How long the unicorn slept in Remorse Kirtley’s lap, Dr. Dapper never knew. He stood where he was, while the sun moved and the ragged grass whispered, and the tiny insects danced in the sunlight. The unicorn’s sides breathed in and out, like those of any other drowsing animal, and now and then it twitched its lion-tufted tail to brush away a fly. And Remorse Kirtley sat utterly motionless, her eyes fixed, as Dr. Dapper imagined, on the world the unicorn had come from. Now and then she turned her head toward him, but he knew that she never saw him at all.
Then, in time, the unicorn rose, and looked in Remorse Kirtley’s face, and brushed its horn over her hair, and went away.
Neither Mistress Kirtley nor Dr. Dapper moved for a long while afterwards, not until she stood up in her turn and went to him, and he put his arms around her. They remained so, with nothing sinful or adulterous in their embrace; but by and by she asked him in a small voice, “How did you know?”
“I did not know,” Olfert Dapper answered her candidly. “I guessed only.”
“That the wife of the Reverend Giles Kirtley might yet be a virgin? A clever guess, wise Doctor.” She leaned closer, pressing breasts not as childish as he had imagined against him. “And one deserving of some return, surely?” The sunflower eyes were soft and tender.
Strangely, it was Dr. Dapper who held back in that moment, actually putting away from himself the woman whose mysteries had tantalized his dreams all that winter. “Good mistress,” he heard himself saying, to his own considerable amazement, “should we do this, you will—thou wilt—forfeit thy chance ever again to see a unicorn—to hold a unicorn in thy lap. I am not such a scoundrel as to wish to deprive thee of such a blessing.” He was horrified by the sound of his own earnest pomposity, the more so because it was uttered with truly good intent. Some of us were not born for the generous gesture.
But Remorse Kirtley laughed at him, and stretched her arms stiffly out on his shoulders, so as to hold his head firmly while she looked into his eyes. “One unicorn in a lifetime is a miracle beyond anyone’s deserving, virgin or no. More than one . . . no, no, Doctor, that is for another life than mine.” She kissed him then, with a force that would likely have knocked him down, had she not still been holding him upright. Still gripping his eyes with her own, she said, with as much gravity as he had spoken to her, “The unicorn set me free, can you understand me? Freed me from the world I have always been taught, and always believed, was the only world for a Christian soul. While I sat there and held him, he came into me—how else should I put it, dear Doctor?—he came into me, and showed me the magic beyond poor, crabbed No Popery, the beauty beyond the sour singsong God of my worship. And for that I will forever be more grateful to thee than anyone else is ever likely to be, my scoundrelly friend.”
She kissed him again, and then she stood back from him a little and slowly began to unlace her drab dark bodice, never taking her eyes from his. She said, “Now it is for thee to complete my liberation. Help me here . . .”
And he did help her, his usually deft fingers as clumsy as those of an ignorant youth, and they did indeed cleave together, and were one flesh, as the Bible recommends and approves.
Later, drowsy in the dappled shade, his herb-gathering bag pillowing both of their heads, he said, “It grieves me yet that you tossed away so lightly your chance to ever again call a unicorn. Truly, I never brought you here for that”—which was only half a lie—“but because I wanted to see the creature a second time. I cannot help feeling at fault.”
Propped on one elbow, her own eyes heavy, she made severe reply. “I tossed nothing away—and certainly never for you, vain man, but for myself. What I have lost, I gave away freely. Even the God of No Popery would understand that difference. The unicorn understood.”
Whereupon, and without explanation, Remorse Kirtley began to cry. Deciding for perhaps the hundredth time in his life that he knew nothing about women, Dr. Dapper let her tears dry on his chest and throat; and somewhere in the middle of that they were one flesh once again, and she was giggling like a girl about something she wouldn’t share. When he asked she only laughed harder, her hair a twisting whip across his face, and he became fascinated then by other things, like the little pink mole between her shoulder blades, a miniature fleur-de-lys that he suspected the Reverend Kirtley had never seen.
