The Taker-Taker 1

by Alma Katsu

  The approaching snows were pressing my departure, however. I sensed that if I remained in St. Andrew for the winter, something terrible would happen. Adair, enraged that I’d defied him, might descend on the town with his hellhounds, and who knew what the blackhearted fiend might do to the innocents of St. Andrew, cut off from the rest of the world? I thought of the stories Alejandro and Dona had told me about Adair’s barbarian past, leading raids on villages and slaughtering inhabitants who resisted. I thought of the maidens he’d raped and the way he’d drugged me and used me for amusement. Moving within Boston society ensured that Adair’s brutal tendencies remained somewhat in check; there was no telling what would happen in an isolated, snowbound town. And I’d be the one responsible for bringing this plague on my neighbors.

  I was mulling over my predicament one evening at Daughtery’s, hoping to run into the tenderhearted axman I’d met early in my visit, when Jonathan walked in. I’d seen that expression on his face before: he had not come into Daughtery’s restless for companionship. He was flush with contentment. He’d come from an assignation.

  He started at the sight of me, but, having seen me, could hardly leave without acknowledging my presence. He took the stool across the lone table, his back to the fire. “Lanny, what are you doing here? It’s hardly the place for a lady to frequent on her own.”

  “Oh, but I’m not a lady, am I?” I said, bitingly, though I regretted my bitterness immediately. “Where else can I go? I can hardly drink in the company of my mother and brother; I can’t abide their disapproving faces. You, at least, can always go back to your big house for a nightcap. Better quality of drink, at any rate. And anyway—shouldn’t you be home at this hour with your wife? You’ve been up to something this evening, I can smell it on you.”

  “Considering your position, I wouldn’t think you’d be so quick to judge me,” he said. “All right—I’ll tell you the truth since you demand it from me. I have been with another woman. Someone I was seeing before you returned so unexpectedly. I, too, have a mistress. Anna Kolsted.”

  “Anna Kolsted is a married woman.”

  He shrugged.

  I quivered with fury. “So you haven’t ended your affair with her, even after the pretty speech you gave me the other day?”

  “I—I couldn’t leave her as abruptly as that without explaining what had happened.”

  “And will you explain that you’ve had a moral epiphany? That you’ve resolved not to see her again?” I demanded, as though I had any right to.

  He remained silent.

  “Do you never learn, Jonathan? This cannot end well,” I said icily.

  Jonathan pressed his mouth into a frown, long-simmering resentment bubbling up. “That seems to be what you always tell me, isn’t it?” Sophia’s name hung in the air between us, unspoken.

  “It will end the same. She’ll fall in love with you and want you for herself.” Fear and sorrow rose up in me as it had the day I’d found Sophia in the river. I wouldn’t have thought, after everything I’d been through, that her vision still had the power to affect me—maybe it did because I sometimes wondered if I’d have done well to follow her example. “It’s inevitable, Jonathan. Everyone who knows you wants to own you.”

  “Do you speak from experience?”

  His sharpness silenced me for a second, but I couldn’t leave it be. I said sarcastically, “Those who have you tend to rue their good fortune. Perhaps you should ask your wife about that. Have you thought how your affair with Mrs. Kolsted will affect Evangeline should she find out?”

  Anger overtook Jonathan quickly, like a storm front. He checked over his shoulder to make certain Daughtery was engaged and no one was listening, then gripped my upper arm and drew me close. “For Christ’s sake, Lanny, have pity on me. I’m married to a child. When I took her to our conjugal bed, she cried afterward. Cried. She is frightened of my mother and dumbstruck around my sisters. I have no need for a child, Lanny. I need a woman.”

  I pried my arm out of his grip. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “I wish to God I’d never given in to my father and married her. He wanted an heir, that’s all he cared about. Saw a young girl with many breeding years ahead of her and made a deal with old McDougal, as though she was a broodmare.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You’ve no idea of the life I must live now, Lanny. No one to run the business but me. Benjamin is still as helpless as a four-year-old. My sisters are ninnies. And when my father died, well … all his worries were foisted onto my shoulders. This town depends on my family’s fortunes. Do you know how many settlers bought their land with loans secured by my father? One harsh winter, or if they’ve no talent for farming, and they will default on their obligations. I can foreclose, but what use have I for another failing farm? So you’ll forgive me, I pray, for taking a mistress and having some small measure of escape from all my responsibilities.”

