The Accursed (64 page)
Mrs. Peck said at once that that was unlikely. Her tone was now transparently ironic. “There is only one ‘Thomas Woodrow Wilson,’ I think. Are you saying that you reject us? The plan of the Almighty, to be enacted through
you
?”
Tugging at his high starched collar Woodrow Wilson said, more forcibly, as if he had been gathering strength, sitting so awkwardly on the ground with no instinctive sense of how, or where, to place his long, lanky legs, “Even if I wished this advancement, Countess, I could not accept it at the cost of another’s life—not even at the cost of another’s suffering . . . No, I can’t wish Andrew West dead under any circumstances.”
“And do you think West would be so magnanimous toward you?”
“I—I—I can’t think—that he would be less magnanimous . . . For there is Jesus’s admonition that we must love our enemies, and do unto others as we would they did unto us.” Woodrow spoke slowly, with the air of one picking his way through a difficult passage. “But the primary reason I must reject your offer, Mrs. Peck, is simply that
I do not want to injure my enemy for any reward whatsoever, still less for revenge
.”
Now Mrs. Peck responded with scarcely concealed rage: “Suppose it is the case, Dr. Wilson, that the dean’s fate will fall upon you tomorrow morning, as his substitute? That my Master, impatient with your feuding, and with your mutual appeals to the Higher Powers for aid, has decreed that one of you must be struck down? Might you be prepared then to change your mind?”
The troubled Dr. Wilson had been fumbling with his pince-nez, to fix them more securely on his perspiring face; and now made an effort to stare at the woman with some trace of his old “power”—unfortunately, almost entirely drained from his watering eyes. But in a voice that quavered with certainty, he said: “If you knew me, Countess, you would know that I never change my mind once I have made a decision.
The key is turned in the lock, and thrown away
.”
The strain of this lengthy conversation was such that Woodrow Wilson was exhausted, and came close to losing consciousness; indeed, he may have lost consciousness for a fleet moment. Lying on the grass in his ministerial suit, white shirt and necktie, he opened his eyes to see the sky lurching above him, like an abyss into which he was in danger of falling; and there was the sun, in the western sky, swollen, throbbing against his very brow. Though he’d tugged his collar open he could not, it seemed,
breathe.
“Countess? Where . . .”
When the spell passed, Woodrow sat up, disoriented. He was alone: his companion had vanished, without a word of farewell; and had left carelessly behind, on the grass beside him, unless she’d flung it down in disgust, the little bouquet of alyssum and iris he’d given her from his wife’s garden—the delicate flowers now yellowed and withered and the leaves so dry, they crumbled to dust when he touched them.
POSTSCRIPT: “THE SECOND BATTLE OF PRINCETON”
T
he rest is history.
For of course it happened as the “Countess de Barhegen” prophesied: Isaac Chauncy Wyman did indeed pledge a gift of two million, five hundred thousand dollars to Princeton University, stipulating that the dean of the Graduate School, Andrew West, must oversee the money in the construction of a graduate school of his design.
When notified of the bequest, the elated West traveled at once to Boston by train, to thank Mr. Wyman in person—(as, some eighteen months later, the dean would travel to Boston to attend Mr. Wyman’s funeral, and to lay a sprig of ivy on Wyman’s casket, taken from the outer wall of Nassau Hall). From Boston, West would wire triumphant cables to several of the university trustees, who had been his staunch supporters through the years of the Wilson/West struggle—
TE DEUM LAUDAMUS. NON NOBIS, DOMINE.
By this time Woodrow Wilson had been struck down in his tower at Prospect, felled by a “massive” stroke.
So ended, sadly for Dr. Wilson, the “Second Battle of Princeton.”
DR. DE SWEINITZ’S PRESCRIPTION
A
fter Woodrow Wilson’s stroke of May 30, 1906, the distinguished Philadelphia physician Wilhelm de Sweinitz was summoned to Princeton by the trustees of the university, that an expert verdict might be offered on the subject of Dr. Wilson’s future health.