They walked back side by side, just as they had set out; but when Dr. Dapper reached to take her hand, like any village swain, Mistress Kirtley shook her head and pulled away. Hair invisible again under the Dutch cap, bodice laced to near-constriction, long brown dress respectably free of any telltale grass stains, she had reassumed the role of meek Puritan goodwife, playing it with the passionate attention to detail of the actress she had spent her life becoming. Even when she glanced sideways at him and smiled just a trifle, it was not the smile of Remorse Kirtley. Dr. Dapper knew that smile well.
They parted at the outskirts of the village: he to his mortar and pestle and improvised scales, she to tend her husband, and to prepare a full dinner after a full day. When, at Reverend Kirtley’s next visceral complaint, Dr. Dapper hurried to him with his potions already prepared, there was never the smallest suggestion that anything ignoble might have passed between anyone and anyone else; nor did Mistress Kirtley do more than nod attentively at her family physician’s instructions and notate them without quite looking at him. Dr. Dapper stayed longer than he might have, constantly attempting surreptitiously to catch her eye, but he had no luck.
News of the colonists’ various homelands came infrequently at the best of times—and not at all during the winter months—and was delivered haphazardly, most often by traveling peddlers, tinkers, and circuit-riding preachers who chanced through No Popery. Olfert Dapper had received no messages at all from the Netherlands since his arrival, and had almost resigned himself, not only to the probability of spending at least another year in this drearily savage New World, but also to the worse horror of realizing that he was gradually adapting to his life here. He liked and respected the Abenaki of his acquaintance, and he very nearly liked two or three of the settlers, and he was even developing a certain taste for succotash.
Oh, whatever might be waiting for him back in Utrecht, he had to get out of this place!
Mistress Remorse Kirtley went on about her business as a dutiful No Popery wife, cooking and gardening and praying and keeping a proper house, never allowing herself to be alone in Dr. Dapper’s company for more than the few minutes it might take him to hand her his newest medication for her husband’s ever-truculent stomach and instruct her in its application. She kept her eyes cast down at all times, her hair completely covered, and her modest bearing an example for all Puritan women. Dr. Dapper, thinking about it, could never say whether he actually loved her—love, as it is generally used, being an emotion as honestly foreign to him as the Turkish language, or the finer points of infralapsarianism. Neither could he call it plain sinful lust anymore: it was, perhaps, that, having glimpsed the mysterious heart of the minister’s wife, he simply wanted to see it again, more than he had ever wanted to see the unicorn a second time. It has been mentioned that Olfert Dapper had more than a little of the romantic in his nature.
He went on occasion, when he had the time free (his fraudulent medical practice having gradually approached the genuine), to the meadow where he and Remorse Kirtley and the unicorn had once been together. He had no expectation of finding either one of them there, but it comforted him strangely to stand exactly where he had watched in numbed wonder as the unicorn lowered its head into her lap; and where, a world afterward, he had helped her unlace her bodice, while she never took her eyes from his.
Once he encountered his old Abenaki companion Rain Coming standing in the same place, his black eyes watching everything, yet seeing nothing that Olfert Dapper could see. They greeted each other briefly and soberly, and Dr. Dapper said gently, after a while, “It will never come here again. I cannot say how I know that, but I do.”
Rain Coming n
odded a very little. He said only two words. “She come.”
Dr. Dapper stared at him. “She? Whom do you . . . Do you mean Mistress Kirtley?” A squirrel observing them from a branch abruptly dashed away at the sound of his voice.
The Abenaki met his eyes calmly, taking a long time before he answered. “When you go home. She come then.”
“When I go home . . .” A sudden immense sadness filled Dr. Dapper’s chest, and the words came out almost in a whisper, in contrast to his earlier cry. He said, “But I may never go home, my friend. There are some very angry people waiting there for me, and they might even put me in prison. Prison.” He repeated the word, emphasizing it carefully, knowing that the Abenaki, like the other Algonquian tribes in general, had no real equivalent for such a word, such a concept. He said again, “I do not know whether I will ever go home.”
“You go home soon.” Rain Coming’s own voice was slow and certain. “She come to Abenaki when you go.”
“Why then?” Olfert Dapper demanded. “There is no connection between us anymore—we barely speak, except about her husband’s medicines. Why would she run off to your people when I am gone?”
