Dominion

by Fred Saberhagen

  Simon grunted, rowing one last hard stroke, driving the old tub of a rowboat firmly into the shore. Then he shipped oars and hopped out into the muddy shallows, grabbing a length of chain to tie up the boat at its usual place, the ancient willow trunk. He said: “There’s not really a couple thousand.”

  “All right. Maybe there’s really about a hundred people. Littlewoods and Collines and Picards and Wedderburns. Hell, old Gregory’s actually some kind of a cousin to both of us.” Carefully shifting his seat in the canoe, Saul made ready for Simon to get in. “You wanna do the paddling?”

  “Sure.” Simon had learned to use a canoe the previous summer. He was in a hurry now to get across the river, and also eager to see how fast he could paddle, with another year’s growth of muscle to call upon. Jeez, Vivian was thinking about his big muscles. “I guess you’re right, about the family.” But he wasn’t really able to think about the family now. Not now, when Vivian wanted to see him. Maybe there would even be some way that Saul could be got rid of for a while…

  Saul, relaxed now, sat in the bottom of the canoe, watching the water go by as Simon swung the craft downstream and headed it out from shore. “Yeah,” Saul said, “maybe my folks will be the ones who own the castle someday, and we’ll be rich.”

  Simon paddled. To have something to talk about, to relieve his mind from Vivian, he asked: “So just who owns the castle now?” He felt sure it was someone in some branch of the family.

  Saul sighed faintly, as if he didn’t much care about that point. “They say it’s all tied up in the courts and things. We can come and stay in it whenever we want. There’s a little furniture and stuff.” Pause. “That room still looks burned, and screwed up, you know, where old man Littlewood blew himself up. He was like our great uncle or something.”

  “Yeah.” After using the old rowboat, the sleek canoe was a joy to handle. Simon drove the paddle fast and hard, angling between islands, taking advantage of quicker current wherever he could. Between strokes he asked: “Gregory don’t mind you using the canoe, huh?” He’d asked for its use himself and had been turned down; he knew his aunt and uncle went out of their way sometimes to do what Gregory wanted.

  Saul shrugged again, as if what Gregory minded or didn’t mind was no concern of his. “He don’t use it much himself. Hey, Si?”

  “What?”

  “You ever see Gregory outdoors in the daytime?”

  “In the daytime?” Simon repeated mechanically. He yearned to ask Saul what Vivian was wearing today. On a hot day like this, it wouldn’t be much, probably. “In the daytime? Hell, I dunno. I guess, sometimes. He usually comes around at night. Why?”

  Again Saul’s shrug; it was a superior gesture, as if he had too many pressing things to think about and had already had to go on to think of something else. Saul and Vivian were basically among the castle-owners, not the dwellers in the huts below.

  Simon said: “I dunno what part of the family I’m really in. The poor part, I guess.”

  “I dunno either.” Saul meant about himself. He sounded suddenly worried about it.

  Now Simon was past the islands, he could see the castle landing dead ahead. There were no boats at the tiny floating dock. There usually weren’t. “Hell,” said Simon. “Go start up your own family. That’s the way I feel about it.”

  Saul’s expression seemed to say that it wasn’t that simple, but he didn’t want to argue about it, at least not right now.

  Simon stepped out on the floating dock, after bringing the canoe neatly alongside. To his surprise, Saul only changed seats once more and reached for the paddle.

  “I’m just gonna goof around in the canoe for a while, Si,” the younger boy said. “You go on up.”

  “Oh,” said Simon, not knowing what else he ought to say. He was going to be alone with Vivian. A pulse inside his head began to tap, lightly and quickly. Inside his trunks he could feel himself shriveling up completely, as if with fear.

  When Saul had paddled out ten yards or so from the dock, he turned the canoe and let it drift. Now he regarded Simon with a look in which he let some wicked amusement show. “Hope you’re ready,” he called back. “She had a kind of funny look today. Like maybe her pants were a little hot or something.” And he continued watching Simon carefully for some reaction. Watchful, that was the word for Saul Littlewood at twelve.

