F&SF BK UNICORNS VOL 2.indb

by Gordon Van Gelder

  Dr. Dapper followed, deliberately hanging a little way behind, to give the impression of growing reluctance at such ominous signs. The reverend did not look back for him, but kept advancing, step by heavy step, staring only at the earth, the musket loose in one hand; he might have forgotten completely that he was holding it at all. Olfert Dapper’s legs were beginning to trouble him, but he labored on, uncertain of everything except for the one hope that had blossomed in him, like a small bright coal to blow on in the night of great fear. Remember—remember always—they must come to you, they must deceive themselves.

  Nearing the top of the rise, the Reverend Kirtley abruptly paused in his slow advance, pointing at the ground. “See, the savage’s tracks have vanished!” he declared, glowering directly at Dr. Dapper for the first time since they had begun their climb. “What can this mean?”

  Bless me, God of Liars . . .

  Hesitantly, almost mumbling himself, casting the fear he felt in another, more purposeful shape, Dr. Dapper gestured at the cloven marks and said, very quietly, “He walketh about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

  For a wonder, the minister did not immediately catch the reference. Then he did, and his face turned a sickly, feverish red, and then absolutely colorless once again. He whispered, “I felt . . . in my heart I felt the Lord’s warning, the Lord’s merciless pity . . . but I put my fears away . . .” He took a sudden fierce step forward and gripped Dr. Dapper by the collar, his strength a monster’s strength in that moment. Aloud, he cried, “But I smelled no brimstone when I stooped to the tracks! No brimstone—no hellish fumes at all! How do you explain that, physicker?”

  Careful, careful . . . “If I remember the Holy Word correctly . . . which, doubtless, I do not”—Dr. Dapper smiled and ducked his head in embarrassment—“there is a mention of the Evil One having power to assume a pleasing appearance. May that not extend to—ah—scent, as well as looks? May not even the stink of Hell be at Satan’s command, after all?”

  The Reverend Kirtley shook his entire body like a tormented bear. “No, I cannot believe—I refuse to believe that the Devil could possibly touch . . . that she could be . . .” He did not finish the phrase, but hung his head for a long moment.

  “I read my Testament in Dutch,” Dr. Dapper said with pious humility, “which surely cannot match the mighty language of your King James Version—but does it not say that Satan hath no power over a pure heart?” He paused, mentally counting off seconds, before he pressed home. “How few of us can claim such a condition, when the full balance of sin is told?”

  Forgive me, my maligned Mistress Remorse. Speak up for an errant Hollander in that other New World, when the time comes.

  When the minister lifted his head again, Dr. Dapper felt a sudden qualm at the thought that he might glimpse tears in the wolf-eyes. But they were just as dry as before, and just as ruthlessly resolute. The Reverend Kirtley said only, “Follow on.”

  As they continued their slow advance toward the hilltop, Dr. Dapper heard the minister arguing endlessly with himself in a droning undertone. “But if the Devil took the savage on the spot, for what infernal purpose drag her along . . . why keep her alive, except as bait for the righteous—what purpose, what purpose?” Dr. Dapper noticed that the tracks of Mistress Kirtley’s work-shoes had become fainter on the moss, while the cloven hoofs had cut steadily deeper into the soil, as though Satan had been stamping or even dancing in triumph at his catch. The Reverend Kirtley must have felt the same, for he groaned aloud, studying one such passage of signs; but then added aloud, “But she fought him, as we all must fight the Devil—the very earth itself bears witness to her battle. My poor sinful wife . . .” He was holding the musket in both hands again, across his chest.

  At the top of the rise Mistress Kirtley’s footprints vanished abruptly and completely into a bewildering swirl of the cloven marks. On witnessing this dreaded conformation of his fears, the minister uttered a single great raw cry and fell to his knees, clasping his hands and wailing hoarsely, “Oh, my poor Remorse—her faith was not strong enough to save her! She struggled against her woman’s weakness, but the Evil One snatched her up—he devoured her like a roaring lion! My poor lost child!” He was tearing at his long gray hair with one hand, at his shirt with the other, and blood followed his fingernails.

