Few, perhaps, are the children who, after the expiration of some months or years, would sincerely rejoice in the resurrection of their parents.
—Edward Gibbon
It would happen, from time to time, that my father would offer me advice that, while not precisely wise, was neither altogether foolish. Given that he was a man who enjoyed boxing my ears, bloodying my nose, kicking me in the arse and testicles, sticking me with needles, on occasion branding me with an iron, or otherwise causing pain, misery, and scarring, advice was always more pleasant than other sorts of fatherly attention.
The last such morsel of wisdom was proffered perhaps three weeks before I rebelled against his tyranny by striking him in the face with a hammer and running off with his fortune. My father, having learned that he had not, in fact, been clapped by the whore he currently favored, had been in a reflective mood, and with his mustaches only moderately flecked with beef and pudding crumbs, he turned to me with something not entirely unlike paternal regard. Spitting upon the floor, by way of introducing a new topic of conversation, he observed that there are but two sorts of people in the world, villains and victims, and that a man must be determined to be one lest he make the error of becoming the other.
I prefer not to embrace so dark a view of the human nature, but a man in my condition might easily fall into the habit of hedging his bets and living as though these words contain at least a hint of truth.
The fortune I took from my father that memorable day of hammer-swinging was in excess of three hundred pounds, the greatest quantity of money he had ever possessed, and certainly the greatest he would ever be likely to possess. I knew that I would never have a better opportunity to escape his clutches, for the prize was tempting and the enthusiasm of his celebration was, if not without precedent, at least unlikely to be exceeded.
We were staying in a delightfully indifferent inn in Nottingham at the time, notable for the beauty and business sense of its serving girls. The very day I set my mind to do this thing, my father was kind enough to offer me an excellent opportunity. While he completed a vigorous bout of drinking and whoring, I lay upon my bed with my eyes open, awaiting his return. At last I heard him fumble with the unlocked door, until by some miracle of coordination he managed to operate the machine as its designers intended, cause the door to—behold the miracle!—swing open. Further advertising the likely success of my venture, my father dropped to the floor and, after a moment of careful consideration, crawled drunkenly toward his bed, resting himself at last upon a spot very near his intended destination. He lay still for a moment, then raised his head and vomited cathartically. This jetsam then served as a most agreeable pillow on which he could lay his weary head as he contentedly embraced oblivion.
For all his faults, my father was a patient man and a perceptive one, and I was haunted by the fear that he knew precisely what I intended. I am inclined toward the impulsive, but I made myself wait perhaps a quarter of an hour before making my move. I might have waited longer, but the stench of vomit was an encouragement not to be ignored, and his snoring was loud, gurgling, and undeniably convincing.
In the dim glow of the rushlight, I managed to collect his recently acquired sack of bank notes, coins, and jewels. I donned my inferior set of boots and had just begun to turn the door handle when, like a mythic creature rising from its grave, my father shot upright and rushed toward me. His teeth shone from the darkness, and I saw chunks of his vomitus clinging to his three days of beard. His hair, still long and thick though he was upwards of forty years of age, was wild like a demon’s, and his eyes were wide with rage. Some instinct, perhaps a preternatural sense of avarice, had informed him of what I intended, and nothing could induce him to embrace sleep when his hard-won money was about to bid him farewell.
I was prepared for violence, if not specifically from my father. One does not commence to take a fortune out into the night without considering the possibility of assault, and I had hung a mason’s hammer on my belt. My mind driven now only by fear, I unlooped the hammer and struck my father in the cheek. It was a blind swing and a reflexive impulse. I have never loved violence. Much to my father’s disgust, I have shrunk from it and endured his mockery while I refused to beat or cut or stab our victims. Yet, so great was my will to preserve my life and money, I did not hesitate to strike him now.
He squeaked like a mouse in a cat’s jaws, and he fell to the floor. Then, without thinking, I bent over him and philosophically considered the merits of striking him in the face once more. It was as much as he deserved, you may be sure. A thousand memories of closed-fist blows to the gut, of sticks and canes against my buttocks and sacks of walnuts to the back of my head, came rushing at me. Another blow—a disfiguring blow, even a killing blow—would have been no more than justice, but as a parting gift to the man who had sired me, I spared his life and did not strike him a second time. He had, after all, taught me the importance of filial duty, and while, like him, I am apt to be vengeful, I am unlike him in my inclination toward mercy.
* * *
All of this excitement took place in December of 1712, when I was but two and twenty. I fled Nottingham with a staggering sum of money, an amount that would have kept my father in drink and whores and gaming for more than six months. Had I so chosen, I could have taken that same amount and rented some property in a quiet village somewhere. In such a state, I might have lived out my days in moderate comfort. I might have cultivated land and raised cattle. An investment of that sort would have left me with half my stolen wealth in hand and set aside for unplanned contingencies so that I might never fear want or deprivation.
That would have been the best course, but I knew I would not be happy. Though I despised my father, I was his son. Since I was old enough to wear long pants, I had been raised a schemer and a rogue, a trickster and a thief. I knew no way of living but stealing and cheating and deception. I did not want to continue to live thus, but I certainly did not wish to grow old planting crops and shoveling manure. I was too clever and too handsome for such a fate. A life of blistered hands and an aching back was not for the likes of me. It was a mode of living that struck me on the one hand as honest, but on the other as unpleasant.
As I strode away into the cold countryside, warmed by the memory of having finally escaped my father, I realized that what I wanted was to become a gentleman of leisure. I would be willing to set aside all inclination to steal and cheat and deceive if, in exchange, I did not have to endure the indignity of hard labor and long days and a meager living. I thought it a rather decent sort of compromise.
Despite my father’s pernicious influence, however, I was a far more moral person than he, and certainly more moral than he had wished me to be. Before the sun had risen, I knew I had found my course. I would do the moral thing. I would use my stolen money to pretend to be a gentleman and win the heart and hand of a young lady of property. Or, if absolutely necessary, an old lady of property. I hoped it would be a young one.
* * *
I now wave the magic wand of narrative and transport my reader nearly a year into the future and scores of miles to the south. These miles were not traversed directly, however, for before turning my attention to London, I spent several weeks in Cardiff. Why should I venture to so remote a corner of the kingdom, you may wonder. In part, because I wished to set aside my impulsive nature. I wished to plan my actions with care. In Cardiff, I kept my ears and eyes open that I might construct a plausible story, so when I came to London, I would come not as myself, but as Reginald January, son of William January, an Englishman who had made his home in the remote fields outside the Welsh capital.
There was no William January, but his sort most certainly existed, the man who wished to retreat from the world and took up residence in the obscure countryside, where his quiet was disturbed only by the song of birds, the barking of his dogs, and the occasional marble-mouthed utterance of his Welsh servants or neighbors. This species of gentleman rarely wished to be troubled by his own children, and so he would send his sons to England for their education.
My story, then, while not a common one, was nevertheless plausible. My father was a wealthy landowner, having made his fortune trading in the Dutch colonies and in the Japans. He had seen and, if rumors were to be believed, done many terrible things in those years, and so as soon as circumstance permitted, he retired to live out his years in quiet. I, his far less rusticated son and heir to his considerable wealth, had come to London to enjoy the fruits of my father’s melancholy years of robbing, raping, and murdering brown savages.
I obtained fine clothes, rented a lovely home on the fashionable side of Charing Cross, and commenced my new life, just in time for the season, as a single gentleman with more time and wealth than purpose. I dedicated myself to establishing a reputation as a man who enjoyed the arts and theater and opera, who attended church with regularity and proper, though never excessive, piety. Other than religious nonsense, these things were true of me. It had suited my father to raise me to impersonate a child, and later a man, of means, and so I had received an education. As a result, I had an appreciation of the arts, and those first weeks in London, when I had the opportunity and the silver to indulge my interests, were some of the happiest of my life. At long last, I was where I belonged. I filled my eyes and my mind with delights of the intellect and artistic wonder. I needed only to make certain I could remain there.
For that to happen, I had to establish the most advantageous connections, and so I attached myself to young men much like the one I pretended to be. I was, however, slightly superior to all of them. I might accompany some of my new friends to a gaming room, but while I never gamed myself, neither did I priggishly lecture or condemn those who did. I regularly, but not frequently, gave to the needy upon the street. I subscribed to several books of sermons and a few volumes of poetry, but only those written by reputable scribblers and never the scandalous ones. And to my new friends I hinted, in half-muttered and blushing confessions, spoken only on those rare occasions when I’d had a glass too many, that I was of a mind to marry. I wanted a wife, and children to dandle upon my knee, and the quiet comforts of domesticity. My friends would then blush for me, for I was young and rich and handsome—far more handsome than they—and I ought to enjoy these years of liberty. There was time enough for marriage when I was grown old and fat. They mocked me for my tender heart, but the unmarried ladies paid attention.
I truly hoped this scheme would work, because three hundred pounds is spent very quickly in fashionable London, and I was now accumulating debts at an alarming rate. I believed I had two months at the most before I could no longer politely dodge bills, at which point my creditors would grow restive and my reputation begin to crumble. It was marry well and marry soon, or give up the scheme as a bad job.
It was during this period, as I began to worry that my investment would yield nothing, that at a small gathering I was introduced to the ladies known about town as the Four Widows. These were the most prized women in London, a quartet of fashionable charmers, joined by the common fate of being young and rich, beauties whose husbands—all considerably older—had done them the great favor of dying early in their marriages.
No hundred women in London were pursued as energetically as these four, each of whom was worth at least six or seven thousand a year. Their every social activity was reported upon by the newspapers and magazines. The clothes they wore, the food they ate, and the plays they attended became instantly fashionable. Their very desirability made them unobtainable, but my father had taught me—perhaps another piece of anomalously good advice—that the more an object was believed unobtainable, the more accessible it was to a man of daring.
I chose to be a man of daring. I would make one of those widows my own, and I cared not which one.
* * *
Or so I said. I selected for my prize Lady Caroline Worthington, because while I wished to be a man of daring, I did not choose to be a man of excessive daring. Lady Caroline was the least pursued of the widows because she was judged the plainest by a critical world. I certainly thought her not very pretty when I first met her, and when I first set my sights upon her, but how wrong was the world and how wrong was I. Lady Caroline was, in fact, the most beautiful of the four, perhaps the most beautiful of women, but hers was a subtle beauty, the sort a man did not notice at first but that crept upon him at a slow and steady pace until, one day, he found that this was loveliness of a species so powerful, so overwhelming, it froze the air within his lungs.
I shall spare you the details of the courtship. Suffice it to say that I made a point of finding myself in Lady Caroline’s way. Shortly after we met, events conspired so that we had mutual friends and we moved in mutual circles. We found ourselves near one another at gatherings, at balls, and at operas. We would talk and I watched her lovely gray eyes light up as she discovered that her views on religion and politics and literature were mirrored by mine. Yes, I conducted researches to make certain I knew of her opinions, that she might discover we were of like minds, but we were of like minds. I might have anticipated her views, because, indeed, I shared them with her, and conversation with Lady Caroline was always a true delight.
We would spend hours together, talking upon subjects about which she cared so passionately, and she would sometimes catch herself and blush at her enthusiasm, which I found charming beyond words. Nowhere could a man find a woman more clever and modest and kind. Had she been penniless, I would have done anything to possess her. But she was rich, and that was ever so much better.
The enormity of my love would amount to very little, however, if the lady did not love me in return. My first hint that I might meet success came on a brisk Sunday afternoon in September of 1713, as we strolled with the bon ton through St. James’s Park. The air was cool but not cold—winter had announced its imminent arrival, so all of London was out, enjoying the weather while the opportunity allowed it. Here were great lords upon their horses and ladies in their carriages. Everyone wore their finery, and those of us who chose to display ourselves on foot walked in easy satisfaction, the sun upon our faces. There were suits and dresses in every color of the rainbow, and silver and gold thread sparkled like the stars of the heavens. Lap dogs merrily chased peacocks. It was a glorious day to be a man of means, or to be masquerading as one.
Lady Caroline looked particularly resplendent in a gown of exquisitely pale yellow and embossed with elaborate floral embroidery. Her hat, wide brimmed and feathered, sat atop her piled hair, which some fools called mousy in color but I thought the most charming shade of brown. More than anything, however, Lady Caroline smiled with the pure pleasure of being in good company and in good health and in fine weather. She glowed in her joy and vitality, and there is nothing more alluring than the proximity of a woman who feels alive, and, I fancied, in love.
I flatter myself that I looked quite well in my own red velvet suit with large silver buttons, beneath it a sky-blue waistcoat, and beneath that a shirt that erupted with frills like the froth of the ocean. My newly made queue periwig showed off my face to its finest advantage, and not a few women stopped to look at me, but though they might have regarded me as the finest specimen of manhood in the park, I had eyes for none of them. I did not so much as notice when they stared or gestured toward me with their fans or giggled behind their gloved hands. I was aware of none of it, but Lady Caroline saw it all. She watched them notice me, and she watched me ignore them. She saw that I looked at no woman but her, and she smiled.
We walked in easy and, I imagined, libidinous silence for some time, surrounded by our companions. Then fate handed me a great favor. The other widows strayed hither. The other suitors strayed yon. Lady Caroline and I were alone—no one within fifteen feet of us in that great Sunday throng. It was as close to privacy as the St. James procession would afford.
“Mr. January,” she said, casting those lovely gray eyes downward. “I hope you do not harbor any misconceptions about our friendship.” Her cheeks turned pink, and she pressed her red lips together until they were as pale as her lovely skin.
“If you are my friend,” I said, “then I am the happiest of men.”
She smiled and blushed more deeply and took a moment to collect her thoughts. “Sir, I will be plain with you for the regard in which I hold you. I do not seek to marry again. Not now. Perhaps not ever.”
“And that is what you think?” I asked her. “I seek out your company because I wish to marry you? Are you so certain that I have no interest in your ideas and your conversation and your taste?”
“I know you and I are very companionable,” she said, looking less certain of herself. Perhaps she had hoped I would not wish to discuss this topic at length but merely take my marching orders. I was too clever for that. “It is because we are so companionable that I must be direct with you. I cannot allow you to think I would lead you where we cannot go. My marriage to Lord Albert was not a happy one. I am not so naïve to think you have not heard the rumors.”
