Greenmantle (40 page)

He broke off as she touched his hand again. “Thanks,” she said.

Valenti knew what she meant. The promise was still in her eyes and it seemed warmer now. A hot flash went through him, just at the closeness of her. He cleared his throat again as she took away her hand. Brushing a strand of hair from her eyes, she leaned forward. He took a breath and started again.

“Okay. Now, this is the safety. When it’s on, the gun doesn’t work. See, you can pull the trigger, but nothing happens.” He snapped the magazine free of the grip and showed it to her. “This is your magazine. It holds twelve rounds. Now, they called these self-loading pistols when they went on the market back around the turn of the century. You don’t get the recoil on these, not like you do on a gun that uses a cylinder. That’s because the same gizmo that ejects the spent round and brings the new one up absorbs a lot of the recoil. I’m going to let you fire both today, but I think this is the one you’ll want to hang on to. It’s lighter, easier to manage…”

* * *

Ali paused when they came out of the woods above Lewis’s cabin. She couldn’t see the old man from where they were, but a trail of smoke rose up from his chimney, so she thought somebody must be home. Where would he go anyway?

“C’mon,” Mally said.

Ali didn’t move. “I was just thinking,” she said. “Maybe I should talk to someone else—like the lady I was dancing with last night.”

“Lily?”

“Yes. Her.”

“What for?”

“Well, I know what you think and I know what Lewis has told me, but I don’t know what the villagers themselves think. They’re not all like Lewis, are they?”

Mally shook her head. “Lewis is different, like Tommy is, but in another sort of a way.”

“I thought so. I think I’d like to talk to her, just to get another perspective.”

“You could try climbing a tree,” Mally said with a smile.

Ali laughed. “But that won’t tell me anything—not about this, anyway. Do you know where Lily lives?”

“Sure.”

The wild girl angled off toward the village. After a last look at Lewis’s cabin, Ali followed. Looking ahead, the brush grew so dense it seemed impossible to pick through, but Ali found that if she stayed right on Mally’s heels, she had no trouble. The wild girl chose a winding way, bypassing the heavier thickets, until they were suddenly in a small pasture. Cows lifted their heads to regard the two intruders, ignoring them once they’d passed.

“That’s where Lily lives,” Mally said as they reached the far side of the village. She pointed to a small picturesque cottage overhung with vines. Rosebushes clambered up the sides of its stone walls.

“Aren’t you coming in?” Ali asked.

“No. I’ll wait for you here.”

Ali paused. “Don’t you like Lily?”

“Oh, I like her all right, I just don’t know her. You go on ahead.”

Leaving her walking stick with the wild girl, Ali went on by herself. As she neared the door of the cottage, she began to feel a little shy, but before she could change her mind, the door opened and Lily was standing there, looking at her. A smile creased the old woman’s face.

“What a pleasant surprise,” she said. “Do come in.”

“I don’t want to be any bother.”

“Nonsense. We see few enough new faces in the village—I’m happy to see you.” She ushered Ali inside. The cottage was all one room, divided into a neatly kept sitting room, a kitchen and a sleeping area. The quilt on the bed was gorgeous, Ali thought, knowing that her mother would just love it. When she stepped closer to investigate it, she realized that the whole thing was hand-sewn.

“This is beautiful,” she said.

“Well, thank you—Ali, wasn’t it? That was a whole winter’s project back when Jevon was still alive. Jevon was my husband.”

Ali nodded. She glanced at a sepia-toned photograph on the mantle. “Was that him?”

“Yes, it was. Handsome devil, wasn’t he?”

“Who took the picture?” Ali asked. She’d been under the impression that they didn’t have much in the way of modern conveniences in New Wolding. Where would they even get the film developed?

“Lewis’s son Edmond took it. Before he left the village for good, he used to travel quite a bit between the outer world and the village. He left with the Gypsies one year and never did come back.”

“Gypsies? You mean like
real
Gypsies?” She remembered Lewis mentioning something about them.

