The Loves of Leopold Singer

by L. K. Rigel

  “My dear friend,” Grim said. “Are you unwell?”

  She saw that he too assumed such intimacy possible.

  “Yes,” she said. “I am unwell.”

  “Then come with…”

  “No. I do not believe I should ever come with you, sir.” She hurled the sir like a slap across his face. “I must go to my husband.”

  “But Mrs.—Marta,” he said. “We could be happy together. You would be my perfect helpmeet in the Lord’s work.”

  “My husband,” she said again. “I must go.”

  Everything was clear. Life was unfair. That was just the way of the world. She had borne the wrong child who died. Harriet Goodson had killed her own child in mortal convulsions. Innocents were massacred by Bonaparte’s soldiers or American Indians, in the old world and in the new one. Marta was no worse off and no better off than anybody.

  She had a right—no. She had a duty to recognize what was beautiful in life and to love it, love it all every moment she still had breath.

  She remembered the bronze statue at the cathedral in the village, the image of the Madonna with her dead son draped in her arms. With new eyes she saw Mary’s beautiful agony and the enduring steadiness of the angel’s hand. In one mystical instant, Marta realized her pain was also her joy. It was this ability to feel that made her fully human, that made life precious and good.

  “But I have children,” Grim broke into her thoughts, childlike.

  “Are you mad?” If this weren’t so abominable, it would be comic. “Do you believe those ill-mannered brats would induce me to leave the most honorable husband, whom I love?”

  “But—but Mr. Singer might die…”

  “Oh!”

  Charged by the thrill of self-awareness, she pulled away from George Grim’s massive grip. She flew up Taenarus Boulevard, joyous and new. Her feet didn’t touch the ground.

  -oOo-

  Leopold placed the dulcimer he’d brought on a table while Lightfeather’s opened the piano bench and pulled out a sheet of music.

  “Here it is,” Lightfeather said. “Who would have guessed?”

  “Excellent,” Leopold said. “I’ll have to find new strings for this. Perhaps go over to Boston for them.”

  “It’s Amazing none are broken.”

  “Amazing I had forgotten the instrument all this time. My father gave it to me a lifetime ago. I’m not trained, except by him, but there was a time I could lose myself making music with the thing.”

  “What made you think to look for it?”

  “I didn’t. This morning I came upon an unpacked crate, and it was there.” Leopold tuned the sclerotic strings and began to lightly pound out a song.

  “Perhaps Mrs. Singer is like this instrument.” Lightfeather picked up their earlier conversation. “You must not look for her to come back to you.”

  Leopold hit a wrong note and damped the strings with his hands. He was mostly satisfied with his life, even reconciled to the possibility he would not have children. But he couldn’t accept this living death that gripped Marta. He wanted her back.

  Just yesterday he had finished a new saddle. The design had turned out better than he’d expected, and his first thought hadn’t been of his wife. Instead, he’d imagined showing his work to Susan Gray. How she would admire the piece. How she would have understood his pleasure in creating this useful and beautiful thing. Thinking of Susan only made Marta’s gloom more difficult to bear.

  He’d come to Lightfeather for more than music. Leopold didn’t say as much, but he needed advice. This reverend was the opposite of his counterpart down the boulevard. He looked for the good in a situation rather than for its evil. It was gratifying to find an intelligent, enlightened man to talk to in this town, but this was not the advice he had expected.

  “There must be something I can do. I am her husband.”

  “For a man of action, the hardest thing is to remain still. But I believe Mrs. Singer has a soul sickness. She has to come up out of it of her own accord.”

  “You’re telling me the only thing I can do is do nothing when her happiness is so necessary to my own.” Leopold played on, becoming one with the instrument, and the Mozart rondo danced into the air like an incantation.

  “What is that?” Lightfeather said. “I don’t remember this piece.”

  “Oh, something I heard once.” Leopold’s thoughts flowed with the rondo and eased until he felt released from his worries. “I will,” he said. “I will do nothing and wait.”

  And then she was in the doorway, glowing. She looked as nervous and as happy as on their wedding day.

