I brought out the Griswold and Gunnison revolver. He trained the flashlight upon it.

"Lordie," he said. "That's an antique. Is it safe to use?"

"Luman told me it was fine."

"I hope to G.o.d he knows what he's talking about."

I could see the expression on Dwight's face from the light splashing up from our pale hands, and it was plain he was just as unnerved by the atmosphere as I was. I felt more than a little guilty. I'd instigated this adventure, after all.

"Why don't you give me the flashlight?" I said. "I'll lead on."

He made no objection to this. I took the flashlight off him, trained it on the bushes ahead, and we began our trek afresh.

We didn't have much farther to go. Ten yards on and we cleared the shrubbery: the stables were fifty yards from us, their pale stone visible even in the murk. As I've pointed out before, the place is remarkable; an elegant building of some two thousand square feet, which might be mistaken for a cla.s.sical temple, with its modest pillars and portico (which is decorated, though we couldn't see it in the gloom, with a frieze of riders and wild horses). In its glory days it was an airy, sunlit place, filled with the happy din of animals. Now, as we came into its shadow, it seemed like one immense tomb.

We halted in front of it. I splashed the flashlight beam over the enormous doors, which were open. The light barely penetrated beyond the threshold.

"Marietta?" I said. (I wanted to shout, but I was a little afraid of what forces I might disturb if I did so.) There was no answer at first; I called again, thinking if she didn't answer on the third summons we could reasonably a.s.sume she wasn't there, and retreat. But I got my answer. There was the sound of somebody moving inside the temple, followed by a bleary who is it? Rea.s.sured by the sound of Marietta's voice, I stepped over the threshold.Even after all these years, the stables still smelled of their tremendous occupants: the ripe scent of horse sweat and horseflesh and horse dung. There had been such life here; such energies contained in stamping vessels of muscle and mane.

I could see Marietta now. She was coming toward me, b.u.t.toning up her vest as she approached.

There was no doubting what she and Alice had been up to here. Her face was flushed; her mouth seemed swelled with kissing.

"Where's Alice?" I asked her.

"Asleep," she said. "She's exhausted, poor baby. What are you doing here?"

I was a little embarra.s.sed now; I'm certain Marietta knew I had indulged my voyeuristic instincts where she was concerned, and probably suspected I was here doing the same thing. I didn't protest my innocence; I simply said: "You're both okay?"

"Fine," Marietta said, plainly puzzled. "Who's out there with you?"

"Dwight," came the reply from the darkness behind me.

"Hey, what's up?" Marietta called back to him.

"Nothin' much," Dwight said.

"I'm sorry we disturbed you," I said.

"No problem," Marietta replied. "It's time we were going back to the house anyhow..." _, As she spoke, my gaze moved past her into the darkness. Despite the ease of the exchanges going on, there was still something troubling me; drawing my eye into the murk.

"What is it, Eddie?" Marietta said.

I shook my head. "I don't know. Maybe just memories."

"Go on in if you want to," she said, stepping aside. "Alice is quite decent-" I stepped past her "- you'll be disappointed to hear." I threw back an irritated glance, then ventured into the stables, leaving Marietta and Dwight behind me. My sense that there was a presence here was growing apace. I let the beam of the flashlight rove back and forth: over the marble floor, with its gullies and drains; across the stalls, with their intricately inlaid doors; up to the shallow vaults of the ceiling. Nothing moved. I couldn't even find Alice. I advanced cautiously, resisting the urge to glance back at Marietta and Dwight for the comfort of it.

The place where we'd laid the body of Nicodemus, along with all the belongings he'd wanted buried with him (his jade phalli; the white gold mask and codpiece he'd worn in his ecstasies; the mandolin he'd played like an angel)-was in the center of the stables, perhaps twenty yards fromwhere I now stood. The marble floor had been lifted there, and not replaced after the burial.

Mushrooms had grown from that dirt, in supernatural profusion. I could see their pale heads in the gloom; hundreds of them. More phalli, of course. His last joke.

A motion off to my right; I halted, and looked round. It was Marietta's lady love, rising from the spot where she'd been sleeping.

"What's going on?" she said. "Why's it so cold, honey?"

I hadn't noticed until now, but she was right: my breath was visible before me.

"It's not Marietta, it's Maddox," I told her.

"What are you doin' here?"

"It's okay," I said. "I just came to-"

I didn't finish the sentence. What halted me was a sound from the darkness beyond my father's grave. A clattering on the marble floor.

"Oh my Lord..." Alice said.

Emerging from the shadow, its hooves making a din this place had not heard for almost a century and a half, was a horse. Nor was it any horse. It was Dumuzzi. Even at this distance, even in this gloom, I knew him. There had never been an animal so splendid, nor so certain of his splendor.

The way he pranced as he came, striking sparks off the marble, which flashes lit his gleaming anatomy, and made his eyes blaze. Whatever wounds had been visited upon the animal by Cesaria-and though I wasn't conscious to witness her slaughter, I'm certain she reserved her greatest cruelties for Dumuzzi, the ringleader-all of them had been healed. He was perfection again.

Somehow, he had been revivified, lifted up out of the pit into which his body had been dispatched, and returned to glorious life.

