Running with the Pack Part 24

"I'm not a hunter, but I'm told . . . that, uh, in places like the arctic where indigenous people, uh, sometime might, might hunt a wolf." A man lecturing over the sound of howling wolves opened the alb.u.m, a chairman of some group or movement. "They'll, they'll take a double-edged blade, and they'll put blood on the blade, and they'll melt the ice and stick the handle in the ice so that only the, the blade is protruding. And that a wolf will smell the blood and wants to eat, and it'll come and lick the blade, tryin to eat. And what happens is, when the, when the wolf licks the blade, of course, ah, he cuts his tongue and he bleeds and he thinks he's really havin a good-and he drinks, and he licks, and he licks and of course he's drinkin his own blood, and he kills himself. That's what the imperialists did to us with crack cocaine . . . "

That was when Charles always pressed the skip b.u.t.ton. The first time he had put the CD in and heard that bulls.h.i.+t he had turned it off, and it was several weeks before he gave it another chance. That Mr. Matherne would give him something like that right after what had happened to his mother was crazy and stupid, and he had hated his teacher for a few days afterwards.

"And they actually think that there is somethin that is bringin resources to them but they're killing themselves just like the wolf was lickin the blade, and they're slowly dying without knowing it. That's what's happening to the community, you with me on that? That's exactly and precisely what happens to the community. And instead of blaming the hunter who put the d.a.m.n handle and the blade in the ice for the wolf then what happens is the wolf gets blame, the wolf gets blamed for trying to live. That's what happens in our community. You don't blame the person, the victim, you blame the oppressor. Imperialism, white power is the enemy, was the enemy when they first came to Africa-"

"Bulls.h.i.+t," Charles whispered, the word a mantra he recited whenever he heard those lies. Maybe some of it was sort of true on some other, higher level, but the crackhead who had knifed his mom wasn't a victim, he was a wolf, a hunter, and he didn't deserve any sympathy or justification. He was a beast, and he should die. She had fed him, fed all of them in that slouching brick building the color of old blood that she had single-handedly turned from a crackhouse into a shelter, she was there six days a week and even brought her son along, made him come along if he wanted the allowance he spent on pizza and beef jerky and chocolate milk and everything else he guiltily wolfed down in the cafeteria after throwing away the tempeh sandwiches she made him, the salads and fruit. The junkie wasn't the victim of white oppression and imperialism, he was a drug addict and he tried to jack her car right there in the f.u.c.king parking lot, and Charles knew she couldn't have, wouldn't have fought him over it, probably tried to talk him down like she talked everyone down, but instead of getting talked down he stabbed her twenty-eight times and then crashed her car into a parked police cruiser two blocks away.

Charles had to think about something else, so he turned the music off and picked up the second werewolf book. He opened it and saw the chapter was simply t.i.tled "Becoming a Werewolf." Twenty minutes later he knew how he would be spending the rest of his summer.

The simplest method for a young man trapped in a sweltering southern city distinctly lacking in werewolves to coerce into biting one's arm seemed to be the herbal recipes the book listed, complex combinations of various dried plants brewed in this tea or bound in that poultice, whatever a poultice was. The bulk bins of New Leaf Market were, to Charles's disappointment, void of wolfsbane, hemlock, and just about everything else but a few of the more common dried flowers. Day One was a bust but Charles was not in a hurry to return home, so after eating a rare, hot vegan lunch he walked in the gra.s.s bordering the big road down to the tower of the capital and the two smaller, domed buildings ab.u.t.ting it, the architecture resembling a dude's junk even to non-teenaged viewers.

The downtown was nothing but offices, banks, and government buildings, and finally Charles marched south. He had no way of knowing he pa.s.sed within a block of a local vegan soulfood cart, or four blocks of a twenty-four hour veg-friendly coffee shop, just as he had no way of knowing that there were dozens of non-a.s.shole kids in his neighborhood, kids who preferred reading and riding bikes and playing video games to terrorizing their peers and getting f.u.c.ked up. The sun was setting as Charles reached Holten Street but he walked around the block a few times before going inside the dilapidated house where his gramma was already cooking something he didn't want to eat.

There was a bike in his room. It didn't have gears and was a little small but it was, undeniably, a bicycle. Charles felt a lump in his throat, and then felt stupid for feeling it.

"Gotcha bike," his father said over the hoppin john that Charles could barely taste the fatback in.

"I really appreciate it," Charles said. "Thanks."

