The Book of the Damned

by Tanith Lee

  "The front door had been unlocked. Can a ghost not pass through a door? Does it need keys, and candlelight? Well, who knows. That fool. Why couldn't he explain himself in his letter."

  "Andre is - Andre was mad. He and Philippe."

  "It was in my mind, he must do something unwise. The insanity over the woman. Then her death."

  "I told you, Russe, I heard them saying at the Iron Bowl, there was another duellist's body found in the Observatory woods."

  "That's not unusual."

  "They buried it, as always - no identity, and no questions. That was before dawn yesterday. But when did he send the letter to you?"

  I listened, marvelling. When he said, this second man, whose name was surely LeMar - when he said 'dawn yesterday' he meant a morning gone, one day and night. Could it be that I had lain all that great while, deliberating, between ending and resuming, before I moved and flung up from the prison? It had seemed to me to be only minutes.

  "It may be Andre has only gone away. They think so at his lodging. This is what his letter implies. But I am perturbed by the reference to a debt to this man, this Anthony Scarabin."

  "Her brother - Russe, Russe. Don't you see? Scarabin shot him. Andre is dead, and in a grave. We've searched the City. Where else could he be but under the ground."

  "Here in this house."

  "Yes, in this house. We come searching, we see the flicker of a light and rush in - but where is Andre, tell me that. Oh, he is here. He is here, Russe, but not in the flesh. Ah God't'

  The cry was sudden and full of a kind of gratified terror.

  Russe only cursed, in his heavy way.

  It came to me the candle had been blown out abruptly, by an invisible agency.

  I heard the noises of the flight of that one, that LeMar - Le Marc - all down the stairs again, howling, and out into the street."

  But Russe remained, and he said, "Andre? Andre, are you truly dead and truly here?" (I had the desire to answer, sepulchral, from the chest. But he would not know my voice now.) 'Ah, Andre, if you are. I warned you. Horror and sorrow, unholy things. You were a fool to meddle with it, Andre. Well, I'll go to the house of the Baron. I will ask him outright. It must be settled."

  I crouched amid the chest and heard Russe in his turn go down the stairs. Then I rose up. I started - for the first tide of daybreak was in the window. I could see by it the candle, smoking.

  Perhaps Philippe and I had played another game upon our friends.

  Of whom had Russe been speaking? This Baron. I must follow the two men, and learn.

  The lid of the chest fell, shutting in, conceivably for ever, perhaps, the shed bloodied skin of dead shot Andre. I had the bullet, however. It must have worked its way out like a splinter.

  I took up one of the woman's veiled hats, the mesh purse, and a pair of respectable gloves, and went quickly down the house, ignoring the soft cracks and hissings it made at me. I locked the front door, then tossed the key high, at the crowns of the trees growing from the old City Wall.

  Andre had known the way to the Baron's house, but I was not so certain. The peculiar light before sunrise showed me the agitated figures of the two men, about a hundred metres up the street. If they should chance to look back, they would think me only some lady of darkness hurrying to her lair, or lady of virtue hastening out to church.

  I felt much stronger now. I felt the edge of laughter, but scarcely any pain, under my breast.

  And how quaint the lady's shoes sounded on the pavement.

  We went downhill, and crossed a terrace, and heard, far below, the City stirring.

  They climbed another hill, my guides, with a clock-tower on it. I climbed after.

  We came to a street along the hill's inner shoulder, and here memory sharply returned. The stuccoed houses were still asleep and blank as mausoleums, all but't ie. There was already some activity there. A pair of carriages stood outside the wrojight-iron gate, reminding me of another pair of carriages, or the same, under the trees above the duelling hollow. Grooms had been holding the heads of the horses; now a coachman came and got up on the box of the foremost vehicle. Russe was on the pavement, arguing with a domestic from the house. Both spoke intensely, quietly, not to wake the street, LeMarc sometimes joining in, flapping at the house, the carriages, the sky.

  Across the road I spied on them, concealed in another gateway.

  LeMarc had turned towards the iron gate, now ajar, and the steps. The domestic tried to restrain him. The voice of Russe rose suddenly.

