“Constance.”
22
Constance recognized the voice instantly. Snatching up the stiletto, she leapt up from the harpsichord stool, knocking it backward. Where had the voice come from? Feelings of humiliation, outrage, and violation mingled with surprise and homicidal anger.
He survived, she thought as she stood in the center of the room, torch darting from corner to corner, searching for his whereabouts. Somehow, some way, he survived.
“Show yourself,” she hissed in a low voice.
Silence reigned. She stood there, trembling. So it was he who had so artfully contrived this tableau. And to think she had allowed herself to enjoy it. To think she had admired an orchid he had discovered — brought by him into her own most private of chambers. To think she had eaten, enjoyed, food prepared by him. A shudder of revulsion passed through limbs already quivering with rage. He’d been spying on her, stalking her. Watching her sleep.
The flashlight beam revealed the room to be empty — but there were several doors and numerous hanging tapestries. He was there. Laughing silently at her consternation.
If he wanted to play a game, she would give him one. She switched off the torch, plunging the sub-basement into darkness. He was, it seemed, familiar with these spaces, but he couldn’t possibly know them as well as her.
In the dark, she would have the advantage.
She waited, gripping the stiletto, waited for him to speak again, to make a move, betray his location. The shame and horror of how she’d been toyed with continued to wash over her: those decadent meals he’d left, accompanied by wine… The poem with the feather of an extinct bird… His own little translation in the margin of the book… The new species of orchid, named after her… Not to mention that he had discovered the identity and location of her son — and then had a t’angka painting of him made for her.
My son… Anxiety lanced through her fury. What, exactly, was Diogenes doing — or worse, what might he already have done — with her son?
She would kill him. She’d failed once; she would not fail again. The basement collections were full of weapons and poisons, if it came to that. She might have the opportunity to better arm herself. But for now, the stiletto was exceedingly sharp and — if well handled — would be more than sufficient.
“Constance,” the voice came again out of the darkness.
It echoed strangely, distorted by passageways of stone and muffled by tapestries. The very sound of it was gall and wormwood to her; it caused an inner fury that was as physical as it was emotional.
She dashed forward, in the blackness, toward the uncertain source of the sound, plunging her blade into one hanging tapestry, then another, stabbing and slashing. Again and again the blade was deflected by stone, depriving her of the satisfaction of feeling it sink into tissue. She continued around the dark room, knocking over instruments and stumbling over display cases, the only sound the ripping and tearing of her knife through the woven tapestries that, she was sure, concealed the hiding figure of Diogenes.
At last, the heat of her fury abated. She was acting like a madwoman; she was reacting exactly as Diogenes expected. She returned to the center of the room, breathing quietly. The room, like many in the sub-basement, had been built with stone air shafts to withdraw the unhealthy vapors from the subterranean space and disperse them into the upper air. He was using those stone shafts to confuse her. He could be anywhere.
“Fils a putain!” she said to the darkness. “Del glouton souduiant!”
“Constance.” The voice came again from everywhere and nowhere. This time it had a mournful, but gentle, tone.
“I would tell you how much I hate you,” she said, in a low voice, “except that one does not hate the dung beneath one’s feet. One merely scrapes it off. I thought I had scraped you off. What a shame you survived. I do, however, take a certain consolation in the fact that you did not burn to death at Stromboli.”
“How so?” came the voice.
“Now you can die a second death by my hand — and this time I can watch you die in even greater agony.”
As she had spoken, her voice rose in both pitch and volume. But now the red mist fell away, to be replaced by an icy calm. She would not give him the pleasure of hearing her betray any more hatred. He was unworthy of any expenditure of effort — save for the thrust of a blade. She would aim for the eyes, she decided; first one, then the other. Out, vile jelly! And then she would take her time. But first, she needed to wait for the moment to strike.
“What do you think of my composition?” Diogenes asked. “You played it beautifully, by the way. I hope I managed to catch some of the contrapuntal fire of Alkan, in one of his more conservative moods.”
“It is unwise of you to bring up Alkan,” Constance replied. “It will only make your end more painful.”
There was a pause. And then: “You are right. That remark must have seemed — no, it was—insensitive. That was not my intention. That was my old self speaking. You have my apology.”
On one level, Constance could not believe — simply could not comprehend — that she was speaking, conversing, with the man who had lied to her, seduced her for his own perverse ends, and then discarded her with such triumphant scorn and contempt. What was he doing here — and why? No doubt to humiliate her further.
Diogenes said nothing. The silence lengthened. Still she bided her time. “So Aloysius was right,” she said. “He warned me to expect a confrontation: and now it has come. Assume nothing—those were his words. So that was you, in the tunnels beneath Oldham? That was you he saw, standing on the Exmouth dunes, watching us?”
Silence.
“And now your revenge upon your family is complete. Congratulations. Aloysius is dead — thanks to that thing you released. You think you are here to toy with me again. You think you can seduce me a second time, with your poetry and effete aesthetics and all the rest of your intellectual ordure. And then, when the moment is ripe, you’ll slip the knife in—again.”
“No, Constance.”
She went on, “Except, connard, it is I who will slip in the knife: an emasculating slash. I cannot wait to see the look on your face when I do. I saw it once before, you know: on that day when I pushed you over the lip of the volcano. It was the surprised look of a man losing his manhood.”
As she spoke, she felt the fury begin to rise again. She willed herself to stop talking, to let the cold composure return so that, when the chance arose, she wouldn’t miss.
At last, Diogenes spoke again.
“I’m sorry, Constance, but you’re wrong. Wrong about my actions — and utterly wrong about my motivations.”
Constance did not reply. She was calm once again. And the hand that grasped the stiletto was ready to dart forward and thrust home at the slightest indication of sound or movement. The years spent in the dark spaces of this sub-basement had sharpened her senses like a cat’s — odd it was taking so long for her eyes to accustom themselves to the blackness. She had been too long in the light.
“Let me assure you of one thing. I do not seek revenge on my brother or anyone else. No longer. Now my aim is different. Your hatred changed me. Your singular pursuit changed me. The volcano changed me. I’m a different man, transformed—reformed. The reason I am here, Constance, is because you are here.”