The Golden (28 page)

Not long after
sunrise someone emerged from the castle. A very tall, very slim
someone dressed in a long gray skirt and a dark blue shawl that
covered her head and shoulders, and shadowed her face. Alexandra.
Beheim had no doubt that it was she, but was perplexed by the
hesitancy with which she approached the body, stopping and starting,
casting quick glances overhead, displaying none of the calculation
that he would have predicted. And when, instead of going directly to
the body, she negotiated a wide circle around it, paying no attention
to it whatsoever, and went plunging about in the tall grass, pausing
now and again to peer into the pine woods and call his name, he did
not know how to take this.

“Michel!”
she cried. “Where are you?”

She darted a
glance toward the castle.

“Damn you,
Michel!” she shouted. “Show yourself! We may not have
much time!”

She stumbled,
fell, disappeared into a grass-filled depression; then she staggered
to her feet. The shawl had slipped down onto her shoulders, revealing
the spill of her auburn hair, and in the instant before she pulled it
back over her head, Beheim saw a look of abject terror on her face.
She stood without moving, and he had the idea that she was fighting
for control—again, this was not behavior he would associate
with the murderer, who would, he surmised, be acclimated to this
environment. She was reacting in the same way that he had when he
first experienced daylight. Yet when she peered into his hiding
place, he knew she must have detected some sign of him, his heartbeat
perhaps, and he got to his knees, ready to run. And when she came
toward him, he jumped to his feet and backed away.

“Stay
down, you idiot!” she said. “You’ll be seen!”

She stumbled and
fell once again, and rather than regaining her feet, crawled toward
him through the high grass. Fear was written in her tightened mouth
and round eyes. Nevertheless he continued his retreat.

“What in
perdition’s name is wrong with you?” she said. “Get
down!”

She sank to her
knees in the grass, gazing up at him balefully; but then her
expression softened and she reached out a hand as if to give him a
caress. He did not allow it, retreating even farther away, and she
stared at him in obvious confusion.

“What’s
the matter?” she asked. “Why are you behaving this way?”

“How do
you expect me to behave? Fawning, pawing you? Begging for a kiss?”

“I think
some show of affection would be appropriate,” she said stiffly.
“After all, we—”

“We what?
I’d like to hear your interpretation of the event.”

“We made
love,” she said after a pause, her voice gone small. “At
least that’s what I did.”

He could find
nothing of a disingenuous character in her words, in any facet of her
reaction, and he wanted to believe her; but belief was not in him.

“I’d
like to hear your interpretation,” she said.

“What I
thought about it has no bearing on this,” he said. “I did
what you wanted me to do. That should be enough for you.”

“Michel . . .”
she began; then she broke it off and gazed despondently back toward
the castle. “Sit down. Somebody will see you.”

He made no move
to obey.

“Are you
deaf?” she said. “You’ll be seen if you keep
standing there like a damned statue!”

Puzzled, still
uncertain of her, but admitting to a sliver of uncertainty concerning
her guilt, Beheim dropped into a squat, maintaining the distance
between them.

Alexandra
reordered the shawl about her face and sighed. “How can you
stand this?” she said dispiritedly. “It’s
horrible!” Her head gave a twitch, as if she had thought to
glance up at the sun but had thwarted the impulse.

“It
becomes less difficult with time,” Beheim said. “What are
you doing here?”

“I’m
out for a Sunday stroll!” She gave him a pitying look. “Do
you believe I would willingly experience this . . .
this hallucination? The Patriarch sent me to witness your triumph.”
She colored this word
triumph
with heavy sarcasm.

He remained
silent, studying her, not yet convinced; he had expected that
Christina would be the Patriarch’s agent. Alexandra, watching
him, burst into laughter.

“You
think
I
committed the murder, don’t you?” she said.
“Is that the reason you’re acting so coldly toward me?”
She shook her head in disbelief. “That’s right! I’m
the one! I’m the madwoman who tore the Golden apart just to
have a taste of her blood. And naturally, being guilty, I’d be
the one to steer you onto the right course.”

