by Sarah Bryant
When the piece ended he paused again, then moved into the next before the silence could break. It was an étude, the one I had struggled with, and I felt the tension dissipate from the room as the audience found themselves back on the solid ground of a virtuoso showcase piece. For this one they applauded. Afterward Alexander played two more études, rather perfunctorily. Then he stood up, smiled and bowed, took my hand firmly, and left the room.
Mary caught up to us in the hallway and began to protest, “Oughtn’t we to say good-bye to Dorian, at least?”
“Eleanor isn’t well,” Alexander told her, his look asking me not to contradict him, though I would not have thought of it.
Someone else had taken up at the piano in the room behind us, playing a popular song. People were singing, laughing, and I heard the sound of their footfalls as they began to dance. These faded as we twisted and turned our way through the empty rooms, strewn with glasses smudged with fingerprints and lipstick, bits of feather and ribbon, crushed flowers and the burnt-out ends of cigarettes.
“At any rate,” Mary said as we stepped out into the sweet darkness and slid into the car, “we’ll see him again soon enough.”
“What do you mean?” I asked absently as the car lurched into motion. Alexander slipped an arm around my waist, and I was glad to lean against his comforting warmth.
“Dorian said that this party was such a success, he’s already planning another. I told him that you had been thinking of entertaining at Eden, and he suggested that we have a joint party up at the house on the hill. Of course, it’s ultimately up to you.” She was clearly oblivious to our discomfort.
“The house can’t be fit for guests,” I said faintly.
“Eleanor, you’re not going to be tiresome, are you?”
She was half-joking, but the serious half concerned me. I hadn’t seen her this excited about anything in ages. The mark of Dorian’s seduction was on her face like a brand, and suddenly I was frightened, for myself as well as for her. I had relied on Mary as an anchor of reason; yet if he won her over, we would be divided, and I would be cast adrift in a tide of dangers rising far too fast.
I sighed. “I’m sure he doesn’t need me to go ahead with it.”
Mary’s eyebrows drew together, as they did whenever I scorned her beloved Chopin. “Really, Eleanor, I think you’re a bit unfair about him.”
I sighed again, leaning my head on Alexander’s shoulder, closing my eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry, Mary. I’m just so tired, and my head aches.” The last of my drunken euphoria had drained away, leaving leaden pessimism in its place.
“I know,” she said after a moment. Her tone had softened again, and I relaxed. The drone of the engine, the warm breeze touching my face from the propped-open vent, the total darkness beyond the twin dim pool of yellow light on the road ahead all combined into a drowsiness I couldn’t fight. It wasn’t long before I had drifted into sleep.
SIXTEEN
IT was as if the dream had been waiting for sleep to release it. I found myself at the centre of the maze behind the house on the hill. A full moon brightened the night sky, so that the apple tree in the centre of the garden, young and strong and replete with golden fruit, cast a shadow on the ground beneath it.
I stood in this shadow, circumscribed by fire. It ran around the tree in a ring, making an island of the small mound where it stood. The twins stood on either side of me, blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot. They wore robes and veils like medieval nuns, one red, the other white. The white one’s head was like a wilted flower, the red’s high and defiant.
I tried to cry out and to run, but I had neither voice nor the ability to move. I looked at the twins, and then at the moon above them. Its white light condensed and brightened until I was no longer looking at the moon, but at the sun.
Now the ring around the apple tree was of water. Birds and butterflies swooped and dove against the azure sky. To my left, a white horse grazed on the young grass. To my right, a black-haired woman gathered flowers, singing the lullaby I had sung to Tasha. Her skin was white and pink as the roses she held. As she neared the stream and the island, a man alighted from the tree’s lower branches, and said with a sardonic grin that reached right up into his summer-blue eyes—
“Eve!”
The afternoon dissolved. The smell of burning was strong, and with it came dread. There were two more figures in the garden now, both outside the ring of fire. One stood near the woman in white, his features obscured by shadow, his back to the tree. The other stood by the woman in red, and his features swam in the firelight.
