The Taker-Taker 1

  He wasn’t inclined to explain any more to me at the time, but I found out the next night when Dona slipped into the bedroom with us. And Tilde the night after that. When I objected, protesting that I was too self-conscious to enjoy myself in front of the others, I was given a blindfold. The next morning, when I glanced at Tilde shyly as we passed on the stairs, still dazzled by the pleasure she had given me in bed, she growled, “It was only a performance, you stupid cuny,” and trotted away, dispelling any doubt that it had been anything more. I suppose I was naive, but the pleasures of the flesh were new to me, the sensations overwhelming. I would become numb to all of it, and numb to what it did to my soul, soon enough.

  It was not long after this that a most notable event occurred, though I didn’t gather its significance at the time. It started with a lecture on astronomy and navigational arts that we attended at Harvard College. Science was a bit of a fad in that day and sometimes the colleges would host public lectures. These were places to be seen as much as any party, a way to show that even though you were a socialite you still had a bit of brain, so Adair made it a point to attend. The lecture that day was of little interest to me, so I sat at Adair’s side and borrowed his opera glasses to scan the audience. There were many faces I’d seen before even if I couldn’t remember their names, and just as I was thinking the outing was a waste of time, I spied Tilde chatting up a man on the far side of the auditorium. I could see only a quarter profile of his face, and mostly my view was of his back, but I could tell he had a striking physique.

  I handed the opera glasses to Adair. “It looks like Tilde has found herself a new man,” I whispered and nodded in her direction.

  “Hmm, I believe you’re right,” he said, peering through the glasses. “She is a born hunter, that Tilde.”

  It was common to meet up with other socialites after the lectures at a nearby public house. Adair had no patience that afternoon for the small talk over coffee and beer, however, and watched the door. Before long, Tilde came in on the arm of the young man we’d seen at the college. He was quite dashing, with a beautiful face (a trifle on the delicate side), a sharp little nose, a cleft in his chin, and glorious blond curls. He looked all the younger on Tilde’s sophisticated arm, and while Tilde could hardly be mistaken for his mother, the disparity in their ages was hard to miss.

  They joined us at our table and Adair spent the whole time peppering him with questions. Was he a student at Harvard? (Yes.) Did he have family in Boston? (No, he’d come from Philadelphia and had no family in this area.) What was he studying? (He had a passion for science, but his parents wished him to continue the family business, which was law.) How old was he? (Twenty.) At this last answer, Adair frowned as though displeased, a quizzical response to so straightforward an answer. Then Adair invited the young man to dine with us that evening at the mansion.

  I will be blunt: the cook may have served a saddle of lamb, but it was clear that the flaxen-haired young man was the main course. Adair continued to ask him all sorts of personal questions (Any close friends here at college? A fiancée?) and when the young man became nonplussed, Alejandro would jump in and distract everyone around the table with self-deprecating stories and jokes. More wine than usual flowed, particularly into the young man’s glass, and then after dinner the men were given snifters of cognac, and we all repaired to the game room. At the end of an evening of faro, Adair claimed we could not send the young man back to his rooms at the college in such a state—he would be reprimanded for drunkenness if caught by the tutors—and insisted he stay with us for the night. By that time the young scholar was almost unable to stand without assistance, so he was hardly in a position to refuse.

  Adair had a footman help him up the stairs while we gathered outside Adair’s bedchamber like jackals preening before dividing up the night’s kill. In the end, Adair decided he and I would enjoy the young man’s company and dismissed the others. Drunk as he was, he stripped gamely when commanded and followed me eagerly into bed. Here is the curious part: as the boy stripped, Adair watched him closely, not with enjoyment (as I had expected) but with a clinical eye. It wasn’t until then that we learned the young man had a club foot; it wasn’t terribly misshapen and he had a specially made boot that helped him walk without much of a limp. But upon noticing it, Adair seemed visibly deflated.

  Adair sat in a chair and watched as the young man swived me. I saw, over the boy’s shoulder, disappointment on Adair’s face, a detachment toward our guest that he fought to overcome. In the end, Adair took off his clothes and joined us, surprising the young man with his attentions, which were nevertheless accepted (he didn’t resist in any case, though he did yelp a little when Adair got rough with him). And the three of us slept together, our guest relegated to the foot of the bed, succumbing to the effects of alcohol and the usual result of a man’s amorous effusions.

  The next morning, after the young man was sent off in a carriage, Adair and Tilde had heated words behind closed doors. Alejandro and I sat in the breakfast room and listened—or tried not to—over tea.

  “What is that about?” I asked, nodding in the direction of the muffled argument.

  “Adair has given us standing orders to be on the lookout for attractive men, but only the most attractive. We are to bring them to his attention. What can I say, Adair enjoys a pretty face. But he is only interested in perfection, you see? And I understand the man Tilde brought to Adair was less than perfect?”

  “He had a club foot.” I didn’t see how that made any difference; his face was exquisite.

