Zaragoz

by Brian Craig

  He lifted his head, but when he tried to move his legs he found that one was caught at the ankle, and when he sat up he saw that it was shackled, and that the shackle was chained to the wall close to the end of his makeshift bed. He could stand up and move about, but he was confined by a tether no more than half his own height.

  At first the chamber seemed so large that this range seemed very meagre, but then he realized that his station was situated on a narrow ledge, no more than five feet wide, and that beyond the candle-tray there was the rim of a dark, deep pit. This pit stank horribly, and from its depths there emerged a faint sound, part rustle and part rattle, which he could not quite make out. There was something in it of trickling water, but there was something else, too—a different kind of movement.

  He pushed the candle closer to the stone rim, then picked up the tray and held it out above the pit, but the light was far too feeble to illuminate its depths.

  "It is the sound of rats," said a thin, hoarse voice. "All the wastes of the castle are hurled into pits like this one, so that they fall into a common space, where they are flushed all-too-gradually away by water hurled after them. Where they go after that, who can tell?"

  Orfeo raised the candle higher then, and saw that beyond the 108

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  mouth of the pit—which was only six or seven feet across—there was another ledge like his own, with another pallet of filthy straw, and another shackled prisoner, sitting on his crude bed.

  The sight of that prisoner made him draw in his breath very sharply. The man must have been handsome once, and to judge by his diction he had been a gentleman, but he seemed as thin now as a starveling beggar. His skin was very white, and there were ugly sores on his face and bare arms. His hair had grown very thin, and that too had turned white, contrasting sharply with the darkness of his shadowed eyes.

  "I am sorry for my appearance, sir," said the gentleman. "I fear that I have not seen the light for some years now, and there is something about this dry northern bread which does not entirely agree with my southern stomach. I hope you will not be offended if I say that I am glad to see you, for if my reckoning is correct, it is three months and more since last I had a companion. The boy who brings my meagre rations has no time to talk nor inclination to listen, and I am not ashamed to say that loneliness has weighed upon me far more heavily than this shackle upon my leg."

  Though this speech was very carefully made its tone was undercut by anguish, and Orfeo could tell that it cost the other much to maintain such studied politeness.

  "Who are you?" asked Orfeo. He spoke more abruptly than he normally would, for the shock of the place, added to the legacy of his nightmares, had taken an icy grip on his mind.

  "My name is Jacomo Falquero," said the other, speaking a little less hoarsely now. "I am a native of Gualcazar. May I know your name?"

  "It is Orfeo," replied the player. "I have no family name, and I have no home. I live as a travelling player and teller of tales."

  At that, the other man burst suddenly into tears—though Orfeo saw that he had all-too-little to spare in the way of actual tears, and must perforce sob rather drily.

  "Oh, Orfeo," said the miserable man, "you cannot know how I have prayed for a companion, though I knew it was an evil thing I did. I cannot help but be glad to see you, though I hate myself for wishing such captivity as mine on another man. Forgive me, my friend, if my prayer has played a part in bringing you here.

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  Forgive me!"

  Orfeo felt a sudden lump in his throat, as if he might himself burst into tears in sympathy with the pangs of Falquero's conscience. But he swallowed hard, and said: "Hush, man! I was brought here by an evil creature who wished me harm, and not by your prayers. And if it is my fate that I must languish here a while, I am glad that I do not find myself alone."

  He looked around, to judge more precisely the nature of his confinement. The cell was rectangular, some sixteen or seventeen feet by thirteen, while the pit cut a narrower rectangle from its floor, taking six or seven feet from the longer dimension and eight from the shorter. The floor was laid out in the shape of an angular horseshoe, with a door halfway around.

  "How long have you been here?" asked Orfeo, gently, when the sobbing stopped and Falquero began to win the struggle to control himself.

  "Five years, as near as I can reckon," said the other, mournfully.

  "I have had other companions, but they were so broken by torture that they did not live long. None was with me for longer than a month before being tumbled into the pit—though those who keep us do not always wait until a man is dead before they give him to the rats."

  Orfeo looked down at the pit again, and could not repress a shudder.

  "How did you come to this fate?" he asked his companion.

  "Do you ask if I committed some crime?" replied Falquero, with a hollow laugh. "No—I see that you do not. Nor do I ask of you how you deserved this confinement. I was sent to Zaragoz with a little girl, to be her protector, appointed by her lawful guardian. My small mistress was summoned by her relative the Duke, in the expectation that when she came of age she might marry his son—but we did not like what we found here, and one night I tried to take her away in secret, to return her to her guardian in Gualcazar. 1 have been here ever since, and do not know what became of my mistress."

  "Is her name Serafima?" asked Orfeo.

  "It is," said the other, raising his head from his hands as he spoke, in surprise and expectation.

  "Then I can tell you that she is alive. She is a prisoner, but 110

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  in a kinder place than this. I have not seen her, but I was near her only two nights ago. I cannot speak for the Duke, but I think his intention still is that she should marry his son, if the lady's consent can only be won. It seems that he has been patient while they were still so young—but I do not know what will happen now that her coming-of-age approaches."