The wind shifted in my direction, carrying with it the acrid smoke and its accompanying dread. I tried to scream, just as the red-veiled woman lurched toward the fire. Dorian reached across it and stopped her, then untied her gag.
“You’ve killed them,” she cried piteously. “Let me die!”
Dorian’s eyes were hard and cold as pearl, but he loosened the woman’s blindfold. As it fell away, Eve’s passionate face looked out from beneath the veil. When she saw Elizabeth and Alexander, relief flooded her face.
“Don’t think yourself saved,” Dorian said to Eve, each word falling with resonance and finality. “You have sinned, and you must pay for it.”
“I have deceived you, yes,” she answered, her voice clear despite her obvious terror. “But I have always been true to myself, so I cannot have sinned.”
“You have sinned,” Dorian repeated. He looked at Elizabeth and Alexander, then turned away. “All of you have sinned, and all of you will pay!”
The tears on Eve’s face had dried. When she spoke, it was with authority. “Only I have deceived, and only I will answer for it.”
“I’ve passed my judgment,” Dorian replied shortly. He moved toward my mother, but Eve called to him to stop. He looked at her, this time with anger lighting his eyes. “Isn’t your original sin enough? Do you cross me in my judgment as well?”
“It’s not your right to judge us,” she said.
Dorian struck Eve across the face. She barely flinched, though a line of blood sprang up on her cheek. “That is for your passion,” he said to her. “Now, for your sin—”
Elizabeth turned her white-hooded head toward them, as if she wished to speak. Eve cried, “Unbind her!”
Dorian seemed confused for a moment. Then, dazedly, he did as Eve had ordered.
“If there is sin here, it is mine,” Elizabeth said, as soon as her tongue was free. “Eve only did what she thought she must do. I complied with a deception when I knew better.”
A tear spilled down her cheek, and collected in a drop on her jaw; on Eve’s was a congruous drop of blood. The two hung momentarily, then fell with the suspended languor of autumn leaves. In that lengthened moment Alexander broke from his torpor at last, and caught a drop in each hand. When he opened them, he held two jewels: a ruby and a diamond. He regarded the prisoners, then looked at Dorian, whose face was frozen in an expression of disbelief.
“How is it,” he asked Dorian, “that you are not moved by the one’s honest admission of her mistake, or the other’s willingness to shoulder the transgressions of another?”
“Their sin remains unaccounted for!” Dorian cried, pointing an imputing finger at the twins.
Alexander looked at the jewels in his hand. “Let each of them carry her own burden. That is punishment enough.”
I blinked, and the jewels hung from fine chains. Alexander stepped across the fire. He gave the diamond to Elizabeth, the ruby to Eve. Each took the proffered jewel and hung it around her neck. Then Alexander began to untie the rest of their bonds, while Dorian watched in silent fury.
“Understand,” Alexander said, “that Eden is lost to you.”
As the last of the bindings fell away, Dorian leaped across the fire, and reached for Eve with unguarded fury. I tried to scream, but still I had no voice, no ability to move, no way to counteract the impending horror. The fire flared, stretching high into the night, trapping u
s. My ears rang with a woman’s wails. Then all was darkness.
I started awake in the backseat of the car. We were at Eden, parked by the front door. Alexander and Mary were hovering over me, their faces anxious; Alexander’s hands were on my shoulders. As soon as he saw my eyes open he let go of me. I sat up, my hair coming loose from its pins and tumbling down around my shoulders.
“I had a nightmare,” I gasped, every image etched horribly into my mind. “A terrible nightmare . . .”
“I know,” Mary soothed, smoothing my hair back from my forehead. “You were crying and calling—”
“We tried to wake you,” Alexander interrupted, clearly as shaken as I was, “but you wouldn’t respond.”
“It was as if you were in some kind of trance.” Despite her carefully controlled tone, I could see that Mary had been frightened badly.
