Marianne, the Magus & the Manticore (7 page)

"Your affairs were left in his hands, you said."

"I was only a schoolgirl. My mother's estate—rather a big one, from her father—was in papa's hands during his lifetime, but then it came to me. Except Harvey was executor. Oh, there's some man in a bank in Boston, and an attorney I've never seen, but Harvey is really the one who says yes or no. The others simply do what he tells them."

"Ah," said Makr Avehl, in a strange voice. "They simply

... give consent."

"Yes. And whenever Harvey says anything, he always says it is what Papa would have wanted. Which means it is what Harvey wants." She fell silent, flushing. "I feel very disloyal, talking about him this way."

Makr Avehl, thinking of the contents of the box he had taken from her apartment, contented himself with silence. At that moment the hungry, predatory part of him withdrew, and a more thoughtful self examined Marianne's face with a quick, sideways look. "Blood is not always thicker than water, Marianne. Only when the ties of blood are equally strong on both sides is there any true kinship. Kinship can never be a one-way thing."

"That's what Mrs. Winesap says. She says if I don't like him, I simply don't like him, and I shouldn't feel guilty about that."

"I couldn't agree more. Mrs. Winesap is an eminently sensible woman. Also, she has your welfare at heart, and that makes her kin to you in a real way." He swung the car onto the exit ramp, then beneath the highway and onto a shore-bound road between budding trees fretted against the dusk.

Lights faded around them, dwindling from hectic commercial to amber residential, soft among the knotted branches. It was quiet in the car, all traffic left behind them. Reflected in the waters of a little bay was the discreet sign in pink neon, "Willard's." He parked the car and looked quickly at his watch.

"On time. There will be no excuse to have given our table to anyone else."

He took her from the car and into the place by her elbow, gently held. Their table was waiting, and Marianne gained the impression it would have been waiting had they not arrived until midnight. Makr Avehl waved the maitre d' away and seated her himself, his hands lingering on her shoulders as he arranged the stole on the back of her chair. She resolutely focused herself on the reflections in the water, on the candlelit interior, on anything else.

When he had seated himself across from her, he said, "Shall we dispense with the usually obligatory cocktail? Do you know the origin of the word? It dates, I am told, from the early years of the nineteenth century in New Orleans where cognac was mixed with bitters using an old-style egg cup—called a coquetier—to measure the ingredients. From cah-cuh-tyay to cock-tay to cock-tail would have required only the slovenly enunciation of a half generation. Does that interest you? Not greatly." He grinned at her and pretended an interest in the menu. The meal had already been arranged for.

When he had ordered for both of them, he leaned back and stared around him, a little arrogantly. "This ordering for one's guest is no longer an American custom, I know. But it is a custom I enjoy. So I command outrageous viands from kitchens across the breadth of the world if only to see how my companions will approach them. If what I have ordered does not appeal to you, now is the time to chastise me."

"It sounds delicious," she said. "I don't mind at all. It's precisely what Papa always did."

"And Harvey?"

"I've never eaten in public with Harvey," she said stiffly.

"I imagine he would be more... more showy about it."

"I can hear him now," said Makr Avehl, putting on a pom-pous expression. " "The lady will have breaded cockscomb with the sauce of infant eel.' Then an aside to his companion: 'You'll love it, Juliet. I remember having it in Paris, during the International Conference of the Institute of Anthropology.' Like that?"

"Like that," she agreed. "And then he'd watch her like a hawk to be sure she pretended to enjoy it."

"Which she would do?" He nodded at the hovering wine steward.

"Which they seem to do," she agreed. "I've never been able to figure out why."

Across the table from her, he glittered with gentle laughter.

The explosion of light seemed so real that Marianne actually blinked to avoid being blinded, then opened her eyes wide, astonished at her own childishness. It was only the blaze of something flambe' behind him, being made a great show of in a chafing dish. An obsequious waiter slipped behind her chair to place two additional wine glasses beside her plate, while the wine steward poured an inch of ruby light into Makr Avehl's glass. He sipped it, nodded, and Marianne's own glass dropped red jewels of light onto the table cloth.

