Bride of the Wilderness

by Charles McCarry

  “Ah, Rose,” he said, grinning and trembling. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  To his surprise, Rose stood up and walked toward him, lifting her skirt to her boot tops and holding out her hand, as if she meant to take the sweetmeat after all. Oliver’s face lit up with happiness and he reached out a hand to her.

  Rose looked downward. His wounded friend. Wounded or not, it was engorged and old and disgusting. She whirled, just beyond Oliver’s reach, and ran up the stairs.

  Oliver liked games before bed, and he still thought that this must be a game that Rose was playing. He pushed the sweet into his own mouth and chewed it as he thundered after her. Sore as his bitten flesh was, he wanted Rose more than ever. He imagined her on the bed, glorious, as he had seen her the night before.

  “By God, I don’t know how you’re going to do it in your condition,” Oliver said aloud to his bitten part, giving it an affectionate squeeze as he bounded up the stairs. “But do it you shall.”

  Rose’s door was locked from the inside. Oliver called through the wood to her, but she was silent. It was a very heavy door, closely fitted except for a space about an inch high at the bottom. The room might have been empty, it was so quiet, but he knew that Rose, with her extraordinary ears, could probably hear him breathing.

  “Rose, come out,” Oliver said. “I have something more for you. It’s a truly beautiful thing—more beautiful than all the other things together.”

  “I don’t want to see it.”

  “You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

  There was a long silence. Then Rose’s voice, surprisingly clear, said, “How big is it?”

  “As big as a plover’s egg.”

  “What color is it?”

  “Something like a strawberry. No, redder than that.” “I don’t like red. But put it under the door.”

  “I won’t, Rose. You must come out if you want to see what it is. It’s a beautiful thing.”

  “Put it under the door if it’s so wonderful and then we’ll see.”

  “No. I don’t trust you.”

  “Then give whatever it is to somebody else. I’m sure I don’t want it.”

  Oliver took a ring out of his pocket and looked at it. Even in the dim evening light that filtered into the upstairs passageway, the stone, a huge ruby surrounded by a circle of sapphires, shone brilliantly. It was the largest jewel Oliver had ever seen except on the finger of the queen in a royal portrait. Only that day, he had mortgaged everything he owned in order to buy it.

  Oliver wrapped the ring in a scrap of silk and slid it under the door. Hearing Rose gasp, he smiled: let her resist a ruby as big as a plover’s egg! No human being could. Oliver imagined her slipping the ring onto her finger. He imagined her with her hair floating around her, wearing the ring, and only the ring. He called to her. Still Rose didn’t answer or open the door. Oliver thought of battering it down, but he was afraid that she would go out the window before he could knock the hinges off.

  * * *

  Much later, after he had drunk a whole bottle of French brandy, Oliver went to sleep on the floor outside the bedchamber door. A cold supper had been laid out by the maid on the table in the hall downstairs. Even Rose had to eat and drink in order to live, and she would have to step over his body to go to the food. That was her weakness: he would capture her when she came out.

  When Oliver woke up, Rose’s door was open. He lurched to his feet and looked inside the empty bedchamber, even searching under the bed before he heard the rattle of crockery below. He went down the stairs in his stocking feet and cautiously opened the door into the hall. Rose sat at the table alone with six candles burning in a silver candelabrum that had come from Spain in the Pamela. Oliver was amazed to see her. She was eating a chicken leg and watching herself in Fanchon’s mirror. When Rose saw Oliver, she smiled, the first time she had ever done so. Sour as his stomach was after all the brandy, his heart lifted.

  “Have you eaten?” she asked.

  Oliver shook his head. Rose, all of a sudden wifely and mild, filled a plate with cold meat and cheese and poured him some ale. Oliver sat down on the other side of the table. Needing food to absorb the brandy he had drunk, he ate as quickly as he could, cutting chicken and mutton off the bone with one hand and stuffing it into his mouth with the other.