Of course I had heard the rumors. Sir Albert was some thirty years Lady Caroline’s senior, perhaps fifty or fifty-five. He was greatly fat and inclined to excessive perspiration and flatulence and the stench that accompanied such leaky vessels. Beyond his lack of personal charms, Sir Albert was said to be a demon of a man. He was not, like my father, inclined to violence, but he was cruel, delighting in humiliating and insulting his wife, mocking her before her friends and his. I had heard that he would sometimes come home drunk with whores and rut loudly within her hearing. This, however, was preferable to the times he turned his slobbering attentions upon his wife. I had heard it all. Sir Albert had been a vile brute, and his death had been a gift of the heavens to Lady Caroline.
“I do not listen to gossip,” I told her.
“Then listen to me,” she said with a resoluteness I could not but admire. “I see marriage as nothing but a state of enslavement. My father sold me to a horrible man because Sir Albert was a baronet and he wished his family name to rise in the world through his daughter. Only once my husband died did my own inheritance come into my possession, and now that it is mine, that I am a free and independent woman, I shall never enslave myself again.” She now stopped and looked at me directly. Her face was red, but with anger now, not embarrassment. Her eyes were moist with tears, and she looked like a being divine. “I shall always enjoy your company, Mr. January, as long as you enjoy mine, but there can be no more than that. You are a gentleman of fortune, and perhaps you are too modest to see how women admire you, but they do. You can have your pick of them.”
I reached out to take her hand but then pulled it back—a calculated move of tenderness and restraint. Ladies always find it affecting. “The admiration of women I do not know is of no importance to me. You, however, are of the utmost importance. But understand that I am not a predator, Lady Caroline, and you are not my prey. I seek nothing but to be in your presence in any capacity that you will have me. I shall be content with as little as you choose to offer, and I shall never ask you for anything more.”
She nodded and we walked on. Her face, I observed from the corner of her eye, changed moment by moment—satisfaction, relief, sorrow, pride. She had made her wishes known. She would not marry me. She would not marry anyone.
For my part, I showed no expression, certainly not my true one, which was joy. This was a woman with a pure soul and a good heart. She was as unblemished in her character as a creature of flesh could be, and she had made her wishes known—both those of which she spoke and those which she did not intend to reveal. I believed she and I would be married within the month.
* * *
Only one week later, I exited the Drury Lane theater with Lady Caroline and nearly a dozen others, including the other members of the widows’ quartet. We had just seen Addison’s Cato and stood upon the street, taking in the power and pathos of Mr. Booth’s performance while we waited for our servants to fetch our carriages. It was a cool night, cloudless and bright with stars. About us, peddlers cried out their pies and oysters and apples to the emerging crowd. Whores beckoned to gentlemen. Street acrobats walked upon their hands. Legless beggars walked upon their hands as well, dragging their stumps through the refuse. Hungry children wept for food. It was a London night in all its beauty and chaos and misery.
There, upon those magical streets, shivering in the cool air, Lady Caroline stood next to me in easy silence. We did not speak, but it was not for lack of words, but rather for their unimportance. She looked at me and I at her, and I sensed that my devotion, my kindness, my compatibility, and my apparent willingness not to seek her hand had all done their work.
Here she was, this marvelous woman with her broad face and narrow eyebrows and heavy jaw—all features that should have made her unlovely, and when I looked at her, I thought her lovelier than anything imaginable. And here was I, in all my manly beauty, oblivious to my charms, with eyes only for her. She reached out, her fingers crooked and tentative, and took my hand in hers. I felt the smoothness of her glove against my own, and my heart was carried aloft upon the delicious entangling of our satin-clad fingers. I knew that we were meant to be together, and that we would be together, and that any difficulties our love might face—such as her inevitable discovery that I was a penniless charlatan—would be both temporary and easily sorted.
That was the moment my father appeared before us.
He was not there, and then he was, a horrifying mask of ugliness with his flattened nose and broken teeth and crooked jaw, courtesy of my hammer blow. Before I had time to fully understand what I gazed upon, he reached out and gave one of Lady Caroline’s breasts a hard squeeze. She cried out, and as I turned, he struck me in the face. He did not use a hammer, which was a kindness to be sure. I was horrified and terrified and in no inconsiderable amount of pain, but I was also a little bit grateful. When my father was involved, things could always be worse. And then they often were.
* * *
I lay upon the ground, mud and horse shit upon my clothes and in my hair. My jaw ached where my father had hit me. He stood over me like a colossus, waving his fist in the air while my good-hearted Caroline and our friends watched.
“Someone do something!” cried Mr. Langham, a gentleman who had never much cared for me, for he had had designs upon Lady Caroline himself. “Someone stop that man!” Who that someone might be, if not himself, he did not suggest, though I doubt he intended one of the ladies ought to take on the fury of my father. I do believe he would have preferred such an outcome, however, than be forced to throw himself into the fray.
While I readily condemn him for his cowardice, I am not entirely without sympathy. My father was a tall man, broad in the shoulders and thick in the arms. He wore his hair natural and long and wild, and while he had never been what might be called handsome—I was fortunate enough to take my looks from my mother—the recent reordering of his face, courtesy of my mason’s hammer, had rendered him something of a grotesque. Beneath the scruff of his negligent beard, his face was like that of a smashed statue, put back together with some pieces missing.
“Reginald January, is it?” my father demanded to my prostrate form. “Son of a wealthy gentleman in Wales, is it? You thought I would not discover you? This is no gentleman’s son, but my own,” he told the onlookers, including the horrified Lady Caroline. “His money is but a fantasy, cobbled together with debt and the rhino he stole from his own father.”
Here was the undoing of all my work, and for nothing more than petty revenge—though, it was true, it was a sentiment I knew well. My father, like me, was a man inclined to indulge the need for vengeance, but he had always valued money over justice, so I knew that he must have been truly enraged. If he had not been, he would have found me in private, demanding that I turn my scheme into his scheme. He would have insisted I steal from Lady Caroline or my new friends and deliver to him my takings, or he would expose me or kill the woman I cared for or some other terrible thing. That he thought nothing of money, and only of ruin, meant that I had taken the most vicious and dangerous man I had ever known and turned him into something far worse.
I was dazed, in equal parts by the surprise of seeing him there, with my refined new friends, and partly by the blow to my jaw. However, my senses were now returning to me and I knew that I could not let him continue. If I could make him stop talking now, this moment, then perhaps I might undo the damage he had done. I could claim he was a madman, one I had never before seen and hoped never to see again. I needed that he would say no more, or better yet, say other, equally preposterous things—makes accusations about Mr. Langham or the widows or anyone else besides me.
I began to push myself off the ground. My jaw and my head both pounded, but there would be time later for pain. Now I had to do something.
“Look here, fellow,” I managed to say. “You mayn’t attack total strangers upon the street, nor speak of absurd accusations to me—or to anyone else here.”
I hoped he would take my meaning, but he only cackled a broken-toothed laugh. “My son, my own son, who I raised without his whore mother, has embarked upon a scheme to trick you all,” he explained to everyone, and to Lady Caroline in particular. He had evidently observed my particular interest in her. “I should love him for it if he had but included me in his plans, but he is a fiend, worse than his own father, from whom he stole. And now, out of bitterness, I will set his own plans to ruin.”
“Mr. January . . . ,” Lady Caroline managed to say. She put a gloved hand to her red mouth. “Can it be?”
“Of course not,” I croaked. I pushed myself up into a sitting position, but my father rewarded me with a kick to the side of my head, and down into the mud and shit I went once more.
“He lies, you silly tart,” my father said. “I raised him for just this purpose, to be the sort of cove what could insert himself among you rich arse-lickers and not be sniffed out. Though I’ll reckon he’s sniffed you where that dress don’t show.”
My Caroline, my beautiful, lovely, sweet, and charming Caroline, gasped as though struck. She looked at me in horror, and what was worse, far worse, she looked at my father as though he were a savior. It was beyond what a man could be asked to endure.
“Look here, you horrible stranger!” I said. “Flee while you can!”
I reached to my side and drew my blade as I tried to rise from the muck. My hand, however, slipped and I fell back down. With unstoppable speed, my father reached down, grabbed the hanger from my hand, and wielded it himself. Now he stood above me, my own sword at the ready, prepared to skewer his own son.
“Were you prepared to use a sword as well as wear it, you would not be here tonight, for if you were less a coward, you would have stabbed me back in Nottingham. But you weren’t man enough. You dared not do the deed, and so your half measures come back to ruin you. I will show you how it is done, so that the matter is final.”
I looked at Lady Caroline, who stood frozen in fear and horror. I told myself I could still survive this encounter and restore my name. I needed to think. My father had always been stronger than I and more reckless and brutal, but I was by far the cleverer. Now was the time to prove it. I needed a scheme, but none came to me.
“I shall endure you no more!” cried my father. His face was the color of freshly spilled blood, and his eyes were as round as coins. He raised the sword above his head, holding it in both hands as he prepared to bring it down—only not yet. He had a bit of speechifying to do first. “I am this wretch’s father, and he is a rogue who has nothing and wishes to steal what is yours. He struck me, his own father, in the face with a hammer, and he stole my money, recently stolen itself from a knave such as one of you. As I lay there, in a pile of my own blood, coughing up my own teeth, I vowed revenge. I would not rest, no, not for a minute, until I had ruined him as he ruined me. I would work tirelessly—”
This was as much of his moving address as we were to be allowed to enjoy, for at this point, my father stopped and staggered backward, releasing his grip upon my hanger. He clenched his jaw and set his right arm upon the left portion of his chest, clutching at the flesh upon his heart as though he wished to tear that organ from his breast. He then vomited forcefully upon Lady Caroline, dropped to his knees, and then fell, face-first, into the street kennel.
Only minutes after ruining my life, my father, the worst and most dangerous man I had ever known, was dead, destroyed from the inside as his own body rebelled against him. Given the damage he had done first, I could take no joy in it.
* * *
I would say that I will spare my readers the scene that followed, but in truth, I would prefer to spare myself. I cannot recall without wincing the sight of Lady Caroline covered with my father’s dying expulsion. Far worse was the more metaphorical expectoration that had landed upon my lady’s ears. She now stared at me with shock and horror. I had, at last, made it back to my feet, and while any lady of quality would have been disgusted to see the man with whom she had just held hands now covered with mud and horse excrement and his own blood, her revulsion was not for my appearance. She did not ask if the accusations were true. She did not have to.
Perhaps we would have spoken more, but Susan Harrow, one of the other widows, pulled her away. Mrs. Harrow had always been skeptical and contemptuous of me. Perhaps she had doubted what I claimed to be, but more likely, she considered the son of a merchant, lately of Wales, to be beneath her friend’s dignity. Now she rejoiced that her suspicions were confirmed and that I was even more low than she had originally considered.
My time, I now knew, was limited. It would be only a matter of days, if not hours, before news of this incident spread through the city. Mr. Reginald January, so lately seen with the Four Widows, gentleman of fashion about town, was an imposter and a schemer. Word would pass from tea garden to coffeehouse. Notices would appear in the newspapers and then, of course, would come the creditors, scrambling upon and over and under and around one another like beetles to be first to claim what little they could of my ersatz estate. It was all coming unmade.
But if collapse was imminent, it was not immediate. I yet had time to return home, clean myself, and collect as much of my ill-gotten property as possible before the bill collectors began to spring up like mushrooms. No one would be by that day, and perhaps the next. Certainly, I did not have to let anyone in, and as today was Friday, I had only to hold off my creditors until the end of the next day, for no debtor could be arrested upon the Lord’s day. Come Sunday I might, with impunity, march out of my boardinghouse with clothes, my sword, and all that I could carry, every item obtained upon credit. I might, if I chose, stroll past my creditors, and there was not a thing any of them could do to me.
Where would I go? I had but two choices. I could either flee the city or I could settle within the Rules of the Fleet, that most peculiar of neighborhoods, where a man would never be arrested for debt. Such a residence was as much a jail as the Fleet Prison itself, the massive house of gloom in the neighborhood’s center, for a debtor who lived within the Rules could never depart its borders—except, of course, on Sunday, when there was so very little to do.
* * *
I passed most of the next day upon my bed, staring at the ceiling, bemoaning all I had lost—my status, my friends, my chance at fortune, and, most of all, my Caroline. I loved her, truly loved her, and she was lost to me forever. At least I was now spared the discomfort of revealing to her, after we were married, that everything I had told her about myself was a lie, but she would have understood the true man behind the fabrications, and in due course we would have been happy.
As I indulged in my misery, my landlady called to me from downstairs, informing me I had a visitor. She was yet civil to me, for I had paid through the entire quarter, and though she had smirked at me from the early morning hours on, she had not demanded I leave, and nor could she reasonably do so. If, however, circumstances were to conspire that I must leave, and she might rent out the room that had been paid for once already, I did not believe she would shed many tears.
Awaiting me in the parlor was a boy of perhaps eight years, neatly enough dressed though dirty from the street. He handed me a folded piece of paper and withdrew.
The note was simple enough. It was from my father’s landlady. Having received word of his death, she wished for me to be made aware of his possessions, which were, by all rights, my own.
Nothing could have surprised me more. My father had never been overly nice in his paternal duties, and his care of me had only ever been motivated by keeping around first a boy, and later a young man, who might be of use for his schemes. Moreover, that this note found me so soon after his death suggested my father had known where I lived for some time. It seemed, then, that he had been watching me, plotting his revenge, awaiting the moment he could do the most damage. Did the woman who now contacted me mistake his interest in me for fatherly devotion, or did she wish to pursue his revenge now that the monster himself was no longer of this world?
I was suspicious, but I feared no landlady, and I told myself—now, I see, foolishly—that my father could do little enough harm now that he was dead. Thus the next day, which was Sunday, I followed the instructions upon the letter and made my way to his house in Covent Garden.
The street was none the best, and from the exterior, I supposed the house too would be in a state of decay, but the interior was clean and neat, if spartanly furnished. A girl of perhaps fifteen—an ugly thing with a horsey face and boney frame—led me into a parlor of sorts full of mismatched furnishings. The walls were decorated with pictures torn from magazines and chapbooks. There, however, was a woman of middle years, stout and tall, with dark eyes and hair, and a handsome face that radiated kindness.
She took my hand at once. “I am Mrs. Tyler,” she said. “You must be Reginald.”
