Dracula Sequence - Thorn Part 11

"Oh, d.a.m.n it, Joe!" Judy never swore. "Are you sure you wouldn't like me to drive a stake through his heart if I get the chance?" Only after the words were out did she remember Bill listening. But Bill would take them as metaphor of some kind; odd, how easy it was for some kinds of truth to remain hidden.

"Judy, G.o.ddam, Judy." Joe on the other hand tended to swear a fair amount. The phone now made his anger tiny. "I'm just trying to look out for your own best-"

"It seems to me that he once let himself get involved in some pretty serious trouble that we were having."

For a few moments the long-distance buzz had the line to itself. Joe's voice when it came back was decently troubled. "I know, we owe him a lot. After what he did for Kate and me, I'll stick my neck out. But how do we know what he's involved in? I'm just trying to get you to stay clear, kid, for your own good. This other young lady who was blown up and killed in his car was probably on good terms with him too, and-"

"Thank you." Judy got the two words out in an acceptable voice, and then quickly hung up the phone. She hoped Joe heard them and really appreciated that she understood and was grateful for his desire to help. Joe really did mean well. It was just that right now Judy was too mad to talk to him any longer.

Bill was still in the doorway, with concern for Judy's troubles written all over him.

She smiled at him again. She didn't want to involve anyone else in anything dangerous. But she would, if necessary.

Her hand still on the cradled phone, Judy closed her eyes. Feeling guilt, and love, she tried for contact. As soon as she really tried, it came. The man called Thorn was still alive, she was completely sure of that. Somewhere to the west and south of her, at some considerable distance.

She thought that he was now asleep. But even in the sunny log room she trembled. She was frightened at her perception of his pain and rage.

Chapter Fourteen.

The servant whose howls had wakened me was a weepy old woman, her past scarred, as I now suppose, with tragedy of one kind or another that must have driven her half mad. She was diligent about the house, but given at times to supernatural fantasies. Her cries continued in the middle distance as I sat there in my bed, I know not for how long, looking at that dagger on the pillow and fatalistically pondering its meaning. I did not require the noise of the ancient seeress to convince me of disaster.

The only logical conclusion I was able to reach regarding the dagger was that Helen had considered killing me with it before she fled-already, somehow, I had no doubt that she was gone-but had then for whatever reason decided against my murder. Still, she wished me to realize that the topic had been under consideration, and she had left the dagger so aimed to symbolize the fact.

Besides this vaguely humiliating and cryptic communication, no message from my departing wife could be discovered. As matters turned out, the old woman was screaming for no more occult reason than having been told of her mistress's defection by one of the grooms. This unusually unintelligent lad, while about his morning ch.o.r.es an hour or two earlier, had chanced to see Helen leaving. He reported belatedly how she had ridden off into the predawn mists on her white palfrey, a thin roll of clothing with a few other belongings tied up behind her sidesaddle, and ac-companied by a cloaked male figure astride another horse. The lackwit groom stuttered and stammered this story again to me, adding that it had never occurred to him to raise an alarm when he saw this. It meant nothing to him, he a.s.serted, that his mistress should have decided to go for an early morning ride. Herein he was mistaken; it meant in fact that I paused to slit his nose for him before I took to the road myself in a frantic effort to pick up my lady's trail.

It turned out that there was no trail, at least none that I could find. In a state of rage that grew ever colder and more pure, I rode at a good speed for an hour along the road that led in the opposite direction from Florence, but caught no sight of the one I sought. Nor would any of the folk I questioned in pa.s.sing admit to having seen Helen ride that way with her secret lover, with that faceless, unidentifiable figure in the groom's stammered story, a man who would be glad to settle for losing part of his nose when I caught up with him.

As for what I meant to do to Helen . . . I do not remember making any specific plan of vengeance then. But it was well for her that morning that I could not find her.

Of course I might well be pursuing in the wrong direction, and after an hour I turned round. It then naturally took me another hour to get back to our Pisan cottage. I had sent some of the servants I considered most trustworthy to scour the neighborhood in other directions, and these were back before me. They trembled when they announced that they had nothing helpful to report. Their fear was wasted, for when I looked at them I believed that they had really tried.

What was I to do? Missing spouse or not, honor and wisdom alike forbade me to postpone by so much as half a day the start of my long trek to Bosnia. The king's orders had been explicit, and the urgency of his need apparent in them.

