by Lee, Tanith
‘And I’m supposed to be called Ankhet Persephone. But you don’t.’
‘I need not. The others must. That’s how you must be known to them.’
‘I prefer Anna. It’s my name.’
‘Then I’ll call you Anna.’
She said, ‘Thank you for the cup. May I use it?’
‘Of course. It’s yours.’
‘Suppose,’ she said, ‘I broke it.’
‘I’d bring you another. But it wouldn’t be the same.’
Anna went to her chair and sat down.
He continued to stand. He was, apparently, utterly at ease. But obviously, if he had lived so very long, he was accustomed to all things, life and death, grief and rage and love, sitting and standing up.
She said quietly, ‘You won’t let me go.’
‘Do you want to leave so desperately?’
‘I’m a prisoner.’
‘Not at all. My guest.’
‘I was brought here for you,’ she said.
‘To be my joy,’ he said. ‘And already, you are.’
She lowered her eyes.
Then she heard him say a sort of poem to her. The hesitation in his voice was more pronounced. He might have been translating, into English.
‘She is one among millions. Her beauty is greater. See, she is like the morning star rising at a festival. Burning white, bright of skin, with beautiful eyes for seeing, and fruited lips for talk and kisses.’
Anna blushed.
It startled her. She felt the blood race through her body.
He said, ‘Like fire lifting in the alabaster. I think that you are the loveliest woman in the world, Anna. But then, I’ve thought so before.’
And the blood withered. She paled.
She looked straight at him, into the blue of his eyes that promised everything and revealed nothing, like the surface of the sea.
‘It’s the Scarabae thing, isn’t it? We live for hundreds of years, or we come back—we reincarnate.’
‘Here you are,’ he said. Just what she had said to herself.
‘Who was I?’
‘Yourself.’
‘Was I that other one—Ruth?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Ruth. The little murderess. Sekhmet the Lady of Time, bringer of fire. If you were, don’t mind it.’
‘I don’t remember,’ she said.
‘Remember other things. That will be easy, here.’
‘But if it’s true—if I was Ruth. I’d have to begin there.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Ruth was an error. A woman mad with pain stabbed Ruth through the breast and left her in a dark wet wood.’
‘And Malach?’ said Anna. She did not know, or examine, why she summoned that name.
But Cain, the lord of the mountain, the god of Hades, Darkness, Cain frowned, for one second.
He said, soft as the brush of his hair would feel, surely, running over her wrist, if he had taken her hand, ‘Forget Malach. He is the past.’
‘Then tell me about him.’
Cain smiled again. ‘No, Anna. Never. Now you must concentrate on me.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Miranda gazed into the face of a putrescent monster, whose inch-long teeth dripped blood. Softly, she laughed, somewhere in her throat. But under her coat of malvaceous wool, Miranda shivered. Not in fear.
Bonanza Videos was strung with Christmas tinsel. Tiny lights winked and glittered in the tiny tree on the counter.
The rather fat young man had followed Miranda from the counter into the store.
‘That one’s quite good. Weak ending though.’
‘Why?’ Miranda asked.
‘They blow it up with dynamite. You can’t do that to a vampire.’
‘No?’
‘Well, you’re a connoisseur like me. It has to be a stake, or fire, doesn’t it?’
Miranda lowered her eyes. Her lashes, so long and thick and black, beautifully seeped in Boots No 7 (who did not experiment on animals), lay on the damask cheeks.
She was not a girl, did not look one. About thirty-nine, maybe forty, the young man thought. But God, she was sexy. And mysterious, too.
He saved the vampire movies for her. She just loved them.
She would have been good in one, come to that. Her shoulder-length black hair, with a wisp of grey, in dark lingerie, and red, red nails. Such white teeth.
She was called Miranda. She had told him. She had flirted with him. He did not feel fat then, he felt real.
‘Well, I’ll take it any way. And the one you saved.’
They walked back to the counter. He said, as he had before, ‘Go on, I bet you’re an actress.’
