“Madame Fauchard has more of a sense of humor than I gave her credit for,” she said.
“My teachers always said I was the class clown. Let's see how you look.”
Skye stepped into Austin's room and spun around slowly like a fashion model on a runway. She was dressed in a tight-fitting black leotard that showed off every curve and mound of her figure. Her feet and hands were encased in furry slippers and gloves. Decorating her hair was a headband that had a pair of large pointed ears attached to it.
“What do you think?” she said, pirouetting once more.
Austin looked at Skye with an unabashed male appreciation that was just short of lust. “I believe you're what my grandfather used to call 'the cat's meow.” "
There was a light knock at the door. It was the bullet-head servant Marcel. He leered at Skye like a lion eyeing a tasty wildebeest, then his small eyes took in Austin's costume and his lips curled in a smile of unmistakable contempt.
“The guests are arriving,” Marcel said in a voice like gravel sliding off a shovel. “Madame Fauchard would like you to follow me to the armory for cocktails and dinner.” His gangsterish intonation was strangely at odds with his butler's formality.
Austin and his feline companion donned their black velvet masks and followed the burly servant down to the first floor and through the maze of corridors. They could hear voices and laughter long before they stepped into the armory. About two dozen men and women dressed in fantastic costumes milled around a bar that had been set up in front of a display of spiked maces. Servants who looked like clones of Marcel threaded their way through the crowd carrying trays of caviar and champagne. A string quartet dressed as rodents was playing background music.
Austin snatched two flutes of bubbly from a passing tray and offered one to Skye. Then they found a vantage point under the lances of the mounted knight display where they could sip their champagne
and watch the crowd. The guests were equally divided between men and women, although it was hard to tell because of the variety of costumes.
Austin was trying to figure out the party's theme when a portly black bird approached, weaving like a ship in a heavy sea. The bird wobbled on its yellow legs and leaned forward, its shiny black beak dangerously close to Austin's eye, and drunkenly intoned in a slurred British accent, “Once upon a midnight dreary ... damn, how does the rest of it go?”
Nothing harder to understand than an upper-class Brit with a snootful of booze, Austin thought. He picked up the rest of the verse, “while I pondered, weak and weary ...”
The bird clapped its wings together, and then plucked a champagne glass from a passing tray. The long beak got in the way when he tried to drink so he pushed it up onto his forehead. The florid, jowly face hidden behind the beak reminded Austin of cartoons he had seen of the English symbol, John Bull.
“Always a pleasure to meet a lit' rate gen'lman,” the bird said. Austin introduced Skye and himself. The bird extended a winged hand. “I'm called ”Nevermore,“ for the purposes of tonight's festivities, but I go by the name of Cavendish when I'm not running around as Poe's morose bird. Lord Cavendish, which shows you the sorry state of our once proud empire when an old sot like me is made a knight. Pardon, I see my glass is empty. Never more, old chap.” He belched loudly and staggered off in pursuit of another glass of champagne.
Edgar Allan Poe. Of course.
Cavendish was a rather drunken Raven. Skye personified The Blac Cat. Austin was the jester from The Cask of Amontillado.
Austin studied his fellow guests. He saw a corpselike woman wearing a soiled and bloodied white shroud. The Fall of the House of Usher. Another woman wore a garment covered with miniature
chimes. The Bells. An ape was leaning against the bar, guzzling a martini. The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The ape was talking to an oversized beetle with a death's-head on his carapace. The Gold-Bug. Madame Fauchard not only had a sense of humor, Austin thought, she had an appreciation for the grotesque.
The music stopped and the room went silent. A figure stood in the doorway, about to enter the armory. Cavendish, who had returned with drink in hand, murmured, “Dear God!” He merged back with the other guests as if seeking the protection of the crowd.