I did what little packing I had to do, and concluded the business of closing down the small household. In all this I was surrounded by servants who moved in a desperate, counterproductive hurry. My servants in my homeland had sometimes tended to be that way also. Whenever I glanced at these folk or spoke to them they dropped what they were carrying, or shook so that their fingers could not tie a knot.

Matters were not helped by the gurgling moans, drifting in from the stables, of the groom with the runny nose. Once or twice I was on the point of going out to quiet him.

A quick inventory disclosed that Helen had left behind the greater part of her new wardrobe, including items I had bought to please her, as well as the lavish gifts of the Medici. I directed that the servants should share these out among themselves, which acted as a tonic to their morale. As far as I was able to determine, my fugitive wife had taken with her no money, or very little; and no jewelry or gold of any particular value. There was no telling, of course, what contribution of wealth her mysterious escort might have brought to the escape.

At last my eye, searching the vacated rooms for any bits of important business left unfinished, fell again upon the painting. My first impulse at that moment was to draw my bloodied dagger and hack the thin panel into splinters. But a moment's cool thought held me back from any such rash demonstration. Not for a moment had I considered permanently giving up the search for Helen. When eventually I should be free again to look for the woman who had so basely used me (as I then saw the case) and then deserted me when her fortunes had improved, such a close likeness could very well, I thought, prove invaluable.

So, I delayed the start of my own long journey enough to send the painting back to Piero in Florence. Along with it I dispatched a brief written explanation of what had happened, and a request that he should keep the picture for me until I either returned or sent for it. To this I added a plea that the Medici use all their powers to try to find the woman for me whilst I was away at war; and that, should they succeed, Helen be held in some secure convent against my return. To some degree I shared my king's misgivings about convents; but given the society we dwelt in, no better alternative was apparent. Also it galled me, as it always has, to have to ask anyone a favor-but again I could see no better course available.

All this was quickly done. Before midday, a few scant hours after my wife's desertion, I was on the high road out of Pisa, in the company of a few mercenaries I had recruited locally, still growling oaths into my mustache as I rode.

My plan was to go overland, pa.s.sing the Alps before snow flew. I wanted to avoid the uncertainties of taking ship upon the Adriatic at that season. And besides, if it must be admitted, I had then and have now no particular liking for the sea.

Unfortunately for my plans, the first snow of the season reached the high pa.s.ses simultaneously with myself and my small escort; it cost us a slow and dangerous struggle to get through.

What with one delay and another, I did not reach the scene of the summer's and autumn's fighting until almost midwinter, by which time military operations were nearly at a standstill, King Matthias had withdrawn himself and much of his army to Buda. On the whole, the campaign had gone better than I had expected for the Christian cause. Mohammed II, in personal command of sizable forces, had invested the fortified town of Yaytsa early in the fighting season, but the timely arrival of the Black Army with the King of Hungary at its head had soon broken the siege.

Historians, if there be any quick ones in the present audience, may wish to note that the generally unreasonable preference shown by European rulers for mercenary troops during the following few decades can be traced back to this victory by Matthias's well-trained hirelings.

I had missed all the glories of this warm-weather campaign, such as they might have been. But I was not too late, while carrying out a mounted reconnaissance, to take part in a snowy skirmish of more than ordinary stupidity against a Turkish patrol similarly occupied. From this brawl I escaped with my honor and my life, my horse and my sword, the dagger which had once been left on a pillow aimed at my head-and a slow-healing thigh wound that temporarily made any further martial activities on my part out of the question.

I rested in camp until I felt able to sit a horse again, then set out for Buda, progressing by slow stages through a landscape that grew more familiar as I went. I had not been invited to present myself before the king; but then I had not been forbidden to do so, either. Indeed, I had heard nothing at all from Matthias since my leaving Pisa. So I judged that some kind of a personal report was necessary, though I did not look forward to delivering it.

It was already the early spring of 1465 when at last, still hardly able to stand, I appeared before His Majesty in his palace. Matthias looked older; kingship and the Turks were aging him rapidly. He received me in private as before, but with a lack of warmth that was immediately noticeable.

"Where is she, Drakulya? Word reached me months ago that you had lost her."

It was I who had sent him that word, of course. "I do not know where she is, sire."

I tried to explain the circ.u.mstances as best I could.

He cut me off with a gesture. "I see you have a wound there that prevents your fighting. But you can travel, or you would not be here. So take yourself to Italy again, and find her. It would have been wiser for you to have stayed there last year and seen to the matter. She is your wife now, and I hold you responsible."

