In Pursuit of the Green Lion (38 page)

This was getting more disgusting with every moment that passed. “Time, take time,” sang the sweet little voice within.

“Maybe I’ll drop him the foot first,” I could hear him mutter to himself. “It would be appropriate.”

“Your beautiful ode?” I prompted him.

“Oh? Oh, yes.” He cleared his throat and began. Midway I interrupted him, by way of encouragement.

“That bit about the pearly toenails, that’s very nice,” I said. Stupidest verse I could ever have imagined, I thought.

“Now, we mustn’t interrupt, must we?” He wagged his finger at me. He’s getting mellow, I thought. A little more of this and maybe I can talk him out of his dirty little plan, and get Gregory back. “Never interrupt an artist,” he went on, in a special rolling tone that he appeared to reserve solely for reciting verse. But it was all too soon he finished the ridiculous thing.

“And now, your promise.”

“It’s very crowded sitting here. It’s hard to get to—if you just moved away a bit—”

“It will be much easier, I assure you, on the bed.”

Oh, my, so much for poetry. I’m worse off than ever.

“The bed? I haven’t finished eating yet.” I stuffed some bread into my mouth. It was as dry as dust.

“Have a little wine to wash it down. Lovely spiced wine.”

Again the wine! The back of my head hurt as he grabbed it to force the cup to my lips. The wine had an odd smell. That certainly isn’t a spice, I thought. But I know it from somewhere. What is it?

“Drink,” he said, and pressed the cup hard against my clenched teeth.

There was a banging at the sealed door.

“Go away!”he shouted. “I’m busy, and not to be disturbed.”

“My lord, my lord. Fray Joaquin sends a message, ‘He’s done it,’ he says. You told him to notify you, no matter what else you were doing.”

“Done it! By Fortuna!” He let me go as he leapt up to the door and shouted through it. The moment he turned his head, I splashed the wine into the corner and set the goblet back on the table.

“Bring him here—hooded. I want no one to recognize him, and above all—not to hear the slightest word from him.” He turned back to me, rubbing his hands. “My double triumph, all in one night. Thus does the Black Master keep his bargains.”

Black Master? No wonder the Burning Cross buzzed so. I’d wrapped it up in a cloth to muffle the sound. As I watched his figure stride back to the table, I seemed to see its outlines fade and shrivel, and a shapeless mass, stinking of sulfur mingled with the sickly odor of lilacs, took its place. The world seemed to slide away, and I could see it there very clearly, hiding beneath the ordinary surface of human flesh. Evil. Consummate evil. The visitors in the hall had never dreamed what lay beneath the everyday shining facade. They saw the surface—the banners, the gilded roast peacocks, the lordly life—and I suppose if they were worldly, they assumed he had a little vice or two on the side. What lord doesn’t, after all? But who, who on earth, could even guess the unspeakable thing that lay beneath this wicked man’s foolish pretenses? And then I knew that it wasn’t love the Count was after, or even the shabby travesty of love. It was my life, and my soul. Mine, Gregory’s, Malachi’s, everybody’s. His own was long gone, if he’d ever had one, and he wouldn’t rest until he could suck away the soul of every decent person who came within his reach.

“Ah, you’ve drunk the wine. Good.” And to my surprise, he poured the rest of the jug into the goblet and tossed it off.

“Enough of poetry. Are you feeling hot yet? No? A little warm in the face, perhaps?”

“What on earth was in that wine?” I asked, standing up in alarm.

“Enough canthatides to put an entire kennelful of bitches in heat. Come here.” So that’s what it was! I’d seen the stuff in my father-in-law’s house. He used it for breeding hunting hounds. I ran behind the bed as nimbly as a deer. He followed, blundering, but even so, he was faster than I was. I leapt back across the bed—he leapt after me. I grabbed the candelabrum from the table and held it, flaming, before me.

“Back, Satan, or I’ll set you on fire!” I cried.

He laughed and swatted the thing out of my hand with a single blow from his great paw. The candles spluttered and went out as he kicked it into a corner.

“Not—hot—yet?” He was panting. His face had gone all red. He stumbled and I leapt past him, racing around the bed to the window.

“Threatening to jump?” His breath was coming hard—too hard. The stuff he’d drunk was working. The napkin was all askew on his head. I clambered onto the windowsill.

