(Now, as he sat in the ladderback chair, watching Aebedel Cowdray die beneath seven stones, his father’s words made more sense, and Anson did not doubt the presence of the Divine Spirit, nor that it was cold, distant, and passionless.)
Under torture, the old witch-women usually babbled about Beelzebub, tales Determination deemed deceitful and useless. But when Old Mother Grax, mad with agony, had promised she would tell them of Aebedel Cowdray’s dark masterwork—a magical artifact he had been refining for decades—Determination had been intrigued. So intrigued that he did something his son had never seen him do. He eased the woman’s torment so that she might speak more freely. The old witch’s tale gushed forth.
According to Mother Grax, Cowdray had taken a small box of silver—a box such as might hold snuff—and he had sorcelled it to contain all of hell within its confines. Into this torment Cowdray could consign living souls stolen from human victims. Misery and agony being the true fuel of blood-sorcerers like Cowdray, the snuffbox thus represented a constant, ready supply of power. Power that would continue to grow as the pain and suffering of the imprisoned souls compounded.
Cowdray had been filling the box with souls taken from the African slaves in which he traded. Taking the soul killed some—those who were old or weak from strain or injury. But the young and strong could survive without souls, for a time. The ritual left them mindless, forgetful, directionless creatures—but they could work the fields, and they were placid and tractable, and as such they brought even higher prices than slaves with their souls intact.
“Monstrous!” Determination had whispered at the conclusion of this terrible recitation. He pressed her with questions in quick succession: where was the snuffbox? How could it be found? How could it be destroyed? But before she could answer any of these, Old Mother Grax’s pain-ruddied face had drained of color. Her rheumy eyes focused on the wall behind them.
“Alas, he is here!” She moaned in sudden terror. “Do you not see his shadow? There, there! Ah, master! Forgive a foolish old woman! Forgive me, Lord!”
The Inquisitors Kendall had looked around themselves, Determination clutching at the great red cross he wore around his neck, but they saw nothing. No dark shadow, no hint of malice or magic. So perhaps it was only fear that caused Old Mother Grax to expire as she did, quite suddenly, great gouts of blood flowing from her nose down her wrinkled chin.
“Of one thing I am sure: Aebedel Cowdray will not long be satisfied with the souls of heathens,” was Determination’s first grim conclusion. “Ere long, he will seek souls of greater merit, those of white Christian men.”
But, having decided to take the cause for his own, Determination was at a loss for how to proceed. Cowdray had carefully confined his business dealings to the middle and southern colonies. His main trading offices were in New York, whose governor—the indulgent sinner William Penn—had once released an old dame accused of maleficum with the infamous pronouncement, “You are at perfect liberty to ride on broomsticks, as I know of no law against it.” Enticing Cowdray to leave such safe harbor seemed nearly impossible.
Thus, when the Inquisitors Kendall sought audience with Governor Penn—with the intention of exhorting him to do his Christian duty and send Cowdray to face God’s justice in Massachusetts—they expected little succor. But while the chance of success was slight, they knew it was greater than any they could expect further south.
They did not, however, expect their slim hopes to be dashed so thoroughly as they were when they were shown into Governor Penn’s office, and were received not only by the governor, but by his honored guest—Aebedel Cowdray himself.
Cowdray was tall and well-formed. He had brilliantly white teeth and curling black hair and eyes the color of frozen seawater. He was dressed even more richly than all the tales about him had suggested. Every inch of his coat was embroidered with silken floss and gold wire, his stockings were snow-white and fine, and his sleeves dripped with lace.
“These are the Inquisitors Kendall?” Cowdray’s gaze had encompassed them both, but Anson had felt the warlock’s eyes hang upon him particularly. “It is said you gentlemen have some quarrel with me. But I have none with either of you. I simply wish to conduct my business.”
“Business in partnership with the Author of Misery himself,” Determination growled. He had clutched the cross around his throat tightly, as if wishing he could use it as a weapon. He cast a fiery gaze on Governor Penn. “You have read my letter, sir. You know the crimes this filth stands accused of.”
