by Diana Rubino
“We had figs once,” I recalled, “and I've made potpourri with basil, parsley and marjoram. Alex, we must share an Italian meal sometime,” I urged. Preferably in Italy, I added silently.
Our tête-à-tête drifted to Shakespeare. “The Bard didn't write any of those great works,” he said. “As the son of a yeoman he couldn't have been privy to royalty's private lives and court intrigue.”
“Mayhap Queen Elizabeth let him live at court to soak up the culture,” I suggested over a yawn. “His acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, performed his plays at court. But I must believe he wrote all those plays—and those beautiful sonnets and words of love. 'My heart is ever at your service,' I quoted the Bard, but saying it to Alex, it came from my own heart.
“How fancifully romantic,” he replied. “Too romantic for a breeder ever to have written.”
“A breeder?”
He nodded. “Yes, a man who breeds with women, as opposed to a molly, who engages in—you know—” He gave his wrist an effeminate flick. “—buggery. He had to be a molly to write like that. And anyone who cavorts with a band called The Lord Chamberlain's Men—” He rolled his eyes.
I playfully slapped his arm, nestled against him and dozed.
When I woke, I overcame my embarrassment and asked the driver to pull over so I could relieve myself in a clump of bushes. My shoes covered in mud, I finished James's whisky and didn't eat another morsel nor drink another drop till we reached the skirts of Paterson. By then, in the dead of the moonless night, my stomach growled with hunger. We filled Alex's flask and James's bottle with water from a well, our only sustenance.
“Oh, Alex,” I lamented as the carriage jolted and lurched onward. “When will we enjoy these pleasurable surroundings you told me about?”
“When we get to the falls. That will be our pleasurable surroundings. Be happy we have the luxury of the carriage. If I'd taken this journey alone, I'd be on horseback.”
The thought of making love next to the roaring falls gave me a surge of energy and excitement. But once again, fatigue overtook me, and I fell into a dreamless sleep amid the jolting and jouncing.
He nudged me awake and I drew a tired breath.
“Look.” He pointed out the window. “There it is.” The carriage lurched to a halt. I nearly fell off the seat, rubbed my eyes and looked out. Before me stood the falls as I remembered, a foamy rush of roaring water cascading off towering cliffs into a rocky gorge. “Beautiful, is it not?” He draped his arm round my shoulders. “It will soon be ours.”
I laughed. “Ours? Are we going to buy it?”
He opened the carriage door and stepped out. I shielded my eyes from the light, although the sky was a dull gray like tarnished pewter, laden with clouds. “No, but I'm impressed with this site to the point of decision.” He pointed to a spot on the opposite bank of the river. “This is where The Society for Establishing Useful Manufacture will build its first mill. In which you shall own fifty shares.”
“Fifty shares!” My jaw dropped. “I'll be wealthy beyond my wildest dreams if this mill becomes profitable. And James thought this too speculative? I need to lecture him on what's speculative and what's a sound investment.”
We strolled along the river arm in arm, the wind whipping my hair into my face and chilling me under James's overlarge clothing.
“These are the pleasurable surroundings you told me about, Alex? Mayhap in June, but not now. I am freezing.” My teeth chattered.
“We shall return and couple under that clump of trees, then,” he assured me. “After our first mill is built.”
I kept my head down against the wind. My shivers from the cold overpowered my shivers of delight. I nudged him toward the carriage, but his feet seemed rooted to the ground. He wanted to stay. “One day a great city will rise on the west bank of the Hudson River.” He gazed into the distance, his eyes narrowed in concentration.
“Right here? Our city?” I already felt we'd created what could be an empire.
“May well be, mayhap not.”
“It may well be Jersey City then,” I joked, huddling closer to him.
“Stranger things have happened.” He led me back to the carriage. We climbed in and I burrowed into his warmth. “Oh, I wish for a bearskin rug before a crackling fire! Alex, let us go to Greenwich Village, rent a cozy brownstone and live in splendor for a few days,” I suggested. “What's a few more days? We never had time alone together, with no need to hurry or listen for approaching footsteps.”
