Maude, in some distant corner of her slowly starving brain, imagined an electrical storm building and summoned it; a storm made up of billions of tiny nerve cells, dark thunder heads growling, lightning dancing between them; the storm was building, growing.
“Who are you, please, tell me,” Maude said. “You’re not a Daughter. I don’t know you, but you know me, you love me.”
“I’ve always loved you, Maude,” the woman in the light said. “I always will. I’m so proud of you. Now live and be happy, darling. Fight for your life, fight for it. Please tell Martin how much I love him still. He tries, Maude, he tries so hard. Your father balances all his love for you with all his fears, all his ridiculous expectations for himself. He wants to understand you, and you can trust him, my darling. We both love you so very much. I’ll always love you both.”
Maude saw the woman’s face for the briefest of instants; she was weary, pale and exhausted. She had sweat-tousled brown hair with hints of red-gold and kind brown eyes. Tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She smiled at Maude with all the light in her being, all the light in this warm endless place. “I love you,” she said.
The storm’s fury was a sizzling blue-hot wall of numbing, convulsing pain. It washed away the image of the woman, it washed away everything. Darkness, then finally, there was a sound. It was far away, but it persisted; it was the beating of a distant, weary drum.
27
The Emperor
Charleston, South Carolina
June 15, 1871
Maude opened her eyes. She was in her bedroom at Grande Folly. Isaiah sat beside her, reading to her from Little Women. He paused when he saw her eyes were open and smiled. He had a large bandage covering most of his head and one of his eyes.
“How are you, little girl? I missed you,” Isaiah said. “Would you like water?”
“Yes,” she rasped, “please. I missed you too. I was very far away. Are you all right? They hurt you.”
“They did,” Isaiah said. “But Amadia was able to help once she worked on you, and Mr. Cline summoned doctors from town. I’m fit as a fiddle, but you, young lady, you gave us a good scare.”
“You’re holding something back,” Maude said. “What is it, Isaiah?”
He handed her a glass of water and tried to help her drink it, but she struggled to sit and drink herself. Her whole body was stiff with old pain. There were compresses stained with yellowish fluids and brown blood all over her chest and she felt more on her back. The water was the best thing she had ever drunk. Isaiah refilled the glass several times for her, and the buzzing headache began to depart.
“More?” he asked, filling the glass again and offering it to her.
“You’ve tried to drown me, now please tell me,” Maude said. “What’s happened?”
“They took Constance,” Isaiah said, “the Daughters of Lilith. Your father is very ill. He was injured trying to stop them. He may never walk again.”
Maude swung her legs off the bed. Everything hurt, but she scarcely noticed.
“Maude, you have to be still,” Isaiah said. “You lost so much blood. The doctors weren’t sure if you’d ever wake up. You died twice while Amadia was ministering to you. Please!”
“Third time’s the charm,” Maude said.
She was on her feet, looking for clothes. She almost fell over as a wave of dizziness struck her, but she steadied herself on the dresser. “How much of a head start do they have?” she asked. “How long have I been lying like a damned rock in this bed?”
“A little over three weeks,” Amadia said, standing in the open doorway. “They are most likely in England already.”
Maude stopped. She stood still as the words sank in. “God … damn it!” she screamed and struck the dresser. The sturdy furniture exploded, shattered wood and clothing scattering everywhere. Maude’s fists were shaking as she stood frozen, unable to suppress the anger and grief, the guilt. All the weakness, the dizziness didn’t matter.
“Goddamn it,” she muttered again. Isaiah came to her and began to hug her.
“It’s not your fault, child,” he said, softly. Maude pushed him away, gently.
“No,” she said and looked up to Amadia. “It’s yours, yours and that lot of bitches with you. You know where they took my baby, you know why?”
“I do,” Amadia said, “and I am to blame. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.” Maude pushed her wild, tangled hair up and out of her face. It fell back. “Isaiah, will you please leave us for a moment,” she said. As Isaiah walked to the door, Maude said, “I’m glad you’re all right. Thank you. I love you.”
