Defending Angels Read online

  On an impulse, she got to her feet and ran lightly up the colorful front stairs to the second floor. Lavinia had seemed to know something about the horrible thing. This wasn’t all in her imagination. It couldn’t be.

  The landing was dim; there was no window here to look over the cemetery and no ceiling light. Lavinia’s door was in shadow.

  The march of painted angels went up one side of Lavinia’s door, over the top, and down the other. The door itself was painted a sheer white that glimmered softly. Bree hesitated a moment, then tapped on the frame.

  There was a soft, shuddery movement on the other side of the door, as if something large and feathery slid across the floor. The door opened, and Lavinia stood there in a flood of pale, silvery light. A gauzy shawl enfolded her, and her dark skin seemed to glow. “Well, child! This is unexpected!”

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Bree apologized. “I had a couple of questions I thought I’d ask.”

  “No bother,” Lavinia said equably. “Come on in and sit yourself down for a spell.”

  Hesitant, Bree stepped inside. For a moment, a very brief moment, the second floor seemed larger than she’d expected. Much larger. A velvety gray mist veiled the floor. The ceiling soared above her. A wall fixture lit with the softness of moonlight cast a gentle shine over a variety of large and small shapes. Lavinia’s voice was a soft whisper in her head:

  “Some of my littlies. You know what a lemur is? I have me a few. And these here are a couple of baby owls that lost their mamma.”

  A ring-tailed lemur curled its tail over the back of a rocking chair and stared at her with huge golden eyes. Bree stared dreamily back. The entire apartment seemed to rock to a slow, sleepy rhythm. The chair rocked with it. The lemur purred. She swayed lightly back and forth on her feet, as though on the deck of a ship.

  The rocking, the lunar light, the scent of strange flowers all made Bree dizzy. She shut her eyes and opened them again.

  The moonlit scene was gone in a flash, evaporated like mist in the hot sun. Lavinia stood in ordinary light on wide pine floors in a small, shabby room that smelled of lavender and roses. She pulled her sweater around her bony shoulders and smiled sweetly at Bree.

  The rocking chair was there, though, swaying wildly as if something had jumped up in a hurry and pushed the chair away. A bit of soft gray fur still clung to it.

  Bree pressed her hands to her ears and took a deep breath. “Please keep on with your chores. I’ve got ... quite a bit to do downstairs. What I wanted to ask you ... it’ll keep just fine.”

  She walked downstairs at a much slower pace than she had going up. Sasha waited for her at the foot, ears up, tail wagging gently back and forth.

  “That,” Bree said with a great deal of puzzlement, “was very confusing. Lemurs? Baby owls? Where do these things in my head come from, Sasha?”

  Sasha yawned, walked back into the living room, and went to sleep.

  Bree rubbed her temples hard. She needed more sleep. She needed to rid herself of nightmares. She’d dumped a pile of unopened mail in her briefcase before she left; she’d it tackle now, before her first appointment of the day. Uneasily aware of the painting looming at her, she settled down to go over her unread issues of the ABA Journal.

  Sometime later, a polite knock at the front door roused her from an infuriating essay complaining about tort reform. Bree got up to answer it, making a mental note to ask Mrs. Mather—Lavinia, rather—about a door chime. Or maybe an intercom. She’d decided after last night that she wasn’t going to leave any doors unlocked, anywhere.

  Sasha gave her an encouraging sort of bark as she walked by. She bent down and fondled his ears, then stroked his forehead. “If you like this one, give me some kind of sign, okay? It’s Rosa Lucheta, the lawyer’s widow.”

  But she opened the door to a short, thickset man with a black beard and a cane.

  “Miss Beaufort?” He rolled the “r” slightly.

  “Yes,” she said. “May I help you?”

  “I am Petru Lucheta. Rosa’s brother.” The accent was Slavic; beyond that, Bree was at a loss. It could have been Russian, Latvian, or Serbo-Croatian for all she knew.

  “How do you do,” Bree said politely.

  “I am ke-vite well,” he said. “Rosa, she is, alas, not so well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. But there was no need for you to come all this way to cancel the appointment. She could have called.”

