Home Repairs

Chapter Twelve:  The Fire and the Rose

by L. Inman

 

The end is where we start from.

 

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

—T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

 

“I thought Elisabeth said she didn’t want to be in on things,” Dawn said.

            Buffy sighed and shifted comfortably on her bed, moving the cellphone to her other ear.  “I think that’s changed now.  It was kinda inevitable.”  This was the problem with all of them being scattered everywhere; she had to explain and report things several times over.  Buffy often found herself taking refuge in shorthand.

            “Is Giles okay?”  Buffy noticed her sister didn’t say, Is Giles okay with that?  Which ought to have been what she was asking, but wasn’t.  Buffy chose her answer carefully.

            “I don’t think he likes not being in the driver’s seat when it comes to us and the Council.”  An understatement, to judge from the fights they had had about it in the past six months.  “But he wants to move on.  Or move back—or just move.  Instead of, you know, complete paralysis.  Elisabeth can help with that.”

 

*

 

And Andrew wouldn’t realize it, but he was helping too.  New Year’s day, Giles’s first concrete action had been to sit Andrew down at the dining table and then go to fetch his old and battered chess set.  When he put it down on the table, Andrew perked up.

            “Ah,” he said sagely, “the Jedi’s game.”

            Elisabeth, at Giles’s shoulder moving her laptop and books out of the way, straightened to lift her hand in an imitation of Alec Guinness’s gesture.  “You don’t want to be using too many Star Wars metaphors.”

            “I don’t want to be using too many Star Wars metaphors,” Andrew repeated, suppressing a grin.  From the kitchen doorway, Buffy snorted.

            “Even though I started it,” Elisabeth said.

            “Even though you started it,” Andrew repeated.

            “Oh, for God’s sake,” Giles said.

            “You can say that again,” Elisabeth said.  (Andrew opened his mouth, but at a glare from Giles, he shut it again.)  “You’ve just done me out of my table.  Now where am I going to work?”

            Giles looked up at her innocently.  “In your cubby in Oxford, perhaps?”

            When Buffy had first arrived, she would have read the subtext merely as a veiled effort to get rid of Elisabeth for an afternoon.  Now, she knew that Giles was prodding Elisabeth to shake off her fear and get properly to work.

            Elisabeth clearly knew it too.  She made a moue at him and went to get her satchel.

            There was more than one reason for Elisabeth to switch gears.  Giles had come downstairs soon after Elisabeth had reached the good doctor on the phone; he sat down quietly at the dining table as Elisabeth paced and spoke, and Buffy knew when he realized whom she was talking to, because he gave a great snort and folded his arms comfortably.  After enduring a brief inquiry by proxy after his health (“The doctor wants to know if you’ve been avoiding spears like you’re supposed to”), Giles listened carefully to the rest of the conversation, and after Elisabeth’s phone clicked shut, he and Buffy and Elisabeth had gone over the plan.  Buffy noticed that although Elisabeth’s voice was calm, there were faint signs of strain in her face.

            Then Andrew came down, hesitatingly, and Giles’s gaze honed on him.

            As Andrew set up the chess pieces under Giles’s critical eye, Elisabeth came back into the room wearing her coat and scarf, and swinging her satchel onto her shoulder.  “All right,” she said, “I’m going.”

            “You’ve got your phone?” Giles asked.  Buffy startled at the implication; despite her urges to patrol, no place she’d been had ever felt as safe as Oxford.

            “Yes,” Elisabeth said, “charged up and everything.”

            “Watch your back,” Giles said.

            “I will.”

            As she turned and left the room, Giles watched with an odd look on his face—wistful, affectionate, uncertain.  There were things going on, Buffy thought, between Elisabeth and Giles; new things, that had as much to do with the changing nature of their relationship as with the problem at hand.

            But Giles did not watch after Elisabeth long.  He turned back to Andrew, who had set up the pieces and made his opening move.

            “Now,” he said softly, “tell me about the first time you met Mr. Robson,” and reached for a black pawn.

 

*

 

“So they’re not breaking up, then,” Dawn said.  Her voice was flat, but it was still a question.

            This was one thing Buffy was pretty sure she knew the answer to.  “No.”

            “Well, who would break up with Giles?” Dawn added, as if the answer were so obvious that anyone who thought otherwise was stupid.  Buffy was torn between two distracting thoughts—one, that everybody seemed to have a simmering chemistry of some kind with Giles, including her little sister, which was gross; and two—

            “I’m not so sure it’s a guaranteed given that someone wouldn’t want to break up with him,” Buffy said, thinking of the few weeks she had just been through.

            “Buffy, I think you should stop being so hard on him.”  Dawn was using her quiet, severe tone.

            “I’m not being hard,” Buffy said, “I’m being realistic.  I love Giles.  That’s how I know he can be hard to live with.”

            Dawn was not giving out convinced vibes, but she must have heard the softness in Buffy’s own tone, because she didn’t pursue the point.  Instead she said:  “You like her.”

            Buffy said indignantly, “Why does everyone sound surprised that I like Giles’s girlfriend?  Am I that much of a bitch to everybody?”

            “Well, no,” Dawn replied, practical, “but even I noticed you going into hyper-protecto mode when you first met her.”

            “Are you sure nobody thought it was just jealousy?”  Buffy pressed her, steely-voiced.

            “Not just jealousy,” Dawn said, completely unstartled.

            “Did Xander say that to you too?” Buffy demanded.

            “Say what?”  Dawn sounded puzzled.

            “Never mind,” Buffy said.

            “Okay,” Dawn said, “I’ll get it out of him.”

            “Don’t you dare.”

            Buffy could hear her sister grinning.

            “It can’t be just jealousy,” Dawn said, “because you would have been even more uber-defensive about Giles being hot if it were.  Plus, you’d be working harder to get his attention.  I mean, you’re already prettier than her.”

            “How do you know?” Buffy said, ignoring the uber-defensive and the Giles being hot.  “You’ve never met her in person.”

            “Willow,” Dawn said simply.

            “Like it’s any of her business either.”  It seemed odd to Buffy that anyone would blatantly consider physical attractiveness such a factor.  But maybe this was like Marie Antoinette let-them-eat-cake-ing people who didn’t have bread.  She felt embarrassed.  Still, it had been a long time since she considered the physical properties of anyone beyond their ability to attack or defend themselves.  Or outside the context of their current feelings:  Buffy remembered Elisabeth’s face in the church on Christmas Eve, and relaxed into firmer certainty.

            “Maybe you should come here next Christmas,” Buffy said.

            “Ha.  I knew you’d cave eventually.”

            Buffy had forgotten that she had argued with Dawn about her coming to Oxford.  “I said next Christmas, not this one.”

            “As long as there’s gonna be a next Christmas.”

            Buffy thought of Robson; thought of the Slayers; thought of Angel.  “Right,” she agreed.

 

*

 

The review of literature had been long done, but Elisabeth was still compiling notes from books.  She had had to break off organizing her thesis to write the essays she had missed writing in the spring; and now that she had caught up her general work, it was time to get back to searching for that elusive backbone principle.  Like a key, she thought dryly.  Like a key or a stone or a sword or a cup, and Elisabeth thought of the Fool, the holy Fool who had gone looking for none of these things but had found them anyway.

            She tapped her pen on her notebook and let her eyes unfocus.  Rupert was playing chess with Andrew at home.  Andrew had known it meant training from the start; it had been moderately obvious.  What had not been obvious was what she had seen: that he had made the act of submission again, if not to his heritage as it once was, then to his heritage as it was going to be—to involving himself, to caring.  How hard that must have been for him, she thought, after the First threw it so hard in his face, like ground glass.  (There was another fairy tale, the Snow Queen—though whether it was she or Buffy who had played the Snow Queen was difficult to tell.) 

            And she was probably out of her mind to suggest herself as the leader for this scheme of parleying with Robson.  Did she really think she could forge a détente with the Council?  Well, she answered herself, as she had many times before, it’s this or going straight to war mode.  Which sounded like several orders of magnitude of no fun.  At least Dr Kettering-Carter had been amenable to her ideas; she had narrowly escaped death herself, from the sound of it.  Everybody had.  Even Anne had lost cousins, and she had been keeping herself at a far remove from the Watcher scene.  Elisabeth sighed.  It was an index of how much of a grip her nightmare had kept her in that she had not noticed, even after the event.  The nightmare, and the annoyingly perennial plague of self-preoccupation.  It was a miracle that Rupert had loved her long enough to help her get the freedom she had.

            Sighing again, Elisabeth reached for the book of essays that contained Professor Tolkien’s discussion of fairytale.  Andrew would like Tolkien’s essay, Elisabeth thought.  She would have him read it…if it didn’t interfere with Rupert’s training.  It might be hard enough to get Andrew into a practical state of mind without her throwing Tolkien into the mix.

            There was a blue sticky-note marking the essay, but as she opened the pages, she realized that though she had put it there, the writing on it was not hers.  It was Rupert’s.  He had written:

 

te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,

secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

 

Elisabeth knew what “te amo” meant, and “secretamente,” “oscuras,” and “alma,” but she was not content simply to gloss it.  She took the sticky-note out of the book and, setting the book aside without a second glance, reached for her laptop.

            She discovered fairly readily that the quotation was Neruda, and she found the rest of the sonnet with no trouble.  But to get a reliable translation, she would need a book.

            Fortunately, she was in Oxford, where she could turn a tap and get hot and cold running books.  She dug into the catalog with alacrity, searching for an en face translation of Neruda’s sonnets.

            There was one in the English Faculty library.  Elisabeth glanced around at her workspace.  Pack up or lock the valuables away?  Elisabeth decided simply to lock things up and run across to the other library.  She slung her coat over her shoulders and went off without buttoning it, the sticky-note in her hand.

            Though it was between terms, there were still plenty of familiar faces in College, students and dons rooting among their own papers in the hope that quiet breeds industry.  Elisabeth nodded at those she knew; they nodded back, some brightening a little, as if they were glad to be seen by her.  Elisabeth was startled afresh: how circumscribed her vision had been, to expect them only to drop her from their notice after her disgraceful breakdown.  The vague threat that had clung to the shadows of Magdalen since the bad time was released a little; people were not staring at her as at a monster.  Even that fellow she didn’t know, glancing back across the quad, was just a fellow, nothing less and nothing more.

            Wait.

            Elisabeth felt herself frown, and her heart beat faster.  She put the sticky-note in her coat pocket and was relieved to find her cell-phone jostling there.  With it still in her pocket, she hit Rupert’s speed dial number, then put her other hand in her other pocket, to wait.

