by Lee, Tanith
Ruth sat among the Scarabae like a living plant among ancient statues. She had bloomed from their support.
Across the room she smiled at Rachaela her straight white teeth that had never needed a dentist.
‘Hallo, Mummy.’
Almost the first time ever she had volunteered a greeting.
But then, she was at home here, not Rachaela’s unwanted guest.
Rachaela did not answer.
To Ruth’s right, Anna stood up.
‘Come and sit down with us, Rachaela. We’re so very glad that you came. We hoped that you would.’
‘I had to,’ Rachaela said. She said blankly, ‘You stole my child.’
‘Oh, no, Rachaela. Not stealing. Not that.’
Ruth said, piping up like a bright and confident pupil, ‘I asked the man. He knew the way. I came by train on my own. I liked it. They sent a car to the station.’
‘And you walked up the hill through the trees,’ said Rachaela.
‘Michael was there. He showed me the way.’
She was not afraid to speak to Rachaela. Not reluctant. It was as if it had all been planned.
Rachaela looked at the weird miniature woman her daughter had become. She did not look like a child dressing up, more like the daughter of a medieval family, dressed always as a smaller version of the adults, a woman at eleven or twelve.
‘Come and sit down,’ Anna said again. Her dress blinked its myriad eyes and all the dresses, Ruth’s included, did the same.
Rachaela went to the table. A place had been laid at the foot, opposite across the long surface, to Ruth’s place. As if they had known to the minute the time of Rachaela’s arrival. Probably everything had been kept ready for weeks, prepared as soon as Ruth got here.
Rachaela sat down, and Cheta came to serve her.
It was a rabbit casserole.
Rachaela ate cautiously, not sure now she could stomach such food.
Ruth ate neatly and voraciously, like a starling.
There was wine, a deep coal-red. Cheta poured a glass for Rachaela.
Ruth too had wine which she drank in greedy little sips.
None of them had changed. This family did not.
Ruth sparkled in the midst of them like a jewel in cobwebs.
The family was pleased. It had an aura of well-being. They had got what they wanted. All of them basked, the Scarabae, Ruth.
Only Camillo was absent. And Adamus.
Rachaela left her food unfinished.
‘A few days ago,’ said Ruth, ‘we had seagull. Jack found it.’
Rachaela said, ‘The cat used to hunt them.’
‘The cat is very old now,’ said Anna. ‘It sleeps all day and most of the night.’
Something had altered. The cat had altered.
Maria brought a strawberry tart.
Rachaela watched Ruth spoon the tart into her red mouth. She had a second helping, as she had done of the casserole. Real home-cooked fare, such as Emma had provided.
Rachaela got up. ‘Excuse me.’ She took her glass of wine across the room, and watched the table from there. It was obscene to pretend to be part of it.
If she, Rachaela, had been abducted as a child or teenager, would she have responded to the Scarabae as Ruth did? Who could tell, now.
The meal was finally finished with the cheeseboard and a dish of fruit. Ruth ate from these too.
The Scarabae rose and went like some collective creature, some sort of amoeba with Ruth its glowing heart, into the drawing room.
Here the old men and women deposited themselves about the room. They took up knitting and sewing, books and chess games. A mild muttering came from them like settling insects.
Maria and Cheta served tea.
Ruth stood before the screened fireplace in her duchess gown, drinking her tea, the focus for all the eyes which constantly rose and came to her, and the old smiles which lifted up the lips over the discoloured, sharp old teeth.
Ruth set down her cup and saucer by the stopped golden clock.
‘Shall I go up now?’
‘Yes,’ said Anna from a couch. ‘Go up.’
Rachaela observed her child swirl delicately from the fireplace and hurry with the well-known, swift fox-like movement from the room. Her acknowledgements to Rachaela were over. Ruth did not even glance at her.
‘Where is she going, Anna?’ Rachaela asked steadily.
‘Into the tower.’
‘Adamus’s tower.’
‘Adamus is teaching her the piano, Rachaela.’
