Chapter 7
Black mists part, and I realize that I am carried into my bed chamber at home. I am only vaguely conscious that it is Daniel who is carrying me to the bed. I sink into darkness and float back up into the dim light to hear garbled bits of frantic discussion. A voice, maybe Joseph, “doctor at number seventeen….across Hanover…”
Another voice, certainly Daniel, “…put him to bed… I’ll… the doctor…” I don’t want him to leave, but am unable to speak or stay clear of the encroaching mist. The candles gutter quietly and go dark.
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A sensation like rising from sleep to find daylight, but there is no daylight, only the darkness of night. I see a neighbor to whom I have not been properly introduced standing by my bed. His voice sounds very distorted and distant. “Fever of unknown origin…. dangerously high….. frequent washing with cool water.” Again the dark mists engulf me.
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Blinding light drives sharp needles into my head. I keenly feel the cold and am in much pain, aching throughout my body. Before the mists recede, I am aware that there are voices around me, but none of the language makes sense. It is like water flowing over stones, constant and incomprehensible. The black curtains part, and I see my servants, Joseph and Mary Anne, trying to help me, but a fiend is blocking them from me. How I recognize the creature as a fiend, I can not tell, for it has some features I know as belonging to Daniel and some that are not natural to this world. It has Daniel’s form and face, but one hand is a ragged wicked appendage with razor-like claws dripping with gore. With that fearsome extremity it scrapes at my chest, leaving me in great agony. I beg Joseph and Mary Anne to help me, but they are unable to hear me over the fiend’s roar insisting that they are to abandon me. I can only comprehend some of its speech…”gross incompetence… more harm than good… I’ll tend… myself,” in a voice like a thousand cannons. My servants leave me in the grips of the monster who leans over my bed its smiling danielface and whispers to me with a gentle danielvoice, and touches my head with a caressing danielhand while its true fiend’s claw excavates my chest to hold up beating slices of my heart that it displays before me before flicking them against the wall.
I plea to be released from its ravenous maw, but the fiend only taunts me by cooing as one would with a baby, “What is my pretty Will trying to say? What sweet nonsense he is speaking.”
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I am again in the depths of darkness. The candles sputter and flicker. I see a man standing at foot of bed, leaning heavily on one of the posts that hold up the canopy above me. With two human hands he is clutching the post as though he could not stand without it. I think for a moment that the man is Daniel, but I see that he is staring at me and weeping, calling my name over and over. I don’t remember seeing a grown man weep before, so I recognize this must be the fiend returned in Daniel’s form. Then a long snaky tail comes from behind him scaly and grey, whipping through the air. I am petrified and unable to move as the tail burrows beneath the blankets that cover me. It coils around my legs again and again like a jungle vine, holding me captive so that it can penetrate and probe my most secret parts. My moans of agony only prod the fiend to mock me by sobbing harder.
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The light returns to torment me, and with the light the fiend has brought a man like a soldier in a scarlet coat. I can not tell at first if he is another fiend, but they refer to each other as ‘colonel’ with much bowing and protocol, so he must be another unnatural being to be so familiar. The scarlet one tells the Daniel one, “something similar… in India…. critical to lower fever…. wash with rum or other alcohol …. evaporates faster… rather nasty business.” I beg for Joseph to come rescue me, but the two fiends ignore my cries.
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The light has fled. All is dark. By the shadowy flicker of candles, the fiend hovers over my bed. Its danielvoice implores me to fight harder, and I would gladly yield now to its caresses, but its clawed hand has cut away all of my heart, and my chest is left a gaping, bloody wound.
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Needles from the harsh light torment my eyes. The fiend’s tail is bedevilng me, wrapping around my throat to choke me as a snake would its prey. l watch with impotent horror as the fiend’s tail creeps down my body so that it can pinch and sting my manhood. Continuously I beg the fiend to end my shame and my pain, but it is provoked only to put its danielface close to mine and pretend to be frustrated, “Please, sweet one, tell me what you want. I can’t understand you.”
