The Cornerstone (12 page)

Saturday, dawn

Pain is relative, isolatable. If one focused on a single small point, the rest retreated into the background—not gone, but reduced to a low-level drone in a symphony of shrieks. Bayard embraced this observation first-hand as he lay on his bed, concentrating all his awareness on his left arm, feeling muscles and tendons repairing around knitting bones. If he paid total attention to the returning mobility in those particular fingers and that specific wrist, he could ignore the greater misery going on in the rest of his body.

The reversion process was well along by now, which was why he was lying on his back in his upstairs quarters instead of crumpled face down on the basement floor. The long bones had fused first, allowing him to drag himself up both sets of stairs—a teeth-gritting ordeal, but once he’d collapsed onto the bed and stretched out flat, the rest of his body had realigned itself so the repair job could go swiftly. Nothing he could do but wait for it to finish, which gave him plenty of time to think.

With more than four hundred years to refine his technique, he’d learned what it took to control the banshee. An uneasy truce had existed between them for centuries: he provided her with the required libation and she preserved his life, and helped him prosper when he was able to situate the
buachloch
under the foundation of a theater. He’d never directly confronted the other one, the Irish sorceress, and so had mostly forgotten about her. But this night’s disaster brought home to him how vastly he’d underestimated what powers she might be mistress of. It simply never occurred to him she would be a threat to his safety. And that, ultimately, was the problem. As master of the stone, he’d expected her to obey him when called, but instead she’d attacked him. She couldn’t kill him, of course, but perhaps, unlike the banshee, she wasn’t spellbound to protect his life. He wasn’t surprised that she’d harbor malice toward anyone who controlled the
buachloch
, being trapped in it. Bayard wasn’t clear on whether turning her spellcraft against her had been an accident or a sly deceit on the part of one or both of the other parties involved in the entrapment. He’d assumed witch and banshee alike required the periodic sacrifice, maybe even shared it somehow, but now he thought probably not. Would it matter to her if he were dead and there was no one to continue the ritual? And why now, after centuries, had she come into the foreground and confronted him? He replayed Dee’s warning in his mind—
Death’s Herald is not the only presence within the buachloch.
Indeed.

Bayard lay in the dark and pondered these things. Gradually the pain in his body began to fade and at last he sat up, shaken, but whole. He stripped off his bloody clothes and went unsteadily to the white-tiled bathroom. He got in the shower and turned on the water as hot as he could stand, scrubbing crusted blood from his face and hands. Eventually he felt clean, but even then he lingered under the shower head, letting hot water pelt his face and chest, standing once again hale and hearty in his twenty-five-year-old body.

Wrapping himself in a floor-length bathrobe, Bayard returned to bed just as pallid, rainsoaked daylight was beginning to frame the windows facing the city street. Exhausted, he lay back on the pillows and closed his eyes. His soul felt ancient, desiccated. He was like an insect sucked dry by a small, innocuous-seeming spider wielding a deadly poison. After this night’s demonstration, it was clear he’d need to approach the stone with utmost caution. Although he’d survived the witch’s onslaught, the damage done to his etheric body was soul-deep, abrasive and less quick to repair. Even the idea of dealing with the day’s plans and evening rehearsal was more than he could stomach. He reached for his cell phone on a bookshelf beside the bed and thumbed Morris’s number from memory.

When Morris answered, Bayard didn’t bother to identify himself. “I require a favor.”

Morris responded after a few seconds’ silence. “Why? Should I be concerned?” His tone was dry, possibly ironic, definitely aloof. Bayard allowed himself a smile. Morris didn’t disappoint.

“Let’s just say I find myself indisposed. Tonight’s rehearsal is canceled. Can I rely on you to pass the word?”

“I can make an effort. You’re serious, aren’t you? Are you ill?”

“Nothing a day’s rest won’t cure.”

“Should I come check on you?”

“No. Call Adelaide, she can contact everyone else. She has the master phone list.”

“And yet you called me first. I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be a prick. Just do this for me and consider yourself owed in kind.”

