Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle (13 page)

Somehow, in the midst of all the gossip, he never commented on Clive's reappearance after so many years, or his surprising youthfulness after so long an absence.

Jamie pulled up his team at the cast-iron gates of Tewkesbury Manor. "If you and the young lady don't mind, Master Folliot. My team are aged and the track from here is steep. If we might drop yourself and the young lady here, sir, I would be ever so grateful, sir."

"Of course." Clive and Annie climbed down from the wagon. "Thank you, Jamie. And good luck to you!"

The wagon creaked away.

"What did you make of that?" Clive asked.

"He saved us a long walk."

"Yes, he did that. But I knew that man as a child. I was a few years older than he. His father—ah, what a man! He used to come up to the manor now and then, and Neville and I would run out to see him. He could pick us up, one in each hand. And he always had a piece of fruit for each of us. Gone now, gone and his son a man of middle years, too beaten down by his life and too cowed by the Folliots to notice that I haven't aged in a quarter-century."

"Never mind that, Clive. Let's get a move on. We're practically there."

The gates swung open at the pressure of his hands, and they strode up the long approach to Tewkesbury Manor. The manor was a huge building, dating back almost to the time of the Norman conquest. Clive had played there as a child, running up and down its long corridors, ducking into concealed passageways hidden by tapestries and high-backed wooden chairs.

"Have you been here before, Annie?"

She hesitated before answering, then gave a soft, affirmative response.

"I should like to know the details of that," Clive said.

"Please—there's so much you don't know, Clive. I wouldn't know where to start. Let's just get there."

"I can remember as if it were yesterday," Clive said. "The great hall, the armory, the kitchens where Neville and I were never supposed to go."

"But of course you did." Annie laughed. She seemed relieved to let Clive reminisce. As long as he did so, she did not have to answer his difficult questions. "We did. There were other places we were forbidden to go, also. Sealed rooms. The subcellar. The inner library."

"You were forbidden to enter the library?"

"The manor has a great library, Annie. Father encouraged us to use it. But that was only the outer library. There was an inner library, as well. The door that opened to it was never left unlocked. Father alone possessed the key. Every Baron Tewkesbury for—well, for so long that the origin of the custom has been lost—every baron has had custody of the key to the sealed library, and the key has been handed down along with the succession to the title."

"Then you never saw the inner library."

"Never."

They had reached the grand entryway of the manor. A liveried footman bowed and reached for the huge iron knocker before Clive could reach for it. The footman pounded the cast-iron implement against its sounding plate, and its boom echoed from the house.

The front door swung open, and Clive ushered Annie in ahead of himself.

"Miss Annabelle." The butler bowed her into the hall. "And Major Clive. A pleasure to see you again, young sir."

Clive looked into the butler's face. The man was ancient, his sparse hair a mere white wisp surrounding his nearly naked scalp, his pink lace a sea of wrinkles. "Jenkins?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm happy to see you again, Jenkins. And Mrs. Jenkins, and the little ones?"

"The missus is still in the kitchen, sir. Most kind of you to ask. With your permission, sir, I shall convey your greetings."

"By all means. And I'll stop by to see her."

"She'll be very happy, sir. And you asked of the youngsters. They're grown now. Young Madeleine is married to a barrister in London. We're very proud of her, sir. I hope you won't think ill of her for rising above her station, sir. And the boy Tom has gone out to Australia to start a sheep station."

"That's wonderful, Jenkins. Wonderful."

"The baron wishes to see you in the library, Mr. Clive. If you feel up to it, sir. If I may venture, you do look a trifle ruffled."

Annie said, "I've other things to do, Clive. I'll see you later." She disappeared through a drape-hung archway. Clive had wondered about her having previously visited the manor; that question was now answered by Jenkins' promptly recognizing her and by her own obvious familiarity with the layout of the house.

Jenkins preceded Clive to the library. His formality was surprising, but Clive didn't question it. More to the point was Jenkins' instant recognition of him—and the fact that the man did not comment on Clive's youth.

