The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (47 page)

"I will not allow this!"

With a sweep of her cassock, she bent her arm round Artemus' head and drew him back a space, locked him into a private conference right there among the torches. Much like the one Poe had overheard, probably: a steady drone broken by scalding whispers.

"Stop a minute... what he's doing... divide us..."

Oh, I could have let them go on, but Time had made its exit, and the play (I felt this with a kind of tingle) was once more mine.

"Miss Marquis!" I called. "You might be well advised to let your brother speak for himself. He is a first classman, you know."

I don't think they even heard me, to be honest. No, what pried them apart finally was his silence. For after the first exchanges, the only voice that could be heard from their huddle was hers, and the more she talked, I think, the clearer it became: he had already started down that road of his. Nothing to do, then, but watch him go.

So it was that in the very moment her arm crooked more tightly round his neck, in the very moment her voice rose to accents of new urgency, he chose to step away from her, to stand in the murdering glare of the brazier fire, his features baked into a mask of resolve.

"I killed Fry," he said.

His mother doubled over, like someone absorbing a knife thrust. Spat out a groan.

"I killed Randy, too," he added.

Lea, though... Lea made no sound. Dead in the arms, dead in the face. Except for this: a single tear, traveling down the chalky plains of her face.

"And Stoddard?" I probed. "How was he involved?" For a second, Artemus looked as helpless as I'd ever seen him. Waved his arms in the air like some inept conjuror and said, "Stoddard was my accomplice, if you like. He might be said to have panicked. You might say he panicked and ran."

How many different notes there were in his voice--how horribly they clanged against one another. I could have spent many days trying to set him in tune. But I didn't have days.

"Well," I said, rubbing my hands together. "That sounds just fine, don't you think?"

For confirmation, I turned to Mrs. Marquis, who was on her knees now.

The monk's cowl had once more fallen over her head. Not a single human extremity could be found among those coarse brown folds; the only thing left was her voice, faintly rasping.

"You can't," she whispered. "You can't."

Don't think I wanted for pity, Reader. But understand: I had, at the same time, the sound of blood in my ear. Poe's blood, still dripping on that stone floor. I would have done anything to make it stop.

"Yes, yes," I said. "All that's left to do... yes, I think all that's left to do is claim the evidence. Miss Marquis, I'd be most grateful if you'd hand me that little bundle of yours."

But she'd forgotten where the box was! How frantic she seemed as she cast her eyes round her, sifting through the patches of dark and fireglow-- before finding it in the last possible place: right by her feet.

Opening it once more, she gazed at its contents with a frozen wonder. Then switched her gaze to me. It will be a long time before I forget that look of hers. Cornered, yes, the hounds baying on every side, but with this distinction: the slightest inkling of hope, as though some path of escape lay just beyond her tether.

"Please," she said. "Leave us alone. It's almost done. It's almost--"

"It is done," I said, quietly.

She backed away: one step, two steps. I matched her. And by now, she had given up any idea of putting me off. The only idea she had left was: Flee.

Which was what she did. Dashed straight for the rock altar with the box still in her hands.

My first thought was that she would destroy it, that last bit of evidence, hurl it into the brazier or hide it behind a rock or God knows what. But when I went to follow, I found Artemus cutting me off, Artemus opposing his weight to mine.

And so we were joined, the two of us, in perfect silence, just as we'd been joined in that closet, battling over Joshua Marquis' saber. And this time, there was no doubt about who had the upper hand.

Youth, yes, was having its way with age, and Artemus was driving me back--and not simply back, I soon realized, but in a very particular direction. I can't say when it occurred to him, but as soon as I felt that first stab of heat on my spine, I knew where I was headed: straight into the pyre of that charcoal brazier.

How strange to look into Artemus' eyes and see nothing there--nothing but the reflection of that towering fire. From somewhere nearby, I could hear Mrs. Marquis' low keening, and Lea's litanies, but the sound that weighed most heavily on me was the crackle of that fire-- caressing my back--engorging my skin.

