Borne In Blood Part 13

"When do you expect to come to Lausanne?" Hero yawned, nearly dropping the travel cup as she attempted to block her open mouth with her hand. "I'm sorry. All the excitement is catching up with me."

"Do you want to rest?" he asked, reaching for the concealed lever that would transform the two seats into a bed.

"Yes, but in Lausanne," she said, laying her hand on his arm. "If the day starts to close in and we are still on the road, then I might change my mind, but not just now. Now I want to doze. I wish it could be like this when I travel to visit my children, but it will be rainy or snowing by the time I depart for Austria."

"At least you will finally spend time with your children," said Ragoczy, aware that the Graf von Scharffensee had hoped to discourage Hero's visit by choosing the most inclement part of the year for it.

She smiled wistfully. "I know I have done the right thing, putting them in their grandfather's hands, but I cannot help but miss them." She drank nervously, clearing her throat between sips.

"Perhaps he will relent when he sees how much good your visit does them." He doubted that would be the case, but he was prepared to encourage her as much as possible.

"Do you think they'll be glad to see me-my children?" she asked, and very nearly held her breath as she waited for him to answer.

"I cannot see why they shouldn't," he answered. "You haven't been cruel to them."

"They might think so, I have been away so long." She bit her lower lip and poured out more cider.

"You children probably understand why, in their own way: children comprehend so much more than we a.s.sume they do." He stroked her hand. "Do not fear that you have been supplanted in their hearts by their grandfather. They must long for you, as all children long for their parents."

"Are you certain of that?" She had intended to snap at him, but this was a cry of hopelessness.

"Children may deny their longing, and they may claim to have forgotten it, but very few of them actually do," he said. "I've observed that for myself, down the centuries. Yours cannot be so different, can they."

"I try to antic.i.p.ate a good reception, but I don't expect one." She looked out at the distant spire of a church. "What village is that, do you know?"

"I regret to say I do not," he answered, recognizing her desire to say nothing more about her coming visit to Scharffensee. "Are you hungry?" he asked. "We have cheese and water and wine still, and a few of those Viennese rolls left." He indicated the small door behind her head that held the food he mentioned.

"No. I will in a while, but just now I'm not ready to eat. The cider will suffice." She put the tips of her fingers together. "We are going along at a good speed, considering. I think your grays could trot forever. For now, I want to look out the window and see nothing but the mountains and the river and the sky."

"Very well," he told her, and kissed her gently before moving back in his seat, where he remained, silent and a bit preoccupied for nearly twenty minutes while she finished her cider and returned the cup to its holder.

"It saddens me to see the seasons change," she remarked as she handed the empty cider-bottle to him.

"Everything changes, soon or late," he said, and was still for another quarter hour. Then he began to speak again, as if continuing a conversation. "There was a time, many centuries ago, shortly after I first came to Egypt," said Ragoczy distantly, "when I often wondered, when I wakened from sleep, if I had died the True Death in my stupor but did not know it. I began to think that perhaps everything I did was the imagining of the dead, that I had not survived but would not admit I had not survived, and so repeated everything I had done in life, but only in my un-dead mind. It took a girl bitten by a rabid dog to jolt me out of that coc.o.o.n of delusion."

Hero looked up, mildly startled. "What?"

"It was a long time ago, of course, and I am certain that I was still recovering from the many decades I had spent as a demon in a Babylonian oubliette." He stared off at the mountains beyond the coach. "I had nothing but my own loneliness and the fear of the sacrifices I was regularly provided to sustain me. Being taken to Egypt was the first step in my awakening." He considered the past in silence.

"When did you arrive in Egypt?" She was intrigued and wary at once, not prepared to hear anything she disliked.

"A very long time ago. They took me to Memphis first."

"Who was Pharaoh?" she asked. "Do you remember? Do you recall anything from so long ago?"

"Many of those things would be better forgotten," he said bluntly. "Yet I recall so much of that time."

"Then you do remember?" She looked surprised at this admission. "Truly?"

He nodded slowly. "It was fifteen hundred years before the Christian calendar, and Pharaoh was Hatshepsut." He tried to think of something to say that would rea.s.sure Hero; he laughed once, softly. "Hatshepsut was a woman, very imposing and capable, as she had to be to be Pharaoh. She came aboard the ship on which I traveled and I was presented to her as a captive. I had never seen anyone like her."

"Did you love her?" Hero asked, then put her hand to her mouth, shamefaced. "I didn't mean that. It was spiteful of me to speak so."