            She let her peripheral vision tell her what she wanted to know, and as subtly as possible avoided blind corners.  But there was one ahead which she could not avoid, and she watched it as she approached, with her finger on the button ready to send the call to Rupert.

            Ten steps, and she’d be there.  Five.

            She looked.

            There was no one there.

            Elisabeth breathed out, and felt silly.  But she kept her finger on the call button.

            When she reached the EFL, she presented her credentials and went in search of the book.  But her mind was no longer wholly focused on tracking down Neruda.  She was thinking of the possibilities of shadows in Oxford.  The Council knew Oxford; many of its members had been Oxford men (she supposed a commensurate number had been Cambridge men, so it wasn’t as if she’d merely picked the wrong university to affiliate herself with).  Anyway, this wasn’t, strictly speaking, a place to hide.

            But it was a place to come awake.  Elisabeth’s vision cleared, and she located the spine of the book she wanted on the shelf and pulled it out.  She turned pages slowly until she found the sonnet; then glanced across for the translation.

 

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

In secret, between the shadow and the soul.

 

Elisabeth went very still.  It’s you that I love, she had told him.  Any you; every possible you.  This was his answer.  This was his answer, to go with her to face her own darkness and to love her not in spite of but within it.

            She read the rest of the sonnet, slowly, then flipped through the pages to browse the others.  The sonnets breathed tenderness and intimacy, and a deep, wild hunger.  She read the lines as though Rupert had sent them all to her; then put the book quietly back in its place.

            Meditatively, with the thought of Watchers riding the surface of her consciousness, Elisabeth headed back to Magdalen.  She was thinking about Pyke’s Lea.  What Rupert had wanted, clearly, was a home.  She had wanted it along with him, but part of her had resisted, fearful that she might find a home and then lose it.  She couldn’t afford to indulge that fear now; and she didn’t want to.

            She thought about how their house had become a crossing-point for strands of a delicate web: the priesthole and her darkness; the Bartholomaes and her friend; the haunting and her family; Andrew and the Watchers. 

            When she reached the corner at which she had paused in coming, Elisabeth stopped to look at the spot that would have been blind to her.  The dampness of melting snow meant that the walks were wet in spots; and in the blind spot two footmarks stood drying, pointed in the direction she would come.

            Unbidden, the memory took hold of her for a split second, of the Iffley Road and a van she had just passed and strong arms wrapping her from behind to hold a pungent cloth to her face.  She made a sudden motion, breaking free from the physical memory, and moved on.

            She strode, quietly fuming, across the quad and back indoors and up the stairs to her cubby.  In the course of her planning she had come to think of her mission as an impersonal gambit, which had been helpful to clear her mind, but which was certainly not the whole story.  Maybe that was what was so infuriating about the Council, that they pretended that it was even though they groped and wrangled and grasped for the upper hand just like anyone else. 

            She and Rupert had both attempted impersonal gambits by dint of killing everything else—their tenderness for one another, their grief, their connectedness to their companions—and the First had wound up making excellent capital out of it.  Buffy, meanwhile, had swung wildly from one side of the pendulum to the other, and managed—just barely—to land on her feet.

            No, this problem, like the others, called for an integration, of a kind Elisabeth couldn’t shape yet in her mind.  She sat down at the desk, reached for the book of essays, and worked steadily till the daylight was gone.

 

*

 

She came home with the evening and let her satchel drop gently to the floor of the foyer.  Upstairs, she could hear voices: Buffy and Andrew, at work on something judging from the shifting and rumbling sounds that obscured their words.

            Elisabeth passed along the hall and into the dining room.  The table was set for dinner (four places), and in the center stood four wineglasses and an open bottle of a red wine.  Wearily, she sank into the chair that was hers and reached to help herself.

            The sound of wine pouring drew Rupert from the kitchen.  She looked up at him where he stood in the doorway, ready to ask him if he’d like her to pour his; but she stopped when their eyes met.  She felt obvious, as if he could read by her expression that she had seen his note; and she knew he had, because he dropped his eyes and blushed.  He was blushing.

            Elisabeth tucked away her wonder and said, “I see you haven’t poured your glass yet.  D’you want me to pour it?”

            “Please,” Rupert said softly, and went back into the kitchen.

            She followed him in a few moments later, carrying both their glasses.  When she handed him his, he took a brief sip of it and put it down.  “Mm, thank you,” he said, reaching to give a stir to the pan on the stove.

            “What’s for dinner?”  Elisabeth put her backside against the counter and sipped at her own glass.

            “Stir-fry.”

            So they would not be pledging one another with tonight’s wine, she thought; and they would not speak about the Neruda sonnet.  She might have felt disappointed, but she did not: whatever figure they were dancing, it was under the surface, sub rosa, and she was comforted.

            Sub rosa.  An unrecognized thought tugged at the coatsleeve of her consciousness, and she stood quietly, sipping her wine and trying to tease it out of hiding.

            “Did you have any trouble?” Rupert asked her, opening a cabinet and sorting through a jumble of unsorted spice containers.

            “No,” she said.  “Pretty sure someone was watching, though, though I didn’t catch him.  Made me mad.”

            Rupert grunted.  Upstairs, a prolonged scraping noise was followed by a volley of what sounded like instructions from Buffy.

            “What’s going on up there?” Elisabeth said.

            “It occurred to both Buffy and me around lunchtime that if, as she said, any shit hit the fan, we could expect more impromptu guests.  Willow is working on protocols for cornerstone protection spells, and Buffy and Andrew are, more prosaically, clearing out the upstairs rooms so that we can move any necessaries over from both our flats.”

            “Good idea.  We’ll want the books over here ASAP, too, I guess.”

            “Yes,” he said, reaching for his wineglass.  “The shelves in the study are ready to receive them, I think?”

            “Pretty much.  We’ll need to wipe them down.  We can refinish the cases one by one, and move the relevant books to other parts of the house as needed.”

            Rupert nodded.

            “Speaking of bookcases—” Elisabeth held onto her wineglass with both hands— “I would like to see the priesthole now.”

            He stopped his motions at the range to look at her.  Then he put down his wine and reached to cover the pan of stir-fry with its lid.  “I think I left the torch in the study.”

            “I’m thinking,” Elisabeth said, leaving her wine on the counter to follow him, “that we’d probably better start keeping one in that room.”

            Rupert snorted, and smiled at her briefly over his shoulder.

            The torch was indeed there, standing upended on one of the shelves.  The cat uncurled itself from a perch on the mantelpiece and stretched, looking at them and yawning.  Rupert gave Elisabeth the torch and hauled back the bookcase door.  It was still a stiff and groaning door, but she could tell that he had put in some time doing what he could to get the hinges in order.

            He moved aside and let her go down first, with the torch.  The cat leaped down and darted ahead of her, becoming a shadow in the torchbeam as she moved it over her path.

            Down she went, with Rupert right behind her, slowly.  It was indeed very dark, which tightened the slack on her breathing; but the beams in the ceiling were sturdy, wood blackened with age like that in the attic, which she had taken as the image of a chapel in her mind.  This was a burrow, a chapel-echoing burrow.  Elisabeth played the beam over the space as she descended to the ground.  The floor was firm earth; an ancient carved bench occupied one curved earth wall.  The spacious room was otherwise empty.

            “Where is this passage you mentioned?”

            He brought his hand forward over her shoulder to gesture toward the wall at her right.  “It’s concealed in a curve of the room; what looks like a shadow from here is actually a turning.”  At first Elisabeth could not tell what he meant; then she came a few steps closer and saw.  “This goes out to the wood?”  She approached it close enough to shift the beam into the turning a little.

            “It doubles back a bit, first.  Presumably to stop pursuit from heading directly to the wood aboveground.”

            Elisabeth nodded.  “All these appear to be time-buying measures.”

            “Yes,” he said.

            “I wonder if they had them before.”

            The cat passed along her shins, and moved on to Rupert’s, startling her for a moment.  In her sudden movement, the torchbeam caressed his profile briefly.  “I am thinking,” Rupert said, “that they didn’t have the escape tunnel before.  My theory is that when they rebuilt this place they intended it to be a place for Watchers, not their ultimate stronghold, perhaps, but something that could be both defended and abandoned.  The work was going to be slow.  But then the last Bartholomae died, and the haunting set in; and the project was lost.”

            “Are there a lot of lost projects like that?”

            “More than there are found ones, I imagine.”

            A brief silence passed.  Elisabeth let the beam fall still toward the stairway and the distant light of the study above.  She watched the motes in the pale yellow light rise and settle.

            “Did you get much out of Andrew?” she asked him finally.

            “A good deal,” Rupert said.  “He is eager to cooperate.  I think you put the wind up him with that Palpatine crack.”

            Elisabeth snorted.  “I guess it can be a useful story to reference.”

            “Hah,” he said.  “When Robson approached me, I asked him whether we were in the story of the fatted calf or the story of the thirty silver pieces.”

            Elisabeth froze, while in the farther reaches of her mind bays and pathways unfolded, firm and navigable.  “We ask what story we are in,” she breathed.  “That’s it.  That’s where the coherence is.  Where’s my copy of Turner?  Did I leave it at the flat?”

            “Eh?”

            “That’s it!” she cried.  “We ask what story we are in.  We’re always asking.”

            She could tell that he was with her, though his face was deep in shadow.  “Are you saying,” he said in a longsuffering voice, “that Andrew is right?”

            “In a certain way, yes,” she answered at once.  “Here, take the torch.  I’ve got to find that book.”

            As he took the torch from her, their hands touched; and she caught the glint of his eyes in a smile.

 

*

 

Between unfolding her new ideas on mind theory and fairy tale, and eating furiously, Elisabeth’s dinner passed very quickly.  Everyone else was quite solicitous toward her: Andrew volunteered to do the washing-up, Rupert listened carefully to her frenetic bursts of speech, and Buffy undertook to make the phone calls necessary to ready them for their plans, once Dr. Kettering-Carter called back.

            She did so, quite on schedule, to say that she had fixed a meeting for them the day after next, in a well-known Oxford pub.  Robson had desired her to say that he was happy to make the concession of coming to Oxford for the meeting.  “Which means he’s in Oxford already,” Elisabeth said tartly.  “Tell him thank you for his trouble.”

