Dance of the Red Death (Masque of the Red Death)

by Bethany Griffin

  “I wasn’t paid. I chose to do it.”

  “I wish you hadn’t.” My voice is small, and I hate myself for it, but at least I said it.

  “The people who approached me felt that the knowledge should be out there. We’ve been living with this, with the aftermath, for our entire lives. It seemed better for people just to know.”

  “Did you think of me when you printed it?” The audacity of the question makes me feel sick. But when he stands there like that, his hands shoved into his pockets, his face so young and yet so world-weary, I want to touch him, to wipe the pained expression from his face. And that makes the betrayal rush back, more overwhelming than ever.

  “I always thought about you. From the night I took you home, I never really stopped thinking about you.”

  I won’t let myself dwell on this answer, or the pain of what could have been. I won’t let myself reach out and brush aside the hair that’s fallen over his face.

  “Did you discuss me with Malcontent? Tell him that you could bring me to him?”

  Anger feels better than fathomless grief. For years I simply wanted to hide from the world and all the pain. Now I want to fight. At this moment I want to fight Will.

  “I never—” He steps away from me, pivoting, and then pacing across the room. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t make offers to him.”

  He crosses the room in two strides. With the low ceilings, he seems even taller than before. He towers over me. I can see his agitation in the movement of his hands. The look in his eyes.

  “I never met Malcontent before that night. He didn’t know anything about me, or the club, or the printing press. He just knew that you had been in my apartment. His men followed you the night you skinned your knee. The night you brought Henry the mask.”

  I reach for my own mask now, thinking of that night. Of the terror, and the dark cloaked men creeping out of the alley. Of Will removing the splinter from my finger when I was safe.

  “He took my neighbor, you know. I couldn’t save her.”

  I feel my anger dissipating. “What . . . did he do with your neighbor?”

  “I don’t know. She disappeared at the same time as Henry and Elise, only he never let her go. Her mask was left broken in her apartment. It was my fault for drawing his attention.”

  “Or my fault, for coming to your apartment.”

  “I suppose we could spend all evening assigning blame. You are who you are, and all the villains want you.” I wonder if he includes Elliott among the villains. “It’s why I returned to the city. To do what I can to protect you.”

  “As long as you don’t get in my way,” I say with more bravado than I feel.

  “I won’t.” He goes back to the press, arranging sheets of paper on the machine, turning knobs. “I told you yesterday, I’m here to support you. And I’ll honor my agreement to help Elliott as long as he doesn’t become as much a tyrant as the others.”

  “He won’t,” I insist. “Elliott is nothing like Prospero or Malcontent.”

  “Not yet. But he isn’t in power yet. I’ve studied how the government worked, before the plague. Eventually, we’ll need elections. Real elections.”

  Elliott is not likely to approve of such an idea. Or agree to it.

  “I can finish this later,” he says. “You don’t want to stay down here with me.”

  Yet I do. This room feels safe, but I have too much to accomplish and we can’t linger here.

  Will picks up my scarf. If I let myself, I could enjoy his touch as he wraps the fabric around my eyes, as he takes my hand to lead me outside. But I will not allow myself to feel such things. Not when I’ve agreed to be by Elliott’s side.

  I don’t let on that the blindfold is loose, that I can see enough to be able to retrace my steps. It seems to take him forever to remove the blindfold. I stand, my chin tilted upward, as he unties the knot. We’re standing in front of a window. Will looks out.

  “The moon is covered by clouds tonight. Let’s check the roof to be sure everything is ready for when Kent and the others arrive.”

  We climb multiple stairways until we finally come to the roof. Outside it is fully and completely dark. Nervousness wells up from the pit of my stomach. April and the children and Kent will be coming in on the airship. We were shot down once before; it could happen again.

  Elliott is on the roof, smoking a cigarette. He grimaces but doesn’t say anything. Not about me arriving with Will. Nor about my absence from my room, if he went back to retrieve me.

