Sitting at the fireplace in the downstairs parlor, she worked at the brass tinderbox. Steel scratched flint, again and again, but could not raise a spark. Magic did not work for her either, as the pall of unnatural death stifled every whispering spirit under this roof. This house belonged to the sleeping vampire now. Only what he wished to happen would happen. Again, she scraped the steel needle across the chip of flint. Still no spark ignited the scraps of dry cloth and straw in the tinderbox. Her forearm ached; she had been trying for half an hour to start a fire.
Josette rested in the upholstered armchair where Barnabas often did his reading. A book with a title in Greek letters lay on the tea table. A ribbon marked the page.
Countess duPres plodded into the room, each step dragging against the weight of her skirts. She carried a silver tray and three cups made of dark green glass. "I can't seem to get a fire started in the kitchen, so I couldn't make a pot of tea. I found a jug of cider though. Angelique?"
Angelique looked up in surprise at the grand countess in her fine suit dress and lace ruffles and a jeweled brooch at her throat. The world had indeed turned upside-down. She received a cup from the serving tray. "Thank you, my lady."
"You have my deepest condolences. I never realized until now that you loved him so deeply." The countess narrowed her weary eyes in straining to focus, to stay awake after the long miserable night. "You must have loved him for as long as Josette did. How it must have pained you when he chose to become engaged to her instead."
"I understood that I was a servant. Society considered me unworthy to be his wife. I never blamed him." Angelique sipped at the sweet spicy wassail.
"You never blamed him." Natalie repeated each word slowly, drawing out the syllables, taking a breath in between as she pondered the idea. Gracefully she turned and brought the tray to Josette in the armchair.
Does she suspect me? If she asks me questions, should I confess to the things I have done? I pursued a dream but in the end I created a nightmare. What does it matter anymore. Angelique closed the lid of the tinderbox.
The front door opened. Morning sunlight brightened the entranceway. Shadows turned to sienna and gold. Outside the birds chattered loudly in the trees. A lone horse nickered like an old woman laughing.
Joshua Collins hobbled inside. Weariness stiffened his frame; his whole body seemed to be made of wood. He leaned on his walking cane, each step pained him as he approached the coral columns at the archway of the parlor.
"Am I too late?" he asked.
Natalie duPres extended a hand in his direction, inviting him to sit down. "Mister Collins, I am so sorry to tell you..."
"No!" Josette startled awake. "No, he is not gone. We made a mistake. He's only sleeping. I hear him calling my name!"
Before the countess could stop her, Josette sprang out of her chair. She dashed out of the room and up the stairs. Natalie called after her and was ignored.
"Barnabas, my darling!" Josette's voice howled on the second floor like a ghost.
"Excuse me." The countess ascended the stairs, slowly, wearily, pausing to sigh at each rise.
Joshua Collins ignored the young woman's outburst and Natalie duPres's departure. All his attention focused on Angelique. He inched along, step by aching step, across the rug. He took a stand by her gown dove-tailing out from the hearth. From the pocket of his coat, he brought out a packet of parchments sealed in a spot of blue wax.
"This is for you," he said.
"What is it?"
"I have spent all night with my lawyers. These papers require your signature. Are you literate, Angelique? Are you able to write your name?"
"Yes I am quite literate, sir." Angelique raised her eyes to glare up at him looming over her in a prideful stance like the Lord God himself.
Upstairs, Josette screamed. There followed a loud thump of her swooning to the floor.
Natalie's voice sobbed in French, "Oh my poor dear."
Angelique sighed returning her gaze to the dark hollow fireplace. If she screams at the sight of his sleeping corpse, how will she react to him reaching up to bite her? That is the revenge I wanted to inflict on both of them—why do I feel no pleasure to imagine it now?
Joshua Collins did not even blink. No emotion disturbed the placid mask of his face. He handed down the packet of papers into Angelique's hands. "First, your marriage is to be annulled. Your name will be stricken from the church's register. I will purchase a new family bible and copy the names of our ancestors, omitting yours. No one outside the family will ever know that you were married to my son. The future generations will never know that you existed. Am I clear? You are not his widow. You are nothing."
"I understand." She held the papers on her lap but did not break the wax seal. Turning away from his stern visage, she gazed into the charred log and ashes of the cold fireplace. Even the spirits of flame had abandoned her.
"Second, there is a note of draft from the bank in Boston where I keep some of my business accounts. When you present this letter, the banker will bestow upon you gold coins in the sum of one thousand dollars. You'll agree it is more than generous."
"Yes it is very generous."
Joshua continued, "I shall allow you until this time of morning tomorrow. Pack your belongings and be ready for the carriage. I trust that I won't have to count the silverware when you've gone?"
