The King of Shadows, page 5
Dawes lifted his lantern high, though the illumination from the lamp on its hook above Matthew’s hammock was enough. “He wants to see you,” Dawes said.
“Pardon?” Matthew’s mind was still deliberating one of Plutarch’s quotes, namely Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resists.
“The professor. He wants to see you. Now.”
It seemed to Matthew that Fate was easier to resist than the summons of Professor Fell, or perhaps one was intertwined with the other. He put aside his book, pulled himself out of his deep-dish hammock and followed Dawes from the larger space through a series of narrow passages, going by the cow pen and the pig sty to the ladder that led up to a hatch and the fresh air of a star-blazed evening. Then across the lamp-lit deck to another open hatch, this one provided with a circular staircase likely constructed for the professor’s comfort, and down into the midsection of the ship. As Matthew followed the ex-highwayman along another passage he could hear the muted thumping of the handpump at work down in the depths of the hull. Hudson was wearing himself out again. Dawes stopped before a closed door, rapped on it with his battle-scarred knuckles, and from beyond came the professor’s voice: “Enter.”
“Go in,” Dawes commanded, holding the door open; a needless command, but one Matthew was sure made this hireling feel important.
Matthew crossed the threshold, Dawes remained outside, and Professor Fell said quietly, “Close the door.”
It was done. Matthew stood with his back against it. The professor’s cabin was spacious but by no means a den of luxury, though it had been appointed in that fashion by several gilded lanterns hanging from the overhead beams, a red-and-gold Oriental carpet laid down across the boards, a mahogany chest-of-drawers with mother-of-pearl pulls, a lounge sofa with overstuffed red paisley pillows, and a bed complete with a wrought-iron headboard decorated by depictions of seashells painted in various hues of blue. Or perhaps on second thought it was a den of luxury, at least by the standards of sailing ships.
The professor sat behind a mahogany desk appointed with a blotter, an inkwell and a wooden holder of several pens. A number of books were stacked to his right. Another lantern sat atop the desk, and on his left a small incense burner in the shape of a seahorse emitted a thin blue streamer of smoke that filled the cabin with an aroma of musky spice.
“Sit.” Fell motioned toward the chair that faced his desk. When Matthew hesitated, the professor said, “Sit. If you please.”
At this invitation, delivered by a voice that Matthew thought was much more hesitant and frail than he’d remembered, the invitee took the chair.
Frail was the correct word. As the professor leaned back in his own chair and folded his hands across his chest in a pose of deliberation, Matthew had the opportunity to assess the man he’d not seen at this close range for nearly two months.
What might be said about the slender, fine-boned mulatto with the fiery amber eyes set in their dark-hollowed sockets—an ex-English scholar of marine life turned upon a path of criminal enterprise with tentacles that stretched westward from Britain across the Atlantic to the New World and eastward to destinations European? His white cap of close-cropped hair which was allowed to bloom out in tight curls on either side of his head like the wings of a snowy owl: the same as before. The high-cheekboned face with its thin-lipped mouth and tiger-like intensity: the same. The blue veins lacing the folded hands: the same. The network of lines in the coffee-and-cream-colored flesh etched at the corners of the eyes and across the cheeks and forehead, depicting both contemplation and the advancement of age, Fell being in the neighborhood of sixty years: the same.
And yet.
Frail was the correct word. Matthew realized that he was looking at a man markedly different from his last view. The facial lines were cut deeper, the cheekbones sharper, the flesh of the face seemingly drawn taut, the eyes larger by dint of remaining the same size in a shrinking skull, and those eyes holding an expression of … what? A hint of weakness? Of fear? And the body itself in its wrapping of a turquoise robe with crimson cuffs and six silver buttons adorning the front: shrunken as well, and more than that.
Professor Fell’s body was trembling. It was only a slight movement, but jarring nevertheless. Matthew realized the man’s hands were kept folded before him in order to prevent their palsy from being too obvious, yet the body betrayed him. At Fell’s side was a small table bearing a plate of the night’s supper—stirred about by a fork but for all intents barely consumed—and a brown teapot and cup.