            “Certainly, if you desire it,” the doctor said.  Elisabeth had not been sure whether to expect hostility on her part, but the doctor showed no hostility, only a dry reluctance.  Grateful, Elisabeth had done her best to avoid insulting her friendship with Robson.  Too, Dr. Kettering-Carter had not been disingenuous:  nothing even remotely like “forces for good should work together” had passed her lips.  Elisabeth remembered their first meeting, when she treated Rupert in her flat; she had an air of deciding what was appropriate to do and then doing it without fuss.  Elisabeth didn’t trust her merely for this; but it took away some of the extra worries that this whole thing would be clouded by emotional manipulation.

            Elisabeth wrote down the information the doctor gave her, passed it on to Buffy, along with her thoughts about the physical arrangements, and left her to call Brian.  She went back to her laptop and her notebook.

            It was so easy that she found it a little scary.  The outline seemed to rewrite itself.  Her Mark Turner books were at the flat, but she would retrieve them later.

            One: Mind Theory and the Implications of Faerie.  Subheading: Metaphor.  Subheading:  Foundation stories.  Subheading:  Argument.

            Argument.  No doubt Robson had an argument, and a story, and surely had used metaphors that had appealed to Andrew Wells.

            Two: Faerie and the Freedom of Significance.  Subheading: Meta-discussions of the Faerie writer; Dante (Italian), Goethe (German), Macdonald (English).  Subheading:  Modern meta-discussions; Tolkien, (bell hooks?) (Neil Gaiman?), Turner/Lakoff.  Subheading:  Meta-texts as the Golden Key.

            The Golden Key.  Elisabeth thought of the ending of that story, how it ended not with an arrival but a journey.  I’m not looking for a place to stop, she thought: I’m looking for a place to start.  And so was Rupert.  She felt reassured.

            Three:  Texts and Their Foundational Stories.  Subheading:  The Quest Narrative.  Subheading:  The Restoration Narrative.  Subheading:  The Alienation Narrative.  Subheading:  Inward and outward transformation.  Subheading:  Re-exchange of meanings.

            The First had tried to invalidate her efforts by claiming real academics didn’t make scholarly hay out of their personal lives.  But they did: and they also made their personal lives from scholarly hay.  There was an exchange, a continual exchange between them of meanings; and that was how minds did their work of restoring the world.

            Elisabeth put down her pen and sat back to look at her work.  The fourth section would be about this work of restoration, but she wasn’t ready to pin it down yet.

            She shut up the house for the night and went to bed.  If there were watchers outside, they would see the lights going off one by one; but they wouldn’t see the work Willow was currently doing from an astral plane.  Elisabeth smiled to herself.

            In their bedroom, Rupert had dressed for bed and was under the covers with a book.  He smiled at her over his glass-rims, briefly.

            “Whatcha reading?”  She crossed to the closet and began to undress.

            “Stole your Purgatory,” he said.

            “Oh, you’re going straight to hell for that one!” she joked.

            He smiled; put down the book on his nightstand and followed it with his glasses.  By the time she had gotten into her pajamas and come to bed, he had turned out his lamp and slid down beneath the covers.

            She got into bed, thinking.  She thought about Rupert’s theory of the Bartholomaes’ plans for the house.  She thought about separations in the midst of journeys.  “Missing you one place, we meet another.”  She thought about cornerstones, and chapels, and the stories one believed one was in.

            “Goodnight, love,” Rupert said, and composed himself to sleep.

            “Mm,” she said, absently, and reached to turn off her light.

            She thought about the kiss he had given her after she braved the darkness.  She thought about Neruda and his wild hunger, and the way that Rupert had disengaged himself.  For a dizzying, frightening moment she wondered if perhaps he was leaving her.  Then she realized it was just the opposite.

            He was courting her.

            Whether he had articulated it to himself or not, that was what he was doing: laying his diffidence and his humility and his desire before her, and letting her choose.  You have a nineteenth-century streak a mile wide, she had once complained to him.  Then, she had not wanted his solicitude if it interfered with her own course of being and action.  Now…what had changed?  She had not ceased to value her independence, but still she found herself wanting to give him this.  She wanted to be courted: she wanted this sub rosa dance.

            She fell asleep still trying to figure out what it meant.

 

*

 

Rupert had anticipated being anxious and envious of everyone else’s active roles; so he was glad when Buffy suggested they ready the house as a refuge—it gave him something to do.  And while he did feel a little twinge when he heard Buffy discussing plans for the next day with Brian on the phone, the rage and misery inexplicably refused to appear.  Unwilling to court it, he threw himself into the work of moving the occult library to Pyke’s Lea.

            Andrew was in charge of wiping down the bookshelves to receive the books and sorting Elisabeth’s notes on what should go where.  It was determined by them all, almost without saying, that the case that concealed the priesthole should carry books just like all the others, so Andrew was also set to finishing the work Rupert had started, oiling the hinges and sanding the edges to stop them scraping.

            Rupert bought a large number of cartons and set them up in Elisabeth’s flat.  With Buffy’s help he packed and loaded the books box by box.  They didn’t speak much; but several times he caught Buffy looking at him with an unreadable expression, as if she were sizing something up.

            This, oddly, did not worry him either.

            With the car, it took several trips between the flat and Oxford to move all the books.  At each arrival, they found Elisabeth staring at her laptop—a fruitful-looking stare this time—or dunking a teabag in hot water, or festooned with sticky-notes, skimming a book.  The first trip, Rupert brought her the books she had requested from the little shelf near her desk at the flat, and she had rewarded him with a smile he hadn’t seen in—how long?  Rupert couldn’t remember.

            He knew she must have seen the note he had written her, because the book he’d secreted it in was in heavy use—he could see it on the table, in premium position—but she had said nothing.  Rupert hoped that meant she understood what he was doing, that he had pulled back because it had become very important that he not make any mistakes.  He was waiting and observing, for the moment that would come—for surely it would come—the moment where he could act in a way that was both organic and perfectly calculated.  In the meantime, he would keep her informed, as it were.

            He was pretty sure she had not yet seen the note he had stuck to the back of her icon.

            They made the final trip in the late afternoon.  Elisabeth had left the table and was poking among the boxes they had already brought; she came to help them with the last ones.  Then she put on tea while Rupert sank into a chair at the kitchen table with a glass of water, sweating.

            “It never gets easier, moving books, does it?” she said as she put down his tea before him.

            Rupert shook his head.  “They get heavier.”

            “I wouldn’t be surprised if they carried extra spiritual weight everywhere they went,” Elisabeth went on cheerfully.  “Wonder if it’d be a good idea to cleanse them.”

            Rupert had often thought that he would like to cleanse the books of their time away from him, but had never found the opportunity.  “You’d help me with the spell?”

            “Yes.  I’m a little less afraid of doing magic now.”

            A little less afraid of doing magic with him.  She didn’t need to say it.  He said nothing.

            “We could clear the ground and start fresh,” Elisabeth said, pouring her own tea.  “Make it all shiny and new.”

            Her tone was light and playful, and he answered her in kind.  “‘Old men should be explorers,’” he said.

            She turned from doctoring her tea, and her eyes were warm.  “Have we lifted the embargo on Eliot, then?”

            He snorted comfortably.  She had not jumped to deny his reference to old men, he noticed: perhaps because she knew he did not feel old.  Neither did he feel young.  He raised his eyes to hers and waited.

            She came to him; laid a hand on his shoulder and bent to kiss his forehead.  When she straightened, he took her hand from his shoulder and kissed its fingertips softly, with his eyes meeting hers.

            Yes, she knew.  She smiled; and he released her to retrieve her tea and go away out to the dining table, to resume her work.

            Rupert did not feel young.  No: in his youth he would not have known how to appreciate this.

 

*

 

The meeting was to take place at half-past noon, in the Kings Arms.  Elisabeth fully expected that Robson would have his men in place: as she would have hers.

            Buffy and Brian were to be at the pub as nondescript sweethearts sharing a pub lunch.  Elisabeth was fairly sure that Robson had never seen Buffy in the flesh, but she was not as concerned about them being recognized as that they should have the chance to arrive and set up their camouflage unmolested.  So early in the morning, Buffy took a train to London; and Brian was to go and bring her back, as if they were tourists.  It was a ruse that could only be done once.

            Rupert and Andrew were to stay at Pyke’s Lea, shelving books and guarding the house.

            Willow had been put on the alert; she had instructed Elisabeth in the making of a magical panic button, and Elisabeth had tried out the spell first on her lucky sixpence.  If she found herself in danger, she would grip it in her fist, and Willow would get the message.  The sixpence felt warm in Elisabeth’s pocket, as did the cross under her shirt.

            When it came time for her to go, Rupert watched her pack her satchel with two books, a notebook, and a pen, then helped her on with her coat and wordlessly saw her out the door.  She drove to Oxford and parked at her flat, trying to control the tremors in her stomach, trying to ignore the second thoughts that shrilled in her mind.  What was she doing walking into town, on the same route they had kidnapped her from?  Would Buffy be at too much of a disadvantage in an unfamiliar London, and be intercepted?  Would she, Elisabeth, even be able to speak without stumbling and capitulating?

            It helped to walk; to eat up the ground with nervous strides, up and across the Bridge and into the city.  The weather had warmed a little, and Elisabeth had left her frock coat unbuttoned, the fringes of her red scarf tickling the air as she moved.

            Along the streets, where post-Christmas tourists wandered and pre-term students hurried, Elisabeth pursued her way.  She felt no eyes upon her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t being watched.  She kept her stride firm, as whoever might be watching should see someone confident and calm, all the way to the door of the pub.

            She swept a quiet glance around the busy room, taking note of the people there.  She saw Robson at once, alone at a table, three-quarters finished with his lunch—early, the rat.  Unsurprising.  The grizzled man at the bar who cast his gaze quickly into his pint was surely Robson’s man; Elisabeth knew there must be others.

            Brian and Buffy were nowhere to be seen.

            Her heart beating hard in her chest, Elisabeth went up to order her lunch, something that would give her a few minutes’ wait while she figured out what to do.  If Brian and Buffy were MIA, should she abandon the plan and hit the panic button straight off?  Or should she plunge ahead without them?

            She decided, for the time being, to grit her teeth and go on; but she didn’t like being the only one who knew that they were missing.  Suppose she was being distracted while something unspeakable happened to them both?  It was a risk she’d have to take.

            Her plate was clapped down in front of her.  She retrieved it and her pint of cider, and turned, just as Buffy and Brian came in, and she almost ran into them.

            They weren’t looking at her; they were laughing into one another’s faces at some hugely amusing joke.  Buffy was wearing the soft wool hat Elisabeth had bought her after Christmas, the one with the jaunty little puffball on top.  Brian had his arm around her in a gesture that was as natural as any lovelorn male might use.  Elisabeth swerved around them, gritting her teeth in simultaneous relief and annoyance.

