Shroud of Shadow (27 page)

“Oh.”

“So I . . .” Omelda mustered a smile, but it was crooked. “. . . hardly have time to think about anything . . . especially plainchant. I'll be all right. Don't worry about me.”

Natil stared, her harp dangling from her hand. Omelda saw the wound, knew that she herself had caused it, knew also that there was nothing that she could do about it. Remaining silent or telling all, she could only pain others, herself, or, more than likely, both. So she left it at the traditional obfuscation of the battered woman:
I'll be all right. Don't worry about me.

With another attempt at a smile, Omelda turned and went back to the floor, her callused knees hardly feeling the rough stone, her cracked hands inured to soap and water.
I'll be all right.

From somewhere within the maze that was the Aldernacht house came a call: distant, eager. “Natil! Mistress Harper! Oh, I'm so glad you're home! Now we can have our little talk about music! I've written a duet!”

Omelda hung her head, her dark hair hanging down in frowzy dribbles. Edvard and Norman sounded just as eager when they stripped her and explained what they had planned for the afternoon. Music, sex, wool cooperatives . . . it was all the same: whatever the Aldernachts wanted, whatever the Aldernachts could buy, whatever the Aldernachts could take.

“It's only got about a dozen accidentals for the harp,” Josef continued. “I'm sure you'll find it quite easy! Mistress Harper?”

His voice faded as he wandered off in the wrong direction. Omelda kept her head down. For a moment more, Natil stood, staring, as though suddenly confronted with the abject powerlessness of everything she held sacred. And then, finally, she turned away. “I will be here for a time, Omelda,” she said softly. “For a little while. If you need me, you have but to call.”

For a little while. And then Natil would leave. But that was all right: she had already left once before, and, as a result, her comings and goings now made no difference at all.

At the door, Natil paused. “Do you . . . do you sing at all, Omelda?”

Omelda paused in her scrubbing, fought to keep her voice from rising into a scream. “I don't sing at all, Natil. It's not important. I'll be all right. Don't worry.”

Plainly worried, Natil left. Her footsteps, soft but distinct, receded down the corridor until they lost themselves in the convoluted silence of the house.

Omelda scrubbed, worked dung and food out of the cracks, felt nothing, whether in her fingers, her knees, or her heart.

***

Francis Aldernacht himself had designed the majority of the Aldernacht house—was, in fact, still designing and adding to it—and as though the mansion were a reflection of a mind lost in convoluted plots, its endless corridors, multitudinous bedrooms, and seemingly pointless salons, gardens, walks,s tables, and outbuildings sprawled across the southern part of Ypris like some particularly invasive species of prostrate weed. But as hugely magnificent as the house had grown, it had taken no form, no final shape, and was, in the end, just a collection of wood, plaster, stone, and brick, no more conclusive or committed than the mind of its creator.

Edvard and Norman Aldernacht, though, were willing and more than willing to make up for their father's lacks, and the day after Francis (still fretting and muttering about Jacob's squanderings of moneys that rightfully belonged to
him
) returned from Furze, they entered his private study, unannounced, uninvited.

In the big chair behind the desk, Francis was smoking a long, elaborately carved pipe, his nicotine-drenched concerns swirling aimlessly from money to tobacco plantations to magic to poison to the death of a certain family patriarch . . . without, however, making much headway toward concrete plans for any of them. But what occupied him was not important to his sons, for they had known for years that though their father's mind might twist and turn and spurt out an occasional blossom, it would never bear fruit.

So the hidden (so Francis thought) panel slid back in response to the secret (so Francis thought) combination of pushed and pulls, and Edvard and Norman strolled into the study, themselves puffing on pipes rammed full of tobacco that was (so Francis thought) locked away in a hidden cupboard.

“Good morning, Pierre,” said Edvard.

Francis sighed. “I came here to be alone.”

“Well, that's all right, Pierre,” said Norman, “because we've come for the same reason. To be alone. With you.”

There was a stack of books on the table. Occult. Cabala. Poisons. A treatise on the toxicity of various fungi. Plans. All plans. All meandering, convoluted, ultimately fruitless plans . . .

