A Wicked Way to Burn

by Margaret Miles

  “What about your own pet frog, Phineas? When did he hop in this time? And why is it that you let him stay, when his kind is bound to give offense to all your decent customers?”

  Those seated by Peter Lynch eyed the Frenchman in the shadows expectantly, while the speech drew groans from some at the back tables.

  “You know, you’re the very first to complain, Peter, since Mr. Fortier joined us yesterday evening.”

  “Maybe you can explain what brought him to Bracebridge, where he’s got no proper business that I know of. And then he can tell us if he imagines he’s going to spend another quiet night in a bed upstairs.”

  “He’s very likely staying here,” the landlord responded patiently, “because it’s cheap, as you all know … unlike Mr. Pratt’s fine lodgings up the hill. Show me he’s a bit of trouble to anyone, and I’ll have him out. Meanwhile, my guests may come and go as they please. It’s still a free country. As to his business—” Phineas Wise regarded the miller with a gleam in his eye.

  “—as to his business, well, I think many of us know what that might be, don’t we, gentlemen? And I say good luck to him, as I would to any man trying to coax a young lady—or any other kind of female, for that matter.”

  “Especially a young colt like Mary!” someone called, and several of the men joined in with loud good humor.

  “You know what else the ladies say about Frenchmen, don’t you, Peter?” called an older man, before hooting with laughter.

  For a moment, it looked as though the red-faced miller might leap over his seat. But instead, a determined look crept across Peter Lynch’s broad features, while his great voice softened to a syrupy growl.

  “Oh, he’s not afraid to walk in here, bold as brass, and sniff around—as long as I’m off trying to get custom for my mill. I suppose he saw me riding into Worcester on Monday, and came running here to try his luck. But I’m back now; and I’m only saying God’s truth when I tell him he’d be better off keeping to his own kind. I’ll just add what we all feel—that any of his kind that hope to get half-breeds by our women will soon be escorted straight to hell!”

  At this, the silent young man jumped lithely to his feet, throwing out a curse and nearly overturning the table in front of the red-cloaked stranger. The miller, too, rose up and spit on his hands in preparation, followed by a wobbling Dick Craft. While others braced themselves, the two old men silhouetted against the leaping firelight spun their chairs around eagerly, hoping for a new tale to add to their threadbare stock. And Phineas Wise hurried to the back of the bar to pick up a stout ash stick he’d often found handy in a brawl.

  It was in this final moment of relative calm, when calculations of positions and odds were swiftly being made, that a sound—not a very loud sound, but one that is frequently found to be commanding—gained the attention of each and every one of the Blue Boar’s inhabitants, calling an immediate truce.

  Its cause was simple. The old stranger, who had been in the process of rising when the excitement began, had taken a purse from an inner pocket of the scarlet cloak he wore. In the confusion, he’d tipped the open bag until its contents fell in a glittering stream onto the table before him. There, more than two dozen pieces of gold sang out loudly as they danced and reeled against each other, and finally settled down before an audience that was as fascinated as a swaying cobra hearing a snake charmer’s horn.

  The stranger bent his head quickly. He picked up the coins from the table, then dropped them back into the leather pouch, one by one. Around him, eyes narrowed in speculation.

  Phineas Wise quietly set his club against the wall. He bent to retrieve a few more pieces that had skipped to the floor. While he held them, he was surprised to see that they were Dutch gold—guldens, from God knew where. He stood and gave them up a little wistfully. Then he retreated a few paces, to be well away from the circle of staring faces.

  Slowly, the men sat down to their tables again. But they continued to watch the stranger as he produced a dull coin from another pocket, and put it by his empty tankard. After that he gave a nod to the landlord, snugged the brown bundle up under his arm again, and made his way carefully toward the open door.

  Gabriel Fortier was in the doorway ahead of him. The young Frenchman stopped to look back with a frown, then drew his foot over the frame and disappeared into the evening.