A heartbeat interrupted Rachaela’s breathing. She cleared her throat and said, ‘How logical.’
‘Yes. It seems she has a natural aptitude.’
‘No doubt. Anna,’ Rachaela hesitated. ‘I want to talk to you.’
Anna got up like a faultless, tactful hostess. ‘Perhaps you’d like to see Ruth’s room?’
‘All right.’
Nobody watched them go out in turn. The Scarabae were not concerned with Rachaela now. Her day was over.
They travelled by a short stairway from the morning room, up into a narrow corridor carved with horses’ heads. Rachaela could not recall coming this way in the past, but she must have done, for she had surely explored all the house. At a turn in the corridor she saw a picture she remembered, a ship at sea, and under the waves a chariot racing from a previous painting.
There was an annexe beyond the corridor with two windows—blackened, impossible to decipher—and then a single door.
Anna opened the door and motioned Rachaela forward. It’s only ethical. You’re her mother.’
Rachaela entered a room of blood.
It was blood-red. The walls of embossed paper, with here and there a darkened bruise of damp, the fiery carpet, the four poster draped and covered in the colour of Ruth’s velvet mouth.
Rachaela stood speechless.
Red. The blood of menstruation and the torn maidenhead. The red of the womb which bore the child. The red of the blood drunk at a feast. Which was it, or was it all of them combined?
The room had its window, too.
Rachaela gazed hard at it.
She made out a Nativity, but it was wrong. A ray from the lamp beside the bed showed that the Virgin’s dress was also crimson, while the Three Kings had the heads of beasts: a horse, a lizard and a cat. Nearby, almost missed, was an ass with the bearded head of a man.
‘Your symbolism,’ Rachaela said, ‘is always curious.’
‘We have our own ways, Rachaela. This has always been the child’s room, the girl-child. She is our saviour, you see.’
‘Because a girl can make babies.’
‘Exactly,’ said Anna undisturbed.
Rachaela said, ‘She’s too young.’
‘Not technically, of course,’ said Anna, ‘but I agree. A few more years should be allowed to elapse.’
‘When she’s fourteen, fifteen?’
‘Something like that.’
‘It’s not legal in this country, Anna.’
‘Oh, this country.’ Anna smiled. ‘We’re our own country. All our countries and none.’
‘And who is the prospective male?’ said Rachaela. She was sweating in the hot colour of the room, ‘You know, of course,’ said Anna.
‘I know, of course. Grandfather and father and lover. That should be incestuous enough even for you.’
Anna lowered her eyes decorously.
‘This is the best way, for us.’
‘And does Ruth know what you have in mind?’
‘Ruth knows and accepts she is important to us. Luckily, this time, we have been able to welcome her in her youth. She’ll grow towards us, and towards her father. He already fascinates her, which is not surprising. In the end, it will seem natural to her. There is a little ceremony that will take place. This will help Ruth, as she grows older, to understand.’
‘No, Anna,’ said Rachaela.
‘It’s out of your hands,’ said Anna simply.
‘It isn’t ou
t of my hands. I’ll take her away.’
‘Even if you could make her go,’ said Anna, ‘Ruth would return to us as quickly as she could. Ruth has no trouble in identifying with the Scarabae.’
‘It’s disgusting, Anna. What happened before was bad enough, was foul enough. But this—’
‘How jealous you are, Rachaela. I’m sorry for you. If you had stayed, the role of wife would have been yours. But you chose not to. We have had to wait in patience all these years.’
Jealous. Yes, that must be it. It was not the unliked child she struggled to shield, but the man’s flesh she would not see mingled with another’s.
Anna had not changed either. Of them all, she was most like the Anna of the first meetings. But now too she was a true adversary. They did not want or need Rachaela any more. She would be allowed in as an adjunct, and kept from doing further harm. They owed her only the debt of Ruth.
‘No, Anna, it’s filthy and I won’t allow it.’
Anna lifted her hands and let them fall.
