8

Savannah’s room swam in mirrors. Still naked, she pulled the cord to one side of the bed on which she lay. Withdrawing panels over the bed revealed still another mirror, amber-tinted, round, gold-wreathed. Savannah stretched her glorious body, exposing it more fully to the golden pool of the mirror, offering it to its own reflection. Her auburn hair covered only one breast. The honey triangle at her legs was just lightly brushed with tawny hair, highlighted gold.

Untouched! Unsmeared! Unsullied!

Her mind repeated those words over and over, a litany to her perfect beauty.

Now her arms rose toward the mirror as if to bring the reflection of herself on her: her body on her own magnificent body.

In that moment she appeared to herself a reflected “X” laid out in naked sacrifice.

(Blood!) Swiftly she shifted her body, destroying the reflection. (The memory persisted: Her hand. Blood covering her fingers!) To expel the unwelcome images, she dressed quickly. The room seemed to scream a buried secret. She left it, closing the door hurriedly as if to lock within it the savage vibrations.

Now completely composed, wearing very low-rise lavender pants, inches below her navel—her blouse exposing a major part of her breasts, the rim of the nipples lightly outlined under the sheer material which clung to her extravagant body as if wet—she descended the sweeping steps into the domed hall just as the priest entered the house, followed moments later by Tarah.

In the dining hall the elaborately set table of food was intact.

“Father!” Valerie rushed to the priest, as if for protection from something undefined.

The priest was holding a branch in his hand.

The girl looked at it.

“It’s a branch of wild rose,” he said, and gave it to her. “I found it outside.” He moved closer to Valerie, and to her brother—as if they must begin to choose sides in a terrible game.

“There’s a superstition about wild roses on the mainland,” Tarah said. “They ward off vampires.”

“There’s no such thing,” Paul said.

The priest smiled, deliberately to veil the harshness of his next words: “There’s evil that procreates evil, it lives on the symbolic blood of others; as red as— . . .”

“Blood isn’t red,” said Blue. “After a while it becomes almost black.” Soundlessly, he had entered the room. He brushed one unruly lock of hair from his forehead. He shrugged his shoulders. A smile assaulted the moody face.

“Blood is filthy,” Savannah said.

“It’s the color of old roses,” Karen said. She leaned slightly on Bravo as they descended the stairs.

The priest thought: Blood can color a whole world.

“I hate even the thought of blood!” Valerie’s mind burst in a shatter of red.

Paul studied each of the people here. Suddenly the world was on display. A kaleidoscope changing in flashes of violent colors, shapes.

Looking at her brother, Valerie saw the glimpse of a stranger.

“Blood will have no color,” Tarah said ambiguously. She saw Mark upstairs looking down at them.

Now Tarah left the domed hall. As if to pry its meaning, she returned to the room where the stage waited.

“Why did you come back?”

Tarah froze at the question.

Mark had asked it.

She regained control immediately. “Because I have to discover again how utterly I hate your father.”

Mark stood on the platform of the stage, touching the chairlike prop. He sat on it, over the black cover draping it. Now he leaned back. He extended his hand, like a king in command.

“Will my half-brother be here?” he asked her.

“Of course not,” she said. Their eyes locked.

Mark asked her, “How old is Gable?”

“Eighteen,” Tarah said.

“The same age as the twins,” Mark said. The words were like the swift lunge of a sure knife, withdrawn quickly: “Do you really hate my father?”

“With a hatred like love. It has to be replenished,” Tarah said.

‘‘You hate him because of the two men?”

“How the hell do you know?” (Richard opened the door; and the two stood there already naked; she walked toward them, to her prolonged sexual execution, she knew. The closed door stopped the shaft of light that had pointed her way like a sword into the womb of the darkness.)

Suddenly, looking at Mark, Tarah did not see a child at all. She saw: Richard. Richard as he had looked that savage night that confounded reality. Beautiful. Cold. . . . Anger, murderous fury, clenched her fists as it had that night: She walked in, she turned, once, to look at Richard, hoping he would relent.

To contain the spilling anger, Tarah closed her eyes. Gable. The anger ebbed. He had Escaped Richard and this terrible island.

Mark jumped off the chair, the platform. He stretched his lithe body.

Tarah watched him move away from her. What did she feel toward him? An extension of Richard; did she hate him too?

Mark had left the room.

Again he stood at the top of the stairs. Again he looked down at the others in the domed hall. Then he walked quickly along the golden corridors. At the end of the wing, he opened a door, not knocking, knowing it would be open.

