Tenebrae Manor (13 page)

13: Bordeaux Amongst Old Books

Through darkled shadows there flitted a movement. Though no light reflected upon it, a certain change in the hazy gloom made it discernible, as one is aware of wind only by its brush on the cheek and the shuddering of treetops. This apparition moved all but silent, only a click of clumsy footsteps and short bursts of breath broke through the echoic halls.

Madlyn crept with haste. She made her descent down and down the stairs into the pit of the manor without a second thought, a route so familiar to her. This time however, the urge to escape the wrath of Libra had doubled and her heart fluttered furiously like a rabbit racing away from a gnashing greyhound. Each step drew her further away and it was with great relief that she reached her room and slammed the heavy wooden door shut. She was safe now. Lady Libra was not one to leave her quarters unless absolutely necessary; her distaste for physical exertion coupled with Tenebrae's innumerable stairs meant that Madlyn could breathe easily in her own abode. It was a dank and windowless cavern of grey brick, more likely to have served as a storeroom before Madlyn had made it hers. Its proximity to the kitchen was only the lesser of its two advantages. The other of course was the room's isolation from the rest of the house.

Madlyn plunked down heavily onto the straw mat that served as her bed and tenderly removed a clump of cloth from her cradling smock. She unraveled the cloth covering with the embellished gentleness and gasped when she caught sight of the hidden token within. The sight of it confirmed in her the rebellion she had undertaken. A flash of glossy ebony caught her sunken pupils and held her completely hypnotised by coveted beauty. It was the black rose brooch that had sat on Libra's vanity and Madlyn had stolen it. The kitchen girl had been overwhelmed with fear up until this point, where she was able to gaze at the thing's great beauty and let the thrill of her rebellion surge through her veins. Her breaths were still short, her mind too feeble to comprehend why she found this brooch so captivating. What she planned to do with it was now her main concern. Stealthily snatching it for herself while Libra was preoccupied with her own reflection in the mirror had been the easy part.

The walls of her room would have driven the more claustrophobic being into a frenzy but to Madlyn, this room was all she had to call her own. Wrapping the brooch in its protective cloth and stuffing it under her pillow, she presently stood and made her way to a pitiful little desk in the corner. It was not a long trek, to be sure, for so small was the room that she was there in two steps.

On the splintered surface of the table lay Madlyn's meager and adored possessions. A few scraps of paper whereupon she had scribbled her thoughts and creations, a quill - merely shed plumage of a no doubt long dead owl and a small shard of glass that had once been part of a mirror.

Madlyn contorted her back to an awkward angle as she reached down to scratch at the back of her shin. The pendulum swinging of her disorderly blonde pigtail failed to wrest her attention from the mirror shard. She smiled vaguely, an expression that would bemuse even the greatest psychologist. The stonewalls sighed in the silence, for a moment Madlyn felt a presence unsettlingly close.

Turning about her tiny room and confirming no visible haunt disturbing her silence quenched her momentary fear, so she was able to return her gaze to the reflection in the shard. Swimming through its triangular surface, the swollen globe of Madlyn's right eye reflected back at her a dead expression. The effect of the sunken skin about her ocular jellyfish, darkened by fatigue, was one that seemed to smolder with a billowy smoke encircling. The blue iris dripped with a malice that frightened her, a malice she did not know herself capable of. But it was a poorly developed malice, more like the expressionless hostility reserved for strangers in which one has no desire to acquaint.

As though only to fill convulsive impulse, Madlyn dashed to her bed and leapt onto it to confirm the presence of the brooch. It was still there. Her heart tingled with a glow. The virgin innocence of her misled love had its embers rekindled. The black rose brooch, which was to become an embodiment of her very affection, should be gifted to the crimson demon. Her love was a confused thing, oblivious to its blatant notions that left it obvious to others. He should have the brooch, Madlyn had decided. Of the consequences, she was untroubled - even of the obvious fact that Libra would no doubt see the stolen brooch on Bordeaux's lapel. Such considerations were abated by her incubated innocence. The seed of her love had been planted long ago but only now was action to be taken; the plant was to be watered, tended to, with every hope that it would soon spill forth in pulchritudinous blossom.

