Genevieve Undead Part 16

Genevieve licked her lips with a rough tongue.

VIII.

This was a strange brood, Antonia Marsillach thought to herself, and no mistake. For the millionth time, she wondered whether it wouldn't have been cleverer to stay in Miragliano and throw herself on the mercy of the city fathers. She'd had nothing to do with Ysidro's d.a.m.ned poison water, and suspected he was only taking her away with him to his luxury bolt-hole in Bretonnia because she knew a lot about the careless way he'd pursued personal profit at the expense of public safety. She should have turned the hog in and pet.i.tioned for a reward instead of sticking by him. He was no use anyway, never had been. Even when things were going well, he'd been more interested in the counting house than the bedroom. She should go back to the stage, and try to get out of the chorus and into a featured spot. She could act better than some, dance better than most, and the customers always liked to look at her legs. She was still young. She wanted some fun.

And here she was surrounded by refugees from the kind of melodrama the city fathers had banned from the Miragliano playhouse as overly morbid and liable to incite public disorder. Before the ban, she'd been in them all, shaking herself during the prologues and getting murdered during the first acts of Brithan Cragg's Ystareth; or: The Plague Daemon and Orfeo's Tall Tale; or: The Doom of Zaragoz, Detlef Sierck's The Treachery of Oswald and The Strange History of Dr. Zhiekill and Mr. Chaida, Ferring the Balladeer's incredibly violent Brave Konrad and the Skull-Face Slaughterer, Bruno Malvoisin's obscene Seduced by Slaanes.h.i.+; or: The Baneful l.u.s.ts of Diogo Briesach. Those plays had dark and stormy nights, and weary travellers forced to stay the night, and puritanical harridans, and family curses, and secret pa.s.sages, and much-altered wills, and ghouls, goblins and ghostliness.

And here she was in one again, promoted from the chorus to a featured role. She'd have to watch herself before the first act curtain.

The witch pounding the harpsichord was competing with the thunder and lightning, while the aunt who hated harlots was foaming at the mouth with righteous hysteria, and the cleric of Ra.n.a.ld was sneaking looks at her cleavage whenever he thought he was un.o.bserved. Schedoni seemed courteous enough, but Antonia wasn't convinced he was still alive. She suspected he might be a wired-together corpse used as a ventriloquist's dummy by the scarred butler. She looked around the great hall, wondering where the entrances to the secret pa.s.sages were.

Ravaglioli, the harridan's husband, was still eating, while everyone else was paying attention to his dark daughter. He was a noisy, messy eater, and food fragments were scattered about his place at the table.

Antonia was tired, and looking forwards to a big, warm, fresh-laundered bed without Ysidro d'Amato in it.

They had brought out Estalian sherry, and it was doing her good inside. Her clothes had dried on her body, and she relished the thought of peeling them off, and towelling herself down. Maybe she could find skilled hands to help her with that. Aleksandr seemed likely enough, and Father Ambrosio would doubtless be keen to volunteer his services.

She wasn't that wonderful as a dancer. But she had other skills. She could always find a comfortable place somewhere. She always had. Zschokke poured her some more sherry. She was feeling quite tipsy.

Ravaglioli scooped a spoonful of some flavoured gruel into his mouth. Antonia wasn't sure whether it was savory or sweet. He gulped it down with a slurp, and reached out for more.

Then, he paused, and his cheeks ballooned, as if he had bitten into a whole pepper. His face reddened, and the veins in his temples throbbed purple. Tears leaked from his eyes, and slipped into the cracks of his swelling cheeks.

He slapped the table with both hands, his full spoon splattering gruel around him. Christabel continued to play, but everyone else looked at the suffering man.

Ravaglioli held his throat, and seemed to be struggling, trying to swallow something.

'What is it?' asked Schedoni.

Ravaglioli shook his head, and stood up. His throat apple was bobbing, and he was breathing uneasily. His eyes were wide open, bloodshot, and panicked.

'It's justice,' snarled Flaminea. 'That's what it is.'

Zschokke tried to help the man, holding him upright, giving him a goblet of water.

