Black Body

by H C Turk

  The cathedral had grown. Previously strewn stone blocks had been adjusted together into a foundation and budding walls. And though the overall site was yet a mass of rough elements being fused together, in my increased imagination I found less of the mess and more of the creation. But the prevalent element remained effort, sinning men controlling carts and sleds with their loads of timber and cements. And what of the singular man imaginative enough to infer from this heap coherent worship?

  I had not forgotten that wilderness across the Thames, but now I wondered how appropriate its name of Gravesbury Reach might be. I saw trees implying a forest, and was pained by this thought, for memories of my forest home returned. And I considered the natural triptych of my part of London—this countryside, the Rathel’s garden, and the city’s greens and parks—and wondered of their comparison; but were not all superior to paved streets, all laughable compared to God’s removed wilds?

  Feeling a shift in the coach as the driver turned to his passenger, I prayed that the male was not moved toward insight by his fare’s special smell.

  “And you are the one, Miss Rathel, who was here afore with her mistress, I do recollect. It is your interest, then, in God and architecture, or in men being worked?”

  To make some polite reply without shouting, I would move across the seat to speak through the window opposite the loud men outside. But when I turned, one of those bodily males stood facing me.

  “So, here is the demon who will ruin my family. Has Amanda sent you to torment me, or is this visit your own wickedness?”

  In that briefest moment before my reply, I determined him. Immediately I was frightened, but the fear seemed to increase my awareness, for I noted attributes of this male previously unexamined. Unlike the perspiring laborers, this gentleman was dry and wore a wig, though his false hair was moderate. He seemed to speak with only the center of his mouth, the middle of his lips moving while the corners remained compressed. His nose was longer and more pointed than usual for a sinner, his eyes moderately separated. All these features conspired to direct his speaking toward his subject as though thrust. But I was not aware enough to determine whether Edward Denton was frightened or displeased.

  “The accord is my own, sir,” I professed. “My goal is only to examine your construction, for truly I’ve been moved by St. Nicholas Cathedral and would view the new one nurtured by your talent. As for your utterance of evil, I must apologize for being its cause, apologize for my poor humor at our first meeting. In truth, I was damaged then by Lady Amanda’s own delusions of evil, and did not believe you would construe such foolishness to be real.”

  Since I was deep in the cab, Edward pressed near the window opening to project his speaking more directly toward me, his breath with a slight odor of snuff, but not liquor nor burning tobacco. And though he made no move for the door’s latch, the man seemed immediately dangerous. I shied from his directed smell, drawing away from his ideas, not his eatings.

  “I know of you,” he declared. “You have not entered London without my agents’ scrutinizing your past. Even before, I knew of Amanda and her witches. If I could prove you the witch, I would have you enjailed, for Lady Amanda is most expert here, and I believe she has found a way to use her expertise to ruin me and my heir.”

  “How heinous of me to jeopardize that aspect which is your heir, as though the blood shared with your son is less important than transmitted wealth.”

  “Is this more of your ill humor, girl? No man could love his son as his own blood and life more than I.”

  Then he rushed away from the window, and I felt relieved that he had departed. But his goal was me, for Edward stepped quickly around the coach to my door. Snatching the panel open, he firmly instructed me to exit, then ordered the driver to wait. I allowed him to guide me out, his hand clasped on my elbow, for the only damage I sensed was not my upcoming destruction, but Edward’s ongoing pain.

  With his hand on my arm like a rein, Edward escorted me to his building. I saw to one side men dressed as he, but Edward made no move toward his peers. In one hand he held me, in the other a cane that he poked at laborers in his path. Perhaps Edward was attempting to impress the lady by soiling her hem, but I was a witch and not fearful of mud. Perhaps he gained satisfaction in dragging me past his workers so they might leer and sweat their sex smell in my direction, thereby shaming the young miss. And though these laborious sinners desiring to gnaw my appeal were as tangible as tobacco, they were less distressing than previous males anxious to eat my body with flames.

  We halted apart from the workers, on high land with the growing building spread before us as though the array of a sinner’s meal. Edward had led me to a vast mound of uprooted stumps, remnant trees to be taken away and burned as though witches who had cursed the construction Denton described.

  “Is your interest, then, in the lintels to soon appear?” he intoned, finally releasing my elbow to direct my vision via his cane toward stone forms. “Perhaps your interest in architecture is more structural. Would you examine the underpinnings of the pilasters to contemplate the vectored stresses they endure?”

  Edward’s speaking was loud, his gestures flamboyant, but not intense enough to bring forth remorse from me, only displeasure.

  “Would you impress me, sir, with your ability to pile rocks?” I returned as though admonishing. “The architect is an artist, is he not? Therefore, explain your true concern, and divulge for me the aesthetics of your son.”

  Edward turned away from his building and toward his true concern: the witch come to attack him. He stared for an instant in which he sought meaning, the young miss cryptic to him in all ways but her danger.

  “I know not of witches as does your mistress, but I believe them real,” Edward declared. “If you be any sort of demonic personage, beauteous or not, I hereby warn you both of law and God. I warn that our king and all the Church of England shall support me in protecting my son whom you would harm.”

