by Rex Baron
She scolded herself for her unsettling thoughts. Her feet were tired, and the weight of the package grew with every step. She regretted that she had made an agreement with the professor that he should not be seen collecting her at the station, and that it was far wiser if she came to him under her own means.
She had been surprised at his appearance the first time they had met. Owing to his title of Professor, she had assumed him to be a much older man, and found herself stammering with confusion when confronted by a handsome smile and a shock of wavy dark hair that might as easily have belonged to a film star or playboy. He popped his smoking pipe out of his mouth, and running his fingers through his hair to make himself presentable, waved her into his cottage.
She remembered that the cottage itself was simple and not well cared-for, as if its inhabitant lived more in his mind than in the confines of the physical space these walls allotted him. But amidst the clutter of books piled in stacks and a tweed coat, tossed casually over a chair for a weeks’ time, there appeared, all around her, many individual objects of great beauty. There had been a lamp, fashioned in glass and bronze-colored metal, in the shape of an egret, that might have been from the house of Tiffany. Porcelains, china and small paintings that hinted, in the low light, at their seventeenth century Dutch origins, lay casually about the place in cozy discord with his personal effects.
She had often wondered, when she thought of him, which of these objects had come to him through the Underground, on sabbatical from their rarefied lives on public display, and which were harmless reproductions of originals, mere art school copies, made by him while studying the beauty of the world, before the war had come and stifled such aspirations forever.
“Are any of these yours?” she had asked, holding up a small miniature portrait in a crystal and gold frame.
“They are all mine. I take responsibility for all of them,” he said with a smile that told her it was better if she did not know such information.
As the evening sky took on the violet color of devotion, she saw the lights of his small farmhouse, just ahead at the end of the lane. A rap on the door revealed, to her relief, that he was waiting for her.
He poured her a small glass of brandy and handed it to her without asking if she wanted it.
“It's for the cold,” he insisted. “It was a bit of a trek out here with that monster of a painting, and I'm sure you can use a little fortification.”
She took the glass from his hand and slowly sipped the warm sticky contents without comment.
“Any problems with the trip, any unusual interest?” he asked routinely.
She was about to mention Miss Auriel but passed her off as unimportant. She shook her head.
“Good,” he replied with enthusiasm, placing a hand on either arm of the chair in which she sat and leaned toward her. “Then, I have something you must do for me.”
Lexi stared into the overwhelming directness of his eyes and felt a flush of warmth creep over her body at the seemingly intimate approach of his request.
At this moment, she realized that she found him more than attractive. The smell of tobacco from his pipe lingered about him, and the rumpled, collarless shirt he wore framed his face in a comfortable softness that made her want to reach up and touch his skin with her fingertips. She resisted the urge and listened attentively as he proceeded to explain what he required of her.
A rare sixteenth century engraving had come into his hands from a source along the network, which he could not reveal. But it was imperative that the small print be taken to another part of England and placed in safety, where its whereabouts would not be discovered.
Lexi agreed to take it back with her, rolled in a small tube, carried in a bag filled with groceries and other usual household purchases, so as not to be in any way out of the ordinary on the train or in the street.
“That sounds simple enough,” she said, with an effort to sound as efficient as she could.
Sebastiaan laughed.
“You sound almost disappointed that there isn't more to it. Let me remind you, my dear friend, that we are hardly in the business of espionage, but are only poor custodians of some of the world’s greatest works for a fraction of time, until this madness with the Germans is over.”
Lexi nodded her head and smiled as she sipped her brandy. He sounded like a professor, with a dowdiness and a slight edge of superiority in his voice, yet the secret of his youth and attractiveness was out. She could not understand why she had not seen it before. He was miscast in his role of the pipe smoking old man with his lofty interests, surrounded by the treasures of the world and dedicated to their preservation. He was nothing more than a bachelor with a slightly unkempt, but nonetheless charming, style of living and deep-set, brooding Victorian eyes, like those she had seen popularized in old playbills and photographs of that period. He was sensuous in his movements, slow and deliberate as he poised his body near her, in such a way that she could not help but notice the outlines of the muscles of his arms through the fabric of his rumpled shirt.
His lips were close to her as he bent over her, talking. She leaned toward him unconsciously, drawn in by his smoldering dark eyes, until she could feel his breath against her face as he spoke.
He talked about their responsibility to the art of the world in peril, words that he had spoken so often that she need not hear them, choosing instead to experience the sensations of each breath as it propelled itself from his lips to her cheek like an ethereal kiss that had not yet decided to express itself in physical form.
She wanted to kiss him. Slowly, without thinking, she let herself be drawn into his eyes, closer and closer until the undecided kiss found its way into the world. Their lips touched and she was aware that his words had stopped. He took her in his arms and held her close to him. There was no reluctance or show of resistance. No word, considering the consequence of the act, was spoken by either of them. No uneasy thought had found its way into either of their minds.
