The Ruby Tear Page 7

  He looked at her sadly. “That’s how it looks to you, my dear, but remember—Sal and I are actors.”

  She gave his stubbly cheek a quick peck and turned to gather up her coat and scarf. “That’s a hell of a better line than ‘My wife doesn’t understand me.’ Listen, I’m going to get out of here before we both end up in trouble, okay? Have you seen my shoes?”

  Sinclair raked his fingers back through his thick, graying hair and yawned. “Look under the sofa. I think I kicked something in that direction a few minutes ago. I’ll take you downstairs.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve taken self-defense classes, you know, mostly to fend off unwelcome fans.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “You’re a beautiful girl, and at this hour only a certain type of professional woman is supposed to be out on the streets all by herself!”

  She sputtered a laugh. “Come on, in New York?”

  He frowned. “Yes, in New York. Seriously, Jessamyn, I can’t help worrying. Anita told me about the marbles someone scattered on the floor of your dressing room. You could have taken one hell of a fall! That’s more than a prank.”

  “Yes,” she admitted, “I don’t like it either, but I’ve put up with nastiness backstage before; we all have. If I don’t make a fuss it’ll probably go away, or at least dwindle to scribbling rude words on the wall.”

  In fact she’d been considerably shaken up by the incident. But the last thing in the world she wanted was to give the unknown prankster the satisfaction of a big public reaction. Besides, she had too much riding on this par to allow someone’s malice to distract her.

  So she and Marie had gathered up the marbles and said nothing (or maybe not quite nothing, since Anthony and Anita and presumably, by now, the entire company plainly knew about it).

  “Lunatic business,” he muttered, scowling at himself in the hall mirror and setting his tie straight. “I wish Nick hadn’t named those dogs of his after the Scottish play. It’s never wise to tempt the Fates. We’re so much at their mercy as it is.”

  Jess noted that even in complaint, Sinclair avoided saying the actual name of “the Scottish play” out loud. It was really too bad that Walter had let slip that Nick’s dobies were named Mac and Beth.

  “I’ll be all right, Anthony. Whoever it was has probably worked off their hostility with those marbles. Trust me, he or she is sitting around tonight feeling all shocked and horrified at the thought of what might have happened because of their spite.”

  “Well, I think you should take precautions,” he said. “What about that pretty pendant you wore to rehearsal tonight? Take care of it. It fits your Eva so well—you don’t want to tempt some sneaky bastard to walk off with it.”

  “It’s locked up safely,” she said. “After all, it’s not really mine. I expect whoever sent it to show up any minute and ask for it back.” Or for something else instead; but that was best left unsaid.

  She held the apartment door open while Sinclair checked his appearance one more time in the hall mirror.

  “So you have a mystery admirer,” he remarked, showing himself first one profile and then the other, “and now a mystery attacker, too. It’s too damned much mystery, on top of a play that’s about a mystery as well.”

  He meant the mystery of how the family treasure, a gorgeous emerald, had come into the possession of Marko and Eva’s forebears. This was a subject of intense argument in the play, and the play’s resolution hinged on the revelations of the truth.

  The central question was whether these characters were now reaping the vengeance sown by their ancestors’ evil actions, in which case they had best bow their heads and accept their punishment; or whether they were being persecuted by greedy villains upon whom they could justifiably wreak a treacherous revenge of their own.

  And then, of course, came the question of what to do with the emerald and the wealth it represented, regardless of its origins. These questions worked themselves out amid bombardment and deprivation, creating an allegory of virtue and violence with much wider application than the ever-strained politics of eastern European.

  It was satisfying to work in a play that had resonance to major issues. If not for the marbles in the dressing room and the Nick’s opposition, Jess would have been completely happy to be back at work again—this part of the work, anyway: the crucible of preparation.

  On the way downstairs her foot hit a child’s rubber ball that had been left on the steps. It bounded down ahead of them. Startled, she clutched the banister.

