Coming back to me, he said, “It was a charming evening, was it not?”
“Yes . . . I had a lovely time,” I said, to my surprise. I had intended to be cold to him, but, yet again, his manner cut through my haughtiness. “It has been a long time since I have spoken to anyone as we spoke tonight.”
“And I may see you again?” He bent down to look into my averted eyes.
“Very well,” I replied haltingly.
“When?” he asked. “You must tell me when, bella mia! I must have something to look forward to!”
The intensity of his gaze flustered me.
“Ah . . . New Year’s Eve, my brother Erasmus is throwing a party. It’s in . . . I forget where, Ariel will give you the address on your way out,” I blurted out. Louder, I called, “Ariel, give Ferdinand the address Logistilla gave me.”
Until the words left my mouth, I had given no thought to Erasmus’s party. If Ferdinand accepted, I would be obliged to go. I found myself torn between an unrealistic hope that Ferdinand’s New Year’s Eve would already be unavoidably occupied, and an intense wish that he would attend.
“Your family will be there?” A keen spark of interest showed in his deep brown eyes.
“Some of them,” I replied speculatively. Little help as my family might be in other ways, I could trust them to thoroughly interrogate anyone who might make extravagant claims about Father. I was curious to see what Cornelius, who claims he can hear truth in a person’s voice, would conclude about Ferdinand’s story.
“I would like that, bella mia.” He took my hands. “I would like to meet your family.” He bent his head and kissed both of my hands. “And now I must trouble you to call a taxi, for I have no other vehicle.”
Ariel gave Ferdinand Erasmus’s address, while I called for a taxi. When it came, I accompanied Ferdinand to the driveway. The snow, which had tapered off during the night, had recently resumed. A blanket of white lay over the lawn and surrounding trees. All seemed hushed. I walked beside Ferdinand down the snowy slate path to where the taxi waited in the curving drive.
“New Year’s Eve then, bella mia,” he whispered to me, as he opened the rear door of the red-and-white cab. I nodded silently, shivering in the chilly night air.
Ferdinand bent to climb into the seat. Straightening suddenly, he swung around and seized me, crushing me to him. He kissed me harshly, his lips bruising mine with their roughness. I kissed him back and slipped my shivering arms beneath his coat to embrace him, the warmth of his body spreading slowly to me.
The snow swirled about us. The taxi driver waited patiently. When Ferdinand finally drew away, there was a furious and untamed gleam in his eyes that flickered like a raw flame. I feared he would seize me again, or carry me off with him, or refuse to leave. A moment later, however, his customary gentleness returned. He kissed me demurely upon the cheek.
“Till the New Year, bella mia,” he whispered in my ear.
Then he was in the taxi, and the driver was pulling away. I watched the cab disappear down the long drive leading to the road. When I could no longer see the red taillights, I brushed the snow from my shoulders and went inside.
As I walked back, each step felt so light, I was tempted to look over my shoulder to make certain I was leaving footprints in the snow. I felt as if I were standing on the air, just like the angel I had described. A delightful tingling ran from the roots of my hairs down the length of my body, causing me to laugh out loud. Reaching the lesser hall, I seized the statuette of my elf and danced about the hall with it, my gown swirling as I went. Even the steady curious gaze of Tybalt, where he lay curled upon his silk pillow, did not dampen my lightheartedness.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
The Chapel of the Unicorn
I awoke the next morning to sunlight streaming through the curtains of my enormous canopy bed. The bed had been built during the reign of Elizabeth I, when such beds were first in style. As I luxuriated upon the massive mattress, it amused me to recall that, back then, our whole family had slept crammed into this single bed.
What pleasant dreams the night had brought. I dreamt Ferdinand kissed me, and no fence of lightning appeared to drive us apart. Only . . . I sat upright. I ran a finger across my lips. They still felt tender. Then, it had not been a dream at all, had it?
The phone rang, and an Aerie Spirit wafted the receiver to my hand. I leaned back against the headboard and greeted Mab, whose gruff voice came wearily to my ear.
“Greetings, Miss Miranda, how are things back there?”
“Very well, Mab,” I replied enthusiastically. “It’s a lovely morning!”