  At that moment, the house door opened. Something was coming °ut. In the twilight, so pale it seemed to float of its own volition, a faceless glimmering shape - but two servants bore it between them. It was a milk-white coffin. Down the steps, the gate opened out for it. A groom pulled wide the carriage door. They eased the coffin into the interior.

  It had had its effect, this manoeuvre. LeMarc was immobile, nonplussed. Russe had foolishly removed his hat.

  And now the Baron, the banker, von Aaron - I recalled him very well - was coming down the steps. I listened with great concentration, and heard him say, to Russe, "This is not the time, not the place. What is it you can want?

  "We are concerned," said Russe, holding his hat, "for the safety of our friend. Monsieur St Jean. I believe you, or your guest, may be able to help us in the matter."

  "I? How can I do that? Her brother, to whom I take it you are referring, has insisted that the body of my wife return with him to - to a previous residence. I am to follow. As you see, that second carriage is already loaded with my trunk and boxes. There is no time now, to discuss any of this. If you must, you may call on me upon my return."

  "When will that be?" said Russe.

  "I'm not certain, monsieur. You must excuse me, you really must. I'm surprised, monsieur, at your lack of taste. To accost me at such a moment, almost across the corpse of my wife."

  Russe stood, frowning and out of sorts at this reproach.

  LeMarc cried, "And the duel? There was one - you admit as much?"

  Von Aaron said nothing. From the porch above, a clear voice cut sinuously and crystallinely down, like a fencer's sword.

  "If that is your problem, you must address yourselves to me."

  There, in his white, white as the coffin, my enemy, gazing at them from his battlements of flawless arrogance and contempt. My heart leapt. The pain of death's memory wracked through it: my heart recollected. And in the purse of mesh the silver bullet, blunted on my muscle, flesh and bone, seemed to jump and scrabble.

  "Then," said Russe doggedly, "we do so address ourselves."

  The man Anthony Scarabin, descending to the street, said in passing, "I can tell you only this. Your friend caused harm. I therefore shot him, two mornings ago. You will find his grave, I believe, in the derelict cemetery that is generally used for such purposes. And now, if you would move aside."

  As if they could not refuse, they obeyed him. Then as he stepped into the first carriage (which contained the coffin), LeMarc bawled: 'You murderer!" But Russe took hold of LeMarc's arm. From Scarabin there was no reply. (And from the flat windows all about, not a face squinted out.) The groom closed the carriage door. The coachman unfurled his whip. The horses came to life and sprang forward. With a grumbling jangle, the carriage was off. It bowled along the street, and up on to the crest of it. Watching, eacji of us beheld it run away, looking weightless as a shadow-ball, around the tower with the clock, and then, taking the downward path, it was gone.

  "This is not over with," said Russe.

  LeMarc broke out shouting, and just as quickly broke down in silence.

  "I shall present the business to lawyers," said Russe.

  Von Aaron nodded.

  "On my return, I will be at your disposal. But now you must let me get on'. He nodded to them, and turned abruptly, marching back into the house. The door was shut by the domestic, who had followed him. The one remaining carriage, humped with its luggage, without a coachman still, and with only the groom
beside the horses, waited like a thing of stone, in the stony light.

  For a few instants, LeMarc continued to complain and flail. Then Russe had him in hand. Russe declared there was no point in their loitering there any longer. They would go straight down to the Justiciary, and be ready when the doors opened at eight o'clock.

  Once they had dwindled from the street, the groom took out of his pocket some pieces of bread and dark chocolate, and began to eat them hungrily.

  When I emerged from my gateway, crossed the road and approached the carriage, the groom did not look at me with any special interest. When I opened the carriage door and got into it, he said merely, "Now - ' but nothing else. Obliged to keep the horses in check, he did not pursue me, nor call again.

  I placed myself on the upholstered seat, adjusted the veil of my hat so that my face was lightly filmed, put my gloved hands on my purse, and waited for von Aaron to come back.

