Blood Ties

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An arms-dealing family confronts a moral dilemma in the nuclear age.

Spears of orange from the morning sun poked through the patches of mist that clung to the mountain peaks. From his poor vantage in the speeding Daimler, Albert von Kassel waited for the castle’s watchtower to appear.

Beside him Dawn dozed, her head resting on the red velvet pillow that Garth had provided after he had tucked away their baggage. Now Garth’s bovine bulk in the front seat created further obstructions to the impending view. It was there, up there, Albert knew, waiting for the car to reach just the right position.

“Slower,” Albert commanded, replicating his father’s inflection. It was not arrogance, merely the standard way of communication. Garth understood orders. He had been with the SS.

Albert waited, squinting. The change in the Daimler’s rhythm stirred Dawn. She mumbled something, then burrowed deeper into the pillow. She disliked annoyances that affected sleep, and Albert had quickly rejected the notion to shake her awake. He no longer felt a compelling need to share with her. More and more experiences, thoughts, were private. They hung together now by inertia, although it was too cruel an idea for him to impart directly. Not yet.

He had been feeling vaguely annoyed for a long time now, the impending reunion only increasing his agitation. All those long memories to be confronted. That Teutonic obsession.

“There,” he pointed, as if it were a child’s discovery. He felt an odd ripple in his heartbeat, a familiar clutch in his throat. Garth nodded and he could see the lips curl faintly on the old retainer’s face, a shadow of a smile.

Poking above the mist, he saw the watchtower of the citadel, stabbing into the sun’s orange shower, deflecting rays on the ancient stone surface. Above the watchtower, plumed on its metallic staff, he could see the rippling banner, a field of white on which were emblazoned the markings of the Teutonic Order.

They were still miles from the castle. But what was seen could raise the adrenalin, involve the living blood. Never mind that it was all a contrivance now. Never mind that the citadel with its bastions, ramparts, allures, baileys and barbicans, was only a prop for tourists to stimulate historical fantasies. Never mind that it was, after all, merely a hotel.

“Damn, it’s beautiful,” he mumbled. Despite himself, he could not resist the historical magnetism.

It was built nine hundred years ago by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, a von Kassel among them. A hundred years later the Knights moved eastward, bringing their version of a zealous God with them, determined that the primitive innocents in their acquisitive path would submit their minds, and lands, to the Knights’ enlightenment. They did, not quite graciously, and they gave the Germans their “Ostland.”

The bloody migration deposited a von Kassel on the shores of the Baltic, Estonia. That would be about eight hundred years ago, thirty-two odd generations, a time frame perhaps worthy of his father’s white-hot obsession. Such continuity deserved its myths and legends, he supposed, wondering why he could never really find the heat of this mighty flame inside himself. It was the old enigma again.

The castle was theirs now, a von Kassel possession, another artifact in his father’s collection of all things ever touched by an authentic ancestor. Only the Estonian lands remained to be reacquired, an impossible dream.

Dawn stirred again, moved a gold braceleted wrist to his knee.

“There yet?” Her voice had not yet cleared.

The private moment had passed.

“Soon.” He pointed to the distant watchtower.

She moved downward to catch the picture, blinking to clear her sleep-fogged eyes.

“Like in a fairy tale,” she said, moved, he suspected, by images of Grimm and Andersen.

“Full of ghosts,” he said.

She clutched his knee. She was a child when it came to that, full of bad dreams, screams in the night. Sometimes she clutched him, ferocious in her fear, as if by holding tight she would dispel the weird creatures chasing her to imaginary horrors. Once, reasserting reality in his arms held a certain charm, exciting him. Now, like most things between them, it was gone.

“Mumbo jumbo,” she hissed, shaking her head, removing her hand from his knee to fish in her purse for a cigarette. He pulled out a lighter and flashed it while she breathed in the smoke deeply, forcing it dragon-like from her delicate nostrils.

“You wanted to come,” he said, settling back into the soft seat, pressing the button to move the glass, sealing their talk from Garth’s ears.

“He looks like Frankenstein’s monster,” Dawn said, showing the direction of her thoughts.

“He’s just ugly. He can’t help that. He’s been with Father for years.” Why was he defending? More to the point, why had he brought her? He could tell the signs. As he withdrew she became more possessive. He wondered why he couldn’t sustain these things. It had been two years and now it was faltering badly.

“I’m tired. The trip has made me edgy,” she said. It was a logical subterfuge on her part. She could blame it on the trip. He hated night flights as well. New York to Frankfurt was a long haul and they had drunk too much.

