Dream Guy (18 page)

Then the half-mad cook—for this, Joe gathered, was his position—clapped his hands, said “Well, it will have to do, but if he decides that it’s not good enough, my cleaver is ready to remove fingers from hands and hands from wrists. Be prepared, you lumpen miscreants!” The servants filed out, and the loathsome walrus turned one last time to examine the table, giving a sigh of satisfaction and raising to his mouth a marzipan mouse that he’d palmed in his inspection.

In a sudden wave of panic, Joe realized that he had become the marzipan mouse. He felt himself being swung upward by a tail then he was dangling, swaying above a huge red cavity, hot as a furnace but reeking of garlic and rancid meat. The hand pinching at his tail lowered, and Joe tried to scrabble away from the gaping maw, but he was trapped in an almond-paste body and he could now feel the cook’s hot breath rising up like sulfurous fumes from a volcano.

He jerked himself awake. If he had been eaten, would he now be dead? Joe had no wish to put it to the test. Dying had always seemed a remote prospect, but just then, it had been imminent. He would have been mashed, crunched and macerated, before descending into a foul crucible of gastric juices. Joe’s stomach writhed and twisted. He felt as though knitting needles were using his guts for yarn. He leaped out of bed and raced for the sink, reaching it only just in time.

Afterward, he brushed his teeth. As he returned to bed, he drew his arm across his forehead, and it was slick with sweat. He glanced at his clock—ten-thirty.

When he opened his eyes again, his stomach heaved and plummeted because he was back at the doorway to the great dining hall. He checked it out more closely. It seemed identical. The same rich reds, the same abundance of food and furnishings, glass, gilt and silverware, identical tapestries, except they weren’t quite identical. This time the bucolic rural scenes had been skewed and leering beasts now slavered at the sight of the milkmaid and her goat. Hounds were now ripping the hare to shreds. The shepherd was aged and withered. The dancers were now skeletons. He glanced up to check the Olympians above. Now Actaeon was being flayed by his hounds, and Demeter had her hands up to her face, her mouth a dark cavern as she watched Hades carrying Persephone down to his underworld as their siblings and cousins watched, impassive onlookers.

This time, he reached forward and plucked an apricot from the closest fruit-stand. The faint racket of approaching feet sounded the same as before, but this time, when the door opened, the men behind it stopped short and stared at Joe. He stood, immobile, juice trickling down his chin. Before he could run, two men came forward. One plucked the apricot from his petrified fingers, the other pinioned his arms. Then they man-handled him back through the doors. Joe remembered the poor boy whose ear had nearly been twisted off, and his own ear began to tingle in sympathy.

The men stopped before the quivering belly of the huge chef. This time, his features were inverted in mirth, his rheumy eyes framed by heavy blond eyelashes, his moustache waxed into a curved bow, his mouth a scimitar of delight below, framed by dimples and laughter lines.

“You mischievous manikin, what imp has set you on to sample our wares? Are the apricots ripe?”

Joe glanced around the circle of men watching their exchange, expectant and amused at the sport to be had. He nodded. The apricots were ripe.

“Excellent! Are you one of his lordship’s guests come early to the table? Are you faint with hunger? Come to the kitchen. There’s plenty to sate you there.”

Joe was hustled down to the kitchen where he was forcibly seated in the middle of a bench at a long table, and, surrounded by the serving men and sous-chefs, was obliged to taste sauces and savories, sweetmeats and specialties, his every nod or grimace recorded and noted by the company. Although all were welcoming and friendly, he felt uncomfortable, reminding Joe of a visit to his mother’s aunt after lunch and when they were obliged to eat a complete high tea with Mum looking daggers whenever anyone tried to avoid another bite.

Then he was rushed back upstairs, once again prevented from speaking by the hurry and bustle of the men themselves. There seemed to be no women in the place at all, which struck him as odd. Then he was propelled so fast along the corridors and up the stairways of the house that he lost all sense of direction. Someone opened a door and popped him into a room. A panicked manservant nervously paced the parquet floor. Joe’s gray pajama bottoms and T-shirt were swept off him, and he was prodded and prinked into hose, a cambric shirt, a padded jerkin heavily embroidered with gold thread and seed pearls, matching sleeves and three-quarter length drawers and delicate leather shoes that reminded Joe of the Clark’s sandals his mother used to make him wear as a small boy, with a strap across his foot and a clanking buckle. The valet took a comb and wrenched it through Joe’s thicket of dark hair, yanking and hauling at the knots.