“I love you, too, little girl,” the old man said. “Don’t go picking a fight now; we both owe her our lives.” He nodded to Amadia and departed, closing the door behind him.
“You seem to have won him over,” Maude said. She looked down at the tangle of splintered oak and tousled clothing. One of Gran’s old poet blouses lay at her feet. She picked it up and clutched it to her.
“He is a very good, very kind man,” Amadia said. “He loves you very much, like his own blood. He reminds me of my iya, my adopted mother.”
“He’s family. Explain yourself,” Maude said. “Who exactly are you, and why are you helping me and mine now?
“My name is Amadia Ibori. I am a Daughter of Lilith, like you. I am the current Oya, given the responsibility of acting in defense of my native lands, and protector of my people.”
“Oya?” Maude asked.
“It is a title from my homeland. There has been a long line of Daughters in Africa who act under the title of Oya. My iya, my mother, Raashida, passed the title on to me once I completed my initiation and took the Blood of the Mother.”
“I assume you finished off that last Son we were fighting?” Maude asked.
“I tried,” Amadia said, “but as you well know, they are quite formidable. I was trying to stay alive myself and figure out some way to drop the brute. I led him on a merry chase, I’m afraid. Most of the manor is in shambles.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not the first time,” Maude said. She found a pair of Gran’s breeches and picked them up as well. “From some of the stories I’ve heard anyway. Gran implied it was a pretty routine happening.”
“I’ve tried to clean up as best I can,” Amadia said. “I didn’t have much else to do around here, waiting to see if you’d live or not. I promised your daughter I’d protect you and your father.”
“How did you stop him?”
“By then, it was after dawn and I drew him outside,” Amadia said, sitting down in the chair Isaiah had been in. “I tried to drown him in the ocean. He returned the favor. I could hold my breath longer, just barely. They truly are frighteningly resilient creatures.”
“They have blood in their veins from a creature that existed before death,” Maude said. “Quite the tonic, apparently.” Maude pulled her nightgown off over her head. Her entire body was a painting made of bruises that covered the spectrum of blue, green, purple, yellow and black. There were fresh stitches. Bandages covered all the wounds that Typhon had reopened with a gesture. Her pale scars were like routes on an atlas of old pain. Amadia looked at her. “What?” Maude asked, a little defensively.
“Nothing,” Amadia said, and lowered her eyes. She fumbled in the pocket of her jacket. “Do you smoke?”
“No, of course not,” Maude said, slipping on Gran’s poet blouse and then sitting on the edge of the bed as she pulled up the beeches. Amadia withdrew a cigar, bit the end off, and spit it into a spittoon near the door. She held the cigar between her lips and then put her fingers near the tip. She moved the thumb and forefinger back and forth furiously. After a moment there was a flash at her fingers, and the tip began to glow from the flame.
“You should try it sometime,” Amadia said. “It’s a habit worth forming.”
“They didn’t hurt her taking her, did they?” Maude asked. “Constance?”
“No,” Amadia said. “She surrendered, said she had foresee
n this coming in a dream. Had me promise to help you and your father. She was very brave. You trained her well.”
“She’s always been brave,” Maude said. “I did nothing.”
“She told me to tell you, and your father, that she loved you, and that to save you two was worth her sacrifice.”
Maude sat back on the bed, partly exhausted just from the simple effort of getting dressed, but more from the idea of her baby far across the world alone, and among dangerous people who wanted to do her harm. “Where are they taking her, and why?” she asked.
“London,” Amadia said. “At least as a first stop. They are traveling on a merchant vessel, the Caliburn. There is a chapter house in the city, built for the Daughters of Lilith a few centuries ago, by the family of one of our own, a woman named Alexandria Poole. Alexandria fancies herself leader of the Daughters. She’s very wealthy and well-connected politically. The Caliburn is one of her family’s ships. She’s the one who gathered us all together for the first time in this generation. She’s the one who claims to understand the prophecy and sent us out to collect Constance.”