“No additional disasters?”
“Not a one. No inkling of what may befall us by Twelfth Night, either, but I have the company on high alert, to be on the lookout for more attacks, just in case.”
“Good thinking, Ma’am,” Mab grunted. “I sent the truck parts we recovered to our forensics guys. I’m hoping they will be able to tell us the cause of the crash.”
“Let’s hope they find it was just an accident, though Tybalt doesn’t seem to think so.”
“Begging your pardon, Ma’am, but I wouldn’t trust the talking fur ball. He has this quirky notion that facts should not stand in the way of an exciting theory. Hardly a reliable witness.”
With nothing to gain from participating in the Mab-Tybalt feud, I changed the subject. “How is it going where you are?”
“Okay, Ma’am. This is what I found out.” There was a short pause, during which I could hear him flipping the pages of his notebook. “Your father visited Prospero’s Mansion in Oregon on September 17th—while you were in Japan. I’m not certain exactly where he went next—looks like he spent a few days in New York, perhaps visiting your brother Cornelius.”
Cornelius again. I shuddered. Please, Lady, do not let him have worked evil upon Father, too!
“Anyway,” Mab continued, “he showed up here in Elgin five days later, on September 22nd, which happens to have been the fall equinox this year. The old priest who takes care of the graveyard where Gregor was buried says Mr. Prospero arrived about two p.m. He had a judge’s order allowing him to exhume your brother’s body and brought in a backhoe to dig up the grave. Then the bulldozer departed and the old priest left Mr. Prospero alone with the coffin.”
“Exhume Gregor!” My mind boggled. “Wha-what happened next?”
“Well, that’s just it, Ma’am. No one seems to know. The priest says your father never showed up to sign the rest of the paperwork. Nor have any of my people been able to find hide nor hair of him since. The backhoe driver was the last person who reported seeing him. It’s as if Mr. Prospero walked into the graveyard and vanished off the face of the Earth . . . which may be exactly what happened.”
None of this made any sense, unless . . .
Could Cornelius be in league with the demons? Could he have sold out Father in order to free the Three Shadowed Ones and get his hands on Gregor’s staff, perhaps hoping to earn some nefarious reward from his infernal allies? Perhaps, ensorcelling Theo and tricking Father were part of some greater, overarching plan.
No. The idea was ridiculous. Besides, Father claimed he freed the Three Shadowed Ones. Of course, he thought it was an accident. . . .
“This doesn’t sound good, Mab.” I spoke slowly, hoping to mask my confusion and dismay.
“I questioned the old priest as to whether there were any other unusual occurrences,” he continued. “He mentioned two weird things. First, late that same night, a man was found wandering around that same graveyard in a state of amnesia. Or at least the priest called it amnesia; apparently nothing the guy said made sense. The old priest took him to the local hospital, which in turn shipped him off to Chicago. I spoke with the doctors, to ascertain whether it might have been Mr. Prospero. They described a young Italian man, who I am tentatively assuming was Mr. Di Napoli—at least, until I find evidence to the contrary.”
“Well, that’s a relief!” I sighed. Sl
ipping from my bed, I began laying out my emerald tea dress and clean undergarments. “More corroborating evidence for Ferdinand’s story!”
Knowing that Ferdinand might be on the level made me feel better about last night’s visit; however, I refrained from mentioning it to Mab. The experience was too precious to share just now, and I did not wish to field the barrage of questions such an admission would surely bring.
Over the phone, I could hear a scratching sound, as if Mab were doodling on a notepad as he talked. “The other thing was: on September 23rd, a trucking company showed up and carried away a crate. According to the old priest, they were supposed to be taking away a broken headstone. However, the priest showed me the broken headstone—it was still there. Then, he showed me the paperwork. Guess what company owned that truck?”
A feeling of icy dread clawed at my stomach. “The same company that owns the warehouse we investigated in Landover, Maryland?”
“You betcha!”
I sat down in front of my vanity and rested my forehead against my palms. It had just dawned on me that the theory Tybalt proposed that first night might be correct. Perhaps Father had not told me what he was about because he feared I would disapprove—and with good reason.
