Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Call

by P. T. Dilloway

It’s about time I hang up my hat and spurs, though never my revolver. That’s just as well as I’m getting too old for all of this riding around on horseback and sleeping on the ground. When I came back from Alejandro’s funeral I made myself young again on the outside, but I still felt old inside. It’s been forty years since then, though I keep myself in my mid-thirties, just spry enough so I can keep doing my job.

  I suppose connecting with Aggie’s grandchild Lise is what made me feel so old when I came back. Or maybe it’s just the weight of all these centuries pressing down on me. Or maybe it’s the steam engines, railroad tracks, and homesteaders that make me feel more and more like a relic every day.

  The last time I felt young and energized was during the Civil War. I of course took the Union side, selling guns to the North. I even cut my hair and joined a unit sabotaging Confederate supply lines in Texas and farther west.

  As the war wound down, it became like the early days of the Revolution again. Lincoln was assassinated and all hope for anything good to come of this faded away. They say slavery is over in the south, but that’s only in name. In truth most of the black men and women are still economic slaves, like Henri and so many others were in feudal times. The Indians have fared even worse, being driven from their land and slaughtered if they don’t abide by the bogus treaties. There’s so much promise for this country, but the goal keeps slipping farther and farther away.

  With the war over, I got back in my saddle. Only now instead of staying around a ranch, I could drive the cattle from Texas all the way up to Kansas to be loaded onto trains bound for Chicago. As back in Texas, I found this work easy enough. Still, the age I feel in my heart kept me from enjoying the riding, roping, and drinking as much as I used to.

  Even that’s going to be gone before much longer. If the Civil War really did anything, it showed where the future lies. It’s not riding around on a horse, roping cattle. It’s in factories, in cities, and on the railroads.

  That’s why for the first time in thirty years I’m wearing a dress and standing in an empty house. There’s a man with me, a little man named Harlan Earl. We stand in a space about half the size of the living room back at Aggie’s house, which Harlan calls the parlor. I try to imagine a sofa, chairs, and other furniture in here. Making a noncommittal grunt, I turn to the window. The block is lined with other houses similar to this one, along with maple trees that are beginning to turn yellow.

  “If you’ll follow me, Miss Joubert, I’ll show you the kitchen.” Harlan is a nice man and trying hard, but he annoys me like many Americans by pronouncing my last name as “Jew-Bert.” In his good-natured way he probably wants to show me the kitchen because he thinks I’ll be spending a lot of time there, cooking for my eventual husband—if I can find one at my age.

  I try to make impressed-sounding noises as he opens the various drawers and cabinets and shows me how to work the stove. I’m not sure why I’m at this house; like Connor’s in Edinburgh it’s much too big for me. Still, it’s about time I settle down and just as industry is the way of the future, so is America the place of the future. The Old World is just that—old and worn out from thousands of years of fighting.

  “Would you like to see the basement?” Harlan asks me. I shrug, which he takes for a yes. We descend the stairs into the basement, where the coal furnace is kept. The rest of the space is cavernous, as big as the stables back home. “There’s plenty of room for storage.”

  “Yes, there is.”

  We go back upstairs, touring the three bedrooms and storage rooms. Harlan ends the tour in the master bedroom, though from his nervousness I doubt it’s because he’s flirting with me. “As you can see, this is quite a good house. Very sturdy and reasonably priced. It’s also in a marvelous neighborhood with excellent schools—”

  “It’s a little big for me,” I tell him.

  “Oh,” he says and his smile fades. It’s unlikely that he’s been on the job long and he probably was hoping for a sale.

  “But I’ll consider it. Can you give me a couple of days to think about it?”

  “Yes, of course,” he says, his face brightening again. He pats the pockets of his jacket until he finds a card with his name and address written on it. “Whenever you’re ready, you just get a hold of me there.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  Like most major cities in America and Europe these days, there’s a foul smell hanging in the air of Rampart. It’s the odor you get from too many places burning coal in close proximity, along with human refuse. There’s talk of putting in a sewage system like in Paris or other civilized cities, but there isn’t enough funding for this yet.

