The Best of Penny Dread Tales (31 page)

Ábel ran around the edge of the bed to lean over her, hands outstretched. Anne-Cathleen knocked them away, and he recoiled as if stung. “Anne, I would have told you …”

“Get out! Get away from me!” She clung to her anger like an anchor. “I trusted you. I left my husband for you! Were you ever going to tell me that it was all a part of your childish politics?”

Ábel said nothing, fighting with his own sadness, but Anne-Cathleen would not relent. “Leave, just leave.” She was alone, her marriage abandoned for a lie, and suddenly she was choking on sobs that sounded like screams. Ábel tried to touch her again but she flinched back, hugging her knees to her chest, oblivious to everything but the pain.

***

Dawn was met in fear.

The slumbering defenders had been awakened hours before, hastened to order by whispers and kicks passed down the walls. It had been assumed that the Ottoman cease-fire was a ruse to lull the Hungarians into negligence in preparation for a dawn assault. Soldiers greeted the morning in silence, peering out from embrasures and trenches at the lightening landscape, rifles and greatcoats beaded with dew.

The day broke, and with it came the roar of cannon fire, every Hungarian cannon still on its axle bellowing defiance at the Ottoman line.

That line remained resolutely, interminably empty. The Ottoman guns remained hidden behind earth-filled gabions; no assault had come under the last ebb of darkness.

What greeted them, looming in the distance over the southern horizon, was far worse than that.

***

The door’s hinges creaked as Anne-Cathleen gently pushed it open. No lamps were lit on the landing, and only the sounds of a slumbering house greeted her. She pushed further and stepped out of the bedroom. She clutched the handles of her carpetbag, knuckles white around the leather. She stepped out on to the landing, and red-rimmed eyes stared around the hall.

Nothing moved. The dusty corners of the hall were pools of shadow, the few slivers of wan morning light slipping through gaps in the thick curtains nailed around the windows and through the hemisphere of painted glass that crowned the house’s doorway. The rocking chair that had held the grim, rifle-armed woman sat empty on the far side of the hall. Ábel’s comrades were all asleep, or at least not busying themselves with noisy night-time activities.

Anne-Cathleen looked back through the door at Ábel asleep in the bed, the sheets typically curled tight about him. He had come back soon after he and Rikárd had left, gushing with apologies and pleading for understanding. Anne-Cathleen had been unrelenting, his pleas breaking on the barrier of her anger. Finally they had both collapsed, exhausted by rage and sorrow and shame. Anne-Cathleen’s wounded pride had made her argue about where Ábel would sleep, but in the end, when he had climbed in beside her, she had been too tired to stop him.

Anne-Cathleen started down the staircase, jumping at each floorboard’s complaint and the rustling of her dress on the carpet. She tried to look at everything at once; the door, the arches that led to the townhouse’s two wings and back into the interior of the house, expecting every time she turned to see Ábel standing at the head of the stairs, watching her. Yesterday, or even just a few hours ago, she would have strode boldly, fears masked by a veneer of arrogance and privilege. Now she walked with a whispering tread, starting at shadows.

She crept to the door and bent to the lock, listening for any sign of a sentry without. There was none, but she did not move. Fear had brought her this far; fear of what the morning would bring, of the machinations of Rikárd and his anarchists, of facing Ábel in the light of day. But she stopped short at the doorway. Beyond were other fears, those that had driven her from her husband’s shelter to Ábel’s, ignorant of the lie of his love. Her hand wavered in the air, outstretched toward the tarnished handle, hesitating before the choice it represented. Where would she go if she wrenched open the door and fled into the night? She could not, would not, go back to Gusztáv; the joyous memory of the wind in her face as Ábel’s trap hurtled away from her home too fresh to betray.

Her hand grasped the handle suddenly. That moment, like all the others, was tainted by Rikárd’s vindictive revelation.

But no one in the city would take her in—not now. She saw no chance of escaping the city by her own means; if she had, she would have done so long before.

Options dwindling before her scrutiny, Anne-Cathleen looked back up at the room where Ábel slept. Emotions warred within her, and her grip on the handle shook as she did. Slowly she released it and stood in silence beside the door for long minutes. Then, with the same patience as she had descended, Anne-Cathleen climbed the stairs back to her room.

