CHAPTER 21: I Will Also Make An End

When I begin,
I will also make an end.
I Samuel 3:12

“What are you going to do now, Araciel?”

Basti stopped, lowering his lamp slightly. Firelight flickered from the parlor, the only other light in the dark halls.

“As I have assured you before, donna, I will stay with the keep, an’ I still be welcome after this.” Araciel sounded weary. Basti grimaced. His friend had been silent as he’d wrapped the four corpses in their linen shrouds, and Basti was worried about him. “I have no wish to leave.”

“Why? You’ve fulfilled your side of the pact with my mother and father, and you’ve attained what you wanted from them. Why stay, now?”

A moment’s silence, and Basti cleared his throat, stepping into the parlor. Araciel and Caterina sat near the fire, the chessboard between them but untouched. He couldn’t read anything in his friend’s shadowed face. He hoped his interruption was timely rather than awkward.

“Alrune said he’s leaving now. He wants to go before the sun sets.”

“He’s leaving at night, in the middle of a storm?” Caterina stood. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know,” Basti shrugged. “But he’s pulling on his boots right now. Here.” He handed her his lamp as she started out the doorway. She gave him a brief smile of thanks, and vanished down the hall.

“He leaves as he came, in a storm.” Araciel’s tone was almost as sardonic as Alrune’s, as he slowly pulled himself out of the chair. “Methinks his entire stay here has been tempestuous.”

“Are you all right?”

“Well enough.” Araciel gave him a half-hearted smile, lighting a lamp on the mantelpiece to take with them through the halls. “I be affrighted of my lord Johannes’ return, for I know not what he will say when he hears of the death of his last son.”

“He can’t blame you for that.”

“I think, nonetheless, he will find aught to blame me for.”

Basti took the lamp from his friend’s hands. Albrecht had given Araciel a stern lecture when he’d changed the wrappings on his much-abused shoulder wound, but the fallen angel insisted on wearing his saber wrong-sided in case things weren’t quite over. Basti was still jumpy enough to want his friend’s good hand free — just in case.

“He won’t be back for months.”

“And when he returns?”

“Well….” Basti gave his friend a curious look. “Let Donna Caterina explain. She’ll give him a fair account of what happened.”

Araciel nodded, looking troubled as they walked down the west hall to the doors.

Nobody could avoid wincing as the key grated in the lock, then turned to unfasten the heavy wooden doors. Albrecht helped Araciel with them. The wind blew snow inside to powder and melt on the floor.

“Are you sure you won’t stay?” Caterina asked, shadows darkening her eyes. She was the only one who’d thought to ask the question, and Alrune shook his head. “You’re still welcome.”

“Oh, I couldn’t stay anymore,” Alrune smirked. “I deplore boredom.”

“Won’t you even take a horse?”

“I despise animals. The feeling is mutual.” The dwarf paused to glance up at Araciel. The fallen angel seemed about to say something, but Alrune just laughed at him and left, pulling up the hood of his cloak as he stepped outside.

“I had best unlock the gate for him,” Araciel murmured after a second, pulling his ring of keys from the door and following the dwarf outside. Caterina frowned.

“I didn’t lock the gate,” she protested, but Araciel was already out of sight in the whirling snows. She sighed.

“I’ll go,” Basti volunteered.

“No, that’s all right. I’ll go.” She hurried outside, after him.

“Well, that’s that,” Albrecht said finally, shivering in the cold. “I’m not sorry to see him leave.”

“No….” Danti muttered.

Before he’d left, the dwarf had helped them board up all the shattered glass windows, leaving the keep dark but secured from the winter. Four bodies laid wrapped in linen in the stable loft, frozen; two awaited transportation to Gestern once the trails cleared, two awaited burial once the ground thawed. Danti and Albrecht had scrubbed blood from the floors and walls of the Gryphon Hall, and thrown away the bloodstained bedclothes from Dietrich’s room, where Fraü Bruhn had met a pointless end simply because she’d stood between the Erl King and the noble’s son.

Nobody had slept that first night, all working hard to put things to rights, as though that would somehow exorcise their memories. The work had continued through the second day, until at last Alrune had stopped and told them he would leave before the sun set.

“Good God,” Albrecht swore, eyes widening. “It’s almost night, and I still haven’t started dinner!”

“Need any help?” Danti asked, following the thin cook as he hurried off.

“I’m panicking, not desperate.”

Basti sat down in the same chair he’d used the first night he’d arrived in Gestern Keep. The bites and scratches Gestern had left on his side had still been there after the transformation, and his hands and feet were still cut where glass had slashed his paws. The damage wasn’t serious, but he preferred to stay off his feet. He set the lamp on the floor beside him, exhausted.

