Mortal Love (33 page)

Wrong,
thought Daniel as they approached the corner of Inverness, but he said nothing.

* * *

“
You don't mind
if I come up with you?” asked Nick as he unlocked the door to the flat. “Sira needed some CDs, and I keep my stockpile here.”

“It's your place.” Daniel stood behind his friend, shivering in the early-evening breeze. “God, I just want to lie down and sleep. For, like, a week.”

“Best thing for you,” said Nick. He pushed the door open and waved Daniel inside. “A nap and a poke, that's what my mother used to say.”

“Nick, I knew your mother. She would never say that.”

“Maybe it was Dad, then.”

They walked upstairs. Daniel felt his heart lift slightly as the familiar smells of coffee and hash and Indian spices enveloped him. If he looked at it objectively … well, Larkin had been only a one-night stand. He hadn't done something like that in twenty years; hadn't actually
felt
like that for much longer, crazed with longing and the sense that sex could somehow open a door to a fantastic world that would explode this one into gray shrapnel.

It was a relief, really, to have it behind him. They reached the landing where Nick's bicycle helmet and assorted rain gear hung, turned and walked into the kitchen.

And stopped.

“Hello, Nick.” A deep voice boomed through the flat. “It's me. Val. Val Comstock?”

Daniel looked up. In the middle of the kitchen stood one of the biggest men he had ever seen off a regulation basketball court. Easily more than six and a half feet tall, broad-shouldered and … well,
huge
—with a filthy red bandanna around his forehead and lank black hair falling to his shoulders, deep-set eyes and hawkish nose, close-trimmed beard and mustache that gave more definition to his chiseled features. He was much younger than either of them—Daniel pegged him at thirty. But his stained
SHOCKHEADED PETER
T-shirt, baggy corduroys and clunky black boots, frayed leather braid around his neck and silver earrings made him look even younger than that.

“Nick? Remember me?” Val said. He was so ridiculously larger than life that Daniel almost laughed. Then the young man's gaze fell upon him, and Daniel froze.

Larkin,
he thought, and fought a wave of panic.
Jesus, he looks like Larkin.

“Val?” Nick laughed in amazement. “Little Val?”

“That would be me.”

Nick danced across the room. “Christ, lad, they been putting steroids in your beer? It's good to see you!”

They shook hands. “My fuckwit brother didn't call, then?” said Val. “He was supposed to let you know I was coming. I still have the key.”

He held it up, a thread of brass in his huge hand. “But if there's a problem, I'll just crash at a hotel—”

“No, of course not, no problem at all!” said Nick. “I mean, as long as you can fit in here.”

Val smiled and looked at Daniel. “I'm Val Comstock,” he said, his hand reaching out past Nick's head.

“Daniel Rowlands.”

“Hey, you're American.” Val grinned. “Me, too.”

Daniel smiled wanly. “Yup.” He wondered where, in fact, this overgrown kid would fit. The security door leading onto the rooftop patio was open; maybe he could sleep out there. He looked back at Val and felt the pinch of envy. “I'm staying here at Nick's for a few months, researching a book. I'm a writer—a journalist, with the
Washington Horizon.”

Val nodded. His eyes met Daniel's—hazel eyes, mingled green and amber—and flickered challengingly:
Oh, yeah?

But all Val said was, “I'm just making a delivery. One of my grandfather's paintings. This is all Simon's doing, of course. My asshole lawyer brother. He negotiated some deal, and as usual I have to be the bagman.”

Nick peeled off his anorak and went to the fridge. “How long you staying, then? Beer?”

“Yeah, sure,” rumbled Val, and Nick handed him a bottle. “I dunno. I'm feeling kind of restless. Might just hang around for a while.”

Nick nodded. “Beer, Danny?”

“No thanks.”

Daniel glanced into the living room and saw that one of the bookshelves was empty. Under it stood two big black trash bags, filled.

