The Golden

by Lucius Shepard

  Beheim cleared his head of these morbid considerations and plodded on, gradually becoming as gray and indefinite in his mind as his surround. If there was a thought in his brain, it consisted of a dismal, primitive chant, a wordless beat of failure and futility that kept marching time with his footsteps. He was heavy in his flesh, his heart, permeated with fatigue both physical and spiritual, and when at last he saw the gray begin to clear and glimpsed the dark shapes of pine trees and a hill, other hills, and realized that he had passed through the imponderable, magical stuff of the walls of Castle Banat, actually walked through them, a ghost in effect if not in reality, and reached the place to which his duty bound him, he felt not a whit of relief, only the weary recognition that yet another phase of his ordeal was about to begin.

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  The Patriarch’s servants, following Beheim’s instruction, dug several pits in the woods close to the castle, each one four meters deep. These they lined with heavy canvas to slow drainage and filled three quarters full with water, not enough in itself to entrap a member of the Family, but enough to render him helpless for a few moments so that sheets of iron—shutters removed from castle windows—could be drawn over the top of the pits, thus sealing in the murderer. Given the water level and the mucky condition of the soil, Beheim thought it doubtful that she—or he—would be able to achieve sufficient leverage so as to climb up and push the iron sheet away. Once this was done, he had the sheets and pits camouflaged with branches and dirt, and then sent the servants back to the castle. Shortly before dawn he took up a position behind a small hillock some sixty feet from the depression where lay the body of the Golden’s companion, whose decaying scent was borne to him on the night wind.

  Soon a blade of carnelian light slipped between the horizon and the sky. Beheim, benumbed, too distanced by the evening’s events to give more than passing attention to the consideration of his peril, watched it spread, illuminating the humped blue-dark geography of the hills, the crimped valleys with their star-struck tinsel rivers and the towns with a few early lights burning like a scatter of embers. He could smell the wet grass, the heady spice of pine needles, bitter smoke from some far-off burning, and from these odors, these sights, it seemed to him that the faces and forms of his past were being extruded, some still-vital essence of each being released into the air and growing more vital yet on being kissed by the rich nitrogens and stinging ozones of the moment, rearing up before him like the fabulous visions that come to a dying man who can no longer feel the terrible insult done his body by wound or disease, but rather is drifting in a blissful nowhere between Mystery and the end of time.

  The things that came to him then were not the things that he would have assumed he would remember, the memorial moments, the birthdays, the promotions, the successes, but were lesser, brighter, and more convivial bits of living. Eating fish stew from a can on a Marseilles dock and trading insults with the fishermen. Spending a night in a cave in the sun-browned, god-thronged hills above Corinth. Drunk in the company of other students, diving into the Seine off the morning bridges to impress a girl. Another girl with whom he had lived for a summer, a dancer in one of the tiny family circuses that passed back and forth across Europe like gaudy platoons; the kid from Reims who sold him a gold watch without any works inside; the lady who invited him in when he had been hiking near Strasbourg, cooked him a meal, prayed over him for an hour, and then—as if this had effected a sufficient purification—took his virginity; the old soldier serving now as a cook in a country inn near Avignon who had prepared fresh trout with mushrooms and told bloodcurdling stories of the Napoleonic wars. Meeting a woman who had just been released from an asylum in Quercy and claimed she was on her way to keep a rendezvous with her dead husband in a bistro near Les Halles; meeting a group of albino children whose parents were educating them to be psychics; meeting a priest who hated God, a Gypsy who refused to read his cards, a drunken dog trainer whose trick-performing pets had been stolen. Wrestling a giant at a carnival in Irun and getting his arm broken. Going to the cockfights in Salamanca, a night under olive trees lit by torches, and winning a thousand pesetas on a black cock whose guts at the end had hung from his belly like fringe off a general’s epaulets. The great cathedral in Köln where he first heard The Messiah; a cantina near San Sebastián where cryptic designs were painted on the doors to ward off evil, as if evil were an incompetent lout who might be sent fleeing by the sight of a few daubs of color and some misspelled Latin words; a riverboat owned by a young widow whose windows were all of stained glass and whose walls were illuminated by crude murals of the saints; a waterfront bar in Calais where one night, while having his first after-dinner calvados, he watched a ten-year-old girl pierce her cheek with steel needles in return for whatever change the patrons tossed her way.

