Jonathan Barrett Gentleman Vampire (21 page)

“He was mad, it’s past now.”

“He
is
mad . . . and will probably remain so.”

“What do you—”

“I’ve seen it before. I may have stopped myself in time, but who’s to say how it will be for him when he wakes up?”

“Stopped yourself?”

“From totally destroying his mind.”

There was no need to press for further explanation; what I’d seen had given me more understanding than I wanted. I shifted, made uncomfortable by the memory.

Nora opened a cupboard and produced yet more candles and lighted them all.

“What darkness are you trying to dispel?” I asked.

“None but that which lies within me. These little flames help drive away the shadows . . . for a time.”

“Nora—”

“I live in the shadows and make shadows of my own in the minds of others. Shadows and illusions of life and love that fill my nights—until something like this happens and shows them up for what they are.” Her hand brushed over the front of her ruined dress. Certainly the sword had pierced her heart, yet she’d recovered and lived. What manner of creature was she? Goddess or demon?

Though I but dimly perceived her meaning, her words and how she said them frightened me. Instinct told me she was working up to something, but I didn’t know what, and in my ignorance I was unable to gainsay her.

“At least you’re not a shadow, Jonathan. I can thank God for that comfort, whatever may come.”

This sounded ominous. “What do you mean?”

She sat by me and looked at me fully. “I mean that I love you as I’ve loved few others.”

My eyes filled. “I love you, too. I would sooner cut my heart out than leave you.”

“I know,” she said with a twisted smile. “But others need you, and I am needed here.” She glanced at Warburton. “To correct my mistakes, if that’s possible.”

“What are you—” But I suddenly knew what she was talking about, and she gave me no chance to alter her decision. It was now my turn to learn of betrayal and in the learning, to forget it.

To forget many things.

“Please forgive me,” she whispered.

And I did.

Without struggle, I slipped into the sweet darkness of her eyes.

* * *

It had taken no small amount
of time and trouble to arrange my passage home. I had to find the right sort of ship and a trusty captain with a long history of successful crossings, then wait for his arrival in port. Then there was the packing. I’d acquired many more books and clothes since coming to England and all had to be put into boxes and trunks, carefully wrapped in oilcloth against the sea damp.

My instructors had an understanding of my situation and obligingly made concessions about my studies. I crammed several months of learning into one, and happily passed with honors in late March. My university training was yet incomplete, but perhaps I could finish things out at Harvard later. This year’s course was over, at least.

Fresh April loomed, bringing more rain, but I was not looking forward to the voyage taking me away from it, though the shipping company had assured me the winter storms of the Atlantic were over.

What about the spring ones?
I wondered glumly.

Ah, well, there was no turning back at this point. I’d have to pray that Providence would be kind and brave it out with the rest of the passengers. My things were packed, I was ready and waiting at the port, and in two months, God willing, I would see Sag Harbor low on the western horizon and soon after that my welcoming family.

My companions for the trip looked to be an interesting lot: some clergymen and their wives, a bright-looking fellow who said he was an engineer, an artist and, inevitably, army officers. The growing rebellion in the colonies demanded more and more men for His Majesty’s service. In the next few weeks we would doubtless grow quite sick of one another, but things were all right for now.

As he had been the first to greet me, my good cousin Oliver was now the last to bid farewell. We waited in a tavern by the docks until the ship’s launch could come for the passengers. We’d secured seats by the only window to be the first to know of its arrival. We drank ale to pass the time. I didn’t care for mine much. Ale was for celebrations, not for partings.

“I stopped by the Warburtons’ on the way over,” Oliver said, his expression falling as it always did about the subject of his friend.

“How is he?”

“The same.”

It was a great mystery, what had happened all those months back, to Tony Warburton. Oliver had initially noticed something was wrong, but had mistaken it for drunkenness. Everyone was well-used to seeing Warburton drunk. This time, he simply hadn’t sobered up. His clothes were sopping wet from the weather and—Oliver discovered—his right wrist had been badly broken. He could not tell anyone how he had come by his injury, nor did he seem concerned about it.

