Night of the Candles (11 page)

For a second Marta’s lips compressed into lines of disapproval, then her expression turned carefully blank.

“Marta! It was Theo … and Sophia … wasn’t it?” Amanda could not have said what made her ask the question, but it seemed important.

“I couldn’t say,” was her answer.

“The voices … they came from across the hall, didn’t they?”

“It seemed so.”

Irritation with the short, noncommittal answer made her tone sharp. “Then whose room is it?”

“It belongs to Herr Theo, fraeulein.”

“Then it must have been he and his sister.”

Marta did not answer. She made a great show of replacing the tea cozy and examining the rug to be certain that no tea stained it.

Amanda was left with a sense of dissatisfaction. Sipping the brew Marta had gone to so much trouble to bring, she found herself breathing quietly so she could listen. As she realized what she was doing, she grimaced, forcing her thoughts away. After all, it did not concern her. She didn’t know why she was troubling herself about it. Soon she would be gone from here, and it was unlikely that she would see these people again. The thought, she discovered, was not a happy one. It was strange how you could meet people and learn something of their lives, then part never to meet again. It was as if there was no purpose, no plan to life, only a vast accidental meshing of people and events.

Pensively, she decided that she would be sorry to see the last of the people here at Monteigne. It would be like saying a final good-bye to Amelia and the part she had played, for so many years, in her life. It was as though once she had left everyone who had ever known Amelia behind, the memory of that lovely child-woman would disappear and it would be as if she had never existed.

Supper came and was disposed of with a minimum of fuss. The food was good but nothing out of the ordinary. There had been a sweet potato pie that Amanda enjoyed since it was in season. The sweet potatoes, just dug a few weeks before, were at their freshest and sweetest now.

When the meal was over and the tray removed, there came a period of letdown. It made her restless to think of the others below, deep in conversation around the fireplace. She wondered if her name was mentioned.

Marta had returned to stay with her, but the German nurse was quiet, too, almost morose in her gloom. She had brought her tatting with her, and she sat like a large gray spider, weaving a fine web. Her small, silver shuttle flew back and forth in her capable hands, and the pattern of lace emerged, intricate and fine.

Once or twice Amanda tried to make conversation, but she soon desisted. Each time she spoke Marta at once stopped her tatting, and Amanda was afraid she was distracting the other woman from her pattern.

Seeing Marta with busy work made her wish for her own needle. She felt the need to be doing something, even if it was only petit point. Tomorrow she really must get up. She could not stand to play the invalid much longer. It gave her too much time to think, nocturnal thoughts with an undertone of melancholy.

Oh, come, she scolded herself silently, looking toward the window. It was dark now but that was no excuse for blaming her depression on the night. Unconsciously she sighed.

Marta looked up then followed her gaze to the window. “Did you want the curtains pulled?” she asked setting down her work. “I should have done it when I lit the lamp, but it was not quite dark outside.”

Since she had already gone to the trouble of getting up out of her chair, Amanda did not object.

The woman reached to twitch the panel of heavy velvet along its rod then stopped, staring out into the night

“What is it?” Amanda asked.

“I’m not sure, fraeulein, but I think … ja, I’m sure it is that Carl.”

“What is he doing?”

“Sitting.”

“Just … sitting?”

“Ja. Just sitting, with a candle.”

“Candle?” Amanda threw back the cover and swung her legs off the bed.

“No, no, fraeulein. You mustn’t.”

But Amanda had already got to her feet. She stood a moment holding to the side of the bed, then she reached for her dressing gown and pulled it about her shoulders. An excuse, any excuse, for action was what she had been waiting for. It was not that she was so terribly interested in poor Carl, she just wanted to do something besides lie flat on her back.

She saw first the glow of the candlelight and the shadow of a figure, like an ancient deity, sitting cross-legged behind it. As she and Marta stared, Carl leaned forward, his face glimmering pale, and lit a second candle from the first.

“What can he be doing?”

“I could not say, fraeulein.”

“It is cold out there, and the dew is on the ground. Perhaps he is only trying to get warm.”

“Ja, fraeulein,” Marta answered tonelessly.

