While I readily condemn him for his cowardice, I am not entirely without sympathy. My father was a tall man, broad in the shoulders and thick in the arms. He wore his hair natural and long and wild, and while he had never been what might be called handsome—I was fortunate enough to take my looks from my mother—the recent reordering of his face, courtesy of my mason’s hammer, had rendered him something of a grotesque. Beneath the scruff of his negligent beard, his face was like that of a smashed statue, put back together with some pieces missing.
“Reginald January, is it?” my father demanded to my prostrate form. “Son of a wealthy gentleman in Wales, is it? You thought I would not discover you? This is no gentleman’s son, but my own,” he told the onlookers, including the horrified Lady Caroline. “His money is but a fantasy, cobbled together with debt and the rhino he stole from his own father.”
Here was the undoing of all my work, and for nothing more than petty revenge—though, it was true, it was a sentiment I knew well. My father, like me, was a man inclined to indulge the need for vengeance, but he had always valued money over justice, so I knew that he must have been truly enraged. If he had not been, he would have found me in private, demanding that I turn my scheme into his scheme. He would have insisted I steal from Lady Caroline or my new friends and deliver to him my takings, or he would expose me or kill the woman I cared for or some other terrible thing. That he thought nothing of money, and only of ruin, meant that I had taken the most vicious and dangerous man I had ever known and turned him into something far worse.
I was dazed, in equal parts by the surprise of seeing him there, with my refined new friends, and partly by the blow to my jaw. However, my senses were now returning to me and I knew that I could not let him continue. If I could make him stop talking now, this moment, then perhaps I might undo the damage he had done. I could claim he was a madman, one I had never before seen and hoped never to see again. I needed that he would say no more, or better yet, say other, equally preposterous things—makes accusations about Mr. Langham or the widows or anyone else besides me.
I began to push myself off the ground. My jaw and my head both pounded, but there would be time later for pain. Now I had to do something.
“Look here, fellow,” I managed to say. “You mayn’t attack total strangers upon the street, nor speak of absurd accusations to me—or to anyone else here.”
I hoped he would take my meaning, but he only cackled a broken-toothed laugh. “My son, my own son, who I raised without his whore mother, has embarked upon a scheme to trick you all,” he explained to everyone, and to Lady Caroline in particular. He had evidently observed my particular interest in her. “I should love him for it if he had but included me in his plans, but he is a fiend, worse than his own father, from whom he stole. And now, out of bitterness, I will set his own plans to ruin.”
“Mr. January . . . ,” Lady Caroline managed to say. She put a gloved hand to her red mouth. “Can it be?”
“Of course not,” I croaked. I pushed myself up into a sitting position, but my father rewarded me with a kick to the side of my head, and down into the mud and shit I went once more.
“He lies, you silly tart,” my father said. “I raised him for just this purpose, to be the sort of cove what could insert himself among you rich arse-lickers and not be sniffed out. Though I’ll reckon he’s sniffed you where that dress don’t show.”
My Caroline, my beautiful, lovely, sweet, and charming Caroline, gasped as though struck. She looked at me in horror, and what was worse, far worse, she looked at my father as though he were a savior. It was beyond what a man could be asked to endure.
“Look here, you horrible stranger!” I said. “Flee while you can!”
I reached to my side and drew my blade as I tried to rise from the muck. My hand, however, slipped and I fell back down. With unstoppable speed, my father reached down, grabbed the hanger from my hand, and wielded it himself. Now he stood above me, my own sword at the ready, prepared to skewer his own son.
“Were you prepared to use a sword as well as wear it, you would not be here tonight, for if you were less a coward, you would have stabbed me back in Nottingham. But you weren’t man enough. You dared not do the deed, and so your half measures come back to ruin you. I will show you how it is done, so that the matter is final.”