“Oh, I will.” Morris’ voice was desert dry.

Bayard punched END and put the phone down. Biggest mistake he’d made in his recent human interactions had been his one-night stand with Morris. They’d both realized it was a mistake and agreed without speaking to carry it no further. It was just that the man had reminded him of someone else, too many years ago: the tall, sharp-faced son of spymaster Walsingham. He’d been part of a threesome with a young woman as beautiful as a sea nymph. Ah, well…an old man’s folly that wouldn’t be repeated. He wondered what Morris would think if he knew the truth.

Bayard rolled carefully onto his side and half slept for another hour or so, listening to the deluge coming down outside, until morning began to spill through the rain-streaked windows. He got up, stretched carefully, and was relieved to find everything in place and apparently in working order. He went into the bathroom to relieve himself and stopped short.

His face in the mirror over the sink revealed something that hadn’t been there before last night. His ginger hair, especially that of his goatee, was streaked with white.

Saturday morning

It was raining like hell. Had been since the wee hours of the morning and showed no sign of letting up. Well, maybe not like hell. If the production of
Doctor Faustus
was any standard to go by, traditional Hell was all fire and burning, not curtains of water. Standing at the kitchen window, watching it come down in sheets off the steep edge of the roof and pound onto the backyard patio, Claire wondered where a stupid expression like that had started anyway.

Exhausted from a long shift yesterday that had been non-stop—they’d barely had time to clean and restock the ambulance between calls—she’d fallen asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, but hadn’t slept well, and was jerked awake some time after midnight by a sharp, sudden thunderclap and sensation of falling. Heart thudding, she lay awake listening to rain pummeling the roof. Finally, she had let the noise lull her back to sleep where troubled dreams of windswept moors and galloping horses outrunning a thunderstorm left her tired and yawning when she got up the next day.

And here it was almost noon, but still the rain came down. Most people would be pissed to be stuck inside on their day off, but she didn’t mind. Her shift varied with the weeks, and this was the first time she’d had Saturday free in months. Dressed in an oversized faded navy sweatshirt and baggy sweat pants, her hair pulled back in a quick messy braid, Claire was ready to be holed up for the day. With outside temps hovering around 39, it wasn’t quite cold enough to snow, but it was a chilled miserable day that nobody wanted to be out in. She was more than grateful that today’s rehearsal had been called off. Apparently Bayard was under the weather. He’d called Morris who’d called Addie who’d called everyone else, so their next rehearsal would be toward the end of the coming week. Just as well. Everyone knew their lines, and the production itself was pretty smooth in terms of costumes and lighting. They could actually go live with the play today if they had to. Happily that wasn’t on the agenda.

She watched the rain and waited for the tea kettle to whistle. The idea to bake some biscuits or cookies crossed her mind, but that would involve more work than she was willing to get sucked into. It would help heat the house, but she could just as easily turn up the thermostat. Either way would add to the utility bill. The kettle shrilled and she turned off the burner. Looking through the basket of tea bags on the counter, she pulled out raspberry and green with lemon. Then she went around the long granite counter, through the small dining area, and into the main room of the house.

The living room was warm, and her mother dozed wrapped in a comforter on the loveseat in front of the small fireplace. The remodeling job done on the house over a decade ago had installed central heat and air (and the granite countertop), but they’d kept the working fireplace for its cozy factor. Below a narrow oak mantel, it had a wide squarish brick façade that made the entire room toasty when a fire was blazing in the grate. Her dad used to buy logs for it, but now Claire made rolled-up paper logs from a stack of newspapers and brown grocery bags that had been collecting for months on a spare dining room chair. Maybe they weren’t as aesthetically pleasing, but they got the job done. She’d planned to scour the tree-shaded back yard for fallen twigs and small branches to use as kindling, but that was out of the question today.

She touched her mother’s shoulder. “Mom? You want some tea?”

Her mother stirred and smiled. “That would be nice.”

“What flavor?”

“Raspberry.”

“Coming up.”

