Masque of the Red Death (16 page)

I glance into a mirror, wondering if my eyes are dilated.

“You look fine,” Elliott says. “You always do. It’s pretty amazing. The first time I saw you, you were passed out on the rug in the green room on the first floor of the Debauchery Club. I thought you were dead. I guess that’s the first thing I suspect when someone is lying on the floor. You were beautiful, and I was glad when your eyelashes fluttered and I could see that you were alive.”

He reaches out and fingers the collar of my dress, as if adjusting it, though I’m quite sure that it doesn’t need adjusting.

“And I’m not easily impressed by beauty,” he adds.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

E
LLIOTT STOPS TO COMPOSE HIMSELF, BREATHING
deeply several times before we reach the throne room. I should feel dread, or disgust or fear, but I feel nothing.

People are flowing through one of the doors, and servants follow them, carrying bottles of wine and hampers of food.

“We’re going for an outing,” Prince Prospero says. “Did you enjoy your time together?”

“The paddleboat?” Elliott asks, ignoring the innuendo in his uncle’s question.

The courtiers study me. I play with the diamond on my finger, wondering, in a world where disease slithers through the air and down our throats, what value does a diamond really have? The hateful ring refracts the lights from the gaslit chandelier into a thousand colors, lovely and useless.

“It’s beautiful,” a female courtier says. The look on her face is unadulterated envy. “Elliott doesn’t visit the palace often enough.”

“Very true.” Elliott throws his arm casually around my shoulders.

“But you could live here,” the girl says.

“Yes.” His tone is neutral. “I can’t imagine anything more horrifying, can you?” he murmurs for my ears only.

“We live in fear of displeasing your uncle.” She shudders. “Of being sent back to the city. And yet you choose to live there. You must be very brave.”

Elliott removes his arm from my shoulder. “I’m sure you would never displease the prince,” he tells the girl kindly.

“I hope not. My cousin tells terrifying stories about the things that happen in the city.”

The girl puts a handkerchief up to her mask, as if to block out some horrible smell. I had never seen this gesture, but the ladies of the court seem to do it over and over again. Even with masks, they are afraid of the air and petrified by the idea of the city.

The servants take us to the water’s edge in a wagon that is pulled by a large steam engine. The boat is also propelled by steam and has two large decks with colorful pennants and small pavilions spread about them. The people who have not been invited stand on the banks and wave as we make our way downriver.

“There are crocodiles in the water today,” I hear someone say.

He’s right. The channel is churning with reptiles, and I take a step back from the rail. Elliott laughs. I don’t like his laugh so much right now.

“They eat people, you know,” he says. “The corpse collectors figured out a few years ago that it’s easier to dump the bodies in the river and let the crocodiles do the rest.”

I picture the baby, a tiny body wrapped in blankets. Do the crocodiles eat the blankets? Or leave them to float in the water? The slithering of the reptiles makes me feel faint. Even the water, slapping gently against the sides of the boat, horrifies me.

“I always liked boats,” Elliott says. And I’m reminded for a moment of the steamship that Henry was driving back and forth across the table when I ate breakfast with Will. And then of my father’s fascination with the harbor.

“There’s a steamship being outfitted in the harbor,” I say.

“Yes. It was my idea. He has offered to put me in charge of the voyage.”

“Do you believe there are other people out there?” My father has a book with sketches of famous places around the world. Places that are whole and healthy and beautiful. I want Elliott to tell me that there are other people out there. That we could visit those places someday.

“If we survived the plague, then others must have. There may be other methods of preventing the disease. And we’ve heard that there are people who are not susceptible. Perhaps you and I don’t even need these masks.”

“It’s strange that no one has come to the city. If other people survived, what’s stopping them?”

“What has stopped us? Internal strife, fear, desperation? I’d love to find others. But the voyage isn’t about that. Not for me.”

A string quartet plays soothing music as Prospero’s boat turns the bend, and for a moment we have a view of the city. Beautiful, virulent, smoldering.

A musket fires, making me jump. After a moment of stunned silence, the passengers laugh and applaud.