  Rose smiled again and licked her fingers with her pink tongue. Her lips shone with fat from the chicken leg. She wore a robe that was belted very high under the bosom, an exciting fashion to Oliver, as everything about Rose was exciting. When Rose lifted her goblet to drink, Oliver saw that she wore the ruby on the index finger of her right hand. She was, Oliver thought, like a shy nymph with her huge tremulous eyes. Any sound or sudden movement would frighten her away.

  Rose neither moved nor spoke. Smiling, Oliver went around the table and knelt beside her. Cautiously he moved the candelabrum closer. He looked at her for a long time. He touched her hair, then stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. Rose didn’t resist; she seemed not even to notice what he was doing. Oliver had never touched such skin. It brought back what he had seen and felt when he had been with her the night before. He untied her gown and spread it apart. Inside the airy cloth Rose’s body sat, the pretty breasts standing up, the legs slightly parted, with flaxen hair between them that was the exact color of the shimmering hair on her head. Very carefully, as if he were capturing two wild birds, Oliver took one firm breast in each hand, then ran his palms along the ribs, over the silky pelt, down to the thighs. He pushed the legs apart a little more and kissed the inside of each knee.

  Rose stirred for the first time and pressed her thighs together. “Sshhh,” she whispered. “What’s that?”

  Oliver’s face was buried between Rose’s breasts. Her arms hung lax at her sides. She was breathing normally. She had a very slow heartbeat; Oliver could hear it through her ribs.

  “Listen,” Rose said. “It’s music.”

  Oliver didn’t lift his face. Holding Rose’s waist with one hand in case she should try to slip away, he worked free of his breeches with the other.

  “Fanny’s playing her spinet,” Rose said. “I can hear it through the walls. I can’t bear it to be so loud. Go tell Fanny to be quiet.”

  “For God’s sake, Rose. I can’t hear music. How can I go next door in the state I’m in? Feel.”

  He guided her hand, expecting her to flinch. The first touch was always a surprise to girls. Of course she had touched it the night before, in a way, but Oliver supposed she did not remember that. She must have been hysterical to do what she had done. The wound throbbed even now. But slowly, like a face swimming toward him in a dream, Rose’s face drew closer until it touched his own. She kissed him chastely on the lips, then drew back just as slowly, smiling, still holding his distended part lightly between her fingertips.

  “It’s the music that disturbs me,” she said. “You can see that, Oliver. Go and tell Fanny to stop. And when you come back I’ll thank you very nicely for my ruby ring. Really I will.”

  Oliver listened for the music. Still he could hear nothing. Clumsily he stood up and tried to pull up his breeches. Rose watched the struggle.

  “You great rogue,” she said with a smile, her robe open, the ring glowing on her finger. Then she stood up too, and led Oliver toward the mirror. They stood in front of it together for a moment.

  “I thought so,” Rose said.

  She turned to Oliver—to Oliver himself, not to his reflection—with a look of such triumph that he mistook it for love.

  “Thought what?” Oliver said.

  “Never mind,” she said. “Go now. Fanny won’t mind your telling her to stop.”

  The watchman, an old man carrying a lantern and a cudgel, was all alone in Catherine Street, calling out one o’clock. He flinched when Oliver burst out of the door and threw his cudgel away to show that he meant no one any harm.

  “Have you heard music from that house?” Oliver asked the watchman. There we
re no lights in the Hardings’ windows.

  “It’s been dark at Mr. Harding’s since ten o’clock,” the watchman answered. “The little girl never plays after eight o’clock unless there are guests in the house.”

  Oliver went back inside his own house. Rose was gone. What was left of the food, Rose’s neatly stripped chicken bones and some crumbs of cheese, was still on the table in the hall. The door to Rose’s room was locked tight. Oliver pounded on it.

  “By God,” he said hoarsely, speaking to his member and giving it a companionable squeeze, “she has no mercy. None at all.”

  Rose whispered to him under the door. Her voice was hoarse. “Olly 0lly Oliver,” she said, “I couldn’t see you in the mirror.”

  “For God’s sake, Rose, leave off this nonsense. I’m dying for you.”

  “And I know why. You can’t come in—not for rubies. Not even for pearls and diamonds. I know what you are now.”

