Eating Memories (36 page)

Morrisy pulled free of the doctor’s grasp. “If you chance find her, I will dig her up again, for such was my promise as she lay dying.”

With a great bustling, Holbrook and the chambermaid brought fresh linens and water. Sanders grasped Morrisy’s hand again; and this time Morrisy had not the strength to pull away. He felt soothing warmth of water and then sharp pain as Sanders began to scrub the wound.

Talk went on between Holbrook and the doctor, but Morrisy had stopped listening. His eyelids closed, sleep weighing them down like dark, insensate earth.

When he woke the doctor was gone. The lamp was lit and the gap at the window was black. Sitting up, he caught a glimpse of a pale form in a coiner. Charlotte stepped from the gloom.

Her eyes were wide and blue, the color of a deep summer ocean. Her skin was smooth and moist, her cheeks the tender hue of ripe peaches. He lay back, loosed the collar of his nightshirt.

“Come,’ he said, and held out his arms.

She came to him soundlessly. The bed creaked as she lay at his side. He felt the tickle of her hair at his chin, and the wet nuzzle of her lips, and at last the nip of her teeth.

Her skin was as cold as the bitter spring weather, but that was no hardship. The weight of her body was less substantial, more, like air than flesh. Her dimensions were right, though, and so he found her again in the roundness of her breast and in the swell of her hip.

She suckled as he lay there. Blood trickled down his lowered arm to drip with a slow and stately rhythm onto the polished boards. Dreamily, he turned his head to watch the stream of crimson flow down his curled hands, his fingers. The cat came and licked it from the floor like cream.

He listened to the gentle lapping of the cat, of Charlotte. There was hardly any pain to the feeding but rather the touch of her mouth against his neck held a great deal of pleasure. He fought the urge to hold her to him, fearing that he would unintentionally stay her when she needed to leave. Besides, he knew, the dead were shy in their own way.

Wakefulness led at last to sleep, the two mixing as delicately as milk feathering into water. When Morrisy opened his eyes again it was full daylight and Charlotte had gone.

Holbrook brought his breakfast; and then, mid-morning, the doctor arrived. Sanders came in the room, thieving a piece of toast from Morrisy’s platter.

“She came to me last night.”

Sanders stopped chewing. “Oh?”

“She lay in my arms. I fed her my blood as a wet nurse suckles a babe.”

Sanders’ face darkened. He shoved Morrisy’s head hard to the side. “I see no blood. No puncture wounds. Stuff and nonsense, sir. You dream the chaotic dreams of laudanum. Let me see your wrist.”

When the bandage was unwrapped, Sanders sucked in a breath. “Holbrook!” he shouted. “Quick!”

The butler hastened in. Sanders said to Morrisy, his tone fearful. “I know not whether your dreams sprang from the laudanum or from your incipient fever, but you may yet have your wish to join her in the grave. Blood poisoning, sir. Look there. Already you can see the streaks up your arm.”

The angry stripes began at the wrist and stretched halfway to the elbow, taking the same roads as the streams of blood the night before.

“My bag.” Sanders snapped a finger toward Holbrook. “I have a drawing salve in it. And set him up on pillows so that his wrist will lie lower than his heart.”

Holbrook lay a new bed of pillows atop the old. Morrisy found himself flung upon it by the butler’s strong arms.

“Apply heat,” the doctor instructed the alarmed and wide-eyed Holbrook, “so as to increase the drawing power of the poultice. And mind you change the dressings thrice a day. He must not move from this place. Heed what I say, for only if we keep him, quiet can we stay the poison.”

“Will you let go your folly long enough to obey my orders?” Sanders then asked, catching Morrisy’s eye. “For I warrant you it means your life.”

“I will as I must.”

Sanders gave him a keen glance. “I’ll be back in the morning to see how the poison has drained.” Taking another slice of toast, the doctor left the room, the butler trailing after.

All that morning Holbrook sat with Morrisy; and in the afternoon the chambermaid came to spell him, working on some mending as she sat in the chair by the hearth.

Morrisy knew that the warmth of the room would soon lull her and that she could not help but doze. Around three o’clock his predictions proved true; and the mending felt, forgotten, to her lap.

Quietly, so as not to awaken her, Morrisy arose. In the stables, the boy gave him an argument about saddling the horse; but the boy was young and Morrisy, after all, was his employer. It took only a raised voice for the lad’s will to crumble.

