Waiting for the Galactic Bus (13 page)

“There’s a flag, Dane. Someone’s home.”

“No one is there. But one will come.”

The ubiquitous music turned rhythmic as they jolted down the last slope and on toward the drawbridge. They crossed it, passed under the portcullis across a cobbled courtyard and up a spiraling set of damp steps, Dane’s boots ringing on the stone. They moved down a long, gloomy corridor toward a widening flicker of light.

“Told you someone’s here.”

“There’s always a light,” Dane answered. “And someone always comes.”

“Your folks?”

“No.”

The vast hall stretched away before Charity, an ocean of dark with one small island of light from a wall sconce. Dane took the torch and set it to logs and kindling laid in the huge fireplace. With more light came welcoming warmth. Giant shadow snakes danced up the high walls. Charity could see the size of the hall now, big as the Plattsville High School gym. Over the mantel a single lion’s head glared at her in bas-relief. Just under it, Charity caught the transient gleam of light on cold metal. All of it gloomy and depressing; yet that odd, steady light followed Dane. Like the music, it must be awfully annoying, but Dane seemed to accept it as part of himself like Roy’s camouflage fatigues.

“We sort of never get hungry here, do we?”

“No. Not for food.” Dane left her by the fire and vanished into the gloom. He emerged again carrying something, which he held out to Charity: the most gorgeous pearl-gray velvet gown she’d ever drooled over in a movie or on the cover of a paperback romance. She thrilled to the sensual crush of the material. The neckline alone was illegal. “It’s beeyootiful! Where’d you find it?”

“My mother’s.”

“Oh, Dane, I couldn’t.”

“Of course you can. It’s yours.”

“All right. Turn your back and I’ll give you back your vest.” Charity let the luxurious weight of the velvet fall about and caress her body. What could be so bad for people who can dress like this? she wondered with a shade of mean envy. At least they had fancy problems. “Oh, it’s really
neat,
Dane. Thank you very much.”

“Stay by the fire. Stay in the light.” Dane prowled the shadows beyond their fire, the musical voice coming out of gloom. “This was my father’s house, seat and symbol of that honor to which he hoped I might aspire. Remember me in your prayers, Charity. Say that when I might have mattered, I would not. That even now I need to act and choose when action mocks me with futility.”

All that was pretty, but she did wish he could talk a little plainer so she wouldn’t feel like a fool trying to answer what she could barely understand.

“Do you know poetry, girl?”

“Just what we had to read in school. Woody Barnes gave me a book of poems for my birthday once.” By Rod somebody, she recalled imperfectly, though one of them was enough. It was about a man in love with a man, which she didn’t approve of that at all and didn’t bother with the rest. Anyway, why was Dane going on like this, so far away from her? “Come sit by the fire, it’s real toasty now.”

Dane knelt by Charity. Even kneeling he conveyed the effect of a taut athletic effort, like Gene Kelly. But now Charity could see the firelight dancing in his eyes and understood very well the feelings they stirred.

“There was a poet of Italy,” Dane said, “who wrote of hell for those who changed allegiance or had none. Ever must they pursue, this way and that through a mist, one banner that ever eluded them. In this place I should have honored am I damned ever to find it empty, ever to lose and know too late what winning might have been.” The fine head bowed over his knee. “Pray for me.”

His voice was like an open wound. Charity’s heart opened and reached for his pain, closed tight around it. “Dane, I’m sorry.”

He flung himself on his back, searching the darkness above for a hope that would not be there.

“You’re crying. I never saw Roy cry.” He would have let himself be run over first, though tears took nothing from Dane’s manhood. “He was my boyfriend.”

“The boy who loved you?”

“Yes. Well, just that once.”

“Oh, there’s the sin.” Dane wound his fingers in her hair. “That such a woman was loved only once.”

When he drew her down to him, Charity knew the meager statistic was about to rise and loved the whole notion. She slid her arms around Dane’s neck while the violins overhead haunted them with melody. “I don’t want you to hurt, Dane.”

“Or I you. We’ll help each other.” His body moved against hers, sending a different heat through every part of her. This was a fringe benefit she hadn’t counted on.

“Can we? Even dead and all?”

“Why not feast on the lamb?” Dane chuckled with the dry ghost of humor. “We’ve already been hanged for the sheep.”

“Sure enough,” she whispered against his lips. “Way I figure, they owe us.”

    14   

Enter Nemesis, pursuing

Something woke her.

The fire had burned low. She lay with her head on Dane’s arm in a soft glow from the embers. Then Dane gently slid his arm away. She felt his movement. When she turned over, he was dressing rapidly.

“Did you hear it?” he muttered.

“Something woke me up.”

“Yes.” Dane threw on the sheepskin and thrust his feet into boots. “They have found me. They will not do’t in the dark.” He threw another log on the fire in a shower of sparks, then came back to Charity. “Stay in the shadows. Do not speak or cry out at what you see. All was foreordained.” He handed her the gown with a remembrance of their earlier tenderness. “I should have known you in life. But it is enough.”

“There wasn’t anybody like you in Plattsville,” she blurted — an admission of wonder and regret not unmixed with a certain relief. Dane was pure electricity, ten times what Roy would ever be or even Woody, but a woman could get very tired loving a raw wire. Roy and Woody she understood; besides, he might not even be Protestant.

“Well, then, come on,” Dane challenged the dark. “Come an make an end.” His hand swept over the mantel and came away with a magnificent rapier that flashed in an arc of light.
“Listen!”

