How did he know her name? Then she saw his face clearly in the uncertain light, recognized him, Sam Oden from Mortemouth, a fisherman with too many children and a worn-out wife and generally not enough to eat.
“Is that him?” Sam asked, and drew her attention back to the two slumped against the brick wall.
She nodded.
“And who would that be?” Sam asked further, approaching the lifeless two as though they were merely a problem to be solved.
“I'm... not sure.” Susan faltered, mildly intimidated by his aggressive behavior. Suddenly it was as though he had taken charge.
“It's his mum, would be my guess,” Sam announced full voice to anyone who cared to hear. What was most curious was that no one seemed shocked by it. Clearly the village had known everything for a very long time. Whether they knew the extent of the intimacy which had existed between mother and son, she didn't know and had no time to find out, for suddenly Sam stooped down near Mr. Eden and commenced speaking calmly, coolly, as one would to an ill child.
“Mr. Eden? Can you hear me? ‘Course you can. Ain't nothin' wrong with your ears, now, is there? You probably don't remember me, but I worked for you, years ago when you was bringing this old place back from the dead...”
Susan listened, fascinated by this one-sided conversation. Maybe after all, this rough fisherman could penetrate.
“Are you cold, Mr. Eden?” she heard Sam ask. “I'm sure your...” He paused. Obviously there were secrets to be maintained even under these grim circumstances. “I'm sure your old auntie is,” Sam went on after a brief pause. “Why don't you let us give you a hand up?”
She saw him start to reach for the frail figure in Mr. Eden's arms and saw at the same time a protective tightening.
Sam looked up at her, the lamplight catching on his strong and now puzzled features. It wasn't a call for help, not yet.
“Lookee, Mr. Eden,” he tried again, settling back on his heels like an enormous grasshopper ready to jump, “it ain't a matter of you not being able to trust us. So what do you say, Mr. Eden? Let me take...” At that moment Sam reached down for the small hand which lay like a fallen leaf among the grays and browns of heavy garments.
There was only an instant contact, but apparently that was enough. Suddenly the grasshopper was hopping, his long legs propelling him up and back, a single word escaping his lips in frightened repetition. “Gawd! oh, my Gawd! Gawd!”
Quickly Susan stepped forward, gathering Tom Babcock as she moved, to whom she delivered a single clear instruction, “Take the woman from him.” For a second she was afraid he either hadn't understood or wouldn't obey. But by the time she'd pushed her way through the gaping men, Tom had taken over the lead and the woman was lifted clean, when suddenly Mr. Eden came roaring up out of his grief, an awesome sight, features and limbs evolving out of the amorphous primordial lump. Reaching out with one massive swoop, he recaptured the hem of her layered garments, and for several macabre moments there was a grotesque tug of war.
Susan stepped closer and tried to place a gentle though restraining hand on his arm.
“Mr. Eden, please don't...”
As poor Sam tried words again, Mr. Eden took advantage of the distraction and pulled completely free and once again grasped the dead woman to him like a thief, his eyes filled with a mad glittering light that spoke of other realities, and for a moment he backed slowly, defiantly away from them, nothing to impede his backward retreat from culminating in the sheer drop of four stories onto the gravel of the graveyard below.
Suddenly a new fear surfaced in Susan's mind. In his present state of mind he could accomplish the leap unwittingly, for he wasn't looking behind him. What he most desired was in his arms, and what he most loathed was directly before him in the form of the slowly approaching, carefully tracking men.
Then something turned in her mind, a fragment of a recent memory, the large canvas downstairs in the library, The Women of Eden, one in particular. Elizabeth Eden.
The nearest thing to a mother that Mr. Eden ever possessed.
“Mr. Eden,” she said suddenly, and stepped through the low-crouching men who continued to track him to his destruction.
“Elizabeth,” she said flatly, though loud enough for all to hear, particularly the one who still backed toward the edge of the roof, now less than five feet away.
“Elizabeth,” she said again calmly, merely speaking the name but hoping that if once there had been anything between them, then perhaps the name alone would remind him of other faces, other realities.
