Atop the dusty hill the fortress at Carcassone loomed in gloom-ridden shadow, its turrets and tile-roofed towers monstrous monuments to death. Turning up the narrow, cobbled alley leading to the immensity, Margorie Thickenham said, "My God, Harold, isn't it something." Her husband yawned without bothering to cover his mouth. Castles, museums, and historic bric a brac--what a damn bore!
If it weren't for his rotund wife, he'd go straight for the casino, the race track, or the nearest café, the only thing these damn Frogs were good at.
"Well it is quite old and all that." Margorie's puffy face twisted like a gnarled apple when her husband didn't bother to answer. "So's my rain coat, but nobody goes gaga and visits it." "Oh you're impossible, Harold." Margorie snuffled asthmatically.
They parked and walked through the drawbridge up the cobbled street past half-timbered shops selling made-in-Hong-Kong junk at exorbitant prices towards the inner wall, a hundred feet high.
"The guide book didn't tell us it would be such a difficult walk." Margorie stopped waddling long enough to set down her valise.
"We haven't walked a hundred yards yet. Quit complaining! It was you who wanted to come to this hole in the first place."
"It's not a hole. It's lovely." That was the problem with having made so much money as a plumber back in England. You're wife thought she was Princess Di, wanting to go to France and Crete and God-knows-where, places English wasn't even spoken.
"Oh look over there." Margorie pointed. "A two star hotel right within the walls." "We should check in the book first. It'll cost an arm and a leg." "Don't be such a penny pincher, Harold. You are so cheap!" If there was one thing he couldn't bear, it was being accused of being cheap.
As if she'd earned any of the money. Doggedly, he stumbled towards the hotel like a tug boat following a great ocean liner. The sawed-off, cross-eyed, half-blind hotel clerk with a Hitler mustache was arrogance personified, refusing to speak English, making Harold feel as though he'd been done a favor to be given a room for eighty pounds a night.
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By the time the sun was setting like a vast golden grapefruit sinking into the forbidding sea, Harold and Margorie had had a nap, bathed in a cramped shower fit only for French midgets, eaten some expensive continental rot or another, and were sitting at a terraced café in full view of the battlements.
"It's kind of like magical, isn't it, Harold, to think it's so ancient and all?" Margorie swallowed some non-magical beer.
"Expensive hokum I should say. Second-rate Disneyland. We could have stayed home and watched all this on video.
Do you suppose they have golf in this god-forsaken corner of the planet?" "I should think so, Harold, but be that as it may, I am exhausted. I'm going back to the room and turn in for the night."
"What and leave me to my own ends?" "Your ends are frayed, Harold. Why not?" "In that case I'll be along in a few minutes. Thank you."
When his wife's broad fanny had disappeared up the alley-way, Harold took a deep breath, for he knew she'd be asleep within minutes.
What a wonderful feeling of freedom! He'd been a faithful husband and more than adequate wage provider for 21 adventure-free years, but with his life slipping away in utter boredom, he'd reached the point where he craved some excitement, or so he thought as a dark-haired, petite thing in a black miniskirt and heels approached. "Now that's a woman," Harold thought overcome by a sudden burst of lust.
The stranger paused and looked his direction. "Do you have a match?" she asked with decidedly French accent. He cursed himself heartily for having given up smoking five years earlier at Margorie's insistence.
"No, I don't," he said, adding impulsively, "but can I buy you a drink?" The stranger sat down. Harold felt an electricity surging through him he hadn't felt in twenty years.
As the streets grew deserted, they made small talk, and the woman, Lisette, sipped a crème de menthe. "Thank you very much, monsieur," she finally said, getting up to leave. "It's very lonely at night here, and your company was tres agreeable."
Harold swallowed hard and fumbled to pay the waiter as the woman rapidly disappeared into the fog in the direction of the outer gate.
Rising in desperate confusion, Harold stumbled after her. A real pea-souper had descended, and the white, misty alleys were deserted as Harold's footsteps thumped along the solid cobbles.
Peering ahead in the inscrutable darkness, he thought he saw a flash of the woman's calf climbing the narrow stone steps to the outer wall.
Strange, he thought, but maybe she means to lead me to her bedroom. When he reached the walkway at the top of the steps, the lights of the city glowed a feeble yellow in the distance as he glanced along the towering battlements.
The darkness settled over everything like a funeral shroud. An unaccustomed feeling of dread shot along Harold's spine as a guttural voice suddenly addressed him from behind, and he felt a blade thrust against his ribs.
"Halt!" Harold froze in terror. Through the pastey gloom he made out the figure of a squat guardsman, wearing a plumed helmet and bearing a halberd. "What exactly is your identity?" The trooper had a French accent and wore his hair like Lisette.
"I'm an Englishman visiting the castle. I mean no harm," Harold blurted. "English eh? Come with me." The sharp tip of the halberd directed Harold which way to stagger through the darkness.
