ALEXANDER’S END
A Novel
© Joseph R. Garber


I.
FOX AND CAT
ARGUMENT: If Death Be Not A Gentleman, Then Who Is?

PIAZZA

Amid a riot and revelry of colors, a solitary man dressed in winter crossed the piazza.

Motley had come to fashion. Blouses flourished polygons of fire, citrus, the feathers of jungle birds. Prismatic rainbows circumscribed ankle-length dresses. Bright-hued stripes rendered startling otherwise unassuming pantaloons. Headwear, always obligatory, was checkered, speckled, polka-dotted, banded, and beribboned — then set off with panache badges of scintillating gemstones coruscating in the late fall sun.

Yet this single man was all stormcloud and coal.

None remarked upon his dusky costume, nor stared at him. Among the tinted crowd who strolled gossiping in the late afternoon sun, those wealthy few as had acknowledged business with him, or who were on the peripheries of his most intimate and privileged circle, nodded reserved greeting. One citizen, no less gaudy than the rest, a jobber in wine, exchanged a few words of commercial politeness with him. Others largely stepped from his path, finding cause to direct their gazes elsewhere, and for the greater part, those eyes that touched him recoiled with the faintest wince, as a finger will when it comes near a surface hot enough to burn, fiery enough to blister.

It was not that he was hated, for that would be an emotion of prospective peril. Nor was he feared, at least not by most. In truth he was respected, admired, and in certain quarters loved. For after all, this man, whose name was Alexander, was acknowledged to be not merely above fashion’s slavery, but above all other slaveries imposed by high society and by low. His well-lived life was both its own art and its own keeping. In dress, as in all other things, he did as he willed, and his tastes and judgement were deemed faultlessly appropriate to his person.

Alexander’s face bore the aspect of middle years. His step and posture were of a lesser age, the supple muscle of a young feline rippling beneath ample blouse, stern breeches, austere cape. He walked lean and tall, though not as tall as men thought him to be, and it was known that his glance missed nothing as he passed. Women remarked upon his eyes — the bolder ones not satisfied in their marriages sometimes seeing, or claiming to see, hunger in their depths.

Such women too were endlessly fascinated by his hands. Alexander’s long fingers, dark as his complexion was dark, looked capable of subtleties denied ordinary men. Even while their owner was otherwise stone-still, those fingers were in constant motion, each digit alive with its own full complement of senses — tasting, listening, sniffing, and most of all questing for whatever might be found.

This man, this proud Alexander, stopped before a seller of fruits. The hawker pointed recommendation to his apples. Selecting an orange, Alexander removed a coin of denomination larger than necessary and passed it to the fruit monger. Thanks were muttered, and a small porcelain plate extended, upon which, with strokes of a swift blade, Alexander peeled and sectioned his dainty, next choosing a plump slice, tipping knifepoint into it, and proffering it to the peddler.

Who had no choice but to eat.

This fruit being unpoisoned, he did so willingly, and with the open demeanor of innocence. Whereupon Alexander ate the remainder with understated relish.

A clutch of churchmen, their robes darker than Alexander’s, marched in stately argument down a colonnaded passageway. Their debate had little to do with theology, finance being as ever their cause of heated words. Catching sight of Alexander, the eldest, grey-haired and preening gold religious insignia, turned from his fellows, lifted his hem, and bustled across flagstones. Upon reaching where Alexander stood, he selected an apple for which he neglected to pay, and leaned his head close to Alexander’s face. The two exchanged whispers, the churchman’s face being more animated than Alexander’s.

One who watched the hushed conversation believed a meeting had been arranged. Another thought a bargain was struck. Still a third asserted that a difficult political matter was to be resolved both soon and with mortal finality. The seller of fruit, who caught a few words, despite his trying not to, knew the truth: a monkish painter of icons would be advised that his price, deemed in certain ecclesiastical quarters as unconscionable, was fair, and that he might commence his work on the morrow.

