The Loves of Leopold Singer (53 page)

“What I have seen,” she said. Her usually bold voice was low, awestruck, filled with sorrow. She held out the empty glass, which Josef refilled without pause. “What day is this?”

“Thursday, August 25,” said the newspaperman. “1831,” he added, in case she were quite addled.

“Four days,” Mrs. Adams fixed a wild look upon each of them. “I have been riding for four days.” She scanned the room. “And all is well here, and in Shermer Landing generally?”

“All is quite well, Mrs. Adams,” Eleanor said. She again urged the soup on Penelope, who this time took it greedily.

“Penelope,” Marta said. “Tell us what you have seen.”

“Four days ago, Sunday night—or I suppose it was Monday morning—a strange sound woke me. It was a muted, gurgling sound. The sound of my husband Mr. Adams dying of a slit throat.”

“Oh!”

“Good Lord.”

“In the moonlight, I saw dear Franklin’s bewildered face. Suddenly someone grabbed my wrist, and I felt sure I was to be next. I became aware of the terror around me. Screams of horror and woeful cries in the house where we were staying—Franklin’s family plantation in Southampton—and from outside the house as well.

“I heard a strange voice say ‘not yet,’ but I could not place the voice in a body.

“Another man, not the one who held my arm, cried out, ‘Not her!’ He pointed to my necklace. The one who held me shrieked ‘Voudon!’ and let go my wrist. They both fled.

“Through the window, I saw a band of black men, slaves, I am sure, some on horses with rifles. One of the men on horseback shouted to the others—the sound of it has haunted me these last days—‘Remember: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first!’ His voice was commanding, beautiful, but his words were terrible. I couldn’t call out for help or they would be back for me; Uncle James’s necklace would not save me twice. The murderers moved on.

“Oh! My dear Franklin. His expression I’ll never forget. He was angry! Not afraid, but furious. And then his face softened. He looked directly at me, and his soul touched my soul, more profoundly than I know how to say. And then he was gone. There on the bed lay a shell, no more than a slab of flesh. That wasn’t Franklin. I waited for hours beside the body. I heard or imagined screams and wailing through all that time.

“At some point near the dawn’s break, I heard a horse’s whinny and dared to peek through the window to see if the men had returned. But the horse was riderless, fully saddled. Someone had lost his mount. I wasted no time. I grabbed this overcoat and ran, down the stairs, past Franklin’s mother and father slaughtered on the stairway, out to the yard past the bodies of all eight boys who lived in the dormitory above the school house, even the slain corpses of Franklin’s six month old niece and her mother.”

 
“This is too terrible!” Eleanor said. It became clear the dark blotches on Mrs. Adams’ nightdress were not dirt at all but dried blood.

“I flew up onto that horse, screaming, like I was shouting myself out of hell. He set out at a mad pace and I hung on, surely terrifying him with my own terror. I have slept hidden under bridges or among trees all the way. I wasn’t sure how far the rebellion had spread.”

“Rebellion,” Harry said, confirming his own suspicion. “So there has been a slave uprising after all.”

“It appears so,” said Josef.

“Excuse me for a moment.” Harry spoke to his valet. “Jones, fetch Jackson. You’ll find him at The Snowy Owl. Tell him to come round at once. I’ve got a story here I want him to write.”

No one thought Harry heartless. They’d known Penelope Adams all or most of their lives. They admired her courage and brashness and knew she’d gladly tell her story to his reporter.

“Poor Franklin,” She said. “He predicted this. He hates—hated slavery with a passion. Anyone who knew him...” Replenished by the soup, emboldened by the brandy, and never having had any sense of propriety anyway, Penelope Adams then said, “What are you all doing in my house?”

The awkward silence was short-lived. Harry the future politician told the truth as he knew it in terms most palatable to his listener.

Penelope blanched. The glass slipped from her hand and shattered on the floor. As she fell toward the shards, Harry and Josef jumped forward to steady her.

“Ugh,” Eleanor pointed to a spot of bright blood on the floor.

A sickening odor suddenly permeated the air, and Josef inspected Penelope’s lower extremities. A gash on the right calf was swollen, crusted with dried brown blood and oozing fresh blood and pus. It smelled of decaying flesh. “Get the doctor.”

Harry raced from the house, but it was of no matter. By the time he returned with the doctor, Penelope was delirious. By the time the ladies got her into bed, she was comatose. The doctor confirmed the gangrene had spread. Through the night, Marta kept her vigil. By morning, that magical creature, the pirate’s golden-haired daughter, who had enchanted Leopold Singer, mystified Franklin Adams, and awed her own daughter, had left this world.

When the party from Massachusetts arrived at Laurelwood, Marta and Igraine straightaway took Sara aside to tell her the horrible news about her parents.

“The strangest thing happened.” Marta produced a parcel from her pocket, a cloth pouch containing an amulet. “Your mother was delirious. She hadn’t known a soul for hours. I was sitting with her, and I fell asleep. But I dreamed I was awake there beside her.

“The fire had long gone cold, but in my dream it blazed to a roar. Penelope sat up in her bed. She knew me. She knew herself. She was quite lucid and adamant to her purpose. ‘Give this to Sara,’ she said. She stretched her hand toward me. Then the room was dark. The hearth was as cold as her poor lifeless body. I was awake, and this was in my hand. I cannot explain it.”

Sara opened the little purse. “Uncle James!”

“What do you mean, dear?” Geordie examined the amulet. “Does this belong to your mysterious guardian angel?”

“It’s my Uncle James’s. He wore it every day of my life until my mother and father went away. He must have given it to mama.”

