Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon

  “Speaking of crimes against oneself,” said Montague with that squeezebox wheeze, “you are sitting across from a—dare I use the word without being struck dead—a gentleman who is quite familiar with the conduct of a brute. An ignorant brute, at that. Isn’t that true, Pellegar?”

  Julian smiled silkily, while Matthew wanted to crawl under the table. “If you say so,” Julian replied.

  “You know full well what I’m referring to! The Hollenstein affair in 1698! Tell them all how you and Brux carried out that particularly charming solution!”

  Julian retained his smile, but he did shift a fraction in his chair. “I find—as likely we all do—that any solution has its own charm. You tell them, Montague, since you’re such the expert.”

  Bing bing bing! rang a fork against a wineglass.

  “Sirs…please,” said the obviously unnerved Doctor Firebaugh. “This is neither the time nor place for—”

  “He and Brux murdered my employer,” Montague wheezed on, aiming his eyes at Lioness as if she might rise up with him to strike down the count. “Strangled him in his bedchamber! My golden goose! And for that I was behind the black balls for two years until I had atoned myself for their sin!”

  “Unfortunate,” said Julian, with a smirk that was right in character. “Ah, speaking of a golden goose!”

  The food was arriving on three rolling carts, the first of which supported a green platter on which a very large cooked goose—its skin crisped to what really was a shade of gold—was being offered to the guests. Matthew’s sigh of relief was a windstorm when Montague’s attention shifted from the so-called crimes of Count Pellegar to the feast being rolled across the gray stone floor. He noted also that Julian’s eyes closed for a few seconds, as if steeling himself for the next confrontation that he had to talk his way out of.

  But any confrontations could wait. Soon on the table along with the cooked goose were platters of steamed carrots and turnips, fried potatoes, creamed corn, yams and asparagus as well as smaller plates of smoked salmon, fried cauliflower with mustard sauce, steamed mussels and a loaf of freshly baked dark bread covered with sesame seeds. The servants stood ready to pour more wine and attend to whatever was needed.

  Weighty wig or not—and horrific circumstances or not—Matthew decided to eat as best as his stomach could manage in its current crimped state of tension. The others apparently the same, for the feast began to be whittled down by knives and forks and there was only the occasional comment from Miles Merda to interfere with the noises of gluttony, of which Matthew noted Montague and Krakowski were tied as most obnoxious.

  Then came another noise…that of heavy boots striding from the passageway between the parlor and the dining room, and suddenly he was there.

  To say that Vice Admiral Samson Lash was bearlike was to say that Lioness Sauvage was knee high to a cub. At six feet four inches tall and with a barrel-shaped frame, the man filled his space and more. He was as much an element of fire as Matthew had ever seen, even considering the fiery Hudson Greathouse. This man’s sharp blue eyes even seemed to be throwing fire as he stopped before the table and scanned the assembly. His nose was large and hooked, his forehead a battering-ram, the black beard that trailed down over the front of his medalled naval uniform was painted with orange and red flames, his mass of curly black hair hung shaggily about his monuments of shoulders, and his thickly veined hands bore knuckles that Matthew thought could knock a chunk of marble from the fireplace. The man was as scary as hell.

  And there he stood, those huge hands on his hips, the fiery eyes peering at one and then the other. At last his broad mouth grinned and the teeth seemed to shoot flame also as they reflected the leaping firelight.

  “Guests!” he boomed. “Honored guests! My hearty welcome to you all!”

  “Hm,” Matthew heard Julian mutter beside him, another noncommittal utterance but this time Matthew thought it was more an expression of awe…and the realization that this was the force of nature they had to bargain with.

  “Please,” said Lash in a more contained voice, “do continue your feasting.” He drew from a pocket of his uniform a gold pocket watch, which he set upon the table between Matthew and Montague next to the bones of the cooked goose. “I will take this moment to say that I know you all have journeyed a distance to attend here tonight…some more distance than others…and I am gratified at the interest you and your affiliations have shown.”