I nodded, for though January was a fabrication, Reginald was my Christian name. My father had always believed in keeping lies simple. He also believed in knocking children unconscious and raping chambermaids, so some of his beliefs were better embraced than others.
Once we were introduced and seated, and the horsey-faced girl brought us wine, Mrs. Tyler began to explain her business. “Bernard told me that you and he were estranged, so you may not have known that he was to have been my husband.”
I made every effort to conceal the depth of my surprise. Mrs. Tyler hardly seemed like the sort of woman my father sought. Her kind disposition was evidenced in her every word and gesture. Was it possible that my father had changed? I then recalled an image of him standing over me, shouting like a madman while I wallowed in pain amid puddles of horse shit. Change, I believed, was not likely. In all probability, my father had simply wanted what Mrs. Tyler had—her house, some jewelry, or other movable.
The longer I spoke with her, however, the more I began to doubt myself. She spoke of a reformed man, a man who wished to put his evil ways aside. More importantly, she spoke of a man who had brought more property into the house than he wished to take from it, and this was the crux of Mrs. Tyler’s business with me.
“I know you had difficulties with your father, and he with you,” she said. “His anger toward you was something he could not relinquish. He learned where you lived and he spoke often of teaching you a lesson, of taking you down a peg, but I take comfort that he died before he could so debase himself.”
On this score I kept quiet. The bruise upon my face was big and black and ugly. If she did not suspect my father of having placed it there, then she had not truly known him.
“But though he had much anger, he also had much love. He was a man with a big and generous heart.”
I chose not to comment on this subject, but I forced a nod in the interest of good manners.
“For that reason, I wish for you to take his belongings, or at least as much of them as you wish for yourself. We will go to his rooms, and you may, in private, look through his things. All that you wish for is yours.”
I could not understand how my father could have conducted even a single conversation with so genuinely kind a woman, but I would not cast aside such good fortune. I finished my wine and allowed her to lead me to my father’s room. When I stepped inside, she stood in the doorway, a wistful look upon her benevolent face. She wiped a tear from her eye but did not follow me within.
It was a simple room, with but a few chairs near a fireplace, a table, and several chests. One of these was open, and I could see within it linens and some cheap jewelry of indifferent value, and, most surprisingly, a single volume, bound in cracked leather. I turned to Mrs. Tyler. “Did my father take up schooling late in life? Because I have never known him to read a word or to write anything but his name.”
She shook her head and smiled. “No, he brought these several items with him. They were . . .” She turned away for a moment. “They were things he acquired in his previous life.”
I nodded. Evidently she knew he had been a thief, and she believed, or pretended to believe, that he had put his wicked ways aside for the love of a good woman. “Why did he keep this book? It could be of no use to him.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I did ask him about the book once, and he would neither tell me nor let me look into it. He said he had a feeling about it, but would say no more. He was a man of great sentiment, as you certainly know.”
“He was subject to strong emotion,” I conceded.
“He did not wish to part with some of his things, and I saw no reason to make him. There would be plenty of time. You may find some jewels or other gewgaws of value, but I hardly know for certain. He was a private man, and I respected that privacy.”
“And you do not want these things for yourself?”
“I want to honor his memory, and I do not need his possessions for that.”
He had clearly deceived her like few people had ever been deceived in the history of deception, but I gave her my most sympathetic smile. She then closed the door and said she would give me time for my grief.
I found much to interest me. A silver chain, a few pieces of fine linen, and a purse containing almost fifteen pounds in small coins. Perhaps twenty-five pounds’ worth of goods in sum. It was not nearly enough to pay my debts, but it was more than enough to secure me new lodgings.
I was almost ready to leave without examining the book, but some impulse made me inspect it more closely. On the surface it was nothing remarkable—merely a thin quarto, bound in old brown leather, with no writing upon the front or spine. I thought it must be a diary or journal of some kind, though not my father’s. He had made certain I knew how to read and write—he had even extorted a Latin tutor into providing me three years of instruction on how to act and speak like a young gentleman, the better to pull off his schemes—but he had never troubled with such matters himself. So if the journal was not his own, then whose?
I reached out and touched the book, and I knew at once that I had found something of import. I am not a superstitious man, nor one inclined to believe in the hidden world, but this book’s gravity was unmistakable. I felt a heat radiate from it, as though it had been sitting near a burning fire. I yanked my fingers away and then touched it again. It was still hot. Not warm, I say, but hot, like a loaf just pulled from the oven. I looked about the room, as though the chairs or the walls might offer me some explanation, but they were silent. I own that I was afraid, for a man who is not fearful of ghosts by nature will, I suspect, fear one if he sees it. I was not terrified, as a matter of course, of hot books, but I had experienced enough of the world to tremble when I encountered the unknown.
A wise man would have fled, but I am my father’s son, and something unique may be frightening, but it may also be valuable. I swallowed hard, glanced about the room once more, and picked up the book more firmly, holding it in both hands.
I will not say the sensation of heat disappeared, but as I glanced through the pages, it was matched by an accompanying numbness. That is to say, I still felt heat, but I discovered I did not entirely mind it. If it had been pure searing pain, I’m not sure it would have mattered either, for what the volume contained so held my attention that all the world was forgotten. Written upon the pages, in a faded calligraphy of beautiful intricacy, were words such as I had never seen, never imagined. I gasped as I struggled to comprehend what the book explained.
My reader will forgive me if I am vague about the contents of the book or how I knew them to be true. There are things that, when you gaze upon them, convey no doubt, and this was indeed of that species. One does not question light or darkness, pain or delight, moisture or aridness. Nor could one deny truth when presented with it so forcefully.
The book contained many truths, not simply the one that would alter my course. Some of them were of little use to me, and some I did not understand, while knowing them to be true all the same. But one section grabbed my attention, and I knew at once what I would do. I did not think that I would do it if the process worked as the book described. A man does not throw a brick from the roof of a house and consider what he will do if it strikes the ground. The brick will fall. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to test out the principles outlined in the book before I attempted them in the real world.
As I continued to read, my desire to initiate the process redoubled, because the book explained that the methods contained within worked only for the tome’s true owner. It could not be stolen—only given of free will. That my father had truly given the book to me, via his lady, was a thing I doubted. That my father had acquired the book by fair means himself was a thing I considered unlikely. And yet, the book made clear that the words contained within would appear as garbled nonsense to any but its rightful owner. As I could read it, I concluded the book was indeed mine, but I had to know for certain.
I do not recall departing Mrs. Tyler’s house. But evidently, I did so with the book’s warmth glowing under my arm, and the rest of the inheritance as well, for even in my stupor, I did not leave the items of value behind. On my way back to my own boardinghouse, I saw a dead bird in the street, and I scooped it up in my handkerchief while a trio of middling women watched in disgust. What mattered to me their opinion? I would never see them again, and the world was about to change under my ministrations.
I ignored their disgusted stares as I examined the dead creature with its torn wing and twisted leg and missing eyes. Could it be what the book promised would come true? I could not see how, and yet I could not make myself doubt it, not after what I had read.
I went to my room and set the book down upon my writing desk. I then opened my volume to the pages that had so drawn my attention and proceeded to follow the simple instructions outlined therein. The necessary ingredients were to be found in my room and in any ordinary kitchen, and so I stealthily raided the kitchen of the very house in which I roomed. With the needful ingredients in hand, the actions were not overly complicated. Indeed they were fluid and intuitive and ever so easy, and it seemed to me as I went through the procedure that it was the most obvious thing. How had this not occurred to me—to anyone? It was as though no one had ever thought to douse a fire with a bucket of water or to brush a coat to remove lint. Were I to outline the procedure here, in these pages, and those words were to retain their shape in your eyes (which I doubt), you would think much the same, but I shan’t. It is not information you need to possess.
When I finished, there was no delay. The bird hopped upon its feet and began to flutter wildly. Its wing, which before had been torn and half gone, was now whole. Its twisted leg was straight. The missing eyes were returned. It was, for all the world, a healthy and robust creature, chirping with great fury as it flew about my room as would any bird suddenly trapped within doors. I ducked and dove and swatted at it, protecting my eyes and my hair until I was able to open a window and drive it away. Then I laughed, relishing the wonder of it, not seeing the mayhem and chaos as anything at all like an omen.
* * *
The Four Widows had made it something of a habit to gather each Wednesday evening to entertain one another and sometimes guests, though they preferred such time to themselves. Other suitors would often invade these gatherings, but I never did. My father taught me far better than to insert myself where I was not wanted. Sadly, I had no choice but to do so now.
The streets were turning dark as I exited my new lodgings in the Rules of the Fleet, to which I had moved the day I obtained the book. I ducked down several alleyways, crossed streets, ran into taverns and out their back doors, all to make certain no creditors were trailing me, ready to grab me the moment I left the Rules. If that happened, I would be sent to a sponging house and given a day to find friends who could pay my debts. As I had no friends remaining to me, I would then be sent to debtor’s prison and rot there until Parliament passed its next general amnesty for debtors. It could come next month or in ten years. Upon my arrest, my property would be seized and auctioned off, the proceeds split among my tailor and jeweler and brewer and chophouse and sword maker and all the others I owed. The book, at least, would not be among those items, for I had it upon me, but it would do me little good in prison. All of this was to say that I had no choice but to make my scheme work, and quickly, for I could not dodge my creditors forever.
I had seen their agents standing outside my new boardinghouse, waiting for me to leave, waiting for me to wander outside the Rules. Such men did not have endless patience, and they had other clients, other men to hunt, so I did not think it impossible that I might elude them, but even I could be unlucky, as you have already observed. The only cure for poverty, it seemed, was wealth, and I had no choice but to obtain it by any means I could devise.
With the prison looming up upon my left shoulder, and the majesty of St. Paul’s Cathedral before me, I moved along Ludgate Street and then headed back toward Blackfriars, slipping into the darkness of Stonecutter’s Alley toward the wretched stink of London’s great thoroughfare of piss and shit, the Fleet Ditch. My plan was to follow the ditch’s loathsome path back to the bridge, cross over to Fleet Street, and then head to west.
My plan was a success. By the time I entered Stonecutter’s Alley, I knew I had lost any followers. I then followed the course of the ditch, all too aware that I might face more dangers, for only the most wretched and desperate of men haunted such a place. Luck was on my side for once, as no one troubled me. I, however, could not say that I traveled untroubled. As I made my way to the Fleet Bridge, I saw three girls, not twelve years old, shirtless and huddled before a fire built of dried turds. I passed a man in rags, rocking back and forth as he held up his hand, filthy and bloody bandages marking where three fingers had recently been lost. Upon the shore of the Fleet Ditch itself, where its contents had overflowed, I saw a thin man and fat woman rutting like animals, she bent over, he entering her from behind. Neither of them cared a jot for the human excrement and dead rats that pooled about their ankles.
All of these terrible sights steeled my purpose. I would not be like these people. I would not be poor and wretched, little better than a beast in my brutish desire for food and warmth and physical release. I had the means to make my desires a reality, and I would use those means. The cost of refusing to do so was displayed all around me.
I moved with care, avoiding danger and dirt, and so appeared unruffled at Lady Caroline’s house off Golden Square, my box tucked under my arm. I looked like a gentleman, I told myself. I looked far better than most gentlemen. There was no reason I could not be a gentleman. I rang the bell, and I presented a tall and fair-haired young man in livery—the sort of handsome fellow whom widows employed but married ladies did not—with my card and waited.
It was very true that I might be sent away. I even considered it more likely than not. If that were the case, I would follow this visit with a letter, requesting in the most persuasive language a private audience. That was a more dependable course, but I did not wish for these events to unfold so very slowly.
I was made to wait for some time, and I had no doubt that a debate raged within. At last, the handsome servant reappeared and directed me into the parlor, where the Four Widows sat, along with Mr. Langham. All of them stared at me—all but my lovely Caroline, who looked away, her face quite red.
I observed them all, and the beauty of the room, lit with its roaring blaze in the fireplace and dozens of tallow candles in their silver sconces upon the walls and those of the chandelier, interlaced with sparking crystal. Light too danced from the silver and gold of the jewelry around necks and fingers. There were bowls and trays of food and goblets and decanters of drink. There was a fine Turkish rug upon the floor and portraits of friends and ancestors upon the wall.
What a journey I had made that very night, I thought. From the Rules of the Fleet, in the shadow of the Fleet Prison and bathed in the stench of the Fleet Ditch, to this fine town house, off Golden Square, full of fine people and fine things. Which of these lives did I want? There could be no question.
Susan Harrow cleared her lovely white throat. She sat primly in her chair, her hands upon the lap of a sea-green gown that matched the precise shade of her large and startling eyes. “We were not certain we ought to admit you,” she said, “but we believed you were owed an opportunity, at the very least, to explain yourself.”
“I very much doubt that,” I said, bowing to all of them. “I imagine you admitted me because you thought it would prove amusing. I suspect this decision was made over the objections—spoken or merely silent and obvious—of Lady Caroline.”
She turned away at the sound of her name.
“It is a bit late to trouble yourself with Lady Caroline’s feelings,” said Mr. Langham.
“I hope that it is not,” I told him.
“Then you believe you can clear your name of the charges laid upon you by your father?” said Mrs. Harrow, her tone rich with derision. “Perhaps you will claim that they were lies, and he was not your father at all. Perhaps the fact that no one had heard of you prior to your arrival a few weeks ago is nothing to concern us.”
“He was my father, and they were not lies,” I admitted.
Lady Caroline put a hand to her prim and pretty mouth. She had, I saw now, hoped that I had come to say something that would make all the unpleasantness vanish. Of course I am not a poor scoundrel, I would say. I have merit because I have money, I would say. I loved her because she wished for it, but I began to feel a growing seed of resentment as well. She had money, and I did not, so what did my poverty matter if she loved me? Why must equivalent wealth—or at least family or name or title or some other form of prestige—be of such import if she truly cared for me? I had thought her good and pure and generous, but I began to see she was no so very different than the rest, not even than that harridan Susan Harrow.
I smiled at them all and bowed once more, and thought of the terrible things I had seen on my way to this house. I had seen such things before, of course. Indeed, I had always seen them, but the contrast between that former life and this one filled me with purpose. “The world is a terrible place for those without means, and I hope you will understand that when you consider the deceptive tools I used to attempt to obtain the comforts of life you believe to be yours by right. My feelings toward Lady Caroline were genuine, and they remain so. I fear I could never have attracted her notice had I presented myself as who I am. Perhaps this does not excuse what I did, but I hope it will explain my motives.”
