CHAPTER TWO
The death room was bright with chatter and laughter. In one corner of the room, next to the door leading to the entrance hall, a chamber orchestra played a sprightly dance tune. A drunken couple clasped one another tightly about their waists, swaying in time to the music in a manner that elicited raised eyebrows from the older members of the room, who remembered a time when such touching was never permitted on the dance floor. Nobody interfered, though. Everyone was too busy talking and eating pastries that were being served by smartly dressed servants.
One of the servants, a young woman with her face flushed from the effort of carrying the heavy tray, paused at the window and looked out. Music was drifting into the house, but it was not the stately music of a chamber orchestra: it was ragged and raucous, the sound of untrained voices singing in the street. The young woman looked as though she would have liked to have joined the singing. But then a nearby guest called out to her, and she hurried over to offer him sweetmeats.
Yeslin, who was standing near a second doorway through which servants disappeared periodically, sympathized with the young woman. With his father’s encouragement, he had spent much of the summer preparing a ballad to sing at the Autumn Commoners’ Festival, when the servants of the Parkside district were released from their chores to celebrate the arrival of frost. Unlike the other commoners of this household, Yeslin had not been forbidden from attending the festival. All that kept him in this house was the thought of a man who probably did not even know he was here.
Yeslin turned his head to look. The southern half of the room, the portion facing the main entrance of the house, was crowded with elite guests, but the back half was empty but for a night-table, and a bed, and a man lying motionless on the bed. As Yeslin watched, another man detached himself from a group of guests that was laughing and made his way to the bedside. He leaned over the man, appearing to inspect him for signs of life.
Yeslin felt his stomach clench, and he forced himself to look away. The dancing couple had just come perilously close to upsetting a footman holding a tray full of champagne glasses. A few of the guests, who had shown no concern earlier at the unseemly dancing, now came forward to persuade the dancers not to destroy their refreshments. Biting his lip, Yeslin searched the crowd for a sign that at least a few of the guests were treating this occasion with sobriety. Finally he found a small group of guests – two men and three women – talking with earnest expressions on their faces. No laughter came from their part of the room. Yeslin edged forward as unobtrusively as possible.
The orchestra paused; during the interval, the words of the song outside could be clearly heard. It was The Ballad of the Dying Prisoner, which was one of Yeslin’s favorites, but before he could judge whether the ballad was well rendered by its singer, the violins had started up another sprightly tune. Under the renewed cover of their notes, Yeslin walked closer to the earnest-looking guests. He could hear now what they were saying.
“. . . no heirs to leave his house and business to. There was only the one son, and he’s gone.”
“And the daughter too.”
“The son killed the daughter, did you know that?” One of the women, in a bright red gown, announced this piece of tired gossip as though unveiling a new fashion. “I saw the body after it happened – the sight was simply shocking. I had nightmares for days afterwards.”
“I told you that you shouldn’t have looked, sweet one,” said the man beside her.
“Oh, but I had to see what had happened, didn’t I? I mean, it happened right next door to us. And her father was with us when the screams started. You should have seen the look on his face!”
“I heard that, when they arrested the son, his face was as cold and remorseless as though he’d killed a dozen girls – is that so?”
“Utterly remorseless.” The woman in the red gown nodded. “I saw it myself.”
“I’d have described his expression as stunned,” said the man beside her.
The second man gave a sharp laugh. “Stunned at his success? I’d imagine so. Not many murderers can accomplish so bloody a killing without any weapons.”
“The poor man.” Another of the women, wearing a gown of sparkling beads, cast a glance at the figure lying motionless on the bed. “To lose his daughter in such a way, and for the murderer to be his own son . . .”
“That’s not what I heard,” said the third woman abruptly. She had been busy inspecting her face with a palm-sized mirror, which she now slipped into her purse. “I heard that the girl’s true murderer was her father.”
Several members of the group looked instinctively around to see whether anyone was close enough to hear. All that they saw was a commoner youth kneeling down to wipe up a drink that had spilled. Reassured, they leaned in closer to listen.
In a satisfied tone, the woman with the mirror said, “I heard all about it from De Vere – he works at Parkside Prison, you know, and he attended the son’s trial. The son testified that, when he was quite young, his father murdered his mother—”
“No!”