All eyes were fixed on the tall woman who looked as if she had been exhumed from a grave. Blood splattered her long shroud and her gaunt white corpse's face. The lips were withered and the eyes set deep into skeletal sockets. There were gasps as she stepped into the room. She paused once again and stared into the eyes of each guest. Then she made her way across the floor as if she were floating on a cushion of air. She stopped in front of a giant ebony clock and clapped her hands. **
“Welcome to the Masque of the Red Death,” she said in the clear voice of Racine Fauchard. “Please continue your celebration, my friends. Remember” her voice gaining a melodramatic quiver “life is fleeting when the Red Death stalks the land.”
The wrinkled lips widened in a hideous smile. Nervous laughter rippled through the crowd and the quartet resumed its playing. Servants who had been frozen in midstride continued on their rounds. Austin expected Madame Fauchard to greet her guests, but to his surprise the apparition came his way and removed the grisly mask to reveal her normal cameo features.
“You look quite handsome in your belled cap and tights, Monsieur Austin,” she said, a seductive inflection in her tone.
“Thank you, Madame Fauchard. And I've never met a more charming plague.”
Madame Fauchard cocked her head coquettishly. "You have a
courtier's way with words.“ She turned to Skye. ”And you make a lovely black cat, Mademoiselle Bouchet."
“Merci, Madame Fauchard,” Skye said with a thin smile. “I'll try not to eat the string quartet, as much as I love mice.”
Madame Fauchard studied Skye with the envy an aging beauty reserves for a younger woman. “They are rats, actually. I wish we had been able to give you more of a choice of costumes. But you don't mind playing the fool, do you, Mr. Austin?”
“Not at all. Court jesters once advised kings. Better to play the fool than to be one.”
Madame Fauchard laughed gaily and glanced toward the doorway. “Bien, I see that Prince Prospero has arrived.”
A masked figure dressed in tights and tunic of purple velvet, trimmed with gold, and a mask to match was making his way toward them. He removed his velvet cap with a flourish and bowed before Madame Fauchard.
“A lovely entrance, Mother. Our guests were properly terrified.” “As they should be. I will pay my respects to the others after I talk to Mr. Austin.”
Emil bowed again, this time to Skye, and took his leave. “You have interesting friends,” Austin said, scanning the crowd. “Are these people your neighbors?”
“To the contrary. These are the remnants of the great arms families of the world. Immense wealth is represented in this room, all of it built on a foundation of death and destruction. Their ancestors fashioned the spear- and arrowheads that killed hundreds of thousands, built the cannon that devastated Europe in the last century and manufactured the bombs that leveled entire cities. You should be honored to be in such august company.”
“I hope you won't be insulted when I say I'm not impressed.” Madame Fauchard replied with a sharp laugh. "I don't blame you.
These prancing, chattering fools are decadent eurotrash living on the riches earned by the sweat of their forebears. Their once-proud companies and cartels today are nothing but faceless corporations traded on the New York Stock Exchange."
“What about Lord Cavendish?” Austin said.
“Even more pitiful than the others, because he has only his name and no riches. His family once held the secret of forged steel before the Fauchards stole it.”
"What about the Fauchards? Are they immune from decadence?
“No one is immune, not even my family. That's why I will control Spear Industries as long as I live.”
“Nobody lives forever,” Skye said.
&
nbsp; “What did you say?” Madame Fauchard's head snapped around and she pinioned Skye with eyes that blazed like fanned coals. Skye had made a casual observation and wasn't prepared for the heat in Madame Fauchard's reaction.
“What I meant to say is that we're all mortal.” .
The flame in Racine's eyes flickered and died. “True, but some of us are more mortal than others. The Fauchards will prosper for decades and centuries to come. Mark my words. Now, if you'll excuse me I must tend to my guests. Dinner will be served shortly.”
She replaced the hideous mask and glided off to rejoin her son.
Skye seemed shaken. “What was that all about?”
“Madame Fauchard is touchy about getting old. I don't blame her. She must have been a beauty in her day. She would have caught my eye.”
“If you like making love to a corpse,” Skye said with a toss of her head.
Austin grinned. “It seems the pussycat has claws.”