The mastermind of crime, this man who had caused so much death and despair, so much suffering and torture in his chosen path of life … this man was very ill, and perhaps was himself looking death in the face when he confronted his shaving mirror.
“Getting along?” Fell asked. The intelligent eyes told Matthew that all of the young man’s observations had been noted and tucked away.
“Yes, very well indeed.”
“Of course you are. I wouldn’t have expected less, from a resilient soldier like yourself.”
Matthew’s eyebrows went up. “Soldier?”
“In the army of Katherine Herrald,” Fell said. “The holy army that has been fighting against me for … oh, how many years? I forget. Yes, you’re a true soldier, Matthew. And have proven yourself worthy of your position, time after time.”
Matthew shifted uneasily in his chair. The old man was obviously losing his senses, to be going on like this. Or perhaps it was the long sea voyage. Anyone might go a bit batty when they were—
“I admire you,” the professor said. He paused, during which his shaky hands poured their master a cup of tea … carefully, carefully … and then done with success. “Does that surprise you?”
“It does.” Matthew had tensed, preparing himself for a bullet of some kind.
“Ease up,” said Fell. He took a sip of tea and put the cup aside. “We’re in different waters here.”
“But unfortunately in the same boat.”
“True. I admire someone who keeps to a bargain. So few will do that nowadays, I wonder what will become of the future generations. But you, Matthew … you never gave a thought to trying to sail off to New York with that lovely girl of yours, did you?”
“I gave many thoughts to it.”
“But no action.
And the thinking of it … understandable.
Am I making sense?”
“Not really,” Matthew said. “To be truthful about it.” What could the professor do with such insolence? Throw him overboard? Hardly.
“Yes.” Fell nodded, his eyes now heavy-lidded. “Um … yes what?”
“To be truthful,” said the professor. “The time has come for it.” He took a little more of that time sipping his tea again, and then he reached to his stack of books, selected the one at its summit and slid it across the blotter toward Matthew. “You recognize this.”
Matthew saw the dark brown cover, old and riddled with cracks like an ancient snakeskin. He saw the faded gold lettering on the spine and did not have to guess what the book was, for he’d last seen it—or a copy very much like this one— in Fell’s house at Y Beautiful Bedd, also in the professor’s library on Pendulum Island and at the Chapel estate outside the town of New York.
“I wish I did not,” was Matthew’s response to Fell’s previous statement, and he looked upon the book without the desire to touch it.
The Lesser Key Of Solomon was the object of attention. Matthew had previously paged—as quickly as possible— through the volume, which described the dukes, princes and other so-called royal potentates of the depths of Hell. Demons all, in service to Lucifer. Creatures such as King Paimon, Earl Ronove, Duke Dantalion, Marquis Amon, Prince Vassago, King Balam, and Duke Valefor, seventy-two in number and all of them commanding multiple legions of lesser spirits. And not only those vile descriptions, but drawings of their seals and instructions of the magical items and conjurations needed to call them forth to do the bidding of the caller … if the caller, in Matthew’s estimation, could survive both the shock of seeing such abominations and the wrath of the demonic force called forth.
All in all, a damned bad book and one the late and unlamented Cardinal Black had been eager to get hold of for his own purposes, after that wretched excuse for a human being had discovered that Fell had bought up every copy of this ill-conceived tome.
Then again … Matthew wasn’t certain Black had expired out there in the snowy woods after their battle at the Autreys’ inn. Or indeed that Admiral Samson Lash had given up the ghost after his gun hand was blown away and his face destroyed by shards of metal. It was Matthew’s experience that evil wore a tough hide.
And here was this book again. Of course it was paramount to Fell’s plan of calling forth a demon from Ciro Valeriani’s enchanted mirror, and so it was no surprise that the professor kept it close at hand.
