The Wolves of Midwinter

24

IT WAS THEIR FIRST DINNER together since Modranicht. They sat around the dining room table, eagerly feasting on the baked fish, roast chicken, and sliced pork with platters of hot steaming buttered greens and carrots. Lisa had baked fresh bread, and apple pies for dessert. And the chilled Riesling was sparkling in the crystal decanters and glasses.

Reuben was in his usual place, to the right of Margon, and Laura sat beside Reuben. Then came Berenice and Frank, and Sergei, while opposite sat Felix as always with Thibault on his left and Stuart next with Phil beside him.

It was easy and quiet as if they’d dined this way a hundred times before, and when the conversation erupted, it was of ordinary things, like the little New Year’s Eve party scheduled for the village Inn, or the unchanging weather.

Felix was silent. Utterly silent. And Reuben could hardly bear the expression on Felix’s face—the shadow of dread in his eyes as they stared listlessly at nothing.

It seemed that Margon was being uncommonly gentle with Felix, and more than once tried to talk to him about unimportant or neutral matters, but when no answer came from Felix, Margon didn’t press it, as if he knew this would defeat his kind purpose.

At one point, Berenice said in a casual polite way that the other female wolves had gone back to Europe, and that she might soon be joining them. This was obviously not news to Frank, but it was news to the other men, yet not a single one asked what Reuben wanted to ask: had Hockan not gone with them?

Reuben wasn’t going to utter the name “Hockan” at this table.

Finally Margon said, “Well, Berenice, you are certainly welcome to remain here if you don’t want to go. Surely you know that.”

She only nodded. There was a look of deliberate resignation on her face. Frank was simply staring off as if this were of no concern to him.

“Look, Berenice,” said Thibault. “I think you should stay with us. I think you should forget your old ties to those creatures. There’s no reason why we can’t attempt a pack of males and females again. And this time we ought to make it work. Indeed, my dear, we have Laura with us now.”

Berenice was startled, but not offended. She only smiled. Laura was watching all this, with obvious concern.

In a soft voice, Laura said, “I would like it if you stayed, but of course this is your affair, not mine.”

“We’ll all like it if you stay,” said Frank dismally. “Why do women so often form their own packs? Why can’t we live in peace together?”

No one said a word.

Just before the end of the meal, when they’d had their fill of the apple pie and the espresso and Sergei had gulped down an enormous quantity of brandy, in came Elthram, dressed in his familiar beige chamois leather, and without a word, he seated himself in the armchair at the foot of the table.

Margon welcomed him with an agreeable nod. Elthram sat back, almost slouching in the armchair, and smiled at Margon as he made a little helpless shrugging gesture.

All this was so puzzling to Reuben. Why wasn’t Margon furious that the Forest Gentry had done what they did? Why was he not claiming that he had foreseen such a grisly possibility? Or that he’d been right to warn against their involvement? But Margon had not been saying such things, and now he sat comfortably with Elthram at the foot of the table.

Stuart was drinking in every detail of Elthram with a kind of startled fascination. Elthram gave him a gentle smile, but the company continued in its miserable silence.

One after another was slipping away. Berenice and Frank headed off to drive down to the village for a nightcap at the Inn. Stuart went up to finish the novel he’d been reading. Suddenly Sergei was gone along with the brandy. And Thibault asked Laura if she might help him with his usual frustrating computer difficulties.

Phil rose to take his leave, pleading utter exhaustion, and refused all offers of assistance, saying he had not the slightest difficulty now in walking or seeing his way to the cottage in the darkness.

And it was the “cottage” now, wasn’t it, not the “guesthouse.”

Elthram sat there staring fixedly at Margon. Something silent seemed to pass between them. Margon rose, and giving a quick warm embrace to Felix, who did not acknowledge it at all, he went out towards the library.

Silence.

No sound came from anywhere, not the low fire in the grate or the kitchen. The rain had died away completely, and the lighted forest beyond the windows was a sweet yet sad spectacle.

