He dropped down to his knees. He slipped forward on the uneven edge of the hole, left hand pitched out to the other side of the grave to steady himself, as with his right, he reached down and groped for that green sparkling thing.
He almost lost his balance, then felt the hard edges of the emerald.
He yanked the chain loose from the bloody, tangled cloth. Up out of the darkness it came, nestled in the palm of his muddy hand.
“Got you!” he whispered, staring at it.
It had been around the creature’s neck, inside his clothes.
He held it, turning it, letting the starlight find it, the jewel of jewels. No great emotion came to him. Nothing. Only a sad, grim satisfaction that he had the Mayfair emerald, that he had snatched it from oblivion, from the covert unmarked grave of the one who had finally lost.
Lost.
His vision was blurred. But then it was so divinely dark out here, and so still. He gathered up the gold chain the way you might a rosary, and shoved it-jewel and chain-into the pocket of his pants.
He closed his eyes. Again, he almost lost his balance, almost slipped into the grave. Then the garden appeared to him, glistening and dim. The hand was no longer visible down there at all. Perhaps the tumbling clods of earth had covered it as they must soon cover all the rest.
A sound came from somewhere. A gate closing perhaps. Someone in the house?
But he must hurry, no matter how weary he was and how sluggish and quiet he felt.
Hurry.
Slowly, for a quarter of an hour or more, he shoveled the moist earth into the hole.
Now the rain was whispering around him, lighting up the shiny leaves of the camellias, and the stones of the path.
He stood over the grave, leaning on the shovel. He said aloud the other verse of Julien’s poem:
Slay the flesh that is not human Trust to weapons crude and cruel For, dying on the verge of wisdom, Tortured souls may seek the light.
Then he slumped down beside the oak, and closed his eyes. The pain thudded in him, as if it had waited patiently and now it had its moment. He couldn’t breathe for a minute, but then he rested, rested with all his limbs and his heart and his soul, and his breathing became regular, easy again.
He lay there sleeping perhaps, if one can sleep and know everything that one has done. There were dreams ready to come. Indeed it seemed, moment after moment, that he might veer and descend into the blessed darkness where others waited for him, so many others, to question him, to comfort him, to accuse him perhaps. Was the air filled with spirits? Did one but have to sleep to see them face-to-face, or hear their cries?
He did not know. Old images came back to him, bits and pieces of tales, other dreams. But he would not let himself slip. He would not let himself go all the way down…
He slept the thin sleep in which he was safe, and in good company with the rain, the sigh of the weightless rain surrounding him but not touching him, in this his garden, beneath the high leafy roof of the mighty tree.
Suddenly he caught a picture of the ruined white body sleeping beneath him, if one could use for the dead a word as gentle as sleep.
The living slept as he had been sleeping. What became of the lately dead, or the long dead, or all those inevitably gone from the earth?
Pale, twisted, defeated once again, after centuries, buried without a marker-
He awoke with a start. He had almost cried out.
Thirty-nine
WHEN HE LOOKED up, he saw through the iron fence that the main house was now full of light. Lights were on all through the upstairs and downstairs. He thought perhaps he saw someone pass a doorway in the upper hall. Seemed it was Eugenia. Poor old soul. She must have heard it. Maybe she saw the bodies. Just a shadow behind the privacy lattice. He wasn’t sure. They were much too far away for him to hear them.
He put the shovel back into the shed, just as the rain came down heavily and with the lovely smell that the rain always brings.
There was a crack of thunder, and one of those jagged rips of white lightning, and then the big drops began to splash on his head, his face, his hands.
He unlocked the gate and went to the faucet by the pool. He slipped off his sweater and washed his arms and his face and his chest. The pain was still there, like something biting him, and he noticed he had little feeling in his left hand. He could close it, however. He could grip. Then he looked back at the dark oak. He could make nothing out of the darkness beneath it, the deep dark of the entire yard now beneath the rainy sky.
The rain washed Lasher’s blood from the flags where Lasher had died.
It fell hard and steady, washing them clean until nothing was left to mark the spot at all.
He stood there watching, getting soaked and wishing he could smoke a cigarette but knowing the rain would put it out. Through the dining room window, he could see a hazy image of Aaron still sitting at the table, as if he had never moved, and the tall dark figure of Yuri, standing about, almost idly. And then the figure of someone else he did not know.
All of them in the house. Well, it was bound to happen. Someone was bound to come. Beatrice, Mona, someone…
Only after all that blood was washed away did he walk over the spot, and go around to the front door of the house.
There were two police cars parked there, end to end, with their lights flashing, and a gathering of men, including Ryan and young Pierce at the gate. Mona was there in a sweatshirt and jeans. He felt like crying when he saw her.
My God, why don’t they arrest me? he wondered. Why didn’t they come out into the yard? God, how long have they been here? How long did it take me to dig the grave?
All this seemed vague in his mind.
He noted-there was no ambulance, but that didn’t mean anything. Perhaps his wife had died upstairs, and they had already taken her away. Got to go to her, he thought, whatever happens, I’m not being dragged out of here until I kiss her good-bye.
He walked towards the front steps.
Ryan started speaking to him the moment he saw him.
“Michael, thank God you’re back. Something really inexcusable happened. It was all a misunderstanding. Happened right after you left. And I promise you, it will not happen again.”
“What is that?” asked Michael.
Mona stared at him, her face impassive and undeniably beautiful in a lovely youthful way. Her eyes were so green. It was amazing to him. He thought about what Lasher had said-about jewels.
“A complete mixup with the guards and the nurses,” said Ryan. “Everybody, unaccountably, went home. Even Henri was told to go home. Aaron was the only one here and he was asleep.”
Mona made a little negative gesture to him, and lifted one of her soft, babyfied little hands. Pretty Mona.
“Rowan is all right?” Michael asked. He could not now remember what Ryan had been saying, only that he’d known, by Ryan’s manner, that Rowan wasn’t dead.
“Yes, she’s fine,” said Ryan. “She was apparently alone in the house for a while, however, and the door was unlocked. Someone apparently told the guards they weren’t needed anymore. Apparently it was a priest from the parish church, but we haven’t been able to find the man. We will. Whatever, the nurses were actually told that Rowan was…was…”
“But Rowan’s OK.”
“The point is nothing was disturbed. Eugenia was in her room the whole time too, lot of good it did. But nothing happened. Mona and Yuri came and they found the place deserted. They woke up Aaron. They called me.”
“I see,” said Michael.
“We didn’t know where you were. Then Aaron remembered that you’d gone off for a long walk. I got here as soon as I could. No harm done as far as I can tell. Of course those people have been fired. These are all new people.”