Christabel stood up, and was ignored as the thing walked past. Vathek had not told her about any mailed monster. This was a new addition to the Histories of Udolpho.

The armoured giant moved slowly, but with purpose. Its visor was down, but there was a blue glow behind the slits.

Not knowing why, she stepped out into the thing's path, and looked up at it. There was an unfamiliar crest on its helmet.

The giant halted, and stood over her, its arms outstretched.

She was impressed with its sheer presence, its size, its power. If she stretched her arms out to their limits, she could barely touch both the thing's shoulders. She touched her fingertips to the iron chest. It was smooth, and slightly warm, metallic but living. She let her palm linger on the sculpted muscles.

The giant made Lawyer Vathek seem truly pathetic.

It embraced her. She felt a flush of pleasurable fear, as she was lifted by the giant. It could crush her with no effort. She slipped her arms around its neck, and hung in its grip. Sensing a male presence beyond the visor, she felt drawn into the blue light.

After a moment, he set her down gently, and pushed past her, continuing on his way. She watched his armoured back as he turned the next corner. Her heart, she realized, had nearly stopped. She felt faint, but overcame her weakness. Her body was still vibrating with the pleasure of the giant's touch.

She could not yield to womanish feelings. Less carefully than before, she strode through the pa.s.sages towards the doctor's apartments. She wanted this over with.

Dr. Valdemar sometimes worked late in his laboratory, distilling the infusions which had been keeping Old Melmoth alive all these years. He would always be found surrounded by bubbling retorts and smoking crucibles. When she had done her business with him, she would set a fire and no one would suspect anything. The elements and chemicals he was fooling with were dangerous. There had been more than one unfortunate explosion in his rooms.

The doctor's door was open. She held her loop ready, and slipped in. There was a fireplace, its blaze shrunken to embers, its orange glow cast through the room. A chair was outlined before the fireplace, and Dr. Valdemar's bald head shone above its back. He was staring into the hot coals.

On the points of her toes, she crossed the floor, and, with a swift movement, fixed the loop around Dr. Valdemar's head. She pulled tight, and felt the wire through her gloves as she struggled to choke the life out of the doctor.

He didn't resist.

Immediately, she realized why. Dr. Valdemar was tied to his chair, and shoved close to the fire. His legs had been pushed into the grate when the coals were burning high. Now, his boots and britches were partly burned away, and his feet were stubby cinders at the end of blackened legs.

The doctor's head rolled in her strangling grip, and she saw that his mouth had been stuffed with pages of parchment. In his forehead three metal pimples were shining. They were nailheads.

d.a.m.n, she thought, the twins have been here first!

XVI.

'Did you hear that?'

'What?'

Someone was singing. A mournful lament, wordless and haunting. Kloszowski would never forget it.

'That.'

'Ignore it,' he told her. 'It'll be more trouble.'

The melody was far away, but getting louder.

'But'

He kissed her, and pressed her head against the pillow.

'Listen, Antonia. Here's my plan. We stay here, and pa.s.s the night pleasantly. Tomorrow when the storm is over, we get up early, steal some clothes and get away without looking back.'

She nodded her agreement as he slipped his hand down to her cleft, and teased. She bit her underlip and shut her eyes, responding to his touch.

The singing was almost that of a choir.

Kloszowski kissed her shoulder, and tried to forget the song. It was no use.

Antonia sat up.

'We can't do it.'

This wasn't going to work.

'We have to find out.'

'I think that'll be a very bad idea.'

She was out of the bed, and pulling on the nightgown she had been wearing. Kloszowski was cooling off.

He got up, and wrapped the novice's robe around him. He looked around for a weapon. He could probably smash someone's skull with the basin, but it was hardly convenient.

He tried to open the door. It was bolted, from the outside.

'We're locked in,' he said, fairly relieved.

Antonia pulled the mirror open. 'No we're not. There are tunnels and stairways. I saw them on the way here.'

She picked up the candle and stepped into the pa.s.sage. Suddenly, it was dark in the cell. He heard her ankle bells tinkling tinily.

'Come on.'

He blundered his way into the boots, and followed.

XVII.

Genevieve heard a rap at her door, and the scurry of small feet. It was the twins playing knock-and-run-away again, she knew. She didn't open the door. It would only encourage them.