Reuben looked up to see Elthram watching him.

Only Reuben and Felix and Elthram remained.

Then after a long period of quiet, Elthram said: “Go now, both of you. Go to the clearing, if you would see her.”

Felix gave a violent start. He glared at Elthram. Reuben was stunned. “You mean it?” Reuben asked. “She’ll be there?”

“She wants you to come,” said Elthram. “Go now, while the rain is slacking. A fire burns there. I’ve seen to it. She wants to come through. It’s in the clearing that she’ll be strongest.”

Before Reuben could say another word, Elthram was gone.

Quickly and quietly, Felix and Reuben went to the closet for their overcoats and scarves, and went out the back door. The forest sang of the rain but there was no rain now, just the high branches releasing their soft trickling downfall.

Felix walked ahead rapidly through the darkness.

Reuben struggled to keep up, realizing that once they were beyond the house lights and the lights of the oak forest, he’d be utterly lost without Felix.

It seemed an eternity that they struggled along one narrow uneven path after another. Reuben managed to put on his leather gloves without slowing his pace, and he wrapped his scarf high around his face against the wind.

The deep woods trembled and whispered with the collected rain, and the earth beneath their feet was often muddy and slippery.

Finally, Reuben saw a pale flickering gleam against the sky, and he made out in the light of that gleam the line of the approaching boulders.

Through the narrow pass, they slipped as before, and into the vast clearing. The strong smell of soot and ashes rose in Reuben’s face. But the cold air seemed at once to dilute it and diffuse it.

All the debris of Modranicht was gone—the scattered instruments, the drinking horns, the coals, the cauldron. A great black circle was all that remained of the bonfire, and in the center of it stood another small blaze, made up of thick oak logs, flames leaping in the swirling mist.

To this blaze they went, walking through the charred and shiny bits and pieces of the old fire. Reuben was painfully aware that Fiona and Helena had died here. But there was no time for mourning the two who had attacked Phil.

They stood as close to the little fire as they could, and Reuben stripped off the gloves and buried them in his pockets. He and Felix stood side by side warming their hands. Felix shivered in the cold. Reuben’s pulse was racing.

And what if she doesn’t come, Reuben thought desperately but didn’t dare to speak the words. And what if she does and what she says to us is terrible, more lacerating, more wounding, more damning than any words that came from Hockan?

He was shaking his head, biting into his lower lip, fighting the sheer misery of the anticipation, when he realized that another figure was standing directly opposite, on the other side of the fire, quite visible above the leaping flames, gazing at him.

“Felix,” he said, and Felix looked up and saw the figure as well.

A low moan came from Felix’s lips. “Marchent.”

The figure grew suddenly brighter than it had been, and Reuben saw her fully realized face, fresh and supple as it had looked on the last day of her life. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold and her lips were faintly pink. Her gray eyes were sparkling in the firelight. She wore a simple gray garment with a hood, and beneath the hood, he saw her short blond hair framing her oval face.

She was not four feet away from them.

The only sharp sound came from the lively fire, and beyond a soft series of sighs came from the great forest.

Then came the sound of Marchent’s voice for the first time since the night of her death.

“How can you think that I am unhappy that you are here together?” she asked. Ah, that voice, that voice which Reuben had never forgotten, so crisp, so distinct, so gentle. “Reuben, this house, this land, I wanted so for you to have it; and Felix, I wanted so for you to be conscious and alive and well, and beyond the reach of anyone who could ever harm you. And you two, whom I’ve loved with all my soul, you are now friends, you are now kindred, you are now together.”

“My darling, my blessed darling,” said Felix in the most broken and bruised voice. “I love you so much. I always did.”

Reuben was shaking violently. The tears spilled down his face. Clumsily he wiped at them with his scarf, but truly he didn’t care about them. He kept his eyes focused on her, as her voice came again with the same distinct and muted power.

“I know this, Felix,” she said. She was smiling. “I always knew. Do you think that, living or dead, I’ve ever laid blame on you for anything? Your friend, Hockan, and he is your friend, enlists me in a cause for which I have no sympathy.”

