The Count of the Living Death (The Chronicles of Hildigrim Blackbeard) (3 page)

“I think it just sat on their heads,” he muttered. “Didn’t leave room for anything else.”

She laughed, but realized this was no idle question. He had something quite specific to ask her and history was only the start of it. Taking a nervous sip from her glass, she tried out several responses in her head. Most were shockingly forward for a woman of her age and position. So again, she thought of her mother: how would she respond? Serious, but not honest, of course; tell him what I
should
say rather than what I would. Just in case.

“Joking aside, I think history and tradition are all very well. It tells us who we are, doesn’t it?”

“When you look at these walls, all these portraits staring down at you…do you really see yourself?” he asked, studying her.

“Well…I see…our way of life. Not
me
, necessarily, but those who shaped the world. Don’t you?”

He crossed his arms and turned away from her, facing the crowd of dancers and chattering couples. She realized that this was the wrong track; she would have to be more honest, even at the risk of spilling an accidental truth on occasion. Fortunately, her mother was no longer around to object.

“Of course, we used to throw darts at them as children.”

He spun around, startled. She nodded, laughing slightly to encourage him. He followed at once.

“And what happened?”

“They never discovered us. We crept into the hallways at night. Especially at this one nasty old woman…said to be some ancient relative of my father’s. We aimed for the eyes and nose. The poor woman, within a month she was headless!”

They both laughed as the music struck up behind them. A bouncy, courtly minuet. Several couples made elegant bows and pirouetted across the floor.

“That’s what I mean,” he said, fingering a sleeve button. “This isn’t us. It’s just where we washed up, like a piece of drift wood. I never set course for ta- coursethis place. And even if we do come from the same tree, well, I can be made into something else. A frigate, perhaps, to sail off to the Colonies.”

“Would you accept passengers? Or is this to be a solo voyage?”

“I’m sure I have room for at least one stowaway,” he said.

She blushed, probably less from the champagne than the way he said it. They had met, flirted, and almost spoken of things ever since she had first come out as a girl of thirteen. But now she was engaged, her life auctioned off to another title in another land. Anything they said now was child’s play, a way of pretending the future didn’t exist (much less the past), with the present an innocent playground.

“When do you leave?” he asked.

“In two week’s time. It’s so soon!” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic—but failing on purpose.

“Two weeks,” he nodded. “That doesn’t give me much time.”

“To do what, may I ask? Are you planning a wedding of your own?” she smiled—tinged with bitterness.

“I can’t say,” he said.

As he said this he touched her arm. Very lightly, yet with tremendous force—enough to shatter her equilibrium. Her eyes swam, her heart shook, and her knees…well, it would be impolite to mention a noblewoman’s knees in public. Pleading important business, he made a bow and wandered off, disappearing into a crush of dancers. Her eyes ran after him, plucked out every last bit of his hair, his dress, his sword. It would have to last through the long, unhappy years of her marriage (and they
would
be unhappy, she assured herself).

“Please,
signorina
, straighten—
elegante
,” the painter chided.

Mary nodded and straightened herself. Her eyes shone even brighter now, smiling with the sudden, startling recognition that he loved her. They could never be together, not in this world…but in another? In the Colonies, like he said? Who would know them, their families, their
history
? Yes, she thought to herself, I know exactly what I feel about history. That it’s best left in the past.

“And that’s the only way?” Leopold gasped. “That’s your great plan, my one way out of this?”

“It may not even be
that,
” the sorcerer said, waving his arms. “It may be gloriously ineffective; this is
Death
we’re talking about! But yes, your one way out of this mess—which is all your doing, I don’t need to remind you—is exactly this: find a blood relation to die in your place. The family resemblance may be enough to temporarily mislead it. Then, when it has appeased its thirst, it can reattach itself and go on at the normal rate…depending, of course, on itsd. appetite and constitution. It may shave off a year or two of your lifespan, but as long as…”

Hildigrim Blackbeard paused to shoo a moth off his beard. Then, having apparently forgotten his point, simply nodded.

“A blood relation?” the prince said, almost laughing. “Who do you suggest, my mother? My aunt—her children? Ask them to
die in my place
? Are you mad?”

“Are
you
?” the sorcerer spat. “You’re the one who unlocked the wretched box! Or perhaps you’ve forgotten?”

“
Why why why why why
?” he wailed, holding his head as he paced in desperate circles. “Why on earth did he do it? Why didn’t he just leave my death in peace?”

“Only a father could understand,” Blackbeard said, gravely. “You were his life, his one and only son. In your early years, death nearly claimed you twice; once with a terrible fever, and the second—”

“I know, I fell from a ledge,” the Count interrupted. “I was six. I remember it very clearly. He never left my side.”

“Such is love,” he nodded. “When he sent for me, he said,
I can’t lose him again. I can’t be one of those men burying his own son. I’ve seen too much of that in my time. I want him to live on, into a better age, far beyond the golden gleams of the horizon, longer than any man on earth
. Poetry, perhaps. But when he said it I believed him. And I foolishly agreed to do it.”

As the full realization of his father’s words struck him, Leopold gazed into the heavens; a faint star still twinkled in the morning light. Had he really said those things? Leopold had trouble marrying the words to the man or even hearing his voice. Had he spoken it confidently, in a single breath? Or hesitantly, in fits and starts? He still remembered one evening, when, after several glasses of wine, he said he admired—not loved, but admired—his father’s work. The old man scampered out of his seat and muttered something about “needing to ring the servant.” He never returned. But now this…it said more than a library of love tokens. His father had loved him. So much so that he inadvertently cursed him for the rest of his life. Perhaps that was the reason for secrecy; saying too much can become fatal, especially when couched in the ambiguous tones of magic.

