Mariah nodded weakly. She reached out again, very slowly, and wrapped her thin fingers around the biscuit. It was surprisingly hard to grip. She trembled. She waited until her fingers dug through the surface into the soft bread beneath to draw it back. She brought it to her lips and tugged a bite free. Chewing was harder than she'd thought it would be, but she got that first bite down, and the second was easier. By the time the biscuit was gone, she had the strength to lift the coffee and wash it down. She expected the strong, bitter brew they'd shared back at her camp, but this was something different. It had a rich flavor, and it was smooth, even against her raw throat. It had been sitting on the crate long enough to cool, so it didn't burn as she sipped it greedily down. Mariah closed her eyes for just a moment, fighting the sudden swell of tears that she felt at that tiny moment of pleasure. It was unexpected. She was emotionally fragile in ways she'd never been.
"From the mountains," Balthazar said. "There are few things in life as wonderful as good coffee and, between you and me, few things as detestable as bad coffee. I am old and have grown into most particular tastes."
Mariah nodded again. She wasn't ready to test her voice again. Instead, she put the cup back on the crate and carefully picked up the plate and fork. If the food could match the coffee she would be in heaven, but surely bacon was bacon and eggs were eggs, and no matter how succulent or juicy it would have to disappoint?
She ate carefully, but steadily, savoring each mouthful.
The food was every bit as wonderful as the coffee. It might have been eggs and bacon, and eggs and bacon might always be just the same, but somehow this was more. She wanted to believe that there was nothing more miraculous about the meal than the fact that it was the first she had eaten since she'd considered herself dead, but it didn't feel true.
"When you've finished," Balthazar said, "I'll pour you another cup of coffee. There are things we need to talk about, a story you need to hear. It's a good story, as stories go. One might even go so far as to suggest it could be fascinating for the right listener. For some it might be a little difficult to believe, but … well … after what you've been through, I suspect you will have no trouble with that."
"Why?" she asked. She found that her voice, though still wretchedly weak, had returned.
"Why do you want to tell me a story? Why do you want to feed me? Why do you even want me at all?" and then, almost as an afterthought, "Who are you?"
"All in good time, girl," Balthazar said, smoothing down the ruffles of his crisp linen shirt. It was a prim, fastidious gesture that spoke volumes about the man. "All in good time," he repeated.
Her eyes flashed, that barely suppressed anger bringing with it a little more of her strength. "What makes you think I want to hear your story?"
Balthazar grew very still. His face was a pale mask in the morning sun. His skin glistened like white porcelain, and for just that precise instant, that solitary moment in time, it looked as though it might shatter. Mariah saw the fragility clearly, the spectral mask of the skin cracking and splintering over Samuel Balthazar’s face. In her mind’s eye it burst into a thousand tiny white shards, spraying her with sharp, biting splinters. And then as readily as it had come, the illusion went and it was just the two of them sat across the fire.
The flames flared suddenly. Two of the stones set into the dirt that ringed the fire-pit rolled out of place, forward and to the side, making a funnel for the fire to rush out through. The flames curled off to either side, rushing faster and faster, and rising, always rising, tongues of red licked up into the sky.
Within the long silence between heartbeats the wagon was surrounded by cavorting flames. Balthazar rose and strode forward, seemingly oblivious to the battering heat and scorching flame, and stepped directly into the center of the broken campfire circle. Mariah tried to cry out, but the air was hot and acrid and she clamped her mouth shut, biting her lip painfully, tasting blood and something else.
Balthazar turned back to face her. The flames gathered around him as though his to command. They did not touch him. He cast his arms wide and the jacket he wore, a jacket that seemed suddenly far too heavy and warm for the desert, ignited. It burst into flames. The raging fire spread, shrouding him, enveloping him. It hung in the air behind him like fiery wings, and he laughed.
