages on the scale of Dartford, and as they approached what he knew to be the approximate geographic location of London, he saw the beginning of barge traffic and a bona fide city in the distance.
It was not a city in the modern sense. This version of London was a low and sprawling expanse of mostly small wooden buildings with a scattering of larger brick ones and one palatially sized complex of stone at the approximate location of the earthly Tower of London, and another where the modern Parliament stood. There was a single bridge spanning the river near that point, a bulky wooden structure upon which a single horse cart was making the traverse. It was a monochromatic city shrouded in the smoke of thousands of wood fires. What it lacked was church spires and to John it looke
d odd without these iconic fingers pointing to the heavens.
John watched men on the shores going about their business. What he saw was labor from another era. They loaded and unloaded barges with manual winches, hauled goods by horse cart, shaped logs with two-man saws and adzes, dumped waste into the river. But then, as they sailed closer to the northern shore, he noticed that the rows of poles which he had persistently seen all the way up-river from Dartford were connected with ropes or wires.
“What are those?” he asked Wisdom.
“The poles, you mean?”
“Yeah. They look like telephone poles.”
“I do not know what a telephone is,” Wisdom said. “Those are telegraph poles.”
John almost slipped off the bench. “You’ve got the telegraph?”
“I do not possess it. The king does.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Why not? It has existed in this realm for some time. I am led to understand that the king of Francia possesses it too and perhaps other rulers. It was Mr. Cosgrove, the gentleman who initiated me into the brokerage business—it was he who recognized the special skills of a telegraph man who arrived here, oh, perhaps twenty years before I did. I believe this man had butchered and eaten his landlady or something equally unsavory but Cosgrove saw his potential and for a hefty bounty delivered him to the crown. The king recognized the potential of this enterprise and saw fit to have the fellow teach various smithies and craftsmen to fashion the batteries, the coils, the wires, and what-not to make the telegraph work.”
“Is this guy still around?”
“Oh no. I remember him fairly well as he prospered for a time and was rewarded by the king with a house in London. A good many years ago he got into a fight with some men even more unsavory than himself and wound up chopped to bits. There the irony ends as I do not believe he was eaten.”
They sailed on for another four hours or so, the pilot skillfully taking the best line to fill the sail and battle the currents and tides.
