Masque of the Red Death

by Bethany Griffin

  Footsteps approach from down the hall. I wait for them to pass, but instead they stop. Someone is going into Elliott’s room.

  As I listen for footsteps to come out, my mind drifts to Elliott’s intensity in the humidity of the hidden garden, when he told me how his uncle had slit his father’s throat. He didn’t say anything about the blood, but I’d guess it stained the Oriental carpet, and I’d go even further to bet that the stain never came out.

  I wake up screaming, covered in sweat, disoriented by a dream that feels more real than this dark unfamiliar room. A hand moves the blanket and pushes my hair back from my face.

  My heart is faster than the dragon clock now, much faster.

  “It’s okay. You’re safe.” The mattress shifts as Elliott sits on the bed beside me. “Is something wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”

  My dream was about blood, gushing red blood.

  I start to ask how he got into my room—maybe I didn’t bolt the door after all—but my throat hurts. I’ve screamed it raw. Again. And now I’m sobbing.

  “I thought someone was attacking you. I wouldn’t have come in otherwise.” He swings both legs up onto the bed and sits against the headboard.

  “No,” I say. I am shaking and scared, but I won’t let him use this as an excuse. I won’t let my guard down.

  “We aren’t enemies, you know.”

  “I know,” I whisper. We aren’t friends either.

  “I’ll stay here. I’ll keep you safe.”

  “Not in the bed.”

  He gets up and pulls an armchair close enough that he can touch my hair.

  “I didn’t realize you disliked me so much,” he says.

  I open my eyes and look up at him. His voice is nearly as raw as mine. I’ve hurt him.

  “I don’t dislike you.” And it’s true. I don’t. I like when he’s vulnerable, but even his arrogance can be magnetic.

  “Is there someone else?”

  Will’s profile hovers at the edge of my consciousness, but there’s disgust on his face. I remember the way he looked at me after I crushed the white flower in the courtyard. Will is fascinated and disgusted by girls like me.

  “No,” I say. “No one.”

  “You’re April’s closest friend. I wasn’t expecting you to fall into bed with me, but the two of you haven’t exactly been living chaste lifestyles.”

  “I was.” My voice is small.

  “What?”

  “Chaste. I made a promise.” This is the first time I’ve tried to explain.

  Whenever I consider abandoning my vows, when I think maybe it would be okay for me to be happy, I remember standing over the grave where Finn was never buried because the corpse collectors took his body away.

  “So there you are, drinking and taking drugs to the point of incapacitation, and you’ve been missing out on the best part of debauchery?” He isn’t interested in my story. I almost revealed everything, and he doesn’t care.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “If you want to know, tell me.” His voice is flirtatious, but when he speaks again, the suggestiveness is gone. “I used to sit with April when she had nightmares,” he says softly.

  It’s the middle of the night and we are both tired. Maybe if I ask questions, he’ll tell me the truth.

  “Elliott, why are we here? Do you really think you can make things better?

  “Yes,” he says. “If we aren’t working toward change, what’s the point?”

  The problem is that right now, I can’t see the point, and I’m not sure if I ever did. “Tell me something we can actually accomplish.”

  “Move people out of the lower city, away from the swamps and the mosquitoes. Renovate the buildings along the river and let families move in, give them masks. Open stores and businesses. Remind people that there are reasons to live.”

  “And how will you do that?” I ask.

  “Start with the masks, hire workers. Work through an entire neighborhood, repairing one building at a time and then moving on.”

  I remember stores. Particularly a candy store where Finn once stole a lollipop and I got blamed. It would be nice for people to have places to go. Things to buy. Masks so they aren’t afraid to breathe.

  “I’d like to think that you could do all that.”

  “My uncle doesn’t care about the city, but I do. And I’m not the only one.” He yawns, still stroking my hair. It feels good, and with him beside me I sleep deeply for the first time in years.

  I wake to comforting morning light. It’s the same poor quality here in this dismal castle as it is in our penthouse apartment. Elliott is sitting in the armchair, fast asleep. I slip out of bed so that I can wash and dress quickly, before he wakes. While I’m brushing my hair, I meet his eyes in the mirror. They are bluer than ever in the light streaming in through the window. Deceptively innocent under those pale eyebrows.

  “Good morning, my dearest Araby.” He has to catch his balance on the side of the bed. “I’m not going to recommend sleeping in a chair, not if you want to move properly the next morning.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He smiles. “I’m not. Consider it my good deed for the day, and the day has just begun. That means I can be very bad today.” He hesitates as if waiting for me to say something in return, something flirtatious. I play nervously with the engagement ring.

  “Do you trust her?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “The girl who said that April wasn’t here.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” He stands and goes to the washstand. He splashes water into a basin. “I choose my informants well. She knows everything that happens in the palace.”

  Elliott’s shoes are at the foot of my bed. His right shoe is stained with dungeon muck.

  “Elliott?”

  He comes back toward me, smoothing his shirt, and follows my gaze.

  “I met last night with some of my people. That’s how I heard you screaming. I was in the corridor, returning to my room.”

  “Was your meeting productive?” He is not telling me the whole truth, not mentioning the visitor I heard at his door, but I let him have this secret.