"You have my word, Mister Collins, I will take nothing from this house."
"Your word?" He snorted in contempt.
Angelique rose slowly to her feet. She faced him as a mirror of carefully restrained rage and disgust. Oh the things I could do to you, Joshua Collins! If you only knew better than to provoke me. I have lost him. I have nothing else of value to lose.
"If I were Josette, would you take her word?"
"Of course."
"Then you will take my word, sir." Angelique turned her back on him. She strolled with a lady's grace across the room. She set the papers on the writing desk. "I will sign them before I leave Collinsport."
His back stiffened to ramrod straight. "If you will excuse me, I have arrangements to make for my son's burial."
"Yes, his burial." Angelique's eyes roved to the brightly lit window panes. She called out with her thoughts, Ben... Ben Stokes, come to me. I need you.
#
For several hours, Angelique dozed alone in her cold marriage bed. No dreams played in her restless mind. Her bones ached with exhaustion so she could not truly sleep. Until she performed the dreaded task, she would not be able to sleep. If only his meddling family would have stayed away! She had no opportunity to be alone with Barnabas ever since the moment he breathed his last. If not Josette and Natalie duPres hovering to cry over the bedside, then his father personally took upon himself the chore of dressing his son for the last time. Rigor mortis did not set into the corpse even after several hours. Joshua Collins remarked upon it, mistakenly assuming that the icy temperatures delayed the process. Sadly he was well-informed on morbid knowledge from his service in the war. Only Angelique knew the real cause for Barnabas's body to be preserved—all day long—as fresh and supple as the moment of death.
She rose from bed and went to the window. Gazing out at the white glare of snow, she called again from her thoughts, Ben... Ben Stokes, where are you? Why don't you come to me?
Angelique combed and styled her hair into a bouquet of blonde ringlets. Earrings of small gold hoops slipped into the needle holes that pierced her earlobes. She chose a new dress that she had never worn before: a dark green satin with vertical black stripes. Mourning clothes would be inappropriate, but not for the reasons that Joshua Collins had given. She did not dress as a widow because Barnabas was not truly dead.
#
Knocks at the front door resounded through the entire house. A brief pause, then the brass ring whacked against the hardwood twice more.
Angelique herself went downstairs to greet the visitor. On the way to the door, she kept thinking, Where is Ben? What could be keeping him away from me?
"Good afternoon, Madame." A reaper of death in the guise of a man stood quietly on the doorstep. Everything he wore was black: his round flat hat, his full-length cape, his overcoat and waistcoat, his breeches, his riding boots, and his leather gloves. He appeared to be barely thirty years old but styled his hair in the fashion of an older man, oiled flat and combed back severely from his high forehead. He had a long narrow face and eyes of such a faint shade of blue they could be almost gray.
"If you've come to see Mister Collins, I'm sorry to say he is not at home."
"Actually," he said. "I am searching for Joshua Collins. I was told he is visiting here today?"
"Oh yes." She glanced back over her shoulder to the empty staircase and the candlelit shadows of the second floor.
"May I come in?" He gazed in her general direction but seemed more interested in scrutinizing the door frame and the threshold.
"I'm sorry, but is it very urgent? Mister Collins is occupied with some business matters. I'm sure he would not want to be disturbed from his papers. May I tell him that you called, Mister...?"
"Trask," he said, lisping slightly. "Reverend Trask."
The name jolted her. Angelique recalled Abigail Collins speaking of a minister from Salem to whom she had written several letters. So this was what a witch hunter looked like: a slender unimposing man. Ben Stokes could easily throw him across the room with one hand. He carried a book under his right arm, the leather of its cover blending invisibly into his clothes. Only the cross tooled into its cover indicated it was a holy bible.
"I will tell him that you were here."
Trask boldly strolled inside as a wraith of flowing blackness. His full-length cape billowed into a cone behind him. "I'd prefer you tell him now."
"If you please, sir!"
Angelique trailed behind him, passing over the very spot where she had lain in a puddle of her own blood. A throw rug covered the stain. Trask's dragging heels shifted the rug. A bit of the rust-colored smear showed on the pine boards.
"You are the wife of Barnabas Collins, I presume?"
"I am."
At the fireplace, he bent over and curiously looked up the chimney. After a moment he straightened up with a sad frown, as if disappointed not to find a horned demon lurking in the charred bricks.
"Tell me about yourself."
"I would rather not," she said.
