by Lee, Tanith
‘You can’t compare that to this.’
‘He didn’t drink my blood.’
Adamus lifted himself. He put his lips softly to her neck and mouthed the little wound. Delicious, the sensation, another melting.
‘Do you need it?’
He raised his head. ‘No.’
‘But it pleases you.’
‘Very much.’
‘How long...?’
‘Your mother was the last.’
‘Something else she never told me.’
He drew again on her vein. The stars lit through her body, following the pressure of his mouth. She tensed and shivered and his hand slipped between her thighs, the fingers daintily probing after the sparks of delight. She climaxed instantly, startlingly.
‘Do it for me,’ he said. He licked at her throat hungrily, closing his eyes.
She snared the tower of him, once more erect and satin-hard, rubbing, tickling, feeling the tremors of its second almost separate life.
She felt his urgency as he moved against her and his breathing caught against her neck. The flaming juices of him burst into her hand.
He kissed her. She tasted salt, the spice of her own blood.
‘What will happen?’ she whispered.
‘Nothing. A love bite.’
A faint noise, beyond the dark world of the room, in the corridor.
‘Is it the cat, looking for you?’
The cat never looks for me. He comes and goes.’
‘Would they be voyeurs?’
‘The family? No, they’ve seen it all. Done most of it.’
Rachaela eased herself up from the bed of sheets and pillows, skin and hair.
‘Don’t,’ he said.
‘I want to see.’
She lit a candle from a bedside match, went to the door and unlocked it.
Outside, something lay.
‘One of Camillo’s gifts,’ she said.
She bent down.
It was a peculiar, twisted heart, made of driftwood.
Camillo was the wicked one.
She reached to take the heart and it crumbled, fell to bits.
‘Oh.’
She came back into the room and shut and locked the door.
‘What had he left you? A cat turd in foil? He’s been known to do that.’
‘A broken heart.’
‘I see. Not just a comment on our morals.’
She set the candle down. Its wavering light lit his long body, ice-white now on the lake of hair. He looked like a prince from an uncensored story, a Beardsley illustration of male perfection. Even to the sleeping phallus, which doubtless Beardsley would have fashioned upright.
‘Why a heart which breaks?’ she said.
‘He’s a romantic. Did he tell you about his flight by night from a besieged city?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s like an old baby. Mischievous and clever. He cares about nothing.’
‘Maybe he cares about you.’
‘It’s my heart, then. The breakage.’
‘Come here,’ he said.
She went to him slowly.
He drew her down and again she lay the length of him, over him.
She was accustomed to it now, the torrent of feeling.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘I will be ashamed.’
‘Tomorrow it will be too late.’
‘Yes.’
He circled her with his arms.
She rested her head in the curve of his neck. She mouthed him, as he had done to her before the bite of his lust.
‘You’ve made love to me five times,’ she said.
‘You’re counting.’
‘We haven’t slept.’
‘Sleep tomorrow,’ he said, ‘when you’re ashamed.’
He rolled their bodies over and pinned her beneath him.
‘I can’t any more,’ she said.
‘Once more, for old time’s sake.’
Beyond his shadow, she saw the dim shapes of the window of the temptation.
‘It’s getting light.’
‘That happens.’
She did not want the day, the day of shame and confusion.
He pierced her without prologue. Used to him now, her open body received him easily. He moved in her slowly to the rhythm of the distant sea.
The deep melodious ache began in her. She could not ignore it.
They rose and fell on the beach of silence.
Behind him the window merged through silver into a dusk of green and chrysanthemum. The red blood drops of the apples appeared.
‘I want to see you,’ he said.
He drew out of her and she groaned at her deprivation of him. He stood back, blew out the candle, watched her as the body of Lucifer was spread out over her own.
‘The apple lies on your groin. Appropriate.’
‘They will have placed the bed so that it would. Come back to me,’ she said, ‘quickly, quickly.’
He lay down on her and penetrated her again so that she gave a cry of relief.
She danced beneath him, writhing on a spindle of galvanic motion.
‘Go faster.’
‘Not yet.’
He held her in waiting between earth and heaven as the window bloomed into its insanity of dyes. The surf pounded in her head. His mouth came gently to her neck and she gave herself again to the lion.
She could not even scream now. The window boiled. She had forgotten everything, past, future. And outside, tiny creatures ran from the driftwood heart.
Chapter Nine
‘How many miles to Babylon?
Three score and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again.’
A thrush or some brown bird answered from a thicket. Rachaela watched it, and walked on. The bird sang a few more notes and flew away.
‘How many miles, how many miles?’
Where had she heard the rhyme? Not from her mother. It came now because it was applicable. She had been to Babylon, and come back.
How canny of her to have chosen a new sweater with a roll neck. This and a little piece of elastoplast denied the most outrageous element of the visit to Babylon. The blood had stopped, had been dry when she woke up. He was gone. But her whole body, strained and bruised as if he had beaten her, that was the monument to his reality.
