by Rice, Anne
She would rise. She had to. And better that she should lift the stone for herself, know how to rise, and that the thirst should drive her to it at the proper moment as it had driven me.
I lighted the torch on the wall for her, and went out for a moment to breathe the fresh air. Then leaving gates and doors unlocked behind me, I went up into Magnus’s cell to watch the twilight melt from the sky.
I’d hear her, I thought, when she awakened.
An hour must have passed. The azure light faded, the stars rose, and the distant city of Paris lighted its myriad tiny beacons. I left the windowsill where I had sat against the iron bars and I went to the chest and began to select jewels for her.
Jewels she still loved. She had taken her old keepsakes with her when we left her room. I lighted the candles to help me see, though I didn’t really need them. The illumination was beautiful to me. Beautiful on the jewels. And I found very delicate and lovely things for her—pearl-studded pins that she might wear in the lapels of her mannish little coat, and rings that would look masculine on her small hands if that was what she wanted.
I listened now and then for her. And this chill would clutch my heart. What if she did not rise? What if there had been only that one night for her? Horror thudding in me. And the sea of jewels in the chest, the candlelight dancing in the faceted stones, the gold settings—it meant nothing.
But I didn’t hear her. I heard the wind outside, the great soft rustle of the trees, the faint distant whistling of the stable boy as he moved about the barn, the neighing of my horses.
Far off a village church bell rang.
Then very suddenly there came over me the feeling that someone was watching me. This was so unfamiliar to me that I panicked. I turned, almost stumbling into the chest, and stared at the mouth of the secret tunnel. No one there.
No one in this small empty sanctum with the candlelight playing on the stones and Magnus’s grim countenance on the sarcophagus.
Then I looked straight in front of me at the barred window.
And I saw her looking back at me.
Floating in the air she seemed to be, holding to the bars with both hands, and she was smiling.
I almost cried out. I backed up and the sweat broke out all over my body. I was embarrassed suddenly to be caught off guard, to be so obviously startled.
But she remained motionless, smiling still, her expression gradually changing from serenity to mischievousness. The candlelight made her eyes too brilliant.
“It’s not very nice to frighten other immortals like that,” I said. She laughed more freely and easily than she ever had when she was alive.
Relief coursed through me as she moved, made sounds. I knew I was blushing.
“How did you get there!” I said. I went to the window and reached through the bars and clasped both her wrists.
Her little mouth was all sweetness and laughter. Her hair was a great shimmering mane around her face.
“I climbed the wall, of course,” she said. “How do you think I got here?”
“Well, go down. You can’t come through the bars. I’ll go to meet you.”
“You’re very right about that,” she said. “I’ve been to all the windows. Meet me on the battlements above. It’s faster.”
She started climbing, hooking her boots easily into the bars, then she vanished.
She was all exuberance as she’d been the night before as we came down the stairs together.
“Why are we lingering here?” she said. “Why don’t we go on now to Paris?”
Something was wrong with her, lovely as she was, something not right … what was it?
She didn’t want kisses now, or even talk, really. And that had a little sting to it.
“I want to show you the inner room,” I said. “And the jewels.”
“The jewels?” she asked.
She hadn’t seen them from the window. The cover of the chest had blocked her view. She walked ahead of me into the room where Magnus had burned, and then she lay down to crawl through the tunnel.
As soon as she saw the chest, she was shocked by it.
She tossed her hair a little impatiently over her shoulder and bent to study the brooches, the rings, the small ornaments so like those heirlooms she’d had to sell long ago one by one.
“Why, he must have been collecting them for centuries,” she said. “And such exquisite things. He chose what he would take, didn’t he? What a creature he must have been.”
Again, almost angrily, she pushed her hair out of her way. It seemed paler, more luminous, fuller. A glorious thing.
“The pearls, look at them,” I said. “And these rings.” I showed her the ones I’d already chosen for her. I took her hand and slipped the rings on her fingers. Her fingers moved as if they had life of their own, could feel delight, and again she laughed.
“Ah, but we are splendid devils, aren’t we?”
“Hunters of the Savage Garden,” I said.
“Then let’s go into Paris,” she said. Faint touch of pain in her face, the thirst. She ran her tongue over her lips. Was I half as fascinating to her as she was to me?
She raked her hair back from her forehead, and her eyes darkened with the intensity of her words.
“I want to feed quickly tonight,” she said, “then go out of the city, into the woods. Go where there are no men and women about. Go where there is only the wind and the dark trees, and the stars overhead. Blessed silence.”
She went to the window again. Her back was narrow and straight, and her hands at her sides, alive with the jeweled rings. And coming as they did out of the thick cuffs of the man’s coat, her hands looked all the more slender and exquisite. She must have been looking at the high dim clouds, the stars that burned through the purple layer of evening mist.
“I have to go to Roget,” I said under my breath. “I have to take care of Nicki, tell them some lie about what’s happened to you.”
She turned, and her face looked small and cold suddenly, the way it could at home when she was disapproving. But she’d never really look that way again.