  I cast my eyes down.

  He continued, wild eyed. “You can’t imagine how tempting your offers have been. I’d give up everything to be free of my obligations! But I cannot, and I think you understand why. Not only would my family be lost, but the town, too, would fail. Lives would be ruined. You may have caught me in a moment of weakness when you came back, Lanny, but the past few years have taught me hard lessons. I cannot be so selfish.”

  Had he forgotten that he’d once told me he wanted to leave them all behind, his family and his fortune, for me? That he once wished his world was just he and I? A more levelheaded woman would have been happy to see that Jonathan had accepted his responsibilities, and was shouldering obligations that might break a weaker man. I cannot say I was happy or proud.

  But I understood. I loved the town, in my way, and had no desire to see it falter. Even if my own family was already in difficulty, even if the townspeople had treated me shabbily and gossiped behind my back, I couldn’t take away the linchpin holding the town together. I sat opposite Jonathan, grim and sympathetic to the plight he’d just shared with me, yet inside, panic bloomed from my feet to my head. I was going to fail Adair. What in the world would I do?

  We drank our brew in dismay. It seemed clear enough that I’d have to give up on Jonathan and needed to concentrate on my own plight: what to do next? Where could I go that Adair wouldn’t be able to track me down? I had no desire to reenact the excruciating torture I’d already been subjected to.

  We paid for our drink and went out to the path, each of us silent with our own thoughts. The night was again cold, the sky clear and bright from the moon and stars, thin clouds slicing through the silver light.

  Jonathan put a hand on my arm. “Forgive my outburst and forget my troubles. You have every right to despise me for what I just said. The last thing I want is for you to take on my burdens. My horse is in Daughtery’s barn. Let me give you a ride home.” But before I could tell him it was unnecessary and that I preferred to be left with my thoughts, we were interrupted by the crunch of snow at the top of the path.

  It was late and near freezing, unlikely for anyone to be about. “Who’s there?” I called to a figure in the shadows. Edward Kolsted stepped into a sliver of moonlight, a flintlock in his hands.

  “Be on your way, Miss McIlvrae. I’ve no quarrel with you.” Kolsted was a rough young man from one of the poorer families in town and posed no competition to Jonathan for anyone’s affections. His long face had been disfigured by smallpox, as many had been in youth, and for a young man, his brown hair was already thinning, his teeth falling out. He leveled the rifle at Jonathan’s chest.

  “Don’t be stupid, Edward. There are witnesses: Lanny and the men inside Daughtery’s … unless you plan to kill them, too,” Jonathan said to his would-be murderer.

  “I don’t care. You’ve ruined my Anna and made a laughingstock of me. I will be proud to be known as having avenged myself against you.” He lifted the rifle higher. A complete dread chill seized me. “Look at you, you fancy peacock,” Edward sneered down his rifle at Jonathan, who, to his
credit, stood his ground. “Do you think the town will mourn when you’re dead? We’ll not, sir. We despise you, the men of this town. Do you think we don’t know what you’ve been up to, bewitching our wives, putting them under your spell? You took up with Anna for a bit of fun, and in the bargain stole the most precious thing I had. You’re the very devil, you are, and this town would be better rid of you.” Edward’s voice climbed, high and defensive, but regardless of his words, I felt sure that Kolsted would not go through with his threat. He meant to frighten Jonathan, to humiliate him and make him beg for forgiveness, and that would give the cuckold a measure of dignity. But he didn’t have the resolve to kill his rival.

  “Is that what you want of me, to be a devil? That would suit your purpose, exonerate you of blame.” Jonathan lowered his arms. “But the truth is, your wife is an unhappy woman, and this has little to do with me and much to do with you.”

  “Liar!” Kolsted shouted.