            Still annoyed, she plunked down her lunch plate across from Robson and plunked herself down after.  “You’re early, I see,” she said sourly.

            “Took me less time to arrive than I expected.”  He was quite cool, and did not startle at her abrupt manner.

            “I imagine not, since you’ve probably been in Oxford all along,” she retorted.  “Was it you shadowing me at Magdalen the other day?”

            Robson shook his head.  “My man Perkins had very little to report.”

            “Q.E.D.,” Elisabeth said, stabbing at her shepherd’s pie.

            “Where’s Giles today?” Robson asked, casually.  “Or are you still pretending that you’re not intimately associated with him?”

            Whether he had intended it or not, the swipe brought back Elisabeth’s physical memory not only of her ordeal before the Council, but of her own response to it.  She relaxed and raised her head to fix Robson with a calculating gaze.

            “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” she said.  “Rupert is at home, doing other things.”

            Unexpectedly, Robson smiled.  It was a familiar smile, subtle and faint, the sort of smile Buffy would have accused Rupert of learning in class at the Watcher’s Academy.

            Elisabeth raised her cider to her lips and took a deep quaff.  In her peripheral vision, Buffy and Brian settled at a table with their drinks, sitting on the same side, cuddled into one another.  Elisabeth rolled her mind’s eye.  There’s such a thing as overdoing it, she thought.

            “So,” Robson said, “may I ask why you called this meeting?”

            The playing-dumb gambit.  Elisabeth cut more deeply into her shepherd’s pie and got to the point.  “Andrew Wells,” she said.

            “Ah,” Robson said, with a delicate sniff.  He pushed his empty plate aside and sat back with the remainder of his ale.  “I did wonder how long that avenue would be open.”

            Elisabeth bristled, took a breath, and calmed herself.  “You really ought to apologize to him,” she said.  “That was a very cruel thing you did to Andrew.”

            He raised an eyebrow.  “As opposed to being a cruel thing I did to Giles?  Enlighten me.”

            “Rupert can take care of himself.”  He can take care of you too, she thought, but held that in reserve.  “It was cruel to Andrew to use him like that—and I don’t doubt you know enough of his history to understand that, or else you wouldn’t have lit on him.”

            “I wouldn’t cast him as such a victim if I were you,” Robson said.  “That boy is dangerous.”

            Elisabeth resisted the impulse to look at Buffy, who, if she had heard that, would be sorely tempted to give a betraying snort.  Buffy knew the nature of the danger Andrew posed better than anyone, and if this was Robson’s effort to divide and conquer, he was playing with pretty feeble tools indeed.

            “He’s still a boy,” Elisabeth answered.

            “Well, there was a period of time during which we wondered if we had made a mistake taking him into our confidence.”  He looked perfectly serious.  Elisabeth raised a skeptical eyebrow.

            “We introduced him to Roger Wyndam-Pryce,” Robson said, as if this meant something.

            “Oh is he still alive?” Elisabeth couldn’t stop the faint curl of lip at the mention of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce’s father, whom she had encountered briefly during her interrogation.

            “He wouldn’t be, if his son had had his way.”

            Clearly Robson was sitting on a piece of information that Elisabeth didn’t have.  She wasn’t about to ask for it, but the mention of Wesley opened a new line of thought to her.  She scraped up a bite of meat and gravy, and chewed thoughtfully.

            “So,” she said, “I take it you’re triangulating on Angel.”

            “We’re not the only ones.”  Seeing that she was not about to ask, he hesitated and said, “Someone sent a robotic duplicate of Roger to infiltrate Angel’s office and hamstring him.  It wasn’t us.”

            “Obviously, or you would have just sent Roger,” Elisabeth said.  “And…and you think Andrew built the robot?”  She laughed.

            “We ruled it out eventually,” Robson said coldly.  “We knew he had been friends with a robotics expert, and he had had some contact with us, enough to pick up information about Wesley’s family.”

            “Well,” Elisabeth said, “then I guess the cuckoo’s in your nest, and not in ours.”  She blinked.  “So, then Wesley killed the robot that looked like his father?  Good for him.”

            “It is not good.  It’s a disaster.  Roger hit the ceiling when he found out, and has been very touchy toward Wesley, and Wesley (quite understandably) won’t give him information or speak to any other Council members—or purported Council members—and we haven’t got any other ways inside the vampire’s circle.”

            “And you think we do?”

            “Well,” he said, “there’s Miss Summers.”

            “Well, see, that’s the thing,” Elisabeth said.  “Even assuming there’s an open line between Buffy and Angel, to get a bead on him you’d have to control Buffy, and you haven’t got a snowball’s of doing that, so what are you snooping on us for?”

            “We have to make up our deficits somehow,” Robson said, his voice hard.

            “Is this where the speech about the Balkanization of forces for good comes in?” Elisabeth said, unmoved.

            “No,” he said.  “It’s a bit late to lament that.  Though Giles did a nice line in idealism for a long while.  It’s interesting, you know, that they would choose you to be the voice for this.”

            Elisabeth had relaxed, but she was still keenly aware of the table, of their feet under it, of each new person who walked in; and so she had less energy for pique when she asked, “And who is ‘they’?”

            “Well, Miss Summers and Giles, of course.  They’re remarkably close, which I suppose is how Slayers and Watchers should be.  That was how it used to be, of course.”  His smile took on a hint of the sardonic, and Elisabeth rolled her eyes, simultaneously annoyed and alarmed.

            “It’s kind of a waste of time to try and bait her, you know,” she said.

            She waited to see if Robson would do or say anything further to blow Buffy’s cover, but he merely gave Elisabeth a tepid smile.

            Elisabeth cast her thoughts back along the conversation, and frowned.  “Why would Roger hit the ceiling when he found out Wesley killed his avatar?  One would think he’d be pleased his son showed some cojones.”

            “He might,” Robson said, “if Wesley hadn’t emptied the clip.”

            “Ah,” Elisabeth said.  “And you found this out how?”

            Robson sighed.  “I think Wesley has finally figured out he can’t confide in his mother and expect her to keep his secrets.”

            Elisabeth thought of Charles Bowen as she said, “You realize that that relationship rather images forth why Rupert won’t help you, I think.”

            “And can you say that you haven’t got your own sore places?”

            “I’ve got no need to say it,” Elisabeth said.  “Abuse with impunity?  Who’d want to hook up with that?  Especially after you put a contract out on the two Slayers who wound up defeating the First Evil.  I guess you’d try your feeble best to protect a Potential, but once they get called, they’re supposed to die like good little girls.”

            He went very pale, and his hand clenched on the table.  Elisabeth felt all the satisfaction of mutual fury: she was damned if he was going to pump her full of extraneous information and have her killed on her way home, without her getting at least one shot in.

            “You have no right—” he said softly—

            “—to mock your grief?  I beg your pardon, but let me recall your attention to the original topic of this meeting, which is what you did to Andrew.”

            He watched her mutinously, his lips a thin line.

            “Talk about mocking grief.  You held out your heritage as a false temptation of redemption for him, and you want to tell me that I’m treading on its dignity?”

            “I would have honored my promises,” Robson said, even more softly.

            “Which makes me wonder,” Elisabeth replied, “why they’ve sent you.”

            He said nothing.

            “Why have they sent you to cover this beat?  They know you’ve sympathized with Rupert in the past.  They know Rupert saved your life from those Bringers.  They know there was a relationship there once.  What makes them so sure you won’t ‘go native’?”

            Robson was still pale, but he had straightened in his chair and fixed Elisabeth with the ghost of his Watcher’s smile.

            “I’ll tell you why,” Elisabeth said.  “It’s because they need you.  Without honorable men among them, the Council can’t exist.”

            Robson’s smile rose thinly.  “I had forgotten your talent for speechmaking.”

            “Speechmaking saved my hide two years ago,” Elisabeth said.

            “Along with the Council’s honor, about which you are so manifestly skeptical,” he returned.

            “Then prove me wrong.”  Elisabeth pushed away her plate and sat back.

            “What do you want?”

            “Xander Harris.  I want your surveillance taken off him.”

            Robson shook his head.  “We need that information.”

            “Not at his expense you don’t.”

            “Where there are Slayers,” Robson warned her, “there will be Watchers.”

            “Which would be all to the good,” Elisabeth said austerely, “provided they aren’t under too deep cover to help, or gone rogue, or too much like Roger Wyndam-Pryce.  You’ve got plenty of information to keep you occupied ferreting it out.  Leave Xander alone.”

            “You can’t enforce it,” Robson observed.

            “But we could try, and you’d be forced to devote your resources to defending yourselves.  And in the meantime, that ticking time-bomb over at Wolfram & Hart will tick unattended.”

            “You could share your information.”

            “If we had any.”

            He studied her face carefully, and she sat patient.

            “And if you came into possession of information?” he said finally.  “What then?”

            “Depends on the information,” Elisabeth said stolidly.

            “So,” he said, “what you’re proposing is a full détente.”

            “Unequivocal and unmitigated.”

            “You’re not afraid I’d merely pay mouth-honor to the obligation and carry on as before?”

            “Afraid?  After the First,” Elisabeth said, “I’ve found fear to be an extremely relative term.”

 

*

 

“If I’m to convince my colleagues to pull our man off Mr. Harris—”

            “And anybody else you’ve got them on—”

            “—I’ll need to bring a token of good faith from you.”

            “Your own assurance ought to be sufficient,” Elisabeth said.

            Robson merely waited.

            “A token,” Elisabeth sighed.  “Very well.”  She reached into her pocket and pulled out her lucky sixpence between two fingers.  She held it up before Robson’s eyes, and he broke into a short laugh.

            “This is my lucky sixpence,” Elisabeth said, with a faint smile to match his own.  “I wouldn’t give it to just anybody.”  She held it to the center of the table, and he reached out his own fingers to take it; but they stopped just short of the exchange, and their eyes met.

            “It’s a double-edged sword,” she told him.  “Be careful how you use it.  If you stab me in the back, you might not find it so lucky anymore.”  She considered telling him how to use it, but just as quickly dismissed the idea: if he was in good faith, he’d figure it out, and if he wasn’t, the act of throwing it away would tell Willow something.  “If you’re on the up-and-up, it’ll help you.”

            He nodded and reached for it, but she held it away one moment more.  “Do you have a first name, Mr. Robson?”

            His eyes were a weathered blue, and calmly direct.  “Michael,” he said.

