Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy) (13 page)

Before them, the house sprawled in architectural, almost chaotic, magnificence. The sheer enormity of Arvale made it impossible for Silas to focus on the house as a whole. It was as if the house had never been conceived as a completed structure, as though no one in its long tenancy had ever even thought about what a “finished” mansion might look like. Silas imagined that every occupant, every branch of the family, understood their obligation: Add to the house. New halls. New battlements, addendum after addendum of stone . . . each age of the world adding its signature to Arvale’s long rambling narrative about family and place, and the very definition of endurance. What Silas didn’t know was whether the house stood just on the edge of Lichport, or whether, beyond that gate was another land entirely. A land where all the portions of his family, all their various homes and tombs, were woven together into one vast estate of ancestral splendor and experience. Was he still in Lichport or some kind of “Umberland”?

Everywhere Silas looked, there was palimpsest. Layer upon hereditary layer, and as he drew closer to Arvale, the very bricks and angles of the walls—windows, towers, chimneys, cornices, ramparts, gables, finials, domes, friezes, tracery, bastions, and parapets—began to speak to him.

I am the battlement raised in 1260 by Gregory Umber for the protection of his family during the War of the Mount. I did not fail them, I did not fall. My walls are washed in the blood of those who came against us.

We are the conical Persian spires. We are a whimsy born of pride. We say, look here! Are we not a fine family? We hold small chambers for secret meetings and assignations. Once, a young man was stabbed to death here. Then his pride-wounded paramour took her own life. Their corpses were left, and the little room was bricked up. Aren’t we a grand family, hiding away our indiscretions in such lovely architectural details?

I am the gargoyle carved with the face of a lion. I watch. I do not sleep. I forget nothing.

We are the panes of glass brought from Venizia by Maria Archimbaldo-Umber on the occasion of her marriage, so she might always sit in the light of her homeland.

I am the sixteenth century chimney with the hollow space for hiding what you will. I have held bastard children, patient lovers, silver and plate, and men of unfashionable collars. Indeed, the bones of a priest still reside in me.

I am the Norman bell tower. I have lost my tongue. I cannot sing. My bell was carried away and across the sea.

We are the towers of the north range. We watch the skies through the cold nights. We hold ourselves aloof and aloft. We are not of that lower sort. We grant perspective and vision for we sit among the stars awaiting signs and portents. Climb our stairs and see. . . .

Silas had wandered right up to the edge of the courtyard without noticing he had caught up to Lars, who was now standing directly before him.

“Silas? Sir?” Lars’s voice broke Silas away from his architectural reverie. Silas rubbed his eyes briefly, and the two made their way across the courtyard toward the great door. The house was both rising up before them and sprawling away to the left and right. Silas had never felt smaller, or more insignificant.

Lars paused for a moment and looked at Silas hesitantly.

“Why have you come to Arvale, Silas?”

“I was invited, and so I came. I think many of the men in my family have visited here . . . during their lifetimes. I know my father came to Arvale. Maybe more than once. It’s sort of a tradition.”

“I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that, you’re different from the usual sort that comes here. It’s a queer house, I know. And we’re a queer family. Who doesn’t know that? But it’s best to just keep going forward and not look back. I was lost when I came here and I wish . . . well . . . I mean it would be best if you—”

“It’s okay. I understand. I’ll be careful. Thank you, Lars.” Silas shook his hand again and Lars nodded his head in seeming relief, but what exactly did he think Silas understood? Who did he think Silas
was
?

Lars ran ahead, perhaps to announce their arrival. Silas’s feet crunched across the gravel that covered the ground in front of the house. Below the gravel, long thin slabs of stone were exposed in a few places, the kind sometimes seen lining the floors in the oldest churches. The very walls seemed to be inhaling the air around him, drawing him closer. As he came to the massive stone archway of the porch, the shadows of the house enveloped him completely, cutting him off from the rest of the world.

Standing before the entrance, he looked up. The wall rose straight up into a riot of gargoyles and decorative and perhaps ritualistic carvings. Up and up the carved grotesques could be seen, crouching and squatting upon their perches of dressed stone. The farthest away became insects, tiny creatures living on the back of some architectural leviathan. Dizzy, Silas returned his gaze to the ground. But now all feelings of adventure and excitement at seeing new things flowed out of him. What was one person next to a place like this? It must have taken thousands of years to build such a house, and standing before its walls, he knew his lifetime was just the merest moment, not even a second, in its long and continuing history.

The great doors of Arvale loomed before him, fifty feet tall and worked with riveted ornaments. Across them, wrought in early runes of iron, Silas could read the word
DOOM
. He wasn’t sure what to do next. Should he wait for Lars to open them? Should he knock? He hesitated. The cold air was alive with sounds, and voices emanated from the walls. When he closed his eyes, he could hear them shouting, singing, crying, rising and falling like wisps of music from a radio in another room.

