In The Face Of Death (51 page)

The library here is much in need of cataloguing I find, and I suppose I will have to hire someone to tend to the work, though not just at present. By next year; there are too many other demands on me regarding needed repairs and improvements. . . .

I have not yet found anyone to share my secret, and so continue to content myself as best as I can with the dreams of those in Saint-Jacques and the posting inn on the Provence road. . . . It is hardly satisfactory, but Saint-Germain has survived in this manner for many decades, and so I suppose I will learn. . . .

Montalia, 10 May, 1890

If I have to read one more tirade against M. Eiffel’s tower, I think I will be ill. Fashion changes, and if it can welcome bustles and hoop skirts, it surely can accommodate the tower. It has stood for a year now, and there are still those who insist it is an insult to France to permit such a monstrosity to stand. . . .

I am finally about to read my published accounts of the American Civil War. I think I can look at my own work with some perspective now that a quarter of a century has passed since I left Savannah. . . . I know it will trouble me, but I can endure that if I can resolve my sense of turmoil about that time that continues to linger with me. . . .

The worst thing will be reading about Tecumseh, for it will waken my need for him once again, at a time when all hope is past. I will have to steel myself against the bond, which is a strange experience for me to seek. . . . He is like the whisper of the wind in this chateau—always present, but hardly noticeable except when storms come. . . . The worst of his despair seems to have faded, which reassures me. His desolation takes a great toll upon him. . . . As much as I long for his company, I know it would be foolhardy to seek it. He is seventy now, and he would not want to deal with me. There are many men who in age want the company of young women, and while I am not a young woman, I have that appearance. But Tecumseh would not be comfortable with it. So I will not set out for America except in the pages of my own books. . . .

Montalia, 9 December, 1890

There has been a discovery in Java, one which has caught my interest: a Dutch surgeon has found the bones of a prehistoric human. I have read all I can find on this fascinating discovery, and perhaps next summer I will leave from here and travel across the ocean—which would be an ordeal, but necessary—to help continue the explorations with those who have begun them. . . . I am no Nelly Bly, to try to race around the earth in less than eighty days, but I would welcome anything that would lessen the days I must spend on water. . . .

I have received the first volume of what promises to be a protracted work by a Scottish anthropologist—to give the study its preferred name—James George Frazier. He calls his work
The Golden Bough. . . .

Two of the new windows are leaking, in spite of all the work done. . . . I will have to arrange for replacement in the spring. . . . At least the slates on the roof have not broken or cracked, and once the flues are all repaired we will be as snug here as anyone can be in a centuries-old stone house. . . .

Montalia, 14 February, 1891

Tecumseh is dead.

Madelaine ran across the steps and into his arms as he descended from the coach; she did not care who saw.

He held her silently a short while, a neat figure of less than average height in black with a flash of immaculate white at his neck, ignoring the impatience of his coachman, the presence of his manservant, and a faint, misty rain. At last he said quietly, “Come, my heart. We should go inside.”

She released him, stepping back. “Yes. You’re right.” Taking his small hand in hers, she led up the steps and across the threshold, finding a comfort in the familiar ritual of greeting this newcomer. “Welcome to Montalia.”

“I have been here once before, though you may not recall, some years before,” he said, by which he meant a century. “You have improved it.”

She remembered the dangerous times at the height of the Terror, but said only, “Thank you,” and stood in front of him to look deep into his dark, compassionate eyes. “I knew you were coming. Knowing it has sustained me.”

He nodded. “It is always difficult when there is a loss like yours. We would have been here sooner, but your roads are morasses.” He paused, watching her. “How long ago was it?”

“Not quite two weeks. Tomorrow is two weeks. Just six days after his birthday.” She shook her head, her throat tight with emotion. “I knew he was ill, but he had had asthma for so long, and I had sent him more tincture just eight months before—” She put her hands to her face. “He was embalmed. If only I could weep.”

“I know,” he said with such empathy that she had to force herself not to cast herself into his embrace again.