  Simon was past caring about, or even knowing, what reactions he might display. He turned dazedly and started along the lightly worn path that wound upward from the shoreline, into the trees that covered the face of the bluff. Mosquitoes greeted him as he entered the shade. Even nearly naked as he was, he hardly noticed them.

  The pulse in his head tapped on. Halfway up the switch-backed path, he scraped a toe raw, stumbling on one of the carved stone steps, and barely felt it.

  Saul had said that she was at the grotto, and when Simon came to the branching path he turned that way. His breathing was shallow and quick, and sweat trickled under his armpits newly grown with adolescent hair. He was distracted from other difficulties by something in the way that Saul had delivered that last remark. It had begun to raise a horrible suspicion in Simon’s mind: suppose Saul was screwing his own sister, or wanted to? Looking back on certain things that had been said and done last summer hinted at confirmation of the grotesque thought. Ugh. Of course he, Simon, was some kind of a cousin to her too. But that wasn’t like a brother and sister. God.

  On silent feet Simon rounded the last shoulder of limestone rock before the grotto, and there he stopped. The thought came, almost calmly, that imagination had taken over completely, that his mind had at last given up reality. Vivian was sitting totally naked on the edge of the stone table at the center of the little paved court before the grotto. Her back was turned to Simon, and, as Saul had said, she was working on a painting. One slim, tanned arm was extended, holding a small brush to an easel set up just beside the table. Beyond the easel was the tall, pale stone statue serving her as model. There was a set of paints beside Vivian on the stone table, as well as two parts of a discarded green bikini and a crumpled red garment that might be a beach jacket. She was sitting sideways on the edge of stone, right foot on the lower paving, left leg raised and bent on the tabletop. In the faint breeze, leaf-shadows slid over her bare back.

  This was not imagination. Suddenly the pulse in Simon’s head was pounding hard. His heart and lungs were laboring as if he’d run up the whole hill. His hands and his knees were trembling violently.

  Saul had known she was sunbathing, he’d set this up. Or else Saul hadn’t known. It didn’t matter. Simon turned for an instant to look at the ascending trail behind him. He couldn’t see Saul on it, and Saul couldn’t have sneaked up through woods and underbrush without Simon’s hearing him before now.

  Simon stared at Vivian again. She was real, not imaginary. He had to try to see her from the front, see everything. In a trembling frenzy he tiptoed off the trail, then went down into a crawling crouch, heedless of occasional sharp twigs. If he could move behind bushes and the low wall to the other side of the court, then look up over the wall carefully, he’d be able to see Vivian from in front. Heart in mouth, Simon made a scrambling, desperate progress. He was as silent as he could be, but still things crunched and snapped faintly under his hand, his knee, his foot. She had to hear the noise he was making, oh God, she had to be alarmed. But when at last, with enforced slowness, he raised his head beside a tree to look, Vivian was still calmly painting, she gave no sign of having heard a thing.

  He had a perfect view of two small breasts, their tan softer than that of the surrounding skin, imaging a bikini top. The nipples were richly brown, exactly as his imagination had formed them for him a hundred times. He saw her spread thighs, the left knee raised and sharply bent. The foot was placed on the table exactly where it prevented his observing the central mystery. But he could see that that enigma was surrounded, just as his solitary dreams had shown him, by dark curls like those on Vivian’s head. Oh God oh G
od. And she was still intent on painting.

  He couldn’t approach her while she was naked, he couldn’t let her know he was here watching. He couldn’t turn and leave. One thing he could do, would do, must do now. In desperate haste he stripped down his trunks, letting them fall around his ankles, then pulling one foot free of them to keep his awkward balance on the slope. Now he would go to it hard and quick. But he had no more than touched himself when Vivian suddenly stood up. Simon crouched, agonizing in fear of discovery, bending his body in a contortion to seek all the concealment possible. The world would end if she should see him now, the way he was. But she had turned away. Stones had printed faint red marks on her rump. Ignoring her discarded swimsuit, she reached for the red robe or jacket. She’d seen him after all, and was about to go tell everyone. No, that was unthinkable. And turned out to be a false alarm. It was still her painting that absorbed her attention. She frowned at it unhappily as she tied the cloth belt of her jacket, covering herself loosely from neck to mid-thigh. Then a moment later she turned and strode impatiently away, heading for the single path where Simon had come up a few moments ago.