“You don’t think so?”

“It has the look, I think, of a vigil.”

“Oh,” she said, casting Marta a half humorous look. “He must be practicing … for the Night of the Candles Theo mentioned the other night.”

“Three candles…” Marta murmured as if she hadn’t heard. “He is lighting a third candle.”

A look confirmed the words of the nurse though Amanda could not see what significance there might be in it.

“Poor thing,” she said at last. “Do you suppose he is sitting out there because Theo wouldn’t let him in?”

“It is possible.”

“I don’t like it. I can’t bear to have an animal in the cold at night, much less a human being. Perhaps if I spoke to him…”

“You needn’t trouble yourself. See, now. Herr Theo goes toward him.”

“It’s about time!”

They turned back into the room as the voice rang out behind them. It was Sophia, a spot of color in each cheek, who had walked into the room. She moved to the window to stand between them, staring out at the scene taking place in the dark velvet of the high grass on the lawn.

“What an idiot! He gets stranger every day. I never feel safe, not with him roaming at will. We will be lucky if he doesn’t set fire to the grass and burn the house down!”

“It will hardly do that, not after the rain.”

“There has been a drying wind blowing all the day. You can still see it. Look at the trees.”

The tops of the trees in the far woods, their branches still holding scattered rags of leaves, were swaying back and forth in the pale moonlight. Higher up, the wind sent a low bank of clouds scurrying, its grayness catching a silver sheen as it flew.

Striding up to Carl, Theo took a commanding stance. Carl got slowly to his feet. As they spoke the wind whirled the sound away, leaving those in the house to watch a pantomime.

After a moment Carl began to slowly shake his head. Theo gestured, and again Carl shook his head.

Then Carl appeared to look beyond Theo to the house. What he saw there gave him courage for suddenly he began to caper about, his hands moving in time to some weird music that could only be in his mind. His patched and misshapen clothes fluttered and flapped in the wind, like the garments of a scarecrow. In the light of the moon, he looked like a demented thing, a pitiful caricature of a human being.

Amanda found herself wanting to cry out for him to stop, for him not to play the fool and increase the chances of being declared mad. She was so involved in the drama below that she scarcely noticed when Marta had stepped back, relinquishing her place to Sophia with a subservient murmur.

Now Carl pranced away, as if in obedience to Theo’s dictates, then he came creeping slyly back, his mouth curved in an open, gleeful grin.

Theo, pushed beyond endurance, took a threatening step forward. Stopping, Carl swept up one of the candles and thrust it at Theo.

Amanda expected to see the candle flicker and die in the wind. It did not. It fluttered briefly before flaring brighter still. Carl brandished it like a weapon, forcing Theo to dodge and stumble back a pace before the dancing flame.

Again Carl looked toward the house, as though for approval. Theo turned his head, looking also, then he called out, a faint swell of sound as the wind began to fall.

“Why in God’s name doesn’t he do something?” Sophia muttered in fierce contempt.

And then Jason moved from the shadows near the front gallery. His head was thrown back, and he was laughing, caught in the grip of a dark mirth. He raised his arm, motioning to Theo, and made some humorous comment.

Theo turned away reluctantly, moving to join him. Together they went back into the house, leaving Carl to his candles and the wind and the cold, damp night.

“Oh, for…” Sophia made a sound of disgust in her throat. “Jason is a fool, almost as great a fool as that imbecile out there!”

“I don’t understand, Sophia. Why do you hate the man so much?”

Sophia stared at her, her pale lashes almost invisible in the weak light so that her eyes seemed to have only naked rims. There was a look of hauteur and concentration on her face, as if she wondered what gave Amanda the right to question her and what she hoped to gain by it. As the silence stretched, Amanda thought she was not going to answer.

Then she spoke slowly. “I don’t know. I cannot bear cripples, but that isn’t it entirely. It’s like … like living in the shadow of an overhanging rock; he gives me a feeling of constant dread. He … he makes me nervous.”

And living with dread made her irritable and vindictive, Amanda thought, though she was given no chance to show her understanding. In aggravation with herself for saying too much, Sophia had gone, in a swift swirl of skirts, from the room.

