The Golden (29 page)

Chapter
Twenty-One

T
he sun, a huge, golden, blistered sac of light, edged higher toward
the top of the sky; gray clouds continued to gather over the valley.
They talked intermittently, casual talk for the most part, Alexandra
expressing revulsion for things of the day, having bouts of extreme
anxiety, and Beheim comforting her by relating his earlier
experiences. They shied away from speaking of what had happened in
the white room, on the great carved bed, but it was there between
them, almost palpable, a third presence in which they both had a part
that sat by their sides and added an accent of warmth to their
conversation. Before long they heard a church bell tolling noon, and
as the last peal had died away, a man dressed in black came walking
around the curve of the castle wall and stood in the shadow of the
wall, gazing out toward the spot where the body of the Golden’s
companion lay. He wore trousers, jacket, a wide-brimmed hat, and had
on tinted spectacles. Most likely, Beheim thought, by waiting he was
trying to tempt anyone watching into showing themselves, thinking
that he could retreat into the castle before his identity was
discovered. At length he came forward into the light. It seemed to
Beheim that his gait was familiar, the way he swung his left arm
farther than his right, and how his head fell slightly to the right
as if to counterbalance the swing of the left arm. With each and
every step, the man’s presence struck new chords of
familiarity. Beheim held his breath, strained his eyes, peering
between blades of grass. The tension was such that he felt he was
being pressed in a vise. And when at last he recognized the man, when
he saw the white hair feathering from beneath the hat, when the
craggy nobility of the features became apparent, he refused to
believe the evidence of his senses.

“Agenor!”
breathed Alexandra. “It’s Agenor!”

“No,”
he said, trying to put his faith in denial. “No, it couldn’t
be.”

She caught his
wrist. “It is! Look! It’s him!”

Agenor had
stopped about five yards from the body; he turned his head in a slow
arc, scanning the woods for movement. From his pocket he withdrew a
scarf. After another look around, he tied the scarf over his nose and
mouth, and stepped close to the body.

“What will
you do?” whispered Alexandra.

“Nothing,”
Beheim said, still shaken. “I’ll report what I’ve
seen to the Patriarch. Or you can make the report. You’re his
agent.”

“It’s
not enough. You have to force him to confess to the murder. If you
don’t, he may be able to invent an excuse for being here.”

“What
possible excuse could there be?” Yet even as he said these
words Beheim found himself believing that Agenor would be able to
justify his presence. No scenario in which he was the murderer held
water. It was absurd, Beheim thought; he would not condemn him
without a hearing. And yet if Agenor was the murderer—and he
had to admit to the possibility—then by giving him a hearing,
he would be exposing himself to grave danger. He had been prepared
for this when he had assumed Alexandra to be the guilty one, but
Agenor was a far more formidable foe, and all of Beheim’s
preparations, his pits, his dilution of the drug, now seemed
inadequate. What if Agenor had his own supply of the drug?

Alexandra was
staring at him expectantly, those lustrous green eyes holding his
gaze, but exerting no pressure of will.

“Very
well,” he said. “But keep clear of him. If he manages to
overcome me, you alone can bear witness to this. If he attacks, you
must assume he is guilty and return to the castle. Do you
understand?”

She nodded,
touched his hand—for luck, he thought, for assurance. He almost
trusted her.

Standing up from
the grasses that had hidden him, Beheim felt that he had grown
enormous, that he was towering over the valley, the woods and rivers,
towering over even the circumstance of murder, dwarfed only by the
imponderable tonnage of Castle Banat. The sight of Agenor—his
spectacles now removed—bending over the corpse and plucking at
its clothing seemed no different than the sight of anyone he had ever
arrested in the moment before the moment of truth. The old man looked
vulnerable, small, oblivious to the fate about to close its jaws on
him, and it was from this perspective, in this frame of mind, that
Beheim spoke to him, saying as he walked toward him, “Nice day
for a walk, eh?”

Agenor let out a
yelp of alarm, dropping the tinted spectacles, and sprang to his
feet. He gaped at Beheim for a second, but then his features relaxed,
composed themselves into a calm mask.

Guilty, thought
Beheim, stopping perhaps twenty feet away. Guilty as the Devil.