            She smiled.  “I’ll think of you on Michaelmas,” she said, and gave him the sixpence.  He took it gingerly and tucked it away in a pocket of his jacket.

            “Three days enough time to show me results?” Elisabeth asked.

            “Quite,” he said.

            “Excellent.”  She rose, brushing at a spot of gravy on her red scarf, and shrugged her coat higher on her shoulders.  Now that the thing was done, she wanted to be up and out of there, never mind being the first to leave: she felt as if propelled by a whirlwind.

            “A good remainder of the holiday to you,” Robson said mildly.

            “And to you,” she said, and swept out without a backward glance.

 

*

 

Still caught up in manic energy, Elisabeth walked briskly back over the Bridge and to the car.  She had flashing mental images of car bombs going off, of goons following her and running her off the road, but she ignored them.  At this point the only thing to do was to press on, whether the disaster hit or not.

            The car did not blow up when she turned the ignition.  She pulled out of the parking space and made her turns for home with deliberate movements, unhurrying, with the same great energy.

            The images did not stop: the old horror of Pyke’s Lea burning caught at her mind, but she drove on without panic.  She searched the horizon for the telltale spiral of black smoke, but there was none.

            The lane.  Her hands were preternaturally steady on the wheel.  The house came into view: perfectly normal.  Elisabeth parked and set the handbrake; the front door opened, and Rupert became visible in the shadows beyond the threshold.

            Still without hurry, she strode up the walk and up the front steps.  At the threshold she stopped to look up at him.  Rupert’s face was impassive, but his stance was a foursquare question: she stepped across the threshold, answering it, and he caught her up in his arms, lifting her off her feet, and she flung her arms hard around him, and he kissed her.

            His mouth against hers was ardent, his kiss radiant with the taste of heat: and she had an answer for that, too.  She felt as if she had never properly kissed him before.  She gave his mouth her full attention for a long minute, and he held her close.

            Presently he let her feet touch the ground, and they ended the kiss; and then the shaking hit her, and she clung to him to keep from sinking.  He bore her up as she shivered, and she buried her face in the front of his jumper.  “It’s all right,” he murmured, raising one hand to stroke back her hair.  “It’s all right.”  He kissed her forehead; she drew a long trembling breath, and the wave of sickness passed.

            “Come into the kitchen,” Rupert said.  “I will make tea, and you will tell me the story.”  He reached past them to shut the door, casting a small smile outside at whatever might be out there; then led her down the hall and pulled out the kitchen chair for her to sit in.  She dropped unceremoniously into it, shrugged out of her coat so that it hung over the back, and unwound her scarf to hang over the exposed lining of the coat behind her.  But she was still shivering.  Rupert, who failed to notice nothing, paused in getting out cups to stoke the fire.

            “Andrew!” he called.  “Come and have tea.”

            Elisabeth heard him come at once, footsteps tracking from the study: Andrew’s eyes were a little pink, she noticed as he entered, but he was carrying himself with a new, if fragile, dignity.  He sat down at the table across from her and stared quietly at his hands.

            Rupert put her tea down in front of her, and Andrew’s in front of him; then he sat comfortably down with his own.  “Now, then,” he said quietly.  “Tell us what happened, Elisabeth.”

            “You’re going to—you’re going to tell me too?” Andrew looked up from his hands and stared from Rupert to Elisabeth and back.

            Elisabeth nodded calmly, and Rupert said:  “I think you have a right to know.”

            Elisabeth nodded again, agreeing; Andrew looked as though he would rather not.  But he took a manful sip of his tea and gave them both a nod.

            She sipped her tea, cleared her throat, and began.

 

*

 

As she was finishing, Buffy and Brian arrived, tumbling into the house as manically as Elisabeth had done.  She looked at their faces fearfully, and was reassured when Buffy smiled.  “It’s all right,” she said.  “Did you tell Giles what went down?”

            “Yeah,” Elisabeth said, clearing her throat again, “I was just finishing.”

            “What was that you gave him at the end?  I couldn’t see it.”

            “I gave him my lucky sixpence.”

            “What?” Rupert said indignantly.

            “I made my lucky sixpence into a beacon, per Willow’s instructions,” Elisabeth explained, “and I gave it to him as a token of my good faith.”

            Brian helped himself to the tea in the pot and put his backside against the counter.

            “You gave him your panic button?”  Buffy stared at her.

            “I had two of them,” Elisabeth said, lifting the chain of her cross up from under the placket of her shirt.  “Anyway, I told him it was a double-edged sword—a guaranteed link with us, but pleasant or not depending on how he acts.”

            Rupert snorted.

            “What happened after I left?” Elisabeth asked.

            “Well, we waited.  I thought maybe they’d picked up on us being there, so we hung out for a little bit.  Robson left soon after you did.”

            “We spotted a guy at the bar that was probably one of theirs,” Brian added, “but he didn’t do anything and he didn’t move, so we left.”

            “Anybody follow you?”

            “Didn’t see ’em if they did,” Brian said.  “But from what you say, they know where you live anyway, so likely they wouldn’t need to.”

            “Well,” Buffy said, “we’ll just keep our eyes peeled.  Whatever happens, at least we made our position clear.”  She looked directly at Elisabeth.  “Thanks.”

            Elisabeth let out a shaky sigh.  “I’m not sure cloak-and-dagger diplomacy is my métier.”

            Rupert lifted his teacup with a smile in his eyes.  “Don’t underestimate yourself,” he said.

            Elisabeth could only sigh again in reply.  “Well,” she said, after a moment, “if you, Andrew, will show Brian where he’s staying tonight, I’m going to do a little shelving in my office while Rupert makes his report.”  Rupert had been the one deputed to report to Willow when the plan was complete.

            Elisabeth rose wearily to her feet and pulled her coat and scarf off the back of the chair.

            “Gimme your coat,” Buffy said suddenly.  “I’ll hang it up.  Then I’ll come and help you.”

            After a startled pause, Elisabeth handed over the coat, and the two women shared a dry smile as the tea party broke up.

 

*

 

“I’ve got Watcher-man covered.  Don’t worry about it any more, Giles.  Xander is as safe as we can make him.”

            “I don’t like to think of him—”  Rupert broke off.

            “He knows just as much as you did when you were Young Mr. Globetrotter, I bet.”  Willow had the uncanny ability to sound like she was reading his mind, even when she wasn’t, and he had not forgotten what it felt like when she did, so he had only his own transparency to blame.

            “Hence my worry.  And what about Angel?” he said, though it was more than useless to bring that up.

            He could almost hear Willow’s shrug.  “You’ll have to ask Buffy about that.  She insisted on being in charge of keeping an eye on him.  I’m not touching that one.”

            “No,” he agreed.  It would continue to cost him, but he had to let Buffy make her own mind up on Angel.  Putting his oar in—even brandishing his oar—even making a small gesture toward his oar—would be disastrous.

            “Thanks,” Rupert said, vaguely.

            “No problem.  I’ll get back to my work—”

            “On the beach?” Rupert said innocently.

            “Hey, now.  Dipping into the astral plane is hard work.”

            “I know it is,” he said, sobering.

            “I need to get a bead on Elisabeth’s sixpence beacon.  Now that I know Robson has it, I should be able to set up a link in case he ever uses it.”

            “Yes.  And thank you,” he added, “for securing the house.”

            “Wasn’t hard,” Willow said.  “The house is pretty friendly since you cleansed it.”

            “Good to hear,” Rupert said.

 

*

 

Buffy hung up Elisabeth’s coat and scarf, then shrugged out of her own jacket and pulled off her hat; her hair crackled, flyaway with static, and she wiped it away from her face as best she could.

            She felt simultaneously euphoric and grim.  It had always been going to come to this, ever since they walked away from the crater that was Sunnydale and chose to take refuge with neither Angel nor the remnants of the Council.  Since Willow hacked into the Council’s databases and plundered their accounts and contact protocols.  Since they had fanned out over the globe and undertaken the mammoth task of finding Slayers all by themselves.

            In a way it was a good thing that the Council was regrouping, because it introduced a third player into the duality of their conclave vs. Wolfram & Hart.  Buffy sighed to herself.  She had not wanted to admit to herself that she was set against Angel as firmly as she was set against the Council, but Robson’s revelations had made that all too clear.  Whatever Angel was up to, he was on his own.  Likewise, Angel’s actions gave the Council something to occupy themselves with—and historically, they would admit no difference between Angel and Angelus—besides the upstarts that had infected the world with too many Slayers.

            Elisabeth had articulated it well: the task at hand was to maintain this uneasy and separate balance.  If the shit hit the fan for any of them, they would go back to duality, to a dangerous pendulum.  Buffy thought back to the Knights of Ni or whatever they were, who had tried to kill Dawn.  The Council did indeed need someone like Robson, to keep them from degenerating into fanatics.  And she, Buffy, needed someone like Elisabeth, to say these things, to give words to the actions she was going to take.

            Buffy had a suspicion, however, that Elisabeth would still like nothing more than to come off the bench on the rarest of occasions, and leave the rest to Giles.  Well, for the time being Buffy could accommodate that.  If Robson kept his word.  If Giles had gotten over his crisis.

            She climbed the stairs slowly and made for the corner room where Elisabeth was seated on the floor, sorting books out of a box.

            “Rupert was very kind,” she said, “to box up the rest of my academic books and bring them for me.”

            “Doesn’t look like you have enough for the shelves on this wall,” Buffy said.

            “Oh, that’ll change,” Elisabeth said, with a self-deprecating snort.

            Buffy smiled.  “Yeah, before you know it this house will be full of smelly knowledge.”

            Elisabeth laughed.  “The way it was meant to be,” she said.

            In the next room over, Brian and Andrew were setting up a second air bed and discussing cricket.  Buffy could hear them over the inflator fan.  Buffy and Andrew had moved his bed to one of the rooms they’d cleared, a few days ago, leaving Elisabeth her office to set to rights when she got the chance.

            On the empty desk lay the brown-paper-wrapped parcel that Elisabeth had retrieved from her sock drawer at Christmas.  Buffy went over to it and gently lifted an edge of the paper.

            “That’s my birthday present from Anne,” Elisabeth said, looking up from the book she was holding.  “Want to help me hang it up?”

            Buffy cleared the paper from the top surface and looked.  She knew it was an icon, but she was not totally sure who the two women with haloes were.  They looked happy, though they had not been drawn with smiles—it was something in the curve of their arms held out and the brightness of their eyes.  Buffy took it up from its paper nest and looked closer.  It was not a photograph shellacked onto wood; it was actually carved and painted there.  “Did she make this?” Buffy asked.

