Mortal Love (30 page)

Instead I bombed around the kitchen for a few minutes, opening drawers and rifling the stacks of CDs on the table, idly checking Nick's answering machine for messages. Nick's manager, someone in Toronto checking on a club date, and Nick himself, worried-sounding and looking for someone named Daniel.

“Daniel, call me on the mobile. You're a fucking mess. You have to—”

Click.

I switched the machine off, looked around to see if Nick had left his usual List of Important Things—letters to be posted, plants to be watered, names of other visitors who might be dropping by.

But I couldn't find anything. The air felt oddly charged, the way it does before a high wind hits, and there was a faint, pervasive odor—the scent of green apples, so sweetly enticing that I found myself looking to see if Nick had some hidden stash of fruit behind the amps and fax machine.

He didn't. There were drifts of sheet music and disks covering his desk, a digitally enhanced portrait of Nick and a woman with short silvery hair. I finally wandered into the guest room, a small chamber with a single grilled window framing the rooftop garden. The bed was covered with a duvet and matching pillow. Beside the wardrobe a vintage woolen jacket was draped across a table. There were books stacked on the desk, as well as a laptop and PalmPilot. I glanced at the books. An academic journal called
Tristania,
photocopies of Aubrey Beardsley pictures, request forms from the British Library and a bunch of things in library binding:
Lancelot of the Laik and Sir Tristrem; The Saga of Tristram and Isond; Sir Tristrem: A Metrical Romance of the Thirteenth Century
by Thomas of Erceldoune, called the Rhymer.

I set down my glass of water and picked up a battered paperback held together with a rubber band, slid the elastic off, and picked through the pages beneath. Denis de Rougemont,
Love in the Western World,
annotated in four different shades of highlighter.

I yawned and dropped the book, loose pages scattering across the desk. I glanced at the bed and wondered if I'd made a mistake not going to Learmont's posh hotel. Nick's guest bed had always been too small for me; right now it looked positively doll-like.

But I was too tired to hassle with anything else. I sat down heavily, the mattress creaking. I took off my boots and T-shirt, dumped them on the floor, and turned off the lamp. Even with the faded curtain drawn, the room buzzed with the electric-blue glow of London night. Voices and snatches of music floated up from the High Street, a monotonous, taunting song chanted by a boy with a thick East End accent.

I shifted, kicking off covers as I tried to get comfortable. At last I settled my head on the pillow and shut my eyes, hoping that exhaustion would do its part.

“Damn it.”

Something was under the pillow, something hard. I stuck my hand under it and found a book. I started to toss it onto the floor, then stopped. I reached over and switched the light back on.

“What the fuck …?”

I sat up, heart hammering as I stared at what I held. Even after all those years, my thumb automatically found the cover's frayed edge and slid beneath. The book fell open to where I had last left off drawing in it. A thicket of vines and brambles, a pair of slanted eyes with the irises inked in green, and painstakingly formed words beneath.

I grabbed the side table, desperate for something solid, and felt the wood split beneath my fingers.

“Oh, God,” I said. “Oh, God.”

It was my notebook, the one I had been working on when my brother shipped me off to McLean.
Ealwearld: Its History,
Volume 7. I stared at the cover, my grandfather's entwined initials above my own swooping adolescent hand, the speckles of ink left by Radborne worked by me into ivy and dogwood blossoms, the faces of birds and women, faceted dragonfly eyes and flowers with the mouths and genitals of men.

I let it fall open again and knew just what page would reveal itself—the image of King Herla, maddened by Vernoraxia's flight into the darkness, at his side the great wolfhound poised to leap from a ragged promontory. My mind spiraled back to myself at fourteen, sitting on a rock at Knight's Head and sketching the cliff while Red was clamming on the beach below. As I read now, the cold scent of sea and kelp-strewn mud rose from the page, and the sound of plovers keening on the beach.

