"Who was in your apartment?"
She remained silent, thinking of Tom, and her lip trembled. It went on trembling while Richard glared at her, because she could not make up her mind what she ought to do and what was safe. She could handleRichard. She was sure that she could. And then he blinked out on her.
"Richard!" she screamed. She punched buttons in vain. The screen was dead. She paced the floor and wrung her hands and stared out the window.
She heard the guard coming, and her door closed and the outer door opened for the exchange of the tray. Then the door gave back again and she went out into the anteroom after it. She carried the tray back and set it on the table, finally went to the bath and looked at herself, at sleep-tangled hair and shadowed eyes and the stain of old cosmetic. She was appalled at the face she had shown to Richard, at what she had been surprised into showing him. She scrubbed her face at once and brushed her hair and put slippers on her bare feet, which were chilled to numbness on the tiles.
Then she ate her breakfast, sparingly, careful of her figure, and dressed and sat and sewed. The silence seemed twice as heavy as before. She hummed to herself and tried to fill the void. She sang—she had a beautiful voice, and she sang until she feared she would grow hoarse, while the pattern grew. She read some of the time, and, bored, she found a new way to do her hair; but then she thought after she had done it that if Richard should call back he might not like it, and it was important that he like the way she looked. She combed it back the old way, all the while mistrusting this instinct, this reliance on a look which had already failed. So the day passed, and Richard did not call again.
They wanted Tom. There was the chance that if she did give Richard Tom's name it could be the right one, because it was all too obvious who could
have gotten a file out of Richard's office, because there had been many times Richard had been gone and Tom had followed her about her duties, teasing her.
Safest not to ask and not to know. She was determined not to. She resented the thing that had happened—politics—politics. She hated politics.
Tom. . . was someone to love. Who loved her; and Richard had reasons which were Richard's, but it came down to two men being jealous. And Tom, being innocent, had no idea what he was up against. . . Tom could be hurt, but Richard would never hurt her; and while she did not tell Richard, she still had the power to perplex him. While he was perplexed he would do nothing. She was not totally confident. . . of Tom's innocence, or of Richard's attitude. She was not accustomed to saying no. She was not accustomed to being put in difficult positions. Tom should not have asked it of her. He should have known. It was not fair what he did, whatever he had gotten himself involved in—some petty little record-juggling—to have put her in this position. The pattern grew, delicate rows of stitches, complex designs which needed no thinking, only seeing, and she wept sometimes and wiped at her eyes while she worked.
Light faded from the window. Supper came and she ate, and this night she did not prepare for bed, but wrapped her night robe about her for warmth and sat in the chair and waited, lacking all fear, expecting the children, looking forward to them in a strangely keen longing, because they were at least company, and laughter was good to hear in this grim place. Even the laughter of murdered children.
There began to be a great stillness. And not the laughter of children this time, but the tread of heavier feet, the muffled clank of metal. A grim, shadowed face materialized in dimming light. She stood up, alarmed, and warmed her chilling hands before "her lips. "Edward," she cried aloud. "Edward, Richard. . . are you there?" But what was coming toward her was taller and bare of face and arm and leg, bronze elsewhere, and wearing a sword, of all things. She wanted the children; wanted Anne or Robert Devereaux, any of the others. This one. . . was different.
"Bettine," he said in a voice which echoed in far distances. "Bettine."
"I don't think I like you," she said.
The ghost stopped with a little clank of armor, kept fading in and out. He was young, even handsome in a foreign way. He took off his helmet and held it under his arm. "I'm Marc," he said.
"Marcus Atilius Regulus. They said I should come. Could you see your way, Bettine, to prick your finger?"
"Why should I do that?"
"I am oldest," he said. "Well—almost, and of a different persuasion, and perhaps it is old-fashioned, but it would make our speaking easier."
She picked up her sewing needle and jabbed her cold finger, once and hard, and the blood welled up black in the dim light and fell onto the stones. She put the injured finger in her mouth, and stared quite bewildered, for the visitor was very much brighter, and seemed to draw a living breath.
"Ah," he said. "Thank you with all my heart, Bettine."
"I'm not sure at all I should have done that. I think you might be dangerous."
"Ah, no, Bettine."
"Were you a soldier, some kind of knight?"
"A soldier, yes; and a knight, but not the kind you think of. I think you mean of the kind born to this land. I came from Tiberside. I am Roman, Bettine. We laid some of the oldest stones just. . ." he lifted a braceletted arm, rather confusedly toward one of the steel walls. "But most of the old work is gone now. There are older levels; all the surly ones tend to gather down there. Even new ones, and some that never were civilized, really, or never quite accepted being dead, all of them—" he made a vague and deprecating gesture. "But we don't get many now, because there hasn't been anyone in here who could believe in us. . . in so very long. . . does the finger hurt?"
"No." She sucked at it and rubbed the moisture off and looked at him more closely. "I'm not sure Ibelieve in you."
"You're not sure you don't, and that's enough."
"Why are you here? Where are the others?"
"Oh, they're back there."
"But why you? Why wouldn't they come? I expected the children."
"Oh. They're there. Nice boys."
"And why did youcome? What has a soldier to do with me?"
"I—come for the dead. I'm the psychopomp."
"The what?"
"Psychopomp. Soul-guider. When you die."
"But I'm not going to die," she wailed, hugging her arms about her and looking without wanting to at the ancient sword he wore. "There's a mistake, that's all. I've been trying to explain to the others, but they don't understand. We're civilized. We don't go around killing people in here, whatever used
to happen. . . ."
"Oh, they do, Bettine; but we don't get them, because they're very stubborn, and they believe in nothing, and they can't see us. Last month I lost one. I almost had him to see me, but at the last he just couldn't; and he slipped away and I'm not sure where. It looked hopelessly drear. I try with all of them. I'm glad you're not like them."
"But you're wrong. I'm not going to die."
He shrugged, and his dark eyes looked very sad.
"I can get out of here," she said, unnerved at his lack of belief in her. "If I have to, there's always a way. I can just tell them what they want to know and they'll let me go."
"Ah," he said.
"It's true."
His young face, so lean and serious, looked sadder still. "Oh Bettine."
"It istrue; what do youknow?"
"Why haven't you given them what they want before now?"
"Because. . ." She made a gesture to explain and then shook her head. "Because I think I can get out of it without doing that."
"For pride? Or for honor?"