Prospero in Hell (23 page)

Erasmus snorted. “As if such as she would come to the likes of you! You read the name in one of Father’s books, didn’t you?
Tsk tsk
. Father would be so ashamed, his sterling Miranda reduced to a common snoop.”

“Enough of this.” I was becoming annoyed in spite of my resolution not to allow Erasmus to disturb me. “I’ve come regarding the matters I spoke of in my letter.”

“Your letter?” Erasmus asked. “Oh yes, the one I threw on the fire without reading. I do so tire of your eternal whining.”

“You… you threw it…” I sputtered. “But Erasmus! Our lives are at stake!”

“Our lives?” My brother clicked his fingers. “Oh, that’s right! I did hear something about you being all a dither over some message meant for me.”

“Meant for you?” I sat down in one of the large overstuffed chairs his overly eager students had recently occupied. The seat was still warm. “How do you mean?”

“Something about a message glimpsed in phoenix-light? Phoenix-script is the method Father and I normally use to communicate,” Erasmus leaned forward as he spoke and gazed mockingly through the strands of his dark hair. “That means the message was meant for me.”

I drew back, more shaken than I wanted to admit. Had Father’s mysterious letter not been addressed to me? No, I now recalled that the greeting had merely read: “My Child.” All this time—during which I had been putting
aside urgent work in order to carry out Father’s wish that my siblings be warned of the dangers to their staffs from the Three Shadowed Ones—had I been dutifully carrying out an order not even intended for me? Perhaps Theo was right, and I
was
under a spell!

And how disconcerting to discover Father and Erasmus had a means of communicating of which I had been unaware. Why had Father not shared this secret with me?

“Did you receive the message, too?” I asked Erasmus.

He nodded, still smiling.

Chagrin turned to anger. “Then, why didn’t
you
warn
me
? You knew where I was. Why didn’t you warn Mephisto or Theo?”

“Father is always firing off dramatic messages, Dear Sister, you know that,” Erasmus replied. He flipped open the book of poetry and glanced down at it, no longer bothering to look my way. “I wouldn’t worry your frosty little head about it.”

Outside the window, students were building a snowman on the lawn. I watched them work as I contemplated this latest revelation. Erasmus was usually one of the sharper members of the family, but he had made a grave error if he had read Father’s message and ignored it. I could not help feeling the tiniest smidgeon of smugness.

“Where do you believe Father is now?” I asked.

“Off gallivanting somewhere, enjoying his retirement,” Erasmus replied airily. “Really, Miranda, for someone of your advanced years, you are shockingly gullible.”

“Father is in Hell!” Theo stood in the library door, huffing from the exertion of the stairs. The parlor maid peeked meekly from behind him.

“Wonders upon wonders! You pried the Old Man off his farm!” Erasmus crowed, a grin of delight spreading across his face.

“Watch your tongue, Young Whippersnapper! I’ve always been older than you,” Theo stalked into the room, leaving the maid hovering timidly in the hallway. My brothers met and embraced. Both were smiling.

“That will be all, Lucinda,” Erasmus murmured. The maid bowed her head and hurried away. “Brother Theo, Sister Miranda, to wha…” His voice suddenly rose oddly. “Where did you say Father was?”

“Father is in Hell, Erasmus,” I said. “He tried to resurrect Gregor and got sucked down through the gate he created. While this gate was open, several things escaped, including our old enemies, the Three Shadowed Ones. Now they are hunting down the family and trying to steal our staffs.”

“High Holy Heaven!” Erasmus paused, thunderstruck. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“Is Father alive?”

“Yes.”

“Well… we’d better rescue him!” Erasmus replied. Despite his spirited rejoinder, he seemed stunned.

“There’s more, Erasmus,” Theo said.

“It gets worse?” he asked sadly.

“Yes, in fact, that’s just the beginning,” Theo replied.

“Ah, life. It always hits you just when it seems to be at its rosiest. Happiness never lasts. All is fleeting.” He had retreated again behind his mask of studied indifference. Leaning against the great oak desk again, he quoted from William Dunbar’s “Lament for the Makers.”

Death comes unto all estates,

Princes, prelates, and potentates,

Both rich and poor of all degree:

Timor mortis conturbat me

Hearing Erasmus’s recitation brought back a memory that was not truthfully mine, yet I had heard tell of it so often that I could recall the scene as vividly as if I had witnessed it myself. My brothers seldom took their magic to human wars, preferring to save sorcery and enchantment for battles against the supernatural. Upon occasion, however, something would snap, and one of them would turn the dire power of his enchanted staff against men.

The Battle of Vimeiro, the first battle of the Peninsular Wars against Napoleon, was led by the general who would later, upon being made a duke, be known as Wellington. It was a hot humid August day on the hillsides of Portugal. The British right flank was proceeding in an orderly fashion, but the left flank was in imminent danger of losing the hill and, more importantly, the six precious cannons positioned upon it. There was always a shortage of guns and gunners during the wars against Napoleon, and it did not help that our brother Titus was among the gunners manning the nine-pounder.

Erasmus and Theophrastus marched that day with the 43rd Foot, a rifle regiment known as the Royal Green Jackets that was part of the force defending the hill. Mephisto and Gregor were in the distance, on horseback
with the 20th Light Dragoons. Theo, who was an excellent shot, often joined the riflemen, but I do not know why Erasmus had joined the infantry rather than the cavalry for this campaign. Perhaps the name, the “Royal Green Jackets,” appealed to his aesthetic sense. He had undertaken other dangerous duties for equally frivolous reasons.

The French grenadiers swept up the hill, pushing the Royal Green Jackets before them. Suddenly, the forward edge of the living blue wave vanished in a cloud of dust. A warm puff of breeze blew the dust away, leaving a circle of dead grass, in the midst of which stood my brother Erasmus.

