The boy peeled himself off the wall and bent to his task with a groan between his teeth. She left the men to their refreshments and went over to the stifling heat of the furnace.
"How long have you been at it?" she asked him.
Jonas answered. "He has been at his Work for six hours, and he will manage another six, with your help."
Anne bit her lip and studied the process, which involved the slow, steady depression and lifting of the handle of a large fixed bellows, its nozzle aimed at the low brick furnace filled with charcoal. The alembic in the top was about eighteen inches high and had some unidentifiable blackened mass inside. The tube that ran through its stopper ended in a container of water, where it bubbled occasionally with escaping gasses. She waited until she had the rhythm right, and then she stepped up next to Jason and put her hand over his on the bellows handle. He kept his grip for two beats and then he pulled his sweat-soaked body away and let her work.
It was a hellish position, stooped and slow. In ten minutes her arm was numb, after twenty her shoulder burned from scalp to hip. She shifted arms, worked for another quarter hour, and then Jason took over again.
It was a long, long day. Jonas resumed his reading aloud, Marc perched on a replacement stool and climbed down from time to time to add charcoal to the fire or make minute adjustments to the alembic, the contents of which seemed to change not at all. Jason's unspoken and guilty gratitude each time she took over was all that kept her going. Even with his youth, his muscles had to be screaming every bit as much as hers. The phrase "sweat meditation" floated into her mind, though she could not remember where it came from, and she would probably have continued with the pointless, hypnotic labor until she collapsed into the fire had Jonas not suddenly stood up, slapped his book shut, and declared, "The stage of calcination is at an end, and our material must rest before the Work is resumed. You have done well."
He moved to the workbench and snatched up the white cloth, revealing a tall, elegant glass pitcher and a matching glass. He filled the glass with water from the pitcher, picked up one of the teacups and dashed its dregs to the floor, then poured water into that, too. He carried cup and glass over to where Jason stood bent over and Anne sat against the wall, and presented her with the cup and Jason with the glass. When they had drunk the water, he took back the two vessels and put them next to the pitcher, and draped the cloth back to cover them. Marc Bennett had come around the table and was whispering furiously in his ear, but Jonas waved Bennett away and came back to stand over them, saying ceremonially, "It is time to cleanse ourselves and to take food again, and to practice the discipline of silence to those who have not seen our Work. Ours is a secret Work, about which nothing is revealed. You have done well," he repeated, and that seemed to be the end of the liturgical blessing, because Bennett leapt in again and insisted, "But she hasn't been cleansed and she hasn't taken her vows. You can't just turn her loose."
Anne narrowed her eyes, not liking the sound of that, but Jonas just threw up his hands.
"All right, Marc, do what you have to. But remember, I told you, Ana isn't following the usual Work here."
Which statement did not please Marc one bit. Still, it did seem that they were to be allowed upstairs once she had taken whatever vows were required; poor Dulcie would be overjoyed.
They followed Jonas down the stone passageway to the outer door with Bennett bringing up the rear. They paused to watch him lock the door, and when he straightened and looked meaningfully at Jonas, Anne braced herself. Bennett marched over to the door of Jonas's washroom, drew it open dramatically, and told her to go in.
"What? No, I'm not going to—"
"Ana," said Jonas. "Go."
She looked from one man to the other, but could read no threat in either of them. Bennett might be looking forward to teaching her a spiteful lesson, but it would not go beyond that, and Jonas, inscrutable as always, nonetheless seemed to be on her side. She did not want to be locked in that small space, but she had to admit that her nervousness did not justify frightening the boy by making him witness a doubtless futile struggle. She dredged up a smile. "Don't worry, Jason," she told him. "I seem to have gone about things backward, so I can't go upstairs until I've been through the starting rituals. It'll be okay. Go and find Dulcie—she'll be biting the carpets, wondering where we both are."
To save him from having to protest, she stepped forward into the small bathroom, then heard the key turn in the lock. Footsteps and voices faded as she examined the close space; with her luck lately, she thought in disgust, they'd forget all about her until Jonas needed to pee. And no doubt the ceremony was something that couldn't begin until midnight.
Still, there was plenty of water to quench her raging thirst, and a toilet, and she had gone without meals before. The water in the tap even ran nice and hot, and she set about cleansing her body, if not ritually then certainly in fact. In exploring the cupboards, she was pleased to find a bottle of aspirin with codeine, which made movement of her stiffening shoulders more bearable, and a cache of thick towels to cushion the floor.
She should have been so exhausted that she would welcome sleep, even in the cramped setting, but sleep would not come. Her muscles refused to relax, her mind leapt and skittered at every small noise, her eyes would not focus on the books of erotica even when the print was large enough to read without glasses. Her body wanted to throw itself noisily at the door, kicking and screaming, and her fingernails itched to peel away at the crack until they could insinuate themselves into the opening. Her lungs even tried to insist that they were low on air, that she was dizzy with lack of oxygen, although she knew it could not be so. More than anything, she longed to pace like a caged beast, but she could take no more than two steps before being trapped by the shelves or the toilet. It was all a part of their absurd alchemical ritual, she told herself again and again. Once she had expressed the proper awe and submitted herself to their masculine authority, they would be satisfied and let her go.
Long hours crept by. The noises of dinner built up overhead, feet slow and quick, heavy tread and the light patter of children. She found herself salivating like one of Pavlov's dogs when the sounds paused for the evening meal, and then the feet sounds resumed for the after-dinner chores. There was another pause during evening meditation, a lesser buildup of noise when that was finished, and finally all the noises faded away. The house quieted. Water, hot or cold, did nothing to satisfy hunger. The muscles of her shoulders and back burned in any position, and even the volumes of erotica lost their ability to distract after the first half dozen. She found herself eyeing the delicate Japanese pictures of couples (and more) coupling, wondering if the pictures were printed on edible rice paper.
She hadn't heard a footstep overhead for at least half an hour, which put it close to midnight, when a noise came from outside the door. Struggling stiffly to pull herself upright from her nest of towels, she waited, her heart racing. A single pair of heavy feet descended the wooden stairs; half a minute later a key scraped in the lock. The door opened. Jonas stepped back, allowing her to emerge.
His dark eyes studied her, looked in at the small room, and came back to her face. "Did you enjoy my library?" he asked he:.
She gaped at him. "Did I—? Well, no, to tell you the truth. Not under the circumstances. I didn't even have my reading glasses."
He nodded as if that were the only consideration, then asked, "Did you wash yourself?"
"Not very well, but—"
"That should do it, then."
"What?"
"Good night, Ana." He reached forward then, immobilized her head between his powerful hands, and bent to kiss her mouth, briefly but with a thoroughness so reminiscent of Aaron that it made Anne's scalp tingle. Before she could react, before she knew whether the tingle was lust or revulsion, the bearded mouth left hers. Then she felt his thick fingers enter the neck of her polo shirt to draw out the buckskin pouch and pull it over her head.