Complication (28 page)

Can this truly mean that once each year the watch must be wound by the right hand of a dead man?
Kelley cried out.
A right hand that must be severed, no less?
Why had she had not previously made a single mention of these three damnable laws? How was he to explain these ghastly conditions to the Emperor? How could he present His Majesty with a contraption whose very engine ran on murder, whose perpetuation depended upon the desecration of corpses? One that while granting life everlasting also promised death and damnation?

Madimi vouchsafed no answer. But Kelley knew.

Madimi was, after all, no angel.

Days later, Kelley was summoned to the castle under the cover of night. Upon his reaching the Kunstkammer, the guards took their leave, abandoning him inside the colossal hall whose windows
had been walled up and whose torches had been extinguished, a maudlin, sepulchral chamber illuminated solely by candles flickering here and there upon endless shelves. Inanimate faces from innumerable paintings and the disembodied heads of mounted beasts looked down upon Kelley as he wandered the Cabinet of Curiosities in search of the King. After some time, Kelley heard a whispering behind him and turned to find two large dull eyes glistening in the dark. This beast was not mounted—it was Rudolf's famed lion, the animal standing not ten feet away, watching Kelley's movements with languid curiosity. Kelley had heard tell of Rudolf's pet lion, said to be a toothless old beast. This beast was neither aged nor lacking of tooth. Neither was it clawless, its massive front paws sheathing weapons sharp and curved like scimitars. Kelley remained fixed in place unable even to breathe or blink until at length the animal twitched its tail and returned into the darkness.

Moments later Rudolf materialized a much-diminished figure, clad in black and pale of skin, eyes clouded and milky. His trembling hands gripped a candelabra with but two wax cylinders burned down to nubs. Rudolf had taken up a position next to Kelley, the light from his candelabra only then revealing to Kelley a large mirror throwing back darkened reflections of the King and his subject.

At great cost I commissioned this mirror from the finest glassmaker in Bohemia
, the King meekly intoned.
And yet anon I fear to gaze upon it lest I find some flaw. In the glass itself or what it reveals to me? I'll leave you to speculate. You've yet to speak. Are you a ghost? We've a scourge of ghosts here already. Ah, but no. You're the Englishmen. The one with no ears. Waste no more of my time. Show me the thing. A watch, wasn't it? We've a scourge of watches too.

Kelley drew a deep breath and slowly unfolded the velvet cloth to reveal the watch inside, face up to show the heraldic white lion. Rudolf's eyes were at once set ablaze. Without uttering a word, he
snatched the piece and draped it about his neck. His expression darkened.

It makes no sound
, said the King.
It has no movement
.

Kelley sought to assuage the Emperor with a sawtoothed smile. The watch, he explained, had not yet been set into motion. It would first need to be wound using a specially crafted key with the magical symbols—

Wind it
, speaks Rudolf.
Wind it, man
.

Kelley here played his final gambit, one he hoped would secure him the funds to flee Bohemia before the King discovered what fueled the Complication's infernal mechanism. Kelley gainsaid the King that presently he did not have the winding key upon his person. It was, he assured his Majesty, in a safe place, ready for delivery at the shortest notice. But having gone into great personal debt to have the watch produced, before Kelley relinquished it entire, he believed it only prudent to seek assurance that his efforts would be justly compensated.

Have you seen Otakar?
interrupted the king.
My lion Otakar? He's here somewhere. He likes to hide but I can hear his heart beating.
The king put a finger to his lips, commanding Kelley's silence.
Can you hear the beating of his heart?
Kelley heard nothing until moments later Emperor Rudolf began coughing. When his fit had passed, the king reached into his cloak pocket and withdrew a small hand bell whose silvery brightness razored through the gloom. A delicate motion of his wrist and two sharp notes tolled in rapid succession, their overlapping sounds still echoing through the chamber as Rudolf turned on his heel, the watch hanging around his neck already forgotten. Guards emerged as if from the darkness itself and descended upon Kelley. They wrestled him to the floor and clapped manacles upon him and secured a sackcloth over his head. Kelley was in some measure relieved. He'd feared the bell was for summoning the lion.

