The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth
Page 3
“If I remember the story,” said Tim, holding a stepstool so that his lordship might safely regain terra firma, “the burning cloth clung to him and could not be removed, nor could the flames be doused by water, so that he burned to a cinder.”
“Indeed.”
“But surely this story is only legend.”
“Not at all,” returned Ector. “You have heard of the Greek fire employed by the ancients—a mixture of quicklime, sulphur, naphtha, and saltpeter, that would cling to, say, an enemy’s ship and only burn the fiercer when wetted.”
Tim nodded, even as he tried not to let his imagination dwell too long on images of flowing, clinging, unquenchable flames. “And this chemical process could be applied to cloth?”
“Cloth is manufactured using the same ingredients: dyes and pigments can be made from sulphur and petroleum and fixed with a mordant of quicklime. Tar is used as a waterproofing agent. If such materials were ready to hand, one with knowledge of the ancient formula could impregnate a cloth with petroleum, sulphur and lime. If it were stored away from the air . . .”
“In a chest,” Tim murmured.
“. . .it might well ignite at a very low temperature and continue to burn even when wet.”
“And if the cloth were a counterpane say, covering a woman incapable of crying out for assistance—ah, what a diabolical plan!”
Ector would not have regarded Tim so quizzically had he started to speak in tongues. “A diabolical plan? Do you mean to say someone has committed murder using this infernal Greek recipe?”
“Yes, yes—the key to the murder is that it took place on Christmas Eve, when either a flaming pudding or the candle used to light it set the counterpane ablaze. The scheme would certainly turn upon Belle being alone in her room at the moment of conflagration. . . . Ah yes. The guests downstairs would have insured that she was.” Tim dashed his right fist into his left hand. “They even thought to provide smelling salts, to cover the odor of the chemicals in the cloth, which had, I’m sure, been manufactured in their own establishment. A clever scheme, but the circumstances did not favor its execution twice, and so did he—they, the souls of avarice—attempt a variation that worked less successfully.”
“My dear fellow,” said Ector, laying a restraining hand upon Tim’s arm, “either you have quite lost your wits, or you have some wonderful tale to tell me—and no doubt, in time, to tell your readers.”
“Yes, my lord, I shall most certainly tell all. And yet the tale is not finished, not quite yet.”
* * * * *
Between his father’s ledger books and his brother’s legal documents, it took Tim only a day to trace Theodora Wilkins to a poor lodging house.
The old woman admitted him to her room, then seated herself beside a small fire, no more than a few coals piled upon a dirty hearth—the remains of another victim? Tim asked himself caustically.
Her beauty had long ago been sacrificed to age. Now her hair was sparse and drab, and she was as wizened as though she had gnawed nothing but the bones of avarice these long years. Reaching for the container of grog that was warming in the ashes, she drank deeply. The reek of the cheap liquor seared Tim’s nose. He wondered whether she had used expensive brandy to soak Belle’s pudding, and whether she had ever wished she had drunk it instead.
“Have a care,” he told her. “You have heard of what happens to those who drink too freely, and then expose themselves to fire.”
“Bah,” she said. Her voice was like the scrape of bare branches across a windowpane.
A basket beside her chair overflowed with scraps of cloth and packets of thread and needles, leading Tim to deduce that she eked out a meager living stitching and mending. “You have always worked with cloth,” he said. “Did you once make a counterpane for a woman named Belle Redlaw, who lodged with you and your—late husband?”
“What is it to you?”
“I am a friend of Mrs. Redlaw’s friends and family. Her death was mysterious. I’d like to know the truth of how it came to happen.”
“She drank herself to death,” Mrs. Wilkins said, and began to cough as rackingly as though she expelled smoke from her lungs.
Tim asked himself why he had come here. Did he hope to hear a confession? What if he did? What difference could it make, now? He felt sure that he stood looking at a murderess, and yet it was not his place to judge, either in this life or in the hereafter. For her crimes against humanity, Theodora Wilkins was now suffering the sharp bite of loneliness and poverty. He could do nothing else to her.
