Cupids (6 page)

I take Helen's hand, turn it palm upward and, passing my own hand over hers, let Guy's sovereign drop. Her smile at my touch turns to surprise as she feels the gold. When she looks into her palm, displeasure floods her face.

“Does money insult you, my Helen?” I ask, taking pains to ensure there is kindness in my challenge.

“Other things please me more, sir. Like honesty and trust.”

“Is gold the enemy of honesty and trust?”

She is rolling the coin in her hand now, adjusting to the feel of it, her expression betraying some struggle.

I must follow Mr. Guy. My fingers touch hers once more and then I leave through the still-open door.

Guy is scowling at the empty street as I alight.

“Two sovereigns for the maid, and eight for the old man,” Guy says testily. “An expensive scheme, my lad, at ten pounds; it had better work.”

“It will, Mr. Guy. We must reunite Mrs. Egret with her past, remind her of her intrepid husband, and make her associate his memory not with her brother-in-law but with us. You know it takes money to win people over and ensure they act in our best interests.”

Guy turns and surveys the falling snow with some sourness.

“I may be a dull man,” he says under his breath but loud enough for me to hear, “but I have always been hardworking and decent.”

He turns to me and I find myself looking away, though I am naturally anything but shy. My face burns too, and I sense now a glint in his eyes as he recognizes the unwanted nature of his confidence. “Yes, hard-working and decent. I dislike tricks, my young friend.”

His glare remains on me and finally I'm obliged to look at him. He says nothing else, merely holds my stare, but I understand the reproach:
and this is what I have come to
.

It's odd, this sense of responsibility that sweeps upon me like an unexpected wind. I am the nephew of a merchant fallen into insolvency, an orphan turned apprentice cook, turned convict, turned imposter. How came it about that I should wield so much power?

I remember the paths that met at a rough crossroads on the hill above Cupers Cove, how the stubble of wheat and barley, freed of the weight of bulging kernels, skimmed against one another in the breeze, reminding me that the shed below was crammed with enough winter food for our beasts. The constant double blow of hammer and echo, hammer and echo, came from below as men laboured like ants over the new twelve-ton boat. Escape was on my mind, but the colony's apparent success was my prison. I had approached Guy once, and saw the flex of impatience about his jaw when I mentioned the roving eyes and hands of his men. His words were like the heavy fastening of a bolt: “There are no articles to cover such occurrences. You are a man. Defend yourself.”

I prayed for deliverance instead, following by rote the murmured verses of my childhood, adding the desperate heat of my shame. But there was no God here. We had either tipped over the horizon beyond His sight, or He was simply unheeding to begin with. Action, I decided, was more potent than faith. As a cook, I always carried the means to induce flame: a cloth, a flint, and some powder. My fingers tingled and rooted in my pocket as the thoughtless breeze swept around me once more. A distant cumulus bulged over the sea, heavy but retreating. If God would not help me, I thought, I will conjure a devil that might.

CHAPTER EIGHT
Matilda

I
SENSED SOMETHING WOULD
happen this morning even before I heard the three loud knocks, before Helen scurried to the door and admitted the visitors. Ever since I awoke and returned to my habitual corner, portents have echoed in the click of my needles, in the breeze-like rustling of my wool. Within the bulging folds of new cloth which grew upon my lap, I saw the rise and dip of unknown mountain ranges.

Sundays are always quiet, but this silence was so intense I could hear the thump of my heart and the creak of my joints. So when he came toward me, this man, nimble and upright for his age, when his shining eyes claimed my attention, his name —
Philip Whip
— passed through me like a ghost before I could have reason to hope it might be him.

And now we are alone. Like the stirring of soft wings within the hard, dry casing of a caterpillar's home, life is returning. The mean, grey years are falling from me. The dust has been so thick and so stifling that at first the memories were too blinding to be endured. Only through the kindness of the handsome face before me can I be guided safely back into the light, to memories of my Nicholas. I trust Philip's clear, blue eyes as a blind woman might trust a soft and comforting voice.

