Phantom (17 page)

I often come to sit alone in the rooftop garden now. When the warmth of the Roman sun at noon begins to draw the stench of the city's squalor, I like to nod drowsily upon the travertine bench, breathing the heady scent of Luciana's potted plants. Sometimes, bending to take a cutting with fingers that are twisted and deformed almost beyond recognition by arthritis, I remember the loving care Erik lavished upon these flowers; I remember how tenderly he nursed them through the ravages of Luciana's feckless neglect, and the way he would sometimes pause to caress a smooth, green leaf, as though he was silently willing it to grow. Over the succeeding years they have flourished into magnificent blooms, just as he once flourished beneath my guiding hand. These flowers, this white stone bench, and the mysterious models lining the walls of my cellar are all I have left to remind me of those two years that altered the landscape of my world forever.

Memories
! Memories are like fireflies darting across the surface of my mind, showing me here and there images so sharp and vivid that I catch my breath in wonder before the vignette disappears, sinking like a pebble into the quicksand of regret and recrimination. Perhaps they are right, those who say behind my back—as I know they do! —that I had begun to lose my faculties long before the tragedy. But I hope they are wrong. I would like to think that I was as sane as anyone else that day when I first saw Erik; I would like my story to stand as the last will and testament of a man sound in mind.

I remember quite clearly the dark stillness of the empty streets as I walked down to the site; I remember the aching heaviness in my heart as I brooded on the letter which had drawn me from my bed, restless and disturbed, before dawn was in the sky.

It was an unremarkable morning, a day that promised to be like any other; and in the gray light, rain had awakened the pungency of excavated earth, bringing the familiar scent of wet sand and cement to my nostrils. Some master masons hate a site at sunrise, when first light cruelly underlines the limits of their daily achievement. So little accomplished yesterday, so much to be done today! But for me dawn was a time of inspiration. I could not remember a period in my life when an unfinished building had not been my reason for waking, eating… breathing. It was only when a contract was completed that I felt dissatisfaction creeping upon me, a sense of loss that was almost bereavement. Erik understood that. Erik understood things that most boys never even glimpse; but right from the beginning the depth of his passion to create made me fear for him. In my mind there was always the uneasy knowledge that one day there would inevitably be the great commission, the glorious challenge to which he would give every ounce of his being and from which he could not bear to part; the beautiful, full-term child of his imagination that he would kill to possess.

I came to know him as a gentle, sensitive genius, but I never deceived myself upon that one point. The boy had killed long before he ever came to me, that much was quite obvious at our first meeting.

I remember that before we had exchanged a single word, his knife was already drawn upon me…

He was trespassing.

As soon as I stepped onto the site I became aware of a thin, boyish figure gliding like a ghost over the gray ramparts of the scaffolding, a strangely eerie sight in the light of the rising sun. I did not cry out in angry indignation, but stood for a moment watching the boy draw his fingers caressingly across the wet masonry. After a moment he stood back, lifting his arms to the walls like a Druid priest communicating with some heathen god, and his hands began to move with a rhythmic series of swoops, as though he were molding the very air around him. It was one of the strangest and most beautiful sights I had ever seen. There was something intensely mystical in this curious communion that made me want to go on watching him with breathless fascination; but my foot touched the edge of a poorly balanced mason's point and sent it crashing to the ground. The boy leapt down from the scaffold with the ease of a young panther and in a second he was upon me with his knife drawn.

I was startled by the sight of the white mask. The eyes behind it were as tense and wary as any wild animal's as he gestured for me to back against the stonework and clear his path into the street. With hindsight I know that I should have listened to his instinctive wisdom and let him go. But I was never a coward and my curiosity had been intensely aroused. With his knife gleaming barely a half inch from my throat, I merely raised my hands ironically and demanded to know if he usually dealt old men such scant civility.

I didn't seriously expect an answer and I was unprepared for the sudden lowering of the knife and the look of uncertainty which replaced the feral aggression in his eyes.

"Monsieur?"

The instant he spoke I was aware that, in spite of his outlandish Gypsy attire, this was no young backstreet cutthroat, intent on murdering me for the sake of my purse. The single word was so beautifully pitched and modulated that I found I had no desire in my head other than to hear him speak again.

"Do you speak Italian?" I demanded curiously.

"Yes, sir." He seemed astonished to find himself being questioned with common civility.

"You are trespassing on private property… do you understand I could have you arrested for that?"

The knife was instantly raised again, but with a weary halfheartedness that suddenly gave me the courage to push his hand away.

"Put that damned thing down, for heaven's sake, boy, you make me quite nervous. There—that's better. Now… tell me what you were doing here."

