“Let me go.”
I shook her, my fingers digging into the muscles of her arm. She said: “It's for her after the Ceremony of the Bride.”
“They die?”
“Yes.” She slipped out of my hands and pointed at some graves by the open one. “Look.”
I looked at the stones. Anette Nordstrom (1911-1939); Grace Robins (1913-1938); Tabitha Peck (1920- 1937), and Mary Jane Bronson (1910-1936). All young, and all dying in order: 1936, '37, '38, '39, and now '40. I looked again at Tabitha Peck. The poor kid was only seventeen. That was a funny name, Tabitha.
“Now you know all about it,” the Princess said. “Come on.
I got the pick. We went back to the temple. She lit the candle. He was lying just where we'd left him. I started to work on the wall, making as little noise as possible. The bricks came out easily.
I'd made quite a hole in the wall and the ceiling by the time my hands began to hurt. I rested for a minute. I was sweating hard. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my blouse. The Princess was standing by the vault door, holding the candle.
“Don't you think that's enough?” she asked. “We got to make a big pile,” I said.
I rested a while, and then I picked up the pick. It felt slippery in my hands. The Princess held up the candle. I saw something glitter in the corner. I went over and picked it up. It was some kind of a metal disk.
“What are you doing?”
“I thought I saw something.”
“What?”
“A coin or something.” I put the disk in my pocket. “It was just a piece of chipped brick.”
“Oh.”
I went to work on the wall again.
From the door I looked back at him. I'd brought down so much stuff he was hardly visible. All I could see was a shoe. He was lying on the wrecked chair, just as if he'd been sitting there when the wall fell. There were bricks and plaster all over him, and all over that side of the cellar. It looked as though there'd been an earthquake. It wouldn't fool anyone with any sense, I thought, but it might fool the Brothers. Particularly if they wanted to be fooled. I thought they would be, since the door of the treasure vault was still closed, apparently just as it had always been.
The Princess was standing by the body, holding the candle for me to get to the door. The light made her hair look like spun gold, as they say. I lit a match and she put out the candle and threw it by the body, like we agreed. She walked towards me, coming straight for the burning match. I smelled her when she got to the door, and I began to feel excited. We went outside.
I took the pick back to the hill with the graves, wiped the handle with my blouse, and dropped it by one of the shovels. The open grave looked black and mysterious. The moonlight was coming at such an angle the light didn't reach the bottom. It could have been twenty feet deep. The Princess waited for me at the corner of the temple. We walked back to the women's building, keeping in the shadows.
The moonlight was still pouring into her bedroom, making the bed look big and white. I washed my hands and found the bottle of brandy and had a long drink. It was funny, but I could hardly feel the stuff. I waited a minute, and then I had another drink. My throat felt numb.
She had taken off her robe and got in bed. I sat in a chair and had another drink. I felt her watching me. I had been sweating, and I kept on sweating. I wasn't used to working with a pick. I sat for a long time, drinking and sweating. I took off my blouse. The air felt good on my bare skin.
“Honey,” she whispered; “what's the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Come over here with me.”
“No.”
I had another drink. Then she said: “I'm sorry I killed him.”
“This is a hell of a time to be sorry.”
“I got frightened, thinking what would happen when he told the Elders. They'd have caught us sure.”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, yes. We're really better off with him dead.”
Her voice was throaty like she had a cold. It made me feel queer. I could see her body under the silk sheet. She hadn't put anything on. I saw the mound her breasts made under the silk, and her hair on the pillow, yellow even in the moonlight.
She whispered: “Honey.”
“What?”
“Are you afraid of me?”
“No.”
“Then come over. You have to sleep.”
I went over, but we didn't sleep.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
