Forever Young The Beginning (91 page)

“
Eleven years sir, er, Ian.
Mr. Milliken brought me over when I had a bad case of pneumonia. I
would’ve died but for him.”

“
You’ve been a vampire
longer than I have by a few years. Perhaps I can learn from
you?”

“
Oh no, sir…Ian. No one even
knows anyone who has done the things you’ve done. I’m hoping to
learn from you.”

“
We’ll learn from each other
then, James. Let’s go and see our ship. I’m anxious to see how well
Thomas made our modification. Who knows but that we might be the
first two of our kind to go to America?”

***

Henri, Marie, Li, and Sophia ran at a
ground eating pace through the foothills of the Alps and crossed
into France, heading west. They would soon swing south and follow
the Rhone valley to Marseille. They hoped to be there by sometime
the next morning.

Back in Geneva, a message
had been left for Ian telling him to come to the chateau, and that
Cosette awaited him there, alive and well. A duplicate message had
been sent to the
Banque de
Lafayette
in both Paris and in Marseille.
Instructions were sent to divert all couriers to the chateau now
instead of to Geneva. Jennifer, Andre, Mustafa, Liri, Celeste, and
Louis and the two babies had all departed for the chateau, taking
two carriages.

As they rode along, Louis held his
sleeping daughter and said “I wonder why we’ve not heard from Ian?
Do you think he’s still in Barcelona?”

“
He could have been selling
his house and dealing with
Barcelona
House
; or he may have spent some time with
Alandra’s family and with Tom and Celita. Oh, Louis, can’t you just
see his eyes when he learns that Cosette is alive! I can just see
it now, and that big bright smile of his that can light up a
room!”

Suddenly, she sat bolt upright as her
eyes widened. Her dreamy smile had vanished and been replaced by a
look of grave concern. Their baby awoke and began to look all
around the interior of the coach with eyes wide.

“
No, Ian’s in London. He’s
going to sail to America. If we search through the bank dispatches
in that trunk we packed we’ll find his letter. He intends to go to
America to do the bank startup. He sails today!”

Cosette wandered aimlessly around the
chateau, memories clicking into place seemingly a bit faster than
before. The sun had just risen. She pondered her reflection again
in the mirror. Whereas it had at first seemed to be someone else,
it now was becoming more familiar. She contemplated the clothing
she had stolen from the people at the site of the ruined Francoise
mansion. Why had she stolen the man’s pants and shirt and a
broad-brimmed hat? She knew now that it was not the sort of
clothing she would wear every day, but she had taken it from an
assortment that included women’s wear too. Recalling that she had
rinsed her mouth and eaten lilac foliage after killing the
chickens, she tied that to her sudden desire to eat that here at
the chateau.

There now was no doubt that she was
connected to the people who lived in this magnificent home. She had
wandered the grounds while hunting and she had discovered an
enchanting place in the deep woods surrounding the place. It was a
small river which had a waterfall. At its base was a natural pool
and she was drawn to the place by something. She concluded that she
had been there before and that somehow the place held memories of
good things in her past. Then there was the smaller home to the
east. Its gray stone walls and slate roof sheltered memories of
good things in her past too. She was certain of it.

Today she would go to the waterfall
and stay a while to see what memories would return. Later she’d go
to stay at the gray stone home to the east. Surely some more
memories would come into focus if she just spent enough time at the
two places. She was drawn to them as strongly as she was to this
chateau.

As she crossed the veranda, she was
aware of four distant figures running swiftly toward the chateau.
She tensed, and then began to relax. Although they were running as
fast as she could run, she didn’t feel threatened. Her keen
vampire’s eyes locked momentarily onto each one as the group neared
her, rapidly approaching up the well-shaded driveway. They seemed
to be familiar figures.

The smallest one of the four was a
petite brunette. As the foursome neared her the small brunette
called a name. Was she calling to her?

“
Cosette! Cosette! Thank God
you’re alive! Cosette! It’s Marie!”

Like a flood her memories all
returned, and with them came instant recognition of the four
people. An indescribable thrill ran through her. It sprang from the
core of her inner being as a golden fount of light, warmth, and
love. Marie’s arms were held wide as she neared Cosette, who
bounded off of the veranda some forty feet and hit the ground
running towards the group herself. Her eyes brimmed with tears of
joy. This was her family! Praise God, this was her family! They
fell together kissing one another in unrestrained joy, weeping and
laughing all together.

***

The merchantman
New Hope
forged its way
through the Atlantic, bound for New York City in America. In
addition to the cargo it carried, the ship’s manifest recorded two
passengers, being Ian McCloud and James Barrow. They were listed in
such a way as to receive preferred treatment at New York by
authority of the Crown itself. They were agents and officers of the
firm of Edwards & Milliken Bank of London. Their own personal
papers bore the symbol of that bank and a seal of authority of the
Crown itself, authorizing one or more banks to be established in
the colonies.

Captain Andrew Norris thought they
were quite young to be the type to establish a bank. He had
transported a pair for another larger bank two years earlier. Both
men looked more the part, being middle-aged, pale, and paunchy.
These two looked to be lean and fit. One was so bronzed by the sun
that he almost looked like he could have been native to one of the
Mediterranean countries. They appeared to be more like his own
sailors or like some of the colonists he had seen in Boston. He
noticed that when the tall bronzed Scot walked about the deck, he
instinctively moved with the roll and pitch of the ship, never
needing to grasp at anything as landlubbers normally did. The
captain noticed that he looked at things which he would normally
look at if he himself was making an inspection. He was sure that
one had seen a lot of time at sea, and resolved to query the two
that evening at the officer’s mess.

