They stood like that for a few seconds, motionless on the edge of violence.
Sweat had risen on Dahlgren’s face. His smile began to fade. The knife left Daniel’s throat.
“Forgiff me, sir,” he said, stepping back and giving a slight bow. “It is not anger at you…but much anger at myself.” He put the knife away. “I vish that ve should be friends. Yah?”
Daniel rubbed the place where the blade’s tip had not broken skin but certainly had left an impression. “I don’t know why you believe me to be someone else, sir,” he said, “but I will repeat that my wife is Quinn Tate, my name is Daniel, and—”
“And you are wrong!” came the reply. “You believe these things because the voman has told you? Her husband Daniel died last summer. Everyone knows her head is verruckt! She is insane. This is not your home, and you are not Daniel Tate.”
“You make no sense.”
Dahlgren’s grin darkened, his eyes glittering above the lantern. “Then…please allow me to prove what I say is correct.”
“Prove it? How?”
“There is a man,” said Dahlgren, leaning closer as if not wanting anyone else to hear yet they were entirely alone upon the wharf, “who vishes to find you. I know this is true. This man is…a professor. A man of great learning, and great power. He knows all about you, and he vill embrace you with gladness once I bring you to him.”
“The man’s name?”
“He is called Professor Fell.”
Did that name cause a shifting of shadows within Daniel’s brain? He knew the name, yet he did not know how he knew. “Why does he seek me?”
“To reward you, for services you haff performed. But he does not seek Daniel Tate. He seeks Matthew Corbett…your true name, and true self.”
Daniel felt pressure building once more in his head. “You said…you came here to hide. From him?”
“I vas involved in a…shall ve say…failed business venture, and he is a var’ hard taskmaster. But I vill tell you…all vill be forgiven, vhen I bring you to him. He vill greatly reward both of us.”
“I think you’re mad,” said Daniel, with some heat in his voice. “I know who I am.”
“Do you? Then…valk the town…alone, and ask anyone to tell you about that voman. My voman Annabelle told me, before she left. Ask about Daniel Tate, and how he died. Now…how can there be two Daniel Tates?”
“Mad,” the tormented young man repeated, and began to back away. “I am Daniel!”
“You are not. The professor knows you. Allow me to prove so, by taking you to him.”
“And where would you take me, to meet this professor?”
“England, young sir,” said Count Dahlgren. “Ve vould board ship in Charles Town, and set sail for England. I haff two horses and a vagon to sell. That vould be enough for our passage.”
“I’m going nowhere with you,” Daniel replied, continuing to back away. “Certainly not across the Atlantic! My wife is here, and so is my life.”
“Your vife is not here,” Dahlgren countered. He motioned toward the east with his crooked arm. “And your life is out there.”
Daniel had had enough. He turned and began to walk back the way he’d come.
“Think on these things!” said Dahlgren. “And…Matthew…no vord of this to the madvoman who shares your bed, yah?”
A confused young man returned to the Tate house, and slipping quietly inside he extinguished the lantern’s flame but found he could not put out the small fire that had begun to burn in his brain. He undressed and settled himself against Quinn’s body, and she moved to rest her head against his shoulder. He lay listening to her breathing. He tried to remember his childhood, or how he’d met Quinn, or their wedding day, or anything about the empty cradle—made from a hollowed-out log—that stood on the other side of the room.
He could remember nothing. Do we have children? he’d asked her, thinking how sad it was that he did not know even this, and she’d replied, No, but we will in time.
That name Dahlgren had called him. Matthew Corbett? And the other name…Professor Fell. Why did that name both repell and attract him? Why did it give him quick images of fiery explosions, rolling ocean waves and cannons being fired from a ship in the violet twilight? And stranger still…why did he think of what appeared to be a bloody fingerprint pressed upon a white card?
These images could not be kept. They could not be held long enough to be more closely examined. But he knew they were important, and he knew they said something about himself that he had to rediscover.
“I love you, Daniel,” Quinn whispered to him, from the depths of sleep.
“I love you, Berry,” he whispered back, but he did not hear himself answer and Quinn had already faded away.
He did not return to the wharf on the following night. Neither did he on the next night, for Quinn was aware of him getting out of bed and she grasped his hands and bade him return, for she’d suffered a bad dream that he was lost in the smoke of a burning wilderness and she could no longer even see his shadow.
But on the following night, after they had made love in their gentle, sweet way and Quinn had fallen asleep, Daniel kissed Quinn’s cheek and smoothed her hair, and he wished he might stay exactly where he was until morning’s light but the fire of curiosity was burning in him, it was a blaze beyond endurance, and it would not let him rest. He dressed, lit a candle for his lantern, left the house and returned to the harbor, where Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren was both fishing and waiting.
“Ah, there you are!” said Dahlgren, from his sitting position at the wharf’s end. “I vas sooner expecting you.”
The young man walked out to him. “A warm night,” he said.
“Yah, var’ varm. I myself like cold days and colder nights. I like the snowfall. The sound of it hissing through the pines. Someday I vill get back to my Prussia. Perhaps you vill help me?”
“By going with you to England?”
“Yah, that.”
“I tell you, I am Daniel Tate. I am—” He stopped, because he had no memories of being Daniel Tate and these mental flashes he was having spoke of a different life altogether.
“You are not anymore so sure,” the Prussian said. “Othervise…you vould not be here.” He saw the bobber go under and felt the line jerk. “Ah! Caught something!” He pulled up a small silver fish, enough for a pan, took it flapping off the hook and dropped it into the wooden bucket with several of its kin. Then he rebaited the hook using a live cricket and put the line again into the water. His boots, Daniel noted, were nearly in the river.
“You’re not afraid of alligators?” Daniel asked.
“Alligators,” answered the Prussian with a slight snarl, “are afraid of me.”
“Yet you fear this Professor Fell? Why is that?”
“As I say, I was involved—much against my vill—in a failed business. But that is in the past, my friend. In the present, he is seeking you. All vill be right, when you present yourself to him. You see?” Dahlgren smiled up at Matthew Corbett, exposing a mouthful of gray teeth.
“No, I do not see.”
“You do know you are not Daniel Tate. You do not belong here, and neither do I. You know that. But…your problem is…you do not remember who you are, and you are trying to decide if you can trust me. Yah?”
“I’m not sure I can trust someone who recently put a knife to my throat.”
“Forgiff me, I am sometimes hot-headed. Also…” Dahlgren smiled again. “Bad mannered.” He returned his concentration to his fishing, as if he were again alone upon the wharf.