The words began to ripple on the page. I shut my eyes, trembling with rage and loss and the vertiginous feeling that something I had thought irredeemable, something as profound and terrible and final as death, had been miraculously undone. Outside, music rose from the café next door; I could hear the drone of street-cleaning equipment and see flashing yellow lights behind the drapes. I stood and walked unsteadily into the living room, my sketchbook clutched to my chest. I began at the far wall, at first going carefully through the shelves and pulling out books, one by one, then wildly grasping whatever I could find.

“Where are the rest?” I grabbed a dictionary and ripped it open, tearing pages from it as though my books might be nestled inside. “You son of a bitch, what did you do with them?
Where are you?
”

I took books from the shelves and threw them onto the floor, trampling and kicking them aside until the room was white with pages. When the shelf was empty, I stopped, dazed, then knelt among the ruined books. Those that had somehow remained intact I ripped apart, their spines splitting in my hands and covers exploding into fragments of cardboard and pulp.

“Where are you?”
I shouted. I picked up
Closer
where it had fallen beside me and cradled it.
“What have you done with her?”

The phone started to ring. I stood and yanked the base set from the wall and threw it into the hallway. Then I staggered into the kitchen, shreds of paper stuck to my bare chest and blood oozing from a gash on my arm.

“No,” I whispered hoarsely. “Fucking Simon. You fucking bastard, where are they?
What did you do with her?”

It was not until I sank into a chair and stared down at the cover of my sketchbook, the shadowy crescent of a scarlet fingerprint blooming beneath a woman's profile, that I began to cry.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Rock and Castle of Seclusion

H
e returned to his room. Breaghan's
duties did not seem to include tending him, so Radborne unpacked his own small valise, placing his few items in the wardrobe. Then he set up his easel in a corner with his color box alongside it. He moved slowly, fearful of further injuring his arm, but after an hour or so, the pain eased, and he even managed to move his bed opposite the window, giving him a clear view of the ruined spire on its lonely spine of rock and the dark sky beyond.

Still, even this minor housekeeping exhausted him. When at half past six Breaghan knocked to summon him for dinner, he begged her give his apologies to Dr. Learmont.

“Please tell him I'm unwell—no, thank you, I don't care for any dinner. A good night's sleep, that's what I need.”

“Are you certain, sir?”

“Yes, yes, of course—please.”

She cocked her head. A sheen clung to her livid blue jaw, so that she seemed to give him a monstrous grin. “I could bring you a tray, sir?”

“No, no, no …”

Quickly he shut the door and started to laugh. “A madhouse!” He took off his jacket and was placing it in the wardrobe when he noticed a bulge in one pocket.

Learmont's book, the book Swinburne had shown him. He shut the wardrobe, settled himself on the bed, and began to leaf through the volume.

It was mostly fairy tales, and tales about other rustic supernaturals. Cornish giants, piskies and demons, a section on mermaids and mermen, another on saints. There was an entire chapter devoted to King Arthur, and one on lost cities, another that dealt exclusively with “the virtues of fire.” Radborne paged through them thoughtfully, wondering what Swinburne might have found of interest here. Burning feet? The accounts of Sir Tristram, or the drowned city of Lyonesse?

This last reminded him of the story told by Evienne Upstone. He paused, gazing at the window, then flipped to the back of the book. Two loose sheets of cheap blue postal paper were stuck here, folded in half. He smoothed them onto the bed.

They were filled with Swinburne's writing—he checked the hand against the signature at the front of the volume and yes, it was the poet's. Disordered ramblings, of interest to Swinburne or Learmont perhaps, but no one else. Radborne folded the pages together again and stuck them back into the book. He thumbed idly through the volume until an illustration caught him, an etching of a knight and a greyhound.

Queen Eselt,
read the title.

A smile washed across Radborne's face: he might do some preliminary sketches from stories in this book. Authentic English folklore, the sort of thing one found sometimes in the ladies' magazines back home. Perhaps he could persuade
Leslie's
to publish one or two of them—certainly Learmont would not object, if some modest financial agreement could be reached. He lay back onto the bed and began to read.