“So she’s the one I need to kill,” Maude said.
“I argued with them that there are too few of us now to fight off Typhon and his Sons as it is,” Amadia said. “I didn’t agree with killing Constance and I won’t help you kill Alexandria. She’s a scheming witch, but we need her.”
“This prophecy says my daughter is the Grail of Lilith, whatever that is,” Maude interjected. Amadia nodded and blew a stream of sweet smoke into the air above them.
“Yes,” she said. “Carcosa is usually only seen in dreams by most human beings, even by us Daughters. Very few have ever seen it with their physical eyes. Alexandria claims to have traveled there in the flesh and read a prophecy from a tablet about the last Daughter of the line of Lilith and how the line can be saved. By the way, when I was cleaning up the library, I came across that stone tablet you have with the ankh carved on it.”
“On the reading table, yes,” Maude said. “Gran told me it was African. I found an odd stone in it, like a ruby. I discovered it was crystallized blood, very potent, like the Blood we drink from the flask at our initiation, but far, far more powerful.”
“That tablet looks exactly like the one Alexandria has in the chapter house in London,” Amadia said. “The one she claims is from Carcosa. She keeps it locked away. I didn’t have an opportunity to translate it, but yours looks like hers and it’s supposed to contain this prophecy.”
“That would mean Gran traveled to Carcosa at some point,” Maude said. “What exactly does this Poole woman claim the prophecy says?”
“The prophecy says the last Daughter to drink of the Grail shall become closer to the Mother in understanding and power than any before her,” Amadia said. “Her blood will be as Lilith’s blood, she shall be as the Grail made flesh.”
“I had to use up the last of the blood in Gran’s flask to try to heal the Earth and put the Great Wurm back to sleep a few years ago,” Maude said. “Constance was the last to drink from the flask before I did that; I was trying to save her. The cult had fed her some of the Wurm’s blood too. The Mother’s blood helped restore her to herself but then these horrible dreams began.”
“I’m confident you did the right thing,” Amadia said. “The pirate queen put her trust in you as her student, the way my iya put her confidence in Anne Bonny, and gave her the Grail. Besides, we’re still all alive, so,” she said with a tip of her cigar, “well done.”
Maude gave her a grudging smile as she wrestled on a pair of buccaneer boots that had also belonged to Gran. “They are taking her to this Poole woman in London,” Maude said. “We need to pursue, if there is any small chance that Constance is still alive.”
“There’s supposedly a ritual to shed the last Daughter’s blood to renew the Grail,” Amadia said. “Only Alexandria claims to know all of it from the tablet. So they’d need to consult her before they did anything with Constance. But they already have enough of a head start to be in England by now.”
Maude, stood, a little shakily. Amadia stood also. “I’ll take that chance,” Maude said. “I have a few things to settle quickly, then we’ll need to be off with the tide tonight. Can you be ready?”
“Yes, of course,” Amadia said. “But it may be impossible to find a ship by tonight. Mr. Cline and Mrs. Mansfield have both been to see you often. A Judge Davenkirk came by to pay his respects as well, brought flowers a few times.”
“I’ll be damned,” Maude said.
“Thank you for trusting me,” Amadia said. “I know I’ve given you many reasons not to.”
“You’ve saved my life several times and you saved my father and a man who in many ways is also my father. Thank you.”
“I didn’t have an opportunity to examine your father’s back,” Amadia said. “His physicians shooed me away like I was infectious. People here seem to think ‘black’ is catching,” she said with a puff on her cigar. “I’m not sure if anything can be done for him or not. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll take a look when I see him.”
“Do you still have the old Grail, the iron flask?” Amadia asked. “We may need it.”
“I do,” Maude said. “I…” She started to speak, looked in the full mirror at her reflection. Why on earth had she chosen such a get-up as she was wearing? Amadia’s cigar smoke rolled over the edges of the silvered glass. She looked like … Maude froze for a moment. Gran, a young Gran, stared back at her from the glass. An association shifted and locked in her brain. Gran’s laughter, her voice in the Record. “We’ve got work to do,” she had said to Maude. “Find the blood stone, unlock the door to the Record, find Hecate. Find me.”
