The Golden Unicorn

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  She waited for no answer, but turned Tudor around and walked down the drive, with the dog moving proudly at her side.

  When I could be sure it was safe, I got out and ran up the steps to the house. I was beginning to feel weary from the long day, and my arm hurt, so that I’d have preferred to go to my room and rest, but Judith’s summons had to be respected.

  As I went upstairs I heard voices from the living room. Nan’s—and who else’s?

  Judith was at her easel when I reached the attic, once more wearing a rust-colored smock and twill pants.

  I paused in the doorway. “Stacia said you wanted me.”

  Her smile of greeting seemed melancholy as she beckoned me in. “Yes, I thought we might continue—if you still have any questions you’d like to ask me. I understand that you’ll be leaving us soon.”

  “I still can’t drive any distance,” I said. “But perhaps I’ll feel better tomorrow. And I would like to talk with you a bit more.”

  She motioned to a chair she had placed near her easel. “Do you mind if I go on working while we talk?”

  “I’d like that,” I told her, and sat down, only to find that the chair had been placed so I couldn’t see the canvas on her easel. I shifted to a better vantage point in order to watch her at work and the sight of her new painting chilled me.

  In the center of the canvas floated a large head with staring blue eyes and the mouth fixed in a smile as set as concrete, as set as the dimple in one obviously china cheek. The face was Stacia’s, yet it was not Stacia because Judith was painting the face of a doll. A Stacia-doll. The effect was eerie and more than a little disturbing.

  “What do you think?” she asked, glancing around at me.

  “I—don’t know. It’s not finished yet, is it? What are you planning for the background?”

  “More heads! A hundred more dolls’ heads—watching her! The way all of us watch her now—because she’s about to affect all our lives. Unless you can stop her, Courtney.”

  “I?”

  “Are you wearing your little golden unicorn, Courtney? Are you wearing it now?”

  So she knew, and I could only wonder how long.

  “Did you see it last night when I came downstairs?”

  “Of course. Alice used to wear it often, and I put it around your neck with my own hands—when you were Anabel Rhodes. The moment I saw it, I was sure. But I had to check with John first. He told me Stacia had brought it to him when you came. You’ve played quite a deception on us, haven’t you, Courtney? All this pretense of wanting to write about me—”

  “That part is real,” I broke in. “I do want to write about you. That hasn’t changed.” My breathing had quickened and I felt cold there in the warm studio.

  She watched me, her green eyes bright, for all her quiet manner. “And by now you must be aware that you are the first grandchild of Lawrence’s will.”

  “Why did you do it?” I asked her. “Why did you give Alice’s baby away?”

  “It isn’t necessary to go into all that old story. Let it be forgotten.” She bent toward her canvas, putting a touch more crimson on one cheek of the Stacia-doll.

  I wouldn’t be dismissed like that. “Forgotten! How can you say that? Don’t you realize how much I need to know? I have to know everything! That’s why I came here—to find my family, to learn why I was given away.”

  “It didn’t seem a mistake at the time,” Judith said, her real attention on the canvas. “It seemed the only thing to do.”

  “So your own unborn baby could be Lawrence’s heir?”

  She turned toward me without resentment, paintbrush in hand. “There were other reasons, but I suppose that was the main one. And perhaps it was better for you to get away from this misbegotten family. Have you thought about that? Have you any glimmering of how Lawrence would have taken over your life? John could never have stood against him. But giving you away wasn’t good for us in the long run, apparently. Not when you consider Stacia as she is now.” Bright green eyes regarded me calmly, and her tone was as commonplace as though she spoke of the weather. “Stacia poisons everything she touches. She destroys. But you are going to stop her, aren’t you, Courtney?”

  “I’m not going to do anything!” I said sharply. “All I want is to go away and never see any of you again.”

  “Not even your dear father?”

  I hesitated, hating the mockery in her words. “If I could meet him away from this house, with no demands made on either of us, I’d like to get better acquainted with him. But that isn’t going to be possible.”

  “Do you know”—she spoke lightly, turning back to her canvas—“you might even have been my daughter instead of Alice’s. That is, if I had married John, if I had left Herndon.”

  Another head was taking shape beneath her quick brush—a small one floating beyond the large central face.

  A sick revulsion shook me. I didn’t want any of them. All my search had come to nothing, and I wished I had never made it, leaving me with the undisturbed memory of Gwen and Leon, whom I loved, and who had loved me.

  “Do you think I haven’t suffered over the years?” she went on quietly. “Suffered for all those things I couldn’t tell anyone. Only Olive Asher knew, because I had to have her help.”

  “And she’s been blackmailing you all this time?”

  “I never thought of it that way. I gave her small sums out of gratitude, and she was satisfied—until I stopped. It was small payment to make for peace and the right to do my work.”

  “Mind if I come in?” asked a voice from the doorway, and John Rhodes walked into the room.

  “Come in, of course,” Judith said. “Perhaps you’d like to sit beside your daughter and watch me while I paint?”

  John raised an eyebrow. “So it’s all out in the open now?”

