Her Loving Husband's Curse (25 page)

“Damn,” said James, looking distracted suddenly. “I still hate how I had to call Goodwin like a thief in the night to resign.” He walked back to the edge of the shore, his hands clasped behind his back as he pondered the winking stars. “I liked it at SSU. I liked the students there.”

“You didn’t have a choice. Grace…”

“I know, Sarah. No job in the world comes before you and Grace.”

“But we have no more salary coming in.”

“Are you worried about money?”

“Aren’t you? I know we have some savings, but I don’t know how long that will last.”

“You don’t know?” James kneeled in front of Sarah and looked into her eyes. “We were married so long ago the first time, but I assumed you remembered.”

“Remembered what, James?”

“Don’t you know who my father was?”

“Your father was John Wentworth.”

“And what was special about him?”

“He was good and kind and he had a warm, loving heart. And…and…”

“And wealthy. Good, loving, and wealthy. When he died he left everything to me, plus I have the money from the land I sold.” He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “I’ve been living off my professor’s salary, so that money has been saved, invested, and reinvested for hundreds of years. We have enough to support ourselves for the rest of our lives, and Grace for the rest of her life, and her children, and probably even her children’s children and their children after them. We have a lot of money, Sarah.”

“But your father knew you were turned. You told me about the night he found you in the woods.”

“He knew, but he didn’t care. He still left me his heir.”

“Did you go back to Salem to collect your inheritance?”

“No. Father returned to England after I left him. He was too heartbroken to stay in Massachusetts.”

“After you left him?”

James sighed. “After he found me in the woods I didn’t stay with him long. I didn’t feel safe there, for his sake. The witch trials were over, but the madness hadn’t gone. People still eyed each other warily. They still whispered behind other’s backs. And if there had been any reason to suspect anyone, I’m sure the hysteria could have broken out again easily enough. I couldn’t subject my father to that.”

“When did you leave?”

“I stayed with him about a month. I slept during the day, protected from the sun by the quilts he pinned over the window. When I woke up my father would be sitting in a chair by the hearth, staring at me like he still hadn’t reconciled himself to the specter I had become, like he had to remind himself every night that I was no longer myself.”

“How did he take your change?”

“You knew my father. His love knew no boundaries, even for his preternatural son. He loved me as he always had. He gave me a place to stay. He kept me away from the sunlight. He even found blood for me to drink.”

“Where?”

“From Mr. Eggleston after he slaughtered the hogs. Father explained his cook needed it for blood soup. He claimed blood soup was his very favorite meal, though in truth he couldn’t stand it.”

“Your father loved Indian pudding,” Sarah said.

James laughed. “Yes, but Mr. Eggleston didn’t know that. After a few weeks he must have realized my father was eating an extreme amount of blood soup, even for someone who claimed to love it so much. Then he and his sons began sniffing around my father’s house. One night the Egglestons came by, and Jonas, the younger son, asked my father if he was there alone. I was hiding behind the house, not wishing to be seen, but staying close in case my father needed me. Luke, the older son, saw me loitering and started as if in fear.

“‘‘Tis merely my son, James,’ my father said. ‘Surely you know him. He’s been gone some time now but, blessed be God, he’s home.’

“My father waved me inside, and I walked as close to the men as I dared. They refused to look at me, and I saw their memories of you in their downcast eyes. My father laughed heartily. ‘You Egglestons look white as specters.’

The men quivered in their chairs, visibly nervous at being compared to the very thing that could have seen them hanged months before. And still they wouldn’t look at me, though they were reconciled that I was the unknown presence in my father’s house. They nodded at my father and left and didn’t come back. Yet I knew I was still a danger to my father. Every time I told him I must go, he begged me to stay.”

James’s voice cracked, and his eyes searched the water, barely visible in the darkness, as though he wanted to see his father again.

“Is that when you left?” Sarah asked.

