Fiction
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Learning By Doing
(The opposite of love is hatred, but the enemy of love is fear.)
Melissa couldn’t help but be nervous about him, even though he’d responded to her ad. The ad itself was the reason.
She waited in the fast-food restaurant with as much poise and patience as she could muster. The girls cooperated for once. Though there were many other noisy, boisterous children there to set them off, they concentrated on their crayons and coloring books with a singular intensity.
The door creaked. She looked up and saw a middle-aged man of medium height enter the restaurant alone. He looked about swiftly, saw her bright red blouse and black canvas handbag, and made directly for her.
In the few seconds she had in which to study him and decide whether to dissimulate, she went from nervousness to an acute curiosity.
He wasn’t screen-idol material, but he was good-looking enough: athletically trim, with a pleasant, open face that obviously didn’t get much sun, topped by a thick mop of brown hair. He wore casual clothes, as she did, but they were of good quality and perfectly clean. His expression was noncommittal, neither censorious nor eager.
I wonder what he’s thinking about me.
He stopped at her table. Alia and Renee looked up, their eyes widening and mouths making Os of surprise and interest.
"Melissa Harland?”
She nodded and rose. “My friends call me Mel.” She extended a hand, and he took it.
"I’m Ron Beaufort.” He started to seat himself and paused. “May I be introduced to these young ladies?”
She bit her lip. “Of course.” She gestured right—This is Alia” and then left—“and this is Renee. Girls, say hello to Mr. Beaufort.”
Alia put down her crayon and stood in her chair. Her hand was slow to rise, but Beaufort took it and shook it with a grave delicacy. Renee got up and came around the table, and he shook her hand as well.
"They’re charmers,” he said as all of them sat. “You must be proud of them.”
She nodded. “I told them to be on best behavior.”
Alia chose that moment to screech, “Are you going to be our new daddy?” at a pitch that could have shattered the pyramids and roused the pharaohs from beneath them. Heads throughout the restaurant turned to look. Melissa resisted the urge to hide under the table, but just barely.
"Alia, sit and be quiet,” he said. The six-year-old reddened at the steel in the words. She was about to go back to her coloring, but Beaufort looked her in the eye and silently compelled her attention.
"I might be, Alia. It will depend on a lot of things. One of them is how you behave while we’re here.” As Alia’s lips twisted into a toddler’s petulant pout, he smiled and continued. “If you’re really good, I might decide that you don’t need a new daddy. Or if you’re really bad, I might decide that you just have to have one.”
Melissa’s mouth dropped open. He flashed her a wink.
"Now,” he said, “would anyone like something to eat?”
Three-quarters of an hour spent in casual small talk over hamburgers and milkshakes left her wondering why he’d answered her ad. He was forty years old and had never married. He was an engineer at Onteora Aviation, had an upper-middle-class income, and lived in a house outside of town that he’d owned for thirteen years. His appearance was more than satisfactory, his voice was smooth and pleasant, and his grooming was first-rate. He had no tics or twitches. He was comfortable with any topic of conversation or none. He had better manners than anyone she’d ever known.
He was too much the dream-come-true, too free of disabling flaws of personality or noxious traits of character. He didn’t sport any danger signs at all.
"Hey,” she said without thinking, “when you leave here, who are you going to report to?”
He frowned. “Excuse me?”
"Come on,” she said. “You’re too good to be real. No one with your assets needs to meet a single mother in a hamburger joint. Somebody put you up to this.”
He stared at her from under a furrowed brow for the most uncomfortable seven seconds of her life.
"Melissa,” he said, “I answered your ad because I wanted to meet you.”
The simple dignity of it froze her tongue. It took an agonizing amount of effort even to whisper, “Why?”
He leaned forward and pitched his voice very low. “‘Single white mother, twenty-eight, very poor, seeks a decent gentleman to provide a safe, clean home for me and my two daughters. Neither age nor appearance matters. I will accommodate you.’”
It was the ad she’d filed.
"In part,” he said, voice still near to inaudible, “I wanted to meet the woman who could humble herself far enough to say such a thing. I wanted to hear her story. And in part, I was curious about the ‘accommodation’ part. That’s hardly a standard romantic gambit. It doesn’t leave a lot of room to haggle. I wanted to know what twist of fate made you willing to ‘accommodate’ anyone who’d be willing to put a roof over you and your daughters.”
The silence stretched. Alia and Renee looked up at her with a hint of alarm.
"We’re alone in the world, Ron.” She spoke as quietly as he had. “My husband abandoned me four months ago. He’s disappeared from the face of the Earth. I have no living relations except for the girls. We’ve been living in an S.R.O. two blocks from here. I’m just about out of money and I can’t work. I can’t even drive. If I don’t get a huge break of some sort really soon, I’ll have to do...well, something pretty dramatic.”
He looked down at his folded hands. “Why can’t you work or drive?”
Instead of answering, she pulled her little bottle of Dilantin out of her handbag and slid it across to him. He picked it up, read the label, and nodded.
"I understand. Well, will I do?”
Her heart vaulted into her mouth. “Why...why are you doing this?”
He smiled wanly. “You seem perfectly nice. Your girls don’t deserve to suffer. And I’ve wanted a family for a long time.”
She started to ask why haven’t you got one? and held it back by the narrowest of margins.
"All right,” she whispered. “When?”
He pursed his lips and held still for a long moment. She began to be afraid.
"There are some conditions. First, I want it perfectly understood that it’s my house. I set the rules. You can come and go as you please, but if you have any filthy habits, or a friend or acquaintance I can’t stand, I’ll tell you so, and I’ll expect you to behave accordingly. Second, the girls seem well behaved, but if I have a criticism or a correction of them to make in the future, I’ll expect you to back me up no matter what it is. Third, I have a cleaning woman who comes in once a week, but she won’t deal with clutter, only dust and dirt. If you leave a lot of clutter around, you’ll get to keep your dust and dirt too. So you’re all expected to keep your rooms neat. “
Your rooms?
"Fourth, there’s a room in the basement that’s mine alone. No one is to go in there but me, whether the door is open or closed. If I’m in there and you need me, knock and I’ll answer you. Except for that room, you’ll have the run of the house. Agreed?”
She nodded.
"Do Alia and Renee agree, too?”
She took their hands in hers. “They will.”
He rose. “Let’s go get your stuff.”
Ron’s house wasn’t a mansion, just a four-bedroom Dutch colonial on the outskirts of the city. But it was spacious and clean, sparsely furnished but still homey and inviting. The pine-paneled living room featured a large leather sofa, a large-screen TV, and a small fireplace. The kitchen was airy and bright, with immaculately clean fixtures and all the usual conveniences. The oak-plank floors were dust-free.
He took the girls to two smallish bedrooms and told them to settle in, then led Melissa to a third one. She peeked through the door and felt confusion rise inside her.
It was a nice room, but it wasn’t the master bedroom. It was perhaps ten feet by twelve, with a single window that overlooked his well-kept lawn. There was a large dresser with a cherry veneer, a large closet with mirrored sliding doors, a modest writing desk in some darkly stained wood, a pair of standing lamps, and a simply made bed. A single bed, meant for one person.
He slid her valise through the door and said, “Yours. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”
She looked up at him. “But, aren’t we...?”
"No.”
"Why?” She wasn’t Miss America, but she’d kept her weight down and her skin clear. Even over the four months past, she’d never neglected her grooming.
His face tightened in discomfort. “It’s not an issue, Mel. Just settle in, make yourself comfy, and let’s get on with making a family and raising the kids, okay?”
Did he take me in to get access to the girls?
"Ron...”
He saw her fear and raised a hand as if to ward away a threat. “You don’t have to worry about that. All I ask of you and the girls is your company. Are we going to have problems because I don’t want anything else from you?”
Nothing in his words rang false, but she was suffused with a formless dread that she couldn’t dispel. If he didn’t want her body, and he didn’t want to abuse her daughters, why on Earth was he opening his home to them? What was his angle?
"Is it my epilepsy? I swear it doesn’t affect --”
“Enough!”
She fell silent.
"Please,” he said, and all at once his fear, as vast as it was inexplicable, became visible to her. “Just make yourself at home. Dinner’s at six. I’ll cook.”
It didn’t take long for Melissa to decide that if Ron wasn’t the ideal spouse and stepfather for her daughters, for damned sure he could have the post until the real thing came along.
He kept metronome-perfect hours: up at five-thirty each morning, off to work by six-thirty, and back at five every afternoon. He retired no later than ten on any evening. He made little noise in coming or going; she had to set her own alarm clock so that she could breakfast with him. Dinner was between six and seven every evening: earlier if she cooked, later if he did. He never missed a family meal and insisted that no one else do so either.
His table-talk was as light and pleasant as the day they’d met, whether it was about world affairs, the girls’ schoolwork, or doings in the neighborhood. Alia and Renee chattered with him freely. He seemed to delight in it. Often Mel would repress her own small talk just to enjoy the banter her daughters exchanged with their benefactor. When the girls had cleared their places and had left the two adults alone, he invariably steered conversation to topics of interest to her. On some evenings, they watched television together. On others, they read in company or played board games with the girls.
On weekends, he busied himself with minor home maintenance and improvements, tended to his yard, or read and listened to music. He was endlessly amenable to Mel’s ideas for impromptu family outings, though he seldom produced initiatives of his own. He made few phone calls and took practically none.
She asked him only for money enough to fill the larder. He always gave her what she asked, and never questioned its use. After a few weeks, he asked if she would like an allowance with which she could do as she wished. She admitted that it would be nice. Every Friday thereafter, he handed her three hundred dollars in twenties, and never thereafter inquired what she’d done with it.
Perhaps once a week, he would go down to his room in the basement. He didn’t announce it; he simply went. He would spend about half an hour there. Afterward, he would pour himself a glass of wine and sit quietly for a long while.
After they’d been together about three months, Mel asked him if he thought they should have a dog. It wasn’t something she’d always wanted; it just seemed right for the house and the situation. He agreed at once, and a week later the largest, shaggiest black dog in all of creation joined their household. The girls shrank back and would have hidden behind Mel, but she guided them forward to meet the unlikely beast, who promptly tongue-lashed both their faces to a giggling glow.
"His name is Bjorn,” Ron said. “He’s a rescue dog.”
"Hm?” Mel couldn’t believe how much of him there was. Bjorn was the size of a small bear. He had more hair on him than any dog she’d ever seen, and beneath that was at least a hundred fifty pounds of actual flesh and bone. As she rubbed his head and ears, Alia went to the nether end and hugged his tail, while Renee slid beneath him and tickled his belly. The dog seemed to love it all.
"The family that got him as a puppy had to give him up. They had no idea how big he’d get. We were lucky. He’s a Newf. Best dog breed there ever was.”
Twin stalactites of drool had formed at the corners of Bjorn’s mouth. Without warning he shook his head vigorously, and the living room walls acquired new decorations. Everyone laughed. Ron ran for a dishtowel.
"Got to wipe that stuff up fast,” he said. “It dries hard.”
As he was swabbing a streak of drool from the paneling, she gave way to impulse and wrapped her arms around him from behind. It was the first time they’d touched since their introductory handshake.
He straightened in surprise as she laid her cheek against his back. He did not turn.
"Mel?”
"Thank you, God,” she whispered. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for Ronald Beaufort!”
"Mel...” His voice was thick.
"Hm?”
"We’d better get Bjorn used to the back yard, don’t you think?”
"Oh.” She released him and stood a little back. “Yeah.”
Though Mel was quickly rid of the suspicion that Ron was some sort of molester or abuser, she never freed herself of her deeper fear: that he had no real reason to keep her around, and would someday decide to turn her out just as arbitrarily as he’d taken her in.
With no sexual bond between them, and no obvious reason for him to value her daughters as she did, it was a possibility she could not exclude. She did her best not to think about it, but at odd moments of leisure, when the girls were in school and there was nothing to occupy her around the house, it would creep under her defenses and lash her with doubt. It made her cast about for ways to ingratiate herself to him. The more she did of that, the emptier and weaker seemed his reasons for his generosity. For generosity it was, and nothing else. She did not clean or entertain for him. He cooked at least as well as she, and was plainly competent enough in the other domestic skills he couldn’t hire to do just fine on his own. She and her children brought nothing to his life except the pleasure of their company.
He seemed to enjoy her company, and the company of her daughters, more than she did. The girls adored him in their turn, and ran to him with shrieks of delight every evening when he returned from work. It wasn’t a subject she could discuss with him; her ponderings were her own.
The fear grew from a minor puzzlement to something dark and impervious. What test might they face that would rend that gossamer pleasure? When and where would it come? Would she recognize it approaching in time to head it off?
She could not know, and she could not ask him. Every night, when they retired to their separate bedrooms, she asked herself, when the fatal moment came as it inevitably must, how she could possibly endure it.
"You know,” she said as she cleared the table, “you never talk shop.”
"Hm?” He looked up from the sink with one eyebrow cocked. The sun spilling through the kitchen window glittered on his thick brown hair.
"Don’t you like to talk shop? I thought all engineers did.”
He chuckled. “True enough, but I didn’t think you’d be interested.”
She slid the breakfast plates into the dishwasher and latched it shut. “Try me out. What do you do all day?”
He rinsed and dried his hands and threaded the dishtowel onto its rack. “I train radars.”
"Huh?”
"I train radars to recognize all sorts of approaching objects. Radars for use at commercial airports.”
"They’re run by computers, aren’t they?” From the back landing came the sound of Bjorn nosing the screen door, demanding to be let in.
"Yup, but you still have to teach them what they need to know.” He went to the back door and admitted Bjorn, who promptly shook a mass of leaves and pine needles onto the kitchen floor. He laughed and went for the broom and dustpan. “Are you really interested?”
"Well, yeah.”
He swept up the debris and tossed it into the garbage. “Then throw some real clothes on and I’ll show you.”
"On a Saturday?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
"Okay.” She went to her room, exchanged her sweats and slippers for a blouse, jeans, and sneakers, and met him in the garage.
His lab looked like something assembled from a junkyard, but he assured her that every scrap of it had a purpose.
"This,” he said, pointing to a weblike array of plates, struts, and wires, “is a phased-array antenna for a next-generation sweep radar. It’s got really good eyes. Maybe too good. It sees a lot of things it could never recognize by fixed rules, so the computer that drives it”—he waved at a beige box in a far corner—“has to learn how to tell stuff it can safely ignore from real concerns.”
She peered at the thing without comprehension. “How does it do that?”
He grinned. “I teach it.” He waved at a wall hung with dozens of metal contraptions. “By using those jigs, I can create many thousands of different radar reflections. Basically, I can simulate anything ever found in the sky. If the computer’s rule base produces a correct evaluation of the kind of reflection I’m testing, I try another one. If it doesn’t, I look for the holes in the rule base and make adjustments until it does.”
"Is it programming, then?”
"Some programming, some physics, a few other things too.” He gained animation with each word. “It has to learn how to learn, Mel. There’s no way we can prepare the radar for everything it might see in the sky. So we have to make it versatile. We have to give it the capacity to acquire new knowledge as it goes.” He grinned. “Think of it as on-the-job training.”
"How’d you get into this?” It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you could study in school.
He flipped a hand. “A few years ago, the guy who used to do it got hit by a car. I took a stab at it, found out I was pretty good at it.”