As he stood there, unsure how to proceed, one of the doors silently opened.

Beyond the threshold, shadows moved and gathered. He took a step back and looked over his shoulder at the road home. He stared at the details of the path, pulling them into his memory—the trees that flanked it, the curve of their branches, the swell of the hill—suddenly frantic about being able to remember the way back to Lichport. He would have gazed longer, adding details to his mental map of the return route, but a voice from within the house bid him simply, ominously, “Welcome home.”

L
EDGER

Wraetlic is thaes wealhstane

—
A
NONYMOUS MARGINALI
A (MEANING “
G
HOSTLY
IS THIS FAMILIAL STO
NE”) NEXT TO AN ENTR
Y CONCERNING HOUSES
IN DREAMS

T
HE MOMENT
S
ILAS
U
MBER HAD
PASSED THROUGH
the great gates, a shiver had passed from the cold ground and up into the stones of the manor. As he made his way closer to the house’s front door, the residents of Arvale felt that shiver as well, and all of them—whether residing in the lowest catacombs or the highest towers—became immediately aware of the approach of kin. Some woke from misty reveries of their former lives. Others began their long journeys from the outer corridors and distant wall towers to the great hall. A few folk of the house were not pleased, and would remain in quiet corners. But everyone would know of the arrival of the Janus; it was house business.

Maud Umber was hopeful but uneasy. The cleverest of the house’s spirits would know what she’d done. She knew Jonas would be waiting for her. She traveled through winding corridors and long passages, unsure of how long her journey would take.

When she arrived in the great hall, a single sharp voice rang across the polished stones of the chamber.

“
Who
is this?
Who
is coming?”

“Silas Umber, Undertaker of Lichport,” said Maud, refusing to be cowed, knowing he already knew the answers to his own questions.

“Who has called him? Who has done this thing?” Jonas’s voice was edged with indictment and anger.

“I have,” Maud said.

Even as Maud softened her tone, the air seemed to bristle as their wills began to push and pull at each other.

“Gods Below, Maud Umber! It was wrong to summon him. You know this. It is too soon,” accused Jonas sternly. He was tall, a robust man in gray clothes, standing bedside the monumental crest-carved fireplace. He gazed into the fire. The silver buttons on his long coat turned to mirrors of flame, and his lengthening shadow stretched out across the floor, like a finger pointing at a criminal.

“Your actions have caused more trouble than you know. Sending the Messenger has woken—”

“The house must come before all,” replied Maud matter-of-factly.

“I agree. That is why we should have waited, consulted, made appropriate preparations.”

“You find him too young?” asked Maud as she leaned forward, her long woolen sleeves draped across the table in front of her. She almost smiled, glad to argue about the boy’s merits because it shifted suspicion away from her motives.

“He needs time. The boy is still in mourning.”

“Beloved descendant, Jonas Umber, you are right, of course. But always and always it hath been thus: The Undertaker shall not be called forth until he, or
she
”—and she put special emphasis on the this last word—“‘has served for at least a score of years,’ or ‘unless the house have need of him.’ I have heard such noises from the sunken mansion—the dark huntsman stirs. And we have troubles concerning so many other matters. . . . Forgive me for letting my love of peace drive my actions. Of course, I should have consulted with you. But what’s done is done. And, in truth, the past has haunted me. The father refused the call because we waited too long and allowed him to become too independent, too foolish and sentimental about his work. He became set in his absurd, deluded habits, and now the noble office we’ve both held has been recast in shame. Without a living Janus our work shall never go apace. And what of that greater business? The Ebony Throne has too long sat empty and in abeyance. Who shall govern from that hallowed seat? Who shall once again command the dead and sit in reverend judgment over them and their estate? Who shall call the dead back once more into the circle of the sun? I am weary of waiting for the honors due to us.”

“The Ebony Throne? Are you now some saint to speak of relics? Those days have long since passed. The throne is now only an ancient ornament. Had a king been on that throne, lo these many years, why, we might never have been given leave to establish ourselves as we have, here in this great house, so comfortable in our familiar surroundings. Do you know what might have become of us? Have you considered that?”

“But Jonas, if one of our own sits in that chair, we need never fear dissolution. What once was may be again! If one of our living kin should take up that mantle, all those lost to us might be returned to the folds of their family. The Umber name might once more be—”

Jonas raised his hand and cut Maud short, staring at her hard. He looked into her eyes with that well-honed scrutiny that was the family’s particular gift. He was looking not at her, but into her, trying to discern if her motives were not perhaps more personal. The moment she felt the intrusion, she shut her mind to him and sat up straight in her chair with the bearing of a medieval abbess—stern, impenetrable, untouchable.