****

The wind that howled about the castle wailed like a newborn, having only whipped itself to life an hour previous. And yet its cold hostility carried with it an omnipresent air, as though it had always been hurtling its gusts across the surfaces of land and sea, only to have just reached Tenebrae Manor, where it would soon pass on through and around the cavernous seashell and never be seen again. The gale moaned with an aptly intimidating warning; a warning of a danger that threatened the very livelihood of the castle’s residents. A danger that had filled Bordeaux with an increasing sense of doubt and pushed him into action. It was this dread that sent him on a grave errand to the library of Tenebrae Manor, where there stood the hope of answers; any answers would assuage the fears that weighed his heart.

Much has already been described of Tenebrae Manor, its echoed corridors, its stairwells of eternal incline, drawing rooms rotted by their own antiquity but what of the manor’s western side? It has been said that the auditorium juts from the house like a boil upon the western side but what can be said of the rooms that stood in its shadows several storeys below? Through a maze of halls, penetrating far and deep, identical in their adornments of stone and wood, there lies an immense library. Access to this archaic cavern would seem a confusing pathway that would turn any jaunt sour and indeed it seemed that it were only Bordeaux’s years of acquired knowledge of Tenenbrae Manor that had ingrained the correct path to the library into his head. There were four of them that made their way through the candlelit darkness, though three of them were unaware of the other that completed their tetrad.

Accompanying Bordeaux were not only the tweed clad Deadsol and Comets the jester, whose composure was one of lesser apprehension but also Madlyn. The girl lurked in their shadows, a few paces behind them, following on a restrained tiptoe that took up all of her lagged concentration. Though she pursued three, she saw only one, the man with his deep red coat - the figure of her affections. She wrestled with her shyness and spent every step trying to exert the extra effort that would push her into his presence. Oh, to be noticed by him! But every time she thought the time had come to burst into their candlelit view, she hesitated and slunk defeated back into the gloom.

Deadsol, possessed as he was by a self-righteous ramble, had provided more of an irritation to Bordeaux’s frazzled mind than any manner of support and he prattled endlessly.               “To relax, Bordeaux. That is what one needs! Oh yes, my yes, I know, oh! Let matters deal with themselves, I say, or better yet! Let
us
let
Libra
deal with it! But no! Stupid fool that I am to suggest the very idea, that idea that
she
would take action!”

“You will do well to follow quietly,” said Bordeaux. “Your joining me was by no means compulsory.”

“Always trying to be rid of poor Deadsol! You are lucky I am so patient, B.”

Bordeaux paused before the great oak doors of the library, “Maybe you are right, Deadsol. Maybe
you
are the patient one.”

They entered the library and stood a moment near the door. Rows of shelves loomed around them, from which innumerable books stared silently. The smell of literature lingered, clinging tenaciously to the air with its mustiness. Faded leather wings hugging dried pages and ink, these books perched themselves on their shelves as the three apparitions moved towards a light glowing faintly in the heart of the aviary-like library.

Madlyn hung near the entrance, still able to discern all conversation in the echoes of the room. A far corner of the room established itself as a small sitting area, where a fireplace roared with life and flung shadows of book towers across the carpet.

It was there that the mummified zombie, Rune, had ensconced on the floor and stared absently into the flames. Enveloped in gauze, he displayed the patience of his age through his quiet hours of reading. Rune was the eldest remaining resident of Tenebrae Manor and after several centuries of restless wandering, he had settled for a life of researching the history of the mansion and its surroundings. His jaw hung listlessly open at all times, as though it were tired of conversing with that upper row of yellowed teeth. Above his gaping maw, betwixt rows of bandages, two yellow eyes peered from a decayed blackness.

