by Anne Rice
She went back to her work, muttering to herself, and I, horrified and struggling to keep a straight face, made my way on. I went into a couple more shops. Nothing special happened. Then in the third on my way, I found an old man very out of his wits and his two daughters both trying to keep him from tearing his clothes off.
"Here, let me help you," I said at once.
We got him down in the chair, got his shirt over his head, and finally he stopped making incoherent noises. He was very wizened and drooling.
"Oh, thank God, this won't go on long," said one of the daughters, wiping her brow. "It's a mercy."
"Why won't it go on long?" I asked.
She glanced up at me, and away, and then back again. "Oh, you're a stranger here, Signore, forgive me, you are so young. I only saw a boy when I looked at you. I mean God will be merciful. He's very old/'
"Hmmm, I see," I said.
She looked at me with cold cunning eyes, as if they were made of metal.
I bowed and went out. The old man had started to take off his shirt again, and the other sister, who had been silent all the time, slapped him.
I winced at it, and kept walking. I meant to see as much as I could right now.
Passing through rather peaceful little tailors' shops I came at last to the district of the porcelain dealers, where two men were having an argument about a fancy birthing tray.
Now, birthing trays, once used in practicality to receive the infant as it came from the womb, had become by my time fancy gifts given after the child was born. They were large platters painted with lovely domestic designs, and this shop had an impressive display of them.
I heard the argument before I was seen.
One man said to buy the damned tray, while the other said the infant wouldn't even live and the gift was premature, and a third man said the woman would welcome the beautiful gorgeously painted birthing tray anyway.
They stopped when I entered the shop proper to look at all the imported wares, but then when I turned my back, one of the men uttered under his breath, "If she has a brain in her head, she'll do it."
I was struck by the words, so struck that I turned at once to snatch a handsome plate from the shelf and pretend to be much impressed with it. "So lovely/' I said, as if I hadn't heard them.
The merchant got up and started to extoll the contents on display. The others melted into the gathering evening outside. I stared at the man.
"Is the child sick?" I asked in the smallest most childish voice that I myself could muster.
"Oh, no, well, I don't think so, but you know how it is," said the man. "The child's smallish."
"Weak," I volunteered.
In a very clumsy way, he said, "Yes, weak." His smile was artificial, but he thought himself quite successful.
Then both of us turned to fussing over the wares. I bought a tiny porcelain cup, very beautifully painted, which he claimed to have bought from a Venetian.
I knew damned good and well I should leave without a word, but I couldn't stop myself from asking him as I paid, "Do you think the poor smallish weak child will live?"
He laughed a rather deep coarse laugh as he took my money. "No," he said, and then he glanced at me as though he'd been in his thoughts. "Don't worry about it, Signore," he said with a little smile. "Have you come to live here?"
"No, Sir, only passing through, going north," I said.
"North?" he asked, a little startled but sarcastic. He shut up the cashbox and turned the key. Then shaking his head as he put the box into the cabinet and closed the doors, he said, "North, eh? Well, good luck to you, my boy/' He gave a sour chuckle. "That's an ancient road. You better ride as fast as you can from sunup."
"Thank you, Sir/' I said.
Night was coming on.
I hurried into an alleyway and stood there, against the wall, catching my breath as though someone were chasing me. I let the little cup fall and it shattered loudly, the noise echoing up the towering buildings.
I was half out of my wits.
But instantly and fully aware of my situation, and convinced of the horrors I had discovered, I made an inflexible decision.
I wasn't safe in the Inn, so what did this matter? I was going to do it my way and see for myself.
This is what I did.
Without going back to the Inn, without ever officially leaving my room in the Inn, I turned uphill when the shadows were thick enough to cover me, and I climbed the narrowing street towards the old ruined castle.
Now all day I had been looking at this imposing collection of rock and decay, and could see that it was indeed utterly ruined and empty of all save the birds of the air, except, as I have said, for the lower floors, which supposedly held offices.
But the castle had two standing towers remaining to it, one that faced over the town, and another, much fallen away, beyond and remote on the edge of a cliff, as I had seen from the lower farmland.
Well, I made for the tower that overlooked the town.
The government offices were shut up of course already, and the curfew soldiers would soon be out, and there was noise from only a couple of taverns that obviously stayed open no matter what the law was.
The piazza before the castle was empty, and because the three streets of the town took many a curve in their way downhill, I could see almost nothing now but a few dim torches.
The sky, however, was wondrously bright, clear of all but the most rounded and discreetly shaped clouds, very visible against the deeper blue of the night, and the stars seemed exquisitely numerous.