I looked at Lady Caroline, who stood frozen in fear and horror. I told myself I could still survive this encounter and restore my name. I needed to think. My father had always been stronger than I and more reckless and brutal, but I was by far the cleverer. Now was the time to prove it. I needed a scheme, but none came to me.
“I shall endure you no more!” cried my father. His face was the color of freshly spilled blood, and his eyes were as round as coins. He raised the sword above his head, holding it in both hands as he prepared to bring it down—only not yet. He had a bit of speechifying to do first. “I am this wretch’s father, and he is a rogue who has nothing and wishes to steal what is yours. He struck me, his own father, in the face with a hammer, and he stole my money, recently stolen itself from a knave such as one of you. As I lay there, in a pile of my own blood, coughing up my own teeth, I vowed revenge. I would not rest, no, not for a minute, until I had ruined him as he ruined me. I would work tirelessly—”
This was as much of his moving address as we were to be allowed to enjoy, for at this point, my father stopped and staggered backward, releasing his grip upon my hanger. He clenched his jaw and set his right arm upon the left portion of his chest, clutching at the flesh upon his heart as though he wished to tear that organ from his breast. He then vomited forcefully upon Lady Caroline, dropped to his knees, and then fell, face-first, into the street kennel.
Only minutes after ruining my life, my father, the worst and most dangerous man I had ever known, was dead, destroyed from the inside as his own body rebelled against him. Given the damage he had done first, I could take no joy in it.
* * *
I would say that I will spare my readers the scene that followed, but in truth, I would prefer to spare myself. I cannot recall without wincing the sight of Lady Caroline covered with my father’s dying expulsion. Far worse was the more metaphorical expectoration that had landed upon my lady’s ears. She now stared at me with shock and horror. I had, at last, made it back to my feet, and while any lady of quality would have been disgusted to see the man with whom she had just held hands now covered with mud and horse excrement and his own blood, her revulsion was not for my appearance. She did not ask if the accusations were true. She did not have to.
Perhaps we would have spoken more, but Susan Harrow, one of the other widows, pulled her away. Mrs. Harrow had always been skeptical and contemptuous of me. Perhaps she had doubted what I claimed to be, but more likely, she considered the son of a merchant, lately of Wales, to be beneath her friend’s dignity. Now she rejoiced that her suspicions were confirmed and that I was even more low than she had originally considered.
My time, I now knew, was limited. It would be only a matter of days, if not hours, before news of this incident spread through the city. Mr. Reginald January, so lately seen with the Four Widows, gentleman of fashion about town, was an imposter and a schemer. Word would pass from tea garden to coffeehouse. Notices would appear in the newspapers and then, of course, would come the creditors, scrambling upon and over and under and around one another like beetles to be first to claim what little they could of my ersatz estate. It was all coming unmade.
But if collapse was imminent, it was not immediate. I yet had time to return home, clean myself, and collect as much of my ill-gotten property as possible before the bill collectors began to spring up like mushrooms. No one would be by that day, and perhaps the next. Certainly, I did not have to let anyone in, and as today was Friday, I had only to hold off my creditors until the end of the next day, for no debtor could be arrested upon the Lord’s day. Come Sunday I might, with impunity, march out of my boardinghouse with clothes, my sword, and all that I co
uld carry, every item obtained upon credit. I might, if I chose, stroll past my creditors, and there was not a thing any of them could do to me.
Where would I go? I had but two choices. I could either flee the city or I could settle within the Rules of the Fleet, that most peculiar of neighborhoods, where a man would never be arrested for debt. Such a residence was as much a jail as the Fleet Prison itself, the massive house of gloom in the neighborhood’s center, for a debtor who lived within the Rules could never depart its borders—except, of course, on Sunday, when there was so very little to do.
* * *
I passed most of the next day upon my bed, staring at the ceiling, bemoaning all I had lost—my status, my friends, my chance at fortune, and, most of all, my Caroline. I loved her, truly loved her, and she was lost to me forever. At least I was now spared the discomfort of revealing to her, after we were married, that everything I had told her about myself was a lie, but she would have understood the true man behind the fabrications, and in due course we would have been happy.
