Dark Season

by Joanna Lowell

  “I feel like Ozymandias,” he said.

  Clement poured him another brandy and refilled his own glass. He sat in the chair adjacent to Isidore’s, smiling quizzically. “How the mighty have fallen,” he said.

  Isidore leaned back in the chair, resting the glass on his shirtfront. He dipped his chin and tried to look into the fire through the brandy. It blazed ochre, like desert sand.

  “The ‘trunkless legs,’” he said. “I feel rather as though my head has tumbled from my body.”

  Silence. The fire popped. Isidore sighed. Drained the brandy and set the empty glass on the floor. He wouldn’t have had to explain himself to Clement five years ago.

  “I didn’t mean to come here.”

  “You shouldn’t have.” Clement stood and stirred the fire. A violent movement. He turned to face Isidore, back lit, the firelight touching his hair with gold.

  Black and white knights. That’s what Phillipa used to call them. Isidore was so dark, and Clement was so fair. Women tended to prefer Clement. Isidore didn’t blame them. Probably better to throw one’s lot in with the white knight. Less likely to end up dead.

  “I thought you might have left already,” Clement said. “Daphne said you’d been engaged to dine with her and Bennington but never showed up. We all imagined … ” He broke off to give the fire another vicious poke. “Frankly, I didn’t think you’d stay in town this long.” There was an implied question that Isidore chose to ignore. He shifted in the chair. His wet clothing had begun to itch. He realized he’d forgotten to scrape his boots outside the front door. He must have tracked mud all through the house.

  There was a roll of thunder in the distance.

  “It was so much warmer that night,” he said, rising to pour himself another drink. “There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.”

  Warm, clear, bright with moonlight. A beautiful night. Everyone was flushed with drinking, dancing. He’d gone over it so many times, every detail, trying to identify the exact moment when all of the possible outcomes of the evening converged on the one. He didn’t believe in fate. Phillipa Trombly hadn’t been born to die at twenty years old at a party at Clement St. Aubyn’s. When had it occurred, the moment? Before their quarrel? During? Or was it not until the very moment she started to fall that it was finally too late?

  His mouth had gone dry. He drank, poured again, and set the decanter on Clement’s desk between ledgers and an ink-stained blotter. Why was Clement awake? He’d imagined him brooding, remembering, but maybe the date, what it meant, had slipped from his mind. Maybe he was simply up late, tending to business.

  The idea that Clement had forgotten made him want to knock the ledgers to the floor. He turned, gripping the edge of the desk with his free hand. It restrained his arm from sweeping the desktop clean. It also helped him keep his feet.

  “If it had been raining, like tonight,” he said, “the balcony doors would have been closed. She wouldn’t have run out there.” He forced himself to sip the brandy and glanced at Clement. “What can you count on in London if you can’t count on the rain?” He laughed harshly and tipped back the glass. The brandy didn’t even burn his throat. He was beyond burning.

  “You’re torturing yourself,” said Clement. “What does it serve?”

  “Whom does it serve? Maybe that’s the question.”

  “Is it?” Clement shook his head. His eyes, green, were invisible, dark hollows in their stead. “Whom, Sid? Phillipa? You? Me?”

  At the sound of that name—her name—Isidore flinched. Then he shrugged.

  “I don’t know.” He laughed again, a strangled sound. “The devil, most likely.”

  Clement swore, tossing back the last of his brandy.

  “It was ghastly for all of us,” he said. “I thought of selling this place. I didn’t think I could stand to live here … after.”

  “But you did,” said Isidore. “You do.” It sounded bitter. But why? He couldn’t have expected Clement to close up his house. Clement had become the head of the St. Aubyn family young, as a boy at Eton, when his parents had died in a carriage accident in Scotland. Clement had always felt the weight of his responsibilities. Was he to have moved his sisters into a hotel for the season? Made of the St. Aubyn house yet another crypt, another shrine to Phillipa’s memory?

  He was finally drunk. He was losing control. He couldn’t channel his anger. His anger was spilling over.

