“All is vanity,” agreed Brother Anselm as he crossed himself.
“Malachi, where is my Gregory? Can you take me to him?”
“Nothing easier. But it’s damp and slippery. We’ll need torch-bearers. We’ll have to ask these mutes to help out.” He glanced about him. The mutes were squatting on the floor in a circle. In the center was Mother Hilde, sitting on her heels. They were all rapidly gesturing with their hands. Malachi noticed one of them make a strangling motion about his neck, and then a little house with his hands, and fingers walking like little feet.
“Hmm,” said Brother Malachi. “They don’t understand a word of English and dear Hilde there can’t pronounce a syllable of any foreign language, but they all seem to be communicating quite well without that.”
“Devil’s symbols,” said Brother Anselm nervously. “I saw the Sign of the Devil.”
“Nonsense, they’re talking. Hilde, dear, what are they saying?”
“This one says it’s no fun being a mute and living in the dark down here and strangling people. He wants to go home to his uncle’s farm where there’s a nice apple orchard.”
“He said all that?”
“Of course. The other one says the fellows here were all as mean as the Devil, except you. He wants to know where we come from.”
Brother Malachi smiled. He made ocean waves with his hands, then a little boat, and then what he thought looked like an island.
The mutes threw back their heads and shook, as if they were laughing. One of them even made a sort of little barking cough.
“They say you have a terrible accent, Malachi,” said Hilde.
“Tell them the Count’s dead, and they can quit and go home if they like. Ask them if they will help us get Gilbert out of the oubliette first.”
“They say nobody ever comes out of the oubliettes, at least not in their time here. They’re too deep. They lower them in, then cut the rope. Then the man’s in forever.”
“Tell them, what goes in must come out.”
“They’re dubious, but they say they’ll go with us.”
“HE’S DEAD? REALLY DEAD?” I asked, surveying the black-clad figure stretched out on the tiles of the hidden alchemical workshop. I could feel the rage leaving me and a strange light-headed giddiness taking its place.
“Most assuredly, Margaret. The final transformation but one. With him the last, which is decay, does not concern me.” Brother Malachi spoke lightly, so as not to frighten me, I’m sure. But his face was still haggard and stubbly from his imprisonment and from whatever he’d seen going on in that room. Even Mother Hilde’s passionate embrace and tears of joy had not totally erased the unmistakably ravaged look of a person who has stared directly at the true face of evil.
“Gregory? You’re sure he’s down there?” I asked, pointing to the open door into the darkness below.
“Yes, he’s there.” Brother Malachi detached an arm from around Mother Hilde and gestured with it to the mutes, who lit new torches from those in the wall brackets for the descent.
I don’t think I’ll write about everything I saw down in the horrible cellars beneath the laboratorium because it was altogether too morbid and depressing. It reminded me of the inside of the Count’s head—or at least the gruesomer parts of his imagination that he reserved for special occasions. Really, you can never be too careful in examining ahead of time the character of those you stay with as houseguests. But, of course, the place made my heart pound for fear we had come too late for Gregory.
As we approached the great pits, the mutes put the torches in the brackets above the last of them and pointed to the pulley above the grating. At the first flicker of light, I could hear a voice reverberating from down below. Tired and hoarse, but his.
“What is it this time? Heroic couplets? Yours should be called cowardly couplets, you perfumed baboon.” The familiar sound made my heart leap.
“Gregory!” I flung myself on the grating. “It’s me, it’s me! We’ve come for you.” My joyful shout echoed and vanished into the deep stone pit.
“Oh, Jesu,” I heard the hollow mutter from below. “I’m hallucinating again. The end can’t be far.”
“It’s Margaret! Answer me! How deep is it to the bottom? We need to get a rope long enough to get you out.”
“Oh, Margaret, how many times I’ve called to you in the dark. And I heard you answer too. But this is the first time we’ve carried on such a complex conversation. I suppose it’s a mercy my mind is going at last.” The voice seemed to fade as it came up from the dark.
“For God’s sake, I’m real, Gregory. Give me the depth.”
“Between three and four times the height of a man, Margaret.” He sounded lost, as if he were in a dream.
“If we lower a rope, can you climb up it?”
