The Gun in the Old Man's Hand

"It is not the dead who haunt us. It is the face we put on them when we are ready to be afraid."

The Duke did not come down to dinner.

It was the third night since the bell. Rain still fell, thick and slow, out of a sky the color of old iron, and the whole house had the dank cold stillness of a place besieged. The shutters were barred on the ground floor. The fires in the great hall had been banked and left to smolder. Four candles burned on the long table, set for five, and four of the five who sat down to eat did so without speaking, with their eyes on their plates.

Thalessa ate a boiled egg and a slice of bread that she had cut herself from the loaf. She tasted nothing. Across from her, Roderick managed a few mouthfuls of soup. He was stronger. The color had returned to his face. But the arm was still strapped, and there was a stiffness in the way he held himself, like a man bracing against a gale.

The footman served. His hands shook so that the spoon chattered on the tureen, and twice he spilled. Nobody remarked on it.

Vespera was not in the room.

"She has taken up the Duke's tray," Uriah said, when Roderick asked. "He asked for it in his chamber. He's not eaten these two days, sir. Miss Vespera says she'll carry it herself and see he takes a bit."

"Alone?"

"He'll have no one else, sir. He says he can't abide anyone in the room."

Thalessa put down her fork.

"Mr. Finch," she said. "What does the Duke take in the evenings?"

"Beg pardon, ma'am?"

"What medicines. Does he keep a tonic?"

"Oh, aye, ma'am. His heart tonic. Dr Malakor prescribed it these three years. A bitter brown stuff in a green bottle, with orange peel in it. He takes a spoonful at ten." The footman's brow puckered. "Miss Vespera measures it for him. She says the doctor trusted her with it, since she can tell the dose by the weight of the spoon."

"By the weight."

"Yes, ma'am. She's wonderful careful."

Thalessa glanced at Roderick. He had stopped eating.

"Did the doctor leave directions," she said slowly, "for the dose to be changed, in the event of his own..."

"His own what, ma'am?"

"Absence."

Uriah looked at her with the blank patience of a servant who has not been told what is expected of him. "I wouldn't know, ma'am."

"No. Of course not."

She picked up her fork again, and put it down. She was thinking of a bitter brown liquid in a green bottle. She was thinking that she had never tested it. She had tested the tea, the wine, the bread, the water in the jug. She had tested a dead woman's pillow. But she had not tested the one thing in the house that a man took, on a schedule, every night of his life, from the hand of a person he trusted.

Foolish, she told herself. Foolish and slow.

"After dinner," she said to Roderick, in a low voice, "I wish to visit the Duke."

…

They never reached him.

It was a quarter to ten. They had left the hall together, and climbed the main stair, and turned along the north corridor where the Duke's bedchamber lay, at the end of a gallery hung with dead Blackwoods in powdered wigs. The passage was dark. A single candle burned in a sconce halfway down, throwing a tiny wavering ring of light on a faded Turkey carpet. Beyond it, a door of dark oak stood closed.

Thalessa stopped.

"Listen," she said.

From behind the door, very faint, came a voice.

It was an old man's voice, hoarse and cracked, and it was talking to someone. The tone was soft, pleading, almost tender. It rose and fell. It dropped to a murmur and broke into a sob and began again.

"... don't look at me like that, Gabriel. Don't. I never meant it. I never meant any of it..."

Roderick drew his revolver with his good hand.

"Stay behind me."

"I think not."

"Thalessa."

"There is nothing in that room that will be afraid of me, and a good deal in it that I should like to see." But she stood back a pace, and let him go first, and they moved down the gallery side by side, in the swinging half-dark, until they stood at the door.

"Your Grace?" said Roderick.

The murmuring stopped.

"Your Grace. It is Thorne. I should like a word."

There was a long silence. Then a sound like the rustle of a body turning in bed. Then, in a voice they hardly knew, high and thin and strangely young:

"Go away."

"I cannot do that."

"Go away. He is here. He is with me. He says he forgives us. Can you hear him? He is singing."

Thalessa's skin crawled.

She listened. There was no singing, only the drip of rain on the roof, the creak of the old timbers, the far-off whine of the wind.

"Your Grace," she said, "who is singing?"

"The Captain."

"Where is he?"

"There. In the corner. He is standing in the corner." The voice dropped to a whisper. "He is all bones, you know. And his eyes. I never saw such eyes. They don't close. They look at you the whole time, and they don't blink."

She felt Roderick stiffen beside her.

"I'll break it down," he muttered.

"Wait."

"He's raving."

"He is not raving. He is hallucinating. That is a very different thing." She laid her palm flat on the door. "Listen to his voice. It's too high. It is dry. He can hardly swallow. Your Grace," she called, "are you thirsty?"

"Yes."

"Is your mouth very dry?"

"Yes. Yes. It's dust. The whole room's full of dust." A panting laugh. "And it's so bright. Why is it so bright? Take the candle away. Please. It's hurting my eyes."

"There is no candle in your room, Your Grace."

"Oh, but there is. A hundred. They are all burning."

Thalessa turned her head slowly. She and Roderick looked at each other in the thin light, and she saw in his face the same understanding that was spreading like cold water through her own.

"Belladonna," she said, almost inaudibly. "Or henbane. Or thorn-apple. A deliriant. In his tonic."

"The brown bottle."

"The brown bottle. The bitter orange would hide the taste." Her lips were white. "Oh, God. I should have tested it. I knew I should."

"Stand clear."

"No—"

But he had already stepped back, and set his shoulder, and was gathering himself to strike.

And behind them, at the head of the gallery stair, a voice said, quite cheerfully:

"Evening, sir. Evening, ma'am. I've the Duke's night cap."

…

It was Uriah Finch.

