Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (34 page)

BERKELEY
,
MONDAY,
SEPTEMBER  16,  1968

He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a
head grown grey in vain.
—
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

 
          
1968
WAS A YEAR DEFINED BY VIOLENCE AND DEATH. BEFORE IT WAS OVER, two
assassinations had forever changed the tone of American political life: Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The two men were killed barely
eight weeks apart, and in the wake of the second murder, the riots at the
Democratic National Convention in Chicago took on a surreal, apocalyptic
importance: seen by the Right as an extension of the animal savagery that had
coopted the political process, and by the Left as a confirmation of the view
that America had become a brutal police state.

 
          
The
trial of the Chicago Seven that followed became a media circus; a carnival
sideshow where Image cast out Truth and Justice was not blind, but mad. . . .

 
          
They'd
bought the little stucco bungalow four years ago, when Peter had been promoted.
They'd been so happy the day they'd finally moved in
—
a real home at last.
Sometimes it seemed to Claire that she could still feel that joy, as if it had
been recorded by the very bones of the house and echoed, like old music,
through its rooms.

 
          
She'd
been determined to make their home everything her own had never been; sometimes
Peter laughed at her for the fierceness of that determination, but his mother
never did. Elisabeth Moffat understood her daughter-in-law with that wordless
communion that makes two strangers heartfelt friends in the space of an
instant. She had made a place for Claire in her heart and her family with a
simple grace that Claire often felt was the single greatest miracle she had
ever been gifted with. Under her mother-in-law's tutelage, the little tract
house had become a home. For two, and, perhaps, someday
—
for three.

 
          
Claire
knew that Peter wanted a family; she had held back from the idea, afraid that
she would only recreate her own childhood hell for a child of her own. It had
been a long time before that fear had quieted, and Claire knew that it would
never really go away. But with Peter and his mother to help her, she had slowly
become confident
—
if not of her success at motherhood, at least that her
mistakes would not be intolerable ones. That spring, she had begun to try to
become pregnant.

 
          
The
dreams had started then.

 
          
At
first she thought they were simple anxiety. In the wake of his break with
Thorne, Colin had gone back to the East Coast. A friend had offered him a
position with Selkie Press, a publishing house that specialized in
parapsychological and occult subjects, and Colin, increasingly at odds with the
Rhodes Group's policy of conciliation and concealment, had accepted the offer.

 
          
But
while Claire knew that she would miss Colin
—
as a friend, and one who
understood her faults far better than Peter ever would
—
she did not think that she
was so dependent upon him as to be sunk in terror by his absence. He was,
after all, only a phone call away.

 
          
Yet
she still dreamed.

 
          
They
began as simply hints
—
a disquiet spilling over into her other dreams. Later came
the images
—
of herself, running through fog, crying out for the return
of... something. There was loss in those dreams, loss deep and wounding.

 
          
She
knew what it was.

 
          
Each
time the knowledge surfaced, Claire rejected it. It was not true. It was some
sick, inverted wish fulfillment. Or just this once, her Gift was playing her
false, tainted because
she
was tainted by the unearned guilt of her
childhood upbringing.

 
          
In
her heart she knew that none of these explanations was true. The dream
continued, month after month, until half a year had passed. She told no one,
but in her mind the unheld conversations echoed.
Claire, why didn't you tell
me?
Colin's voice.

 
          
And
her own, in answer:
How could I? If I tell no one, I can still hope that I'm
wrong. And if I tell you, I have to tell him, or it becomes a secret that I'm
keeping from him, and I cannot bear that. Who can I tell, without telling him?

 
          
No
one.

 
          
When
she was still very young, Claire had become an expert at dissembling; hiding
the unwanted truths far away and presenting an unruffled, cream-smooth face to
the world. Now she resurrected all the skills she thought she no longer had
need of, using them to bury the truth deep and pretend that everything was
normal. And she managed to fool even herself, except when she dreamed.

           
When her dreams woke her, Claire
would slip quietly from their conjugal bed, huddling in the kitchen over a cup
of tea and trying to imagine how to keep Peter safe. She could not warn him.
There was nothing to warn him
about
—
only her frightening sense
of loss. She had known the work he did before they married. She had always
known that it was dangerous, and that he loved it too much to easily give it
up. Telling him that she was afraid would not armor him against the danger. It
would only be a useless cruelty.

