A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess

by Ron Miller

  The water has made him ill. He suffers from severe abdominal cramps, fever and, horror of horrors, diarrhea. He has become dehydrated, but there is no longer even the stale water that had been provided, and the thought of consuming more of the greenish tricklings from the cell’s stone walls literally nauseates him. The pangs of hunger have long since passed; in any case they would have been indistinguishable from the cramps from which he is now suffering.

  Another day or two go by, at least so far as the baron can tell. What a stupid way to commit suicide.

  The rattling of keys is scarcely sufficient to rouse him from his stupor. Something of his poor brain remains sentient enough to ask the question: Wouldn’t it be a waste to have gone through all this for nothing? The remaining part of his brain replies, So what? Let’s eat! But that part is not as influential as it is merely argumentative and the baron finds himself rising to his knees and dragging himself alongside the door. Just in time, too, for at that moment the massive slab swings open like a vault.

  “Musrum’s holy boogers!” comes a high-pitched voice, such as a man assumes when he thinks he is imitating a woman. “Ah, gee! He must’ve been dead for days! Ahhh, man, they oughta just wall this cell off! Phoowee!”

  There is not another sound for a minute or two, obviously to allow time for a little oxygen to penetrate the chamber

  “You gonna leave it open like that?” asks a second, barely audible voice. “You wanna stink up the whole palace?”

  “I’m not goin’ in there ‘til some of th’ stink is gone. He’s sure not goin’ anywhere.”

  “I guess not. Least not in one piece, anyway.”

  “Yeah! Snk! Snk! Snk!” the first replies with what must have been a laugh.

  “You’re gonna need a coupla buckets, man!”

  “I ain’t in no hurry to mess ‘round with a stiff that smells like that either. Why don’t you go an’ get me some sacks?”

  “Where do I get sacks?”

  “How’m I s’posed to know? Use your ‘magination.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Try the kitchen, stupid, they’re always gettin’ sacks o’ potatoes an’ things.”

  “All right. And I’ll ask if they got any magnation while I’m there. Is it any good? Sounds foreign and I’m not too partial to foreign food.”

  The baron hears shuffling and scraping footsteps begin to move off.

  “Better bring a more’n a couple,” calls out the first voice, still near the door.

  For several minutes there are only faint, indecipherable sounds of movement. Would he not come into the cell until the other returns? The baron begins to forget his physical agony in his anxiety. He wants to make some sound to attract the warder and has to force himself to remain silent and motionless. Gradually the shuffling sounds grow closer and the baron holds his breath (for which he hardly needs any inducement). A shadow appears, lapping over the threshold. There are muffled sounds of disgust but the shadow does not recede. Instead it lengthens, an odd misshapen thing.

  At last its creator appears framed in the doorway. The baron silently flattens himself against the wall. The warder, he sees, is a dwarfish, lumpy individual, whose face is not much further above the floor than the second button up from the baron’s belt buckle (when he still had one). The arms are disproportionately long, however; had they not been grasping the handle of a broom, the familiar hairy knuckles would have rested on the floor. The arms are massive and, in themselves, well developed . . . just misplaced, as though they have been transplanted from a wrestler or prizefighter. The remainder of the warder is disappointing: a shapelessly miscreated creature, just shy of being a full-fledged hunchback, but then again just shy of being fully human as well. Its mismatched eyes have just begun to turn in the baron’s direction, one slightly ahead of the other, when the latter reaches out and snatches the broom from the startled fingers. The warder’s slow brain has not begun to react even by the time the baron has stepped behind him and placed the broom handle across his knobby throat. Only then, when the pressure begins, does the massive arms begin to flail at the constricting rod. The baron keeps his face well back from powerful-looking fingers that snap at his nose and eyes like angry crustaceans, while at the same time he presses a knee into the small of the dwarf’s undulating spine. After a very short span of time, and without a sound, the dwarf collapses to the flagstones, though slumped might be perhaps a more accurate word; he is so short there is little significant difference between erect and prone.

