The Crafters Book Two (10 page)

Caroline, Caroline, could you but have heard the note of cold dread which informed his pronunciation of that word! Why, it so caused my flesh to crawl upon my bones that for various instants I remained unaware of the fact that Mr. Culpepper had once more lost that hesitance of speech which I had previously noted.

I forced my spirits up and drew myself erect. “Sir, you presume!” I declared in martial accents. “Witchcraft, is it? In this day and age?” I made free to laugh his tale to scorn. My laugh was, of course, as light, silvery, and musical as you may recall it, if you recall me at all.

Mr. Culpepper hung his head. “I expected this,” he said mournfully. “It all dovetails so neatly with
his
plan. True, who would believe me, speaking as I do of dark forces whose existence is all but forgotten in this age of Reason’s clear light? There is no mind so closed as that which claims to be open to Reason. Yet when I heard from your stepmamma that you cherished a fondness for the Romantic poets who do see fit to give the nod to things Unseen, I had hopes you would at least afford my story fair hearing. Too, when you evinced interest in expanding your own private sphere of knowledge through the unaided study of the Classics—”

“Enough, sir, I pray.” I stilled his words, blushing hotly from the shame they had evoked. “You do well to chastise me. I apologize for the haste of my reaction. It is only that an evil reputation touching the American branch of the family might somehow, in the hands of wicked tongues, come to cast an unfavorable light upon my poor, dear mamma’s departed spirit. Continue, if you will. I will hear out your proof in this.”

Bitter, bitter gall, his laugh! “Hear it!” he exclaimed. “Nay, see it, rather. Behold!” He made a gesture whose expansive nature was intended to take in his entire rotund person. “Learn and pity, dear Miss Delilah, what the dark sorcery of a Crafter’s magic has done to one” —here he detached from around his neck a locket which he opened and handed to me— “whose rightful appearance you may here plainly see.”

I own I gasped, so grievous was the assault upon my nerves. For upon opening the locket I saw the very face I had previously seen swimming across the fleshy features of Mr. Culpepper as the two of us stood in the rain. There were those same golden locks, those verdant eyes, that face spare yet dominating, the somewhat mean lines of the thin lips forgiven by the unquenchable nobility of the chin.

“This . . . is you?” I am certain I stammered. He nodded.

“But—but how—?” I need not have asked. The answer was plain: Witchcraft.

“Need I, to a mind as penetrating as your own, dear Miss Delilah, point out the shabby linguistic jest which Mr. Pericles Factor presently plays out against this entire household?
Factor
is a name which derives from the Latin for one who makes, and
Crafter .
..”

“—means the same. O horrible!” I cried. “Then he is of my blood?”

“A cousin,” Mr. Culpepper averred. “Distant enough in degree to permit your marriage to be free of the banns of consanguinity, even were the truth of his kinship revealed.”

“My marriage?” I was understandably aghast at the word. “To him? Does the villain dare to presume—?”

“He dares much,” said Mr. Culpepper, “if in so daring he finds himself at length in charge and possession of ...
the token.”

He spoke these ultimate two words with such implied import that I must grasp their significance without fully comprehending their meaning. Upon applying to him for further explication, I received the following reply:

“It is a fact well known that those lost souls who devote themselves to the practice of witchcraft must of necessity sell their souls to Satan. In exchange, the Archfiend grants them powers transcending those of common mortals. They may delve into the priviest thoughts of others, mind to mind, without detection. They may—your pardon, Miss Delilah, I
must
speak frankly—influence the emotions of those who have stirred their basest desires. They may effect the transportation of distant objects. And last but not least, they may summon and control a person or object by the utilization of a symbol or token representing that person.”

“Or object,” I prompted, if only to keep the full implication of his disclosures from my mind. “But how—?”

“—does this concern you?” Mr. Culpepper finished my sentence so perfectly in accord with my own thoughts that one might almost ascribe to him the very powers of dark magic of which he had so lately spoken. “For the reason I have already stated:
the token!”

I dared not flinch; I must know! “What token?”

