The Secret Book of Paradys

by Tanith Lee

  Cesar’s plan was to remain the far side of it, and to bolt at once, so adding to Grisvold’s terror. He would then return secretly into the house, and to his sister’s company, where, if questioned, they would both declare their unity in a project to do with the pressing of plants, and encyclopedias.

  As for Grisvold, anything might befall him.

  The chosen hour was dusk, when the area of the west tower was unfrequented, Cesar supposed at his preparatory work, and the servants busy with their supper.

  That Grisvold might disobey Cesar’s orders crossed no one’s mind. Least of all Grisvold’s.

  He stole the key and had it in his grasp when Cesar approached him in the twilight under the tower.

  Most of the boards had already worked away from the door. Grisvold’s inopportune brawn had soon removed their vestiges. The warped outer door also gave before it.

  In the gathering of the dark, as bats flitted over the yard, they stared together, these bad companions, up the stony corkscrew of the stair.

  “It’ll be pitch-black, it will,” said Grisvold.

  “No, I’ve brought a candle.”

  They went in by the base of the steps, and Cesar lit the candle with a vivid splutter from the big match.

  A bleak and grim place it was, the vein of the tower, all fissures and rats’ nests, the steps dank and pocked with ancient stinking rains that had come through and collected there. They went up, Grisvold first as he had been told to do. The candle flung great wheeling arcs that seemed to topple the stair, so they clung to the unsafe railing. Cesar was already unnerved and had a want to fly constantly. But Grisvold’s chittering fear sustained Cesar. Helpless in his own world, Cesar wished, godlike, to see to what depths his subject’s fear might go down.

  At the top of the spiral was the vast timbered door, girded by iron, and with the great iron lock that had been established some two hundred years before.

  “Try the key,” said Cesar firmly.

  Grisvold hesitated, shaking and muttering, and in that instant Cesar beheld that some message had been scratched in the wood above the lock. “Wait,” said Cesar, and shone his candle there.

  “What do it say,” gabbled Grisvold, sweating violently and shivering all over. “Thee tell me.”

  And Cesar, without properly thinking, read aloud the words some admonisher had inscribed there, that the warning not be lost (who that was was never learned; everyone currently in the household disclaimed it).

  All you who dare to enter here will die.

  Grisvold tried to turn, and Cesar struck him lightly and correctively, another lesson learned from Papa.

  “No. Do you want everyone to think you a ninny and a coward? Open the door. Open the door and prove you’re a man.”

  Grisvold bleated in abject terror. But he turned back to the door, got the key into it, and by dint of his strong hand and wrist, forced the door to give and so swing wide.

  Cesar too had waited on this. He was half petrified, and yet his reason had not deserted him. The warning cut in the door concerned entry to the room. As for looking, he would allow Grisvold to do that. Cesar crept, stiff with fright, back down two or three steps, and so he never saw, never chose to see, what the room contained. Obviously, bones, for the dead woman who had laid the curse had prevented anyone’s ever shifting her to hallowed ground. There she must have sat, propped in her chair, in the desiccated ruins of her gown, and with the eternal diamonds still cold and bright upon her. Worse than a ghost, very likely, the actuality of mortal death.

  Above him, where the candle held high in Cesar’s hand could reach, and where the dusk faintly came through the chamber’s broken window, Grisvold stood quaking, and noiseless now, staring at something which was undoubtedly Morcara’s skeleton. And the Devil, who but the Devil, made Cesar whisper loudly, through nausea and panic, “Go in, Grisvold. I dare you to. Go into the room.”

  And Grisvold, like a stage magician’s doll, took some unflexing cloddish steps, and went into the room, into the room of Morcara’s curse, and was there perhaps the half of one minute, before coming out again. And standing on the top step, the doorway of the room behind him, Grisvold looked down on Cesar his tormentor, and said to him, “It’s death to go in. It says so. And thee made me. Thee killed me.”

  Then he dropped flat with a thud that seemed to disturb the foundations of the tower, and did not move, and Cesar fled, throwing away the candle as he did so.

