Forever

by Pete Hamill

  “What is this?” the earl said.

  “I’m the past, sir.”

  “You’re a lunatic is what you are.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “There’s no gold here, no specie, nothing for you to peddle in town. I have a dozen men guarding this house. I—”

  “I don’t want gold,” Cormac said. “I want an explanation.”

  The earl chuckled in a dry-mouthed way, the diamond flashing in his mouth. Cormac saw a woman’s portrait on the wall behind the earl. Dark hair, long, aristocratic neck, rosy skin.

  “An explanation of what? The laws of gravity? The Magna Carta?”

  “I want to know why you killed my father.”

  Now the earl studied Cormac’s bearded face in the muted light. Searching time, searching memory. He glanced at a wall clock, then at the door, and smiled in a nervous way.

  “I’ll tell you what killed my own father,” he said, his voice suddenly blithe and light. “Whiskey. Or whiskey and rum and too much wine. Don’t let anyone tell you that the gout can’t kill a man. You could have asked my mother.” He gestured at the portrait. “She died of him, of living with him, suffering with him.” He shook his head. “Sad. I never did get to know either of them.”

  He reached for the three balls and stood up and slowly began juggling them. “I was raised by… an uncle,” he said, spitting the words through jaws tightening in concentration. “He was a wonderful… man… who had been orphaned himself… and went off with a troupe of buskers instead of going… to school…. He taught me how—to do this.”

  The balls moved more swiftly now, and Cormac thought: I’ve come to kill you, you idiot, and you’re making an entertainment. He felt a twinge of sympathy, imagining the earl when he was twelve. “I loved… that man,” the earl said. “Loved… him.” And Cormac told himself: Stop! Remember the day! Remember the diamond glinting in the light, the dead eyes, the man urging Patch forward. Remember the shot, and the shouts that followed: Finish him off! Sweat blistered the older man’s brow. His mouth tightened in concentration.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Cormac said. “Try to remember, please. It was a bit more than a year ago. On a road in Ireland. You and your men stopped an Irishman and told him to surrender his horse. He refused. And you killed him.”

  Now the earl understood. The balls slowed in the air, and one at a time he snatched them into his right hand. He gazed at Cormac, as if considering using them as weapons, then laid them on the desk beside the posters.

  “You’re talking about that fool. Patch.”

  “No: You made it happen, sir. I was there.”

  “The man refused to obey a law.”

  “A law that didn’t apply to him. My father wasn’t Catholic.”

  “He was Irish, wasn’t he?”

  “But not Catholic.”

  “Yes, but—”

  A feathery sound on the balcony. And now Kongo was there, eyes alert, silent in Indian moccasins. Carrying a canvas shroud. The earl’s eyes widened and he backed up under his mother’s portrait, hunching like a small boy trapped.

  “Do you recognize this African, sir?” Cormac said.

  “I don’t know any Africans, except those who work on the grounds here.”

  “You should meet this one. Your company kidnapped him and brought him here in manacles.”

  The earl began speaking more quickly, the words bunching. “You’re talking outofa profound stupidity. Forwhat you’ve already-done, you’llsurelyhang, unless I plead for your wretched life!”

  Thank you, Cormac thought. I was beginning to pity you, and you’ve shown me your true face. Thank you. Thank you. The earl saw Kongo spreading the shroud upon the carpeted floor, as if preparing a ceremony. “Sit down,” Cormac said, pointing at the earl with the sword. The earl obeyed, searching for a posture, for an attitude that might save him, then sagging into the chair. Cormac placed a bare foot upon the earl’s polished desk and leaned closer, the sword a thrust away from his ruffled chest. For the first time, the earl had doom in his eyes. He glanced at the door as if expecting rescue, but there was no sound from the hallway. Kongo picked up the sign, eased around to the door, and listened. He shook his head. No sound. Not even breathing. Cormac took his foot off the desk and came around closer to the earl. Kongo approached a second door, leading to what they knew from the house map was a bedroom.

  “What do you want?” the earl whispered. “What in God’s name do you want?”

  “I want you to take that pen and a sheet of paper and confess that you had my father killed for a horse.”

  “Of course,” the earl said. “Gladly.”

