Chapter Six:  Throwing Down the Gauntlet

            Starling woke dreamily, loath to leave the warmth of sleep behind her.  Something was drawing her up and out of her brief unconscious bliss, and she put a hand up to her face.  Moist.  Cool.

            She sat up and the compress fell into her lap.  A wet white handkerchief, still cold, and two cucumber slices.  Her eyes did feel better, less puffy and less raw.  The fire had been banked, the teacup pieces removed from the hearth, and a note — ah, his ubiquitous notes — lay on the table.

            She found herself instructed to go upstairs to her room and change for dinner, set for the civilized hour of half past eight.  “Suitable attire” would be provided her.  A glance at her watch showed that the time lacked only a few minutes of eight-thirty.  She had lazed long in dreamless sleep, and would have to hurry to be ready.  Strangely, now that she was awake, she felt her dreams had just begun.

            She heard sounds in the kitchen, but was not moved to investigate.  She picked up her purse from the hall table, climbed the stairs back to what she was already thinking of as her own bedroom, and opened the door to wonder.

            Carefully laid out on the bed was a dress of a type she’d never dared wear.  Black satin, strapless, fitted, its lines slightly softened by a layer of some gauzy stuff.  Generous side slits in the skirt would provide freedom of movement and absolutely nowhere to conceal a weapon, she noted, habit riding roughshod over a certain degree of girlish glee.  A bustier and panties of matching black satin lay alongside, and hose and an honest-to-God garter belt completed the scene.  Oh, yes, and shoes on the floor beside.  Can’t forget the shoes.

            She stripped off, hanging his clothes back in the armoire, and found slacks and blouses had taken the place of the clothes she’d seen there earlier.  More sensible undergarments were folded on the bottom shelf.  She closed the door and leaned against it, her breath coming oddly.  She felt like she was… was… was crouched in the back of an unmarked van, balanced on her toes, ready to bust open the doors and lay down some serious law.

            She sighed and began to put on the ensemble, drawing the black nylon up to her thighs.  Was a good thing she’d shaved her legs yesterday, she thought, and laughed.  Then stopped laughing as she realized that it was just yesterday, and her razor and most of the rest of her belongings were at the duplex, and Ardelia was probably going mad with worry and hassling the higher-ups, putting her own career in danger.

            “What a tangled web we weave,” she said silently, trying to zip up the back of the dress and needing the flexibility of a contortionist to do so.  “Though I never wanted to deceive.”  She finally managed by bracing herself against the bedpost, and exhaled slowly through pursed lips.  Her cheeks were a little flushed from the exertion.  I should get a note or something to her… but what on earth would I say?

            She stepped into the strappy black shoes with their three-inch heels, fastened the small silver buckles and, with another glance at her watch, turned to go into the bathroom.  The slippery soles slid on the high pile carpet and her feet went out from under her.  Only quick reflexes and the proximity of the helpful bedpost saved her from falling flat on her ass.  She stood there a moment, recovering, then grabbed her purse and set out carefully across the room.

            There was a box on the bathroom counter, a gray velvet affair that she recognized as containing jewelry, and another note.  “He could try talking to me for a change,” she muttered as she opened it.  Then she lacked the air to mutter anything else.

 

“Clarice—

A Roman general named Vitellius once sold a single pearl to finance an entire military campaign.  Cleopatra once crushed a pearl into her wine and drank it down to make a point.  What you choose to do with your pearls, bella bellatrix, is up to you.

Remember, some of your stars are your own.

—H.”

 

            She opened the box with trembling hands.  Inside she found a narrow net of silver and pearl, matching bracelet and earrings.  She lifted out the necklace and fastened it around her throat.  The silvery pearls positively glowed against her creamy skin.

            She put on the earrings, fumbled with the bracelet.  Taking a compact from her purse, she applied the small amount of makeup she usually wore, then pulled out a little-used lipstick.  The dark wine color stained her lips satisfactorily, and she paused to take in the effect of her reflection.  She ran a brush through her long auburn hair, parting it simply in the middle and letting it fall forward to frame her face.  Have to remember not to push it behind my ears.

