House of Masques Read online

  “Do you know Charles Worthington?” she asked.

  He steepled his fingers in front of him, and for the first time Kathleen thought she saw a flicker of interest cross his face. “I’ve never met him,” Josiah replied slowly. “Who hasn’t heard of the Worthingtons? The Worthington Stove, the Worthington Estate downriver, the Illinois-Missouri Railway. Charles. He must be the son—West Point a hero in the War. Wait.” He rubbed his earlobe between thumb and forefinger. “Something went awry with Charles Worthington after the War. The Army? The West? I can’t recall.”

  “I must meet him,” she said. “Meet him and get to know him.”

  “Ah, that’s it.” He smiled and looked away, uninterested. “Romance? He’s quite handsome, I believe. Money? The Worthingtons are more than well-to-do.”

  “No,” she said, “neither. I’m not interested in romance or money.”

  “Then why do you want to meet Charles Worthington?”

  Her eyes left his face and she stared into the fire. A log hissed and cracked and scattered glowing sparks on the hearth. She clenched her hands at her sides and her mouth tightened.

  “I want to kill him.”

  Chapter Two

  “Ahhhhh!” Josiah Gorman’s reaction was an exhalation of breath, the mere echo of a whisper.

  He lifted a poker from a rack beside the hearth and thrust at the logs in the fire. The white cat arched her back, stretched, and stalked to the far end of the mantel, poised, then leaped to the chair where she sat erect, her eyes glinting, one green, one blue.

  “I must be cold-blooded,” Josiah said. “I’m never warm enough in this room.” Kathleen glanced from Josiah shaking life into the fire to the glaring cat to the enveloping shadows, feeling small and lost, overwhelmed by the dark room with its bare cedar walls, the row on row of black-bound books, the leather chairs. The tables and chairs and lamps were massive, as though built for someone larger than life-size.

  Josiah whirled without warning and grasped the posts of the chair on either side of her head. She shrank away. “Look at me,” he commanded, and his eyes held her tense and alert.

  “Do you take me for a fool?” he asked. “You leave home—probably the first time in your life you’ve been away from Ashtabula. You track dirt over my carpets, dressed in that miserable dingy dress, your hair straggling down your neck. You plead with me for help, while all the time you’re frightened half out of your wits. Do you think I’m devoid of commonsense? You announce that you plan to kill Charles Worthington. Very dramatic. And completely unbelievable.”

  Her hand went to her mouth and she blinked to hold back the tears.

  “And now,” he went on, “when I show disbelief, you reply with the defense used by your sex ever since Eve.” She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “You cry.”

  “I will kill him,” she sobbed. “I will, I will.” She tried to stand but he put his hand on her shoulder and held her against the back of the chair.

  “Why do you want to kill him?”

  “Because of what he did to my brother.” Her entire body shook with sobs and she gripped the seat of the chair until her fingers hurt. “Charles Worthington murdered my brother, my brother Michael.”

  “How?” His finger still pressed down on her.

  “He shot him without cause, without reason.”

  “Shot him?”

  “Yes, last year in western Kansas where Michael was helping protect the settlement from the Indians. Michael was a corporal in the Seventh Cavalry Company, and Captain Worthington killed him.”

  Josiah dropped his hand from her shoulder. “You’re sure?” She saw the doubt in his raised eyebrows.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Her sobs stopped, and her face flushed with anger.

  “The Army of the United States,” he said scathingly, “doesn’t usually approve when one of its officers shoots a soldier. Even when the victim is only a corporal.”

  “I’m not a child, don’t treat me like one.” Her voice was low and intense. “They arrested Captain Worthington.” She pronounced the word “captain” with scorn. “They court-martialed Captain Worthington.”

  “Oh?” He sounded surprised. “He was court-martialed?”

  “Yes. A farce. He was acquitted. He’s one of their own isn’t he—a West Point graduate, a captain?”

  “Then Worthington is still in the Army.”

  “No, he resigned.”