Small services rendered to God and Art, Alexander moved on.

At the piazza’s southern boundary, where magpie women chattered beneath milliners’ patterned awnings, a narrow lane disappeared among jumbled white-washed buildings. This lane, called “Jew Street,” was the city’s district of goldsmiths and horologers. Standing out of the sun but in essential light, beggars clustered to importune of those who entered the passage such alms as were available. The beggars who occupied the best positions for soliciting bypassers were by trade professional paupers, practiced of prayer and skilled of gesture, who had chosen cadging as a career, and prospered therein. Further from these experts, deeper in the shadows, stood their apprentices, not yet adept, but intently studious of their elders. And at the farthest remove, almost beyond earshot of the moneyed men and women who shopped down Jew Street, huddled the truly poor, come to beggary from necessity not choice.

Alexander made his way among each group, dispensing certain sums to each, and listening attentively to what each, who clearly knew and respected him, had to say. His purse lighter by a measurable weight, he turned his steps back to the piazza, striding with graceful dispatch straight across its flagstoned expanse. He circled the equestrian statue and commemorative fountain in its center, paced eighty steps further to the palace judged by all who, from the corners of their eyes, observed him, to be his probable destination.

Alexander was never seen in the piazza but that he had business with the government. The government — both prince and senate — housed themselves in the palace, his highness in the sunny east wing, the parliament in the darker west. It was to the eastern wing that Alexander walked.

His mission: an affair of state.

PALACE

Once a fortress of sorts, although that was many years ago, the palace now was faced with warm stucco into which, a generation earlier, builders had laid a zigzag pattern of cobalt and burgundy tiles. Those tiles extended from ground level to the height of an ordinary man. Another design of tiles — these being terra-cotta embossed with the heads of mythic animals — surrounded four rows of narrow windows, such windows not being intended for the admission of sunlight but rather were the heritage of martial times, loopholes through which projectiles might be fired at enemies who never came. Highest on the palace wall there appeared a fresco, fresh colors replenished each spring by painters in the employ of the prince. The fresco portrayed a scene of edifying civic virtue: the nation incarnate as a white-robed goddess dispensing from her cornucopia the fruits of good and duteous behavior to smiling citizens. It is worthy of note that each year the faces of citizens painted there, up above the piazza, changed, and were modeled from the true and actual features of those who, during the preceding twelve months, had rendered the prince the greatest services.

This honor, denigrated solely by the sour, was the source of heated competition.

A moat had surrounded the palace until the time of the current prince’s great grandfather, a warlike man who had established enduring peace. Upon affixing his signature to the last of many treaties, this diplomatic soldier (or soldierly diplomat), ordered the moat filled in, its earth planted with citrus trees, and a marble staircase built where once a planked drawbridge hung.

By tradition fruits of the trees were harvested and dispensed to the needy, this in honor of the man who ordered them planted.

Winters being wet, summers being hot with maddeningly dusty winds, the marble staircase had begun to crumble before its builder died. Two white statues of heroic proportions but uncertain metaphor had once flanked the stair. Before twenty years had passed, they’d been scoured into pitted anonymity. Brass fared better, and so brazen lamps were erected in their place. Now these lamps shown at night, and, being polished daily by liveried servants, glowed with reflected glory during sunlight hours.

Alexander climbed the stairs, presenting himself before dark wood doors, both higher than a man might reach, both wide enough to admit a six horse carriage.

Behind him, west and south, cathedral bells struck the hour. On the first stroke, Alexander lifted, then dropped, an iron door knocker in the shape of a heraldic lion. On the second stroke, the doors opened. On the third, at three o’clock precisely, he crossed the threshold, punctually on time, as was and had ever been his hallmark and eccentricity.

The doors swung closed. In the piazza a hurly-burly of contented citizens continued about their business.

A servant frocked in scarlet and gold, family colors to the prince, guided Alexander up three flights of mahogany stairs, left down a darkly paneled corridor hung with portraits of princes past, and through the cream-painted doorway which led to the prince’s private study. Alexander needed no guide, but acceded to the formal necessity of the gesture.