She sipped, smiled, sipped again. It had been a long time since she had had good wine. She had drunk it as a child, at Papa's side, learning to taste. Then she had gone away to school, and there had been no wine then or since. Her slender budget would not stretch to such indulgence, and she sipped again, lost in a haze of happy memory. A plate of pate appeared before her, almost magically, smelling succulently of herbs and shallots. She began to eat hungrily, not noticing his expression as he watched her. It was the expression of a lion about to pounce.

But behind that expression a dialogue had begun, a familiar dialogue to Makr Avehl, one between the man and the Magus, with a word or two from that entity he called "the intruder."

It began with the man saying, "I want this woman!" He said it impatiently. The man did not equivocate. He did not apologize.

"You will conduct yourself appropriately," replied the Magus. 'This is a kinswoman. Even if she were not, there are indulgences inappropriate to a Magus!"

And another voice, sibilant, hissing, "This is a complication we do not need at this time. This is foolishness, kinswoman or not. Be done."

"She is fair," sang the man to himself, not listening to the voices. The wine was diluting their message, blurring their advice. "Fair. Lithe and lovely, dark of hair and pale of skin, curved as a warrior's bow is curved, straight as his arrow is straight. A warrior's trophy! A warrior's prize!"

"A brigand's booty. A robber's spoils," threatened the Magus.

"A poacher's trap," hissed the voice of dissent.

"A lover's prize," the man amended, bending over his plate in a sudden access of warmth. He had not meant to say that.

He had not used the word to himself for almost twenty years, not since he was nineteen and thought himself dying because someone else had died, died untimely, unforgiveably. He shut down the voices, apprehensive of the end of their colloquy.

The food gave him something else to think about, but it led him into the trap once more. He looked up to see Marianne's lips curved to accept the edge of the glass, curved as though in a kiss, and his hands trembled.

"Come now, Makr Avehl," he said to himself. "You are not a schoolboy any longer. You are not a lascivious youth, carried willy-nilly on naive curiosity's back, like Europa on the bull, tormented by lust into abandonment of all sense. Come, come.

Let us talk of something else."

"Did you really like the pictures I brought you?" he asked, seeing a well-trained hand slip the empty plate away from before him to replace it with another, noticing also that Marianne's glass was being refilled. His own was almost untouched.

She did not answer at once, being occupied with napkin and glass. "That was duck," she said happily. "Lovely duck. All bits and pieces with swadges of truffle. I didn't know Willard's

. was capable of that...."

He did not tell her that the pate had been provided earlier, that Willard's was not capable of that, that no restaurant within five hundred miles was capable of that except the one which had provided the pate to his order. "The pictures?" he prompted.

"The pictures. Well, the one of the fish is marvelous. One has a sense of the fish rising, and because the air above and the water below are all one, it is almost as though it could go on rising upward, forever. Like a balloon."

Makr Avehl, who had not thought of this, was much taken with the feeling. "Exaltation?"

"Yes. The feeling that one could go on up and up forever, but one would not need to. The surface is very nice, too. Well, I liked that one. The other one was more difficult. The young women are in the street, alone, but they are not threatened at all. There are lights around, in the house—which must be the house they live in—where people are waiting for them. Nothing horrible is coming. It's a special evening, and the girls are setting lights along the streets. They do that in Mexico, don't they? Set lights along the streets? Candles, in bags of sand? A kind of ritual in which the safe, lighted way is shown, I think.

And that's the way it feels, a safe, lighted way."

"Luminous," he suggested.

She considered this over a spoonful of lobster bisque, turning the idea with the other flavors on her tongue. "Not so much luminous as illuminated. Things which could be threatening or frightening are lighted up, made harmless, perhaps even shown to be attractive. That's what one wants, after all, to have the monsters shown to be nothing but paper cutouts, or shadows, or humped bushes which the light will show to be full of flowers."