“Then what is your motive for coming here now?” asked Elizabeth Benton, one of the Four Widows. She was a woman of great beauty, but she resented with all her heart that Susan Harrow was considered more beautiful. She might oppose her friend if she believed it could gain her notice and acclaim within her circle, but she would not take a risk unnecessarily. “Surely you did not hope to convince us to readmit you to our society merely because you wish to be among us.”
I had been poor all my life. Money that my father acquired disappeared with astonishing rapidity. I was used to hunger and filth and cold and skin raw from lice and flea bites. I was used to be being beaten and run off and fired upon by pistol and musket. I was used to having nothing in a world where many had something and a few, a golden few, had more than they could ever need. That was the way of things, and it had always been so, and while I might have hated my father for the pain he inflicted upon me and the reckless way he spent our money, I had never before hated the ordering of the world in which I lived. But now, in that parlor, surrounded by their lavish furnishings and their paintings upon the walls, their crystal decanters of wine and their trays of white toast covered with mayonnaise and anchovies, I hated the world for what it had done to me. I hated the way of things. I hated the rich and their opulence and plenty and their disregard for the rest of us. Life, I now saw, wasn’t merely cruel or terrible or painful. It was unfair, and it meant there was a fairness that might be achieved. I could be a force to bring about that fairness. I would make them pay for the greed and selfishness. At that moment, I believed in the justice of my cause, and that made me very dangerous indeed.
I took a moment to collect myself and then I addressed the small gathering. “For you to understand why I have come, I must demonstrate something. I hope you will forgive me and indulge me. What I will do next may seem surprising, but you will soon understand.”
I took the box which had been under my arm, opened it, and dumped upon the floor a lap dog that I had found in the street the night before, perhaps a week dead. It had not been a good week of death, either. Rats had been at the little creature, and they have a particular fondness for eyes. The gray tongue of the beast fell from its lips. Its stomach had been ripped open, and its rotting entrails draped out of it. The stench, I might add, was unlovely, and all hurried to press their handkerchiefs to their faces as the sound of coughing and gagging filled the room.
The ladies gasped. Mr. Langham rose to his feet.
“What do you mean by this?!” the gentleman shouted.
“You will see in a moment,” I said.
“Have you no decency shocking ladies in this manner?! Collect your rubbish and depart!”
I turned to him and met his gaze. “Do you propose to make me do so?”
He said nothing, only glowering at me for a moment before looking away.
“As I suspected,” I said. “Now, I shall proceed.”
Elizabeth Benton now rose to her feet, cloth still pressed firmly to her face. “No you shall not!” she cried, though the force of her words was muffled by a piece of embroidered linen dyed the most exquisite shade of sky blue. “You have abused our hospitality long enough. You have lied to us and played your tricks upon us, and now you come here and behave in a manner so shocking I can scarce believe it. Leave—and never return!”
“Sit down!” I shouted at her. And she did. I did not love to be so forceful with her or with any lady, but I had no choice. Given that I was a thief and a liar, and I had deposited a rotting animal carcass before her, I expected a certain amount of indignation. It was, I believed, only natural. However, I could not allow that indignation to metamorphose into something like authority. Another piece of wisdom I had learned from my father was that when a man took command, others naturally obeyed. I therefore took command, so that they might see what I had come to show.
With the opposition now properly subdued, I smiled most charmingly and cleared my throat. “I am truly sorry you must witness so terrible a thing, but it will not remain terrible for long. You will see the wonder of it soon, and you will forget the horror. Indeed, the sad sight before you will make your surprise and delight all the more exquisite.”
So saying, I crouched over the poor animal, which I had found in the street the night before. I proceeded to work upon it the method I had discovered in the book. I muttered the words and sprinkled the ingredients and followed the procedure rapidly so as to obscure what I did. The more mystery the better, I thought.
In a trice, the dog was upon its feet, yapping happily and dancing about in excited circles. It was no longer decayed and rotting. Its eyes, in their sockets once more, were bright, its limbs whole, and its movements fluid. It was still covered with filth, but there was no helping that. The unpleasant odor that had filled the room was gone as well. All was converted to sprightly, happy things.
The company stared at me. Mr. Langham attempted to say something several times but stammered. At last he managed actual words: “It is a trick. Some kind of terrible trick. You think we wish you here to perform legerdemain for us?”
“It is no trick,” I said. “I have discovered the means to return the dead to life. You all saw the beast, you saw what I did. I could not have smuggled a live creature in here and replaced the dead one. It was dead, and now it is alive. The change was affected by my own hands.”
“And what?” demanded Susan Harrow. “You wish us to pay you for your secret? You think you can perform a parlor trick and we shall shower you with coins? Go see the theater managers. Perhaps they will employ you for the after-show.”
The dog yipped at this. It attempted to jump into Mrs. Harrow’s lap, but she pushed it away as though it were a thing of revulsion. The dog ran away to a corner, hiding behind a divan, and curled up, falling asleep almost at once. Apparently it found the business of revival a tiring affair.
“I do not wish to be paid to perform this act,” I said. “I wish to be paid not to perform this act.”
Lady Caroline, who had been silent throughout all this, now faced me. “What do you mean, precisely, Mr. January? Speak plainly.” Her voice was cold and hard.
“For your sake, I shall. I wish your friends to pay me what I ask, or I shall return their dead spouses to life, and their property shall revert to those returned husbands. You shall be widows no more, but wives, ruled over by your rightful lords. You shall have such money and such things as they see fit. You shall go where they permit, and no other place. You shall enjoy the company only of those acquaintances that they approve. So then . . . should you like to revert to your former states, ladies? If not, I suggest you think what price you would affix to your liberty.”
* * *
They stared at me in horror.
“See here,” began Mr. Langham. “You must be mad if you think—”
I held up my hand to interrupt him. “You inherited your fortune from your father, sir, a rather tyrannical and unyielding man. Believe me, you have my sympathies, for I know what it is to have such a father. I have been told by men who know you that you waited all your life for him to die so you could take possession of his estate. When he returns, that money shall be his once more. Now, all of you, excepting Lady Caroline, must present me with five thousand pounds each or you shall lose everything you have to those from whom you’ve gained it.”
“You don’t really expect us to hand you a fortune because of your bit of mummery, do you?” said Mr. Langham.
“If I do not have the money in twenty-four hours,” I said, “then one of this company will see what I can do, and the rest of you will pay quite willingly. It is truly that simple. I assure you, it is no trouble for me to bring a husband or a father back from the grave. A bit of digging, of course, but a life of poverty has the advantage of providing a man with a strong back and no fear of exertion. None of you have such things to fear, of course. All you need worry about is having someone else control the purse strings. If that is no matter to you, then so be it. I shall, sooner or later, find ladies willing to pay to keep what is theirs. And your examples shall prove a better advertisement than a notice taken out in The Gentleman’s Magazine.”
Lady Caroline stood upon what I supposed to be unsteady legs. “I know not if this is trickery or truth, but either way, you are a scoundrel for bringing these threats to people you once counted as your friends.”
“My friends who spurned me because I had not the money they believed,” I countered.
“Your friends who spurned you because you lied to them,” she said, her lovely face now turning red with anger.
“And if I had told the truth, they would not have been my friends at all,” I said. “You cared for me, Lady Caroline, and I for you. Yes, I own I was first drawn to your circle because I wanted money, but within that circle, I was drawn to you because of who you are. The belief that I had money made me a member of your set, but it did not change how you felt. I honor you too much to believe you would have loved me half as much if I had claimed to have half my fortune, or twice as much if I had doubled it. You cannot be so shallow. I cannot allow it possible.”
Lady Caroline’s eyes narrowed. “Whatever I felt for you was an illusion fed by your lies. And now you come here to extort money of my friends. I do not wish for any special exemption, sir. Either you are a villain or you are not. I am not your accomplice or your partner in any venture. What you do to my friends, you do to me.”
“I should never harm you, Lady Caroline,” I said.
“That is your concern,” she said, “but it shall not be on my account. I shall hate you forever for what you do this day, and regardless of the consequences, I could not hate you more.”
“You do not mean that,” I said, feeling that seed of anger blossoming within me. “If I were to vent my anger upon you, you would wish you had been kinder to me.”
“Nothing you could do to me would be worth the price of treating you as anything but a rascal!” she snapped back.
I opened my mouth to offer a reply but thought better of it. The dog was now awake and alert once more, and had begun yapping. The room had descended into cacophony and chaos. I should accomplish no more by continuing to press my point. My words meant nothing. My actions would show them.
Determined to make Lady Caroline regret her harsh words, I bowed once more and departed, leaving the once-dead dog to their care.
* * *
My readers will not be surprised to learn that none of them offered payment. They all believed or hoped that it had been a trick, and they chose to gamble that it was so. They also likely hoped that if it were not a trick, it would be another of their number who would be used as the example. Perhaps the widows believed Mr. Langham would pay the price. It would have been far better if he had, for the senior Mr. Langham had been a successful factor of little note. He might have returned from the grave and escaped attention as any man might hope, causing no one but his own son any grief, and then the widows would have paid. How different things would have been if I had chosen to pursue that course.
I did not like Mr. Langham, it was true, but when I left the house in Golden Square, my animosity was reserved especially for Lady Caroline. It was an irrational anger, but one born of love, and so it was a kind of madness. Her fury and contempt, which I told myself were a sign that she valued money above all else, tapped into my desire for revenge. I called it justice, but my vengeful nature had me in its grip. I sat in my rooms in the Rules of the Fleet and awaited word from one of Lady Caroline’s circle that my demands would be met. I told myself if one of them, it mattered not who, bowed to my wishes, it would be enough to assuage my anger. None of them did. They all defied me, and so they would be made to pay. But Lady Caroline, who hated me because I had been born poor, who allowed that poverty to eclipse all of the things she had once loved about me—she would pay the most, and she would pay first.
That night I went to the churchyard at St. Anne’s, where I knew Lady Caroline’s husband, Sir Albert, to be buried. Spade in hand, and fearful of being arrested for grave-robbery, I was nevertheless resolute. I stood over the grave where the vile Sir Albert had been buried only two years before, and I considered carefully what I was about to do. Once I revived him, Lady Caroline might well regret her actions, but there would be little I could do then—I had already lost her forever. But I also wanted someone to pay as a grand gesture for all I had suffered in my life . . . for what all the poor continued to suffer. I wanted there to be a reckoning for the world’s unfairness, and while I knew bringing Sir Albert back to life would not change anything, I nevertheless believed it would bring me no small measure of satisfaction.
I raised my spade, and when its blade took its first bite of the cold earth, I was committed. There was no turning back. I did not see that I could stop at any moment. I pressed forward, each little mound of earth a blow for righteousness, each drop of cold sweat that fell upon the ground a sign of my determination. I dug and I dug and I dug, and I did not stop until I struck the wood of his casket, and then I pried it open and set myself to my task.
* * *
I had come prepared. I did not want to interact with Sir Albert, but I did not want to leave him to wander about the city in ragged clothes, with no money. I knew that anyone claiming to be a two-years-dead baronet would not get very far in this world, and so I purchased an appropriate set of clothes, used but not terribly shabby, from a ragman. Generous soul that I am, I also left Sir Albert six shillings in a purse. He would have enough to make his way home, and perhaps buy some oysters for the journey. It could be the dead are hungry when they are revived. I imagine I would be if I had not eaten in two years. Perhaps he would wish to buy his wife a present, though from what I had heard of him, I very much doubted it.
Birds and dogs are one thing, but a man, with the gift of speech and thought and reflection, is quite another, and part of me did not believe the process would work upon the most noble of beings. I completed the ritual, attempting to set my doubts aside, and when it was completed, I was rewarded with the sight of this long-decayed pile of bones beginning to grow new flesh that knitted together with rapidity and purpose, like a great swarm of ants traveling across a discarded apple.
I leapt from the grave and took shelter behind a tree, surprised and delighted and not a little terrified by what I had done. I had restored human life, and not the best human life to be found either.
From my sheltered vantage point I watched him struggle from his own grave and stagger upon the earth. He wore only the tattered remnants of his funerary garb, but he clutched the clothes I had left him in his hand. Perhaps, I thought, he would now sniff the air like a beast, and I would see I had brought back not a man but a diabolical revenant. But no. He merely looked up at the stars, let out a laugh, and began to brush the dirt from his body. “By Jove!” he cried. “I am back.”
It was as much as I needed to see. I did not wish to meet him or speak to him or become his aid and his confederate. He was Lady Caroline’s husband, and so he was my enemy. He was, nevertheless, what she had chosen over me, and so she would pay the price. I very much wanted to see it happen.
I went to Lady Caroline’s house and to the back door, where I spoke with one of the kitchen girls, a sweet thing of fourteen whom I had always found charming and who had always seemed to regard me in the same light. I found that for a few pennies she was willing to admit me to the kitchens and to lurk in the hallways, that I might observe events in the household. I did not inform her what those events would be. I only related that her household was about to undergo a most remarkable transformation, and she thanked me for the intelligence. She did not wish to miss it, and she knew she would be held in high esteem by the rest of the staff for being the first to spread the word.
I did not see all that happened. Lurking in dark hallways has both advantages and disadvantages, but what I did not observe, I heard, and the details were later provided by eyewitnesses. Here is what I know: at approximately nine-of-the-clock that morning, the front bell rang and the handsome serving man answered the door. He inquired what business the gentleman visitor in the ill-fitting suit might have, and the gentleman visitor told him that this was his house and his business was none of the concern of a molly like himself. The serving man harrumphed and objected and assured the gentleman of many things, but the gentleman was not to be harrumphed or assured. He struck the serving man in the nose and shouldered past him.
Sir Albert, I should point out, was a tall man, broad and generally built upon a larger frame than most mere mortals. Indeed, I could see, from my darkened hallway, that the suit I had provided was rather short in the breeches and sleeves, giving him a somewhat comical look—or a look that might have been comical had he not appeared so frightening. In life, the gentleman had been inclined to corpulence, or so word and portrait had led me to believe, but the process of reviving appeared to bring great vigor and health, and now he was nothing but lean and powerful. In the darkness of the graveyard, and in my haste to leave, I had not observed it. The return had not conferred youth upon him, for he was still an elderly man, but he was one in great health. He wore no wig, for I had not had one to spare, and his hair flowed wild and long. He reminded me, in his power and fury, of my father. The perceptive reader may now begin to suspect that I began to wonder whether love and anger and rejection had led me down an erroneous path.