He still smiled and joked, but more often than not what he said was incomprehensible to others, as though he’d been carrying on a wholly different conversation in his head. He made people uneasy, but was unaware of it. He hardly turned up for his studies, and then had no concentration for them. Sooner or later he’d wander from the lecture hall. His friends covered for him until his tutor had enough and called him in for a reckoning. After that interview, his parents were quickly sent for and Warburton was taken back home to London.

Like Oliver, I’d also stopped in at the Warburton home see him and say good-bye. I was received with absentminded cordiality. He favored me with his old smile, which imparted a feeling of horror in me. I tried talking to him; he paid scant attention. The only time he showed any animation was when his eye fell upon my sword-stick. His face clouded and he began rubbing his crooked wrist where the ill-healed bones still ached. He shook his head from side to side and the watchful footman whose job was to keep track of his young master stepped forward and suggested that I should leave.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” I said. It was a bleak gray day out. A perfect match to our mood.

Oliver agreed. “I plan to look in on him, though. Now and then he has a lucid moment, the trick is to get them to last. Wish I knew the cause
of it. The doctors they’ve taken him to say anything from the falling sickness to the flying gout, which means they haven’t any idea. And the treatments! Everything from laudanum to bathing in earth.” He looked both grim and sad. Warburton had been his best friend.

“That’s probably the launch,” I remarked, pointing.

“Not long now,” He turned from the view and craned his neck toward the crowds strolling up and down the quay.

“Looking for someone?”

He shrugged. “I just thought that . . . well, that your Miss Jones might have come by to . . . you know, see you off.”

No, she wouldn’t be coming. It was daylight and Nora never . . . never . . . something. I’d gone blank on whatever it was. Annoying, but probably of no importance.

“She’s been very busy lately,” I told him. “Poor Warburton’s condition deeply affected her, y’know.” Soon after Warburton had left for London, Nora had also moved back. “His mother told me that she often comes to visit him. Seems to do him good, though it doesn’t last for long.”

Nora’s sudden departure from Cambridge had puzzled Oliver. “You and she you didn’t have a quarrel or anything, did you? I mean, when you got that letter to go back . . . ”

“What an absurd idea.” But he did not appear convinced. “Let me assure you that we parted the best of friends. She’s a lovely girl, truly lovely. It’s been a delight to have had her friendship, but all good things must come to an end.”

“You’re pretty cool about it, I must say I thought you were madly in love with her.”

My turn to shrug. “I loved her, of course. I shall certainly miss her, but there are other girls to meet in this wide world.” I winced, feeling a sudden lurch of illness in my belly.

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing, really. Just a headache.” I absently rubbed the back of my head and the small ridge of scar hidden by the hair. Acquired on some drunken debauch earlier in the year when I must have stumbled and fallen, it occasionally troubled me. “You’ll look in on her, won’t you? Now and then?”

“If you wish. Won’t you be writing her yourself, though?”

“I . . . don’t think so. Clean break, y’see. But I’d feel better if you could let me know how she’s doing. It strikes me that though she has many friends, she’s rather alone in the world. I mean, she does have that aunt of hers, but you know how it is.”

“Yes,” he said faintly. Oliver didn’t much approve of Nora, but he was a decent man and would do as I asked. I looked at him anew and realized how much both of us had grown in the nearly three years of my stay; in many ways he’d become the brother I’d never had. The weight of the world fell upon my spirit as I again faced the awful possibility that I might never see him again.

The launch glided up, and ropes were thrown to hold it to the dock; the oars were secured. A smart-looking ship’s officer jumped out and marched purposefully toward our tavern. It was time.

“God,” I said, choking on the sudden clot of tears stuck in my throat.

Oliver turned from the window and smiled at me, but the corners of his mouth kept tugging downward with his own sorrow. He made no comment. We each knew how the other felt. That made things better and worse at once.