  “Know what I am?” Oliver cried. “What am I?” “Talk to the cat,” Rose whispered through the door. “She’ll remind you that a witch is always a witch.”

  10

  A week later the Pamela still had not come home.

  “She must come soon,” Oliver said. “Bloody dago, always late.”

  “Yes, always,” Henry said. “And he always makes money for us. What’s wrong with you, Oliver?”

  They were seated with Praise God Adkins at their usual table in Lloyd’s Coffeehouse.

  “I think I know what’s wrong,” Praise God said.

  He took a rolled document out of an inside pocket and handed it over to Oliver. The big man read it, then rolled it up again. He closed his eyes.

  “Is your signature on the original of this paper, Oliver?” Praise God asked.

  Oliver nodded. Adkins leaned forward and looked around him for eavesdroppers before he spoke. When at last he did speak, he whispered. “This is a copy of a demand note, my friends, for two thousand guineas.” He paused. “Yes, two thousand guineas. The loan is secured by the entire cargo of the Pamela—not just Oliver’s one-tenth share—and by the deed to Oliver Barebones’ house in Catherine Street near the Strand. The note is held by Alfred Montagu, Esquire.”

  Henry picked up the note and examined it.

  “Two thousand guineas is more than you and Henry will have between you after you sell the Pamela’s cargo and settle your debts,” Praise God said. “What did you need with so much money, Oliver? And to borrow it from Montagu, of all the thieves in England!”

  “Nobody else was willing to lend it to me,” Oliver said.

  “There was a reason for that,” Praise God said. “He wants your house. And not just yours. Henry’s too. You’ve given him a way to get them.”

  “He wants our houses?” Henry said. “What for?”

  “Who knows? Usually when Montagu wants houses it’s because he wants to pull them down and put up bigger ones for the gentry.”

  “Well, he can’t have them. I’ll find the money.”

  “He doesn’t want the money. He wants the houses.” “We’ll refuse.”

  “Then he’ll pull them down around your heads before the matter comes before a judge and argue afterward. He’s done it before.”

  “He won’t do it this time.”

  “No? You don’t know the rest,” Praise God said. “He’s buying up your debts, Henry, offering a guinea for each pound you owe. I wouldn’t sell, but with the Pamela long overdue, you can be sure that others will. Once he owns your debts, Montagu can do as he likes with you. In the past, it has amused him to send people to debtors’ prison.”

  “What debts of mine has he bought up?” Henry said. Praise God handed him a list.

  “These are the ones I know about. There may be more.”

  Henry read the list. “He has them all,” he said. “Except my tailor.”

  Praise God rose to his feet, tucking account books and rolls of paper into the pockets of his coat and under his armpits.

  “You may very well be ruined this time, Oliver, and Henry with you,” he said. “I say that very sadly, nephew, very sadly indeed.”

  Henry had been sitting quietly, reading over the list of debts. Praise God had totaled them. They added up to about four thousand pounds, or more than the value of the Pamela. Clearly Montagu intended to take the ship too.

  “Well,” Henry said. “This will take some thought.” He handed Oliver his hat. “Come along, we’ll fetch Fanny and take her to Locket’s for supper,” he said. “We can’t think on an empty stomach.”

  “Not I,” Praise God said. “I couldn’t keep food down.”

  At Locket’s Tavern, Henry and Oliver ate a boiled haddock with vegetables and half a breast of veal off the spit, finishing with a dozen oysters each and a marrow bone before they ate their pudding and cheese. They drank four bottles of claret and a pint of ale with the oysters before settling down with their brandy.

  Fanny had a lobster and a glass of Canary wine. Her eyes were on Oliver. He had not spoken through the whole meal. At the next table, a man they had never seen before was kissing a woman called Kate and running his hands inside her dress.

  “That tickles Kate,” the woman said, laughing. “Locket’s front room is no place for tickling, sir.”

  Fanny remembered what Rose had told her, every word of it. Were matters between men and women really the way she said they were?

  “Smile, Oliver,” Henry said. “The Pamela’s sailing home. We’ll hold this man Montagu off with lawyers, and if that doesn’t work, you can break his neck for him. So look a little happier.”

