by Louis Bayard
I didn’t have to say a word. He shook his eyes open and set down his glass and winced into the dark.
“Mr. Landor! This is a pleasant surprise.” He started to rise. “Do you know, I’ve been reading the most fascinating treatise on the puerperal fever. I was thinking you, in particular, might appreciate the—the discussion of sovereign specifics . . . oh, but where is it?” He studied the chair he had just left, whirled round in a heavy daze, then found the treatise, still in his lap. “Ah, here we are!”
He looked up expectantly, but I was already moving to the looking-glass. Examining my whiskers, brushing lint from my chin . . . making sure I was ready.
“Where’s the rest of your family, Doctor?”
“Oh, the hour is too advanced for the ladies, I’m afraid. They’ve retired.”
“Ah, yes. And your son?”
He blinked at me. “Why, he’s in barracks, of course.”
“Of course.”
I crossed the room in slow segments, brushing him softly each time I passed (for the room was exceedingly narrow) and feeling his eyes tracking me every step of the way.
“Can I offer you anything, Mr. Landor? Brandy?”
“No.”
“Some whiskey, perhaps. I know you like your—”
“No, thank you,” I said, stopping just a couple of feet away and grinning at his face in the candlelight. “You know, Doctor, I’m a little put out with you.”
“Oh?”
“You never told me what an illustrious ancestor you had.”
From the crater of his mouth a half grin came flickering up. “Why, I don’t think . . . you know, I’m not sure who you—”
“Father Henri le Clerc,” I said.
He dropped like a winged partridge, straight into his chair.
“Oh, I grant you, Doctor, it’s not a name that would stir up a lot of notice now. But in his day, I’m told, he was the finest of witch hunters. Until he became one of the hunted. May I borrow your light?”
He made no answer. I took the taper and carried it toward the bookcases, toward the niche that housed the antique oil portrait. The portrait to which I’d paid no more than passing notice the first time I saw it. A near-perfect likeness of the engraving in Pawpaw’s book.
“This is le Clerc, is it not, Doctor? Oh, he’s a fine-looking gentleman, your ancestor. I would have wanted him on my side, too.”
I brought the taper lower and watched as the cameo of the young Mrs. Marquis flared into view. Setting the cameo to one side, I rested my hand on the coarsely matted surface that lay beneath, the musty gray cover I had once mistaken for a pillow.
“And this is his book, is it not? I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even know it was a book. Has such an unusual texture, doesn’t it? Wolf skin, if I recall correctly.”
After a moment’s hesitation, I pried my fingers underneath and lifted. What a weight it had! As though every page had been lined with lead and embossed with gold.
“Discours du Diable,” I said, opening it to the front leaf. “You know, Doctor, there are people in this world who’d pay a considerable sum for this volume. You could be a rich man before another sun had set.”
Closing the cover, I returned it with great care to its place on the shelf and set the portrait of Mrs. Marquis back on top.
“Your family has been quite a puzzle to me, Doctor, I don’t mind saying. I could never get a fix on who was—who was in command, I suppose, who was setting the cadence. At one time or other, I suspected each of you. It never occurred to me it might be someone else altogether. Someone who wasn’t even alive.”
I stood in front of him.
“Your daughter suffers from the falling sickness,” I said. “No, please don’t deny it, I’ve seen it for myself. In the course of her spells, she imagines herself to be in contact with someone. Someone who tells her things, sends her instructions, maybe.” I pointed to the painting on the wall. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
In the end, Dr. Marquis was a poor dissembler. Not from a lack of skill but from a lack of bent. Some people, I think, can build up secrets like layers of shale—pile them higher and higher, I mean, and let nothing crack. Others need only the lightest tap to bring their whole edifice down. And for these folks, you don’t even need a face like Father le Clerc’s. You just need to be on hand when it happens.
So it was with Dr. Marquis. He was ready to talk, and talk he did, as the taper sputtered down, as the night wore into morning. And whenever the flow of words abated, I would pour him another brandy, and he would look at me as if I were an angel of mercy, and the words would once again flow.
He told me the story of a beautiful girl-child, marked for all the brilliant things a girl can be marked for: marriage, status, children. Marked, in the same stroke, by illness. Ghastly illness, seizing her when no one was looking, stopping her brain and shaking her like a gourd.
Her father tried every medical regimen he could think of—nothing worked. He even brought in faith healers, but they, too, failed to stop the terror. And gradually, this terror took over the whole family and changed every one of them. So that they abandoned the comforts of New York in favor of the isolation of West Point. They swore off friendships and kept largely to themselves. The father gave up his ambitions, the mother grew bitter and eccentric, and the children, left to their own devices, developed bonds of unnatural closeness. They were all, in their own way, in thrall to this disease.
