The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi (45 page)

The Frenchman extended his arm toward Monckton Milnes. “The axe.
Immédiatement!
”

Monckton Milnes blinked, as if coming out of a daze, and handed it over.

Without hesitation or explanation, Levi raised it and sliced it down onto Judge's neck. Three times he chopped, and on the third, the corpse's head came away and rolled to the floor, making a horrible knock as it impacted against the stone.

“Holy mother of Christ!” Arundell moaned. “God forgive us! God forgive us!”

“We eradicate the unholy, Monsieur Arundell,” Levi said. “It is barbaric and horrible, but it is the Lord's work. Now we must take the remains upstairs and burn them.”

Arundell and Monckton Milnes crossed to the upward-sloping passage and crawled out through it. Swinburne followed, carrying the severed head. Burton and the occultist, with great difficulty, then manoeuvred the corpse through the crawlspace.

After they'd replaced the removable steps and ascended to the square room, they put the dead man in the middle of its floor. Levi took the clockwork lanterns, broke each one open, and poured the oil from them onto the body. He struck a lucifer, threw it, and stepped back as the remains of John Judge ignited. “We not leave until it is nothing but ash,” he said. “But we wait in another room,
non
? The air will be very bad in here.”

The courtyard was half-flooded, the rain bucketing down, lighting and thunder still crashing overhead. They ran across to a doorway on its opposite side and into a high-ceilinged hall. It was dusty but dry, and they sank onto its floor and leaned against its walls and tried to process what they had just done.

Arundell buried his face in his hands. “Was I just party to murder?”

Levi answered, “
Non
, monsieur. It is difficult to understand, but John Judge was already dead.
En fait
, he was worse than dead. We have saved his immortal soul.”

“I shall never make sense of this.” Arundell looked pleadingly at Burton. “Please, Richard, I have come to regard you as family—tell me we have done the right thing.”

“We have,” Burton responded. “That creature—for he wasn't a man—took my fiancée from me. Deprived you of your daughter. Others would have died at his hands.”

“
Non!
” Levi exclaimed. He banged his fist against the floor. “Not die! Not die! This is the
horreur vraie
—the true horror—of it. His victims do not properly die. They become un-dead—
strigoi morti
! They must each be disposed of as we have today disposed of Perdurabo—at very least, burned to nothing. If they are not, their terrible condition, it will spread like the plague. That is why I ask for two stakes.”

It took some seconds for his meaning to register.

“God, no,” Arundell moaned. “Surely you don't mean to say—you aren't suggesting—you can't—”

All of a sudden, Burton couldn't breathe. He grabbed his throat with one hand and clutched at the air with the other. “Bismillah!” he choked. “Please! Not that! Anything—
anything
—but that!”

Levi shook his head sadly. “
Je suis désolé
, but it must be done. We have set John Judge free. Now we must do the same for Mademoiselle Isabel.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

—E
DGAR
A
LLAN
P
OE
, “T
HE
R
AVEN
”

They found Thomas Honesty fussing frantically over the engine of the landau. “It won't start! It won't start!” he cried out. He recoiled away from them as they approached, brandished a pocketknife, and yelled, “Stay back! I saw what you did! Murderers!”

“Don't be a bloody fool!” Henry Arundell barked. “It's not what it seems, I can assure you. Move over! You've opened the inlet valve too wide—no wonder she won't start. Come on, out of the way! We're getting soaked to the skin!”

Honesty pressed himself against the side of the carriage, his eyes flitting anxiously from man to man as they climbed into the vehicle's cabin.

The engine coughed and grumbled.

Arundell exclaimed, “Got it!” and joined his companions, pulling the groundsman inside with him.

Swinburne and Monckton Milnes didn't enter, but climbed up to drive the vehicle, setting it into motion as soon as the passenger door had been pulled shut.

Eliphas Levi raised his voice over the rumbling of the rain on the wooden roof. “Monsieur Honesty, there is no danger. That man, he was the fugitive Monsieur Arundell told you of, and Sir Richard here is an agent of His Majesty the King. You witness a thing very terrible, but not murder.
Non!
Not murder!”

“What, then? You drove a stake through the man's heart!”

“
Oui
, it was necessary, but to explain, ah, that is a difficult thing.”

“Not now,” Arundell interrupted. “In the name of God, not now! I can't stand any more of it.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. “Tom, we are all traumatised. Rest this afternoon and come to the house before the church service tomorrow morning. We'll give you a full account.”

Honesty looked searchingly at his employer's face then gave a reluctant nod.

The landau slid and rocked its way along the path, stopped at the lodge, where the groundsman got off, then continued on to the manor, and into the vehicle shed.

An hour later, the men, having washed and changed into dry clothing, met in the smoking room. They'd missed lunch but had no appetite for anything but fortifying brandies and comforting cigars and pipes.

Burton was withdrawn, his thought processes paralysed, an intolerable constriction gripping his heart, but in his room he'd swallowed half a bottle of Saltzmann's Tincture, and now, when he downed a brandy in a single gulp, its warmth permeated out from his stomach and didn't stop. He felt it course through his arteries, branch off into the veins, spread through the capillaries, and bleed into the surface of his skin, spreading and flattening and reconnecting him with the exterior world.