“I didn’t think it would be so hard
.
. . . The others have not affected me so
.
. . so much. Not Piers, not Falke, not Alexander, none of them.” She took a step back from him as she saw Mercurio approaching. She smoothed the front of her simple dark-grey half-mourning dress, and turned to address her Italian butler.

“Madame Bertrande?” said Mercurio, looking at the stranger with curiosity.

She indicated the man beside her. “This is the guest I told you to expect: Ragoczy, comte de Saint-Germain.”

Mercurio bowed.

“His manservant will be in with his luggage. He is Roger.” Madelaine belatedly dropped Saint-Germain a curtsy, then said to Mercurio. “Put my guest in the southern suite.”

Now Mercurio looked puzzled; the choice seemed an arbitrary one, and not worthy of a man of rank. “Surely the Rose Suite would be better,” he suggested; the Rose Suite was newer and had a better view.

Saint-Germain intervened with practiced diplomacy. “Do not fault Madame
. . .
Bertrande. I have stayed in the southern suite before and found it to my satisfaction. I prefer it to the newer rooms.” His native earth was under the floor, to restore and protect him.

“If that is what you wish,” said Mercurio, puzzled by Saint-Germain’s preference in accommodations. “I will have the staff see to it at once.” He raised his hand to signal his assistant when a lean, middle-aged man with sandy hair and faded-blue eyes came to the door.

“If you will tell me where I may put my master’s things?” said Roger with a nod to Mercurio.

“You know which suite,” said Saint-Germain, and then gave his attention to Madelaine once more. “Where do you want to talk?”

“My library?” she said, and added to Mercurio, to off-set the shock in his face. “We are of the same blood. There is no impropriety in this.”

Mercurio’s bow was so perfect that it made the point that he was reserving judgment in the matter.

“The library is down the second corridor, isn’t it? Near the tower? Do I recall correctly?” Saint-Germain said, certain that he did. He glanced at Madelaine as he started in that direction, leaving Roger and Mercurio to tend to his belongings.

“I have missed you,” Madelaine whispered as they made their way down the corridor. “Though we are never truly separated, I have missed you.”

He motioned her to silence. “We are not yet private, my heart.” As they reached the door to the library, he turned casually to look back down the corridor. “A woman, about thirty, is listening to everything we say,” he told her in an undervoice.

“Mercurio’s wife,” said Madelaine, and added in a tone intended to carry. “I hope you will tell me what I am to do, since I cannot attend the funeral.”

As Saint-Germain closed the library doors behind her, he caught her by the wrist. “Now you can tell me what is locked in your soul.”

She hesitated now that the opportunity was hers. “I do not want to cause you pain, Saint-Germain.”

“Seeing you in such agony causes me pain, my heart; I am not jealous.” he said quietly, his voice low and oddly penetrating.

“I know it; as you know I am not,” she said. “It is what we are.”

“It will only please me that he loved you.” He saw something change in her face, and added, “Do not think he did not love you.”

The words struck to the heart of her grief. “But he chose the True Death. How can I think otherwise?”

“You may think he could not live as those of our blood must live. Surely you told him how it would be?” He released her, but continued to hold her with his compelling eyes.

She nodded once. “The second day at Lake Como. I know I should have told him the whole earlier, but it was during the war, and
.
. . . He admitted he had not realized what it would mean. He listened and asked me many questions. But he
.
. . he would have learned to live as we must,” she defended him, going to light the lamp beside the largest of the bookshelves. “I learned, for all that I have adored you from the hour we met, and have your blood in my veins.”

Saint-Germain let out his breath very slowly. “My heart, you and I are not the trouble here. Your General Sherman is.”

“Tecumseh,” she corrected in a whisper, her voice unsteady. “Did you know that Tecumseh means Shooting Star?”

“How could I?” Saint-Germain asked, so gently, with no trace of accusation, that Madelaine could hardly hear him.

She held her lucifer until it almost burned her fingers; she waved it out and struck another, this time succeeding in lighting the lamp before blowing the little flame out. “You might have learned, once.”

