The Other Adonis

by Frank Deford

  “What did the Lord do to you?”

  “He made it, He did, so that in the clear water, Bess appeared to be looking straight up, into my cursed eyes. Oh, so content she looked—not unlike those very times when like that, she lay, after I had given her ecstasy. And my bane is that I can ne’er forget that sight o’ her. God’s wounds, I see Bess now in that stream better than I see you afore me. ’Twas my intent to turn her over, upon her face, as a body would, had it stumbled and fallen. But not so much as a moment longer could I stay. Not with Bess’s face so lovely in my vision.” He buries his head again.

  “So, what did you do then?”

  “Promptly, I took away for Londontown, and ’twas in a tavern there I heard tell of a ship bound for Virginia. So I came down here to Gravesend, thinking that if I could but sign on, I could find me a new life o’er the sea. Poor sinner though I may be, I know someone of your discernment recognizes a man full of Christian quality.”

  Uh oh, Nina thinks. The leopard is getting his spots back. Bess is dead; long live the new Bess—whatever wench hoves into Cecil’s sight. Or, right now: me, Nina. But, she presses on. “So why didn’t you go to Virginia?”

  “The sailing was delayed. But I stayed here in Gravesend, and sure enough, t’other day, I learned of a passage to Amsterdam, thence to Genoa, and their need for able-bodied seaman. So I signed on, and we sail on the morrow.” He leans forward now, all the remorse vanished, and most of the alleged Christian quality, too. “So, duchess, on what will be my last night upon English soil, for lo, how long, I could not chance upon more agreeable company than you, to drink some now, then to enjoy our flesh abed together.”

  Cecil even starts to reach out again to Nina, totally unrepentant, his predator eyes gazing upon her. She pushes his hand away. “But I’ve hardly met you, Cecil, and you’ve told me of such a horrible thing you’ve done.”

  Cecil grins. He has an answer for everything—at least with women. “No fear o’ that. This very day, I became a new man. Cecil Wainwright, the farmer of Norfolk, is no more—and his past mischief is gone with him. In his stead, signed onto the ship, is a sailor from Sussex—I with a new name, as sure as Wainwright may be with the devil.” He is so blithe, so used to his way, that he obviously expects Nina to forget that he’s killed a woman simply because he’s taken on an alias.

  But now the blood is rising in Nina, her curiosity racing. Yes, yes, she thinks, I see what is coming. Quickly, then. “So, sir, pray, what be your new name?”

  “Oliver Goode,” he declares, sitting tall in his chair, grinning proudly—especially, Nina knows, at that perverse choice of last name.

  But, of course, it is not the last name she cares about. It is the first. Oh, she is not at all surprised, not any more, and if she shivers some when she hears it, it is only mostly from her anticipation. It is amazing, really, how easy the words tumble off her lips, as Nina says, “I see, and may I call you Ollie?”

  21

  “Such familiarity suits me well,” says the man Cecil, who is now Ollie, “although I would soon hope that intimacy not be ours in name only.” He rolls his tongue round his teeth to enhance that salacious vision.

  Nina shifts uneasily, sneaking a glance at her watch. It is only eight-twenty, with plenty of time left before her first regular appointment. She doesn’t want to pull Constance out of her trance, but neither does she want to stay here in Gravesend, where Ollie seems intent only on seducing her. He is so much the—oh my, Nina almost thought “lady killer”—he is so much the ladies man, that Ollie is certain that any woman’s demurral is only a coquettish delay. Has no girl ever turned him down? Nina must gain control here. Sweetly, she asks, “Will you grant me a favor?”

  “What boon is that?” he replies, so graphically stroking his crotch, that Nina all but sees a bulge beneath Constance’s slacks. Constantly, in fact, Nina finds that she must concentrate in order to keep seeing the appliquéd blouse and the breasts filling it to remember that this is a woman before her. This is Constance Rawlings of Chicago and the here and now—and not a randy man named Cecil Wainwright, a.k.a. Oliver Goode, from 1635.

  “A game to play,” she tells him.

  “Would it be for only two?” he leers, fondling himself even more overtly. Nina nods. She even winks. “Sure, and I would play with you, duchess.”