“For God’s sake,” I said, “why didn’t you tell anyone? Thayer would have understood.”
“We didn’t dare. We didn’t want to be shunned. You have to understand, Mr. Landor, it was a terrible time for us. When Lea turned twelve, her spells got much worse. On more than one occasion, we despaired of her life. And then one day, it was—it was an afternoon in July, she came to herself, and she said . . .”
He stopped.
“She said what?”
“She said she’d met someone. A gentleman.”
“And this was Father le Clerc?”
“Yes.”
“Her great-great-great-grandfather, or whoever he was.”
“Yes.”
“And she spoke with him?”
“Yes.”
“In French?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
“She was fluent, yes.”
There was a touch of defiance in his tone, unusual for him.
“Tell me, Doctor. How did she know who this mystery man was? Did he bother with introductions?”
“She’d seen his picture. I kept it in the attic in those days, but she and Artemus, they’d stumbled across it somehow.”
“In the attic? Please don’t tell me you were ashamed of your forebear.”
“No. No.” His hands fluttered. “It’s not like that. Père le Clerc wasn’t . . . he was never the man he was reputed to be. He wasn’t evil at all, he was a healer.”
“Misunderstood.”
“Precisely, yes.”
“And so this poor misunderstood healer, this creature of your daughter’s imagination, begins to instruct her. She, in turn, instructs Artemus. And at some point your own wife, Doctor, becomes a student, too.”
It was just a guess, honestly. There was no piece of paper pointing to Mrs. Marquis, only the proof of my own senses—the way sound carried in this closely built house—nothing could be done in private for very long. A hunch, yes, but from the way the doctor’s face fell, the way it kept falling, I could see I’d hit the mark.
“Well, it must have made for an interesting curriculum, Doctor. The main subject, as far as I can see, was sacrifice. Animal sacrifice—until they reached the point where animals would no longer do.”
His head was moving from side to side like a pendulum.
“What would your precious Galen have said, Doctor? What would Hippocrates have said about sacrificing young men?”
“No,” he said. “No. They swore to me Mr. Fry was already dead. They swore they would never take a human life. Never.”
�
�And you believed them, of course. But then, you also believed a man could rise from the dead and chat up your daughter.”
“What choice did I—”
“What choice?” I shouted, as my fist found the back of his chair. “You of all people! A physician, a man of science. How could you place your faith in such madness?”
“Because I . . .”
His hands closed over his face. A high girlish moan came trailing through.
“I can’t hear you, Doctor,” I said.
He raised his head and cried in his own voice:
“Because I couldn’t save her myself !”
He smeared the damp from his eyes. Coughed up one final sob and held out his hands in a mute entreaty.
“My own art was useless, Mr. Landor. How could I object to her seeking a cure elsewhere?”
“A cure?”
“That’s what he promised her. If she did what he asked her. And she did, and she got better, Mr. Landor. No one can deny it. The spells didn’t come nearly as often, and when they did, they weren’t nearly as severe. She got better!”
I leaned against the bookcase. Tired, suddenly. Tired beyond all measure.
“So if her health was on the mend,” I said, “what did she want with a human heart?”
“Oh, she wanted none of it. But he told her it was the only way she could be free. Once and for all.”
“Free from what?”
“Her curse. Her gift. She was through with it, don’t you see? She wanted to be whole again, she wanted to live as other women do. She wanted to love.”
“And all she had to do was offer up . . . somebody’s organs?”
“I don’t know! I told Lea and Artemus they weren’t to tell me anything of what they are doing. It was the only way I could—I could keep silent.”
He wrapped his arms round himself and let his head droop. Oh, it’s a hard thing, sometimes, witnessing human weakness. Which is, in my experience, what most venality comes down to. Weakness. Hiding itself as strength.
“Well, Doctor, the problem for you is your children keep roping other people into their little devils’ academy.”
“They swore they weren’t responsible for—”
“I’m not talking about Fry,” I said. “I’m not talking about Ballinger or Stoddard. I’m talking about someone who’s still with us. Or maybe you aren’t aware your daughter is engaged to be married to Mr. Poe?”
“Mr. Poe?” he cried.
His astonishment was too piecemeal to be feigned. He couldn’t make sense of it, and so he tried to absorb it in stages, and each new stage worked on him like a hiccough, shaking his whole system.
“But Mr. Poe was here,” he sputtered. “This evening. No one said a word about an engagement.”
“Poe was here?”
“Yes! We had a nice chat, and then he and Artemus went to the parlor to have a little nip of something. Oh, I know it’s against the rules,” he said, flashing his mighty teeth, “but a drab now and then never hurt anyone, I believe.”
