At the entrance to the western tower, she asked what was behind the door.
“My grandmother used to live here. I don’t allow visitors.”
“You must have been close to keep it as a shrine.”
“You’re very perceptive,” he replied.
At a stone staircase that plunged into darkness, she asked whether there were dungeons.
“The dungeons are long gone, but I can show you where they used to be.”
He hit the lights and they descended into the coolness of the subterranean space. There was a rabbit warren of rooms and he showed her some iron fittings sunk into an exterior stone wall where, legend had it, medieval prisoners of clan Gaytan were shackled. In another area there was a large stack of drywall, pallets of tiles, unassembled cabinetry, and assorted building materials.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“Just a small hobby of mine,” he said.
They ascended and went to the main living quarters. After the fire, twelve-year-old Ferrol had his lawyer hire the finest craftsmen in Castile and León to rebuild the ravaged wing to its original medieval glory. He had a sense that as the new master of Castle Gaytan he would need an appropriate place to reside when he was in attendance.
“This is your room,” he said. Her overnight bag was at the foot of the bed on a bench. “There’s a bathroom through there.”
“What’s that door?” she asked.
“My suite,” he said.
“Is the door locked?” she asked.
“It doesn’t have to be.”
*
Celeste opened the door.
She was wearing only the skimpiest bits of red silk. Ferrol switched off his book-light and watched her closely as she approached the bed.
Now, the only light in the room came from an antique crystal kerosene lamp on his desk, a calculated bit of ambiance.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said.
“Does it look like I’m disturbed?”
“I don’t know you well enough to say.”
He patted the bed. “Come, get to know me better.”
He was his usual amorous self and it wasn’t until the small hours when they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Celeste awoke to thrashing and yelling.
Ferrol was flailing about. Frightened moans rose from deep within his chest and emerged from his throat as low, shuddering screams.
“What’s the matter?” she said, freeing herself from his grasp.
When he didn’t answer, she turned on her bedside light and saw his eyes were shut. She prodded him gently, then harder, and when he kept thrashing, she got close and tightly wrapped him in her arms, cooing and soothing him with her voice and her lips.
Suddenly, he stopped and was quiet. His eyes opened with a look of utter confusion.
“Was I?” he asked.
She kissed his forehead and his eyes. “You’re okay now.”
“I should have warned you.”
“Tell me, what’s the matter?”
“Night terrors. They’re called night terrors.”
“Children have this.”
“They started when I was twelve. They never went away.”
“The fire.”
“I said you were perceptive,” he said.
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“I never have.”
“But I think you’ve had women in your bed before. You never told any of them?”
He reached for a bottle of water on his table. “No.”
“I think you’ll tell me,” she said.
He ran a finger up her belly. “Why?”
“Because you’ve never met someone like me.”
He told her. He told her about waking in abject fear to a room ablaze, about learning from the firemen in the dead of night that he was an orphan. When she asked why Hugo had done it, he gave her a version of a poor boy’s pathological resentment toward the rich, then surprised himself when he slid into a retelling of how he visited Hugo in the hospital and snuffed out his life.
“Maybe it wasn’t the best start to a career of saving lives,” he said.
“He deserved it,” she said, simply. “When did the night terrors start?”
“A month after the fire.”
“They come every night?”
“No, but they’re quite frequent.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Ah. The big question. I’m afraid of the jaws of the final beast.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“When I was a boy, my favorite author was the American Stephen Crane, who wrote about the horrors of the Civil War—you know, the North versus the South. It’s what he called death—the jaws of the final beast.”
“We’re all scared of death, aren’t we?” she said.
“For me, it’s all-consuming, forged in Hugo’s fire. But I should say that it goes beyond fear, because the fear turns to anger. When I lost my parents, my only family was my grandmother. She succumbed to old age when I was in medical school. I desperately did not want her to die. I did not want to be all alone. It made me so angry that she had to leave me. I still get angry when one of my patients dies. Anger and fear are my daily bread.”
“What about love?”
He didn’t answer, but said, “I have a dream I’d like to share with you.”
“I’m ready to hear it.”
“In the morning. Now, I want you again.”
She lay back and took him in her arms. “You can have me whenever you like.”
31
Ferrol was standing at a drafting table lit by a high-intensity lamp inside his dark basement. He invited Celeste Bobier and Ferruccio Gressani to review his blueprints.
He had been confident for a long while that eventually Gressani would join him in some shape or form, but Celeste had dropped into his lap in a manner could best be described as deus ex machina, for surely none other than the gods could have manufactured someone as perfect. He needed an able nurse, he needed a willing partner, and as a bonus, he got the company of a beautiful and sexy lover. But Ferrol was a cautious man. It had taken two decades of work and planning to come to this point and he was not going to jeopardize his project, and perhaps even his liberty, by making rash decisions.
Could these two be trusted?
He knew that loyalty—initially—could be purchased. He had plucked Gressani from his main research group and transferred him to his skunkworks lab because he liked his enthusiasm and hard
