The Wolves of Midwinter Read online

  After supper, Reuben and Felix headed up the steps together. “You must tell me if you see her,” said Felix. “But I don’t think you will. I think Elthram and his people have been successful.”

  “Did Elthram tell you this?”

  “More or less,” he said. “I hope you sleep well tonight, and I so appreciate you’re coming with me to the village tomorrow—because you are the lord of the manor, you know, and they all so want to see you. It’s going to be a long day and evening, but it’s only once a year, and they’ll all love it.”

  “I’m going to love it too,” said Reuben. “And what about Laura?”

  “Well, she’ll be with us tomorrow in the village for a little while … and then later on Christmas Eve, of course. That’s all I know. Reuben, we must let her do things her own way. That’s what Thibault is doing—letting her decide things.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Reuben with a smile. He kissed Felix quickly, in the European style on both cheeks, and then went off to bed.

  He was asleep the moment he hit the pillow.

  18

  THE DAY DAWNED GRAY but rainless. The air was moist, as if at any moment the featureless sky would dissolve into rain, but by ten a.m., it hadn’t happened.

  Reuben had awakened marvelously refreshed with no dreams or hints of Marchent’s presence. And he was downstairs at nine for a quick breakfast.

  Big refrigerator trucks were already arriving, and caterers swarmed the kitchen and the backyard, unloading portable ovens, ice makers, and other equipment, while the teenagers who would function as guides all over the house and the woods were there for “orientation” with Lisa.

  All the Distinguished Gentlemen were present and smartly dressed in dark suits, and at nine thirty, Felix, Reuben, Stuart, and Margon headed to “the village” while Thibault, Sergei, and Frank stayed behind to get ready for the banquet.

  The town was reborn. Either that, or Reuben had simply never seen it before. Now with every façade etched in decorative lights, for the first time he appreciated the Old West storefronts with their overhanging roofs that sheltered the sidewalks, and how gloriously the three-story Inn dominated the main street, sitting right in the middle of the three-block stretch as it faced the old theater.

  The old theater, though in the midst of restoration, had been opened for just one of the many crafts markets, and the booths were already doing business to a lively early bird crowd of families with children.

  Cars were bumper to bumper for the three-block stretch that was the downtown and being directed to the side streets to parking lots blocks away.

  Every shop was occupied and bustling, and a group of musicians in Renaissance garb was already playing beside the Inn doors while another group a block and a half away was singing Christmas carols near the town’s only gas station. Several people were selling lightweight see-through umbrellas, and vendors were selling gingerbread cookies and small mince pies from smoking hot tables or trays they carried through the crowd.

  People swamped Felix as soon as he stepped out of the car. Reuben was being greeted too on all sides. Margon took off to see how things were going at the Inn. And Reuben, Stuart, and Felix made their slow and deliberate progress down one side of the street with the aim of doubling back up the other.

  “Ah, the Forest Gentry are going to love all this,” said Felix.

  “Are they here now?” asked Stuart.

  “I don’t see them yet, but they’ll come. They absolutely love this sort of thing, people descending on the forest and its neglected little towns, gentle people, people who love the cold crisp pine-scented air. You’ll see. They’ll be here.”

  More than one huge empty shop had been turned into a veritable arcade of booths. Reuben glimpsed quilts for sale, along with handmade cloth puppets, rag dolls, baby clothes, and a whole variety of linens and laces. But it was impossible to focus on any one particular booth because so many people wanted simply to shake his hand and thank him for the festival. Again and again, he explained that Felix had been the genius behind it. But it was soon clear that people saw him as the young lord of the castle, and even said so in exactly those terms.

  By eleven a.m. cars were directed off the street, and it became a pedestrian mall. “Should have done that immediately,” said Felix. “And we’ll be certain to do that next year.”

  The crowds increased steadily while the rain came and went. The cold wasn’t stopping anybody. Kids wore caps and mittens; and there were caps and mittens aplenty for sale. The hot-chocolate vendors were doing great business, and whenever the rain cleared, the crowd flowed out into the middle of the street.