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The light withdraws, and I now fear it will not return. Beyond the little circle of dim light from the candle, the fiend waltzes with Death in the darkness. Mary Anne appears, and in her face I see dread. She holds a basin of water that the fiend dips cloths into to soak them before placing them on me. My impending death forces me to bargain with the fiend. I beg it to destroy the letter that I wrote to Daniel so long ago. The fiend cocks its head like a puzzled hound. “What’s that, Will?” it asks.
“The letter,” I beg. “Get the letter back and burn it. When I am dead, no one must know.”
It looks angry. “No talk of dying, Will! You will beat this.”
Mary Anne tries to help me. “What’s he talking about… a letter? What kind of letter?”
The fiend will not be turned from my destruction. “It’s just the ravings of his poor fevered brain, I fear.”
“You must destroy it! My life would be for naught if it destroys my reputation,” I cry.
It taunts me by denying, “There is no letter, William. Don’t worry. Just rest and get better.”
I feel the mists rising around me, so I insist one last time. “The letter I wrote about Aubrey St. James.” The face of the fiend hardens and shifts with understanding.
Mary Anne asks, “Who is Ow-berry James?”
The fiend is goaded to fury by the revelation of its secret, and it grabs the basin and roars, “Stop yapping, woman, and go back to the kitchen.” Its face is no longer like Daniel’s, but is twisted by anger and changed beyond recognition.
I despair as she leaves since none are left to help me.
The fiend draws near, and again assumes the gentle danielface and combs his danielfingers through my hair as one would with a beloved spouse. “That letter was burned long ago,” it lies. “I promise that it can not hurt you now.”
Death awaits in the shadows, and the instrument of my destruction is still possessed by the fiend. I weep, and the tears flow into the hole left when my heart was ripped away.
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My bedchamber was dim and grey when I awoke, all of the colours washed out and muted. I was looking at the windows that overlooked Hanover Square, the velvet drapes pulled back to allow in a little light. The hush before dawn, I wondered? No, since the windows face the sunrise, the weakness of the light must indicate that it was just past twilight. With great effort, I turned my head to the right and found that Daniel had pulled a chair adjacent to the bed, his arms cradling his head on the counterpane next to my hips. I could see his face, calm and relaxed in his sleep, looking quite innocent and boyish. His mouth was parted, and his deep, even breathing edged towards light snoring. The tranquility of his face called to my mind the details of the odd dreams that I had been having, but they were unclear and lacked clarity. Daniel was in them in some other form. An evil spirit, perhaps? I was uneasy without knowing exactly why and touched my chest half expecting to find an empty cavity there.
I reached my hand towards his head and lightly caress the dark, glossy curls, and dropped my arm to the bed. Daniel’s eyes opened with drowsy reluctance, then he jumped to his feet, startled by my stare. The chair crashed to the floor behind him, and he stood, chest heaving, eyes wild, an unbroken stallion seeing the saddle for the first time. The moment of panic passed when he realized that my eyes had followed him, or perhaps when I whispered, “What time?”
“William?” he asked. “I thought…” He quickly stepped to the bed and rested his palm on my forehead. He inhaled a long, shuddering breath before making a noise almost like a sob, “Thank God!”
“How do you feel?” he murmured softly to me.
“Weak. Tired. Is it …evening?”
Daniel grabbed one of my hands between both of his, patting me soothingly. “Yes, it is,” he looked at the clock on the mantel. “Eight and a little past.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Have I …been ill…all day then?”
He gave short, bitter bark of laughter that was devoid of mirth. “No. Almost four days have passed. Today is Wednesday.”
“Wednesday?” I wondered. How was it possible that so much time had eluded me?
“Do you need anything?” Daniel asked me gently.
“Is there any… water?” I asked, gravelly-voiced.
“Certainly,” he assured me. “But let me send for the doctor first.”