“Well, I’m damned sorry to see you go,” he said, his own throat obviously constricted and making the words come out unevenly “You’re the only relative I’ve got who’s worth a groat and I’m not ashamed to say it.”

“But not in front of the rest of the family,” I reminded him.

“God forbid,” he added sincerely, and the old and bitter joke made us both laugh one more time.

Ignoring the stinging water that blurred our vision, we went out to meet the officer.

CHAPTER NINE

LONG ISLAND, SEPTEMBER, 1776

“They was my hosses ’n’ wagon, Mr. Barrett, ’n’ still mine but for that bit of paper. I figger ’twill take another bit of paper to get ’em back ’n’ want you to do it for me.”

Thus spoke our neighbor, Mr. Finch, seated in Father’s library. Our guest and future client was angry, but holding it in well enough; I would have been in an incoherent rage over the theft. Father only nodded in neutral agreement.

Finch’s problem had become a familiar story on the Island as the commissaries of the occupying army diligently worked to fill their own pockets as well as the bellies of the imported soldiers they were to supply.

“What sort of paper?” asked Father, looking grave.

“It were a receipt for the produce I were sellin’ to ’em. I had my Roddy read it, but they left out how much I were to be paid ’n’ said it would be filled in later.” He placed the document before Father.

“And you signed it?” He tapped a finger against a mark at the bottom of the sheet.

Finch’s weather-reddened face darkened. “They give me no choice! Them bloody soldiers was standin’ ’round us with their bayonets fixed to skewer us ’n’ grinnin’ like devils. I had to sign it or they’d a’ done God knows what ’n’ more besides. Damned Hessians they was, ’cept for the officer ’n’ ’is sergeant. Couldn’t make out a word of their talk, but the way they was lookin’ at my young daughters was enough to freeze your blood.”

Another too-common evil. We’d all heard of the outrages committed by the soldiers on helpless womenfolk, and when their men tried to defend them they were often as not murdered. The army sent from England made little distinction between the rebels and the king’s loyal subjects, not that a war was any excuse for their mistreatment.

In addition to wholesale theft and the occasional riot, many of the military had taken to using unprotected women as their own private harem whenever they pleased, whether the ladies were willing or not. There had been courts-martial held, but the attitudes of the officers more closely resembled amusement rather than intolerance for the brute actions of their men. Thinking of how I would feel should Elizabeth face such a threat, I could well understand why Finch had readily cooperated.

“So I made my mark,” he continued. “Then one of ’em hops up and makes to drive away ’n’ when I asks the officer what he thinks he’s doin’, he says the receipt included
what
the goods come in as part of the sale. ‘The king needs bosses,’ he says as cool as you please. I was a-goin’ to argue the point with ’im, but those men was licking their lips ’n’ my girls was startin’ to cry, so it seemed best to leave ’n’ try another way The poor things only come along to help me ’n’ in return git shamed ’n’ have to see their da shamed as well. Roddy felt awful about it, but he read the paper over ’n’ couldn’t find a way around it. Said that the way it were written could be taken as havin’ mor’n one meaning.”

Fairly well off compared with other farmers, Finch still could not afford to lose a pair of good work animals and a wagon. Still less, though, could he afford harm to his family.

“Anyways, if you c’n see yer way through to gettin’ my property back, you’ll not find me ungrateful, Mr. Barrett,” he concluded.

Father’s desk was stacked with similar complaints. He was himself a victim of the rapacious commissaries and their clerks. With a signed receipt from a farmer selling his goods, they could fill in whatever amount they pleased on the sale. It was usually a more than fair sum of money, but none of it ever reached the farmer, for that went into the pockets of the commissaries. Any complaint could be legally ignored, for the victim had signed, hadn’t he? He was only trying to squeeze additional money from the Crown, the cheat. Any who refused to sell their surplus could have the entire crop confiscated. That, too, had happened.

“Will we be able to help him, Father?” I asked after Finch had left.