But Rain Coming himself was gone, in that particularly disturbing way of being gone that he had, which the Reverend Kirtley always said plainly showed the infernal origins of all his folk. Dr. Dapper stared into the silent woods after him for a time, and then wandered back to No Popery.
He knew that the Abenaki had taken in runaways and exiles from the various Sagadahock colonies; and he knew further that the Algonquians had no God-given laws concerning the properly submissive status of women. An Abenaki, Micmac, or Passamaquoddy woman might, in his undeniably limited experience, look away from a man, or past him, or through him, but never down at the ground. A woman of spirit and resource, such as Mistress Remorse Kirtley had shown herself to be, might well rise higher in Indian society than would ever be possible for her in Puritan surroundings. He wondered less how Rain Coming had learned of her decision than whether she herself knew of it yet.
The weather was warm still, but close to turning—after more than a year in Maine, even Dr. Dapper could tell this by the changes in the birds’ behavior and the taste of the dawn wind—when he was roused from an evening doze by a rapping at his door. Peering through a crack in the wall which no amount of caulking would ever patch for long, he recognized, to his astonishment and immediate anxiety, the Reverend Kirtley. The minister had never once been to visit him at home, and their occasional conversations in church usually involved either the state of Dr. Dapper’s immortal soul or Reverend Kirtley’s highly mortal stomach. Could he know? Could someone have . . . could she have confessed all? The question was heightened by the fact that the reverend was carrying a musket. It was a very large musket, with a mouth like a tulip.
But Olfert Dapper had not gained the rank and respect that he enjoyed in his mendacious art without learning (always with the exception of Margot Zeldenthuis) when to put his faith in a woman’s eyes. His panic left him as swiftly as it had come, and he opened the door to welcome Giles Kirtley.
The minister entered with an oddly furtive air, looking over his shoulder as though he were the one well-acquainted with thief-takers and persons bearing heavy sticks and unreasonable grudges. Offered the one good chair, he leaned his musket gingerly against the wall, accepted a mug of somewhat dubious jenever—a thing Dr. Dapper could never remember having seen him do—and began the conversation by saying abruptly, as though the fact had just come to his attention, “Brother Dapper, you’re a Dutchman.”
Dr. Dapper raised his eyebrows and spread his hands. “I cannot deny it, sir.”
“Ah.” Reverend Kirtley cleared his throat several times. “Perhaps that is why I find it easier to confide in you, even though we have not been—ah—close? Warm? Intimate . . . ?” His voice wandered away into the random corners where his glance had gone.
“My loss, certainly,” Dr. Dapper said graciously. “What can I do for you, Reverend?”
“My wife . . .” Reverend Kirtley stood up, turned in a constricted circle, like a bear tied for baiting, and sat down again. “My good wife has been kidnapped. Stolen away. By those red savages. Savages, man!”
Caught completely by surprise, Dr. Dapper could only blink and stare. “By the Abenaki? Kidnapped?”
“What else? Who else? There are tracks—obvious, unmistakable! They dragged her away in the night, poor creature, before she could utter a cry. Even now it may be too late to prevent . . .” He bent almost double in his chair, covering his eyes. The position was not unlike the one he usually screwed himself into when his stomach was demanding its due.
“Prevent,” Dr. Dapper said; and then, “Oh. Oh. Well, we must certainly rouse the village, Reverend. If you take the houses east of Bear Creek, I will take all the west side—”
“No!” The Reverend Kirtley seized both of Dr. Dapper’s wrists in his big-knuckled hands. “I could not bear it if . . . if the worst were known to . . . to . . .”
“To all your congregation,” Dr. Dapper finished for him, more respectfully than he felt. “Your following of the faithful. Yes, of course, I understand. We will begin our search tomorrow, at first light—”
“Tonight! We dare not wait!” The reverend was on his feet again, reaching for his musket.
But Dr. Dapper shook his head firmly, and did not rise. “There are wolves out there, and catamounts—I heard one scream close by, yesternight. We can do nothing in darkness but run ourselves into worse danger than she may be in, trying to rescue her. I will go with you at first light, as I said.”