The dog has not jumped down yet.

He reread the last line, and then the entire story.

“‘The dog has not jumped down yet,'” he whispered.

What could it mean? He thought of Cobus Candell with his tribute of orpiment and sable and linen, the unfinished painting of a madwoman.
They've just come from the wedding night.

He remembered a story his mother had read it to him, a story from the book of tales that had been one of his childhood treasures.
Only guess my name and you will be freed.

Only guess. The image of the woman upstairs expanded within him like a drawn breath, a woman standing before a window filled with quicksilver light, a woman standing at the edge of Blackfriars Bridge. Evienne Upstone and the figure he had glimpsed in a shaft of sun in Southwark.

And yet neither of these was the eidolon he held in memory as though it were a coin clutched in his hand. The curve of her cheek, her autumn hair lifted by the breeze (there had been no breeze), her mouth pressed against his cheek (it had been her palm, not her mouth), her breasts glimpsed where the bodice of her dress had parted (there had been no parting): all of this was more real than anything in the room around him, more real than the woman pacing in her cell upstairs.

Upstairs.

He could hear her now, walking back and forth, back and forth, as though tracing a path within a labyrinth. He looked up. In the ceiling above him, a tunnel spiraled, the same passage that Jacobus Candell had painted.
The dog has not jumped down yet.
Stone and plaster crumbled to reveal a nautilus with a woman at its heart, her eyes welcoming and mouth parted to pronounce his name. Radborne gasped, then laughed, then began to sing to himself.

He lay back upon the thin mattress, closed his eyes, and concentrated upon the sound of her footsteps pacing the floor above. Back and forth, back and forth, the sound quickening with his heart and breath. Her skirts moved slowly across the floor, not silk or linen but a swirl of underwater green, fronds parting to reveal white sand like flesh upon the sea floor. If he lifted his hand, he could touch her, a warm curve shaping itself to his palm, softer than Candell's sable, softer than anything. He smelled vetiver, vervain, verdigris; tasted bice metallic as scorched pennies,
mustn't lick your fingers.

But he did, thrusting one hand into his mouth as the other unbuttoned his trousers, his cock springing free of the knot of cloth and curled warm hair. Above him her steps came more and more rapidly, like a finger tapping glass. He breathed fast and shallow; the room was cold, but he was on fire. His back arched, his mouth twisted to speak her name, but she had no name, only color:
asphodel mignonette malachieteus chartreuse viridis peridot emeraude woodbine vetiver vervain. …

When he came, his shout echoed Candell's:
You must learn her name!
And gasping, he rolled over and grabbed at his open sketchbook on the floor, grabbed his pencil and scrawled it there—

Green,
he wrote, the letters loping across page after page after page,
Green Green Green Green Green Her name is Green.

He woke next
morning early, honeyed light all around and Radborne ebullient as though he were entering his studio for the first time. He sat up, the chill nestling into his crotch where he had forgotten to button his trousers. He dressed quickly, grabbed his sketchbook, pencils, and overcoat, and ran downstairs.

Dr. Learmont was in the dining room, an empty plate before him and a notebook and bottle of ink. His face was pale, his lanky hair disheveled.

“Mr. Comstock, good day to you. Breaghan will be busy this morning. There is some porridge on the side table there, and coffee and sausages.” He bent back over his notebook.

Radborne got himself breakfast and proceeded to eat. Not even Breaghan's lumpy porridge could dampen his spirits. His exhilaration ballooned; he almost laughed out loud, but Learmont's grave expression kept him in check. Radborne could feel a sort of light leaking out from behind his own eyes, spattering the tablecloth with pale emeraude. So he kept his head down, gazing with a furtive smile at his porridge.
Green,
he thought,
the secret is Green.