Again imprisoned, this time at Hněvín Costle in the faraway village of Most, Kelley was ostensibly confined for amassing outstanding debts, his house nonetheless by royal troops ransacked from top-to-bottom, no object left untouched as the soldiers searched in vain for the winding key. Those few earthly acquaintances left to Kelley were called before the Imperial police and made to answer arcane horological queries understood by neither party. Their houses too were turned out, every inch scrutinized. Kelley was shaved bald and stripped naked, his body's every declivity explored by gaolers hands. The winding key was not found. In terror, Kelley awaited the visit from Master Executioner Jan Mydlář.

But a year later, the Master Executioner still had not been summoned, and only then did the portents of Mydlář's absence dawn on Kelley. Rudolf had given up on the Complication. Dismissed it as another amusing but useless geegaw, one among uncounted thousands already in his possession. Edward Kelley was no longer worthy of the rack, the pear, the hot iron poker. Nor even the gallows, nor drawing and quartering. Rudolf had sentenced him to slowly starve to death in obscurity.

Near two years into this second imprisonment, Kelley attempted self-murder. Mirroring his disastrous plunge at Křivoklát, he again sought escape through a tower window. Though he'd calculated a plunge from such heights would be sufficient to kill him, calculation was not among his talents. Kelley broke two ribs, and as if to complete the cruel twinning jest, shattered his other leg.

Kelley implored her to bring Death swiftly, but she had determined it still possible to purpose the Rudolf Complication and its creator to some nefarious deed. Rather than permit the watch to gather dust in the gloomy depths of Rudolf's treasure storehouse,
would it not be better to loose the instrument upon the world as an agent of bedlam and malevolence?

Madimi proposed the terms by which she would aid in Kelley's escape from Hněvín Castle. Madimi said she would see to it that the Rudolf Complication would be awaiting him back in Prague. The watch would be his and would be governed under the same Three Laws of the Rudolf Complication. But should the watch ever cease its movement, regardless of who possessed it, Madimi would be loosed upon this earthly realm to claim Kelley. Was-Kelley would remain Madimi's servant for all the time left him. She would aid him in his endeavors until the day he failed, and then she would turn her full wrath upon him. Engineering his earthly destruction, she would harvest his soul. This harvesting might occur immediately upon the watch's cessation, or it might happen in a year, two years, five years, ten. Madimi had nothing but time. And could not time itself, properly wielded, be an instrument of torture?

 

 

Was-Kelley reaches the tavern at the House of the Black Rabbit where while alive, he had secretly convened with the Black Rabbi Jacob Eliezer, the Italian Jew who would sneak from the sequestered Fifth Quarter to tutor Kelley in the rudiments of gematria. Then as now, the tavern is no more than a lugubrious cellar with torchlit walls of clay. Two large beer casks, three long tables, and six benches rest upon a dirt floor at all times muddied by quantities of spilled libations, the innkeeper the same cloven-lipped oaf of yesteryear. At this hour only four other patrons are present. Two are engaged in a card game seemingly without end or purpose, hand after hand played sans wager or commentary, while the other two fervently whisper in low tones as if plotting
murder or commercial venture. One man loudly remarks upon the sudden terrible stench, and swiveling his head to confront its source finds Was-Kelley sitting alone at a corner table. The conspirators and card-players fall silent and come to a sudden decision to hastily take their leave. Moments later the innkeeper himself has followed them, the fat man stumbling up the stairs and holding his scream only until he reaches the front door. Was-Kelley fingers the stag horn dagger taken from the dead gypsy.

Was-Kelley waits.

At length there appears before him a small figure dressed in a ragged gown of flowing red. Tangled black hair of varying length clings to her forehead. He has never seen Madimi as corporeal being, has only experienced her presence through the shewstone or shimmering water, has only heard her voice as something disembodied or speaking to him through books and writing. But Was-Kelley knows this little figure in red can only be the demon Madimi made flesh when he sees her black wormhole of a mouth, diseased and ravenous and smiling.

B
efore I even opened my eyes I knew Vera was gone. I woke blinking against the harsh light flooding through the window as the sun rose above a serrated horizon into a raw blue sky. Below, the river was veiled in mist. I was on the couch, naked under a stiff white sheet like something draped over a corpse, corpselike being fair description of my general state that morning. While I slept, Vera must have swept the broken glass from the floor and picked up all the papers that had spilled out of the accordion folder. What was left of my clothes lay neatly folded on the coffee table next to a powder blue bath towel.