The butler had aged normally in the past twenty-eight years, while Clive had aged by a matter of months. Surely Jenkins had noticed the change—rather, Clive thought, the
lack
of change—in the younger man. Why had he not commented? Jamie Cawder, the farmer who'd given Clive and Annie a ride on his wagon, was a dull soul who might simply have failed to take any note. But Jenkins was a bright man with a good mind. That, Clive remembered from his own childhood.

It was inconceivable that Jenkins, having bid farewell to Clive in 1868, would welcome him back to the manor in 1896, a Clive who looked hardly older than he had twenty-eight years earlier, and fail to notice something very strange about the series of events. Perhaps it was professional reserve on Jenkins' part. Or perhaps it was… something else.

Jenkins knocked on the door of the library. A voice called from within, and the butler opened the door for Clive, standing aside and closing it behind him as Clive entered the room.

Clive stared thunderstruck at the two men who awaited him.

His father, Arthur Folliot, Baron Tewkesbury, stood beside his high-backed, ornate chair behind his familiar desk. In childhood. Clive had thought the chair a throne, and had fantasized endlessly of his father as a king, himself as a prince who stole moments of sitting on that throne when no one else was in the room.

Baron Tewkesbury had aged indeed in the past twenty-eight years. When Clive last saw him in England, the baron had been a vigorous man of late middle years. In the Dungeon, Clive had encountered his father again—or a simulacrum of the man—and he had been little changed, if any, from his former state of being.

But now the baron had aged shockingly. He was wizened and bent. He had lost all of his hair and most of his teeth, and he stood—rather, swayed—peering at Clive through pale, milky eyes. Holding on to his chair with one hand, he raised the other, pointing a trembling, bony finger at Clive.

"So," he managed in a voice that conveyed bitter hatred despite its quavering weakness, "the traitor returns!"

"I? Father—
traitor
?—how can you call me that? I have never been a traitor to you or to the Folliots. It was you who always scorned me, who blamed me for my mother's death. And after our reconciliation in the Dungeon, I thought that all was peace between us!"

The baron stared at Clive, saying nothing.

"No." Clive held a hand to his brow. "No, it was not you, was it, Father? I remember now. I learned, even before I left the Palace of the Morning Star, that I had expressed my love and fealty to a simulacrum. Not to you."

"Correct," the old man whispered. "You made up like a sniveling bastard with a simulacrum of your father. No, Clive," he repeated, "I was never in the Dungeon."

"But
I
was." The words were spoken by another voice, a voice that broke in shockingly upon Clive's confrontation with his father. Clive turned at the sound of the second voice. So flabbergasted had he been at the sight of his father, and so distressed at the old man's accusations, that he had ignored this other.

The second man looked like an older version of Clive.

His hair was longer, steel-gray throughout, and his heavy mustache was of the same metallic hue. His face was tanned with decades of sunlight and seamed with long years of exertions. His blouse showed a slight paunch, but overall he gave the appearance of a man in excellent physical condition for his years. The uniform he wore somewhat resembled Clive's, but the design was that of a different unit and the insignia of rank indicated that the wearer held the rank of lieutenant general.

"Neville?"

"Indeed."

"But you—you have aged so—"

"I have aged but normally. Like you, I was born in the Year of Our Lord 1834. It is now 1896. Do I not look like a man of two and sixty years?"

"You do. You look remarkably fit for a man of sixty-two. But…" Words failed him. Instead, he indicated himself with a gesture of his hands, implying silently the comparison of his relative youth with his brother's apparent age.

"Of course, brother. You were brought here from the year 1871. You are but thirty-seven years old. And your charming descendant, I might mention—"

"You know Annabelle?"

"Were you not present at our first meeting, brother? Or have your encounters with simulacra so confused you that you doubt it was truly I—or truly she! We were both ourselves, authentically and in the flesh." He smiled suggestively. "Oh, I know her very well indeed, brother!"

Clive balled his fists and started to lunge at his brother before drawing himself back. "Only the difference in our ages keeps me from giving you a lesson, Neville! Be careful how you speak of my granddaughter! If not by reason of common decency, then because she is also your own grandniece."

