The swiftness with which Arthur's expression altered-his mist-gray dilated eyes at once narrowing, his grimace softening to a malicious smile-showed how keenly sensitive he was to his older brother's game, and so at once he agreed: why, yes, certainly, it was only appropriate, no need to hesitate, the Negroes would be given that room, for who else-including Arthur himself?-had a better right to it?

Exactly, Raphael said. And, still turned to his son, and still not looking at him, he directed Samuel to make the arrangements: inform the housekeeper, inform Violet, go to the kitchen and introduce himself to the "soldiers," perform all the tasks that a gracious host would perform since, unfortunately, the head of the family felt indisposed and would now be retiring for the night. . . .

"Father," Samuel said, lurching to his feet, "you aren't serious!"

"I am as serious as you have been," Raphael said.

SO THE THREE runaway slaves were chambered for the night in the Turquoise Room, whose splendors were so astonishing, so inestimable, that it was quite probable the poor men did not even register the honor bestowed upon them-or they might have thought that each room in the castle was as luxurious. Whether they slept well, or uneasily; whether they were gratified by Raphael's generosity, or baffled by it, or suspicious; whether they sensed the crude joke behind their host's action-no one knew-but they asked Arthur if they might be housed elsewhere, the following day. And so they were moved to the coachman's lodge. (And within a week Arthur and the men were gone-"word had come," Arthur said mysteriously, of a change in plans; even the establishment of a second capital would have to wait.) The Turquoise Room was aired, and scrubbed, and polished, and a number of its furnishings removed (some to be vigorously cleaned with kerosene, and given to the servants; some to be burned outright), and Raphael inspected it and saw that it was as beautiful as ever; it was a splendid room, worth every penny it had cost. Then it was shut up again, and not reopened until Senator Wesley Tidd came to visit, in order to discuss the logistics of a partnership with Raphael Bellefleur in an iron-ore mining operation in Kittery. (Out of the Kittery mines was to come the iron that sheathed the Monitor in the war-as well as iron for any number of other military equipment. Two hundred thousand tons were to be extracted from the Bellefleur mines annually, during the peak years, before the mines wore out.) Evidently Senator Tidd spent a restless night in the Turquoise Room, for in the morning he seemed drawn and tired, and apologized for "not being himself." His head ached, his eyes watered, his stomach was upset, he had suffered unpleasant dreams. . . . Almost timidly (for though the Senator was a thoroughly unscrupulous man he had impeccable social manners) he asked Raphael if perhaps . . . if perhaps he could be moved to another room? He was not accustomed to making such requests, but he had endured a particularly difficult night, and though the room was beautiful-even more astonishing than legend would have it-he feared it had been ruined for him on this visit.

And then again, some months later, when Hayes Whittier was a houseguest, he was discovered strolling about the park's graveled walks well before dawn. When Raphael questioned him he answered evasively, saying only that he hadn't slept well; he supposed it was indigestion. Later in the day he too requested another room. . . . His manner was sober, even grave. "What was the nature of your dissatisfaction with the room?" Raphael asked. "I was not dissatisfied with the room," Hayes said at once. "But you spent an unusual night?" Raphael asked. "Ah, yes," Hayes said, his voice dropping, his gaze fleeing Raphael's, "a somewhat unusual night." "Was there . . . any sort of odor?" Raphael asked hesitantly. Hayes did not reply; but he did not appear to be casting his mind about for a proper reply; he was simply staring at the ground. "Was there," Raphael asked, "any sort of . . . of presence? I mean, could you . . . Could one . . . Could one sense a presence that might be called foreign, or . . ." Hayes hunched his shoulders in a way he had, and ran his forefinger over the bump at the bridge of his nose. When rising to speak in support of Secretary of War Cameron, some years later, he was to make the same gesture, and to speak in the same slow, distracted, profoundly melancholy voice. "There were a number of presences," he said, staring at the gravel underfoot, "and . . . and, yes, yes, I suppose you might characterize them as foreign."

THOUGH THE FILIGREE and objets d'art-and that enormous intimidating mirror-would constrain them to some extent, and there could be, naturally, no young women present (as there frequently were, near the end of the evening, when the men met at the officers' club), Samuel and several of his friends from the Light Guard decided to spend their poker night in the Turquoise Room, in order to investigate it.

For two or three hours their boyish high spirits must have had a subduing, or soothing, effect upon the "presences"-for nothing much happened that might be considered uncommon, though cards slapped down were frequently overturned, or blown off the table by an imperceptible breeze, and the wine the men sipped-a very dry white Portuguese wine from Raphael's cellar-seemed to go at once to their heads, as if it were pure alcohol. Then, despite Samuel's hearty insistence that nothing was wrong, that they had to resist the seductive power of their own imaginations, it soon became evident that invisible creatures were in the room with them: the game was more and more interrupted, a glass lifted to someone's lips by itself and wine spilled, gold coins spun and rolled about, a ghost breath rippled Samuel's hair playfully. There were heavy indentations in chair cushions, the impress of someone's generous buttocks. The mirror grew cloudy and indistinct. Diamond-shaped crystals on one of the chandeliers began to rattle. There was an odor of flesh-not altogether clean-and yet not altogether unpleasant: the odor of perspiration that has dried, mixed with the odor of soil, sunshine, vegetation, unlaundered clothes. Most distressing, however, was the undercurrent of voices, lifting now and then into laughter of a somewhat jeering type. And though Samuel insisted, now rather boisterously, that his friends were imagining everything-they were silly as young girls, routed by spooks and imps!-what fools!-what cowards-one by one the young men made their excuses, feebly and nervously, and went home. When the last of his friends rose to leave, swaying unsteadily, Samuel seized what remained of the deck of cards and threw it petulantly down, cursing him; he staggered to his feet, turning his back on his friend, his arms crossed and his shoulders hunched in an attitude of childish fury, and when he raised his eyes he found that he was facing the mirror, staring into the mirror, and that, beyond the filmy glass surface, his friend was not reflected-the room itself was only dimly reflected-and his own image was transparent as a jellyfish's.