Lily nodded. “They come once or twice a year—just one family, the Grys. Jango—he’s a grandfather himself now—has been bringing his family for as long as I can remember. We get what we can’t grow or make ourselves from them. Sugar, some teas and spices, that sort of thing. Lewis wasn’t too happy the year Edmond left.”

“Why did he leave?”

“Oh, you’re young. You know how restless young people can get. The village wouldn’t even have been settled in the first place if some of the young folk from the original Wolding hadn’t been restless themselves. My own son Peter left the year after Edmond did.”

“Do you miss him?”

Lily looked at the photo of her husband and sighed. “Oh, yes. I miss him. More so now that Jevon’s gone. I keep hoping that he’ll come back one day, but I don’t think he will.”

“Why not?”

“Lewis says that if you stray too long from the village, you lose the way back.”

“There are fewer and fewer of you each year, right?” Ali asked.

“I’m afraid so. But my Jevon saw it coming. We changed, you know. We’ve become, not so much lazy, as forgetful. All we do is dance at the old stone now. Sometimes the mystery comes, sometimes he doesn’t. We used to sacrifice a bull there at that old stone—every year we did that.” She didn’t notice Ali’s face go pale. “I think that’s important—rituals and the like. Not this come-when-you-will attitude that we’ve slowly fallen into. I think if it weren’t for the mystery—if he didn’t still come to us at the stone—we’d all be gone now.”

“You don’t think he should be freed?”

“Freed? Oh, who’s filling your head with such nonsense? There’s nothing binding him here. Do you think something like him could be held captive by the likes of us?”

“But I thought—I thought it was the villagers who kept him here. Tommy’s piping and all that.”

“You’ve been talking to Lewis,” Lily said, “and Lewis thinks too much. He has to have everything neatly explained, but it doesn’t work that way. We’re talking about a
mystery
. I love Lewis like a brother, Ali, but sometimes I just want to shake some sense
out
of that head of his.”

“Mally says there’s something keeping him here, too.”

“Oh, yes. The wild girl. Where did you go with her last night, Ali? You made us all very worried.”

Ali shrugged. “Just…away.”

Lily’s eyes went dreamy. “I always dreamed of that. Of the stag taking me away on his back….” She sat silent for a long moment, lost in her thoughts, then blinked and looked at Ali. “Not that I’m unhappy here, you understand. But there’s a little bit of Lewis in us all, I suppose. I’d like to know where the mystery goes in that stag shape of his. It must be to some very special place.”

Ali couldn’t begin to explain that landscape of wild forestland and the circle of stone formations. “We went a long way,” she said at last.

“I’m sure you did. But tell me. Do you long to be back there, wherever it was that he took you, or can you still be content here in this world of ours?”

“I…” She’d spent a lot of time being scared, Ali realized, and then a lot more talking with Mally. In the end, she hadn’t really experienced very much of that other place. She remembered the moon—how big it had been and how low—and the stars so close you could almost reach out and touch them. The peace in among those stones. The very air…

“I’d like to go back,” she said.

There was a touch of yearning in her voice that made Lily nod her head. “I thought it would be like that,” she said. “It’s like the stories of Faerie, isn’t it? Once you’ve been in their Middle Kingdom, you can never again be content in the fields of men.”

“I suppose.”

Lily nodded. “But I still think I’d have liked to have gone, just once.”

It didn’t seem fair, Ali thought. She’d gotten to go and she was just a kid with her whole life ahead of her, while this old woman… All those years and never once getting a glimpse of that place. Unless she saw it in Tommy’s music, or felt it in the presence of the stag.

What would Lily do if the stag didn’t come anymore? Would Tommy still play his pipes? Or would all the villagers move away? Maybe it’d be better if the villagers did go. She didn’t know if the people of New Wolding were happy or not, but they had never really had a chance to see what else there was to see in the world. That didn’t seem right either.

“I’ve got to go,” she said suddenly.

“Oh, no,” Lily said. “I haven’t even had a chance to offer you some tea. And I was going to make scones, too.”

