Taltos (4 page)

Whatever the case, it was no good to have them in a dark time, to use Samuel’s words, not with all they knew and kept within their archives. Not good. And for some strange reason his heart went out to this gypsy in the glen. And his curiosity burned as fierce as ever regarding the Taltos, the witches.

Dear God, the very thought of witches.

When Remmick came back, he had the fur-lined coat over his arm.

“Cold enough for this, sir,” he said, as he put it over the boss’s shoulders. “And you looked chilled, sir, already.”

“It’s nothing,” he replied. “Don’t come down with me.
There’s something you must do. Send money to Claridge’s in London. It’s for a man named Samuel. The management will have no trouble identifying Samuel. He is a dwarf and he is a hunchback and he has very red hair, and a very wrinkled face. You must arrange everything so that this little man has exactly what he wants. Oh, and there is someone with him. A gypsy. I have no idea what this means.”

“Yes, sir. The surname, sir?”

“I don’t know what it is, Remmick,” he answered, rising to go, and pulling the fur-lined cape closer under his neck. “I’ve known Samuel for so long.”

He was in the elevator before he realized that this last statement was absurd. He said too many things of late that were absurd. The other day Remmick had said how much he loved the marble in all these rooms, and he had answered, “Yes, I loved marble from the first time I ever saw it,” and that had sounded absurd.

The wind howled in the elevator shaft as the cab descended at astonishing speed. It was a sound heard only in winter, and a sound which frightened Remmick, though he himself rather liked it, or thought it amusing at the very least.

When he reached the underground garage the car was waiting, giving off a great flood of noise and white smoke. His suitcases were being loaded. There stood his night pilot, Jacob, and the nameless copilot, and the pale, straw-colored young driver who was always on duty at this hour, the one who rarely ever spoke.

“You’re sure you want to make this trip, tonight, sir?” asked Jacob.

“Is nobody flying?” he asked. He stopped, eyebrows raised, hand on the door. Warm air came from the inside of the car.

“No, sir, there are people flying.”

“Then we’re going to fly, Jacob. If you’re frightened, you don’t have to come.”

“Where you go, I go, sir.”

“Thank you, Jacob. You once assured me that we fly safely above the weather now, and with far greater security than a commercial jet.”

“Yes, I did do that, sir, didn’t I?”

He sat back on the black leather seat and stretched out his long legs, planting his feet on the seat opposite, which no man of normal height could have done in this long stretch limousine. The driver was comfortably shut away behind glass, and the others followed in the car behind him. His bodyguards were in the car ahead.

The big limousine rushed up the ramp, taking the curbs with perilous but exciting speed, and then out the gaping mouth of the garage into the enchanting white storm. Thank God the beggars had been rescued from the streets. But he had forgotten to ask about the beggars. Surely some of them had been brought into his lobby and given warm drink and cots upon which to sleep.

They crossed Fifth Avenue and sped towards the river. The storm was a soundless torrent of lovely tiny flakes. They melted as they struck the dark windows and the wet sidewalks. They came down through the dark faceless buildings as if into a deep mountain pass.

Taltos
.

For a moment the joy went out of his world—the joy of his accomplishments, and his dreams. In his mind’s eye he saw the pretty young woman, the dollmaker from California, in her crushed violet silk dress. He saw her in his mind dead on a bed, with blood all around her, making her dress dark.

Of course it wouldn’t happen. He never let it happen anymore, hadn’t in so long he could scarce remember what it was like to wrap his arms around a soft female body, scarce remember the taste of the milk from a mother’s breast.

But he thought of the bed, and the blood, and the girl dead and cold, and her eyelids turning blue, as well as the flesh beneath her fingernails, and finally even her face. He pictured this because if he didn’t, he would picture too many other things. The sting of this kept him chastened, kept him within bounds.

“Oh, what does it matter? Male. And dead.”

Only now did he realize that he would see Samuel! He and Samuel would be together. Now that was something
that flooded him with happiness, or would if he let it. And he had become a master of letting the floods of happiness come when they would.

