Sat, May 19 2012
Maybe an hour later Passepartout and Jules became aware of the sound of someone trying to turn the wheel that opened the door of the Aurora. Not only had they locked it they had also put a steel bar through it and this now clanked in irritation every time someone tried to turn the wheel.
Both men grabbed up their stakes and hammers on the way to the door.
Outside was Rebecca. Her hair was hanging down long around her neck making it impossible to tell if she had been bitten. With a nod to each other Jules pulled out the bar and Passepartout quickly opened the door, jerking Rebecca inside and then slamming the door back again.
"Really!" Rebecca gasped in shock. Recovering she asked, " How is Phileas?"
She started back toward the staircase to his room only to be surprised by a steely grip on her arm, Passepartout again. He was too tired and dazed to worry about his role as manservant.
"Miss Rebecca, please to be showing us your neck."
"Passepartout, I'm fine I -- " She stopped as both men raised the stakes and hammers they held. "Oh, very well." She said impatiently.
She lifted her hair to show them her neck. Both men carefully examined every inch of her throat for fear their tired eyes might miss something.
"What took you so long, Rebecca? It has been three days! We have been thinking the worse." Jules reprimanded her as he checked for bite marks.
"Ang...Rimini was very secretive about where he kept his coffin. Passepartout's Grandmother had said that you had to kill them in their coffins. It took me this long to find the hidden room. Then I ...I removed his head to make sure he couldn't return again, as Passepartout's Grandmother suggested as well." Rebecca held herself very straight to keep herself from getting emotional.
There were no signs of any puncture marks. Both gave each other a curious glance as Rebecca started back for Phileas' room.
"My God, Phileas!" Rebecca wept.
Only then did it dawn on Jules and Passepartout that they hadn't told her of Phileas' death and Rebecca hadn't seen her cousin's descent into hell and would be shocked by the appearance of his body.
Mustering as much strength as they could they rushed up the spiral staircase to Phileas' room.
Rebecca knelt beside Phileas touching the cheekbones that rose above his beard as if she didn't believe it was really him.
When he had convulsed the covers had slid so that only his lower torso and left leg were still covered. Passepartout and Jules had not bothered to put the covers back. It had seemed pointless to cover the dead man and they were both too shattered to worry about Victorian modesty.
Phileas' body, normally beautiful and athletic, looked distorted. The ugly red, purple, blue, green, and yellow of bruises covered nearly every inch of skin. There were swollen places and cuts. His right leg was a raw sore from trying to work the manacle off. The manacle he had insisted on before he lost all reason. His neck showed the puncture wounds from Rimini's attack and was bruised and covered still with dried blood, Phileas' blood. Dried blood also covered most of Phileas' face. With the three days growth of thick, dark beard, and the unkempt nature of his hair it was nearly impossible to believe this had been Phileas Fogg.
"Why haven't you been caring for him?" Rebecca demanded, hot tears stinging her eyes. "How could you treat him like this?"
"You weren't here Rebecca," Jules replied mildly. "Fo..Phileas became an animal, his only drive to feed. At the very end he came back to himself, but then he wouldn't let us give him blood and he still insisted we keep our distance as he didn't know when he might turn back into that, that thing."
"Well help me to clean him up and see to his wounds now and get that damn chain off of his leg!"
"Rebecca, he is dead. There is time for that but we need to leave this place before dark and Passepartout and I need to rest first."
"He is not dead!"
"Yes, he is Rebecca. He -- he called out your name, had a seizure and died. He starved to death because he refused to take mortal blood."
"I killed Angelo. Phileas is free. He's not dead. I would have felt him die."
Jules reached to pull Rebecca away from Fogg's corpse. Rebecca shoved him and he fell into Fogg's body. A low, almost inaudible groan escaped Phileas' lips. Passepartout and Jules looked at him in total amazement.
"But he has no been breathing. He's being so cold!" Passepartout exclaimed.
"He is near death. Now that he is mortal the injuries they gave him and the massive blood loss may kill him yet. But he isn't dead."
"We have to get him to a doctor."
"I wouldn't trust anyone around here, Jules. If he is bleeding internally and needs surgery he is dead anyway. He doesn't have enough blood to loose in surgery. He needs to be tended to. But we can do that on the way back to London. If he is still alive when we arrive we can have a doctor check on him."
It was cold, it was practical, but it was also true.
"Passepartout, get some broth started then get us airborne. When you have our course set come and change Phileas' bed linens. Jules, get lots of hot water, soap, towels, bandages, salve, a razor, and shaving soap."
"Miss Rebecca I am thinking if -- er -- when Master comes to he would be embarrassed to know you had -- taken care of him. Maybe you should be making broth and setting course."
"The broth won't do him any good if he won't drink it. I am not a cook. If I made it the ingredients would be wasted. Besides, if none of us tells him he won't know."