"Very sharp ones, and I'd love to use them on your lady friend. I
don't know why you were so worried. I'm bored to pieces."
Austin had been watching the arrival of more servants. A dozen or so hard-looking men had slipped quietly into the armory and taken up positions next to every door leading in or out of the great chamber.
“Sit tight,” Austin murmured. “I have a feeling that the real party has yet to begin.”
CAVENDISH WAS superbly intoxicated. The Englishman had shoved his raven's beak onto the top of his head to allow his rosebud mouth unimpeded access to his wine goblet. He had been gurgling wine throughout the medieval-style dinner, washing down the exotic game dishes everything from lark to boar like a human garbage disposal. Austin picked at his food to be polite, took an occasional sip of wine and advised Skye to do the same. They would need clear heads if his instincts were on the mark.
As soon as the dessert dishes were removed, Cavendish staggered to his feet and tapped the side of his water glass with a spoon. All eyes turned in his direction. He raised his goblet. “I would like to offer a toast to our host and hostess.”
“Hear, hear,” his fellow guests replied in boozy acknowledgment, lifting their drinks as well.
Encouraged by the response, Cavendish smiled. "As many of you know, the Fauchard and the Cavendish families go back centuries. We all know how the Fauchards, ah, borrowed the Cavendish
process for forging steel on a mass basis, thus assuring their own rise while my people faded into the sunset."
“The fortunes of war,” said the ape from The Murders in the Rue
Morgue.
“I'll drink to that.” Cavendish took a swig from his goblet. “Unfortunately, or fortunately, given the tendency of Fauchards to meet fatal accidents, we never married into their family.”
“The fortunes of love,” said the woman draped in bells. The guests around the table roared their drunken approval.
Cavendish waited for the laughter to die down, then said, “I doubt if the word love was ever uttered in this household. Butawyone can love. How many families can boast that they single-handedly started the War to End All Wars?”
A heavy silence descended on the table. The guests glanced furtively at Madame Fauchard, who had been sitting at the head of the table with her son seated to her right. She maintained the waxen smile she had held throughout the oration, but her eyes radiated the same heat Austin had seen when Skye mentioned her mortality.
“Monsieur Cavendish is most flattering, but he exaggerates the influence of the Fauchard family,” she said in a cool voice. “There were many causes for the Great War. Greed, stupidity and arrogance, to name a few. Every family in this room joined the jingoistic pack in urging on the war that made us all fortunes.”
Cavendish would not be discouraged. “Take credit where credit is due, my dear Racine. It is true that we arms people owned the newspapers and bribed the politicians who howled for war, but it was the Fauchard family, in its infinite wisdom, that paid to have the Grand Duke Ferdinand assassinated, thus plunging the world into a bloody brawl. We all know the rumors that Jules Fauchard bolted the pack, thus ensuring his untimely departure from the earth.”
“Monsieur Cavendish,” Madame Fauchard said, her voice a warning growl. But the Englishman was on a roll.
“But what many don't know,” he said, “is that the Fauchards also bankrolled a certain Austrian corporal throughout his political rise and encouraged members of the Japanese Imperial Army to take on the United States.” He paused to take a drink. “That turned out to be more than you bargained for and things got a bit out of your control, what with your slave factories bombed to dust. But as someone said a moment ago, 'the fortunes of war.” "
The chamber was gripped by an almost unbearable tension.
Madame Fauchard had removed her plague mask and the loathing etched in her face was even more terrible than the Red Death. Austin had no doubt that if Racine had been capable of telekinesis the weapons would have jumped off the walls and hacked Cavendish to bits.
One of the guests broke the heavy silence. “Cavendish. You've said enough. Sit down.”
For the first time, Cavendish became aware of Madame Fauchard's withering stare. The Englishman's brain had caught up with his mouth and he knew he had gone too far. His foolish grin vanished and he wilted like a flower under the heat of a sunlamp. He sat down ponderously, more sober than when he had stood only moments before.
