Prospero Regained (6 page)

“That’s why I left the Mars part out,” Erasmus commented blithely to Gregor. “Mars is a place, Malagigi. There’s a planet there … I mean the planet is a place, like France. Not a planet in the ancient sense of a dot of light in the sky. Earth is a planet. So is Mars.”

“But of course! And the sun is a place like Egypt.” Malagigi scoffed. “Come, my friend, are you sure that the noxious gases of the Swamp are not affecting you adversely?”

“Only our noses.” Mab sniffed dubiously and then crinkled his nose against the putrid stench he had just inhaled.

“I am quite well,” Erasmus replied. “Not my fault if you got yourself beheaded before the rise of modern science.”

“Whatever that may be.” Malagigi waved a hand airily. He nodded encouragingly at Gregor, who was currently holding the silver star. Gregor lifted his hand up higher, so that the silvery light surrounded the gondola. “So, you were going along about your day, troubling no one, when your sister called up the Hellwinds. Where? On the streets of Edinburgh?”

“We were on the Bridge across the River Styx,” I said.

“You were in Hell? All of you?” He glanced around as if to see which of us were not present. “Theo? Titus? Cornelius? Logistilla, too?
Pourquoi?
”

I said, “My father has been captured by demons. The Queen of Air and Darkness holds him prisoner. She plans to kill him on Twelfth Night, which, unless I have completely lost track of time, is the day after tomorrow. We were trying to rescue him,” I finished grimly.

“The great and dread magician Prospero? This is astonishing news indeed! And you all came to rescue him! Amazing! How lucky that you have Miranda’s Lady to guide you, for I cannot see how mortals could hope to make such a trip without the supernatural help of the Bearer of the Lightning Bolt!”

“Actually…” My tongue would not move in my mouth. I hid my face in my hands.

“My sister was defiled by a demon,” Gregor said bluntly. “The White Lady of Spiral Wisdom no longer heeds her.”

Thank you, Gregor, that was tactful,
I thought.
I hope that’s not how you handled your parishioners during confession.
Tears threatened to well up, but my eyes remained dry. The peace the star brought sustained me.

“Ah … this is dire news!” Malagigi’s eyes grew round and watery as the implications sunk in. “But did not your family rely upon Water of Life for your immortality? Without a Handmaiden of Eurynome to travel to the Well at the World’s End, how will you maintain your eternal youth?”

“We won’t,” Erasmus replied, his voice flat. “In a mere few decades, we will all grow old and die.”

“I sorrow for you all!” Malagigi lowered his head in silent prayer. Looking up, he said, his voice serious, “You know, of course, that without Divine Eurynome to guide you through Hell, you have no chance.”

“An angel told us to come,” I replied defiantly. “She said we had the tools we needed to succeed.”

“Mephisto has the scrying ball of John Dee—Merlin’s ball, the one Solomon used when he came down here disguised as Asmodeus,” Erasmus explained. “If we can find Mephisto, we can use it to find Father and the others. And, of course, we have our staffs.”

“Ah!” Malagigi’s eyes flickered over the three staffs of power we carried—the staffs that were our Prospero Family legacy: Gregor’s
Staff of Darkness,
Erasmus’s
Staff of Decay,
and my flute, the
Staff of the Winds
—before coming to rest upon
Durandel
riding in its sheath at Erasmus’s side. Softly, he murmured, “Maybe, with Heaven’s help, you have a chance after all.”

“Yeah,” muttered Mab, “a snowball’s chance!”

Narrowing his eyes, Mab began surveying our surroundings carefully, as if attempting to discern exactly what the proverbial ball of frost’s chances might be.

CHAPTER

THREE

The Greatest Swordsman of Christendom

“A traitor lurks in your midst,” Malagigi mused as he poled, “and, yet, you do not fear Mephistopheles, Prince of Hell? We are certain, are we not, that when we find him, he will refrain from sticking us upon his pitchfork and roasting us over the coals, yes?”

“Our brother is not the same individual as the demon of that name,” Gregor corrected him in his calm, gruff voice. He was peering at the silver star, which he held in his outstretched hand.

Mab and I exchanged nervous glances again. Malagigi watched this carefully. He stroked his mustache and then gave a quick shrug, as if to say: “What is this to me?”

As we punted underneath a growth of diseased palms filled with spiderwebs, Mab leaned over, all the while keeping a wary eye on the web’s inhabitants, spiders as large as cats, with the faces of women.