"Can't be walkin everywhere lookin like such a target," his dad went on, a strange expression on his ashy cheeks. "Gotta be able to dip out quick next time them toughs come atcha. Fight's out, so that leaves you with flight. What?"

Charles realized he must be looking pretty confused himself, his gramma looking back and forth between her son and grandson with a beatific smile on her pinched face.

"I went to school, boy," his dad shook his head and set back to his meal. "Maybe not as much's some but I went, and that's how I got the state job. Rickards is hard but it'll be good, toughen you up, and then you can head over to Fam like your mom and me. That's the last thing the government wants, us simple coloreds getting degrees."

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College wasn't exactly Ivy League, and Charles knew his father had only received an AA, but it was the closest thing to a good night he had enjoyed since arriving. It only got better-after dinner his dad took him out to the video store and let him pick out a movie. When his gramma went to sleep they settled in on the couch his dad slept on with a battered VHS tape called Black Werewolf. About halfway through the film Charles realized it had to be the same movie Mr. Matherne had recommended, The Beast Must Die, just with a different t.i.tle for some reason. Not even his dad offering him a hit on the acrid joint he puffed and cutting up with "Werewolf my a.s.s, that's a d.a.m.n dog leapin all over the place. More like leap-wolf, you ask me" could diminish Charles's pleasure. That night he dreamed of being a real werewolf, and not like the obvious German shepherd in the movie but the real deal, a beast both ferocious and fair, a cross between a superhero and a monster. Then he dreamed about his mom and woke up feeling sick and scared.

The next morning Charles pored over his book and realized he was rapidly running out of means of becoming a werewolf, given the short supply of rare herbs and the continued absence of the Devil offering up magic ointments. One method the book listed was to sleep outside under a full moon on a Friday, but who knew when the next one of those would be, and if that actually worked, the world would have been long overrun in lycanthrope winos and boy scouts. Just about everything else involved werewolves or, failing that, normal wolves, and so Charles had almost given up hope when he re-read the paragraph about being cursed.

There weren't a lot of Gypsies in the ghetto, but if Hollywood had taught Charles one thing it was that the South was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with magical black people. Of course, they always appeared whenever white people needed them so Charles was at a marked disadvantage there, but he did know an old black lady, and if she didn't know voodoo or whatever she could at least point him in the right direction. His gramma spent most of any given day in the community center a few blocks away, and Charles was halfway there before he remembered his bike and trotted back home to get it.

It lacked a kickstand and he had to peddle backwards to brake but the feel of the wind on his face was a welcome one. Leaning the bike against a handicapped parking sign, Charles walked up the cracked concrete walkway and pushed open the tinted gla.s.s doors. He felt like he had jumped into the neighborhood pool back home, the AC burning his sweaty skin. Taking off his gla.s.ses and wiping them on his s.h.i.+rt, Charles realized at once why his gramma spent so much time there.

"Charlie!" she cried, and putting his gla.s.ses back on he saw he had walked in on an impressively stereotypical game of bingo. His gramma waved him over and he moved between the tables crowded with old men and women, most of whom seemed put out by the distraction. The tables were obviously from a school cafeteria, and his gramma scooted down the bench to make room for him, the older gentleman beside her smiling at Charles as he squeezed between them.

"This is Charlie," she said proudly.

"E-nine," announced the portly man at the front of the room, causing a flurry of groans, mutterings, and laughter. "E-nine."

"Charlie, that's Mr. Johnson next to you, and this is Ms. Hattie, and she's Mrs. Leacraft, and-" a half-dozen more introductions were made, to the consternation of those who actually treated the game with the severity it deserved. Finally Charles's gramma finished up and seemed ready to turn her attention back to the game but Charles realized he had hit the jackpot and acted quickly before the attentions of the seniors could return to their bingo cards.

"Ma'am, I came here to ask you something," said Charles, pleased to see Mr. Johnson and a few of the others were watching him curiously.

"Well go on then," she said, her eyes flitting back to the front of the room where the announcer sifted out the next ball.

"Is there anyone around here who knows about voodoo and cursing people and all that?" Charles asked.

"What?" His gramma frowned at him, her voice nearly drowned out by the laughter of some of her neighbors and the disapproving voices of others.

"We're Christians, boy."

"Don't go messin with rootwork."

"You think you're funny?"

"Charlie's dad's been showin him movies bout, whatsit, werewolfs," his gramma said defensively, though she had every intention of bawling him out once they were alone. "He's just got himself curious."

"Ware woofs?" Ms. Hattie said, peering at Charles. "Takem on ta the juneya moosam, they got ware woofs there."

