Angelique spent the rest of the day prowling about the grounds in search of her brew's ingredients. She went down into the basement to find a spider that carried its egg sack, ready to hatch a brood. Compė Anansi, be clever for me. She climbed up to the attic and seized a fragile little bat asleep upside down. You who fly blind in the dark and yet can see. She dug into the hollow of an oak tree's roots and scooped up the larvae of a cicada. Longest-lived of all insects, you sleep underground until the time is right to emerge. She boiled a little copper kettle in the privacy of her own room. Throughout the hours she added to her brew a spoonful of apple vinegar and hog's blood, a mandrake root and a rabbit's foot, a corn snake's cast-off skin, and a silver coin. By squeezing an onion into her eyes, she drew out her own tears.
When the brew was finished and started to bubble black, Angelique dipped in the monogrammed kerchief that she had used in another spell to choke him. The silky fabric still carried the memory of what it had done, how it had almost squeezed the life out of him, and how by releasing its knot Barnabas was saved. The fabric stained in the brew and turned color from white to a deep teal.
"Now, little soldier," she said to the wooden figurine, taking it out of her bureau drawer. "You have a very important mission. You must not fail!"
She carried the kerchief and the wooden soldier upstairs, being careful not to be seen. Through a small narrow door, up a tunnel of very narrow stairs, up she went to the top of the house. She had been there once before, hours ago, to fetch a sleeping bat. Now she ascended with a purpose to find the best place to weave the spell of her life... and Barnabas's life.
In the attic, she measured out her paces between the east-facing and west-facing windows. She found the exact center between the mercurial patches of cold sun. Always on the move was the sun. She used a stick of chalk, a tack, and a string to draw a perfect circle. She sprinkled salt granules around the chalk line. She set up beeswax candles that had never been burned. She made the wooden soldier stand in the center; it had peg joints at the hips and shoulders so it could either sit or stand. She ripped the kerchief in half, draping one half on the soldier's chest like a knight's shield.
"What are you doing?" asked a young boy.
Angelique startled and turned to see the shaggy blonde hair of Daniel Collins ascending up from the hatch in the floor. Behind him emerged his cousin Sarah in her lacy white bonnet and her pale turquoise dress.
"I'm, uh, playing a game."
Daniel in his miniature gentleman's suit put a hand to his hip. He critically surveyed her arrangement of the wooden soldier and the circle of salt and candles. "What sort of game is that?"
"I'm doing it for Barnabas," she said. "He seems so unhappy today. I thought that if I could remind him of happier times, when he was a child, that he wouldn't be so angry at his uncle."
Sarah sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
Daniel spun about to scold her, "Don't you start crying again. You're a Collins, and we don't cry for anything."
The sun was sinking lower to the forest-covered hills. There was, at most, an hour until sunset. Angelique had no time to waste with the children. She had to risk continuing her spell right there, with them at her side. "This toy used to belong to Monsieur Barnabas when he was a boy about your age. He used to play 'fort' and 'regiment' and I so very much want to set it up just right for him."
Daniel laughed at her and plunked himself down cross-legged on the floor boards. "You're such a girl. That's not how you set up a fort."
"Oh, it isn't? Would you show me?"
"Sure."
Daniel scooted sideways. He threw open the lid of a toy chest that he apparently knew was there. He unloaded some whittled sticks with notched ends, tall cups for casting dice, lacrosse rackets, and a set of wooden pegs with flattened bases.
"Now, to build a proper fort," he began. "You need to prepare for what sort of assault you intend to withstand. Is it to be wild Indians or pirates with cannons?"
"Perhaps both."
"As you say." Daniel used the dice cups to make four towers, at equal distance around the circle, and then hooked the notched ends of sticks to build a wall connecting them. Angelique watched and marveled with amazement at the youth's intuitive grasp of magic—to combine the geometry of sacred shapes, a square and a circle; to position the towers at the four compass points; to use the raw elements of wood and light and air. In hardly a few minutes, he constructed a fine sturdy wall around the standing wooden soldier.
"Now, these are your sentries." Daniel set up the flat-bottomed pegs on the cup towers. "They're from the game called Devil Amongst the Tailors or bar skittles. Nathan Forbes took me to The Eagle, you know, that tavern on the docks? He showed me how to play darts, and cards, and skittles. So when I saw these in the toy chest, I knew right away..."
Sarah reached into the toy chest. "I don't want to play fort. I want to play ball."
"Well, I don't," Daniel said. "Only babies play ball."
"I'm not a baby!" she cried out.
"You're acting like one."
Sarah crossed her arms and turned away to face the western window. All the sky was starting to fade from blue to gray. The clouds had a faint sheen of yellow on the undersides of their meringue vapors.
"I'm sad," the girl said. "I don't like it when Barnabas hurts people."
Angelique looked up sharply. "When has Barnabas ever hurt someone?"
"He made Mother cry, and he made Josette cry, and now he's going to hurt Uncle Jeremiah. If someone doesn't stop him, he's going to go on hurting more and more people." Sarah sniffed again. Her voice became softer, faint, almost an echo of herself. In that pale dress, in the dimming light of the late afternoon, she seemed translucent against the darker hollows of the attic's corners.
"Don't be afraid," Angelique said to the girl. "Everything's going to be fine."
"No it won't. It won't ever be fine. I keep having bad dreams."
Daniel rolled his eyes and confided in Angelique, "I don't understand her silly games of dreaming about things that can never happen. Imaginary friends locked in the basement. A woman who is a doctor! And nobody's going to wrap a coffin in chains."
