The Ruby Tear

by Suzy McKee Charnas

  He could not recall the names of his uncle, his two nephews, and his younger brother, all of whose hacked-off heads he could make out jammed onto the spikes on the wall by the gateway in to the forecourt. His father must have been taken captive—he would never retreat from his castle.

  Best not to think about what might have happened, or might still be happening, to him. Or to his mother, the sister who had never married and who ran the estate better than any man, or . . .others . . . .

  Magda, who was to have been his wife, ravished away, a prize not of war but of treachery. Her name was seared into his heart with a blazing iron. It stung and burned like the spit of the Devil bubbling on the flesh of the damned.

  His people were dead or gone, his home tumbled stone from stone and consumed in flames, and all the treasures of his lineage robbed away by strangers. He would soon join all that was lost here. He’d seen enough battlefields to know that his wound was fatal, so he should have been praying for the salvation of his immortal soul while he still could.

  Instead he cursed his luck in a weak whisper. He pictured the enemy and cursed them: mercenaries in foreign gear, ruthless men who had lain in ambush for him in his own home, hacked him down, and thrown his bleeding body out here with the rest.

  Ivopold Hugo Dedrick von Craggen, who had spent two years fighting for his Church against unbelievers and heretics of all sorts, now called not on his God but upon the legions of Hell, begging them to follow and strike down his family’s murderers.

  Time drifted; his curses floated impotently away.

  Someone was coming. He turned to look, scarcely feeling his injury now. A sturdy white warhorse, stripped of its trappings, walked placidly among the tumbled bodies. On it rode a woman, seated sideways on the horse’s broad back. She was a stranger to him, a white-faced woman in dark garments with long, black hair swirling from her head as she turned to look out over the dead, this way and that.

  The wife or daughter or leman of a man of the castle, seeking her butchered lover or father to pray over? She passed nearby, a dark shadow in the moonlight. He tried to call out to her, but could only groan.

  Yet she must have heard; she turned to ride closer, and she slid down from the horse’s back. Her dark skirts rustling, she knelt beside his good companion in battle, poor Pero (that was the name of that lifeless hulk), handling him somehow, but without sobs or prayers. Handling him—raising him up a little—to rob the corpse? Was it some peasant woman, come here on a strayed or stolen war mount to find enrichment among the corpses of her betters?

  He uttered a croak of protest, and she looked at him.

  Her face shone pale, with a stillness like the moon’s own face. Ebony hair floated about her pallor like windtorn storm clouds, and the white column of her throat drove down in a gleaming arrow into the sable stuff of her gown.

  This was no peasant.

  “Lady,” he whispered, “who are you?”

  He felt a chill in her gaze, from eyes invisible in their shadowed sockets. Her lips were black. Blood shows black in the moonlight, but she was clearly unwounded.

  You know me, came her voice straight as a spear into his mind. I am the Blood Angel of this land, Baron. You have glimpsed me sometimes while you hunted the forests of your father’s domain. Where blood is spilled, there I drink; and with the blood I take up memory, I take up oaths and curses and destinies. I take up the crimes of the past and the promises of the future, Baron. You know me.

  Why yes, he thought in muzzy astonishment, I do.

  There had always been whispers among the peasants and villagers about a dreadful rider in the wooded hills, an ageless being who supped on the blood of her people. Dark nourishment linked her unbreakably to this ancient soil: she had always been there and could never die. They had spoken of her with fear and with warding-off signs given them by their priests; but they spoke of her with pride also.

  He’d thought he had seen her sometimes, but those sightings he had never spoken of, for could a godly man be taken by such visions?

  Well, he thought; she is real. And Pero must be not quite dead, for she would not drink blood from a corpse.

  And I know you, Ivo Hugo Dedrick Maria von Craggen.

  His nape prickled; no honest man wants such a creature knowing him. But he was dying, so what could it matter?

  He listened, spellbound.

  I can smell your blood, she went on, rich with the courage and the pride of your line. Warrior of many battles, you must know that you are wounded to death.