  “Yes, but nothing conclusive about April.” He checks his reflection in the mirror. “I want to go to the tower before we leave.”

  “Do you think she’ll be there? Maybe?”

  “No.”

  His answer is simple and harsh. I don’t want to ask more, but I feel I must.

  “Will we be allowed to leave?”

  “I’m not certain. But I find the best strategy is to act like he’ll let us walk out of here when we want.”

  His answers are not reassuring. I’m sure he doesn’t mean them to be.

  Elliott leads me down the hallway, up two flights of steps to another hallway that’s filled with antique cannons. “My uncle collects oddities,” he says.

  We come to the end of the corridor and climb a stairway that spirals into the tower.

  “This is where the prince keeps important prisoners. A room in the tower is kept in preparation for April.” We climb another set of stairs. He clears his throat. “And for me and for our mother. At least this is where he would keep April if he wanted people to know she was here. Otherwise she would be in the dungeon.”

  The room is empty, save for a bed and a desk.

  “You were so sure that he’d taken her.” I can’t keep the accusation out of my voice.

  He slumps against the wall and puts his head in his hands.

  I can’t help thinking that Finn and I would do better. I would never lose him.

  Except that I did lose him. To death and disease. And murder.

  Elliott paces back and forth in front of the barred window, clenching his fists. He touches various items, a child’s jewelry box. A doll.

  “It’s dusty. He hasn’t been preparing these rooms. He’s left them the way they were.” He looks relieved, and then sighs.

  Across the room is a door that’s been painted the same color a
s the wall. “What’s through that door?” I ask.

  “Nothing.”

  I see him reaching for me, but I’m already pushing the door open. This room is much like the other, except that the walls are covered with a thick textured wallpaper. The sort my mother would have had installed throughout our apartment if Father hadn’t objected. I see a bed, a desk, a wardrobe. Under the single window is a piano.

  “Araby?” Elliott puts his hands on my shoulders. “You were right. We should go.”

  It’s a beautiful piano. I step forward to feel the finish, touching one ivory key with my finger. Sheet music is still open on the bedside table.

  There’s a gentle tap at the open door. Elliott pivots. I can’t help noticing how graceful he is. A guard stands in the doorway. He gives Elliott a quick salute.

  “Sir, Miss Worth is not allowed in the tower.” The guard seems profoundly uncomfortable.

  I cross to the wardrobe and pull it open. Dress after dress hang waiting, all modest. Not a single one is red.

  “My mother was here,” I say softly.

  “You must have suspected....”

  “No.” I never suspected, but it all makes sense. The way Father worked, day and night. Mother’s nervousness.

  The window is barred. The door is heavy, fitted with multiple iron locks. Mother was a hostage. I trace the outline of a butterfly in the wallpaper. He caged her up here and surrounded her with butterflies. And I’ve treated her horribly.

  A second guard steps into the doorway, and the three men consider one another. This guard does not salute Elliott, and his expression is angry.

  “I am to remove the young lady,” he says. “The prince has ordered it.”

  Elliott takes a step forward. When I put my hand on his arm to restrain him, the diamond on my ring flashes. I move my hands to his shoulders, and I can feel his tension easing.

  Elliott glances meaningfully toward the bed. “We’d like a few minutes alone.”

  I choke, but I let him touch me. His hand is at the nape of my neck.

  “Sir.” The first guard is nervous.

  “It’s okay, Elliott, we have our own room.” I pull him toward the door. The guard behind us laughs, and the nervous one looks away. He’s one of Elliott’s men, I’m sure of it.

  Elliott’s thumb slides from my hairline to my shoulder in one movement, and I feel myself blushing.

  “Yes, we both have rooms.” He leans forward and kisses the side of my face along the edge of my mask, a gentle kiss, but suggestive. “But the view from this window is lovely.”

  He guides me to the barred window, and I stare out at carefully manicured green lawns, and then there are trees and the edges of the marsh curling around the castle. Elliott turns me slightly toward the hillside. I cannot see the caverns that he told me were there, but I understand that he is reminding me of them.

  “You must leave.” The second guard seems ready to call for reinforcements.

  Elliott pulls me out of Mother’s specially designed prison, through the outer room, sliding his mask back into place. He twines his fingers through mine. We walk slowly, though my instincts tell me to run, past the cannons, down the circular stairs of the turret. When we’re back in the main part of the keep, he drops my hand.

  “Excellent. They won’t be talking about the prince’s nephew skulking around where he isn’t supposed to be. They’ll be whispering about how Mr. Elliott and his beautiful fiancée can’t keep their hands off each other.”

  It’s silly, but I think of the serving girl, Elliott’s spy. I wonder how she will feel when she hears the whispers. If she’s risking her life to spy for him, she is probably in love with him.

  “Come on, it’s time to wish my uncle a good morning,” he says.

  I feel like someone has wrapped his hands around my throat. How can I be in the same room with his uncle? I never want to see Prince Prospero again.

  “I am sorry,” he says, turning back when he realizes I’ve stopped beside a rusting suit of armor. “I was sure that you knew.”

  “No,” I admit.

