Love Poison No. 13 Page 6

  His desperation growing, he decided he would have to flick the lever back into position, praying it caused no further ill effects.

  He slipped the lever back into its original place, grimacing even as he did so, regretting it already.

  The flame wasn’t snuffed out. Neither did it or its crystal slip back down into the machine.

  But whereas the flame remained firmly in place, the crystals and lenses in the rest of the machine one again went through their own whirling dance, this time completely in reverse.

  With a solidly satisfying clunk, the last of the revolving frames clicked to a rest.

  At last, a gloomy splattering of the dullest shades of light began to flow across the wall.

  No, Cauda hadn’t returned, unfortunately: it was all too dark, all to shapeless, to be another image of her flawless dancing – even an atrociously illuminated one.

  It was hard to make out what it was, being both completely alien yet also in some ways strangely familiar, all at the same time…

  A giant hand!

  Yes, that’s what it was!

  Peering at the dark image intently now, Guilfo could just make out the waving of the fingers that, blown up to this ridiculous immense size, could have been the grasping tentacles of a merciless kraken.

  He glanced down at his own hand, moving it slightly, recalling how he had waved it in front of the lantern’s lenses; he brought it up close to his face, imagining how it would look if it were blown up to the size of a giant’s.

  Letting his hand fall down by his side once more, he looked back excitedly towards the lantern.

  Somehow, it had recorded the moves of his hand as he had waved it in front of the lenses.

  And now it was projecting those captured images upon the wall, just as it had done with the captured images of Cauda.

  Guilfo chuckled with wicked delight.

  There was no other machine to capture the images!

  This was it; this remarkable lantern was the device that captured the images!

  *

  When Forisimo arrived back at his workshop, he was surprised that the hallway was dark and unlit.

  It was bad enough that Purnito hadn’t been waiting for Forisimo in the gondola at their arranged meeting place on the canal side. It was even more lapse of him, however, to forget to make any arrangements for when his master would arrive home.

  At least Purnito had left the door unlocked: but why wasn’t the lamp already lit?

  Forisimo searched around in the darkness for the narrow alcove containing the lantern and its flint. The lamp was there, but no matter how much Forisimo felt around its base, his hands never alighted upon anything that had been left to light it with.

  Indeed, the whole area felt damp, even wet, as if rainwater was seeping down from somewhere, a not unusual occurrence in these older, more dilapidated parts of the buildings fronting the Lane Without Name.

  He cautiously made his way farther along the dark corridor, searching out with his hands for the next alcove, the next lantern.

  Again, however, the area around the lamp felt damp, and there was once again no flint to light the wick with.

  Had the water seepage been so bad that it had washed the flints to the floor? All it needed was an accumulation of rain pooling in a high spot beneath the roof, the supporting beams gradually rotting and weakening until they broke, the released waters cascading down through the entire building in a swiftly moving waterfall.

  He hadn’t lived here long enough to know the corridors so well that he could make his way effortlessly along them in this pitch darkness; yet he still knew enough of his new home’s layout to painstakingly make his way to the areas he’d set aside as his living rooms, both of which were conveniently nearer than his workshops, if lying off at a sharp, unusual angle.

  The rooms were also dark.

  Of course; Purnito must have left in the gondola, as arranged, but had been unexpectedly delayed somewhere, Forisimo realised.

  Forisimo made his way towards where he knew the table stood, the room’s lamp being set in its middle.

  He tripped over something bulky lying in a heap on the dark floor, sending him sprawling across the floorboards. When he turned to inspect what had brought him down, feeling around with his hands once more in the darkness, he was horrified to find his fingers running through the softness of clothes, feeling the hardness of a body beneath.

  Purnito!

  It has to be!

  That’s why he hadn’t been waiting at their rendezvous point!

  But has he just been knocked out? Has he collapsed through some illness?

  Or has he…?

  The more Forisimo felt around Purnito’s body, the more he discovered that the poor man’s clothes were either caked hard or still soaked with a sticky liquid that could only be blood.

  He needed light – more urgently than ever.

  Rising to his feet, he unsteadily made his way towards the table, crashing into it in his urgency to reach the lantern. There was a thud, a tinkling of shattering glass as the lantern was knocked over. Forisimo scrambled around with his hands across the table top, trying to find in the darkness the flint to light what he hoped would still be a usable wick.

  There was an even louder crash back along the corridor: the more thunderous sounds of wood cracking. Forisimo briefly wondered if it were the rotten timbers responsible for the water spill: briefly wondered, indeed, if it had been one of these splintering ceiling beams that had struck Purnito.

  But the cacophony of wood being relentlessly shattered continued, drawing a fearful Forisimo back into the corridor, back towards the front door where all the noise seemed to be emanating from.

  The door caved in, its heavy wood splintering into almost nothing as if receiving a final strike from a barging bull. Light at last flooded into the dark corridor, lanterns held aloft by a number of armed men forcing their way past what little remained of the door.

  ‘It’s true,’ one of the men cried, waving his lamp towards the wall, towards the alcove containing its own unlit lamp. ‘There’s blood everywhere!’