            She looked and felt both less and more like herself than she ever had, and she was glad without precisely knowing why.  She was careful on her way down the stairs, holding fast to the banister for more than one reason.

            She remembered the front porch was wooden and faced west, unsuitable for her needs.  Was there a back porch?  She remembered seeing a path leading down to the water’s edge from her window’s vantage point.  She walked through the glittering dining room, through the storm of fire and ice, and into the kitchen.  He was there with his back to her, just as before.  What was that, past the pantry?  She circled the center island, passing behind him without comment.  Yes, a small hallway, like a mudroom, and a door.

            She could sense his eyes upon her as she went into the hall.  She found a light switch, probably for a motion detecting light, since she saw no glare through the door’s window, and flipped it off.    Opening the door, she stepped out onto the small porch.  A brisk gust of wind ruffled her hair and sent it streaming over her shoulders.  Perfect.  A few concrete steps led down to a patio overlooking the ocean.

            Her eyes scanned the sky… there.  Through a break in the trees she could make out Orion, low on the southeastern horizon.  In a low voice she chanted the names her father had taught her… Betelgeuse, Rigel… Bellatrix.  Female warrior, in Latin.  Though shadowed by her showier brothers, she was still one of the brightest objects in the sky.  She stood there in the cold, hand at her throat, allowing his compliment to warm her.

            When she had taken in her fill of cold and fiery metaphor, she bent down and unbuckled the slender straps of her shoes.  Setting her stocking feet down on the chilly concrete, she took a shoe in each hand and methodically scraped the soles against the edge of the step.  It was a harsh, rasping sound, at odds with the polish of the evening, and she was glad when she finished.  She ran her fingers over the newly scuffled soles, and found the traction acceptable.  Donning the shoes once more, she bent to redo the buckles and felt a presence behind her.  She stood and turned quickly to find herself face to face with Lecter, and with only a handspan separating them.

            “I enjoy stargazing, too,” he said smoothly.  “I find it gives one a certain… perspective.”

            She just looked at him, silhouetted in the faint light that penetrated from the kitchen.  He took her hand, bent and brushed his lips across it.  The heat of his breath made her shiver.

            “Let’s get you inside and warmed up.  I hope you’re hungry,” he said, still with a light grasp on her fingers.

            “What’s for dinner?” she asked, at a loss for words.

            “You never ask,” he said, and smiled secretively.  “It spoils the surprise.”

            “Somehow, I doubt that the menu will be the most surprising part of this evening,” she murmured, and he grinned.

            “I suppose we’ll simply have to see, won’t we?”  He swept his arm across his body.  “After you, Clarice.”

            She smiled and preceded him back into the house.

            The dining room managed to be stupendously overdone and charmingly intimate at the same time.  She had no idea how he’d done it, but was content to sit and enjoy the ambience while he fetched the beginnings of their meal.  It was the light, she thought suddenly, just as her mind had been about to turn to something else.   The light came from all around, from crystal sconces and silver candlesticks, but it all focused on the two seats at the end of the long table, leaving the rest of the room dark with shadows.

            That must be why she didn’t notice him until she heard the clink of dishes being set down on the sideboard.  She started at the noise, then settled back into her chair as he approached.

            “I think you’ll like this, Clarice.  May I?”

            She gestured at her glass and he filled it with wine.  In the warm candlelight, it looked like translucent blood, like rubies made liquid, like the essence of a scarlet rose.  Like the rose he wore at his lapel, just beginning to bloom, brilliant against its background of black jacket and white shirt.  She lifted the goblet to her nose and inhaled.  She had no names for the scents she smelled, no fancy words to describe this aroma, but she loved it all the same.

            He had poured his own wine and set plates in their places.  She raised her eyebrows at this first course.  A creamy orange soup, flecked with spices, served in tiny pumpkins carved in a crystalline sort of pattern.  She looked at her wine glass, then back to the pumpkin.  Yes, he’d matched the stemware.

            He sat down across from her, caught her eye, and smiled.  “Surprised?”

            “Yes,” she said, laughing.  She poked a well-shod foot out from under the table.  “I’m very surprised that you didn’t find me glass slippers.”

