Peter Wicked Page 7

“Good fortune, I suspect.”

  “But why nary a mention of him?”

  “Because Mrs. Towson despises him. Look, I shouldn’t worry about him. So what if he’s awful rich—just look at him.” He shuddered. “Not even Arabella is that stupid.”

  After Dick left I lay awake in bed, staring at the dark and turning visions of Arabella and Roby Douglass over and over in my head. The more I tried to put it from my mind, the more I thought about it. I thought about how she’d looked at him as he led her away from the garden that afternoon, and I thought of how they probably looked praying together at church of a Sunday morning, as if nary a wicked thought ever passed through their heads. I thought about—

  “Good Lord!” I sat up in bed. I’d dozed off and had an awful dream.

  The door was rattling. I opened it to let Greybar in, but when I reached down to pet him, the little bastard scooted across the hall to Douglass’s door and meowed.

  FIVE

  Elver Towson wouldn’t never have admitted it. He would’ve been tarnal put out if I could properly take affront at anything he said or did; yet he managed to make it clear I was about as welcome as a wild hog at a church social.

  “Dick has gone up to Chestertown to fetch the papers,” he said in his study one morning. The room smelled of old leather, old whiskey, and old cigar butts. Sipping from his glass, which was one of them little thimble-sized things old ladies use for sherry, he looked at me standing by the window. “He tells me you’ve some notion to go west.”

  “Yes, sir. I got an idea to open up some markets out in Kentucky or down in that area. Tennessee, maybe, or maybe all the way down to New Orleans.”

  He finished his glass and waggled it. “Sure you won’t have a sniff?”

  “No, thank’ee, sir. If one bit of advice stuck from my pap, it was never drink and do business.”

  “Oh, you don’t say?”

  At the sideboard, he poured himself a bumper and lifted it to his lips, slowly so as not to spill it, and stood there holding it to his mouth as if he was soaking it up through his tongue. When the glass was half empty he sat down again in his wing chair, one knee over the other, and looked past me out the diamond-paned window onto a bed of roses and the broad side lawn. Some Negroes were out there cutting the grass with scythes. It was warm out there, and the sweat shone on their skin.

  If Elver Towson knew what I was, I’d be out there with them. Certain sure I wouldn’t be in his study breathing the sweet fumes of his whiskey. By God, I was thirsty.

  “How much do you need?” he said.

  About a barrel would do it, I thought. I looked at the nude Aphrodite on the wall behind him. She was smiling past one hand, the other hand being more strategically occupied. Strands of red hair streamed across her face and breasts.

  “Are you well, Mr. Graves? I know a head wound can be a dangerous business.”

  “I’m fine, sir. I just got kind of a permanent headache is all.”

  “Son, I’ll give you a little tip about business. When a man mentions a venture of yours and asks you how much money you need, you’re supposed to tell him how much money you need.”

  The whiskey glowed in his glass. I wondered was he ever going to finish it.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So, what’s your proposal? How many men will you hire? How much is a flatboat man getting these days? How much is a barrel of whiskey wholesale, and of what quality?” He waved his glass around as he talked, and I watched it lest he spill it. “I’m sure you’ll not have much trouble with those latter two things,” he said, “considering your daddy produces a good deal of good drink. Top-quality stuff. You have written to him to set up the scheme, I hope.”

  “Well, I need to get me a trading license from the Spaniards.”

  “Not a bit of it! Pinckney’s treaty solved that four years ago. Free trade along our side of the river all the way down to West Florida. Write to your father. If you can’t take advantage of your family, who can you take advantage of, I always say.”

  “I confess I ain’t wrote him these six months and more, sir.”

  “Then I suggest you do so,” he said. “Better yet, go see him in person. That’s far and away the best thing to do. Perhaps we’ll talk about it again some other time.”

  He drank his whiskey at last, throwing it back like it was air. Then he put his glass down.

  “There,” he said, “I’m done drinking for the day.” He winked. “And I’ll commence again at sundown. But say, I hear my daughter and her gentleman friend are going riding this morning.” His laugh rattled low in his chest, like he had water in his lungs. “Do you like horses, Mr. Graves?”

