"No?" Ellison was suddenly aware of the gun still in his hand, though it was hanging motionless with muzzle pointing down at the carpet. "There was no one else in the house." At that she looked more peculiar than ever. "Was there? Was there?
Stef, why did you do it?"
His wife only sighed, a sound blending weariness and impatience. "Oh Ellison. Do what?" For some reason she had never adopted any diminutive or nickname for him.
Sometimes in the past he had wished secretly that she would do so.
The gun like a great weight seemed to pull his arm down toward the floor. "Don"t pretend to be stupid. You guided him out of the house for some reason-"
"I was with you when the alarm went off."
"-and you arranged somehow to give him the keys to the car. You may have done a lot of damage to important plans, plans that you don"t begin to understand."
"I don"t begin to understand?"
"Did it worry you so much, that I might decide to have him killed? Your own daughter was killed and you got through that." Then Ellison thought to himself: I shouldn"t have said that.
"Ellison. I didn"t help him. I didn"t know he was going to leave. I didn"t want him to leave until it could be decided what to do about him. If he had any help it came from someone else. And you don"t have to be so secretive, about your plans to sell the painting secretly and make a fortune, you and Del. Del"s told me about that. Or your own bombing scheme. Del wasn"t too happy about that one." She paused, sniffing.
"Oh my G.o.d," she said.
"What?"
"Don"t you smell it?"
"What?"
"Very faint, but it"s there. The perfume Helen used to like to use."
"Stef, this is very stupid. You"re trying to distract me. There was no one else in this house, and someone helped that boy to get away and steal my car. He couldn"t have done it without help. Even if he"d found the keys, how could he have avoided the other alarms?""I"m not trying to distract you, Ellison, I"m trying to explain something. But I suppose I ought to leave it to Del. Oh G.o.d, don"t you know anything of what"s going on?"
That stopped even Ellison, for a moment. "Now just what in h.e.l.l is that supposed to mean?"
"I wish you"d put that gun away. There are no burglars. It"ll be better if Del explains to you himself. When was the last time you talked to him?"
"I haven"t seen him since the kidnapping setup, and the last time he called was days ago. It bothers me when he calls, though he keeps a.s.suring me that the phone here isn"t tapped by anyone. How can he know that?"
"Oh." Abruptly Stephanie was almost smiling. "He now has ways of telling, about things like that."
"That"s exactly what he said. I don"t understand what it means, and I don"t like it.
He"s taking too many chances."
"He did tell you that he means to come here tonight?"
Ellison was astonished. "Of course, he told me. I didn"t know he"d let you in on it too. He talks too much. And that"s another thing, his coming here. When I asked him how he knew the house wasn"t being watched, he just laughed. He wouldn"t even discuss it."
"If Del says it"s all right, then it"s all right, Ellison. Believe me."
"Why? Will you answer that simple question for me?"
"Del," said Stephanie, in a new voice. Ellison spent a moment trying to make sense of this as an answer, and then realized that it had been a greeting instead. She was looking over his shoulder.
Beyond a doorway, in the dimness of the next room, towered a figure as tall as Ellison himself, almost as broad. It certainly looked like Del, though Ellison could not at first make out the face in the dim light. It looked like Del, but something had been changed-but it was Del, it was so like him to stand there like that, listening, not saying a word until he was discovered.
Ellison cleared his throat. "I didn"t hear you come in. How did you get here? How do you know the house isn"t being watched? What if-"
The figure came toward them, moving with Del"s walk into the light. Del"s face, undoubtedly. But vastly changed, young, lean, no longer sagging in cheek and jowl, under a full head of crisp brown hair.
Del looked at least thirty years younger than when Ellison had seen him last.
How? Plastic surgery? More than that. But what?"Del. You"re . . . you"re . . ."
"Ellison. You"re you"re you"re." Del"s rejuvenated voice mocked him, while Del"s young face smiled. "You"re you"re you"re. Still as much of an idiot as ever."
Then the smile, changing as it moved, was turned on Stephanie. "All this ringing on the radiophone would seem to indicate something serious. I was coming anyway, so I thought I"d just come over instead of answering." Del"s manner was supremely confident. "What"s it all about?"