Val's gaze followed his; he shrugged, then said, “Oh, yeah. Nick. I kind of made a mess in there. I'll reimburse you for it—but there's something I need to ask you about.”

His rumbling voice dropped almost to a whisper. There was some soft, implicit threat in it, a sense of someone being reasonable who maybe hadn't had a lot of practice. Uneasy, Daniel glanced again at the living room, and this time noticed bits of torn paper on the floor beneath the windows, the ripped cover of a paperback.

“Actually,” Val went on, “probably the person I really need to talk to is Simon. 'Cause this sketchbook of mine that, like, disappeared when I was fifteen? I found it here. Just now. But—”

From downstairs came the squawk of the doorbell. Nick started for the hall but stopped at the
boom
of the outer door banging shut.

“That'll be Sira,” he said as a voice rang from the stairs.

“Nick? You here?”

Daniel turned. It was Larkin.

“Why, look who's here,” said Nick. He had gone pale as paper. “She's a rainbow.”

She was wearing faded, much-patched jeans, a tunic of worn tie-dyed velvet, green and red and blue and yellow. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, strands of gray and auburn tangling in the fringe of a long turquoise scarf. The getup should have been ludicrous, but, gazing at her, Daniel felt his heart constrict painfully as he lifted a hand to greet her.

“Oh, hello there. Daniel.” She smiled blankly, not exactly as though nothing had happened between them but as if it had all been decades ago. “I forgot you were staying here. I was just stopping by, I think I left my coat the other night.”

“
Last
night,” Daniel started to say. But then she turned from him, and the words stuck in his throat.

Once, years before, he had been hiking alone in the Moab wilderness in Utah, when in the distant glass-blue sky he had seen two small prop planes collide. His horror had mingled with astonishment. How was it that in all that vast open space the planes had managed to find each other? His amazement was compounded when he later read that, elsewhere in the desert, another hiker had been killed by the falling wreckage.

“Maybe the really incredible thing is that it wasn't you,” his girlfriend said when he finally told her about it. “Maybe you were lucky, seeing it happen.”

Seeing it happen.

On the other side of the kitchen, Val Comstock was staring at Larkin, but she hadn't really registered him yet. She was looking at Nick, her lips parted and her face tilted to one side, as though she were trying to figure out what was going on here, what she had wandered into. A surprise party? An argument?

“Um … ?” she said, turning.

And saw Val.

A shimmering instant, the moment between when a crystal glass is struck and when it cracks. Daniel's hand grasped the corner of the kitchen table; Nick stood with his beer, mouth open to speak. Separated by the table, Larkin and Valentine Comstock stared at each, Larkin in her outdated Gypsy glory, Val with his dirty red bandanna and sweat-stained jeans and T-shirt. In the back of his throat, Daniel tasted bile, bitter green suddenly flooded by the taste of scorched fish. There was a scent of apple blossom and the sea. Somewhere a dog barked. Very slowly and without looking away from Larkin, Val reached to set his beer on the table, his hazel eyes wide and wondering as a sleepwalker's.

Enchantment.

Daniel saw the pen-and-ink figures of conjoined lovers in a field of endless green and white, felt Larkin's hand upon his face and taloned fingers clawing at his breast.

Discovery.

“I know you,” murmured Val. Gazing at him, Larkin nodded silently.

“Yes,” she said, and Daniel felt a door close upon him forever.

Recognition.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Triumph of Time

I
t was not dusk but dawn,
not dawn but night, not sun rising or setting but flame. The world was on fire; no, not the world, he saw as he began to run, not the world but Sarsinmoor.

“Evienne!”

He raced across the narrow land bridge, all the air roaring. Heat surrounded him like a wall crashing down; he was trapped inside a vast athanor, flame and smoke and tiny black things soaring everywhere, beneath him the ground rippling and gorse crackling like flesh upon a spit. He shouted and beat futilely at the air, running with his head bowed against waves of crimson and black and blinding white. “Evienne!”

