Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) (23 page)

She had confused but vivid dreams, in which Mr. Barrett was some dark-eyed king in
ancient Greece, and she was his weapon, bringing the demon plague to a city he meant
to conquer.

* * *

In the morning, Barrett had a large, dark woman in a bright dress come to the apartment
and prepare a bracing breakfast of “grits,” bacon, coffee and fresh-squeezed orange
juice.  It was the perfect cure for the slight hangover Juliana felt from the night
before.  It would have been much worse if she hadn’t danced out so much of the alcohol.

He drove them to the docks and showed them the towering steel ship that would whisk
them across the Atlantic like a seafaring locomotive.  Its name was painted in huge
black letters on the hull:
S.S. Eurydice.

“I wish you both the best of luck,” Barrett said, giving them their tickets.  He took
Juliana’s gloved hand and held it. “Be safe.”

“Thank you so much for everything, Mr....Jonathan,” Juliana said.

“Mr. Jonathan?” Barrett laughed. “I’ll accept it this time.  Next time you see me,
I expect to be addressed correctly.”

“I don’t suppose we will see you again, though,” Sebastian said, with an ‘ain’t-that-a-shame’
sort of smile. “Not for a long time.”

“As it happens, I plan to visit Berlin myself in the near future,” Barrett said. “A
little more of that boring shipping business.  With any luck, my friends in the Human
Evolution Congress will invite me to see the advanced work they’ll be doing with you. 
So we may meet again sooner than you expect, Sebastian.”

Sebastian nodded, frowning, and didn’t say anything.

“Until then, good luck and Godspeed to you both.” Barrett held Juliana’s hand, then
slowly released her and offered his hand to Sebastian instead.

“Thank you for all your help, Mr. Barrett.” Sebastian said, though his tone was cold.
“We appreciate it more than we can say.”

When Sebastian shook Barrett’s hand, Barrett hissed and jerked his hand back.  Barrett
stared at his palm, and Juliana saw what looked like burn marks across his fingers.

“Did I squeeze your hand too hard?” Sebastian asked, clearly trying not to snicker.
“I forget my own strength.”

“The strength of your grip had nothing to do with it,” Barrett hissed.  He showed
Sebastian the strange burn marks on his hand.

“Oh, let me heal that for you,” Sebastian whispered, reaching for him. 

“Don’t touch me again!” Barrett tucked his hand into his coat pocket and glared at
Sebastian with an ugly expression on his face, full of hate.  Then it smoothed out
into a businesslike smile. “I hope you enjoy each other.” He tipped his hat and walked
back toward his car, leaving them at the crowded ticket gate.

“What just happened?” Juliana asked.

“My touch hurt him instead of healing him.  What a pity.” Sebastian sounded almost
delighted. “Come on, let’s get onboard.  I can’t wait to cross the ocean.”

The
S.S. Eurydice
was a multi-deck steamship with its hull filled with cargo—international mail, rum
and tobacco from the West Indies, timber and cotton from the United States.  A few
hundred passengers rode on the upper floors.

Juliana had a stateroom on the highest deck, with a teak chest of drawers and matching
wardrobe, a queen-sized bed, soft carpeting, and a private bath, lit by ornate sconce
lamps and a row of curtained portholes.  Seth’s room was on the same hall, in a servant’s
nook, essentially just a cot in a narrow closet without a single window. 

“How posh,” Seth said, looking over his quarters.

“It’s better than sleeping with four roustabouts in a tent on a summer night,” Juliana
pointed out.

“It’s also better than sleeping in a sewer during a flood, or in a barrel of rusty
nails.  It’s better than so many things.”

“If you’re pleasant to me this evening, I may let you sleep on the divan in my sitting
room,” she said.

“Or we could trade rooms,” Sebastian suggested.

“I don’t believe that will happen.  Shall we watch the launch?”

“Won’t it be crowded out on the deck?” Sebastian asked.  He knew how being in a crowd
terrified her.