As I indulged in my misery, my landlady called to me from downstairs, informing me I had a visitor. She was yet civil to me, for I had paid through the entire quarter, and though she had smirked at me from the early morning hours on, she had not demanded I leave, and nor could she reasonably do so. If, however, circumstances were to conspire that I must leave, and she might rent out the room that had been paid for once already, I did not believe she would shed many tears.
Awaiting me in the parlor was a boy of perhaps eight years, neatly enough dressed though dirty from the street. He handed me a folded piece of paper and withdrew.
The note was simple enough. It was from my father’s landlady. Having received word of his death, she wished for me to be made aware of his possessions, which were, by all rights, my own.
Nothing could have surprised me more. My father had never been overly nice in his paternal duties, and his care of me had only ever been motivated by keeping around first a boy, and later a young man, who might be of use for his schemes. Moreover, that this note found me so soon after his death suggested my father had known where I lived for some time. It seemed, then, that he had been watching me, plotting his revenge, awaiting the moment he could do the most damage. Did the woman who now contacted me mistake his interest in me for fatherly devotion, or did she wish to pursue his revenge now that the monster himself was no longer of this world?
I was suspicious, but I feared no landlady, and I told myself—now, I see, foolishly—that my father could do little enough harm now that he was dead. Thus the next day, which was Sunday, I followed the instructions upon the letter and made my way to his house in Covent Garden.
The street was none the best, and from the exterior, I supposed the house too would be in a state of decay, but the interior was clean and neat, if spartanly furnished. A girl of perhaps fifteen—an ugly thing with a horsey face and boney frame—led me into a parlor of sorts full of mismatched furnishings. The walls were decorated with pictures torn from magazines and chapbooks. There, however, was a woman of middle years, stout and tall, with dark eyes and hair, and a handsome face that radiated kindness.
She took my hand at once. “I am Mrs. Tyler,” she said. “You must be Reginald.”
I nodded, for though January was a fabrication, Reginald was my Christian name. My father had always believed in keeping lies simple. He also believed in knocking children unconscious and raping chambermaids, so some of his beliefs were better embraced than others.
Once we were introduced and seated, and the horsey-faced girl brought us wine, Mrs. Tyler began to explain her business. “Bernard told me that you and he were estranged, so you may not have known that he was to have been my husband.”
I made every effort to conceal the depth of my surprise. Mrs. Tyler hardly seemed like the sort of woman my father sought. Her kind disposition was evidenced in her every word and gesture. Was it possible that my father had changed? I then recalled an image of him standing over me, shouting like a madman while I wallowed in pain amid puddles of horse shit. Change, I believed, was not likely. In all probability, my father had simply wanted what Mrs. Tyler had—her house, some jewelry, or other movable.
The longer I spoke with her, however, the more I began to doubt myself. She spoke of a reformed man, a man who wished to put his evil ways aside. More importantly, she spoke of a man who had brought more property into the house than he wished to take from it, and this was the crux of Mrs. Tyler’s business with me.
“I know you had difficulties with your father, and he with you,” she said. “His anger toward you was something he could not relinquish. He learned where you lived and he spoke often of teaching you a lesson, of taking you down a peg, but I take comfort that he died before he could so debase himself.”
On this score I kept quiet. The bruise upon my face was big and black and ugly. If she did not suspect my father of having placed it there, then she had not truly known him.
“But though he had much anger, he also had much love. He was a man with a big and generous heart.”
I chose not to comment on this subject, but I forced a nod in the interest of good manners.
“For that reason, I wish for you to take his belongings, or at least as much of them as you wish for yourself. We will go to his rooms, and you may, in private, look through his things. All that you wish for is yours.”
