“We dress for dinner at this House,” said the Widow Merlat. She rose when she said it, and the glare she turned on Othur would have sent a normal man back at least a pair of steps.
But not Othur. He just slumped against the polished cherry door casing and turned a bleary half-smile back upon the widow.
“I am dressed, Mother,” he said. His voice was thick and wet, and he pronounced each word with the slow, elaborate care that makes weed-addicts think they’re speaking normally. “Dressed much better than him.” He’d raised a pale, thin hand and pointed at me.
Abad, seated across from me, snickered. Beside me, the daughter Elizabet pretended to be furious and used the occasion as an excuse to reach down and give my knee a friendly squeeze.
“You will sit down,” said the widow, still standing. “And if you disgrace your father’s table again tonight, you shall find yourself sleeping on the street.”
Othur shrugged, ambled toward a chair. The widow followed him with her eyes. “That goes for all of you,” she said. “This man will ask you questions, after we dine. You will answer them. Know that if you insult, if you lie, I shall cast you out. Out of this house, out of the will, out of the Merlat name. Is that clear?”
She waited for nods, got grudging ones and sat.
And so we dined.
The dining room-one of three I’d found, this being the smallest-had floors of Saraway marble, shot through with gold. The walls were paneled with cherry-one was hung with tapestries, one with weapons various Merlats had borne to battles diverse. One wall sported a mahogany and glass curio cabinet full of bric-a-brac and a door that led to a wine cellar.
The wall behind the widow, though, commanded my attention. Centered upon it was a portrait of Ebed Merlat himself. He was depicted as a tall, powerful man, dressed in cavalry officer’s blues, his helmet gone, his hair white and wild and flowing in a wind. He held up a sword at least a length and a half too long to have ever been real, and the horse he was mounted upon would have been a freak, were it truly that large.
But the effect worked. You didn’t see the soldiers in the background, or the fires, or the bulking forms of Trolls encircling them. All you saw was Ebed Merlat, his uplifted sword, his fierce blue eyes. I found it difficult to meet the painted man’s gaze.
He was probably four-foot-nine in real life, I decided. Four-foot-nine, balding, and the closest he ever got to a horse like that was watching the painter sketch it out.
The widow was seated at the head of the table, directly under the watchful glare of the painted Ebed. I assumed she did this intentionally, and applauded her attention to detail.
The table was polished blackwood, the chairs high-backed, cushioned with red velvet and still about as comfortable as a stump. Over the table hung a lead-glass chandelier from which three dozen candles shone. The light should have been brighter, but the ceiling was a dark red tile, and the room just seemed to suck up the light.
Even so, I was able to get good looks at each of the Merlat children. Abad, who had arrived first for dinner, was nearly thirty. He was clean, at any rate, and his clothes were new and well-kept. He had his mother’s small sharp eyes and coal black hair and his father’s tall straight frame, but he’d missed getting a chin of any sort from either of his parents. And while the Widow sat still and silent, Abad was a fidgeting, finger-drumming, fork-twirling mess of nervous habits. So far, though, the only attention he’d sent my way had been a glare that vanished as soon as I returned it.
The daughter, Elizabet, had shown up a few moments later. She’d dressed for dinner, too, though from the Widow’s sharp intake of breath and slight paling of features I’d known that the Widow Merlat and her daughter had different ideas about dressing.
So did I, for that matter. Elizabet’s bright red, over-the-shoulder, slit-up-the-thigh dress said loads about the wearer, and most of the messages had no place being sent in the presence of one’s mother. She had slinked in slow, stopped in the doorway to speak to her mother and turned as she spoke so I’d get the full view.
I’d gotten it. Long black hair done up in Old Empire curls that fell over her shoulders and cascaded down her back. Big brown eyes under lashes done up with just the right make-up for the room and the lighting. Legs in dark silk stockings treated with a powder that made them shimmer in the candlelight.
Her voice was low and husky, and when she repeated my name she smiled with her lips and let her eyes widen just a bit. Then she looked me over and kept smiling, as though she’d just found something she’d been looking for all day.
I let her think she had me hooked, even going so far as to pour her a glass of middling good wine. The widow watched, glaring and hawklike, and once just before Jefrey barged in with a serving cart, I saw Elizabet give Abad a quick look of triumph.
Jefrey served, moving from plate to plate and filling each with food from within his steaming pans. We had duck with bread stuffing, mashed potatoes and something Jefrey called jelad cafe oromead that turned out to be a three-bean salad and a slice of ham. It wasn’t bad, either; I made sure I asked Lady Merlat to compliment the cook, though we both knew that either she or Jefrey had cooked it all.
Abad choked his down and demanded seconds and thirds. Othur pushed his around without ever lifting his fork, drank five glasses of wine and slipped a solid-silver serving knife up his sleeve when he thought no one was watching. Elizabet, like Othur, merely toyed with her food, though she did manage to eat a few beans and most of the ham slice.