"Why, brother—what did I say to offend you? Miss Leigh is a charming young person. Some of the customs and standards of her generation are different from those of our own, to be sure. Some of them may even be shocking. But I assure you, I hold her in only the most affectionate avuncular regard."

The old man had slumped into his seat, and now he managed to call the others' attention. "To business, to business, Neville and Clive."

Neville drew a chair for himself; Clive did likewise.

"I am a very old man," Baron Tewkesbury quavered. "I have not long to live, and when I die the title of baron and all its perquisites and obligations shall pass to one of you. To you, Neville, if you survive me."

"I intend to do that, sir."

The baron turned Neville's response aside with a twitch of his head. "To you, Clive, if Neville does not survive me. And if you can purge yourself of your treasonous acts and affiliations."

"But, Father—you continue to accuse me of treason, and I am innocent of the charge!"

"Did you not make league with the Ren in the eighth level of the Dungeon? Is that not treason enough?"

"Father—I entered the Dungeon involuntarily, and only because Neville had disappeared and I was attempting to follow his trail. Everything I did in the Dungeon, on whatever level, has been done out of loyalty to the Folliots—and out of the needs of survival."

Lord Tewkesbury peered at Clive. The room was silent, its atmosphere charged as Lieutenant General Sir Neville Folliot and Sir Arthur Folliot, Baron Tewkesbury, waited for Clive to continue.

"I seem to have blundered into—or been lured into!—the greatest conspiracy in the history of the world. Philo Goode, Amos Ransome, Lorena Ransome… my long-faithful batman Horace Hamilton Smythe! He has saved my life repeatedly, Father, in the course of my adventures—only to disappear, then reappear in one exotic guise after another. Is the man a turncoat, or is he himself a victim of some alien force?"

He shook his head. Where to take this bizarre conversation? He would attempt a different tack.

"You, Neville." He rounded on his older brother. "You are sixty-two years of age?"

"I am that."

"And I am not yet forty. Yet we were mere minutes apart in time of birth. The year is 1896. I was snatched here from 1871. I have traveled across landscapes as terrifyingly unearthly as the mind can grasp, I have fought monsters the likes of which…"

He studied the faces of his two closest living relatives, his father and his elder twin. The baron seemed to be drifting, in the manner of a man approaching his ninetieth year. But Neville Folliot, immaculately groomed and punctiliously outfitted as a lieutenant general of Her Majesty's Royal Somerset Grenadier Guards, was listening intently. His expression was inscrutable as to his reaction to Clive's words and as to his own intention, but at the very least he was listening closely to Clive.

"Neville, my brother, let me tell you of one of my first encounters upon entering the Dungeon. In the company of my former batman Smythe and his East Indian associate Sidi Bombay—"

"I know Sidi Bombay," Neville interrupted. "I had the pleasure of making his acquaintance in the city of Zanzibar."

"Yes. And quite some reputation you left behind with our consul in Zanzibar, and with the Sultan Seyyid Majid bin Said!"

"Ah, some of the colorful residents of Zanzibar! And of the mainland of East Africa! I fear that I shall not see their likes again. The responsibilities of rank, the weariness of age—they conspire to keep an old veteran like me close to the flagpole. You younger chaps get to play at heroics."

"I refer not to heroics, Neville! Wherever I went, your reputation preceded me! I was branded a blackguard and a scoundrel—by utter strangers, Neville!—thanks to the mischief you had wrought."

"A pity. But it was all so long ago, Clive. Back in the sixties, ah, we were such wild youths, were we not? Colorful and rebellious, ready for any experiment, eager for every new experience. There will never again be an era like the sixties—at least not for us. But we live in a later decade now. The nineties may be better than the sixties, or they may be worse. Opinions must needs differ. But in either case, let us contend with the realities of the present."

"You will have to explain to me what you mean by the realities of the present, Neville. Precisely what realities are those? I know only that George du Maurier claims that he brought me here by the power of his mind and with the aid of Madame Clarissa Mesmer."

"Du Maurier? You have been in communication with du Maurier?"

"I came here from his home."