Jennifer Horseman

by GnomeWonderland

  Perfect . . . perfect. "Just to be certain of it, here," her voice dropped to a whisper, as she pulled a ring from her finger and handed it to Juliet.

  Juliet stared in disbelief at the ring. Rubies and diamonds formed a delicate flower set in platinum. Though she knew nothing of jewels, she was certain the ring was worth a fortune. She looked at Clarissa with confusion.

  "I want you to have this as a token of our wills now joined against his. It shall protect you."

  The unexpected gift left Juliet speechless for a moment. "Oh, Clarissa ... I can't-"

  "You must! Cousin, cousin, do you remember the handkerchiefs you gave for Michaelmas last year? I never told you how much they meant to me. I cherish them as a token of a friendship that never had a chance because of ... him. We can't let him ruin us anymore. Please, give me a chance, I want nothing more. Wear my ring always," she purposely put it on Juliet's middle finger, the mangled one. "It shall be a symbol of a new beginning for us. It will protect you ever more from him."

  Juliet would never forget how, as she stared at the lovely ring, a tingling ran from her finger up her arm, racing in a chill down her back, a feeling that it wasn't hers and never would be, that she had no right to wear it. She pushed the feeling away, moved beyond words by Clarissa's gesture of friendship.

  "Promise me you'll wear it always?" Juliet nodded slowly. Clarissa's forced smile could not begin to overcome the fear in her eyes as she rose to leave. She hesitated with one last word before shutting the small attic door behind her, "I will be praying."

  Juliet watched her retreat, not knowing for whom Clarissa would be praying but sensing it wasn't for her. She stared at the note. Fear surrounded her, alone with the faintest trace of perfume, this strange ring, and the note in her hand. As if the hot stinging pain that made her tremble was only a warning of what lay ahead. As she spent many lonely hours trying to sleep, her desperation grew, and from it she knew she had to ask Tomas to forsake his father's rules and marry her at once. Tomorrow might be too late.

  Just before the eighth bell each morning, a carriage left Fairwoods Manor to travel along the well-kept road leading to the Bristol shipyard and docks. It was the habit of Master Stoddard to make the trip every day except the sabbath, and Garrett and his men knew all of Stoddard's habits. A thick grey mist covered the land and sea, serving as a convenient shield for the ten armed and mounted men waiting for the imminent arrival of the carriage, but no shield was necessary, for an entire platoon of red coats could not stop Garrett from his revenge.

  Garrett's men stood out along the roadside in plain view of passersby. Not that an English military presence would interfere. Bristol's small garrison had orders from the highest authority, orders to refrain from aiding its most prominent citizen on this day, orders to leave twelve of the finest mounts on Port Street and to take the rest of the day on leave. Orders no one objected to.

  A meadow opened before them, spreading out like an enormous green blanket. A thin forest of birch and pine trees lined the road. A small farm sat in the distance, complete with cows and plow horses roaming free in the field. The idyllic scene contrasted sharply with the tension gripping the mounted men, men who were as accustomed to danger as most others were to monotony, and while Leif eagerly filled his lungs with the fragrant morning air, he imagined it held the taste of the blood that would be spilt this day.

  Leif watched Garrett in silence. Garrett looked like the mad and dangerous man he had become: the dark, unbound hair and a two-weeks growth of beard added harsh color to his face, while he wore only sailing breeches, a vest, and thick black boots. He wore no weapons save for a dagger in his boot. Tension constricted his heavily muscled frame. Normally, Garrett enjoyed drink little, far less than most men, but since the early morning hours he had been drinking. Though he showed no outward sign, he walked on a thin line of oblivion, a necessary condition in order to do what he must this day. More than anywhere, the madness revealed itself in his eyes, as if he saw his brother everywhere, a vision he must extirpate. Where humor and passion normally marked a lusty thirst for life, the tension now betrayed a thirst for revenge, a thirst to be quenched this day.