The widow’s plate sat untouched. The meal was quick, with the only conversation being of the pass-the-salt variety. Finally, the widow rang a tiny silver bell, and Jefrey rolled his cart back in and began collecting plates.
“Now we talk,” said the widow, as Jefrey scooped up my plate.
“Fine, Mother,” snapped Abad. “And what are we to talk to this gentleman about?”
He said “gentleman” with a sneer.
“Do you remember what I said, Abad? About insult?” said the widow.
Before he could answer, I spoke. “I’m here to find out who-or what-has been frightening your mother,” I said. “To that end, I need to ask some questions.”
“Go ahead,” purred Elizabet. “We all want to help Mother, I’m sure. Don’t we?”
The brothers Merlat issued a weak round of yeses. Elizabet beamed and turned toward me.
“Do me first,” she said.
Jefrey threw a handful of forks into a metal pan, but I ignored him.
“Fine,” I said. “Tell me, then. Have you seen your father’s shade?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and she drew her arms across her breast and huddled closer to me. “More than once.”
“How many times?” I asked. “And when?”
She bit her lower lip. “The first time was-oh, three months ago,” she said. “I’d come home for a few days, to visit Mother, and the dogs began to bark, and the footmen were shouting. So I opened my window-I was in my room, on the fourth floor-and looked down, and there was Father, standing there, looking back up at me.”
“What was he wearing?” I asked.
She frowned. “Shrouds,” she said. “Grey, gauzy shrouds. He had grave-mold all over his face-oh, Mother, I’m so sorry, but he did.”
“And you’re sure it was your father?”
Elizabet shook her head. “It was him,” she said. “His ghost, I’m sure of it.”
“And you’ve seen him since.”
She counted on her fingers. “Three times,” she said.
“When?” I asked. “I need dates. If you can’t recall the exact day, that’s fine, but the nearer you can narrow it down, the better I can help your mother.”
She struggled, came up with four dates, one of which was a maybe, but close-within a couple of days.
“All right,” I said. “One more thing. You know the revenant stories, that they come back to take vengeance on their killers. Tell me, then-why is Ebed Merlat coming back here?”
At that, Elizabet shrugged. “They’re only silly old wives’ tales,” she said. “Surely you don’t believe such nonsense.”
“I don’t believe-or disbelieve-in anything yet,” I said. “I’m only asking you a question-why do you think your father would come back?”
She looked away. “I’m sure I have no idea,” she said. “That’s your job, isn’t it? To find that out?”
I shrugged. “If that’s what it takes, Miss Merlat, that’s what I’ll do.”
She drained her wineglass, and I’d moved on to question Othur and Abad.
Neither was helpful. Othur spent so much time “away”, as he called it, that he had neither seen nor heard anything. And Abad grudgingly admitted that he’d been home on two of the occasions the apparition was seen, though he wouldn’t claim it had been his father. He gave me dates for both days, said he didn’t know what might drive his father out of his grave and retired early, Othur at his heels.
Elizabet soon took her leave as well. “Good night,” she’d said to me, more in promise than farewell. Then she’d sauntered away, sure I was watching her go every languid step of the way.
Jefrey came banging back in. He held a covered plate in his hand, which he took to the widow. “I see you didn’t touch a bite,” he said, plunking the plate down and removing the cloth. “You got to eat, Lady Merlat.”
On the plate was a grilled cheese sandwich and a thick dark slice of chocolate cake.
The widow sighed. “Thank you, Jefrey,” she said. Jefrey stood there and watched until she picked up the grilled cheese and took a bite. Then he left, collecting a few wineglasses and pausing to look at me with a “Well, what?” expression.
I shrugged in return. I’d gotten nothing, except the firm conviction that everyone but Othur was lying.
Elizabet’s revenant wore shrouds. The widow’s wore a burial suit. Abad’s ghost had mad red eyes and a bloody white shirt, and it screamed out the widow’s name.
Othur wasn’t lying only because he probably saw legions of revenants every night, and forgot them all with his first puff of weed in the morning. We could parade dancing Trolls past his bed, and get nothing out of him the next day but pouts and slurred insults.
I looked up at Lord Merlat’s blood-and-thunder portrait and propped my chin on my hands. What about it, Old Bones? I thought. What are you up to, and why?
The widow put down her fork, tinkle of silver on china. “Well?” she said.
I sighed. Lord Merlat’s eyes, mere dabs of paint and shadow, bore into mine.
“About what I expected,” I said. “They’re claiming to have seen something they haven’t, unless your visitor has a more extensive wardrobe than the spooks in the stories usually have.” I lifted a hand when the widow puffed up.
“Ignore me, Lady,” I said. “I do have a few questions for you, though.”