He turned, and his friend was still there, chattering, his hand extended for Samuel to shake. If the young man caught in that instant Samuel's own astonishment he gave no indication: quite simply he was escaping, and there was nothing Samuel could do to restrain him.

So he left, and Samuel remained in the room, at first angered by-by whatever it was-by the queer bodiless agitation of air-by the murmurous voices-and the laughter that rose in jagged little peaks-and the odor. He drank from a wine bottle, staggering about the room. Why didn't they show themselves, were they afraid of him, who were they to intrude on a private card game, to interfere-who were they to trespass in Bellefleur Manor? He saw, reflected in the mirror, a dark figure pass close behind him; but when he turned no one was there. Coward, he whispered.

The gold minute hand on the alabaster clock above the mantel began to move backward. Samuel stared at it, the bottle lifted to his lips. He was angry, he wasn't frightened, quite deliberately he swallowed a few large mouthfuls as he watched the clock hand, though the wine had begun to dribble down his chin. Then he threw the bottle from him and rushed to the clock and stopped the hand, and moved it forward again. There was a slight resistance but he overcame it; and in his zeal moved the hand round and round and round, so that he lost track of the time. . . . Two in the morning, perhaps. Two-thirty. No more than three.

Now when he turned he saw in the mirror a mist-shrouded group of people, all of them black: and detaching itself from the group, with a peculiar airy grace-peculiar because it was so solid-was the figure of a woman. Samuel stared, standing motionless. In his distraction he began to dig at the tartar on his front teeth, a habit he believed he had cured himself of years before.

A black woman-a Negress-but not a slave-evidently not a slave-with wide thick grape-colored lips-tobacco-colored skin-a broad, somewhat flat nose, with prominent nostrils-hair that frizzed with static electricity-strong shoulders-muscular shoulders-a thick but long neck-long-lashed eyes-very dark eyes-eyes that fixed him in a mocking stare. He stood immobile, waiting for her to speak-what if she called him by name, what if she claimed him!-his thumbnail now jammed between two of his lower teeth.

A Negress, an African-with what defiantly, hideously African features! Samuel stared and stared, for he had never seen a black woman before, never at such close range, and though the mirror was cloudy, and the outlines of the woman's body bled away into the shadows, she was somehow enlarged, magnified, and subtly distorted, as if she were an image detaching itself from its surface and covering Samuel's eye-a dream-image adhering to the surface of his amazed unresisting eye. But she was so ugly! She was ugly, despite her beauty. A mature woman, ten or more years older than Samuel, with heavy breasts that appeared to be hanging loose inside a shapeless sweat-stained garment, and tense cords in her neck, and stained teeth. One of her lower teeth was even missing. . . . Ugly, obscene. Still she held him with that bold stare, as if his expression of alarm and disgust amused her. She was ugly, she was obscene, he wanted only to turn and run from her, and slam the door behind him, and lock it. . . . But instead he remained immobile, a strand of wavy hair fallen over his forehead, his shirt collar askew, the front of his vest wine-stained, his legs slightly bent at the knee as if their strength were draining from them; and the thumb pressed against his teeth.

But you have no right to be here, he whispered.

FROM THAT NIGHT onward Samuel Bellefleur was not himself-it was said of him, repeatedly, even by persons who had not previously known him well, that he "wasn't himself." Seated at dinner he smiled vacantly, and pushed food about his plate, and replied when spoken to so languidly, so indifferently, that Violet burst into tears more than once, and had to be escorted from the room. He was not discourteous: he made a show of being courteous: but his every word, his every gesture, even the most subtle movement of his brow, communicated a perverse and possibly even malicious contempt.

They could smell the woman on him-they could sense his erotic gravity-a sensuousness so powerful, so heavy, that it held down his soul like an enormous rock, and would not allow it to float to the surface of ordinary discourse.

Raphael was embarrassed, and then angry; and then baffled (for how could his son be indulging in a wicked liaison, when he no longer left the manor?); and, in the end, frightened. He had not expected his son to be celibate, he certainly knew of slightly scandalous doings among the officers of the Light Guard, and so long as Violet did not know-or did not acknowledge that she knew-it hardly mattered. But he had not expected anything so rankly obvious as this: and there was, at all times, even in the breakfast room, that incontestable rich ripe overripe fairly reeking odor that emanated from Samuel, stirred by his every movement, wafted about in the most innocent of atmospheres. And yet the boy bathed-certainly he bathed-he bathed at least once a day.

Samuel stayed away from the family for longer and longer periods of time, and though Raphael was grateful that he wasn't, at least, leading a dissolute life on one of the gambling boats, or piling up debts in the Falls like other young men in his circle-the boy was, after all, sequestered away in the Turquoise Room with the two or three newspapers Raphael subscribed to, and the almanac for the year, and even the Holy Bible!-still he could not refuse to acknowledge his son's increasing estrangement, and the fact that what stared coldly at him out of Samuel's eyes was no longer exactly his son. "Are you not feeling well, Samuel," Raphael murmured, touching the boy's arm, and after a space of several seconds the boy would draw away, slowly, and smile that haughty indifferent smile, and say in a husky voice, "I am feeling exceptionally well, Father."

His linen was changed less often. His collars were unbuttoned. He declined to come downstairs when his friends called, and gave as an excuse for missing drill, and for missing the sessions with Herod that had once consumed so much of his time, a drawling mumble about feeling "sluggish." After weeping in Raphael's arms Violet suddenly grew angry, and spoke in a rapid low voice of the "slut" who was ruining her boy: it wasn't anyone on the household staff, she was certain, she was certain, she didn't think it could be one of the female laborers, for how could he smuggle the creature up to the third floor day after day?-but he did have a woman, of course he had a woman, a filthy wicked slattern who wanted only to destroy Raphael's heir! (Violet's frenzy, as well as the remarkable words she used, embarrassed her husband to the point of stupefaction: he had never imagined his wife knew such words, let alone of the reality they indicated.) There were times when, emerging from the Turquoise Room, Samuel actually staggered, and his handsome face-more handsome than ever, it seemed-was oily with sweat. His skin might be feverish to the touch, his lips parched and raw. His mustache, untrimmed, bristled in all directions, and must have tickled; Violet once picked a tiny kinky hair off his lip-and thereby incurred her son's startled displeasure. "Don't touch me, Mother," he said, recoiling. But at least, at that moment, he looked her fully in the face.

