Cupids (16 page)

“But you have time now to work on a plan for more permanent backing,” he tells me. I look up to see his eyes flickering with intelligence — thoughts he will no doubt take his time over before venturing. I think of the black crime of which Bartholomew has already made me a part — a crime of ultimate futility unless followed up by even worse; the rumble in my ears grows into a wave of anger. What is it he would have me do next?

“What does that silence mean?” I demand, feeling the twitch of fury reach my fingertips.

“Nothing.” His watery blue eyes mock me with false innocence.

“You were thinking something. Out with it!”

Eliza's slap has come down upon my cheek once more. A secret delight and a terror have merged upon the sting — the child-like impulse for disproportionate revenge. My imagination now bids me follow its course, to hear the very words of its unfolding upon Bartholomew's lips, and to be upon that luxurious balcony of sin where the action can be contemplated from the safety of vicariousness. As Bartholomew and I both know, there is only one means by which Mrs. Egret's estate could become mine in perpetuity, only one route through which I could receive, as he puts it, “permanent backing.”

“As administrator of Eliza's inheritance, I am also her heir presumptive. Isn't that correct?”

“I suppose so,” he says. His noncommittal shrug frustrates me. I want to jab him hard.

“How much would you want this time?”

“Mr. Guy, I have to take my leave.” He nods at me as though I am to be humoured, and — sly dog that he is — even feigns trepidation as he begins to withdraw from the table. Raising his price, of course! The need to hear his real answer becomes almost painfully urgent.

“How much?”

“I have to leave,” he repeats, opening his hands in the same infuriating gesture — the most innocent of demons!

Don't think
, I tell myself.
Thought is the enemy of action
. I clamber as fast as I can over the table, leap and suddenly I'm upon him, fingers digging into the flesh beneath his collar, twisting the fabric. Books and papers fall and scatter from my desk to the floor, pushed off by my unsupported shoes. I fall upon the other side, on top of Bartholomew, knees upon his chest, hands burrowing into his collar like the teeth of a bull terrier worrying its quarry.

He squirms beneath me, and tries to roll, but I have him pinned. “You would have me murder again, you dog!”

“No!” he protests, wriggling, his fingers upon mine, trying to prize them from his collar.

“Name your price and be done with it!”

“Madman!”

This time he turns so quickly I am thrown. He's on his feet looking down upon me, his eyes blinking in horror. I want to tear that mask of virtue from him, to root inside and pull the quivering beast of dark intent from his heart, force it to speak its unholy desires. But I'm out of breath and he is backing off toward the doorway, hand reaching to his injured throat. In a moment more and without another word he is gone.

My plans to follow fizzle and die. As I turn onto my palms and begin rising rather painfully — a muscle in my back is yelping a protest — I hear a whispered exchange and the slamming of the front door. They are gone and will not return. Bartholomew has taken the dark intent with him to some unknown destination, hopefully not the same destination to which I am bound. Pulling myself upright against the rim of my table, a sudden clarity descends. The dark intent is still with me, grotesque and quivering. But it is shackled by a threat that is quite new: if I were to act now, it is only I who will be responsible.

Cupers Cove, my dreams of expansion, the tramping of expeditions into the interior all begin to fade in importance. I will go through the motions, of course, but the venture will wither along with one crime which I mean to disown, and the thought of another which will remain uncommitted. In the airless study, amid papers and books strewn underfoot, only the faintest and most mournful of siren calls survives — a memory of golden hair, the vague taste of salt rising and falling on my tongue, and the foamy hiss of Eliza's skin sliding against the sheets.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Bartholomew

“C
AN YOU REALLY HEAR
the mermaids whisper?”

Helen's voice is so soft, my mind so crowded with present arrangements and recent occurrences — a sovereign for the priest, the witness we failed to provide, the sting from Guy's fingernails upon my neck — that I'm not sure I've caught her words correctly.

“What? What was that you said?” I tilt my head for the answer but keep my eyes fixed above the altar and upon the silver cross hanging in the misty shaft of light which aims like a sword through the blue stained glass.