“She is not a very happy person,” Amanda said, feeling as she spoke the inadequacy of the comment.

“No, fraeulein” Marta agreed, moving heavily from the shadows. “Fraeulein…”

“Yes, Marta.”

“Would you object if I brought a pallet and slept here in this room with you?”

“Why, no, I wouldn’t object … precisely.”

“It is that man out there,” she went on, a little too quickly. “I do not trust him. Like all his kind, may God watch over them, he has only one idea.”

“You mean, that I am his Madame Amelia, returned from … from the grave.”

“Exactly so. I have no idea that he would harm you. In fact, I would say it would be the last thing he would do. Still, he is not … not accountable.”

Amanda nodded in slow agreement, and Marta went away to return shortly bearing the mattress from a single bed, a pillow, and several blankets and sheets in her arms. Her pallet she placed before the fireplace to take advantage of the warmth of the floor there and the heat that lingered in the bricks.

For a time after they had finally lain down, Amanda felt ridiculous. It seemed so medieval to have someone sleeping at the foot of her bed for her protection.

She had become a little chilled from standing before me window, and now she pulled the covers up to her neck. She was not very sleepy, and the presence of another person in the room did not help. She lay staring up into the inside of the tester letting her mind drift.

What was it Sophia had said of Amelia, that she had no wish for children? She had said that her illness was feigned, an excuse to keep from having to produce an heir. She could hardly credit that, not with Marta, a special nurse, in attendance on her. Surely that would not have been necessary for an imaginary illness? And yet, she could remember that once, when she was thirteen and Amelia ten years old, Amelia had pretended to have a sprained wrist. She had kept it tightly wrapped and cried out at the least touch for more than a month during the summer because she hated putting up the plums, blackberries, and peaches, making them into jelly, preserves, and sometimes wine. These were housewifely skills their grandmother had insisted that every girl should know. Amanda had watched the younger girl bind up her wrist every morning and take off the bandage at night without ever mentioning a word to then grandmother.

Yet, if it was true that Amelia had somehow faked her illness, then why had she taken her own life? Why would she do such a thing when she had everything to live for, youth, beauty, a loving husband, a lovely home, a life of comfort and leisure? No, she had no reason to kill herself. What did that leave? An accidental death? An attempted suicide that was never meant to be fatal, simply frightening for those around her? Or … murder?

No. She mustn’t allow her imagination to run away from her. There was no use indulging in wild speculation, all on the evidence of a jealous woman who was only too eager to step into Amelia’s shoes. No, she must stop it. She must think of something — anything — else. Nathaniel. Her wedding. The house they would build, white, with an octagonal tower housing a study and library for Nathaniel. And for herself a sunroom where she could grow ferns and have a settee of rattan with green and white printed cushions. She would buy a baby carriage of rattan, and on warm spring days she would roll the baby out into the back garden, and he could sun while she did needlepoint for her dining room chairs…

Candles, bright pinpricks of light shone in the dark night, hundreds, thousands of them. They grew, blossoming, moving closer. She turned as they came nearer. She began to run along a dirt track. She could feel the warmth of the tapers growing behind her and then, in the way of dreams, the candles were before her, sweeping in upon her in a smothering wave, burning, setting her on fire!

She came awake with a jerk, staring wide-eyed into the dark, her breathing quick and uneven. Then she sighed in relief as the tension faded. Turning her head, she could just make out Marta on her pallet, her chest rising and falling with her stentorian breathing. She smiled a little in the dark. Stentorian from Stentor, the Greek herald with the loud voice.

Looking beyond to the window she saw the star shine gleaming through a crack between the drapes. It reminded her of Carl and his tireless vigil.

Obeying an impulse, she slid out of bed and padded to the window. There was a faint swimming in her head but, other than that small weakness, she felt well.

The moon had set, leaving the ground below in much greater darkness than earlier. There was no sign of candlelight, no capering figure. Then as she strained her eyes she saw him.

Carl, crazy Carl, still sat below her window, cross-legged before the burned out stumps of his candles, his hands dangling over his knees, his head slumped upon his chest.