Taltos (45 page)

“You know,” said Marklin, “none of this was bearable even when I thought of myself as a dedicated novice. Now I find it simply outrageous. Being awakened at four in the morning … Good God, it’s actually five … for a mourning ceremony. It’s as stupid as those modern-day Druids, dressed up in sheets, who carry on at Stonehenge on the summer solstice, or whenever the hell they do it. I may let you say the appropriate words for us. I may wait in the car.”

“The hell you will,” said Tommy. He took several swipes at his dry hair with the comb. Useless.

They went out of the room together, Tommy stopping to lock the door. The hall was predictably cold.

“Well, you can do that if you wish,” said Marklin, “but I’m not coming back up to this floor. They can have whatever I’ve left in my room.”

“That would be perfectly stupid. You’ll pack as if you were leaving for normal reasons. Why the hell not?”

“I can’t stay here, I tell you.”

“And what if you’ve overlooked something in your room, something that would blow the lid off the entire affair?”

“I haven’t. I know I haven’t.”

The corridors and the staircase were empty. Possibly they were the last of the novices to hear the bell.

A soft whisper of voices rose from the first floor. As they came to the foot of the steps, Marklin saw it was worse than he could have imagined.

Look at the candles everywhere. Everyone, absolutely everyone, dressed in black! All the electric lights had been put out. A sickening gush of warm air surrounded them. Both fires were blazing. Good heavens! And they had draped every window in the house with crepe.

“Oh, this is too rich!” Tommy whispered. “Why didn’t someone tell us to dress?”

“It’s positively nauseating,” said Marklin. “Look, I’m giving it five minutes.”

“Don’t be a blasted fool,” said Tommy. “Where are the other novices? I see old people, everywhere, old people.”

There must have been a hundred in small groups, or simply standing alone against the dark oak-paneled walls. Gray hair everywhere. Well, surely the younger members were here somewhere.

“Come on,” said Tommy, pinching Marklin’s arm and pushing him into the hall.

A great supper was spread on the banquet table.

“Good Lord, it’s a goddamned feast,” Marklin said. It made him sick to look at it—roast lamb and beef, and bowls of steaming potatoes, and piles of shiny plates, and silver forks. “Yes, they’re eating, they’re actually eating!” he whispered to Tommy.

A whole string of elderly men and women were quietly and slowly filling their plates. Joan Cross was there in her wheelchair. Joan had been crying. And there was the formidable Timothy Hollingshed, wearing his innumerable titles
on his face as he always did, arrogant bastard, and not a penny to his name.

Elvera passed through the crowd with a decanter of red wine. The glasses stood on the sideboard. Now that is something I can use, thought Marklin, I can use that wine.

A sudden thought came to him of being free from here, on the plane to America, relaxed, his shoes kicked off, the stewardess plying him with liquor and delicious food. Only a matter of hours.

The bell was still tolling. How long was that going to go on? Several men near him were speaking Italian, all of them on the short side. There were the old grumbly British ones, the friends of Aaron’s, most of them now retired. And there was a young woman—well, at least she seemed young. Black hair and heavily made-up eyes. Yes, when you looked you saw they were senior members, but not merely the decrepit class. There stood Bryan Holloway, from Amsterdam. And there, those anemic and pop-eyed male twins who worked out of Rome.

No one was really looking at anyone, though people did talk to each other. Indeed, the air was solemn but convivial. From all around came soft murmurs of Aaron this, and Aaron that … always loved Aaron, adored Aaron. Seems they had forgotten Marcus entirely, and well they should, thought Marklin, if only they knew how cheaply Marcus had been bought out.

“Have some wine, please, gentlemen,” said Elvera softly. She gestured to the rows and rows of crystal glasses. Old stemware. All the old finery. Look at the antique silver forks with their deep encrustations. Look at the old dishes, dragged from some vault somewhere perhaps, to be loaded with fudge and iced cakes.

“No, thank you,” said Tommy, tersely. “Can’t eat with a plate and a glass in my hands.”

Someone laughed in the low roar of whispers and murmurs. Another voice rose above the others. Joan Cross sat solitary in the midst of the gathering, her forehead resting in her hand.

