Masque of the Red Death

  He pulls me close, but instead of embracing me, he whispers, “I’ve worked in the Debauchery Club for a long time. I know things, people. Maybe I could help you. It would be better than getting involved further with them.”

  I shake my head. I can’t let him risk himself. He’s the only one looking out for Henry and Elise. I hug both children.

  “Be good,” I say. “Listen to your brother.”

  They nod.

  “You’ll be safer.” I say it more to convince myself than anything else. Will picks up Henry and takes Elise by the hand.

  “And I thought he was irresistible before,” April says in a dreamy voice. We watch their retreating backs, and I realize that I’m holding my breath.

  They’ve left Henry’s ball. I place it carefully on the floor of the steam carriage, which is littered with pamphlets. I pick one up.

  “It says the water in the lower city is poisoned.”

  “Another attempt to frighten people,” Elliott says. “Malcontent.”

  Smoke from the burning building stings my eyes. I steady Henry’s rubber ball with my foot. The world seemed safer yesterday. Maybe not for me or my family, but for everyone else.

  The guards climb into the carriage, beaming at Elliott like he’s the greatest hero on earth. We ride in silence for several miles.

  I start to ask about the Red Death, just as April speaks.

  “I can’t believe that you went home with Will,” she says, laughing. “Every female member of the club has been trying for him. And it was wasted on you, wasn’t it? Or did you break your vow?”

  “I didn’t…” I begin, and then trail off. She’s looking from me to Elliott expectantly, and I realize that she’s trying to reassure him. She thinks he cares what I did or didn’t do with Will.

  “Of course you didn’t—”

  “Shut up, April,” Elliott says. Maybe he does care.

  Now he’s annoyed her, so she teases him. “Did you see the way they were…”

  Elliott makes an angry gesture.

  “It was nothing,” I say.

  “Nothing? You were with him for two nights.”

  “Henry was sick.”

  I picture the faces of the children, innocent with sleep, but then I push the image away. Mother is a prisoner and Father is in hiding. Elliott’s right. It’s dangerous to care about too many people.

  “Araby is good at getting men to sleep beside her without anything … happening,” Elliott says grimly, surveying the city.

  His voice is strained, and there is a crease in his forehead that I never noticed before.

  “You weren’t hurt in the fight?” I ask.

  “Of course not.”

  We pass building after building. Homes with quilts and blankets covering the windows. I’m in pain too.

  We’re both looking out over the city, trying not to feel anything.

  “I didn’t know you could fight with a sword like that,” I say, to break the silence. In the distance I can see another building blazing.

  He makes a dismissive gesture. “They were untrained, clumsy.”

  “When we lived in the palace he used to challenge the guards to fight him,” April says. “Until the prince made him stop because he had killed too many.”

  “That’s not the way I remember it,” Elliott says softly.

  One of the guards frowns. Elliott shakes his head, and the guard looks away, flushing.

  It is starting to drizzle. I pull Will’s coat closer around me, hoping he won’t be cold without it. I am ridiculously pleased to have something of his.

  We’ve pulled up to a crossroad, and I realize that it’s the same one where I first saw dark-cloaked men slipping in and out of the shadows. No cart blocks our path this time. There is no young mother, giving up her infant. Instead April ignores the cold wind and Elliott does his best to shelter me from it.

  The canvas roof of the young woman’s building has been torn back, exposing the grim living quarters inside.

  I realize then that we are not going home. We’re going to the Debauchery Club. The thought of going into our empty apartment horrifies me, but Will warned me not to go to the club. I should tell them. But for some reason I don’t.

  When we get within a block of the club, Elliott leans over and says to April, “This is where we separate. You take the guards, as we discussed earlier.”

  April wants to say no. I can see it in the tilt of her head. But Elliott’s voice is plaintive. For Elliott, this is close to begging.

  We climb out of the carriage, and April gives us one long look before hurrying to the back entrance of the club. Elliott’s steam carriage is parked at the end of the alley.

  “You’ll have to go with my sister,” he tells the guard. “She needs your protection. We will rejoin you in a few hours.”

  The guards who were with us in the carriage nod and turn away, but two others come out of the Debauchery Club. I recognize one of them; he was watching my father.

  “Loyal to the prince,” Elliott mutters.

  “Sir, you can’t—,” the guard begins.

  But Elliott has turned away. He hands me into his carriage, cursing because the engine is cold, and when he tries to start it, the motor makes a strange grating sound.

  Three guards have gathered on the sidewalk now.

  “Sir, you should come with us,” one of them begins. More are approaching. Two of them have unslung their muskets.

  “Elliott, they’re going to shoot us!”

  “No, they aren’t.” Above his mask, his blue eyes are sparkling. He’s enjoying himself.

  He hits the side of the steam carriage with his fist, and the engine comes to life with a loud roar.

  Elliott’s soldiers appear to be arguing with the prince’s men. Elliott smiles. One of the guards who was with us in April’s steam carriage hits the man who was trying to stop us. And then we turn a corner, and they are all out of sight.

  “What will your uncle do to my mother?” I ask.