His answer was a weary grimace. “We’ll do what we can, laddie. There’s some forgery at the bottom of this case, else they wouldn’t have been able to take the horses and wagon. That might make a difference. At the very least we can raise a bit of noise over it. Because of the way these things work, one can’t help but expect to see the corruption sweeping in, but this business is getting completely out of hand. I’ll write to DeQuincey. He’s busy playing pot-boy to General Howe, but perhaps he’ll take a moment to remember his neighbors.”

Nicholas DeQuincey was one of the most ardent supporters of the king’s cause and had been among the Loyalist troops waiting to greet General Howe’s army when it landed on Staten Island two months ago. Apparently he was so loyal he was willing to turn a blind eye to the resulting depredations of Howe’s army. That Father was planning to ask for help from such a man was a clear indication to me that he’d given up hope of using the civil courts to settle matters. Now it would fall to calling on friendships and favors to achieve justice.

I ran my thumb over a pile of papers outlining various complaints against the occupying army. There was little hope in me that anything would come of them, even with DeQuincey’s intervention.

“It’s not fair,” I muttered.

He looked up from the letter he was composing. “No, by God, it isn’t. It’s bad now and will only get worse. If that Howe had played the wolf instead of the tortoise he’d have captured Washington before he and his rabble ever had the chance to leave this island. At least then we would have seen the beginning of the end to this tragic nonsense. I don’t know how far Washington will retreat, but there’s enough country north of here for him to drag the fight out for months.”

Months. Good lord.

Father finished his letter and addressed it. While he worked, I was busy turning Finch’s complaint into language suitable for a court presentation. The day after I’d arrived home, Father had taken me on as his much junior partner. It was not official so far as the court was concerned, for I still needed to pass my exams, but I was glad of the honor and the chance to use what I’d learned in Cambridge. We hoped that after the rebellion was over and things got back to normal again I could finish my schooling at Harvard.

But he treated me as a respected colleague and commissioned the making of a fine desk to match his own. They were pushed together front-to-front for convenience, though it often led to confusion. Much of our labor overlapped; we were still working out how to avoid making a muddle of all the paper.

Of this new project, a second copy of Father’s letter needed to be made by me, though that was really a clerk’s job. We had no clerks; the two lads that had been with us had long-since departed to their families or to join up with Loyalist troops. I possessed no inclination to follow the latter example. Father hadn’t encouraged me in one way or another on that decision, but I shared his opinion that the fighting was better left to the soldiers who knew how. He needed my help more than they and more than one incident had occurred to justify my remaining close to home.

Back in January, while I’d been making arrangements to return, Father had had the bad luck to be in Hempstead when a rebel troop led by the fanatical Colonel Heard had ridden in to force known and suspected Loyalists to sign an oath of obedience to the Continental and Provincial congresses. Father signed rather than submit to arrest, but found little reason to be bound by his agreement.

“A forced promise is no promise,” he told me. “They’ll make no new friends to their cause with such methods and only turn the undecided against them.”

Had Father been undecided before, this insult had clarified things for him.

For a time. Now our British saviors seemed to be doing their best to alienate those that had shown them the greatest support. Father’s vast patience showed signs of erosion as each new case came in. We’d seen five people that morning. That officer, his sergeant, and the troop of Hessians had been busy. Doubtless they were also benefiting from their “legal” thefts.

When I’d finished my draft, Father paused in his work to look it over.

“Is it all right?” I asked after a moment.

He gave a pleased nod. “Wait ’til we get you in court. If you do as well there as you do on this . . . ”

If we ever had another court. The exacting work of civil law was yet another aspect of life interrupted by the rebellion. At this rate I would be serving an unnaturally long apprenticeship.

Someone knocked on the door. At our combined invitation it silently opened and Jericho announced that the midday meal was ready. Heavens, where had the morning gone? Father shed his wig, we put away our writing tools, and marched out in Jericho’s wake to assume our accustomed places at the dining table.