Here, three stories above the piazza, brightness prevailed. At various times and by command of various princes, glazers had been summoned to install wide windows. Glass — plain, beveled, etched, and stained — had been placed at angles and on the flat to transmit stolen sun. Cunningly disposed mirrors entrapped the result, splashing reflected illumination across furnishings of expensive simplicity, picking out highlights in tasteful oil landscapes, casting focusable beams on walls shelved with working books, and warmly enfolding with light the space wherein an adroit administrator conducted his affairs and hoarded his ambitions.

The prince’s rooms of state were below, on the ground floor, hung with obligatory tapestry, gloomy with obligatory seriousness. He frequented them only upon official occasions. His personal quarters, his private camera, (and all the more private for the guards who patrolled the palace) were above. Not even Alexander was invited there.

PRINCE

Rising from his desk, a cluttered expanse of cherrywood intaglioed with tortoise shell, the prince showed a thin smile, saying a single word of greeting: his visitor’s name. He was a handsome man, tall and lean as Alexander — but constructed of a different plan. It might be said that while Alexander’s sinew was that of the forest cat, the prince was designed on the model of a fox. Both are swift, both cunning, both share common appetite and in certain precincts hunt common prey on common ground. Yet neither can be mistaken for the other, nor are alike in thought, or motive, or sentiment.

Because the two men were each other’s exact contemporary, having been born in the same year and under the selfsame star, their city’s astrologers were bewildered at the horoscopically inexplicable differences between them, and stuttered weak excuses in ineffectual rationalization of the polarities between their concurrent lives.

“Cousin,” replied Alexander, who did not admit of titles and honorifics. And true, there was, or might have been, some distant connection between him and his nominal ruler, some seventh or eighth of shared blood, although the lineage was unclear, and the two men’s acknowledged cousinship was more mutual courtesy than familial bond.

“A beverage?” asked the prince. Alexander circled to a gauntly leathered chair, more wood than upholstery. The prince reached for a porcelain pot, decorated with a flowery motif. Alexander shook his head, and the prince returned to his own softer seat.

“Your lady wife?” the prince inquired politely. “How go things with Francesca?”

“High spirits, cousin, and good health. She progresses through her condition with exuberant zest.”

“I am glad of it.” True sincerity could be easily read in the prince’s voice, for he was (and who was not?) an admirer of Alexander’s most accomplished spouse.

“And your son, the princeling?” Alexander returned a courtesy of friendly questioning. “Is his leg full-mended now?”

The prince rapped his desk with a happy slap. “By heaven, he is! I feared that horsefall would leave him with a limp. But young bones knit firm, and I owe a special debt to your wife for her care of him.”

“No obligation, cousin, is owed for the nursing of my godson.”

The prince glanced upward with a brief discomposed look.

Why discomposed? I am not certain. Perhaps he was not entirely at ease with Alexander. Perhaps he never was. Being beholden to such as he (and too often the prince was that) is not a burden that sits lightly on any monarch’s shoulders.

Recovering from momentary disquiet, the prince turned his eyes back at his guest. Meeting Alexander’s judgemental gaze as few other men could do, he lowered his voice. “If you’ll allow, we’ll speak more of family matters later. At the moment I have urgent business with you.”

Alexander neither altered his expression nor modulated the neutrality of his voice. “I expected as much. Well then, cousin, to it.”

Knitting aristocratic fingers that bore no rings, the prince asked softly, “Do you know Pico, the treasurer of my brother to the south?” The prince had no brothers, but rather in royalty’s conventional vocabulary referred to all heads of state as “brothers.”

“I have not that pleasure.”

“He is a man of whom I would speak in the past tense.”

Whereupon obligation fell on Alexander, causing him to reply with the formula of his profession: “Where might I find this Pico?”

