Cupids (7 page)

He takes a step closer, a smile — knowing and flirtatious — upon his face now. “It is the wildness of adventure that makes it holy. When the spring comes we will throw ourselves upon the fierce crosswinds of fate once more. We will seek danger and glory afresh, and we trust, dear Lady, you will give us your blessing and encouragement.”

“
Only
my blessing and encouragement? Well, young man, you have those already.”

His smile remains on mine and he doesn't blink. His companion is as red as a fresh-scrubbed radish, and his feet shuffle in a distracting manner.

“I see it is something rather more that you seek,” I say, returning his smile. “You have reunited me with a dear friend, it is true, and, in courtesy at least, I must promise you something in return.” I pause, realizing that the conviction of my words belies an infinite uncertainty. I wonder if this youth has actually shamed me into the valour of decisiveness. It feels that this is so, but how? As the room turns slowly and I try to root my senses, I realize he has so successfully evoked the spirit of my late husband that in refusing him I would be dishonouring Nicholas. I look to the elder of the two men. It is he to whom any pledge must be made. “I cannot, in conscience, disinherit my brother-in-law while he lives,” I continue, rather shocked at myself for putting such an idea into words, “nor can I punish my niece. But if he should die before Eliza turns twenty in a year and a half hence, she will need a male protector. My brother-in-law should have dealt with this possibility a long time ago, but he is a man who clings to life and will not think of the possibility of the long and dreamless sleep that naturally awaits us all.” The acrid sting of disloyalty dries my tongue, but I press on.

“Should Mr. Egret die in the next eighteen months, he will leave one woman old and declining, another under the age of legal inheritance. The avaricious neighbour and the witchfinder both will prick their ears to the possibilities.” I pause for a moment.

Mr. Guy stares at me, his lips silently mouthing the words I have just spoken as though in an attempt to understand their meaning. I look from him to his companion. The younger man's face is alive with calculation.

“I will bestow upon you, Mr. Guy, the honour of being Eliza's protector in his place should Mr. Egret's life not span that eighteen-month bridge to Eliza's safe inheritance. There is no other family upon which I may rely. You will, until that time, have at your disposal all my wealth and all the interest which you may use at your discretion. You will, no doubt, continue in your bid to win her. And if you do, my fortune will be yours in perpetuity.”

“We will need a notary, my Lady,” says Mr. Guy's companion quietly.

“You may call on the judge next door,” I answer. “You have perhaps fifteen minutes left before my brother-in-law returns.”

The younger man bows and takes a backward step. Guy follows suit, confusion still twisting his expression. They leave. As Helen has slipped from the room also, Philip and I now sit in silence. The room is perfectly still. It must be fancy, the tiredness of my vision, but a soft blue smoke lifts around our shoulders and a burning has entered my nose. A moment more and the illusion passes.

When they were young, Philip and Nick used to practice hitting targets with their pistols. I remember the smell of gunpowder, and the way that the smoke moved like a cloud. I thought then how easy it would be, too easy perhaps, to take aim and lay one's finger upon a trigger, how death might follow the merest twitch of thought.

The words of my pledge run through my mind once more, and I see again the earnest understanding in the younger man's eyes. I know I will not rescind the promise; it is my repayment to love and valour and is as sacred as a vow to the dead. Yet, dimly, the knowledge grows that something beyond my control has been set into motion.

CHAPTER NINE
Guy

“
S
HE MEANT WHAT SHE
said and nothing more,” I insist again. “There is no call for reading into events more than exists, my lad.”

Time and time again during the last few days, since the strange meeting between Mr. Whip and Mrs. Egret, since the lady's proposal that followed and the amendment of her will, Bartholomew has returned like a pesky wasp to the same dead point —
what does she really intend us to do
?

The tavern door opens again and a rush of freezing air scatters some of the sawdust from the table between us. “Only a fool would find encouragement in anything she said.”

Bartholomew catches my eye, says nothing, and takes another gulp.

“What?” I demand.

“Sir?” he says, mock-innocent.

“What do you mean by that silence?”

“Silence, Mr. Guy, usually signifies an absence of meaning.”

“Not with you.”

“If you want my opinion, sir, I am more than willing to give it.”