  Leif knew well that revenge was a primitive, destructive force. Yet destruction was often necessary for life; Garrett needed his revenge as an eagle needs the wind. Not just to right the wrong or to murder the murderer, or even to merely blot out the horror of his brother's gruesome death, but to extirpate his feelings of rage and helplessness at not having been there to protect the much-loved boy who had so desperately needed him, a helplessness foreign to men and their actions, far more so to a man like Garrett.

  Garrett's dark gaze finally rested uneasily on the curve of the road in the distance where the carriage would first be seen. With heightened senses, an anticipation of this thing he must do, he heard the rumble of the carriage wheels in the far distance even before young Gayle and Heart, waiting up the road. Through the thick mist he made out the movement of those two men's horses. His hand rose in a signal to his men. "Remember, I want him alive at any cost."

  Stoddard looked up from his papers to gaze at Wilson, sitting across from him on the maroon velvet seats of the carriage, before replying to his concern. "There won't be any labor problems in Bristol anymore."

  Mr. Wilson stared with marked disbelief. "You ... my gracious lord, you've decided to meet the demands?"

  Amusement tinged the large man's response. "I do not concede to the 'demands,' as you call this pitiful attempt to blackmail me, of common laborers. No, I taxed the last of my reserves and purchased the two foodstuff and dry goods shops in Bristol. The owners were finally persuaded to accept my offer last night." He did not bother saying how it was done, past, "Suffice to say they were given no choice. I should have done it years ago. The stores have been stripped and left bare, a situation that shall remain until the workers concede and those five ships are finished."

  Mr. Wilson took in these changed conditions with a startled gasp. "But 'twill take months and—"

  "People will starve. Indeed, no one in Bristol will challenge my authority again and those rumors that I can't pay my debts will finally cease — " Stoddard stopped upon hearing horse's hooves coming alongside the carriage. He slid back the window siding to see a riderless horse galloping alongside the carriage. "What the devil!"

  Gayie agilely clung to the carriage footstool as Heart knocked out the driver, bringing the carriage to a slow halt. Gayle poked his pistol through the window as a greeting. Stoddard gasped, stopping just short of a scream as he stared at the barrel of a long ivory-handled pistol. He flew to the drawer across from him, but as his hand grasped the pistol there, the carriage stopped and Gayle leaned full inside. Stoddard felt the cold sting of the barrel of his pistol hard against his cheek. "There'll be no more killing for you now," Gayle said easily. "Take care man, I've a terrible twitch in my hand. Step out easy and meet your sorry fate."

  Stoddard emerged from the carriage to find himself looking at the barrels of eight pistols. Fear mixed evenly with rage, a potent mix vented at last in a demand, the last he would ever make: "What in God's name is the meaning of this?"

  The silence stretched endlessly as Garrett studied the man haunting his nightmares of these last two long weeks. He now understood Leif s quiet insistence that he disarm himself, for had he a pistol in his hands at this moment he would have fired point blank to his head, an action far too merciful for the evil he saw. Not a small evil either, but one far larger than he had anticipated. Arrogance, pride, and cruelty were written on the large man's features, shown in the harsh, deeply curved lines of his face, even in the light of his gaze; all of it validated the many tales of terror he had gathered since he learned of Edric's pitiful death.

  The name Stoddard had not been unfamiliar to him or to any other man remotely connected to shipbuilding, shipping, and the seas. For a hundred and fifty years the Stoddard family owned one of England's greatest shipbuilding enterprises, a declining enterprise owing to
the unlimited timber reserves of the Americas and the industriousness of her people. This decline Stoddard, and men like him, attempted to slow by lowering wages and increasing production, so that among far more damning things associated with Stoddard's name, everyone in shipping talked about the miserable working conditions among the laborers of Bristol.

  Stoddard's gaze narrowed as incredulity overrode his fear, and while he was not fool enough to go against pistols unarmed, his unquestioned authority remained fixed in his squared shoulders and firm stand. He looked at each man briefly, holding first Leif and then Garrett in his gaze. Garrett looked like a madman as he removed a cask and took a long draught before meeting this gaze with the frightening look of a rabid dog: there was rage, extreme agitation, and yet unmistakable pleasure. Stoddard cried, "Just who the devil do you think—" "Ah, the very devil indeed," Garrett said easily. Unlike his emotions, neither words nor thoughts nor actions were in anyway tempered by his drunkenness. "I am your worst nightmare come to life, a man whose reputation follows the name Black Garrett." He added as if commenting on the weather, "And I've come to kill you."