“Another time,” Ali said. “I’ve really got to run.”

“You promise you’ll visit again?”

Ali nodded. “Bye, Lily. And thanks.”

“For what?” the old woman asked, but Ali was already at the door. She waved to Lily and went outside, softly closing the door behind her. Mally was right where she’d promised to wait, playing with the walking stick.

“Are we going to see Lewis now?” she asked.

Ali shook her head, “We’re going to look for bones,” she said. “Where should we build the fire?”

“There’s only one place will do,” Mally said, handing Ali the cane. “On the very top of Wolding Hill.”

“Okay. Let’s get to it.”

* * *

A minute or two after she’d fired the .38, Frankie’s wrist still hurt. Her ears rang from the loud report. Tony had warned her about the kick that the gun had, showed her how to hold it properly, left hand supporting the right, but it had still come as a shock.

“I think I’ll stick to the other one,” she said.

Valenti nodded and handed the automatic back to her. “Yeah, I thought it would suit you better, but I wanted you to try the .38 at least once, just to know what it felt like. Now you won’t be wondering about it.”

Frankie looked at the cardboard target they’d set up about fifteen paces from where they stood. “I didn’t even come close.”

“You did better with the automatic. You did good, Frankie. You want to go in for a sandwich?”

“Sure. Tony, why don’t you go after those men? Why don’t you go into the city and stop them before they come out here?”

“Well,” Valenti said. “First off, in the city, they’ve got the advantage. We can’t go around packing a lot of artillery and then just blast away with it when and if we catch up to them. But they can just hang out wherever they are, pick us off and disappear. What would you say to the police if they stopped us to ask what I’m doing with my UZI and why you’re carrying a piece?”

“You’re right.”

“And the second thing is, if they’re willing to leave us alone, I’m happy to return the favor. I’m not gunning for them, Frankie. I want to leave that kind of shit behind me. If they force my hand, I’m going to meet them with all the firepower I can put together, but I’d rather be left alone.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Frankie said. “Really.”

Valenti nodded. “I’m not just saying it because it’s something I think you want to hear. Believe that.”

“I do.”

“That’s good. That’s really good.”

They left the weapons on the table and set about making some lunch. As she started to slice bread, Frankie glanced at the clock over the stove.

“Oh no!” she cried. “Look at the time. It’s after twelve.”

“What’s the matter?” Valenti asked.

“It’s Ali—she’s not back yet. God, I feel terrible. I forgot all about her. If something’s happened to—”

“It’s okay,” Valenti said. “Trust me. She’s fine.”

“But what’s she doing out there?”

Frankie had turned to him and for a long moment she held his gaze. Valenti sighed. Maybe it was time to get the last of the lies out of the way. Well, not exactly lies, he corrected himself. Just the things that neither he nor Ali had bothered to expand upon.

“The thing of it is,” he said, “she’s got a friend in the woods—a girl named Mally. And there’s this village back there that we visited yesterday. Let’s finish fixing up these sandwiches and I’ll tell you all about it over lunch.” And I just to Christ hope you believe what I’m about to tell you, he thought, because I’m not so sure I do myself.

Frankie was puzzled, but she went back to slicing bread. “Okay,” she said. “So long as you’re sure she’s okay.”

“She’s fine.”

“I just wish you wouldn’t sound so mysterious about it.”

“There’s the word,” Valenti said. “You got it in a nutshell. Mystery’s what this is all about.”

2

Broadway Joe didn’t recognize the intruder immediately. The shock of his office door slamming open and the man’s sudden appearance held him motionless for a long moment. He saw a darkly-tanned face with a couple of days’ worth of beard smudging its outline; short dark hair above the face, a long raincoat below. Behind the man, Joe’s bodyguards had already been taken out. Freddie was lying stretched out on the carpet, Dan leaning up against a wall, doubled over. As the man brought an Ingram submachine gun up from his side and pointed its muzzle at the
consigliere
, recognition finally dawned on Broadway Joe.