Dark Season

by Joanna Lowell

  Something was pulling her. Pulling her away from the light. She wanted to move her limbs, fight against whatever it was, but their weight was the weight of the river itself. She was being sucked down, down, and the light was receding.

  Let me go. She tried one last time to reach for the light. Papa. Papa. Then there was only black. She screamed and heard a gurgle, oily water and bile pouring from her throat, and air rushed in. Air that felt like claws, scraping all the way down into her stomach. More water, hard, hurting, moved up through her body to pour from her mouth. She was wracked, shaking. Through the pain in her ears, she heard a voice. Deep. Harsh.

  “Breathe. Breathe, damn it. Breathe, my angel. Breathe, darling, breathe.”

  It hurt to breathe. But the air came rasping in, and this time it went again, without water. She felt something hard digging into her back, became aware of her soaking dress plastered to her skin. She couldn’t stop shaking. She opened her eyes and saw only blackness. No. She shut them again in terror.

  “Open your eyes.” She recognized that voice. That command. She felt the scratch of callused fingers moving on her face, the pressure of warm hands. “Look at me.”

  This time she could see. A dim figure bending over her, dripping onto her. From the shadows of the face as it drew nearer: a glimmer of blue. Blue eyes. The color of midnight—that absolute black that signaled the day would come. Bright. Shattering the dark. Blue beneath black. Blue eyes bringing her back into her body. She tried to sit up, and strong arms wrapped around her.

  “Don’t fight me. Can you stand?”

  She could. Shakily, his arm around her waist.

  “Come,” he said. He led her, half crawling, half climbing over slippery stones. She stumbled, sinking in sludge and scum. God, that stink.

  “This way. We can’t get up the wall there.”

  The bell of a church clock tolled in the distance. Once. She could hear the creaking of iron chains and men’s voices, indistinct, coming in and out across the water. An enormous ship was passing slowly, close by, on the river. No one from the deck would notice the two figures, wet, shivering, struggling on the shore. And that other sound—chugging, nauseous—that was the paddles of a steam ship churning.

  “Wait, wait.” She pulled against his arm, and he held her while she vomited, doubled over, more filthy water. It gushed even from her nostrils. Stinging. She heaved again. Nothing. His hand was smoothing back her hair, kneading her back. His voice was murmuring near her ear. “Easy, love. Easy. Let it out. Breathe. Ready?”

  He was gentle but firm. Already urging her on. She wanted to collapse, but she forced her legs to move. Suddenly they were out of the lee of the pier, and the cold wind slapped against them. She gasped, and the wind snatched her breath away.

  “Stay still,” he commanded and ripped off her sodden cloak, dropping it in the mud. He caught her beneath the knees and armpits, carrying her the last few yards up to the riverside streets. She heard his breath sawing as he went on his knees to lower her to the cobbles. She drew in her legs, clutching herself, and rocked. He crouched beside her. He withdrew a knife from his boot and pulled her arm across his thighs. He worked the blade between her wet, shrunken glove and the skin of her inner arm. He slit the fabric to her wrist and spread it apart. She gasped as the cold moved up her arm, air brushing across the exposed skin. He pulled the ruined glove from her hand. He did the same with her other arm. Then he rubbed at the clammy flesh, caught her numb fingers between his hands, and chafed at them. God, they hurt too. Everything hurt.

  His teeth were chattering. Blades of hair plastered his cheeks. He put his lips against her forehead, the hot breath providing a temporary focal point—one thing in this world of pain that felt good.

  “We need to get to my coach.” She felt his lips move. “We’re going to stand at the count of three.” She couldn’t bear to imagine him standing, removing his body. The wind would blow through her. She clutched at his shirtfront.

  “Stay,” she whispered. This feeling—it was almost like the convulsions. Her body was frozen in a slow-motion spasm. Clenched. “Stay here.”

  “We’ll be warm soon,” he said. “I promise. Now we’re going to stand. One. Two.”

  At “three” they rose. She made it to the alley before she wavered, too dizzy to take another step. He lifted her up into his arms. She pressed her face into the wet cloth of his shirt. His heart beat steadily, but so slowly. She must have lost consciousness. The next thing she knew, she was being wrapped in a greatcoat that smelled of camphor and horses and settled on the padded bench of the coach. The movement of the coach jolted her. She huddled back into the greatcoat. The light from the coachman’s lamp gleamed through the window, playing upon the face of the man beside her.

  He had saved her life. He had also nearly killed her.

