The Obsidian Chamber

14

Constance looked up from her journal.

What was it that had so suddenly caught her attention? A noise of some sort? She listened, but the sub-basement was as quiet as a tomb. A draft of air, perhaps? That was absurd; no breezes stirred in this ancient space, so far below the streets of Manhattan.

She sighed. It was nothing; she was simply restless and distracted. She glanced at her watch: ten minutes past two in the morning. Her eyes lingered on the watch with sadness. It was a ladies Rolex with a platinum jubilee band, and it had been a present from Pendergast the previous Christmas. It matched the timepiece he wore on his own wrist.

She shut the journal abruptly. It was impossible to escape the memory of Aloysius; everything reminded her of him.

She had woken half an hour before. Recently, and most uncharacteristically, her sleep patterns had become disturbed — waking in the middle of the night only to find herself unable to fall asleep again. Perhaps this accounted for the lethargy that had been stealing over her in recent afternoons, prompting the naps that, almost inevitably, had turned into prolonged dozes. But at least she couldn’t blame the insomnia on recent events, Pendergast’s death or the apparent intrusion into her sub-basement: she had been waking at unexpected hours since at least the beginning of their trip to Massachusetts. At that time, her nocturnal alertness had occasioned an important step forward in their investigation. Now it was simply an annoyance.

So she had risen from her wakeful bed and gone into her library to write in her journal. The normally soothing practice proved another frustration: the words just wouldn’t come.

Her glance moved from the closed journal to the dishes from last night’s dinner, piled on the silver tray. The meal had been a chilled one, almost as if Mrs. Trask had known that Constance would be too preoccupied to eat it directly: a brace of cold-water lobster tails, sauce rémoulade; quail eggs au diable… and, of course, a bottle of champagne, of which she had drunk far too much. She could feel it now, a gentle throbbing behind her temples.

Almost as if Mrs. Trask had known I would be too preoccupied to eat it directly…

A strange thought arose in Constance’s mind: was it really Mrs. Trask who was preparing these dishes? But who else could it be? She would not have hired another chef, especially not on her own authority. Besides, the housekeeper jealously guarded her maternal role, always fussing, and would never allow anyone else to prepare food in the house.

Constance placed her fountain pen on the table. She was clearly out of sorts. It was probably due to the wine, which she was unused to drinking, along with the rich meals of late. She could, at least, put a stop to all that. And while she thought of it, it might be a good idea, after all, to speak to Proctor about her recent discoveries in the sub-basement.

Picking up her pen again, she reached into her desk, removed a single piece of cream-laid writing paper, and jotted a note:

Folding the note in half, she rose from the desk; put on her silk dressing gown; and then, lighting a torch, picking up the tray holding the dishes and champagne bottle, and placing the note on top of them, walked down the short hallway.

She opened the door — then stopped short once again. This time, she did not drop the dishes or the bottle. Nor did she draw her stiletto. Instead, she carefully placed the tray to one side, patted her dressing gown to ensure the blade was at hand, and then shone the torch on the thing that had been placed outside her door.

It was a dirty, yellowed, rolled-up piece of silk, with Tibetan writing and a red handprint. She recognized it immediately as the reverse of a t’angka — a Tibetan Buddhist painting.

She picked it up and carried it to the library, where she spread it out. And then she gasped. It was of the most gorgeous appearance imaginable: a coruscation, a sunburst, of reds and golds and azures, with exquisitely delicate shading and perfection of detailing and clarity. She recognized it as a certain type of religious painting depicting Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, sitting upon a lotus throne, which in turn rested on the lunar disk. Avalokiteshvara was the god most revered in Tibet as sacrificing his own salvation to be reincarnated again and again on earth, in order to bring enlightenment to all living, suffering beings of the world.

Except that this depiction of Avalokiteshvara was not as a man, but a young boy. And the child’s features, so exquisitely drawn, were identical, down to the fine whorls of hair and the characteristic droop of the eyelids… to those of her own son.

Constance had not seen her child — the child of herself and Diogenes Pendergast — in a year. The Tibetans had declared him a rinpoche, the nineteenth reincarnation of a revered Tibetan monk. He was hidden away in a monastery outside Dharamsala, India, safe from any interference by the Chinese. In this painting, the child was older than he had been when she last saw him. It could not have been done more than a few months before, at most…

Standing utterly still, she drank in the painted features. Despite the father, Constance could not help but feel a fierce maternal love — exacerbated by the fact that she could only visit him rarely. So this is what he looks like now, she thought, staring almost rapturously.

Whoever left this, she thought, knows my innermost secrets. The existence of my child — and my child’s identity. The hint that had begun with the location of the newly discovered orchid, Cattleya constanciana, was now made plain.

Something else was becoming clear. This person was, without doubt, courting her. But who could it be? Who could possibly know so much about her? Did he know her other secrets, as well — her true age? Her relationship to Enoch Leng?

She felt certain that he did.

For a moment, she considered engaging in another fierce and thorough search of the sub-basement. But she dropped the idea; no doubt a fresh search would be as fruitless as the last.

She knelt, picked up her note to Mrs. Trask, tore it in two, then slipped it into the pocket of her robe. There was no longer any point in sending it — because she knew now that it was not the housekeeper who had been providing her with these exquisite meals and precious wines.

But who?

Diogenes.

She quickly dismissed this as the most ridiculous speculation imaginable. True, such a fey, whimsical, teasing courtship would have been typical of Diogenes Pendergast. But he was dead.

Wasn’t he?

Constance shook her head. Of course he was dead. He had fallen into the terrible Sciara del Fuoco of the Stromboli volcano. She knew this, because she had struggled with him on the very lip of the abyss. She had pushed him herself, she had watched him fall — and had peered over the edge into the roaring winds to the smoking lava below. She was certain her revenge had been complete.

Besides, in life Aloysius’s brother had had nothing but contempt for her — he’d made that abundantly clear. You were a toy, he had written: a mystery easily solved; a dull box forced and found empty.

Her hands clenched at the mere memory.

It wasn’t Diogenes; that was impossible. It was someone else — someone who also knew her deepest secrets.

It came to her like a bolt of lightning. He’s alive, she thought. He didn’t drown, after all. And he has returned to me.

She was overwhelmed with a tidal wave of emotion. She felt almost crazy with hope, frantic with anticipation, her heart suddenly battering in her chest as if it would break free.

“Aloysius?” she cried into the darkness, her voice breaking, whether with laughter or weeping she didn’t know. “Aloysius, come out and show yourself! I don’t know why you’re being so coy, but for God’s sake please, please let me see you!”

But the only reply was her own voice, echoing faintly through the subterranean chambers of stone.