Haunted Castles (18 page)

Now she, from her cage, reached between the cold black iron of the bars, her tapering slim fingers writhing like little snakes in the attempt to grasp the keyring. Grunting indelicately, cursing vulgarly, she stretched her pretty arm still further, one round ripe fruit of a breast crushed cruelly against the bars. A sheen of sweat covered her whole body, despite the dungeon's chill. But still her fingers did not touch the taunting keys.

He, watching her efforts, whined, “No use . . . no use . . .”

She was loath to give up so easily. Hissing an unladylike oath, she now unbent her shapely long legs and, wincing at the pins of pain that shot through them after the hours of squatting restraint, she forced them between the bars, toward the metal circle of keys that lay between them and escape. Her toes flexed and curled, reaching for the keys. Her legs stretched still further, as her full thighs now were scraped and squashed by the cage bars. Biting her lip, she gripped the bars with her hands and pressed her belly and loins relentlessly against the unyielding iron, almost splitting herself in two on the bar that separated her thighs, gasping in pain, her toes clenching and unclenching, the sweat streaming from her flesh, until, at length, with a moan of thanksgiving, her efforts were rewarded, her feet closed upon the ring, she felt the welcome cold shafts of the keys between her toes, and slowly, carefully, she drew her feet back toward the cage, reached out and seized the keyring in her hand, then fell back, slimed with sweat and the blood of scraped skin, panting, sobbing, victorious.

Her lover in the other cage, eyeing the keys almost lasciviously, croaked, “The locks! Open the locks!”

She inserted one of the dozen keys into the lock of her cage door. It did not fit. She tried the next. And the next. Both lovers cursed, despair flooding them again and filling the great space hope had excavated in their hearts, as she tried key after key.

The tenth key worked. She swung open the creaking door of her cage and crawled out upon the stone floor of the dungeon. Slowly, agonizingly, she pulled herself to her feet and stood at her full height, magnificently, nudely beautiful.

Then, walking past his cage, she went straight to the dungeon door.

“Wait!” he cried. “Would you leave me here?”

“Who travels light travels best,” she said, and unlocked the dungeon door.

“Strumpet! Open this cage!”

She laughed softly and blew him a mocking kiss.

“You need me!”
he screamed. “You need me to overpower the guards, to steal horses, food, clothing. If you leave without me, I will bellow my lungs out, awaken the entire castle, the warder and the guards will apprehend you before you reach the first wall!”

She looked at him thoughtfully. Then, smiling, she walked back to his cage. “I was but teasing you,” she said, and released him.

“I choose to believe you,” he growled, “bitch!”

The two of them swung open the heavy dungeon door. Quiet and swift, hardly daring to breathe, they padded on bare feet up a narrow corkscrew of stone stairs to the armory.

There, serried ranks of soldiers stood in wait!

No: thus they appeared to be at first glimpse, but were soon revealed to be no more than empty suits of armor, the eyeslits as devoid of life as the sockets in the grinning skull below.

Up more stairs they climbed, and skittered spiderishly along a pitch black, airless corridor so constructed that it seemed to grow narrower as they penetrated it, the ceiling built gradually lower and lower until they were obliged to crouch, the walls themselves so close together at one point they had to go in single file and then to crawl on their bellies through the foul air and impenetrable dark.

It seemed upward of an hour before they felt cool air and, shortly after, crawled out and stood upright in a place no less dark but which felt to be a specie of tunnel. They ran blindly through what proved to be a vexing, labyrinthine network of such tunnels, often colliding painfully with hard stone walls, until they heard a liquid sound and knew the maze to be a system of drains or conduits or somewhat, for soon they were splashing in filthy, stinking water up to their ankles, then to their knees, then feeling panic seize them as the icy wetness lapped their naked backsides.