He could, however, do something for her. Had not Belle’s ghost, and her father’s, and yes, Dick Wilkins’ dark ghost as well, carried a message of pity and compassion from the next world into this?
From his pocket Tim produced a gold coin. He held it in his hand a moment, warming it, then laid it down upon the mantelpiece. The beldame’s rheumy eyes flicked upwards, so that he could almost see the gleam of gold reflected in them. “Merry Christmas,” he said, and left the chill, acrid air of the room for the frosty air of the city street.
The vapor of his breath hung in the air before him like a ghost. The windows of even the meanest shop and lowliest hovel glowed with a rosy, anticipatory light. Tomorrow would be Christmas Eve. He would join his brothers and sisters, by blood and by marriage, and they would raise a glass to Scrooge, the founder of the feast. And yes, they would eat plum pudding ablaze in brandy, with a sprig of holly adorning its round and savory top.
* * * * *
The bells of Christmas morning were pealing, setting the bedcurtains to shivering delightfully, like children first sighting their Christmas presents. And indeed, Scrooge had almost returned to a childlike state, opening his mouth trustingly as Mrs. Gump spooned gruel into it.
The nurse’s gaze met Tim’s. Not much longer, it said.
Behind him stood his father, and Scrooge’s nephew and his wife, all kitted out in their Sunday best, for it was, after all, Christmas Day.
Scrooge tried to wave his hand and succeeded only in twitching his finger. Mrs. Gump, though, understood his meaning. Wiping his face with a corner of her apron, she vacated her chair.
Tim stepped closer to the bed. “I have the answer to your question, Mr. Scrooge. I know who your ghosts were. Who they are.”
The old man’s pale face seemed infinitesimally to brighten. His eyes turned in their sockets to where Tim stood. “Tim,” he whispered. “Always a good lad, Tiny Tim.”
Tim forebore to comment on his present height, but simply folded it onto the chair. He took Scrooge’s hand between his own, gently, for it was as thin as a bird’s wing. Slowly the old man’s cold flesh began to warm. “The Ghost of Christmas Past,” Tim told him, “of your past, is Belle Fezziwig. Belle Redlaw, as she was when she died. She is the spirit of former joys and former regrets.”
“Ah,” said Scrooge, summoning a blissful smile. “Belle.”
“The Ghost of Christmas Present is Arthur Fezziwig, her father, the robust spirit of both gratitude and reproof. The spirit of every Christmas that has past and is yet to come.”
“Fine old fellow, Fezziwig.” Scrooge sighed, his smile abating only briefly.
“The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is your old friend Dick Wilkins. He was consumed by greed, sadly, and died with the black hood of the condemned criminal upon his head. Perhaps, though, by helping you his spirit was redeemed.”
Scrooge’s lips tightened to a narrow slit. “Poor old Dick. If only he had been visited by three spirits, as I was so fortunate to have been.”
Tim nodded. “I have this very afternoon been invited to call upon Miss Annabelle Pumphrey, Belle’s granddaughter, in whom Belle’s beauty and compassion live on. I intend to take your advice, sir, and not neglect the finer sentiments.”
“Good. We were not meant to be alone in this world, Tim.” His hand twitched feebly.
Behind Tim’s back Mrs. Gump was chatting with Scrooge’s niece, a woman of sprightly disposition and great interest in
the doings of mankind: “I heard it on my way here this morning, madam. The poor woman went at her pudding so greedy she ate the sprig of holly stuck in its top and choked to death upon it.”
Tim glanced round. Of all the women in the city of London, surely. . . .
“Her name was Wilkins too, so I hear. Dead as a doornail, the undertaker said, as sure as though someone had driven a stake through her heart.”
“Not now,” said Scrooge’s niece, quelling the nurse’s gossip.
Too late. Tim looked down at his strong young hands cradling Scrooge’s blue-veined and fragile one. Had those same hands, then, brought justice at last to Theodora Wilkins, however unwittingly? Had she died—no. Even though she had died unredeemed, her spirit would now be walking abroad amongst her fellow human beings. Perhaps she would find peace at last, as her husband had done. As their victim had done.