  He did know; and now he was stunned to glimpse salvation, of a kind. The wrong kind, but why should he care?

  “Then drink from me,” he said, dragging himself up on his elbows in a surge of desperate energy. “Leave poor Pero, he is a good soldier, a devout man all his life. Let Heaven have him, Lady. He has earned his rest from this misery of iron and death. But I have failed in everything that I tried to do. Damnation is no more than I have earned.”

  Be sure of what you offer, she answered, smiling slowly with those blackly shining lips from which he could not avert his eyes. Perhaps it is only your fear of death that speaks so recklessly, Baron von Craggen —a coward’s fear.

  His mind, slowed by the onset of darkness, caught up suddenly with events: she would address him by this title, which she did for the second time now, only if his father the Baron was dead. So Egon, the true Baron and respected (if not precisely beloved) father of Ivopold, must lie dead somewhere, no doubt tormented first and then butchered by the enemy to the encouragement of their treacherous leader—the blond foreigner with the white gryphon on his shield. The damned man, a renowned mercenary, had been hired to head the castle forces in Ivo’s absence. So Ivo was Baron now; the dying heir to a dead line.

  “Take my blood,” he said, or thought he said; “give me some kind of life in return. My family is destroyed, my wife is the booty of a treacherous thief, and the treasure of Craggenheim is stolen away. We had this gem from the hand of Charlemagne himself, and we have kept it safe, until now! As the last of my name I have work to do, the work of revenge. But I cannot do it like this—help me, I beg this of you!”

  I dream, he thought, floating on pain. Hurt as I am, how can I speak? My lungs are lanced through, I am already in Death’s hand.

  This is a dream, or the torments of Hell.

  The woman with the bloody mouth inclined toward him, attentive and unhurried. You have lost a wonderful treasure, she replied, a gem beyond price. And these have been terrible deaths that the betrayer has forced upon your family. But haven’t you had enough punishment, Baron? What you ask of me is no favor, believe me. What you beg from me now, you will curse me for in ages to come.

  Listen to me curse, then, and laugh at me for it! he responded, voiceless now and coughing blood. I would willingly be the butt of your sport in that cloudy future, if I can only live long enough to avenge my family! Lady, drink before all my blood runs out of me. Make me a demon, like you. I will do whatever you bid me, at whatever cost.

  She touched his forehead with her cool wrist. Do you think I am lonely, Baron? Do you think I long for your companionship?

  No more than the moon longs for another moon in the night sky. The longing is all mine, Lady. The pain I feel is nothing to this longing. If I live with the life you offer, I will go hunting on the trail of my enemy. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far I must range, I swear to return to him and his the slaughter and the reaving he has given me, until the last of his line is dead and the Craggen treasure is in my hand again.

  Well, she murmured, that’s a fitting purpose for a proud young man of noble blood.

  She drew down the hood of his mail shirt, exposing his torn neck to the night’s chill. Her fingers rested lightly against the faintly throbbing artery at his throat. Her touch was ice.

  You will leave this place on your travels, she said, but you must come home again if I call you. You will be unable to create others like yourself, for with that power I do not pa
rt. And I will speak to you from time to time, through the link this land’s blood creates between my mind and yours.

  She leaned close. A cold breath that stank of carrion glided on his skin. I will agree to all this, if you give me your oath and it satisfies me. I see no impediment. The men of Craggenheim have not pursued me or set priests and Inquisitors after me. By the orders of your forbears, I have been let go my own way. The women of Craggenheim have bought favors and powers from me and paid the fair price. Something is owing for that, too. Your own lady mother was one of those women. She’d have had no sons, but for me.

  So: what you must do is give your word to obey my rules. On what will you swear, Baron?

  On my blood, Lady.

  He choked, darkness dancing in his wavering sight. Her lips pressed cool against his skin, and knives of ice tore his skin. The cold of the blackest spaces of Hell flowed into him, taking the place of the warm blood pulsing out of his body. He floated away on a freezing tide toward a sleep from which he would awaken changed forever.