  Again he crouched low, limbs tangled in an aborted effort to get his trunks pulled up again. But Vivian never looked in his direction. When she reached the main path she walked up it briskly toward the castle. Simon could easily mark the passage of the red jacket behind screens of green growth. Then Vivian was gone.

  Simon stood up, feeling more than half insane. He was dripping sweat all over, his nerves totally shot. What next? If she was clothed at all, he could approach her; he’d follow her up to the house, say he’d just come up from the landing. He got his trunks pulled up, his congested maleness, reeling like -dull toothache, more or less housed again. Through bushes whose little scrapes and pricks he now could feel, he worked his way out onto the sunwarmed stone pavement of the court. He stared at the table; that very stone, right there at the edge, had been pressed moments ago by Vivian’s warm ass. The easel and the paints were there, the small brush, tip wet, just where she’d thrown it down. Speaking of wet tips… he ached. And there were the two parts of her bikini. She’d worn them this hot day, and they would smell of her. He imagined himself raping her bikini now. But the possibility paled before one infinitely better if still discouragingly faint; he’d catch up with her, up at the castle.

  Crossing the stone-paved court toward the path, Simon passed beside the abandoned easel. His eye was caught by the painting, and he paused momentarily in surprise. Even at the age of fifteen, even in his present state, he could see that the painting wasn’t very good. This was a surprise in itself, because Vivian always gave such an impression of overwhelming competence. But the main thing that stopped Simon was the painted face. Clumsily as it was done, he could see it wasn’t supposed to be the same face that the statue had. And for just a moment of wild conceit he thought that the face depicted might be modeled on his own; but no, that was supposed to be a short beard under the chin, not just a shadow.

  The pathway brought him through the tall, thick hedge, into the half-tended back lawn of the castle. He stood beside the weed-grown tennis courts, with the great brownish stone face of the reconstructed keep rising broodingly before him. Afternoon shadows were lengthening. That didn’t matter. Saul had gone off somewhere with the canoe, probably. That didn’t matter a whole lot either, it would be easy enough for Simon to wade and swim his way back across the river, in the dark if he should stay on this shore that long. There was no rational reason for the sudden urge he felt to turn and hurry away.

  He moved to stand beside the disused, empty swimming pool, looking up at the face of the keep shaded by tall trees and by its own west wing. Just ahead of him, at ground level, one of a pair of French doors stood slightly open. Otherwise the whole building appeared unoccupied, deserted.

  Everything was silent, but he knew that she was in there, somewhere.

  “Vivian!” It came out as a booming, grown-man’s shout.

  Only silence answered it. And then a cicada in a tree somewhere, keening loudly, as if in a mocking pretense of amazement.

  Simon went to the French doors and entered. It was dim inside the castle; at night it would be pitch black. He supposed Gregory must have electricity turned on in some of the rooms at least. He paced silently from one unfurnished ground floor room to another. They looked just as they had when Simon had seen them briefly in summers past, when he and his cousins had run through them in play, sometimes taunting, daring Gregory to chase them out. Which the caretaker had done, effectively enough, without seeming to try very hard. He had a way about him, that seemingly could turn on fear like an electric light in the cavernous dim rooms. The game did not last long, nor had it been frequently repeated.

  “Viv?” He still said it loudly, but this time it was not a shout.

  But this time his calling got response—of a kind. So faint that Simon wasn’t even really sure it was a physical voice, or of what it said. But he was sure that it came from Vivian. He was standing in the great hall when this answer came floating to him from upstairs.

