The Cornerstone (16 page)

“I agree. The language is evocative, filled with sensory detail. Can you imagine British life in the 1500s? You have Queen Mary burning martyrs. I’ve read the stench of burning human flesh is unique. No other smell quite like it. Then you have Protestants reforming everything and suddenly a dreary Catholic monarchy becomes awash in unfettered philosophy —you have Luther’s proclamations, Calvinist ideology, the writings of John Dee where science and sorcery are equally pursued. And on top of that imagine a visceral city life with the odor of slaughtered cattle in the air, streets clogged with butcher’s blood, discarded rubbish, carts loaded with offal from cattle markets. Rich and poor jostling each other along crowded narrow streets, on horseback and on foot. And cold, clear church bells breaking over the sleeping city every morning at daybreak. To distill all that into mere words is no small skill.”

“How do you know what it was like, in that much detail?”

“I’ve done my research.” Bayard leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe.

Tom emptied his glass. “I’ve read all Marlowe’s plays, and his collected poetry. You could say I’m interested in the man himself, his wide-ranging ideas on philosophy and the teasing way he treats religion. There’s something…personal… in the way he retells the old German Faust tale. It’s like it came from the point of view of someone who knew first-hand what he was writing about.”

Bayard made a scoffing noise. “You think Christopher Marlowe sold his soul to the Devil? Come now, you don’t strike me as a superstitious fellow. Our friend Adelaide, yes, but not you.”

“I don’t mean literally, with horned demons flying in through the window on a fire-breathing dragon. I mean someone who’s compromised his honor, his ethics, even his beliefs to attain something that maybe he shouldn’t have, but once he’s made those choices they can’t be taken back. The ripple effect of those actions spreads out into the future regardless of what else he may do.”

Bayard was silent, just staring at Tom with his dark eyes.

“If you could speak directly to Marlowe himself, what would you say?”

Tom did not hesitate. “I’d ask how closely he identified with Faustus. How much of his own thoughts and aspirations and fears were poured into the character’s personality. Did he believe Faustus deserved his fate? That’s what I’d ask. ”

Bayard drew on his pipe. “Well, the idea of someone with enormous talent and capability throwing it all away for a false reward is compelling, isn’t it?” He downed his own glass and stood up. “If you don’t mind, it’s been a trying week for me and I’m tired.”

Tom was on his feet in a second, pulling on his jacket. “Sorry. I’ve taken up too much of your time, especially if you’re not feeling well—”

“Let’s just say certain sponsors have been difficult. Diplomacy was never my strong suit.”

Tom went to the apartment door and let himself out. “Thanks for the whiskey, and your time.”

“Likewise. It has been most enlightening.” Bayard pushed the door shut, and Tom heard the lock click in place. So much for his interview with the director.

He turned and quickly went downstairs. For a moment he stood in the lobby, just listening. “What’s your secret?” he whispered to the shadows, but the building was still and silent, with nothing to tell him.

Tom pushed the front door open and stepped out into the cold. He figured he must have missed Claire while he was in the green room listening to Drew go on and on or upstairs playing at philosophy with Bayard. Most likely she’d got tired of waiting on him and gone home. Just to make sure, though, he straddled the bike, hung his helmet over the handlebars, and lit a cigarette. He waited and smoked, to see if she’d catch up with him after all. By the time he’d smoked the cigarette down to the filter, he felt annoyed with himself for wasting time and cranked the engine. The Harley roared to life and he backed out of the alcove. With one last look up at the darkened windows of the Janus, he goosed the throttle and tore down the street.

Thursday night, continued

The theater was tomb-still. A few lobby lights were on, but the bulbs in the ceiling fixture and over the stairwell landing were low wattage, so their light was dim and scattered, penetrating the shadows as effectively as a penlight through dense fog.

Claire chewed her lip. Somehow she’d missed Tom. She’d intended to meet him in front of the building, but it hadn’t worked out. It didn’t seem like she’d spent that much time in the parking lot with Jackie—her mood plummeted at the mere thought of that farewell scene—but by the time she’d come back to look for her keys, his motorcycle was gone. The lobby was cold and Claire held her arms tightly across her body, shivering in little spasms. She headed for the stairs. Hating to go up there, but knowing she had to, produced a sensation of slow motion where movement was dreamlike, as in those pre-waking moments when consciousness hovers just out of reach.