“Do the mermaids really whisper in the darkness as the oceans roll upon the endless sands? Is the voluptuous moon really four times its usual size?”

“Is that what I told you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” I turn to the vestry archway where an ancient, crooked man with a broom — presumably the witness the priest said he could find for us — appears and slowly nods his gnarled head in my direction.

“And that the atmosphere hangs like honey tinged with cinnamon and clove.”

“Yes,” I say, returning my gaze to the cross.

“So it's true?”

“What? Oh, figuratively, yes.”

“It isn't true, then,” she says, resigned. “You better tell me what it
is
like.”

I turn to her now and see her dark eyes full upon me. Her fingers skimming across the incense-fragranced pew take hold of mine, and something heavy inside me becomes feather-light and flips over, landing dizzily off-kilter. It takes awhile to see what has happened. The request, drably enough put, is a simple invitation to tell the truth, but it does not come with any withdrawal of commitment, nor with any threat of penalty should the answer displease.

“Cold, damp, windy, and grey,” I tell her.

“Thank you,” she says with a squeeze of my fingers, and for the second or third time since leaving Guy's home I feel the rank and grimy overcoat of other men's desires and ambitions begin to loosen from my neck and shoulders.

“And the people?”

“Best steered clear from. That's why we are aiming for a new plantation some miles to the north.”

“Do you have a bad name there, Bartholomew?”

The question — its extraordinary insight — takes me aback.

“Yes,” I say after a pause. “I have a bad name there.”

“Then you should change it. We need a fresh beginning.”

Puzzled by the suggestion, by its correlation to a thought of my own, I watch the elderly witness put aside his broom very slowly and carefully, and then make his tortoise-like progress toward us. I find the cross reclaiming my eyes, this time with a question —
what have you to offer this girl?
The four opposing paths comprise the eternal sign of choice. I am as damned as any man can be. I have taken a life. I have involved this young woman in the process. Could I at least not leave her alone?

Her fingers remain on mine and squeeze once more. “I told you it was my crime, not yours, and I meant it.”

My heart tumbles two beats into one. I turn to see a surprising intensity in her gaze. Is it not some proof of union when a woman can dive unaided into the mind of a man and view the contents clearly enough to emerge with the one thought that plagues him the most?

“I was the one with cause to hurt him and I was the one with cause to protect him. He was my father.”

The intelligence robs me of breath. A draft sweeps through the half-lit interior and I turn to see the cross trembling upon its wires. We are both damned then. The idea seems to make things better. I think of the night in the Crossroads Tavern again, of my fingers caressing the folds of her nightdress. If Helen is sullied also we could be like snakes together in the pit, damned by the world but kind to each other.

The ancient man, his shoulders bent like a question mark, sits down on the front pew on the opposite aisle. His hands — pale but blotchy with growths — tremble with the years. I wonder how time might judge us.

The priest, black and white like a magpie in mourning, emerges from the vestry at last, a record book flapping in his hand. As we rise my chest thumps like a cartwheel turning over stone. I haven't given the priest my name yet; we've exchanged payment and details of time and place only.

“What name should I choose?” I whisper to Helen urgently.

The ancient man half turns. Do his eyes narrow in suspicion?

“Take the name of Mrs. Egret's husband. She calls him upright and daring.”

I wince at a perceived irony. But when I meet her steady, earnest gaze, I find she means it after all. “Nicholas it is. And the surname?”

We shuffle out from the pew and, meeting our witness in the aisle, take the few short paces slowly together to the altar.

“Your name, sir?” asks the priest, quill and record book at the ready.

A full name comes to me immediately and I push it away. The choices continue spinning like wheel spokes in motion, a constant, never-ending exchange. Why was the first idea repugnant? The prickle of urgency crawls up my arms.

“Nicholas,” I say to buy time.

Grey eyebrows raise, and the priest gives a short sigh of impatience.

“Your full name please.”