“It is rumored throughout the ranks of your eternally condemned American connections,” he said, “that while the British branch of the Crafter family has wisely chosen to eschew the questionable advantages sorcery confers, they are still masters of certain ... heirlooms whose symbolic power is immeasurable. These are passed from generation to purblind generation. They are not many, nor is the power of each equal to that of its brother. Some are no more than gewgaws—a forked branch of hazelwood, the statuette of a satyr, a chaplet of laurel, carefully preserved, a cup carved from olivewood—yet there is one among them whose value transcends all others, a thing whose symbolic power offers the possessor thereof mastery over the paramount force of this rich world.”

His speech overawed me. “Mr. Culpepper, do you—can you mean ... the Divine.”

He shuddered as if with cold and put up a warding hand. “No, no, by no means. By no means need we concern ourselves with ... that of which you speak. I mean Death, Miss Delilah.”

I felt the cowardly blood retreat from my extremities. I stood chilled to the fingertips. “It is not given for mortals to control Death, sir,” I said.

His eyes burned strangely. “Not for ordinary mortals, perhaps. But your practitioner of witchcraft is well beyond the tiresome constraints incumbent upon commoner folk.” He managed a wry smile as he added, “Can you conceive of the temporal power to be vouchsafed the man who is known as Death’s master? Can your simple woman’s mind begin to ideate the wealth such a man might amass? From the mightiest potentate upon his throne to the lowliest wretch in his filthy hovel, who would
not
seek out such a man and press into his hands all his earthly goods if they might purchase from him but a day’s additional respite from the attentions of the Grim Reaper?”

“You speak a sorry truth there, sir,” I replied, myself more grim than the Reaper of whom he spoke. “This, then, is Mr. Factor’s purpose? To procure from me the token of which you speak, the object by which Death himself may be ruled?”

“Even so. Being sure of his captive prey, the cunning sorcerer Factor confided in me utterly his goal and the means by which he intends to achieve it, though Innocence herself be trampled into the dust should she stand between it and him.” Mr. Culpepper’s fluency was perhaps to be assigned to the absence of Mr. Factor, yet I vow I found it yet rather disconcerting.

“Then you know what this token is?” I asked.

“It is the model of a human skeleton in miniature, carved from wood by the hand of Wizard Amer himself, forefather and founder of the Crafter line and first to plunge his soul into the murk of the Devil’s service,” he told me. “The token passed from Wizard Amer’s hands when one of his she-cubs stole it, the better to advance her own career in the black arts, else the old rogue might be living yet. She in turn lost it to a sibling who only understood its use imperfectly, and he was murdered for it by the lover of yet another of his sisters, at her behest.”

“O evil!” I exclaimed, as well I might, for Mr. Culpepper was outlining for my revolted ears a family history Mamma had never mentioned—with what good cause!—and which I trust you will never reveal to another living soul, my trusted Caroline.

“Evil indeed,” Mr. Culpepper agreed. “Shall I desist?”

“Go on,” I directed, steeling myself. “Knowledge is better than ignorance.” Somehow, in uttering those words, I thought I felt my dear mamma’s approbation warming me.

“Well, I shall make short shrift. The whole sanguinary mess ended with the skeleton transported to England by one Thomas Crafter, who knew nothing of its supernatural value. Only the tales of its virtues remained in the New World, there to be unluckily discovered by the mystic pryings of Mr. Pericles Factor—or Crafter, to give him his true name. He set his mind on recovering the token and exploiting its powers to the fullest. Through family documents, he was able to trace it to England, and it was during his continued investigations in London that I was misfortunate enough to cross his path.”

“He is, then, no true acquaintance of yours, Mr. Culpepper?” I ventured.

“ ‘Mr. Culpepper’!” A sharp, caustic laugh again escaped his lips. “That name! It is no more mine than Factor is his! We met, he and I, at the races. My adored sister Athena—who knows when next I shall see her sweet face in this world, alas !—remarked upon the dashing young gentleman whom none of the Prince’s party seemed to know.”

“The Prince’s party!” I gasped, taken aback by all that such casual mention of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent implied. “You cannot mean—”

He raised a masterful hand to still my words. “All in good time, my dear Miss Delilah. All shall be revealed. We were, as I was saying, at the races. To satisfy a beloved sister’s whim, I found a pretense to introduce myself to him. His charm was hypnotic, devastating, even—dare I say it?—fatal. On the strength of my introduction, he soon became an intimate of our set. No doubt the villain perceived our wealth, breeding, and social preeminence as little more than tools for him to use at his convenience at furthering his noxious scheme. There was, need I mention, neither trace nor hint of his American origin when first we commenced relations, else I should never have allowed him such favor.” He looked solemn.