  The old stranger seemed to hesitate, but soon followed, and the tavern let out its breath.

  Candles again flickered quietly, and conversation, when it resumed, was subdued. Several times, one man or another looked deeply into the dark recess that now held only a table and two empty chairs.

  Who was the old man in the scarlet cloak, they asked themselves and each other, and how had he come by all of that money? Everybody knew that gold and silver coins were scarce throughout the colonies. Spanish silver dollars—“pieces of eight”—were sometimes seen, as well as British sterling. But most silver received was sent straight back to England, to help pay for the flood of goods the colonies required—or else it was melted for plate, or other items. So it was with gold. And the odds of seeing Dutch coins? They were very, very slim.

  Where had the stranger come by it? And more to the point, where was the frail old man going with his gold, out on the dark road at night, and all alone?

  The two quails by the fire (whose names were Tyndall and Flint) relit their pipes, and issued the first of several dire predictions involving footpads, demons, and wolves. Meanwhile, Phineas Wise shook his head as he went to stand on the doorstep and jingle pockets full of copper. He peered out and saw that the chilly night was less complete than it had appeared from inside the lighted tavern. A bit of bloodred twilight still clung to the western horizon, while the sky overhead was a deep blue dotted with small, pale clouds, and several points of twinkling stars.

  A breath of cold flowed down the hillside that the stranger had just begun to climb. Eventually, the road the old man followed disappeared near the crest in dense forest, with a wide stretch of old burned-over meadow coming before. As he continued to watch, the landlord heard the lonely voice of a whippoorwill calling out from nearby woods. It cried, it was said, for lost souls who wandered in the night. The practical man listened, and half believed. Someone would die soon. The cry of a nearby owl joined that of the other bird, echoing Phineas Wise’s own unasked question in an eerie staccato.

  Whoo-who-whooo?

  Where was the old man going, Wise wondered, watching him climb slowly past dark fingers of a bending hemlock that overhung the road. There was no other tavern to stop in for a good five miles. Ahead, there were only a few isolated farms nestled in a hilly stretch of forest, and unprosperous ones at that. Was there something wrong with him? Didn’t he know how to tell direction? Beyond that, did the old man feel no fear? It was a puzzle, but in the end Wise turned back to his own hearth and business, and shut the tavern door firmly behind him.

  Inside, it was as if his customers could still hear the happy ring of the falling gold coins, while they called for more of the same. Now the miller, too, seemed concerned for the old man’s safety.

  “I only say,” maintained Peter Lynch, “that he’d be far better off investing it, than carrying it around.”

  “Investing it with you?” Dick Craft asked with a wink. The miller did not return his amusement.

  “Better than to lose it somewhere in the night,” Lynch intoned ominously.

  “Myself,” Dick continued, “I’ve lost more money in broad daylight than in the dark. But that’s rarely called stealing, is it? Not when there’s signed notes, and all, to make it right—”

  The miller’s glowering face soon made Dick bite his tongue, and remember that he spoke to a man quite used to doing business.

  The third of their party, Jack Pennywort, had less to say on the matter. His own concern was that he should be getting home, and that his wife would scold him properly if he came in late—or do even worse. This led to the usual comments from his heartier friends who fe
igned surprise that Jack should care. Undoubtedly, they joked, he had become accustomed to his punishment. What of it, if he should be locked outside his own door to sleep where he might? There could be unexpected pleasures in such a system, if a man knew where to look, and what to do about it. So then, why not stay a little longer?

  But Jack got up, found a copper or two for the landlord, and made his way somewhat unsteadily to the door. It should be added that this clumsiness was not entirely the result of drink. Jack had been dragging a clubfoot behind him all of his life. It was generally considered by his friends and neighbors to be quite a humorous appendage.

  Eventually, followed by loud laughter, the shuffling little man gained the door. His departure allowed the tavern to concentrate on an entering party of thirsty new arrivals, who jostled Jack rudely as they passed him on the sill.

