Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon

  “Doctor Firebaugh,” Julian persisted in a quiet, smooth voice, “how does a member of your profession—and your standing—come to be involved in this matter? I would think with your qualifications you’d be quite happy with a profitable life in this city. Who knows where you might wind up?”

  “Yes,” Montague said, “he might wind up in that hellhole called Berlin.”

  “Or somewhere in Africa,” Merda spoke up. “A good question, Your Excellency. Let’s hear it, doc.”

  Matthew pretended to be intent on toasting himself before the fire, but he was listening intently.

  Firebaugh put aside his book and removed his spectacles. He rubbed his forehead, gazed up at the blue-sky ceiling for a moment and then said, “It is true I graduated with high honors from the Royal College of Physicians. I have studied medicine and chemistry, it seems, for most of my life. I am forty-two years old and for the last six years have been practicing at the Highcliff hospital, which is not quite a half-mile from this house. In fact, that was where I met the vice admiral four years ago, when he came in to have a—” He paused, obviously not knowing whether to reveal this bit of information.

  “Check of his ball sack?” Merda prompted.

  “A boil lanced,” Firebaugh continued. “A minor thing, but it can become complicated. In any event, we began talking about things. Life in general. The condition of the world. And I told him my secret, the thing that I knew to be true but that I believe for years I hid even from myself.”

  “Pray don’t leave us hanging,” Julian said when Firebaugh was silent.

  “I detest people,” Firebaugh replied, his eyes slightly narrowed. “I have never married, I have no children, my mother and father are deceased and my only relative—a sister—is married and lives in the colonies, in Boston. I was never meant to be a physician to human beings. One of my instructors told me as much, many years ago. That my so-called ‘bedside manner’ was, as he put it, somewhere between execrable and non-existent. Oh yes, the people element of medicine is what I have failed at. It’s my nature, to want to work alone. To want to be alone. I find great comfort and pleasure in solitude…yet to continue to rise in stature as a physician in this city, one must at least pretend to have care and empathy for his patients.” He shrugged. “Not I. I am simply of a medical mind, and I do not wish to be bothered by the blatherings, woes and corruptions of the sick.”

  “Interesting,” said Julian. “A doctor who despises the idea of having living patients!” Matthew thought he couldn’t have phrased it better himself.

  “Why didn’t you simply become a researcher?” Victor asked, obviously finding some value in this conversation. “You needn’t have dealt with patients in that regard.”

  “Money issues,” Firebaugh replied. “Let us say, I have grown accustomed to a certain standard of living. Laboratory researchers find their income and their advancement quite limited. I choose not to accept limits. At one point I expressed these feelings to the vice admiral, and obviously I made an impression. Therefore when the vice admiral asked me to lunch at his club one day and broached the subject of a particular book he was proposing to seize—and the fact that a great deal of money would surely be in the offing—I listened with open ears. And so I am here, gentlemen, ready to turn my medical mind to research beyond my wildest dreams…researching items that, as the vice admiral has said, have the power to change the world.”

  Yes, but would it be a world worth living in? Matthew wanted to ask. The answer given to himself was: Definitely not.

  Merda laughed. “That’s a knee-slapper, doc. Damned if I ever met a doctor who wanted to kill people instead of heal them.”

  “All in the name of research,” said Firebaugh. “I see myself in a solitary place—in some other country, yes—but surrounded by my papers and my books and my…my peace,” he said. “Precious solitude, in which to exercise my mind. And who knows what might come from the potions in that book? In my estimation, the formulas are intriguing and at least on paper promise to be extremely effective, but also…I wish to use them as starting points toward greater experiments.”

  Matthew didn’t like the sound of that. Greater experiments? What? Poisoning the water supply of entire cities? It seemed to him that Firebaugh might not be content in his pursuit of solitude until half the world had perished.

  “That’s my story.” Firebaugh stood up. “Pardon me while I resume my reading in my bedchambers, as I prefer the privacy there.” His reverie done, the good doctor left the room.

