Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

  Down the corridor sounded the torpid grate of long disused metal hinges, and he was aware of slippered feet whispering toward him, along with the scratch of rougher garments. A small procession soon appeared. The man in the lead wore a cowl and robe. Though first in order, he was not the leader of the group, for in service of another he bore delicacies on a golden salver: strawberries and honey along with the more mundane foodstuffs of milk, bread and wine.

  The Puritan knew such fare was not for him, but for whom? Was he, then, not alone in this dungeon? But what prisoner would be so feted? He did not attempt to ask the cowled man, for he was immediately distracted by the young woman who followed. Hers were the slippers he had heard. Her gown clung to a voluptuously curved figure, full breasts lifted to meet the low neckline, and about her bare shoulders hung luxuriant, jetty locks.

  This vision of ripe pulchritude, which would have stirred desire in most men, struck the Puritan with distaste... followed immediately by an abject sense of failure. For this woman was the one he had come to Avignon to carry away across the Rhone River and back to La Rochelle. This was Fausta, she of the blood of Pope Alexander VI and Cesare Borgia.

  She turned on him her dark eyes, wet flakes of coal already as hard as diamonds, then turned aside to pause at the barred entrance of his cell. The man in the cowl paused and looked back toward her uncertainly. She beckoned him on with an imperious flick of her wrist and the lackey obeyed. Now she parted full, painted lips and showed perfect white teeth.

  “I am told you are he who came here in the interests of those Huguenot settlements so near Avignon, those doomed first to fall when I make this city again a Papal stronghold. But ’twas a fool’s errand, unworthy of the rumored acumen of the one known as the Puritan. Are you truly Solomon Kane?”

  “You have said,” the man in black responded, his craggy countenance as pale and impassive as the face of the chalk cliffs which lift the city of Avignon above the Rhone.

  Kane had entered France through the harbor city of La Rochelle to offer his sword arm to the Huguenot cause, no more or less than many other English Calvinists had done. Before long, his prodigious abilities as a battle strategist set him apart, and friend and enemy alike spoke of him with distinction as the Puritan. Rumors of the effects of his designs troubled King Henri III on the throne of a divided land, and even reached distant Rome, giving the Mitered brow of Pope Gregory XIII cause to furrow.

  Fausta tossed her head back, black locks gamboling over her bare shoulders, and laughed. The sound was like the rustle and peal of tiny bells. She leveled her gaze to meet his own. “Are you in the place of Christ, then, that you answer me as he did Pilate?”

  “I make no claim to be in the stead of Christ; t’would be blasphemy. But my Lord has schooled me how I should answer, and that I resist not evil.”

  “Hypocrite!” Fausta rejoined, the tip of her tongue flicking scorn with each syllable. “Was it not ‘resistance’ that brought you here to seize me?”

  “My attempt against you was not in regards to my own interests, but those of God’s cause. I resist the oppression of those whose blood has flowed since Saint Bartholomew’s Day because they desire religious freedom. My Lord himself took up a whip of cords to banish by force those who obstructed worship in his Father’s house and has thus set me an example.”

  “But the Galilean did not repeatedly dip a sword in human blood as you have done. Did he not warn you that he who lives by the sword will die by it? In that you should have heeded him as well.”

  “My soul is made clean by Christ’s righteousness; I am ready to depart.”

  Fausta laughed mockingly. “But I am not yet ready for your departure. Your capture will advance my campaign when I make claim to the Papal throne. While Gregory remains in distant Rome, ineffectual in dealing with your opposition of the Catholic Church, I have come to Avignon, to the very threshold of France and the Huguenot threat, and captured their master strategist.”

  “Are you mad, woman?” the Puritan asked, his jaw slack in the face of such unmitigated egotism. “Do you truly think to seize the Papacy from Gregory? Have you forgotten your sex?”

  Fausta drew up her slim shoulders and stiffened primly. “I am the inheritor of Pope Joan who was called ‘John,’ she who was Vicar of Christ before childbirth betrayed her. Further, I am a blood descendent of Pope Alexander, through my ancestress, Lucrezia Borgia. Joan’s office and title have been passed down by succession to Lucrezia’s female descendants, a secret alternative to the Papal line. Though none before me who has received this office has been so bold as to come forward and make claim.

