I turned my gaze away from the depressing landscape. A little later the coach was suddenly jounced and our pace increased. I heard an annoyed "Rawk!" from among the overhead baggage and Grip fluttered down to pick at Peters' wig. The bird had apparently grown tired of Dupin's tutelage and fled from his house on the occasion of our last visit, appearing in the rigging of the Eidolon at quayside and greeting me with a cheerful "Vingt francs pour la nuit, monsieur" when I came topside following my interview with Valdemar.
Grip obviously wanted our attention because he did not approve of the driving. He always acted this way when Emerson seized the reins and drove the horses to a frenzied pace. The driver was loath to dispute matters with the simian, and what normally followed was that Ligeia was called upon to calm the horses mesmerically. Then Peters had to recover the reins from the ape and scold him a bit.
"Hey now, Grip! Give it back!" I heard him suddenly cry, and some sort of tussle ensued involving the hairpiece. This caused Ligeia to stir at my side and raise her head, taking a weight off my shoulder.
She yawned delicately and said, "Is he at it again?"
I nodded.
We were careening from side to side as well as bouncing when she stretched. Peters tickled the bird under his beak with one of his inhumanly thick fingers and composed his features into a frightful grimace which on anyone else would have been a slight smile.
"'At's a good Gripper," he said. "Let 'er go for Uncle Petey."
Grip saw fit to comply, and Peters immediately restored the wig to his pate, careless of the position it fell to occupy. Ligeia rose, leaning against the inside wall of the coach, parted the heavy drape on that side, hung out the window and gestured. Immediately, we began to slow.
"Might toss in a couple of heavy ones for Emerson," I muttered.
She winked back at me and leaned even farther. I caught hold of her about the waist. A half-minute later she signaled for me to help her return to her seat.
"My turn," Peters said, rising to his feet.
"Not necessary," she responded. "He has surrendered the reins to the driver."
"That ain't like him," Peters observed.
She shrugged.
"L'ennui, perhaps," she suggested.
"Oh, sure," Peters said, and he seated himself. After a time he began playing with Grip again. "Say
'Nevermore!' " he coaxed. "That's wot the gennleman in Paris wanted you to say. C'mon! Let's hear it!"
"Amontillado!" the sable creature screamed. And again: "Amontillado!" He finished with a burst of maniacal, almost-human laughter, followed by the sound of a cork being drawn from a bottle, this last was repeated many times in quick succession.
"I do believe that's a type of strong drink," Peters observed, squinting at me. "Ain't it?"
"Aye," I replied, my mind wandering ahead.
I wondered exactly what I was to do once we reached Toledo. Valdemar had given us no assurance that Von Kempelen was actually there—only that this was the right trail for me to follow to my ultimate goal of freeing Annie.
"Nevermore," Peters said softly.
"Amontillado," Grip insisted.
The day before we reached Toledo there came a rapping from overhead. In that Emerson lay curled at Peters' feet sleeping soundly (a frequent occurrence these days, with a little help from others), we assumed it was the driver signaling to us. Peters leaned out and hailed him on this account, but the man denied it.
The rapping came again, and Ligeia turned and studied me. "You have not been with the mesmerism making, have you?" she inquired.
"Me? No. Not in a long while," I responded.
"I feel something strange," she said then. Then she was calling out the window to the driver. We began to slow.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Most unusual," she said.
We came to a halt beneath a large tree. She ordered then that Valdemar's wine crate be unstrapped and lowered to the ground. Then she told the driver and his assistant to take a break, somewhere beyond the hill. Peters elected to join them. It was a strange sensation that overtook me then, because I heard the rapping again—from inside the crate.
"Open it," she instructed me.
I undid a final fastening and raised the upper portion of the lid. Both irises visible, Valdemar stared up at us.
"Worse and worse," he observed.
"What is it?" Ligeia asked.
"I come to you without being summoned. Could it be that the Life Force gains ascendancy?"
"I could not say," she answered. "Do you know why whatever brings you here has done so?"
His right hand moved, falling upon my own where I leaned on the edge of his casket. It took considerable effort of will for me not to draw away.
"You must part company with the others," he said, "before entering the city. If you do not, they will die in Toledo."
"What are we to do while he is within?" she asked.
"Turn and head east," he replied. "Query me again at sundown."
"I do not understand what I am supposed to do in Toledo," I stated.
"Neither do I," he said, his hand tightening on mine. "Something summons. You may answer it or not, as you choose. Your will is free."
"I must go," I said.
"I knew you would," he replied, and he slumped back, his hand sliding free of my own and falling back perfectly into place upon his breast.
Ligela motioned for me to close the casket, which I did. She took my arm and walked with me among a stand of saplings.
"I do not like this at all," she said. "It smacks of—interference. It may be a cosmic stroke of good fortune. It may be a trap. There is no way for me to tell in advance."
"What are we to do?"
"I wish to place you under control," she said, halting within the grove, "and to create a psychic bond."
"Remember what happened the last time you worked on me?"
"I have given it considerable thought since then," she told me. "This time you will not be evicted from your body."
"What will be the purpose of this—bond?"
"Hopefully, it will keep me apprised of your welfare," she explained.
"All right," I said.
I seated myself upon a gray log, my back against a boulder, at her direction. I remember the sweep of her hands past my eyes and a buzzing below my stomach. The plug of my mind was drawn and my thoughts drained away... .
How much later it was that I awoke I do not know. I felt very relaxed.
"Good," I heard her say. I opened my eyes, she smiled, extended her hands, and helped me to my feet.
"Did it work?" I asked as we walked back to the coach.
"I think so," she said. "We shall see."
The others were waiting when we got there, and we raised Valdemar and strapped him into place.
As we rode along, I wondered: Even if she became aware of some peril I faced, what would Ligeia be able to do about it, way off somewhere to the east? I studied Grip, who returned my gaze. He opened his beak several times, but said nothing.
Toledo stood on a hill, the Tagus river bent three-quarters of the way about it. It was situated some forty miles southwest of Madrid in an area not currently held by the French. Dark clouds hung above the city, and the ground was damp—as if we had just missed a storm. Our current coachman—older than most of the others—halted us outside the city walls, vowing he would only set foot or wheel within the place sometime between the freezing of hell and the Second Coming.