* * *
We came after considerable travel to the quiet duchy of Aragon. No signs of war here, as back in Spain proper. Some of Prospero's subjects spoke French, others Spanish, and still others English. The peace here was of a deathlike sort. If there had been foreign armies in this land recently, they had fled months ago. This domain was devastated not by war, but by disease. Traveling, we first heard rumors and then saw terrible evidence—funeral processions, chanting monks, deserted villages—of the presence of the Red Death, a variant of pneumonic plague.
We had entered a new year while working our way around a war zone. Valdemar, again, was invaluable in this respect. Another matter on which he'd advised us concerned Prince Prospero and his present situation. The prince had apparently removed himself from all human commerce only a few days before our arrival. Nor was it a simple sequestration. Rather, careless of what happened to the majority of his people, he had called to his side a thousand friends and companions. Determined to escape the Red Death, they—with a suitable staff of servants and a company or two of soldiers—had barricaded themselves inside one of his castellated abbeys where, well supplied with all manner of provisions, they expected to wait out the epidemic.
All of which would be pretty much academic, save that Prospero was apparently one of the men Von Kempelen had approached on the matter so near to everyone's heart. And Von Kempelen had elected to enter the refuge with the prince.
Because of the involvement of Annie, Valdemar could not be certain, but he felt it likely that Templeton, Goodfellow, and Griswold had also taken sanctuary with Prospero.
"Find me the place," I insisted.
"It is outside Tarragona," Valdemar explained, gesturing now. "To the northwest. A little village called Santa Creus."
And so we headed east.
The following week our coach rattled into Santa Creus. It was an eerie feeling, for the town was mainly deserted. We rolled about its streets for a time that afternoon, viewing at last what had to be the abbey, in the distance—an enormous building with soldiers on the walls and at every point which might possess a gate. I told our driver to head for it.
When our approach was noted several shots were fired in our direction, and orders to halt were shouted in Spanish, French, and English. We complied.
I stepped down from the coach. I took one step in the direction of the abbey.
"Halt!" a guard repeated.
"Certainly. I'd appreciate speaking English."
"What do you want, English?" one called back.
"I'm looking for some people I believe may have gone inside a few days ago."
"If that is the case there is no way to reach them," he said.
"It's very important." I flipped a gold coin into the air and caught it.
"We're billeted just inside the wall," he said. "Even we can't go any farther. The inner doors are welded shut."
"What about messages then? Is there no way to get a message inside?"
"No," he answered. "No way."
"All right," I said. "I understand. In that case, I'd like some information."
"Don't have any," he said. "You'd better be moving along."
"Wait! I'll pay you for it," I offered.
He laughed.
"Wouldn't touch your gold," he said. "Might be tainted with the Death."
I assumed my best parade ground voice then, "Soldier, was there a German named Von Kempelen? And four Americans—three men and a woman?"
He straightened visibly, his shoulders moving back.
"Sir, I do not know," he replied. "There were so many."
"Thank you, soldier. I take it nobody's doing business in town?"
"No, sir. And if I were you I'd not stop there. I'd head for the border and beat the horses till they fell. Then I'd start running."
"Thanks." I turned away. I entered the coach.
"What now?" Ligeia asked me.
"We ride away," I replied. "We stop as soon as we're out of sight of the place. Then we have a talk with Valdemar. Annie may or may not be inside, but it's not her I want to ask about."
* * *
We parked near a skeletal olive grove. The others helped get down the coffin, and then took a walk when I explained that Ligeia and I were about to open it—save for Grip, who stood upon my left shoulder and observed.
Valdemar's eyes came open immediately when I raised the lid, without any preliminary mesmerism. The daylight did not seem to be bothering him either. Ligeia gave me a strange look and passed her hands above him then. Even before she had finished, he spoke: "What place is this?" he asked. It was not at all like him to initiate conversation.
"This is Santa Creus, near Tarragona, in Aragon," she answered.
"What is there that is special about it?"
"The Red Death has apparently taken a massive toll here," she said.
"Ah!" he said. "Those lucky, lucky dead! How fine! How fortunate! Gladly would I trade caskets with any of them. To sleep! Perchance never to dream!"
I cleared my throat.
"I hate to keep bothering you with the mundane and earthly," I said, "but there's no one else I can ask."
"I understand your mortal predicament," he replied. "Ask."
"There is a huge abbey near here. We just visited the place," I explained. "There seems to be no way in. It is guarded. The doors are even welded shut. But I believe that Von Kempelen is inside, and possibly Annie, Templeton, Goodfellow, and Griswold. It occurs to me that large ancient buildings often possessed secret entrances. Can you tell whether this is the case here? I want badly to get inside."
His eyes rolled back suddenly, showing only the whites once more. His hands fell into place across his breast. There was a long pause before he spoke, then, "There is a secret passage from the abbey to the city," came his sepulchral tones. "A tunnel. It has been out of use for so long that I cannot see where life may pass. It has been changed. Perhaps sealed. The town has changed above it."
Again, silence.
Finally, "Could you be more specific?" I inquired.
"No," he replied. "But Von Kempelen is within, and there is that ambiguous quality I have learned to associate with Annie. She may well be there, also."