Sir Albert now made his way past other servants, who rushed forward upon hearing the ruckus. Some stared in wonder and, no doubt, servantish pleasure at the sight of this strange man storming his way into the house on the way to make a truly excellent story to tell at the tavern. Others, who had been in service longer, recognized this hulking creature, and swooned or dropped to their knees to seek the protection of Jesus. Lady Caroline, who was at breakfast, arose from her table and went out to the front hall to investigate the mayhem for herself, for she was no coward.
Now this part I did witness myself. I lurked like a thief in the shadows while Lady Caroline strode out like a lady knight, ready to protect her home and those in her charge. She wore a gown of the purest white, and it flowed behind her as she took mighty and forceful stride, perhaps afraid but unwilling to show her fear. Yet when she stepped into the hallway and stood face-to-face with the horror of a husband she had buried two years previous, her resolve left her. Her knees buckled, and she reached out to the wall to steady herself with one hand. The other she pressed to her mouth.
“Dear God,” she said.
From my cowardly lookout, I saw her eyes fill with tears, and I felt my own moisten in kind. The enormity of what I had done now struck me with all its terrible force. I had truly forever lost the woman I loved. More than that, I had condemned her to her very own hell.
In my misery and self-loathing, I must have made a noise, for Lady Caroline turned and spied me. My teary eyes met her own, and I expected to see all the rage and anger and resentment that was my due, but all I saw was concern for us both. She blinked away her tears, swallowed hard, and mouthed one word at me: Go. At that moment, she thought only of my safety. I understood then that, in her goodness, Lady Caroline might have been angry with me, and she might have felt betrayed, but she still loved me. If only I had spared her and her friends, if I had chosen other victims for my scheme, things might have gone very differently, but instead I cultivated resentment and pursued revenge. I had given in to my basest side, and even in knowing that, she did not wish to see me hurt.
She looked once more at me. Run, she mouthed. And then she stepped forward to greet her husband, a man who made her existence a misery, whom I had brought back into her life.
I retreated to the servants’ entrance and slinked out the back door. I made my way to the Rules and to my boardinghouse and to my rooms. I slammed the door shut and cursed my foolishness and my petty weakness for revenge. I did not leave my room for food. I did nothing but lie upon my bed and weep.
The next day I received four separate packages of five thousand pounds each. Twenty thousand pounds. I was rich. I had enough to live in luxury the rest of my life.
My troubles were just beginning.
* * *
I wasted no time, delivering for safekeeping the bulk of my money with a reputable goldsmith. I then proceeded to pay off all my debts; take a new house on Upper Brook Street, close enough to Grosvenor Square to be fashionable and close enough to Tyburn Lane to be a good value. I ordered several suits of new clothes, a few new wigs, and various items of personal and domestic furnishing, and began my life as a man of leisure.
In a matter of days, I had gone from being worth less than nothing to having as much as I could desire. I was hardly the wealthiest man in the city, but a man of my sudden fortune would never need to work again. I would never want, never suffer, never lie and swindle and thieve for my next meal. I had achieved success beyond anything my father would have thought possible.
This success was, admittedly, soured by the fact that it had come of a gift from my father and that I had consigned the woman I loved to misery, but I tried not to let those two things bother me. For the first, my father had possessed the book, but not the skills or wit to use it. I had therefore bested him quite fairly. As for Lady Caroline, I told myself that she had made her choice, she had rejected me, indeed had instructed me to do precisely what I had done. Perhaps that would have sustained me had she not seen me hiding in her house, had she not, in her moment of terror and sorrow, worried about me.
* * *
A noted baronet with political ties and influence had returned from the dead. How could I have believed such a thing would not cause a stir? I suppose I hadn’t thought that part through, but soon Sir Albert’s revival was the talk of London. I was no better than one of the curious, for having returned him to life gave me no particular intimacy with the man. Indeed, it was my hope that he would never find out who it was who revived him or that I had enjoyed a particular connection with his wife.
So it happened that I had no choice but to learn what I could the same way every outsider did, from newspapers and chatter in coffeehouses. Sir Albert, it seems, was unable to tell the curious anything about what lay beyond this world. If he had gone to heaven or hell, he could not say, for none of his experiences had left an impression upon him. That he had been somewhere and doing something, he was certain, for he had hazy memories of other people and movement and places, dynamic shadows and strong feelings, but beyond that he could say little. As for the means of his return, he was similarly vague. He knew that he had been brought back by a person who had discovered a method of returning the dead, but he did not know who this person was. If he had learned of my scheme to extract money from his wife’s friends, he said nothing of that. I suspected he had not been told, and I was quite content that he should never learn.
So while Sir Albert’s return was all Londoners wished to speak of, they knew nothing of my involvement. Indeed, the world had conspired to hide my presence well, for on every street corner there were now peddlers selling pamphlets that claimed to contain the secret method of restoring life. I purchased one of these and found it contained utter nonsense, just as I had supposed. I felt a moment of anger that dullards were profiting from my work, but I let it pass. I had profited enough.
Some readers may suspect that a man such as I might grow greedy, demand more money from the widows or seek out new victims to threaten. Anyone with whom I chose to share the secret that I was the city’s only true necromancer—and a quick demonstration with a dead creature would prove I was—and who did not want a husband or father returned would pay me what I wished. However, I was not greedy. I was not my father. I was not a man whose appetites could never be satisfied or a man incapable of keeping hold of his money. I now had all I required in the way of physical and material comforts, and I did not wish to tempt fate by seeking more. I was determined never to touch the book again unless some disaster should strike and I found myself in need.
I joined a new club and made new friends, and though I was not out and about quite as much as I had been before, I was nevertheless seen in public. Once or twice, after some dramatic coughing, a gentleman might bring up the unfortunate subject of rumors that circulated about me. He might say that he heard I had been exposed as charlatan and an imposter, a man with no wealth and ample pretension. To such questions, I would blush and hang my head. I would say that it was true that I had misled the world about my family, because my father was a lout and a drunkard. Not only had I been ashamed of him, but I had been in fear of him, for I knew once he had discovered that I had made my fortune in trade, he would seek me out and demand that I make my wealth his own. I had hidden my origins not only from the world, but from my parent, and he had discovered me all the same.
“As for the other matter,” I would say, “I can promise you I am upon a very sure footing. I invite you to speak to any merchant with whom I do business. You will only hear that I pay my bills promptly and with good cheer. I haven’t a debt in the world, and I know of many a gentleman, some with far more wealth than I, of whom the same cannot be said.”
The facts, therefore, bore out my claims, and while having had a drunken oaf for my sire might have tarnished my reputation in some circles, my evident fortune, which I displayed with tasteful reluctance, sufficed to compensate. At the theater, at the opera, and through the rambles, I rarely saw any of my old acquaintances, and when I did, nothing more than an uncomfortable bow passed between us. Good manners and embarrassment, not to mention fear of my wrath, prevented any of that set from disclosing my necromantic secret.
I had taken on my father, and I had won. I had taken on death, the king of terrors itself, and made it my servant. In doing all this, I had betrayed Lady Caroline, and that mistake still haunted me. Do not think otherwise. Not a day went by, not an hour in each day, nor even a minute in each hour, that I did not think of what I had done with regret. If only I had chosen one of the other widows to torment, how much better, how much easier, would have been my life. Perhaps Lady Caroline would not have forgiven me, but at least she would have been safe and well and happy.
I set about in an effort to erase the mistakes of my past and enjoy my new life. I took pleasure in my new friends, in being a man about town. I flirted with some women, and more, you may be certain, flirted with me. If I was not serious in any of these encounters, I managed to take some small pleasure in them. In sum, I could not change the past, and so I made it my business to enjoy the present that I had labored so hard to achieve. In this pursuit, I was successful.
But that was before the queen began to search for me.
* * *
I was dining at my club when I overheard the conversation between two older gentlemen I found intolerably fatuous.
“It is most unusual,” said Mr. Fallows, a man of about fifty with a long face and an enormous nose, the tip of which pointed down, almost touching his upper lip. Indeed, it wiggled when he spoke. He also had enormously wide eyes, and his wigs were inclined toward the frizzy. Taken as a whole, he gave every impression of being a man who had just been startled unto his death.
“I agree with you there, sir,” said Mr. Christopher, some five years his friend’s senior. He was less grotesque in his face, but far more so in his person. Rarely did one see a man of Mr. Christopher’s rotundity. He required a cane to walk, and often the assistance of two or three servants to rise from his chair. No one liked these two save each other, but despite their disagreeable personalities and appearances, they were always remarkably well informed. It was something of a mystery how men no one was inclined to speak to somehow knew everything.
“A unique series of events,” said Mr. Fallows, continuing.
“No precedent, sir. None at all,” agreed Mr. Christopher.
They had become something of a fixture in the club. They were apt to speak thus loudly until someone inquired of their subject, for they loved nothing more than to demonstrate their knowledge. I was walking past, quite prepared to continue on, when I heard something I could not ignore.
“It’s a deuced bad time for some jackanapes to start pulling people from their graves,” Mr. Fallows said. “And Sir Albert, of all people. That pot has been stirred, sir. Stirred very much indeed.”
“To overflowing,” agreed Mr. Christopher, nodding so that the flesh about his chin and neck jiggled like aspic. “The Germans have certainly noticed.”
I paused and turned to them, raising my glass of wine in salute. “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but I could not help but overhear.”
At this, they both smiled.
“All of London speaks of the necromancer, but what concern is this of the Germans?” I asked.
“Have a seat, Mr. January,” Fallows said, pointing toward an empty chair. “And we shall tell you.”
“With great pleasure,” agreed Mr. Christopher.
I had hardly touched breeches to upholstery before Fallows began. “The queen wishes to employ the services of the necromancer. She proposes that we have a former corpse sit upon the throne.”
In retrospect, I should have seen that my skill would be of interest to Queen Anne and her court. She was known to be ill, and it was widely rumored that she was dying, which was always a complicated thing for a monarch without an heir. More than ten years earlier, Parliament, determined that no Catholic monarch should ever rule the kingdom, had passed the Act of Settlement, requiring that the succession pass over dozens of more closely related relations—all of whom were of the Romish persuasion—to descend upon the queen’s extremely distant cousin Sophia, electress of Hanover. This would be the end of the house of Stuart and the beginning of an England ruled over by German louts. No one was pleased about this prospect. At least, no one but the Whigs, for they had worked tirelessly to ensure that England would have a Protestant monarch. Better a Protestant foreigner than an Englishman with Papist leanings.
Queen Anne, as my readers well know, had many miscarriages and brought more than a few children to term only to have them stillborn. Only once did a child of hers survive infancy, but much to the nation’s collective sadness, William, Duke of Gloucester, had died of a fever just after his own eleventh birthday.
Mr. Fallows leaned back, swirling a glass of wine in his hand. His frizzled wig sat askew on his head. “I suspect there will be much arguing about this in Parliament, but I’m not sure there is anything to be done. I’ve never heard of a bill forbidding formerly dead men from taking the throne.” He sipped his drink, and wine stained the tip of his nose.
“There can be no such law passed,” said Mr. Christopher, “for such a bill would prevent Jesus from being king.”
“I’m not sure He has the right to be king of England, savior or no,” said Mr. Fallows. “Let Him prove his bloodlines first, I say. Ha ha. And in any case, if there were to be such a bill, Jesus as an exception could be written into it.”
“Very true,” his friend agreed. “We can always make an exception for the messiah.”
“One moment,” I said. “What precisely is the queen offering the necromancer?”
“Land,” said Mr. Fallows. “Wealth and title. He would be a duke, I should think. The man who can return her son to her will become one of the greatest men in the kingdom.”
I took a drink of my own wine and considered this. I had not wanted to pursue more wealth, but a man could hardly refuse the will of his rightful monarch. I would not have my readers suppose this is mere posturing on my part, either. I was not looking for an excuse to accept this offer. The truth was, I would rather have been an obscure and comfortable gentleman than be thrust into notoriety by returning a dead prince to life. My own life should have become miserable. Perhaps I would have been a duke, but half the kingdom would have been pounding upon my door, begging me to restore this person or that. The other half would have been begging me to refrain from doing so. It would have become impossible for me to live the kind of quiet life I most enjoyed.
On the other hand, I could ask the queen not to reveal my name. I did not need to have a title, did I? If she wished to reward me with property and gold in secret, I would accept such terms. I would be very reluctant to make it a public matter.
“I would think the necromancer, if he is a patriot, would have to obey this summons,” I said.
“If he is a Tory,” said Mr. Fallows.
“A Tory who has taught his technique to a friend,” added Mr. Christopher, “for he will be a dead Tory the moment he steps forward.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to conceal my alarm.
“It is inevitable,” said Mr. Christopher, “that this offer has been met with very little delight from the Whigs. They have invested in the Hanoverians, and they mean to have their German monarch. The Whigs will not allow their chance at power to escape them. Far easier to slit the necromancer’s throat, I should think.”
“Surely they would not murder to advance politics,” I said.
Both men laughed. I do not recommend gazing upon such men laughing. It is unpretty.
“No, sir,” said Mr. Christopher with a slap upon his massive thigh. “Not politics. Money. There are contracts, positions, sinecures to be had once the Hanoverians take the crown. They have been waiting for Anne to die, and now that she is upon the threshold of the abyss, they will not allow some petty magician to ruin their chances.”
“It is so very ironic,” said Mr. Fallows, “that the most dangerous enemy this necromancer will have is the one man he is known to have returned from the grave.”
“Sir Albert Worthington?” I asked.
“None other,” said Mr. Christopher. “You must know he was pivotal in the passage of the Act of Settlement and is said to be one of the electress’s most vital agents here in England. At least he was when he was alive.”
“And now he is again,” said Mr. Christopher.
“Indeed,” agreed Mr. Fallows. “Alive once more, and so an agent once more, I must think. He has been rumored to say, and in the presence of the greatest men in the kingdom, that this necromancer must be stopped at all costs, that to sit a corpse upon the throne would be an abomination, and it would lead to another civil war. Do you know what these great men replied, Mr. January? Can you guess?”