Obligations being mutual, the prince answered formally, “South, two weeks ride on a swift horse, across the border, and two more to my brother’s city. The treasurer of that polity lives in the block of money lenders. Stone griffins couchant mark his door, which itself is unmistakable, being the sole brass portal in a street where wood is the custom.”

“When does my cousin require service of me?” This the second part of the formula.

“With less leisure than I should like. You will attend maestro Wilhelm’s concert two days hence?”

“A new piece for viol and orchestra, I am told. His wife, whose talents astonish, is to be solo artist. Francesca is especially keen that we hear her performance.”

“Then depart the morning after, if it fits you.”

Alexander nodded once, then spoke the final necessary words. “A fee must be tendered for this service.”

A leather pouch appeared on the desk. Within soft gold clinked as the prince pushed it towards Alexander. “Half now and half upon return, and fifteen percentum extra in recompense of the cost of travel.”

Alexander slipped the pouch beneath his blouse. He did not open it nor count its contents. No man, not even a prince, would be foolish enough to stint him of so little as a single coin of his price. “Done, cousin, and done.”

Averting his eyes, the prince fingered a ciphered document. “Would you know the antecedents of this commission?”

“I would not.” Alexander’s voice showed the faintest hint of surprise. That it showed any emotion whatsoever was an uncommon occurrence. “My efficiency is a gate that swings on two hinges: independence of causality and independence of consequence. Whyfore and whatafter are freight borne by my patrons. To saddle any of my calling with them invites disaster, for we are mounts trained to speed, and thus to lighter loads. Burdens, be they moral or otherwise, put us off our pace.”

Already a-whisper, the Prince further lowered his voice. “In your visit to the house with bronze doors, might I ask that, should certain papers come before your eyes —”

Alexander whispered not at all. “You presume too much, cousin. Men of lower calling are employed for such tasks.”

The prince sighed. “There is are letters, messages from —”

“I would not hear this.”

“You know me, cousin.” The prince’s voice was solemn and importuning. “And so you know I’d not ask this of you were not the matter grave.”

“Still —”

“Come with me, if you will.” He arose, the fire of fashionable garb fluttering from his shoulders. Two martial men, armored in their eyes, stepped from behind an arras. One bore a crossbow at full cock, the other an unsheathed sword. Both wore leather, and were dark with facial hair. The prince glanced at them. “There is no need.”

“Sire,” said the burlier of the two, a bearded black bear whose broad shoulders bore a captain’s silver ensigns, “this man —”

“Is not my death. Were he, then you would have had your ending before he’d paced three paces into my chambers. Is this not so, Alexander?”

Alexander, still sitting, not deigning to acknowledge the presence of the prince’s bodyguards, allowed himself the faintest of smiles. “Of necessity, mine is a contingent profession. Planning carries one to the cusp, but finalities are matters of opportunity and conditions of the moment. Two armed men behind an arras. A third in a secret cupboard — you may order him out, cousin, for he was the first I sensed — and a poisoned blade in your own boot. I should say that the ordering of the dead would vary depending on their speed and nimbleness, and not on any predetermined stratagem. Let your bodyguards reflect on this, and reconsider the fashion of their secret deployment.”

Casual insult came easily to Alexander’s lips. I do not think he was always aware of it, not really, but rather thought his mordant barbs mere honesty, and of no provocative intent.

The captain of the guard, that brawny athlete who wielded the crossbow, reddened. He angrily leveled his weapon on Alexander’s head. “I might strike you to the grave, assassin,” he snapped.

“Cousin?”

“No need to kill him, Alexander. He is new to his job, new to my city, and is, I think, sufficiently swift of mind to learn better behavior in your presence. Besides, this carpet cost me dear; I would not have it stained. You, Jacot, lower that useless toy. My guest loses his patience, and you stand a whisker’s width from the dark.”

“Sire?” The crossbow wavered.

In a hard voice, resonant with royal authority: “Down, man, down. Your prince commands!”