"They do?" Charles couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Red'uns," Ms. Hattie nodded, the thick patch of hair on her neck making Charles wonder if a bite from her would be sufficient. "Ma Davie liked'um."

"Don't you get her started on her boy," Charles's gramma hissed. "Go on home and don't come back in here less you behave, Charlie. I swear-"

Charles didn't wait to see what she swore, instead thanking Ms. Hattie and booking it. Back at the house he dug through the phonebook, and in five minutes he had directions to the Tallaha.s.see "Junior" Museum. He considered asking them about werewolves but it wasn't like he had a lot else to do if Ms. Hattie was as crazy as she sounded, and so he set off down Orange Avenue.

The neighborhoods thinned out as he peddled and it took him over an hour before he even reached the turn-off. Regular as locker searches at Rickards High School the afternoon rain came down and soaked him as he rode, but finally he hit the hilly stretch of gravelly road. He was out in the woods now, poison ivy and brambles filling in the gaps between the scrub pines, the sounds of the highway he had foolishly ridden on fading as he rolled into the parking lot. The wooden building looked awfully small and wanting in spooky architecture for a place purported to hold some variety of werewolf but in he went, drenched from sneaker to snout.

The Junior Museum was more or less a zoo for local animals. Beyond the building lay a re-creation of an old farm, and trails wound through the woods and over long boardwalks near a lake. There were supposedly alligators and a panther but they must have been hiding in their large enclosures, everything green palmettos and brown leaves and reddish cypress and gray oak. There were hardly any other people on the grounds as he wound through the maze of paths and walkways, and then he arrived. Charles grinned, the plaque on the raised boardwalk overlooking the pen clarifying Ms. Hattie's rambling.

Red Wolf. Endangered. Rare wolves, indeed.

They looked like dogs, lanky and brown and lolling in the shade of the underbrush at the mouth of their den-two wolves. Charles wondered just what in h.e.l.l was wrong with him, coming to a zoo. He supposed the patch of woodland was their natural habitat but still, locking up intelligent animals was unfair. That was why he didn't eat them, after all, because they were smart and felt pain and rejection and the sting of confinement, because they were just as real as he was and deserved to live for themselves instead of being locked up.

Looking down at the bored wolves Charles couldn't believe what a kid he had been. Even if werewolves were real, which they weren't, why would he want to be one? He didn't even eat cheese anymore so why would he want to gnaw bones and rend flesh? Would he scare the Holten Street Clique straight, or fix the crackhead who had killed his mom? What he was doing was daydreaming about violence, no different than some fool thinking a heater or a knife would even the score or keep him safe. What did violence beget? Again, what in h.e.l.l, Charles? The Vegan Werewolf sounded like a pretty dumb premise for a children's book, not a mature plan for fixing himself and helping his community, like his mom had- They came up behind him, braying in their exaggerated dialect, and somehow he knew, as if even then his nose were keener, his ears sharper.

"-bwah, that s.h.i.+t is r-tarded," one of them hooted.

"See one fight a red-nose pit, that'd be tight," said another, and Charles turned around and looked at the three white kids from the silver hatchback that had pelted him with garbage his first week on the Southside. There was a fat one with a kango hat, a bulky but strong looking dude, and a wiry little one in a wife beater. None of them looked older than Charles but clearly one of them had a license.

"Hey," the smallest nodded at Charles and they moved a little way down the boardwalk.

"Nuthin here, either." The ripped guy said. "Bunk as f.u.c.k."

"My moms'll go to work in another hour," the skinny one said. "Try out that gravity B I built?"

"Go ghetto-callin later," the fat one said in a low voice, glancing over his shoulder at Charles as they turned and went back down the walkway, away from the pen. "My cousin showed me how to get p.i.s.s into a water balloon."

Then they were gone around the bend of the wooden boardwalk, and Charles exhaled, light headed and nauseated. Looking down into the enclosure his eyes focused immediately on a small puddle, probably rainwater, and the footprints around it. What else was he going to do that summer? The chain-link fence went right up to the railing of the boardwalk and Charles went over before he chickened out.

Halfway down he realized what he was doing and froze. It took more strength than he knew he had to turn his head, knowing they must be about to pounce and drag him down to a b.l.o.o.d.y, painful death. Instead he saw the two wolves watching him lazily from their shady lookout. He scrambled the rest of the way down, painfully aware of the noise the metal fence made as he descended into the pen.

