The Crimson Inkwell

by Kenneth A Baldwin

  Inside my eyes, next to the weariness, I saw the unnatural anger that had taken residence within me. It frightened me. The anger swelled. I did not choose this. Bram had thrust it on me without my consent or knowledge. He had made me prey to his magical experimentations. Curse the man! Who was he to take my freedom so casually? What right did he have to subject me to this condition?

  It was clear to me now. I was addicted to experiencing the magic, as dependent on it as any laudanum addict or drunkard. These symptoms of anger were born from my dependency, and to break free would debase me to the ugly, sweaty, desperate walk of the recovering addict, if it was possible at all. And, I would have to bear the disease in silence, under the mask of domestic tranquility.

  Bram, who I had considered a friend, and I thought cared deeply about me, had tricked and used me. In the looking glass, I saw a fool and imagined Bram in his yurt, laughing to himself with his smug, sly expression. The very thought made my blood boil.

  He could not get away with this. A red, angry dragon inside of me breathed his fire up my throat and into the base of my skull. I felt such heat, such piercing heat, that I couldn’t stay still. Someone would have to make him pay. Could I risk telling the police? No. It would implicate my infidelity. I would have to keep that a secret the rest of my life. My limbs acted of their own accord and moved me to retrieve the still wet umbrella.

  I swung open my door and made my way to the fairgrounds under the strange electric lights across the river. At the very least, I would have satisfaction by informing him that his plan had fallen through, and I would not write another sentence with that damned pen.

  The air was veiled with the full, looming darkness only approaching winter brings to the early hour. I was glad for my coat, as the chill of the air fought at the cracks between my clothes. It was good that I had traveled this road so often in the series of the past weeks because an unnatural fog seeped around corners and filled alleyways. I saw few other people on the streets.

  The only warmth I found was from the exertion generated by my rapid pace and the dull burn of the anger somewhere deep inside me. Would I feel that dull burn always? I hadn’t felt it so prominently even the day before, but I would be a fool to think it wasn’t growing.

  Soon, I crested the hill overlooking the fairgrounds and saw the glow of the electric lights, even more strange than their usual unearthly vibrancy, playing tricks on my eyes, turning their pinpricks into broad, blurry smears across my vision.

  Days before, this vista would have brought me so much anxious excitement. Now, it filled me with a quiet fury and—confusion? What was there to be confused about? I had made my bed. I just had left to rub Bram’s nose in it.

  On closer inspection, something was not quite right. I heard no sounds of the crowds that swarmed the Exotic Creatures Tent and Hypnotist ring. I quickened my pace, and as I got closer, I saw some tents folded neatly on the ground, their tent poles slack in the mud beside them. The mud was littered in decomposing scraps of paper, the remnants of the fairgoers. I saw some of my own stories amongst advertisements for the fair and a gaggle of other publications.

  Some small groups of carnival performers worked to collapse another tent in front of me. Horses were lapping at puddles from the recent rain; next to them lay half-prepared stacks of travel packs, bursting at the rope tying them closed.

  This was it. They were preparing to leave. The conclusion dawned on me like the winter sunset. If the carnival was leaving, what would become of Bram?

  I hurried through rows of packs, chests, and eclectic furniture stacked beside wagons. It pained me to see the people and environment of such a unique place being swept away. They were leaving me to my lot in the city, without so much as a goodbye. The carnival had transformed me just to abandon me.

  I reached Bram’s familiar yurt, relieved to see it still standing just the way I remembered. Cyrus chewed on a bone outside, his paws and haunches covered in mud. But, even the aloof dog couldn’t rid me of my fear or my slow-growing anger.

  I ducked inside and found Bram’s belongings neatly and meticulously packed.

  “You’re leaving,” I spat out without introduction.

  “The fair has decided it’s time for us to move along.” He didn’t stop making stacks of his belongings.

  “Were you going to tell me?”

  “I had a feeling you might find me before I left,” he said, reassembling a wooden puzzle box.

  “So that’s it then? You’re just packing up and going.” I couldn’t stand to see him packing so casually there like that, like he was getting away with a marvelous prank—pulling off the perfect crime.

  “I don’t have much of a choice.” He sighed. “I don’t choose when the fair stays or when it goes. I just follow.”

  “You don’t think you have any unfinished business here?”

  “Do I?”

  “I would insist you do!” He couldn’t play innocent with me. His play acting was infuriating. His riposte lingered in the air in front of his stupid grin. Was he pushing some flirtation? “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?”

  “I wouldn’t flatter myself by pretending to know your mind.”

  I couldn’t help it. I walked up to him and shoved him hard. He stumbled backward on to the bed. I followed up quickly and slapped him across the face.

  He looked up at me, and I down at him. The space between us filled to the brim with expectations and disappointment.

  “Pretending to know my mind? Where was this humility for the past few weeks? I am a diseased woman. And, I know of no physician that can help me, no remedy to cure me. Only you, because you did this to me with half-truths and promises about your stupid pen.”

  He rubbed his cheek where I hit him but didn’t look angry.

  “Luella, please, will you stop hitting me?”