“Michel!”
said Agenor. “I’m surprised to see you here. I’d
assumed you were still involved in your interrogations. A servant
told me about this.” He gestured at the body. “So I
thought I’d investigate. See what was up. I believe”—his
brow furrowed as if in deep contemplation—“that this may
be the body of the Golden’s companion.”

“It won’t
do, my lord,” Beheim said. “Really. It won’t do at
all.”

Agenor’s
face was washed over by a succession of emotions: defiance, rage,
sadness. “No,” he said at last, his voice almost
inaudible. “No, I don’t imagine it will.”

Wind laid
undulant lines across the field, rippling and striping the tall
grasses; the grass made a long, hissing sigh.

With a rueful
laugh, Agenor looked up to the sun, then he waved at it. “Well,”
he said breezily, “tell me your opinion, Michel. Can we suffer
this on a daily basis? Is it worth all the effort?”

Beheim had no
answer for him.

Agenor’s
Adam’s apple bobbed reflexively. “It seems I’ve
gotten what I wanted. Whether I truly wanted it or not.”

Beheim did not
understand this statement, but he had no desire to pursue the matter.
Each second he was assaulted by a complex of feelings, old feelings
of devotion and allegiance, new ones of anger and resentment at
Agenor’s betrayal. “Will you come back with me to the
castle, lord?”

“The
castle.” Agenor swept off his hat, ran a hand through his thick
white hair. “Yes, well. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
I would like to. In fact, I intended to. But I simply can’t.”
He glanced up at Beheim. “I wondered if this was a trap. I
suppose it was idiotic of me not to recognize it for one.”

“My lord,
if you do not return with me now, you will surely die.”

“At your
hands?” Haughtily. “I think not.”

“I diluted
Felipe’s drug, my lord. I cannot guarantee that you have more
than a few minutes of life remaining.”

All sternness
and rigor drained from Agenor’s face, and it appeared his
features would dissolve, melt like heated wax, and flow off the bone
into a puddle. Then he regained his composure. “That is a lie.”

“Your
pardon, lord, but what would be the virtue of such a lie? I did not
know the murderer’s identity. I wished to protect myself.
Dilution of the drug was my sole means of protection in the face of
powerful enemies.” Beheim took a step forward, suddenly
wanting—despite everything—to save the old man. “Time
grows short, my lord. I would not see you die in such ignominy.”

“Ah, but
it is precisely the death I sought! And not an ignominious one at
all.” Agenor, to Beheim’s consternation, seemed merry,
giddy with the prospect of immolation; once again he looked up to the
sun. “If, indeed, you are telling the truth, and if, in that
case, you knew what you were doing when you diluted the drug, which I
doubt, I still do not believe that you will ever completely
understand the irony of this moment.”

“Then
explain it to me, lord, if explanation pleases you. But be swift, I
caution you.”

“Yes,
perhaps I should explain. If for no other reason than that you will
be able to confirm my folly.” Agenor edged a step closer to
Beheim, a surreptitious movement that put him on the alert. “You
see, my friend, I have been experiencing certain—how shall I
put it?—certain discomforts of late. Mental difficulties. A
tendency toward the erratic, a drifting in and out of delusion. I
recognized these to be symptoms of the changes that attend the
passage from one stage of this peculiar eternity into the next, and I
must tell you I did not welcome them. They seemed like maladies, the
products of a curse. Therefore, unwilling to subject myself to these
changes, and gripped by the blackest of depressions, I determined to
end my life.”

Agenor shifted
nearer, and Beheim prepared to run. He was feeling a bit separate
from the world, light-headed, but this did not concern him. He was
fascinated by Agenor’s arrogance, his implicit denial of a
circumstance that had placed him in mortal peril. It did not greatly
surprise him, though; it was in accord with the Family’s
penchant for self-destruction.

“It was
not a difficult decision,” said Agenor. “But implementing
the decision, that was another matter entirely. I did not wish my
death to be the mere spending of a life, and I must also admit to a
degree of cowardice. Then one morning—I had been experimenting
with Felipe’s drug—after returning from a walk outside
the castle walls, I was passing the Golden’s chamber, and it
occurred to me that she could serve as the agency of my death. I
thought this a stroke of genius. I had always aspired to participate
in a Decanting, and now I could satisfy this yearning. I knew the
Patriarch would not permit such a breach of tradition to go
unpunished. He would sentence me to an Illumination. And therein, I
realized, lay the value of my death. I would have questions put to me
that would focus the dying light of my mind on the particular portion
of the future that has so concerned me these past years: the question
of whether the Family should abandon the West and go into the East
for safety.”