As the days passed, Captain Norris
came to like the pair, and he’d gotten to see just how good a
seaman the McCloud fellow was. It turned out that he was the
McCloud that had been involved in a scrape with pirates in the
Mediterranean years ago. There was a maritime legend of a Scottish
crew who had saved an ambassador’s daughter from pirates and had
weathered a record-setting storm in that part of the world. Until
one night at supper, Norris had always doubted the accuracy of the
account.

His navigator had asked McCloud if he
knew of the story and McCloud had revealed that he’d been a part of
it. They’d all been spellbound by the testimony of one who had been
there. They learned then that the true story was more fantastic
than the legend, being that they captured a rich prize and sold her
and her cargo. This enabled the owner of the ship to completely
recover her construction cost in one voyage. That was a feat never
before heard of anywhere.

They’d encountered a nasty storm
recently and were having a time of it. McCloud and Barrows had
simply come on deck barefoot, each wearing only seaman’s pants.
Both just pitched in and began to help. The tall Scot would tell
the other one what to do from time to time.

When a man aloft had slipped and
become entangled in the rigging, he cried out for help. McCloud
swarmed up the rigging like a monkey with its tail afire and had
easily helped the man free himself. He stayed with the man then and
worked alongside him to furl the rest of the sails on that mast.
The ship had begun to pitch so violently that the captain had
ordered all hands down.

McCloud simply descended to where he
could swing to the adjacent mast and in seconds was there,
ascending to tie down the sails that the others had abandoned. He
clung to the wildly swaying masts like a spider and calmly lashed
everything in place and checked the other sails, edging out onto
the slippery spars to do so. The men below stopped to watch the
whole thing. When he was done, he descended so rapidly that he
seemed to flow down the ropes like water.

When the crewman who he had saved came
to him, he had flashed a bright smile and had clapped the man on
the back. Several of the crew and the captain himself came to him
to thank him. Norris had never seen the like and he knew that
everything that McCloud had told him about the pirate rescue legend
and the storm was true, and that likely there was a lot more that
he wasn’t telling. He’d never have believed the rest of the story
though.

The crewmen would talk about how he
liked to walk the decks at night and would borrow the navigator’s
sextant and check their course. Many times he would stay with the
helmsman and talk, helping him to stay awake. Often in the daytime,
he would go aloft to the crow’s nest to take a skin of water or an
apple to the lookout and would stay a while there. He was as at
home aboard a ship at sea as anyone Norris had ever seen, including
himself. The pair of them were very well-liked by the
crew.

Norris had been intrigued when Ian had
asked permission to teach his companion James some techniques of
unarmed combat. He had allowed them to use the foredeck for that at
certain times of the day, and he’d seen things since then that he
couldn’t have imagined. Warfare of any kind was best conducted as a
science, and after watching the first session with McCloud teaching
Barrows he saw that hand-to-hand fighting was a science as
well.

The two were so well liked and
accepted by the crew and officers, that the peculiar experiment
involving the herd of goats and their special food didn’t cause a
lot of comments. Certainly there were no negative comments made
about the pair, and they were already accepted as if they were a
part of the crew, even if a bit peculiar. McCloud even took blood
samples and regularly looked at them under a microscope, even
showing Captain Norris what blood looked like when magnified. It
had something to do with wanting to know what effect being confined
at sea had on animals and there was a vague mention of doing a
favor for a friend at the London Royal Academy of Science. The
goats had been a last-minute thing which had been insisted upon by
none other than Robert Milliken of the bank of Edwards &
Milliken who had financed the refurbishing of the ship. No doubt
the bank was doing a favor for someone at the Academy.

No one thought too much of the fact
that the younger one, James nearly always wore a broad-brimmed hat
and gloves. Both men sometimes wore sun glasses as well. Captain
Norris had never even seen or heard of them before and had been
told that they were made in France.

Fourteen days out they had become
becalmed, or nearly so with only a light northeasterly wind. That
was an unusual thing to happen on an Atlantic crossing, being far
more apt to happen in the Pacific. It was evening and Captain
Norris was taking a final turn about his ship. He had invited Ian
to walk with him. They had become good friends and had talked of
home and of family. It was then that Norris had learned of the
recent death of Ian’s wife. He thought that it explained a lot
about why a man would pick up and go to a strange place. The
captain was kept busy at times fielding questions about the
American Colonies.

Finally he went to turn in for the
night, leaving Ian alone on the deck. Not distracted by anything
now, he turned his gaze to the heavens. His mind drifted then to
where he didn’t want it to go. He thought of a beautiful green-eyed
lady who had stood with him many times on the deck of a ship at sea
and had gazed with him at the magnificence of a night time sky that
can only be seen at sea. His thoughts then turned to a beautiful
lady with lovely wide-set gray eyes who had lain with him in the
wilds of the Scottish highlands and other places on nights like
this. His ghosts had accompanied him after all, and were only
waiting for the planned distractions of the day to cease, in order
that they might once more invade his heart and mind.

He contemplated the ghostly
orb of the moon as it seemed to sail rapidly through storm-tossed
cloudy seas. It was a marked contrast to the relatively calm seas
and light winds they were experiencing. The light breeze in the
rigging whispered to the stars above, seeming to mock him,
saying
‘they are gone… they are
gone.’

A large galleon sat tied to the pier
in Edinburg on an overcast day. A broad gangplank connected it to
the dock. On it was a herd of eight goats being driven by two
seamen upwards toward the deck. Each of them wore a brand new
extra-wide leather collar. Two cargo booms worked hoisting cargo
aboard. It was a busy scene as the crew bustled about their
business. The cargo hatches had been changed to allow sunlight and
air below through a grillwork. Hinged caps made of copper could be
lowered and clamped over the grillwork in foul weather to keep the
cargo hold dry.