The Wolves of Midwinter (12 page)

Reuben walked around the now-vacant bedroom for some half an hour, imagining the nursery, and then went to investigate all the necessary accoutrements online. Lisa chatted happily about the necessity of a good German nanny who would sleep in the room while the little boy was an infant, and all the marvelous Swiss shops from which the finest layette imaginable could be ordered, and the necessity of surrounding a sensitive little one with fine furnishings, soothing colors, the music of Mozart and Bach, and appealing paintings from the very start of his life.

“Now, you must leave the nanny to me,” said Lisa forcefully as she straightened the white curtains in the new office. “And I will find the most marvelous of women to do this job for you. I have someone in mind. A beloved friend, yes, very beloved. You ask Master Felix. And you leave it to me.”

Reuben was fine with it, yet something about her suddenly struck him as strange. There was a moment when Lisa turned and smiled at him that he had an uneasy feeling about her, that something was not quite right about her and what she was saying, but he shrugged it off.

He stood watching her as she dusted Laura’s desk. Her mode of dress was prim, old-fashioned, even out-of-date. But she was spry in her movements and rather economical. It nudged at him, her whole demeanor, but he couldn’t quite figure out why.

She was slender to the point of being wiry but unusually strong. He’d seen that when she forced the window which had been stuck fast with fresh paint. And there were other strange things about her.

Like now, when she seated herself before Laura’s computer, turned it on, and quickly ascertained that it was in fact going “online” as it should.

Reuben Golding, you are a sexist, he said to himself silently. Why do you find it surprising that a forty-five-year-old woman from Switzerland would know all about checking that a computer was online? He’d seen Lisa often enough on the household computer in Marchent’s old office. And she hadn’t been merely pecking away.

She seemed to catch him studying her, and she gave him a surprisingly cold smile. Then giving his arm a squeeze as she passed, she moved out of the room.

For all her attractiveness, which he did like very much, there was something mannish about her, and as he heard her steps echoing down the hall they sounded like those of a man. More shameless sexism, he thought. She did have the prettiest gray eyes, and her skin had a powdery soft look to it, and what was he thinking?

He’d never paid much attention to Heddy or Jean Pierre, he realized. In fact, he was a little shy around them, not being used to “servants,” as Felix so easily called them. But there was something a little strange about them too, about their whispering, their almost stealthy movements, and the way that they never looked him in the eye.

None of these people showed the slightest interest in anything ever said in their presence, and that was odd, when he thought about it, because the Distinguished Gentlemen talked so openly in front
of them, at meals, about their various activities that you would have thought there would be a raised eyebrow, but there never was. Indeed no one ever dropped his voice when talking about anything just because the servants might hear.

Well, Felix and Margon knew them well, these servants, so who was he to be questioning them, and they couldn’t have been more agreeable to everyone. So he ought to let it go. But the child was coming, and now that the child was coming, he was going to care about a lot of little things, perhaps, that he hadn’t cared about in the past.

By evening, Celeste had changed the terms of her agreement slightly.

Mort, after some agonizing reflection, saw absolutely no reason why he should be the husband of record here, and neither did she. It was agreed that Reuben would drive down to San Francisco on Friday and marry Celeste in a simple legal ceremony at City Hall. No blood test or waiting period was required by California law, thank heaven, and a small “prenup” was being drafted by Simon Oliver that would guarantee a simple no-fault divorce settlement as soon as the child was born. Grace was taking care of the money involved.

Celeste and Mort had already moved into the guest bedroom at the Russian Hill house. They’d live with Grace and Phil until the baby came into the world and went to live with its father. But Mort didn’t want to be around for the wedding.

Yes, Grace admitted, Celeste was angry, angry at the whole world. Prepare for some ranting. She was angry she was pregnant, and somehow Reuben had become an archvillain, but “We have to think of the baby.” Reuben agreed.

A little dazed and angry himself, Reuben called Laura. She was fine with the marriage. Reuben’s son would be his legal offspring. Why not?

“Would you consider going with me?” asked Reuben.

