A Widow's Curse

by Phillip DePoy

  I tried not to change my vocal demeanor.

  “In fact, I do.”

  “Mary and Joseph.”

  “I see.” I held my breath a moment. “The portrait is important?”

  “You don’t know the story? You don’t know the ancient family tale?”

  “Um…”

  “Jesus, I would have thought you’d at least have heard, if you know anything about the portrait at all.” She was obviously amazed.

  “What is it?” Ordinarily, with someone who knew a story that I wanted to hear, I would have been terrifically wily. I couldn’t believe that I had blurted out the question as I had.

  “The story?” She sighed. “Well. Have you got a moment? That’s the question. It’s a pretty good story, but you are calling long-distance.”

  “I’m fine. What’s the story?” There it was again: complete lack of guile. What was going on in my brain?

  “The long and the short of it is this.” Her voice relaxed a bit and I recognized a mode of speech setting in, a style of speaking that said she had told and retold this story hundreds of times. “It began over two hundred years ago—and it hasn’t ended yet.”

  “Andrews!” I bellowed the second I hung up the phone.

  I heard stirrings before I heard his voice. He’d fallen asleep.

  “What is it?”

  “Can you come down, please?” I stood to make some espresso. “I have a story to tell you that you are not going to believe.”

  There was a rumbling sound like distant thunder, then the sort of stagger stumble a drunken man might sound were he coming down my stairs.

  “You’ve got nothing on me, mate.” He yawned. “Before my little nap, I found out about the Barnsley brood but good. They may be the unhappiest family this side of yours. Around 1828—”

  “Stop! I have a tale out of Thomas Hardy.”

  He appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Mine’s more Poe.”

  “Have a seat. I’ll make espresso. Just listen.”

  He shrugged, not at all awake.

  “By all means.” He scraped a kitchen chair across the floor and sat at the table. “Bore me.”

  “Not this time.” Pouring bottled water into the reservoir, I snapped on the espresso machine and it grumbled to life. “Are you comfortable?”

  He nodded, eyes almost closed.

  “It all began at the turn of the nineteenth century.” I leaned against the kitchen countertop. “A distant relative of mine fell on hard times in Wales and sought work in England. He was, according to the legend at least, a master gardener, and he was hired to work at none other than the Barnsley household around 1803.”

  That opened his eyes.

  “I’m just getting started,” I said before he could interrupt me. “This Briarwood was apparently something of a wonder in other ways, as well. When the lady of the Barnsley household became pregnant, the lord suspected that my relative was responsible, as he had not been with his wife in several years. From that moment on, her husband never spoke to her, lived in a separate part of the mansion, took her out of his will. The servants began calling her ‘the Barnsley Widow.’”

  “Widow?”

  “Because her husband was dead to her.”

  “Your relatives in Wales told you this story?” Andrews eyed the espresso machine longingly.

  “No. They wouldn’t talk to me at all—nor, incidentally, even believe they were my relatives. But this particular story is a part of Professor Devin Briarwood’s ardently swashbuckling history of the family, soon to be published in England. Everyone knows the story. I got it from his secretary.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s a great story, if you’ll let me finish it.”

  “Sorry.” He slumped in his chair, a sullen version of paying attention.

  “The lord of the house accused Briarwood of dallying with his wife; Briarwood neither confirmed nor denied it, so Barnsley challenged Briarwood to a duel.”

  “Seriously? Your family gets into more trouble.”

  “Briarwood refused.” I ignored Andrews. “He countered with a wager. He bet his innocence on a horse race.”

  The espresso machine shot out a breath of steam.

  “A bit strange and chancy, wasn’t it?” Andrews stretched.

