The Wolves of Midwinter (51 page)

The next day, the house was in a pleasant little uproar. Felix unveiled his plans to build, with Reuben’s approval of course, “a great enclosed swimming pool” off the north side of the conservatory, stretching along the western wall of the house. The architectural plans had already been drawn up. Jamie obviously thought it was the most exciting thing ever, and he stood gazing down over the intricate drawings with wonder, asking if people had done these on a computer or by hand. Of course the enclosure would be a dramatic and harmonious extension of the existing conservatory with lots of white iron, gingerbread, and beautifully shaped windows. And more tropical plants. And Felix was looking into the matter of geothermal heat. Jamie knew about geothermal heat. He’d been reading about it online.

Margon was watching all this with amusement, and Sergei came in with Frank for breakfast and expressed his usual friendly but cynical dismissal of Felix, who was “always building something, always making plans, making plans.”

“And Sergei will be the first one,” said Berenice to Laura in a polite voice, “to swim the length of that swimming pool fifty times each morning, once it’s built.”

“Did I say I wouldn’t swim in the pool?” asked Sergei. “But what about a heliport out back or a jet runway? Or better yet a harbor down there where we can dock a hundred-foot yacht.”

“I never thought of that,” said Felix with genuine exuberance. “Reuben. What do you think? Imagine it, a harbor. We could dredge a small harbor, a slip for a yacht.”

“I think these are marvelous ideas,” said Reuben. “The luxury of an indoor pool, totally connected to the house, is something unimaginably wonderful. Yes, go ahead. Let me get my checkbook.”

“Nonsense, dear boy,” said Felix. “I’ll take care of it, of course. But this is the question. Do we make the northern end of this new enclosure connect with the old household office off the kitchen? Does that room go, so to speak, and do we replace it with a bright dining area at the northern end of the pool?”

A sword pierced Reuben. Marchent had been in that office, working, when her brothers, her murderers, had broken into the house. From there she’d run into the kitchen, where they had viciously and brutally stabbed her to death.

“Yes, let’s take that room away,” said Reuben. “I mean, let’s open that space up into the new enclosure.”

Hockan drifted in, distant, but smiling agreeably enough, and deeply polite to Lorraine and the children as he had been all along. He gazed at the blueprints with respectful awe, murmuring something under his breath like “Felix and his dreams.”

“We all need dreams,” Frank muttered. He had been on the fringes, drinking his coffee in silence.

Hockan and Sergei pulled Reuben aside at the first chance. “When do you want us to start looking for your brother?” Hockan asked with obvious sincerity. “Sergei, Frank, the rest of us. We have ways of finding people that others don’t have.”

“I know, but where do we look?” asked Reuben. “We could go back down to Carmel and start there.” But he had his doubts.

“Say the word,” said Sergei.

“If we haven’t heard anything by tomorrow, I’m going back down there, with anyone who’s willing to help.”

That night was Saturday night, and the house was filled with a celebratory atmosphere, with a huge dinner in the main dining room and plenty of extraordinary wines. Everyone was present, and the little Maitland family seemed dazzled by the candlelight, the display of china and silver, the rapid-fire conversation flying back and forth, and the soft piano music floating from the living room where Frank and Berenice traded off playing Mozart.

For the first time since his spectacular arrival, Hockan was genuinely talkative, chatting about beauties of the British Isles with Lorraine and Thibault. He was so attentive and so unfailingly polite that Reuben worried about it a little, that there was a note of sadness and humiliation in it. He couldn’t be sure.

Stuart was in awe of Hockan but he didn’t trust him. That Reuben could tell.

Hockan is trying very hard, Reuben thought, to be part of all this. For others it’s natural. Felix makes it all natural. And Hockan is truly trying to fit in. But he couldn’t help notice the suspicion in Berenice’s eyes when she studied Hockan. Lisa watched him rather coldly also. Who knew what stories these two had to tell?