“Mr. Eden,” she said, “think of Elizabeth. Think how much it would hurt her if you were...”
But the man continued to back away, clutching his burden.
“Mr. Eden, please,” she entreated. “Elizabeth,” she repeated. “Consider Elizabeth and how much she loves you.”
Suddenly, when she least expected it, the struggle stopped. The head had been thrown back when something had penetrated and apparently distracted, if not soothed.
Tom Babcock moved away holding the dead woman, and Sam Oden put a restraining hand on the man's shoulder. As though realizing he had lost his burden, Mr. Eden suddenly roared upward, as if to pursue Tom, and it was several moments before Sam and the others wrestled Eden to the floor, when the great head finally ceased its thrashing and appeared to stare straight up at her.
Suddenly Sam Oden's mates, aided by a most unlikely ally, Mr. Bates, appeared before her, carrying a long thick piece of rope which trailed behind Bates like a fitting tail, and even as she watched, helpless, the four of them, working in efficient unison, the long rope tail shrinking as it was wound around and around the fallen man, pinned his arms, on down to his upper legs, until Eden resembled nothing quite so much as the prize kill in a big-game hunt.
At that moment, the struggle erupted again, all the more awesome for its futility, and she watched as long as she could as he tried to pull free of the rope and, unable to do so, commenced to propel himself like a malformed crab, using the back of his head and the heels of his boots for leverage, the strain of incredible effort upon his face.
As the torturous effort of locomotion earned him a few useless inches, Mr. Bates stepped forward and lifted one boot and placed it directly in the middle of the man's abdomen. As he held it there and watched the slow-dawning awareness on Mr. Eden's face, this grin broadened.
“I don't think that your royal Highness is going anywhere without the permission of these... gentlemen.”
“Please... let him go,” Susan begged, and saw the four of them still bent over, growing brave. Sam Oden halted the outraged thrashing by merely stepping forward and standing on the long outflung hair.
“Don't!” she cried, at last finding her voice and the will to use it, confronting the senseless brutality with the weak weapon of entreaty. “Mr. Bates, I beg you. Please release him. There's no need - ”
“No need?” Bates parroted, encircling the fallen man to a position where he could confront her over the body. “The man is a suitable candidate for Bedlam. Look at him. With little effort and no concern for us he could take his final step over the edge and take us with him, one or all.” At this excessive claim he pointed a melodramatic finger toward the edge of the roof. “Now, surely, miss, you don't want all of our deaths on your conscience.”
By way of support, Sam Oden contributed, “He's strong as an ox, miss. He really is. I mean, he looks... shriveled like winter apples, but there's granite in there someplace.”
Sickened by the spectacle, Susan noticed that all had fallen silent now, staring down at their accomplishment. Bates seemed to relish the moment more than the others, who continued to exhibit a certain hesitancy, as though, despite their unschooled intelligences, they, more than Bates, knew that sometime, somehow the bondage would have to be removed and the man would come storming up out of rage, his targets clear — the three who rendered him thus.
Then it was her time to move. “Please, Sam,” she said quietly, her voice ho
vering below the roar of the wind, “lift him up and carry him downstairs to the library. I think he's been - ”
“No!” The strong objection came from Bates, who stepped forward, clearly challenging her.
“Why not, Mr. Bates?” she asked, still hoping to see Sam Oden and the others following her order.
But she didn't see anything, and only at the last moment heard Bates: “...so I think, while it is certainly desirable to transfer him, he must be taken immediately to the proper authorities.”
It was only on the last words that Susan came back to herself and to the precise voice speaking madness. “Authori...” she tried to repeat and couldn't and there was no need, for Bates was more than happy to repeat it for her.
“Of course authorities. She was dead,” Bates explained, as though to slow children. “Wasn't she, miss? Oh, you tried to whisk her away, but Bates knows the feel and look of a corpse, and if she was dead, which I assure you she was, then someone must be responsible for that death, and we all know who that someone was, and now Mr. Eden can add murder to the long list of offenses which God will confront him with in the next world. But in the meantime, we humble folk are compelled to live by the same laws, whether he likes it or not.”