  Nerves twitched in his face, which was runny with calculation. He picked up a goose quill, pulled a sheet of paper closer, dipped for ink, and began to write. He finished. Signed it with a flourish. Cormac leaned forward to lift it from the desk, and the earl lunged for the pistol. He gripped the barrel, then forced open the lock, prepared to shoot. Cormac slammed the flat of the sword across his brow, and his grip loosened. Cormac pried the gun loose of the earl’s grip and tossed it to Kongo.

  “That was stupid,” Cormac said.

  “I’m sorry,” the earl said in a beaten voice. A thin line of blood lay open on his brow.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Go ahead and shoot me,” the earl said. “But remember: one shot from that gun and I’ll have ten men in this room.”

  “Yes, and they’ll find you with a hole in your head.”

  The earl’s eyes were now brimming, moving to the ceiling, to the doors, to the portrait, and back to Cormac.

  “Please, just leave,” he said, while Cormac read the note. “I won’t pursue this if you just leave now. Here, I’ll give you some money.” He played with a key in a locked desk drawer. “Not enough for the terrible thing that happened to your father. But—”

  “Nothing changes with you, ever,” Cormac said. “You tried to pay for my mother’s death too. Do you remember that? She died under the wheels of your coach. In the mud.”

  The earl looked doomed. He opened the drawer as if fumbling for money, mumbling broken words, sweating harder, and then there was another pistol in his hand.

  Cormac rammed the sword into his heart.

  The earl’s surprised eyes opened wider, and so did his mouth. Cormac jerked the sword free, blood spread across the ruffled shirt, and the earl’s face hit hard upon the desk. Jesus God, Cormac thought: I’ve done it. I’ve done what I came to America to do. I’ve completed the terms of the vow. Jesus God: I’m free.

  Then Kongo touched his arm. “Quick,” he said. “We go.” Together, they laid the earl’s body in the shroud (his face whitening, his eyes wide). The blood was flowing now, slopping on Cormac’s hands, puddling and staining the shroud. They closed the open end around his head, tied the lumpy bundle with ropes, and lifted it together. “Quick,” Kongo said again. Cormac could feel the leaking blood as it sloshed within the shroud. He and Kongo moved its dead weight to the outside stairs that would take them to the deck and the river. Cormac heard himself panting, and for an instant he saw images of shrouded bodies on greased planks falling into the sea.

  From the distance, he heard muffled shouts. As in Kongo’s plan, a fire had begun in the barn. To distract the earl’s men. To cover their flight. “Quick,” Kongo said. “Quick.” Cormac turned for a final look at the earl’s study, at the desk, the posters, the juggler’s polished balls: and saw the room’s second door open.

  A woman stood there, horror on her face.

  She was big with child.

  Bridget Riley.

  All the way here from across an ocean, from the damp earth of Ireland, from the smoke of a lost, gutted mansion: Bridget Riley herself. Cormac stepped toward her and she backed up. Kongo had his back to the doors, listening to the muffled sounds of alarm. He raised the pistol and aimed it at her. “No,” Cormac said. “Don’t kill her.” Kongo’s eyes were cold and impatient. Bridget took in the bloody sw
ord, the pistol, the lumpy shroud, and understood what had happened.

  “Don’t scream, Bridget,” Cormac said.

  “Who are you?” she said, a trill of terror in her throat.

  “You know me. We rode together through Ireland. And here you are, Bridget, still the earl’s whore, living in another Big House.”

  “Good God,” she whispered.

  “And now carrying the earl’s bastard,” Cormac said.

  The noise from outside smothered her sudden wracked and hopeless weeping. Horses were whinnying. Men shouted. A distant bell was ringing.

  “Don’t kill me.”

  He could hear Mary Burton, another soul far from home, pleading in the same way: to him, or to Kongo, or to others who had the power to let her live or make her die. For a fraction of a moment, Mary and Bridget merged, their faces, bodies, masks, wombs. As if they were sisters. His contempt for Bridget, for the earl’s whore, for the woman who had told him her sorrowful story in Ireland, smashed against his pity. Pity for her. For the child she carried. Then he thought: If she’s carrying the earl’s child, I must kill it, and her too. To make certain that I’ve gone to the end of the line. But suppose it was a girl child? Suppose…

  Kongo could no longer wait. He untied one of the cords in the shroud, went to Bridget Riley, grabbed her blouse, pulled it up over her head, exposing a laced garment covering her swelling breasts. He tied the blouse like a hood, the rope tight around her eyes. Then he stepped to the side and punched her hard. She fell without a word.