I could not, and said as much.
“I shall tell him,” volunteered Mr. Christopher. “They replied, behind closed doors, mind you, so no one would know—”
“No one!” cried Mr. Fallows with nose-wagging mirth.
“No rumors would spread!” laughed Mr. Christopher.
“What did they say?” I demanded with a severity that seemed to shock the two men.
Mr. Christopher sharply looked at me. “No need to be so animated, Mr. January. I shall tell you. Be patient.”
“No rush,” said Mr. Fallows. “The club is not on fire, I trust.”
“I smell no smoke,” agreed Mr. Christopher.
With great effort, I refrained from speaking another word.
At last, seeing I would not allow them to extend the conversation further, Mr. Christopher sighed, as if having lost something of enormous value, and proceeded. “They told him that, as he had a nearer connection to the necromancer than any person in London, Sir Albert must do all in his power to prevent the man from granting the queen’s wish.”
“It is a bad season for necromancy,” said Mr. Fallows.
“The worst I can recall,” agreed Mr. Christopher.
The two commenced once more to laughter and I excused myself.
I returned home in a state of agitation that evening, and my servants informed me that there was a guest awaiting me in my parlor. I rarely received guests in my home, and so this surprised me, but not as much as when I saw who it was—Lady Caroline.
* * *
I stared at her in surprise. She stood by the fire, her back to me, holding a glass of wine in her hand. Her velvet gown, the color of the wine she drank, highlighted the perfection of her form. Her hair was piled high under her hat, and delightful curls slipped loose.
I was filled with love and desire and loneliness and regret. She had been wrong to reject me—that much was certain—but for all that, I would have done anything to undo my terrible act. However, even I, granted by fate the godlike power over life and death, could not change the past.
“I am surprised to find you here,” I said. My voice was dry and brittle. I hated sounding weak, but if there was a person to whom I would gladly submit, it was she.
She turned to me, and I could see that she had been crying. Is there anything more melancholy than tears upon the face you love?
“You are a villain,” she said, “but you are not the worst kind of villain. No, that title is reserved for my husband, whom you have returned to the world.”
“I ought not to have done it,” I told her. “I acted out of anger.”
“I know,” she said, casting her eyes upon the floor. “You wronged me, but there was some truth in what you said, and I own I can understand your motives and I believe that you do—did—love me in truth.”
“I did and I still do,” I said, stepping toward her.
She held up her hand to stop me. “It is too late for that. In bringing Sir Albert back from his grave, you have not only made me miserable, but you have endangered yourself.”
“I have heard he intends to harm the necromancer, but surely he cannot know who I am.”
She swallowed the remainder of her wine and set the goblet down upon the mantel. “He has long suspected I know who returned him from death, though I denied it. I think Susan betrayed me. It would be like her, I think. It hardly matters. He demanded I tell him who had returned him. I tried to refuse. I tried to appeal to his better nature, but there is not such a thing. He hurt me, Mr. January. He hurt me where he knew the world would not see the bruises.”
Again, I took a step toward her. “Caroline,” I said.
“No.” She backed away, as though I too would bring her harm. “Do not touch me. I am sorry, Mr. January. I hate you for what you’ve done to me, but because I know I played a part in this, that I could have been kinder, I come to bring you warning. My husband has always been loyal to Sophia of Hanover, and he has always been a staunch Whig. He would have done anything to end the Stuart succession, and he will not allow you to bring the prince back from the grave. And, he is altered.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is not the same as he was before,” she told me, her voice now sounding wild. “He is worse. He is crueler and more hurtful. He was always unkind, but not this bad. Death and resurrection, I fear, have heightened what was worst in him and dulled what little there was of good.”
I took a moment to consider what she said. I had not only brought a bad man back from the grave, but in doing so, I had made him worse.
“I am sorry, Lady Caroline,” I said.
She shook her head. “Sorrow will get you nothing. You cannot fathom how you hurt me, and I have hated you for it, but I will not see you murdered because of me. You must know that he will come here before night’s end, and he will have his particular villain with him. He will force you to reveal your secrets, and when there is nothing more to be learned from you, he will kill you.”
I smirked. I was my father’s son, after all, and I was not afraid of the baronet, recently returned from the dead. His particular villain, indeed. I should have liked to have the opportunity to teach this fellow a thing or two about villainy.
“Let him try,” I said.
“You do not understand.”
“No, you do not understand. I am no coward to be threatened. I shall be waiting for him with sword and loaded pistols, and, if necessary, I shall send him back to the grave from which I so foolishly plucked him.”
“He will have you outnumbered.”
“Numbers do not signify. They will have to gain the house to fight me, and I shall happily dispatch any lackey Sir Albert cares to bring with him.”
“You underestimate his resolve,” Lady Caroline said, growing exasperated by my failure to quake in fear. “If Sophia takes the throne, he stands to be one of the most powerful men in the country, and his return from the grave has emboldened him. You must flee. Tonight. Take what you can carry and leave London. If you do not, you will be dead before morning, and your secrets will be in Albert’s hands.”
“I will not flee,” I said. “I would have to abandon my home and my wealth.”
“Leave your damn wealth!” she shouted at me. “You stole it from my friends once they saw what you had done to me. The money is as vile as your terrible secret. Besides,” she added with a sneer, “I have no doubt a man of your stripe can always procure more.”
I did not love that she should judge me so, but I knew I was not entirely undeserving of her rebuke.
Indeed, I was prepared to tell her as much when my serving man—James, I called him, though I did not know his real name—came into the room to tell me that there were two men outside, one of whom could not be called a gentleman, and they both insisted upon seeing me at once.
Lady Caroline gasped. “I did not think them to come so soon.”
I turned to my man. “In a few moments, I will ask you to lead Lady Caroline out the back way and to safety. I shall deal with these men myself.”
“No!” Lady Caroline exclaimed. “They will kill you!”
“Perhaps they believe they will,” I replied.
I asked the serving man to hold them off for a few more minutes. When he left the room, I turned back to Lady Caroline. “I will not run from my own home, and I will not see you hurt. He cannot know you were here.”
She nodded, and then, to my surprise, she reached out and took my hand. She yet wore her gloves, but my own hand was naked, and the smoothness of the satin was exquisite.
“I will never again allow you to come to harm,” I said.
She took away her hand. It was like having my heart torn from my chest. “I wish things might have been different between us,” she said.
I wanted to tell her that they still might be, but I did not think she would want to hear those words just now, so I nodded and sent her on her way. I then directed my man to admit Sir Albert. My orders were that my man would show him the way to the parlor but not enter it himself.
When Sir Albert entered a few minutes later, I was prepared. I stood in my parlor, goblet of wine in my hand, sword at my side, prominently displayed. My suit was very well cut, emphasizing my own handsome physique—the strength in my shoulders and calves was quite evident. Sir Albert might have been a large man himself, but I fancied I made an imposing figure.
Sir Albert walked through the door, and I began to wonder if I had been overly optimistic. I had forgotten just how tall, just how fit he had been that day at his house. He strode into the room like a giant entering a village he was prepared to crush under his boots. And he was not the worst of it. By his side was a nasty-looking fellow in rough clothes, though neat. He was not as tall as Sir Albert, but he was brutish in appearance, animal-like, with a low brow, long hair, a protruding muzzle, and scars across his face. He grinned at me, showing a set of uneven teeth, ranging in color from yellow to black.
Should the situation descend to physical violence, I had no doubt that I would be bested, but I would not allow others to determine the manner in which events unfolded. I made those determinations for myself. There would be no violence but upon my terms. These men would leave, and have gained nothing for their efforts.
“You’re January?” Sir Albert said without ceremony.
“I am Mister Reginald January,” I agreed. “Who addresses me?”
He walked over to my decanter of wine and casually knocked it over, allowing it to spill upon my very expensive Levantine rug. The stain spread out like the creeping fog. “Don’t assume airs with me. You know damn well who addresses you. I may owe you a debt of thanks for bringing me back from death, but you never intended it as a favor. And you are no gentleman, despite what your stolen money suggests. I know precisely what you are, for my whore of a wife told me.”
“One moment,” I said. “You shall not insult Lady Caroline.”
The brutish companion stepped forward and, before I had time to react, struck me across the face. I reeled backward, wine goblet flying from my hand. My head struck a painting upon the wall, tearing the canvas. The portrait did not dislodge, but I slid down, feeling as though I might lose consciousness or vomit, or perhaps both. It was not a good showing.
“This is Hubert,” Sir Albert said, gesturing toward the brute.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Hubert as he unbuttoned his breeches and began to piss upon my divan.
While Hubert indulged in a long and forceful urination, waving his penis up and down to create a dramatic arc, Sir Albert proceeded with his discourse.
“I am being gentle with you thus far,” he said, “because I wish you to consider my terms. I will possess the means of raising the dead from you. You will provide me with this knowledge, and then you will flee. I prefer you flee the kingdom entirely, for if I receive word of any necromancy in England, I shall be forced to respond as the threat warrants. Perhaps you house the means to bring yourself back, and killing a man who can raise the dead suggests its own set of difficulties, does it not, Hubert?”
Hubert was still pissing. “It presents a bit of a dilemma, Sir Albert.”
“Indeed it does,” Sir Albert agreed. He scratched his chin thoughtfully, as though considering the matter for the first time, though this presentation smelled to me of the lamp. “It is a curious question, do you not think? How can I sufficiently threaten a man who has no fear of death?” He snapped his fingers and grinned, as though an idea had just struck him. “I have it. What think you of this, January? If you do not vanish from the kingdom, I shall cut off your hands and feet. And, for good measure, I shall tear out your tongue. Yes, that does sound quite good. It should certainly keep the necromancy to a minimum, I should think. A man who cannot speak or gesture or hold anything cannot raise the dead, I suspect. It should be a pleasure to watch him try at any rate. But I doubt he would. A man maimed in the most terrible way, rendered a prisoner within his own body, I imagine he would give up on life entirely.”
Hubert, who had finally emptied what I could only presume to be the world’s most capacious bladder, had tucked away his unwelcome organ and was in the process of buttoning his breeches. “But such a man could not look after himself, Sir Albert. Surely he would die, and you would have accomplished nothing.”
“Right you are, Hubert.” Sir Albert looked at me. “He’s cleverer than you thought, isn’t he?”
Looking at the piss stain upon my divan, I could not but reflect that I did not share Sir Albert’s opinion, but I chose to keep that fact in reserve.
Sir Albert continued. “We must then keep Mr. January alive. Here’s the very thing. I shall have him transported to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in his incapacitated condition, where I shall pay to have him kept alive for as long as can be effected. What think you of my solution, Hubert?”
“Very elegant, sir,” Hubert said as he picked his teeth with his thumbnail.
“And I would, from time to time, pay him a visit, to remind him who had done him this terrible service and who was committed to keeping him alive and in a state of utter misery and sorrow for as long as human ingenuity could contrive. Is that not an eloquent punishment?”
“It is like a poem built of flesh, Sir Albert.”
Sir Albert smiled at me. “You were once a penniless rogue, and because I am, at heart, generous, I offer to you the opportunity to return to that existence. The alternative, such as I have set before you, is a grim one. What say you?”
“You must count your blessings to receive such a proposal,” Hubert offered, helpful fellow that he was. “I’ve heard him be less generous with them what he didn’t like. You want my opinion, dying and coming back made him a bit sentimental.”
“We all mellow with age, Hubert,” Sir Albert said.
“Very wisely observed, Sir Albert,” said Hubert. “Time was, I’d have taken a shit on that divan.”
Lying upon the floor of my own house, my head aching, and threatened with violence beyond measure, I was not entirely certain what I could say. I was determined not to let Sir Albert have what he wished. I did not want to lose the book and its power to generate money and comfort. I also did not want to allow its power to fall into the hands of a rogue like Sir Albert, a bad man made worse by my very own machinations. I cared little if the Stuarts or the Hanoverians ruled the kingdom—the poor would remain poor and the rich would remain rich. I cared little if Whigs and Tories traded places at the table of power, for they were all one to me. What I cared about was not letting Sir Albert win.
“Now, tell me your secret,” said Sir Albert.
“I cannot.” The words tumbled out of me. “You see, there is a book—a magic book. It is how I learned my method, and only the owner of the book can affect the revival of the dead.”
“A magic book, indeed. That sounds like a lot of hokum to me,” he answered.
“I did raise you from the dead,” I said, trying to sound both reasonable and sincere. “That also sounds like hokum.”
Sir Albert allowed the point, but it did not cheer him. “Then give me the book!” he cried.
“I don’t have it,” I told him. “I would be a fool to keep such a thing upon my person.” It was, in fact, in my waistcoat pocket at that very moment, but there was no reason to let him know such a thing.
“Then where is it?” said the increasingly impatient baronet.
“I don’t know,” I sputtered. My nose began to run, and tears ran down my cheeks. “Please don’t cut off my hands and feet! I swear to you I don’t know!” It was a good performance, if I may be my own critic. The fact that I was, in truth, quite frightened added to the verisimilitude, but I do not want the reader to think I had given way to panic and despair. I always have a plan. Or at least I often do, and this was one of those occasions when I nearly did. I was, in fact, working on a plan, and I was determined that it would be a good one.
Hubert took a step toward me and I raised my hand in protest. My thinking was rapid and erratic, but I believed I could come up with something if no one struck me again for a few moments or pissed on any of my furnishings. Such things make it so very hard to concentrate. “Once your return from the beyond became so well circulated a story . . . I feared someone would find me and demand my secrets, but I was determined to protect the book. The only solution was to keep it where even I could not get it. I . . . I gave it to a friend, who was told to give it to a friend, who was told to hide it.” I hoped this many layers of obscurity would dissuade them from seeking out these friends themselves. “I can get the book, but I need a day. Perhaps two.”
Hubert stepped toward me again and I pressed myself against the wall, feigning more fear than I felt. Growing up with my father had given me a certain indifference to physical pain. I did not care for it, but I knew a few blows about the head would not do me much harm.
“All right! One day, then!” I said, thrusting out my hands defensively. “I will bring it to you by tomorrow evening.”
“Very well, then. See that you do,” said Sir Albert, sounding a little bit placated.
Hubert punctuated this command by kicking me in the side twice, but as I said, this did not trouble me overmuch.