  The baron has just stepped out fully into the corridor, which he only has a moment to perceive is just fifteen feet or so in length, with only his own door breaking the irregular stone walls, and heavy doors blocking either end, when the warder’s companion reenters through one of them. He is no more attractive than the other, although considerably skinnier, and has only time to utter a startled Uh? before his mouth is filled with bits of teeth and tongue pulverized by the force of the broom handle which has been swung into his face like a baseball bat. The baron has a brief second to notice that the creature actually looks a little improved with the club imbedded in its face. The skinny assistant drops as though his bones have suddenly evaporated. Taking no chances, the baron grasps the head by its large, waxy ears and bounces it once or twice against the stones until the tongue sticks out and stays that way.

  The baron now takes the time to make a thorough search of the two bodies, something that offends his fastidiousness almost as much as his cell had lately done. Other than amazement at the sheer number and variety of vermin (including but certainly not limited to lice, weevils, crabs, roaches, leeches, flies, fleas, ticks, mites, mice, roundworms, flatworms, heartworms, tapeworms, flukes, and various molds and fungi), the only worthwhile discovery is a ring of perhaps a dozen heavy keys. He is disappointed to find no weapon. Taking the keys, he cautiously steps through the door that the assistant warder had left open. This gives onto a cross corridor that curves off to the left and right.

  He chooses the latter direction at hazard. A dozen feet along he discovers a massive oak double door. It is barred with half-inch iron staples bearing locks as large as both of his fists together. There are a pair of small windows and he peers through their heavy iron mesh. Holy Musrum’s pendulous testicles! he whispers reverently. Beyond is a vast, high-ceilinged room that has been transformed from whatever its former purpose had been into a treasure warehouse. It is filled, with a studied and organized compactness, with more wealth than even the highly imaginative baron can have dreamed existed: endless, pyramidal mounds of canvas bags, each neatly stenciled with some fabulous amount, scores of enormous wooden chests (one is open and its jewelled contents allow him to dizzily extrapolate the contents of the others), famous paintings stacked ten deep, rolls of tapestries, mountains of objects too large to fit into the chests: chandeliers, lamps, urns tea sets, samovars, sculptures, all, he has no doubt, as solidly silver and gold as they looked.

  Damn his withered little soul! he growls to himself, recognizing a boxed set of matched brushes. Those were mine!

  This is unquestionably Payne Roelt’s treasury, the accumulated loot of two years’ intense and single-minded labor. Here are the liquid assets of an entire nation. The baron suspects, and rightly, that this is merely one of many such vaults.

  The right-hand passage ends in steps that are evidently at the bottom of a spiral stairway. Assuming that up is the most desirable direction, the baron takes the first of the narrow steps.

  The climb seems interminable, though the baron has probably ascended no more than fifty feet. He at last, however, comes to a slot in the outside wall, through which a cool current of air is leaking. Although heavily burdened with the oily, fishy odor of the Slideen River, it smells like the freshest country breeze to Milnikov. In spite of his anxiousness to escape the dungeons he takes a few moments to flush his lungs of the poisons they had accumulated, and to reaccustom his nose to the sensation of genuine air.

  The slit faces upstrea
m so all he can see of the river is a dark grey surface reflecting a sky just beginning to silver with dawn. On the distant bank is the egress of the Muchka River, a small tributary at the mouth of which he can see the lights of some building or another. Dawn is good, he thinks; there will be far fewer people afoot than he might encounter later in the day.

  The top of the staircase is blocked by another heavy door. It has a small window protected by a lattice of iron straps. Peering through this the baron sees a small section of a broad corridor. For the first time since escaping from his cell he hears sounds produced by other human beings: no doubt servants prepanng for breakfast and whatever other absolutely necessary things servants and household staff did at dawn. He can only speculate what one of them would do if he were seen. Does he look disreputable enough to raise an alarm? Probably. Undoubtedly. He has only the trousers and sleeveless undervest he had been left with and which he has been wearing for weeks. Both are unspeakably filthy. He has lost a dozen pounds or more and has to clutch the waist of his beltless trousers with one hand to keep them aloft. He is barefoot and his once tidy moustache and imperial are now as lost as unkempt weeds among the thicket of weeks-old greyish beard.

