by Laura London
Annie wrapped herself protectively around Cat’s neck, her loose ebony hair sliding over his arms, her cheek tucked into his shoulder. And that in itself was a miracle. Six months ago Cat would have shoved her away, scarred as he was, and frigid, whatever anybody thought. The only contact he had allowed was Morgan’s casual, infrequent touch, and deliberately rapid encounters with women of a certain order.
Forever etched in Sails’s memory was a color portrait of Cat the night they’d first brought him to the Joke. Come and see the boy I’ve bought, Morgan had said, and there had been Cat, with face paint on his cheekbones and smelling of violets, sitting on Morgan’s bed, his face about as friendly as a barracuda waiting under a rotting foot bridge.
“It never does any good to ask,” the boy had observed, dissecting them, chilly-eyed under curled lashes, “but I function better when there’s only one pair of sweaty hands on me at a time.”
“You have very good diction for a twelve-year-old,” Morgan had said, blandly smiling.
“I’ve known men like you,” the boy had said. “I know what you want.”
“I’m afraid you don’t,” Morgan had said, looking consideringly at his exotic purchase. “You still have things to learn about men like me, my child. And put your clothes on. It may take you a few days to get used to the idea, but you don’t have to wait anymore in bedrooms wearing nothing but your gooseflesh.”
Years it had taken to turn that savagely hostile brothel product into the youth who could become a friend to little Merry, and when she passed out of this world, she would carry a part of him with her. Surely he needed to hear it was not his fault he couldn’t save her, and not the opposite. What could Morgan be thinking of?
Devon, awakened thirty minutes later, found Cat on the southern slope near the house under the vast, horizontally spreading limbs of a fig tree. Cat was seated in the deep shade near the trunk, his knees drawn up, and on them, in his folded arms, he had buried his face. His braid was wrapped like a collar around his neck, and one of his thin hands clasped a large oval leaf that he must have plucked from the waxy foliage above him.
Devon knew better than to offer sympathy. Instead he sat on the grass and waited until Cat looked up. When the boy lifted his head, Devon saw that he had not been crying. But it was the only time in the years of their friendship that Devon had seen Cat look like the teenager he was. Speaking calmly, as though this were any ordinary day in their lives, Devon prodded forth the same discussion they had repeated daily since she had fallen ill: about the medicines they were giving her, the dosage, the frequency. Even in this moment of mutual panic their minds clicked into the accustomed pattern, and when they had exhausted the paces, Devon stretched out flat and stared up at the dark branches.
“Could we get her to swallow? Is it possible?”
“Probably,” said Cat, “but by this afternoon I don’t think so.”
“What would happen if we double everything we’re giving her?”
“I’ve told you. Convulsions. Death.”
“If we increase it by a third?”
“Devon, we did that yesterday. I’m already killing her with the dosage that—” But Devon had uncoiled from the ground like a whip ricochet, dragging Cat with him, catching shirt front and braid in a crushing grip. For once, neither was acting as each glared into the extremity of the other’s exhaustion.
In a voice he couldn’t manage to keep under perfect control, Devon said, “All right, then. Now you know. I’m as close to the brink of some childlike useless frenzy as you are. Don’t impel me to do anything I’ll have to apologize for later. That girl is not going to die.”
With helpless wrath Cat said, “Why not? Because Morgan told her not to? God and the Devil don’t listen to Rand Morgan. Or do you think the celestial weight of our guilt is going to sift into her through the skin and keep her alive? Do you realize you’re still calling her ‘girl’? Does she have to be dead before you’re willing to admit that from the beginning she was a woman to you? To me she’s more than one more warm tup. Get your goddamn hands off my shirt.”
He was released with a speed that would have terrified someone less inured to violence, and found himself staring into Devon’s cold fury.
“Don’t examine too closely the chaste purity of your feelings for her, little monk,” Devon said softly. “You might have a surprise.”