He hadn’t seen Samuel in five years, or was it more? He had to think. Of course they had talked on the phone. As the wires and phones themselves improved, they had talked often. But he hadn’t actually seen Samuel.

In those days there had only been a little white in his hair. God, was it growing so fast? But of course Samuel had seen the few white hairs and remarked on it. And Ash had said, “It will go away.”

For one moment the veil lifted, the great protective shield which so often saved him from unendurable pain.

He saw the glen, the smoke rising; he heard the awful ring and clatter of swords, saw the figures rushing towards the forest. Smoke rising from the brochs and from the wheel houses … Impossible that it could have happened!

The weapons changed; the rules changed. But massacres were otherwise the same. He had lived on this continent now some seventy-five years, returning to it always within a month or two of leaving, for many reasons, and no small part of it was that he did not want to be near the flames, the smoke, the agony and terrible rain of war.

The memory of the glen wasn’t leaving him. Other memories were connected—of green fields, wildflowers, hundreds upon hundreds of tiny blue wildflowers. On the river he rode in a small wooden craft, and the soldiers stood on the high battlements; ah, what these creatures did, piling one rock upon another to make great mountains of their own! But what were his own monuments, the great sarsens which hundreds dragged across the plain to make the circle?

The cave, he saw that too again, as if a dozen vivid photographs were shuffled suddenly before him, and one moment he was running down the cliff, slipping, nearly falling, and at another Samuel stood there, saying,

“Let’s leave here, Ash. Why do you come here? What is there to see or to learn?”

He saw the Taltos with the white hair.

“The wise ones, the good ones, the knowing ones,” they had called them. They had not said “old.” It would never
have been a word they would have used in those times, when the springs of the island were warm, and the fruit fell from the trees. Even when they’d come to the glen, they had never said the word “old,” but everyone knew they had lived the longest. Those with the white hair knew the longest stories….

“Go up now and listen to the story.”

On the island, you could pick which of the white-haired ones you wanted, because they themselves would not choose, and you sat there listening to the chosen one sing, or talk, or say the verses, telling the deepest things that he could remember There had been a white-haired woman who sang in a high, sweet voice, her eyes always fixed on the sea. And he had loved to listen to her.

And how long, he thought, how many decades would it be before his own hair was completely white?

Why, it might be very soon, for all he knew. Time itself had meant nothing then. And the white-haired females were so few, because the birthing made them wither young. No one talked about that either, but everybody knew it.

The white-haired males had been vigorous, amorous, prodigious eaters, and ready makers of predictions. But the white-haired woman had been frail. That is what birth had done to her.

Awful to remember these things, so suddenly, so clearly. Was there perhaps another magic secret to the white hair? That it made you remember from the beginning? No, it wasn’t that, it was only that in all the years of never knowing how long, he had imagined that he would greet death with both arms, and now he did not feel that way.

His car had crossed the river, and was speeding towards the airport. It was big and heavy and hugged the slippery asphalt. It held steady against the beating wind.

On the memories tumbled. He’d been old when the horsemen had ridden down upon the plain. He’d been old when he saw the Romans on the battlements of the Antonine Wall, when he’d looked down from Columba’s door on the high cliffs of Iona.

Wars. Why did they never go out of his memory, but wait there in all their full glory, right along with the sweet
recollections of those he’d loved, of the dancing in the glen, of the music? The riders coming down upon the grassland, a dark mass spreading out as if it were ink upon a peaceful painting, and then the low roar just reaching their ears, and the sight of the smoke rising in endless clouds from their horses. He awoke with a start.

The little phone was ringing for him. He grasped it hard and pulled it from its black hook.

“Mr. Ash?”

“Yes, Remmick?’’

“I thought you’d like to know, sir. At Claridge’s, they are familiar with your friend Samuel. They have arranged his usual suite for him, second floor, corner, with the fireplace. They are waiting for you. And, Mr. Ash, they don’t know his surname either. Seems he doesn’t use it.”

“Thank you, Remmick. Say a little prayer. The weather’s very volatile and dangerous, I think.”

He hung up before Remmick could begin the conventional warnings. Should never have said such a thing, he thought.

