The Hidden Blade: A Prequel to My Beautiful Enemy (Heart of Blade)

by Sherry Thomas

  He was halfway to Herb’s room when he heard the sound of something like a sack of flour being thrown against a wall.

  He stopped. He was too late. Sir Curtis had come upon Father and Herb.

  The door opened, and out spilled Herb’s words. “Please, sir, you must not punish Nigel. He has been the very example of goodness and rectitude. I am the one responsible. I am the one at fault.”

  “Of course you are the one at fault,” said Sir Curtis, one foot in the corridor, his face turned back toward the inside of the room, his voice thin but perfectly clear. “It is too bad Nigel’s previous institutional stay did not cure him. This time I will spare no expense—and no treatment—and he will emerge from the sanitarium a new man, no matter how long it takes. You, Mr. Gordon, on the other hand, are going to jail for your rampant homosexuality. And I will see to it that you stay there a very long time. I daresay society would heave a sigh of relief were you to die there. Indeed, if you should do me the courtesy of returning home and firing a bullet into your head, I would be much obliged.”

  The ease and maliciousness with which Sir Curtis suggested that Herb take his own life—Leighton felt as if he had been trampled under a stampede.

  And Father…That “previous institutional stay” that Sir Curtis had mentioned so cavalierly—no wonder Father was so afraid of Sir Curtis. He must have locked Father up and subjected him to…treatments, treatments that made people lower their voices when such words as “Bedlam” and “asylum” were mentioned.

  Sir Curtis emerged fully into the corridor looking energetic, purposeful, and not particularly disturbed, as if he weren’t about to send Father to one kind of prison and Herb to another, but had only scolded a pair of footmen for their lack of punctuality.

  His glance fell on Leighton as he passed, but he said nothing. Only as he reached the stair landing did he turn around and admonish casually, “See that you do not become like them.”

  Inside the room, Herb spoke. Leighton didn’t need to make out the words to feel the anguish in every syllable. He stared at the closed door, thinking for no reason at all of the sunrise from that very morning.

  It seemed aeons ago, when actual dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.

  Herb at last fell silent. The silence twisted and smothered; Leighton bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. He knocked, thinking that Father must have left via the secret passage. “It’s Leighton.”

  The door opened. Herb was wrapped in a dressing gown, his face puffy, the rims of his eyes red. Behind him sat Father on the floor, in only his trousers and an untucked shirt, his feet bare, his back against the wall, his head in his hands.

  Instead of letting Leighton in, Herb came out of the room and shut the door. “Don’t worry. It’s all right,” he said bravely.

  “I know what happened,” Leighton said.

  Herb rubbed his hand over his face. “Your father, he hasn’t spoken a word. Not a single word.”

  “He doesn’t want to go back to an asylum.”

  Herb jerked. “What asylum?”

  “Sir Curtis mentioned that Father had been committed once. Did you not hear?”

  “Jesus! Forgive my language—I meant to say I didn’t hear anything your uncle said. It was as if someone plugged my ears. I saw his lips move, but all I could hear was this thunder inside my own head.”

  At least then he hadn’t heard Sir Curtis’s malevolent words toward him.

  Herb pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you sure, my dear boy, that he mentioned an asylum?”

  “He said that Father’s previous stay did not cure him, so he would commit Father this time for however long it takes.”

  “Goddamn it—sorry, please excuse me.” Herb thrust his fingers into his hair. “But Nigel has never mentioned such a thing, not in all the years we’ve known each other.”

  Leighton rather thought he wouldn’t mention it either if he had been locked up and treated as if he were mentally disturbed. And Father would have been young, since by age twenty he was already married, and Leighton had been born shortly after his twenty-first birthday.

  Herb, pacing in the corridor, stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry. I am still not hearing things properly. Did you say Sir Curtis threatened to send your father to another asylum?”

  Leighton nodded.

  “Can he? Nigel is a grown man with all his faculties intact, a good landlord and a devoted father. Surely it cannot be such a simple matter to put him away against his will.”

  Leighton did not answer. All he could see was Sir Curtis’s cool, self-satisfied expression. The man did not anticipate any difficulties.