  “How was the burial, my dear?” He didn’t forget the vow made only moments earlier, but she looked so alive, like a butterfly he would love to catch. He struggled against taking her hand.

  “It was—grave!”

  With that, he did take her hand and said, “My dear friend, are you unwell?”

  “My dearest friend, I couldn’t be more well.”

  On the way home clasped the reins in both hands. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought she had been about to reach for his arm. Or was that wishful thinking? She did sit nearer to him than usual, and he was aware her thigh pressed against his.

  No. He would not entertain those thoughts. Lightfeather’s advice was sound, and he was determined to follow it. He wouldn’t touch her. He wouldn’t look at her. She must be free to recover in her own time and manner.

  Marta found Leopold’s new-found self-discipline most inconvenient. He wouldn’t look at her. She was about to slip her hand into the angle of his elbow, he moved away. She was too late. He’d lost patience with her at last.

  She made a plan. She’d ask him to come to their room and help with her dress. But when they reached the carriage house, he jumped down and didn’t come around to hand her out. He grabbed the dulcimer and held it to his chest like a shield as he backed away.

  “I have to check something with Zehetner,” he said. He bounded up the steps to the veranda and set down the instrument. Then he was off on foot to the fields.

  She watched him go, not quite sure what to do, when she heard sweet little cries coming from the barn. She took her pitiful self to see the kittens. She’d find affection there. She climbed up into the hayloft where the mama cat had made a nest for her latest brood, seven weeks old, darling little pranksters.

  One kitten, black but for his white toes and a white blaze on his chest, was in a loving mood. He batted at Marta’s cheek and licked her chin with his pink sandpaper tongue. “Ah, Twinkle-Toes, you are something.” The kitten yawned and stretched his tiny tongue out as far as possible. She laughed and nuzzled him.

  Was life not wonderful? The barn smelled of fresh, newly laid hay. She heard the farm hands calling to one another, happy in their work. Even the animals, cackling and snorting, seemed conscious that they lived on a happy farm. Everything was good and as it should be.

  She gave each kitten its full measure of pets and coos; and when the mama cat showed up, Marta assured her that she was a perfect cat with beautiful children. “I’ll leave you now,” she said. “You have all cheered me up.”

  Two steps from the ladder, her foot went through a bad board. She lost balance, letting out an involuntary shriek. She fell forward, and all she could see was the pitchfork left on the ground below. Somehow she twisted and shifted her weight. She fell backward and merely landed on her bottom in the hay loft. The startled mama cat screamed, and the little ones added their kitty hisses to the commotion. Marta worked at the rotted board and pulled her foot free just as one of the men came in.

  “Mrs. Singer, are you hurt?”

  She quickly thrust her foot back into the hole. “I need my husband!” she called out. “He’s gone to find Mr. Zehetner.”

  “I’ll get them both.”

  “No. It isn’t necessary to bother Mr. Zehetner. I only want Mr. Singer.” Her throat burned; surely her subterfuge was obvious.

  -oOo-

  Leopold climbed u
p to Marta, frantic, but she appeared to be unhurt.

  “It’s stuck.” She pointed to her foot. “Perhaps remove the boot?”

  In silence, he undid the hooks and slid her soft foot free. She leaned back in the hay as he caressed her ankle to check for breaks. His was in agony.

  “I don’t believe I’m injured, dear.” Her foot slipped out of his hands rested on his thigh.

  “Oh, Marta.” he groaned.

  “What is it?”

  But he could say nothing. He was miserable.

  She stood up and took his hand and led him away from the loft’s edge. He followed. His will was used up. He lay down, and she sat beside him and unbuttoned his shirt. She kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his chin. She opened his shirt and kissed his chest. She loosened his trousers and stroked his inner thighs.

  She was bold, and he was weak. She petted him, she tasted him. She traced his ear with her tongue, teased his belly with her mouth. He was engorged and dripping and powerless. She spread her skirts over him and slipped, swollen and wet, all around him and took him in. He moaned, and she rode him. He grabbed her backside and pulled her closer, and she swallowed him deeper. She closed her eyes and he felt her spasms clenching ever tighter until it seemed they were one being, all feeling.

