Night of the Candles (5 page)

“Take it away. Please, take it away.” Lifting a hand she pushed at the cloth.

“But it will help the ache inside your head,” Marta protested, setting it back in place.

“No, no. It makes me feel ill. Take it away.”

“All right, all right, if you say so,” the nurse agreed as Amanda’s voice began to rise. “I’ll just go and pour this out and bring some cold water, without the cologne. It is all I can do. There is not another thing in the house.”

The door closed behind her, and Amanda lay very still, fighting the lingering feeling of nausea. When the door opened a moment later she did not open her eyes, thinking it was Marta returning. It was only when the shuffling whisper of soft, hesitant footsteps on the rug came to her that she slowly turned her head. “My Madame…”

Amanda caught her breath remembering the hoarse voice, the bearded face with wild eyes that had come at her from out of the rainswept darkness just before she fell. Then she saw the apprehension that drew the face of the creature before her into a caricature of woe, and she managed to smile.

“Oh, Madame. You have come back.”

He was a small man, or seemed to be because of the permanent stoop that bent his shoulders. His sandy hair was a tangle of thick curls tied back with a piece of grime-blackened leather. If the damp clothes he wore had ever had shape or color, they had lost it. There were no shoes on his feet with their thick, calloused soles. In his hand he carried a battered gray hat with a tarnished insignia of some kind, and over his shoulder was slung a cloth bag, which bulged at the sides. The gray-streaked beard that covered his lower face made him seem ancient, but from his cheeks and forehead and the squint lines around his pale brown eyes, Amanda thought he could not be much older than Jason and Theo. He had brought with him into the room the freshness of the outdoors combined with the taint of woodsmoke, nothing else. Still there was something of the animal about him. What was the name the cook had used? Crazy Carl? It had to be him.

“What do you want?”

“To … to see you,” he said in a voice that was nearly a whisper. “Just to see you.” He inched nearer the bed, his eyes fixed on Amanda’s face. As she stared at him she realized that tears were tracking slowly down his cheeks.

He thinks that I’m Amelia. The realization came with a sudden clarity. He thinks that I’m Amelia, returned from the dead.

Slowly he advanced toward the bed. When his foot touched the set of carpet-padded steps beside the tall four-poster he glanced down, then went down on his knees, his mouth open and the light of reverence in his tear-filled eyes. Gropingly he reached for her hand that lay curled on top of the coverlet.

Amanda shivered as she felt the damp warmth of his fingers. She wanted to draw away, but she knew that the slightest movement would make her head pound.

“I … I’m so happy that you are back,” he said in a husky stammer. “Don’t ever go away again. Don’t let them make you go. I cannot live if … if they make you go away again.”

“What is this? What in the world are you doing in here!” The high, strident voice belonged to Sophia. She stood in the doorway in her dressing gown of white satin trimmed with blond lace, her hair spilling over her shoulders.

At the sight of Sophia, a vacant look came over the man’s face. He got slowly to his feet and stood staring at Sophia, his hat in his hands and his shoulders sagging.

“Get out! Get out, I say. I’ve told you time and time again. Why can’t you understand, you stupid idiot? I won’t have you up here. I can’t stand the sight of you, your drooling face and sly ways. If I catch you up here again I’ll … I’ll have Jason throw you off the plantation!”

“Sophia, please,” Amanda whispered, closing her eyes against the waves of distress that broke inside her mind, mingling with the throbbing ache.

But the protest seemed to add to Sophia’s ire. Glancing about she saw a small hearth broom beside the fireplace. A quick movement and she held it in her hands, brandishing it at Carl.

“I told you to get out,” she cried, taking a step toward him.

A slow smile grew on Carl’s face and with a cunning look in his eyes he shuffled forward, not toward the door but toward Sophia.

A look of alarm appeared on her smooth ivory face. She stopped and uncertainly lowered the broom. Carl moved a bit more.

“Here now! Here…” It was Marta, standing in the hall doorway, a pan held in both hands, her wide face pale as she took in the scene with amazed eyes.

“What is this?”

At the harsh voice they all froze and then turned guiltily toward the door that led into the room next door. Jason stood there just tying the belt of his dressing gown with an angry jerk.