“Oh, yes. And the son said that his father used to tie him to his bed and beat him till he was bloody. And that drove the son out of his mind, and that’s why he killed his sister.”
“He couldn’t have been as crazy as all that if he was giving testimony,” the second man objected with a snort.
“Still, you never know. The kindest looking men may hold dark secrets in their lives. . . .”
Everyone turned to look at the figure lying motionless on the bed. After a moment, the woman in the red gown said, “You know, now that I think of it, the son’s expression really was stunned.”
“Stunned with remorse, no doubt,” her husband supplied.
“Or stunned with craziness,” suggested the woman with the bright beads. “Completely driven out of his mind by his father’s cold-hearted abuse.”
“Or the son could have lied about it all,” persisted the second man, evidently relishing the role of expressing the minority viewpoint. “He could have made it all up to save his own life.”
“Well, he didn’t succeed, did he?” remarked the first man.
“He succeeded well enough to save himself from the hangman.”
“But the magistrate gave him over to the Seekers. How long do you think prisoners survive in the Eternal Dungeon?”
The woman in the beaded gown gave a dramatic shiver. “Oh, please, let’s not talk of such things.”
“De Vere told me that, when the son wasn’t sentenced to a hanging, his father was furious,” said the woman with the mirror. “And he was only satisfied when he learned that the son would be handed over to the hooded Seekers to be tortured for the remainder of his life.”
“Let’s hope his life was short, then,” said the woman in the red gown, who was now dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her handkerchief. “Poor boy. That he should have been driven to such a terrible deed by so cruel a father . . .” She glared in the direction of the man on the bed.
“Really, you know,” said the second man, “I’m not at all sure we should have come here today. He doesn’t deserve our presence.” He turned to take another glass of champagne from one of the passing servants.
Yeslin, putting aside the champagne glass he had picked up from the floor, took a step toward the speakers, and then felt his body yanked back with a painful jerk. Twisting his body to look, he saw that he had been hauled back by Harden Pevsner.
Mr. Pevsner was proof against the saying that face reveals character. He had bland blue eyes, and hair the color of wheat in sunlight. In this respect, he looked very much like his brother.
His hand was tight upon Yeslin’s arm, though, as he hissed, “If you cannot keep from glaring at the guests, you ought not to be here.”
“But they’re telling lies about him!” Yeslin whispered back. “And they’re dancing and laughing. . . .”
Mr. Pevsner’s grip bit down yet harder as he gave a thin smile at the red-gowned woman, who was now staring wi
th curiosity at the nearby scene. Pulling Yeslin away from the crowd, toward the western window, he waited until they were beyond hearing of the men and women before saying in a soft voice, “The death vigil is intended to give a dying person the opportunity to see his friends and neighbors for a final time – not in mourning, which would be inappropriate for a man facing his rebirth, but visiting in joy in order to remind him of the transformation he will soon undergo. I know that this is hard for you to understand, since you do not have such customs where you come from.”
The words, which would have been a gentle reproof if spoken by Mr. Pevsner’s brother, were voiced like a falling lash. Yeslin felt himself grow cold. He had forgotten how important it was – so very important – not to act in any way that reminded Mr. Pevsner that he did not belong in this room, but instead should be outside on the streets, where the singing continued.
Mr. Pevsner, having failed to receive a reply, opened his mouth to remonstrate further, and then jerked his gaze away toward the window. “What the bloody blazes is that man doing?” he asked.
Mr. Pevsner never swore; that was one of the more irritating aspects of him. He did not swear, but neither did he refrain from words that might convey impurity. Instead, he took a middle road, inventing words which sounded like oaths but which could not be held against him if anyone accused him of blasphemy. Thus he had the pleasure of breaking the rules without having to accept the consequences for it.
Yeslin craned his neck to look out the window. Beyond the gardens – carefully tended since Yeslin’s arrival at the house the previous spring – was a white picket fence, and beyond that the sidewalk and street. The side of the street nearest the house was lined with carriages; most of the neighbors had at least taken the minimal effort to come in their less gaily painted conveyances. The carriage-drivers looked bored as they sat obediently in their seats, awaiting the return of their masters and mistresses.