  It was more than two hours before they’d made their circuit of downtown—what with stopping for a puppet show and several choruses of “Deck the Halls”—and there was nothing to do but begin it all again as new people were arriving all the time.

  Only a few people asked Reuben about the famous Man Wolf attack at the big house, and if he’d seen or heard any more of the Man Wolf. Reuben had the distinct feeling many more wanted to ask but didn’t think it in keeping with the festivities. He was quick to answer that no one in Northern California, to the best of his knowledge, had ever seen the Man Wolf again after that “horrible night,” and as for what happened, well, he could scarcely remember it. The old cliché “It all happened so fast” was coming in handy.

  When Laura arrived, she fell into Reuben’s arms. Her cheeks were beautifully rosy and she wore a pink cashmere scarf with her long finely cut navy blue coat. She was thrilled by the festival and embraced Felix warmly. She wanted to see the rag-doll dealers, and of course the quilt dealers, and she’d heard there was someone selling French and German antique dolls too. “And how did you achieve this in only a few weeks?” she asked Felix.

  “Well, no entry fee, no license requirements, no rules, no restrictions, and some cash incentives,” said Felix exuberantly. “And a lot of repeated personal invitations by phone and e-mail, and networks of phone helpers, and voilà, they have come. But think about next year, darling, what we can do.”

  They broke for a quick lunch at the Inn, where a table was ready for them. Margon was in fast conversation with a table of real estate agents and potential investors, and eagerly stood to greet Felix and introduce people all around. Stuart, with two of his old high school buddies, was holding forth from another table.

  A state senator had been looking for Reuben, and two state representatives, and several people wanted to know what Felix thought about widening and improving the road to the coast, or whether it was true he was going to build a planned community back of the cemetery, and could he talk a little about the architectural theme he had in mind?

  Reporters came and went. They did ask right off about the Man Wolf attack at the house, with the same old questions and Reuben gave them the same old answers. There were a few local news cameras from the surrounding towns passing through. But the Christmas festival was the real news, and the banquet later at “the castle.” Would this be a yearly tradition? Yes, indeed.

  “And to think,” Laura said to Margon, “he made this happen, he brought together all this life where essentially there was no life.…”

  Margon nodded, drinking his hot chocolate slowly. “This is what he loves to do. This is his home. He was like this years ago. It was his town, and now he’s back and free once again to be mentor and the creative angel for another couple of decades and then—.” He broke off. “Then,” he repeated looking around, “what will we do?”

  After lunch, Laura and Reuben hit the antique-doll table and two of the quilt tables, and Reuben carried all the goods for Laura to her Jeep. She’d parked on the very edge of the cemetery, and to Reuben’s amazement he found the cemetery crowded with people who were photographing the mausoleum and the old tombs.

  The place appeared picturesque enough, as always, yet he couldn’t prevent a frisson from paralyzing him as he looked at the graves. A huge arrangement of fresh flowers stood before the iron gates of the N
ideck mausoleum. He closed his eyes for a moment and whispered a silent prayer of sorts for Marchent, an acknowledgment of what? That she could not be here, could not see or taste or feel, or be part of this vibrant and shifting world?

  He and Laura stole a few quiet moments in the Jeep before she took off. This was Reuben’s first chance to tell her about the Forest Gentry, to tell her the strange and moving things that Elthram had said about her, and having known her when she walked the forest with her father. She was speechless. Then after a long pause she confessed that she’d always felt the presence of the spirits of the wood.

  “But then everyone does, I think, everyone who spends any time alone in the forest. And we tell ourselves it’s our imagination, just as we do when we feel the presence of ghosts. I wonder if we offend them, the spirits, the dead, when we don’t believe in them.”

  “I don’t know, but you will believe this spirit,” he said. “He appeared as real as you do to me now or I to you. He was solid. The floor creaked when he walked. The chair creaked when he sat down. And there was a scent coming from him; it was, I don’t know, like honeysuckle and green things, and dust, but you know dust can be a clean smell, like in the first rain, when the dust rises.”