Madame Fauchard rose like a cobra uncoiling and raised her glass. “Merci. Now I will offer a toast to the great, late House of Cavendish.”
The Englishman's ruddy complexion turned the color of paste. He mumbled his thanks and said, “You must excuse me. I don't feel well. Touch of the indigestion, I fear.”
Rising from his chair, he made his way toward the exit and disappeared through the doorway.
Madame Fauchard glanced at her son. “Please see to our guest. We wouldn't want him to fall in the moat.”
The lighthearted comment seemed to break the tension and conversation resumed as if the previous few minutes had never happened. Austin was less sanguine. As he watched Cavendish leave the room, he thought the Englishman had signed his own death warrant. “What's going on?” Skye said.
“The Fauchards don't take well to having their dirty laundry hung out in public, especially when strangers are present.”
Austin watched Madame Fauchard lean over to say something to her son. Emil smiled and rose from the table. He collected Marcel and together they left the armory. After-dinner brandy was being served when Emil returned about ten minutes later without Marcel. He gazed directly at Austin and Skye as he whispered in his mother's ear. Madame Fauchard nodded her head, her face impassive. The move was subtle, but Austin didn't miss the implication. His name and Skye's had just been added to the Cavendish death warrant.
Several minutes later, Marcel returned from his mission. Emil saw that he was back, then stood and clapped his hands. “Ladies and gentlemen of the Masque of the Red Death, Prince Prospero has prepared a memorable entertainment to cap off the evening's festivities.” He signaled a servant, who lit a torch from the flames of a brazier and handed it to Emil. With great ceremony, Emil produced a large skeleton key from the folds of his tunic and led the way along the nave, crossing the transept to the rear of the armory. He paused to insert the key in a low wooden door carved with skulls and human bones. As he opened the door, his torch flared and sputtered in the cool musty air that flowed through the portal.
“Follow me if you dare,” Emil said with a smirking leer on his face, and then he ducked under the jamb.
Laughing giddily, the guests paused, then with wine goblets in hand they filed after Emil like the children of Hamlin following the Pied Piper. Austin put his hand on Skye's arm and kept her from going with the others.
“Make believe you're drunk,” Austin said.
“I wish I were drunk,” Skye said. “Merde. Here comes the dragon lady.”
Madame Fauchard glided over and sa
id, “The Red Death must take its leave, Monsieur Austin. Sorry we couldn't get to know each other better.”
“I am, too. That was an interesting toast Sir Cavendish gave,” he said, slurring his words.
“Great families are often the subject of malicious gossip.” She turned to Skye. “The masquerade is at an end. I believe you have a relic that belongs to my family.”
“What are you talking about?”
: “Don't toy with me. I know you have the helmet.”
“Then it was you who sent that awful man.”
“Sebastian? No, he is my son's lapdog. If it's any consolation to you, he will be eliminated as a result of his failures. Never mind, we will persuade you to tell us where our property is. As for you, Monsieur Austin, I must bid you farewell.”
“Until we meet again,” Austin said, swaying slightly. She gazed at him with a look approaching sadness. “Yes. Until we meet again.”
Escorted by an entourage of servants, Madame Fauchard headed for the exit. Marcel had been standing nearby. Now he came over and curled his lip in his movie gangster's smile. “Monsieur Emil would be heartbroken if you missed the entertainment he has prepared for you.” “Wouldn't miss it for the world,” Austin said, deliberately slurring his words.
Marcel lit another torch and gestured toward the door. Austin and Skye caught up with the tail end of the raucous crowd. Marcel took up the rear to make sure they didn't stray.
The procession descended a short stone staircase to a passageway about six feet wide. As the guests plunged deeper into the bowels of the chateau, the laughter began to ebb. The merriment died completely along with conversation, when the guests entered a section of tunnel lined with eye-level stone shelves that overflowed with human bones. Emil stopped in front of a shelf, picked out a skull at random and held it above his head, where it grinned down at the guests as if amused by their clever costumes.