One carriage-driver, though, was standing on the street beside his horse, which was not hitched to any vehicle. Unlike the other carriage-drivers, he was wearing stable-clothes, patched and muddy. He held in his hand a bucket. As Yeslin watched, the man upended the bucket, splashing water onto both his own horse and the horse of the nearest carriage. The driver of that carriage looked amused rather than angry; Yeslin heard him call out a cheery remark to the driver on the street.
“Blundering imbecile,” muttered Mr. Pevsner. “He’s making a spectacle of himself, and of this household. Here, go tell him to take that horse back inside.”
“But—” Yeslin cast a look at the man on the bed. He could barely see the uneven rise and fall of the man’s chest under the blankets.
“Go,” repeated Mr. Pevsner through teeth tight around a smile he was aiming at one of the guests. He gave Yeslin a shove in the direction of the servants’ door.
Yeslin felt his throat close inward, but he dared not disobey. Giving one last lingering look at the man on the bed, he left the room filled with bright chatter.
The sound of the orchestra faded as he closed the door behind him. At one time this door had led directly to the eastern portion of the yard, which had an exterior staircase leading down to the servants’ basement. But soon after arriving at this house, Yeslin had noticed the difficulty that the servants experienced in carrying their loads up the front staircase in the entrance hall, for its steps were so highly polished that the servants ran a continual risk of slipping and falling to their deaths. He had explained this to his father, who had turned so pale at this information that Yeslin, for the first time, followed the impulse to reach out and take his father’s hand. His father had smiled, and had then begun making plans. The outer staircase had been enclosed with walls so that it would be warm in the wintertime, and a second flight of stairs had been built to the top storey of the house. At Yeslin’s suggestion, his father had also had workers install a small pump and washbasin in the stairwell, so that the servants would not need to carry up buckets from the kitchen below.
The combined sink-room and stairwell was bright with light. It had windows facing south; the wall that held the windows was slightly deeper-set than the line of the room he had just left. Yeslin found that his eye was lingering upon the near corner of the room, at a door to an enclosed area that jutted out from what had once been the outside wall of the house. It had been a shed – once filled with gardening tools, now used as a place to store mops. In the old days it had been kept locked all of the time, for the flower gardens had been much neglected since the death of the daughter who had insisted that she be their caretaker. These days, it was left open to any servant who wished to make use of it. It was opened dozens of times a day, and Yeslin himself, during his first week at the house, had made a thorough inspection of it, in the manner of a boy curious about his new home. His father, discovering him removing the shelving one day to see what lay at the back of the closet, had turned fire-red, and for a breathless moment, Yeslin had braced himself for the inevitable. Then, amazingly, his father had laughed and had encouraged him to explore the house’s attic too.
That seemed a very long time ago. Yeslin turned away from both the closet and the bright windows and made his way to the far end of the stairwell, where the washbasin lay, and where a small door to the outside had been constructed.
Autumn chill crackled through the air outdoors. Yeslin – who had spent the previous winter on the streets, dressed in nothing but a thin shirt and trousers – took no notice of the cool air. His gaze had automatically risen toward the room above the stairwell. The autumn plants in the pots hanging from its windows had not yet faded from the frost; they were still cheery shades of orange and red, like a Flame of Rebirth. The eastern sun sparkled its reflection upon the window panes.
His father had let him choose his own room. “That was my son’s,” his father had said, his chin quivering, “and that was my daughter’s.” Yeslin had chosen the daughter’s room, which was filled to the brim with plants that had been neglected since her death. Only later would he learn, from the servants’ gossip, that he had chosen the room where the fourteen-year-old girl was murdered. Inspecting the floor closely, he had found the bloodstains where her battered body had lain motionless after the assault. Thereafter, he watered all of her plants regularly, muttering curses against the son as he did so.
Now he turned his attention back to his task, walking forward and pausing only when he reached the cornerpost of the house. Most of the guests had left their carriages here, in the ring of private pavement in front of the house. Yeslin spent a moment scrutinizing the carriage-drivers while pretending to stare at the foundation-stone of the house. The stone depicted a young servant kneeling to his master, or an obedient son kneeling to his father – Yeslin had never been sure which.
None of the carriage-drivers were familiar to him. Even before the murder, Yeslin had heard, his father had entertained few guests, preferring to reserve his time for his business and his family. Now, through the months of grieving, his father had lost all interest in the business, which was handed over to his brother for supervision. All of the housemaster’s thoughts, all his hopes, all his love had gone to the one remaining member of his close family, whom he had not known existed before the previous spring.
