The King of Shadows, page 28
Light-headed and staggery due to nearly a full glass of the fiery brandywine, Adam was led to his bedchamber—a room that further staggered the senses due to its opulence and finely crafted furniture—by Lillian, who silently removed his boots before he crashed himself upon the goose-feather bed and descended quite rapidly into the depths of sleep.
He was awakened, sweating, by the urgent need to empty his stomach of the offending liquid that had burned his throat going down and now threatened to burn it twice again by erupting upward. He scrambled out of bed, and by the light of the oil lamp left burning on a table at his side was able to direct his spew into a chamberpot before it could mar the polished floorboards. Twice more he convulsed and emptied, and at last lay on the floor with his cheek against the timbers and the room seemingly slowly spinning about him.
He heard a scream.
A woman’s scream, he thought. He lay exhausted, but listening.
The scream came again, this time more strident and somewhat ragged.
Then … silence.
After another moment a third scream came to his ear, and at this point he sat up, for someone below him—in the house’s cellar?—was being either violated or tortured. He got to his feet, shakily, steadied himself against a chest-of-drawers painted with a pastoral scene, and when a sharp feminine cry issued up from below he went to the door, opened it and stepped out into a dark corridor.
He heard murmurs. They led him along the corridor to another door, and standing before it he heard yet a fifth cry—again muffled by the thickness of wood, yet certainly not issuing from the mouth of a ghost or from his own drink-hazed brain.
To open the door, or not? He was debating it when he heard from beyond a woman’s laughter: a high, nearly crazed sound, quick and then gone.
It was followed by further murmurs, which Adam took to be male voices.
He backed away from the door. Whatever was going on down there, he thought it wise not to intercede, and backing further away he bumped into a body that caused him to suck in his breath and nearly cry out himself.
Lillian held a lamp. She still wore her black uniform. She quietly said, “I will return you to your room.”
“I heard … screams. A woman. There, behind that door.”
“I will return you,” she replied, her face devoid of expression, “to your room.”
Twenty-four
In the bright morning the Black Crow’s son discovered his newly polished boots shining up at him on the floor beside the door. The chamberpot was sparkling clean. He washed his face in the provided water basin with soap that smelled of limes, he adjusted his clothing and with an examination of his gaunt and long-jawed face in an oval looking-glass he went out to discover what was what. “I’m sorry, young man, but the Portress family has moved away. No, I have no idea where they’ve gone, but my wife and I moved in at the first of July. The house was vacant, I believe, since the end of May.”
He found Gavin Flay clad in a red silk robe, having his breakfast of eggs and bacon at a small round table in a room with a glass wall that afforded a view of a manicured garden. Birds swooped about in the trees and shrubbery that adorned the green earth around a lilypond, the entire garden being enclosed by an orderly wall of brown and white stones. “There is the young man!” Flay put aside his napkin and stood up. He smiled heartily, as if at a newfound brother. “Come, have some breakfast! Kenneth!” he called toward another open doorway. The bald servant from the night before came in. “Another plate! What will you have, sir?”
“Um … I … don’t think I’m very hungry.”
“But you must have something! All right then … tomato juice with a little kick in it, does that suit?”
“A kick, sir?”
“Nothing so strong as I understand you found the brandywine to be. No, this is my special recipe to relieve … how shall we say … the morning after. All my friends say I should market it. Brown sugar, mustard powder, garlic powder, a little black pepper … well, it cures the doggers. Kenneth, he’ll have a large one. Come, Dominus, take a seat.”
The boy sat down across from Flay as Kenneth retreated to prepare the concoction. “My name,” he said, “is Adam Black.”
“I prefer Dominus.” Flay began to eat again, his teeth crunching on the bacon. “I like drama, you see. And your performance with that show was certainly dramatic enough to attract my interest. Thus you are here, and here we are.” He took a drink of white wine from a goblet at his right, after which he sat staring out at the garden. “Going to be a beautiful day,” he said. “I should take you around later and show you the sights.”
There was no more conversation until Kenneth had brought the glass of juice on a silver tray. Adam tried a sip, found it sharply tangy but quite good, and drank half of it down.
“I understand,” Flay said at length, his gaze still on the garden, “that you were walking about last night … or, to be more specific … this morning, since it was well after midnight.”
“I … heard … thought I heard … a woman crying out in pain.”
“In pain? Really?” The gray eyes in the handsome face turned upon him. Flay smiled, yet Adam thought the eyes did not share it. “Hm,” said the master of the house, and that was all. He finished the last of the bacon, and Adam put down his final drink. “A beautiful day,” Flay said again, and then he leaned back upon the purple cushion of his chair. “I wish to know all about you. Everything. Your life before you joined that show … how you came to be there … why you chose to accept my invitation … everything. It is very important to me that you be truthful and leave nothing out, and— believe me—I am a good judge of truth and lies. But for what reason might you not be truthful? You are certainly safe within the walls of this house. Safe in this city. Safe with me. So … let us hear the story of Adam Black, who wears so well the robe and mask of Dominus.”
Flay waited.