Stephanie took a step closer to Del, reaching for his hand. "I"m so glad you did.
There was a boy here. Ellison thinks maybe he was one of the kids you . . . who was at the house in Phoenix once. The boy kept asking for Annie. Said he knew that Annie was here, and he didn"t want to go away. Now he"s gone, and so is one of the cars."
Del"s forehead creased in a mild frown. He glanced up quickly at the ceiling. "Did you-?"
"No, I haven"t been up there. I don"t know if she"s there now or not. And I haven"t talked to Ellison about her being there. I"ve been waiting for you to do that."
"A wise decision," said Del.
Ellison raised his voice. "Will someone kindly inform me what is going on here, under my roof?"
"Close under your roof, old man," said Del. His young face looked so strange, so strange. It wasn"t, it couldn"t be, simply makeup or anything like that. It brought back authentic memories. This was really the way Del had looked, thirty, forty years in the past.
Del asked Stephanie: "Did this boy give a name? What did he look like?"
"Short, blond hair, very young." Ellison couldn"t remember the name, but Stephanie did. "He said his name was Pat O"Grandison, something like that."
"Ah," said Del. "Yes. She talked about him, before she decided she was going to be Helen. I suppose she"s gone with him. But I"ll go up and take a look."
And with the last word, Del disappeared. Just like that, from the middle of a lighted room. Ellison found that he had raised his own arms, and like a sleepwalker was groping through the empty air where a moment earlier his rejuvenated brother had been standing.
And was standing again. Del"s powerful young hand, materializing in mid-air, casually warded Ellison"s groping arm out of the way.
"She"s not in the attic now," said Del to Stephanie. "The earth and everything looks undisturbed." His light frown had solidified but did not seem to dent his confidence. "So the two of them apparently took off together. They"re both crazy so I"m going to have to check up on what they"re doing."Stephanie said: "She was wearing Helen"s perfume again."
"Oh, she"s completely settled in as Helen now, in her own mind. I don"t know how she justifies to herself sleeping in the attic all day, and occasionally flying out through the wall at night and enjoying a drink of blood. Not the way Helen should act, certainly not in Annie"s dream of the home-sheltered adolescent. She may be five hundred years old, I don"t know, but inside she"s still a little girl wanting to be loved."
Ellison groped his way to a chair and sat in it. He looked at the gun still in his own hand and wondered for a moment what it was doing there. He tried to frame questions that he could ask and that would do him some good, but got nowhere in the attempt. The crafty suspicion suddenly sprang to life: his wife and his half- brother were conspiring to drive him mad.
The spark of suspicion had no sooner been ignited than it sprang up in a roaring blaze.
He looked up, keeping his face calm. Understanding seemed to grow. "You"re not really Del," he announced his sudden insight. No one could shed, really shed, thirty or forty years. Stephanie had murdered Del, after all, and had found this young man who looked like him. Could Del have had a son who looked this much like him?
Del"s young face looked at him, and away again, contemptuously. "I"ll see you in a little while, then," the youth said to Stephanie. "Can you manage things here?"
Stephanie was clinging to him impulsively. "Don"t go yet. Del, change me now, tonight. You said you would, as soon as you were changed yourself. Now you"re all set. I don"t want to go on like this, with him, another day. Not another hour if I can help it. You can"t imagine what it"s like. Take my blood once more. Change me."
"Oh, I can imagine. But, as I say, I"m going to be busy for a while. If she heads for the painting again tonight there could be problems. Gliddon"s out there, and his men, and they don"t imagine that there are any such things as vampires. I"m not quite ready to be rid of them all just yet."
To Ellison, listening, the whole conversation had become utterly insane, incomprehensible. Yet it was perfectly plain to him from looking at the two of them just what was going on. What had happened between his wife, his wife, and the giant young demon-figure that somehow looked like a young Del.
Now Ellison watched as the young man who looked like Del took Stephanie by both arms, and kissed her softly on the forehead. He said, in his perfect imitation of Del"s young voice: "I will. I"ll change you. You"ll be young forever too. But you have to understand that when that happens, it will make a difference between us. No more lovemaking. It doesn"t work between two vampires, you understand. Then we"ll just be-friends. So I don"t want to rush things. I love you just as you are."
