by H C Turk
“Oh, of course not. The days have so leapt past.”
“Aren’t you noticing, child, that the other folks in the household were attending church this morn as is God’s desire while you were lounging beneath the bed?”
“How presumptuous of you to deem the sinners’ selected day of worship God’s,” I retorted. “I have no remorse for worshiping the God we share in a manner pleasing to Him, not you. And because you personally are aware that public men will have at me if able, I am surprised you admonish me for remaining in the house. Would you have me bring my attraction to your parishioners so they might reveal their lust to Jesus? Do you not recall the previous occasion?”
“Aye, you can be ending your assault now, lass. Ah, I’m thinking one day you’ll be having me apologize for hoping to better your young life.”
“No, one day you will be required to vanquish that excessive sensitivity of yours as though you were a child attempting to grow properly; whereas I in fact am the blinking lass made to become a lady in a strange, opaque world wherein she does not comfortably fit, and so on.”
“Yes, miss,” the equally snide servant replied, “and I’m thanking you for the lesson in existence, miss.”
“Please, Elsie, you sound like Eric. All day I have to hear his mewling.”
“Ah, and now we’re finding your true concern: that your beau is not appearing this morning.”
“Elsie, I vow to render my chamber into a most wildly natural area if you ever again refer to that sinner as my ‘beau.’”
“Now, Alba, there’s no shame in having a friend who’s also a young man. Are you having only me as a friend the rest of your days in London?”
“You have taken your final breath as friend of mine if you continue tormenting me with the Denton creature,” I snarled, and hastened to my bed cave.
I had so shamed the boy he would not return. This was the concern to lead me to Elsie that morning. I had found myself loitering in the great room, expecting the tutor’s approach, for she had always come before Eric that first week of his visiting. But no one came, and though I inquired of Elsie, the true answer I found in myself. I sought Eric not only to allay my guilt at having disgraced him, but because he was not the typical male. Eric was not the same species as those creatures in the park, was not at all like Georges Gosdale and that man on the Thames’ bank. He was neither boy nor man, but Eric, and not an unacceptable companion. And though he had no fragrance of the witch about him, he had a morsel of their ways, for Eric lacked the pretension of most sinners. Unlike Elsie, who made to be motherly but was in no way my mother, Eric was my social peer. And, yes, I was a member of this society as long as I lived in their city and shared tea with their populace. Eric was also peer to me in certain personal respects: his age was similar to mine, his thinking acute, whereas Elsie’s was kindly. Perhaps Eric was similar enough to substitute for the witch friend of my own age I had never known….
Certainly. This sinner who upon first smelling me had unleashed his man-stick to stuff inside my bottom was the same as a witch sister. Because my absurd thinking dishonored me more than I had Eric the previous day, I entered a deserved bout of sulking to last the entire Sabbath. Not a second did I spend on the rooftop. Not a moment did I pass in the garden. The following morning, I opined my situation to Rathel, who waited in the foyer to greet the tutor and the extraneous student.
“What is the continuing purpose in retaining the tutor’s services when the victim Eric is heretofore taken with my presence?” I demanded. “End this teacher’s dreary work and let us be on with proving you ignorant so that I might exit London.”
“The purpose is for the boy, not yourself,” Rathel replied with a calm I could be tutored toward disliking. “In Mrs. Natwich, he has a chaperone of professional stature. Furthermore, tutoring allows the boy justification for coming here which he might provide his parents. He would not, of course, convey his true rationale, which might yet be unknown to him. So we shall continue with the tutor’s services, unless you have some superior idea. But this I doubt, for you have yet to learn how to think, only speak.”
“Oh, the pain you deliver scars my heart,” I intoned. “My best idea, then, is to be on with your foolishness to thereby more rapidly prove you the fool.”
I then left Rathel to greet her guests. The tutoring with Eric passed normally, the boy evincing no effects from the previous day’s disgrace. Much of the morning passed, however, before I overcame my displeasure. Thereafter, I was merely bored, too concerned with myself to allow the young man to be a true diversion.
