The day I interviewed Lorna, I was not well. I’d woken with a blazing migraine and all the dizziness and nausea that comes with it. I wanted so badly to cancel that afternoon’s introduction, but she was working in the gallery every afternoon that week and rent was due in just four day’s time. So I took a long hot shower, threw on my softest clothes, and…

Read more

I loathe politics. Observing them is dull and writing about them duller still. Give me an engaging crime story—a murder in the park or a particularly savage riverside mugging, even an obituary or two, for what, to the inquisitive mind, could prove more tedious than the dreaded campaign club dinner? How the voters cheer and whoop, drunk on lofty principl…

Read more

Beatrice was coming. Beatrice the liar. Beatrice the thief. Beatrice who had long held the title of best friend, yet had done little to earn or to keep it. Beatrice was coming to my island—the secluded sanitarium of sea and stone, to which, at my weakest, I had retreated. Coming, now, to disrupt my peace. Even as I waited in my favorite easy-chair, still as the dead and twice as tense, she was drawing nearer, ever nearer.

In my mind’s eye, I pictured her—a modern-day pilgrim perched at the bow of the 5 o’clock ferry, the last from the Port of Seattle. As though viewing a new world, she’d look out on Puget Sound—its mirror-glass surface; its emerald depths; the constellation of craggy islets, turned, as the sun set, to mist-cloaked silhouettes on a horizon awash in violet and gold. Would she see beauty, as I had?

Perhaps it would be a welcome change, having her here. I would show her the secret trail that wound through the madrones and the beach where the clam-diggers worked, and we’d explore the hidden burial plot, and the ramshackle barn atop the hill. Perhaps, if my health permitted, we might even learn to sail. Then I remembered her fright of whales, and knew she’d never ride at the prow, but indoors away from the water. And she’d no doubt arrive as she always had—stinking of liquor and the street, and the ill-remembered past.

Beatrice the charmer; the trickster; the snake. I loved her like a sister, and hated her like the bitterest of enemies.

When, by telephone, she’d first mentioned coming, I had dismissed it as idle talk. She would never leave New York. She was a fixture there—as welded to the city as Lady Liberty herself. She wouldn’t travel 3,000 miles to this windswept horseshoe in the west—not to reside nearly a full day’s journey from the distractions of civilization. Not Beatrice with her thirst for mischief and the meaner of life’s pleasures.

But she had been adamant.

“Daria,” she’d said, “I need a fresh start. Tell me again about the island. Didn’t you say it’s a place where someone could… disappear?”

I had confirmed that it was indeed such a place—that it was where folks went who didn’t want to be found, and it was rife with smugglers and thieves and moonshiners on account.

“And your house there—it’s spacious?”

It was, I had admitted, but only the upper floor was habitable, and not a foot of it was mine. It belonged to my sister, Thera, and her husband, Alonso, and I’d already imposed heavily on their kindness. Why, they’d given up their own master bedroom—the dimmest and quietest—so that I might rest and recover undisturbed. She’d pressed me no further that day, and I’d assumed my meaning had been clear. But only two weeks later she’d called again, this time from the lobby of a dockside inn. She’d ridden the rails to Seattle, and planned to rent her own little shack upon reaching the island. Lord only knew how she had come by the funds.

“And just where will you stay in the meantime?” I’d demanded.

“Well, I was hoping, Daria… and you know me, I can sleep any old place, but I was hoping that I might stay with you. Only until I find other arrangements, of course.”

Of course. And, helpless, I’d agreed—and asked Alonso if he would fetch her from the ferry in the Model T. Thera, elated at the prospect of company, had tidied the house and made herbed dumplings, and had carefully primped her auburn curls in preparation for the outing. She didn’t belong on the island, my sister. She was not a star-gazing loner like the man she’d married, nor was she an invalid like me, and I knew she pined in secret for the flapper’s life she’d left behind.

“Won’t you come with us?” she’d urged. “Aren’t you just a bit excited?”

But I’d remained, as always, in my chair by the parlor windows, staring at a copy of Kidnapped, unable to make sense of the words. Beatrice was coming—no, Beatrice was here!—and nobody, nobody understood.

I heard rather than saw her arrive, for Beatrice’s voice is distinctive—a high, babyish chirp, the sort one would expect a mouse to use if indeed a mouse could speak—and it carried crisply from the yard in the still autumn night. She’d changed little since I’d left New York more than a year before: the same stained coat of drab green; the tattered grey cloche pulled low; the long, lank, straw-colored hair, unwashed, no doubt, since Brooklyn.

Beatrice had never been called a great beauty. Her nose was high and vaguely hooked, her chin a touch too soft—and she was miniature, scarcely taller than a little girl, with queer, gawky knees that seemed, whenever she stood at ease, to have bent in the wrong direction. But her clear green eyes were large and lively, and her smile, with its impish charisma, held a power to charm partly owed to its quirks.

“Daria!” she cried, frisking forward to embrace me, and I forgot, as always, the slights of the past, and was glad that she had come.

Something stirred in the satchel at her shoulder, and she lifted the flap to reveal a tiny dun-colored dog, its human-like brows knitted in fear.

“This is Joe-Joe,” she said, plucking the quivering creature from its cocoon and kissing its runty snout. “He’s my baaayby.”

“I didn’t say you could bring a dog here, Bea. Their fur makes Thera sneeze.”

“Oh, it’ll be alright for a few days,” said Thera. “Only keep him out of my studio; he’s not to make a mess of my paints.”

Beatrice fell asleep in the parlor that night, curled on the rug before the fire. For a moment, I studied her—watched the rolling glow of the dying embers reflected in the stark planes of her face. She looked older, now, than her twenty-five years, her skin roughened by long excess and the indignities of the street. From his nest in the crook of her arm, Joe-Joe glared at me, his black seal’s eyes and button nose twitching with mistrust.

The following day, we walked the grounds. I showed Beatrice the house—the immense dark-wood mansion in which I passed my days. I introduced her to its hidden nooks and spoke at length on its peculiarities, of which there were many. It was called Linger Longer, I told her, and it was one of the very first homes on the island.

Then, in the pale light of northern fall, we strolled through the woods, down the narrow lane below the house, to the lonely old dock at its end. Bea lit a cigarette and we stood for a time, leaning against the creaking rails, and staring out across the glassy bay at the clean, white village of Eastsound huddled along its rim. In his canvas satchel, Joe-Joe trembled and whined. Bea seemed to go nowhere without him these days, a fact which nettled me more than I cared admit.

We turned, from there, toward Crescent Beach, a desolate strip of rocky sand, just to the east of the house, and I wondered, upon reaching it, why I’d brought her there, for as beaches went, this one had always been a touch unwholesome. At low tide, as it was that day, the waterline was cluttered with kelp and the bodies of deceased crustaceans, ever stinking, ever swarming with midges and blowflies. Above, where the coarse grasses grew, lay a boneyard of bleached and limbless logs—the remnants of mighty evergreens that had long ago succumbed to the roiling waves. It was a melancholy scene, smacking of endings and decay, and I wished we hadn’t come for I was already very tired.

“That there is the edge of Madrona Point,” I told Beatrice, gesturing back toward the rocky bluffs. “See how it juts into the Sound, like a tonsil…? We live in the center of the horseshoe; that’s why the water’s so still...”

But she wasn’t listening. She was staring along the shore toward the clam-diggers, and the oyster-men beyond, and I wondered if she’d been touched by the island fever, the unease that sets in as it dawns that one is trapped—corralled on all sides like a rat on a ledge.

In returning, we followed the little-used track road that cut through the dense mixed woods, connecting the beach with our estate. How fatigued I’d grown; how my heart pounded and my breath burned; how my feet dragged like stone as I toiled up the muddy slope. But when we reached Linger Longer, my friend was not ready to rest. She insisted on seeing the barn, and the archery range where I practiced on rare good days, and though I could think of nothing but my bed, I grudgingly obliged.

At the barn, I tugged open the great sliding door and let Beatrice have a peek.

“It’s Alonso’s studio,” I said, “where he develops his photographs and tinkers with his contraptions.”

“Ah, but what is that?” she asked, peering into the gloom toward an object in the far right corner. This was a large round target of black and red felt, its center stuck with six silver daggers.

“They’re mine. I was learning to throw like they do in the circus.”

“I want to try it!”

“We will,” I promised, “soon, but not today.”

Just beyond the barn, lay the pine-shrouded burial plot of the family Wynne, and it was there that I rested, slumped against the mossy headstone of an infant named Mabel. Beatrice hopped briskly from grave to grave, reading aloud the names of their occupants.

“Wendell K. Wynne… Elma Odlin… Maude Mary Wynne… Lorelei Wynne… Stanhope Wynne...”

“Stanhope Wynne once owned this place,” I said. “He was a surgeon and a dentist, and for decades kept a private practice on the lower floor. Much of his equipment—ghastly stuff—was still there when Alonso and Thera arrived.”

“Is that why the lower floor isn’t used?”

“No, that’s because of the rot. The house stood vacant for some years, and parts of it were overrun by mold and rats, and… Well, Thera said they discovered an entire family of raccoons downstairs—”

“But it’s such a handsome old place; why should it stand vacant?”

She had quit her meandering, and now stood peering through the foliage toward the object of our discussion. Handsome it was—handsome, not beautiful, for it was neither graceful Victorian nor lilting gingerbread. There was something almost maritime in its design—something in the solid wood siding, the innumerable casement windows, and the oil lanterns hung therein that gave the impression of an earthbound ship—a stately galleon, crawled ashore to nest among the trees.

“Humans are superstitious creatures,” I said. “No one wants to sleep or dine where others have died. It’s happened in all old homes, of course, but it’s impossible to ignore when living in what was once an operating room. That, and there was a tragedy. One of the Wynne girls had an accident, and was never found—”

“Which girl? Does she have a stone?”

“That one, there—Lorelei, the sister of Russel Wynne, who sold the property. Apparently he was so keen to run off to sunny California, that he gave the place up for a crackerjack price. And of course that only encouraged the rumors—because the truth is, no one is sure what happened to Lorelei. Some will tell you she drowned, others that she fell from the cliffs along Madrona Point Trail. The most outrageous theory is that, after a quarrel, Russel locked her in the Nothing Room, and just left her there.”

“The Nothing Room?”

“Ah, yes. It’s visible from here if you look closely. See the narrow door set into the upper wall—how there ought to be steps or a veranda below it? Well, as far as we know, there never has been. It’s only a door with no purpose, and we can’t guess what’s inside. Nothing, or so the neighbors say, but the door has swollen tightly shut, and we’ve never been able to look for ourselves.”