She listened with interest, not to a presentation on the physics of electromagnetic detection or the heuristics of the associated interpretation logic, but to a narration of how his career had moved from a conventional track in electronic design to another he could never have anticipated. After a few minutes, he ran down and smiled sheepishly.
"I’m sorry. I talk too much, I know.”
"No!” she said. “It’s great. It’s fascinating. We’ve been together more than half a year and I didn’t know the first --” She realized where she was headed and fell silent in embarrassment.
He looked at her with a hint of dawning realization in his eyes. Presently he took her hand between his two and chafed it tenderly.
"Mel, you know all the important stuff about me. You’ve known it since the day we met. What I do here is fun, but really it’s just earning a living. What I do at home, with you and the kids—that’s life.”
Her eyes flooded, and she nodded. They left his lab in silence, her hand in his.
On the way back to the house, she laid a hand on his arm and said, “We should pick up some bread and milk. We’re almost out.”
He nodded and pulled into a convenience store. As they stepped out of the car, she moved up to him and tucked her hand under his arm. He noticed, but said nothing. They made their selections and got on the checkout line behind a modest queue of other shoppers.
They were next to check out when a too-familiar voice said, “Melissa?”
Oh God, not here.
She resisted the urge to turn, hoping he’d conclude she was someone else.
It didn’t work. Doug closed on her at once. He was as nattily attired as always, as perfect the ladies’ man in a Quik-Stop as in a trendy disco. He leered down into her face from his imposing height as if they were back in the singles’ club where they’d met. Where she wished she’d never gone. Reflexively, her hand went to Ron’s arm and squeezed. Doug noted the gesture, and his lip curled in contempt.
"Found yourself another sugar daddy so fast, babe?”
Holding down panic with an effort, she turned to Ron, smiled, and said, “Ron, this is Doug Davis. He’s a...friend I haven’t seen in a while.”
Ron’s eyes narrowed. He extended his hand uncertainly. Doug ignored it.
"Did he buy the whole package, or are you holding out on him the way you did on me?” He ran a finger along the side of Melissa’s face, as if she were still his private plaything. The other customers murmured uneasily.
"Excuse me.” Ron’s voice rang with truculence, the trumpet call of an alpha male preparing to defend his turf. “Miss Harland is with me. If the two of you have issues, this is not the place to air them.”
"Can it, prettyboy. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.” Doug’s six foot, eight inch height and his weightlifter’s build made his glower near to unendurable for most men. Incredibly, Ron met him glare for glare.
"I disagree, musclebrain.” The note of challenge in Ron’s voice intensified. A mousy woman with an armload of baked goods backed away and knocked over a stand of potato chips. “Lay off now unless you want more trouble than you can afford.”
Doug’s eyes flared wide with fury. Melissa squealed her fright as he drew back his hand to strike.
He never got the chance. Ron shoved Melissa to the side, surged forward, and buried his left hand knuckle deep in Doug’s solar plexus. The bigger man whoofed all the air from his lungs and doubled over his pain. Ron thrust an open palm straight up into his chin with knockout force, so quickly that Melissa wasn’t sure she actually saw the blow.
Doug Davis flipped backward and measured his full length crashingly upon the floor.
The rest of the store’s customers drew back in alarm, as if a robbery were in progress. The clerk groped beneath the countertop for something, probably a bludgeon.
Ron took no heed. He knelt next to his defeated opponent and spoke to him gently, pedantically, a teacher making a simple point to a tragically slow student.
"I told you, asshole, she’s with me. I don’t give a shit where she was before this, whether it was with you or anyone else. If you ever so much as look at her again, I’ll seal your fucking eyes shut for good.” He took Doug’s chin in a rough, contemptuous grip. “Do you understand me, dick breath?”
Doug was still re-learning the fine art of breathing normally. He nodded.
Ron released him, threw a twenty onto the counter before the terrified clerk, and pulled Melissa out of the store.
Melissa sat frozen in the passenger seat all the way home, unable to utter the least of sounds.
When Ron had pulled the car into the garage and killed the ignition, he turned to her and said, “What was that about ‘holding out’?”
She said nothing.
"Mel,” he said softly. “I really need to know.”
His mildness struck through her paralysis as no elevation of volume or asperity of tone could have done. She turned to meet his eyes, found nothing there but curiosity and affection.
"I left the girls with a friend for a few days while I worked on him.” Her voice tried to betray her, but she kept it steady. “I thought I could get him hooked before he knew there was a string to the package.”
He waited to hear if there was anything more. When she failed to continue, he said, “That’s all?”
She nodded.
He grinned. “Well, I guess you learned not to do that again.” He fished the groceries out of the back seat, got out and headed for the kitchen. He was at the door when he noticed that she’d remained in the car.
"Mel? Coming?”
She got out hesitantly. He waited for her at the door. When she reached him, he put one gentle hand to her cheek.
"It’s okay. That was then. Let’s get on with now.”
He opened the door and ushered her into their home.
She went to him that night. She could wait no longer.
As she eased open the door to his bedroom, he sat up hesitantly in the dark. Bjorn, camped at the foot of the bed, raised his head, then lowered it again when he recognized her.
"Mel? What’s the matter?”
"Shhh,” she said. “Nothing.” She urged him a little way back, tossed her robe aside and slipped under his covers without further speech. He flinched as she took him in her arms, then slowly extended his own to embrace her. She tried to still his trembling with caresses and soft murmurs.
"Mel,” he said, agony ringing through the syllable, “I can’t.”
"Yes you can, Ron. Just relax. I’ll help.”
“You can’t help.” The words were forged from the coldest iron.
She pulled back a little way and peered through the darkness at his face.
"Ron,” she said in her calmest, most soothing tone, “I haven’t held out on you in any way. I showed you the whole package right up front. Now it’s time for you to come clean with me.”
"But I haven’t asked for this,” he whispered.
"Because you don’t want it?”
He said nothing. Presently she felt his hand close over her fingers and guide them to his thigh. She did not resist.
What he pressed to her fingertips felt nothing like what she’d expected. It was rough and granular, a lump of cicatrice that protruded from his leg like a cancerous growth. It was the fleshly incarnation of pain.
"How?” she whispered.
"A gunshot wound. Just missed the femoral artery. The surgeon said I was lucky to live, but it took out a nerve trunk he couldn’t re-splice. I was fifteen.”
It took her a moment to grasp his implication. “So you can’t...?”
He clutched her and said nothing.
Wait a minute.
"Ron, what do you do when you go downstairs?” She trailed her fingers over his flesh, found the scar again and caressed it. “Does it have anything to do with this?”
He didn’t respond at once. Then, with no preliminary, he pulled away, slid out of bed, muttered “Put your robe on,” and headed for the door.
She was behind him in an instant.
His basement room had little in it. From the bright lighting, the large workbenches and the vises attached to them, she inferred that it had once been used as a general-purpose workshop, but there were no tools or raw materials to suggest that he used it that way now. In the corner stood a plastic trash bucket with nothing in it. The sole window was covered with a sheet of dark cloth.
He pulled open a drawer, drew forth an oblong pinkish object, handed it to her and turned away.
It was an irregular cylinder of supple rubber. It was about six inches long, with a rounded tip, a flared base, and a bulge at the middle about an inch and a half in diameter. She knew what it was for. She peered into the drawer from which it had come and saw a tube of lubricant, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a mass of cotton balls.
"You use this --”
"When I can’t hold out any longer. There’s a second nerve track that...well, you know.” The words were hoarse with strain. He would not look at her.
She contemplated the plug for a long while. He stood unmoving and unspeaking.
It’s a prosthetic. A medical appliance. It’s just like my Dilantin. Just as right, and just as necessary.
If I can cope with epilepsy, he can cope with this.
She plucked the lubricant from the drawer and took his hand.
"Ron,” she said, “come with me.”
He turned hesitantly, face red from shame and twisted by confusion.
"We’re going back to bed,” she said. “Your bed.”
"But --”
"No nonsense, Ron.” She yanked him toward the door and pressed him forward, one hand on his shoulder. “Get up those stairs.”
They went.
When she’d closed his bedroom door behind them, she snapped on the light. He flinched, still confused.
"Off with the robe and shorts,” she said. He complied. She shed her own robe.
"Face down on the bed.” When he was prone, she straddled him on her knees, urged his rump a little way upward, and squirted a generous amount of the lubricant on his exposed anus. His hands balled into fists as she worked it into the orifice with her fingers. The muscles of his back and neck became rigidly tight.
When she probed him, he gasped and started almost hard enough to buck her off his legs. She said, “Shhh, it’s all right,” and continued her ministrations. Gradually his tension subsided. He began to rock to the rhythm of her hands.
At last she lubricated the plug, put the tip to his anus, and ran her free hand caressingly down his back to the base of his spine. “Now push against me.” He did. The plug slid smoothly into him and seated itself naturally.
She turned him over with a gentle tug. His eyes were as wide as a startled deer’s. His chest trembled visibly. He’d developed a respectably large, very hard erection. She teased it with her fingertips, and he gasped and surged again.
"Happy birthday,” she whispered.
"It’s not my birthday.”
"Oh yes it is,” she said, and impaled herself upon him.
"Why did you want the light on?” he said.
She grinned. “I didn’t want you hiding from me any more.”
"May I turn it off now?”
"Okay.”
He slid out of bed, hit the wall switch, and was immediately back under the covers, his arms around her. Bjorn emitted a single thunderous snore, then fell silent.
"Happy?” she said.
He squeezed her in the darkness. “Very. But I don’t understand why --”
"Because I had to learn.”
"Hm?”
"I waited this long,” she said slowly, “because I had to learn to love you.”
"Oh. But --”
"What I don’t understand,” she said, “is how you’ve loved me and the kids all this time, right from the day we met, with no warm-up at all.”
His chest rose and fell against her.
"I knew how it was supposed to be done,” he said. “So I just did it. The three of you are lovable. That made it easy. After a while, I didn’t even have to think about it.”
Learning by doing. On-the-job training.
"Suppose we hadn’t been lovable?”
His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Why think about it? So tell me, Miss Harland, are you satisfied with the results of your ad?”
Her arms tightened around him. “I don’t think,” she murmured against his cheek, “there’s a luckier woman in the whole world. I can’t imagine how the rest of them let you get away.”
She felt his mouth curve into a grin. “Money well spent, then?”
"Very. How many places can you buy a first-rate husband for thirty bucks?”
Something blossomed in the warmth between them. Something new, and surprising, and yet inevitable. He pressed her close.
"I love you, Melissa,” he whispered. “My wife.”
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Ceremony
(So you think you’ve seen it all, eh? Well, what about Catholic family-values porn?)
Laura had suffered long enough. The evening was as hot and damp as the day had been, and she’d labored enough for one day. She rose from her drawing board, stretched as best she could, and waddled across her living room to its sole window. She tried to open it wider, but without success. There was no breeze anyway.
The street below was quiet. The rush hour was long past. Yielding to impulse, she raised the window screen and stepped out onto her fire escape, clutching the loose folds of her maternity dress in her left hand. It was a difficult task; at seven and a half months, she had to maneuver her swollen belly like a heavy bundle when she moved. She sat awkwardly on the fire escape, eyes unfocused, legs dangling over the edge.
There was still no breeze, but the sense of release from the confines of her apartment was refreshing. It made her yearn for further release, release from her gravidity, which at a month and a half’s distance seemed far away.
She knew she was lucky, as single mothers-to-be are reckoned. College educated, equipped with a skill marketed easily even from her home, she had no money worries and would have none. Prudent in all things and desiring only the best for her daughter, she had eliminated every avoidable hazard to her baby’s health from her diet and habits. Her friends were supportive to a fault. Sometimes it took all her forbearance not to scream and drive them from her apartment so she could be alone for a while...especially when one of them mentioned Peter.
The least mention of Peter’s name left her drifting among memories she could not thrust away. Most were memories of good times and good company, but those were not the tormentors. It was the memory of his touch, of his tender yet rugged lovemaking, that brought her to the limits of her endurance. She’d known no man’s touch since the day he left her, more than five months ago, when she’d told him that there would be no abortion.
In the silence of her soul, she had to admit that she wanted him still. Were he to come through her door, she would fling herself at his feet. His merest word of assent would make the past five months as if they had never been. The Earth was more likely to stop rotating.
Now she had done it to herself. Currents of sense memory stroked her skin, ghostly hands in the still air. With her eyes closed, she could imagine him caressing her, feel his lean torso against hers so vividly that he might as well be there. Yet he was not, and never would be.
He had said he’d loved all of her, not merely her glittering exterior but the depths of her. She’d been too reserved for most of the men she’d known, too proper, too Catholic. Not for him. When she’d told him of her determination to remain a virgin until marriage, he had merely nodded. His assent had been so natural as to say but of course, as if the matter hadn’t needed to be voiced.
Bare weeks later she’d taken him into her body. Her Catholic scruples burned to ash in the heat of their embrace. It was the start of a time of unspeakable joy.
It had ended with his departure, but she could not regret it. To regain it was her most fervent desire. She would have prayed for it, were it not blasphemous.
“Come live with me,” he said.
"No, you come live with me. I have the nicer apartment.”
"All right.”
"When should we have the ceremony?”
He shrugged. “Whenever.”
"You really don’t care?” He’d described himself as a casual Catholic, born to the faith but hardly practicing. Yet surely he would want God’s blessing on their joy.
"It doesn’t really matter. We’re already married.”
"Huh?”
"Here.” He put his hand to his heart. “And here.” He moved it to her breast. The tender pressure became a caress as he descended to kiss her.
His words had echoed within her; they’d spoken her own unvoiced conviction through his lips. Even now that the falsity of it stood so plain, she could not regret it.
She ached for his touch. Waves of desire surged in her, urging her to wallow in the memory of his hands and body. She badly needed release. For half a year she’d had none.
She lowered her back onto the floor of the fire escape and pulled up her maternity dress, revealing herself to the sky. At the top of a six-story apartment complex, she was unlikely to be seen even by a passing helicopter. Her hands began to caress her own flesh, stroking and smoothing her belly as a lover’s would. As Peter’s might have, had he not panicked and fled.
Her belly moistened with a fine sheen of sweat. It made the evening’s heat more comfortable, as if it were only an outward expression of the heat within her. Yet she needed more. The waves of tension within her were cresting, urging her toward more direct measures.
Her arms snaked around her belly, and her hands went to her groin. She teased open her labia the way Peter had done, parting the outer lips with one finger, spreading her inner folds with another to expose her clitoris. She stroked the little nubbin gently, and the fires within her blazed high.
Her need was too great and had been too long unwatered. In only seconds, she stiffened and cried out. The force of the orgasm momentarily, blessedly relieved her of consciousness.
When her senses returned, she was suffused with a sense of peace. She lay flat, her belly and groin still exposed, and breathed deeply, gazing into the bottomless sky.
It was not Peter, but it had been good. Very good indeed. At any rate, it would have to do.
When she had regained herself, she clambered to her feet and started to turn toward her window. It was then that she noticed her audience. A tall, slight, fair-haired young man, eyes wide and mouth hanging open, was watching her from one of the few windows along the perpendicular “L” of the apartment block from which her own could be easily seen.
He appeared paralyzed. From his expression, he’d missed nothing of substance.