  "Black Garrett? Kill me?" Stoddard's gaze widened dramatically as he looked up at the unusually tall, handsome man who claimed the famous name. His mistake was to laugh derisively. "The same name used by every lawless criminal on sea and land. Forgive me if my credulity stretches to break—"

  Leif motioned once. A tall savage looking man brought his mount up and before another word could be uttered, he sent his booted foot hard into Stoddard's stomach. Wilson screamed from within the carriage as he saw his employer double over with an unnatural grunt, the pain of it seizing the whole of his body. Then Stoddard rose slowly, cautioned now.

  Garrett watched dispassionately. "The point, my doomed man, is that I forgive you nothing. Least of all the horror of the way you put my brother, Edric Van Ness, to his death. A horror I shall watch you endure before very long now."

  Nothing on earth could have saved Stoddard; likewise, Garrett could not imagine anything that could make his own pain worse. Nothing until he heard Stoddard gasp, still trying to recover from the force of the blow: "Edric Van Ness? I don't know who you're talking of, and if you think-"

  Garrett moved before any other man could comprehend the implication of those awful words. In a sweep of motion, he swung off his horse and pinned Stoddard to the carriage door, towering over him with the sudden evidence of his rage. He held him there with the strength of one large hand. "My God, man," his eyes blazed with unspeakable emotion, "tell me that isn't so! You know Edric's name! You know what heinous crime I speak of!"

  Yet when Garrett saw he didn't, it filled him with horror; his long fingers tightened around the fleshy neck. "Just how many men have you discovered your precious daughter laying with? How many men has she accused of rape? And how many men have you had castrated and gutted and left to bleed to death?"

  For the first time the terror of what was happening worked its way into Stoddard's face, as Garrett choked the air from the passage to his lungs. So crazed was he with his rage that Garrett had no awareness of the great strength he brought to bear on the man's neck, no awareness of Stod-dard's sputtering gasps as his face blanched first white then blue. Stoddard's life might have ended mercifully then and there but for Leif. The only man who could or would do it, Leif swung off his horse and put his huge arms around Garrett to pull him away. Stoddard dropped unconscious to the ground and Garrett stepped back, staring in shock. "Rouse him," he said, feeling a sick pleasure—he recognized it as such—at the sight. Gayle landed two hard slaps to his face and Stoddard opened his eyes to hear: "Aye, such a quick death will not be your fate. I will make you live just long enough to watch the great show I will make of your daughter's rape, then to feel your own castration." He turned away. His disgust with himself finally reached the depth of his soul. "Tie and sack him."

  Juliet sat perfectly still on the window seat, staring ahead without seeing the garden below. The familiar mist shaded the landscape grey, a vast grey emptiness like unto of hell, a place devoid of shades of light and color, devoid even of the finality of black. She tried to sweep the thought from her mind but her fear kept returning to it, a warning.

  The same fear filled her eyes, and while her tears never fell, they hung there like the grey mist outside the window, and this light in her eyes revealed the inner turmoil of her heart. Strange dreams had visited the few restless hours of her sleep, dreams filled with Tomas and their love, a horrible, desperate longing to reach him. A huge dark shadow of a man kept stopping her. Every time Tomas's outstretched arms reached to take her into the sanctity of his embrace the shadow came over her, the shadow of a man deaf to her cries, as he forced her still to the mercy of his will.

  She shook her head to shake the vision. The shadow must be her uncle. Clarissa's strange warning resulted in this new fear. Nervously she twisted a handkerchief as she waited. A note had been sent to her tutor. Her deception suited Mr. Grover perfectly. He did not mind keeping her cancellations a secret, for her uncle unknowingly paid him for the appointment. She waited, in the unlikely event that her uncle might have forgotten something and turned back for it, an unlikely event that had never happened before but that was still a remote possibility. After Clarissa's warning, she would take no chances.