  “What should we do?” Herb let out a trembling breath. “What should we do?”

  None of this felt real. Was this how the monks of ancient China had felt when their monastery was leveled before their eyes, as if the tragedy were happening elsewhere, elsewhen, to people no one knew?

  “I’ll go get Father’s whisky.” It was the only useful thing Leighton could think of to do.

  “Yes, good idea,” said Herb gratefully. “Thank you.”

  After Leighton went downstairs, however, he did not immediately go to the library, where Father’s kept his decanter, but first sought out the butler.

  “Mr. Mims, has Sir Curtis left?”

  “Yes, Master Leighton. When he sent Miss Saithwaite away, he asked that a carriage be prepared for him. I believe he departed more than an hour ago.”

  “Who is Miss Saithwaite?”

  “I believe she might be Lady Fitzmaurice’s niece.”

  Lady Fitzmaurice was an old woman who lived about ten miles away from Starling Manor.

  “But more to the point,” added Mr. Mims, “I believe she must be Sir Curtis’s fiancée, or Sir Curtis would not have brought her here, the two of them alone.”

  Sir Curtis was engaged? Leighton had believed he would remain a widower his entire life. Now Sir Curtis’s sudden appearance made more sense. He had accompanied his new fiancée to visit her aunt—or perhaps it was at her aunt’s place that he proposed. Then he—or Miss Saithwaite—had decided that the good news should be shared with his family too.

  They would have been waiting in the drawing room. Mr. Mims, after a fruitless search, would have returned to deliver the news that the master was not in his room taking a nap, nor in the library, nor the billiard room. He would have asked whether Sir Curtis and Miss Saithwaite cared for another cup of tea.

  Was that when Sir Curtis had asked about Mother’s whereabouts, or whether there were other guests at the estate? It didn’t matter. The point was, Miss Saithwaite had no clue what was going on, but Sir Curtis did. That was why he’d sent her away before he made his presence known to Father and Herb.

  Herb was still in the passage, leaning against a wall, when Leighton returned upstairs with the whisky and two glasses. “Bless you, my dear boy,” he said, the corners of his lips trembling as he tried to smile.

  He opened the door. “We brought fortification, Nigel. Have some. It’ll take your mind off…”

  His voice trailed off. Father was no longer inside—he must have returned to his own rooms via the secret passage.

  Herb sighed. “Can’t blame him for wanting a bit of peace. I talked too much, and said such silly things too—I had no idea that his fear of ending up in an asylum had a perfectly rational basis. I kept telling him that nothing terrible would come of it, nothing worse than mere unpleasantness.”

  He took the decanter and the glasses from Leighton and set them down. “I’ll get dressed. Let’s go for a walk—the inside of my head still rings a bit. And then after dinner we’ll talk to your father again.”

  Herb was dismayed, but not afraid yet. “You should be careful too,” said Leighton. “When Sir Curtis said he would send Father to an institution, he also said he would send you to prison.”

  Herb started. “He can’t do that.” And then, in a smaller voice, “Can he? That would be downright barbarous.”

  But Sir C
urtis was barbarous. That was why Father feared him. That was why, when he came to visit, Mother tried to pass herself off as a simple woman with nothing on her mind but her children and her charities.

  “I think you should take Father and leave the country,” said Leighton.

  Herb stilled, a glass of whisky raised halfway to his lips. “What?”

  “He is too afraid of Sir Curtis to protect himself, so we must protect him—by making sure Sir Curtis cannot get to him. People go overseas for their health all the time, don’t they?”

  Herb hesitated. “I will if that would help matters. Would he come?”

  “I think he’ll do anything to not go back to an asylum.”

  Herb bit his lower lip, then nodded slowly. “You might be—”

  A shot ran out, cutting Herb off—a shot that sounded as if it came from the direction of Father’s rooms. Herb turned to Leighton, his face pale. “Was that…was that a firearm going off?”

  Leighton couldn’t speak—it had been a firearm going off. He could only stare at Herb. Don’t! Don’t even think such thoughts. Father wouldn’t. He couldn’t do such a thing.

