When Clarice woke the next morning she was startled to find herself alone. From the very first she and her husband had maintained their own private quarters upstairs, rooms they could retreat to when the need for solitude and quiet was stronger than their need for one another, but it had been quite some time since last she passed a whole night without Hannibal. They had begun to crave one another, and his bouts of isolation were rare, these days.
She understood why he withdrew, sometimes. From the moment they left the Chesapeake house she had suffered under no delusions about the character of the man she'd tied herself to, about the choice that she had made. The day she chose to leave her life behind in favor of a new journey with him was the day she chose to accept him, all of him, precisely as he was. A man who had killed, who took pleasure in the killing, who made beauty from violence, whose heart was so unlike any she had ever before encountered, a heart not made for love, or at least not for the sort of love portrayed in Hollywood films or old country songs. There was tenderness in that heart, and wonder, and wanting, but there was danger, too. She knew this, and so she did not try to control him, to shape him, to change him; she sought only to know him, and to share with him, of him, and of herself. Clarice did not worry, when her husband found solace in solitude. The labyrinthine passages of his mind contained more riddles and mysteries than she could ever hope to unravel herself, and if he sometimes needed to unpick those mysteries on his own, she knew it was not a condemnation of her abilities. He respected her, cherished her, adored her, and she knew it well. Besides, there had been many nights in the first year of their new life together when she sought the sanctuary of her own bed, her own quiet thoughts, without the warmth of him at her back, without the endless mercurial churning of his mind so close to her she could almost hear it; she knew what it was, to long for peace.
Clarice did not worry about her husband returning to his old ways; the life that they had made here was a pleasant one, and one he had told her that he wished to maintain. To maintain such a life would require restraint, on his part. He had been captured once before, and learned the difficult lesson of his own fallibility while he languished in his dank cell in Baltimore. The inspector in Italy had discovered his true identity, and Mason Verger had very nearly been the end of him. Clarice herself had tracked him quite neatly, and she was not so arrogant as to believe that no one else would ever be clever enough to do the same. They had taken pains between them to adjust his habits, to cover his tracks, but a sudden spate of murders could undo all their careful work, and Hannibal knew it.
Clarice did not worry about her husband giving in to reckless impulses. Hannibal was a clever man, and he always weighed his desires meticulously. The pleasure of eliminating some troublesome acquaintance - the offensive police detective who had come sniffing around when they first arrived in Buenos Aires, or the Countess Dufrense, with her insufferable laugh, for example - did not hold a candle to the pleasure of their comfortable life in this place. Now that they were wed, now that they were expecting a child, now that they had established themselves in a respectable social circle and found satisfaction in their lives together, Hannibal had no need for other, more dangerous pursuits. Older now than he had been when he was first captured in Baltimore, wiser, and with more reason to maintain a low profile, Hannibal had, to her mind, outgrown his previous predilections. It was, she thought, a retirement of sorts, and a well-earned one at that.
Clarice did not worry about her husband, usually, but as she stretched, cold and alone in the bed they shared more often than not, she found herself, if not worrying, questioning, at least, what might have taken him from her side. The night before he had been amorous and attentive, left her sweaty and sticky and satisfied, and given no sign of the melancholy that often drove him to retreat. What he had done, however, was announce that he had an appointment, without warning or explanation. She had been sleepy and sated the night before, and had not questioned him, but now she did. Now she questioned; where had he gone, and why had he kept it a secret from her? Clarice was not in the habit of demanding an accounting from her husband; they were, both of them, free to go where they wished, when they wished, with no need to ask permission or forgiveness. There was no need for her to question him, when most of the time he told her anyway, trusted her with the details of his life, the secrets of his heart.
But he had not told her yesterday, had not told her where he was going or why, and he had not returned to her. Though she had long since shed most of the habits of her previous life with the FBI some fears, once known, could not be forgotten. A life could be lost in a hundred different ways, a thousand, one small choice steamrolling into a dozen disasters. Always before she had been able to put such fears aside, knowing that he had provided for her material needs, knowing that if she found herself suddenly without him she could carry on in this life they had built together, but now those fears had returned with a vengeance, brought on by the knowledge that she was no longer alone. Even now, cradled beneath the warm swell of her belly, a new life was growing, a life for which she would assume full responsibility, if Hannibal were lost. How was she to raise a child on her own, without him? To raise, not just any child, but a child who was to inherit the legacy of his father, the last living piece of Hannibal Lector, without Hannibal's influence? They were meant to do this together, and she could not stomach the thought of doing it alone.
You're being irrational, she told herself sternly. There was no reason to believe that Hannibal had not survived his journey into the city the night before. It was just as likely that he had returned late, and chosen to sleep apart from her so that she would not be disturbed by his arrival. Whatever else he was, Hannibal had always been a courteous man.
He's in his room just down the hall, she told herself, slipping out of bed. You'll see.
Clarice had fallen asleep naked, decadently mussed and luxuriating in the slide of silk sheets against her skin, and so she paused by the doorway, and slipped into her favorite grey silk robe. The robe was a gift from Hannibal, as was every beautiful thing in her life, lavish and understated, but it did not warm her as she padded quietly out of the room and down the corridor, seeking the suite where he sometimes passed his nights alone. The house was all in silence, but she had expected nothing less; the servants knew better than to venture upstairs before noon. This was La Bella and Dottore's private domain, and trespassers were not met with kindness.