Of course they investigated the room in his absence, at least in the first weeks when he allowed them in, but they found nothing-only the scattered newspapers, a cushion out of place, finger smears on the mirror, the minute hand of the clock slightly bent, and the clock no longer ticking. The odor of unwashed flesh, the odor-hardly more subtle-of fleshly delirium was sometimes faint, sometimes overpoweringly strong, so that Violet, hardly able to breathe, commanded the servants to throw open all the windows. How hideous, that smell! How obscene! And yet there was nothing to attach it to: the Turquoise Room was as extraordinarily beautiful as ever, as magnificent as ever, a room fit for royalty.

The only time Samuel showed much interest in his parents' increasing alarm-and then the interest was rather mild-was when Raphael pointed out that he'd been hidden away in the room for eleven hours straight; and Samuel, opening his blood-threaded eyes wide, said that that couldn't be the case-he'd been in there only an hour or so-wasn't it still morning? Raphael explained, trembling, that it was by no means morning. Samuel had been in that room all day, and did he intend to sleep in there again tonight . . . ? What was he doing in that room! Samuel began to gnaw at his thumbnail. He frowned, looked through his father, seemed to be making rapid calculations. Finally he said with a wry shrug of his shoulders that "time was different there."

He was absent for longer periods of time, for days at a stretch, and when he did appear at the dinner table he yawned, ran his hand lazily through his hair, let his food grow cold on his plate. He ate so little, he should have been wasting away: but in fact he was as solid as ever, and there was even the beginning of a slight paunch high above his belt. When Violet demanded to know what he was doing in the Turquoise Room he blinked at her as if not knowing what she meant, and said in a hollow, husky voice, "Just reading, Mother, what do you . . . what do you think?" and his slack lips drooped into a negligent smile. He disappeared for three days, and then for four; when they forced open the lock to the Turquoise Room he was nowhere to be seen. But then he appeared downstairs that very evening, and showed surprise once again that he'd been away so long. According to his calculations he'd gone upstairs to read the newspapers and had been there about two hours, but according to their calculations he had been gone for four days.

"I think I understand," he said slowly, again with that dull loose smile. "Time is clocks, not a clock. Not your clock. You can't do anything more with time than try to contain it, like carrying water in a sieve. . . ."

And so, finally, he disappeared into the Turquoise Room. He entered it one evening after dinner, and never came out; he simply disappeared. The windows were not only closed but locked from the inside. There were secret passageways out of two or three other rooms in the castle (one of them Raphael's study) but there was no secret passageway out of the Turquoise Room. The boy had simply disappeared. He no longer existed. There was no trace, no farewell note, there had been no significant final remark: Samuel Bellefleur had simply ceased to exist.

One night some months later. Raphael, still grieving for his son, cut short his meeting with a group of Republicans in a city five hundred miles away, and returned to the castle, and ran upstairs to the Turquoise Room (which was now kept locked, since it was so clearly haunted), and, with his gold-knobbed cane, smashed the enormous mirror. Shards of glass flew everywhere, shards of all sizes, icicle-shaped, pebble-shaped, some small as needles, driving themselves into Raphael's flesh. He continued to strike the mirror, however, again and again, gripping his cane with both hands, sobbing and shouting unintelligibly. They had taken his son! They had taken his beloved son from him!

When he was finished only a few slivers of mirror remained on the wall. What faced him-held up, still, by the exquisite Italian columns-was nothing more than the mirror's plain oak backing, mere wood, two-dimensional, reflecting nothing, containing no beauty, badly hacked by the spasmodic blows of his cane.

Tirpitz.

On her many travels-to Nautauga Falls, to the state capital, to Port Oriskany, to faraway Vanderpoel-Leah always took Germaine, no matter that the little girl would have preferred to remain at home, playing in the walled garden with Vernon or Christabel or the others; no matter that Gideon objected. "I can't travel without her," Leah said. "She's my heart-my soul. I can't leave her behind." "Then stay home yourself," Gideon said. And Leah stared at him, stared him down. "You don't need to make these trips," Gideon said, faltering. "It's just something you are deluding yourself with. . . . We don't need you to make these appeals for us."

Leah, knowing how the falsity of his words must strike him, knowing that he couldn't fail to hear, for all his hypocrisy, their tinniness, saw no reason to reply. She simply rang for one of the servants, to help her pack.

There was the matter of Jean-Pierre II unjustly imprisoned in Powhatassie, and Leah's initial petitions denied; there was the matter of locating a partner (one with, as Hiram expressed it, "unlimited resources") for certain mining operations east of Contracoeur, now that the scheme for managed cutting privileges in the pine forests had fallen through (and though Leah never explicitly spoke of the brothers' ignoble failure with Meldrom neither Gideon nor Ewan was allowed to forget it: Leah would say only "Now we must shift our plan of attack," "Now we must begin again at zero"); there was the need to check up on Bellefleur property, much of it operating at a loss, or with very slender profits; there was the matter of keeping up social contacts (which Leah, like Cornelia, called "thinking of our friends")-for the day wasn't distant when the many Bellefleur girls (Yolande, Vida, Morna, even Christabel, and now even Little Goldie) would be of marriageable age; and for a while, though she couldn't have been sincere about it, there was the matter of finding a suitable husband for poor Garnet Hecht (who had surprised everyone, or nearly everyone, by having a baby: a darling little girl with dark curly hair and dark button eyes who hadn't at this point any name, since Garnet was too listless to name her, yet too weakly stubborn to acquiesce in one of the names Leah suggested). So Leah was busy, marvelously busy, no sooner back at Bellefleur Manor and soaking in a hot bath than she was planning another trip, another mode of attack. Attorneys were hired, and then dismissed, for being incapable of "understanding what I say, when I don't say it," as Leah explained; there were brokers, bank officials, bookkeepers, accountants, tax lawyers, men whose names turned up like mica in a spaded garden as Leah talked excitedly at the dinner table of her plans, and then were covered over again and forgotten; there were of course Bellefleurs in other cities, frequently with other names (Zundert, Sandusky, Medick, Cinquefoil, Filaree), who should-or should not-be cultivated, depending on their usefulness; there were so many politicians-from Governor Grounsel and his Lieutenant-Governor Horehound down through unelected party hacks who might have impressed Leah with their claim of knowing what really went on-that no one in the family, not even Hiram, could keep them straight. What this promiscuous assortment of men had in common was Leah: she believed they might be useful, or might at least put her in contact with others who would be useful.

