The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque

by Jeffrey Ford

  At that moment my ride pulled up. Before I could get into the conveyance and be on my way, I was shivering uncontrollably with the realization that Charbuque had begun his game again. What was more distressing was the thought that it was I who had forced his hand.

  PHANTASM IN THE FLESH

  WHEN I arrived at the dock the ferry was there, but I was told that there was some engine trouble and it would be a while before they got it up to snuff. I was directed to a nearby establishment, a shack whose sign said The Copper Kettle. It was only a two-minute walk back up the road to the bay, and I was assured that someone would fetch me when things were in order. I was peeved, to say the least, anxious to put an end to the affair, but I had no choice. As I walked to the tavern, I noticed that the sky was growing overcast and the air smelled of impending snow.

  I spent much of the afternoon nursing a whiskey in that hovel. To be fair, the old fishermen and clammers who were the place’s regular patrons were a good bunch. They looked and sounded like a gaggle of pirates, bearing scars and tattoos and using foul language, but they treated me kindly and told me many tales about the history and lore of the bay. When I informed them I was a painter and on my way to deliver a portrait to a patron, they laughed as if this was the funniest thing in the world. Finally a lad came to the Kettle to fetch me. I shook hands all around and thanked them for their hospitality.

  I hadn’t realized how late it was until I stepped out of the tavern and saw that the sun was already well on the wane. I hurried along the dock and boarded the boat. There were no other passengers, but the ferry captain seemed more than happy to take me across. The water was choppy, and the skies were heavy with dark clouds save for a sliver of red at the horizon. I stood on the deck with the mate as we made the crossing. He took out a small spyglass with which he showed me the different sights back onshore. “It’s blowing up pretty good now,” he said to me above the wind. “You can see the clammers heading in.”

  I took the glass from him and turned it on the boats making for the dock at Babylon. I noticed a small skiff with only two people in it. I could barely believe my eyes, but I was looking at Watkin. A young man was rowing, and the old fellow was sitting facing the pilot. “Perhaps he is coming to fetch me or tell me that if I am not finished, the commission is canceled,” I thought.

  Although the sun had not yet set, the sky was so overcast it might as well have. It was early night as I left the basin at Captree Island and, portrait under my arm, headed east over the dunes toward the summerhouse of Mrs. Charbuque. As I crested the last dune and looked down into the valley of sand that hid the house, I was struck by how different the same place could feel depending upon the circumstances. Gone was the warm feeling of tranquillity I had felt when visiting during the daylight hours, for now the house appeared dark and forbidding. I saw no light from where I stood, and the tin chimes on the porch were ringing with an insistence that might wake the dead. I descended the dune and made my way up the stone path to the porch. Drawing closer, I saw that the door had been left somewhat ajar.

  The dark house and the open door made me nervous, reminding me of my discovery when Luciere had fled the city. I prayed she was not gone again. Although the situation alarmed me, my desire to deliver the portrait was even greater. I would not be denied my opportunity to fulfill the commission. I went up the steps and knocked on the doorframe. No one came, and I heard no sound from inside the house. The wind was blowing rather wildly now outside the valley of dunes, and it was difficult to hear above its keening.

  “Oh, hell,” I said, and stepped into the house. The floorboards creaked mercilessly as I advanced one step at a time, trying to remember the layout of the place from my previous visit. The rooms were draped in thick shadow. I called out, “Luciere.” When I got no response, I felt my way along the walls and around furniture to our meeting room at the back of the house. By the time I reached the door, I was quaking like a child, not even completely aware of what it was that had me so frightened.

  I breathed a great sigh of relief when I saw a sliver of light coming from beneath the door. “She is waiting for me,” I comforted myself, “but cannot hear my call because of the wind.” Standing for a moment outside her den, I gathered myself together and then opened the door and stepped inside. The scene I had grown so used to—the screen, the solitary chair—was made lurid by the addition of an oil lamp on the floor beneath the left-hand window. Its guttering glow cast long shadows upon the wall and ceiling.

  “I’ve come with the portrait,” I said.

  I heard rustling behind the screen and the sound of her chair creaking.

  “I hope you will be pleased,” I said, and set to undoing, with my penknife, the wraps that held the painting. When it was free, I walked forward and lifted it up over the top of the screen. I was reassured when I felt another pair of hands take the weight from mine. With a tempest of butterflies swarming in my solar plexus, a sense of anticipation that could have cut a diamond, I sat down in my chair and waited.

  “I saw Watkin making the crossing to town,” I said, unable to contain my nervousness.

  She sighed.

  I did not know whether to take this as a response to my statement or a critique of my work. My answer came a few long minutes later when something flew over the top of the screen and landed on the floor at my feet. I looked at it before retrieving it; a monumental stack of cash tied up with string. I grabbed it up and began counting. Not only was it a huge number of bills, but the denominations were staggering. My thumb flipped their corners three times, and I gloated with each pass.

  “Luciere,” I said, “does this mean I have done it?”

  I waited, and then saw a black-gloved hand grab the side of the screen. The seemingly immovable barrier was violently cast aside with the ease of a leaf being buffeted by a November gale. It happened so quickly, I could barely follow. But before the thing had crashed to the floor, I knew I was looking directly at Moret Charbuque.

