The Sixth Key(132)

‘Will the two of you shut up!’ Deodat said, at the peak of irritation. ‘Rahn, try to leverage off the step to stand up.’

Rahn tried to get onto his knees by bringing his tied feet under him and leaning his side on the step, but he was fettered by their collective weight working as an opposing force. It was no use. Rahn could hardly see now for the smoke and he was completely exhausted; the events of the last days had caught up with him.

He gave up, defeated. ‘What about all that talk about liking your boring life?’

‘It was all rubbish. I hate my life!’ La Dame coughed. ‘Dull routine. Endless days. But this . . . I could have done without this . . . Come on, Rahn, let’s not die with this coming between us.’

Rahn’s eyes were watering. ‘You mean, like the gun you were pointing at my head?’

‘It wasn’t even loaded! I didn’t know they were waiting—’

‘You didn’t theorise that it might be in the realm of probability?’

The house upstairs erupted in a conflagration. They tried one last time to squirm out of the ropes but they were too tight and the knot would have made a sailor proud. There was nothing sharp they could try to cut the rope with. They were trapped.

‘I don’t want to die with this on my conscience, Rahn,’ La Dame said, emphatic for a dying man. ‘Say you forgive me!’

Rahn’s lungs were burning from irritation, his lips were dry and he was sweating. ‘For God’s sake, La Dame!’

‘Say it!’

‘Alright! I forgive you!’

Deodat said, wheezing, ‘It’s over!’

Rahn knew it was true. He held his breath and closed his eyes. He saw himself in a cemetery, pointing to a gravestone on which stood the Leoncetophaline of the Countess P’s pendulum clock. He sank then, for the third time in so many days, into a black mine, into a womb of darkness, into that tomb . . . He was going to die – perhaps he was already dead? But something made his eyes open briefly. There was a figure in the smoke and flames. It was coming towards him. He heard the sound of a bee . . . but it wasn’t a bee at all. It was Esclarmonde de Foix! She had returned from the land of Prester John! Her hair flowed white about her face, she wore a crown of stars, and in her belly there was an effulgence like the sun. She stood on a crescent moon, whose body crushed a great red dragon with seven heads. She would take him out of this momentary terror and together . . .

‘You certainly make it hard for me to keep you out of trouble, Otto Rahn!’ she said.





THE ISLAND OF THE DEAD





46


An End Without an End

‘In the deepest slumber – no! In delirium – no! In a swoon – no! In death – no! Even in the grave, all is not lost.’ Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’


Venice, 2012

There was a knock on the door. I looked at my watch – twenty to midnight. A voice came from the other side. It was the Irish monk. I was to get dressed and to go to the library.

I found the Writer of Letters waiting for me with a coat and scarf in his hands.

‘You’ll need these; come, I have something to show you.’

He led me out into the fog-laden cemetery by the light of a lamp, without so much as an apology for the late hour. I asked him what we were doing and he was effusive in his reply.

‘It’s time to solve the puzzle,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re up to it?’

I wasn’t about to have him think otherwise. ‘Of course.’

It was deathly cold. I blew into my hands to warm them. There were no sounds except for the hooting of an owl in a nearby tree and the gentle lapping of the lagoon. My drowsiness had by now completely deserted me and I kept a sharp eye out in case this man was planning to kill me – as a macabre solution to the puzzle of death that I had come here to solve. I didn’t want to die but I knew that if I were to despoil the Writer of Letters of his dramatic end I would equally despoil myself of the final conclusion, the master work.

‘This is all very dramatic,’ I managed to say without sounding too nervous.

‘Dramatic? Yes, metatheatre is dramatic,’ was his cold reply. ‘But you have always tried to keep reality at bay, isn’t that so? Living your life as if it were a work of fiction. No, my desire is not to create drama but to unveil your life. Now, where did we leave Rahn last night?’

‘He was dying in the fire and dreaming he was in a cemetery . . .’ I looked at him, and it occurred to me – the Leoncetophaline! ‘Surely you’re not about to tell me he was dreaming of this cemetery, are you?’ I asked him, unable to prevent a chuckle at this new absurdity.