“Ask.”
I rose, stretched, pushed back my chair. “I’m going to take two angles on this, Lady,” I said. “First, I’m going to assume that someone is dressing up in grave-clothes and taking strolls in your yard.”
“Nonsense,” said the Lady.
“Maybe,” I replied. “I’ll also entertain the notion that your husband really has returned. I’m just telling you it’s a distant second.”
“It is the truth.”
I prowled about the ornate display cases, which seemed to favor china plates and silver teapots.
“Either way,” I said, “I’ve got to work backward from your visitor in the night to the root of the problem.” I turned to face the widow. “Why would someone want to frighten you, Lady?”
“I am not frightened,” she snapped.
“Why would someone want to make you think your husband needs vengeance before he can rest?” I said. The widow’s eyes went narrow and cold. A pair of blue veins popped out on her powdered forehead.
“I do not know,” she said, snapping out each word as though she could make it hurt me.
I met her eyes, held it. She blinked first, and looked away.
I sighed. “All right,” I said. “You’ve got trouble, never mind what kind. The best kind of trouble never comes cheap. So tell me this, Lady Merlat. Are you having money problems?”
She met my eyes, glared.
“House Merlat is hardly reduced to paupery,” she said.
I shrugged. “Fine,” I said. “Wonderful. Are you causing anyone money problems?”
She swallowed, closed her eyes briefly, spoke.
“My husband invested well,” she said. “Aside from our banked assets, we receive a quarterly sum from various investing firms.” She swallowed again. “The funds are generated by careful, discrete investing. We engage in nothing rapacious. I tell you, goodman, money is not the issue here.”
“What about your will, Lady?” I asked. “How do the kids figure into that?”
Pay dirt. I saw it on her face. Her face went red, her knuckles white, before she dropped her hands into her lap.
“You said I’d get answers,” I reminded her. “I need this one, too.”
“The children will be provided for,” she whispered, after sending a furtive glance around the room. I noticed she let her gaze linger at the bottom of both doors, just to see if feet might be lurking quietly beyond. “They will not have full access to the Merlat fortune. But they will not starve.”
I considered my words. “Do they know this?”
“They do not,” she whispered. “I will present the official revision at court next week.”
“Next week.”
“Surely you do not think-”
“I don’t think anything yet,” I said, cutting her off when her voice threatened to rise above a whisper. “But I need to know these things, Lady. It may be relevant, it may not. But I still need to know.” I paused. Jefrey’s footfalls passed by the door, continued down the hall and were swallowed up by the dark empty House.
“You’re sure the kids don’t know?” I asked again. She flushed further, glared.
“I am not a fool,” she said. “Nor am I so blind that I cannot see what they have become. They will be able keep up a pretense of wealth after I am gone-but they shall have no access to the bulk of my husband’s fortune, nor the house, nor the investments. I will not see them loot what it took us a lifetime to amass.”
“And Jefrey?” I asked. “What does he get?”
The widow swallowed. “Half a million crowns,” she said. “A year.”
I whistled.
“He is impertinent, rude and uncultured,” said the Lady. “But he has remained. Through it all. I cannot say that for anyone else.”
I nodded. I tried to picture Jefrey in the role of scheming frightener of old women and failed. Thufe would smell it in his heart and bite his head off.
What I could see, though, was that secrets rarely stay secret. The widow might not tell-but someone drew up the new will, someone else witnessed it and someone else filed the appeal for revision with the Court in an act that would need to be witnessed by another half-dozen Court functionaries. A dozen people probably knew. It would only take one of them to talk.
How that would bring about a charade involving revenants, I couldn’t say. But I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, either. That much money, a gambler, a weed-addict-I didn’t need Mama’s cards to see something nasty was inevitable.
“You are wrong,” said Lady Merlat, reading my face. “Money has nothing to do with this. My husband did not come back from the dead to engage in a petty squabble over the terms of a will.”
“I’d hardly call it a petty squabble, Lady,” I said. “And you’ve got to consider my point of view-that your husband isn’t out there at all. But someone is, and we need to figure out who.”
“I saw Ebed,” she said. “I tell you it was him!”
“Then tell me why he came,” I said. “What brought him back? What is this vengeance he needs, and why has it brought him back to you?”
She stood, and the look in her eyes matched that of her husband in the portrait. “I don’t know!” Her voice rang off the tiles. “He died of a fever. What vengeance shall he take? Upon whom shall he visit it?” Her eyes flashed, but she bit her lip and I could tell she was glad she wasn’t facing her late husband’s portrait.
“I don’t know, Lady,” I said. “Not yet.”
The widow sat. “Find a way,” she said, her jaw clenched tight. “Mistress Hog said you could put him to rest. She said you would find a way.”