  Oh Tomas, I love you now and forever. Not long now my love, not long . . .

  Wilson's fear had kept him frozen to the seat until the moment he realized they were not taking him too. Then he felt certain he would have heart failure and he grasped his chest with both hands as he peered cautiously out the window of the abandoned carriage. Ten men rode away in the distance, headed for the shipyard. A large bag dragged in the dirt behind the horses, and Wilson started trembling as if he felt each rock and bump in the road knife into his own body.

  Mercy in heavens, what should he do?

  Surely the garrison would stop them at the docks! He had no idea of the crime these terrifying devils accused Stoddard of, but good Lord, there were certainly enough injustices from that man to choose from. This might be God's will-

  Yet Clarissa! "You will live just long enough to watch the great show I make of your daughter's rape. . . ."Mercy, mercy! He must warn Clarissa, save her just in case the garrison was late!

  Wilson stumbled out of the carriage and began running . . .

  From the upstairs window, Clarissa watched in the distance where a small, hooded figure disappeared into the mist-shrouded forest. Her father's malevolent hand had touched every aspect of her life. She had never questioned the horrible things her father said about her strange cousin, a girl who lived among them but yet who didn't, cloistered in a barren attic room like a real-life Cinderella. "Juliet's mother was your sister, my aunt?" "Yes ... at least at one time in her life . . . but fallen, fallen so low. Worse than disreputable. She worked in a place I cannot name, for fear of offending the delicacy of your ears."

  "Her name, Father? What was her name?" "I will not torment myself by repeating it. Your cousin is the unhappy result, left to me with the unwanted burden of seeing her raised to a Christian life. But like her mother she is wicked, plain, and simple, a wickedness I refuse to let taint you. . . ."

  He concluded with the instruction to pretend her cousin was not there, to take great care never to develop an association with that shy and sad creature.

  That was before she understood the nature of her father's heinous love, before she felt the full extent of her jealousy for Juliet's existence. Jealousy because her father nurtured an unnatural hate for Juliet, and, simply, his hate was infinitely preferable to his love. How she had loathed those few hours of the year she had to be with the young girl. It was Juliet's eyes, so large and filled with emotion, eyes that spoke without words. Back then the accusations in her cousin's eyes were far more benign, and she effortlessly formed responses to Juliet's bewilderment as they sat in the carriage on the way to church: " Tis not our fault your mother was so wicked! Be glad, little girl, th
at my father's charity extends to feeding you!"

  Juliet always did seem so strange to her—Juliet's ease with the servants and the comfort she found with them, her extreme quiet, the way she crept around like a frightened mouse—though who really could blame her for that now? Father was more likely to beat her than to pass a word with her. Juliet's unusual intelligence, too, the girl's love for father's books, all seemed strange and somehow suspicious. Once Missy unintentionally made father laugh when he overheard her saying, "Witches are like that, so smart and clever and quiet... an' she's got the whole 'ouse in 'er spell, the way Bess and Stella think 'tis goodness shinin' in 'er eyes. . . ."

  Yes, Father had so influenced her that until she was old enough to dismiss the very possibility, she actually thought Juliet might truly be a witch. Later, when she understood the unnatural horror of her own life, she imagined those same sad eyes staring at her with a different accusation, the knowledge of the scene enacted in the dark dead of night ... "I know what thick, hellish pleasure he brings to you ... the trembling and the fever of his ungodly love, oh, I know. . . ." And with the accusation, she began to see Juliet's wretched existence was a thing to be envied.

  Juliet would be destroyed this day, and with her, her father. Dead, the word was a long-sought-for sanctuary. Her only regret was that he would never know just how much she hated him.

  She turned from the window. Her skirt swept the floor as she went to a silk-lined drawer of her desk. She opened the bottom drawer and removed a small plain package. Inside were two lace handkerchiefs, embroidered in lovely colors: gold, red, orange, blues, purples, and greens, a pretty rainbow made into an exotic jungle scene.