‘No,’ she said.
Rich husband, he thought. Lonely? No, no such luck.
She seemed contained, fulfilled. Full. Like a woman pregnant... with herself.
The slim young man, the one who came in for animal videos, and travel documentaries, was standing at the counter. The fat young man had never liked him, this slim one with his dark eyes.
The fat young man beheld the slim young man dark-eyeing Miranda.
‘Good afternoon, sir. Did you like the film on India?’
‘Yes,’ said the slim young man.
The thing I can’t stand,’ said the fat one, ‘is those ghastly American voice-overs.’
‘I turn the sound off,’ said the other.
Miranda produced some pound coins from the pocket of her elegant coat. She did not have a bag, although her boots, of russet leather, were immaculate.
An hour ago she had been in the heart of the city, drinking champagne cocktails in a gloomy smart hotel. A piano had played, and Miranda had sipped the drinks away. She had paid for those from her pocket also.
She did not like handbags. They impeded her. She liked, however, to cross her long slim legs in the russet boots, with the glimpse of purple lycra stocking. Men looked at Miranda. As she stood in freezing Trafalgar Square, an Indian gentleman had come to her. He was a head shorter than Miranda, who was not tall, and he had a gold tooth. He offered her a flat in Knightsbridge. Miranda, with a seductive laugh, declined.
The taxi had brought her back to the London village. But she had not been quite ready to go home to the house.
She felt so young now. Skittish, was it? Zalotna.
She had seen the young man before, the slim one.
He was quiet, scholarly. She imagined him in a dark tower, ringed by books. Handsome. Yes, he was.
She took the videos in her narrow pale hands, of which the nails were manicured but not red, decorated with rings, one of which had known the courts of sixteenth-century Italy.
She watched the vampire videos secretly in her room.
Porn.
They amused her. She was not yet aroused. Not quite ready. Yet.
‘Excuse me,’ said the dark, slim young man, at the door. ‘You dropped this.’
‘Did I?’ She knew she had not, it was a twenty-pence piece. Miranda only carried notes, pounds, jettisoned anything smaller. It occurred to her he was mean, or careful, would not waste more on her.
‘Yes, I saw it fall. Not much,’ he admitted, ‘but it all adds up.’
She accepted the coin. ‘Does it.’
He held the door for her.
Miranda walked into the cold brittle street. Mauve sunfall lay across the house-tops, thin as glass. It matched her, considerately.
‘You go that way. So do I.’
He’s lying again, Miranda thought. What fun.
They walked up through the houses, towards the common, large houses with timbered masks, looming out over wide lawns turning grey. A lighted window flashed on.
‘House there,’ he said. ‘I do their garden.’
‘Oh, you’re a gardener.’
Jesus Christ had been mistaken for a gardener.
But this one said, ‘My name’s Sam.’
‘Yes? I’m Miranda.’
‘You live in that big house, don’t you? The fantastic house with coloure
d windows.’
‘Yes.’
‘I saw you come out once,’ he said.
‘Did you?’
‘Beautiful architecture,’ he said.
She smiled. Does he mean me?
He walked beside her. She thought, Am I ready now? But she knew she was not.
And then the beautiful house appeared above them up the slope, beyond the other houses, against the wild trees.
The sky was starting to flame behind it.
He said, ‘It’s like something from a film.’
‘Is it?’
‘I don’t suppose,’ he said, ‘you need someone for the garden? I’m good. And I don’t overcharge. It’s a fiddle, you see. I avoid the tax man.’
Miranda said, ‘How old are you?’
He looked furtive, or only shy.
‘Twenty-three.’
She thought, I shall be twenty-three soon.
She said, ‘Perhaps we do need someone.’
They walked across the quiet road, and up into the drive.
And there, at the house front, was a great bike, a Harley Shovelhead, black and solid as a sculpture. Someone stood beside it, who straightened up. He had jet black hair tied back. Solid as the bike, his stomach was a barrel, and the rest of him tense and hard, like steel.