"No. I did not love anyone then. At my best, I was indifferent." He leaned back as much as the seat of the coach would allow. "Not that a foreign slave would be allowed anywhere near Pharaoh without all her guards around her, and the priests. No, they had better uses for me than as an oddity to entertain Pharaoh: I was made a slave of the Temple of Imhotep, and a.s.signed to care for the dying."

"How awful," said Hero with distaste, for she had seen field hospitals and knew what they were. "How did you manage?"

"Indifferently, at first, both in skill and in att.i.tude. I cared only that the priests were satisfied with my work, nothing more." He felt the road begin to dip again, and said, "Lausanne is about two hours ahead, I think."

"If all goes well," she said.

"If all goes well," he agreed. "I doubt we'll have any trouble on this stretch of road. It is well-traveled once the crossroad is reached, in about half a league." He put his hands together, fingertips touching lightly. "And if there are no more difficulties, we should be at Chateau Ragoczy before dark tomorrow. We will depart early and travel as far as Saint-Gingolph before resting. If we arrive late in the day, we will not continue, but spend the night there. If we have made good speed, we will go on. The horses will suffer otherwise." He looked over at her. "I hope you will not be too disappointed if we have to wait an extra day to return."

"No. No, but I am weary of travel."

"As am I," he said, and fell to watching the sky and the lengthening shadows. "The Kladrubers are wearier still, and Gutesohnes along with them."

The coach pa.s.sed the crossroad at Renens-en-Haut and continued on toward the lake. There were more houses now, and the promise of a town ahead-Renens-and the road to Lausanne. Gutesohnes pulled the team to a jog-trot and steadied them through increasing traffic. At one point he halted them completely to permit six mounted dragoons to go past them, then set the team moving again.

"I could see the other coach, about a league behind us, while we waited for the dragoons," Gutesohnes called down to Ragoczy.

"Very good. They've closed the gap. I am sure they made an easier pa.s.sage through the mountains than we did." Ragoczy saw Hero shudder miserably; he softened his voice. "It is over. The highwaymen are gone. We need only concern ourselves with pickpockets and sneak-thieves."

"What a consoling thought," she said, too brightly.

"You understand the risks all travelers take in strange towns," he said, so levelly that she managed to gesture agreement without any sharp words. "It is wise to keep in mind that travelers' inns often cater to those who prey upon them as well as the travelers."

"Why should I fear, since I am with you?" Her banter fooled neither of them, for it was clear from her demeanor that the threat of being robbed frightened her.

"And you will stay in the private parlor I engage for your use. As soon as Rogier is with us, I will task him with ensuring you are not exposed to the unmannerly fellows who are bound to be in the taproom."

The coach lurched to a stop, and Gutesohnes called down, "Sorry. There are pigs loose on the road."

This simple announcement set Hero to giggling, the first indication of her release of tension. "Pigs."

"Probably being driven home from market," said Ragoczy calmly.

Her giggling continued. "I sound so ... missish. I don't ... You'd think I'd never traveled before."

"You are trying to rea.s.sure yourself," he said. "That escape this morning was very frightening."

"Even for you?" Her spurt of laughter made her look about in chagrin. "I don't mean anything ... wrong."

The coach began to move again, and Gutesohnes called down, "Which inn?"

"Le Corbeau et Hibou," answered Ragoczy.

"I know the place," Gutesohnes a.s.sured him, adding, "The team is very tired."

"They have had a hard day," Ragoczy agreed.

Hero had brought her unmirthful laughter under control, and now she said, "You're very understanding, Comte. But I am appalled to think such a minor disruption could work such a change in me."

He took her hands in his own. "I know you have been about the world, and seen many things, but that does not mean that you are immune from fright. The chase this morning was fairly brief, but it well and truly rattled me. I expect it did much the same for you."

She took a long, slow breath. "Thank you for understanding."

"Le Corbeau et Hibou," called out Gutesohnes. "Right ahead."

Ragoczy lifted her hands and kissed them. "You might thank Gutesohnes, too. We were saved by his driving."

She nodded twice. "I will," she declared, and began to make small repairs to her appearance as the coach swung into the innyard and ostlers ran out to a.s.sist the coachman with the horses.

Text of a note from Professor Erich Teich at Heidelberg University, to Wallache Gerhard Winifrith Siefert, Graf von Ravensberg at Ravensberg, Austria; carried by academic courier.

To Graf von Ravensberg, the felicitations from Professor Erich Teich of Heidelberg, on this, the 18thday of September, 1817 My dear Graf, I thank you for informing me of your forthcoming publication on the properties and character of blood. This will provide a much needed text that many of us have wanted to have to hand in our pursuits. By your innovative work, you may have provided a basic thesis from which all of us concerned with anatomical studies might clarify our thoughts and observations. I congratulate you on your accomplishment, and I look forward to reading your book as soon as it is made available. Now that I have returned to my university I can endorse your work freely. Many others will be equally pleased to learn of your efforts, which will doubtless inspire lively debate from Poland to England.

