by Paul Park
He started to speak, but not to her. His mouth was open, but he didn’t move his lips. “We were together on Walpurgis night,” he said now. “That was the first time I saw him with my master. He was a child, and my master played with him. Threw him in the air until he squealed. My master had pig’s eyes. That was not a wind that broke the tree. He was not a black bear on the snow. Not a cold white blanket on the narrow bed…” on and on till she was sick of it, disappointed by failure. Still she felt pity, but it was for herself. The boy seized hold of her arm. She had a hard time freeing herself. She had to pinch him. It wasn’t his fault. None of it was his fault. She’d send Jean-Baptiste to tend to him, feed him, give him a bath. Then she’d try to decide what to do with him, whether something could be salvaged out of this.
But she needed her own bath first. She had an invitation to the palace that evening, and already she had wasted time. Now she got to her feet and dusted off her hands. She left Markasev lying in the middle of the cage, locked him in, blew out the light, opened the door to her bedroom and then closed it behind her. For a moment she leaned against it, listening. Then she walked through to the bathroom.
Jean-Baptiste had lit the water heater in the basement without being asked. He knew about the invitation, and the warm pipes were a sign that he expected her to go. She herself was not convinced she had the heart for it. Nevertheless, preparing for a visit to the palace was a complicated task, and she began it now. The first step was not to think about her husband’s laboratory or what it contained. Instead she concentrated on the pain in her stomach, the racing of her pulse. She had a sudden memory of herself at fourteen, standing in the wings of some theater or opera house, waiting for her cue, her face heavy with paint. Then as now, a successful performance needed some rehearsal, and as she stood in her bathrobe waiting for the copper tub to fill, she went over possible dialogue in her mind. Behind her in her bedroom she could hear Jean-Baptiste fussing around. He didn’t stand on ceremony. He’d been with her a long time.
She had a sudden memory of the instant when all this had started: the end of a performance of Klaus Israel’s Cleopatra, in which she’d danced the title role at the Ambassadors Theatre. She’d stood in the smoking footlights as the flowers fell around her. Looking out, she’d recognized the baron, recently a widower, one of the most powerful men in Bucharest. He was deputy prime minister, which was the post the generals gave him for his testimony against Prince Frederick. Alone of all of them he was not clapping or stamping his feet, but only staring with his pig’s eyes at her as she stood almost naked on the stage.
Now tonight she would see many of the same people who were in the audience at that performance. They still tolerated her, for her husband’s sake. Or else, she hoped, they remembered the famous artist. Before that she had been a child of the slums, a servant like Jean-Baptiste, which was why he felt he had a right to talk to her through the half-open door as he made the bed and laid the fire. “Bring back money,” he said. “Your solicitor came by today.”
Later she thought he had gone. She was in her bath, soaping the blood out of her bitten fingernails, when she heard his high, soft, insolent voice. “I’ve seen the guest list. You’re still young.”
He was always hoping she would marry again.
She lay shivering in her bath, although she’d run it hot. Sometimes when she was young she had been unable to step out on stage, she’d been so frightened. Now she remembered that fear, and as she scrubbed her arms she decided she would not be able to tolerate walking up the steps of the Winter Keep, friendless and alone between the rows of guards. If Miranda Popescu had been a prisoner in her husband’s laboratory, or if Raevsky had caught her in the snowy woods, then it would have been easy to go. The knowledge would have been like money in her pocket. But Markasev had failed, Raevsky had failed, and the baroness had failed with them.
At the same time it was essential to be seen, to go out into the world so that she would not be forgotten.
Maybe it was not fear that disabled her so much as anger. Princess Aegypta had done this, had summoned the death angel and stopped Raevsky and his men. The baroness couldn’t imagine making herself beautiful, making small talk with the women, flirting with the men, while that old woman laughed at her in Mogosoaia. She couldn’t bear it. She stepped out of the bath and seized a towel.