  Josiah stood and cupped his chin in his hand. For a long moment his flecked brown eyes studied her. “Follow me,” he said at last, and led the way to a door next to the bookcase. He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and brought out a ring from which hung a multitude of keys. He selected one and unlocked the door.

  In the dim light she saw a small and sparsely furnished room—a desk, two chairs, several tiers of drawers, and vague mounds on the floor. Through the single window a lone star shone above a purple haze clinging to the far bank of the river. Josiah lit two candles and the huddling mounds on the floor became piles of books. Books also lay scattered on the desk and the window seat. A grandfather clock ticked beside the window.

  “Sit down,” he told her, and she sat facing a blue Pacific Ocean on a globe on the corner of the desk. Josiah turned from her and unlocked one of the drawers and searched through folder after folder.

  Why did she pick up and open the book? Was it because it lay on top of the pile beside her chair? She didn’t know. Her fingers caressed the cool, smooth pages. The pictures leaped at her, the obscene pictures of bodies distorted and twisted, and her fingers tightened until her knuckles showed white.

  “Put that down.”

  The book thumped to the carpet. She tried to return his stare, feeling sick, her mouth curling with revulsion and fear, but after a moment her eyes dropped from his and Kathleen sat twisting her hands in her lap.

  Tick, tick, tick. The clock. She drew a deep breath, looked up and found Josiah slumped in the chair on the far side of the desk. Tick, tick, tick. He studied a rectangular card, ignoring her. She watched his thin fingers, noticed that his nails were long and well cared for. She could see light coming through notches and perforations on the edges of the card.

  “Charles Worthington,” he read, his tone matter-of-fact, as though nothing had happened. His voice was deep and she was lulled by the rhythm of his speech. “1843—born in Chicago. 1863—graduated twenty-fourth in his class from the U.S. Military Academy. Fought in the battles of Cold Harbor and Missionary Ridge during the Civil War. Awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. From 1866 to 1870 was a captain in the Indian campaigns. 1871—resigned his commission.” He shook his head. “Nothing more,” he said.

  He stared at her for a long while and then opened a ringed notebook on the desk. “July, 1871,” he read the heading of the calendar.

  “New York on the fifth,” he continued as though to himself. “Washington on the eighth. Back here at Gleneden on the sixteenth to prepare for the western trip. Today’s the second, you’d have a little more than a week. The Worthingtons. Perhaps I should. Perhaps.”

  Josiah stood, loomed over her. “Watch,” he said and held the key ring in one hand. “Help me count the keys.”

  She looked at the candlelight shining from the silver ring and from the silver keys. He clutched the keys in his fist and released one and let it slide around the ring. “One,” he said. She was silent. “Count with me,” he told her. “One,” she said. Another key clicked down beside the first. “Two,” he said. “Two,” she repeated. Another. “Three.” “Three.” “Four,” she said. “Five…”

  Kathleen was at peace, drifting, the sun warm on her face. She gazed directly into the sun and the yellow sphere dazzled her so she shut her eyes, dizzy, black spots forming and reforming. A voice came to her from far away. “You never opened the book. Forget the book.” Kathleen nodded.

  Josiah was smiling
at her. She felt strange, as if she had lost a moment of time. The keys lay between them on the table. “Stand up,” he told her. “Take off your kerchief.”

  She undid the knot and her black hair shook free. “Fluff your hair,” he said. He nodded. “Let me see…light blue eyes, good features, regular. The nose tilts to the left. Hardly noticeable, a slight imperfection adds interest. Smile, you haven’t smiled once. Yes, very nice. Put your hands on your waist. No, a little higher, draw the dress in. Tighter. Good, good. Yes, you have some possibilities.”

  She felt the tears in her eyes. “I’m not an animal getting ready to be auctioned off,” she said, her voice low and choked. “I’m a person.” Her eyes flashed at him, bright from the tears.

  “Wonderful.” He smiled. “A little spirit at last. I was beginning to be afraid you were nothing but a doormat.”

  She knew a surge of hope. “You—you’ll help me then?”