  “Good. But you must do my bidding.”

  “I like a woman takes a hold of the pole herself.”

  “All right then, gaze upon this candle,” Nina says, holding it up before Ollie’s eyes. “And follow the light. We are moving together, Ollie. You and me. We are taking a trip.”

  “Together?” he murmurs, but vaguely now, his hands finally falling limp in his lap, his eyes shifting after the candle.

  “Of course, together, just you and me. And when I finish counting, we’ll be there: three… two… one.” She lays the candle down. He sits up, looking around. “Do you see where we are, Ollie?”

  Suddenly, he is agitated, fearful, his head twisting about. “God’s wounds, I must take leave of here.”

  “Why?”

  “You must know. That cur’s son Burleigh has set all of Amsterdam after me.”

  “Why, Ollie?”

  “’Twas not intended. If Burleigh’s woman had just kept her tongue.”

  “Who is Burleigh?’

  “The second mate. From the moment we board in Gravesend, he’s on my arse.” But now a twinkle, the Ollie that Nina first met. “Yet wouldn’t you know, we but dock here, and I chance to meet this woman—the very one Burleigh pokes when ere he comes here—and she takes a likin’ to me, and soon enough, we’re under the sheets.”

  “And she—what’s her name?’

  “Caterina.”

  “Caterina was going to tell Burleigh?”

  “Aye, she was. Informs me herself, never such a fuck she’s had in all her life, but it wasn’t her pleasure.”

  “To fuck you?” Nina asks.

  “Aye.”

  “So, you had your way with her?”

  “Let’s not be babes, duchess. Sometimes the lasses will say they’re not so inclined, even as you can all but see the smoke risin’ from their cunt.” He leans forward. “Marry, I’ve been thinkin,’ you might be that breed o’ cow yourself.”

  Nina is not for discussing the point. She only asks, “So what happened…with Caterina?”

  “What could I do but silence the wench?” Ollie stares at his hands. Nina gets the picture. Cecil Wainwright, alias Oliver Goode, emanating from Constance Rawlings, is a murderous, brutal creature, all too quick to react with savage fury. Nina shivers. Ollie looks around, then cries to her, “I cannot keep here! Burleigh will have ’em searching everywhere for me.”

  “Where can you go?” Nina asks. “I’ll join you there.”

  “Will you now?”

  “’Course I will, Ollie.”

  He thinks. “Well, I’m told the Spanish Netherlands isn’t far distant.”

  Nina has never heard of that—let alone knows where it might be. The Spanish Netherlands? Isn’t Amsterdam in the one-and-only Netherlands? So, “Where would that be?”

  “South o’ here, only two-days ride. They called it Flanders ’fore the bloody Spanish papist bastards took it over.”

  “So, I’ll meet you there,” Nina sighs, adding that certain come-hither tone that he appreciates. Expects.

  “Pray, look for me at the docks. I’ll be after a ship to sign onto. Maybe Virginia this time.” A wink. “Maybe us together.”

  “Maybe,” Nina coos, holding the candle up again, asking him to focus, even as Ollie keeps turning his head this way and that—still wary that Burleigh must be closing in on him.

  Finally now, he stares straight into the candle. “Where, Ollie?” Nina murmurs. “Where in the Spanish Netherlands will you fi
nd a ship?”

  “Antwerp, duchess. Antwerp, I’m told, is the city I want.”

  Of course, but somehow Nina already knew that, didn’t she? Wherever these Spanish Netherlands, she was positive that there would be Rubens’s city, there would be Antwerp. At last, Ollie will be in Antwerp, and she—Nina—will be with him, because by now she is almost as hypnotized as he…well, as Constance is.

  Yes, yes. But whoever Constance may be now, wherever, Ollie was the name Bucky screeched. And this Ollie is a cold-blooded killer. Two women murdered by his bare hands. Minimum. And, of course, now Nina can visualize it: Bucky down on his knees, screaming Ollie’s name. Pleading. It must be. Yes, Bucky is pleading with Ollie. As his hands are poised about his neck. Please don’t strangle me. No please…

  And she could suddenly remember what Hugh had said, “It’s documented that an inordinate number of people who claim to recall past life remember dying violently.”

