Master of the Moors (10 page)

At last he released her,
but she knew he wasn't finished. Not until she told him what he was
waiting to hear. She shivered, hoping he might suggest they
continue the conversation---if that was what it was destined to
be---indoors, in the warmth of the house. But he just stood, still
grinning that ugly grin, and waited.

"He's going," she said at
last. "He'll be at the dance."

Donald nodded. "Good girl.
I'll wager you promised him the time of his life."

He winked and started to move into the
house but she grabbed his coat. He turned and looked at her hand as
if it had grown an extra finger. She quickly released
him.

"What?" he asked, all
trace of humor, however forced, now gone.

She hesitated, cleared her
throat. "Is our agreement complete then?"

He shrugged. "We'll see
how you do tonight, won't we?" With a chuckle, he went inside,
slamming the door behind him as if she was indeed a cat who'd been
shunned from the house.

I'm
sorry
, she thought, as tears spilled
welled in her eyes,
I'm so sorry, Neil. So
sorry for what I've done. So sorry for what they're going to do to
you
.

8

Campbell watched her,
waiting for acknowledgment. When it didn't come, he sighed silently
and made his way toward the bar.

Sarah Laws had, at one
time, been known as the 'smiling wench' of The Fox & Mare. It
was not a derogatory term. Sarah had jokingly, and in retrospect
unwisely, coined it herself in a crowd of benevolent drunks, who'd
latched onto it immediately and thereafter favored it over her
given name. But the nickname had died with her husband. After all,
it was hardly appropriate to call a grieving widow a wench of any
kind, and all who gathered beneath the smoky veil in the tavern
knew it.

On the day a horse killed
her beloved, she became Sarah again.

On the day a horse killed
her beloved, her jovial nature vanished, replaced by a severity and
bitterness that aged her, painted silver strands in her red hair
and turned the corners of her mouth down, pointing the way for the
beginning of new wrinkles.

On that day, Doctor Frank
Campbell commiserated with her, offering his condolences, even
while unbridled excitement and hope frolicked behind his eyes. He
was one of the few not discouraged by the change in her demeanor or
the obvious atrophy of her spirit. To him, it was the sign of an
opening, a door left barely ajar but ajar all the same, through
which a man, armed with love and honorable intentions, might
squeeze through.

Brent Prior was filled
with women who'd married young and withered in the marital snare,
the light of hope and ambition long since diminished in their eyes.
They went about their days with barely restrained sorrow in their
eyes, perhaps wishing for a miracle they knew in their hearts would
never come. And for those lucky enough to discover companionship,
love and the happiness it brought, fate frequently intervened to
reduce them to their basest level. Typhoid fever, consumption,
cholera, cancer, influenza, enteric fever, pneumonia, scarlet
fever, smallpox, and of course, violent death at the hands of
fellow man or beast, or simple treachery, all waited in the wings
to tear the worlds of lovers apart, erasing the fantasy of eternal
bliss.

But while sorrow and grief
often robbed a woman of her beauty as well as her spirit, Campbell
thought it had actually had the reverse effect on Sarah Laws. Gone
now were the coy smiles and flirtatious winks to every man but him.
Gone were the whorish crimson lips and painted cheeks, allowing the
world a glimpse of the natural beauty she'd kept hidden behind a
plastic mask. It was a faded beauty, the vitality drained from it
by parasitic grief, but it was there. The doctor could see it, like
a low light burning in a dirty lamp, and it drew him like a moth.
Throughout his days of drunken self-pity, disgust and rage, Sarah
Laws remained the prize that could keep him alive. She was a
slender thing, her hazel eyes like dimming embers awaiting the heat
of companionship to rekindle their flame.

Campbell seated himself at
the bar, ostensibly to distance himself from the guffaws and
raucous celebrations provided by the cluster of dirty farmers
seated at the round table in the corner, his real motive to be as
close to Sarah as he could manage. She looked even more bleached of
color today, so much so that his affection toward her was diluted
by concern for her health. She was all angles, her shoulders and
elbows forming points beneath her blouse. Her face was ashen, her
eyelids at half-mast, as if her presence here was simply a dream
from which she yearned to awaken.

"Good morning, Sarah,"
Campbell said, drumming his fingers on the wood. He watched, with
some disappointment, as she cast him a noncommittal smile, flung
the rag she'd been using to polish the glasses on the counter, and
set about fixing him a drink. This was far from the first time
she'd paid him no mind, so he was not discouraged by her dismissal.
As she turned away from him, he let his gaze drift from her
carelessly tied hair to the pale smooth skin of her neck, broken
only by the tiniest of moles, and down her back to the swell
beneath her skirts. She was divine, and he prayed to all that was
holy that he'd be given the chance to see beneath those clothes. He
could weather her standoffishness and indifference for decades more
if he knew that eventually she'd be waiting for him, arms and legs
spread invitingly.

She all but threw the drink down
before him.

He smiled. "Thank
you."

She didn't meet his gaze.
Instead, her eyes moved to his purse, and the clumsy fingers he
used to procure the cost of the drink. He gingerly placed the coins
in the open palm of her hand and nodded. "There's sum enough for
you to have a drink of your own," he said.

Another perfunctory smile
and she was gone, back to the other end of the bar where she tended
to her glasses with more fervor than such a menial task demanded.
Campbell sighed, and stared into his drink.