She was not ashamed. Not embarrassed. Not angry or bewildered or happy. She was nothing. Vacant. He had scoured her out.
He must have removed the remains of the heart from the carpet, or Michael or Maria had cleared it up, like the mouse.
What do I feel?
Surely she must feel something.
But he had drunk up her feeling with her blood.
The heath was rinsed by fitful sun. Sometimes it clouded over with rays of darkness.
‘Yes, and back again.’
She sat down on a rock. From here she could see to the house, the standing stone between like a lightning.
No rabbits today.
She began to cry, silently. Some feeling after all then.
The sea boomed.
The heath took no notice of her.
Rain fell for days and nights. It washed away the markers, the clawings of the cat in the earth, the tenuous little flowers beside the path, the webs upon the outside of the windows. It dissolved memory. For this was what the immediate past had become.
He had come in at the door, he had lain down with her, he had been her lover. And before that he had brought her back from the world, home again into the enclave of the Scarabae.
The doors to the tower were locked. She had tried them after two days. She had knocked.
She knew intuitively Babylon had been only for one night. He had wanted her only for one night. If he had even profoundly wanted her at all. It was the act the house drove him to, a completion. Even her blood was not enough to entice him. If it was true, he had gone without, a monk, for thirty years.
She did not want to leave the house now.
In misery she clutched at it. The cheerful fireplaces, the masks of the windows. She could hide here, burrow, and be safe. No worries, no living to earn, no people to deal with. How dangerous the house was, a great stone cradle lagged with cotton-wool to wrap her.
She existed with the firelight and the radio, and most nights she went down to ‘dine’ with Stephan and Anna, and now and then others appeared. She knew them all now.
She had never gone back to the beach.
But the rain washed the beach, too.
They were all there, at the dinner table, all of them but Camillo, who had never come. Sixteen Scarabae, and the four who served.
Wine was brought with the fish.
From this, if she had not guessed, she saw it was a celebration. Her blood turned to ice.
And they all smiled at her from time to time. Little biting smiles of their old strong teeth.
Then she felt the trap again. It was not a cradle she was in.
Upstairs she had another hot bath, too hot, it almost made her sick.
She performed the set of exercises she had taken to, on the carpet by the bed.
She should have drunk more of the wine.
In the bed she lay and imagined that she had never come here, that her life went on, between the shop of Mr Gerard and the flat. There would be monetary compensation for the loss of the fiat. She had heard nothing, but how could she, here?
She waited, for the door to open.
Of course it did not.
Five by the tower clock at the bedside—three-thirty in the morning.
The rain, the restless sea.
The rain had ended, and only Anna had come to dinner.
This seemed if anything as purposeful as the gathering of the clan on the previous night.
She was meant to confide in Anna.
‘I was thinking,’ said Rachaela, ‘I may need to get away to London for a while, after all.’
‘How should that be?’ Anna did not look astonished or even feral. She was bland.
‘Some money matters I should have sorted out.’
‘Surely, a letter would do.’
‘No mail comes to the house.’
‘The van brings it. Cheta—’
‘I really think I’ll need to attend to it personally.’
‘Well, if you must.’
No refusal then. And nothing to assist.
Rachaela looked into the fire. She saw no pictures there, not even of Sylvian’s funeral pyre.
‘As you know,’ Rachaela said, ‘I’ve slept with him.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ said Anna. Obviously there had been a breach of etiquette.
‘It was what you all wanted and anticipated. I thought you’d like to be certain.’ Anna did not say anything. ‘I’ve seen nothing of him, since then.’ Rachaela had not meant to say this.
‘Adamus is very secretive,’ said Anna. ‘You must allow him time.’
‘I was the innocent, not he. What does he need time for? He’s had thirty years.’
‘He doesn’t communicate easily,’ said Anna, indulgently. ‘I myself haven’t seen him, except briefly, for a great while. You must be patient.’
‘So you said before. Why must I be patient?’
‘What else can you do?’ said Anna simply.
‘Yes, I see. Plainly nothing. How long do you think he’ll hide from me? Two months, three?’
‘I don’t know, Rachaela.’
‘Or perhaps this is now a permanent state. Maybe I should get Michael or Cheta to take me into the tower with them when they deliver meals.’
‘That would never do. You can’t force yourself upon him.’
‘He forced himself on me. You all forced him on me.’
‘No, Rachaela. There was some measure of acceptance on your part.’
‘This is a game,’ said Rachaela, ‘as I suspected.’
‘Not at all. More... more a dance, Rachaela. A changing of partners through time.’
‘Left alone on the dance floor,’ said Rachaela, ‘and the band’s gone home. When the last little star has left the sky,’ she added, quoting with banality, ‘and not still together.’
‘He is as he is.’
‘I see that. Where am I?’
‘You are quite secure, Rachaela. You have all of us.’
Rachaela quailed. ‘But you’re all mad.’
Anna smiled her smile. ‘What can I say to that.’
Rachaela saw a picture in the fire. It was Camillo riding on the back of the great black cat.