‘You fight against the tide, always.’
‘She’s a child. Am I to let you do this to her?’
‘She will be agreeable. What alternative do you offer her? You’ve had your freedom, Rachaela, and what have you done with it? Yours is only a sleeping life.’
‘It’s mine.’
‘Then live it, and allow Ruth to live hers.’
‘We won’t agree on this, Anna.’
‘No. I expect not.’
Rachaela felt utter helplessness, as she was meant to feel, and as she guessed that Anna saw.
‘Then I’m to be a spectator,’ she said.
‘If you wish.’
Around them the blood-red bedroom pulsed and smouldered. Rachaela imagined Ruth asleep here. Waited on by servants, her bed made, possessions carefully dusted. There on that table a box of paints and drawing pad; by the bed another box, of jewels, pearls and faceted glass. Everything had been catered for. Here Ruth could live: a pampered being, a fairytale princess, safe in the castle at last. And with a fairytale prince provided.
‘It’s all too exact,’ said Rachaela. ‘Something will happen. You don’t know Ruth.’
‘Oh yes. Ruth is like us. You were the rogue flowering, Rachaela.’
Rachaela lay in her green-and-blue bed and listened to the house shifting, and the breath of the sea.
She must make some scheme for herself, the best thing to do.
Once or twice, soft stark footfalls went along the corridor.
The tower clock by the bed told her it was five-fifteen, almost three then, if she remembered the time interval correctly. Or unless the clock had changed its pattern. But surely the clock was like the rest, changeless.
Had Adamus changed?
Did he look old now. He would be over seventy, if it could be true—foolish to reiterate any doubt. It was true, must be so.
But Ruth would not be drawn to an old man. The thirty he had looked would seem old enough to a child of eleven. But Ruth was not a child.
Rachaela saw Ruth again as she had appeared. An eldritch maiden. A mask in a dress.
She would have to speak to Ruth.
For the first time, properly speak to her.
The sea sounded louder as it claimed the beaches. The power of water.
Was Sylvian still out there, floating with the galleons and flotsam?
In the morning Rachaela bathed and dressed, and tugged on the bell-pull so that Cheta miraculously appeared. Everything was superficially as before. Toast and tea.
Rachaela recalled her former hypnotized aimlessness, and went out quickly.
She took the correct corridor, found the Salome annexe and climbed up to the attic.
The attic was not as it had been. The rocking-horse was gone. Webs of dust made a cat’s cradle about the space. On the chests the brown bottles of Uncle Camillo’s wine, many minus their corks, were wreathed and veiled.
Camillo had not been in the attic for months and perhaps for years.
The dust from the old house gathered everywhere, the powders of its grinding bones.
A cherry-and-green stuffed bird turned slowly to an icicle of dust.
She had laid the hammer there, after she had tried to break the tower window. A useless moment of violence. Let her recall and beware. The hammer was no longer where she had dropped it. Rachaela left the attic.
She began to move through the house as she had done before, opening doors, now trying to force doors which would not open. She found Alice knitting in a pale sitting room whose window was a gigantic cloudburst of primrose and grey. At the window’s foot, cities burned and Alice performed complicated clicks and twiddles on her steel needles.
Had she located Alice in this room before? She had come on no other Scarabae beyond Cheta, who had brought her breakfast. Two of the doors she had forced had turned out to open the other way, and to be cupboards containing piles of bedclothes, folded.
‘Alice, where is Camillo?’
Alice knitted.
‘I don’t know, Rachaela. Perhaps you should try the library.’
‘That was Sylvian.’
‘Uncle Camillo goes there now. Oh, such a lot of books we used to have. Rooms and rooms of them. I can remember Uncle Camillo playing with us, popping out from behind the chairs.’
Rachaela left Alice and wove her way through the house to the library. No one was there, but on the table stood the mutilated globe, the ink and ruler.
Rachaela looked at the ruler. It was plain ebony. She had seen Camillo scratch a skeleton on the ruler, but it was gone.