In the following days and into autumn, I came to accept this situation with few bodings as to how the charade might end. Greeting Eric some morns was as dreary a chore as dressing. Because London offered me little interest, other days held nothing for me but conversation with the young male. And though refreshing in a boring manner, he was never a witch. Neither was he devious Rathel nor fretful Elsie. Nevertheless, not so fascinating was Eric that I required no respite from his presence. Herein my support was Eric, for occasionally he had to remain home for his own familial reasons. Learning of this, I successfully demanded days of my own free of him and Natwich, days for journeying to the Continental market with Elsie for a refreshing selection of those few and foreign fruits available during English autumn.
Occasionally Eric would arrive before the tutor, an initiative that drew unspoken joy from Rathel, but firm lessons of being unchaperoned from Mrs. Natwich. Thereafter, Elsie or Rathel or even I would rush Master Eric out of doors through the garden only to return him via the front entry once the tutor was settled within. Since Eric and I were apprised of each other’s schedule, I required scant expertise in the sinning calendar to greet him in the foyer one morning. Drawing scandalous looks from Elsie for usurping her servitude, I rushed gleefully to the now familiar latchwork, expecting Eric but finding Georges.
Arduous surprise came over the sinner upon viewing me, the man’s shift of visage exacerbated by my unhesitant greeting.
“And a proper welcome to you, Mr. Gosdale, the sinning gent with his hellish hands and satanic soul.”
“Miss Alba!” Georges cried, “I must propose serious marriage to you!”
Along with a loud inhalation from behind me came Elsie’s immediate, rushing presence, the woman both angered and frightened. Of the three humans present, this servant was most passionate.
“And you’re a bit old, are you not, sir, for so young a lass? And a bit mad, too, for any type of person. So you’ll be away from the door before the whole household is set upon you and your criminal thinking!”
“Do not threaten me, hag, with your household of women,” Gosdale retorted. “No gentleman will accept abuse from an utter commoner. The only women I shall see are Lady Amanda to demand her daughter’s hand in honorable marriage, and then the girl in my bed for life.”
Elsie then produced the most severe anger ever in my time with her.
“I am the hag, you blackguard! A flipping scoundrel you are without even a scum of decency!”
These two were then interrupted by an ostensibly calm Rathel, who in fact reeked of a fury equal to Elsie’s.
“Miss Elsie, you will no further confront this person. Go instead to the drawing room and attain my grandfather’s lance upon the wall so I might skew the criminal directly in his bowels.”
So passionless was the sound of Rathel’s words that a fool might disbelieve. But no fool with a witch’s nose. Elsie withdrew as instructed, muttering wordlessly.
Waiting no further for this troupe of operatic performers, Gosdale proceeded with his goal as previously described to Elsie.
“Lady Amanda, I must ask—nay, I must insist upon your daughter’s hand,” he began, then thrust forward for that mentioned extremity. Now in a literal mode, Gosdale gained my wrist with his fingers and my bosom with his forearm as he raised my hand in a jerk to his lips, leaning so near me that I could smell his scalp. As Georges pressed ahead and grabbed, Lady Amanda
inhaled an affronted breath, achieving a startled demeanor from face to rigid posture. More direct was I in snatching my hand from the thief and smacking him with a hearty push of both my palms against his chest.
I felt no hatred, but under no circumstance would accept such an assault by a sinner. My action was enough to send the gent beyond our threshold where he paused with smarting eyes, but Rathel was set to even greater redness in all her skin as though a natural tart, transmitting a terrible glare to Gosdale as she ordered him away before Magistrate Naylor in person was brought here to arrest this trespasser, this molester.
That final word ended Gosdale’s pause, inspiring him to again seek manifestation of his allegedly honorable goals in the form of my literal hand, as long as my fleshy torso portions would also be forthcoming. Though he reached for my limb, there was no contact, the lass leaping backward as the lady intervened between her daughter and the demon.
