Authors: Gene Wolfe
Castleview (4 page)
“Yeah, he’s dead. How’d you know?”
“We guessed, or Dad did. I thought he was probably right.”
“He fell. That’s what they say.”
There were brown vinyl chairs beside the little table that held Ann’s abandoned book; Mercedes sat down in one and motioned toward the other.
“Hey, would you like to go out and get a Coke or something? You could leave a note. I’ve got Mom’s Olds.”
“How many legs on a horse?”
Seth stared at her for a moment. “Four?”
Suddenly decisive, Mercedes stood. “I’d love to. We just about—I’m a little shook, to tell the truth. I need to get out and do something.”
“Too good. Me, too.” Seth sighed. “Rain’s quitting, so maybe we can chase the castle, after. You ever done that?”
THE VIEW AT NIGHT
ROBERTS UNLOCKED the door, stepped inside, and switched on the lights. The County Museum had been a private house once, and they stood in what had been its foyer; there was a desk for an attendant, a few cabinets against the walls.
Roberts said, “What was it you wanted to see, Mr. Shields? I can take you right to it.”
“The castle,” Shields told him.
“We’ve got a whole exhibit on that. Over this way. You believe in it?”
Shields nodded. “I saw it.”
“Really? I guess that would make a man interested. Right through here, this was the music room when old Doc Dunstan built the place. About the castle’s in the next room, the studio.”
Shields nodded. The music room held coins, mostly, and a few sad-looking violins. He stopped for a moment to peer at the faded pages of a diary.
“My great-grandpa’s,” Roberts told him proudly. “He was a Wells Fargo agent for a while. Saw some interesting things, and had some interesting things to say about ’em.”
Shields nodded. “I’ll bet.”
“They were after me to donate it, but if I did, what would happen to it if they close this place? So it’s just loaned.”
Shields said, “You should keep it in the family. Got any children, Bob?”
“No more Robertses—I’m the last. Two daughters, though, and two grandchildren.”
Shields straightened up. “They’ll value this, when they’re older.”
“I hope so. He had a theory of his own about the castle—thought it was rocks out in Arizona. A mesa, he called it.”
“He’d seen it, too, then.”
“Oh, sure. He’d grown up right around here. Everyone that does sees it. It doesn’t really stand to reason that the kids should see it more than the grownups, but that seems to be the way of it. You’d think that kids wouldn’t see it so much ’cause they’re shorter, nearer to the ground.”
Shields said, “Grownups don’t climb trees.”
“That’s a fact. Could I ask where you were when you saw it, Mr. Shields?”
“In the attic of a two-story house with high ceilings. The Howard house—we’re thinking of buying it.”
Roberts nodded. “I know about that.”
“I guess it’s true, what they say.” Shields bent over the diary again, trying to decipher its florid, faded handwriting. “News travels fast in a small town.”
“Sure does,” Roberts confirmed. “Specially if you’re Mrs. Howard’s father.”
Shields turned to look at him. “That’s right, she said her maiden name was Roberts. I never put two and two together.”
“That’s my daughter Sally.”
Shields hesitated. “Do you know that your son-in-law got hurt this afternoon, Bob?”
“Tommy? Lord, no. Was it serious?”
Shields nodded. “I think so.”
“Sally should have called me. Maybe she called Sarah—no, Sarah would have called and told me.”
“Maybe you ought to call her.”
Roberts nodded. “If you’ll excuse me just a minute, Mr. Shields.”
“Of course.”
Roberts hurried back to the hall. Shields could hear the dial of the old-fashioned telephone spin, then Roberts’s muted voice. Somewhat embarrassed, he bent over the diary once more.
The page to which it lay open began with the continuation of a sentence: “—a shock? Why, I would not have gone to the door to see a ghost after that, nor suffered anyone to speak to me of it. To find someone from home out here, homesteading on the Santa Cruz, beat seeing the elephant.”
Roberts said, “Sarah’s with her. Sarah says she’s taken something and gone to bed. She didn’t want to wake her up.”
Shields nodded.
“Tommy’s dead—I guess you knew. You wanted to break it to me easy. I appreciate that.”
“I thought he probably was,” Shields admitted. “I didn’t know it.”