Yeslin raised his face to gaze beyond the carriage-drivers to the great stone building lying at a distance upon a hill, as though it were nothing more than a stony outcrop. Within the natural stone foundation upholding the palace, it was said, lay the infamous Eternal Dungeon. Prisoners were sucked into its cave mouth and eaten, never to return to the lighted world.
The palace was different. Its grounds were always alive with richly dressed men, women, and children. One dark evening during the previous winter, when the air had been so cold that Yeslin was sure that he would die before the night was through, he had stood at the back gates of the palace, pressing his face against the icy bars and trying to imagine what it was like to live among wealth. In the moonlight, he could see the ornamented windows of
the palace, while in the rocky area directly behind the palace, a thin stream of smoke arose, seemingly from the rocks themselves.
The guards had chased him away then, but he had returned many times, and whenever he visited, whether during the day or during the night, he had seen the same grey smoke coming out of the ground. He could see it now, a faint blurry line against the palace.
“It’s a Flame of Rebirth, no doubt,” his father had said when he asked. “Even the greatest men and women of this world must die.” He had smiled at Yeslin, and then his smile had turned into a hacking cough that left him breathless.
Slowly Yeslin walked round the front of the house. A few of the carriage-drivers glanced his way with curiosity, and then returned to their stare of boredom. He paused as he reached the front door and was tempted to stand on tiptoe to look through the colored glass at the serene, beautifully decorated entrance hall that his father had always allowed him to travel through, provided that he did not enter the front parlor, which was reserved for the guests that never came. Now the entrance hall was barred to him as well, by order of Mr. Pevsner, who seemed convinced that Yeslin would wreak havoc in any room he entered. Yeslin found himself wondering at what point Mr. Pevsner would feel confident enough of his power to turn the commoner boy out of the house.
He was suddenly tempted to simply open the front door. A doorbell would ring clearly through the house, the butler would come and see him, and Mr. Pevsner, learning of his disobedience, would act accordingly. Everything would be over, and he would no longer have to sleep at night with nightmares of what was to come.
But then the man on the bed would be alone. Resolutely, Yeslin turned away and made his path round to the western side of the house.
He could hear more clearly now the commoners’ singing, and he began humming his own ballad – not too loudly, for Mr. Pevsner had banned all singing from the house, despite the fact that his father liked to hear music when he was ill. Yeslin had worked carefully on his song, using as its base The Ballad of the Dying Prisoner. It had always bothered him that the ballad should end with the death of the lonely prisoner. In his own version of the tale, he had engineered a rescue of the prisoner from the Eternal Dungeon, with the help of a sympathetic guard. He had struggled over the question of whether anyone would believe that a guard in the Eternal Dungeon could be sympathetic and had also spent much time trying to decide whether the prisoner and the guard should be friends, or merely love-mates. In the end, he had made them twins who had been separated at birth, one going to live with a commoner family and the other going to live with a high-born family. Not content with this innovation, he had added a second twist: rather than have the ballad be an ordinary tale about the bond of love between the prisoner and his rescuer, he had arranged for the other prisoners to rise up in revolt against their oppressors. At the end of the ballad, having slain the Seekers and regained their freedom, the prisoners and the one sympathetic guard joined together, arm and arm, to bring their mighty power to the streets of Yclau’s capital, where they might free other men and women who had been treated unjustly.
It was a vision that pleased Yeslin, though he knew that it was likely to elicit laughter from many of his listeners. He smiled now as the tune thrummed in his throat, so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not notice where he was until Rab hailed him.
“Did that old gas-pipe throw you out?” the carriage-driver asked, pausing to wipe sweat from his brow with an arm that was already covered with water.
Yeslin gave a worried look back at the house. The window was still open, though he could not see whether Mr. Pevsner was near. Lowering his voice in the hopes that Rab would take the hint, he said, “Mr. Pevsner sent me to ask you to take the horse back into the stable, please.”
Rab looked aghast. “The stable? How the bloody blades am I supposed to wash him there? The dirt floor will turn into a puddle of mud!”
“That’s what he told me to say,” replied Yeslin with a shrug. He looked round to see whether the other carriage-drivers were listening to this conversation, and found that they were.