  Clement picked up the poker then threw it down. The thud was muffled by the carpet. Isidore wanted to cover his ears. His grip on reality, on sanity, was slipping. Five years ago, had anyone heard it? The scream? The thud? The band had been playing. Couples were dancing in the ballroom. They’d quarreled, and then, or before, or after, the moment had occurred. He was trying to chase after Phillipa, but he was as drunk then as he was now. Drunker. Angrier. In the hall, he’d stumbled across a plump young man, too young for the depravity of that late-night revelry; he was lying in his own vomit. Isidore had nearly fallen in the mess, staggered, then dropped to his knees. The weight of his sagging head tipped him over, and he’d stretched out on his stomach, pressing his flushed cheek to the cool oilcloth that lined the floor along the wall. Maybe it came then, the moment that turned into too late. When he was belly-down on the floor.

  Clement was speaking, and he sounded angry too. Isidore realized he preferred this to restraint, to the wall that had grown up between them.

  “I couldn’t pack up and run away to Italy, to Egypt.” Clement bit off the words. “I had sisters to bring out. The barony to run. I couldn’t indulge my grief or make grand, futile gestures or throw away my life. Too many other people depend on me.”

  “Clem—” Isidore began, stepping toward him. Clement had balled his hands into fists, and Isidore realized that his hands too were in fists. His hands were in fists, but his fury had fled. What was he going to do? Beat Clement senseless? Hope that Clement beat him senseless? They’d never fought in earnest, only scrapped in fun. Isidore had always been a hairsbreadth quicker to evade and deal blows. He’d had more practice. This was madness. The horror he was reliving was making him mad. He had to stop it.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said, relaxing his stance. “You’re right. It would have been ludicrous … ” He waved his hand vaguely. “To shut up the house. Futile, like you said. I’m not thinking clearly tonight.” He wanted to ask Clement why, why he’d pulled back from their friendship five years ago, why they didn’t talk anymore in that easy way that bespoke understanding and acceptance, but if he started, he knew he’d turn maudlin.

  I needed you, Clem. You closed yourself off to me when I needed you. His mouth quirked, but it was nothing like a smile. He wasn’t one for admitting need.

  Maybe Clement felt guilty it had happened at his house. Maybe he had other reasons to feel guilty. A dark thought, one that Isidore refused to pursue. He had long ago tried to give up assigning blame. He’d taken it all on himself.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. He half expected Clement to say it back to him—It’s not your fault either, Sid. Wasn’t that what people did? Mouthed platitudes? Salved the conscience of whatever wretch stood in front of them?

  But Clement didn’t say it.

  Isidore leaned back over the desk and picked up the decanter. The stopper fell from his nerveless fingers. He put the heavy crystal lip to his mouth and drank. He shut his eyes, felt the brandy running through him.

  “Oh, hell.” The muffled expletive sounded close to his ear. Clement had grabbed the decanter from his hands. He swayed. Clement braced him with an arm then pushed him into a chair. Isidore let his head drop then dragged it up again in time to watch Clement stowing the brandy decanter on a high shelf next to his collection of figurines. Terracotta horses. A gift from Malvina, the sister closest to him in age. It amused him—Clement putting the brandy on that shelf as though Isidore was a child who wouldn’t be able to reach. As though he weren’t a man who stood over six feet in height.

  Well, maybe he was be
having more like a child than a man. And maybe he couldn’t reach it. His vision was swimming. The pools of light and dark in the study were flattening out into a checkerboard pattern.

  White knight. Black knight.

  I’m going to pass out. The idea was not unwelcome.

  “Will you go to Castle Blackwood?”

  Isidore came back into his body with a start.

  “What?” he muttered. Clement was one of the few people who knew something of why he might not want to return to Castle Blackwood. Even as a boy, he’d been observant. Isidore could never keep his face from tightening when he talked about his father. Nor could he hide every burn, bruise, cut, and scar. But Clement, whatever he suspected about Isidore’s childhood, also believed in duty, in discharging one’s responsibility to kith and kin no matter what. He really was a white knight. A staunch defender of the Protestant succession. The perfect scion. Isidore couldn’t answer. Couldn’t imagine getting out of the chair, let alone taking up his father’s mantle at Castle Blackwood. He would worry about all of that … tomorrow. Or the day after.