After several minutes Dr. Learmont looked up. “I administered another dose to Cobus an hour ago,” he said. “When I went with Breaghan to bring him breakfast, I found him still extremely agitated.”

Learmont refilled his pen and made a notation in a long column. Radborne nodded without looking up. Eyes, eyes, watch the eyes.

“We often found mercurial blue pills effective,” he offered.

“Perhaps,” said Learmont, and continued to write.

“A suggestion only,” said Radborne. He waited until Learmont turned to reach for something on the table behind him, then shot a look at his notebook.

He expected to see a record of sedatives and dosages. And yes, one side of the book had a recipe scrawled upon it, very badly spelled.

No pharmacopoeia at all, but a record of Candell's paintings. As Dr. Learmont settled himself again, Radborne swiftly turned back to his breakfast. The doctor returned to his notes. After several minutes he spoke.

“Given Cobus's agitated state, Mr. Comstock, I think it best for you not to visit him today.” He glanced at Radborne's things near the door. “I see you've brought your sketchbook. You might enjoy walking about the headland, if the weather stays fine. Though I wouldn't recommend going farther into the moor yet—a treacherous place.”

“So I've been told.” Radborne tapped his spoon against his bowl; then, startled, held the utensil to one side.

He was not imagining it. A flare of green raced around the spoon's bowl, the way alcoholic spirits will burn blue when ignited. His eyes widened; he hurriedly composed himself and looked back at Learmont. “Mr. Candell—is he always so violent?”

“No. In fact he has been almost extraordinarily gentle, here and at Bethlem. I would not have sequestered myself alone with him if that were not so. Only once have I witnessed such a display of temper from him, and that was when he first met with Miss Upstone. I had thought she might model for him—under supervision, of course.”

“But she has!” broke in Radborne. “The painting he's working on now—every figure in it is her. Even the men. All of them, every last one!”

“And yet he only met her once, and was most inhospitable.” Learmont pushed aside his notebook. “I had hoped he might be cured—he could never be released, of course, but one always hopes for some return to sanity. He seemed to respond so well to the refined morphine solution.”

He stared broodingly at the table. “It is very important to me that he continues his painting. What did you think of his work, Mr. Comstock?”

“Well … his technique is fine. You said he was at the Academy, so I'd expect that. But he seems drawn to the same subjects. Fairies, I mean.”

“That was his bread and butter, before his crime. He could have enjoyed a success as great as Burne-Jones or Millais. You noted all the Shakespearean references?”

“Yes. But the painting he is working on now. It is—it seems the product of a disordered mind. I gather that it was inspired by one of your own stories.”

“No. The very opposite. He began work on it at Bethlem years ago. The story I collected from an old woman in Lanteglos. There are literary precedents, of course. Our friend Lady Wilde is attempting to work them into a book of her own.”

“What a peculiar coincidence, then. That he painted it.” From the corner of his eye, Radborne glimpsed a glaucous shimmer, like the refraction of sunlight on moving water. He swallowed.

“I think I will take your suggestion,” he said. “I'm going to explore the headland. That is, if you really don't need me?”

“Not this morning, no.” Learmont stood and waited for Radborne to collect his sketchbook, then brightened. “Wait—I do have a thought! I've arranged to move Miss Upstone to the cottage at the tip of the island. That was my other task this morning, and it strikes me that you could look in on her. My colleague Dr. Stansel at Exeter had a pleasant success last year with some ladies he ensconced at the seaside. It's my thought that Miss Upstone's melancholy might be eased if she were exposed to fresh air and sunlight. It is very important that she continue to paint.”

“Why?” said Radborne irritably. The flickering green shape was making his head ache. “I would think bed rest and quiet would suit her better. And how can you possibly leave her alone and unsupervised if she's so desperate?”

“Breaghan will stay with her. The poor soul is remarkably devoted to Miss Upstone. But I would be very grateful if you would inquire briefly at the cottage. I've had no chance to visit her myself.”