  “Life imitates art,” she said. “Anthony—what if the marbles were a code version of ‘Break a leg’? Maybe somebody was just wishing me luck, in a bizarre sort of way.”

  “Somebody crazy, maybe,” he muttered, peering down the remaining flight of steps as if he expected to see a hit man lurking in the foyer.

  He waited outside in the cold with her until she got a cab. It occurred to her to wonder, briefly, whether he would have been so gallant if she were heading home from his bed instead. An ungenerous thought, but appropriate to dozens of actors of both sexes whose beauty sleep was more important to them than either love or courtesy.

  Putting this uncharitable thought firmly away from her, she thanked him for his good company and said good night. He gave her a chaste, bourbon-scented kiss and waved her off.

  When she looked back through the cab’s rear window, he was still standing there, his shoulders hunched against the cold. She felt a stab of sympathy. There was nothing to stop a man from being truly lonely, even if he would fly back home to his one true love if she so much as crooked her little finger at him.

  A far cry from my one true love, she thought tartly. It would serve Nick right if she had stayed with Sinclair tonight. Oh hell, oh hell. She dug a Kleenex out of her purse and blew her nose.

  Oh, hell.

  Her own apartment, across town, was warm and dark and blessedly quiet. She locked the front door with a sigh of relief; should have come home hours ago! Wrapped in the fleecy robe her aunt had brought to her in the hospital, she wandered into the small front room, stirring hot milk and cinnamon with a dash of vanilla. It was her favorite bedtime drink. She had even converted Nick to it.

  Oh, Nick.

  She sat on her bed, pawing through a pile of photos from the bedside table drawer.

  Here was Nick, tanned and grinning and hugging his arms across his chest in boyish pride after a sailing race. Only he wasn’t a boy, he was a man with the long, sliding musculature of a runner or a swimmer; an experienced and well-traveled man who would still gladly crew for someone else in a boat race to Bermuda. Couldn’t keep his own boat, he always said; too much trouble and expense, and he was never home long enough to get much use out of it.

  And here he was again, fixing a loose board in the porch of his house; he swung a hammer like a skilled workman. And here he was sitting in the gazebo out back with a book in his long-fingered hands, grinning at her around the cigarette butt trapped between his teeth.

  And here he wasn’t, at Jessamyn’s side in her apartment—not any more. So much for the romantic notion, staple of a hundred films good and bad, that if two people came through a disaster together they were bonded for life.

  Crawling into bed, she thought of his youthful beauty, a kind of sunny good looks radiating the confidence that had carried him through a hundred dangerous situations in far-off places. Jess could still feel—or imagined that she felt—the pressure of his warm, solid hand on hers.

  She was used to the interest of attractive men, but Nick had always been different: completely straightforward and direct, not busily trying to express himself in the most effective way possible so as to charm his current audience. He had allowed her to see him clear and plain, candidly offering his true self for her inspection, without wiles.

  But not anymore. Now he was cold and opaque, a stone man.

  I should have stayed at Anthony’s. Next time, maybe I will.

  Vampire at Prayer

  O Dark One, are you
watching me? Do you spare a quiet thought for my affairs, here in this brash new world where my search has brought me?

  Craggen stood on the small balcony of his apartment, looking down on the night-shrouded trees enclosed within the block’s outer rampart of condo towers and brownstone row houses. His night vision sharp, could pick out each leaf, each sleeping bird, each soft-footed cat scrabbling up the fences between the patchwork of smaller back yards and gardens. Most residential blocks in this city contained these hidden territories, and they fascinated him.

  He sipped wine from a stemmed glass—watered wine, just enough to warm him and rest his thoughts. How they churned his feelings, these hot, living folk, when he spent any time among them! Fortunately, over the generations he had learned to tolerate little of what sustained them, and that sun-grown nourishment enabled him to endure their company (and also the daylight of their working lives, if the sky was not too bright).