The long bout of forced physical idleness and no sleep was thought provoking. Too much had thrashed about in his head. Vague suspicions had blown up into huge mental conflagrations, imaginary confrontations with his father, with his brother Rudi, with Dawn.

In his mind Albert had used strong words. Betrayal. Death. Madness. Aside from other considerations, dealing in plutonium could be bad business. Atomic weapons, like nerve gas and bacteriological bombs, were not in the rules of the superpowers’ games. Let their clients play with each other with more manageable toys: tanks, rockets, planes, guns, big and small. That was the business of the von Kassels, brokering for all sides. If a moral consideration nagged at him, he had, he thought, kept that hidden. Or had he? Did his refusal of Rudi’s plan show a lack of courage, a weakness? It was sure to come up again at the reunion. He had tried to be tactful and considerate, for Rudi’s abused ego mostly. Poor Rudi. The middle son. The clumsy one. The less gifted. Putting him, Albert, the youngest, in charge of the von Kassel enterprises was humiliation enough for Rudi, considering that their older brother, Siegfried, had chosen to abdicate his responsibilities. With his father’s health waning, Rudi, goaded by his ambitious wife, might take this last chance to prove himself worthy to take his rightful place. Perhaps he was the worthier. Moral considerations were the enemy of the family business, a violation of the von Kassel code. Plutonium! My God, it could blow up the world. That is the world’s problem, his father would say. What did such a detail matter to a von Kassel? His own reticence was a break in the pattern.

And holding this family reunion six months before the scheduled event was another break in the pattern. Considering the Baron’s health, that, at least, was understandable. They would come together every three years for this ritual restoking of the von Kassel myth. More than mere business, although that was part of it. Outsiders thought it eccentric. Like Dawn.

His brother Siegfried had called him from London. Phone calls were rare, the talk guarded, cryptic. International wires had too many ears. But Siegfried, the family oddball, observed a poetic license, although he respected the von Kassel passion for secrecy and knew the code words. He had seen their father in the spring and the phoned report was ominous. Health problems. Weight loss. The Baron was slipping badly. In his heart he had yearned for the Baron to expire without another of these obligatory rituals. Not loving the old man seemed, somehow, a biological aberration, and he did not relish the confrontation so near the end. God, how he had longed to love him!

“How much further?” Dawn asked irritably.

“Not long,” Albert said gently. He had hoped he could love Dawn forever.

The Daimler gained speed. The watchtower darted in and out of sight as they moved closer to it.

“Will they like me?” Dawn asked. It was her defenselessness that plagued him now. He should have broken it off before the trip.

“Sure,” he lied. When they sensed his waning interest, they would ignore her. In the world of the von Kassels, ingratiation had a purpose.

“I hope so,” she said.

The Daimler had turned off the main highway and was climbing cautiously up the narrow road. The high watchtower loomed clearly now, the reddish brick, the arched lookout holes. Other watchtowers, lower ones, came into view. As the car moved upward, the mist thinned, the outlines of the great citadel seemed etched in the blue sky, a gothic masterpiece, perched on the commanding peak.

“Now there is eloquence,” Albert said. “That says it all.” He wondered if he truly believed it.

“Big,” she observed. She reached out and clutched his hand. The sight was intimidating, frightening.

Tiny sensors in his mind were touching the high brick enclosure, feeling the ancient texture of Westphalian brick, kilned over eight hundred years ago, piled and mortared with the sweat of feudal peons.

Listen! Can you hear? It was his father’s words, returning with the timbre and echo of twenty-five years before, when he was just ten, and had crossed the ocean from America for the first time since being sent away. They had been in the castle rectory. Albert had listened, had wanted to hear. But he could only catch the echo in the rectory, bouncing around in the brick vaults of the ceiling held there by slender granite pillars, a masterpiece of architectural engineering. How desperately he had wanted to hear this sound that rang in his father’s ears. He had clutched the older man’s hand as if the pressure might afford a clue.

Hear what?, he had wondered, but had dared not ask, for his father’s concentration was lost in some distant mist of memory. Voices. Prayers. The rectory was a religious enclosure, and the Knights knelt toward the East, toward Jerusalem, which had spawned their spirit. Perhaps his father had heard the clanking of their armor, the clamor of swords, as they shifted in their scabbards. It was something he could only observe, but never feel. Was there something missing in himself?