  “I know,” she said. “Reuben, why are these things making you sad?”

  “But they’re not,” he protested.

  “Yes, they are. They’re making you sad. Your voice changed just now when you talked about these things.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, if I am sad it’s a sweet sadness,” he said. “It’s just that my world’s changing, and I’m caught betwixt and between, or I’m part of both, and yet the real world, the world of my parents, of my old friends, it can’t know this new world, and so it can’t know that part of me which is so changed.”

  “But I know it,” she said. She kissed him.

  He knew if he took her in his arms, he couldn’t stand it, stand not having her, stand being here with her in the Jeep, with people passing as they made their way to their cars. This was so painful.

  “You and I, we make a new covenant, don’t we?” he asked. “I mean we make a new covenant in this new world.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And when I see you on Christmas Eve, I want you to know that I’m yours, I’m your bride in this world, if you’ll have me.”

  “Have you? I can’t exist without you.” He meant it. No matter what fear he felt of her transforming into the she-wolf, he meant it. He would get past that fear. Love for her would carry him past it, and there was no doubt that he loved her. With every passing day of being without her, he knew that he loved her.

  “I will be your spouse on Christmas Eve,” he said. “And you will be my bride, and yes, this will be the sealing of our covenant.”

  This was the hardest parting from her yet. But finally, kissing her quickly on both cheeks, he slipped out of the Jeep and stood by the side of the road to watch her go.

  It was two o’clock as she headed for the highway.

  Reuben headed back to the Inn.

  He ducked back into the private bedroom set aside for him and his party long enough to use the bathroom and then he completed a quick little story on the festival for the Observer and e-mailed it to his editor, Billie Kale, with the note that he’d have more to add if she wanted it later on.

  Billie had already left for the banquet, but he knew she’d hired a chauffeured car for herself and the staff so she could pass judgment on the story from the road.

  Indeed the answer came back, “Yes, and yes,” as he was leaving the Inn again with Felix and the others under the first sunshine that had broken through all afternoon. She texted that his Christmas-traditions essay was now the most e-mailed story on the paper’s website. But she’d like to add a short paragraph to today’s story, about the Man Wolf being nowhere in sight during the village fair. “Yes,” Reuben said, and tapped out the paragraph just as she’d requested.

  After greeting a group of television reporters, Reuben and Felix broke off from Stuart and Margon to inspect all of the booths in earnest, as Felix wanted to hear from the craftsmen and merchants as to how sales were for them and what he could do to make the fair better in coming years.

  Reuben grew almost groggy as he moved from table to table, inspecting the highly glazed pottery, the unique bowls and mugs and plates, and then the dried-apple dolls, and the quilts again, always the quilts. There were leather craftsmen selling belts and purses, dealers in brass and pewter belt buckles, fine gold and silver jewelry, and the inevitable flea-market professionals marketing obvious machine-made goods, and even one merchant selling what might have been stolen hardcover best sellers at half price.

  Felix took time with everybody, nodding again and again to this or that compliment or complaint. He had pockets filled with business cards. He accepted cups of mead and ale from the vendors but seldom drank more than a sip.

  And through all of this Felix appeared deliriously happy, even a little manic, needing from time to time to escape to a back room or a restroom or a back alley, where he and Reuben found themselves in the company of the guilty outcast smokers who puffed on their verboten cigarettes furtively and with apologies before going back to join the “saved.”

  There were times when Reuben felt dizzy, but it was a beautiful kind of dizzy, what with the Christmas carols rising and falling in the general hubbub of voices, and the giant Christmas wreaths on door frames all around him, and the smell of pine needles, and the fresh, moist breeze.

  Finally he lost Felix. He lost everybody.