  It was indeed true, Forisimo realised with a bewildered frown. What he had foolishly taken to be water soaking the walls was actually a pool of blood that had been stored in the base of the lamp, a pool he had released when he had opened its window to light it.

  ‘There! There’s our murderer!’ another man screamed excitedly.

  The man, Forisimo was surprised to see, was pointing accusingly at him.

  And then, in the light of the man’s lantern, Forisimo saw that he was also covered in Purnito’s blood.

  *

  Chapter 11

  Although Cauda’s dancing appeared characteristically flawless to everyone watching her in the fully packed theatre, she herself worried that her anxieties might be affecting her flow, her ease of movement.

  What had happened to Forisimo?

  Not only had she seen nothing of him now for over a week, but she hadn’t even heard from him; there had been no secretive delivery of notes, no whispered asides from people amongst the theatre staff who still admired and appreciated the skills he had brought to their productions.

  None of these people could tell her what had happened to him, other than that his workshops on the Lane Without Name had been boarded up by the authorities.

  Stranger still, whereas such an unwarranted intrusion into the lane by the authorities would usually have met with a rebellion of the shopkeepers, each threatening to reveal the secrets of otherwise powerful people who would soon be bent to their will, no one was even prepared to answer the most skilfully worded questions regarding Forisimo’s disappearance.

  Naturally, for a while Cauda had suspected that Guilfo might have been involved in having Forisimo ‘removed’ – the fate usually awaiting any rival of Guilfo’s he was finding especially problematic or stubborn – and yet reports of the lane’s inhabitants’ collusion in or at least acceptance of his vanishing suggested otherwise.

  True, Guilfo was walking everywhere these days with a certain spring in his steps, and he had been surprisingly forgiving of many mistakes made by the staff that would usually have resulted in at least a furious dismissal. Yet many had put this new, brighter demeanour down to the delivery of a new lantern, one obviously made to the most elaborate of specifications, and beautifully constructed to boot.

  Cauda had watched with growing interest as this new lantern was carefully raised into the framework of timbers overarching the stage and its audience, recognising immediately that it was a device worthy of Forisimo’s own particular skills.

  It had reminded her, indeed, of the contraptions Forisimo had used to either capture or project images of the dancers, but this machine had no chemically impregnated linen sheets, no great wheel revolving about it.

  Had Guilfo and Forisimo’s series of disagreement somehow been resolved between them?

  Had Guifo agreed to purchase Forisimo’s devices; but, perhaps, only on condition that the latter stopped seeing Cauda?

  That could explain the closure of his workshops on the lane, the belligerence of the other shopkeepers when people asked for his whereabouts.

  With Guilfo’s backing, he might have set up workshops elsewhere, in more exclusive parts of the city.

  As Cauda danced, she tried desperately to erase all these negative thoughts from her mind, being well aware of the debilitating effects it could have on her movements.

  And yet she couldn’t help but glance up towards the new lantern, wondering if it really were the source of her problems.

  Bizarrely, despite the lantern’s elaborate array of lenses and crystals – which she had admired as the stagehands had prepared to hoist it up into position – no light seemed to emanate from it
.

  More terrifying still, the eye of its lens followed her every move, the lantern swivelling smoothly on a complex system of wheels, as if it were being directed by some invisible man, perhaps even a ghost.

  She felt odd, uncomfortable, under its unwavering gaze. The flame behind it flickered like a red band in the lens, glowing ominously like the reptilian eye of a dragon.

  It could have been some hideous beast, hiding in the uppermost branches of a dark forest, waiting to pounce.

  She sensed that, somehow – foolishly, she knew – it could probe deeper into her being than any human eye.

  It stripped away any façade, revealing the real, previously carefully hidden Cauda

  Most worryingly of all, Cauda feared that it would inevitably bring her life to an end.

  *

  Even if Cauda were to threaten to leave him – even if she were to die – she would now have to continue dancing for Guilfo and his descendants to the ends of eternity.

  That meant she no longer possessed that particular power over him, at least.

  As for her other hold over him, that of the love he suffered for her – well, now that that upstart Forisimo was facing execution for murder, soon even that could turn to his advantage.

  His shoulder would always be here for her to weep upon, of course, as Forisimo was led to the executioner’s block.

  What a dreadful surprise it would be for her too, to realise that she had so foolishly fallen for such a devious man, who has so effectively hidden his murderous nature.

  It had been a lucky escape for her, Guilfo would point out to Cauda when he thought the moment right. For who was to say that she, too, might not have been one of his victims if his murderous intents hadn’t been discovered so prematurely?

  How could Cauda resist such considerate concern for her wellbeing?

  And all this with absolutely no recourse to one of Master Caputo’s ridiculous potions too!

  Guilfo gleefully watched Cauda’s performance, relishing this moment perhaps more than any other he had experienced.

