Vampires of the Caribbean

by Debra Dunbar

  “I expect you will require papers to be signed, and I look forward to your presenting them to me. If they are...legally complex...I will revert to the family’s lawyers in London to advise me. If not, then you may look forward to my honoring the promissory note at the same time as I settle affairs with Mr. Gilbee. I trust that is satisfactory.”

  She gathered the deeds back into her valise, and then she stood, bringing them to their feet and concluding the discussion.

  “Mr. Tynes will continue as my manager,” she said, and smiled the way a shy young woman might. “I value him most highly.”

  Let them make of that what they will; that it will be all right, I will soon have a man to take over the burden of thinking about things that are beyond women, like commerce.

  Lady Margaret exited the chandler’s below the office in good humor.

  It had gone better than it might have. She was far from safe, but the traders’ guild would hesitate to move on her while her secrets remained hidden, and once the sales for the season were concluded, none of it would matter very much.

  They might very well write a hasty, confidential letter to the earl. But she knew her father. He might not deign to reply, or he might reply and deliberately encourage what he would see as headstrong folly in her: folly that would lead to a quick ruin and be entirely in keeping with his punishment of her.

  What he would not do would be to confirm any problems within the house of Willoughby-Lazaure. Not to the likes of the guild.

  She came to an abrupt halt.

  Agnes had turned at the sound of her footsteps, every trembling muscle shouting her distress. Her eyes were wide with horror. Lady Margaret knew her maid’s every mood, and the woman was barely in control of herself.

  “Agnes? What is wrong?” She spoke softly.

  And Agnes, who spoke excellently when they were alone, and who was erudite beyond all others’ expectations of her, could manage only one ragged word: “Ship.”

  Lady Margaret looked down Grande Street to the harbor. There was a newcomer entering the protected bay. A slaver.

  Down at the bottom of the street, where they held the Sunday market, there was movement. Preparation.

  They would be holding an auction this morning.

  She felt the shock surge through her. She’d known this would happen, of course. Ships came to sell slaves to every one of the Leeward Islands. It had been only a matter of time before it happened in her new home.

  It was one thing to know it, quite another when it was about to unfold in front of you. When the truth sank down into your stomach like acid.

  They could not do anything here—must not.

  “Agnes! Look at me!”

  Her maid managed to obey.

  “Breathe. Breathe deeply.” Lady Margaret had to take her own advice. Her hands were trembling too. What they did next might undo all their work, and waste what little luck they’d had so far.

  She took her maid by the shoulders, safe enough on the street to not arouse comment.

  “Peace, Agnes,” she said. “There is nothing I can do now. Nothing! Do you hear and understand me?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Secrecy and silence are our only friends. Now, you will walk up the hill beside me. You will cast your eyes down and you will not speak. We are returning to Nightwood in the carriage forthwith.”

  “Yes, my lady.” It was a whisper, full of fire, but acceptance, too.

  They ascended the hill swiftly to where the deputy governor’s loaned carriage waited.

  Chapter 10

  Enzili

  No. No peace now. Not yet. Not for me.

  Secrecy and silence, yes. I have made no noise, disturbed no revelers.

  It is night: my time, the only time I can emerge. This work must proceed at night, perforce. Black night, depthless, drawn like the thickest, smothering blanket over the darkest hearts on the island.

  Mine included.

  The demon wants to howl, but I control it, feed it, use it.

  The night stirs like a sleeper disturbed. A storm is passing. Errant winds blow across the empty marketplace, shove against the wooden walls of the old slave ship, so she, too, is like a sleeper disturbed, rolling and fretting against her hawsers, her sides squealing against the wooden pilings of the dock.

  Like the captain had squealed when I forced him over the pilings and held him and held him, until his own ship had pressed and crushed the life from him and his head burst like a rotten melon and his brains oozed and dripped down the boards.

  The demon is not sated, but that is enough tonight. No plantation owners’ sons dying inexplicably as they make their way to the quarters where the slave girls lie trembling in the dark.

  Not tonight. Just this one vile man whose ship brought girls like those here.

  I leave.

  Let the ship’s watch, drunk and unvigilant in the safety of harbor, come upon their captain in the light and see the broken bottle beside him and smell the brandy on his clothes and find the scuff on the slippery gangplank where he must have fallen.

  Secrecy and silence.

  Chapter 11

  Charles

  The evening storm hit, as they sometimes did in the Leeward Islands, rushing out of the darkening southeast and chasing the last of the daylight away with uncanny speed. Caught unprepared in Drakeston, Charles retreated to the Harbour Inn, to let it vent its fury on the thick stone walls of the old building.

  A month had passed since the peculiar deaths of the Clement heir and the captain of the merchantman. Life was hard and uncertain in the Caribbean. People died all the time. Those deaths had been a three-day wonder, odd as they were.

  In the following weeks, no one remarked much on the plantation owner who’d suffered a fall from his horse and broken his neck. Or the sot who’d finally succumbed to an excess of brandy.

  But then there was the fool who’d fallen into his own mill and been crushed.

