The Wolves of Midwinter Page 15

  “I take showers,” Reuben said, “but thank you.”

  “Very well, master,” she responded. “Would you care for some late supper?”

  “No, ma’am,” he replied. He was livid that she was there. Dressed in torn and filthy garments, he waited, biting his tongue.

  She walked past him and around him and towards the door.

  “Who were those creatures in the forest?” he asked. “Were they the Forest Gentry? Is that who they were?”

  She stopped. She looked unusually elegant in her dress of black wool, her hands appearing very white against the cuffs of the black sleeves. She appeared to reflect for a moment and then,

  “But surely you should put these questions, young sir, to the master, but not to the master tonight.” She held up one emphatic finger like a nun. “The master is out of sorts tonight, and it is no time to ask him about the Forest Gentry.”

  “So that’s who I saw,” said Reuben. “And who the hell are they, exactly, this Forest Gentry?”

  She looked down, visibly reflecting before she spoke, and then raised her eyebrows as she looked at him. “And who do you think they are, young master?” she asked.

  “Not the forest spirits!” he said.

  She gave a grave nod, and lowered her eyes again. She sighed. For the first time, he noticed the large cameo at her neck and that the ivory of the raised figures on the cameo matched her thin hands, which she clasped in front of her as though standing at attention. Something about her chilled his blood. It always had.

  “That is a lovely way to describe them,” she conceded, “as the spirits of the forest, for it’s in the forest that they are most happy and always have been.”

  “And why is Margon so angry that they’ve come? What do they do that he’s so angry?”

  She sighed again and, dropping her voice to a whisper, she said, “He does not like them, that is why he is cross. But … they always come at Midwinter. I am not surprised they are here so early. They love the mists and the rain. They love the water. So they are here. They come at Midwinter when the Morphenkinder are here.”

  “You’ve been in this house before?” he asked her.

  She waited before answering and then said with a faint icy smile, “A long time ago.”

  He swallowed. She was freezing his blood, all right. But he wasn’t afraid of her, and he sensed she didn’t mean for him to be afraid. But there was something proud and obdurate in her manner.

  “Ah,” he said. “I see.”

  “Do you?” she asked, but her voice and face were faintly sad. “I don’t think that you do,” she said. “Surely, young master, you do not think the Morphenkinder are the only Ageless Ones under heaven? Surely you know there are many other species of Ageless Ones bound to this earth who have a secret destiny.”

  A silence fell between them, but she didn’t move to go. She looked at him as if from the depth of her own thoughts, patient, waiting.

  “I don’t know what you are,” he said. He was struggling to sound confident and polite. “I really don’t know what they are. But you needn’t wait on me hand and foot. I don’t require it, and I’m not used to it.”

  “But it is my purpose, master,” she responded. “It has always been my place. My people care for your people and for other Ageless Ones like you. That is the way it has been for centuries. You are our protectors and we are your servants and that is how we make our way in this world and always have. But come, you are tired. Your clothes are in tatters.”

  She turned to the hot chocolate, and filled his cup from the pitcher. “You must drink this. You must come and be close to the fire.”

  He took the cup from her, and he did drink the thick chocolate in one gulp.

  “That’s good,” he said. Strangely, he was less rattled now by her than he’d been in the past, and more curious. And he was infinitely relieved that she knew what he was and what they all were. The burden of keeping the secret from her and the others was gone, but he couldn’t help but wonder why Margon hadn’t relieved him of this burden before now.

  “There’s nothing for you to fear, master,” she said. “Not from me and my kind ever, for we have always served you, and not from the Forest Gentry because they are harmless.”

  “The fairy people, that’s what they are?” he said. “The elves of the woods?”

  “Oh, that I would not call them,” she said, her German accent sharpening slightly. “Those words, they do not like, I can tell you. And you will never see them appear in pointed caps and pointed shoes,” she went on with a little laugh. “Nor are they diminutive beings with tiny beating wings. No, I would forget such words as ‘the fairy people.’ Here, please, let me help you take off these clothes.”