At an earlier stage in her life, she would have fled in embarrassment. Only a few months ago, she would have gathered her dignity about her and exited as if nothing untoward had happened. Not today. The sensuality that had claimed her had left her incapable of even a blush.
She locked eyes with the young man and smiled at him: a coquette’s smile, inviting, faintly wicked, full of promise. She had no idea who he was. It didn’t matter. He was Man, and she was Woman, and were they to find themselves together, there was no doubt what would occur. Her hands went to the hem of her dress and pulled it over her head, to reveal her to him in her glory.
He stared at her perhaps ten seconds longer before hurrying away from his window, leaving her unobserved, unadmired, and strangely empty.
Matt McCloghrie struggled to calm himself. His blood surged through him, swelling and heating his face. It was absurd, considering what he’d been through. After two and a half years as a photographer-for-hire in this city, he shouldn’t even have noticed.
I thought this place had taken all the blood out of me.
Maybe not.
He hadn’t expected a tenth of what his customers had done before his lens. How anyone could bring herself to act in such a fashion under the gaze of a stranger was incomprehensible. How they could want it captured on film was beyond him. Who were these photographs for?
When the first one had shed her clothes and reached for her vibrator, it was all he could do not to scream and run. She had laughed at his naivete. Over time he’d become inured to the bizarreness barrage. Last month he’d shot a scene that included handcuffs, an eggplant and a goat. He hadn’t raised an eyebrow. Yet he hadn’t come to understand.
He certainly didn’t understand how he could photograph such as that all week long, without reaction, but be so shaken by the sight of a young pregnant woman touching herself on her fire escape.
He might have told himself that it was because she hadn’t known he was there, if she hadn’t awarded him that come-hither smile. She’d shown no more inhibitions than any of the ones who paid him to immortalize their cavortings.
He flopped onto his sofa, threw his head back and closed his eyes. He could still see her. She had imprinted herself on his mind’s eye.
He tried to analyze the image on his mental film, as if he were back in school at Trinity, doing it for an assignment. The view angle was enticing and the focus was strong. The foreground figure obliterated all consideration of any other detail within the frame. Despite the softness of the shapes, the figure was definite. Its contrast to its background was intense, as if enhanced by the developer. The pose was superb. The placements of the arms and legs were exquisite, framing the large, rounded belly to perfection. The angle of the neck and the expression of transport on the face were beyond perfection.
It was the work of a master. He could have wished it were his own.
But it is.
His blood resumed its pounding. Accident and perception had combined to create the most beautiful image he had ever seen, of a woman he did not know. He would never forget it.
He wondered who she was.
Laura could have called any of a score of her friends to help her with her Saturday laundry. Whoever she selected would have dropped everything to help. It was remarkable that none of her friends had stopped by yet. Personal pride mandated that she struggle through it alone.
The worst was maneuvering the basket into the elevator. The opening was too narrow for her to carry it on her hip; she had to lean back, balance it on her belly and thrust it before her. For a second or two, she couldn’t see whether there was anyone in her path.
When she’d set the basket down, she confronted a tall, slender young man whose vaguely familiar face burned a deep crimson. He turned away and stared into the corner of the elevator, his shoulders raised about his neck to deny her the sight of his embarrassment. It was a moment before she realized who he had to be.
"Hey.” She kept her voice soft.
He said nothing.
"It’s okay. You were just looking out your window. No law against that.”
"I know.” His voice was low and hoarse with strain.
She started to speak again, and found herself with nothing further to say.
When the elevator reached the basement, he turned toward her. There was enough discomfort in his expression for a spinal tap.
"May I help with those?”
The gambit surprised her. “It’s not necessary, I can manage.”
"No, I’d like to. Really.” He bent and lifted the basket. “It’ll be easier if you step out first.”
She did, and preceded him to the laundry room.
"Weren’t you headed out or something?”
He shrugged.
She rose from the plastic chair, stretched, and went to lean against the spinning dryer. The vibrations were heavenly against her lower back. “Look, it isn’t as if I’m a cripple.”
"I know, Miss. I just want to help, that’s all.”
She grimaced. “Everybody wants to help. You’d think pregnancy was a big deal.”
"Oh? It isn’t?”
Blood rushed to her face.
"It wasn’t that hard to get knocked up...hey, what’s your name?”
"Matt. Yours?”
"Laura. Pleased to meet you. So, Matt, how come you’ve been sitting down here for an hour and a half with a pregnant gal whose name you wouldn’t even ask for?”
He muttered something and looked away.
"No date for tonight, Matt?”
His head whipped around at that. There was a hot anger in his eyes that made her wonder whether she was safe with him. Yet he did not rise from his seat.
"I’m a photographer,” he grated. “I work most Friday and Saturday nights. Would you like to hear about some of my paying customers, Laura? I have a large collection of stories I could tell you, if the telling of them wouldn’t turn my stomach.”
She gaped at him.
"I’ve only been here a short time, but by God I think I’ve seen every perversion known to man, and been paid to capture them all on film. So forgive me, please, for finding the sight of a pretty girl great with child a refreshing change from the usual. I hadn’t known it was an offense against the local mores.”
Great with child.
"You’re not a native-born American, are you, Matt?’
"No.” He looked away again.
"From where, then?”
"About twenty miles north of Dublin.”
"Ah. I see.”
"Do you?” he snorted. “Yes, I’m a Catholic. Has that been outlawed here in the land of the free, too? I shouldn’t wonder.”
"No, it’s not that.” She took a moment to choose her words. “Childbirth’s still something of a miracle there, isn’t it?”
He scowled. “Don’t patronize the poor Third Worlder with his nose pressed against your window, girl.” His brogue became more definite with each word. “Yes, we’re poor back there. Yes, a lot of women lose their babies at the birth, and some lose themselves as well. But the miracle of it is the same here as there.”
He rose to glare down at her. “You’re one with your child now, Laura. It’s God’s greatest blessing, the strongest foretaste we get of His love in this life. You haven’t bothered to learn from it, or to revel in it. Poor benighted chit. It’ll last but a little while longer, and then there’ll only be words. And like as not you’ll never know what you’ve missed, that I can never know at all.”
The dryer chose that moment to stop. He moved toward her.
"Let’s get those up the stairs.”
Instead of standing aside, she reached for his hand and pulled it to her belly.
The gesture paralyzed him. He stood perfectly still, his palm against her, for a timeless interval.
"Do you...go to Mass on Sundays, Matt?”
He nodded.
"Where?”
"Saint Theresa’s, over on Thirty-Seventh.”
"May I go with you tomorrow morning?”
His mouth fell open. “Of course.”
"Are you working tonight?”
"Well, yes, but what are you thinking?”
She smiled. “Dinner. My apartment. I’ll cook.”
He studied her face.
"May I help?”
"Of course.”
For the next seven weeks, they were apart as little as possible.
He came to her apartment every morning at seven and fixed breakfast for the two of them. His days were largely his own, and he spent them with her. She would perch at her drawing board, executing one commission after another without rising for hours at a time. He would read, listen to music, fetch them coffee. His appointments were almost all in the evening hours, and so they usually parted company after dinner.
"This is such a nuisance,” she said one time, unsure what she meant by it.
He grinned. “Perverts have jobs, too.”
Even on those evenings when no customer awaited him, he would take his leave no later than eight. She would not see him again until the following morning. As much as she wanted it, she could not bring herself to ask him to stay the night.
He never deliberately touched her. Yet, now and then, when they sat on her sofa with the television on, she would feel her daughter stir, reach for his hand and put it on her belly. He would leave it there until it was time for him to go.
He was there when her water broke. He went into a frenzy, so agitated that she had to laugh.
"Relax, Matt. I’m packed, and the hospital arrangements were all made months ago. All I need to do is wait for the contractions and call the doctor.”
It stopped him cold. He grinned. “You efficient American wench. I should have known.”
They didn’t have to wait long. Within two hours she was in the waiting room at the hospital, with him clutching her hand and making the most absurd soothing noises ever heard outside a nursery. When she’d been admitted, he followed her to the prenatal room without a word.
When she was wheeled into the delivery room, she half expected him to follow. He stepped forward as if he’d intended to do so, then stopped himself. The doors swung closed on an expression midway between longing and fear.
"Name?” The nurse didn’t look at her.
"Laura DiGennaro.” Post-partum exhaustion made every word a struggle.
The nurse scribbled onto her clipboard. “Picked a name for the baby yet?”
"Annelise.”
The nurse pulled a plastic baby bracelet and a paper insert for it from a pocket of her uniform. She wrote Annelise’s name on the insert, folded the bracelet around it, and held it up for Laura to see. “This makes it official.” She pulled Annelise’s tiny hand from Laura’s breast and clipped the bracelet around her wrist, then strode from the room. The baby never stopped nursing.
"You’re off to a good start, little one,” she whispered, caressing the new life at her bosom. “You have a good appetite. I hope I can keep you fed.”
It was something Matt couldn’t help with.
Matt wheeled her and Annelise down the corridor three days later. As they turned the corner toward Admissions, she saw Peter standing at the desk.
The thick black hair, the sculpted features, the pose of casual grace were lifted from her memories. He was as she remembered him in every respect but one: she had never seen so much pain in his face.
He rushed toward her. Matt moved to interpose himself.
"Laura, they wouldn’t tell me where you were!”
She faced him unspeaking. Matt looked back at her for some indication of what ought to be done.
"They had no reason to, Peter. What are you to me, anyway?”
Peter surged forward. Matt caught and restrained him without apparent effort.
"For God’s sake, Laura, I’m the father of that child you’ve got!”
With Peter’s and Matt’s eyes both fixed upon her, she shook her head.
"No, you’re not, Peter. I don’t know what fantasies you’ve conjured up, but the one thing you’ve never been is the father of my child.” She looked at Matt. “Let’s go.”
Matt wheeled her past her stunned ex-lover to the Admissions desk. As soon as the nurse looked up, Laura blared, “There’s been a mistake.”
The nurse looked up in confusion. “What kind, Miss?”
Laura displayed Annelise’s wrist, the hospital ID bracelet still upon it.
"My daughter’s been mislabeled. No doubt you’ve got her name wrong on the birth certificate as well.”
The nurse shrugged. “Well, it isn’t the end of the world. Just come back in a week or two and file --”
"No. I want it rectified now.”
The nurse wasn’t easy to crack, but Laura had more resources than she usually displayed, and in time a hospital administrator was fetched to see to the creation of a new birth certificate.
"Now, Ma’am, what is your daughter’s name supposed to be?” The administrator was all unctuous solicitude.
"First name, Annelise. Last name, the same as her father’s.” Laura swallowed hard and slipped her hand into Matt’s. “McCloghrie.”
Matt gasped. She clutched at his hand. From behind them came a loud thump as Peter collapsed.
"Why don’t you give him the spelling, Matt?”
He’d gone paler than a newly laundered sheet, but he spelled his last name in a steady voice. The administrator indited two birth certificates, crunched them with the hospital seal, and handed one to her.
"Congratulations, Mrs. McCloghrie. I’ve never seen a more beautiful baby or a happier couple.”
Laura squeezed Matt’s hand. “Will you forgive me for taking you by surprise that way?”
They stood at the curb before the hospital entrance, waiting for their taxi under a brilliant early-autumn sky. Despite the crisp breeze that nipped at their cheeks, Matt’s color had not entirely returned.
"There’s nothing to forgive, love. Thank you, is all.”
"Do you want us, then?”
"More than I’ve ever been able to say, and you know it well, wench.” Matt glanced up at the spire of St. Theresa’s, a block away. “You’ll think him a horrible constipated stickler for details, but if Annelise’s father is going to be sharing her mother’s bed, he’d like to have a ceremony sometime soon.”
Laura smiled, pressed his hand to her cheek, moved it to rest upon Annelise’s back.
"What do you think we just did?”
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Equalizer
The little man who called himself Acorn stepped close to Michael and looked up into his face. The candlelight playing on his features gave him the aspect of a supplicant at an altar. "Let me hear you speak in your lowest register, clearly but as quickly as you can."
"Anything in particular, sir?"
"No, whatever you choose."
Michael thought a moment. "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our deaths, Amen."
If he really is a conjurer, that will put him on notice.
Michael's deep bass echoed from the walls of the cave. Acorn's eyebrows went up. "Nine seconds from start to finish. Christian?"
Michael nodded.
"Could you do that, say, two hundred times in succession, keeping your voice that low and maintaining that pace the whole way?"
The big laborer shrugged. "I don't know."
Acorn ran a hand over his bald pate. He clasped his hands behind his back, strode to the mouth of his cave, and stared out at the huts and fields of Carach an Lagan.
"It's important to know. This could be worth a great deal to you. But not the Ave Maria. I have a passage here from an old book, about the same length." He returned to his workbench and laid his hand on a large leatherbound volume. "Would you like to try it?"
Michael regarded the book uncertainly. "May I have a look at it?"
Acorn heaved the volume open. Its binding crackled. The pages filled the air with tiny motes of dust as they turned.
"Here." He pointed to a paragraph inscribed in an unusual script.
Michael squinted down at the passage. "I can't make it out."
Acorn grinned. "It's very ornate, but it's the Latin alphabet. You'll pick it up. Watch and listen." He ran a finger underneath the words as he read them off. They sounded harsh, uncouth. The air acquired a hint of tension, as if a storm were gathering outside.
"What does it mean?"
The little man shrugged. "To you and me? Nothing at all. To the man who wrote it? No one alive can say. Read it aloud with me, once."
Acorn had been right. Once he'd heard the passage read, Michael's eyes adapted to the decorative swirls on the letters and filtered them out without thought. They read the passage together, Acorn's light tenor and Michael's weighty bass in strangely perfect unison.
"Excellent, Michael. How is it that you learned to read so well?"
Michael looked down at his boots. "I was taught by the priests. They thought I might become one of them, until I married."
"What do you do to support yourself?"
"I pull a trashcart, twice daily."
Acorn nodded. "Not much money in that, is there?"
"No."
And Aoife is with child again. Dear God, how am I to feed another?
Acorn cocked his head. "How long would it take you to learn that passage by heart? As well as you know the Ave Maria?"
"Well, they aren't words I know, which will make it harder. If I might have a copy, so that I could say it over to myself as I worked --"
"No copy, Michael. You must learn it here."
"Ah. I don't know, sir. Perhaps a day or two, but the work --"
"Two hundred sesterces, Michael."
Michael gasped. Acorn regarded him steadily.
"To learn a string of nonsense words? Sir, what can be the use?"
A corner of the little man's mouth turned up. "I have a use. Let it lie. Two hundred sesterces for you to commit that passage to memory, and to recite it two hundred times perfectly, as low and as rapidly as you did the Ave Maria."
Two hundred sesterces. I could leave off the hauler's life, buy a plot, learn to farm. Aoife and the babes would never fear hunger again. I might even be able to afford a book of my own. Perhaps two or three!
"Today, sir?"
Acorn shook his head. "Today you practice." He put a gold terce into Michael's hand. It was the first gold Michael had ever touched, and he was amazed at the weight of it. "There's something on account."
Michael tore his eyes from the gleaming disk with difficulty. "I must leave at the ninth hour to pull the cart."
"Practice till the ninth hour, then." The little man's face shone with undisguised eagerness. "Come, let's go over it again...."