He strode to the hall, and bellowed, “Joseph! Joseph! Come quickly.” He returned to the bedchamber, and poured water from a pitcher on the tea table into a crystal beaker. Kneeling beside the bed, he cupped the back of my head for support and held the glass to my mouth to allow me a few sips. I heard the clatter of feet on the stairs, and Joseph came running in, the fastest he had moved in years, his face creased with anxiety. Daniel stood up and clapped my servant on the back. “The fever appears to have broken. Run to fetch the doctor.”
Joseph sighed with relief, and I gave him a little smile. “Does my heart good, sir,” he said, “to see you looking better. I’ll be back with the doctor double quick.”
While we waited, Daniel fussed over me in a hundred ways, fluffing my pillows, smoothing the counterpane, brushing my hair back from my face.
Soon the doctor arrived, and boomed as he entered the chamber, “So our patient has abandoned Morpheus’ arms? We were all rather worried about you, sir.”
Daniel hovered while the doctor rested his hand against my forehead, muttering, “Good… good. The fever seems to have broken.” He grabbed my wrist to feel my pulse with his broad, flat fingertips. “Hmmm…. weak, but steady. A very curious case, sir, most provoking.” He turned to Daniel to instruct, “As long as he fever does not return, he may take a little light broth for a few days, then some boiled fowl and vegetables. Nothing in a sauce for a while, nothing too rich or too heavy.”
“Yes, I’ll have the cook make some now,” Daniel said.
“And to drink, some weak tea at first, and then perhaps some port wine, well diluted with water.”
I protested weakly, “Pray do not… take any wines from… my cellar…to spoil them by adding… water.” I breathed heavily from the effort of the long speech before continuing, “Too humiliating… to be thought of as… a barbarian.”
Daniel grinned at me. “Now I know that you are recovering, William, if you have resumed fretting over what Society thinks of you.” He winked at me. “I’ll go see to that broth.”
The doctor pulled the chair beside the bed again, sitting down to ask, “May I ask you a few questions to fill in my scant knowledge?” I nodded. “The fever came upon you rather suddenly, did it not?”
“Over two … or three hours.”
“You were very fortunate to have the faithful attendance of your friend, Colonel Moore.” He thought for a moment. “Although I fear that he rather terrorised your servants.” He chuckled. “Treated them as though they were troops threatening to bolt at the first sound of cannon fire. Quite the martinet. However, I could not have asked for a better assistant.”
“How… so?” I asked.
“I don’t think that he has left your side for these four days and nights. Watched you as intently as I would have myself. A great friend to you, sir. Brings to mind some of the friends of the readings of, what-do-you-call-it, uhh.. classical antiquity. A regular Castor and Pollux you are”
“Castor and Pollux… were twin brothers,” I said. “You are thinking of… Damon… and Pythias?”
“What? Yes, yes, I see. To be sure,” he mused. “More your line than mine, I daresay.
While the doctor prattled on, I thought about how his opinion about Daniel’s faithfulness seemed to be at variance with my experience of him. Something about the dreams I had while I ailed also floated around just out of sight, never coming quite into view.
My thoughts were interrupted by Daniel’s return with a cheery, “Here’s a little soup to restore you to health, Will.”
Mary Anne followed with a bowl on a tray that she placed on a table by the bed. The doctor peered into the dish and and nodded his approval. “That’ll do nicely, I think.” He picked up his hat and made a small bow to me. “Sir William, I leave you in capable hands. A few days of rest, and you will be in the pink of health.” He nodded to Daniel, “Colonel, I bid you a good evening. With your permission, I shall return tomorrow.”
“Thank you, doctor. Until then.”
Mary Anne stood staring at me. “Oh, sir, what a fright you gave us all,” she exclaimed in her broad country accent.
“It is kind of you…to be concerned,” I said slowly.
“I could hardly sleep anight for the fear,” she moaned. “You was carrying on something awful.”