Her face was absolutely warm and expressive as she spoke, her voice as lyrical and natural as it had been that last day.

“Now, please, both of you listen to me. I don’t know how much longer I have to say these things to you. When the invitation comes again, I must accept it. Your tears hold me here now, and I must set you free, that I too might be free.”

She gestured naturally with her hands as she spoke, and it seemed she moved closer to the fire, impervious to its heat.

“Felix, it was not your secret power that darkened my life,” she said tenderly. “It was the unspeakable treachery of my loveless parents. I died at the hands of those who were diseased and blind. You were the sunshine of my life in the garden you planted here for your descendants. And in my darkest hour, when all the vibrant world defied my reach, it was you, Felix, who sent the gentle spirits of the forest to bring me light and understanding.”

Felix wept softly, soundlessly. He wanted to speak, Reuben could see that, but Marchent’s eyes had shifted to Reuben.

“Reuben, your loving face has been my lamp,” she said. It was the same manner she’d taken with him on the fatal day, naturally kind and almost tender. “Let me be your lamp now. I see your innocence abused again—not by your old family—but this time by one who speaks with bitterness and feigned authority. Look well at the dark intelligence he offers you. He would cut you off from those you love and those who love you in return—from the very school in which all souls imbibe the greatest wisdom.” She lowered her voice, underscoring her outrage with understatement. “How dare a living soul consign you to the ranks of the damned, or devise for you a bleak and penitential path of fetters and circumscription? You are what you are, not what others would have you be. And who does not struggle with life and death? Who does not face the chaos of the living breathing world as you and Felix do? Reuben, resist the curse that claims the power of Scripture. Resist my words, Reuben, if they offend the deepest longings of your honest spirit.”

She paused but only to include both of them now as she continued.

“Felix, you left this house and land to me. I gifted it in your memory to Reuben. And now I leave you both, bound by ties as strong as any under heaven. The lamps burn bright again at Nideck Point. Your future stretches to infinity. Remember me. And forgive me. Forgive me for what I didn’t know, and didn’t do, and failed to see. I will remember you wherever I go, as long as memory itself survives in me.”

She smiled. There was the tiniest trace of apprehension, of fear in her face and her voice. “This is farewell, my darlings. I know that I go on, but I don’t know to what, or where, or if I will ever see you again. But I see you now, vital and precious, and filled with an undeniable power. And I love you. Pray for me.”

She went still. She became the picture of herself, eyes looking forward, lips softly closed, her expression one of faint wonder.

Then her face began to waver, to fade. And soon all that was left of her was the outline of her figure drawn on the darkness. Finally that too vanished.

“Good-bye, my darling,” whispered Felix. “Good-bye, my precious girl.”

Reuben was crying uncontrollably.

The wind was soughing in the dark invisible trees that towered all around the clearing.

Felix wiped his tears with his scarf and then put his arms around Reuben, and steadied him.

“She’s gone now, Reuben, gone home,” said Felix. “Don’t you see? She has set us free, just as she said she wanted to do.” He was smiling through his own tears. “I know she’ll find the light; her heart’s too pure, her courage too strong, for anything else.”

Reuben nodded, but all he could feel for the moment was grief, grief that she was gone, grief that he’d never hear her voice again, and only slowly did he come to realize that a great consolation was being given to him.

When he turned and looked again into Felix’s eyes, he felt a deep calm, a trust that somehow the world was the good place he’d always believed it to be.

“Come,” said Felix, hugging him close, and then letting him go, his eyes filled now with the old vigor and light. “They must all be waiting for us, and they must be so afraid. Let’s go to them.”

“It’s all perfectly all right again,” said Reuben.

“Yes, dear boy, it is,” said Felix. “And we will disappoint her terribly if we don’t realize it.”

Slowly they turned and made their way back across the field of ash and cinders, to the narrow passage between the boulders, and began the long walk to the house in easy silence.