  Miss Mulloy brought Lioness back within fifteen minutes, about the same amount of time as Montague had spent. Both of them had left their satchels with Lash. “Next will be Mr. Krakowski,” the young woman announced. “Sir, are you ready?”

  “Yes, ready!” He stood up, took one stumbling misstep but corrected himself. He got his satchel and followed Miss Mulloy from the room.

  “That’s one we can count off,” Merda said. “He’ll make a fucking hash out of his bid.” Merda stood up from his chair, stretched to his not very impressive full height and strolled over beside Matthew at the fireplace. He rubbed his hands before the fire, and then his small dark eyes took Matthew’s measure. “Doesn’t the baron ever speak?” he asked Julian.

  “When he has something to say,” Julian answered. “And then only in our language.”

  “He looks like a painted dummy.” Merda reached up and flicked Matthew under the chin. “No offense, but it’s the fucking truth.” Matthew simply stared back at him, then with a snort of disgust—both playing his part and expressing his own truth—he walked away and settled himself into the chair Merda had just vacated.

  Krakowski was brought back into the parlor in around ten minutes. Miss Mulloy took Victor away and Krakowski took a chair, closed his eyes and seemed to go to sleep right then and there. In a few minutes Lioness got up from her seat and circled the room, examining some of the marine paintings and signal flags that adorned the walls…or at least pretending to. When she got close to where Julian was sprawled in his chair she turned toward him as if she hadn’t realized he was there. “I have heard quite a lot about you and the baron,” she said.

  “Positive things, I hope,” Julian replied.

  “Ha,” Montague said bitterly.

  “Interesting things,” Lioness answered. “You and the baron recently had dealings in Portugal, is that correct?”

  “Hm,” said Julian. “You heard this in Africa?”

  “In France, where I stopped on business. I understood your dealings had to do with Duke de Valasco.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Madam,” Julian said with a thin smile, “I never discuss business when I am at work. And this waiting game—this entire affair—is to me, work.”

  Lioness nodded, but Matthew saw the shine in her eyes and he thought her animal nature had been aroused. “I understood Duke de Valasco contracted you and the baron to murder his elder brother, and you were rewarded with an item of—shall we say—importance.”

  “Importance is in the eye of the beholder.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Lioness.

  “And I know what’s going on here!” Merda crowed. “The tall lady desires some Prussian cream in her cookpot! Ha! I’d always heard the black skins were—”

  He stopped speaking when Lioness came upon him like a whirlwind, grasped the lapels of his jacket and lifted him off the floor with one hand, pulling him up toward the teeth clenched in her otherwise impassive face.

  Merda opened his mouth wide.

  He reached up to grab hold of the teeth that appeared too large for their aperture. With a pop the entire set of upper dentures and the shiny red roof of his mouth was in his hand, and turning it toward Lioness there was another small click and two small but ugly hooked blades shot out from the device. He held the blades at the level of her eyes, and Matthew saw that the sharp tips were perfectly
spaced for the task of turning light into permanent night.

  “Temper, temper,” he said, his voice a bit slurred and the real front teeth only tiny pegs beneath the hard wax dentures.

  She didn’t let him go at once. She smiled—a hideous grimace—while Montague laughed and clapped like a drunk monkey and Krakowski roused himself from sleep to wonder what the hell was going on.

  Matthew found himself thinking that if these two killed each other right now it would be two less to worry about, and then he was horrified at himself because he was becoming too much of a bad man, pretend or otherwise.

  Still, it would be beneficial.

  “Truce, tall lady?” Merda asked. “It would be a shame.” Whether he meant a shame to blind her or to be shaken like a dog’s bone and thrown into the fireplace he didn’t make clear.

  At that moment Miss Mulloy walked into the room with Victor. In a flash Merda’s bootsoles were back on the floor, Lioness had turned away as if nothing had happened and the blades were retracted into the dental device and inserted into Merda’s mouth.

  Miss Mulloy lifted her chin, as if actually smelling the aroma of impending violence. “Is there any trouble here?” she asked.

  “Just a little show,” Montague replied. “Quite entertaining.”

