After another
minute or so it became clear that Agenor was gaining rapidly on them,
and Beheim’s tactics changed; rather than attempting to trap
Agenor in one of the pits, he decided that the best course would be
to elude him for as long as possible and let the sun do its work. And
since his wind was weakening, he thought that they would be better
off hiding than continuing to run. Not far ahead he spotted a tangle
of secondary growth, a miniature jungle that had sprung up around two
fallen trees, their huge root systems clotted with dirt, looking dark
and mysterious, like strange ritual wheels just unearthed from a
ruin, the closely packed nodules of root tissue and clumps of wet
soil contriving an uncanny resemblance to those myriad assemblages of
the gods that adorn Indian mandalas. The dead trunks lay one across
the other, and were shrouded in thickets of viburnum, spirea, and
elderberry, tangled further with ivy and thorny Devil’s club,
as well as with a crush of dead boughs. Having satisfied himself that
Agenor was not within sight, Beheim jumped up onto one of the trunks,
hauling Alexandra after him, and they tightroped out to the junction
where the two trunks crossed. There they gingerly lowered themselves
into the massy vegetation, pushing through tiers of wet needles and
stiff webs of branches and ropy vines into the dank cavity beneath, a
cavity, Beheim realized gratefully, that deepened into a mossy hollow
and would allow them to crawl farther back beneath the tangle should
the need arise. They sat on the clammy ground. Dampness soaked
through Beheim’s trousers almost immediately, but he felt
secure. The foliage was so thick overhead that only a few needling
beams of gold light penetrated to their hiding place. He watched as
one appeared to glide over Alexandra’s white cheek and center
on a glorious green eye. The pupil shrank to a pinprick, the
perfectly plucked eyebrow arched as if in inquiry. He squeezed her
hand, drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling all his
muscles relax.
Seconds later
Agenor came pounding past, his breath sounding fierce and guttural,
like that of a wild boar. Beheim heard branches shredding in the
surrounding thickets, the footsteps receding, then silence. Somewhere
a bird twittered. Wind stirred the leaves and needles above them,
admitting a shower of light. Beheim’s flurried thoughts began
to settle, and as they did, he recalled the location of the pits in
reference to the landmark of the fallen trees. One was very near,
about a hundred feet away and almost directly upslope. A bit late, he
thought, but he was pleased to know his own location, more secure for
knowing it.
He gave
Alexandra’s hand another squeeze, but held up his own hand to
signal that she should maintain silence. Their eyes met again. There
was, he thought, a softening of her regard, a new color added to her
view of him, another gold fleck glinting in that mineral iris. His
fingers strayed along her wrist. He felt her strong pulse, the beat
of her century-long life, as powerful and persistent as the rhythm of
an African drum. Her hand was pliant in his. Receptive. He intended
to be cautious this time in interpreting that receptivity, but he was
tempted to believe it signaled real promise for them. Love? He was
not sure their inconstant natures would support such an easily
bruised passion, though lust might well find a fine expression in
their promise. But what he sought most of all was something rarer
than love. Trust. Commitment. Honor. Possibly she had acted in her
own immediate self-interest in striking down Agenor—she may
have feared being discovered by him and realized that her chances of
survival would improve with an ally. But she had not acted for those
reasons alone, he was sure of that much. The infant recognition that
had made them lovers must also have been at work. The intuition that
he was someone in union with whom she could achieve her heart’s
desire, someone whose influence would refine and make more precise
her comprehension of that desired object. It was something he himself
felt about her, and though he was not yet willing to embrace the
feeling with open arms, he had the notion that sitting there in that
clammy little womb beneath the dead trees, the darkness was putting a
seal on their union, marrying them in some final and ultimately
efficient way.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
T
here was a creaking from somewhere close by, as of a clandestine
footstep on an unstable surface.
Beheim held
perfectly still, his ears straining.
Wind riffled the
pine boughs; the distant chatter of a jay.
The rich smell
of the soil around them seemed suddenly to grow more pungent.
But there was no
further creaking.
He was about to
risk a whispered assurance to Alexandra when someone began tearing at
the layers of foliage above them, ripping away great swatches of
vines and dead boughs and chokecherry branches.