“What is all this noise? Marta is the only one who should be here.”

“I found this creature in here bothering Amanda,” Sophia began. “He is obviously out of his head. He thinks she…”

“I just went to bring some fresh water without the cologne in it, which upset Miss Amanda. Her head…”

“All right!” Jason cut off both explanations. “Out. Everybody but Marta. Carl, come. I’ll see you downstairs.” He waited politely for Sophia and Carl to precede him, then left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

Marta crossed to the washstand to set down her pan, then came toward the bed to lay the cool cloth once more upon Amanda’s forehead.

“There. Is that better?”

Amanda nodded slowly, clenching her teeth with the effort. She found herself longing to be alone, to lie very still in the darkness, perhaps to sleep.

Marta fussed about, twitching the covers straight on the bed, picking up the hearth broom where Sophia had let it fall, and putting it back in place, wiping dust from the furniture. She gave the appearance of great efficiency, and it was with the attitude of someone interrupted in an important task that she turned to face Jason as he came quietly back into the room a few minutes later.

“How is she?”

At the ragged sound of his voice Amanda opened her eyes. It must be difficult for him, she thought, to see a woman who resembled his wife with her hair spread out upon the pillows where his wife had lain in her illness.

“She is in agony, Herr Jason.” Marta answered his question in a low voice. “She needs something for it, but there is not a thing. You threw it all … every bottle … out, remember?”

Jason raised his head a fraction, staring at Marta, then he turned away without speaking and moved toward the bed.

“You are in pain?”

Amanda tried to nod but she could not. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Fever?” he asked, looking at Marta.

“I think not,” she answered. “‘Twas the blow to the head when she fell.”

Jason’s face tightened, but he reached out to lay his fingers against Amanda’s cheek. “No, no fever…” he murmured, then stopped as his fingertips touched the track of helpless tears running from the corner of Amanda’s eyes into her hair. His face tightened, and he seemed to grow pale beneath his tan.

“Concussion?”

“I am almost sure of it, Herr Jason.”

He did not move for a long moment, then he sighed. “Wait,” he said and swung away, moving to the door of his room. He reappeared in a moment carrying a small green bottle with a black stopper.

“You kept it!” Marta exclaimed, then shut her mouth, swallowing the rest of what she had been going to say.

Jason ignored her. A carafe of water had been placed on the table beside the bed, and he took up one of the small glasses turned upside down on its tray. With the stopper from the green bottle, he measured five careful drops into the glass, then slipped the bottle into his pocket. He added a little water and swirled the liquid to mix it. At last he moved nearer the bed and placed the glass in Amanda’s hand, then stepped back with a brusque gesture to Marta indicating that she assist Amanda.

With Maria’s strong arm beneath her shoulders, Amanda drank the elixir of opium. Then she lay back, her eyes barely open as she waited to be released from her pain.

She heard Marta set the glass down and move to sit down on the slipper chair as if she intended to keep an all-night vigil. Jason swung away, moving back toward his room.

She opened her eyes. “Thank you,” she murmured. But if Jason heard her he gave no sign.

The blackness in her mind grew lighter, brightening until it had the glow of a spring day. She stood in a field of pink and white poppies, their fragile heads blowing in the wind. Coming toward her, running lightly without a sound, her hands outstretched, a smile of welcome on her face, was Amelia. She wore a dress of summer muslin sprigged with violets and green leaves, its flounces trimmed with purple ribbon. Her hair was loose, blowing in the gentle wind. There were gems, emeralds to match Jason’s eyes, in her ears, and the collar of Harmonia around her neck. Running at her side was the great dog, Cerberus, his tongue lolling out with joy.

“Amanda!” the bewitching vision cried. Catching Amanda’s hands, she swung her around dizzyingly, like the child’s game of flying statues, relief mixed with the happiness sparkling in her pansy purple eyes. “I am so glad to see you. You are just the one I need. We always helped each other, didn’t we? You will help me now, won’t you?”

In her dream Amanda felt gladness, but it was over-laid by the impulse to draw back, to retreat from a suffocating fear.