  * * *

  He started up with a gasp from the well of sleep. The dream, initially sharp and bright as a stained glass rendering of some saint’s agony, faded at once. It didn’t matter. He knew it by heart, and felt a wry fondness for it sometimes—his one true relic of the old life, still faithfully his.

  He got up, stretched, and went to the window of the bedroom, rocking gently on his heels and thinking of the culmination of his labors. Not too soon, though; nothing spoiled revenge like haste. He’d had time to learn that lesson well.

  On the whole, he thought he’d made a good bargain.

  There was someone else he needed to be thinking about: the woman, the one the cab driver had mentioned in Rhinebeck yesterday.

  “The Griffin house?” he’d said. “I took someone out there just the other day. Good looking. Maybe she’s an actress, looking to be in Mr. Griffin’s play. It’s opening in the city in a month or so—you know about that? Everybody talks about it around here . . .”

  Yes, Ivo knew about that.

  Now he knew something new about it, something very interesting. A woman, a beautiful actress at Griffin’s house, maybe in his play? A pawn he might use, perhaps, in this stalking of the final prey? A plot twist to amuse himself with? Perhaps he might tease a little extra pleasure out of the process by choosing a more oblique approach than usual . . . .

  The lie of the land sometimes included some particularly interesting features that might go to make his own last act a great deal more interesting, subtle, and flavorful.

  Ivo had had a long time to learn to appreciate subtlety.

  Victory

  Jess hurried toward the theater, ten minutes early for the first rehearsal. She felt as if her heart were flying ahead of her, exultant in victory. She had to remind herself that the hardest job still lay ahead. Now that she had won the part, she had damned well better deliver.

  The board had given Walter the go-ahead: if he wanted to cast Jessamyn Croft on as Eva, they would back his choice. So he’d made it.

  Jess hadn’t dared to fully accept this as a done deal until Nell Clausen, the theater’s business manager, took her into the office and showed her a copy of Nick’s contract for the production. The playwright had, according to the papers, a right to participate in the casting process and to contribute his input. He did not have veto power over the director’s choices.

  Moreover, since Nick hadn’t come to the city for any of the auditions for Eva (or for any other part, for that matter), the Board members decided that he had no case for interfering at all in Walter’s decisions.

  Upstairs in the rehearsal room, everyone was milling around, looking for places to hang or drop their coats and scarves. They greeted Jess with enthusiasm. What they really felt, who could tell? She’d been away a long time now.

  Walter walked in, clapped his hands, and gathered them around a scarred oak table in the center of the room. The stage itself wouldn’t be available for rehearsals until the sets were finished, three weeks at least. They were all used to rehearsing in rooms like this. Jess found the shabbiness comfortingly familiar.

  The first thing Walter said to them, once he got them to stop chattering and doing somersaults and other physical warmups on the carpeted floor, was that Nick Griffin was not going to attend rehearsals.

  “You’ll have heard,” Walter said, “that Nick and I have had some disagreements about casting.” Everybody pointedly avoided looking at Jess. “Luckily for our show, I have prevailed. In the interests of harmony, Nick says he’d rather stay out of it entirely. If there are questions we can’t resolve among ourselves here, I’ll go see him and get his input. On no account will he come barreling down here, criticizing and carping and rewriting lines out from under us, like most first-time playwrights at this stage of things.”

  At Jessamyn’s side, Anthony Sinclair cast his eyes heavenward and intoned, “Thank you, Jesus!”

  Jess couldn’t stop herself from coming to Nick’s defense. “Nick’s had experience in the theater. He’d know better than to come around nitpicking.”

  “Good,” Anita MacNeil said. “I’d just as soon not have the writer shooting me pained looks during rehearsals.”

  Bella Mason, who played the matriarch of the fictional family in the play, carried on with the knitting she had brought with her. “What about changes we want, though? I have a couple of lines that need editing. It’s just little things, like finding someplace to breathe.”

