The Blessing Stone (60 page)

She knelt beside him at last, her skirts billowing around her, and the colors of her gown resembled a sunrise—gold against pink. She said, “Martinique is known for its flowers, m’sieu. But even so, many of us brought favorite plants from home. Do you know the oleander?” She pointed to tall, leafy shrubs bearing pink blossoms. White stumps could be seen where branches had earlier been hacked off.

Kent sucked on the last piglet bone and then crunched the remaining piece of crackling skin. “Wait till you see the flowers in America, my dear.”

She pointed to the discarded spits beside the fire pits. “We cooked the piglets on those branches. I told Colette to make sure the bark was well stripped off before they were skewered into the meat.”

He took a long swig of rum and gave her a perplexed look. “What is all this to me?”

“The oleander is poisonous. Every bit of it.”

His look was blank.

“Your men are not sleeping, m’sieu, they are dead.” She gestured to Colette who, knowing what was expected of her, broke into a sprint. She went from man to man, to all the bodies sprawled in the yard, felt each on the neck briefly, and then moved on. When she was finished, she flashed her mistress a triumphant grin.

Kent blinked. “Dead? What are you talking about?” And then comprehension dawned on him just as dawn broke over the mountain peaks and shot spears of light across the plantation. Now he saw what he had not seen in the smoky light of predawn: that his men lay in unnatural positions, and that they were far too silent to be sleeping.

He shot to his feet, throwing down his plate and cup. “I don’t believe you. Every step of the cooking was supervised, every ingredient was tasted.”

“You think only of poison that comes from the outside and goes in. You never thought of poison from the
inside
going out. As the cooking proceeded, the sap from the oleander branches was released and spread through the flesh of the pig.”

“I do not believe you.”

“Look at your men.”

He slowly turned, blinking at the sight of bodies strewn in the pale light of dawn.

Her voice came to him through the lingering smoke of the bonfire: “You said there are a thousand ways to poison a man. You were wrong, m’sieu. There are a thousand and
one
. You did not know about the oleander.”

He gave her an incredulous look. “When did you decide to do it?”

“From the moment I saw you through the spyglass. Before you and your men even reached the plantation. You were right all along, m’sieu. It
was
a trap. When I saw you coming up the hillside and I knew there was no time to send a warning to the fortress, I realized that our only hope lay in poisoning all of you. But that required you staying here. And the only way I could keep you here was by seducing you.”

“By God, woman, you did not seduce me! It was the other way round!”

She pointed to the discarded spits. “Those were already prepared before you even reached the plantation. Have you not wondered why I did not send a runner to the fort when I first saw you? True, the soldiers could not have come in time, but still did it not seem strange to you that I didn’t even try?”

He didn’t respond, but ran his hands over his perspiring face. He had gone shockingly white.

“I decided not to send a runner to the fort because the soldiers would have started out, and you would have spotted them, and you and your men would have made your escape. For my plan to work I needed you to stay here until the piglets were eaten. So I took a gamble.”

His look turned furious. “Then what we shared in the grotto meant nothing to you?”

“It meant
something
to me, m’sieu. It meant saving my husband’s life. It also meant saving my children’s legacy.” She pointed to the chests of gold coins his men had dug up from under the gazebo. “That gold belongs to my children. My husband built up that fortune to pass along to our sons and daughters. Did you think I would let you take it?”

He suddenly grabbed his head. “I don’t feel well.”

“It should hit you quickly. Unlike your men, you ate little else, just the meat. And you have had little to drink.”

“You aren’t seriously going to stand there and watch me die!”

“It is of your own doing,” she said without a trace of pity in her voice.

“You can say this…after what we had together? You
enjoyed
it!”

“Pretense, m’sieu. Your touch was vile.”

“Then you are nothing more than a whore.”

“No, m’sieu, I am simply a woman who will do anything to keep her family. Even sleep with a serpent.”

Sweat dripped from his forehead. “It was my mistake to take you for a lady.”

“It was your mistake to underestimate how far a woman will go to protect her family.”

He clutched his stomach and cried, “For the love of God!”

