The Black Throne

Any horror but this, I remember thinking.

When I awoke I lay in a cell. There was no pit in its center and its door stood ajar. Ligeia and Emerson were with me. Peters stood at the door.

"General Lasalle has taken the city?" I said, repeating what I thought I had just heard.

"That is correct," she answered.

"The bond you established... . It worked?"

She nodded.

"But everything that happened to me here—there's a dreamlike, drugged quality to it."

"Griswold has finally succeeded in using your A

"So our paths did cross here, in a way. In a place of illusions. What of Von Kempelen?"

"It was a ruse. Now that A

"So we must backtrack."

"So it would seem."

I accompanied them out into the fallen city, heading north to where our coach would be waiting, drinking water as I went.

Thus do I refute Berkeley.

She was the single artificer of the world in which she sang. Builded of no mortal sand, and sea the salt of her words, she passed through her kingdom, itself become the self of her song. At his cave she called forth the poet, unbound his hands, embraced him.

"They would have me pluck my dark bird," she said, "of the midnight flights."

Poe looked past her, at the turbulent sea. A cloud covered the sun.

"Untrammeled be, and know I would not harm you," she told him.

"Unreal," he said, and he turned away from her.

The space before him shattered like a wall of glass.

"Don't go," she said softly.

"Unreal."

He stepped through the crack in the kingdom, into darkness.

VII

After the pneumonia had had its way with Elizabeth Poe and her head lay still upon the soiled pillow, long black hair framing her childish face, great, gray eyes finally closed, the tiny actress was dressed in her tawdry finery, the best of her paste jewels hung upon her.

They laid her to state in the milliner's attic, where the other members of Mr. Placide's company, along with Mrs. Phillips, Mrs. Allan, Mrs. Mackenzie, and their husbands—who had taken upon themselves the arrangements for the funeral—might come by and pay their respects.

Her resting place was to be close to the wall in St. John's Churchyard. There had been some protest from members of the vestry that an actress should be buried in consecrated ground, but Mr. Allan and Mr.

Mackenzie, both members of the congregation, had prevailed. As it was, her grave was to remain unmarked for over a century.

And the gray-eyed boy who had been a pet of the company wondered... . How often had he seen his mother die and lie there like this, till it was time to come forward and take her bows? It was taking longer than usual this time. When would she come back to hold him?

It was a brisk December day in 1811. He was almost three years old. As Mrs. Allan's hired hack bore him away, along the cobbled streets of Richmond, he became aware at some point that his baby sister Rosalie was gone, also.

He was taken to the three-story Georgian brick house at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Tobacco Alley which was now to be his home. She did not come back for him. It was taking very long.

We came after considerable travel to the quiet duchy of Aragon. No signs of war here, as back in Spain proper. Some of Prospero's subjects spoke French, others Spanish, and still others English. The peace here was of a deathlike sort. If there had been foreign armies in this land recently, they had fled months ago. This domain was devastated not by war, but by disease. Traveling, we first heard rumors and then saw terrible evidence—funeral processions, chanting monks, deserted villages—of the presence of the Red Death, a variant of pneumonic plague.

We had entered a new year while working our way around a war zone. Valdemar, again, was invaluable in this respect. Another matter on which he'd advised us concerned Prince Prospero and his present situation. The prince had apparently removed himself from all human commerce only a few days before our arrival. Nor was it a simple sequestration. Rather, careless of what happened to the majority of his people, he had called to his side a thousand friends and companions. Determined to escape the Red Death, they—with a suitable staff of servants and a company or two of soldiers—had barricaded themselves inside one of his castellated abbeys where, well supplied with all ma

All of which would be pretty much academic, save that Prospero was apparently one of the men Von Kempelen had approached on the matter so near to everyone's heart. And Von Kempelen had elected to enter the refuge with the prince.

Because of the involvement of A

"Find me the place," I insisted.

"It is outside Tarragona," Valdemar explained, gesturing now. "To the northwest. A little village called Santa Creus."

And so we headed east.

The following week our coach rattled into Santa Creus. It was an eerie feeling, for the town was mainly deserted. We rolled about its streets for a time that afternoon, viewing at last what had to be the abbey, in the distance—an enormous building with soldiers on the walls and at every point which might possess a gate. I told our driver to head for it.

When our approach was noted several shots were fired in our direction, and orders to halt were shouted in Spanish, French, and English. We complied.

I stepped down from the coach. I took one step in the direction of the abbey.

"Halt!" a guard repeated.

"Certainly. I'd appreciate speaking English."

"What do you want, English?" one called back.

"I'm looking for some people I believe may have gone inside a few days ago."

"If that is the case there is no way to reach them," he said.

"It's very important." I flipped a gold coin into the air and caught it.

"We're billeted just inside the wall," he said. "Even we can't go any farther. The i

"What about messages then? Is there no way to get a message inside?"

"No," he answered. "No way."

"All right," I said. "I understand. In that case, I'd like some information."

"Don't have any," he said. "You'd better be moving along."

"Wait! I'll pay you for it," I offered.

He laughed.

"Wouldn't touch your gold," he said. "Might be tainted with the Death."

I assumed my best parade ground voice then, "Soldier, was there a German named Von Kempelen? And four Americans—three men and a woman?"

He straightened visibly, his shoulders moving back.

"Sir, I do not know," he replied. "There were so many."

"Thank you, soldier. I take it nobody's doing business in town?"

"No, sir. And if I were you I'd not stop there. I'd head for the border and beat the horses till they fell.

Then I'd start ru

"Thanks." I turned away. I entered the coach.

"What now?" Ligeia asked me.

"We ride away," I replied. "We stop as soon as we're out of sight of the place. Then we have a talk with Valdemar. A

We parked near a skeletal olive grove. The others helped get down the coffin, and then took a walk when I explained that Ligeia and I were about to open it—save for Grip, who stood upon my left shoulder and observed.