When she reached the heavy door to his suite she did not pause; she flung the door wide, and strode with all due haste into his private parlor. February was summer in Buenos Aires, and so no fire had been laid, the marble fireplace instead cold and lifeless. The bookshelves were kept in perfect order, his desktop cleared of all paperwork; he was a fastidious sort, her husband. His absence in the parlor alarmed her, but no more than his absence from her bed; it was early, still, and he might well have been sleeping. Undeterred, then, she marched to the bedroom, and once more threw open the door.
No Hannibal. The bed was still neatly made, giving no sign that he had passed the night there.
NowClarice was worried.
As quickly as she could she rushed from the room, and made her way downstairs in her bare feet, her hand drifting subconsciously to the soft swell of her belly. She was not so very far along, not yet, and so the changes in her shape were not so very dramatic, but she knew, as Hannibal knew, that their child was growing within her, and she had made a promise to that child, to shelter him, to keep him safe. How was she to protect him from this? The time for saving Hannibal, for stopping him before he made some reckless, calamitous decision, had already come and gone. There was nothing for her to do, now; the choices had been made, and already spiraled out of her control. If her husband were doomed, she was in no position to save him. It had been quite some time, since last she felt so helpless, and her stomach churned with grief, and with rage. They had endured so much already, she thought, had suffered their fair share of loss and pain, and she had hoped, before now, that such troubles were behind them. Now she felt trouble closing in on her, and she could see no escape. Of course, there was every possibility that nothing had happened at all, that her fears were unfounded, but she had learned of loss, and the unpredictability of life, from an early age, and the shadows of trauma were too long for her to outgrow them. Having lost her own father as a child, she knew how easily the fragile bonds of life could be shattered, and she feared the rending.
Clarice burst through the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, and made her way at once to the small corner of the house where she and Hannibal most often took their breakfast. It was no more than an hour since dawn, and they were both habitually early risers; if he were not in bed, than she supposed it stood to reason that he had gone in search of his morning meal. A cup of fine Turkish coffee, a pastry or two, the morning's newspaper; he indulged in such things each day, though he usually preferred to do so in her company. It would be strange, she thought, for him to take his breakfast alone, but she would prefer strange to tragic, on this particular morning.
As she rushed through the house the servants melted from her path, perhaps sensing the potential for disaster that hung in the air; the Señora was not in the habit of storming through the lower levels naked but for her robe, and certainly not without the company of the Señor. Perhaps they, too, had noticed his absence. Perhaps they, too, were worried.
Clarice emerged into the breakfast nook and very nearly wept with relief, for there he was, Hannibal, sitting at the table in a neat grey suit, looking for all the world as if nothing were amiss. The morning's paper was spread across the table in front of him, and he held a small china cup in his hand, still steaming with the first of the morning's coffee. As she burst into the room he looked up, momentarily alarmed, but his face softened as he caught sight of her.
"Good morning, my darling," he said mildly.
For a moment Clarice was silent; she didn't know whether she wanted to weep from sheer relief, to scold him for frightening her, or to retreat and nurse her wounded pride in secret. Her worries had been for naught; Hannibal was here, and well, had done nothing untoward or dangerous. Though she wanted, very much, to know where he had gone, though she wanted to tell him of the terrible fear that had gripped her, to tell him how the impending arrival of their child had already begun to change her mind in ways she had never expected, in the moment what she needed most was only to be with him. To hear his voice, to feel his hands on her skin, to know that he was with her, still, and would be for a good long while yet. No more than five minutes had passed, from when she woke alone until now, but she had traveled through a lifetime's worth of grief, thinking of their child growing without him, thinking of how her heart would shatter, if Hannibal were taken from her now.
And so she did not speak, did not question him or herself. She only went to him, and settled herself down at once upon his lap. Clarice wound her arms around him, pressed her nose to the tender skin of his neck, felt the distress of the morning receding as his own arms encircled her, as his palm rubbed gently against her hip.
"What's this, then?" he asked her softly. There was neither accusation nor mockery in his tone; they had been together long enough, and knew one another well enough, for him to recognize when she was troubled, and he always sought to soothe her, when he could.
"I don't like sleeping without you," she whispered against his neck.
"Then I shall be certain that you don't, ever again." He punctuated his promise with a kiss against the crown of her head, and Clarice melted in his embrace, let the warmth of him soak through her, and wash away all that had come before. For a time she simply rested, curled against him, but eventually the baser needs of her body asserted themselves and she was forced to leave him in favor of a quick trip to the loo. When she returned a beautiful breakfast was waiting for her, and her husband was waiting for her, and so distracted was she by the strangeness of the morning that she never noticed the newspaper had, somehow, disappeared.
If she had seen that newspaper, if she had taken a moment to peruse the most sensational of the morning's headlines, she would have seen - in Spanish, of course - the words Bishop Slain in Bloody Valentine's Attack, and she would have looked at her husband, and as she did the seed of doubt that had been planted when she first woke would continue to grow unchecked, a terrible, choking vine.