His father, Charles von Kassel, Baron of the Teutonic Order, was not bound by time. His mind, like the castle’s walls, enclosed more than mere historical fact. Locked in its ridges and tissues was the blood memory of all von Kassel generations.

Vainly, Albert searched all of his life to breathe fire into the image that his father had tried to stamp into his consciousness. He could see the Knights of his father’s litany straggle homeward after doing battle with the Infidels in the Holy Land. He could see them reform their ranks and push eastward along the bloody trail to bring the word of Christ and for themselves, of course, all the lands from Samogitia to the Finnish Gulf and from the Baltic to the Peipus. But he could not hear the rattle of armor and find the heart’s beat within as his father had. He had never dared admit that. Not that.

Historians, he had learned later, told a different story than his father. From the security of musty texts, they had called the Knights butchers, rapists, plunderers, who amassed their acreage by force and subterfuge.

Lies, his father had ranted, when in a mood of youthful curiosity he had dared to broach the subject. The land belongs to him who takes it and holds it, the Baron had roared, his fist descending loudly on the nearest surface. Perhaps we didn’t have the will or the courage to keep it, his father had responded finally after the tantrum had subsided. Besides, eight hundred years was a mighty record. We were always our own masters. They conquered our lands, Russians, Germans, Estonians. But they never conquered us. Not the von Kassels!

If he secretly seemed misplaced within his father’s obsession, Albert nevertheless admitted the magnetism of the idea which held them together, recognizing the power of the device. Because of that alone, the von Kassels were beyond boundaries, beyond governments. Arms brokerage had always been their business, even beyond the care of the Estonian lands, the feudal estates. When the Russians had threatened from the East they had bartered arms for survival. When the Germans threatened from the West, they had merely shifted customers with similar results. When the Estonians threatened from within, again the resiliency of the von Kassels triumphed. Others destroyed each other. The von Kassels survived.

Even now, his father considered the moment only a temporary exile from their ancestral lands. Estonia. It was as foreign to him as Timbuktu. He smiled.

“What’s amusing?” Dawn asked. He had not been conscious of her eyes watching him.

“I was thinking of the family,” he lied. The dead, actually, he wanted to say.

“They’ll all be there?”

“All.”

He had kept photographs from past reunions in gold-stamped leather albums lined up on the bookshelves of his New York penthouse. During those first days with Dawn, in the flush of loving, he had wanted to share them with her and they had sat before the fire turning the plastic coated pages, the inserted photographs neatly captioned. She had watched them all grow old.

“And that funny, horsey lady?” she had asked, pointing a tapered, well manicured finger.

“Aunt Karla, Father’s sister. The wife of Count Wilhelm von Berghoff,” he had explained stroking her bare shoulder.

“Another von.”

“We are all vons.”

“It seems so . . .” she hesitated. “. . . archaic.”

“It is. But that is the point.”

“The point?”

“Being archaic holds the whole thing together. It gives us continuity.”

“And that’s your father,” she had pointed again. “The Baron.”

“We are all Barons. Me. My two brothers.”

“But you never use the title.”

“Only when necessary.”

“When is that?”

“For business, and perhaps to get a better table at a restaurant.”

She shivered lightly, pulling her silk dressing gown closer, tighter, outlining her full breasts.

“How can you be in that business?” she had asked. Had the thought made her shiver? He shrugged, not wanting to explain.

“Arms are a commodity like any other,” he had answered, the intonation offering finality to the probe. The complexities would overwhelm her, he thought, his mind drifting lightly over details. Computerized inventories. Warehouses strung out across the world. The holds of ships. Mobility. Firepower. Tactical and strategic weapons. Vehicles. Planes. Obsolescence. The vocabulary would merely add to her confusion.

“And your brother Rudi lives in South America?” she had asked pointing to Rudi, a florid face, high balding forehead, the vested paunch.

“Buenos Aires.”

“And Siegfried lives in England.”

“Yes.”

Albert knew she was thinking how odd it was. Three brothers scattered over the world.

“My father’s hedge against chaos. He wasn’t certain what would happen to the world. So he scattered us like seeds.”

“He must be mad.” She had not the discipline to keep a thought controlled. Words were always popping out. “I’m sorry. You’re not insulted?”

He chuckled. He would have substituted eccentric for mad. But mad was more honest. He had let it pass. A frown clouded her forehead. It was a time when even her briefest pain mattered. He had gathered her in his arms and kissed her lips. But when they had disengaged, the frown continued. A puzzle.

“What is it?”

“No mother?”

“She died,” he answered, the old mystery intruding briefly.

“Young?”