“Don’t look.” As Elliott grabs my shoulders to turn me away, I see three figures standing among the rocks on the shore.

“Are they diseased?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“And they left the city for the marsh? To die?”

“They don’t always die.” He looks at me for a long time. “I knew a boy who lived with the contagion.”

“What happened to him?” I’m not sure that I want to know.

“He bruised easily, his skin oozed. Everyone waited for him to die, but he didn’t even seem sick, certainly wasn’t bedridden. Instead people who came in contact with him died. At first it was deemed coincidence. When his own mother came down with the contagion, he hung himself.”

I gasp.

It isn’t unheard-of for people with the contagion to kill themselves. But it still horrifies me.

“They are dangerous, these people with the disease. Especially to the people who love them. Most of them leave the city voluntarily for the marshes. Others are run out of the city. Or killed.”

I’ve never been in the swamps, but it seems like an inhospitable place, full of reptiles and biting insects. I see a few chimneys, maybe a village with four or five houses. I wonder if Father knows that there is a village here. He must.

Among the heaps of stones that line the shore, I see a statue. It has been shaped like a girl rising from the rubble with her arms outstretched. I point to it.

“Talent doesn’t disappear when you get sick,” Elliott observes.

“Not until you die. Then it’s gone forever,” I say quietly. “Does the prince know that people can survive for so long?”

“Yes. Of course. Why do you think it’s legal to kill anyone who has the disease?”

We hear laughter from the bow of the boat, and the well-dressed passengers surge toward whatever diversion is being offered.

I can’t look away from the three figures on the shore.

One falls to the ground. Another runs, hiding behind the heaped stones. The last figure sits staring out at us. We’re too far away to see his face, but I imagine that his expression must be defiant. Either he’s daring the guards to shoot him or he doesn’t care.

A volley of musket fire startles me again, even though I should be expecting it. Sparks fly as the musket balls hit the limestone. I breathe deeply, relieved that they’ve missed.

But with a last burst of fire, the man slumps forward.

The body falls with the hand palm up, close to the water, and as we watch, a massive crocodile lurches out of the swamp.

Tears course down my cheeks. My oblivion should have lasted longer. Reality is proving stronger than Elliott’s drugs. Blinded, I hurry away from the merriment.

“See?” Elliott is following me. “See what I mean about savages?”

I hate the look on his face, as if he’s happy about what is happening because it proves his point. I close my eyes.

“Just because you don’t want to see something doesn’t mean that it will go away. Do you think inhumanity doesn’t exist if you pretend not to see it? Or maybe get too drunk to understand? We’ve forgotten the things that make life worthwhile.”

I put my hands over my ears to block the sound of his voice.

Mother believes that music makes life worthwhile. Music, art, literature … maybe the survivors in the swamp believe that too.

Elliott pulls my hands down. I understand that the gesture irritates him. But I don’t want him to touch me. Anger clouds my vision. I can’t even look at him I’m so frustrated. Disgusted. He’s brought me to this terrible place and won’t tell me anything. Twice he’s asked me to risk myself. Twice I’ve sneaked into Father’s laboratory. And I don’t even really know why.

“You’re playing at revolution.” I say it in a low voice so the other passengers won’t hear me, but I put all of my scorn and frustration into it. “You say you want to change things, but you can’t do anything.”

I turn away from him, and then, with no warning, he wraps his arms around me and lifts me. He twists my body up, above the low railing on the side of the boat, dangling me out over the water. I go limp with shock.

“Don’t look down,” he hisses. “The water is swarming with crocodiles. Do you know that they pull people under the water, lodge them beneath a rock or a fallen tree to snack on later? They don’t just eat the dead, Araby. There’s a place, just around the bend, where there was a cage. People put human sacrifices out for the beasts. They’ve taken to worshipping them. I witnessed it myself. Human beings chained a girl there and left her to die. That is what my uncle has done to us, to our city.”

Elliott’s gone mad. My back is pressed against his chest, and I can feel his heart racing. He’s gasping for breath. If I struggle, he might drop me. I look for something to grab on to, but there is nothing close enough. Nothing but him.