I rested my forehead against my palm, trying to regain composure. I was hot, too hot to blame it simply on the warm night.
The lights of the house spilling across the lawn were like knives driven into my eyes.
“It was so awful,” I said, “and so real . . . as if I had really been there. But I couldn’t have been . . . could I?”
“Let’s go inside,” Mary said gently. “I’ll make some tea and you can tell us all about it.”
I nodded, and Alexander led me to an armchair in the library. By the time Mary came back I was calmer. I sipped the tea and related to them the basics of the dream.
When I finished, Alexander’s look was grave. “I know that you don’t want to hear it, Eleanor, but I really think that Eden is not good for you. I can’t believe you aren’t at least half-frightened of the place, and I can’t understand why you persist in staying here.”
Mary was studying me closely. The fine lines I had noticed on her face earlier that evening were more pronounced now. “I have to agree, Eleanor,” she said. “You’ve been excitable and peevish since we came here, sleeping all day, pacing all night. Perhaps it isn’t a healthy place for any of us.”
“I can’t believe it!” I cried. “Both of you speak to me as if I were an invalid—a child! The rest of you are free to go anytime, but I won’t leave! Not yet.”
“Good God, Eleanor,” Alexander said with the beginnings of anger, “you can’t still think that digging into this mysterious past of your family’s can lead to anything but misery?”
There were tears in my eyes; I wiped them away angrily. “Misery? My family is all dead! I’ve never even had a photograph of my mother. I don’t know who she was or what divided her from her sister; everyone has tried to keep it from me all my life. And as long as I don’t know what happened, then I don’t know who I am!”
Alexander and Mary looked at me as the words settled, and then, furtively, at each other. After a moment Mary stood up, and I saw tears glimmering in her own eyes.
“You know that I’ll stay here as long as you need me to,” she said. “But I can never be happy with something that causes you grief.”
I shook my head, already regretting my words. “I know that, Mary. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I should have seen what all of this would mean to you.” She kissed my cheek. “Is there anything else you need now?”
“No, thank you. I’ll be fine.”
She looked at Alexander, then smiled at me again. “Good night, then, both of you.”
“Do you believe it?” I asked Alexander when she was gone.
“What?”
“The dream. Do you think that Eve did something terrible, and we’re all part of it?”
He smiled ruefully, twining his fingers with mine. “It was a dream, Elenka. Nothing more. As for the past—let it be, for now. It’s almost morning.” I looked toward the arched window. The night beyond it was still bright with stars, but there was a faint trace of color in the eastern sky. “Come, I’ll see you safely to bed. I can let myself out.”
I turned from the window. Alexander’s face was irresolute. I leaned forward and kissed him. After a moment he pulled away and looked at me again, and the conflict was gone.
“I’ll see you to bed if you like,” he repeated softly. “But only if you are certain.”
“I was certain the first time I saw you,” I answered.
Alexander looked at me a moment longer. Then he took my hand, and we tiptoed up the stairs by that first faint light in the sky. We made love in the twilight, lay watching morning break, and then slept in the sun, dreamless.
Nobody disturbed us that day. We lay in the dappled light that sifted through the leaves of the trees outside the window, talking and laughing softly between embraces. When twilight fell again, Alexander finally left, but before he went, he picked up the pink dress from its crumpled heap on the bedroom carpet. The rose he had pinned over my heart was still fresh and perfect. His eyes fell on it, and stayed. Finally I took the dress from him and unpinned the flower.
“It’s as if it’s only just been cut,” I said, holding it up to study it by the dim light.
He ran his hand over my rough hair. “It’s your magic,” he said. I shook my head at him, but he repeated, “It is. Eleanor Rose—why not?” His smile waned as he fell to studying my face. “May I have it? To remember this day?”
I turned the little flower over in my fingers once, and then handed it back to him. “Consider it a token of my undying love.” I smiled. “Or an undying token?”
His eyes were serious, though, as he accepted it. “Do you understand what you say?”
I nodded, suddenly as serious as he.
