Peter Wicked

by Broos Campbell

  “But hang it, Arie,” I said, “I was a mite busy, you know. I got captured and hit on the head some fierce. Want to see the place?”

  “No.” She gave me a hidden sort of smile and turned her face away. “Yes.”

  We walked along a bit, our hands brushing against each other until I held mine open. She smacked her palm against mine a couple of times and then laced our fingers.

  We met Jubal’s father strutting along with his cane, bringing the pony cart down for the luggage. He looked fine in his blue and silver livery, and his white wig gave him a distinguished air. He took off his hat and bowed.

  “Welcome home, Mars Dickie,” he said, smiling beautifully. “Hello, Mistah Graves. Pleasure to see you ag’in.”

  “Hello, Uncle Jupe,” I said. “Glad to be back. How’s the missus?”

  “She fine, she fine. She over to da Woolsey place now.” Just the slightest of hesitations, and then he smiled beautifully again and said, “I see her ’most ebber week, I thank you, sah.”

  “And how’s the leg?”

  “Oh, fine, fine, I thank you, sah. Bit o’ da rheumatism, is all. It get in my bones, sah, I thank you for askin’.”

  “He’s a little old to be working, ain’t he?” I asked when we had passed out of earshot.

  Arabella frowned in puzzlement. “Who, Uncle Jupe? Don’t be silly. I don’t think he’d know what to do with himself if he didn’t have us to care for. Besides, he must work to earn his bread. The Bible says so.”

  “But even mules get put out to pasture when they’re used up.”

  She swung her hand, swinging mine with it. “Silly, Uncle Jupe’s no mule!”

  “What happened to his wife?”

  “She never could make a pie. I said to her, ‘Easy as pie,’ but it didn’t take. We had to buy a new cook.”

  That brought up a memory I didn’t care to mention—my friend Juge in our prison cell in Jacmel, telling me how he’d put his former owner into the oven for burning the pastry.

  I shook my head. “That’s a shame.”

  “Yes, there’s nothing I like so much as pie.”

  Dick laughed. “I think he meant it’s a shame for the niggers, Arie. He fought alongside ’em in San Domingo and they put bugs in his ears.”

  “Pish, pash, and posh,” said Arabella. “Don’t pay any never-no-mind to Dickie, Mr. Graves—nor to Uncle Jupe. The Woolsey place is only five miles away, and he can walk over and see her any night he wants.”

  Side by side in tall-backed cane chairs, Mr. and Mrs. Towson drank lemonade under an ancient, laurel-smelling sweet bay magnolia, festooned with leafy white blossoms, that was the centerpiece of a trim garden at the end of the path. Although Elver Towson had served with a macaroni regiment during the Revolution, he hadn’t awarded himself an honorary colonelcy, being afflicted with an inconvenient honesty. He was yellow-haired and blue-eyed like Dick and Arabella, but silver had shot through the yellow, red had rimmed the blue, his jaws had become jowls, and whiskey roses had gone to seed on his nose and cheeks. Lily Towson—the second Mrs. Towson and about twenty years younger than her husband—was slender and redheaded, with small creases at the corners of her mouth that disappeared into dimples when she smiled. She was dressed in white muslin, with an upside-down flowerpot of a straw hat secured by a sea-gray ribbon that matched the color of her eyes. On a marble bench to her left hunched a lank-haired lout with no eyelashes or brows that I could see, and no color at all in his face except a rash of raspberry pimples across his chin, cheeks, and forehead. He smirked at me.

  “Mama! Papa!” said Arabella, tugging me along. “See what I have brought.”

  I don’t expect my own homecoming could’ve been any solemner. Mr. Towson rose to shake his son’s hand, but that was about as excited as they got. It was just their way.

  Mr. Towson took in our midshipmen’s uniforms and waved his hand at a pitcher on a silver tray. “D’ye care to take anything in your lemonade, Mr. Graves? We have the ladies’ indulgence.”

  “Thank’ee, Mr. Towson, but I guess I’ll pass.”

  “It’s your father’s own stuff.”

  “Sometimes I’m of two minds about whiskey, Mr. Towson.”

  He looked up sharply. “Not gone temperance, have you?”