  On the stone stairs his bare feet whispered almost silently. Now his scraped toe had begun to hurt. Jeez, but he was a mess, Vivian wouldn’t want to come near him, no one would. In the interior coolness of the castle, sweat was drying clammily on his skin. He ran a hand through tangled, dirty hair, dislodging a small leaf. His mosquito bites had started itching, his frustrated balls reproached him with dull swollen pain…

  At the first stair landing, he was distracted from this unhappy internal litany by… something. A nagging urge to turn aside here, explore a particular side hallway. The summons, whatever it was, was not from Vivian this time. But it was there.

  At the end of a short hall he opened a thick wooden door, and was surprised to find that it gave onto a circular gallery that went at balcony level around a stone room at least thirty feet across. Enough daylight to show the general configuration of the chamber found its way in through small windows at a level a floor higher than the balcony. In the middle of the stone floor below was a low dais, much resembling the outdoor table near the grotto. This place reminded Simon of something else too, and in a moment he understood what—a medical operating theater, something he had never seen except in movies and television. A small central stage with not much audience space around it, what little there was provided safely out of the way of the performers.

  But the most striking thing about this theatre was that the floor and the lower walls were blackened, scorched, in a pattern of streaked radü extending from the central table. The top of the dais itself was darkened too, solidly and in a different shade, as if exposed to repeated hard use and damage. It was quite clean now, as was the whole empty room, empty except for shadows.

  This had to be, Simon thought, the room in which Old Man Littlewood, whom Simon had never seen, had burned or blown himself to death five years ago, Simon had never been told just how. And now there were only shadows…

  For just a moment Simon thought he saw a man, someone standing at the edge of the floor, against the lower wall on the side where the blurred daytime shadows presently were thickest. But when he looked closely there was no one. Even when he closed his eyes, in an unconscious effort at the proper kind of concentration, his inner vision could detect no one.

  It was a spooky place and he wanted to turn and leave. But there was some important reason, still undiscovered, why he should not do that just yet. Instead he started walking round the gallery, like a small child trailing the fingers of his left hand on the stone balustrade. When he got about halfway around, he could see what was directly under the part of the gallery where he had been standing when he first entered. A cot was there, in shadows but with enough indirect light on it for Simon to make out the recumbent figure of a man. The man lay partly on his back, partly on one side, with the pale outline of his face turned directly in Simon’s direction.

  Gregory.

  It was very difficult to distinguish a
ny features forty feet away, in the dim light, but Simon was sure. Gregory’s eyes were open—how could he really be sure of that?—and they might even be following Simon as he walked.

  Feeling a chill of fright and horror compounded, Simon walked on quickly, keeping his eyes on the man’s face as he moved. He told himself that Gregory had to be asleep, despite the impression of open eyes that tracked Simon as he walked. If he was awake he’d certainly sit up, say something, yell at Simon for intruding. Something about the way the man just lay there, as if he were watching Simon in his sleep, was horrible in the extreme. It brought to a focus all the strangenesses that Simon had seen or imagined about Gregory in the past. It forced Simon to begin to see him clearly.

  When Simon had got far enough round the gallery’s circle for the man on the cot to pass from his field of vision, he broke into a soft-footed run. Sweating again despite the coolness, he trotted quickly back out through the gallery’s single entrance, and closed the thick door behind him, as quickly as he could without making noise. And then even as he moved on he began to tell himself that the pale face and dark eyes following him must have been some kind of an illusion. Seeing something was one thing, and making sense out of what was seen was something else entirely. It wouldn’t make sense for Gregory to simply lie there and watch…as if he were in some kind of trance.

  And Saul had said, hadn’t he, that Gregory had gone with the other adults to Blackhawk; of course for Saul to lie, or be mistaken, would be no big surprise, but… Simon yearned to leave the castle as quickly as he could, running, wading, swimming, to get back to the other side of the river. But it was a hopeless yearning, like that of a soldier who knows the war must be finished before he can go home. Vivian was here. He couldn’t leave while there was a chance of finding her.

  Simon went back to the stairs, and up again to the next landing. Having got that far he paused, hearing somewhere—was it behind him?—a sound like the faint closing of a door. He listened but there was no other sound. To find Vivian, the direction to go was up and forward.