For whatever reason, Adam doubted that this man might turn him over to the law for his offense in the dirty coal village of Colquitt. Adam thought that on the contrary his host would be entertained by it, and therefore he cleared his throat, took the bearings of the compass of his life that had brought him to this moment, and told everything, leaving out not an iota of truth.
When the tale was done, Flay steepled his fingers together and nodded. His face had remained emotionless throughout the recitation.
“A vicar’s son,” he said quietly. “How interesting that is.”
“I hope to see my mother again,” said Adam. “Soon … someday.”
“I’m sure you shall. Are you concerned—and I would think rightly so—about the reaction of your father to your mother’s betrayal?”
“Yes, I am.”
“But you can do nothing about that, can you? And it being so far in the past … surely that revenge has already taken place.”
“Revenge, sir?”
“Of course. A man like your father—the Black Crow, as you so aptly put it—must have his revenge. He has been betrayed by a woman.” Here a slight smile passed across Flay’s mouth, then disappeared. “The very originators of betrayal. Thus he must have his revenge, just as his God revenged. But … such is not surprising.”
“Sir?”
“No one,” Flay said, “holds hatred as dearly as a Christian. Oh look! Do you see the redbird, in the tree up there?” He spent a moment observing the crimson avian until it flew away. “Surely,” Flay went on, his languid gaze returning to Adam, “you have realized that, as a young man who I feel is far more intelligent—more sensitive, more attuned—than others your age?”
Adam hesitated, but he felt he had to ask the next question though it might burn his mouth as severely as the brandywine. “Are you not a Christian?”
“I don’t hate,” was the answer. “I don’t apply laws of repression and revenge upon others. I don’t attempt to drive into the earth those who disagree with my positions and opinions. I believe that if you follow the path of Christianity into the past, you will find one bloody battleground after another, and for what? A confusion of belief. Your own father holds firm to that confusion, and it has ruled—and ruined— his life, according to what you’ve told me. Is his God a holy avenger, angered at His own flawed creation? Or a loving father who sent His own only begotten son to die with a vinegared sponge pressed to his mouth? And what is this ‘only begotten’? If this God were so all-powerful, He might beget an army … a continent … a world of sons. Spare me that further confusion.” Flay put the wine glass to the thin line of his mouth and drank. “So,” he said as he put the empty glass aside, “does that satisfy your question?”
Adam had never heard such a confession, and it was shocking. But … in another sense … very interesting, because it laid bare to him some reasoning behind his father’s righteous anger at the world, at his family, and at himself. His father was, quite simply, a prisoner of his own confusion, flailing at the iron bars of circumstance. And perhaps also, at the bitter stone walls of the church’s lack of recognition and reward. But these thoughts could not and must not stay long in the boy’s head, because people had been stoned to death for entertaining a fraction of what Gavin Flay had presented to his attention.
Still … Adam felt the need to press forward with one more inquiry.
“You don’t believe in God, then?”
Flay ran a forefinger around and around the wine glass’ rim.
He said, “You misunderstand. I am a religious man. Perhaps one of the most devoutly religious you are ever likely to meet.”
“But … sir … I thought—”
The forefinger to Flay’s lips silenced the boy. “No need for such weighty conversation on a beautiful morning as this. And the morning soon to pass, as the clock on that table reads eleven-fifty-eight. Therefore, I have a plan for the day. I will have my carriage and driver brought around, and we shall proceed to the shop of my tailor, where you will select at least two suits to your liking. A new pair of boots would be worthwhile as well, for those are poorly worn down. Something in exotic leather, I would think. I sell the leathers to my bootmaker, so I know he has an admirable assortment. Does that sound to you like a day well spent?”
“It does, sir, and it is much appreciated. But tell me, please … why are you doing this, and why did you invite me here in the first place?”
“Ah.” Flay studied the activity in his garden for a moment more before he answered. “I am hosting a party on Friday night. Three nights from today. I would say twenty or more persons will be here. They are all quite wealthy, all quite fashionable, and all quite powerful in their own orbits. I want you to meet them. You see?”
“I think I do. You want me to wear a new suit and make some kind of impression upon your guests?” The why was another question, but Adam thought he would learn that in time and in truth the whole thing sounded very exciting.
“I want you,” said Flay, who leaned slightly forward to make his point, “to wear the purple robe that Lillian tells me is in your satchel. I want you to meet them, yes. As Dominus.”
“As … Dominus? But why—”
“That is your value to me. Enough questions. Pardon me while I get myself dressed, and then we shall be out and about.” Flay stood up. He was a tall man, but even so not quite as tall as the elongated fifteen-year-old. “Enjoy the view,” he said, and then he departed.
Adam realized he was not going to receive an explanation for the midnight screams, and perhaps it was best not to pursue the issue any further. There was also the bizarre behavior of the lady Ember to consider. Had it been her screams heard from below? And then followed by the shrill peal of laughter?
He couldn’t dwell on it. He was here, and here to stay for the foreseeable future since his bag of money was down to the last few shillings.