Fingers still biting into the fence, he glanced away from the wolves to the muddy earth at his feet. Dry pawprints speckled the ground but a few feet away one was filled with blackish water. Squatting down, he moved like a nervous crab over to the print, the wolves still motionless but watching. Then Charles giggled at how stupid he was being and, dropping onto all fours, stuck his mouth in the pawprint and slurped up a mouthful of muck-water. He coughed on it but stood triumphantly, which was when he saw that only one of the wolves was still lying in the shade watching him.

Charles turned back to the fence, knowing what he would see. The boy had suffered nightmares before, had seen a horror flick or two, and knew what came next. Sure enough, the red wolf stood between him and the fence, its teeth bared, its hackles raised, a low growl bubbling out of its throat. Bulls.h.i.+t, thought Charles, and then it lunged forward.

Charles kept his b.l.o.o.d.y hand in his pocket as he pa.s.sed through the museum building and out into the parking lot, dusk creeping down from the dirty clouds. The white kids must still be on the grounds somewhere, the silver hatchback one of the only cars in the lot, and after looking around Charles took his damp s.h.i.+rt off and wrapped his hand in it before getting on his bike. He had only peddled halfway to the main road before he had to ditch his bike and throw up, still terrified and confused.

It knew what he wanted and was helping him, a part of Charles told himself, but the rest of him was certain the wolf had been just as scared as he was, territorial but scared, and that's why it had fled back to its mate after nipping his hand instead of dragging him down and ripping out his throat. Charles didn't know how he had made it up the fence afterwards, his bound hand already dying the s.h.i.+rt an impossibly bright red. The silver hatchback pa.s.sed him as he got back on his bike but none of the kids seemed to notice him, and Charles rode as fast as he could, his stomach twisting, his head pounding, his hand itching.

The setting sun at his back, Charles peddled harder and harder, his bike whining, traffic content to cruise behind him instead of pa.s.sing the crazy-looking kid flying down the road on a tiny bike. Then the bike was too slow, and in the deepening twilight he left Orange Ave and skidded his bike to a stop on a side road by one of the FAMU gardens. When the last car pa.s.sed him he hurled the bike down into the gully that ran parallel to Orange and scrambled down the steep bank after it, foam flecking his lips, a fever working its heat from his spinning head down his parched throat and into a ball of fire in his belly. He fell the last few feet down the overgrown slope, kudzu tangling his legs, and lay beside his bike in the shallow, mucky stream at the mouth of the culvert that dipped under the side road. Charles guzzled the water until he vomited, and then he drank more.

The creek had to be toxic, what in h.e.l.l, Charles, his skin burning and his limbs aching and his bowels pinching, and he scrambled into the wide culvert, away from the headlights s.h.i.+ning at the top of the deep ditch. Then all of his bones broke, every single one, and Charles couldn't even scream from the agony of it, just the sound of the splintering bones making him throw up, except instead of ditchwater a long, dripping tongue spilled out of his mouth, dangling by his chin. Charles tried to stop himself from s.h.i.+tting his pants, as if that were somehow the worst part about dying, as if embarra.s.sment hurt worse than real pain, but he couldn't even scream so holding it in was futile. Then it was real pain, it was the worst part, and he managed to make his twisting, warping arms get his pants down to relieve the pressure.

The length of spine that had split out of the skin beneath his tailbone extended further without the jeans to constrain it, and that freedom was when the pain turned to pleasure, when Charles finally let himself acknowledge and believe what was happening to him. Not bad water, not exhaustion, not craziness-he was a werewolf, a real werewolf, and he could no longer control himself. He was going to forget himself, he was going to be a deadly beast hunting the crackheads and wannabe g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers and ghetto-callers, he would rip them apart and he would lick and he would drink and he would drink and he would lick and when he came back to himself the next morning he would be covered in scratches and bruises and no memory of what had happened, but when he saw a human finger or some bling in the toilet bowl he would realize that it was time to reset the old vegan clock, yes indeed, and every full moon it would happen and- Charles realized it had finished, his body trembling but again complete and static, yet he was still himself. Mentally, at least-his eyes were sharper, as were his nose and ears and, flexing his paws in the drainage pipe, his claws. Trying to get up, Charles felt the faintest tinge of disappointment that children do when things do not go exactly as they expect-he was not some hulking, half-human lupine monster who could walk on his hind-legs, he was a wolf, and not even a very large one. Nevertheless, moving on all fours felt so natural and cool that Charles laughed, a raspy, alien growl. Standing at the mouth of the pipe, he licked his chops and looked up at the full moon, wondering if it had been the water in the footprint or the bite or simply his desire. Then he tried howling, and it came as naturally as walking had, and dogs took up the cry all over Tallaha.s.see.