  I return to my hotel, where I’ve been staying for the last week while I evaluate opportunities here. Instead of going to my room, I go to the bar, which is empty at two o’clock in the afternoon. I’m on my third whiskey when Glenda sits down next to me.

  She orders a whiskey for herself, gulping it down immediately. “This can’t be good,” I say.

  “I’m afraid not. Lise died last night.”

  “Oh. I see.” It’s been forty years since I last saw Lise; by now she was probably a grandmother herself. “How’s Agnes taking it?”

  “Hard, as you would imagine.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine.” Aggie’s children have all died, Luc keeling over in the stables ten years ago. Zoe died five years ago in a house fire. That left only Lise as Aggie’s most immediate relative, though she has a few great-grandchildren and probably great-great-grandchildren before long. She isn’t as close to them as she was to Lise and Zoe, or Brigitte before she died; at well over a hundred by mortal reckoning she’s too old for baking cookies and kissing boo-boos anymore. I try not to think of my daughter, who by now would be seventy-four, though more likely she’s long since died. “You want me to talk to her?”

  “I think you should. She always listens to you.”

  Glenda and I order another drink each and gulp them down at the same time. “So how did Lise go?”

  “In her sleep. Very peacefully.”

  “Like her grandfather.”

  “I suppose so.” Glenda drinks another whiskey and then says, “I hear you’re retiring from the cowgirl business.”

  “The business is going to retire me before much longer, so I might as well beat it to the punch.”

  Glenda considers this for a moment, staring at me. “There’s something different about you. Let me get a look at you.” As in the archives so long ago, she tilts my chin so she can look me in the eyes. “I’ll be, it looks like you’re finally a grown up.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean that as a compliment.”

  I can imagine Hisae saying that I’m no longer young in my heart, which is how I’ve felt for most of the last forty years. “I guess I’m finally getting old.”

  “We all do eventually.”

  I slide off my stool and then leave some money for the drinks. Before I can leave, Glenda catches my arm. “When you see Agnes, don’t be too shocked by what you see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see.”

  With that ominous warning, I go out to an alley and vanish myself home.

  ***

  The house has the feel of a museum. Not only the darkness, the dust, and cobwebs, but the smell of it. Unlike all the years when the house was occupied by Aggie, Sophie, Mama, and I and then later by Aggie’s family, the house has a certain dank aroma, as if it’s rotting away. The only person downstairs is the latest Mrs. Devereaux, a rotund woman with a pleasant face.

  “Mrs. Chiostro is napping,” she says as she boils some chicken broth.

  “How is she feeling?”

  “She only feels bad when she remembers. That isn’t often these days.”

  “Oh,” I say, unable to think of anything else.

  “Are you one of Mrs. Chiostro’s great-granddaughters?”

  “Yes. My name’s Sylvia.”

  “Sylvia? I think Mrs. Chiostro had a sister na
med that. No one’s seen her for a long time. They say she was a very peculiar woman.”

  “She probably was.” With a nod I take my leave of Mrs. Devereaux and start up the stairs. My footsteps echo with each step and I feel a growing cold lump in my stomach as I think about what I’ll find up there.

  I tap on the door to the master bedroom, but there’s no answer. I finally turn the knob and slip into the room. It’s as dark as it was the last time I was in here, after Alejandro died. Only this time Aggie is lying on her back, sleeping.

  She looks almost like Mama in her final days. Her white hair is thin to the point of her scalp being visible. Her cheekbones are pressed close to the surface, so close that they seem ready to tear through her skin. The withered hands on top of the blankets are curled into claws, probably from arthritis.

  I hesitate for a moment to make sure that she’s still breathing. Then I reach out to gently shake her shoulder. “Agnes?”

  “Mama?”

  “No, Agnes, it’s not Mama. It’s Sylvia. You have to wake up now.”

  “I don’t want to study. I don’t want to be a witch.”

  “Agnes, wake up.”

  “I don’t care about the coven.”

