I laughed.
"Please," she repeated.
"I just had a vision myself," I said, "of what it might be like living with someone like you. A man could never have an affair, or sneak off for a few pints with his friends."
She smiled.
"I only see things with a terrible urgency about them," she explained.
"Just what I said. Do you see my promise, too?"
She nodded.
"I'll have to find another way," I said.
"Thanks," she told me. "I'm sure you will."
We walked some more, and she took us into the north building, giving us the general layout of the place, showing us where Templeton's, Goodfellow's, and Von Kempelen's rooms were located, showing us the great dining hall with its enormous ebony clock making a dull thunder where it stood against the western wall. Annie told me that its chiming was so loud and so peculiar a thing that if a musical entertainment were in progress when it marked the hour, the musicians must perforce halt in their playing until it had completed its task. We saw her to her own room then, and I arranged to meet her again in the afternoon.
Later, I suggested to Peters that we kidnap her, spirit her out of there that very night, for her own good.
We could head back home then and hunt down Griswold.
"No, sir," he said. "She's another'n—like Ligeia. There's a ghostwind blowin' past 'er. She knows better'n you 'bout these things, an' I'll not be crossin' the likes of 'er."
"People like that aren't always right about everything, Peters."
"You've my last word on it, Eddie."
"All right," I said. "We'll wait and see what develops."
After that, I met with Annie every day and she was eventually able to point out Goodfellow—bluff, beefy, and smiling—and Templeton—tall, thin, possessed of eyes like pits under heavy brows. Peters and I went out of our way to avoid Von Kempelen, being uncertain where he stood in our regard. It was agreed among the three of us that we would interfere—physically, if necessary—should he attempt to create gold. The days fled quickly toward spring and he did nothing along these lines. Nor did he seem to have reached agreement of any sort with anyone, according to Annie. I wondered what kind of game he was playing, and how long he might tease someone like Prospero before he found himself in new quarters with a pit and pendulum of his own for company. I'd a feeling that something must break on this front before too long. Perhaps Templeton and Goodfellow might suffer accidents, leaving him with but the one customer and no way out. Or perhaps we were all waiting, for something—what?—that Griswold was checking into. I wondered whether Annie would object to my killing Griswold if I did it in a fair duel?
I wondered several times, in the days that followed, whether Peters might not have some secret command from Ellison, to follow Annie's orders rather than mine under certain circumstances. Though the issue never came up, I was curious whether he would actively oppose me should I attempt to take Annie away from that place against her will. I wouldn't try it, though. She was simply too persuasive and I too anxious to please her.
He seemed well on the way himself toward developing strong feelings toward the little dancer, Trippetta—another reason, I suppose, for him not to be too anxious to leave.
So we put more work into our act. We had rehearsed before simply to maintain the appearance of our announced roles. We had feared recognition, however, should we actually go onstage, since Von Kempelen knew us and there was always the possibility that Griswold or even Templeton had had some extra-physical means of summoning our likenesses for others to see. It did not seem worth taking chances. But the more we thought of it the more it seemed that masks or garish face-paint might not be out of order in a comic act.
Fortunately nothing like an organized schedule of performances existed. The prince or his steward called now and then, at any hour of the day or night, for one type of amusement or another. Also, many of the performers—musicians or jugglers usually—went freelancing among the crowd of guests, gathering scattered coins against the time when they should be free to leave the abbey and have a chance to spend them.
Peters was somewhat readier than I to take the stage, eager I suppose to do anything that would bring him into more frequent association with Trippetta. And so he actually accompanied a number of clowns and acrobats seeking to increase their number one evening, one of their members having suffered a broken leg during a particularly daring feat. I thought little of it, even on the following day when the troupe was sent for again. It was not until the prince began requesting solo performances of him that I grew concerned. As it turned out, I needn't have.
The motley costume concealed the inhumanly thick musculature of his arms and shoulders, and he displayed a talent I would never have expected for clowning. It was only a matter of days before he had become the prince's favorite jester.
Soon we were into March, and it became increasingly apparent—at least to me, in my garish garb, as I put Emerson through his paces—that Trippetta regarded Peters only as another of the freaks who appeared among the entertainers: amusing, but not to be taken seriously.
I'd even done a foolish and avuncular thing one day. Catching her aside following a performance, I did not exactly ask Trippetta her intentions toward Peters in so many words; but I had wanted to find where he stood in her regard, for having him smitten and mooning about as he was might well interfere with his ability to act and react quickly and with a clear head should the necessity arise.
She gave me her pert smile and curtsied.
"Yes, Sir Giant?" she responded to my salutation. "How may I serve?"
"Just a point of information, lovely miss," I said. "You must be aware of my friend Peters' attentions—"
"The jester? 'Twould be difficult not to, Sir Giant, for he is always there, whenever I turn—grinning like one demented, scraping, bowing, proffering a flower."
"He is very fond of you, Miss Trippetta. While your affairs are none of my affair, so to speak, friendship bids me exceed common civility and inquire as to your feelings on his regard. That is to say—"
"Do I feel that the fool is making a fool of himself?" she finished. "Fairly put, and the answer is yes, Sir Giant. I do not wish to hurt a countryman of his stature, but Prince Prospero himself has smiled upon me twice now and complimented my beauty. I have considerably higher hopes than an alliance with one who represents everything which caused me to flee the American Wilderness. I am, Sir Giant, a lady; and I feel my position in life may soon be elevated to reflect my tastes and talents."
"Thank you, Miss Trippetta," I acknowledged. "It is a refreshing thing to encounter in the midst of courtly circumlocution."
"You are welcome, Sir Giant," she said, granting me another curtsy. "And you might tell your friend that, having seen many, I deem him an extraordinary fool."
"I shall convey the compliment." I turned on my heel then and departed.
Later, when I summarized our conversation for Peters, removing my premeditation to make it seem more spontaneous, he only grinned his broadest demon's grin and applauded it as an example of her wit.
I realized then—perhaps had known all along—that talking was of no use, that he would break his heart over her one way or the other no matter what I said or how I said it.
I wished for Ligeia's counsel, or Valdemar's. But that would have to wait.
It was more than the place by which she walked to sing. Tonight she came to be alone, as more and more she did these troubled days. Barefoot, on the broad, brown expanse, she paced; and the sea boomed beside her and ebbed, the sky grown coppery mountains where cloud had been, echoes of that wave-clap out, out, out, returning sound for sea. Her contralto played against its lowering note as she turned and trod the emptied path of the whales, out through limp, damp weed, glass-slick stones of many colors, shells, skeletons, shipwrecks. It was among the bones of the sea, in a coral grove, that she found him—orange, red, green, and yellow still clinging to the dampness, like the distillation of all the rainbows arching centuries above. He looked away and dried his eyes when he felt that she was near.