Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon

  Matthew continued to warm his hands. He thought it was Black’s presence that was making the room so terribly cold.

  “We can get it out of Devane,” Black said. “I’d like to cut him up a little.”

  Matthew looked over at the demoniac and saw that Black had set his pipe aside on the low table, had drawn a curved dagger with strange markings on the blade from his jacket, and was commencing to use it to clean his long sharp fingernails. “Come now,” Black urged softly. “Confess it.”

  Still Matthew remained silent.

  “Let me play at being a problem-solver,” Black suggested, as his blade continued to probe. “That’s what you are, correct? Mother Deare told me about that episode on Fell’s island. That he hired you to act a part? And now here you are again, acting a part, but I suspect it wasn’t planned this time.” He paused in his nail-cleaning to draw on his pipe once more. “Your agency excels in such work. I mean to say, the work of solving problems for your clients. Such as…oh…finding objects that have been lost. Or…people who have for some reason been lost. I put my mind to this, Matthew. I shunted it back and forth, trying to make sense of why Fell would send you after the book. I came to the conclusion that…and I hardly could believe this myself…you volunteered for the task. Likely Devane didn’t, but he was made to come along. Now…with that in mind, why would you volunteer for this? Well, is it to win freedom for those two friends of yours, the man and the girl Mother Deare told me she took to the village? But no…I don’t think that’s all of it. I think you bartered with Fell for something else, if he would allow you to come after the book and win the freedom for your friends. Fell is not that easily bargained with. He would want more than the book. He would want…shall I tell you, or do you already know?”

  “Is it your voice or the whine of the wind that’s making my skin crawl?” Matthew asked.

  “You already know,” Black said. He blew a ring of smoke. “He wants you to find Brazio Valeriani. That’s the other part of the bargain. He must have great confidence in you, believing you would come back from this house alive.” Black held up the dagger, its tip toward Matthew. “Don’t waste time trying to deny it. Your agency is well-known for such exploits as finding missing persons. I have to say, if you weren’t looking for Valeriani on Fell’s behalf, I would be glad to pay you your asking price to find Valeriani for myself. What would that price be, Matthew?

  “Your head on a stick,” was the answer.

  “Rage clouds the mind, Matthew. It doesn’t suit you.” Black returned to cleaning his nails. “Do you even have any idea why the professor wants so badly to find Valeriani?”

  Matthew realized that remaining silent and sullen at this point was not beneficial to his interests. Was Black offering to tell him? Matthew said, “I know it involves the book of demonology and Valeriani’s father, Ciro.”

  “Ah, the book of demonology.” Black gave another thin smile. “What if I told you one might regard The Lesser Key of Solomon as a catalogue?”

  “A catalogue of what?”

  “Demons, of course. There they all are, with their names, titles and powers spelled out on the pages. A catalogue, Matthew, of what demon can be chosen for what kind of work on the earthly plane.”

  It took Matthew a moment to formulate an answer. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Instantly he thought yes of course Cardinal Black believes it…and so too must Professor Fell.

  Black laughed. It began as a chuckle of glee and ended up sounded as if he were grinding his teeth on a bone.

  “That was a stupid remark, wasn’t it?” Matthew asked.

  The cardinal’s pipe smoke drifted through the air, curving toward the fireplace’s flue. As the whorls approached him, Matthew imagined they took the shape of grotesque faces and creatures with claws and horns. One skimmed his cheek like a rude phantasmic kiss as it went past and was caught by the updraft.

  “The tale I have been told,” said Cardinal Black, “is that Brazio’s father—a scientist of some note—suffered a mental breakdown at the death of his wife. In that condition, Ciro Valeriani actually had an enlightenment. All the false beliefs were extinguished. He came to know the true ruler of this world, and to both respect and yearn for that kind of power.”

  “Satanic, I’m assuming you mean.”

  “He became quite interested in The Lesser Key of Solomon, and in other tomes even more far-reaching but difficult to obtain. My understanding is that Ciro made contact with a man in Rome who could not only furnish him with some of these—for a hefty price—but who could also introduce him to Senna Salastre.”