I could not understand how my father could have conducted even a single conversation with so genuinely kind a woman, but I would not cast aside such good fortune. I finished my wine and allowed her to lead me to my father’s room. When I stepped inside, she stood in the doorway, a wistful look upon her benevolent face. She wiped a tear from her eye but did not follow me within.
It was a simple room, with but a few chairs near a fireplace, a table, and several chests. One of these was open, and I could see within it linens and some cheap jewelry of indifferent value, and, most surprisingly, a single volume, bound in cracked leather. I turned to Mrs. Tyler. “Did my father take up schooling late in life? Because I have never known him to read a word or to write anything but his name.”
She shook her head and smiled. “No, he brought these several items with him. They were . . .” She turned away for a moment. “They were things he acquired in his previous life.”
I nodded. Evidently she knew he had been a thief, and she believed, or pretended to believe, that he had put his wicked ways aside for the love of a good woman. “Why did he keep this book? It could be of no use to him.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I did ask him about the book once, and he would neither tell me nor let me look into it. He said he had a feeling about it, but would say no more. He was a man of great sentiment, as you certainly know.”
“He was subject to strong emotion,” I conceded.
“He did not wish to part with some of his things, and I saw no reason to make him. There would be plenty of time. You may find some jewels or other gewgaws of value, but I hardly know for certain. He was a private man, and I respected that privacy.”
“And you do not want these things for yourself?”
“I want to honor his memory, and I do not need his possessions for that.”
He had clearly deceived her like few people had ever been deceived in the history of deception, but I gave her my most sympathetic smile. She then closed the door and said she would give me time for my grief.
I found much to interest me. A silver chain, a few pieces of fine linen, and a purse containing almost fifteen pounds in small coins. Perhaps twenty-five pounds’ worth of goods in sum. It was not nearly enough to pay my debts, but it was more than enough to secure me new lodgings.
I was almost ready to leave without examining the book, but some impulse made me inspect it more closely. On the surface it was nothing remarkable—merely a thin quarto, bound in old brown leather, with no writing upon the front or spine. I thought it must be a diary or journal of some kind, though not my father’s. He had made certa
in I knew how to read and write—he had even extorted a Latin tutor into providing me three years of instruction on how to act and speak like a young gentleman, the better to pull off his schemes—but he had never troubled with such matters himself. So if the journal was not his own, then whose?
I reached out and touched the book, and I knew at once that I had found something of import. I am not a superstitious man, nor one inclined to believe in the hidden world, but this book’s gravity was unmistakable. I felt a heat radiate from it, as though it had been sitting near a burning fire. I yanked my fingers away and then touched it again. It was still hot. Not warm, I say, but hot, like a loaf just pulled from the oven. I looked about the room, as though the chairs or the walls might offer me some explanation, but they were silent. I own that I was afraid, for a man who is not fearful of ghosts by nature will, I suspect, fear one if he sees it. I was not terrified, as a matter of course, of hot books, but I had experienced enough of the world to tremble when I encountered the unknown.
A wise man would have fled, but I am my father’s son, and something unique may be frightening, but it may also be valuable. I swallowed hard, glanced about the room once more, and picked up the book more firmly, holding it in both hands.
I will not say the sensation of heat disappeared, but as I glanced through the pages, it was matched by an accompanying numbness. That is to say, I still felt heat, but I discovered I did not entirely mind it. If it had been pure searing pain, I’m not sure it would have mattered either, for what the volume contained so held my attention that all the world was forgotten. Written upon the pages, in a faded calligraphy of beautiful intricacy, were words such as I had never seen, never imagined. I gasped as I struggled to comprehend what the book explained.
My reader will forgive me if I am vague about the contents of the book or how I knew them to be true. There are things that, when you gaze upon them, convey no doubt, and this was indeed of that species. One does not question light or darkness, pain or delight, moisture or aridness. Nor could one deny truth when presented with it so forcefully.
Four Summoner’s Tales Page 17
