“Master Jon!” the loquacious one exclaimed. “What happened?”
“We don’t know for sure, Will,” Jon said seriously.
“Some one did for Erich!” Will said, spotting and accurately interpreting Erich’s blood-soaked clothing.
It was only moments before most of the Noir household assembled around Jon and Isaac and the sad burden that they bore. Foremost among the observers was the [38] redheaded Irishman, whom Jon assumed was Thomas’s servant. He looked over Erich’s corpse with a cool eye and unmoved expression. Others of the household were less stoic.
A babble of voices broke out, excited, confused, angry, and frightened.
“Erich! Lord Jesus, what happened?”
“Who did it?”
“What killed him?”
“Is he dead—he’s dead, isn’t he?”
Jon tried to hush them, but the torrent of exclamations continued until a deep, guttural voice accustomed to command roared up and over them all, drowning out the clamor.
“QUIET, you fools! Let me through!”
The crowd of chattering servants and field hands mobbing Jon and Isaac suddenly parted and like Moses himself, Captain Benjamin Noir strode through the ensuing gap. He was indeed a man of Biblical proportions. None of Benjamin Noir’s sons had reached his height of four inches over six feet, though Thomas came closest. Even in his eighty-fifth year he was unstooped. He had the bearing of an eagle. His mane of hair was thick, still mostly black, though streaked with white, as was the beard that fell in generous waves to his chest. A dozen small stone trinkets, red, green, and blue, were entwined in his beard, half a dozen rings shone on his long, strong fingers. He was lean rather than broad, but only a fool would think his spare build indicated weakness. His muscles were whipcord strong. Veins and tendons stood out on the backs of his large hands like twine. He looked [39] as though he’d been chopped out of a block of hardwood, weathered and knotty, salted by the sea and baked by the sun. His eyes had the confidence of a man who knew he was physically powerfully and mentally tough. His bearing was regal, even arrogant.
He stopped before the barrow and looked at Erich’s body for what seemed to be a long time, but was probably no more than three seconds. Then he looked up at Jon, his face unchanged though knots of muscle jumped at his temples as he clenched and unclenched his jaw.
“Where did you find him?” he asked in a level voice.
“The marsh, sir,” Jon said. “We were rounding up some stray cows.”
Captain Noir nodded once, then looked down again at the corpse. He frowned, bent closer, and took Erich’s chin, twisting the dead man’s head to get a clearer look at his cheeks. He looked back at Jon. From long experience, Jon could see the sudden anger in his father’s eyes as they became even colder than usual.
“What does this mean?” Benjamin Noir asked in a quiet voice. That tone, Jon knew, meant that he was furious, raging as he stared at the words carved on Erich’s cheeks and the symbol incised into his forehead, presumably by his murderer.
“I don’t know, sir.”
Captain Noir nodded, studying the corpse, Jon thought, as he himself might study a particularly interesting, previously unknown species of butterfly.
“Frau Agatha said that we should send a messenger to the magistrate in Brooklyn. And perhaps also, the priest.” Jon wasn’t sure why he repeated Agatha Derlicht [40] suggestions. Perhaps, he thought, to annoy his father. He respected him tremendously and probably even loved him in a distant way, like one might love a god who metes out punishment far more often than he answers prayers. But for reasons he never really understood, he also constantly tested him, pushing the ill-defined boundaries that stretched between them.
Again anger shot through Benjamin Noir, but Jon carefully kept his grin to himself, knowing better than to smile in public at his father. Impudence like that was sure to bring a reaction. If not immediately then later, in private. Noir clamped down upon his anger so quickly that Jon realized he was probably the only one in the crowd who had recognized it. Another point, he told himself, adding it to the tally in the private game that he played daily with the man who had sired, then for all practical purposes, lost interest in him.
“She did, did she?” Agatha Derlicht was his father’s bitter enemy. They competed for money, status, and prestige, in every big—and little—thing that happened in Geiststadt. Clearly, he wouldn’t like her dictating to the Noirs. Even when her suggestion made good sense. “Well,” Benjamin Noir said, “for once she’s right.”
