Sustenance (56 page)

“That sounds a bit facile to me,” she said, feeling a quiver of unease stir deep within her.

“We need to be aware of the monster we can be,” he said, a bit distantly. “If for no other reason than to be able to hold that savagery at bay.”

“Yes, I know it’s dangerous to give free rein to that fury you tell me is part of what we are. You’ve told me at least five times before now.”

“And you still do not believe it is a real part of how you will change when you come to my life.” He spoke tenderly, and with such sadness in his blue-shot dark eyes that she began to wonder if his warning really were truthful.

“I’ll bear it in mind; I promise you.” She lifted a corner of the duvet and thrust her arm out into the morning. “A little warmer. Do you happen to remember where my bathrobe is?”

“On the back of the bathroom door,” he said, accepting that she would not discuss these various matters for the time being. “Would you like me to go and fetch it for you?”

“Yes,” she said. “Not because it’s cold, but with the servants moving about…”

“I do understand,” he said. “It won’t take me more than a couple of minutes.” He got out of the bed, and paying no heed to the cold floors, let himself through the door into the hallway, then padded down to the elegant bathroom. He took Charis’ bathrobe from the peg on the back of the door, and started back to his guest bedroom only to find Valerot waiting at the top of the stairs. “Good morning,” he said to his steward in French.

“To you as well, Comte,” said Valerot. “Are you and your guest up yet?”

“Not yet. Is there something that needs my attention?” His manner was courteous, but now his senses were on the alert.

“Oh, no; not yet. We’ll want to see you in the Great Hall at mid-day, but for now, I wanted to know if your guest is ready for breakfast.”

“In half an hour, I should guess. We’ll come down to the morning room.” He smiled. “Thank you, Valerot.”

Valerot ducked his head as a sign of appreciation. “Half an hour in the morning room. I will meet you there.”

“Very good,” said Szent-Germain and passed on to the guest room, saying as he entered, “Breakfast in half an hour in the morning room.”

“I suppose I should get dressed,” Charis said, watching him.

“No need. You might want to brush your hair.” He tossed her bathrobe to her. “Otherwise, you will not shock the staff.”

“My overnight bag is on the straight-backed chair,” she said, pulling on the bathrobe while sitting up straight in the bed.

He reached it and handed it to her. “Here you are.” While she opened the herringbone-patterned hard-sided case, he went on, “The celebration begins at noon: you’ll want to dress for that. Nothing too fancy.”

“I brought the mulberry skirt and the embroidered jacket,” she said as she took out her boar-bristle brush and set to work on restoring order to her hair.

“That will do well.” He held out his arm to assist her to stand, but she ignored the gesture, and went on brushing her hair.

“Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready, if I can find my slippers.” She went from stiff-bristle brush to comb.

Szent-Germain looked under the bed and retrieved her pair of red satin slippers, which he silently offered to her. “Am I neat enough for joining you at table?” he asked when he was on his feet once again.

“If you want to,” she said. “I have to make an appointment with Celeste; my hair’s getting unruly.”

“As soon as we get back to Paris, telephone her shop.” He opened the small closet and removed a black brocade smoking jacket which he donned, taking care to make sure the wide silken belt lay smoothly around his waist.

“Are you ready?” she asked as she came down from the bed. This time when he proffered his arm, she took it with a slight toss of her head.

“If you are,” he said as he opened the door and bowed her through it.

TEXT OF A LETTER FROM D. G. ATKINS IN INDONESIA TO HAPGOOD NUGENT IN UPPSALA, SWEDEN, WRITTEN IN ENGLISH CODE AND CARRIED BY DIPLOMATIC COURIER, DELIVERED NINE DAYS AFTER IT WAS WRITTEN.