  “It seems he knew a jockey,” I went on, “and was certain he could rig the race. But Barnsley found out about the jockey, had said jockey beaten, then drugged all the horses but his own. Barnsley’s horse won the race by a mile.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The bet was very public, and Barnsley insisted on payment as well as an admission of Briarwood’s guilt. Briarwood said he had nothing of value with which to pay his debts, and Barnsley said, ‘What about that silver coin that you wear around your neck?’ Briarwood objected violently. He told everyone it was the last thing of value in his entire family and that he would sooner part with his life than with the coin. But Barnsley won out. Not hard to see why: A dallying Welshman owed a debt to an English landowner. So Briarwood yanked the coin from his neck and threw it on the ground at the feet of the jealous husband.”

  “It was our coin?”

  “Yes, but there’s more!” I failed to prevent my volume from rising. “As Briarwood was leaving, he put a curse, a Welsh curse, on anyone who held the coin, and, in fact, on the entire Barnsley family and all their descendants.”

  “Wait.” Andrews was fully awake. “He was even cursing his own child, right?”

  “Exactly. He was cursing his own child.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “And when it came her time, the wife endured an agonizing seven-day labor and died shortly after the child was born. With her last dying breath, she repeated the servant’s curse, only in English, so that everyone was certain to understand every syllable, with her own poison addendum. She included the Briarwood family, as well, and all their descendants.”

  “‘A plague on both your houses.’”

  “The lord of the Barnsley house shunned the baby, of course. And when the boy-child grew to very early manhood, the father all but threw him out of the house. That boy was Godfrey Barnsley, who came to America.”

  “You’re not going to believe my story.” Andrews sat full up. “It’s about Godfrey Barnsley!”

  “Wait, I still haven’t gotten to the punch line.”

  “There’s more?”

  “When Godfrey came to America, he brought the only things that mattered to him: the Briarwoods’ cursed coin of Saint Elian and a portrait of his mother.”

  I waited for the last bit of information to sink in.

  Andrews only took a moment to realize where I was headed.

  “No.” He almost stood up.

  “He brought a portrait of his mother,” I concluded, “painted by a young landscape artist named John Cotman. Cotman had come to paint the English countryside in his typical dark manner, but the image of the woman in his one and only portrait is so romantically portrayed that when it was done, there was speculation that Cotman, not my relative, was the actual father of the troublesome child. And, P.S.: After that, Cotman’s style completely changed from dark to light, as you were telling me.”

  “Godfrey brought the portrait to America with him?” Andrews was still trying to catch up.

  “Yes. The painting was presumed to have been lost in the Civil War when Yankee troops destroyed the Barnsley estate here in Georgia.”

  “Wait,” Andrews protested, “now you’re getting into my story—it’s about the Barnsley estate during the war, and believe me, that family was cursed. But aside from roving the countryside, what was Cotman doing on the Barnsley estate long enough to have painted a portrait and dallied with the lady of the house? Any ideas?”

  “Yes: more irony. He was known for his architectural drawings, as you discovered. He had actually been hired by Barnsley to produce renderings of that family’s estate.”

  “Damn.”

  “At least.”
I put one of the white demitasse cups under the spout of the espresso machine and pressed the button.

  The satisfying whoosh ensued.

  “The woman.” Andrews stared out the kitchen window. “Lady Eloise Barnsley—she must have been something.”

  “Something?”

  “Made a man lose his last dollar, inspired another to paint his one and only portrait, and finally killed her husband’s spirit—not to mention laying down a family curse.”

  “A widow’s curse at that.” I turned toward the machine.

  “She wasn’t really a widow.”

  “And there’s no such thing as a family curse,” I countered. “But if there were, it would be worse; much more effective coming from a widow than a disgruntled former employee. It’s her repetition of the curse that would really made it take hold.”

  “Why’s that? Wait. You have some kind of folk crap to back you up. Is my espresso ready?”

  I handed him the cup that was sitting there steaming at the machine.

  “In general, widows have often been thought to possess a degree of witchcraft in the folk community.”

  “Why?” He slurped his espresso.

  “My particularly feminist take on the subject is basically that a widow didn’t fit into the general sociology of a male-dominated world—she was, necessarily, independent, not herded by a father or husband. Usually, the accusation of witchcraft would come from some argument about stolen corn or a bad wheat crop. If someone told you that you were to blame for a bad harvest, what would be your response?”