 
          
And
so Claire kept her own counsel, her mind partitioned into shapeless dread and
willful ignorance.

 
          
Until
one day she could be ignorant no longer.

 
          
It
was September 16, a Monday. Peter was working the evening shift, three to
eight. Claire was home, fixing dinner, to the sounds of
Rowan and Martin's
Laugh-In
in the background.

 
          
For
the last several years she had listed with a temporary agency
—
there was always work for
someone with an RN degree who was willing to fill in here and there
—
but once the meaning of her
premonitory dreams had become unmistakable, she'd worked less and less. She'd
begun dreading having to leave the house for any reason, as if the act of
staying home could provide some sort of bulwark against what was to come.

 
          
Most
of the time she kept busy, but lately, each night around
seven
o'clock
,
she began to watch the time. And when
eight o'clock
had come and gone she
breathed a prayer of thanksgiving, even though Peter would not be home for
another hour. At
eight o'clock
his shift was over, and Peter was safe for another day.
She could go on with her life then, and by the time he arrived home she could
greet him as if nothing were amiss.

 
          
It
was
8:45
. She was in the kitchen, cooking dinner. She'd shifted her
schedule to match his, so they ate at quite a continental hour. There was a ham
baking in the oven; Peter's favorite. It would be years to come before she
could smell ham without feeling nauseated.

 
          
She
was filling a saucepan at the tap and turned to place it on the stove. And
then, in an instant, her world fell away.

 
          
She
was lying on the ground, in the dark. Above her, she could see the bright
lights of the convenience store a few blocks from their house.

 
          
There
was no pain. Only cold, and wet, and a vast calm, knowing that death had come,
and that now everything stopped.

 
          
"Peter!"

 
          
The
sound the saucepan made as it hit the linoleum brought Claire back to the
world. There was water all over the floor, but she did not stop to mop it up.
She grabbed her car keys and ran for the door.

 
          
She
knew where he was. She would have known even if the ties that bound them hadn't
drawn her to the little shopping plaza less than fifteen minutes from their
house. She had no memory of the drive, only of the moment when she turned the
corner and saw the two patrol cars parked in the lot.

 
          
"Hey,
lady
—
oh,
Jesus, it's Claire
—
honey, don't
—
" The words went by her meaninglessly; she tore at the
hands restraining her until they let her go.

 
          
They'd
covered Peter with a blanket out of the back of one of the patrol units;
impatient, she pulled it away, kneeling beside him. The ground was slippery and
wet, and just then she didn't understand why. Why had they covered his face?

 
          
"Peter?"
Claire whispered. She reached for his hand, her fingers closing over the
pulse-point in an automatic nurse's gesture. But she was too late. The hand was
cold and lifeless in hers. He was already gone.

 
          
It
isn't fair. It isn't fair
—
he wasn't even on duty. How could somebody shoot him when
he wasn't even on duty. . . .

 
          
Nothing
mattered then. Later they would tell her the whole story
—
a hold-up, a sawed-off
shotgun. They would assure her that Peter's death had been merciful, painless,
and quick. They would tell her that her husband died a hero. None of that
mattered now. All that mattered was the realization that with her husband dead,
she must be the one to go and tell his mother.

 
          
One
of the uniformed officers drove Claire to Mrs. Moffat's house. He'd wanted to
drive her home, but Claire had been firm. She felt an urgent need to tell this
news at once, as if by waiting it could somehow become worse. She knew that her
calmness was an illusion wrought by paralyzing emotional trauma. She knew that
it might be kinder to wait, to break the news to Mrs. Moffat in daylight. But
in some part of Claire's heart the irrational conviction survived that somehow
Peter's death was not real, that Elisabeth Moffat would have some secret magic
that could make the bad news go away.

 
          
The
car pulled into the driveway.

 
          
"Claire,
why don't you wait here and
—
"

 
          
"Don't
be silly, Steve," Claire said. Her words had the blunt cruelty of shock.
"It won't get any easier for me if I don't hear the words. I already know
that Peter's dead."

 
          
She
yanked open the door and swung out of the car.

 
          
Peter's
mother knew before Claire said a word. What member of a policeman's family
would think anything else, when a uniformed officer appeared at her door in the
middle of the night?

 
          
Only
later did it occur to Claire that she must have looked like the Angel of Death
herself. She'd wiped off the worst of the blood on the drive over, but her legs
were still smeared with it.