  Jonathan took a step toward his assailant and my gut twisted, unsure if he had a death wish or if he couldn’t let Kolsted hide from the truth. Perhaps he felt he owed it to his lover. Perhaps our argument in Daughtery’s had brought about some resolution. But his angry countenance was misleading and Kolsted might be convinced that Jonathan was enraged because he loved Anna. “If your wife were happy, she wouldn’t seek my company. She—”

  Kolsted’s old rifle fired, a blue-white burst of flame at the muzzle, which I caught from the corner of my eye. It went too fast: a crack like thunder, a flash like lightning, and Jonathan staggered backward, then dropped to the ground. Kolsted’s face contorted, captured in the moonlight for an instant. “I’ve shot him,” he muttered, as though reassuring himself. “I’ve shot Jonathan St. Andrew.”

  I dropped to my knees in the half-frozen mud, pulling Jonathan onto my lap. His clothing was already soaked through with blood, all the way to his greatcoat. It was a deep wound and serious. I wrapped my arms around Jonathan and looked balefully at Kolsted. “If I had a rifle, I would shoot you where you stand. Get out of my sight.”

  “Is he dead?” Kolsted craned his neck but wasn’t brave enough to walk up to the man he had shot.

  “They’ll be out in a second, and if they find you here they’ll lock you up forthwith,” I warned, hissing through my teeth. I wanted him to flee: stirring could be heard within Daughtery’s and someone would be out shortly to see who had fired the shot. I had to conceal Jonathan before we were discovered.

  I didn’t have to prompt Kolsted twice; whether it was from fright or sudden remorse, or because he wasn’t ready to be taken into custody, Jonathan’s assailant drew back like a spooked horse and ran. Locking my arms around Jonathan’s chest, I pulled him into Daughtery’s barn. I peeled back his greatcoat, then his frock coat, until I found the wound in his chest, blood spilling out from a hole near where his heart should be.

  “Lanny,” he wheezed, searching for my hand.

  “Right here, Jonathan. Be still.”

  He wheezed again and coughed. There was no help to be had, judging from the distance of the shot and the location of the wound. I recognized the expression on his face: it was the strained look of the dying. He fell into unconsciousness, sinking in my arms.

  Voices floated in from the other side of the worm-eaten boards, men from Daughtery’s out on the path. Finding no one, they drifted away.

  I looked down on Jonathan’s beautiful face. His body, still warm, weighed heavily in my lap. My heart clamored in panic. Keep him alive. Keep him with me at all costs. I hugged him tighter. I couldn’t let him die. And there was only one way to save him.

  I eased his body to the ground, spread open his coat and waistcoat. Thank God he was unconscious; frightened as I was, I’d never have been able to do the cursed deed otherwise. Would it even work? Perhaps I remembered it wrong or there were special words I needed to recite to make such potent magic work. I had no time for second guessing, however.

  I fumbled at the hem of my bodice, searching for the vial. Once I’d located the tiny silver vial by feel, I ripped out the stitches and pulled it from its hiding place. My hands shook as I pulled the stopper from the vial and separated Jonathan’s lips. There was only a drop in there, less than a bead of sweat. I prayed it was enough.

  “Don’t leave me, Jonathan. I cannot live without you,” I whispered in his ear, the only thing I could think to say. But then Alejandro’s words came to me, the thing he’d told me that day I’d been transformed—I prayed it would not be too late. “By my hand and intent,” I said, feeling foolish even as I spoke, knowing I had no power over anything, not heaven, hell, or earth.

  I knelt in the straw, Jonathan propped in my lap, and brushed his hair off his forehead, waiting for a sign. All I remembered from the ordeal was the sensation of falling and a fever sweeping through my body like a fire, then waking much later in the dark.

  I hugged Jonathan to me again. He’d stopped breathing and was growing colder. I pulled his coat around him, wondering if I could get him all the way to my family’s farm without being noticed. It seemed unlikely, but there was nowhere else to take him, and someone would search Daughtery’s barn sooner or later.