And so Morrisy rode out in the cool of the afternoon. When he was well hidden in the forest on the other side of the pasture, he dismounted and led his horse into the copse where he had Charlotte hidden.

Upon lifting the coffin lid he found that her face had puffed out untidily, and that her eyes were sunk into her skull. Ambitious ants had found her. A line of them led into her nostrils and mouth like a living suture. He wiped them away with a kerchief as best he could.

There was so much to do; so much to make presentable. “How pretty you look,” he told her gaily, glad that she hadn’t a glass to see her ruination. Deftly he plucked a small boutonniere of maggots from her breast and stroked some rose water about her cheeks.

Her belly had distended, and it bulged in twin, tight lumps to either side of the sash of her burial dress, as though Death himself had quickened her womb.

He went to the edge of the pasture and plucked marjoram and .lavender for her bed. He tucked the sprigs around her, singing to her all the while.

By the close of day his wrist had begun to throb; and he was dull-headed with lack of sleep and his skin felt flushed. He shut Charlotte’s coffin lid against any coming rain, and then rode back to the house.

Lamps were lit in the windows. Holbrook and the doctor were awaiting him by the door.

“Holbrook’s given the chambermaid and stableboy the sack,” the doctor announced as Morrisy walked up the steps to the entrance. “And good riddance.”

Sanders pulled up Morrisy’s sleeve. The red streaks lay a trail directly toward Morrisy’s heart.

“Nearly to the elbow,” the doctor said. “But I’ve saved patients worse than this. The question seems to be whether you will aid me in healing you or oppose me and die.”

Morrisy swayed on his feet, caught in a sudden bout of light-headedness. With a cry, Holbrook caught him.

Each taking an arm, the two helped him to his room.

* * *

Morrisy slept fitfully. Towards the dead of night he awoke to see that Holbrook had fallen fast asleep and that Charlotte had come. She stood in the corner all lost and alone and reticent until he called her to him.

How beautiful she is, he thought as he stared at the smooth, round tautness of her cheek. And how lightly she lay atop him. Her moist lips parted, exposing tiny, perfect teeth.

“Drink your fill, for I may not have long to live. And, as you drink from me,” he whispered, contending with the bitter jealousy the suggestion cost him, “have your way with Holbrook, as well, for he is stuffed with a youth’s rich blood.”

When he met her gaze he found her blue eyes blank and empty of thought; more the eyes of an insect than a warm-blooded creature. A thrill of revulsion ran through him as he wondered how much of her the ants had conquered and whether the feeding insects might have eaten their way to her soul. Then he remembered that the blue eyes, however blank, belonged to his Charlotte; and with, a pang of guilt, he wrapped his good arm about her delicate waist and held her fast, her cloud of blond hair tickling at his cheek.

A moment later he felt the delicious nibbling at his neck and the warm flow of his own blood against his skin. Her cool tongue licked.

“As you need your strength,” he told her again. “Go to Holbrook.”

The greedy, lapping sounds at his neck were her only reply.

* * *

The morning found Morrisy ill-rested and feverish. Holbrook had awakened from his doze and seemed tired and overly pale.

While the butler yawned, Morrisy drank tea and ate a bite of egg the cook had sent up; wondering whether Charlotte had sought her refreshment of the younger man, and if she had found Holbrook’s young juices more satisfying.

The doctor came an hour later, disturbing Morrisy’s brown study. He studied the bandaged arm with dismay. “I caution you not to bestir yourself,” Sanders said. “You are in dire peril.”

“She came to me again,” Morrisy told him. “She slept in my arms.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, lifting an ironic eyebrow. “Of course. You spoke of the new fashions for the season, most likely, and who is to have a coming-out-of-the-grave soiree.”

Morrisy watched Sanders clean and wrap his wrist. The wound was suppurating, weeping a thick, yellow fluid that crusted the bandages. “We do not speak,” he said. “Speech is a skill that is beyond her. She is dead, you know.”

Sanders glanced up from his work. “Yes. Dead as clay and I wish you realized it. What a merry time you must have of it in your imaginings. What? She never asks after your own health? Does she not ask to the running of the house? My God, man. In your fantasy she becomes a stingy ghost.”