I had no doubt who had performed this handiwork.

Just as it had been the hand of Cesaria Yaos which had slaughtered Dumuzzi so it had been the hand of her husband, my father, who had resurrected him again. Nothing was more certain.

Never in my life was I seized with such a boundless supply of contrary feelings as at that moment. Dumuzzi's living presence before me-indisputable, irresistible-was proof of a greater presence in this melancholy place. Nico-demus was here: at least some portion of him, piercing the veil between this world and the kingdom to come. What was I to feel about that? Fear? Yes, in some measure; the primal fear that the living inevitably feel when the spirits of the dead return.

Awe? Absolutely; I'd never had more certain proof of my father's divinity than I did at that moment. Grat.i.tude? Yes, that too. For all the trembling in my belly, and in my legs, I wasthankful that my instincts had brought me here: that I was able to witness this omen of Nicodemus's return.

I glanced back toward Alice, intending to tell her to retreat, but Marietta had come to join her, and wrapped her arms around her. Alice was looking at Dumuzzi, but Marietta was looking at me. There were tears in her eyes.

Dumuzzi, meanwhile, had pranced to the edge of my father's grave, and now, suddenly, advanced upon it, hooves high, and proceeded to stamp on the earth which covered Nicodemus's corpse.

The mushrooms were pounded to pulp, pieces flying off in all directions.

After perhaps half a minute, he grew calmer, at last simply standing in the mess of earth and pulped mushrooms, his head a little turned so that he could watch us.

"Dumuzzi?" I said.

At the sound of his name he snorted.

"You know this animal?" Marietta said.

"He was father's favorite."

"Where the h.e.l.l did he come from?"

"Back from the dead."

"He's so beautiful," Alice murmured, her voice filled with wonder. It seemed she hadn't heard the exchange between Marietta and myself, she was so engrossed in the sight before us. Marietta took hold of her arm.

"Alice," she said firmly. "We have to go. Now."

She started to pull Alice back toward the door. But as she did so, Dumuzzi rose up again, higher than he had before, and loosing a sound that struck the eardrums so hard we all gasped, charged in our direction. The sight of his sudden approach-mane flying, hooves high-glued me to the spot.

This was the last sight I'd seen before I'd fallen beneath him and his comrades all those years ago: the memory made my limbs stupid. If it hadn't been for Dwight catching hold of me and dragging me out of the way history might well have repeated itself. I don't believe Dumuzzi meant any harm this time-as he most a.s.suredly had on the first occasion-he was simply making for the door by the most direct route. But nor do I doubt that he would have knocked me down and broken my bones if I'd remained in his path.

I didn't see him leave the building; I was too busy being hauled out of his path. By the time I'd picked myself up again, he was gone. I heard the sound of his hooves as he pounded away; then silence, broken only by the breathing of four exhilarated people."I think we should get back to the house," Marietta said. "That's about as much excitement as I can take for one night."

How things have changed! Didn't I write once that the prospect of being around if Nicodemus were to show himself was so terrifying I'd rather be dead? Now, with the evidence for his presence indisputable, I'm perversely excited. This family has been riven for too long; it's time we were together again. There are wounds to be healed, peace to be made, questions to be answered.

I want to know, for instance, what Chiyojo said to my father just before she died. Something pa.s.sed between them, I know. The last sight I saw before I lost consciousness was Nicodemus- horribly wounded himself, of course-leaning dose to my wife, listening to her final words. What did she tell him? That she loved him? That she would wait for him? I've wondered about that so many times over the years. Now, perhaps, I might be able to get an answer from the only man who knows the truth.

And the other question I want to ask? Well, it's perhaps less easily answered. I want Nicodemus to tell me what he had in mind when he created me. Was I an accident? A casual by-product of his l.u.s.t? Or did he knowingly create a half-breed-a union of divine father and mortal mother- because there was some function that such an unhappy creature was uniquely equipped to serve?

If I could have an answer to that question would I not be the happiest man alive? That's what makes the prospect of Nicodemus's return more inspiring than fearful. The chance to stand before the man who caused my soul to be made and ask that most ancient of questions: Father, father, what was I born for?

X.

Loretta had begun an informal list of guests for Cadmus's funeral a year before, jotting down names in the back of her diary when they occurred to her. There was a certain morbidity to this, she realized, but she'd always been a practical creature. The list would be useful, sooner or later, and there was no harm in being prepared for the event when it came, even if he lived to be a hundred and five.

Of course the events of the night he'd died had shocked her. But she'd always known in her heart that the truth about the Barbarossas, if she ever discovered it, would astonish her; and so it had.

Not that she imagined she'd learned everything that there was to know that night. All she'd witnessed was a tiny piece of a puzzle which she suspected she would never entirely understand.

Perhaps it was better that way. The same New England pragmatism which allowed her to start a funeral list before the death of her spouse, and to plan for her own empowerment, also made her brittle in matters that defied easy categorization. The life of the spirit was one matter, and the life of the flesh another entirely. When the two became muddied-when the invisible aspired to solidity, and the drama of the soul was played out before her eyes-she was deeply discomfited. It did not rea.s.sure her one jot that there were such forces as she'd witnessed at the mansion operating in the world. She took no metaphysical comfort from the fact. But a fact it was, and that very same pragmatism kept her from lying to herself. She'd seen what she'd seen, and in thefullness of time she'd have to deal with it. In the meanwhile, she'd make her list.