“You haven’t got the bowels for it,” he gloated, doubled over to recover his breath. I looked down. Endless miles it seemed, down into the dark, with nothing but the sharp rocks of the mountainside below. A wave of pure fear rippled through me. I must. I have to, I thought. My mind was racing. But that look below had cost me my chance. He grabbed my foot and I toppled down hard into the room, shrieking and bruised. I kicked and tore at him with my fingernails, screaming horribly as he scooped me up and flung me onto the bed.

“Lovely—”he gasped. “Just the way I like them—”but he could hardly speak. His whole body had gone all crimson and blotchy. Let him die, God, let him choke and die on the damned stuff, I prayed. He paused and bent over, breathless and retching for a moment, and I thought my prayers had been answered. I jumped from the bed and raced to unbar the door, but he was on me like a wild beast. He didn’t even feel me batter at him with the door bar as he began to tear at my clothes.

But he was slowing. I could feel his breath coming in great gasps, like air from a bellows, as he pinned me to the floor. The odor of lilacs mingled with that of vomit as he suddenly rolled off, all huddled over, and shudderingly gave up the witches’ brew he’d drunk.

“He’ll never make it,”my mind’s voice sang. I’ll be wanting a new dress after this, I thought. He raised his ugly head and stared into the corner. He seemed suddenly paralyzed, his head frozen and staring into the dark. “You’ll get out of this one, Margaret. Aren’t you the lucky one?” chirped the little voice. Lucky? I’ll have to burn this dress as soon as possible.

“In the corner. There—”he said, and his voice was full of horror.

And a bath. I’ll be wanting a nice bath. I crawled away from the door. My hair was all unbound, and my clothes hung about me in tatters. I felt myself. Bruised here and there, but substantially unhurt. No damage, really. The baby started to roll again. We’re both fine, I thought. That’s got to mean something good. “Joy,” sang the baby, as it rolled and rippled. You foolish little thing, I told it in my mind. Don’t you ever understand when you’re in trouble? And we’re not half out yet. But I loved it suddenly so much, with a fierceness that claimed me totally.

The Count let out a horrible scream. What on earth was wrong with him? Why didn’t God just strike him with lightning and get it over with? You’d think He’d know how to do it right.

It was then that I saw it, standing in the corner. A child. A pretty blond child, just as real as could be, standing there and pointing at him with an accusing finger. She was unclothed, and eyeless, and her little chest gaped open, where the heart was gone.

“I didn’t do it,” the Count said. “I had to—they made me.” The child was joined by another, a little boy, similarly marred, and then another, who held a mangled head in his arms. “It wasn’t me, Fray Joaquin, you want him. He did it. He told me how, and once I called Asmodeus, he wanted more, more. You see? It wasn’t my fault, not mine at all. They forced me to do it—” He was crouching, now, retreating from the little figures that were crowding around each other, multiplying in the corner. He tried to smile convincingly as he argued with them, but his mouth twisted grotesquely, and his eyes were full of terror. But the little creatures never answered. Oh, even now I can’t bear to tell it all, it was so frightful. One by one, the silent specters filled the room around him, deathly quiet, pointing, while he crawled about the floor with excuses, excuses …

He was screaming and gurgling now. “Not me, not me!” he shrieked as he picked himself up and dashed to the door to escape them. But his way was barred by a fierce, whistling cloud like a storm cloud, a seething mass of poison. He rolled his eyes like a frightened horse as he prepared to try to dash through it.

“Why do you wait, little ones?”A ferocious woman’s voice could be heard through the stormy mass. “Destroy him now. He is the one.” My breath turned cold and stopped in my chest as I stared up at the raging, billowing cloud. It was the Weeping Lady!

“To me, to me!” the Count cried, and with the answering rattle and crash at the door, I scuttled under the bed. I could hear the fierce whistling, and something like chattering from all sides of the room as the Count thrashed on the floor, as if under attack by invisible hands. I could see the booted feet of his guards, and hands trying to pick him up as he writhed and fought away from them, gripped by some invisible force. I saw him roll and scream on the floor so close by my hiding place that I could have almost reached out and touched him. And the most curious thing was that his naked body was mottled with thousands of tiny welts, exactly like the marks of babies’ teeth….

“Help me, get them off!” he shrieked, and I heard his feet race to the window, a horrible prolonged scream, followed by the faint sound of a thud on the rocks below. There were curses and the clatter of feet as the men raced out the door and down to the sharp crags beneath the window.

