Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (84 page)

The world tilted upside down for a moment and when it turned the right way again, nothing was the same. For Jamie’s Uncle Philip had arrived uninvited and brought with him a guest, a boy of about nineteen years of age. A boy with eyes of a dense sapphire blue and hair the color of winter chestnuts. A boy with a pure profile and every bone fitted perfectly to the next. A boy who moved across the room now with a cat-like grace, slender and straight, a natural athlete. A boy who must be Jamie’s son. For no relative whose blood spanned farther apart than father and son could so resemble another man, could so embody all those features she had only ever thought to see in one man. He was, quite simply, beautiful, and possibly one of the worst shocks she had ever had in her life.

“Pamela,” Philip smiled, yellowing teeth sharp and nasty. “I’d like you to meet Julian. Julian, this is Pamela.”

The boy took her hand, though she had no memory of putting hers out to him. Her breath was caught somewhere between her throat and lungs and refused to move. His hand was warm and hers icy in comparison.

One thought with two minds at such times—the mind that wanted to curse and ask why and how and who, and the other mind which was cool and calm, carefully assessing what this might mean, what traps and pitfalls now yawned open at one’s feet. One never spoke in public with the first mind, only with the latter.

“How lovely to meet you, Julian. Are you a friend of Philip’s?” This was said lightly but with a slightly dubious undertone as to the likelihood of Philip having friends at all.

The boy still held her hand, sapphire eyes bold and face inquisitive. He smiled and it was utterly disarming, just as it was when his father smiled. And his father Jamie must be. She saw that clearly, for the boy had been brought here as a pawn in the Reverend’s game, she was certain. Only it was also clear he did not know himself to be a pawn. She wondered if he even knew there was a game, and thought it likely best if he did not. For innocent he would be more amenable to manipulation by his masters, and she had no doubt they had been grooming him for some time in anticipation of this moment.

The second mind spoke to the boy while the first stood back, numb and reeling. He was clearly well educated, cultured, and had been raised with impeccable manners. He had already spent a term at Oxford. Jamie’s alma mater. She suspected that was not coincidence. She suspected nothing was.

Philip watched the interplay between them with a look of smugness oiling the froggy sheen of his skin. Julian seemed unaware of the tension that existed between her and Philip but it was likely he was too polite to point it out had he noticed. The game had changed and she was not, despite gypsies and Jesuits, prepared for such a move as this one.

Julian excused himself shortly after, bowing over her hand in parting and on rising up, looked her full in the eyes and spoke in poetry as his father so often did.

“Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.”

And so he had some small portion of his father’s charm, though not yet his grace. Perhaps never his grace, for it was not a thing acquired so much as innate to Jamie’s nature.

“Well, he’s not backwards about bein’ forwards, I’ll say that for the wee beggar.” Casey was looking darkly in the boy’s direction as he joined a group of people near the window, inserting himself with ease into their midst.

She excused herself and put her half-full wineglass on a table. Smiling all the way to the stairs, she gathered her skirt in one hand and walked up until she was well hidden in the shadows from the upper floor. Then she fled along the hall, certain she was going to be sick. She reached the bathroom and locked herself in, the ball of nausea cold as ice lodged in her chest.

She sat down on the side of the tub, pressing her hand to her chest where her heart was still pounding hard enough that she could hear every beat in her ears. She swallowed, trying to dislodge the icy pain, wishing fervently that she hadn’t had the glass of wine earlier. Jamie’s son, here in Jamie’s home. Oh, that Jamie should be here to see this boy. What would it mean to him? Did he have any idea of this? It was hard for her to imagine that Jamie wouldn’t know he had a son, to think that a woman he had once loved could keep such a secret from him seemed beyond cruel. Though perhaps he had not loved her, and that might explain a great deal in itself.

There was a knock on the door and then Casey’s voice, quiet, but filled with worry. “Jewel, are ye alright in there?”