“Begging your pardon, Ma’am,” he whispered in my ear, “but are we certain that the Harebrain is on the level? He is, after all, a demon. Maybe that’s what Abaddon meant by there being a traitor in the family.”

“You told us not to worry about Abaddon’s warning!” I whispered back.

“True,” Mab allowed softly, “but I wasn’t thinking about the fact that you had a demon in the family. Demons love ratting each other out.”

Mab pulled out his waterlogged notebook, frowned at it, and stuck it back in his trench coat. Searching his pockets, he pulled out the notebook Father Christmas had given him, the pages of which were waterproof. With a quick shake and a wipe with his handkerchief, it was as good as new. To his delight, the Space Pen he had received upon the same occasion worked, too.

Flipping the waterproof notebook open, Mab quickly wrote out a list of my siblings’ names, with Mephistopheles at the top. Above this, he scribbled:
POSSIBLE TRAITORS
.

Meanwhile, Malagigi, who was pushing through the sticky white tangles with his pole, was speaking to my brothers. “Ah, Mephistopheles Prospero! What a fine swordsman your brother was! It was a pleasure to watch him, which is much to say as he was cutting down my men! Of course, I did not know any of those men personally. It had been several centuries since I had ventured from Ardennes, except to visit my siblings in our tower in the vale of Orgagna, but I cared for them on principle, since they were Merovingians … I mean … what is the new word?… Frenchmen. Still, Mephistopheles was a wonder!”

Mab drew a square around Mephisto’s name and then drew out one of his waterlogged notebooks. He carefully turned the pages, slowly separating one from another until he found what he wanted. He read what he had written and then, looking up, asked, “Several times now, I’ve heard people call the Harebrain the ‘Greatest Swordsman in Christendom.’ I gather it’s a title. How did he get it?”

“I’m not sure…” I glanced at Erasmus.

“His real prowess lay upon the battlefield, of course,” Erasmus replied, “but sword fighting as a military art stopped meaning much once muskets and rifles began replacing swords. And Mephisto has never achieved the same degree of mastery with a gun that he has with a blade.”

“Ulysses has the distinction of being the best shot in the family,” Gregor commented, “perhaps, because he was the only one of us who would not have preferred to be a swordsman.”

Erasmus gave a contemptuous shrug. “Be that as it may … the title ‘Greatest Swordsman in Christendom’ was presented to Mephisto by Queen Elizabeth, upon the occasion of his match against Salvador Fabris, who was then considered the greatest swordsman in the world at the time.”

“Fabris! Even I have heard of him!” Malagigi replied, impressed. “This duel, did you see it?”

Erasmus and I shook our heads.

“Alas, we were in Italy,” Erasmus explained. “Theo was in the audience, though. He was serving as a knight for Queen Bess under the Earl of Essex at the time.”

“I was a child of six growing up in Milan.” Gregor leaned forward with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “So, no, I was not able to attend. But I do recall Mephisto reenacting the match for Logistilla and me. My brother played both parts with great thrusts and flurries and a good deal of shouting that I, in retrospect, suspect was not part of the original. I was so impressed, I insisted on swinging around a long wooden spoon for some months, to the dismay of my nanny.”

“I did get to see him fight the great Ridolfo Capa Ferro,” I said, recalling that long-ago afternoon upon the fish-boned bricks of the Piazza del Campo in Sienna when I had watched some of the world’s greatest fencers strut about beneath the hot Italian sun. It had been an unusual treat for me to leave my cloistered chapel and spend an afternoon with my family. I still remember the spicy taste of the sausages sold by a street vender at the far side of the shell-shaped market square and the sound of the crowd as they cheered for their favorites.

“Ah, yes!” Erasmus’s eyes sparkled at the memory. “Old Ironhead announced he and his students would face all comers—propaganda for his fencing school, of course. Only Mephisto beat them all. After that, Capa Ferro used to come by to wheedle trade secrets out of our elder brother. They became great friends.”

“That event I do remember!” Gregor’s dark eyes glowed with the warmth of golden memories. “By that time, I was twelve and so disappointed that none of the grown men would fence with me—at that age I had no notion yet that I was destined for the church. You won a few matches yourself, if I recall, Big Brother.”

“Well … yes,” Erasmus replied, looking down at his hands in an uncharacteristic moment of humility. He played with his fingers. “I did my part for the family honor.”