  Followed by the overseer who’d been taken by a sudden fever.

  And now there was an uneasiness stirring through the island.

  Folk in Drakeston packed the church services and when they emerged, they huddled and spoke softly, glancing around.

  Even in the Harbour Inn, the air thick with tobacco smoke and buzzing with conversations, it was more subdued than it had been since the first ship of survivors had limped in from Saint Domingue with their bloodcurdling news.

  Sitting alone in the gloomy bar with a glass of brandy in front of him, Charles felt the eyes of others, the way they touched on him and slid away.

  He understood the superstitions. Anyone new, however glamorous, was suspected of bringing bad luck, or worse. As was anyone connected with them.

  Charles had always been between, neither part of the Drakeston world, nor the plantation society. The feeling of exclusion wasn’t particularly new to him. He could not let it be important to him.

  The letter that had arrived today, burning like a hot coal against his chest—that was important to him, even if his thoughts shied away from it.

  His engine, built in a closed shed at Nightwood, that was important to him.

  It loomed, hissing, in its wooden barn at Nightwood, hidden from view. It crushed the juice from the harvested sugarcane just as he’d designed it to. They’d barely needed to run it for more than an hour a day. The workers could not keep up with its appetite, yet Lady Margaret would not contract crushing for other plantations until they’d leaped ahead of the market with this year’s early yield.

  In place of the fierce exultation he’d expected at the proof of his design, and the clamor of people calling out his name, there was secrecy and silence.

  In all matters. After setting tongues wagging with their dancing, Lady Margaret had not deemed it the right time to proceed with any announcement.

  So Charles remained in the house at Gilbee’s, like a fly in a web, where he slept feverishly, wracked with dreams about his engine: its swollen bulk monstrous in the night, the
smooth power of its great, oiled piston thrusting faster and faster, until the whole assembly was shuddering and steaming and the furnace was melting and it wasn’t the lightening of dawn ahead but eyes, her eyes looking at him and he woke exhausted in a web of stained and torn and tangled sheets.

  Not yet, she’d said. Too early. Be patient for me, Charles.

  And he tried.

  Conversations with her were difficult. They spoke every day, but things he wanted to say seemed to slip from his grasp when she looked at him. He could never pin her down, or properly argue a change in their agreement. Not even to set an exact date or set of conditions to rebalance their shares more equitably, let alone discuss their engagement.

  Why could he not speak coherently? Why?

  Every time he came away from her, his list of meant-to-say grew, and his heart felt ripped apart, though he could not say whether by rage or love.

  Only when he tended the Tynes Engine did everything seem right in the world.

  And still, he’d come away thinking: my name, her machine. And that was when he felt anger.

  He took a swallow of brandy, to hide the grimace.

  Out of habit, he schooled his face. They were always watching. Their acceptance of the amalgamation of Gilbee’s into Nightwood meant nothing. It was a ruse. As if they would ever really demand repayment from the earl’s daughter! It was him they were after. And his machine. The Tynes Engine. They must know of it, somehow. How?

  Doubtless the guild had someone here tonight. And doubtless they were wondering about the content of the private letter that had been delivered to him. As they should.

  Without being obvious, he glanced at the other drinkers. It was a busy night. Many were sheltering from the battering of the storm outside. The guild’s spy could be any one of them.

  Or there could be more than one.

  He tried to calm himself. It was getting harder every day.

  He could pick out some of the malicious gossip that bubbled through the inn. People had seen those coffins unloaded from the ship. Seen them carried on an open wagon to Nightwood.

  He knew what had been in the first. No one knew what was in the second. But everyone in this inn had an opinion.

  There would be no relief from discussing anything with anyone here. He was barred from talking about his own matters, business and personal, and to engage in the gossip about supernatural happenings was to become frustrated by people’s inability to distinguish fact from fantasy.

  Yet he knew there must be something uncanny afoot.

  It was as if there were truths just beyond his grasp: the deaths; that second coffin; her very presence on St. Mark’s; her reasons for obsessive secrecy. Was it all one thing? What was she hiding? Would he ever know? Why did the second coffin always creep into his thoughts? Why did he keep thinking it would be the death of him to find out what was really going on?

  He shivered in the heat, despite feeling hot and sweaty.

  He heard more fantasy than fact in the rumors, but he’d given up pretending he wasn’t a superstitious man.

  “Long face, Charles. Poor harvest?”

  He blinked in surprise as his friend, George, slid onto the bench beside him.

  He’d brought a bottle and another glass.

  “No,” he replied loudly for the benefit of anyone listening. “The best yet.”

  Just not mine.

  George grunted as he filled the glasses, then he turned and made some comment to someone on the other side of him.

  Charles had to talk to someone; he had to seek some outlet for the twisted emotions that were bursting him from the inside. George would listen, and he was an intelligent man.

  So Charles started to speak quietly, staring at his drink, not daring to look at George.