Feb. 16
th
. 51

Hapgood Nugent

Department of Mathematics

Uppsala, 036

Sweden

My good friend Happy,

I have written to your sister to inform Uncle Freddie that this project to which he assigned me is completed, and I am pleased to say that my skin is intact. My reputation is another matter, but the possibility that I might find myself turned away from the company of honest patriots was explained to me at the first, and the pension that has been arranged should provide for my basic wants. It has occurred to me that I will need to make arrangements to find other housing before I set foot in my native land again, if, in fact, I ever do. I still have that place in British Honduras, and I may go there for a while. You’ll pardon me if I believe you got the luckier result from the coin-toss that said you would align yourself with the Ex-Pats’ Coven for the purpose of learning who among them might be in active cahoots with the Reds, and the course I was set upon: following the traffic in human beings out of the refugee and displaced persons’ camps into the Third World, as well as authenticating the missions authorized by men working with Uncle Freddie. The Limeys would say he has a couple rum blokes working for him, and they’d be right. Still, I wanted adventure, and you may rest assured that I got it. You will have to remain in Sweden for another five years at a minimum, and that can’t be easy for you.

I hope you’ll be able to find some way to tell your sister thank you for me—short of showing her this letter—she was a most effective go-between; but she’d better be careful of your brother-in-law: he would be appalled to learn that she was doing more than sending you the occasional money order. The reports she carried home after visiting you last summer give me the opportunities I had been seeking. I got two years’ worth of investigation documents past Hoover’s Hounds; using Dave Wissart’s address for the reports gave an added level of protection: who in the FBI would suspect a Republican Congressman’s campaign planner of helping a real Communist Sympathizer? Hoover’s a vainglorious buffoon, but we’re stuck with him at the FBI for the time being.

Uncle Freddie has ordered me to create a legend for myself to account for the years that I was officially missing, and I think I may have the first outline of one. I’ll fill you in if it turns out to meet Uncle Freddie’s standards. Do you happen to recall that paper I gave in ’39? The one about the universe not being static? The one all the Einsteinians found so objectionable? I may be using that as a jumping off place, as an academic argument that put my name on the mathematics landscape with a warning that I was worse than a union fink for doubting Papa Albert. It moves me away from the mess of the HUAC—not even Dave Wisssart could protect me from that stench—and puts me in with those whose hubris lost them all righteous mathematical chairs at respectable universities anywhere in the civilized world.

You tell me you like Uppsala, and I wish I could believe you, but I know the Swedes—stiff-rumped, inhospitable, and proud. Thar’s not like you, Happy, and I can’t believe your work for Uncle Freddie has made you so cynical that you’re willing to take on protective coloration with your sister and me. You’re there because you either feel some loyalty to Uncle Freddie or you’ve been painted into a corner and you want to keep your friends and family away from CIA attention. You’re being cautious, and that is very good of you, as I am in preferring British Honduras to the US of A. My place is pleasant enough to provide you an amusing visit, but I’m prepared to wait until it’s safe. When it is, we can make our plans.

D. G. A.

4

W
INTER WAS
making a last bid for attention, sending gouts of wind along the Parisian streets and over the waters of the Seine, whipping the surface into a grayish froth that made the wan light seeping through the lowering clouds seem even more threatening than it was in a city drained of color. From his small office in the Eclipse Press building, Szent-Germain stared out into the afternoon, a distracted air about him as he found himself recalling his stay in the city some two centuries ago when he was first introduced to Madelaine de Montalia: it was at a ball, and her aunt had introduced them; he clearly recalled how she had met his gaze directly, no sign of fear or dubiety in her knowing eyes. From that night until her death, she knew him for what he was and did not despise him for it, nor see him as the monster so many would do if they knew his true nature; he had not needed to tell her anything about his undead state, and yet she came to him willingly, eagerly. This recollection was anodyne to him, soothing his anxiety and giving him a clearer vision of his situation. The problems within his own company required immediate attention, he knew. “Back to the present,” he told himself in his native tongue. He had more urgent—and less pleasant—matters to attend to than memories of Madelaine in her breathing days: he concentrated on the last year, trying to sort through the most recent changes in his plans that the latest news from Cecil Tommerson would require; this was not the kind of misunderstanding that could be worked out over time: he needed to address it promptly. To add fuel to Tommerson’s accusations, Szent-Germain had received a letter from the factor in his South African office that left him troubled, and although the cold of his office did not bother him, he suppressed a shudder; he had already put in a telephone call to Hawsmede and would meet with him on Thursday in London, and he would need a day or two to assemble his records here in Paris as well as requesting information from Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Lisboa, Barcelona, Genova, and Venezia before he took the next step. Then there was the more delicate matter of Lord Weldon; he had let it be known that he had been trying to get news of him, and was considering venturing into Central Asia to find him, a prospect that gave him sardonic amusement. “A man in search of himself. How twentieth century of me.” An emotion compounded of despair and vast loneliness that was only slightly relieved by irony and mourning enveloped him, but he quivered it off him. A small electric heater provided a little warmth to the room, but he paid no attention to it, for the cold he felt was not the result of the weather.