  There was, as the brother and sister described it, a deal of fuss. For Grisvold’s mother went to look for him, and then some of the grooms went, and they found him halfway down the stair of the tower, where, somewhat recovering, he had crawled. He was carried to his mother’s room, and there on her bed he raved and burned, so the doctor was called from the village. But by morning Grisvold was dead.

  Then all the old truths of Morcara’s room were brought out shamelessly, and Cesar’s father went up alone, shut the door, and locked it. And coming out, gray himself as the stone, he set about ordering bricks and cement to seal the tower’s lower door forever. A fortnight later this was done.

  As for Cesar, when questioned he and his sister adhered to their pretense. They were not believed, but neither was it feasible to disbelieve them, for that must be to accept that two children, below the age of twelve years and of good birth, had perpetrated something evil.

  Presently Cesar was sent away to school, where he was subjected to all he had dreaded, and worse, and might have felt, if he had thought there any need, to have expiated his sin. Mademoiselle de Venne paid in other ways for a crime she soon shifted totally to her brother. The copious diaries of her girlhood contain only one reference to Grisvold’s death, as follows: Cesar once did, in childish ignorance, a very wicked thing, and made me lie for his sake. I have no luck, nothing goes right for me. Have I too been doomed by Morcara’s curse?

  When they had finished their story, the two mummified objects at the fire fixed on Rendart their glassy eyes. After a few moments, the young man sighed. That was hardly response enough.

  “What do you say to it, eh?” demanded Monsieur de Venne. And reaching out almost absently, he rang the bell for the stoat-faced maid, since his brandy decanter was empty.

  Rendart sat considering. He had rather astonished himself by being deeply offended. Not only at the appalling viciousness of their childhood personas – which still in some form persisted, flutter about poor Grisvold as mademoiselle had, and make intimate confession as had monsieur. But also at the insane stupidity that had preserved the pair of them, to this very night, in the crediting of Morcara’s curse.

  It was true, Rendart would have liked to punish them, but sternly he had put this idea behind him. Then he was only left with the much harder puzzle of how to bring them to their senses in a tactful and open-ended way.

  At length, after several quite harsh or insistent promptings from monsieur and mademoiselle, and after the brandy had been refilled by Pierre, Rendart spoke.

  “I take it, the lower door of the tower is still bricked up?”

  “What else?” flared Monsieur de Venne.

  “I have to tell you,” said Rendart, “it could be unbricked tomorrow, and the remains of Morcara Venka removed for burial. That might allow her peace. Perhaps you might feel easier.”

  “God have mercy!” cried Mademoiselle de Venne. “How could it be possible?” she said. “No one can enter that room and live.”

  “I’ve heard the words of the curse on the room,” agreed Rendart. “But I wouldn’t put any faith in their effectiveness.”

  “Haven’t you had proof enough?” grated monsieur, recharged with brandy fire. “Morcara herself. The man who broke in the door. And bloody Grisvold.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard what you’ve said,” murmured Rendart, “but it seems to me the first man who rushed into the chamber by accident rushed out again in horror, missed his footing, and fell quite naturally, if unfortunately, to his death. Poor Grisvold, from what you say, was subject to und
iagnosed fevers, which may have been linked to an inflammation of the brain. He had also been recently and savagely beaten in a manner, dare I say, the awful beatings given monsieur perhaps did not approach. Add to that a superstitious and overwhelming terror, and I must suppose his latent disease erupted and carried him off. As for Morcara,” added Rendart determinedly, as alcoholic waves and pale flappings threatened from the fire, “I rather think she took her own life. From what’s been said of her she would brook no denials. To live her life without a man she genuinely had come to desire would have seemed to her dramatic spirit an imposition. Neither man nor God should tell her what to do. So she shut herself up and concluded her existence with poison.”

  “Ridiculous!” roared monsieur.