She watched him in cool detachment, as she might watch a pot come to boil. When she saw his color go from white to ash, and then a queer purple blush rose up from his neck, she said, “My slaves are already on their way to the fortress to alert the soldiers. It will not be long before they are here. But you will be dead by then.”

He reached for her. She stepped back and, as he fell, his fingers curled around the brooch, tearing her bodice. When he hit the ground, the blue crystal was clenched in his fist, its hues of magic and enchantment glinting between his fingers in the rising sun.

“Ma chou
, you are the talk of the Antilles. You are a positive heroine!” They were getting ready for bed. Although they had just entertained guests for the evening, Henri had made a point of staying sober. And now he was looking at his wife with new love, and desire, in his eyes.

“Do you see the irony, Henri? If I had told you the true source of my discontent, you would never have bought me the telescope, and without the telescope that night would have gone quite differently.”

“Thank God, then, for my obtuseness.”

She climbed beneath the covers and blew out the candle. “Henri, I want to bring the children back from Paris. I know it isn’t done. Colonists don’t raise their children on the islands. But we shall be the first. We will import tutors, riding instructors, ladies of good quality to teach etiquette and deportment. Perhaps I shall establish a school. Yes, that is what we will do.”

He said, “Yes,
ma chou,
” deciding he was going to say yes to everything she asked for from now on, she was so enchanting.

He reached for her but she drew back. “What is it,
ma chou
?”

“You fell in love with me because I was beautiful. And then you saw how beautiful I was the night with Kent. But it was the Star of Cathay. It made me beautiful, and so I was able to distract Captain Kent long enough.” Henri had tactfully not enquired about what went on at the lagoon and, despite the disarray of her clothes the next morning (Brigitte had clearly fought off the scoundrel and successfully defended her honor), had convinced himself that his wife, being a clever conversationalist, had merely
talked
with the Englishman all night. Brigitte, of course, did not disabuse him of this notion.

“But you
are
beautiful,” he said. “No gemstone can make you so.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Very well.” He left the bed and came back a moment later. In the darkness she felt his fingers on the bodice of her nightdress. “What are you doing?”

“Making you beautiful. There. There is your blue crystal.”

And she felt its magic begin to work at once, the Star of Cathay, transforming her. She went happily into Henri’s embrace, feeling beautiful again, for what can work on a pirate can work just as well on a husband. And when their passion was spent, and Brigitte was deciding that life in Martinique was going to be paradise after all, Henri turned on the light to illuminate the ivory cameo he had pinned to her breast. The blue crystal was still in its box.

She laughed softly and reached for him again.

Interim

After the defeat of Christopher Kent, Martinique suffered no more pirate invasions, and the so-called golden age of piracy came to an end soon after when the navies of the world joined together to take back the seas. Henri and Brigitte lived to the ripe old ages of sixty and sixty-three respectively, leaving a legacy of wealth and honor to their children. Bellefontaine Plantation survived earthquakes, hurricanes, and a massive eruption of Mt. Pelée to become, in the present day, a popular tourist attraction where visitors are told by cheerful young tour guides the exciting tale of how Mr. and Mrs. Bellefontaine, armed only with a spyglass and a musket, managed to defeat a hundred bloodthirsty pirates in the course of a single night.

In 1760, Brigitte’s son, by then a dissolute old man suffering from gout and venereal disease, was in a poker game with a man named James Hamilton. All Bellefontaine had left was a blue crystal that had belonged to his mother. He had no idea of its worth, only that it had been known as the Star of Cathay. He lost the hand and possession of the crystal passed to James Hamilton, who gave it to his lady-love, Rachel, who bore him two sons out of wedlock on the island of Nevis, in the West Indies. Shortly after the family moved to the island of St. Croix, James Hamilton abandoned Rachel and the two boys, Alexander and James. Using the blue crystal as collateral, Rachel obtained a loan and opened a small shop in the main town, where James was apprenticed to a carpenter, and Alexander, eleven years old, took work as a clerk at the trading post. They prospered and Rachel was able to buy back the blue crystal, for sentimental reasons.