  “Quick,” he said.

  59.

  In the black river, the skiff was pulled by the current. The earl’s body lay on the bottom of the boat, tied into its shroud, which was now heavy with rocks. Kongo stood guard at the stern, armed with the pistol and an ax, his eyes searching the river. They were passing the palisades that thrust up from the New Jersey shore. Cormac rowed desperately, trying to move them out of the grip of the current, closer to the Manhattan side, to a place of escape, but the skiff was being pulled by the black water toward the open harbor. Upriver, coming fast, they could see the bob and flicker of lights. A boat, with at least two lanterns. Coming after them. The earl’s men.

  This was not in Kongo’s plan. There was no time to feel what he’d done, taking one life, sparing two. Sparing Bridget. Sparing a child. Almost surely the earl’s child. Did it matter? It might. The tribe ordered pursuit “to the end of the line.” Where was the end of the earl’s line? Not now, Cormac thought. No time to think. Time only to row, adding my own feeble power to the force of the river.

  Until Kongo told him to stop rowing. Then he grabbed the upper part of the wrapped shroud and Cormac the bottom. The boat wobbled as they heaved. And the shroud sank into the black waters.

  Upriver, the light was now larger. Yellow lantern light. The lamp of vengeance and punishment. Coming so fast that it must have five or six men rowing together.

  Kongo glanced around, and then gripped the ax.

  “We swim,” he said.

  Cormac remembered swimming in rock pools in Ireland, in wide streams over hot summers, but he was afraid of the northern waters of the river. I can’t die. Not now, when I’m free.

  But Kongo left no room for argument. He smashed at the keel with the ax. Sharp splitting sounds. Water erupted from one hole like a geyser. Followed by another, and a third. The boat slowed, the black water rose, and they were in the river.

  The winter river shocked Cormac. He felt absolutely alone now, sinking and sinking, water filling nose and mouth, as he plunged into a black, shapeless, bone-freezing world. The sword was hooked into the back of his belt and seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. He beat hard with his hands and arms and kicked with his legs, but he seemed not to move. And then he started rising. He saw the smeared roof of the sky. He felt his long coat swollen with water, the sword digging into his flesh. He tried to wriggle an arm free of the coat, but water filled his nose and mouth. He now felt nothing in his hands. Or his feet. Down he plunged, down and down, ripped by the current. Thinking: I am dead. Thinking: I now join the earl. Thinking: I have done what I came to do. But now I die. Far from home. Thinking: Revenge drowns.

  Then he felt a bumping beneath him.

  A roundness.

  Cold and sleek and bumping him, pushing him up and up and up, forcing him away from the dark, drowned river bottom. It was as if he were being pushed by some enormous fish. Some round, cold-fleshed dolphin lost in the icy north. Up. And up.

  Until he burst free and saw the sky.

  He gasped as air and life flowed back into him. Went under again. Then was bumped. Almost gently now. Like a series of cold caresses.

  He surrendered to the creature.

  And then the world swirled and the watery sky was full of black clouds and the cold gauzy moon and the bumping caresses turned him, shoved him, moved him into endless blackness.

  He awoke to a cold pink dawn, lying in sand and scrubby weeds. A pale moon lingered in the sky. He ached in every joint and felt a throbbing pain in his back. He sat up. Felt a pressure. The sword. I still have the sword. The pain ceased as he stood on aching legs. Then the river and his fear erupted from him in bile and vomit. Finally, after another five minutes, he felt empty of everything. He stood with his head bowed, vacant, boneless, exhausted, freezing, and whispered hoarsely, “I’m alive.”

  Seabirds cried and screeched above him, as if angered by his intrusion, circling, diving, swooping, but not attacking. Across the harbor, he could see the island of Manhattan and knew he was on the wild empty shore of New Jersey. Pushed here. Bumped here. Saved. When he looked again at the seabirds he saw among them one that was black and knew that it was a raven.