As he spoke, his voice rose from sarcasm and wheedling to outrage and fury. The degree of hate which Susan felt spilling out of the thin man was awesome.
But what did he want? What, in the throes of this ancient outrage, was he failing to articulate? “Yes, she was dead” Susan said quietly. “But I don't believe Mr. Eden was responsible, as you suggest, Mr. Bates.”
“Oh? And how can you be so sure? Are you a constable or an inspector or an examining physician?”
“No,” she agreed readily, “and I can't be sure. But I have had experience, and in my judgment the woman starved to - ”
“Starved!” Bates mimicked. “Miss,” he said archly at the end of the laugh, “Sam Oden's people might starve, or mine, or, as they do every year, any number of Mortemouth folk, but I assure you, as one who knows that anyone blessed to inhabit this castle does not, will not, cannot starve to death...”
He had his audience — Sam Oden and his two mates, who undoubtedly all their lives had heard about the Eden wealth and Eden plenty.
“ … so I propose, miss, that we haul the garbage out, right enough, but instead of giving him escort down to his grand library, that we haul him direct to the constable in Exeter.”
“He is helpless!” Susan countered angrily. Yet what could she do? Reverend Christopher, who had been an ally, had disappeared, bearing the body of Lady Harriet, along with Tom Babcock. With their disappearance had gone the last vestiges of reason. All she was left with was pious anger and illiterate curiosity.
“All right, men,” she heard Bates command, and looked back to see the three of them closing in on Mr. Eden, all more than willing to take their orders from Bates, who seemed to know precisely when the reins of leadership had shifted and who held them now.
As the three of them lifted him bodily, his head fell back disjointedly and for a moment she thought that he had blessedly lost consciousness. But then she caught a brief glimpse of his eyes, open, staring at nothing.
“No objection, miss?” Bates inquired with suspect thoughtfulness. “Yes, Mr. Bates, many objections, but none that can be discussed here, at this moment, in front of Mr. Eden.”
“All right, men, then haul the rubbish out in any way you see fit.” In spite of the strain of effort, all three men nodded to the command, which simply gave them permission to make the passage as rough as possible.
Then they were moving, and she caught up with them at the trapdoor. As Sam Oden stooped to slip through the narrow opening, she bent over the helpless man who had been lowered to the floor with unnecessary roughness.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
Then Mr. Eden was hoisted aloft again and angled awkwardly down through the narrow trapdoor.
Bates called out instructions in one direction. “Proceed directly through the castle the way we came up, and down into Mortemouth, where we'll fetch a wagon, and stop for no cause or no man/' and all the time he spoke, he slowly disappeared after the others.
Gone! Then she'd better rouse herself and follow closely after.
He had tried to tell her to go away. Who the woman was, he had no idea. But it mattered little. She had looked kindly at him, and that he couldn't bear.
Suddenly he felt himself slipping from their grasp on the sharp downward angle through the trapdoor. Four hands made a grab for him, but too late, and seconds before his head struck the stone floor, carrying the full weight of his bound body behind it, he could see what was going to happen and welcomed it, and at the same time lowered his head and let his shoulders take the brunt of the fall.
He shut his eyes and bowed his head in an attempt to absorb the pain, and wondered how long it would take them to kill him. No matter. He'd been too cowardly to accomplish the task himself. Let them do it for him.
Harriet...
At the thought of her he bowed his head, and though he didn't will it, a single moan slipped out.
“Easy, men,” someone sneered close above him. “His royal highness isn't used to such rough passage. Kid gloves, that's what he's accustomed to.''
With his head bowed, John thought he recognized the voice. Slowly he looked up and felt something cool and wet rolling down from his left temple, and was only then aware he must have scraped his forehead.
Bates!
He'd thought so. He'd endured that arrogant bastard every day for too many years.
