The Taker-Taker 1

by Alma Katsu

  His warning rattled and surprised me; it was not something I’d expected from him. But I said nothing, waiting for him to continue.

  “I have a question for you and I hope you’ll be honest with me. What does a girl like you see in Adair? I have looked into your heart and seen it to be wild and adventurous. He’s introduced you to the world of carnal pleasures and you’ve embraced it as only a child raised by the puritanical will do—to his delight, I might add. Perhaps your wildness is only foolishness, Lanore—have you considered this? Give your lovely body to Adair, if that is your wish, but why would you give your heart over to a man who will only abuse it? He is unworthy of your loyalty, of your love. You are being reckless with your heart, Lanore. I think you are a little too innocent to consort with the likes of him. Forgive me for speaking my mind, but it is for your own good.”

  I was flabbergasted by his words. Who was he to call me foolish; I was trapped like the rest of them, wasn’t I, forced to appease a tyrannical master in order to survive. No, at the time I saw myself as doing the best I could in a terrible situation. I see it differently now, of course; I know I was reckless and unable to speak the truth to myself. I should have been grateful that Jude took the great risk of warning me in Adair’s own house, but I was too suspicious to trust him and instead, I tried to bluff him into thinking I knew what I was doing. “Well, I thank you for your advice—I suppose—but you’ll forgive me if I say I must decide what is to be done for myself.”

  “Oh, but it’s not just for yourself, is it?” he asked. “You’re about to bring your Jonathan into it, too, the man for whom you profess such great love. The eagerness with which you agreed to Adair’s proposal makes me wonder if perhaps he wasn’t right. You want to do as Adair instructs you, don’t you? You want your love to be caught in Adair’s trap because it means he will be trapped with you.”

  “Do you know what I think?” I nearly shouted, pushing the needlework off my lap as I sprang to my feet. “You’re not here to give me advice at all. You’re jealous. You wanted to bring Jonathan to Adair yourself but you couldn’t. I will succeed where you failed …” For all my vehemence, I didn’t know what I was talking about; I would certainly have more influence over Jonathan than Jude, but for what purpose? Jude knew, but I didn’t.

  He shook his head and backed away a step. “I make sure that the people I bring to Adair’s attention are deserving in their way. And they go to him of their own free will. What’s more, I would never give him someone I claimed to love. Never.”

  I should have asked him what he meant; but like many a young person, I thought it better to bluff than to reveal that I didn’t know what I was doing. And I didn’t trust Jude; he was showing me a completely different face and I didn’t know what to make of it. Was he hoping to trap me in a moment of disloyalty to Adair, a master he had served far longer than he had known me? Perhaps that was his role among Adair’s pack, to be the infiltrator, the informant.

  I forced a glower on my face but was trembling, unnerved. Jude had pushed me to the edge of composure. “I’ve heard enough from you. Leave now before I go to Adair with your deceit.”

  He drew back in surprise, but only momentarily, then let his shoulders sink. He bowed again in a mock show of respect as he backed out of the room. “I see that I was entirely mistaken about you, Lanore. You’re far from reckless with your heart … You know exactly what you are doing, don’t you? I hope you’ve made peace with God for what you are about to do.”

  I tried to calm my breathing and my racing heart, and tell myself that not one of his words was true. “Get out,” I repeated, taking a step toward him as though I could drive him out of the house. “And I hope to never see you again.”

  “Alas, that is not our fate, I fear. The world is a small place, given an eternity, as you will see. Whether you or I wish it or not, our paths will cross again,” he said as he swept out of the room.

