Nick grunted, grinning despite himself at the other’s mordant humor.
The old man shifted his feet. “So this baron, defeated by some enemy, made a pact with the daemon to assure vengeance on the victor. So, although they’d killed him, he came back again, this time living as a creature of such a daemon must live: on the blood of ordinary, mortal folk. They say he still walks the earth and calls himself von Craggen.”
“Still,” Nick said, feeling light-headed. He could see every ragged lock of hair winding out from under the edge of the old man’s worn woolen cap, every liver spot on his wrinkled skin. “But he did actually die first, right? How long ago?”
“Centuries,” the old man said, without elaboration.
Nick pressed on. “But he’s still walking around, as if he were just one of us?”
Walking around; hunting my ancestors down, stalking us like deer in his baronial forest—no, like bears or wolves. That’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy, a legend, a tall tale.
The old man breathed deeply and hugged his bulky clothes tighter around his body. “You must know this about us by now; you’ve traveled in this country before. We eat, breathe, drink, and bathe in stories of revenge. We love them and nurture them and lovingly polish them as we hand them on to a new generation. And so they stay alive.”
And so he stays alive, this relentless monster that stalks us and kills us.
“Is there more?” Nick said.
The old man looked up at where the sun had risen high enough to gleam palely behind the drifting fog. “Probably. Our stories of vengeance never end, and what doesn’t die must grow, isn’t that so?”
He stood up.
“Tell me everything you know; please. It’s important.” Nick grabbed the trunk of the tree and struggled to his feet.
“Of course it’s important,” the old man said. “But I’m hungry, and if you’ve had an early breakfast, it’s time by now for another.”
It could all be lies, Nick told himself, turning to look across the crooked old tombstones. Everything he’s told me so far and everything he’s going to tell me. But why would he lie? And the more fantastic it is, the truer I’ll know it to be. Maybe if what he gives me is good enough, I’ll tell him that I’ve seen his daemon with my own eyes, and what she looked like on her white horse, and then he can scoff if he likes and play the superior man of reason.
But should I tell him that I’ve also seen this baron? Because I have. He kissed Jessamyn’s hand. I saw.
“Who told you these stories?” he said, as they walked down toward the pitted remains of the road. “Did you hear them from your grandfather, your grandmother?”
The old man grinned, flashing two gold teeth. “My grandparents? No, no, how would they know? They lived in Mostar. I grew up there. We were city people, in pharmacy. Nobody actually born around here would tell you these tales, not even for money. They’re still afraid of the baron and his daemon, they don’t talk about them.
“No, I came here to study folk music in the countryside, and local people told me these things after a while. Also there are references in some of the older songs, if you know what to look for. I married a local girl and stayed on, teaching music.”
“Was she a Christian woman?” Nick said gently. “Your wife?”
The old man nodded. “I come here sometimes to visit her.”
They walked a little in silence. The old man dragged one foot slightly at each step, the edge of his shoe turning over small pebbles that made a wet sound in the mud.
Nick said, “You could leave this town.” He didn’t say, go back to your own family, to Mostar. He knew how seldom there was anything left for such people to go back to, and it was no surprise to him when the old man shook his head.
“No. I’m here, and I’ll stay here.”
“In spite of the baron who died but came back to life?” Nick said, glancing back at the crowded graveyard, the scattered stones, the leaning tree.
“I’m not superstitious,” the old man said. “Besides, if he exists, he still doesn’t come here. He travels. And I’m too old to run away from anyone now.”
Nick had to restrain a laugh, a surge of energy, a cry of triumph: at last, he was doing something, not sitting at home waiting for the baron—the enemy, obviously the enemy, impossibly the enemy—to come after him.
He’d stood on the creature’s own turf and listened to local gossip about him. And he’d learned.
His own daring filled him with hope as he hurried through the dissolving fog after the old man from Mostar who had come here in more peaceful times to study folk music.
Advice
That was not wise, the Dark One murmured. You are careless, to take your meal again so close to your enemy’s business and his woman. What if the little gnome-woman remembers more than she should about your time with her?
You are mistaken, Ivo thought. He stood on the street corner and watched the plate glass window of the Two White Cats, where Jessamyn Croft could be seen having coffee with two of the other actors, the older “lead" and a younger one. She did draw men to her, but that wasn’t surprising.
The Lady wouldn’t let it lie. How, “mistaken”?
Jessamyn Croft is not my quarry. Nicolas Griffin is, and Nicolas Griffin has shut up his house and gone abroad.
How strange, Baron. You seem to spend all your time with her, and none looking for him. Naturally, I conclude that the one you seem to be stalking is your quarry.
Nicolas Griffin loves her, he replied, digging his fists deeper into his coat pockets. He will not go far away from her for very long. Why can you not understand this? Old as you are, do you know nothing of love? If I stay near her, eventually he will come back to her—and to me.
Do you still want him to?
Of course, he thought. But perhaps not too quickly. I am in no hurry, Lady. And I cannot believe that after all this time, you are.
