Prospero in Hell (14 page)

Bowing my head over him, I wept.

My voice choked with sobs, I began to sing the lullaby Caurus had recited by my bedside so long ago.

Lucciola lucciola, gialla gialla

metti la briglia alla cavalla

che la vuole il figlio del re

lucciola lucciola vieni con me.

Firefly, firefly, yellow and bright,

Bridle the filly under your light,

The son of the king is ready to ride,

Firefly, firefly, come to my side.

As I sang it the second time, in English, a voice joined me, reedy yet vibrant.

“Caurus!”

“Fear not, Milady,” Caurus’s inhuman voice—sounding much like the music of a hornpipe formed into words—spoke from the air over my shoulder. “I am well. My body is damaged, but will heal under your ministering. I merely came out of it to chase that scoundrel back into his pot!”

“Glad to hear it,” I snapped brusquely, blushing. It was uncharacteristic of me to weep over a servant. To have been caught was unseemly.

Caurus’s airy voice chuckled, “No need to be embarrassed, Milady. We all know you love us.”

“I do?” I asked, astonished.

“Of course,” he replied, “And we love you! Why else do you think we all work so hard?”

In the end, I departed through the damaged Fey Threshold alone. While Iblis’s oath theoretically kept him in the pot for the next year and a day, Caurus and I agreed that someone needed to stand watch until the pot could be properly sealed. Caurus returned to his body, and I gave him a second drop of Water of Life to speed his healing. He agreed to stand watch wearing the Urim gauntlet but refused to touch
Laevateinn
unless it was absolutely necessary.

I did not blame him. The sword terrified me as well. My right arm still tingled with numbness, and several times, I thought I heard its voice whispering to me, urging me to revenge. I left him standing guard with
Laevateinn,
stashed within the Urim sheath from the angel’s armor, resting atop the empty fourth pedestal. The spear
Gungnir
hovered in the air nearby. It patroled the vault, still seeking its quarry, Seir of the Shadows.

Leaving the Vault behind, I flew through the curving corridor that led to the Wintergarden. It took me a few tries to figure out how to pilot the carpet. I brushed the wall twice and nearly tumbled off once, but eventually, I got the hang of it.

I zoomed through the halls, banking and soaring. While underground corridors were hardly the sky, flying was still exhilarating. The gentle buoyant motion reminded of my recent trip through the night sky on the back of the giant black swan, which led to thoughts of Astreus. I pushed them away. The elf lord was too painful a subject, as gratitude warred in my heart with agony over his possible betrayal of my brother.

Emerging from the long dark halls, I flew into bright sunlight and took a breath of warm moist air. Beneath me stretched a lush garden. Overhead, an enormous latticework of iron and glass enclosed the entire area, creating a greenhouse, or, as we would have said during the reign of Queen Victoria, a wintergarden.

Outside, beyond the glass, lay the Faery Glade. Although it was winter
outside the mansion, the gardens of the Faery Glade were in majestic bloom. Tiny winged beings, hardly larger than butterflies, danced upon the leaves, or stroked vibrant colors into the petals of the flowers. Every leaf glittered and shone with a brilliance no mortal gardens could achieve; though a few approached it, on early mornings, when sparkling with dew.

In the distance, beyond the gardens, stood the ivory curve of the gate though which lay Mommur, the seat of the elven court.

I tried to avoid entering the Faery Glade, for it was difficult to stay there any length of time and emerge unchanged. Long ago, when the Wintergarden and the grounds outside it were new to me, I fell asleep in the Glade once while reading a book. When I awoke, the little sprites had woven my hair into a faery knot, a lovely coiffure that was quite arresting to the eye. It graced my face and framed my throat and shoulders in soft silver.

I had thought the arrangement wonderfully simple, but I could never quite reproduce it. Since then, I have seldom dressed for a formal dinner or ball, including the recent festivities at Father Christmas’s, without being haunted by the memory of that hairstyle, and how lovely it would have made me look. And this was just an arrangement of my hair! I shudder to think what life must be like for those who have eaten their food or drunk their wine.

The fight in the Vault had left me shaken and sore; merely entering the Wintergarden soothed my spirits. The air smelled lovely, an earthy fragrance full of spearmint and fennel. The Turkish carpet soared over the garden beds and brick paths which formed arched bridges where they crossed the quick-moving streams that flowed through the garden. Below grew thyme and tansy, St. John’s wort and vervain, as well as rarer herbs whose virtues were known only to sages and mystics. Close by were healing herbs, such as rue and yarrow. A little distance away, pennyroyal and rosemary grew within a circle of brick pathway, along with another flower, a silvery-violet one, which I had not seen in some time.

Leaning from the carpet, I picked a bloom of it. It was moly, the flower the god Hermes gave to Odysseus to protect him from the shapechanging magic of the enchantress Circe. I buried my nose in its petals; its scent reminded me of barren mountaintops and olive trees.

Beyond the next rivulet grew the poisonous plants: deadly nightshade and hemlock, larkspur and foxglove, jimsonweed and its cousin, datura, the herb that figures into
The Thousand and One Arabian Nights
. To one side, away from other vegetation, a lone mandrake grew next to a large rock. The scent that hung in the air here was musky and mixed with the odor of wet dirt.

Somewhere amid these aromatic plants and deadly flowers was my father’s horticulture project, the one missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of his recent life. What this last piece would tell me, I did not know. Most likely, he had been growing appleberries or fairy-blossoms, or some other semimystical seed that would only sprout near the Faery Glade, something that bore no relation to the events on the night of the Equinox beside the grave of my dead brother.

And yet, I could not help feeling that this last piece would hold the key to the mystery of Father’s purpose.