This piqued Bea’s curiosity, and she insisted that we open it, by any means necessary.

“Another time,” I told her, “when I’m not so tired.”

In the morning I was ill, not with cold or flu, but with the nervous exhaustion that had long mystified my doctors. Two years past, it had struck without warning, turning my steely nerves to jelly and my dancing feet to lead, and I’d abandoned Broadway for the seclusion of the island—for what good was an actress who slept through rehearsals?—who quaked at the sound of applause?

The fatigue proved unshakable that day. For hours I remained beneath my quilts, weak and feverish, listening to Beatrice, who stood outside my bedroom door, chattering away on Thera’s new telephone, no doubt to Todd or Shawna, her bootlegging chums from the Bronx. One could always guess to whom Bea was speaking, for in tone, accent, and favored words, she would unconsciously become them—and, oh, but she was a grand mimic! Indeed, it had been with shock and some measure of disgust that I’d first observed this habit, and at times I still wondered if, behind the ever-morphing mask, she possessed a true face of her own.

Later, when the sun had set, she crept into my room.

“Thera and I walked to town today,” she said. “I asked after rooms to rent, but... I don’t know what I’ll do. They’re all soexpensive, Daria. Perhaps, if there were two renters...”

“I’m not renting with you,” I said. “I’m not well enough yet to care for myself. Thera cooks and does the shopping. She’s my guardian angel, and I wouldn’t get along without her.”

“What is your plan then—to stay here, where you’re only a guest?”

“Well, I had thought of moving to Deer Harbor when my health improves. There’s a lovely marina where I could rent my own boat. I so want to learn to sail, and it would be peaceful on the water.”

But rather than improving, my health seemed only to worsen. The fatigue was stubborn, the fevers frequent. I couldn’t practice archery with Bea or bob about in the dinghy with her and Thera, and we never did pry open the door of the Nothing Room or learn to throw knives like they do in the circus. Days slipped by, silently turning to weeks, then months. I passed Halloween in bed reading The Count of Monte Cristo, and on Thanksgiving, when all of Eastsound feasted at the Oddfellow’s hall, I remained in my easy-chair with a basket of felt and leather trim, for I had taken, in my idleness, to fashioning hats.

Beatrice, in these lonesome times, provided precious little company. She spent her days in town, bantering with weekenders and befriending the locals, returning to Linger Longer only to sleep and to partake of Thera’s cooking. After dinner, we’d take our cigarettes in the parlor, the casement windows open to the crisp night air, and we’d watch the silver wisps of smoke curl lazily into the dark. Bea would ramble—about the thrills of the day and the splendid new people she’d met. She had always been well-liked, no less so by the notoriously clannish islanders, and it took her a remarkably short time not only to finagle a serving job in a respectable home, but to announce that she was moving. A young friend of hers, Alfie, had offered her the use of his boat—“a real orchid of a yacht moored out at Deer Harbor”—and I wondered what had become of the girl who used to tremble at the sight of salt water.

I won’t say that I was envious; while a home on the marina had been a fond wish of mine, neither I nor my housemates would be sorry to see her go. Alonso complained of the telephone charges and the disappearance of his silver razor, though the latter, he insisted, could not have been the work of Beatrice Chip, career pickpocket, for she had reformed her ways and would never steal from friends. Thera took issue with Bea’s treatment of me—“she doesn’t visit with you; you’d think she only came to evade the law!”—and lamented the increasing emptiness of our pantry. The household breathed a sigh of relief the day Bea and Joe-Joe took their leave—but our respite was to be short-lived, for it was that very night that the sleepwalking began.

At first it was harmless enough. At eleven, I rose and wandered into Thera’s studio where she sat before a portrait of Alonso, adding a life-like gleam to each of his black curls. I’d often watched her paint, for in the airy room, with its ornamental screens, its high glass walls, and pastel silks, I had always felt at peace—and she’d therefore noticed nothing out of the ordinary—not till she’d turned and seen my eyes, which appeared to be staring at nothing at all.

“Our ma was a somnambulist, too,” she’d said, leading me gently back to my bed. “Nothing bad ever came of it—nothing dangerous, at least.”

But I never had taken after our ma.

A week later, I was found standing over the stove, a spatula in hand and a single egg sizzling merrily away on the griddle. The night that followed, my sister was wakened by a draft of wintry air, and she and Alonso, upon entering my room, had found the French doors thrown wide. Without a light, I had strayed onto the veranda, climbed atop the rotting wooden rail—and stood poised as if to leap.

After this, I confess I was frightened to sleep alone in my cavernous bedroom with its countless adjoining hazards. Along the far wall lay my worktable and hat-making tools, sharpened for cutting and gauging. To the right was the kitchen—fire and knives!—and to the left the frost-slick balcony, and the infinite perils of the outdoors. I wouldn’t so much as shut my eyes, not until Thera, who was an exceptionally light sleeper, offered to stay in my bed. There were no further incidents till the night of Christmas Eve, when Beatrice came for dinner, and the mulled wine flowed.

It ought to have been perfect—a white Christmas of fairy tale charm. After our feast and figgy pudding, we had gathered around the fire, exchanging gifts and listening to Bea’s humorous tales of the nautical life. Often she mentioned Alfie, her young landlord, and I wondered if there was something between them, and was glad to see her looking happier, and far healthier—even rather stylish in the fine black cloche I’d given her. I mustn’t begrudge her the boat, I thought—must be grateful instead that she was away from New York, and the vices that had nearly destroyed her.

Then, turning to me, she said: “by the way, Daria, I’ve been learning to sail,” and for the first time, I caught sight of the look. It was only a flash, really—a momentary glimmer about the features, gone well before I’d discerned what it was. But I didn’t forget it, rummy as I was with eggnog and wine, and later, when I’d retired to bed, alone—for Thera wanted only Alonso’s company—I pondered long into the night on its significance.

It had been glee, tinged perhaps with something more. Smugness?—no, triumph!—a look that might suit a conquering general or the victor of a duel to the death. And I was sure I wasn’t mistaken, though I sorely wished I were, for it washardly an expression one wants to see on the face of one’s closest friend. It was born of jealousy, no doubt. Beatrice had always envied me: my talent, ambition, family bonds—and the insipid flattery and attentions heaped upon me by my audience. Though I had always sensed her resentments, Bea had absorbed it all in silence. Now she was reveling in my downfall—the rising star brought low!—and I didn’t like it one bit. I would not be the Edmond Dantes to her Fernand Mondego.

When next I opened my eyes, I was no longer in my bed. I was upright and shivering in frigid blue gloom, wondering, even as awareness returned, if I were in fact still dreaming. But no, I could distinctly feel my frozen feet, toes numbed by the new-fallen snow through which I must have tread, and the rough wood beneath my heels—and it came to me that I was in the old barn. I could see with waking clarity the gaps between the weathered boards, for through them streamed shafts of wan moonlight, and the stronger glow of the back porch lamp.

I wasn’t dreaming, but I had been not a moment before—a nightmare, vague in detail, yet poignant in emotion. There had been a frightened girl and an angry boy, the glint of a blade and a calm black sea, churned to milky froth by the thrashing of desperate limbs; slick white hands and wordless gasps; pale silk unfurling, slowly, slowly, in the tide, beneath the indifferent watch of a million stars.

Still reeling, I fumbled blindly for a light—and when at last the ceiling lamp flicked on, I was met with an eerie sight: across the dusty floor led an unwavering path of neat wet foot prints, ending at the target in the far corner. One of the knives had been plucked from the felt, and carelessly dropped beneath.

And though I told no one of the dream or the incident, I was to spend Christmas Day in a frenzy of nerves.

“Cabin fever,” said Thera. “Why don’t you and Beatrice go to Friday Harbor tomorrow, have a haircut and see how your hats are selling in the shops?”

Well, Bea thought this an inspired idea, and I was in need of a haircut, and on the following morning, we made the short voyage to San Juan Island, and the bustling village of Friday Harbor.

“How would you like it?” asked the hairdresser, at the only salon in town.

“Short.”

“Like a flapper?”

“Shorter,” I said, “like Charlie Chaplin or Nils Asther.”

The request gave her some pause—like a gentleman’s?—was I certain? But she eventually obliged, exclaiming, when she’d finished, how fetching I looked—how elegant and modern. Beatrice, unsure of what she wanted, agreed to a neat bob, which she subsequently requested shortened, not once, but thrice. The result was a style very like mine, albeit in a far less dramatic color than my raven black—and she didn’t like it at all.

“I look like a dowdy schoolmarm,” she’d fretted, hiding the sandy wisps beneath her filthy grey cloche.

“Why don’t you wear your new hat?” I asked.

“I can’t. This one was a gift from a dear friend back home, and I won’t take it off—not till it falls off.”

She was cuckoo as a clock, I thought—but I said no more of it, and on the evening ferry, we rode home apart, neither desirous of company. Bea paced the inner deck; I stood at the prow in the icy wind, staring into the roiling wake, where, lit by the cabin lights, the waves glowed palest jade. I wondered how it would feel to fall—to sink into the bubbles as one sinks into a bed—for I was tired in a way no sleep could cure.

That night, when Beatrice had gone home, the nightmare came again. I’d like to say it was clearer, the events less muddled and the faces visible—but it wasn’t and they weren’t, and I was vexed to reflect, upon waking, that only one new detail had emerged. I’d recognized the setting—the bone-white logs, the dark fringe of seaweed that rimmed the shore, like fur on a lady’s coat. It had been none other than Crescent Beach where, in the ashen moonlight, a girl had run and a boy had followed—murder in his heart and in his hands. Just who were they, these slender silhouettes, dressed in white?

I sensed, in a purely visceral way, that it was more than a simple dream, for the very witnessing of it had left me sick, haunted for hours by a lingering sillage of evil. At breakfast, I asked Thera if there had been crimes on the island, killings and the like, but she was of little help.

“Here?” she scoffed. “I haven’t heard of any.”

But Thera had arrived less than a year before me; what did she know? It was time to seek the counsel of locals, and this I soon did on the days I was able. I called on the neighbors across the lane; I chatted with the grocers and the shopkeepers; I questioned the archivists and the white-haired librarians. Each said the same—that the criminals of Eastsound were smugglers and moonshiners, very seldom killers. Of accidents, however, there had been many. The disappearance of Lorelei Wynne was frequently mentioned, often in hushed tones, though accounts of her death were conflicting at best.

“You know that grave of hers is empty,” said Scotty Hughes from over the hill. “They never did find her body, poor child.”

What had she been like? I’d inquired. Had she been large or small? Had her hair been dark like that of the dream girl?