“Hecate?” Maude said.
“What?” Amadia said. “Are you all right?”
“Isaiah!” she called. He arrived at the door.
“Yes?” he said, looking a bit surprised at how Maude was dressed.
“Did Gran ever mention a ‘Hecate’ to you?”
“Ah,” Isaiah said, “I remember the Hecate, that was your gran’s old ship, a beauty she was too. A fifty-five-foot corvette. The first ship I ever saw. She used to anchor off that beach she loved so much behind the manor. Lady Cormac said it was the fastest ship in the sea, blessed by Poseidon himself. She was very proud of it.”
“What happened to it?” Maude asked.
“I think she sold it?” Isaiah said, closing his eyes, and jabbing the air with his forefinger, trying to summon memories. “My father may have said … it sank after a battle with … an empire of evil sea anemone creatures … was it? I’m really not sure. Your Gran was running about the world so much at that point, gone for months at a time, so many adventures, and so many strange and colorful guests at the mansion, and of course the manor getting wrecked every few months, usually because of those adventures or colorful guests. I’m sorry, Maude, I don’t recall what became of it.”
“It’s all right,” Maude said. “Thank you. I’m off to Charleston to see my father, and I think I know where to start looking for Gran’s ship. Could you please let Arabella and Alter know I’d like to see them, tonight.”
* * *
Greene opened the door to Martin’s townhouse in Charleston. It was after dark, and the butler held a small revolver close to his chest. He smiled when he saw it was Maude and swung the door open. “Miss Maude! It’s so good to see you up and about, madame,” Greene said.
“How is he, Chester?” Maude asked, as she hugged him. Greene took her coat and shut the door.
“They’ve done all they can for him,” Greene said. “The kidnappers tossed him off the stairs. It did something to his back. The doctors don’t know if anything can be done for it. He’s been very distressed, Miss Maude, between what happened to Miss Constance and to you. I’ve never seen him like this before. He will be so glad to see you.”
“I hope so,” Maude said.
Greene led Maude through the townhouse to the door of Martin�
��s study. He rapped on it and then opened it to allow Maude to step inside.
“Mr. Anderton,” Greene said, “Miss Maude is here to see you, sir.”
Martin was in a high-backed wheelchair near the window overlooking the street. He was in bedclothes and had a blanket draped over his lap. Maude stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
“Hello, Daddy,” she said softly. Martin turned the chair toward her. Maude had never seen her father look so frail, so old. Martin looked up and his eyes smiled in his sunken face.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” Martin said. His voice was cracked from lack of use. “I have some papers for you.”
“Daddy,” Maude said, afraid to cross the distance to him, but her heart ached to hold him. Ghosts of anger, of ugly words said and heard, held her in place. Truth be told, it was fear, fear of rejection, of somehow making it worse between them, if that was even possible. “None of that matters.”
Martin turned the chair. He wrestled with it and Maude saw the anger, the frustration, in his every movement. Finally, the chair responded and he pivoted it to face his desk. He picked up a sheath of papers with hands that shook a little. “I think you’ll find it all very self-explanatory,” Martin said, “and it’s all been run past Mr. Rutledge, much to his chagrin, I’m afraid. You just need to sign them and file them with the court.”
He held out the papers. Maude crossed to him and took them. She glanced over them and then paused. “Daddy, you’ve signed control of your companies over to me, you’ve signed everything over to me? You don’t want to do that, that business is your life.”
“No,” Martin said, “it never was supposed to be. I’m sorry, Maude, I tried to stop them from taking her. I did everything in my power.” His voice was cracking in pain, and he was fighting to hold back the tears; he failed. “It just wasn’t enough, I wasn’t good enough to…” Maude knelt beside him and put her arm around him. “I couldn’t save her, I couldn’t save her. I…” Martin wept and Maude held him tight, so tight he couldn’t fly away.
The Queen of Swords Page 32