Painfully rigid, he listened, yearning upward towards the coffin lid, beyond it.

And there were footsteps. Footsteps on stone. Steady, echoic. Coming nearer.

They stopped.

Bernard, crying, hardly dared to speak again. He stared upward, ached and prayed upward into the darkness. Someone was standing there, just over him, just on the other side of the stone, just on the other side of the blackness. He could feel the presence. Standing there. In the light, in the open air. Looking down at him.

Bernard licked the mucus from his upper lip. Swallowed it. Sniffled. Spoke through his tears in a tremulous whisper.

“Help me. Would you please.”

There was another moment’s silence. And then the presence spoke. A voice distinct and mellifluous. Casual, gentle, even kind. Strange and yet strangely familiar.

At the sound of it, some warm, potent emotion he couldn’t name bubbled out of Bernard like blood from a wound, ran like blood all over him.

“I’m here, son,” the presence said. “I’m here.”

4

The silence was oppressive. The chink of cutlery on china. The slow crunching of cold food. Sir Michael sat at the head of the long table, swirling the wine in his crystal. Staring before him. Not speaking. Storm found the old man’s sunken features, his disheveled hair, his wild glare painful to look upon. He kept his own head down, picking at the roast beef and carrots on his plate.

The dining room was narrow, but trim and pleasant enough. The lunch was laid out in gleaming plates and servers, blue and white. The crystal chandelier sent dancing rainbows over them and onto the flocked paisley on the long walls. Low sideboards and a serving table ran along one of those walls. And above these, there hung a gilt-framed painting of shepherds on sunlit hills. The landscape was almost a reflection of the landscape visible through the tall windows on the wall opposite, the wall Storm was facing. Out there, though, through the port-red curtains tied back with golden cords, he could see the hills stretching away under gathering clouds, a roiling black mass of them. A hem of thunder sounded from time to time, distant at first, but growing closer.

Sophia sat with her back to the scene. Her black hair, her pale valentine face were etched sharply against the sallow, murky light of the afternoon. Storm glanced up at her. Her figure was softened by a fuzzy tannish sweater with snowflakes all over it. But she held herself very straight and he could feel the tension in her. He tried to catch her eye, to telegraph his question: When would she speak out? When would they begin?

She seemed not to look at him. Her head moved almost imperceptibly. A little forbidding shake of it: not now, not yet.

He went on eating, impatient, nervous. His head aching; thick; foggy. He did not feel well.