Dark Heart Rising (17 page)

‘I know.’ Raphael waved a hand at the old man. ‘Please, carry on with your meal … I can return tomorrow, I have simply come to … be with him.’

The old man grunted, the bunch of keys tied to his wrist jangled loudly. ‘Visitors usually come in the day, sir.
She
comes in the day … Better in the day.’

‘My great-mother?’ Raphael nodded, anxious to put the old man at ease. ‘Yes, I know. I simply wanted to …’ He trailed off, unable to find the words to explain.

The old man looked confused, though he seemed to understand the boy’s agitation, his need.

‘One minute, I will fetch a torch.’ Turning his back on Raphael, he shuffled over to the building behind him. Standing at the locked gates, Raphael shifted from foot to foot, half regretting coming out to the Celestial memorial grounds so late at night, putting the old man to such trouble. The old guy had been here as long as he could remember. Day in, day out, guarding over what few resting places there were here. Death was not part of life on Nissilum. Only a few exceptions had their tombs here. Old Quin had little to do each day and had slowly turned more eccentric and unsocialised in his old age. The son of a peasant angel, he had never married or had any children, his only companions were the ghosts of the unfortunate few left rotting in this place.

Raphael was about to call out, tell old Quin he had changed his mind, that he shouldn’t bother himself on such a cold night, but then the old man reappeared, grinning, half his teeth missing, a few tufts of blond hair fuzzy on his head.

‘Good one here … Bright enough.’ Quin waved the torch about, smiling. He shook the keys off his wrist, catching them in his palm, then deftly found the one to unlock the main gate.

‘Thank you,’ Raphael said, ‘I won’t be long.’

The old man shrugged good-naturedly, turning the key and unlocking the heavy gate. It creaked back, and Raphael was free to walk inside the grounds.

The old man beckoned to Raphael to follow him, through a narrow alleyway, either side of which stood the old tomb shelters. The boy suppressed a shudder as they walked, turning at the end, where an ornate stone arch heralded the resting place of the Celestial family.

Quin unlocked the heavy stone door in the middle of the arch, coughing and muttering under his breath as he did so. Raphael was increasingly regretting coming here. He had never been before;, had refused to admit that his father no longer existed. Standing out in the damp cold, about to enter a less inviting place, he rubbed his hands together.

As Quin held the door to the tombs open, he turned, grinning, as though he was almost excited at the prospect of a visitor at last. He handed Raphael the torch, nodding in a half-witted kind of way.

‘Perhaps you could accompany me …’ Raphael gestured inside at the pitch black. He hoped the old man would understand, that he wouldn’t have to explain.

To his relief, Quin nodded kindly. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said gruffly, gently pushing Raphael into the building.

‘There.’ The old man pointed directly in front of them.

Gabriel’s tomb was an open stone casket of sorts. As the two of them approached it, Raphael had the urge to bolt, to run for his life. But he stood his ground.

‘Do you come in here much … ?’ he asked Quin. The hand that was holding the torch trembled a little, casting dancing shadows on the walls.

Quin shook his head furiously. ‘Forbidden,’ he said. ‘Only your eyes, your mother’s, your great-mother’s eyes, shall see.’

‘Oh.’ Raphael was now even less inclined to see his father – or the bones that were all that was left of him.

Quin watched him, waiting.

Raphael stepped forward and, even in the cold, he felt a light sweat on his forehead. Swallowing, he forced himself to look down at Gabriel.

Who wasn’t there.

Raphael frowned, both relieved and disappointed at the same time. He flashed a look back at the keeper.

‘There’s nothing there,’ he said quietly. ‘My father is gone.’

Quin shook his head slowly. ‘Mistake,’ he said, ‘you have made a mistake.’

‘Look.’ Raphael drew Quin closer to the casket. ‘Nothing there.’

Quin peered inside, sticking his lip out, perturbed, then scratching his head.

‘You’ve never seen my father in here?’ Raphael stared hard at him. ‘Perhaps he never was?’