  His amazing lantern was watching every dance she executed, preserving every flawless performance forever within its store of crystals. The more he had studied the contraption before it had been hoisted into place high above the stage, the more he had been impressed with its ingenuity: once the lenses had been focused upon a particular subject with the flame lit, it would revolve on its system of well-lubricated cogged wheels, following that subject’s every move (thankfully, it had not followed the movement of his hand earlier when he had pulled it aside from the lens, apparently because his move was too abrupt – his hand effectively vanishing from view – for even the machine to follow).

  If he had the machine copied, then it would be possible to have Cauda dancing around the whole world, and all at the very same time!

  When he told her that, that this is what he could do for her – sharing her remarkable gift for dance with the entire world! – then surely she must declare her love for him?

  There was just one small problem, of course: what would be the effect on Cauda’s dance when she heard of poor Forisimo’s fate?

  But thankfully, it was only a very small problem.

  For no matter how much she foolishly moped over her loss, the lantern images could replace her until she recovered her composure.

  Indeed, Guilfo thought, relishing the excuse, the opportunity, to display this new version of Cauda upon his stage, it would be a whole new sensation in its very own right.

  His gleeful thoughts were interrupted by a pained groan rising up from the audience like a disturbing mist.

  He glanced nervously towards the stage, wondering what could have happened to bring about this unexpected reaction from the customarily endlessly adoring crowd.

  Cauda’s dance seemed no different than usual.

  Then he saw it; a slight faltering in the usually graceful movement of her feet – and yet this was too small a difference for the crowd to notice, surely?

  Then she slipped as she landed from a twirling leap.

  Yes, she recovered quickly, elegantly: but Cauda had never been known to deliver anything less than sublime perfection.

  Every man and woman in the crowd groaned once more. It was the same groan that had emanated from them earlier.

  Which could only mean, Guilfo realised, that she must have faulted badly then too.

  Once, well, maybe that could be forgiven, explained away even by a fault in the stage floor rather than in Cauda’s dance steps.

  But twice?

  What was happening to Cauda?

  *

  Chapter 12

  Cauda was distraught.

  She had never, ever performed so badly – not even when she was first beginning to practise her moves.

  It was her natural flow that had deserted her!

  Every mistake she made was accompanied with a sharply penetrating pain, like a stiletto blade being driven home deeply into her foot, her arm, her leg; whichever part of her body was letting her down.

  And ultimately, all those painful strikes accumulated within her heart, slowly tearing it apart.

  She wanted to flee the stage, yet instead she struggled on, hoping that she would somehow regain her poise, her grace.

  When the curtains at last closed about her, she almost collapsed with shame. She ran weeping from the stage in no mood to respond to the crowd’s half-hearted demand for a curtain call.

  She ran past the old stagehand, who glanced at her almost fearfully, obviously unsure as to how he should react to her poor performance.

  She ran past the other dancers, most of them making no effort to hide their satisfied smirks.

  She almost ran into Guilfo, who had rushed down towards the rear of the stage as soon as he realised something was affecting the performance of his star act.

  ‘What happened out there?’ he raged.

  ‘I…I don’t know!’ Cauda wailed, now uncontrollably shaking as she wept, as she recalled the humiliation, the disgrace.

  ‘Something must be causing this!’ Guilfo fumed, grabbing her roughly by her arms as if intending to violently shake the truth from her.

  ‘I…I…’

  How could she tell him it was because she hadn’t heard from Forisimo?

  That must be the cause of her problems, surely?

  ‘You weren’t concentrating, were you?’ Guilfo snarled, his eyes as glaringly frightening as any ravenous wolf.

  ‘No, no…it wasn’t that, I swear,’ Cauda insisted.

  It was partially true: her moves normally came so naturally to her, concentration would only spoil the effect, making everything too leaden, too considered and over thought.

  But she had been distracted by her anxiety, her worry that Forisimo no longer loved her and had abandoned her without even a word of apology.

  It had felt as if all her love for life, all her energy, was being slowly sucked from deep within her. As if it were draining away, perhaps never to be recovered.

  ‘I didn’t feel entirely myself out there tonight,’ she admitted, realising with a shock that this was true: she had felt as if her body wasn’t hers, as if there were a hollowness opening up inside her. ‘I couldn't coordinate things correctly anymore…’

  ‘You’re ill? Is that what you’re saying?’

  Guilfo said it with a hint of hope; if she were ill, she could recover, with the correct treatment. Depending, of course, on just how ill she was.

  The hope vanished from his expression.

  ‘Jus how ill are you?’ he asked fearfully.

  ‘No, no; not that ill, I’m sure!’ Cauda answered. ‘I just need a rest; I’ll get over it,’ she added.

  Guilfo peered at her suspiciously, as if he had detected the doubt she felt about her own statement.

  The workers in control of the curtains had let the ropes fall away from their hands; there would be no curtain calls tonight, they realised worriedly.

  The curtains remained closed.

  An apprehensively murmuring audience was already leaving the theatre.

  No one was demanding Cauda’s return to the stage.

  *

  Forisimo was still caked in Purnito’s blood.

  It had dried hard upon him now, almost black and flaking a little, such that it gave him a scaly appearance, as if he were some captured beast.