Chapter Five: Funereal

The sun is bright; stay in the shade

What was once young is doomed to fade

Carl woke late the next morning. It was nearly nine when he descended the stairs, and he could tell instantly from his sister's disapproving stare that she was not at all happy with him.

"Morning, Hannah," he managed, sinking into a chair at the dining table.

"Breakfast is served promptly at eight thirty-five every morning," she replied frostily. "Your porridge is cold."

"Ah— yes. I'm sorry, Hannah. I was extremely tired."

"Exhaustion is no excuse for sloth," said Hannah imperiously. Carl was on the verge of arguing that exhastion was an excuse for everything, and a fine one too, but he wisely decided to pick his battles and let this one go.

"Soh," he said. "What, erm— what's on the schedule for today?" He tried to decipher the steely gaze he recieved in answer to his question— it took him a moment to realize his faux pas. "Oh, oh, right, er, Mother's funeral service— er— I meant besides that."

Hannah levered herself to her feet and looked dignified. "I am going now to get prepared," she announced. "And I would advise you, Carl Hampton, to do the same." Then she swept off, her grant exit marred only slightly by running up against the doorjamb on the way out.

Carl smiled to himself and gulped some coffee.

B.R.E.A.K.

He'd brought his finest robes for the occasion of his mother's funeral. Of course, he was a poor friar, and in this case 'finest' did not mean 'finest'— it meant 'cleanest' and 'least worn.' He washed his face, arms, and neck, not remembering till then the dream he'd had the night before. When he did remember, he sagged against the washstand and tried to forget.

When a young girl, Tamerlaine had been both exceptionally brilliant and exceptionally strong-willed. Her father had died under mysterious circumstances— her mother had followed him not long after when the building she was in collapsed on her. Tamerlaine Gentle had been brought up by her older sister, with occasional help from her uncle. Things seemed to be moving onto a smoother track when Adelaide, Tam's much older sister, announced her engagement to a member of the Russian aristocracy, and told Tam they would have to go forever to a strange new country.

Carl hadn't been there for this confrontation, and of course news of it was prevented from reaching his ears, but over the years he gathered that Tamerlaine had reacted to the news by throwing a fit in which she invoked the spirits of her parents and threatened physical harm to Adelaide and her fiancee. Afterwards, she rushed from the house, and found Carl waiting for her under the tree which bore their initials, carved there on a long-ago summer afternoon.

That's where the doctors found her, clinging to Carl's arms, came and led her waay, Carl left behind to watch and to cry helpless tears.

The little boy Carl, blue eyes swollen and reddened, face twisted in anguish and grief—

The man Carl snapped back to reality and found himself getting into the carriage next to his sister. After some thought he posed a question which had the twofold advantage of gaining him information, and putting her in a better mood, giving her a chance to gossip.

"So tell me," he began, "you remember our old playmate Tamerlaine Gentle—"

"Oooh, yes," said Hannah immediately, and nodded. "The one got locked up in the looney bin."

"You have sucha delicate way of putting things," said Carl, smiling gently at her. "Yes, her. Did she— did she ever get out?"

"Oh yes, nearly ten years ago now. You know, they thought she perhaps had something to do with the death of her parents, though in the end they decided she was innocent. I don't know, though— there was always something odd about that girl, and the mystery was never entirely settled, to my mind."

"What— Hannah, are you actually suggesting that you suspect someone who was a child of five of doing her parents in?"

"Weeeell—" said Hannah. "You never know, do you?"

"Hannah, her mother died when a building came down around her ears. There's no way anyone could have had anything to do with that!"

"Yes, but her father died under mysterious circumstances! The paper said so!"

Carl took a deep breath and tried to control his voice, which was getting squeaky as I always did when he was upset. "He was strangled, Hannah. Surely even you cannot seriously contend that a tiny girl actually choked a grown man to death."

"Well—" said his sister. "No, I suppose not."

Carl breathed out. "Thank you."

"But there was something odd about the girl, all the same."

Carl sighed. "Yes. There was, at that."

They rode in silence for a minute, then Hannah volunteered, "She became a writer, you know. Quite famous; wrote about what the inside of the crazy house is like, which is exploitation if you ask me."

Carl decided not to ask how, exactly, writing memoirs of your own experiences was exploitation, and instead just made vague, encouraging noises.

"But, I think," she finally went on, "you never know, she may be settling down a bit now." Her tone was supremely doubtful, however, and she pursed her lips and tilted her head sideways.

"Did she— ever get married, or anything like that?" Carl asked hesitantly.

"No, good heavens, who would marry Tamerlaine Gentle, of all people?"

Carl nodded slightly and turned to look out the window. "I think I'll just be quiet now," he said softly.

"Anyway, she'll probably be here today," said Hannah with a sigh. "Likely she thinks she's a friend of the family still. Well, we must do the best we can to disabuse her of that notion." Carl didn't reply and his sister moved on to other subjects. She prattled on till they reached the church where the service was to be held.

Congregated within were hundreds of people whom Carl vaguely recognized, though not enough to put names to them, and the whole effect was to make him extremely uncomfortable. He smiled, but the smile never reached his eyes; he nodded, but people went away feeling slightly snubbed; and the whole time he was searching for a woman he knew, though he wasn't about to admit it to himself.

He was having an argument with his conscience, and his conscience was losing. By rights, Carl thought, I should be mourning my mother. My mother, the woman who brought me into the world with pain and suffering, who raised me— well, technically she raised me, along with the nurserymaids— but his thoughts kept turning away from the passing of his parent, turning back to—

After all, he told himself, regardless of whether the cardinal was right and the dead wre in a better place, or the Bible was right and the dead were asleep, either way his mother was not here and she was.

Tamerlaine never came into sight, and Carl sank into the pew next to Hannah with an undeniable sense of disappointment.

During the service he tried to locate some wonderful memory that involved his mother. he tought of, and rejected, the day he got his dog (his mother had ordered it and him out of the house immediately), his seventh birthday (his mother was ill, and insisted on everyone going to bed at half past four in the afternoon), and the anniversary of his parent's wedding (Carl had been soundly spanked for making a congratulatory bouquet of his mother's prize roses). Finally he gave up on things he himself remembered and thought instead of a picture he'd once seen, of his mother before she was married, when she was young and beautiful and happy. It was beause of this picture only that Carl knew he had inherited her features.

Well. Except for the nose. That came from his father.

Carl smiled to himself and thought of the picture all through the lengthy service,a nd by the end found himself truly mourning the passing of that beautiful, laughing young girl.