Daniel returned to the chamber after seeing the doctor out. “That will do, Mary Anne. No need to frighten him.”
She rolled her eyes, “He’s calmed considerable now! When he was crying in fear about that letter like every demon of Hell was after him, I like to have run from the house myself.”
“That’s enough!” Daniel said very firmly, his temper barely under control.
Alarmed, I asked, “Letter? I talked about… a letter?”
Mary Anne said, “Fairly raved you did, about a letter to Ow-berry James.”
“Daniel!” I blurted involuntarily.
“Woman!” he bellowed. “Cease your stupid prattle and return to the kitchen at once.” He grabbed her arm and dragged her from the chamber. “Don’t come back up here until I ask you to!”
“Daniel,” I begged weakly. “What did I… say about Aubrey… St. James?”
“Nothing,” he said shortly.
“She knows!” I cried.
“She doesn’t know anything,” Daniel scoffed.
I despaired, “I’ll be ruined.”
“There is no letter, Will,” Daniel reassured me. “Well, not any longer anyway. There may be some ashes scattered in an abandoned British fort in the high sierra of Spain,” he chuckled, “but I challenge anyone to raise them from the dead.” He came beside the bed and started gently lifting me into a semi-sitting position, propping me up with pillows against the headboard. “Let’s get a little broth down you.”
“Don’t change… the subject,” I demanded. “The letter. What do you mean?”
He spread a napkin over my chest. “I’m not sure why I bother with this,” he laughed. “You’ve rather ruined that nightshirt with slobber and snot over the past few days.” He scooped a little broth into the spoon and held it to my lips.
I scowled, “I can feed… myself.”
“Open!” he ordered. I was too weary to fight and reluctantly complied. “And I win again,” he laughed softly.
“You did not!” I insisted, “The letter?”
He sighed as he held another spoon of broth up to me. “I told you everything there is to know. I burned it in a campfire in Spain.” Another spoon was jabbed in my mouth. “It can never do you even the slightest bit of harm.”
My confusion must have shown on my face. “But you said…”
He cocked his head, “What did I say? When?” he asked curiously.
“Your response to my… confession.”
He snorted, “It was hardly a confession, William, and I don’t remember what I said.” He scraped the last of the broth out of the bowl. “Shall I go to the kitchen for more?”
I shook my head.
“Do you want to change out of that soiled shirt?”
“Stop fussing.” I pointed to the chair. “Sit.”
He slowly raised a single eyebrow and studied me. “What’s this about?”
“You owe me an explanation.”
It took him a moment to recall. “Ah! Yes,” he smiled. “You want it now?”
“I’ve waited… fourteen years,” I said tartly.
He drew the chair up beside the bed, stretching his legs out before him. He fiddled with his cuffs and fidgeted in his seat.
“How to start?” he mused. I waited impatiently. “As you know, I am the son of a simple tradesman, blessed with neither fortune nor aristocratic blood. Through a mysterious bequest from an unknown benefactor, I was allowed to attend Macalester’s School where I met you.” I made a gesture to indicate that this was all well known to me. “I repeat this only to emphasize how little I had in common with the other students.” He sighed. “Every boy in the school knew I was his social inferior and made it his mission to make me miserably aware of the fact. Except one.” He gave me an indulgent smile.
“You were the only one who made my life endurable, and that was the least of your sterling qualities,” he said.
“Ridiculous!” I sighed. “It’s not true, and even so,… what does that have… to do with anything?”
“It is relevant. You were a wee, fragile-looking thing in those days, but always had a kind word for everyone. And so intelligent!” he exclaimed. “Even the masters were afraid of your intellect.”
“Nonsense.”
“It is all true, very true,” he insisted, “Of course, I was a scamp and a scoundrel, always tardy for lessons, never prepared, a rude retort ever at my lips.” Daniel chuckled ruefully, “What endeared you to me always was your willingness to follow me into whatever escapades and shenanigans I could devise.” He shook his head, “Your enthusiastic trust was most unexpected and truly appreciated.”