Morrisy smiled at the ceiling. His entire arm felt hot and swollen; the wrist throbbed and ached. “Oh, Sanders. Are we so callow as to disdain the dog’s dumb affection?” he asked quietly. “Or despise the cat because she comes to us for food?”

There was a beat of stupefied silence and then the doctor exclaimed, “What a pair of questions!”

“Do not misunderstand me.” Morrisy ran his tongue over the sticky, thick matter that sleep and fever had left on his lips. “I only meant that she is a helpless thing; and l love her the more for it. I love her,” he said, voice failing him and tears springing to his eyes. “Oh Christ help me, I love her desperately.”

* * *

When the doctor’s carriage had disappeared down the road, Morrisy snatched his covers off. “Let there be no more pretensions between us, Holbrook. I mean to tend to my wife. Get my riding clothes, please.”

The butler stood unmoving, apparently caught by surprise.

“Are you deaf, man?” Morrisy intended to shout, but his voice was too feeble. He tried to gain his feet, bur weakness toppled him to the bed.

“The doctor—”

“Blast and damn the doctor. Charlotte needs me and time is wasting.” Morrisy’s teeth chattered. He made another vain attempt to rise. “Help me up.”

“Mr. Morrisy, sir, I cannot allow you—”

“Allow me? Allow me? You forget, man, who is the master and who is the servant. You’ve forgotten who took you as a stableboy and brought you in the house to dress and act the gentleman. I’ll not bear sneaking around as I’ve done. There is no time for that. No time.”

The butler, all downcast, was standing on the carpet, tears coursing down his cheeks. “Please, sir. Do not force me into this thing, else I will feel I have killed you by my own hand.”

“Come, Holbrook.” Morrisy spoke as gently as he might have spoken to Charlotte. “If I set a gun to my temple and blew my brains out, as I have wanted to do these past days, the gun would be held blameless, would it not? It would only have done as it was bidden, as the perfect servant should. Please. Please help me.”

The butler went forward to pull Morrisy upright. Morrisy seized his arm. “She is comely again, Holbrook. Just as she was before her illness. She needs the rich blood of youth, so I’ve told her to come to you. Overlook my jealousy. Forget that she is my wife and take her.”

Holbrook’s eyes rose from their contemplation of the carpet. His face was even more leached of color. “Sir—”

“They will find her again. She lies not three miles distant, in the thicket of St. Albans woods. If you value me, you will dig us up and place both our coffins together. As I have no heirs, I have deeded you my house and lands to see after our upkeep, Charlotte’s and mine. Promise you will do as I ask.”

Why does he stare at me so? Morrisy wondered. And was that the flush of ambition or of resentment which burned on his cheek? “Promise,” he snapped. “On all that I have done for you, and on all that I give you now, promise!”

“Yes, sir,” the butler said.

“Now, get me my clothes and her hairbrush and rosewater. See that my horse is saddled.”

“As you wish, sir,” Holbrook said.

The horse, catching the strong scent of death, entered the edge of the copse but would go no further. Morrisy left him tethered and made his way inside.

He had made a poor choice for her resting place, he saw. The damp had gotten to her as assiduously as the insects had. No rosewater or lavender could mask the stench. Charlotte’s bloated flesh was a mottled mushroom color; and furred, black islets of mold blemished her cheek.

Careful not to pull her loose scalp from her skull, he brushed her matted hair. A single white maggot, he noticed, was lying like a tear at the corner of her eye. Her mouth, still standing ajar, vented a thick stream of black ants. Cooing to her all the while, he plucked what bodies he could from her face.

When he finished he noticed that his left arm was swollen to twice its size and had become useless as wood. His boots were pinching dreadfully and the skin above the leather tops was bloated and tight. Alarmed, he tried to rise from his crouch, but vertigo overcame him and he collapsed sideways into the bracken. For a long while he struggled, trembling and sweating in starts, attempting to pull off his boots.

He gave up finally, and, screwing up his courage, began to crawl towards his horse. The bay hunter saw him coming and rolled an anxious eye, but did not bolt. Morrisy loosed the reins from the branch and pulled himself up one-handed by the stirrup. One foot braced in the stirrup, belly astride the saddle, he urged the bay home. All unwillingly, and with many a curious look backwards, the horse began walking toward the stables.

When he was but a little ways into the meadow, Morrisy heard a wild clatter. He raised his head. His carriage was hastening toward him, his footman whipping the horses and Holbrook leaning out the door.