Scrooge’s eyes widened, beholding another vision. “I am light as a feather, I am as giddy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy.” His voice cracked and then steadied. “I hear old Fezziwig now: Clear away, Dick. Clear away Ebenezer. It’s Christmas, a time to celebrate. . . . Why, Belle, you wish to dance with me? Gladly, my dear. Gladly.”
Tim felt the others gathering close. Their hands, too, reached out for Scrooge’s. He smiled, brilliantly. “God bless us, every. . . .” And he sank back upon the pillow, giving up his own ghost.
Tears started in Tim’s eyes. Carefully he laid Scrooge’s hand down upon the clean, white counterpane, and leaned his head back against his father’s chest. Perhaps Scrooge would also find his mortal life too short to spread the compassion he had learned—and learned very well—nineteen years ago today.
“He would not think it sad to die upon Christmas Day,” Bob said softly, pressing his son’s shoulder. “Not Ebenezer Scrooge.”
“No,” said Tim. And in his heart he repeated the words that his own childish mouth had once uttered, as fine an epitaph as any man could wish: God bless us, every one.
Author’s Note
“A Stake of Holly” first appeared in Death by Dickens, edited by Anne Perry, Berkley Prime Crime/Berkley Publishing Group, 2004, and was reprinted in X is for Xmas, edited by Carla Coupe, Wildside Press, 2011.
This story is fan fiction, in a way, filling in the spaces in “A Christmas Carol” and providing a sequel.
Spiritualism was popular in Victorian times, so Scrooge’s request and Tim’s response require little suspension of disbelief. The wonderful 70s television program, Connections—a mad mouse ride through history and technology—gave me the tidbits about clothing manufacture and the mass market. As for the burning cloth, that was a fortuitously-timed article in Archaeology Magazine on chemical warfare of the ancients.
I enjoyed planting some characters and bits of business from other Dickens stories in “A Stake of Holly”, as though Tim himself would in time write his own author’s works. But then, one of the pleasures of literary theme anthologies such as Death by Dickens is nodding toward the original author.
A Mimicry of Mockingbirds
The evening was fine and warm in a last lingering imitation of summer. Through Tom’s open window came a distant strain of harpsichord music, accompanied from time to time by a woman’s voice. He would have preferred hearing the salutations of the muse of law, as he was at this moment preparing a difficult case. He pulled his candle closer to Littleton’s English Law with Coke’s Commentaries.
A song, an echo of the original, trilled from the tree outside. Tom looked up with a smile. He liked the voice of the mockingbird, mimus polyglottos, the American nightingale. Mockingbirds were clever little fellows, modest as widows in their silver and gray suits. . . . Voices shouted, the harpsichord and the woman’s voice ceased abruptly, and with a flutter of wings the bird flew away.
Tom dipped his pen and turned to a fresh page in his commonplace book. “As our laws so have our vocabularies been shaped by the customs of our sovereign Britain. Such collective nouns as ‘an ostentation of peacocks’ or ‘a parliament of owls’ amuse our fancies and remind our intellects of the deep roots of our mother tongue. And of its insularity, that such a charming creature as a mockingbird has no such appellation . . .”
A knock drew his attention. “Come!”
His landlady opened the door. “Mr. Jefferson, are you working still?”
“Indeed I am, Mrs. Vobe. My colleague Patrick Henry will soon argue a case of inheritance, for which I have promised him a complete brief.”
“He does go on, Mr. Henry does. Why, you’d think he was preaching revolution!”
“So one might think,” Tom returned, without venturing to express those grievances of which he as well as Mr. Henry were sensible.
Mrs. Vobe was wiping down a long-necked wine bottle with her apron, causing its blue glass to wink gaily in the light. “Here you are, Mr. Jefferson. Shocking, the dust from the streets, but I reckon it repels the flies.”
