Angelique awoke still laying on the floor, surprised to realize that she was not dead. Her head throbbed. Her chest ached in pain. But she was alive. Truly alive. She only had strength to roll her eyes and look about; Barnabas had gone. She wondered again if her dream was accurate. Had she exacted her revenge upon him, or not?
She whispered a simple spell. The lead ball squeezed out of the little hole in her chest and popped onto the floor. Click, and it rolled away into a small knot in the boards.
Blood spread in a large pool underneath her. So much blood... How could Barnabas be so heartless to leave her behind, laying in such horror?
Her jaw set in determination. No one was going to help her now. Angelique closed her eyes and turned her thoughts inward, to the flesh that had been torn by the shot, to the shredded veins. Spider webs formed around the injured parts, and stitch by stitch, mended most of the damage. It was enough for now.
She staggered to her feet. Dizzy, she reeled and held onto the wall for balance. Looking to the side, she saw the place nearby where she had dreamed of the monstrous bat attacking Barnabas's neck. Blood spots spattered the wall; not her blood. His!
"No," she cried. "Barnabas, mon cher, where are you?"
From upstairs, she heard Ben Stokes's voice. She raised the hem of her long nightgown and struggled to ascend the steps. Though weakened by the gunshot, she could not afford to rest. She had to reach him. She had to undo the damage she had done.
Barnabas lay in the bed in his bachelor room—not their wedding suite—and Ben Stokes stood guard over him. Sapped of his strength, he drooped sideways off the stack of pillows. Her worst fears glared at her: two puncture wounds dripped threads of blood down his neck.
Ben Stokes yelled at her, "Stay away from him!"
Angelique gestured to the front of her blood-soaked nightgown. "He shot me, Ben!"
"He had good reason to!"
"Perhaps, but that's not important now." Angelique staggered to the bedpost. She clung to the mahogany pole and studied the pallor of his flesh—already like a dead man. "I was so angry. I've made a terrible mistake."
Ben Stokes pointed to the puncture wounds. "Did you do this to him?"
"Yes," she admitted.
"Is he going to die?"
"Yes, unless I can prevent it. Ben, stay here. Watch over him as I go prepare a brew."
Ben Stokes took a stand like a bear rising up. He growled at her with all the murderous fury of a witch hunter and executioner. "I'm not letting you near him, ever again."
"Don't you understand? I'm his only hope, now. I must undo what I have done or we are all doomed!"
"What do you mean?"
Angelique could see the color of poison spreading through him, a blackness like squid ink spilled in clear water, corrupting his blood into something inhuman. His heartbeat was gradually slowing down. His stomach was already turning grayish blue from within. Soon he would be unable to eat or drink as an ordinary man.
"If he dies," she explained in a trembling voice. "He will become one of the living dead."
#
Angelique dashed down the stairs to the first floor, her slippers fluttering. On the way through the foyer, she snatched up a single candle from the narrow table by the stairs. With the other hand, she hoisted her long skirt and sprinted, as fast as her legs could stretch open and gobble up the corridor. Two-fisted she punched open the cellar door and descended at reckless speed.
The candle flickered and dripped hot wax on her hand. Swiftly her footsteps tapped a rapid syncopation like the beat of a little drum going to war. She passed through another door of solid wood reinforced with a sheet of tin. At the base of the stone stairs, the chamber opened to a labyrinth of brick passages—some barred by iron doors and some archways that seemed more terrifying in their openness.
Angelique dropped to her knees just at the base of the stairs. She touched one of the flagstones. A few whispered words, and the stone obeyed, rising up out of its place. She dug into the soft black earth underneath and gathered a handful of chilled dirt. Soil from beneath the home where he was born. Soil to nurture the roots of his humanity.