  “Not at all,” said Rendart. “Mademoiselle has herself assured me the garden abounded in dangerous and venomous plants; I myself spotted three or four. You picture Morcara in her ball gown, with flowers in her hand. Probably they were one of the deadlier species, and she ate them to effect a swift dispatch.”

  A space of wordlessness followed this statement, during which the fire and some clocks ticked away the minutes. Seeming to understand what they did, it was Mademoiselle de Venne who quickly if hoarsely broke the silence.

  “But remember the words, Monsieur Rendart. They are scratched to this day on the door.”

  “I do indeed remember them, perfectly. All you who dare to enter here will die.” Rendart paused, and let his pity for them both, even his pity of their nastiness, their evil, come back to him. He would spare them, he must. “Suffice it to say, mademoiselle, if you wish me to undertake the commission, I’ll see to it the tower is unbricked, the upper room entered, and the bones removed to holy ground. For myself and those I hire for the work, I haven’t any fears. I guarantee their safety – and their wages – and if you like, I’ll furnish proof of their survival for, say, a year after the reburial. I’ll even go so far,” said Rendart, with a sudden smile, “as to set up a tomb for Morcara Venka, at my own expense. Out of respect for her romance.”

  They sat dumbfounded, glaring at him. They loathed his interference and yes, they would like him to perish of the curse of Morcara’s room; they would give their permission.

  Rendart regretted his smile all night as he lay dozing in the fearful dank white bedroom. He was sorry he had lapsed, for it had been the smile of a torturer if not the executioner: He had punished them by making a gift to the dead, rather than to themselves, the living – that state and title to which they so obstinately clung.

  A month later, as the heat of summer baked into a fruiting jamlike autumn, the tower of the mansion was opened, the stair ascended, the door undone, and the heap of bones placed in a box and borne away.

  Rendart for his part contracted with the workmen, and the priest who had spiritually cleansed the room of any impressed miseries, that they should monthly submit to the de Vennes, for one year after the enterprise, continued proof of their life and health, which was accordingly done. All those who entered Morcara’s room, including Rendart himself, are still hale and going about their deeds in the world.

  For of course, as Rendart had seen, having the youth, the scope for it, it was no curse at all Morcara Venka had laid upon her room in the tower. For she told no more than the truth, the truth which the old monsieur and mademoiselle must not be made to face so bitterly, the truth at which she, Morcara, in anticipating, had thumbed her nose. Pure self-deception caused others to dance thereafter to Morcara’s tune. (As she surely knew, adding a cunning flick of the wrist to her phrase.) It was only necessary to open the eye of the mind as well as the door of the chamber, in order to go in there without terror. Or at least without any terror that was not already inherent and inevitable, and that each of us must dwell with for every year we are on the earth. All you who dare to enter here will die. It was a fact. All who dared the room would die. What else? For death is the destiny of all, and unavoidable, be it now, tomorrow, or eight decades hence. But how often do we like to be told, how often do we not convince ourselves we are immortal?

  * * *

  You can tell the graves of the bourgeois, always so ornate and yet so cautious, as if even here they were afraid to try too far above their stations, lest they be smitten. Sometimes you see how the living attempt to make reparation. Here the neglectful parent has strewn stony flowers above his child, but none of the real sort. The story associated with this grave is very horrible and very strange. Hearsay.

  The Marble Web

  Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do!

  I’m half crazy, all for the love of you!

  – Harry Dacre

  From the glycerine water they pulled her up, first hauling on the sodden shreds of her robe, but these gave way, finally getting purchase on the bones of her corset which had not rotted. Her hair streamed back into the water, like weed, and in the pre-dawn nothing-light, she was no longer pretty, or easily to be recognized.

  There were many who got their trade out of the river, that Styx of Paradys. By night suicides came down to the edge like parched deer. Others, murdered, were thrust out into the depths, surfacing days or weeks later, by this or that bridge or muddy bar, to render up, to the scavengers of the river, a pearl locket, a silver watch, or a jet in a ring of mourning.