"I wasn't stealing!" he said quickly, looking down at the knife rather helplessly, as though suddenly uncertain what he ought to do with it now. "I wasn't doing any damage—"

"I can see that," I said with dry irony. "Nobody ever did any damage to stone simply by stroking it."

"
Oh
!" One hand went to the mask in a gesture of agonized embarrassment. "How long have you been watching me?"

"Long enough to know I wasn't watching a thief at work," I said. "Interested in stonework, are you… care to see the plans, perhaps?"

He looked at me warily, as though trying to decide whether he was being mocked, but I saw him abandon his natural suspicion when I reached inside my coat for the papers.

"Thank you," he said automatically, taking the sheets from me and spreading them out upon a dry patch of ground beneath the scaffold. He reminded me of a little boy who has had good manners drummed into him by a long and painful process, and I was taken aback when he suddenly gave a cry of rage that was almost a sob.

"No, it's wrong!" he said furiously. "It's
quite
wrong, not a bit like I—oh, how can you bear to build anything so vulgar?"

I gave a slight sigh, unnerved to remember that my first response to those plans had been oddly similar.

"The building is being erected to suit the specifications of a very rich and vulgar client," I explained patiently. "An architect must eat, you know, and so must a master mason. If we built only to satisfy our own inner vanity we would very soon starve."

I watched him stare darkly at the design.

"I would rather starve!" he said with extraordinary passion. "I would rather starve than build ugly houses!"

I believed him. The tone of his voice affected me with deep unease—it was as though
ugly
was the worst expletive in his dictionary.

"Are you apprenticed here in Rome?" I inquired after a decent pause.

"No, sir." Was it my imagination or did he stiffen at the question?

"But you have an interest in architecture, do you not? You love fine buildings?"

"I studied a little once," he admitted cautiously. "A long time ago, when I was a child."

He could not have been much more than thirteen and yet he spoke of childhood as though it were many decades behind him. He puzzled and worried me with his sad, wary dignity and his whiplash reaction to threat. I wanted to know who he was, where he came from, and why he combined the manners of a young gentleman with all the instincts of an experienced street killer.

Strangely the mask remained the least of my curiosity…

"I have other works in progress," I told him quietly,

"and I think you will find that not all my clients are without taste. If the company of an old and opinionated man is not uncongenial to you…"

I spread my hand to indicate the street beyond, and after one last moment of hesitation, born of God knows what terrible experience, he stood up and followed me.

A strange elation surged through my thin veins as I began to walk away, not looking behind, trusting that he would not stab me in the back or simply flee at the first opportunity. My inner depression had evaporated like the morning mist, leaving behind an odd, pulsing happiness, an awareness that somehow I had stumbled on something very rare and precious.

For a moment I thought I knew exactly how Christ must have felt when He called John.

It was hard, not looking behind me. He made no more noise in walking than a cat, and since it was as yet too early to see his shadow on the walls we passed, I had the oddest sensation of being trailed by a ghost.

The contract I wished to show him lay on the south side of the city, outside the ancient Roman walls, and was within a few weeks of completion. I could tell by the quick intake of his breath that the sight pleased him; I was rather pleased with the result myself. For the last fifteen years or so I had dealt mainly in contracting, but I had never released control of the high-precision work. The fine carving in relief on the capitals and cornices, the cutting of tracery and archmolds, I still considered my exclusive province, despite the slow creep of arthritis, and here I could show him the good taste of pure, clean lines and understatement, a skill that merely released the natural beauty of stone.

He was impressed. He didn't say anything, but his silent approval washed over me like a warm tide and made me feel as though I had just submitted my master's piece to the ancient Masonic lodge. An odd feeling, that, in a man who had spent forty-five years at his craft!

I permitted him to prowl all over the empty, echoing building, touching, asking questions, occasionally volunteering a criticism that struck me dumb by its pertinence and vision, its uncanny mirroring of my own instincts.

And then, as we were disturbed by the arrival of the master carpenter and his apprentice in the courtyard below, the boy at once shrank out of sight against a bedroom wall.

"I must go," he said uneasily, the eyes behind the mask already seeking the shortest path to flight.

I laid a hand on his thin arm to detain him.

"Where do you live?" I demanded suddenly.

"I don't live anywhere." He was staring at my hand where it rested on his arm, making no effort to shrug free of my grasp, merely staring as though he could not quite believe I had touched him without intending to inflict pain. "Sometimes I travel with the fairs for a while. I heard there was one in the Trastevere, so I left my horses outside the city walls and came to look while the streets were quiet…"