  “Nothing to remark upon,” Lioness offered. “That is, nothing I can’t handle in my own way.”

  “I see,” said Miss Mulloy after a short pause, and Matthew suspected she really did. Her soft brown eyes turned upon Julian. “Count Pellegar? You and the baron, next.”

  eighteen.

  With Pellegar’s satchel in his grip, Julian walked alongside Miss Mulloy through a long hallway at the rear of the house, as Matthew followed a few paces behind. Matthew noted a peculiar thing about the hallway: its walls began as the light blue of the rest of the house, but as it continued on the paint became a darker and darker blue, as if they were descending into the depths of the sea. The candle sconces mounted here and there did little to lighten the atmosphere. It was as if the hallway in its emulation of the sea were depriving the lungs of oxygen. Matthew felt fresh sweat under his arms and he wished he’d had the chance to apply more white powder to further mask both his features and his scar, but he had not. There was some sweat at his hairline under the heavy wig, but unless rivulets ran down his forehead he thought—hoped—he’d be all right.

  All right. Now that was a ridiculous thought, in this hallway that seemed to be twenty fathoms deep.

  “What is your place here?” Julian asked as they approached a large oak door at the hallway’s end where the walls were nearly black: the sea’s bottom, which claimed the bones of so many drowning men.

  “My place?”

  “Yes. Your elegant gloves, the very beautiful gown…are you—let me put it as well as a poor Prussian can—Vice Admiral Lash’s permanent hostess?”

  She gave him just the hint of a smile, but it was guarded and careful. “My gloves are my style. I always wear them. Thank you for the compliment on my gown. I am the hostess at this particular event, yes, but I also serve as the vice admiral’s business advisor.”

  “Oh?”

  “I have a head for numbers,” she said. “He trusts my judgement and in return offers me a very rich life. Here we are.” She opened the door. “After you gentlemen, please.”

  Julian and Matthew entered the room. Its walls were painted as dark as the last few feet of the hallway, yet there were pools of light from strategically placed lanterns. A large oval window gave a view to a snow-covered courtyard. Across a dark blue carpet trimmed with scarlet, Samson Lash sat behind an imposing desk that had a ship carved upon its front. One of the pools of light spread across the desktop and reflected up into the flame-bearded face. And there before Lash—right there atop the desk—was the book bound in red leather that held the potions created by Jonathan Gentry. Right there…so near and yet so far. Even as Matthew’s gaze fell upon it, Lash caressed it with his huge left hand.

  On the floor to one side of the desk was a basket containing the satchels of those who had come before. To the other side of the desk was a chair in which sat the white-suited Owl, his golden gaze already fixing upon Matthew.

  It took Matthew a few seconds to register that someone else occupied a corner of the room beyond the desk, where the light did not reach. His heart seemed to stutter in his chest.

  Cardinal Black sat in a chair with his spidery legs outstretched, the boots crossed at the ankles. His thin, angular frame in a coal-black suit with an ebony cloak about his shoulders indeed made Matthew think of a spider that had spun its web and now waited for the prey to become entangled. On the pale long-fingered hands with their sharpened nails were the multitude of silver rings cast in the shapes of skulls and strange satanic faces. The mane of sleek black hair that settled around the shoulders simply made the cardinal’s pallid, weirdly elongated face appear even more ghostly-pale, as if it were a thing of smoke that had somehow taken form and hung in the air, its puncture-wounds of eyes unblinking. The flesh was drawn so tightly over the cheekbones that Matthew felt pain looking at it, thinking that at any second the bones would burst through. But pain was not the central perception Matthew gathered; the centrality was that of a silent evil, watching and waiting…the spider for the flies.

  Miss Mulloy closed the door at their backs. She came around to stand at Lash’s right side. In the low light, even her cherubic countenance had taken on too many shadows for Matthew’s liking. He felt a shiver up his spine. The Owl was still staring at him, and how long would it be before the man mentally unmasked him and recalled seeing his face at The Green Spot?