He turned away from Jon, and looked back at the assembled household, which, as always, was hushed in his presence.
“SETH!” he bellowed.
There was a stirring in the rear of the crowd, and a small, mousy-looking man pushed through. It was Seth Noir, the oldest of the Noir brothers. He was thirty years Jon’s senior. For all of Jon’s life he’d been Benjamin [41] Noir’s private secretary. He lived at Noir Manor, jumping at the sound of Benjamin Noir’s voice, scurrying to do his bidding. He existed in the shadow of the man more as a servant than as a son.
“Yes, Father.” Jon could hear the capital letter that Seth placed at the beginning of the word “father” as clearly as if he’d seen it on the printed page. Seth spoke as if he were addressing a distant but feared priest rather than the man who’d sired him.
“You heard Frau Derlicht’s suggestion,” Benjamin Noir said, “conveyed so ably by the boy here.”
Seth’s head bobbed in a servile bow.
“Yes, Father.”
“Off to Brooklyn with you then, to the magistrate’s office.”
“Yes, Father. And the priest?”
Benjamin Noir scowled. “Piss on the priest. He comes here once a week to gather money in his collection plate and then scurries back to his comfortable parish in Brooklyn.” He looked at Erich’s body. “I suppose he’ll be needed for the funeral. We’ll summon him then. Not sooner. I’ll not put him up at Noir Manor to eat our food and guzzle our brandy any longer then absolutely necessary.”
Seth nodded and turned to go.
“Wait a moment!” The tone of command in Benjamin Noir’s voice stopped Seth in his tracks. “Don’t forget to give them the killer’s message.”
Seth turned, puzzled as well as cowed. “Message?”
“Open your eyes,” Benjamin Noir said with a hint of disappointment. “Do I have to tell you everything?”
[42] “No, Father,” Seth said, even more puzzled. Even more cowed. “But—what message?”
“I AM RETURNED,” Jon intoned, and a flash of satisfaction ran through him at the hint of approval he detected in his father’s eyes.
3.
The prodigal son returns, Thomas thought, but not a fatted calf in sight.
He carefully picked a meandering path around the piles of cow dung as he approached the front entrance to Noir Manor. It was a silly, pretentious name, he thought, but he did have a bit of fondness for the old homestead. The manor itself, though twenty years old, looked as if it’d been built just that spring. The Captain ran a tight ship. Painting, minor carpentry repair, washing, and waxing were constant activities inside and outside the house. It shone under a fresh coat of whitewash. The uraeus sign above the lintel gleamed like the sun.
Thomas liked the house’s cleanliness. He was quite neat himself and he liked living in neat places. That’s why at times it seemed a relief to leave the crowded, noisy, palpably dirty city, and return to Noir Manor where everything smelled faintly of fresh paint, soap, and wood oil.
Too bad, Thomas thought, as he noticed his brother James reclining on the front porch, that tiny bit of charm evaporated so rapidly.
“Ah,” James said. He was apparently the entire welcoming committee. “The prodigal son returns.”
“How original,” Thomas sniffed.
James was, as usual, drunk as a lord, though only someone like Thomas, who had known him all his life, would realize it. James was handsome with black hair [44] and the dar
k, brooding eyes of a spaniel dog. He’d inherited a somewhat swarthy complexion from his Hawaiian mother, who had been the second of the Captain’s four wives. He was as lean as the Captain and nearly as tall as Thomas, but he carried himself in an inelegant slouch. He slouched even while reclining, which he was now doing on the cushioned wooden bench on the Manor’s front porch. His clothes looked lived in. Indeed, they probably were. Thomas’s practiced eye told him that it had been several days since James had changed them.
Intolerable, Thomas thought. How does the man stand it?
Sloppy, drunk, and handsome. Four words that described his brother to a jot. There was no more to him, nor less. He wondered how the Captain had tolerated his mooching about the Manor for so many years. All the other Noir brothers—but for Seth and Jon, of course—had gotten married, or at least moved out and started their own lives away from Geiststadt. But it seemed that James was a permanent fixture. A leech good for nothing but draining the wine cellar on a regular basis.