  I saddled Jonathan’s horse, amazed to find I was afraid of the devil stallion no more. With strength I didn’t know I had, born of necessity, I threw Jonathan over the horse’s withers, swung into the saddle, and sprang out of the open barn doors, streaking through the village. More than one villager would later claim to have seen Jonathan St. Andrew ride out of town that night, throwing theories about his disappearance into disarray, no doubt.

  When we reached my family’s farm, Jonathan’s body cradled in my lap, I went straight to the barn and woke the hired driver. We had to leave St. Andrew that night; I couldn’t risk waiting until morning, when Jonathan’s family would come looking for him. I told the driver to hitch the horses quickly; we were heading out immediately. When he protested that it was too dark to travel, I told him the moonlight was strong enough to light his way, then added, “I’m paying your wages, so you listen to me. You’ve fifteen minutes to harness those horses.” As for my trunk of clothing and other things, they’d all be left behind. I couldn’t risk waking my family by returning to the cabin. My only thoughts at that moment were of spiriting Jonathan out of town.

  As the coach rattled down the snow-crusted road, I peeked out the curtained window to see if anyone in the house had heard us, but no one stirred. I imagined them waking to find me gone, wondering—heartbroken—why I would choose to leave this way, my departure as mysterious as my years of silence. I was doing a great injustice to my mother’s and sisters’ kind hearts, and it struck me to my core, but the truth was, it was easier to disappoint them than to lose Jonathan forever, or to disobey Adair.

  Jonathan lay on the bench across from me, wrapped in his coat and a fur lap robe, my cloak balled into a pillow, his head propped at an awkward angle. He made no movement, there was no rise and fall of his chest with breath, nothing. His skin was pale as ice in the moonlight. I kept my eyes trained on his face, waiting for the first sign of life, but he was so still I began to wonder if I had failed.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  We put miles between us and the village in the hours before dawn, the carriage rattling down the rough and lonesome forest trail as I sat vigil over Jonathan. It could have been a funeral trap, with me acting the widow accompanying her husband’s body on the journey to his final resting place.

  The sun had been out for a while by the time Jonathan stirred. By then, I’d almost come to the conclusion that he was not coming back; I’d sat trembling and sweating for hours, on the verge of vomiting, hating myself. The first sign of life was a twitch of his right cheek, then a flutter of an eyelash. As he was still white as a corpse, I doubted my eyes for a moment, until I heard the low moan, saw his lips part, and then both eyes open.

  “Where are we?” he asked in a barely audible rasp.

  “In a carriage. Lie still. You’ll feel better in a
bit.”

  “A carriage? Where are we going?”

  “To Boston.” I didn’t know what else to tell him.

  “Boston! What happened? Did I”—his mind must have gone to the last thing he could remember, the two of us at Daughtery’s—“did I lose a wager? Was I drunk, to agree to go with you—”

  “There was no agreement about it,” I said, kneeling next to him to tuck the robe around him more tightly. “We are going because we must. You can no longer stay in St. Andrew.”

  “What are you talking about, Lanny?” Jonathan was vexed and tried to push me away, though he was so weak he couldn’t make me budge. I felt something unpleasant under my knee, like a sharp pebble; reaching down, my fingers found a shot of lead.

  The shot from Kolsted’s flintlock.

  I held it up for Jonathan to see. “Do you recognize this?”

  He tried hard to focus on the small dark form in my hand. I watched as the memory caught up to him, and he recalled the argument on the footpath and the flash of powder that had ended his life.

  “I was shot,” he said, his chest heaving up and down. His hand went to his pectoral, the torn layers of shirt and waistcoat, stiff with dried blood. He felt his flesh under the clothing, but it was whole.

  “No wound,” Jonathan said with relief. “Kolsted must have missed.”

  “How could that be? You see the blood, the tears in your clothes. Kolsted didn’t miss you, Jonathan. He shot you in the heart and killed you.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re not making sense. I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not something that can be understood,” I replied, taking his hand. “It’s a miracle.”

  I tried to explain it all, though God knows I understood precious little myself. I told him my story and Adair’s story. I showed him the tiny vial, now empty, and let him sniff its last foul vapors. He listened, the whole time observing me as though I was a madwoman.