Rebecca and Jules set to cleaning Phileas from head to toe. Particular care was given to his neck, wrists, leg, and the cuts. Rebecca carefully shaved Phileas starting with the area of the vampire's bites first to make sure her hand was not tired and didn't reopen any wounds. He moaned and jerked away from the touch to his neck.
A low whimper "no" was the first thing he had said in hours.
Hot tears ran down Rebecca's cheeks again. She softly stroked the hair back from his face.
"Its all right Phileas, you're safe."
He would have been safe she rebuked herself, if it hadn't been so important for her to come here and to find Angelo still alive. So important that she may have killed Phileas.
Rimini had told Rebecca all he had done to Phileas. No, more than that, he had gloried in telling Rebecca. It must have been awful for Phileas with those vampires standing around moaning and groaning for a taste of his blood but having to stand back as the Duke had feasted.
Then when Phileas was drained and his heartbeat running down, Angelo had described it like the beating of the wings of a dying butterfly, Rimini had bit into his own wrist and given the blood to the unconscious Phileas to drink. He had not been able to make a conscious choice to become one of them. The only part of his mind that still worked was the part that fights and claws for survival. And God knew, only too well, that part of Phileas' mind was a long way from being the man.
Rimini had delighted in telling Rebecca of the fear and disgust in Phileas' eyes when he had awoke. His vain attempts to vomit too little blood too late. The horror at his dawning realization of what he had become. Rimini told of feeling Fogg's decision to die before he had been released to stumble off into the forest.
Once Phileas was far enough away that Rimini could no longer feel their tentative psychic link Rimini had repaired to his castle to wait.
Angelo had laughed at the choices he left Fogg with. To die at the hands of those he loved, for the vampire's siren song of survival was now too strong for him to kill himself, or to feed on one of them.
Rebecca closed her eyes to fight back the memory. Her Angelo had been dead long before she put a stake through his heart and cut off his head.
They finished cleaning, doctoring, and bandaging Phileas. They decided to forgo a night shirt as it would only impede their tending to his injuries. Passepartout made the bed up with extra covers to keep his Master warm.
The three carefully lifted Phileas to the bed. The low moans and whimpers that escaped Phileas reminded Rebecca of when he had been deathly ill as a child. He had diphtheria and very nearly succumbed. She was forbidden from his room but she would pad down the hall on bare feet and peek in the door to check on him.
Phileas had suffered so much in one short lifetime. He was a young man still. It wasn't fair. If there was a God he shouldn't allow it.
They decided to watch him in shifts. Rebecca took the first watch. She understood why Jules and Passepartout had thought him dead. You could not see his chest rise and fall and he still felt cold to the touch from shock and blood loss. Only when he would make an occasional sound or move ever so slightly could she be sure he still lived.
He seemed caught in an endless nightmare of the events. She tried but he would not wake from them. When he had cried out in terror for Rimini to leave Rebecca alone it had gripped her heart and made it hard to breathe. Who could she blame but herself? It was her that brought them to this horrid place and her bitter and hurtful words that had driven him from the safety of the Aurora. She sobbed covering her mouth to stifle it. She did not want to be heard and pitied when all thoughts should be on Phileas.
Jules took the next watch. It was hard to get Rebecca to leave. She just kept setting there stroking Phileas' arm.
"We were so worried about you, Rebecca. Rimini seemed to have some sort of control over you."
"He said we were connected because our souls were meant to be together. I think it must have been some sort of vampiric power. But it wasn't strong enough to keep me from doing what I had to do to free Phileas. Oh, Jules, if he dies it is all my fault." Rebecca allowed herself to cry openly.
Jules was taken aback but tried his best to comfort her. She still stroked Phileas' arm as if afraid that if she stopped touching him he would disappear.
Before she finally left they changed the bandages. Two people would make shorter work of it and they wanted to spare Phileas having the process drag on.
Jules patiently fed small drops of Passepartout's broth to Phileas. When Phileas strangled and choked Jules would panic. Fear made him want to run for help even though he knew the reaction was to be expected trying to get liquid down an unconscious man. He would steel himself to wait out the coughing fit and then begin again. It was too vitally important to get nourishment down Phileas to let his dread that he might accidentally cause his friend's death stop him. If they didn't get sustenance down him he surely would die.
Jules studied Fogg. He studied him to the point he could have drawn him. It was hard to see past all the injuries Rimini and his ghouls had inflicted. And under those insults lay older ones from his previous misadventures. The small sword scar by his left eye, the scar under the same eye he wouldn't discuss, the scar from the bullet he had taken in his right shoulder when Erasmus has been killed. The bullet from that still lay somewhere in his body.