He rotated in a swirl of cloak. He held the bible close to his heart so that the little cross on the cover faced to her. "I have just come from the manor house on the hill, where I have interviewed the servants and several members of the Collins family. They tell me you are from the heathen island of Martinique in the Caribbean whence did come Tituba the legendary slave witch."
"I'm sorry." She blinked rapidly. "I don't know anyone named Tituba."
"Are you aware that you stand on the brink of Hell, madame? The precipice is open below your feet. The fires are stoked and ready."
Angelique sighed weariness at the old priestly rhetoric and how silly his ignorance. "Yes, we are all sinners. May God deliver us from evil."
"The matriarch of the house is in a stupor of despair. An innocent child dreams of devils with blood dripping from their mouths."
"Sarah dreamed?" she repeated, laying a hand to her own throat.
Reverend Trask kept talking, too enthralled with the sound of his own voice to listen to anyone else. "There has been a plague of wrath in this house. Pure hearts have turned from their true course. Adultery and licentiousness have cause tempers to flare, culminating in murder. The question is, who is at fault? Who had the most to gain?" His voice gained volume and passion to make her heartbeat quicken. "Clearly it was the Devil's plan to wreak havoc upon the righteous. The Devil and his minions are ever at our backs, like hungry wolves, mouths open, ready to devour our souls. They sniff at your heels, madame!"
"Excuse me, sir, but you are starting to frighten me."
"You should be frightened!" he boomed. "Dark forces are at work in this household. Death and blood are the currency of wickedness. The arrows of the reaper fly unseen at noon-day; the sharpest sight can't discern them; the swiftest man cannot dodge them. As pastor Jonathan Edwards once wrote, '...men's own wisdom is no security to them from death; that if it were otherwise we should see some difference between the wise and politick men of the world, and others, with regard to their liableness to early and unexpected death; but how is it in fact?' As we read in Ecclesiastes, 'How dieth the wise man? as the fool.'"
Hearing the creak of floor boards upstairs, Angelique looked to the ceiling. She wondered if the reverend's shouting had awakened Josette or Natalie from their exhausted sleep, or if it was enough to pry Joshua Collins away from mourning over the corpse of his son.
"Though they dig into Hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to Heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence I will command the Serpent, and he shall bite them."
Angelique flinched at the word bite. "If you please, sir."
"God has laid himself under no obligation by any promises to keep any natural man out of Hell one moment. God certainly has made no promises either of eternal life, or of any deliverance or preservation from eternal death..."
"Enough!" Joshua Collins blasted from the top of the stairs.
Reverend Trask snapped out of his monologue trance. "Sir?"
Joshua Collins descended the stairs at an uneven gait. Favoring his right knee, he leaned on his walking cane every other step. He said nothing—not a single word—all the way down, forcing the reverend out of courtesy to wait for him to reach the bottom floor.
"Good afternoon, sir, my name is Rev—"
"I know who you are." Joshua's small eyes narrowed even more to make an appraisal of the black-garbed clergyman. Such a frown! If he were a trader on the Ivory Coast, and the reverend were a slave put up at auction, Joshua Collins would not have paid a ha'penny to own him.
"Then you know why your sister has invited me."
Joshua used his silver-tipped cane to point at the front door. "Consider yourself uninvited. I'll thank you to take your leave. Good day, Mister Trask."
Trask stepped forward with all the grim poise of a dueling swordsman. "Are you not aware, sir, that an agent of Satan has a nefarious scheme to destroy your family? Have you not seen the omens in the madness and the murder that has befallen your household these past few weeks? I speak of a witch! Yes, there is a bride of the Devil in your midst. A she-wolf in lamb's clothing. A succubus in the disguise of an innocent. She has deceived you and even now is plotting your destruction. Allow me to help you discover the hag's true identity."
"I shall ask you once more," Joshua said, raising his voice to try and out-shout the reverend. "Hospitality you may find with my sister's company, but you shall not receive it from me. I believe you are an ignorant fanatic, a blind man shooting his pistol in the dark. I will not tolerate your presence one more minute!"
Angelique sighed a sort of weary relief. Of all the people in the world to defend her, it was this gentleman. Some of Barnabas's spirit lived on in his father's cold rationality. If an item could not be inventoried and measured, it did not exist. Therefore, witches did not exist.
Reverend Trask inclined his head, almost bowing, almost—but not quite—respectful of the lord of the land. "If I may plead for your indulgence, sir. Before I go, I would very much like to speak with your son."
"I told you," Angelique said. "He is not at home."
"Then I ask permission to wait until he returns."
Joshua said, "Quite impossible."
"Why is that, sir?"
"He's gone." Joshua looked away to the window. A long quiet pause smoothed the worry lines on his forehead. Whatever grieving he had to do, he had finished in private. Now he was prepared to face the world again with a stoic mask of indifference. "He went to England."
