Dark Dance (41 page)

Yes.

Rachaela knew and perhaps all of them knew, this search being only some ritual they performed among the black windows Ruth had smeared with crosses, and under the carvings, the paintings and painted mirrors which had lipstick crosses like blood.

And now they were here, and Cheta took out the key, and put it away again, for the lock of the door had been broken.

Adamus flung the door wide.

And there again, in the prancing lamplight and candle flash was the mildewy paper of bats, and the countless red gowns upon their stands.

The Scarabae stood in the doorway, muted, and put their old dry hands up to their lips and throats and on each other’s shoulders.

It was as if they could not enter.

But Adamus went in.

As if he knew it all, had been told of the scene, as perhaps he had, the bird hiding in the skirt of the gown.

He strode forward, and as he passed the dresses he thrust at them and sent them spinning. He was the centre of a red whirlwind, and as they thudded down their gauzes shattered and crimson smoulders and sprays of beads burst up from them. He the wind and they the red sea, parting.

The Scarabae women gave tiny cries, as some of them had done on finding Anna and Alice, Peter and Dorian. It was another sort of death.

But Adamus came to the dress in the corner, a dress with a full skirt, a train.

He did not push the dress over.

He reached out and delicately pleated up the material, ounces of rose satin that crushed together in his hand.

And there at the heart of the dress, like a child in a flower in a fairy tale, was Ruth.

She was crouched very small in her garment of blood, darker and richer than her hiding place. Her black hair spilled round her. There was no blood on her that was visible and her hands were empty.

She turned her head like a snake, looked up and saw Adamus standing above her. And then she smiled, the sweetest smile Rachaela had ever seen upon her face. And the face, always that of a hobgoblin, broke into beauty like a star.

‘I hoped it would be you,’ Ruth said. ‘I thought it would be. Adam,’ she said, ‘they tried to keep us apart.’ Like a heroine in some third-rate book.

Very gently, almost daintily, he reached further into the dress, and with both hands he lifted her out.

And Ruth, seeing only him, put up the star of her face to be kissed.

Adamus transferred her to his left hand. He held her by a grip upon the waist of her dress, up in the air.

And then he struck her with his right hand, across the face and neck, a blow that should have smashed her in pieces.

His own blow tore her out of his grip and the bodice of the red dress ripped and came away and Ruth flew backwards to fall upon the floor.

She lay there, partly stunned, and the torn away bodice had left bare her breasts, which were white and perfect with buds for nipples, and now a tiny thread of scarlet spilled there, not from the dress but from the corner of her mouth. And for a moment Ruth looked, as she lay there, the flawless image of the media vampire, before her pale face turned puce on one side and began to swell.

‘Get up,’ Adamus said.

‘No,’ Ruth said through her thickening lips. ‘You’ll only do it again.’

‘Get up,’ he said, ‘and face them.’

So then Ruth got up, and holding one arm across her breasts, she stared at the Scarabae.

She stared and they stared back at her.

They did not ask her if she had done it, or why. She did not deny anything or boast of anything. All their faces were the faces of icons. Something was conveyed between them perhaps, without look or word.

The silence was very long.

When Rachaela looked at Adamus, his face too had become like theirs. He left Ruth where she stood and came towards the doorway. And all of them parted to let him by.

Only Rachaela caught at his arm.

‘No,
Adamus. You can’t go—what will they do?’

‘Take your hand off me,’ he said. ‘Don’t force me to make you do it.’

Her hand fell and he went by her and away into the dark of the corridor.

She said to the Scarabae loudly, ‘What will you do?’ And she was frightened, but it seemed for herself not Ruth.
‘Stephan
—what will you do?’

Stephan said, ‘We must confine her. That was what was always done.’

Miranda said, Tn the attic.’

‘Locked in the attic out of harm’s way,’ said Miriam.

Sasha said, ‘For many years.’