  It was all running out of him, he realized, like violet water down a drain, all that brilliant particularity of life and history emptying, as if it no longer found him a suitable vessel. And it was being replaced by…by what? He could put no simple name to it, but it seemed a new pilot stood at the helm of his soul. Someone informed by a dark, cool competency, yet in whom there burned a lust so feral it was almost indistinguishable from rage, so potent that it outshone even his fear of the day now dawning. It was this entity who now looked out from his eyes onto the brightening world, who contemplated the patch of weeds around him, yarrow and vetch, mint and sorrel, with stony displeasure, annoyed by the rich, moldering scents of the autumn woods, and who watched unmoved as the sun smeared scarlet and orange and purple along the horizon beneath galleons of cloud, bringing the forested crests of the surrounding hills into sharp relief. Yet he did not quite conform to the Patriarch’s definition of an indulgent and self-absorbed mentality, for there remained in him more than a sliver of conscience, of moral regard, of all his old compulsions, and he did not believe these things to be mere residues. He had changed, yes, but he was still himself in some wise, still Beheim the man, and while understanding this did not please him as once it would have, he was nevertheless satisfied to know that the change had not utterly overwhelmed him. The Patriarch’s wisdom apparently had its limits, and recognizing that was also an occasion for satisfaction.

  Soon the world came to be filled with the great vibration of the sun. Beheim lay flat, refusing to look up, feeling waves of killing heat on his neck and shoulders, his eyes on the castle, which blotted out nearly half the sky, as still and silent as the corpse of some immense stone-colored animal. The pale blue sky distressed him, as did the winded greenery and rippling grass and the incessant play of light and shadow; yet he experienced no panic and furious disorientation as before. He did not think he could ever come to love the light, but if tolerate it he must, then tolerate it he would. A black beetle sporting pincers nearly twice as long as its body began climbing a stalk of sorrel in front of him, blindly proceeding into midair. He felt an odd kinship with the thing, but when it reached the top of the stalk and swayed there, turning its antennae this way and that, he became annoyed with it and also with the analogy he had drawn between its progress and his own, and flicked it away with a forefinger.

  Not long after sunrise someone emerged from the castle. A very tall, very slim someone dressed in a long gray skirt and a dark blue shawl that covered her head and shoulders, and shadowed her face. Alexandra. Beheim had no doubt that it was she, but was perplexed by the hesitancy with which she approached the body, stopping and starting, casting quick glances overhead, displaying none of the calculation that he would have predicted. And when, instead of going directly to the body, she negotiated a wide circle around it, paying no attention to it whatsoever, and went plunging about in the tall grass, pausing now and again to peer into the pine woods and call his name, he did not know how to take this.

  “Michel!” she cried. “Where are you?”

  She darted a glance toward the castle.

  “Damn you, Michel!” she shouted. “Show yourself! We may not have much time!”

/>   She stumbled, fell, disappeared into a grass-filled depression; then she staggered to her feet. The shawl had slipped down onto her shoulders, revealing the spill of her auburn hair, and in the instant before she pulled it back over her head, Beheim saw a look of abject terror on her face. She stood without moving, and he had the idea that she was fighting for control—again, this was not behavior he would associate with the murderer, who would, he surmised, be acclimated to this environment. She was reacting in the same way that he had when he first experienced daylight. Yet when she peered into his hiding place, he knew she must have detected some sign of him, his heartbeat perhaps, and he got to his knees, ready to run. And when she came toward him, he jumped to his feet and backed away.

  “Stay down, you idiot!” she said. “You’ll be seen!”

  She stumbled and fell once again and, rather than regaining her feet, crawled toward him through the high grass. Fear was written in her tightened mouth and round eyes. Nevertheless he continued his retreat.

  “What in perdition’s name is wrong with you?” she said. “Get down!”

  She sank to her knees in the grass, gazing up at him balefully; but then her expression softened and she reached out a hand as if to give him a caress. He did not allow it, retreating even farther away, and she stared at him in obvious confusion.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Why are you behaving this way?”

  “How do you expect me to behave? Fawning, pawing you? Begging for a kiss?”

  “I think some show of affection would be appropriate,” she said stiffly. “After all, we…”

  “We what? I’d like to hear your interpretation of the event.”

  “We made love,” she said after a pause, her voice gone small. “At least that’s what I did.”

  He could find nothing of a disingenuous character in her words, in any facet of her reaction, and he wanted to believe her; but belief was not in him.

  “I’d like to hear your interpretation,” she said.

  “What I thought about it has no bearing on this,” he said. “I did what you wanted me to do. That should be enough for you.”

  “Michel…” she began; then she broke it off and gazed despondently back toward the castle. “Sit down. Somebody will see you.”

  He made no move to obey.

  “Are you deaf?” she said. “You’ll be seen if you keep standing there like a damned statue!”

  Puzzled, still uncertain of her, but admitting to a sliver of uncertainty concerning her guilt, Beheim dropped into a squat, maintaining the distance between them.

  Alexandra reordered the shawl about her face and sighed. “How can you stand this?” she said dispiritedly. “It’s horrible!” Her head gave a twitch, as if she had thought to glance up at the sun but had thwarted the impulse.