She awoke, her heart beating high in her throat. She felt strange, disoriented, the effect, she supposed, of the opium. It was dark in the room. The lamps had gone out, leaving a smell of smoking wick and warm oil. Marta was a white blur in her chair from which issued a wheezing, even breathing. Then she heard the sound of music, a faint melody drawn from a Spanish guitar, sad, steeped in regret. She lay listening enthralled, strangely soothed. As the last notes died away she closed her eyes and slept, the pain in her head banished.

“YOU are awake, fraeulein? Guten Morgen. How do you feel?” Marta, coming into the room with a breakfast tray containing coffee and hot rolls, brought Amanda’s eyes open.

“Much better,” she said, smiling up at the round concerned face of the nurse.

“That is good. The head, it still aches?”

“A little, but not as badly as it did last night. Marta…”

“Yes, fraeulein?”

“Last night … it’s nothing but confusion in my head. Was Mr. Monteigne here in this room?”

“Indeed yes,” Marta answered as she placed the tray on the table and helped Amanda to sit up against a pile of pillows. “But ‘twas nothing to disturb yourself about. He was concerned only with your welfare. He gave you medicine to stop the pain. It was most extraordinary, fraeulein, you cannot know what it meant.”

“Oh?” Amanda accepted the tray across her lap.

“Ach, your cousin, his wife, lay there in that bed crying with the terrible pain in her head. It was like the return of a bad dream to see you so.”

“I can imagine. I’m sorry, terribly sorry.”

“There is another thing. The medicine in the green bottle. It was this, the laudanum, the elixir of opium, that my liebchen, your cousin, used to take her life.”

Shaking her head, Marta sat down in the chair and folded her hands.

Amanda was silent. It was no wonder Jason had looked so grim. Still, what could she have done? She could not help the accident that had placed her in this invidious position.

“Now, fraeulein, you must not blame yourself. It may be that you would not have needed the laudanum, your condition might not have been called to the master’s attention at all, if it had not been for that woman and the madman from the stranger’s bedroom.”

“Oh, yes … Sophia … and the one they call Crazy Carl. I remember now.” She did remember, but it seemed fantastic, the shabbily dressed man kneeling beside her bed pressing his lips to her hand.

“Why was he here … that is, I know he thought I was Amelia, but why would he care so for her? What did she have to do with him?”

“That poor lady. She could never resist a stray. Carl now, no one knows his last name. He just came walking along the road one day. Near as anyone can tell he had been wandering, living hand to mouth, since the war. It seems sometimes, from what he says, that he was in a large battle with much … much artillery … is that the word? He was struck perhaps, or maybe it was only the noise, who can say? Madame Amelia took him in. She fed him, gave him clothes. He had been sleeping in the ditches, but she let him have the stranger’s bedroom.”

“Stranger’s bedroom?”

“You don’t know the custom? We are not so far from the river here at Monteigne. There is much traffic, of people going to the West, looking for something new, different, they know not what. A small bedroom is kept ready for the travelers caught nearby when night falls. Families, those who are kin or friends of kin, the traveling preacher, the circuit riders … all are welcome. It was so before the war when hospitality was a part of the life. It is so now.”

“I had forgotten how soft-hearted Amelia was. But yes, she could never stand to see anything hurt or killed. She was fearless when it came to righting what she felt was an injustice.”

“Ach, ja, that is my liebchen. No animal could be mistreated in her presence. Let me tell you. It was only last spring, just after I came to be with her. We were driving in town when she saw three or four boys with a half-grown puppy. They were tormenting the poor thing, dipping it into the water of the river, letting it near drown, laughing at its feeble struggles. She marched up to them and took it away. Perhaps you saw it in the yard? She named it Cerberus because it so nearly crossed the river … what was the name, I cannot think…”

“Styx.”

“That is it! The dog stayed with her always until he grew too big to be in the house. He had no love for anyone but her. She had his whole heart. When she died he transferred his trust to that mad man, Carl. He obeys Herr Jason and tolerates the rest of us who live here at Monteigne; everyone else is an enemy. I shudder to think of how he howled the night she died. There was nothing that would make him stop.”

“It is strange that you should mention the dog. I saw them together last night, in a dream.”

“It is not so strange to me that you dreamed of her … not here, lying in her bed.”