Edvard shoved them aside, plunked his rump down in their place. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “We've come to talk with you.”

Francis surrendered to the inescapability of their interview. “What do you want?”

“We want to help you, Pierre.”

Their persistent insolence irked Francis, but he did not say anything about it. He never said anything about it. He had given up saying anything about it years ago, when Edvard and Norman had informed him that they did not give a fig about his opinions, wants, desires, or rights, and that they considered him rather petty for insisting upon or even mentioning such matters in their presence.

Since then, Francis had ignored Edvard and Norman, and Edvard and Norman had ignored Francis. It seemed important to the brothers, though, that they periodically remind their father just how little they respected him, and therefore they took every opportunity to insult him, try him, invade his privacy, appropriate his belongings.

“You want to help me,” said Francis. “Of course.”

“Really, Pierre.” Norman shoved aside another pile of books and occupied the vacancy. “You're so distrustful. Why would we
not
want to help you? I mean, after all, you're our father.”

Francis snorted.

“And we have a common interest.”

“Common interest . . . ?”

Edvard grinned. “Money.”

Francis looked up at that. Behind the haze of smoke, Edvard's eyes were hungry, and there was a light deep within them that was much like the light in Francis's own eyes that he (so he thought) kept carefully hidden. “Money?”

“The family money.”

Respect or disrespect, rights or no rights, Francis was now interested. “What about it?”

“I think you know very well, Pierre,” said Norman. “It's a vast sum, a vast sum . . . and vast sums can so easily turn into small sums, if one is not careful.”

Francis, recognizing thoughts that paralleled his own, had now gone beyond interest and into fascination. “That's true.”

Edvard finally said it bluntly. “Grandfather is squandering the estate.”

Unwillingly, then, torn between rapt agreement and caution: “I think so.”

“He needs to be . . . to be . . .” Arrogant as the young man was, he suddenly appeared to be afflicted with a touch of his father's indecision when it actually came to uttering the words.

Norman, a little slower, was no so shy. He leaned across the desk. “He needs to be gotten rid of.”

Francis cleared his throat, falling into the old pomposity. “Well, you know, your mother and I are . . .” He cleared his throat again. “. . . taking steps.”

“Oh, Pierre! Go fuck Bishop Etienne yourself! You'll never get him to say that Grandpa is mad! Grandpa can buy him off in a heartbeat!”

Francis sat, stunned. “How did you know about Etienne?”

“How did we know about Etienne?” Edvard sing-songed back at him. “How did we know how to get in here? How do we know where to find your tobacco? How do we know anything, Pierre?” He leaned closer. “We
find out
.”

Francis's jaw clamped down on his pipe.

Edvard's eyes were bright. “Grandpa has to go. He has to be disposed of—”

“There are laws . . .”

“—legally.”

“Oh, to be sure. Well, you know—”

“We can do it.”

Francis's remonstrations abruptly ceased. He did not look at his sons. A cloud of smoke from burning tobacco drifted toward the ceiling. “You can . . . ?”

“Legally.”

Francis's eye fell on the stack of books. Occult. Poison. Nothing had given him the courage to make the assay. But his sons had . . . had . . .

Legally. That was the whole point. It had to be done legally. And Francis knew without a doubt that, as unscrupulous and selfish as they were, they could do what they said they could do.

He took a deep breath. “What did you have in mind?”

Edvard sat back, smiling. “That's better, Pierre. Much better. Because, you see, though we can do it, we'll need your help.”

Francis frowned, suspicious.

“For one thing, we need your financial help.”

Francis's frown deepened.

“Because, if Grandpa dies—legally, you see—we want more out of it than the dribblings you've planned to hand out to us.”

Deeper still.

“We want control of the firm. We want the final say. Oh . . .” Edvard held up a hand to his father's outburst. “. . . we'll let you in on everything, we'll even draw up a contract. In fact . . .” Laughing now, glancing at Norman. “. . . we'll insist upon it. Nice and legal. Buying and selling. True Aldernachts.”

Francis sat motionless. His books had done nothing for him. But to throw in with his sons—even assuming that they could actually accomplish their goal—involved a bargain of diabolical import.