“I don’t think so, Margaret. It’s—rather cramped down here at the bottom. I’ve lacked my usual exercise, I fear: my arms and legs are quite numb. I haven’t the strength.”
“Then tie it about you, and we’ll use the pulley to haul you up.” I stood and the mutes loosened the grate and heaved it aside with a practiced gesture.
As it was removed, I heard him say: “If it’s not real, it’s certainly the best one so far.” But as the rope reached him, he gave a cry of despair.
“What’s wrong?” I called down to him.
“Blasted cold—can’t get my fingers to work—can’t tie it properly.” His voice was lost in the dull, echoing sound of racking coughing that rose from the pit.
I knelt by the hole as one of the mutes held a torch for me to see. Sim, who loved all things lurid and gruesome, had tired of inspecting the apparatus in the Count’s torture chamber and had come to kneel beside me to peer in.
“Phew. Stinks down there, don’t it? Hey, what’s that stuff down there? Bones?” Sim sounded pleased.
Gregory was curled at the bottom of the hole, without even a shirt to keep him warm. I could just barely make out his figure in the dim, flickering light.
“Of course it’s bones. What d’you think’s down here? Roses?” The waspish tone in his voice renewed my hope.
“Any skulls?”
“Several.”
“I sure could use one of them.”
“Sim! You’re horrid! We’re supposed to be getting him out—not collecting souvenirs.”
“Use your thinker, Margaret. You just lower me down on the rope—I tie it under his arms—then I get my skull and ride up on the rope with him. It’s easy. Wimmen!” He snorted in imitation of a grown-up male.
It was not long before we heard Sim’s voice echoing up from the pit, alternating with inarticulate spluttering noises from the object of his attention.
“Move yer arm, will you? My goodness, you’ve got a long beard!—How long did it take you to grow it that way?—Hey, look, I didn’t mean to pinch—quit grumping.—So why’d Margaret ever go and marry you?—What do you think of this one? The jaw’s still on it, but it ain’t got many teeth.—No, this one’s better. Maybe I’ll take both.—You’ll hold ’em for me, won’t you? I’ll need at least one hand for the rope.—Come on, be a sport and help me out.—Hey, Margaret! Grab my skulls as he comes up before he rolls on ’em and smashes ’em!”
Soon enough, Gregory was gasping above ground beside the grated holes like a newly landed fish, and Sim was happily polishing his acquisitions with his sleeve. Gregory seemed as weak as a kitten as I wrapped him in the Count’s big fur lined cloak and rubbed his hands between my own to warm them.
“Oh, Margaret, it really is you,” he said, but his voice sounded terrifyingly frail. “I thought of you—I saw you—I heard you calling.” His skin was stretched tight across his bones like parchment. I’ve never imagined that anyone alive could be so thin. But the eyes that stared out of the tangle of long hair and beard were blazing and alive. I could see him staring at me, looking, looking, as if he could not get enough. Then a lazy half smile crossed his lips. And that old look, half tenderness and half misch
ief, glinted in his eyes.
“Why, Margaret,” he said mildly. “You’ve been putting on weight.”
“Me? I have not!”
“Come now, you can’t deny you’re rather thick in the waist. You’ve been living well since I left.”
“Living well! I’ve been pining away! Pining away and making your baby! Do you think that’s easy? I got seasick! I walked and walked! I had to trick that horrible man! At the very least, you might have considered telling him you liked his blasted poetry and sparing yourself and me all this trouble!”
He slumped on his back and his smile was weak, but triumphant.
“I’ve got standards, Margaret.”
“Carry him up!” I told the mutes. And two of them gave their torches to Brother Malachi and Brother Anselm, taking Gregory up and swinging him between them as easily as if he were a sackful of cabbages.
Laid out on a bench in the alchemical workshop, he scarcely protested as I washed his face and trimmed his hair and beard. I could see his eyes travel from my face to my spreading waistline, back and forth, and a look of wonder growing on his face. It was as if the idea couldn’t get through his head that there would soon enough be three of us.
“You shouldn’t be so hard on him,” I could hear Mother Hilde saying behind me. But I just said, “I’m not being hard at all!” and went on clipping silently. Then I passed to bandaging his open sores, and wanted to weep. But I certainly wasn’t going to let him know that.