Exchange of crime, exchange of guilt, exchange of responsibility
, the spinning wheel seems to say, a one-way exchange all the way, save for a small portion of stock, enough for two boats and the charge of a couple of men. Why not at least take his name in payment? The wheel arriving full circle again prods me with the inevitable word, and this time there is no excuse for hesitation and no time for rethought.

“Guy,” I tell him. “Nicholas Guy.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Helen

October 1612

G
ULLS CIRCLE THE SWELLING
sail of the Cupers Cove ship as it disappears around the headland. The laughter of the birds, faint but persistent, reaches me as the breeze unexpectedly changes direction, tugging at my clothes with its warm fingers.

Like wolves padding around their prey the questions come closer each time we have contact with John Guy's colony.

“Where's Mr. Nicholas Guy this time?” Colston asked me an hour ago, weighing his pronunciation of the name with an unnatural and skeptical emphasis. “I was hoping to meet him just once before the end of the season.” His strong, meaty hand gripped our wharf in proprietary fashion, his head cocked to the side. “Is he exploring the interior
again
?”

The Cupers Cove men know well enough there is some mystery. Perhaps they imagine there is no such plantation owner, that I alone direct Jake and Matthew, our men, and Sarah, Matthew's young sister. Perhaps they have postulated that the fictitious husband, “Mr. Nicholas Guy,” is some form of protection. Were it to become generally known the plantation was run by a woman, perhaps, some authority could be invoked to confiscate these grounds, the houses, the boats, and wharf. It is fair reasoning, of course, and the fear they seem to sense makes it hard for them to leave us alone.

Mr. John Guy has apparently said nothing all this time; according to his men he has no knowledge of a distant cousin here, but does not deny the possibility. I can easily imagine his murmured and red-faced response as he busies himself with some urgent task.

Soon Guy will be gone again, leaving his community to fend for itself or collapse into disorder in the cold months ahead. We'll be safer from Cupers Cove too when winter closes upon us. But next year worries me, and the years after that. How long can I keep Bartholomew from sight without their resentment spilling into aggression? I'm afraid that like a badly stitched garment, this island's coast will become tattered with the dangling threads of suspicion and disharmony. I fear the twin demons of hunger and distrust, more so today than ever before, as I've felt a change within me this morning — more than mere nausea or dizziness this time, more than an absence of blood. We are weaving the world afresh, Bartholomew and I, and Matthew, Jake, and Sarah, and in some ways it's a ragged enough beginning. Our very first act has been to dissemble.

I turn from the ocean, intending to climb through the bush to Bartholomew's hideout, but something — a flicker or spark of movement — catches the edge of my vision and compels me to turn back to the waves. And there I see it.

The reddening sun over my shoulder skims over the water's surface, setting the wave-dance on fire. Each ocean ridge peaks slowly, holds itself up as though yearning to attain some nameless bliss, and then tumbles joyously into its sisters to build afresh. I think of my own half-sister, Eliza, the merciless tug of my hair, the names I was called as a child. Did she know I was her kin? Such fury must come from somewhere. But this is not the way it has to be. Sister can be friends with sister, brother with brother, and cove with cove if it comes to that.

The constant movement I witness seems to transfer, rippling in my belly now. It is surely too early to kick, yet life will either have expression or die. It is time to tell Bartholomew. In the meeting of two peaks a stone's throw away I see a curious swirl of foam, the hint of a dipping wet back, and then the shiver of a tail, ribbed like a fan and catching the sun's sparkle. I wait to see if it will reappear, but the waves heave, peak, tumble, then reform. Nothing but foam shows above the surface. The impression, nevertheless, has stirred a desire for the magic of surprise, a belief that many possibilities lurk beneath the surface of things.

As I turn at last and begin tramping up the incline, coarse, low-lying bushes tug at my skirts. Bartholomew emerges unexpectedly from a group of trees much lower on the hill than usual. His face is rather white, his eyes twitchy and red as is often the case when a ship from Cupers Cove is sighted. He scrabbles down the hill toward me.