  Now that her senses were returning, questions followed.

  “What … ” she began and coughed. Her throat felt raw.

  “You swallowed a great deal of water.” He slid across the seat until he was pressed against her side. “Don’t overtax yourself.” For the first time, his presence failed to make her skin tingle. Her skin was like rubber.

  “I can’t feel my feet,” she said. She couldn’t tell if her lips moved when she spoke. Her face had stiffened, become a mask.

  He got his arm under her knees and lifted her legs, pulling them across his lap. His fingers, so beautifully formed, so clever, moved clumsily as he tried to untie the laces of her boots. His hands were trembling. He lifted them before his face, opened and closed them, shook them viciously from the wrist, then spread the fingers wide. Still, they trembled. He swore and reached for his knife. Then he cut through her bootlaces with two crude motions, tugged off her boots, and tossed them to the coach floor. She felt the tip of the blade as he slit her stockings and pushed them up her calves. She wiggled then, resisting, back pressed to the side panels of the coach. Her legs, from bare calves to heels, rested on his damp trousers. His palms slid across the tops of her feet. His thumbs pressed deep into the arches. He bent her feet up, then down, sliding his thumbs in little circles.

  “Can you feel this?” he asked, pressing harder with his thumbs.

  She felt it. She had never felt anything like it. She swallowed, wincing at the ache in her throat. He lifted her feet, leaned over, and … breathed against her toes.

  She jerked involuntarily. If his grip were any looser, she’d have kicked him in the face.

  “Lord Blackwood,” she whispered unsteadily.

  “Isidore,” he said wryly. “I am, after all, blowing on your toes.” And again that warm, tickling breath seeped across her skin.

  She tried to control her breathing and felt, remarkably, a blush rising. Heat moving from her core up to her neck and face. Thank God. It meant her blood hadn’t congealed in her veins.

  “I would have had the foot warmer prepared, if I’d known we were bathing in the Thames tonight.” He lifted his head, hands still gripping her feet, rubbing the soles, the heels, rubbing up to and around the ankles, sliding up the curve of her calves and back down. He looked worn and grim, jaw hardened against the cold, but his lips quirked.

  What was he about?

  “You attacked me,” she said wonderingly. One moment she’d been staring out at the black forest of yards and masts across the river, the next she was battling an unknown assailant, larger than she, and far stronger, battling for her life. That instant, when the iron arms closed around her, had been more terrifying even than the fall into the water.

  The river, at least, was indifferent. Men, on the other hand, exulted in cruelty. Mastered all of its forms. She would rather drown than become fodder for such delights. But it wasn’t a cutthroat who’d grabbed her. It was Isidore Blackwood. She could not assimilate this knowledge.

  “Attacked you?” The mockery in his eyes puzzled her. “Is that what happened?” His cheekbones stood out like blades as he thinned his lips, suppressing a shudder. She tried to open the g
reatcoat, to spread it over both of them, but he tucked it back around her.

  “Keep it,” he rasped.

  “You’re freezing.” She tried again to open the greatcoat. He swore again and pulled her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her, holding her and the greatcoat firmly in place.

  “I can’t freeze,” he said, shifting her to the side so his cheek was near hers. “Too much gin in my blood.”

  She couldn’t smell the alcohol on his breath. All she could smell now was river slime. The fumes rising off both of them. And to think, the poor drank this fetid liquid, redolent of feces and decay. She shoved Mr. Penn’s voice from her head. Her stomach was still making noises.

  “I doubt the coat is doing you much good.” Blackwood braced her with one arm and used the other to hook her wet hair and tuck it behind her ear. “Your dress is soaking.” His voice was low, lips against her earlobe. “I should have cut it off you.”

  He sounded as though he were still considering the option. She half expected him to reach for the knife.

  “I’m quite warm now,” she said hastily. He laughed against her neck, a little gust of warm air.

  “Come, Miss Reed, we both know you’re a better liar than that,” he said.

  “Ella.” It felt good to speak the truth. “You may call me Ella.”

  Be careful. Be on guard lest you tell this man too much.

  “Ella,” he repeated.

  How could she be on guard? She was fighting to keep herself from dissolving into tears. After the shocks of the last few hours, physical and mental—it took the last remaining bit of her strength to remain clam. She wasn’t warm. The icy dress was a torment. They would both be so much warmer if he did cut the clothing off their bodies. If they clung together, skin to skin. The hard muscle of his thigh had pressed between her legs when he embraced her in the park. Now she was resting on those long, hard thighs, cradled against his chest.

