Jennifer Horseman (4 page)

Mr. Wilson took in these changed conditions with a startled gasp. "But 'twill take months and—"

"People will starve. Indeed, no one in Bristol will challenge my authority again and those rumors that I can't pay my debts will finally cease — " Stoddard stopped upon hearing horse's hooves coming alongside the carriage. He slid back the window siding to see a riderless horse galloping alongside the carriage. "What the devil!"

Gayie agilely clung to the carriage footstool as Heart knocked out the driver, bringing the carriage to a slow halt. Gayle poked his pistol through the window as a greeting. Stoddard gasped, stopping just short of a scream as he stared at the barrel of a long ivory-handled pistol. He flew to the drawer across from him, but as his hand grasped the pistol there, the carriage stopped and Gayle leaned full inside. Stoddard felt the cold sting of the barrel of his pistol hard against his cheek. "There'll be no more killing for you now," Gayle said easily. "Take care man, I've a terrible twitch in my hand. Step out easy and meet your sorry fate."

Stoddard emerged from the carriage to find himself looking at the barrels of eight pistols. Fear mixed evenly with rage, a potent mix vented at last in a demand, the last he would ever make: "What in God's name is the meaning of this?"

The silence stretched endlessly as Garrett studied the man haunting his nightmares of these last two long weeks. He now understood Leif s quiet insistence that he disarm himself, for had he a pistol in his hands at this moment he would have fired point blank to his head, an action far too merciful for the evil he saw. Not a small evil either, but one far larger than he had anticipated. Arrogance, pride, and cruelty were written on the large man's features, shown in the harsh, deeply curved lines of his face, even in the light of his gaze; all of it validated the many tales of terror he had gathered since he learned of Edric's pitiful death.

The name Stoddard had not been unfamiliar to him or to any other man remotely connected to shipbuilding, shipping, and the seas. For a hundred and fifty years the Stoddard family owned one of England's greatest shipbuilding enterprises, a declining enterprise owing to the unlimited timber reserves of the Americas and the industriousness of her people. This decline Stoddard, and men like him, attempted to slow by lowering wages and increasing production, so that among far more damning things associated with Stoddard's name, everyone in shipping talked about the miserable working conditions among the laborers of Bristol.

Stoddard's gaze narrowed as incredulity overrode his fear, and while he was not fool enough to go against pistols unarmed, his unquestioned authority remained fixed in his squared shoulders and firm stand. He looked at each man briefly, holding first Leif and then Garrett in his gaze. Garrett looked like a madman as he removed a cask and took a long draught before meeting this gaze with the frightening look of a rabid dog: there was rage, extreme agitation, and yet unmistakable pleasure. Stoddard cried, "Just who the devil do you think—" "Ah, the very devil indeed," Garrett said easily. Unlike his emotions, neither words nor thoughts nor actions were in anyway tempered by his drunkenness. "I am your worst nightmare come to life, a man whose reputation follows the name Black Garrett." He added as if commenting on the weather, "And I've come to kill you."

"Black Garrett? Kill me?" Stoddard's gaze widened dramatically as he looked up at the unusually tall, handsome man who claimed the famous name. His mistake was to laugh derisively. "The same name used by every lawless criminal on sea and land. Forgive me if my credulity stretches to break—"

Leif motioned once. A tall savage looking man brought his mount up and before another word could be uttered, he sent his booted foot hard into Stoddard's stomach. Wilson screamed from within the carriage as he saw his employer double over with an unnatural grunt, the pain of it seizing the whole of his body. Then Stoddard rose slowly, cautioned now.

Garrett watched dispassionately. "The point, my doomed man, is that I forgive you nothing. Least of all the horror of the way you put my brother, Edric Van Ness, to his death. A horror I shall watch you endure before very long now."

Nothing on earth could have saved Stoddard; likewise, Garrett could not imagine anything that could make his own pain worse. Nothing until he heard Stoddard gasp, still trying to recover from the force of the blow: "Edric Van Ness? I don't know who you're talking of, and if you think-"

Garrett moved before any other man could comprehend the implication of those awful words. In a sweep of motion, he swung off his horse and pinned Stoddard to the carriage door, towering over him with the sudden evidence of his rage. He held him there with the strength of one large hand. "My God, man," his eyes blazed with unspeakable emotion, "tell me that isn't so! You know Edric's name! You know what heinous crime I speak of!"