  He was not very long. Probably he had only gone in again to evade Russe and LeMarc. Now the coachman also came, and going round, got up on the box. I heard the groom say in an undertone, "Some girl has got into the carriage." The coachman grunted with no amazement.

  But von Aaron, when the groom had opened the door for him, froze in the middle of his ascent into the vehicle.

  "Who the devil are you?"

  "Your fellow traveller."

  "This is," he said, still bowed over in mid-entrance, "a private coach."

  "Quite so."

  "Then please get out, mademoiselle."

  "I will not," I said. "You had better get in, instead."

  His engraved face loomed before me, at a loss. Then he pulled himself up and sat down across from me. The groom hovered at the door and von Aaron indicated this fact with his hand.

  "Must I have you ejected, mademoiselle?"

  "Don't consider such a thing." I stared at him through the veil. "I am going where you are going."

  "And where is that?"

  "After the other. The man in white, and that white coffin. It's perfectly simple. Why delay us both."

  His hand went into his cuff of metallic lace and drew out a lace handkerchief. He put it to his brow and lips. His eyes never left me. Finally, he said, "It occurs to me that I know you, mademoiselle."

  "Not at all."

  "Yes. I've seen you before. I - ' quite suddenly his face grew very white and still. Only the lips separated from each other, and the eyes darted up and down me, up and down. There could be no doubt; I was a woman. He was thinking to himself, was he, that I was some relation of Andre St Jean? A cousin, perhaps, or a sister. At length he glanced away, at the hovering groom, and told him to withdraw and to shut the door of the carriage. The groom did so. He went back into the gateway and stood there looking at us, not much intrigued, surreptitiously slipping slivers of chocolate into his mouth. Von Aaron said, "You will render me your name, mademoiselle, at once."

  I lowered my eyes. I replied deliberately, "My name is Anna Sanjeanne."

  There was a pause. The difference in the 'Sanjeanne' was very slight from the one he had been expecting. It caught and held him, trying it over, licking his lips. The handkerchief fluttered again. I closed my eyes, my hands folded upon the purse in my lap.

  "And you - he said, "you will not get out?"

  "No I will not get out."

  "God in Hell," he said. He swore. He compressed the handkerchief and thrust it away. Then, he leaned from the window and shouted at the coachman. As von Aaron lurched again into his place, the whip cracked outside and the vehicle juddered. We began to move, rolling forward, the wheels grinding over the stones, as I had seen happen with the first carriage.

  Sleep, or faintness, stole over me. I leant my cheek against the seat's cushioned support, my head turned from the Baron towards the other window. The world swam and streamed, all Paradys streaming away. My lids fell again.

  Von Aaron said to me from far off, "I shall not, mademoiselle, exchange another single word with you. You must understand this."

  "Do as you please," I murmured.

  He laughed bitterly, just once.

  The jolting of the carriage as it gained speed joined with the furious knocking of my heart. The roar of wheels and hoofs flowed in my brain. Awareness, Paradys, they poured off me together. The City was going, being left behind, as if we lifted into the morning sky. Somewhere, thin and hard and pure as steel, a thread led away out of the labyrinth, at the other end of which there ran before us a blazing gem of white.

  The carriage travelled through the day, almost as the sun did. There was only one brief stop.

  In the first hours, I saw very little from the window, after the fragmentary passing of the City. Once, after we had clattered across the great bridge that spanned the last northern loop of the river, a vagary of the curving road laid out before me one ultimate vista of Paradys. It rested behind us in a valley of light, glittering there like water, for the day was already growing hot. The towers and domes had melted down into the molten whole. It was a landscape solely, only possibly inhabited. And thereafter, the only bells we heard, the speechless, sweating Baron, and I, were the sheep-bells from the orchards and pastures at the roadside.

  Later, the dust came and furred the windows, already shut by glass and sun. We rushed then through a pollinated world, lost in bright mist. When there were woods, the carriage darkened. Here and there a fountain jetted from a rock, or a stream-bed widened, flashing like diamonds.

  I slept, or swooned, rising in and out of deep silences to the clash of wheels and the groans of the vehicle. I was not alarmed he would set on me, my companion, that I should be taken up unconscious and thrown out on to the road. He had acceded. He had given in to destiny which had assumed my form.