“Sally called Sarah, didn’t say what was wrong, just asked her to come over. Naturally, Sarah came. After she found out, she tried to phone me. Teddie told her you and me were already gone.”
“If you’d like to go there, Bob … .”
Roberts shook his head. “Not right now. Sally’s asleep, and there’s nothing I can do. Seth’s off someplace—Seth’s my grandson. He’ll be all right, he’s Tommy’s boy.”
“I’m sure he will,” Shields said.
“Tommy was a tough one,” Roberts told him. “Tommy was a fighter.”
Shields nodded again, not knowing what else to do in the face of the older man’s controlled grief.
“You were wanting to see the stuff about the castle. It’s in that room there. That’s the studio. Switch is on the wall, to your left as you go in.”
“Thanks,” Shields said. He went into the studio and turned on the lights. Behind him in the music room, he heard Roberts blow his nose. Bob wasn’t tough, Shields reflected. Bob wasn’t a fighter. Or perhaps, he was.
The rider reined up, his horse stopping so abruptly that it appeared to crouch. He pointed his rifle at Ann like a pistol, keeping the reins in his left hand. “Get out of that car.”
Ann nodded, opened the door, and stepped out into the rain. It was no longer falling quite so fiercely as it had been, Ann decided. She thought of her body sprawled on the wet grass, the last gentle rain tapping at her upturned face. The gun was the kind you saw in cowboy movies; it seemed strange that such a gun could fire anything but blanks. Its muzzle followed her like a menacing eye.
“Come over to the gate.”
Ann did as she was told.
He tossed her a bunch of keys. “Unlock it.”
The big padlock was drowned in darkness. Ann clamped the flashlight beneath her chin, found a key that looked as though it might fit.
Freed from the hasp, the gate swung toward her. The horse tossed its head, watching her sidelong through the rain; its rider’s eyes were lost beneath the brim of his rain-soaked hat.
“You get back in that car. If you think you’re real smart, you’ll cut the lights and throw her in reverse. And I’ll have six or seven bullets in her before she’s thirty feet back down the road.”
Ann shook her head. “I’m not going to do that.”
“Then you ease her by the gate. Go real slow. When you’re through, get out and lock the gate.”
She nodded, saw him try to peer through the windshield when the domelight came on. It seemed odd and almost unnatural to be inside the car once more, away from the rain. She shifted into drive and let the Buick creep forward.
When she opened the door, the rider said, “Kill the engine.
Give me my keys back, and the keys to the car.” He dug a heel into his horse’s flank; the horse turned obediently, presenting its left side to Ann. He dropped his reins on the horse’s neck, took both sets of keys with his left hand, and stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans. “Open the doors of that car,” he told her. “All the doors.”
Give me my keys back, and the keys to the car.” He dug a heel into his horse’s flank; the horse turned obediently, presenting its left side to Ann. He dropped his reins on the horse’s neck, took both sets of keys with his left hand, and stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans. “Open the doors of that car,” he told her. “All the doors.”
“All of them?”
For an instant she thought he was going to shoot, leaning from the saddle, his left hand grasping the wooden part of the gun in front of the trigger. She turned quickly, opened the rear door on the driver’s side, trotted around the car to open the other doors.
“Open the trunk,” he said.
“I can’t,” Ann told him. “You’ve got my keys.”
He dismounted. “Shut that gate and lock it.”
She did so. The lock was large and shiny, well-oiled. He wasn’t really much taller than she was, Ann decided.
“Get into the car on the other side. I’m goin’ to drive.” He put his rifle flat on the rear seat, slammed the doors, raced the engine as he started it.
Ann closed the other rear door and got in beside him. “I could have grabbed your gun,” she said. “I could’ve turned it around and shot you.”
“I know,” he said. “But you’re not goin’ to do that.” He tapped the horn to get his mount off the road, and wrestled the shift lever in a way that showed he was accustomed to a stick.
Ann clutched the armrest as the Buick rocked around a sharp curve. “What about your poor horse?”
The rider chuckled. “Buck’ll be along. Wants to get back to the barn, get his saddle took off. You very wet, ma’am?”
“Not as wet as you are,” Ann said.