Each and every one of the Distinguished Gentlemen and the Distinguished Ladies made it a point to engage the newcomers in conversation, to ask polite yet slightly unusual questions, and to invite them into enduring threads of discussion. Phil and Jamie had called a truce as to certain irreconcilable differences over politics, art, music, literature, and the fate of Western civilization. Christine rolled her eyes when Jamie held forth and Jamie rolled his whenever she shrieked with laughter at one of Sergei’s jokes or Felix’s playful teasing. But Reuben detected a deep anxiety behind Lorraine’s unfailingly pleasant speech and expression. And he himself was both happy and miserable, happier perhaps than ever in his life, as if his life now was a staircase of ever-escalating happinesses, while at the same time he was so frightened for Jim, he could scarcely bear it.

Felix rose to make a final toast.

“Tonight, dear ladies and gentlemen, and beloved children,” he said, his glass raised. “This is the very end of the Christmas season.
Tomorrow, Sunday, will be the official end with the Church of Rome celebrating the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus Christ. Then the church calendar will begin on Monday what has always been called so solemnly and beautifully ‘Ordinary Time.’ And we must reflect tonight on what Christmas has meant to us.”

“Hear, hear,” said Sergei, “and we shall all reflect on this as deeply and briefly and concisely as possible.”

“Oh, let Felix go on,” said Hockan. “If Felix finishes by tomorrow night at midnight when ‘Ordinary Time’ begins, we should count ourselves lucky.”

“Or are we going to get another toast tomorrow night,” asked Thibault, “as the last few hours of the Christmas season slip through our fingers!”

“Maybe what this house needs is a public address system,” Sergei suggested. “And Felix could broadcast at regular intervals.”

“And anyone turning off his PA system would be arrested,” said Stuart, “and confined to the dungeons beneath us.”

“And we should print out the entire liturgical calendar,” said Sergei, “and post it on the kitchen wall.”

Felix laughed good-naturedly. He was absolutely undeterred.

“And I must say,” he went on, raising his glass once more, “that this, our first Christmas season at Nideck Point, has been exceptional. We have given gifts and received gifts that we could not possibly have anticipated. Our old and dear friend Hockan is once again with us. And Jamie, Christine, and Lorraine, you come to us as gifts—and you too, Berenice—gifts to our beloved Reuben and his beloved father Philip, and to our entire household. We salute you. We welcome you.”

Clapping, cheering, with embraces and kisses for Lorraine and Jamie and Christine.

“And a prayer for James,” said Felix lastly. “That James will come home safely very very soon.”

And then the company broke up for dessert and coffee buffet style in the great front room.

An hour or so later, just about everyone had gone off to sleep, read, watch TV, who knows what? And the house suddenly seemed dark
and empty, though its fires roared as always. Felix came to find Reuben in the library, where Reuben was at the desk computer searching for the numerous motels and guesthouses he meant to visit personally tomorrow.

“Don’t worry about your brother,” said Felix with an easy smile.

“And what in the world makes you say that?” Reuben asked gently. “For you—of all my beloved friends—never say anything that doesn’t mean something.”

“I know he will be all right,” said Felix. There was a light in his dark eyes. “I simply know. I have a feeling.” He drank the last of his wine and put the glass on the edge of the desk. “I have a feeling,” he said again. “I can’t say more, but I know your brother is all right now. And whatever happens when he knows about the children, well, he will be all right. And they are infinitely better off just now than they ever were before, without the loving knowledge and support of your family.”

Reuben only smiled. He couldn’t quite bring himself to answer.

“Well good night, dear boy,” said Felix. “And I should take this glass to the kitchen, shouldn’t I? I am so annoyed when people litter this house with cups and glasses!”

“And things go well with my father in the woods?”

“Splendidly,” said Felix. “But it’s good he had the Twelfth Night Feast. Morphenkinder by instinct want to hunt humans. I don’t think the forest is appreciated until that innate desire has seen some fulfillment.”

“Thank you, Felix,” Reuben said. “Thank you for everything.”

“Not at all. Don’t say another word,” said Felix. “I think I’ll walk down the hill and visit with your father.”

For a very long time, Reuben sat there, thinking, reflecting. Then he brought up a new blank page in his word processing program, and began to type.

“I died at the age of 23, in the season of the year which the church calls ‘Ordinary Time,’ ” he wrote. “And as we come once again to ‘Ordinary Time,’ I want to write the story of my life since that moment.”