            He had an odd look on his face, equal parts humor and chagrin.  “I’m hardly your fairy godmother, Clarice.”

            “Really?  You could have fooled me.”

            “Eat your soup before it gets cold,” he said, lifting a spoonful to his lips.

            She conceded so far as try it, and it was remarkable.  Thick, spicy, warm, it was like he’d taken autumn and put it in his stockpot.  But she wasn’t about to let him go so easily.

            “You are concerned about my well-being.  You shower gifts upon me… but somehow they all have strings.  How are you not my fairy godmother?”

            He smiled, but it was quick and maybe even a little faltering.  “You look lovely in the pearls,” he said, setting his spoon down.

            “Thank you, Dr. Lecter.  I feel lovely in them.”

            “I’m glad.”

            “You didn’t answer my question.”

            He sighed.  “Have you read your Brothers Grimm, Clarice?  Or do you rely on Disney for your fairytale knowledge?”

            “Umm, I…”

            “No matter.  I should think that by now you would have learned not to ask questions if you don’t want to know the answer.”  He held her with his eyes, and the look in them would once have sent her fleeing from the darker places she had within.  No longer.

            She met his gaze and lifted her chin, and though the pearls suspended from her earlobes shook a little, she was still able to say in a clear voice, in her own voice, “But I do want to know, Doctor.”

            He looked down, breaking the contact, and stared into his soup.  “I had not wanted to do this now,” he said simply, tonelessly.

            “I think it’s a fair question.”

            “I understand that,” he said, “but now is not the time.”

            He’d gotten her dander up once too often.  She was in a dangerous mood, and she knew it, and she didn’t care.  She picked up her fork and plunged it into her soup, feeling the tines bite into the bottom.  “But this is all the time we’ll ever have, Doctor.  As you once pointed out to me.  As you were showing me here, with your little pumpkin game.  You’ve plied me with pearls, tempted me with beauty, showered me with comforts, followed me from halfway around the world, and I want to know why.”

            “Clarice,” he said, in a voice filled with warning, though he did not look up from his plate.

            “God damn it, Doctor, I’m tired of playing in a game where you make all the rules!  I’m tired of your cryptic notes and riddles, and I’m tired of acting out this courtly farce of civility while you strip me bare and give nothing in return!”  She stood up, pushing her chair back, leaning onto the table and staring at him through the candle flames.  She was breathing fast now, and felt more than a little wild.  “Look at me, Dr. Lecter.”

            He lifted his head, and she saw the sadness of ages in his face.  “You were right, Clarice,” he said plainly.  “This is far more surprising than my menu.”  He picked up his napkin, folded it neatly on the table, and rose from his seat.  “If you’ll excuse me,” he said mildly, turned and walked away.

            She stood there, dumbstruck, and watched him retreat.  Sitting down, she reached for her wine glass and drained it dry.  Wow.  It was quite good, and probably didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.  She refused to ponder whether or not the same was true of Dr. Lecter.  But, damn it, she deserved an answer.  This was the closest she had ever come to getting one, and this moment would not likely come again.  I’m sorry I ruined your dinner, Doctor… but you had to be you, didn’t you.  You had to take dinner and elevate it to the scale of a chess match.  Well, you’ve got to take the consequences then, same as the rest of us.

            As she sat and watched the wax drip from the candles, she heard a noise, a… something.  A soft thud?  She didn’t recognize the sound.  She got up, poured another glass, and pursued.

            He was in the library; the big French doors open to the chill and the ghostly soft moaning of the wind.  As she watched his still form in the light of the candles guttering on top of the piano, he spread his hands and began to play.  A storm of music filled the room, drowning out the sound of the surf and the low whisper of the breeze.  Crashing, pounding notes, like waves on sand, like a headache pulsing against a skull.  Chords of glorious pain wound together with a melody of startling, improbable beauty.  And, every so often, in the background, a high, thin thread of music, like crying.  She’d never heard anything quite like it, and she was spellbound in the doorway, feeling like an eavesdropper, like she’d tapped a line that she’d only guessed existed.

