Jon had made himself useful on the manor from an early age, purely from an innate love of the house, the land, and the people and animals who lived on it. Benjamin Noir took advantage of Jon’s talents, enabling him to turn his attention to his own arcane studies. He let Jon have more and more say in running the farm as Jon grew older and more knowledgeable. But what his father spent long days and nights studying, Jon couldn’t exactly say. Benjamin Noir had shut him out entirely from that part of his life. Though he had some curiosity regarding his father’s studies, Jon had found interests of his own to occupy his time and attention. Most of them centered about the land, its flora and fauna, even its imperfectly known history. There was more than enough in all that to occupy Jon’s time and energy.
Jon finished the bacon, bread, and tea, and pushed away from the table, calling out a farewell to Callie, which she acknowledged with a wave of her wrinkled hand from her accustomed place in front of the fireplace.
Outside the sun was shining. Its rays blazed in glory upon the uraeus symbol made of gold leaf, blue and red enamel, and jet inlay set above the main entrance to Noir Manor on the east-facing side. The uraeus was a kind of Noir family crest. It consisted of a winged sun disk with a snake said to be a cobra writhing under it. Jon had seen similar insignia in travel books about Egypt. Some [14] of the villagers—especially the Derlichts and their client families—proclaimed the uraeus pagan and sacrilegious, but it always made Jon feel safe and protected as it shone like a golden beacon in the rays of the sun.
There were probably twenty things that needed doing about the farm, but first Jon headed for the Glass House.
The villagers had called it Noir’s Folly when Benjamin Noir had begun building it. Noir had lived for three months in a hut that barely had room for him and Callie and the children, erecting the Glass House before he built a barn for his livestock or even Noir Manor for himself and his family. Set in a slight depression that protected it from wind and storm but left it exposed on all sides to the sun, it was a hundred feet long, sixty wide, three stories tall, and was by far the biggest building in Geiststadt.
It was constructed of glass windows embedded in a web of wooden frames oriented north-south, with the main entrance in the south wall. Part of the north wall was brick and stone. An adjacent furnace room abutted this wall, designed, Jon had discovered, like those in ancient Roman bathhouses. The furnace heated water, which was then transported in ceramic pipes—also built on the Roman model—that ran under the conservatory’s floor.
When it had been completed the plants began to arrive.
Orange and lemon and lime trees from Florida. Orchids of every size and color and description from a thousand islands of the far west. Herbs and medicinal shrubs from China. Insect-eating oddities from the jungles of the New [15] and Old world. Water lotuses and lilies from Egypt and the Amazon.
Benjamin Noir made a fortune—on top of the rumored fortune he’d brought to Geiststadt with him—supplying fresh fruit to the growing metropolis of Manhattan even in the dead of winter, as well as exotic flowers to society ladies and medicinal potions to doctors and quacks of every persuasion.
No one laughed at the Glass House now.
Jon went through the antechamber—the entrance was double-doored to conserve heat during the winter months—and entered the House proper. He wrinkled up his nose at the stench that suddenly assailed him and waved a hand at the swarm of flies whose buzzing was an annoyingly audible hum.
After twenty years his father’s Corpse Flower was finally blooming.
It had started to flower two weeks ago. The previous season’s single-leafed stalk, nearly twenty feet high, had collapsed and given way, as always, to a new bud growing out of the soil inside the giant tub in which the Corpse Flower resided. But this bud was different than the one that usually appeared. It grew ferociously fast, sometimes a preposterous foot a day, developing into what was technically called the spadix, a fleshy central column that bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a phallus. A bell-like structure called the spathe was now unfurling around the base of the spadix, reaching perhaps halfway up its eleven foot length. This spathe resembled a frilly-edged, upside down skirt. Its outside surface was dull green speckled with creamy spots. Its interior was [16] vivid crimson, as if it had been painted with blood. As the spathe continued to slowly unfurl to its four-foot diameter, the plant’s odor grew more and more potent. Its stench attracted swarms of insects, mostly flies by day and certain species of moths at night, which entered the Glass House through its ventilation panels.