“The following night I awoke and my father was sitting at the table as usual. He was slurping on a bowl of gruel, watching me absent-mindedly, his thoughts somewhere far away.

“‘I must go,’ I said. ‘‘Tis too dangerous for you now with me here.’

“‘You cannot leave me,’ my father said. He knelt besides me, grasping my hands, imploring me to stay.

“‘I must go,’ I repeated. ‘I am leaving tonight.’

“Even though this demon blood was still new in my veins, I felt very human then. I was a son abandoning his beloved father, and every ounce of my being felt broken because of it. ‘Those men will return eventually,’ I said, ‘and next time they may not be too ashamed to see me. They will step closer, look into my face, into my eyes, and they will know I am not myself. Then they’ll notice I do not appear in daylight, or they’ll question again the amount of blood you ask for.’

“‘Is there no other way you can eat?’ my father asked.

“‘Aye, but you do not want to know what it is.’ My father shivered. ‘You are afeared,’ I said. ‘You know what I say ‘tis true.’

“‘The fire is not lit, and I am but a human and ‘tis growing colder.’

“I looked at the unlit hearth, then glanced through the window at the night sky. I saw the beginning traces of winter as frost in the air. My father threw some timber in the hearth and lit a fire. The flames exploded into reds and oranges and I felt the heat against my skin. It was wonderful. I had become so used to cold that the warmth of the fire made me feel human. For a moment I weakened and thought I should stay. Perhaps living with my father, finding blood from unobtrusive sources, keeping his company and his counsel, was possible even as I was. I looked at my father’s face, saw the undying love in his eyes, how he would be there for me, that night and every night we were together. I knew he would do everything he could to make this life as easy for me as possible. Then I realized, like a slap on the face, that it couldn’t be done. I was what the witch hunters had been searching for—a demon presence in Salem.

“I walked close to my father, leaned over him, and he wasn’t afraid. He knew I drank blood, and he knew he had blood aplenty in his warm human body, and he never once shrank from me in fear. I kissed the top of his balding head and grasped his hands.

“‘I love you dearly, Father,’ I said, the blood streaking my cheeks. ‘I always will. I will never forget you.’

“My father grasped my hands again. ‘No, James. No! I cannot let you go.’ He broke down in heartrending sobs. ‘You cannot go. You cannot…’

“I released his hands and flashed away as fast as any demon running wild in the pits of hell. Even when I was miles away I heard him weeping and murmuring my name.

“‘James… my boy…come back…my son…come home.’

“I couldn’t stand the sound of his anguish and I nearly turned back, but I saw a vision of those innocent women hanging from the ugly tree on Gallows Hill, and I remembered the terror on your face as the constable dragged you away. I couldn’t go back to him.”

James shuddered as the pain from so many years before wrenched through his preternatural body. Sarah stroked his arm with short caresses, trying to comfort him.

“Poor John,” she said. “Did you ever see him again?”

“No. Just two months later my father abandoned Salem and returned to London. He lived there for another year until he died.”

Sarah shuddered, the colder nighttime air and her wet feet finally prickling her. She looked at Grace, whose eyes were fluttering under feather-like lashes.

“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” James said, “but I can see you’re cold. Let’s get you both dry and warm inside.”

In their bedroom, James dried Grace’s feet with a towel and changed her into her nightshirt and set her down in her crib. Sarah changed into her flannel pajamas, grateful that Theresa had left the pot of untasted tea on a hot plate on the dresser, along with a platter of homemade bread and fresh cheese. With Grace put to bed, Sarah poured herself some tea and sat on the bed next to James.

“Was John sick when he left Massachusetts?” she asked. “Why did he die?”