She got to the landing and walked as softly as possible to the ballet rehearsal hall. The door was unlocked so she slipped inside. It was empty and dark, although the mirrored panels across the room reflected streetlights outside, producing a disquieting sense of watery movement along the walls. Claire tried to shake off the feeling of tense awareness that pervaded the room as she came all the way in. She scanned the floor and quickly spotted her keys, right where she’d left them. The tall windows watched her like so many pairs of eyes. She stood perfectly still, her breathing shallow, listening for sounds of anyone moving around. Pocketing her keys, she hurried out and down the stairs, heart thudding against her ribcage. Then she heard a door opening and closing on the second floor, followed by footsteps coming toward the stairs.

Crouching in the shadows, she pressed herself against the wall beside the stairwell. This time Bayard seemed in no hurry as he came down, sauntered across the darkened lobby to the street doors, and locked them. Then he checked his key ring, found another key, unlocked the basement and went in, leaving the door open behind him. And why not? He was the only one in the building, as far as he knew. Claire waited, breathless, to see how long it took him to do whatever it was he did down there and come out again. Minutes slipped by, and then more minutes, until she was certain she’d been hiding for at least half an hour. Had he gone out a back door? The worst part was that now she was locked in, which meant the only way she was going to get home was to find him and ask to be let out. The thought of her mother at home, panicking because Clair was late, pushed her into action.

She crossed the lobby and stopped at the head of the narrow basement stairs. Bayard had switched on a light at the bottom, and its grime-encrusted bulb flickered as if it was not seated firmly in the socket, and every creak and sigh running through the walls and floors of the building threatened to short the tenuous connection. Peering down, she could see green-painted concrete walls, their pitted surface flanking steps that pitched steeply for maybe a dozen narrow wooden risers, then jogged right and went down a few more.

Claire descended step by step, heart jumping out of her chest, hand outstretched against the wall to steady her balance. The air in the cramped stairwell was stale and left an unpleasant taste on her tongue. Reaching the bottom step, she expected to find Bayard but saw no one. She hesitated, breathing and listening.

“Hello?” Her voice fell softly on the deadened air. The cavernous space of the basement stretched away from her, its walls lined with painted flats, piles of used lumber, broken furniture, and storage crates stacked one on top of another. Cobweb-encrusted shadows filled its corners, while square concrete pillars transected the room at regular intervals in stark relief from the bare bulb.

Claire stepped onto the basement floor, then walked out a few steps, her Reeboks squelching over the tiles. Holding her breath, she heard nothing but the pounding of her own heart. Silent seconds passed, as she fought the urge to run back up the stairs. Then she spotted ascending steps barely visible across the basement. They were set in the far wall, leading up to a metal door. Guessing it must open into the alley behind the building, Claire could only assume Bayard had exited that way. If the door could be opened from the inside, she would be free with quick access to the parking lot.

At that precise moment, a tower of filing boxes some distance away toppled with a heart-stopping crash, spilling papers and file folders in a jumble over the floor. Claire fled halfway up the stairs, and then dared to look back. The skitter of feet and a flash of a skinny naked tail gave the culprit away.

“Fuck…rat...” She could barely catch her breath her heart was pounding so hard. “Get. A. Grip.” She headed back down.

The far door was a long way across the basement and deep in shadow, but it really was her only option at this point. She stepped down onto the tiled floor again, resolute.

That was when the stench hit her. A rotten smell, but with a nauseous, sweet bite to it. Claire gagged and clamped her hand over her mouth. The last thing she wanted to do was throw up in the grubby basement of the Janus Theatre. Trying not to breathe in, she wiped sweat from her face and held her nose. The fetid odor was worse near the stairs…a dead rat, or something worse?