  “Rosa is not so well permanently,” he said. “She is unable to work, alas. I, however, am ke-vite able to work. I have come in her stead.”

  “I see.” Bree considered Mr. Lucheta for a long moment. He had very black eyes. The beard covered most of his face, but what she could see of it had a benign, almost avuncular expression.

  “You are willing to consider a man for this position?” he said anxiously. “The advertisement did not make a reference to gender.”

  “Our laws don’t allow us to do that, Mr. Lucheta. Forgive me, may I ask? Are you a citizen? Of the United States, I mean?”

  “Oh, yes. I mean, yes, I understand you. No, I am not a citizen. I have a g-r-r-reen card and I will be eligible for citizenship quite soon.” He cleared his throat, glanced from side to side, and shifted his cane from his right hand to the left in the politest possible way. “May I come in?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you standing here on the stoop. Yes, please come in.” She turned, hearing the shuffle-thump as he walked behind her. She felt like Ishmael listening to the one-legged Ahab roam the decks of the Pequod.

  “We’ll have more furniture soon,” she said over her shoulder. “I ordered a desk and some filing cabinets from Office Max this morning, and they’ll be here sometime tomorrow. And our phone lines will be installed by Friday afternoon, at least that’s what Southern Bell promised, and they’re usually pretty reliable.”

  The shuffle-thump came to an abrupt stop. “I see you have the Rise of the Cormorant.”

  Bree whirled. “I beg your pardon?”

  He used his cane to point at the picture. “That. I haven’t seen it in many, many years.” He limped closer. “T’uh. One of the copies, I see. Hm.”

  Bree sat down. Her knees were a bit trembly. “One of the copies?” she said. “As if, I mean, are there a whole bunch of copies?”

  He folded his hands on his cane and gazed affably at the leather chair.

  “Please, of course. Sit down.”

  “Thank you.” He sat in a very formal way, with his back straight and his cane placed horizontally over his knees.

  Bree tried to behave calmly, but she knew her voice was shaking. “You’ve seen this painting before? And you said something about a whole bunch of copies? Is it famous?”

  “Do you mean, are there a whole bunch of copies, as there are a whole bunch of copies of Vincent’s Sunflowers or Pablo’s Dove of Peace? Art that has been carelessly replicated in volume? Is this a piece of art that is famous in that way? That is what you are asking me?”

  “Yes,” Bree said, finding this intimate way of referring to dead artists a little disconcerting. “Although I don’t know this picture at all and I do know those others, of course. Everybody does. It can’t be that famous. Or not as famous as the other pictures you mentioned.”

  “In some circles, it is that famous. As for copies, there are not so many. But you already know this, I think.”

  Bree shook her head. “I don’t know a thing about it. I wish I did. It’s called what? The Rise of the Cormorant?”

  “Yes. It refers to the bird, you see, who flies over the ship.”

  Bree bit her lip. For some reason, the answer to this next question was critical. “Who painted it?”

  “The Patriarch, of course.” He turned to her. “You didn’t know this?”

  “What Patriarch? Who’s the Patriarch?”

  Petru tugged at his beard. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I’ve said too much for the moment. I was under the impression that ownership of the painting has
passed to you.”

  “I hate the thing,” Bree said. “Own it?” The depth of her fear and hatred surprised her. “I’d rather own a rabid dog. I don’t want it. I loathe it. I’ve tried to wreck it and I can’t. I can’t even give it away.”

  “No?” Petru said with interest. “You’ve tried this? To pass it along to someone else?”

  Bree shuddered. “Never. How could I foist that thing on someone else? I meant I can’t see myself having the gall to give it to somebody.” She took a deep breath and burst out, “It’s wicked!”

  Petru tugged at his beard. “The subject is wicked,” he agreed. “The painting itself is not wicked—it merely is what it is.” He tilted his head, considering, “What is the worst thing you feel when you see the Rise of the Cormorant ?”

  Bree stared at it defiantly. “I dream about the damn thing, you know. And the dream’s always the same. If I could just swim fast enough I could keep the people from drowning. That’s what I feel when I look at it; balked, angry, and helpless.” To her extreme annoyance, tears sprang to her eyes. Antonia was right, Bree cried from rage and frustration much more often than she should.

