Prospero in Hell (25 page)

“ ‘
May 4th. Today, I consecrated little Miranda to the Creatrix Eurynome. It is my hope that Her divine influence will curb the natural tendencies of my daughter and make the child more like unto human kind.
’ Seems you were
not always the perfect daughter you pretend to be now,” Erasmus finished smugly.

“I knew it!” Theo muttered angrily, “I knew Father had Miranda under a spell!”

“If Erasmus’s discoveries are true, it may be best for us all that he did,” replied Cornelius. Turning to me, he asked, “You truly knew nothing of this?”

“Nothing!” I responded faintly. “I’m not sure I believe it still. It’s…”

“The journal in which I found the reference resides in my library.” Erasmus gestured upward.

I drew back, hugging my glass to me. Had Father truly said such spiteful things about me? It could not be! I recalled so clearly our many chats about my mother, Father sitting beside me on the bluff that overlooked the northwest coast of our small isle. His keen blue eyes shone with love as he spoke of her.

Could he have been speaking of
the foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy was grown into a hoop
? No. She could not possibly be the woman who had inspired such greatness in him. Erasmus and Mephisto’s story made no sense.

And yet, I recalled the King of Fire glaring at me, his eyes ablaze with fiery menace, as he sneered, “Vile half-breed! Accursed Nephilim!” A Nephilim was, if I recalled correctly, a term used for the half-human, half-supernatural monstrosities that roamed the earth before Noah’s Flood. I had thought Iblis referred to Caurus—an Aerie One in a fleshy body.

Only, I recalled with sudden alarm, the King of Djinn did not turn to address Caurus until after he had spoken his half-breed insult. When he originally spoke the words, he had been staring directly at me.

Could it be the woman of whom Father had spoken of so tenderly was not my mother? I struggled to keep the pain this notion caused me from showing on my face.

“Enough about past sorrows.” Mephisto cheerfully threw out his arms. “Let’s get to the present sorrows. What’s this family tragedy everyone’s yammering about?”

Erasmus handed Mephisto the letter. Mephisto read it silently, making faces as he went. As he approached the end, he cried out: “O dastardly Ulysses! What a monstrous thing to do!” He was quiet for a long time, tears in his eyes. Finally, struggling to put on a brave face, he declared
tremulously, “What a bonehead! I hope he plans to pay up on the money Gregor owed me!”

“Erasmus believes Miranda invented this document,” Cornelius said softly.

“Miranda? Why would she care what Ulysses or Gregor did? What a dopey thing to think, Erasmus,” Mephisto replied, dismissing the idea out of hand.

I felt a flood of affection for my hapless brother. Suddenly, I was very glad I had not abandoned him on the streets of Chicago.

Behind me, Theo began to laugh. It was a harsh wheezing sound at first, but it developed into a deep throaty laughter that reminded me of Father. The laughter led to a bout of coughing.

When Theo could breathe again, he said, “What a sad world you must live in, Brother Erasmus, believing the worst of a guileless creature like Miranda.” He shook his grizzled head and put down his untouched glass of mango juice. “Come, Cornelius. Let us get ourselves a cup of something hot, as our good brother Mephistopheles suggested. There perhaps, we can ponder today’s revelations and decide what, if anything, to do about them.”

“A goodly plan, Brother Theophrastus,” said Cornelius, rising and putting out his hand for the young boy beside him.

As the young boy left his post by the window and came forward to take my brother’s arm, I was again struck by how familiar his features were. He felt my eyes upon him and gave me a cheerful smile. As he did, I realized that I had seen him before: in Father Christmas’s scrying pool.

He had been playing in the street with several other children, and one of the masons we had seen repairing the Lincoln Monument called him home. I knew now that those masons were
Orbis Suleimani
who worked for Cornelius. The mason had clearly borne a resemblance to the boy and seemed to be his father. Could it be his position as Cornelius’s guide that led the Scrying Pool of Naughty and Nice to show him to me as if he were part of our family?

As I smiled at the boy, I was reminded of the many years I spent serving my father. A wave of sympathy for this child, who would probably rather be out sledding, washed over me. For an instant, I felt as if it were I who dutifully led the blind Cornelius out the door.

I had begun to rise. Now, I dropped back into my chair and sat, shaken.
It had happened again, this strange empathy with a stranger. But what did it mean?

Theo exited the room, still chuckling and coughing, He was followed by Cornelius and his young guide, and a moment later, by an eager Mephisto. This left Erasmus and me alone, amidst masks and feathers.

“Erasmus, why do you hate me so?” I asked.

“Surely, you know,” Erasmus replied, his mocking dark eyes smiling at me from beneath his straight black hair.

“Humor me,” I said tiredly. “Why?”

“Oh, I think not,” he replied, leaning back in his chair and sipping his mango juice. “I know better than to sharpen my enemy’s weapons.”

I sighed. “May I see Father’s journal, the one you quoted from?”

“Certainly not! You might sully it.”

My eyes narrowed. “You made all this up, didn’t you? There is no journal!”

“There’s a journal, all right!” Erasmus replied. When I continued to look skeptical, he said, “Oh, very well! But you must promise to wash your hands first.”

Rising, he led me back toward the library.

A maid had opened one of the library windows, and a cold breeze had blown away the aroma of perfume and chai, leaving the room chilly and smelling of snow. An enormously fat cat covered with black and white splotches lay curled in Erasmus’s chair by the desk. I had to look twice before I recognized him as Redesmere, Erasmus’s familiar and the dire enemy of Tybalt. I paused briefly to give him a pat. Erasmus glared at me, but I remained undaunted. After all, his glare was nothing compared to the stare my own familiar would have given me if he had caught me at it.