The library was in a corner room of the house and, with both sets of windows open, subject to a pleasing cross breeze that made it comfortable in the hot months. The dining room was not so advantageously located and had but one window. It was flung wide in a futile hope of freshening the close air within, but the wind wasn’t in the right direction to provide relief. We sat and stewed in the heat, picked lightly at our food, and imbibed a goodly share of barley water.

Little had changed in the years I was absent and this ritual the least of all. Mother would hold forth on the most tedious topics, or complain about whatever had offended her in the few hours since breakfast, usually quite a lot. She was well-supported by Mrs. Hardinbrook and, to a lesser extent, by Dr. Beldon. Both had become fixtures in the household, though Beldon could be said to be a contributing member by reason of his doctoring skills. He’d proved to be an able enough physician, but was still liable to fits of toad-eating. Elizabeth was formally polite to him, Father tolerated him, and I avoided him, which was sometimes difficult because the man was always trying to court my friendship.

Today Mother was full of rancor against yet another rise in prices.

“. . . four times what they charged last year for the same thing. If we didn’t have our own gardens we should starve to death this winter. As it is, Mrs. Nooth will have to work day and night to build up our stores once the crops ripen. It’s a disgrace, Samuel, and absolute disgrace.”

“Indeed it is, Marie,” Father said, taking a larger than normal swallow from his glass. He had wine as well as barley water.

“Of course, if we have anything left to harvest,” she added. This was a not too subtle reference to the crop sold to the first commissary to come through the area. Under circumstances very similar to Finch’s, Father had had to sign a blank receipt for a load of grain. The grain was collected, but we were still waiting to be paid for it.

Father spared a glance for me and raised one eyebrow. I smoothed out the scowl that prevented me from properly chewing my food.

“I got a letter from Hester Holland today,” Elizabeth said to me. She wanted to change the subject. “She’d heard that all the DeQuincey boys were serving under General Howe.”

“Then God keep them safe and see them through to a swift victory,” Mother responded. She didn’t like Miss Holland, but the DeQuincey clan held her wholehearted approval. Mother was not beyond doing some toad-eating of her own, and the DeQuinceys were a large and influential family They had money as well and a match between one of its scions and Elizabeth was something to encourage.

“Amen,” said Mrs. Hardinbrook, but it was rather faint. She also had hopes for arranging an advantageous marriage, but in three years she had yet to successfully interest Elizabeth in her brother or her brother in Elizabeth. It was frustrating for her, but amusing to watch, in a way.

Beldon was entirely aware of her efforts and now and then would occasionally commiserate with me on the subject. He had polite and honorable admiration for my sister, but that was as far as it went, he assured me, perhaps hoping to gain some praise for his nobility of spirit. I’d met others of his temper at Cambridge, men with a decidedly indifferent attitude toward women. Soon after my homecoming I’d made clear to him that I was not of that number, a fact he graciously accepted, though the toad-eating continued as before.

“Hester wrote that some of the soldiers being quartered in the old church are very handsome,” Elizabeth said. Unlike Hester, she wasn’t the sort to idly gossip about such things and I wondered why she’d bothered to mention it, until I noticed that she’d directed the remark in Mrs. Hardinbrook’s direction. The lady had once taken pains to be present when a company of commissary men had marched by our gate to their camp, wearing her best dress and most winning smile, waving her handkerchief to the thieves. Elizabeth thought—not without reason—that she was a great fool.

I now perceived this innocuous statement to be an acid comment on Mrs. Hardinbrook’s immodest behavior. It might also be taken as an indirect reminder of Beldon’s preferences and the futility of altering them with a marriage. Mrs. Hardinbrook had outstanding thick skin, but a twitch of her brows betrayed that she had felt the blow. Beldon’s lips curled briefly—with humor, I was relieved to note, not offense.

Mother, innocent of this byplay, took it as something to pounce upon. “She would, I’m sure. Elizabeth, you really must try to cultivate a better class of friend than that Holland girl. If she’s keeping company with soldiers then she’s no better than a common tavern slut.”