Beheim tried to
take a step away, but he felt rooted to the spot. Agenor’s tall
black figure rippled like something seen through flame, and his voice
had the resonance of a great bell; its vibrations dizzied Beheim,
made him slow and uncaring.

“I planned
to take a sip, no more. Only a sip. But once I had tasted the Golden
I was unable to stop. Oh, Michel, what a flavor the blood had! And it
was not the flavor alone that commanded me. There were visions. It
was as if I had become the Golden, as if by drinking I flowed along
the river of her life and knew . . . no, not knew.
Felt! I felt all her womanly secrets, the hot pleasure waked by a
first kiss, her monthly pains, her sharp virginal longings. I
degraded myself in my abuse of her. And so with a single act of
violence I rejected centuries of temperate life and scholarly ideals.
When I saw what I had done, my desire for death grew stronger, and I
set in motion a scheme that would both punish me and elevate you. You
see, I believed that despite your inexperience you were the one who
should take my place, that you would become the voice in our Family
for policies of reason and restraint. I intended to lead you slowly
toward the conclusion of my guilt, to make it look as though your
brilliance had won the day. But now it appears that my decision to
die was not a firm one.”

He cocked his
head as if hearing an inner voice and made a scratchy noise in his
throat, as if what he had heard had afforded him mild surprise. His
manner of speaking grew increasingly halting and distracted.

“It was
never firm. Never. I . . . I understand that now. My
death wish, if you will, was merely another symptom of the mental
erraticism that had so depressed me, a kind of morbid playfulness.
Games. I was playing games. With myself, I suppose. With everyone,
and everything. And my convoluted attempt at achieving death by means
of your investigation, that, too, was a symptom. A game. I both did
and did not want to die, you see. Equally attractive ends. So I
constructed this scenario against which to play out my ambivalence.
Even at this moment I am flirting with the ideas of death and noble
sacrifice. But—” a cracked laugh—“I will not
do more than flirt with them.”

Agenor, Beheim
realized, had moved quite close to him, less than an arm’s
length away. His white hair looked bright as flame. The deepened
lines on his brow seemed to write an epic of concern, of deep study;
his eyes were hooded, brooding; but there was a febrile slackness to
his mouth that spoke of weakness, indulgence, an inner unraveling.
That expression was a signal of terrible danger—Beheim knew it
well. But all his observations and recognitions were futile. He could
not stir a step. Agenor’s lips parted in a slowly developing
smile to reveal his fangs, and Beheim felt that he was shriveling
away inside himself, as helpless as a bird before a serpent.

Then something
came whistling down onto the side of Agenor’s head, something
that impacted with a solid
thunk
. He screamed and staggered
away. Blood stained his white hair, rilled in a heavy flow down his
cheek and jaw, and Alexandra, her hair in disarray, looking half-mad
herself with fear, dropped the dead bough with which she had struck
him and caught Beheim’s hand and pulled him toward the woods.
Still dazed, he struggled against her. She shouted, slapped his face,
and stung to alertness, he let her drag him along, running clumsily
over the uneven ground, lurching sideways whenever he struck a
depression, flailing his arms to maintain balance. There was a
roaring at his back, a sound such as a wounded animal might have
made.

They burst
through a fringe of chokecherry into shaggy green pines, dappled
sunlight, ferns, boulders protruding from a cover of dead needles,
the land sloping away sharply. Alexandra started straight downhill,
towing Beheim along, but as they descended the steep slope,
remembering the pits, he said, “No, this way!” and turned
her back uphill, setting a course roughly parallel to the edge of the
woods. The sunlight confused him. Every place looked more or less
alike, masses of dark green and pine trunks glowing coppery in the
strong light, and they were moving so quickly, so erratically,
ducking left and right, he became uncertain as to where the pits lay.
They were close at hand, he was sure, but he could not pinpoint their
location. He could hear Agenor breaking through the bushes not far
behind, and once again he thought how inadequate his preparation had
been. The pits, even if he were able to find them, would likely be
useless. And who knew how long Felipe’s drug, even diluted,
would protect Agenor?