Lola Montez and the Poisoned Nom de Plume (35 page)

I skittered across the grass and grabbed it by the knobbed hilt, then jumped to my feet and turned to face the snake—already hopping and leaping on its one leg, swinging the other sword from side to side as it came. This was no human, this was—abominable! Like a tornado, it was upon me and battering me with thrust after thrust, as I parried and gave ground, both of us panting and hissing and grunting; the fury of the insane against the strength of the completely cornered who must—somehow, in some way—defend its small life.

I darted around a family vault, craving its bulk to hide behind, and then realized that it was so big that I wouldn’t know from which direction de la Vega would come: would he follow after me the same way, or stop and creep round to the other side, to ambush me from there? Damn, oh damnation! I couldn’t hear anything, had no idea where he was. I was so terrified. So I faced away from the vault and raced as fast as my legs would run in a direct line away from the whole thing, shoulder blades clenched with the fear of the sword impaling me between them.

Instead, I was still running. Then I heard something strange, a whistling kind of sound, a ‘whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo’ coming through the air, but before I could register any more than that, out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something black at either side of my fleeing legs, with what looked like a stone at each end. Then sharp pain! A final ‘whoo-whoop’, as something else wrapped itself tightly around my legs at the calves. I fell with a horrible crash, knocked off my feet, my legs and skirt bound securely with what I could now see to be leather cords.

Winded, I lay where I was, desperately trying to breathe and think. A crackly, horrible sound from behind, approaching. It was the priest, laughing.

“Wonderful invention, aren’t they?” he said, looming over me. “Very helpful to someone in my condition. They use them in the New World, call them ‘bolas’—for rounding up cattle. Cows. Perfect for what I had in mind.” He’d hopped onto the swordstick I’d dropped in the fall, so I couldn’t snatch it up, then jabbed at my skirt with the other sharp blade. “Move away from it. Now.”

I rolled, then tried to sit.

“Stand up.”

I used my arms to help me into a standing position. Then we stood there, facing each other.

“Very amusing, isn’t it?” he said, picking up the second swordstick while guarding my movements with the other. “Can you see yourself? You look like me. See how easy it is to function on one leg?” Then, exploding with rage, face twisted in a kind of rictus: “You bitch! You succubus! Get over there! There!” And he pointed to another tall headstone.

I had to hop. It was immediately exhausting and unbalancing, made me feel so vulnerable, and the impossibility of escape had never loomed larger. What a sight we must have been, had anyone been there to see it—but at that moment, Montmartre Cemetery held only the dead, and the two of us, hopping.

When I was beside the headstone, he barked, “Stand against it.” My heart was hammering as if it was about to burst, but I did so. I couldn’t think what else to do; I was trussed, couldn’t run. Was this the end? Oh
Dios mío
, what kind of end?

He yanked a cord from a pocket and tied me at the waist with one loop of the rope around the stone, jerking it tight. The rope also encompassed my arms, binding them at the elbow. I wished then that I could will myself to die, and if I could have, I would have done so. It was all over for me.

But not for him. One thing about Father Miguel de la Vega which I’d learned two years before is that he cannot simply kill: first, he has to tell his victim all about it. All about why, and then—if his hatred is particularly roused—about how.

And so he began.

“They wanted you to die quickly, as soon as I’d made my way to Paris,” he hissed. “But I promised the society I would find a method of punishing you more than you could bear. To kill you through the heart first, before killing you through the body. In that way I could also punish you for the agony you have inflicted upon me. The bullet wound in the thigh—I’m sure you recall the circumstances? It didn’t heal. When I was captured and taken to prison… it festered. Gangrene set in. The prison surgeons didn’t like me, didn’t care that I knew it. Finally, the leg was sawed off. Not even a stump remains, for they dislocated the femur from the hip joint, like cracking open a chicken. Sawed everything away. No pain killer of any description, fully awake and aware for the entire ordeal.”

I shuddered at the terrible images he’d painted.

“So you see, I vowed to myself that I would have the pleasure of killing you twice. That’s why Koreff’s experiment caught my attention and why I agreed. I could do it then, while you were in the same state that I’d been, when they sawed off my leg: awake, but unable to stop what was happening, what I was going to do. But he’d used a drug, too, and because of that, I didn’t think you would have suffered enough. His simple brethren, as well, were getting in the way. Too sentimental, all of them. Useless to us.”