"Could it also be as it was in Toledo? Confusion at the crossing of her path?"
"Yes."
"Still, I have no choice."
He said nothing.
"The tunnel is the only secret way in?" I asked.
"The only one that I see. Let me rest."
I executed the dismissing gesture myself, without thinking. His eyes closed and the lid slammed. At this, Grip did his champagne uncorking sound.
In a little while we were loaded again and on our way into town.
* * *
We parked in a mews near the plaza, and I hung my saber from my belt. The afternoon was running on toward evening. Peters and I thought to explore quickly, obtain a general notion of the place's layout and perhaps gain an impression of the likeliest area for the tunnel's terminus. Ligeia was to wait with the coachman during our excursion.
And so we hiked about, Emerson flitting from building to building and through an occasional treetop, pacing us. The town was very quiet. Storefronts were boarded over. We saw no one, heard no voices.
"Does it bother you that the plague has passed this way, and something of its essence may still linger?" I asked Peters.
His grin remained constant.
"When yer time's up, yer time's up," he said. "An' if it ain't, it ain't."
"I'm not quite that fatalistic about it," I said, "but I've a feeling I'd have learned from Valdemar if this were too risky a sojourn."
"More likely Ligeia'd've said something."
"What do you mean?"
"She's more'n a fancy hand-waver to put folks asleep," he said. "Told you that back aboard ship."
"You mean she's a witch? A sorceress?"
"I 'spect," he replied softly.
We passed through an area where there had been some b
urning, where blackened, half-fallen, windowless shells lay amid puddles and weeds. The odor of stagnant water came to my nostrils, along with assorted smells of decay. Emerson perforce descended to ground level here and shambled beside us for a time.
At length we passed out of this section of town and came into a rundown area crossed by rutted roadways. As we followed it Emerson vanished again. It became obvious to us that all of these buildings had been broken into. In consideration of the cost of moving things—as well as the time of additional exposure involved in transport—the merchants had counted on the simple security of boards and nails for protecting their goods. Some inhabitants of this place had not fled, it would seem, and had engaged in a bit of looting.
Walking a bit farther we had almost passed a great decaying hulk of a building when we heard a sound of laughter from within. It was not the cheerful laughter of good fellowship, but rather a barking, fiendish sound. Still. . . . I exchanged glances with Peters and he nodded.
We approached the structure's front and Peters gave to the door such a kick that it flew inward and banged against the wall. I might have preferred stealth, but Peters—then, as always—seemed absolutely without fear. He appeared to possess an extreme confidence in his own physical ability to extract himself from any situation.
The laughter died immediately. Entering, we discovered the place to be an undertaker's establishment. Some excellent-seeming caskets were on display—all ebony and silver—and I regretted Valdemar's not being along to see them. Casting about quickly, however, we saw no sign of life. Then Peters pointed to an open trap door in the floor, in a corner to our right. I loosened my saber in its scabbard and we approached.
We looked down into a long range of wine-cellars whence the sound of a bursting bottle occasionally emerged. At the room's center was a table which held an enormous tub. Various flasks, bottles, and jugs were scattered about it. A human skeleton depended from a rafter above it, affixed there to a rig-bolt by means of a stout cord tied about one leg. The other leg jutted grotesquely, and occasional drafts and reactions of the rope caused it to jounce and twirl. There were a number of individuals seated about the table on casket trestles, and some of them seemed to be drinking from very white bowls which were strongly reminiscent of portions of skulls.
I could see the individual at the head of the table—a gaunt, near-emaciated man possessed of an enormously elongated skull, his skin jaundiced to an extreme yellow hue. He was staring back at me.
Across from this man sat two women—one enormously obese, in perfect complement to his leanness; the other petite, delicate, well-formed, pale, save for flaming cheeks, with a drooping nose which depended beyond her lower lip. I judged the latter lady tuburcular, and she was seized by a coughing spell just as the thought passed through my mind. A dour-looking, puffy old man sat to the left of the large lady, arms folded, one bandaged leg up upon the table.
There were two more men present, and though the angle of my view did not let me see them well, I could tell that one had enormous ears and bandaged jaws, and the other appeared to be somewhat paralyzed—reclined at an unusual angle, almost deathly still. Most of them wore garments fashioned of shrouds.
I saluted the man who regarded me.
"Good evening," I said.
The man banged the white, scepter-like implement he held upon the tabletop, causing the bottles and skull-bowls to jiggle. The proximity of one turning above him caused me to realize it a thigh bone.
"My friends, we have guests," he announced.
All heads turned in our direction, save for that of the paralyzed man. He just turned his eyes.
"You're welcome to come below and join us, good sir," the host invited.
Out of his line of sight, I signaled to Peters to remain in reserve.
"All right," I said, and I lowered myself onto the steep stair and descended it.
"And who might we have the honor of entertaining?" he asked.
"My name is Edgar Allan Perry," I replied.
"And I am King, these my pestly court. You are welcome to join us in our drinking and making merry in the face of imminent dissolution. Would you care for a skull of grog?"
"Not just now, thanks," I replied. "I am looking for a tunnel, one which runs to the abbey."