I stood, backed away from the table. “You really ought to eat something, Lady Merlat,” I said. “And get some sleep, too. I’ll be watching tonight.”
She shook her head. “Put him to rest,” she said. Her eyes were wet, and she clenched her jaw tighter to keep it from quivering. “Please.”
I backed out of there, Ebed Merlat glaring down at me every step of the way.
Jefrey and I took up residence in the Gold Room, so called because the wall and door trim was covered with a small fortune in gold leaf that had begun to peel at all the corners. We shoved furniture around until we wound up with a pair of chairs against the wall opposite the room’s three windows.
Jefrey sat. “Well,” he said. “I reckon you’ll see something tonight.”
I sat. “Why do you say that?”
“They’re all here,” he said. He lowered his voice. “The kids. I reckon it’s one-or all-of them the old Master has come back to get.”
I frowned. “I thought you didn’t believe,” I said.
“I never said that,” he said. “I never did. I just never said I believed in front of Lady Merlat.”
“So what have you seen, Jefrey?” I asked.
Jefrey shrugged. “Not a damn thing,” he said. “Not even when Harl and the widow and that fool butler Ichabod was pointin’ and wavin’. I can’t see it, Markhat.” Jefrey shook his head, and his voice fell to a whisper. “But that don’t mean he ain’t there.”
I stared out across the lawn. Even with dusk lingering, I could barely make out the shapes of the trees and the statues through the window-glass. Three-bolt glass, I think it was called, meaning it was so thick you’d need to shoot it three times with a crossbow before it shattered. Old Bones could be out there dancing with the angels, I thought, but unless he was carrying a pair of torches, I’d never see him.
“Why do you think it’s the kids he’s after?” I said.
“They’re always here when he comes,” said Jefrey. “Always, at least one of ’em.”
I turned in my chair, recalled the notes of dates I’d made. According to the widow, the revenant had walked several times when the kids were away.
“Hold on,” I said. “That’s not what I heard.”
“Don’t care what you heard,” said Jefrey. “They were here, every time. You think the widow always knows what that bunch is up to? You think they don’t come here to hide or stash weed or defile the Master’s house whenever they take a whim?” Jefrey snorted. “They come and go as they please,” he said. “But the dogs know. Oh yes, they do.” Jefrey snickered. “Dogs was trained not to raise ruckus at the kids, early on,” he said. “Bet I could train ’em to forget that. Love to see them bastards try to sweet-talk Thufe.”
I rose, started pacing. If someone walked the grounds only when the Merlat heirs were around, there was bound to be a reason.
“Tell me about Master Merlat’s last days,” I said.
“Ask the Lady,” said Jefrey.
“I’d rather hear it from you,” I said. “The Lady seems disinclined to discuss it.”
Jefrey shrugged. “I reckon she does,” he said. “He caught fever.”
“I heard.”
“Something out of them swamps down south,” said Jefrey. “Turned his insides into sores. Open sores in his mouth. In his nose. Ruined his eyes. His ears, too, I reckon. Got all down his throat. He’d try to talk and cough up puss and blood.”
I’d heard of it. Wet fever, it was called. Rare, and not contagious, but so nasty a fear of it lingers to this day. I wasn’t surprised the widow hadn’t named it.
“Wet fever.”
Jefrey nodded. “Worst thing I ever seen,” he said. “Tried to help out. The smell-god, the smell.” He shook his head. “She never left him, though. Never did.” His gaze went up to the ceiling. “Sickroom is right above us. Door’s locked now. I think she buried the key with him.”
An odd custom, the death-room key burial. But not an uncommon one, though I hadn’t figured the Merlats as Reformists. I nodded. “And the kids?”
Jefrey snorted. “Didn’t show ’til the funeral,” he said. “Othur fell out during the service. Abad asked his mother for a loan. The girl had a screaming fight with her man of the week.” He would’ve spat, but he eyed the polished oak floor, had to swallow instead. “Bastards.”
“You say she never left him.”
“Not once,” he said, and his wrinkled face softened. “She loved him, Markhat. You mark that. I don’t know nothing about vengeance or haints or what-not, but she loved that man and he loved her and if he’s come back looking for trouble it ain’t with the Lady.”
I knew when not to speak.
Instead, I watched the light fail. Jefrey rose, lit more lamps, then sat with his shiny black walking stick across his bony knees.
“So what’s the plan?” he said after a time. “You just gonna walk outside and grab him when he shows?”
I shrugged. That was my plan, all right-wait until Lord Merlat’s shade appeared, then take it by the collar and shake it and see who fell out of the shroud. It had seemed a good plan in the cheery light of day.
Jefrey whistled. “Well, I reckon anybody that cleared Troll tunnels during the War ain’t afraid of spooks in a yard,” he said.
I put on my best war-weary veteran face, nodded and watched the darkness gather.