"No one has ever died of a tiny cat scratch," Noel said, laughing.

Brown Lucy.

Brown Lucy, Lucy Varrell, drunken and hilarious, naked, her great ungainly breasts leaking milk, milk for his baby (a son, not yet named: she had managed to beat poor clothespin-lipped Hilda by two or three weeks, and did not even mind-for such was her savage good nature, and one of the reasons Jean-Pierre could not stay away from her-that he boasted to whoever would listen), straddling him in her upstairs room at the Fort Hanna House, riding him, slapping him playfully but hard up and down his sides, against his quivering thighs, until, suddenly delirious, he began to shout. A dribble of watery milk across his face, her uncombed grease-stiffened hair cascading against his eyes and mouth. Don't! Don't! Stop! Oh, Sarah- AT THE LAND commission office at Fort Hanna there was excited, gloating talk of the bankruptcy, and the imprisonment, of Alexander Macomb himself.

In his elegant gentleman's attire the son-in-law of Roger Osborne, one Jean-Pierre Bellefleur, arrived to negotiate for the purchase of certain wilderness lands; but once in Fort Hanna, and having journeyed as far north as the trading settlement at Paie-des-Sables, he was possessed of a notion to buy up everything he could, or, to the contrary, sell the holdings he had already bought from Macomb's agent in New York, and return to the city at once.

The wilderness! The mountains! The broad flat Nautauga River! . . . In Manhattan his father-in-law, though infirm, had spoken with zest of the riches of the north-the uncut pine, the firs-and, seated in the dark-paneled library of the Broadway town house, he had insisted that Macomb's extravagant purchase of the ten townships (townships formed after the destitute Oneida Indians were forced to cede their land to the state) was a brilliant move: for within two years Macomb had resold the land, at considerable profit, to other speculators: and the way was now cleared for . . .

But now Macomb was bankrupt, people said. And jailed.

Here, in Fort Hanna, the Northern Missionary Society contended with the loose brawling community of trappers and traders and ex-soldiers and whores like Brown Lucy who (so rumor had it, but the rumor was false) had acquired fortunes. Brown Lucy and Erasmus Goodheart and a former secretary of Aschthor-John Jacob Astor-and other members of the "criminal element" Roger Osborne feared might corrupt his immature son-in-law.

Goodheart, for instance. Drinking with Goodheart at Fort Hanna House. The man claimed to be part Algonquin, part Seneca, part Dutch, and part Irish. He looked no more Indian than Jean-Pierre. He had been, evidently, Lucy's lover. In a manner of speaking. He was one of those who spread the rumor, perhaps not maliciously, that Lucy had a small fortune hidden away-it added to her value, her charm. (The first sight Jean-Pierre had of the woman was a discouraging one: she was big, and the bigness appeared to be muscle, except for the large, flimsily-corseted breasts; she was much younger than he had anticipated, and good-looking in a harsh jocular way. He would, he saw, have to compete for her attentions.) When Jean-Pierre first arrived in the north country the wilderness frightened him except when he had downed a certain number of drinks. His first tumbler at midday, the best he could acquire in this wretched part of the world, sipped like wine. My dear Hilda, he wrote, Each day is a tumult of new impressions & new knowledge . . . I scarcely know what to think. . . . The wilderness land awakes in us (I must say us because we seem all equally afflicted, except for the Indians who remain, and the elderly or infirm or mysteriously dispirited) a sense of . . . a sense . . . He crumpled the letter and began again, irritated at his task, for not only did he resent having to write to her (whom he did not love) but he gravely resented the fact that it was so devilishly difficult to express what he felt (when in conversation he was glibly skillful, and could make anyone understand his meaning or at least acquiesce to it). My dear Hilda, The air is intoxicating, I lie awake as demons cavort in my skull, drawing me in one direction and then in another . . . enticing me to this, or to that. . . . The wilderness land is alive. I did not grasp that earlier. Nor does your father understand, with his prattle of . . . his smug prattle of . . . He pushed the stiff sheet of paper aside, and poured another inch or two of whiskey into his glass. Gently, like the brushing of a lover's eyelashes against one's cheek, the image of the girl Sarah touched him: touched his overheated skin. He had not thought she would follow him here, so far from the place he had last glimpsed her. By now she was settled in England, by now she might even be married, it was not a preposterous thought, he had lost her forever, he had made a fool of himself, married to a washboard-plain woman whom he did not love but who was too sweet, too self-effacing, for him to dislike with pleasure. And then too there was the dowry. And the father-in-law's generosity. (Was Osborne senile, or somewhat rattled by the drugs his physician fed him; or was he simply anxious to keep Jean-Pierre happy?) My dear Hilda, Jean-Pierre wrote, in a sudden frenzy, There is only one principle here as elsewhere, but here it is naked & one cannot be deceived: the lust for acquisition: furs & timber: timber & furs: game: to snatch from this domain all it might yield greedy as men who have gone for days without eating suddenly ushered into a banquet hall & left to their own devices. One stuffs oneself, it is a frenzy, the lust to lay hands on everything, to beat out others, for the others are enemies. At the banquet there is so much food! There is in fact a surplus of food! But we are all the more ravenous, we cannot contain ourselves, we fear there won't be enough to go around and so we must gobble up everything on the table. . . .