  The sky is filled with hazy clouds, and I suspect it will rain before dawn.

  “I wanted to make sure everything was ready,” Will says.

  “I had the same idea.” Elliott stubs out his cigarette and moves to help Will.

  They prepare lengths of rope and the huge piece of canvas that was used to hide the ship when it was on the roof of the Morgue. I stand to the side and watch the sky.

  Elliott pauses beside me. Being on the roof reminds me of the fireworks, the celebration in the bay. “Just think how beautiful the ship would look, if it were illuminated.”

  “Kent would never risk that,” Elliott says.

  “But imagine a world where it wasn’t a risk. I’d like to live in that world.”

  “I’d like to create it for you.”

  His gaze is too intense; I can’t hold it. Glancing over, I see that Will is checking the great iron rings that will hold the ship down once it is in place. The wind is blowing the clouds, and as I watch I think I see something. The prow of the ship. I point upward.

  “They shouldn’t be here for two more nights,” Elliott says.

  “Unless something happened. It’s cloudy. If Kent was desperate . . .”

  “Kent doesn’t get desperate,” Elliott says. But Will has gone very still. Finally he looks at me.

  “It’s why I wanted to have everything ready. He told me he might bring the ship in early, if things weren’t going well . . .” He pauses. “With April.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I CAN’T BREATHE. SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED to April, and in the days we’ve been in the city, I’ve come no closer to finding Father. We don’t even know if he’s alive. I watch the progress of the ship. What if April is dead?

  “So you’ve been checking the roof?” Elliott asks Will.

  “On and off. Tonight is the first night I thought their arrival might be a possibility.”

  There’s nothing we can do but wait. Half an hour passes. We don’t speak. We don’t assure one another that nothing is wrong. We simply wait, the three of us, standing together, but not close enough that I could reach out to either of them.

  The ship is mostly obscured by clouds, but when it emerges from cloud cover, it’s magical. Like something from a children’s story.

  Kent guides the ship in, and Will and Elliott begin tying it down as Kent leaps to the roof to help them.

  The wooden stairs lower, and even as the boys work to secure the ship, Henry and Elise descend, hugging me and inadvertently pulling my hair. Something sticky smears from my cheek to my forehead. Before I can wipe it away, Mina is approaching.

  “April’s gotten worse,” she begins. But she doesn’t have to say anything. April is right behind her. I gasp. She looks awful. Exhausted, her skin deathly pale and her eyes sunken. I’m careful not to be too obvious about adjusting my mask before I reach to embrace her, but then Elliott is there, picking her up in his arms.

  “I’ll take her downstairs,” he says. Kent follows.

  The balloon is deflating, and they’ve completely covered the ship with gray fabric. Unless you were standing on the roof looking for it, I doubt you would pay it any attention.

  Will stops in front of me. “Elliott has asked me to take something across town for him tonight,” he says. “Some message for one of his officers. Could the children sleep in your room?”

  I rub at whatever sticky residue Henry smeared across the side of my face. “Of course,” I say. “I’ve missed them.”
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  In the light of a lantern, Will’s smile is sudden and radiant.

  “Where is Thom?” I ask, turning to Kent.

  “He didn’t want to come in this far. Not with his very obvious illness. We set him down on the outskirts of the lower city.”

  April’s room is in the same corridor as mine and Elliott’s. Kent tucks her into bed; Mina goes to a cot in her dressing room. After I’m sure April is comfortable, I retire to my room. Elliott grimaces when he sees the children following me.

  But I’m relieved. There can be no repeat of what happened this afternoon. I never wanted to share anything like that with Elliott. I’ve always known better.

  I lie awake for a long time. I can’t even toss and turn because Henry is curled up on one side, Elise on the other. I can’t get the image of April, and her pallor, from my mind. If I can’t find my father very soon, then I must go to hers, as Thom suggested.

  And as I consider giving myself to Malcontent, I realize that if the children on either side of me were in danger, that I would do exactly what Will did. That I can’t hold his betrayal against him any longer.

