Cupids (17 page)

“It's gone,” I say, “you're safe.”

He looks not toward the ocean but at me, and I know that expression, the unnatural passivity of a mask with the suggestion of turbulence beneath. It is the same expression I witnessed in the Crossroads Tavern when I returned to tell him that I would after all murder my master, the same one I saw again when he climbed Mr. Guy's stairs to the attic space where I had prepared myself for the mummering. It is the expression of change and second thought.

“Yes,” he breathes unsmiling, his gaze flicking toward the ocean.

“So, until the next time, you can relax.”

Silent, rather dishevelled like a young scarecrow, he stares at me.

“That's what you want?” I ask.

“No.”

He turns his head, scans the brush dotting the hill, the woods above.

“What then?”

“Maybe I should take my chances.”

I wait for more.

His gaze returns to me, and then looks over my shoulder at the ocean.

“Maybe I should stop hiding.”

A smile steals into my face. He sees this and nods.

“Well, let's go home,” I tell him, taking his arm. “I've got something to tell you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Bartholomew

H
OW BLIND THE COURAGE
of daylight seems when the clarity of night descends! Roof planks rattle. Insulating moss sighs as the searching winds shift. I can so easily imagine the stealthy approach of men from every direction. I can almost hear them scuff around the tilt where Jake and Matthew sleep. I can hear the stones skittering as they clamber over the rocks on the seaward side of our enclosure. Each creep, each whoosh of grass, each twig that snaps brings them closer to us, to the hot breath upon my neck again. But this time would be much worse. The heat of desire will have rolled into the blade of revenge. And since Helen's news, there is so much more to lose.

“Maybe I should stop hiding,” were the words thrown carelessly into the late afternoon. The fact that I am to be a father has conspired to weave this careless suggestion into a vow. It's no longer just us. A parent's shame will weigh heavy upon the shoulders of a daughter or son. How can I back out now? How can a growing child watch as his father retreats into the woods and his mother lies to cover the tracks of her husband? The promise of new life demands the example of pride, and I have trapped myself, it seems, into providing it.

Helen moans beside me and shifts first onto her back and then onto her side, facing away from me. I feel the warm pat of her hand on my leg — my compensation — as she turns. Soon, another life will have sprouted between us, and my dreamless brain buzzes with the sights and sounds of the cradle: the bald infant, with red face and tiny fists shaking their ineffectual protests; the growing child tottering on unsteady feet, new curls reaching thin and fernlike from the disappearing dome of its head.

The first suggestion I might be wavering from my accidental vow drew from Helen a response so withering I believed myself to be in the nursery once more. The idea that I stop hiding was, to Helen, a sign of growing up. It must have seemed natural to her that I would falter from this resolve at least once, natural that I, like her, would try to climb back upon the beast of maturity without delay.

“Don't be silly,” she said when I told her that to the Cupers Cove people I am still a criminal, and must be careful. She was crouching above the cooking pot which perched firmly upon the stove-circle. The words, so utterly confident in their scorn, might have been addressed to the carrots and turnips had they possessed the effrontery to pose as the deadliest of poisons.

“Why do you find it so hard to believe?” I asked, heat rising to my cheek. “Remember I stole the pendant. Remember it was I who conceived our plan against Mr. Egret.” I nearly added it was also I who carried it out, but I didn't want to remind her. “That's behind me now, of course.” I winced at the note of pomposity in my voice. “I'm reformed. But in my time I have done many things which lay far beyond the dictates of the law.”

She raised her eyes in my direction. A sad, bitter smile played upon her face.

“Did you kill your own father?”

“No,” I said, and my lips tightened like those of a scolded boy aware of the many hoops of knowledge that separate him from his teacher.

“Then you are a novice, and, thank God, you will always remain so.”

She raised the spoon to her lips, tasted, and then went back to stirring.