Agenor.
Beheim saw him
through rents in the greenery, standing atop the pine trunk, his
features contorted with rage, half his face covered in drying blood.
He dipped his
shoulder and his hand punched through into the cavity, groping for
them. He smashed his fist into the trunk, and as if the fist were an
ax, it clove the dead wood, scattering chips everywhere.
Alexandra
shrieked; Beheim caught her about the waist, dragged her deeper into
the hollow. He toppled over backward onto cold wet ground, and as he
scrambled up, his head scraped against pine bark, against the trunk
upon which Agenor was standing. “Help me!” he said,
squatting and putting his shoulder to the trunk. “Help me lift
it! Hurry!”
Agenor was
grunting, cursing, continuing to rip and batter away at the barrier
of foliage, at the wood itself, chewing out a wider passage with
blows from his powerful right hand. Whenever his fingers caught the
wood, they tore deep gouges in it. The vibration of his blows seemed
to shiver the world. Beheim’s heart felt hot and swollen.
“Now!”
he said as Alexandra settled beside him, her shoulder pressing
against the trunk.
Together they
heaved upward, first merely shifting the trunk, but then—the
full force of their strength engaged—pushing it up at an
extreme angle, tearing loose vines and shrubs, warm gold light
flooding the hollow, half-blinding them, and Beheim heard a shrill
cry as Agenor lost his balance and fell.
With a fierce
effort, they shoved the trunk off to the side of the hollow and
clambered up onto level ground.
Agenor was
ensnared in a mass of uprooted shrubs, visible as an arm and a shock
of white hair; the trunk had rolled onto his legs. But as they gained
their footing, shielding their eyes against the light, they saw him
sit straight up, draped in vines and crowned with leaves like an old
forest king suddenly woken from a long sleep. He wrenched a leg free
and kicked at the trunk with it, rolling it aside with what seemed
the slightest of exertions. Then he came to his feet, trailing
strands of vine, moss in his hair, which was an unruly mess, sticking
up in places, stray locks falling onto his forehead. Leaves and
needles fluttered down about him. His eyes gleamed, pure black at
that distance like beetles lodged in the orbits, and he stared cold
death at them, the image of savagery and madness. With a backhanded
swipe, he snapped the slim trunk of a sapling ash beside him; then he
stepped toward them, appearing in no particular hurry, certain of his
victory.
Beheim and
Alexandra backed clumsily up the slope away from him, and Beheim,
remembering the pits, steered Alexandra on an appropriate course.
When Agenor increased his pace, he pushed her ahead of him and they
ran, darting in and out among the pines, until they reached a
circular clearing centered by an immense prow-shaped boulder that
marked the site of one of the pits. Beheim took a stand beside it,
positioning them in a patch of sunlight so that the pit lay between
them and Agenor, who was moving purposefully toward them now,
smiling, doubtless thinking that they had given up. Alexandra made to
run again, but Beheim restrained her.
“Stay
here,” he said under his breath. “We’ll never
outrun him. Our best chance is here. Believe me!”
Doubt caused her
stoic expression to flicker, but after a second’s hesitation
she nodded and turned toward Agenor.
The old man had
regained his composure. Though he was still dressed in vines and a
few leaves, he seemed only disheveled, a gentleman who had, perhaps,
taken a bad fall from a horse.
“That’s
better,” he said as he approached. “Better by half. It
will be quick, I promise you.”
Beheim tried to
keep his eyes off the mat of branches and leaves and needles that
disguised the pit. Could any water be seen through the latticework of
foliage, shining in the sun? To draw Agenor’s attention away
from it, he said, “No one need die of this, lord. What you did
was only an aberration. I understand that. I have no desire to punish
you.”
“Perhaps
you do not, my young friend,” said Agenor, coming forward at a
steady pace. “But others will. The Patriarch will learn of my
guilt. If not from you, then by some other means. I can never return
to Castle Banat, and if I am to escape, I must make certain that I
have a good head start. I wish I could spare you, but”—he
shrugged—“I cannot.”
A dozen more
steps, Beheim thought, urging Agenor on with a wish as intense as a
prayer.
