Goblin Moon (18 page)

Lord Vizbeck stiffened. “Here now, my good man, there
is no need to be impertinent. If you haven’t the decency—“

Lady Ursula silenced him with a motion of her hand.
“Let us not waste the governor’s time—or our own. Perhaps, sir, you
will be good enough to tell me what is the . . . the usual
recompense.”

The governor knit his fingers together. “A keg of
wine the night before and a whore to warm his bed. And the next
day, a coin for the hangman, to make sure the execution is swift
and painless. He will also, in all likelihood, require your word in
writing that he’ll be buried decently, and not turned over to the
College of Chirurgeons for their experiments.” Lady Ursula
shuddered visibly. “My own compensation—for allowing the thing to
go forth at all, for the arrangements that have to be made—is not
inconsiderable.” And he named a price so high that the lady gasped
in dismay.

“I think you must be aware,” Lady Ursula said, in a
stifled voice, “that unless you are willing to be more moderate in
your demands, we won’t be able to do business at all. Indeed, were
my circumstances mot so fearfully reduced, I would not be forced to
take this step in order to circumvent my creditors.”

“That goes without saying, my lady. Yet I find it
hard to believe that you are entirely friendless,” said the
governor. “Borrow the money, if you must, for I do assure you: the
thing cannot possibly be done for less.”

Lady Ursula laughed bitterly. “Borrow the money, when
it is by living beyond my means that I came to this pass! There
isn’t a goldsmith or a moneylender in Thornburg who would—“

Lord Vizbeck leaned down and spoke softly in her ear.
“By the Nine Powers, Ursula, if you will not allow me to marry you
myself, at least permit me to defray your . . . wedding
expenses.”

“I will not,” hissed the lady. “Do consider my
feelings. Having refused your own too generous offer, how, in all
conscience, can I possibly allow you to—to buy a husband for
me?”

The governor continued to rock his chair back and
forth. “I should perhaps add that there has been considerable
outcry against these prison weddings, against the well-born and the
titled using this expedient to cheat honest tradesmen of their due.
Any day now, the Prince may issue a proclamation forbidding these
marriages. Then where will you be, my lady?”

“The same place that I shall be if I do not satisfy
my creditors by the end of next week,” said the lady. “Imprisoned
for debt. Oh, it would be unendurable! Very well, your price is
extortionate, but I suppose there must be something, some old
silver or china that I can sell. Make the arrangements, and expect
to see me next Friday . . . my wedding day.”

The lady left the prison on her cousin’s arm. His
lordship’s mama, the dowager Lady Vizbeck, awaited them on the
barge.

“And are you engaged to be married, my dear?” the
dowager asked.

“I believe that I shall be, before the day is out.”
Lady Ursula collapsed on a velvet-cushioned bench and took out her
fan. “The governor will make all the arrangement; he will attend to
all the details. All that remains for me is to decide where the
reception will be held.”

“You have had a great many offers, I believe?” said
Lady Vizbeck, patting her hand affectionately. “Such a novelty it
will be, your wedding feast. Half the ladies in Thornburg would be
honored to host the reception and claim credit for the sensation it
will cause. Whom will you choose, do you think?”

Lady Ursula gave a weary small sigh. “I believe that
I will choose the Duchess. Who else, indeed, could do the thing as
it ought to be done?”

Though Lady Ursula’s upcoming wedding was the talk of
the town, the Thornburg magistracy would not be hurried; they
issued no writ against the lady, and the wedding went off precisely
as planned. On Friday morning, the bride arrived at the prison,
pale but composed, was introduced to her bridegroom, and was
married. At one, the groom mounted the scaffold, kissed his hand to
the Fates, and was hung—carrying her debts into the next world with
him. By sunset, carriages and sedan chairs began to arrive at the
crumbling Zar-Wildungen mansion, where the bride awaited them, in a
gown of figured white satin, a gauzy floor-length veil, and the
Duchess’s diamonds.

The Vorders were among the earliest guests to arrive.
“So poignant,” said Clothilde Vorder, as she, Elsie, and Sera
climbed the marble steps to the door. “So heart-rending, really, to
think of the poor dear receiving her guests—and she so recently
widowed!”