  “Until I have replaced Gregory as Pope and Avignon is again the site of the Holy See, you are a valuable political prisoner to me. I use you as you would have used me, though not as rudely as you might think. You are kept in the Low Treasury beneath my own apartments in the Papal palace. ’Twas here the Popes of old stored their most precious acquisitions, and you are most precious to me.”

  With a sardonic smile, Fausta resumed her journey down the corridor. Only then did Kane see the third party of her procession, for he had been obscured by Fausta herself. At sight of him, the Puritan’s eyes narrowed and a momentary, small tremor shook one craggy cheek, but by sheer will he returned his whole face to the stillness of stone. His eyes remained narrow. “Gaston...” he hissed through clinched lips.

  “Ho, great Puritan!” the swarthy complexioned man with curled, black mustachios said. “You were right in warning the council of La Rochelle to never trust a traitor, eh? But I think in time, over the course of our journey, I won even your confidence. The petite affaire of the boar, who would have gored you but for my well-trained arrow? Of course, that you survive to enter Avignon was paramount to my true mission.”

  “And from the moment you saved my life, Gaston, have you rehearsed in your heart how you would taunt me with that fact as you do now?”

  “ ‘Rehearse?’–no. ‘Relish’–would be a better way to put it. And now, Solomon, do I have your love? Do not your scriptures say that you must forgive me, on penalty of eternal fire?”

  “Aye. I do forgive you.”

  The mustachios twitched higher on Gaston de Rochefort’s cheeks as he smiled. “From the heart? I believe ’tis written you must forgive from the heart.”

  “Aye. I bear you no malice for your deceit toward me. Christ was also betrayed, and Christ schools me that the servant is not greater than his master.”

  “Yes, but Judas did not live to receive forgiveness, did he?”

  “He brought his own destruction down upon his head, for he could not live with the consequences of his actions.”

  “I will have no trouble living with mine,” de Rochefort said. His eyes were suddenly cruel and dour and there was no longer any mirth in his voice. “And I dare say my life will be much longer and fuller than yours.”

  He turned curtly to go.

  “Gaston?”

  Fausta’s agent drew back to the barred cell, hoping for an imploring for mercy.

  “Yes, great Puritan?”

  “I forgive you on my own account, but there is he whom you did not give a chance to offer his forgiveness. I do not revenge myself for deeds done against me, but avenging the evil deeds against an innocent... Ah, in that lesson I am also well-schooled, and have applied myself assiduously... one might say... with relish. Pray to Satan that God does not unbind me. For then I will be free to execute on you judgment for the life of one who proved my most faithful friend.”

  Gaston de Rochefort cocked his head, his dark pupils rapidly oscillating inside slit lids as though at a loss as to whom Solomon referred. Then he drew in a deep breath and expelled it with a laugh. “That... egg? ’Twas not on my account that he valued so little his own life...”

  So intense was Solomon’s gaze, so quick was his lunge, like an iron-tethered panther, that de Rochefort forgot the cell’s bars for a moment, and sprang away. Except for those bars, Kane would have constricted his length of ch
ain around the Frenchman’s neck until the flesh of his throat squeezed through the links.

  Gaston’s face blanched, but his color quickly restored, and, chagrined that his defeated enemy had humiliated him, he stabbed his forefinger at the imprisoned Puritan.

  “My man motioned for the boy to be silent! You see that you are yet alive. And so would he yet be, had he not opened his mouth to give you warning! He did not suffer. ’Twas quickly done.”

  “Aye, I saw how it was done! I heard the beginning of his cry ere you silenced him. I saw young Hezekiah’s body piling at your feet, your blade scarlet with his life. If your lackey’s pommel had not struck me from behind, your blood would have mingled with Hezekiah’s, and tonight, though conscious of my own imprisonment, I would be satisfied that you were conscious in Hell!”