“Just after I was born,” he had said blandly. It still could induce pain. “Motherless waifs,” he mocked. He had always dismissed it in exactly that way. We must not dwell on it, his Aunt Karla had admonished when the question was raised. For years he had hated his mother for dying.

“Poor darling,” she had said, shivering again. He had imagined it was simply softness and vulnerability, qualities that roused him. He had kissed her again, spreading the silken robe so that his mouth could find her nipples.

But that was when Dawn had mattered. Briefly, he had considered marriage. Defiantly, since she was a Jewess. On the sunny side of thirty-five, he had pondered the matter in sleepless turnings with her beside him, breathing with quiet contentment. A designer of women’s clothes, with a worldwide clientele, she had sat beside him on the plane to Paris and it had happened to him somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. Once he could have remembered the exact moment. The stewardess had cleared their after-dinner drinks. They had talked nonstop for three hours by then, become intimate in the way of casual travelers. But the intimacy had lingered.

It embarrassed him now to remember how they groped for each other under the first class blankets, electric charged spontaneous embraces that lasted the remainder of the trip. And after.

He had endowed Dawn then with deliciously exotic qualities, like a rare grape that had suddenly fermented and become wine, soft to the pallet. Yet not addicting. No woman had ever done that to him, a troubling circumstance in itself. What then was permanent? He wanted love to last. But it came and went, like the seasons. There had been scores of women.

It was, of course, the contemplation of marriage that had raised the Jewish thing. The urge for possession had completely captured him and even during the day in the midst of the most plebeian events, despite absorbing business interests demanding his total mind, he could not erase her from his yearning. Surely, that was love.

Yet the blood thing was so heavily programmed into him that the guilt could not be dismissed. It was a family axiom that all von Kassels, the great extended line of Estonian Barons, do not genetically combine with Jews. One might, he knew, using modern values, not particularize the bigotry to Jews alone. It extended also to Slavs, Poles, blacks, the entire conglomeration strewn on the shores of the Mediterranean and all their offal washed up on the beaches of the Americas, as well as Indians, red and brown. All but the Nordic, the Germanics. His Aunt Karla was a rabid Hitlerian anti-Semite, whose late husband, the Count von Berghoff, could be virulent on the subject, boasting of his destructive acts against Jews. His father’s prejudices were much more institutionalized. He did not hate Jews alone. Mostly he hated all non von Kassels. All marriages were compromises of the blood. Even Siegfried’s marriage to a girl from a titled British family and Rudi’s marriage to a South American German were merely tolerated.

The Baron père had married a Hohenzollern, his mother. But she had died soon after he was born, providing him and his brothers with a lifetime curiosity. Since there were no pictures of her, no possessions, not a trace of her existence on earth, the curiosity was only natural. “She is dead,” was the Baron’s only retort to their youthful questionings. But how? Disease? Accident? Murder? She had simply expired and they must exorcise forever the idea of her. Such was the fatherly implication and so it was. Somehow, too, the matter of her absence was considered a fault, a betrayal of von Kassel interests, however the circumstances of her demise. How dare she! What was important, though, was that she had performed her single function, to reproduce von Kassels and mix it well with Hohenzollern blood, ancient cells, the stuff of Rulers, Kings, Knights and Barons.

Albert cursed his own weakness in bringing Dawn to the reunion. Ironically, her ardor had multiplied as his diminished. But she would behave herself. She had always done that. And she had, almost as an implied bargain for a permanent future as a von Kassel, promised to keep her antecedents to herself. She could easily do that. She was a natural blonde, blue-eyed Jewess with a straight symmetrical nose and high cheekbones. Most people took her for a Swede, since she looked strikingly like Ingrid Bergman. He detested himself for allowing the implication to exist.

Seeing the castle loom above him, the Teutonic banner now visible in sharp detail, clearly revealing the scepter and the shield, he began to feel like a little boy again, the youngest, awed and dumbstruck in his father’s presence.

He could be brave in New York, thousands of miles distant, manipulating the family’s worldwide interests with a sure touch, ruthless and authoritative, although the legal and spiritual reins still rested in his father’s hands. Discovering his swift, agile mind had been his father’s joy after the indifferent, rebellious Siegfried and the plodding Rudi. Accepting the mantle of the von Kassels’ business interests was natural for Albert. He reveled in it. He had gone to Harvard Business School after an engineering degree at Yale. He could articulate a weapons system to a prospective buyer with expert skill. Heads of state liked him. He had learned five languages, although sometimes he cleverly omitted his knowledge, giving him the edge over his adversary. All customers were adversaries.