  THIRTY

  Preparations for the trip began immediately, my passage booked on a cargo ship departing for Camden in four days. Dona, only too happy to see me go, helped me choose a sturdy pair of traveling trunks from among the dozens and dozens that had made the trip from Europe. In one we put the best of my clothing and in the other, gifts for my family: a bolt of silk from China; a set of collar and cuffs made of Belgian lace, ready to append to a dress; a gold necklace set with faintly pink opals. Adair insisted I take enticements for Jonathan, to show him what delights were available outside the Great North Woods. I explained that my friend had only one weakness, women, and so Dona shuffled through the boxes and unearthed a deck of playing cards, painted with lewdly explicit figures in place of the usual king, queen, jack of the various suits, with the queen of hearts being depicted in an especially remarkable and daring pose; a book of pornographic verse (though Jonathan had never been one for literature; if any book could make a reader out of Jonathan, perhaps this one could); a figurine of carved jade, said to be acquired from the Far East, of a trio having a sexual adventure; and last, a velvet jewelry roll holding, instead of bracelets or rings, a set of carved dildos, one each made of wood, ivory, and ebony.

  I frowned at this last gift. “I’m not sure this would be to his taste,” I said, holding up the ebony one, the largest of the triplets, to study its detailing.

  “Not for his usage,” Dona said, taking the dildo from me and rolling it up with the others in the velvet casing. “You’ve made his proclivities plain enough. This could be used, say, to entertain his ladies, a novelty to whet their appetites and put them in a playful frame of mind. Would you like me to show you how they are used?” he asked, then cast me a sideways look, incredulous at my lack of sexual sophistication, thinking that perhaps I was not up to the job.

  While Dona riffled through the trunks, intent on finding the specific trinket he had in mind, I amused myself by digging through the chests, too, unwrapping mysterious bundles, marveling at the treasure stored within (a bejeweled music box shaped like an egg, a miniature mechanical bird that flapped metal wings and sang a tinny song). Eventually, in a dusty trunk shoved under the eaves in the farthest corner, I found an item that gave me goose bumps. A heavy seal, golden in color (but made of brass, certainly; an object that size made of gold would be worth a fortune), wrapped in velvet and stored in a deerskin pouch. The seal of the long-dead physic of which Adair had spoken? Had he held on to it as a keepsake?

  “There you go.” Dona’s voice called me back and I hastily closed the trunk and pushed it back to its resting place. Dona had wrapped Jonathan’s packages in a square of red silk and tied it with a gold cord. He’d wrapped the presents for my family in a length of blue fabric and some white ribbon. “Do not confuse these two packages.”

  I was perhaps lulled into complacency by these preparations. Adair was being so accommodating with the assortment of gifts, the luxurious travel arrangements. I began to wonder if I didn’t have a choice in this, after all, if this wasn’t my chance to get out of his grasp. Perhaps I could not trust myself to consider these mutinous possibilities in Adair’s presence, lying in bed next to him, but surely hundreds of miles away from him I would be safe. Distance must weaken the link between us.

  I was comforted by this thought, maybe even emboldened. I began to see this trip as my chance for escape; perhaps I could even convince Jonathan to leave his family and their expectations behind and escape with me.

  That is, until the following afternoon.

  Tilde and I were returning from the milliner’s with Tilde’s new hat when we saw the girl. She stood in an alley, peeking out at the traffic on the street. From what we could see of her, she was thin and gray, a tiny mouse dressed in limp rags. Tilde went over to the girl, causing her to scurry deeper into the alley.

  I was wondering why Tilde had gone after the girl in the first place and if I should join them when they started toward me. In the overcast light of the afternoon, I saw how pitiful the girl was. She looked like a rag that had been crumpled up and discarded, th
e knowledge that she was disposable stamped everlasting in her eyes.

  “This is Patience,” Tilde said, holding the girl’s small hand in hers. “She needs a place to stay, so I thought we would take her home with us. Give her a meal and a roof over her head for a few nights. You don’t imagine Adair will mind, do you?” Her smile was vulpine and triumphant, reminding me immediately of how she and the others had found me on the street a few months earlier. The effect was just as she’d intended. On seeing the alarm on my face, she gave me a sharp, warning look and I knew I was meant to say nothing.

  Tilde hailed a carriage and ushered the girl up the steps ahead of us. The little one sat on the edge of the bench, staring out the window with wide eyes, watching Boston spin by. Had I looked like this, so pitiful, nothing more than prey for a predator, practically begging to be eaten?