“Aye, it was dark, and she was pretty and slim, just like you. Have you talked with Ike Whitelee? He knew little Lori, and her brother Russ, better than anyone. He’s a policeman now… lives out in Olga.”

Well, I fully intended to meet this Mr. Whitelee—to drive to Olga myself if need be—but my traitorous body had other ideas.

The morning that followed, it was clear I’d been walking. I awoke exhausted, my ankles scratched, my feet black with mud, and I stayed in my bed the length of the day. Consequently it was Thera who, whilst bringing my lunch, first noticed the rash.

“What’s that on your face?” she asked. “Do we have bedbugs?”

A glance in my hand mirror revealed what she meant. Spattered across my nose and cheekbones, like a crop of demon freckles, were countless raised rosy spots, and no sooner had I seen them than they began to itch. My first thought was the pox; I was dying, no doubt, or had at the very least contracted the measles. But, as my sister pointed out, there were no other symptoms. Likely it had resulted from a brush with some unfriendly plant during my nocturnal ramblings, or had indeed been the work of bedbugs. My quilts were laundered, and my face well cleansed, and Thera, optimistic as ever, told me the rash would be gone in the morning.

But it was not gone. In the night the spots multiplied, spreading across my brow, my chin, my neck, with the speed of a biblical plague—and it itched, God help me. It itched like a thousand worms writhing just beneath the skin, and I tore and picked and scratched with abandon, rending holes that would surely scar. Thera mixed poultices of mud and clay, and I spent long hours in the bath, soaking the innumerable welts that dotted my chest and back. Each morning, I consulted the mirror, and was repeatedly disappointed. The rash persisted, and with each passing day, my hope and dignity further dwindled.

I wanted only solitude during this time, ashamed of my monstrous appearance—yet at my sister’s invitation, Bea came often. She’d use the bath and the telephone, and she’d peer at me where I lay curled and vulnerable in the old leather easy-chair, clothed in nothing but a robe and the cracked grey poultice. She’d brag about her friends and their adventures, and the new furnishings she’d bought, for she was working in the home of General Anderson now, and he paid handsomely. She’d tell me of her new longbow and her sabre lessons with the instructor I had mentioned, and say what a pity it was that I couldn’t learn swordplay, because she was having an absolute ball. She spoke of her sailing trips, decadent dinners with her best girl Priscilla, and sunny picnics on the slopes of Mt. Constitution, from where, on a clear day, one could see Canada—and most days were clear, for upon us was a gentle but glorious spring, in which I could take no part.

Through glass, I watched as Bea assumed my goals, my interests, the hobbies and skills I’d long cultivated—with one purpose, it seemed: to become me, or rather a better version than ever I had managed. She dyed her hair dark, and bought black Chanel and silk scarves and button-top boots, and an ivory cigarette holder just like mine—and she’d don this new finery and stand bobbing over my bed like a dainty carrion bird, dressed head to toe as Daria Slane.

I ought to have sent her away, for what true friend would revel in the suffering of the other? But in prolonged seclusion, the mind plays tricks, and I doubted my own impressions. I was, after all, the only one who’d seen the look—the smug half smile, the gleaming eye—for it would vanish, mirage-like, when Thera approached, and I could imagine no sane way to describe it. And so I let her come, dreading, in secret, the spiritual disquietude inflicted by each visit. It continued, this parody of friendship, until one evening in June, just after Bea’s birthday, when she’d knocked unannounced at the door of Linger Longer, wearing an expensive black cloche.

“That hat,” I said, “was it a present?”

“No, I bought it. Isn’t it just ducky?”

“Sure is. Just as ducky as the one I made you, with my own hands, from Italian felt—the one you never wore.”

“Don’t cast a kitten, Daria. It’s only a hat. Can I come in? I simply have to tell you about—”

“No! I’m too tired for visitors. You’d better find your way home.” And I shut and locked the door, and drew the curtains.

“It’s probably envy,” said my sister later. “She resents your creativity. It’s harder to counterfeit than a haircut or a scarf.”

I didn’t care, I said; Beatrice was not to be invited home again, and Thera, ever my loyal champion, reluctantly honored my wishes. When she and Bea’s paths would cross—as was won’t to happen in tiny Eastsound—she’d explain that I’d taken a turn for the worse, that I was far too tired and my nerves too raw, for the entertainment of guests.

At first these excuses were true enough, but with each passing week their veracity declined. A restless energy was brewing, gradually supplanting the ball-and-chain fatigue that had long held me captive. My feet grew lighter, steadier, and while I was plagued still by nightmares and spells of sleepwalking, a fog began to clear that I hadn’t known was there. I longed to leave the house. In the still summer nights, I would stand on the veranda, from where one could hear the calls of orcas beneath the waters offshore, or catch a whiff of salt air, and I’d wish that the ancient madrones and pines were but a few feet shorter, so that I might look out on the Sound.

By late October, I could bear it no more. I would attend the annual Halloween walk, I decided, dressed as a bandit in a cloak and a mask, so as to keep my affliction concealed. But when I tried on the gown I’d meant to wear, brocade mourning garb from the days of Queen Victoria, I was overcome by a curious feeling that had little to do with the rash: revulsion at the shape of the thing. An acute discomfort at the fullness of skirt, the snugness at the waist and bosom, and an unaccountable loathing for the sight of my own figure in the mirror.

Flinging the garment to the floor, I tried several more in varying styles, all with the same uncanny certainty that they were somehow wrong, and that I looked wrong in them. I wasn’t used to clothes anymore, I reasoned. I had, after all, spent months in only a robe. Then, in a dim corner of the hall closet, my eyes fell on Alonso’s double breasted suit. I didn’t try it on—its owner, while boasting a fine fashion sense, stood several inches shorter than I, and it would never have hung right. But at the back of my brain, where instinct sleeps, a queer little flame was ignited, and I asked Thera to nip down to the secondhand store and buy me an outfit just like it, in the slimmest size they had.

It was a scruffy thing, my first suit—pin-striped black with an unfashionable excess of pockets—and Thera looked at me askance as I dressed.

“Why not be a lady bandit?” she said. “I still don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” I replied, for I could not yet find the words to explain. I only knew that I didn’t want to be a lady bandit, because I didn’t want to be a lady at all—and for the first time in my life, I didn’t have to. There were no longer fans to impress, no patrons to woo or expectations to honor. There was only little old me, and a blank slate.

I went to town that evening in a capital mood, aglow beneath my mask with a previously unknown serenity, and in the morning awoke refreshed, despite some festive excesses. My dreams had been pleasant, and I’d remained in my bed, not having risen a once. And when Thera brought my eggs on toast, it was discovered that a miracle had occurred in the night.

“Your skin—it’s better!” she exclaimed, and as ever she was right. All that remained of the abominable rash were scattered scabs and wounds—the pink and scarlet leavings of my own fingernails—and I nearly sobbed with relief. At last, at last, I was free!

The scars healed quickly and I wasted no time. Almost daily, I ventured over the hill to the shops, to pedal my hats and my ladies’ clothes, and to compile a more fitting wardrobe. By late November, I’d turned quite the profit, and had become the sharpest dressed young fellow west of the Cascades. I bought pleated trousers and suspenders, neckties of paisley and silk; waistcoats and silver cuff links and a long black coat of merino wool. I starched my collars and slicked my hair and bound my chest to boyish flatness—all while my housemates looked on in confusion, no doubt viewing my metamorphosis as a bout of passing madness.

“I don’t understand you, Daria,” wailed Thera. “Why would you want to change yourself when you’re so beautiful—so feminine?”

And we’d quarrel, and I’d ask that she call me Avery, for I’d never cared for the name of Daria. Avery Slane, the great thespian reborn—and it was armed with this new moniker and my best black Homburg hat that I strolled straight down Main Street to the tiny Puget Theatre, heedless as ever to the curious stares of the small-minded island folk. Actors, after all, were entitled to their caprices.

According to a poster on the door, there was soon to be a play—a production of Peter Pan—and I was engrossed in reading the fine print when who should emerge but Beatrice.

“Daria! I’ve missed you. Are you better now? You must be, because here you are, out and about...” As she spoke she studied me, bug-eyed, with frenetic interest.

Much better indeed, I told her. I’d been sleeping like a baby—no nightmares at all. And just what had brought her to the theatre?

“I popped in to say hello to General Anderson’s wife, Lydia, who’s on the committee. They’re doing Peter Pan! Will you audition?”

“Certainly will,” I said.

“Which role—Wendy? Tinkerbell?”

“I’d like the title role if I’m to do it at all.”

“Of course. With this striking new look of yours, why shouldn’t you play Peter? Fellas won’t be dogging your heels this time, but you never did want a man, did you? Not, at least, in that way.”

I smiled, suddenly very fond of my old friend. She knew me—better, at times, than I knew myself—and, in the spirit of the moment, I invited her to supper on Saturday.

But when that night came, and Bea arrived, she was no longer the same Bea I had met downtown—no longer the girl in beaded Chanel. Unashamed, she stood before me in a tailored suit of stark black wool, a paisley necktie at her throat. Her hair had been freshly darkened, and slicked back from her brow, and her head adorned in a brand new hat—a black Homburg precisely like mine.

I nearly shut the door again—nearly turned her away without a word. But I didn’t. I stared, agape, frozen by rage and something like fear. She had traded one skin for another, the old me for the new.

“Where did you find those clothes?” I heard myself say. “Rob a little boy, did you?”

She giggled, and slipped past me into the kitchen, Joe-Joe emitting a peevish snarl from the satchel on her shoulder.

We supped in the formal dining room—Thera, Alonso, Beatrice, and I— my companions chatting amiably over my sister’s fragrant borscht, oblivious to my gathering ire.

“This is an interesting new look, Beatrice,” said my sister. “What does that beau of yours think?”

“Alfie isn’t my beau,” said Bea. “You know, I’ve never wanted a man—not, at least, in that way… and it’s a difficult way to be, on the street, where everyone wants something from you.”

Alonso and Thera nodded their sympathy, and I said nothing—only stared into my bowl, stirring the blood red broth and thinking of the Sound—the vast fathomless trench into which any sin might sink.

I dreamed of Crescent Beach that night—saw once again the kelp-choked shore, two figures locked in struggle and a shining blade dropped. Pale hands on a pale throat and ivory silk unfurling in the lapping of black waves. Lorelei. Somewhere there existed proof of her brother’s crime—and it would be here at Linger Longer.