Stephanie gave a wild cry. "You don"t want me any more. I can see it. You"re through with me now. And, my G.o.d, I gave you my daughter for your games. You"ve had both of us and used us up. Helen"s dead, and I"m-now you want to leave me with this, this obscene old lump of fat-"
Ellison was not conscious of getting to his feet, or of saying anything, though he could hear his voice. And the gun in his right hand rose levelly and seemed to go off by itself. He had at last got Stephanie"s full attention. She stood up very straight, and gazed at Ellison with wild and unbelieving eyes. Then her hand caught at the seventeenth-century Spanish shawl and at her breast beneath. And then she fell.
Ellison held the gun up higher now, and shifted his aim. And now he was looking straight down the long Luger barrel, at Del"s eyes, excited but unfrightened, that gazed straight back at him.
"You haven"t learned a thing, have you old man?" said Del. Ellison fired, but somehow Del was not falling, though he winced as if with pain. Anger and triumph were in his face and he was moving rapidly toward Ellison, reaching out for Ellison with young powerful hands. The Luger fired and fired again, and Del came on unharmed.
Chapter Twenty-Three.
Fade in on violence.
If you have seen one tournament of jousting, you have seen them all. But then, unless you are after all, in tune with my jests, almost as old as I am, you have never seen even one, have you? Never mind.
There were church bells in my ears, when I knew that no bells rang. Angels swam round me in an alarming swarm; not, as modern legend has it, looking for the point of a pin to sit on, but rather to cl.u.s.ter before my eyes inside my steel helm, good and evil disputing for my soul.
I understood vaguely that my helm was being lifted off, by gentle hands, but the knowledge made things no clearer. I saw the totentantz; and I saw, as on a stage, tableaux from the old French story in which three living men meet their three doppelgangers all wrapped in shrouds.
"Is he dead, then, at last?" It was the voice of my dear wife Helen, and she was despairing almost utterly. "He is dead. I know that he is dead."
Someone else muttered something. If this was death, at least I did not fear it. The Angel of the Lord swooped near to me, dispersing the fog of lesser cherubs who were swarming in my eyes, and spoke to me. What the angel said to me then I may not yet reveal.
"He is not dead," said another, non-angelic voice.
I was lying on my back inside a jousting pavilion of fine white cloth, lit gloriously from above by bright sunlight. My armor had all been stripped away, and my body, wrapped now in white linen almost like a shroud, was a ma.s.s of many hurts. I hurt no more, though, than was seemly for one who had been knocked off a horse by the brutal impact of a long, sharp-ended pole, and had probably been trampled on by horses" hooves thereafter. Meanwhile the Angel of the Lord transformed himself into Helen, who sat at my side dabbing with cool perfumed water at a certain abominable lump upon my head.
Presently I understood that this wretched lump was coextensive with my head itself.
"I feared for you, oh my lord." And Helen was weeping softly. Dab, dab, oh so gently. Her perfumed kerchief of fine Florentine cloth was mottled red.
"That I was dead?"
"Yes. Oh, Vlad, your face was pale and still."
"Know then that I am alive." I raised an aching arm to catch Helen"s hand, whose dabbing ministrations had become more irritant than help; and, to provide a sweeter reason for the catch, I squeezed what I had caught, and brought it to my lips.
"And, even if I had been dead, to have such an angel ministering to me would make me rise again."
A non-angelic face in the background coughed and grimaced at this remark. It was, I realized now, a friar standing by there. Doubtless he had come to anoint the dying.
"I would not have you jest about such things," said Helen. But I think what really bothered her was her perception that I was not jesting. This was in early 1469. By then we had been five years married, and had lived long enough as man and wife to begin to know each other well.
"Your good wife speaks wisely, my son," the friar chided me. "You have been near death today, but today it is G.o.d"s will that you live. You should consider that one day He must will otherwise. Death will come to us all, or soon or late."
I considered the friar"s long face, and liked it not. "Nay, father. Does it not say somewhere in the Scriptures, "we shall not all die, but we shall all be changed"?"
The friar"s face said emphatically that mine was not a proper att.i.tude; but what could one expect from these foreign soldiers who were the bane of Italy? "It saith also, that the devil may quote Scripture when he likes." After that, sensing himself no longer quite welcome, the priest bowed out through the tent flap and took himself away.