When the youngest son reached the age of seventeen, a local clergyman raised funds to send him away to school in New York. While studying at Kings College, Alexander Hamilton met and fell in love with Molly Prentice, the daughter of a Methodist minister. To Molly he pledged his eternal devotion, sealing his pledge with the gift of a blue crystal that his mother had given to him as a parting gift when he left the West Indies. Molly’s father, however, did not approve of his daughter’s relationship with an impoverished young man of dubious lineage, and packed her off to live with relatives in Boston, where she later fell in love with and married Cyrus Harding, giving him eight children. She never saw Hamilton again, but kept the crystal as a reminder of her first love, and when she heard of his death in a duel with a man named Aaron Burr, she could no longer bear to look at the crystal and so gave it as a wedding gift to her daughter, Hannah, a girl with mystical leanings who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead. The crystal, Hannah declared, was a great help in this regard.

THE AMERICAN WEST
1848
C.E.

East, South, North and West,

Tell me, O Spirit, which way is best
.

After he finished his silent chant, Matthew Lively kept his eyes closed a moment longer, then opened them to see where the spinning crystal had come to rest. It was how Matthew made all his important decisions—consulting the Blessing Stone.

He opened his eyes. It was pointing west.

He felt a small thrill of excitement. He had already wanted to go west, to see the new country on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, maybe even to carve a whole new life for himself there. But if the Blessing Stone had told him to go east, then to Europe he would have sailed; south would have taken him to Florida, and north would have had him packing off to the wilds of Canada.

But the stone was pointing to the word “west,” which he had printed on a large square of white paper along with the words “south,” “east,” and “north,” lining up the four cardinal points with the help of a compass. Then he had placed the smooth crystal, which his mother had christened the Blessing Stone, in the center and spun it. It had come to a rest with its narrower end pointing west.

He could hardly contain his joy. Crumpling up the paper and returning the crystal to its special velvet-lined box, he hurried downstairs to inform his mother of his plans. But he stopped at the foot of the stairs. The curtains were drawn across the doorway to the parlor, which meant a séance was in progress and so his mother could not be disturbed.

Matthew didn’t mind. He was young and hungry and would celebrate with cake and milk in the kitchen until his mother’s ghost-seeking clients had left.

As he cut himself a generous wedge of chocolate cake, he hoped his mother’s contact with the spirits was a good one this afternoon; he was not in a mood to cross words with her, or to have her refuse to let him go. Matthew needed to go; he would die here in Boston if he didn’t.

It was because of Honoria. She had nearly killed him with her rejection of his marriage proposal. His heart was in mortal pain; there were no salves or ointments for this kind of wound. It wasn’t just that she had said no, it was the
way
she had said it. With a horrified tone: “I could not live with a man who dealt daily with diseased bodies.” Matthew didn’t blame her. Honoria herself was frail, spending half her time on her retiring couch where she received visitors. Moreover, he himself was not made of heroic proportions. Matthew Lively knew very well what people saw when they looked at him: a pale, nervous young man who frequently stuttered, and, despite his college education, was altogether too unsure of himself.

Still, her rejection had wounded him, and so Matthew Lively, twenty-five years old and finishing his glass of milk, decided he was done with women forever.

Hannah Lively, daughter of Molly Prentice who had once been the love interest of Alexander Hamilton, came into the kitchen, a plain woman in black bombazine, a small lace cap on her head.

“Was it a good reading, Mother?” Matthew asked. He was proud of the fact that his mother was one of the most sought after spiritualists on the East Coast.

“The spirits came through very clear today. Even without the aid of the Blessing Stone.” Then she gave him an expectant look.

“Mother, the stone pointed west!”

She nodded sagely. “The guiding spirit in the crystal knows where your destiny lies.”

Sixty years old and considered a true prophetess by their many friends and neighbors, Hannah Lively believed absolutely in the power of the crystal, therefore Matthew didn’t tell her that he had had to spin it eleven times before it finally pointed west. He reckoned the stone just needed warming up.

“I have to leave for Independence at once,” he said excitedly. “They say you shouldn’t leave later than the first of May. Wagons that come after the first ones don’t get as good grazing grass along the trail, and it’s crucial to get to the California mountains before the first snowfall—” He stopped when he realized what he had revealed: that he had planned to go west all along.