  “Why don’t you stay here?” Herb said, his voice shaking. “Stay right here.”

  But Leighton couldn’t. He followed two steps behind Herb, who shuffled, as if sleepwalking, toward Father’s rooms.

  Already Mr. Mims and a footman were racing up the stairs. Mechanically Leighton held out a hand. They stopped on the steps, regarding him uncertainly.

  “Is everything all right, Master Leighton?” asked Mr. Mims.

  Leighton did not answer.

  Up ahead, Herb had his hand on the knob of Father’s door. His lips were moving. It looked as if he were calling Father by name, but no sound emerged.

  Or was it because Leighton could not hear anything over the upheaval in his own head? He was almost at Herb’s side when Herb, with a grimace, at last pushed the door open.

  Immediately Herb recoiled. A fraction of a second later his hand came over Leighton’s eyes. Leighton pushed it away.

  Just beyond the door was the sitting room of Father’s apartment, where he was slumped over the writing desk. Leighton knew a moment of intense relief—Father was tired, that was all.

  Then he saw the blood on the wall behind, the blood that pooled beneath Father’s head, the blood that fell, drop by drop, onto the floor beneath the desk.

  Someone tried to restrain Leighton. He struggled, shoving his elbow into that person’s side, only faintly registering the pained cry as Herb’s as he freed himself and ran to Father.

  Father’s eyes were open, an almost surprised expression on his face. In his hand was an ivory-handled dueling pistol that had been in the family at least a hundred years. It still smoked faintly at the muzzle, the tang of gunpowder as overwhelming as the scent of blood.

  A note sat on top of a stack of books, the ink not quite dried yet. I am sorry. I am so sorry. But I cannot go back to an asylum. I cannot. I am sorry.

  Leighton thought it was Herb whimpering in anguish. But it was him, making half-strangled noises in his throat, not wanting to understand what happened, but unable to keep a rising horror from swamping him.

  He stumbled backward until he was stopped by a wall. And from there he sank to the floor, his hand clamped over his mouth.

  He was wrong. This was what the monks must have felt when their monasteries had been torn down: despair and utter futility, before a pitiless darkness that would swallow the entire world.

  Chapter 5

  The Truth

  Ying-ying was not gracious in defeat. She sulked when she lost games of chess or go, and refused to let anyone tell her answers to riddles she couldn’t solve herself.

  What Amah did to her was unforgivable, forcing her to kowtow at knifepoint. Never had she been so insulted in her whole life, and by a servant, a nobody! She feigned illness for a day, and afterward, to Mother’s surprise, spent her days in Mother’s study, poring over volumes of poetry and history, practicing calligraphy with a vengeance, even willingly plucking away at the Chinese zither, a difficult instrument that rebuffed her every attempt at making music.

  Amah, for all that she had seemed at death’s door, was abed for only one day before going about her duties as usual. To continue her snubbing, what hours Ying-ying had away from Mother’s rooms she spent in the kitchen, where she’d never be caught alone. Cook didn’t mind her presence, and often Ying-ying had gossip to listen to when Little Plum came in to lend a hand.

  One afternoon, when Amah was out buying herbs at the apothecary shop, she came up as a topic.

  “I don’t know how she does it,” said Little Plum, as she helped Cook shuck a pile of pea pods. “If I never went out anywhere for myself I’d be like an ant on a hot pot lid.”

  The servants had few sanctioned holidays, but they each had their own ways of slipping out. Little Plum visited her sweetheart during Mother’s summer afternoon naps. Cook extended the length of her market trips for her own business. Judging from the frequent appearances in the kitchen of servants on social calls from other households, it seemed a universal practice.

  With the exception of Amah.

  Amah, as far as anyone knew, had no family, no romantic entanglements, and, despite her popularity, no close friends. But even lonesome servants stole out to buy some nibbles they craved, a jar of hair ointment, or to go down to the teahouse-theater to catch a performance of their favorite actors. Not Amah.

  “I told you my cousin Old Luo once saw her in that gambling place,” Cook said placidly.

  “Old Luo couldn’t see his fingers if he stuck his arm out.” Little Plum shook her head. “If he were any more blind he’d be a fortune-teller.”

