Capitulus V (Chapter 05)
Cherl is haunted by ghosts
Zhanet and Steev escort Cherl to one of the wagons; they are half carrying her as her knees keep buckling. She keeps repeating, "Seconds, only seconds and they would have lived. It is so unfair." Although Zhanet and Steev try to soothe her, she is inconsolable. She is moaning and weeping as though her heart is breaking. She stops and throws up; the world is spinning and she is trying desperately to grasp reality. She sits in the wagon and stares into space; she thinks she is losing her mind.
Claude and his four male servants make their way to the Arena morgue. After a few minutes inside, they emerge; the servants are carrying two pallets bearing Sylvi's and Cordele's bodies covered with bloody sheets. They bear them to one of their wagons and lay them in the wagon bed. Claude stays with the bodies while two of his men sit up on the driver's bench. The other two go to Zhanet's wagon. They arrive at Claude's estate and carry the bodies to the atrium.
All members of the household stand around the bodies and weep. Steev helps Cherl to view the bodies; he pulls back the sheets, and Cherl stares at the two still lovely faces. They are covered with blood and urine, but she kisses their faces regardless. Her eyes are dry; she has wept until there are no more tears. She notices that the wound in Cordele's buttock is dripping blood. Without thinking, she puts two fingers under the wound and allows the blood to drip on her fingers. She licks her fingers and moans. Steev and Claude help her to her chamber and Claude gives her a sedative to help her sleep; Steev removes her chiton and puts it away.
The young women come in with basins of water and towels; they drop their chitons and bathe Cherl. She doesn't seem to know what's happening. After the women dry her, she lies on the bed and falls into a troubled sleep. Milla and Sera stay and watch over her while the other girls go to their chambers.
No one has anything to say to one another; the evening meal is skipped.
Three hours later, Cherl is wakened by strange music. She is uncertain whether she is awake or dreaming; the sedative is still active in her system. Delia and Sera are fast asleep on the floor beside the bed. Cherl walks out of the room, forgetting that she is nude, and goes looking for the music. She walks through the salon to the atrium and stops cold. She witnesses the ghosts of Sylvia and Cordele dancing around in the moonlight. They are pale except for the blood covering much of their bodies. Their bellies are saturated with blood. The flute music is coming from the shadows; Cherl can't see the player, but she knows that Delia is the flutist in the group. She thinks that Delia has conjured up the ghosts with her strange music. Suddenly, the music stops, and the ghosts turn and look at Cherl. A chill runs through her and the hair on the back of her neck stands up. The ghosts say nothing but walk rapidly toward her. Cherl is frightened but stands rooted to the spot. She is crying again. She knows she is dreaming now, yet desperately wants to stay that way, so she can continue to see her deceased loved ones. When they reach her, they throw their arms around her. When she feels their naked bloody flesh against her flesh, she passes out again.
When she comes to her senses, Claude, Zhanet, Steev, are standing over her with concerned looks on their faces. They somehow have dressed her. She looks around for the ghosts, but when she sees they are not there, she realizes she was dreaming or hallucinating -- probably from the sedative. They help her to a chair and offer her wine. She says nothing about the hallucination lest they think she is non compos mentis.
"Cherl, we know why you fainted," says Zhanet. "You thought you had lost your mind. You haven't. Delia told us what happened in the atrium. She was the one playing the flute. She thought her playing had awakened the dead and was just as frightened as you, but she was unable to stop until you walked into the atrium. You were nude and she thought you had died, too, and were joining the other two dead women. It wasn't until they touched you, and you fainted that she knew you were still alive."
"Until they touched me? How could I have felt ghosts?"
"Drink your wine, and we'll tell you what happened." Cherl gulps it down and waits.
Claude speaks up, "Cherl, when we went to the Arena yesterday morning, I paid a visit to the Arena officers and offered them a great deal of money to spare the lives of Sylvi and her mother. Although they said it was out of their hands and that the sentence must be carried out, I was ready for that contingency. I outlined a plan before them. Part of it you know already as you had talked the women into committing an unthinkable act between mother and daughter, especially that mother and daughter. Sylvi eventually convinced Cordele that since she wanted desperately to live, they should do as you suggested. Finally, Cordele acquiesced.
"I took a magician's trick knife with me. It had a blade that sank back into the handle and burst a small bladder made from a pig's intestines; of course, the bladder was filled with blood; the pig's blood. The executioner couldn't tell the women in advance for several reasons. We felt that they wouldn't have reacted as they did at the proper time. He did hit them hard in the abdomen with it, but it was the handle that knocked the wind out of them. After he hit them, he held his face close to theirs and told them how to react. They were fine actors and pulled it off. The crowd would have demanded their deaths if they hadn't.
"I had given some medicine to the officers to give the women to simulate death. I'm sorry to tell you this after all the trauma you've been through, but in order to keep them unconscious, the dosage had to be large; we weren't absolutely positive that it wouldn't actually kill them after all they went through. That's why you weren't in on that part of the plan.
"If they did die from the medication, you would really have been devastated. I can still hear you saying, "Seconds. Seconds." I can imagine what you would have thought of me if I had killed them when they were supposed to be safely out of their predicament. By the way, I thought you would catch on when you saw Cordele's buttock's wound bleeding. The dead don't bleed.
"Sylvi and Cordele finally woke up just before dawn. They were so happy to be away from the Arena that they danced out into the atrium. Delia couldn't sleep because she was mourning thinking they were dead and was consoling herself by playing her flute in the atrium. Sylvi and Cordele were drawn by the music. Poor Delia thought they were spirits coming to exact revenge because she had licked Sylvi's pudenda against your orders and caused the debacle.
"Now, I know you prefer women, but I think I deserve a big kiss -- and a grope -- for saving their lives."
Cherl throws her arms around Claude's neck, hugs him tight, and gives him a long open mouth kiss. He reaches around her, grabs her buttocks, and squeezes hard enough that it makes her wince. It was the best pain she had ever felt.
"Where are they? Please. I want to see them." She still has her arms around Claude.