Lexi was aware of a chill in the room as he stripped away the layers of her clothing, exposing her body to his comforting hands. A fire should have been built in the hearth, she thought, in perfect preparation for this act of lovemaking. But it had never occurred to the professor that this physical adventure could exist as a possibility. Yesterday's soiled shirt and pajamas top should have been tossed aside from the back of the chair, so that they would not be wadded up uncomfortably under her head as he pressed her down under his weight. But there had been no foresight, no design in this seduction. It had come upon them both unexpected and unbidden, like a stranger at the doorway, welcomed in without question.
Lexi awoke in the morning amidst a tangle of clothes, trapped under a hideous crocheted coverlet that held in the heat of their bodies, causing her to squirm in an agony of suffocating dampness. Sebastiaan lay silently sleeping next to her, the full weight of his shoulder planted squarely on her outstretched arm. She wriggled the fingers of her hand under his dead weight, and a throbbing pain shot up her arm as the blood inside its veins tried desperately to find the way back to her heart from under her sleeping lover.
It was still dark outside. She caught a glimpse of his wristwatch and determined that it was five forty-five. She tapped his shoulder firmly, and he grunted in unconsciousness as he rolled away.
She expected that he would be awkward with her when he awoke. He would offer her breakfast, which he would try to cook himself. They would avoid eye contact and pretend nothing had happened.
Instead, the professor turned toward her and stirred from his sleep. He opened his eyes and smiled.
“Good morning,” he said, reaching his hand out from under the coverlet and stroking her hair. “It's very nice, indeed, to wake up and find you here,” he said.
There was no breakfast, only a cup of coffee, offered along with a warm embrace, which Lexi found to be genuine and sweet. He had been too distracted rummaging through his artifacts to even think of cooking for her. He called out fragments of frie
ndly conversation, which she picked up from the next room, as he opened drawers and dragged pasteboard folios from their hiding places in avid search for something. At last, he emerged from the bedroom, still barefoot, carrying a small framed print that he extended for her to see. It was a dark engraving showing four men in dramatic poses, clustered around a low lamp on a table, upon which wax dolls were spread ominously in front of them.
“Here is the piece I want you to take back with you. I'll take it out of the frame and roll it up to make it easier.”
As he set about removing the small picture from its undistinguished frame, Lexi sat drinking her coffee, staring at the dark image behind the glass.
“It doesn't look like a great work of art to me,” she said with a certainty that made him laugh. “Really now,” she continued, ignoring his mirth, “those men in the picture look like they're playing statues. I mean it's a ridiculously stiff drawing.”
Sebastiaan popped the back off the frame and slipped the paper print free.
“I'll have you know,” he said, “this print depicts Robert the Third of Artois casting a death spell on Philippe VI, the King of France in 1333. It might not look like much to you, but the French find it pretty interesting, particularly old Philippe.” He shot her an amused glance, but her eyes remained fixed on the print.
“Did he die?” she asked, draining the last of her coffee from the cup.
Sebastiaan shook his head.
“It seems Robert confessed the intrigue to a monk named Sagebran, who spilled the beans to the King in the nick of time.”
“So the King had Robert killed?” Lexi conjectured.
“I'm sure he wished he had. He was banished and made his way here to England, where he convinced Edward the Third to go after the French throne, thereby starting the Hundred Years’ War.”
Lexi grunted her disapproval of the whole affair.
Her lover rolled the print and wrapped it in brown paper, then handed it over.
“You're going to have to be very careful not to crush it, or worse yet, lose it.”
Lexi looked up from under her dark brows, silently warning him not to underestimate her abilities. The look prompted a fatherly kiss on her forehead.
“Come, I'll take you near the station in my auto and drop you a quarter of a mile away so that you aren't seen with me.”
“Ashamed to be seen with me, are you?” she asked teasingly, maneuvering the conversation away from the intrigue of smuggling to a more personal subject.
He crossed the room toward her, letting the untied ends of his necktie fall from his hands. He caught her in his arms and kissed her.
“No one could ever be ashamed of you,” he answered.
Lexi's thoughts clouded with the memory of her Uncle Jacob, how he had wept when she told him that she would pass as a Gentile and deny her own people.
She gently pushed Sebastiaan away and busied herself with gathering up her things. Her accomplice stood puzzled, watching her small unnecessary movements.
“Have I done something?” he asked.
Lexi turned to him, her eyes filling with tears. It was the first time that she had cried for her Uncle, the first time that she had allowed herself to believe for a single second that he was no longer alive.
“You've done nothing,” she said, “but you don't even know me. You don't know what my life is or what I've done.”
She was unable to speak further. A flood of tears streamed down her face as he held her in his arms and she wept.
Sebastiaan stroked her hair away from her face and kissed her as if she were a child.
“We have all done things because of the war that in another time would have been unthinkable. I know there is much you have been through. I hope one day that you will feel secure enough with me to be able to tell me about it. But for now, for the moment, you are safe and nothing else matters.”