  “Yes, Piambo,” he said. “You’ve certainly done it and done it for the last time.” He held a gun in his gloved hand. I could not move, but still I was curious to see this phantasm in the flesh. He was a man of somewhat younger years than myself, with refined features, a mustache, and long locks that fell to his collar in back. He was dressed in a black jacket and black trousers, and his white shirt was opened at the top.

  “What have you done with your wife?” I managed to ask.

  “Let us just say, she will not be returning,” he said, and smiled.

  “I’ll be going, then,” I said.

  He leveled the gun at me and laughed. “I’m afraid you will not be returning either,” he said.

  “I thought you were unable to approach your wife,” I said. “How did the game change?”

  “I knew all along that you were seeing her. You were making love to her. And the painting proves it. She broke the rules. She gave in to infidelity, and that, my friend, gives me license to seek revenge.”

  “But you haven’t seen the painting until now,” I said.

  “Sorry, Piambo. I saw it in the church. When that old fool of a priest came out to fire his shotgun, I doubled back and went inside. I’d seen you place it behind the altar earlier. All I needed was a quick look at it, and I was off before the priest returned to the church. And that showed me the truth.”

  “I swear to you, I have never laid eyes upon your wife,” I said.

  “Come, come,” he said. “In any event, you have your commission, and a little something extra along with it.”

  “A bullet?” I asked.

  “Those bills have been doused with the Tears of Carthage. Before too long your remorse at having treated me so shoddily will give way to tears. You will cry blood for me, Piambo.”

  This revelation made me instantly frantic, and in rapid succession I saw in my mind’s eye the victim I had discovered in the alleyway and Shenz, weeping his life away. I lashed out in fear and anger. Throwing the hefty stack of money at Charbuque’
s head, I lunged for him. He was taken by surprise but managed to fire the gun. I felt the bullet whiz past my ear, but that did not deter me. I was on him in a flash. Grabbing the bottom rung of his chair, I tipped it backward, and he sprawled onto the floor, the gun falling from his grasp. Before he could retrieve it, I booted him in the head as viciously as I could.

  He was not unconscious, but he was groggy. Wasting no time, I searched my coat pocket for the small bottle of tincture of nutmeg that Watkin had given me. I found and opened it. Tilting my head back I poured a liberal dosage into both eyes. It was immediately evident why the parasite that brought the tears found this solution inhospitable. My eyes stung as if being attacked by wasps. There was an infernal burning sensation, and no matter how much I rubbed them my sight would not clear. For all intents and purposes, I was totally blind.

  I turned and ran for the door, but my sense of direction had abandoned me, sending me headlong into the wall, knocking me off my feet. I was stunned and scrabbling to my knees when I felt a boot force me back to the floor. Before I could make another move, the gun barrel was pressed against my cheek. I could see nothing but could feel my hands being tied behind my back, my ankles being bound together. Struggle was now useless.

  Charbuque was winded. I could hear him heaving. “Your painting will burn with you, Piambo,” he said, but there was something wrong with the voice. It modulated with the pronouncement of the words and ended in a higher register. My eyes cleared then, and I blinked them repeatedly to gain more focus. What I saw was Charbuque across the room, leaning over to pick up the lantern. His glove was off, and the hand that reached down was most assuredly feminine, and when the locket swung out on its chain from inside the open collar of his shirt, I knew it was Luciere.

  “I know who you are,” I said.

  “You know nothing,” came the reply, but this time the voice was missing its gruff affectation. It was most assuredly the voice of Mrs. Charbuque.

  The next thing I saw was the lantern smash and shatter against the back wall. Fiery oil flew outward, and each of the little puddles of flame took hold on the dry unvarnished wood. Strangely, before departing, Luciere leaned over, lifted the screen, and set it up in its usual position. “I don’t want to have to watch you die,” she said, and, with this, stepped over my body and left the room.

  BLIND DEVOTION

  THE FLAMES spread quickly as I struggled against my bonds. Smoke billowed up, gathering against the ceiling like a storm cloud, and I knew that the entire house would soon be engulfed. I found it difficult to breathe, the heat from the fire making the air incredibly heavy. My plan was to roll onto my back and then bend my legs at the knees, bringing my ankles up within reach of my bound hands. I managed to get onto my back, and that was about all I could manage. That simple movement left me drained, and I stared up at the ceiling and screamed for help with the little strength I had left.

  My throat was soon parched from the heat, and my cries were little more than hoarse, whispered pleas. Eventually only my lips moved, producing no sound at all. I was disappearing. My money, infected as it was, was burning, my painting was being incinerated, I had stepped away from my daily life, lost my friend and my lover. I was, in all, now no more substantial than Charbuque. I imagined the fire consuming me and the combustion of my being offering little more than a dull burp. My original reason for having taken on the commission was to test my art, but as it turned out, much more had been tested and found sadly wanting. Then I thought I was hallucinating, for I saw Sabott standing over me, staring down, holding what looked like a palette knife.

  “Master,” I said.