“I suppose you told him you loved his poetry,” he said. His voice was terribly weak, and he ended with a spasm of coughing that squeezed my heart.
“Of course I did. What else? And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.” The remembrance of lilac water made my stomach all queasy.
“He recited ‘Ode to Summer’ to you, I suppose.” I went on sponging him off and began dressing him. He was too weak even to assist putting his arms into the sleeves of the heavy tunic.
“Oh, yes. That horrid one with the birds and plants. The man knew nothing about summer. He hadn’t an ounce of feeling in him.”
Gregory smiled, and coughed again. Then an odd look crossed his face.
“Hadn’t? He’s dead?”
“Yes, of course. Why else do you think I’m here? He had nasty designs on me, but when I went to see him about you, he jumped out the window.”
“Oh, really? You pushed him?”
“No. I didn’t. He drank too much aphrodisiac and turned all purple—and then, well, then he jumped. I was very relieved, you may imagine.” I sat back on my heels to drink him in with my eyes.
“I’m relieved too. But you still have a sin on your conscience.”
“I do not!” I was indignant. But he doubled over coughing, and I could see that he was laughing.
“You told him you liked ‘Ode to Summer.’ And that, Margaret, was a lie.”
“At least I know how to stay out of trouble.”
“You think I’d have got out if I told him I liked his preposterous versification? Oh no. The moment I agreed with him, I would have been a dead man. I worked on my insults, Margaret. They kept him coming back. And as long as he came back, they kept me alive. The minute he lost interest, it would have been over. I had plenty of time to think up good ones—but I was wearing down some. I couldn’t have kept it up much longer.”
“Bless you, you’ll never change.” I knelt down and put my arms around him. But it was when I put my head on his chest that I could hear the rattle with each breath that he drew. God in heaven, I wept to myself. The Gift is too weak to help him. Spare him. I’ve suffered too much.
“Sim,” I could hear Brother Malachi’s voice intoning behind me, “it strikes me that for my pains I am owed—now—hmm—Marcus Graecus, The Book of Fires, that looks nice, I’ve always wanted that one. Aristotle’s De lapidibus—I have that, and this one’s ill copied. Goodness, yes, the Mappae Clavicula—I’ve never had more than an excerpt. And a most satisfying copy—with illuminations, too. Arnoldus Villanova, of course I’ll have that. Opus de chemia, lovely, lovely. Now—this thing—hmm. ‘On the Secret Art of Calling Devils’—I’ll leave that for the Inquisition, which will probably be called in to clean up this mess. Geber, the Summa Perfectionis, rather spotty from use, but better than my copy. I’ll have that. Yes, this is just about right.” I turned in the direction of the sound to see several volumes disappearing into the bosom of Brother Malachi’s capacious gown. Gregory’s eyes followed mine. He could barely turn his head.
“Theophilus. It really is you there, after all. I thought I’d imagined you. What stupidity led you into this hellhole?”
“Me?” said Brother Malachi. “I’m traveling in search of a translator for a rare work I’ve acquired. And, incidentally, helping out Margaret here.”
“Theophilus, you old rascal. I didn’t think you liked me.”
“I don’t, Gilbert, I don’t. You are a hopeless, bad-tempered, thorny-tongued, arrogant young troublemaker. Wherever you go, disasters occur, despite my frequently offered—and entirely ignored—wise advice. Most days, I simply can’t abide even the thought of you. Today, however, I like you. You are in a state too weak to annoy me. And then there was the day you composed ‘Ode to My Lady’s Large Shoe,’ and I laughed until I wept. That day I liked you too. And, of course, the day you gave me your last sou so that I might flee from Paris, and as you turned to go back out into the snow, I saw that you had sold your cloak. That day, Gilbert, I loved you, and I wept as I tucked my manuscripts into my pack. But on the whole, you are unendurable.”
“I suppose now I’ll have to say I like your poetry too.” Gregory’s voice was reduced to a whisper.
“How typical of your promises, Gilbert, since you know I don’t write any.” Brother Malachi paused to look regretfully about the laboratorium. He shook his head. “What I’d like to take with me is the glassware. Do you know how hard it is to get a proper philosopher’s egg made in London?”
“Who’s the dead man, Theophilus?”