She tried the books. She looked at the lines ruled through the sentences. She found one book with single words left unruled. After much effort, she put the sentence together which the book now consisted of; We have fled before them.
On one wall, the north, the books were readable. No one had taken up Sylvian’s work, despite the ominous ruler and ink, Rachaela left the house and went to the steps which led down to the beach.
The sea was in, turquoise green, foaming.
She turned back to the house and resumed searching. He was the oldest of them. He had the roots of things secreted in his mind. She could not go to Adamus.
What was Ruth doing? Perhaps asleep in bed. She had liked to lie in on Saturdays and Sundays. Sometimes sitting up to draw.
Rachaela lost herself in the house as if it were essential that she must. She found another door that would not open and knocked loudly on it. When she tried again the door gave suddenly as if it had decided of itself to let her in.
There was, inside the tall yellow bed, an old man, tucked up to the chin. Between the bed and the door, a splash of red and white on the room’s ochre. The rocking-horse.
‘Camillo?’
The pane of the old face turned, the long white hair fanning out on the pillow.
One must be careful, too, of intentions among the Scarabae. She had meant to find him, and she had.
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ said Rachaela.
She advanced slowly. Had he come to this after all in the twelve years, the couch of age and decrepitude? There was no smell of the invalid in the room.
‘Camillo,’ she said again.
He looked at her. His eyes were sharp as knives.
‘One night,’ he said, ‘the mob came. They shouted round the house and the servants ran to my mother, they were so frightened. My father picked me up. ‘Get dressed,’ he said, ‘put on your warmest things.’ Outside the sleigh was ready and the horse to pull it. They had taken off the bells. My father used the whip. We started at such a speed. I remember the white snow splashing up like a wave.’
‘I don’t want to hear this,’ Rachaela said quietly.
‘The crowd had been misled,’ said Camillo. ‘They ran after us and stones thudded round the sleigh. My mother was weeping. She had on all her jewellery and a great fur cloak over her nightdress. We drove from the outskirts of the town. There were men running with torches but th
e horse bolted past them. I was excited, too young to understand everything had been left behind. Out into the white woods we ran. Great spumes of snow roared up and the trees were like huge white candles, glowing under the moon. I sobered, thinking of sagas I had heard of wolves, but my father hushed me. My father said, ‘Men are to be feared, not wolves.’ Then the forests closed about us and there was no more light.’
‘Camillo.’
‘The sleigh ran all night. Once on a hilltop the trees broke, and we looked back and saw a vast red light on the horizon. My mother cried out. She said that they were burning our people. My father said the town itself was burning. Then the trees swallowed us again.’
‘And in the morning,’ said Rachaela, ‘the light came, and you hid your head and wept.’
Camillo grinned. ‘Good, good. I don’t have to finish it.’
‘Why did you tell me?’
‘You’re here.’
‘Who were they, the ones that died?’
‘Scarabae,’ said Camillo. ‘Always Scarabae.’
‘Superstition, which they themselves fostered, killed them.’
‘Twinkle, twinkle little star,’ said Camillo, ‘how I wonder what you are.’
‘You were afraid of the light because you’d been taught to be afraid of it,’ said Rachaela. ‘You believed you were vampires because someone told you that too.’
‘What is this creature,’ said Camillo, ‘a mouse? An elephant?’
‘How can I take Ruth away from them?’
‘Ruth,’ said Camillo, ‘that nasty child.’
Rachaela stared at Camillo.
‘You don’t like her.’
‘A viper in the bosom.’
‘Then help me get her away, Camillo. Tell me how?’
‘There’s no hope of it,’ said Camillo from the yellow box of bed. ‘She is their bud now. And you are grass cuttings, the bush that won’t flower. Go away.’
‘Camillo—’
‘One night,’ said Camillo, ‘the mob came. They shouted round the house...’
Rachaela saw the old face close again like a crab upon its story. She went to the door and he recited the words until she had gone out and shut the door behind her. Then there was silence in the room again.