  I forgive him. And with that, I fall asleep.

  The next morning, sun is streaming through the window. Henry reaches over me to pinch Elise, and she slaps his hand away. I push both of them back to their own sides of the bed and sit up so I can look down at them. “I haven’t seen you in days,” I say. “Did you have many adventures while we were apart?”

  “We saw animals in the forest,” Henry says. “Cougars and wild dogs. Kent said that maybe we could tame a rabbit, so that I could have a pet.”

  Finn and I had a cat when we were young. She disappeared soon after we moved with Father to the cellar.

  Henry is working up some excitement for telling me what he saw in the woods. “And then we saw a large animal that I thought might be a horse, but it had horns—”

  “Antlers,” Elise corrects, shaking her head at her small brother. “Is there something to eat?”

  “We’ll have to get dressed and go downstairs,” I say. I show them to the closet. “Take anything you want.

  Before I know it, Henry is wearing a coat that nearly drags on the floor, with the sleeves carefully rolled up, and a woman’s hat with two feathers in it.

  It isn’t exactly what I expected when I told him to take what he wanted, but Elise starts to giggle and can’t stop, and her laughter is infectious. We are all laughing when we are interrupted by a light knock at the chamber door.

  “Good morning.” It’s Will. My heart speeds up at the sound of his voice, and I’m not sure how I should feel about that. Everything has changed, and nothing. I can’t just blurt out that I forgive him, and he’s not likely to see it on my masked face.

  “Look how pretty Araby is,” Elise announces loudly. “She hasn’t even washed her face yet, and she’s still pretty.”

  “Actually, I have washed my face,” I say, and feel myself blushing.

  “She smells good,” Henry adds.

  “I’m thrilled that you could spend your evening with such a pretty and fine-smelling young lady,” Will says. He hasn’t really looked at me, and his face is drawn.

  “What’s happened?” I ask.

  “More cases of the Red Death. Some areas are overrun with it.” He starts to say something else, but he looks to the children and closes his mouth.

  “Do you want me to take them to get something to eat?”

  “I’ve asked one of the servants to deliver breakfast to my rooms.” He smiles. “It’s like I’m a patron here, instead of a glorified servant.” He yawns.

  “Go, get some rest,” I say. “I should check on April.”

  “It doesn’t look good, Araby,” he says softly. And then, as we all walk into the hallway together, “Don’t take off your mask.”

  He leads the children, smiling quietly as they chatter, and I stop at April’s suite. A servant is outside with a tray. “I’m not going in there,” she says. “No matter what Mr. Elliott says.”

  So the servants know already. I don’t blame her for not going in. She has a mask, but no one trusts the masks completely.

  “I’ll take it.” I lift the tray from her hands, and she looks at me with suspicion, as if I might have the plague too.

  I push the door open, but April is sleeping. I put my hand to her forehead. She’s feverish but breathing well. The best thing she can do is sleep. I set the tray beside her bed and tiptoe out.

  Down in the dining room, Elliott’s at a big table, talking to several of his officers.

  “I’m going out,” I announce.

  He raises his blond eyebrows.

  “We haven’t done anything since we arrived. I don’t know where my father is, but he isn’t here. I have to do something. April—”

  “I’ll go with you,” he says. “I want to get a feel for the streets around the club. As long as you don’t mind stopping to burn bodies.”

  “It’s how I long to spend all my days,” I say. “Burning the dead.”

  He nods to his man, and then we exit the building to midmorning sunshine. Elliott toys with a match that he’s taken from his pocket and doesn’t say anything.

  “What shall we do?” I ask. “Have you heard from the clockmaker? We’re a day overdue in searching the Akkadian Towers.”

  “The clockmaker promised to contact me if he discovered anything. To get to the Towers, we’ll need a steam carriage.”

  “Then we should go back and get it.” Did he not see how deathly sick April was? Kent risked his ship to bring her home early. But Elliott does not seem to be in any sort of rush.