“You may
not have had that course in mind,” Beheim said angrily. “In
fact, even if you are innocent, I don’t think you did. You knew
nothing of Felipe’s researches. What did you really want to
happen?”

“I told
you! Before we made love, I told you everything! You knew you were
taking a chance. You knew there was the possibility of disaster.”

“Perhaps
you told me some of it, but not all. Did you want Felipe to kill me
so as to compromise Agenor?”

At the sound of
Felipe’s name, she grew somber. “I did not mean for him
to kill you. I could hardly have expected that. But neither did I
hope for the opposite. I’ve already explained all that to you,
but obviously you’ve dismissed what I told you as being part of
some devious scheme in which I sought to ensnare you.”

He chose to
ignore her last comment. “I had no choice but to kill him.
Felipe and Dolores intended to kill me.”

“It’s
not important why you did it,” she said in a brittle tone. “In
fact, I suppose you’ve done me a great favor, you have raised
me high. But that will count for little with others of my branch.”

“I wonder
how they will greet the news that it was you who sent me to Felipe’s
apartments.”

“Badly, I
expect,” she said with sudden venom. “You make a strong
case for my preventing that story from being spread. And since you
are the only one who can tell it . . . “Yet you
must bear witness to the Patriarch. What will you tell him? That you
settled a personal grievance rather than letting his will be done?
You have as little choice in this as have I.”

Her anger faded
as quickly as it had come. She regarded him glumly for a few counts,
then glanced down at the grass; she plucked up a blade, rubbed it
between her fingers.

“What are
you thinking?” he asked.

“I recall
asking you that same question not so long ago. You had some
difficulty in answering it.”

“And I
recall you telling me that it was the easiest question of all to
answer, unless one had something to hide.”

“I’ve
nothing to hide.” She continued fingering the grass blade, her
head down, hair partially obscuring her face. “I had hopes,
Michel. That was what I was thinking just now. I was thinking about
those hopes, about how rare they were, how rare were the moments that
inspired them. Does that seem foolish to you?”

“No, not
if those hopes and moments truly existed.”

“How can
you doubt that they did?”

“I nearly
died following your advice. Isn’t that—”

“It wasn’t
advice I offered. It was far more than that.”

“Whatever
it was, I nearly died because of it. Reason enough to raise some
doubts about the purpose of your counsel, wouldn’t you say?”

Her eyes locked
on Beheim, and he was again struck by the exotic character of her
face, those green eyes, the extraordinarily wide mouth, the
cheekbones as abrupt as scars.

“Agenor
told me you could be pigheaded,” she said. “Yet he also
said that logic would never fail to sway you. Apparently he is not
all-seeing.”

“What is
your relationship with Agenor?”

“Why
should I tell you anything? To have you denounce me for a liar or
worse? You were a policeman too long. You suspect even the good that
comes to you.”

“I won’t
deny that I’ve a suspicious nature,” he said. “As
to whether or not I’ve had reason for my suspicions, that’s
another story.”

She plucked up a
handful of grass, let the wind take it, all but a few stalks that
remained lying on her palm in a configuration that reminded him of a
cryptogram. That more than anything she had said or done, the way she
watched the grass drift away through the air, wonderingly, with
touching attentiveness, like a child seeing something simple and
marvelous for the first time, that persuaded him that she had not
been exposed to the daylight for a very long time, that she could not
have committed the murder.

“You don’t
have to tell me,” he said. “It’s probably
unimportant. I’m not sure any longer why I want to know these
things. Habit, I guess.”

“I don’t
believe it’s important, either,” she said. “Agenor
is not himself these days. He rambles, he loses track. It would be
foolish to give much weight to the things he does.” She brushed
something off her skirt. “I’ve no idea how he would
describe our relationship. We have political views in common, but
little else. After the murder he came to me distraught, more so than
I have ever seen him. He asked if I knew anything that might help you
with the investigation. He was afraid he had put you in a desperate
position. I told him I might be able to help. Of course I had my own
ends in mind. As I told you, I hoped you would find something to
discredit Felipe. The bottle cap was a happy coincidence. Yet I will
never believe he had anything to do with the murder. That was not his
way. Had he lusted for special blood, he would have bred his own
Golden. Indeed, I know he was considering doing just that. Look
here.”

