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Accounts of the Stone 13 Pellegrino: Il Fidanzato (continued) Have you a wife, Lubbert Das? Posie ring pretty, how the meager band of gold glints against your knuckle. What does it say inside? What promise is burning against your cold skin? NEMO NISI MORS? < !--more-- > Everybody loves a fool; does she adore you as those who pay for your jests, and keep your home whilst thinking of the laughter you gave her, before and after your marriage? Surely even she must have attempted to discourage this surgery on your pate which she loves well. And had you lumbered home, with a bleeding head, would she have tended to it as gently with familiarity and care as Meester Brugghe's maid with the light handed touch we reserve for strangers and concern? Ah, my poor Meester Das. When we left the story, the Marchel was at his window, watching the grounds of Champtoce castle before the monk whirled him away. To Österreich then, to a bride of considerable wealth; a woman of diamonds... The carriage carrying our guilt-ridden Marchel and his sleeping monk slowly made its way through the streets of Wien. They were half-awake still after dawn, stirring only while rare shopkeepers who chose not to observe the Sabbath fished in their pockets for clinking keys. Throughout their journey here, he felt as a fugitive, fleeing Champtoce and its ghosts: old and new, children's feet and the sound of little, dancing bells scurrying behind corners and doors, avoiding the chateau's master. Although he had to give the monk due praise, despite the exorbitant prices for a cure; his skin had not felt so well since his days in the courts of the kins. Bitten by the chilly air, he again felt as an inveterate traveler, a handsome, learned, and rich young man; he felt reborn. The dancer's death gave him hope. What will the next woman give him? he idly wondered, and instantly felt guilty. Lubbert Das, the young Marchel began to find justification for Samireh's murder. He glanced at his gloved hands; the pustules and marks, he knew, still gave the skin beneath the leather a worse texture than the tanned hide he wore to conceal it, and he began to plan his next murder. Images of the Countess Bathory, lounging about silken sheets and young virgins in her castle at Budapest, of boys and girls fed and clothed by the Marechal de Rays before violations raced through his head. How did it begin for them? Erzsébet Bathory wanted eternal beauty, Marechal de Rays wanted gold. His reasons were not born of vanity, nor of avarice, and the expected casualties of his crimes- four- will be considerably less than one hundred and fifty. More than ever, he felt like a monster. The carriage stopped at the end of a procession of stopped carriages with gilded ornaments and whitewashed walls. It is Sunday, he forgot, and in the distance, he heard the bells of a church before he craned his neck out to the hoary morning and saw the steeple of a cathedral pierce the gray sky as a dull sword against duller armor. "It is St. Stephen's Cathedral," the monk said with a yawn. "Sybarites. Can you smell that? Konditerei on Sunday; they bake pastries on the day of the Lord!" "We are a murderer and his accomplice," he quietly replied. "Let us not speak about heresy." As the carriage jolted, one foot at a time, they came closer to the chapel's entrance. A sweet music floated out of its doors and took the smell of horse manure, sweet cakes, and powdered nobility from the Marchel's mind. The notes were lovely, made seraphic and new by the contratenor voices despite his familiarity with the Latin psalm; more enchanting and awe-inspiring than any songstress that graced the halls of his château. After they passed, the monk told him that the choir is composed entirely of boys, much like the ones employed then violated by the Marechal de Rais in Champtoce's cathedral. < !--endmore-- > |