Quin looked dumbfounded. ‘Yes, yes. He was here.’ He looked helplessly at the boy. ‘Your great-mother … she saw to it all.’

An echoing silence passed between them. Raphael struggled with an inexplicable truth.

His great-mother had lied.

An owl hooted. Night-time rodents scuttled around at his feet, but Raphael barely noticed. He felt a mixture of anger, fear and extreme curiosity. As he drew nearer to the back of the palace, he glanced up at the vast bay window where the lights in Celeste’s sitting room burned cosily. Raphael let himself through the gate to the garden that lay in front of the servants’ entrance. It was quicker to come this way, where he could slip, no questions asked, down the long passage that led to the great hall.

‘Sir.’ One of the pretty maids bobbed, as he passed her. He smiled briefly, hardly seeing her, and continued on his way. He had a reputation for erratic behaviour, he was aware of that. He was certain that the girl would scurry into the kitchen and report one more incidence of it. Raphael didn’t care. He had long since stopped caring what others thought of him. All except for his great-mother, that is. It had always mattered to him what she thought, with her integrity and her kindness. Her lack of guile.

But he must have been wrong about that. Walking through the hall he stopped at the foot of the great staircase. Celeste too had it in her to deceive. Like his father.

Was his whole family steeped in hypocrisy? The door to her sitting room was ajar. As he pushed it further open he saw her seated on her favourite chair, head bent over her needlework. A cello concerto played at just the right volume on the ancient record player – she refused to upgrade to anything else.

She heard him, lifted her head, and a beatific smile lit up her face.

‘Raffy.’ She put down on her sewing. ‘What is the matter, boy?’

‘I went to see my father,’ he said without preamble. ‘I went to the Celestial tombs.’

Her face darkened, but she kept the smile on her face. ‘I see.’ She clasped her hands together – nervously, he saw.

‘I went to talk to him … to talk out everything on my mind.’ Raphael came to sit next to her. ‘And I suppose to get some kind of closure. Acceptance of his death—’

‘Raffy,’ she tried to interrupt, but he silenced her with a wave of his hand.

‘Imagine my surprise when his tomb was empty! Old Quin was taken aback too … All very odd.’ He stopped talking and his head dropped. He waited for her to speak.

She shifted in her seat. ‘Raffy—’

‘Where is he’ – Raphael raised his head – ‘if he’s not in his tomb?’

‘Darling … you know that death here is not as it is in the mortal world.’ Celeste rose, picking up her needlework and placing it in a white wicker basket at the side of the sofa. She seemed unable to look at him.

‘Yes.’ He stared at her back. ‘But we gather the bones when our people are gone … But my father’s are gone. I want to know where.’

Celeste sighed and her usual immaculate posture drooped. She turned and finally met Raphael’s eyes, moving cautiously towards him. Finally she sat herself next to him.

‘Raphael, I don’t know where your father is …’ She breathed out at last, as though letting go of some burden, all the time watching her great-son.

‘What?’ Raphael felt his heart skip a beat, or perhaps stop altogether, just for a second. ‘But, you said … I saw …’ He stopped; he remembered the last time he had seen Gabriel, half mad, gibbering, while Dorcas wrung her hands next to him. He had been so shrunken and pale, where he had been larger than life, full of vitality. He had just kept repeating the same word: ‘sorry’.

‘Your father was very weak,’ said Celeste. ‘And your mother – well, she couldn’t cope. She still can’t … But who knows—’

Raphael shook his head impatiently. ‘I don’t want to talk about my mother.’

‘I was his sole carer. I felt as though I was with him night and day, trying to comfort him, tell him that whatever he had done, it was not worth wasting away over. Your father’s valet, Milo, was devoted to him too as you know. Between us we tried to keep him from … disappearing. Then one night, Gabriel was in a particularly bad way. His skin was grey, and he shook all over. We knew that there was nothing
physically
wrong with him, we knew that it was his mind, destroying him. Milo went to the physician to fetch a sedative while I stayed with Gabriel, but he was gone for so long … and Cadmium – never the most patient of men – was eager for me to accompany him on a state visit on the other side of Nissilum. I felt torn, but the staff assured me they would watch over my son … And so I left.’