“Not on the top deck,” Juliana said. “Most passengers don’t have access.”

“Aren’t we traveling in high style?”

They watched from the railing of the upper deck as the steamship chugged away from
the terminal.  Most of the passengers were crowded on the level below them, leaning
over the railing and waving good-bye to a matching crowd on the dock, friends and
family seeing them off.  There was a festive mood, like the beginning of a party.

She spotted Jonathan Barrett among the crowd on the land.  Apparently, he hadn’t driven
off at all.  He stood with his arms crossed, smoking a cigar, standing apart from
the rest of the crowd.  Even from this distance, she could feel his dark eyes picking
out her form on the upper deck, watching the stiff, salty wind tousle her white dress
and dark hair.  She looked back at him, and her heart beat at a faster tempo.  He
was dangerous to her, even at a distance.

Sebastian circled an arm around her waist and drew her close.

“You have a look in your eyes,” he said. “What are you looking at?”

She turned to face him, hoping he wouldn’t notice Barrett watching from the dock.

“It’s such a long way,” Juliana said. “Aren’t you scared?”

“I’m scared of sleeping in that little closet for nine nights.”

“Then you’d better enjoy your days, hadn’t you?”

“This one’s already looking much brighter.” He drew her close and gave her a long
kiss, long enough to wipe out any thought of Jonathan Barrett until he was just a
tiny shadow, lost over the horizon.

I feel nothing for Mr. Barrett
, Juliana told herself. 
Nothing at all.

She and Sebastian explored the ship, which was filled with entertainments for the
passengers.  There was a tennis court, a restaurant, a lounge with a piano player
and a singer.  They amused themselves sitting on deck chairs and reading each other
stories from the pulp magazines Sebastian had bought from a newsstand in Charleston. 
The magazines had lurid covers and names like
Amazing Stories
and
Weird Tales
, and they were filled with stories about aliens, ghosts, and detectives.

They ate steak with smoked mussels, accompanied by summer salad and a great deal of
Spanish wine.  In the lounge, they found themselves playing cards with a minor French
diplomat on his way from New Orleans to France, accompanied by his strikingly attractive
young mistress, a stage actress.  Juliana tried to get them to talk about life in
Paris, but he stubbornly returned to his favorite subject, horse breeding, which he
discussed in long, graphic, and highly specific detail.  When the music slowed, Juliana
coaxed Sebastian into a dance, which continued for the next two songs.

Later, they walked the promenade deck, her arm tucked into his, with a billion stars
glowing in the cloudless sky above.  Their walk slowed considerably after they turned
a corner and found themselves alone on a stretch of the deck.  Jenny looked up at
the stars.  Rain was starting to fall, but it was warm, and neither of them ran for
shelter.

“Do you think there’s life out there, like in
Amazing Stories
?” she asked him.

“You mean three-eyed monsters with blue tentacles who fly around in metal bubbles
and shoot rayguns?” Sebastian asked, referring to a story they’d read earlier.

“Just any life at all.  It looks so dark and cold.  And lonely.”

“My mother told me that the stars were all alive.  She said they were angels watching
over us.”

Juliana smiled. “Imagine something that’s alive, but made entirely of light.  Or darkness.”
She looked down at her hands, imagining the demon plague inside her, which she always
pictured as a swarm of tiny, poisonous black flies.

“Beats the three-eyed tentacle alien,” Sebastian said.

She looked up at him and traced her fingertip along his cheekbone. “Maybe there really
are angels.  How else could I have been fortunate enough to find you?”

“You make a good point,” Sebastian told her. “I’m a pretty good find.”

Juliana looked at him for a long moment, then said, “Walk me to my room.”

They walked quietly down the passenger corridor.  He opened the door to his narrow
closet.

“Have a good night,” he told her.

“You don’t have to sleep in there!”

“That’s right.  I can curl up on the rug in your room.  Sleep by the fireplace, which
you probably have, too.”

Juliana took his hand.  Inside her stateroom, there was no talk of sending him to
sleep on the couch or the rug.  They kissed each other hungrily, and his hands explored
all over her body, caressing her through the summer dress.