  Still, northern cities pleased him most, especially in winter with lowering clouds and short, dim days.

  Not to mention the crowded streets, from which a vampire might take his slender supper without notice so long as he was discreet about it. These people were normally too busy with their own affairs to pay much heed to one denizen’s modest, though singular, appetites.

  That thin old woman hunched into her quilted housecoat down below, now, opening her back door with a sweep of yellow light: as usual, she called to her pug dog to come in from the yard, where it spent its days digging madly for imaginary rewards. The woman might notice a young man standing on his balcony with his drink, but what of it? Even if she somehow found out what his more usual drink was, would she speak to anyone about it? In what terms, without making herself sound naive or crazy? In a city like this one, the naive and the mad were neglected or taken advantage of; they did not survive long, once the common run of urban predators had identified them. No. The old woman would mind her own business unless he tried to drink from her; and even then . . . .

  A crowded world had its advantages, although sometimes the noise and rush was very wearing. He was proud of himself for being still in it, not driven out by constant change (he’d not been much used to change at Craggenheim, with life on a small scale and geared to the round of the seasons). He wondered if his own country had been steamrollered into global modernity by this time, steeped as it was in persistent traditions and ancient grudges.

  But in fact he didn’t much care. His own world was so much wider than that now, wider and deeper and richer.

  Dark One, he thought, in the old formal tongue of his normal human life, watch over me as my elder; help me keep my promise, help me take what belongs to me by right.

  And, came a voice as sable-black as a raven’s feather, what shall you do then, Baron?

  Whatever I will.

  The voice whispered, You do not know what you will. Your mind is already blurred with interest in a living woman, a performer of fictions on the stage—a professional liar. Be wary, young Baron, of venturing beyond your depth.

  Nonsense! He scowled at his half empty wineglass. My “youth” is only apparent, as you well know; as for the woman, she is attractive and talented but ephemeral, like everything else of the daylight world. To me, she is simply a person close to the person I pursue. In her own right, she can be no one special. A pawn, Lady, no more.

  You have been thinking of her.

  I have been thinking of how best to make use of her. Don’t you think I have had enough, in my long life, of pretty ladies—the best and the worst of them? And this one is scarred, body and soul, by great loss and fearful hopes. There’s too much anxiety; it’s depressing.

  Then why do you picture her so closely in your thoughts, Baron?

  To know her better, the vampire said in the sparkling darkness of his mind under the flat, washed-out darkness of the city’s night. Griffin the mercenary took my Magda from Castle Craggenheim. Maybe I should take this Jessamyn from Griffin the playwright, before I kill him like a dog. The reversal appeals to me.

  Do you think that’s all it is? Then you are a fool, came the answer, light and careless and almost fond. For you are already lost.

  Craggen smiled at the pallid sky and lifted his glass in a toast to the unseen speaker. Dear Dark One, I was lost the night you drank away my human life and gave me this shadow life instead.

  I gave what you asked for.

  True. I do not complain, I merely observe.

  What, then, are you doing out here on this cold night, winging your thoughts away over the midnight seas to your blood-soaked homeland?

  He sighed. Pursuing my purpose, Lady, pursuing my purpose; without that, what could I be doing, still in this world that no longer has a place or a need or a use for me?

  You are moody tonight, came the reply. It would be best for you to find yourself a meal. Moodiness is dangerous for your kind. You can die of moods, you can throw your away life—such as it is—on a gloomy whim.

  Craggen shrugged. Never fear, Lady; I am hot on the trail of my true prey, and I won’t stop short of my triumph.

  For a moment there was nothing but the distant honking of horns at some knot in late-night traffic, and the roar of a plane overhead. Then the answer came, See to it, then. I do not appreciate the waste of my gifts, Baron.

  Which is as it should be, he responded calmly, and drained his glass. But this is my last hunt, and you must pardon me if I take the time to fully enjoy it. I will go take my food as you suggest; and in time I will take also the prey that belongs to me, and take back my property also. This woman with the sadness in her eyes will help me unknowingly, and touch me not at all.