Well, Thomas thought, that would change.
He mounted the porch’s short, wide stairway and regarded his brother, who indeed did have a glass of brandy resting on a small table within easy reach.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
James waved briefly. “Busy. Jon with the cows, or something agrarian. Father in his study. Of course.” He reached for and took a healthy sip of brandy.
“Seth?”
“Ah, Seth.” He put the glass down and looked closely [45] at Thomas. “You’ve come too late. Missed all the excitement.”
“Have I?”
James nodded. “Murder. Foul murder. Father has sent Seth to Brooklyn to report it to the magistrate.”
“Not—” Thomas paused. “Not anyone from the Noir household?”
James made a negligent gesture. “Just the old cowherd, Erich. You remember old Erich, don’t you?”
“Vaguely,” Thomas said, thinking, So. It begins.
He went by his brother, passing him as he reclined on the settee.
“Don’t get up,” he said, glancing down at James’ twisted, clubbed left foot that was housed in a clumsy-seeming leather boot.
James flushed, pulling his lanky leg back towards his body, unconsciously hiding the ungainly boot as best he could behind the normal one as Thomas went by into the house, smiling to himself.
The cooper’s yard was empty as Jon Noir pushed the barrow he’d borrowed back to the great oak tree and the wooden table that sat under its spreading branches. The cloth that had served as Erich’s temporary shroud was folded in a neat bundle under his arm. Callie had cleaned it—she was marvelous at getting bloodstains out of clothing—laundered, and dried it so that it was as white, soft, and stainless as it’d been when he’d borrowed it. It was only right, Jon thought, to return the items as soon as possible. As much as Erich’s death pained him, for he’d been genuinely fond of the old man, he didn’t want [46] to dwell on it. Or on the implication: there was a mad killer loose in Geiststadt.
The only thing, he thought, that just might take his mind entirely off such dark ruminations was the girl he’d met earlier today. She could take the minds of the damned off the torments of Hell.
As he approached the cooper’s yard he could see someone sitting at the table under the oak, drinking desultorily from a pewter mug as he planed some long, narrow wooden planks with an adze. He was a moderate-sized man, stout and red of face, with a bald head under a straw hat, sweat-stained shirt, dirty trousers, and a leather work-apron that was spattered with wood chips, sawdust, and other unidentifiable stains.
“Hello,” Jon said uncertainly.
The man looked up suspiciously from his work. He looked from Jon to the barrow.
“Is that my barrow?” he asked, the suspicion suggested by his face clearly present in his voice.
“Uh, yes. Your daughter, was kind enough to lend it to me earlier today when I, uh, had need of it.” The cooper continued to look at him suspiciously. “So, I’m, uh, returning it now.”
“Yes,” the cooper said. “I remember. She told me. Something about a body.”
“Yes—”
The man took a long pull from his pewter mug and plunked it down heavily on the table. “You’ve returned it. Now you can go,” he said, turning his attention back to the stave he was planing.
“Yes.” Jon was nonplused. “This too. A bolt of linen.”
[47] “Put it in the barrow,” the cooper said, without looking up.
“Yes.” Jon looked over to their shop, but there was no trace of the girl. She was probably inside, cleaning, or cooking, or—
Suddenly he saw her, peering out at him from a second floor window. At least he thought it was she. He could see the gleam of sunlight striking her glorious hair. He resisted a temptation to wave, and turned to cooper, who was still engrossed in his task.
“I know you’re new to Geiststadt. We haven’t really had a chance to meet yet. I’m Jon Noir.”
The cooper finally stopped running the razor-sharp blade over the wooden stave when Jon said his name. He put his tool down and rubbed his hands together, as if he were washing them without water or soap.
“Noir?” Johann Schmidt said. “One of them Noir boys? One of them sea captain’s boys I heard tell of?”
“Why, yes,” Jon said. “I suppose so.”
A new look came into the cooper’s watery eyes, calculating and servile, at the same time.