  Walter, his hands clasped on his belly, nodded solemnly. “I’ll take your requests to him, of course, but let’s remember, this isn’t a workshop production. Try to keep change requests minimal, and get them in early, folks.

  “Now, can we try a read-through of the first act?”

  In their sweats and jeans and sweaters, sipping bottled water to keep their mouths moist, they began reading the play aloud. The second time around, they stopped after each scene to discuss it. They were like a chamber music group running through a score for the first time.

  This was the part of theater work that Jess loved the most: the early days, when everybody was equally ignorant, hesitant, and experimental. Nobody expected anything of anybody yet, so it felt as if anything was possible: any insight, any revelation, any achievement.

  In reality, of course, Walter already had a firm idea in his mind of how the play should look and move and sound. His job was to nudge them, more or less subtly, toward their places in his vision. He had the reputation of being very good at this. More importantly, they all knew enough about him so that they felt they could trust him not to let them make fools of themselves on stage.

  So there was a good atmosphere in the rehearsal room, tingly with apprehension and anticipation but basically confident. Jess basked quietly in the warmth and excitement that she’d been missing so much since the accident.

  She thought about her lines as she read them, impatient to find the passionate center of the doomed and prescient Eva and establish it as a touchstone for everything else. It was too soon, but you could only get there by starting somewhere; after so long away, she was starved for some sense of competence and craft in herself.

  As for the others, she hoped for the best. Bella Mason was a known, dependable quantity and a comfort to have on board. Jess knew Anita MacNeil, who had gotten the lesser part of Magda, and she had heard of Anthony Sinclair for years but had never worked with him before. The other four were strangers.

  Before long they would become closer than the family they portrayed on stage.

  Afterwards, they dispersed for a first look at their dressing rooms. Jessamyn’s was a small space, crammed with an illuminated make-up mirror, a table, a couple of chairs, and no window. A wicker wastebasket occupied one corner. There were two patched places on the pale green walls.

  A vase of flowers, some pictures, and a colorful calendar would help. You had to make your working space into a temporary home. She thought of a pretty little music box that she had use
d in her last dressing room, that horrible closet in a much fancier theater—but no, the box had been given to her by Nick, and Nick didn’t want her here at all.

  She’d have given an arm to see him pop in here and make some wise-ass joke which meant, “I love you, I hope you do well!”

  Instead, she had her victory over his exclusion. The taste was as bitter as it was sweet.

  So, she thought, sitting down at the makeup table, I win this round. Maybe it would lead to a reconciliation. If the play was a success, he might come see it after all and fall in love with her again.

  Meanwhile, damn him to hell if he does anything to ruin it for me!

  Someone was out in the hall, a stout woman with a belligerent jaw, walking up and down peering at the dressing room doors.

  “Marie,” Jess exclaimed. “Are you working in this show?”

  “I’m your dresser, Miss Croft,” the woman said. “As long as they can afford me.”

  Jess smiled. She had worked with Marie before. She recognized Walter’s hand in this—hiring extra help they could probably ill afford. But by doing so he had done his best to give Jess a stalwart and completely partisan ally at the Edwardian.

  “Come on in and have a look,” Jess said, giving Marie as much of a hug as that sturdy person would accept. “It’s no palace, but it’s not a cell in a Turkish prison, either.”

  * * *

  Marie knew how to “dress” spaces as well as people. By the third day of rehearsals, she’d added some touches of her own: a porcelain figurine of a seventeenth century gallant bowing on the windowsill, a beautiful batik cloth from Indonesia hung to mask the worst wall of the room, and a colorful rag rug, a peaceful oval shape, hiding the worn center of the painted concrete floor.

  “Oh,” she said, “and there’s something else, I almost forgot. Here, this was on the chair over there, a gift from an admirer.”

  Jess laughed. “An admirer of what? I haven’t done anything yet!”

  “Well, neither has anyone else,” the dresser said tartly, selecting a blusher shade and trying a feather-touch of it on Jess’ cheek. Marie’s sentimentality over the theater and its folk was well disguised in briskness colored with cynicism.