  To this there was no answer; and after a moment he went inside to put on his warm coat. He covered his russet hair with a soft black hat, and drew onto his muscular hands soft, snug-fitting gloves. Then he went down into the pale night of the city, to assuage his hunger.

  And he felt no fear at all, for he believed what he had told his dark ally.

  The Bailiff’s Tale

  The transcription shook slightly in Nick’s hands as he read. How had his father missed this?

  By being a man of action, probably; by rushing off into the fray, whatever it was, instead of doing deep research. And Grandfather Geoffrey, before him? The Burch Collection had been strictly a private hobby of an obscure professor in his time. He had doubtless never heard of it.

  But here it was, the answer—maybe—some answers at last.

  The room smelled of old paper and furniture polish, and the bulb in the brass reading lamp was rather dim. Alone and still wearing his duffle coat (the heat had only been turned on for his visit), he read eagerly.

  The original account, faded ink on stained paper to be touched only by white-gloved hands, had been somewhat modernized on typing paper as crisp and clean as if no one had ever handled it since.

  “Testimony of Stephen Leigh Griffin, of the Griffins originating in the village of Hale’s Hay in Wessex, England.

  “I, Stephen Griffin, wish to put forward here my account of what has been told to me by my father, George Griffin, in the days before his strange and lamented death. We are men of the New World now, but a devilish history links us to the land of our origin, a tale passed from father to eldest son, and with it always a sad and early death, despite outward prosperity in our family’s undertakings.

  “My father said to me that the fortune of the Griffins began in the ninth century, when Griffin was the name of hereditary bailiffs for a nobleman, the Earl of Banford in Wessex. By thrift, good service to their lords and by the grace of God, their fortunes waxed. Yet the bailiff Stephen Griffin was hated by the villains whose interests he crossed in pursuance of his duty to his lord.

  “He was much reviled behind his back and sometimes to his face, including a public cursing by one Alice Riggs, thought to be a witch. She prophesized that one of his family would bring home to the Griffin household a blood red bane that would follow the Griffin men down the generations, until th
ere would come an heir of this house who would unloose his grip and lay bare his breast letting his treasures lie as open for the taking as the petty treasures of the Earl’s people had been open to being taxed away by the bailiff in the performance of his duty.

  “It was said even then that the Griffin men were hard men in a hard time. The third bailiff chose not to share his worldly goods between his two sons, reserving nearly everything to the elder son, Simon. A small portion only was bequeathed to the younger, Adam, to outfit him for soldiering so he might go win riches of his own.

  “At his father’s death Adam Griffin went abroad, fighting where he was hired in foreign wars, no word being heard of him sometimes for years together. Meanwhile his brother Simon prospered and became himself a wealthy small-holder as well as the new Earl’s fourth bailiff of that family, and thus he established his line.

  “And then Adam Griffin came home from the lands of the Germans and eastern barbarians bringing with him a great red ruby as big as a walnut that was a wonder to see, and also a fair haired woman that he married. She never said one word in a known language that anyone could puzzle out in all the days she lived in Griffin Hall.

  “Of the red jewel Adam said he had it from a nobleman who promised him gold and a fine warhorse for his services, but then tried instead to kill him when payment came due. Adam Griffin took what payment was owing for the many battles and skirmishes he had fought in this lordling’s service, the ruby being part of that payment. He also brought away the young woman named Magdalene, who had been a ward in the foreign lord’s household, safe from the pillage and upheavals of that country due to wars and the absence of laws of either man or God. She had no other family or protector left there.

  “Before long, word of the ruby reached the Earl himself, some say because Simon could not bear his brother having it if he could not have it himself. So the Earl demanded to see the famous gem, and when Adam would not show it the Earl of Banford had him thrown into a dungeon and there he died.