But Hilda would not understand. Would be frightened at his passion, and show the letter to her father.

My dear Hilda, he wrote, his hand more controlled, I shall never voluntarily leave this wilderness paradise.

MANY MONTHS LATER Brown Lucy rolled from bed, and padded out barefoot into the back room, and returned a minute later with a pail of fish heads and tails and guts which she dumped atop her lover.

"That's for your Sarah! Your precious Sarah!" she screamed.

Half-awake he tried to protect himself but the shock was paralyzing: to hear her name uttered aloud, when he had carried it with him for so long, in secret. . . .

"But how did you know," he said, wiping frantically at himself, "you filthy bitch, goddamn you!-how did you know?"

"And Sarah isn't the name of the one in New York, is she!" the woman shouted. She rushed at him, her breasts swinging, and he turned aside and lost his balance and fell back across the bed, into the remains of the fish. (His fish, brook trout, which she had cleaned for him.) "Liar. Bastard."

"But how did you know?" Jean-Pierre cried in a daze.

SO IT WENT, months and years. One must surmise.

THERE WAS, AS well, sinewy yellow-eyed Goodheart, with his scarred forehead and rotting teeth and a lurid cascade of tattoos on both arms, telling Jean-Pierre, when they were alone, and drinking far into the night, of the old days at Johnson Hall, when Sir William was his majesty's General Agent for Indian Affairs. Before the old man died of apoplexy in 1774. Before his sons inherited his estate, and his position, and everything went bad. The tribes of the Six Nations had gathered at Johnson Hall every summer for their games, and there were days and days of celebrating, and more food than anyone could eat, provided by the Crown. But Jean-Pierre had difficulty envisioning those days.

Lucy had told Jean-Pierre that Goodheart, despite his beard and natty clothes and his modest local fame as a cardplayer (his winnings were always small, as if he were eager not to incur wrath; but they were consistent) had been born of a slave family: both his mother and grandmother were household slaves of Sir William's. But he never alluded to his own past; he joked freely of the relative worthlessness of Indians as slaves.

It was commonly known, for instance, that they were capable of dying at will. Their spirits could depart at any time from their bodies, leaving behind bodies which might absorb any punishment. Sir William's oldest son John, after the old man's death, had once ordered an Onondagan slave, a man in his mid-thirties, flogged to pieces . . . literally to pieces, to shreds, for "willfulness and sloth." Indian slaves always sold for far less than Negroes. And there were so many more of them.

Goodheart accompanied Jean-Pierre by steamboat down the wide fast-flowing Nautauga, and down the Alder, where he might view the despoiled mansions of the great landowners who had fled north in 1776. There were tales, he said, that Sir John had buried much of his treasure in an iron chest somewhere on his property, before fleeing to Canada with his family and his Scottish tenants and a dozen of his most valuable slaves.

Sometime later, Jean-Pierre bought the Johnson property, which brought with it more than 60,000 acres of land. It had been confiscated by the state, and sold to Macomb, and sold again after Macomb's bankruptcy. Gradually the frenzy grew: in one month he bought 48,000 acres west of treacherous Lake Noir, where no one lived, and 119,000 acres of impenetrable wilderness land around Mount Horn. The following year he was to acquire, at seven and a half pence an acre, 460,000 acres north of the tiny settlement of White Sulphur Springs.