It was making her sick to the point of passing out, which didn’t make sense, given her occupation. She was quite used to the smell of blood, but this was something different. Pulse roaring in her ears, her vision narrowed to pinpoints and she fell with arms splayed out, catching at anything to break the fall. Her head struck the tiles and she half-bounced, half-slid with her shoulders wedged into a narrow crawlspace under the steps. Her open palms hit the row of foundation stones mortared in crumbling concrete, scraping the skin of her palms. Gasping, Claire lay still, her senses on overload. The stone closest to her face was eroded and irregular, unlike the others, which were finished and square. Its rough surface oozed something darker than the shadows. She touched it with trembling fingers, and then scrambled onto her hands and knees, leaving bloody prints.

“Shit…!” Claire’s fingers began to pulse with tiny electric shocks that flickered around her wrists and then went racing up her forearms. She clung to consciousness just long enough to note that both arms had gone numb to the elbow. Points of light whirled in front of her eyes, slowly coalescing into a gaunt, vaguely female face with wild, tangled hair. A screech split her eardrums as her field of vision went bright red and then black.

For one marrow-freezing second, she lay on the basement floor unable to breathe, but with the next gasp a warm, damp breeze blew over her face. Head aching and vomit threatening in her throat, Claire waited agonizing seconds with eyes clamped shut for the world to stop doing its tilt-a-whirl. Slowly the nausea retreated and she pushed up on one elbow, opening her stunned eyes. Impossibly, she found herself sprawled on a mud bank, the gloom of an overcast sunset settling over the tidal flats of a wide river. The stench still filled her sinuses, but it had shifted to a fishy, raw-sewage smell—the gag-inducing scent of blood had disappeared along with the Janus Theatre.

Claire groaned and tried to sit up. Her head ached beyond belief and even the faint light stabbed at her eyes. Likely a mild concussion. And possibly something worse; why the hell did the theater basement look, and smell, like the world’s worst polluted river? She closed her eyes and sat perfectly still, trying to make the pain subside. She’d never experienced a shock-induced hallucination before and wondered how long it would take to wear off. None of the clinical definitions and descriptions of head injury delusions she’d read gave any indication this kind of tactile sensory overload was possible.

She opened her eyes again and was dismayed to see the foul-smelling riverbank had not disappeared. She stared, disbelieving, at the stagnant water lapping at low tide along its banks. On the near side, small boats lying on their sides clustered like clam shells on the mudflats. A pair of swans drifted downstream, pale and incongruous. A man’s voice called to a boatman out on the water, and then Claire saw with a shock the dark outline of a city sprawling along the opposite bank and up onto the higher ground. As darkness began to fall, she saw soft lights sprinkled all over the hillside: candles in the windows of narrow houses, torches bobbing along the bankside road. Claire caught her breath—torches?

She rubbed her eyes, her dazed brain unable to account for what she saw. Even more disturbing, it looked vaguely familiar in a second-hand way, as if she’d seen it in a photo or something. Staring across the water, it came to her—the scene was on the front cover of the Shakespeare anthology Addie had loaned her. Impossibly, she was staring at the live version of the Thames, as seen from the Elizabethan theater district of Southwark. Shivering to her very core, Claire recognized the stinking, teeming body of sixteenth-century London hulking across the river like a great scabrous beast.

Dumbfounded, she couldn’t stop shaking. She put her hands to her face, then yanked them away. Her fingers and the creases of her palms were caked with blood. Stifling a retch, she wiped them on her sweat pants, but the stains wouldn’t come off. Staring at the evidence, she tried to remember how it got there. She hadn’t scraped her hands that badly on the stones under the stairs. In forcing her mind back to the blackout moment, she failed to see the two men struggling along the muck of the strand until they were too close to avoid notice. They dragged something heavy between them—as they drew closer, she saw it was a body.

She watched, frozen in terror, as the men hauled the body to the water’s edge and dropped it with a loud slosh face-down in the shallows. Their guttural voices echoed across the slow-moving current in accents so thick Claire barely recognized it as English.

“…give ‘is bloody plague germs to the fishes.”

“…was you as drunk after ‘im last—be catchin it yerself next off—”

“Whisht!” The first speaker slapped his hand across his companion’s chops and stood looking at Claire like a pointer that had just flushed a quail from a hedgerow.