“Yeah, I understand,” said Michael with a little nod.
They went up the steps and into the front hall. Everything looked as it should, the red carpet going up the stairway. The oriental rug before the door. A few natural scuff marks here and there as always on the waxed wood.
He looked at Mona, who was standing back away from her uncle. The jeans could not have been any tighter. In fact, the whole history of fashion might have been different in the twentieth century, Michael thought, if denim hadn’t been such a tough fabric, if it hadn’t had such a capacity to stretch to a woman’s little hips like that.
“Nothing was disturbed,” said Ryan. “Nothing was missing. We haven’t searched the whole house yet but…”
“I’ll do it,” said Michael. “It’s OK.”
“I’ve doubled the guards,” said Ryan, “and doubled the shift of nurses. No one leaves this property without express permission of a member of the family. You have to be able to know you can take a walk and come back and Rowan is all right.”
“Yeah,” said Michael. “I should go up and see Rowan.”
Rowan wore a fresh gown of white silk. It had long sleeves and narrow cuffs. She was as she had been when he left her-same gentle wondering expression, hands folded before her, on a fresh cover of embroidered linen with a lovely trimming of blue ribbon at the edge. The room smelled clean, and full of the scent of the blessed candles, and a huge vase of yellow flowers that stood on the table where the nurses were accustomed to write.
“Pretty flowers,” said Michael.
“Yes, Bea got them,” said Pierce. “Whenever anything happens, Bea just gets flowers. But I don’t think Rowan had the slightest inkling ever that anything was amiss.”
“No, no inkling,” said Michael.
Ryan continued to apologize, continued to aver that this would never happen again. Hamilton Mayfair stepped out of the shadows and gave a little nod of greeting and then vanished as softly and soundlessly as he had appeared.
Beatrice came into the room with a soft jingling noise, perhaps of bracelets, Michael didn’t know. Michael felt her kiss before he saw her, and caught her jasmine perfume. It made him think of the garden in summer. Summer. That wasn’t so very far away. The bedroom was shadowy as always with the candles and only one small lamp. Beatrice put her arms around him and held him tight.
“Oh, darling,” she said, “you’re soaking wet.”
Michael nodded. “That’s true.”
“Now don’t be upset,” said Bea, scoldingly, “everything turned out just fine. Mona and Yuri took care of everything. We were determined to have everything straightened out before you came back.”
“That was kind of you,” said Michael.
“You’re exhausted,” said Mona. “You need to rest.”
“Now, come, you must get out of these wet clothes,” said Beatrice. “You’re going to be chilled. Are your things in the front room?”
He nodded.
“I’ll help you,” said Mona.
“Aaron. Where is Aaron?” asked Michael.
“Oh, he’s just fine,” said Beatrice. She turned and flashed a brilliant smile at him. “Don’t you worry about Aaron. He’s in the dining room having his tea. He snapped right into action when Mona and Yuri woke him up. He’s fine. Just fine. Now I’m going downstairs to get you something hot to drink. Please let Mona help you. Get out of those clothes now.”
She cast a long look up and down at him, and he looked down and saw the dark splatters ail over his sweater and pants. The clothes were so wet and so dark you couldn’t tell the difference between the blood and the water. But when the clothes dried, you could.
Mona opened the door of the front bedroom and he followed her inside. There was the wedding bed with its white canopy. More flowers. Yellow roses. The draperies of the front windows were opened, and the street light shone in the wandering branches of the oaks. Like a treehouse, this bedroom, Michael thought.
Mona started to help him with his sweater. “You know what? These clothes are so old, I’m going to do you a real favor. I’m going to burn them. Does this fireplace work?”
He nodded.
“What did you do with the bodies of the two men?”
“Shhh. Don’t talk so loud,” she said with an immediate sense of immense drama. “Yuri and I took care of that. Don’t ask again.”
She pulled down his zipper.
“You know I killed it,” he said.
She nodded. “Right. I wish I could have seen it. Just one time! You know, had a really good look at him!”
“No, you didn’t want to see it, and don’t ever go looking for it, don’t ever ask me where I disposed of it, or…”
She didn’t answer him. Her face seemed still, determined, beyond his influence, beyond his tenderness or his concern. Her own unique mixture of innocence and knowledge baffled him as surely now as it had ever done. She seemed unmarked in her freshness, her beauty, yet deep within some dangerous chamber of her own thoughts.
“You feel cheated?” he whispered.
Still she didn’t answer. She’d never looked so mature-so knowing, so much the woman. And so much the mystery-the simple mystery of another being, alien to us by simple nature and separateness-one among many whom we will never fully possess or know or comprehend.
He reached into his pocket. He held out the muddy emerald, and he heard her gasp before he looked up again and saw the amazement in her face.
“Take this away with you,” he said under his breath. “This is yours now. Take it. And don’t ever, ever turn around and look over your shoulder. Don’t ever try to understand.”
Again, she was grave and silent, absorbing his words, but giving no hint of her own true response. Perhaps her expression was respectful; perhaps it was merely remote.
She closed her hand over the emerald as though to conceal it utterly. She pressed her closed hand into the bundle of his soiled clothes.
“Go bathe now,” she said calmly. “Go rest. But first-the pants, and the socks and shoes. Let me get rid of them too.”
Forty
THE MORNING LIGHT woke him up. He was sitting in her room, by the bed, and she was staring at the light just as if she could see it. He didn’t remember falling asleep.
Sometime during the night he had told her the whole story. Everything. He had told Lasher’s story and how he’d killed Lasher and how he’d slammed the hammer right into the soft spot in the top of Lasher’s head. He didn’t even know if he’d been talking loud enough for her to hear. He thought so. He had told it in a monotone. He had thought, She would want to know. She would want to know that it’s finished and what happened. She had told the man in the truck that she was coming home.
Then he’d fallen quiet. When he closed his eyes he heard Lasher’s soft voice in his memory, talking of Italy and the beautiful sunshine, and the Baby Jesus; he wondered how much Rowan had known.
He wondered if Lasher’s soul was up there, if it was true that St. Ashlar would come again. Where would it be next time? At Donnelaith? Or here in this house? Impossible to know.
“I’ll be dead and gone by then, that’s for certain,” he said softly. “It took him a century to come to Suzanne. But I don’t think he’s here any longer. I think he found the light. I think Julien found it. Maybe Julien helped him find it. Maybe Evelyn’s words were true.”
He said the poem over to her softly, stopping before the last verse. Then he said it:
Crush the babes who are not children Show no mercy to the pure Else shall Eden have no Springtime. Else shall our kind reign no more.
He waited a moment, then he said, “I felt sorry for him. I felt the horror. I felt it. But I had to do what I did. I did it for the small reasons, if the love of one’s wife and child can be called small. But there were the great reasons, and I knew the others wouldn’t do it; I knew he would seduce and overcome all of them; he had to. That was the horror of it. He was pure.”