Early on, Leah had won over grandfather Noel and uncle Hiram: they were clearly besotted with her, and thought it quite reasonable-even "pragmatic," in Hiram's words-that the old Bellefleur estate of 1780 might be regained, by judicious maneuverings. It would take time, it would require ingenuity and cunning, and secrecy (for if Bellefleur enemies suspected the family's plan they would leap in and buy up the land simply out of spite); it would certainly require diligence and tact (and unfortunately the Bellefleurs had a reputation, generations old, of tactlessness); and charm. So if anyone objected to Leah's schemes Noel and Hiram defended them, and great-grandmother Elvira soon joined in (for, as she neared her hundredth birthday, she was visited with increasingly apocalyptic dreams: floods, fires, lightning storms that illuminated the heavens: premonitions that something extraordinary was to happen to the family); and even Cornelia, who customarily opposed her daughter-in-law as a matter of principle, appeared to see some merit in certain aspects of the plan . . . for the grandchildren would be of marriageable age soon, the boys as well as the girls, and she hoped . . . ah, how fervently she hoped . . . that the new generation would choose more discreetly than the old. Gideon quarreled with Leah in the privacy of their suite, and maintained a sullen courtesy elsewhere, and Ewan sometimes vigorously challenged her (he was especially antipathetic to the scheme of securing a retrial or an outright pardon for Jean-Pierre II: Why not let the old boy spend the rest of his days in peace at Powhatassie, by now he's adjusted, he must have a circle of comrades, he receives a monthly allowance from Father for little treats and niceties, doesn't he-why not let him remain there, and not stir up trouble again?); but when he helped see her off, climbing into the old Packard touring car that fairly sagged beneath the weight of her luggage, turning to wave a goodbye kiss at whoever was assembled on the marble steps, Leah in her smart magenta traveling cloak with the matching kid shoes, her white gloves buttoned at the wrist, the filmy white aigrette bobbing on her slope-brimmed cream-colored hat, her rich glowing exultant face turned to him (and now, nearly a year after Germaine's birth, she had lost the extra weight she'd carried, and even the tiny pinch of flesh beneath her chin, so like Germaine's baby fat, had disappeared)-why, he could not stop himself from grinning, she was so handsome a woman, of course she would succeed! If any Bellefleur succeeded in this century, it would be Leah.

Through a helpful acquaintance in the attorney-general's office Leah met a charming middle-aged man named Vervain, a furrier, who showed some interest in the possibility of entering into a partnership with the Bellefleurs, though he knew nothing about mining; but it soon developed that Vervain hadn't the sort of capital Leah required. (And he was too well protected by his female relatives, as a rich widower, to be a possibility for poor Garnet, who might have appealed to him . . . a husbandless spiritless frail little mutt of a girl, halfway attractive if glimpsed in the right light, who somehow-no one knew how-no one could guess how-had had a darling little baby a few weeks ago.) But it was in the company of Vervain, who escorted both Leah and Germaine to the World's Exposition at Vanderpoel, that Leah met P. T. Tirpitz, the banker and philanthropist, renowned throughout the state for his charitable donations of parks, lakes, renovated mansions, and immense sums of cash to worthwhile institutions (among them the Church of Christ, Scientist, to which he may have belonged). Long ago, it was thought, Tirpitz's father had lent an undisclosed sum of money to Raphael Bellefleur, but Leah didn't know if the transaction had taken place before the worst period of Raphael's career-in short, she didn't know if it had been fully repaid. It was a measure of Tirpitz's gallantry that he made no allusion to past dealings with the Bellefleurs, and affected only a dim but flattering notion of their grandeur, and their significance in what he called "the magnificent history of our nation."

Though he must have been an elderly man at this time-smallish, bald, with odd planes and layers of bone in his skull that made Leah think of her mother, and a tooth chipped in an inverted V, which gave him a boyish puckish disingenuous look-he appeared as robust as a man in his mid-fifties, or even younger. On one of their strolls through the Exposition grounds he insisted upon carrying Germaine, who had gotten tired, and it quite impressed Leah-who was, all her life, to be impressed by such obvious demonstrations of strength even when she had long outgrown their usefulness, and could see them, clearly, as nothing more than sentimental vestiges of a too-lively girlhood-remember, for instance, the daring midnight climb of her cousin Gideon into her bedroom where he fought and murdered Love!-it impressed her just the same, that the man's legendary wealth, and the rumors of his association with a church she thought nothing if not comical, had not weakened him. His muscles were small but hard, and he staggered only a little under the hefty child's weight. "You really don't need to carry Germaine, Mr. Tirpitz," Leah said, her smile gracious behind the filmy gauze of her veil. "I need to do nothing," Tirpitz replied. But he winked at Leah to soften the effect of his words.