  When their frenzy had passed, he lay stunned and quiet, wondering at what had just happened between them. Leopold felt cherished in a way he had not thought possible, cared for instead of caring for. He had held their last night in London as an ideal of lovemaking, but this went beyond that. That night, there had been a greediness in Marta that was absent today.

  Just now, she had wanted to give him pleasure, not take it. He felt a kind of peace that he had never even wanted because he’d never known it was possible. Marta had come home to him.

  The next Sunday, all the Zehetners and both Singers attended Reverend Lightfeather’s services together, with one exception.

  Josef had been missing nearly a week.

  Privateer

  1776, Jamaica

  Circe Asher Sande lived half the world away from Carleson Peak on the 12-gun sloop Circe, named when her husband still loved her. Aristaeus Sande was brutish and bow-legged, with wispy brown hair and weathered skin. He had no manners. He was short. His shoulders were too broad and his clothing out of fashion. Of course the Duke of Gohrum and Circe’s father, Lord Branch, had underestimated him.

  He’d come to England and The Branch to seek help obtaining letters of marque against the French and Spanish. He added Circe to his prize. “I’m not the first sailor to fall under Circe’s spell,” Sande had said to her when he got her alone. “But I’ll be taking you from this island to mine, and damn the baron’s notions if they’re to the contrary.”

  How glorious it had felt to lose everything to him. She came to hate the sea, but in the beginning she felt like a princess in a fairy story. Sande was her dashing pirate—privateer—and he would do anything to make her happy. He rechristened his favorite sloop after her and reduced its guns from fourteen to twelve to make space for her chamber.

  “Besides,” he’d said, “twelve’s a luckier number, else why did our Savior have twelve apostles?”

  He was wealthier than she’d suspected and poised to grow richer still now that the American colonies had declared their sovereignty and the British Navy had blockaded their ports. He had added American letters of marque to that box he kept locked in his cabin, and he planned to add more ships to the fleet of six he already owned.

  Then he simply grew tired of her. He no longer swept her off to his cabin and made passionate love to her. Circe sometimes thought he’d forgotten he had a wife, but when their daughter was born he was ecstatic.

  He’d insisted on yet another silly Greek name. “Penelope’s the name a man holds in his heart when he’s been too long at sea.”

  “Not Circe?” She had pouted, hoping to tease him into paying her his old attentions.

  “Ah, that name appeals to a different organ!” He’d returned the baby to her cradle and smiled with real delight. Circe had reclaimed him. The old passion was there, she could have sworn it. But when he cupped her breast, a little milk oozed from her nipple and he went limp. She laughed, but he did not. Confusion and anger passed over him, and all the light in his face for her was gone. She lost him to Penelope.

  Sande played with his daughter, sang to her, told her tales of dolphins and mermaids, corrupt governors and daring privateers. She seemed touched by magic. The crew swore she was a daughter of Neptune himself. Her hair was the color of corn silk, thick and white with a hint of yellow. Her blue eyes were full of fun. She expected to find the world and every good thing at her feet. Penelope adored her father; she tolerated her mother.

  Circe became nothing more than nurse to the captain’s daughter. She took to carrying a blade to punish the grabbing hands, hands that once had not dared. She had gambled her identity on Aristaeus Sande and lost. She couldn’t go home to the father she’d defied.

  The Kingston mailbag had just arrived, and one of the less odious crewmen handed her a three-year-old letter from Philomela. It had been lost in transit, which could explain why their correspondence had ended. Philly must have been waiting for an answer all this time.

  As Circe opened the letter, she spotted Aristaeus in the jollyboat returning from the Syren anchored across the harbor. She kept track of his progress as she read.

  As Circe expected, the letter contained no greeting Aristaeus. Philly had hated him from the beginning, but then she hated all men. There was no plea for Circe’s return. Rather, it was a litany of Philly’s sufferings. Their sister Daphne had been ill and Philly had gone to Ireland but was too late. Everyone in the household, including Daphne and her husband, had died.