  He takes the ring of keys, carefully, to keep them from jangling, and cautiously tries them one at a time in the lock. The eighth key fits. With a rusty screech that raises the baron’s hair, the key turns. He feels the bolt slip from its moorings and the door is now free to be opened. Giving one final search of as much of the outside corridor as he can see through the grating, the baron opens the heavy door a fraction of an inch. Peering out, he can see nothing in either direction The hall is well lit, however, and appears to be some functioning part of the underpalace. The same vaguely busy sounds still come from one direction or the other.

  He hastily withdraws his head as a figure appears. He watches cautiously as it goes by. It is only a portly maid carrying an enormous wicker basket of what appears to be laundry. For no particular reason he decides to follow her and, as soon as she disappears around a corner at the other end of the passage, he slips from his hiding place in pursuit. He arrives at the intersection just in time to see her entering a room through a pair of oversize swinging doors. As she barges through, hissing sounds and a whiff of steam escape around the bulging figure. The baron hurries to the doors, arriving while they are still listlessly swinging, and holds one ajar so that he can see into the room beyond. It is evidently the palace laundry; large vats or cauldrons are set half-sunk into the wet, tiled floor. Two or three boiled-looking women with papier-mâché faces are stirring the contents of the vats with what look like canoe paddles. The air smells incredibly fresh and clean, so much so that he has to hang onto the door frame weakly, to keep from falling.

  “Who are you?” asks a voice, not in challenge but with simple curiousity, from the vicinity of his elbow. He looks down to see that he had not noticed the arrival of another maid. Like the first, she is burdened by a vast basket of dirty laundry. Does the palace hire nothing but midgets? Apparently unperturbed by his presence or appearance, and ignoring the fact that he has not answered her, the newly arrived woman sidles past him, intent upon her business.

  “Who’s that?” asks one of the others, brushing aside a damp lock of hair in an ineffectual attempt to see better.

  “I dunno.”

  “Looks like summon who’s fallen in th’ river!” replies a third, who is a little closer and can see better, cackling at what apparently is to her an enormous joke.

  “Fallen in th’ river?” asks one of the others, in some confusion, not until now having heard anything over the hissing kettles. “Who’s fallen in th’ river?”

  The baron, neither so starved nor tired to have completely lost his wits, replies, “I have! I mean, I did!”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Who did what?”

  “It is I, the baron,” he answers, which vagueness seemed sufficient for the women. He had a title and that is that.

  “Sorry sir, y’r lordship, I dint reckernize you in all o’ this steam. What can we do for y’r worship?”

  “Can I get some clean clothes? Can’t run around the palace like this, can I?”

  “No, sir! Y’r worship, sir. That is, I mean, I certainly wouldn’t think that you’d care to!”

  “Begging y’r pardon, y’r lordship,” puts in a thin voice from one foggy corner, “but hasn’t you clean clothes in y’r chambers?”

  “Ah, yes . . . indeed I do, or would have, that is. You see, I is planmng to leave today and I have all of my things sent down to the docks, to meet my ship. In my trunks. All packed. I is only taking a last-minute stroll around the lovely grounds of your charming palace when, well, accidents will happen, you know,” he finishes disingenuously.

  “How did y’r worship find himself here, of all places?”

  “Hazel!” chides one of her companions in labor. “You mustn’t be askin’ his worship all o’ these questions! It’s terrible rude!”

  “I am lost,” he answers, blessing the speaker and hoping that the unseen one would heed the advice.

  “Begging y’r worship’s pardon, I’m sure.”

  “Anything will do,” says the baron, bringing the conversation back to its original course. “How about these things?” He picks a bundle fiom a nearby table. “These should do just fine.”

  “Them’s the chamberlain’s things. I don’t know if I oughtta ‘low anyone to take those.”

  “Nonsense! Lord Roelt and I are like brothers. His gratitude will probably know no bounds when he learns how you helped me. As I shall be sure to let him know.”