“I guess that’s right.” He was driving the gravel road much faster than she would have, but he obviously knew every twist and turn of it. “If they hadn’t of busted my jeep, I wouldn’t have had to take him out in this.”
Ann said, “I’m sort of sorry I went out in it myself.”
“That’s somethin’ I was wonderin’ about, ma’am. You come to see one of the kids?”
Ann shook her head. “I just wanted to talk with whoever is in charge.”
“In charge of the kids, or in charge of the place?”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Ann said. “In charge of the horses, I suppose.”
“Then you got him. You want to go through our barn? Maybe you’d like a chance to dry off first. We got a big fire goin’.”
“That sounds good,” she said. Actually, it sounded heavenly; she imagined a red-hot pot-bellied stove in a bunkhouse, cowboys spinning tall yarns (or was that sailors?), while a battered old stoneware coffeepot bubbled. Despite the heater, her teeth were chattering.
Triumphantly, the Buick roared to the top of a small, steep hill; at the bottom, under a brilliant light on a tall pole, in a valley that seemed separate from the rest of the world, stood a big white barn and a red-roofed rambling fieldstone building.
“This is a girl’s camp, isn’t it? I’d have thought you’d be closed by now.”
He nodded without speaking as the Buick rattled over an old wooden bridge.
When he had switched off the engine and returned her keys, he got his rifle from the back seat. “I guess you ought to open up that trunk, ma’am. Just to be sure.”
Ann did, and he glanced inside. She closed it again and made certain it had latched. “Just what are you so frightened of, anyway?”
“I don’t rightly know,” he told her. “Come on in.”
She followed him into a wide rustic room, one wall of which was mostly fireplace; it held a bigger, redder, hotter fire than Ann could ever have imagined. Four young women were sitting on a long sofa dividing the room, not so much watching a television set as talking above the noise of it.
The rider said, “We got company, Miss Lisa.”
All four looked around and stood up.
Wearily, Joy Beggs opened the front door of her own little house on Willow and hung her coat in the hall closet. Her son Todd called, “That you, Mom?”
“Uh huh.”
“You’ve got company.”
“Who’s—” Joy began, as she came into the living room. She fell silent as her visitor rose.
He was a very dark man with a thin, pointed, black beard and oddly penetrating eyes. There was something odd about his clothing, too, Joy decided—about the long brown tweed overcoat he drew tight despite the warmth of the room, and his pointed, shapeless shoes.
“Per’aps I should introduce myself,” he suggested. “I am Liam Fee, and I am an archdeacon.” He extended a business card.
Joy accepted the card. “I’m afraid Todd and I aren’t very religious, Mr. Fee, and I’m terribly tired. Maybe if you could come some other time, when it’s not quite so late … ?”
“I will,” he told her. “Oh, indeed I will. I trust that you will have good news for me then.”
Joy recalled having heard someplace that
gospel
meant “good news.” She repeated, “We’re not very religious,” and added, “we don’t have much money.”
gospel
meant “good news.” She repeated, “We’re not very religious,” and added, “we don’t have much money.”
Fee smiled, displaying small and crooked teeth that did not look white even in his swarthy face. “That is a misfortune that may be remedied, Mrs. Beggs, and one that I hope to remedy. You sell houses? Buildings?”
Todd said, “He wants to build a church, Mom.”
“I see. Yes, I do.” Joy took her favorite chair, the big wingback with the green and gold Chinese pheasants. “Won’t you sit down again, Archdeacon Fee? I’m sorry if I seemed a little brusque, but it’s been a long day.”
“Then I will not keep you. We have several postulants here in your town—you may be unaware of that, yet it is so. We wish to provide them with a suitable place of worship.”
“You need a building lot in a good location, with space for parking.” Mentally, Joy flipped pages in the big black register back at Peak Value.
Fee shook his head. “More, per’aps, than that. We cannot build at once for so few. For the present, we wish a house—a capacious residence. It should be near the site where we will build, so that the congregation may assist in the construction after services.”
“I see.”
“And it must not be too much in the town. A country place not far from the town, per’aps, or a home on its outskirts. You have told me that you are not inclined to religion, Mrs. Beggs. May I take it that you are not prejudiced against faiths other than the Christian?”
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