  Jacomo Falquero received this news in silence, and though he was obviously grateful to know that the lady was not dead, still he could take only meagre comfort from a knowledge of her situation.

  Orfeo looked again down into the pit, which drew his thoughts at every moment's pause. Was this, he asked himself, to be his end? Was he to be cast, dead or alive, into the castle's cloaca, to be devoured by the vile scavengers which wallowed in its filth?

  He moved the candle closer to his bed, knowing that Sceberra had only left it for him so that he might see his eventual destination.

  How long, he wondered, would Sceberra deign to let him remain in the living hell of confinement and contemplation, before tiring of his continued existence and putting an end to him? Did any other know that he was here—and would any other care, if any knew? How fiercely would Rodrigo Cordova pursue enquiries as to his whereabouts—and what effect could his efforts possibly have, given that he seemed to be surrounded by enemies of his own, and might easily be brought here himself?

  "Did they hurt you much?" asked Jacomo Falquero—and Orfeo saw that the other man was staring at the ugly bloodstain on his shirt that marked the wound which Sceberra had inflicted.

  "Only in anger," he said. "There is nothing I can tell them which they need to know, and though the minister says he doubts it, I think he knows that it is true. If he tortures me again, it will be for pleasure alone. Perhaps he will not, for he seems to have other things to occupy his mind—perhaps to do with your mistress's coming of age. The doom of Zaragoz has been cried by a strange prophet, and there is an unease in the land. If there were but a chance of diAvila's defeat...."

  "My friend," said Falquero, "I would not deny you hope while it can still nourish your soul—but while I have been here I have found that hope, in the end, becomes one more kind of torture.

  In such captivity as this, one can only live from hour to hour.

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  Once, I prayed every day for my release, but as those
prayers have gone unanswered, I have forced myself to make my ambitions more modest than that."

  Orfeo stretched himself to soothe his aches, then knelt to test the strength of the shackle which bound him to the wall.

  It was very strong, fixed by two thick rivets. They must have brought a smith here with him, to forge the metal while he was still unconscious—and the smith must have been a skilled man, too, for his ankle had not been seared by the heat—cold water must have quenched it in the brief interval before its spread from the rivets to the circlet.

  The fact that they had sealed him thus, rather than using a lock and key, told him unequivocally that Sceberra did not plan to let him go. The minister was a man with all the necessary power and cruel inclination to turn his petulance into a sentence of slow and horrible death.

  Orfeo felt a suige of righteous wrath in his guts, which screamed that this could not be, for he had done nothing at all to deserve it. But it plainly was, and all complaints that he might utter—whether he directed them at the man who had done this or at the gods themselves—would not alter it.

  He considered what Falquero had said about hope becoming one more thread of torture, but put the thought from him. The time was not yet come to despair. Rodrigo Cordova lived, and was his friend. And, absurd as it might seem, the lady Veronique might still be so determined to have him play and dance at the Night of Masks as to demand that her father's minister allow him to do it.

  While he knelt there, still listening to the traffic of vermin in the caves far below, the door of the cell opened. Orfeo took up the candle to see better who it was.

  It was a small boy, bearing a pair of leather buckets. It was the same small boy, in fact, who had brought food to the other prison, where the lady Serafima was confined, and Orfeo realized what a sick irony it was that the bey's enforced silence had prevented him from reporting to Falquero how his mistress fared.

  The boy would not break that silence even now, though he recognized Orfeo instantly. There was someone behind him in the doorway, watching to see that the rule was not broken—not 112

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  Fernand Arrigo or any other man-at-arms, but the far more sinister figure of the huge man who had held Orfeo prisoner while Sceberra hurt him.

  Orfeo dared not speak to the boy, lest he should cause him further trouble, but he knew that his eyes were imploring the child to spread the news of his presence here. As he tried to exert the force of his will to send that silent message he wished fervently that he had the art to work one tiny trick of magic. But he was not even sure that the boy knew who it was that had carried him unconscious to the kitchens, or would think it a debt he owed even if he did.

  The boy took two small loaves from one of his buckets, and laid them carefully down, one at the end of each ledge, beside a wooden bowl already waiting there. He added a few leaves of raw cabbage. Then he poured a measure of water into each bowl.

  "Thank you," said Orfeo, in a tone as neutral as he could manage.

  Falquero said nothing. Then the boy left, and the giant cellkeeper closed the door behind him.

  "He had a dozen loaves and more," said Orfeo. "There must be other dungeons like this one, each with its oubliette, a ready supply of noxious gases, and the everpresent music of the rats."

  "Sometimes," said Falquero, "there are other sounds. Before I was a prisoner, I was told that the caves are very extensive, and that the rats which feed on the wastes of the castle are eaten in their turn by monsters which never see the light of day. One of my former companions lived—for a brief while—in the terror that something whose foulness was beyond his imagining might come from that pit to devour him alive. There have been times when I would not have cared had something of that kind come for me, but nothing ever did. Whatever makes the sounds can no more fly than the rats can, and the wall of the pit must be very hard to climb."

