Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  Something like that.

  Yet the lesson took. As a grown woman, Aurelia had a great deal of trouble managing a lie. She could force herself to do it, especially in the right cause, but she always found, later, the words of Sister Immaculata’s poem on her lips. Instead, she indulged in what she came to think of as acts of willed imagination. When forced to balance two lovers—Kevin and Eddie, for instance, back before her engagement—Aurelia never actually lied to one about the other. No. She committed acts of imagination. She created stories to keep each beau from worrying about the other. Even Sister Dorcas allowed works of fiction.

  “It still sounds like lying to me,” Mona had said when Aurelia tried to explain her theory.

  “That’s because you don’t have an imagination.”

  But Aurie did have an imagination, an imagination as rich and fertile as any novelist’s. She used it a lot, weaving works of fiction rather than lies. So, when she told her husband she had not opened the envelope delivered to the suite in his absence, Aurelia had not lied exactly. She had simply imagined a story in which she had remained a dutiful wife, never touching the envelope no matter how it mocked and teased her from the dresser. That was what she had told Kevin: not a lie, but a short story about another woman, a woman Aurelia admired but, alas, did not always manage to be.

  The other Aurelia, the one who could never quite behave herself, had indeed opened the envelope, carefully tugging the flap with her fingers in a mixture of fear and worry and lonely rage, after first prudently borrowing glue from the concierge, to be able to seal it up again. The fault, this other Aurelia told herself, was not her own but Kevin’s, for abandoning her on their honeymoon for what he claimed was business even though it looked more like—

  Well, Aurie did not know exactly what it looked like, but she knew exactly what it felt like. It felt like her husband was engaging in a little willed imagination of his own.

  And so she had opened the envelope, and pulled out a sheaf of colored papers, all of them blank, and found, in the middle, a short letter. She frowned, and, as an inveterate snoop, guessed the answer. The colored pages were to keep anybody from reading the letter by holding the envelope up to the light. The letter itself began, oddly, “Dear Author,” as if to a writer or a magazine.

  All interrogations were negative. All sources have been unproductive. The testament is likely on your side of the water. Kindly inform our mutual friend that the debt is paid. We can offer no further assistance.

  The letter was unsigned.

  Maybe it was business after all, Aurie reflected, slathering glue over the flap, and hoping nobody would think to check for fingerprints.

  When she was done, she crawled into bed and lay awake, waiting for morning. She tossed and turned, wondering. Her husband was receiving secret unsigned notes from people who could perform interrogations and had sources and used words like unproductive, people who helped the Author because of a debt owed to a mutual friend. He had dragged his new bride around Europe in search of a testament that was probably back in the States.

  A testament.

  The sort of thing people left behind when they died.

  Now, after her husband’s return, Aurie understood a little more. Phil left a mess behind, Kevin told her, exhaustion making him indiscreet. But a mess evidently was not all Castle had left. He had also left some kind of testament. Maybe the note referred to his will, the disposition of his estate, but her husband’s frantic search suggested otherwise. No. Aurelia was sure that the testament was something else, nothing to do with money or property. And whatever the testament might be, Kevin Garland was desperate to find it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Again the Cross of Saint Peter

  (I)

  THE THIRD EVENT that cemented Eddie’s purpose occurred early in 1956, not long before the publication of the novel that would make him famous. The novel, entitled Field’s Unified Theory, was the story of a Negro physicist who spent his angry, disdainful life searching for the Holy Grail that defied even the great Einstein: the so-called unified field theory that would discover the common physical effect behind gravity and electromagnetism; and if in hindsight the inspiration for the story seems plain, it was less so at the time, at least to the public. Advance copies had leaked out. There was already talk of a National Book Award. Eddie’s Harlem friends made gentle fun. They repeated drearily familiar jokes. How is a Negro writer like a giraffe? The bigger he gets, the more people laugh at him. What’s the difference between a Negro writer and a Negro janitor? The janitor can live on his income. Nevertheless, they were proud of him, as was his mother, and perhaps even his father, although Eddie had only his mother’s word for it.