(She was to learn later that Tirpitz, for the past fifty years, had exercised every morning: sit-ups, push-ups, barbells, leg weights. "The body is an instrument by which we can approach God," Tirpitz said. "It is the only instrument.") He took her to dinner, and arranged for one of his most trusted servants to stay at Leah's hotel with Germaine (even so, Leah worried: she had become, since the birth of this extraordinary child, an almost fussy mother who felt vaguely that something was missing from her own body, an arm or a leg or at least a finger, when her child was out of the room: and then Germaine seemed to aid her so, simply by gazing at her and smiling); he took her to the sailboat races on the Eden River, and to the opera, and to the private reception that followed the presentation of a medal to the visiting Emperor of Trapopogonia by Governor Grounsel on the third night of the Exposition (the emperor, whose kingdom was east of Afghanistan, disappointed Leah by resembling Hiram, and by speaking an almost accentless English-though she was naturally flattered by his warmly appreciative remarks to her); he arranged for the three of them to explore the Exposition early Sunday morning, before it was open to the public, pointing out exhibits that were of more than ordinary interest (engines; rockets; calculating machines; the City of the Future with its moving sidewalks and robot-servants and controlled temperatures and handsome manikin-people; the Hospital of the Future where blood, sperm, tissues, bones, and every organ-including the brain-would be stored, and would be available for patients), and ending the tour with the Tirpitz Pavilion, which was of course his own, and which both Leah and Germaine loved best: a five-acre jumble of marvels that included painted and bejeweled baby elephants; a white marble fountain with hundreds of tiers that sent out spray in a dizzying variety of forms; a killer whale named Beppo in a green-tinted transparent tank; a small mountain of orchids of the most extraordinary subtlety and beauty; Egyptian and Mesopotamian statuary; the Zodiac, in diamonds, fixed to a black velvet covering; a life-sized and amazingly lifelike Abraham Lincoln who intoned, in a grave, gentle, but forceful voice, "The Emancipation Proclamation" innumerable times a day; carnivorous plants from the Amazon region that, with their yard-wide petals and the steel-spring trap of their jaws, ate and digested not only insects but mice and birds fed to them by attendants. . . . And there was more, much more, so much more that Leah's head swam, and she felt the drunkenness of euphoria without having tasted (for it wasn't yet noon) a single drop of alcohol.

"Mr. Tirpitz," Leah said, laying her white-gloved hand on his arm, "what is the theme of your pavilion?-what is the connection between all these wonderful things?"

"Can't you guess, Mrs. Bellefleur?"

"Guess! Can't I guess! Oh, I'm no good at guessing, Mr. Tirpitz, my children are far sharper, if only Bromwell were here-you'd adore Bromwell, I think-I'm no good at guessing. What is the connection?"

"But, Mrs. Bellefleur," Tirpitz said, smiling so that the inverted V on his chipped tooth showed, "surely you can guess."

Yet she could not. So Tirpitz turned to Germaine, and squatted before her, and asked if she could guess; and the child-hardly more than a baby, with the baby fat still plumping out her cheeks-stared at the old man with her tawny green-bronze eyes, as if gazing into his very soul, and said in a small, shy, but unfaltering voice: "Yes. I can."

Tirpitz laughed. He straightened, with some awkwardness (for the small of his back ached), and at once changed the subject, grasping both Leah and Germaine by the hand, leading them on, for now it was nearly time for the Exposition to open to the public, and they must escape before the hordes descended.

"I find it very hard to breathe in the air of crowds, don't you," he said.

THE EVENING BEFORE Leah was scheduled to return to Bellefleur Manor she was invited to Tirpitz's private suite on the nineteenth floor of the Vanderpoel Hotel, where, Tirpitz promised, they would discuss the Bellefleurs' financial situation. Quite by accident-it really was an accident, he insisted-he knew a little about the geology of the Chautauqua region, and the iron ore and titanium deposits east of Contracoeur (titanium!-Leah had never heard the word before), and would like very much to discuss the plans for several mining operations Leah had mentioned. Leah had been almost girlishly pleased by his tone, and did not mind his flirtatiousness ("Ah, but I dread to ask how much money you and this charming daughter of yours want!" he said, and Leah said quickly, "Not what we want but what we need, Mr. Tirpitz," and he said, "For the maintenance of that enormous estate in the mountains, and to finance your husband's expensive tastes in horses?" and Leah said, "He's sold all his horses, and the estate maintains itself-it almost maintains itself," and he said, "But do I dare believe that, dear Mrs. Bellefleur!") and his paternal habit of seizing her hand and rubbing it briskly between his own. (As if Leah's strong, blunt-fingered, overheated hand needed warming!) She did not mind, even, the old man's smell-an indefinable odor, crisply acerbic as the air of an attic which pigeons have befouled for decades, and then again dry and tough as old parchment; and then again (when he first greeted her, when he had just left his rooms) oily-sweet from the French cologne he dabbed liberally on himself.

So she prepared to meet him in his suite on the nineteenth floor of the Vanderpoel, dressing herself in her most charming outfit (which Tirpitz had already seen once, but Leah couldn't help that)-an oatmeal-colored silk dress with a many-layered skirt, a black velvet hat upon whose fashionably sloped brim three blood-red multifoliate roses bobbed, long black gloves with simulated black pearl buttons, high-heeled leather shoes she had ordered made a half-size too small (for she was vain about her large hands and feet, and took no comfort from Gideon's insistence, in the early days of their marriage, that a woman of her statuesque proportions would look peculiar with smaller hands and feet); and she carried her silk parasol, which matched the dress. It upset her, even so, to leave the baby behind-though Mr. Tirpitz had sent over the same servant, a middle-aged Scots woman with a happy disposition and a special love, as she said, for baby girls; she halfway wondered if Mr. Tirpitz would mind if she brought Germaine with her. . . . Odd, it was odd, Leah thought, kissing Germaine goodnight, how much she depended upon this child: how little she concerned herself with the others (she had to make an effort to recall, precisely, the twins-though Christabel and Bromwell were hardly twins now), as if, when gazing at Germaine, she forgot the others entirely . . . and her husband as well . . . and all the Bellefleurs. She seemed to draw energy from the baby, much as the baby had drawn energy from her, sucking the warm rich sweet milk from her breasts with a sensual rapacity that had been rather wonderful while it lasted. . . .