He was thrust into a candle-lit chamber at the base of an adjacent tower. A headman of some sort with crossed eyes, a nasty black mustache, and a leather jerkin addressed Harold in broken English.
"What are you doing here?" The interrogator stared at Harold near-sightedly. "Vacationing. My wife's idea you see." The interrogator scowled. "We've had a report you've been seen in the king's forest hunting small game."
"Nonsense, I've never been hunting in my life." Harold tried to remember his attorney's phone number. "What is that thing upon your wrist?" "A wrist watch, of course. What do you think it is, a pizza?"
A second later Harold wished he hadn't been so smart as a guard behind him delivered a sharp truncheon blow to the back of his scalp. Head bleeding and knocked to his knees, Harold handed over his digital watch.`
The interrogator held it close to his eyes, turning it over and over again in puzzlement. "How did you get in this castle?" Knowing now he wasn't going to be believed anyway, Harold wasn't sure what to say this time.
Finally, he said, "Well, we drove up you know. Then we parked in the lot outside like folks do and walked in through the front gate."
The interrogator pounded a meaty fist that shook the table. "A damnable lie, English dog!" "No, it's the truth. My wife and I are vacationing here from the U.K."
"What is this U.K.? What king do you owe your allegiance to?" The interrogator's breath made Harold pull back. "I'm not into kings and all that," Harold said. "I'm a simple plumber. It's my wife that's crazy for Prince Charles and the queen and such."
"Silence!" the interrogator rang a small bell. Six helmeted soldiers rattled into the dungeon. "And now, monsieur," said the interrogator, "you must be made to suffer for the rabbit you stole from the king's forest."
"What the hell rabbit?" Harold couldn't believe how high-pitched his voice had become. "Take him!" the interrogator replied as the six soldiers dragged Harold's trembling body off to a darker hole where his thumbs were strapped to ceiling hooks.
Sputtering torches hissed in the oxygen-starved air. As Harold's toes dangled to the floor, a burly guardsman, wearing a black mask, stripped away Harold's jacket and flogged him three times with a horsewhip.
Harold screamed and fell to his knees as the overhead hooks were released. As he sagged there whimpering in pain, the interrogator returned. "Why are you doing this to me?" Harold moaned. "For being a thief and a liar," the interrogator said. "And now to the wheel."
Unfastened from the thumb hooks, Harold was dragged to a cruel device operated by hand crank. Forced to lie across a wooden wheel, Harold screamed as his head and shoulders were yanked one direction, his legs and feet another.
When he was fully extended, his poor body stretched to at least three inches beyond its normal five feet nine, an eagle was carried into the foul-smelling hole. "No," Harold cried as the eagle was taken from the leather glove of its trainer and placed upon Harold's belly.
"This hungry bird shall eat two inches of thy flesh," the interrogator said. "Perhaps this will teach you a lesson about trespassing."
The worst previous pain Harold had ever previously endured was having his teeth drilled with benefit of anesthetic. The hungry eagle ripped at his innards with an excruciating, ravening intensity. Harold cried out ceaselessly, but his guards quaffed beer while the torture proceeded.
When it was done and Harold was a bleeding piece of meat, the restraints were released, and he was left a crumpled, whimpering ball, lying on the cold, stone floor.
Time passed. Finally the interrogator returned. "What makes this machine work?" the interrogator held up Harold's digital watch. "I have no idea. Maybe my wife knows."
The pain was too intense for Harold to speak another word. "Liar, you are a magician, a product of the incubus," the interrogator said. "And now, monsieur, for being a spy, a thief, and a purveyor of black magic--to the wall!"
Six guardsmen in pointed, steel helmets marched Harold to the highest point of the wall. Fog curled up from below like the hideous white smoke of Hell. Crouching on his knees, Harold stared over the precipice to the where he knew the black reality of the earth lay.
He would be broken into pieces by the fall. The interrogator stood by the lantern-bearer with folded arms.
"Wait!" Harold suddenly shouted. "There is no waiting," the interrogator replied. "Yes, but I have magic," Harold said. "Look at these. I'll give them to you."
He took his glasses from their case. "These eyes enable the blind to see. I have invented them. We call them spectacles." "Give them to me." The interrogator took the glasses and held them before his eyes, glancing at a sheet of parchment by the light of the lantern.
After a few seconds he gave a pleased sort of chortle. "Yes, as we suspected. The Englishman does have powerful magic," the interrogator said. "I will keep your magic eyes. Therefore, return to your wife and family, English dog. Release him!"
Suddenly Harold was left crouching and bleeding alone on the wall as the soldiers hurried off into the fog in a burst of clanking metal.
He shivered with the ungodly pain of the torture his body had endured, but as he gazed out into the fog, he cherished his second-chance at life, noting the magical beauty of the yellow castle lights dimly reflected off the coldness of the ancient stone. And then gathering his guts into his hands, he stumbled towards the hotel, crying, "Margorie. Margorie. Oh, dear Margorie, save me, darling wife!"
--end--