“I’ve brought my own supply of books,” Matthew said. “That one I can do without.”
“Don’t you wish to know which …” Fell hesitated, deliberating. “Which entity,” he went on, his face solemn, “I have chosen to summon?”
“No.” Spoken flatly and decisively.
“Of course you wish to know. Otherwise you wouldn’t be the Matthew Corbett I have come to admire.” The shaky hands came out and reverently returned the volume to its place atop the stack. “But I won’t press you on that. I take it from your reticence, however, that you might be beginning to believe in both the power of the book and the ability of the mirror?”
“Neither one,” said Matthew. “I have bargained to help you find Valeriani’s son, but nowhere in that agreement is my belief that any of this is more than chasing a feather in a windstorm.”
“Ah.” The professor nodded and took another drink of tea. He leaned back again in his chair, his fingers once more laced together. “And now that you bring up this journey of chasing a feather, as you put it, I want to know why you have directed our quest to Venice.”
“It’s a nice destination for English tourists.”
“But more than that, yes? So. Venice. Why?”
Matthew did his own job of hesitation. How to answer this question that he’d known was coming, sooner or later? Until this moment, Professor Fell had seemed to simply put his trust in the New York problem-solver that they were heading in the right direction. Looking into the professor’s eyes—watery and weakened as they were—Matthew realized the man was not going to let him out of this cabin without further explanation, and being in the presence of Fell and that damned book was not exactly where he wished to spend what would seem a very uncomfortable eternity.
As a further prod, Fell said quietly—and perhaps ominously, “I believe you know something I should be told. I would like to hear it now, if indeed we’re in this same boat … being truthful, I mean.”
Matthew examined his knuckles, if only for the moment to gird himself. Then he took a hero’s breath and returned his gaze to the professor’s. “I recall you told me Brazio Valeriani was last seen in Florence. I know that he attended his father’s funeral in Salerno. Thus he was travelling north.”
“Florence is not Venice,” Fell said.
“No, but one might travel through Florence on the way further north. I believe he might be found in an area north of Venice, if indeed he may be found at all.”
“You’ve been speaking to Rosabella behind my back, haven’t you?”
“Speaking to Rosabella, yes, but if not behind your back then I doubt we would be on this ship en route to Italy.”
“And Rosabella told you what, exactly?”
“A fragment,” said Matthew. “Which for now I’ll keep to myself.”
There followed a long moment of silence. Matthew did not move. The professor’s only movement was the palsy he was trying without success to conceal.
At last, Fell said, “You see? That’s why I admire you. Because you are well aware that I have taken men who looked at me with one disrespectful eye and had them cut to pieces as slowly as their bloodstreams would allow. And here you sit before me, denying my … let us say … gentlemanly request. You don’t fear me, do you?”
“If I said I did not, would you then have me cut to pieces?”
Fell gave a short little laugh, though his face was devoid of merriment. “I could have had you killed so many times. And should have had you killed, so many times.”
Matthew shrugged, for indeed he realized he did not fear this man, now that Berry was far from his clutches. “One time,” he said, “would have been enough.”
And now the professor did laugh—a strident sound— and the laugh went on until it turned into a cough and then a strangling sound, and Fell drank the rest of his cup of tea to clear whatever phlegm of illness was obstructing his throat.
“I’ll tell you,” said Fell, when he could speak again, “why I want to raise a demon. Surely—surely—you wish to know that?”
“I had assumed you wanted to turn every man of the law into a stork and conquer entire countries with your breath. Isn’t that—”
“LISTEN TO ME!” Fell’s fist slammed down upon the desk. The sudden force of both the blow and Fell’s voice made Matthew jump in his chair. The teapot and cup crashed to the floor, English brew streaming across the Oriental carpet. Even the stack of books topped with the catalogue of demons seemed to jump, and indeed the entire ship shuddered, rolled to starboard and creaked to its oaken joints, the lanterns above swinging on their hooks.