“I wish I could, but I must hurry back. I've much work to do. Mayhap another time.” But I'd nearly drifted off. This was the most tiring trip I'd ever taken. And the least romantic.
He looked around a bit more and took notes whilst I huddled in the carriage. During the tiring return trip we stopped at another dilapidated farmhouse at the roadside. We entered and exited separately between four hours of sleep on lumpy cots. No time for romance or anything close to it. But at least we'd spent this time alone—almost.
When I arrived home, I slept nearly round the clock. When I awoke, darkness shrouded the bedchamber. I slid across the bed and peered at the clock on James's nightstand. Half past eight. James was not home, but he'd left a note. “Gon to work, then to bisnuss meeting. You had a visiter, she requests that you visit her.” He'd drawn an arrow pointing to a calling card next to his note.
As I saw the sender's name, Mrs. Hamilton, a stab of fear sliced through me. Had she found out I'd snuck away in disguise with her husband? But we were so discreet, now coming and going by the back door. Still, I convinced myself she'd learnt of our excursion.
I couldn't honor her request. Not yet. I needed to rehearse what to say, how to comport myself.
There was still no word from Alex about the treasury clerkship either. Over the next few days, James grew irritable and testy. He did go to the congressman Alex had suggested, but he had no openings. Ergo, James slid back to square one.
I did not hear from Alex, either, but knew he was busy. I did not try to contact him.
The next day, James sat down and without a drop of alcohol in his system, cautioned me not to disturb him. “Ah'm composing a most important letter,” he stated.
This scared me. “I hope you're not considering blackmail or blabbing to your notorious cohort Callender. James, be civil,” I begged.
Without a word, he scratched pen over paper.
I picked up the newspaper and skimmed the front page headlines. Naught had happened to fret about since yesterday. Page two displayed a headline about The Society for Establishing Useful Manufacture. The article reported the plans to build a mill on the Passaic River. I smiled with satisfaction, knowing it was all because of me…rather, us.
On an internal page I spied a short piece. It quoted the commissioner as saying he believed the murders of young women had ceased due to extra vigilance by constables. The hunt for the killer continued, but he may have moved on to another town.
As I read about a local performance of The Magic Flute, James fanned his letter to dry.
“I hope you didn't threaten him,” I warned James. If he had, I could do naught about it, but I could not live without Alex. These had become the happiest days of my life. We needed the money, but I feared my lecturing James about the art of diplomacy hadn't sunk in.
“That isna my way, you know that.” He stood, as if ready to give a speech to Congress, and read: “Certainly you did not show the man of honor,” he recited in a chiding tone, “in taking the advantage of the afflicted, when calling on you as a protector in the time of distress. Your answer I shall expect this evening or in the morning early, as I am determined to wait no longer. I know my lot. I shall abandon my wife for good, in return for a cash payment of one thousand dollars.”
I staggered backward and knocked a pitcher to the floor. “A thousand dollars! Are you daft?”
He folded the letter. “I offered to let him pay me in installments, interest free.”
I couldn't even look at h
im. Alex had told me he would face this when the time came. Now the time had come. Would he abandon me—or pay James that exorbitant sum?
Chapter Fifteen
Severus
I awoke, drenched in sweat, my nightshirt stuck to my skin. The nightmares had returned, those awful dreams that so defined who I was, and what I'd been. Only when they persisted did I feel the need to satisfy my darker urges. Now they recurred with greater intensity.
My mind drifted as I remembered that time and place so long ago, when my life changed forever.
I worshipped my father. The tall lean strong-willed God-fearing scholar and magistrate Albert Black lavished love and affection on my mother and my sister Louisa.
When Father met a premature death in a drowning accident, we clung to one another in our shared devastation and grief. Mother found herself unable to cope with her grief and often turned to me for solace and comfort. I saw nothing amiss in her need to feel my arms around her, for I was her reminder of the man she had loved and lost.