The laughter rolled over Mariah like pounding thunder. It buffeted her with such heat she felt her skin drying and shrivelling over her bones. Still Balthazar laughed. She closed her eyes and tried again to scream, but now, when she needed her anger there was only fear and no sound would come. The laughter blew her words, and her breath back down her throat.
Then he fell silent. He reached down into the burning coals at his feet. His hand slipped beneath the surface and returned with a long glowing tube gripped tightly. Balthazar unscrewed the end of that tube with a deft flick of his wrist. He upended it and dropped something into his hands. Another flick of his wrist, and a scroll unfurled. The paper was bright, and the letters seemed to have been penned in flame. Mariah tried to read, but it was impossible. If she kept her eyes open, they felt as though they would melt on the anvil of his fire.
She closed them as tightly as she could, but it didn't matter. The images burned through her eyelids and into her brain. Her head shook from side to side, and she raised her hands to her eyes. Tears spilled out and steamed through her fingers.
And then it was gone. A warm wind brushed across her skin, turning chill as it touched her. She heard a crow's cry in the distance. She didn't want to see, but she opened her eyes. The stones were all in place, the fire in the pit smouldering low. She turned slowly, not trusting her eyes.
Balthazar sat in the chair across the old crate from her. In his hands he held a scroll. He turned and showed it to her. The script was beautiful and archaic, each flowing line of letters carefully inscribed. Balthazar unrolled it to the end. There was a large fragment torn from the bottom right corner, splitting the signature and ruining the perfect symmetry of the document.
Mariah reached for her coffee. In its place, a tall, clear glass stood. The glass was filled with water so cold that condensation peppered the surface. She gripped it in one shaking hand, and then brought her other hand to steady it as she raised it to her lips and gulped it down. There was no gentle sipping, no careful swallowing, she inhaled it and almost gagged on the icy water. What she couldn’t drink dribbled down her chin.
"It is a long story," Balthazar said. "It is a story of betrayal and loss, of love and death. In a way, it could so easily be your story, couldn’t it, Mariah? Love lost, great treachery, the spectre of death; none of these things are strangers to you, are they?"
She met his gaze, and though the spark of defiance was not dead, it was – for the moment at least – cowed.
"Tell me," she said, knowing that she didn’t want to hear it and knowing that she didn’t have any choice but to.
With a wink, Balthazar began. . .
Chapter Thirteen
Benjamin stood over Elizabeth's coffin and stared out through the stained glass windows far above into the dying rays of the sun. He was alone in the church. The funeral was scheduled for the morning, early, before dawn’s first light. It was hot near Saguaro on the best day – it would be an unpleasant ceremony if they allowed the sun to rise before they laid her to rest.
In the cool of the evening, the scent of the cut lilies and the wreaths and garlands of flowers stacked around the coffin permeated the air. A light breeze blew in the front door on its way through the rectory in back. In the morning, the pews would be full, and Amazing Grace would shake the rafters. Benjamin didn't plan to be there to hear it.
He had propped open the coffin so he could see her face. One last look. She was so still and quiet he could have believed she was carved of porcelain if he hadn't held her warm, supple body in his arms days before. She was smiling. Her expression spoke eloquently of serenity and peace. But how could she be at peace? How could there be any serenity now? There was no ca
lm; there was only violence and its ghosts. The rest, the tranquility, the notion of peace, they were all lies, and above all else in the world, Benjamin despised lies.
A whisper of cotton broke the silence. Benjamin didn't look up from her lips. He knew what he would see, and he wasn't ready. What, not who, he thought, tracing a finger across her cold cheek. Soft footsteps padded across the wooden church floor. The lilies and wildflowers gave way to a darker scent. Moments later, a pair of very pale hands rested on the rim of the coffin. He still didn't look away from Elizabeth's face, he didn’t need to.
"You are sure that this will work?" Benjamin asked without turning.
"If you doubted," a soft, husky voice replied, "you would not be standing here, waiting. You would not take the chance of letting someone see us alone."
Benjamin said nothing. He had nothing to say.