“Thank you.” Tom placed the bottle at the far end of his desk, away from his books and papers, noting as he did so that despite Mrs. Vobe’s best efforts with the apron, her own fingers, tacky with the baking and basting due her position, had left smudges upon the glass. “Did I hear voices exclaiming in the street just now?”
“Aye, that you did. Mr. Bracewell’s been taken sick, very sudden, and his wife’s sent for the doctor.”
“Which Mr. Bracewell, Robert the merchant or his brother Peter?”
“Robert, the elder.”
“I hope he recovers speedily.”
“And if he don’t, well then, there’s work for you in proving his will.”
“Which is a duty I should gladly forgo, for I have quite enough work without wishing ill of one of my fellow citizens. There are greater matters at hand than such domestic ones as wills and properties. And yet,” Tom turned back to his books, “such domestic matters are as vital to those whom they closely affect as are the present debates on taxation to the citizens of all His Majesty’s colonies.”
He heard the door shut as Mrs. Vobe went on about her business and left him to his.
* * * * *
Raindrops sifted down the back of Tom’s collar as he stood with his hat in his hand. But he took no more notice of them than he did of the odors of mortality, smoke and cooking food and ordure, which hung in the misty air. Beyond the churchyard the various buildings of the town seemed little more than suppositions, allowing him to imagine them as fine palladian structures, not the serviceable but disagreeably ramshackle houses of Williamsburg.
“Earth to earth”, intoned the rector, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust. . . .”
Eliza Bracewell attended the dark gash in the earth that was her husband’s last resting place, her child clasped against her skirts. At her side stood Peter Bracewell and his wife. Robert had owned property and served his time as juror. If not representing the upper stratum of society, still he’d been of the solid middling sort. Now a goodly number of Williamsburg’s citizens stood around his grave, eyes downcast in seemly sobriety.
To Tom’s mind came the words of Cicero: “What satisfaction can there be in living, when day and night we have to reflect that at this or that moment we must die?”
A child was more likely to come to its funeral than to its marriage. Those souls who lived long enough to marry seldom made only one such contract. Tom’s old school companion Bathurst Skelton, for example, had recently died, leaving his charming wife, Martha, a widow. Anne Bracewell, Peter’s wife, had been the relict of James Allen, a planter from Surry County.
And now dire misfortune had deprived the other Mrs. Bracewell, Eliza, of her husband. Surely Peter, despite his reputation of caprice and instability, would remember his obligations to his nephew and provide for his education just as Tom’s uncle had provided for his after the untimely death of his father. Although Eliza could be expected to marry again. She was a comely young woman, her complexion pale beneath the brim of her fashionable bonnet but of a pleasing plumpness.
Eliza directed her steps toward the gate, awkward as a marionette, supported less by her brother-in-law on the one side than supporting her child on the other. Peter’s wife walked just behind. By the draping of her skirts Tom perceived Anne was with child, and politely averted his eyes.
Every few steps Peter paused, inviting the socially select amongst the mourners to share the funeral feast at Robert’s house. “Mr. Jefferson, we should be honored by your presence.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bracewell. I should be honored to attend.”
The rain thickened, dripping in resonant thuds down upon the coffin. Three mockingbirds perched along the wall of the churchyard, the notes of their song passing from the one to the next and then to the next in an avian symphonic composition. An exaltation of larks. A watch of nightingales. A mimicry of mockingbirds. . . .
Tom found his creation pleasing, and promised himself he would write it down as soon as may be, after the funeral courtesies had been observed.
* * * * *
A cold wind blew dried leaves into the house. Hastily the servant closed the door and accepted Tom’s hat, cloak, and gloves. Tom strode briskly through the hall, past the staircase, elegant in its austerity, to George Wythe’s familiar office with its intoxicating scent of books.
“Mr. Jefferson, how very amiable of you to attend me.” Wythe greeted his former pupil with a hearty handshake. His high forehead and eagle’s-beak nose caused the lawyer and jurist to seem a veritable New World Aristotle, intellect personified.