“Yes! By all means, let’s tally each other’s hypocrisies. Is that mine? Then we’ll do yours next. Why haven’t you let her go?”
Devon allowed a frigid pause to develop. When he finally spoke, his voice was light and full of ice. “Every time I saw her, I reduced my demands so as to help her comply. It became almost comical.”
“It shouldn’t have, because the real comedy is that the relationship you were so sure she had with Granville was never more than a third of the reason you kept her.” Cat stepped back, the sharp movement swinging his shoulders, and the braid fell from its loop around his neck. “You won’t let her go because you want her. Even in that bloody tavern I saw it. It’s a disease with you. You walk into a room with Merry, and you take in so much hydrogen that it’s a miracle you don’t float. But she’s young and sensitive and well-bred, and that sets your chivalrous conceits flowing like springtime sap. You could have taken her; except that it was easier for your genteel conscience to deny yourself the cure of her body, even if that meant you weren’t able to open the knot. An honest man would have raped her at once and let her go.”
Devon had retreated a step, though Cat wasn’t sure if it was in anger or to look at him from a fuller angle.
“Are you mad at me,” Devon said slowly, “because I want to take her to bed, or because I haven’t?”
“I’m mad at you because you’ve kept her a prisoner while you made up your mind whether your lust was more important to you than your bloody vanity. It would have been better to have ravished her and released her than to keep her living all those weeks in air turrets.”
The shining oval leaf had dropped from Cat’s fingers. Leaning forward gracefully from the waist, Devon swept it up and stood staring at the glossy cuticle, as though the bright color fascinated him, playing one slow finger along the vein paths. Looking again toward Cat, he said, “Why do you assume that I could have done either thing?” And then, “You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“Really?” The reply was heavily sarcastic. “Then you may have made yourself unnecessarily elaborate. What will become of your moral dilemmas when she’s dead?”
Cat stopped, and though Devon couldn’t feel the change in his own expression, he saw Cat shut his eyes tightly against it and cover his eyes and forehead with a long hand that was pitifully adolescent, thin and prominently boned.
Swiftly turning, Cat tried to walk away but discovered that his leg muscles weren’t functioning properly. The first shock of the discovery was so intense he might almost have confused it with illness. Almost. Practical to the end, he decided to sink to his knees, catching himself on an outstretched hand as he fell. He knelt, fighting a blasting wave of nausea. It was minutes later, as it subsided, that he became aware of Devon’s arm supporting his shoulders, the touch pressureless, infinite in its ability to warm and reassure.
Cat murmured, “I’m sorry. Honestly. I’m not sure how much of it I meant.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Devon said.
When Cat turned toward him, he found that Devon was looking at him with an unpolished kindness strain left undimmed. It occurred to Cat that he had never seen Devon look so tired.
Exhaustion made Devon slightly misread Cat’s expression. Devon said, “I apologize for dropping off sitting up. I should have been there with you when Morgan conducted his little drama.”
“No. He picked a time when you weren’t there. You know Morgan’s methods. Divide and slaughter.” Cat studied Devon’s face. Through everything the man had asked nothing for himself, not sympathy, not tact, not even sleep. This was not the first time Cat had notic
ed how unselfish Devon was in his friendships, and if anyone thought differently, it was an illusion created by the strength of the impression Devon left on people. He felt Devon pat his shoulder and withdraw his arm. Wishing he was at ease enough with physical contact to have returned the light clasp, Cat gave him a glance that was as free from pain as he could make it and with the back of his fingers flipped the soft blond hair on Devon’s forehead.
“You need a haircut,” he said. It was an old joke between them. No one could remember the original context, but it seemed to have had something to do with Cat’s hair being much longer. Then, losing the last of his inhibitions about appearing pathetic, he said, “Please. Help me keep her alive.”
