Personal Darkness (41 page)

"You see, he told me all about it."

"All what, Stella?"

"The house, the people. Where."

"Where, Stella?"

Stella told him. What Nobbi had told her.

The last time on earth she had heard him speak.

There was quiet, and when Stella looked around, Luke had not produced a gun or a stiletto. He looked merely pensive.

"Mr. Glass," said Luke, "a very perceptive man, said it was likely Nobbi might have told you. You being so close."

Stella gazed at Luke. "I need to know," she said. She thought,
He's not human
.

"All right, Stella. But sit down. It's bad."

Stella, not because she needed to, but because she needed words, sat.

"You may have heard," Luke said, with an odd casual coolness, "the police were looking for a girl. About seventeen. They nicknamed her The Vixen. She got into people's houses and cut their throats, then burned the place down. A sweetie."

Stella had not heard, or if she had, forgotten, but she nodded, meaning,
Go on
.

"Well, she's a daughter of the family Nobbi, unluckily, went to visit. Seems she didn't like him. She killed him, Stella."

"This girl—she cut Nobbi's—she cut his throat—"

"A neck wound. Carotid. Death's very quick. Not much you can do, if any of them tried. She's crazy. Long black hair, body like a dream, and mad as they come. And we… can't do a thing, Stella. Not a thing."

"Yes," she said.

"He should have left well alone, Stella. Mr. Glass— we warned Nobbi."

Stella got up, holding the parcel Luke had given her. She walked to the window.

"I'd like you to go now."

"Of course, Stella. Just make the solicitor's, all right?"

"Yes."

He went. She watched. She saw him come out on the grass, huffy at his brush with a moron who had not appreciated his glamour. As he opened the candy Daimler and got in, he trod exactly in the dog shit.

"Thank you, God," said Stella. "You are a monster, but you do exist."

She thought of the pearl-gray hand-stitched suede shoes beyond cleaning, and the stink in the car.

She did not think that, maybe, perhaps, Mr. Glass had instructed Luke, what he might say, if pressed, to this high-strung, bereaved woman. The thing the Corporation might not do. But Stella was different, a hysterical female alone.

Stella, not hysterical, opened the parcel.

She held out the stuffed lion before her, then drew it in.

"Oh, my love," she said, "my only, only love."

WHY HOPE TO BE HAPPY? Before, it had been like a tide of water (life), not especially fast, passing over her. Not happy. Not un-happy. Indifferent.

There was music and there were books.

The rest was an interruption.

Live second-hand.

And then the Scarabae. Anna, Stephan. Adamus. Ruth. Miranda. Malach. Althene.

The cats sat looking at her, perturbed, for Rachaela was their priestess and had no function save to serve them.

Jacob, black on white, Juliet, a dainty monkey, white on black.

They were the salve, not the solution.

At sunset, the helicopter would arrive. Presumably.

He had come back from somewhere, Malach. Althene, with medical skills beyond belief, binding cracked ribs, stitching long cuts. And Kei had been called, for there was an animal, a black dog. He had tended to it, seemingly, and Oskar and Enki had shown no jealousy, only licking it, calming it. Something of all this Althene had told her.

She did not ask what had gone on.

Somewhere, somehow, Malach had spent his grief and rage.

But what was stupid Rachaela to do?

My daughter, walled up in the attic again, like mad Mrs. Rochester in
Jane Eyre.
And my lover, leaving me
.

Sunset. They would be gone. Dogs, Malach, Al-thene.

Good
. Let her go. Pervert. Half-thing. No. No. She was perfect. She was like something made in heaven, even if marriages were not made there. She, he. Damn her. And good-bye.

Rachaela knocked on the door of Eric's room.

Almost to her surprise, he called to her to come in, called her by name, perhaps to demonstrate he had not been expecting anyone but she.

It had been a clear day, but very windy. Through Eric's windows, which were of dense orange and green and magenta glass—a forest, knights riding, maidens strewing flowers—the light of late afternoon made colors on an overall paleness.

Eric sat by a little chessboard with tiny figures shaped in silver or bronze as animals. There were herons for bishops and squirrels and mice and pigeons for pawns. The kings and queens were not lions but cats with delicate crowns between their leaves of ears.

"Eric, I said before, several times, I had to leave you. And now I must." Rachaela watched Eric move a silver armadillo knight onto a geranium-pink square.

"No, that's wrong."

"I'm afraid it isn't."

"I'm sorry, Rachaela. I meant the move I had made."

Rachaela laughed. She had come to laugh, among them, strangely, with ease and genuine pleasure. Even now, the board of little beasts intrigued her. And stopped her concentrating.

"I have to say," Rachaela said, "this house has been my fortress. But now. Now it's a prison. With a prisoner."

"Ruth," he said.

"Yes." She thought, /
had this conversation with Ste-phan, the last time. But it isn't the same. And Stephan is dead
. "You see, I understand now," Rachaela said. "There's nothing to be done about her. I accept… what you'll do. There's no doctor on earth who could help her. Only Malach seemed—but then—" She recalled Ruth dragged shrieking up the stairs. Ruth, screaming for Malach. "And I can't do anything. I never could. I always disliked her and now there's just an emptiness in me with her name. The same as there is for Adamus."

"Yes," said Eric. His thin hand lay over the little armadillo, like the hand of a god of miniatures.

"And so—I leave her to you. That's all I can think of or decide. Maybe I'm grossly in error. Probably. God knows."