  Dr. Dapper said nothing, but fell to studying the confused marks in the earth. He had known them from the first for the unicorn’s prints—the Devil having, as everyone in Holland knew, one human foot and one clumsy, betraying cow-hoof—but his only explanation for the disappearance of Mistress Kirtley’s tracks was that she must have mounted the unicorn, virgin or no, and ridden it . . . where? The trail was so confused that the hoofprints seemed to lead away in every direction from the hilltop, as though the unicorn itself had been the one dancing in celebration of their reunion.

  Something lying on the ground caught the corner of his eye, and he knelt himself in a gesture of absentminded piety to pick it up, putting his musket down first as he did so. Almost invisible against the trampled moss, it proved to be a bit of the dark lace of Remorse Kirtley’s bodice, cleanly severed, though by what he could not guess. He slipped it into the wallet at his belt without passing it to the reverend. Mine.

  Reverend Kirtley was rocking to and fro on his knees, moaning unintelligibly to himself, as Olfert Dapper had known old Amsterdam Jews to do on the death of a parent or child. He crouched down beside him and placed a tentative hand on the broad, unyielding shoulder. Speaking instinctively in the intimate case, for only the second time in this country, he said, “Thou must be brave. Thou must pray for her and be brave.”

  The Reverend Kirtley’s head whipped around to glare at him so fast that Dr. Dapper almost fell over backward. “Pray for one so lost to virtue as to fall into Satan’s claws? Nay, to rail against the verdict of God is to risk damnation oneself, and I’ll none of it.” The minister’s hoarse voice was painful to hear. “The judgments of the Lord are forever righteous,” he said, and his eyes were not at all mad, but murderously sane.

  “Surely,” Olfert Dapper said, nodding fervently, though his own words came out in a choked whisper. “Surely, amen.” He thought, If I get out of this place alive, I will never leave the Netherlands again. I will never leave Utrecht again. I will never leave my house.

  As though he had caught the unspoken words, the Reverend Kirtley rose slowly to his feet, and all his attention was on Olfert Dapper. The musket did not swing to point directly at him, but neither was it pointing as much away from him as he would have preferred. The reverend said, “It is necessary that you leave No Popery this very day. I lament to say it, but I can brook no dispute.” The toneless words sounded like millstones grinding into motion.

  “Today? Why today? What makes me . . . why am I suddenly become so unwelcome between one minute and the next?” But he already knew, which lent a certain hollowness to his protestations. Of course. Hoist by your own petard, clever Dapper.

  “You have seen what you have seen, and it is vain to pretend that you fail to understand its import. The Evil One has taken my wife for his own—been permitted to take her, because she was clearly the weaker vessel of ”—to his credit, he did falter here—“of our household. Unworthy as I am, I remain the head of this greater household of No Popery, and it would not be advisable to have it known . . .” He made a slight helpless gesture with his hands, without finishing the sentence.

  Considering that his passionate desire to leave Maine, Sagadahock, and this entire miserable outpost of ignorance and fear dated from his first day in No Popery, Dr. Dapper was astonished at the flare of genuine anger which possessed him at the minister’s words. He was close to losing English in his rage. “You for your wife care nothing, hypocrite you—only for your standing in this place, this . . . this”—and here he did use a Netherlandish word “that you call a village. Your wife is with the Duyvil better off than she was with you—”

  At which point the Reverend
Kirtley swung his musket viciously across Dr. Dapper’s face, knocking him down. He stared up into the bell-mouth of the musket and the minister’s strangely composed, almost expressionless visage. The Reverend Kirtley said, “I grieve to have had to injure you, my friend, but I could not permit you to continue abusing me in such a fashion.” He cocked his head to study Dr. Dapper’s face, clucking softly to himself. “I see your mouth is bleeding—I pray you, by your leave—” He reached out to wipe the blood away with the edge of a sleeve.

  Dr. Dapper struck his hand away, which was not behavior he would ever have advised to anyone facing a madman armed with a musket and the favor of God. He rose shakily to his feet and said, quietly but clearly, “No wonder your wife ran off with Heer Duyvil. Who would not?”