And so it went. Months, and years. Long ago. Though Jean-Pierre supervised the digging up of the Johnson property-the extensive lawns, and the overgrown formal garden-he never found the legendary treasure. He halfway suspected that Goodheart had lied to him but it was for other reasons that he had Goodheart jailed at Fort Hanna, in 1781, the year of Harlan's birth.

Trespassing and poaching on his land, he charged. He couldn't allow it.

By then Brown Lucy too had disappeared. He had paid her off, had given generous bonuses for the sons (were there three of them, or four), had sent her up to Paie-des-Sables to live, where her sagging breasts and belly and her forlorn, savage face wouldn't depress him.

And Hilda too, eventually, must be banished. For like Brown Lucy she came between Jean-Pierre and his love: though his love was nothing more than a fleeting image, a moon-pale child's face glimpsed at the rarest, the least anticipated, of moments.

"Sarah! What do you mean by Sarah! I'll give you Sarah, you hogshit son of a bitch!" the woman stormed above him, overturning the pail of fish guts on his head.

WHEN THEY CAME to get him, so many decades later, in the farthest bedroom of the house he and Louis had built, he had no time to think of any of the women: he had no time to think at all. Nor could he interpret their taunts, their furious jeers, as they dragged him and Antoinette out of bed. Why were they so angry!-why did they want to kill him!

But he had no time, even, for that thought.

"Bellefleur-!" came the cry, drunken and murderous.

Bellefleur.

The Broken Promise.

On the eve of Germaine's fourth birthday a uniformed messenger arrived at Bellefleur Manor to deliver a document containing such upsetting news that Leah, to whom it was addressed, grew faint, and staggered, and would have fallen into a swoon had not Nightshade, alert as always at his mistress's side, stepped forward. "Ah, how could she!-how could she! How could such a thing happen!" Leah cried. The household was all in a commotion but Nightshade retained his calm: murmuring solicitously, as if comforting an animal or a very small child, he tore open one of the leather pouches he carried about his person, and released, with admirable alacrity, a bluish, highly astringent mist that cleared Leah's head at once. Her small, rather narrow, rather colorless gray-blue eyes opened wide and staring.

She threw herself down in a chair, and tossed the heavy document-it was a parchment sheet, at least twelve inches long-at her father-in-law, who was insisting noisily that he be shown whatever it was. But she continued to moan, in a low voice that writhed with anger and helplessness and sheer incredulity, "How could she! My own daughter! Lost to all shame, and now this! They are betraying us one by one, they must be stopped! How could she, a daughter of mine!"

For, it seemed, the wanton Christabel had been made Demuth Hodge's lawful wife in a civil ceremony in, of all places, Port Oriskany (so close to home!-and the detectives' last report, filed months ago, with a list of extraordinary expenditures, placed them in Guadalajara, Mexico); and she had, in a handwritten letter to old Mrs. Schaff, forfeited her claim to the inheritance-all of Edgar's fortune, all of the property, Schaff Hall, and the many thousands of acres of precious land. Old Mrs. Schaff, acting, perhaps, out of a venomous desire to prostrate poor Leah, had had the letter duplicated on stiff legal-sized stationery, and it was this ugly document Leah had received.

"Nightshade, how could she," Leah whispered, grasping the creature's wrist with a desperate familiarity that did not go unnoticed among the Bellefleurs, "Christabel whom I loved so dearly, Christabel who was so precious to us all!"

A FALSE RUMOR started among the domestic help that Leah had wept: had actually been seen weeping. But it was soon contradicted by the housekeeper and several of the maids who had been present, for of course Leah had not wept, despite her perturbation. She never wept, so far as anyone knew. Not as a young woman, not as a girl, not even as a child had she wept; and though everyone had supposed her especially close to Hiram, despite their occasional differences of opinion, it was observed that she remained tearless at the old man's funeral.

Because of Hiram's sudden death the entire household, of course, was thrown into mourning: or at the very least (for the Bellefleurs were magnificently pragmatic people) into the semblance of mourning. Naturally there could be no formal birthday celebration in Germaine's honor. Leah promised a secret party, maybe, upstairs in her boudoir-office, with a birthday cake and a few presents, but the revelation of Christabel's spiteful act was so upsetting that Leah forgot about the party, and called instead an emergency meeting of the family council, including the family's various managers, financial advisers, accountants, and attorneys.