“It’s
I whom you have reason to fear,” Alexandra said, startling
Beheim. “For I am not of your branch. Kill me if you must, but
you have no reason to kill Michel. You are his master, you can
control him.”
“Can I?”
said Agenor. “I wonder. It strikes me that he has changed
greatly in this short time. Had he not, I doubt he would have
inspired such allegiance from you.”
Beheim let his
eyes drift to the side, making sure of the position of the iron
shutter, buried beneath dirt and needles.
Five steps,
maybe six.
He felt almost
buoyant with a mixture of fear and exhilaration. The burning thing in
the sky seemed to have intensified its radiance, flooding the
clearing with light so substantially golden it seemed to be
solidifying around them, threatening to preserve the pines and the
boulder and the three of them forever like insects in amber.
Then Agenor
paused, and Beheim’s heart sank.
“Come to
me, my friend,” Agenor said, extending his arms to him. “Let
me embrace you.”
There was
nothing sardonic or gloating in his tone; on the contrary, he looked
rather wistful standing there, head tipped to the side, brow knitted,
the corners of his mouth turned down.
“I cannot,
lord,” Beheim said. “I am not so easy with this moment.”
“Nor am
I,” Agenor said sadly. “But there is no point in
prolonging it, is there?”
He came several
steps closer, stopping with his feet mere inches from the verge of
the pit. Beheim could scarcely hold himself back from leaping forward
and pushing him in.
“Strange,”
said Agenor musingly, “how this has all come round.”
“Think on
this, Agenor,” said Alexandra. “Consider it well. We
might compose a formidable power, you and I. Surely there is another
way, a way in which you could make use of the assistance of the
Valeas, whom I now represent, to further your ends.”
“An
alliance?” said Agenor. “True, if it were an alliance I
could count on, such would be most helpful. But where are my
guarantees?”
“A
guarantee is easily achieved,” Alexandra said. “Were I to
kill your man here, were I to report that my actions came as a result
of having discovered it was he who killed the Golden, would not my
complicity assure an alliance?”
Beheim gazed at
Alexandra in astonishment, but she paid no notice to him, fixed upon
Agenor, her lovely face drawn with intensity.
“Interesting,”
said Agenor.
“Everyone
witnessed his behavior toward the Golden on the night of the ball,”
Alexandra said. “His guilt would come as no surprise. Evidence
could be planted in his rooms. You could claim that you suspected him
from the start, and that you hoped by appointing him to investigate
the crime, you were giving him an opportunity to reveal himself.”
Agenor gave a
sharp laugh and, addressing Beheim, said, “Is she not the most
astonishing creature?”
Beheim was
speechless, gone beyond fear into a state of confusion so profound it
seemed a new kind of pain.
“Yet the
very quality that makes her so astonishing,” Agenor went on,
“the marvelous spiritual agility that enables her to give
herself wholly to first one and then another . . .”
He shook his head in awe. “I’m afraid I would find you
too distracting, so I will have to forgo the pleasure of an alliance,
dear lady, and proceed with my initial design. But first”—he
glanced down at the ground, then smiled at them—“first I
must decide how to negotiate this ridiculous trap you’ve set.
Now let me see. Shall I leap across, or shall I go round? What do you
think?”
Beheim’s
acceptance of defeat must have shown on his face, for Agenor—staring
at him—proceeded to laugh heartily and then said, “There,
there, Michel! Surely your hopes for this pathetic device were not
high.”
“No, not
very.” Beheim looked down at his hands, finding them in this
moment before extinction odd in the extreme, little fleshy grips that
moved with such craftiness—it seemed impossible they should
cease to exist. Then anger knotted in him again. “Tell me,
lord,” he said. “All your ideals, all those hopeful
schemes and noble designs with which you so enthralled me, were they
only part of a game? Were they whimsy, a trait of the character you
chose to adopt?”
Agenor did not
answer at once but gazed off into the deep woods, down the slope
toward a trickle of bright water showing like a strip of silver
ribbon left hanging in the boughs of an old Christmas tree. The blood
had finished drying on his face, much of it had been rubbed away, and
with his white hair and the ravaged beauty of his face, he resembled
an old actor who had botched his makeup with an overapplication of
rouge.