  His father had gone south again, and was busy organizing more boycotts.

  Eddie hardly cared. Now New York’s white as well as black salons were open to him. He had become what he had longed to be, the man on the rise. His celebrity did not quite balance the loss of Aurelia, who had become, to his confused dismay, rapidly and radiantly pregnant. One cloudy May afternoon, they happened to run into each other outside the offices of the Sentinel on Seventh Avenue. They shared a distant, friendly hug, and then, eyes aglow, she asked Eddie about rumors that he had been seeing Mona Veazie.

  “I believe Gary is seeing her,” said Eddie.

  “What about Torie Elden?” One hand saucily on hip, the other rubbing her newly rounded belly. “Somebody saw the two of you at Craig’s Colony Club the other night, and—”

  “I’m not seeing anybody.”

  “Well, you should be.” She raised a hand to forestall his response. “We are where we are, Eddie. Let it be.”

  Her use of “we” struck Eddie as inapt. Aurelia was married to a Garland. She was pregnant with Kevin’s child. Eddie felt Wesley Senior at his shoulder, thundering that Aurelia should be singing her husband’s praises, not allowing an ex-beau to infer that she was having second thoughts. He asked, forcing a smile, how the great marriage was going.

  Aurelia briefly dropped her gaze. “Oh, well, you know Kevin,” she said.

  “I’m sure the two of you are very happy,” he said, every word costing him.

  “I’m sure,” she echoed, meekly.

  Eddie’s raising would not allow him to press further. They were where they were. When Aurelia, working hard, began gushing about something hilarious that Thurgood Marshall had said last week at Amaretta Veazie’s salon, Eddie let her gush, and even laughed on key.

  “I’m glad you’re happy,” said Eddie before they parted. “And, listen, if you ever need—”

  “An autograph?” she teased, before he could say anything foolish. “Tell you what. When you’re famous enough, I’ll come beg you for one.”

  A couple of nights later, Eddie attended a dinner party at a Central Park South duplex owned by a wealthy white couple, patrons of the arts and friends of Langston Hughes, who had arranged Eddie’s invitation. Actually, the night began as comedy. Eddie walked into the lobby still puzzling over Aurelia’s meaning, and therefore failed to impress the doorman, who refused to believe that he was a guest, refused to call upstairs to check, and threatened, if Eddie would not vacate the premises, to buzz the deputy commissioner of police, who lived on the fourth floor. Hating humiliation above all things, Eddie folded his arms and stood his ground. Just then a Columbia professor arrived, a philologist of some note. He tried slipping past the contretemps, but his wife tugged at his arm and announced in a voice to wake the dead that this must be the Negro Helen had told her about.

  Upstairs Eddie found only one other Negro—Mona Veazie, who arrived on the arm of Gary Fatek. Half a Hilliman or not, Gary loved to shock. Chairs had been set out in the long drawing room. A well-known pianist played a sonata. The Columbia philologist, who was just back from East Africa, discussed certain discoveries he had made about the use of participles in Kiswahili. Then it was Eddie’s turn, speaking in place of Hughes, who was abroad. He was nervous: his skill was with the written word. He mumbled a fe
w sentences about the role of the literary imagination in the movement for Negro rights, on both sides, tossing in a modest criticism of Faulkner for his portrayal of the darker nation. He graciously thanked his hosts. He was applauded.

  Afterward, Eddie chatted with Gary and Mona, but it was evident that they planned an early getaway and had come only to hear his remarks. Before Eddie could manage his own departure, he was snagged by an elderly man with sour breath who wanted to compliment him on his recent success on Broadway. A swift young couple wanted to know whether he was available to do other parties. A pleasantly plump woman in her twenties flirted, asking if Eddie believed all that or if maybe it was just show.

  “All of what?”

  “About writing. Do you write for justice? Do you write for money? Or do you write because your muse forces you?”