  “Sir, the sort of person I am is one steeped in morality, a lesson of life coming ultimately from God, whose name you use as though He were one of your agents, a laborer with the task of protecting you from your own imagination. But I am of God no less than you, and being both fearful and loving of our greatest Lord, I wish harm to no person, not even the heinous Rathel, who has encaptured me. I wish only to live with my own people away from your family and Rathel’s.”

  “If you’re a demon, girl, you’re a glib one in asserting a love for God,” Edward responded, displaying with his latest reply less fear and more interest. “What, then, of your terrible speaking that day about killing my Eric?”

  “Sir, it is not I, but Lady Amanda who suffers an unfortunate delusion that somehow against my will and capacity I shall bring damage to your son.”

  “And thus is your reputation, that your past life was one with witches wherefrom you became imbued with their evil,” Edward retorted. “How would you grievously harm my son if not demonically? But no need have you to understand an evil that Satan promotes through your person. Deluded you might be as to your harmlessness, but Amanda is the expert here, and she is your mentor. Her delusion is in believing that I wronged her by marrying my wife instead of herself. But Franklin was my business partner, not my marital agent. And Eric is my son, not hers, though she believes this improper to the point of ruining him and me. Amanda’s delusion is in confusing contractual obligations with those of the heart.”

  “But, sir, was it not your vow to wed Amanda if her husband came to the worst, which was his death?”

  “Glib again you are, girl, but nevertheless ignorant of the truth’s entirety. My vow was to financially support the wife of my partner, but Amanda confronted me with a misinterpretation. Never was my promise to wed her, and all of honesty knows this, despite what your mistress may have said. But I would have married her—I would have conceded—for time it was to begin my own family.”

  “An impossibility with Lady Amanda in that she was barren. Thus, we find the
limits of your honor.”

  “Thus, we find the limits of Amanda’s emotions; for upon learning of her barrenness, she yet insisted upon our wedding, though she had never professed desire for me beyond siring a child that Franklin could not.”

  “How wicked of her to seek a companion for life after her husband passed away, after she found herself incapable of a most desired offspring.”

  “Other companions were available, Amanda having some selection in being a significant lady. Better companions existed for her than I, for only misery would I bring in sharing her poor travail of being childless when a child was the companion I also desired most.”

  “Despite any incorrect honor, I pity you, sir. I also pity Rathel for her hatred, and truly believe you unworthy of vengeance because of your particular rejection.”

  “Amanda developed her hatred not from my rejection, but from my wife,” Edward corrected. “Early in our marriage, Hanna bore me a son and heir. Only then did Amanda develop her poor emotion, which she carries through the years. There is the pity. A fine life she could have with any of countless English gentlemen, but instead she has settled upon you.”

  “And thank you, continually gracious sir, for equating me with hatred.”

  “Pleased I would be to find you equal to the ostensible,” Edward countered, “that child Amanda could never conceive. But I doubt this to be her satisfaction with you. I disbelieve that Amanda has been with her witches again to return with merely a comely girl. I believe the lady gained what she has sought these years: not a family for herself, but a weapon to harm mine.”

  “Sir, I ascribe the true danger here to all of these delusions, which Rathel herself promotes as though real. Therefore, if you believe me that despicable medium the lady imagines, I suggest you best protect yourself by eliminating me. The most sensible method would be to aid in my returning home, thereby removing from London Rathel’s greatest weapon.”

  In that moment, he considered me. Perhaps he sought salvation.

  “You would be at your former home again, this Man’s Isle?”

  “I would if God allowed me the selection.”

  “And you desire me to fund your living on this island as you now live? Am I to afford you luxuries which you in fact would take to your current home and thereafter gloat upon with your mother?”

  “Sir, my mother is dead, my only mother, my true mother, and she was murdered by the despicable law you previously threatened against me. Perhaps your son would be satisfied to live in Rathel’s home, but I am unnatural there, and would have my own home and nothing further of the Rathel, who compares to my mother as the blackguard compares to the businessman. And from you, sir, I have no desire but that your pitiful delusions leave my life. Being the only person about with no phantasms, I suggest that you provide me not with funds, but with direct transportation to my only and original home. This dangerous girl would then be beyond the bounds of your fear.”

  “I have no reason to believe this offer.”

  “Then believe your own desires, ignorant sinner,” I admonished. “The position you now hold is conflictual. Can you deem me so wise in sophisticated city ways as to seduce you financially? Disbelieving my desires might be sensible, but to disavow your own is foolish. If you consider me so perilous, what could be better than to have me well removed with neither your luxuries nor the Rathel’s knowledge?”

  “Now I understand your plan,” Edward announced, having gained deluded enlightenment. “I see that in fact you nearly are wise enough to have connived me, for with that last phrase you reveal yourself. Yes, you would have me plan your departure, yet all along Amanda would be informed by you. As soon as you left London at my behest and expense, I would be arrested by the king’s magistrate for having kidnapped a child legally adopted by Amanda Rathel. Thereafter, I would be imprisoned for a term long enough for you and your mother to have your wicked way with my son, to overcome his own good sense and my weakened wife, gaining Eric’s betrothal by seducing him with your worldly personage and beautiful, sinister visage.”