Like Time. Dividing, dividing, dividing, until all its many filaments become indistinguishable from one another, the consequences of decisions—made and unmade—taken to their ultimate limits then conflated, unconstrained by context, fully perceptible from every possible perspective.

The unity of multiplicity.

A new mode of being.

The empty glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor.

He realised he was standing by the fireplace and the others were looking at him.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Clumsy.”

Henry Arundell rang for one of his clockwork footmen and instructed it to clean up the fragments.

“You and me both, Richard,” he said. “My hands won't stop shaking.”

“A shock prolonged, it is very damaging,” Levi said. “So we must proceed
intrépide
—undaunted—though it hurt us bad. We act fast and cure this disease before it spread far.”

Swinburne said, “What should we do, monsieur?”

Levi addressed Arundell. “Your family, they are in the chapel,
oui
? Standing vigil over Mademoiselle Isabel?”

“Yes.”

“Just before dark come, you must remove them.”

“That won't be difficult. They'll need to eat and sleep.” Arundell raised his hands to his head and dug his fingers into his hair. “But, Mother of God, no! I know the deviltry you intend, sir, and I'll not have my daughter's body so violated without absolute proof that she's become the thing you claim!”

Burton interjected, “Despite everything I've seen, I agree. You'll not lay a finger on her, Levi, not unless she—” He swayed and grabbed at the mantelpiece for support. “Not unless she rises before my eyes.”

Levi considered the bowl of his pipe. “Then we must witness more
horreur
,
que Dieu nous protège
!” He addressed Arundell. “In my room, monsieur, there is a tall floor mirror. You have many such in the house?”

“One in every bedroom.”

“
C'est fortuit.
Will you have them all put in the chapel?
C'est nécessaire.
”

“Very well.”

Arundell's haunted eyes fixed upon the objects beside the occultist's chair: the second stake, the mallet, and the axe.

He poured himself another brandy.

At six o'clock, Arundell went to the chapel to relieve his family of their vigil, telling them he would sit through the night with his daughter.

His wife, Blanche, Smythe Piggott, the cousins Rudolph and Jack, and Uncle Renfric joined Burton, Swinburne, Monckton Milnes, and Levi in the dining room. The Birds and Beetons joined them, having spent much of the day since breakfast sitting with Sadhvi Raghavendra, helping to write letters, taking down the decorations, and arranging flowers all over the house.

The meal was a perfunctory affair. Halfway through it, Mrs. Arundell made tearful apologies and retired to her room, and afterwards the family members were quick to disperse, all exhausted by their grief.

Blanche hung back, clinging to Burton's arm. “Richard—that this should happen at such a time. I am so sorry.”

“We've both suffered a dreadful loss,” he replied. “I wish I could somehow comfort you, Blanche, but it's all I can do to keep myself standing. I don't know what words I can offer.”

“I have my faith and my Bible. At times like this, religion proves its worth. I would be comforted if you would finally realise the value of it, too.”

His eyes met hers and she flinched at the smouldering anger in them. He said, “I'm afraid, if anything, I'm being pushed rather in the opposite direction.”

A tear rolled down Blanche's cheek. She took his hand, squeezed it, and left the room.

Burton turned to his companions. “Let's get this over and done with.”

They waited for Levi to retrieve the tools then followed Burton out into the hallway and along a number of passages to All Saints Chapel, which was incorporated into the west wing of New Wardour Castle, being undetectable from the outside. Semicircular at both ends, almost a hundred feet long, forty wide, and forty high, it was remarkably sumptuous, painted white with gold fittings and decorated with many paintings and vestments.

Leading the group along the aisle between the pews, Burton approached the chancel. He saw Henry Arundell sitting beside an open coffin, which was on a catafalque in front of the altar. The explorer mounted two steps and looked down into the casket.

The chapel fell away, as if rapidly sinking into a dark chasm. He felt hands grabbing him beneath the arms; heard Monckton Milnes's distant cry of, “Richard!”

There was deep shadow, a confusion of memories and sensations. He smelled the spice-laden air of Zanzibar; listened to parakeets bizarrely cursing him in English; saw his reflection in the facets of a black gemstone; tasted blood.

Nurse! By God! Don't lose him!

Stand aside, sir. Move! At once!

Is it another attack? His heart?

Will you please get out of my way? How am I supposed to do my job with you breathing down my neck?

He opened his eyes, looked up at Swinburne, and said, “It's all right. Just a momentary dizziness. Not my heart.”

“No one thought it was,” the poet answered.

“I heard them say so.”

“No. You must have imagined it. The shock hit you hard—you fainted.”

Burton sat up and looked at Henry Arundell. “Why, sir? Why is she in her wedding dress?”

“It's what she would have wanted, Richard. In the eight years since she met you, she desired only to be your wife. She talked about it incessantly. We thought it appropriate that she be interred in the dress.”