Once my two guests departed, I pulled myself to my feet and called for my man, demanding a fresh glass of wine and some clean clothes. After a refreshing drink and a change of wardrobe, it was time for me to put my plan into effect. If Sir Albert wanted the book not to fall into the hands of his political enemies, then that was precisely where it would go.
* * *
I hired a coach and set out to Kensington Palace without further delay. We crossed at Westminster Bridge and made our way through the dark at St. George’s Fields at night until I was at last outside the gates of the queen’s residence. The great red brick palace stood on the other side of those iron rails and across a few hundred yards of garden illuminated by moon and torchlight. Within those walls I would find Anne herself, or someone very near to her, who would offer me protection and provide to Sir Albert the punishment he deserved.
It was a curious thing, as I gazed across the grounds to the palace. Therein was the queen of England, surrounded by some of the most powerful and influential people in the kingdom. All of them desperately wanted to see me, and I had the power to alter the nation, not simply today, but for all time. In my hands was the means to preserve a moribund dynasty, and while I had been uncertain if I should use that power, now Sir Albert had driven me to my destiny. Just as my desire for vengeance had led me to return him to life, now that same desire would lead me to thwart his plans. I rather liked the symmetry of it.
Content with my sense of importance in the unfolding of global events, I approached the cluster of perhaps a dozen palace guards, who stood eyeing me with bored hostility.
“Good evening,” I said to the guards. “I should like an audience with Her Majesty, Queen Anne.”
Only one of these men turned to look at me with slow and reptilian contempt. “Is that so?”
“I understand that you must not be in the habit of admitting anyone who wishes, but the queen has sent for me.”
The guard held out his hand and twitched anxiously the fingers of his studded leather glove. “Let’s see it.”
“I have no formal invitation, for she did not know my name. I am the necromancer for whom she has called, and now I arrive to offer my services to Her Most Royal Majesty and the benighted house of Stuart.” I placed my fingertips gently to my chest and bowed.
The guards burst out in guffaws. “We’ve had a score of you lot already today,” one of them replied.
I stepped forward, rising to my full height, thrusting forth my chin, and locking eyes with the saucy fellow who had addressed me so. He would know by the steadiness of my voice, by the authority of my bearing, that I was not a man to be sent off like a peddler with a pie cart. “I care nothing for your charlatans and imposters. I say I am the necromancer.”
He deigned to blink in my direction. “Be off, or you’ll be a necromancer in chains.”
I laughed the laugh of the aggrieved and tolerant, and I tried not to allow my authority to deflate. “Certainly I understand that you have been troubled with fools and madmen who claim they can do what I can, but I assure you I am the true necromancer, and the queen will wish to see me.”
“And I said be off!” the guard snarled.
“Look, if I could but find a dead bird or rat, I can assure you—” I stopped talking because the guards were now drawing their swords and stepping forward. Apparently they had already taken their fill of men who claimed to do what I could, in fact, do. No amount of persuasion on my part was going to gain me entrance. I thought to ask how the true necromancer could ever hope to see the queen if they behaved thus, but I chose not to press my point, as the value of a Pyrrhic victory enjoyed from prison struck me as minimal. I therefore retreated to my hired coach and headed home, wondering how I could possibly gain the protection I desired before I was due to surrender the book to Sir Albert.
Once in my house, I called for more wine and retired to my parlor, from which the divan had been removed. I sat on a chair before the fire, only a few feet away from where Sir Albert’s tough had knocked me against the wall, and there fell asleep.
Perhaps a few hours later, my serving man hurried into the room to inform me that the house, to his regret, was very much ablaze. A quick sniff of the air revealed the presence of smoke, and a peek down the hallway displayed a terrifying wall of flames. Having no choice but to concur with James’s analysis, I fled, very much hoping that the rest of the staff was able to do the same. Anyone burned to death, I decided, I would do the kindness of reviving. It seemed to me a safer course than running about the house looking for kitchen maids huddled in corners.
* * *
A quarter hour later, I stood in the distance, watching neighbors and volunteers pour water upon my house. I’d had the good sense to keep the book on my person, and so it was never in more danger than was I, but I had little more reason to rejoice. My house was in ruins, a charred shell. No doubt Sir Albert knew where I had stored my money, and he would have effected plans to make it impossible that I should retrieve it. I was now backed into a corner, and if I were to survive this ordeal intact, I would have no choice but to deliver ownership of the book to Sir Albert. I would have to set aside my need to win, my desire for revenge, and capitulate. As Sir Albert had observed, I had been a penniless rogue before, and no doubt I could be one again. Indeed, I could see myself, in my mind’s eye, only a few days or weeks hence, riding upon a mail carriage to some nameless inn, paying forth my last few coins for a room and a chance to swindle or cheat or trick or bed some stranger out of his or her small purse.
“No,” I said aloud. I would not do it. I would not surrender. I would be maimed and defeated before I would hand him that victory, but how I would thwart him, I could not say. If I could not simply enter Kensington Palace, I would need to find a sponsor. A visit to the House of Lords, perhaps, might be the first step to gaining an audience with a sympathetic and connected Tory. It was a wise course but a slow one. It would no doubt take days, at the very least, to find and convince the right person to introduce me to the queen. I only had hours, and I could not think how best to use them.
As I stood there, considering my options, a boy approached me, letter in hand. “Is you January?” he asked.
“I is,” I assured him, snatching the letter out of his hand.
It was from Sir Albert. He wrote in threatening and somewhat colorful language, but his point was succinct. He had taken the precaution of having me watched, and so he knew about my abortive venture to Kensington. And now, for my perfidy, there would be consequences. My house, I already knew, was destroyed, but that was not the whole of my punishment. Lady Caroline was dead. He had, in response to my double dealing, taken her life, strangled her while she struggled beneath his grip in wide-eyed terror. However, as I was the necromancer, there was no need that her death should be a permanent condition. If I were to bring him the means of revival, he would allow me to return her to life before relieving me of my abilities.
I stared at the words on the page, illuminated by the light of my burning house, and I felt rage and sorrow and pathetic self-pity. I had been lazy and sloppy. I had treated my power lightly and not considered its consequences. I had been content with a life of leisure while, all around me, my enemies had planned and concocted stratagems. I was, in short, outmatched and out of time. I could not preserve my wealth, my power, and the woman I loved without having a stratagem of my own. I could not repay Sir Albert for his crimes unless I possessed the means to defeat him. I therefore turned my back on my ruined house and set off into the night. It was time I showed Sir Albert that I was not a man with whom to trifle. I had wrought these terrible things. Lady Caroline was dead because of me, and I swore then and there that I would make things right. I would do anything to revive her and punish Sir Albert.
Several hours later, spade in hand and covered with sweat in the cold night air, I stood over the open grave and performed the ritual. I held my breath, regretting my decision even while I understood that I had no choice. And then I watched while he sat up and looked about, confused.
“Was I dead?” he asked.
I nodded.
“And I ain’t no more.”
I shook my head.
“You done it?”
I nodded again.
With closed fist, my father struck me in the face, knocking me against the freshly dug earth of the grave from which I had rescued him.
* * *
My father remained sitting in his coffin, like a man roused from a refreshing nap. His clothes were in reasonably good shape, for he had not been in the ground overlong, and he was not excessively dirty. In point of fact, his odor was less offensive than on any occasion I could recall. His face had been restored, and the damage I’d done with the mason’s hammer was but a memory. He was back, only, like Sir Albert, more powerful and potent than ever.
“Don’t go thinking you’re Jesus Christ,” he said. “I’m sure if you done it, a monkey could do it.” He pushed himself to his feet and began to bend and unbend his elbow. “It ain’t felt so good in years. Now, to celebrate my return to life, I aim to get myself good and drunk. Then I want a whore. And then we’ll deal with your problem.”
I rubbed my jaw, which hurt, but nothing was broken and no teeth had been dislodged. I suppose such a blow might serve as the equivalent of a hug or a handshake for a normal man. “How could you know I had a problem? Have you been observing my activities from the next world?”
“I don’t recall nothing of the next world, but if I’d had the ability to watch this one, I wouldn’t have wasted my time by looking at you. I know you have a problem, and I know it’s a big one, because otherwise you’d have left me in the ground. Whatever you’re up against, it has to be mighty scary for you to recruit your old pa to your side.”
That was true enough.
“Now,” he said, “let’s get going. Drinks and whores.”
“Very well,” I said. I supposed there was no hurry. Lady Caroline was not going to get any more dead than she was already.
We went to a bagnio toward which he felt a particular fondness, and soon he had his arms around a pair of scantily dressed beauties. The proprietress of the establishment appeared astonished to see him alive and healed in his face, but my father dismissed her questions. Rumors of his death were false, and his face was recovered. He then disappeared to a room with his two girls, and left me alone at a table with a bottle of wine and a healthy dose of regret.
I had no interest in the temptresses employed within those walls, for my heart and my mind were absorbed with Lady Caroline, lying cold and dead somewhere, waiting for me to come to her. A foolish romp with a stranger had no charms to offer me. But as I continued to drink the very indifferent wine, and as I grew increasingly inebriated, it became difficult to fend off the advances of the charmers who sought my attention.
At last I determined I could hardly be blamed for seeking comfort and release, and so I followed a fair-haired creature called Julia to a private room. There, in the near-darkness, broken only a single flickering candle, she began to kiss me, and for a moment I forgot my troubles and, to a lesser extent, the fact that Julia smelled most distressingly of other men.
This lovely oblivion lasted but a moment, for soon the door burst open with a terrifying crash, and I jumped back, prepared to explain the misunderstanding. Of course, there was none. This was not some middling man’s wife or daughter, but a whore, and I had no need to explain my actions.
However, it was no angered spouse come into the room, but my father. He was drunk and staggering, and held a bottle of wine loosely by its neck. He gestured at me with it, and its contents sloshed out upon the floor.
“You like this one, do you?”
“Well enough,” I said. “A bit rank, but I’m not inclined to fuss.”
“Then I’ll have her,” he said.
I opened my mouth to object but thought better of it. My conflict was not with my father. He was, again, alive, and no doubt that conflict would be coming, but until Sir Albert was dealt with, I was best served by staying out of my father’s way.
“Very well,” I said. I moved toward the door.
“No.” With his free hand, he shoved me hard. I staggered backward but did not fall. “You watch. You watch me do what you cannot.”
“I could,” I said. “I simply choose not to. I also choose not to witness your intimate moments.”
“You’ve spent so much time among these mincing danglers, you’ve come to speak like one. Now you watch how a real man takes a woman, and you sit there like the eunuch you are. You do what I say, or I leave you to your problems. Maybe I’ll even stick a knife in your back, like you never had the guts to do to me. A hammer to the face, indeed. A real man takes his weapon and thrusts it in, as I’m about to demonstrate.”
There was no point in objecting. There was no point in refusing. I would indulge my father for the few hours it was necessary to indulge him, and then I would consider my next moves. And so I stayed. I shall spare the reader any more details of this scene. I am forever scarred by it. There is no reason you should be, too.
* * *
When he had taken his fill of drink and women and humiliating his only child, my father and I sat in a private room of the bagnio to discuss my situation. He leaned back in his chair, fire behind him, a mug of beer in his hand, and closed his eyes at the pleasure of it all.
“Swiving whores beats the piss out of being dead,” he told me. “So tell me. How exactly did you, of all people, learn to raise the dead?”
“There was a book. I found it among your possessions, in fact.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I think I know the one. I always wanted to keep it, and I never could tell why. Figures though, don’t it? The only worthwhile thing you’ve ever done, and you got it from me.”
I sighed. “You had the power to do worthwhile things, and you never knew it. I hardly think that is something worth bragging about.”
He slammed his mug down on the table. “Don’t give me sass! You wanted me, and you got me. Keep your tongue civil, or I’ll beat you until you recall what it is, exactly, you got. Now, you tell me your problem, and don’t leave out none of the details, and I’ll figure out just what I’m going to do about it.”
And so, I proceeded to tell him everything. I told him how I had found the book, and used it and brought Sir Albert back to life. I told him how I had extorted money from the others and how all of this had attracted the queen’s attention. Finally, I told him how Sir Albert had threatened me and killed Lady Caroline. With only a few hours left before Sir Albert sent his man Hubert after me, I needed a resolution that was both speedy and sure.
“So, this Sir Albert is a thorny branch up your ass,” he observed, “but you can’t do nothing about him because he’s richer, stronger, smarter, and more ruthless than you.”
It was not how I would have framed it, but my best course here was to make my father feel like he needed to show me up. “That is correct.”
“And you want to bring this rich slut of yours back to life. Let me give you a little bit of advice. If you find her soon enough,” he told me, “before she starts to decay, you might want to have your way with her before you bring her back.” He set his feet up on the table. “It’s a pleasure few enough men sample, but I’ve never heard of a one who didn’t enjoy it.”
I stared at him indignantly. “I shan’t violate her corpse!”
“No, not a gentleman like you. You only lied to her, brought her dead husband back to life because you knew it would make her miserable, and then took all her friends for what they were worth. But a man’s got to draw the line somewhere, don’t he?”
I made no answer to this.
“Aren’t you going to ask me my price for helping you?” he said.
“I thought, perhaps, bringing you back to life would be sufficient.”
“You thought wrong,” he told me with a disturbing grin. It was the one he showed when he was pleased to demonstrate his power over me. “I want the method of resurrection. I want the power for myself.”
“Only the owner of the book may possess the power,” I told him, repressing a smile of triumph. “And you cannot read.”
“I’ll rip the lips off your face if I think you’re laughing at me, boy,” he said. “As for reading, I can learn, I suppose. But you will have to give me the book, and teach me the method. That will do for the nonce.”
“Why do you want it?” I asked.
“Power,” he said with a shrug. “And you met Mrs. Tyler.”
“Yes,” I said, thinking of his landlady and wondering why she would make him wish to own the book.
“She changed me,” he said wistfully. “She made me into a different kind of man.”
“I haven’t seen any evidence of that,” I said.
“Well, it’s all mixed up now, isn’t it?” he said. “I’m darker than I used to be. I can feel it. Coming back did something to me. And if she and I are going to be together, we need to even things up.”
“So,” I summarized, “you wish for the book so you can kill the woman you love and then bring her back in the hopes of her being more like you.”