Hurrying into her gown under a muted cadence from plucked bass strings, Charity heard the hollow echo of a male tread over the courtyard stones — up the stairs, striding toward the hall. Illumined in his own light, Dane bounded across the vast chamber onto a low dais, whirling, rapier held high.

“Nemesis, come! And you unfeeling stars, I hurl defiance for reply, and cast into the balance for the world to see, my soul’gainst thy insensate cruelty.”

As Dane’s ringing challenge died away, Charity started at the answer, a blast of horns descending in a minor mode. Another spotlight revealed a figure leaning, negligent but coiled, against the entrance arch. Even in apparent relaxation the black-clad stranger had about him the same dangerous energy as Dane. His sardonic laughter echoed off the stones.

“Bravo, Dane. Pentametric to the end.” He lifted his rapier. “But I have found you.”

A stifled scream of tension tore from high-pitched strings. Muffled timpani measured the intruder’s cat tread across the hall as Dane stepped down to meet him.

Charity swallowed hard
.
Oh, man, it’s Darth Vader.

“So you have,” said Dane. “But think no more to follow me. Here upon my father’s hearth, with all he left me, this sword, I speed you home to the deeper hell that spawned you.” The sword cut a hissing swath through the air. “Come, sir.”

Moving in his own light, the stranger’s blade crossed Dane’s with a chilly
ting
and slithered along its middle third. The two slender threads of steel were no more than moving light, flashing about each other. The two men circled like lethal dancers, the nasty
ting-tack! of the
blades a deadly dialogue. The steel threads wove about each other, crossed, disengaged, beat with resonant echoes over the inexorable trombones that measured them.

Then in a blur too swift to follow, the dark little man thrust and lunged like a striking snake. As quick, Dane parried overhand with a twist of his wrist; the blade streaking for his heart swerved far aside, tore from the attacker’s grasp and clattered on the stone floor. He stepped back.

“Your father taught you well, Dane.”

“Had he schooled me so in honor, or were I pupil apt, I should be with him now. But as to sword —” Dane speared the fallen rapier guard on his own point and launched it toward his enemy’s grasp. “Well enough. Come again.”

“You should not lend me mercy I may not repay.” The stranger leaped at Dane again in a slashing attack, closed and tripped him. Dane lost his balance and fell. The dark man’s blade whirled in a circle of light, came down just as Dane rolled aside and sprang to his feet. They closed again, beat, disengaged; then the smaller man slipped under a slight miscalculation in Dane’s guard and lunged.

Dane faltered; the sword dropped from his fingers. Charity cried out as he sank to his knees with a strangling cough and fell on his side. His enemy regarded him with remote pity as the music melted to poignant strings.

“Victory,” he pronounced with no joy in it. “Rest, most noble among the damned.”

Dane lay in his light, a stain spreading over his shirt. With a sob, Charity ran to cushion his head in her lap.

“Dane. Dane!”

His eyelids fluttered open. “Aye, Charity. Well enough.”

The grave, tender music brooded over them, a repeated figure in muted brass. Dane listened with a wan smile of satisfaction. “For the time... you made me very happy.”

“Oh, Dane. Honest, for all the trouble, I was never so happy in my whole life.” A rage welled up in Charity, a fury with a virulence to frighten her. Even her voice was different when she turned on Dane’s killer. “You son of a bitch.”

He stepped back, offended. “Madame, please.”

“Pardon my language, but damn if I don’t wish I was a man for two minutes. I’d take his sword and shove it where the sun don’t shine for what you done.”

“For what you
did,”
Dane corrected weakly. “So please you... a little of your namesake for our mother tongue.”

She hugged him close, desperate. “I don’t want you to die.”

“I must.” Dane’s hand faltered up to touch her lips and hair. “My father’s waiting. My... spirit fails. But I did love you. That... makes fair end.”

“Please don’t die. It ain’t fair!”

“Don’t blame this churl; he’s but transport. He sends me home. Oh, Father, I stained your life. For earnest, take... my death.”

The somber music faded to silence. Dane lay still in Charity’s arms.

“Oh, Dane.” With infinite tenderness, Charity eased his head down onto the stones and bent to kiss the stilled lips. “I should have gone with you. You were a man to die with.”

“You are worthy, child.” The stranger sheathed his sword. “The sentiment becomes you.”

Charity was a little impressed herself. She’d never felt that depth or voiced anything like it in her life.

“You must go now.”

“Go where?” she asked listlessly over Dane’s body.

“Where you will, but with dispatch. Hark!”

The wind had risen outside, a pitiful moaning sound, bleak as her own sorrow, and a voice rode on it.

Char-i-tee...

“
I
came for him,” the dark man said. “They come for you. His ghosts o’ertook him; yours will come betimes. Quickly begone.”

With a last adoring look at Dane, Charity hurried away from the hall, down the worn steps and across the gray courtyard while the wind cried with its terrible summons.

Charity?

She fled across the drawbridge into the fog.

In the gloomy hall, the victor gazed down at the body graceful even in death — and signed plaintively. “Wilksey, your pauses are interminable.”

One baleful eye opened and impaled him with accusation. “That is the way to play it, Mr. Kean.”

“Indeed.” Edmund Kean snorted with dry disgust. “Is there no o’erdone reading, no tattered cliché, no cheap effect to which you will not plummet?”

“You amateur!” Wilksey Booth shot to his feet like a jack-in-the-box released. “You charge me with overplaying?”

“Amateur? I was playing the Bard before you were born.”