  The musket came up sharply, but the Reverend Kirtley neither shot him nor struck him again. Equally calmly, he responded, “You see, obviously, why you must leave us, and leave directly.” It was not a question. The reverend said, “One such public declaration, even a mere rumor, born—as they always are—of a mere private thought . . . and confusion is come upon poor No Popery. You are a doctor—you understand about contagion. Confusion leads inevitably to chaos, sir, and chaos is the portal to Hell, as utter, unshakable faith is the threshold and fortress of Heaven. I cannot imagine, good Dutch Calvinist as you are, that you would gainsay me on that point.”

  Dr. Dapper did not reply, but looked away, trying to focus on the maze of footprints surrounding them. His head was still ringing from the blow, and when he shook it to clear his vision his neck hurt. But it seemed clear at least that Remorse Kirtley had indeed ridden off on the unicorn, with Rain Coming—as he was somehow certain it must have been—mounted as well. Olfert Dapper imagined him with one hand tangled gently in the unicorn’s mane, his black eyes alight with the lost brilliance of long-dead stars. In his sly, sidestepping, faithless heart, Dr. Dapper whispered, “Go well. Yes.”

  The Reverend Kirtley said briskly, “Isaac da Silva will be leaving at dawn.” Dr. Dapper knew the cross-grained old Portuguese peddler as sour company, but honorable enough in his trade. “He will carry you to where the Penobscot becomes navigable—from there, you should have no difficulty finding transportation downcoast to Falmouth, and a ship to take you wherever suits your fortune. Tonight, when you assemble such belongings as you may care to take with you”—he shrugged, and very nearly smiled—“I would consider it a kindness if you would leave behind some of your most excellent stomach medicaments. I have never known their like for immediate relief.”

  “It would be my honor,” Dr. Dapper replied. “But if it should come to my attention that you have blamed the Abenaki people for your wife’s disappearance, or that they have been harmed in any way—”

  The Reverend Kirtley nodded gravely. “You have my word.”

  They walked back to the village of No Popery in silence, and parted there. The minister went home to a house that no longer held Mistress Remorse Kirtley; and Olfert Dapper applied a bit of last winter’s bear grease to his torn lip, then began to pack the few things he would bother to take along on his journey to whatever might await him in Holland. Prison, perhaps; perhaps Margot Zeldenthuis . . . Olfert Dapper had always recognized those moments when it was best to leave his fate to whims beyond his own.

  It was a longer night’s work than it should have been, considering how little he actually meant to take along. A handful of dried herbs . . . a small, extremely sharp knife . . . a jar of wild grape preserve (payment for setting and splinting a child’s broken arm) . . . a couple of grotesquely abscessed molars . . . his pinewood mortar and pestle, the shallow bowl still containing a dusting of crushed tansy, the flower’s camphor-like aroma lingering . . . a fragment of dark lace, carrying its own aroma . . . each of these was charged with a memory of this ridiculous, terrifying, terrifyingly beautiful new world that had unicorns in it. He was leaving with far more than he had brought.

  When he was done, he sat on the front step—the only step, in fact—of his little house, built by his neighbors, and waited in the still-warm night for the grumble of Isaac da Silva’s wagon wheels, which always sounded to him like the peddler’s wearily complaining voice. Exhausted as he was, he had no expectation of sleep: the day had been too draining for that, and he felt as though he might never sleep again. All the same, his eyelids did drift closed from time to time—though never for long, to judge by the moon—and so it was that Rain Coming seemed to materialize out of nothing before him, as silent, as profoundly still, and as indubitably present as ever. Dr. Dapper did not rise to greet the Indian, but smiled, although it hurt his mouth. He said, “I will miss you.”

  He thought that Rain Coming nodded slightly, but he might have been wrong. He asked, “Is she with your people?” When that did elicit a nod, Dr. Dapper chided the Abenaki mildly, saying, “You see, you had it backward. She has come to you first, and I am only leaving now. It was you she went away with?”

  Rain Coming definitely nodded this time. Olfert Dapper asked, “Will she be well with you?”

  “Little time,” Rain Coming responded. “Long time . . .” He shrugged and shook his head slightly. He said, “Sometime. Somewhere.” He made a gesture with both hands, as though he were pushing away the horizon.