  I nodded. “I forgot I was wearing the unicorn when I came downstairs last night when you were hurt. How are you feeling?”

  “Never better. But I may have been mistaken about falling.” He looked straight at Judith. “It seems that something they call a weapon has turned up in the shrubbery along the terrace. It’s a long wrench from the garage. Evan seems to be sure that it’s what struck me down. Though which one of my affectionate family used it, there’s no telling.”

  Judith had turned back to her easel, working as concentratedly with her brush as though she’d been alone. John walked around me and stood where he could see the canvas with its central face that caricatured Stacia.

  “That’s an ugly thing to do,” he said. “Don’t finish it, Judith.”

  “Why not? I have an ugly child!” Without warning, her serenity cracked like splitting silk and she whirled to fling her paintbrush across the studio. Then she ran to the little oasis of furniture set upon prayer rugs, and threw herself on the couch, her head on her arms, sobbing convulsively.

  To see Judith take such leave of her control was shocking. It was as if the inferno she had lived with all these years had exploded into the open and she was being destroyed by emotion in the upheaval. Yet I couldn’t believe that the mere act of giving me away after my mother died could have troubled her to this extent.

  John watched her impassively, and when I made a move to go to her, he put his hand on my arm. “Let her cry. She’s been bottling everything up for too many years. Let it all spill out.”

  He was not entirely without compassion, I thought, and he understood her very well. I wondered what life would have been like for them if he had left Alice, and she Herndon, and they had found each other.

  I stayed where I was, aware of the touch of his hand on my arm, filled with a new longing to turn to him for comfort. But he had none to give me. There was no one I could turn to—no one at all.

  His fingers moved on my arm, so that his touch was almost a caress, and he was suddenly smiling at me, ignoring the tempest
of weeping down the studio.

  “I’m glad you’re not the hysterical type, Courtney. We’ve enough of frantic females in this house today. Stacia—because you went sailing with Evan—whom she lost long ago. Nan full of self-accusation, with some wild bee in her bonnet. And now Judith. Poor old Herndon will have his hands full, but I expect I’d better go downstairs and fetch him. How is your arm, Courtney?”

  “When I think about it, it hurts,” I said. “But I’ll live. I have to live long enough to get away.”

  “Get away where?”

  “Back to New York. I can’t take on what Judith wants. I don’t want it. I don’t want it at all.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s inevitable. The way to stay hidden was not to come here in the first place, my dear.”

  “Whose side are you on?” I demanded. “What is it that you want?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever found that out for sure,” he said almost wistfully. “And as for whose side I’m on—always my own, young Courtney. You’ll have to accept that. I’m not likely to change now.”

  I stood close to him for a moment longer, with his hand on my arm, while I looked up into the sadness in his eyes—the sadness of loss and old disappointment. My father, I thought. Without warning, startling myself as greatly as I startled him, I kissed his cheek—quickly, lightly—and then ran away from him toward the attic door, ran away from the sound of Judith’s sobbing.

  Nan was going out the front door as I came down the stairs, leaving Herndon alone in the living room. He stood at one of the long windows, staring out at sand and sea, but his look was blind and stricken, as though he couldn’t see them.

  I went to him quickly. “John thinks you’d better go up to Judith. She’s upset and crying.”

  He gave me a brief, startled look as he came back from a great distance, and then went past me up the stairs. I didn’t follow him back to the attic. He could manage Judith better than anyone else, and while there was more to be settled between Judith and me before I left this house, it would have to wait until she recovered.

  I started up to my room and in the upstairs hall I met Stacia coming from her own room at the far end. She was carrying a cardboard carton and as she neared me she smiled sweetly.

  “See what I have, Courtney?”

  Reluctantly, because I wanted no exchange with her, I looked into the box and saw all the little heads staring up at me, rattling against each other as she shook the box.

  “What are you doing with those?” I asked.

  Her smile mocked me. “My mother isn’t going to need these any more—not when she moves away from this house. So I mean to give them a proper burial. Perhaps a burial at sea.”

  I didn’t care about the dolls. “Then you’re going on with your plan for the house?”

  “Of course! You didn’t think I’d pay any attention to your so-called bargaining, did you? I don’t think you’re going to inherit, after all, cousin Courtney. So I must help my mother pack.”

  She laughed lightly and started past me toward the stairs.

  “Have you seen what she’s painting now?” I called after her.

  She threw me a quick, vindictive look. “Yes! And she’s not going to paint any more dolls. I’ll see to that.”

  More than a little distressed, I went into my room and lay down on the bed, wanting only to close my eyes and shut everything away. In a little while it would be time for dinner and I needed to change into a dress. But for now I would go limp and let everything float away from me.

  Of course it didn’t work out that way. My thoughts were a tumult of confusion, as though on a stormy sea, with now and then a bit of flotsam floating to the surface. One bit was the wrench that had been used to strike John down on the terrace. Why? Why John? I could almost accept Stacia’s feckless words about meaning to frighten but not injure me. Only now something far more vicious and dangerous was going on. Because of Alice’s death? Because what had happened to my mother so long ago was finally surfacing into the present and frightening the one who had been responsible? What could John know that he had kept silent about all these years? Had he been protecting someone?