  “That’s fine, Agnes. I don’t care about them either.”

  “I want to kiss boys.”

  I can see this isn’t getting anywhere, so I try changing tactics. “A proper young lady does not lie in bed all day,” I say in my best imitation of Mama. “Now get up at once.”

  Aggie sits up as if fired out of a cannon. When her eyes open, I see they’re as rheumy and unfocused as Mama’s before she died. She looks around the room, waving her hands around. “Mama? Where are you? It’s so dark.”

  I lean close to her so one of her hands can touch me. “I’m right here, dear.”

  “I don’t feel good, Mama.”

  “That’s all right, dear. Mama is going to help you. But first we’re going to do a little magic practice. Can you handle that?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Good. Now, I want you to think about what you look like. Concentrate very hard on this. As you do, I want you to say, ‘Bazzo Grinick Noram Alkun.’ Can you do that?”

  Aggie nods. She closes her eyes and then repeats the magic words. I worry that her magic might be too weak to work at this point, in which case I’d have to ask Glenda about an Inner Child potion. But as I watch, Aggie’s hair thickens, her face becomes chubbier, and her skin turns smooth. Her hair goes from white to gray to silver and then back to its natural gold.

  When Aggie opens her eyes again, she’s a sixteen-year-old novice. Her eyes are clear again, the bright eyes of a young girl. That is until she looks around the room. She holds up a hand, staring at it for a moment. Then she finally settles her gaze on me. “Thank you, dear,” she whispers. “I suppose I let myself go too long this time.”

  “It’s all right. You’re fine now.” I bend down to put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Yes. They’re all dead now. Only the great-grandchildren are left and they’re afraid to see me.” Tears sparkle in her eyes. “They think I’m just a withered old hag.”

  “You’re not—anymore.”

  She slides over a little so I can sit next to her on the bed. She stares down at her feet, making no effort to wipe her tears away. “Glenda was right,” she says.

  “About what?”

  “When I married Alejandro, she said I would receive my punishment. Now I realize that this was it, watching them grow old and die. My beautiful babies. My grandbabies. Alejandro.” She shakes her head. “They’re all gone now.”

  We don’t say anything for a minute. I’m not sure what I can really say at this moment to comfort Aggie. Alejandro and the others aren’t ever coming back; her family is gone forever. She surprises me by wiping at her cheeks and smiling. “I don’t regret it. Not a bit.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I have ninety years of such beautiful memories. I remember the first time I kissed Alejandro. Standing at the altar with him. Holding Mathieu, Marcus, and Luc after they were born. Baking cookies with Zoe. Showing Lise how to sew. Reading to poor Brigitte. No one can take that away from me.”

  I nod at this, thinking back to my own treasure trove of memories from over the years. Most of these involve Henri and Alejandro, but there’s also Connor, David, Rachel, Frau Braun, not to mention Mama and Sophie. There’s all those spectacular sunrises and sunsets I witnessed on the frontier. Lifetimes of memories stored away in my mind. “I guess you’re right.”

  “I suppose now the only question is what to do now,” Aggie says. “I don’t want to putter around this old house for another hundred years.”

  “Come with me to America,” I say.

  “America? I don’t know, isn’t that a little uncivilized?”

  I think of the house Harlan Earl showed me with its tree-lined street. A house with too much room for one person, but just enough for two. “Not anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t want to impose on you.”

  “It’s not an imposition.” I give her shoulder a squeeze. “You’re my sister.”

  “But what would I do in America?”

  “Whatever you want. It’s the land of opportunity.”

  Aggie turns to me with a shy smile. “I suppose we could give it a try.”

  Epilogue

  When Aggie and I return to the estate almost thirty years later, the place is a disaster. It looks as if it’s been through a war, which is accurate. The Great War, at least that’s what they call it in America, though I don’t know what’s so great about it.

  The gates are off their hinges, so we can just walk right through. I can see Aggie shiver as we go around a crater left by an artillery shell. At least there aren’t any dead bodies along the path.