  “You know the price?”

  “No, not really. I’ve brought two hundred dollars from the money the government paid us when Michael was killed.”

  He shook his head. “Money isn’t important to me. I’ll need more than dollars.”

  “What do you mean? What will you need?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, I’ll need your services. That’s how I exist, on the services of others.”

  “Others like Clarissa?”

  Josiah leaned back in his chair. “Yes, you might include Clarissa. Of course, she’s an exception. In most cases I don’t require the length of service she’s given. Clarissa is someone very special.”

  “Then how long would I be in your debt? A month? A year?”

  “No, all of my agreements are the same. Not for a year or two years, or even five. Forever.”

  “No,” she gasped. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly.”

  His chair slammed to the floor and he strode to the doorway and pulled a tasseled cord. “I’m sorry,” he said. “No exceptions are permitted. None. The agreement would be like all the rest. Good night. Let me know if you change your mind.”

  There was a tapping and he opened the door. “Here’s Clarissa. She’ll show you to your room. You’ll stay with us overnight.” He turned to the window and she saw his expressionless face reflected in the black windowpane. Heat lightning flickered in the distance and outlined the mountains beyond the river.

  Kathleen began to reply, surprised at the abruptness of her dismissal, but she felt anger rise in her and she bit her lip and did not speak. She rose to leave and noticed a book on the floor at her feet and stooped and placed it on the table. How did the book get on the floor? she wondered.

  She shook her head and followed Clarissa through the large room, along a corridor, up two flights of stairs, and down a short hallway. Her room was small and bare—a bed, chest of drawers, commode with basin and pitcher. Her carpetbag sat on the floor beside the bed.

  Clarissa now wore a dark green gown falling almost to the floor and she had brought her golden hair forward so it cascaded over her breasts. The darkness of the dress and the shadowed hall behind her made Clarissa’s face appear paler than before, and Kathleen felt a surge of sympathy and pity and instinctively reached to the older woman and clasped one of her hands.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Kathleen asked.

  Clarissa stared. “Do? You? For me?”

  “I thought…” Kathleen began. The words came in a jumble. “You live here, have to live here with him in this house, alone, no way out. I might, I thought, I might help.”

  For an instant Clarissa seemed about to laugh. Instead her mouth tightened. “You? Help me?” Now she smiled, without mirth, a bleak turning up of the corners of her mouth.

  “What do you know of me?” she asked. “Or of life? How can you judge me, or him, or anyone? Your world is two-dimensional, flat, and you clothe yourself in moral rectitude and sit looking down from your judgment seat.” Clarissa withdrew her hand.

  “The world isn’t flat,” she said. “It’s round, and you can’t see more than one infinitesimal portion at a time. There are lands of light and lands of shadow and people you can’t conceive of and ideas beyond your ken. Only after you’ve lived long and known life and death and pain, dreamed through nights of hope and awakened to mornings of despair, only then can you even begin to judge.”

  Clarissa paused, her breathing short and quick. “Every day I’m lonely and unhappy and some days I wish I were dead. And yet…and yet if I had to go back and live again, come here as you have today, if I could by some miracle relive my life, I’d go to him, exactly as I did before.” She spun away and Kathleen heard her feet running along the hall.

  I don’t understand, she thought as she prepared for bed. Can Clarissa really feel the way she claims? Or was the voice the voice of Clarissa, while the words were the words of Josiah?

  Sleep wouldn’t come. The images of the long day whirled before her—the train and the cinders and the beautifully gowned women, the smoke billowing from the locomotive, the conductor waving to her from the steps, the stationmaster standing with hands on hips, the chimneys jutting into the red sky, the woman with hair the color of gold, Josiah warming his hands at the fire, Josiah peering into her eyes.

  And just before sleep finally came she remembered her last meeting with Michael, her face taut, eyes beseeching, the memory long shut away, and she whispered to herself, “It never happened. A dream, a nightmare,” and she sealed the memory away and she slept…

  The sun shone from directly overhead. The sky was cloudless. A single railroad track stretched infinitely ahead, aimed arrow-straight at a distant, hazy horizon. Bitter smoke choked her and she saw a small sod house standing alone. On all sides knee-high prairie grass bent and rippled in the breeze. The smoke curled from the charred timbers of the house’s roof.