“Peruse your family tree: is there a crotchety great-grandmother or distant relation hiding away somewhere? Someone who won’t survive the week?” Blackbeard suggested. “Not that I advocate murder, of course…but as I said, someone will die, be it you or someone else.”

“There’s no one, I couldn’t imagine—no, it’s ridiculous!” he spat. “I would never have someone killed in my place, not even a convicted—”

An image flashed through his head and cut off the final word. A convicted criminal. Someone already sentenced to death, merely waiting the accursed day in the despair of a decrepit dungeon. Someone for whom death would be a blessed deliverance, especia, fnce, eslly given the manner of the execution (typically, beheading, but given the nature of his crimes, he might even expect a more prolonged demise). And there was such a person: his father’s bastard son…his half-brother, Ivan.

“Half-brother?” Blackbeard repeated. “I wasn’t aware that your father had two sons.”

“No, he wasn’t…that is, Ivan lived quite apart from us. I never knew him. I scarcely even knew he existed.”

Ivan was the result of his father’s brief affair with a Russian dancer before his birth. His father never mentioned him, and indeed, Leopold only learned he had a ‘brother’ by accident. One evening, when he had accidentally fallen asleep under a table, his father and an advisor came in, arguing volubly about someone they referred to as “Ivan the Terrible.” Toward the end of the conversation, his father threw a saucer against the wall—which shattered—and shouted, “damn him, he’s no son of mine, may he drown in the seven seas! His mother bewitched me with her gypsy arts and rotted his brains with witchcraft! He’ll never be allowed in my presence.”

Apparently, Ivan took this rejection personally. He became a notorious criminal and declared war on the entire kingdom. By the time of his capture, he was charged as an assassin, a spy, a cutpurse, a highwayman, and most unforgivably, an actor. When rumors of the trial reached Leopold’s ears the sentence had already been passed: death, without possibility of pardon, in two month’s time. It haunted him to think that this fellow—in blood, at least—was his brother. A brother he could never know. What was he like? And what might he have been like if his father had found some way to accept him?

“I don’t understand…won’t his Death stop my Death? We all have a Death, don’t we?”

“Of course, a wise question,” Blackbeard nodded. “I will attempt a spell to temporarily sever the two—he will be in a kind of limbo, between life and death. His Death will be unable to defend him.”

“I see,” the Count nodded. “And when we open the box…will it be painful?”

“Instantaneous,” he said, with a wave of his hand. “Won’t feel a thing. He’ll snuff out like a candle.”

“In that case…would he do?”

“Estranged or not, he is your brother. But do you know where he is?”

“The Royal Dungeons, in the condemned quarters,” Leopold replied. “Can we get to him?”

The sorcerer gave a slight groan, but nodded. Yes, it could be done. It probably shouldn’t be done, they would probably become wanted men themselves if they weren’t careful, but yes, he could arrange it.

“I’ll get dressed,” Leopold nodded.

Mary’s coach was stopped at the palace gates. Something about a quarantine, no one was allowed to leave or enter. Disguised, and unable to give her full name (which might have opened all doors and gates), she merely said she had urgent business with the Count and demanded entrance. The guards refused. The orders came from high up; she would simply hh stave to wait. In truth, they were terrified. Defying a direct order of Hildigrim Blackbeard would bring swift and terrible repercussions. Death, most likely. But there were many ways to go. They most feared a curse-transformation, which would change them into hideous, loathsome insects, leaving them to flail about helplessly until some greater beast ensnared them in its claws—

“Twenty fobs for each of you: now open the doors!” she cried, flinging the coins out the window.

As they clattered against the road, the guards temporarily forgot all about curses and Blackbeards. Twenty fobs a piece? Enough to die happy in food and drink, with a bit left over for the funeral. Trading wary glances, they stooped down to pick up the coins and waved her through.

“Say you overpowered us with swords and pistols!” they called after her.

“And that we resisted heroically!” the other added.

But Mary was no longer listening. As the coach rumbled under the gates, her thoughts focused on Leopold and if he would take her. If not, she was ruined. She had abandoned her marriage and family in one fell swoop, fleeing the estate with only a few, precious belongings and her servant’s petticoats. Not even the coachman knew her identity; she had given him a letter with special instructions to “take this servant directly to the palace of the Count of Cinquefoil and ask no questions!” Beyond that, she had no plan. She felt that he wanted her to come—he had hinted as much—but she didn’t know how to ask. “Do you want me?” was a simple question. But did anyone actually say it? If he refused now, she would have to return in shame and scandal. Her fiancé would most likely turn his back on her (not the worst part of this equation), and she would be sent to eke out her existence in a nunnery on the distant coasts of Scanda. But it was worth the risk. It was the only way she knew to ask him, and she would risk oblivion itself to learn the answer.

Once in the courtyard, she slipped out of the coach—giving a brief wave of thanks to the coachman, who refused to acknowledge her (she was a mere servant, after all)—and scanned the palace walls. She knew he lived on one of the highest floors, but how to reach him? From her own experience, servants lived in strict seclusion to a given task and floor; looking suspicious would be as productive as flashing her jewels. How thoughtless she had been! It was one thing to defy her parents and the expectations of society, but quite another to masquerade as the one thing that no amount of money could prepare her for: the life of a servant. What did they do? How did they act? After nineteen years of living among them she had never really seen one. She knew they cleaned things, arranged things, made things…and oh, they also brought things. What could she bring? A chamber pot?

“You there! Standing about like a halfwit! Come here!” someone shouted.

Terrified, Mary realized an older, very neatly dressed servant was gesticulating at her. She approached and did her best attempt at servility, which only made the elder servant enraged. The servant shook her a bit and asked her what in the world she was up to.