***

A flock of predators bore down on Budapest. Sleek and lethal, their wooden hulls sheathed in plates of iron that reflected bright morning light from their starboard sides. Slim gas chambers studded tall flanks, keeping the colossal vessels aloft while broad propellers drove them inexorably on. Dark-skinned men in fleece-lined coats stared through telescopes, contemplating the doomed beauty of the Hungarian capital spread out before them.

The airship fleet of the Ottoman Empire drew closer, confident in its superiority, stately in its progression through the clear skies. A northerly wind restrained their speed but did little more than give the defenceless city more time to contemplate its fate.

The city was helpless. The few Hungarian airships that remained in the city were cutters and couriers, not warships, and the city’s rocket magazines had been depleted countering the enemy siege-works. Bombardment was the terror of all cities, more horrific than any battlefield for its impersonality, more devastating for the totality of destruction that would scour a city of life. Nations had submitted to occupation and annexation in the face of such a threat.

The Hungarian soldiers fled. Battered, bleeding, deprived of rest and the hope of victory, it was a wonder they had held for as long as they had, but to see death itself unhurriedly approach was too much. They fled in ones and twos, officers doing their best at first to contain the rush but soon joining it. The rout spread along the ramparts, heading not north into the doomed city but east, out toward the sun-baked plains and the hope of surviving the day. Behind the Ottoman siege lines, cavalrymen mounted eager horses and contemplated the sport of the day.

In the skies above them, the airship captains did the same.

***

The blade of light crept along the floor. Anne-Cathleen watched it stretch from one floorboard to the next, marking time in the most primitive way she could imagine. Eventually the sliver would reach across the length of the floor and begin climbing the wall. Anne-Cathleen had told herself that once the light reached the wall she would stand up and leave the room. There were many floorboards left to cross before that happened.

Anne-Cathleen lay on her side, completely still. Only the occasional blink to clear her eyes betrayed the fact that she was alive at all. She was dully aware of commotion beyond the door of the tiny bedroom, a great deal of clattering, shouted activity, no doubt in preparation for some nefarious purpose. Anne-Cathleen ignored it; it was beyond her concern. She waited for whatever was to come.

Ábel had said he would return shortly, before disappearing out into the mêlée of the radicals’ hideout. The shaft of light had made its way across three floorboards since then, and Anne-Cathleen had not heard his voice amongst the din. What he planned to do with her, what Rikárd—thinking of the poisonous man almost made Anne-Cathleen shriek, but she remained still—had planned for her, she did not know.

Long minutes passed slowly. The beam of white morning light inched further, illuminating the dust and dirt lining the deep grooves of the wooden boards.

The noise from the hall subsided all of a sudden, and she dimly raised her head to listen. A shout, louder and angrier than before, made Anne-Cathleen start. She looked at the door. No one had disturbed her since she had ejected Rikárd; the radicals were as content to ignore her as she was to disdain them.

A fearsome yell answered the shout, and suddenly the tramp of running feet echoed through the house. Heavy, hurried footsteps shook the bedroom’s boards, and Anne-Cathleen finally moved, lifting herself up to sit on the edge of the bed. She moved back from the door, which burst open to reveal Ábel, sweat-streaked and wide-eyed.

“Anne, we have to leave, now.” The look in his eyes was terrible; Anne-Cathleen drew back.

“No, Anne, we are going!” Ábel shouted, startling her. He reached out and grasped her wrist, hard. She instinctively pulled back, but he pulled her up off the bed despite her cry of protest.

“Ábel, let me go! My bag!” He towed her out of the room, hauling her bodily. “Wait, my bag, stop!”

“We don’t have time, Anne. Please trust me!” He did not stop in his headlong charge down the stairs, and Anne-Cathleen stumbled behind him. The hall was empty, deserted by Ábel’s comrades at a moment’s panicked notice. The thought that the constabulary had come to arrest the whole nest of them flashed through her mind, and she tried once more to pull away from Ábel, who turned, wrathful. “God damn it, woman, don’t fight me now! I’ll not die here and neither will you!” He heaved again, drawing another cry of pain as they ran out into the morning’s glare.

“Die? What’s happening Ábel?” Anne-Cathleen no longer struggled against his grip. He didn’t reply but swore instead.