“How many beatings… did I endure for your… sake?” I wondered.
“More than you deserved,” he laughed, “but not as many as you had earned, I’m sure.”
I scoffed.
“Very quickly we grew quite close and our friendship bloomed into a relationship of rather a different nature.”
I interrupted, “You really don’t have to rehash that.”
He studied me coolly. “Yes,” he drawled, a rather opaque quality in his dark eyes that I
could not read. “I forget how sensitive you are on that subject. In any case, if I might
add one more embarrassing detail?”
“As if I could prevent you,” I whispered.
“After the masters extinguished the lights at night, I would lie awake, unable to snatch even the slightest morsel of sleep until you had crept into my bed and curled up between my ribs and my arm.’ He smiled at me rather sweetly. “Once you had burrowed in, all was right with the world as far as I was concerned, and I could go to sleep.” Then he smirked, “At least as long as I did not have to satisfy your prodigious passion.”
“Daniel!” I hissed.
“You really did have the most insatiable appetites then,” he laughed. “Not that I was complaining.”
“You are vile and unspeakable,” I grumbled.
“Perhaps, but you would not have me change, I daresay.” He looked a little sad. “The time when we were sixteen or seventeen years of age is one I remember fondly. I was happy… and in love.” I stared at him gape-mouthed. “Oh, don’t look so surprised! I thought you were the most remarkable creature I had ever seen. Still do for that matter.”
Gruffly, I conceded, ”I thought the same about you.”
“And now?” he inquired.
I reflected, “I’m reserving judgement until I hear the rest of this tale.”
“Well, yes. I knew how you felt then.” He paused, “And I know how you feel now even if you won’t admit it. In any event, when the time came for us to part at the end of our school days, you made it less difficult by going about it with such dry-eyed acceptance. It was painful, was it not?”
“It was,” I admitted, “More than I thought I could bear.”
“Where did we find the strength? Those first weeks I was in the army without you, I wanted to crawl under a tree and die. The only thing that kept me going was looking forward to your letters. I cherished them more than you could know.”
“I think that I have some idea.” I had experienced the same elation upon recognizing his familiar scrawl.
He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, perhaps you do. In any event, one day we were camped near Badajoz, on the banks of the Rio Guadiana, when the mail from England caught up with us. I was so excited to see that there were two letters from you. I don’t remember the first one at all, something about your studies, I suppose. But the second…”
“The one about Aubrey,” I said with much emotion.
“Yes. Poor Aubrey St. James. I don’t recall that you had ever mentioned him more than once or twice in passing. When I read those lines with your litany of…”
“Please don’t,” I interrupted. “I burn with shame still.”
He looked at me sharply. “Why? Your behaviour was noble and honourable. Your tale of the abuse that poor boy suffered at the hands of his father filled me with rage. Your role in helping him escape to France to find his mother! The courage you displayed! The sacrifices you made!” He shook his head in amazement. “I would have thought it rank fiction except that it was too characteristic of you for me to doubt the veracity. I had never heard of anyone acting such a magnificently selfless way.”
I was shocked to hear him say this. “Your response at the time certainly indicated that you thought otherwise.”
He was baffled. “I can’t imagine why you would think that. I was filled with such love and admiration for you. I don’t remember the exact words, but while I don’t have your skills as a writer…”
“I still have your letter, and I can quote it word for word.”
“Please do!”
“Between the curt opening ‘Sir’ and the rude close, ‘your obedient, et cetera’ came only three lines: ’In receipt of your letter about Aubrey St James. At last your true nature is revealed. I shall save your missive as a reminder of the what you have become.’
Considering that I had admitted to you some three or four crimes that could lead me to the gallows, you must see how the coldness of your letter lends itself to no interpretation other than disapproval. “
Daniel frowned. “I said I do not have your talents for scribbling, and that is proof. I intended to express my admiration, and that leads me to my point. In my eyes you possess every manly virtue while I have been nothing but a bundle of vices, and at seventeen, I felt that disparity mostly keenly.”