Ravaglioli looked worse than the poisoned plenipotentiary, in Sendak Mittell's l.u.s.trian Vengeance; or: 'I Will Eat Their Offal!,' when he was told that the deathbane-laced tripes he had just eaten were pulled from his beloved grandmother while she was still alive.

He pushed the servant away, but poured the water into his mouth, sucking vigorously. He gulped, and the blockage in his throat went down towards his stomach. He drained the rest of the water, and reached for the sherry, laughing.

'What was it?' Schedoni asked.

Ravaglioli shrugged and smiled, wiping the spittle off his chin. 'It felt like a little metal ball. I've no idea what it was doing in the gruel, or what it could have been. It was coated with something sticky.'

Then he grabbed his stomach as a spasm hit him.

'It hurts'

Ravaglioli began shaking, as if lapsing into a fit. He held the edge of the table, and grit his teeth.

'Burning inside it's growing hot'

Suddenly, he bent backwards, his spine audibly snapping against the chair rest. His swelling stomach burst through the hooks of his doublet, and was exposed.

Christabel stopped playing, and turned on her stool to look at the commotion her father was causing.

Zschokke backed away from the flailing man, and several people moved their chairs to give Ravaglioli room. His eyes were showing only white. His stomach was distended like a pregnant woman's, about to deliver triplets. Red stretchlines were appearing in the skin. The man was groaning, and there were noises inside him, breaking and tearing noises.

Antonia couldn't look away.

With a sulphurous bang, Ravaglioli's stomach exploded. Gobbets rained around him, and his chair collapsed.

A wisp of blue smoke curled out of the gaping hole in his midriff.

Somebody screamed, and screamed, and screamed and Antonia realized it was her.

IX.

That had been disgusting!

Kloszowski wiped his sleeve with a napkin, and watched everyone panic. D'Amato quieted Antonia down with a slightly overenthusiastic slap, and the dancer sat back, appalled.

A bald fellow with bow-legs, who'd been sitting near Schedoni, scuttled over, dusty coat-tails trailing the floor, and examined the corpse of Signor Ravaglioli, prodding around the edges of his yawning stomach wound with a bony finger.

'Hmmmn,' he said. 'This man is dead.'

Obviously this was a physician of some insight.

'Some explosive device, I suspect,' the doctor added. 'Designed to react to the inside of a human stomach'

He took a fork, and poked around inside the mess.

'Ah yes,' he said, holding up a small s.h.i.+ny sc.r.a.p of something. 'Here's a fragment.'

'Thank you, Dr. Valdemar,' said Schedoni. 'Zschokke, have this mess cleared away and then bring us coffee.'

Kloszowski got up and thumped the table. Cutlery rattled. Ambrosio stopped his still-full wine goblet from falling over.

'I don't think you understand,' he said. 'This man is dead. Murdered.'

'Yes?' Schedoni seemed puzzled by his outburst.

'Someone must have killed him.'

'Indubitably.'

'Aren't you going to find the murderer? See that he, or she, is punished?'

Zschokke and two servants brought an old curtain to carry off Ravaglioli in, and a maid with a bucket and mop appeared to tidy up the quarter of the room that had been splattered.

Schedoni shrugged. 'Of course, murderers are always exposed, always punished. But first we should finish our meal. The habits of Udolpho will never be disturbed by something as crude as a mere killing.'

Everyone at the table appeared to agree with the old man and so, feeling foolish, Kloszowski sat down. Not only was this family the epitome of the parasite cla.s.ses, they were all mad.

Christabel, piqued because her father's death had interrupted her recital, returned to the table, and took her seat. Ambrosio made a grasp at her bottom but she brushed his hand away.

Ravaglioli's chair was tipped back and he was lifted onto the sheet, and quickly wrapped. The maid wiped up.

'Put him in the cold storage room,' Dr. Valdemar instructed the steward. 'I shall examine further later. There may be much we can learn.'

'Perhaps our guest might say a blessing for the dead,' suggested Vathek the lawyer. Everyone looked at Kloszowski, and he resisted the urge to look behind him.

He kept forgetting he was a cleric of Morr.

Kloszowski mumbled something and made gestures in the air, vaguely trying to imitate clerics he'd seen at funerals. No one questioned his impersonation, and the coffee arrived in several steaming pots.

