The Taker (35 page)

He petted my hair for a while before drifting into sleep, leaving me to wonder how much he knew about Jonathan, just how precisely Adair might have read my thoughts. The entire conversation gave me the shivers; I couldn’t see the purpose of giving eternal life to such undeserving people, to surrounding himself for eternity with cowards and murderers, especially if what he sought was loyalty. His plans, for I didn’t doubt he had them, eluded me.

And the worst part, the part that I couldn’t bear to face, was the question of why he had chosen me to join his perverse family. He must have seen something in me that told him I was like the others; perhaps it was written on my soul that I was selfish enough to drive another woman to take her own life in order to have the one she loved.
And as for his invitation to love him, I wouldn’t have thought someone like Adair would feel the need to be loved … or that I was the type of woman capable of loving a monster. I lay shivering in Adair’s arms that night as he slept soundly.

What of Uzra? It didn’t take a mystic to see that she didn’t fit the pattern of the others in Adair’s family. She floated above the rest of the household. It wasn’t that the others forgot about her, but she was not discussed. She was not expected to join us when we gathered to drink and talk late in the evening on returning from a party, she never sat among us when we gathered around the table in the dining room for a meal. But we might hear whispers of her pattering overhead or in the walls, like a mouse climbing the battens.

Occasionally, Adair summoned her to the bedroom, where she joined us, tight-lipped, eyes downcast, surrendering but not participating. But she’d seek me out later when I was alone, let me brush her hair or read to her, which I took to be her way of letting me know that she did not hold me responsible for what transpired in Adair’s bed or, at the least, forgave my allegiance to him. One time, I sat still so she could paint my face in her native fashion, with thick rings of kohl encircling my eyes and the line extended out toward my temples. She wrapped me in one of her long, winding cloths so that only my eyes were visible and I must say, the getup gave me a very exotic look.

Sometimes, she’d give me a strange look, as though she were trying to talk to my soul, find some way to convey a message to me. A warning. I didn’t think I needed her to warn me; I knew Adair was a dangerous man and that I risked grave damage to my soul or my sanity if I got too close to him. I thought I knew where the line of control was and that I’d be able to stop myself in time. How stupid of me.

Sometimes Uzra came to my room and held me, as though she was comforting me. A few times she pulled me out of bed, insisting I follow her to one of her hiding spaces. Now I understand that she did
this so I would know where to go when the day came that I needed to hide from Adair.

Tilde, on the other hand, gave me no warning when she took me by the hand one afternoon with an irritated sigh and, ignoring my questions, led me firmly to a seldom used room. There, on a table next to the fire, stood a bottle of ink, a number of needles arrayed in a fan, and a much stained old handkerchief. Tilde settled in a chair, tucking stray hairs behind her ears and not regarding me in the least. “Take off your bodice and sleeves,” she said, very matter-of-factly.

“What is this about?” I demanded.

“I’m not
asking
you, you stupid cuny,” she said, taking the stopper out of the ink bottle and wiping the stain from her fingers. “This is by Adair’s orders. Give me your bare arm.”

Gritting my teeth, I did as I was told, knowing that Tilde delighted in bullying me, and then flounced onto the stool opposite her. She grabbed my right wrist and drew my arm to her, giving it a twist so that the underside was exposed to her, and then she pinned my arm under hers the way a blacksmith traps a horse’s hoof between his knees in order to shoe it. I watched suspiciously as she selected a needle, dipped it into the ink, and then stabbed it into the delicate white skin of the inside of my upper arm.

I jumped even though I felt nothing more than the press of contact. “What are you doing?”

“I told you, it’s on Adair’s orders,” she growled. “I’m pricking a mark into your skin. It’s called a tattoo. I take it you’ve never seen one.”

I stared at the black dots—three, now four; Tilde worked quickly. They looked like beauty marks, formed as the ink spread slightly beyond the puncture. After about an hour had passed, Tilde had completed the outline of a crest about the size of a dollar piece and was starting on an animal-like figure, a bit snakelike and fantastical. It took me a minute to realize that she was drawing a dragon. It was at this time that Adair strolled in. He tilted his head to watch Tilde at her work. He dragged a thumb over the site, now awash in both black ink and red blood, to get a clearer view.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked me, a little proudly. I shook my head. “It’s the crest of my family. Or rather, the crest of my adopted lineage,” he amended. “It’s the emblem on the seal I told you of.”

“Why are you doing this to me? What does this mean?” I asked.

He took the handkerchief and wiped at the tattoo, to better admire it. “What do you think it means? I am marking you—as mine.”

“Is this really necessary?” I asked, trying to twist my arm free, which only earned me a mild slap from Tilde. “I suppose you do this to all your creatures. What about yours, Tilde? May I see it, so I’ll know what it will look like when—”

“I don’t have one,” she said abruptly, not looking up from her work.

“You don’t?” I faced Adair. “Then why me?”

“It is something special I have elected to give to you. It means you are mine forever.”

I didn’t like the proprietary gleam in his eye. “There are other ways of conveying such an intent to a girl. A ring, a necklace, some token of your devotion is the traditional method, I believe,” I said, testily.

My feistiness seemed to please him. “Those are but tokens, trivial and transitory. You can take off a ring. You won’t be able to do the same with this.”

I stared at Tilde’s handiwork. “What do you mean … my skin will be stained permanently?”