He wore his dark green jacket, and his lank black hair hung before his eyes. His upraised right hand was covered in a gauntlet of shimmering silver-white. Within this Urim-gauntleted hand, he held aloft the
Staff of Decay,
which spun and hummed in his grasp, rotating too quickly for the human eye to see, so that it appeared as a long gray blur.

Erasmus stood motionless, heedless of the deafening cracks of firing muskets and the choking smell of gunpowder and blood. A slight mocking smile played about his lips, which moved, though no words could be heard above the din.

Without any change in his mocking expression, he advanced down the hill, waving the gray blur of his terrible staff before him. He came forward steadily, a relentless, irresistible force. The blue-coated grenadiers who stood their ground grew older before the eyes of their comrades, aging ten years, then forty, then sixty. Their flesh shriveled upon their limbs, until they were as gaunt and dry as mummies. Then they had flesh no more. Their dried horrified eyes looked out from bare skulls, until even their bones dissolved into dust and were blown away by the Mediterranean breeze.

Some tried to fire their weapons, but the wood of the muskets crumbled in their age-spotted hands, the metal parts falling to the ground in pieces. Terrified, the grenadiers began drawing back. Those who had encountered Erasmus’s scourge without perishing stumbled with the tiny halting steps of the aged or crawled, dragging their weakened, dilapidated bodies.

As terror spread and weapons were discarded, an unnatural pall fell over the hill. In the sudden stillness, Erasmus’s words could be heard ringing out across the silent battlefield.

He takes the knights into the field

Enarmed under helm and shield;

Victor he is at all melee:

Timor mortis conturbat me

He takes the champion in the stour,

The captain closed in the tower,

The lady in bower full of beauty:

Timor mortis conturbat me

From behind the retreating grenadiers, a brave French soldier broke through the ranks and charged up the hill, shouting in his native tongue, “English devil! I will send you back to Hell!” Still outside the range of Erasmus’s devastating effect, he fired his pistol directly at my brother’s face. Titus, who watched from his position beside the guns at the top of the hill, told me his heart stopped, for he was certain that bullet carried Erasmus’s death.

Erasmus’s smile never faltered. He never even looked up. He merely waved his arm, and the bullet dissolved into dust. Another step forward, another stanza, and another pass of the staff, and the brave Frenchman gaped in horror as his pistol rusted away and his outstretched arm withered to nothingness, moments before he followed them to oblivion.

Throughout all this, Erasmus’s recitation never faltered:

He spares no lord for his puissance,

Nor clerk for his intelligence;

His awful stroke may no man flee:

Timor mortis conturbat me

The British lost seven hundred twenty men at Vimeiro. The French lost over two thousand, including several hundred soldiers who gave themselves up, preferring to become captives rather than face old age or worse. They fled in droves, allowing the British to capture thirteen of the twenty-three French cannons. The
Orbis Suleimani
have cleaned up the official records, of course, omitting any mention of my brother. Those few unfortunate souls that tottered away from their direct encounter with the
Staff of Decay
met their death soon after upon the blades of
Orbis Suleimani
assassins. Soon, no evidence of Erasmus’s involvement remained.

As I listened to Erasmus recite the same poem now, I pictured how he must have appeared to the French grenadiers who lost their lives to his magic at Vimeiro, and I shivered: not a pleasant man, my brother Erasmus.

When Erasmus finally fell silent, Theo asked gruffly, “Very well and good, but what about Father?”

Erasmus rose and smiled his ironic, mocking smile. “I am a poor host, am I not? You probably have not even been offered refreshments. So there is worse news to come, is there? Why don’t you both come with me, and I will have Lucinda bring us drinks while we wait for Cornelius. Misery loves company. Why not share the wealth with him as well?”

“Is he here?” I asked.

“He arrived yesterday.”

After sending his maid for refreshments, Erasmus led us to a drawing room on the ground floor. African masks of woven, dyed straw and brightly painted clay hung upon the walls, along with a full Lakota Indian headdress and an Aztec fan of bright red and blue parrot feathers. In keeping with Erasmus’s sense of humor, amidst these primitive masks and fans, there hung a dainty lady’s hat adorned with the blue-gray feathers of the extinct passenger pigeon.

Lucinda brought us mango juice and slices of quince poached in a cardamom syrup, not what I would have served guests on the thirty-first of December, but perhaps young coeds who came to hear poetry expected exotic desserts. The drinks were served in tall fluted cups of cranberry glass—a favorite of Erasmus’s because it gets its deep red color from adding trace amounts of gold, his favorite metal, to the molten glass. Cranberry glass is beautiful, but through it, the yellow-orange juice looked like blood.

I sipped my mango nectar and stared across the snowy lawns. In the distance, skaters risked their lives upon the frozen waters of the Charles River. Somewhere beyond lay the city of Boston. It had been a long time since I had been to Boston, longer still since I had visited any of the cities of my childhood.

What was Milan like today? How had it weathered the encroachment of this modern world? Would I find it hostile and altered, like coming upon a stranger where a loved one should have been? Or, had it improved with age, the changes muting its faults and preserving its virtues?

My family fell into the second category—with a few exceptions, such as Ulysses. While time had taken its toll, the passing centuries had also brought a maturity to my brothers they had lacked in earlier eras. A month ago, I would have thought it impossible that we would ever again join willingly together to accomplish something—even something as grim as confronting Ulysses over
the death of our brother Gregor. While my youngest brother’s treachery still shocked me, he was centuries younger than the rest of us and had not lived through the many experiences that had forged us into family. Sitting in Erasmus’s drawing room, the sunlight falling through the tall windows and onto my face, I felt, to my surprise, unexpectedly charitable toward my younger siblings. Perhaps I had been too hard on them.