Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(99)
Author: Anne Rice

The press loosened as they passed through the doors. Men and women were filing around the long table. Someone was laid out on the table. God, not Aaron! Can’t look at Aaron. And they know you can’t look at him, don’t they? They are waiting for you to panic, and for Aaron’s wounds to bleed!

Horrible, stupid. He clutched Tommy’s arm again, and heard Tommy’s correction. “Do be still!”

At last they had come to the edge of the grand old table. This was a man in a dusty wool jacket, with mud on his shoes. Look, mud. This was no corpse properly laid out.

“This is ludicrous,” said Tommy under his breath.

“What sort of funeral is this!” he heard himself say aloud.

Slowly he leant over so that he could see the dead face that was turned away from him. Stuart. Stuart Gordon, dead and lying on this table—Stuart’s impossibly thin face, with its bird-beak of a nose, and his lifeless blue eyes. Dear God, they had not even closed his eyes! Were they all insane?

He backed away awkwardly, colliding with Tommy, feeling his heel on Tommy’s toe, and then the swift removal of Tommy’s foot. All thought seemed beyond him. A dread took hold of him totally. Stuart is dead, Stuart is dead, Stuart is dead.

Tommy was staring at the body. Did he know it was Stuart?

“What is the meaning of this?” Tommy asked, his voice

low and full of wrath. “What’s happened to Stuart….” But the words had little conviction. His voice, always a monotone, was now weak with shock.

The others drew in all around them, pressing them right against the table. Stuart’s limp left hand lay right near them.

“For the love of heaven,” said Tommy angrily. “Someone close his eyes.”

From one end of the table to the other, the members surrounded it, a phalanx of mourners in black. Or were they mourners? Even Joan Cross was there, at the head of the table, arms resting on the arms of her wheelchair, her reddened eyes fixed upon them!

No one spoke. No one moved. The first stage of silence had been the absence of speech. This was the second stage, the absence of movement, with members so still he could not even hear anyone draw breath.

“What’s happened to him!” demanded Tommy.

Still no one answered. Marklin could not fix his gaze on anything; he kept looking at the small dead skull, with its thin covering of white hair. Did you kill yourself, you fool, you crazed fool? Is that what you did? At the first chance of discovery?

And suddenly, very suddenly, he realized that all the others were not looking at Stuart, they were looking at Tommy and at him.

He felt a pain in his chest as though someone had begun to press on his breastbone with impossibly strong hands.

He turned, desperately searching the faces around him—Enzo, Harberson, Elvera, and the others, staring at him with malign expressions, Elvera herself staring straight up into his eyes. And right beside him, Timothy Hollingshed, staring coldly down at him.

Only Tommy did not stare at him. Tommy stared across the table, and when Marklin looked to see what had so distracted him, what had made him oblivious to the perfect horror of all this, he saw that Yuri Stefano, clothed in proper funereal black, was standing only a few feet away.

Yuri! Yuri was here, and had been here all along! Had Yuri killed Stuart? Why in the name of God hadn’t Stuart been clever, why hadn’t he known how to deflect Yuri? The whole point of the intercept, of the bogus excommunication, was that Yuri would never, never be able to reach the Motherhouse again. And that idiot Lanzing, to have let Yuri escape from the glen.

“No,” said Elvera, “the bullet found its mark. But it wasn’t fatal. And he’s come home.”

“You were Gordon’s accomplices,” said Hollingshed disdainfully. “Both of you. And you and only you are left.”

“His accomplices,” said Yuri from the other side of the table. “His bright ones, his geniuses.”

“No!” said Marklin. “This is not true! Who is accusing us?”

“Stuart accused you,” said Harberson. “The papers scattered all through his tower house accused you, his diary accused you, his poetry accused you, Tessa accused you.”

Tessa!

“How dare you enter his house!” thundered Tommy, red with rage as he glared about him.

“You don’t have Tessa, I don’t believe you!” Marklin screamed. “Where is Tessa? It was all for Tessa!” And then, realizing his terrible error, he realized in full what he already knew.

Oh, why hadn’t he listened to his instinct! His instinct had told him to leave, and now his instinct told him, without question—It is too late.

“I’m a British citizen,” said Tommy under his breath. “I won’t be detained here for any sort of vigilante court.”

At once the crowd shifted and moved against them, pushing them slowly from the head of the table, towards the foot. Hands had taken hold of Marklin’s arms. That unspeakable Hollingshed had hold of him. He heard Tommy protest once more, “Let me go,” but it was now utterly impossible. They were being pressed into the corridor and down it, the soft thudding of feet on the waxed boards echoing up beneath the wooden arches. It was a mob which had caught him, a mob from which he couldn’t conceivably escape.

With a loud metallic shuffle and crack, the doors of the old elevator were thrown back. Marklin was shoved inside, turning frantically, a claustrophobia gripping him that again pushed him to scream.

But the doors were sliding shut. He and Tommy stood pressed against each other, surrounded by Harberson, Enzo, Elvera, the dark-haired tall one, and Hollingshed and several other men, strong men.

The elevator was clattering and wobbling its way down. Into the cellars.

“What are you going to do to us?” he demanded suddenly.

“I insist upon being taken to the main floor again,” said Tommy disdainfully. “I insist upon immediate release.”

“There are certain crimes we find unspeakable,” said Elvera softly, her eyes fixed on Tommy now, thank heaven. “Certain things which, as an order, we cannot possibly forgive or forget.”

“Which means what, I’d like to know!” said Tommy.

The heavy old elevator stopped with a shattering jolt. Then it was out into the passage, the hands hurting Marklin’s arms.

They were being taken along some unknown route in the cellars, down a corridor supported with crude wooden beams, rather like a mineshaft. The smell of the earth was around them. All the others were beside them or behind them now. They could see two doors at the end of this passage, large wooden doors inset beneath a low arch, and bolted shut.