When I awoke, it was with a jolt, and I knew I had strayed from my bed. All was stifling black, yet I was sure I wasn’t in the house or the barn—at least no corner I had explored. The air was different; stale and frozen, imbued throughout with a scent like death—the sickly must of air untouched for years by living lungs. Extending a hand, I felt raw wood, dust, nails—and close behind another wall, and another. Then, thoroughly disoriented, I discovered a door. Hope surged as I grasped the knob, only to plummet soon after when it would not budge!

Panic took me and I screamed, pounding at the unyielding boards and shouting the names of Thera and Alonso—each sound seemingly muffled by the walls of my prison. What if I’d wandered downstairs—locked myself in some closet, far from anyone who might hear me? I’d smother here in the blinding dark, while above they searched in vain.

Then, from below, came raised voices! There was a thud—a metallic object striking the door—and I stepped backward, wincing as my bare feet stirred ancient filth. I heard a scrape, a grunt of exertion, the crack of splintering wood, and the door sprung outward, revealing the worried face of my rescuer, Alonso, who stood perched on a ladder, pry bar in hand. Dawn was creeping over the tops of the trees, and I saw where I had been: locked, alone, in the Nothing Room, for how long, I couldn’t say.

Weak and babbling, I was half led, half carried into the parlor, and set before the fire. Thera, fussing, brought blankets and a tincture for my nerves, and Bea sat beside me, patting my back in an awkward pantomime of concern.

“You sure can scream,” she said, “like a dying rabbit. Bet they heard you from town!”

Presently, a knock sounded at the kitchen door, and a policeman was shown in, scruffy and fair-haired, his nose red from the cold.

“I called him,” said Thera. “I wasn’t sure Alonso could free you by himself.”

The officer, one Sergeant Whitelee, insisted that he have a word with me, curious as to what exactly had transpired. How had I scaled the wall?—prized open the door? And why on earth should I want to do either?

I couldn’t answer—only muttered halfheartedly that I’d been looking for Lorelei Wynne, dreaming of the night that Russel killed her—and that some people, while dreaming, do very odd things.

“What do you know of Russ Wynne?” he said.

“Nothing… only I—I saw them, fighting… There was a knife, but he lost it, or perhaps couldn’t use it… and then… he was so angry. He couldn’t be stopped...” I trailed off, embarrassed, for I’d recognized the name. This was Ike Whitelee, childhood friend of the unfortunate siblings Wynne, and he was glowering at me with patent disdain.

“Russ never hurt Lori. Russ never hurt anyone. These lies—they’re vile, and you shouldn’t repeat them.”

“They say her body was never found—”

“She went into the Sound—what would you expect? They were picnicking on the water—Russ and little Lori—and their skiff was tossed by a pod of transient orcas. Russ surfaced and Lori didn’t. He thought she’d been pulled below, dragged down by one of the whales—and he was never the same after. Could hardly speak of the tragedy.”

I apologized, of course, for my thoughtlessness, but couldn’t resist asking the thing that I’d meant to all along: what did Russ Wynne look like?

“He’s big, bearded... We all called him the friendly giant.”

I thought of the boy on the beach, a delicate figure in white–-and I confess that my heart sank. He had never been Russel Wynne, nor had his victim been Lorelei.

“You must let this go,” said my sister, at afternoon tea. “You’ll make yourself sick over a dream. And Daria, dear… I don’t think you should have Beatrice here anymore.”

“Why?”

“I saw something while she was comforting you… a look that crossed her face. And you may not believe it, but… it appeared that she was gloating!”

Truth be told, I thought little of Beatrice or the nightmare in the following weeks. The auditions were at hand, and I spent them preparing, rehearsing songs and monologues, even purchasing a fay green coat to better evoke Pan.

When the day arrived, all went swimmingly. The part was mine, I had no doubt. My performance had been impeccable, and I strode proudly through town, my spirits soaring high over the ice-crusted streets.

When I arrived home, Thera met me at the door. “Daria… don’t go in there yet—”

“You should call me Avery,” I said, brushing past her in annoyance. “Soon everyone else will know that name.”

She was acting queer, anxious almost, and the reason was soon plain, for whom should I find in the parlor, smoking leisurely by the open window, but Beatrice—and she was wearing a fay green coat. For one hideous moment, we regarded each other, her features all atwitch with hateful triumph. Then she smiled and embraced me, and asked if I’d heard the news.

“What news?” But I already knew the answer, and my heart quickened in dread.

“I’m going to play Peter Pan!”

“H—how?”

“Oh, I auditioned this morning and they loved me—Lydia Anderson told me so! They’ll go through with the rest for formality’s sake, but she said they couldn’t imagine a more perfect Peter, and the part is mine if I want it!”

Thera laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. Joe-Joe snarled from his perch on my leather easy-chair—and I paid no mind to either. All that existed in that moment was the face of Beatrice Chip—traitor, impostor, shameless saboteuse—her twinkle-eyed smirk framed by a dizzying surge of red.

“I’ll call myself Adrian,” she chattered. “It’s a better stage name than Beatrice, don’t you think? Less girly? Oh, and Avery… Tabby is throwing a party tonight to celebrate. You know Tabby’s house—the yellow gingerbread just off Crescent Beach? Alfie and Priscilla are coming and they have nowhere to park their new breezer, so I was wondering, Avery, since your front drive is mostly empty—”

“Get out,” I said.

“But… Avery—”

“Get out! Take your mutt, and get out of my house—and don’t ever come back.”

But she did come back, not days or weeks, but hours later, and it was not to beg my pardon. I heard them in the drive—the roar and silencing of a motor, the echo of laughter, gay and boisterous as though all was right with the world. I considered dashing outside, banishing her once more from the property, but I had already dressed for bed, and so I did the thing I would live to regret: I turned out the light, and went to sleep.

The nightmare came with a vengeance—the morbid play unfolding as it always had before—except, that is, for its ending. As the stranglehold was loosened, I looked down upon the victim, her young life drifting out to sea, and at last I saw her face. It was Beatrice, her body limp in the gentle waves, surrounded by the sodden silk of a long nightgown—for she had been a girl after all—and the murderer above her, from whose eyes I bore witness, could be none other than myself!

My feet were muddy when I woke, and the white satin of my new pajama suit was uncomfortably damp and stiff. Yet when I told Thera of my worries, she dismissed them in a huff. The nightmare, she said, had been a manifestation of yesterday’s turmoil. Likely I’d wandered the grounds, as I was wont to do while dreaming, and been drenched in the early morning downpour. I was inclined to accept her logic. After all no knives were missing from the kitchen, and the fancy car had left the drive, presumably with Beatrice inside.

But a nagging doubt persisted, and at noon I fetched my warmest coat, and made for Crescent Beach. In the bitter winds and rough high tide, it was empty as a desert isle. No footprints marred the rain-washed sand; no body rolled on the breakers or lay tangled in the kelp. Relieved, I was about to turn back when, at once, two anomalies caught my eye. Thera and Alonso’s hand-painted dinghy, which had for months remained tethered to the roots of a driftwood log, was now absent; and at the far end of the beach there was movement—a dun-colored speck, racing to and fro along the rising spume. It was Joe-Joe.

That evening, as I had feared, the good Sergeant Whitelee came calling—and he had both news and questions. A quaintly painted dinghy had been found, knocking against the western dock, and it had been identified by a neighbor, Tabby Moran, as ours. She’d been searching for a mutual friend, Beatrice Chip, who had vanished some time in the night, leaving all her clothes and her beloved dog behind in Tabby’s guest room.

“I’m sure she hasn’t gone far,” said Alonso. “She has strange habits, our Bea, but she always comes back.”

“Everyone adores, Beatrice,” said Thera. “There’s not a soul on the island who’d hurt her.”

“There’s no evidence yet of violence,” said Whitelee. “We think she’s gone into hiding, set the scene to look like she’s met with an accident or that she’s split for Victoria—”

“But why?” I demanded.

“Come now! As her friends you must know? The charming Miss Chip was smuggling hooch, and we were closing in. Now we’ve got our work cut out for us, because it’s just as you folks say; everyone loves Beatrice. She’s got the island in the palm of her hand.”

Well, my housemates seized this theory and held it close, for it was infinitely preferable to any other. I tried my best to follow suit, but my suspicions robbed me of sleep. I lay awake watching the sky grow light, listening to the carols of the robins—and it was then, with a jolt, that I remembered: Kitchen knives were not the only blades on the grounds of Linger Longer.

The barn was dark when I wrenched open the doors, but the flood of electric light soon showed me what I’d dreaded. In the far corner, where in the target had stood six daggers, five now remained.

I packed my bags that afternoon amid Thera’s spirited protests.

“It’s not proof!” she cried. “You may have wanted to, may have believed at the time that you were, but you didn’t do it! You wouldn’t! Somewhere here you acted it out—like a play in the theatre of dreams—and it will be here on the property that we’ll find that knife—you’ll see!”

I only shrugged, for it made no matter where it lay—whether in the woods or the waves, as harmless prop or would-be weapon. Only the Sound knew what had happened that night—the great silent Sound and a little dun dog, and I feared the testament of neither.

The time had simply come—and it was by the light of a waxing moon that I boarded the evening ferry, my destination uncertain and my feet as light as wind. The island belonged to Beatrice, and, dead or alive, she could keep it.

Subscribe now

The place was cursed, the Apache claimed—haunted by the restless spirits of those who’d fallen from its treacherous edge to meet their doom upon the jagged rocks below. It was not quite a canyon, for it was neither long nor particularly wide. It was a gash, an open wound in the surface of the earth, and by night so palpably sinister in appearance that even the miners—pragmatic, straight-thinking men not usually given to such superstitions—had come to believe that misfortune preyed on all who strayed too close. It had no official name. To the residents of Silver, Arizona, it was known simply as the Vorago.

By my estimation, it was neither haunted nor unlucky; it was my refuge, my mute confidant—and it was, in part, to spite these absurd and antiquated notions that I returned every sundown, seeking solace at its dusty rim. Countless hours I’d spent perched at the edge of that precipice, whiskey bottle in hand, feet swinging freely over open air—for in the sheer recklessness of that action, I found both thrill and comfort. Perhaps I would someday muster the courage to leap, but at present, I was content with the mere possibility.

The night in question had begun like any other. I rested upon my favorite stone, an enormous slab of granite that jutted precariously from the cliff face, breathing the crisp December air and thinking the thoughts I had diligently suppressed throughout the watchful light of day—thoughts of Aurelie. Twenty six months had elapsed since last I’d seen my beloved’s face—twenty six wretched months!—yet, embalmed in the fluid of memory, her image held inviolate, immune to the ravages of time. At first I’d wished only to forget, and to that end I’d crossed half a continent, abandoning my life’s work and fleeing New Orleans, where, through the haze of grief, every dark-haired girl had been my Aurelie. Now I cherished each memory, each detail of our years together, for each was a priceless jewel—and it was here, in the silence, that I polished them.