As I knelt on the Turkish carpet, searching for some sign of a new plant or seedling, I caught a glimpse of a dark shape lurking among tall feathery ferns near the herb garden. Nervously, I noted that I was uncomfortably vulnerable. It was a long way back to the Vault, nor could I flee outside, for all around the Wintergarden lay the Faery Glade.

Not wanting to touch the demonic flute, I slid open the razor-sharp fighting fan of Amatsumaru; reflections of brightly colored petals shimmered in its moon-silver surface. Thus armed, I flew slowly toward the herb gardens, halting the carpet above the ferns. Was it Seir again? How had he gotten into this part of the house? It was extraordinarily lucky that I happened to be in the Vault when he arrived to free the Kings.

Or had Caurus and I let him in?

As I passed over the mint patch, my dark intruder rose from where he lay and stared proudly back at me with unblinking golden eyes. I relaxed, sighing. I had forgotten my familiar had his own ways of moving between Prospero’s Mansion.

“You should be more observant, Handmaiden of Eurynome,” said my familiar, Tybalt, Prince of Cats. “You circled twice before spotting me. What if I had been a goblin or an incubus?”

“You should be more cautious yourself, Your Highness,” I replied folding the fan against my palm. “I might have cleaved you in half before I realized you were a friend.”

“You? Strike me? I hardly think so.” Tybalt gazed up disdainfully through the feathery ferns.

“Overconfidence killed the cat.”

“Love of action brought him back,” replied the black cat.

With a quick fluid motion, he leapt up through the ferns to land beside me on the carpet. He turned in a tight circle three times before settling against my leg.

“I thought it was satisfaction that brought him back,” I opined.

“Depends upon which revenant cat you consult.”

“Ah. Convenient meeting you here. I’m looking for Father’s gardening project, the one you mentioned last time we spoke.”

Tybalt washed. As I waited for his answer, the carpet floated forward, passing above the center of the garden. There, the waters of the many streams cascaded over short waterfalls to meet and mingle below in a single pool.

A low pedestal rose from the waters of the pool. On the pedestal, in a large porcelain pot, grew a single flower like a purple plume. The flower was the immortal amaranth, smaller and daintier than its mundane counterpart. In the earth from which the amaranth sprouted could be seen the gentle imprint of a deerlike hoof. As I watched, the amaranth began to tremble violently. Tybalt had crept up to the edge of the carpet and was batting at it.

“Tybalt! Those flowers only grow where Eurynome steps. They are sacred!” I snatched him up and put him on my lap.

Tybalt shrugged out of my grasp, saying, “You should not allow them to wiggle so temptingly if you do not wish them to attract attention.”

“What do you suggest, that I tie them up so they cannot sway about?”

“Self-respecting passersby could then direct their attention at the dangling rope, and the flowers would be spared.”

It never paid to argue with a cat.

“Father’s gardening project, Tybalt?”

“Ah, yes. This way.” He jumped down and began leading me through the Wintergarden.

At first, he walked casually along the brick walkways; however, he soon departed from the paths, to move amidst the greenery. He crouched and stalked, moving silently from plant to plant, almost disappearing altogether behind a rose bush or large feathery fern. He led me twice about the entire garden before coming to our final destination. I bore with him, saying nothing.

For Tybalt, there was no shorter path.

Finally, we arrived at a small area behind the linden trees, separated from the rest of the garden by an L-shaped partition of glass and iron that jutted from the outside wall. Within this private garden grew a young dogwood tree from which a branch had recently been cut. The wound had bled a rusty crusted substance that coated the bark and earth beneath it. The tree stank unpleasantly of old blood.

At the base of the trunk, something glittered amidst the roots. I wrapped my hair, which still smelled of smoke, across my nose to keep out the rotten stink and knelt to examine it. Half-buried in the dirt was a star sapphire as large as the pad of my thumb. Additional scrutiny revealed other gems, several of which were embedded into the sapling itself. Two, an amethyst and an emerald, bore the sign of a fish. I dropped the sapphire and straightened.

“What is it?” asked Tybalt. He leapt upon the sapphire and batted it about with his paw.

I pointed. “See the emerald with a fish carved into it?”

Tybalt sniffed the gems stuck into the bark. I wondered how he could smell anything other than the unpleasant rusty stink.

“It’s an early Christian symbol,” he replied eventually.

“Very good. These jewels once belonged to the popes of Rome. They used to decorate the Scepter of the Pope, the one made from a piece of the True Cross.”

“Wasn’t that one of the items your family ‘liberated’ from the Vatican?” Tybalt batted at the amethyst, but it would not come loose from the bark. “I thought the scepter was in the Vault. Why are its gems stuck in this tree?”

In my mind’s eye, I saw eight young trees, each of a different species, growing in a circle on the island where I had spent my youth. They had not been there when I was a child, but when, many years after our escape, I returned to hunt my would-be rapist Caliban, I had come upon them. In among their roots, I had found curls of paper, the remains of Father’s great tomes, I now guessed. At the time, I had not understood what I was seeing, but after hearing Seir’s story…

I also recalled how Mab and I had come upon the alcove that housed my father’s statue in the Great Hall and how, above it were the newly cut words:
THE STAFF OF ETERNITY
.

And, finally, I remembered a conversation with Theo, held decades ago near the banks of the Mississippi, during which he had said: “
Last time we spoke, Father declared if he could not convince me with words, he would have to demonstrate to me the foolishness of my position. But that was over a year ago, and I haven’t heard from him since
.”

“This tree is the Scepter,” I replied. “Father sprouted it—as once, long ago—he sprouted trees from his magic tomes to make our staffs.”

“Oh? Why sprout it now?”

“What does one do with the True Cross?”

“Crucify people?” the cat suggested, rubbing his head against my leg.

I snorted. “What did my father do in September, immediately after coming here and cutting off a branch of this tree?”