  “Well, I can understand that,” said Reuben. “And actually it’s a bit of a consolation. Would you mind telling me if there are dwarves and trolls out there?”

  She didn’t respond.

  He was just miserable enough in his torn and wet shirt and pants to let her assist, forgetting until it was too late that he had no underwear on, of course. But she had the terrycloth robe over his shoulders instantly, quickly wrapping it around him as he slipped his arms into it, and tying the sash for him as if he were a little boy.

  She was almost as tall as he was. And her resolute gestures again struck him as odd, no matter what she was.

  “Now, when the master is not out of sorts, he will perhaps explain everything to you,” she said, her tone softening even further. She dropped her voice, laughing under her breath. “If on Christmas Eve they did not appear, he would be disappointed,” she said. “It would be a terrible thing in fact if they did not appear at that time. But he does not like it at all that they are here now, and that they’ve been invited. When they’re invited, they become bold. And that irritates him considerably.”

  “Invited by Felix, you mean,” Reuben asked. “That’s what’s been going on. Felix howling—.”

  “Yes, invited by Master Felix, and it is his prerogative to tell you why, not mine.”

  She gathered the soiled and torn clothes and made of them a little bundle, obviously for throwing away. “But until such time as the august masters choose to explain about them to you and your young companion, Stuart, let me assure you that the Forest Gentry cannot possibly bring you the slightest harm. And you must not let them force your … your blood to rise, as it were, as it seemed it did tonight.”

  “I understand,” he said. “They caught me completely by surprise. And I found them unnerving.”

  “Well, if you do want to unnerve them in return, which I do not advise, by the way, under any circumstances, just refer to them as the ‘fairy people’ or ‘elves’ or ‘dwarves’ or ‘trolls’ and that will do it. Real harm they cannot do, but they can become quite an incredible nuisance!”

  With a loud sharp laugh, she turned to go, but then,

  “Your raincoat,” she said. “You left it in the forest. I’ll see to it that it is brushed and cleaned. Sleep now.”

  She went right out the door, shutting it behind her, leaving him with all the questions on the tip of his tongue.

  12

  THE HOUSE WAS IN a pleasant uproar with people coming and going everywhere.

  Thibault and Stuart were decorating the giant Christmas tree and commandeered Reuben to help them. Thibault wore a suit and tie as he almost always did, and with his wrinkled face and mossy eyebrows looked the schoolmaster next to Stuart, who, in cutoff jeans and a T-shirt, climbed the creaking ladder like a muscular young cherub to the top step to decorate the highest branches.

  Thibault had put on a recording of old English Christmas carols sung by the choir of St. John’s College at Cambridge, and the music was soothing and haunting.

  The intricate lighting of every branch of the giant tree had already been done, and what was needed now was the hanging of countless gold and silver apples on the tree, little lightweight ornaments that sparkled beautifully amid the deep thick green pine needles. Here and th
ere small edible cookie gingerbread men and gingerbread houses were to be added, and the gingerbread had a delicious aroma.

  Stuart wanted to eat them, and so did Reuben, but Thibault forbade them sternly to even think of it. Lisa had decorated every single one herself, and there weren’t enough as it was. The “boys” must “behave” themselves.

  A tall elegant St. Nicholas with a gaunt but benevolent porcelain face and soft green velvet robes had been placed at the very top of the tree. And the branches from top to bottom had been dusted lightly with some sort of synthetic gold dust. The effect of it all was grand and impressive.

  Stuart was his usual buoyant self, eternally smiling, freckles darkening when he laughed, explaining to Reuben that he’d been able to invite “everybody” to the Christmas gala, including the nuns from his high school, and all his friends, and the nurses he’d known in the hospital.