If Germaine was disappointed she did not show it, for she had become accustomed to playing by herself for hours, hidden away in the most remote rooms of the castle, with no one but the gentler cats for her playmates. (The toms, of course, were too rough: their lazy pawing might turn in a moment into kicking and scratching and serious biting, and since uncle Hiram's death there was naturally great concern about infection as well. Mahalaleel alone among the male cats would have been a trustworthy pet for Germaine, since he was exceptionally fond of her, and always sheathed his claws when she petted him, but of late, for the past few weeks, he hadn't been sighted anywhere in the vicinity of the castle; and it was feared that, at last, he had disappeared, as mysteriously as he had appeared so long ago.) So Germaine played with her favorite cats, talking and chattering to them, or she read aloud to them, as best she could, from old books she discovered in out-of-the-way places, crammed between the cushions of old sofas, stacked untidily in closets that stank of dust and mice, or hidden beneath fur boas and scraps of yellowed lace in bureau drawers that opened only with difficulty-and what odd books they were, how heavy their ancient leather bindings made them!-heavy, weighted with age and sorrow, and yet captivating, even on sunny mornings when of course she should have been playing outside. In later years Germaine would recall these volumes with disturbing clarity, for though she had not been capable of understanding more than a few sentences here and there she had pored over the books at length, turning the stiff yellowed pages reverently, reading aloud in a shy, faltering whisper. Belphegor of Machiavelli, Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg, The Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm of Holberg, the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, the Journals of Jean D'Indagine, and of De La Chambre, The Journey Into the Blue Distance of Tieck, The City of the Sun of Campanella, the Confessions of Augustine, and of the Dominican Emyric de Gironne, Hadas's Nocturne, Bonham's Doppelganger, Sir Gaston Camille Charles Maspero's Egyptian Mythology. . . . The old books, despite the costliness of their bindings, looked as if they had never been read, or even opened; they must have been acquired in bulk by one of the child's great-great-great-grandfathers, along with works of art and pieces of antique furniture.

Occasionally she climbed the stairs into the tower her brother Bromwell had once claimed for his own, and standing at one of the windows she peered for long minutes into the sky, waiting to see a plane. She had pleaded with her father to take her flying one day soon-for her birthday, perhaps-she wanted no other present-nothing else would please her. When he wasn't home, which was frequently, she begged her grandmother Cornelia or her grandfather Noel or whoever would listen. (Not Leah. Leah would not listen if Germaine brought up the subject of a plane ride.) But it's too dangerous, her grandparents said. It isn't for little girls. It isn't for any of us-except your father.

If she sighted a plane in the distance she climbed atop the windowsill, and waited to see if it would come closer. She knew that her father and his pilot friends did wild, playful things in the air, for she had overheard her mother's complaints (they were maniacs, they were insane, flying between the spans of a bridge on a bet, making emergency landings in fields or on roads or, in the winter, on frozen rivers and lakes); it was quite possible, she thought, that he would fly to her, he would circle close to the tower, and somehow, somehow, she didn't know how, he would pull her up into the plane with him, and they would fly off together, and no one would ever know where she had gone. . . .

But though she frequently sighted planes they rarely came near the castle, and when they did they were, evidently, strangers' planes: they simply flew overhead, the noise of their engines growing louder and louder and louder, and then fading, rapidly, until they were out of sight, and she remained behind, crouched on the sill, staring, her hand still upraised.

Daddy . . . ? she whispered.

THEN ON THE eve of her birthday Gideon relented.

He relented, and promised her a ride the next day. Just the two of them-in the cream-colored Dragonfly-and it would be very nice.

But Leah protested. He was being ridiculous, she said.

Gideon did not reply.

He was being selfish, he was trying to come between her and her daughter- But Germaine began to cry. For she wanted nothing more than to go for a plane ride with her father; she wanted no other birthday present.

Germaine, Leah began.

But Gideon arose, and walked from the room without looking back.

And Germaine ran after him, ignoring her mother.

Daddy! Daddy, wait! she cried.

-but he only wants to come between us, Leah protested. He doesn't love you.

