I stop short of mentioning the courtesan because what if Miriam was lying about having told her? What if she doesn’t know? I can’t be the one to tell her. Give her more ammunition.
“Look, yes I knew who Miriam was when I had your grandfather hire her. She was down on her luck and considering the situation, why not help her out. God knows I didn’t have any other allies in this house. But the peanut thing, she may have mentioned your girlfriend’s allergy but I swear I didn’t know it was lethal. I just thought her face would swell up or something. What do I know about these things? If Miriam fed her peanuts, that’s on her, not me. Probably a stupid little game she concocted. Miriam doesn’t like Mercedes either. Seeing a pattern?”
I snort.
“What you’re saying now, though? That it was some sort of attack? That has nothing to do with me, Judge. Why would I care about that woman? I don’t like her, it’s true. But I don’t like any of those high-born spoiled Society women. They look down their noses at me and I’ve never made a secret of my dislike. You know that. But I can tell you I don’t care enough to launch some attack. Christ. Not everyone thinks like your grandfather. If anything, you’re blood, not me. Maybe question your own motives with her. Do you have any intention to marry her? Because if you don’t, I suggest you try to keep yourself to yourself. A woman like that will trap you. You don’t want that.”
“You’re concerned for me?”
“Of course, I am. You’re my son.”
“Or is it that if I marry and have an heir, it won’t bode well for Theron, especially considering what he did to her.”
“Like I said, a sex game.”
I slam my hands on the table so hard she jumps. “If you fucking say that one more time, I swear—”
“What?” she stands. “You’ll take me into that room and finish what your grandfather started? Oh, believe me, I have no doubt you would.”
Jesus.
I walk away, rub the back of my neck. She got a rise out of me. I just gave her exactly what she wanted.
“Does your girlfriend know about that by the way? Or about your temper? Just like his. It’s a matter of time. She should really know what she’s in for, don’t you think? I doubt she’d so easily spread her legs—”
I spin to face her and throw the table over, sending wine all over the kitchen, red splashing on her white robe before the glass shatters into a hundred pieces.
My mother screams.
I stand staring at her, at the splatters of red so much like blood.
She’s backed against the counter and staring back at me. She steels herself. Is she truly terrified of me? “I feel sorry for the woman you’ll marry one day. You are just like him, Judge. Exactly him.”
I flinch as if she’s struck me and stalk out of the cottage, her accusations chasing me. Nothing I haven’t heard before, I remind myself. Nothing I don’t already know. I am like him. I will hurt her. It’s in my nature.
I stalk to the one place I know I should avoid. I walk over muddy earth, my boots sinking into the ground. He’d hate that. Me tracking mud inside. I don’t use my flashlight to light the way as I retrieve the key from my pocket and unlock the padlock, push the door open. Feeling for the switch I flip it and light up the room. I’m instantly confronted by the evidence of my brother’s rage. His hate. The whip on the floor. The broken cane. Mercedes’s shoes discarded, one in a corner, the other upside down a few feet away. Her clothes, torn from her body. If I look close at the whipping bench, I see blood too. Hers?
At the fireplace I stack wood. Using old paper for kindling I light it and it takes immediately. The logs are so dry they’ll go up in no time. Satisfied, I straighten, watch the fire grow, flames bright and hot.
I take the bottle of scotch I drank from the last time I was here and carry it to his chair. No one sat in that damned chair but him. Ever. It’s huge, like a fucking throne, the leather creased and worn. I switch on the CD player, my grandfather never understood streaming, and Matthäeus Passion blares at a volume that at first makes me flinch. I drink straight from the crystal decanter.
This is what he’d listen to after the punishments. While we lay limp trying not to make a sound. Like what he’d done was some sort of holy rite. During the punishments there was silence. Mostly. Because it was a game to him. How long until we’d scream. And woe to he who wept. Tears are weakness. Screams are also weakness but somehow less so. Take it like a man, he’d say. And until you did, he kept going. Never tiring. Taking a sick pleasure from it.
I spent some time over that bench but not nearly as much as my own father, even as an adult man. Never as much time as Theron. He was always finding some way to make trouble. Like he didn’t learn. Or maybe he just wanted grandfather’s attention desperately enough that he didn’t care if it was good or bad.
As far as I know my mother was only brought here that one time. But maybe I’m wrong. I know he taunted my father about his inability to control his wife. I think my grandfather hated her. Once she served her purpose, bearing his grandsons, he didn’t bother with her. Until he learned the truth about Theron. Then she had his full, undivided attention. And I was made to witness.
Jesus.
Can I blame her for hating me?
I push my hand through my hair roughly, drink three long swallows of scotch, then three more until I start to feel it. The heat. The numbing will come. But not fast enough so I drink more.
My mother is right. I will hurt Mercedes.
Because my grandfather favored me for a reason. He chose me over my father, over Theron even before he knew Theron wasn’t blood. It wasn’t because I was the firstborn. It was because he saw something in me he liked. He saw himself. His sharpness of mind. His disciplined nature. His need for balance between right and wrong, justice and consequence.
And he saw his own rage.
I would carry the family after his death. It had been decreed from when I was only sixteen. My father had accepted it. He’d had no choice once my grandfather learned the truth about Theron’s true paternity. Ironically, it was my father who had given him that piece of information. I still don’t understand why he did that. Was he so afraid of my grandfather? Was he so controlled by him that he would deliver his wife to the old man? That he would ensure the destruction of Theron’s future? Or did he do it to punish my mother for humiliating him with her affair?
The music reaches its crescendo as I finish the bottle. I get to my feet and I hurl the decanter against the far wall. The sound of expensive crystal smashing is momentarily satisfying. It feels good. Violence feels good. It always has if I’m honest with myself.
I stalk toward that wall, glass crunching under my shoes as I tear the racks that hang there down. The music drowns out my thoughts while I rip the room apart, instruments of torture, some for show, some for use. I don’t discriminate. I destroy them all, tearing down shelves, turning over benches, ripping leather from wood.
His books I tear in two before feeding them to the fire. I open the cigar box. Still half a dozen in here. I pick one up, smell it. Nothing quite takes me to that dark time as this smell. It still lingers in my study too. I should tear the walls down. Throw away anything the stench clings to no matter its value. I should bury any memory of him, including his portrait, and maybe with it I can bury this side of myself.
But as I look around the room, at the destruction I caused, I know I can’t. I know that’s not a possibility.
I drop the box to the floor and open the cabinet where more bottles of scotch are lined up in a neat row. I take one, twist the cork and break the seal to drink from it, feeling the burn on its way down. I’m about to start on the second part of the room when I hear a noise. Barking. The dogs.
I turn to the door. And standing there in black leggings and my Barbour that’s entirely too big on her is Mercedes, her hair loose and soaked down her back. Her riding boots caked with mud. I wonder if she, too, walked. The dogs stop at her side as if she were their master and not I and they all watch me, the dogs curious, Mercedes something else as she takes in the state of things. The state of me.
“Kentucky Lightning came back without you.” She enters the room. “What the hell are you doing, Judge?”
I don’t know why I feel so caught out. Like she’s seeing some part of me she was never meant to see. A part that I’ve worked very hard to hide.
“You don’t answer your fucking phone and it’s pouring out so the dogs can’t pick up your scent. Your mother said you left over an hour ago in a rage. What did you do to her? She looked terrified. What the fuck is going on?”
Paolo comes running into the room stopping short when he sees me. “You were right,” he says to Mercedes.