  “A new flavor of tea?” Matthew asked.

  “Senna Salastre, who was ninety-four when he passed into the master’s hands last August, wrote some of the books Valeriani was seeking. Matthew, you are so uneducated. You have no idea how Maestro Salastre has worked to benefit the true believers, what he has done in this world to overturn the fictions that you and others of your ilk labor under. You don’t see that the master’s way is freedom. Total, unadulterated freedom the like of which you have never known.”

  “Freedom to cut the hearts out of children, is what you mean?” said Matthew. “And gouge out as many eyeballs as will fill a White Velvet bottle?” He felt the heat rising in his face. He brushed away a floating specter that seemed to be formed of scrabbling claws and a blue tongue a foot long. “And, oh yes, the freedom to cut as many throats as possible and carve that ridiculous symbol on their foreheads, as if it really means you have any power at all? Your freedom, sir, will end when the rope drops you, and I will be there to—”

  “From one of Maestro Salastre’s books,” Black went on, as if Matthew had not spoken a word, “Ciro Valeriani created in his workshop a free-standing, full-length mirror. Valeriani as a scientist had been interested in mirrors for years, so this project intrigued him. Maestro Salastre helped him with the construction and added the mirror’s reflective element from his own workshop. I understand that very soon the glass turned dark, as expected.”

  “A dark mirror? To what point?”

  “With Maestro Salastre’s guidance,” said Black, “Valeriani created a mirror that is not simply a mirror. It is a passageway. Can you imagine in your earthbound mind what planes of existence are connected by that passage?”

  “I don’t wish to imagine,” Matthew quickly replied, though he knew fully well what Black must be getting at.

  “A demonic being can be called to come through.” Black put the pipe’s bit between his sharpened teeth. “A chosen one, of the caller’s choosing. I understand that there is a time limit and a risk of injury, but—”

  “Good Christ, you are mad, aren’t you?” Matthew felt ready to explode. “Demons coming out of dark mirrors! That’s sheer insanity!”

  “Ah,” said Black, with a slight nod. “Would you say the same thing to Professor Fell?”

  Matthew was struck into silence. Behind him the fire burned brightly and before him the wind of a pre-dawn storm blew currents of snow past the oval glass.

  “Fell wants to call forth a demonic presence as much as I do,” Black said. “Why, I don’t know. For me, it would be the ultimate power…to have such a presence in my grasp…for that creature to know I have been faithful and true to the master we both serve…and then…what my command would be…I haven’t yet decided, but mark this…that it would shake the world, Matthew. This I can vow.”

  It took Matthew a moment to regain his reeling senses. “Insanity,” he breathed, but he feared it was much more than that. “You do realize that Ciro Valeriani came to his senses and tried to destroy the thing?”

  “He was unable to do so. My understanding is that at the last moment, when the presence he called forth was in the passageway, he must have lost his nerve—known he was unworthy—and shattered the glass. Some time later he was compelled to repair it.”

  Compelled might be
the right word, Matthew thought. What Valeriani created would not let him destroy it, Fell had said. “And then he hanged himself soon after?” Matthew asked.

  “Very soon after. With his death, the mirror disappeared. His son must know what happened to it, and—if it still exists—where it is hidden. That is why Danton Idris Fell wants you to find Brazio. Find the son, find the mirror. Simple enough?”

  “Italy’s a big country.”

  “Oh, not so big for a grand problem-solver like yourself.” Cardinal Black stood up from his lounge chair and came across the carpet toward Matthew with a smooth, gliding gait. The man was fearsomely tall and in this firelight his weirdly angular face itself had the appearance of demonic virtues. Matthew wondered if this was the sight the little boy in the tower at Adderlane had seen: Black coming at him like a long-legged spider with a dagger in hand. When Black stopped before him, Matthew was treated to the cardinal’s blade being drawn back and forth across his chin.