  But Jausande Marguerite, she was not quite of the usual order, for they had heard of her, perhaps been looking out, and for that reason, wrapped in an oilskin, her body was taken presently to one of the judiciary buildings behind the Scholars’ Quarter. Here, under the dreadful probing of the new electric lamps, she was identified, she was given back her name, which was no longer any use to her.

  And soon after that the hunt was on, but the hunt found not a thing. Thereafter all this was sensational for a brief month, then passed into the mythology of the City, that makes itself from the ragbag of everything.

  “Lower the lights,” said the young man in the loud coat. “He’ll perform a miracle.”

  “What nonsense,” they said generally. And then, another: “It isn’t necessary to lower the gas. He’ll do it without.”

  Across the salon, the man with whom they were spicing their conversation glanced at them, and the group fell silent.

  “What eyes,” said one of the women feebly, once the man had turned away.

  “Oh? I thought them surprisingly poor, considering he’s supposed to use them in order to entrance, and hypnotize.”

  “Probably uses his ring for that,” said another.

  The loud coat admired the ring, someone else remarked pointedly that it was very vulgar. But others had not at all observed a ring, and looked for it in vain.

  Then the group began to discuss a different topic. Their flylike minds were unable to remain for long in any one spot.

  The man they had spoken of, however, was now and then commented upon by all sides. His nickname was The Conjuror, for it was said of him that he had made some money in a vaudeville act to the north. He represented therefore to the bourgeois evening salons of Paradys all that was ludicrous, contemptible, quaint; a butt for jokes, and perhaps needful in a dry social season.

  In appearance, certainly, The Conjuror was recognizable by his very ordinariness. Not short, decidedly not tall, thinly built, and neither well nor badly dressed, his hair was combed back and his face shaven, leaving – washed up there, as it were – two normal eyes, without exceptional luster, and actually apt to turn as dull as misted spectacle lenses.

  His notoriety was founded on a collection of odd stories, the facts of which came always in an altered version.

  Meanwhile, he had not said, written, done, or vowed to do anything at all celebrated. There was a rumor the walls of his narrow flat near the Observatory were plastered by bills and photographs depicting him as an archmagician, raising the dead from the floorboards of a stage. But who had been to the flat to see? He was unmarried, had no servant. He went out only to those functions to which some frustrated hostess had, on a whim, summoned him. With t
he perversity of the City, however, his utter dreariness – he had neither wit nor charm about him – soon lifted him to a bizarre pinnacle, that of the Anticipated. There he stayed, or nearly stayed, by now fading a little, for even if lighted by others, a candle must have wax enough to burn of itself.

  “My dear,” said the hostess of the evening salon, as she led her niece into the room, “I should have been lost without you.”

  “Why?” said her niece, who dreaded finding the salon tedious, and longed to escape.

  “Your youth and prettiness,” said the flattering aunt, “your poise. That dress which is – oh, perfection.”

  Jausande Marguerite smiled. She was one of those girls who had somehow always managed to draw genuine praise from both sexes. She was attractive enough to please but not beautiful enough to pose a threat, she was kind enough to be gentle, cruel enough to amuse, and young enough to be forgiven.

  “Look there, what a fearful coat,” said Jausande, and avoided the eye of the loud young man swiftly, with a delicate, apparently spontaneous vagueness.

  “Yes, his father has been a great help to your uncle. Vile people, but money … there we are …”

  Jausande sighed, and cleverly concealed her sigh as she had learned to conceal a yawn at the opera.

  Beyond the salon windows the evening, through which she had been driven, still had on it a light blush of promise. Jausande had caught the terrible sweet illness, often recurrent as malaria, and most unbearable in youth and middle age, the longing for that nameless thing given so many names – excitement, adventure, romance, love. Every dawn, each afternoon, all sunsets, aggravated the fever.

  But through the promising dusk she had come, to this. Already her eyes had instinctively swept the room over, and found all the usual elements both inanimate and physical. There was nothing here for Jausande Marguerite. But she must pretend that there was.