Yet when Garrett saw he didn't, it filled him with horror; his long fingers tightened around the fleshy neck. "Just how many men have you discovered your precious daughter laying with? How many men has she accused of rape? And how many men have you had castrated and gutted and left to bleed to death?"

For the first time the terror of what was happening worked its way into Stoddard's face, as Garrett choked the air from the passage to his lungs. So crazed was he with his rage that Garrett had no awareness of the great strength he brought to bear on the man's neck, no awareness of Stod-dard's sputtering gasps as his face blanched first white then blue. Stoddard's life might have ended mercifully then and there but for Leif. The only man who could or would do it, Leif swung off his horse and put his huge arms around Garrett to pull him away. Stoddard dropped unconscious to the ground and Garrett stepped back, staring in shock. "Rouse him," he said, feeling a sick pleasure—he recognized it as such—at the sight. Gayle landed two hard slaps to his face and Stoddard opened his eyes to hear: "Aye, such a quick death will not be your fate. I will make you live just long enough to watch the great show I will make of your daughter's rape, then to feel your own castration." He turned away. His disgust with himself finally reached the depth of his soul. "Tie and sack him."

Juliet sat perfectly still on the window seat, staring ahead without seeing the garden below. The familiar mist shaded the landscape grey, a vast grey emptiness like unto of hell, a place devoid of shades of light and color, devoid even of the finality of black. She tried to sweep the thought from her mind but her fear kept returning to it, a warning.

The same fear filled her eyes, and while her tears never fell, they hung there like the grey mist outside the window, and this light in her eyes revealed the inner turmoil of her heart. Strange dreams had visited the few restless hours of her sleep, dreams filled with Tomas and their love, a horrible, desperate longing to reach him. A huge dark shadow of a man kept stopping her. Every time Tomas's outstretched arms reached to take her into the sanctity of his embrace the shadow came over her, the shadow of a man deaf to her cries, as he forced her still to the mercy of his will.

She shook her head to shake the vision. The shadow must be her uncle. Clarissa's strange warning resulted in this new fear. Nervously she twisted a handkerchief as she waited. A note had been sent to her tutor. Her deception suited Mr. Grover perfectly. He did not mind keeping her cancellations a secret, for her uncle unknowingly paid him for the appointment. She waited, in the unlikely event that her uncle might have forgotten something and turned back for it, an unlikely event that had never happened before but that was still a remote possibility. After Clarissa's warning, she would take no chances.

Oh Tomas, I love you now and forever. Not long now my love, not long . . .

Wilson's fear had kept him frozen to the seat until the moment he realized they were not taking him too. Then he felt certain he would have heart failure and he grasped his chest with both hands as he peered cautiously out the window of the abandoned carriage. Ten men rode away in the distance, headed for the shipyard. A large bag dragged in the dirt behind the horses, and Wilson started trembling as if he felt each rock and bump in the road knife into his own body.

Mercy in heavens, what should he do?

Surely the garrison would stop them at the docks! He had no idea of the crime these terrifying devils accused Stoddard of, but good Lord, there were certainly enough injustices from that man to choose from. This might be God's will-

Yet Clarissa! "You will live just long enough to watch the great show I make of your daughter's rape. . . ."Mercy, mercy! He must warn Clarissa, save her just in case the garrison was late!

Wilson stumbled out of the carriage and began running . . .

From the upstairs window, Clarissa watched in the distance where a small, hooded figure disappeared into the mist-shrouded forest. Her father's malevolent hand had touched every aspect of her life. She had never questioned the horrible things her father said about her strange cousin, a girl who lived among them but yet who didn't, cloistered in a barren attic room like a real-life Cinderella. "Juliet's mother was your sister, my aunt?" "Yes ... at least at one time in her life . . . but fallen, fallen so low. Worse than disreputable. She worked in a place I cannot name, for fear of offending the delicacy of your ears."

"Her name, Father? What was her name?" "I will not torment myself by repeating it. Your cousin is the unhappy result, left to me with the unwanted burden of seeing her raised to a Christian life. But like her mother she is wicked, plain, and simple, a wickedness I refuse to let taint you. . . ."