  As Lash spoke, both the Owl and Elizabeth Mulloy quietly entered the dining room behind him, and again Matthew felt his stomach squeeze with tension around the grand meal he’d just consumed…and hoped to keep down.

  “This is a momentous occasion,” Lash said. “Great expense and precise planning had to be undertaken, but from the beginning I understood that I was not going to fail. I will admit to you that my associates and I—”

  Yes, I know who those must be, Matthew thought: the fortunately dead Mother Deare and the unfortunately living Cardinal.

  “—did fail twice in this attempt, as the plans went awry at the last moment. Therefore we had to wait until a more opportune time, which we of course seized…and the result is, I own a volume that has the power to change the world. You know it as a book of chemical and botanical potions once possessed by England’s own Professor Fell, and I think all of you recognize the importance of that name.” He paused. One wilderness of an eyebrow gave a slight twitch. “I mean to say…what once was the importance. Time does not stand still, gentlemen and madam. Neither does the control of power. This volume…whatever we had to do to get it, whatever risks had to be taken…well, the formulas in the book do speak for themselves.”

  Lash began to slowly pace from one end of the table to the other. “Let us understand the procedure.” His boots made a clacking sound on the stones. “This has been a long time in the preparation—as you all well know—and I shall not rush it now. One by one, according to the number you were given that applies to your arrival here, I will see you privately in my study, and thereupon will hear the amount you have elected to offer in exchange for—”

  “Just a moment, sir!”

  The voice was startling, since everyone but the speaker had been so focused upon not only Samson Lash’s speech, but his presence.

  Victor had spoken. “I protest against that procedure! Why not have open bidding?”

  Lash stopped pacing, stood very still, and stared at him.

  The moment stretched.

  Then Lash smiled, but there was something deadly playing at its edges.

  “My house,” Lash said quietly. “My rules.”

  Victor was silent.

  “Let me reassure you—all of you—what your winning bid purchases.” Lash walked toward Firebaugh and put both huge hands on the man’s thin shoulders. Matthew thought those hands could break the shoulder bones in two seconds of effort. “You are winning not only the book, but the services of Doctor Firebaugh for one year from tonight. The very talented doctor has given the contents of the book an intense study in the short period of time we have owned it, but let me assure you that he will thoroughly understand its directions before you reach your destination. Doctor Firebaugh has been trained in the knowledge of chemicals at the Royal College of Physicians by two of the most renowned names in London’s medical profession, Doctors Lucian Crippen and Wilfred Jekyll, and you may not be aware of the intelligence of those individuals but I dare say you shall.” Lash gave the shoulders a reassuring pat and strolled back down to the other end of the table, where he picked up the pocket watch, looked at the time and then set it back down.

  “In addition,” Lash said, “the winner of this auction shall have the benefit of two bodyguards chosen from this man’s able team.” He motioned toward the Owl, who briefly nodded. “These bodyguards will remain on duty until your ship leaves London, to prevent any of the saddened and disappointed losers from attempting to take what is not
rightfully his—or hers—or theirs.” He gave Matthew and Julian a pointed look. “These bodyguards will be armed and ready to kill, with my blessing. Doctor, are we nearing the time?”

  “Yes, I would say so,” Firebaugh responded.

  “I foresaw,” said the vice admiral, “that all of you might question the validity of the potions. Therefore I have taken the liberty of applying one of them—from the doctor’s creation— to a glass of the wine that was partaken at dinner, and the effect should be imminent.”

  If Matthew’s heart had been beating hard, now it began to gallop like a racehorse. His gloved hands grasped the arms of his chair. What if he or Julian had swallowed a truth serum? Christ! he thought. To have everything spill out here at the dinner table…disaster upon disaster!

  “Soon now,” said Lash, with another glance at the watch.

  “I still protest this arrangement!” Victor argued. “It’s unfair, not to hear what my competition is—”

  Sandor Krakowski began to laugh.

  All eyes turned toward him.

