Elise had made up her mind. Through the windows she had seen a thin line of men melt into the trees and shuddered. Still—in the darkness and confusion she could pass as one of those men! She tucked up her skirts so they looked like wide Dutch breeches and found a pair of men’s boots and a wide-brimmed hat, wrapped the baby well, threw a heavy cloak over them both, breathed a silent prayer and slipped out the back door into the bitter cold, and made her way into the woods.
No sooner had she reached the shelter of the trees than someone hissed something at her in Dutch—probably reproof to a straggler for being late. As tall as a man, with her shoulders well padded and wearing men’s boots and a long cloak, a broad-brimmed hat pulled well down over her forehead and muffled up to her eyes with a scarf, Elise passed unnoticed for one of the watchers, passed through their lines and pressed northward to the spot where the blasted sycamore made a vivid landmark. There the iceboat would be waiting.
Back in the big stone house, Verhulst had withdrawn the servants from outside Imogene’s door. Tonight he would teach his young wife a lesson she would never forget! But first he would give her enough rope to hang herself!
In her bedroom lmogene waited breathlessly until the sound of the servants’ footsteps died away. At last, with trembling fingers, she set the key into the lock. It turned without a sound and she was out in the dark corridor. Drawing her fur-lined velvet cloak about her, she slipped silently downstairs and out through the big front doors. There she paused a moment, tying her French hood more firmly against the biting wind. Stephen’s timing had been perfect—the river would be frozen solid by now, and smooth, making a perfect surface for the iceboat—and the upcoming tide that would crack that flawless surface was not due for a long time.
She ran down the slope, unaware that she was watched by silent men from the woods—and worse, by Verhulst from an upstairs window.
Even as lmogene ran toward the pier, Elise was flinging herself into the iceboat upriver, gasping out to Stephen, “He knows! The patroon knows!”
“Then—” Stephen turned to Willem, whose iceboat this was. “Will ye take us anyway?”
“Aye,” said Willem uneasily, his hands upon the tiller. “Now that we have the woman on board, we can be past Wey Gat and gone—they’ve no iceboats there as I know of.”
So he was to leave lmogene here . . . Stephen’s jaw hardened. “She may be waiting for us anyway,” he muttered, “lmogene is resourceful.”
“No, no, she is guarded!” wailed Elise. “But the patroon will not hurt her—it is for the child she fears. You must take us away and you can come for her later.”
It went against the grain, but Stephen saw the wisdom of her argument. Moments later the big square sail was lifted and they were off downriver, gathering speed before the strong north wind.
In the white stillness sound carried well. Imogene heard the first sounds of the approaching iceboat and ran out from under the wooden pier.
From the bluff he was floundering down, the patroon of Wey Gat heard it, too.
“The dogs!” he roared. “Loose the dogs!”
Imogene heard his cry and looked back in horror. Verhulst knew! From the lower shore she heard the baying of the dogs—Verhulst’s man-eating pack—and gave a silent scream as she saw them streaking toward her. And now men seemed to come from everywhere, running down the slope toward the ice.
But even as she ran, Imogene was pursued by a new dizzying horror. Just as in the dream that had haunted her for so long, she was running over a gray surface—but that surface was not sand but ice! That was not a sailboat with a copper-haired man aboard she was running toward but a gray iceboat! And those leaping forms that had pursued her in her nightmare were not sharks but men and dogs! Her old dream was coming true—she was living it out this night, and with stunning certainty she knew that she was running to her death.
The scene that greeted the hurtling iceboat’s passengers was a macabre one: Verhulst and his men had reached the ice—and so had the dogs. Imogene, in her blue velvet cloak, fled before them, waving her arms at the oncoming iceboat.
“Imogene!” shouted Stephen hoarsely, for he saw the huge lead dog about to leap for her throat. He brought up his pistol, took careful aim at the lead dog—a leaping gray ghost. The dog was so close, so perilously close to Imogene. Praying that the lurching boat might not deflect his aim so that he missed the dog and hit the woman, he fired. The skittering iceboat braked with a scraping screech and Stephen saw, thankfully, the big dog drop and Imogene, waving her arms and crying, “Stephen, oh, Stephen!” come a leap nearer the iceboat.
It was the last thing he saw.
Verhulst van Rappard, here confronted with the handsome substance of the man who had seemed to him but a shadow, seeing before him almost larger than life the lithe tigerish lines of this fellow who dared to try to take Imogene from him, brought out the pistol from his belt in a single fluid gesture and fired from blind rage right at Stephen Linnington’s broad chest.
As the heavy shot crashed through his doublet, Stephen’s tall figure gave a great tremor. He staggered, clutched at his chest, and then toppled backward in a spatter of blood.
Imogene screamed.
“Look out!” cried Willem hoarsely, trying to brake against the wild wind.
But Imogene, frozen in horror and living out her dream, looked up at the iceboat bearing down on her and could not move.
Verhulst saw her danger and gave a shout—but even that did not move the woman who stood like a statue on the ice. As Willem swung about to avoid her, the iceboat struck her a glancing blow on the head and she would have been thrown to the ice senseless had not Elise, leaning over the side, screeching, grasped her by the wrist and dragged her aboard.