‘Who’s there?’ she said.
The young man with her flexed himself. ‘What is it?’
And then the other man spoke from the aura of the Shovelhead. ‘You won’t remember me. I was with your Camillo. But he isn’t here.’
And out of the shadow came a soft little bark.
‘Connor,’ Miranda said, ‘and Viv.’
They sat in the gold and white room, drinking pink Alsace wine, Miranda, Connor, and Viv.
There was no one else, except the oldish man, who Connor remembered, and who had brought the two bottles, and gone away. The boy who had been with Miranda had gone away too, into the twilight like a young wolf. Connor had caught the words ‘Garden’ and ‘Tomorrow’, but he was not really interested. Was this boy Miranda’s fancy? Maybe. Connor did not think much of him, though. Surely she would have more taste?
Her hair was cut shorter, and it was darker. And she was considerably younger, too, than when he had seen her last. That did not startle him; that she had had her hair cut surprised him more.
She had not told him anything much. Camillo had not been to the house. He had already learned this from the oldish woman who answered the door—Cheta? Miranda called the old-man-who-was-not Michael, as before. The others Connor recalled were absent, the man, Eric, the woman, Sasha, and the pretty, stupid young girl... Tray.
He was gone too, of course. Malach. White-Hair—Camillo’s father.
‘But you’re alone,’ Miranda said, when they were nearing the end of the first bottle.
‘So I am.’ They fell by the wayside. No, not quite true. One did. The rest had only scattered. Red went first, to her man at the pub, Mark. She was to help him with some research, or something. The sort of excuse people make who do not yet feel permitted to be together. Basher went somewhere less esoteric, and Josie, Cathy and Rats. Shiva had gone to his mother’s house. His Hindu father had died and now the white woman was alone with her three daughters. Shiva had become the head of the house. He did not seem resentful. ‘I’ll marry,’ he said, ‘make some girl happy. My mother’s very orthodox, though, she keeps all the festivals. She used to scold daddyji for not being devout.’
Pig went away, and Whisper. Cardiff had come back.
And so, that night in the northern hills.
‘His leg, you see,’ said Connor, ‘wasn’t much good. He had it broken, didn’t ride for months. Like horses, perhaps. You need the control.’
He opened the new bottle.
Miranda sat in her mauve dress, listening and very still.
So, Connor told her of the great, black, wet road, and how Cardiff, full of beer and loud with farts—although Connor omitted this—went racing some unseen phantom rider away up the slickness of the dark.
They came behind him, and in a curious lit pane, like a mirror, that did not exist, for there were no street-lamps (possibly only a trick of memory), Connor beheld Cardiff take the bend with the fractured rhythm of a lost charioteer. Saw Cardiff and his bike leap high in a moment of senseless glory, the flight before the fall.
Both hit a tree, the bike and Cardiff, head-on.
And then they both slewed back and lay together on the road.
As Connor and Owl rushed up to Cardiff, dismounted and stood over him, they saw that, although the helmet had protected his skull, his neck was nearly severed from his body. He was dead, yet from his frame there issued one last saluting flatulence, miraculous and terrible in the suddenly silent night.
Then the dog Meato, who was with them yet, began a raw appalling howling. Viv kept quiet.
Ray said something about the police.
The others ignored this.
They carried Cardiff’s ruined corpse, and the cadaver of his bike, away over the lone lorn hillsides, up to some old beacon place.
There they burned Cardiff and the bike. The flames burst up to the sky above and sang with the crack of bones.
A week later Connor and Owl went to Cardiff’s grandmother’s house in Birmingham, and gave her what things of Cardiff’s they had been able to rescue from his mess, and clean.
She did not cry. She was a dry-eyed old woman who had probably seen it all twice over. She said they were good boys to come and tell her, as if Cardiff had been detained at school. She gave them black tea and plum cake they forced down, like a wake, sitting in the front room of her ancient terraced house that had survived the war, and her husband’s cancer, and now stood mute above the shade of Cardiff’s dying and unspoken final fart.
