Riot Most Uncouth by Daniel Friedman Read Free Book Online Page A

Byron. Gordon is hers.” Here he pointed an accusing finger at my mother. “I had to take her surname to get her money. And now, of course, the money’s gone, and I’m left with nothing but a fat wife, a crippled son, and somebody else’s name.”
    The man rubbed his hands across the front of his canvas trousers as he tried to decide what to say. He came up with: “Your name ain’t no concern of mine, sir. I just need the furniture.”
    My father stood, his motion remarkably smooth and deliberate, considering his drunkenness. He drew his second pistol and fired it at the chair. The ball struck the place where the back met the seat, sending an explosion of slivers and cushion fluff into the air. My mother was hit by shrapnel in several places, and I got a thick chunk of wood stuck in my forearm, and another in my side. I began to cry.
    â€œHave the sodding thing, with my blessing,” said my father to the workman, and he threw his crystal glass against the side of the house. Then, to my mother: “Take the child away. I can’t stand to look at it any longer, or listen to the sound of its mewling.”
    At sunset, she brought my supper to my bedroom, and I ate it alone, as the governess had left several weeks earlier for want of pay. I did not see my father again that night, and when I awoke the next morning, he’d left us and fled the country. Had he stayed, he would have been imprisoned for his unpaid debts.
    The castle at Gight, which had been Catherine’s inheritance, went to my father’s creditors. When she met Mad Jack, she was a wealthy heiress with a substantial income. Now, all that was gone. My mother was willing to give up everything for love, so love found her a match who was willing to take everything from her. My father, despite his other flaws, was not lacking in imagination, and he put his creative faculties to good use, devising new ways to spend money and accumulate debt. Once he’d stripped away her assets, my mother was no longer of any value to him.
    Soon after he left, I heard he had died. There were rumors that he was murdered by the husband of his mistress. I never believed it, though. My father always said that only foolish men die. Whatever else he was, Mad Jack was no fool.

 
    Chapter 8
    I loved—but those I loved are gone;
    Had friends—my early friends are fled:
    How cheerless feels the heart alone,
    When all its former hopes are dead!
    Though gay companions o’er the bowl
    Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
    Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,
    The heart—the heart—is lonely still.

    â€” Lord Byron, “I Would I Were a Careless Child”
    When I returned to my residence, the man from London was waiting there for me.
    â€œI am Sir Archibald Knifing,” said my new friend as I entered. Joe Murray looked irritated; it was his customary duty to introduce guests, and it was rude of Knifing to dispense with proper etiquette. But Knifing didn’t seem like a man with much respect for protocol or much tolerance for inanities. He didn’t seem like the kind of man one wants to meet when one has just lugged a heavy wooden chair up several flights of stairs after stealing it, either.
    I shrugged off my greatcoat, which Joe Murray retrieved from the floor, and I pushed the throne against a wall in the parlor. I draped my body over the seat, trying to look as impressive as I could under the circumstances. My clothes and hair were damp and clingy.
    Knifing remained almost unnaturally still as he watched me arrange myself. He had a sallow and waxy complexion; skin like that of an embalmed corpse, except for a puckered pink scar that sliced diagonally across his face, from the middle of his forehead, through his milky left eye, and down the side of his cheek. His clothing bore the hallmarks of the finest London tailors, but his suit was black, which was out of fashion for social calls during daylight hours,