"You have the money?" she asked.
Now he looked up.
"I have your money, witch. See that you earn it." There was no aggression in his voice, only a deep well of hurt, despite the harshness of his words.
The woman he knew as Jeanne Dubois gazed up at him with deep, unblinking brown eyes. He met her gaze, but found it unyielding as granite. After a few moments he looked away.
She turned, and started toward the front door of the church without another word. Benjamin gently lowered the lid of Elizabeth's coffin, rested his hand on the wooden surface for just a moment, and then followed the witch into the deepening twilight. As they stepped into the churchyard, he looked up and down the deserted road. There was no one moving at that hour, nor was there likely to be, but he still looked. And he listened, because what he could not see he might well hear. Sounds had a peculiar way of travelling in the dark.
Jeanne Dubois was not the kind of woman a respectable man should be seen alone with. The shame of it would be that much worse with his fiancé only two days dead and still not in the ground. The church rested up against the outer edge of Mission Ridge, one side overlooking the sloping valley that held the town, the other cresting a deep, narrow gorge. Jeanne turned away from the town and crossed the church yard toward the slope and the cliff beyond. Her feet crunched on the gravel, adding an earthy tone to her passage.
The rear of the church was a graveyard. Ancient, canted stone crosses and rough-hewn monuments sprouted like broken teeth. The graves were well tended, even those that had toppled or had their stones broken. Some bore fresh flowers. Jeanne walked through them without glancing right, or left. Benjamin was forced to hurry his steps to keep up. He did not dare look at the blooms in case they had withered at her nearness. He chided himself for being a fool – but he still did not look.
The climb down to the gorge was rough. Vines gripped at his ankles and branches whipped back across his face as he pushed through them. He cursed and stumbled forward. The ground loosened underfoot and he fell hard on his hip. He cried out and reached for a dangling branch. Just for a second he had it, felt its reassuring solidity and strength and then he his fingers slipped and it was gone. He panicked; pin-wheeled his arms, and tilted out over the brink.
Strong fingers clamped over his wrist and spun him back hard. He hit the ground. The breath wheezed from his lungs, bright splashes of light igniting before and behind his eyes. He groped wildly with his free hand, found the stump of a scrub pine and clung to it tightly. She never loosened her hold on his wrist.
"Get up," Jeanne Dubois said. "There isn't much time."
She was right; the night was gathering about them. The moon hung like a traitor in the sky, casting its silver like a smattering of coins across the land.
When he had his bearings, she let go. He rolled to his knees, pulled himself upright and followed her more carefully, taking every handhold the slope offered and keeping his gaze focused on the ground at his feet. The moon showed him the way. To his right, he heard the rushing water of the river, pounding its way through the gorge. Ahead the slippery, dangerous trail they followed disappeared into the side of a heavy forest.
‡‡‡
Benjamin had been in the forest, but only on horseback, and only then by the light of day. It was a different place at night. His mind whirled with the stories he'd heard ever since he was a boy, stories of Indians, demons, bears and spirits. As a man, he'd simply avoided the place, the boy’s fears still deeply rooted in his soul. His work as a banker called for little or no travel, and lessons learned young were by far the hardest to shake.
The woman was another thing altogether. It had been several months since word of her presence filtered through to the town. She lived in the forest. She never entered the town by day - most had never seen her enter at all. Certain of the older women in the town believed she could heal and went to her for infusions and herbal remedies.
"It is all here in the trees," she told them. "Everything you need, given freely by nature." Others believed she was a demon sent to tempt their souls, and would brook no contact with the 'hag of the trees'. A few of the men claimed to have spent time with her, swapping coin for a different kind of devotion, but there was no evidence to support the claims, and the men themselves were wont to lie on a number of subjects if they thought it made them look somehow more than they were.