He raises his tankard. His clear blue eyes fix upon mine over its rim.

“Then give it.”

Bartholomew lays down his drink.

“The old lady has issued a challenge,” he says, eyes lowered, one finger tracing a pattern in the table's sawdust.

“So you keep implying.”

“She has told us of the obstacle her conscience forbids her from removing. At the same time she has cleared a path for us to profit by the removal of that same obstacle.”

“It sounds like a riddle, boy.”

His finger, which has created a full circle in the sawdust, stops. “Rather an easy one to solve, wouldn't you say? She cannot remove the obstacle. She is asking us to do it for her.”

“What would you have me do?” In spite of the bitterness of the ale and the sourness gathering in my mouth, I take another swift gulp. My stomach jumps.

“Sir, I would merely have you do all that your ambition and desire deems necessary.”

Ambition and desire — the words glow hot in my belly and I have a queasy sensation that Bartholomew is merely giving voice to my own thoughts which, too timid to form themselves into words, have remained in a dusty swirl of confusion. Within hours of our meeting with Mrs. Egret, I did recognize such a challenge. Even as she spoke those words “if he should die,” the vision of a bloody knife circled in my brain. Only when we had dealt with the notary and emerged from the dimness of the house into the clear winter's day, did the idea of violence firmly consign itself to the world of nightmares. And there has been some comfort in resignation.

Ambition and desire are terrible things, much more punishing than defeat. Ambition and desire respond to hopes whether they are godly white or criminal black. They never rest.

Before Mrs. Egret's “help,” I was just becoming used to the idea of failure. The early promise of the colony — the noble effort it represented — was already beginning to replace ambitions for success and expansion. My near-miss was already becoming my gleaming city upon a hill, a dream always receding, always out of reach. It had, if truth be told, already become the “almost” of my career, the country of my founding that never quite was. A laudable effort which is thwarted possesses a comfort, and a pristine, unsullied quality that no victory in the world can ever match.

And then there is Eliza. Eliza is the name whispered in my blood as it courses through the channels of my veins. Eliza is the word mumbled by my heart as it thumps its way through the dreamless night. How glorious it was beginning to seem to live a whole life under the golden shadow of unrequited love! How delicious indeed when I now consider the alternative of the stark, dangerous action that may result in the acquiring of all ambition, and the end of dreaming. Eliza, the dream, is worth any risk, but can the same be true of Eliza the woman? It is a paradox. The risk I am considering is the one thing that might win her as a prize and turn her from Eliza the dream to Eliza the woman. Would such a victory merely break the spell?

As I begin to answer Bartholomew, I feel like a man with outstretched fingertips reaching timorously into a dark and unknown space. “My ambition and desire,” I say quietly, “do not require the breaking of the sacred, moral codes passed down to us all and learned by rote in the schoolroom.” I wonder at the weakness of the statement, the placing of myself in the position of a child. Am I begging him to persuade me? Or am I pleading for a way to excuse myself from the obvious course of action?

Something like a smile, but more subtle, calculated, and intelligent than any I have seen on his or any other face, takes possession of his features. “Moral codes are themselves subject to perpetual change. In times of stability and opulence, compassion and charity reign supreme. In times of danger, the sword of valour is sharpened. Qualities rise. Qualities fall. My dear sir,” he says, lowering his voice to a whisper and edging across the table. “Until fate dispossessed me, I too learned by rote the lessons of history and morals. Humble though I am, I did learn this much: When the scribes and scholars come to review the history of the world, they will find there is only one consistent virtue. That virtue is success.”

I move back in my seat, a mannerism designed to magnify my distaste. My ale is almost drained and a new thirst has already begun. The barman is filling a jug, I notice, and will be at our bench before long. “You sound like the worst kind of skeptic, young man,” I tell him. “One who denies the existence of human good must surely deny God also.”

“Whose god?” he asks in a whisper. “We are colonizers, Mr. Guy. Our God cannot afford to be faint-hearted.”