  “Oh, I’ll say not, sir. It’s just that I floated Billy in a barrel of it after his duel with Peter Wickett. I had to get him home somehow, and—”

  “Sir, I don’t believe the ladies needed to hear that.”

  “Well, I don’t guess I will have any right yet, sir, thank’ee.”

  “Suit y’self.” He topped off his glass from the decanter. “Dick?”

  “If it doesn’t misplease the lady.” He bowed to his stepmother. “Good afternoon, madam.”

  “Good afternoon, Dickie dear. Refresh yourself as you will.” She smiled at him, and then she turned to me and showed me her dimples.

  I got my hat off without dropping it. “I hope I find you well, ma’am.”

  “I am, thank you, dear.” She held out her hand to be kissed. “How handsome you have become!” Her smile faded faintly as she indicated the lout. “This is Mr. Roby Douglass of Delaware. New Ark, isn’t it? He has come to stay the summer, I think.”

  Douglass had gotten to his feet, though I didn’t bet it was on my account.

  “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Douglass,” I said, but I said it to the back of his head. He’d taken Arabella’s hand in both of his and leaned over it as if he had every intention of kissing it.

  “Oh ho,” he said, like a stage Frenchman. “We are meet again, mam’selle.”

  She giggled and pulled her hand away.

  “Well!” said Mrs. Towson, fixing a smile on her face. “Isn’t this grand. Do be seated, my dears. Mr. Graves, why don’t you join Arabella on the marble settee. I’m certain you were comfortable where you were, Mr. Douglass. I’m sure you’re hungry as ever, Dickie. Shall I pour you some lemonade, Mr. Graves? Why, Arabella, don’t crush the poor boy. You’ll be in his lap in a moment.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Arabella lowered her eyes and moved an inch or two away from me on the stone bench. Hanging her head had the advantage of bringing the wide brim of her straw hat between her face and her stepmother’s eyes, and she looked sidelong at me and grinned before turning herself once more into a young gentlewoman. “Will you have a cake, Mr. Graves?”

  “Yes, thank’ee.”

  Mr. Douglass leaned forward and snatched a petit-four before Arabella could bring the tray within my reach. “Oh ho,” he said and stuffed it in his mouth.

  “Well, really,” she said, giggling.

  “Mr. Douglass is here on . . . business of some sort, wasn’t it?” said Mrs. Towson.

  “Y’m,” said Mr. Douglass. He swallowed and said, “Beg pardon, ma’am.” He showed his teeth charmingly.

  “Mr. Douglass is the son of . . . well, of Mr. and Mrs. Douglass, of course—silly me!” said Mrs. Towson. “His family have been in Delaware for some time, I understand. Since the Swedes, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  I said, “Is Douglass a Swedish name, sir?”

  “No, ’tisn’t. Say, what’re you questioning me for?”

  “I ain’t.”

  He showed his cake-covered teeth again before setting them into another petit-four.

  “You seem remarkably well, Mr. Graves,” said Mrs. Towson. “I understand you were in your sickbed for some weeks.”

  “I’m tolerable, ma’am, thank’ee. My wounds were mostly to my head. Our surgeon, Mr. Quilty, thought that in itself disqualified me from the sick list.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Dick. “He took the Faucon frigate nearly single-handedly, and dressed only in his shirt.”

  “And a belt,” I said.

  “There wasn’t much left of the shirt afterwards, though,” said Arabella.

  Her father dang near spilled his lemonade. “Arie!”

  I was surprised to hear her s
ay it, myself. I looked at her, wondering how she knew it, and she held herself very straight like she was trying to hold her breath and laugh at the same time.

  “Dickie tells such funny stories in his letters,” she said, turning the look toward me. “Are they true?”

  “He must’ve been flattering me, ma’am,” says I. “There was a good fifty Rattle-Snakes left when we boarded. They deserve the credit as much as anyone.”

  “That isn’t what I—”

  “Yes,” said Douglass. “The way I heard it, you were running around San Domingo in the stark-staring altogether with a bunch of niggers you’d taken up with, and—”

  “I weren’t either naked—”

  “More lemonade, Mr. Douglass?” said Mrs. Towson. “Do have a cake.” She nudged him with the tray until he took one. “Dickie, dear, surely you had some adventures?”