  “Hell may be my final place, but I dare say you will precede me there,” Gaston snarled. “Are you not also ‘Cain?’ You have slain those whom you should call ‘brother,’ good Christian men, just as convinced of their righteousness as you, who fear the heresies of Calvin shall surely place souls in Hell! I am a mercenary and a rogue, but the sin of hypocrisy cannot be laid to my charge!”

  With that, Gaston de Rochefort departed in the direction that Fausta and her lackey with the salver had taken. And Solomon Kane, the momentum of his rage expired, dropped back to his cell’s floor.

  Sleep finally overtook him, and it was only his preternatural sense, strong even when his natural force was abated, that awoke Kane to a delicate clink and scrape. At first, he struggled to lift the lids of his eyes against the gravity of slumber, but once he apprehended the strange sight before him, he was immediately alert.

  A cowled and cloaked figure held out the golden salver, empty now but for the wine and bread.

  “You are the monk who carried the salver before Fausta earlier,” Kane said. “Did your mistress send you?”

  “I answer to no mistress. I am not he whom you suppose. Think of me as... your Grand Inquisitor.”

  Kane rose to his feet before this ultimate mortal enemy of his faith. Links of his chain dully chimed as they dropped behind him, falling back upon one another. Steady in the face of possible torture, he still could not suppress an involuntary chill at the voice of this Grand Inquisitor. It possessed that aural quality of glasses filled to different measures, when teasing fingers coax their lips so that they murmur forth in sonic effulgence, as if the air spoke in ecstasy of itself.

  “Do men of your exalted office now stoop to serve dainties to heretics?” Kane asked.

  “The occupant next to you left these foodstuffs. She thought they might satisfy your hunger. Indeed they might–if it pleased me to give them to you.”

  Kane ignored the taunt. “ ‘She?’ Who is she, and why is she in this place?”

  “Look to your own affairs! Why are you here?”

  “ ’Twas to combat heresy that I came hence. To carry away she who would by force of arms compel men to embrace spiritual harlotry on pain of their lives! Who would put women and children to the rack and screw to compel them into eternal torment of Hell!”

  “And do those you Huguenots slay suffer no pain? Yet those you kill say they fight to save men’s souls from Hell as well.” Here the robed figure indicated the tray and what lay upon it. “These... doctrinal issues. Do you truly believe it pleases your God that men slay one another over this grape and wheat? Is it truly such a great matter?”

  Kane frowned.

  “ ‘Inquisitor,’ ” he said, “verily, you are a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal! ‘No great matter?’ Did not your own Council of Trent affirm that all who deny the sacramental bread and wine transubstantiate into the flesh and blood of Christ are accursed from God? There is nothing less at stake than an eternity of abject bliss or loss for each soul of mankind. There are not many paths to salvation, all of which one may pursue at his pleasure, but there is the one true way which my Lord schools me is both straight and narrow!”

  The robe of the Grand Inquisitor rustled like a hiss of contempt. “Salvation? There shall come an age when men struggle no more over the way of salvation, when they will learn it has always lain elsewhere, and then they will lay down their arms. To end all striving I have come, though long delayed, and I will begin with the conflict at hand. In this cause, you shall serve me, Solomon Kane.

  “I am of the Horla. Soon, my brothers will join me, and the age of the Horla shall begin. Already the whole Earth is out of joint at our coming–hours, days, and seasons moved out of place–though our herald is only now appearing unto men.”

  Kane coolly stepped back into the shadow of his cell, his chain scraping along the floor. “You speak madness, Horla. Neither would I serve you were I free.”

  “Deliverance is closer than you think. Where you are bound was not at first a cell for prisoners, but the old subterranean palace treasury. When the last Pope left Avignon, he made it a secret archive, storing precious documents and artifacts and walling over doorways to conceal them. Fausta somehow learned some of this–but not all.”

  “You’re saying there is another door to my cell, one walled over?” Kane asked. “What matter? Should I break through it, I am yet chained. Nor would I take the key to my bonds if you offered it to me, for I will not be indebted to you.”