  Thibault offered to help Reuben add any last-minute college or newspaper friends, but Reuben had taken care of all of this earlier when Felix had knocked on his door, offering to help him. Numerous phone calls had been made. Reuben’s editor from the San Francisco Observer was coming with the entire staff of the paper. Three college friends were coming. His cousins from Hillsborough were also driving up; and Grace’s brother, Uncle Tim from Rio de Janeiro, was flying in with his beautiful wife, Helen, as both wanted to see this fabulous house. Even Phil’s older sister Josie, who lived in a nursing home in Pasadena, was making the trip. Reuben loved his aunt Josie. Jim was bringing a few people from St. Francis parish, and several of the volunteers who regularly helped with the soup kitchen there.

  Meanwhile activity went on all around them. Lisa and the caterers had laid out hundreds of sterling knives and forks and spoons on the giant dining room table, and Galton and his men swarmed over the backyard area, clearing an old parking space behind the servants’ quarters for the refrigerator trucks that would come the day of the banquet. A band of young teenagers, answering to Jean Pierre and Lisa—everyone was answerable to Lisa—were trimming every interior door and window frame with garland.

  That might have looked absurd in a small house, so much greenery, but it was perfect here in these vast rooms, Reuben thought. Masses of thick red candles were being added to the mantelpieces, and Frank Vandover brought in a cardboard box of old Victorian wooden toys to be placed under the tree when they were finished.

  Reuben loved all this. It was not only distracting; it was restorative. He tried not to study Heddy and Jean Pierre as they passed, for clues of whatever nature they shared with the redoubtable Lisa.

  And everywhere from outside came the noise of hammers and saws.

  As for Felix, he left before noon to fly to Los Angeles to make “final arrangements” with the mummers and other costumed people who’d be working the Christmas fair in Nideck or the party up here after the Christmas fair ended. He would stop in San Francisco before coming home to see to the adult choir and the orchestra he was assembling.

  And Margon had gone to meet the arrival of the boys’ choir from Austria, which would also be singing at the party. They’d been promised a week in America as part of their compensation. After he’d seen to all their arrangements at the hotels on the coast, he was headed on to make some other necessary purchases of additional oil heaters for the outdoors—or so Reuben and Stuart were being told.

  Frank and Sergei, both very big men, came and went continuously with boxes of china and more silver flatware and other decorations from the lower storerooms. Frank was snappily dressed as always, in a polo shirt and clean, pressed jeans, and there was as ever that Hollywood sheen to him even as he toted and reached and lifted. Sergei, the giant of the household, his blond hair an unruly mop, sweated in his rumpled denim shirt and looked faintly bored but eternally agreeable.

  A team of professional maids was inspecting all the extra bathrooms on the second floor, those on the inside of the corridors, to make sure each and every one was properly stocked for the banquet guests. The maids would stand outside these bathrooms to direct guests on Sunday.

  Deliverymen rang the bell about every twenty minutes; and some reporters were outside braving the light rain to photograph the crèche statues and the ceaseless activity.

  It was rather dazzling and comforting, actually—especially since neither Felix nor Margon could be reached with any questions about anything.

  “You can expect the entire week to be this way,” said Thibault casually as he handed the ornaments out of the box to Reuben. “It’s been this way since yesterday.”

  At last they broke for a late lunch in the conservatory, the only place where decorating was not going on, its tropical blooms seeming woefully incongruous with the Christmas spirit.

  Lisa brought plates for them piled high with freshly carved prime rib and huge potatoes already dressed with butter and sour cream, and bowls of steaming carrots and zucchini. The bread had been freshly baked. She opened Stuart’s napkin for him and put it in his lap, and would have done the same for Reuben if she’d had the chance. She poured Reuben’s coffee, put in the two sweeteners for him, and poured Thibault’s wine and Sergei’s beer.

  Reuben sensed a gentleness in her he hadn’t seen before but her gestures and movement were still odd, and a little while ago he’d seen her mount a five-step ladder before the front windows without holding on to anything, to wipe some blemishes from the glass.

  Now she banked the little fire in the white Franklin stove, and stood about topping up drinks without a word as Sergei fell on his food like a dog, only using his knife now and then, shoving rolls of beef into his mouth with his fingers, and even breaking up the potato the same way. Thibault ate like a headmaster setting an example for schoolchildren.