‘You’re crazy,’ Rachaela said, only a repetition. ‘She’s just a child. A sick child. She needs help.’

‘Locked away,’ said Stephan. ‘Carlo,’ he said.

And Carlo went forward to Ruth, and as he did so he took off his jacket, and when he came to her he offered it.

But Ruth spumed the jacket, only keeping her arm firmly across her naked breasts.

Carlo put one hand on Ruth’s shoulder, arresting her.

She put up her head arrogantly, and let herself be propelled towards the doorway. And as she passed through the Scarabae, or perhaps as she saw Rachaela, Ruth smiled again. But now it was the smile of a clown, lopsided from the damage of the blow. With difficulty she enunciated: ‘You deserved it.’ And was taken away to the attic above in the dark.

❖

‘Stephan,’ she said, ‘you don’t understand.’

Stephan sat staring at the hearth, where the fire had been in winter.

Rachaela sat down facing him. ‘Stephan, what Ruth did was terrible. Can’t you see that she’s psychotic? To lock her up in your attic will solve nothing.’ Stephan watched the phantom of the fire. ‘She needs attention. She needs a hospital.’

‘Anna,’ Stephan said.

‘Anna can’t be helped. Let me help Ruth.’

‘We have our own ways.’

‘Ruth isn’t yours. She’s mine.’

‘Ruth is ours.’

The bodies lay in their bedrooms, Peter and Dorian together on one bed. Soon, when the tide turned, they would be taken to the beach. Burned. So much Stephan had told her.

‘You must listen to me, Stephan.’

‘Oh, Anna,’ he said.

Rachaela got up and went to her room.

She sat listening to the sea, trying to hear the moment when it changed.

It had happened.

Ruth would hate Adamus now. And he was finished with Ruth. So much passion between them. More than there had been between Adamus and herself.

But she must get Ruth away. Now it was possible. Only the locked attic door to prevent it.

Why? Why must she rescue Ruth?

Ruth was the demon Rachaela had always envisaged.

Better to wash her hands of Ruth and all that blood.

But something would not let her.

After all there was some bond between them. Like the umbilical cord, unsevered. No love, never that. But... something.

She could not leave Ruth to the Scarabae.

The tide, surely the tide had turned now.

She listened, no longer for the tide, but for the minute noises of the Scarabae as they went down to the cremation of their dead. Like beetles in the woodwork, creeping. She heard them go, or did she imagine it.

Finally she went out, and from the landing she saw them, filing into the lower rooms, in their summer clothes, as if to a midnight garden-party.

What a bonfire there would be on the beach.

Had Adamus gone with them?

Rachaela turned and went into the left-hand corridor.

When she reached the foot of the stairs she expected one of them after all left on guard, but no one was there.

She climbed to the attic door. It was firmly closed. The lock must be more hardy than that to the room of gowns or they would not have trusted it.

She tried the door. It shook and did not give.

Rachaela stood there at a loss.

What should she say, to an eleven-year-old murderess who had killed four times over?

‘Ruth—Ruth? It’s me. Ruth, answer me.’

A bell of silence formed, in which Rachaela seemed to hear dim bat-like squeaks, the rush of sparks in a great fire miles away.

‘Ruth.’

A voice answered from beyond the door.

‘Hallo, Mummy.’

It was calm and still, the voice, muffled by the swollen lips, and very young. It was a child’s voice.

‘Ruth. Are you afraid?’

‘No,’ said the voice. And then, solemnly, ‘Yes.’

‘Did they leave you a light?’

‘Oh yes. They left me candles.’

‘Be very careful with them,’ said Rachaela.

‘Yes, Mummy.’

‘I’ll make them let you out. Then we’ll go back to London. I don’t know how long it will take.’

‘They won’t let me out,’ said Ruth. ‘They didn’t let out Uncle Camillo for twenty years. That was in another house. Sasha told me.’

‘Sasha meant to scare you. Did they hurt you?’

‘No, just my face. I cut my mouth on a tooth.’