He concluded with the instruction to pretend her cousin was not there, to take great care never to develop an association with that shy and sad creature.

That was before she understood the nature of her father's heinous love, before she felt the full extent of her jealousy for Juliet's existence. Jealousy because her father nurtured an unnatural hate for Juliet, and, simply, his hate was infinitely preferable to his love. How she had loathed those few hours of the year she had to be with the young girl. It was Juliet's eyes, so large and filled with emotion, eyes that spoke without words. Back then the accusations in her cousin's eyes were far more benign, and she effortlessly formed responses to Juliet's bewilderment as they sat in the carriage on the way to church: " Tis not our fault your mother was so wicked! Be glad, little girl, that my father's charity extends to feeding you!"

Juliet always did seem so strange to her—Juliet's ease with the servants and the comfort she found with them, her extreme quiet, the way she crept around like a frightened mouse—though who really could blame her for that now? Father was more likely to beat her than to pass a word with her. Juliet's unusual intelligence, too, the girl's love for father's books, all seemed strange and somehow suspicious. Once Missy unintentionally made father laugh when he overheard her saying, "Witches are like that, so smart and clever and quiet... an' she's got the whole 'ouse in 'er spell, the way Bess and Stella think 'tis goodness shinin' in 'er eyes. . . ."

Yes, Father had so influenced her that until she was old enough to dismiss the very possibility, she actually thought Juliet might truly be a witch. Later, when she understood the unnatural horror of her own life, she imagined those same sad eyes staring at her with a different accusation, the knowledge of the scene enacted in the dark dead of night ... "I know what thick, hellish pleasure he brings to you ... the trembling and the fever of his ungodly love, oh, I know. . . ." And with the accusation, she began to see Juliet's wretched existence was a thing to be envied.

Juliet would be destroyed this day, and with her, her father. Dead, the word was a long-sought-for sanctuary. Her only regret was that he would never know just how much she hated him.

She turned from the window. Her skirt swept the floor as she went to a silk-lined drawer of her desk. She opened the bottom drawer and removed a small plain package. Inside were two lace handkerchiefs, embroidered in lovely colors: gold, red, orange, blues, purples, and greens, a pretty rainbow made into an exotic jungle scene.

"Oh, Juliet . . . why I'm, I'm speechless. . . . 'Tis lovely!" She remembered Juliet's eyes then, large with worry over her Michaelmas gift, then relieved upon Clarissa's feigned pleasure. They had never before exchanged presents but she knew why she had been given it. A ridiculous attempt to bridge the gulf between them. "But, Juliet, I have nothing for you."

"I wasn't expecting a present. I just wanted to give you something special. Tis a small thing, but I do hope you like them."

Clarissa held the handkerchiefs in her hand. It was strange how she had a thousand expensive and beautiful things: four closets full of dresses, hats, coats, and shoes, boxes of jewelry, vanity cloths of Spanish lace beneath crystal, sculpted trinkets, gold-plated brushes and combs, perfumes from faraway Paris. She had everything a young lady could want and more, and yet for reasons she only now began to understand, she always returned to these two cotton handkerchiefs. Like Juliet's eyes, they said so much.

She could not stop hating Juliet for it, for Juliet's ability to change the plain cloths into something colorful and exotic and filled with life. Juliet had survived when she had not. Juliet preserved inside herself a soul untouched by Father, a thing he tried to ruin but couldn't. Ah yes, my young cousin, how surprised you would be to know how much I envy your miserable circumstances. ...

She stared at the cloth until her eyes closed as she tried desperately to shut out the horror, but it was no use. It was not her fault, she knew it was not her fault: since she was two her father had wreathed his unnatural love for her with the very same fear of his wrath that he used on Juliet, a fear choking her every day of her life. It was that fear that had made her cry rape. He would have done it without that damning call, and yet, when she closed her eyes, she heard Edric's terrified appeal to her mercy over and over.

She had no idea if the ship her agent spotted offshore last night was actually The Raven. "A thirty-ton schooner, sleek and streamlined for speed, top mast black as rumor is said to have it . . ." his message had said. If so, would Black Garrett come today or tonight? What would he do about the garrison? How much force would be brought to bear?