‘Well, I’ll go to London.’
Anna said, ‘Wait a while.’
‘For what?’
‘Perhaps something will happen.’
‘But it has. I told you.’
She thought, Has anything happened? Another dream.
She thought: London, have I the strength to try again?
She knew the days now, she had retained a careful count of them. On a Saturday she went up to the attic. It was two weeks and a day, since he had brought her back, since their episode on the green-and-blue bed. The doors into the tower had stayed locked. She had been busy, walking and walking, sometimes in the fountains of the rain, doing her exercises. Some nights she drank three glasses of wine. She did not talk to Anna, only responded mildly when Anna spoke to her.
Camillo was not in the attic. It seemed he had lost all interest in that too. The rocking-horse stood still as a rock, she tipped its back to make it move. Three bottles had exploded off their tops and there were wine stains on the walls.
Rachaela sampled the wine. It was sour, as the old women had told her. Sour, but potent. She might try this brew, in preference to the civilized wine Michael dished up.
She searched the attic, and found a hammer lying between a sewing machine and a stuffed bird. As if in readiness.
She opened the clear window and climbed out.
The sky was blue, muddied with vast banks of cloud like cumulus from a volcano.
She walked across the two roofs and came to the tower and its window.
No sound. The piano was not being played. How quiet he was. Was he even there? Where did he go to when he disappeared? She had seen, he would brave the daylight. Was it only their affectation, to be afraid of it, as if it was expected of them.
She knocked courteously with the hammer’s hilt.
Was he there, and only dissembling. Burrowed in the tower, safe from her.
Nothing. Only the noises of the sea.
Rachaela rested against the tower wall. She longed to be elsewhere, to be another person. Anyone would do. Some spotty check-out girl, some sock-washing wife. Anything, anything rather than this.
She swung the hammer lightly. At her first swipe the glass cracked in the lion’s head. She lashed again. Pieces of yellow crystal dropped out on to the roof like strange sweets.
But she had not breached the tower. There was more glass, or some other thicker substance, behind the jagged hole she had made.
She smashed down hard against it with the hammer and the window shook, tiny cracks appeared like earthquake faults. The substance beyond and between the glass did not give.
She might have guessed. The stone-slinging mob had taught them. The glass was provisioned against attack.
She left the broken shards lying and took the hammer back into the attic and set it down neatly by a bird of paradise in lime and cherry feathers.
A useless aggression.
She had been shown. They were impervious to her.
And she was not a vandal, it was not natural to her to destroy things.
She went back to her room.
In biro, she wrote on a piece of paper taken from an ancient stack in a bureau of the morning room.
Adamus, it is unfair of you to shut me out. I want to speak to you. This isn’t some idle whim. How long are you going to hide yourself, or can you?
Then she tore up this letter, and the two or three which followed it, and burned them in the fire.
Adamus
was the Prince of Darkness. He would not answer at her call. A capricious and malevolent spirit, thing of shadows. He had imposed his will, or the will of the Scarabae on her. Now she must loosen their shackles. She must. She could. It was simple.
In fear she sat and thought of everything before her. She had been an imbecile and deserved nothing more kind.
She had better find the strength. She had better.
At about four in the morning, by the light of one candle, she thrust two more books into the new black bag, tested its weight, and did it up.
This time she had squashed some of her clothes inside, and several of the lighter books, the paperbacks. Into her everyday bag went make-up and toiletries. She could not take the radio, but as before she had acknowledged that. The quantities of books she must leave behind.
It was Tuesday, she had kept careful count.
The day of the van, perhaps, but that was not relevant. The van could not be used again. Surely Carlo and Cheta would prevent it, now.
She put on her coat and hauled the new bag up on to her back like a knapsack. It was heavy but tolerable. She would have to endure. The lesser bag she slung on to her shoulder.
Rachaela opened the door on the usual night-time blackness. She gripped the candle firmly.
The carvings swung, and up there an owl of wood stared at her among the leaves.
There was something wrong.
She knew it before she had reached the landing. A light burned in the hall, the red lamp.
She came out at the head of the stairs and looked down.
They were all there. All the Scarabae. She looked them over one by one, Unice and Alice, Peter and Dorian, Jack and George and Eric, Stephan was there and Anna, standing to one side, Teresa, Miranda, Anita, Sasha, Livia and Miriam. And Uncle Camillo in his armour with the lamp shining on the breastplate and helmet, and the vizor down so you could not see if he were laughing.
Rachaela had halted in her tracks.
She confronted them, waiting for one or all of them to speak.
How had they known?
Even, there, near the passage, the four servants, big Carlo among them. Ready to seize and stay?
‘I’m going,’ Rachaela said loudly. ‘I won’t be stopped.’
She held up the candle and began to descend the stairs.
A little ripple went over them, and she braced herself, but otherwise they did not move.
She was strong and they were old. How would old Carlo react to a kick on the ankle, her teeth in his wrist. The candle might be used as a weapon.