Forever (25 page)

He circled around through dark streets, where gorged pigs slept in doorways and dogs barked and rats slithered toward garbage. He turned through unlit streets toward Cortlandt Street, planning to enter the shop through the alley. A hand gripped his biceps in the blackness. Like a vise.

“Cor-mac.”

Kongo pulled him close. Cormac could see his eyes and teeth, smell Africa and the sea and hard work rising together from his skin.

“Come with me.”

He released his grip and began to walk, making no sound as he moved. They headed toward the North River. Streets vanished in rising mist, the river water now colder than the air. At the river’s edge, Kongo paused, as if waiting for a scent. Finally he relaxed.

“You need to kill that man?”

“Yes.”

“Before the big trouble?”

“I hope. And I now have a way in, to his big house.”

He explained about the proofs of the posters.

“Good,” Kongo said. “My friends, they have watch the house. And we have a man in the stable, he is with us.”

Cormac felt his blood streaming through his arms and legs.

“Here is what we do,” Kongo said.

58.

Q
uaco waited on the driveway in a borrowed phaeton while Cormac
stood at the door of the mansion. The late-afternoon light was rosy, the wind soft. Three armed men watched him as he waited for payment for the posters. Cormac remarked on the end of winter and the beauty of the house. The men grunted. Cormac hoped they would not search him, for his long coat covered the sword. And nothing could cover the beating of his heart. The door opened. The lean man with the coarse skin, now dressed in the more formal clothes of a butler, handed him an envelope. Payment for the posters.

“The master says good work indeed,” he muttered. “And there’s a bit extra for delivery.”

Cormac thanked him and turned away, glancing at the stable, where three of the earl’s Africans were watching and smoking. He climbed back in the phaeton, and Quaco flicked a whip. They trotted back down the road to the south. When they were out of sight, Cormac thanked Quaco, asked him to hold the envelope until he saw him next, and dropped into the forest. He moved toward the river, along the Indian trail marked by Kongo on a rough map. The trail wandered past mounds of ancient oyster shells to another path that zigzagged down the cliff to the river’s edge. He waited in the shrubbery until the sun slipped down behind New Jersey and the sky turned mauve. He searched for the large boulder from Kongo’s map. Saw it twenty feet down the muddy river edge. On the near side of the huge rock, out of sight of the earl’s house, was Kongo’s boat. He was poised at the oars.

“Good,” he whispered as Cormac climbed in. The African began rowing back upriver, until they saw the glow of the earl’s house against the darkening sky. Cormac could make out the earl’s dock, and the stairs leading up the cliff, and then the house itself, the balconied facade facing south, rosy near the roof from the final light of the vanishing sun. The March wind turned colder.

“Until later,” Cormac said. Kongo tapped his shoulder with a fist.

Now Cormac was driven only by the quest for the earl. He removed the long coat, and the sling for the sword, and dropped both on the bottom of the boat. He held the sword, feeling its weight and power. Then jammed it into his belt and waded ashore. Kongo said nothing. There was a plan. Now Cormac must make it work.

He knew the house from another sketch, made by Kongo’s man in the stable. And as he moved through dense woods, approaching the southern side of the house, Cormac saw the huge oak tree, its branches leading toward a second-floor balcony. He began to climb the trunk, but his shoes were wet from the riverbank. He removed them and gained traction with his bare feet, rising on the trunk into the branches. Through the sparse leaves of the tree, he saw an armed man dozing on the deck behind the first floor, and the line of the railing leading down to the river. He climbed higher. Lantern light burned beyond the doors of the second-floor balcony. That was the goal. The earl’s study.

Cormac paused, now feeling oddly calm, gathering strength, and then crawled out upon the thick oak limb leading to the balcony. The limb held his weight well but was three feet short of the balcony. He must leap. Silently. And grab the rail. Hoping that nobody saw him. Hoping he didn’t fall twenty feet to the ground. He looked down. A wide path of gray gravel surrounded the house. He saw nobody on patrol. Inside the room, a shadow moved. Bulky and male. The earl was home.

Cormac stood now, legs bent, on the thinnest end of the tree limb, balanced precariously, about to leap, when he heard footsteps below on the gravel. A man walked around the corner. A face familiar from the earl’s company in town. He carried a musket and whistled in the dark. If he looks up (Cormac thought), I’m dead.

He gripped the branch above him for balance. He stopped breathing. He held himself as still as the tree itself. The man below continued walking around to the deck in back, his whistling fading away.

Cormac thought: Now.

I must go now.

And he did.

