He shook the flask, and then remembered it was empty.
“I should have known from the smell, but when I first saw them, I didn’t even realize I was looking at bodies,” Angus whispered. “The driver. The guard. My wife. She had lain there unburied four or five days, and this was in the peak of summer. Her face was unrecognizable because the whole corpse was covered in an undulating carpet of black.”
“Black?” I asked.
“Flies,” he said. There was a quaver in his voice. “And maggots in the flesh. I recognized her only by her wedding ring. It was so unimpressive, I guess her killers didn’t bother to chop off her finger to get at it.”
“My God.”
“Deeper in the woods, we found Iris. Because of the decomposition, we couldn’t know for sure, but old Mr. Bartholomew, the undertaker, said there were ligatures and wounds that suggested they’d done things, that they’d-” Here, he broke down into sobs.
“I’m sorry, Angus,” I said. “I had no idea.”
“I’d have killed myself, I think, if it weren’t for Crystal, my younger one. In a few more years, she’ll be married, I suppose, and I’ll have nothing left to live for.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” I said. I leaned forward and patted him on the knee. “You’ll still have whisky.”
“I hope it don’t offend you to hear me say it, but you and I aren’t so different,” Angus said.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“I didn’t fully realize it until Mr. Knifing found Mrs. Tower’s diary, but I reckon I knew all along why you couldn’t stay away from the murder scene. It’s the same reason I volunteered to be constable. The same reason I patrol these lonesome highways with my musket. You’re looking for revenge.”
“I’m looking for answers.”
“Call it what you will.”
I thought about that for a minute. Then I asked: “What’s your surname, Angus the Constable?”
“Buford. I’m Angus Buford.”
I smiled. “Well, I’m pleased to know you, Angus Buford.”
“Likewise, I suppose, Lord Byron.”
Chapter 34
For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I’ve done a feat to-day.
But since he cross’d the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,
To woo,-and-Lord knows what beside,
And swam for Love, as I for Glory
There’s a great old legend about a boy from Abydos named Leander who fell in love with a priestess of Aphrodite named Hero. Hero dwelt in a tower in Sestos, and between Sestos and Abydos lay the Hellespont.
The Hellespont is one of the most treacherous straits ever documented by cartography or mythology, and Leander swam across it every night to rendezvous with his lover. Hero hung a lamp in the window of her tower, and its light guided him to her.
I remember my mother telling me about Leander and Hero as she tucked me beneath my tattered blanket in the rooms where we lived in Aberdeen, before I inherited Newstead. Mad Jack had already been gone a year, but my mother told me he was coming back, and I believed her. She told me love is a beacon, like Hero’s lantern, and just as Poseidon’s rage couldn’t keep Leander from his beloved, my father’s affection for us was mightier than any force in nature, and it would bring him inexorably home to us.
This is how boys are shaped into the men they are to be. When I was small, my mother told me bedtime stories, and when I grew older, I spent my sleepless nights drinking and lying to myself.
But here is the truth: On the third of May in 1810, I visited the place where Hero’s tower stood, and I looked into the treacherous strait between the Aegean and the Propontis. It was mostly white-capped churn slamming against jagged rocks, and from my perspective, there was only one rational thing to do. I stripped my clothing off, and I walked into the water.
In my youthful imaginings, Leander was propelled by his ardor the way a strong headwind and a full sail drive a boat. I pictured him skimming across the waves like a lusty porpoise; his engorged ventral appendage slicing through the surf, and the pale-green sea froth lapping at his swollen purple bollocks.
The actual experience of swimming the Hellespont is somewhat different. The waters are swift and treacherous and black, even when the sun is high. The surface current and the undertow run in opposite directions, so if you push too deep trying to cut through the ten-foot swells, the undercurrent will drag you into the depths, and hold you there, and squeeze the breath from your lungs. The distance from the European side to the Asiatic is only about a mile, straight across, but the current is so powerful that I traveled a distance of between three and four miles on a diagonal to make it from one shore to the other. If you aren’t a very strong swimmer, the Hellespont is an easy place to die. Trying to swim across it is an insane thing to do; nobody with any sense of prudence or moderation would ever even attempt it. My aim was to prove such a feat was possible, a thesis that was subject to some doubt until I accomplished it.
It took me an hour and ten minutes to make the crossing. Though the weather was warm, the fast-moving water was frigid, and I lost feeling in my extremities halfway through the swim, when I was quite far from either shore. Finishing the journey sapped me of my strength, and, unlike Leander, when I dragged myself onto the beach, I was in no condition to express any amorous urges. I just sprawled on the gray sand and vomited seawater for a while, and I was quite ill for several weeks afterward.
When I was a child, my mother told me the story of Leander and Hero, but she didn’t tell me all of it. It wasn’t until I got to Harrow that I learned how it ended; how all the legendary love stories end.
Leander made his swim each night throughout the summer, but when the seasons changed, the waters grew more violent and unendurably cold. I swam the strait in the daytime, and I could clearly see my destination on the European shore. Leander swam at night, when the sunless sky melted into the dark water. With the waves tossing him upward and the current sucking him down, he had only Hero’s guttering lantern to show him which way was up, and which way to swim. When the raging winds blew her light out, he lost the shore, lost his equilibrium. He lost hope. And the sea swallowed him.
Hero saw his drowned body wash up on the beach, and full of grief, she threw herself from her window and smashed against the rocks.
Mad Jack said that death is only for fools, and maybe it’s foolish to die for love like Leander and Hero. But maybe it’s also foolish not to dive into black waters if there’s a perfect girl waiting on the other side. Maybe it’s better to die for her than to live without her.
And maybe it’s foolish not to dive into black waters if there’s a chance to explore the sparkling shore on the other side of them. Maybe it’s foolish not to run and swim as far as one can, to push oneself to the limits of one’s physical capabilities, to make a grasp for the horizon.
Vampires must shun the light and cower in their crypts. Where’s the fun in that? What good is eternity if you can’t spend it dashing after the rising sun? I’d rather my candle burn briefly but brightly than dwell eternally in darkness.
Chapter 35
Where there is mystery, it is generally supposed that there must also be evil.