“Daniel!” I snapped. “You do us both a great disservice. You make me sound like a marble saint.”
“Be that as it may,” he said, waving aside my objections, “I resolved then and there as I read that letter about your rescue of young St. James that I could not subject you to my wickedness any further and that I must reform my ways. I set as my goal the day when I had earned equality with you by balancing your wealth and family connections and your outstanding character with the glory I could win on the field of battle.”
This revelation left me speechless.
“It took fourteen years, but at last the distinctions I won in the defeat of the French at Waterloo made me realize that I could approach you as an equal, that I was worthy of calling you my friend.”
I quivered with emotion, as I studied his face that was flushed with pride. “Is that story true? That you shunned contact of fourteen years until you could return a hero?”
“Yes, that is the reason.”
“That is so…” I stuttered in a shaky voice. “So… so…”
Daniel supplied helpfully, “Noble? Romantic?”
I found the word I was looking for. “Stupid! Moronic! Idiotic! I have never heard a more useless reason in my life.”
His face fell. “William, I thought that you would find it touching!”
“Touching?” I hissed. “You left me suffering from a broken heart for all those weeks and months, not knowing if you were dead or alive while you were seeking glory to inflate your ego?”
“Well, when you put it that way, I admit it doesn’t sound as convincing.”
“I am incredulous. If I had any strength in me, you would be on your arse in the street right now.”
“William, don’t be angry. I was young and foolish.” He knelt beside the bed and grabbed one of my hands, imploring, “I can’t bear to lose you again. While you were ill these last few days, I was tormented in hell for fear of you leaving me. You must forgive me! You must!”
“Those are just empty words, Daniel.”
He ripped off his cravat and began opening his shirt. “What are you doing?” I demanded in a panic.
“Look!” he said, fishing something out through his open collar. “Do you remember this?” He held in the palm of his hand a silver pendant that was suspended on a chain around his neck. He thumbed it open to show a lock of fine blond hair on one side and a portrait of me at a much younger age. “That look of sweet innocence in your face? Only I knew the fires that burned behind those eyes.”
I fingered the pendant, twin to the one downstairs in the library, the portrait of him that I had kept.
“See, Will?” he asked softly. “It is not just meaningless words. I have carried a reminder of you next to my heart all this time.”
I closed my eyes. “Daniel, you stun me.”
“But in a good way?” he asked hopefully.
I opened my eyes and reached over to thumb away a tear that was trickling down his cheek. “Can there be a good way to be stunned?” I wondered. With some effort I moved away from him on the bed. His face looked frightened. I pulled back the counterpane, and patting the space I left empty for him, said, “Get in.”
“William!” he exclaimed. “You are not yet well enough for …. that.”
I said, “Keep your breeches on, you randy satyr! I only want you to hold me again.”
He let out a slow, ragged breath. “So you forgive me?”
I squinted at him as he removed his boots. “Can I sleep on that? Let you know in the morning?”
Before he extinguished the candles he gave me a wide smile of unbounded joy. “Absolutely!” he said as he crawled beside me.
It took us a minute of shifting around and jockeying for position before we were comfortable with me again nestled between his arm and his ribs, my head on his chest.
With a single finger under my chin he lifted my face to his and gently touched his lips to mine. There was scarcely any pressure behind the kiss, only warm, velvety softness. I again lay my head down.
We stayed like that in silence for some time before Daniel said, “You have grown into a magnificent man, Will, but you fit against me better when you were sixteen.” I could hear the smile in his voice and also a quiver of a much deeper emotion.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and said, “I think that we will find it’s the clothes. We’re not accustomed to wearing this many garments in bed together.”
A soft chuckle in the dark, “I look forward to testing your hypothesis, William.”
I fell asleep with Daniel’s heart thumping beneath my cheek.