But taking the family business helm was one thing. Accepting the caveat that only a von Kassel could share in the proceeds was, of course, inhibiting. Not all von Kassels were efficient, the best around. His cousin Frederick in Cairo was, in fact, a dangerous asshole. And Adolph in Hong Kong was, although brilliant, a voluptuary and a blatant homosexual. And the others, in varying degrees, had their foibles. But they were, after all, von Kassels, distant cousins actually, descendants of a great-great uncle who got out of Estonia with his skin years before his father. They were not, of course, in the main line of succession.

All this was acceptable. What Albert feared most was that his father would entrust to him the spiritual enforcement of the von Kassel legend, the geneological stewardship of the family. To his father this was a mania, more important than wealth, than life itself. No matter of blood or marriage could be decided individually by any von Kassel. A birth was not merely a birth. It was an act of membership in the von Kassel club. With it came an awesome power that he did not want. Yet one could not lead in business matters without accepting that burden. If he was edgy, he had good reason to be. He did not want to abdicate. Yet, in his heart, he knew he was unworthy to be crowned. He shook himself, hoping the image would disappear. Dawn reacted to his sudden movement, glancing at him.

She had lit another cigarette, inhaling the smoke deeply, flicking her long blonde hair further back from her face. They were approaching the castle head-on now. The powerful Daimler motor strained as the road’s incline angled higher.

“It’s all so damned gothic,” she said, the words coming in a hiss of smoke

“The old man summers here,” he explained patiently, knowing he had said it all before. “Says it regenerates him. It was built by the Order.”

“Ancestor worship,” she snapped.

“Like the Jews.”

“We don’t make lampshades. . . .” Her words trailed off. “Sorry darling,” she said, patting his hand.

“We are Ostlanders,” he said quietly. “There is a difference.”

She settled back in the seat. He understood her uneasiness.

To divert himself, he pressed a button and the glass that separated them from Garth opened.

“Who’s here?” he asked in German.

“Baron Rudi and the Baroness,” he said slowly. In Garth’s world, all titles were necessary. “And the twins. The Countess von Berghoff, of course. Baron Siegfried and the Baroness are driving from Paris. They might have arrived.” He paused, a device meant to separate the classes in the family structure. “The others are already arrived.” Frederick from Cairo. Wilhelm from Zurich, Adolph from Hong Kong. He pictured their faces.

“And the Russian woman,” Garth said unexpectedly. The words were flat, but he had obviously saved it for the last.

“Who?”

“The wife of your father’s brother.”

“Wolfgang?” He was puzzled. They had gotten word that he had died in Moscow. Every generation had its black sheep. There had been some vague talk of a late marriage.

“Your father and the Countess . . .” Garth mumbled. It was the shorthand of servants who are privy to secrets. That seemed odd, Albert thought, considering the long estrangement.

“. . . with her kid,” Garth said, the explanation now complete. So that was it. Blood again. A von Kassel to be reclaimed. Albert nodded, turning again to watch Dawn, who had stamped out her cigarette and was now fussing with her face, looking into her small round compact mirror, always a sign that they were nearing a destination.

The Daimler slowed, entering the castle grounds. The air was clear now, the sky emerald blue without a puff of cloud in sight. Below, the forest faded into the mist. Here, the castle appeared to be the only habitation on earth, a self-contained world.

“They knew what they were doing when they built this,” Albert said. Dawn ignored him, concentrating on fixing her face.

The Daimler turned into a road surrounded on either side by a brick wall, then over a wooden bridge which spanned a dry hollow, once a moat. The bridge led to the castle façade, stretching sheer to fifty feet or more into which was carved a huge arched entrance leading to a massive courtyard. The car crunched over a winding gravel road which threaded through a carefully manicured tree park to what was now the main structure. Above them loomed the dominant watchtower, and the banner of the Teutonic Order.

Garth braked the car in the semicircle of the entrance driveway. Two uniformed servants appeared and began collecting the baggage.

“Dungeon for two,” Dawn said, stepping delicately onto the driveway, her eyes scanning the sunlit entrance. A rotund man in a tight morning suit stretched to its fabric’s limits came toward him.

“My good Baron,” he called, grasping Albert’s hand, fawning. He bowed, tossed his head and clicked his heels as he pumped Albert’s hand. Smiling, Albert watched Dawn observing this bit of stage business.