  “I know you loved her.”

  Isidore tried to sneer, but his face had gone numb. His eyes didn’t feel hot anymore but cold. Vitreous.

  Clement had turned to lean over the fire, bracing himself with both hands on the mantle.

  You don’t know. You don’t know anything about it.

  Clement held that posture, contemplative or despairing, Isidore couldn’t guess. Clement had become a mystery to him. There were so many things they didn’t know about each other anymore. It occurred to Isidore that he didn’t want to let this state of affairs continue. That maybe he could change it. He opened his mouth.

  “Have you been painting?” The question surprised him as much as Clement. It came from that other life they’d shared, their life before. Dull days of summer parties in the country. Long, peaceful days. He, sketching the beauties by some babbling brook. Clement, with his easel and that high, eager step, trampling the heather.

  “From time to time,” said Clement slowly, straightening. “Actually, I’ve been working on a series.”

  “Watercolor?” Five years ago, Clement had been making small studies of kitchen gardens. Herbs. Flowers. Vegetables. Very controlled. Very precise. He had the eye, and the inclinations, of a taxonomer.

  “Oils.”

  “Ah.” Isidore couldn’t get out more than a syllable, but things had clicked into place. That sharp scent. Turpentine. Clement must have spent the evening painting in the library. That’s where he’d set up his easel years ago, in front of the tall, south-facing window. The room received excellent light. But not at night. Clement seemed to anticipate his thoughts.

  “I hardly need to see to work on these canvases,” he said. “I’m not painting from life. Not waking life anyway.”

  “Dreams.” Isidore’s clothing was still damp, but the fire had finally managed to warm his extremities. He felt a languor stealing over him. It was dark in the room, and it took him a moment to realize his eyes had drifted shut. He heard Clement sit down beside him.

  “Nightmares.” Clement’s voice was low. “It’s a kind of bestiary. No one’s seen them of course.”

  “No,” said Isidore, eyes still closed. “Of course not.” Who would Clement show them to? He had always been Clement’s audience. And Clement, his.

  “And you?” asked Clement.

  “I gave it up.” Isidore stood abruptly but had to sit down again. Damn.

  “You’re not going to get to that brandy.”

  “I might.” Isidore waited for his stomach to settle. “If I keep trying.”

  Clement chuckled. There was real mirth in it. Warmth. Friendship. All at once, the tension dissipated. The night seemed like it might wind down, it might end. And there’d be a new day.

  “I took up woodworking,” said Isidore after a moment. “How’s that for an aristocratic pastime? I learned from a Neapolitan hunchback who slept in the same room as his donkey.”

  “And where did you sleep?” Isidore could hear the smile in Clement’s voice.

  “On the other side of the donkey.” He stood and this time kept his feet. “I preferred it to any night I ever spent under my father’s roof.”

  “It’s not his roof anymore.”

  Isidore ignored this. He reached and took the bottle down from the shelf.

  “Sid … ” A warning note.

  Isidore sank to his knees in front of Clement’s chair.

  “One toast,” he whispered. “To Phillipa. Then I’ll go.” He lifted the decanter, swallowed, and passed the bottle to Clement.

  Clement considered the bottle. “I’ve said goodbye to Phillipa,” he said at last. “I won’t toast her. I’ll drink to the future.” He drank and stood. Isidore squinted up at him, no longer caring that he must seem ridiculous.

  “You’re staying here, Sid,” said Clement. “We’ll get you into a spare bedchamber. You need dry clothes and a night’s sleep.”

  “If it’s all the same to you,” Isidore murmured, stretching out on the carpet, “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  “Fine.” Clement stepped over him and returned the brandy to the desk. “Five years,” he said quietly, as though to himself.

  Isidore opened his mouth, but this time no sound came out. The carpet was thin, but he felt that he was sinking into it. He was relieved. It was that or slide off the face of the earth.

  I was meant to sleep here, he thought. In this house, the house where it happened. If I’m going to sink down into hell, let it happen tonight. Let the floor open.