  “Before we begin,” said Julian, who sounded amazingly calm in this den of Hell, “a word to the wise.” He was speaking to Lash, but directing it to the Owl. “The others out there are getting somewhat restless. Arguments have begun. I note that no one had the presence of mind to remove the set of fireplace tools from the room. With those, any of the creatures in that parlor could commit mass murder.”

  Lash nodded. “See to it,” he said to the air, and immediately the Owl left the room and once more closed the door.

  Matthew would’ve breathed a sigh of relief, but now Cardinal Black was watching him…and Black had seen him face-to-face in Y Beautiful Bedd, if only for a short time but time enough. Mister Corbett, Black had said that night in the village’s hospital. I’ve heard much about you.

  “Gentlemen,” said Lash, “I have been looking forward to this meeting, most of all.”

  “The baron and I are honored.”

  “Show me what you have.”

  Julian took the key from his pocket and unlocked the satchel. Matthew thought Julian must have nerves of steel, to have fitted that key in the locks so smoothly; if it had been up to him he’d still be fumbling with a sweat-slick key from now past midnight.

  Julian opened the satchel and shook it until all ten of the gold bars had left their pockets and lay on the desk just short of the book.

  The gold gleamed up into Lash’s face. He reached out to run his fingers over one of the bars, and then he said quietly, “Where is the other half of your offer?”

  “Ah. Here.” Julian unsnapped the inner compartment and brought out the five pieces of parchment, and Matthew thought that if these weren’t what Lash meant, they were both dead. In dramatic fashion, Julian laid down one sheet at a time, and when he was done Matthew caught the briefest shine of sweat through the powder on Julian’s forehead.

  Lash said nothing as he studied the sheets. He took an arm and pushed the gold bars and the book aside so that he could further arrange them to his liking. Miss Mulloy peered at the drawings over one of his massive shoulders. In the corner, Cardinal Black shifted his position just a few inches, as if the spider were preparing to strike.

  Lash spoke.

  “Excellent,” he said. Then, with a rush of emotion: �
��Excellent! I knew you wouldn’t fail me. Even though after our last communication I heard nothing more.” He lifted his gaze to Julian and presented him with a scowl that would’ve withered Matthew to his knees. “You should have written to tell me you had these. I was left hanging for much too long.”

  “My apologies. I…didn’t feel a letter was secure.”

  Lash looked upon the drawings once again. His scowl evaporated. A smile kept pulling at the corners of his mouth. “I accept your apologies. And what you say makes sense. What do you think, Elizabeth?”

  “They’re magnificent,” she said.

  “More than magnificent. They are…everything to me.”

  “Your happiness, sir,” said Julian, “is our happiness. Does this mean we win the bidding?”

  “It means you are far ahead in the running,” Miss Mulloy answered, rather crisply for her position as hostess. “Vice Admiral Lash will take his time in making a decision. Also, Miles Merda has not offered his—”

  “Elizabeth, let us not be too opaque in our appreciation, lest Count Pellegar think we hold this collection in low regard,” said Lash. “As far as I’m concerned, you will be the winners. And yet…” His hand again caressed the red book. “I do have the luxury of time in which to consider. In any case, I have an entertainment planned for later which I think you gentlemen will enjoy. So let us not rush to any statements of completion.”

  “As I say, your happiness is—”

  Lash laughed. He grinned fiercely up into Julian’s face. “Do you two even know what it is you’ve brought to me? Can you even guess why I went to all that trouble to contract your services to Duke de Valasco?”

  Julian hesitated, perhaps a beat too long. Then: “Of course. For the plans you have before you.”

  What Lioness had said in the parlor, Matthew remembered: I understand Duke de Valasco contracted you and the baron to murder his elder brother, and you were rewarded with an item of—shall we say—importance. Matthew wondered if the gold bars were not from this Portuguese duke but from some Prussian criminal group that desired the book, and the parchment plans had come along because Lash had in some way arranged for them to be part of the bid. If that was true, Lash had reached a hand nearly fourteen hundred miles to secure the sheets of parchment that he now seemed to be viewing with such excitement, and Matthew reasoned that this plan must have been at least a year in the making.