  “What else is in that chest? Do you have something in there to bewitch women and hex away their senses? How did you persuade me to lower my guard? Why did you turn me into one of your dark experiments?”

  “I never forced you to do anything. You’re a grown woman.”

  “That’s what you’re telling yourself to feel good leaving me.”

  “We both knew that I was never going to stay forever,” he said, exasperated.

  “Forever no, but I thought a bit of warning perhaps, or some type of closure—“

  “Come with me.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Come with me.”

  He may as well have knocked me over with a cricket paddle. My breath seized in my throat.

  “You don’t have to accuse me of anything,” he went on. “I know what I did, and I can’t forgive myself for that. I was bold and arrogant. I thought I could control powers that were beyond my understanding, and now when I see you—” He motioned blankly with his hands, leaving his torso and midsection open. His gesture, combined with a painful expression I had never before seen on him, had an effect on me I cannot explain. In spite of everything, my instincts told me to reach out to him and close the gap between us. This feeling was enough to dull the swelled-up anger deep inside of me, making it doubly welcome. It would feel so warm to give in and let it go all at once.

  “I have searched every note, every book, every account I have,” he continued. “I swear to you, I thought your addiction would be impossible if you were only exposed to the magic in small, controlled doses. Come with me. I’ll make it my life’s mission to find a remedy for you. And, in the meantime, when the episodes of your fury overcome you, I’ll sit with you, and I’ll hold you, and I’ll remind you of the magnificent woman that you are until those feelings subside.”

  I knew that he was guilty of my disease. I knew he had caused it, and that this was the very least he could have promised me to make up for his carelessness. But even knowing all of that, I could only describe the sincerity pouring out of his words and the genuine affection he now showed me in his peculiar way as romantic. Warm emotions filled my breast, an
d a sense of longing, deeper than even than my anger, sprang to life in an instant.

  I look around his half-packed tent. It was by no means respectable, but the eclectic collection of furniture and rugs felt more welcoming than the walls at Langley’s. Byron had always tried to decorate in ways that might please me. He often tried to surprise me with biscuits, tea, an occasional trinket, but no gifts or gestures could make up for what I knew would never be in our marriage. I always knew, deep down, that Byron would be a safe, old husband to make a young wife out of me. If I left with Bram, I could have more, and a hint of that possibility, even with a man whom I hated one day and clung to the next, would be better than a sure life of passionless and mildly pleasant domesticity.

  If I left with Bram, maybe, there would be a chance for more than respect and friendship. Maybe one day, we could regenerate the spark that had been buried by this accusatory anger. I’m sure I would occasionally see Anna, and untethering myself from the old editor would free her to marry Jacob. If I left now, I would never have to face Edward again either. I’d never have to look into his eyes and know I killed his father. I’d never have to face up to the crushing guilt. To see him now, it would consume me body and soul. If I ran now. . .

  “My attacks are going to get stronger, aren’t they?” I asked.

  He nodded grimly.

  My heart begged me to go. It would be safer with Bram. He understood what I was. It would be unfair to Byron to trick him into marrying me. This was reasonable.

  But, could I run? My father raised me to be a woman of integrity and industry. He taught me to face the world standing up. If I had even a shred of decency, could I run from the mess that I had brought to the people who cared about me? In my heart, I knew that, one day, despite the impossible difficulty and weight of it, I would have to see Edward again. I was chained to the positive outcome of his life as much as Bram might be to mine. Even if it meant a life void of true happiness, was it not on my ledger to see that Edward might find some peace? The calamity had set my feelings for him in stone. Yes, it took the greatest misfortune to recognize what love was, but such was my lot. Now that I knew it, I could not run from it. Marrying Byron meant loving Edward. That was what I had just decided at Langley’s, and it was as true to me as the river running through Dawnhurst.

  “I’m engaged,” I said at last.

  “I know that, but I can’t help but feel that you may be engaged to someone out of convenience.”

  “We are setting a date for the wedding. Tonight. After I leave here.”

  Bram’s chest deflated. He sunk into himself in spite of the clear effort he made to raise his chin.

  “Why?” he asked. I searched for an answer. I couldn’t tell him the truth of all of it.

  “Because I love him,” I lied.

  He eyed me with his mouth ajar, hurt and suspicion mingling on his face. He studied me, waiting for me to revise what I said. When he saw I would not, he shook his head sadly.

  “Then I wish you well,” he replied. “And, as a friend, I must counsel you to remove yourself from my tent. It isn’t proper for an engaged woman to treat with a bachelor this way.”

  He turned away from me to resume packing, spending an undue deal of attention to some letters in a small wooden box. That was it. The crack of reality’s whip thundered down on the truth of our friendship.

  We both had known this relationship could be not be discovered, and we had never mentioned it out loud before. It was a dark unspoken fact on which we based every moment together, a way for us both to know what was on the table in the first place. I knew from the beginning that this would end with him or me leaving or else him and me leaving.

  Yet, how could I let him go? My hopes for salvation were with him and him alone. I didn’t even know where to start looking for someone else to help rid me of my malady.

  “Will you still find a way to heal me?” I asked.

  He looked up at me across his shoulder.