  Petru patted her hand in a comforting way. “This is very Russian, you know. To feel as deeply as this. It’s a good thing.”

  “I don’t believe there are any Russians in our family,” Bree sobbed, “but I appreciate the thought.”

  Petru chuckled a little, dug into the pocket of his suit coat, and emerged with a clean tissue. Bree accepted it with thanks and blew her nose. It smelled of lemons. She leaned against the couch back and looked up at the ceiling rather than confront the painting again. “I just want it out of here.”

  “The only way to remove the painting from your life is to find someone else to accept it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Bree said, a little crossly. She was embarrassed at breaking down in front of a man who might be going to work for her; then she was embarrassed at her testiness. “I do apologize, Mr. Lucheta. I’m not usually this volatile. Please tell me all you can about the painting.”

  “The Patriarch created the Rise of the Cormorant as a warning, and as a test. The warning is, of course, that the cormorant is always on the rise. The test—the test is most interesting. There are those, Miss Beaufort, who would gaze upon those drowning souls and sail as fast away from rescue as they could. And there are those who beat the bodies with their oars and hope to drown them faster. And there are those who scream with rage that they cannot help fast enough.”

  “You forgot those who’re scared pea green,” Bree said with painful honesty.

  Petru laughed a little. “Fear, like tears, is very Russian.” He twinkled with satisfaction. “All deeply felt emotions are very Russian.”

  “But which Patriarch? There’s a Patriarch in the Greek Orthodox Church, and in the Russian one, too, isn’t there?”

  “And for my people as well,” Petru said. “I am a Jew. But no, the Patriarch of whom I speak is one of the Patriarchs of Angels.”

  “I haven’t heard of that religious sect before,” Bree said. “Does it come from Western Europe or Eastern?”

  “God is universal. The Patriarchs of Angels are universal, too. There are no artificial divisions in the Spheres.”

  “I see,” Bree said somewhat dryly. There was a look in Petru’s eye she didn’t like at all. Religious cranks were not her favorite kind of people. She balled the tissue in her hand and looked around for a wastebasket. She’d forgotten to buy a wastebasket.

  “And of course, there’s the cormorant.”

  “Of course,” Bree agreed. “A large diving bird, isn’t it? You can train it to fish, I think.”

  “It is a fisher of men’s souls,” Petru said. Then, in a sonorous voice that rolled through the little room like a kettledrum, he quoted: “The angel ended, and in Adam’s ear / So charming left his voice, that he a while / Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear.” He beamed at her. “Like the painting, the Patriarch commissioned this. John’s greatest work, I believe.”

  “John?” Bree said, utterly baffled. “John who?”

  “Milton. Paradise Lost. ”

  Bree bit her lip hard and said, “I see,” in a strangled way.

  “You are laughing,” Petru observed without any sign of being offended. “La, la. There it is.”

  “I do apologize, but—” She stopped in mid-sentence. Petru looked at her. “But what?” he said encouragingly.

  “Nothing. Nothing.” She put her hand up to her eyes, as if to shield herself from a bright light. Nothing made sense. “I’ve been running around like a headless chicken, getting the office set up. I’m a little overtired, that’s all.”

  Petru didn’t move. But Bree had a sudden horrific fancy that he’d turned into something different. He wasn’t a shabby, down-at-the-heels refugee, but a solid piece of the dark. She forced herself to open her eyes and look at him.

  He smiled at her with such irresistible good humor that she had to smile back. “There is no need to hire me at all,” Petru said, comfortably. “Sometimes it is difficult for those from different life experiences to adjust to one another. And many of you Americans are just a little bit suspicious of we Russians, are you not?” He shrugged. “I can assure you I am not a member of our mafia, or of our KGB, and that my heart no longer belongs to the Communist Party.” He started to get up.

  “Of course I’m not suspicious of Russians,” Bree said. Only of people who referred to dead poets as if they’d had dinner with them last night, she thought. But she didn’t say that aloud. “Please don’t think that. It’s absurd.” She pulled herself together with an effort. She’d called this man in for an interview, dammit, and that’s what she was going to do. Interview him.