“Of course, I’ll go with you,” she said.

H
E WAS AWAKENED
in the middle of the night by the howling—the same lone Morphenkind voice he’d heard the night before.

It was about two a.m. He didn’t know how long it had been going on, only that it had finally penetrated his thin chaotic dreams and nudged him towards consciousness. He sat up in the darkened bedroom and listened.

It went on for a long time, but gradually became fainter as if the Morphenkind was moving slowly and steadily away from Nideck Point. It had a tragic, plaintive quality as before. It was positively baleful. And then he couldn’t hear it anymore.

An hour later when he couldn’t get back to sleep, Reuben put on his robe and took a walk through the corridors of the second floor. He felt uneasy. He knew what he was doing. He was looking for Marchent. He found it an agony to wait for her to find him.

In fact, waiting for her was like waiting for the wolf transformation in those early days after he’d first changed, and it filled him with dread. But it soothed his nerves to make a circuit of the upstairs hallways. They were illuminated only by the occasional sconce, little better than night-lights, but he could see the beautiful polish on the boards.

The smell of floor wax was almost sweet.

He liked the spaciousness, the firm wood that barely creaked under his slippers, and the glimpse of the open rooms where he could just make out the pale squares of the undraped windows revealing the faint sheen of a wet gray nighttime sky.

He moved along the back hallway, and then turned into one of the smaller rooms, never occupied by anyone since he’d come, and tried to see out of the window into the forest behind the house.

He listened for that howling again, but he didn’t hear it. He could make out a very dim light in the second floor of the service building to his left. He thought that was Heddy’s room, but he wasn’t sure.

But he could see precious little else of the dark forest itself.

A chill came over him, a pringling on the surface of his skin. He stiffened, keenly aware of the wolf hair bristling inside him, nudging him, but he didn’t know why it had come.

Then very slowly, as he felt the prickling all over his face and scalp, he heard noises out there in the darkness, the dull crash of branches, and the sounds of grunts and snarls. He narrowed his eyes, feeling the wolf blood pulse in his arteries, feeling his fingers elongating, and he could just barely make out two figures beyond the end of the shed, in the clearing before the trees closed in, two wolfish figures who seemed to be pushing and shoving at each other, fending one another off, then gesticulating like human beings. Morphenkinder certainly, but which Morphenkinder?

Before this moment, he was certain he knew all the others by sight when they were in wolf coat. But now he was not certain at all who these two were. He was witnessing a violent quarrel, that much was clear. Suddenly the taller of the two threw the shorter Morphenkind against the doors of the shed. A dull reverberation went up from the wood as if it were the surface of a drum.

A high angry riff of syllables broke from the shorter figure, and then the taller figure, turning his back on the other, threw up his arms and let loose with a long, mournful, yet carefully modulated howl.

The shorter figure flew at the taller one; but the tall Morphenkind shoved him off and again appeared to lift his head as he howled.

The scene paralyzed Reuben. The transformation was coming over him fiercely now, and he fought desperately to stop it.

A sound interrupted him, the heavy tread of feet just behind him, and he started violently, turning to see the familiar figure of Sergei against the pale light of the hall.

“Leave them alone, little wolf,” he said in his deep gravelly voice. “Let them fight it out.”

Reuben shuddered all over. One violent chill after another passed through him as he fought the transformation and won. His skin felt naked and cold, and he was trembling.

Sergei had come up beside him and was looking down into the yard.

“They will fight it out and it will be over,” he said. “And I know there is no way with those two but to leave them alone.”

“It’s Margon and Felix, isn’t it?”

Sergei looked at Reuben with undisguised surprise.

“I can’t tell,” Reuben confessed.

“Yes, it’s Margon and Felix,” said Sergei. “And it doesn’t matter. The Forest Gentry would eventually come whether Felix called them or not.”

“The Forest Gentry?” asked Reuben. “But who are the Forest Gentry?”

“Never mind, little wolf,” he said. “Come away and let them alone. The Forest Gentry always come at Midwinter. When we dance on Christmas Eve, the Forest Gentry will surround us. They will play their pipes and drums for us. They can do no harm.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Reuben. He glanced back down at the clearing beyond the shed.