  And there was fresh humiliation, the strong insinuation that Aristaeus had seduced Philly as he’d wooed Circe. Surely, I need not draw you a picture.

  Circe glared at Aristaeus. She’d like to convince some voodoo woman to lay a hex on him. But hold! There was another bit of news, great news that made the rest like nothing: Lord Branch was dead. Circe let out a joyful yelp. She could go home!

  But as she read on her hand trembled and the rage of blood pounded in her ears. “Never!” She paced the deck, groaning, and the men exchanged knowing looks about the captain’s crazy wife. According to Philomela, Gohrum had petitioned the crown, and she was already made baroness in her own right:

  Poor Daphne is dead, and we cannot know if you will ever return to England. The title is called out of abeyance in my favor.

  This was an outrage. Circe was the rightful Lady Branch, and Penelope absolutely the heir apparent. She had to get back to England.

  The jollyboat pulled alongside the Circe. Aristaeus looked furious and the men were quiet. Penelope was perched on his shoulders in sky-blue silk trousers and a vest of the same material over a canary yellow blouse. With her wild hair she could be a djinn from an oriental tale. Surely it was Circe’s duty as her mother to get her into proper clothes and back to England to claim her rights—and prevent her growing up a savage.

  The girl scrambled down to her father’s lap. The men looked everywhere else, each hoping the child’s magic would work now, but she ignored Sande and reached out to the young man seated beside them.

  Circe had seen the boy before, James, maybe seventeen years old. Sande told a ridiculous story that James was a kind of genius with sums. He wore a large, cut gold hoop in his ear that sparkled against his dark skin. Penelope fingered the earring and the dull silver charm he wore on a leather cord around his neck. She touched his cheek and gave him her most disarming look, the one that said, “I am the princess who deigns to pay you attention. Are you not pleased?” He returned a brilliant smile, equally self-confident.

  Penelope spied Circe. “Look, mama!” She stretched her little hand over James’s head. “I am tall!”

  “Yes, dearest; you are so tall!”

  She was a sweet girl. Her brows came together in c
oncentration as she looked past her mother to the ship’s bow. Circe followed the child’s gaze and sighed in disgust. When Aristaeus renamed the sloop for her, it had seemed clever, even hilarious, to model the bare-breasted figurehead’s face after her own. Now, it was just another humiliation.

  She had ruined her life. She, who should be Baroness Branch, had calluses on her feet and had to bolt her cabin against her husband’s men. But she could save her daughter. She went to her berth and tucked Philomela’s letter into a nook Aristaeus knew nothing about. No one would miss her, but she’d have to be clever to get away with Penelope. She’d sleep a while and plot her departure later, when she was thinking clearly.

  -oOo-

  The Circe was at sea, the half moon rising as the stars came out. Captain Sande stared at the orange rim of the horizon. He was still fuming over what he’d learned today. His favorite frigate the Maenad had been taken as a prize by the British and sold in London—and to Gohrum of all people. It never would have happened had the colonies not rebelled against the crown; but since Sande now carried letters of marque from the United States, he could hardly petition the British for the Maenad’s return.

  The new country had a mere thirty-one vessels, hardly a navy. They were eager to supplement with privateers, and Sande had letters for all six of his ships—five now. The letters of marque were just a precaution; events could lead to all sorts of things, and the letters would save him from piracy charges if he took a British vessel.

  Now, by God, he would take a frigate to replace the Maenad, whether the East India Company or the British Navy liked it or no, damn them. It was a matter business as well as honor. No one should lightly attack anything belonging to Aristaeus Sande.

  He’d acquire more ships and quit the Mediterranean altogether. The Barbary Mohametans were too violent, and they liked to take Americans for hostages and slaves. Without the British Navy as protector, the risk of Tripoli was too great. It would be safer and more profitable to run gunpowder and rum in and out of the blockaded colonies. A man could grow rich as Croesus off the war and remain on this side of the world all the while.