The other passengers are mostly in the bow, fawning over the prince. As far as I can tell, we are alone. The water reflects the midmorning sunlight, blinding me.

I suck in my breath, wanting to scream, but I can’t make a sound.

“I didn’t get there in time. It was terrible. We tore down the platform and threw the chains into the water. Two days later they had put up another platform and killed another girl.”

Elliott’s arms are very strong. He pulls me back, but my legs are still dangling.

“So why are you doing the same thing to me?”

I feel him flinch.

“I told you not to trust me.” His voice is harsh. I’m sure, for a moment, that he really is going to drop me. “But you started to, didn’t you? Last night. This morning. I could see it in your eyes.” He drops his forehead against my hair. For a torturous moment, as one of my shoes begins to slip, he doesn’t move.

“And I’m falling in love with you,” he whispers. “But I would throw you in the water and watch crocodiles tear you to bits, if I thought that doing so would accomplish my goals. Do. Not. Trust. Anyone. Especially me.”

He pulls me in. When I move, one of my toes touches the wood railing. The deck is below me, but I’m still too afraid to struggle. His thumb caresses my cheek.

“What’s wrong with you?” I gasp.

“I don’t know.” His sincerity is almost more frightening than anything else.

He is actually panting as he pulls away my mask and searches my face. His is already gone, though I have no idea when he took it off.

He kisses me.

I’m trembling all over from the intensity of the last few moments. I allow him to kiss me. And then I tear myself away.

I put all of my rage behind my fist, connecting, hard, right below his eye.

It’s been years since I’ve fought, but I had a brother. I know how. Both of us collapse onto the polished wooden deck. I scramble to get my mask back on.

He has his hand up to his eye, touching where I’ve hit him. Now we’re both gasping for breath. His mask is on the deck beside him. I hold it out to him.

There is a barrage of shooting from the front of the boat, but the prince isn’t watching the murders. He’s leaning over the railing of the top deck of the ship, watching us.

Suddenly Elliott scoops me up and carries me below into a storage room.

“I’m sorry,” he says in a low voice. He’s still trembling, hiding behind his mask, trying to pretend that the depth of emotion he just revealed wasn’t real. He’s trying for nonchalance. But I know better.

I see with satisfaction that his eye is already turning purple. He takes the silver syringe from a pocket. He’s offering me a few more moments of oblivion. He looks so devastated, so earnest. But he just held me over a crocodile-filled river.

I consider the syringe and feel an odd burst of strength. “I don’t need it.”

“Really?”

“Put it away.”

Later a servant tells the two of us that we are to ride back to the palace in the prince’s enclosed carriage.

Prospero has barely settled himself into his seat when Elliott asks, “Where is my sister?”

“Is that the only reason you came? Because you thought April was also … visiting? You wound me, nephew.”

“You asked me two weeks ago to stop her from making such a spectacle of herself. And before I could do anything, she was gone.”

“And you think I had something to do with that?” the prince asks. He gives Elliott a slight smile.

Elliott doesn’t answer.

I struggle to remain completely still, to keep my face impassive. The prince cannot see how much I despise him. That would be disastrous. The silence stretches out. Unbearable.

“I do not have your sister. If you discover her whereabouts, send a courier to tell me, immediately. Whatever you think, everything I’ve done, I’ve done to make you and your sister stronger.”

I don’t move or make a noise, but the prince’s attention shifts away from Elliott. His eyes crawl over me, and I wonder if I remind him of my mother. “I will send men into the city to make inquiries about April. Will that please the two of you?” His gaze returns Elliott’s. “Three days from now, you will captain my steamship. Your project. Your voyage of discovery. The scientist’s daughter can go with you. While you’re gone, we’ll move her parents to the palace so that they won’t be so lonely without their only living child.”

He pauses on the word living. It was his fault, and I’m just now comprehending the depth of it. His fault that Mother missed the last year of Finn’s life. So many moments when we could have been together. He’s hurt so many people.