Felix stood alone now facing the forest, and raising his head he gave another of those plaintive howls.

Sergei was leaving. “But wait, please tell me,” Reuben insisted. “Why are they fighting over this?”

“Is it so disturbing to you that they fight?” said Sergei. “Get accustomed to it, Reuben. They do it. They have always done it. It was Margon who brought the human family of Felix into our world. Nothing will ever divide Margon and Felix.”

Sergei left him. He heard the door of his room close.

The sound of the howling came from far off.

Four a.m.

Reuben had fallen asleep in the library. He was sitting in Felix’s leather wing chair by the fire, his feet on the fender. He’d done some
computer work, trying to trace down the words “Forest Gentry,” but could find nothing of any significance. And then he had sat by the fire, eyes closed, begging Marchent to come to him, begging her to tell him why she was suffering. Sleep had come but no Marchent.

Now he woke and at once sensed that some particular change in things around him had indeed awakened him.

The fire had burned low but was still bright in the shadows because a new log had been added to it; a big thick chunk of oak had been nestled in the embers of the fire he’d built two hours ago. Only shadows surrounded him in his chair before the brightness of the fire.

But someone was moving in the room.

Slowly he turned his head to the left, looking past the wing of the leather chair. He saw the slim figure of Lisa moving about. Deftly, she straightened the velvet draperies to the left side of the huge window. Bending easily, she stacked the books that lay on the floor there.

And in the window seat gazing at her with a look of fierce and tearful resentment sat Marchent.

Reuben couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. The scene struck perfect horror in him more surely than any other visitation—the spectacle of the living Lisa and the ghost in hideous proximity to each other. He opened his mouth but no sound came out.

Marchent’s quivering eyes followed Lisa’s smallest gestures. Agony. Now Lisa moved forward towards the ghostly figure, smoothing the velvet cushion of the window seat. As she drew nearer the seated figure, the two women looked at each other.

Reuben gasped; he felt he was smothering.

Marchent looked up furiously and bitterly at the figure who reached quite literally through her, and it seemed the obdurate Lisa stared right at Marchent.

Reuben cried out. “Don’t disturb her!” he said before he could think or stop himself. “Don’t torture her!” He was on his feet shaking violently.

Marchent’s head turned as did Lisa’s, and Marchent raised her arms, reaching towards him, and then vanished.

Reuben felt a pressure against him, he felt the pressure of hands on his upper arms, and then the soft tingling feeling of hair and lips touching him, and then it was gone, completely gone. The fire burst and crackled as if a wind had touched it. Papers on the desk rustled and then settled.

“Oh God,” he said in a half sob. “You couldn’t see her!” he stammered. “She was there, there on the window seat. Oh God!” He felt his eyes watering, and his breaths came uneasily.

Silence.

He looked up.

Lisa stood there behind the Chesterfield sofa with that same cold smile he’d seen on her narrow delicate features once before, looking both ancient and young somehow with her hair swept back so tight, and her black silk dress so prim to her ankles.

“Of course I saw her,” she said.

The inevitable sweat broke out all over Reuben. He felt it crawling on his chest.

Her voice came again, unobtrusive and solicitous as she approached him.

“I have been seeing her since I came,” she said. Her expression was faintly contemptuous, or at the very least patronizing.

“But you reached right through her as if she weren’t there,” Reuben said, the tears sliding down his face. “You shouldn’t have treated her like that.”

“And what was I to do?” said the woman, deliberately softening her manner. She sighed. “She doesn’t know she’s dead! I’ve told her, but she won’t accept it! Should I treat her as if she is a living creature here? Will that help her!”

Reuben was stunned. “Stop it,” he said. “Slow down. What do you mean she doesn’t know she’s dead?”

“She doesn’t know,” repeated the woman with a light shrug.

“That’s … that’s too awful,” Reuben whispered. “I can’t believe such a thing, that a person wouldn’t know she was dead. I can’t—.”