When, one night, she came to my bedroom and crept into my bed, whispering, “Hold me close, please, Severus,” I still saw no harm in the coming together of mother and child. However, when her fingers traced their way across my chest and then down to my stomach, I began to tremble. Then her fingers touched that which I knew they should not. I tried to pull away but she shushed me.
“Be quiet, my son, my beautiful Severus. You are the mirror image of your dear father. Do you not imagine he would want you to take care of me, to service the needs of your dear mother in her desperate need?”
I said not one word as I lay rigid, Mother's fingers coaxing me to a state of expectation I had never previously experienced. She shrugged off her chemise and climbed atop my trembling body. I felt her heat as she lowered herself onto my throbbing manhood.
“Mother…” I tried to protest, but she placed a finger on my lips. I fell silent as she rocked back and forth on me. I felt her shudder and in my shame, I gave way to my own animal instincts. She fell into a deep sleep and I lay still, not wanting her to wake and force herself upon me again.
As wrong as I knew it to be, she began to visit my bed twice, often thrice a week. Once, she screamed her passion so loud that Louisa called out from the landing hallway to ask if all was well. Mother brazenly rose from my bed, still wet from our spending, pulled on her chemise, went to the bedroom door and opened it. She told Louisa she had visited me upon hearing my screams, brought on by nightmares of Father's drowning. Whether Louisa believed this outright lie, I knew Mother neither knew nor cared. I never, ever spoke of the matter with my sister.
I knew this liaison to be sinfully wrong. As time went by, I became determined to end her hold upon me. But she would have none of my pleas to end our licentious incest, and demanded even more as time dragged on.
One night, much to the surprise and shock of the villagers, Grantly House, our family home for four generations, burnt to the ground in a mysterious fire. I lay next to Mother one last time, my final escape from her aberrant clutches now almost complete. As my hands closed round her throat, I shivered with a new excitement, a sense of arousal I never before experienced. As she gasped, her last breath accompanying the final seconds of life, an unseen force possessed my soul. Within seconds my second self found life and purpose.
The following morning, constables discovered her charred remains in the ruins of the house. My sister Louisa was found in her own bedroom huddled in a corner, the victim of smoke inhalation, her body spared from the all-engulfing flames. The constables encountered me wandering the grounds incoherently. I behaved as if deep in shock. They accepted my story of being unable to reach my mother and sister despite my best efforts.
After inheriting a small fortune, I went to London for an education under the leading practitioners at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. My chosen profession was a far cry from what my loving father mapped out for me.
Chapter Sixteen
Eliza
To-night I am too tired to write much, with Angelica ill and Philip whining that the tutors work him like a slave. Alex came home exhausted and retreated to his study. Mrs. Reynolds never replied—an admission of guilt, mayhap? Many of our government's men craved seeing Alex crash, before he had a chance to even contemplate a bid for the presidency. I still considered it a nasty ploy and did not mention this second letter to him.
But later that eve, when I entered his study to discuss purchasing new furnishings, he was not there. The open ledger lay upon his desk. I approached it to take a look. The sum of $600 in the withdrawal column astonished me. I looked closer. Had I read it wrong? No, $600 had come out. He always kept meticulous records of our personal finances. I sank into his leather chair, staring at the entry. Please be an error, I begged. It should only be $6 or $60. But Alex did not err when it came to finances.
This was not my place, but I needed speak to him. I searched all over the house and the yard. No sign of him.
Maria
James came home with five bottles of whisky, a dozen lampreys and a mysterious smile. Then he whisked a box from his pocket and presented it to me. “For my beautiful and talented wife.” I opened the box to a gleaming pearl necklace.
“Heaven above, where did you get this? Marie Antoinette's personal armoire?” I stared at the gems, too shocked to even thank him.
“At Burque Jewelers if you must know.” He uncorked a bottle.