Alexander, still sitting, spoke as father might admonishing his youngest son for a minor fault, “Guardsmen, the both of you, in your gorgets, to the left, you will find small darts embedded to a depth of three quarters into the leather, thus one quarter of your armor’s width from your skin, your throat, and the vein that pulses beneath shallow flesh. Be so kind as pluck these darts out, being most careful not to prick yourselves, for the least puncture is immediate extinction. I should like you to keep them as souvenirs, and to study them as object lessons from which you may better learn your trade as you mature in it.”

The crossbow hung from a limp hand.

Alexander stood. Taking the prince’s arm, he said, “You asked that I accompany you. Well, I shall. Whatsoever my cousin wishes to show me is never without interest.”

DUNGEON

Bearing his cocked crossbow, Jacot, who was the only man allowed to precede his prince through any portal, rapped hard on an oaken door. “Open within! Our sire awaits.”

Silently, on well-oiled hinges, the door swung wide. A lean man in white linen, calf-skin apron about his waist, made necessary obeisance. Captain of the guard before, two guards after, Alexander and the prince entered the torture chamber of the palace.

Eyebrow arched, Alexander murmured, “This has changed, cousin.”

“The place has a new master,” the prince replied, “and a better one.”

A third voice chimed, “I thank my sire for the compliment.” This from another man in white, making his knee as his ruler entered. He had the appearance of a fussy scholar, hair at ends, eyes wide and darting, and withal a skinny bird of distracted mind and unsettled habit.

“Alexander, here is Hugo, latterly of the island states, now chief questioner in my service. Hugo, my cousin Alexander, whose name you have no doubt heard.”

A swift bow, and a sincere one. “Your reputation proceeds you, sir. It is my honor to be your host.”

“The honor is mine.” Alexander waved a hand in a gesture of indifferent greeting. Or perhaps dismissal. Hugo, whose life work was the reading of truth in faces, was unable to determine which. “I see,” Alexander continued, “many alterations since last I visited this cheerless crypt. What was once dark and designed to terror, is now astonishingly transformed. Why these wall of snowy plaster? Why more candles than a festive ballroom? Your steel sparkles clean, sir, and why is that? And where are the black hoods and blood-smirched leathers of your predecessor’s day?”

First insuring that the prince nodded his permission to tell all, Hugo threw out such little chest as he possessed. “Modern times, sir. And therefore modern methods. The business ‘tisn’t about pain. The business is about answers. Pain’s only one tool of many, and not always the best of ‘em. We want our guests down here to talk, you see. Breaking bones and unwinding entrails and making your man — or woman as the case may sometimes be — scream like a soul hurled to hell is all in the nature of punishment. Well, sir, punishment’s someone else’s affair, not mine. All I want is honest answers to honest questions. Best, then, to let your customer see what’s what. Let his eye dwell on the instruments before they are used, and let him look on the earnest faces of men who are practiced in their art. Then give him ample time to reflect as the tools of the trade are applied, and between times after they’ve made their first caresses. As a torturer, sir, apprenticed at the age of nine, journeyman at fourteen, and now passed forty years in my trade, I can say with all authority fear in the body is thin soup. Fear in the mind is what you want. It’s all up in the head, you see. Up in the skull is where you need to torture a man. Up there is where you’ll break him. Or, at least, nine times out of ten you will.”

“The tenth.”

“Traditional work, sir. Most traditional.”

Alexander’s face wore a bemused expression. “And tell me, Hugo, do you enjoy this work?”