'I must tell Old Melmoth,' Vathek said, addressing himself to Schedoni. 'This will affect the will. Ravaglioli was in the direct line of succession.'

'No he wasn't,' snapped Flaminea, between thirsty little sips at the boiling black coffee. 'I was.'

Vathek scratched his bristle-covered cheek.

'My late husband married into Udolpho. I am the direct heir, am I not, father?'

Schedoni shook his head, as if unable to remember.

'I thought father was grandfather's son,' said Christabel, 'and that you, mother, married into the family.'

'That was my impression,' said the lawyer.

'Well, your impression was wrong,' snarled Flaminea. 'I have always been the heir. Father Ambrosio will confirm the truth, won't you, uncle?'

Ambrosio, who was dividing his attention between Antonia's thighs and Christabel's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, applied himself to the question.

'I'm not your uncle,' said the father, 'I'm your father. Before I entered the cult of Ra.n.a.ld, I was married to my cousin Clarimonde. She was abducted by the banditti and never heard from again, but she left me with a daughter.'

Ambrosio's hand had dipped below the table, in Christabel's direction. He winced, and brought it up again. Christabel still had her meatfork.

'Uncle, you are confused,' said Flaminea. 'You are a father, not my father. Surely, you concede that Christabel is your grand-niece, not your grand-daughter.'

Ambrosio drank his coffee, the p.r.o.ng-marks red against the white skin of his hand, and said, reasonably, 'I believe Christabel is Pintaldi's sister, is she not?'

'Christabel?' said Flaminea, eyes glowing blue.

The dark girl shook her head, and said, 'It's nothing to me.'

Outside, the thunder had receded to a dull rumble every few minutes, and the main noise was the steady tattoo of the rain against the walls, and the rattling of the windows. Inside, Kloszowski's head was beginning to ache. 'More coffee?' asked Schedoni, courteously.

X.

She had lost track of time, and could not tell how many years she'd been imprisoned. Her life before she came to Udolpho was a distant, vague memory. She had been married, she thought, and had children. She had lived in a city near the sea, and her husband had been a mariner, eventually the owner of his own boat, his own s.h.i.+pping line. Then, she'd travelled, and come, during one of these d.a.m.nable thunderstorms, to Udolpho.

Her captors called her Mathilda, but that wasn't her name. Her real name was Mathilda.

No. It was She couldn't remember.

Zschokke, the tall man with the twisted face who brought her her meals, could not speak. But he was often accompanied by a bent, mad old man named Schedoni, and he always called her Mathilda. He spoke to her as if she was pitiably altered, but there was nothing wrong with her.

She was not a victim of warpstone. She was a normal woman.

She tried to lift her head, but the weights Zschokke fastened around her skull while she was asleep were too heavy.

There had been a slit window once, but it had been bricked up.

She could never tell whether it was day or night but she knew when there was a storm. She could hear the thunder, and the stones of the ceiling would become wet, occasionally dripping on her.

She didn't know why she was held prisoner. At first, she'd begged for her release, then for an explanation. Now, she didn't bother. They called her Mathilda and were sorry for her, but they'd never let her free. She would die in this room and be buried under a slab carved with the name of Mathilda Udolpho. That was to be her fate.

Once she had secreted a chicken bone from one of her meals, and snapped it, making a sharp tool. For months, she'd sc.r.a.ped away at the mortar between the stones, loosening large blocks. She'd rested her head against the cold wall while she worked away with her bone-trowel, and had flattened a part of her face.

In the end, Zschokke had caught her. She had tried to sever the vein in his throat with the sharp bone, but it had just broken on his skin. He didn't abuse her for her attack. But she'd eaten filleted meat and fowl ever since.

She tried to remember her real husband, her real family. But she could only picture the face of Schedoni Udolpho, and recall the names of the children he repeatedly told her they'd had together: Montoni, Ambrosio, Flaminea She tried to stand, but couldn't. Her head was heavy as a cannon-ball, and her neck had long since withered away. She could draw her knees up and crouch but her head stayed anch.o.r.ed to the floor.

She dragged herself, pulling with her hands and pus.h.i.+ng with her feet, across the floor of the room, the carpet bunching up under her. One day, Mathilda would get out. And then they'd all be sorry.