A snore reached us from Fortunato's direction. He had passed out, slumped on his stone ledge.
Peters eyed him, then advanced and took his cap and bells and tried them on. The sleeper stirred but did not wake as Peters stripped him of his motley jacket, too. Montresor watched but said nothing.
Peters and I took up the torch and tools. Then—Emerson following—we entered the dark tunnel. I had been surprised, in the alcove where we had obtained the tools, to catch a glimpse of a tub holding a quantity of freshly mixed mortar.
The passage was low, crooked, overgrown with spiderwebs. Plainly, it had not been used in many years.
We had not gone far before a bend in the passage took us out of sight of the two watching figures, Ligeia and Montresor, and the slumped form of Fortunato in his white linen. A hundred paces and I knew Ligeia was on the stair, Grip upon her shoulder, on her way to a distant bedroom, leaving the others to their own devices. I could almost hear Grip repeating his wine-drinkers' joke.
He paced the decks of an ancient vessel, knees shaky, joints aching. Occasionally, he groped among his navigational instruments of tarnished brass and greening bronze. Mumbling to himself, he would go topside to take readings, polar mists drifting above the waters, ice floes sliding by. His ancient crew lurched about him and strange birds called from overhead. At times it seemed that someone attempted to address him in words mumbled and low, catching at his sleeve, pursuing him on his rounds. But always, when he turned, the figure would flit away, fade. The words never came quite clear. He would return to his cabin then, to rummage and reflect... .
Poe awoke in a cold sweat, hands trembling. There had been so many dreams, some of them utterly terrible—such as that of the pit and the pendulum—and while this lacked the horror of that one or the grotesqueries of the encounter with King Pest and his court, it bore an intolerable element of loss and abandonment. He massaged his damp temples.
... As if he had sailed beyond human ken, he reflected, past all normal commerce of thought and feeling. And yet must he go on, against the winds and the tides of change and becoming. Lost, lost.
VIII
We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy.
Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror.
It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall—this rushing annihilation—for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination—for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it.
The Imp of the Perverse, Edgar Allan Poe
And so we followed the long, secret tunnel through the catacombs, to its end against a blank stone wall.
We listened carefully, we listened long at this place, but we could hear nothing. We looked for light at the interstices between stones where the mortar had crumbled away, but we could see none.
So we attacked the wall with hammers and bar. The antique dust powdered our clothes, skin, and hair, got in our eyes and mouths; but soon we had made an opening large enough to admit a person into the lowest level of Prospero's stronghold.
On the other side, Peters, Emerson, and I emerged into a storeroom crowded with huge crates and bales whose contents we wasted no time trying to guess. Quickly, by the flickering torchlight, we piled back stones we had removed, closing the wall at our point of entry, leaving the tools just outside in the tunnel.
Of course we had no mortar, but in this dim corner the chance of any inspection seemed remote. To make that chance still smaller we managed to shift a large crate to a place where it shadowed any sign of our labors.
"What now, Eddie?" Peters asked.
"I say we go topside and try to blend in." I considered his borrowed motley. "We're entertainers. You're dressed for the part. I'm not."
"You juggle? Know any acrobat tricks?"
I shook my head.
"Afraid not."
"Then I guess you're an animal trainer. Emerson, c'mere." The ape leapt down from a crate and came to him. "You be takin' yer orders from Eddie, we go upstairs. Unnerstan'?"
Emerson shambled over and stared at me. I extended my right hand.
"Shake," I said.
The simian reached forward, seized my hand and pumped it.
"I'd guess," I said, "there'll be a pretty big crowd to run things—servants, cooks, whores, soldiers, entertainers. If they've only been in here a few days they can't all know each other yet. A couple of new faces among the entertainers shouldn't be likely to startle anyone. I'll take Emerson up and see how we blend. Why don't you wait an hour or so, then come up and try the same thing."
"I'd judge it ter be fairly late. May not be that many about."
"On the other hand, Prospero's a reveler. He may keep going till he drops every night. We'll just have to see. Keep an eye out for a place to sleep, too."
"Right," he said.
And so we located the stair and I mounted it, Emerson at my side. We came to several choices of ways. I opted for ground level and centrality. This brought me in due course to a courtyard resembling nothing so much as an enormous gypsy encampment. It was lit by torches and campfires, roped off into sections filled with tents and lean-tos, through which the babble of tongues and the sounds of fiddles and guitars carried; people were dancing, drinking, eating, children were crying, dogs wandered, and two men were fighting at the far end. There were buildings on every side of the courtyard, interconnecting, though the most massive seemed the one to the north. It was the most completely lit, and as my wanderings bore me in that direction I became aware that a goodly amount of the noise I heard was actually coming from within it.
No one challenged me, and even Emerson was not unique as a performing animal. There were two trained bears and a troupe of clever dogs.
Several circuits of the courtyard and whatever curiosity we might have roused soon gave way to indifference. I learned that some of the servants, entertainers, and miscellaneous staff had taken up residence in the complex at the south end of the yard. But on inspection these quarters proved small, damp, windowless and poorly ventilated, in the main, and I could see why so many were camping outside. I later learned that these had originally been the monks' cells. While I could appreciate their spiritual fortitude I required something closer to the mainstream of life here.
A bit later I encountered Peters in his motley, proceeding as I had. He agreed with my feelings on lodgings. We spent that night in the stables, and no one seemed to mind or even notice. Further exploration of these quarters showed us an out-of-the-way corner behind the stables where Emerson could be chained in such a fashion that he could easily free himself in an emergency. Peters and I settled upon a small loft, a seeming repository for unused harness, as our own lodging. I had grown accustomed to stables during my time with the cavalry, and my continuing presence in this one seemed oddly bracing.