This smell of rotting flesh gave the unusual plant its name of Corpse Flower. Benjamin Noir had brought its seed from the South Sea island of Sumatra. Jon could find no reference to it in any of his botany books. It was clearly related to the little Jack-In-The-Pulpit that Jon often came across during his rambles through the woodlands, but when this plant was compared to the homey little native it stood out like an oak to a shrub. Jon had been observing it with growing excitement over the last few weeks, visiting it early in the day and late at night and whenever he could in between, measuring and jotting down notes and drawings in his journal.
Even his father seemed entranced by the plant’s transformation. Jon would find him standing before it nearly every day. Benjamin Noir took no notes or observations concerning it, but the rare flowering had clearly captivated him in his own way.
Jon had just finished his initial notes—the spadix had gained another six inches of height during the last twenty fours—when he was interrupted by a young field hand who came running breathlessly into the Glass House.
“Jon—” Isaac had been with for the Noirs for nearly five years. He and Jon were fast friends and companions. Probably several years younger than Jon, Isaac was an escaped slave from one of the larger plantation-style [17] farms up the Hudson River, or, considering his accent, perhaps from somewhere far to the south. No one in Geiststadt particularly cared. Benjamin Noir owned no slaves because he thought they generally caused more problems than they were worth. He only cared that Isaac, who was bigger and stronger than most fully-grown men, did the work of two for the wages of one. Jon only cared that he was an ideal companion on his rambles through the countryside.
“What’s all the excitement?” Jon asked.
“Old Erich says the cows broke through the fence again and got into the marsh. We gotta get them back before we lose any in the sinkholes.”
Jon sighed. This was sure to take up most of the morning, which in turn would push his regular chores back to the afternoon. So much, he thought, for a quiet ramble up HangedMan’s Hill.
“Let’s get out of here,” Isaac said. “The swamp smells better than that ugly old plant.”
Thomas Noir rose earlier than usual. Much earlier. While he saw nothing wrong with languishing in a warm, comfortable bed, he knew that he had a busy day ahead of himself and he had better get going.
His once cozy rented room was no longer cozy. It was bare and sullen-looking in the early morning light. The things that made it bearable—his few pieces of furniture, his fine rugs, his books and manuscripts—were all gone. He’d packed them yesterday with the help of his servant, Tully McCool. Well, he thought of McCool as his servant. He knew that McCool had a different interpretation of [18] their relationship. But that was all right. McCool could think what he thought. He—Thomas—knew the truth of the matter.
McCool had left the previous afternoon to get a head-start in the slow-moving furniture wagon. There was nothing left in Thomas’s room but the bed and the chamber pot under it, a change of clothing from underwear out, and a small satchel that held the few necessities he’d need on the way to Geiststadt. Even his copper bathing basin, which he’d kept in a closet-sized room just down the hall, had been carted away by McCool and was already on the way to the bucolic little hamlet that Thomas had the misfortune to call home.
Thomas sighed as he relieved his bladder, rather inaccurately, in the direction of the chamber pot. He did
n’t care. He was leaving this room forever and when he returned to the metropolis of Manhattan—which he would, as soon as possible—he would have achieved his majority, his birthright, and his inheritance.
There would be no more hired rooms. He was tired of living on the Captain’s parsimonious handouts. He wasn’t ready to build a house yet, so he’d take a suite in a fine hotel. In fact, come to think of it, he wasn’t ready to tie himself to a single place, even as fine a place as Manhattan. The whole world—Boston, London, Paris, Vienna—was out there, ready for him to explore. Perhaps he wouldn’t return to Manhattan after all, but book passage to the Continent. He had a year more to finish his degree, but what did he need with a piece of paper proclaiming him a college graduate? He would finish his more important studies this summer. Then perhaps a year [19] on the Continent would suit him more than a year in college cramming his head full of worthless scraps of knowledge that were no use in the real world.