Back upstairs, she launched herself out the back door that led to the servants quarters and the stables. Snowy wind bit her cheeks. Her breath was like a cloud of pipe smoke. In her foolish schemes, she had imagined that she would never need to come to the back door again, once she became the lady of the house. Without pride, she dropped to her knees in the fresh-fallen powder. She used the base of the brass candlestick to scoop up a few sparkling flakes—as small and delicate as the wings of fruit flies and exquisitely formed into flowery crystals, each one unique, each one a work of angelic art. Water, the source of human life... Pure and clean, fallen from the sky... Untainted by the earth.
She fetched an iron knife from the kitchen. In the parlor, she climbed onto an upholstered chair and reached over the mantle to the portrait of Josette. She scraped the knife across the oil paint, flaking off sprinkles of powdered color. Something to desire... The color of a dream... A reason to live.
Finally, she pricked her finger and squeezed out a few drops of crimson to mix into her brew of rosemary leaves and oolong tea. "By my blood I cursed you, Barnabas Collins, and by my blood I release you from that curse."
When she brought the pewter tankard to him, Barnabas's face had turned as white as the pillow. She feared he might be already dead.
He moaned pitifully, "Help me, help me."
She slipped a hand beneath his neck to raise his head. His skin was cold. "Drink this."
"No." Eyes closed, he weakly strained to avoid the tankard coming near his mouth. "You're trying to kill me."
"Drink it! I'm trying to save you!" She leaned in closer. Clamping her arm around his head, she forced the tankard to his lips. She gave him no choice but to accept the sour brown brew that she poured onto his tongue. He gagged and gulped, but did not spit it out. She held on to be sure it went down.
"Josette, Josette," he whispered as he sank half-asleep to the pillow.
Angelique put the empty tankard aside and stroked his cold forehead. For the first time in years—perhaps her entire life—she felt no jealousy at the sound of the other woman's name. Barnabas was not pleading for his lady love; he was saying a prayer. If he had asked for Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and all the saints to come down from Heaven and hold his hand, Angelique would have conjured them.
"Where is she, Barnabas? Where is Josette? Tell me, and I will bring her to you!"
His eyes snapped open, bloodshot, wild and crazed with panic. "No! I will never tell you. She's safe... she's safe from you..." His strength spent, he sank sideways into the pillow.
Trembling, she backed away. What have I done? He fears me. He hates me. Even if he lives, he will never forgive me. Angelique shook the thoughts out of her mind. First, he had to live. The brew had to work!
"Close your eyes, Barnabas, and don't open them until I tell you." Angelique grasped the heavy curtains and spread her arms open wide. Sunshine glared off the snowy landscape, a cold brightness more intense than any fire.
Barnabas cried out a wretched agonized wail, an almost inhuman sound like the howl of a dog being crushed under a wagon. Sunlight burned him; Angelique saw wisps of sulfurous steam rise from his skin. He covered his face with his arms. Only when she closed the curtains and the room dimmed, he settled down into hoarsely groaning into the armloads of tangled blankets.
"It should have worked." Her voice broke as tears glistened in her eyes.
#
That afternoon, his parents came to visit the house. Naomi Collins carried in her arms a ceramic jug swaddled in a towel. "I brought a wassail. Have you never tried it before? It's a hot mulled apple cider with sugar and spices. It's Barnabas's favorite."
His frowning father tagged along behind. Not saying a word, he made an intense study of icicles on the overhanging branches of trees.
Angelique blocked them at the doorstep, "He's not here. He has gone out."
"Where did he go?" Naomi Collins asked.
"I don't know." Her mind was too full of worry to think of a good excuse. "He left early this morning."
"When will he return?"
"I don't know." Floor boards creaked upstairs. Impossible! He can't be getting out of bed. He barely has the strength to raise his head off the pillow. Angelique aimed a fake smile at the sour frown of Joshua Collins and did her best to bluff. "Forgive me, I'm being rude. Please come inside and visit with me. I'll put on the kettle. As a Christmas present, Barnabas gave me a large tin of Twining's black tea from London..."
Joshua stiffened at the idea as if she had pointed a gun in his face. Angelique held her smiling performance, pretending to be unaware of his involvement in the so-called Boston Tea Party more than twenty years before. "No thank you. Naomi? Come along."