Wishing you every success.

I am.

Erich Teich.

Professor of Anatomical Studies.

Heidelberg.

3.

Hero crumpled the letter and let it drop from her nerveless fingers. She began to shake, her face now the color of whey. "Oh, G.o.d!" she cried and dropped to her knees on the entry-hall carpet, huddling over the paper as she began silently to weep.

Ragoczy, who had been seeing to the unloading of the two coaches, saw her fall and broke off his effort with a quick signal to Rogier. "What is it?" he asked as he went to her and went down on one knee beside her, his back to the open door to shield her from curious eyes. "Hero?"

"She's dead," Hero muttered, and thrust the letter into his hand. She did not sob but tears shone on her face.

"Who is dead?' he asked as he smoothed the sheet and began to read.

Hero shuddered heavily as she tried to speak, but failed.

Ragoczy perused the Graf's note, appalled at the lack of sympathy extended to the child's mother. "What a terrible loss for you," he said as he reached the end of it and reached to set it on a decorative urn near the stairs. "I know it's inadequate, but I am very sorry."

"Annamaria. Annamaria. Annamaria," she said as if repeating a prayer. "I should have gone to her. I should have insisted that the Graf let me see my children." She hugged herself and began to rock back and forth, still bent over her knees on the carpet.

"You had no way of knowing," said Ragoczy, aware this was useless and that Hero was in the thrall of her grief. He motioned to Rogier to keep away.

"I should have known. I'm her ... I was her mother." Suddenly she let out a howl of anguish and fury that made the chateau ring. "G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d, what am I going to do? She's buried already. For weeks! I can't mourn her with her brothers." All the warmth had gone out of the bright afternoon; for Hero, everything had suddenly sunk into shadow, and that now held her as if in an invisible shroud. "If we'd pressed through yesterday, I would have learned of it sooner," she said dully.

"And been no more able then to change what has happened than you are now," said Ragoczy with such kindness that she was able to lash out at him. "Had you been here, you still could not have reached Scharffensee in time to-"

"Little you know about it! You, with your centuries and centuries! She didn't have even a decade. She was about to turn nine." She put her hands to her face and finally the sobs came. "Not yet nine!"

"Nine is very young," Ragoczy agreed, unable to think of anything more to say.

"She hadn't any chance. All she did was learn French." Her sobs deepened. "It is wrong!"

Ragoczy laid his hand on her back to steady her as her rocking increased. "Hero."

"Life is cruel!"

"Life is indifferent," said Ragoczy as consolingly as he could. "It is we who are cruel. Or kind."

Suddenly she rose up and lunged at him, but whether to attack him or fall into the haven of his arms, she herself could not tell. "You don't know anything about it! Nothing! It doesn't touch you. It touches me. Annamaria was mine!"

He held her close to him, letting her struggle against him, but supporting her. "You love her and will always miss her. Grieve for her, Hero."

"You are ... you!" She shoved at him and almost pushed herself over. Reaching for the letter, she bundled it into her hand and glared at him. "She's gone. I have lost her."

Without moving, he said, "Sorrow is always private."

She wiped her face with the ends of her shawl. "And so it will be with me." She wobbled to her feet. "You will never be able to suffer as I do."

"No, I cannot; I have never had a child," he said. "But I know what it is to grieve." He took a step toward her; she motioned him away as if in panic. "What will you let me do for you, Hero?"

"I? Nothing. Nothing." She turned and ran for the stairs.

Ragoczy stood still, overwhelmed by the immensity of her sorrow, until he heard her door slam, and then, as if shocked to action, he climbed the stairs and knocked on her door. "Do you want-"

"Go away!" she ordered.

He hesitated, not willing to leave her in such agony. "You need not endure this alone, Hero."

"And why not?" she challenged, her voice thick with emotion. "We all bear our pain alone, don't we?"

"Not wholly alone," he said, thinking of T'en Chih-Yu, of Tulsi Kil, of Heugenet, of Xenya, of Orazia, of Acana Tupac, of Leocadia, of Demetrice, of Ignatia, then, most unhappily, of Csimenae. Each memory was a reproof to him, but he added, "You need not bear all your loss alone."

She took a long time to answer. "She missed her father so much. At least they may be together now." Again she was quiet. Then, "Go away, Comte. Go away."