NOW, WITH HER DOZING form beside me, I long to be that reckless youth who once shocked her with his thievery. There was a fire in my gut then, a quality that was unpredictable even to me. I believe I found some sort of comfort, as well as endless self-flattery, in the notion that a reckless, fearsome spirit dwelt within me. But now things are different. Once the flames of inner discord have been quenched, all fear must turn outward for its cause. To the man who no longer intimidates himself, the world is suddenly full of shadows.

How long ago Bristol seems! Lying open-eyed, I once again conjure the memory of Helen and I sitting together by the fire near the Broad Quay, her warm curiosity, her innocent need for adventure, nudging me along a path of lies invented moment by moment, bend by bend. It was delicious indeed when I slipped my hand inside my pocket, felt the hot gold against my fingers, then drew the pendant out by the chain. I remember how it rotated slowly, its emeralds and diamonds dancing in the light of the flame, how Helen's gasp came as though spouting from somewhere deep inside the earth, a wellspring of pure emotion yet to be defined.

Was I only kidding myself? I wonder. Was I not as I believed myself, the wizard who skips over the rocks of mundane existence, dazzling the onlooker with each nimble dance move beyond the shackles of morality? Was I always as Helen sees me now — a boy forced into crime by the simple desire to survive, escape, and prosper?

“There was nothing so special about your sins, Bartholomew,” she told me, stirring her stew. I received this news like a cannonball to the chest. “They were merely of necessity and circumstance. It's time to forget them.”

I wanted to ask her what she had thought of me that night in Bristol when she sat by the dockside fire, hands over her mouth, tears streaming down her face.
Were you not
, the words almost rise into my mouth,
just a little impressed?
Instead I sat quietly, listening to the wind and waiting for dinner, trying in vain to ward off visions of myself as the future will no doubt encounter me: a hard-working man with thickening waist and balding head; a man of care and constant worry, vigilant of fever and famine as his children grow; an aging man with back bent from digging roots from the earth; a man of swollen joints who loves the simplest and most modest of pleasures — the puff of tobacco, the heat of an outdoor fire in September. This is not how it was meant to be, yet this is where I am. The flint of danger and the cloak of mystery were decoys against this simple truth: I am ordinary.

This is what Helen believes, and for a moment I am almost ready to agree with her, almost ready to embrace the idea as welcome. Peril and crime are exhausting, after all. But a change in the wind and the distant rattle of planks scoop fresh danger into my mind. Helen does not know. How can she? Men are capable of anything when they fear their true desires may be exposed. We are not safe at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Guy

T
HE ROPE COMES DOWN
upon my desk with a triumphant slap. Colston smiles at me like a man who has just won a fortune in a game of cards.

“What this?” I ask quietly, laying down my quill. I wonder why the candle flame should quiver in response to my own hushed voice though it remained entirely unaffected by Colston's swiping movements. My gestures, my words — everything I do these past few days — has been measured and soft; I won't let anything disturb the delicate thread of my plans. Repairs must be completed to my returning ship on time. There must be no dispute with the men. A superstitious part of me won't raise my voice for fear it may provoke the weather to unleash its random vengeance. So delicate is the balance, so great the need to return, I hardly dare breathe.

“This is the noose that will hang him.”

Only now do I notice that the rope on my desk forms a loop. Raucous laughter and shouting from somewhere outside grows apace, then dies away.

“What are you talking about, Colston?”

The question, of course, is a lie. I know what it all means, but I am waiting for the fog of panic to clear.

“It
is
Bartholomew in the plantation to the north. Somehow he has made his way back. We should return immediately so we can be upon him even before he wakes.”

I rise from my chair and step out from the desk.

“What makes you think it is him?”

“We designated Browne as a watch. He stayed in the cove and waited until after we left. When we picked him up around the next headland, he confirmed it. Bartholomew emerged from the woods the moment he thought our ship gone.”

“I gave you no such authorization.” Circling the tiny room, I feel like a fly trapped in a web, twitching for freedom.

“It's a minor detail, sir. We
have
him!” With this, he beats his fist so hard upon the desk the noose jumps half an inch. I turn from him. “He's within our grasp. The man who ruined our crop, the villain who escaped your custody!”