Staying to the channel, Charles marveled at how stunning the night was, the smells and sounds so rich he felt like he was gobbling them up, and he only left the wild of the filthy brook when streetlights began spilling down into the dark ravine. He waited until the sounds of cars were a safe distance off and scrambled up the side, the trickiest maneuver thus far. Then he crossed Orange and headed home by way of the FAMU campus, smelling and hearing any would-be witnesses long before they caught a glimpse of him, and if anyone working late at the university saw a large dog loping across the parking lots it did not make the paper the next day.

Southside was beautiful under the full moon, Charles realized, beautiful but sad. The scarcity of streetlights in this particular urban area allowed him to walk right up the middle of the street, his nails clicking on the rough pavement, and whenever headlights rounded a corner he cut into a backyard or under a house, most of them raised shotgun houses like his with plenty of room for a beast to hide until the car pa.s.sed.

A silver hatchback was parked in front of one of the houses Charles ducked under, and he waited there until the trio of white kids came down the stairs, their fear stinking more than the dried-up pot in their pockets or the cigarettes in their hands. Charles kind of wanted the beast to take over then, at least to scare them, but one of the Holten Street Clique who had jacked Charles was with them, and even bristling with teeth and claws Charles was scared of the big thug-he had a funky, metallic smell about him that might well have been a gun. Otherwise the kids smelled the same, more or less, which meant something, Charles supposed.

Charles moved on as they jawed in front of the hatchback, and in a vacant lot he rested by a worn fence and watched three men pa.s.s around a gla.s.s pipe, their fingers the only parts of their bodies not shaking as they smoked the stinking, sour lumps. Charles realized with a single sniff that one of them was the father of the Holten Street bully who was with the white kids two blocks over, and he wondered if the boy knew his dad was a junkie. The kid certainly had nicer clothes than his father, but that wasn't saying much.

Deeper in the night and the Southside he found a group of men and women enjoying a midnight grillout in a backyard, and further on a fenced-off yard where several pitbulls woke up growling at his approach, the dogs ripe with anger, their throats scarred from fighting, the stink of their dead fellows rising out of shallow graves beside the fence. Charles checked the address of the house to report them to the police in the morning. By then he was starting to fade, his tongue panting, his limbs sore, and he followed his own scent back to Holten Street, toward his bed.

His father was asleep on the front porch, an ashtray and the cordless phone on a stool beside him. Charles nosed the screen door open and padded inside the dark house. Hopping onto his bed, he curled up and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

"Boy, don't you sleep naked in your gramma's house!" Charles sat up in bed at his father's voice, his head pounding, his whole body sore and scratched and bruised and his eyes watering from the ruthless sunlight. "Charlie, I don't wanna call the police on you but you cannot be stayin out all night, not callin or nuthin. You don't wanna go where I've been, Charlie, trust me. What's wrong with you?"

"Sorry," Charles blinked away the tears and saw his father had turned away from him in the doorway. "I was-"

"I don't wanna hear it," his father shook his head. "But this is it, understand? No more. One free get-out-of-s.h.i.+t card and you just used it, son-no more. I lied to my mom for you, Charlie, I told her you got in right after she went to sleep. How do you think that made me feel? I rented us another wolfman movie and you make me stay up all night thinkin you run off or got yourself killed with that smart mouth of yours. Where you get off . . . "

Charles wondered if he would transform the next time the moon swelled. His father droned on, clearly taking satisfaction in the lecture, and Charles realized that he had been wrong about a whole h.e.l.l of a lot of things. He was actually relieved that he had woken up human, and more than even knowing how the night-air of Tallaha.s.see tasted or what the full moon smelled like, that was the most surprising thing about the summer that Charles became a werewolf.

THE BARONY AT RDAL.

PETER BELL.

In Norway and Iceland certain men were said to be eigieinhameer, not of one skin . . . . The full form of this superst.i.tion was, that men could take upon them other bodies, and the natures of those beings whose bodies they a.s.sumed . . . and a man thus invigorated was called hamrammr.

-Sabine Baring-Gould, 1865 The excursion to Norway was something of a new departure for Fraser, who had previously rarely travelled abroad.

It had long been his habit to spend his holidays visiting botanic gardens. Powerscourt beneath the Wicklow Mountains, storm-lashed Tresco Abbey in the Scillies, the Hebridean splendours of Achamore, Arduaine and Inverewe-Fraser had visited them all; as well as countless others, by no means all of which were open, officially at least, to the public; but, by fair means or foul-for he was not averse to trespa.s.s-he had ticked them off his list.