  Except she hadn’t called him, she’d called his sister. She stared at him, eyes narrowed. That is, if he actually had a sister named Rosa. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure of anything.

  Sasha got up from his corner with a grunt, and hobbled past Bree to Petru Lucheta. He stuck his nose on the man’s knee, accepted a pat, hobbled back to his corner, and went back to sleep. His message couldn’t have been clearer if he’d spoken aloud:

  There’s nothing to worry about. A little eccentricity never hurt anyone.

  Bree took a breath, held it, and decided to trust both her dog and her inner voice. “Do you have a résumé, Mr. Lucheta?”

  “Call me Petru, please. I have here my passport, my sister Rosa’s address in this city, where I live, and my license to practice law in Petrograd.” He pulled a sheaf of documents from his suit coat, and placed them on the coffee table on top of the newspaper. The article about the wind damage at Huey’s was uppermost. He looked at it, looked at Bree, and smiled like a bearded cherub.

  Bree ignored the smile and examined the passport and the license, a piece of vellum with a gold seal. The vellum was in the Cyrillic alphabet. So he was Russian. And claimed to be a lawyer. She didn’t read Cyrillic; for all she knew the poor man was licensed to sail three-masted schooners rather than practice law.

  “I can’t offer you a professional position,” Bree began apologetically.

  He held up one pudgy hand. “Of course you cannot! And I, I cannot practice law here, in your country, at least not for a great while yet. No, no. It’s for the assistant to your good self that I come.”

  “A great while yet, you said? Do you mean that you’re studying for the Georgia Bar?”

  “Yes. At night. It is as well that I read English with much more adeptness than I speak it.” He raised his chin. “Ah. I hear, perhaps, your delivery person at the door.”

  Bree jumped to her feet. There was a knock at the door, a modest rat-a-tat-tat. But Office Max wasn’t due to deliver the supplies and the filing cabinets she ordered until tomorrow. And Ronald Parchese’s appointment was for four o’clock; it was just after two right now.

  Bree opened the front door to a pair of delivery men with DASHETT DELIVERY embroidered on their coveralls. The one wit
h the name “Eustace” stitched above the Dashett logo held a clipboard and thrust it at her. “Mrs. Winston-Beaufort?”

  “Miss Beaufort, yes,” she said, as she scribbled her name on the sheet. “This is great. I didn’t expect you guys until tomorrow. Please bring the desk on in here. The filing cabinets go in the dining roo—I mean, the conference room.”

  “No desk, ma’am,” Eustace said. “We got boxes, we got bookshelves, but we got no desk.”

  Bree frowned and looked at the sender’s name on the manifest. Professor Cianquino. “Oh, no,” she said.

  “This not your stuff?” Eustace asked with patient indifference.

  “It’s not my stuff,” Bree said crossly. “But it is stuff that’s been sent to me. I suppose it’d be really rude to send it back. Would you stack the boxes in the kitchen, I mean the break room, please? And the bookshelves can go along the wall opposite the fireplace. I needed some anyway.”

  “Your law library is arriving,” Petru Lucheta said, as he got to his feet with some difficulty. “This is excellent. I am, of course, conversant with the computer, but it is a much greater pleasure to handle books.”

  He and Bree both stood out of the way as Eustace and his colleague brought the boxes in on dollies.

  “I don’t really have a law library, as such,” Bree confessed. “I have a few reference volumes, like Black’s and a few of my textbooks from school, but I depend on Lexis for researching case law. This”—she gestured at the stack of cardboard boxes disappearing into the break room—“is a gift from an old friend, a retired law professor, who seems to have gotten it from my uncle. It’s more of a curiosity than anything else, and,” she added with considerable frustration, “I really don’t have room for it.”

  Petru, who had ignored the latter part of this speech, stopped Eustace, withdrew a volume from the box at the top of the stack, and examined the spine. “Aha. It is as I had hoped! Lexis,” he added, “does not have available the Corpus Juris Ultima. At least, not yet.”

  Bree closed her eyes. She heard Petru shuffle-thump to the kitchen. “Alas!” he called to her. “This version is not in Latin! We will just have to cope, dear Bree!”