Angela led the Pandolini children through the fog to the rendezvous, a secluded clearing on the fringes of the great forest, a half mile east of the lunatic asylum. Without pausing for breath, she put Maria and Giuseppe in charge of their younger siblings, and set off to rescue her parents.
It was an easy job trekking though the huddle of houses between the forest and the asylum. Each shack swam into view, lit by the glow of the moon and the flames in the earthen pits before each door. But Angela grew frightened when these gave way to the wasteland around Asylum Hill. All she could see was the dreaded tower silhouetted against the mist; all she could hear, the ravings of its madmen; all she could smell, the stench of its dung heaps.
Angela got into character. She dirtied her face, adjusted the sash of her swashbuckler’s costume, and set her broad-brimmed hat at a rakish angle. Next, she scratched herself and imagined manly thoughts. With a prayer to the god of happy endings, she swaggered up to the asylum’s forbidding oak door, determined to play the brashest of daring young men.
The clapper was a gargoyle’s head. Angela took it by the open mouth and banged three times. The booms of the bronze jaws silenced the cries within.
The window grate scraped open. “Who goes there?”
“A hired man come in service of Arnulf, Archduke of Waldland,” Angela said with grim authority. “I’d speak with the keeper.”
“Would you indeed.” A pause. “Show your papers.”
“I am about such deeds as need no papers,” Angela declared. “Open this gate and bring me the keeper. Step lively too, if you wish to wake upon the morrow.”
There was a heavy grunting and rattling of keys; the door creaked open. A man peered out. Hard and grizzled, he wore a dirty smock, fouled and glistening. Hair sprouted from his collar and cuffs, spreading up his neck and over the backs of his hands. Behind him, three grubby attendants held restraints and harnesses.
“I am the keeper,” the man said. “What is the archduke’s command?”
“He has sent me to take the Count and Countess von Schwanenberg to the dung heaps, there to slit their throats.”
The keeper stared at her. “A moment.” He closed the door. Angela heard loud muttering as he conferred with his attendants. The keeper reopened the door. “Enter,” he said. “I’ll lead you to the prisoners. You can save yourself trouble by killing them in their cell. After, my attendants will drag the bodies to the basement for dissection and disposal.”
“I am grateful for your hospitality, but the archduke’s instructions are clear. I am the one to do the deed, and on the dung heaps.”
“As you wish,” the keeper shrugged and let her in. Angela tried not to faint in the putrid air.
The keeper took a torch from the wall and led her up the winding tower stairs. Endless cells emerged from the dark as from a nightmare. Gnarly hands flew between the bars at Angela’s face. She held a hand to her hat, lest a lunatic grab its brim and tear off her disguise.
At last, they reached the top of the tower.
“The Count and Countess,” the keeper sneered. He opened the peephole in an iron door. “The archduke’s kept them chained in their finery. Oh, how they struggled when they arrived. They’re not so high and mighty now.”
Angela peeked through the spy hole. Moonlight shone through slits on the outer wall. She saw her father in shadow, his hands manacled to a beam above his head. Her mother was slumped forward on a stool, her foot cuffed in a leg iron. Angela recognized the back of her wig, and the funeral dress she’d worn on the day of the burial. She struggled not to weep.
The keeper unlocked the door and handed her the key to her parents’ locks. Angela flew to her mother, dropped to her knees, and felt for the ankle cuff. “Mother,” she whispered, “it’s me. Angela. I’ve come to bring you home.”
“My darling girl.” Her mother caressed her shoulders.
Angela froze. The voice and touch were strange. She looked up slowly—into the hollow eye sockets of the Necromancer.
“Did you miss me?” the Necromancer purred.
Angela screamed. “Father!” The man hanging from the chains swung around—a lunatic with a lantern jaw and bugged eyes. “Dolly, my dolly!” he leered.
The Necromancer clutched Angela with his bony claws. “I knew you’d come, my sweet. Ah, the love of a child for its parents.” The keeper’s assistants swarmed Angela. “Life may be more fantastic than stories,” the Necromancer continued. “Still, didn’t you wonder how you entered the madhouse so easily?”
The keeper put a hood over Angela’s head. The Necromancer cinched it tight. “At midday tomorrow, you and your parents will be taken to Market Square to burn as witches,” he gloated. “Your fate will lure the grave robber’s apprentice, and the two of you will roast together.”