I feel like the traveller who, having stumbled upon the wrong path, sees no alternative but to keep going. If only I had handed Bartholomew over to the authorities as I had originally planned before leaving the colony. If only I had not unchained him on the ship, or at least confined him where he could not roam. If only Bartholomew had not persuaded me to bring the old adventurer, Whip, to Mrs. Egret. These and so many more are missed chances for a safe return to modest ambition, or no ambition at all. Now it is too late. Night is drawing in. Our destination can only be arrived at through the most deadly of perils, physical and moral. I have given this young jester the power to influence others as well as myself. I have allowed myself to be tempted, and the temptation is such that only the most self-defeating cowardice could induce me not to yield. If I falter now, my whole life will be rendered void of meaning. To others I might become the man who almost colonized the eastern portion of Newfoundland. To myself I would become the man who saw a chance and closed his eyes until it was over. I would have chosen failure over success and would thoroughly deserve the lack of attention given to me by Eliza, her mean-spirited father, and even Mrs. Egret and the old man. How right the young man before me is to invoke the heretics' argument about the changeability of virtue. All I really know about Bartholomew is that he is a liar and a thief. Yet everybody looks upon him with favour. His charm is undoubtedly his wildness, the fact he is quite unfettered by morality.

The barman arrives and I nod. His foul beer comes in a torrent, sloshing and foaming to the top of my tankard. He fills my companion's mug also and leaves. The Crossroads Tavern has always been a place of hard business. Despite the extra security of hushed voices, the people here know not to listen in.

“Well, young man,” I say, mustering as much authority as I can, “let us put our words upon the table. If you yourself were in my position, how would you proceed?”

CHAPTER TEN
Bartholomew

I
N THE RISING WARMTH
of the night, the snow has melted and seeped into my shoes. I gaze up at the dark outline of the Egret roof and wish I could get as drunk tonight as Guy was when I saw him home. His gloom-laden words and maudlin self-pity weigh upon me now —
you think me a dull,
heavy-footed man, don't you, Bartholomew? You think I'd turn
a poor jig at the fair, a fellow who lacks charisma, no doubt?
You're all laughing at me, you twinkling-eyed youths with your
pretty faces . . . your mermaids . . . and your serving girls.
You're all in it together, I know —
But the words that came before this final descent into incoherence irk me most deeply:
how would you proceed?
I felt as though he was breathing his own ambitions into me and setting me, his personal devil, loose to fulfill them.

Am I fated to forever be the living embodiment of temptation? I envy Guy that he is able to thrust his present thoughts and future sins upon another. I was his mirror and, like all moral cowards, he cursed his own reflection, calling me a godless skeptic. Of course, he agreed upon the act of murder which has no doubt been nudging him ever since the notary witnessed Mrs. Egret's altered will.

The simple switch of responsibility for the crime established, he outlined a way I would profit, becoming one of the stockholders. The trap — his, though no doubt he believes it is mine — was complete in a matter of minutes. He wanted no details and would merely await the accomplishment of the task.

The rain beats its paws against my face and the same spray farther afield — tiny arrowheads arcing toward the ground — catches the distant starlight. The dark window immediately below the steeple under the roof must be Helen's room. An emotion has come upon me that is quite new and, in a sense, frightening. It makes me want to take root in the ground upon which I stand and hunker down with another who might comfort me.

I know why I'm weak. Guy's gasping stupor brought Cupers Cove to me more vividly than I would like. Since leaving him the ghosts of that time have been on my heels: the gimlet-eyed men, the creaking floorboards, the hot breath upon the back of my neck. Ever since Cupers Cove I have been burdened with a cloak of grime.

The mermaid sightings were always a prelude to trouble; the word itself,
mer-maid
, became a double toll, a warning of the unwelcome stirrings that the night would inevitably bring — shuffling movements amid the snores and belches, the sliding, surreptitious approach while with eyes closed I would try to count how many were converging upon my bunk. And once, the final time before — in desperation — I burned the grain, the pitiful whisper in my ear, a plea agonizing in its abject brutality. “You think you're something, don't you, Bartholomew?” These were the logic-free words that formed themselves inside the man's hot gasps while my neck hairs bristled like ripening corn. “You think you're better than us?” The weight of his trembling hand was upon my arm and I recognized the shameful, clodhopping request for love, with envy and violence substituting for tenderness.