  “It’s too dangerous to take the steam carriage out during the day,” he says. “But I’ll take you this evening. I promise. And I’ll send someone to question the clockmaker. Be sure he’s doing what he said he would.”

  He stops to burn some bodies in a courtyard behind the Morgue. To his credit, he doesn’t tell me not to look. To my own, I do not avert my eyes. At the same time, I don’t think about who they once were. Elliott says something under his breath, what seems to be a sort of benediction for the dead. Then he drops the match.

  “This is likely to be unpleasant,” he says.

  It’s worse than unpleasant. The metallic-sweet smell of death is inescapable, and ashes fly up into the air. If I didn’t have my mask on, I’d be choking on death.

  “Will says that the Red Death is getting worse,” I say.

  “It is. Two of my soldiers died yesterday. And another was killed. We think he was ambushed by some of Malcontent’s zealots. They’re using the tunnels to reach more people. Climbing into houses through cellars and basements.”

  We’ve stepped back, away from the burning remains.

  “We need to find a way to use the tunnels against them. Perhaps block them off,” he says. “Do you want to have a look? I’m open to suggestions.”

  Exploring tunnels seems better than standing here, choking on ashes. And if our search for Father is as fruitless tonight as it’s been since our return, then I’ll need to use the tunnels to find Malcontent.

  We climb down into earthy-smelling tunnels, much like the ones that we entered from the clockmaker’s basement.

  “Who built these?” I ask.

  “No one knows. They’re ancient. My father”—he grimaces—“was a student of history, and he said that city after city has been built on this site because of the harbor. He used to fund excavations, and I’d go watch the men dig, waiting to see what they would uncover. My uncle thought it was foolish, but when they uncovered something shiny or valuable, he was the first person on hand.”

  “Was he always so ruthless?”

  “Yes. Father didn’t see it. He was a good man . . . then. Easily led, I suppose, but a good man.”

  “So was my father.”

  I wait for Elliott to argue, but he’s stopped, examining a skull embedded in the wall. A pile of ancient bones lies in the tunnel. After the diseased corpses we just burned, th
ese brittle bones have an antique sort of elegance.

  Eventually we come to an intersection that looks more frequently used than the one we’ve been traveling.

  “This is the path his men are taking,” Elliott says in a hushed voice. “I can’t spare enough men to waylay them, but perhaps Kent could devise some sort of trap. At least to keep them out of this area.”

  I memorize the route that brought us here, paying special attention to the last few twists and turns. If I need to reach Malcontent, this is my best path. And with April in such poor shape, I suspect I will be using the tunnels before Kent sets up any traps. At least I hope so.

  “I could use some fresh air. Let’s go back to the club. I’ll dispatch a soldier to check in with the clockmaker,” Elliott promises. “We will find your father.”

  We backtrack to the nearest ladder and climb up to the street.

  The streets we traverse in the Debauchery District seem in relatively good repair. Only one small building looks burned out; a few have broken windows. The streets are relatively free of debris, though I nearly trip over a broken jug. Was it dropped as someone fled from the Red Death, or used as a makeshift weapon?

  We turn a corner and see dozens of people carrying luggage, looking up at the buildings with hopeful expressions. The first of Elliott’s settlers.

  A soldier leads the group.

  “The Morgue is nearly filled, sir,” he says to Elliott. “I’ve sent men to search the surrounding buildings. We’ve been sending those from the upper city to the Debauchery Club.”

  “Be sure you leave room in the club for some officers,” Elliott says. “Consult the list of safe buildings.”

  “We’ve cleared three city blocks so far,” the soldier says.

  One of the women falls to her knees before Elliott and tries to kiss his hand. He pulls back, his cheeks flushing.

  “Thank you so much, sir,” she says. “We’ve been afraid to go outside.”

  “You’re welcome,” he says gravely.

  “We’re going to need more food,” the soldier says. “And something for them to drink, since we’ve been telling them the water isn’t safe.”