In the interim, Dr. Wilson’s longtime physician Dr. Hatch, in collaboration with Dr. Boudinot, seemed to have antagonized the Wilson family by suggesting that Dr. Wilson appoint an acting president of the university; and seriously consider resigning his office, to return to a less demanding professorial schedule. After twelve days of severe disability, Dr. Wilson began to “rally” despite the fact that the vision in his left eye had all but vanished, seemingly forever; his ability to flex the fingers of his right hand seemed permanently impaired; and neuritis of the left shoulder and leg had lately grown so painful, paralysis might be imminent. Most worrisome to the physicians were the convalescent’s mercurial swings of mood: from despair, to euphoria; from extreme caution, to certitude on all matters; to bouts of sardonic laughter, and bouts of despairing tears. Yet, the invalid was soon “up and walking”—with a cane; and his speech, though hesitant and slurred, gradually strengthened, like an atrophied muscle returned to use.
Woodrow Wilson would not hear of appointing an “acting president”—not while he was alive!
As befitting a specialist of high repute, Dr. de Sweinitz examined his patient with painstaking thoroughness and assembled a medical history by closely querying Dr. Wilson’s Princeton physicians, and not only Dr. Wilson and his wife and daughters, and certain of his associates, but even the household staff at Prospect, as to the man’s habitual behavior. Dr. de Sweinitz estimated that Woodrow Wilson had suffered, prior to 1906, at least
fourteen breakdowns
in mental and physical health; mincing no words, he diagnosed
arterio-sclerosis
as a consequence of prolonged high pressure on brain and nerves.
Mrs. Wilson pleaded with the Philadelphia physician, not to make such a diagnosis public. “A dying by inches, is it not? What then of Woodrow’s career?”
Nonetheless, Dr. de Sweinitz insisted upon his conclusion, and suggested an uncompromising prescription.
“The patient’s medical history is such, I must advise him not only to retire from his presidency here, but to retire from the academic world altogether. He must ‘close up shop’ at once. In addition, he must give up all pretensions of a
public life;
most of all, his habit of speechifying, which is a kind of insidious myth-building: erecting mere opinions and fancies into pontifical orations, much repeated and calcified, declaimed on public platforms before an audience. Also, Mrs. Wilson,” Dr. de Sweinitz said, more severely, “he must give up his habit of reading books: for a man of Dr. Wilson’s temperament can’t read another man’s line without wishing to combat it, which inevitably leads to ‘vocalizing’ his thoughts, and thereby to speechifying. He is plagued by
ceaseless thinking,
like wheels churning in mud. This has caused his high blood pressure, and a strain to all the nerves and vital organs.” At this the distinguished physician paused, for he himself had worked up a nervous intensity, signaled by a quavering of his voice. “I must therefore advise that your husband retire from thinking as well, for he cannot think without wanting to write and speechify—a pathological circle from which we must save him, else he is prematurely doomed.”
As Ellen West wiped tears from her eyes, Dr. de Sweinitz took pity on her yet further, saying that if Dr. Wilson followed his advice, and took all the medications prescribed him, she and her daughters could expect to have him with them for some years more—“No less than five, I would estimate, Mrs. Wilson, and perhaps as many as seven.
But he must never yield to thinking in the old way again.
”
H
istorians are in general agreement that June 4, 1906, marks the date of the “exorcism” of the Curse on the Princeton community, being
coincidentally
the date of the death of Winslow Slade; but none has yet attempted to link the events in any convincing manner. Hollinger’s feeble thesis—that the “energies of Evil” had simply run their course, and that the “dead” grandchildren of Winslow Slade had never really died—has been the most commonly accepted.
Fresh evidence, however, to which I alone am privy, suggests that matters are not quite that simple.
The challenge for this historian is tremendous, however: my task is to evoke
simultaneity
in two very different, even antithetical dimensions, being bound to a linear narrative in which chronological time is the organizing principle. That is, the reader has a reasonable expectation of encountering, in a work of history, something of the causality of his actual life—if X occurs, Y follows; from Y, Z follows. It is never the case in actual life that time runs backward, unless in science-fiction films; for all of us, time moves forward, inexorably. Yet, we are fully comfortable with the idea that many, countless many events are occurring
simultaneously
—most of them beyond our awareness; and that these events may be linked in intricate ways.