Taking a final draught of whiskey, I hurled the empty bottle into the chasm where it shattered far below with a pleasing crash. I stood rather tipsily and whistled for Jeopardy, the odd-eyed paint who’d been loaned to me upon my arrival in this god-forsaken wasteland. A queer animal was Jeopardy. Possessed of both singular beauty and abhorrently bad manners, he displayed an irksome penchant for wandering off at the most inconvenient of times. In the distance a nighthawk called, but I detected neither hoof beats nor equine silhouette upon the horizon.

I did, however, spy a light. It did not seem terribly far off—though, lord knows, it is difficult to tell in the vastness of the desert night—and it appeared to be drawing nearer, bobbing slowly along in the fashion of a lantern held by a human hand. The presence of another living thing so near the Vorago was a rare and curious event, and I reasoned that anyone imbued with the mad gall or pressing purpose for such a venture might best be avoided. It would be wise to turn immediately for home, giving the light and its bearer a wide berth. But, alas, my foolish soul is governed not by wisdom but by curiosity—the insistent and perverse need to know—and so I waited, with a hand upon the pistol at my belt and an increasing lack of confidence in my aim.

As I stood in the eerie stillness, eyes fixed upon the light, a shiver of dread crept over me and with it the niggling sense that something was wrong about it, unnatural even, though I was unable to discern precisely what. Perhaps it was the sickly colorlessness of the light—its brazen lack of the golden overtones commonly associated with candles and their ilk—or perhaps it was the fact that it was moving in an unwavering, now unmistakable, line toward me.

Gradually, from that single sphere of cold white light, emerged the figure of a man, scarcely visible through the blinding rays of the lantern he carried. Without a pause, he glided through the cumbrous thicket of sagebrush to the rim of the Vorago, then made his way gingerly along it. As he drew near, I observed that he did not seem to be armed, but my relief soon turned to puzzlement at his appearance: he was smartly—indeed, almost formally!—attired in a manner quite incongruous with his rugged surroundings. His shoes gleamed with freshly polished luster, both hair and mustache were immaculately groomed, and his suit was of a style and fineness more befitting an elegant opera house than the dust-blown, weed-choked perimeter of a rough-hewn mining town like Silver.

Yet the most disquieting thing about this peculiar personage was his color, or what might better be described as a lack thereof, for he resembled nothing so much as a tintype photograph come to life—grey!—every inch of him grey as slate!—all but his face and hands, which, by the light of the lantern, glowed a luminous white.

“Good evening,” he called. “A very pleasant one, is it not?” It was a disarmingly mellow voice, accented with the familiar undulating cadence of the Deep South. Perhaps he had not come unbidden.

“Good evening to you,” I replied. “Are you a guest of Mr. Corbet? He didn’t say he was expecting company.”

The somber white features gave a near imperceivable twitch of amusement. “Indeed not,” he said, “and I doubt I’d be invited in for a sherry should he learn that I’m here.”

I was fixing to inquire as to why, if they were on less than amicable terms, he had chosen to wander about Mr. Corbet’s property at such an un-businesslike hour, but I held my tongue. He’d drawn very near—there were not three feet between us—and while his voice had remained unerringly calm, there was something in his overall mien that seemed paradoxically at odds with this impression—something that spoke of obsession, of judgement, and absolutes. He was small and slight of build, and, despite the ashy pallor of his hair, no older than thirty; yet there was a sense of gravity about him, and in his sharp grey eyes a focused intensity that made one want to stand up straighter.

“It’s true that Mr. Corbet is a difficult fellow to keep the peace with,” I said.

“Especially, I would imagine, for his dependents.”

“I am not his dependent, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

“Are you not Francis Marche, the young nephew of Mr. Morris Corbet?”

“The very same.”

“And are you not currently residing—sans employment—under your uncle’s roof, and therefore under his miserly old thumb?”

“I beg your pardon? What entitles you to make such vulgar suppositions?”

“I meant no insult to you, Mr. Marche. In fact, you’ll find that I am sympathetic to your predicament. But I’ve forgotten my manners! Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Bartholomew Isles, and I have a proposition for you—a terribly appealing proposition, and at a most propitious time, as you shall soon learn.”

“And is this proposition one of such infamy that it must be discussed in the dark at the ends of the earth?”

“Some may call it infamy, young sir; I call it justice. It is my aim to see Mr. Morris Corbet dead by the end of the week. I have every faith that you are the man to accomplish this, and you shall be amply rewarded for your troubles.”

“Me?” I laughed. “You expect me to murder my benefactor, the dear uncle who has shown me nothing but generosity?”

Bartholomew Isles waved a hand as though shooing away a fly. “Shall we dispense with these cumbersome pretenses? You despise your uncle; we both know this.”

“Do not presume to know me, sir,” I warned, my choler rising. “I should have no reason to hate my uncle, nor any right to take his life. Susannah would be devastated.”

“Susannah! The way he treats that child is abominable. She’ll flourish once the yoke of his tyranny is lifted from her pretty young shoulders.”

“Is that your quarrel with her father? I would never have taken you for a thwarted suitor.”

“What a scandalous suggestion! If our negotiations are to remain harmonious, you’d best not repeat it. Now, regarding your reward—”

“I don’t want it! There is no sum on earth that would make a murderer of me.”

“My dear young fellow… Who said anything about money? You shall have that which your heart most desires.”

“You could never deliver what you suggest… for it no longer exists. Kindly take your propositions elsewhere. Silver is replete with scoundrels who would gladly carry out such unsavory work for a pint and a turn at the cat-house.”

“As you wish” said Isles, smiling genially. He then gave one sharp whistle, and, to my acute vexation, Jeopardy appeared, swishing his tail and looking pleased with himself.

“Good night to you,” I said, turning to mount my wayward paint.

“Good night, Mr. Marche. We won’t meet again, but payment will be prompt once the task is complete—and if you should require a token of good faith, look to the persimmon tree.”

Keen to terminate the encounter, which, for some inexplicable reason had left me greatly discomfited, I made no reply. I kicked Jeopardy, rather more savagely than intended, and we sprang headlong into the welcoming darkness. More than once I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting to find the ghastly white light bobbing along in pursuit, but, to my bemusement, both man and lantern had vanished. I was pondering this phenomenon and listening, with conditioned abstraction, to the cacophonous racket of cracks and splinters beneath Jeopardy’s hooves, when I was struck by an epiphany; Bartholomew Isles had passed through identical terrain—a morass of dry sagebrush and long-deceased cacti—without so much as snapping a twig.

The hour was not quite as advanced as I’d imagined, for as I approached Nepenthe House, the estate of my uncle, a tentative glow still streamed from the dining room windows. Nightfall rendered the structure nearly invisible—an angular black bulk against an expanse of star-dappled sky—and this was just as well, for in the unforgiving glare of day it was a sight capable of arousing—in even the most stoic of Southern hearts—a melancholic twinge of nostalgia. Designed in faithful homage to the lost glory of the Corbet’s River Road house, it had, in little over ten years, fallen into a deplorable state of disrepair. Relentless wind-borne sands had scoured its outer walls near bare, and the stately Doric columns that fronted its capacious veranda were riddled with long, spidery fissures. It reminded one of the weathered face of an old woman, who had, in youth, been exceedingly lovely.

In the dining room my little cousin Susannah sat alone, her youthful features softly illumined by the flame of a single lamp. There was a half-eaten slice of cake on the table and a fretful crease in her brow.

“Francis!” she cried. “Come and have dessert with me. Daphne has made a divine lemon pound cake.”

“Perhaps later, dear. I need a word with your father. Is he in his study?”

“Yes, but you’d best not trouble him; he’s in a foul temper.”

“Was there a quarrel?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “Oh Francis… do I look terrible in this dress? Maggie May gave it to me—she knows I don’t own anything so fine—and I want to keep it, but Father said I look like a prostitute! Is it true, Francis?”

She rose and gave a shy twirl. The gown in question—a yellow, many-ruffled thing—dwarfed her diminutive frame in a way reminiscent of a child taking liberties with her mother’s wardrobe. Though Susannah was nearing twenty-two, she remained little and lithe as a woodland nymph, and one might have been forgiven for presuming that the wide grey eyes, the delicate chin, and the honey-colored curls belonged to a much younger girl. Since she’d come of age, her guileless beauty had inspired innumerable marriage proposals and calf-eyed declarations of love—much to the consternation of my uncle who had no intent to relinquish the hand of his only daughter.

“Sue,” I said, “you are far too sweet to be a prostitute. Ignore your father; he is a bitter, curmudgeonly old bore.”

My uncle did not greet me as I entered his study. His beady black gaze shifted momentarily in my direction then returned to the tumbler of bourbon he held.

“I won’t disturb you long, Mr. Corbet,” I began, “but I must ask you a question.”

“Then quit prevaricating and ask me, boy.” He leaned back in his chair, regarding me with unrepentant antipathy.

Physically, Morris Corbet was not the most imposing of men. His stature was ordinary, his shoulders visibly slumped, and all across his glistening pate was spattered a profusion of raised, purplish spots—a feature for which I felt a disproportionate sense of revulsion. An uninformed stranger might look upon him with pity rather than fear, but when in his cups, as he often was, his temper turned volatile and his olive-like eyes took on a decidedly malevolent gleam.

“Very well,” I said. “Do you know a Bartholomew Isles?”

A frightful expression crossed his face—one of simultaneous confusion and rage. He leapt from his chair, cheeks crimson, and pounded the surface of his desk with both palms.

“Where did you hear that name?” he demanded.

“Tell me what history you have with this Isles—”

“That is no concern of yours. You’ll divulge where you heard that name you miserable young whiffler, or—”

“I heard it from the man himself, of course. He’s in town—and I don’t believe he means you well.”

“Well, that is quite impossible,” he sneered. “Whomever you’ve met is an impostor, likely one of my competitors hell-bent on driving me into the madhouse. You’re to speak of this no further. Mention that accursed name in the presence of my daughter and you’ll be made to regret it!”

“What would you do, uncle? Throw me penniless into the desert?”

“That I will soon do nonetheless if you don’t begin to earn your keep.”

“Silver has no need of a French chef,” I lamented, “and I’ve been trained for no other vocation.”

