What Moves the Dead (10)
“How do you feel?” I asked, seizing upon the opening.
“Do you know, I feel quite energetic at times? I know that I look a fright. My mirror doesn’t lie. No, he is quite right. I don’t have much longer. But I did not think I would feel so restless.”
I studied her face. She was still paler than any living being had a right to be, but there were two spots of color on her cheek, high and hectic. I was struck by a feeling that her skin was nearly transparent and if I were standing closer, I could have seen the individual tiny capillaries filled with blood. Her eyes were feverishly bright, but when I had touched her hand earlier, it had been as cold as the waters of the tarn.
Catalepsy. Anemia. “You should leave here,” I said abruptly. “This place can’t be healthy. Let Roderick bring you back to Paris. We’ll go to the theater and the museums and walk in the parks and eat lemon ice.”
She smiled, though it seemed like she was not looking so much at me as through me, and smiling at whatever she saw on the far side. “Lemon ice. I remember. We had them the last time I saw you, before you swore as kan.”
I had no real memory of what we’d eaten that day, but I agreed anyway. “We’ll have it again.”
“Ah, Easton.” She patted my arm. Her hand felt chill, even through the sleeve. “You’re kind. But I belong here. I would be lost if I could not go down to the lake and confess my sins.”
“What sins could you possibly have?” I asked, trying to sound playful, not entirely succeeding. “You have always been above reproach. You did not even help me push your cousin into the river.”
“Have I?” She looked through me again. “Perhaps it is only in dreams that I am sinning.” She smiled again, but it turned into a yawn. “Forgive me, dear Easton. I am tired. I should go lie down for a little while.”
“Let me walk you to your door,” I said, offering her my arm. “You will have to tell me where it is, in this great maze of a house, but I will take you there.”
She leaned on me. She weighed nothing at all. I saw her to her room, and she seemed to float through the door as if the earth could no longer quite hold her.
* * *
When I finally returned to my rooms, after trying three doors that looked right and weren’t, I found a very welcome arrival. My batman, Angus, was already there.
“Angus!” I clasped his forearm. “You made it!”
“Aye,” he said, fixing me with a gimlet eye. “A short journey with fresh horses over empty roads in decent repair. Truly it taxed me to my limits. Sir.”
I grinned, unrepentant. Angus served my father before me, and even then was long in cunning, if not yet long in years. When my father was killed in battle and I swore in, he took one look at me, a callow fourteen-year-old with bound breasts and a freshly shaven skull, and took me in hand. “For,” he said, “the Good Lord may look out for fools, but it won’t hurt to have another set of eyes helping.”
When I sold out my commission, he came with me. His beard and mustaches had gone entirely gray and he could predict the weather with pinpoint accuracy based on various aches and pains, but I would have put him up against any younger soldier I know, myself included.
He had a thick Scottish brogue when he chose to indulge in it, but could shed it instantly for unaccented Gallacian, and even I didn’t know where it was he came from originally. He never expressed any desire to return. I had offered once, and it so offended him that I did not offer again.
“Should I be insulted by the room they’ve put you in, or are they doing the best they can?” he asked.
I glanced around the room. It wasn’t much better by daylight than it had been by candlelight. The wallpaper was still mostly intact and the fireplace worked, but there was a creeping damp to the air. The great curtained bed sagged and the curtains were tattered to gauze. The door to Angus’s room was swollen and stuck in the jamb. “I think it’s the best they can do,” I said. “And go easy on the fire, will you? I don’t think they can afford the logs.”
“So that’s the way of it, eh?” Angus nodded. He helped me out of my jacket and scowled at the room in general. “Cheerless house,” he said. “I mislike it.”
“You and me both,” I said tiredly. “You know I’m not a superstitious soul, Angus, but I swear there’s something wicked here.”
“Well, I am a superstitious soul,” said Angus, “and I know there is. It ain’t canny. The sort of place you find devils dancing on the moors.”
“There aren’t any moors. There’s a sort of heath and a tarn and a mad Englishwoman painting mushrooms.”
He raised an eyebrow. I described the redoubtable Eugenia Potter.
“Oh, that sort!” he said, poking up the fire and turning the bricks to heat them. “One of the fine, fierce old ladies of England. They’ll climb mountains and make tea on the summit if they need to. We’d have done a damn sight better in the war if they’d sent them over instead of the troops.”
“Probably not a devil of the moors, then?”
“Well, I haven’t met her yet. She might be.” Angus sniffed. “Mushrooms, eh?”
“Yes, and some nasty ones, too. Poked one with a stick for me, and it smelled like an open grave and rotten milk. And she said it wasn’t even ripe yet!”