Michael pulled aside the burlap that closed the door to his hut and peered within. Aoife was kneeling with her back to him, sorting through a pile of cut rushes, saving out the broadest for thatch and setting aside the lesser ones to be burned for heat. Her pregnancy had begun to show only a few weeks earlier, but in her kneeling position it made her slender body look unbalanced and vulnerable. Before he could speak, she smiled over her shoulder at him.
"Where are Eamon and Siobhan?" he said.
"I sent them to the bog for peat. They should be back soon. What did Acorn want of you?"
He knelt beside her and took a bundle of reeds to sort. "He wanted me to learn a chant for him. Said my voice was perfect for it."
Best not to mention the money until it's in my pouch.
Aoife looked uneasy. "This has nothing to do with the druids, does it?"
He shrugged. "He said nothing of them. It's just an old chant in a crude old language, but when it's recited at speed it becomes quite musical. I asked him what it meant and he said no one alive could say."
Aoife paused in her labors and ran a hand down his cheek. "Sweet trusting man that you are, you believed him straight off, didn't you? Father Declan might know."
Michael considered. "You're right. I hadn't thought of him."
"Shall we climb the hill and ask him, then?"
He nodded. "We shall. When the babes have returned."
"That could be a while, husband."
"We don't lack for things to do, wife."
She dropped her bundle of reeds and made to rise. "I only meant to say that -- "
He stopped her voice with a kiss. Her lips parted to admit his tongue. Her hands rose and began to undo the laces at the throat of his tunic. His went to the belt of her gown.
Father Declan rubbed at his tonsure. "Are you certain those are the exact sounds?"
Michael nodded. "I could write them out as letters for you, Father. I read them off a page in a great book, and the image is still fresh in my memory."
The stooped old priest mused uncertainly for a moment, then pulled a quill and a sheet of parchment from a crevice in his worktable and passed them to Michael. "Do it, my boy." Michael released his wife's hand and took the quill.
Michael's hand was not as smooth nor as steady as it had been when the priests schooled him. A trash hauler had little opportunity to write, and scant coin for parchment or ink. Yet it was not entirely discreditable. When he had finished, the priest peered down at the writing and read it off slowly but surely, reproducing the chant exactly as Michael had learned it.
"I do not know it, my boy. It is not Latin. Nor is it Gaelic as we speak it. Perhaps it comes from the Orkneys, where the Gaelic is not spoken true. But it has a rough sound to it, like a challenge or an insult." The priest pondered a moment. "It could be Saxon, I suppose. Michael," the priest said, laying a frail, age-gnarled hand on Michael's huge, heavily calloused one, "when you recited this... chant, did you feel any different? Did anything unusual happen?"
Yes, Acorn laid a gold terce in my hand and promised me two hundred more like it.
"Nothing, Father. Oh, the walls of Acorn's cave echoed it for a moment, but no more."
Declan nodded. "Acorn has a certain reputation among us, my boy. Not a bad one, mind, but he's done much traveling, and inquired deeply of things the Church considers dangerous. I will not tell you to shun him, but I caution you: he may have purposes of which he does not speak. He would not be the first."
"I understand, Father."
The old priest sat back and stared at his folded hands. "I should tell the abbot of this, you know."
Michael started. Aoife drew close to him. Her arm snaked around his waist. "Even though nothing has yet come of it, Father?"
Declan's inky black eyes rose and probed at Michael's. "Perhaps not. But will you come to me if something does?"
Michael's mouth became dry. "I will, Father."
News of the Balogh campaign filtered into Carach an Lagan with the carts of the spring's traders. Evan Balogh and his horde had overrun half of Ireland to date. His most recent conquest was only four leagues to the east. He'd not moved through the winter, nor yet since the thaw, but the portents were poor.
Town by town, Balogh's spears had humbled the defenses that rose to meet them. In each he'd sworn the tuathan to fealty as his vassal, left a garrison of hard men, and commanded the conscription of half the lads of military age. Surely the training those boys were receiving was not in how to farm.
Michael pondered the tidings despite his inclinations. Were Balogh's legion to assail Carach an Lagan, there would be little his town could do about it. Aoife's father said that their tuathan Bryndan had not taken his sword in hand since Michael was weaned. Bryndan's people might fight, but against the large, well armed, and ferocious Balogh army, they would have little hope.
Balogh had not proclaimed his goal publicly, but it was clear. He intended to be the first King of all Kings Ireland had seen in seven centuries. He appeared to have the means. Barring a coalition of the remaining free towns in opposition to him, he would be master of all Ireland within a year. Even such a coalition would face long odds.
Michael could not hope to affect the matter. Though he was the largest and strongest man of the village, he lacked all training for war. Yet he thought about it as he hauled, and tended his homestead, and practiced the odd chant under Acorn's eye. He said nothing to Aoife.
After a fortnight of practice, Michael wanted only to have done with the old chant. Acorn had told him nothing more about it, had merely sat and listened as Michael repeated it endlessly, straining to keep his voice low and to speak as quickly as he could nonetheless.
On the fourteenth day, after thirteen days of three hours' practice each day, Acorn listened to Michael recite the old phrase two hundred times without pause or error, and announced that the practices were finished.
"What then, sir?"
"Bide. You will see." The little scholar went to the back of his cave and dragged forth a device that looked much like a potter's wheel. The drive mechanism was sturdier than on a typical wheel, a pair of stout gears with thick teeth. The platter was thinner than most, as if it had been shaved down. Mounted to the stem of the contraption was a heavy wooden strut that supported a large horn, too large to have come from a local beast. Wrapped tightly around the narrow end of the horn was one end of a gleaming wire. The other end trailed lightly along the upper edge of a clay drum. Michael leaned close and saw that the wire end actually rested in a shallow groove that spiraled along the length of the cylinder.
Acorn saw the question in his eyes and smiled. "Time for your labors to bear fruit, Michael. You must run through the chant as before, as low and as fast as you can. Don't bother to count the repetitions. Speak into the horn, and start when I say."
The little man dragged a stool up to the wheel, sat upon it, and placed his feet upon the pedals. He rocked them back and forth a bit, and the wheel spun to his touch. He closed his eyes, muttered something unintelligible, and then stared straight at Michael.
"Begin."
As Michael launched into the chant, Acorn pedaled the wheel carefully and deliberately, maintaining a steady pace of one revolution per heartbeat. The end of the wire inched along the groove toward the bottom of the cylinder. Michael tried to ignore it and concentrate on his chant.
Twenty minutes later, the wire end had reached the bottom of the cylinder, where it scraped against the platter.
Acorn bade him stop, ceased to pedal and slipped off his stool. He staggered, brushed a bit of clay dust from his jerkin, and nodded.
"That was very well done, Michael."
"Thank you, sir." But what is it that I did? "May I be paid now?"
The scholar smiled. "Presently. But will you assist me with a test first?"
"What must I do?"
Instead of answering, the little man went to the mouth of his cave, scratched about on the ground, and returned with a fist-sized rock. He handed it to Michael.
"I shall remount the wheel in a moment. Stand back by the mouth of the cave. When I have the platter spinning, take this and cast it at me, as hard as you can."
"But sir --"
Acorn held up a hand. "Aim below my neck, please. Just in case."
He returned to the wheel, fiddled with the horn and the wire for a few moments, and seated himself once again with his feet on the pedals. In two seconds the wheel was spinning swiftly, and the chant was squawking from the horn in a faint but clear voice. It was Michael's voice, raised above the range of the human and accelerated to extraordinary speed.
"Now, Michael!" Acorn was puffing and pedaling furiously.
Michael hurled the rock at Acorn's belly with all his force. It did not reach its target. About three feet from the scholar's flesh, the rock burst in a shower of sparks, leaving only a cloud of dust.
Acorn ceased to pedal, dismounted the stool, and beamed at his device with paternal pride.
"It works."
Though Abbot Ciaran was three hands shorter than Michael, still the laborer felt the priest to be looking down at him.
"What you have described is plainly sorcery. Though you were an unknowing accomplice to it, yet you were an accomplice, and therefore excommunicate until you have been cleansed. This proscription," Ciaran said, one hand raised against Michael's imminent cry of protest, "does not apply to your wife or your children."
Michael turned to Father Declan. The old priest's face was twisted with pity. He held Michael's gaze only a moment, then bowed his head over his folded hands.
"Of what will this cleansing consist, Abbot?"
Ciaran pursed his lips, then clasped his hands behind his back and began to amble about his study. His considerable girth jiggled with each step.
"You must make a full confession of your part in the affair, omitting no detail or condition. You will be absolved, of course. However, you will do penance. It will include the surrender of all your profit from your deed, for God will not countenance a man to retain the gains from such a thing, yet admit him back into grace."
Michael had feared as much. He'd pondered it for an hour before ascending the hill to tell Father Declan of what Acorn had done. He'd come to no conclusion. He hadn't dared to tell Aoife about any of it.
He allowed his eyes to travel the breadth of the abbot's office. It was a large space, the largest within the abbey. The stones of the walls had been scraped clean of all moss and dirt, and the spaces between them carefully chinked with river clay that was then rubbed smooth. The floor was covered with thick furs, so soft that when Michael entered, he'd thought for a moment that he'd stepped onto a cloud. A large desk and an adjoining work table stood beneath a large window framed by heavy blue drapes. Several large wooden cabinets, their doors closed to his inspection, lined the other walls. In the man-high hearth, a merry fire consumed half a hundredweight of good oak logs. Despite the open window, the fire warmed the room to the edge of Michael's ability to endure it.
Bryndan lives in a hut no grander than mine. Father Declan's cell is smaller, and is cold even in full summer.
"And the abbey shall have my two hundred sesterces, then?"
The abbot frowned. "They are not yours. They are the fruits of a transaction with a conjurer and a demonolater. They shall be put to God's work."
"What work does God have that requires my two hundred sesterces, Abbot? You receive a tenth of all the product of Carach an Lagan, and from the looks of this room you don't stint yourself the use of it. Why can't I retain my pay for labor honestly done? Why can't I use it to buy a plot and a few animals, and raise my family out of the trash-hauler's life? Why must it go to your comfort instead?"
Declan gasped. The abbot's eyes flared wide and his face turned purple.
"Would you prefer that your whole family be under the ban, young man? Would you want to see your wife and children denied the rites, the Eucharist, and the face of Christ? Take care that your concern for their bodies does not cost their souls an eternity in hell."
The words sent a chill down Michael's back, yet there was something else there as well, something that stiffened him against the gale that raged from the mouth of the portly abbot. He stared briefly into the blazing fire as his thoughts congealed.
"Each Sunday dawn since I was five I have climbed the hill," he said, "to hear Father Declan say the Mass. I have heard his sermons, and learned the faith at his hand, and accepted all that he taught me. I have given the tithe with my own hands, even when it left me and mine with so little that Aoife and I had to choose between feeding the babes and feeding ourselves. I have brought Eamon up the hill for a year, and I was soon to bring Siobhan beside him. I have never once complained.
"Father Declan told us ever that our salvation lies in our own hands, that each of us comes to Christ by his own faith and will and labor, that no man can damn me but myself. I took his words and I laid them alongside those of the druids, and I knew that this was how the world was meant to be, not the bloody sacrifices and grim woodland gods and chanting at the dark of the moon.
"But now you, Reverend Abbot, tell me that what I've believed all these years is a lie, that my wife and my babes are hostages to my decision. That by your word, they can be denied the hope of heaven, though they had no part of what I did. And I take your words, and I lay them alongside those of Father Declan, and I know that either you are no true priest of Christ, or he is not. And I will keep my two hundred sesterces."
He turned and departed before the astonished priests could respond. As the door closed behind him, he heard the abbot scream "You are no Christian, Michael!" in a voice shrill with frustration and fury.
There were no immediate consequences. The other residents of the village showed no change in attitude toward Michael or his family. At the market, Acorn's gold spent as readily as the coppers Michael earned for hauling the trashcart. Once Bryndan saw the color of Michael's money, the tuathan agreed to introduce him to some minor nobles who might divide their lands with him at an acceptable price.
Michael left a terce on account with the blacksmith, that a sword might be forged for him. Word was passing that the Balogh horde would soon be on the move again. With all that lay to the east already under his sway, Balogh would surely be looking in the direction of Carach an Lagan.
At dawn on the Sunday after the confrontation with the abbot, Michael led his family up the hill to the chapel as always. The townsfolk parading along before and behind him said nothing. At the chapel doors, Artyr and Padraig, ploughmen nearly as large as he, stepped before him and gestured that he halt. Their townsfolk flowed around and past them.
"You and yours may not enter here, Michael," Padraig said.
Aoife gasped.
Michael frowned. "Is it for you to say so, Padraig? You, whose drinking and wenching are the shame of Carach an Lagan? Or you, Artyr, who pray that you'll die on a Sunday, after Mass and before noon, so that you'll not descend straight to hell?"
"We have been instructed by the abbot," Artyr said in a monotone.
Aoife's hand closed painfully tight upon Michael's. Their children drew close around them. A last trickle of villagers flowed past them, leaving them alone outside the church.
Michael made a show of peering into the chapel. "I don't see that particular fellow anywhere about. Has he ever shown you his study, Artyr? Did he call you there to... instruct you, or did he come outside to do it, so the dung on your boots wouldn't offend his fine fur rugs?"
Artyr's broad face convulsed in a snarl. He looked as if he might hurl himself at Michael, until Padraig laid a monitory hand on his shoulder.
"There is no point to this, Michael," Padraig said. "You and yours are excommunicate, and have no place in a gathering of Christians, here or anywhere. Make haste to your sorcerer in the cave, for his is the only instruction you'll receive in Carach an Lagan."
The two retreated into the chapel and shut the doors in Michael's face.
"Is it true, Michael?"
Aoife sat on the ground, knees drawn up and head thrown back. Her eyes were sheened over with tears. She'd said no word since they descended the hill, except to send Eamon and Siobhan to the bog for peat they didn't need.
"I don't know, wife. He had me do a service for him that I didn't understand, and he did a thing with it I can't explain. So far no harm has come of it, and he paid me well. I don't know what to expect."
"What was the thing you did?"
Michael told her.
"No demons?"
He sauntered to the door of their hut and peered out at the spring morning. All was quiet. The rest of Carach an Lagan was still atop the hill, celebrating the Mass that had been denied to them.
"None that I saw. But what should we expect I would see? Would I know a demon if I stared one in the face?"
"Who made the voice you heard, if not a demon?"
Michael moved to sit beside her, looped his arms over his knees. "It was my voice, love. As shrill as if I were a mouse not a man, but mine nonetheless. Acorn's device spoke with my voice, but faster and higher than I could ever do, even if you were to take a blacksmith's tongs and crush my --"
"Enough, Michael." She turned away from him, and he saw the rapid quivering of her shoulders.
"We will never know want again, wife."
She would not look at him. "We will never see God's face, husband."
"Dung of an ass!" Her head jerked around at his sudden roar. "Have we not kept the Commandments with full respect? Have we not taught our children as we ourselves were taught? We are no less Christians than we were before. Abbot Ciaran and his lust for the gold I've earned cannot make us less. Aoife," he said, allowing entreaty to pour into his voice, "it was God made me what I am. It was God gave me this chest and this throat, and the voice they produce. It was God made the laws of the world, not Abbot Ciaran. If this voice and Acorn's skills can produce something wondrous, something that might shield a man from a thrown rock, or a spear, or..."