“Hogwash! There is no excuse for such idleness. At your age, I was master of a plantation. Then when the war came and everything was lost, do you think I sat on my laurels waiting for a helping hand? Certainly not! I came out here and I made this life. I knew nothing of banking—now mine is the largest bank in town! So you see, Francis, I’m baffled by your uselessness. You could at the very least teach that silly, addlebrained girl of mine to cook. As it happens, she’ll be preparing our supper tomorrow evening; you will assist her.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “if I can find the time.”

On my word, I had every intention of completing the requested task, but such was my loathing for my uncle that I was unable to resist needling him a bit. This loathing was not, as may be supposed, a result of his temper, his miserliness, or his flagrant lack of anything resembling human sentiment—though neither his friends nor enemies would dispute the veracity of this depiction—but rather due to the fact that I found myself humiliatingly dependent upon his grudging hospitality and his oft mercurial goodwill.

It was no secret that lingering reverence for his late wife, Isadora—my aunt by blood—was his sole motivation for permitting me to remain at Nepenthe. Of late my welcome had worn thin, yet still I could summon not an ounce of ambition, and the leaden paralysis of grief is not an ailment readily explained to a man who’d worked while his wife lay dying. Aye, I hated Morris Corbet, and often wished for his demise—but in such cases the margin between wish and act is wide indeed.

That night I could not sleep for thoughts of the persimmon tree. That seemingly unremarkable shrub stood against the east wall of the library, and I had passed it on countless occasions, oblivious to what secrets it concealed. Now in my drunken fancy, a fixation had formed—over and over I heard the words of the man in grey: “Look to the persimmon tree.” And compelled by an overriding urge to do just that, I rose, fetched a candle, and crept downstairs.

The tree had belonged to my aunt. Having somehow transported it all the way from Louisiana, she had, by all accounts, been fanatically protective of it. Now it grew—or rather lived, for it was far too root-bound to expand in size—in an enormous earthenware pot beside the French doors that opened onto the back veranda. Here it was guarded by the watchful brown eyes of its mistress, for upon the wall opposite hung a life-size portrait of the good lady herself.

“My apologies, Aunt Isadora,” I whispered. Then I began my inspection. Observing nothing unusual in the tree’s exterior, I moved on to its subterranean portions. I brought a poker from the hearth and made several insertions, alert to any resistance that might suggest a buried object. My task was obstructed by a multitude of roots, and I was nearly ready to concede defeat when I struck something unyielding with a tinny, metallic clang. As it was nearly a foot beneath the soil, there was nothing for it but to upend the hapless tree and liberate it from its pot.

When, after much feverish digging, I’d managed to excavate my prize, I could scarcely tell what it was I held. It appeared to have been a small box once, now so disfigured by rust as to be quite unopenable. I pocketed it, then began re-potting the tree, and I was completely engrossed in

this task when I was startled clear out of my wits by a voice.

“What that poor tree do to you, Mister Francis?” Behind me, hands on her hips, stood Daphne, the estate’s caretaker and cook, her clever black eyes regarding me with suspicion.

“Daphne,” I said, “you don’t intend you tell Mr. Corbet about this, do you?”

“Well, I s’pose not... but what you doin’ down here in the dark?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you—not just now. But Daphne… you’ve been with this family a long time, haven’t you?”

“Yes sir, since your aunt was just a girl.”

“Have you ever heard of Bartholomew Isles?”

At this, her eyes narrowed. “Where you hear that name?”

“Aha! So you know of him?”

“Course I know ‘im. He was Miss Isadora’s betrothed ‘fore she ever met Mr. Corbet—and I never did see two folks so in love! Always playin’ the piano together… playin’ Miss Susannah’s namesake song.”

“Susannah… is Susannah?” In my weary intellect, the glimmer of a thought had emerged, one that defied articulation.

Daphne was quick to intuit my meaning. “Yes sir,” she said. “Susannah’s never been Mr. Corbet’s child, but don’t tell nobody I said it.”

“But… what happened? Why didn’t my aunt marry Mr. Isles?”

“He was killed… a week before the weddin’. And they say he shot hisself, but we all know he didn’t. It was that heartless old devil, Mr. Corbet. He’d been comin’ round, pestering Miss Isadora. He wanted her for hisself and he would never let another man wed her.”

“Good God, Daphne. Are you certain? That is, are you certain Mr. Isles was truly dead?”

“Yes sir, ‘cause afterward he’d come back—we all saw ‘im! He haunted the grounds for years, always showin’ hisself the second week o’ December, same week he was killed—and that devil Mr. Corbet didn’t know any peace—not till we came out here an’ left the spook behind.”

By this time, I was feeling very queer, so I excused myself and went upstairs. It seemed I had met a ghost, and at this my logical mind rebelled most grievously. Yet the events in question—my own encounter with Isles, the reaction of my uncle, and the testimony of Daphne who’d never been known to fib—seemed more compatible with a paranormal explanation than an earthly one, and I was not so foolish as to discount the evidence of my own eyes.

Once alone, I brought the rusted box from my pocket, and, with the aid of a slim knife, coaxed it open. Inside, nestled in folds of decaying silk, lay two rings—both gold and in startlingly pure condition. The first was a thick unadorned band, which, from its size, I deduced to have been a man’s wedding ring, likely intended for Isadora’s betrothed. The second was set with a large, round gem of a pale red hue. It too was inscribed: B loves I. A promise ring, perhaps.

I returned my new-found keepsakes to their box and stashed it in a drawer. Then, chilled, blurry-eyed, yet still oddly wakeful, I dosed myself with laudanum—a recourse I avow is not my wont—and sunk directly into an undisturbed slumber.

And, oh, how I dreamed. I was in New Orleans once again, in the cluttered studio on Rue Canal. The shutters had been thrown open and there, bathed in the noonday sun, stood Aurelie clad in a gown of defiant black and white. Propped on an easel before her was a painting—her latest masterpiece—and she was studying it with evident displeasure. She looked precisely as she had on our final day together, even including the indigo paint that stained her fingernails—but when at length she turned to me, she did not ask whether I thought a third figure might balance the composition, as she had in fact done. She fixed me with her fay, unearthly stare—for the eyes of Aurelie were not like those of other mortals; I was convinced they had the capacity to see through one’s fleshy exterior to the naked soul beneath—and when she spoke, there was desperation in her voice. “Do it,” she said. “Do it for me.”

I awoke with a start and a sense of impending failure that would harry me the rest of the day. I knew of what she spoke, and although she was now but a phantom, there was no wish I could deny her without dreadful self-reproach. As evening fell, I fled to the Vorago and endeavored to drown my nerves in whiskey, but it brought me no solace for all the while I remained vigilant, alert to the appearance of a ghostly white lantern.

Upon returning home, I discovered both my uncle and my cousin seated in the dining room. I had once again abandoned poor Susannah, and, as the air was fouled with a most unappetizing odor, it seemed she had cooked supper on her own. In her culinary choices, my dear little cousin displayed a distressing lack of the senses most fundamental to an able cook: those of taste and smell.

“Am I late for supper?” I asked, seating myself.

“You certainly are, you whey-faced young wastrel,” said my uncle. “Once again, you’ve shirked the only duty for which you have practical use.”

“It’s alright, Francis,” said Susannah. “I’ve done fine on my own, and we haven’t eaten yet. The pies are in the oven.”

I was questioning how any pie, regardless of its contents, could produce such an unholy stench, when Daphne arrived to serve us. The crust was hard as plaster and the filling tasted precisely as its aroma had portended. I glanced at my uncle, fearful that his choleric temperament would not permit him to swallow politely as I had, and my worry was well-founded for he promptly regurgitated the first mouthful.

“What is it?” he demanded. “What on God’s green earth have you tried to feed us?”

“There are potatoes,” said Susannah, her voice atremble, “walnuts, gooseberries, turbot—”

“Turbot! And where, pray tell, did you obtain this turbot?”

“The pantry… there were several jars—”

With one abrupt movement, Morris Corbet sent his pie careening to the floor amidst a crashing spray of crumbs and grease. Susannah leapt to her feet in fright, clutching at the skirt of her dress. Among the yellow ruffles, there showed several large, spreading oil stains.

“You worthless imbecile! That turbot is older than you!” shouted Mr. Corbet. “It is vile—unfit for human nourishment—and that is precisely why it remains in the pantry. I’m thankful your mother isn’t here to witness such incompetence—she’d be ashamed!”

For one so gentle, Susannah rarely wept, but in the face of such vitriol, her great soft eyes brimmed with tears.

“I… I’m sorry father. I didn’t mean to disappoint you.” With that, she turned and shuffled from the room—stiffly, as if stunned—and as I watched her retreating form, something was ignited in a forgotten corner of my long-dormant heart: an icy flicker of rage. Like a drug, it rushed through my veins, banishing my apathy and sending my moral compass awhirl—and I grew giddy with the stuff, giddy and perilously bold.

“You must go after her, Mr. Corbet,” I declared. “Go after her immediately and apologize. Truly, sir, I would not treat my dog the way you treat that girl, and if you won’t amend your ways then you alone are responsible for the consequences.”

“Consequences, eh? If I were ten years younger, boy, I’d make you regret your smart words, but as it happens, you’re to make yourself useful instead. I’ve found you a position at the bank—the unskilled sort, of course—and you’ll begin working off your debt come Monday.”

So drunk was I on whiskey and hatred that I merely laughed—a hideous torrent of maniacal, hedonistic glee. It was as if some foreign entity had taken possession of my psyche and implanted it with the basest and most murderous of impulses. At that moment, I wanted very badly to harm my uncle, but there are some lines which no decent man must cross—not, at least, without risk of permanent alteration to his soul—and I must not allow rage to make me its puppet.

I stood and made for the door, but my uncle’s fulminations pursued me: “It’s been two years, boy! Just how long will you go on festering over that whore you were fool enough to marry?”

“Aurelie was never a whore,” I snapped. “She was an artist—the most refined and cultured of ladies!”

There was an air of bloated triumph about his detestable, speckled countenance, as if by provoking my ire, he had somehow bested me.

“At heart, all women are whores, Francis… no matter how refined.”

“Very well,” I said coolly. “If that is what you believe, so be it.” And I knew then that Bartholomew Isles had spoken the truth: before the week was through, Morris Corbet would be dead.

Later that evening, I knocked at the door of Susannah’s room. “Let me in, little cousin,” I pleaded. “I have something that may lift your spirits.”

Upon entering, I found her seated at the edge of the bed in a tattered dressing gown. Soaking in a wash basin beside her was the prized yellow dress.

“Hold out your hand,” I said, and into it I dropped both gold rings.