  “Where have you come from, Patience?” I asked.

  She regarded me cautiously. “I run away.”

  “From home?”

  She shook her head but offered no further explanation.

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.” She looked no older than twelve and seemed to know it, her eyes darting away from my inquisitive stare.

  Tilde took her to an upstairs room as soon as we arrived at the mansion. “I’ll send a servant with some water so you can wash up,” she said, causing the girl self-consciously to raise her hand to her dirty cheek. “I’ll have some food brought up, too. I’m going to find you something warmer to wear. Lanore, why don’t you come with me?”

  She went straight to my room and began rustling through my clothing without asking permission. “We gave all the small things to you, I think … Surely you have something that will fit the girl …”

  “I don’t understand …” I cut in front of Tilde and closed the door of the armoire. “Why did you bring her here? What do you intend to do with her?”

  Tilde smirked. “Don’t pretend to be stupid, Lanore. Of anyone, you should know—”

  “She’s still a child! You can’t hand her over to Adair as though she’s a toy.” Of all the things I’d known Adair to do, he’d never molested a child. I didn’t think I could stomach that.

  Tilde went over to a trunk. “She may be on the young side, but she’s no innocent. She told me she ran away from a workhouse where she’d been sent to have her baby. Fourteen and with a child. Honestly! We are doing her a favor,” she said as she plucked out a narrow set of stays with serviceable cotton laces.

  I slumped onto my bed.

  “Give these to her and clean her up a little.” Tilde shoved the clothing at me. “I’ll see about getting her something to eat.”

  Patience was standing at the window, looking down on the street when I returned to her room. She pushed dirty strands of brown hair from her eyes and looked covetously at the clothing in my arms.

  I held it out to her. “Go ahead, put these on.” I turned my back as she stripped. “So, Tilde tells me you are from a workhouse …”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “… where you had a baby. Tell me, what happened to your child?” My heart thumped in my throat; surely she didn’t run away and leave him behind.

  “They took him away from me,” she said defensively. “I never seen him, not since he was born.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s done and over with. I wish …” She stopped, perhaps thinking better of sharing too much with these suspect ladies who had swept her off the street. I knew how she felt. “The other lady tells me there might be a job for me here, as a kitchen girl maybe?”

  “Would you like that?”

  “But she says I have to meet the master of the house first, to see if he approves of me.” She searched my face for some sign that I was in agreement, that a strange trick wasn’t being played on her. Tilde was wrong; the girl was still very much an innocent. Like it or not, I heard Jude’s words ring in my ears: she was too innocent to consort with the likes of Adair. I could not let what had happened to me happen to her.

  I grabbed her hand. “Come with me. Don’t say a word or make a sound.”

  We ran down the back staircase, the servants’ stairs, which I knew Tilde never used, and through the kitchen to the back entrance. A handful of coins sat on the corner of the chopping block, waiting no doubt for a deliveryman. I scooped the money up and pressed it into Patience’s hand.

  “Go. Take this money and keep the clothing.”

  She looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “But where am I to go? They’ll punish me for sure if I go back to the workhouse, and I can’t go home to my family …”

  “Then take your punishment, or throw yourself on the mercy of your family. For all the wickedness you’ve already seen, there’s more that you have no knowledge of, Patience. Go! It’s for your own good,” I said as I pushed her out the door, then slammed it shut. The scullery girl entered at this moment and gave me a fishy eye, and I went back up the stairs to the shelter of my room.

  I paced wildly. If I’d thrown the girl out for her own safety, what excuse had I for living here? I knew that what I was doing with Adair was wrong, I knew this was a wicked place and yet … fear had held me in place. Just as fear now prodded me in the back; it was only a matter of minutes before Tilde realized her catch had been released, then she and Adair would be on me like a pair of lions. I began throwing clothing into a satchel as every nerve in my body told me to flee. Flee or face a terrible wrath.