As if they'd been churning behind a gate just unlatched, implications and possibilities poured through his brain. Aoife leaned toward him and peered into his face.
"Michael?"
The Balogh hordes.
"Michael!" Her hands clutched at his shoulders.
He clambered to his feet and brushed the soil from his clothes. "I must see Acorn." He reached down to his wife. "Will you come with me this time?"
She took his hand and rose.
"Was it sorcery?"
Acorn's eyebrows rose. "So I am 'sir' to you no longer, Michael?"
Michael's jaw clenched. "What you are to me is of no moment beside what you are to the world."
"Which is?"
"A conjurer. A demonolater. And the agent of my corruption."
Acorn said nothing. Aoife's hand squeezed Michael's to counsel calm. He looked down at her, then jerked his chin toward the contraption that had spoken with his voice. It sat in the back of the cave, surrounded by other oddments of unclear import.
"There it is, wife. First I spoke to it, and then it spoke to me. But its voice was far stronger than mine. Strong enough to shatter a thrown rock to dust. Strong enough to shield the man who rode it from a swordstroke or the flight of a spear. Strong enough to cast us out of the Church, deny us the rites, make us shunned of Carach an Lagan and wherever else word of our banishment might travel. Acorn," he said, turning to the little man once more, "would it protect you from the village in arms, should Abbot Ciaran persuade them that you've leagued with a demon? Would it protect you from me?"
The color drained from Acorn's face. "You have had nothing but good of me, Michael. Why do you turn against me now?"
"By your hand I was cast out from my people!"
Acorn's eyes narrowed. He raised one small hand, made a show of inspecting it, and turned it palm up toward Michael.
"Are you sure, Michael? By my hand? Why doesn't this hand remember that? Was it I who pronounced you excommunicate? Was it I who called anathema upon you before the village? Was it I who told you that your entire family would fall under the ban unless you surrendered your wages to the abbot? And when that threat had been spoken, did I compel your answer?" Acorn's lips pulled back from his teeth. "Truly, I have been many places this past week. I am a man of power indeed!"
Michael's mouth fell open. "The abbot said --"
"That I made a pact with a demon? Did you see a demon, Michael? Did you hear a demon's voice?"
It was my own voice I heard.
"Acorn, what did we do together? If it wasn't sorcery, then what was it?"
The fire dimmed in the little man's face. His face worked as if he were tasting the words he was about to speak.
"We made an experiment, lad. I'd been told a strange tale about that chant, involving a man in a village to the south. He didn't know what it meant, no more than you or I. He recited it to his children as a nonsense rhyme, and they learned it and recited it back to him. One day when they were bandying it back and forth, faster and faster, his wife became irritated with them and hurled a potshard in their direction, and it exploded as it flew. The event terrified them. They scarcely dared to whisper of it.
"I tried it for myself, but the results were erratic. It occurred to me that speed -- sheer rapid repetition -- might be the key, but as fast as I could speak the words, still I could not make the effect reliable. So I contrived a device that would record the sounds spoken to it, and play them back at need, at a speed far higher than any human throat could manage. And I called you to me.
"Now that we can make it happen at will, we can study it. We can try to determine why it happens. We will learn more of the marvels of this marvelous world. And from those steps, who knows what other learning might come? We might learn how to rend the earth with sound, that we may have its coal, or cut a path through a mountain, to make way for a road. All because you learned an odd chant in a forgotten language and sang it into my device."
Michael nodded. He released Aoife's hand and moved to Acorn's worktable, where oddments were piled in no particular order. The hilt of a dagger protruded out one side of the pile. He pulled it free, tested its point and its edge, and turned back to the little man.
"Mount your wheel, Acorn. We're going to have another experiment, right now."
Acorn licked his lips. "That's a very valuable blade, lad. I'd prefer that --"
"Mount your wheel."
Acorn complied.
Within a few seconds, the little man had the wheel spinning furiously. Michael's recorded voice once more squawked fast and shrill from the horn. Michael raised the knife high above his head and whipped it down at Acorn's bare scalp.
It exploded in his hand. The concussion threw him backwards into the cave wall, knocked the breath out of him and sent him to the floor.
Acorn leaped off his mount. He and Aoife squatted over Michael, their faces filled with fright. Behind them, the spinning cylinder coasted to a halt, Michael's recorded voice dropping through the octaves until it ran out in a subterranean grumble.
Michael shook his head and blinked away the sparks of impact. "It works." His voice was thick.
"What was the point of that, Michael?" Acorn said.
"My redemption. And yours. And the deliverance of Carach an Lagan. Can you make your device to speak at a distance? To protect someone not mounted on the wheel?"
The question seemed to confuse Acorn. "I don't know, lad. Why?"
Michael picked himself up off the floor of the cave, straightened his tunic and folded Aoife's hand in his own.
"Armor for a champion." He looked into his wife's eyes. "Go home and tend to the babes, love. I'll be back by nightfall."
Bryndan saw the two of them approach. The big silver-haired tuathan dropped his hoe and looked ready to flee when he recognized them. Michael hailed him in a low voice.
"Shall we go inside, Bryndan?"
The tuathan turned silently and led them into his hut. He indicated with a gesture that they should sit, then descended to his haunches in the far corner of the hovel. He sat silently, eyes darting from Acorn to Michael and back.
"Balogh is coming, Bryndan."
The tuathan nodded.
"Have we the means to beat him back?"
Bryndan snorted. "We are ten score men, as many women, and a clutch of useless priests. His legion numbers six thousand. He could leave three quarters of it behind and still slay us all."
It's worse than I thought.
"Will you take up sword against him, or do you mean to let him have us without a struggle?"
The color drained from the tuathan's face. "Have you no sense, man? If we submit, we live. If we resist, we die, down to the youngest babe in arms. He had Cullaire put to the torch for resisting after its tuathan gave token of surrender!"
Michael nodded. "But if we win?"
"Madness! He has thirty times our numbers, all hard men blooded in battle!"
"The rule, Bryndan," Michael said in his gravest bass, "is that if the defenders' chieftain offers combat of champions, the attacker must accept. Father Declan says that not once in seven centuries has an attacker refused the challenge."
Bryndan peered at him as if he'd been babbling in tongues. "If you mean to suggest that I face Evan Balogh man to man with broadswords, you've gone simple. He's killed every man who's ever faced him. He keeps count by notching a cherry staff. There are three score grooves in it. I do not care to be numbered among them."
"He would not kill you."
"Why not?"
Michael closed his eyes briefly. "Acorn can prevent it."
The tuathan's gaze shot toward the little scholar, who was as startled as Bryndan at having been introduced to the exchange. "How?"
"I, ah, have a device --"
"A talisman? A relic? Balogh slew a chieftain who carried a fragment of the Cross!"
"Not that kind of device, Bryndan." Michael tried to put authority in his tone. "Acorn has a machine that can swaddle you in safety. While he works it, no blade can touch you."
The tuathan's face writhed between wonder and terror. "How?"
"I don't know," Acorn said. "But it works. Michael helped me build it."
The words hung leaden in the air as Bryndan studied Acorn's face. Michael dared not speak.
"You are what they say you are," the tuathan whispered. "For eleven years I have rebuffed the folk who called you sorcerer. He's done naught to you or to any of us, I'd say. He is courteous and free with his coin, and he calls no man his foe. He keeps his nose to his own affairs and speaks ill of no one. Get you home and do as well. And now," he grated, "I learn that I was a fool."
Acorn's face spasmed with pain. "I am no sorcerer and you are no fool, Bryndan. You could work my machine as easily as I. There are no earth powers involved. No rituals, no sacrifices, none of the dark and deadly things of the druids. It will not endanger your soul in any way. It will ward you from the blows of Balogh's sword."
Bryndan stood. Though the tuathan was aflame with anger, Michael could see no trace in him of the warrior who'd led Carach an Lagan to victory in a score of battles.
"Get you gone, sorcerers. Evan Balogh will be the King of Ireland by Midsummer's Day. I will not stand against a man who wears fate's mantle, no matter what your infernal device might do. I will submit, and pray that my people do not cost me my life by resisting the inevitable."
Only a fortnight more had passed when Balogh's outriders appeared atop the eastern ridge. Though they wore no obvious livery, it was plain that they had come to survey the village for the impending attack. They moved slowly along the rock, studied the roads, the passes, and the village's paltry defenses, then wheeled and rode off without a word.
Michael had the news of Acorn. The little scholar was flushed with excitement, as if the contest to come were but one more of his absurd experiments. The news put flutters of doom into Michael's stomach. He accelerated his practice with his new-bought sword.
Aoife took to keeping aside a day's food for the four of them. Their few movable possessions she bundled in a burlap rag, that they not be left behind when the family took flight.
Each day, Michael went to the market and asked after horses or carts that might be for sale, at any price. There were none.
Three days later Balogh's legion poured through the eastern pass, score after score like a human river, banners flying and voices singing challenge. Michael had never seen so many men in one place. He hadn't imagined that many in all of Ireland.
Evan Balogh rode at their head on a great roan whose shoulder was as high as Michael was tall. A broadsword in a dark leather scabbard was strapped to the horse's flank.
Apparently Balogh had expected to meet either a band of defenders or no one at all. When his eye lit upon Michael, he pulled up short and raised his hand. When the legion had come to a stop behind him, he leaped nimbly down from his horse and swept the area from north to south and back. Once satisfied that no ambush was afoot, he buckled on his swordbelt and strode toward Michael, who stood before the market gate with his new-forged sword sheathed at his side.
With only a pace between them, Michael found that he had to look a little downward to meet the warlord's eyes. It brought no comfort. Balogh was built like a mountain scoured by an eon of storms. He was easily as broad as Michael, and the flesh of his face and forearms bore a multitude of scars. His dark eyes were hard. His manner was that of a man who took the submission of others as his birthright.
"I am Evan Balogh."
Michael nodded, conscious of the press of eyes upon his back from where his family and townsfolk huddled. "My name is Michael."
The warlord cocked an eyebrow at the lack of a surname. "Are ye the tuathan of this place?" His expression said you have not the look.
Michael swallowed. "I am here in his place."
"To treat with me?" Balogh's voice betrayed his amusement. His legend said he never gave quarter, nor accepted anything short of absolute surrender.
"To fight you."
Balogh and his men brayed laughter as one. Michael fought not to cringe before the blast of contempt.
"Ye are no more than a boy. A strapping lad, to be sure, but no man of arms. And ye think to try your youngling's strength against the King of Ireland?"
"You are not king here."
The laughter from the ranks ceased at once. Balogh's mirth disappeared and his eyes narrowed.
"One swing of my blade and I shall be, lad. Ye have no more than twenty summers, ye smell of the bog, and that sword ye wear has never been blooded. Ye are no proper chieftain to oppose me, and there can be no more than fifteen score of ye to meet my spears. Have done with your foolishness, bend your knee to me here and now, and I'll not slay ye and all your kindred for your cheek." The scarred face produced a vicious snarl.
Yet the bluster rang false. A note of uncertainty vibrated in the warlord's voice. He'd expected none of this, and was unsure of what he really faced, either from Michael or behind the walls of Carach an Lagan.
He doesn't want to fight me!
"Our chieftain," Michael said in a tone of casual contempt, "toyed with the notion of meeting you himself, but at the last he deemed it beneath his dignity. So he summoned his retainers and bade us arrange ourselves by height, and he selected the smallest of us to go forth as his champion, that you might have some trifling chance to prevail against the might of Carach an Lagan. He wanted there to be contest enough for a song or two. He would not have it said that the great Evan Balogh was crushed like an insect and his legion swatted away without a care."
Balogh's face turned dark with fury. The gasp from his men rushed through the air like the blast of wind that opens a summer squall.
"If ye set life at so little," Balogh hissed, stepping back and drawing his sword, "I'll not deny ye a death at the hand of a king."
Michael pulled his sword from its sheath and stood at the ready. From behind him, faint but definite, came the rumble of his recorded voice, rapidly accelerated by Acorn's furious pedaling.
Lord God of hosts, I have been Your faithful servant all my life. If I am to die by this man's hand, let it be in Your arms. Let it be as a man, not a wretch who grovels and pleads for his life. Let my family and my neighbors remember me to my credit. And take Aoife and the babes under Your special care.
Balogh raised his sword high overhead, stepped forward and swung it whistling down at Michael's neck. Michael did not attempt to ward the blow.
A bare inch from his flesh, the sword clanged against something unyielding. It did not explode nor fragment. It bounced off as if Michael's neck had been sheathed in a slab of the finest steel. The reaction threw the warlord backward as if he'd been struck an equal blow. As his legion cried out in amazement, Balogh staggered and fell onto his rump.
The protective whine faltered and ceased. Michael suppressed a shudder and smiled. "Perhaps you see now, sir, why we don't need a great many warriors to deal with you."
Balogh picked himself up, glared his hatred at Michael, and charged again. Michael's ears strained after the protective chant as the warlord swept his blade at Michael's midsection.
Perhaps the chant faltered at a crucial instant. Or perhaps it had not established its shield around him quite in time. Balogh's blade sliced through Michael's leather jerkin and scored his flesh from one hip to the other, opening a long wound that bled copiously. Though the cut was too shallow to threaten Michael's life, and looked far worse than it was, the surprise and pain staggered him, almost sending him to his knees. Yet once again, Balogh took a far heavier blow. He flew backward to the earth, stretched out supine and witless from the reflected force of his stroke.
It's time.
Michael stepped forward easily, blade loose in his hand, ignoring the burning gouge across his belly. He stood over the fallen war chief and smiled down at him.
"Two of your best blows to none of mine, sir, yet here I stand over you. Will you have the least of mine to remember us by?" And he raised his virgin sword and struck.
Balogh gave a great and despairing cry as Michael severed his sword arm at the shoulder. His blood flowed out to water the soil of Carach an Lagan's market square as his hand clutched spastically at the hilt of his useless sword. Within a minute, his life was spent.
Michael wiped his sword on Balogh's jerkin, returned it to its sheath, and straightened to address the leaderless horde.
"Your chieftain has shown us his best. Is there any among you thinks to better him?"
In three minutes, all had departed as they had come, leaving Michael to stand alone over the lifeless body of Evan Balogh, who would have been King of Ireland.
None of the townsfolk would speak to him, or to Aoife. They stayed as rigidly away as if he'd ridden into battle on a demon's back. Three days after the confrontation, he and Aoife decided to go.
They didn't need to do much preparing. Their few movable possessions, of which Aoife's knives and her two earthen bowls were the greater part, made a pack that even Eamon could carry. After a last dawnlight look at the village that had been home to uncounted generations of their kin, they made for Acorn's cave in the eastern cliffs.
The little scholar stood smiling at the cave mouth to greet them. He didn't appear surprised at their arrival. He beckoned them in, bade them sit.
"I will miss you, Michael."
Michael nodded.
"It was inevitable, you know. Whether for the abbot's accusations or the defeat of Balogh, it was impossible that they accept you again. For all that you saved them, they are no longer sure what you are."
"I know, sir." I knew before I went to challenge Balogh. "I can't fault them."
"Does your wound pain you much?"