“Artemus was here, too?” I asked.
“Yes, it was quite a—quite a party. . . .”
“And when did Poe leave?”
“Well, I don’t know. He couldn’t have stayed long, he had to get back to his quarters, just as Artemus did.”
I often wonder if things would have turned out differently if I’d been on my game from the start. If, say, I’d thought to ask about that family portrait the first time I saw it. Or if I’d understood the importance of Lea Marquis’ condition when it was first described to me.
Or if I’d recognized right off what I saw when I entered the Marquis house that night.
No, it took me more than half an hour to realize what it was, and as soon as I did, I leaned into Dr. Marquis and hissed the words right into his face—the reproach that should have been mine alone.
“Tell me, Doctor. If Poe left your house, why is his cloak still in your front hall?”
It was the only article still left on the coat rack. A bundle of black wool, standard government issue, except for the . . .
“Except for the tear,” I said, holding the cloak. “Do you see, Doctor? Nearly the full length of the shoulder. Probably came from sneaking through the woodyard so many times.”
The doctor stared back at me. His lips bubbled and went slack.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, Doctor, it’s that cadets never go anywhere without their cloaks. Nothing worse, is there, than turning out for reveille on a winter morning without some padding?”
I set the cloak back on the rack. Gave it a couple of brushes. And said, as casually as I could, “So if Mr. Poe didn’t leave, where did he go?”
Something flashed in his eye. The tiniest spark.
“What is it, Doctor?”
“They were . . .” He turned round now, trying to get his bearings. “They were taking out a trunk.”
“A trunk?”
“Old clothes, they said. They were throwing out old clothes.”
“Who was?”
“Artemus. And Lea was helping. And they had their hands full, so I opened the door for them. And they . . .” He opened the door. Took a step onto the landing and peered into the darkness, as if he expected to find them still there. “I don’t . . .”
He turned back to me, and as his eyes met mine, his face went white, and his hands flew to his ears. It was the very same position I’d seen him assume in Kosciusko’s Garden that day with his wife. The position of a man who wants to shut everything out.
I grabbed his hands. I pulled them down to his sides and locked them in place.
“Where have they taken him?” I asked.
He fought me. Fought as though he were the stronger one.
“It can’t be far,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “You can’t carry a trunk too far. It must be somewhere within walking distance.”
“I don’t—”
“Where?”
I meant to scream it, right into his naked ear, but something snagged my voice at the last moment, strangled it down to a whisper. And yet it might as well have been a scream, for his face blew back under the force of it. He closed his eyes, and the words dribbled from his lips.
“The icehouse.”
Narrative of Gus Landor
37
December 13th
A saber wind was driving down from the west as Dr. Marquis and I went hurtling down the Plain. The trees were whistling, and a screech owl was flying, near-somersaulting, over our heads, and a cedar bird was chattering like a mad monk . . . and Dr. Marquis was chattering, too, even as he ran.
“I don’t—don’t think we need . . . bring in anyone else, do you? Family business and all that. I’m sure I can—talk to them, Mr. Landor . . . once that’s done, no one’s harmed . . .”
Well, I suffered him to go on. I knew his biggest fear was that I would call in Hitchcock and a full party of reinforcements, and since I had my own reasons for settling the matter in private, I held my peace. That is, until two young cadets came striding toward us in long bounds.
“Who comes there?” they cried in near unison.
One of Hitchcock’s newly ordered double postings. Seething with belts and cartridge boxes and brass and steel.
I felt the doctor’s hand on my arm like a prayer.
“It’s Mr. Landor,” I said, trying to sound as calm as I could between pants. “And Dr. Marquis. Out for some late-night exercise.”
“Advance and give the countersign,” they said.
I was well enough known at the guard posts by now that on a normal evening, this request would have been a mere formality. Such were the changed times that the older sentinel, far from relaxing, thrust out his chin and repeated the order in a crackling man-boy voice.
“Advance and give the countersign!”
I took a step forward. “Ticonderoga,” I said.
He held his stance for some time, and it was only when he heard his companion clear his throat that he
pulled his chin back.
“Carry on,” he said gruffly .
“Excellent work, gentlemen!” Dr. Marquis called back as we dashed away. “I feel safer, I’m sure, seeing you on the job.”
The only other person we saw abroad that night was Cesar, the mess steward, who appeared, improbably enough, on the brow of the hill and waved at us like a boy on an outing. We were too busy running to return his greeting. Two minutes more, and we were standing before the icehouse, staring up at that homely little barn with its stone walls and thatched roof, and I had a sudden memory of Poe atop those very heights, peering down at me as I wedged little rocks in the turf. No way for us to know, then, what we were looking for—Leroy Fry’s heart—lay just below us.