            “Yeah.”  Elisabeth had got up to dig in a small carton of assorted picture-hanging stuff.  “She started work on it while I was at her house recovering, in the spring.  Oh, that reminds me.”  She turned around briefly.  “I should ask Rupert if he would call her after he’s done talking to Willow.  I mean, she’s probably safe where she is, but we ought to check in with her.”

            Buffy grunted in agreement and turned the icon over to look for a picture-hanging hole on the back.  There was one, but there was also a note, written on a sheet from a small notepad and taped to the smooth wood.  Buffy would recognize Giles’s small, cramped handwriting anywhere.  She read it before she could even think what it was doing there.

 

Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come.

For winter is now past, the rain is over and gone.

The flowers have appeared in our land, the time of pruning is come: the voice of the turtle is heard in our land:

The fig tree hath put forth her green figs: the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come:

My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall, shew me thy face, let thy voice sound in my ears: for thy voice is sweet, and thy face comely.

 

Buffy blushed hot, just as Elisabeth turned round with a nail and hook cupped in her hand.  “Um,” she said, holding the icon out with its back facing Elisabeth, “I think this is supposed to be for you.”  She turned away and made a studied search for the hammer as Elisabeth took the icon and silently read the note.  When she found it, she peeked around: Elisabeth was still looking at the note, and there was a heavy shine in her eyes.  As Buffy watched, she blinked it away and peeled the note gently away from the icon’s back, to fold and tuck into her pocket.

            “Where are you going to hang it?”

            Elisabeth gestured at the west wall, facing the window.  “Here, I think,” she said.

            Together they measured the icon against the placing of the nail; Buffy drove it in (gently: preternatural accuracy wouldn’t stop her from bringing down all the plaster on the wall if she hit too hard), and they fitted the flat wood back flush with the wall.  Elisabeth stepped back, nearly tripping over the box of books, to judge whether it was straight.  They made a few adjustments and admired their handiwork: and the icon did look perfect, as if it had grown in its place.

            But after a moment Elisabeth sighed restively and said, “I’m going to go find Rupert and ask him about calling Anne.”

            Buffy nodded.  Elisabeth picked her way around piles of books and went.  In the doorway she turned briefly.  “Thanks for your help.”

            “You’re welcome,” Buffy said.

            She was gone.  Buffy shuffled around a stray book and sat down in the wooden swivel chair by the desk.  The empty room around her was quiet in its slant of late afternoon light, and the icon presided over the silence like a guardian.  This was a good place to think.

            Which was good, because Buffy had a lot to think about.

 

*

 

Brian and Andrew had already gone downstairs; Elisabeth could hear them in the kitchen, opening and shutting the refrigerator door and getting crockery out of the cabinets—Andrew had volunteered to cook dinner, and Brian, whose paternal instincts seemed to have been awakened, was helping him.

            She bypassed the kitchen and went to the study.  Rupert was there, of course, sitting on the edge of his desk, the toes of his boots planted just short of the squares of sunlight that lay across the carpet from the French doors.  He looked up mildly when she entered, and when she came close he scooted down the edge of the desk to make room for her.  She wasn’t tall enough to both sit and stretch her legs as he was doing, so she perched on the desk with one toe on the carpet for balance.

            “All right?” he asked.

            “Yes.  You?”

            “Yes.”

            “Where’s Buffy?”

            “I left her upstairs.  We hung my icon in the office.”

            “Ah,” he said, and went quiet.  Her face warm, Elisabeth dared a glance up at him; his eyes were cast down, lashes low, and his lips held a small, thoughtful smile.

            For a long moment there was no need to talk.  They watched the sunlight bars lengthen on the carpet.

            “I wish you could have met my parents,” Rupert said, as if they had been discussing it.  “I think they would have liked you.”

            “I wish I could have met them, too,” Elisabeth said softly.

            Rupert raised his gaze to the decorated ceiling.  “He was a great Watcher, my father, in his quiet way.  He loved books.  Not every Watcher does, you know.  He didn’t travel as much as I did when I was training, but he knew more about every place I’ve been than I ever will.”  He sighed.  “I miss him.”

            “How long has he been gone?”

            Rupert twisted his mouth, counting.  “I was about your age when he died.  So, close to twenty years.”

            “Was it…a natural death?”

            “More or less,” Rupert said.  “He was wounded fighting a colony of Svarak—swamp demons—that summer, and was carried off by pneumonia the winter after that.  My mother had died a few years before, and he missed her.”

            “Those books you’ve got in Bath—those were his?”

            He looked over at her.  “Yes.  Some very nice items.  Would you like to have them here?”

            “If you’re not concerned about putting all our books in one basket,” Elisabeth said with a smile.

            “It’s been a hazard with this house before,” he agreed.  “And so much was lost when the Council library was blown up.  But I can’t help thinking there’s a reason why human beings want books to live in company with one another.”

            Elisabeth nodded, and another small silence fell.

            At length Rupert spoke again.  “Shame you had to give away your lucky sixpence.”  Was he thinking of a rainy day, months ago, when she had offered it to him?

            “I’ve still got the cross,” Elisabeth said.

            Rupert smiled.  “Yes,” he said, “we’ve still got that.”

 

*

 

“Hello?”

            “Hello…Anne?”  He had not dared to address her simply by her name before.

            “Yes.”

            “Rupert Giles here….I—”

            “Oh, I was hoping you’d call.  How did—”

            “Are you all right?” he asked, alarmed.

            “Oh, yes, quite all right,” Anne said.  And though that was exactly what she would say even if she were not, Rupert had never heard her voice so unstrained before, so he relaxed in spite of himself.

            “How did the plan go?” Anne asked him.

            “I have good hopes for it,” Rupert said guardedly.  “Elisabeth brought off her part gracefully and well; we must wait and see what the outcome is.”

            “And you?” Anne asked, more quietly.  “How are you?”

            “I’m quite all right.”  He echoed her words, and realized that he was, in fact, speaking the truth.

            “Good,” she said.  “I’m glad to hear it.”

            He caught the softness in her tone and said, “Thank you.”

            “You’ll keep me abreast of the developments?”

            “Of course.”

            “Thank you,” she said; and he breathed out the last of his fear.

 

*

 

One of the interesting effects of being in a state of courtship, Elisabeth reflected that night as she got into bed, was the heightened desire for physical contact with the beloved.  The afternoon had waked her in a way she had not felt in a long time: that moment on the threshold, and the note Rupert had left on the icon, had together compounded hunger and emotion to a degree she had not anticipated.  And since they had tacitly initiated a period of separation, Elisabeth found that her only recourse was to return the energy within herself, to re-fuse it with her own vital force.  Perhaps he was having a similar experience, but if so, he gave no indication of it: he had gone to bed ahead of her, kissing her temple lightly before he went, and was now peacefully sleeping on his side of the bed.

            As if this weren’t upheaval enough, her nerves had gone back on her from the confrontation with Robson; she had picked at her dinner, and had had to reassure Andrew that there was nothing the matter with his cooking, and then fled to the refuge of the bathroom for a long soak in the tub.  The only thing to do, of course, was to wait it out and hope that it wouldn’t interfere with her sleep.

            Since Rupert had called Anne according to Elisabeth’s wishes, and Anne had assured them that she had not seen anything unusual or been interfered with in any way, Elisabeth decided to go to church the next day instead of holing up in Pyke’s Lea for some unspecified disaster.  She had played a round of cards with the others, then left them to their own devices while she went up to the office and amused herself with arranging her laptop and notes on the desk.

            Elisabeth straightened the covers over her lap, scrunched down among the pillows, and turned out her light.  As the darkness settled over them, she listened to the sounds of the others getting ready for bed, and waited for Rupert’s warmth to reach her and mingle with her own.

 

*

 

“You’re laughing at my pajamas, aren’t you.”

            Buffy stopped fighting the smile.  Brian came fully into the kitchen and pulled out a glass and the jug of milk, then hooked one of the chairs out from the table with a slippered foot and plunked himself down.

            “Where do you find pajamas with trains on them in your size?” Buffy asked him.  He was as tall as Giles: the thick navy robe he wore over his pajamas merely emphasized his lankiness.

            Brian shrugged and poured himself a full glass of milk.  “It’s not so very hard,” he said.  “You, I observe, are not dressed for eyelid inspection.”

            “No.  I did a quick patrol, but I still can’t sleep.”

            “Standing watch?” he said, though it wasn’t really a question.

            “Yeah; I guess so.”

            “Probably a good idea.”  Brian took a swig of milk and wiped the milk-mustache off his lips.

            “Giles and Elisabeth can take care of themselves, but I dunno.  I’m just used to the keeping-watch gig, I guess.”

            “Yeah,” Brian said.  “When are you going back?”

            “Well, it depends on what happens tomorrow and the next day.  My flight out’s on Tuesday, the sixth.”

            He nodded and sipped again.

            She looked directly at him.  “It makes me feel better that they’ve got you,” she said.

            Brian looked for a minute as if he might wave away her implied thanks, but he thought better of it and said, “I’ll be here.”

            “Thanks,” Buffy said.

            Brian downed half of his remaining milk and put down the glass to stifle a yawn.  “I’m not as young as I used to be,” he said.  “I think I’m going to go to bed.”  He lifted his glass and finished off the milk, then rose to put away the jug and rinse his glass in the sink.  “You going to stay up?”

            “I think so,” Buffy said.

            “Right.  Call if you need anything.”

            “Okay.”  He was nearly at the door when she said, “Brian?”

            He turned and waited.

            “Thanks for…you know, all the fun.  And stuff.”  God, that sounded ridiculous; but Brian didn’t seem to mind.

            “A little fun between friends,” he said with a quiet smile, “is never a bad thing.  Good night.”

            “Night.”

 

*

 

The sky clouded heavily over, and it rained hard.  Elisabeth darted through the downpour to the car and drove to church with windshield wipers flapping.

            Before that, Buffy went to bed in the grey predawn, met on the way up the stairs by Rupert coming down to make early morning coffee.  “All right?” he murmured.  “Yep,” she said.  “Get some rest then,” he said.  So she did, and the cat slept with her in a round curl on the bed, his tail nested around his nose.

            Elisabeth returned from church without mishap, except for being quite damp and cold; Anne, she reported, was fine.  She sat down at the kitchen table with her sock feet pointed in the direction of the fire, and read the beginnings of her new outline to Brian.  Drops from the downpour rolled down the lower half of the diamond-paned windows; Rupert and Andrew played chess, Rupert with a cup of coffee steaming at his elbow.