Michael grinned and pulled up his tunic. Acorn approached, peered close, and gaped. Only a thin, perfectly horizontal scar traced across his flesh. It was as neatly closed as the finest surgeon could have done.
Acorn's eyes darted from the scar to Aoife. "Lady, did you...?"
She shook her head. "Not a bit of it, sir. It closed of its own. It had stopped bleeding before Michael got home."
The little scholar's face went slack. He sat heavily upon his stool and clapped his hands against his thighs.
"When he struck that blow, I thought he'd cleave you in two. When I opened my eyes and saw you standing and him in the dirt, I thought I'd lost my reason."
Michael's brow furrowed. "But why, sir? His first stroke did me no harm. Why should his second?"
Acorn didn't answer. Instead he rose, went to the back of his cave and plucked two items from a pile of detritus. He brought them to Michael and laid them in his hands like tokens of payment.
Michael stared dumbly at the fractured halves of the cylinder upon which Acorn had inscribed his voice.
"How?" he whispered.
"It shattered at Balogh's first blow," Acorn said. "You stood naked before his second stroke, with no protection but your jerkin."
"Then why -- why -- "
"I don't know, lad." Acorn looked acutely embarrassed by his ignorance. "I'd give a year of my life to know. You had a stroke of luck to equal Balogh's stroke of his sword. That's my only conjecture."
Michael closed his eyes and sat perfectly still for a long moment.
Luck never hardened flesh against a sword swung in fury.
"Acorn," he said, "in a day or two, when we are well away from here, I want you to climb the hill and tell Father Declan of this. He needs to know. And perhaps he will have an answer for you. Will you do that, simply because I ask it?"
Tension mounted in Acorn's face. "I would not be welcome there, Michael. What would be the use?"
Michael caught the little scholar's eyes and held them. "Acorn," he said in his lowest register, "it could be worth a great deal to you."
Acorn swallowed and nodded. Michael rose and put out his hand, and the scholar took it.
"Go with God, Acorn."
Michael took Aoife's hand and led his family out of the cave. They set out to the west, along the track of the Lagan, their backs warmed by the rising sun. In two days' walk, they would come to a village where Michael could make a new hut of reeds and stones and river clay, learn to till and sow and coax grain from the earth, teach his children of their forebears and raise them to their strength, and nevermore be taken for a sorcerer, or a king.
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The Middle Years
On the day it began, I was at work at Onteora Aviation. I was on my way to somewhere. I can no longer remember where. Once there, I would do something required by my middle management job, with indifferent cooperation or bored resistance from some other middle manager. After that, I'd return to my usual routine, which was mostly juggling figures and composing reports that had only a tenuous relation to anything in the real world.
I was headed downstairs, with a folder of papers tucked under one arm. I reached the landing between floors, wheeled to continue down the next flight, and found myself staring helplessly at the most beautiful woman God has ever put on this sorry ball of mud.
She was tall, about five feet eight, with a buxom-slender figure from an adolescent fantasy. She wore a navy blue skirt suit that hugged her with a lover's fervor, and matching high-heeled pumps that transformed her already magnificent legs into instruments of erotic torment. Her dark brown hair brushed gently over her shoulders as she climbed. When she raised her face and her eyes met mine, the impact should have thrown me back against the wall. Those eyes were huge, luminous, and so kind that I couldn't imagine her ever speaking a word in anger.
No woman had shaken me that way since Bea left me.
She smiled. It was enough to melt the Rock of Gibraltar.
"Hi," she said, and climbed on past me.
It was some time before I realized that I'd frozen solid on the staircase. Even after I realized, it took a few seconds to make my limbs move normally again.
Heaven had descended to Earth and looked me in the eyes.
She couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old. I was well past forty. I had no more business fantasizing about a young goddess like that than I had of trying to play in the Masters', but of course that didn't stop me.
I should have continued down, but instead I glanced up at the flight I'd just descended. She was standing at the middle of it, watching me intently. It was a second blow, and nearly fatal.
"Are you all right?" she said. Her concern seemed genuine.
I forced a smile. "Fine. Just a little winded."
"You're sure?" She came down the stairs toward me and peered into my eyes. "I could help you to the nurse's office, if there's a problem."
A spike of pure panic went through me as I realized that she was about to touch me. I put on a face that wouldn't have passed muster in a wax museum.
"No, everything's okay. Have a nice day!" With that I trotted down the stairs and hid behind the doors to the next floor until I was certain she'd gone on her way.
I don't remember anything else that happened that day, but I remember that I dreamed about her that night, all night long.
Two days later, she saw me in the cafeteria and sought me out. I don't usually eat cafeteria food -- too much salt -- but that particular day I hadn't brought anything, and as hard as I tried, I couldn't ignore the demands of my gut.
I was sitting alone, shoveling down a fairly decent beef stew, when I saw her approach. When I realized that she was headed straight for my table, my mouth went too dry to swallow.
She smiled that bone-liquefying smile and sat down across from me as if we were old friends that had arranged to meet there. Dozens of pairs of eyes followed her. They remained upon her as she unwrapped her utensils and addressed her chef's salad.
"How are you?" she said.
I swallowed my heart. "Not bad. You?"
"Just great. I'm Angela Bowman, by the way."
She put out a hand. After about a century of agonizing indecision, I took it and shook it.
"Uh, I'm Dan Lundquist."
"I'm in Accounting. Where do they have you?"
"I manage the Aerodynamic Engineering Department."
She forked up a bite of her salad and held it at port arms. "Is the engineering stuff fun?"
I had no difficulty believing that her interest was sincere. That guile-free face could have convinced me that black was white.
"It has its moments." I dredged up more stew, realized my hand was shaking, and set down my spoon before I could spill it on myself. "It had more of them before I got into management."
"Do you regret that?"
The young ones always asked that. "No, not really. You can't keep doing technical work your whole life. At least, I couldn't."
Tiny Vs formed on her forehead. "Why not?"
I shrugged. "You lose some of your ability to concentrate when you get to my age. Plus, the younger guys come to the job with tools you've never learned. So you let them do the math, and you make sure they know what they're supposed to do and have enough computers and pencils to do it. You settle into elder statesmanhood."
I sneaked a glance around. There were between sixty and eighty people in the cafeteria that day, nearly all of them male, and every one of them was watching our table. The closest ones were listening with only the barest trace of concealment.
She noticed my survey. "They're watching us, aren't they?"
I tried to smile. "Yeah. Does it bother you?"
A tiny shake of the head. "I just have to remind myself not to laugh."
"Why would you laugh?"
A giggle bubbled through her restraint. She cut it off at the third trill. "Because it always happens." She pushed the remains of her salad aside, knotted her fingers on the table and stared down at them, as a young girl would do while trying to cope with embarrassment. It was the first gesture I'd seen from her that wasn't exquisite in every way.
"They're young men, Angela. It's normal for them to be interested in a pretty young woman. And to wonder why she's sitting with a man old enough to be her father."
She nodded without looking up. "I know."
"Why are you, by the way?" It took an effort to get the question out.
That brought her head up. Yet there was nothing but warmth in her expression.
"Because when I asked you on the staircase if you were okay, you didn't use it as an excuse to hit on me."
Blood flooded into my face. My behavior had been more from the shock of encountering her than from any quality of character, but how could I explain that to her? Was it something she'd be better off for knowing?
"Angela..." I paused to choose the right words. "I did notice how attractive you are."
She cocked her head. "Well, of course you did. I know I'm beautiful. If you hadn't noticed, I'd have thought there was something wrong with you."
Aha.
Need I tell you I was overwhelmed by Angela's interest and warmth? I should think it was obvious by now. I hadn't realized I had enough fuel left in me to feed so fierce a fire. I'd been twenty years without a wife, more than a decade without a date, and I'd thought I was "beyond all that." I could not have been more wrong.
She'd lavished her lunch hour on me, making small talk in a cafeteria crawling with younger men, any of whom would have killed me and eaten my body for the hint of a smile from her. When we rose to return to work, she asked if we could have lunch together again the next day. I'd have said yes if it meant I'd be hanged at sunrise.
She possessed more than physical beauty. She was as poised a person as I've known lifelong. She had conversational skills that were uncanny in one so young, and a sense for what directions not to take that I hadn't won until long after Bea left me. There was nothing coquettish or affected about her. Her gift of beauty was matched in full by her gift of grace.
I was in love.
It was absurd, grotesque, unthinkable. It was in defiance of the laws of nature. It was the central cliche of the male mid-life crisis, enacted nightly in cheap bars and red sports cars from coast to coast.
It was undeniable. On the strength of an hour's socializing, Angela had me in a grip of steel.
I was good for nothing the rest of the day, locked in a state of ambulatory paralysis. My body went through all the motions, but my mental processes had stopped. The lockdown didn't lift until I was home, swaddled in the familiar sterility of my flat. When it did, I started to shake. Passions unslaked for twenty years rose to seize my heart and brain, and they had their way with me.
I sat on the couch in my little living room, with the television off and only one dim lamp burning in the corner, shivering as if defending myself from frostbite, until simple weariness brought my day to an end.
I went to my bedroom, undressed, and got down on my knees to pray. Go ahead, laugh at the thought of a middle-aged man who still prays before bed, without children to set a good example for. But I do. I have to. The once I let it lapse, just after my marriage to Bea failed, I slid so close to the edge of Hell that I could have steamed rice in the updraft.
I don't know that God looks out for me. I only know that I have to ask.
So I did. I asked to see clearly, not to fall prey to vanity or wishful thinking. I asked for wisdom enough to tell what was right from the urgings of desire. And I asked for something I hadn't asked since the night Bea left me: a sign.
No, I hadn't gotten one back then, but He hadn't told me not to ask again.
The next day, work took me away from my desk just before noon. When I returned to my office, I found Angela waiting for me, but not alone. Carl Weatherly, an engineer of mine about her age, was chatting her up. She did not look happy.
Carl's a nice young man, intelligent, hard-working, not bad looking and always decently groomed. He's had his share of attention from the unattached women in the plant. That isn't much, as there aren't many. The typical engineering group is more than ninety percent male, and aerospace is even purer than that. Women just don't take much interest in it.
One of the things a young engineer has to cope with is that there are essentially no romantic opportunities in his workplace. Since young engineers typically overwork, sparing little time for activities outside the office, they can go through agony over why they spend all their Friday and Saturday nights alone. Some draw the lesson and adopt pastimes that will bring them into contact with single women, even if those pastimes are far less exciting than designing airplanes. Some close in upon themselves, and train themselves to believe it doesn't matter. Others become...well, let's say a trifle crude. Not vulgar, necessarily, but heavy-handed, unable to be subtle or read the finer signs.
When Angela saw me she raised a hand, cut Carl off in mid-importuning with a curt "excuse me," and hurried toward me as if we were lovers who'd been separated for twenty years. She actually grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the stairwell. Carl stood there at the door to my office, looking as if he'd just been mugged.
When we were sufficiently far away, I asked her, "Wasn't that just a little abrupt?"
She scowled delicately. "I didn't need to hear the rest of his pitch. They're all the same." She noticed my dismay, stopped and turned to face me squarely. "I get it a lot, Dan. I'm tired of it. Maybe if you spent a few years being drooled over like a nicely dressed pizza, you'd understand."
I nodded. We didn't speak again until we were seated over lunch. Once again, we received an inordinate amount of attention from the other diners.
"Did I upset you?" she asked.
I reflected briefly. "No. I think I understand the pressures on you. But do you understand the pressures on him?"
"On what's-his-name upstairs?" She shrugged.
It was the first indication she'd given that there might be something missing from her perfection.
Was it the sign I'd asked for? How could I know? And if it was, what was I to make of it?
"His name is Carl, Angela." I kept my voice low. "He's twenty-six years old, unmarried, and a fine design engineer. He spends most of his evenings here as well as his days. It's a pattern among my younger men, though God knows I don't ask it of them. Cut him a little slack."
Her eyes flared. Clearly she hadn't expected a reproof from a man she'd deigned to lavish her time on. Perhaps it had never happened to her before. She started to defend herself, fell silent instead.
"It's not a big deal, dear." I wanted to reassure her, but I'd be damned if I was going to let her think that treating me nicely could get me to overlook rudeness to others. Especially others for whom I had responsibility. "But you should bear in mind the differences between you. You're a beautiful, charming, poised, much sought after young woman. He's a young man who has almost nothing going for him at this point in his life except good health and a skill that might make him prosperous some day. Yet he has to seek you out and win your attention, not the other way around. So try to be kind."
Her mouth dropped open a little way. A lesser woman could have burst into tears and not delivered such a jolt to my heart.
"Are you angry with me, Dan?" It was almost inaudible.
"No." It had taken more resolve than I thought I possessed to drop that mini-lecture on her, but I wasn't going to tell her that. "I'm flattered beyond belief that you should want my company. I don't know what to make of it, though."
Some of her composure returned. "What you should make of it is that I like you. You're what you are, and you're not trying to be something else. You're courteous and dignified and accomplished, and you get a lot of respect. And you're not a slave to your glands."
Aha. "I think I understand. And thank you."
We finished our meals in silence, the cafeteria buzzing around us.
Angela kept seeking me out. She developed a sense for my free moments and made sure to share them. Lunch every day. Coffee breaks early and late. After a couple of weeks, Happy Hour at The Black Grape, a local watering hole where our colleagues often went to wind down from the tensions of the workday. Shortly after that, dinners and movies, not as dates but as if foreordained.
She had my absolute attention every second we were together. What little I had to offer socially, I gave to her. She listened to my stories and my japes with complete and unfeigned interest, and returned her own as appropriate. At first, it was baffling, even frightening. At last, it was exalting.
She kept me captivated from first to last, with never a hint that she expected anything but the pleasure of my company. She touched me often, at first with the carelessness of the casual conversational gesture, later with a far more evident significance. I had to work harder than she knew to control my body's response. Controlling it was mandatory, for whenever there were others present, all eyes were upon us.
For some time, I regarded the match as absurd, destined to come to nothing. From the admiration with which Angela spoke of her father, I inferred that I was just an approximation to him, someone she could trust to be protective and gallant without demanding anything of her. Once she'd found a young man of suitable quality, she'd wean herself from me and go on.
Yet it persisted. Days became weeks, and weeks became months, and her devotion lessened not one iota. We grew closer with each hour together, every step as natural as April rain. My resistance to her all but disappeared.
I came to realize that I was more than I'd allowed myself to be. Angela was the instrument of my reacquaintance with myself. Her affection restored me to a stature and a sense of value that my years alone had leached away.
I stood straighter and groomed myself more carefully. I watched the way I spoke, pared away the fuzz that had accumulated around my diction. I bought half a dozen shirts and two pairs of shoes. I lost nine pounds.
My reaction at being noticed with Angela on my arm evolved from embarrassed incredulity to confident pride. The twenty years between us ceased to concern me. I was more than an aging bundle of comfort-seeking, pain-avoiding nerves, more than a cog in a corporate machine, more than a node of production and consumption. I was a man. I was her man.
I was reborn.
Carl took to dogging my steps, asking inane questions, making small talk, telling me jokes I'd first heard before he was conceived. Out of pity, I restrained my urge to tell him to let me be. He wanted Angela as desperately as man has ever wanted woman. It screamed from him.