“I’ll love you always, Eleanor,” he said, clutching me in an intense and oddly clumsy embrace.
“Will you come tomorrow?” I asked, a little anxiously.
He smiled again. “Nothing could keep me away,” he said, then kissed me good-bye.
PART TWO
PROLOGUE
NOVEMBER 1905
THE DUCOEUR HOUSE
IBERVILLE PARISH, LOUISIANA
NIGHTTIME in a small, round, candlelit room. The candle’s flame reflects in a mirror over a small table; the only other furniture are a couch and a desk.
A dark-haired woman sits by the candle in a dress the color of blood. There’s a writing desk on her lap, and her hand moves furiously across the page. From time to time she turns furtively to look around the room, as if assuring herself that she is alone.
When she finishes writing, she blots the page with a torn strip of blotting paper, then seals it in an envelope. She scrawls something across it, then gets up and knocks quietly on the door. A young, frightened-looking Creole girl in maid’s cap and apron unlocks the door and enters.
“He’s coming, Madame,” she says. Ascending footsteps sound below.
The woman presses the envelope into the girl’s hand. “Send it as soon as you can, Jeannie. It must reach my sister as quickly as possible.”
“It will go with the morning mail.”
“Thank you,” the woman says tremulously, and kisses the girl’s cheek. “Now go! Use the second-floor doorway, and don’t tell anyone that you were here.”
The girl goes, locking the door behind her. The woman hides her writing desk under the sofa, then returns to her chair and takes up a piece of needlework. By the time the key turns again in the lock, she appears to be engaged in it.
A man enters the room. It is clear from his flushed cheeks and shiny eyes that he has been drinking. A lank piece of fair hair hangs over his face, and his jaw pushes sullenly forward. He lists in the doorway, watching the woman until she can no longer ignore his presence. She looks up at him. Her face is the thin blue-white of skimmed milk, but her eyes are still full of the smoldering passion that distinguishes them from her sister’s. The man’s pout dissolves into a leer.
“So innocently occupied, Elizabeth,” he says with a faint French accent. Eve only looks at him with large, frightened eyes. “Has a day in here changed your mind?”
Her eyes flicker away from his, down to the embroidery in her la
p. Nonetheless, her voice is resolved when she answers, “I’ve told you, she’s with my sister, and there she’ll stay until you’ve come to your senses.”
His face hardens. For a moment his body, too, is frozen. Then he crosses the room and strikes her across the face. “Don’t lie to me,” he says, his voice low and menacing. “She’s with him, isn’t she?”
“Whom?” she asks dully, her face hidden by a dark tumble of hair.
A tight, ironic smile tugs at his lips. “We both know whom I mean.”
She doesn’t answer him, just turns her face to the wall and drops her head into her hands. He watches her for a moment, then he takes her hand—the one with the wedding ring—and turns it toward the candle’s light, exposing the ink spots on the fingers.
“What have you been doing?” he demands.
“Writing letters,” she answers after a pause.
“Where are they?”
She points to the desk, and he examines the three envelopes he finds there. He pockets them and leans against the wall she faces, crossing his arms languorously across his chest.
“You know, there is still a distance for you to fall . . . for the child, a much greater one.”
She finally raises her head. Her hair falls away from her face, revealing a red welt under her right eye. The skin beneath it is already discolored. “Stay away from her, Louis,” she says, her voice low and ominous.
Louis looks at her with impotent fury, then turns to go. However, as he is about to close the door again, something catches his eye. He moves back across the room and picks up the strip of blotting paper that lies by his wife’s foot. She rises and tries to take the paper away from him, but he holds it out of her reach, his face freezing into a brittle smile as he reads the words imprinted there. He looks at them for a long time—too long—and then, still smiling, he raises his hand and strikes her again across the face so hard that she falls backward into the stand with the mirror, knocking it to the floor. The candle expires, but the full moon sheds enough light to distinguish the crack that bisects the fallen mirror, and Eve supine before it until Louis drags her to her feet again.