He leaped. Fell short. Grasped the balcony railing. Held hard, his naked feet splaying for traction but finding only air. He saw himself falling. Imagined being impaled on his own sword. Imagined the earl opening the door, pistol in hand.

Silence.

Then he swung himself, his body twisting, and felt one bare foot catching the lip of the balcony. Now, he thought. I can do it now. He heaved, holding his breath, and then he was up, weightless, safe. He stepped over the rail and inhaled deeply. Once, twice, three times. Exhaling as silently as possible. Hoping there was no dog.

Cormac looked in at the room. The earl was at a desk with curved legs made of polished wood. French, like the goods sold on Hanover Square. Empty bookshelves rose behind him. There was a door in the wall past the desk. Closed, with a key in the lock. There was a pistol on the desk beside his ink pot. And he could see the three porcelain balls, red, white, and blue, that the earl had used to entertain his men outside a building in Belfast. He was wearing a white ruffled shirt, open at the neck, and his coat was folded carelessly on the desk where he’d dropped it. His brow was furrowed. The posters were stacked to the side of his writing space. He finished writing, blotted the paper, began addressing an envelope. Some vagrant thought passed through him and he smiled. Cormac turned the door handle gently. And stepped inside with his sword drawn. He moved quickly to the desk.

The earl looked up with alarmed eyes and reached for the pistol. Cormac placed the blade of the sword across his wrist, took the pistol and shoved it in his own belt.

“What is this?” the earl said.

“I’m the past, sir.”

“You’re a lunatic is what you are.”

“Perhaps.”

“There’s no gold here, no specie, nothing for you to peddle in town. I have a dozen men guarding this house. I—”

“I don’t want gold,” Cormac said. “I want an explanation.”

The earl chuckled in a dry-mouthed way, the diamond flashing in his mouth. Cormac saw a woman’s portrait on the wall behind the earl. Dark hair, long, aristocratic neck, rosy skin.

“An explanation of
what?
The laws of gravity? The Magna Carta?”

“I want to know why you killed my father.”

Now the earl studied Cormac’s bearded face in the muted light. Searching time, searching memory. He glanced at a wall clock, then at the door, and smiled in a nervous way.

“I’ll tell you what killed my own father,” he said, his voice suddenly blithe and light. “Whiskey. Or whiskey and rum and too much wine. Don’t let anyone tell you that the gout can’t kill a man. You could have asked my mother.” He gestured at the portrait. “She died of
him,
of
living
with him,
suf
fering with him.” He shook his head. “Sad. I never did get to know either of them.”

He reached for the three balls and stood up and slowly began juggling them. “I was raised by… an uncle,” he said, spitting the words through jaws tightening in concentration. “He was a wonderful… man… who had been orphaned himself… and went off with a troupe of buskers instead of going… to school…. He taught me how—to do
this
.”

The balls moved more swiftly now, and Cormac thought: I’ve come to kill you, you idiot, and you’re making an entertainment. He felt a twinge of sympathy, imagining the earl when he was twelve. “I loved… that man,” the earl said. “Loved… him.” And Cormac told himself:
Stop!
Remember the day! Remember the diamond glinting in the light, the dead eyes, the man urging Patch forward. Remember the shot, and the shouts that followed:
Finish him off!
Sweat blistered the older man’s brow. His mouth tightened in concentration.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Cormac said. “Try to remember, please. It was a bit more than a year ago. On a road in Ireland. You and your men stopped an Irishman and told him to surrender his horse. He refused. And you killed him.”

Now the earl understood. The balls slowed in the air, and one at a time he snatched them into his right hand. He gazed at Cormac, as if considering using them as weapons, then laid them on the desk beside the posters.

“You’re talking about that fool. Patch.”

“No: You made it happen, sir. I was there.”

“The man refused to obey a
law
.”

“A law that didn’t apply to him. My father wasn’t Catholic.”

“He was Irish, wasn’t he?”

“But not Catholic.”

“Yes, but—”

A feathery sound on the balcony. And now Kongo was there, eyes alert, silent in Indian moccasins. Carrying a canvas shroud. The earl’s eyes widened and he backed up under his mother’s portrait, hunching like a small boy trapped.

“Do you recognize this African, sir?” Cormac said.

“I don’t know any Africans, except those who work on the grounds here.”

“You should meet this one. Your company kidnapped him and brought him here in manacles.”

The earl began speaking more quickly, the words bunching. “You’re talking outofa
profound
stupidity. Forwhat you’ve already-done,
you’llsurelyhang,
unless I plead for your wretched life!”

