"You'll both feel better once we get you some dry clothes," Elizabeth says. "And some warm food inside you. Peter, would you go downstairs to the freezer and bring up some steaks?"
"Aren't we being a little too solicitous?" I mindspeak.
Elizabeth flashes me a false smile. "Humor me,"
I nod, head for the door. As I leave the room, my bride turns her attention back to our guests. "Oh, where's my hospitality? After all that time in the water… you must be dying to get the taste of saltwater out of your mouths."
When I return a few minutes later, four frozen steaks in my hands, I find all three of them sitting at the oak dining table, a blue ceramic pitcher before them, Santos and Morton sipping from almost empty, large crystal mugs. I eye the pitcher. "Elizabeth, the Dragon's Tear wine?" I mindspeak. "What the hell are you doing?"
"It's done," she says, then turns to them. "Finish the rest. You'll feel better."
Casey Morton upends her mug and drains it. Santos sniffs at his, stares at the clear liquid. "It tastes a little greasy," he says.
Elizabeth shrugs. "I'm sure it's not what you're used to. We live on an island. Our water comes from a cistern."
He nods and drinks the remainder of the liquid in his mug.
Elizabeth smiles, motions for me to sit down next to her.
Santos looks around the room. "I have to tell you, I don't understand why you objected to my coming out here. There wasn't anything in the harbor. I haven't seen anything suspicious in the house-" He smiles. "I mean it's odd in here. I don't think I'd like to live the way you do… but I don't know what you were trying to hide. And I got to give it to you-if you wanted Casey and me out of the way, you certainly could've just sat on your hands and watched us drift out to sea… Maybe the note was wrong."
"Note?" I say.
Santos shrugs, looks at the floor. "I guess I'm trying to apologize to you both…"
Casey Morton's legs give way. She slumps to the floor, in a sitting position, her eyes open. "Casey!" Santos says, kneeling next to her. She nods, staring into space.
He turns, glares at me, says, "What the hell?" then topples to his side.
I stare at him and the woman, wait for them to move, to make a sound, but neither one does. "Now what?" I ask Elizabeth.
She smiles, snuggles close to me. "Now we keep them."
Shaking my head, I move a few inches away from her. I think how much easier it would have been to let them float to their deaths, and wish my bride had consulted me before she acted. "Keep them? For what?"
"For the child," she says. She takes my hand, lays it on her stomach. "After I deliver, your son and I will both need fresh meat. These two were going to die anyway. We can keep them in the cells below. This way we'll have plenty of time to fatten the woman. We can use her and the man as servants until my time comes."
"That's months and months away." I stare at her, realize how much rounder her stomach's become, remember how much her breasts have swelled, her nipples darkened and thickened. "You won't be ready until May," I say, trying to reassure myself with how much more time we have before our responsibilities change.
"Until then I want someone to help me in the garden. …"
"I could do that."
"As if you don't have enough to do," she says. "I don't need you to do any more." Elizabeth stares at Santos and Morton slumped on the floor in front of the fire, like two mannequins abandoned by a careless window dresser. She grins. "We have them now for that."
Chapter 23
Father told me that when he built this house, he took pains to make sure that sounds traveled very little. "Especially from the cells on the bottom floor," he said. "I found I always lost my patience with the noisy ones. There were times, I have to admit, that I dispatched some of them more quickly just so I could have some peace and quiet. You can't imagine how dreary it can be to have to listen to hours and hours of human tears and whining."
Thanks to Father's foresight and the thick stone cell walls his masons built, Elizabeth and I both sleep late the next morning, undisturbed by any noise generated on the floor below us. As usual, I wake first. Leaving my pregnant bride still lost in her dreams, I stop outside our bed chamber, near the spiral staircase, when a few muffled sounds drift up from the cells.
Glad to know the effects of the Dragon's Tear wine have abated, curious to see the condition of our guests, I descend the stairs-the muted noises growing louder, taking form. Casey Morton sobbing and groaning.
When I near the bottom, she stops. I stand in the shadows, out of view of the cells, and listen to the rustle of bodies moving, the metallic clinking of chains. Jorge Santos murmuring in the darkness, "Casey, honey, relax… We'll get through this."
She shrieks instead, loud enough to make me wince, the scream fading only as she runs out of air. Then she begins to moan again, ignoring Santos's assurances, her cries building in volume. Before she reaches another crescendo, I flip the wall switch, turning on all the ceiling fixtures at once-their bright lights erasing all the shadows, shining through the iron-barred doors of each cell. Casey throws one manacled hand over her eyes to block the glare, cowers on her cot and yowls.
I step into my captives' line of sight. Jorge Santos, still in his wetsuit, his left forehead covered by a purple welt from his accident the day before, sits on his bed, blinks from the light as he stares at me. Iron chains attached to an iron ring around his neck and iron manacles around each wrist and each ankle limit his range of motion to only a few feet on either side of his bed. He makes no effort to fight against his shackles. Not so Casey Morton in the cell next to him, separated from Santos by a two-foot-thick stone wall and similarly restrained. She jumps from her bed, tries to move as far from me as she can, tugging and yanking on her chains to no effect.
Already the manacles have rubbed her wrists red, almost raw. Before she hurts herself further, I yell, "Stop!"
Casey freezes, staring at me, gasping air like a frantic animal, her blond hair tangled and spiked, her bruises and cuts from the day before covering her face in an irregular pattern of welts and scabs. Blood has caked on the side of her wet-suit where a gash in the black material offers a glimpse of the white skin and the dark red wounds beneath.
Fear, I decide, will do more to still her than any soothing talk. I almost growl my words. "Casey, I keep a pack of wild dogs outside. Do you remember seeing them chase your boat when you and Jorge sailed close to the island?"
She nods.
"If you don't quiet down, I'm going to have to put a few of them in the cell with you. Do you understand?"
She nods again, looks at the floor.
I move on, stand in front of Jorge's cell. "I think your friend will be quiet for a while," I say.
"You're a prince," Santos says, his tone acid. He examines his chains. "Is this what you did with Maria? You drugged her and held her here until you killed her?"
"No." I fight the temptation to explain how I feel about his sister's death, to dismiss it as an accident. "I never drugged Maria. I never had her down here."
"Maybe…" Santos shrugs. "At this point I guess there's no reason for you to lie." He locks eyes with me. "But I know you know what happened to her."
His eyes possess the same shape, the same color as Maria's. I find he reminds me too much of her. It irritates me that I still care about his sister's death, and it bothers me that Elizabeth has engineered events in a way that forces me to be reminded of her constantly. Better, I think, that he and the woman had died. I look away.
Santos irritates me more by adopting a smug expression, almost a smirk, as if he's won a point in a contest of wills. "I notice that you didn't deny that you killed her," he says.
Sighing, I shake my head. "No, I didn't deny it. I didn't say I did it either. I don't think discussing Maria now serves either of us very well…" I let my voice deepen, turn menacing. It's time, I think, to remind him his fate depends on my good will. "It certainly doesn't serve you."