“Grof?” came Washington Young’s voice from the other side of the door.

Szent-Germain shook himself mentally, and called out, “Come in, Young.”

“I’ve just sent out the last
Grimoire,
” he said as he came through the door. “We’re planning a last meeting for mid-March, so you have a month to decide if you want to attend. Do you have any preferences for the date?”

“Not at the moment, and it shouldn’t matter in any case; I’ve never been a member of your group, officially,” said Szent-Germain, indicating the chair on the far side of the desk from him. “But thank you for thinking of me. I’m glad you’ve come in; I know you’re busy.” He cocked his head in the direction of the sound of the big presses clanking away in the main room. “I have a proposition to put to you, and I trust you’ll consider it. A loyal Wobbly like you should find the opportunity acceptable.”

“What kind of proposition?” Young asked, trying not to sound suspicious. “Are you going to include any others in the Coven in this offer?”

“No; this is specific to you, having to do with these presses, and others like them, and the Guttenburgs especially. I hope that won’t be a problem for you with the Coven? I can see no reason why it should be, but if there is one, I hope you’ll let me know now.”

“I’m the only printer in the group—that’s obvious. Okay, I’ll consider it, so long it’s none of your
divide and conquer
methods.” He realized what he had said, and changed his demeanor to something less confrontational. “I don’t mean
your
methods but that’s how some businesses go about union-busting.”

“I’m aware of that, and I have nothing against unions; in fact, I think they’re beneficial.” He thought back to his centuries of dealing with working-men’s organizations: guilds in the Middle Ages, Artei in Fiorenze, Brotherhoods in France and Germany, Companies in Eastern Europe … He made himself address the present. “If the shops want to organize, they may do so, with my blessing, if they need it.”

“That’s good to know,” said Young, not entirely convinced. “But about the Coven—”

“I won’t know my schedule for another two to three weeks, but remind me, if you would, and I’ll ask Charis what she thinks.”

“There aren’t likely to be many of us still here by the last meeting,” said Young, a little sadly as he sat down. “I don’t believe it’ll be much of a crowd.”

“Very likely not,” said Szent-Germain. “The Praegers have already left, and Russ McCall; Mary Anne is pleased in her new work and, I think, tired of Paris, so she may not attend. I think she’s doing her best to break with the past, and that includes the Coven. We know Happy is set in Uppsala, and Win Pomeroy is out of the country,” said Szent-Germain, agreeing with Young as a way to show his concern more than to reiterate shared knowledge. “The rest aren’t likely to linger unless they have work here—”

“Like I do, thanks to you,” said Young, a touch of anxiety in his voice. “Moira wants to stay here, and so do I.”

“Then have Bethune review the contract and remain where you are, with my thanks.” He leaned back in his chair, wanting to put Young more at his ease. “Not all the Coven is gone; I’m assuming that now Boris King has opened his record shop in Rue de les Faisans, he and his wife will attend anything linked to the Coven. Happy says any of you who want to visit are welcome in Sweden, but he has no intention of coming back here except on holiday. Steve diMaggio’s business is flourishing, so he’ll be here for some time. Sam Effering doesn’t want the group broken up entirely—he was just getting used to it when it began to unravel—and is willing to come in from Luxembourg to help keep it going on a social level if nothing else, but he is in the minority. Axel Bjornson is bound for Kenya; maybe this time he’ll find what he’s looking for; the English don’t seem worried about his politics the way the Americans are.” He paused to allow Young to ask the question that was clearly burgeoning in his mind.