  “You’ll soon be leaving for Fell’s village,” Black said. “They’re harnessing the horses right now. I will tell you that if you do not return with the book I want, I will personally cut Devane’s heart out. The master demands that it’s done while the offerings are still alive. You may not care that Devane dies and you may get to that village and think you can hide from me, but you are wrong.”

  “What, are you going to get Lash to sail the Volcano back and bomb the place again?”

  The dagger stopped moving. Black angled it so the point was just beneath Matthew’s lower lip. “You know too much, little man. Lash anchored the Volcano off Newquay just as it’s supposed to be, so when I come for you it won’t be with bombshells, it will be with…” He paused, conjuring up an appropriate term. “Deathknells in the night,” he said. His mouth of sharpened teeth grinned. “Bring the book back to me, Matthew. That’s what my master demands of you.” The dagger’s tip was just about to draw a droplet of blood, but Matthew steeled himself and didn’t move.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yes?” Black called.

  “The coach is ready for him.” It was the Owl speaking. “Bring him to the dining room.”

  Black motioned with a flourish of the blade. “After you.”

  On the way from the library to the dining room, Matthew was taking in every detail he could gather about the house…where the central staircase was, how far it was from the staircase to the entrance foyer, how far the door down to the murder pit was from the dining room, the distance from the dining room to the parlor, and everything else he could slip into his brain. He was going to need the details for what he was planning. Of course it was a desperate plan and might go wrong in the first few minutes. He was unsure he would be up to the beginning of it, but he had no choice. It was either try this or be taken on the road back to Y Beautiful Bedd and there was no time to even pretend Fell was going to give up the book. Fell might have a dozen copies hidden away somewhere in the village—if indeed there were a dozen copies of that thing in existence—but to make a gift of one to Cardinal Black? No, it would never happen.

  “Here’s our morning traveller!” boomed Samson Lash as Matthew entered the dining room. The others seated at the table for the breakfast feast Lash had promised regarded Matthew with less enthusiasm and more pure disdain. At the far end of the table Elizabeth Mulloy did not look up from her platter of scrambled eggs, ham and corncakes. Matthew noted that Lazarus Firebaugh was absent, likely either sleeping or having breakfast in his quarters. “Ready for the journey, I hope!” Lash said.

  “Here’s some breakfast for him,” said Merda, who followed it with a thrown biscuit that hit Matthew squarely in the middle of his forehead. “Want another?” He reached for the tray on which the other biscuits rested.

  “Come now!” Lash chided. “Let’s don’t be antagonistic! You have a week of being perfectly ordinary citizens and enjoying all the charms of London!”

  “I am far from being a perfectly ordinary citizen, thank you,” said Lioness. She bit a sausage in half and turned her dark, sullen eyes from Lash upon the object of the moment’s contempt.

  “I miss the charms of my own country already,” Krakowski said, with a sour expression. “I didn’t think I was to be held hostage here!”

  Before Montague could voice his own bitter sentiments, Matthew took charge. “I regret you all feel so…would the word be betrayed? I wish I could alter the situation, but unfortunately it’s not within my power.” He tensed momentarily as Cardinal Black came up beside him and patted him on the cheek with those hideous and murderous fingers before the cardinal took a seat across from Elizabeth. “That said, I am hungry,” Matthew continued. “Where should I sit?”

  “In the coach that is waiting for you outside,” said Lash. “You’ll find a basket of edibles there for your breakfast, which you’ll need to share with the able bodyguard the Owl has provided. His name is Bogen. He’ll be here directly to help you along.”

  “Travelling in this snowfall?” Matthew asked. “We won’t make much time.”

  “You’ll be leaving as soon as possible because my experience at sea tells me the weather is only going to worsen. There’s no use in dawdling. The directions I’ve given my driver are to stop at inns only to freshen the horses and feed yourselves. He knows the way, you may count on it.”

  “Here’s butter for your biscuit, you sorry shit,” said Merda. This was followed by a thumb-sized bit of butter hitting Matthew on the side of the face.