  Krakowski, still laughing, put a hand to his throat as if to clench the laugh off, but it would not cease. His pockmarked, battle-rough face had reddened. He laughed on, the sound of it getting louder and higher in pitch, and he looked back and forth at the others as if believing the wild laughter came from some other body than his own. He started to stand but suddenly he was laughing so hard he was unable to leave his chair, and on and on it went, until—

  —very suddenly he burst into tears.

  “Ah,” said Lash. His eyes glinted with delight. “The next phase.”

  Krakowski not only was now crying forlornly but blubbering like a little boy who had just lost his last sugar candy. Then he began to wail like a child who had seen his mother beheaded before him, and in his seat Matthew cringed because it was a horrifying moment, to witness a man reduced to such a state of helpless pain.

  Lash snapped his fingers. One of the servants came forward with a glass of white wine on a silver tray. Lash took it and said to the table at large, “Someone should hold him while I get this down his throat.”

  Matthew almost stood up, but Julian sensed it and grasped his arm to prevent a move that would betray Matthew’s innocence of English.

  Lioness rose from her seat, came around the table and clamped her arms around both Krakowski and his chair. With one hand Lash pushed Krakowski’s head back, said, “Drink this, Sandor. Come on, like a good boy.” He got the glass against the sobbing man’s lips and started pouring, and somehow in his chemical grief Krakowski realized the antidote was at his mouth and his tongue emerged to allow as much as could be swallowed. After the glass was empty the man continued to cry for another moment while Lioness restrained him and Lash rubbed his bald head as an attempt at further ease. At last Krakowski shuddered, gave a last hideous sob and a croaking noise and laid his sweating face down upon the table.

  “There,” Lash said. “He’ll be shipshape in a few minutes.”

  seventeen.

  Matthew stood before the fire in Samson Lash’s parlor. Everyone had returned from the dining room after the unsettling—at least, to him—demonstration, and first to be escorted by the Owl to Lash’s office with his satchel in hand was Bertrand Montague.

  All but Matthew sat silently in the chamber. Seated in his chair across the room, Sandor Krakowski was still recovering. Every so often he gave an involuntary shudder and put his hands to his face as if to blot out some horrific dream. As a reward for his participation, he’d been given a glass of what Lash announced to be twenty-year-old French Armagnac. Krakowski had taken it gratefully but was not exactly sure why it was being given to him, since he told Lash and the others that he recalled hearing someone laughing at the table and after that he couldn’t remember anything until he’d found himself back in the parlor, being given a glass of Armagnac.

  While Krakowski had been semi-conscious with his face against the table, Lash had said to the rest of the assembly, “And there you see the effects of just one of many potions in the book. Doctor Firebaugh informs me that this particular formula is simple to follow and has a result that can be effectively timed.”

  “All well and good, sir,” said Victor with the hint of a sneer, “but of what use is such a formula? Laughing and weeping…it’s not lethal, is it?”

  Lash had stood where he could stare directly and quite forcefully into Victor’s eyes. “No, not lethal. Does anyone have an answer to Victor’s question?” His gaze roamed the table. Then: “Count Pellegar? Your reputation for creativity precedes you. Care to venture a guess?”

  Julian tapped a finger against the table a few times, gathering his thoughts. Matthew waited for what was to come, thinking that it had better be convincing, “I believe,” Julian said, “that the potion mimics insanity. There are times it might be useful not to kill, but to destroy. To ruin a reputation, to make a man fall from favor…particularly a man who might be valued as an advisor. On the battlefield, an officer under such a spell would be unable to lead or to write out orders. No, it’s not lethal…but it is deadly in its own way, and could cause the actual deaths of—I would say—thousands.”

  “Thousands,” Lash repeated. He smiled and nodded. “Precisely correct.”

  Now, in the parlor, Julian was sitting in a chair between Merda and Victor, his white-powdered brow furrowed in contemplation and his fingers steepled before him. Lioness had taken a seat as far away from the others as possible, and had been brave enough to ask for another glass of red wine from Elizabeth Mulloy, who seemed to be acting as their gracious hostess during this period of waiting. Firebaugh sat wearing a pair of oval wire-rimmed spectacles, reading what appeared to be a weighty medical tome he’d brought from another room, and Matthew figured he must be staying here at the house under Lash’s watch.