"At least take the wassail." His mother handed the swaddled jug into Angelique's arms. The cork had a scent of sweetened tart apples and cinnamon. "Keep it warm for when he returns."
"I will, thank you."
Naomi's eyes rolled to gaze upwards to the second floor. Soft blue eyes had a dreamy opaque glow. Her expression went blank as if asleep, or drunk, or listening to a song that no one else could hear. "I thought I heard him calling to me."
"Don't embarrass yourself." Joshua groped blindly for his wife's elbow through her green velvet cape. "He's not here."
"I didn't imagine it. I heard him!" Naomi stepped inside the house, past Angelique who was helpless to think of a good reason to block the door and keep her away.
The house fell into silence. From the bricks of the foundation to the rafters of the attic, the entire framework held its breath. Old spirits in the forest emerged from the golden shadows of day. They pressed their eyeless faces to the windows and gazed inside, waiting for what would happen. A high pitched squawking sound echoed in the empty hallways upstairs; the dark poison in his soul was gaining strength. Angelique felt his distant pulse like a drumbeat in the jungle.
At that moment, she understood that it was no mere chance that his mother had come. The power of his will had summoned her.
"Mother?" he called weakly from upstairs.
Naomi hoisted her heavy skirts in both hands and galloped up the stairs. "He is here! Why did you say he wasn't?"
Hastily putting the wassail jug on the hallway table, Angelique scrambled to follow behind the swirling hem of her velvet cape. "He's not feeling well. I didn't want you to worry."
Naomi pushed open the bedroom door and gasped at the scene. Barnabas stood weakly slouched and gripping the bedpost. His green brocade dressing gown, unbuttoned, sagged off one shoulder. His bare feet were as pale as his nightshirt. His face had turned ashen gray. His lips were blue. The bandage had fallen off from around his throat, or perhaps he tore it off. The puncture wounds in his neck had started oozing blood again. Long strings of dark red traced wavy lines from under his ear to down his chest.
Joshua stayed by the door and did not enter. Naomi alone helped her grown son stagger back into bed. "What's wrong? How long have you been ill?" She bent over him to lovingly tuck in the blankets around his chin.
Barnabas deflated into the pillow, his eyes closed, his mouth open to breathe in shallow gasps. Soon, he would not need to breathe at all.
#
For the next several hours, Naomi with her beautifully powdered face and jewels sparkling at her ears, wept inconsolably at the side of the bed. Even the taciturn Joshua Collins choked up when Barnabas looked at him and weakly said, "Father, I didn't think you would come."
Later in the afternoon, Doctor Thornton arrived with his small leather bag. He declared in his lyrical Scottish accent, "It's a fever."
He proceeded to affix several leeches onto Barnabas's forearm. Immediately, the black worms curled like shrimp burning in a fry pan. They detached and fell onto the sheets—dry and dead.
"That's odd." The doctor still held the glass jar containing leeches in one hand, and his tweezers in the other, ready to apply at least a few more. "I've ne'er seen that happen before."
Joshua Collins waved the doctor away. "Unabashed quackery! If you can't be useful, get out of my house."
Angelique stood apart watching his parents wallow in their grief. They were too distraught to notice her wide-eyed and shaking in helpless waves of true terror. Barnabas had to survive; he had to! She feared his death more than his parents feared losing him, for she knew that this death would not be the end. Imaginings plagued her mind and caused her heart to race: Barnabas with fangs returning in the night to chew into his father's neck or to hungrily gulp the blood out of his mother's jeweled throat. Even his little sister would be fair prey.
"Why can't the doctor do anything?" Naomi pressed a rolled-up hand towel to her son's forehead. "Why are they calling it a fever when he's so cold? Joshua, he's so cold."
Joshua stood by the window, his back to them all, staring out at the gray landscape and the lengthening shadows. "Get hold of yourself, Naomi. When we go to supper, we shall not speak a word of this."
"What?"
"We shall carry on as if nothing is wrong. I have instructed the doctor to do the same."
