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    Pulphouse Fiction Magazine #12: Pulphouse, #12
    Pulphouse Fiction Magazine #12: Pulphouse, #12
    Pulphouse Fiction Magazine #12: Pulphouse, #12
    Ebook425 pages5 hoursPulphouse

    Pulphouse Fiction Magazine #12: Pulphouse, #12

    By Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Annie Reed and

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    The Cutting Edge of Modern Short Fiction

    A three-time Hugo Award nominated magazine, this issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine offers up twenty-one fantastic stories by some of the best writers working in modern short fiction.

    No genre limitations, no topic limitations, just great stories. Attitude, feel, and high-quality fiction equals Pulphouse.

    "This is definitely a strong start. All the stories have a lot of life to them, and are worthwhile reading." —Tangent Online on Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, Issue #1

    Includes:

    "Jesting Pilate" by Lee Allred

    "Exchange Policy" by Scott William Carter

    "Dead Girlfriend" by Ray Vukcevich

    "Laugh Track" by David H. Hendrickson

    "Family Bonds" by R.W. Wallace

    "Mystery Weekend" by J. Roderick Clark

    "A Magical Negro" by Ezekiel James Boston

    "Be Very, Very Afraid" by Jerry Oltion

    "Barely Decent" by Kent Patterson

    "Call Me Peaches" by Daemon Crowe

    "Death by Vodka" by Robert J. McCarter

    "Virtual Oracle" by Leigh Saunders

    "Machine in the Ghost" by Rob Vagle

    "The Postcard" by David Stier

    "Gordie Culligan vs. Dr. Longbeach and the HVAC of Doom" by J. Steven York

    "On Red Mountain" by Robin Brande

    "Fort Dumpster" by O'Neil De Noux

    "Scrawny Pete" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

    "My Father, the Popsicle" by Annie Reed

    "The Neighborhood" by Angela Penrose

    "As if My Every Word Has Turned to Glass" by Robert Jeschonek

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWMG Publishing
    Release dateJun 23, 2021
    ISBN9798201365608
    Pulphouse Fiction Magazine #12: Pulphouse, #12
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    Author

    Dean Wesley Smith

    Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.

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      Pulphouse Fiction Magazine #12 - Dean Wesley Smith

      Jesting Pilate

      Lee Allred

      Lee Allred leads off this issue of Pulphouse with a very original fantasy story, set in the past with some very familiar writers, and twisted in a way only Lee can do.

      Lee is not only a long-term professional fiction writer, but he writes comics as well at times for both Marvel and DC Comics. And he always has a completely different way of looking at the world.

      His short fiction has found homes in many different magazines and anthologies, including Asimov’s and Fiction River, as well as previous issues of this magazine. To check out all of Lee’s fantastic work, go to https://www.leeallred.com/

      The cobblestone alley narrowed until it barely spanned a man’s shoulder width. Thick London fog muffled the footsteps of a balding man in doublet finery and starched linen ruff wandering the night alone after curfew.

      Or not quite alone.

      Two men followed him. The first was a cutpurse, padding silently only three paces back. Behind the thief, equally as silent, a tall lean man dressed in a gray that blended into the fog. The tall man silently drew a sword, a whippet-thin rapier of the finest Toledo steel.

      The balding man had proven trebly foolish. First, for braving the night after curfew. Second, for not hiring a linkman—Devil take the curfew! And lastly, for wandering the back alleys of London head down deep in thought, mumbling to himself, oblivious to the danger behind.

      The balding man had one piece of luck: the cutpurse timed his strike two paces too late.

      The alley unexpectedly opened into a small courtyard between buildings. As if panicked that his prey might escape, the thief abandoned stealth. In his haste, he slipped on offal from an emptied chamber pot. A loose cobblestone underfoot clattered past the balding man, breaking the balding man’s reverie.

      The balding man whirled, peering into the dark and fog. His eyes widened at the sight of the ha’penny knife and the ha’penny thief behind it. The balding man scrabbled backwards. His steaming breath—perhaps his last—shot upwards in the damp and cold.

      The thief moved in.

      Before he could strike, a voice called out behind the cutpurse, a voice solid and strong as if trained for the stage, a commanding voice:

      A little man with a little knife

      Means to cut a little purse

      From a man whose pen flashes bright with life

      As it cuts a matchless verse.