"And Althene is leaving with Malach tonight," Eric said.

"I'd like to say I was tricked there. But perhaps I only tricked myself."

Eric said, "It's difficult to have faith in a lover. They possess so much of you. You're at their mercy. How can you ever anticipate kindness?"

"Well, I haven't had much."

"None of us," he said, "has."

Rachaela felt an urge to go over to him. Instead she went to the other side of the board, and looked more closely at the tiny animals.

She remembered. Had he carved masks once? He had been so silent. A gift of feathers to dead Sylvian. How he had ordered champagne.

Eric said, "When do you wish to leave?"

"As soon as I can. But, I'll need to make some plans."

"Not necessary. We will provide all you require. By that I don't mean you will be tied to us. Go as far as you want. But the provisions of our house are also yours. You are ours."

"I have to concede that. So, I'll agree. I suspect you will anyway. You've put money and possessions my way in the past, I think. Before I even knew."

"Perhaps." Eric slid the armadillo forward. "And now I've trapped myself."

Rachaela picked up the silver cat-queen, who waited to one side. Poor thing, taken so early and bizarrely from the game.

"I feel," Rachaela said, "I want to be in London. I don't want to go farther than that. London's what I know."

"There is a large apartment," Eric said, "a third-story flat, overlooking the river. It could be made ready in three or four days."

"Thank you," Rachaela said.

"And if you should want us," Eric said, "we are here."

Rachaela looked at him and their eyes met. Dust still lay upon the vivid brightness of Eric's black eyes. No change. No older and no younger.

"I'm afraid of you, still," Rachaela said.

"Yes. That will go."

"Will it?"

"Time," he said.

"Oh, time. It doesn't heal. It spoils. Can it do anything good?"

"There's no choice," he said, "but to continue, and see."

"Adamus found another option. He hanged himself."

"But you," he said, "have not."

Out in the garden, Rachaela guided the two cats. They investigated every bush and stem, and Jacob arrogantly sprayed, marking a territory he did not realize was soon to be altered. Apparently the new flat had access to a garden below. She was planning for the cats as for herself. What they would eat and the freedoms they would need. This was helpful. She was not quite alone, for now she did not want to be. She partly feared it.

Among the windy, bare and acorn-colored oaks, she met Miranda walking with Tray.

Miranda was the young woman in her filmy dress, and Tray an elderly lady dressed in black. They moved hand in hand, so that Miranda could support Tray. In Tray's other arm was held close a brand-new bright golden lion, a wonderful velvet beast, with mane and tufted tail, and sherry eyes that sparkled. An old woman with a toy lion.

"There is Rachaela," said Miranda.

Tray smiled at Rachaela. She was innocent.

She had gone quite insane, so much must be obvious, but, like Ruth, she was not to be handed over to any authority, not even to her own mother, to whom the body of the fat brown dead man had been returned, smoothly by night.

"Tray has a new name we're trying," said Miranda. "Tell Rachaela."

"Terentia," said Tray. She smiled again and seemed pleased. She raised the lion and kissed it like biting a golden fruit.

"It's an old Roman name," said Miranda. "Ah, look." And she bent down to stroke Juliet. Still linked by hand, Tray or Terentia too, bent down. She tucked the lion under her chin and stroked Jacob who hurried up to be included.

The wind blew savagely against the garden, and the trees creaked like the masts of a ship.

Time… The world, a ship upon the seas of centuries, passed on.

Althene did not come to say good-bye again. Rachaela had anyway locked her door. She sat between the cats and the sunset began, cold red under a dome of alcoholic violet.

The helicopter dropped from the sky.

Out of the opened window of her unlit room, Rachaela saw the camp of bikers raise their heads to see. Two of the men got up, shouting and excited. Lou was there, in creased black rubber, and Camillo, just visible, the white dreadlocks, not turning to look.

The helicopter lighted in the glade, and from the house walked out the figures of the ones who were going away. As the dark filled the common and the lights of the house were unlit, they were like shadows she could only guess to be Malach, Kei, Althene. A white shine on Malach's hair. He moved stiffly, old now, as she had seen him last. And the two ghosts of the dogs, unsure perhaps at departure. Kei carried a bundle in his arms—the mysterious black dog, maybe. And Michael and Cheta followed with the few bags.

Althene's shadow moved strongly ahead. From the bikers' camp someone whistled. And another dog barked, and was hushed.

In a moment they would be gone.

The trees swallowed them, and then, presumably, the helicopter, which rose again like a chariot of fire.

I feel nothing
, Rachaela thought.
Nothing
.

She thought of her mother's body lying in its box, all wrong, a stuffed doll of flesh.

Juliet started earnestly to wash Jacob.

How strange. I feel nothing. And my eyes are wet.

IN THE SCENTED PALACE, WITH ITS pagodas of plants and rose-petal lighting, Stella was remade. Recreated, as something which Nobbi would never have recognized. An alien. Which was as it had to be.

There was so much money it was beyond belief, and Stella did not believe in it. She had let the solicitor, and then the bank manager, and then the financial consultant, deal with it. They seemed to enjoy this, their faces glowing with greed. And she sat quietly and gazed at them, from the valley of the Shadow.

And when it was all over, she came here, to this place which promised a kind of beauty that Stella knew to be also unreal.

With her she brought a small overnight bag. There were only a limited number of items in it, one of them the lion Nobbi had left for her, her true inheritance.