“She was scarcely even acquainted with the man,” said
Sera, under her breath. “Any emotion that the bride may display on
this particular occasion can be nothing but—but the most blatant
form of play-acting!”

“But of course,” replied Mistress Vorder with a
haughty glance. “That hardly detracts from the sentiment one feels
on viewing the young widow. I, myself, am prodigiously fond of a
tragical play. And I would not be as insensitive as you,” she added
severely, “not for all the world.”

They passed through the receiving line, and down a
wide, torch-lit corridor lined with faded tapestries. In the
cavernous dining hall, the table was set with elegant gilt-edged
china and crystal goblets, but the very finest setting (all
gleaming with gold and jewels) had been placed at the head of the
table in honor of the groom, who was expected to attend the
reception in spirit, though his body was still in the custody of
the public hangman. To this end, someone had placed a wax effigy in
the bridegroom’s chair and tastefully arranged a hempen noose
around its neck.

Francis Skelbrooke strolled into the room, very
prettily attired in white and gold, all but the black satin bow
which held back his powdered curls. He carried a short malacca cane
with a quizzing glass mounted on the knob at one end, and he seemed
especially struck by the arrangement of the table, for he spent
several minutes minutely examining the groom’s setting through his
glass.

“And what—if one is permitted to inquire—is your
impression of all this, Miss Vorder?” he asked.

“It seems,” said Sera, in no mood to mince words this
evening, “that people will do anything for a sensation these days.
I think that Society has gone quite mad.”

If she hoped to ruffle his composure, she did not
succeed. “I have always admired your keen perceptions,” said
Skelbrooke, and ambled off, presumably in search of the
Duchess.

When the feast was over, and the last toasts had been
made—to the beauty of the bride and her improved prospects for the
future—it came time for the wedding guests to see the bride and her
groom upstairs to their bedchamber. Two brawny serving men lifted
the chair and carried the wax effigy out of the room, the bride and
her guests snatching up candlesticks and falling into place in a
procession behind the chair.

Sera walked alone, without a gentleman’s arm to lean
on—which she accounted a blessing, for it allowed her to lag behind
the others and spared her much of the conversation and unseemly
jesting. Up the long curving marble staircase to the top floor of
the mansion, the procession climbed, the flames of their candles
like tiny sparks of light in the vast, gloomy halls. They walked
through a series of rooms connected by archways, and along an
echoing corridor, where the dust lay thick on the floor and cobwebs
hung like tattered lace curtains from the groined ceiling. Then
there was a sudden blaze of light and warmth, as someone threw open
the door to the bridal chamber.

I will not go inside,
Sera
thought.
The whole situation is so patently
obscene!
With which resolve, she turned around and headed back
down the corridor. But in the rooms beyond, a draught of cold air
put out her candle, and she lost her way in the dark. When she
finally came out into a torch-lit corridor, she was in a totally
unfamiliar wing of the mansion.

Certain that one of the doors on either side of the
corridor must open on a set of stairs, Sera tried several, only to
discover that each of them was locked. Then she decided to relight
her candle on one of the torches and try to find her way back in
the direction she had come. But through
which
door had she entered the corridor? All of them
looked exactly alike.

Growing frustrated, she began turning the knobs
again, searching for the unlocked door.
Perhaps
I have lost my sense of direction . . . perhaps I should try the
doors on the other side of the corridor.
A knob turned in her
hand, and Sera eagerly pushed the door open.

She paused on the threshold, certain this was a room
she had never seen before. It was a lofty chamber, about the size
of the dining hall down below, awash in moonlight which entered the
room through a kind of domed skylight in the ceiling. The vast
chamber resembled nothing so much as a museum, for the variety of
curious objects that were displayed in glass cabinets or mounted on
marble pedestals.

I ought not to be here,
Sera
told herself. But the thought which immediately followed was:
the door was unlocked
. Curiosity over-came
propriety, and she stepped over the threshold, closing the door
softly behind her.