      And so is ask’d which the greater task:

      The sword or the mighty pen?

      It doth depend, my cutpurse friend,

      On whose blade does the flashing first!

      The swordsman stepped forward, his gray cape swirling. His gray garb as plain as the balding man’s clothes were gaudy. The swordsman’s face lay shadowed under the wide brim of a tall-crowned Puritan hat.

      The thief, not only stripped of his element of surprise but surprised himself, had the choice of fleeing past his intended victim or confronting the tall stranger with the sword.

      He chose poorly.

      With an effortless flick of the rapier’s tip, the swordsman flipped the knife from the advancing thief’s grip, then, continuing the blade’s arc plunged it unerringly into the scoundrel’s heart.

      William, Jacob Talmage said as he wiped his sword blade clean on the dead man’s own clothes before slipping it back into its scabbard, your nighttime wanderings with your Muse will one day lead you to your death. You should leave off nocturnal wanderings when lost in your composing. I cannot always be walking so providently behind you.

      William Shakespeare smiled and shook the gloved hand of his friend and creative rival. Would you have me waste the time it takes to stroll from Cheapside to Blackfriars? Should my mind, otherwise unengaged, not be about its own task while my feet perform theirs? He kicked the dead man’s corpse. Still, I thank you for your rescue, friend Jacob, as I do not thank this ruffian. He made me drop a line.

      He looked up at Talmage. "And if I might speak of lines, yours were, as well as poorly scansioned, poorly timed. Leave be your little impromptu compositions after you dispatch a foe, and not before, or mayhap you find your own daemon Muse lead you downwards as well."

      Talmage smiled. Mayhaps, but not tonight. He gripped his friend on the upper arm and pushed him along. Come, the scene is over, let us quit the stage. This thief was only gallows’ bait, true, but I would forego the pleasure of speaking to the night watch. I take it from the direction of your travel, you make for the Goat and Bagpipe as well?

      Shakespeare nodded. The Goat, the Bagpipe—and the Bacon.

      Talmage’s eyes narrowed. Aye, our newly spurred Sir Francis Bacon and his thrice-dammed Rosicrucians.

      The raucous noise of the tavern guided them in long before the warm fireglow through mullioned glass lighted their way in the fog.

      Rather than entering the tavern, Shakespeare pointed to a rickety side staircase. I keep a small room here, Shakespeare muttered, not wanting to write certain lines in open company at the Globe.

      Talmage nodded. Good Queen Bess had been dead only one scant year. The murky lines of power and authority and intrigue swirling around the new King James in the Year of Our Lord 1604 still roiled and churned. Precautions such as these were wise for a writer who touched upon the lives of kings and queens.

      The upstairs room was small and cramped. Its only heat against the riverside dank was the small beef tallow candle Shakespeare lit and the body heat of the two men themselves. Shakespeare blew on his hands and then quickly scratched his quill over a sheet of foolscap, putting down the lines he’d composed along the way. The name he penned in ownership read Fr. Bacon rather than his own.

      Talmage laughed. "Et tu? He produced a sheaf of paper from under his cloak with a similar false Baconian appellation penned in Talmage’s hand. Since first hearing the man speak, I suspected he penned not a single word that bears his name. They say the new King is ‘the wisest fool in Christendom’ but our Wise Bacon treads close on His royal heels. I wonder how many others he has gulled into providing him his seeming wit."

      His host bade Talmage to sit upon the room’s only chair, a spindle-shanked castoff, while Shakespeare examined his rival’s work, Talmage’s counterfeit entitled Of Truth.

      Gulled or paid or blackmailed, whichever best suits Bacon’s catchpenny purposes, Talmage said softly.

      Shakespeare smoothed out Talmage’s top sheet upon the desk and tapped the first lines with the back of his hand. I like this, Jacob. It has your voice. ‘What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.’ But ’tis too fine a line for Bacon. Pray save it for one of your own plays. The Globe and the wider world will know it yours anon they read it anyway.