"Why?" Naomi cried, her blue eyes rimmed with red.
"I will not have our servants gossip in Collinsport that we have an outbreak of mysterious fever. I will not allow a panic in my house!"
"I can't."
"You can and you shall, madame. You are to say that we've come to visit my son and congratulate him on his wedding. All is forgiven. I will summon my lawyers to the house tonight and rescind the changes to my will. Barnabas will be reinstated as my son and heir."
Naomi turned away and gripped the bedpost. "I can't. I can't."
"Then, as soon as we return to our home, you have my permission to retreat to your room and drink yourself into oblivion. After all, it has been your habitual behavior as of late. The servants will think nothing of it."
Joshua walked proud and tall, tapping his walking cane on the hardwood boards of the corridor. Naomi could be heard weeping all the way down the stairs and out the front door.
Angelique stood at the foot of the bed. She said nothing of good-bye or thank you for coming to visit as his parents made their exit. All her attention was fixed on Barnabas. His eyelids were darkening to purplish rouge. Sweat flattened his hair. The locks on his forehead had started to form into a row of jagged spikes.
#
On that night, she even allowed Josette to come to his bedside. The young widow had arrived at the old house in panic, throwing open the front door boldly. "Where is he? I must see him! Something terrible has happened to him, I know it."
A premonition of doom—or perhaps the forceful will of Barnabas himself—had summoned her back from a roadside tavern. Josette had journeyed all day by carriage sleigh to wait for him. Angelique had guessed correctly that the two were planning to elope after he had killed her. Jealousy meant nothing, now. Perhaps this foolish, naïve love might give him the strength to maintain his grip on humanity. But with every passing moment of the darkening night, even that hope faded.
"Did you know you were ill when you sent me away? Is this the danger you warned me about?" Josette wore her smart tailored traveling suit and black lace widow's veil. Even in mourning for her husband, even in grief for her lover, she never looked more beautiful.
Barnabas sleeping did not revive as Josette gently touched his cheek. By the sound of his shallow wheezing, Angelique feared he might never awaken. Not as a man, anyway.
"Danger, he said?" Angelique came alongside the pillow. She dabbed a moist towel to his clammy forehead.
"Yes, he came to visit me early this morning. He said that I was in mortal danger and I had to leave Collinsport immediately. He wouldn't explain why." Josette slipped her hand underneath his limp palm. Brown fingers sharply contrasted his gray skin. "He seemed to be afraid of something. He was always looking over his shoulder as if someone were following him. Angelique?"
"Yes, mademoiselle?"
"This illness is so strange. It's not like any fever I've ever seen. He's so cold!"
Angelique said, "Oh his fever was burning an hour ago I gave him an herbal remedy."
Countess Natalie duPres stood observing from the foot of the bed. She had also arrived with Josette, dressed in her smartly tailored suit dress for the journey. Gloves still sheathed her hands.
"No, Josette is right. Look." The countess pointed at his neck where the puncture wounds continued to ooze and seep blood into the bandages. "Any normal bite would have made a scab by now. There's something very unnatural going on here."
Angelique took away the wad of blood-soaked cloth. She replaced it with another kerchief of gauze. That too quickly transformed from white into red. The tips of her fingers brushed over the wounds. She whispered in her mind a desire for the blood to clot. She had healed herself of a gunshot wound. Surely, she thought, she could heal this! An owl's cry shrieked a reply into her thoughts. When she looked into the bandage again, the punctures dribbled even more fiercely. The blood darkened to a purple hue as it was all turning rotten inside his veins.
Josette said, "Do you think it's...? Oh, I can't say it!"
"What?"
Her mouth hung open a long pause before she managed to choke out the word, "Witchcraft."
"Yes, yes!" Countess duPres gripped the lapels of her own traveling suit. "It must be. I have seen nothing but omens of doom in my Tarot cards since before we arrived in New England."
"No, that's absurd." Angelique coughed a trembling laugh. "If he hears you talking about such things, he'll be very cross with you. Haven't you seen the way he is annoyed at his Aunt Abigail for ranting on about Salem and the devil and so forth?"