  “Really, y’r worship?” simpers the maid. “You won’t get me in no trouble, would you?”

  “Of course not! Why, you will have done me an excellent favor, and I am certain that Lord Roelt will consider that any favor done for as good a friend as I will be as good as placing an obligation upon himself.”

  “Oh, my,” says the maid, while trying to work out the sense of that.

  “In simpler terms, Lord Roelt will owe you a favor in return!”

  “Oh, my!” she cries, considerably flustered, while her companions coo in astonishment and envy.

  Taking advantage, the baron asks quietly, “Is there someplace where I can change?”

  He is directed to an adjoining janitor’s closet where he quickly peels off his prison garments and stuffs them into a galvanized waste can. There is a sink in the closet, and a slab of coarse soap, and he takes the opportunity to clean himself. There is no towel, so he gladly uses one of Payne’s dress shirts. Among the clothes he has taken are evidently Ferenc’s tennis costumes, though the baron can scarcely imagine the king being so physically active. No doubt the clothes are simply worn to garden parties and the like. In any case, they consist of a pair of white duck trousers, white shirt and some underthings. There are, naturally, neither socks nor shoes, but what the hell.

  The baron exits the closet and quickly crosses the steamy, vague room, the laundresses stared curiously, like goggle-eyed fish warily regarding a cruising, hopefully indifferent, barracuda.

  Reentering the outside corridor, the baron looks for the most direct way into the upper reaches of the palace. He knows that the building, or agglomeration of structures, is labyrinthine and he is probably as familiar with its organization, such as it is, as anyone else; probably far more so than his immediate enemies, he is moderately certain. However, accustomed as he may be to the ins and outs of the wandering, haphazard maze of corridors and interconnecting rooms, to him, like everyone else of his particular class, the existence of the world downstairs is something seldom acknowledged, if ever considered at all. He can only assume that any passage or stairway that takes him up is desirable, and would have to trust that he would be eventually deposited into familiar territory. As he meanders with increasing impatience and frustration, more and more often passing servants who surreptitiously and silently gaze with mingled curiosity and fear, he feels like some forgott
en little constipated nodule passing through the endlessly coiled gut of a vast and somnolent creature for whom he is not even yet an uncomfortable bloated feeling.

  He would have given a lot to have stumbled across a kitchen, or even a servant with some food whom he can talk out of, but there is nothing. The weakness he feels is becoming burdensome, he has to stop at the head of every staircase, winded, and his poor legs seem to be made of rubber.

  Finally, after what seems like hours of wandering, and is, in fact, the baron enters a passage that is vaguely familiar: a long, broad, vaulted corridor lined with oleaginous portraits of members of the Tedeschiiy family and its various and varied offspring and branches. More to the baron’s pleasure than an appreciation of Princess Bronwyn’s unbelievably good fortune in apparently not having inherited a single physical characteristic from her forebears (which is not altogether true; every one of her not remotely unpleasant features can be found somewhere, in some degree, among the grim and dour portraits, a nose here, an eyebrow there; Bronwyn’s good luck came in that eventually, by sheer force of probability, someone is bound to eventually inherit more of the outstanding physical attributes and fewer of the less appealing ones; it is as though Musrum in creating the princess, had taken a handful of genes, tossed them into the air and watched them all come up heads) is the display of arms that are artfully arranged around the portraits of the more militarily-inclined ancestors. Browsing hastily but thinksfully, he selects a fine-looking epeé that still bears a glinting razor’s edge.

  At the far end of the passage, the baron knows, lay the apartments of the king.

  Just imagine the surprise on the faces of the king, Payne Roelt and General Praxx when the big double doors burst open, revealing the spectral figure of Baron Milnikov upon the threshold. Ferenc leaps convulsively, like a frog in a voltaic demonstration, while Payne manages, after only the briefest lapse, to maintain his habitual sneer, though this is by a face that is suddenly bleached to an unpleasantly corpse-like blue-white, an effect that makes the expression appear more seasick than supercilious.