The manor house was ablaze. But when he reached the courtyard, he saw that only the front of the building had been consumed, and its lower story—the old wing to the back was intact, and while flames beat at the upper floors, they had not yet reached them. He paused, coughing and struggling to catch his breath. On the cobbles a safe distance from the building, paintings and boxes and wooden crates were strewn, hundreds of them.

“Comstock!”

He looked up to see Learmont staggering from one of the side doors, dragging a huge canvas.

“Help me,” the doctor gasped, nearly falling as he wrestled the painting to the ground. “Must save them …”

“Where is she?” cried Radborne. He grabbed the painting from Learmont and thrust it aside. “Is she inside?
Where is she?”

“She?” Learmont looked at him dumbfounded, then gave a gasping laugh. “
She
is gone! Torched her nest and fled!”

He turned and began to run back toward the house. “Surely Kervissey will have seen the flames in Padwithiel— help me get the rest of them!”

“The paintings?” Radborne grabbed at him. “Are you mad? What about Candell—is he safe? Where is he?”

“His work is there!” Learmont shouted, pointing to the piles of canvas and crates, then pushed Radborne from him. “I freed him—he has gone to her!”

With a groan he turned and ran back inside.

“Gone?” cried Radborne. “Evienne!”

He tore off his jacket, covered his face with it, and ran. The stench of burning gorse was everywhere; above him glass and stones exploded from the heat and rained down. He ran behind the manor house, where scattered heaps of fallen wreckage blazed, drew to a halt, panting, and peered through the smoke to the cottage.

It seemed to be intact, though runnels of fire spat and tore through bindweed and thorns at his feet. “Evienne! Breaghan!”

He raced to the door and yanked it open. Inside, all was as he had left it just hours before—the teacups still on the plain deal table, Evienne's watercolor on the easel, a thread of ash clinging to the spent peat fire. Of Evienne Upstone there was no sign, nor Breaghan.

“You'll not find her here, Mr. Comstock,” a voice said. Radborne whirled. “And she'll not find you either. She's got from you what she needed, and she's gone, gone.”

In the doorway stood Jacobus Candell. He wore his paint-spattered smock but was barefoot; his hands were cut and bleeding, as were his feet. He stank of turpentine and linseed oil. “The doctor set me free to help him. I told him that I have left you my things, Mr. Comstock. The lapis lazuli is pure, and I have already told you about the
caput mortuum.
I trust you can prime your own canvas. I have done with painting for a while, I think.”

“Cobus.” Radborne strode over to him. “Cobus. Is she … have you hurt her? I swear to God I will kill you if she's been harmed!”

Candell's pale blue eyes shone. “Harmed?” He began to laugh. “I would not
harm
her, Mr. Comstock—could you harm the sea? Could you harm
this
—”

He turned and ran back outside, darting clumsily back and forth until he came to a blazing patch of gorse. Then Radborne had hold of him, pulling him away roughly. “Stop it! Tell me where she's gone—
where is she?”

Candell did not struggle to escape. He gazed at Radborne with that ineffably sweet smile, then lifted a sticky red hand to touch his cheek. “You won't find her, lad. Nor the other. The midwife.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The deformed woman. That is all they wanted of you—to beget a child.”

“A child?” Radborne fought for breath, squeezed his eyes shut. He saw the tiny bier in the grass, the body of the wren inside it, a woman lying on the moor beside him, then a woman in the distance astride a horse. “I … I lay with no woman.”

Candell laughed softly. “That is true. But you straddled her all the same, and your spunk is as good as any man's. She's gone to lay her egg in another's nest now, sir—you won't find her.”

He dug his hand into the pocket of his filthy smock and withdrew a speckled egg, held it up for a moment, then crushed it between his fingers. “Chipping sparrow,” he said regretfully. “Not hers. The midwife took it—put it in a box, she'll keep it for a hundred years if she has to. You'll never see your son, sir. Not that'd you recognize him if you did.”