“Oh!” she gasped. “That’s Mother’s old ring. It’s pure gold with a hessonite ruby. I hadn’t seen it since the war! Father threatened to sell it, so Mother hid it away. But you know I… I don’t recognize the other one.”

She then implored me to reveal how I’d come by them, but I refused, promising to do so at a later date.

“I don’t deserve to keep such treasures,” she cried. “I’m a disgrace to her memory.”

“Nonsense. Tomorrow I’ll help you cook supper—as I ought to have done before—and all will be made right.”

True to my word, I devoted much of the following day to Susannah’s culinary tutelage. We concocted a fine mound of pie dough. Then, as the pantry presented a woeful dearth of ingredients, I crept into the library and gathered every ripe persimmon. Susannah prepared the filling—over-spicing it as I had feared—but her lattice tops were cut with unexpected symmetry.

As suppertime approached and the pies baked golden, compulsion wrestled with reason. The murder of my uncle would be neither justifiable nor rational, yet I found myself overwhelmed by an insurmountable urge to do so, and to act this very night without delay. I was, however, still perplexed as to the method of said act; I had no stomach for violence.

While retrieving the bubbling pies from the oven, an idea arose. I requested that Susannah choose a bottle of wine from the cellar, and in her absence, I dashed upstairs and fetched the laudanum from the medicine chest. When it comes to decisions, my little cousin is like molasses in winter, and by the time she’d returned toting a dusty bottle of Burgundy, I had, with the aid of a small funnel, emptied the vial’s contents, into the pie filling.

Regret descended when, at length, we’d gathered at the table and Morris Corbet cut into his pie. The flavor of laudanum is not easily disguised—he’d taste it and immediately discern its contents! And yet, I mused, he was not as habituated to this substance as I, being, as he’d once stated, rather sensitive to its compounds. Perhaps he would merely detect a vague unpleasantness without guessing its source.

To my surprise, he swallowed the first bite with no hesitation, and took a lengthy swig of Burgundy, clearly having imbibed much already.

“It’s an improvement,” he pronounced. “It’s very bitter—I assume the fruit was unripe—but it is edible, and I’m famished.”

Susannah and I looked on—she with pride and I with horror—as Morris Corbet devoured the remainder of the pie and two more glasses of wine, and I was nearly convinced that my effort had been futile when at last his eyelids began to flag.

“I think… I’ll retire to bed,” he muttered—and he fell abruptly asleep in his chair.

“He’s overindulged again,” sighed Susannah. “Shall we have a game of checkers in the library?”

Two excruciating hours crawled by before she wearied of the game, and I was left alone to assess the situation. In the dining room, my uncle remained upright at the table, appearing not to have stirred—but the characteristic flush of wine had been supplanted by a bluish pallor. When at last I summoned the courage to touch him, I drew back, aghast—he was not yet cold, but I detected no pulse.

My panic at that moment was absolute. What precisely I had expected was unclear, as were my reasons for having committed an act so wholly at odds with my greater nature. I had been compelled, launched like a bullet from a gun, and I knew not whether the trigger hand had been that of Bartholomew Isles or some demon from my own soul. Now, however, was no time for such reflection if I wished to avoid the gallows. I fetched paper and ink from my uncle’s study and penned a quick note. It read thusly:

Sue,

When I woke your father, he became angry and left the house in a huff. Since he is still very drunk, I worry for his safety and have gone out to bring him home.

-F

I did not expect Susannah to wake. The note was intended chiefly for the eyes of Silver’s sheriff, who, in being a conveniently linear-minded fellow, would be apt to dub my uncle’s death an accident if only it appeared as such. As his vices were no secret, few would find it far-fetched if he should be discovered at the bottom of a cliff after a night of misadventure.

Morris Corbet had not been a large man, but his weight seemed to have increased tenfold, and I won’t describe what frenzied methods were employed in the transport and subsequent fastening of his earthly remains onto the back of the understandably reluctant Jeopardy. As we waded into the moonlit expanse of sagebrush, I grew as skittish as my steed. My senses tingled with that intangible terror one experiences while being observed by unseen eyes, and I cast about continually, searching the horizon for a pale white light.

Gradually I fell to ruminating. Through the daze of guilt and shock, I could not help but concede that, once again, Isles had been correct: unfettered by Morris Corbet’s tyrannical penny-pinching presence, Susannah would indeed flourish. At last she would be free to wed, free to entertain, free to fill the pantry with delicacies, or to purchase jewels and gowns of ostentatious splendor—as befitted a beautiful young lady of means. She would mourn—bitterly, no doubt—for the man who’d raised her, but I saw sunshine in her future where before there had been none.

Soon the Vorago opened before me like a river of ink, black and impenetrable, as if slashed into the land by some devilish claw solely for the disposal of sins. I led Jeopardy to its extreme edge and set about unbinding the unwholesome burden from the saddle, fumbling over the knots for my hands had grown numb of the cold. Suddenly, from far below, came a clear sharp whistle, and Jeopardy, always the traitor, wrenched his neck from my grasp and trotted briskly toward the summons.

“Get back here, you painted fiend!” I shouted, scrambling to follow. He had strayed onto my favorite sitting stone—a precarious position for a beast of his weight—and now stood swishing his tail and turning his great rabbit-like ears to and fro. From this spot, he mulishly refused to budge, so it was here that I once again set to untying—and the objectionable task was all but complete when there arose from below the most alarming sound one can imagine when poised above a chasm: the crack and grind of shifting stone.

For one panicked moment, I fancied that the very jaws of Hell had opened beneath to consume me, and I was not much relieved when the stars and the horizon and the solid rock on which I stood gave a sickening lurch, revealing the fatal truth. The stone, beneath the combined bulk of a horse and two men, had finally broken free of the cliff face. Many nights I’d spent flirting with Death; at last my affections were returned. No sooner had I grasped this than I was falling, plummeting backward into those cold pitchy depths, the moon and the star-spattered sky reeling above in rapid retreat. Then, with a jolt, the darkness descended.

How long I lay swathed in oblivion remains unknown, but presently I became aware of a light, and as consciousness returned—slowly, as when waking from a dream—I perceived that said light seemed to emanate from a figure perched atop a nearby rock—that of a young woman in a gown of defiant black and white. My heart leapt, for the very shape of her—the slender waist, the mane of coal-black hair, the proud curve of the neck and shoulders—was familiar as the streets of my childhood, yet still I dared not hope, not till that exultant moment when at last I glimpsed her face; it was Aurelie, and in her hand a pale white lantern.

Subscribe now

I did not desire the lady Theodosia. In truth, I feared her—feared her grasping hands and her lascivious vulturine stare—for in succumbing to her wanton whims, one risked the swift vengeance of her husband, Magnus Victorinus Aquila, a general at whose name the empire trembled. And in snubbing her advances, one was liable to provoke the ire of the lady herself, a blunder near as deadly as the first. Indeed, even the most virtuous of liaisons with this fiendish temptress held the potential to thrust one into a perilous dilemma, and so it was that I studiously avoided her presence—particularly in situations of seclusion.

Today, however… Today I had been summoned. I would find her in the bathhouse, I’d been told—the colossal construction perched high atop a craggy hill at the westernmost wing of the general’s sprawling villa. As I ascended the interminable multitude of stone steps that led to its palatial pillared entrance, I invented excuses in earnest. “I am ill, my lady; I am newly wedded, my lady; I am so preoccupied of late that I would not be enjoyable company, my lady.” But when at last I’d made my way through the expansive entry hall and the dim labyrinthine corridors, and arrived weary and breathless at my destination, all words and contrivances had taken flight.

The chamber prearranged for our meeting—a vast steam room—was impressive indeed. Floors, walls, and vaulted ceiling were richly patterned in tiles of lapis, turquoise, and gold. Along the center of the room ran a low, spacious bench of similar decoration; and upon this bench there lounged, semi-recumbent, the lady herself, in sultry vainglorious splendor.

Theodosia was not beautiful, and the formless lines of her aging face intimated that, for all her hauteur, she never had been. Years of indulgence and idleness had imbued her figure with a slack shapelessness, a loosening of the ample curves—an effect further emphasized by the numerous baubles she wore. Broad cuffs, slim armlets, and bejeweled anklets that bit the tawny flesh.

She was said to come of lofty stock—the daughter of a Greek nobleman, I believe, or perhaps a Carthaginian prince. Whatever her heritage, no Egyptian blood was hers to claim—a fact at which she had long waged aesthetic rebellion. She painted her eyes like the queens of the Nile, and the scanty garments that were her wont might have easily been fashioned by pharaonic hands.

“Well, if it isn’t Opilio, my favorite wine merchant,” she purred. “Come and sit with me, my dear.” Though I’d been sent for by name, her air was one of happenstance—that of illicit lovers who’ve fatefully crossed paths in a deserted street.

“What did you wish to discuss, my lady?” said I, remaining on my feet. “Time is short, I’m afraid; I must reach Constantinople by nightfall.”

“Oh, you must stay here tonight. We have many comfortable rooms for guests… and my own bedchamber is, of course, the most luxurious of all.”

“Thank you for your hospitality, but I cannot accept. At sunrise I am meeting an important buyer at the harbor, and I mustn’t be late.”

“Do you know why my baths are emptied of servants?” she asked.

“Why, my lady?”

“Because servants can’t keep secrets. This bathhouse is my kingdom, and within its walls I can do what I like. Now… come and sit with me.”

Perhaps it was the vapors that played havoc with my wits—the cloying steam and heady scents of sandalwood, sweet jasmine, and myrrh—but, to my chagrin, I was near ready to oblige her request when there emerged from a shadowy portal at the far end of the chamber a blond youth in a thoroughly rumpled tunic, thus drawing the attention of my distractible hostess.

“Crispus!” called Theodosia. “Come here, my love. Come and sit beside me. Opilio, this is Crispus, my beautiful golden boy. Is he not a wonder to behold?”

Reluctantly I nodded my assent, for it could not be denied that, in all my travels, I had scarce beheld a more exquisite young man. His features were of a fine patrician mold. The fair hair hung just below the shoulders in soft, shimmering ringlets, and as he smiled in greeting, the white of his teeth contrasted strikingly with the deep, sun-burnished tan of his skin.

“Opilio,” said the lady, hooking one arm about the lad’s broad shoulders, “tell us what delights you are selling.”

Sensing that, with the arrival of Theodosia’s “golden boy,” any imminent danger had passed, I gathered my nerve and recited a concise list of my wares: reds from Messenia and Chios, white from Mt. Falernus, olive oil from Crete, and a handsome selection of Thracian wools.

“Which wine is the sweetest?” she asked.