Redesmere opened one golden eye, contentedly observed my homage with the
nobles oblige
of true royalty, and closed it again.

At the far end of the chamber, Erasmus pulled out a key to open a door set between two bookshelves. Shelves were set into this door as well. To unlock it, he had to reach down a narrow gap between two books.

It opened into a short corridor, also lined with bookshelves. At the back was another locked door. The key to this door, when he pulled it out, glittered yellow in the dim light of the overhead bulb.

As he opened this second door, he flipped on the light, illuminating a chamber ablaze with gold. I raised my hand to shade my eyes and peered through my fingers. Beyond, everything sparkled and flashed. A golden chandelier hung from a gilded ceiling, shining its light upon a windowless hexagonal library. Delicate chairs of finely wrought gold stood around a table with a mirrored surface and burnished crackle legs upon which sat a chess set of onyx and gold. Upon the table sat pens, ink wells, and paper organizers, all of them of the gleaming yellow metal.

The books, older and rarer than those in the main library, rested upon heavy bookshelves of solid gold. I recalled the effort he had gone to gathering the ore and learning to smith it—and two occasions upon which an entire floor had collapsed under their tremendous weight. The wooden ladder that slid along the bookshelves, allowing access to upper shelves, was gilded, and the small stepping stools shone like little rectangular suns. Even the white marble of the floor contained aurulent flecks.

In my youth, we would have called wealth like this “a king’s ransom.” Nowadays, men count wealth in terms of how many aircraft carriers or bombers it will build. Amidst the fourteen karat bookshelves, the dazzling table, and the rest, there was more than enough to ransom a king, but I doubted all of this would be enough to buy even a single aircraft carrier.

“Impressive,” I murmured, blinking.

“Ah, gold…” he smiled lazily. “The most beautiful substance in the world, like sunlight trapped in solid form. Doesn’t age, rust, or rot.”

I had forgotten about Erasmus’s love of gold. It was not the wealth of it that drew him, as it might Cornelius or Ulysses, but its immunity to the ravages of time, and thus to his
Staff of Decay.

“Odd choice to house a library of fragile old books,” I mused aloud.

“I thought the contrast fitting,” he replied airily.

Walking to one of the six walls, he slid out a long flat drawer upon which lay a very old tome. The leather of the cover was brittle and cracked, and flakes of parchment lay about the ragged edge of the pages. Yet, despite its great age, I recognized it, recalling the thousands of times my child self had come upon Father writing in that very book.

Yet, how old it had become. How fragile! Seeing it now, I could almost forgive Erasmus for not wanting to let me touch it.

My brother opened the book with great care, turning almost immediately to the page containing the quote he had mentioned. The musty odor of decaying parchment assailed my nostrils. I sneezed.

To my dismay, the passage was just as he had recited it. Farther down the page were additional unpleasant descriptions of Sycorax’s unruly child.

“What makes you think this passage here refers to me, rather than Caliban?” I pointed at the page. “Here, Father uses the masculine form of ‘child.’ ”

“It is common to use the masculine for ‘child’ in Greek, regardless of the gender of the offspring,” Erasmus replied. Smirking, he pointed. “Just there, he describes the child as a force for destruction even though it is ‘no higher than his thigh.’ Caliban, who was already living on the island with his mother when Father arrived, would have been larger than that. Wasn’t he already half grown when Father arrived?”

I clenched my fists and glared down at the journal. I disliked talk of Caliban. The mere thought of him still filled me with an old rage. Caliban… my brother?

As I stared dull-eyed at the passage, a strand of my pale silver hair, escaped from its clip, floated beside my cheek. I caught it and frowned, trying to figure out how to poke it back into my coiffure. Erasmus misinterpreted my dismay.

“You looked so much lovelier when your hair was vibrant and black, Dear Sister.” My brother’s smirk widened. “But then, we all know how vanity is a sin! So, perhaps you should thank me.”

My sharp retort was halted by a thought. Father’s essay on the horrors of contact with demons claimed that each demon had a vice and any mortal who remained too long in its company would become vulnerable to that vice. What vice was associated with the demon in Erasmus’s staff? Did this bitterness that ate at him, causing him to constantly attack me, originate from the demon in the
Staff of Decay
?

“Did you know our staffs have demons in them?” I asked bluntly.

“Of course,” he replied blithely. “Didn’t you? No? Daddy didn’t see fit to tell you, eh? Probably thought little Miss Perfect would have a hissy fit. How did you find out?”

I turned back to Father’s journal and continued reading, ignoring his barb. There was no point in bickering for bickering’s sake. Were I to answer, my brother would either accuse me of consorting with demons or mock me for believing an incubus; never mind that Erasmus himself had just attested
to the truth of Seir’s words. Coming to the bottom of the page, I reached out to turn it.

“Ah, ah, ah! No touchy.” My brother stepped between me and the book. “You did not stop and wash your hands.”

“Very well, you turn the pages.” I crossed my arms.

“Now see here, I am hardly…” Erasmus trailed off, frowning thoughtfully at the top of my head. “Wait here!” He pointed at the spot where I was standing. “Touch nothing until I return!”

He departed, locking me into the golden room so I could not flee with his precious books and riches.

I considered yanking out the nearest book on principle, reasoning that since Erasmus had left without obtaining my agreement, I was not obliged to obey his wishes. As my eyes trailed over the shelves, however, my sympathy for him increased.