From a
voluminous pocket in her skirt, she removed a leather folder that
Beheim recognized as Felipe’s journal. He was distressed, not
because she had stolen it, but because he had not thought to steal it
himself.

She began
leafing through the loose papers inside, but he said, “Don’t
bother showing me. I believe you.”

It all made
sense, he thought, though sense of an extremely sketchy sort. He
could not understand why Agenor had bothered to seek an alliance.
Instinct, perhaps. Or had he known of Felipe’s researches?
Could he have suspected that the murder had been committed during
daylight? If so, why then had he not suggested as much to Beheim?

There was no
point, he decided, in further analysis. He would have to wait and see
if his plan bore fruit. An unlikely prospect. It was evident that he
had misread most of the clues and all the tendencies of the case.

He settled
himself beside Alexandra, still wary of her, but accepting her for
the time as, if not a lover, then a neutral observer, possibly an
ally. He did not know if he could trust her in a difficult situation.

“What do
you want from all this?” she asked him.

He laughed
bitterly. “I’m hardly in a position to want anything. I’m
just trying to survive.”

She appeared to
be waiting for him to continue, to explain, but he did not feel in
the mood to rehash his experiences of the past twenty-four hours.

“Well,”
she said finally, “what would you want if wanting were your
motive?”

“Why does
that interest you?”

“I’m
interested to see what we might have in common. Perhaps we will
become friends again.”

“Friends?
Is that what we were?”

“It will
do for now.”

“I don’t
think I’ve heard the word ‘friend’ used since I
became part of the Family.”

“It has, I
will admit, something of a different meaning to most of us. But
friendship and membership in the Family are not mutually exclusive.”

With the shawl
shading her face, she really looked quite beautiful, softer and more
vulnerable than women of the Family were wont to look. But Beheim had
learned to distrust beauty. He turned his eyes to the battlements of
the castle high above, rearing dark against the pale sky. A few
threads of gray cloud were gathering over the valley, netting a
portion of the blue, and farther to the west, a flight of blackbirds
whirled up from a copse, appearing as if an invisible hand were
scattering the ashes of a giant.

“I’m
not sure,” he said. “I don’t suppose I know enough
to have reasonable wants at this juncture. But one thing I’m
clear on. I want more than what I’ve been told is possible to
want. I want something that would strike most of our cousins as being
out of character. If I were to try to name it now, I would most
likely seem foolish. Yet it is not a foolish thing to want. I’m
clear on that as well.”

She remained
silent for a few seconds, then said, “Not a bad answer. I’ve
felt that way myself.”

“Indeed?”
he snapped. “I imagine it’s just another phase I’m
passing through.”

“Don’t
be an ass, Michel! I’m trying to befriend you, to help you.”

“First and
foremost, you’re trying to help yourself.”

“Granted.
But our interests coincide in this instance. They have from the
beginning. We can help each other. We’d be fools not to. No
matter how isolated an instance was our time together two nights ago,
it had to signify something. Some form of intuitive trust at the very
least.”

“Trust,”
he said thoughtfully, looking out across the field at the castle,
like a god in its gray decrepitude and huge, imponderable mass.

“Yes, what
of it?”

“I was
considering whether or not I valued it least of all the bonds that
could unite us.”

She gave no
response, and he glanced at her. She was staring with disgust at a
beetle—perhaps the same one he had flicked away—that was
crawling along the hem of her skirt. He supposed that her disgust was
part and parcel of her distaste for all the daylight world; but there
was something so fabulously normal about her reaction, so womanly, he
laughed and laughed. Yet when she asked him why he was laughing at
her, he felt so much, relief, hope, fugitive strands of deeper
emotions, once again he was not certain that he knew the answer.