Hugo furrowed his brow. Alexander had posed him a question he’d never contemplated. After obviously strained reflection, he replied “Well it’s my job, isn’t it? A job like any other, I should say. The enjoyment is in doing it right. The getting of results, if you know what I mean. Oh, I’ll allow, no different from any other job of work there are times and parts that are distressful. The worst is the smells, I’d say. A fearful man stinks worse than a pig in rut. And there’s the piss of it when they can’t hold back, and the flow of shit when the going gets hard, and fountains of puke they spew up at the most extreme of times. But blood’s not so bad, no not at all. It has a nice clean smell, you might even say it’s refreshing. And roasting flesh, why that’s nor worse nor better than a chicken on the spit. Leastwise once you’re accustomed to it. The cries are galling ‘tho. I must allow that. Quite melancholy they can be. Most times, down here we wear felt plugs in our ears. I’ve some you and sire may use if you wish, and which I earnestly recommend if you’re planning to observe this afternoon’s interrogation. You can hear your man’s answers through them, but the worst of his screams are muffled as it were. A perfumed handkerchief beneath the nose will also serve you well. But then, I am wandering, aren’t I? The answer to your question, sir, is yes, I do like my job. It’s a man’s work, I will confess, and the pay’s most generous, for which I am grateful to you, sire, and appreciative.”

Suddenly showing the aspect of keenest interest, Alexander posed another question. “Why these uniforms of white linen?”

“The better to show the blood, sir. A man don’t appreciate how much he may be losing unless he sees the spill of it. Watch a spurt splash on to your questioner’s chest, and you’ll think twice about denying answers. As I said, sir, as I said, we get our best results with the innards of their heads, not the innards of their bellies.”

Alexander nodded. “I thank you for your answers, Master Hugo. They give me, whose business is never pain, but always its opposite, insight I had not had.” Then, turning to the prince, “Cousin, this has been an interesting visit. But, no doubt, there is more to your bringing me here than the expanding of my intellectual horizons.”

The prince wore no smile. His eyes did not shine, as Alexander’s, with intelligent curiosity. He stared into the middle distance, as if wishing to be remote from the matters at hand. “A man is to be questioned. I wish you to hear his answers before departing for the south.”

Alexander’s voice went hard. “Such is not in my compact. Cause and effect are polar opposites. My profession is purely effect. Causality corrupts. I will not know of it. I have said this earlier, and you know it to be so.”

“Between cousins. Between friends.” While princes do not beg, there was a plaintive note to his voice.

Alexander pressed a finger to his chin, and his eyes turned inward. After some few seconds of deep reflection, he asked, “Is the matter so desperate?”

“Would I ask if were it not?”

Now decided, Alexander turned to the torturer. “Why then, Hugo, will you introduce me to your… how do you call them?”

“Guest, sir. Either that or customer.”

PRISONER

He was old enough to have spent some few years shaving, but no older than that. Not tall, not short, a man of middle height with nut brown hair, eyes to match, and quite pale of skin. Hugo’s apprentices had stretched him naked on a railed table, straps of leather belted over his chest, waist, wrists, elbows, ankles, knees. “You will observe, sire and sir, that we do not constrain the head, and that there’s a padded cushion beneath it. There’s some art to that, yes, there is. We want every customer but the most dangerous to be able to crane his neck up, look down on his torso, and see what’s going on — by which I mean, see what we are preparing to do, or see what we are doing, or see what we may do next. Now men less skilled than me will forget about pillowing his skull. That’s poor practice. A man in the throes of the questioning may do himself damage if his head snaps back on hard wood or steel. Why, would you believe, there are even those who will try to render themselves unconscious, which is a most inconvenient cause of delay.”

Alexander stood to the prisoner’s right, and, yes, he found fear to have a palpable odor. “His crime?” he asked of the prince.

Standing to the other side of the rack, declining to direct his eyes at Hugo’s “guest,” the prince answered in a voice of great coldness, “Taken last night when all honest men were abed. Taken on the third floor of the palace. Mark you, the third floor. That someone could slip past guards thought to be best — and most expensively trained — in the southern kingdoms is bad enough. That he could make his way past three floors of them is all the worse.”

“Your apartments?”

“A single floor from where he prowled. And from where…” here the prince’s voice sank, ice rimming every word, “… a chambermaid’s scream rather than the perspicuity of twenty armored soldiers brought the interloper to my attention.”