Miranda sighed.
Connor said, The Dance of Death.’
Miranda said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Camillo had scorned them for being a family, the army of bikers. Now Miranda commiserated with Connor, the bereaved.
They drank.
Connor rose. ‘I must be off.’
He wished he could ask her again to ride with him, but they had been speaking of the death of riders.
And Miranda said, ‘Come and visit me, when you’re passing.’ A strange little formal silly unsuitable phrase that gave him hope.
‘I’m off to Scotland. In the spring—you won’t want me.’
‘Well, you must try, and see.’
Viv licked round the last of her wine in the white china bowl that might be some sort of precious Chinese object. Viv smiled at Miranda, and Miranda scooped her up on to the expensive skirt, and kissed Viv’s brow, between the up and down ears.
‘Goodnight,’ said Connor.
He longed to escape, desired to stay.
But the night was outside. The world, with its threats of destruction and collapse. How much longer did they have, to ride and drink and sing and kiss?
Well, at least until the spring.
When the door was dosed upon Connor and Viv, and the Shovelhead started up its power of roaring, Miranda went away to her room, with the films of vampires in her Christmas carrier bag from Bonanza Videos.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Just inside the door...
Rachaela stood there.
She was changed.
Her hair was shorter and blonde, her eyes were greenish.
Not Rachaela.
He tried to speak to her. But her name, which he had now, would not come out. Sofie—
‘Are you awake?’ she said.
She spoke in Dutch, and for a moment too, he could not follow it. He had been thinking in English. Or Latin. Something.
‘Johanon,’ she said. ‘Answer me at once.’
‘I’m-here.’
‘Good. Then it’s time for your medicine.’
He said, or attempted to say, ‘Have I been ill?’ But of course he had. Something had been hurt inside him when they took Anna. But no, that was
England. He had healed.
He thought, This is wrong. And he moved slightly and he remembered, how he had been—Althene. But he had travelled here as a man. It was meant to make everything easier.
Sofie said, ‘Bus came back at noon, but I sent him away. We don’t want Bus, do we? We want to be alone.’
Johanon felt, on his male and breastless body, the nightdress of sheer silk. It was familiar and in error. Nothing of his mother’s would fit him, he was too big. Somewhere she had found a nightdress of silk for a large slim woman.
He turned his head. His hair was soft and loose all across the pillow. It—he—smelled of Christian Dior.
‘How long—’ he said, clearly.
‘Oh, a night, a day. I gave you something.’
‘I know you did. Why?’
‘To make you better.’ Sofie was insane, and he had always known, and now insane Sofie had drugged him. She came closer. ‘And I gave you a little injection. Bus showed me once. Quite safe.’
‘In God’s name what?’
‘Just something so you can relax. It’s pleasant. I like it.’
The room moved gently, like a lazy ship half becalmed. Don’t enrage her. Don’t alarm her.
‘All right, Sofie. I slept well.’
‘Do you like the silk thing? I ordered three or four for you.
I know you prefer it. I recall, in the old house... how you used to dress.’
‘Yes, Mother. You stopped me.’
‘But you were so clever, Johanon, as a child. You bribed the maids to help you. And then you’d go about the house in petticoats and cap—’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘They used to tell you, didn’t they, when I’d come down. And then you used to hide. You wanted to so much,’ Sofie said, tenderly, ‘to be a little girl. Even if I beat you.’
There was no answer from the bed.
Sofie said helpfully, reassuringly, ‘I’ll give you your medicine now, and then we’ll see to your face and nails. Make you lovely.’
Johanon held down words. Images.
Was this revenge? Was it only madness?
He tried a little, to see how his body responded. It barely did. In his bladder he felt the dull premonition of pain.
I’m afraid I need the bathroom, Mother.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘we won’t worry about that.’