Through the dogs, past the men, the iceboat flew, straight as a plummeting hawk. Amid howling and shouts, it careened out of sight downriver going now at a horrendous speed.
The patroon’s men stood by helpless among the milling, snapping dogs. There was no catching it, not without another and faster iceboat—all knew that. As one, they turned silently to the patroon for their orders.
The sight that met them made them draw back and mutter among themselves.
Verhulst was bent over, staring at the big gray lead dog Stephen had shot. It lay in a pool of blood on the ice. Its great jaws were still open showing the gleaming white fangs.
But Verhulst did not see the dog. He saw Imogene.
And in his vision he was once again alone with the cold moon that scanned him critically from above—alone with his folly, alone with what he had so nearly brought to pass and in his horrified imagination he saw what had so nearly happened.
He saw again in a hellish vision the huge lead dog leaping for the running woman’s throat. He heard her agonized scream, saw the savage rending that ripped her flesh and spattered her blood over the river’s hard gray shining surface. And so vividly was this vision imprinted on his distraught mind that it seemed to him it had really happened.
Now in his mind she lay dying in her blood on the ice, torn by the savage dog, while her lover, unconscious, sped away from her downriver aboard the skimming iceboat.
Stricken, Verhulst knelt beside her.
“Imogene!” His agonized voice choked the word but she did not seem to hear him. Her lips seemed to be trying to form words but could not. Past sight and sound she was drifting away from him—perhaps in the arms of a spectral lover.
In that awful moment, Verhulst knew she was dying but—he had seen her try to speak. She had some word for him, some message. He bent closer to her lips and a wisp of sound came from them ... a last sweet message, meant for his ears alone.
“I love you, Verhulst...” The soft whisper, like the woman, died away.
And Verhulst, overcome with emotion, collapsed with a sob on the body of the dead dog, while about him his men shuffled their feet and looked at each other in embarrassment and horror.
It was big Schroon, schipper of the Danskammer, sca
ndalized by this whole affair, who helped the patroon up. It was second nature to Schroon—he had been helping Verhulst since he was a boy of five.
Verhulst staggered to his feet, protesting. In a whirling world he saw his surroundings, dimly, through a kind of film. And then the vision that had seemed the veriest of truths wavered into nothingness and he was standing over the body of a dead dog, with both feet planted on solid ice looking downriver where the iceboat had disappeared, and Schroon was clutching his arm and asking hoarsely what they should do now.
Verhulst shook his head to clear it.
With a jolt his world came back to him. That was a dog that lay there—only a dog. Imogene—alive or dead—was being carried away downriver, swept along by the fierce wind that was chilling their bones to the marrow. He turned grimly to Schroon.
“You will follow them, find them,” he cried hoarsely.
Schroon looked taken aback.“But the Danskammer cannot sail on the ice!”
“Use your iceboat. I know you have a small iceboat hidden under the willows downstream.” And when Schroon would have protested, Verhulst’s voice rose. “Don’t argue, Schroon. I have seen it!”
Schroon’s steadying hand left the patroon’s arm and his ruddy face took on a deathly pallor. He had not dreamed the patroon knew of his precious toy, so well secreted beneath the trees downriver. That iceboat was easy-going Schroon’s only protest against the patroon’s harsh rule. But his whole being revolted at the thought that it was he who must seek out the patroon’s wife, that lady whose lovely face and gentle ways he had so often gazed upon—he who must bring her back, for who knew what summary justice!
“You will—kill her?” he faltered.
“If I please to do so!” shouted Verhulst, livid with frenzy that Schroon had not promptly snapped to attention and run to obey his orders. “Go after them, Schroon. Bring me back word of what has happened to them, of where they are.”
Still Schroon hesitated. He was waiting for some word that the patroon would not harm Imogene, no matter what she had done.
It was not forthcoming.
Old habits died hard. Schroon’s shoulders drooped, but he turned downstream, slipping and sliding along the ice.
Verhulst looked after him with bleak satisfaction. Big Schroon had never failed him—he would bring Imogene back!
“I’ll go with him,” offered Groot, the kennelmaster. “The dogs can follow—they might come in useful.”
“No,” shuddered Verhulst, still beset by his all-too-recent vision. “Not the dogs. We will follow by sled.”
“The horses will make little headway,” protested Groot. “The ice is too slick and the snow too deep.”
“We will go on skates, then,” decided Verhulst, “and the horses and sled can follow us.” For his heart was beset by sudden panic. Imogene was hurt, the iceboat had sheared alongside her, striking her head. She would have fallen like a stone had not the woman Elise dragged her into the iceboat, squalling like a banshee.
Imogene was hurt, her lover was dead... he would find his lady and bear her back by sled to his river fastness.
So Verhulst reasoned as he put on his skates.
It was a grim skating party who made their way downriver, their steel blades ringing on the ice. Far behind them floundered a sled pulled by horses but the skaters rapidly outdistanced it and were alone on the moonlit river’s glassy surface. Sheer on their right rose the Hudson Highlands, seeming endlessly tall when viewed as now from the river ice. The great rounded peaks rose snowily from the wide gray expanse of the river.