She stood and walked across the room to unlock the door. Casey came in and shut it behind him, his face pale beneath the dark of his whiskers.

“It’s been the helluva shock, no?”

She smiled wearily. “You could say that.”

“Do ye think Jamie knew?” Casey sat beside her on the tub. The lip of it was flat and wide, and as porcelain went, fairly comfortable.

“No, I don’t.”

He raised an eyebrow in question. “Ye seem very certain of that.”

She shrugged, feeling unable to explain. “I think if he knew, he would have prepared me for it and he didn’t. The man isn’t God. He can’t anticipate the consequences of every action he’s committed in his lifetime.”

“Well,” Casey said wryly, “he does a damn good imitation of bein’ all knowin’ an’ all seein’ much of the time. Do ye know anything about the mother?”

“No—well nothing other than she must have dark hair and blue eyes.”

“Aye, that would seem to be about all the boy took from her.”

She looked up at him in question. “So, it’s not just my imagination? I started to doubt that he could possibly look that much like Jamie by the time I got to the top of the stairs.”

“No, it’s bloody apparent to anyone who has ever set eyes on the man. That boy has to be his son. Christ, he even moves like him.”

“I noticed that, too.”

“Ye’ll have to come back downstairs in a bit, darlin’.” He squeezed her hand, shoring her up against the evening’s disaster.

“I know. I just need a minute to pull myself together.” She squeezed his hand back, leaned up to kiss him and then put her forehead against his. “I’m glad you’re here tonight. I don’t think I would have managed without you.”

He put up his free hand and stroked her head. “Well, I’d hate to think ye can manage without me at any time, Jewel, but I know that ye can an’ have been in this situation. Give yerself some credit, woman. This hasn’t been easy, an’ yer man knew it wouldn’t be but he felt ye were up to the challenge. An’ while I’m not overfond of agreein’ with Jamie Kirkpatrick, I do agree with him here.”

“I think,” she said softly, “I think I have to start considering the possibility that he’s not coming back, Casey. I can’t hold the companies if it can be proven that Julian is Jamie’s blood. It will only be the matter of a blood test and they will have grounds from which to strike hard. Then I have to ask myself as well what Jamie would want, if he had known about Julian? We may have a stronger hold on the house and land, but as to the companies, blood will out, and maybe it’s right that it should.”

“Take yer time over this and don’t assume right away that Jamie would view this boy as a blessing in his life.” He gave her a quick kiss and then stood. “I’ll see ye downstairs, Jewel.”

After Casey left, she straightened her hair and re-applied her lipstick. She knew she still looked pale and shocked but there was little she could do to change that just now.

She hesitated by the window. The snow had stopped falling and a thin skiff of it lay over the lawns. Unbroken by any footsteps, the grounds rolled away from her, a field of silver where the auld ones might dance under the half-moon that waxed in the sky. Below, a soft light came from the stables, creating a small circle of gold in the paddock. She put her forehead to the chill pane and closed her eyes.

Like a small chapel deep in a wood where no wayfarer ever passed, there was a place inside that she kept for Jamie’s sons and her own lost babies, each name a folded petal on a delicate rosary: Michael, Alexander, Stuart, Maude, Deirdre and Grace, the last child she and Casey had lost before the miracle of Conor. It was not a place she visited often but she always knew where it was, the shape of it, the doors and windows and the altar, simple, just a place to kneel and remember, to say words that didn’t have real form or shape but could only be said in that small, deserted chapel in the forest of the heart.

The prayer she said now was for Jamie and the sons he had lost, both those who had died and the one who had lived. And she prayed that the living son was not a thorn on that petalled rosary that she turned over in her heart.

“Merry Christmas, Jamie,” she whispered, soft as the frost latticing and branching on the window. “You have a son.”