Such are the ways of kings, and the difficulties of trying as loyally as possible to serve them. We dissolve now to a shot of me galloping madly right-to-left over the Alps. No, of course in actuality it was not that quickly done. This time the king was not so eager to provide me with letters and with gold. But eventually he had to admit that if I were to go, it were best that I succeed; and if he wanted me to succeed he had better give me all the help he could; and by the time he was convinced of this my leg was better, well enough to try the mountains.

Officially, you understand, I was all this time still imprisoned in the Tower of Solomon. And in truth there were a few moments during this epoch when I might have been tempted to settle for a return to my comfortable cell. But in fact, by the early summer of 1465, I was again on my way south to Italy. This time I was traveling as an officially nameless member of a delegation from Matthias to the new Pope, Paul II. Leader of the delegation was Ja.n.u.s Pannonius, who was what is now called a humanist, and also a poet, of about my own age. Pannonius and his uncle Ja.n.u.s Vitez had long been on good terms with their ruling kinsmen, the Hunyadi family. In a few years both Ja.n.u.ses were to be entranced by an ill-starred conspirator into a revolutionary intrigue, and Matthias was going to have them killed; but in 1465 their prospects were still bright.

By the summer of that year, Matthias had somewhat revised his earlier thinking on the subject of papal crusades. If he, the King of Hungary, was going to have to make a career out of fighting the Turks anyway, then he might as well have all the help he could sc.r.a.pe up, well organized or not. Pannonius and his delegation were in fact going to Rome to plead for a new Crusade.

Having gone to school in Italy as a youth, Pannonius spoke the language well, and with his help I brushed up on my own Italian during the journey. En route our leader entertained the rest of the party with songs of his own devising, verses about the difficulties of politics, the perils of dealing with the infernal Turks, and the pains of life's personal tragedies. When he warbled about a cuckolded husband, he seemed oblivious to the fact that I gave him close attention, and so I wisely restrained my reactions, judging that my own history was not known amongst my companions. All in all, Pannonius blended show business and politics in a way you might have thought startlingly modern, could you have heard and understood his yodelings. For my part, at the time I was little in sympathy with either art. And my mind was filled with affairs more personally important. When at last our little party reached Florence, I quietly dropped out.

Piero had grown a little goutier since I had seen him last, and a little older under the burden of his new responsibilities as head of Medici Enterprises. Still he welcomed me more warmly than my own liege lord had at Buda. I think it was during this second trip that I first began to fall in love with Italy. And the merchant chief listened sympathetically to my problems. Yes, he had been instructing his people to keep their eyes and ears open everywhere they went. But unfortunately he still had nothing to report of Helen's whereabouts. She had perhaps, he thought, gone very far away this time.

I had to agree, though in the past she had demonstrated an affinity for Italy. And perhaps, I thought to myself, this time the Medici were really not so very interested in trying to help me find her. Well, they could scarcely be blamed. They had done much for me already, and they certainly had plenty of other projects to keep them busy, for example trying to make a living, and keeping a complex city-state going in a difficult world. It must have been plain to them that my marriage was a lost cause, even if my bride could be found again; and that Matthias was unlikely to be pleased however the situation turned out now.

As he strolled beside me through the cavernous rooms of the palazzo Medici, Piero gripped my sleeve in a friendly way and gave it a little shake. "Have you spoken to Morsino yet, friend Ladislao? It may be that he has heard something that we have not."

"I doubt it. But I will talk to him. And one thing more, Signore Piero, if I may try your patience. Remember the painting that I had sent to you from Pisa? Would it be possible to have some of your people look at it before they depart on trading missions." I said this partly, I suppose, to impress Piero with my unflagging determination.

He nodded vigorously, as if pleased to be bothered with still one more request.

Probably he had little intention of honoring it anyway. "The painting is very beautiful, and I thank you for its loan. I have kept it where my eyes can fall on it every day." And with a little beckoning gesture he led me into another room and showed me the Magdalen above a fireplace. We both regarded it for a few moments in silence.

Then Piero went on: "I will have it moved to your room, if you like . . . of course you are going to stay with us, while you are in Florence."

"Thank you, Signore Piero. Your hospitality and generosity are more than a poor soldier like myself deserves." I was about to add that I had no wish to find the painting gazing at me each morning when I awoke, when a new idea struck me, what I considered to be a really clever thought. "And yes, I would like it in my room.