  “Gilbee’s coming,” he said. It was like lancing a boil. The words spilled out. “I’ve just received a letter. He’s had a change of circumstance. He refused my offer and is coming to take over his plantation. The letter was delayed, coming in by Antigua. Gilbee’s probably on the next ship.”

  I am finished when he arrives, ruined. Dead.

  All the fury he’d been trying to contain since he’d read the letter was released. He found he was trembling with the passage of it. And yet perversely, his thoughts seemed clearer.

  When he received no response from George, he turned.

  His friend was preoccupied, entirely taken with the bosom of the woman sitting in his lap, and the coquetry she was pouring into his ears. He hadn’t heard a word Charles had said.

  Charles frowned in disgust at his friend, so easily distracted from important matters by a woman. Her promises were all cheap words, and George would find no favor there unless he paid for it. And while he was so distracted, he was more likely to have his pocket picked than his breeches loosened.

  Charles’ brow chilled and the brandy threatened to come back up

  Distracted from important matters. A woman. Cheap promises. Pocket picked.

  His mind was clearer now. Was it not exactly what had happened to him?

  It struck him like a cannonball.

  They were all in it together. Wolcott. Harney. Willoughby-Lazaure. Gilbee.

  Of course the earl hadn’t given his daughter Nightwood, whatever she said. How could he have believed that? And her claim about the guild spilling his secrets—they would never have told her about their dealings with him. Unless they were all part of the plan, and she’d told him they had to force him to sign his engine over to her.

  That’s why it’d taken so long to receive a response to his letter to the earl. The guild and the earl had needed that time to concoct a plan.

  They wanted the Tynes Engine. They wanted to take over the whole West Indies sugar business, and they’d use his engine to do it.

  And how had the earl decided to ensure the solution he wanted? He’d sent his daughter to distract Charles with her beauty, beguile him into agreeing to secretly give his engine to her. And now that the conspirators had proof the engine worked, Gilbee was sent to claim his estate back. Lady Margaret would disavow him. He’d be in jail.

  He would not have been so mentally impeded merely by her beauty. No. Something had come with her to the island. Something that was eliminating rival plantation owners, as if his steam-powered press was not enough.

  How had he not seen it before?

  Because that something was bewitching his mind. Bewitching…yes…witchcraft.

  It all made sense, now.

  Who could he go to? Who could aid him?

  He rose unsteadily to his feet, ignoring George’s call, and staggered from the bar.

  He’d made it as far as the door when it burst open, letting a blast of cold, wet air into the smoky bar, and bringing with it a man wrapped in oilskins against the weather.

  The Reverend Leonard Birkett caught his jacket, frail hands holding him with surprising strength, while his eyes were seemingly fixed on his neck.

  “I’ve found you in time,” the Reverend hissed. “Thank the Lord.”

  Chapter 12

  Charles

  “We must speak. Not here. They may be watching.”

  Charles was too stunned to reply as the Reverend bustled him outside, slamming the door behind them.

  “Shelter under my coat,” Birkett said, fighting to make himself heard above the shrieking winds and rumbling thunder. “We’ll go to the church. We’ll be safer there.”

  It was awkward walking and trying to keep one man’s coat in place to cover the two of them. They hindered each other, and staggered as the wind buffeted them.

  At the stone steps to the whitewashed church, Charles finally tripped, and cursed.

  “My apologies, Reverend,” he said. “Devil of a storm.”

  “The devil’s storm that is breaking over St. Mark’s will make this seem like an English summer breeze,” Birkett said, as the great door of the church creaked open, revealing the darkness inside.

  He pushed Charles in and followed
him, pausing only to look to the left and right at a deserted, rain-lashed Grande Street.

  Charles stood, dripping onto the floor, while Birkett lit a candle, then locked and bolted the door.

  “We can’t speak in here either,” the Reverend said, gesturing. “Come, down to the crypt, where none will note the light and wonder what’s afoot. They may already have eyes watching this place.”

  Is the old man mad? Or am I? Charles thought. They are watching. And listening. I know.

  Charles followed him down into the crypt, another door shutting behind him.

  It was silent. They were isolated from the fury of the storm outside.

  And it was dark. The Reverend lit more candles.

  The church was no cathedral; the crypt was no more than a basement with arched columns supporting the wooden floors of the nave above. There were no musty tombs or mausoleums, though there was an old stone altar table to one side. It rested on brick pedestals, assembled without mortar and crumbling in the damp.

  Water had leaked into the crypt, making a thin pool over the floor, so that the column arches were reflected in the wavering light of the candles. The image rippled as they stepped through the water and looking at it made Charles dizzy, as if he couldn’t tell up from down.

  Birkett placed candles on the altar and knelt beneath it. He scratched at the wall behind for a moment and then lifted a package from a hiding place. It was wrapped in leather and he unfolded it carefully on the altar.

  “The ship from Antigua brought this in today,” Birkett said, his hands caressing a book, leather-bound in worn, starless black. “My brother there is our central repository for the knowledge we have gathered. This is our oldest book.”

  “What is it?” Charles leaned forward. The cover was embossed. He thought he could make out Latin words—De Noctis.