  Lash took a drink from an ale mug before he went on. “Make sure you take that nice warm coat of Count Pellegar’s. It does look to be a frigid morning. You also may count on the fact that Bogen will be well-armed. The Owl tells me he is capable of extreme violence, if it comes to that. Also, he is instructed to shoot you in the head if anything even appears to his careful eye to be going wrong up there in Fell’s little corner of Wales.”

  “Tell him he should save a ball for himself, because after he shoots me they’ll start by sawing his feet off and go up from there by inches.”

  “I am sure there will be tensions.” Lash wiped his wet mouth with a white napkin, dabbing gently at the corners. “It will be to your benefit to ease them, keep both death and dismemberment at bay, and lead all events to a happy conclusion.”

  “Happy for whom?” Montague threw his own napkin down onto his plate. “I dislike this arrangement to the marrow of my bones, sir! You know I must make a full report to my guild!”

  “As you please,” Lash replied easily. “It was my error in not inviting Professor Fell to join the bidding, and so I take full responsibility. But let us not be hasty in our judgments, as we must take the long view on this matter.”

  “A long dim view, sir!” Montague snapped, unwilling to empty his cup of anger.

  “He lost at cards last night,” said Lash to Matthew in a tone of confidentiality. “That does tend to annoy someone who thinks he’s a better bluffer than he is. Ah, here’s your escort now!”

  The Owl had entered the room. He was accompanied by a square-shouldered man of medium height, stocky with a thick bull neck. Bogen wore a dark blue cloak over a gray suit. Beneath a gray tricorn was a face hewn from a slab of granite and then squeezed under pressure. Matthew thought Bogen’s formidable nose could be mistaken as a third elbow and his chunk of chin an extra six-knuckled fist. A pair of pig-like eyes stared from the holes in the work of stone and fixed upon Matthew, whose heart rose into his throat at the same time his knees sagged as if struck from behind. This man was a beast.

  “All is ready,” said the Owl.

  “Get him that coat Devane wore,” Lash said. “Find him a hat, we don’t want him catching his death. Then search him again before you put him in the coach. Good journey to you, Matthew. Now run along.” He waved an indifferent hand and returned to the consumption of the breakfast feast.

  Matthew cast another glance at Elizabe
th. She kept her gaze averted. Now he felt his heart sink. If his plan was to work at all—and to call it a plan was to call Cardinal Black the most handsome of angels—he needed her help. Of course it all might go to hell in the first minute, so there was that possibility, and then what?

  He dreaded to think.

  Bogen took hold of Matthew’s upper arm. “Move,” he said, in a voice like the sound of the chisel that had shaped his face.

  Shit, Matthew thought.

  “Hurry back!” piped Merda’s childlike voice as Matthew was marched out of the dining room with Bogen on one side and the Owl on the other. They passed the central staircase and entered the foyer where the coats and hats were still hanging and, as Matthew noted while the Owl gave the polar bear coat a good going-over, the weapons were still piled up in the basket atop the table. Then the Owl frisked Matthew again, he was made to shrug into the coat, the bruise-colored tricorn of Baron Brux was smashed down upon his head, the front door was opened and the pre-dawn cold hit him in the face like a freezing sledgehammer, and once more he was marched along between the two men to where his coach awaited at the gate.

  Never mind the airship, Matthew thought. The coach was a leviathan, a landship twice as large as an ordinary vehicle of its purpose. It suited the outsized swagger of Samson Lash. The thing was shaped like a ship, with a sharp prow and a flatter stern. Its main body was painted a cream color with doors of navy blue and scarlet, two on each side, and at the back the baggage compartment was not a regular canvas tarpaulin but another pair of doors. The four horses that were destined to pull the thing were also of the larger and shaggier variety. Matthew didn’t know their breed but figured the Vikings had brought their forebears over from the frozen north. Two men bundled in heavy coats and hats sat up on the leather-padded driver’s bench, one to relieve the other when necessary. By the light of the lanterns that hung from ornamental pedestals on either side of the bench, Matthew saw through the falling snow that the relief driver had easy access to a musket secured in a cowhide holder just beside his right leg.