Josette stroked the back of his hand. "In the garden, he asked me a question. He said, 'Did you choose to betray me with Jeremiah?' No one had asked me this in such a way before. I thought I should answer, yes of course, because that is what I did... But he insisted, as if he already knew that I should answer differently. He kept re-phrasing the question, and he asked it again and again. Did I willingly turn away from loving him? Did I make a decision of my own free choice?"
"And what did you answer, mademoiselle?"
Josette wagged her head rapidly back and forth. Tears leaked out of her big brown eyes. "I said, I wasn't sure. It all seemed like a dream. Things happened that I could not seem to control. I saw myself saying and doing things, but I never planned to break his heart."
The countess said, "As if you were under a witch's spell."
Angelique walked away from Barnabas and strolled across the room. She leaned on the bureau of drawers and looked at herself in the mirror. In the background behind her reflection, she saw the death bed scene—the man sleeping out his last hours of life, and the widow in black lace who sat in vigil at his side.
"You really do love him, don't you, mademoiselle?"
Tears gushed more freely out of her large dark eyes. "Yes, of course I do. I've loved him since that first day in Martinique when we strolled in the garden and he asked me to recite in English the colors of the flowers. Rouge... red. Bleu... blue. So many young men have called me pretty, but they never seemed sincere. They only wanted to own me for themselves. They never wanted me to learn new things. Only Barnabas gave me his heart unconditionally. When he called me pretty, and expected nothing in return, I started to believe it might be true. Oh why, Angelique? Why else would I leave him if I wasn't under a witch's spell?"
#
Throughout the long night, the three women took turns dozing in the armchairs at his bedside. They replaced the moist towels on his forehead. They changed the bandages on his constantly bleeding neck. They tucked and re-tucked the blankets around his arms, only for him in fits of delirium to throw the covers away.
Every so often, he babbled in his sleep, "The bat... the bat... keep it away from me!"
"Oh my darling," Josette sobbed at his pillow. "There is no bat. Why does he keep saying there's a bat?"
"He must be dreaming." Angelique paced back and forth, from the bed to the window, and from the window to the bed. She watched the moon, hour by hour, as it passed over a clear sky salted with stars.
Natalie duPres slumped in an armchair said, "Those bite marks on his neck could be from an animal. It might be rabies."
"They aren't bite marks," Angelique insisted. "No animals have been near him! They're a pox. The doctor diagnosed it as the plague."
From downstairs, the clock on the mantle chimed. Five... six..., Angelique counted in her mind. Each ping of the bell was a spike to pierce her heart. The end of the long night was near. Within a few minutes, it would be dawn.
Barnabas opened his eyes one last time. He managed to focus on the woman bending over his pillow. He smiled at the sight of her, but his forehead frowned. "Josette, you shouldn't be here. You're in danger."
"Nothing could keep me from you, my love." She leaned in closer, her face just inches away from his. "Please tell me, what danger? Has someone done this to you? Tell me, Barnabas, is it really a witch?"
"Josette. Josette."
"Yes?"
Angelique heard her husband's final words spoken to her rival, "I have never stopped loving you, Josette, and I never will... never, for all eternity. Wait for me. I promise, I will find a way to come back for you."
Sunrise flashed out of the forest like a burst of lightning in scarlet and gold. Snow had fallen overnight to a layer of fresh powder that in the dawn's glow seemed to be a meringue dusted with pink sugar. Icicles glistened as diamonds in the black trees. Storm clouds had traveled away. The sky was a clear dome of abalone shell. So beautiful, she thought. He would have liked to see this dawn.
When he breathed his last, and his eyes finally closed, a cold wind rushed on black wings through the corridors of the house. Angelique hugged herself. Her eyes widened, dry with terror. I've lost him. I've lost him forever. All I can do for him, now, is the ultimate act of love. I must give his soul peace. I must release him, in death, as I could never bear to do in life. Forgive me, my darling.
#