  “Until last night, I thought it was the reason…” He falters, and I wait for him to continue. “I thought it was the reason you never wanted me to touch you, because of my uncle and your mother.”

  I shake my head. “I avoid touching everyone. Not just you.”

  His uncle and my mother. The truth is starting to sink in. She didn’t abandon me.

  “Elliott, I can’t look at him.”

  “You have to. Smile. Act normal. Don’t let him see that you are angry.”

  My need for oblivion now is stronger than ever, stronger than the night I met Elliott. I don’t have to ask him for it. He eases the syringe out of his pocket.

  “Will this help?”

  I shouldn’t accept it. I know that, but I need to stop thinking for a little while. So I hold out my arm.

  It’s just like before, only now I know Elliott, and almost trust him.

  Afterward, I can walk and make a facial expression that I’m pretty sure passes for a smile. I’ve perfected the art of the fake smile. It’s not so difficult when you are completely numb.

  I glance into a mirror, wondering if my eyes are dilated.

  “You look fine,” Elliott says. “You always do. It’s pretty amazing. The first time I saw you, you were passed out on the rug in the green room on the first floor of the Debauchery Club. I thought you were dead. I guess that’s the first thing I suspect when someone is lying on the floor. You were beautiful, and I was glad when your eyelashes fluttered and I could see that you were alive.”

  He reaches out and fingers the collar of my dress, as if adjusting it, though I’m quite sure that it doesn’t need adjusting.

  “And I’m not easily impressed by beauty,” he adds.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  ELLIOTT STOPS TO COMPOSE HIMSELF, BREATHING deeply several times before we reach the throne room. I should feel dread, or disgust or fear, but I feel nothing.

  People are flowing through one of the doors, and servants follow them, carrying bottles of wine and hampers of food.

  “We’re going for an outing,” Prince Prospero says. “Did you enjoy your time together?”

  “The paddleboat?” Elliott asks, ignoring the innuendo in his uncle’s question.

  The courtiers study me. I play with the diamond on my finger, wondering, in a world where disease slithers through the air and down our throats, what value does a diamond really have? The hateful ring refracts the lights from the gaslit chandelier into a thousand colors, lovely and useless.

  “It’s beautiful,” a female courtier says. The look on her face is unadulterated envy. “Elliott doesn’t visit the palace often enough.”

  “Very true.” Elliott throws his arm casually around my shoulders.

  “But you could live here,” the girl says.

  “Yes.” His tone is neutral. “I can’t imagine anything more horrifying, can you?” he murmurs for my ears only.

  “We live in fear of displeasing your uncle.” She shudders. “Of being sent back to the city. And yet you choose to live there. You must be very brave.”

  Elliott removes his arm from my shoulder. “I’m sure you would never displease the prince,” he tells the girl kindly.

  “I hope not. My cousin tells terrifying stories about the things that happen in the city.”

  The girl puts a handkerchief up to her mask, as if to block out some horrible smell. I had never seen this gesture, but the ladies of the court seem to do it over and over again. Even with masks, they are afraid of the air and petrified by the idea of the city.

  The servants take us to the water’s edge in a wagon that is pulled by a large steam engine. The boat is also propelled by steam and has two large decks with colorful pennants and small pavilions spread about them. The people who have not been invited stand on the banks and wave as we make our way downriver.

  “There are crocodiles in the water today,” I hear s
omeone say.

  He’s right. The channel is churning with reptiles, and I take a step back from the rail. Elliott laughs. I don’t like his laugh so much right now.

  “They eat people, you know,” he says. “The corpse collectors figured out a few years ago that it’s easier to dump the bodies in the river and let the crocodiles do the rest.”

  I picture the baby, a tiny body wrapped in blankets. Do the crocodiles eat the blankets? Or leave them to float in the water? The slithering of the reptiles makes me feel faint. Even the water, slapping gently against the sides of the boat, horrifies me.

  “I always liked boats,” Elliott says. And I’m reminded for a moment of the steamship that Henry was driving back and forth across the table when I ate breakfast with Will. And then of my father’s fascination with the harbor.

  “There’s a steamship being outfitted in the harbor,” I say.

  “Yes. It was my idea. He has offered to put me in charge of the voyage.”

  “Do you believe there are other people out there?” My father has a book with sketches of famous places around the world. Places that are whole and healthy and beautiful. I want Elliott to tell me that there are other people out there. That we could visit those places someday.

  “If we survived the plague, then others must have. There may be other methods of preventing the disease. And we’ve heard that there are people who are not susceptible. Perhaps you and I don’t even need these masks.”

  “It’s strange that no one has come to the city. If other people survived, what’s stopping them?”

  “What has stopped us? Internal strife, fear, desperation? I’d love to find others. But the voyage isn’t about that. Not for me.”

  A string quartet plays soothing music as Prospero’s boat turns the bend, and for a moment we have a view of the city. Beautiful, virulent, smoldering.

  A musket fires, making me jump. After a moment of stunned silence, the passengers laugh and applaud.

  “Don’t look.” As Elliott grabs my shoulders to turn me away, I see three figures standing among the rocks on the shore.

  “Are they diseased?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “And they left the city for the marsh? To die?”