The Crafters Book Two (8 page)

I was at the parlor window when Papa brought her poor, broken body into the house. Never will I forget the sight of her bloodstained dress, the material the very color of the little blue book we had shared scarcely two hours ago. Papa walked like a man gone blind. He laid her body down upon the parlor couch despite Nurse’s shrill exhortations to remember that “the child” was present. When she saw he would not heed her, she flapped around the parlor, searching for me. I shrank into the folds of the draperies, willing myself invisible. I knew that something was dreadfully wrong, yet, for my life, I did not want to be taken from the room. Papa then burst into wild lamentation—so wild that Nurse, fearing he might do himself a mischief, summoned the footman. Between the two of them, they forcibly conveyed him upstairs. I later heard the front door slam as the footman ran out just ahead of Nurse’s shouted orders to fetch Papa a physician.

I was conveniently forgotten. The room was awfully still.

I stole from my hiding place to stand beside Mamma’s body.

I stared at her face but it was so pale and bruised and torn that I could not bear the sight for long. I averted my gaze to the open window. Outside, I could see our street transformed into a turmoil of people. A swooning Miss Hawkins was being conveyed back into her own home by her bachelor brother. Your own dear mother, my Caroline, was there as well, her face a twisted mask of grief and shock. The driver of the phaeton huddled on the seat, his face in his hands. Some of the crowd shook their fists at him while the few rational souls present who recognized the bitter workings of chance and fate attempted to hold them back. One among them was speaking earnestly to the distraught driver—words of comfort, I suppose.

“It will not work,” said a voice behind me. “The guilt will prove too much for him. By week’s end, he will be dead by his own hand. Hanged, I believe.”

I turned and saw that I was no longer alone beside the couch.

A tall gentleman dressed all in black knelt before me like a suitor. I have no idea of how he managed to enter undetected. I attribute it to a momentary lapse of attention on my part.

“So you are Delilah,” he said. Strange, I can recall every detail of his dress—Quite the epitome of fashion, he was—but his face remains virtually a blank in memory. It was white, I do believe, and angular to the point of fleshlessness, were that possible in a living man. His eyes were so huge and black as to seem all pupil, or all void, although I know that too to be an impossibility. His forehead was so high that I can not recollect where his hair began, or even if he had any at all. How odd.

It is equally odd that I did not bolt from the room then and there. I always was shy of strangers—Mamma chided me for it many a time—yet I did not seem to fear this one. He regarded me long and hard. “Ah, yes,” he said at length. “Amer’s very chin, and Samona’s midnight hair. You’ll be stubborn, or a beauty. Or both, may the powers help us all! Especially if you take after your ancestors in more than appearance.” Here he shuddered, and a curious clattering sound rang through the parlor.

“Who are you?” I asked. Rather, I demanded. Never before or since was I so bold.

“A friend,” he said, and turned his famished face towards Mamma. How hollow and miserable his voice! “A kindly friend, some call me.”

There was something in the way he stared at my poor mamma’s body that made me, young as I was, understand that here was another being who shared in equal measure with Papa and me the devastating sorrow of Mamma’s passing. In kinship and simple compassion, then, I took his hand in mine. It was exactly like grasping a bundle of dry sticks.

He looked up. “Do you seek to comfort me, child?”

I swallowed my own tears and nodded. “You were her friend,” I managed to say.

“So I was, so I was.” He shook his head slowly and got to his feet, towering above me. “As good a friend as I have been to many of your family, my dear; to Amer and Samona, in their time, and Ahijah and Arabella and Margarethe and the rest in theirs, and to Baldwin and Thomas—”

Of all the names the gentleman rattled off, I recognized that one. “Thomas? You were a friend to my mamma’s grandfather?” He nodded, an affirmative gesture which did not have precisely the effect he might have foreseen, for on the instant I flew at him in a passion, small hands and feet flailing, and belabored him without let or mercy.

“Liar!” I shouted. My abrupt bereavement demanded outlet, and took it in pointless wrath. “Liar, liar, liar! How could you know my mamma’s grandfather? He was
old,
and you—and you—”

The stranger grasped my wrists and effortlessly kept me at arm’s length while he gathered his assaulted wits. “And
I,
miss, am older than that,” he told me.