  “Montagu?” Fanny said. “Who’s that?”

  “The man who was looking at you while you played the other night.”

  “You mean the man who threw the cat on the table.” “Was it him? You saw him?”

  “Through the window. He had a man waiting in the street with it. He went outside and took it from the man, then came back into the house and let it go.”

  “Bastard,” Oliver said. He was wearing the new curly wig that he had bought for his wedding and he was quite drunk. His face was flushed and his speech was slurred.

  “I’ve lost everything,” Oliver said.

  Henry smiled again. “I don’t think so. The ship will be all right. So will we.”

  Fanny looked from one man to the other. “What’s this?” she said.

  Oliver covered his face with his hands. “I borrowed two thousand guineas from Montagu,” he said.

  “Two thousand guineas? What for?”

  “I bought a ruby ring for Rose,” he said.

  “You paid all that for a ring?” Fanny said.

  Oliver’s hands, bony and veined, still covered his face. “There was a necklace too, but I held that back.” “Then we can sell it.”

  “I tried. Even the man I bought it from would only offer five hundred.”

  “I saw the ring,” Fanny said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “For all the good it did, I might as well have thrown the money into the Thames,” Oliver said. “Rose won’t let me be a husband to her. She says she can’t see me in the mirror.”

  “Can’t see you in the mirror?”

  “She says I’m bewitched and if we’re man and wife we’ll both turn into white cats.”

  Tears ran down Oliver’s cheeks.

  Henry looked at his friend for a long moment, then gave his arm a squeeze.

  “Witches and white cats, is it?” he said. “I think we’d best go visit the Gypsies.”

  11

  In their cold-eyed contempt for anyone who was not exactly like them, the Gypsies who lived in the Great North Woods of Surrey were like peers of the realm, lawyers, and pickpockets. Henry brought Rose Barebones to them because she resembled them, being proud, vain, superstitious, and able to understand only the simplest facts. If Rose mistook nonsense for wisdom in her own world, Henry reasoned, she might do the same among the Gypsies and be cured by them of her stupidity—or her madness, if that was what the m
atter was. He saw little difference between the two conditions.

  The forest had been thinned by centuries of wood-cutting, and the great trees that had given highwaymen and other desperadoes a hiding place were gone. Even so, it was not safe to travel through the forest without an escort even in daylight, and Henry had sent word of their coming. Four male Gypsies waited with ponies on the south bank of the Thames when Henry and Oliver and Rose and Fanny were rowed ashore. It was Sunday. The sun was near the equinox, and it burned round and white in a cloudless blue sky.

  The ponies wore no saddles, so Fanny rode astride with her sky-blue dress billowing around her (“Your eyes!” Rose cried) and her slim calves in their white stockings gripping the animal’s ribs. Rose mounted sidewise, and rode easily even without a saddle. In moments they were deep in the forest among slender young trees that filtered the watery April light.

  Henry rode beside Fanny and talked about Fanchon. “When your mother and I were engaged to be married, I brought her out to visit the Gypsies,” he said. “She was amazed by the trees, enormous oaks with trunks eight or ten feet thick. But not many were left even then. They cut them down by the thousands to build the Royal Navy.”

  “Where is the Pamela? Do you know?”

  Henry looked around him to see if anyone was listening. “She’ll soon be in Honfleur,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll go there at last.”

  “To escape from this man Montagu?”

  Henry always called him that: this man Montagu. He knew that Fanny was teasing him and smiled.

  “To beat him at his own game. He thinks he can get my ship. But we’ll sail the Pamela to Portsmouth instead of London, transfer her cargo to another ship that will be waiting, and send that ship to London. We’ll sell the cargo, pay off our debts, put horns on Montagu, and spend whatever’s left on pigeon pie and lobster in Locket’s Tavern.”

  “Where will you find a second ship?” Fanny asked. “Practical Fanny. It’s all arranged. No one knows but you and me. Not Oliver, not even Praise God.” “When will you go to Honfleur?”

  Henry pointed to Rose, riding down the path ahead of them. “As soon as the Gypsies chase Rose’s witch away,” he said.