“Any success with your filming?” Ryan asked, turning his head toward where he thought the man was standing.
“Think so. Just you all wait and see. Might have some surprises for you.”
“What?” Dean asked. “Tell us.”
“The best surprise is no surprise,” Mildred said. “Why not wait and see?”
The boy’s face fell. “Oh, come on, Johannes. Tell us what you done.”
“What you’ve done. Or what you’ve been doing,” Krysty corrected. “Not what you done.”
“Sorry.”
Forde sat on the sofa and stretched out his long legs, peering at his mud-splattered boots. “Sure is foul out there,” he said. “Just blowing over when I came back in. Promises to be a fine, clear night. Found me a back way in through an overgrown herb garden. Sort of wicket gate, unlocked.” His eyes were wide with excitement, and Mildred noticed that his fingers were trembling as if he’d been through a shock.
“What part of the mansion did that lead to?” Ryan asked. “Kitchen?”
“Through there. But you’ll see on my film. I can’t tell you. Too amazing. Most bizarre thing. The cellars are real old, with a low roof, and damp and smelling of salt and decay and iron.” He was grinning more broadly, wolfishly, almost hugging himself with what Krysty saw as a mix of excitement and fear. “I’ll process the film tonight after we’ve eaten and show it to you tomorrow night. And I swear it’ll blow your eyes out of your head.”
He turned to Ryan. “Sorry, friend. Bit thoughtless. But you’ll hear about it.”
“Will you show film to Family?” Jak asked.
“Will I not?”
“Will they like it?”
“Will they like it, Mildred? Well, now, I’m not quite so sure that I can answer that. Have to wait awhile and see for ourselves, won’t we?”
Everyone except Ryan, sitting still on the sofa, had gathered around Forde. None of them noticed the small side door to the room, almost hidden in the shadows, open and close.
“Have you seen some of the Family?” J.B. asked. “Apart from Elric?”
Ryan wondered why the man didn’t answer, unable to see Forde rubbing his fingers against the side of his nose, smirking at the others.
“What? Will someone just tell me what the man’s fuckin’ saying?”
Krysty answered, her words overlapping his anger. “Sorry, lover. Johannes has taken some film today that he thinks is special. Double special. Something to do with finding his way into the cellars of the house. And with the Family. Says he’ll show them to us tomorrow night after supper.”
“When I’ve processed them,” Forde said. “I doubt I’ll ever take any better film for the rest of my life.”
Norman’s voice from the gloomy corner of the large room made them all start, not knowing when he’d come in, or how much he’d heard.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Dinner is served.” His voice was completely flat and toneless.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They found that there was a new figure at the head of the long table, sitting with Elric at his right hand and an empty chair to his left.
There was no doubting his kinship with Elric, though Krysty thought, as she helped Ryan to a seat, that either of them could have been related to Jak.
The only real difference in their appearance from that of the teenager was in height. The two members of the Family were much taller than Jak. Elric was around six feet three inches tall, and the new member of the clan close to six and a half feet.
But both men were almost skeletally thin, with red-tinted eyes and hair as white as Sierra snow. Both had the same strange skin, pale as wind-washed ivory, with an odd delicacy to it, like the finest lace.
As the outlanders were shepherded in by the ever-attentive Norman, the two members of the Family both stood, the older one more slowly, as if his joints pained him. Krysty guessed that he was in his forties, but he seemed much more frail than Elric. He was staring at his guests with such intensity it worried her. She chose not to mention that to Ryan.
“Do sit down, outlanders. I am Thomas Cornelius. Welcome to Bramton and our home.”
“You the father of Elric?” Dean asked.
“Yes, I am,” Thomas replied.
Simultaneously Elric Cornelius said, “No, he isn’t.”
They looked at each other with a flash of what Krysty thought was anger. Then both of them offered brilliant smiles, revealing amazingly white and perfect teeth, one of the rarest sights in Deathlands, where most people had lost most of their teeth by the age of thirty.
“Yes, he is,” Elric said.
Simultaneously Thomas Cornelius shook his head. “No, I am not his father.”
“Want to try a third time?” Ryan asked sarcastically. “Mebbe both give us the same answer this time around?”
By now everyone was seated and the older Cornelius had gestured to Norman to begin serving the food.
He spoke to the company, gesturing with his hands. Mildred looked away, feeling that the long, bony fingers with the carefully manicured, sharp-tipped nails were almost hypnotizing with their fine elegance.
“Perhaps I should explain straightaway, to remove any ambiguity or confusion, just who we all are and how we come to be here.”
“Be nice,” Ryan said laconically, wincing as Krysty kicked him under the table.
“I understand your unhappiness, Ryan Cawdor. We have been poor hosts. Indeed, you will probably not meet all of the Family until tomorrow. Some are away and some busy flying about their own business.”
Doc was watching the fragile-looking man speak. There was a nagging suspicion about what was going on in Bramton and in the mansion on the cliff top, but Doc knew better than to engage his mouth before his brain had functioned. From where he sat, Elric was clear in his direct line of sight, and he could have sworn that he detected a thin-lipped smile at Thomas’s words.
It was there, and then it was gone, like a late frost under the rising sun.
Perhaps it had never been there.
Doc kept his silence.
Thomas was still speaking. “I hope that Norman has looked after you. The weather has been inclement today, I’m afraid. We never saw the sun at all.” It was said with heavy regret.
Doc thought he saw the same fleeting grin from the younger albino.
Why? he thought.
“I gather the food has been less than adequate. This is because our tastes as a family are not as other people, and the kitchen gets little practice of cooking for norms. Neither Elric nor I will dine with you here.”
The first course was a mix of what looked like local trout, with bread-fried catfish, served on a bed of boiled rice with snow peas on the side.
Krysty quietly told Ryan what it was, and how good it looked. “Best we’ve seen since we got to this place,” she said, biting off a slice of the baked trout. “Mmm, that is so good.”
“There is wine,” Norman said, bringing around a dark green bottle, frosted with the cold. “This is from the oldest part of the cellars.” He poured out a glass for everyone, hesitating at Dean, waiting for a nod of approval from Krysty.
Doc snatched up the long-stemmed crystal goblet and swilled the pale gold liquid around, dipping his beaky nose into it, inhaling deeply and sighing.
“It’s a Sancerre. And a very good one unless I totally miss my guess.”
Norman giggled. “You’re the first visitor in the past fifty years to know that. Wait until you try the Lafitte with the roast beef.”
Doc smiled, sipping appreciatively at the French wine, glowering at Dean, who’d gulped his half glass down in what seemed a single mouthful.
Thomas waited for a few moments before resuming his little speech.
“I take it from your reaction that we have got it right. The people in the kitchen will be told.
“Now” he spread his hands expansively, “you came here through the mat-trans system in the old Redoubt 47, did you not?”
It was a bombshell.
Ryan paused, a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. He heard his son gasp with shock, and someone else dropped a fork. Doc was his guess.
He actually smiled at the foolish way his mind was operating, wasting a fraction of a moment on wondering who’d dropped a fork, when they were sitting at a table with someone who’d guessed their most secret secret.
Or, he quickly figured, someone who actually knew their biggest secret.
For twenty beats of the heart, nobody in the room spoke a word. The only sound was a high-pitched giggle from Elric Cornelius, which was echoed by Norman.
Finally it was Thomas who spoke again. “I have no need to ask you if this is true. Even if I wasn’t already certain, your reactions would have screamed it out as plainly as if it were daubed on that wall in letters ten feet high.”