  But the pleading does no good, and the fingers splay out, tighten. Just as with Bess, as with Caterina. Then: “…owwllllleeeeeee…” And silence.

  Dead silence.

  But wait, Nina thinks. If Constance somehow was Ollie, a man, then of course, Bucky must have been… The vision is so clear that Nina throws one hand up over her eyes, and—

  “What kept you, wench?” The voice. Ollie’s.

  That snaps her back. She puts her hands on her hips and glowers at him. “Oh, I’m a wench now, am I?”

  Ollie roars. It is amazing. He is beside himself, smiling. Smiling? No, beaming. “Ah, whether you be a whore or a queen, I care not,” he booms. “And you can keep those fine tits o’ yours wrapped in that fancy French armor, for I’ve found me a far better pair, I have.”

  “Really?” Nina has never seen Ollie like this before.

  He ducks his head, all but blushing. “I have met the woman I truly love.”

  “Was not Bess that?”

  Ollie holds up a hand to shush her. “Pray, you are sworn to silence.” Nina nods. “Besides, Bess was barely a woman. Margareta is all a woman. With your ken, duchess, but without your years.”

  Margareta. So—could she have been Bucky? Of course. If Constance had been this man, then Bucky must have… “How did you meet Margareta?” Nina asks.

  Ollie smiles broadly again. “’Tis quite amazing. Upon my arrival here that other forenoon, e’en at this very spot where now we discourse, ’twas only my purpose to find a vessel and sail off. A carvel would be to my liking, but I would settle for a fair boyer—whatever, only to be gone. Then, what do I discover, but the bloody Dutch have blockaded the river up by the North Sea. Once, I am advised, this is a port would put Amsterdam in its shadow, but now there’s only small barges can ply the river. A friend I have met asks that I journey with him down the coast to a place they call Dunkirk, where a fellow of my strength and disposition may well be taken onto one of the privateering ships there. This strikes me as a pretty game, but just then, unawares, someone approaches me.”

  “Margareta?”

  Ollie scowls at Nina. “If it is my tale you seek, duchess, you hold your tongue. Pray no, ’tis a gentleman, most well attired, and though weak in the king’s English, he identifies himself as an assistant in the studio of one Peter Paul Rubens.”

  Nina only nods. It is as if she knows what will transpire before Ollie reports it.

  She inquires, “Did you know of this Rubens?”

  Ollie shakes his head. “Upon my oath, I had no acquaintance with his acclaim. Indeed, at first, I hold some suspicion, for the gentleman who has approached me—Cornelis, by name—treads with light feet, and I have been bothered by those bugger boys before.” Ollie slams his fist into his palm to indicate how he has handled that situation. “But I listened to him best I could, whereon he informed me that Rubens is at work upon a painting that includes a personage who might be a match for my own fine figure.” Ollie flexes to underscore the point. “He then quotes me a most handsome sum, and I agree to consider his proposition.”

  “So you went with Cornelis to Rubens’s house?”

  Ollie snorts. “House? Such a house as his makes cottages of castles I have seen in England. It is upon The Meir, the grandest square in all of Antwerp, but among so many tall trees that when you find yourself within, you might as well be in the midst of any countryside. Why, peacocks wander the gardens no less than chickens or ducks of the better manor I have known. And I am advised that this house of his is of a style that would make a Genovese sailor feel as if he had ne’er e’en left home. Withal, once within, I am straightaway ushered to meet this Rubens. And instantly, I am put more at my ease, for it is obvious he is no honey boy, but a full man, no less than I. Why, e’en at so many years—and he must be fifty if he’s a day—he has fathered three babes with a new wife. Moreover, he speaks as good an English as that which I have heard in any part o’ Norfolk.”

  “What language do they speak here?” Nina asks.

  “Zounds, you’re in Antwerp, and you don’t know?”

  “But I’ve just arrived.”

  “Why it is Vlaamach they speak,” Ollie says, pronouncing “Flemish” as the natives do, because he has never heard the word in English.