  60.

  When Cormac arrived that afternoon, after the ferry ride to the Manhattan dock, still barefoot in his soggy coat, Mr. Partridge looked relieved. Cormac didn’t show him the blurred, water-swollen letter signed by the earl.

  “Have you been swimming?”

  “Yes.”

  “They say it’s good for the health.”

  “It’s better in August.”

  “Well, have a sleep, and we’ll work tonight.”

  He surely must have suspected something terrible (Cormac thought), but he didn’t ask another question. Cormac removed his coat and trousers, brushed away the mud and nettles, hung them on a peg, then hid the earl’s letter and the sword. He fell into an aching, dreamless sleep.

  When he awoke, Mr. Partridge was setting type by lantern light. He mentioned casually that an African had delivered the money for the posters.

  “And by the way,” he said, “happy Saint Patrick’s Day.”

  The night of the rising.

  The date that had fueled Kongo’s urgency.

  Cormac listened for street sounds but heard no clamor or alarm. He opened the door, and the night was very still, without wind. Of course. That was it: the wind. Or the lack of it. They had spoken about the need for wind before firing the fort. On this night, there was no wind. He closed the door, feeling reprieved.

  “Expecting someone?” Mr. Partridge said.

  “No, just a breath of air is what I needed.”

  Mr. Partridge was silent for a while, type clicking in his swift hands. Cormac could hear his shallow breathing. Finally the older man spoke, in a grave voice.

  “You’ve killed him, haven’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  He sighed. “And now what will you do?”

  “I’ll finish learning my trade.”

  Mr. Partridge looked at Cormac carefully, then handed him a sheet of foolscap.

  “You can set this. I’ve work to do up above.”

  “Good night, Mr. Partridge.”

  And up he went on the ladder. No judgments. No expressions of a regret he did not feel. Cormac set type that night until he could no longer see.

  When Cormac lay down to sleep at last, he was filled again with the events that had brought him there. He still felt almost nothing. It wa
s as if the black river waters had purged remorse, and guilt, and even conscience. He hoped he would not be traced and arrested for murder most foul. He hoped Mr. Partridge was not drawn into any of it. And he feared Bridget Riley. As she must fear him. She was the only witness. She could call the constables, tell them about Cormac, and about Kongo, and that could be the end of them.

  But he did not think she would give names or descriptions. If she had married the earl, then she was the widow. That possibility must have drawn her to America. To assail the earl with guilt, or threats of exposure, to force him to marry her in some chapel, anywhere from Boston to Charlotte. That would be her triumph. She’d been sold for oats and corn, and now she’d be a lady. She could make him juggle before admitting him to her bed. There must have been some risk: The earl could have had her killed. But perhaps there was something else. Perhaps he loved her. Perhaps he sent for her. Perhaps he felt an aching loneliness on the shore of this empty continent, this outpost on the moon.

  Either way, she might choose silence. If she was truly married, or could persuade others that she was, she would now own everything that the earl had owned when mysterious robbers broke in and committed murder. She would own the property in New York and the property in Carrickfergus. She would own his shares in the trading company. Better to vanish. Go home to Ireland or England instead of standing as witness in a trial that would make her name known from here to London and certainly provoke scrutiny.

  He got out of bed and found a newspaper to see what ships might be sailing on the morrow. The war had cut the number to two, when there would normally be ten. But neither ship was bound to cross the Atlantic. One was going to Charleston. The other to Nova Scotia. Cormac thought: It must be the war with Spain. But if Bridget Riley couldn’t leave, performing her grief for a small audience, then why would she not talk? The constables might suspect that she had a hand in the killing. Particularly if she had married the earl, if there was a certificate, a will. After all, the constables were faced with a mystery. There was much blood in the earl’s study, but why was there no body? What mere thief would steal a body? If they suspected Bridget Riley, she would surely save her own skin. She would describe the African and the Irishman. Cormac’s breath quickened in fear. And then another face appeared in his jangled reverie, another woman who might be carrying a child. Where was Mary Burton? What was she doing with her rage? What could be brewing through this long night that would come for him in the day?