In my chronicle, the reader is required to know that Winslow Slade departed this life in the very pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church where he was delivering a guest sermon; that his death was unexpected, and terrifying to behold for the congregation many of whom loved the elderly man dearly, and all respected him; and that this death coincided with, or may have followed by a moment or two, Todd Slade’s triumph in the Bog Kingdom. (This would have been approximately 10:20 a.m. EST, in Princeton; but at no recorded hour in the Bog Kingdom, as in that region seasons seem not to exist as in our world, and calendar and clock time serve no purpose.)
Following later in the day are the miraculous developments involving Dr. Slade’s “deceased” grandchildren, of which I will speak in due course.
So it is, I will present the chapter “A Game of Draughts” first, and “The Death of Winslow Slade” second, asking that the reader keep in mind the fact that the events they record occurred
simultaneously.
H
ere was a novelty, and something of a shock: a child in the Bog Kingdom after so many centuries.
So tattered was the boy’s clothing, so disheveled and sickly his appearance, he was believed at first to be a mere urchin or beggar-boy, or a chimney sweep cast out by his master, in an early stage of lung disease. But the Countess Camilla, drawn by servants’ excited chatter, perceived that he was a decent boy, perhaps even well bred, and decided upon a whim to take him in, and save his life.
For one day my life may want saving, and here is an investment.
When one of the Countess’s retinue observed that taking in a strange child might go over poorly with the Master of the castle, the Countess said haughtily: “You’ve heard my wish. It’s enough to
hear
it, I hope, to
obey
.”
So it happened that Todd Slade gained entry to the mist-shrouded castle at the heart of the Bog Kingdom, which fact would precipitate the deaths of his family’s enemies.
“YOUR LIFE HAS
been saved, Rat-boy,” the Countess Camilla said, not unkindly, “and now you must repay me. What qualities have you? Can you sing, can you dance, can you tell stories?”
When the boy did not immediately speak, being in a state of numbed shock, like one who has been propelled through time and through space bare-headed, exposed and with no protection, the Countess said, “Will you play mute, boy?—and tempt me to forget my good intentions?”
At first, the boy seemed incapable of responding. Then, with the air of one who must react, to save his life, he slowly shook his head—
No.
“You are not mute, then?” The Countess was both vexed and amused. “Except you don’t speak, eh?”
And again the boy shook his head slowly—
No.
As the Bog Castle lay beneath a dread weight of
ennui,
the inevitable curse of a seasonless and timeless land, it was hoped for a while that the foundling child might provide a suitable diversion for Countess Camilla, who’d had no child of her own. She ordered Rat-boy bathed in her own sumptuous marble bath, in clouds of effervescent bubbles; and surfeited with every manner of sweet and liqueurs, until he grew ghastly pale, and was sick to his stomach—a novelty in the Bog Kingdom, and a particular revulsion to the Countess, who commanded that Rat-boy be taken from her quickly, anywhere out of her sight.
Yet, not long afterward, the Countess commanded that the spindly-limbed boy, who looked to be about eleven or twelve years old, in Earth-time, be dressed in an embroidered silk costume, complete with ruffled white blouse and kidskin boots, that he might perform as her page. “He’s but a child and harmless. If he begins to sprout a beard, and hairs in his armpits, the Master will kill him, or castrate him—but not for a while, I hope. In the meantime, our household has been too long empty of childish laughter which is
unpremeditated laughter
.” So the queenly Camilla whose pale golden eyes snapped even when she smiled and whose will was not to be thwarted within the castle walls, except by her brother the Count.
For Countess and Count were not wife and husband but sister and brother and between them there was no deep bond of love but only of the more sinister primordial
blood
.
Once bathed, and his hair brushed and curled, and his frayed and filthy clothing cast away and replaced by a costume suitable for the Countess’s page, Rat-boy was attended by the Countess’s own servants, and fussed over by certain of the women; kissed, petted, and proclaimed as an a
angel-child
by Countess Camilla herself. In her hands she framed his face and peered into his eyes, that blinked with fear; she interrogated him as to his name, and his homeland, and his reason for the journey alone, afoot, through the hazardous wastes of the Bog. But Rat-boy only shook his head, silently; as if he were not only mute but also deaf and dumb; in truth, the frail boy was malnourished and weakened, for the castle food scarcely nourished him.
“What is your name, my little page? Whisper it in my ear.”