When Elizabeth took ill, Benjamin had wanted to approach the witch immediately. In truth he would have done anything to save his fiancé, but when it came to Jeanne Dubois, Elizabeth's father, mayor of the town and a righteous man, forbade it. Righteous, in his parlance, meant superstitious. Jeanne Dubois might as well have had horns.
Benjamin had stayed with Elizabeth. He'd refused to leave her bedside and had listened to every word the doctor spat out of his foul old incompetent mouth. All the while, he'd sat and held Elizabeth's hand as he watched her slowly die. It was a bitter thing, to think that there might be something he could do, and yet be helpless to do it, so instead of praying he found himself saying her name, Jeanne Dubious, over and over barely above a breath, as though she might somehow hear him, the words carried by the intensity of his need, and come to him. She did not. Elizabeth was beautiful to the end, but in those last moments, so weak. So helpless.
"What would you give to have her back?" The question had come when he was at his lowest. He remembered the words, spoken so softly, so teasingly. The woman had leaned over his shoulder as he wept, drunk and alone, on the porch of his home. He hadn't seen or heard her, but she was there. He cried out, and she laughed, mocking his tears and his pain. Then, again, she asked her question.
And he gave his answer:
"Anything. Everything. I want her back. I want it to be last month, before she got sick. I want the future that should have been ours. I want, I want, I want, but I can’t have any of it."
"Perhaps," she'd said, "it is not too late. There are ways, for those willing to tread a dark path."
"What do you mean . . ?" he asked.
He didn't really need to be told what she meant, but he didn't want to believe her; to do so was terrifying. To believe she had command over life and death was as obscene as it was unnatural. There were limits in his world, things that he believed he understood, and that needed to be true. The veil between this world and the next could not simply be torn asunder without consequences. The dead did not return to the land of the living – they moved on to a blessed afterlife, or perpetual torment. That was how the mechanisms of his faith worked. Elizabeth was in a better place, free of the suffering that had killed her.
"There are ways," she said again, as though that explained everything he wanted to ask.
"But the price is high. Higher than most are prepared to pay. Would you truly give anything to buy her back?"
"Of course," he said.
"Then meet me in the old church grounds when the sunlight dies." She left him then, alone with a sudden and stupid hope that he might get his second chance at love. He knew he should have stayed at home. She was either a witch, corrupt to her withered heart, or more realistically judging by her words, a common liar. P
erhaps, he thought, she had arranged an ambush in some secluded place and planned to make off with his riches. He laughed at that. His trousers were threadbare and his pockets filled with lint. If she wanted riches he was not the man for her schemes. She'd set her price, and he had it with him, but it wasn’t about money. It never was. She wanted something else, something that she knew he could offer. The question was, what would he get in return? Visions? Hallucinations? A dream of one last night with Elizabeth, banished with the sun? Or worse, nothing? Ridicule? Her question should have been how desperate was he, not what did he want.
He thought about her strength as she caught and held him from tumbling into the gorge, and he shivered. Had her hand been cold?
The twilight gave way to deeper darkness as they passed the first line of trees and disappeared into their shadows.
Benjamin picked up his pace slightly. His heart raced, beating hard against the ridge of bone in his chest. Every shadow seemed to his rattled mind to have eyes of its own. Twice he thought – imagined – he saw something, just out of sight, skittering away. The sounds of small animals and the susurrus of the breeze teasing the leaves overhead were magnified by the empty, vacant silence. His footsteps echoed loudly – the woman moved as though she were another of the shadows. Insubstantial, like a ghost, her passing made no sound.
That absence of sound placed a chill in his heart.
Ahead, the trees thinned, and a patch of brighter moonlight beckoned with its dabble of silver coins on the ground. Jeanne Dubois entered the clearing, and as he stepped from the trees, Benjamin saw that in the center of that open space, two trails crossed. He turned and glanced back the way they'd come, but could make out no landmarks. He tried to retrace his journey from the church in his mind, but could only place vague details, and found that he'd lost all sense of direction. The roads could lead to – or from – anywhere.
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