"My wife.…" Reverend Kirtley stood up, turned in a constricted circle, like a bear tied for baiting, and sat down again. "My good wife has been kidnapped. Stolen away. By those red savages. Savages, man!"
Caught completely by surprise, Dr. Dapper could only blink and stare. "By the Abenaki? Kidnapped?"
"What else? Who else? There are tracks—obvious, unmistakable! They dragged her away in the night, poor creature, before she could utter a cry. Even now it may be too late to prevent..." He bent almost double in his chair, covering his eyes. The position was not unlike the one he usually screwed himself into when his stomach was demanding its due.
" Prevent, " Dr. Dapper said; and then, "Oh. Oh. Well, we must certainly rouse the village, Reverend. If you take the houses east of Bear Creek, I will take all the west side—"
"No!" The Reverend Kirtley seized both of Dr. Dapper's wrists in his big-knuckled hands. "I could not bear it if...if the worst were known to…to…"
"To all your congregation," Dr. Dapper finished for him, more respectfully than he felt. "Your following of the faithful. Yes, of course, I understand. We will begin our search tomorrow, at first light—"
" Tonight! We dare not wait!" The Reverend was on his feet again, reaching for his musket.
But Dr. Dapper shook his head firmly, and did not rise. "There are wolves out there, and catamounts—I heard one scream close by, yesternight. We can do nothing in darkness but run ourselves into worse danger than she may be in, trying to rescue her. I will go with you at first light, as I said."
And with that the minister had to be content, though as he left Olfert Dapper's house he added, "Remember to bring your gun."
To which Dr. Dapper responded, "I have no gun. I do have an excellent belaying pin from the ship that brought me to these shores. But no gun."
"I will have one for you," Reverend Kirtley assured him grimly.
And so saying, he plunged out into the night, leaving Olfert Dapper sleepless until sunrise.
When they met at the empty church, Reverend Kirtley indeed handed Dr. Dapper a loaded musket. It felt so heavy and cold in his hand that he almost dropped it. He protested that he had never handled such a weapon before, and was likely to be more of a menace to any companion than to the supposed kidnappers of Mistress Kirtley. The Reverend replied only, "The hand of the Almighty will be on the trigger at the appointed time. You need have no fear."
But Dr. Dapper had a great deal of fear turning his own belly to a solid block of ice as they set forth, following the tracks—unmistakable, as the Reverend Kirtley had said—of Mistress Kirtley's small, clumsily-shod feet to the point, just out of sight of No Popery village, where they crossed a set of moccasined footprints and went on in company with her companion…or her abductor. Mistress Kirtley's prints were closer together now, showing only the balls of her feet, which could have meant she was either running or being dragged along. There was no doubt of the Reverend's opinion: his normally ruddy face was iron-pale, except for the blood-drops standing out on his bitten lips. He swung his musket from side to side, like a scythe, as they walked on; and from time to time he sighted along it at random targets, grinding his teeth and grinning a wolf-grin. Olfert Dapper feared for everyone.
At one point, the Reverend studied him sharply—not quite swinging the musket around—and said, "You have a certain sympathy for the savages, or I am mistaken." It was not a question.
Cautiously Dr. Dapper replied, keeping his tone carefully inexpressive, "I find them a not uninteresting people, and well worth studying." As casually as he could, he edged around to the far side of the minister.
"Children of Satan," Reverend Kirtley spat. "Whatever unspeakable, demon-born humiliation they have visited upon my wife, I will take her back as my lawful wife, with no shame ever on my part. But I shall kill every one of them, and I shall burn their filthy lodges to the ground, and plow the earth with salt afterward. This I swear." He halted for a moment to glare fiercely at Dr. Dapper. "You have heard my oath before God."
"Yes," Olfert Dapper answered quietly. "I have heard you."
The track of Mistress Kirtley and her presumed captor grew more difficult to follow as the ground hardened and the undergrowth became thicker. Whenever possible, Dr. Dapper did his best to scuff out a print with his foot, or to mislead the grim Reverend; but the path to the Abenaki village was known to all the inhabitants of No Popery, and by now the minister had no need of a trail to lead him where he was convinced his wife must have been taken. It would take only a sight of Mistress Remorse Kirtley to unleash a massacre; and Dr. Dapper, born during the Eighty Years' War, knew something about massacres. In frantic silence he rummaged through the stratagems and devious contrivances of a lifetime, but utterly in vain. He marched by the side of a man planning murder and could think of no way to stop him.
So despondent had he become that he never noticed the first cloven hoofmarks—neither the delicate prints of a white-tail deer nor the dinner-plate tracks of a moose—joining those of the moccasins and work-booted feet. When he did finally become aware of them, at the point where they began to veer from the familiar path, heading together up a low, mossy rise of ground that bore all three prints clearly, he pointed them out to the minister, feeling the first twitch of a scheme in his belly as he did so. "Behold, Reverend!" he cried, as dramatically as he knew how. "Whatever can you make of these uncanny slots?"
Giles Kirtley halted, leaning on his musket and shaking his head very slowly as he pondered the sudden new tracks. The cloven prints were generally in the middle of the path, with Mistress Kirtley's close on the left side and those of the unknown Indian further off on the right. The Reverend was muttering, almost inaudibly, "I like this not…and yet it cannot, cannot.…" At one point he bent to the ground to sniff at the hoofmarks; then raised his head, murmuring, as though he were alone, " No… I will not believe... No. No.… "
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 absent-minded 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 backwards. "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 have 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 that 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 crossgrained 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. Toni
ght, 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 camphorlike 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."
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