“Have you been in Bristol all this time?” I ask him.

“Some miles distant in the country, my Lady, I have dwelt a quiet existence this fifteen years past, though in my dreams I venture still to the blue seas of the Mediterranean, to the wild frozen wastes of the north, to the deserts of the east where I travelled once with your worthy husband.”

“Ah,” I gasp, feeling the affection of his phrases close too tightly upon my heart. “You and he were men indeed, men indeed.” His hand comes down upon mine again and I hold back further tears.

“Why did you not come to see me all this time?” I ask with more reproach than I intended.

“I did, my dear Mrs. Egret, twice soon after I purchased my house in the country. Both times your brother-in-law sent me away before I could see you. He told me you were too sick to be disturbed and I should not come again.”

A band of heat stings my forehead as though I had been struck with a lash. I am used to seeing my bother-in-law's dry inadequacy as neutral — a blind, unmoving barrier against joy; I have never before thought of it as a
predatory
greyness, an invading dust which harms wilfully and with malice. He sees my reaction and smiles.

“He may justly have thought me a vagrant, the first time anyway. I was still recovering from my final travels, tired, sunburned, and disinclined to dress for company. He perhaps considered me a likely carrier of some foreign plague.”

Grief heaves inside me again. Despite my old friend's kindly interpretation of his behaviour, I have a sudden vision of my brother-in-law as a wingless vulture sitting on the threshold of the mean house, pecking and harrying the most exotic of migratory birds, one of which carried messages of friendship and of love lost. Who else might he have turned away?

I am aware that a wealthy widow is never more than a few steps from the ducking stool, the scaffold, and accusations of witchcraft. My own riches have remained a firmly concealed secret, and my brother-in-law's status in the community has always cast a deep shadow, obscuring me from Bristol's scavengers. I have no surviving family but he and Eliza, and it is true Mr. Egret, the younger, has been my protector as well as my jailor. Like oil and water the incompatible elements of anger and thankfulness swirl inside me. “If I have been sick,” I say at last, my voice weak, “it is a sickness brought on by want of those I have once known who are now gone from me. He had no right to turn you away.”

“But I am here now,” he says, his smile widening, “thanks to the two young rogues who brought me. What do you think of them, my dear? The pretty boy bribed me to come to Bristol again, can you believe that? Four sovereigns to see my old comrade's honoured wife and my own dear friend?”

His smile is infectious and I find myself excusing what is surely inexcusable. “He
paid
you?”

He nods again, chuckling. “Does it not remind you of Nick and me? Remember the way we used to bribe your father's servants to gain entrance into your household? Once, do you recall, we mistook your rich uncle as a servant and passed him a coin, which, I remember he took with a smile.”

I make to swat him away in jest. “You two were young fools!”

“And yet was not this same spirit that put wind into our sails, that prized open the world and its riches?” As though to illustrate his words, a gust finds its way unexpectedly into the room and I find the passageways to my lungs filling with freshness. I see Philip and Nick as young men with packs and donkeys making their way through yellow sands, to the land of spices and adventure. For a moment I'm too full to answer him.

“Now,” he continues, “merchants grow rich with fleets under sail, a thousand scribes and accountants at their bidding, and the banner of the East India Company to give bluster to their canvas. But it was young fools such as Nick and I who paved the way.”

I look into his face again, his eyes the pure blue crystal of understanding, framed by the deep granite of hardship, travel, and time.

“Why did those young men bring you to me, Philip?”

“To plead their case, I imagine, my dear.”

“How would they know I possess anything worth pleading for?” I ask. I feel suddenly like a fresh fallen carcass in a meadow; I sense the circling shadows of birds overhead.

“Matilda, the true adventurer can smell gold from a thousand miles, so you should know they are genuine when they converge upon you rather than your brother-in-law. In any case, I hardly needed persuading to see you. In bringing me here they have taken me back to my youth!”

He holds my hand again and I feel layered years of boredom, heartache, and frustration peeling away, exposing me to the harsh glare of the sun and to a terrible pain as urgent and fresh as the day it was first felt.