  “That’s true enough,” Cook concurred. “He’s gone into the wrong courtyard several times because he couldn’t tell which one was his own front door.”

  The words were on the tip of Ying-ying’s tongue to inform them of Amah’s nocturnal jaunts, something sensational that neither Cook nor Little Plum knew: Amah not only going out, but going out—gasp—in the middle of the night to unspeakably dangerous places.

  But the memory of Amah’s knife at her chest silenced her—just as it had whenever she thought of telling Mother. She ate another candied plum instead.

  On the twenty-sixth, after Da-ren’s arrival, Ying-ying could no longer avoid Amah. Mother was pitilessly strict on this: Ying-ying had to stay in her rooms, out of sight, while Da-ren was in residence.

  And this night Da-ren, when she spied upon him from her window, seemed to be in a grim mood, his gait without its usual energy.

  At dinnertime Amah entered Ying-ying’s suite of rooms. She brought a cucumber salad, a stir-fry of chicken with cashews, and an egg-drop soup with dried scallops and slices of ham. Ying-ying filled her bowl with rice and began eating without saying anything. Amah sat down on the opposite side of the square table and did the same.

  Amah didn’t speak until she was finished eating. “Still angry with me?” she asked, setting down her chopsticks. She didn’t sound irate, but neither did she sound apologetic.

  Ying-ying refused to answer. She wasn’t as fast an eater as Amah, so she buried her face in her bowl and pretended not to have heard anything.

  It didn’t seem to matter to Amah. “I have been thinking of making you my apprentice since you turned five,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact. “You are now a month short of nine and I still haven’t. Because I knew you’d be a trying student.”

  Ying-ying’s head snapped up. She stared at Amah indignantly.

  “The order, by tradition, admits only orphaned girls, or those who have been sold off by their families. For good reason—they are beyond grateful and they work hard. But you, clever and agile as you may be, are spoiled, lazy, and too willful for your own good.”

  “I am not!” Ying-ying shot back. “You are—”

  The slender, glittering knife was in Amah’s hand. She set it gently down on the table, the blade poin
ted at Ying-ying. What Ying-ying was about to say froze in the back of her throat.

  “I have been too lenient with you.” Amah didn’t raise her voice; she had no need to. “But the graver fault lies with Fu-ren. She has raised you as if you were somebody, when in fact you are nobody.”

  Ying-ying gasped in outrage. She was not a nobody. She lived in this splendid courtyard with pomegranate trees and goldfish big as her hand swimming in huge urns. Her clothes were made of the finest silk from Hangzhou. The pins in her hair were adorned with real pearls. And though she wasn’t a flawless beauty like Mother, she was a very pretty girl. Everyone always commented on her large, lovely eyes, her perfect double eyelids, and—the envy of all—her long, long eyelashes.

  “You are talking rubbish!”

  “Am I?” Amah asked. “Who’s your father, then, if you are somebody?”

  Ying-ying opened her mouth, but nothing would come out. She thought back to the photograph, the foreign devil with the aggressive stare.

  “You dug up that picture,” Amah said, as if reading her mind. “Didn’t you wonder who he was?”

  Ying-ying shook her head so hard her vision swam.

  “He was your father, an Englishman, though you never saw him, nor he you.”

  “You are lying!”

  It became Amah’s turn to act as if she hadn’t heard. “Your mother came from a scholar’s household. But her father tried opium and liked it too much. He drained the family purse feeding his habit. Then his son fell sick. There was no money for a doctor or medicine. So he sold your mother. After all, she was only the offspring of a concubine, and only a daughter. The slaver took her to Shanghai and sold her to a fancy brothel.”

  Ying-ying wanted to stick her fingers in her ears. She couldn’t. The story was dreadful, but dreadful in such a way that she must go on listening.

  “She was beautiful and learned, so she didn’t suffer the fate of common prostitutes. They billed her as the loveliest girl in Shanghai. Your father came to see her out of curiosity. He liked what he saw, so he bought her from the brothel. But after two years, the big crash came. He lost everything. One night he got drunk with his friends and never came home. Three days later they fished him out of the Huang-pu River.”