The yard had emptied; a black four-horse cab crowded with men and women disappearing from view as they watched. Ábel and Anne-Cathleen chased after it, the sense of panic within Anne-Cathleen made worse by ignorance of what threatened them.

As they passed through the wrought-iron gates and on to the street, Anne-Cathleen heard an odd noise, a
crump,
like a sudden intake of breath. She looked around for the source but was hampered by Ábel’s unyielding grip. The sound grew, or rather it rippled, a series of wet
thumps
carrying over the houses
.
They reached the end of the street and emerged into chaos.

People were running from their homes in terror. Men dragged their wives and their wives carried crying children, all of them scared beyond reckoning. Anne-Cathleen felt their fear feed her own, and she recoiled from the crossroads. Some were carrying bags or boxes, which made Anne-Cathleen think of her abandoned carpet-bag; all that remained of her belongings, abandoned.

She and Ábel plunged into the crowd, Ábel leading the way as they were jostled and pushed aside. They headed across the road, running for another row of townhouses on the far side. A single-horse trap sat idle in the street, its driver anxiously looking back at his master’s home.

As they approached Anne-Cathleen realised Ábel meant to steal it, and she pulled up short. He finally let go of her and strode on, hailing the driver with an angry yell. The man turned quickly, and his eyes widened. Ábel produced a pistol from his belt and did not stop walking forwards as he cocked it. The driver’s hand went for the whip slung by his seat, and Anne-Cathleen screamed as Ábel pulled the trigger and put a bullet between the driver’s eyes. The man dropped like a stone, and she screamed again as dead eyes stared into hers.

Ábel leapt into the trap and mastered the rearing, panic-stricken horse in its traces.

“Anne, come on!”

Ábel jerked the reins, kicking the trap into motion. She stepped back, horrified by the casual murder a man she had loved had committed before her. Ábel leaned out, caught her roughly around the waist and hoisted her into the trap. She kicked and fought him, seeing through tears as the world around her collapsed.

Ábel gave the horse its head, and the trap surged out into the road, narrowly missing a man and his wife on the corner as they turned north. They galloped on, past rows and rows of housing and the streams of humanity that poured from each. Those households whose staff had remained through the siege now lost them, every man and woman seeking safety for themselves first and only. Some tried to waylay Ábel, but he brandished the empty pistol at them as they went by. Anne-Cathleen clung to the trap’s board, desperate for an explanation for the chaos that had suddenly erupted around her.

As they left behind the houses of the southern slope and started to climb towards the summit of Gellért Hill, Anne-Cathleen looked back and got her answer.

Budapest was burning.

Anne-Cathleen knelt in the trap’s seat and saw a city die in flames. The sweep of the horizon was consumed by fire and black smoke, boiled and churning like a corner of Hell itself. The ruined southern districts of the city were hidden by a wall of choking smoke, but she could see flames racing through the streets of Csepel and gardens of Budafok. Across the river Pesterzsébet was too bright to look at, an ember glowing with the ferocity of the sun, radiating heat and devastation. Church spires and mosques, factories and villas, all burned and died, collapsing under their weight as the inferno devoured their foundations. Anne-Cathleen saw tiny groups of people running, confused and terrified, and she tried to turn away rather than see the horror of families fleeing nature’s own fury unleashed.

It was a fury unleashed by a flotilla of hovering airships, their outlines wavering through the scorching air. The Ottomans had turned man’s primordial fear against Budapest, and Anne-Cathleen heard herself spitting curses and hate at the vast engines of death that even now rained curtains of liquid flame on as-yet untouched corners of Pest. She screamed vows of vengeance and pleas of mercy into the sky, hating them for the destruction they had wrought on her life.

Ábel kept the horse trotting up the hill and gently moved his hand to Anne-Cathleen’s shoulder, turning her away from the scene of a dying city. She slapped away his hand and slumped into the seat.

Abel negotiated the trap up the switchback road that led into the memorial park at the Hill’s summit. Anne-Cathleen looked at him for the first time since he had plucked her kicking from the bedroom. She saw the tears that stung his eyes and the tortured set of his mouth, clamped shut to keep in the same cries that she had vented. One shaking hand started to reach out to his, but when his hand moved to grasp hers she jerked back, and a fresh wave of tears rolled down Anne-Cathleen’s cheeks.