  “No, ma’am, except I got to take a pair of twelve-pounders ashore at Jacmel and pound the fort with ’em.”

  “Yes!” said Mr. Towson. “I read that to you from the Gazette, Lily. Routed the nigger army.”

  “I guess you’ll forgive me, sir,” I said, “but it was the colored army he routed.”

  “That’s what he said,” said Douglass. He looked at me like I needed a drool cup.

  I opened my mouth, but Dick beat me to it. “They have different degrees of niggers down there. Most of them are black as sin, but there are some mulattoes,” he said. “The coloreds—seriously, that’s what they call ’em in French, free coloreds. Isn’t that right, Matty?”

  “Gens du couleur libre—‘free people of color,’ sure.”

  “The coloreds were under a chap named Pétion, who was under Rigaud, who’s the leader of the mulattoes.”

  “Till he ran off to France, anyway,” said I.

  “Yes, before then,” said Dick. “The niggers, they were under Toussaint L’Ouverture, whom you’ll have heard of.”

  “Not I.” Douglass reached for the petit-fours. “Not that it matters anymore, does it? Isn’t it over now? You lost, the niggers won, and here you are and not even a lieutenant for your troubles. That’s a midshipman’s uniform, isn’t it?”

  “That’ll come with time, sir,” said Mr. Towson. “The military’s like the weather—no accounting for it, but you can turn it to your advantage if you’re smart. Now tell on, and no more interruptions.”

  We took turns relating our tales, leaving out the more bloodthirsty bits so as not to distress the ladies, and so Mr. Towson could savor them himself after dinner.

  Arabella clung to my arm and shuddered when I described my captivity in Jacmel. “It must have been horrid,” she said, “surrounded by all those nasty niggers!”

  Her clutching me like that had the pleasant effect of pressing her breast against my arm, but I found the touch of her fingers unaccountably unpleasant. “I wouldn’t say that, not at all,” I said. “Toussaint is about as magnificent a fellow as you’ll see anywhere. And I had a friend on his staff, a major name of Juge. We got captured in the same assault. He was a great pal to me, and you couldn’t beat him for bravery and honor.” Which was what got him killed in the end, but I didn’t say it. “He was all the time laughing, no matter how bad things got.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Towson, “the nigger is funny that way. It has to do with the simple nature of his soul.”

  “Oh, pooh, papa,” said Arabella. “A nigger hasn’t a soul. Reverend Thomas says so. Everybody says so. Matty, you didn’t bring this ol’ Juge with you, did you?”

  “No, he was killed aboard of the Faucon.”

  “How you prattle, child,” said Mrs. Towson, and for an instant I wasn’t sure if she meant me or Arabella. “More lemonade, Matty dear?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Do continue—you were interrupted.”

  “Yes,” said Douglass. “Tell us about the duel.”

  “We’ve heard enough of that to last us a lifetime, I guess,” said Mr. Towson. “Some folks have no notion of what the Code Duello means. You boys behaved honorably, we’ve sent our condolences to the family, and that ought to be the end of it.”

  “The end of Billy Trimble, you mean,” sniggered Douglass.

  I stood up. “He was my cousin, you—”

  But Elver Towson leaned over and shook a finger in his face. “You embarrass yourself, sir!”

  “No need for shouting, Elver,” said his wife.

  “Damnation, I’m not shouting!”

  Ha ha for you, Mr. Douglass, thinks I, sitting down again, but he was cunninger than I thought.

  He smiled at Arabella. “I believe the lady promised me a walk.”

  “Oh . . . but I meant later!”

  He pouted. “But you promised.”

  “Yes, do be a dear girl,” said Mrs. Towson. “Mr. Graves and your brother have weeks and weeks to tell you all that has transpired, but Mr. Douglass is our guest and he must be humored. I mean, indulged. Goodness,” she said, fanning herself, “it’s rather warm for June, isn’t it?”

  I regarded Arabella’s eyes, the color of the sky behind their long lashes, and was moved; I regarded her figure as she rose from the marble settee and was moved again. Beneath her broad hat her yellow hair was cut short in the new French fashion, and I’d disliked it at first, thinking it made her too boyish, but it really did something fine for the slenderness of her neck. Which I wanted to squeeze when Douglass held out his arm and she took it.