At this, he gave me the queer smile I had come to expect when he was about to do something hurtful. He jerked my arm away from Tilde and pinned it under his, took a deep breath, picked up one of the needles, and stabbed it through the center of Tilde’s handiwork, careful to land in the middle of the design. A sharp pain suddenly bit into my upper arm, the stings of Tilde’s needles coming alive all at once. “By my hand and intent,” he said into the air like a proclamation, and then the wound stung as though salt had been rubbed into the open flesh. He twisted my arm sharply to get another look at the tattoo, and I winced in pain before he let go.

“Lanore, you surprise me,” Adair said, though exaggerating for
effect. “I thought it would please you to know I value you so highly that I would claim you for eternity.”

The thing was, he was right: it did please the perverse part of me that wanted a man to desire me so badly he would burn his name into my skin. Though I was not so deluded that I wasn’t alarmed, too, at being treated as though I were livestock.

Weeks passed in this way. I was content with Adair most days: he was attentive enough, kind enough, generous enough. We made love robustly. But there were times when he acted cruelly for no reason other than his own enjoyment. At those times, Alejandro, Tilde, Dona, myself—we became court jesters trying to appease a vindictive regent and coax him out of his terrible mood, or at least, trying to avoid being the object of his cruelty. At those times I felt trapped in a madhouse and was desperate to escape, only I didn’t believe I could. The others were still with Adair, even after decades of such nerve-shattering treatment. I had been told that Uzra had tried to run away from him countless times. Surely, if there was a way to escape, they would have done so by now.

Also, despite my preoccupation with Adair, Jonathan began creeping back into my thoughts. At first, it was guilt that I felt, because there was another man in my life—as though I’d had a choice! Nonetheless, no matter how logically I tried to think about it, how vigorously I recalled his poor treatment of me, his callousness, I missed Jonathan and felt I was being unfaithful to him. It didn’t matter that he was sworn to another woman and that he’d abdicated his claim to my heart—sleeping with one man, while loving another, seemed wrong.

And I did still love Jonathan. A thorough examination of my heart told me so. As flattered as I was by Adair’s attention, pleased that a man who’d seen the world would find me intoxicating, I knew in my heart that if Jonathan arrived in town tomorrow, I would leave Adair without even saying good-bye. I was merely surviving. The only hope left to me was to one day see Jonathan again.

TWENTY-NINE

T
ime slipped past me, immeasurably. How long had I been with Adair—six weeks, six months? I’d lost count and was convinced it didn’t matter; in my new circumstances, I’d never have to keep track of time again. Time in all its infinity was open to me now, like the ocean, and much like the first time I’d seen it, too great for me to grasp.

One blue and gold late summer afternoon, there was a knock at the front door. As I was happening by and there were no servants at hand (sleeping off a binge of purloined claret in the pantry, no doubt), I opened it, thinking it might be a tradesman or someone come to call on Adair. Instead, standing on the steps, satchel in hand, was the wild-eyed charismatic preacher from Saco.

His jaw dropped upon seeing me and his cunning face lit up with pleasure. “I
know
you, miss, do I not? I recognize your pretty face because a face like yours I would not be likely to forget,” he said, sweeping into the front hall without an invitation. He brushed by me in his dusty cloak, removing the tricorner hat from his head.

“I know you too, sir,” I replied, horrified, drawing back, unable to guess what in the world had brought him here.

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense, then. What is your name and how did we meet?” he asked, still smiling but in a way meant to hide the calculations going on in his head, trying to recall where we had met and under what circumstances.

So instead of answering him, I asked, “Why have you come here? Do you know Adair?”

My guardedness seemed to amuse him. “Of course I know him, why else would I show up on his doorstep? I know him in the same way that
you
know him, I’ll wager.” So it was true—we were the same now, he and I. Adair’s creations.

And then it came to him, his face lighting up with lurid delight. “Oh, I remember now! That little Maine village not far from the Acadian settlement! That’s where I met you! Without the drab brown dress—you are barely recognizable in blue silk and French lace! It’s an amazing transformation, upon my word. Left the Puritans behind without a regret, have you? It’s always the quiet ones who turn out to be the most wild at heart,” he said, narrowing his eyes to slits and leering, probably guessing that we stood a good chance of ending up in bed together. All he had to do was ask Adair and he was unlikely to be denied.

At that moment, we were interrupted by Adair’s voice booming from the landing above us. “Look who has turned up at my door! Jude, come for a respite from your travels? Come in, come in, it has been too long since I last saw you,” he said as he jogged down the stairs. After embracing Jude heartily, he noticed that Jude was staring at me in gleeful anticipation and so he asked, “What is it? Do you two know each other?”

“As a matter of fact, we do,” Jude said, circling me, making a great show of drinking in the sight of me. “I wrote to you about this young woman some time back. Do you recall a letter describing a promising unspoiled beauty with a feral streak?”

I drew myself up, chin held high. “What do you mean by that?”

But Adair only chuckled and brushed my cheek to assuage my anger. “Come now, my dear. I think his meaning is plain, and you wouldn’t be here at my side if it wasn’t true.”

The unwelcome visitor’s eyes swept over me like a housewife’s hands testing a piece of fruit. “Well, I’ll wager she’s unspoiled no more, eh? So, you’ve made this little spitfire your spiritual wife, have you?” Jude asked Adair in a mocking tone, and then he addressed me. “It must be your destiny, my dear, for you to turn up here, don’t you think? And you are lucky, Adair, that you didn’t have to make the journey all the way up there to get her—trust me, it’s not a trip I would wish on anyone. She made a bit of trouble for me when I was there, too. Wouldn’t introduce me to the fellow I wrote to you about.”