As the ancient fury built, he struggled against the ropes that held him, and ceased only when he realized he had no more energy and that he was providing his tormentors with a source of amusement.
“Ever seen anything like it?” one asked, standing back, a note of clear delight in his voice.
“Did oncet,” came the flat reply. “Went up to London town to visit me brother, and he took me to the circus at Bedlam.”
“Come on, lift him high and let's carry him out.”
Bates...
The best head butler in all of England, or so the Duke of Devonshire had claimed, and John, of course, hadn't rested until he'd lured him away from the duke, paying a king's ransom in the process. He'd known that first year that the rigid man had been miserable. Eden wasn't Chatsworth, was rougher, more isolated, cut off, and worst of all, tainted with the scandal of John's own life.
Still, instead of releasing him, John had merely appealed to his greed, to the natural greed of all men, and Bates had reluctantly remained in service at Eden and, in the process, had become a modestly rich man. He might have become a wealthy man if he'd had wit and cunning. But lacking both, modest riches had been all he could manage.
All at once John heard the voice again, encouraging, “That's it, men. Now you've got the hang of it. Like a dead animal, that's the best way to carry him. Don't you agree?”
As pain compounded pain, John felt his body weight hang suspended. He gave himself over to the harsh rocking motion and tried not to dwell on his dead hands, numb from lack of circulation, and wondered what had intervened, what had come between him and the goal he most urgently desired.
Something... A voice had spoken a name, and that name had meant too much to him — Eliz...
He felt only distracted chaos in all parts of his mind. No more false shadows of hope, no more specters of fear, real or imagined. If he'd lacked the courage to end this futility on the parapet of his empty castle, then he had every reason to believe that the men carrying him now, and certainly the one following after, would be more than happy to end it for him, perhaps before the dawn of a new day.
He was sorry for that. As he'd directed his life, he would have liked to direct his death, with Harriet in his arms where she belonged, where she had always belonged, already passed on, waiting for him on the other side, where together they would revel in their unique love which this world had denied them.
This world? Why was it so difficult to comprehend? How had he known to go to her apartments last night? He'd gone there before only in the beginning, when his sickness hadn't as yet done its worst, when he'd first been aware that they were the only ones in this vast castle, Peggy gone, then Bates. He'd needed her then, had envisioned them together. But night after night he'd knocked on her door and called out to her, but had always found the heavy bolt thrown, and ultimately he'd lost his temper and pounded on the door until his hands had bled; then he had turned his back on her barricaded door and had barricaded himself in the library.
And in this isolation he'd lost time, and days and weeks and months had turned into years and he had lived only in the presence of the Alma-Tadema painting of The Women of Eden, and in his remembrance of the past, which ultimately had done the greater damage, for he carefully avoided thinking on happy times. They hurt too much. Rather he dwelt on the betrayal and deception, for those suited him better.
“Lift him up,” came the command from behind. “We want to deliver more than a corpse to the constable - ”
Abruptly the voice broke off, and John, eyes closed, listened for the cause. “Put him down,” he heard Bates whisper fiercely, and sensed that someone was coming from the opposite direction, up from the lower floor, which would mean that it wasn't the woman. They'd left her above on her knees, praying. She'd been the one who had spoken the name that had —
“I say, what in the...?”
This voice was coming from the opposite direction, was male and puffing and sounded more baffled than anything else. “I say, Bates, have you lost your mind? What in the...?”
Then he felt himself being dropped from a distance of several feet onto the stone floor, his back receiving the full weight of the fall, the impact penetrating through to his chest, where he felt his lungs deflate.
For a moment he was aware of nothing except his need to breathe and his total inability to do so. He tried to turn first right, then left, but the trusslike rope prohibited significant or effective movement. He tried to draw his knees up, hoping to ease the strictures about his chest and force air into the useless lungs. But even that was denied him by the rigid bondage encasing his legs and ankles, and in a final effort to draw breath, he lifted his head and purposefully struck it against the stone floor.
Eden Rising (The Eden Saga Book 5) Page 7