“Well done, my little ones.” The sighing mass of the fast dissipating cloud drifted across the room. I poked my head out from under the bed in the abandoned room to hear a ferocious whisper in my ear.

“I’ve found there are worse things than marrying beneath oneself.”

“Yes, Madame Belle-mère,” I answered, still breathing hard against the cold stone floor.

“H
E WANTS YOU.”
Fray Joaquin stood at the door and looked about the laboratorium. Everything seemed unchanged. Messer Guglielmo was still bristling with irritation and envy as he inspected the metallic stuff in the crucible, while Brother Malachi, still pale with fatigue, was sitting on the stool against the wall with his feet tucked up, looking more like a sack of turnips than a Master of the Great Work.

“Wants me? Whatever for?” Brother Malachi feigned surprise. He was slumped against the wall, grateful for its cool stones, and mopped his brow with his sleeve. The gauntlets and rod lay forgotten in a corner.

“That’s what I say too.” Messer Guglielmo’s testy voice was heard from among the heads crowded around the rapidly cooling crucible. “It’s damned little gold you got, after all the bother you’ve made for me.”

“It is gold, though, and the best quality. That’s better than you’ve done with your quintessence of two thousand eggs. You’re a parasite, and he’s genuine,” snapped Fray Joaquin.

“There’d have been more, if we’d had the full moon,” Malachi added in a complaining voice. “The moon expands the action of the powder.”

“Well,
I’ve
certainly never heard of that. It’s not in Geber, it’s not in Villanova. And as for Magister Salernus—”

“Your Geber has never made you so much as a dot of gold.” Already Fray Joaquin’s mind was racing. Why give this valuable fellow to the Count? It’s a long way from the cellar to the tower bedroom. If I can get rid of this blabbermouth Messer Guglielmo and his worthless devils, I can just bundle this Theophilus down to the stables and be off. I’ve done enough secret business for the Count so that no one will suspect a thing until it’s too late. I can sell him practically anywhere for a tidy sum—or no, better yet, find somewhere I can put him to work myself. Quick, decisive. That’s the way.

“Tie him up. Hood him. The Count awaits.”

“Really, hooded? Isn’t that a bit melodramatic? Besides, I might trip and injure my brain. My brain is sensitive, like a delicate plant—”

“The mutes will hold you up. It’s orders. That way you can’t divulge the Secret to anyone en route.” Or see where you’re going, either, when I take you off with me. What a good idea.

He’ll probably kill me, thought Brother Malachi, as soon as he thinks he’s got the recipe. At least I’ve bought Margaret some time. Now I think I need some myself. A good thing Messer Guglielmo doesn’t write down his experiments.

“You’ve—ah—memorized the steps?” asked Brother Malachi as the mutes tied his hands behind him.

“Of course I have. Do you think I’d trust an important secret like this to writing?” I’ll leave in the morning, Messer Guglielmo was thinking. Someone else will pay a lot better than the Count for this secret. Why, he might even kill me once he knows it. Perhaps I’d better just leave tonight, as soon as this Theophilus fellow is taken to the Count.

“Now you remember that you add the sulfur exactly at the point that the struggle of the red dragons becomes visible.”

“Nonsense. I distinctly saw you wait until the second color change of the lion.”

“You have it wrong. Didn’t you see? Do I have to teach lessons to babies?” Malachi drew himself up to his full height between the two mutes. His voice dripped with arrogance.

“Do you think I’m a fool? I know the red dragon when I see it.”

“Shut the man up,” Fray Joaquin addressed the mutes. “I must speak to Messer Guglielmo alone.” Brother Malachi bowed his head as an ox does for slaughter while they finished the job.

Fray Joaquin drew the rageful alchemist into the dark little inner chamber where the familiars were summoned. “Are you sure you’ve memorized the formula?”he asked.

“Of course,” responded Messer Guglielmo.

“Absolutely? This man’s a trickster. You heard him trying to mix you up. The Count must have a reserve, in case this weakling gives up the ghost under questioning.”

“Understood.”

“Good,” said Fray Joaquin, and plunged the wicked little stiletto, as sharp as a needle, in between Messer Guglielmo’s ribs.

And as the alchemist lay on the floor, the blood bubbling in a bright pink froth through his lips, Fray Joaquin addressed the new-made corpse: “Now only one man has the Secret.” Utterly calmly, he wiped his stiletto off and replaced it, stepping out into the workshop.