"Vlad, do not sit up yet. Rest yet a while, and I will tend to you."
"I will sit up." For the moment, though, it was quite enough just to get my elbows under me and raise my shoulders. "And shortly I will rise, and walk. I want to see the progress of the tournament." There was a large roar, of many excited voices, not far outside. The pavilions had been set up in rows quite near the stands and the lists.
Now there came groans, and loud prayers of alarm; again some shrewd blow had been dealt. "Who unhorsed me? Who dealt me such a devil"s blow? I don"t remember.""I do not think I saw who it was."
"Nay, Helen, it is only a game, is it not? Do you think I am going to go looking for revenge?"
The great misbegotten lump that was my skull ached all the more mercilessly when I sat up. But evidently, despite all my interesting visions, I had not been unconscious for very long. The brightness and warmth of the sun shining through the pavilion top told me that the time was still near midday, and the crowd"s voice sounded as fresh and enthusiastic as ever.
Again shouts of encouragement and triumph, mingled with those of disappointment, drifted in.
"Who is winning?" I wondered aloud. And without letting myself think about the problems of movement, I got to my feet and began to dress myself.
Helen sighed and let me have my way. "I do not know. They say the grand prize will be awarded to Lorenzo himself, whatever happens in the jousts. It is his wedding we are celebrating, after all, even if he is no warrior."
I grumbled reflexively at that. Not that I wished for myself the fame of winning. I did not want to be prominent in the public eye; I was still Signore Ladislao in Italy, because I was still theoretically, officially, imprisoned in Hungary by my brother-in- law, and would be for another seven years. His Majesty King Matthias was still wary, still uncertain of what reception I might be accorded were I to appear in a place of honor at his court; and he was, for somewhat different reasons, also unsure of what Helen"s reception would be there. Meanwhile I had been occupied with other things.
Some of these were tasks undertaken for Matthias, and none of them have any proper place in this history. But I was on better terms than ever with the Medici, who ruled more firmly than ever in Florence; and they would not take no for an answer to their invitation to this tournament and wedding.
It was a celebration, a festive occasion, the like of which had perhaps not been seen in those parts since the days of ancient Rome. Arm in arm with my wife (She was, I must admit, helping me to keep steady on my feet, though she managed to make it look as if I were the one supporting and a.s.sisting her) I presently walked out of my pavilion, which stood surrounded by a multicolored mushroom forest of other tents like itself. I was at once congratulated upon my quick recovery, by smiling gentlefolk nearby. Only a few yards away, the temporary stands held cheering thousands. In the middle distance the Palazzo Medici was strung with flowers from every doorway, window, and cornice, as were many of the other buildings in this quarter of the city, and even some of the many church spires in the distance. The land where the tournament was being held had been, only a few months ago, a wasteland of abandoned buildings, emptied decades ago by plague. At Piero"s direction, all had been leveled and made smooth for a jousting ground to help in the celebration of the wedding of his eldest son to the lovely Clarice Orsini. Now, as I strolled with my wife, the prize seats of the grandstand came into our view, and I could see some of the Orsini delegation there now, the future in-laws of Lorenzo, ready to weld their elder dynasty to his."Shall we go and watch the fighting, Vlad?"
"No, I have changed my mind. I think I have seen enough of combat for one day."
And I guided Helen in the opposite direction from the lists. "I prefer to seek more soothing entertainment."
Through increasing crowds, lively with celebration, we moved toward the palace.
There was something strange about the crowd, and it puzzled me until I realized there were few hawkers; food and drink were instead being given to the ma.s.ses free during these proclaimed days of joy. Musicians played on a small green, and some gentlefolk were in sport performing for the crowd, treading the stately old French ba.s.se danse. It reminded me for a moment of the old French story in my dream, or vision.
Helen must have seen me smile. For whenever I displayed good humor she was wont to bring up some topic she had been saving till I should be in a good mood.
"Vlad, you have been fighting so much these last few years. In these little wars, and tournaments. Do you mean to keep on fighting always, until one day when I think that you are dead it turns out I am right? Is it not time to let the younger men do their share?"