He nodded. "It's unfortunate the other group of things had such an unpleasant feel to it. Certain groupings can have that quality of foreboding or threat. I remember a particular place in the forest of Alphenlicht, trees, stones, some large leafed plants with waxy blooms. Taken individually, the trees are only trees. The stones are interesting shapes, taken each by each, and the plants are found in many boggy parts of the mountains. Taken as a whole, however, this particular clearing among the stones with the trees brooding above has a quality of menace."

He shook his head, keeping to himself the question as to what kind of knowledge or study would have stimulated a person—any person—to have chosen the particular group of things he had found in the box. The knowledge was one matter but, in addition, what motivation would one have had? These questions were not merely interesting but compelling. He was most curious about the sly vileness in which he had given her the things one at a time, singly, so that her spirit would be led to accept them individually rather than take warning at the cumulative effect.

Nonetheless, she had taken warning. Which told him something more about her to make his lustful self pause. There was heritage here, the heritage of the Magi. "With whom," advised the Magus within, "it is wise not to trifle."

He pursued this question. "You didn't like the things Harvey gave you. Did you tell me why?"

She shrugged, spooning up the last of her bisque, sorry there was not more of it, so relaxed by the wine that she did not mind answering. "They made me feel slimy. Dirty. Not clean dirt, but sewer dirt. I've never been in a sewer, but I can imagine." She put her spoon down with regret. "The naked girl was the worst. That one made me angry. She was so...

sacrificial."

"Anger," he mused, nodding once more to the hovering waiter. "I have often wondered why anger is considered by some Western religions to be a sin. It is such a marvelous protection against evil." He examined her face, thinking of an old proverb of his people, often used to define perspicacity of a certain type:
He can recognize the devil by his breathing.
He thought it interesting that Marianne could recognize the devil by its breathing, and he wondered who the devil was. Well, he should not be too quick to identify.

"The reason you found them unpleasant probably doesn't matter. We've taken care of it. It's likely that your brother would not even know the difference between the things he gave you and the substitutions I have made. He would undoubtedly be distressed to learn he had caused you a moment's apprehension. There is certainly no reason to mention it to him."

Marianne had had no intention of mentioning it. "You think I felt as I did about the things merely because Harvey gave them to me? That seems a little simplistic."

"It's probably as good an explanation as we are going to get." He laughed with a good pretense of humor, watching as the second set of wine glasses were refilled. They would continue with the Trockenbeerenauslese until dessert. He had chosen it for her, thinking she would prefer it, and was now regretful that he had not realized she would appreciate something better. Still, it was a very fine wine, if not a preeminent one, and her glass was being refilled for the third time. Her face was flushed and happy, and she played idly with her fork, waiting for the salad. He went on, putting an end to the subject,

"I suggest any further presents from your half brother be put in storage somewhere. Often we wish to be exorcised of demons we ourselves have allowed house room. That is an Alphenlicht saying, one my sister is very fond of."

"I suppose she means demons of memory," said Marianne in an untroubled voice. "Of guilt, of vengeance. Things we dwell on instead of forgetting." In that moment, she felt she would not be bothered by such things again.

He cursed at himself, not letting it show. The box had been no minor assault. She should be warned. Who was he to give her these platitudes instead of the harsh warning which was probably required? If he were to be true to his own conscience, he would explore the root of that corruption, find the cause, help her arrange a defense against it rather than deal her a few proverbs to placate her sense of danger. However, there was no way to do that without frightening her, and tonight was not the time, not the place, not with her glowing face across from him, candlelit, soft and accepting. When he knew her a little better—when he found out who was responsible. He did not believe it was her brother. The shallow, puffed-up ego which had looked at him out of Harvey S. Zahmani's eyes would not have been capable of the singleminded study necessary to select those individual gifts to make up such a synergistic power of evil. Well. It would wait. He would not destroy her pleasure tonight.

Neither would he destroy his own planned pleasure for the weekend. He returned to his purpose.

"Do you ride, Marianne?"