  “A very English ‘Sod off,’ I would think.”

  “Exactly. And then the next bad thing that happened anywhere close by would be blamed on that curse.”

  “Not fair.” He finished his espresso in a final gulp. “More?” He held out his cup.

  “But the worst of it was that a widow’s curse could be ensured by the power of God.”

  “What?”

  “Book of Exodus. God warns you not to bother a widow. If you do, and said widow calls upon God, He will hear them, and His wrath shall wax hot, and He will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows. So don’t mess with a widow, seriously.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Not really.” I took the cup from his hands. “We’re still in the Old Testament with Exodus.”

  “But, I mean, damn.” He sat back. “And P.S.: How do you remember all this stuff?”

  “Speaking of curses.” I set his cup back under the nozzle of the espresso machine and pushed the button. “My brain is littered with thousands—with piles of that sort of thing. I’m inhabited by the Ghost of Research Past. I can’t get rid of it.”

  The espresso machine made its own little ghost, a wisp of nearly transparent steam.

  “You need so much more help than I can offer you.” Andrews shook his head and held out his hand for the cup. “But I do have a terrific companion piece to your story. It starts when Godfrey Barnsley comes to America, and the curse really settles in.”

  “So you’re buying the concept of the widow’s curse.”

  “You will, too, once you hear my story.” He blew on his espresso and sipped a bit.

  I didn’t bother to remind Andrews at that moment that as a descendant of Briarwoods, I was included in the curse.

  Twelve

  “Godfrey Barnsley,” Andrews began, “was penniless—for reasons you’ve just mentioned—when he came to America from England in 1823. But ten years later, he was one of the richest cotton magnates in the South.”

  Andrews had run upstairs and retrieved his laptop, to which he was referring for exact information.

  “So much for the curse.” I turned toward the espresso machine, at last making a cup for myself.

  “So you would think. He married well, a young woman named Julia Scarborough, who was the daughter of a wealthy shipping merchant in Savannah. But she didn’t like the heat in Savannah, with its attendant threat of yellow fever and malaria on the Georgia coast, and talked our boy Godfrey into buying nearly four thousand acres of land in the solace of a higher elevation.”

  “Near Adairsville, to be specific,” I assumed.

  “Right. And he got the land at bargain basement prices because?”

  “No idea.”

  “Really. I thought you’d know this, Mr. I Remember Everything.”

  “Wait. This would have been around—what, late 1830s?”

  “Correct.” Andrews seemed to delight in my struggle to recall my history lessons.

  “The Cherokee.” I sank back into the counter. “The Trail of Tears.”

  “We have a winner.” Andrews set down his cup. “Godfrey acquired the land—Cherokee land, and sacred in the bargain—just after the tribe were taken from northwest Georgia.”

  “I think I’m remembering this correctly.” I strained. “The Indian Removal Act barely passed the 1830 Congress. I think—I’m pretty sure Davy Crockett railed against it; might have destroyed his political career. It was clearly insane to relocate the Cherokee. They’d built roads and schools; they were farmers and cattle ranchers. Oh, and there was Sequoyah’s alphabet—”

  “Do you want to show me how much you know,” Andrews interrupted, “or do you want to hear the story?”

  “Sorry. But the Trail of Tears—it was one of the worst—”

  “Right,” he broke in again, “but it was good for Godfrey and his family, and that’s all he thought of.”

  “Good, you mean, because he got the land he wanted and didn’t have to deal with the real owners.”

  “Or so it seemed.” He glanced at his screen. “By 1841, Barnsley had moved the family up here, added another six thousand acres to the estate, and started work on his mansion. And I do not use the term loosely. Here’s a letter from him that says the place had ‘six or seven different styles of windows, giving variety, yet harmonizing. All the walls are of brick. The campanile is three stories high. On the first floor is the drawing room, library, vestibule, hall, dining room, breakfast room, pantry, bathrooms, with the cistern above a large closet and a room-size safe.’ He used black-and-white Italian marble for the mantels, had everything handcrafted in Europe. Doors came from London cabinetmakers—cost a fortune.”