In her mind there was a way opening up to her, though it was dangerous. Never had she used it in a public place, but only in secret. Only in private. Conjuring was a dangerous art, because it was illegal. But sometimes a woman had nothing else, if there was no one in the hard world she could depend on.
Sometimes a single woman had no recourse. There was a charm her mother had given her, passed down among prostitutes from the beginning of time. She herself had taken and improved it, and she spoke it now. She stood on the mat, wrapped in a towel, looking at the stranger in the long mirror on the back of her bedroom door. She spoke the separation charm again and was rewarded by a change in the surface of the mirror, which grew dark.
She put on her robe. Then she was motionless for another moment, sitting on the rim of the tub, looking at her small feet, humming a song. She was waiting for a knock on the door to her dressing room. Sometimes it was brisk and forceful, sometimes a small, whispering sound. This time she simply felt a presence, and she couldn’t wait. She turned, flung open the door. There was the image from the mirror, a simulacrum of herself made into flesh, its hand outstretched.
“Here, you’ll catch cold,” she murmured. The simulacrum didn’t move. Flushed from the bath, it stood with a quizzical expression on its face.
Another robe hung from a hook inside the door, a Japanese kimono of blue silk. Mystified and appalled, the baroness took it down and slid it over the woman’s shoulders, while at the same time she was admiring her beauty—her dark lips and shining chestnut hair, the tinge of color on her flawless cheeks.
The woman couldn’t speak, not yet. She stood with her legs apart, her arms raised. “You’ll catch cold,” murmured the baroness again, and then she was singing again in her hoarse, breathless voice while she began the work of preparing the woman for her evening at the Winter Keep. As always when the decision was made, it was important to act quickly and ignore your doubts—she sat the woman in the chair and then turned to open the lacquered boxes of cosmetics and colored shadows. She chose a palette first, chose some pencils and brushes, smiling because again she was reminded of her mother, this time fussing over her when she was young, maybe singing part of this same song. She laughed for a moment and then hushed herself, frowning into the mirror above her dressing room table, afraid that she might by some noise or word bring Jean-Baptiste from wherever he was toiling in the quiet house.
Now that she had swallowed down her misgivings, the work was fun. She took no pleasure in preparing her own body for these ceremonial events. But this woman was so calm, so accepting. She never flinched while the baroness lined her eyes with kohl and purple dust, shaded the holes of her ears and nostrils with black pigment mixed with gold dust, painted a gold line around her lips. She sat quietly while the baroness rubbed and dusted her body with a perfumed powder, slipped on her stockings and undergarments, and put aside the Japanese kimono. Then she stood while the baroness arranged on her body the layers of silk brocade; she was famous for the simplicity of her attire. Almost alone among the ladies of the court, she wore no wig. Now she brushed her hair until it gleamed. When she was finished, the woman was indeed a stranger, beautiful beyond a doubt.
The baroness brought a hand mirror and held it up in front of the woman’s face. When she saw herself in the reflection, the woman came alive in a different way. She took the mirror and held it up, and smiled. The baroness waited with her velvet shoes, and the woman appeared to notice her for the first time.
“You will go in the rented carriage.”
“… rented carriage,” said the simulacrum.
* * *
“HEY!” MIRANDA SHOUTED. “That’s
mine!”
She hadn’t noticed the cross in Splaa’s hand. She’d thought she would leave it for the old woman who had died for her. She thought she would leave it with the eleven coins, but this was different. She jumped onto the dam again. “What are you doing? Stop!” But then the bird was gone.
Peter stood on the shore, staring down at the dead bodies. “It is a message for the princess,” said Gregor Splaa. “In Roumania.”
“That’s ridiculous. How could it fly so far?”
Splaa shrugged his shoulders—condescendingly, she thought. He shifted his big pack, took up his gun. “It’s my bird,” he said. “When I was ten, my falcon made the flight to Budapest in just two days. Your aunt gave me a box of Turkish candy and a leather glove.”