  Orfeo could have wished for less macabre conversation as he ate his frugal meal, but he did not complain. And when the meal was over, he listened while Falquero told him more about the agonies of confinement. He felt that it was not for him to question that need which the other man had to speak his mind, and that it was a necessary act of kindness to let the thoughts spill out as they would, without interruption.

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  Eventually, though, Falquero's need to talk gave way to a need to listen, and he begged Orfeo to tell him a story: a story which would make no mention whatsoever of Zaragoz, or prisons, or shackles, or pits.

  This Orfeo did, as bravely as he could. He wove a complicated plot out of the adventures of a king's three sons, each of whom fell in love with a different magical woman and was sent on a remarkable quest, which tests all would have failed save that their paths crossed and recrossed, so that they might all help one another, until in the end each one achieved his heart's desire, though only one could inherit the kingdom. It was by nature a long story, and Orfeo made no attempt to shorten it, for he wished to be lost in its twists and turns nearly as much as his companion did, and though he knew all along how it would end he was nevertheless carried away by the suspenseful art of his telling.

  The story helped him to foiget, for a while, the many hurts which were afflicting his body, and when he finally reached the end of it he found that he had become very drowsy, and was able to escape into a far gentler slumber than the nightmare-infested sleep from which he had earlier roused himself.

  When he awoke again, he did not know where he was at first, and when he opened his eyes the darkness was impenetrable, for the candle had long since burned out. For a moment or two he struggled for recall, but then the stench of the pit brought it all back to him, and he felt the coldness of the stone beneath the straw.

  He could still hear the sound of rats, roaming restlessly about the depths of the pit.

  But there was another sound, too, which must have played a part in waking him. It was the sound of a creaking hinge, and he realized that the door to the cell was being opened, very slowly.

  He sat up then, and turned towards the sound—and as the links of his own confining chain rattled quietly, so there was a second rattle, like an echo—which was the sound of Jacomo Falquero sitting up in his turn, having been similarly awakened.

  Having been pushed carefully open, the door was pulled to again—and still no one spoke, for whoever was coming in was trying to do so as quietly as he could.

  Then, when all the sounds had died save for the distant whisper 114

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  of the rats, there was a little flicker of bright flame, and there appeared from the darkness a hand, lighted as if by a will-o^the-wisp dancing upon the palm. By that light, Orfeo could see a face—and no doubt Falquero could see it too, for when they spoke it was in unison, and the name which they pronounced was exactly the same, in its syllables and in the sheer astonishment with which they spoke.

  What they said was: "Arcangelo.r 115

  INTERLUDE

  Orfeo paused in his narrative as one of the candles guttered and went out. It was not until he moved, and pain shot along his right arm from shoulder to elbow, that he realized how stiff he had become, entranced by the intensity of his narrative.

  He was not the only one who seemed entranced. He looked across the table into the face of Alkadi Nasreen, who had been listening so intently that his features seemed carved from wood.

  Two or three empty seconds passed before the Caliph's concentration was broken; then he scowled.

  "This is a devilish long story," said Alkadi Nasreen, shifting an empty wine-cup and looking around. "It has kept us here all night."

  "I am sorry," said Orfeo. "When I saw how interested you were, I became determined that you should not miss the slightest detail of the tale."

  "But it is all mysteries and riddles! Are all your Bretonnian tales so convoluted?"

  "They tend that way," Orfeo admitted, "but in this case, the convolutions were not built in by me. I am simply reconstructing the pattern
by which events unwound. I can promise you solutions to most of the mysteries and some of the riddles, but true stories are never as neat as the ones a player makes up for the telling.

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  When I invent, I am like a god who knows all, and can intervene in the interests of justice to ensure that the guilty are punished and the good rewarded. When I remember, I am only a man, who sees but the smallest fraction of what occurs, and has no authority to command or understand those higher beings whose work it is to determine who shall live and who shall die."

  "If you know the answers to these mysteries now," sad the Caliph, speaking as though he had a sour taste in his mouth, "then you need not make mysteries of them while you tell your story."

  "A story is still a story," Orfeo replied, "and must proceed from beginning to end. And besides, there are questions whose answers you have chosen to hide from me, in order to contrive a litle drama of your own—for you have not told me precisely where your interest in my story lies, thus insisting that I risk offending you. If you would tell me what name you bore before you were Alkadi Nasreen, Caliph of Mahabbah and Lord of the Twin Seas...."

  "Damn your infernal curiosity!" retorted the other. "I want the truth, not half-truth bent to the purposes of clever flattery in the hope of securing your release. You are a slave here, Master Orfeo, and it is I who have the sole right to make demands and ask questions. How much longer will the telling of this story take?"

  "It is difficult to judge," said Orfeo, "as I have never told it before."

  "We have storytellers in Araby, too," said the Caliph, coldly.

  "Among the stories which they tell is the tale of a wife sentenced to execution, who obtained stay after stay by telling stories to her royal husband, each one suspended before morning in order to win another day of life by tempting curiosity, until the farce had lasted a thousand and one nights. You would not seek to treat me thus, I trust?"