“Of course not,” I concurred, and unable to restrain the outrage of my bosom at this violation of a gracious man’s confidence, I added, “O vilest duplicity, thy name is Pericles Crafter!”

He seemed to regard me tenderly for an instant, and when a zephyrous sigh blew from his pendulous lips I imagined it emanating from his mouth as it truly appeared, thin and unensorcelled. The miniature portrait he had shown me displayed a face whose masculine beauty was almost worthy of a true Prince Charming. O Caroline, our childhoods are not so far removed from us that you cannot recall the nursery tales of enchanted princes, their natural perfections forcibly disguised by witchcraft. Yet there I stood, in Mamma’s old attic chamber, living such a tale of wonder!

“You do not know how near the mark you hit when you speak of duplicity, Miss Delilah.” He spoke as if the world’s weight bowed him down. “The better to prepare his unwitting tools, the sorcerer next used his falsely winning ways to lure my innocent sister Athena into his clutches.”

“Say not so!” I begged.

“I must.” He was obdurate. “By blandishments and promises he won her heart. By lies he convinced her that I was against the match. By base cunning he persuaded the child to elope with him to Gretna Green where they were joined in holy matrimony.
Holy!
With one such as
he?”
He was upon the point of loosing an oath when my restraining presence calmed him.

“I received his demands in the same post as brought Athena’s rapturous announcement of her marriage,” he went on. “Now assured of his prey, the demon incarnate dropped all pretense. He spoke plainly as to his blood and opprobrious sorceries. He had conveyed my sister to an isolated country retreat, he told me, and there placed her under a spell of sleep. Athena would not wake again unless he allowed it, and if he chose he might remove that portion of the spell which permitted her to survive without nourishment. This was the threat he held over me. For my part, as I loved my sister, I must meet with him in London, at a time and place of his specification, there to consent to whatever dastardly orders he might put to me. I checked the direction of Athena’s letter to me and found that it was addressed in
his
hand. Thus did my broken heart prove that the fiend must have laid the sleeping spell upon my darling as soon as she had finished writing that last missive of bridal joy.”

“The knave!” I cried.

“Aye, but what is more perilous than a knave who holds all the cards?” he observed. “He had me. I attended him at the time and place specified. It was a low resort in one of London’s least savory quarters, where to buy a man’s silence costs a ha’penny more than to buy his life. There, in the back room of a den of thieves and ruffians, Pericles Crafter invited me to share a cup of wine with him. It was not poisoned—of this he assured me by drinking from the same bottle. Ah, but venoms may do worse than kill! I drank, then demanded he state the price of Athena’s freedom. He laughed and most curiously replied, ‘The potion has prepared you, fool! Soon you will sue for your own freedom right enough, and forget your idiot sister’s predicament.’ Then, in place of honest speech he began to utter syllables of arcane and awful significance. I grew weak. My sight dimmed. The room swam. Pains of an untellable cruelty racked my body.”

“Please, sir, no more! I cannot bear it!” I begged him. You know me, Caroline—or you used to claim you knew me as a sister—and you know with what ease my tender soul bruises for the plight of others.

“Courage, Miss Delilah,” the dear, gallant man said. “I have borne as much upon the field of battle. I must speak, lest worse befall. I shall abridge: I lost consciousness. When I awoke, he was stooping above me, a sneer twisting his mouth. He handed me a shard of broken looking-glass, that I might see the metamorphosis his witchery had wrought.” Here he touched his face.

“A man’s true worth is not measured by mere appearance,” I reminded him.

“For you, perhaps,” he said. “But how many women share your sterling moral excellences?” As I could say nothing to this, he continued. “Crafter then told me of his plan. He had changed my looks with a foul purpose: I was to impersonate one Horatio Culpepper, of the Darbyshire Culpeppers. His diligent researches as to the whereabouts of ... the token ... had yielded fruit. He knew all he needed to know of your family, including the facts of your mother’s death and your father’s remarriage. He knew that your stepmother had a distant connection, a Mr. Horatio Culpepper, on whom she doted but whom she did not see or hear from with any great frequency. He would gain
entrée
to their home and trust discreetly, in the company of your stepmother’s supposed connection: myself.”