A fire in my legs, too: the burning muscles of resistance. Futile resistance, for the distance between me and the flames was falling away, and the fire was kissing my shoulder blades, tongueing the very hairs on my neck. I could see it, yes, in Artemus' eyes, I could see him, steeling for this last push.

And then, for no apparent reason, his head jerked back. I heard him cough out a cry. And I looked down to find, fastened like a tick to Artemus' trouser leg, the balled-up form of Cadet Fourth Classman Poe.

Drugged though he was, and bleeding freely, he had crawled toward us and closed his teeth on the left calf of Artemus Marquis--a bite of thoroughly respectable breadth and depth. And he was now undertaking the one job he could still manage: anchor. Trying to drag Artemus to earth.

Oh, Artemus tried to shake him off, but Poe's will seemed to have grown in ratio to his frailty, and he wouldn't be budged. And Artemus, knowing he couldn't take on both of us, chose to move against the weaker part. He raised his fist and, after a brief calibration, prepared to smash Poe's crown.

He never got that far. In the time it took him to make his strike, I was already making mine. My right fist caught his jaw, and my left seconded it in short order, slamming him under his chin.

Down he went, and down went Poe, still keeping vigil on that leg, so that when Artemus tried once more to rise, Poe's weight kept him pinned to the ground. By then I had grabbed one of the torches and lowered it to Artemus' face, and held it there until it raised a chain of shining sweat along his brow.

"That will be all," I said, between clenched teeth.

Whether he had it in mind to argue the point, I'll never be able to say, because that was when the sound came. The sound of something going terribly wrong.

Lea Marquis stood before the rock altar--her eyes big as moons, her cheeks smeared with something that looked like clay. She stood there, yes, clutching her throat with a red hand.

It was clear in an instant what she'd done. Seized her final gambit, that's what. Mad to win herself new life, she'd followed Henri le Clerc's instructions down to the letter, and it was the last thing I would have expected and maybe the first thing I should have expected. Instead of offering up that heart, she had consumed it. Swallowed it whole.

Narrative of Gus Landor

39 In the end, I think, it came down to this: she couldn't see it all the way through for Henri le Clerc. Something in her bridled. And so the heart she was tasked with devouring lodged itself halfway down her throat-- and began drawing away her life's breath. Her knees buckled... her body curved in on itself... she spilled onto the ground like a load of kindling.

And Artemus and I, who not twenty seconds before had been wishing each other dead, now rushed to her side, and behind us came Mrs. Marquis, her slippers scuffing the stone, and dragging after her, Poe. All of us gathered round Lea Marquis' sprawled form and stared down at that pale face, rouged with heart tissue, and those eyes, jolting from their sockets.

"She can't..." Mrs. Marquis gasped. "Can't..."

Breathe, that was the word she was searching for. And in fact, no words at all were coming now from Lea Marquis, not even so much as a cough. Just a high forlorn whistle, like the song of a bird trapped in a chimney. She was dying before our eyes.

Poe had both of his hands pressed round Lea's head. "Please! Please, God, tell us what to do!"

God being absent, we did our best. I levered up her torso, and Mrs. Marquis pounded her on the back, and Poe cooed in her ear: help was coming, help was on the way. I looked up then and found Artemus standing over us, holding the very lancet he had used to open Poe's vein.

He never proposed, never explained, but I knew at once what he meant to do. He was going to carve a channel of air straight through his sister's throat.

Such a fierce look to him as he straddled Lea's chest... such a terrible glint to that blade... I could well see why Mrs. Marquis moved to take the lancet from him.

"It's her only chance," he growled.

And who were we to argue? Lea Marquis had ceased even to protest, and blue ponds had formed round her lips, round the very beds of her fingernails, and the only parts of her still moving were her eyelids, flapping up and down like awnings in a stiff wind.

"Hurry," I whispered.

Artemus' hand shook as it measured out the sections of her throat. His voice shook, too, as it called up the words of his father's textbooks."Thyroid cartilage," he muttered. "Cricoid cartilage... cricothyroid membrane..."

At last his finger stopped. And maybe his heart stopped, too, in that moment before the lancet plunged.