“But who are we mourning?” asked Marklin in a whisper. “Is it Marcus or Aaron?” He had to say something.
The candles made an irritating glare, for all the swimming darkness around him. He blinked. He had always loved this scent of pure wax, but this was overpowering, absurd.

Blake and Talmage were talking together rather heatedly in the corner. Hollingshed joined them. As far as Marklin knew, they were in their late fifties. Where were the other novices? No other novices. Not even Ansling and Perry, the officious little monsters. What does your instinct tell you? Something is wrong, very wrong.

Marklin went after Elvera, quickly catching her elbow.

“Are we supposed to be here?”

“Yes, of course you are,” said Elvera.

“We’re not dressed.”

“Doesn’t matter. Here, do have a drink.” This time she put the glass in his hand. He set down his plate on the edge of the long table. Probably a breach of etiquette, nobody else had done it. And, God, look at this spread. There was a great roasted boar’s head, with the apple in its mouth, and the suckling pig surrounded by fruit on its steaming silver platter. The mingled fragrances of the meat were delicious, he had to admit it. He was getting hungry! How absurd.

Elvera was gone, but Nathan Harberson was very close to him, looking down at him from his lofty mossback height.

“Does the Order always do this?” Marklin asked. “Throw a banquet when someone dies?”

“We have our rituals,” said Nathan Harberson in an almost sad voice. “We are an old, old order. We take our vows seriously.”

“Yes, very seriously,” said one of the pop-eyed twins from Rome. This one was Enzo, wasn’t it? Or was it Rodolpho? Marklin couldn’t remember. His eyes made you think of fish, too large for expression, indicative only of illness, and to think it had struck both of them. And when the twins both smiled as they were doing now, they looked rather hideous. Their faces were wrinkled, thin. But there was supposed to be some crucial difference between them. What was it? Marklin could not recall.

“There are certain basic principles,” said Nathan
Harberson, his velvety baritone voice growing a little louder, a little more confident, perhaps.

“And certain things,” said Enzo, the twin, “are beyond question with us.”

Timothy Hollingshed had drawn near and was looking down his aquiline nose at Marklin, as he always did. His hair was white and thick, like Aaron’s had been. Marklin didn’t like the look of him. It was like looking at a cruel version of Aaron, much taller, more ostentatiously elegant. God, look at the man’s rings. Positively vulgar, and every one was supposed to have its history, replete with tales of battle, treachery, vengeance. When can we leave here? When will all this end?

“Yes, we hold certain things sacred,” Timothy was saying, “just as if we were a small nation unto ourselves.”

Elvera had returned. “Yes, it isn’t merely a matter of tradition.”

“No,” said a tall, dark-haired man with ink-black eyes and a bronzed face. “It’s a matter of a deep moral commitment, of loyalty.”

“And of reverence,” said Enzo. “Don’t forget reverence.”

“A consensus,” said Elvera, looking straight at him. But then they were
all
looking at him. “On what is of value, and how it must be protected at all costs.”

More people had pressed into the room, senior members only. A predictable increase in soft chatter. Someone laughing again. Didn’t people have the sense not to laugh?

There is something just flat-out wrong with this, that we’re the only novices, thought Marklin. And where was Tommy? Suddenly in a panic, he realized he had lost sight of Tommy. No, there he was, eating grapes from the table like some sort of Roman plutocrat. Ought to have the decency not to do that.

Marklin gave a quick, uneasy nod to those clustered around him and pushed through a tight press of men and women, and, nearly tripping over someone’s foot, landed finally at Tommy’s side.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Tommy demanded. He was looking at the ceiling. “For God’s sake,
relax. We’ll be on the plane in a few hours. Then we’ll be in …”

“Shhh, don’t say anything,” said Marklin, conscious that his voice was no longer normal, no longer under his control. If he had ever been this apprehensive in his life, he didn’t remember it.

For the first time he saw that the black cloth had been draped everywhere along the walls. The two clocks of the great hall were covered! And the mirrors, the mirrors were veiled in black. He found these things totally unnerving. He had never seen such old-fashioned funeral trappings. When people in his family had died, they’d been cremated. Someone called you later to tell you that it had been done. That was precisely what had happened with his parents. He’d been at school, lying on his bed, reading Ian Herning, when the call came, and he had only nodded and gone on reading.
And now you’ve inherited everything, absolutely everything
.