I gulped down two glasses of water in the kitchen. The digital oven clock read 7:47 AM. Taped to the refrigerator was a crayon drawing of someone in a striped shirt kicking a lopsided soccer ball. Tomášek's work. Paul always hated soccer, said no kid of his was going to play it, so I couldn't help but smile. Inside the fridge I found a few vegetables, yogurt, some goulashy looking muck. I was hungry, but I had my limits.

Inside the bathroom I turned the shower as hot as it would go and tried not to dwell on the images of Vera that arose every
time I closed my eyes and even when I didn't. The water stung the gash above my ear and leached the dried blood from the cut on my foot in diffuse coppery tendrils. Even after vigorous lather-rinse-repeat cycles, I could still smell Vera. I didn't want to ponder what last night meant about me or about her or what should be done next. That she left at the crack of dawn meant she didn't much relish sifting through the aftermath either. It's one thing to wake up godknowswhere and creep down the backstairs, but to abandon your apartment to a stranger was black-belt-level avoidance behavior. Except I wasn't exactly a stranger.

I got out of the shower and toweled off and looked for a razor. Her bathroom drawers were a muddle of female implements, make-up and hair gels, lotions and soaps. Behind the mirror was a medicine cabinet overflowing with prescription bottles. The prescriptions were all printed in Czech, but there must have been fifteen or twenty different kinds of pills and capsules and liquids. All the dates were recent and bore the same Lékárna U Anděla brand pharmacy label. Maybe all these medications explained the wig. Maybe they explained a good deal more than that.

I gave up on the razor and headed back to the living room. Nothing more deflating than putting on dirty clothes after a good shower. I thought about digging around Vera's room to see if I could find some men's wear in her closet—she'd had the socks after all—but going through her medicine cabinet was bad enough. Besides, Vera could've just run out for coffee, might return any minute. Except I knew she wouldn't. I could wait there all day and into the next and I wouldn't be seeing her again.

It was time to leave, and once I got back to Chicago, there would be no returning. In a few hours I'd be on a plane, and in a few hours more I'd be home and this would all be a fever dream, a falling nightmare I'd woken from an instant before hitting the ground. A few thousand miles away and Martinko Klingáč would
be nothing but a name from a fairytale. Soros the black sheriff and Bob Hannah the dead journalist and Gustav the comatose curator, all would be gone and forgotten. The Right Hand of God and the Rudolf Complication likewise. The Black Rabbit and the Hotel Dalibor and the Galleria Čertovka. The Vltava River and Čertovka canal. St. James Church, the Astronomical Clock, the Faust House, they could all burn to the ground tomorrow, and it would impact my life not one iota. Edward Kelley and John Dee, Rudolf II and his Kunstkammer,
Prague Unbound
, its cryptic and insane entries—all were things that would play no part in my future.

But I owed it to Bob Hannah to at least have a look inside the accordion folder. Whoever had killed the journalist had surely gone through it, but maybe they'd missed something. Right now all I had was he saids and she saids from parties I couldn't trust. What I needed was tangible proof. I'd check the folder, and if there was nothing good, I'd go to the airport and let time and distance work its forgetting magic.

Except I couldn't. The accordion folder was gone.

And with its departure returned all those muddled suspicions and unanswered questions about Vera I thought I was leaving behind. My mind started kicking back into paranoid mode and I felt my muscles tense and my jaw set hard and my pores yawn open, and I was right back to where I'd been eight, twelve, twenty-four hours ago.

But I was spent, emptied out.

My jaws unclenched and my face slackened.

And so fuck whatever had happened to Paul.

Good riddance to Malá Strana and its quaint pastel houses. Good riddance to the flood-scarred edifices of Karlín, to stately Ořechovka, to riverside Smíchov and the vague moonlit world of Charles Square. Fuck this city Prague and fuck my dad for
keeping Vera's letter, for buying the plane ticket, and fuck him for dying. Fuck Vera for writing the letter in the first place. Fuck her for birthing little Tomášek-middle-name-Lee and for ever getting involved with my brother. And fuck my brother Paul and his short, meaningless life.