Claire padded in her stocking feet back to the kitchen. It was these small things that put them in synch and made Claire’s chest ache. She loved her mother so much at times like this, it was painful to think about how it was going to be when the respirator failed to be enough. When that inevitable death came, Claire would be alone. Completely. Well, there was an aunt across the country and a cousin whose name she didn’t remember, so technically that wasn’t true. And the neighborhood was full of families she’d grown up with, people who considered her as much one of their kids as their own. Jackie’s mom had always treated Claire as a second daughter, and she’d spent more nights than she could count at their house, curled next to her playmate in Jackie’s single bed. But that particular train of thought—death and the relentless passage of time—led down into the black hole of despair she fought to avoid by doing external things like joining a theater company and going to pubs with friends. The abyss retreated as she carried the mug of tea in one hand and a TV tray table in the other out to the living room.

She set the table up in front of her mother, careful not to get the oxygen generator line tangled in its spindly legs.

“Sugar, or maybe some honey?”

Her mother shook her head and took a few sips from the cup. “This is fine.”

Claire went back for her own cup and then curled up on her side of the couch, feet underneath her. They sat together without speaking, just listening to the rain and watching the fire burn down. Finally, Claire got up and pushed the coals around with a poker, bringing the flames back to life. She put on a few more paper logs, which caught and blazed up.

“Your rehearsal got cancelled?”

“Yeah, Addie said Bayard was sick or something. That’s pretty rare—the man’s never missed a single rehearsal in all the time I’ve been in the company.”

“I wish I could see the show. It sounds exciting.” Her mother sighed and readjusted the comforter around her feet. They’d never carpeted over the original hardwood floors, which helped retain the value of the house but meant the floors were cool underfoot during the winter.

“It’ll be videotaped. I’ll bring you a copy and we can watch it together.”

Her mother smiled and nodded. Claire had gotten so used to these limited responses that it was easy to forget how voluble and talkative the mother of her childhood had been—a sociable woman so opinionated and eager to discuss or argue any point that got tossed into the conversation that she usually dominated the exchange.

“Could you…” Claire waited while her mother gathered enough breath to say what she wanted. “…get my sweater?”

Claire supposed that, no longer having the breath to adequately express what she thought, her mother’s mind must work overtime. In a way, emphysema seemed a karmic joke of some kind for a person who’d expended so much breath explaining what she thought, and what she thought others should think.

She got up and went to her mother’s bedroom and retrieved a well-worn gray cardigan from the bed. Helping her mother sit up straighter, she slipped the old sweater in place, making sure it hadn’t bunched up in back where it would make an uncomfortable lump.

“Better?”

Her mother nodded. She looked small and folded in on herself, partially wrapped in the coverlet, with the sweater draped around her stooped shoulders. Hard to remember how she’d looked when Claire was in grade school. Gwen Porter had delivered her only child at the late age of forty-one, early middle-age by some standards, but Claire’s memory produced the image of a slender, elegant woman with dark bobbed hair and large luminous eyes.

She settled back in her spot at the end of the couch, wondering if she really ought to turn up the thermostat. She felt guilty for keeping the house at bit cooler than she’d like, just to save a few pennies on the heating bill. Her mother looked cold. Not the level of comfort Claire knew her mother had grown up in. Gwen’s family had been wealthy, her father an investment banker, but he’d lost a bundle somehow; Claire wasn’t sure of the details. Gwen had gone to college and married late, far beneath her station to Jimmie Porter, a young insurance salesman. He was a friend of her brother and came around the Porter household a lot because, according to Gwen, they’d instantly hit it off. Once married, they’d struggled financially, trying to make it on their own. Gwen’s family helped them occasionally in the early days of the marriage, but as the family became increasingly impoverished themselves, those infusions of cash came less often and finally stopped. Claire had a picture in her mind of Gwen going from living a privileged childhood to a barely lower-middle class married life. Her mother’s brother, Jimmie’s pal, died in his fifties of lung cancer as had their father, a weakness of the lungs apparently running in that side of family. Claire assumed it had skipped her because she was tall and sturdy, with a strong constitution—her problems were mostly mental.