The Wolfman (10 page)

Sir John liked the sense of age that the house represented; he valued its permanence, treasured its strength. In many ways it matched his own life: something that had become wiser and stronger from age rather than weaker. Though there were cobwebs in the high corners and finches in the attic, the essential house was strong. As strong as ever. Just as Sir John was strong. As strong as he had ever been, age notwithstanding.

He teased music from the keys. Samson sat beside him, his liquid brown eyes fixed on his master’s pale hands, his great ears alert to every sound in the house. When Lawrence had stopped outside of Gwen’s room, Samson had heard the shift of weight on the floorboards; when Lawrence had hastened to his own room and closed the door, Samson had noted each covert footfall. The dog was attuned to Talbot Hall. When he heard Gwen’s softer footfalls cross the hallway, Samson chuffed quietly.

Sir John, never missing a note, flicked a glance at the dog and then looked at the ceiling with a knowing smile.

As he played his smile never once faltered.

L
AWRENCE SLOUCHED DOWN
the hall and threw himself into a chair that was one of a matched pair in a conversational nook. Years ago that nook had been the chart room of
The Captain
as Lord Nelson planned the destruction of the French fleet at Trafalgar. Lawrence was always Nelson, Ben was always one of his fighting
captains. At other times the nook was a straw hut where Robinson Crusoe—Lawrence—and Friday—Ben—planned how best to deal with pirates. As he waited for Gwen, Lawrence bent and looked at the underside of the armrest and sure enough the initials were still there. BT and LT, carved with fingernails and long since varnished over. It made him smile.

“Mr. Talbot?”

He had been so lost in reverie that he hadn’t heard her approach and he shot to his feet as nervously as a young heir at a debutante’s ball. But the actor in him rebelled at the foolishness and immediately pulled his features into a smooth smile.

“Miss Conliffe.”

“Thank you for coming,” she said as he ushered her to the adjoining seat. She arranged her tightly cinched brocade robe primly. Lawrence was fully aware of the maid lingering down the hall, her face as stern as a beadle’s, arms folded across her considerable bosom. Lawrence had no wish to challenge such ferocity.

“I’m sorry we’re meeting like this.” He reached beside the chair and lifted the small satchel of Ben’s belongings.

“These were Ben’s. He’d want you to have them.”

But it was immediately clear that she recognized the bag. Her eyes glistened as she accepted it, and when she lay it upon her lap she caressed the worn leather. Then she opened it and removed the daguerreotype picture of herself. The memory of it, perhaps of the happy day on which it was taken, struck her hard and a sob hitched through her chest. Tears welled in her eyes.

“If . . . if there’s anything you need,” Lawrence said, feeling suddenly large and clumsy. “Anything at all, please let me know.”

She looked up from the picture and Lawrence could see her eyes transform from the vulnerability of tears to something harder and colder.

“I want to know what happened to him,” she said, and there was no tremble in her voice.

“So do I. And I’ll do everything I can.”

Those words, that promise, broke the fragile resolve and she disintegrated into tears. He moved quickly to sit beside her, drew her into the circle of his arms, and caressed her head as she buried her face into the hollow of his throat and wept.

The maid took a single defensive step toward them, but Lawrence caught her glance and gave a mild shake of his head. The maid paused, watching her mistress, then nodded and resumed her post.

Lawrence held Gwen as she cried. The sobs were so deep, the grief so huge and immediate that he wondered if she had been able to let it out before now. Certainly Sir John offered no haven of a shoulder to cry on. Lawrence felt awful for not being able to help, but he was glad he could do at least this much. Her tears burned against his throat like acid and he fought to keep his own sobs from tearing free of his chest.

L
awrence knew that he would not be sleeping much tonight, if at all. Too much had happened. Too much was still happening. His brother’s funeral was tomorrow, and his brother’s fiancée was just down the hall. Lawrence’s thoughts flowed like liquid mercury from one to the other, from grief at his loss and guilt over his desires. Sleep be damned.

He paced the length of his room over and over again, sipping too much whiskey, frowning at the shadows, imagining laughter and boyhood chatter from years ago. All of his and Ben’s possessions were still in that room. When Lawrence had gone away after their mother’s death Ben apparently moved across the hall and left every reminder of childhood behind. Shelves filled with clockwork toys and tin soldiers and tin weapons surrounded him. A clothes tree in a corner still held red cloaks from their adventures as Roman soldiers and oilskins in which they walked the decks of imaginary ships. A broken rocking horse leaned against a wall near a cricket bat and a pile of chipped building blocks. All the colors had paled like a faded photograph . . . like his own memories, which had lost so much clarity and texture as the years had burned away.

In the distance, miles beyond the estate, there was the sound of thunder, low and mean like an old dragon
clearing its throat. Lawrence almost smiled, thinking of how Ben had convinced him that thunder was the voice of dragons, but then another thought raked its claws through that image. The thunder rumbled again and Lawrence stood there, staring at the big four-poster bed, remembering thoughts he had hoped never to revisit. Never, especially not here. . . .