Rallying, I picked up my brush and began untangling my long silvery locks. It took a certain knack to keep the phone nestled snugly on one’s shoulder while dressing one’s hair, but decades of practice helped. Of course, one of these days I would get a speakerphone, and yet another of my highly-honed skills would go the way of galloping while riding sidesaddle, placing the bed-warmer just so, and dancing in a bustle—victims of the relentless march of progress.
“I don’t suppose the priest had any idea what Father wanted to do with Gregor’s body?” I asked. Mab gave a negative snort. I continued, “Did he say what became of Gregor’s body and coffin?”
“The priest never mentioned a body. He thought the trucking company took Gregor’s coffin instead of the broken headstone, which may be the case. It can’t be in the crate we found, because that crate was the wrong shape for a coffin, unless . . .” Mab’s voice dropped. “Ma’am, I fear the coffin, and probably your brother’s body too, may have fallen through the gate into Hell.”
“It’s a good thing I’m a Protestant now,” I said faintly, putting down my brush. “Otherwise, I might find that information tremendously disturbing.”
Ordinarily, the news that my brother’s dead body was now in Hell would have inspired cold fury within my breast, directed at whomever had disturbed his eternal sleep. However, the culprit was apparently Father. I comforted myself with the assurance that Father had not intended to lose Gregor’s body, and thus, that it has been the Three Shadowed Ones who were to blame . . . unless, of course, Cornelius were at fault. Given a choice, I would rather blame the demons.
“By the way, Ma’am, I’ve been meaning to ask, and seeing your brother’s grave—or lack thereof—reminded me. What does Gregor’s staff, the . . .” I heard pages flip as he consulted his notes, “Staff of Darkness . . . what does the Staff of Darkness do? Other than issue darkness . . . I mean, it does do something else, right?”
“Enforces oaths. If you swear an oath on it, you cannot break that oath without dying. Also, it drains life—not enough to injure a human without prolonged exposure, but enough so that the darkness can be used as a ward to keep out spirits, much as the rock salt did.”
“Swear oaths, you say? Similar to swearing on water from the River Styx, then?”
“Exactly. We used it to guarantee our contracts would be upheld,” I sighed, “and it’s mighty hard running Prospero, Inc. without it! Also, the darkness that seeps from it absorbs life, keeping certain kinds of spirits at bay . . . the same kind that cannot cross the Styx. It’s a wonderful staff, though I prefer mine.”
“I see. Interesting . . .” There came a pause. “We swore on that thing, didn’t we, Ma’am? That’s how we Aerie Ones became enslaved to you Prosperos. . . .”
“Employees, Mab, not slaves. Slaves serve against their will.”
“When the penalty for changing one’s mind is death? Sounds pretty ‘against my will’ to me! Wish there were some court where I could go complain about being compelled to swear under duress.”
“Back to the matter at hand, Mab,” I insisted sternly. “Where do we stand now? What have we learned?”
“Basically, the priest’s story seems to corroborate Di Napoli’s story. Other than that . . . your father goes into a graveyard and digs up a dead relative. He never reappears, but a truck shows up and removes a crate. The truck belongs to a company that just happens to own a crate with a gate to Hell in it.
“My guess is this: the crate from the graveyard contained a gateway into Hell. The same gateway through which your father disappeared and Di Napoli emerged—probably herded out by the demons, so that his reappearance would cause havoc. Furthermore, I hypothesize this is the same crate Mephisto so kindly opened for us in Maryland—a crate which, by the way, is now securely packed in one of our warded warehouses. Thanks to the good work of some of my men.”
I brushed my hair in silence, considering all that I had heard. Mab waited respectfully. I heard him take a gulp of something, probably—from the sound he made after he swallowed it—the cold dregs of a forgotten morning coffee. It was later in the day where he was.
“Begging your pardon, Ma’am,” Mab asked finally, “but what was Mr. Prospero thinking? Digging up your dead brother on the fall equinox?”
“I don’t know, Mab.” I considered the matter. “My guess is he was trying to summon up my brother’s ghost, and he got some kind of demon instead. The demon then dragged him bodily into Hell—leaving behind an open gate, which allowed both Ferdinand and the Three Shadowed Ones to escape.”