At last, he was chivvied back down the stairs, down corridors, round corners until he found himself at the head of a massive staircase of white marble, gray-veined and chill as the whisper of angels.

There was no time to listen to whispered warnings that bombarded him as he stood there, numerous and dry as leaves falling from autumn trees. He shook his head to dispel the noise and ran lightly down the shallow, commanding steps that curved around into a vaulted hallway. Flambeaux sat in angled sconces, leading the eye down a parquet gallery and to the dining hall at its end. There was only one direction to follow, and Joe took it.

This time when he stopped at the doorway of the great room, it was because the place was heaving with guests. Every one of the hundred or so seats was full, and the guests were deep in their cups and at their platters. And what guests, for everyone was only half human. He saw hydra-headed women and centaurs, sphinxes, lupine figures with tawny eyes and paws, snake-haired gorgons, men with pigs’ snouts and trotters, a minotaur whose weighty neck and head threatened to send him toppling backward when he poured the contents of a goblet down his throat, a fellow as shaggy as a bear with eyes quite as small and mean, and, intermittently, sheep-like creatures, their fleeces whiter than winter ice, their little hooves nervously tittuping against their plates and glasses as they registered the hungry stares of their fellow diners, who seemed ready enough to bare their fangs and rend their ovine neighbors. All of them were grabbing at the array of foods before them, cramming it into their mouths, slobbering and belching and rising up to haul before them another loaded trencher of the glorious delicacies.

A soft voice insinuated itself into Joe’s horrified consciousness.

“Quite grotesque, don’t you think? But so very entertaining.”

Joe twisted around to see who was speaking to him. He looked up, only a short distance, and into the eyes of the man he knew as Dr. Dolon.

Chapter Fifteen

Eidolon

Instead of the doctor’s coat, chinos and a pale-blue shirt, Dolon now wore clothes even more dazzling than Joe’s. His starched ruff was four or five inches deep. His white satin doublet was trellised with black velvet and silver silk. He wore white silk hose and his puffed drawers were in the same material as his doublet, but in a slightly different pattern. On his fingers gleamed rings rich with gems and in his left ear dangled a huge and creamy pearl. His dark hair was swept back into artfully unruly curls, and this time, he sported a tailored moustache and beard tapering to a fine point.

“Now that we finally meet, perhaps we should introduce ourselves properly,” suggested the doctor. “I am Eidolon.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Joe, holding out a hand for Eidolon to shake. It was ignored. “Is this your home?”

“I suppose so. For the moment, until I tire of it.”

Around them, the sounds of the feast continued—the buzz of conversation, the gulping and chewing and delighted murmurings, the clink and chink of glass, knives and silver. Never had Joe seen quite such single-minded and sustained consumption. It entirely dispelled any appetite he might have had, but Eidolon led him to the far end of the table where two seats awaited them. At once, menservants were at their elbows, pouring wine, selecting succulent morsels from five or six of the dishes closest to them. Joe half expected someone to come and pop the food into his mouth.

“So, young man, what is your name?”

“I’m just a friend of Silas’s. Your patient.”

“Yes, that unfortunate boy. You haven’t touched your glass. Surely you’d like to sample the wine? It’s an excellent Burgundy.”

“Surely you should be at the hospital?”

“But I am, just as you are in your bed. At least, I assume you are in your bed.” Eidolon sat back in his chair, fingering a grape in one hand and the stem of his glass in the other. Joe remembered everything his mother had told him about stranger danger, everything his father had said about never giving anyone too much information—parental hang-ups he’d taken for granted and at times considered a touch paranoid, but not now.

“Probably.” He tried another question. “Why were you nicking things at that club?”

“To see if I could get away with it. Why were you there?”

“Because Silas wanted to go. What were you doing at the villa?”

“I’m not sure. It was just the place I was taken. You and your friends…”

The hubbub of the feast around them made it hard to concentrate, but Joe knew he had to remain on guard. There was something about that soft, penetrating voice, the sweep of the eyebrows and the gleam of the hazel eyes that generated fear rather than confidence. What Joe could not work out was why he had been invisible the first time he had entered this scene, but now he was only too visible and vulnerable. He looked away from Eidolon and around the room again. The edges of the floor and the ceiling seemed to be fraying and warping, as if he were seeing the place through a distorting lens. Perhaps, if he chose, he could wrench himself out of here, much as he had escaped from the chef’s ravenous appetite for sugared mice.