  But that was fine. He stopped now and then to jot notes for the next article, thumbs hammering on his iPhone, but mostly he drifted, soothed and fascinated by the movement and color, the squeals and laughter of the children, the slow hesitating yet incessant movement of shoppers that seemed at moments rather like dance.

  Arcades and artisans were running together in his mind. He saw table after table of little fairy and elf Christmas ornaments and angels, and displays of fascinating handmade wooden toys. There were dealers in perfumed soaps and bath oils everywhere he looked, booths of buttons, dyed yarns, ribbons, and lace trim, and booths of fantasy hats. Or were those vintage hats? Somebody had recently been talking about hats, hats like those with big brims and flowers. He couldn’t quite remember. Hand-dipped Christmas candles were for sale every few feet it seemed, and so was incense, and handmade notepaper.

  But here and there was the rare exceptional artisan presenting a display of unique wood-carved animals and figurines that didn’t resemble the more commercial big-eyed woodland critters at the next table, or the jewelry maker whose gold and silver brooches were truly spectacular creations, or the man who painted his silk and velvet scarves with entirely eccentric and original figures.

  And then there was the painter who put out nothing but his original and fascinating canvases, with no apology or explanation whatsoever, or the woman who assembled huge baroque decoupage ornaments out of bits of lace and gold braid and brightly colored figures clipped from old Victorian prints. There were wooden flutes for sale, Tibetan brass bells and singing bowls, zithers and drums. There was one dealer who sold old sheet music, and another with a table of tattered and broken vintage children’s books. And a woman who’d made beautiful napkin rings and bracelets from old sterling spoons.

  The sky was white overhead, and the wind had died down.

  People were buying, said the merchants. Some of the food vendors had sold out. One potter confessed she wished she brought all of her new mugs and bowls, as she was now left with almost nothing to sell.

  There was at least one dealer doing a great business in handmade leather shoes.

  Finally Reuben rested against a storefront, and through a break in the crowd tried to gain perspective on the mood of the festival. Were people really enjoying themselves as much as they seemed? Yes, undoubtedly. Balloon artists were doing a brisk business with the little kids. Cotton candy was being sold, and even saltwater taffy. And there were face paint
artists for the children too.

  To his right sat a tarot card reader at her velvet-draped card table, and a few feet beyond a palm reader who had a client opposite in a folding chair.

  One whole shop across from him was selling Renaissance costumes, and people were laughing with delight at the lace-trimmed shirts that were selling for “great prices.” And beside the shop was a used-book vendor presiding over tables of books about California and its history and the history of the redwoods and the geology of the coast.

  Reuben felt drowsy and comfortable, unnoticed for the moment, and almost ready to close his eyes. Then he made out two familiar figures in the shadowy open door of the Renaissance shop. One figure was most definitely the tall raw-boned Elthram in his familiar beige chamois shirt and pants, his black hair long and bushy and even tangled with bits of dried leaf; and the other figure, the slender and graceful woman who stood right beside him, groomed and seemingly poised, was Marchent.

  For a moment he could not believe it, but then he knew that this was exactly true. Nothing distinguished them from those around them except what would have distinguished them had they been alive.

  Elthram towered over Marchent, his large eyes glittering as he smiled, whispering to her, it seemed, whispering with moist smiling lips, with his right arm tightly around her, and she, turned just slightly towards Elthram, her hair neatly combed, was looking straight at Reuben as she nodded her head.

  The world went silent. It seemed to empty except for the two of them, Elthram now casting a slow glance at Reuben, and Marchent’s eyes holding him steady as she continued to listen, to nod.

  The crowd shifted, moved, closed the gap through which Reuben had seen them. The noise around him was deafening suddenly. Reuben hurried out into the middle of the street. There they were, the two of them, solid and vivid down to the tiniest details, but they turned their backs now, and they appeared to be walking into the enveloping darkness of the shop.

  The sights and sounds of the fair went dim again. Someone bumped into Reuben, and he yielded without thinking or responding, barely conscious of a hand on his arm. There was a stab in his intestines, and a heat rising in him threatening to be pain.