Which was all very well. “Wait a minute,” Miranda said. “Peter, come. Let’s talk about this. I guess we’re not coming back here.”
The cottage was smoking under its wet thatch. Miranda wondered if it would even burn. Probably it was difficult to set fire to a house you’d built yourself.
Last night, the wind had howled and shaken the roof. After midnight it had died away, and Splaa had gone out with his rifle, leaving them alone with Blind Rodica’s body—Peter had woken up, though he wouldn’t say much, wasn’t much comfort, was still groggy. But when Splaa came back, even before he’d kicked the snow off his boots he was talking as if there was no danger anywhere, and it had all blown away with the wind. The old woman was dead on the floor, and he was saying everything was all right. They could make plans about what they were going to do. They could talk about Roumania and home.
Now, standing on the stone wall above the line of pale bodies, Miranda wanted to talk again—“This isn’t right,” she said.
Four men in a row on the bank of the pond. All were wrapped up like little packages with their arms hidden, their feet laid close together. Now that she looked closely, she could see how young they were—just boys, really.
“We go down to the river,” said Gregor Splaa. “There’s a path downstream on the south bank. Or mother says we’ll find the boats. There’s a hunting camp. I know we can find friends.…”
He’d said this the night before. In the light of day, it seemed a pretty feeble idea after twelve years of preparation. And Miranda could hear the uncertainty in his voice as he continued, “There is a village called Albany on the big river. We are one knot in a web, Rodica and me—in Albany there is a man who will forge papers. Ion Dreyfoos—we had thought we’d take you south to New York Island. Now I think it will be better to turn north into the French territory—come now, please. Captain Raevsky will have—”
Behind them the wet thatch smoked, and through the door she could see the body of Blind Rodica. Splaa and Peter had both stepped down to the bank beside the stream, but she stayed on the wall, looking down at the dead bodies. “What about him?” Miranda interrupted. “What about these guys? Aren’t these their footprints? Didn’t they come up here from the river?”
“We don’t worry about him. Please, come.”
Miranda could tell he wanted to get her away from the house. But she wouldn’t step down. No matter how distressing, she didn’t want to lose her view of the four boys, and Blind Rodica through the open door. “Why not? Yesterday they were trying to kill us.”
Splaa shrugged. “We don’t have to worry.”
“Sure.” She felt an anger that surprised her.
Splaa wiped his nose with his wool sleeve. “Didn’t you listen? You must have faith—it’s true. And in the morning he is gone. They are gone. Sennacherib…”
His words fumbled away. He held the barrel of the long gun in his mittened hand. Once again he seemed eager to move on, but she wouldn’t budge. “I don’t see Captain Raevsky here,” she said, meaning where the corpses lay behind her.
Splaa turned away. He looked down the path beside the stream, flowing noisily under its shield of ice. “Rodica made us safe,” he murmured. “If you knew her, you would not doubt. Sennacherib…”
But she interrupted. “Last night you didn’t believe any of it. Gypsy nonsense.”
Where did her anger come from? she asked herself. Everything was mixed together in her head. Ever since she’d stepped outside that morning she’d felt close to tears, and maybe anger was a way of covering that up, keeping that down. She’d felt tears in her nose in the bright sun. She could see five corpses from where she stood, an old woman and five boys her own age. All of them dead for her, fighting over her. And she couldn’t help thinking that if she’d done things differently, if Splaa had done things differently … How dare he say the danger was all gone? How bad could it have been? If it had all blown away in the night like a bad dream, surely she could have …
Besides, she felt so alone. All morning since she’d woken up, she had been missing Rachel and Stanley. And Andromeda—the yellow dog ran back and forth along the surface of the ice near where they had fought with Raevsky the day before. On top of that, Peter still wasn’t saying anything. He just stood there in the snow, his head a couple of feet below her. He’d scarcely said a word since they’d got up. When she’d asked him, he’d said he didn’t remember much about the night before. But he remembered the poem. Now he spoke up. “It’s called ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib,’” he announced. “He was an Assyrian king.”