  “Shall I have Jenkins bring you dry clothes?”

  Isidore managed to turn his head from side to side. He was done speaking. Just like that, his words for the night had run out.

  “How about a donkey then?” Luckily Clement didn’t expect an answer. He was already leaving, shutting the study door behind him with a soft click. Isidore listened to Clement’s muffled footsteps fade down the hall. He rolled onto his side and let the fire warm his back. He would sleep alone with his sins. If he woke up in a pit of fire, so be it. The waiting at least would be over.

  And if he didn’t? If he woke and there was no pit of fire? Could he stop running? Stay in England. Attend to his estate. Rekindle old friendships. Say goodbye, as Clement had. After five years, say goodbye to Phillipa. Let her rest. Let himself live. Start again. He had no words left, but he felt his lips make the shape. Goodbye.

  And suddenly the darkness in the room didn’t press down as heavily, and he slept.

  Chapter Three

  Ella didn’t dare open her eyes. The lids pulsed unpleasantly. The pain in her head had subsided to a dull ache. Her limbs felt heavy. She tried to move them, and they resisted. It was a coverlet, she realized. A heavy blanket weighing her down. The softness of the featherbed swallowing her up. She was in her bedroom. Papa’s hand was smoothing her hair from her forehead. The dear rumble of his voice comforted her.

  “Rest, my darling. The worst has passed. You’re safe.”

  Until the next time.

  She gathered her strength to force her swollen lips into a smile. She would never express her bitterness, her despair. Not to Papa. Papa always believed she was getting better.

  “This was the last one,” he would say. “The very last.” She loved him for it, his stubborn, groundless optimism, even when it made her want to scream.

  “I’m sorry.” She pushed the air through her swollen lips. I’m sorry, Papa. It happened again.

  She listened for his deep, assuring answer—Sleep, little one. Sleep. We can do anything in dreams—and felt the hand on her forehead turn over. Knuckles pressed her damp skin.

  “You’ve haven’t got a fever. Can you sit up? Are you thirsty?” It was a woman speaking, not Papa. Never again Papa. Papa was dead.

  Where was she? Memory came flooding back. Cousin Alfred calling her into Papa’s study. But it wasn’t Papa’s study anymore. It was Alfred’s study. He’d already take
n down Papa’s maps and mounted his loathsome hunting trophies on the walls.

  “This can’t come as a surprise. You must have known you couldn’t stay here. I wrote to the head doctor of a colony in Zurich. I had his response today. The regimen is almost shockingly liberal. It includes concerts and dancing. Sunday walks in the village. The air is very good. You’ll be happy, he assures me. It’s a happy place.” Alfred shoved the letter across Papa’s desk. She stared at it, and at his pudgy hands. Unimaginable, that a man such as he had brought down those proud, swift stags whose heads reared from their wooden plaques. What would he be without his guns? Without her papa’s estate? What if he had to fight a stag to the death with just those fat fists against antlers and hooves? What if he had to use those hands to earn his own fortune?

  He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. She could see it in his face. He was nervous. She made him uncomfortable. It was not good of her to enjoy it. But she did not drop her eyes. He kept his face a polite mask only a moment longer. He held the letter out to her, and when she didn’t take it, his lips turned down into the nasty sneer she remembered from her childhood.

  “Or I could put you in an asylum,” he said, throwing the letter carelessly over his shoulder. “It’s more than within my rights. For your own sake, of course, Ella. You’re a danger to yourself. Do you know a bad bite to the tongue can be fatal? The lingual artery runs through it. If you sever it, your life can pour out of your mouth.” He clacked his teeth together then smiled with closed lips.

  She refused to show any emotion. It was easier than she would have imagined. Her heart was in the coffin with Papa. This man couldn’t hurt her. He’d always hated her, hated her because he feared her. Even that knowledge didn’t hurt her anymore. So what if people feared her? There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t cure her brain. Mr. Norton had explained it to her. Her “anatomical abnormalities,” as he’d called them. Damaged brain. Epilepsy. And now—this last was her own diagnosis—a dead heart. Let her cousin do his worst. She was ready.