I found old winding stairs, too narrow almost for a human being, that curved around the useful part of the old citadel and led up to the first platform of stone, before an entrance to the tower.
Of course this architecture was no stranger to me whatsoever. The stones were of a rougher texture than those of my old home, and somewhat darker, but the tower was broad and square and timelessly solid.
I knew that the place was ancient enough that I would find stone stairways leading quite high, and I did, and soon came to the end of my trek in a high room which gave me a view of the entire town stretched out before me.
There were higher chambers, but they had been accessible in centuries past by wooden ladders that could be pulled up, to defeat an enemy and isolate him below, and I couldn't get to them. I could hear the birds up there, disturbed by my presence. And I could hear the breeze moving faintly.
However, this was fine, this height.
I had a view all around from the four narrow windows of this place, looking in all directions.
And most especially, and important to me, I could see the town itself, directly below me, shaped like a great eye—an oval with tapered ends—with random torches burning here and there, and an occasional dimly lighted window, and I could see a lantern moving slowly as someone walked in a leisurely pace down one of the thoroughfares.
No sooner had I seen this moving lantern than it went out. It seemed the streets were utterly deserted.
Then the windows too went dark, and very shortly there were not four torches that I could see anywhere.
This darkness had a calming effect on me. The open country sank into a deep dark tinge of blue beneath the pearly heavens, and I could see the forests encroaching on the tilled land, creeping higher here and there, as the hills folded over one another or sank steeply into valleys of pure blackness.
I could hear the total emptiness of the tower.
Nothing stirred now, not even the birds. I was quite alone. I could have heard the slightest footfall on the stairs down below. No one knew I was here. All slept.
I was safe here. And I could keep a vigil.
I was too full of misery to be frightened, and frankly I was prepared to take my stand against Ursula in this spot, preferred it, in fact, to the confines of the Inn, and I feared nothing as I said my prayers and laid my hand on my sword as usual.
What did I expect to see in this sleeping town? Anything that happened in it.
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Now, what did I think that was to be? I couldn't have told anyone. But as I circled the room, as I glanced again and again down at the few scattered lights below and the hulk of the descending ramparts beneath the glowing summer sky, the place seemed loathsome, full of deceit, full of witchcraft, full of payment to the Devil.
"You think I don't know where your unwanted babies are taken?" I muttered in a rage. "You think that people who are down with the plague are welcomed right through the open gates of your neighboring cities?"
I was startled by the echoes of my own mur-murings off the cold walls.
"But what do you do with them, Ursula? What would you have done with my brother and sister?"
My ruminations were madness perhaps, or might have seemed so to some. But I learnt this. Revenge takes one's mind from the pain. Revenge is a lure, a mighty molten lure, even if it is hopeless.
One blow from this sword and I can strike off her head, I thought, and heave it out that window, and then what will she be but a demon stripped of all worldly power?
Now and then I half-drew my sword, then put it back. I took out my longest dagger and slapped the palm of my left hand with its blade. I never stopped walking.
Suddenly, as I made one of my boring circumlocutions, I happened to spy far away, on a distant mountain, in which direction I really didn't know— but not the direction by which I had come—a great quantity of light playing behind the mesh of the sylvan darkness.
At first I thought this might be a fire, there was so much light, but as I narrowed my eyes and focused my mind, I saw that this was out of the question.
There was no riotous glare on the few visible clouds above, and the illumination, for all the breadth of it, was contained as if it emanated from a vast congregation gathered together with a fantastical quantity of candles. How steady yet pulsing was this orgy of fierce light!
I felt a chill in my bones as I looked at it. It was a dwelling! I leant over the window edge. I could see its complex and sprawling outline! It stood out from all the land, this one luxuriantly lighted castle, all by itself, and obviously visible from one entire side of this town, this spectacle of forest-shrouded house in which some celebration appeared to require that every torch and taper be lighted, that every window, battlement and coping be hung with lanterns.
North, yes, north, for the town dropped straight off behind me, and this castle lay north, and it was that direction of which I'd been warned, and who in this town could not have known of this place, yet there had not been one single solitary mention save for the whisper of the terrified Franciscan in the Inn at my table.
But what was I looking at? What could I see? Thick woods, yes; it was very high but surrounded by close and concealing woods, through which its light again and again palpitated like a great menace, but what was that coming from it, what was that wild, half-visible movement in the darkness, over the slopes that fell away from the mysterious promontory?
Were there things moving in the night? Moving from that very distant castle right towards this village? Amorphous black things, as if they were great soft shapeless birds following the alignment of the land but free of its gravity. Were they coming towards me? Had I been charmed?