Thomas dressed carefully, fastidiously, as he mused about his future. He was a big man. He had inherited the Captain’s size as well as his dark good looks. That was, he realized, one of the reasons why the Captain favored him over his brothers. With his thick black hair, dark eyes, sharp features, imposing height, and evident physical strength he looked more like a muleskinner or stevedore than a gentleman. That was why he always dressed like a gentleman. So people would know who he was. Not a fop, with excessive perfume and a high-combed pompadour. Not a dandy, with too-high collars and too-lacy cuffs and too many accessories cluttering his appearance. But a gentleman, like Beau Brummel, the man who’d defined masculine fashion on the Continent for the last thirty years.
His friends thought him excessive to change his underwear every day and take a water bath two or even three times a week. But besides being a disciple of Brummel, Thomas also liked the sensation of cleanliness. He enjoyed the scent of freshly washed skin and the soft caress of newly laundered linen.
His best clothes were already packed and on their way to Geiststadt. He didn’t care to waste them on a seven or eight hour carriage ride over dusty roads. His second best—even his third best—were quite sufficient to bedazzle any observers on the road home.
He put on clean linen drawers and undershirt and a fresh pair of cotton socks. Then his Wellington boots. It [20] was difficult to pull on the knee-high, calf-hugging brown leather boots without the assistance of a valet, but Thomas persevered. Then he shimmied into his dark blue trousers with the buttoned side panel. Skin tight to the knee, they were cut looser below with enough slack in them to fit over his boots. Thomas buckled the straps that fit under the Wellington’s insteps tight to ensure unwrinkled perfection over his muscular thighs. He shrugged into his white linen shirt and struggled with the cravat for a moment, seeking that elegant drape which only an experienced valet seemed capable of producing. He decided in the end not to waste too much effort on its meticulous folds. He was going to spend the day in a stage and then a hired carriage, not in a fashionable dining establishment.
The waistcoat came next, ribbed wool and silk, a somewhat lighter blue than his trousers, then the double-breasted riding coat that matched the trousers perfectly. It hugged his broad chest and narrow hips, its faultless construction declaiming Thomas’s faultless taste as a gentleman of refined elegance.
He checked his pocket watch, giving it the customary morning wind before arranging it on its golden chain in his waistcoat pocket. It was not a terribly old watch, dating from the closing years of the previous century, but nevertheless it positively emanated heka. It had been one of the Captain’s prize possessions. Thomas had been thrilled and amazed when the Captain had given it to him last year on his twentieth birthday.
It was French. It kept exquisite time, even having an insert face that ticked off the seconds. Its gold outcast [21] was decorated with an Egyptian scene done in repousse—dating it to sometime soon after Napoleon’s invasion of that country in 1798. It showed a sphinx with an outsized uraeus figure hovering in the air above it. When the Captain had given Thomas the watch he’d told him with more than a little satisfaction that once it had belonged to Napoleon himself.
All antique, odd, and beautiful objects had heka. Or so the Captain said. The fact that this object had once been owned by the most powerful man in the world increased its heka considerably. Thomas, who had inherited the Captain’s inclinations and talents as well as his looks, could feel the watch’s heka when he held it in his hands. It was warm in his waistcoat pocket. Its ticking was like heartbeat of a hidden familiar, secret, cunning, waiting to spring into action to enforce Thomas’s slightest whim.
It was good, Thomas thought, to have power.
He sighed. Someday he might really discover how good it was. Meanwhile, it was a waste of time to muse upon the future and what it might bring when the present had to occupy his full attention. First he had to take the stagecoach to Brooklyn. There he’d hire a carriage to Geiststadt. The regular stage service between Brooklyn and Flatbush—with a stop at Geiststadt—was too sporadic to suit Thomas’s needs. He hated wasting his time waiting on schedules arranged by others.
He sighed again. He anticipated three, maybe four months in Geiststadt. Well, it couldn’t be helped. He had to be careful. He had to make sure that the transfer of power and wealth went smoothly. He couldn’t afford any mistakes. He had a long and prosperous life waiting [22] ahead of him. If his plans worked. And why wouldn’t they?