His contemporaries wisecracked about it at his expense. He struggled to hold his tongue. Apparently, he was the last of them to happen upon my young goddess. The rest had already discovered her, made their plays, and been turned away.
He probably thought that association with me would render him more eligible in her eyes. Engineers are like that. When it didn't happen, he became sluggish and remote.
To her credit, Angela remained polite to him, though reserved and impervious to his advances. I loved her all the more for it, though it still hurt to see his look of envious yearning, so easily translated: Why him? Why not me?
I struggled with the guilt for awhile, until I realized it was unearned. Then I struggled with the irritation from his unwillingness to accept Angela's lack of interest.
One day when Carl was following me like an imprinted duckling, babbling about some design decision which I knew he needed no help with, we chanced by Art Marsden's office. Angela was there, in pursuit of a report Art had promised her. He was habitually late with such things, but she wasn't inclined to let it slide.
I braked before they could see us, stuck out an arm to block Carl's progress, and showed him a finger to the lips.
"You know, Art," Angela purred, "the business side of the building doesn't think as well of you technical guys as you deserve."
"Really." Art was being his usual dour self, making it plain that his thoughts were elsewhere and he was waiting for his visitor to notice. If he weren't the top hydraulics man in the country, I'd have shipped him to Siberia long ago.
"Uh-huh. And it's all due to trivia like this. But Dan tells me you never miss a really important deadline, so I know your priorities are good." I bit my tongue. She leaned forward over his desk and looked into his eyes at close range. "Help me convince my boss?"
Angela had a knack for getting the attention of a middle-aged man. Art straightened in his seat and held himself with some dignity. "What do you need?"
"If you'll just copy off your costings worksheets and staple them together for me," Angela said, "I'll write the report myself. Just let me have the numbers, so Phyllis can see that you're not a subversive and I'm not a goldbrick, okay?"
No, I couldn't see her bat her lashes at him. But I could hear it.
"Okay," Art rumbled. "I guess I can type it up for you. It's just, with the whole EL-17 program on the line --"
Angela held up a hand. "No need to explain, Art. And really, if it's too much of a bother, just send the pro forma costings over and I'll pretty them up. I really do appreciate your help."
Art swallowed and smiled. I'd have sworn it would fracture his face.
"It's no trouble, Angie. I'm sorry to be a drag."
I was too close to insane laughter to stay for the denouement. I grabbed Carl by the arm and routed us around the back of Art's cubicle before I could lose control.
Presently, Carl said, "Phyllis would kill her if she saw that." He said it with a hint of anticipation.
Phyllis Lefkowicz, the Comptroller, was sixty-three years old, all business all the time, and battleship gray down to her underwear. She probably didn't remember how to spell sex. She was Angela's boss.
"You think so? She got the job done, didn't she?"
"But --"
I fixed him with a glare. "You think Phyllis has to know about it?" He turned an embarrassed red.
"You've got to use the tools you have, Carl. If you have a forceful personality, you use that. If you have a silver tongue, you use that. If you're blessed with Angela's brand of charm, you use that. There are only three rules in business: Don't lie, don't steal, and don't promise what you can't deliver."
He said nothing more, but I could hear the gears grinding in his skull, and I didn't like the way they clattered.
We'd gone to The Black Grape after work, and found the usual knot of our colleagues, laboring to remind themselves that life existed beyond the office. As had become usual, Angela stayed close to me, always with an arm around my waist or draped over my shoulder. A little circle of admirers formed around us to swap banter and gentle irreverencies about management above our heads. It was all light and inconsequential, until Carl showed up.
He looked flushed and tousled. He walked with a hitch, as if he'd begun his evening somewhere else and had come there to finish it. As he came through the door he scanned the crowd, found Angela and me, and headed directly for us, trapping us against the bar. I tensed.
"Well, lookee here," he said with a crooked leer and a hint of a slur. "OA's super stud of the month. How's it hangin', boss man?" He groped with one hand, found the bar and propped himself against it. He looked straight into my eyes, pointedly informing Angela that she had fallen beneath his notice. "Gettin' it ready for later?"
I clenched my jaw and forced back a reproof. Angela's hand closed on my arm and squeezed strongly.
"Carl --" she said.
His eyes swerved toward her as if she'd risen out of the ground that very moment. "It talks! I wouldna guessed!" He swept an arm at me. "How long did it take to train it, Danny boy?"
What the mind might detoxify can still poison the body. I saw red. Adrenaline flooded through me.
I'm not a brawler. I've never raised a hand in anger. Still, if Angela hadn't stepped between us, Carl would have gone to the hospital and I'd have spent the night in jail.
She knew what she was about. She slipped between us and faced me squarely, put both hands to my face and compelled my attention. We stood that way, her fingertips against my face, until the blood haze had cleared from my eyes.
"Let's go, Dan," she said. It was enough. We shouldered past Carl and made our way out to the parking lot.
Instead of getting into the car she settled her arms around my neck and pulled me close, and we kissed. I clasped her against me, let myself bathe in her magnificence, and silently prayed for strength.
"Dan," she whispered, her face warm against mine, "can we make love tonight?"
The remnant of my anger dissolved, and my fear surged to its full height. I began to tremble.
Though I'd grown accustomed to Angela's affection, I'd never allowed myself to think about what might lie beyond the present. I'd tasted the agony of loss already, and had no appetite for a second helping. As ingenuous as she was, beyond the door she'd opened was a place into which I could not see.
Was it only fear for myself?
Angela was as generous of heart as she was beautiful of face and figure. She'd put no price on anything she'd given me, from her companionship to the offer of her body. She might not know what she stood to lose by her generosity. I did.
I could not take what she'd offered without paying for it in full, and I did not know if I had the price.
A thump and a flash of flapping cloth pulled my gaze toward the door of the Black Grape. I winced, pushed Angela back a little way, and looked into her eyes.
"Can you wait for it a little longer, Angela?"
Her eyes compressed with disappointment. "If I have to, but why?"
The night seemed packed like the Coliseum of old on a Roman holiday, a crowd of thousands eager for the emperor's signal that the games begin.
"I have to do something first, love. It's not...not optional. Believe me that I want to?"
She frowned and studied me closely, but at last she nodded.
I squeezed her against me one more time. Over her shoulder, staring at us from the entrance to the bar, was the disconsolate, fury-twisted face of Carl Weatherly.
The following morning, I summoned Carl to me as soon as he arrived at his desk. Without explaining, I led him upstairs to where Alfred Kinkead, vice-president for Aerostructures, awaited us in his office on Mahogany Row. I sat in one of the two guest chairs, and Carl settled uneasily into the other.
Al's a good man. He knows it's no kindness to hang a man slowly. He smiled formally and said, "Mr. Weatherly, I'm transferring you to the Structural Analysis group in plant 17. Ed Forger will be your new supervisor. He expects you over there this afternoon. Will you need any packing materials for your personal possessions?"
Carl turned white. For a moment he worked his jaws like a beached fish, gasping for water and unable to reach it.
"Why...why am I being transferred?"
Al gestured at me. "Dan asked for it."
Carl turned to me, a portrait of outrage.
"This isn't about anything professional, is it? This is about her."
I nodded. "It's both, Carl. You're obsessed with her. You take up my time on the slightest excuse, just hoping you'll be there when Angela comes by. Your productivity is down by nearly half. You're the butt of every joke told in the department. After last night, I can't have it any more, but I know you're a capable man, so I've arranged to put you out of the way of your problem."
He spat a jolt of bitter laughter. "Out of your way, you mean."
"That too. Didn't I just say so? Look, you're not the first man in history to fix his sights on a woman who doesn't want him. No one's going to fault you for your pain. But your conduct on company time and company grounds is company business. You've posed me a problem I cannot abide."
He clutched the arms of his chair. "What about your obsession with her?"
I allowed myself some severity, then. "My conduct," I said flatly, "is for evaluation by my supervisor, just as yours is for evaluation by me." I waved at Al Kinkead. "There he is. Do you think you have anything to tell him that he doesn't already know?"
That stopped him. He looked down at the floor in silence for a long time, then rose and left to pack his things.
Al shook his head. "It's a pity."
"No argument, but what else should I have done?"
A rueful smile. "Nothing."
"I'm going to need the rest of the day off, Al."
He nodded.
That night I took Angela out to Grucci's, the finest restaurant for hundreds of miles in any direction. She was surprised, and a little uncomfortable about being dressed in business attire among so many evening gowns, but I hadn't wanted a change of clothes to blunt my momentum.
I ordered for both of us. No one in America makes osso bucco to match Ogusto Grucci, and the wine he brought to accompany it would have made the Olympians forswear ambrosia forever.
The meal and the surroundings unsettled her for the first time in our acquaintance. From end to end, she said next to nothing. She was visibly unsure of herself. She certainly wasn't sure of me. But then, neither was I.
Dessert was strawberries zabaglione, and why the condemned don't order it with their last meals, I'll never know. Angela finished her sweet and laid down her spoon with a look of mystical transport.
"Dan, none of this was necessary!"
"Don't you think the occasion warrants it?"
"Just because we're going to make love later?"
I smiled. "But we're not."
Her mouth fell open and the color drained from her face. Diners all around us took notice of her distress. She must have been radiating on some universal band.
"Don't you want me?" she whispered.
"Desperately, dear. So much that I can barely stand to wait. But I can stand it for another three months, and I think you can too."
Her hands clenched and unclenched on the surface of the table. "Why three months?"
"Because," I said as I rose, "that's the soonest Father Schliemann could get us the church. We'll make love for the first time on October third. That is," I said as I sank to one knee before her and took her hand, "if you will do me the honor of coming to Our Lady Of The Pines that day, joining me at the altar and becoming my wife." Under the eyes of two hundred elegantly dressed strangers, I fished the jewel box from my jacket pocket and showed her the engagement ring. "Will you marry me, Angela?"
There is a perfect face, for it is her face. There is a perfect silence, for it was the silence in that place as she comprehended what I'd said.
"Can we have children?" she whispered.
"As many as you like."
Her eyes brimmed over. "Then, yes."
I slipped the ring onto her finger, rose and took her in my arms as the crowd burst into applause.
There is a perfect joy, for it was mine that night, and has remained mine ever since.
In his middle years, a man learns not to accept the unearned, that it will carry a higher price than he can imagine. He looks for the strings on a free gift, and prunes them away or declines the package. Above all, he learns how unlikely is the true second chance, and how precious. But if it should come, he takes it, and gives thanks, and reflects on how wise God is in not letting us see too far ahead.
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Impurities
"Mr. President," the static-flecked voice from the speakerphone said, "my people cannot endure much more of this bloodletting. We have lost --"
"Two thousand three hundred forty-six citizens in the past two years alone," Stephen Sumner said. "I know it well, Natan. But the ink on the peace accords is barely dry. Do you propose to topple the government of Palestine before its first birthday, while it's still struggling to get control over its people?"
Secret Service agent Geoff Nolan kept his face expressionless. He'd mastered that, and every other discipline of his exacting trade, except for one: the art of not hearing what was said by the president of the United States and the potentates with whom he conversed.
"Mr. President, we both know that abu Sirkas's regime has no intention of stopping the attacks. Mossad could show you documentary evidence that the terror squads are drawing on the Palestinian state treasury, and receive funds from eleven other states besides."
A scowl flickered across the president's face. He rose from his desk and went to stand before the broad bay window of the Oval Office.
"That's as may be, Natan. I know your evidence is good, but for Israel to make war on Palestine at this time would engender massive casualties, backlash from world opinion, and a strong reaction against your advocates in America. I cannot support you in this under current conditions. I advise you to do what you can with your less publicized tools and methods."
Nolan's ears pricked up involuntarily.
It sounds like he's counseling the prime minister of Israel to dispatch an assassination squad, the way they did after Munich. How many people would be howling for his scalp if they could hear this conversation, as I'm hearing it now?
Sumner had risen to the presidency on the strength of his ardent constitutionalism. He'd preached the importance of strict limits on the powers of government, of absolute adherence to the rule of law especially by its hired minions, across the length and breadth of America. Huge audiences, crushed by ever-rising taxes, baffled by incomprehensible laws, and outraged by unaccountable legislators and regulators, had thrilled to the message. His victory had eclipsed all but George Washington's unanimous election in 1788.
Now it appeared that his convictions were somewhat flexible. At least, when it would not be he who had to answer for the consequences.
There are no saints in high office, Geoffrey boy. Leave your idealism at home with Nadia.
Nolan's hand went automatically to the crucifix that was always in his hip pocket.
Lord Jesus, guide me in this as in all things. Though these be Caesar's things, affairs of state in which You refused to involve Yourself, surely there's a right and a wrong to it. Help me to know the difference.
The conversation ended. Sumner spent a moment more staring out at the gorgeous White House lawn, then strode to the mantel and took down the epee mounted above it. He struck a garde position, held it for a moment, and launched into an elaborate sequence of strokes and feints that carried him all the way across the Oval Office.
Nolan watched with an appreciative eye. Sumner would turn fifty-five in two weeks. Yet with his sword in hand, he moved with the fluidity of a far younger man. His every motion was micrometer-exact and as precisely timed as a metronome. The president noted his attention, put up the sword, and grinned.
"The boss is a little strange, eh, Geoff?"
"Not at all, sir." Nolan struggled to keep his face smooth. "A lot of people like the grace of fencing."
The president nodded. "There's a purity to it. When the gong sounds, there's just you, and the sword, and your opponent. The rules are simple and clear, and the objective is right there in front of you."
"Not much like statecraft, then, Mr. President?"
The grin slipped from Sumner's face. He looked a moment at the sword in his hand, returned it to its place above the mantel and resumed his seat at his desk.
"No, not much at all."
Though the entire Secret Service competed for the supreme prestige of guarding the president's person, there was little love for the daily debrief that each agent so honored had to endure. All such debriefs were conducted by Agent-In-Charge Ryan McFarlane, the commander of the detail.
McFarlane was a legend in federal law enforcement. He'd entered the Secret Service from the FBI, where a string of takedowns of major espionage and drug rings had raised him to national prominence. He'd disdained all publicity, but the regularity and size of his successes kept his name on everyone's lips nonetheless. It didn't hurt that he was tall, blond, classically handsome, and built like Captain America. President Walter Coleman himself had solicited McFarlane's application, twenty years earlier.
But the highest ranking, most decorated agent in the Service was not an affable man. He had no friends on the job. His smile was rarer than an admission of error from a politician. Nothing was known about his private life, except that he was a widower without children and lived alone. An agent on whom his eye fixed was hard pressed not to shiver.
"You neither saw nor heard anything that could be construed as a threat to the president's person?" McFarlane said.
"Nothing, sir." Nolan kept his voice level.
"And you neither saw nor heard anything that might later be used against the president in the performance of his duties?"
"Uh, no, sir."
A jot of extra intensity entered McFarlane's already bright blue eyes. "Why the hesitation, Nolan?"
Nolan cursed himself beneath his breath and tried to organize a response.
"I'm waiting, Agent." McFarlane had risen from his chair and stood with his arms crossed over his chest.
The little interview room suddenly seemed like the inside of a freezer.
"Well, sir, you know an agent can't help hearing what's said in his presence."
McFarlane's icy stare was unchanged.
"The president doesn't always talk straight, sir. Sometimes there are...ways to interpret his words that would reflect badly on him."
"Politically?" McFarlane said.