"Goodnight! Be good, dear, and go to sleep at once! Oh, I love you," Leah whispered, hugging the baby, and not minding that in her excitement the baby grabbed at the cloth roses, and nearly tore one off the hat. "I'll be back by midnight."

Germaine kicked, and fussed, and threatened to cry; but Leah was firm. "Go to sleep at once."

On her way out Leah heard Germaine starting to cry, but she paid no attention, and took the stairs down to the street floor, being too impatient for an elevator, and walked the several blocks to the Vanderpoel. There, a silent black man in uniform took her up in a cagelike elevator to Mr. Tirpitz's suite (this particular elevator had only one stop, the nineteenth floor), and another servant, also in livery, but Oriental rather than black, let Leah into the parlor. She exclaimed aloud-there were orchids everywhere-vases and vases of orchids-white orchids, lavender orchids, orchids of a subtle creamy-blue shade-she had never seen anything so beautiful.

She was seated in a comfortably overstuffed chair, and the young Oriental man brought her a drink on a silver tray, which he put down on a table before her. Leah snatched up the drink at once and took a sip. Bourbon, so far as she could tell it was good bourbon, though she wasn't a connoisseur like most of the Bellefleurs; but it was precisely what her nerves required.

The servant disappeared. She was left to herself. She waited, gazing at the orchids, wondering if Mr. Tirpitz owned an orchid plantation-but surely he did-surely he owned a great many things. Not long ago uncle Hiram had spoken of Tirpitz, had mentioned the name in some connection or other, with reverence, Leah believed, but she could not recall exactly. How amazed Hiram and the others would be when she returned with Tirpitz's support for the Contracoeur mines!-how amazed and envious and jealous Gideon would be- (Gideon. But she would not think of Gideon. She rarely thought of Gideon, and never when she hoped to enjoy herself.) She sat, and drank the bourbon, and waited, and after some fifteen minutes of waiting she began to get restless, and happened to see-but had the Oriental boy mentioned it, in his shy cold murmur?-an envelope on the silver tray. Mrs. Bellefleur was scrawled in red ink on its front. She snatched it up at once and tore it open. And read these words, which had been scrawled in the same dark red ink, in the same loose hand: Leah dearest, we are one of a Kind arent we, I know you inside-out & know you know me, if you step into the next room I will make you very happy I believe, & ser sear certianly you will make me very happy & will return I promise to the barbarian Bellefleurs in great TRIUMPH!!!!!

Leah let the card slip through her fingers, whimpering with the surprise-the shock-the distress of it. She got to her feet, and fumbled to set down the glass; and then brought it up to her lips again and swallowed a large mouthful of bourbon. Her face flamed. She finished the drink. Let the glass fall. Started for the door, almost tripping in her long skirt. Paused. You filthy old son of a bitch, she whispered, you buzzard, I could pick you clean, I could suck the marrow from your bones. . . . She set her hat straight on her head. Stood there, gazing into a mirror, wondering at the red-faced angry woman she saw there. The bastard, she whispered. I will tell Gideon.

She thought of Jean-Pierre imprisoned, for a crime-for crimes-he did not commit, and the townspeople gloating over it; she saw the magnificent wilderness kingdom taken from her family, piece by piece, tract by tract, over the centuries. If Germaine were here . . . If Germaine were here it would be so simple to hug the child to her, to weep into the child's neck. Where have you come from, who are you, why were you sent, what must I do. . . . There were times when, embracing Germaine, and gazing into her eyes, Leah saw, somehow saw-as if it were a dream of the previous night she was able, only now, to summon to consciousness-what must be done.

The hotel room was empty except for the overstuffed furniture and the orchids. Everything was silent; street noises did not rise so high. There was Jean-Pierre, now an elderly man, pining away in a prison cell . . . there was the hideous massacre at Bushkill's Ferry . . . the humiliation of the public auction when Noel and Hiram were boys . . . the loss of the land, piece by piece, like jigsaw puzzle parts, over the years. How real that was, all of that! And how unreal Leah Pym suddenly felt.

She paused, halfway to the door. Looked back to the glass lying on the carpet, and the card, that rectangular piece of white cardboard, lying beside it. Swallowed, pressed both hands against her burning cheeks, stared. If I could see into the future, she thought in dismay, I would know exactly what I must do. . . .

The Birthday Celebration.

The day Yolande ran away from home, never to return-never to return to Bellefleur Manor-was also the day of Germaine's first birthday.

But was there any connection between the two events . . . ?

On that dry, warm, relentlessly sunny August day, when no breeze blew across Lake Noir, or down from the mountains, there was to be a large birthday party in the late afternoon, to which Leah had impulsively invited all the young children in the area, and their mothers-all the children from reasonably good families, that is. (And she invited the Renauds, whom she rarely saw now, and the Steadmans and the Burnsides, and even wrote out an invitation to the Fuhrs which, when she reread it, struck her as humiliatingly meek: so she discarded it.) In her enthusiasm over seeking out financial and political support for the family Leah had quite neglected people close to home; she had not even thought of them for months. Please come to help us celebrate the first birthday of our darling Germaine, she wrote gaily.

At teatime there would be a huge square chocolate cake with pink frosting and GERMAINE 1 YEAR OLD in creamy vanilla letters, and an entire table and a stone bench heaped with presents, out back on the terrace; there would be paper hats and noisemakers and surprise treats for the younger children, and champagne for everyone else, and even musical entertainment (Vernon planned to play his flute, while Yolande and Vida danced, costumed in long dresses and veils and feather boas dragged out of one of the trunks in the attic); and Jasper was to lead his young Irish setter through the complicated tricks he had taught the dog over the summer. . . . We hope to have a marvelous time and we hope you can join us!