Alexander glanced into the prisoner’s face. “I compliment your skill, young gentleman, and in a purely professional sense regret your ill-luck.” The prisoner made no response.

“Then he is an assassin!” snapped the prince.

Alexander cupped an elbow in his left hand, and with his right drew a pensive line along his cheek. Again he looked at the prisoner, taking two steps back to study the man head to toe. After some few moments of reflection, he answered, “No, he is not. Not by profession. However he may be an ordinary homicide, albeit one of uncommon skill… or, perhaps, uncommon ambition. But for a career, he pursues another trade. I reason thusly: while muscled, he is not muscular, lacking the corded litheness obligatory for assassin, thief, nightcrawler of any kind. His skin is pale, this being a mark of one who does not, as my kind, exercise naked in the sun that we may brown our parts, and even our eyelids, the better to blend with night. He lacks those calluses, necessary armor to fingertips and toes, that a climbing man develops as he skills himself in surmounting walls. Nor do I see upon his body a single scar, such badges being unavoidable to my profession, even among the most green and callow apprentice. So, no, cousin, no, this man, soon to be a mewling thing of shredded flesh, is no assassin.”

Hugo, studious in his trade, noticed that Alexander’s final sentence provoked from the prisoner an almost imperceptible wince. This Hugo greeted with unshown appreciation: doubtless Alexander, whose reputation for quickness of mind was without rival, sought to put into play Hugo’s counsel regarding the necessity of torture being (at least at first) principally mental; equally doubtless the prisoner was, even at this moment, suffering imagined pain.

For the first time, the prince deigned to look upon the racked man. “If not assassin, then what are you? Tell me true, and I’ll show you mercy.”

No answer. Not even a meeting of eyes. The prince leaned closer. “Hugo here is master of his trade. I was a long time searching for his like, and he came to me with peerless bona fides. I have heard, I have been told that he first ministers to his victims so that they scream for him to stop, then — and in the end — that they scream for him not to stop.”

His eyes fixed on the chamber ceiling, the prisoner hissed brave rebuttal: “I’ll not scream.” Whereupon he screamed most terribly.

Hugo withdrew a long needle from the young man’s elbow, from that sensitive place between the bones into which he had inserted it. Wiping its coating of blood onto the snow of his blouse, he spoke with what seemed to be genuine sympathy, “There, there, lad, no need to be ashamed. I took you by surprise, didn’t I? T’wasn’t fair of me, no not at all.” His victim’s complexion, already pale had turned paler still, and a crown of sweat beaded his forehead. Hugo blotted it with a scrap of cloth. “Quite painful that. There’s nerves in your elbow that hurt like the very devil. Ever hit something the wrong way, hit it just here where my finger points? Why if you did, then that was the merest foretelling of what a probe of polished iron can make you feel. Settle down now, I’ll have an apprentice put some ice about the spot, and the hurting of it will soon go away.” Turning to Alexander, he explained, “Pain’s funny stuff, sir. Too much at once, and the body becomes deadened to it. But if you let your customer rest betweentimes, then each new dose is fresh-born and full of vigor. So we’ll give the lad a few minutes to recover himself, then start afresh. Unless…” these words he directed to man on the rack, “… unless, my boy, you’d forego experiences like the last, and worse experiences than that, and instead tell my sire what he wishes to know. Come now, son, the questions are simple enough: who sent you; why sent; and to what purpose?”

Silence.

Hugo heaved a sigh. “Sire and sir, best you should take a seat. Experience tells me we’ve a most recalcitrant prospect to question this day. Much tedious work lies ahead, and I will be a long time about extracting my necessary answers. So please, if you will, relax and bide until the chore is done.” Then facing his shivering victim: “Young man of unknown name. I, questioner in the service of the prince, enjoin and admonish you to answer me to his highness’ satisfaction, else suffer the inflictions that are my art. Question the first…”

© 2000 Joseph R. Garber; Alexander’s End;