Devon had settled cross-legged in the deep grass, twirling the leaf between two fingers. “You can depend upon it, child.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, as though he was clearing his brain, and as he lowered his hands he said, “You may not have any particular faith in the healing power of guilt, but I promise you that the heat of mine is going to keep Merry alive until she’s at least three hundred. And she’s more to me too than one more warm…” He lost interest in the sentence, searching in his pocket and then producing a piece of notepaper. He handed it to Cat.
“Tell me about this,” he said.
Cat glanced at the paper. It was covered with his own handwriting, the neat slanting letters that had always seemed like they must come from a hand other than his own.
“Where did you get this?” Cat asked, as if he didn’t know already.
“It was beside me when Annie woke me. Morgan left it, one assumes. I can’t think of anyone else who would take the liberty of rifling your journal. What is it?”
Reluctantly Cat said, “An Indian remedy. I don’t know how to use it.”
“Have you tried?”
“Yesterday. Do you remember when Griffith kept Raven busy on the Joke making new rope handles for the fire buckets? Middle of the afternoon? I made up a dose, and Saunders fed it to one of the dogs.” Cat was looking away from Devon, down the rolling meadow where a cotton tree sparrow trilled a scale that rose and fell sweetly. The boy felt the older man’s scrutiny, and then a shallow relief as that scrutiny was withdrawn, an assessment complete.
“It died?” Devon said.
“I don’t know if it would have died,” Cat said. Inhibitions, irritation, and frustration were back in place, thank God, and he was able to keep the sticky misery out of his voice as he finished. “Saunders had to shoot it.”
Devon made a murmur in his throat of muted sympathy as he tunneled his spread fingers thoughtfully through the grass before his knees.
“Too strong, then. It’s a poison. We can dilute it.”
“For God’s sake, do you think I haven’t thought of that?” Cat said. “Dilute it how much? And even then, how would I know if it’s safe for Merry?”
On their trip through the fragrant shaded grass Devon’s fingers encountered a young scorpion, and he let it walk onto his barely cupped palm. Cat’s stomach muscles tightened involuntarily, even though he knew the small arachnid’s sting was no worse than a severe wasp bite. He kept his lips stubbornly shut, and in a minute Devon gently released the scorpion and watched it slip away on its belly.
Devon smiled. “The Indians were right about quina.”
“Look—”
“We’ll work out a less potent formula, and give it to me first. Yes?”
“No!” The skin on Cat’s cheekbones whitened and stretched like thin fabric. “Oh, no. Don’t ask.”
But Devon was already getting to his feet. “Assent with a civil leer, young’un. Do you think I’d let you kill me? It would be unspeakable to leave you alone to explain it to Morgan—”
“Not to mention packing you in a Malmsey butt and sending you home to Mother.” Taking refuge in anger, Cat said, “Try not to posture, will you? I’ve got grief enough without having to depopulate half the island. I won’t give it to you. You wouldn’t be a fair test anyway. The body isn’t a base metal vat that you can dump what have you into. Chemicals react against each other, and since you aren’t full of arsenic like she is—”
“Give me that too.”
“Wonderful! Instead of sending you home, maybe you’d like us to bury you beside the dog. What’s the matter with you? I remember a time not long ago when you were sane. Will poisoning you help her?”
“That, my friend, is what we’re going to find out.”
In the end Devon won, probably because, as Cat would reflect later, when it came to relentless expertise in getting his own way, Devon was rarely outdistanced. Cat gave him the questionable medicinal concoction, and when Devon was alive an hour later—though not in what anyone would call a healthy condition—Cat diluted the mixture by another two thirds and fed it to Merry.
Chapter 19
The unicorn hadn’t abandoned her after all, it seemed.