“She said it saved her from your father’s murderers,” said Igraine.

“Are you so shocked, my dear?” Sara said to her husband. “You know I come from pirate stock. An artifact of island custom is bound to fall out of my past from time to time.”

“More provocative than shocking,” Geordie Carleson kissed Sara’s hand with obvious warm regard. Marta felt gratified. She’d given Sara the right advice.

“How provocative is this, then?” Sara put the amulet on. “Now the loa will protect me.”

“I am full in favor of anything that protects my darling.” Geordie laughed as if he didn’t believe in island spirits, but Marta saw that Sara believed it all, even the dream.

There was more to it than she’d told, something which could be no dream. When Penelope had fixed on her that look of recognition, Marta had blurted out. “Sara is married. You have a granddaughter!”

Penelope’s expression had radiated eager pleasure which metamorphosed into rage—rage against Death coming for her, Marta supposed, come to steal the one thing she wanted: more. More time. More life.

‘More’ was the last word on her last breath.
 

-oOo-

The next day Marta came down to breakfast alone. A message had come saying the baroness was in extremis, and the Carlesons and Lady Asher had gone to The Branch. Marta’s fellow travelers had left even earlier to go on a walk to view the “sublime” waterfalls some four miles away. She was certainly glad to have missed that.

“Bi-ket.”

“Oh, and who can this be!” Marta squealed.

Little Jane came running in on strong little legs looking for fun. Marta saw none of Sir Carey in the child, and for that she was grateful. There was not much of Sara there either. The straw-blonde hair and irreverent blue eyes were likely Penelope’s gift to the granddaughter she never knew.

“Bi-ket,” Jane said again.

“Do you want a cookie? Let’s see what we can find, dear.” In the kitchen, Marta lifted the girl up onto a stool. “Stand here dear. I want to get a good look at you.”

“Ooh, ‘nake,” Jane pointed at Marta’s brooch.

“You dear thing.” How right April Zehetner was! Marta’s heart had been here in England, in the safekeeping of this child.

“There you are, Jane!”

The woman in the kitchen doorway was not a stranger. “Gray? Susan Gray?”

“Mrs. Singer, hello. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again.”

“Why are you here?”

Marta heard all about the duke’s softhearted, romantic side, Susan’s tragic marriage, and her relation to Lady Asher. “So I have lived here all these years, and my time in London seems unreal to me now. Sara told us about his—about Mr. Singer’s dreadful accident. I am so very sorry.”
 

Jane sat on Marta’s lap with a half-eaten biscuit suspended in front of her mouth, staring thoughtfully out the open half of the kitchen’s Dutch door.

“That one will be a philosopher,” Susan said. “Much good will it do her.”

“You were going to tell me about your father?” Marta said.

“Just this: My father was a gentleman, but my mother was poor, with no connections. When they married, my father’s family disowned him. He died when I was fifteen, and my mother had no capacity for the world. She disintegrated, essentially.”

“Susan, you use the most marvelous language.”

“My father understood me. After he was gone, except for one brief time, I never felt I belonged anywhere. Then I came to Laurelwood. I was useful to the people I cared for and who cared for me. And Mr. Geordie’s Jane is a dear.”

Mr. Geordie’s Jane
. Marta said, “I want to hear about all of her adventures.”

Susan looked past Marta, “Now who is this coming to the back of the house?” They watched a man get out of a carriage and come through the kitchen garden, looking a little lost.

“I know that man,” Marta said. “No doubt, he has come in pursuit of the ever-elusive Miss Igraine Fiddyment.”

Susan said, “We’d better see what there is for the poor man to eat.”

“I’ll bring him in.” Marta met Solomon Grasmere at the winter squash and led him into the kitchen.

“Mrs. Singer, what luck,” he said. “I’ve found the right place, then. I didn’t want to present myself at the front door to total strangers.”

“Come in, Mr. Grasmere.”

If Solomon Grasmere thought it was odd to be given tea and scones right there in the kitchen, he made no sign of it. He devoured the offering and after some moments said, “I found I could not stay away.”

“We’re all on your side, you know,” Marta said. “Miss Fiddyment will come round. Love will find its way.”

-oOo-

Sara returned from The Branch and slipped into her sitting room. It was the morning of the equinox, and a light rain fell on the Peak. The red oak at the mallard pond had lost all its leaves but one, and it fluttered in the chilly breeze.

An occasional splash of sunlight broke through the clouds. It was cozy in her little room, its fire burnt down to radiating embers while outside Nature shed the last of summer. On the other side of winter would come every shade of green and blue skies with cotton-puff clouds. Around the pond, white narcissus would burst out laughing in every tiny depression as the yellow of daffodils strained at the tips of their green shafts. The whole world would be born again, then.

But on this autumn day, the oak’s fingers were black against a gray sky, holding on against everything to this year’s remains. But the world couldn’t hold on to her mother, always greater than life, and now death was taking Aunt Philomela. An hour ago, she had been in her great aunt’s room for a last goodbye.

“Elizabeth tells me Circe’s brat—I mean your mother is dead,” Philly had said. “So when I am gone, you will be Baroness Branch, and the estate will be yours.”

“That can’t be right. Somehow it seems Sir Carey—and therefore Wills should have a better claim.”

“Officially, Wills is no relation, no matter how well-loved. He’s not in the line.”

“Officially?”

“The world is full of secrets and unfairness, as you well know, dear Sara.” Philomela’s grip tightened. “You have a secret. I hope you value the good husband the Fates sent you.”