His mother didn’t mind. As long as the crystal sanctioned it, her son was free to go where his heart led.

They heard the front door open and close, feet stamping on the mat in the hall. There was Matthew’s father, knocking the rain from his top hat—a tall silver-haired gentleman with distinguished bearing, as befitted his profession. He said solemnly, “The Simson boy died. It was the pneumonia, he couldn’t be saved,” and went into the library. Jacob Lively sat at a desk and, as was his habit, took care of business before anything else. A meticulous record keeper, the elder Lively took out a blank death certificate, dipped his pen into the ink and carefully filled out the details, taking out his pocket watch to reckon the time of death: it was exactly a six minute walk from the Simson house.

Only after he had completed his business did he then turn to his family and, reverting to husband and father, rose with a smile. “Am I to guess from the look on my son’s face that a decision has been made?”

“I am going west, Father!”

Jacob embraced Matthew and said with unaccustomed emotion, “I will miss you, son, and that’s God’s truth. But you were born to put roots down in a foreign land. We’ve always known that, your mother and me.” The Livelys had seen the growing restlessness in their youngest son, and understood his yearning to go to a place where he was needed. They reckoned that out west was where his skills would be needed most of all. “Now that the hour is upon us, son, I wish you godspeed.”

His parents presented him with a gift: a black bag with his initials stamped in gold. Inside were scalpels, scissors, needles for sewing flesh and skin, sutures of silk and catgut, dressings and bandages, syringes, and catheters—all brand new. His eyes widened as he brought a prized instrument from the bag. “A stethoscope!”

“Genuine French,” his father said with chest-puffed pride. Very few were in use yet on this side of the Atlantic.

The long wooden tube, with one widened end to be placed on a patient’s chest, had only been invented a few years earlier. The original creations had been much shorter, and then doctors had realized that a longer listening tube allowed enough distance to keep the patient’s fleas from jumping on them.

Before he departed, his mother wanted to do one last reading, for it was her plan to send the Blessing Stone with him, reasoning that in the three thousand miles between Boston and Oregon, Matthew was going to need the crystal more than she.

While his mother consulted privately with the Blessing Stone, Matthew paced in the parlor. His upcoming adventure both excited and frightened him. It was the first time in his life he had taken the initiative to do something on his own. Ever since he was a toddler, he had been a follower. He had even followed his older brothers into their father’s profession (and if Matthew had ever entertained thoughts of pursuing another career, he had buried them because such bold initiative was not in his nature).

After Hannah had communed with the spirit in the Blessing Stone, she took her son’s hand and pressed the crystal into it, curling his fingers over the stone. “Listen to me now, son,” she said gravely. “A great trial is facing you. You must meet it with strength, courage and wisdom.”

“I know, Mother,” he said gently. “It’s a long and uncertain journey to Oregon.”

“No, son, I’m not speaking of the journey. Yes, that will be arduous, but what path isn’t? I speak of something else—a turning point in that journey. Something”—her face grew troubled—“terrible and dark.”

This alarmed him. “Can I avoid it?”

She shook her head. “It has been placed before you, it is your fate. But it is there as a test. Let the crystal guide you, son, it will lead you to light and to life.”

And then it was time to leave as he had a long way to travel—by foot, horse, coach, canal boat, and train—from Boston to Independence, where the road to his destiny was to begin.

“I’ve already told ya,” the wagon master fairly shouted, “I ain’t takin’ no unattached females and that’s that!”

Emmeline Fitzsimmons glowered at Amos Tice in exasperation. She had spent the past two weeks in Independence, the jumping-off point for the Oregon Trail, going through the massive encampment on the Missouri where families were waiting to start the trek west, and she still had not found a wagon master who would take her along. It wasn’t fair. Plenty of single men were finding places in the wagon trains. But one lone female…

She wanted to scream.