  Matthew couldn’t help but from time to time steal a glance at Julian. That ready recognition of what the insanity potion could do bothered him; Julian knew his evil, that was for sure. But it had dawned on Matthew that Jonathan Gentry’s book of potions would be worth an untold fortune in the underworld, which was exactly why these assassins and representatives of like-minded powers were gathered here. These people lived on the will to destroy, either from their own motivations or the money being paid them from corrupted rulers or those who wished to seize the crowns. This book was akin to The Lesser Key of Solomon; one was a compendium of the demons of Hell, and one was a compendium of how to loose those demons upon the earth.

  The demons of chemical poisons, all there for the taking, and Doctor Lazarus Firebaugh available for one year to coax the deadly imps from their bottles. Matthew figured Firebaugh would be free to negotiate his own terms after the year had ended, so he was pretty much set for life. He burned to ask questions of the man, to find out how Firebaugh had gotten involved with this…indeed, he burned to ask questions of all the assembly, but for once his curiosity could not be fulfilled and he felt like going to the wall and chewing the paint off it.

  But…something had begun to work in Matthew’s mind concerning Mister Julian Devane, and he did not like where it was leading.

  Surely Julian had recognized the value of the book. Who wouldn’t? With that thing in hand, Julian would owe allegiance to no one. Julian would be gone on his own path in a shot, Fell be damned and Berry forgotten. Indeed, that pistol of Julian’s might have a ball with Matthew’s name already on it, if they walked out of here as winners of the auction.

  So, the questions Matthew realized he might face were terrible.

  Might he have to kill Julian to save the sanity of the woman he loved…and intended to ask to marry him, when she was—by God’s grace—recovered?

  Might he have to kill Julian to save his own life?

  Julian suddenly lifted his chin and looked across at Matthew as if reading his mind; then, without a change of expression, he averted his gaze and once mo
re sank into contemplation.

  The fire crackled and popped at his back, but suddenly Matthew felt very cold.

  “Can’t someone tell me? Who was laughing?” Krakowski asked, still befuddled. He had presented this question once before and gotten no reply. Matthew wondered if he was going to be fit enough in the head to offer a coherent bid. “I am confused!” Krakowski said.

  Firebaugh looked up from his book. “Breathe deeply a few times, Sandor. That should help.”

  “Help? Help what?”

  “Just breathe and relax.”

  Krakowski muttered something that was in his own language and unintelligible, but he did as the doctor said and closed his eyes.

  “You must have a big brain,” Merda said to Firebaugh. “A fucking genius. Are you?”

  “The creator of the book, Doctor Jonathan Gentry, was a true genius,” Firebaugh replied, “I try.”

  “You’ll have to do better than try, when I have you in my country,” Victor said. “My employers will expect more than table tricks.”

  “I shall deliver,” Firebaugh answered, with a measure of regal dignity. “And I can promise you, sir, that the book’s ‘table tricks’, as you call them, have the power to turn the tables on any enemy your employers see fit to destroy.”

  Julian suddenly broke from his state of contemplation. “Fine words,” he said. “But I’d like specifics that Vice Admiral Lash failed to supply. For instance, how many potions are inscribed in that book? Even…how many pages does the damned thing have?”

  “You’ll get to see that for yourself, Count Pellegar.” Elizabeth Mulloy had entered the room, bringing Montague back to the group, and Matthew noted that she could move as quietly as a cat. “The book is in Vice Admiral Lash’s study. Madam Sauvage, I believe you are next.”

  Lioness retrieved her satchel and went with Miss Mulloy, while Montague sat scowling in a chair as if things had not gone as well as planned. Merda aimed a little chuckle in Montague’s direction but when he didn’t get a bite on his line he reeled it in and sat twiddling his thumbs.