T
HUNDER GROWLED IN
the east and the shaking of the old house’s timbers jolted young Lawrence Talbot out of a dream of dragons. His heart was in his throat and he crept out of his bed and crossed the cold floor to the edge of Ben’s bed. He bent low over the sleeping form and hissed, “Ben! Wake up!”

“Ug . . . it’s late . . . I’m asleep . . .”

Lawrence shook him by the shoulder. “I heard something.”

Ben propped himself up on his elbows and listened, eyes still closed. “It’s just the storm,” he said and then collapsed back onto the bed and pulled the covers up over his head. A buzzing snore came faintly from beneath the blanket.

Lawrence made a frustrated face but he did not retreat back to his own bed. Instead he stood there, still bent over, his head cocked to listen.

There it was again. A strange sound. More of a growl than a rumble, but muffled. Was it outside the house . . . or
inside
? He crept to the door of their room and turned the handle as quietly as he could, trying to make sense of what he had heard.

Only silence greeted his straining ear.

Summing up all of his meager courage, Lawrence pulled the door open and stepped into the hall with all
the care of someone putting a foot onto thin lake ice. He gradually shifted his weight, willing the floorboards not to creak. The hallway seemed a mile long and as lightning flashed outside the twist of shadows made it seem as if the rows of deer heads had turned toward him, their glass eyes searching for this pale intruder.

Lawrence shuffled sideways, his back to the wall, turning front and back to make sure that all of the shadows were just empty air, that nothing was hiding there waiting to reach out a taloned hand. On many wild nights he had dreamed of monsters in the dark—strange, shapeless creatures that skulked out of the black forest, sniffing for tender meat. Father and Singh always smiled at his stories, assuring him that the woods were safe and the house was a fortress, but Lawrence always feared that they were saying that just to fool him. To protect him from the truth. That maybe there were monsters out there in the dark.

Thunder rattled the windows and in the heart of their din Lawrence thought he heard the other sound, the one that had pulled him from his sleep. That indefinable noise that he knew was made by something that should not be here. At the top of the stairs he paused, his tongue nervously licking his dry lips. Should he wake up father?

No! Father was away on business.

The thought terrified Lawrence. Why would Father go away when a storm was coming? Father had his guns, he had shot bears and boars and all manner of creatures. Surely Father was unafraid of anything in the woods . . . but now the truth that his hero and protector was
not
here chilled Lawrence to his core.

What about Singh?

But the Sikh’s room was on the other side of the Hall; with all these shadows it might as well be on the dark side of the moon.

Thunder slammed a fist against the walls and the whole house shook. Lawrence looked over his shoulders and he could swear that the deer heads had turned toward him, their antlers sharp as knives, their eyes glaring at him with unnatural ferocity. He backed quickly away, moving backward down the stairs. First a few steps, then more, and when the next thunderclap struck he whirled and ran down the rest of the winding stairwell, his bare feet slapping desperately on the icy wood. Outside, the storm had brought wind with it and it howled through every crack in the walls and under every door. The wind rose and rose until it was a piercing shriek and Lawrence wanted to stop up his ears, but at the same time he felt
drawn
to it. It called to him and screamed at him and tore at the night.

Lawrence ran down the last of the stairs and raced along the side passage, away from the great front door, heading toward the back door that led into his mother’s glass house garden. She would not be there this late, of course, but it was a place where she always felt safe, and where she read to Lawrence and Ben. Even with all its glass walls it felt more like a fortress to him than this pile of wood and rock; so he tore along, chased by shadows, pounded by thunder. And the wind’s wail continued to build to a banshee shriek.

Lightning flashed so brightly that the corridor was suddenly stark whites and blacks, and it outlined every curl and twist in the ornate wrought iron of the garden door. The reflection turned each pane of glass in the double doors to milky opacity, and then the lightning vanished and the doors were plunged into darkness. But not before Lawrence had found them and grasped the smooth, cold, familiar curves of the handles.

More thunder, and the wail of the wind was a white-hot needle in his brain.

As Lawrence thrust open the doors the wail spiked even higher and for a terrible moment he thought that the sound was a scream and not the wind at all. He stepped tentatively into the garden and winds buffeted him, and then he realized why he could hear the wind so well—the glass house doors were opened to the natural garden beyond. The exterior doors stood open, moving back and forth as waves of rain shoved at them. The glass house was soaked and frigid water washed around Lawrence’s ankles, sending chills up his flesh in waves. And the wails continued. Hypnotized by the moment, lost in the dark sorcery of wind and thunder and rain and lightning, Lawrence moved forward as if in a dream, unable to stop his frozen feet, his eyes blinking as he stepped into the spray of rain by the doors to the outside garden.

Thunder struck again and again, and between the bursts he could hear the wail. Lawrence stopped.

The world stopped.

He looked down at the water flowing toward him from the edge of the patio. It was black with shadows, but even when the lightning flashed it remained black.