      Talmage stood to retrieve the sheets from his friend’s hand. He refastened the roll with ribbon and slipped it under his cloak. ’Tis the point, William. I tire of Bacon’s game, and would let Truth out, knowing full well that blathersgate savant will fail to see my jest. Tonight my servitude ends. Like jesting Pilate, I mean to wash my hands of it.

      Shakespeare rolled up his own work. You dice an expensive game, my lord. Those of us with but workaday lives who have not freebooted with Drake and Grenville and shared their treasures must play a cheaper hand. Sir Francis Bacon is the King’s new passing Fancy. He rubbed his bearded chin. "Still, I find I’d fancy watching his be-baconed eyes bulge wide at the two of us entering paired, a gift for him in both our outstretched hands. Those dice I can afford."

      Talmage gathered his gray cloak and resettled his hat upon his head. Shakespeare clucked his tongue at the gray felt tall-crown, wide-brimmed Dutch-manner like the Puritans favored. I dislike hats that slouch so. And the color! When will you come down on one side or another, my friend? Your gray is too black for surpliced Christendom, too white for black sheep dissenters. Too Puritan for safety’s sake and too cavalier for dour pieties.

      I’ll gladly dye it once I find plain Truth’s hue. Talmage said as he unlatched the door. And this I promise, my good friend: unlike Pilate, whence e’er I finally do hear sweet Truth, I’ll stay fast to heed its call.

      Talmage descended the side stair and entered the tavern’s front door first, his scabbarded sword a welcome weight upon his hip. The firelight from the tavern’s roasting fire was not as cheery inside as it looked from the outside looking in through the leaded mullions. The flames capered like Satan’s imps, casting unnatural shadows across the faces of the assembled guests seated at one long table, or rather, at several table pushed together to form one whole. Sir Bacon sat at its head, flanked by two dour-faced Rosicrucians. A motley of players and fellow scribblers filled out the rest of the ale-sopped benches.

      Roughhewn beams of darkened oak held up the room’s low ceiling. Talmage muttered a curse for its low construction as he stepped in, cursing more for a man his height having to stoop to save his head against the beams, than the limit of movement it would place should he have to draw his sword.

      Shakespeare followed him in, close behind.

      Portly Ben Johnson saw both of them enter, but had eyes only for his balding friend. His fat bricklayer’s fist pounded the table, bouncing the earthenware mug set before him. Will! he roared at Shakespeare a pace behind the taller man. I was but in the midst of regaling our host about our own part in Bishop Miles’ and his Royal Patron’s great project—

      Your grape-born regalements will wait, Master Hodman, Sir Francis Bacon said, his stentorious voice silencing the babble around him. Only the elderly Rosicrucian seated on his left continued his low-pitched monotonous chant of nonsense words. Or more happily wither on the vine altogether, for I see my two great and good friends have brought me gifts bearing Greek.

      He reached out for the ribbon-bound papers. I take it these are the texts I hired you to proof? I wonder what it is I have to say tonight? He quickly scanned the texts, passing each sheet in turn to the fox-faced Rosicrucian on his right.

      The fox-faced man bedecked with collar ruff and feather-plumed hat frowned at the top sheet in Talmage’s hand and whispered in the ear of his master.

      Bacon’s eyes narrowed for the briefest of moments, but he waved for Talmage and Shakespeare to sit at the foot of the table. Join us, my two good friends. Our revels are yet not ended, and our players have yet to leave the boards.

      I must decline, Sir Francis, Talmage said, his hand edging to the hilt of his sword. I find the environs here less to my likings than your haunts of old. A soul could stand to his full height at Grey’s Inn, and the full frame of his body could follow. Besides, he added, pointedly looking at the Rosicrucian, I likest not your newfound company of rosy-crossed players.

      Nay, stay! Bacon called. Hear my thought for a new play. It concerns a foolish man who would fain leave his jailor. He finds he never can, however. What say ye of that?

      I say a new playwright should be best found. I have ever preferred my plays to have the ring of truth.

      ‘What is truth?’ Bacon quoted sneeringly, his fingers caressing the top sheet in Talmage’s hand. I am the King’s new favorite, and Truth is what I say it to be.

      Bacon’s eyes shone with the guttering flame of the firepit. "Oh, I will publish this new work you’ve proofed tonight, my dear Talmage, and I will continue to publish those proofings that follow. For they will follow. And that foolish man in my play? E’er will he safevouch his jailor’s words for he shall never leave his jail. Never."