  I hated horses. I’d charge across a burning deck with grapeshot howling past my ears. I’d go aloft in a roaring gale, blindfolded and with one hand tied behind my back. I’d swim naked through shark-infested seas, even, to save Arabella from the evil clutches of Roby Douglass, but hell if I’d do it a-horseback. On a plow nag, maybe, but not one of the Towsons’ riding horses. No, sir; last time I got astride a galloping horse the tarnal thing took me into the middle of an infantry assault on a fortified town. I’d be dogged and double damned afore I got on a horse again.

  I got to the stable yard just in time to see Douglass helping Arie get settled sidesaddle on a piebald mare. Arie wore a black, flat-topped round hat and a high-waisted, tight-sleeved red riding habit with long skirts flowing down the horse’s larboard side. Mr. Douglass wore a smug little grin that I didn’t like at all. He threw his leg over a bay gelding and glanced back at me.

  “C’mon, Arie!” he whooped, and touched heels to his horse.

  She tapped the long whip in her right hand against the mare’s odd side, and away they trotted down the road. Her perch looked mighty precarious to me, but then they broke into a canter and disappeared behind a stand of sweetgum trees down at the end of the lane.

  “Hey! Ahoy!” I ran into the stable. “He’s riding her too fast!”

  “Oh, no, suh,” said the groom, leading a saddled chestnut past me into the yard. “Dat Mars Roby be ridin’ a gelding. Dat ain’t a her. Dat’s a fella what used to be.”

  “He’ll ‘used to be’ a fellow when I get done with him, I guess. He’s like to break her neck.”

  “No, suh, I’m sorry to say again, but Miz Arie got da mare. An’ it take a lot to break a hoss’s neck, I can tell you from experience. Yes, suh.” He held out the chestnut’s reins. “I expected you’d be along, so I done saddled—”

  I grabbed the reins. “Hold his head while I get aboard.”

  “Yes, suh,” he said with the patience of an old bosun obeying the orders of a boy midshipman. He wrapped a big fist through the bridle.

  The chestnut seemed to be biding his time; he stood still enough with his head in the groom’s arms, but his rump was a-quiver.

  “You want I should fetch you a bar’l to stand on, suh?”

  “No.” I reached up and grabbed the pommel, but still I hung fire.

  The groom pointed at the stirrup. “You puts your foot in dere, suh.”

  “Well, I guess I know that much, don’t I?” I put my foot in the stirrup, but the groom grabbed my ankle.

  “Beg your pardon, suh, but you wants to put it in da other side. Like dis here.” He turned the stirrup around and slipped it over the toe of my boot. “Try it dat way, suh.”

  I boarded at last—clutching handfuls of reins, mane, and pommel—and set out at a brisk trot, the chestnut snorting and shaking his head and me bouncing all over Sunday and back. I never could get a hang of riding proper—all that rising up and down while standing in the stirrups just confuses me and makes it double hard to hang on. I’ll tell it true, though—a trot may be an easy gait for a horse, but it’s a power uncomfortable on Charlie and the boys.

  The chestnut turned right at the stand of gum trees. Dust hung in the air in that direction. I didn’t bother looking down, though, calculating I could trust the horse to watch the road; I watched his ears and head. W
hen we jolted past a patch of pine waste he twitched his ears and raised his head, and I let him pull in where he wanted to go. He nickered, and from beyond a thicket of bushes Arabella’s piebald raised her head and neighed in reply.

  I found Arabella and Roby Douglass in a cozy little grassy place. Douglass’s shirttails were out, and Arabella had leaves in her hair. She’d lost her little hat, and her skirts were muddy in the back.

  “Oh, Matty!” she said. “You won’t tell, will you?”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Douglass snapped.

  “Oh, I think there is, mate.”

  “Yes, that you’re a peeping Tom!”

  “Mind yourself, pal, or I’ll knock you down!”

  “Roby! Matty!” Arabella clapped her hands like a Sunday school teacher. “You stop it this instant. Why, you’d think you were a couple of dogs, the way you sniff and growl around each other.”

  “Well, thank you very much,” I said. “I guess you wouldn’t want me to come along and help you if you’d fell off and broke your neck.”