  Chapter 4

  AT TUESDAY’S TWILIGHT, Richard Longfellow, the eccentric neighbor of Charlotte Willett, sat alone in his paneled study. As the light faded, he contemplated an object on one of the walls. The object was a portrait. Its subject was Eleanor Howard, a young woman with direct eyes, and hair that fell in dark ringlets.

  Longfellow continued to gaze, but he no longer saw the portrait. Instead, memory had taken over, giving him the only other images he would ever have of her striking beauty—for the original had been tragically lost.

  From time to time, he still imagined her sitting there beside him, sometimes rocking a cradle. But Eleanor Howard had been taken when an illness settled in her throat and choked the breath and life from her, as it had done to others nearby. His own grief at the loss of his fiancée had been shared by her sister Charlotte, who soon endured more sorrows of her own. Unlike Eleanor, Aaron Willett had refused to be bled, but in the end it had made no difference.

  Longfellow turned to the window, to find most of the sky’s color gone. It was lucky, he told himself, that he had learned long ago to enjoy a bachelor’s life. At least, he still had Charlotte. He had admired her from the first. Her features were nothing as special as Eleanor’s; he was reminded of the fact as he turned back to stare at the portrait once more, through the gloom. But Eleanor’s older sister had her own quiet charms, with an intelligent spark grown strong in a soul that had always been loved, and kindly treated. Charlotte, too, was capable of thinking eternal thoughts, possibly almost as capable as he was himself.

  Uncurling his legs, which had a habit of becoming entwined, Longfellow sprang to his feet, determined to buoy his mood by lighting a candle. Eleanor had frequently experienced bouts of feverish imagination and activity, coupled with an exciting lack of restraint. Charlotte’s mind was quieter, more even, but still quite curious … although it did sometimes seem to him that she tended to plod.

  Curiosity about the larger realities of the universe, things outside one’s personal life—that was the secret of lasting contentment! But when Longfellow felt the urge to philosophize, he imagined the scheme of things to be chaotic, and nearly unsolvable. He certainly held little hope for any rational system of order that tried to alter the petty obsessions of most of humanity, who did their best to ruin the world for each other. Wryly, he watched Charlotte perceive a natural harmony all around her, while she noticed human discord as a force of only minor importance. It was a rare turn of mind, he thought—possibly even one to be envied.

  Whatever the truths of the cosmos, her bright moods invariably spilled over onto his darker ones when the two sat and talked. She sometimes made him laugh out loud. Besides that, she listened well. And his neighbor had often helped him weather his frequent melancholia. She made him feel necessary … as her steadfast supporter, and as a good companion. He knew this to be a rare thing for a man whose quick, passionate nature had lost him nearly as many friends as he had ever claimed.

  Not that he minded having few friends. He was, after all, respected. And as long as there were new ideas to explore, experiments to be conducted and studied, seeds to plant and stars to ponder, who could be bothered with courting admiration? Let others fear loneliness. The cup offered up by the physical world was filled to overflowing.

  Energized by a new idea, Longfellow picked up the candlestick in front of him, and strode away from the fire toward a gold-framed mirror that graced one side of the simply appointed room. As he did so, he felt the pleasant flap of the long linen trousers he’d recently affected (taking the style of certain Italian peasants), which he wore outside his boots to further confound custom. The trousers were cool and comfortable, and they didn’t constrain him at the joints like common knee breeches, with buttons that bit into you when you sat. They also concealed lower legs he found quite adequate for the most part, if they did not bulge enough to meet fashionable standards.

  Lighting two more wax tapers that stood in brass-backed sconces on either side of the Venetian mirror, he peered at his own image. It was less beautiful than the one he had been contemplating on the wall, but it had the advantage of being alive. By the light of candles and fire, the mirror revealed a pliant, if solemn, face. It could have been a trifle underfed, but it had full lips, and now it experimented with a pleasant smile—nothing like the pinched, aristocratic sneer so popular in his former home by the Bay. Longfellow saw that false token all around him when he rode in to Boston to visit. It was enough to make a parson growl.