Thank you, Cormac thought. I was beginning to pity you, and you’ve shown me your true face. Thank you. Thank you. The earl saw Kongo spreading the shroud upon the carpeted floor, as if preparing a ceremony. “Sit down,” Cormac said, pointing at the earl with the sword. The earl obeyed, searching for a posture, for an attitude that might save him, then sagging into the chair. Cormac placed a bare foot upon the earl’s polished desk and leaned closer, the sword a thrust away from his ruffled chest. For the first time, the earl had doom in his eyes. He glanced at the door as if expecting rescue, but there was no sound from the hallway. Kongo picked up the sign, eased around to the door, and listened. He shook his head. No sound. Not even breathing. Cormac took his foot off the desk and came around closer to the earl. Kongo approached a second door, leading to what they knew from the house map was a bedroom.

“What do you want?” the earl whispered. “What in God’s name do you
want?
”

“I want you to take that pen and a sheet of paper and confess that you had my father killed for a horse.”

“Of course,” the earl said. “Gladly.”

Nerves twitched in his face, which was runny with calculation. He picked up a goose quill, pulled a sheet of paper closer, dipped for ink, and began to write. He finished. Signed it with a flourish. Cormac leaned forward to lift it from the desk, and the earl lunged for the pistol. He gripped the barrel, then forced open the lock, prepared to shoot. Cormac slammed the flat of the sword across his brow, and his grip loosened. Cormac pried the gun loose of the earl’s grip and tossed it to Kongo.

“That was stupid,” Cormac said.

“I’m sorry,” the earl said in a beaten voice. A thin line of blood lay open on his brow.

“No, you’re not.”

“Go ahead and shoot me,” the earl said. “But remember: one shot from that gun and I’ll have ten men in this room.”

“Yes, and they’ll find you with a hole in your head.”

The earl’s eyes were now brimming, moving to the ceiling, to the doors, to the portrait, and back to Cormac.

“Please, just leave,” he said, while Cormac read the note. “I won’t pursue this if you just leave now. Here, I’ll give you some money.” He played with a key in a locked desk drawer. “Not enough for the terrible thing that happened to your father. But—”

“Nothing changes with you, ever,” Cormac said. “You tried to pay for my mother’s death too. Do you remember that? She died under the wheels of your coach. In the mud.”

The earl looked doomed. He opened the drawer as if fumbling for money, mumbling broken words, sweating harder, and then there was another pistol in his hand.

Cormac rammed the sword into his heart.

The earl’s surprised eyes opened wider, and so did his mouth. Cormac jerked the sword free, blood spread across the ruffled shirt, and the earl’s face hit hard upon the desk. Jesus God, Cormac thought: I’ve done it. I’ve done what I came to America to do. I’ve completed the terms of the vow. Jesus God: I’m free.

Then Kongo touched his arm. “Quick,” he said. “We go.” Together, they laid the earl’s body in the shroud (his face whitening, his eyes wide). The blood was flowing now, slopping on Cormac’s hands, puddling and staining the shroud. They closed the open end around his head, tied the lumpy bundle with ropes, and lifted it together. “Quick,” Kongo said again. Cormac could feel the leaking blood as it sloshed within the shroud. He and Kongo moved its dead weight to the outside stairs that would take them to the deck and the river. Cormac heard himself panting, and for an instant he saw images of shrouded bodies on greased planks falling into the sea.

From the distance, he heard muffled shouts. As in Kongo’s plan, a fire had begun in the barn. To distract the earl’s men. To cover their flight. “Quick,” Kongo said. “Quick.” Cormac turned for a final look at the earl’s study, at the desk, the posters, the juggler’s polished balls: and saw the room’s second door open.

A woman stood there, horror on her face.

She was big with child.

Bridget Riley.

All the way here from across an ocean, from the damp earth of Ireland, from the smoke of a lost, gutted mansion: Bridget Riley herself. Cormac stepped toward her and she backed up. Kongo had his back to the doors, listening to the muffled sounds of alarm. He raised the pistol and aimed it at her.
“No
,” Cormac said. “Don’t kill her.” Kongo’s eyes were cold and impatient. Bridget took in the bloody sword, the pistol, the lumpy shroud, and understood what had happened.

“Don’t scream, Bridget,” Cormac said.

“Who
are
you?” she said, a trill of terror in her throat.

“You know me. We rode together through Ireland. And here you are, Bridget, still the earl’s whore, living in another Big House.”

“Good God,” she whispered.

“And now carrying the earl’s bastard,” Cormac said.

The noise from outside smothered her sudden wracked and hopeless weeping. Horses were whinnying. Men shouted. A distant bell was ringing.