  “Oh! Never you worry about me, Mr. Graves, I’m sure,” she said, sweeping by me. She marched up to the piebald and grabbed the reins. “You go ahead and tattle if you want. Papa will know Dasher never meant to throw me. It’s that stupid sidesaddle.”

  I scrambled down to help her and Douglass elbowed me out of the way, but Arabella stuck her nose in the air.

  “I don’t need help from either of you,” she said. And she didn’t, neither. She put her left foot into the single stirrup, hoisted herself up as easy as climbing into bed, and hooked her top leg between the two prongs sticking out of the side of her saddle. I guess that’s what she did, anyway; with all them skirts, it’s kind of hard to tell what a woman’s doing with her legs. She held out a hand, still with her nose in the air. “My whip, if you please.”

  I found it before Douglass did, and I held it out to her.

  “Thank you,” she said, cold enough to freeze a fire in August, and kicked her heel against the horse’s larboard side and tapped with her whip on the starboard.

  I was so mesmerized by the way the damp skirts clung to her thighs that I forgot to keep an eye on the enemy. He rode up behind me, and as I turned to get out of the way he gave me a boot in the head.

  “Come along, darling,” I heard him say as I tumbled into the bushes. “I fear the lout means to do you harm. I shall protect you. Also I have found your hat.”

  I lay peacefully in the bushes while the thudding of their hooves faded, and soon the only thudding was in my head. I wondered if he was a good shot. Certainly he had the reach on me with swords, but if I could rush inside his guard I could gut him.

  The summer sun was piercingly bright even in the shade of the woods, and the air was breathless and sodden. After a time I found myself down by the shore, and I stripped off my clothes and swam in the bay until I could think of things other than murder.

  We spent that evening on the veranda, listening to the crickets and fanning ourselves while the ladies drank lemonade and the gentlemen drank julep, which Lily Towson allowed of an evening and which Uncle Jupe made so well. Manners dictated that we call the julep something else, though.

  “How do you find your lemonade, Mr. Graves?” said Arabella.

  “Delicious, ma’am.” I allowed myself a deep pull at it. Jupe had gotten the mint, sugar, and whiskey mixed so well together that I couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. I held the dewy glass against my temple.

  Arabella perched in the middle of the cane settee with me on one side and Douglass on the other. Elver and Lily Towson sat in high-backed cane chairs across from us, while Dick lounged off to the side, reading one of his newspapers in the light of a lamp in the window. Greybar crouched at Douglass’s feet, staring up at him.

  “Say, Graves,” said Douglass, holding out a finger for the cat to bat at. “Who’re your people voting for?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Why, don’t you care who’s president?”

  “I don’t get a vote.”

  He leaned past Arabella and gave me a sly grin, all teeth and chin. “That’s right. No property.”

  “I ain’t old enough and neither are you. And my father owns plenty of property.”

  He snorted. “Pittsburgh, isn’t it?” He patted his lap, and Greybar jumped into it. “Away off in the mountains with nothing on it but rocks. Who would want such land as that?”

  “General Washington, for one,” I retorted. “He owned a passel of it. That’s why he was so eager to put down the Whiskey Rebellion.” That stupid cat was purring. “What do you care who we vote for? I don’t see how it’s none of your business.”

  “Jefferson’s bound to cause another rebellion if he gets elected,” he said. “You ought to read the papers.”

  “I guess if it’s important someone’ll tell me about it.”

  “I don’t suppose we need discuss politics,” said Mrs. Towson, “any more than we need discuss which church to go to on Sunday. Tell me, Mr. Graves, have you read the new edition of the Letters from an American Farmer?”

  Hector Saint John’s collections of essays had been a mainstay of discussion for years. “No, ma’am, I didn’t know he’d published a new one.”

  “It isn’t doing nearly as well as his others.” Douglass smiled condescendingly at Arabella. “It’s in French.”

  “What,” I said, “ain’t you got any French?”

  “I’ve never heard a Frenchman say anything worth listening to.” Again he smiled at Arabella. “We’re at war with them, you know.”

  “Says here,” said Dick, holding his paper closer to the lamplight, “that Bonaparte has crossed the Alps on a mule.”

