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Isobel’s head popped up. “What does ‘sagacious’ mean?”
“Sagacious,” he said, writing, “adjective describing someone in possession of acute mental faculties. Also describing one who might, in a bookstore, think to get up and locate an actual dictionary instead of asking a billion questions.”
Isobel made a face at him. When his pen paused, she ducked her head down and dove back into the page.
When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within.
She stopped, thinking that must mean that, no matter what side of the door you were on, there would be no checking in or out of the Prospero Hotel. She had to admit that was a little dooming right there, and it made her kind of want to know what happened. How was Poe going to write his peeps out of this if there was no exit? She skimmed to the bottom of the paragraph.
Buffoons . . . improvisatori . . . ballet-dancers . . . musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.”
Yadda yadda. She turned the page.
“Are you skipping?” he asked.
“Nope,” she lied without missing a beat, “I just read fast.”
It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven—an imperial suite.
It was here that Isobel first felt the twinge of an inward pull on her mind. Slowly the words started to get out of the way and let images of courtiers revolve, in slow motion, through her mind’s eye. It was as though she had somehow adapted to the density of the language. Soon the words smudged away from the page, and in their place, she was left with the sensation of gliding through the scene, like she’d become a movie camera, sweeping through the sets of rooms and over the heads of costumed actors.
Each of the seven rooms, she read, had its own color, with tall, Gothic windows to match. First was the blue chamber, then the purple, then the green, the orange, the white, and then the violet. The last chamber, however, was black, with heavy draperies and bloodred windows.
It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies), there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.
Isobel skimmed ahead until she reached midnight in the story. Having seen plenty of horror flicks, she knew enough to expect the major drama to start then. And Poe didn’t disappoint.
When the black clock chimed twelve, so began the real freakiness. Left and right, everybody started to flip out over some stranger-danger creep who had come out of nowhere.
The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revelers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
Gross, she thought, but also kind of cool. Isobel flipped the page and scanned to the very end, to where Prince Prospero, peeved to the max, started charging through all the chambers.
He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry—and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
Hold up. Wait—what? That was it?
Isobel traced over the last sentence again, even though she knew she hadn’t missed anything. Or maybe she had? She swallowed hard against the lump that had formed thick at the back of her throat.
“Okay.” She slammed the book shut, causing the table to rattle, which must have caused Varen’s writing to skip because he looked up, eyebrows raised. “So can we talk about how I just read this Masque with a q thing and how at the end the bad guy totally wins?”
He drew his pen away from the page and sank back into his chair, regarding her with something like amusement. “I assume that when you say ‘bad guy’ you’re referring to the Red Death, implying that Prospero is the good guy?”
Her jaw jutted to one side as she took this into consideration. She saw his point and, eyes rolling upward, lashes fluttering, she sighed. “So, whatever, he locked out all the sick people and threw a big party for his rich buddies. Not cool, I get it. But that aside, why would Poe write a story about some lavish palace and take so much time talking about all these different-colored rooms and build up all of this stuff about this chiming clock and some sagacious prince and his drinking pals if he’s just going to kill everybody at the end?”
“Because,” Varen said, “in the end, Death always wins.”
At these words, Isobel recoiled. She took her hands from the table and put them into her lap, shoulders hunching. “You know,” she said, “no offense, but it’s when you say stuff like that that people start to worry about you.”
His expression fell.
She cringed on the inside, admitting to herself that she hadn’t meant to sound so blunt. He stared at her, but she couldn’t meet that kohl-etched gaze, half-hidden behind his hair yet still able to pierce her straight through.
“I mean . . . ,” she began, gesturing with her hands, as though they could help with the damage control.
“So,” he said, “are you worried about me?”