An eternity of headlong splashing flight they suffered, hearing the chattering of rats and seeing their red eyes in the dark, before a pinpoint of light in the far distance brought harsh sobs of triumph from their throats and they ran toward it pell-mell, splashing, sliding, falling, scrambling to their feet again and plunging on toward the blessed beckoning spot of light, out of the noisome water that now fell to below their knees, then to their ankles, until they were running in dryness again, the light growing brighter and bigger until, with aching limbs and flaming lungs, they burst out of the tunnel and into—

The dungeon. The selfsame dungeon whence they had escaped. For there were the cages, with the doors standing open, and there was the dangling skeleton, and there was their amiable warder, a truncheon in his hand, greeting them with a gap-toothed smile.

“A trick,” the troubadour groaned, collapsing to his knees.

“Aye, lad,” the warder nodded. “A trick to pass the time and take your minds off your troubles.”

The woman shrieked, “A fiendish trick! A trick to raise our hopes and dash them down again! A gloating demon's trick!”

“Now, now,” the warder chided, “into your little cages, the pair of you, and quick about it or I'll be obliged to break a bone or two with this . . .” He raised the truncheon meaningfully. Taking the keyring from her hand, he locked them in the cages again.

“All wet, are you, all wet and bare and blue with cold?” the warder said, solicitously. “Take heart, there will be heat enough at dawn.” And, significantly, with broad winks, he opened a cabinet and took down a pair of branding irons which he placed upon a bench. “Aye, fire enough and heat enough,” he grinned. From the cabinet he also took two long sharp blades, like gigantic paring knives. “Fire and heat and other things as well,” he added, placing the awful knives next to the branding irons. He then closed the cabinet, squinted at the hideous equipment on the bench, and said, “That be enough. For the First Day, at least, it be enough.” Then, deliberately shaking the keyring and filling the air with its sour jangle, he walked toward the dungeon door, saying, “This time I'll not be forgetting my keys, like a naughty knave. Good night, my lady, young sir, or rather, good morning, for dawn will break in less than an hour.”

The door clanged shut.

 • • • 

The Duke's face wore an expression of shock. “Dead, you say? Both of them?”

“Aye, that they be, Your Grace,” replied the warder, “and by their own hands. Behind my back, they reached out from their cages and took the blades Your Grace bade me put upon the bench for them to look at. The Lord have mercy on their souls.”

The Duke crossed himself, dismissed the warder, and turned to the tonsured clergyman at his side. “You heard, Monsignor? Smitten by remorse, consumed by guilt, they took their own lives.”

“And, as suicides,” solemnly said the priest, “plummeted straight to the fires of Perdition—there to suffer chastisement infinitely more severe than if they had died by your command.”

“True, true, poor burning souls,” said the Duke. “I never, as you know, intended bodily harm to come to them.”

“Of course not. Such cruelty would have marred the good repute you bear among all men.”

“Those grisly tales I bade the warder tell them, those skeletons and other things, were but to harrow and humble their spirits for a night. Oh, I do repent me—”

“Of those harmless tales and bones?”

“Not they so much, Monsignor, as I repent my overtrusting nature that placed those two young people in temptation's path. Is mine the blame? Is mine the hand that led them to depravity, discovery, and death?”

The priest spoke firmly. “No! Your Grace's guileless goodness cannot bear the blame for the sins of others!”

“It is good of you to say it.”

“You never could foresee or wish the death of your young wife!”

“Oh, no.”

“You never could desire to yet
again
become a widower!”

“Heaven forbid.”

“And dwell in mournful loneliness once more!”

“O doleful day!”

“No man in all the realm can blame you.”

“I pray not.”

“The hearts of all your friends, your faithful courtiers, the meanest churls, the highest lords, His Majesty, the Church itself—all these mourn with you in this heavy hour!”

“Thank you, Reverend Father.”

“But if I may, without offense, speak of your sudden sad unmarried state, I would remind Your Grace that a certain advantageous alliance is now possible with a family whose name is so illustrious I need not give it breath . . .”

“At such a time as this,” the Duke replied, “one cannot think of marriage. But when I have composed myself, then we may have some words anent that prince to whom you have alluded, and whose sister is, I do believe, of fifteen summers now and therefore ripe for wedding. To you, Monsignor, I leave all small details of the nuptial ceremony, which must take place, I need not say, only after what is called a decent interval.”

“A decent interval, of course,” replied the priest.