Part Nine
Russian Fairytale
Russia – November 1974-September 1975

From the Journals of James Kirkpatrick

November 11th, 1974

Born—Nikolai Andreyevich Kirkpatrick, sound of body and certainly sound of lungs, for he has made the entire camp aware of his existence in no uncertain terms, this son with three parents. He is, of course, beautiful and blue-eyed with a quiff of red hair that is Violet’s despair, for she had hoped he would be blond like his father. He weighed in at a very respectable 8 lbs. 11oz. and has a hearty appetite.

It is as though we have been given a stay of execution, a stay that allows us to pretend that we are not in a camp from which it seems increasingly unlikely we will emerge. It is at best a game of pretend, yet it is our life at present. There is no knowing if we will be allowed to keep Kolya for more than eighteen months, which has traditionally been when Soviet children are removed from their mothers in situations like ours, and put into the nightmare of state institutions. One does not require a broad imagination to know what a child’s fate would be in such a place at such a tender age.

Russians do not live in expectation of happiness. History has taught them far harder lessons. Russians endure, Russians survive, and at the end of the day, that is no small accomplishment. In this country it is often an act of heroism.

But I think in our own way, we have found happiness. Perhaps it is only what is left of my Western naïveté, the part of my philosophy that says man and woman are due some measure of joy in this life, but yet… yes, we are happy in our own way. Stripped down to our essentials and in limbo so that joy is snatched at as bread by a starveling.

This camp exists outside of time, or so it seems to those of us shut up here. It is as though we are beyond the bounds of even Soviet time and space, and live in some strange, dark fairytale buried deep in a Russian bor. Rarely do any officials come here and I know even within a system as secretive as the Soviet one, this camp is beyond the pale, to use a term from my own land.

Chapter Sixty-two
February 1975
Russian Fairytale

Jamie left the bath hut feeling remarkably light
in spirit. He had managed a shower in privacy, with hot water and real soap. He was looking forward to cuddling Kolya, having a hot cup of tea, his bed and his wife, in pretty much that order. Valentin, the camp commander, had allowed them permanent occupancy of their small bridal hut and the privacy was a cherished thing, even if it had caused pangs of envy amongst those who did not have such luxuries. He did not feel enough guilt about it to change the situation. Envy in the camp was a given, small shards of it existed everywhere for everything. Envy over bread rations, envy for the extra potato in the bowl of the man next to you, envy for release, even when it was only the release of death.

Shura approached him as he crossed the yard, fine snow falling on his shoulders and frosting the dark waves of his hair. Jamie shivered, still damp from his ablutions, the stubble of his hair immediately stiffened in the cold.

“What’s wrong?” Jamie asked sharply, fear already hurrying him forward. Had something happened to Kolya? Had he felt hot when Jamie held him those precious ten minutes before dinner?

Shura held up one thick hand. “It is not the baby or Violet, do not fear.”

Jamie’s brows rose in query, for the dwarf looked unnaturally flummoxed.

“It’s Gregor,” Shura said with a heavy breath. “He’s drunk and raving and he won’t listen to anyone, except, perhaps, you. He has cut his hand badly, and I need to get him calmed enough to clean and stitch it. He’s in the banya.” Shura gave an apologetic shrug, for few would volunteer to go inside a confined space with an angry Gregor.

“Drunk?” Jamie considered that the idea of drunkenness and Gregor did not seem to belong in the same sentence. He did not think there could be enough vodka in the entire camp to make Gregor drunk. His capacity was legendary.

When Jamie entered the banya, Gregor was quiet, which alarmed him more than if the man had been raving as Shura had said. But the detritus of his recent rage lay littered about the place. The structure itself remained sound, for it had been built to withstand Russian weather and was as solid as a Shoreland tank. The hut was hot and dry as hell for there was a fire going strong under the stones and a full bucket of water on the rough floor beside them. Gregor was partially clothed and seated on the long bench, slumped against the wall, huge hands lying open on his lap as though beseeching an invisible guest. Blood dripped steadily from the injured one.