"England?" the reverend asked.
Angelique fluttered her eyes and sprouted a quick smile. "Yes, that's right, he went away early this morning on an urgent matter to tend to business ventures in England."
"I see." Reverend Trask headed for the door. "Then I shall return to the main house and converse with your sister Abigail on these matters. But take heed, Mister Collins, that there is nothing between you and the flaming pit of Hell but the air. You have nothing solid to take hold of, nothing to save you from plummeting into the abyss, but the unobliged hand of a wrathful God."
In a swirl of black cloak and cold wind, Trask whooshed out of the door. All was silent when he had gone. Even the spirits in the shadows closed their eyes.
"What a disagreeable man." Joshua stared at the door.
"Imagine such nonsense." Angelique forced a soft laugh. "Witches! Here, in this day and age."
"Humbuggery and horsefeathers," he agreed.
"It was quite clever of you to say that he went to England. I don't know how else we would have gotten rid of him!"
Joshua Collins entered the parlor. He strolled slowly from the rug-covered spot stained in Angelique's blood and came to the place where Barnabas had stood when he had fired his pistol. There his father now posed between the armchair and the fireplace. He tilted his head back to gaze up at the portrait of Josette above the mantle. The serenity of the illustration was almost melancholy. Angelique wondered, was it possible for a portrait's mood to change after it had been painted?
"I did not say that merely to get rid of him," Joshua said with his back to her. "I've given the situation considerable thought. This is what we will tell everyone. Barnabas went to England."
"But..."
"I will pay Doctor Thornton a handsome sum of gold to keep his visit confidential. I've already spoken to Josette and Natalie upstairs. They understand."
"I don't, sir. I don't understand at all."
He turned around to face her at last. "No one must ever know that my son was afflicted with the plague. There will be chaos and panic. Workers will desert the cannery and the shipyards in droves. It will be the ruin of my business."
"Your business," she whispered incredulously.
"There will be no funeral. God forgive me, but he will have no headstone."
"What will you do with him?" she asked. "Toss him into the ocean?"
"No." For a moment, his stoic composure cracked. He looked aside and needed a few deep breaths to regain control of himself. "I have a place in mind. He will be interred with all the dignity that he deserves, but in a secret location where no one will ever find him."
"Where?"
He merely shook his head. "I must go. There are arrangements to be made."
Angelique held onto the banister at the foot of the stairs. She watched his father depart into the afternoon sunshine. The clock on the mantle chimed four times. Alone in the silence, the cold hard rock of fear solidified in her gut. It would be sunset before long. They were almost out of time.
#
Ben Stokes returned at quarter to five o'clock. He came to Angelique in the kitchen, where he found her busy with a kindling hatchet and sharpening the handle of a plunger taken from the butter churn. "I heard you callin' but I couldn't get here any faster. First that Reverend Trask was asking me all these questions about Mister Barnabas and Miss Josette, and then Abigail Collins ordered me to keep that Phyllis Wick busy with talkin' while she searched in her room. Miss Abigail thinks Phyllis might be the wi-... the wi-... I wish I could say it! But she couldn't find anything incriminating in her drawers. Just Phyllis's personal journal, and Abigail's reading it now."
"I'm not interested in why you're late." Angelique lifted the whittled stake to observe if she had sharpened the tip enough. "What matters is, you're here now."
"What're you doin' with that stick?"
Angelique held the precious stake gently against her chest. "Never mind. There is something I need you to do for me. Very soon, Riggs and Thompson will come here. They will take him..." She was careful not to say his name; since he had died, she had never spoken his name. "...away to be buried but not in the family cemetery in the churchyard. Joshua said that he will conceal the fact of his death out of concern that his employees will panic at the idea of a plague."
Ben Stokes's mighty hands curled into fists. "I wish I could tell 'em the truth. It was no plague that killed him."
"You know you can never say a word." Her eyes scrutinized the hatred that twisted his bear-like face into a furious carnival mask. "If I didn't know better, I would think that you found a way to tell him the truth about me."
"You gagged me but good. I can't even say the word of what you are."
Angelique puzzled over the problem for a moment with a feeling that she had forgotten something important. Her suspicion lingered that, somehow, Ben Stokes had found a clever way to elude her spell of silence. But her mind was a fog of fear. Her gut dreaded the next chime of the clock.
"You must hurry, Ben. Follow the men, but at a distance so they don't see you. Discover where they take his body. Then, hurry back here and let me know."
"Why?"
She shrieked, "Don't ask questions! There isn't time. Just go."
#