He was making small hops, like a crow. It looked painful as well as tiring. But the mad light was in his eyes, and I guessed what was coming. He reached into a pocket again and drew forth his vice: a little cigarette, tightly rolled, containing his drug of choice—ganga. His yellowed fingers reeked of it; his teeth were stained with it. His own, particular painkiller. He sparked a match upon the headstone and sucked the smoke deeply into his lungs.

“You got away, in Bonn… Somehow you did, yet again. So I told myself, maybe even… Three times,” he said, eyes slitted, the ganga getting into its stride. “Killing you thrice… You deserve it.” He smiled. “Let me tell you how.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“
¡Cállate!
” he screeched, and slapped me hard across the face. “You are going to know, because that is part of the reparation!”

My head rang from the blow. I closed my eyes; if I kept looking at him, I wouldn’t survive. Well, I wouldn’t survive anyway—but I couldn’t bear to witness his triumph. At first, this seemed to suit him fine.

“The first way that I killed you? Let me explain. Cassagnac was deeply in debt; he was easy to convince. He joined because I promised to help him absolve himself from his obligation; the hot-headed brother-in-law was also game. Beauvallon set up the fraudulent motivation for the duel, and Dujarier was gullible enough—honourable enough?—to take the bait. He’d gotten it into his romantic mind that the avenging angel—the note he’d found on the whore—had something to do with first-born sons like Dumas
fils
, and so he’d been determined to guard that supercilious young man from being struck down.” I could hear de la Vega’s tongue rasp across his dry lips, perhaps aiding a smirk, before the high-pitched recitation began again. “Dujarier knew his Exodus 12, but he didn’t know enough, or else he forgot: that he was a first-born son, too. The avenging wing travelling over the land—yes, it had come for them. But him first. With Dujarier dead, Cassagnac’s debt… disappeared. It was a very satisfying first death—for you.” He came closer, I sensed it, and his voice dropped into a deep whisper. “Did you suffer? I know you did. You who are first-born, too.”

I could feel the vile heat of him, as well as smell his smoke-filled, cadaverous breath. He was so close. Only inches away.

“Those who are privileged, those who inherit the old world order, must be struck down. The society may be breaking apart, but I never will. I will be the old warrior, a Father Merino—faithful to the death, the last Exterminating Angel…”

I was swallowing salty tears. Tears couldn’t help Henri. Nor could they help me.

His mind had travelled far away. “With Beauvallon’s acquittal, the two of them may flee the country, back to Guadeloupe, perhaps. But I’ll find them. I always do. They have a new debt, and they will pay.”

His grin was stretching his lips into an even thinner line, I could hear them elongating. “Your second death—now listen how it comes…”

I opened my eyes and looked straight into his. Black, nothing in them that I could recognize as earthborn. He had one arm out now, touching the stone for balance. His thin chest heaved with barely repressed ferocity.

“I asked myself, as I stalked you this morning—perhaps there’s a third, is there a third? Of course there is. My signature, a happy little finale… Usually they’re dead first—but not this time. Not for you, jezebel. For you, something unique. Uniquely brutal. As a way to thank you for my one leg. The whole time they were sawing, I was thinking of you. My dreams of retribution, all those months in prison—oh, they’ve kept me going.”

I blinked. I couldn’t take a breath, hadn’t breathed forever.

He dropped one of the swordsticks and raised the other, its sharp point nearing my bodice, then resting upon the material, about to cut the laces that bound me in.

“Have you guessed?” he whispered. “Have you guessed the second death, before the ultimate third?”

I had to make him say it. “No. I haven’t, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Despite my best intentions, my voice quavered: I did know, I had understood—it was to be like the young dancer that Henri had found on our doorstep. Pray God she’d been dead first—but I’ll be alive…

“You’ll be begging to die, believe me,
puta
. You’ll beg for it.” He took a drag of his little cigarette, then threw it down. “Do you want to know?”

I nodded, staring into that alien face.

“I will cut it off.” He leaned in, close to my ear, and said deliberately, “The one that sits over your heart. Your useless, worthless heart.”