Rab noticed this as well and scowled at the nearest carriage-driver, who grinned back. “Better learn to hold your tongue, man,” the other carriage-driver said cheerfully. “I’ve heard tale that your new master has already turned seven servants out onto the streets.”
“Six,” growled Rab. “And he isn’t my master.”
“Seven,” said Yeslin softly. “He turned out little Gillie this morning.”
Rab looked as though he would roar at this news, but instead he glared at the other carriage-driver, picked up his bucket, and pulled at his horse’s rein. “Come on,” he told Yeslin, who began winding the nearby hose back onto its wheeled reel, pushing the reel as he went.
He left the hose reel beside the outside pipe that his father had installed the previous summer, at his suggestion, and hurried to catch up with Rab. The old man had already turned the corner into the spacious back lawn that held the vegetable gardens and the chicken coops and the stable for the carriage horses. Servants were bending over the coops, fetching eggs and occasionally glancing, as the servant-girl had, toward the Autumn Commoners’ Festival, their expression wistful.
Yeslin, pausing against a vine-pole to catch his breath, looked over toward the celebration. The morning was still young, and the sun had just begun to rise over the roofs; the frost sculpture looked as fresh as it had on the previous night, when it was made. It was in the traditional shape: a circle to symbolize the turning cycle of rebirth for the old year and for the human souls who had died during the past year. Children were clustered around the ring, looking as though they would like to have touched it, but none of them dared mar the sacred symbol.
A woman broke away from the crowd of adults that was drinking and was listening to a man sing a song. She reeled her way up to the ring, gouged out a bit of the ice, and plopped it into a mug. She promptly handed the mug to the small girl she was dragging alongside her, and said something sharply to the girl. The girl looked up, but apparently she did not respond quickly enough for the woman’s satisfaction. The woman, gripping the ring to keep herself from falling over, hit the girl on the head with her fist. The girl fell onto her bottom and burst into tears.
Yeslin felt his hands curl into balls. He stood motionless, willing one of the other commoners at the festival to notice and come rescue the girl, but the adults were absorbed in the singing, and the children seemed disinclined to interfere with the heavy-handed woman. The girl picked herself up and stumbled over to a nearby barrel, where she carefully filled the cup with the traditional hard cider before bringing it back to the woman. The woman gulped down the contents swiftly.
Yeslin, recollecting himself, turned away before his birth-mother should sight him. He had not expected to see her here, so far from home, but that was careless of him. His birth-mother never passed up a chance for a free drink. The only wonder was that his birth-father was not here as well.
By the time Yeslin caught up with Rab, the carriage-driver had already wiped down the horse and returned it to its stall. He was sitting now in the hayloft, chewing on the end of a bit of hay. Yeslin climbed up the ladder to join him.
As he flopped down onto his stomach beside the carriage-driver, he said, “Someone should do something.”
He was not entirely sure which event he was speaking of, but Rab drew his own conclusions. “Who could?” he replied simply. “Who’d risk being turned out?”
“Manfred,” Yeslin suggested.
“Oh, aye. He’s mid-class; the Menservants’ Guild would care for him if he lost his position without cause. But the rest of us . . . One word from any of us, and we’d be out the door, with no letter of recommendation to find us a new position.” He glanced at Yeslin, half buried in the hay. “It’s mighty cold on the streets in winter.”
Yeslin nodded without speaking. They were both silent for a while, looking down upon the horses’ stalls and watching the warm steam from the
horses’ mouths rise into the air. Finally Yeslin said, “He’s ruining everything. The household was fine till he came along and took over.”
“Mm.” Rab chewed on his hay a minute before saying, “Well, it’s been fine since your arrival. Before that . . . The master was mighty down before that. Needed someone like you to pull him up from his bad spirits.”
Yeslin cradled his face in his arms to keep it from being scratched by the hay. “Do you think he’s dead?” He did not bother to say the name. He never said the hated name.
“No,” replied Rab decisively.
Yeslin raised his head to look at him. “You seem very sure.”
“I know— Well, never mind what I know. I know he’s not dead.”
It was hardly the first time Rab had teased Yeslin with mysterious hints, and once again Yeslin had to force himself to keep from asking the questions he was sure Rab wanted him to ask. His father hated gossip.