The door burst open. Dawes stood on the threshold, his tight-jawed expression showing he was ready for action and in his right hand the dagger he’d drawn from inside his jacket. “I’m all right,” the professor said at a more composed volume, though his voice was scratchy from the sudden blast. “Really,” he continued when Dawes held his position. “We are having a discussion.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be just outside.” With a dark glare thrown at Matthew, Dawes retreated and closed the door.
The ship’s timbers creaked again, and once more it seemed that the vessel rolled, leaning to the port side just enough to make Matthew wonder if the sea had suddenly become heavy or if the clear night had somehow birthed a rainstorm. Then the Triton steadied itself and all was calm but for the lanterns continuing to swing above their heads.
“My reason,” Fell said. “I want you to know exactly why, so … when Valeriani is found … and then the mirror, I pray … you will understand.”
Matthew didn’t reply. I pray, the professor had said. That sounded odd from a man wanting to call up a demonic fiend to do his bidding. He could tell that—again, oddly—Fell seemed to be waiting for Matthew to give him permission to speak onward, and so the problem-solver in light of desiring an answer to this particular mystery said, “I’m listening.”
Five
“I wish,” said Professor Fell into Matthew’s further silence, “to say farewell to my son.”.
Perhaps the musky aroma of the burning incense had either clouded Matthew’s senses or the incessant sound of the sea rushing along the hull had dulled his ears? He said, “Pardon?”
“My son. Templeton. I told you the tale. I wish to say farewell to him, and I need the mirror and a … an agent … let us say a go-between … to do so.”
It was so near to Matthew’s lips: Have you gone totally insane? But he kept his mouth shut though it seemed he could feel the bones and flesh of his face fighting the imprisonment of words.
“I will give you a moment,” Fell said. “I can tell you are somewhat knocked in the brain.” He managed a faint but haunted smile. “After all, you did expect me to call forth a demon in order to secure more riches, more territory or more life for myself, did you not? No, none of those. Only Templeton. My Temple. As much time as I can command, for time in this instance would be worth more to me than all the gold that has even been mined or ever will be mined in the remainder of the world’s existence.”
And Matthew might not believe in raising demons from magic mirrors, but that last statement from the professor … yes, he believed it to be absolutely true.
Young Templeton Fell. Temple, for short. Matthew remembered the story as told to him on Pendulum Island. How at the age of twelve the boy was set upon on the way to school by a gang of young rowdies, chased down and beaten to death in the street. Matthew recalled one thing in particular from the professor’s tormented recounting of that event, Fell saying And the awful thing, Matthew … the awful, terrible thing … is that Temple had a premonition of his death the night before, and he asked me to walk with him to school that morning … but I, being busy in my own affairs … could not be bothered to do so. I had my research before me. My academics. So I said, Temple … you’re a big boy now. You have nothing to fear. Your mother and I trust in God, and so should you. So … go along, Temple, for the school is not very far away. Not very far. Go right along, because you’re a big boy now.
The murder of Professor Fell’s son had caused the man to be drawn into the underworld seeking revenge. It had come about when the previously mild-mannered scholar had procured his own band of toughs and paid them to kill the six boys who had carried out the violence. The youngest creature fourteen, the eldest seventeen, Fell had said. They never lived another month.
And yet Matthew recalled also that the deaths did not salve Professor Fell’s wound of the soul, as he had expected it might. In fact, the hunger for revenge was greatly intensified, and the professor ordered his gang to kill the parents of the boys, their brothers and sisters, and anyone, Fell had recounted, “who lived in their squalid little rooms”.
Thus was born the creature. From that tragic beginning, the gang Fell had put together looked to him for leadership, and suddenly he found himself with a reputation. His cup now totally cracked—in Matthew’s opinion—the man who had spent most of his life studying the fascinations of life in the sea now threw aside his wife and everything that had gone before, for he was infected first by power and then the money that came from his endeavors, which begat more power, which begat more money, which begat … and on and on, to Biblical proportions.