“I mean where did you get the money?” Then it came to me. “Oh, God. Did Alex…”
Without another word, he pulled wads of notes from both britches pockets. They kept coming and coming, like a magic trick.
“Aye, lass, the secretary of our treasured treasury, the wizened wizard of the fiscal world himself, gave in and remitted the first installment of my modest demand.” He brandished a smug smirk.
“The first installment?” I swept the notes off the table, not wanting to see them. “How much is here?”
“Six hundred, with the other four to follow. I made it easy on him, gave him a fortnight.” He took a sip of wine and wiped his mouth with one of the bank notes. “Any more of this comes in, I shall wipe t'other end with it. Haar!” He guffawed like a pirate.
So I was worth a thousand dollars…for now. If this was treasury money, Mrs. Hamilton, if not the entire Congress, would hear about this. God help me, I couldn't end our liaison. My love for Alex grew stronger each day. Now I longed for him even more.
Eliza
As Christmas approached, I hoped to replace a few items around the house. Our aging furnishings looked shabby and unstylish, our tables scratched and nicked, our rugs frayed at the edges. Loath as I was to broach the subject with my husband, I needed to discuss the gravity of this huge withdrawal from our account.
With supper eaten, the dishes cleared and the children abed, I approached him in his study. Engrossed in some documents, his reading specs perched on his nose, he appeared older, from years of laboring late into the night.
“Alex, may I have a moment, please?” I never sat in his presence until invited.
He gestured to the chair across from him. With gratitude I sank into the worn leather. “As we do a fair amount of entertaining, some new rugs and furnishings would more appropriately reflect our status. Are we able to make some purchases, to the sum of, say…six hundred dollars?” I watched for his reaction. He blanched at the amount and avoided looking me in the eye.
“That is excessive.” He pulled off his specs and rubbed the graying hair at his temples. “We're not entertaining royalty. Mayhap I can spare a hundred or so, but nowhere near your request.”
My anger rising, I clenched my jaw. “The Treasury Secretary of the United States, unable to afford furnishing his own house?” I itched to reveal what I'd seen in the ledger. “We have substantial savings. Your salary more than covers our expenses. We hardly live beyond our means. Why is this such a hardship?”
He reached for his wine goblet, and finding it empty, put it back. As he ran his
palm over his forehead, I noticed his hairline was beginning to recede. “I'll give you some funds with my next pay. Friday. But I wish you had asked me earlier.”
How much earlier? I wondered. Before he'd made that enormous withdrawal? “I would have, but I have duties as well. Running a household, raising children…”
“Enough, Betsey.” He held up his hand, a signal the conversation was over. “I said I'd give you some money, now let me return to work so I can pay for all these flub-dubs you want.”
“Yes, sir.” I left him alone. If it were a small amount, I wouldn't have cared. But this withdrawal nearly bankrupted us. How I hoped he hadn't fallen into the speculating trap with the likes of James Reynolds. But my husband wasn't about to tell me why he'd withdrawn this large sum, and this greatly disturbed me. I'd never kept aught from Alex. But he never shared all with me. I'd have to find another way to trace the path of our missing funds. He wasn't the only person with connections in the bank system. He might be the Treasury Secretary, but I was Mrs. Secretary!
Maria
With Christmas three days away, we planned to visit my mother and brother in Newburgh. James had paid debts with some of the money Alex had given him. If naught else, James was honorable. He might duck out of a duel, but never a debt. He'd starve before he'd owe anyone, and he'd proved it by letting us starve a few times.
We moved into posher lodgings in High Street across from the market. Our three-story brick house, twenty-four by thirty-four feet, was the largest we'd ever lived in. We had a separate kitchen, washhouse and stable.
I now taught three violin pupils. But my income went on lessons for myself. My instructor, Mrs. Platz, a Vienna native, had taken a violin lesson from Wolfgang Mozart ten years ago. Apparently in as dire straits as we were, Mr. Mozart took on pupils to supplement his income. But Mrs. Platz told me a Viennese friend had written her that he'd died on December fifth.