But Yolande and Christabel planned a smaller birthday celebration, in one of the children's secret places on the bank of Mink Creek (the Bellefleur children, in every generation, had "secret" places-in passageways, in nooks and crannies and cupboards and cubbyholes, in haylofts, beneath the floorboards of abandoned barns, behind evergreens, behind boulders, up trees, on roofs, in ice-tunnels (in winter), in manor towers whose floors were strewn with the skeletons of birds and bats and mice, in the old "Roman bath" their elders presumed was safely boarded up); they had nagged Edna into allowing them to bake and frost some cupcakes, and they had stolen from the kitchen larder a half-dozen ripe peaches and some sweet black cherries and a pound of rum-flavored chocolates from Holland. Yolande slipped into her pocket some pink candles for the cupcakes, and a box of kitchen matches from Edna's stove. What a lark it would be, with no adults-with no Leah-hovering near!

So at midmorning they took Germaine out to play in the garden as usual, but they soon crept away through the gate at the rear, each of them holding her by the hand. They would hurry to Mink Creek, to a pretty little cove a short distance from the lake, where the creek emptied into the lake, and there-seated on pine logs, protected from the sun by low-hanging willow branches-they would have their own private birthday celebration, and no one would know. (A noisy gang of boys-Garth and Albert and Jasper and Louis, and a visiting cousin from Derby, Dave Cinquefoil-were swimming off the Bellefleur dock, but they couldn't see the girls; and Leah and Lily and Aveline and grandmother Cornelia were being fitted for their fall clothes, by a dressmaker and her assistant from the Falls, so they would be occupied all morning.) "This is a special day, Germaine," Yolande said, stooping to kiss the child. "It's your first birthday and it will never come again. . . . Do you know, a year ago you weren't born yet! And when you were born you were just a baby, a helpless little baby, nothing like you are now!"

Germaine had grown into a sturdy toddler, large for her age-very pretty-with red-brown curls and a small snubbed nose and those amazing green-bronze eyes, whose fabled luminosity varied: in the candlelit shadows of Leah's bedchamber they frequently glowed with a discomforting intensity, but in the ordinary glare of midmorning sun they appeared no more striking than Yolande's and Christabel's eyes (for Yolande and Christabel were also extremely attractive). Germaine was a baby, still, and yet more than a baby. She was intermittently and unpredictably precocious: she knew many words, but would not always say them. Then again she could be a terrible infant in a matter of seconds, mewling and bawling and kicking and thrashing about. It was observed widely that she behaved well when Leah was not present, but no one dared tell Leah that. Yolande was of the opinion that she could be Germaine's mother, and that Germaine would be far better off. ("Your mother is always fussing over Germaine, she's always kissing and hugging and talking to her, talking some kind of private baby talk, she's always looking at her-that would drive me wild!" Yolande told Christabel. "She doesn't look at me," Christabel said weakly.) Germaine was also given to queer prolonged spells of "knowingness"-when her gaze deepened but seemed unfocused, and her baby's face shifted into impassivity. At such times there was a stubborn Bellefleur set to her pursed lips; she would not respond to kisses, queries, love pinches, or even little slaps. She disturbed the servants by coming up silently behind them. She discomforted one of the dogs by staring into his eyes. Sometimes she left off playing, and was to be seen perched up on the white wrought-iron chair that was usually Leah's, in the garden, with her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, her expression still and sad and prematurely melancholy. In the nursery one morning she astonished Irene by babbling excitedly, "Bird-bird-Bird-" and pointing to the window, not five seconds before a small bird-it must have been a warbler-slammed into it and fell, its neck broken, down into the shrubbery. Once Garth hitched up the old pony cart to the last pony on the estate, a gentle, rather lazy Shetland with faded brown markings, and watched over Germaine and Little Goldie as they rode squealing with delight around the weedy track; and he claimed that the baby put her hands to her ears and shut her eyes tight a few seconds before the pony trotted over a rock that flew up into the cart's axle and nearly overturned it. . . . (On the eve of her birthday Germaine was reluctant to be put to bed, and behaved quite disgracefully in her bath. Leah, her face flaming, was forced to shake the child and cry, No, you don't, no, you're bad, you're deliberately and shamelessly bad and you know better and I won't tolerate it!-and bundle her off, still kicking, to bed. She thrashed about, she threw her pillow out of the crib, she wailed, and held her breath, and choked and sputtered and spat, and threw a tantrum lying down, as Leah watched, biting her lip, but making no move to interfere-for she wouldn't be manipulated-and then finally, after an interminable period, Germaine grew tired, and the wails were sobs, and the sobs faint petulant gasps, and suddenly her eyes were closed, and she slept. But within an hour she was awake again, screaming more violently than ever, and when Leah rushed to her she was sitting up in bed, her skin clammy, her pajamas soaked with sweat, babbling about fire-she clutched at Leah and fixed her with those great staring eyes, and babbled about fire-in a voice so terror-stricken that Leah's heart nearly failed. She comforted the baby, and changed her, and brought her to bed in the big bed (for Gideon was away on business that night, he hoped to return by teatime the following day), and after Germaine fell asleep Leah put on a dressing gown and wandered about the manor, too frightened to sleep, convinced that there might be a fire-there had been fires enough in the old days-and that Germaine had smelled the smoke or in some way seen the fire-or had foreseen it- But of course there was nothing. And when Leah returned to her bed at 4:00 A.M. she found her daughter sleeping deeply and placidly as any one-year-old.

THE GIRLS WERE in their secret cove only a half-hour when they were joined by twin ginger kittens, about seven weeks old, but unusually long-bodied, who came mewing through the grass, and were greeted with cries of delight: the kittens were petted, hugged, kissed, fed cupcake crumbs, and allowed to go through the frenzied motions of nursing against Yolande's neck ("Oh, how they tickle! Aren't they silly! Just look-the way they knead their paws and shut their eyes and purr, sucking at nothing at all!" she cried), and finally to drop off to sleep in Yolande's and Christabel's laps.

And then the boy appeared.

No, first he threw a rock-a large rock that splashed in the creek only a few feet from where Christabel sat.

The girls screamed, and then Yolande shouted, "Damn you, go to hell!" thinking it was one of the Bellefleur boys. But it was a stranger: the boy in overalls with the cloth cap on his head: and he had the same jeering moronic grin as he came splashing along the creek, bringing his feet down with exaggerated force.