But that was really amazing—their knowing Samuel at Claridge’s. Imagine their having gotten used to Samuel. The last time Ash had seen Samuel, Samuel’s red hair had been matted and shaggy, and his face so deeply wrinkled that his eyes were no longer fully visible, but flashed now and then in random light, like broken amber in the soft, mottled flesh. In those days Samuel had dressed in rags and carried his pistol in his belt, rather like a little pirate, and people had veered out of his path on the street.

“They’re all afraid of me, I can’t remain here. Look at them, they’re more afraid in these times than long ago.”

And now they were used to him in Claridge’s! Was he having his suits made for him on Savile Row? Did his dirty leather shoes not have holes? Had he forsaken his gun?

The car stopped, and he had to force the door open, his driver rushing to help him, as the snow swept against him in the wind.

Nevertheless, the snow was so pretty, and so clean before it struck the ground. He stood up, feeling a stiffness in his
limbs for a moment, and then he put his hand up to keep the soft, moist flakes from striking his eyes.

“It’s not so bad, really, sir,” said Jacob. “We can get out of here in less than an hour. You should board immediately, sir, if you please.”

“Yes, thank you, Jacob,” he said. He stopped. The snow was falling all over his dark coat. He could feel it melting in his hair. Nevertheless, he reached into his pocket, felt for the small toy, the rocking horse, yes, it was there.

“This is for your son, Jacob,” he said. “I promised him.”

“Mr. Ash, for you to remember something like that on a night like this.”

“Nonsense, Jacob. I’ll bet your son remembers.”

It was embarrassingly insignificant, this little toy of wood; he wished now that it were something infinitely better. He would make a note—something better for Jacob’s son.

Taking big steps, he walked too fast for the driver to follow. He was too tall for the umbrella anyway. It was just a gesture, the man rushing beside him, umbrella in hand, for him to take it if he wanted it, which he never did.

He boarded the warm, close, and always frightening jet plane.

“I have your music, Mr. Ash.”

He knew this young woman, but he couldn’t remember her name. She was one of the best of the night secretaries. She’d been with him on the last trip to Brazil. He had meant to remember her. Shameful not to have her name on the very tip of his tongue.

“Evie, isn’t it?” he asked, smiling, begging forgiveness with a little bit of a frown.

“No, sir, Leslie,” she said, forgiving him instantly.

If she’d been a doll, she would have been bisque, no doubt of it, face underpainted with a soft rose blush to cheeks and lips, eyes deliberately small, but dark and deeply focused. Timidly she waited.

As he took his seat, the great leather chair made especially for him, longer than the others, she put the engraved program in his hand.

There were the usual selections—Beethoven, Brahms,
Shostakovich. Ah, here was the composition he had requested—the Verdi
Requiem
. But he couldn’t listen to it now. If he slipped himself into those dark chords and dark voices, the memories would close in.

He put his head back, ignoring the winter spectacle outside the little window. “Sleep, you fool,” he said without moving his lips.

But he knew he wouldn’t. He would think about Samuel and the things Samuel had said, over and over, until they saw one another again. He would remember the smell of the Talamasca house, and how much the scholars had looked like clerics, and a human hand with a quill pen, writing in great curled letters. “Anonymous. Legends of the lost land. Of Stonehenge.”

“Just want to be quiet, sir?” asked the young Leslie.

“No, Shostakovich, the Fifth Symphony. It will make me cry, but you must ignore me. I’m hungry. I want cheese and milk.”

“Yes, sir, everything’s ready.” She began to speak the names of the cheeses, those fancy triple creams that they ordered for him from France and Italy and God only knows where else. He nodded, accepting, waiting for the rush of the music, the divinely piercing quality of this engulfing electronic system, which would make him forget the snow outside, and the fact that they would soon be over the great ocean, pushing steadily towards England, towards the plain, towards Donnelaith, and towards heartbreak.

A
FTER THE FIRST
day, Rowan didn’t talk. She spent her time out under the oak, in a white wicker chair, her feet propped on a pillow, or sometimes merely resting on the grass. She stared at the sky, eyes moving as if there were a procession of clouds above, and not the clear spring blue, and the bits of white fleece that blew silently across it.