  “But?” I knew there was a punch line.

  “Wait, I’ll get to the but in a second.” He stared at his screen again. “He also acquired every known variety of rose for his garden, and the gardens were designed by somebody famous, or in the style of somebody famous. Anyway, the place ended up with twenty-four rooms, looked like an Italian villa, and it had hot and cold running water.”

  “How is that possible? In 1841?”

  “He had some sort of copper tank close to the chimney that supplied the hot water to bathrooms, and a tank in the bell tower provided cold water to the rest of house and gardens.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Also his wine cellar was famous for—”

  My turn to interrupt impatiently. “Would you please get to the but.”

  “But,” he said instantly, reading from the screen, “he had built the whole bit on an acorn-shaped hill, which, and I quote, ‘was reputedly cursed, and Indian legend warned it should be avoided as an unlucky site.’”

  Andrews sat back, once again delighted with his own research.

  One of the things I always found most irritating in the academic world was an easy ability to fall in love with one’s own research, and then to mistake that research for the point of the story. I certainly had fallen prey to the lure of that siren myself, many times.

  “Curses everywhere” was all I said.

  “Barnsley didn’t care about a local legend.” Andrews shook his head. “He should have.”

  The day was beginning to cloud over again and a cold wind had come up. Quick black shadows darted across the lawn and through thick pines outside of my kitchen window, like great lost souls, I thought, seeking in vain for some bit of sunlight.

  “Godfrey’s good life was u
pset somehow, then?” I knew Andrews would go on with his story whether or not I prodded him, but asking him questions now and again assured him I was interested in his tale.

  “Exactly.” He shifted something on his screen. “After he built his mansion on the Cherokee land, where he should not have, everything went downhill. Very shortly after the family were installed in the manor, one of his infant sons died, and not long after that, wife Julia was lost to tuberculosis. Daughter Adelaide died in the house in 1858 and—this is absolutely the best—his eldest son, Howard, was killed in 1862 by, no kidding, Chinese pirates.”

  “We’ve passed over into the land of fiction.” I set the espresso machine to its maximum yield and pressed the button.

  “Seriously. Godfrey had sent the boy out to scour the world for exotic ‘Oriental’ shrubberies for the grand gardens around the manse, and Howard was killed by pirates on the quest.”

  “Unbelievable.” I took my cup and sipped.

  “After that, it appears that our boy Godfrey became obsessed with the mansion and the gardens. He went all over Europe to find things for the family home, even though it was, by then, bereft of family.”

  “A sad ending to your story,” I agreed.

  “Not nearly.” Andrews leaned forward, scanning his computer screen excitedly. “That’s not nearly the end. We’re up to the Civil War now, and the Union troops found Godfrey Barnsley, all alone with his Italian marble and his hot and cold running water and his half-finished dreams. Sherman’s men were headed for the estate on May 18, 1864. Some Confederate colonel tried to warn Barnsley that the Yankees were on their way, but the colonel was shot down in the garden before he got to the house. And even though orders were given forbidding the sack of the house, the Union troops did just that. All Godfrey’s handpicked furniture was burned, and the Italian statues were toppled, dinner plates smashed, wine drunk. The place was an empty husk by the end of the war. So Barnsley went to New Orleans to try to rebuild his fortune and promptly died there.”

  “But his body was brought back to the mansion,” I guessed.

  “Right, but the curse did not die with the man. In 1906, a tornado tore the roof off the main house. Then Godfrey’s granddaughter Adelaide bore two children: one grew up to be a modestly famous boxer called—and here we have a bit of Damon Runyon—K. O. Dugan. And K. O. killed his brother and went to prison, hastening their mother Adelaide’s death in 1942, when—swell the music, dolly in for a close-up—everything left in the estate was sold at auction, and the entire place was covered over by kudzu, as if it had never been there at all.”