"What are 'you talking about?" Loretta said. Her tone, though still assertive, was tinged with unease, as though she knew there was truth in what she was hearing.
Tell her, Cesaria said to Cadmus. The figure crouched in the shadows shook its heavy head. Cesaria took a step toward Cadmus. Old man, she said. Get yourself up off the floor.
"He can't-" Loretta said.
Shut up, Cesaria snapped. You heard me, old man. I want you up.
As the instruction left her lips Cadmus's head rolled backward, so that now he was looking straight up at Cesaria. Then, inch by quivering inch, he started to rise, his back pressed against the wall; but not of his own volition. His legs were too wasted to bear him up this way. This was Cesaria's doing. She was raising him by sheer force of will.
It seemed he was not entirely unhappy to be puppet-eered this way. A tight-lipped smile had crept onto his face, as though in some perverse way he was taking pleasure in being handled this way; in feeling the woman's power upon him.
As fascinated as she was appalled, Rachel crossed the room and went to stand at Loretta's side. "Please, don't do this," she said to Cesaria. "Let him die in peace."
He doesn't want to die in peace, Cesaria replied. Then, to Cadmus: Do you? It's better to suffer now, because that way you think you will have paid your debts. Isn 't that what you hope?
Cadmus made the tiniest of nods.
You may be right, by the way, Cesaria said. I don't have any better idea of what waits for you than you do. Maybe your soul's free after this. Maybe it's the ones you leave behind who'll pay the real price. She took another step toward him. Your children. Your grandchildren. Your wife. She was so close to him now she could have touched him. But she didn't need to make physical contact; she had a profound hold on him: that of her will and her words.
His eyes were filled with tears. His mouth opened a little way, and he started to speak. It was the ghost of a whisper.
"Can't we… make peace?" he murmured.
Peace?
"Your family… and mine."
It's too late for that.
"No…"
You had your own flesh and blood murdered by my son, Cesaria said. You drove Atva to madness for your ambition. You sowed terrible seeds when you did that. Terrible, terrible seeds.
The tears were pouring down Cadmus's face now. The perverse smile had gone; he looked like a mask of tragedy: his mouth turned down, his cheeks gouged, his brow furrowed.
"Don't punish them for what I did," he sobbed. "You can stop this… war… if you want to."
I'm too tired, Cesaria said, and too old. And my children are as willful as yours are. There's nothing I can do. If you'd come to me fifty years ago, and repented, maybe I could have done something. But now it's too late, for all of us.
She drew a little breath, and it seemed that as she did so the last of Cadmus's life went from him. His body ceased to shake, his face, that tragic mask, was abruptly wiped clean. There was a long moment of absolute stillness. Then Cesaria turned to Loretta and said: He's all yours, and turned her back on wife and corpse. The moment she withdrew her patronage, Cadmus slid back down the wall like a sack of bones. Loretta let out a tiny cry and went down on her knees beside him.
Cesaria wasn't interested in the drama, now that Cadmus had left the stage. She didn't turn to look back at Loretta keening over the body; she simply strode to the door and out onto the landing. Rachel went after her.
"Wait!" she called.
She could feel the air in Cesaria's wake becoming agitated. An aura rose off her, like heat off a stove. The air shook and melted. But Rachel wasn't about to let the woman go without at least attempting to question her. Too much had been said that needed explanation.
"Help me understand," she said.
There's nothing you need concern yourself with. It's over now.
"No, it's not! I need to know what happened to Galilee."
Why? Cesaria said, still descending. The emanations were beginning to cause some major disturbances now. The ceiling was making a peculiar grinding sound, as though the beams were shaking behind the plaster; the banister was rocking, as if buffeted by gusts of wind.
"I love him," Rachel said.
Of course you do, Cesaria replied. I'd expect nothing less.
"So I want to help him," Rachel said. She'd hesitated at the top of the stairs, but now-realizing that nothing she could say was going to halt Cesaria-she went down after her. A wave of sickly air struck her, smelling of camphor and dirt. She plunged through it, though it stung her eyes until they watered.
Do you know how many men and women have wanted to heal my Atva over the years? Cesaria said. None of them succeeded. None of them could.
She was at the bottom of the stairs now, and there hesitated for a moment, as if making up her mind where she would start her blitzkrieg. If Rachel had entertained any doubt that Cesaria intended to take up the offer made in Cadmus's room, and wreck the mansion, she had it silenced now, as the great Venetian mirror hanging in the hallway shook itself loose and came crashing down, followed in quick succession by every item on the walls, even to the smallest picture.
Rachel halted, shaken by the sudden violence. Cesaria, meanwhile, moved off down the passageway toward Cadmus's sitting room. "You should go," said a voice above.
Rachel looked up. Loretta had come out onto the landing, and was now standing at the top of the stairs.
"She won't hurt us," Rachel said; brave talk, though she wasn't entirely certain it was true. The noise of vandalism had erupted again; clearly Cesaria was demolishing the sitting room. The woman might not intend to do any hann, but when such chaotic forces as these were loosed, was anybody safe?
"Are you leaving?" Rachel said to Loretta.
"No."
"Then neither am I."
"Don't go near her, Rachel. What's going on here is beyond you. It's beyond us both. We're just little people."
"So what? We just give up?"
"We never had a prayer," Loretta said, the expression on her face bereft. "I see that now. We never had a prayer."
Rachel had watched events transform a lot of people of late: Mitchell, Cadmus, Galilee. But none of those changes distressed her quite as much as the one before her now. She'd looked to Loretta as a place of solidity in a shifting terrain. She'd seemed so certain of her path, and what measures she had to take to dear the way ahead. Now, suddenly, all that certainty had drained out of her. Though she'd known Cadmus was not long for this world, and though she'd certainly known the Barbarossas were something other than human stock, the proof of those facts had undone her.
I'm more alone than ever, Rachel thought. I don't even have Loretta now.
The din from the sitting room had died away during this exchange, and had now ceased entirely. What now? Had Cesaria tired of her furies already, and decided to leave? Or was she just catching her breath between assaults?
"Don't worry about me," Rachel said to Loretta. "I know what I'm doing."
And with that hopeful boast she headed on down the stairs and into the passage that led to the sitting room.
A bizarre sight awaited her. The room which Cadmus Geary had used as his sanctum had been as comprehensively trashed as the sickroom and the lobby, but two items had been left untouched by the assault: the landscape painting on the wall and a large leather armchair. Cesaria sat in the latter looking at the former, surrounded by a brittle sea of shards and splinters. Bierstadt's masterpiece seemed to have her entranced. But she was not so focused upon the canvas that she missed the fact of Rachel's presence. Without turning to look at her visitor, she started to speak.