Tenebrae Manor (3 page)

“Arpage, I am aware of her increased appetite for all things but what are we to do? Surely you see the predicament I am in?”

Arpage considered his master’s words a moment before sighing longingly and, having been beaten into submission, returned to his post at the foot of the monumental instrument.

Bordeaux clapped his hand upon the composer’s back before striding back to the ladder, sighing. He retrieved his red silk handkerchief from his coat pocket and mopped his skeletal brow. “It is hotter here than outside,” he groaned.

Arpage had ceased to remember his master’s appearance all but immediately, the notes of intense invention again spewed from the garish instrument and Bordeaux took it upon himself to leave the composer to his work.

It could be delayed no longer. Bordeaux had to act upon the Lady Libra’s summons.

As the distance closed between their inevitable meeting through step by spidery step of Bordeaux’s skeletal legs, the perpetrator of the forthcoming meeting lounged lazily within her quarters at the top of the mansion in Tenebrae’s finest wing. Reclining on a chaise lounge dwarfed beneath her ample girth, Lady Libra, the mistress of Tenebrae Manor, stretched her arms luxuriously. Her dusky eyes were like pools of dark amber; this accompanying her plump red lips, upturned ever so slightly at the corners, gave her an air of unshakable confidence, of peerless wisdom. Her body, hugely fat, curved sinuously beneath her alarmingly snug charcoal dress, clinging to her like a second skin. She was all things beauty in a woman, albeit exaggerated to their polar extremes, so as to create a sort of overripe diva - like a piece of fruit left upon its branch but a day too long, so as to be left too sweet, too ripe. Hedonistic in all respects, Libra was not wont to being denied her sensual surfeits and her lofty position within Tenebrae left her lapping up all luxuries her reluctant servants languished upon her.

She lay now, fanning herself apathetically with one hand, draining a glass of cherry wine with the other. Surrounded as she was in her comforts, Libra was a shade flustered, attributing to the stifling heat wave. “Madlyn,” she called shiftlessly.

Seconds passed and only a vacuum devoid of sound came in reply. She shifted her weight onto her elbow. “Madlyn,” she called, louder this time but to similar result.

Libra squeezed as many seconds out at she could before her patience was exhausted and struggled into a sitting position. Her movements were graceful, albeit lumbering in a way. Slowly, heavily, she rose to her feet and stiflingly gave her back a stretch; it had been some time since she had stood up. “Where is that wretched girl?”

She took two steps forward before an answer came, though not in the form she had anticipated. A courteous knock upon the oak door of her bedroom was followed by Bordeaux’s imposing entrance, whereupon the demon stood formally and awaited acknowledgement.

“Oh, it’s Bordeaux,” murmured Libra, as if to herself and she slowly flopped herself back onto her chaise lounge.

“My Lady, how do you fair this hour?” Bordeaux bowed with great panache and stepped closer to Libra.

“Surely something can be done about the heat, Bordeaux?”

“Others were hoping that you would remedy the situation.”

“Ah, B. I never catch a break now, do I?” she sighed.

Hold your tongue, Bordeaux,
he thought. Since ascending to Tenebrae’s highest perch, the gorgon had shown little activity in the way of leadership.

“Well, don’t just stand there being so formal, take a seat.” Libra gestured to a less than comfortable wooden stool, upon which Bordeaux propped himself and planted his chin into his hand.

“Futile as it may be, for the sake of the others, I must ask; can you do nothing about the heat wave?” he asked.

“Madlyn!” screeched Libra.

Bordeaux moaned inwardly, his attempt was indeed futile.

This time though, at least for Libra, an answer came to her request, as a young blonde girl in a navy blue dress and white apron staggered in on clumsy legs. Her knees seemed to buckle under the load she carried, that of a platter of glistening pastries. The girl placed the platter down onto a low table next to Libra, who proceeded to greedily grasp a delicacy in her fingers and stuff it generously into her plump mouth.

“Coffee, my lady?” the girl asked.

“Where have you been, Madlyn?” spat Libra.

The girl’s empty, sunken eyes rolled back mischievously. “Oh nowhere, really… Hi Bordeaux.”

“My dear Madlyn, how do you fair?”

She tried to hide her smile, yet her attention was so arrested on Bordeaux that the coffee cup beneath her overflowed with a hiss.