The day’s progress: three suits of fine quality ordered from the tailor Thomas Earles, a new pair of ostrich leather boots from the bootmaker Isaiah Kurtz, and two new tricorns— one black and one maroon with a gold-colored ribbon. On their jaunt Adam walked two paces behind Flay, who strode about with remarkable speed trailing smoke from his ebony pipe that was not only fist-sized but in the sunlight revealed to actually be in the shape of a carved fist with hooked nails. Flay directed his carriage driver, a hulking gent named Hammers, to drive them about to various areas of London so as to show the boy as much of the city as could be packed into the remainder of the fading day. Only a scratch of that stony, smoke-stained colossus could be managed before the sun had begun to settle and the lamplighters emerged with their genie lanterns and ladders. Watching these men and their assistants make their rounds, Adam was struck by the thought that illumination on the streets at night—unheard of and as yet unthinkable in any village he had ever lived in—meant that activity in the great city was not constrained by darkness. In his experience, a town folded up and slept when the last tavern shut down, the night being as harsh as any vicar’s decree; but here, there was no such command from man or God to cease life—as it were—in the hours when most were abed. Which brought again to mind the midnight screams, and what activity down below was causing such … torment?
Torment followed by wild laughter? How could it be?
“Your thoughts?” Flay asked as the carriage moved along, his face reddened by the pipe’s glow and a swirl of smoke spinning out.
“Oh … well … sir, I was just thinking … about the city … and how the lights of night …” He searched for the proper word. “Charm it,” he decided.
Flay smoked his pipe and stared at the boy as if trying to determine if indeed he could tell if this was truth or lie. At last he said, “I have always enjoyed the night. As a boy myself, I crept out of bed in my father’s house and went jaunting in the dark. I was never afraid. Something about the night calms me … intrigues me … satisfies me. I don’t necessarily need or want the lights of night, for they disturb the equilibrium.”
“The equilibrium, sir?”
“Between the light and the dark. I prefer the solid pitch, rather than the weak candle. But it’s the coming thing, isn’t it? I dare say soon all these wonderful dark streets will be aflare, and then where will London be?”
“Illuminated?” Adam ventured.
Flay offered a faint smile. “More’s the pity, then, for the moon and the stars.”
The next two days were uneventful. Flay had said he would at some time show Adam his leathers warehouse on the river, but in the meantime he did his work in his upstairs office while Adam was left to attend to his own endeavors. The boy found Lillian usually close at hand, and wanted for nothing. He did at one point pass the mysterious door beyond which had issued the disturbance, and as Lillian was nowhere in sight he dared to try the knob and found the entry locked.
Late Friday afternoon, as the sun burned darkly orange behind the coalsmoke clouds in the west, there came a knock at Adam’s door and the master of the house entered carrying a small wooden box, which he placed atop the chest-of-drawers.
“My guests,” he said, “will begin arriving at eight o’clock. We will have a gathering in the study, with drinks and food, that will last one hour. Kenneth will have brought you a meal at seven o’clock. I ask that you not leave this room from now until Lillian calls for you, which should be a quarter after nine. You will note that the clock on the mantel keeps perfect time. When Lillian calls, you will be dressed as Dominus and ready to assume your character.”
“My character, sir? Am I to put on a performance?”
“You will have no script but your own imagination but yes, I expect you to entertain the guests.”
This was a further puzzle to the boy, but he said, “All right, sir, I suppose I can.”
“Very good.” He placed a hand upon the box. “You will find in here jars of white and black powder and the appropriate brushes. I wish you to make your face up as I saw you upon the stage.”
“Make up … my face?”
“Just as Dominus would appear. Your mirror will serve that purpose. Let me add for the sake of clarification … you are here because it is my duty—my pleasure—to bring interesting individuals to the attention of my guests.”
“Interesting? In what way?”
“Different,” said Flay. “My guests … enjoy the different.” To Adam’s silence, Flay repeated “A quarter after nine,” and left.
The approach of evening darkened the room. At precisely seven o’clock Kenneth brought the boy a tray on which rested a meal of steak-and-kidney pie, boiled potatoes and a small pot of tea. At eight, Adam heard the voices of the arriving guests, and he opened the box of powders and began to do himself up as Dominus in the mirror. Occasionally a burst of laughter—both female and male—could be heard, but mostly the voices were constrained to low murmurs.
When the clock showed nine Adam heard a multitude of footsteps in the outside hallway—the voices louder—and then fading away again … a descent of sorts. In fifteen more minutes Lillian came for him, and by that time he was clad in the purple hooded robe, his face both paled by the white powder and shadowed by the black, and though he had no idea what he was going to say to this crowd—for it had indeed sounded like a crowd out in the hall—he trusted his many past experiences as Dominus the sinister gatekeeper of the unknown to lead him to success.
“Follow,” said Lillian, a dame of few words.
She took him to the mysterious door, opened it and directed, “Down.”
The staircase was carpeted in red. The walls were made of gray stone. Fixed upon them were iron sockets that held burning black candles. At the bottom of thirteen steps stood Gavin Flay in a loose-fitting white shirt and black leather trousers.
“Come, Dominus,” he said, lifting a crystal glass of brandywine in his hand. “Join the gathering.”