She stepped back from him, lifted her dress over her head, and tossed it on the carpet. 
He gazed at her, desire in his eyes.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, but she walked to the bed, turning off all the lamps in the bedroom,
and he followed.  He took off his cotton shirt and dark trousers, and she could see
him thick and hard inside his underwear.  The two of them together, almost completely
undressed now, made her shake in anticipation.  She’d longed to get out of their clothes
together, to let every part of him touch every part of her, skin on skin, a sensation
she’d never experienced.  She wanted it so much it frightened her. 

The rain fell faster as he lay her across the bed, splashing against the glass and
making the steel hull echo with thousands of tiny pings.

He kissed her slowly, touching the tip of his tongue against hers.  His hands moved
from her hips and across her stomach and ribs, not hurrying at all, as if he wanted
to feel every part of her.  He had the rough-skinned hands of a boy who’d grown up
working hard for little money.

She sighed when his hands touched her breasts through her bulky, starchy cotton bra. 
She unlatched it for him, then shivered in delight when he touched her bare skin. 
He kissed her and she held his face close, unable to get enough.  He tasted like sunlight
on her lips.

His hands moved down her body, at a speed she found agonizingly slow.  His fingertips
brushed low on her stomach, beneath her navel and just above her cotton panties. 
Juliana traced her hand down the muscles of his abdomen and touched the erection that
strained against his undershorts.  She took a breath and reached inside, touching
him without any cloth barrier.  He felt scorching hot in her fingers, and he grew
more rigid as she explored his length with her fingertips.

He slowly drew down her panties.  They lay naked for a moment, looking at each other
in the silver moonlight as a thunderstorm ripped across the ocean, rocking the vast
ship around them.  Juliana embraced him, kissing him hungrily and pressing her body
against him.  He wrapped his arms around her, and the feeling of their bodies wrapped
in each other was better than she’d ever imagined.  She wanted to stay just like this
forever, his skin on hers, his breath on her lips.

“I was dead,” she whispered. “You brought me to life.”

Her fingers touched his lip, and his hand brushed down her side.  They kissed again,
and his fingers rubbed her gently at
just
the right spot between her splayed legs.  Her body filled with a roaring fire, and
a burst of lightning filled their cabin.

He climbed on top of her and slowly entered her.  She bit her lip in pain.  After
a lifetime of solitude, the intimacy hurt almost as much as the physical loss of her
virginity.  She clung to him while he was inside her, and her breath came out in short,
hot gasps.  She had never felt so close to anyone.

“I love you,” she whispered afterward, too low for him to hear over the rumbling thunder. 
She lay against him and let the ship rock them to sleep.

* * *

Eighty years later, telling the story to Seth and Mariella, Jenny would skip the more
intimate details of their first night on the ship...but she would pause and give Seth
a secretive smile, for reasons he didn’t even remember.

After a week of travel, which Juliana and Sebastian spent eating, drinking, dancing,
and playing, the
Eurydice
reached Le Havre, France.  They marveled at the massive number of ships from all over
the world porting at the sprawling industrial city.  Juliana wanted very much to visit
Paris, but it was three hours each way by train, so they didn’t have time.

The ship carried them into the cooler weather of the North Sea, around the Netherlands,
then south along the River Elbe towards Hamburg, Germany.  Farms and woodlands lined
the wide river, and heavy boat traffic flowed both ways.

Juliana stood on the deck, gripping Sebastian’s hand as the German port came into
view.  It was a beautiful city, full of canals, bridges, and symmetrical neoclassical
buildings.  Trees lined the streets, and the spires of cathedrals soared here and
there along the skyline.  The city looked both ancient and extremely modern, even
futuristic, and it was situated in the center of Europe.  It felt like they were arriving
at the center of the civilized world.  As their ship approached the busy docks, full
of cranes unloading automobiles and railroad cars, a sudden stab of panic struck Juliana.