He shoved his fingers into his mouth, sucking them noisily. With a shout of rage, Radborne drew back his hand to strike him. As he did, he saw Candell's eyes widen, staring past him, past the cottage, toward the cliffs.

“Oh, wonder!” the painter cried, and, trembling, fell to his knees. “Oh, but see …”

Radborne turned.

At the edge of the cliff, two pillars of flame reared into the air, ten feet, twenty, a thousand. They rippled and flared like auroras of emerald and ice and jade, coruscating green and black, as slowly and inexorably they pulsed up and down, like infernal pistons. Radborne screamed, seeking to shade his eyes, but nothing could keep that terrible light from him, or its sound: it ignited his very brain, searing skull tongue teeth eyes, until all he could see was radiance, a horror of incandescent emerald that clamored like a gong, giving off endless echoes. He stumbled backward and fell, rolled onto his stomach, then got to his feet, staggering as he ran.

“WONDER!” a voice shouted. Hands grabbed him. Radborne pushed them away frantically, had a glimpse of a dark form suddenly thrusting through the brilliance. “WONDER!”

“Cobus, no!”

At the edge of the cliff stood Jacobus Candell, holding at arm's length a blazing branch of gorse. At his feet a small form furiously dashed, jumping and snapping at his hand. As Radborne watched, the blaze flickered, then leaped, touching the hem of Candell's smock. There was an explosive whiff of turpentine, and Radborne stared in horror as Candell erupted into flame.

“Cobus! No—”

The figure raised its arms, reaching toward the shining heavens.
“Wonder!”
it screamed.

There came an instant where it was all one thing: man and light, green and black, night and day. Then with a sound like an exploding cannon, the radiance was gone. Radborne stood beneath a night sky, Sarsinmoor ablaze behind him and someone shouting his name.

“Comstock! Comstock, you meddling
shite
!”

Someone grabbed him by the arm. “Swinburne,” Radborne whispered, and coughed convulsively. “Swin—”

“He's here!” the poet shouted. “Quick!”

Another figure appeared in the fire-streaked darkness, a coachman clutching a lantern. “Kervissey's got t' doctor!” he shouted. “Bring 'im to the coach, sir!”

“Can you walk?” Swinburne cried, pulling Radborne to him. “Come, I'll bear you as much as I can.”

They stumbled through flame-licked gorse, smoke swirling around them and the manor house bellowing with flame. Radborne was nearly deafened; tears of agony and terror streamed down his face as Swinburne drew him to the narrow spit of land that bridged the gap between Sarsinmoor and the headland. Halfway across it a wagon lumbered away from them, piled high with crates and canvases. Radborne recognized Kervissey's dour head beneath its cap, and a taller, sparer figure, standing to gaze back at the fiery ruins.

“Learmont.” Radborne mouthed the name through scorched lips.

“Here, Mr. Comstock.” They had reached a coach in the courtyard, its blinkered horses snorting and shrieking as a groom struggled to keep them still. Swinburne stepped aside as the coachman pulled the door open. “This is Inchbold's man. He'll bring us to Trevenna.”

“Trevenna.” Radborne clambered into the coach, then turned empty, maddened eyes upon the little man beside him. The coach door slammed shut. The coachman shouted and the horses lunged across the courtyard, away from the blaze. “You … how did you … ?”

Swinburne gasped and settled back against the seat. He ran a hand through his wild ginger hair, then looked at Radborne. “My conscience would not let me rest. Thinking of you here, alone with them. …”

He grasped Radborne's large hand tightly in his own small one.

“
One who is not, we see: but one whom we see not, is.

“Gabriel, my sad bad glad mad brother—I could not save him, nor Lizzie, nor poor damned Ned. But you …”

The poet's eyes narrowed. As the coach clattered across the moor, the ruins of Sarsinmoor behind them, he gave his shrill peacock laugh.

“You, Mr. Cuntwit, Fancy's fool and an American to boot—you have made a hero of me at last!”