Chapter 14
"Can I be there?" Barnabas pleaded with his captors.
Mary Overstreet shook his head. "There is no point in your attending the execution. You can't save him. We don't want you to try again."
"I know that I can't. But I want to be there."
"Why would you want that?'
"To.. to be with him. All others hate or fear him. There has to be someone there who is willing to be his friend. It would make him less lonely."
Mary shook her head again.
"You can keep me handcuffed, if you are afraid that I will try anything. Please. Let me be there. Let me be able to tell Julia afterwards that here was not pain, that it was quick."
Mary seemed to relent. "I will talk to the others. Maybe they will allow you to be there."
Frances looked at Nunez. Something was about to happen, she sensed it...
They allowed Barnabas to go. He was chained, with guards. No chance of his doing anything. If he wanted to watch Richard die, then let him...
He managed to sit down. It was difficult for him to move because of the chains, but he bore it patiently. He just wanted to be there.
He saw Megan, who looked ahead, flinty eyed. She hated to lose, and she had lost. She was not sure now if she had truly loved Richard, or had just been caught in the romanticism of the situation. In any case, she did now want him to die, but still had to watch him being killed...
Richard was led into the room, shackled, just as Barnabas was, but more securely.
"Do you want to say anything?" he was asked.
He spoke to Barnabas. "Only that I am sorry that I was the occasion for so many people being hurt. It was never my intention to bring pain to you, nor to drive a wedge between you and Julia. Tell her that I love her."
Barnabas smiled feebly. "I wish I could wish you good luck."
"Why, wish it. For, who knows, I might need it where I am going."
He was secured to a post to the end of the room. They spoke to him and he shook his head. So even here they had the ritual of offering a blindfold, Barnabas thought. They were traditionalists enough..
He wondered about Angelique. Could she do this right? Would she fail? Would she want to fail?
It was to be done with a crossbow. Someone stood in front of Richard, and lifted the weapon. No way that he would miss the heart at such a short distance...
The wire of the crossbow was stretched, while the shooter took aim. Then it was released.
The bolt speared Richard's chest, shattering flesh and bone as it cut through.
Richard's head slumped just before the body began to decompose and disintegrate...
Had there been something in Richard's eyes just before the bolt struck?
Nunez sat bolt upright in his bed, staring fixedly, with a surprised expression in his face.
Frances, as she had been instructed, sedated him. Then she recorded it in her chart...
When would Barnabas come back?.
Richard's body, or what was left of it, hung from the chains that bound it to the post.
Barnabas wondered. Had the transfer taken place? He dared not hope for it..
His own shackles were removed. There was no danger now of his trying to rescue Richard. They were polite about it, but never apologetic. It needed doing and they did it.
He looked at the body and felt a know in his throat. Was that Nunez or Richard? In either case, the answer held sadness for him. If he had saved Richard it had been at the cost of Nunez' life. He had failed with Nunez... Nunez could have still been reached...He could still have made something of himself.
But he would never speak those regrets aloud. That had been the deal he had made when he got Angelique to agree. He would hold to it.
He moved towards the post.. While it was fast decomposing, they were taking no chances. They were cutting off the head, and it nauseated him.
"It is a pity that it had to end like this." he commented. "He had much to offer."
"Maybe he had. Maybe it was we ourselves who would have been offered by him."
The head had fallen. It was now a bare skull, with some hair sticking to it. Barnabas touched it. A last contact. Saying goodbye to Richard... Or apologizing to Nunez... he did not know which...
"It had to be done, Collins. Even he did recognize it."
"He did not recognize him. He just didn't know how to fight it."
"Comes about to the same thing."
Nunez slept, a deep drugged sleep. Or rather Nunez' body. Frances could see something in the expression of the sleeping face that she had not seen before... Or maybe it was just a fancy of hers...
Megan and Angelique could barely face each other, not out of anger, but out of fear of betraying themselves. Megan, her ferocity spent, was now mourning for Richard, as she had meant to., but she did not want Angelique to see this.
Angelique had her own reasons to be wary... She did not want Megan to know that Richard was still alive.
Richard had hurt her, yes, Megan realized. But she had loved him. And in a way he may have loved her... She had seen him die. And if Richard had manipulated her, it was to get himself killed quickly, sparing himself and Julia the agony of waiting...
She sobbed, as she recalled the bolt cutting through his chest.
"You could not have saved him." Angelique said. "no one could. He wanted to die."
"And this makes it all right?"
"I don't know. " Angelique said dully. "But that's the way it is, and we cannot change it."
Angelique had assured him that it had worked. yet not until Nunez woke up would he believe it. And he would not tell Julia of it until he was sure of it.
He saw again the body decomposing, hanging from the chains, still dripping the last drops of blood... Julia would never know of that, if he could help it...
He had had some Dutch courage before coming in, but not enough.
Julia stared at him. She said nothing. He knew what she wanted to ask him and dared not.
"He suffered no pain." he said. "they made it quick."
She said something. He could not make out what.
"I am sorry, Julia. I wish I could have saved him."
She said again something that he did not understand, then turned her face and wept.
He passed her by. He had to see Nunez. He had to be able to tell her that Richard was alive.
He raced to the room. Frances was there, at the bedside. She handed him the chart,
He saw that he had sat up suddenly. Checked the time. About the same time that the bolt had been fired...
It might have worked. But the sedation had to wear off before he cold be sure.
He let Frances rest while he waited. He twiddled his thumbs, studying the patterns on the floor...
He wondered if Frances would be bothered by Nunez' fate. He had not told her what he meant to do. The less she knew, the less she could give away. The story, that she had to keep Dr Hoffman from murdering a patient in her distress was a good enough cover... and probably needed. Verhoff and the others had believed that he planned to substitute a doppelganger, and once they had foiled that plot they did should not have looked for other plots...
He hoped...
What would Frances say to what he had made her an accomplice to? Would her unshakeable loyalty crack because of this? ... It was not different that doing a heart transplant when the donor was brain dead...
But Nunez was not brain dead...
They drug had began to wear off. But it was still too early to tell. When the eyes opened and focused, who would it be looking out from them? He hoped it would be Richard...
Finally it was time. Intelligence was returning to the eyes. The breathing was more regular, less forced. Yet, did it feel like Richard?"
There were sounds of steps approaching.
"Barnabas?" Julia said. "Are you there?'
"Yes."
She looked at Nunez with hatred. "Why here? he's not going to change, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. And he lives while Richard... while Richard... He has no right to live."
He felt torn. In a few moments he could answer her, but he did not dare. Not yet. Just a few more seconds... minutes...
"Leave him." she was weeping now. "Maybe I will do what you stopped me last time. This time you won't interfere."
"Julia" he tried to take her in his arms, but she repulsed him. "Julia, don't cry."
"I will cry if I want to."
'Jewel, don't cry."
It was not Barnabas who said it. It was Nunez. Yet Julia, wrapped up in her pain did not recognize it.
Barnabas went to Nunez' bed. He had done it! "Julia, look at him, listen to him."
There was no mistaking the awakening man now. The face was Nunez's but the expression on it was Richard's.
"What... what am I doing here?" he asked, confused. He looked at Barnabas. "What did you do?"
"Richard Zimmerman is dead. They have the body to prove it. And you got a new body and face. New fingerprints too."
"But..."
Julia stared, not sure of what she was seeing or hearing.
"You...you... she said. "you are..."
"Jewel" Richard said with tenderness.
"You are Richard.."