Mitch.e.l.l came to see her in the late afternoon. He wanted to know whether she'd seen or heard from Rachel.

"Not since she left the house after Cadmus pa.s.sed away," Loretta said.

"She hasn't called you?"

"No."

"You're absolutely sure? Maybe Jocelyn took a message and forgot to give it to you."

"Do I gather from this that she's gone missing?"

"Have you got any cigarettes?"

"No. Mitch.e.l.l-will you stop pacing for a moment and answer the question."

"Yes, she's gone missing. I need to talk to her. I haven't... finished... with her."

"Well. This may be hard to hear, but perhaps she's finished with you. Forget about her. You've got other things to be occupying your time right now. We've got a lot of press to deal with; a lot of rumors-"

"To h.e.l.l with that! I don't care what people think. I've spent all my life trying to be Mr. Perfect.

I'm over it. I just want my wife back! Right now!" He came to Loretta suddenly, and it was hard to believe the face he wore had ever smiled. "If you know where she is," he said, "you'd be better off telling me."

"Or what, Mitch.e.l.l?"

"Just tell me."

"No, Mitch.e.l.l. Finish the thought. If I know where she is and I don't tell you, what?" She stared hard at him as she spoke and he averted his eyes. "Don't go the same way your brother's gone, Mitch.e.l.l. It's not the way to do things. You don't threaten people if they don't give you what you want. You persuade them. You get them on your side."

"So suppose I wanted to do that..." Mitch.e.l.l said, softening his tone. "How would I get you on my side?"

"Well you could start by promising me you're going to go shower. Right now. You smell rank.

And you look terrible."

"I'll do that," Mitch.e.l.l said. "Is that all? You're right, I've been letting myself go. But right nowit's hard for me to think about anything but her."

"If you find her, what then?" Loretta said. "She. isn't going to Want to start over, Mitch."

"I know that. I f.u.c.ked up. It can't ever be the way it was. But... she's still my wife. I still have feelings for her. I want to know that she's okay. If she doesn't want to see me, I can deal with that."

"Are you sure?"

Mitch.e.l.l put on a dazzling smile. "Sure I'm sure. I'm not saying it won't be difficult, but I can deal with it."

"Here's what we should do. You go upstairs and take a shower. Let me make a couple of telephone calls."

"Thank you."

"If you want to put on some dean clothes ask Jocelyn to fetch one of Cadmus's shirts for you.

Maybe she can find a pair of pants that'll fit you too."

"Thank you."

"Stop saying thank you, Mitch. It makes me suspicious."

She poured herself a brandy when he'd gone. Then she sat by the fire and thought over what he'd said to her. She didn't believe for a moment the little performance he'd put on for her at the end: all that forced brightness was grotesque. But nor did she believe that he was a lost cause; that she couldn't, with some manipulation, win him to her side. She was going to lose Rachel, if she hadn't already. The woman was too obsessed with Galilee Barba-rossa to be a reliable ally. If or when she found him, then they'd efficiently form a faction of their own. And if she failed to find him, or was rejected, she would be so crippled she'd be more of a burden than a help.

She needed somebody to work with her, and maybe-despite her doubts about his intelligence- Mitch.e.l.l was the likeliest candidate. In truth, she didn't have much choice. Cecil had always been loyal, of course, but he'd change his allegiance if it was fiscally advantageous to him; and Garrison could make it so. The other members of the family-Richard and the rest-were too remote from the heartt of things to be able to step into the breach at short notice. And she had no doubt that time was of the essence here. Her only advantage at present was her knowledge of Cadmus's private methodologies: how he'd computed and predicted, right up until a month before his death, the flow of his fortunes; where he'd planned to invest, and where he'd planned to sell; secrets and predictions he had kept from everyone, even Garrison, but which toward the end he'd shared with her. To that advantage she could perhaps now add Mitch.e.l.l: if, and only if, she could deliver to him the woman with whom he was still so very plainly obsessed.

She felt only the tiniest twinge of guilt at this. Though she'd warmed to Rachel somewhat of late(there was certainly no denying her courage), the woman was no sophisticate, nor ever would be.

She'd done well, for someone from such unpromising roots, but she'd never be the kind of presence Margie might have been under other circ.u.mstances: it simply wasn't in her blood. And when all the fine sentiments about democracy had been voiced, that's what it always came down to: the blood in the veins.

So she would sacrifice Rachel in a bid to gain Mitch.e.l.l: it was a chance worth taking. And she knew exactly where to begin with her investigations. She called Jocelyn in, and told her to go and fetch her address book. Jocelyn returned five minutes later, apologizing that it had taken her so long. Though she was putting on a brave, loyal face, she was in a deeply distressed state; her hands had a constant tremor, and she looked as though she might burst into tears at the slightest provocation.

"Will there be anything more?" she asked Loretta as she handed over the book.