  Eddie took a good look at her. Her thick brown hair was tangly and unstylish, as if she didn’t care. Green eyes teased him from beneath heavy brows. Her first name was Margot. Her surname had a “Van” in it. She lived and worked in the city, and was attending tonight’s party with her parents, who looked prosperous and indulgent. Margot followed his gaze. She assured him that her parents lived in Washington, and were headed home tonight on the late train. Her slim mother displayed an exotic swarthiness that he tentatively identified as Greek. Her balding father possessed the same round, peppy face as his daughter. Eddie recognized the name. He was Elliott Van Epp, a conservative Senator from a Midwestern farm state, often talked of as presidential timber. Eddie was trying to decide whether the realization was grounds for backing off or pressing forward when he noticed the gold cross snuggled tightly at the young woman’s fleshy throat. It was identical to the one he had found clutched in the hand of poor Philmont Castle, whose murder last year remained unsolved—and, mostly, forgotten.

  Margot was wearing the same cross.

  The same cross, upright this time, ornate workings unmistakable. Eddie’s keen eyes could even discern the start of the upside-down inscription he had been unable to read that night: “We shall,” the tiny words began once more. The rest was again lost to him, swirling around the back and into her sweater.

  Margot smiled. “What are you looking at, Mr. Wesley?”

  Caught. He softened. Just now, caught was not so bad. Aurelia was gone, and his other serial relationships had gone serially bad. It had been a long time. “What would you imagine me to be looking at?”

  “The same thing most men look at, Mr. Wesley.”

  “Call me Eddie,” he said, smiling back.

  “All right, Eddie, but before you get any ideas, I should tell you that I’m engaged.”

  “A fearful malady that afflicts most pretty girls sooner or later.” He bowed. “I’ve seen it before,” he added, ruefully.

  “Have you?”

  “Often. But I promise not to hold it against you.”

  Three nights later, Eddie sat in his bedroom, examining the cross close up. He twirled it between his fingers. He had little experience of serious jewelry, but the gold was shiny and soft, its weight in his palm a growing surprise. “We shall be free,” the inscription read, except that on the back the words were right side up, suggesting that the cross, when seen from the other side, was meant to be inverted. The four points of the cross were marked by narrow arrowheads, each with a line joining the legs, as if to form the letter “A.” Eddie perched on the windowsill trying to work out how this well-bred girl and a Wall Street lawyer came to own the same curiously designed gold cross, marked with the same upside-down legend. He recalled the letter from his father but could not accept the image of either Philmont Castle or Margot Van Epp as devil worshipers. Eddie suspected that he was missing something very obvious, and, being a man of action, woke her up to ask.

  “From my mother,” Margot said sleepily. In the darkness she was sweaty and inert. She had piously removed the cross prior to sex. “Come to bed.”

  “Where did she get it?”

  “I think Italy. I don’t remember.”

  “Italy?”

  “Back before the war. I was a little girl.” She yawned. “My mother’s Italian. Half Italian. Now, put it down and come to bed.”

  “Are you a Catholic?”

  She considered the question for a while, eyes glazing a bit because she was still a little high. Finally, she shrugged pale, sloping shoulders. “Not really. We’re not really anything, except at election time.” A sharp grin. Her teeth, like her famous father’s, were huge. Margot was leaving town in a few days; when she returned, she would be a wife. “Then we’re everything.”

  Eddie pointed. “What do the words mean? Are they a quote from somewhere?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are they from the Bible?”

  “I told you, Eddie, I don’t know. Come back to bed.”

  “Why are they upside down on the back?”

  “I don’t know.” Yawning again, Margot looked around the cramped space. “This is stupid,” she announced. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  Eddie was too focused to waste energy on charm. “What about these marks?” Pointing. “Are they the letter ‘A’?”

  This time she only shrugged.

  “Are there more crosses like this one?”

  “I would imagine so.”

  Her insouciance had started to annoy him. “You never asked? You wear it, but you don’t know anything about it?”

  Margot finally sat up. The sheet curtained at her waist. She beckoned lazily, fleshy fingers fluttering. “Come to bed,” she repeated. “Or else I’m going home.”

  “It’s dangerous out there at night.”