  The candle Dick carried was an island in the darkness. Down the hall to the left, dim lights showed under Arabella’s and Mr. Towson’s doors; to the right, Mrs. Towson’s and Douglass’s were dark. Time ticked away in the clock beside us at the top of the stairs. We turned right. At the far end of the hall, Greybar’s eyes flashed yellow in the candlelight as he turned away from Douglass’s door and stared at us.

  “Who is that wart, anyway?” I whispered.

  “That’s your cat.”

  “No, that wart.”

  “What wart?” We’d been through a couple-three bottles of Mr. Towson’s port wine after the others had gone upstairs, and Dick spoke overloud.

  I draped an arm around his shoulders. “Sh!”

  “Sh!” he said back. Then, “What wart? Roby Douglass?”

  “No, your granny! Of course I mean Douglass.”

  “Oh, ho! Jealous, brother?”

  “Sh-sh-sh! Not I, mate. Curious, is all.”

  “Yes, sure. Well, he’s one of the Delaware Douglasses, of course. Armaments, I believe.” He put his finger to his chin, and then held it up. “I remember now. His father owns a gunpowder factory. But—trade and manufacturing, Matty, not at all our sort.”

  “Pipe down.”

  “You pipe down.”

  We stopped to put our fingers to our lips and shush each other.

  “Anyway,” he whispered, “I shouldn’t worry about it.”

  “But I’m trade and manufacturing myself, come to that.”

  “As long as you’re an officer, you’re a gentleman.”

  “That’s true, so true.” However long it might be till we actually were officers again. We bumped into my bedroom door. I opened it. “I always thought your old man looked on me kind of favorable.”

  “Well, so he does.” He followed me in and shut the door. He lit the candle on the nightstand. “But you’re different, almost one of the family. I’ve always thought of you as a brother, brother.”

  “Maybe that’s just it.” I sat on the bed and kicked off my shoes. I couldn’t tell anymore if I liked Dick because I liked him or if I liked him because he was rich. Uncle Jupe had turned down the bedclothes and laid out my nightshirt. “If I’m a brother, I can’t very well be a brotherin-law. Your pap was awful reserved today, don’t you think?”

  “Not a bit of it.” He stretched out his arms and yawned, the candle in his hand throwing shadows on the wall. “Say, now that you mention it, he was unusually polite. I remember marking it: Mr. Graves this and Mr. Graves that, and never a ‘Matty’
or ‘dear fellow’ in it. I put it up to our having been blooded. Did you see the way he got his color up when you told him how the old Rattle-Snake got sank? It’s a good job you saved that part for after dinner. Though I expect Arabella would have enjoyed it. She’s a bloody-minded ninny, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.” I got up and hung my coat on the back of the chair.

  “Why, sure! She sets her suitors on each other like fighting cocks.”

  “What suitors?”

  “What suitors? Half the Eastern Shore, of course—the male half. As her brother I hate to admit it, but she’s kind of a peach, don’t you think?”

  “Yep.” When he said peach I had such a vision of soft juiciness that it give me a third leg, and I had to sit down again to hide it. I’d gotten it into my head that I was undressing for bed, but I sure couldn’t take my britches off right at that particular moment, so I unbuttoned the knees and yanked my stockings off.

  He yawned again. “I don’t know what she sees in that Roby Douglass fellow.”

  I balled my stockings up and heaved them against the wall.

  “Goodness, Matty, you have it bad, don’t you!”

  “Well, I guess I know it, don’t I? It’s just that . . . that toad has throwed me. Only temporarily, mind you, and don’t you dare allow I said it.”

  “Him! Arabella’s snubbed him since he first began coming around.”

  I rubbed my bare feet on the floorboards. I looked at Dick, trying to gauge what the truth was. “What d’you mean, since he first began coming around? How long’s that been going on?”

  “He was here last Christmas, which you would’ve known if you had come like you said you would.”

  “I had some family business to take care of with my brother Phillip, which I guess you know.” Phillip had managed to get the shipping business he owned with my father into shoal water and had cut off my allowance. I’d also been a-whoring that day, it being my birthday as well as the Lord’s, but I didn’t guess Dick needed to know how I spent my time. “How come I never heard of Roby Douglass before?”