  “A mule,” I said. “Why’d he do that?”

  He looked at me over the folded sheet. “To attack the Austrians, says here.”

  Arabella fidgeted beside me. “Why didn’t he attack the Italians?”

  Dick and Douglass and I all looked at her. “What?”

  “The Alps are in Italy, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, Dick,” I said, slipping him a wink. “Why didn’t he attack the Italians?”

  Douglass gave me a pitying look. “There’s no such thing as an Italian. You got your Genoese and your Ligurians and your papists, but never a plain old Italian. You ought to look at a map sometime.”

  Dick raised an eyebrow at me. “And here I thought Genoa was in Liguria.”

  “I guess gunpowder’s a pretty good business to be in, what with the war and all,” I said. “Ain’t it, Mr. Douglass.”

  “About as good as selling cheap whiskey, Mr. Graves.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Mrs. Towson, holding up a slender hand, “I must disallow this topic as well.” She plied herself with her sisal fan. “I suppose discussing Hector Saint John will necessarily lead us back to religion. Oh dear.”

  We sat a while in silence, except for a rustle or two from Dick’s papers and now and then someone slapping themself on the cheek. I was thinking about asking Mrs. Towson could we smoke on account of the skeeters—she’d already indulged us with whiskey in mixed company, after all—when Arabella ran her fingers lightly across my own. I thought maybe it was a centipede or something at first, she did it so light, but then she took my hand in the dark and give it a squeeze.

  “Here’s an interesting item,” said Dick. “Says here, ‘Norfolk. John Kendle, master of the Liza of this place, having lately returned from Europe, reports that on the twelfth instant—’”

  “What’s the twelfth instant?” said Arabella. “And why are there twelve of them?”

  I heard a wheeze as Douglass opened his mouth, so I said, “It means on the twelfth of this month.”

  “Which is June,” said Dick, “in case you have forgot. Where was I? ‘On the twelfth instant, Cape Henry bearing northwest a half west, distant nineteen leagues, after a chase of four hours, he was captured by a French privateer sloop, Citizen Captain Mesh, from Guadeloupe, mounting eigh
t carriage guns. The French captain, exceedingly tall and beautifully mannered, took from the brig some pots of paint and other ship’s stores, along with the better part of a hogshead of rum, and several Negro sailors belonging to the ship’s owners. Upon being told the Liza was short on provisions, Captain Mesh supplied her with a barrel of beef and a bag of bread, expressing much regret that any difference should have taken place between the two republics, and released her with a profound merci.’”

  “That was droll of him,” said Mrs. Towson.

  “Surprised that Master Kendle didn’t notice a few hundred dollars was missing from his strongbox while he was at it,” said Mr. Towson. “Yankees have a sad lack of imagination.”

  “Why, Elver!” said Mrs. Towson.

  “I’m joking, my dear.”

  “Well, if the Frenchie released him out of profound mercy, why’d he steal the strongbox, then?” said Douglass. “That doesn’t sound so merciful to me.”

  “What?” said Mr. Towson. “Who said he stole the strongbox?”

  He gazed blearily at Douglass, who was explaining about Yankees to Arabella.

  “That was pretty dang funny, Dick,” I said. “Why don’t you read—what’s the matter?”

  “You won’t like this one as much,” he said.

  “Read it anyway.”

  “Very well. ‘Washington City. A duel took place on the ninth instant at Bladensburg between Lieutenant Peter Wickett of the United States sloop Breeze and Lieutenant Danville Crawley of Captain Tingey’s staff. Mr. Crawley was so badly wounded that it was supposed he should succumb to his death. Two shots were also exchanged by the seconds, neither of whom was wounded. Mr. Wickett is desired to return to the federal city to answer to a charge of attempted murder.’ Hmmm, what do you know.”

  He looked more cheerful than alarmed, but was doing a good enough job of hiding it that I didn’t guess I could mention it.

  “That’s kind of strange, ain’t it?” I said. “Peter must’ve been tarnal provoked.”

  “Yes,” said Dick dryly, “considering how dead set he is against the gentlemanly art of the Code Duello.”

  “That isn’t the half of it,” said his father. “Since when is dueling illegal?”