The dull soothing roar of Manhattan seemed to enfold it as surely as the dim hulking outline of tall buildings behind it and on either side. Three townhouse gardens had been joined, obviously, to make this little paradise, this lovingly tended place that seemed as verdant and vital as an old New Orleans courtyard, safe from the throbbing world around it, and existing only for those who knew its secret or had the keys to its formidable gates.
Rose and I sat on the bench together. She was dazed, silent. I said nothing. What was there to say? She was a nymph beside me in her white silk dress, and I could feel her heart beating rapidly, hear the anguished thoughts struggling to achieve some coherence in her feverish mind.
I held her firmly with my right arm.
We were gazing on this little wilderness of thick pink hydrangea and luminous calla lilies, of creeping moonflowers on tree trunks and glistening white gardenias that gave off the most intoxicating scent. High above, the sky shone with reflected light.
They appeared as if out of nowhere. Fareed, with this radiant mortal boy in his arms. One moment we were alone, and then we saw them standing against the back wall, before the stately promenade of trees, and the boy—the young man—came towards us ahead of the dark hesitating figure of Fareed.
Rose ran to him. She rushed towards him and he took her at once in his arms.
Had I met him anywhere in this world, I would have been staggered by his resemblance to me, the bright golden hair, the way my hair had once been before the Dark Blood had lightened it and the repeated burnings had lightened it so that it shone almost white. That was how it had once looked, full and natural, like that, and this was a face I knew that looked at me now, a face that so resembled the boy I myself had once been.
I could see my brothers in him, my long-forgotten brothers who’d died unmourned in the mountains of the Auvergne, bodies left to rot by a mob of peasants in those awful days of revolution and destruction and competing visions for a brand-new world. A raft of sensations caught me off guard—smell of sunshine on the haystacks, and the straw bed in the sunlit room of the inn, taste of wine, sour and acidic, and the dreamy drunken vision from the inn window of that ruined château rising out of the very rocks, it seemed, a monstrous yet natural excrescence, in which I’d been born.
Rose released him tenderly as he walked towards me and I took him in my arms.
He was already passing me in height, and sturdier and more robust than I’d ever been, a human child of modern times of plenty, and out of his heart there came a palpable generosity of spirit, a great respecting curiosity and willingness to know, to love, to be overwhelmed. He was totally without fear.
I kissed him over and over. I couldn’t help it. This was such fragrant and flawless human skin, this, and these eyes that looked into mine hadn’t a particle of evil in them, and no conception of me or us as evil, and much as I couldn’t understand this, I warmed to it almost to the point of tears.
“Father,” he whispered.
I nodded, at a loss for words, and then murmured, “So it seems, and so it is. And the world’s never given me such a treasure.” But how weak these words seemed.
“You’re not angry?” he asked.
“Angry! How could I be?” I responded. “How could I possibly be angry?” I embraced him again, held him as tight as I dared.
I couldn’t conceive of his life, it was impossible, and the images flashing before me were fragmentary and did not achieve a story that I could follow at all.
Suddenly the Voice overpowered me.
“Enjoy your moment!” said the Voice, seething with anger. “Enjoy it, because you’re not long to have many like it.” And it began to sing loudly an ugly Latin hymn of gruesome metaphors that I’d heard many a time before.
I couldn’t hear what Viktor was saying to me. The Voice was unstoppable. I tried to cut it off but it was rumbling on and on with the hymn. Rose was standing behind Viktor, and he turned and put his arm around her. She was obviously afraid.
I saw Mekare standing near. And Rose had seen her too. She was with Jesse and David and appeared bewildered but subdued—as white as calcite, her tangled red hair shimmering in the garden lights. Her gown was wrinkled and torn. Her feet were bare.
David and Jesse led her towards the back steps of the townhouse, but she stared at Viktor when she saw him, and though she still followed their lead, she slowed her pace. She looked at me and then at him. She stopped.
There came that flash from her, that flash that Benedict had described, Benedict who was here in the garden now with Seth. That flash of Maharet and Mekare together, seated in some quiet and restful spot. I saw it. The Voice was jabbering. It was a green spot in sunshine, and the twins were clear eyed and young. Just for a second they both appeared to look at me, long-dead daughters of another spring, and then this was gone.
“Can you see all this, Voice?” I asked. “Did you see that place?”
“See it, yes, I see it, I see it as you see it, because you see it, yes, I see it, and I knew it and I was a spirit there! So what!”
The Voice went on, roaring its curses, a lot of figurative ancient language that had little or no real meaning anymore. “A tomb!” he groaned. “A tomb.”
And on she went into the house, the tomb, and then the miserable and weeping Benedict followed, not even glancing in our direction. Such a submissive and defeated figure, this Benedict, pretty like his maker, with sad reddened eyes, and walking with a modern demeanor, casually, without that sense of presence so effortlessly reflected by the older ones. You would have thought: Just a kid, just a student somewhere, just a boy.
Seth stopped.
“What do you want to do with him?” he asked me. “With them both?”
“You’re asking me?” I said a little angrily. “Maybe we should decide that as a council.” I could barely hear my own voice over the Voice. “I swore only to give Rhoshamandes back his severed limbs, but after that?”
“Kill them both,” said the Voice. “They failed me. Kill them cruelly.”
“The others will accept your decision, obviously,” said Seth. “You’re our leader now. Why wait for a council? Give the word.”
“Well, I haven’t really been anointed ruler yet, have I?” I said. “And if I have, well, I will call for a council before they’re sentenced to death. Keep them here alive.”
The Voice railed.
Viktor stood there staring at me as I spoke to Seth as if every little expression or nuance in my tone was of interest to him, absorbed him, transfixed him.