  At noon, the sun was overhead, striking the carriage roof with its spears. I rose from my stupor and lay in another one of unbearable heat and savage excitement. I was proceeding where I must. I was a creature that was itself beyond all transgressions, all impediments.

  I could revel in that, half-dead in the heat and deathless, as the Baron mopped his face and drank water from a travelling bottle.

  Afternoon came, and all things slept but we. Black sheep lay in the shade of colossal oaks. Crows on a parched field stood as if petrified. Blond wheat parted at the wind of our passage, and closed again together like the tines of a fan. Black as agates, the grapes on the vinestocks, among the grey and dusty leaves -

  About three in the afternoon, came the halt. There was an inn above the road, and the horses were to be changed. As it was seen to, a man materialised at the Baron's window, and handed in a hamper.

  The Baron unfolded for himself a wooden tray, and spread a napkin over his knees. He ate shiftily, then took a goblet from the hamper and a bottle, uncorking and pouring the red wine. Now the glass bulb glowed like a huge garnet. He gulped the glass, spoiling it.

  Just before we started up again, von Aaron, discarding the remains of his meal, the tray and napkin, leaned diagonally, across the carriage and offered me a glass of the garnet wine.

  "The day is very hot." He apologised for showing kindness or pity, breaking his vow not to speak. But I respected the vow. I raised the veil of the hat, and drank a little wine. A very little - I had no intention that nature should force me to quit the carriage. Though he superstitiously dared not put me out, an independent withdrawal would obviate destiny in an instant.

  When I set down the glass, he was staring at me in distressed fear. He shook his head, retrieved the goblet and himself swallowed ail its contents. Then, he spoke again. "Mademoiselle St Jean, if you would reconsider. Do you see that inn? It's very pleasant. I have money here - and I must come back this way, and can then… Surely - '

  "No."

  "Why this stubbornness?" he pleaded. "What can you hope for?"

  What indeed? The hope, ghostly, unclaimed, flooded me like fire at his question.

  "We were not to converse, I thought," said I. "And you have misremembered my name."
/>   The man appeared at the window for the hamper, and von Aaron pushed it out to him. He dropped a coin in the man's hand. Hamper, wine and waiter moved away.

  Perhaps a quarter of an hour had elapsed. The coachman called a query from his box. The Baron shouted out to him to go on. Nor did the Baron evince any want or need to vacate the carriage.

  The new horses started forward with all the rush of the old.

  Towards sunset, when a pink-geranium glare filled the vehicle, the Baron spoke again.

  "I think, Mademoiselle St Jean, that we should talk."

  "Formerly, you thought otherwise. You were then correct."

  "Mademoiselle - Mademoiselle St Jean - '

  "Sanjeanne, if you must."

  "This is very ill-advised on your part."

  "You believe so."

  "This venture. Let me tell you what I conclude. That you have some strange irrational dream of vengeance on your mind."

  "Vengeance for what, pray?"

  "The death of your brother."

  "I have no brothers, Baron."

  "The - gentleman whom you saw leaving my house in the City - he is not to be trifled with. You should not - I'm telling you, mademoiselle, you are embarked on a dangerous course."

  I laughed. A girl's laughter, it came to me unexpectedly and delighted me a moment.

  We plunged on through the radiant pink light, and pines began to come along the road, which rose upward, upward. Then we entered a great vault of geranium sky, with, hanging in it, cliffs and spires of rock, the dark forests boiling over them, and the sun, a transparent burning-glass, only the colour of the air.

  As I gazed at it, he said quite crisply, "You will have to cross the northern border, mademoiselle, if you mean to go on with this. Do you have papers?"

  But it was the beauty of the sunset which v^as real. The Baron apparently did not understand about the being of reality, its translucence, its elasticity.

  When the sun sank, the forests closed on us. Now it grew chilly. Timelessly time advanced.

  It was near midnight, and I was numbed and stiff with cold. I had slept further it seemed, or at any rate, been absent from the carriage where my body journeyed. Now, the carriage had stopped again.