  “Good evening, Mr. Piambo,” he said, but now I could see it was not Sabott. I blinked my eyes once and then once again, and the form above metamorphosed into Watkin. He was not holding a palette knife but a long hunting knife. He grabbed me hard by the left shoulder and flipped my body over. In a moment, my wrists were free. Another pass with the knife and my ankles came apart. He put the knife in a scabbard on his belt and helped me to my feet.

  The fire was nearly everywhere in the room. It had crawled along the walls and now blocked the exit. Watkin was searching frantically with those pure white orbs for an avenue of escape. “Follow me,” he said, stepping forward and lifting my chair from the floor. “When I clear the window,” he called over the roar of the flames, “you’ve got to move fast because the incoming draft will fan the fire.” I didn’t have time to so much as nod. He ran at the window to the right, the only passage not choked off by the blaze, and tossed the chair. The glass shattered, and he yelled, “Now!”

  Yet I stood helplessly dazed until I felt his hand on my back, shoving me. When I reached the opening I dove, my arms out in front of me. It seemed as if I flew for a few seconds before coming down hard on the sand outside the house. I had only enough time to roll clear before Watkin followed, landing only a few inches from me. After helping me to my feet, he supported me with an arm around my shoulder, and we made our way to the top of the dunes.

  There we sat, watching the inferno below us.

  “Thank you, Watkin,” I said.

  “My apologies, Piambo. I was on my way to town to try to find you and warn you to be on your guard. I knew things were coming to a head. As soon as I got over to the dock, I asked if anyone had seen you and they told me you had taken the ferry. I told the oarsman I would double his pay if he would take me back immediately.” He put his hand to his eyes and, one after the other, plucked out the white prosthetics that had been the false proof of his blindness. “I won’t be needing these anymore,” he said, and tossed them away.

  “Can you explain any of this?” I asked.

  “I’ll try,” he said, and turned to look at me, his face lit by the fire from below. I couldn’t believe it, and still can’t upon recollecting it, but I swear, Watkin was cross-eyed.

  “I loved her, Piambo. I loved her as if she was my daughter, but by the time she hired me to help her, she was already damaged, I’m afraid.”

  “Damaged?” I asked.

  “Troubled,” he said. “She was already more at home behind the screen than in the everyday world. There, she had a sense of power and confidence, and her performances reinforced that feeling. Still, I could tell she was not right and was moving always closer to a crisis.”

  “London?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “She was weakened by the tour. I thought the travel would do her good, but it only exacerbated her mania. She took physically ill, and in that time had a breakdown.”

  “And was Charbuque a lover who left her?” I asked.

  “There never was any Charbuque save in her mind,” said Watkin. “She concocted Charbuque, not as a lover. She did not want a lover, she wanted a persona she thought would give her the same power and confidence in the world that she had behind the screen. From what she knew of the world, one had to be a ruthless, manipulative man to be safe.

  “What brought it to a head was that one day a cleaning woman at the hotel we were staying in came to her room. The maid did not know she was behind the screen, and Luciere watched through her secret pinprick as the woman pulled the stopper from the ancient silver lamp, something Luciere had never dared do, and sniffed the opening. The maid most likely thought it held expensive perfume and dabbed it on her neck before going about her chores.

  “Twenty minutes later, the woman sat down in the chair facing the screen and began to cry, and you know what happened next. Luciere watched the woman expire before her eyes. She wanted desperately to help her but could not venture out from behind the screen. The police ruled the death the result of disease but were still skeptical about it. We had to leave London quickly.

  “Luciere did not want to accept responsibility for the death of the woman, so she invented Charbuque and a whole story to go along with him. From time to time, he would surface. Since I had worked in the theater, she begged me to tell her about costume and disguise, and I did. She made herself up to be a man. Eventually, i
n 1886, she settled upon the guise of the writer Robert Louis Stevenson because she read his novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which came out that year. Charbuque was her Mr. Hyde. You see, they were the Twins.

  “Sometimes she would go months without a visit from him. But each time he came, he had more power. She would go out at night in that getup and do terrible things to surrogates as a way of hurting her feminine self. In order to regain her power behind the screen, she would hire painters, all men, and play with their minds. ‘They are so egotistical, they make perfect subjects,’ she told me. The best that can be said is that she suffered a grotesque sickness. It is truly beyond explanation.”

  “Was this recent spate of murders the first time she used the Tears of Carthage as a weapon?” I asked.

  “I think so,” he said. “When we returned to the States, she had me research what the substance in the lamp could be. A young fellow from Greenwich Village, a scholar of such things, told me of its origin and how it had been used in antiquity as a weapon. And fool that I was, I could refuse her nothing. I told her, which makes me as guilty as she.”

  “Where will she go now?” I said. “She seems to have made a full break, leaving her screen behind to burn.”

  “I don’t know, but now I owe it to the world to stop her. I can’t let this go on. Too many have suffered; too many have lost their lives.”

  I had a thousand more questions for Watkin, but he rose and swept the sand off his trousers. “I will find her before she kills again, Piambo,” he said, his determination punctuated by the partial collapse of the roof. There was a loud groan, a crash, and then a million sparks flew into the air and were carried away on the wind.