  “You mean that she has long journeys yet ahead of her?” Rain Coming did not reply. Dr. Dapper said slowly, “I am sad for her. Tell her that I wish . . .” But he had no idea what he would wish for Remorse Kirtley, and so he simply said, “Keep her safe while she is with you—and tell her that I will never forget her. Please tell her that.”

  “For you,” the Abenaki said. He reached into the deerskin pouch that hung ever at his waist and produced, crumpled and slightly frayed on one side, the small Dutch-style cap that Olfert Dapper had never seen Mistress Kirtley without, except on the one occasion. He accepted it hesitantly, his throat suddenly too dry to thank Rain Coming for bringing the gift. He could only manage to nod himself, bending his head over the cap for a brief moment. There was no smell of her. He had hoped there would be.

  Rain Coming had turned away before Dr. Dapper heard da Silva’s wagon coming. He said, “The unicorn. I still do not know your word for it, but I know you have one.” The Abenaki paused, but did not turn again. Dr. Dapper asked, “Did she . . . did you both ride it? I have imagined so.”

  Rain Coming looked back at him then, but said nothing. The peddler’s wagon sounded closer; he tried not to think about what the ungreased axles would sound like during the long ride ahead. Raising his voice, he said, “I saw it twice, and I had no right, I know that. I should never . . . Did it . . . I mean, the creature—did it . . . do you think. . . ?” But he did not know what he meant to ask about the unicorn, any more than he knew what he wanted Remorse Kirtley’s life to be, and so he never finished the question.

  The night was dark yet, but a cock crowed sleepily in Schoolmaster Prouty’s coop, and the bulk of Isaac da Silva’s wagon was now visible as it neared Dr. Dapper’s house. He rose to bring out his belongings; but realized as he did so that Rain Coming was still looking fully at him, and that the Abenaki’s eyes had changed, becoming as they had been when they two had sight of the unicorn for the first time. Rain Coming’s eyes were wide and young, brilliantly young as Dr. Dapper had never seen them, and so painfully clear that he could not look directly into them for long. Rain Coming said softly, “No more,” and there was no sorrow or loss in his voice, but only an aching joy. “Never come back,” he said again, almost singing it. “Never no more. Gone away.”

  Then he was gone too, and Isaac da Silva was demanding that Dr. Dapper get himself and his scraps of rubbish into the wagon immediately, if he thought he was going to stand there and let his fine horse get chilled.

  Olfert Dapper rode all that first day facing backward, turning a woman’s dowdy Dutch cap over and over between his hands. But the next morning he placed Mistress Remorse Kirtley’s cap carefully into his pocket, and, sitting up beside the peddler, he se
t his face toward the sea.

  Miracle on Main Street

  Robert Arthur

  I

  DANNY WAS CROUCHED on the stairs, listening to the grown-ups talk in the living room below. He wasn’t supposed to be there; he was supposed to be in bed, since he was still recovering from the chicken pox.

  But it was lonely being in bed all the time, and he hadn’t been able to resist slipping out and down in his wool pajamas, to hear Dad and Mom, and Sis and Uncle Ben and Aunt Anna talking.

  Dad—he was Dr. Norcross, and everybody went to him when they were sick—and the others were playing bridge. Sis, who was in high school, was studying her Latin, not so hard she couldn’t take part in the conversation.

  They were mostly talking about other people in Locustville, which was such a small town most everybody knew everybody else, well enough to talk about them anyway.

  “Locustville!” That was Mom, with a sigh. “I know it’s a pretty town, with the river and the trees and the woods around it, and Tom has a good practice here, but the people! If only something would shake some of them out of themselves, and show them how petty and malicious and miserable they are!”

  “Like Netty Peters,” Dad said, his tone dry. Danny knew Miss Peters. Always hurrying over to some neighbor’s to talk about somebody. Whisper-whisper-whisper. Saying nasty things. “She’s the source of most of the gossip in this town. If ever there was a woman whose tongue was hinged in the middle and wagged at both ends, it’s her.”

  Uncle Ben laughed.

  “Things would be better here,” he remarked, “if the money were better distributed. If Jacob Earl didn’t own or have a mortgage on half the town, there might be more free thought and tolerance. But nobody in debt to him dares open his mouth.”