And with that the minister had to be content, though as he left Olfert Dapper’s house he added, “Remember to bring your gun.”
To which Dr. Dapper responded, “I have no gun. I do have an excellent belaying pin from the ship that brought me to these shores. But no gun.”
“I will have one for you,” Reverend Kirtley assured him grimly.
And so saying, he plunged out into the night, leaving Olfert Dapper sleepless until sunrise.
When they met at the empty church, Reverend Kirtley indeed handed Dr. Dapper a loaded musket. It felt so heavy and cold in his hand that he almost dropped it. He protested that he had never handled such a weapon before, and was likely to be more of a menace to any companion than to the supposed kidnappers of Mistress Kirtley. The reverend replied only, “The hand of the Almighty will be on the trigger at the appointed time. You need have no fear.”
But Dr. Dapper had a great deal of fear turning his own belly to a solid block of ice as they set forth, following the tracks—unmistakable, as the Reverend Kirtley had said—of Mistress Kirtley’s small, clumsily-shod feet to the point, just out of sight of No Popery village, where they crossed a set of moccasined footprints and went on in company with her companion . . . or her abductor. Mistress Kirtley’s prints were closer together now, showing only the balls of her feet, which could have meant she was either running or being dragged along. There was no doubt of the reverend’s opinion: his normally ruddy face was iron-pale, except for the blood-drops standing out on his bitten lips. He swung his musket from side to side, like a scythe, as they walked on; and from time to time he sighted along it at random targets, grinding his teeth and grinning a wolf-grin. Olfert Dapper feared for everyone.
At one point, the Reverend studied him sharply—not quite swinging the musket around—and said, “You have a certain sympathy for the savages, or I am mistaken.” It was not a question.
Cautiously Dr. Dapper replied, keeping his tone carefully inexpressive, “I find them a not uninteresting people, and well worth studying.” As casually as he could, he edged around to the far side of the minister.
“Children of Satan,” Reverend Kirtley spat. “Whatever unspeakable, demon-born humiliation they have visited upon my wife, I will take her back as my lawful wife, with no shame ever on my part. But I shall kill every one of them, and I shall burn their filthy lodges to the ground, and plow the ea
rth with salt afterward. This I swear.” He halted for a moment to glare fiercely at Dr. Dapper. “You have heard my oath before God.”
“Yes,” Olfert Dapper answered quietly. “I have heard you.”
The track of Mistress Kirtley and her presumed captor grew more difficult to follow as the ground hardened and the undergrowth became thicker. Whenever possible, Dr. Dapper did his best to scuff out a print with his foot, or to mislead the grim reverend; but the path to the Abenaki village was known to all the inhabitants of No Popery, and by now the minister had no need of a trail to lead him where he was convinced his wife must have been taken. It would take only a sight of Mistress Remorse Kirtley to unleash a massacre; and Dr. Dapper, born during the Eighty Years’ War, knew something about massacres. In frantic silence he rummaged through the stratagems and devious contrivances of a lifetime, but utterly in vain. He marched by the side of a man planning murder and could think of no way to stop him.
So despondent had he become that he never noticed the first cloven hoofmarks—neither the delicate prints of a whitetail deer, nor the dinner-plate tracks of a moose—joining those of the moccasins and work-booted feet. When he did finally become aware of them, at the point where they began to veer from the familiar path, heading together up a low, mossy rise of ground that bore all three prints clearly, he pointed them out to the minister, feeling the first twitch of a scheme in his belly as he did so. “Behold, Reverend!” he cried, as dramatically as he knew how. “Whatever can you make of these uncanny slots?”
Giles Kirtley halted, leaning on his musket and shaking his head very slowly as he pondered the sudden new tracks. The cloven prints were generally in the middle of the path, with Mistress Kirtley’s close on the left side and those of the unknown Indian further off on the right. The Reverend was muttering, almost inaudibly, “I like this not . . . and yet it cannot, cannot . . .” At one point he bent to the ground to sniff at the hoofmarks; then raised his head, murmuring, as though he were alone, “No . . . I will not believe . . . No. No . . .”
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