  A clock lay shattered on the path to the door. Tick, tick, tick. When the clock stopped, she knew, she would die. She wanted to run, yet her legs were heavy and she could not.

  The door of the house swung open and the sunlight leaped inside. Two crude nails pierced Josiah’s wrists and impaled him on the wall, his arms out-flung. His eyes were open and stared at her, and his mouth had frozen in a silent, perpetual scream. Blood oozed from where the shaft of an arrow protruded from his chest.

  Smoke eddied about her feet. A bed, the mattress charred and black. On the mattress Clarissa lay spread-eagled with thongs binding her hands and feet to the bedposts. She was naked. A red gelatinous slit extended from between her legs to her throat. On both sides of the slit the flesh hung moist and flaccid. As Kathleen approached, a fly buzzed away from the wound. Clarissa’s beautiful face was rigid, fixed. Where her hair should have been Kathleen saw a red smear, nothing more.

  The taste of bile rose in Kathleen’s throat and she fled from the house into the yard behind. A mound of fresh earth marked the tomb. Kneeling she spread her hands on the dry and crumbling soil. She heard a scratching and leaned forward until her hair touched the earth. The scratching came again, faint, from within the earth itself, the sound like fingernails clawing into rotted wood.

  “Michael,” she cried, her hands burrowing gopher-like into the ground.

  The sun. Where had the sun gone? A shadow lay across her body and her hands clenched. The earth squeezed between her fingers. She looked up. The Indian was naked except for a loincloth, his knife pointed at her breast. Kathleen twisted and felt the pebbles jabbing into her back. His face was angular and brown and his body was smeared a dull red, the same color as the blood on his knife.

  She scrambled to her feet and ran. After a few paces her feet caught as though entangled in marsh grass. She reached down and pulled the sticky, entwining strands loose and tried to throw them aside, but they clung to her fingers and she looked and saw the blood and matted hair. The hair glistened in the sunlight. The c
olor of gold.

  She screamed, one long, hopeless scream. The Indian’s bronze face bent close to hers and his hand grasped the neckline of her dress and she looked into his eyes and the panic ripped and tore at her.

  One of his eyes was green, the other blue.

  She woke gasping, sobbing. The window was a pale rectangle on the far wall. Her heart throbbed. “Michael?” she whispered, and she saw her brother run toward her across a green field of rippling grass, a bouquet of daisies in his hand, laughing, calling to her, “Kathy, Kathy.” His voice seemed to echo in the empty bedroom.

  Kathleen shook the vision from her mind. She was weary. As tired as though she had never slept. The water from the basin felt tepid on her face and as she dressed her underclothes clung to her body. She drew on the gray dress.

  The hall still held the shadows of the night and Kathleen groped ahead with one hand on the wall. How had she and Clarissa come the night before? She found the stairs and descended the two flights, hurried along the corridor, tried a door on her right. A gloom-filled room with the furniture shrouded beneath green drapes. Another door. An unused room, empty.

  A clatter drew her to the end of the hallway and she pushed open the last door. A black coal stove crouched to her left. Cupboards clustered along one wall. A pump protruded over the sink. Josiah sat behind a bare wooden table sipping coffee.

  He smiled.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Are you ready to accept my proposal?”

  Kathleen sighed. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I accept.”

  Chapter Three

  The room was quiet. From a great distance, Kathleen heard the faint warning cry of a steamboat whistle.

  Josiah’s chair scraped on the wood floor. Kathleen stepped back. He rose and held his cup aloft as he would a glass of wine, his slender fingers encircling the rim.

  “I propose a toast,” he said. “To the forthcoming meeting of Miss Kathleen Donley and Captain Charles Worthington.” He raised the cup and drank. “May it prove to be both fateful and fatal.”