The bar was a small,
gloomy, smoke-filled square, with pine wainscoting and three
Y-shaped poles spread across the length of the room, keeping the
rafters safe above their heads. The Fox & Mare always gave the
impression that it was crowded, even when only a few souls occupied
the place. This effect was due in part to the stuffed foxes that
guarded the corners and the pheasants and grouse frozen in
mid-strut atop the rafters. Above the bar itself, an enormous
stag's head protruded from the stone wall, the look of death in its
eyes carefully erased by a taxidermist's hand. The magnificent
antlers twisted outward like gnarled roots seeking ground from
which the beast might grow again. On the wall opposite the door, a
row of pictures hung, each frame containing a face grinning in
victory---the huntmaster's gallery. Near the end of the row, a
picture had been removed, leaving a noticeable white space on the
smoke-tainted wall. Beneath these grinning heroes, seven circular
tables pressed close to the wall sat empty, while the farmers
continued to laugh uproariously in the corner opposite.

"Another?"

Campbell looked up to see
Sarah standing before him, hands on hips.

"Pardon?" It was then that
he realized he'd finished his drink without even being aware of it.
"Oh, yes of course."

Sarah nodded and took his
glass. Again, he watched her, until she returned with the drink
and, as before, set it roughly down on the counter. She waited with
tangible impatience for him to produce the money. This time he
deliberately delayed the transaction.

"It must get frightfully
tedious attending to us louts," he said.

She shrugged, held out her
hand.

"Perhaps you should
consider getting out some night. Have a few drinks and maybe a
dance or two. It might be just the tonic."

When she smiled, his own
smile dropped a notch. Scarcely had he seen such a humorless,
bitter expression on a pretty girl's face.

"I suppose that's your
medical opinion, is it Doctor?" She pronounced the last word as if
it were some kind of disease.

"Not at all. I just think
it's an awful waste for you to stay cooped up in here all the time,
condemned to play sympathizer to drunkards and ruffians. It would
do you the world of good to get out of here some night."

He hoped the proposition
was obvious and yet feared he'd been too bold. The last thing he
wanted was to scare her off, or anger her, now that she was, at
last, focused solely on him.

"Tell me, Doctor," she
said, leaning closer, "of what interest is it of yours what I do
with my hours?"

Campbell pursed his lips.
"I just think they could be better spent, that's all. You're still
a young woman, and an attractive one, but no one ever lived a full
life breathing in the fumes from those content to waste
theirs."

She stared then, and in
his mind he saw her reach out and touch him, her fingers brushing
against the stubble on his chin, her tongue parting her lips to
moisten them, preparing them to meet his. Or perhaps she would step
back and frown, fold her arms and consider, only for the severity
to leave her face for one fleeting moment. Long enough for her to
nod curtly and tell him a time and a place for him to meet her, to
take her out and show her the life she'd been missing, the love
she'd had and lost, the passion she hungered to regain.

But instead she looked
over his shoulder, grunted and said, "Leave your money on the
counter. I have other customers to attend to."

Annoyed, and more than a
little frustrated, Campbell turned to see who had quashed his
chances. He froze, his foot slipping off the rung on the barstool.
"Dear God," he whispered, and then quickly realized everyone must
have heard him. The room had fallen deathly quiet, the farmers'
mirth forgotten as they stared over their drinks at the man
approaching the bar.

Despite the thickness of
the smoke from the farmers' pipes and cigarettes, a smell of damp
earth and death suddenly filled the room.

***

A faint rustling roused Mansfield from
a dream of Hell.

With fear caught in his
throat, he opened his eyes, dreading whatever apparition might be
sharing his room tonight. No longer did the waking world offer him
respite from the torture of sleep's dark images. No longer could he
trust the sounds that dragged him from slumber, for more than once
he had traced them to an unspeakable thing towering over the foot
of his bed, its jaws wide, bloodstained teeth gleaming, pale tongue
rolling, as if in quiet laughter at his helplessness. It wouldn't
linger long, but its dissolution left Mansfield with a clear view
of another monstrosity---an image of himself, beaded with sweat and
wide-eyed, peering over the coverlet from the mirror across the
room.

Sometimes it was Callow he
saw standing in his room, grinning at him, whispering, "All prey is
equal when hunted," and chuckling with the sound of coal tumbling
down a pipe.

Full consciousness brought
with it the familiar pain and Mansfield groaned low in his throat
at the sensation of a thousand knives skewering his legs. If felt
almost as if the bones were attempting to rearrange themselves, to
knit themselves into impractical shapes, an illusion reinforced by
the occasional crackling and popping sounds he heard at night, each
sound signaling the onset of a fresh wave of ferocious agony.
Whatever it was that was killing him, was spreading upward,
caressing his spine, his ribs, his arms, with tongues of fire,
twisting them until he felt sure he would die from the shock of
having to endure such torment.

He was not dead, though he
wished to be, as selfish as he knew it was to entertain such
yearnings. The children awaited his recovery, but he knew if he
could find his voice he would tell them to leave this house, to
leave Brent Prior and everything it represented to them. But they
would resist, their faith in his convalescence leading them to defy
him. Here they would stay until he died and set them
free.

It might not be death at
all
, he thought then, alarmed at the
intrusion of a long stilled voice inside himself.
It might be an awakening
.

Perhaps, but an awakening
to
what?

He narrowed his eyes at
the glare as the mist shifted and sunlight once more filtered
through the windows. He blinked, once, twice and exhaled a ragged
breath as invisible claws scrabbled at his ribcage.

The pain washed over him.

Hissing air through his
teeth, he jerked with the shock of the onslaught, the tendons in
his neck straining beneath the skin. His body went rigid, his head
thrusting back deep into the pillow as molten lava replaced his
blood.

"NNnngghh," he grunted,
hands contorting, twisting the sheets. He shut his eyes tight, saw
crimson fireworks explode, and opened them again.

Think of Kate think of Neil think of
anything something anything...

Dust motes danced in the fall of
light. He focused on them until his vision wavered with
tears.