“I have read your letter as well,” Cowdray interjected, raising his clean-shaven chin haughtily. “Your claims are ludicrous, based upon the lunatic rantings of a poor old woman you tortured to death.” He paused. “But it matters not. My slaves are mine to do with as I will. What I do with them ... magical or not ... is of no concern to a couple of hired Massachusetts murderers.”
“You ... dare!” Rage made Determination stumble over the words. “We do the Lord’s work, you abomination! And while your slaves are indeed yours, bought and paid for, well do I know that you will not be satisfied with them. Such souls must seem mealy bread to one as fine as you. You will soon seek stronger meat.”
“How he rants!” Cowdray drawled, in Penn’s direction. “Have you heard quite enough, my good William?”
“Quite enough,” Penn said. Throughout the whole interview, he had been paying little attention, focusing instead on the signing of several documents that seemed to require his urgent attention. “Have them shown out.”
“Your honor!” Determination cried. “This is unconscionable!”
“You gentlemen are a credit to New England,” Penn observed, as his secretary moved to bodily usher them from the room. “Indeed, you have confirmed, with admirable thoroughness, every suspicion about our observant brethren that ever I have conceived.”
This parlor witticism drew a dry snicker from Cowdray and a bellow of fury from Determination. The secretary had to push Determination toward the door. Anson followed. And as he was at the threshold, watching his father rebuke the secretary with hot words containing promises of hell and damnation, he was suddenly aware of Cowdray’s presence at his shoulder, cold and dark and smelling of silk.
“Tell your father to have a care,” Cowdray spoke in a voice so low that Anson could not tell if the words were really spoken aloud at all. “If stronger meat I do seek, I could look farther and fare worse than the tender morsels of your regard. Your wife’s name is Sarah. Your children are James and Abigail.”
Anson spun, a wrathful exhalation on his lips, but there was no one behind him. Aebedel Cowdray and Governor Penn stood together at the far end of the room. The governor had poured out little glasses of port and they spoke with civilized anticipation of the delicacies that awaited them at the dinner table. Neither man looked up as the Inquisitors Kendall were thrown into the street, and the door slammed behind them.
Anson had wanted to flee New York at that moment, on the very next coach that would take them back to the safety of Massachusetts. He did not dare tell his father of Cowdray’s threat, for the old man was already inflamed to the point of apoplexy. Determination had insisted that they wait outside the governor’s home, lurking like a pair of brigands, until Cowdray finally emerged well after midnight, sated with drink and food. Determination refrained from accosting the man physically, but as Cowdray began his walk home, Determination followed him, loudly censuring him with every step. There were few passers-by at that time of night, but those there were watched with amazement as Determination hurled imprecations at Cowdray’s back.
“Hear me, Satan-spawn!” Determination roared. “You God-forsaken atrocity, abortion of Babylon’s whore, misery of mankind! Your crimes are seen by the Lord God Almighty, and He will not long suffer you to walk upon the good earth that is His noblest creation! Today you are clothed in silk and finery, but you will be reduced to ash, consumed in the lake of fire that burneth eternal ...”
Cowdray had not hastened hi
s pace, simply continued to stroll with perfect equanimity, even pausing once to admire the velvety darkness of the night sky. When finally he came to his house on Pearl Street—an even finer house than the governor’s—he had turned his head and looked at Anson.
HE WILL CHOKE ON THE HATRED HE SPEWS. Cowdray spoke without speaking, his words ringing inside of Anson’s head. THEN THE DECISION WILL BE YOURS, MOONCALF. A SON DOES NOT HAVE TO TAKE UP HIS FATHER’S BATTLES.
Then he closed the door behind himself.
Anson had pleaded with his father to come away. But Determination would not. He had planted himself in the street, screaming up at Cowdray’s dark windows, until officers of the watch came and arrested them for disturbing the peace.