Capt. Amos Tice was originally a mountain man and his attire showed it: a long, fringed buckskin jacket over striped pants, boots, flannel shirt, and a beaded Indian belt from which was slung a long hunting knife. His sweat-stained, broad-rimmed hat shadowed a face red from the sun and a beard gray with age and hardship. No one knew exactly what he was a “captain” of, but he had a reputation for being fair and for seeing that his emigrants got where they needed to go. Tice looked the audacious young woman up and down: while Emmeline Fitzsimmons wasn’t exactly beautiful, and he wasn’t partial to ginger fly-away hair and freckles, still she was pretty, he thought, and he liked her plump, robust figure. But she was an invitation to trouble in any man’s book. “I’m sorry, miss,” he said again, “but them’s the rules. We don’t allow unmarried women traveling alone.”

Emmeline was beyond frustration. This was the seventh wagon master to refuse her and the prospects were diminishing. Already the first wagon trains had left; in a couple of weeks there would be no more leaving because of snows in the Sierras. “But I can be of help. I am a midwife.” She waved her arm over the crowd of women and children. “By the looks of some of these women, they will be needing my services.”

Tice frowned disapprovingly. No proper lady would make mention of so delicate a subject as a woman’s expecting state. He doubted she was a midwife. Too young, too genteel. And unattached. The sort that caused the worst trouble. The journey to Oregon was two thousand miles and with God’s help should take four months. That was too many miles and too many nights to have a woman such as this along. He started to turn away, presenting his broad back as his final word.

“If I find someone,” she said quickly. “If I find a family that will take me, will you allow me to join your wagon company?”

He scratched his beard and spat tobacco juice to the muddy ground. “Awright, but I gotta approve of the family first.”

Independence was a bustling frontier town where all manner and varieties of people mingled: Canadian trappers decked out in furs; Mexican muleteers in bright blue jackets and white pantaloons; shabbily dressed Kanza Indians on ponies; Yankee opportunists selling everything imaginable under the sun; and the thousands of emigrants with their wagons and bright hopes. The spring air rang with the clanging of blacksmith’s hammers, the shouts of gamblers in the muddy streets, and the sounds of honky-tonk pianos pouring from the saloons. People in a hurry milled in and out of shops crammed with goods, while Indians gathered in the streets to sell their crafts.

As Emmeline stood in front of the busy dry goods shop wondering which way to go next, she overheard one man say to another, “Yessir, heard it direct from my brother. Says that out in Oregon pigs run about freely and with no owner, fat and round and already cooked, with forks and knives stickin’ out a them so all you have to do is cut a slice off now and then when you’re hungry.”

That was when she spied the young doctor, going into the apothecary shop across the way.

Having a sudden idea, she hurried across and went inside. Pausing to let her eyes adjust to the dimness of the store, she saw advertisements for Windham’s Bilious Pills, Dr. Solomon’s Balm of Gilead, and Holloway’s Ointment. The shelves behind the counter were stocked with tonics and powders meant to cure everything from gout to cancer, all claiming guaranteed results. Emmeline picked up a bottle of Soothing Syrup for Babies. The label said it contained morphine and alcohol. The recommended dosage was “until baby is calmed.”

Then she saw the young doctor, talking to the chemist.

She had deduced he was a medical man by the black bag he carried—it was identical to the ones her father and uncles always took on house calls, the ubiquitous black bag of the physician. The young man himself was thin and pale, his suit ill-fitting. And Emmeline thought he seemed nervous. As she made her way through the customers and drew up next to him at the counter, the young man opened his black bag and produced a bottle for the chemist to fill. Emmeline saw the gauze and bandages, sutures and scissors.

“Pardon me, Doctor, I was wondering if you could help me.”

He rounded on her, startled. “Are you addressing me?” he said, a flush rising up from his starched white collar.

Emmeline had been brought up well enough to know never to approach a strange man without first being introduced. But these were peculiar times, and this
was
the frontier. So she said boldly, “My name is Emmeline Fitzsimmons and I’m looking to go west. As I am a lady on her own, however, the wagon masters are reluctant to sign me on. Let me travel with you, Doctor. I can be your assistant. I am a trained midwife.” She held up her own leather satchel that contained the instruments and medicines of her craft. “But I am much more than that,” she hastened to add as he continued to stare open-mouthed at her. “My father was a doctor and I helped him in his practice. I wanted to be a doctor, too, but I wasn’t allowed in the medical college.” She added bitterly, “Only men can become doctors.” Then she smiled brightly. “But I would be a great help to you.”