Her body covered only by the purple robe, Joja lay in bed. Her red hair fanned on the pillow. She heard the door close. Eyes shut, she said: “Richard?”

There was no answer.

“Mark,” she said. This time it was not a question.

Mark advanced toward the bed, over the woman.

Through the window the sun was yellow, soon to turn orange in the late afternoon.

“Why did you ask your father to invite me?” Joja’s lips asked.

The boy lay on the enormous bed.

“I slept with you and my father once,” he said. “I was naked. And so were you and he.”

Joja’s eyes opened into the exposed round mirror over the bed, as if she dare not face the boy directly.

“Like this,” Mark said. He removed the trunks.

She saw the reflection of his exorbitant body—the white patch at the middle, sheltered from the sun; the dark triangle of hair between his legs enclosing the powerful groin. Her throat choked with longing.

“And you were naked too,” he said.

As if her mind had separated itself from her body, one reacting independently of the other, Joja’s hands opened the purple robe. Yet her mind cried: Don’t! It was an alert—a warning which had nothing to do with the fact that Mark was a boy. No, because suddenly for her he was not. Rather, it was a warning that announced a fear of exposing herself to him—as if it were she who were capable of being corrupted by him.

“And you held me,” Mark said. “I lay between you and my father. You both held me.” His voice was soft and hypnotic, mesmerizing—like the beating of the water earlier, the flapping of wings: soft and subdued: rhythmic: yet it commanded.

Then she felt Mark’s lips barely touching her neck. To Joja it was suddenly as if he had bent to kiss the imprint of his father’s bite.

Malissa lay on her bed, fully clothed as if prepared to rise quickly in any eventuality. Her hands guarded her. “That pitiful Albert—to challenge me,” she said to la Duquesa; la Duquesa had just finished arranging Malissa’s clothes. The words were clearly an implied warning to the queen in black mourning.

Malissa’s eyes closed. But the blue bubbled glasses on the ageless face seemed to remain watching, alert.

Leaving the room quietly, la Duquesa crossed the hallway, knocked softly but urgently at Albert’s door—and entered the open room hurriedly before there was an answer.

“Your grace!’’

She cautioned him with a black-nailed finger. She closed the door. “She’s asleep,” she said. Then quickly, as if to verbalize an unspoken alliance: “Why do you put up with her?”

“Because— . . .” He closed his mouth tightly: He would clearly not answer, not now.

“Which one do you want?” la Duquesa asked him hurriedly.

“I don’t understand, your grace.”

“Tor—Topaze—Rev— . . .”

“You can arrange it?”

“Of course. I’m a superb, convincing actress.” Then: less sure: “I can try. . . . I think I can get Tor for you. I don’t trust the others— . . .” She was already at the door.

“Your grace, why are you exposing yourself to Malissa’s anger for me?” Albert asked.

“Because the Duke despised cruelty,” la Duquesa said. “He would want me to do this. . . . Often—on rainy afternoons when we made love all day—often he would say that there is nothing sadder than love and desire which pine without fulfillment.”

Suddenly there was the loud, unmistakable whirring of the helicopter, descending outside.

“It’ll wake her!” Albert said frantically. His hands clutched in terror at his fleshy throat.

The loud whirring of the helicopter continued. It had begun slowly in the distance like the flapping of wings.

Mark heard it instantly. He stood up from the bed in Joja’s room. “My father is here!” He put on his trunks.

At the door, he looked back at her. A hint of a promise, long extended, still to be kept?

The recurring rage flowed suddenly into anticipation within Joja. Richard is here!

She dressed hurriedly and left the room quickly.

Mark moved along the mirrored halls. He met Malissa coming out of her room.

Richard is here!

The entourage rushed with her, followed by Albert and la Duquesa.

Richard is here!

Downstairs, the others were aware of the loud whirring of the helicopter, and of the excitement seizing the house totally.

Tarah knew: Richard is here! Deliberately she gathered all the anger within her, to conquer a vague, sensual, disturbing anticipation.

The fiery water surrounding the island pulled the sun’s reflection into its depths.

Now they were all in the enormous hall.

Richard is here!

The glass eye of the arched dome, freezing the sky, glared down at them. From above, the vitreous black and white floor seemed to contain them all within a vortex.

Mark stood on the stairs, Malissa beside him. They all stared toward the white rotunda of columns through which Richard would enter. Mark’s clear eyes were red in the fierce light of the late afternoon.

“My father is here,” he said.