She sat in the dark and listened. The Wailing Abbess was going again, guiltily confessing over and over again to the stifling of her baby boy, the result of her indiscretion with a dwarfish wizard. The whole family was supposed to be buried behind one of the walls in the east wing somewhere.

Her father wasn't back in his portrait yet.

There was a creak. Her door was bending a little, as if something heavy were propped against it. Knowing she'd regret it, she walked over, unlocked the door, and pulled it open. Her visitor fell to his knees, then pitched chest forward onto the carpet at his feet. She recognized Lawyer Vathek from his clothes.

But where was his head?

XVIII.

Aleksandr was keeping up with her but wasn't happy about it.

There must be an entire system of these tunnels, like the dwarf labyrinths under many of the cities of the Empire. They kept having to push through dust-heavy curtains of cobweb, and crunching old bones underfoot. She could hear rats scuttling in the dark.

They still couldn't tell where the song was coming from.

'It's odd,' she said, scything away a cobweb with her arm. 'Lots of webs, but no spiders.'

Aleksandr huffed. 'I don't like spiders.'

'Who does?'

'Christabel Udolpho?'

Antonia laughed. 'Maybe.'

She rubbed the cobweb between her fingers and thumb. It came apart.

'This isn't like webs, you know. It's like the cotton stuff they use in the theatre. I remember in the company of Cobweb Castle; or: The Disembowelment of Didrick that it got everywhere. People were choking on it.'

'So this is a melodrama, then?'

'Well, have you ever seen a dinner guest explode before? Or a hulking butler with more scars than pimples? Or found a place like this on a dark and stormy night?'

'You have a point. A small one, perhaps, but a point.'

They came to a dead end. They turned and retraced their steps, and came to another.

'That wall wasn't here. Look, our footsteps come out of it'

She lowered the candle. It was true.

The singing had stopped. There was a steady grinding sound now, much nearer.

'Antonia,' Aleksandr said, 'hold up your candle.'

She did. The ceiling was slowly descending.

'Merciful Shallya,' Aleksandr said.

XIX.

Ysidro d'Amato knew he wouldn't be able to sleep until he'd counted it all out again, just one more time.

He had his valise open, and was fingering the bags of coins. He opened each in turn, loosening the drawstring, and sorted through the different denominations. He always had as much as he could in coinage, and kept it in his own hiding places rather than the banking houses of Miragliano. That had proved to be a wise course.

He cursed the marsh-trader who had offered him such an irresistibly low price for two barge-tankers of supposed rainwater. When the watchmen, and anyone whose business took them to a watch station, started dropping dead, sickly foam leaking from every orifice, d'Amato had instinctively known it was time to leave the city, and move into his Bretonnian household.

His coins clinked as he pa.s.sed them from hand to hand. He would leave Antonia Marsillach along the way somewhere, he'd decided. Given the choice between hard, cold coin and soft, warm skin, he would always choose the former.

This was a strange house. He'd be happy to leave.

He began to replace his coinbags in his valise, carefully slipping them in. Something in the bag moved, and he pulled his hand out quickly, tucking it into his armpit. He had felt a small, warm body. It was the size of a rat, but it hadn't been furred. Rather, its back had been covered with tiny quills that made his skin sting.

Blue eyes peered up from the dark of the bag.

He was unable to make a sound. He watched in horror as the valise tipped over, unbalanced by the shifting weight of the thing inside.

Then, in a black blur, the thing shot out, and, squeaking, disappeared. A moneybag chunked against the floor, and a sc.r.a.p of parchment drifted out. It was an old bill from his counting house that he'd used to line the bottom of the valise.

He picked up the paper and looked at it. It wasn't covered in the jotted figures he remembered. It was a plan of some sort, but it wasn't complete. The lines were broken up, as if he only had half of the design, the scribe having been interrupted before he could ink in all the faded pencil lines. There were the remains of a seal on the paper, a baby swan's head in black wax.

Behind him, a door opened. He turned. D'Amato clutched his dagger. No one would steal his coins and live.

'Montoni,' the newcomer said. 'Grandfather, it's me.'

It was Pintaldi. He slumped forwards into the room. He held up his arm. Three of his fingers were missing, and the stumps were still pumping blood.

'It was Flaminea and Schedoni,' he gasped. 'They're trying to cut our branch out of the will.'

'The will?'

'Yes. The fortune should be ours, grandfather. I know you have returned to put our case.'

'I'm not'