A coffin wrapped in chains! Thinking back to a nightmare that Barnabas once had, in Martinique, she looked to the girl with a new appraisal of Sarah's unfocused awareness. Not quite power. Not yet confident enough to reach out and speak to the spirits of the forest. Sarah definitely had a luminosity about her soul, a candle in a dark room that had yet to be ignited. Abigail was no threat with her ignorant talk of witchcraft, but Sarah's eyes were pure and true seeing more than others could see.
"What did you dream about your brother, Sarah?" she asked.
"Barnabas keeps hurting people. I keep chasing after him, but I can't find him. When I almost catch him, it's too late. He's mean. He's always angry. I'm afraid for all my friends. In my dreams, he wants to hurt my special grown-up friend who sings 'London Bridge' with me. I tell him not to be wicked, and he doesn't listen to me." Sarah whimpered and covered her face with her hands. "Why doesn't he listen to me?"
"Because," Daniel said. "You're a stupid little girl with stupid imaginary friends."
"Am not!" Sarah stomped her foot. The floor board creaked and the wooden pegs in the fort jiggled. "I'm not playing with you anymore."
"Fine." Out of a cedar chest, Daniel unfolded a man's cravat. The fabric was faded and yellowed with the years. He carefully encircled the whole fort with the long band, outside the perimeter of salt and the walls of wooden sticks. "Now, we have a moat. All it needs is a crocodile, or better yet, a dragon to guard it. Do you know where we can get a dragon?"
There was no time to draw one on paper or conjure a figure out of potter's clay. Yet she knew that Daniel was right about the fort needing a totem guardian; he had an instinct for this sort of thing. With the proper training, he could become a fine warlock.
Angelique looked instead to the little girl. "Sarah, can you imagine a dragon for us?"
"I don't like dragons. They're scary."
Daniel just laughed at her. "Girls!"
Angelique kept serious, looking to the girl with earnest hope. "Please, Sarah? The war is about to start. The enemy is going to fire..." She paused, thinking of a musket ball fired out of Jeremiah's pistol. "The little soldier needs to be protected from cannon balls."
A new mood of childish understanding came over Sarah. In her sulking reluctance, she moved forward. The frilly lace hem of her gown swept a faint trail in the dust.
"It's for Barnabas, isn't it," Sarah said, not a question but a statement of fact.
"Yes."
Daniel flapped his hands across his knees in exasperation. "She already said it was! Are you deaf or stupid or something?"
Sarah fixed a steady stare into Angelique's face, their pale eyes locked in a gaze of knowing and starting to know.
"Will it protect Uncle Jeremiah too?" she asked.
"Perhaps," Angelique whispered, not daring to tell a lie to that face.
Dust flakes swirled in the air that Sarah had stirred. The low angle of the sun cast a heavy beam sideways. A plank of brilliance, sparkling with the golden particles, twinkled all around Sarah and each one knew her—the soil and the air of this place where she was born. If the ancient spirits in the trees did not accept Angelique as an interloper, they seemed to embrace little Sarah; she was a fish and this was her native sea.
"Can it be a pretty dragon? Can it be pink?"
"Of course it can." Angelique smiled.
Sarah looked down at the fort and her expression went somber in concentration. "It's pink and gold. Instead of fire, it breathes out rainbow sparkles."
"That sounds wonderful," Angelique said. "Now, the soldier is safe."
The colors of the sky deepened in hue. Sunset approached. Her heart fluttered with the dread of what was about to happen.
"Sunset," the little girl said in a dreamy monotone. She gazed to the window panes turning from pumpkin to rouge. "Bad things are going to happen after sunset."
Angelique rose to her feet. "Would you mind if I take you downstairs, now, children? It's almost supper time. Mister Collins will be very angry if you're late to table."
Sarah whirled about for the stairs. "Father! I can almost hear him calling."
Daniel followed her at a leisurely stroll. He asked over his shoulder, on the way down, "Can I come back tomorrow and play with the fort?"
"Of course," Angelique said, her hand on his collar for guidance to be sure that he left the attic behind. On her descent, she glanced back as her eyeline came down level with the floor. She saw the translucent figure of a fat pink dragon, with golden spikes on its back, prowling the silk moat around the fort of wooden sticks. It arched its neck and let out a silent roar. Its fiery breath was a stream of rainbow sprinkles.
#
After saying good-bye to Daniel and Sarah at the dining room, she carried the other half of the torn kerchief to Barnabas. It needed to be put on him to complete the connection.
She caught up with him in the foyer at the base of the stairs. He was preparing to leave the house and meet Jeremiah at the dueling place.
"Barnabas, would you wear this?"
"Why?"
"As a token from me. Did not the knights of the Round Table wear the scarves of their ladies before they went into the... What was it called?"
"Joust," he said grimly. "I'd rather not be distracted with such silliness."
"I'm not being silly." With her fingertips, she pressed the corner of the kerchief through an empty button hole. A few quick tugs, and he had a crude corsage. "I want you to know that I understand how you feel. Your heart is broken by Josette, just as you have broken mine."
He closed his eyes. "Angelique, I never meant to..."
"I know you never meant to ruin me and toss me aside, but you did. Now Josette has done the same to you. I want this kerchief to remind you that we are bound together—you and I—in a communion of suffering. When you go to face your rival, remember you are not facing him alone. My prayers are with you."
"I don't believe in prayer."
"Then, believe in my love." Angelique raised herself on her toes and smacked a quick, soft kiss to his cheek.
"I'm not sure I believe in that, either, or if I ever will again."
He stepped away quickly, avoiding her gaze. He swirled his long cape around himself, billowing like the black wings of a burned angel as he launched out the door. A flurry of snowflakes turned to pink and gold in the setting sun.
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