He’d fallen into a half-sleep filled with the sounds of a storm and the feeling of running swiftly beneath snow-heavy pines when voices awoke him. He blinked, to see Araciel and Caterina return together, heads tilted toward each other to talk over the sound of the wind. The fallen angel had taken the lamp, holding it high as they walked to light their way. For a second the two paused, snow whirling around them, and Araciel bowed, lifting Caterina’s hand to his lips.

Basti glanced away when Caterina pulled her hand away and leaned forward, instead. He was adjusting the lamp wick when the two entered the hall, Araciel closing and locking the doors behind them.

“Albrecht forgot dinner,” he said, looking up. “Danti’s helping him make something.”

“Fate forefend,” Araciel muttered, turning and tucking the ring of keys into his belt. Caterina laughed, her face flushed.

“I’d better go and chase him away,” she smiled, shaking snow from her velvet skirts. For a moment the last night’s events seemed forgotten as she took the lamp back from Araciel. “I remember the week Albrecht was ill and Danti took his place….”

Basti watched as she vanished down the hall, and stole a glance at his friend, only to find Araciel gazing at him. For a moment they were silent, and then Basti gave a broad, Neapolitan shrug.

“Let Donna Caterina explain,” he sighed. Araciel winced, and then sighed.

“She may explain to her father’s satisfaction,” the fallen angel said, voice hopeless, “but how shall I explain to mine?”

Basti sat cross-legged on the floor, chin on his fist as he stared at the roughly shaped marble block before him. Behind him Danti rustled papers, pen scratching quickly as he sketched and resketched a study for a painting. Light and freezing air streamed through the glassless window. Danti had finally pried the boards off, impatient with working in lamplight, though now the studio was the coldest room in the keep.

“Danti?”

The sculptor looked up, to see Albrecht standing in the doorway. Basti twisted to look over his shoulder.

“Caterina saw a rider on the trail up the mountain.”

“Johannes,” Danti said, wiping his pen’s tip on a scrap of linen and setting it aside.

Albrecht nodded.

“I’m going upstairs to tell Araciel.”

“All right.”

Basti got to his feet, a feeling of dread chilling his stomach. Danti still sat, gazing into nothing.

Three months had passed. They had been quiet months. The five survivors had been reluctant to speak to each other, reluctant to think too long on what had happened. Danti’s ribs had knit, Basti’s scratches and cuts had vanished, and even Araciel’s shoulder had finally healed.

Basti had found distraction in his sculpture, quietly whittling bozzetti, then finally beginning work on the marble Danti had set aside for him. Danti had started sketching, first ideas for sculptures, then for paintings, but he had yet to begin a serious project. Albrecht tended to the needs of the keep, and Araciel spent long hours in the laboratory and library, searching for the answer to a question only he knew to ask. Caterina also immersed herself in work, first methodically searching Hubert Naich-Gestern’s rooms and cataloguing his music, and then when no clue to his identity could be found there, losing interest and returning to Alfons’ translations. The twelve days of Christmas had come and gone almost unnoticed, without the festivities Basti was accustomed to, just a prayer in the evenings with all five gathered in the parlor.

“Well,” Danti said at last, “we’d better go out to greet him. Change out of that shirt, Basti, there’s a rip along the cuff.”

Basti fingered the tear, wondering where he’d gotten it, and nodded.

When he’d changed into clothes more suitable for greeting the keep’s lord, he walked downstairs, reluctant to witness what would come. The five of them had reached a kind of normality, and now their solitude would be disturbed. Basti wondered if he really wanted to disturb the dust that had settled over that nightmarish memory.

Albrecht and Danti nodded to him as he stepped through the door and squinted in the sun, half-blinded by the snow that still covered the ground. Araciel stood by the gate, holding it open and waiting. Beside him, Caterina shivered in the cold, a warm cloak pulled around her shoulders.

Finally the horseman came into sight, Signore Johannes lifting a hand in greeting as he approached. Beast and man looked tired from breaking a trail up the mountain, the snow caked on Johannes’ boots and leggings were evidence that more than once he’d dismounted and led the horse through the drifts.

“Guten Tag,” Johannes said cheerfully, as they rode into the courtyard. Araciel took his reins and helped his master down, silent. The alchemist looked around, leaning over to embrace Caterina as she approached.

“Where’s Dietrich?” he asked, looking over her shoulder.

Basti turned away and walked back inside. He didn’t want to listen. Nobody tried to stop him.