  “It’s dangerous everywhere.”

  “It’s not dangerous in here.”

  “You’re dangerous anywhere,” she said, leaning back for him.

  (II)

  EDDIE LED MARGOT down the dank back stairs at five-thirty in the morning and bundled her into a waiting gypsy cab driven by his old friend Lenny from Scarlett’s gang, who never slept and was amused to cooperate in these ventures, and who, Eddie swore, could be trusted absolutely. On the sidewalk, Margot took his hand but did not kiss him.

  “The next time you see me, I’ll be Mrs. Lanning Frost.”

  “And then what? First Lady in fifteen years?”

  “Maybe twenty.” The green eyes sparkled. “First we need to get Lanning into Congress—well, he always calls it the Congress, he’s such a pretentious bastard—and then wait for our senior Senator, or maybe even Poppa, to retire. A term in the Senate, maybe two, and then we’ll be ready.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Lanning.” She laughed. Her lips brushed his cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll get the Secret Service to sneak you in. We’ll have it off in the East Room.”

  “I’ll look forward to it,” he said playfully, but both knew he was anxious to be free of her.

  At the end of the alley a bus guttered past. A garbage truck followed, rattling. Working Harlem, the larger fraction, had started to wake. “Eddie?”

  “Yes, Margot?”

  “Why did you ask me all those questions about my cross?”

  He shrugged. Lenny Rouse was waving impatiently from the car. “I’ve never seen one like that before.”

  A long moment while the brilliant eyes measured him. “Yes, you have,” Margot said at last, and, rising on her toes, kissed his cheek. She put her small mouth to his ear. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I think you should leave it alone.”

  “Leave what alone?”

  “Some things can’t be stopped, Eddie.”

  “Margot—”

  “And some things shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m not going to interfere with your plans,” he promised, annoyed. “Tell you what. I’ll even vote for your husband.”

  Margot laughed, not unkindly. “Oh, Eddie. You think you’re so cynical and sophisticated, but you’re so naïve.”

  His cheeks burned. “I’m what?”

  “I’m not talkin
g about Lanning. You can stop Lanning all you want.” Another peck, this one on his mouth. Then she scrambled into Lenny’s cab and pulled the door behind her, the Saint Peter’s Cross glistening at her neck.

  (III)

  CONTRARY TO WESLEY SENIOR’S FEARS, his son was not lazy. He was a prodigious worker. He simply preferred writing to everything else. Research in particular came hard to him. One of his history professors had assured him, despairingly, that he could be a brilliant student if he spent less time at his diary and typewriter and more time in the library. But Eddie did not dream of being a brilliant student. He dreamed of being a brilliant writer. Too much research, he used to preach, would dull the pen. Thus his next actions would have confounded those who knew him, had he not carefully kept them secret. He began to frequent the city’s many libraries and museums. He read learned articles on the image of the cross. He browsed the collection of crucifixes at the Cloisters, the Gothic castle on 193rd Street in Fort Tryon Park, guarding the northern tip of Manhattan. He wandered Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, studying images, asking questions. He contacted the Columbia philologist he had met at the party, who in turn put him in touch with a couple of medievalists. He told them he was doing research for another novel, and a part of him probably was. He even got in touch with his father again, this time actually using the telephone and risking That Voice, as he and Junie used to call it. He asked his father where the words “We shall be free” appeared in the Bible. The pastor inquired gruffly if his son imagined he had the whole book committed to memory, and directed him to Strong’s Concordance, of which Eddie had never heard. The New York Public Library had a copy. But either Professor Strong had erred or the words were from another source, for his massive tome listed “she shall be free” in Numbers and “he shall be free” in Deuteronomy but “we shall be free” nowhere. The medievalists were no more helpful, nor were the museums, and the curator at the Cloisters kept telling him that without seeing the item in question he could not really venture a guess. An archivist at the library told him that any number of fraternal organizations—the Elks, for example, and the Rotarians—incorporated religious symbols into their seals. But none, she admitted, inverted the cross, perhaps because to do so would be disrespectful.