“Why tell them anything about me?” she asked. “Why ever even bother with them again?”
I was shocked by this. But it wasn’t a complete surprise to me. Perhaps I’d been waiting for it. Perhaps I’d sensed it in her all along, the unspoken questions.
I wanted to say Nicki sat by your bed when you were dying, does that mean nothing? But how sentimental, how mortal that sounded, how positively foolish.
Yet it wasn’t foolish.
“I don’t mean to judge you,” she said. She folded her arms and leaned against the window. “I simply don’t understand. Why did you write to us? Why did you send us all the gifts? Why didn’t you take this white fire from the moon and go where you wanted with it?”
“But where should I want to go?” I said. “Away from all those I’d known and loved? I did not want to stop thinking of you, of Nicki, even of my father and my brothers. I did what I wanted,” I said.
“Then conscience played no role in it?”
“If you follow your conscience, you do what you want,” I said. “But it was simpler than that. I wanted you to have the wealth I gave you. I wanted you … to be happy.”
She reflected for a long time.
“Would you have had me forget you?” I demanded. It sounded spiteful, angry.
She didn’t answer immediately.
“No, of course not,” she said. “And had it been the other way around, I would never have forgotten you either. I’m sure of it. But the rest of them? I don’t give a damn about them. I shall never exchange words with them again. I shall never lay eyes on them.”
I nodded. But I hated what she was saying. She frightened me.
“I cannot overcome this notion that I’ve died,” she said. “That I am utterly cut off from all living creatures. I can taste, I can see, I can feel. I can drink blood. But I am like something that cannot be seen, cannot affect things.”
&nbs
p; “It’s not so,” I said. “And how long do you think it will sustain you, feeling and seeing and touching and tasting, if there is no love? No one with you?”
The same uncomprehending expression.
“Oh, why do I bother to tell you this?” I said. “I am with you. We’re together. You don’t know what it was like when I was alone. You can’t imagine it.”
“I trouble you and I don’t mean to,” she said. “Tell them what you will. Maybe you can somehow make up a palatable story. I don’t know. If you want me to go with you, I’ll go. I’ll do what you ask of me. But I have one more question for you.” She dropped her voice. “Surely you don’t mean to share this power with them!”
“No, never.” I shook my head as if to say the thought was incredible. I was looking at the jewels, thinking of all the gifts I’d sent, thinking of the dollhouse. I had sent them a dollhouse. I thought of Renaud’s players safely across the Channel.
“Not even with Nicolas?”
“No, God, no!” I looked at her.
She nodded slightly as if she approved of this answer. And she pushed at her hair again in a distracted way.
“Why not with Nicolas?” she asked. I wanted this to stop.
“Because he’s young,” I said, “and he has life before him. He’s not on the brink of death.” Now I was more than uneasy. I was miserable. “In time, he’ll forget about us …” I wanted to say “about our conversation.”
“He could die tomorrow,” she said. “A carriage could crush him in the streets …”
“Do you want me to do it!” I glared at her.
“No. I don’t want you to do it. But who am I to tell you what to do? I am trying to understand you.”
Her long heavy hair had slipped over her shoulders again, and exasperated, she took hold of it in both hands.
Then suddenly she made a low hissing sound, and her body went rigid. She was holding her long tresses and staring at them.
“My God,” she whispered. And then in a spasm, she let go of her hair and screamed.
The sound paralyzed me. It sent a flash of white pain through my head. I had never heard her scream. And she screamed again as if she were on fire. She had fallen back against the window and she was screaming louder as she looked at her hair. She went to touch it and then pulled her fingers back from it as if it were blazing. And she struggled against the window, screaming and twisting from side to side, as if she were trying to get away from her own hair.
“Stop it!” I shouted. I grabbed hold of her shoulders and shook her. She was gasping. I realized instantly what it was. Her hair had grown back! It had grown back as she slept until it was as long as it had been before. And it was thicker even, more lustrous. That is what was wrong with the way she looked, what I had noticed and not noticed! And what she herself had just seen.
“Stop it, stop it now!” I shouted louder, her body shaking so violently I could hardly keep her in my arms. “It’s grown back, that’s all!” I insisted. “It’s natural to you, don’t you see? It’s nothing!”
She was choking, trying to calm herself, touching it and then screaming as if her fingertips were blistered. She tried to get away from me, and then ripped at her hair in pure terror.
I shook her hard this time.
“Gabrielle!” I said. “Do you understand me? It’s grown back, and it will every time you cut it! There’s no horror in it, for the love of hell, stop!” I thought if she didn’t stop, I’d start to rave myself. I was trembling as badly as she was.
She stopped screaming and she was giving little gasps. I’d never seen her like this, not in all the years and years in Auvergne. She let me guide her towards the bench by the hearth, where I made her sit down. She put her hands to her temples and tried to catch her breath, her body rocking back and forth slowly.
I looked about for a scissors. I had none. The little gold scissors had fallen on the floor of the crypt below. I took out my knife.
She was sobbing softly in her hands.