No, I saw this. Or did I?
There were dozens of them!
They were coming closer and closer.
They were tiny shapes, not large at all, the largeness having been a delusion caused by the fact that they traveled in packs, these things, and now, as they came near to the town, the packs broke apart and I saw them springing up to the very walls beyond me on either side like so many giant moths.
I turned around and ran to the window.
They had descended in a swarm upon the town! I could see them dip down and vanish in the blackness. Below me on the piazza, there appeared two black shapes, men in streaming capes, who ran or rather leapt into the mouths of the streets, issuing from their lips an audible and audacious laughter.
I heard crying in the night, I heard sobs.
I heard a thin wail, and a muffled groan.
No lights appeared in the town.
Then out of the darkness, these evil things appeared again, on the tops of the walls, running right on the edge and then leaping free.
"God, I see you! Curse you!" I whispered.
There was a sudden loud noise in my ears, a great brush of soft cloth against me, and then the figure of a man reared up before my face.
"Do you see us, my boy?" It was a young man's voice, hearty, full of merriment. "My very curious little boy?"
He was too close for my sword. I could see nothing but rising garments.
With my elbow and shoulder and all my strength, I went for his groin.
His laughter filled the tower.
'Ah, but that does not hurt me, child, and if you're so curious, well then, we'll take you too with us to come and see what you long to see."
He caught me in a suffocating swaddle of fabric. And suddenly I felt myself lifted off the floor, encased in a sack, and I knew we had left the tower!
I was head down, sick to nausea. It seemed he flew, carrying me on his back, and his laughter was now half blown away by the wind, and I could not free my arms. I could feel my sword, but couldn't reach the handle.
Desperately I felt for my dagger, not the one which I must have dropped when I had been caught by him, but the other in my boot, and then having that, I twisted and turned towards the rough back on which I rode, bouncing and growling, and plunged the dagger through the cloth over and over again.
He gave a wild scream. I stabbed him again.
My whole body, inside the sack, was whipped up into the air, away from him.
"You little monster," he cried. "You wretched impudent child."
We descended sharply, and then I felt myself hit the ground, the rocky grassy ground, and I rolled over, tearing at the fabric of the blinding sack with my knife.
"You little bastard," he cursed.
'Are you bleeding, you filthy devil?" I called out. "Are you?" I ripped at the sack, lost in it, rolling over and over, then feeling the wet grass with my naked hand.
I saw the stars.
Then the cloth was torn free of my struggling limbs.
I lay at his feet, but only for a moment.
6
THE COURT OF THE RUBY GRAIL
NOTHING could have wrenched the dagger from my hand. I cut deep into his legs, bringing forth another riot of I screams from him. He picked me up, indeed hurled me high in the air, and I fell, stunned, onto the dewy ground.
This gave me my first blurred but imperative glimpse of him. A great rush of red light illuminated him, a hooded and cloaked figure dressed as a knight, in long old-fashioned tunic and sleeves of shining mail. He twisted his torso, his golden hair tangling over his face, obviously in pain from the wounds inflicted on his back, and now stomped his wounded leg.
I rolled over twice, holding tight to the dagger, as I freed my sword sufficiently to draw it out of the scabbard. I was on my feet before he even so much as moved, and swung the sword with one hand, clumsily, but with all my force, hearing it smash into his side with a sickening moist slosh of a sound. The gush of blood in the bright light was horrific and monstrous.
There came his worst cry. He fell to his knees.
"Help me, you imbeciles; he's a devil!" he screamed. His hood fell back.
I scanned the immense fortifications rising to my right, the high crenelated towers with their fluttering flags in the unsteady glow of countless lights, just as I'd glimpsed from the distance of the town. It was a fantastical castle of pointed roofs, sharply broken arched windows, and high battlements crowded with dark figures moving in silhouette as they looked down on our struggle.
There came rushing down the wet grass the figure of Ursula in a red gown, cloakless, her hair in long braids with red ribbon, rushing towards me.
"Don't hurt him, I charge you," she screamed. "Don't touch him."
A group of male figur
es, all got up in the same old-fashioned knightly tunics, down to their knees, with somber pointed steel helmets, followed her. They had bearded faces all, and ghastly white skin.
My adversary pitched forward on the grass, sprouting blood as if he were a hideous fountain.
"Look what he's done to me, look!" he shouted.
I stuck my dagger in my belt, grabbed the sword with two hands and went at his neck, letting a roar escape my teeth as I did, and saw the head roll over and over and down the hill. "Ah, now you're dead, you're bloody dead!" I cried out. "You murderous fiend, you're dead. Go get your head. Put that back on!"