  I was on the street and in a carriage without thinking, counting the money in my purse. Not much but enough to get me away from Boston. The carriage left me at the office for a coach service and I bought fare on the next passenger coach out of Boston, heading for New York City. “The coach don’t leave for another hour,” the clerk told me. “There’s a public house across the street where some people wait until it’s time,” he said helpfully.

  I sat with a pot of tea in front of me, my satchel at my feet, my first chance to catch my breath and think since I’d fled. Even with fear hammering in my heart, I also felt peculiarly optimistic. I was leaving Adair’s house. How many times had I wished to do it but lacked the courage? Now I’d done the deed in haste and there were no signs that I’d been discovered. Surely he’d not find me in an hour—Boston was a big place—and then I would be on the road, untraceable. I wrapped my hands around the white china pot for the warmth and allowed myself a tiny sigh of relief. Perhaps Adair’s house had all been an illusion, a bad dream that only seemed like reality while in the midst of it. Maybe he had no power to harm me out here. Maybe summoning the courage to run out the door was the only test. The question now, of course, was where to go and what to do with my life.

  Then, suddenly, I was aware of the presence of several people at my elbow. Adair, Alejandro, Tilde. Adair crouched next to me and whispered in my ear, “Come with me now, Lanore, and do not think of making a scene. There is jewelry, I’ll warrant, in your bag and if you call for help I will tell the authorities that you stole these valuables from my home. The others will swear to it.”

  His hand nearly crushed my elbow as he pulled me from my seat. I felt his anger radiate like heat from a fire. I couldn’t look at any of them in the carriage on the way to the house—I just sat withdrawn into myself, my mouth rusted shut with fear. We’d barely gotten inside the front door when he reached out and slapped me hard across my cheek, knocking me to the floor. Alejandro and Tilde swept hurriedly behind me and out of the hall, like birds lifting from a field ahead of a storm.

  From the fury in Adair’s eyes, he looked like he wanted to tear me to pieces. “What did you think you were doing? Where were you going?”

  No words came to me, but as it turned out, he wanted no answers. He only wanted to hit me, over and over, until I lay in a broken heap at his feet, looking at him through swollen eyes and a haze of blood. His anger hadn’t subsided; that was apparent as he nursed his knuckles and paced in front of me.

  “Is this how you repay my generosity, my
trust?” he roared. “I take you into my house, my family, clothe you, keep you safe … In some ways, you are like a child to me. So it is understandable, how disappointed you have made me. I warned you—you are mine, whether you wish it or not. You will never, ever leave me, not until I allow you to go.”

  Then he lifted me up and carried me to the back part of the house, the kitchen and servants’ domain though they’d all disappeared like mice. He carried me down a flight of stairs to the forlorn cellar, past crates of wine, sacks of flour, and unused furniture stored under drapes, through a narrow passage, its walls damp with chill, and finally to an old oak door, heavily scarred. The light in the room was dim. Dona stood by the door in a robe, tightly cinched at his waist, and he hunched over as though sick. Something terrible was about to happen if Dona, who usually delighted in the misfortune of others, was afraid. In his hand dangled a spider’s web of leather straps, a harness, but unlike any horse’s harness I’d ever seen.

  Adair dropped me to the floor. “Get her ready,” he said to Dona, who began to peel off my sweaty, bloodied clothing. Behind him, Adair started undressing. Once I was naked, Dona began strapping the harness to me. It was a design of nightmares and began to contort my body in an unnatural position, a pose of utmost vulnerability. It bound my arms behind my back and pulled my head almost to the point of breaking from my neck. Dona let out a whimper as he notched up the straps, but he did not make them any looser. Adair towered over me, his manner menacing and his intent clear.

  “The time has come to teach you obedience. I’d hoped, for your sake, it wouldn’t be necessary. It seemed that you were destined to be different—” He stopped, catching himself. “Everyone must be punished once, so they know what will happen to them if they try again. I told you you’d never leave me and yet you tried to run away. You’ll never try to run away again.” Adair wove his fingers into my hair and drew his face close to mine. “And remember this while you are back in your village with your family and with your Jonathan—there is nowhere you can go that I can’t find you. You can never escape me.”