“Never again will you touch my Alba, vile despot!” Rathel cried while stepping smartly between Gosdale and me.
“And I say, Lady Amanda, that such contact is acceptable for a fiancé, one to support and love your daughter for her life,” Gosdale professed with attempted reason.
“You shall steal the Crown Jewels before you again corrupt my girl with your immoral touch, Mr. Gosdale. Now, away with you before your only available spouse is a guard of Montclaire Prison.”
By then, a minor audience had gathered on the street, another forming inside the house: the two remaining servants peering fearfully from the great room. Our theater soon turned most dramatic, for Gosdale in his satanic passion became increasingly insistent upon grasping my hand, touching me, having me in marriage, having me in the flesh.
“If this be your prejudiced thought, Lady Amanda,” Gosdale continued, “I should change it. I shall correct your misgivings by taking your daughter now, and proving my worth by loving her properly.”
With a bulk beyond us, Gosdale stepped forth to take me as though a side of beef for his table. But Rathel intervened, stepping between the lass and the lech only to be pressed aside, Gosdale grasping on and about my person so intimately that surely some law would have us necessarily wed. Then the molester paused to look beyond the foyer, seeing Elsie dashing near, outraged from the man’s latest advance. Elsie was met by her mistress, the two sinners stepping together to exchange the lance, the superior receiving the item from a servant who seemed willing to wield the weapon herself.
Standing in the foyer again, Gosdale was now without movement as he heard the angered lady’s most insistent demands.
“Sir, you are off at once or I demonstrate English law by preventing your further assaults at the price of your health.”
“I suggest you not threaten a swordsman of my experience,” Georges declared.
“A swordsman unarmed, I see,” Rathel observed. “Then take this, sir, to be your weapon,” and she stabbed him.
Sufficiently experienced was the man to avoid receiving the head in his bowels, which was the lady’s aim. Not so proficient in combat was he to avoid all damage, however, for the lance sliced into his side, through clothing and into flesh as proven by his grimace, that grasping throughout his body; and there was no acting here, no opera. No expression could have been more real than his face distorted in astonishment.
The exterior audience responded with a communal gasp at this theatrical turn. Strong from her righteousness yet weak from violence, Lady Amanda ordered Delilah to the constables. Scarcely near enough to smell blood, the woman ran past the fallen sinner and quit the grounds.
As the servant passed him like a storm, Gosdale looked up to his assailant, the man showing no remorse as he spoke.
“A wench you are to have attacked a gentleman come only to beg for you daughter.”
“You might find time to seek Jesus’ absolution for your sin of lust before Satan takes your soul,” Rathel told him. “That immortal passage will transpire in but a moment, sir, with your unchecked bleeding.”
Looking down to his side and the wet welling to color him like an unnatural tart, the non-famous swordsman could only agree.
“Yes! I am killed. Have the girl fetch a minister—you worry of the law when I am murdered? God alone take my soul!”
“I shall fetch a mortician for you, sir, in that none other will have use for your corpse.”
Again I was overwhelmed by English society. And though I had no conceptual argument with the Rathel’s defensive actions; nevertheless, I could only feel maddened at the world she had forced me to enter.
“You need me for your killing with the power of death you yield?” I demanded of her in a harsh whisper.
“His wound is not of the consequence he believes, else he’d be crying less and bleeding more,” Rathel stated, quashing my operatic response.
The mistress then looked toward the crowd, to the persons stretching above the privet hedge, those collecting to see through the gate. She was only able to focus beyond once the danger before her had been reduced.
“Any physician or woman for nursing might aid him,” Rathel called out.
“Cauterize it!” Elsie proposed with a loud whisper, but made no move to apply her own medicinal expertise.
Rathel then stepped inside, closing the door behind.
“I doubt the gravity of his wound,” she told her household, “but I’ll allow none of my home to be taken by madmen.”
Though feeling more revulsion than terror, I considered the madness Rathel had ascribed to Gosdale most appropriate here, and I for one felt no less extreme. Extreme enough to step past the lady and open the door, moving outside to Gosdale.