  Alejandro shrugged. “Ah—there you go.” He busied himself buttering a heel of bread and said no more, leaving me to stir my tea and wonder about Adair’s strange obsessions. The thing was, he’d swived that boy as though it was punishment for disappointing him somehow. It made me uneasy to think about it.

  I leaned across the table and clasped Alejandro’s hand. “Remember the conversation we had a few weeks ago, about my friend? My handsome friend? Promise me, Alejandro, you will not tell Adair about him.”

  “Do you think I would do that to you?” he said, hurt. I know now that his offense was all pretend. He was a good actor, Alejandro was. We all had to be around Adair, but this was Alejandro’s role in the group, to be the one to lull the distressed or uncertain, to assuage and calm the victim so she doesn’t see the blow coming. At the time, I thought of him as the good one whereas Tilde and Dona were evil and bitter, the deceivers, but I see now they each had a role to play.

  But at the time, I believed him.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I started to become more curious about my housemates. I had just begun to see them as a pack that worked together, each with a purpose, each performing his or her part with an ease that came from having done a job many times. Flushing out prey, distracting the quarry, running the unfortunate victim to ground, whether it was the club-footed young man or an easy mark at a card game. The three were like hounds held in check on slip collars; Adair had only to loose them and they were off, each confident of what he or she must do. I was the fourth hound, new to the pack and unsure of my role. And, well-tuned instrument that they were together, they were reluctant to make room for me, sure that I would trip them up and detract from their cold grace and efficiency. It was just as well to me: I had no desire to join them.

  I expected a backlash from the others regarding Adair’s fondness for me and was surprised when there wasn’t any. After all, I must have displaced one of them as Adair’s favorite and confidante. But none of them was upset. There wasn’t a spark of jealousy in the air. In truth, except for Alejandro, they had little to do with me. Now, all three gave me a wide berth but without malice. They skirted both me and Adair, except for when we traveled to and from parties, and during those times there was an air of forced joviality hanging over us like a fog. When Tilde and I caught sight of each other, for instance, I sometimes noticed the grim set of her mouth combined with a slight furrow to her brow, but what I saw did not seem lik
e jealousy. The three of them drifted through the house like ghosts, haunted and powerless.

  One night I decided to ask Adair about this. After all, he was more likely to tell me the truth than were they. I waited as Adair found a bottle of brandy and goblets to take to the bedroom, while the servants helped me slip out of my skirts and bodice and unpinned my hair. As Adair poured the drink into our glasses, I said, “There is something on my mind that I have been meaning to raise with you …”

  He took a swig from his drink before handing a glass to me. “I expected as much. You’ve been distracted lately.”

  “It’s … the others,” I started, unsure of how to continue.

  “Don’t ask me to send them away. I won’t. You may want us to spend all our time with each other, but I can’t have them wandering loose. And besides, it’s important that we stay together. You never know when you will need one of us to come to your aid, someone who understands the obligation. You’ll understand someday,” he rushed to say.

  “I don’t want them to be sent away. I’ve just been wondering, Adair, which of their hearts has been broken now that you spend all your time with me? Which of them most keenly feels the loss of your attention? I see them and feel sorry for—Why are you laughing at me? It wasn’t my intention to amuse you.”

  I’d expected him to smile at my question, chide me perhaps for my foolish sensitivity and assure me that no one resented me, that the others had each had their turn as his favorite and knew that this pleasure wouldn’t last forever, that the harmony of our household was intact.

  That wasn’t the reaction I got from Adair, however. His laugh wasn’t one of appreciation: it was mocking. “‘The loss of my attention’? Do you think they’re upstairs, crying themselves to sleep at night, now that they no longer are the apple of my eye? Let me tell you a bit about the people with whom you share a home. You have a right to know since you are bound to them for eternity. It’s best to keep your guard up around them, my dear. They’re not going to look out for your best interests, not ever. You have no idea about them, do you?”

  “Alej has told me a little,” I murmured, dropping my eyes.

  “I wager he’s told you nothing of consequence and certainly nothing to make you think badly of him. What did he tell you about himself?”

  I started to regret that I had brought this up. “Only that he comes from a good family in Spain …”

  “A very good family. The Pinheiros. You might even say a grand family, but you will not find any Pinheiros in Toledo, Spain, today. Do you know why? Have you ever heard of the Inquisition? Alejandro and his family were rounded up by the Inquisition, by the grand inquisitor himself, Tomás de Torquemada. Alejandro’s mother, his father, his grandmother, his little sister—all were thrown into prison. They were given two choices: they could confess their sins and convert to Catholicism—or they would remain in prison, where they would likely die.”

  “Why didn’t he convert?” I cried out. “To spare his life, would it have been so terrible?”

  “But he did.” Adair poured more brandy for himself and then stood in front of the fire, his face lit by a flickering flame. “He did as they asked. He would have been a fool to refuse them, under the circumstances. The Inquisition was proud of its ability to break a man: they made it a science. They kept him in a cell so small he had to tuck into a ball in order to fit, and he had to listen to the screams and prayers of the other prisoners until the sun came up. Who would not go mad in these circumstances? Who would not do anything they asked, in order to save himself?”