Jon Noir stood in dark unmoving water up to his calves, the mud sucking greedily at his boots. Slogging through the marsh that spread out for miles southwest of Geiststadt took effort, but Jon had tireless legs and a deceptively strong back and arms he’d developed in a lifetime of hiking, working the farm, and wandering the surrounding countryside.
It was a warm day. Jon and Isaac and old Erich, at times separately and at times together, had been chasing their runaway milk cows all morning. They had found all but the one named Eisa, leading them in turn to safer pastures than the unfenced marshland with its infrequent but deadly sinkholes. As it approached noon, the three searched different areas of the undulating landscape calling for her.
Jon took a breather, sitting on a grass hummock and wiping the sweat from his brow with his forearm. He could use a cool wind for a momentary respite from the heat, like the one that had blown on his birth night. Callie used to hold the entire Noir household spellbound telling of it, but none more so than Jon and his twin Thomas. For Jon the stories were enough to quench his thirst for the faraway. Thomas, though, was as different from Jon in this as he was different in so many other ways. Callie’s stories only seemed to fire his desire to see everything, experience everything, and somehow maybe someday even come to own everything.
When Thomas graduated from Columbia, Jon expected [23] his father would send him on the Grand Tour. A year in Europe. England. France. Germany. Spain. Italy. Greece. Jon did envy Thomas that. A year abroad would be something to remember and talk about all the rest of his life in Geiststadt. But it seemed unlikely that Jon would get the opportunity to take such a trip. His father would never pay for it.
“Jon!!! JON-A-THAN!!!”
Isaac’s deep shout carried strongly over the open marshland. Jon turned and saw the large, dark figure waving strenuously. He waved back across the rolling marshland and started to slog towards him, avoiding the open water and overly lush regions of vegetation that indicated sink pits which could very well be bottomless.
“I found Elsa!” Isaac bellowed unnecessarily, as Jon could see the black and white spotted bovine standing placidly at Isaac’s side.
“Fine!” Jon said as he approached. He happily thumped the cow on the side of the neck. “Just in time for lunch.” He turned around in a circle, scanning the expanse of marsh that surrounded them. “If we can find Erich, we can head for home.”
There was no sign of the old cowherd. He could, Jon realized, be almost anywhere in the marshes. The bog land was relatively flat, but did slope in rolling wav
es to the south. Fed by a stream running off Skumring Kill, the marsh covered hundreds of acres south and west of Geiststadt. Although mostly a grassy plain, it was also dotted with copses of willow, elm, and oak as well as bramble thickets too dense and thorny to penetrate.
[24] Isaac mopped the sweat from his face with a rag and tucked it in the back pocket of his breeches.
“Maybe Erich got tired of looking. Maybe he already headed off to the Hanged Hessian.”
“Maybe.” Jon smiled to himself. Old Erich had been with the Noirs for longer than Jon had been alive. He was inclined to take advantage of his age, as well as Jon’s good will. Jon frequently covered the cowherd’s lapses with his father. Erich was a good man, loyal and knowledgeable, but he was getting up in years and lately took more rest than Benjamin Noir might approve of. “All right. We’re not too far from The Hessian. Let’s go see if he’s there.”
“I could do with a drink of cool water,” Isaac said, leading Elsie by a rope he’d looped around her neck.
Jon squinted up at the sun riding high in the middle of the sky.
“I could do with a pint of cider and a bite of ploughman’s.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and jangled the change therein. “And fortunately I think I’ve got enough for both of us.”
Isaac grinned. “All right.”
Together they picked a path through the marsh, trying to stick to the higher, drier ground. Isaac led the cow. Jon watched for butterflies and unusual flowering plants. They both kept an eye out for Erich, though truthfully both were thinking more of the cool pints waiting for them at the inn on the Brooklyn-Flatbush road.
THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Book 1: Shades of Night, Falling Page 2