Though I trust that my stay will not be long."

To implement my new brainstorm, I paid a visit that very day to Verrocchio's studio. This time I went alone-Lorenzo, I should perhaps explain, was out of town on business at the time.

The studio had been transformed in the year since I had seen it last. There were at least half a dozen apprentices in sight, all of them busy shoveling sand, mixing and grinding pigments, hammering boards together into a platform, sweating and sending up a haze of dust from all the drudgery that lies behind serene fine art in metal and stone and paint. None of these youths recognized me, nor I them. But one went promptly to inform the master of my arrival, and returned in a moment to lead me to another room.

The very structure of the building had been changed considerably during the last twelve-month. A neighbor's stable had been taken over, and built into the growing complex. Raw timber walled some rooms completely new. But though the place was much enlarged, it was still crowded by its new production; business was booming tremendously.

I was conducted to where Verrocchio was at work, in one of the newly added rooms. The master, who had not changed noticeably, was not really glad to see me, though he made me welcome with effusive words. Here comes trouble, the expression on his fleshy face proclaimed. He was at work sculpting a clay figure, about half life-size, whose model, a st.u.r.dy lad wearing only a leather ap.r.o.n and some token bits of ancient-looking armor, stood on a small stage under the usual skylight.

At a second glance I recognized this youth, altered by a year's fast growth, as the very one that I had come to see.

"Messer Verrocchio," I began, "I suppose you have seen or heard nothing of the Hungarian woman since the last time I was here?"

"Nothing. Well, that is, only that she . . ." Verrocchio broke off, looking embarra.s.sed.

"You mean you have heard of my marital difficulties with her, and that she has run away again."

He nodded.

"Be sure and let me know if you hear more. You know where I can be reached. But it is really a painting that I have come to see you about today-a painting, and this young fellow who did it."

Verrocchio proved willing enough for me to hire away his apprentice and model for what I said would probably be a few days' work. He probably thought that his powerful patrons were still more interested in helping me than they really were, and I did not trouble to enlighten him. And so that very afternoon I was standing with Leonardo before the Magdalen in my small guest room at the palazzo Medici."It is only the face that I really want, you see. As many copies as you can make, drawing well, in the time that you can work for me. Here is the painting. And you must still have the woman's face in your mind's eye, as she spent a long time posing for you."

The boy was handsome, but there was something inhuman, almost, about his eyes. If I had met him armed in the field, I should have expected him to be extremely dangerous, for reasons having nothing to do with size or training.

He said only: "Tracings could be made, if we had thin paper."

"I can get you paper, or give you money to buy some. What I must have are good likenesses of this woman. I want a man who has never seen her to be able to recognize her when he does, once he has studied one of your sketches."

Leonardo was pinning up a small sheet of paper on the small easel he had brought with him. "Yes, I think I can do that, provided the man who looks has good eyes to see."

He began to draw. I, having learned how sometimes good artisans were bothered by close observation, moved away to look out of the window into the courtyard.

"Have you ever seen the woman again in the flesh?" I asked, as casually as possible. I had not forgotten that only this young artisan's tip had enabled me to locate Helen the first time around.

"No, signore," the boy answered. But there was something in his voice that made me turn back to look at him. I found him regarding me in that calculating, almost robotic way of his. Then he added: "But I have seen Perugino since then."

"Perugino." It took me a few moments to recall where I had heard that name before. Yes, Verrocchio had spoken it, at some point during at least one of my visits to his place of business a year ago. "Perugino was the bearded apprentice, in your master's studio last summer?"

"He had shaved, the last time I saw him."

"And where was that? And when?"

"I saw him here in Florence. About six months ago. But since then I have heard that he has gone to Rome, to paint some murals in a church there. Which church I do not know." Leonardo looked at me for a moment longer, then turned back to his work.

I turned back to the window again. I found one hand, knuckles white, wrist shaking, clutching my dagger's hilt. Dolt that I was! not to have known. But still I could not believe that a king's sister could have left me for a mere artist . . .

Before my eyes in imagination, I brought the face of the bearded one, clear as my memory could focus it. Now I could remember how that countenance had looked when I first brought the rescued Helen into the studio-the very place where he had first brought her to be a model. Confused, stunned, displaying a strange mixture of emotions. Somehow I had got the impression that Perugino had first met her in some Florentine tavern. But what had Morsino said? . . . an attractive girl, of diminutive stature, recently arrived . . . in the company of a troop of traveling players, or an itinerant artist, or something of that kind . . .