And for another hour he wrote, stopping only now and then for a
moment or two, until finally he had filled some fifteen double-spaced pages. “And so I went from being ordinary, terribly ordinary, shamefully ordinary—out of ‘Ordinary Time’—into a world of exceptional expectations and revelations where miracles abound. And though my place has been given me in this new realm, my future is in my hands, and must be shaped by me with infinitely more care and thought than I ever gave before to my actions.”

He broke off finally, and stared at the distant window with its inevitable silver spatters of rain. And he thought with a sigh, Well, that didn’t take my mind off anything. And if he’s dead somewhere on a motel room floor, well, I know I killed him. I killed him. I killed his soul before I killed his body. And he’s the first casualty among my family of what I have become. And if I ever breathe this secret to another living being who is not one of us, well, I will probably become the murderer of that one too. And that cannot ever happen.

If he didn’t stop thinking about it he’d go crazy. Better to go upstairs and pack a bag for tomorrow.

Three a.m.

Something had awakened him.

He turned over and reached for his iPhone.

E-mail from Jim
.

He sat up, quickly scrolling through the writing.

“Back at my apartment. Just got in. Can I see you tomorrow after nine a.m. Mass at St. Francis? And thank you for sending Elthram. God only knows how he found me, but until he tapped on my window, I had no idea anybody was looking for me!”

M
ASS WAS WELL UNDER WAY
when Reuben slid into the third pew.

He’d dropped off Lorraine and the children with his mother, doing his best to fend off interrogation as to why Phil had not come down with them, and promising to bring Jim to the house on Russian Hill just as soon as he possibly could.

He was so relieved as he watched Jim on the altar that he almost started to cry.

Jim wore his splendid white and gold vestments for the special Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, and he seemed utterly calm as he went through the liturgy, coming at last to the sermon, and stepping down to walk back and forth before the pews as he spoke. His small clip-on mike amplified his voice perfectly, as always, in the vast crowded church. Only a deep redness in his eyes and a distinct paleness to his face revealed that the past few days might have been a trial.

At once he took up the very theme that Felix had mentioned the night before.

This was, though many did not know it, the last day of the Christmas season and tomorrow would be the first day of what the church so poetically called “Ordinary Time.”

“What is a baptism?” he asked the congregation. “What was baptism for Our Blessed Lord? He was sinless, was He not, so He didn’t need to be baptized. But He did it for us, didn’t He? To set an example, just as His entire life on earth was an example—from His birth amongst us as a baby, through boyhood and manhood amongst us, until He died as each and every one of us dies, to His resurrection from the dead. No, He didn’t need to be baptized. But it was a turning point for Him, a rebirth, the end of His private life and the beginning
of His ministry, and He went out into the wilderness to confront the temptation of Satan as a ‘new’ being. Okay, so what is a turning point? What is the meaning of rebirth or renewal? How many times do we experience this in our own lives?”

At once he went into the theme of Christmas, of Midwinter, and of all the age-old ways in which the Church and people of all nations in the West celebrate the Feast of Christmas.

“You know, for centuries, we’ve been criticized for grafting our sacred feast on a pagan holiday,” Jim said. “I’m sure you’ve heard the charges. Nobody knows the actual day on which Christ was born. But December twenty-fifth was a great feast to the pagans of the ancient world, the day when the sun was at its lowest ebb and people would gather in the fields, in the villages, and in the depths of the forest to beg for the sun to come back to us at full strength, for the days to lengthen once more. And for warmth to return to the world, melting the deadly snows of winter, and gently nourishing the crops of the field once again.

“Well, I think it was a stroke of genius to put these two feasts together,” said Jim. “Christ, born into this world, is a magnificent sign of transformation—of complete renewal, renewal of the physical world and the renewal of our souls.”

It was remarkably—though not surprisingly—like what Felix had said about Christmas and Midwinter, and Reuben loved it. He was lulled by Jim’s voice as with ease and authority his brother went on talking about the capacity for renewal being the very greatest gift we have been given in this life.

“Think about it for a minute,” Jim insisted. He stopped with his arms slightly raised, hands gently appealing to the congregation. “Think about what it means to renew, to repent, to start all over again. We human beings always have that capacity. No matter how badly we stumble, we can get up and try again. No matter how miserably we fail ourselves and God and those around us, we can get up and start all over again.