He held her for long, dangerous moments, longer than the time before the departure of the morning train safely allowed.
“Come,” he said, “we had better hurry. You don't want to miss your train.”
• • •
As she watched the predictable countryside pass by from the window, Lexi wished that she had missed the train. The encounter with the professor seemed an agreeable distraction at first, but there had been no way of knowing, when she casually entered into it, that she would be left with such a feeling of loneliness and pain.
She wanted to go back, to be able to stay with him, even if only for a little while. She needed to be with someone who understood how deep the pain of shame could go, without asking to be told the truth. The only good thing about the war was that there was no real truth, only their truth and our truth, pitted against each other to create, in the end, yet another truth, a third truth, which no one as yet had any grasp of. She had become something new, as everyone had, by merit of involvement in the war. She, like everyone else, no longer had a past because the world as they knew it, the world of personal pasts and long ago deceits, had ceased to exist.
She leaned back in her seat and thought about Sebastiaan. She wondered what dark secrets had made a man so attractive take up the life of scarcity and seclusion that he had apparently embraced.
She would do a good job for him, she thought, patting the rolled up engraving hidden in her bag of groceries, under the watchful eyes of a nanny holding an infant in the seat across from her. He had instructed her not to keep the print herself, because, if the smuggling ring were discovered and she was implicated, there must be no link to the engraving. He had told her to give the print to someone neutral, unrelated if possible, for safekeeping. She pondered for some minutes the possibilities.
She was relatively new to the village and had made only tenuous acquaintances with the neighbors. They would think it odd if she made so personal a request as the custodianship of her personal effects. The candidate would have to be someone who would not ask questions as to the value of the work or her intention in leaving it with them.
Her mind conjured the image of the inky etching she had seen that morning in the hands of her dear professor. There was something about it that she found disturbing, something that she could not put her finger on at first, until she realized in horror what it was.
There was an object depicted in the print, on the table next to the wax figures of the King and the rest of the Royal house. It had caught her attention, but she had not grasped fully what it was until now. It was a Hand of Glory, the same filthy abomination that she had helped Helen steal from the coven that night in the woods.
As she walked through the village streets toward the open meadow that served as a shortcut to her cottage, Lexi wondered if anyone had observed her arrival and questioned her comings and goings. She decided that it might be a good idea to invent a relative on the Cornish coast, whom she might be seen visiting on a regular basis without being thought suspect. Sebastiaan's face formed in her mind's eye, and she flushed with excitement at the idea of claiming him in any personal way.
She crossed the meadow as the wind gusted from the east, causing her to clamp her hat firmly on her head and hurry toward the caretaker’s cottage that she had rented from the local estate office. It had once been the groundskeeper’s house for a grand country estate that she had been told burned down in the early part of the century. She approached, just in time, as the first heavy drops of rain, signaling the seasonal afternoon downpour, began to spatter noisily about her. She dislodged a brick at the side of the front window and felt down into a small open hole for the latchkey. It seemed laughable to hide the key in such a place. The agent from the office who disclosed to her the hiding place was most certainly only one of a dozen people who knew the whereabouts of the key.
Nonetheless, she perpetuated the habit and dug around in the small blind space, until her fingers felt the cold metal. She let herself into the tiny parlor room just as the sky opened up in a torrent of angry gray rain.
As the door opened, Winston raised his head
from the hearth rug and happily trotted over to greet her. She put the kettle on for tea and carefully dislodged a bunch of carrots and a loaf of bread from the bag in order to free the sinister engraving from its hiding place. Gently, she unraveled it and set it out on the mantelpiece for contemplation.
As the evening passed into night, the shower heightened its intensity to the howling violence of a winter storm. The eaves of the house groaned as the fitful hours passed, and Lexi found her dreams invaded by the wailing of human voices, piercing the foggy uncertainty of a dreamscape battlefield.
Countless legions of barbaric soldiers, clad in metal and bits of animal fur, stood shoulder to shoulder with god-like men, their powerful bodies covered in chainmail. Archetypal warriors from every century marched together, as if ranks of fallen warriors had been summoned from the peace of death to fight together in a single irrefutable cause. They marched toward her through the mist with swords and truncheons held high, flank upon flank of sternly beautiful faces, youthful and steadfast in their intent. They did not acknowledge her presence but moved onward, like a great machine, toward a horizon bathed in blue light.
In the distance, a small group of people stood silhouetted against the river of illumination that seemed to bisect the blackness of the great plain into halves. The figures were indistinguishable at first. They remained immobile, seemingly awaiting the onslaught with transcendental calm, then, at once, they became clear. They were old women and a handful of frail, elderly men, holding their ground against the army's approach. In the forefront stood Miss Auriel, carrying a silver sword in front of her, hilt end up like a silver crucifix, offering a benediction of sorts, as one general might engage another in the name of God.
She stood in the guise of Saint George, ready to slay the dragon, so that England might once again, in this new time of crisis, be protected and delivered from her enemy.