Gregor gave Erasmus a rare fond smile. “I remember your son Sebastian cheering for you. He told everyone within earshot that the winner was his father. Your poor wife was quite beside herself with embarrassment.”

It was so unusual to see the somber Gregor smiling openly that I felt oddly disorientated, as if I were seeing a brother I had not known I had. Maybe Gregor really had changed during his imprisonment. I wondered how it came about. I hoped that Erasmus would accept this olive branch, acknowledge Gregor’s enthusiasm, and give him with some encouragement, but Erasmus merely turned away and stared off through the tangled webs at the cypress trees beyond, his face tight and drawn.

Another spasm of irritation at my pigheaded brother ricocheted through me. What was wrong with him? Was not the misery around us enough motivation to bridge the gap between himself and his brother?

I clenched my fists, resisting the urge to push him over the side of the gondola into the swamp, where he belonged.

As if he could hear my thoughts, Erasmus suddenly turned around, but he was not looking at me. He grinned at Malagigi. “Those show bouts of Mephistos are all well and fine, but none of them compares with my brother’s greatest match.”

“You mean the match he and Cesare fought over that pretty girl?” I asked, recalling the event. I added enthusiastically, “I saw part of it, the part that could be seen from the
Filarete
tower. Didn’t they fight some of it on a staircase?”

“It was the sort of thing you’d see in a film.” Erasmus laughed with glee; the shadow that had fallen over his face moments before vanished as he recalled this incident from his early youth. “Up and down stairs, over tables, in and out of doorways, across the parade grounds … that’s the part Miranda caught. It was unbelievable! In my whole life, I’ve never seen its like! Two of the best swordsmen in Italy fighting over things worth fighting about: women and money!”

“I have heard about this duel my whole life, Maugris!” Gregor exclaimed. Again there was a rare flash of boyishness in his smile. “Mephisto and Theo have acted it out for us dozens of times. And, once, when we were invited to visit the
Castello Sforzesco
for some public festival—the castle that had belonged to my family when Father was Duke, before—” Gregor laughed as if suddenly putting two and two together. “It was you and your siblings, who took it away from him, wasn’t it?”

Malagigi gave a shrug. “It was your uncle Antonio who convinced the French king to attack. We merely came along to lend a hand. A dashing figure, your uncle. A pity he died that day.”

“That was before I was born. I never met him. Anyway, we visited the
castello
for some public celebration, and Erasmus blocked out the whole fight for Sebastian and me, showing us where various parts of the fight had taken place, where first blood had been drawn and where Cesare finally conceded. There was even a faint blotch on the stone that Erasmus claimed was Mephisto’s blood, shed when Cesare stabbed our brother in the shoulder after refusing to yield when first blood was called.”

“Ah, yes!” Malagigi laughed. “Even I have heard of this match!”

“You?” Gregor asked, taken aback.

“But of course!” Malagigi replied. “Your uncle Antonio described it to us. He was very fond of Mephisto. When we first met, he still hoped Mephisto and Erasmus could be turned, that they would eventually join him against Prospero.”

“Really!” I nearly shouted in surprise. “What an extraordinary idea!”

“It may not have seemed that extraordinary to Uncle Antonio,” Erasmus admitted. “Mephisto and I did admire him greatly. He had turned against Father. It only made sense that he might think others would, too.”

“Would you have?” I asked, shocked.

Beside me, Mab pulled out his list of Traitor suspects and drew a box around Erasmus’s name.

“Of course not!” Erasmus replied, a touch of both humor and sadness in his voice. “But how was Antonio to understand that?”

*   *   *

MALAGIGI
poled us forward as the rest of us sat quietly, basking in the light of the silver star. The swamp here was littered with debris from rotting trees. Ahead, a wide log floated between two cypresses, blocking our way. Malagigi switched his pole-oar to the nearer side of the gondola, so as to maneuver us around the log.

Erasmus leaned back and gazed at the silver star. “He isn’t a bad brother, all in all. Mephisto, I mean. He fought a couple of times on my behalf over the years. His trusty blade has defended you, too, Miranda, as I recall.”

“A few times,” I admitted. “Usually it was Theo who sprang to my defense. In fact, Theo once dueled Mephisto for the right to defend me. After that, Mephisto let Theo be my champion. But there were a few times when Theo was not around, and some young blood troubled me. Mephisto was quick to put the upstart in his place!”