The bird had gone.

Rachaela stood at the window, looking across the roofs to the tower.

The sun blazed on its cone, the window glinted.

Adamus.

He had drunk her blood but he walked in the daylight. Would Ruth be disappointed when she found, after her night of metamorphosis, that the sun did not shrivel her up?

Chapter Seventeen

Just before midnight Scarabae’s betrothed came downstairs, She looked like a bride in Hell, in her dress of blood and the veil like melon-heart, wing-spread from its little coronet, and with two scarlet roses in her hand.

Rachaela’s watch had ascertained the time, but really it was only night, the last summer lightness compressed from the sky, the house doors open.

Lighted candles everywhere, beaded ranks of fire giving off a dense and wavering heat.

The old people had gathered in their dinner clothes, their dust and spangles. Only Rachaela in her skirt and T-shirt did not fit. She stood apart, she was only the witness.

Ruth’s made-up face looked totally contained, but she shone with electricity. She was the glowing centre of the fires.

Another room had been opened up, cleaned by the servants and filled with candles and red roses on tall wooden stands.

At the far end was a table draped in red velvet, and on it a huge old book lying open. Behind the table stood Dorian in his dinner clothes and starched shirt.

In front of the table was Adamus.

To her horror, Rachaela saw that he too wore a tuxedo, a white shirt and black bow tie. He too had dressed himself as a figment of the farce. His face showed nothing and the eyes were as she recalled, dull lacquer pools without light or depth. But it was true, he was their puppet.

The Scarabae had made an aisle and Ruth walked down it and into the room.

The Scarabae moved in after her, taking up their places behind the betrothal pair, the man and the small woman-child.

Rachaela stood at the back of the room, looking across the heads of strong wire hair, and one helmed head, for Uncle Camillo had come in his armour. She and Adamus were the tallest in the room, which added to the sense of ridiculous beastliness.

Dorian unseamed his withered mouth.

‘The house has come together on this night, to oversee the promising of its two children, Adamus and Ruth, to one another. This is done in the spirit of an old tradition. It is done in pledge for the house of Scarabae, in the hope that it may continue and flourish with generations.’

Rachaela’s eyes dazzled from the candles. She could not follow what Dorian said, it was too distorted and nonsensical. And now he spoke in a foreign language, and after that in what was perhaps Latin.