“Stupid girl,” hissed Libra. “You may take your leave, once you tell me where you have been hiding, ignoring my calls.”

“The kitchens are busy is all. There’s talk of another human in the house.” Madlyn brushed her hands on her smock and pulled at the blonde pigtail that sprouted out the side of her head.

“A human? Is that all? Is that the reason for your tardiness? Your depriving me of these fine sweets? Go now, silly girl.”

“Bye Bordeaux,” simpered Madlyn, paying no attention to Libra.

The order must have settled into her feeble brain somewhere though, as the girl tottered out through the door she had entered with a silver tea tray in hand.

“She is so insane, one could mistake
her
for a monster,” said Libra.

“Yes, well those humans do have fragile temperaments. I believe it is safe to say that her year at Tenebrae Manor has frightened out what was left of her wits.”

“Stupid girl to begin with, really. But she is dutiful when she feels like it and lord knows, I’ve needed a servant true to their duty.”

Bordeaux sipped his coffee quietly as Libra crammed another cake into her overweight body. The demon was not surprised that she had not offered him one. Libra’s ravenous appetite was startling to nobody.

“Now, about my birthday…” she began.

“My lady, please. I must interject. This matter of the human.”

She threw her arms into the air. “Oh, the human, the human. What of him?”

“As master of affairs, I feel I must deal with him swiftly so as to carry out more important matters,” said Bordeaux.

“Well I don’t know much,” replied Libra. “Only that the lad is scampering about the walls somewhere. Like a rat in a maze, trying to escape I’d say. I had thought you’d be more informed. How did he get in here?”

“I would hazard the guess that Usher let him in.”

“The halfwit.”

“A youthful sort, from what I gather, “ added Bordeaux. “Probably a simple farmhand. Not rugged enough to be a wrangler.”

“Indeed.”

Libra licked her sticky fingers and began to drain her cup of coffee. It was increasingly clear that Bordeaux’s presence was frustrating her as much as it was he. Bordeaux rose to leave, such pleasantries with Libra were beginning to grate on him.

“Sit down, Bordeaux, you fusser! You’re too sensitive.”

Bordeaux stood still for a moment, before turning back to face Libra and rolling his eyes. “I suppose I do put the
boy
in flamboyant.”

“There’s the sweet young man I know. Now, I can tell you that Edweena found the man out in the forest but last I heard, it was Deadsol and Comets that were looking after him.”

Bordeaux grinned. “That ought to scare some of the youth out of him.”

There was a pause.

“So Bordeaux,” Libra smiled. “Since I have so aptly divulged your required information…”

“… The preparations are coming along satisfactorily.”

Libra stared up at him through her pool-like eyes, smiling vampishly. She seemed to be attempting to gracefully roll onto her stomach, no doubt hoping her alluring charm would wheedle more information out of Bordeaux. Though she was so engorged, that movement was difficult, unaccustomed as she was to her increasing centre of gravity. As such, there was a distinctive delay in her physical being, demonstrated in this ham-fisted attempt at seduction. Her plump abdomen pressed down into the chaise lounge beneath, as the mountainous shelf of her rear end quivered slowly upon her hips. Propping her head upon her hand, her white fingers twined through her dark curls. “Just…
Satisfactorily
?” she asked.

Bordeaux had observed this charade with indifference, his begrudging respect for the lady forcing him to indulge her curiosity. “Satisfactorily,” he said. “Swimmingly, smoothly, without hitch, like clockwork. What more can I say?”

Libra seemed content with the response. “Such a hard worker, B.”

Bordeaux shifted uncomfortably.

“Yes, go then,” said Libra. “I see you want to leave. Go do whatever it is you always do. Bustle here, hustle there. Once you discover life’s simple pleasures, you will be much happier. Eternity is a frightfully long time to spend alone.”

She poked another pastry into her mouth and simpered.

“Would that my schedule permitted it, dear Libra.”

“Oh B, nobody likes petulance. Not when your
fabulous
queen keeps this house underneath a lovely blanket of night.” A broad gesture of her arm drew the shape of the lengthy window occupying most of one side of her room.