He thought again of the murderous son. If the son was not dead, he was imprisoned, being tortured to death. And lying, perhaps? He had lied at his trial, trying to shift the blame for his murder onto his father. Would he lie to the Seekers? And if he did, would the Seekers believe him?
Suddenly restless, Yeslin half-climbed, half-slid down the ladder. Sighing, Rab followed slowly. As he did so, Yeslin said, “There ought to be a way to stop such things from happening. It happens in other households too. Servants being sent away without cause.”
Rab snorted as he reached the ground. “Boy, has it taken you this long to figure that out? It happens all over the city. Sewer workers, manufactory workers . . . any man or woman without a guild to fight for him gets turned out, and none of us can do a thing about it. It’s the way things are.”
“It’s wrong!” cried Yeslin.
“Aye. Well, there’s lots of wrongs in this world that can’t be righted. Do you think we can bring back the master’s daughter from death? Or the master’s son from those torturers that have hold of him now?”
“He deserves to be tortured,” Yeslin replied.
Rab sighed again as he leaned against the half-doors that led to the outside. “Aye, well, you can say that, but I’ll tell you one thing: If the two of them were here again, the master wouldn’t be dying. It’s grief as much as illness has brought him to this state. I thought, when you came . . . But he wants to die. He wants to travel on to a new life, where he won’t remember what happened and feel the pain of it.”
Yeslin folded his arms and looked out upon the yard, and upon the street beyond, empty but for passing carriages. In a tight voice, he said, “I’ve tried.”
He felt Rab’s arm fall across his shoulders. “You’ve tried,” the carriage-driver agreed. “And no one could have done a better job than you have. The master’s not dying for want of love, that’s for sure. But she was his daughter, and he . . he was the master’s first-born. His heir.”
Rab’s voice had taken on a different note now, a more hushed sound, with a catch at the end of his sentence. Yeslin was beginning to look over at him to see what his face held when a carriage caught his eye. It had been moving swiftly, but it parked itself on the side of the street just as quickly, on the corner of their lot. The carriage had four horses rather than two, and on its top sat both a driver and a man in a soldier’s uniform. Yeslin could not see who sat inside the carriage, for the window shade was drawn, but he could see the gold seal upon the carriage’s black body.
“That’s the royal seal!” he cried, leaning over the half-doors to see better. “I saw that seal on the gates of the palace!”
“Aye?” Rab sounded singularly unimpressed. “That’ll be the prince, then. He and the master shared the same tutor when they were young; the master sometimes got invited to the palace, back in those days. The master has never forgotten the prince, after all these years.” He sounded as though he thought the prince was receiving an honor by visiting here.
Yeslin was now practically falling over the doors, trying to see the inhabitant of the carriage. Rab spat out his hay to say, “You’d best go back indoors. If the prince is there, you should be by the master’s side. So the prince will remember you were there, in case anything should happen after.”
Yeslin stared at Rab, impressed with his quick wit. “I wouldn’t dare,” he said. “He’s the prince.”
“Last I heard, princes were mortals, like all the rest of us,” said Rab in a matter-of-fact manner. “This one’s an old man. Probably would appreciate seeing that your father’s being cared for by a bright-eyed boy like you. Go on, make sure that barrel of wind inside doesn’t take your rightful place. Let the prince know that your father values you.”
Yeslin was still trying to think up arguments against Rab’s absurd plan, but the carriage-driver had opened the doors and pushed him forward with as much determination as he used with his horses. Yeslin, unable to resist the idea of being in the same room as royalty, ran toward the house, past the squawking chickens and the startled servants.
Only as he reached the corner leading to the east side of the house did he look back. A man had emerged from the carriage, clothed from head to foot in royal black, but his back was to Yeslin. He was talking to the soldier, and his head was hidden by the hood of his cloak.
Reassured by this sign of the prince’s generous condescension toward his inferiors, Yeslin turned and began to race back to the death room.
He slid into the room unnoticed. All was as it had been when he left: the sprightly tunes continued, the chatter remained high, and his father lay motionless on the bed. Mr. Pevsner was leaning over his father again. His mouth dry, both from the run and from the anticipation of what was to come, Yeslin began to edge his way toward the water pitcher on the nearby sideboard. But his way was suddenly blocked by a man two heads higher than himself.
“May I fetch you something, sir?” His father’s butler and valet, Manfred, spoke coldly.