      Mayhaps the shadow who capers upon the proscenium of your imagination will thus be amenably disposed, Sir Francis, but as for myself, the hour is late and I will take my leave.

      As he turned for the door, Shakespeare made as if to follow. Talmage placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder and shook his head. ’Tis not a storm a workaday ship from Avon should sail in, Master Will, he softly said. Stay—on your life and your future words. But, take care. ’Tis such a tavern and such a company of rosy crosses here as poor Kit fell from in Deptford. I truly wonder at how many have danced to our host’s goatish pipes and for how long.

      He stepped to the door. The room was silent save for the crackling of the pit fire and the keening murmur of the old man’s chants.

      Godspeed, my jesting Pilate who will not stay for his answer. Bacon laughed behind as Talmage stepped into the fog. ’T’would be a shame should you run afoul of the watch this late past curfew.

      The fog closed in around him as Talmage briskly strode away. The streets were dank and silent save for the leathered scrapings of his boots. Once thought he heard the soughing pad of feet behind him. He ducked inside a side alley, and waited, shadowed and silent, but no man passed by. He resheathed his sword, but crept out the back of the alley and altered course. The fog grew thicker.

      Somehow he found himself returned to the backstreet courtyard where he’d dispatched Will’s cutpurse although he should be several streets away. The corpse lay undiscovered still, pooled in its blood and evacuated effluvia.

      Bacon’s laugh echoed against the courted walls.

      Talmage drew his sword but saw no one at all.

      Again he heard the keening of the old Rosicrucian’s chant. Tendrils of fog swirled and curled above the dead man’s corpse and solidified into a man-shaped mockery with eyes that glowed with the guttering flames of Perdition. Another being of fog and smoke formed, and then another and another. Their wraith-gray claws stretched out as the four creatures advanced towards the slowly backing Talmage.

      Many a man would have dropped their sword and many a man’s mind would have gibbered in madness at the sight. Talmage but gripped his sword’s hilt all the tighter and sprang forward, his Muse racing as was its wont:

      Creatures of Smoke or creatures of Flame,

      Devils or Men, ’tis surely the same.

      Courage of steel and mettle of heart

      Shall with Christ’s blessing

      Cause—thee—to—part!

      On each of the four last words, he stabbed out at the four mockeries in turn. His sword met not wisps of fog, but solid flesh. As each creature of fog clutched its vaporous breast and fell, the veil of fog and smoke vanished and what once was each a creature became uniformed soldier of the King, falling to the dew-slicked cobbles.

      The fog lifted as if it had never been, and the full moon shone over the courtyard. Talmage found himself facing a small army of the King’s Yeoman of the Guard. A ring of pike points hemmed him in.

      Their captain stepped forward. He had the same fox-face as the Rosicrucian at the tavern, and a dangling red-painted crucifix. Impossible that he could be the same man, but there he stood.

      Jacob Talmage, known sometimes as James Talmage, he intoned, I have the King’s Warrant for your arrest. He smiled, and Talmage thought he saw a flash of the Goat’s pit fire behind the man’s eyes. The charges are unspecified, but the murder of these four guards will do.

      The captain wrenched the sword out of Talmage’s hands. He swished the air with it a stroke or two, as if examining its balance, then rammed it home in Talmage’s own belted scabbard. By all means, keep your sword. It will amuse His Majesty mightily to be presented it in Court by your own hand, drenched as its blade is in the blood of His Own Guard.

      By the time it took to be marched to Whitehall Palace, the hour neared cockcrow and yet the Great Hall was ablaze with light and the King sat on his throne, attended by his courtiers, as if they’d spent the entire night awaiting Talmage’s arrival.

      Two burly Beefeaters, liveried in the Crown’s scarlet and gold and armed with heavy halberds, met Talmage at the door and flanked him as he trod. No other weapons were evident. No nobleman in the room wore so much as a dagger. The new King’s terror of a naked blade was known far outside the confines of the court.

      What game was Fox Face playing, leaving Talmage possession of his sword?