Her voice was a hoarse frightened whisper. She clutched at her daughter, who struggled at first to free herself, and then quieted, suddenly, when she saw how agitated her mother was. And anyway her father had left. And anyway (so she told herself fiercely) he hadn't retracted his promise.

But he doesn't love you, Leah said, squatting so that she could look Germaine in the face. You must know that. You must know. He doesn't love any of us, he only loves-he only loves, now, his planes and-and the sky-and whatever he finds there- IF GERMAINE SLEPT poorly on the night before the catastrophe it was not, as one might surmise, that she anticipated the destruction of the castle, and the deaths of her parents: it was simply because she both dreaded and yearned for the morning, when her father would take her into the sky as he had promised-but then again perhaps he wouldn't, perhaps he would retract his promise-ah, what might happen! She was only four years old, she was small and helpless and frightened and so exhilarated she woke every half-hour, her bedclothes tangled in her legs and her pillow crushed in the oddest ways. The spittle-stained panda who slept with her found himself unaccountably on the nursery floor where his young mistress impetuously tossed him, waking from a nasty little dream in which her father did retract his promise and fly away without her.

In the morning, very early, she ran in her summer nightgown out into the hall, and called out Daddy, Daddy-and at once he appeared, as if he had been waiting for her (thought she knew of course he hadn't-probably he had been planning to slip away in secret); and he wished her a happy birthday, and kissed her, and told her yes, yes, of course, he hadn't forgotten, he certainly planned on taking her for a ride, but she had to get dressed first, and she would have to have a little breakfast, wouldn't she, and then they would see about the ride.

He hadn't changed his mind? He hadn't forgotten?

He wore a white suit with a dark shirt, open at the neck, and Germaine thought she had never seen anything so dazzling white, and so beautiful. The coat hung loose on him-the shoulders drooped slightly-but it was a very handsome coat and she wanted to hide her face against it, and say Why don't we take Mamma too, why don't we ask Mamma, then she wouldn't be so angry, maybe, she wouldn't hate us both so much- But he sent her off to breakfast.

And appeared downstairs in a half-hour, to take her to Invemere. Wearing the white suit with the dark blue shirt, and a white hat with a deep crest in its crown and a band of braided leather that looked so smart, so handsome, she laughed aloud at the sight of it and clapped her hands and said that she wanted a hat just like that. Leah lit one of her long cigarettes and brusquely waved the smoke away and coughed that tight quick cough of hers, but said nothing. How strange it was, but how wonderful, that this morning Leah didn't seem to care! The airplane ride, and Germaine's birthday: and she didn't seem to care. But then so many people were coming later that day. The attorneys, the advisers, the managers, the tax men . . .

Gideon took Germaine's hand, and at the doorway he paused, and lifted his white hat in a little farewell gesture. Which Leah didn't notice. He asked if she would like to join them.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "Go on, go away, take her away, do what you want."

She stubbed her cigarette out in a saucer, and the saucer rattled noisily against the table. And when she looked up again her husband and her daughter were gone.

She seized the little silver bell, and rang impatiently for Nightshade.

DRIVING ALONG THE lake Gideon spoke gaily of his Dragonfly and how Germaine would like it. We'll have to wear parachutes, he said. In case of trouble. I'll have to strap yours on you and give you some instructions though of course nothing will happen. . . . Your Daddy knows how to fly as if he has been flying all his life.

He gave her his wristwatch to examine. It was a new watch with a wide leather band which she had never seen before. The face was so complex-there were so many numerals and moving hands, black, red, and even white lines-she could not tell the time, though she had learned to tell time perfectly well on the castle's numerous clocks.

Can you see the red hand moving? Gideon asked. That's the second hand.

She studied it, and did see it moving. But the black hand moved too slowly. And there was a small white hand that moved too slowly also.

So they drove along on a hot August morning and the dust billowed up behind them and Germaine was studying the watch so intently, she did not notice that her father had stopped his idle cheerful talk, and had turned off the lakeshore road. The car bumped and bounced along the narrow lane that led to aunt Matilde's house.

At once she knew. She knew, and let the watch fall, and said in an aggrieved voice: But this isn't the way to the airport! This isn't the way!

Hush, said Gideon.

Daddy, this isn't the way!