Yeslin, feeling his throat tighten, shook his head quickly and backed away. He had gotten along well with all of the servants since his arrival here, for he had never tried to act as though he were anything other than what he was, a commoner boy who had received the charitable hospitality of a high-born gentleman. But Mr. Pevsner, upon his arrival, had seemed determined to ensure that a wall was built between the servants and the high-born members of the household. His father had still been continuously aware of his surroundings at that time, so Yeslin had found himself on the side of the wall belonging to the household’s gentlemen. Since that time, the servants’ animosity toward him had risen.
More than once, Yeslin had wished he could cross back over to the side of the wall where he belonged, but his father was on this side. He looked again at his father, who was breathing deeply and taking no notice of what was happening in the room. His face seemed sunken, like that of a corpse; his hands did not move upon the bed-cloth.
The sound of a door closing snatched Yeslin’s thoughts away. He turned his head and saw that Manfred, who must have left the room during the interval, had returned from the entrance hall. He walked swiftly over to Mr. Pevsner, who was still staring intently at the man on the bed, and leaned forward to speak softly in his ear.
Mr. Pevsner’s face changed. He looked sharply at Manfred, who nodded to confirm whatever he had said, and then Mr. Pevsner hurried toward the door to the entrance hall, taking no further notice of Yeslin’s father. The butler, without need for instructions, came forward to the crowd and began announcing the early end of the death vigil.
Yeslin ignored his speech. What he saw was more important: Mr. Pevsner was gone from the room. Moving as unobtrusively as possible, so as not to attract the attention of Manfred, Yeslin went over to his father’s side. Tentatively, he reached out and touched his father’s hand.
His father’s eyelids flickered, then rose. The sick man stared unseeing at the ceiling for a moment, and then turned his head toward Yeslin. He smiled.
Yeslin felt a smile rise unbidden to his face. He squeezed his fathe
r’s hand, all his thoughts of royalty swept away. His father continued to smile weakly at him; then he appeared to notice that some commotion was taking place elsewhere in the room.
He opened his mouth, and Yeslin leaned forward. In a rasping voice that was nearly drowned by the clatter of the departing musicians moving their instruments, his father asked, “Is he here?”
Yeslin did not have to enquire as to whom he meant; his father had asked this question many times before. “No, sir,” he replied. “He hasn’t come, sir.”
“‘Father,’” the man in the bed corrected quickly, raising his head slightly. “I told you, you’re to call me ‘Father.’”
Yeslin smiled again. “Father,” he whispered.
His father sighed and let his head fall back onto the pillow. “He must come,” he said in a faint voice as the last of the guests was ushered out. “I know he’ll come. I sent a message to him.”
Yeslin hesitated before asking, “Who sent the message for you, Father?”
“Why, Harden, of course. He handles all my correspondence now.”
Yeslin was silent. If Mr. Pevsner had been told to send a message to the Eternal Dungeon, Yeslin was quite sure that such a message had never been delivered. It was obvious enough why it would not be in Mr. Pevsner’s best interests to send the message. And Mr. Pevsner’s best interests determined what events took place in this household.
Finally Yeslin said, “But he’s still imprisoned, Father. He can’t come here, and perhaps he can’t send a message.”
“Oh, he’ll come.” His father’s voice, for all its faintness, was firm. “He’s such a clever boy. He has always found ways to do things. Of course I’ve never told him how clever he is. That would make him prideful. But he’s quite the cleverest boy you can imagine. He’ll find a way to come.”
Yeslin tried to think of how to respond to this, but already his father’s eyelids were drifting shut. As Yeslin gently pulled his hand away, he looked up and realized that the room was empty.
He had assumed that Manfred would sweep him away when the servants were sent out, but apparently Manfred had decided that he dare not go that far without orders from Mr. Pevsner. No doubt he had gone to request such orders. Yeslin could hear Mr. Pevsner’s voice now, approaching the room. Yeslin got up, backed away from the bed, and tried to figure out where he could hide himself so that he would not be removed from the room.
It was too late. The door opened, and a figure entered. It was not Mr. Pevsner; nor was it the butler. It was the figure in black, cloakless now. His head was turned toward the man on the bed, though whether his eyes were focussed on the man was difficult to tell. Yeslin could not see his eyes.
The figure in black was a hooded Seeker.
The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus Page 42