  “It depends on your father. No matter what happens, I don’t think my uncle will kill her.”

  “You don’t think he will kill her,” I say flatly. “She has to live, Elliott. I owe her a lifetime of apologies.”

  “Sometimes I think that’s all we owe our parents.” Elliott adjusts his driving goggles. “I didn’t crawl out from behind the curtain when my father was murdered. If I’d done so, maybe I could have bought him some time; he could have fought back.

  “If he had lived, my mother wouldn’t be a paranoid wreck, and maybe April wouldn’t be so self-destructive. But I can’t even tell my mother that I’m sorry for being a coward. If I say one word about it, that would be treason.

  “My mother is so scared of the prince that there is a chance she would turn me in. Wouldn’t that be amusing, if my own mother betrayed me? For trying to apologize?”

  “But you’ve thought of apologizing.”

  “Of course. Haven’t you?”

  I hadn’t, not before two days ago.

  Maybe Elliott is a better person than me.

  “My uncle doesn’t understand people who can make things. All he knows how to do is destroy. Your mother makes silence into music. He is fascinated by that.”

  I don’t know how to respond to this observation, so I stare out at the city.

  Something is burning on the sidewalk. Usually I’d assume that such a fire was an attempt to generate warmth. But today it might just be a random act of destruction.

  “We’ve always wondered why Uncle Prospero let your mother go. You had a brother, right?”

  How can he not know this thing that defines me?

  “We were twins.”

  Elliott can’t comprehend what this means, but he has the decency to say, “I’m sorry.”

  I fight back tears. Losing Finn never stops hurting.

  “You are sure he’s dead?” Elliott asks.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure he’s not a captive?” When I shake my head
, he continues, “Your father has held the prince at bay for years. But all of a sudden, the prince has decided that he doesn’t care. Either he no longer fears your father, or there is something he fears more.”

  Elliott picks up a handful of flyers, but instead of handing them to me, he lets them fall through his fingers. Still, I see the words DOWN WITH SCIENCE repeated over and over. “I don’t want to live through another plague. This Red Death. I never want to see…” He gestures out at the city. Whatever sunlight there was is gone, and the buildings are dreary and dark. “I don’t want to watch this city burn to the ground.”

  His voice wavers. Not enough that most people could hear, but I notice.

  He makes an abrupt turn.

  “After my uncle released us from the palace, my mother begged me to live with her and April in our old apartment in the Akkadian Towers. But it held too many memories of my father, so I lived in an apartment on campus. I was writing real poetry then. Agonizing over words. I was happy until I realized that I was the only one who could do something about the deterioration of the city. I could make something, the way my uncle never could. It is what I was meant to do.”

  I wonder how he can be so arrogant. And why I believe him.

  He falls silent as we approach the university. This place has strong memories for me, too. Father in his white lab coat. Finn standing on a chair to peer into a microscope, looking at germs, while I pretended not to be bored. I haven’t been here in years.

  We drive past a domed building and a row of white columns. The lawn of the university campus is lush and green and the white buildings are clean of graffiti. The buildings gleam in the late afternoon light, and the shrubs have been cut into neat squares.

  “The people who live here choose to spend a large part of their time on upkeep,” Elliott explains. “There are even unofficial classes held in some of the buildings. Though I guess they’ve canceled them now.” He points to a message that’s been painted above an arched window. THE CONTAGION WAS CREATED HERE. “Ugliness has seeped into every part of the city.”

  “Or maybe the ugliness is in us. Father says that’s just the way we are. Underneath the pretense of civilization.”

  “That’s an odd thing for him to say. He saved humanity, after all. Do you think he regrets it?”

  “Sometimes, maybe,” I say, mostly to myself, because it isn’t the sort of thing Father would ever admit. “Especially after Finn died.”

  Elliott parks his steam carriage behind a tall building and leads me up a set of narrow wooden stairs to his apartment. Every surface inside is covered with books except a table under the window, which is littered with vials and beakers. I feel a stab of desire looking at all of the residue in the beakers. With what Elliott could concoct, I could forget all of this for a little while. I’m not sure what is deeper, my disgust with myself for wanting oblivion, or the wanting itself.

  Through the window I see groups of maskless young people sitting together in the courtyard. I put my hand to my own mask. It’s cool to the touch, like it always is in late fall and winter. How wonderful it would be to discard it, even for one day. But I never will.

  Elliott is gathering papers from his desk and from a table near the desk. He crumples them into a large metal bowl. The basin is blackened already; these aren’t the first papers he’s burned. I wonder if he ever made copies of the blueprints I gave him. I don’t suppose it matters now.

  Smoke stings my eyes. I like this apartment much better than the one he keeps at the Debauchery Club, but the smell of smoke reminds me of earlier today, and I feel slightly ill.

  “I’m going to walk over to the science building,” I say. “You can watch me from the window, if you want to check on me.”

  He’s pacing back and forth, muttering to himself.

  “Be careful,” he says, looking up at me for a moment. “You know this campus pretty well, though, don’t you?”

  I’m fairly certain that I never discussed the university with Elliott. I don’t answer before I walk out the door.