“Do you want me to cut it off again?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Gabrielle, listen to me.” I took her hands from her face. “I’ll cut it again if you like. Each night, cut it, and burn it. That’s all.”
She stared at me in such perfect stillness suddenly that I didn’t know what to do. Her face was smeared with blood from her tears, and there was blood on her linen. Blood all over her linen.
“Shall I cut it?” I asked her again.
She looked exactly as if someone had hit her and made her bleed. Her eyes were wide and wondering, the blood tears seeping out of them down her smooth cheeks. And as I watched, the flow stopped and the tears darkened and dried to a crust on her white skin.
I wiped her face carefully with my lace handkerchief. I went to the clothing I kept in the tower, the garments made for me in Paris that I’d brought back and kept here now.
I took off her coat. She made no move to help me or stop me and I unhooked the linen shirt that she wore.
I saw her breasts and they were perfectly white except for the palest pink tint to the small nipples. Trying not to look at them, I put the fresh shirt on her and buttoned it quickly. Then I brushed her hair, brushed it and brushed it, and not wanting to hack at it with the knife, I braided it for her in one long plait, and I put her coat back on her.
I could feel her composure and her strength coming back. She didn’t seem ashamed of what had happened. And I didn’t want her to be. She was merely considering things. But she didn’t speak. She didn’t move.
I started talking to her.
“When I was little, you used to tell me about all the places you’d been. You showed me pictures of Naples and Venice, remember? Those old books? And you had things, little keepsakes from London and St. Petersburg, all the places you’d seen.”
She didn’t answer.
“I want us to go to all those places. I want to see them now. I want to see them and live in them. I want to go farther even, places I never dreamed of seeing when I was alive.”
Something changed in her face.
“Did you know it would grow back?” she asked in a whisper.
“No. I mean yes. I mean, I didn’t think. I should have known it would do that.”
For a long time she stared at me again in that same still, listless fashion.
“Does nothing about it all … ever … frighten you?” she asked. Her voice was guttural and unfamiliar. “Does nothing … ever … stop you?” she asked. Her mouth was open and perfect and looked like a human mouth.
“I don’t know,” I whispered helplessly. “I don’t see the point,” I said. But I felt confused now. Again I told her to cut it each night and to burn it. Simple.
“Yes, burn it,” she sighed. “Otherwise it should fill all the rooms of the tower in time, shouldn’t it? It would be like Rapunzel’s hair in the fairy tale. It would be like the gold that the miller’s daughter had to spin from straw in the fairy tale of the mean dwarf, Rumpelstiltskin.”
“We write our own fairy tales, my love,” I said. “The lesson in this is that nothing can destroy what you are now. Every wound will heal. You are a goddess.”
“And the goddess thirsts,” she said.
Hours later, as we walked arm in arm like two students through the boulevard crowds, it was already forgotten. Our faces were ruddy, our skin warm.
But I did not leave her to go to my lawyer. And she did not seek the quiet open country as she had wanted to do. We stayed close to each other, the faintest shimmer of the presence now and then making us turn our heads.
5
By the hour of three, when we reached the livery stables, we knew we were being stalked by the presence. For half an hour, forty-five minutes at a time, we wouldn’t hear it. Then the dull hum would come again. It was maddening me.
And though we tried hard to hear some intelligible thoughts from it, all we could discern was malice, and an occasional tumult like the spectacle of dry leaves disintegra
ted in the roar of the blaze.
She was glad that we were riding home. It wasn’t that the thing annoyed her. It was only what she had said earlier—she wanted the emptiness of the country, the quiet.
When the open land broke before us, we were going so fast that the wind was the only sound, and I think I heard her laughing but I wasn’t sure. She loved the feel of the wind as I did, she loved the new brilliance of the stars over the darkened hills.
But I wondered if there had been moments tonight when she had wept inwardly and I had not known. There had been times when she was obscure and silent, and her eyes quivered as if they were crying, but there were absolutely no tears.
I was deep into thoughts of that, I think, when we neared a dense wood that grew along the banks of a shallow stream, and quite suddenly the mare reared and lurched to the side.
I was almost thrown, it was so unexpected. Gabrielle held on tight to my right arm.
Every night I rode into this little glade, crashing over the narrow wooden bridge above the water. I loved the sound of the horse’s hooves on the wood and the climb up the sloping bank. And my mare knew the path. But now, she would have none of it.
Shying, threatening to rear again, she turned of her own and galloped back towards Paris until, with all the power of my will, I commanded her, reining her in.
Gabrielle was staring back at the thick copse, the great mass of dark, swaying branches that concealed the stream. And there came over the thin howling of the wind and that soft volume of rustling leaves, the definite pulse of the presence in the trees.
We heard it at the same moment, surely, because I tightened my arm around Gabrielle as she nodded, gripping my hand.
“It’s stronger!” she said to me quickly. “And it is not one alone.”
“Yes,” I said, enraged, “and it stands between me and my lair!” I drew my sword, bracing Gabrielle in my left arm.