I kicked him in the legs, every blow making a sound like drumming my heels against a chair-rail. “You can’t be that old!” I bawled, lunging and squirming in his grip. “No one can be that old! Great-grandpapa Thomas is
dead,
and—and Ahijah was the name of my great-granpapa’s father, so you couldn’t know him and
he’s
dead, and—and—”

Suddenly the gentleman in black swept me from my feet and held me tight against him. “Only one death matters so very much to you now, doesn’t it, my little one?” he asked softly. His voice was tender, yet it cut me to the heart and I began to cry. “There, child,” he said, running those spindly, brittle fingers through my tangled hair. “When you are older, you will understand. For now let it suffice to know that I will be your friend, too.”

I was sniveling terribly, I fear, for the stranger gave me his pocket kerchief and bade me blow my nose. I did so, but when I would return him his own he directed me, “Keep it. If you are a true sprig of old Thomas’ tree, you’ll be glad to own such a useful souvenir some day.”

I gazed in wonderment at the kerchief, which he bestowed with as much ceremony as though it were a bolt of best Cathay silk. In truth it was plain black cotton, the hem poorly stitched and the comer embroidered with a tipsy
“D”.
All six-year-olds are natural skeptics with the manners of untrained foxhounds. Small marvel that I dried my tears and asserted, “This isn’t useful; it’s dirty.” I blew my nose into the black folds again to ratify my statement.

The stranger lifted one thin, white finger. “I said
if,”
he replied. “And I am famous for seldom speaking in the conditional tense, believe me.” With that, he vanished. Oh, I do not—I
can
not mean he played the ghost. Most likely he excused himself in the ordinary way and departed by the front door. The footman returned just then with Dr. Greeley in tow, and Nurse flew down the stairs to greet them. She caught sight of me in the parlor and whisked me up to the nursery forthwith. The strange gentleman probably made his exit in the teeth of all that confusion.

That is the only logical explanation, is it not?

None of which, I know, enlightens you any further in regard to the hideous fate which has befallen me,
à la mode de Culpepper.
Pray forgive my digressions, precious friend. In your absence, these letters are the only solace I may find beneath this roof. I must not abuse your patience.
Eh bien, continuons!

My extended divergence from the topic to hand is, I see, assignable to my earlier mention of Great-grandpapa and his aversion to Americans. (Mamma once told me the old fellow claimed he could smell them out in a crowd!) This, in turn brings me back to Mr. Horatio Culpepper’s American companion, Pericles Factor. O, do not the very syllables of that name jar upon the ear, sweet Caroline? No less did the man himself jar upon my sight.

I was in our smallest garden when they arrived, the one which in happier times was Mamma’s private herbary. It has mostly run wild since her death, yet Papa is indifferent to all of Cook’s suggestions that he tear down the brick walls separating it from the kitchen garden, to enlarge the latter. Some pretty yellow flowers of cinquefoil held my attention—I thought I recognized them from a sketch in Mamma’s notebook, although her comments thereunder were all written in Greek. Some quality of the plant must have fascinated her, for the alien characters were heavily underlined and decorated with a plethora of exclamation marks uncommon to the tongue of Homer.

“Well, if that ain’t the purtiest thing!” a deep voice boomed, and a huge paw swept in under my nose to uproot the dainty flowers root and all. Oh yes, Caroline, I have transcribed the “gentleman’s” speech exactly as I heard it. Yet my meager powers of description fall short of conveying the full impact of his raw, uncultured voice and its monstrous accent.

The Americans may have defeated our bold English troops a time or two, but they are condemned to be ever vanquished by our sweet English language.

My unwelcome caller bowed low, doffing his hat with so extravagant a flourish that the brim dug a channel in the garden dust. “You must be Miss Delilah,” he said, white teeth flashing from a face sunbrowned as a bargeman’s. “Pericles Factor, at your service.”

I confess, Caroline, his person was not without those superficial charms of tint and form that less perceptive women are pleased to settle for as attractive. Thank Heaven you and I know better! What boots it that a man like Mr. Factor be molded on the heroic scale, with broad shoulders, trim hips, clusters of jet-black curls such as are the crowning glory of Lord Byron himself, eyes the disturbing violet of iris flowers, and a demeanor merry as a Vauxhall Gardens revel?
We
seek the poet’s soul, you and I, in the men upon whom we ultimately mean to bestow our favors.

Which we do not mean to bestow at all, of course.