This room showed signs of frequent use, or at least
of a recent dusting. Yet there was something heavy and stifling
about the atmosphere, as though it were laden with some subtle
incense which added
weight
to the air
rather than fragrance.

Lifting her candle high, Sera wandered through the
room, gazing at one thing and then another: a bowl of crystal
fruits—a jeweled dagger with a blade like a crescent moon—a wreath
of silk flowers which (or so Sera fancied) might be the source of
the strange, odorless perfume.

On one wall, she discovered a gallery of oil
paintings, portraits of men and women of some bygone age, all of
them depicted with such mournful or tragic expressions that it
seemed as though the artist must have caught each one in the midst
of some terrible catastrophe or the grip of some lingering grief.
On a row of pegs along another wall hung a display of antique
costumes: gauzy gowns in soft bright colors, fanciful hats loaded
with jewels and plumes, and elaborately curled wigs that seemed too
heavy for the heads that once carried them. There was a grey cape
covered with silver spangles and lined with swansdown, and a stiff
lace ruff edged with pearls, which somehow put Sera in mind of
Mistress Sancreedi. But the size of these tiny, delicately made
garments astonished Sera.
These are children’s
costumes. But who would dress their children so
elaborately?

There were also a number of masks, arranged on the
wall around a long mirror in a gilt frame. Some of these masks were
beautiful, but many of them had an ugly or an evil aspect. On an
impulse, Sera took down one of the more hideous masks and held it
before her face.

When she turned to examine her reflection in the
mirror, she experienced a painful jolt of surprise. The mask had
transformed not only her face but everything about her. She was
gazing at the image of a tiny hunchback with a twisted lip, in a
tattered black gown. A soft noise behind her startled Sera so badly
that she dropped the mask and whirled around, just in time to see
Francis Skelbrooke enter the room by a door near the back.

Apparently as startled as she was, he stopped with
his hand still on the knob, and such a scowl on his face as Sera
had never seen there before.

Then the frown disappeared, and Lord Skelbrooke
regained his easy composure. He closed the door behind him and made
a deep bow. “There you are, Miss Vorder. I did not mean to startle
you, but your cousin sent me to find you.”

Sera put a hand to her heart. “Elsie . . . Elsie has
sent for me?” she asked, in a strangled voice. “Has she taken ill,
Lord Skelbrooke?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Skelbrooke, crossing the
room. “I did not mean to alarm you. I should have been more
specific. It was not Miss Elsie who sent me to look for you, but
her mother.”

Sera flushed a hot shade of crimson. It was bad
enough that she should encounter Lord Skelbrooke in this place
where she had no business to be, but how much more vexing that
Cousin Clothilde had actually sent him in search of her, as though
she were a naughty child.

Skelbrooke bent down and picked up the mask, spent a
long moment examining it through his quizzing glass. Then, with a
tiny, enigmatic smile, he lifted the mask to his face and examined
his image in the mirror.

Sera could not stifle another gasp of surprise.
Before her eyes, the young Imbrian nobleman became shorter, he grew
taller, he went through a whole series of amazing transformations:
man, woman, dwarf, gnome, child, adult, monster, brute . . . all in
a matter of seconds. And then, just as suddenly, he was himself
again, a neat little man elegantly clad in white and gold, staring
back at her through the eye-holes of the ugly mask.

“It is all in knowing how to work these things,” he
said calmly, as he hung the mask back on the wall. But Sera felt a
surge of outrage, as though he had somehow made her the victim of a
vulgar jest.

When he offered her his arm, she shook her head and
walked out through the door by which she had first entered the
room. But she did pause and wait for him, while he took a tiny
silver key out of his waistcoat pocket and slipped it into the
lock.

“I should tell you, Miss Vorder, that the things in
that room and the one beyond it are very old and valuable. Neither
the Duke nor the Duchess wishes to expose them to public view. I
cannot think how the door came to be unlocked.”

“But you did not enter by this door,” Sera pointed
out, a trifle pettishly. “Was—was the other chamber you spoke of
unlocked as well? That seems very careless.”