The Wolves of Midwinter (26 page)

He brought the company into the main room, and stood with arms folded as they acknowledged the perfection of everything.

It had all been “done,” or so they had thought when they left, but it seemed a multitude of refinements had been added. “Those are pure bayberry candles on all the mantels,” Felix said, “and the holly. Do note the holly.” It was everywhere, with sharp dark glistening leaves and bright red berries, nestled into the garland around the fireplaces, the doorways, and the windows.

To the giant tree, already a masterpiece before they left, countless little gold ornaments had been added, most representing nuts or dates, and also a whole sprinkling of gold angels.

And to the right of the front door stood a giant dark heavily carved German grandfather clock, “to chime on New Year’s Eve,” said Felix.

In the dining room, the great table was covered in Battenberg lace, and laid out, like the hunter’s boards, with sterling chafing dishes and heavy serving pieces. In the corner a long bar was set up with a dazzling array of name-brand liquors and wines, and there were round tables here and there with potbellied silver coffee urns and piles of sparkling china cups and saucers.

China plates in ten or more patterns at least were piled at the ends of the long table along with stacks of heavy sterling dinner forks. Chefs would carve the turkey and the ham for a “fork meal,” said Felix, as some people would have to balance a plate on their knees, and he wanted them to be entirely comfortable.

Reuben was completely in the spirit. Only the absence of Laura hurt him, and also the worry about Marchent. But judging from Felix’s excitement, perhaps there was no cause now to worry about Marchent.
Nevertheless the thought of Marchent here or Marchent gone struck equal terror in Reuben’s heart. But he didn’t want to say so.

They had their supper in the kitchen, crowding around the rectangular table by the window, Lisa ladling up a pungent beef stew into their bowls, while the men served themselves their drinks, and Jean Pierre served a crisp green salad. Stuart devoured half a loaf of French bread before even touching the stew.

“Don’t worry about this kitchen,” Felix said. “It will be turned out like everything else. And don’t be shocked at all the garland upstairs. We can take it all down off the doors after the party.”

“I’m kind of loving it,” Stuart said. And he did appear dazed as he looked around at the trimmings on the kitchen window which hadn’t been there before, and the masses of candles on the sideboard. “It’s a shame it can’t be Christmas all year.”

“Oh, but the spring will bring its festivals,” said Felix. “Now we must get our rest. We have to be down in the village by ten a.m. tomorrow for the fair. Of course we can take breaks. We don’t have to be there all day; well, I have to be there all day, and, Reuben, it would be good if you were with me.”

Reuben agreed immediately. He was smiling at the sheer scope of all this, and wondered who would be first in his family to ask how much it had cost and who was paying for it. Maybe Celeste would ask that question, but then maybe again she wouldn’t dare.

It was Stuart now who asked this very question.

Felix clearly didn’t want to answer, and Sergei said, “A banquet like this is a gift to everyone who comes, you wait and see; it’s that way. You can’t measure it in dollars and cents. It’s an experience. And people will be talking about it for years. You give them something priceless with all this.”

“Yes, but they give us something priceless too,” said Felix, “in that they come, they are part of it, and what would it be without every one of them?”

“True,” said Sergei, and then looking at Stuart he said gravely in his crackling baritone, “In my time, of course, we ate the captives of other
tribes at Midwinter, but before cooking them, we put them to death painlessly.”

Felix laughed out loud before he could stop himself.

And Stuart shot back, “Oh, yeah, right!—You’re a farm boy from West Virginia and you know it. Probably worked in a coal mine for a little while. Hey, I’m not knocking it. Just sayin’.”

Sergei laughed and shook his head.

Margon and Felix exchanged a secretive look, but said nothing.

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

“Did Elthram tell you this?”

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

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

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

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

He was asleep the moment he hit the pillow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are they here now?” asked Stuart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But they’re not,” he protested.

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

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

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

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