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Back Cardinal Black Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Title Page
  2. One: Into the Storm
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Two: London Calling
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Three: The Malignant Seven
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Four: Squirrels and Cats
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Five: Revelation
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. About the Author

“My spirit thanks yours,” Lash said, with a slight bow. He gazed around at the others. “Any more objections?”

“I have a comment,” came Matthew’s tight voice. He felt as if either his shoulders were about to pop free or his back about to break and possibly both at the same time. The smell of the blood and intestines around his leg irons was a sickening miasma. “If I’m to take a trip,” he went on, painfully, “my first step should be getting down from here.”

“Oh!” Lash pretended to give a startle as if he’d completely forgotten. “Pardon me, young man! Where are my manners? Get him down!” he instructed the guards. “Corbett, we’ll bring you a washbucket and a glass of the fine Armagnac to calm your nerves. You may rest and dress at your leisure. That suit you?”

“Of course,” said one gentleman to another, though the naked former was near passing out and could not bear to set eyes upon the hollowed-out corpses that lay in the dirt on either side of him. The guards unlocked the leg irons and the manacles, at which moment Matthew found he was hardly capable of walking and sank down into the bloody mess, where he gave a bone-wrenching shudder and from his stomach boiled up most of the night’s dinner, in particular the steamed mussels and the fried cauliflower. He was hauled up by the men and guided toward the pit’s door, whereupon in his state of delirium he stepped on the face of Dippen Nack and again fell, was again sick, and heard Lash laughing up in the gallery as if watching a comedy of Shakespearean proportions.

Thus, then, went Matthew through the door and again into the bare room where the clothing of a Prussian baron and two dead men lay scattered on the stones. A moment after the door was closed and he heard a key turn in its lock, he sank down to the floor. Under the lantern that hung from a hook at the ceiling, Matthew brought his knees up to his chin and wept in the grief of his own personal tragedy.

Twenty-One

Twenty-One