  “Chained here, you serve me not, but neither do you serve your own cause. Your mission does not have to end a failure, Solomon Kane. You may yet return with your prize to La Rochelle. Serve me, and I will give you Fausta. Aye, say the word and tonight you will feast, not on the meager fare upon this salver, but on venison and champagne from Fausta’s own larder!”

  “I trust you not, Inquisitor,” replied Kane, “for I perceive you have no authority here at all. It is a desperate man who seeks an ally in one who is locked and bound.”

  “Desperate, Solomon? You shall come to know desperation in this place, and when we speak again, I shall find you more agreeable. That I promise you.”

  With that, the hooded, robed figure withdrew into the deeper shadows and was gone. To Kane, it all seemed a strange dream. Though as he tried to return to sleep, he found his mind much occupied with what the mysterious figure had said: what had he meant that time was already out of joint, and when would this “Age of the Horla” come to pass?

  Kane would have doubted the reality of the encounter, save that, the next morning, the golden salver with the untouched wine and bread set outside his cell. When Fausta returned that evening to visit again Kane’s neighboring cell, the monk before her struck his foot against the tray, sending the wine splashing over the floor and the bread crumbling underfoot. Further, the fresh foodstuffs flew from the salver the monk now bore and joined the stale bread and wine on the ground.

  Fausta cuffed the man’s ear. “Fool!” she snapped. Then she grabbed the ear she had stung and twisted it, the monk grimacing in pain. “Why did you leave the salver from last night here in the corridor? Clean this mess–after you fetch fresh victuals from above. And she obviously does not savor the bread and wine–why did you bring them again tonight? Return only with milk, honey and fresh strawberries! I go to commune with her.”

  “And where is Gaston de Rochefort tonight?” Kane asked Fausta as the monk scurried away.

  “He came last night only by my special dispensation, granted because he was instrumental in capturing you,” she answered. “I allowed him his moment to gloat, but I will not subject you to his repeated jeering. I heard him–how his man took you from behind; more, how he murdered a boy when the lad sought to warn you. Gaston’s actions were without honor. I have never heard that Solomon Kane ever met a foe but face to face. You, in turn, deserved no less.”

  “And yet, lass,” he answered, “you consented to his scheme of deception.”

  “I did not,” Fausta said. “He was recommended to me as one who could deliver you. I did not know precisely how he would accomplish the deed.”

  Kane grinned mirthlessly: “I believe there is very little tha
t Fausta does not know, that she desires to know.”

  At this, Fausta drew up her slim shoulders imperiously, but clearly Kane’s words left her abashed. Without answering, she continued to the next chamber.

  Afterwards, she did not acknowledge him when she passed his cell en route to the neighboring room.

  From the first of his captivity, Kane’s chain had chafed the skin of his waist through his clothes, and when he unbuttoned his shirt to examine himself, he discovered a section of flesh scraped raw. Long inured to hardship, he endured the discomfort stoically, as he did all physical unpleasantness of his current living conditions.

  Still, Kane was a man of action, and his previous environments, no matter how harsh, usually had been of his choosing, whether under the high boughs of a forest or jungle, or on the deck of a ship from which horizons never failed to yield fresh revelations of diverse wonders. This had proven true as an inkling he first felt as a lad in Devonshire, a sense that the familiar woods and marshes of his hometown were but the far outposts of something that might ever go on and on, world without end.

  The loss of free access to that world chafed his soul more than the chain afflicted his flesh. He wondered how went the war. Fausta had yet to take him bound from his cell and exhibit him as her spoil, so her longed-for hour was not yet come. Still, he ached for some knowledge that would extend his view beyond these walls whose mere monotony began to raise them to monolithic heights about him.

  It was then that the rapping began on the other side of the wall connecting his chamber with that of the mysterious occupant next door.

  In response, Kane lifted his chain, made his way across his room and rapped his fist against the stone from where the sound had emanated.

  Immediately, there was a rapid-fire tattoo against a lower part of the wall. Kane’s eyes dropped to that spot: there, a block of masonry–Kane blinked and dropped to his knees before it to be certain–was slightly wriggling, as though being pushed from the other side!