Their laughter returned.
"Why would you want to go there? The company is far far better here."
"I do not doubt your conviviality, but I am looking for an ancient tunnel. It may be somewhere hereabout."
"Nay, you'd best dig your own," said the man with the wrapped leg. "Start here. We'll fill it in after you."
The ladies tittered. The paralyzed man rolled his eyes. My host banged his bone and swilled a few drops of wine.
"Silence!" he roared. Then, using the bone as a cane, he levered himself to his feet. He lurched toward me and raised the bone, pointing it. Disconcerted, I saw that he held it as an expert swordsman might his blade. "You will be so good as to drain an entire skull of grog," he announced, locating one with his left hand and dipping it into their vat, "upon which you will be welcomed into our company and allowed to tunnel where you will. Otherwise you will be baptized in it by total immersion, till the cock crows."
He extended the dripping skull toward me and I drew my saber.
"An unkindly act," he observed, and he gestured to his opposite number. The fat lady began to sing.
Peters must simply have jumped into the opening. His feet struck the stair about halfway down and he leaped, catching hold of the skeleton upon which he swung. The singing ceased and shrieks arose. King Pest's minions must have been taken aback by one whose appearance was every bit as outre as their own and far, far more sinister. Peters let go and landed upon the table.
"Up the ladder, laddie!" he called. "'Tis time to drown all sorrows."
King Pest backed quickly away from me and turned toward Peters, pointing the bone. Peters moved forward and caught hold of the big vat. It must have been ponderous in the extreme, filled with liquid as it was. But he raised it, threw me a wink, and began to tip it. I swarmed up the stair as the gurgling began, mixed with screams.
A moment later I heard the rattle of the skeleton, a thud on a tread, and a chuckle. Peters emerged from the opening and kicked the trapdoor shut. A moment later he was raising a heavy coffin which he deposited upon it.
Emerson suddenly came into the shop, the light of a new-risen moon at his back, and commenced gesturing to Peters.
"I think we'd better be gettin' back," Peters said then to me. "We've done all the good we can here."
We followed our shaggy companion into the night.
* * *
Mews by moonlight: Lovely lady seated on a coffin, a few of our belongings piled nearby, nightbird perched atop them.
"Ligeia," I said, "what's become of the coach?"
"I heard the driver unloading it," she replied, "and when I got out to see what he was about he leaped back to his seat, snatched up the reins and rode off. He feared the Red Death."
"He took the time to say that?"
"He'd said it earlier, right after you left to explore. He said he thought you mad. He suggested the two of us depart."
"We passit a barrow back a ways, Eddie," Peters remarked. "P'raps I should fetch it."
"Good thought. Yes, do that," I answered.
Which is how we came to be wheeling a cart bearing our worldly and otherworldly possessions up and down the streets of Santa Creus when two men staggered across our path heading to the northeast, one of them clad in jester's motley.
I was about to hail them when I felt Peters' hand upon my arm.
"They're tipsy," he said.
"So?"
"Recall the ones in the cellar."
"These may well be part of some more normal group of survivors."
"Let's follow them then, rather than approach them."
"I'd prefer that, too," Ligeia said.
So we settled into a pace which kept us a decent distance behind
the men, overhearing bits of their conversation on occasion. They reeled a bit as they went, though they sobered somewhat farther along and straightened their gait. I gathered that the one in jester's garb was named Fortunato. The other was called Montresor.
The latter looked back once or twice, but I could not tell whether he saw us following.
As other snatches of dialogue drifted our way I gathered they were talking, with considerable erudition, of wine. At least, their discussion seemed full of specialized knowledge.
They slowed as they neared a large, rambling, antique mansion, set among gloomy trees apart from other buildings. From their comments, I gathered it to be Montresor's house, despite his momentary difficulty in unlocking the door.
There came a knocking from inside Valdemar's box. Ligeia placed her hand upon its lid, possibly doing something mesmeric, as—after a time—she announced, "This is the place. We must get inside somehow, for the tunnel entrance is near."
So we kept going, right up to the front door. Shortly, I was knocking on it. Peters and I had to pound long and hard before Montresor answered. When he did he looked surprised, annoyed and vaguely alarmed in quick succession, and then simultaneously.
I suppose the general appearance of our group was not reassuring.
"Mr. Montresor?" I said, hoping hard that he knew some English.
He studied my face for several long seconds, then nodded.
"Yes. What is it?" he asked.
"It concerns the delivery of this case of Chateau-Margaux, of the antelope brand, violet seal," I explained.
His gaze shifted to the large case, where it was instantly taken prisoner. His wariness and annoyance faded. He licked his lips.
"I do not understand," he said. "I did not order this. Are you selling it? Is it a gift? Are you messengers?"
"You might say we are messengers," I told him. "Though in this city, at this time, ordinary messengers are hard to come by."
"True," he said, nodding. "And what sort might you be?"
"We are," I told him, "all that is left of a troupe of entertainers. We were sent for by Prince Prospero, but we were not able to reach the abbey before its gates were sealed. The soldiers refused to admit us, and they also refused to inquire of the prince himself whether he wanted us admitted.
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