“Yeah, but what did Mr. Prospero expect to gain from summoning your brother’s shade? And why did he need the body? Why not just use his hairbrush or some old belonging? What kind of magic was he aiming to perform that he needed a corpse? Nothing white, I can tell you!”
“I don’t know, but I can make a possible guess. Father has been studying the secrets of the ancient Eleusinian mystery cults. With those secrets, it is theoretically possible that Gregor could be reborn without losing his memories. Their rituals were usually held around harvest time. Perhaps the fall equinox was a propitious day for this, so he tried to summon up my brother in hopes of sharing with him the secrets he had gleaned. Though how he thought Gregor would find his way out of Hell to be reborn, I don’t know. Nor do I have any idea why he needed my brother’s body, unless he had tried before without it and was unable to locate Gregor’s soul.”
“Interesting,” Mab muttered darkly.
I said, “I would not envy Gregor, finding himself stuck in the body of an infant with the memory of a grown man. Nor would I want to be the woman who gave birth to a baby who remembered his previous life.” Visions of the cigar-smoking baby I had seen in some cartoon flashed through my head.
Mab growled, “Bet you Prospero planned to take Baby Gregor to your sister Logistilla. Then, voilà, a flick of her wrist, and she turns him into an adult. After all, she’s had plenty of practice producing full-grown Italians. Only, Prospero doesn’t know darling Logistilla was in on it with the guys who killed Gregor. Unless she had his knife because she hunted down his killers, took the dagger back, and turned them into turtle soup.”
“A comforting hope, Mab,” I replied, “but I doubt it. I’m sure if Logistilla had caught Gregor’s murderer, we would all have heard about it, over and over again. No, I fear her having the knife has some more sinister cause. Exactly what, I don’t know—perhaps having something to do with that devil you smelled.”
“Speaking of that knife,” Mab drawled, “I visited the archive at the town hall in Elgin. Apparently, they still have some police records regarding the shooting of your brother. They aren’t immediately accessible though—have to be printed off a microfiche machine or something. I paid their fee and
gave them the address of the mansion. The clerk promised to mail us a copy of whatever he finds.”
“Good thinking! Tell them we’ll pay more if they expedite it,” I said absently, for my thoughts were consumed with suspicions regarding Logistilla and Cornelius.
They had been quite close until their recent falling out, always whispering together at stockholder meetings, back when Logistilla still owned stock. Could this plot against the family have reached as far back as the death of Gregor? Could Cornelius have wanted the Staff of Darkness even then, and been thwarted when it was laid to rest with Gregor’s body?
I would have dismissed this theory as foolishness, were it not for one thing: I did not, for an instant, believe Logistilla’s claim that she had forgotten about seeing Cornelius use his staff on Theo, only to have the memory conveniently pop up again while we were dining together, over half a century later. It was possible, but since we were speaking of something as important as Theo’s life, her claim struck me as unlikely. Yet, if she had remembered all along, why had she waited so long to tell anyone?
Unless she had been Cornelius’s accomplice. In which case, she was willing to tell me now because of their recent falling out. I wondered again what the cause had been. Could it be that she feared for Theo, or that she had balked at involving Father? If so, I applauded her attack of conscience. Of course, all of this was speculation.
“Ma’am?” Mab repeated.
“Er. Very good, Mab,” I said. “Though I’ll be surprised if they turn up anything. I recall Ulysses did some investigating at the time, but no one was very helpful.”
“Won’t know what they have until we see it, Ma’am.”
“Very true, Mab. Hurry home! There is still much to do.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Will do.”
BUNDLED in my white cashmere cloak and a pair of fur-lined suede boots, I set out into the enchanted gardens behind Prospero’s Mansion, and passed through the gate in the high stone wall that enclosed the forest beyond, seeking the chapel hidden in its midst. I walked between the straight black trunks, my boots crushing the mix of snow and soft needles carpeting the earth. The pungent scent of pine tickled my nostrils, and brought to mind other walks through other forests on other continents.
Prospero Lost: Prospero's Daughter, Book I Page 33