There he sat, legs crossed and ignorant to the company behind him and yet once their presence was made clear; namely by Comets prodding at the mummy’s arm, he showed signs more akin to annoyance than fright. His head turned about its axis and seemed to slowly consider his intruders.

“Is that Bordeaux and Deadsol?” he croaked in a strained voice.

“The very same, Rune,” replied Bordeaux. “Well met, my friend.”

The mummy rose to his feet, rising higher and higher until he towered over them all. He was a creature of great lank, pushing towards eight feet in height, his arms hung low beside him, reaching the knees of his spindly legs. With a considerable delay, Rune limply shook the hands of both Bordeaux and Deadsol.

“I have not had a visitor in some time,” he said. “Yet something tells me that this is more than a casual meeting.”

“You are not wrong in that assumption, Rune,” said Bordeaux. “We come with a request for information most critical. The very livelihood of Tenebrae Manor depends on it.”

Rune scratched his head absently, though he was not wrestling with the words of Bordeaux but rather the actions of the jester Comets, who was making a nuisance of himself about the library.

“Comets!” barked Deadsol.

Comets leapt upon the shelves as swift as a simian and with unmatched zeal, began to fling unfortunate tomes about the floor. The fluttering of the soaring pages contradicted the dull thud of book spine upon carpet, as birds of printed words, stitched and bound, crash-landed upon the floor.

"Must the young boy do that?" said Rune.

"Comets, you rascal! Descend from your perch at once, good citizen!" Deadsol ordered.

The jester made several unmentionable gestures of ribald obscenity before obeying the command of his friend, stamping down onto the ground and jumping on the spot repeatedly. He muttered an incomprehensible curse and scratched crudely at his rear. Rune was visibly peeved at the actions of the imp; though his body was old he showed no apathy in reprimanding the lad with a swift clap across the head. Comets slurred dizzily as the bells of his cap jingled.

"These books are all that connects Tenebrae to the world beyond the night! One would do well to treat them with respect."

Comets wasn’t listening but had calmed down significantly now that the others were paying attention to him.

Rune turned back to Bordeaux. “My friend, I have lived here for centuries. I remember your arrival to this place like it was yesterday. You know that I have devoted the long years of my afterlife to researching the history of not only Tenebrae but also the entire world! If there is some threat to my old home, I will do all I can to bring my knowledge forward in assistance.”

He rung his hands passionately, causing the bandages swathed about his limbs to rustle softly.

“Then please, divulge all that you know about Wood Golems.”

“Wood Golems?”

There was a hush amongst them. For Rune, it was an air of perplexity that plagued his mindset. Bordeaux was pressed with grave concern and, in the shadows, Madlyn gasped with fascination. She had climbed a nearby shelf and crouched behind dust-coated tomes so she was able to look down at the others. The ceiling was within her reach, pinning her somewhat between shelf and roof, amongst the decades of dust that irritated her nose. Madlyn fought back the urge to sneeze and continued to observe Bordeaux with her bulbous eyes.

“Wood Golems, you say?” repeated Rune, “Well for one, I know that they can be quite deadly if you give them a chance. But what possible threat could they pose to us?”

“My friend, I found one trying to destroy the walls of the house. I was then attacked by the creature and was startled by its aggression.”

“It was destroying the house?” said Rune.

“I kid you not and their increased numbers throughout the forest lead me to believe that there is something very wrong. We must act fast, lest they destroy the foundations of our home and it collapses.”

“They have removed a certain
joie de vivre
from our lives,” chimed in Deadsol eloquently.

In the meantime, Rune had produced a stepladder and propped it against a shelf. It was a shelf not unlike any of the others, though it was seemingly obvious that the zombie knew what he was searching for. His knees trembled under the weight of the monstrous book that he had slid from a high shelf. It was a mammoth thing of brown leather, precariously balancing on the shoulder of the now top heavy Rune, who presently fell from the ladder with the book landing heavily next to him.