  Further study brought to light the presence of new gray hairs among the dark mass that fell down his back—tied, but neither pomaded nor powdered. Still thick, by God, for a man who could no longer call himself young. And the eyes were certainly distinctive—the rich color of hazelnut shells. It was fortunate, he told himself, he was not a vain man by nature.

  Moving away, Longfellow tapped the glass barometer that hung on the wall. For the moment, it held steady … steadier, he thought ruefully, than he felt himself. Would the evening never end?

  He knew he had become dangerously mercurial again. Right now, he had the urge to argue about something—anything. Perhaps Locke, or Rousseau, or some other misleading and overblown fool. Cicero would take whatever side was left in an argument, and keep it up until they were both worn out with it, run down like clocks and ready for sleep. But Cicero was late returning home.

  Longfellow sat at the pianoforte for a while, picking out a tune on the cool ivory keys, considering fate’s rude manners. In his father’s time, in Boston, Cicero had been far more than an adequate servant—in fact, he had nearly run his father’s city house … especially after Richard’s mother had died. He had also assisted the members of the family he’d “adopted” in delicate matters, often requiring a certain amount of finesse. At Jason Longfellow’s death, his will had ended the black man’s bondage, providing him with the legally required funds to remain free. But Cicero had agreed to stay in service to Richard Longfellow (who else, he asked, would have the job?) and had moved with him when the aging young man, in love, purchased the house next to the Howards four years before.

  Tonight, Cicero was down at the taproom of the Bracebridge Inn, imbibing news with his wine. Like his Roman namesake, he enjoyed society even while he frequently objected to it, and it to him. Since he was no longer a slave, he had a right to sit with the others. But for several reasons he preferred a warm, hidden nook around the chimney corner. Jonathan Pratt served him Madeira there, often bringing him stories as well. And as the evening progressed and the wine and rum flowed, Cicero frequently chuckled at what was meant for very few ears (and certainly not his own), coming from patrons warming themselves beside the fire.

  Bored again with his train of thought, Longfellow shifted, and started a new tune. “Maybe I’ll have to get a cat to talk to,” he muttered to himself, sulking while he cocked an ear at something in the distance.

  Abruptly, the front door opened and shut, and quick feet sounded in the hall. In another instant, Cicero stood before him, bent almost in two.

  “I came …” he gasped, “because I supposed … even in your mood … that you’d be interested in what I’ve h
eard …”

  Overcome, he again lowered a head that appeared to be topped by a gray, tailless, fashionably short-curled periwig, although it wasn’t.

  “Difficult for me to say,” Longfellow replied, waiting for more. It was not forthcoming. Cicero still fought for breath and equilibrium. Longfellow tapped his fingers on the piano lid impatiently. “And difficult for you, it seems. Another secret?”

  “No. Better hurry, though … the rest of the town’s … probably there already.”

  “Really.”

  “It seems Jack Pennywort … over at the Blue Boar … started walking up the Worcester road, following an old man who’s a stranger in these parts—aaaahhh! … and the old man … it seems that the old man … well, he caught fire! Ignited all by himself … nobody knows how.”

  There was quite a long pause, and the ormolu mantle clock chimed the hour.

  “He what?” Longfellow inquired, squinting with impatience.

  “They say … he … went up in flames.”

  Catching his breath, Cicero studied the effect his news had produced. He had been aware of his employer’s black humor since suppertime. He believed this new event would be able to change it, and perhaps provide them both with amusement for several days.

  “What—on the road? And who, if you don’t mind my asking, are they?” Longfellow queried, taking several steps to peer out of a window into the darkness. There were lights on the opposite hillside, where none should have been.

  “Over the bridge, up past the tavern. Jack Pennywort was the only one to see it. Some already say it’s the Devil’s work. Or witchcraft, at least. Jack claims there’s nothing left of the fellow at all!”