            They were waiting.

            Just as Rupert was clearing the kitchen table to make dinner, Buffy came downstairs with her cell-phone in one hand.

            “Just talked to Willow,” she announced quietly.  “She’s been on the phone with Xander.  He’s been working on tracing the guy the Council put on him, and finally found where he was staying, only to find out that he pulled up stakes a few hours before and left.  So Xander’s gonna stay put for a few days and then move on.”

            There was a brief silence; then Rupert said, “Well.  That’s a good start.”

            “Yeah,” Buffy said.  “I’m thinking we’ll keep a close eye on the sitch to see if it keeps steady that way.  In the meantime I’m asking everyone to check in in the next 24 hours with a report on their own security.”

            “Good idea,” Rupert said.

            “D’you want us to check in too?” Brian asked, grinning.

            “Idiot,” Elisabeth said affectionately.

 

*

 

Brian went home that evening, but promised to lend a hand the next day getting Andrew established in the Oxford flat, which was now very disheveled indeed.  Rupert intended to spend as much time with him, there and at home, as possible.

            Andrew, for his part, was looking steadier and less like a man in a small boat rocked by huge waves of shame.  He bore with equanimity the matter-of-fact ways that Rupert and Elisabeth discussed keeping him within ken.  “And we’ll have to face it, Elisabeth,” Rupert said:  “we’re going to have to get you your own car.”

            Elisabeth made a face.

            “Just don’t get her another Brave Little Toaster, Giles,” Buffy said.  “She needs a real car.”

            “There was nothing at all wrong with my Citroen,” Rupert said, glaring at her.  “It served me just fine until—”

            “—until Spike wrecked it,” Buffy said calmly.  “Yes, I know.”

            Elisabeth waited for the mushroom cloud, but none came: Rupert merely grunted, not without humor, and returned to sauteing onions.

            Buffy turned to Elisabeth and gave her an almost-smile worthy of Rupert himself.

 

*

 

The rain fell late into the night, and then cleared away, leaving a blustery sunny day the next morning.  Elisabeth sat down with her notes and books and laptop in her office, with the eastern sun streaming in along the floor toward the icon on the wall.

            Buffy and Giles took Andrew to Oxford and saw him settled in Elisabeth’s flat, then grabbed some hamburgers for lunch and came back.  But Buffy didn’t feel like packing for home yet.

            “Let’s go for a walk,” she suggested, and Giles agreed.

 

*

 

Four:  Faerie and the Perpetual Invitation.  Subheading:  Repentance.

            Buffy and Rupert had gone out walking.  Elisabeth was alone with her house; unless you counted the cat, who was in the room with her, stretched out in the sun and bathing himself.  The wind blew a hard gust, rattling the panes of the window: a friendly noise, as you chose to take it.

            This thesis was actually going to happen.  For the first time Elisabeth could see it, could see herself completing it and presenting its component parts as lectures, as Dr. Biggs had suggested long ago that she do.  All it would take was the push of sustained work.  All she had to lose was her fear.

            Elisabeth put her hands to the keyboard, caught up in thought.

 

*

 

Buffy and Giles sat on the stone wall dividing two pastures.  Overhead the soft clouds scudded, driven on by a relentless wind, leaving them shadowed and sunlit by turns.  Giles’s hands were quiet in his lap, and his eyes were on the western horizon.

            “It isn’t going to last forever,” Buffy said at last.

            He knew she was talking about the Council.  “No,” he agreed.  “The balance will shift again, sooner or later.”

            She said, “What are we going to do about Angel?”  It sounded horribly blunt, but she didn’t know how else to say it.

            Giles didn’t answer for a moment.  Then he asked:  “Do you trust him?”

            “No,” Buffy admitted.

            She waited, but Giles did not exult in her choice of him over Angel, nor did he ask if she trusted him.  Maybe he was afraid.  Maybe he already knew.  After all, he had allowed her finally to see how close he had come to breaking.  It was a bold move for him to make, who knew that she had distrusted him in the past.  Even in his wounded anger, he had given her this.  Buffy’s throat ached hard.

            He looked over at her, saw what was on her face, and gave her that little affectionate smile he always gave her when he was waiting for her own courage to catch up with her.  “I imagine we’ll deal with it as it comes.  Are you worried?” he said.

            “No,” Buffy said.

 

*

 

Subheading: Re-vision.

            Depending on the fairy tale, sometimes one returned to the old world with a new way of seeing things that jarred with the comfortable vision of the natives.  Just as often, though, the hero or heroine continued in the brave new world they had tumbled into, with only what they learned to guide them.  Either way (Elisabeth scrawled in her notebook), the interactions of the person with their surroundings were contingent on a re-vision of what had gone before.

            Elisabeth put down her pen; looked over at the icon.  “Yes, yes, all right,” she murmured to herself.  “You don’t have to rub it in.”

 

*

 

“You know,” she said, “Robson accused us of being close.”

            Giles’s lips twitched, either from annoyance or amusement.  “And that worries you?”

            “Well, no.  Except…except it sounded like an innuendo, the way he said it.”

            It was an amused smirk playing with Giles’s mouth.  He continued to stare away at the horizon.  That did it.

            “And you know what Xander told Elisabeth?  He said that sometimes when he reads our emails he wishes we would just fuck already.”  There.  That ought to shake him.

            But Giles remained unshaken.  He didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

            “That was supposed to be shocking,” Buffy said.  “There was supposed to be shock.”

            Far from being shocked, Giles was blinking thoughtfully into the far distance.  “Speaking hypothetically, I dare say it would offer some short-term relief, but probably would only introduce more problems in the long run.”

            “You’ve thought about it?” Buffy’s voice shot up half an octave.

            “Buffy—” he cast a longsuffering frown over at her— “were you paying attention at all when you pilfered the Watchers’ diaries for juicy tidbits about Angel?”

            She stared at him a moment, then, “I didn’t see anything in there about that,” she accused.

            “Well, I suppose not,” Giles said.  “Recent history has tended toward the prim and prudish.  Nineteenth-century notions of greensickness and all that.”

            “What the hell is greensickness?” Buffy demanded.

            “Not something you need to worry about,” Giles said, very dryly, which incensed her even further.  “My point is,” Giles went on (he was getting his lecture-voice on, and maybe there was something to that love-hate theory), “we live in a relatively liberated age and country, where a man and a young girl working closely together are merely subjected to irritating innuendo and mild threats.  Not every society is like that.  Historically, a good number of Watcher-Slayer relationships were conducted under the aegis of marriages of convenience, to protect the girl from humans while she killed demons.  And—though the diaries are somewhat reticent on the point—I imagine that more often than not, the marriages were consummated.”

            “That’s—”  Disgusting, she had been going to say, but she choked on the word.  She swallowed and said flatly, “That sounds abusive to me.”

            Giles shrugged.  “I expect it depended on the particular relationship.  Some of them were healthy, some of them weren’t.  Mostly, of course, they ended when one got the other killed.”

            “Which is totally different from the other kind of Watcher-Slayer relationship,” Buffy said tartly.

            Giles ducked his head, laughing.  “You see my point.”

            She did see his point, but she didn’t have to like it.  She blew out a sharp sigh.

            “That’s what Robson was getting at, of course,” Giles said.  “That we’ve got no business claiming the moral high ground based on our particular relationship.  Glad I wasn’t there.  Probably would have socked him one right there in the Kings Arms.”

            “You and me both.  Brian had to hold my hand pretty tight under the table.”

            “Brian restrained you?  Ha!”  Giles was getting far too much enjoyment out of this conversation.

            “He says he did it for his own benefit as well,” Buffy said.  “I think his biggest beef was what it all said about Elisabeth.”

            “Well, yes.”  Giles’s amusement dimmed.  “There’s that, of course.  What did she do about it?”

            “Oh, she referred to his ‘feeble efforts’ to protect a Potential, and then gave him a tongue-lashing about hypocrisy when he got mad.”

            “Good,” Giles said.

            “I don’t think you need to worry about her.”

            “No,” he said.  “Or you.”

            She gave him a look.  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Giles.”

            “You’re quite welcome,” he said, with an austere little grin.

 

*

 

Subheading:  Restoration.

            Fairytale, scrawled Elisabeth, was far more radical in its premise than other kinds of writing precisely because it both called back to the very foundations of thought and also pointed forward to a restoration of the world, a redress of some wrong or a repair of something broken.

            You could not make straight what was crooked.

            Someday, Elisabeth thought, she would find out how precisely Charles Bowen had got mixed up with Watchers—if it were possible.  How possible could it be for someone to trace her own path to where she got mixed up with Watchers?  And had one event triggered the other?  In any event, the things that had happened, the concomitant energy of them, had pushed these few days to a high tension—the meniscus of water that was not yet ready to flow.  Not yet; not yet.

            They had nearly, she thought, reached the place to start.

 

*

 

They walked back together, the wind ruffling Giles’s hair and flicking the puffball on Buffy’s hat, the sun sinking ahead of them toward late afternoon.

            Before they reached the head of the path on the road, however, Giles slowed almost to a stop.  “Do you think we’ll be all right now?” he asked her.

            She knew he was thinking, now that she was about to leave, of the reasons why he’d asked her here in the first place.  She stopped and turned to face him.  “What do you want me to say?” she said, slowly, looking him in the face.

            He met her eye with a small smile, and there, there was the Giles that she loved.  “Lie to me,” he said.

            “We’ll never fight again,” Buffy said promptly.  “We’ll always want the same thing for our people.  We’ll always choose the same direction and it’ll always be the right one.  We’ll never say mean things to each other, or make each other cry, or have to drink an ass-load of scotch to reconnect, or put each other in danger.”

            He was laughing quietly by the time she finished.  “You’re a terrible liar,” he said, and held out his arms at the same moment she went forward to hug him.

            The sun had slipped down a little farther before either of them let go.

 

*

 

That evening Elisabeth brought her laptop down to the lounge and they all three crowded onto the couch to watch movies on the DVD drive.  Giles hogged the popcorn bowl until he got sleepy, after which he relinquished the bowl to Buffy and rested his head on Elisabeth’s shoulder.  Later, in the middle of The Princess Bride, when the popcorn bowl had been abandoned on the floor almost empty, he slid down still further to lay his head in Elisabeth’s lap and his sock feet in Buffy’s.  With an indulgent snort Buffy gathered them in and let her hands rest over him; she glanced at Elisabeth, whose tired focus was fixed on the computer screen, but whose hands moved slowly, combing his hair with her fingertips in soft, tender strokes.