  “Do you speak any Vlaamach?” Nina asks, trying her best to duplicate his pronunciation.

  “A word here and there. ’Tis the same tongue as Amsterdam. Then he grins, delighted. And, almost boyishly, savoring the words, “Mijn schoun Margareta.” Nina shrugs. Ollie sighs. “My beautiful Margareta.”

  “And does she love you too?”

  “Ja, ja, ja!”

  “And where did you meet your beautiful Margareta?”

  “At Rubenshuis. Upon the top floor, in the master’s private studio.”

  “Is Margareta in the same painting as you?”

  Ollie chuckles. “No, no. Margareta is in another painting. You’ll be hard put to guess who Mr. Rubens makes of her.”

  “Try my imagination.”

  Instead, Ollie teases her some. “More funny yet, I am in the painting with Rubens’s wife. Her name is Helena.” Ollie leans closer, in conspiracy. “The master is an old fart, and struggling mighty with the gout, but his Helena is younger e’en than I. And God’s wounds, she poses naked as a babe. I’ve seen whores with more shame.”

  “Really? You’ve seen Mrs. Rubens naked?”

  He leans back. “Well, not herself now. Mr. Rubens takes her up to that private studio of his upon the highest floor, and alone there, bids her unrobe, and then, what he calls, ‘sketches’ her. But then he takes the sketches and paints o’er top them—and ’tis there I’ve seen Helena as bare as the nose upon your face.”

  “So, you’ve never truly seen the lady herself without her clothes or decency?”

  Ollie guffaws. “You would not say that were you, as I, to see a painting of her. Marry, Mr. Rubens can paint tits—and other divers parts of the body—to a finer aspect than God in his heaven ever made them. I would wager that I can see Helena better upon that canvas than Rubens does himself when he pokes her abed.”

  “So, Ollie, is he painting you naked, too?”

  He laughs. “No. The master’s put me in some manner of sheet. Bright orange it is, and wraps round me.”

  “Do you know the name of the painting?”

  “To be sure. Helena and I are portraying Venus and Adonis—”

  “Adonis?”

  “Aye, I’d never heard tell of him, but the moment Mr. Rubens lays eyes upon me, he screams out to Cornelis in Vlaamach. When I ask the great gentleman to speak in my own tongue, he says, ‘Why, Englishman, I have just exclaimed to Cornelis that he has found me my Adonis. Not only are you, in visage, the match for any man, but truly, I have not chanced upon such a figure as yours since I used a bald-headed brute named Adriaen in The Ascent to the Cross.”

>   “Have you seen that painting?”

  “No, ’tis in the cathedral with much of the master’s work. But Margareta promises to take me there.”

  “But she has not yet?”

  Ollie suddenly looks away. “I best reveal no more to the likes o’ you.”

  “But you know I can keep a secret. Whatever you tell me will ne’er escape my lips.” (Ne’er, thinks Nina; now I have actually said “ne’er.”)

  Anyway, he does accept her word, if grudgingly. “True enough, you do hold a confidence as well as—more’s the pity—your modesty.”

  “Why, Ollie, how could I be immodest before you if you have given your heart to Margareta?”

  He roars at that. “Hold still, duchess. Not yet am I married, and no man unwed—and precious few wed—must restrict himself to a single piece. If it’s yet your pleasure to taste a little of this treat”—Ollie merely points to his crotch this time—“you need but follow me toward Rubenshuis, thence round the corner, to Hopland to a house there that the master also owns—where I reside alone in the grandest circumstance.”

  “You have your own house?”

  “Just so. For when I comprehended how taken Mr. Rubens was by my aspect, I drove a hard bargain. I feigned but little interest in his enterprise, maintaining that I would instead prefer to strike out for Dunkirk, there to seek a ship of prey to sign onto. Whereupon, he not only raised the original offer, but he volunteered to provide me with lodging in this other house he owned—and to stock the larder there, as well—for as long as my services were required to be his Adonis.”

  “So you have privacy when Margareta joins you?”

  “And ’tis a privacy sorely required, too, for my sweet must leave a husband by her own hearth.”