            His fingers flew across the keyboard but even as she stood and watched, they crash-landed in a discordant thump.  He crossed his arms and put his head down over the keys.  For a moment, the only sound was the wuthering of the air through the doors, and she almost missed his keen, so close was it to the pitch of the wind.

            She brushed a finger quickly across the corner of her eye and stepped into the room.  Setting the glass on top of the piano, she put her hand lightly on his back.

            His speed never failed to take her off-guard, she though wryly, as he grabbed her wrist and held it tight.  She looked him in the eye, unblinking, and forced a steel into her voice that she didn’t really feel.  “Where were we, Doctor?  Ah, yes, you were about to explain yourself to me.”

            “Quid pro quo,” he said softly, and she nodded.

Scanning the room, she found a chair behind a broad desk and rolled it over.  She sat, sinking deep into the butter-soft leather cushions, and crossed her legs.  “Ready when you are, Dr. Lecter.”

He turned around on the piano bench to face her squarely.  Lifting his shoulders, he took a deep breath.  He looked like nothing so much as a man facing a firing squad.

His words were stark, his face slack, and his eyes gazed straight through her. “My sister’s name was Mischa.  She was beautiful, she was my world.  Until… until they came and they killed.  Soldiers — deserters probably.  They took my parents first.  Then they put all the children in a barn.  And the winter was cold, so cold, I remember.  They got a deer, but after that there was nothing to eat.  I was too skinny… I had hidden some food for Mischa, though, and they took her instead.  There was… I couldn’t… I was six years old.”

Her horror froze her, but he kept speaking.  “You’re much like her.  I saw that the first time we met.  I see in you what might have been.”  He licked his lips.  “I hoped for a long time that it could be again.  That I could make Mischa live, give her your place in this world.  If I could kill you to do it, I would.  Make no mistake.”

Her throat was too dry to swallow, her mouth too parched to speak.  All the moisture in her body welled up and clouded her eyes.  And still, he continued.  “It was a diverting game and a serious wish all at once, I admit.  But you didn’t go along with the plan.  You kept surprising me, Clarice.  You are not she.  You are a woman, and she will forever be a child.”

He stood and came to her chair, hands clasped behind his back.  “In a way, you’ve killed her all over again.”

She looked up at him and the tears spilled unheeded down her cheeks.  Inclining her head slightly, she spoke softly.  “Thank you, Hannibal.”

Rising to her feet, she pressed a hand against his chest.  She passed her lips quickly over his cheek, turned, and left him alone with his grief and his ghost.

She was stopped in the doorway by the sound of his voice.  “Clarice.”

She faced him.  “Yes, Doctor?”

“In the Brothers Grimm, there is no fairy godmother.  Cinderella receives her gifts from a bird in a hazel tree, planted over her mother’s grave.  There is no coach, no mice, no stroke of midnight.”

Nodding, she said, “Good night, Dr. Lecter,” and walked away.

 

 

Interlude:  Conversation

            Lecter sat once more at the piano, his hands splayed harmlessly over the keys, provoking no sound from the instrument.  But music surrounded him all the same, as the warmth of the candles was transmuted into the pure and distinct opening notes of the Goldberg Variations played on a cheap tape deck.

            He listened to those golden notes bounce off the pure white walls of the cell chamber, darting in the air like fireflies on a summer’s evening.  Heard the approach of staccato heels, inhaled a whisper of soft, sweet scent.  Sucked patiently at the pain dripping through the bars.   It was a clean, cold taste, not bitter, but salty.  It stung his lips, dry from institutional air, and rolled over his tongue like melting snow, like the marrow of a long bone.

            The bars dissolved, eaten away, and he was again at the piano, his mouth still full of her sorrow, a vintage he’d savored often over the long years.

He wondered now how she liked the taste of his.

            Slowly, his fingers began to move, picking out the melody, distilling drops of music from memory.  He finished out the aria and sat for a moment, bathed in silence, radiating heat from every pore.  Swinging his legs around, he stood and walked a few measured paces towards the French doors.  He paused, letting the breeze cool his skin, then took a few more steps, and then a few more, until he passed through the doorway and onto the patio.

            He watched the pale face of the moon traverse its arc across the cold night sky for a long, long while.