"Yes, sir."
A quantum of tension drained from the Agent-In-Charge's features. He pursed his lips and stuck his hands in his pockets.
"Did you vote for him, Nolan?"
"Uh, yes, sir."
"But he's not the first man you've voted for, is he?"
"No, sir."
"And those others? Were they calendar saints, whose every word meant exactly what it appeared to mean, and nothing else?"
Nolan's mouth tightened. "No, sir."
McFarlane nodded. "Of course they weren't. Nor will any other man be who rises to the Oval Office. We don't involve ourselves in politics, Agent. The people choose according to their own lights. Whoever they choose, we're oathbound to protect."
Nolan could not repress a shrug. "You asked, sir."
McFarlane shook his head. "I asked whether you saw or heard anything that could be used against the president in the performance of his duties. Things that could be used to put him under duress. Not matters of policy that his opponents would use to campaign against him. Our job is to protect him from violence and coercion, not to ensure his re-election. Got that straight now?"
"Yes, sir."
McFarlane stared down at him a moment longer, then sat and folded his hands before him. A grin played at the corners of his mouth.
"It's a hard job, Nolan. Acquiring the right kind of detachment is one of the hardest parts. You're doing well. Keep at it. Dismissed."
The bombing of Geneva's famous Weiss Associates Building, home to the most prestigious retail diamond merchants in Europe, woke the news centers of the Eastern Seaboard at precisely 2 AM. At the time of the explosion, more than three hundred persons were in the building, more than two-thirds of them affluent shoppers from around the world.
The explosion, later reckoned to be an atomized-fuel blast, shot chunks of structural steel through the walls of buildings hundreds of yards away. The firestorm that followed the explosion completely defeated Geneva's firefighting corps. They watched, impotent, as the five-storey jewelry emporium was reduced to a mound of ash. There were no survivors, and nearly no recognizable remains.
Geoff Nolan was on duty outside the presidential bedroom when the news hit. A mass of politicos and agents, led by Ryan McFarlane, surged down the hall toward him, a sight that nearly made him pull his sidearm and drop into combat position.
First Lady Adrienne Sumner had been scheduled to be in Geneva at the time of the blast. McFarlane had attempted to contact her detail and assure himself of her safety, but without success.
It was Nolan's task to awaken the president.
Stephen Sumner emerged from his bedroom in a maroon silk robe. He was pale, but grimly composed. He gestured at once for his Secretary of Defense and pulled the man out of the knot of cabinet officials that awaited the president's orders. Their exchange was seven words long; Nolan heard it all.
"You know what to do," Sumner said.
"Yes, sir."
The secretary hurried off. Sumner retreated to dress. McFarlane issued orders for a high-alert, imminent-threat deployment of the Service's twelve hundred agents.
The orders McFarlane gave to Nolan were simple and clear: "Don't let him out of your sight, son."
"Yes, sir."
The First Lady's Secret Service detachment commander rang in six minutes later. Twenty-three minutes after that, the wire services came alive with the news that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine had claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Secret Service wasn't the only federal organ to receive special tasking orders that day.
The commanders of twelve separate special-operations detachments in bases in Eastern Europe and the Indian Ocean received go-orders so cryptic that not even their communications chiefs could make them out. All of them mobilized at once. Aircraft seemed to drop magically from the sky to accept squad after squad of heavily armed Delta Force commandos, whom they whisked off into the darkness. SEALs and Marines, loaded for bear and for underwater infiltrations, boarded submarines that left the docks without fanfare and went to flank speed the moment they reached open water.
Each detachment had as its target a palace in a capital in the Muslim Middle East. Their strike orders were time-synchronized.
Four hours after the Weiss Building exploded, those twelve teams struck their targets as one.
The guards who walked the parapets and corridors of twelve palaces heard only the barest breath of passing air as death closed upon them from the shadows. The Americans killed without mercy until they reached the persons whose names stood at the tops of their order sheets: twelve sleeping heads of state, who'd gone to their beds serenely confident that the thugs surrounding them would be proof against any intrusion.
All twelve received a rude awakening.
American soldiers jerked them roughly from their covers, stripped them of whatever they wore, and secured them in plastic hand- and ankle-cuffs that were impossible to pick or break. Black hoods were pulled over their heads. The unspeaking Americans frog-marched them through the carnage to destinations unknown, leaving only corpses and silence behind them.
Nolan stood his Oval Office post in an agony of anticipation. Sumner had seated himself at his desk, made a single phone call, and then sat back with his hands steepled against his chest. Nolan watched him sit that way, unmoving, for four hours, until the sun had risen and the soft buzz of the phone notified him of an incoming call.
Sumner pressed the ANSWER key and said, "Yes?"
"Full compliance, sir."
"Thank you." The president disconnected. His eyes went to Nolan's face.
"Would you like to know what's happened here tonight, Geoff?"
The question threw Nolan off balance. "Uh, yes, sir."
"History. You've been a witness to history. You can be a witness to still more of it, if you're amenable. Sleepy?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then go get some rest." Sumner rose and stretched. "But set your alarm to wake you in six hours. I'll expect you back here then."
"Uh, Mr. President, Agent McFarlane told me not to let you out of my sight."
Sumner nodded. "I'm sure he did. But for a change, I'm perfectly safe. Just now, I'm probably the safest man in the world. You'll find out why in six hours. So be off with you. I'll handle McFarlane. You catch some sleep."
Nolan did as instructed.
When Nolan returned to the Oval Office, the president rose from his desk and said only, "Come with me."
They hurried down the corridors to an elevator that Nolan had never seen used. It plunged them deep into the subterranean security levels, where the president might be expected to go in the event of a nuclear attack. But when they debarked, it was to board a curious looking subway, a single-car affair that looked more like a spaceship than a thing that traveled underground on rails. There was no one there waiting for them.
Sumner pulled open the engineer's cabin, stepped inside, and beckoned Nolan to follow him. He put his hands to the futuristic control board as if it were something he did each day. Nolan regarded the multicolored array of touch-panels and plasma displays uncertainly.
"Relax, Geoff. You weren't expected to know about this. McFarlane does. We're headed for a facility only a few people have heard about."
The president took hold of a joystick and drew one finger along a green plasma panel, and the little train accelerated smoothly and silently down the track. Blue steel arches, like the ribs of some gigantic prehistoric beast, flashed past them as they sped down the dim tunnel.
"You disapprove of me, don't you, Geoff?"
"Sir?"
The president kept his eyes on the track unspooling before them. "You think I've betrayed my convictions." He grinned at the windshield. "Your deadpan isn't nearly as good as you think it is."
Nolan fumbled for words. "Mr. President, if you want to replace me --"
"Nothing of the sort, Geoff. It's part of the reason I like having you around. You're a measure of, well, a lot of things. And no one on the detail doubts your skills."
Sumner canted his joystick to the left, and the little train cambered smoothly through a descending curve. A spot of light appeared in the distance. It grew slowly larger and brighter.
"There's no manual for how I'm supposed to fulfill the oath I took. The Constitution describes the duties of the president fairly well, but it never gets to the 'how' of the thing. What am I allowed to do for the sake of 'preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic'? Since no means are specified, should I assume I'm allowed to use any means at all?"
"Uh, sir," Nolan faltered, "you're a little outside my field."
"Which field, Geoff? Criminal justice, or protecting the president?"
Nolan kept his mouth shut.
"We've been at war for a lot of years now. Damned few people have been aware of it. But the enemy is real, he's numerous, and he hates this country and its ideals more than a decent American could imagine. And I am charged with stopping him."
The spot of light was now plainly the mouth of the tunnel. Sumner drew his finger across the throttle again, and the train decelerated to a smooth halt. The right wall of the tunnel gave way to a concrete platform on which stood a squad of Marines, rifles at port arms.
When they debarked, a Marine lieutenant approached, snapped to attention, and saluted. Sumner returned it.
"Is everything ready, Lieutenant?"
"As you specified, sir."
Sumner nodded and made for a nearby escalator, with Nolan right behind him.
The room to which Sumner brought him was nearly a hundred feet square, high-ceilinged and as brightly lit as an operating theater. Yet it was empty of everything but people: Marines in BDUs, and twelve naked middle-aged captives, hands bound behind them, their swarthy faces uniformly filled with fear. At each captive's elbow stood a Marine with a nightstick. Another dozen Marines armed with M-16s flanked the group.
The captives' faces were quite recognizable. They'd been splashed across the country by innumerable newscasts and newspapers. Nolan paled as the implications struck home.
The walls were dotted with capped fittings, evenly spaced. They might have been for wiring harnesses, or for hoses; Nolan couldn't tell.
The floor was smooth, seamless concrete. It had been smoothed more carefully than any concrete Nolan had seen before, giving it a texture near to porcelain. Its sole feature was a large sewer drain at the room's center. When his eyes lit on it, Nolan noticed that the floor was slightly pitched, perhaps half a foot lower at the drain than at the walls.
It was clear what the room had been designed for.
Sumner sauntered up to the captives and looked each in the eyes. Each one's expression went from terror to wonder, and then to outrage, as he recognized his host. They started to scream in a melange of Middle Eastern tongues.
Sumner let it go on for a few seconds, then drew a deep breath and shouted a single word, in a parade-ground blare that would have made any drill sergeant proud.
"QUIET!"
The gabble ceased at once.
"You all speak English. You recognize me, and you recognize one another. But you do not yet recognize that the world has changed.
"That is why you're here. That is why I'm here with you. Before you leave this place, you will know the change, and you will bow before it."
One of the captives spat a stream of obscenities. Sumner nodded to the Marine at the captive's side. The soldier cracked his baton across the gibbering man's midsection, doubling him over and sending him to his knees. Sumner waited while the Marine hauled the captive back to his feet.
"Do not presume on my benevolence, gentlemen," Sumner said. "It should be obvious by now that I have none. None for you, at any rate.
"All of you are heads of Muslim states. All of you are complicit in the funding and operation of terrorist gangs. All of you have blood on your hands, probably more than anyone will ever know. So I have had you brought to me."
Sumner's voice was level and unstressed, but Nolan could see the special gleam in his eye, the glaze over his features, that presaged a dramatic action.
What could be more dramatic than kidnapping twelve heads of state?
"My operatives killed everyone around you. Their count was eleven hundred sixty-seven fatalities. That was by my order. I wanted there to be enough carnage to drive the lesson home. But the lesson is not yet complete.
"In a few hours you will be going home. The same infiltration teams that snatched you will be tasked to return you, in full darkness and by the same methods. Whoever is in your palaces when you return will die. What happens after that will be for you to decide.
"I have had you brought here to hear a sentence of death. At the next terrorist act by any group that has received even one dollar's worth of assistance from any of you, that sentence will fall. Do not doubt that I will have it carried out."
The silence was so perfect that Nolan found himself listening for his own heartbeat. Sumner's gaze raked across the faces of the captives.
"But the sentence will not be for you. It will be your families who will die, from your next of kin all the way out to your grandparents, your grandchildren, and your second and third cousins. You will be left entirely without relatives.
"If that lesson fails to produce the effect I want, and another Muslim commits another terrorist act, I will have you brought to me again. But we won't convene here. You will go to my War Room, where we'll watch the saturation nuclear bombing of all twelve of your countries. I will leave you as the sole remnants of your people, your languages, and your cultures. Then I will return you to them. You will rule over nations of corpses and radioactive rubble, to survive as best you can."
Sumner smiled. "Do you have any questions?"
One of the captives in the front row croaked a single word. It might have been "oil."
Sumner nodded. "Oil, yes. A very important commodity, doubt it not. But America has its own, and Europe and Asia can learn to do without it. Anything else?"
"Why?" the same captive said.
Sumner cocked his head. "Because I'm sick of you, your posturing, your fanaticism, and your savagery. Because you've killed enough, and hated enough, and brutalized enough to damn your entire civilization. Why else? Or did you mean why now?" Sumner breathed deeply, and suddenly seemed to double in size. "Because my wife was in Geneva last night, and when that bomb went off no one knew where she was. Do you need more explanation than that, Mr. Prime Minister?"
Silence.
"Very well. You will now be returned to your palaces. Have a nice day." Sumner strode at once for the door, with Nolan behind him.
McFarlane's gaze was less challenging than usual.
"What upset you most about the episode, Nolan? The specifics of it, or the fact that you were compelled to watch it?"
Nolan grinned ruefully. "I wasn't compelled, sir. The president asked me if I'd like to watch history being made. Of course I said yes. I just wasn't prepared for what came next."
McFarlane rose, hands in his pockets, and looked over Nolan's head into the far corner of the room. His expression was distant.
"How did you feel about 'what came next'?"
Nolan clamped his lips together and bowed his head.
"Agent Nolan?"
"It doesn't seem right, sir. It was an act of war at the very least. And to kill all those people deliberately, just to send a message! Can the president have that kind of authority?"
McFarlane didn't answer at once. He shuffled out from behind the little table and paced as best he could in the confines of the interview room.
"Not only can he, he does. Yes, the strikes were acts of war, absolutely. Undisguised, undecorated, and unapologized for. But in for a penny, in for a pound, Nolan. The president is commander-in-chief, remember? He'd decided we were already at war with those states, and he wanted to force their immediate capitulation. The only way to do it was to terrify their leaders so thoroughly that they'd submit to him without further fighting."
"Do you think it worked, sir?"
McFarlane produced one of his rare grins. "Ask me in about two years."
The commander of the Secret Service reseated himself and steepled his hands on the table between them.
"No president has ever had to face the terrors we live with today, Nolan. There's no rulebook for this sort of conflict. Stephen Sumner has to make up his own tactics. Worse, he has to make up his own rules. God help us all if he blows it, but he has no choice about trying."
"Sir..." Nolan hesitated.
"Spill it, Nolan."
"He wouldn't have done it except for his wife."
As soon as he said it, Nolan felt a deep shame. McFarlane looked steadily into his eyes. The younger man struggled to bear it.
"I could have guessed that would trouble you, son. But does it trouble you enough not to want to do this job? Have you thought at all about why the president wanted you to see those twelve tyrants brought to him in chains and humiliated in his presence?"
Nolan's eyes widened. "It wasn't just because my name was at the top of the duty roster?"
McFarlane shook his head. "Not at all, son. He thinks you might have what it takes to command the detail." A grin. "In about twenty years."
The room went briefly silent. Nolan fingered the crucifix in his pocket.
"To be a top agent," McFarlane said, "you can't be perturbed by the impurities in the men you protect. You have to be able to accept them. Not just ignore them, but accept that they're part of what makes a man strong enough to wield the powers of the presidency. Like the impurities in weapons-grade steel. It would be ordinary soft iron without its carbon and molybdenum fractions. Useless." His eyes flicked to Nolan's hip pocket. "What are you fiddling with, Agent?"
Nolan's face reddened. Reluctantly, he pulled the little crucifix from his pocket and laid it on the table. McFarlane regarded it somberly.
"Do you always carry that with you?"
Nolan nodded.
McFarlane reached into his own pocket, pulled out a slightly larger crucifix, and laid it on the table next to Geoff Nolan's. The younger man stared at it in silence.
"Surprised, Nolan?"
"Uh, a little, sir."
"The president gave that to me. I'm never without it."
"President Coleman?"
McFarlane shook his head. "President Sumner."
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