As he said this, my right hand was slowly approaching my waistband. I was tied so tightly, just under my rib cage, to the stone! The priest’s mad eyes were fastened upon my breasts, the tops of which were evident in my tight bodice, and which were—no doubt—revealing the thundering heartbeat that was now suffusing me with lightheadedness. With all of my fiercest concentration, and with my eyes locked upon his thin, slavering lips—showing nothing whatsoever in my face—I felt for the flick knife, easing it free, touching the handle. His vile head swooped towards my breasts, jaws open!—as I pulled, flicked it—shhhtttt!—and with utmost speed, stabbed straight up and into the demon’s jugular, shoving the four-inch blade as hard as I could up through the artery to the knife’s very hilt. At almost the same time, with a swift jerk, I jack-knifed my legs and kicked him away from me with every atom of strength fueled by terror, still gripping the handle.

The Jesuit reeled on his one foot before falling backwards like an enormous tree crashing off its hewn trunk, the swordstick clattering after him. With the fall, as my knife pulled free of the artery, blood began to cascade out of his neck—fountains of it, spurting into the air. On his back, his arms started scrabbling around, bubbling noises began coming from his throat. Then one hand went flailing to his neck, attempting to staunch the blood, but it was hopeless. It was everywhere, gallons of it, coursing out of him at unbelievable speed. Before I could fully believe that I’d actually done it, his body jerked with a dreadful conclusiveness, and then was still.

I sagged against the rope at my waist, trembling all over. Then, fingers shaking, I used the slippery knife to saw at the cord binding me to the headstone. When it finally cut through, I simply tumbled onto the ground in shock. I suppose it was no more than a few minutes later, though I genuinely don’t know—at any rate, after some time I was able to concentrate on cutting the leather cords of the bolas, to release my bound legs.

There he lay, my mortal enemy and the most dreadful fiend ever imaginable. Flat on his back, lips curled in a snarl. Upper and lower row of savage teeth revealed, like those of a lamprey eel. But everything coated in thick scarlet blood, as if—having sucked the souls of his victims for sustenance—the eel had been torn loose and was lying, as if on a fishmonger’s block, in its gore, dead as dead can be, with its eyes filming over.

Everywhere around was blood—but I was not covered in it. The shove I’d given had swivelled him, and the opened artery’s cascades had gushed everywhere else. There had been an initial spatter—a streak across my bodice, and upon my hands—but, with luck, I would be able to find Magnifique and he wouldn’t gallop away in fear of the dark, fresh scent.

I wiped my hands on the grass, over and over. Finally, I stood. What now? Should I take myself to the police station, to tell them what had happened? Not likely. Would they believe me? Even less so. Did that make me like Beauvallon? A murderer, who left the scene of the crime? My breath hitched in my chest: no, it did not.

I staggered off on trembling legs. I had no choice, I would leave the body there. This is a place of death—so let him lie here, dead. I needed to be gone, needed my horse. Felt no remorse—oh, not a jot. Just a wild soaring joy to be alive, when such a very few minutes before, I had prayed to die quickly—from fear if nothing else. Praying for a heart attack such as a rabbit or a deer, about to be devoured, may expire from, if they’re lucky; the kiss, perhaps, of a higher being whose love may be unknowable but offers a kind of brutal mercy. Instead, against all odds, I was alive.

Steps away from the bulky stone family vault, I found Magnifique nervously cropping grass. I moved towards him, hand out and palm flat. He wasn’t sure… My hand began to shake; I concentrated upon holding it firm. No doubt it reeked, so I daren’t go too near like this, but the gesture itself, I hoped, was reassuring. As I cautiously approached, the gelding’s nostrils flared out and then in, he feinted a leap away, then—thankfully, oh beautiful one—decided against it and let his rein be taken.

“Oh, lovely horse, my brave fellow…” I rested my forehead against the strong, warm curve of his neck. “
Merci, mon amour
. Come, come with me.”

I swung up onto the saddle, and gingerly stroked his neck from there. Breathing deeply and slowly, I tried to keep my body from giving away its shattered nerves. He was smelling it, though—the blood—and was quickly aware of my clenched shuddering, up on his back. He began dancing sideways, snorting. I took one last look at the splayed crimson heap on the ground—to be sure the monster was truly dead—then turned Magnifique’s head, gave a gentle nudge with my heels, and off we went.