“That, Gilbert? Just another monster who wanted to rule the world—he is no loss, no loss at all. Now, where’s my rod?”
As Brother Malachi knelt, puffing, beneath the wide table full of curious glass and copper vessels, Mother Hilde remarked, “We really ought to be going, Malachi, dear. The morning light will be here soon, and I, for one, have never wanted to be out of a place more.”
“Morning!” I exclaimed. “Good heavens! Hugo probably still thinks he’s meeting the Count in single combat! Knowing him, he’s slept like a log through all of this. Someone really ought to go and let him know.” How easy it was to forget Hugo. And what a pleasure.
“Hugo who?”
“Hugo your brother.”
“Hugo meet the Count? He wouldn’t last a minute. The man’s twice his size, and a better swordsman to boot.”
“Was.”
“Oh, yes—was. But Hugo, here? In mortal combat with the Count? Not on my account, surely.”
“Not directly, no. It’s over an insult to his blood. But he did come here for you.”
“For me? He must have gone soft in the head.”
“I suppose he did. But he probably wants to talk to you about that himself.”
“In my current state, Margaret, Hugo is very nearly the last person in the world I want to see.” He curled over, convulsed with coughing. “The absolutely last is Father. Stay with me, Margaret, your hands are nice and warm.”
“You were always the one with warm hands.”
“Not anymore.”
“I’ll never leave you; you know that, don’t you?” I knelt next to him and pulled the Count’s heavy cloak around him as I embraced him. He reached out a hand and pulled mine to him beneath the cloak as he closed his eyes. In the warmth of the dying fire in the athanor, he fell asleep, his breath coming in long, rattling sighs.
IT WAS LONG BEFORE matins. The stars were still brightly shining when Hugo got up in the night. Traveling had been good to him; he’d ceased his agon
ized night wanderings and had his first real sleep in months. But now he’d had nightmares of the vast bulk of the Sieur d’Aigremont coming at him in the lists. Just as the Count had unhorsed him and dismounted to finish him off, he woke with a horrible start: he remembered he was a man under a curse. He was stained with a horrible sin—God could not favor him on the morrow, even if he was so clearly the better man in every other respect. “The curse, the curse,” he mumbled as he paced the floor among the straw palliasses where his men slumbered contentedly. Robert, his squire, turned on the mattress at the foot of the bed. He was snoring. “God, even to be a man at arms—a nobody—with an unstained heart,” Hugo whispered enviously. “Save me, Lord, save me. Forgive me. I’ll reform. I swear. Gilbert can tell me how to do it, to break this curse. There’s a holy man somewhere he knows about. Maybe there’s a shrine for the accursed—some saint. I’ll do a penance, God. Anything.” Prayers. Maybe prayers would do it. Beads, that was it. But who had any? Cis, that was who. “Damned slut! What does she need them for?” he muttered as he leaned to stare out the window at the dark dome of the sky. She’d vanished with that old dandy, the Sieur de Soule, the so-called ambassador. Snuck off without a hint of gratitude or loyalty. Who did she think she was anyway?
The cold night wind pushed banks of icy clouds across the face of the waxing moon. Come out of the sky, God! cried Hugo in his mind. Show Yourself and tell me that You hear me….
There was a clattering in the courtyard below. Hugo looked down and saw a familiar figure, huge and menacing, in the moonlight, mounted on a tall black horse. He was entirely enveloped in an immense black cloak that fell on either side of the saddle and whipped about his horse’s legs in the icy night wind. Hugo heard his deep voice calling,
“Come! I hunt tonight.” And from the shadows, two more cloaked horsemen joined him. One had a tightly curling black beard and immense eyebrows. The other Hugo recognized as the friar who had leaned against the Count’s great chair to whisper in his ear the night before. They pulled their little black cobs in behind the Count’s immense stallion. As Hugo watched, a parade of solemn figures on tall black palfreys, black without even a patch of white on them, seemed to emerge from nowhere to escort the first three figures. They, too, were cloaked in black, but their hoods were up so that their faces could not be seen—that is, if they had any faces at all. As they rode slowly to the inner bailey gate, Hugo noted with a start that there were thirteen of them.
In Pursuit of the Green Lion Page 34