He drove faster, without glancing at her. She kicked at the seat, and knocked the watch onto the floor, not caring if it broke; she began to sob that she hated him, she loved Mamma and hated him, Mamma was right about him, he didn't love any of them, Mamma was right, Mamma knew everything! But though she thrashed about and cried until her face was wet and overheated, and even the front of her polka-dot jumper was damp, he did not stop the car, nor did he even try to comfort her. And of course he didn't say he was sorry for lying.

Why did you promise, Daddy! she screamed. Oh, I hate you-I hate you and wish you were dead- And she did not even care that aunt Matilde and great-grandmother Elvira and the smiling old man were so pleased to see her. She didn't care, she was still sobbing and hiccuping, there was the tame red cardinal in his wicker cage, in the sun, making his high questioning chip-chip-chip sound, there were the white leghorns and the white long-tailed rooster with the bright red comb, but she didn't care, she drew away from aunt Matilde's hug, even Foxy the red cat, hiding around the corner of the house and finally venturing forth, seeing who it was, even Foxy couldn't distract her, for she knew she had been betrayed: her father had broken his promise to her, and on her birthday of all days.

The old people wanted him to stay but he had no time for them.

Let me make you some breakfast, aunt Matilde said. I know you haven't eaten. Eggs, buckwheat pancakes, sausages, muffins-blueberry muffins, Gideon-don't you have time for us, really?

But of course he hadn't time.

Ah, Gideon, look at you-! Aunt Matilde sighed. So thin-!

He stooped to kiss Germaine goodbye but she turned half-aside in disgust.

She was such an outraged, poker-faced little lady, he couldn't help laughing at her. It's because of the wind, he said, the wind isn't right, it's coming from the mountains too hard, it would knock our little plane out of the sky. Germaine? Do you understand? Another day, when it's calmer, I'll take you up. We can fly right over Lake Noir and see the castle and the farm and you'll be able to see Buttercup out in the pasture, and wave to him, all right? Another day. But not today.

Why not today! Germaine screamed at him.

He waved his hat at them as he backed away, smiling. But it was nothing more than the shadow of a smile, just as his eyes weren't anything more than the shadows of eyes, and of course she knew.

She knew, she knew. And would not even glance at the watch he left behind for her-the big ugly watch with all the confusing numerals and lines.

He got in the car and backed it around and drove away, and even waved at them out the window, but he was already gone, she wouldn't wave back, she stood there staring at him, panting, no tears left, the salty tears already drying on her cheeks, and when the car was out of sight down the narrow lane she wouldn't let the old people comfort her because she knew she would never see him again, and it would do no good to cry, to scream, to throw the watch down into the dust and stamp on it: she knew.

Another time, another time, great-grandmother Elvira whispered, touching Germaine's hair with her stiff chill fingers.

A Still Water.

In a strange land where the sky has disappeared and the sun has gone dark and the rocky inhospitable soil beneath our feet has vanished, on the borders of Chymerie . . . on the borders of the deathly-dark lake . . . beneath the waters of the deathly-dark lake . . . the god of sleep, they say, has made his house.

For there are, according to the immense monograph A Hypothesis Concerning Anti-Matter, by Professor Bromwell G. Bellefleur, slits in the fabric of time, "portals" linking this dimension with a mirror-image universe composed of identical (and yet unrelated, opposed, totally distinct) beings.

How may they be identical, and at the same time "unrelated, opposed, and totally distinct"?

The god of sleep, a corpulent god, a most greedy god, has made his house where the sun has no dominion, eclipsed by the brute matter of the earth. There, no man may know aright the point between the day and the night. In that place a still water abides . . . a still, lightless, bitter-cold water which runs upon the small stones and gives great appetite for sleep.

A HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING Anti-Matter. Eight hundred dense pages long, filled with Bellefleur's small, chaste, rigorous handwriting, and hundreds of equations, and graphs, and sketches, and impatient desperate doodles, which mimic the work's somber thesis. Prefaced with an enigmatic and loosely translated remark of Heraclitus, on the nature of time: or, rather, on the nature of our conception of time.

Those who read A Hypothesis Concerning Anti-Matter and were not acquainted with the brilliant young man who wrote it feared for his sanity; those who knew Bromwell were disturbed but not at all surprised. And of course they did not fear for his sanity, for who among them was half so sane as that boy-genius who had never grown up . . . ?