"Oh, God," he moaned. "Please, God."

Just the slightest pressure from his hand: that was all it took to drive the blade like a sounding rod into his sister's throat.

"Horizontal incision," he whispered. "One half inch." An eye of blood welled up round the blade.

"Depth... one half inch..."

Quick as light, Artemus drew out the blade and plunged his index finger into the slit in Lea's throat. A strange gurgle rose up from inside her, like water rustling through pipes. And then, as Artemus began looking round for a tube to insert, the eye of blood slowly broadened into a pool.

No longer subsiding now, it was widening. Weeping through the wound and rolling away in a steady tide--washing over Lea's marble skin.

"There shouldn't be this much," Artemus hissed.

But the blood kept coming in full defiance of man and medicine, pouring forth in fresh waves, painting Lea's throat. The gurgle grew louder, then louder still...

"The artery," gasped Artemus. "Did I... ?"

Blood was everywhere, bubbling, burbling. In a rush of despair, Artemus drew his finger from the opening with an audible pop, and droplets of blood scattered from his hands like tiny pearls...

"I need..." A sob caught him in midsentence. "I need... please... something to bind..."

Poe was already tearing at his shirt. I was doing the same with my own, Mrs. Marquis was rending her robe... and in the midst of all this thrashing lay Lea. Perfectly still, except for her blood, which came boiling up from inside, more and more of it, never ceasing, never slaking.

And then, quite unexpectedly, her mouth opened. Opened to form three words, as audible as speech.

I... love... you.

It says something about Lea Marquis, I guess, that each of us might have thought himself the beneficiary of those words. She wasn't looking at us, though. She had found the way out--at last--and she was watching herself go, smiling as the light in her pale eyes flickered away into nothing.

We knelt there in silence, like missionaries on a foreign shore. I could see Poe driving his palms straight into his temples... and in that moment, my impulse was not to comfort him but to ask the question that had stuck in my head like a piece of grit. I growled it straight into his ear:

"Is it still poetry's highest theme?"

He looked at me with unseeing eyes.

"The death of a beautiful woman," I snarled. "Is it still a poet's noblest subject?"

"Yes," he said. And then he fell on my shoulder.

"Oh, Landor. I shall have to keep losing her. Again and again."

I didn't even know what he meant. Not then. But I could feel the rhythmic shudder of his rib cage against mine. My hand found the back of his neck and held it... a few seconds... a few more seconds... and still he wept, without tears, without sobs, until everything that lay inside him had been turned out.

Mrs. Marquis, by contrast, seemed more in control of her faculties than any of us. She was filling the air with her cool, easy voice:

"It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was to be a wife... A mother, yes."

That word, I suppose: mother. It sent something flying up inside her. She tried to cap it in her mouth, but it burst through her fingers. It was her own cry.

"A mother! Like me!"

She listened until the echoes had died away, and then, with a low, guttural moan, she threw herself on her daughter's body. Pounded it again and again with her tiny fists.

"No!" called Artemus, dragging her back.

But she wanted more. She wanted to thump that body into paste. She would have, too, if her son hadn't held her off.

"Mother," he whispered. "Mother, stop."

"We did it for her!" she screamed, lunging at her daughter's still form. "All for her! And then she goes away and dies anyway! That horrible, horrible girl, what was it for? If she didn't... what was it for?"

She went as far as she could go in that direction, and then, in the common way of grief, swung back hard. Pushed Lea's hair from her face and wiped the blood from that white throat and kissed that white hand. And sank into the moat of her tears.

What more arresting sight is there, Reader, than sorrow writ so large? I gave myself over to it. Which is why, I think, it took me so long to hear the sound that was coming from above us, settling like dust on our heads.

"Mr. Landor!"

I turned my face toward it.

"Mr. Landor!"

Laughter, that was my first impulse. I was sorely tempted to laugh. For my savior had come... and lo, his name was Captain Hitchcock.

"Down here!" I called. It took my voice a few moments to wind its way through the corridor and up the shaft. Then, from above:

"How do we find you?"

"You don't!" I called back. " We will find you!"