It had been cold in the early morning. But now they could no longer see their breath, and the snow fell in clumps from the trees. The ice had melted on the small slope below the dam. In front of them the trail broke away, and ran north along the stream through a stand of evergreens. They’d come that way the day before from Christmas Hill.
“‘The Assyrian came down like the wolf of the fold,’” said Peter. “‘And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold.…’”
She felt a surge of gratitude and relief just to hear him talk. Just to hear him quote his poetry, as he had when she’d first known him at the other ice house. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes suddenly wet. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
Peter smiled. And Splaa smiled, too. “We go to the river now,” he said, as if everything had been decided. Peter and Miranda watched him as he started down the path. A thin man in buckskins, he was swaying under the weight of his enormous pack. He was holding his rifle by the barrel, using it as a kind of walking stick, which made Miranda think it wasn’t even loaded.
What was it that Rodica had said? We don’t depend on him—something like that, and now Miranda was beginning to suspect why. She took a last look inside the door of the house, a last look at the bodies under the dam. That morning they had been dusted with snow. But now their blankets were covered with little drops of water.
She couldn’t just stay here. And they had to keep together. If that captain wasn’t on the bank, then he must be somewhere, and maybe even Kevin Markasev was somewhere, too. On the wall, suddenly she felt exposed, and so she jumped down and put her hand out to touch Peter’s sleeve. They followed Splaa a few steps into the woods before Peter answered her question.
“I keep telling myself my name is Peter Gross and I live at 351 White Oak Road,” he said. “But it’s not doing much good.”
Andromeda had come running back across the ice. Now she pranced around them in a circle. She seemed eager to go down the path, and after a moment, she ran on after Gregor Splaa.
“I know what you mean,” Miranda said.
“My father told me he once took some drugs in high school. He woke up in the hospital. So I’m thinking about that.”
“But you didn’t take any drugs.”
He walked in front of her, and they made slow progress. Through the dark tree trunks, the yellow dog ran back and forth.
It was a comfort to watch the dog and talk with Peter. “That was pretty good,” she said, “the way you knocked out that soldier.”
She felt she could say this because the man with thick lips and yellow hair had not been among the bodies on the bank. The man who’d shot Andromeda, however, was.
Peter shook his head. “I just pushed him and he fell over. I was always pretty good at fighting, considering.”
“And now you have two hands.”
“I guess.”
They were hidden in a pair of Splaa’s gloves. The right glove looked swollen and stretched. Now Peter reached up to push a low bough out of the way. “‘Sennacherib’ is a mediocre poem,” he continued. “My mother told me. She wasn’t crazy about Byron, but she wanted me to learn the second-rate stuff. She said you couldn’t spend your whole life in the tops of trees.”
And yet the treetops were so bright in the morning sun. The woods were so fresh. Andromeda ran around them in a circle, her nose low to the ground.
“What do you think?” Miranda asked. “Are we crazy?” She gestured down the path toward Gregor Splaa.
It was warm for gloves, and Peter took his off. He flexed his big new fingers. There was the red mark on the joint of his thumb, the birthmark in the shape of a bull’s head, and Peter rubbed at it. “I wasn’t adopted,” he said. “I live with my dad on White Oak Road. I don’t know anything about Roumania.”
Which wasn’t an answer to her question. “I mean,” she said, but he interrupted.
“I’m not sure we have a choice.”
And that was probably true. So expedite the inevitable, as Stanley might have said—their small path had left the stream. It met a larger trail now, which had been used recently by many people. It wound through some granite boulders strung out in a line, and Miranda realized she recognized them. But they had always stood in a clump outside the astronomy laboratory at the college, and she had often played on them. Now they were scattered down the slope. One was pressed into the trunk of a big tree. Turtle Rock, she’d called it. There was the place she used to sit with Stanley, a protuberance like a turtle’s head.