Before the year was out, Determination Kendall was dead.
He died suddenly in his fifty-eighth year, in a month where the full moon fell on the thirteenth day. He began vomiting toads and slugs and other black sickening vermin from his lips, and soon they were gushing forth in such volume that he choked on them, his eyes wide with terror. He died clutching the red cross around his neck, and it did him no good.
Anson was not a vengeful man. But he had loved his father as best as he could, and it was brutally unfair that he should be murdered thus—so casually, so remotely, seemingly with as little effort as was required to snuff the life of a fly. If nothing else, Determination had been a faithful and diligent servant of God—far more perfect than his son ever had been or could be. He had devoted his life to enacting God’s will in every word he uttered and deed he performed. And it had earned him not even the meagerest scrap of regard. Instead, God had suffered Cowdray, the worst of sinners, to fill Determination’s last moments with terror, suffering, and misery.
It was unconscionable.
Anson remembered Cowdray’s last words to him.
A son does not have to take up his father’s battles.
They were not words of advice. They were words of challenge. Cowdray thought him weak-willed and hesitant, just as his father always had.
Anson saw that there was only one way he could truly honor his father’s memory. And that was to prove him wrong.
Anson went to work with a vengeance he never knew he possessed.
He saw that it was useless to attack Cowdray within the fortress of safety he had created for himself. Cowdray had powerful allies.Anson would need powerful allies as well.
Governor Simon Bradstreet had recently returned to Massachusetts after the dissolution of the Dominion, and it was to him that Anson proposed an allegiance of interests. He knew that Bradstreet would care little about Cowdray’s sins—but the warlock’s vast fortune ... well, that was another matter. The governor was in desperate need of funds to fight the French’s unceasing harassment of the colony’s frontier outposts to the north. Cowdray had no wife or kin. When he died, the disposition of his estate would be uncertain. If it could be so arranged that he be arrested in Massachusetts, and there tried and convicted and executed, his estate would escheat to the colonial government.
Bradstreet’s face had lit with interest when Anson described the scheme. But just as quickly, he had frowned. “Ah, but you will ne’er draw him to Massachusetts,” the governor muttered bad-temperedly, as if hope itself were an annoyance.
But Anson was resolved to prove him wrong. He went after Cowdray’s business agents, members of his coven—anyone with even a remote association with the warlock who had the misfortune to stray into areas controlled by those sympathetic to the growing fame of the (now solitary) Inquisitor Kendall.
He had a hundred in gaol within a month, and all of them under torture. Those who knew the most about Cowdray’s affairs died the most quickly, just as Old Mother Grax had, gushing blood from their noses and eyes. Anson gathered knowledge in drabs and snatches. He learned how Cowdray would steal souls by means of a black snake that would slither up to kiss the lips of a sleeping man. The sleeping man would rise in the morning, but he would never again wake.
Anson was heedful of the threat Cowdray posed. He sent his wife and daughter far away from Boston and told no one—not even Sarah’s family—where they had gone. He kept his son James with him. The boy was ten, a good age to be apprenticed. The work was endless, and Anson needed hands he could trust. James had a clever mind. He did not blanch at torture. It was what his father said must be done, and he did it—not with the kind of pleasure Anson suspected Determination had taken in it, but because he loved his father and wanted to please him. This made Anson proud. His son was stronger than he had ever been.
The most useful piece of information they collected was about a shipment Cowdray was expecting. The warlock had made arrangements to take a bride. Little was known of her, except that she came from a good family in England, and she was very wealthy, and Cowdray had sent his fastest ship to bring her—and the large dower sum that accompanied her—to New York.
When Anson learned of this, he rejoiced. For here, finally, was a way to get Cowdray to Massachusetts.