Jules had heard some of Foggs paramours discussing his scars. They were not large or disfiguring and seemed to add to his attractiveness and mystique. Rebecca had once said that as a younger man Phileas had been almost too beautiful. Only the most self-assured women had dared to try and win his attentions. Even when his hair had started going grey at an early age that only seemed to fascinate them more.
It made Jules wonder what Phileas' mother had looked like. He found it odd that as much as he had cared for his mother and as early as he had lost her he had no portraits of her around his townhouse. Though, come to think of it, there were none at Shillingworth Magna either. There were lots of pictures of ancestors, including Boniface, but no pictures of Josephine Fogg. Why?
It also seemed that all Aristos had portraits of themselves and Phileas didn't. Why would a handsome and, well frankly, arrogant man like Fogg not have some beautiful portrait of himself hanging in his homes?
Why would what, according to all accounts, had been an extraordinarily beautiful woman as Lady Fogg not have galleries of paintings made? Artists must have begged her to paint her portrait. He would have to ask Rebecca. She would know and she might tell him. There was no guarantee of that, however. The Fogg family seemed full of secrets and Jules curiosity had only uncovered a precious few of them.
When Passepartout came on duty he and Jules had dutifully changed the bandages again. They were determined to prevent any infection from taking hold. Phileas simply would not have the strength to recover.
Phileas was still agitated. What little movement or sound he made was a reaction to the memories he kept reliving. He needed to rest. He needed that energy to go towards his healing.
Passepartout finally started talking to his Master. First in French using the words his aunt Louisa had used to quiet him when he was a child. It seemed to help. So then he started telling Fogg about some of the exploits of his earlier life. Finally, unbelievably Passepartout ran out of things to talk about.
Then an idea struck him and he ran and got the last newspaper he had purchased for Fogg. In this God forsaken place he hadn't been able to obtain new ones and his Master had already read this one. But Passepartout thought maybe, along with the reassuring sound of a human voice, the familiar sound of the turning of the paper might be a comfort to Phileas too. Passepartout made sure to try and affect the exact same style Fogg had in turning the pages and holding the paper to read. This seemed to add to the calming effect.
So a routine was established, in addition to caring for Phileas body, to take care of his mind it was not allowed silence in which to relive the horror he had experienced. Rebecca read Phileas' favorite books to him. Jules read his plays and ideas from his notebook. And Passepartout? Passepartout read the same paper over and over again till his manner with it was exactly like Fogg's.
One ad in the agonies column always struck Passepartout as funny. It was a wife appealing to her runaway husband. Not for his return but that he return her pet pig that she missed very much. Passepartout would always giggle and, referring to the husband, say, "The swine." It would strike him as so hilarious he would laugh till tears rolled down his face.
They were getting near to London and while everyone was anxious they continued on with their routine of changing bandages, feeding Phileas, and reading to him.
Passepartout had once again reached his favorite part and started to giggle with anticipation.
But before he could say his punch line a voice, husky and weak, said, "If you say "the swine" once more I shall stuff you out of a porthole."
"I'm sorry, Master. I -- Master?!!! Master, you are awake!!!!!”
"Yes", Phileas choked slightly as his throat was so dry. "I am aware of that."
Passepartout dashed to the door and screamed at the top of his lungs, "Miss Rebecca! Master Jules! He is awake!!!"
In an instant Rebecca was there followed only a moment later by Jules. Rebecca sat carefully on the edge of the bed staring into Phileas' beautiful eyes rimmed as they were with long dark lashes. It was so wonderful to see him returned to himself. She was so overjoyed she laughed until she cried.
"Rebecca, are you all right?" Phileas rasped.
"I think I am supposed to be asking you that question dear cousin. But, yes, I am much better now."
"Well, now that you mention it I think I could drink an ocean and still be thirsty. But I am so sleepy I think perhaps I shall take a nap first." Phileas said his eyes closing wearily.
"No, Master! I am sorry. But water is right here and I am thinking you should be drinking as much as possible."
"Oh, all right, if you insist, Passepartout." Phileas said but he didn't open his eyes.
Passepartout gently raised his head and gave him a glass of water to drink. Satisfied when Fogg finished it. Passepartout beamed at Jules and Rebecca.
When they arrived in London they had a doctor thoroughly check Phileas over. Fortunately he was used to taking care of Phileas and wasn't too surprised by the explanation of how he came to be in such a state.
He said that Phileas would survive though it would take time and lots of care. He was dehydrated, anemic, and undernourished. But Passepartout was seeing to that as rapidly as he could get food down Phileas. Rebecca was seeing to her cousins every whim. Phileas was trying not to take too much advantage of the situation. Though he did enjoy having her spend time reading to him. Jules was inquiring into the lack of pictures of Phileas and Lady Josephine. He wasn't getting much in the way of an answer. Perhaps that would be the basis for a future story.
The End
End of Chapter Three
Chapter 2 | Chapter 3