  The house itself has a few windows broken, some stone chipped, and a handful of bullets embedded in the walls. I go up the steps first, reaching down to the holster at my hip for the revolver Colt gave me almost eighty years ago. Though Aggie and I are witches, I just feel better having the pistol in my hand.

  “It looks deserted,” Aggie says.

  “Yeah, looks like,” I say. Aggie has always been too trusting. The war has only been over for a few weeks; there might still be deserters or scavengers holed up in here.

  I go in first, sweeping the foyer with my gun. Aggie stays behind me as we shuffle along the hallway. I peek my head into the parlor, wearing my nightcrystal glasses for the first time in years so I can see in the darkness. There’s no one in here, but from the debris on the floor and the broken furniture it’s obvious someone was here.

  Aggie gasps and I realize why as she runs over to the mantle. Someone has run a sword along the length of the portrait of her family, cleanly slicing through the faces of her sons. “How could someone do such a thing?” she asks.

  “Foot soldiers aren’t always the brightest people. You should be glad they didn’t use it for kindling.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Aggie mumbles, though I know she’s still devastated.

  We should have taken the paintings and furniture with us to Rampart—recently renamed Rampart City. But Aggie wasn’t sure how long she would be staying and didn’t want to disturb her old house. After a while we both just forgot about it, taking for granted that the house would remain untouched whenever we chose to visit.

  I put a hand on Aggie’s shoulder and give it a squeeze. “We can have someone fix it.”

  “I know.” The rest of the bottom floor is in a similar state. The books in the library—most of them still Sophie’s books—have pages torn out, probably for toilet paper. A few have lewd images drawn in them and captions in German that cause Aggie to blush. “Animals.”

  Upstairs isn’t much better. We start with the master bedroom, where Aggie and Alejandro used to sleep. Someone has taken a knife or sword to the mattress, splitting it open. The gutted mattress lies propped against the window, no doubt from
someone looking for a hidden stash of money left behind.

  It’s the same in the other bedrooms, including mine. Some savage has even torn the heads off of my old dolls. I almost step on the shattered remains of the redheaded doll Alejandro gave me for Christmas. Bending down, I scoop up the pieces, tucking these into a pocket. Like the painting, maybe I can have someone repair it.

  “What a mess,” Aggie says.

  “It sure is,” I say.

  “I suppose most of it we can throw out. The rest we ought to put into storage before the next awful war.”

  I nod at this. You don’t need to have feelings like Aggie to know another war will come along; they always do on this continent. “Let’s get to work.”

  ***

  The rest of the estate isn’t in much better condition. The vines have withered away from a lack of attention. I’m not a farmer by any stretch, but I know the entire vineyard will have to be replanted; we’ll have to start from scratch. It’d probably be easier to plow the whole thing under and sell it to someone else, but Aggie and I have already agreed that we won’t give up this property under any circumstances.

  I’m relieved that no scavengers or vandals have desecrated Mama and Sophie’s graves. Of course Sophie’s grave is just a tombstone, but it’s still a reminder of how much we cared for her. I kneel down in front of Mama’s grave, brushing some dirt away from the stone. “It’s me, Mama,” I whisper. Mama probably wouldn’t recognize me now that I’ve let myself get old, though I can still take down men a quarter of my age. “We’ll make this right,” I promise her.

  The stables where I first met Henri and later David have all but burned to the ground. There’s only a few bits of charred wood and stone left to indicate where it ever was. There probably won’t be much need for a stable now, not with all these motorized machines like automobiles and airplanes.

  I find a broken scythe blade that I use to hack through the brush of the old forest paths. Despite the pain in my old joints, I keep swinging the rusty blade to make my way along the path. I have to know if my special place is still there.

  It’s been over a century since Alejandro and I last fucked there, but I still remember how to find the little clearing. I part the brush, half-expecting to find a deer standing there. But there’s nothing, just an empty bit of grass. I lie down on this, putting my ear to the ground and closing my eyes. If I listen hard enough, I can hear Henri’s voice tell me that he loves me.