  The wind outside is cool.

  The science building was Father’s favorite place, before. Finn and I played beside the stream that runs behind the building while Father did research in the university laboratory. I find that stream now, and sit beside it, wondering how to question Elliott. How to ask him for details about his rebellion. He must have more in mind than what he has revealed to me.

  I am startled when someone puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “I have some questions for you,” I say, surprised at how completely I welcome Elliott’s presence.

  Except it isn’t Elliott.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  “I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU AS WELL,” Father says. “And warnings. The prince has your mother.”

  “Will she be safe?” I choke out the words.

  He sits down and puts his hand over mine. He is wearing a heavy coat and has cut his hair and shaved. Somehow he looks both younger and more worn.

  “How could you not have told me?” I whisper.

  “That she was a prisoner?”

  I hate knowing that Finn died believing that Mother had abandoned us.

  “It was her secret, Araby.”

  I pull my hand away.

  “She thought it was worth your anger to protect you both. There is no right answer. Did you feel you were doing the right thing when you stole plans from my laboratory?” When he puts his hand back over mine, it’s as if I never pulled away. “Nothing is easy, I know.” His voice is impossibly sad.

  “I’m sorry.” It seems inadequate, and also, somehow, unnecessary. I’m worried about him. “How will you hide from the prince?”

  “It’s better that you don’t know, but I won’t let Prince Prospero take me into custody without a fight.”

  A fight? My father is the most peaceful man I know.

  “Elliott wants me to go with him on the voyage.” The wind scatters the dead heads of a row of dandelions, the fluffy kind that children blow and wish on. Father was once excited about the possibilities of the steamship.

  “I have nothing left to bargain with. The prince’s nephew may be the only one who can protect you now. Stay away from the prince and the religious fanatics. Go, get out of the city.”

  “But—”

  “Araby, I have a question for you,” he interrupts. “The most important thing I’ve ever asked.”

  I stare at a blue fish darting back and forth in the stream.

  “Are you ever truly happy? Could you be?” How can this be the most important thing he’s ever asked?

  I want to say yes. This morning, in Will’s apartment, I would have said yes, but in my mind I keep seeing Henry falling to the ground, his mask cracking. I don’t say anything.

  Father sighs. “So your answer is no.”

  No is too final. I grip his hand the way I might have held on to it as a child, before…

  “I don’t know. The plague happened.” My voice catches on the word plague.

  “The plague happened,” he agrees.

  “And we lost Finn.”

  “And we lost Finn.”

  Mother said that he must believe there is good in the world, so I promised never to tell him. I couldn’t wash Finn’s blood from the crease between my thumb and my forefinger, no matter how much soap I used. But I kept the secret.

  “You’ve given me the answer I need,” Father says.

  But I’ve given the wrong answer. Dread settles over me. I pull Will’s coat tight and struggle to think of a way to tell him that I could be happy, I might be happy, but I have no words. And now Father is speaking again, his voice low and rushed.

  “Whatever happens, remember that I love you, and your mother loves you.”

  I can feel him pulling away, and I want to cling to him. But we’ve never been that open.

  “Don’t take your mask off, not for any reason.” He hands me a vial filled with clear liquid. “If you get into trouble, drink half of thi
s and give the rest to the person you love most.”

  I start to ask what it is, what it does, to ask what he knows about the Red Death—but before I can, someone grabs me from behind.

  “So you found him,” Elliott says. One arm is snaked around me. In his other hand, he is holding a knife.

  “I didn’t find him,” I gasp, trying to figure out what he thinks he’s doing. “He found me.”

  Is Elliott suggesting that I meant to find Father, that perhaps I’ve betrayed Father? Again?

  “My uncle wants you dead,” Elliott tells Father.

  I kick him and he lets me go. With both eyes trained on Father, he shifts the knife from hand to hand.

  “I know.” Father stands, and for the first time in years, I see the heroic father of my youth. The father who could do no wrong. He’s a hero to many people, but that never mattered to me, not after Finn died.

  “Who are you working with?”

  Father blinks, surprised.

  “I’m not working with anyone. I’m not working at all. I’m hiding.” Father’s eyes bore into Elliott’s, and I can’t tell if Elliott believes him. Or if I do.

  “I need to know everything there is to know about the Red Death.”

  Father gives Elliott the look that he reserves for incredibly stupid people. I see Elliott’s knuckles turn white around the hilt of the knife.

  “Please—,” I begin, trying to find a way to stop this.

  “It’s a virus.” Father’s voice is low and unfriendly. “The masks help, but they don’t guarantee immunity. I have pages of notes about the illness. You can read them, if you think the information would be helpful. They are in a journal I kept as I studied various diseases. It’s hidden behind the third drawer in my desk.”

  The journal isn’t in his desk. It’s in the pocket of my coat, and my coat is in Will’s wardrobe.

  “I want those notes,” Elliott says. He takes a step backward, as if to make himself less threatening. “Are they enough?”

  “Nothing is going to be enough. But I recorded everything I know.”

  “And did you include the information that has prompted my uncle to command his guards to kill you on sight?”