He shook his head, letting her choose the course of their conversation for the moment. “I went no farther north than Mexico; I would not have learned any of the Shawnee words in Mexico.”

Madelaine sat down on the long Empire couch at one end of the library, remarking as she did, “This piece is wasted in here. I should move it to a more spacious room.”

Saint-Germain went to stand behind her, his small hands resting on her shoulders. “Tell me how you remember him.”

She did not answer at once. “Tall. Red-haired,” she said at last, “Impatient. Active. Complex. Brilliant. Easily wounded, though rarely willing to admit injury. Steadfast. Eyes like steel, blue-grey. Principled. Given to despair. Energetic. Uncommonly clear-minded. Tender. Rarely playful, except with his children.”

Saint-Germain kissed the top of her head. “What else?”

“He was tactless. Arbitrary. Demanding. Relentless. Loyal. Nervous. Abrasive.” She was shaking now as she spoke, and each word shuddered through her with increasing strength. “Occasionally infuriating. Purposeful.”

“An admirable man, though not quite likeable,” Saint-Germain observed.

“Most men were afraid of him. Most women liked him. Trusted him. I did, from the first.” Madelaine lowered her head. “I suppose, until the end, I hoped he would change his mind, and taste my blood.”

Saint-Germain came around the end of the couch and lifted her chin with his hand. “You have no reason to blame yourself for his refusal.”

“Are you convinced of that?” she asked, speaking too quickly.

“That is not important: you are not convinced,” he pointed out, and touched her lips with the tips of his fingers before turning away and crossing the room.

“What else can I think?” Her question pursued him. “He would not accept either my bond or my life.”

For a short while Saint-Germain said nothing. “Tell me how he was as your lover.”

Madelaine looked up sharply. “Are you certain you want to hear?”

He regarded her steadily, his dark eyes enigmatic. “I am used to being impotent, after four thousand years, my heart. That he was not will not distress me.”

Her unexpected laugh shocked Madelaine. “That is what I think troubled him the most, when we talked at Lake Como—the impotence.”

“I found it difficult at first,” Saint-Germain confessed with a wry smile. “When I supposed that all there was to achieve was penetration.”

She turned away from him. “The first time we were alone together, in a private room in a casino in San Francisco, he spent too quickly to do anything but apologize for an hour. And the second time we were together, at my house on Franklin Street, he was too nervous at first to stiffen. We had time enough that night to enjoy each other once he grew more at ease. He was . . . adventurous with me. He always seemed to be on a quest when we were intimate.” She folded her hands in her lap. “He never fully got over a sense of betrayal of his wife when he was with me.”

“Does that surprise you? With how you have described him, if he truly cared for you, he would do it with reservations.” Saint-Germain came back across the room and stood before her. “Madelaine, you loved his depth of loyalty. Why does it worry you that he gave it to others? Surely you did not want it all for yourself?”

She shook her head in dismissal. “You know I did not.”

“Yes,” he said, and dropped to his knee, taking her hands in his own. “If he had shown disregard for his wife, would you have loved him as much? Would you have trusted him?”

“Of course not,” she said testily.

“And you did not expect him to abandon his family on your behalf, did you?” he prodded. “Would you have held him in high regard if he had?”

“No. Nor would he have done it.” She caught her lower lip in her teeth, unwilling to meet Saint-Germain’s calm, loving gaze.

“And you admire him for that,” Saint-Germain added.

“Yes.” She freed one of her hands, but only to touch the neat, dark waves of his hair. “The worst thing was the bond, losing it so completely. It has been there, as constant as a note from a string. Only now the string has snapped, and the note is silenced.”

“I know,” he said, and slipped his arms around her waist.

“At least, if he had come to our life, the bond would remain.” She felt his arms tighten. “As it is—”

“I know,” he repeated, with such sorrow that it caught her attention. “The loss is devastating, for the bond can never be forgotten once it is created.”

“As long as I am
.
. . alive, I will have to endure this loss?” she asked, shocked. “I felt no such anguish when Falke died, or when Alexander was killed. Why should losing Tecumseh be so painful?”