  For a moment, there was only the crackle and spit from the fire, and in my heart, I begged that Adair would not go on. I wanted to keep the Alejandro I knew, sweet and considerate, and remain ignorant of whatever evil he kept hidden inside.

  Adair tossed back the last of his drink and stared again into the flames. “He gave them his sister. They wanted someone they could make an example of, evil in their midst. A reason to rid the country of Jews. So he told them his sister was a witch, an unrepentant witch. In exchange for his fourteen-year-old sister, the priests let him go. And that is when I found him, gibbering like a madman for what he’d done.”

  “That’s horrible.” Shivering, I pulled the sable blanket around my shoulders.

  “Dona handed over his master to the authorities when he was arrested for being a sodomite. The man who had taken him in off the street, fed and clothed him, painted his likeness on the walls of Florence. A man who adored him, truly adored him, and Dona gave him up without a second’s hesitation. I’d be a fool to expect any better treatment from him.

  “And then there’s Tilde. She’s the most dangerous of all of them. She comes from a country very far north, where there are days in the winter when the sun is out for only a few hours. I came across Tilde one of those frigid nights, on the road. She had been doused with water and turned out in the cold winter evening by her own people. You see, she had set her heart on a rich man in the next village. There was only one obstacle in her way: she was already married. And how did she decide to solve her problem? By killing her husband and her two children. She poisoned them, thinking no one would ever figure out what she’d done. Only, the people in her village discovered her plot and put her to death. She was meant to freeze to death, and by the time I found her, she was already half frozen. Her hair was solid ice, her eyelashes and her skin were frosted with crystals. She was dying and yet she still managed to glare at me with an expression of pure hatred.”

  “Stop,” I whimpered, burrowing completely under the heavy blanket of pelts. “I don’t want to know any more.”

  “The true measure of a man is how he behaves when death is close.” There was a sneer in Adair’s voice.

  “That’s not fair. A person has a right to do anything to survive.”

  “Anything?” He raised an eyebrow and snorted. “In any case, I felt you had a right to know that sympathy is wasted on them. Beneath their beauty and their manners, they are monsters. There is a reason I chose each of them. They have their place in my plans … but not one of them is capable of love, except of themselves. They wouldn’t think twice about giving you up if there was something to be gained in the bargain. They might even ignore their obligation to me, if they thought they could get away with such treachery.” He slid beside me into the bed, cupping my body against his, and I fancied I felt a strange neediness in his touch. “That is what I find fascinating about you, Lanore. You have a great capacity for love. You long to give your heart to someone, and when you do, it is with impossible commitment, inexhaustible loyalty. I think you would go to any lengths for the man you love. It is a very lucky man who will win your heart one day. I would like to think that even I might be so lucky.”

  He petted my hair for a while before drifting into sleep, leaving me to wonder how much he knew about Jonathan, just how precisely Adair might have read my thoughts. The entire conversation gave me the shivers; I couldn’t see the purpose of giving eternal life to such undeserving people, to surrounding himself for eternity with cowards and murderers, especially if what he sought was loyalty. His plans, for I didn’t doubt he had them, eluded me.

  And the worst part, the part that I couldn’t bear to face, was the question of why he had chosen me to join his perverse family. He must have seen something in me that told him I was like the others; perhaps it was written on my soul that I was selfish enough to drive another woman to take her own life in order to have the one she loved. And as for his invitation to love him, I wouldn’t have thought someone like Adair would feel the need to be loved … or that I was the type of woman capable of loving a monster. I lay shivering in Adair’s arms that night as he slept soundly.

  What of Uzra? It didn’t take a mystic to see that she didn’t fit the pattern of the others in Adair’s family. She floated above the rest of the household. It wasn’t that the others forgot about her, but she was not discussed. She was not expected to join us when we gathered to drink and talk late in the evenin
g on returning from a party, she never sat among us when we gathered around the table in the dining room for a meal. But we might hear whispers of her pattering overhead or in the walls, like a mouse climbing the battens.

  Occasionally, Adair summoned her to the bedroom, where she joined us, tight-lipped, eyes downcast, surrendering but not participating. But she’d seek me out later when I was alone, let me brush her hair or read to her, which I took to be her way of letting me know that she did not hold me responsible for what transpired in Adair’s bed or, at the least, forgave my allegiance to him. One time, I sat still so she could paint my face in her native fashion, with thick rings of kohl encircling my eyes and the line extended out toward my temples. She wrapped me in one of her long, winding cloths so that only my eyes were visible and I must say, the getup gave me a very exotic look.

  Sometimes, she’d give me a strange look, as though she were trying to talk to my soul, find some way to convey a message to me. A warning. I didn’t think I needed her to warn me; I knew Adair was a dangerous man and that I risked grave damage to my soul or my sanity if I got too close to him. I thought I knew where the line of control was and that I’d be able to stop myself in time. How stupid of me.