Merry found it in a dream of sharp colors that stretched at the edges like a projected globe from where she stood, a tiny figure clothed in pearly cotton under the sky-distant curve of an arched window. Her heart pounded gently with longing as she saw the dream creature canter across a shimmering horizon. There was a moment when it disappeared, and she was weak with fear, but it returned, circling and striking its hooves in the red dirt, and then rearing, its knotted ivory horn standing in the air as a glistening spiral. It paused and then galloped straight toward her, growing larger, its nostrils softly dilated, its mane streaming. Great hooves, unclad in iron, threw a debris of grit and pebbles behind as it raced forward until it stopped ten feet from her and stood, quivering nervously. Shyness and an inexplicable dread made her approach it slowly, though the love and joy inside her was so strong that the earth melted like April snow under her bare feet; and the unicorn seemed to quiet as it watched her come closer.
It nickered softly to her, an invitation, though its muscles were taut in repose, as if being still were an effort, as if it were not easy to restrain its power, and this was a deference not to be long accorded. With trepidation and wonder she put her fingers into its mane and buried her face there also and learned with surprise that the hair wasn’t coarse or odorous like the fibrous stuffing of Aunt April’s drawing room wing chairs back in Fairfield, but was thick and soft like heavy silk, and fresh scented as a mown pasture.
The unicorn was tall, and her arms were imbued with unnatural strength as she pulled herself upward to its back, her breasts drifting over the rippling neck muscles, her legs lifting apart to receive the broad thrust of its body as she straddled it. The creature’s life beat came to her, a caressing pulse below her cradling thighs, and then the great muscles stretched as it began to canter, and they moved together in long rocking strides. The sparkling green earth and the heavens caroled love hymns to them, and the sun dusted their united bodies with powdered light. Life fluids coursed through her surrendered body, and all parts of her had become healthy and distended with rich golden blood. Her fingers roamed under the unicorn’s mane, embracing the warm hidden curves of its muscles. Rushing air burned her throat as she pressed herself deeply into its back, and her exhaled breaths came forth in many colors and blended with its own to bathe the sky in rainbow fluid.
On it went, the exquisite paradise that filled her until she was too exhausted to hold herself on the white back any longer, and sensing it, the great animal slowed to a trot, and then to a walk, and brought her to peace under the densely bunched head of a pear tree in blossom. She let herself slide to the ground, uncurling her heavy limbs slowly, and lay on a mossy bed beneath while white-touched pink petals rained over her in perfumed silence. Through eyes that could only open halfway, she gazed at the unicorn as it stood poised above her. But then, in one splendidly beating moment, the dove-whisper of the wind murmured to watch the unicorn because she was on the edge of a great discovery.… To watch…
The wind-command faded. Merry opened her eyes to Cat, bending over her with another of those eternal damp cloths h
e insisted on slopping on her skin every spare second he wasn’t pouring his vile medicines down her. She observed fretfully that his braid, usually so perfect, had hair tendrils straggling out as if he’d slept on it; the cloth being applied tenderly to her brow made her feel sticky. And he had woken her from the unicorn. Merry lifted her hand and pushed at him.
“No!” she said crossly.
She saw him drop the cloth, which made a clammy water ring on the bedclothes, and look at her face with what seemed to her like totally unwarranted amazement. Before she had a chance to comment on that, he had snatched up her hand and was pressing it to his mouth with his eyes tightly shut. And then, to her chagrin, he was bending his head over her tightly clasped hand, and droplets of something wet were running into the center dip of her palm and from there down her wrist. Where was the water coming from?
“You’re not coming down sick too, are you?” she asked him irritably.
He had turned his face away. “No. No, I’m hale. Merry…” His voice sounded strange. “Merry. You’re going to get well.”
“So you’re always telling me. I’ve yet to see any evidence of it,” she said with the natural peevishness of a convalescent invalid. “Where’s Devon? Why is it so dark in here? I’m thirsty. And you made my hand wet.”
In a state of bliss that was higher than anything he’d known in his life, Cat ran to satisfy her complaints; opening the jalousies, patting her hand dry, raising her head to give her water and nourishment. He had paused at a mirror to make a brief curious study of his eyes, which had unexpectedly produced tears for the first time since his infancy. Finally, when he was certain he had this surprising new ability under control, he went to tell the others that Merry would live.