The wool cooperative, though . . . and that damned Bishop Albrecht! Jacob was squandering the estate. And if there were any way to keep it intact . . .

Edvard reached for the tobacco pouch, but, after a moment's thought, he took the pipe from his father's mouth and shoved it into his own, tossed the inferior article at Francis. “We can do it. And we will. Providing, of course, that you cooperate.”

Holding a burnt-out pipe, staggered by the insolence of his sons, the enormity of what they had planned, and their willingness to laugh about it, Francis hesitated, his thoughts swirling even more impotently than usual.

Norman was smiling. Edvard beamed. “Ah, Pierre, God must love you very much to send you two sons like us!”

An estate consisting of nothing, or an estate consisting of . . . well, as much as Edvard and Norman were willing to give. Francis considered the choices for a time, then took the unlit pipe from his mouth.

“All right,” he said.

Dinah's head made a hollow sound as it smacked into the dark paneling of the passageway. Edvard, who had flung her, now leaned close, his blue eyes gleaming, his hand twined in her hair. “Listen,” he said, “and listen well. We're taking a risk with you. We're taking a very big risk. You will succeed.”

Dinah, her head ringing, fought with a suddenly uncooperative mouth. “I'm . . . I'm . . .”

Francis, from behind: “Edvard, really . . .”

“Shut-up, Pierre. I know what I'm doing.”

“For the love of God, keep it quiet,” said Norman.

The atmosphere of the passage was close, stagnant, full of man smells and wood smells. Dinah blinked, tried once more for speech, but Edvard was leaning close again, his white teeth gnashing as he formed the words, his lips opening and closing, puckering and relaxing. “You'll fuck him,” he said. “And you'll make sure he's dead when you're done.”

Dinah's head still spun, but her thoughts were petulant:

'Course I'll do it, 'cause that's what they want. I know what I can do. He'll die with a smile on his yawp
. . .

“Because if you don't . . .”

“Edvard, please . . .”

“Shut up.”

“Keep quiet, we're near the servants' quarters.”

“You shut up, too.”

Surrounded by men and by their heavy odors (and, she fancied, by their erections, stiff pricks brought up by the proximity of a half-clad woman with her dark curling hair and her soft curves and the scent of female melt moistening her thighs), Dinah wavered. “I'll . . . do it.”

“Because if you don't,” continued Edvard, “you'll suffer. You'll suffer with all the torments that we can devise.”

I said I'd do it, why . . . ?

“Every particle of the Aldernacht fortune will be bent upon destroying you, little slut. There will be no escape for you. Do you understand?”

“I . . .”

He shook her. Her head cracked once again against the paneling. “
Do you understand?
”

The fear started then, a cold knot in her heart that trickled down to her groin, chilling her, drying up her willed arousal. Suddenly she could not think of the round fullness of a stiff penis inside her, suddenly she could think only of pain and death, of Edvard's lips opening and closing, puckering and relaxing like a hungry, toothed thing inches from her eyes.

I don't understand. I said I'd do it. How am I supposed to get him up and dead when they're talkin' to me like this?

In another part of the house, Jacob was down and awake. Eudes had tucked him into bed, and Natil had played for him, and now he was left alone with himself . . . and with his thoughts.

Alone. It was night, and the cracks in the shutters admitted nothing more than additional darkness, darkness that made the room seem isolated, lost. And Jacob, too, felt isolated and lost.

Bed's narrow. After Marjorie left, didn't have the heart to keep the big one. Pumped her good and full a few times in it, though. But look what came of it. Francis, and Karl . . . and that Josef. Nitwit. What good's his music? He'll be out on the street with his damned lutes after his brother takes over.

And Edvard and Norman and Francis half escorted, half carried the scented, rounded flesh of their murder weapon through the twisting passages that wound secretly through the house like the divertricular guts of a wooden animal. But Dinah's own guts were clawing at themselves now, rebelling at the hire, salary, and threat of her sexual orders, turning her arousal to ashes.

Jacob stared up into the darkness. Dinah stared at the wrong side of a wooden panel. Suddenly, she wanted to run.

“Remember what I said,” said Edvard. His hand pulled the lever that opened the panel.