He stood at the top of the stair with a tray in his hands, a small black lacquered tray with a green bottle, a silver spoon, a glass of water. His thin face was flushed with the climb. He wore the stained apron of the serving-pantry, and his sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and he looked, for the first time since she had known him, almost content. He had been kept busy. A man who had been kept busy was a man who had been spared the work of thinking.

"Don't open that door," said Roderick sharply.

"Beg pardon, sir?"

"Put down the tray, Finch. Put it on the floor and step away."

"But the Duke's tonic, sir, it's gone ten. Miss Vespera said to bring it special. She was in a taking, sir, she said he had to have it or he'd not sleep." The footman blinked. "She can't bring it herself, she's with Lady Aurelia, in the chapel. She said I should knock three times, so he'd know it was me."

"Finch—"

It was too late.

Uriah had reached the door. He set the tray on his left forearm, lifted his right hand, and knocked.

Three times. A slow, polite, domestic knock, such as he must have given on that door a thousand times.

Rap. Rap. Rap.

For a moment, nothing.

Then the lock turned.

It was a small, dry, final sound, and it seemed to go on a long time. The oak swung inward on a dark room that smelled of sweat and brandy and burnt sugar. A candle guttered on the floor. In the doorway stood the Duke of Blackwood, in his nightshirt, with his silver hair standing out round his head like a dandelion clock, and his eyes wide and black and glaring, and a heavy dueling pistol held out in front of him in both hands.

"Gabriel," he whispered.

"Your Grace?" said Uriah, in bewilderment.

"I knew you'd come. I knew you'd come for me. You said you would, on the boat. You said it when you could hardly speak." His face was running with tears. His lips were gray. "I'm sorry. God forgive me. I'm so sorry. But I cannot let you take me. Not like this. Not in the dark."

"Your Grace, it's only me, it's Uriah—"

"Stay in your grave!"

"Duke!"

The pistol roared.

It was an enormous sound in the narrow gallery, a flat shattering crack that filled the passage from wall to wall and set the portraits swinging on their cords. A sheet of white flame leapt from the muzzle. The tray flew from Uriah's arm. The green bottle burst against the wall. The footman was picked up and flung backward across the carpet, as lightly as a doll, with a look of mild surprise on his face, and fell with a heavy soft thud at the foot of the opposite wall.

Then there was silence.

…

Roderick reached the Duke in two strides.

He seized the pistol by the barrel with his good hand and wrenched. It came away easily; the old man's fingers had gone slack. The Duke stood swaying in the doorway with his mouth open, staring at the place where Uriah had been. Then his knees buckled, and he went down, slowly, on to the threshold, and sat there with his hands in his lap like a child.

"I shot him," he said.

"Yes."

"He was the Captain."

"No, Your Grace."

"He had the same coat." The old man looked up, and his eyes were the eyes of a creature that has fallen into a well. "It was the same coat. I swear it. I swear."

Thalessa was already on her knees beside the footman.

He lay on his back on the Turkey carpet, with his arms flung wide and one leg doubled beneath him. His shirtfront had been blown open. Out of the middle of it, welling, bright and frothy and steady, came the blood. It ran across his ribs and soaked into the pattern of roses on the rug. Frothy. She saw that and her heart sank. A lung.

"Mr. Finch," she said. "Uriah."

His eyes opened.

They were pale, and bewildered, and very clear. He looked at her as a child looks at a stranger in a hospital.

"Miss," he said. "Ma'am. I think I've been shot."

"You have."

"It doesn't hurt." He smiled faintly. "That's funny. It ought to."

"Don't talk."

"I only wanted to bring his tonic, ma'am. I was only..." He coughed, and a thread of red ran from the corner of his mouth. "He was ever so frightened. Did you see? He looked at me as if I was somebody he'd killed."

"Be still. Roderick, bring a lamp. I need to see the wound." Her hands were already working, tearing the shirt away, pressing a folded cloth over the hole. It was hopeless; she knew it. The ball had gone through the lung and taken a piece of the heart's own sac. The blood came up between her fingers in pulses, faster, fainter. "Hold on. Please. We'll get you to a bed—"

"No, ma'am."

"Uriah—"

"I'd sooner stay." His eyes had gone past her to the ceiling, to the dim carved cornice where the shadows lay thick. "It's nice here. It's quiet." His hand moved. She took it. It was cold as a stone. "You'll tell Miss Vespera?"

"Tell her what?"

"That I never meant to be a trouble. I only did what she said." He drew a shallow breath. "She said bring it special. She said knock three times."

The hand tightened on hers.

"It was a nice house, ma'am," he whispered. "Before."

And then the pale eyes stopped moving, and the grip loosened, and the hand lay still in hers like a bird that has fallen from the sky.

Thalessa knelt on the rose-colored carpet, in the guttering light, with a dead man's blood on her skirt and her cheek wet and her lips shaping words that made no sound. Behind her, Roderick had set down the lamp. The old Duke sat in the doorway of his chamber, rocking, with his arms about his knees, murmuring over and over the same two words in a child's voice. Forgive me. Forgive me.

And at the end of the long gallery, in the shadows by the stair, a small figure in gray was standing perfectly still, with her hands folded and her pale face turned toward them, as if she had been there for a very long time.

"Miss Haze," said Roderick, very quietly. "How long have you been standing there?"

"I came as soon as I heard the shot, sir."

"From the chapel."

"Yes."

"It is a hundred and forty yards."

"I know." Vespera's voice was soft and clear and entirely steady. "I ran. I do not often run. I fell twice." She lifted one hand and touched the bruise on her cheekbone, and the tear in her sleeve. "Is it Mr. Finch? Is he hurt?"

Nobody answered.

She stood a moment longer in the dark. Then she bowed her head, and her thin shoulders began, very faintly, to shake.