“The Falernian white. If you wish, I will fetch a sample.”

“There’s no need. I have every faith in your expertise. Crispus shall accompany you to your cart where you will sell him the largest amphora of Falernian white. Pray tell what it will cost?”

Within the uncharacteristically formal words lurked a note of bitterness, and in searching her face, I saw what I had dreaded; the painted black eyes were ablaze with resentment—and a challenge.

“For a woman of your unrivaled beauty,” said I, “the wine is free.” Theodosia grinned, her ego appeased, and I once again drew breath.

As Crispus and I embarked on our errand, the youth lagged timidly behind until, upon nearing the sunlit door of the entry hall, he seemed to come to some private decision. Darting forward, he seized my arm, and urgently bid me stop so that he might discuss with me a matter of the gravest import.

“Very well, we’ll speak here,” I agreed, “ere we’ve both been winded by those pitiless steps.”

“The general is coming home,” he said. “Soon—perhaps this very night—and I do not wish to be here when he arrives. Do you understand?”

“No. Kindly elaborate.” His predicament was, in fact, plain as day; and I furthermore deduced what favor he was soon to ask, but I confess I was well amused by the lad’s anxious attempts at elucidation.

“General Aquila is an uncommonly clever man. He is also exceptionally cruel. Those who cross him are found murdered, and always in the most bizarre and outlandish of ways—he is an artist of death. I do not believe that Theodosia would tell him of our… closeness—not in words, at least—but her eyes are shameless. They cannot lie! With one glance she would betray us both. You know nothing of me, but I’ve been told you are a good man—kind and noble. I care not about your destination—take me with you when you leave this place!”

“As it happens, I’m headed not immediately to Constantinople, as I implied to the lady, but to the neighboring village of Sarna where I intend to eat and drink and sleep until high noon tomorrow. I will likely reach the city very late that evening.”

“Let me ride with you!” he pleaded. “If it’s payment you seek, I’ll do my best to oblige.”

At this, I softened. “No payment is necessary, my friend. You are quite welcome in my cart, though I confess that my reasons aren’t entirely selfless. The road to Constantinople is a long, lonely one, and I am greatly heartened by the prospect of company. I’ll wait at the foot of the stairs. When you’ve delivered Theodosia’s wine, return straightaway and we’ll set out.”

“Then it is true; you are a good man. But I’m afraid I must further impose upon your kindness. I mustn’t leave now but early tomorrow—preferably before sunrise.”

“Why?”

“Theodosia loves me dearly. I cannot abandon her without even the dignity of a farewell.”

“That woman does not love you,” I said. “She loves everyone and therefore no one. As her affections are multifold, they are divided, like the mighty river that splits into many nameless tributaries, weakening at each divergence. A love so scattered must rightly be given another name.”

“Supposing, then, that I love her?”

“And is this sentiment as dear as your own life?”

“Of course not, but I hardly believe a word of goodbye would spell doom.”

“The risk is yours to take,” I said, and we agreed to meet at the foot of the steps the following morning, directly before first light.

When the amphora of Falernian white had passed safely into the hands of my new associate, I left him to his foolishness and went down the road to Sarna where I passed the night at an inn of questionable repute. Owing to the bawdy antics of its patrons, sleep proved elusive, and I awoke later than intended. The sky was lit with green and grey when at last I reached the villa and found our intended meeting place deserted. Dawn had come—and Crispus had not.

Cursing the boy’s tardiness, I lead my horses to the foot of the stairs and lashed them to one of the stunted trees that grew from the rocks. There I would wait, but only ‘til the sun was above the horizon. As the morning progressed, I grew uneasy. Where was he? Had he decided against our plan and merely forgotten to inform me? From the fertile sludge of worry, arose a host of more sinister explanations, but I promptly dismissed them. He had overslept, no doubt. There was no immediate reason to believe anything had gone amiss. Yet something had; I could feel it.

As I scanned the marble colonnade for signs of movement, a figure appeared at the crest of the stairs—that of a female of a distinctly voluptuous build. It was only on the rarest of occasions that Theodosia left the villa, but, suspecting that it was she and wanting keenly to avoid an encounter, I unbound my team and made a hasty retreat.

On the road to Constantinople, I found myself conflicted. Equal to my eagerness to reach the city was my fundamental abhorrence for loose ends, and I at length concluded that my mind would not rest till I discovered what had become of my young acquaintance. Having no cohesive plan, I passed that day and another night in Sarna, and, before sunrise, returned once again to the villa.

At my previous post, I waited and watched, half expecting the lad to appear upon the stairs. Daybreak did reveal someone—a slim, lanky figure pacing to and fro along the colonnade, but Crispus it was not. Judging by his garb and the hefty spear he toted, he was likely a young soldier—one of Aquila’s men. The general had come home. Presently a second figure emerged from the door of the baths—Theodosia. If I were to learn the fate of the boy, this was my chance, so,grumbling at the task before me, I began the arduous climb.

Both lady and guard had vanished by the time I’d reached the colonnade—retreated, it seemed, into the recesses of the bathhouse—leaving me no choice but to follow. In the entry hall there loitered a profusion of soldiers, their crude, careless voices echoing discordantly in the stillness of the cavernous chamber. A few eyed me sullenly, but as none moved to impede my progress, I pressed on.

In approaching the steam room, I discovered it closed. Across its entrance had been hung an opaque black curtain, and before this dour blockade stood two grim-faced guards and the lady Theodosia. The latter did not look herself. She was clothed in a heavy gown of unadorned white, the drapes of which covered every inch of skin; her arms were wrapped tightly about her bosom in nervous self-embrace; and her cheeks, when she turned to face me, were streaked with kohl.The brazen temptress had vanished and in her place stood an ordinary woman, frightened and alone.

“Opilio!” she cried. “I am so glad you’re here. Where is Crispus? Do tell me, dear. I won’t be angry. I only want to know that he’s safe.”

I admitted with regret that I hadn’t seen her golden boy—not since the day before last.

“Then… was it not you?” she asked in puzzlement. “He said he was leaving me—going away to the city. I assumed you’d offered him transport.”

“It was I, yes, but he never showed up.”

She looked stricken, as though her blackest fears had been confirmed—and I sensed that there was more to tell. Leading her gently out of earshot of the guards, I asked: “Beyond the obvious fact of his disappearance, have you reason for alarm?”

For a moment she hesitated, eyes restive and downcast. “My husband knows,” she said. “He returned home mere hours after Crispus had revealed his plans. I was so angry—so hurt!—by my love’s betrayal that when Magnus came to my chamber, I… I told him of my golden boy and the passion that we’d shared.”
“And what did he do?” I demanded. “How did he seem when you told him?”

“He grew very still. For a frightfully long while he sat at the edge of the bed, neither moving nor speaking. When I implored him to voice his thoughts, he rose and left the room without uttering a word.”

“Since that night, has he mentioned Crispus?”

“No. We breakfasted on the terrace the following morning and he seemed in high spirits—as though nothing had happened! Now he has barred me from the use of my own baths, for a surprise, he says, is being installed. Oh, please speak your mind, Opilio. I can’t bear to see you look at me that way!”

“I am thinking,” said I, unable to mask my disgust, “that you’ve condemned the lad to death.”

My honesty was met with a flurry of impassioned denial: “We don’t know that! Perhaps, in learning of Magnus’ return, he has simply gone into hiding.”

Abruptly, her protestations ceased, for in the darkened hallway from whence we’d come, a man approached: the general, Magnus Victorinus Aquila. He was neither old nor young—a robust, ageless figure in dramatic red and white. Purpose in his stride, he brushed past me without a glance, seeming only to want words with his hapless wife.

“The workmen have finished,” he announced. “Come—your surprise is ready.”

“In a moment, husband.”

Then his eyes fell upon me—amber, they were, and full of unspoken scorn—the eyes of a hawk.

“What,” he sneered, “is the wine merchant doing in your bathhouse? He is not another of your diversions, I hope.”

“No!” exclaimed the lady, as if the very idea were unthinkable. “He sold us a lovely white wine on credit and he has come to be paid.”

“Then he shall be, but first—to the steam room! Your merchant may accompany us if it pleases him.”

The anticipation in that cold, callous voice filled my heart with dread, and in studying him I saw reflected—in his stance, his smirk, his mien of latent merriment—the truth that I had sought. The general was gloating—what terrible vengeance had he wrought? Words can scarce describe with what profound aversion I beheld his invitation. The inquisitive zeal that had lured me back to this den of depravity—tenacious as it had been—had dispersed in the space of an instant, and, like a horse that scents carrion, my sole instinct was to flee. I was about to excuse myself, to tell the general he might keep the wine as a homecoming gift, when the gaze of Theodosia arrested me. There was terror in her eyes, and a silent plea: “do not leave me, for I cannot bear it alone.” She had drawn the same conclusion as I.

“Why do you dally, dearest?” said Aquila, and, seizing her by the wrist, he led her through the narrow tenebrous passage to the threshold of the steam room, where the curtain had been lifted and the guards dismissed. I owed Theodosia nothing—neither the comfort of communion nor a word of defense—yet, as if borne onward in the immutable events of a nightmare, I followed.

Upon entering, I initially noted no significant difference—none, that is, but the lighting. Where Theodosia’s sanctuary had been dim and murky as its purposes, a multitude of torches and braziers now burned, casting all about a lurid play of flickering light and shadow. Gone were the scents of myrrh, of sweet jasmine and sandalwood, subverted by the reek of lamp oil and smoke. If this was the surprise, it fell far short of its fanfare. Perhaps, I mused, it was meant as a metaphor—that in banishing the darkness, Aquila hoped to illuminate, and so squelch, his wife’s infidelity.

Then Theodosia gave a shriek—shrill and anguished—chilling to behold—and in following her line of view, I soon perceived the cause. High above the tiled bench in the center of the room was a sight I would not soon forget; there, glinting grotesquely in the rude torchlight, hung a grinning skeleton, each individual bone of which had been sealed in a brilliant cast of purest gold. The dreadful object was suspended by twine of a near invisible fineness and positioned in the semi-horizontal posture of an angel in flight—arms outstretched as if in embrace. Of the identity of the bones, there could be no doubt.

When his wife’s fevered shrieks had given way to a succession of low dolorous sobs, the general spoke: “Now, my darling,” said he, with the triumphant pomp of a speech that is practiced, “your golden boy will always be with you, here where you spend all your days.”

Whether Theodosia’s appetites were diminished by the ghastly fate of her lover, I could not say, but she never again cast a lustful glance in my direction—nor did she return to the bathhouse she adored.

Subscribe now

.