One of the young leather-clads he had dealt with on his first visit to the coffeehouse clumped past with a different companion this time, an older man in a lumpy down jacket and cargo pants. They didn’t seem to notice him where he stood under the awning of an all-night Korean grocery.
Now, that is where I should be feeding, he thought, following their progress down the windy street with narrowed eyes.
True, came the soundless words in his mind. They are full of drugs and sickness, exactly what you like best, or so you tell me.
He shrugged off her sarcasm. Not always. I drank from the little theater woman, and she was clean; not even the taint of tobacco.
He went silent, his attention trained on the actors at the window table, although they were blurred by the vapor on the inside of the glass.
If you liked it, you could go back and finish. This person would welcome your complete attentions, Baron, do you not think so? She has a poor life, in the corners of a world of appearances that despises and pities her for her stunted stature.
No, he answered. Lily Anderson likes her life, despite moments of self-doubt and regret and envy of others. But who doesn’t have these? She also has a child she loves and she is respected and well paid for her talent. Also because she functions well as part of a team, I think. Her life is strong and centered. Why should I kill such a person? There are too few of them in the world in any century.
Like this Jessamyn Croft? Is she one of them too? Is that why you spend your time looking at her, even at this moment when you seek to entrap the one who follows her?
Who is it, Lady? The same one who created these “accidents” at the theater?
Why do you care?
He smiled angrily, baring his teeth—not fangs, not without the hunting lust to draw them down. In his quiescent state he smiles as freely as other men.
I like to know who the enemies are, before I choose my tactics, he answered finally. You can tell me, you can surely see from where you are: who is it that harries her at her work with such cowardly slyness, and tracks her in her own city’s streets?
/> I might see, came the dreamy reply, but I have no wish to. These petty intrigues are so dull, Baron. You indulge yourself, but I am not indulgent by nature. I await the full flower of your revenge, which was the purpose of your extended life, remember.
I remember, he replied. He thought of commenting on the mindless devotion to revenge that provided the Dark Lady a recent feast of blood in his homeland, but at that moment he realized that the older man in cargo pants had entered the cafe, alone, and taken a corner table from which he could easily observe Jessamyn Croft and her two companions.
The big kid in the leather jacket had vanished, but Ivo recalled with relish warning him and his friends off with a physical gesture, the other night in the Two White Cats. He would have enjoyed demolishing the two boys, but for what? Discourtesy, and unwanted attention; but their crude arrogance had left lodged him with an inclination to teach them a hot, fast lesson.
The focus of his vengeance was becoming a bit more diffused than was healthy, now that he closed in, however slowly, on his real quarry, his final kill.
Revenge on the last head of the Griffin line was certainly his purpose in pursuing first Lily Anderson and now Jessamyn Croft; wasn’t it? Vengeance offered such a full, rich flavor to the palate of the imagination! No wonder most people—even an unnatural being like himself, with a long, long memory—never lost a taste for it.
Certainly not with the Dark One attentively hovering to remind him of the sweetness that he sought: Griffin blood, Griffin screams, Griffin spasms of terror and agony. A parade of men in various stages of extremity passed before the eye of his memory. These were Griffin men he had driven to reckless desperation, to outright madness, to suicide, or whom he had dispatched personally and with pleasure.
Why shouldn’t he enjoy it? They were wicked men, stubborn men, greedily withholding from him what he knew and they knew was rightfully his. If anything, he felt himself to be superior to the Dark One, having specific motivation for his own vengeful appetite, where she seemed to lust after bloodshed for its own sake.
Through the front window of the cafe Ivo watched Jessamyn laughing at something one of her companions said. She was a very handsome woman, and she had a particularly delightful, bubbling laugh that made other people smile.
But in her eyes the shadow of sadness still lurked, if you looked deeply enough. It was something worth noting. This shadow was powerful, and it spoke to him with unexpected authority.
He thought it was a forced awareness of her own mortality and that of those she loved. He respected her for that. Denial in its many forms was so much more common.
He had felt the crookedness and the scars on her hand when he’d taken it to kiss it. The subtle, imposed asymmetry of her face had been evident to him the first time he had seen her.
This person wasn’t just a pawn, and she wasn’t an enemy’s cast-off leavings to be played with and then spurned. He had to admit to himself that he admired her—for looking into death’s face willing herself to survive, and climbing back into a real, living life with all its risks. Exposure on the stage to failure, even ridicule, was something she had sought out, after time away and damage to her instrument, which was her body and her mind. She’d fought her way back into her work, like a warrior charging again into battle despite her own barely healed wounds from before.
In his own way, of course, he’d led many different lives, but successively, moving through centuries of time, and his performances were designed to be convincing, not enlightening. Also he had a single, driving purpose throughout, a purpose old and deep and not linked to anyone’s entertainment—except, perhaps, his own, and the Dark One’s.
Jessamyn’s performances were true, although they were fictions. His were all lies, as even now his courtship of her for hidden purposes might end in her unintentional destruction—what they called these days “collateral damage.”
If you do use her, came the distant murmur, as you say you will.
I mean to, he replied. But I try to avoid inflicting my vengeance on the innocent, as you well know. That is not the Craggen way.