Araciel found him hours later, sitting in front of the marble block again. He’d lit some candles as the shadows had crept across the floor, and sat with hands tucked under his arms to keep them warm while he considered where to place his next cut.

“Basti? Have thou a moment?”

“Of course.” Basti looked up, searching his friend’s face. “How’s Signore Johannes?”

“He be deeply shaken, as thou might expect.” Araciel pulled over a stool and sat down, ignoring the dust that threatened his rich attire. “He fears the effect this news shall have on Elisabeth, who be still in Munich with her relatives.”

“Is she better?”

“So he assured us; but of a certainty, this new blow shall come hard.”

“Well, what’s he going to do?”

“I know not; he has spent many an hour listening to Donna Caterina, and now has retired before the evening meal to consider and mourn.”

“I’m sorry.”

They sat quietly a few minutes, then Araciel sighed.

“Basti, I need thy pragmatist’s advice, and thy Neapolitan good sense.”

“I thought all Neapolitans were rude.”

“That,” Araciel said with a faint smile, “be a flaw that does unfortunately come hand-in-hand with pragmatism.”

Basti grinned back.

“What’s wrong?”

Araciel looked almost uncomfortable, studying the half-started sculpture with more intensity than it deserved.

“I have searched these three months for some clue to mine own identity now; and have found nothing to give hint of my present nature. No more take I injury from that which be sacred – yet neither have I become what I was, capable of shedding this flesh and transcending this earth.”

“So, you’re human, just like the rest of us.” Basti looked up, uncrossing his legs. “Didn’t Alrune say you’d be?”

“But am I to live and die like a mortal man, or be there a chance yet of regaining the heavens? What be expected of me, now?”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Basti sighed. “You need someone who knows more about religion, I guess.”

“I have come to realize that.” Araciel dragged his gaze from the statue and gave him a grave look. “And thus I conclude I must leave the keep to seek my answer elsewhere.”

“Leave?” Basti was aghast, unable to imagine the keep without him. Unable to imagine living in the keep without him. “Where will you go?”

“To the library of the Medici, perhaps, or to the other great libraries and collections in these lands.” Araciel closed his eyes a moment. “It has occurred to me that I might travel e’en further, to the Holy Land, perhaps. Where’er I must to learn what manner of creature I be now.”

“But … but why? Can’t you wait? I mean, you could send off for copies of manuscripts, you could write to scholars and philosophers….”

“Basti, an’ I stay, how shall I further resist mine own weaknesses? I be of half a mind e’en now to ask my Signore Johannes for Caterina’s hand, though I fear he would refuse from hatred of my failure to protect his son….”

Basti ran a hand through his marble-dusted hair in unconscious imitation of his master, attempting to martial his thoughts. That Araciel was finally admitting to having lost his heart was no great surprise; Basti had known Araciel was enamored for a long time, and had half expected the subject to be brought up tonight. He’d managed to shake off the Erl King’s whispered insinuations as he’d watched the two these last months, and seen the careful, guarded manner Araciel maintained around Caterina even when they thought they were alone. Araciel knew the danger he posed to himself and to her, and kept a watchful check on himself.

But this idea of leaving – Basti hadn’t expected that. He’d hoped Araciel would do exactly what he’d just suggested, ask to marry Caterina, and eventually become the next lord of Gestern Keep. Basti hadn’t been able to imagine leaving them, looking elsewhere for patronage when he finally became a true sculptor. It had never occurred to him to imagine that Araciel would be the one to leave.

“Well, why not ask him? I know Caterina would want you to. Go and talk to the lord, and forget this insane idea of leaving the keep. Araciel,” Basti pleaded, “what happens if you spend the next thirty years searching for an answer, and then die of old age? You’ll have lived in vain, and broken Caterina’s heart for nothing!”

“What happens, Basti, if I do stay here for thirty years and age not, and all I love finally die around me? And if then I learn I have failed God by succumbing once more to the weaknesses of the flesh?”

“You don’t have to lead a priest’s life to serve God. Most of the priests I’ve known haven’t been nearly as good-hearted as you are, anyway.”

“I dare not make a mistake, Basti. Be it not better to err on the side of righteousness?”

“Well, you’re sure not erring on the side of love!” Basti scrambled to his feet, angered. “You’ll leave all your friends and the woman you love just to get back to Heaven again – that doesn’t sound like anything but pride, to me! Pride and vanity!”

“There be no vanity in the attempt to serve God –”

“Well, if you go, I’m going with you.”

“No!”