Suddenly he was thoroughly sick from the candles. He could see the candelabra everywhere, such costly silver. Some of them were even encrusted with jewels. God, how much money did this Order have stashed away in its cellars and its vaults? A small nation indeed. But then it was all the fault of fools like Stuart, who had long ago willed his entire fortune to the Order, and must surely have changed that will, all things considered, of course.

All things. Tessa. The plan. Where was Stuart now—with Tessa?

The talk grew louder and louder. There was the tinkling of glasses. Elvera came again and poured more wine into his glass.

“Drink up, Mark,” she said.

“Do behave, Mark,” whispered Tommy, unpleasantly close to his face.

Marklin turned. This wasn’t his religion. This wasn’t his custom, to stand about feasting and drinking in black clothes at dawn!

“I’m going now!” he suddenly declared. His voice seemed to explode from his mouth and echo throughout the room!

Everybody else had gone silent.

For one second, in the ringing stillness, he almost gave in to a scream. The desire to scream was more pure in him than ever in childhood. To scream in panic, in horror. He didn’t know which.

Tommy pinched his arm, and pointed.

The double doors to the dining hall had been opened. Ah, so that was the reason for the silence. Dear God, had they brought the remains of Aaron home?

The candles, the crepe—it was the very same in the dining hall, another cavern of grimness. He was determined not to enter, but before he could act upon this decision, the crowd moved him slowly and solemnly towards the open doorway. He and Tommy were being almost carried along.

Don’t want to see any more, want to leave here …

The press loosened as they passed through the doors. Men and women were filing around the long table. Someone
was
laid out on the table. God, not Aaron! Can’t look at Aaron.
And they know you can’t look at him, don’t they? They are waiting for you to panic, and for Aaron’s wounds to bleed!

Horrible, stupid. He clutched Tommy’s arm again, and heard Tommy’s correction. “Do be still!”

At last they had come to the edge of the grand old table. This was a man in a dusty wool jacket, with mud on his shoes. Look, mud. This was no corpse properly laid out.

“This is ludicrous,” said Tommy under his breath.

“What sort of funeral is this!” he heard himself say aloud.

Slowly he leant over so that he could see the dead face that was turned away from him. Stuart. Stuart Gordon, dead and lying on this table—Stuart’s impossibly thin face, with its bird-beak of a nose, and his lifeless blue eyes. Dear God, they had not even closed his eyes! Were they all insane?

He backed away awkwardly, colliding with Tommy, feeling his heel on Tommy’s toe, and then the swift removal of Tommy’s foot. All thought seemed beyond him. A dread took hold of him totally. Stuart is dead, Stuart is dead, Stuart is dead.

Tommy was staring at the body. Did he know it was Stuart?

“What is the meaning of this?” Tommy asked, his voice

low and full of wrath. “What’s happened to Stuart….” But the words had little conviction. His voice, always a monotone, was now weak with shock.

The others drew in all around them, pressing them right against the table. Stuart’s limp left hand lay right near them.

“For the love of heaven,” said Tommy angrily. “Someone close his eyes.”

From one end of the table to the other, the members surrounded it, a phalanx of mourners in black. Or were they mourners? Even Joan Cross was there, at the head of the table, arms resting on the arms of her wheelchair, her reddened eyes fixed upon them!

No one spoke. No one moved. The first stage of silence had been the absence of speech. This was the second stage, the absence of movement, with members so still he could not even hear anyone draw breath.

“What’s happened to him!” demanded Tommy.

Still no one answered. Marklin could not fix his gaze on anything; he kept looking at the small dead skull, with its thin covering of white hair.
Did you kill yourself, you fool, you crazed fool? Is that what you did? At the first chance of discovery?

And suddenly, very suddenly, he realized that all the others were not looking at Stuart, they were looking at Tommy and at him.

He felt a pain in his chest as though someone had begun to press on his breastbone with impossibly strong hands.

He turned, desperately searching the faces around him—Enzo, Harberson, Elvera, and the others, staring at him with malign expressions, Elvera herself staring straight up into his eyes. And right beside him, Timothy Hollingshed, staring coldly down at him.