  “How talented you are, sir, to have constructed a composition more fanciful than any opera,” I retorted. “How pitiful that Satan again has had his way with God’s people by transforming another into a fool. My ending suggestion, then, is in the form of a wish: that your son receives the fine life any average person deserves, and that you are not burdened with the suffering your own ignorance should mandate.”

  Then I quit that site of deluded construction, no ushering from the operatic architect required, instructing the coachman to convey me to any kindly place where people do not reject their own salvation.

  Of course, he took me home.

  Chapter 12

  Modern Weapon

  On the roof, genuinely in my person, I believed that I sensed, unreally in my mind, a natural realm, wild land without artificial constructs, animals without reins, plant life not in pots upon a window sill. I seemed to perceive the subtle intermingling of wilderness odors, their source a realm far beyond the roofs of London, not in sight but within my belief. But, no, not even the keenest witch can retrieve sensation such a distance, though any person can sense home despite a separation; for this is not perception, but desire, and desire has no bounds.

  True sensations were immediate, but only those of London’s bulk. True thought existed, the fact that I would never leave this city by my own devise, for I could not approach a park without finding evil to denounce, could not pass a major building without being accosted by impassioned fantasy. And sinning men were everywhere, some in the form of boys. True humans I saw below, well-souled but not well-scented, the people to have improved God’s perfection by building London. And what of this area before sinners, before St. Nicholas? Had woods and witches been present, every tree and sister cut down because of their danger? Surely, no witches remained, only Rathel’s kind, Rathel’s family. And that specific failure was present below, the child who should have been hers, for here came Eric.

  The unaccompanied boy was not passing by, for he turned directly toward Rathel’s townhouse. After stepping through the privet hedge, he left my vision, but then the knocker sounded. I knew Eric had come to prove the Rathel’s assessment, that the white witch once presented toward a male would not be resisted. Could I resist him by remaining on the roof—but what of his next visit? For how many years would I need to reject him? How long would Rathel retain me and my intended failure before having me burned? But I surrendered to the inevitable, moving from the roof into the house, returning to Rathel’s family another failed member not hers by blood but through manipulation.

  Stepping from the ladder to the balcony, I found earnest Elsie scurrying toward me.

  “And it’s the Eric lad who’s come to see you, Alba,” she began, settling before me to speak importantly, unselfishly. “Since I’m last seeing him, lass, he’s become a young man. And with your both being the age of betrothal, a wonderful bond might be made between the two families now separated by a past that should stay gone.”

  “Oh, Elsie, am I to be burdened with rescinding history? My tutor insists upon plying me with wars—am I to be mending the entire world retroactively?”

  The servant heard no word of mine, much too concerned with appearance than content, stepping near to pull upward on my collar and downward on my bodice, yanking my shoulders straight and patting my hair with effort and expertise as she nervously continued her own speaking.

  “Ah, I’m praising God, child, that for once you’re looking near decent, as though you’ve finally gained understanding of being a lady; for they must always be prepared for presenting themselves, and not to spiders, but to beaus. And after marriage, to their husband ever and to his business associates and fellow parishioners and—”

  “Blooming bearskins, Elsie,” I interrupted, having heard enough foreboding.

  “Now, Alba, you’ll be speaking like a lady,” she returned with a displeasure I could smell. “Are you learning no purpose in speaking but torme
nting the people who care for you?”

  Perhaps not, for this was not the verbal sport between Mother and me. Elsie here was humorless, expectant because her young lass was receiving her first beau. But since Mother was not present, was anyone available to care for me?

  “Forgive my rudeness, Elsie, but please understand my position. As I have made known before, the Rathel intends for this Eric to wed me so that the witch in me will somehow kill him and make the final bond of hatred between the two families one of death.”

  “Ah, it’s more nonsense you’re tormenting me with, girl,” the servant moaned. “Killing her husband’s wilder traits is what a wife can be doing, but no more. Now, be pleasant with the lad or I’ll be marrying him meself, since I’ve never gained a husband, and would as soon be taking one even if I had to kill in payment.”

  “I wish you would take him,” I told her honestly, “for with your kindly spirit, you deserve him.”

  “Oh, Alba, and I’m deserving nothing of the kind. So young a lad for meself?” she smiled. “Whatever are you thinking, now, in your often strange mind?”

  “I am not thinking of his age nor yours, Elsie. I am thinking that such a person of appropriate age and similar position would be appreciated by you, with your good heart and elegant soul. Truly, I have no desire for a beau, but in you I detect a happiness wished for me that I would have for you.”

  “Ah, and it’s sweet you are, child, to be wishing for me something so grand as your own marriage. No lass from any land could be more generous.”

  “I would have for you the finest love ever to come from marriage. But here, my Elsie, is not all the generosity you imagine in me, but a desire for justice; for no person more fully deserves the love she would choose than you.”

  As the sinning woman was rendered static by my profession, I entered my chamber to drown myself and thus save Eric by discouraging him. Therefore, I thrust aside my garments to douse my baby-ejecting portion with the strongest liquid scents Elsie insisted on procuring for my livery, though never had I applied them before.