He jumped up on the bank, and seized one of the kittens. Holding it against his chest he petted it roughly, and puckered his lips, and said Kitty, nice kitty, kitty-kitty-kitty, in a high-pitched voice meant to mimic Yolande's.

"You put that kitten down! That's our kitten!" Yolande said.

The boy ignored her. His expression was flaccid and self-contained, as if he were alone. "Don't you scare that kitten," Yolande said faintly.

Christabel had scrambled farther up the bank, hugging herself; Germaine was sitting in the grass, a messy half-eaten peach in her hand. Yolande got slowly to her feet, staring at the boy. She was very frightened. But angry too. "You don't have any right to be here," she whispered.

The boy looked at her for the first time. His eyes were small, mud-brown, moist. On his forehead were premature lines, which deepened with mock concern.

"You got no right to be here," he said.

He reached up to tug the cap down more tightly on his forehead, still holding the kitten against his chest. It had begun to struggle wildly.

Then Christabel asked nervously if he'd like something to eat-a cupcake, or a peach-would he like some candies-and the boy turned from Yolande to Christabel, his expression still impassive. "Candies," he said, approaching Christabel, his mouth opening, his ugly tongue protruding like a dog's, so that she understood he wanted the chocolates put in his mouth. Which she did, with a thin little giggle. The boy chewed two candies, frowning, then spat them out-spat them into the creek without bothering to lean over, so that the mess dribbled on his trouser legs.

". . . kinda shit is that . . . trying to poison me . . ." he muttered.

"Those are good candies! Those are from Holland!" Yolande cried.

He took hold of Christabel by the hair and pulled her to the creek bank and pushed her off, and she fell splashing in two or three feet of water. "You want to come swimming too?" he asked Yolande. "You and the baby? Eh? Take off your clothes and come swimming too?"

"Don't you dare come near me," Yolande said.

He stared at her, and smiled slowly, revealing his tobacco-stained teeth. Yolande saw that he was Garth's age but that something was wrong, something was terribly wrong with him. "You want to take off your clothes, eh? And get in the creek with me? All of us, eh? Come on! Hurry up! I know your name, missy," he said softly. "It's Yolande."

"Go home," Yolande said, her voice shaking. "You shouldn't be here, you'll get into trouble. If you go home now we won't tell . . ."

"You get out of here," the boy said to Christabel, who was trying not to cry, "and take the baby with you. Go on-get! I don't want no crowd here."

"Please," Yolande said, "leave us alone. . . ."

"We're going swimming! You and me! Gonna take off our clothes and go swimming!"

Germaine had begun to make faint sounds, whimpering, gasping, as she pushed herself backward on the grass. The boy, peering at her, stood very still for a long moment, the kitten crushed against his chest, and then said, "Get her out of here! I don't want no baby here! I don't want no bawling baby here!"

Yolande picked Germaine up to comfort her, and Christabel hurried to crouch behind them. Her bare legs streamed water and her teeth had begun to chatter.

"D'you hear what I said, you!-you there!" the boy said to Christabel. "Take that baby and get the hell out of here! I don't want no goddamn bawling baby here! Or I'm going to do this to all of you," he said, making a sudden gesture as if he were twisting the kitten's head off. When the girls screamed he grinned at them, and showed that the kitten was untouched, but made the gesture again, his hand cupped about its head-and again the girls screamed, and Germaine began to shriek. He laughed at their distress, but a moment later was irritated by it, and said, raising his voice to be heard over the baby's terrified wails, "You're making me mad! You don't want to make me mad! Yolande Bellefleur, you don't want to make Johnny mad 'cause I know your name and I know how to get you-Yolande Bellefleur, Yolande Bellefleur-you want something nice to stuff your pussy with? Better shut up that baby-"

But the baby continued to cry. And Christabel, crouched behind Yolande, had to press her hand against her mouth to keep from sobbing.

"I can't stand no bawling," the boy said. "Y'want me to do this to you all-" Again he made the twisting gesture; but this time he did twist the kitten's head. It made a single hideous ear-piercing cry and must have slashed his hands with its claws, for he swore, and threw it out into the creek as lightly as he might have thrown a stone: it sank into the swift-flowing current in the center, a small hurtling scrap of orange, sinking immediately from sight. It had all taken place so quickly the girls could not grasp what had happened. This terrible boy had wrung the kitten's neck, he had thrown it into the creek. . . . And what was he saying about the baby, taking the baby away, what did he want with Yolande. . . . !

"We could go swimming. Or we could go over there," the boy said, indicating with a jerk of his head an abandoned barn on a rise nearby. "Just you and me, Yolande. I don't want none of them others. . . . Y'want me to twist all your heads off? Eh? Better stop bawling!"

Clearly he too was frightened. His young voice rose and fell with anguish, with daring, with an inarticulate rage; in his impatience he danced about, stomping, bringing the heel of his boot down hard near the girls' feet, as if he were teasing a dog. He touched Yolande's hair. His fingers closed in her hair. A kind of radiance broke across his face-his ugly smile faded-he simply stared at her. After a long moment he said, in a low, broken voice: ". . . that barn over there . . . just you and me . . . just for a few minutes. . . . Yolande. . . . Yolande Bellefleur. . . . Just for a few minutes. . . ."

"Barn! What barn! Where is there a barn . . ." Yolande whispered.

The boy pointed.

She laughed, turning, shading her eyes. There was a barn nearby. One of the old hop-curing barns. It was badly rotted now, on the brink of collapse: moss of a bright lurid green grew on the sagging roof; even a few tiny maples nested there. "Oh, there. . . . That . . . " Yolande said.

He tugged at her hair. Hard. Then a little harder. He did his angry dance-step again, nudging Yolande's foot. And nudging her with his knee. Like a puppet she did not resist: she did not even cry out when his fingers yanked her hair.

"Y'want me to come back here sometime, at night, I could come back at night, and wring all your heads off, all the goddamn fucking Bellefleur heads, wring 'em off and throw 'em in the creek," the boy said softly, bumping against Yolande. "Y'want me to . . ."