Celeste paused, her pain visible in her eyes, before going on.

‘I was away for a day and a half…And when we returned I rushed to his room, hopeful that he would be calm and peaceful. Milo was standing guard outside and when he saw me approach, his whole face seemed to freeze in fear – he told me that Gabriel had gone … he had literally wasted away overnight.’

‘Yes – I know that he wasted away …’ Raphael could see how difficult she was finding this explanation, and it made his heart soften towards her, just a little. But he wanted the whole truth, the whole story, however hard it was for his great-mother to tell it.

‘I didn’t believe him at first and I must say I pushed past him and ran in to see for myself.’ She paused, taking a breath. ‘And there on the bed was what I took to be him: a collection of bones underneath a blanket.’

‘So you saw his bones?’ Raphael leaned forward. ‘It was true?’

‘I couldn’t bear to look …’ A tear slipped down on to her cheek. ‘I remember sinking on to the bed and sobbing. Thinking of you, a boy without his father, whose mother had gone … I suppose all that had happened over the years since Gabriel first broke down suddenly came upon me, like a great weight crashing down.’ She blinked at Raphael through her tears. ‘The next thing I remember was waking up with Cadmium at my side on the day of Gabriel’s ushering out ceremony.’

‘But what about my great-father, my mother, my aunts? Nobody saw for themselves that Gabriel was dead?’

She shook her head. ‘Nobody could face it. And then he was taken to the tombs and nobody visited. By that time you were starting to …’

‘Yes.’ Raphael nodded. ‘My own “madness” had begun.’

‘And when I did finally first visit the tombs – I saw that his was empty, and I just left and never told a soul. I pretended to the family that all was well. Cadmium refused to talk about Gabriel … I knew he would never go there. Dear old Quin was practically jubilant at the sight of me. Clearly nobody else had been there. The only one who knew was me …’

‘And Milo?’ Raphael pushed her. ‘Milo knew. Did you not try and find him when he went to live with his cousins in the South?’

She stared at me, and I knew. She had no idea where Milo was either.

‘They both just disappeared,’ she whispered, hoarsely now that her tears were coming thick and fast. ‘Just … gone.’

‘He could still be alive,’ said Raphael, trying hard to take it all in. ‘Somewhere … Gabriel is still alive.’

W
hen I woke up the first thing I saw was the moon through the window. Translucent, shimmering, perfectly round. I looked at my clock, two a.m. I had gone to bed with that moon staring at me, and woken up to it. For months I had barely noticed it and now it seemed to be beckoning to me. All over again.

Careful not to wake my sleeping family, I drew back my quilt and softly crossed the room to the window.

It was a windy night, but milder than usual. I shrugged off the thick cardigan I had worn to bed and forgotten to take off. A tiny draught lifted the fine hair on my arms and outside the black-topped trees swayed rhythmically. The wind must be strong because it was as though the whole of the mountain was whispering.
Just leaves hitting leaves
, I told myself. But something felt different tonight … I felt a strange sensation. No, not strange … familiar. I had drifted in and out of sleep, things coming into my head … Not exactly a dream, but images. I wanted so badly to see Luca. But all I saw was fleeting. Black eyes. Not green. A thick green forest and the sound of breathing.

And a low wail. Like a wolf’s.

I lifted the window latch, pushing it open, feeling the slight nip of the difference in temperature. It felt cool, soothing, gentle fingertips stroking my arm. I shut my eyes, wanting to feel sleepy again.

‘Jane.’

My eyes snapped open, met a flash of a face. But was it him? Was I just making him up … and those unmistakeable mossy green eyes? I opened my mouth, but as I did so, he disappeared. Breathlessly, I leaned right out of the window, searching on the ground below. I didn’t imagine it, I knew. Someone had been there.

‘Luca,’ I whispered out into the night, ‘please. Don’t go.’

But I was met only with silence. The yard was deserted, the trees still gently swaying.