‘Are your teeth all right?’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth. ‘But my eye’s swollen up.’

‘He might have killed you,’ said Rachaela.

‘He was angry.’ There was a second silence. Ruth said, ‘I didn’t mean to do it. It was like the book. They were bad and I wanted to punish them.’

‘Don’t talk about it now,’ said Rachaela. ‘We’ll find you a doctor. You can talk to him.’

‘Yes, Mummy,’ said Ruth. After a moment she said, ‘They brought my clothes, and my drawing book and paints. There’s a stuffed bird. All this wine Uncle Camillo made. I drank some. It made me feel funny.’

‘Don’t drink it,’ said Rachaela.

‘I can see Adam’s tower from the window. The lamp’s burning. I can see the yellow lion.’

‘Does the window open?’ Rachaela asked quickly.

‘No. They locked the window too. They brought me dinner on a tray. It was a piece of old fish. But the jelly was nice.’

Rachaela thought, incongruously,
I haven’t eaten all day
.

‘Ruth, try to trust me. I promise I’ll get you out.’

‘All right,’ said Ruth.

The third silence formed.

Rachaela thought of Ruth at the grave of the cat, weeping.

Blinding, searing tears filled Rachaela’s eyes, sliding through like razor blades.

‘Don’t be afraid, Ruth,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

And now I am the liar after all.

‘Will he forgive me?’ said Ruth.

‘No, Ruth, he won’t.’

‘No,’ said Ruth. She said, ‘I did it to make them sorry. But I didn’t really mean it.’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’

When she went out, the sky was bright with fire.

When she looked over at the steps, it seemed to be touching heaven.

There was nothing left to see of them, Anna and Alice, Peter and Dorian. They had gone up in smoke.

Without a prayer or a song, like old clothes or refuse, so they cremated their dead at the rim of the water.

Far out, the sea made white flounces.

The Scarabae, those who were left, stood in their erratic circle, like old kiddies at a Guy Fawkes party.

She looked from her height and saw them all, Teresa and Anita, Unice and Miriam, Sasha, Miranda and Livia, George, Stephan, Jack and Eric. And to the side the humble retainers, the not-quite Scarabae, Maria, Cheta, Michael and Carlo.

Adamus was not with them. And Camillo was not.

The fire burned on and on like all the fires of the world.

Both doors to the tower were locked.

The woman stood before each of them in her skirt and blouse and deluge of black primeval hair. Then she went back to her green-and-blue room.

Rachaela stood looking at herself in the winged mirror, breast-high amid the hedge of lilies, the rayed sun and swallows.

Who am I?

She did not know. She saw herself as a stranger, beautiful and far away. In looking at the faces of others, she had forgotten her own.

It would be easy to go. To leave them all to each other.

But they would travel with her.

She could not leave Ruth, poor insane little animal, snared in their rites and ceremonies where even murder was accorded a kind of ritual place.

Rachaela went down to the kitchen.

Cheta and Maria were scouring pots; Michael sat at the table, cleaning silver methodically.

‘Michael, I need to see Adamus. You must let me into the tower.’

‘When Mr Adamus locks the doors he wishes to see no one.’

‘I realize that. But this is important. And you have a key.’

‘I take his meals, Miss Rachaela.’

‘If you won’t let me in, I’ll come with you.’

He could not refuse her. She was Miss Rachaela. And Anna was not there to countermand the order.

She waited until lunch-time, in the kitchen.

When the tray was ready with cold, supermarket chicken and salad, biscuits and cheese, the glass of wine, she followed Michael, as she had followed him before.

They went via the Salome annexe, down the stair and along the passage, to the door.

‘If you will wait, Miss Rachaela, I shall tell him—’

‘No. I’m coming in with you.’

Michael did not argue.

She went after him, into the tower and up the steps.

The room, burning from its window, tawny, gold, amber, was empty.

Michael put down the tray on a table.