Page 17 of What Dreams May Come
I did run. I darted toward a heavy pewter candlestick, seized it and ran back to find a smiling Count Prospero held herby the throat.
I slammed him in the ribs with the candlestick, and gentle reader, I was fighting for a friend. I connected witha solid thump.
He shrugged off my blow and smashed her in the face with his fist. She flew backward and hit the window. The precious glass broke beneath her skull and shattered outward andshe collapsed.
Her strongbox flew from her hands, bounced on the tiles, opened and—two squeaking dormice skittered in opposite directions, and four gold coins rolled in crazed circles across the floor.
I wound up for another hit.
He batted my weapon away as if it were no more than a mosquito.
The worst had happened. Count Prospero had hunted me down. My protector had been vanished. I was weaponless, on my own, and there was no point in being afraid now. I looked into the pale eyes behind the mask, and with a calm that denied the crowd’s screams, the fights starting all around, and his towering menace, I said, “That’s your second box, Count Prospero. You have only one more to choose, and you lose the wager.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Count Prospero was not amused. Snatching my strongbox from under my arm, he grabbed my wrist in his brutish fingers and hauled me across the ballroom toward the back of the house. No one paid attention to us. Most people crowded toward the great doors; a few ran toward the back, taking the servants’ exit or crawling out the windows. Throughout the crowd I could hear Madame Culatello’s ladies shouting suggestions like, “The guards are demons!” and “We’re sacrifices to Count Prospero’s dark forces!”
I had no trouble believing that the guests credited the shouts, since even now I wondered if Count Prospero would drag me down to the depths of his house and all the way to hell.
As he veered toward his office, I heard the sounds that meant the great doors had at last been opened wide. I could hear Verona’s streets, the shrieking of Count Prospero’s guests, the muffled roars of his guards as guests trampled them, savaged them, tossed them aside like the refuse they were.
Count Prospero flung me inside the bare room. He kicked the solid wood door closed, muting the sounds.
In the silence and the light of the single candle, I watched with terrified fascination as Count Prospero placed the strongbox on the desk and opened it—to reveal the rat that gave it weight feasting on a wealth of shriveled raisins, and worth...nothing.
Bad choice.
I, like afool, laughed.
Also a bad choice.
Prospero slowly looked up, the candles shone full on his mask.
For the first time I realized his eyes were glacial blue or icy green, hypnotic in their power, andI backed away.
“You imagine this is funny?” The words slipped softly from his unseen lips.
To my ears, it sounded as if a snake had gained the ability to speak. “It is.” I lifted my chin and pretended I didn’t feel the chill that exuded from him. “That’s the third strongbox. As promised, at the bottom there were gold coins. Three, to be exact, and undoubtedly coveredwith rat shit.”
He swept the box off his desk, scattering the raisins, the gold, and the fat glorious rat who landed with a thump and indignantly waddled after his food. “Who carries the box with the ransom? Or is thata woman’s lie?”
“I don’t lie.” I may spin the truth, but I don’t lie and I don’t feel the need to explain that to this insulting cur. “Berengaria carries the gold. She has kept possession of that strongbox the whole time. You remember Berengaria. She jumped onto the dais next to you, frightened you”—how I relished those words!—“gave you the terms, and when you agreed, offered you her strongbox. If you’d taken it, you’d have won the wager and one hundred gold coins would be yours, and the precious ring.” I didn’t like the way Count Prospero’s head bobbed on his neck, as if rage had seized him by the throat. Yet what could I do but forge ahead? “You lost the wager.” I pointed at his hand. “Giveme that ring.”
Nowhelaughed. “Did you really think that if I failed, I’d giveyou the ring?”
What I really thought was that I wanted not to be here, confronting Count Prospero by myself. “A wager is a gentlemen’s agreement. You must doas you vowed.”
“You’re a woman.” The way he said it, with such contempt, as if I was one of the lesser creaturescreated by God.
“I am.”
“Your cohorts are women. You dare to dress like men. You do that because you know a woman is nothing more than a cow made to bear a man’s son and provide it milk. A woman’s skin is the parchment on which a man writes a wager that commands respect. A woman’s wager is nothing but a bleating of a sheep.”
Furious red dots darted in my vision. “You bray like a crossbred ass unable to produce offspring!” I leaped toward him. “I should remember, you’re no gentleman. You are no lord. You’re low-born, a knave, a bully, a charlatan, a buffoon, a maggot that crawls to eat the entrails of the dead. You destroy everything and produce nothing.”
Like a striking asp, he grabbed my wrist in a bruising grip and lifted it high above my head. “You. Did you think I don’t recognize you? She told me you were coming. She demanded payment for your identity. I know what I hold, and you’re worth every coin, Lady Rosaline of the House of Montague.”
She?Shetold him?