      Each step down the mat of plaited rushes laid atop the hall’s flat stone flooring took Talmage closer to the monarch. Courtiers lined both sides, staring slack-jawed not at him, but at some unseen focus. The faces of the blank-eyed women were rouged as current custom; those of modest means rouged with carbonate of lead, which slowly drove a constant user mad, while those of greater wealth rouged with tinted bear fat, which surely drove the bear mad.

      Talmage treasured the tiny smile the flitting thought-jest brought him; likely he would live to smile at no other.

      The King’s throne sat upon a dais, centered under the mullioned panes of a brooding oriel window through which the dawn’s light was not yet due. The King’s pudgy frame showed itself weak in every little nervous twitch at the approaching halberdiers. His bulging, protuberant eyes darted this way and that. His narrow-chinned face lay scarred by pox. One got the sense that the King could have been a great man had he but tried, but that that he did not try—at that or at any other ambition other than maintaining his seat upon his throne.

      Flanking him right and left were eight Rosicrucians—seven Fox Faces as alike as if cast from a mold, with one more the twin of Bacon’s companion at the tavern. No, he was the companion at the tavern, for Sir Francis Bacon stood at the King’s own right hand. How they had arrived ahead of him, Talmage could not say.

      What Talmage could say was there no doubt now where the power lay in the Court. The same King who had written obsessively of fell powers in his Scottish Daemonologie, who had his royal self tortured dozens of young girls falsely accused of witchcraft, had himself been bewitched by the chanting Rosenkreuzers.

      Brought within two paces short of the King, Talmage now could hazard why that Fox-Face had taunted him by leaving Talmage his blade. The same chanting that undoubtedly had left these courtiers mindless husks and bewitched the King also left Talmage weak and almost unable to move. He could no more draw his sword and spring to attack than he could jump over the moon.

      Bacon bent down and whispered in his monarch’s ear. The King’s eyes steadied, as if focusing for the first time. So, he said, crossing his leg. This is the playwright who dispatches four of Our yeoman with naught but a blade and a well-turned Alexandrine.

      He snapped his fingers and a young page brought a gilt finger bowl. The King dipped the tips of his fingers in it, then motioned it away. Court gossip said James’ skin lay soft as taffeta sarsanet, made so by the monarch never truly washing. Talmage, standing this close to the king, could well believe the latter part of that gossip; it smelled like standing near a midden on a hot day’s sun in Billingsgate Market.

      The King fixed his bulbous eyes on him. Do you think you may chop down Our men like so many trees in Birnam Wood?

      Nay, your Majesty, Talmage said, his voice a mere breath. Any mention of the creatures he had fought would only lead to charges of witchcraft.

      We should think not.

      Again Bacon whispered in the monarch’s ear.

      "Our good friend Sir Francis suggests that, like Christopher Marlowe before you, you have contracted the pen-scribblers complaint: hiding sedition and treason inside the seeming merry lines of your plays, most specifically your Tamerlane and the Turtledove. What say ye?"

      Talmage found anger-fueled strength enough to place his hand upon his sword hilt, but no more. I say I performed that play in this very Great Hall on the very command of your August Self. It had no more treason in it now than it did then—

      Impertinence!

      —when your own August Self clapped and praised it!—

      Impudence!

      "And I also say that it is for the King to decide what treason be and not some ear-whispering Court sycophant!"

      Red pulsed on James’s cheeks as he fought for regal control.

      Once calm, the king reached his bleach-white fingertips and softly caressed the gold-threaded doublet of Sir Francis. We’ll not have it thought Our granting favors to Our supporters a defect, he said, too softly for comfort, for even Christ Our Lord did the same, and therefore We cannot be blamed. Christ had his beloved John. I have my Sir Francis.

      The King dropped his hand and leaned forward in his throne, the red anger in his face returning. And as for Law, do not presume to tell Us about Law! Kings arose before the estates or ranks of men, before any parliament, before any laws made, and by Kings was the land distributed, which under God’s Grace was wholly Theirs to begin with. So it follows of necessity that Kings are the authors and makers of Laws, and not the laws of the makers of Kings!

      I have no quarrel with your claim of Divine Right, my King, Talmage answered calmly, only with Sir Francis asserting such a claim to it as well.