My back is still turned for the moment, but I can hear Colston panting in anticipation. What would be the easiest course? I ask myself. The answer seems simple enough. Let them have their revenge. Let them string him up. He may babble his story about Bristol. He may tell them I released him voluntarily on the ship, that I later gave him stock in the Company in return for his crimes, and that I provided, though reluctantly, passage on my returning ship to the cove in which he now dwells. But this is one occasion when he would not be believed. Everyone knows that a condemned man will say anything to avoid the drop, and the men hate Bartholomew so deeply, no amount of his golden rhetoric would hide the evil they perceive. Still, something holds me from giving the word.

“Quickly, sir,” he tells me. “The men are eager!”

“I'm sure they are, Colston,” I say trying to gauge the direction of the hubbub, guessing the men must be down by the wharf, “I'm sure they are.” I turn to face his deepening frown, his shoulders hunched over my desk, his thick hands spread upon its surface, fingers twitching by the noose. “Unfortunately, the regulations by which we govern ourselves are still crystal clear. Capital crimes are brought back to England.”

Pushing himself off from the desk, he breathes a sigh and smiles. “Who would know the difference? He is a fugitive!”

“
I
would know, Colston.”

He watches me for a moment, to check I am in earnest. Looking inward, I do the same, listening to my heartbeat, to the sound of a man who wants nothing more than to leave Newfoundland for good, and who has just rearranged every expectation, including his own, to make the delay of argument and rebellion far more likely.

“You mean to stand in our way?”

“No,” I say quietly.

He drops his shoulders in relief and moves forward to the desk to claim his rope. My hand reaches out as though to receive. He tilts his head then, with a moment's hesitation, hands over the noose. My fingers grip the dry hemp.

“I don't mean to ‘stand in your way,' as you put it. I mean to stop you and have you clear any such thought from your head.” I lift the rope, not quite knowing why, until I feel the fibres ruffle my hair and the noose dropping heavily around my own neck like a displaced halo. Colston stares at me bewildered. “If you use this on anybody,” I say softly, “you will have to use it on me first.”

Exasperated, Colston raises his hand to his hip and anchors it there.

“And if you're thinking of waiting until I leave before you move, don't,” I say. “There are ways of knowing if foul deeds have been committed, even from England. I am quite prepared to make the Company aware of my misgivings about the Colony's intentions.”

“You owe your men an explanation, sir,” he says, disparagement, perhaps even disgust in his face as he looks upon my heavy necklace. I remove the noose slowly and keep it hanging from my fingers.

“Have you or your men seen any mermaids recently, Colston?”

He bristles, standing upright; I hear a swift inhalation.

“What does that mean?”

I think of withdrawing the remark, but I spy the flinch of fear beneath his pride and suspect he may at any moment look for an excuse to back off. In the silence, I trace through the path of my decision. If I left things as they were, Bartholomew would likely be dead before sunrise. I would have ensured against delays in leaving; in fact, I would have earned myself the heartiest of send-offs. As it is, my last hours here will tick slowly away under the pall of suspicion. There must be some very powerful reason for me to have spoken and acted as I have done. A distant shriek comes from down on the wharf, accompanied by more laughter and the beginnings of a chant, the words of which I do not catch. With the ugly knot of sound comes the beginning of an answer: there was a part of me once, an upright, noble part which believed in meeting the world face-on. It was this part, and not the rest of me, who had originally sought to woo Eliza Egret. Gradually, it seems, this rock of decency sank into the mire of subterfuge. The cost of my ambition was foisted upon another, just as the cost of this rabble's desire has been foisted upon another. That this object happens to be one and the same makes this new hint of reclamation more promising than I deserve.

“I will not allow this man to pay for my sins, or the sins of the colony,” I say at last, and as I speak I watch his expression fold into defeat. Even the candlelight reveals the subtle lines of guilt and self-realization. “Calm them down, Colston. Get them to see sense. Tell them they have wives now, and that wives need husbands, not outlaws, which is what this act would make them.”