Where the river was wide and the ice in the center was thin they found Schroon.
He was lying face down on the ice with an arrow in his back.
Beyond him, at the river’s center, was an ominous break in the ice, a dark glittering pool.
Groot, a magnificent skater with endless power in his heavily muscled legs, was the first to reach him.
“Schroon.” Gently Groot lifted him up. “Can you hear me?”
Schroon groaned and opened his blue eyes. They were glazing in death. “Indians—from the bank,” he managed to get out. “No reason—just shot at me. Missed me once and then got me. I fell out of the iceboat and it—went through—the ice—in the middle of the river.” He was sinking.
“Schroon.” The patroon bent over him; he had to know. “Did you see my wife, did you see the iceboat you were following?”
Schroon looked hazily up at the patroon whose orders he had long so faithfully obeyed, even to this sad pursuit of his lovely young wife on whom he had set the dogs! Schroon would never forget that, or forgive it. His eyes were glazing over and through the film he got his last view of the patroon’s dark worried face.
“The Indians—were shooting at them when I got here. Their iceboat was sinking... all dead...” His head drooped. Schroon was past answering questions ever again.
All the color drained from Verhulst’s dark face.
His golden bird had escaped her golden cage—but her flight to freedom had been short. He had lost her somewhere in that evil black water, lost her forever.
It was only then that he realized how very much he had loved her.
Like a drunken man, Verhulst staggered away from the skaters toward that dark break in the ice. Closer and closer he lurched toward it, drawn by heartbreak, until the ice cracked beneath his feet and someone, risking his life, came and dragged him back.
She was down there—Imogene was somewhere beneath this thick screen of river ice that hid the river’s deep chasm as it cut between the mountains, she and her child—that child who had borne the van Rappard name—she and her lover who had come to carry her away—she and her faithful servant and some unknown stranger and his iceboat—all of them were being carried downriver by the current beneath that opaque layer of ice.
He would never see her again.
As that thought drenched him, drowning him in it, the patroon lifted his head and gave a great howling wail that rent the sky and caused the little war party of Indians who had come down from the hills to avenge a woman mauled by a trapper to pause in their tracks and listen. The sound was not repeated and they went their silent way on deerhide moccasins. They had taken a life in revenge, it was enough....
Verhulst had collapsed senseless on the ice.
And so the sled on which he had thought to bring Imogene back to Wey Gat carried him home, half-crazed with grief and barely conscious, moaning and seeing visions in which he spoke to her, cajoled her, bullied her.
The doctor who was summoned and who arrived at Wey Gat two days later found him lying in his big square bed. He was staring fixedly at the ceiling and he steadfastly refused the hot soup that was being urged on him. He had had time to think during the long sleepless hours, and his tortured mind had accepted a strange reality.
With sudden energy, he pushed aside the soup, brushed off the doctor’s restraining hand and sat up.
“The aanspreecker! He must be brought, and fine coffins constructed. Stones must be carved! There is to be a funeral.” Scandalized eyes met above his head. A funeral—with no bodies?
“Three coffins.”
“ ‘Three’?” It was the doctor’s voice, internally counting. “ Ah, yes, for your wife and daughter and the servant woman.”
“Four coffins—I had forgotten about Elise. A pine box will do for her. The stranger who steered the iceboat can drift unmarked for eternity as far as I am concerned, but there will be three great coffins of fine wood with silver fittings: One for a woman, one for a child and—one for a man.”
For a man! Eyes bulged and there were sharply indrawn breaths. Surely this grief-crazed madman was not planning to memorialize his wife’s lover?
But that was exactly what the young patroon had in mind. In those moments when he was wrenched away from his visions to bitter reality, he had seen his position more clearly—and realized the depth and breadth of what he had done to the woman he loved. She had brought him so much beauty, so
much gaiety, and he had returned only material things, not the love she had asked for, the love to which, he now admitted, she was entitled. He wanted to make it up to her and so he conceived a strange quixotic notion: Imogene had loved another man—in death he would reunite them.
Verhulst might have buried Stephen’s memory deep in the dark rushing waters beneath the ice where the iceboat had gone down. But he did not. Stern-faced and grieving, in the most magnificent funeral the river had ever seen, the young patroon of Wey Gat buried the lovers. Black-clad aanspreeckers, their hats streaming long black crape ribbons, went scurrying from house to house inviting guests to the funeral, since by custom none dared attend unless invited. Black gloves and handkerchiefs were given to every tenant of Wey Gat, and all drank spiced wine and smoked the patroon’s tobacco at the great feasts that were held to commemorate her passing. Each bearer received a new black suit of mourning clothes and the wives of his neighbors all received gifts of black gloves and scarves and fans and carved jet mourning rings.
To the scandal of all the countryside, Verhulst placed three empty coffins in the family plot at Wey Gat. The stones he raised to Imogene and Georgiana bore their names and the sad words “Lost to the River.” But on the other tombstone—which everybody read with whispered comments—there was carved only, “Stephen Linnington, gentlemen of Devon” and the date and a Dutch word that meant “Tomorrow.”
Bold Breathless Love Page 36