It was this comment that anchored Bordeaux reluctantly into his position one rung lower than Libra, even though he had to look past the excess of luxuries in the lady’s room in order to see out the window. Her private bedroom was more like a mansion in itself, pressed into a single expanse. Her tables lay adorned with ornaments of great beauty, of metals most valuable, gems most lustrous, trinkets she had gathered prior to her resignation into this comfortable locality. It was here, in the most opulent section of Tenebrae that she was able to live as she desired, in torpid bliss.

As Bordeaux’s eyes circumnavigated the interior, Libra rose from her seat to lean softly against him. Bordeaux recoiled from the touch of her prominent belly pressing into his side, her deep eyes oozing with the innocence so well feigned by a charlatan.

“I don’t doubt that you’ll get the rest you’ve earned,” whispered Libra. “Until then, you’ll handle the issue of the human, won’t you?”

The demon pensively scratched at his chin. “Such trivialities always seem to
need
my endeavours to ensure
proper
undertakings are achieved.”

“It is not unnoticed, love. Now go, I wish to doze.”

Libra shambled to her sizeable bed, an ocean of crumbled quilts whose quantity almost diminished her remarkable plumpness. Collapsing down onto it and sinking softly into its billowy down, she exhaled a sigh of utter content, as though Bordeaux had already made egress. He remained steadfast to his post for but a moment, a qualm begotten by the abundance of disruptions to his regime choking the last remnants of aplomb from beneath his ribs. Lady Libra was snoring softly within the minute, her assurance of tranquility doing little to influence her emaciated counterpart.

He had taken upon himself to proceed directly to the ground floor drawing room, where he would undoubtedly discover the very being of his botheration. The human.

The drawing room in question was a favourite rendezvous for Deadsol and Comets, who were, no doubt, interrogating the poor man this very moment.

Bordeaux would do well to advance immediately to this room. That is until a rare display of revolt overcame him and the renegade within instead led him to his own quarters, to amass a warranted reprieve. Guilt swam in his lungs with each step away from his vocation.

His room was a simple one. An apt description when compared to the abundance of his most recent visitation to Libra. A round tower jutting from Tenebrae’s northeastern foundation pointed skyward like a guard’s lance, it was here in this turret that Bordeaux ventured to escape the pressures of life in the manor as master of affairs. If he were allowed but one sliver of personal joviality, one err in the staunched tourniquet of his loyal disposition, it would lie somewhere within the spherical grey stone of his own walls.

He could not help but smile in relief at the sound of his leather shoes reverberating the stone spiral stairwell entering the room. Up and up he went until the curtain of black ascent was peeled away and his eyes fell upon his nook with blissful nostalgia.

“There is something in Libra’s words,” he muttered.

He shook his head though, for he was well aware that were he to adopt Libra’s languid disposition, Tenebrae Manor would swiftly fall into chaos.

Bordeaux removed himself from the confines of his burgundy coat, further revealing his slim frame, wrapped as it were in his grey waistcoat. The shirt beneath, streamlined in elegance, was of a red so dark as to put even his fine coat to shame. The passion of the most violent primary colour shone from his clothing as the very definition of the word. Were blood to have soaked the fibres of it, it would appear insipid by comparison.

The demon carefully draped his coat over its rack and placed his shoes beneath it with precise pedantry. His wrists turned outwards as if to absorb the very feel of his room in all its creature comforts. They were comforts of simplicity. His room was decorated with meaningful ornaments acquired throughout his extensive life. On his writing desk, a set of panpipes tied with feathery tassels, a skull of some long dead human being, its eyes dripping with the tallow of a candle placed upon the scalp like a pointed hat. Pendants of sincere craftsmanship displaying the care and love that went into their creation. Within a pearly clamshell, Bordeaux plopped ring after ring of brilliant silver as he removed the ten that he usually wore. One on every digit, each engraved with patterns of paisley or intricate ivy. Inks and paints sat orderly placed upon a drawing board covered in unfinished sketches and manuscripts. Crimson curtains swayed like ghosts in the open window on the northern facade, their movements drawing Bordeaux to the ledge where his extravagant telescope was assembled. A wind was concocting its gusts in the atmosphere beyond and for a fleeting, exciting moment, Bordeaux thought it was the signal of a long awaited cold change in the weather. Alas, the currents were a scalding variety, churning up the torpid air from its stagnant hibernation.