  “There is no contingency on what I said before. I will find a cure for this. I won’t fail.”

  His severity both surprised and reassured me. Considering he had confessed to ignorance on my proposed cure, I felt an unsure degree of relief sweeping down my spine. He would venture into the unknown, but if someone in this world could find a cure, it would be Bram.

  “Thank you,” I said, my voice breaking. I turned to leave.

  “One last thing,” he said before I got to the door. “A wedding present.”

  He placed a small wrapped parcel in my hand.

  “Should I open it now?”

  “If you wish.”

  I gently unfolded the cloth wrapping. In my hand lay a small crimson inkwell.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you a golden one. I wish you all the best, Luella Winthrop.” He kissed me gently on the cheek, turned around, and got back to packing.

  The feeling of his lips on my skin lasted my entire walk home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Church in Milford Square

  I WOKE THE next morning to calm sunshine. The rainclouds from yesterday had cleared, and the city hosted its first light blanket of snow. It was a gentle snow, the variety that would melt by the noonday sun. Still, it made the air clear and clean, a hint that I was not dreaming. I lay in bed for a good while, wondering if everything I’d experienced over the past couple of days had been just that—a dream. In my memory, it all seemed hazy, boozy, and feverish. In the still quiet of a fresh snowfall, all of it was impossible. There was no magic. There was not even a carnival. I had never gone to the police looking to drum up stories. I hadn’t played with fireballs or watched Byron blow up at my sister’s fiancé. There was no magic, and I hadn’t caused the death of Edward’s father.

  It was all a dream. Please, let it all have been a dream.

  I turned on my side and pulled the blankets over me to indulge in a few more minutes of sleep, but as I did so, I saw a little glass inkwell, surrounded by ornate metal carvings and filled with a deep red ink, sitting on my nightstand. It sat there like a ghost, a bloody messenger from a time and place I wished to forget.

  I wanted to fall back asleep. If I could just pass the threshold of consciousness, I could return to what was real. But, under the covers, I felt the unwelcome reminder of my constant companion, the bubbling anger in the pit of my stomach. This was life. This was the destination of my previous choices.

  I rolled out of bed and enrobed myself with a long wrap before making my way to the kitchen to put a kettle on. Anna stayed in bed, and I was left to the reverence of the morning. The still in the air made me feel as though I was wading through it. Every motion was a swim stroke. The world was still sleeping, and I was on an island, untouchable. The silence could smother magic and anger. The stillness could heal all.

  Perhaps life wasn’t all that bad, anyway. What had I practically lost, after all? It was brutal and cold to think, but I was right back where I was before I had met Edward. Byron and I were soon to be married. He’d support Anna and me, modestly, until she could find a suitable husband. In many ways, my wish had come true: here I was waking up two months earlier. So, what if I’d never dream again of winning the Golden Inkwell? So, what if I’d failed my father?

  I poured myself a cup of tea.

  There were, of course, drawbacks. The guilt of Edward’s father alone was enough to put an asterisk next to any happiness in my future, but I hadn’t done anything on purpose. I had been negligent, reckless even, and stupid, but I would have sooner hanged myself than cause his family any harm intentionally.

  I was also sick, now. I had already experienced several outbreaks from my magical malady. Each one seemed to increase in its severity. I knew those feelings would surface again.

  However, many people experience the negative effects of illness and still manage to get along in a marriage. I would simply need a strategy to manage my attacks, and that was very possible. Besides, as foolish as it sounded, I could not lose faith in Bram. I hoped
one day he could find a cure.

  I could just imagine Bram knocking on the door one day, Byron answering to find a strange man asking for me. Who wants to know? I’m an old friend. She’s never mentioned you.

  We’d be married by then, and I’m sure I could assuage his apprehensions. I’d have to find some way. Or maybe I could arrange to meet Bram elsewhere. It’d be wonderful if the two never had to meet. Even if Byron had suspicions, I was confident that my husband would never seek the warmth of a mistress. He worshipped me, and that was something. That was more than many women could say. In fact, maybe one day I could find it in me to divulge to him the great secrets of my misconduct. The thought warmed me more than the teacup in my hands. Could Byron endure even that?

  A gentle knock, which sounded like a battering ram in my quiet kitchen, shook me from my musings. Who could be calling at this ungodly hour? What time was it anyway?

  “Just a moment,” I called.

  I checked myself for decency and found a thick, long coat, effectively covering up any hint of my figure before cracking the door. Byron stood on the other side with an enormous basket of baked goods, a beautiful bouquet of roses and goldenrod, and a toothy smile.

  “Byron!” I said, opening the door just enough to poke my head through. “What are you doing here so early?”

  “It’s nearly half past ten,” he replied. “Were you still sleeping?”

  “Half past ten?” Had I slept in or did time run away with my thoughts? “No, I was just enjoying a quiet morning. I think Anna is still asleep.”

  “Out with Mr. Rigby until late perhaps?” he asked with a hopeful smile. I tried to smile back. “All the better. That way, I hope to gain the element of surprise.” He motioned with basket and flowers, wafting an irresistible sweet, herbaceous scent my way. “I can drop them off if you would like, but I was hoping we could talk.”