“Why’n’t you tell me you’re a member of such a prominent family?” he asked, continuing on forcefully. “Come, sit a spell. Have some brandy. My name is Schmidt. Johann Schmidt.” He turned to face his shop and raised his voice in a shout that would wake the dead buried on the lower slopes of HangedMan’s Hill. “Trudi! Bring more brandy. And another mug for Master Noir!”
“Take your hobnails off the furniture, McCool,” said Thomas Noir as he entered his bedroom and found the [48] Irishman sprawled out in his comfortable chair, hands behind his head and his feet upon the small inlaid table between the bed and chair.
Tully McCool complied, but with his usual deliberate pace and the half-derisive grin he wore whenever Thomas issued an order. Thomas acknowledged the grin with a smile and slow nod of his own, saying to himself, Wait my lad, just wait. Revelation will come to you like all the rest. McCool stood in his usual slouch.
“Hope you approve of your quarters. Sorr,” he said in an exaggerated brogue.
Thomas looked around and nodded. It wasn’t the same bedroom he’d shared with a brace of brothers while growing up. Noir Manor was well-near deserted now, compared to its crowded condition when a swarm of brats fought for their father’s attention as they fought for the food on the table. Most of the third floor bedrooms were empty. McCool had chosen the most spacious of the unused chambers for him. Thomas approved. His trunks of clothes and boxes of books and manuscripts were still packed, but that was all right. Unpacking and storing his clothes was not a task he trusted McCool with. The bogtrotter didn’t know how to handle and care for fine clothing. And the books ... Thomas didn’t know if the Irishman could even read. If he could, there were some volumes in Thomas’s collection that it was best McCool remained unaware of.
But something was missing ...
“My bathing basin?” Thomas asked, after he’d looked around the room and taken a mental inventory of the furniture, trunks, and boxes McCool had brought up.
[49] “Ah, yes,” the Irishman said. “I’ve put it in the small room down the hall, haven’t I? Sorr.”
“Satisfactory,” Thomas said. He was well aware that McCool looked at him with scarcely concealed derision. That was all right. Visionaries were always mocked.
“Young master,” a voice said from the bedroom’s doorway, “welcome home.”
It was Callie. McCool looked at her with his usual expression of amused interest, Thomas with the uncertain caution he always felt around the tiny old woman. He was, well, not afraid, exactly, of her cold gaze. Wary of it, more lik
e. He remembered the time he’d poked around her room and found her collection of dried, shriveled heads. After that he always was sure to be at least outwardly respectful to her. He could sense the heka in her. Before he’d reached his later adolescence, she was the one who’d assisted the Captain in his studies. Even now, he hadn’t really taken her place. There was a strong bond between Callie and Benjamin Noir. Thomas sensed that in the early years of their relationship they’d been closer than master and servant. Closer even than savant and apprentice. Much closer.
“Thank you, Callie,” he said, after a silent moment. He gestured at McCool. “This is my man, Turlough McCool. I’d like him to have a room on the third floor.”
“Servants live out back,” she said in a flat voice, referring to the unmarried farmhands’ quarters adjacent to the barn.
“You don’t,” Thomas said bluntly. He challenged her consciously if cautiously, wondering how she would react.
[50] Callie puckered her thin lips. Humor more than anger shone in her cold eyes, but a bit of both was present.
“The Captain requires my presence,” she said.
“I require McCool’s,” Thomas replied.
“All right.” He was surprised at her quick acquiescence. “He can take the room next to this.”
Thomas glanced at McCool, pleased with his success in overriding Callie’s orders. The Irishman seemed unimpressed.
“The Captain wants you in his study,” Callie said.
“I haven’t even had a chance to unpack,” Thomas protested, “Or even refresh myself—”
“At once, young master,” Callie said in a dry voice. Thomas recognized that voice. It meant that she was serious. There was no denying, even questioning her, when she used that tone. His sense of triumph quickly dissipated.
“Very well.” He turned to McCool, who didn’t even struggle to keep the smile off his face. “You may take your things to your room.” He looked around his own chamber, reaffirming his previous hesitance about McCool handling his books and clothing. “I’ll unpack my things once I’ve spoken with the Captain.”
THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Book 1: Shades of Night, Falling Page 4