“You’re a very interesting individual.” Eidolon continued his close observation of Joe, then took a sip of wine. “You’re the first person to cross into my world. Normally, people are quite oblivious to me. But we’ve met each other three times now, and I don’t suppose that is an accident. How do we keep getting tangled up?” He replaced his goblet on the tablecloth daintily.

“Chance.”

“I don’t think so.” He finally popped the grape he had been fiddling with into his mouth. “Some force is arranging for this to happen.”

“Is this your dream or mine?” asked Joe.

“Don’t you know?”

This just irritated Joe. Eidolon reminded him of the more sarcastic teachers at school, the ones who loved to condescend to their students and used any opportunity to massage their own egos with smart remarks. He tried to remember how he’d escaped from Perkin. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d done it, but he’d had to somehow burst out of the boundaries of the mouse body and back into his own. It had hurt. Now he wasn’t present in any other body, and it would probably hurt even more, but that seemed preferable to exchanging inanities with this Eidolon person, who interrupted his thoughts as if Joe had spoken aloud.

“It’s no good. You’ll have to meet a challenge to escape this place now.”

That sounded ominous—ominous and unpleasant. “What sort of a challenge?”

Eidolon smiled then steepled his fingers, tapping his pursed lips. He tilted his head first to one side then to the other as he pondered how best to trap Joe.

“I don’t see that I have to present you with any challenge for the time being. I don’t believe you can leave here until you’ve met the challenge, so if I delay setting it, you can’t go anywhere, which suits me very well.”

“Why?”

“I want the stuff Silas took. I want it all back. He ruined a little project of mine I’d been nursing along. A touch inconvenient. I’m sure you understand.”

“Why don’t you ask me to get the drugs back? That could be my challenge. If I fail, I have to return here whenever you want.”

Eidolon considered Joe’s proposal then shook his head. “No, that won’t do. It’s a neat enough idea, but I can retrieve my goods without your participation, which means I can dispose of you whenever I please. Because”—and here Eidolon bared his teeth, which were neat and square and startlingly white for some sixteenth century courtier—“I am going to dispose of you. What with my misplaced goods and my tiresome arrest the other night, you’ve wasted quite a bit of my time. I can’t allow that to continue.”

The valet appeared at Joe’s elbow, and Eidolon nodded.

The servant led Joe back to the room where he had been dressed, helped him unlace himself out of the elaborate clothing he wore then bowed and locked him in.

Questions plagued Joe. He had never before slept in a dream. If he had a dream within a dream, would it come true? If he dreamed about being home, could he get himself home? Could he call in on Karabashi and see if the Turk had discovered any useful information? Could he get a message to Nell? Had Smokey woken up? Was Eidolon really a doctor at the hospital?

He reflected on the conversation with his manicured host—or jailer. He hoped that he’d concealed his name. It seemed atavistic, but vital, to withhold his identity from the stranger. Anyway, what sort of a name was Eidolon?

At least he’d managed not to eat or drink anything, which surprised Joe, because he was in a semi-perpetual state of starvation. But this evening, neither thirst nor hunger assailed him. Perhaps that was just another aspect of being in a dream, except that he recalled that in Sardinia he had eaten quite happily. The inconsistencies were beginning to trouble him, especially since both Nell and Karabashi thought that identifying consistencies was so important.

He paced. When the valet had left, Joe had found his own pajamas, whipped off the huge white nightshirt the valet had placed over his head and put his own things on. He gazed out of the window but could make out very little of his surroundings. He had been left with a candle fizzling in its stand. He didn’t like the look of the heavy wooden bed with its richly embroidered hangings. It looked dusty and uncomfortable. Although it was tall and imposing, he wasn’t convinced that he’d actually fit in it, but there was no alternative. He had to lie diagonally because, although it was as wide as a standard double bed, it was nowhere near as long. The sheets were clean but clammy. He remembered reading somewhere that in the sixteenth century, most people shared their beds and their fleas and lice, so supposedly, he was privileged, but he would almost have welcomed being bitten if it meant he had company.