            Suddenly, Buffy wished she wasn’t going home.

            From where she sat, she could only see a little of Giles’s face, but she knew he was asleep when he released a soft little-boy sigh and relaxed.  She and Elisabeth looked at one another briefly and suppressed a laugh, but they let him sleep until the movie was finished.  Buffy gathered up Giles’s limp feet and moved them over the edge of the couch while Elisabeth shook his shoulder.  “Bedtime,” Elisabeth said, as Buffy got up to stretch and eject the DVD from Elisabeth’s computer.

            “Not quite for me,” Buffy said on a yawn.  “I’ve got to start packing.”

            “Need any laundry done?” Elisabeth asked.  She had succeeded in getting Giles to sit up, bleary-eyed with his hair sticking up in several directions.

            “Nope, did it this morning.”

            “Okay.”

            “Need help getting sleepyhead to bed?” Buffy asked.

            “‘M quite capable of getting to bed myself, thank you,” Giles said, with dignity.

            He stood up and combed a hand through his hair, making it worse; and they laughed at him.

 

*

 

Elisabeth and Giles together took Buffy to the airport, exactly as they’d brought her, only now the silence in the car was full of a much more welcome sadness.  Buffy watched the countryside slip by, thinking of the lifetimes she’d lived since she came.  She thought of the gifts she had been given, and of the most important gift: perspective. 

            In the front seat Elisabeth was absently humming “We Three Kings” and composing a text message to Brian on her cell.  When she got to the refrain, Giles began softly to sing along:  “Ohhh-ohh…star of wonder, star of light….”

            They ended up all singing, of course, except Buffy had to drop out on the verses because she didn’t know the ones about all the gifts.  “You guys really are geeks.  You know that, don’t you,” she said, and Giles smirked at her in the rearview mirror.

 

*

 

They had stopped to see Andrew on their way, and found him busily cleaning the flat from top to bottom.  Elisabeth thanked him warmly; Giles hinted he’d stop by perhaps that evening or the next morning—Buffy approved the tacit strategy of keeping Andrew on his toes; and Buffy shook hands with him.  “I’ll be seeing you in February,” she said firmly.

            Andrew nodded.  He looked less like the wide-eyed case of arrested development he had been the year before, and more like a young man, though still troubled.

            Buffy wondered what she had looked like, before she began to understand her calling.

            However many lifetimes ago that was.

 

*

 

They were calling her for pre-boarding.  Buffy turned to Elisabeth and hugged her hard, till she grunted.  “Sorry,” she said, pulling away with a laugh.  “Never got the hang of gauging hug strength.”

            “I don’t mind,” Elisabeth said.  “Take care of yourself.  Watch your back.”

            “Will do,” Buffy said, and turned to Giles.

            She had thought they would simply repeat the long hug they had had the day before; but instead, Giles took her gently by the shoulders and pressed a soft kiss on her forehead.  For the brief moment it lasted, she closed her eyes, and brought one hand up instinctively to touch his.  Then he pulled away, and looked down at her without saying anything.  She met his eye: they had said it already. 

She offered him a small smile; then she shouldered her carry-on and walked toward the gate without looking back.

 

*

 

The cat met them at the door, chirruping and darting round their legs in a quick trot, herding them toward the kitchen.  “Yes, yes, we know it’s dinnertime,” Elisabeth said, as Rupert took her coat and hung it next to his on the pegs they had mounted on the foyer wall behind the door.

            They fed the cat and fixed themselves a late tea: Elisabeth grilled them some Reubens while Rupert sliced cheese and fruit.  They had not had the house so thoroughly to themselves before, and the sensation was an inchoate mixture of loneliness, exultation, and uncertainty.  As darkness fell and cloaked the earth, Elisabeth went through the house turning on lights, and Rupert made no objection.  He began the task of laundering all the used bedding in the house; then when the first load was in the dryer, he went upstairs in search of her.

            She was in the office, puttering about putting books on the wall shelves.  A warm light issued from the new lamp on her desk.  As he came in and leaned on the doorframe she turned and saw him, and smiled.  “I’ve finished the new outline,” she said.  “Shall I read it to you?”

            “Please,” he said.  He came in and seated himself on one of the upturned wooden crates that had lately held a heavy pile of occult volumes, which now occupied the study shelves downstairs.

            She read him the outline, and elaborated on the notes she had made to go with it; he commented on a few points, and they let the subject draw the discussion where it would.  Though they made no mention of it, Elisabeth could see that he knew as well as she did how the images and concepts of her thesis applied to their lives, and that he took this as a matter of course: and a little more of the old uncertainty fell away.

            Time drew toward bed; Elisabeth battened down the house for the night and turned off all the extraneous lights, then helped Rupert to fold sheets and towels and carry them upstairs.  Together they made their bed, smoothing down sheets and blankets and duvet; then almost at once unmade it after changing into pajamas and washing.

            When the lights were out, they lay quietly without moving; once the darkness had given way to their night vision, Rupert turned to her, slipped an arm round her waist, and kissed her.  She kissed him back; but the kiss ended, and he lay his head down on her breast, still silent.  It had come to the point, now: but they were still waiting to begin, waiting for an unknown signal.

            They would have to make the signal themselves.  As soon as the thought came into Elisabeth’s mind, Rupert also rose up, throwing off the covers, and got out of the bed.  She put out her hand in the darkness and unerringly found his, for him to draw her out of the bed with him.

            Out of the bedroom and down the stairs; their bare feet making soft sounds on the smooth, ancient floors, they made their way down the hall to the study, where the aumbry lived.  Rupert had unpacked and organized its contents: on one shelf was a battery-operated button lamp, and he pressed it, filling the large cabinet with light to choose what they would need for their working.

            An earthenware plate with heavy blue glaze; a sturdy, unused white candle; a small bag filled with gem-like grains of incense, and a charcoal pat; a small braid of sweet grass:  Elisabeth watched him remove them one by one and pile them together on the plate.  Then she too had an idea.  She slipped away from his side and padded through the now-familiar darkness of the house to the kitchen.  When she returned, he looked expectantly to her and saw the jar of honey in her hand; and his eyes brightened.

            They sat down together on the floor, arranging their tools between them, with hands that did not hurry and did not shake.  To one side of the long plate, the candle; to the other, the charcoal.  Elisabeth let fall a drib of honey in the center of the plate and put the jar off to the side.

            Rupert lit the candle.  Elisabeth held the charcoal pat to the flame and put it down in its place to sputter and heat to a dark glow.  When it was ready, Rupert laid a pinch of incense grains carefully upon its top; curls of fragrant smoke rose from them, and the light of the candle began to glow further than its beam.

            Elisabeth laid the little braid of grass alongside the coal; it too began to smoke.  She sat up straight, and their eyes met and held.

            He held out his right hand, palm up.  “Let the four winds bear witness,” he said, his voice both soft and resonant.

            She nested her left hand in his.  “Let the four elements bear witness,” she said.

            On the other side, his left palm, his dominant hand:  “Let the four dimensions bear witness.”

            She cupped his dominant hand from below with her own.  “Let the four angels bear witness.”

            Over and around their joined hands the halo of incense and light grew, until it wove around them whole, enclosing them together in its glow.

            At the same moment they both knew when the invocation was complete: they could feel the separate individualities of one another, bone and breath, charged to utter significance.  Their next acts would ring silent and straight through the whole of space and time.

            Slowly, he moved his right hand to press level, palm to palm, with hers which he had held; his fingers longer until they meshed and clasped with hers.

            Equally slowly, she released his other hand to dip her finger in the small shining pool of honey.  She carried a generous bead of it to his lips and painted it there, from the philtrum down to the broad curve of the lower lip.  Then she leaned forward, minding the candle, put her mouth to his, and suckled the honey away.  She felt his eyelashes flutter low; he trembled suddenly, setting off an answering tremor within her.  When at last she pulled away and sat back, she felt herself incandescent from within out.

            He reached with his left hand to answer the gesture, his eyes open once more, dark and intent.  With a motion of humility he took up the rest of the honey on his finger and touched it to her lips: had they not already gone below the depth of tears, she would have wept.  He bent to her, and their eyes closed at the moment his mouth touched hers.  The tang left from the honey she had taken from his lips mingled with the fresh sweetness of the honey he took from hers, and became the sweetness of their mouths themselves, lips and tongue and teeth together.

            And this was where they had been brought, to a place both inevitable and impossible, of exultant freedom and utter troth.  When at last he sat back, their still-clasped hands radiated inward a perfect heat, taken both from their bodies and from the halo of light around them.  The light had risen and flared at their kisses outside their notice, and when they sat back, it fell again, and there was but one term left in the progression.

            Rupert took up the candle and rose, still holding Elisabeth’s hand.  She went with him back along the hall and up the stairs, the candle lighting their way, the flame purling and trailing with their movement until they had returned to their bed, where she took the candle from him and fitted it into the holder he had given her; and the flame quieted, then stood straight and still, and the light of the glass sparkled gently over them.

            They stood at the side of the bed, their gazes clasped as their hands had been.  “Do you remember?” Rupert whispered.

            The note of half-unbelieving joy in his voice made her release his hand to reach and take his face in both of hers.  “Could I forget?” she answered, and heard the deep emotion in her own voice.

            They reached, without any more hesitation, to kiss again: and their hands smoothed and tugged away one another’s clothing, breaking the kiss only long enough to pull off shirts and push back the covers.  Then she got into the bed, naked, and drew him in with her, and he pulled the thick covers up over them together.

            In the light of the candle they stroked one another’s skin with all the tremulous hunger of new touch, the sweet tang of honey still on their tongues, the half-caught glances bright and awed and almost shy.

            Elisabeth arched back and aligned their bodies, and Rupert pressed within her.  In the movement they took to themselves, all the pleasure that had brought them here became multifoliate and fractal, as if they meant to hide each glance and laugh and caress and candle’s gleam like jewels along the way of their future, and spend their years together seeking them again.

            He raised himself on strong arms above her, his eyes closed in half a prayer: she held him, her body strong to cradle his, and breathed the other half.  And after, they lay in the bed they had made, drowsing and caressing the damp curves of one another’s nakedness, and fell asleep twined together.

            Over their sleep, the candle burned steadily and still.

            And downstairs, the black shadow of the cat, their guardian, moved on silent tread from room to room, watching with unblinking eyes, until at last he too curled before the banked fire of the kitchen hearth.

            And in the perfect, chill stillness of the hour before the deepening grey of dawn, Pyke’s Lea slept.

 

*

 

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

 

*

 

finis

 

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