“And this is Miss Frank,” Albert said with an air of exaggerated imperiousness. “Our manager, Hans Weissen.” Again the bow, the nod, the click of the heels, only this time the lifting of her hand to his lips, barely touching. The acknowledgment of possession was clear. He had not told her that the family also owned the castle. She looked up and smiled.

“So happy. Wonderful,” the manager said turning to Albert. “He looks marvelous.” Albert waited for the obligatory reminiscence. “I have known him since he was so high,” Hans said. There was a whiff of heavy scent emitting from the manager’s pink skin. The face was cherubic, the head bald, with little red-rimmed eyes like a Dutchman in a Rembrandt painting. After he had illustrated Albert’s younger size, the dimpled hands rubbed themselves together in an attitude of cloying delight.

They followed him inside. The lobby was ornate, with stone floors and graceful pillars stretching high into the vaulted ceiling. Suits of armor were on display, with little legends in German at kneecap level attesting to their authenticity as those worn by the ancient Knights of the Order. A huge Teutonic banner hung across the entire length of the lobby.

“Uncle Albert. Uncle Albert.” Squeals echoed and reverberated in the room as two identical little girls, dressed in the wedgewood gray uniforms of an English girls’ school, round granny glasses perched on their noses, came running to embrace him. They were chest high, their legs like sticks in long white stockings. Embracing them identically, he returned the gesture, kissing them on their foreheads, under their peaked caps.

“My bookend nieces,” he said to Dawn. “Inger and Ingrid. This is Miss Frank.”

Dawn held out both hands, which seemed the logical mode of greeting. They grasped her hands lightly and curtsied.

“I’m the one with the little birthmark here,” Ingrid said, pointing to her cheek.

“But sometimes she covers it with makeup,” Inger pointed out, giggling. There was an odd mixture of Spanish inflection amid the English accent. And a touch of precociousness.

“They belong to my brother Rudi.”

“Mummy and Daddy are having breakfast in the dining room,” Ingrid said.

“Then we’re going to play tennis,” Inger said, with exactly the same inflection as if the remarks came from the same person. They skipped away, their shoes making hollow echoing sounds.

“They’re cute,” Dawn said.

“And bratty,” he whispered.

“You have the suite directly below your father’s,” the manager said, leading them to a caged dome-shaped elevator.

“As soon as you are settled, the Baron will expect you,” Hans said to Albert as they ascended. The titled reference to the father was distinctly different from his own and the others. The Baron was the Baron.

“Of course,” Albert replied.

An arched wooden door opened to their suite, a rectangle, windowed on four sides, but divided into two rooms, a sitting room and a bedroom. A bowl of fruit was placed next to a bouquet of flowers on the table. A sideboard held a forest of glistening bottles and glasses. The manager rubbed his hands together and bowed as he backed out of the room.

“If he clicks his heels again, I’ll die,” Dawn whispered. But it was too late, the little departure ceremony was exactly as the greeting.

“Anything. Anything at all . . .” The words faded as the door closed.

When he had gone, he watched her survey the room, the eyes darting into the brightness. A tapestry covered a wall between the arched windows, depicting a Knights’ battle, the Teutonic Order’s colors on shields and banners. Even the furniture had a heroic look.

He followed her into the bedroom. It was dominated by a high, massive four-poster bed with a heavy carved wood frame hung with red damask.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Not his. About twelve hundred years too early.”

She turned toward him, mischievous. He understood the coquetry and tried avoiding the challenge by averting his eyes, looking out into the sun-filled court. Moving toward him, her hand brushed his cheek.

“My father will be waiting,” he said, but not as firmly as he wished. He pitied her now, and himself, for having to dissimulate. Resisting the compulsion to disengage, he let her put her arms around him, hesitating briefly, then returning the embrace.

“Hold me,” she said. Obeying her, he pressed her closer. She was the alien here. Her breath was light and warm against his cheek.

“I must go,” he said, loosening his grip.

“Yes,” she agreed. He knew she had hinted at more, had wanted to make love. When she was insecure, frightened, she yearned for it, requiring a more gentle performance on his part.

“Later,” he said, squeezing her arms and releasing her. But she had detected the hollowness of the rejection, the deadening of his interest, and her eyes reflected it.

“You wanted to come . . .” he began, almost as a rebuke. “I get tense here.”

“Of course,” she said, turning away.

He wished he could still love her, he thought, irritated by his own indifference. Then, shrugging, he passed through the sitting room and let himself out of the door.

Perhaps it will come back again, he decided hopefully, unable to shake off the growing loneliness.

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