“I think he died of a broken heart.” James could hardly say the words. “After I left my father I disappeared into the woodlands again. Sometimes I forgot where I was or why I was there. Then one night as I stumbled along I saw a woman near a low-burning fire outside a thatched hut of branches. She had wild red hair and an unwashed face, and she sat on the forest floor barefoot and cross-legged. At first I thought I would hunt her, but when I approached her she turned to me so casually I had the feeling she had been waiting for me, though how she knew I was coming I didn’t know. I didn’t know I would be there myself. I can sneak up on my prey unnoticed and unheard, but somehow she knew I was there. She smiled at me and nodded.

“‘‘Tis about time,’ she said. ‘What took you so long? Have you been dallying on your way to me?’

“I thought she must have me confused with someone else. I couldn’t guess her age since she looked both young and old. She had a feathery billow of red-brown hair, which made her look young, but the straggly rags she wore were hardly stitched together and made her look old. She walked toward me with strength in her bearing, then stopped a foot away and crossed her arms in front of her chest as though she were challenging me.”

“I’ve seen that look from Jennifer a hundred times,” Sarah said.

“Exactly the same. Beneath the dirt on the woman’s face I could see she was young since she had smooth skin. Her eyes were bright and steel-gray.”

“Like Olivia.”

James nodded. “‘You’re late,’ she said.

“‘What do you want?’ I shot back. ‘I know you not.’ I turned away, but she grabbed my arm and held me more tightly than I would have thought possible from someone of her diminutive size. She came no higher than my waist.

“‘Ah,’ she said, ‘but I know you. You’re the one I’m waiting for. You’re the one who will go on.’

“‘What nonsense do you speak, woman?’ I said. ‘How can you be waiting for me?’

“‘‘Tis the prophecy,’ she said. ‘Someone tall, strong, and golden-haired, a man with skin as white as snow and as cold as the winter wind, will come. You will help him as he will help you and your future generations.’ She gripped my hand more tightly. ‘That golden-haired man is you. You are part of my fate, as I am part of yours. After you will come the man who will be the continuation of my bloodline, and we are a strong bloodline as far back as blood goes. But you know all about blood, do you not?’

“I stepped away, suddenly afraid of her. ‘Be not troubled,’ she said. ‘I have no visitors here. You are in no danger from me. I have secrets of my own.’

“She turned toward the fire, waving her hands upward as though she beckoned the flames to rise and they obeyed, growing higher and hotter at her command. She turned to me and smiled.

“‘I am special,’ she said, ‘and so are you.’

“‘If you know I am special then you know more than I,’ I said. ‘I know not what I am.’

“‘Do you know how you came to be this way?’ she asked. I still wasn’t sure what to make of her, this ragged, dirty young woman living alone in a hand-made shed in the middle of the forest, but she already knew about me, so I told her about that night with Geoffrey outside the jail, and when I finished speaking she brushed my words away with her hand.

“‘You’re to stay with me,’ she said. ‘For a while.’

“‘According to whom?’

“‘According to the prophecy.’

“‘What prophecy?’ I demanded. ‘What the bloody hell are you talking about?’

“‘I can read the prophecies. All my kind can.’

“‘Your kind?’

“‘Aye. Haven’t you been bothered enough about witches to recognize one when she stands afore you?’

“I laughed bitterly. ‘Very well then,’ I said. ‘You’re the one they’ve been searching for. Come with me, woman, because I know some people down Salem way who’d like to show you their special tree. They searched for you so hard my wife died of it.’

“She threw up her hands as if she were annoyed. ‘No one looks for me, boy,’ she said. ‘I am good enough at my ways that no one alive knows I’m here. I’ve harmed no one. I help, not hurt. I use my potions to heal, not poison. I cannot thwart, only thrive. That foolishness down Salem way had nothing to do with my kind. It was because of human weaknesses---pettiness and fear and blackmail.’”

“She was right,” Sarah said.

“Yes, but I wasn’t willing to admit it at the time. ‘You said no one knows you’re here,’ I told her, ‘yet I know you’re here and you were expecting me.’

“‘Caught that, did you? No one alive knows I’m here. You aren’t alive now, are you?’