“And you will leave me neither as I was, nor as I am, dear Philip, but a spirit stretched and tortured between those two opposite poles.” I want to add that part of myself died upon that eastern mountain slope along with my Nick all those years ago, and that when Philip himself brought me the news months later, then disappeared once more into his seemingly eternal voyage, that the rest of me disappeared with him, that the dry husk that remained seemed worthless. But what can adventurers know of the women who are left behind? What can they know of love if safety is their concern for us? No one's mind and body is really designed to await news of others in danger, except perhaps poor Eliza, the butterfly under glass. Eliza, whose energies have long been warped into a sabre of spite, particularly to those who threaten to claim her father's attention; she is perhaps the kind of creature imagined by Philip and Nick. But she was raised by her father and knows no other life. Though young, Eliza is already my counterpart in futility and lifelessness.

Like a good maid, Helen has sensed her presence might be needed and has presented herself before us. “Tell the two young men outside I will see them now.”

As I watch Helen curtsy, back away, then move swiftly to the front door, I have the strange impression that Philip and I are like ancient gods viewing from a distance the shadows of the people we once were. I sensed butterfly hints of flirtation last night between Helen and the good-looking boy, and feel that the magic of Nicholas, Philip, and I must have risen like vapour during our youth to hang in the air until this moment and then fall afresh, enriching these young people, causing them to sprout fresh shoots of love and adventure.

The two men return on the heels of the blushing Helen, Guy first, then the younger one, lighter of step than his chief, almost dancing in eagerness as he steals glimpses of Philip and me over Guy's shoulder. My incongruous sense of power as they halt before me and survey my expression for clues makes me feel as a small dog might if suddenly presented with sceptre, crown, and bowing courtiers. What
shall
I decide? I have no idea. Indignation rises at the thought of my brother-in-law, gatekeeper against my will. But the gratitude of the sheltered and tired clings upon the shards of my anger like moulded lead upon the edges of stained glass.

“So, young men,” I begin, “what is it that you would ask of me?”

The older looks to the younger for a moment as if for guidance. Then he coughs and straightens his shoulders. He holds his hat before himself rather in the manner of a penitent before a shrine.

“Gracious Lady, you may have heard of our travels and our labours already.”

“In great detail, sir. I was in this very room last night when you described them.”

He seems to colour for a moment. I have perhaps reminded him of his doomed attempt to make love to my niece. Then he stands even more erect, comically formal. “Our great efforts to make our dear colony successful rely upon the faith and support of those who reside at home.”

The younger man frowns and casts his eyes to the floor.

“The backing that we have, the financial backing, is limited . . .” he falters, his wary eyes skipping along the tapestry above my head, to the Egret coat of arms, a scrawny carrion bird in whose talons resides a sword. “The original stock is curtailed to such a degree that profit may be stifled . . .” The younger man steps forward suddenly, startling Guy though his voice was already beginning to trail into silence.

“My Lady, if I may,” says the handsome youth. He gestures to his companion as though about to prove this rather dull creature an example of particular fineness of character. “You must understand this great man has a burden upon his shoulders as heavy as the greatest explorers known to history. Great Julius himself, travelling from Rome, could scarcely have felt the eyes of future generations as keenly as Mr. Guy does today. He seeks to bring the glory of civilization, godliness, and culture to the astounding but desolate beauty of Newfoundland. As Rome was to England then, England is to this new territory now. It is a satellite of ourselves, my Lady, and a legacy we dare not neglect. We are bringing all that is brave and steadfast into the dark and untamed wilderness. It is nothing less than a holy mission.”

His words dance in the air like flames of pure mischief. I look into his intelligent eyes. The unrestrained, mellifluous tone of his voice brings him as close to my ideal of man as anything I have heard since the time of my dear Nicholas.

“Young man,” I say, smiling, “it seems you imagine the old to be lured by that which is holy, just as the young are to be tempted by mermaids and pearls.”