“Here, ma’ am,” the creature went on, thrusting the ravished cinquefoil blossoms into my face. “Sweets for the sweet.”

“That is, I think, ‘Sweets
to
the sweet’,” came a voice with all the gumption of a gutted mouse. From out of Pericles’ muscular shadow there slunk a person shaped like a cabbage. He bowed to me as well as his complete lack of a waist allowed. Sunlight glistened from his nearly hairless pate. “Horatio Culpepper, mum,” he said stiffly. “Connection of your mother’s. My friend, Mr. Pericles Factor. Said we might find you out here. Your mother, I mean. From America. Mr. Factor, that is. Said you would see to us, talk to Cook about tea. Having a bit of a lie-down. Terrible headache. Your mother has.”

I glowered at him most terribly and said, “You must mean Stepmamma, sir. My mother is
dead.”

The effect of my words was what one might achieve by pouring a bucket of iced water over an owl. Mr. Culpepper suffered some form of inward collapse and muttered obscure apologies. Mr. Factor, however, remained unploughed.

“These are gonna wilt bad if you don’t do something about ’em quick. Tell you what, ma’am: You can put ’em in water inside first, before you get us our tea,” he said, pressing his still-ignored floral tribute firmly into my hand and using the same action to give me a gentle but determined tug in the direction of our house.

O Caroline, what could I do and still remain a lady? I complied, silently cursing Stepmamma at every pace.

And so they have had their tea and are presently in the rooms assigned them, overseeing the unpacking of their things. I may have poured tea and passed the cakes, but I did
not
play the spinet for either of them. Nor shall I. The oafish Factor looks as if he would prefer a rustic reel to a Mozart sonata, at any rate, and as for my appointed swain, one hesitates to play Bach for the delectation of an animate plum pudding.

Should you wonder how I have managed to elude my unwished-for duties as hostess, I know you will have nothing but praise for my resourcefulness, dear friend:

I am studying Greek.

Yes, that is to be my shelter and my salvation, let Stepmamma pout how she will. The idea sprang full-blown to mind as I sat above the tea things, watching Mr. Factor pour his beverage into the saucer and blow upon the steaming brew before slurping it down. Mr. Culpepper consumed his drink with rather more aplomb, reserving his own excesses of bad manners for the devouring of every tea cake in sight, save those Mr. Factor managed to scoop up.

I could not bear to observe these concerted swillings. Rising from my place as soon as manners might allow, I heard myself announce, “Your pardon, gentlemen, but it is the hour for my Greek lesson.”

“Greek?” quoth the uncouth Factor. “I hear tell you English gals like to muck around with odd stuff, but why’d you want to trouble your pretty head with Greek?”

Mr. Culpepper, on the other hand, appeared strangely elated by the news. “Now, Pericles,” he said, beaming. “I think it just wonderful that Miss Delilah takes an interest in the Classics.” Astonishing to report, he was not at all tongue-tied when addressing his friend, yet let his conversation turn to me and: “Latin, too? Fine tongue. Greek, that is. Studied it some myself. Latin, I mean. Pericles, here, he’s got ’em both. Said so, anyhow. Didn’t you, Peri? Latin and Greek, Harvard, Yale, somewhere, once? That old book of your family’s—?”

Pericles guffawed and dealt the hapless Culpepper a strong buffet on the back. “Aw, now, H’raysh”—thus does the Yankee tongue mangle the sweet syllables of Mr. Horatio Culpepper’s Christian name!—”you know I never did have me any sort of a head for furrin languages.”

Here he gave Mr. Culpepper a swat so fierce that I marveled at what passes for male camaraderie. The poor, plump little man lurched forward, his hands skidding among the tea things and quite upsetting the cream. As I rang for Maisie to clear away the resulting mess, I heard Mr. Culpepper say in that peculiar, staccato manner of his that yes, yes, he must be mistaken, quite wrong, surely thinking of another friend, the Classics were not Mr. Factor’s meat at all, and so on.

Perhaps my imagination runs too rampant, darling Caroline, but I have reviewed my memories of teatime and the conviction remains: He was afraid. Mr. Horatio Culpepper was purely terrified of his supposedly dear friend, Mr. Pericles Factor.

Whatever can it mean? Sitting here, poring over the first introductory lessons of Mamma’s old Greek text, I freely admit that I do not know.