  I thrust it all away from me and tried to think of Evan. But that memory brought me only pain, and after a little while the hurt in my arm seemed to surmount everything else, and I got up to take the capsules I was permitted. I wouldn’t go down to dinner, after all. I couldn’t face any of them at the dinner table. There was a house phone in the hallway and I went to it and listened for Asher to answer.

  “I’m not feeling well,” I told him. “I’ll just skip dinner. Please make my apologies to the family.”

  Then I went back to my room, put on my nightgown, and got into bed, leaving my lights burning and my door closed. It had begun to rain and I wondered if this was the edge of the hurricane that had been moving slowly up the coast. I hadn’t heard a radio all day, and I didn’t know what was happening. The outside world had ceased to matter.

  That was what happened in illness, I supposed—a self-interest predominated, shutting out all else. And everyone in this house was ill—including me—with a sickness of emotion that grew from the festering left by old tragedy. More than old tragedy. All that had happened seemed to have its source in one terrible old man—Lawrence Rhodes.

  Rain beat against my windows, and was somehow a soothing sound. At least no one would be out walking on the beach or terrace tonight. Though Stacia might be getting soaked at her “sea burial.” For some reason I thought of that sad figurehead from the Hesther out there on the sand, its weathered face lifted to the rain, as though it kept guard over the Rhodes, as though it summoned down punishment from the sky upon its own head, and took away the sting of lightning. It was indeed a sphinx—having seen all, known all.

  I let myself drowse.

  Later, when the dinner hour was over, someone tapped at my door, and I called out that I didn’t need anything and just wanted to rest. But Judith opened the door and walked in. Tonight she wore a long gown of royal blue, with gold beads at the throat, and all traces of her tempestuous weeping seemed to have been washed away by the very tears she had shed. There was none of the swollen distortion that marred most faces after a bout of crying, and she came to the side of my bed and looked down at me with her usual calm repose.

  “Asher told us you wouldn’t be down for dinner. Are you all right, Courtney?”

  Apparently we were to ignore what had happened upstairs.

  “I’m just tired. I didn’t think I could face the dinner table.”

  “I don’t blame you, what with all of us at swords’ points. But you will save us now, Courtney. We’ll talk again when you’re feeling better.”

  I propped myself on one elbow. “Yes, we’ll talk. There’s a great deal I want to know—and only you can tell me. I must know, Judith.”

  “I can tell you about the pendant,” she said, as though she were making a generous concession. “Alice wanted it to be yours. She had put it around your neck soon after you were born. It was she who put it there, not I. And I felt almost superstitious about taking it off. I couldn’t bear to, and I didn’t see how it could identify you to your new parents.”

  “As though any of this matters now,” I said. “It’s all over, and I’m going away. Rhodes’ problems aren’t mine. You can’t pull me back into your lives at this late date.”

  Her smile had an assured but faintly enigmatic quality. “We’ll see, Courtney. Perhaps it won’t be necessary, once Stacia realizes what’s best for us all.”

  “That makes me the target again, doesn’t it? She’s already admitted to the other things—the car and the dog.”

  “Those aren’t important. She wouldn’t really have injured you.”

  “I think they’re important. They’re important to me. And I’m not a bit sure she didn’t intend serious injury.”

  “No! Somethi
ng much worse is happening. Courtney, I saw Alice walking on the beach last night. She loved to wear white, and she was down there in a long white robe. I saw her as clearly as I can see you now.”

  Here was new hysteria, and I couldn’t cope with it. I turned my face away from her and said nothing.

  She spoke almost sadly. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Next you’ll be seeing the unicorn moon.”

  “Not I. I’m not a Rhodes. But perhaps you, Courtney. You’d better watch the sky from now on. But I’ll leave you alone for the present. This isn’t the moment for all that heart-baring you want. I’ll go downstairs and send up a tray. What would you like to eat?”

  “Anything,” I said. “Whatever there is.”

  But instead of going away, she came to stand beside my bed and for an instant her hand touched my shoulder lightly. “Sometimes since I saw the unicorn about your neck, I’ve almost wished you were my daughter. Stacia has always seemed a stranger to me.”

  Remembering what she had said once before—“the eldritch child of a witch”—I looked up into her sad, beautiful face with its enigmatic green eyes. “Perhaps that’s why she’s a stranger—because you never loved her enough. Parents need to love a child—to keep it safe.” This was something I could say from my heart.

  “Yes. Perhaps you’re right. Were you loved, Courtney? Were the parents you went to good to you?”

  “They were wonderful. They loved me very much and I loved them.”

  “Then why did you come here?”

  “They’re dead, and I was foolish enough to think blood was important. I wanted to know who I was. Now I’m sorry to know. Perhaps if I could have stayed with Alice in the beginning it would have been different.”

  There was a flash of something in her eyes—perhaps an old resentment surfacing for an instant. “No! There was always something cold about Alice—something cold and grasping. She’d never have loved you properly, even though she bore you. I knew I was doing you a favor to get you away from the Rhodes.”