“Why not?” Basti stood and glared at him, shaking hair out of his eyes. “I don’t abandon my friends!”

“Thy art –”

“Your true love.”

Araciel stared at him, astonished.

“The last time thou looked at me like that,” the fallen angel said at last, tentatively, “thou were intent on leaping at me to protect Donna Caterina.”

“What makes you think I’m not, now? Do you want to see her married off to a stranger, someone she doesn’t even know, much less love? She escaped that fate once — are you going to condemn her to it again? She doesn’t want to leave you, and she doesn’t want to leave Gestern Keep!”

“Basti,” Araciel pleaded, “this be of the utmost importance –”

“And her feelings aren’t?”

The fallen angel’s objection died on his lips.

“You brushed me off once before, but you’re not going to to do it again,” Basti said firmly. “I told you then that both you and Caterina loved each other, and you wouldn’t listen to me. Now that you know better, maybe you’ll start listening to me again. When everyone learned what you were, you thought we’d all hate you, and we didn’t. When you Fell from grace you thought you’d never escape Hell, and you did. When you argued with Alrune all the time, you thought he was your enemy, and he wasn’t. Have you ever stopped to wonder why you keep assuming the worst, and it never happens?”

“I –”

“I’m not done yet,” Basti overrode him, glaring. “You’re intent on assuming that Signore Johannes is going to hate you, and I’ll lay a wager that he won’t. He’s an intelligent man, and he loves Caterina and you both. Now, I don’t know if it’s just that you’re a natural pessimist, or if Satan’s trying to trick you into despair so you’ll return to Hell, but I think it’s time for you to stop it now. You’re going to stay here, and marry Caterina, and hire messengers to travel everywhere they can to bring you back information on angels and men, and you know what you’ll find out?”

“No,” Araciel admitted, bemused.

“You’ll find out that nobody knows anything more than you, because these aren’t the kind of matters mortals are involved in. And eventually you’ll find out if you’re mortal or not, because either you’ll die or we will, but at least you’ll have had time with people you love. And,” Basti continued, “I don’t know anything about the Church and I can’t come up with quotes in six other languages or even criticize someone’s Latin, but I’ll bet everything I’ve got that you’ll find out that God isn’t petty enough to care that you took a few decades off to make someone’s life happier.”

Araciel waited until several moments had passed.

“Very well.”

Basti took a deep breath and let it out.

“So you’re staying?”

“I shall stay, Basti.” Araciel gave him an uncertain smile, looking up from his seat on the dusty stool. “I would not dare otherwise, for fear of thy wrath. Thou be a true student of thy master, Basti – I shall swear thou did twice scowl exactly like Danti during that lecture.”

“And you’ll talk to Johannes?”

“But –” Araciel caught himself before Basti could, with a trace of chagrin. “By the end of the month, Basti.”

“What’s all the shouting about?” Danti asked, poking his head through the doorway. “Basti, aren’t you coming to dinner? It isn’t healthy to get so wrapped up in your work that you forget meals, you know.”

“Of course not,” Basti agreed. The sculptor gave him a conspiratorial smile and continued down the hall.

“Then be I forgiven?”

Basti smiled and held out a hand. Araciel caught it and let the sculptor’s apprentice pull him from the stool. For a moment the two stood in a pool of candlelight, streaked with stone dust, breath white in the cold January air.

“There be so much yet to do,” Araciel said wistfully, gazing at his friend. “So many questions that yet remain unanswered on this earth.”

“Well, you can’t do everything on your own,” Basti said practically, picking up a candle and handing it to his friend. The flame flickered wildly in the breeze from the broken window, and Araciel protected it with one hand as Basti extinguished the rest. “Not even the Erl King could do that.”

“And shall we also vanish like the old gods, when we be forgotten by the rest of mankind?”

“No. That’s what art is for.” Basti paused a moment. “And children.”

“And angels,” Araciel sighed, holding the candle up to light their way through the dark halls to dinner. “When they do not forget their own selves.”

“I guess we all do that.”

They climbed the stairs in silence, walking through the halls to their own rooms. At the door, Araciel paused, candle in hand.

“Basti?”

Basti turned, tossing hair out of his eyes.

“I wish I could be as certain as thee, to know what and who I am as well as thou knowest thyself.” The fallen angel looked wistful in the unsteady light.

“Well,” Basti said, giving his friend a surprised look, “you were the one who told me exactly who and what I am; I’m Sebastiano da Napoli, and what I’m doing or what shape I’m walking in at the time doesn’t really make any difference at all. And you, you’re Araciel, whether you’re in Heaven, Hell, or Gestern Keep.”