  “It becomes less difficult with time,” Beheim said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m out for a Sunday stroll!” She gave him a pitying look. “Do you believe I would willingly experience this…this hallucination? The Patriarch sent me to witness your triumph.” She colored this word triumph with heavy sarcasm.

  He remained silent, studying her, not yet convinced; he had expected that Christina would be the Patriarch’s agent. Alexandra, watching him, burst into laughter.

  “You think I committed the murder, don’t you?” she said. “Is that the reason you’re acting so coldly toward me?” She shook her head in disbelief. “That’s right! I’m the one! I’m the madwoman who tore the Golden apart just to have a taste of her blood. And naturally, being guilty, I’d be the one to steer you onto the right course.”

  “You may not have had that course in mind,” Beheim said angrily. “In fact, even if you are innocent, I don’t think you did. You knew nothing of Felipe’s researches. What did you really want to happen?”

  “I told you! Before we made love, I told you everything! You knew you were taking a chance. You knew there was the possibility of disaster.”

  “Perhaps you told me some of it, but not all. Did you want Felipe to kill me so as to compromise Agenor?”

  At the sound of Felipe’s name, she grew somber. “I did not mean for him to kill you. I could hardly have expected that. But neither did I hope for the opposite. I’ve already explained all that to you, but obviously you’ve dismissed what I told you as being part of some devious scheme in which I sought to ensnare you.”

  He chose to ignore her last comment. “I had no choice but to kill him. Felipe and Dolores intended to kill me.”

  “It’s not important why you did it,” she said in a brittle tone. “In fact, I suppose you’ve done me a great favor, you have raised me high. But that will count for little with others of my branch.”

  “I wonder how they will greet the news that it was you who sent me to Felipe’s apartments.”

  “Badly, I expect,” she said with sudden venom. “You make a strong case for my preventing that story from being spread. And since you are the only one who can tell it…”

  “Yet you must bear witness to the Patriarch. What will you tell him? That you settled a personal grievance rather than letting his will be done? You have as little choice in this as have I.”

  Her anger faded as quickly as it had come. She regarded him glumly for a few counts, then glanced down at the grass; she plucked up a blade, rubbed it between her fingers.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I recall asking you that same question not so long ago. You had some difficulty in answering it.”

  “And I recall you telling me that it was the easiest question of all to answer, unless one had something to hide.”

  “I’ve nothing to hide.” She continued fingering the grass blade, her head down, hair partially obscuring her face. “I had hopes, Michel. That was what I was thinking just now. I was thinking about those hopes, about how rare they were, how rare were the moments that inspired them. Does that seem foolish to you?”

  “No, not if those hopes and moments truly existed.”

  “How can you doubt that they did?”

  “I nearly died following your advice. Isn’t that—”

  “It wasn’t advice I offered. It was far more than that.”

  “Whatever it was, I nearly died because of it. Reason enough to raise some doubts about the purpose of your counsel, wouldn’t you say?”

  Her eyes locked on Beheim, and he was again struck by the exotic character of her face, those green eyes, the extraordinarily wide mouth, the cheekbones as abrupt as scars.

  “Agenor told me you could be pigheaded,” she said. “Yet he also said that logic would never fail to sway you. Apparently he is not all-seeing.”

  “What is your relationship with Agenor?”

  “Why should I tell you anything? To have you denounce me for a liar or worse? You were a policeman too long. You suspect even the good that comes to you.”

  “I won’t deny that I’ve a suspicious nature,” he said. “As to whether or not I’ve had reason for my suspicions, that’s another story.”

  She plucked up a handful of grass, let the wind take it, all but a few stalks that remained lying on her palm in a configuration that reminded him of a cryptogram. That more than anything she had said or done, the way she watched the grass drift away through the air, wonderingly, with touching attentiveness, like a child seeing something simple and marvelous for the first time, that persuaded him that she had not been exposed to the daylight for a very long time, that she could not have committed the murder.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “It’s probably unimportant. I’m not sure any longer why I want to know these things. Habit, I guess.”

  “I don’t believe it’s important, either,” she said. “Agenor is not himself these days. He rambles, he loses track. It would be foolish to give much weight to the things he does.” She brushed something off her skirt. “I’ve no idea how he would describe our relationship. We have political views in common, but little else. After the mu
rder he came to me distraught, more so than I have ever seen him. He asked if I knew anything that might help you with the investigation. He was afraid he had put you in a desperate position. I told him I might be able to help. Of course I had my own ends in mind. As I told you, I hoped you would find something to discredit Felipe. The bottle cap was a happy coincidence. Yet I will never believe he had anything to do with the murder. That was not his way. Had he lusted for special blood, he would have bred his own Golden. Indeed, I know he was considering doing just that. Look here.”

  From a voluminous pocket in her skirt, she removed a leather folder that Beheim recognized as Felipe’s journal. He was distressed, not because she had stolen it, but because he had not thought to steal it himself.