Alba was the word, a barely heard gasp from Elsie, a name that was both question and command from the mistress. My only reply was to continue.
Though the moaning gent appeared to be dying, his smell was of illness, not death. As I stepped to him, I seemed somehow removed. The lance lay flatter than he, the man’s legs separated, knees bent and unsteady. A bit of red on the spear’s metal point I could see, a portion of the shaft hidden toward the wet end, ensconced in the sinner’s clothing. So I grasped the clean section of the wooden limb, pulling until it came free of Gosdale’s wool, taking no flesh along, causing some cowering in the male but scant additional pain. Then I left him with the same concern as Rathel.
I returned inside with the weapon, having seen more of the audience than Rathel, but the same as she, only after the intruder had been stabbed, only after that impediment to my perceiving something as common as a crowd had been removed. But this crowd was not so common, for there stood Eric at its edge, no more or less involved than the other members.
Tutored enough to know of firearms, I was aware that this wooden stick despite its forged metal was a primitive weapon, one appropriately used by grunting folk in grass huts, not social persons in London. But, oh, what a modern weapon it was compared to witches, who are best to reflect evil, not create it.
I dropped the Rathel’s heirloom at her side, as though being workmanlike in retrieving a lost object. I then explained.
“Perhaps we shall again need to protect our home against evil,” I stated, and resumed my place in the household.
Chapter 13
No More Immortal
Though Eric was not seen further that day, the tutor arrived as per schedule, Natwich becoming so distraught upon hearing of my suitor that she was overwhelmed with emotion, returning home without giving lessons. More interested than Natwich in current affairs, London’s constables made to determine why bloodied Gosdale had been so forceful in his attempts to receive the girl. Supported by her servants and the remaining crowd, Lady Amanda’s depiction of the scene ascribed no wrongdoing to her household. But the constables sought better explanation, for marital desire is rarely enough to cause an established gentleman’s stabbing. Usually the female has at some instance encouraged the gent—and did yours? the constables inquired, these invert teachers asking all and telling nothing. But this reverse tutoring e
nded after one constable mentioned that this Lady Amanda was oft doing the king’s business with his Magistrate Naylor. Gosdale was then conveyed away, his wound or situation impressing certain constables enough for them to kindly wish his recovery, though none predicted an imminent demise.
Rathel’s association with Naylor was manifested in the following hours when the magistrate arrived. Though familiar with Naylor’s voice (and the back of his jacket) from that day of eavesdropping, no imaginings had I of his appearance as I was summoned downstairs to be interviewed by this official sinner. And I cannot say that Naylor’s visage matched his voice; for whereas the sinners’ faces are nearly all alike, the significance of human communication provided visually is in the expressively changing nuances of a person’s face and carriage, not the thickness of one’s beard nor the supposed beauty of one’s particular snuff-filled lips. Likely, Naylor’s being wigless despite a balding pate held some import for the sinners, but the witch was not amazed at either his lack of hair or lack of vanity. The consequence of this sinner’s words, however, was clear without my needing to search for subtlety.
“Kindly forgive me beforehand, Lady Amanda and Miss Alba,” Naylor began as we sat in the drawing room, “but I must query you about this violence. The gentleman Gosdale has not been known by his peers to drink excessively, and we have no beliefs of his being one to carouse with the womenfolk. Yet he tells us from his ill bed that Miss Alba has offered him provocation toward matrimony.”
Rathel became angered despite the magistrate’s beginning wish for forgiveness.
“I defy the lying blackguard to describe the slightest prompting on my daughter’s part that encouraged his extreme, unhealthy desire.”
“Your anger is justified, Lady Amanda, and again I apologize. But surely you are one to understand my position in needing to determine the cause of Gosdale’s injury. I will add, however, that in fact the gentleman was unable, even after close querying, to convey those specific activities on Miss Alba’s part that so provoked him. Nonetheless, he was firm in insisting that it was she who drew from him desire.”