Bestiary

this belief, I was to be confirmed. These tools would save my life, though they may now have brought me to the end of it.

Beth glanced up; Joey was toddling after Champ, who had a bright blue block in his mouth. Joey was laughing, and Champ’s tail was wagging, and Beth thought how strange it was that here, now, she should be reading what was probably a condemned man’s final confession. Caught up in the tale, she began to skip over the alternative readings and notes and let the narrative unfold.

We were led by several noble lords, among them Robert, Duke of Normandy, Stephen, Count of Chartres and Troyes, and Godfrey de Bouillon, descendant of the great Charlemagne himself. He went on to recount many more barons and princes who rode with this first crusade, all in the same cramped, precisely executed style in which the entire letter had been written. Under what conditions, Beth wondered, had it been composed? Clearly, he had had only a few spare sheets of parchment to work with, because the words were very closely spaced, the lines very narrow. And where was he at the time — confined to a dungeon cell, writing by the light of a torch, or in the attic of a prison tower, huddled in the moonlight that penetrated the bars of his window? Was he resigned to his fate, or had he some hope, or some plan, of escape?

Our journey, though favored by divine providence, was a difficult one, and we were often besieged and attacked. Beth knew the history of the First Crusade — some of the illuminated manuscripts she studied would allude to it — and she had read the standard historical accounts in grad school. But she had never read a first-person rendering like this — had anyone? — and she quickly lost herself in it. Between the frontiers of Austria and the walls of Constantinople, the pilgrim horde, which, according to most accounts, numbered several hundred thousand, devoured everything in its path, and the inhabitants of Hungary, Bulgaria, and Greece proved less and less receptive, and finally hostile. At a trumpet blast from the King of Hungary, a legion of archers and mounted horse was unleashed upon us. Even Peter was forced to flee to the Thracian Mountains, and it was there we hid in misery until the Emperor Alexius granted us safe conduct to his mighty fortress on the shores of the Bosporus.

The sun had dropped another few degrees behind the Santa Monica Mountains, and the words were becoming difficult to read. Beth put the transcripts down in her lap and looked up at Joey, who had knocked down his walls and towers and was sitting surrounded by the fallen blocks. He was chattering gibberish to himself — he just had to be way ahead of the usual learning curve, Beth thought for the umpteenth time — with his head tilted up toward the bedroom window. “Da,” she thought she heard him say — had he? — and she followed his gaze to the same window, where she could see, through the slats of the Venetian blinds, Carter’s dark silhouette as he moved back into the room. He was home earlier than she’d thought he’d be. Still, it would have been nice if he’d come outside to say hello before going upstairs to change out of his work clothes. She’d picked up some swordfish steaks at the market and she was sort of hoping he’d be up for a barbecue.

“Want to go inside and say hello to your daddy?” Beth said to Joey. “Can you say that — daddy?” Joey looked at her with a big grin but said nothing. “I think you just did, ten seconds ago.” Beth got down on her knees and crawled across the grass toward him. This made Joey laugh, and his loose blond curls shook in the evening air as Champ ran around them both, barking, in a big, wide circle.

With the transcripts tucked under one arm, Beth hoisted Joey up off the lawn and, together, they stood for a moment, watching the sun dip below the mountaintop. The ravine below their house fell into deep shadow; a flock of birds suddenly burst from the brush and flew off toward the ocean.

Beth nuzzled Joey’s cheek — why had no one explained to her how sweet a baby could smell? — and turned toward the house. Carter hadn’t turned on the lights yet.

In the kitchen, Beth flicked the switch and called out, “How would you feel about a backyard barbecue?”

But Carter didn’t answer; he must be in the bathroom.

She put Joey into his high chair, turned on the local news — another forecast of hot and dry weather — and gave him his dinner. Champ sat on his haunches, expectantly, until Joey was done and she could feed him, too. The news was following a freeway chase somewhere down near Redondo Beach. That was one thing you could say for New York, Beth thought: traffic was so bad no highway chase could last more than a few hundred yards.

When the newscast ended, she turned off the TV and lifted Joey out of his chair. “Uh-oh,” she said, “somebody needs a new diaper.”

And it didn’t look as if Carter was going to be in the mood for a barbecue. He must have flopped onto the bed and fallen asleep.

As she carried Joey upstairs, she noted that Carter still hadn’t turned on any of the lights. She went into Joey’s bedroom, changed him, and left him in his crib, then crossed the hall to the master suite.

“Carter?” she said softly, stepping into the darkened room. She’d expected to see him lying on the bed, damp from a shower. But no one was there. And there was a fragrance in the air — the scent of a forest, after a heavy rain — that made her stop in her tracks. It was the scent she remembered from New York, from the terrible and difficult days preceding Joey’s birth. The days when their lives had been shadowed, even endangered, by the malevolence of a creature who went by the name of Arius.

She fumbled for the light switch and turned it on. The bed was unrumpled, the room was empty.

But the bathroom door was closed.

She put her ear to it and, holding her breath, listened for any sound within. There was a low swishing sound, of the plastic shower curtain crackling. “Carter?” she said, still hoping against hope that she would hear him answer.

But there was nothing.

She tried the handle; the door was unlocked. She opened it slowly, and yes, the shower curtain was billowing in the breeze from the open window. At dusk, a wind often came up off the valley below. But no one was in the stall.

Only the scent of wet leaves — more powerful here than it had been in the bedroom — suggested that someone might have been in here.

Someone who might even have exited, moments before, by the open window.

Downstairs, she could hear the sound of the front door opening.

“Honey?” Carter called out; she could hear his backpack hitting the floor of the foyer. “Guess who I brought home for dinner?”

“You decent?” Del called out. “’Cause if not, come on down!”

Beth closed the bathroom window tight, then stepped back into the bedroom.

“She must be upstairs with Joey,” she heard Carter saying to Del. “There’s beer in the fridge; help yourself.”

Carter came up the steps two at a time, and when Beth turned to him, she knew he could tell something was wrong.

And then the scent must have hit him, too, because he quickly took her in his arms and looked all around. “You alright? Joey alright?”

She nodded.

Then he ran to the nursery, and came back with Joey nestled against his shoulder.

“When did this happen?” he asked. “Just now?”

“Yes. Right before you came home.”

“Did you… see him?”

“No.” She shuddered involuntarily. “It was only that smell.”

He didn’t have to ask how Arius might have gotten in. They both knew that he could come and go wherever he pleased. And now they knew something more — that whatever their hopes, and their suspicions, had been, he was still a presence in this world. And in their lives.

“You mind if I have one of the expensive foreign brews?” Del shouted up from the foot of the stairs. “I don’t normally drink a beer that had to come all the way from Holland.”

“Have whatever you want,” Carter answered, still holding the baby and looking deep into Beth’s eyes; they didn’t have to say a word for each of them to know exactly what the other was thinking.

Little Joey looked from one to the other, with his usual expression — so incongruous for a toddler — of placid understanding.

“I should have called ahead,” Carter murmured. “To tell you about Del.”