      James pounded a soft fist upon the lacquered arm of his throne. "You have no quarrel with My claim? Who are you, little man, to decide what claim a King might have?"

      He rose to his feet in anger.

      "I am God’s Hand on Earth and you will fear and obey Me as you would Him. All of this wretched isle was given to Me by Him to mete out as I please! I hold title on it all and everything and everyone within! Everyone—body and soul! Do you hear? Body and soul!"

      The King’s mercurial outburst caused even the Rosicrucians to catch their breath. For the barest moment, the chanting stopped.

      And that moment was all Talmage needed. With a shout he drew his blade as the Muse bubbled up inside him once again:

      As Kings are wont, They often flaunt

      As They forget atop Their Throne

      Where Divine Right ends

      And Greed begins

      (Unfettered once beknown)

      And so miscount in vast amount

      The sums They think They own:

      A subject’s troth and, aye! his oath,

      And heart if One can cajole.

      But one things lacks

      In this Kingly tax

      The thing no King can toll—

      For a King can’t claim what is God’s in name,

      And

      that

      is the immortal soul!

      Before the first line fell silent, Talmage had dispatched the two Beefeaters with a quick stroke, left and right. He leaped forward to strike, not at James, but at the tavern Rosenkreuzer now fumbling at his blood red cross hanging pendent on his chest. Talmage could ill afford to give these rosy crossers time to begin their chant anew. He feared the ancient’s chant the most and so struck him first.

      One, two, three, they began to fall to his blade, offering almost no resistance at all, so great their surprise. By the fourth, they began to gather their wits and began chant again and even to shout, but to no effect. The words that tumbled out of Talmage’s mouth, given to him by his Muse, seemed to counter any shouted witcheries.

      As the last fox-face fell, Talmage turned his blade to Sir Francis. Before he struck, he toyingly flung aside with a mere wrist-flick the crimson obscenity hung around Bacon’s neck. He then plunged full the rapier’s reddened blade into Sir Francis’ heart as he shouted his final line.

      His Muse-given virtue spent, Talmage dropped to a knee before his King, offering his reversed sword hilt-first in surrender as the loyal subject he ever was. Whatever happened now, at least James and the Kingdom were safe from further witchery.

      A babble of voices rose behind him as the assembled courtiers came to their senses and their own volition. The babble turned into cries of Guards! Guards! as they saw at last the bloody tableau before them, and the wretched little man on the throne cowering at the sight of the blade and screaming, Take it away! Take it away!

      Yeoman of the Guard burst into the hall to arrest Talmage.

      Whatever happens, Talmage thought as they surrounded him, at least England is safe.

      The guards hauled him to his feet.

      To Talmage’s horror, one by one the dead Rosicrucians rose, too. They rose from their pooling blood like string-pulled wooden puppets and took up their chanting anew, again ensnaring King and courtiers alike

      The last sound Talmage heard as the guards dragged him away was that of the King shouting at His mindless Court, Why don’t they dance? Why don’t they dance? The last sight he beheld was that of the slain Sir Francis rising to his feet and beginning to caper like a motley fool to please his captive King.

      The guards took him not to the Tower as he supposed they would, but dragged him down passage to passage in the meandering hulk of Whitehall Castle, through Chapel and Presence Hall and thence to the King’s Guard Chamber and the Great Chamber below. Down and down into finally the cellar underneath, down into the brick-arched undercroft that once served as King Henry’s Great Wine Cellar.

      A dozen sconces burned brightly. Smoked meat and wheels of Danish cheese lay stacked on shelves between the wine casks. A dozen bottles of the finest Spanish sherry from Montilla kept company beside a hundred Welsh hogsheads of commoner vintage.

      The guards chained Talmage to a heavy iron ring newly fastened to the far wall of a small alcove. He wondered if this be a sick jest on the part of the King’s Rosicrucian puppet-masters, to chain Talmage just out of reach of the finest victuals while they fed him his daily slops.

      The Rosicrucians were not done with him yet.

      Within moments, dozens of hodmen began delivering their loads of brick. A team of bricklayers, stout as old Ben Jonson, mixed up a trough of mortar and began to wall the alcove shut, brick by brick.

      They meant to execute him by immurement! By the barbarian practice used

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