It seemed to me a very poor sort of idea to grant the power of life and death to my father, particularly as the first thing he would do is murder an innocent woman in the hopes that she would come back less good-natured. Nevertheless, I was not certain I saw an alternative. I needed a man such as he was, and such a man did not come without his price. I had to choose between saving Lady Caroline and granting godlike power to someone without pity or remorse. I chose to save Lady Caroline, and so I agreed to his terms.
“It is a power you must handle with respect and the utmost concern for the good of all mankind,” I said.
“The devil take your respect and your care,” he said. “If you want to save your highborn bitch, you will give it to me. If you care about all mankind, you will not.”
“Then I shall give it to you.”
He took a long drink from his mug. “Grand.”
* * *
The next morning, we visited a series of stores that my father might purchase the items he required. We then proceeded at once to visit Sir Albert Worthington. My father stood there in his rough clothes, looking like a rustic. I was in my fine suit, a bit worn from escaping flames and a night in a whorehouse, but otherwise intact. My collar was clean, my buttons glittering, and my sword hung by my side. In sum, I looked ineffectual, and my father looked like a poor sort of servant. It was just the sort of impression I wished to make.
It was Hubert who answered the door, and it rather surprised me that he would take upon himself so menial a task, but then I suspected I understood the meaning. Given that Sir Albert was going about killing his own wife and such, he had almost certainly sent the servants away. This was so much the better.
Hubert said very little, perhaps not wishing to perform for us without the audience of his master. He merely led us to the parlor and vanished. Nearly an hour later, he returned, now with Sir Albert, and this time, Hubert appeared far more animated. That both men were amused by our presence, there could be no doubt. Each wore an easy, good-natured smile, as though they were chums freshly returned from an errand of mischief.
“Well,” said Sir Albert, “you’ve come to pay me a visit. And you’ve brought an old ruffian who stinks of whores and drink. Very kind of you. Now, are you prepared to give me the book?”
My father cleared his throat and rose to his feet. “Begging your pardon, Sir Albert. I am Mr. January’s father, and he has asked me to come here and speak a few words on his behalf.”
“On his behalf!” cried Sir Albert. “I’ve never heard the like. Have you heard the like, Hubert?”
“I have not, sir,” answered Hubert. “On his behalf indeed. This ain’t a funeral, nor nothing like one.”
“If I may be so bold as to disagree,” said my father. “It is rather like one.”
So saying he removed his pistols, one from each pocket, and proceeded to shoot both men in their respective heads.
* * *
A few minutes later, I revived Sir Albert. He lay on the floor, and when I was finished, he hopped to his feet with astonishing vigor.
“How dare you!” he cried.
My father stabbed him in the heart.
* * *
I shan’t bore the reader by rehearsing each separate murder. My father bludgeoned, asphyxiated, and beat Sir Albert to his death. He smashed his face into the fireplace stones until his head was a bloody pulp. He gouged out his eyes. He stuck a burning poker down his throat. In short, he died and was revived perhaps a dozen times. I lost count. He might have been garroted twice, though the details are hazy. I can assure my readers that my father rather enjoys garroting.
I noticed, and this detail was not lost on my father, that after the sixth revival, Sir Albert appeared to have a marked decrease in energy. I did not know if that was a temporary effect or if a person can only be revived a certain number of times before his life energy begins to dissipate. The truth of it hardly mattered, because my father meant to make good use of this fact.
When I revived Sir Albert after my father had killed him for the final time, I first propped him into a sitting position, and my father placed Hubert’s severed head in his lap, for he had decapitated that worthy, and had made clear that I would, under no circumstances, revive him. Sir Albert opened his eyes and stared in horror. He tried to get up, but he was apparently woozy. He rose and fell down to the floor twice, finally clawing at the wall to gain purchase. He slipped in Hubert’s blood, or perhaps it was his own, but did not fall over.
“You ain’t what you were,” said my father. His face, his hands, and his clothes were now stained with Sir Albert’s and Hubert’s blood. All of this endless murder had filled him with a manic energy. His eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed, and he breathed heavily. He looked like the embodiment of terror that he, in fact, was. “The effects nibble at you. You don’t feel it the first time, and maybe not the second neither, but as many as we done you, you begin to feel it. Next it will be worse. Might be you don’t have the use of your mind rightly, or your legs don’t work. Can’t put you down for another go neither, since you might well come out the worse for it.”
“This is preposterous,” said Sir Albert, his voice now slow and somewhat slurred. “How . . . dare you treat me so. Are you in the queen’s service? I demand . . . you tell me.”
“You don’t demand nothing,” my father said. “Though I’ll tell you because it pleases me to do so that I don’t give a turd for Tory or Whig, Protestant or Papist. I’d take the queen’s coin if she were offering, but it’s too hard to get to at the moment, so I’ll take yours instead. Tell me where you put your wife’s body, and then tell me where you got your valuables, and in exchange, I’ll let you live.”
“Do you . . . think you can use violence . . . to force my hand?” Sir Albert demanded.
“You burned down my son’s house and killed your own wife, so I’d say violence is the order of the day.”
“Your son,” Sir Albert sputtered with contempt. “He can’t . . . he can’t even fight his own battles. He needs . . . his papa to save his precious book.”
My father laughed. “That’s true enough, but because he needed me, it ain’t his book no more, it’s mine. You have to deal with me now, my popinjay, and you’ve already wished you hadn’t forced my son’s hand, I’ll wager. So now, here’s how it is going to transpire. You will tell us where you put your wife, and if you then run as fast as your legs will carry you, and I never see you more, I shall let you live out your days as best you can without name or money or influence. That’s all there is. You ain’t going to get a better offer. Say no if you like. I’ll just keep on killing you until you say yes. I haven’t yet tried to kill you by cutting off what little you got between your legs. Now that sounds like a right good time.”
Sir Albert stared at him, and he seemed to know he had been bested. “She’s upstairs . . . upon her bed.”
“Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” my father said, and he cracked Sir Albert over the head with a fire iron.
“I thought you weren’t going to kill him again,” I said.
“I don’t think I did. I just put him to sleep while we make certain everything is as he says.”
We went upstairs and searched through the various rooms until we found Lady Caroline, upon a bed, cold and still in the grip of death. Her skin was pale and waxy, her lips blue. Her eyes, which were open, looked like clouded marbles. Around her neck, a ring of black bruises told the tale of her brutal murder. I stood in the doorway staring at her, full of hatred for the monster who could have done this to her. There she was, dead, but within my power to restore. And yet, might she be different? Might she be vile? Would the Lady Caroline who came back be the same as the one who died?
My father appeared behind me. “Now’s your chance,” he told me. “Lift her skirts and have yourself a little taste.”
I chose to ignore this bit of advice. Instead, I went to work upon her at once, bending over her and beginning the procedure. I had only just started when I felt my father’s rough hand on my shoulder, yanking me back.
“If you won’t take your fill, I’ll do it for you.” He grinned at me. “Let’s just say there’s one more payment to be made for my services. You can have a go at her or I can. But she ain’t coming back to life until one of us does.”
I stared at him. “Why?”
He laughed. “Because that is how I like it.”
I shook my head. “Why must you be like this? For what possible reason do you wish to torture and crush your own son? Have you no capacity for love or joy or sentiment?”
He snorted. “This from the boy who struck me in the face with a hammer and stole my money.”
“You had it coming, as you most certainly know. And, as you say, I might have stabbed you. Will you punish me for showing you that mercy?”
“For being a coward, you mean,” he said with a derisive laugh. “Don’t pretend to be a saint when all you are is a boy who can’t ever be a man. That’s all there is to it. You’re afraid of me, and I have nothing but contempt for a coward. If you can’t do things as you like, then you’ll damn well do them as I like. Now, will you have a tumble with this dead woman or no?”
“I will not,” I said with a noble dignity certain to fill him with disgust. “What would Mrs. Tyler say of you if she were here?”
“Don’t you speak of her,” my father said, jabbing a finger into my chest. “Besides, once I break her neck and bring her back, she’ll be the first to cheer me on. Now, if you are not going to have at her, you shall see it done.” So saying, he began to unbutton his breeches.
“No,” I said, my voice hardly more than a whisper.
He continued to unbutton, but he looked at me with a wolfish grin. “What are you going to do about it, boy?”
I said nothing.
“That’s what I thought.” He turned away from me, having pulled down his breeches, laughing, no doubt, at the juvenile delight of thrusting his bare buttocks at me. He grabbed Lady Caroline’s skirts and began to lift. Then his eyes went wide, in surprise. He staggered backward, one hand straight out, the other reaching frantically for the waist of his breeches, that he might pull them up. He could not grab them, however, and he tripped over his own clothing, falling facedown onto the cold floor.
After inserting it into his neck, I had pulled out my hanger at once, and now there was a gaping hole in the flesh, which bled copiously. My father, still lying facedown, raised one hand to the wound, but blood flowed freely past his fingers.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he said. “You don’t have the courage to take a blade to me.”
“Apparently, I do,” I observed.
“You’ll . . . bring me back,” he muttered.
“Of course,” I said. “You are my father, and I shall restore you. And next time, you will be better behaved.”
I had no intention of doing any such thing, and I briefly considered tormenting him with that knowledge, but better safe than sorry, I decided. If he thought he would be revived, he would be content to lie there and bleed. If he knew I would never return him from death, he might find a hidden pool of strength. My father ought not to be underestimated. And so, in the service of my survival, and so Lady Caroline’s survival, and indeed Mrs. Tyler’s survival, I swallowed my love of revenge. I like to think this demonstrates my moral growth.
Once the old monster was properly dead, I took Lady Caroline’s body, which was uncomfortably stiff, in my arms and carried her to another room. This was an awkward procedure, for a dead body is a heavy thing, and there may have been some unmanly dragging at certain points. She did not appear to mind. Once I had her in a guest room, away from the sight of my father’s corpse, I commenced once more to break the shackles of mortality, as only I know how, and used my remarkable skills to restore breath once more to those sweet lips.
In a moment, her eyes fluttered and she shot up from her bed. She looked at me, and she gasped, putting a hand to her now-milky throat in the memory of what that beast had done to her. And then, to my surprise, she flung her arms around me.
“You came back for me, Reginald!” she cried. “I knew you would!”
The warmth of her body against mine, the wet of her tears against my neck—how can I describe the joy of this moment? I held her close and told her I would always save her, always take any risk for her. I told her I loved her, and even death could not keep us apart.
“I am sorry I doubted you,” she said to me, still crying against my neck. “I know now you love me.”
I studied her. “Do you feel any different, Lady Caroline? More . . . evil, perhaps?”
She cocked her head as she considered the question. “I don’t believe so . . .”
That was good enough for me. “I have seen to everything,” I said. “Sir Albert is no more. He shall never trouble you again.”
She pulled away from me and looked at me, her moist eyes locking with my own. “You killed him?”
“You needn’t concern yourself with the details,” I told her. “When I met you, he was dead. The dead should remain dead.”
“Excepting me?” she asked.
“Excepting you,” I answered. “And me. I shall leave you the book in my will, and you shall do the same for me, and we may be immortal and together.”
She wrapped her arms around me again. I was not quite certain that I wished to be with her for all eternity. I loved her absolutely, but can a man ever love a woman that much? I supposed I would find out, and it was clearly what she wished to hear, so the plan would do for now.
I then excused myself, explaining to her that there was a bit of cleaning up to do, and that she might not wish to see what damage that necessity had wrought in her house. She told me she was content to remain closeted until I told her otherwise. Lady Caroline closed the door behind me, so she would not have to listen to the sound of me disposing of the bodies.
* * *
My man James was yet in my employ, and he proved useful in helping me to collect bodies, parts of bodies, and other detritus. I could think of no better place to deposit them all than in the Fleet Ditch itself. How fitting that so foul a pit should be the final resting place of the worst man I had ever known, along with one more who had proved surprisingly good competition for that title.
Since he had arrived on the scene and then disappeared so suddenly, Sir Albert’s return from the dead proved to be a short-lived sensation. Most people presumed he had wandered back to his grave, or what had appeared to be a corporeal Sir Albert had merely been a spirit. Those who had not seen him with their own eyes might have guessed that the entire story was a hoax. All of these theories were well with me, for Lady Caroline was never legally declared unwidowed and her property remained her own.
I should say that it continued to remain her own after we wed, for she arranged that her wealth should be held as separate property, but since I now had money of my own, I was in no way distressed. We wanted one another, not one another’s silver, and that is a much better foundation for a happy marriage. We did choose to vacate London, however, for it was uncomfortable encountering, upon a regular basis, those people from whom I had, by means of necromantic extortion, obtained my wealth. No matter. As it turned out, neither Lady Caroline nor I was particularly attached to London society. We removed ourselves to the north, from whence Lady Caroline’s family originated, and bought a beautiful house in York, in the shadow of the minster. It has proved to be a happy home for us.
As for the book, and its powers, I have set these aside. I want nothing more to do with them and I have vowed never again to use them unless financial distress or some other inclination should convince me otherwise. It is but a surety of my happiness with Lady Caroline, there to bring her back should some tragedy befall her, assuming we are still, at the time, living in a state of felicity.
Perhaps it was so that Lady Caroline was a bit darker after her resurrection. Perhaps it was this darkness that allowed her to forgive me my crimes and to marry a man who had blackmailed her friends and taken such liberties with the lives of others. I could not say. I do feel that a little bit of darkness might have made her even more compatible with me, and nothing that resulted from her death and revival harmed our love. As to whether or not it strengthened it, I shall leave that to better minds than mine.
As one last note, I should mention that business takes me, from time to time, to London to meet with bankers or lawyers or suchlike people, and while I am there, I always make it a habit to pay a visit to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. It is a wretched place, mostly full of the housed dying, but there are a few longer-term patients, paid for out of donations. There lies such a terrible case, a man who lacks feet and so cannot walk. He lacks hands, and so cannot write. He lacks a tongue, and so cannot speak. Some unknown benefactor pays for his upkeep, and I must say, I find it a touching experience to visit this unfortunate, whose eyes are wide and expressive, as if he has something to say to me. What could it be? No one knows. Perhaps he wishes to express gratitude to those who care for him. Perhaps he wishes to say that it was a mistake to cross a man so disposed to feed his inclination for vengeance. Perhaps he wishes to plea for death. I can offer no informed guess as to what this poor fellow wishes to communicate. I suppose it is a secret he will take with him to his grave.