wrought? Patently not; and even that was lost. Flung out by Irina, faced with a changed Elfrida, he was probably also in danger of his life. He shrugged. He could not find it in him to value his life very highly, not now that his ability to bring disaster upon those around him had reached this new peak. Selfish, Jocasta had said. That was the understatement of all time.
—I’ll look after you, Elfrida was saying. I promise. I’ll look after you for ever. If you will look after me.
—Elfrida … he said helplessly, but his voice trailed off into silence; he could think of nothing to say.
—I love you, you see, she said. You don’t need anyone else. You don’t, do you?
Light came in to the room. Count Aleksandr Cherkassov stood in the doorway. There was a curl of distaste on his lips, overlaying the shock in his eyes.
—It’s not murder, said Flapping Eagle. She didn’t murder him. There was no violence.
—Was there not, said Cherkassov and left the house.
Elfrida Gribb clung to Flapping Eagle as if her life depended on it. Which, in a sense, it did.
He held her there, and they stood for a long time by the corpse of the Way of K.
XLVHI
FOUR GRAVES, VOID sentinels at the forest’s edge, fresh-made holes in Valhalla, stood at the spot where Flapping Eagle and Virgil Jones had looked across the plain an emotional age ago. It was a still morning, the light mists swirling, the mountain remaining impenetrable behind discreet clouds. Virgil, wet with fatigue, his feet complaining, his tongue licking feverishly at his lips, his eyes peering, watched the approaching procession. His limbs gathered their forces; soon they would have to undo their work. Piles of earth, dark and slightly moist, stood in attendance by the tombs.
Femme fatale. If the cap fits, wear it. One by one they fall around me; dead men around me, unborn life within. Poor, stupid count, lanced in his feeble head. I watched him die, leaving the house of death, so silent, so distant, passing without a word, into the garden, I behind, he ahead, looking ahead. A giggle from Alexei, idiot offspring laughing at bemused parent, a chess piece falling to the ground, and back, back to the house, to sit and stare. Poor hidebound anachronism that he was, finding comfort in the arms of whores, finding none in mine, and now, when I wished to, I could give him none. Staring and smoking, as if death would waft away on the fumes. There, in the past, pinching little Sophie Lermontov’s little rump, gallant he was at balls and in war, but the past was receding now, present horror ousting past pleasure, as he sat and stared and smoked. The triviality of it, to die for the death of a Gribb, his frail mind stabbed by the death of a Gribb. I watched him die, his eyes turned to some other world, his hands and lips as they moved in an unseen, unheard life, I watched it all: as he came to his feet, stiffly to his feet, erect and handsome, my idiot adonis, crumpling then before his ghostly executioners, no, no, no blindfold please, a cheroot before you shoot. The ghostly executioners—I did not see or hear them, the ghosts of his assassins, but it was them. I was not surprised to find him dead.
But Page, little worshipping Norbert, last of the serfs, who wanted only to serve us, so good with Alexei he was; small man that he was, good innocent Page, he would not die for a Gribb, yet for a Cherkassov to die so broke him. While the Cherkassov stood firm in the Way of K, all the Gribbs on earth could perish without harming him. But if the trunk of the tree should fall, there is little hope for the branches. He died when he knew, when he knew the Cherkassov had fallen, invaded by Grimus, there, I have said it, died as Alexei laughed and played.
Femme fatale. It is my lot. I accept it. The grief, accepted. The pain, accepted. Let them fall around me. I shall not fall, I shall bear the burden. But not the blame. Let blame fall where it belongs, upon the living occupants of the house of death, upon her, mealy-mouthed whited sepulchre, and him, the murderous eagle. The Countess Irina shoulders no blame.
Anthony St Clair Peyrefitte Hunter was in the Elba-room when the news of Gribb’s death arrived. His first