  “And that’s how they ate in the day and age when you were born, right?” said Stuart to Sergei. He loved to tease Sergei at any opportunity. Only next to the giant Sergei did the muscular and tall Stuart look small, and Stuart more than seldom let his big blue eyes move slowly over Sergei’s body as though he enjoyed the sight of it.

  “Oh, you are dying to know precisely when I came into this world, aren’t you, little puppy wolf?” said Sergei. His voice was deep and at times like this his Russian or Slavic accent thickened. He poked Stuart in the chest, and Stuart held firm deliberately, his eyes narrow and full of gleeful mock condescension.

  “I bet it was on a farm in Appalachia in 1952,” said Stuart. “You tended the pigs till you ran away and joined the army.”

  Sergei gave a deep sarcastic laugh. “Oh, you are such a clever little beast. What if I told you I was the great St. Boniface himself who brought the first Christmas tree to the pagans of Germany?”

  “Like hell,” said Stuart. “That’s a ridiculous story and you know it. Next you’ll tell me you’re George Washington and you actually chopped down the cherry tree.”

  Sergei laughed again. “And what if I’m St. Patrick himself,” asked Sergei, “who drove the snakes out of Ireland?”

  “If you lived in those times at all, you were a thick-skulled oarsman in a longboat,” said Stuart, “and you spent your time raiding coastal villages.”

  “Not far off the mark,” said Sergei, still laughing. “Quite seriously, I was the first Romanov to rule Russia.” He rolled his rs theatrically. “That’s when I learned to read and write, and cultivated my taste for high literature. I’d been around for centuries before that. I was also Peter the Great, too, which was terrific fun, especially the building of St. Petersburg. And before that I was St. George who slew the dragon.”

  Stuart was tantalized by Sergei’s mocking tone.

  “No, I’m still betting on West Virginia,” said Stuart, “at least for one incarnation, and before that you were shipped over here as a bond servant. What about you, Thibault, where do you think Sergei was born?”

  Thibault shook his head, and blotted his mouth with his napkin. With his deeply creased face and gray hair, he looked decades older than Sergei but this meant nothing.

>   “That was long before my time, young man,” Thibault said in his easy baritone. “I’m the neophyte of the pack, if I must confess it. Even Frank’s seen worlds of which I know nothing. But it’s useless asking these gentlemen for the truth. Only Margon talks of origins, and everyone ridicules him when he does it, including me, I must confess.”

  “I didn’t ridicule him,” said Reuben. “I hung on every word he said. I wish every one of you would bless us one day with your stories.”

  “Bless us!” said Stuart with a groan. “That might be the death of innocence for both you and me. And it might be our literal death from boredom. Add to that I sometimes break out in a fatal allergic rash when people start telling one lie after another.”

  “Let me make a guess with you, Thibault,” ventured Reuben. “Is that fair?”

  “Of course, by all means,” Thibault answered.

  “Nineteenth century, that was your time, and the place of the birth was England.”

  “Off by only a little,” said Thibault with a knowing smile. “But I wasn’t born a Morphenkind in England. I was traveling in the Alps at the time.” He broke off as if this had sparked some deep and not-too-pleasant thought in him. He sat very still, then seemed to wake from it, and he picked up his coffee and drank it.

  Sergei rattled off a long quote, sounding suspiciously like poetry, but it was Latin. And Thibault smiled and nodded.

  “Here he goes again, the scholar who eats with his hands,” said Stuart. “I can tell you right now, I won’t be happy unless I grow to be as tall as you, Sergei.”

  “You will,” said Sergei. “You’re a Wonder Pup, as Frank always says. Be patient.”

  “But why can’t you speak of where and when you were born in a casual way,” said Stuart, “the way anyone would do it?”

  “Because it isn’t spoken of!” said Sergei sharply. “And when it is spoken of in a casual way, it sounds ridiculous!”

  “Well, Margon of course had the decency to answer our questions immediately.”