Now, with the broad plain of retirement extending before him, he was exploring pastures new: a cruise of the Norwegian fjords, courtesy of his daughter, Eloise. The stark northern climes of Scandinavia had never previously struck him as a likely hunting ground for exotic flora; but Eloise, who had worked for a time at Kristiansand University, a.s.sured him that the cherry trees bloomed prodigiously all along the grey banks of the fjords, hinting at treasure troves as wonderful as Kew, trees mightier than anywhere back home in Argyll. Fraser was not convinced.

As the coach traversed the mountains, they listened with exas-peration to their prattling Norwegian tour guide, Inge, a rotund, rosy-cheeked, middle-aged woman, with curiously idiomatic English, whose appearance reminded Fraser of a garden gnome.

"To your right you see the Grnnfjell." She gesticulated towards the wooded slopes, adopting a melodramatic tone. "And here, in the forests, long ago there lived man-wolves and bears, and things that are drinking blood, including the terrible b.l.o.o.d.y fox . . . "

"Like something out of Bergman!" Eloise exclaimed.

"Bergman is Swedish, my dear. I wouldn't let our guide hear that, it's like saying the Welsh are Scottis.h.!.+ . . . "

"Well, a lot of the old Norwegian n.o.ble families have Danish or Swedish blood in their veins. They've all been united one time or another."

Still the guide droned on: now it was trolls.

" . . . and these trolls, they lived in caves up on the hillside, and hidden away in dark dells, and on a lonely dark night, if a traveller he meet a troll, then he might not live to see the day, or will go mad with fear . . . "

There was something about the guide's jolly, lilting Scandinavian vowels that, to an English ear, sounded vaguely comic, curiously and uneasily framing the horrors.

"This is as bad as Scotland!" declared Fraser. "Nothing but ghosts and legends! Where are all these wonderful gardens?"

"Stop complaining! You're the one who's always telling people Grandmother Campbell had second sight!"

They were entering a tunnel.

" . . . and above here, in a high pa.s.s, there was a slaughter in the olden days, very b.l.o.o.d.y . . . "

"She'll be blaming the Campbells next!" he said.

"Not unless she's a MacDonald!"

"Aye, they get everywhere!"

The guide's history lesson continued, of questionable accuracy.

"Notice how she glosses over the War," whispered Eloise. "Nothing but heroics. They've buried the past here, alright."

Eloise was a historical researcher, her specialism Norwegian resistance in the Second World War. Indeed, her scholars.h.i.+p had won her the fellows.h.i.+p at Kristiansand, a post she had been reluctant to vacate, having unearthed previously unstudied material in the National Archives that shed new light on the n.a.z.i occupation. It involved some of Norway's most respected families. The picture was, however, incomplete; further research was needed, not to speak of circ.u.mnavigating the suddenly disobliging att.i.tude of the university authorities. Fraser got the impression she had left under a cloud. The present trip, he suspected, was as much inspired by his daughter's scholarly agenda as by a desire to indulge him in the botanical wonders of the North.

Eloise had arranged things so she would have time at the end of the trip to revisit the Archives in Oslo; and, beforehand, to network with colleagues from Kristiansand. Fraser had been left to wander the old university town alone, which had not been without its rewards. Meanwhile, Eloise had not wasted her time: an interview with a surviving member of the Norwegian Resistance, Evald Aker, great-uncle of a former colleague, had left her quite excited.

"Aker told me about a Resistance operation to help refugees escape to Sweden that ended in a ma.s.sacre," she explained over supper in the sterile luxuriance of the Bergen Radisson, "It involved one of Norway's oldest families, the von Merkens. This ties in with hints in my own research. Some of these n.o.bles were only too glad to sell out their people for the sake of a quiet life! Aker gave me the name of an old servant who's apparently still on the estate. Said he could tell a few tales about goings-on during the War when a certain Anders von Merkens was in residence."

"Where's that?"

"The Baroniet Rdal!" Eloise declared, smiling.

"That's on our itinerary, isn't it?" he responded. "You knew that all along! I thought this was a holiday!"

"Let's call it a mix of business and pleasure!"

"So what's this place, Rdal?"

"Oh, you'll love it! An old Norwegian manor house with landscaped gardens. Over a hundred species of rhododendron-they should be at their best now-and ten thousand English roses! Rdal-the Red Vale! So called for its brilliant autumns."