And Matthias, earlier. Something about an artisan. How his sister had actually run off with one. If she could do such a thing when a Sforza wedding was in prospect, then why not as the bride of a Drakulya?

. . . and again, just after the wedding ceremony, Perugino handing her an armful of flowers. How had he looked, then? Could I trust my memory to tell me? And she . .

It was still almost impossible to believe. I turned away from the window again.

"Leonardo," I called softly. In my greatest angers I maintain full control of myself and my behavior. "Be plain. You are telling me that she ran off with this Perugino."

"It is nothing to me, signore. I do not wish to become involved. But yes, I think that is what happened."

"I see. And has this matter been discussed at the studio?"

He hesitated. "Not really. Not much. I think we all guessed, last year, what had happened. Perugino quit the studio a little while after you left for Pisa. But you were gone. There was no way to tell you anything. Signore Lorenzo did not come round again to the studio for a long time."

"I see." No one wanted to get involved, really. I supposed that that was natural enough.

Now I thought that the youngster was suddenly afraid of me, perhaps wishing that he had kept quiet. Still his hand sketched steadily enough. He unpinned one paper from his easel and put up another. He was working quickly, already there appeared to be several finished preliminary sketches.

I was about to speak, when I glanced down at them. To study the topmost paper better, I picked it up. It showed the essential lines of the Magdalen's face, angelically done, the key to the face captured, just as I had wished.

Again I was about to speak when the corner of another drawing, at the very bottom of the small pile, caught my eye. I pulled it out. It was every bit as well drawn, but a grotesque.

It was a male countenance, set in an expression, almost a mask, of insane rage. I needed a moment to realize that I was holding a caricature of my own face.

Chapter Fifteen.

Rage augments strength, and sometimes cunning and the will as well. If one can harness it properly, and take the time to seek out tools, and improvise means, then eventually if one has eyes that see in virtual darkness, in a matter of only a few hours perhaps, the door of even a heavy wall safe can be seen swung back, with its great lock reduced to hanging wreckage. Success had been greatly aided by the ability to work on both sides of the door alternately. And now the cans of films and containers of tapes could be brought out. It was something to do, somewhere to start; and it had become necessary now to make a start at once.

Electric power to the Seabright mansion had recently been shut off, a difficulty overcome by some attention to the main. Dorlan and his wife had also departed by the morning after the bombing, which was a help.

The laboratory tucked away in the mansion's lowest level was equipped with projection devices of all kinds, and these when sworn at properly in medieval tongues were at last persuaded to function properly. The private show, sans t.i.tles, soundtrack, or any other frills, began.

At first glance the star of the show, an enormous fat man who cavorted naked with adolescents of both s.e.xes, as in some gross parody of more conventional p.o.r.n, appeared to be Ellison Seabright himself. At a second look it did not appear to be him. The monumental man in the film looked as big as Ellison and resembled him facially but was even older, with a fringe of white hair round his ma.s.sive head. Now and then he could be seen casting a look toward the hidden camera that must have done the filming through one of the concealed ports in the playroom wall. It was recognizably the playroom-lounge of this very house where the action was going on.

The huge old man knew without a doubt that the camera was there. He was intending to watch himself in action later, evidently thus doubling his enjoyment of these acts. Here we did not have your common garden variety of senior citizen. Mr.

Thorn, no stereotype of the golden years himself, had no doubt at all that he was beholding the image of Delaunay Seabright.

The broken safe had yielded up perhaps a dozen cans of film in all, with an equal number of videotape cartridges. A sampling of three, four, five, six of these containers showed no essential variation in content, though the supporting cast appeared to be always different. With one exception. Several times the same lean, dark man of thirty or thereabouts appeared-otherwise the players were all quite young and interchangeable, coming and going like seasonal flowers in a vase.

After the sixth sample, Thorn turned off the projector and sat in darkness trying to think. He could feel that sunny daylight had come, aboveground, but that did not concern him here. His course of breaking into the safe, despite its first feeling of instinctive rightness, was proving to be of no apparent help. The sad secrets of the safe seemed to have nothing to do at all with Mary Rogers or her death. Nor did they explain why Seabright or anyone else would have any reason to want to eliminate Thorn. Nothing here to tell Thorn who was guilty, where to start a search . . .