Four Summoner’s Tales

by Kelley Armstrong, Christopher Golden, David Liss

  * * *

  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 glo
ve 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.