He knew of a woman who, by all reports, was the best weather-witch in the New World. He promised her that she would not be tried if she would stir him up a sorcerous wind that would compel Cowdray’s galleon off its course, and into one of the harbors in Massachusetts, Boston or Salem or anywhere in between. She was reluctant, for no witch or warlock desired to cross Cowdray—but the Inquisitor Kendall’s reputation had become near as fearsome, and she was eventually persuaded. And Anson did keep his promise. He did not prosecute her. He did nothing until he felt the winds shift, heard the sailors of the harbor begin to talk of other ships, previously bound for New York, mysteriously diverted to the waters of Massachusetts Bay. He waited long enough to be certain that she had kept her end of the bargain, and then he killed her, cutting her throat silently in the night with his own hand.
He was his father’s son. He knew the ways of witches, knew their occult methods of communication, knew that he could not take the chance that the woman would betray his plans to Cowdray.
Anson Kendall had always had blood on his hands, so much blood that it dripped from his fingers. Once, he had longed to wash it away. Now though, he cared not. What was a little more blood? What was it, really?
How Cowdray had found Sarah, and had delivered to her a comb of ivory and silver (with a note that said it was a gift from her most loving husband) Anson never knew, even to his dying day.
Anson did not receive word of what happened to Sarah until more than a week after Cowdray’s fastest ship had been blown into Boston harbor, and Cowdray and his whore had travelled North under the cover of sorcerous guises to reclaim the treasured cargo. Cowdray’s affianced, a petulant and spoiled girl, repined in the governor’s home even as Anson and his son had lain in wait, with twice two dozen of Governor Bradstreet’s best men.
It had taken all of those men to capture Cowdray, and the warlock—summoning ferocious spirits from within the snuffbox—had left most of them dead. It was only young James’ bravery—for he had knocked the snuffbox from Cowdray’s grasp—that allowed the remaining few to finally clap the warlock in irons.
It was a great victory, but short-lived. The next day, Anson received a letter from his daughter Abigail, who had sent it upon the fastest post.
Abigail wrote of how pleased her mother had been with the unexpected gift from her husband. But upon combing her hair with the jewel of ivory and silver, beautiful as the moon, Sarah Kendall had fallen into a trance. Abigail’s letters became shaky on the page as she recounted how the comb had become a black snake, slithering up Sarah Kendall’s nose.
His wife was not dead. But neither was she alive. She breathed, but there was nothing in her eyes.
All the arts of the local priest, the local doctor, even the local herb-woman had been employed to save her. But from each, the judgment had been the same; her soul was gone from her body.
His wife, pure and kind and laughing, who had never done a cruel thing in her life, had been consigned to an eternity of tortur
e in a magically-created hell with only the spirits of black heathens for company. The thought of it nearly drove Anson mad.
Or perhaps it had driven him mad, he thought as he looked at the blood dripping from Cowdray’s fingers, as he looked into the man’s agonized face. Only a madman could take such pleasure in pain, so much joy in revenge.
Anson Kendall sat in the ladderback chair, watching the warlock die. The moon had risen higher now, casting a pallid glow over the gallows field. He pulled Cowdray’s snuffbox from within his coat. The masterwork of the warlock’s evil was horribly beautiful—worked in chased silver, the scene on the lid depicted a vision of the devil dancing in hell, ringed by souls writhing in torment. The face of the devil had been worked to resemble Cowdray’s own.
Anson opened the box. It was lined with uchawi wood, polished glove-smooth. He ran his fingertips along the inside, and they came away coated with a dark, powdery residue that tingled. He rubbed his fingers together. The box was open, but Sarah’s soul was locked within it, within a world of suffering, and there was nothing he could do to save her.
Anson clicked the box shut. He tucked it back inside his coat and stood. He turned away from Cowdray. James didn’t notice his father’s rise; he was warming himself before the fire. In the light of the now-risen full moon, and the flickering gleam of the flames, his young face looked very old and very sad.
In that moment, Anson felt very keenly the pain of failing everyone he had ever loved.
Then, there was a cry—high-pitched, desperate—and a dark blur, a flash of red and bright silver, and Anson felt something slam against him from behind.
The Warlock's Curse Page 2