The Countess pinched the boy’s cheeks until a dull flush came. But he had not a word to utter, and shrank from the fierce woman in apprehension. “Where did you come from, my lad, and where did you intend to go? It was not
here
—of course. For
here
is not imaginable from
there
—whichever
there
was your home.” The Countess stared into the boy’s eyes, that fascinated her as the eyes of one
still living,
which she had not seen in a very long time.
“Do you know where you are at this moment? And who is Master here, and who is Mistress? Or have you truly ‘lost your tongue’?” So saying, the Countess made a show of prying the boy’s jaws open that she might see if his tongue
was
missing, and terrified the child by asking if he should wish to be disburdened of the “slimy useless thing” which, it seemed, he did possess after all, attached to the back of his mouth.
“For if you are indeed mute, my boy,” the Countess said, in a reproachful voice, “it may be that you will be required to look the part.”
WHEN THE MASTER
of the castle returned, he thought his sister’s page a rat-faced little whelp who looked familiar but could not recall having seen him before. Unless, in some dim chasm of his brain, the boy lingered as a memory of a meal of no particular distinction hastily and only partly devoured.
“I don’t doubt, Camilla, that you’ve taken Rat-boy in to spite me, and not out of a charitable love for
him
.”
The Countess, already beginning to be bored with her Rat-boy page, yet protested that the boy was her pet, and not to be molested or frightened; in any case, not to be tossed out for carrion birds to pick at until she, and she alone, gave the command.
So heavy was the pall of damp and lassitude upon the Bog Castle, the nights were spent in joyless carousing, and the playing of draughts; but, as an elderly bent-backed servant informed Todd, the game was no ordinary game of draughts of the kind played by persons in civilized lands, but a most ingenious and deadly species. For the winner was not only privileged but required to chop off the head of the loser in full view of the assembled court!—which feature the Master had initiated upon his return from the East some years ago, that the
ennui
of the castle might be stirred. And now all were mad for the game, and had acquired an insatiable desire for blood—the blood of others, that is. “When you hear a bestial roar erupt in the early hours of the morning,” Todd was told, in a lowered voice, “it’s the response of onlookers to yet another ‘execution.’ And nearly as horrific a sound to hear, as it is a sight to see.”
Todd would have liked to question the man further, but he thought it most prudent to remain speechless. For some reason, it is human nature to speak more openly to one who appears to be mute.
Being of a disposition desperate to survive, and made cunning through desperation, Todd Slade had acquired certain mannerisms appropriate to a mute—signaling with fingers, rolling his eyes agitatedly, grimacing, rapidly nodding or shaking his head when others spoke; in this case, he shuddered, and shrank away in fear. And the elderly servant warned: “You must never consent to play draughts with any of them, my lad. But if you are forced into it, your only hope is
never glance up from the board
. Not for an instant—not for the wink of an eye! For the experienced players have grown fantastically adroit in cheating, and the Master above all. (Master prides himself on playing draughts with any opponent, and acquiescing to his own execution if he loses; but of course, Master never loses.) If they can’t clear the board of your pieces legitimately, they will sweep them to the floor or pocket them; and then all that awaits you is the chopping block and the starving reptile-birds. Not even Mistress could save your life—nor would she wish to, as she too is mad for blood.”
Todd had played numerous board games with his cousins Josiah and Annabel, as with other family members like Grandfather Slade; in fact, it was his grandfather who’d taught Todd to play draughts—“an English variant on American checkers”—and to play with “both a serious and a playful heart.” Winslow Slade had quite enjoyed playing such games with his young grandson, and was surprised and delighted when Todd quickly began to win. The boy’s precocity at draughts/checkers was marveled at through the West End, by those who’d seen him play with adults; but, unfortunately, at about the age of ten, Todd became easily bored by games so restricted by rules as board games, so that not even Annabel enjoyed playing with him. With dismay Todd recalled his brattish behavior—if he’d lost a piece at the wrong moment he might fly into a tantrum, and send all the pieces tumbling to the floor; sometimes, he cheated by advancing a piece by stealth, or with a sly movement of a finger dislodging one of his opponent’s. Particularly Todd was ashamed of how childish he’d been, and how he’d taxed poor Annabel’s patience.
“If only I had my childhood to relive!” Todd murmured to himself, crouched in one or another of the castle’s damp corners. “I would do everything differently, and not have come
here
.”
