For I, in this savage place, had become so simplified, the grateful scholar of the rain and of the sea.
At last one afternoon late when the light was just dying, I was wakened by the savory aroma of a hot supper, and I knew that I had been drunk for a full day round the clock, and that she had not come.
I devoured the supper, as liquor never stops my hunger, and then I dressed in fresh clothes, and sat to thinking of what had become of me, and trying to calculate how long I had been in this place.
I thought it was twelve days.
I resolved then that no matter how despondent I became, I would drink nothing further. That I must be released or go mad.
And feeling disgust for all my weakness, I put on my boots, which I had not touched in all this time, and the new coat brought to me long ago by Charlotte, and went to the balustrade to look out over the sea. I thought, surely she will kill me rather than let me go. But it must be known one way or the other. This I can no longer endure.
Many hours passed; I drank nothing. Then Charlotte came. She was weary from her long day of riding and tending to the plantation, and when she saw that I was dressed, when she saw that I wore my boots and my coat, she sank down into the chair and wept.
I said nothing, for surely it was her decision whether or not I should leave this place, not mine.
Then she said: “I have conceived; I am with child.”
Again, I made no answer. But I knew it. I knew that it was the reason she had been away for so long.
Finally when she would do nothing but sit there, dejected, and sad, with her head down, crying, I said:
“Charlotte, let me go.”
At last she said that I must swear to her to leave the island at once. And that I must not tell anyone what I knew of her or her mother or of anything that had passed between us.
“Charlotte,” I said, “I will go home to Amsterdam on the first Dutch ship I can find in the harbor, and you will see me no more.”
“But you must swear to tell no one-not even your brethren in the Talamasca.”
“They know,” I said. “And I shall tell them all that has taken place. They are my father and my mother.”
“Petyr,” she said. “Haven’t you the good sense even to lie to me?”
“Charlotte,” I said. “Either let me go or kill me now.”
Again, she wept, but I felt cold towards her, cold towards myself. I would not look at her, lest my passion be aroused again.
At last she dried her eyes. “I have made him swear that he will never harm you. He knows that I shall withdraw all love and trust from him if he disobeys my command.”
“You have made a pact with the wind,” I said.
“But he protests that you will tell our secrets.”
“That I shall.”
“Petyr, give me your pledge! Give it to me so that he can hear.”
I considered this, for I wanted so to be free of this place, and to live, and to believe that both were still possible, and finally I said:
“Charlotte, I will never do you harm. My brothers and sisters in the Talamasca are not priests or judges. Nor are they witches. What they know of you is secret in the true sense.”
She looked at me with sad tear-filled eyes, and then she came to me, and kissed me, and though I tried to make of myself a wooden statue, I could not do it.
“Once more, Petyr, once more, from your heart,” she said, her voice full of sorrow, and longing. “And then you may leave me forever, and I will never look into your eyes again until I look some day into the eyes of our child.”
I fell to kissing her again, for I believed her that she would let me go. I believed her that she did love me; and I believed for that last hour as we lay together, that perhaps there were no laws for us, as she had said, and that there was a love between us which perhaps no one else would ever understand.
“I love you, Charlotte,” I whispered to her as she lay beside me, and I kissed her forehead. But she would not answer. She would not look at me.
And as I dressed once more, she turned her face into the pillow and cried.
Going to the door, I discovered that it had never been bolted behind her, and I wondered how many times that had been the case.
But it did not matter now. What mattered was that I go, if that damnable spirit would not stop me, and that I not look back, or speak to her again, or catch the scent of her sweetness, or think about the soft touch of her lips or her hand.
And on this account I asked her for no horse or coach to take me into Port-au-Prince, but resolved that I should simply leave without a word.
It had been an hour’s ride out and so I fancied that it not being yet midnight I should easily make the city by dawn. Oh, Stefan, thanks be to God, I did not know what that journey would be! Would I have ever had the courage to set out!
But let me break my story here, to say that for twelve hours I have been scribbling. And now it is midnight once more, and the thing is near.
For that reason I shall shut up in my iron box this and all the other pages I have written, so that at least this much of my tale will reach you, if what I write from here on is lost.
I love you, my dear friend, and I do not expect your forgiveness. Only keep my record. Keep it, for this story is not finished and may not be for many a generation. I have that from the spirit’s own voice.
Yours in the Talamasca,
Petyr van Abel
Port-au-Prince
Sixteen
Stefan,
After a bit of refreshment, I begin again. The thing is here. Only a moment ago, it made itself visible, in its manly guise, an inch from me, as is its wont, and then caused my candle to go out, though it had no breath of its own with which to do it.
I had to go downstairs to procure another light. Coming back I found my windows open and flapping in the breeze, and had to bolt them again. My ink was spilt. But I have more ink. The covers had been snatched from the bed, and my books had been scattered about.
Thank God the iron box is on its way to you. Enough said, for perhaps the thing can read.
It makes the sound of wings flapping in this close space, and then laughter.
I wonder if far away in her bedroom at Maye Faire Charlotte sleeps, and that is why I am the victim of these tricks.
Only the bawdy houses and taverns are open; all the rest of the little colonial city is quiet.
But let me relate the events of last night as fast as I can …
… I started out upon the road on foot. The moon was high; the path was clear before me with all its twists and turns, rising and falling gently here and there over what we would scarce call hills.
I walked fast, with great vigor, all but giddy with my freedom, and the realization that the spirit had not stopped me, and that I was smelling the sweet air around me, and thinking that I might make Port-au-Prince well before dawn.
I am alive, I thought; I am out of my prison; and perhaps I shall live to reach the Motherhouse again!