After a moment, in which a number of revelers bustled past wrapped to the ears and making a great deal of tipsy and irritating noise, the answer came: There was your uncle Georg, after the siege of that walled town in Hungary, remember—certain extreme things were done to punish the people for their resistance. Yet those people were guilty only of wishing to survive with their families and goods intact.
Ivo uttered a snort of dismissal. Well, then, it is not my way, and as I am Craggen now—there are no others left, you tell me—it is entirely up to me to define our rules. If I do not do it, then it is not the Craggen way. What I do, is.
Then you may fail, Baron; for a whim.
He shut his eyes tightly and stood there, his shoulders bowed, his right hand clenched around one of the cold metal rods that supported the outer corners of the grocer’s canopy.
A man whose history has passed away and left him behind has little left to him but whims, he answered. Apart, of course, from the thirst that sustains me. But my whims are trivial compared to yours, Lady, as you well know. The history of my homeland is made up entirely of your devouring whims, I sometimes think. It seems to me a strong personal victory that, given your example, I manage to hold to my purpose despite the lure of my whims, or the command of yours.
Well, you are young yet, Baron, and full of fancies. But I tell you, this woman is the cause of your restlessness. She puts you in more danger than you know. Do not imagine that this last Griffin man is a flimsy opponent, to be lightly cast down. You cannot overcome him without effective tools. This actress is the best tool you have, and your attentions to her will bring him to you in the end. But it may be as you yourself suggested: that she needs to be in obvious danger for him to come out of hiding and face you in the open.
Leave me, Lady, he demanded. Leave me to my own needs. Griffin is lawfully mine, like all his line, and I do not give him up for anything.
But the woman has held to her own life against heavy odds, she has won it back from death’s hand with her own strength. It is true, she is more than just a weapon against my enemy, and in any case I am not careless with fine weapons. She is not mine to do with as I please. Not even for your amusement.
But there came no reply, and when he let go of the pole and opened his eyes, Jessamyn and her two friends had gone. The older man in the parka and cargo pants was still there, drinking coffee.
That one was with the lout from the other night, he thought. There’s something, some threat . . . He was watching her. I may have to do some killing here besides the killing of Nicolas Griffin. And when all the killing is done—what then? When the ruby is mine, and my enemy has paid, and—and what?
One of the Asian store clerks had been eyeing Ivo, and now came purposefully toward him from inside the store.
He walked away before the grocer’s man could challenge him, but his thoughts walked with him. He was angry with himself: What then didn’t matter; it was a good thing that the Lady had slipped away. He would be embarrassed for her to see his thoughts now.
His future, if he had one beyond the fulfillment of his vow, had never been a concern to him. Now, with the end in sight, he couldn’t help but wonder uneasily—would the Lady at last withdraw his unnatural life and leave him to crumble quietly into a drift of dusty corruption, like a vampire in a film? Or take him to some place of her own, for some other service to her? Would he step into an eternity in which his slaughtered family would meet him, soul to soul, with thanks for his faithfulness?
But if so, what would he say to them—shades of so long ago, barely conceivable now as real people to a man who had lived so many centuries into this amazing future? Strangers. They would be strangers; or perhaps he would forget the long pursuit, remember only the satisfying end, and return to what he had been before, unchanged and familiar . . .
No. If they existed anywhere, his father and mother and Magda and the others, he’d
have felt them with him all this time, or now and then, encouraging, exhorting him to complete his task.
So, then—just death? Again, back to how it had been that first time, or something else—devils, even, flames of the hell he no longer believed in? He was so close—a surge of victory at long last, and then what?
No, this wasn’t for him to think about. A warrior knew that every new day was a gift no one could count on, and carried on without concern for such things. Completion was coming, and after that—whatever fortune and the Lady brought.
Meanwhile, he had a thirst to feed.
He strode uptown, a sturdy young man with his hands in his pockets and his gaze avidly probing the night world around him.
Costume Call
Eva’s dress for the second act looked splendid—a silk gown with the skirt cut on the bias so that when Jess turned, it swirled like an opening flower. The fabric was a subtle shade of slate blue, embroidered at collar and cuffs with small flowers in delicate touches of pink and orange. The costumer had found the dress in a thrift shop and had cut and trimmed it to Jess’s figure.
The costume was only basted, not yet sewn, but already Jess was thinking about what kind of offer she could make to Wardrobe to buy it after the production closed. She hadn’t dreamed that her first costume since the accident would be so beautiful, and she articulated her delight at every opportunity. You could never go far wrong by openly appreciating the work of the people on whose skills you depended onstage.
Sinclair was less pleased with his gray suit, largely because he hated the tie they had found to go with it: a hideous blast of clashing colors intended to express a degree of vulgarity that he said he preferred to try to get across with his acting, if they would be so kind as to credit him with being able to do so.
He looked terrible, haggard and tight-faced. He said he hadn’t been sleeping well: “Nerves, that’s all. I’ve just never been able to loosen up properly on the way into a play, not since that awful night in “Ghosts” when I cracked my head open on that damned desk. And I can’t help thinking about all these weird little afflictions. The Edwardian’s secret demon, you know.”