AS THE COUNTESS
lost interest in the novelty of her Rat-boy page, Todd was free to wander in the castle as he wished, so long as he kept clear of those residents who seemed to take offense at the sight of a child, and amused themselves with drunken pranks and torments—seizing Todd by the scruff of the neck, for instance, and forcing him to compete with snarling dogs for scraps of food. (So humiliated, yet bent upon surviving, Todd accepted such indignities with a steely resolution he recalled his grandfather Slade speaking of, at a time when Todd had scarcely paid the old man any heed:
As you are a Slade, you can and will keep your own inner counsel.
)
The cunning child also reasoned that, if his tormenters saw him broken and weeping, they would be satisfied for the time being, and he would be spared another day; and might hope for revenge.
By daring and stealth Rat-boy made his way to the great dining hall where wood fires dispiritedly burned in great, six-foot-high fireplaces littered with bones, and where, through the long, sleepless night, the castle’s revelers caroused. (For sleep of a normal kind was, while not forbidden in the Bog Castle, considered déclassé, and a sign of weakness.) It was observed by one of the Countess’s female consorts—(such were chosen by the beautiful Countess for their ugly faces and misshapen bodies, for the Countess was amused to appear to great advantage beside them)—that a child of such tender years should be spared such gruesome sights as beheadings, as they might give him “unnatural inclinations”; provoking the sulky Countess to shrug, and tousle her page’s hair, saying: “Why, where’s the harm in it?—one can’t be a
boy,
and
tender,
for very long.”
So it happened that Todd Slade was a mute witness to some very coarse behavior among members of the court, and occasional visitors; and to the nightly games of draughts—which, though begun with drunken optimism and noisy bravado on the parts of the players, always culminated in craven terror on the part of the (disbelieving) loser; and in an execution so bloody, and so often mangled, poor Todd hid his face in his hands.
So rowdy were these nocturnal merrymakers, so strident and forced their laughter, the very spiders shuddered in their webs hidden high against the vaulted ceiling of the great hall; and in the bone-littered courtyard outside, scavenger birds stirred in sleep, and flapped their wings, in anticipation of the dawn’s bloody repast. Todd’s sheltered boyhood had ill prepared him for the brutality of the world—at least,
this world;
he recalled like a dream the customary quiet of Wheatsheaf, the way in which his mother and the household staff coddled him, despite his bad behavior; only his father had no patience for him, and now Todd could quite understand why.
In the Bog Castle, Todd shrank from all that he was forced to see, and expected to be “amused” by. His first execution, for instance, was carried out by Master himself, who, being very drunk, with frog-eyes bulging, badly botched the job, and had need to bring the (poorly sharpened) ax down five or six times on the neck of a smooth-chinned castle youth, before the deed was accomplished. Several nights later Todd was yet more astonished and repelled by the spectacle of the fair-haired Countess Camilla!—who, for all her hauteur and scrupulosity, often indulged in draughts with untutored male opponents who offered her no serious challenge and were easily defeated. “My queen conquers all! D’you see?—
all
”—the Countess’s voice rang thrillingly.
And then what paroxysms of laughter arose at the sight of the beautiful woman with her mask-like face of blond perfection, her composed expression, in velvet, silk damask, and ermine robes, glittering with jewels, as she stood like a woodsman with wide-spread legs, to swing the ax with fearsome determination through the air!—and to sever in a single blow the head of a luckless admirer from his body.
And cheers arose drunken and callow as cheers at the Princeton-Yale football game, Todd had several times attended with his family.
Rat-boy hid away crouching with the dogs. With the most craven of these, he had made friends; these were creatures bonding in equivalent misery. He thought:
Will I ever escape this hellish place? And if I do, where can I go? For I have lost my way back home.
WHILE TEACHING HIMSELF
the alphabet, and how to fashion words into logical sequences, Todd had had occasion to peruse some of the very old, never-opened books in Copplestone’s library at Wheatsheaf; as something of a prank, meaning to stupefy his father, he’d committed to memory a passage from Anaximander:
It is necessary that things should pass away, into that from which they are born. For things must pay one another the penalty, and the compensation, for their injustice, according to the ordinance of Time.
Todd had not understood this wisdom at the time, though he had felt its implacability.