  She supposed, in a sense, the coat was doing her plenty of good. It kept her from feeling the heat of his body, yes. But it also kept her from feeling the contours of his body beneath her. The ridges of lean muscle. The rise of his hipbones.

  “Why aren’t you asleep in bed … Ella?”

  It seemed unfair that he would ask her that. He knew what tomorrow held. She was to be cast back on the world. The fragile calm she’d known at Trombly Place would shatter. Mrs. Trombly would be told that she was a thief. Mrs. Trombly would sit mute on the pretty sofa, a sorrowing, foolish woman, her misguided attempt to connect with the spirit world eroding her faith in the living, leaving her at the same time farther from the dead than ever.

  And she would be friendless again and would feel it even more acutely for having had—though briefly, though she had won it falsely—the promise of help.

  She said only, “Sleep doesn’t always come at the appointed hour.” There was nothing he could say to that. He wasn’t asleep, either. “I needed to think.”

  She had to clench her teeth then, bite back the torrent of language that threatened to spill from her mouth. Her body wanted to void everything now. River water. Her inner ravings. She wanted to say more. Gush the words out.

  I was going mad.

  I was going to wear through the carpet, pacing.

  I felt as though I really were a criminal, stealing out of the house, walking the streets in the night when all the innocent maidens are tucked under coverlets, dreaming sweet dreams with their curls spread on scented pillows. Perhaps I belong to the streets and the wharves and the drear, anonymous night. Insofar as I belong anywhere.

  I felt as though I couldn’t stay another minute in that bedchamber, where Phillipa once dreamed her own sweet dreams, of her wedding, of her children.

  I felt as though I were a nightmare that troubled Phillipa’s sleep. If I disappeared, she would wake up. None of it would ever have happened. She would be beside you now, in a tester bed, the two of you dry and warm. She would murmur as the memory of the nightmare faded, and you would smooth the worry line from her forehead and whisper, “It was just a bad dream.”

  A dream sent by a jealous fairy. Morgan La Fey, lonely on her misty island, longing for the love of mortal man.

  Insane fantasies. She’d been beside herself.

  Thank God her lips stayed closed. The words did not spew forth. She forced them back.

  She felt his chest move as he took a deep breath, preparing to question, to accuse. She couldn’t handle an interrogation. Not now. She was too cold, too tired, too defeated.

  “Please,” she said and heard her voice break. She had the mortifying sensation that she needed to expectorate and did so, discreetly, into the fold of the coat. Funny, how she had swallowed half the Thames and could suddenly feel this desperate thirst.

  She tried again. “Tell me the story of Rhodopis,” she said. “You asked me to remind you.”

  He let his breath whistle out. Said nothing. The silence lasted so long, she began to drift away from herself. She was drifting away from her huddled body and the vibrating coach, up over the wide lanes of mansions, the dense, evil-smelling rookeries, the factories with their smokestacks like iron trees, up over the river that curved through it all, carrying disease, lapping against stone walls and marshy shores and causeways. She was drifting up over everything great and small, so high nothing could reach her. Then he spoke, and she heard him as though from far off, and at first his words sounded alien, as though she were no longer part of the human community. But they tethered her. She could follow them back down.

  She turned her face so her cheek touched his before she realized what she was doing. His cheek was clammy. The soft rumble of his voice resolved into meaningful units.

  “Rhodopis was a Greek girl,” he said. “She lived on a rocky island where cyclamen grew pink and white, and the sea was clear as glass. She tended goats and ate figs and honey.”

  She could see the island as he spoke. He conjured it with his words, with the cadence of his voice. She curled up more tightly, burrowing into the coat, into him.

  “One day,” he said, “raiders came and slaughtered the goats and burnt the fig trees and smoked the hives, and they took Rhodopis to Egypt, where she became a slave. She was sold to a cruel master who took her to his city. It was called Hephaestopolis. Can you guess what that means?”

  “City of the fire god,” she whispered. She could see that too. City of metal, scorched clay, living coal.

  “Yes,” he said, stroking her hair, then resting his hand on her brow. The comfort she derived from that gesture. It made the tears stand in her eyes.

  “It was always hot in Hephaestopolis,” he continued. “And Rhodopis was forced to do the hottest work. She had ashes always in her hair, and she turned the oxen on spits all day and night for her master. But her spirit was unbroken. Every now and then she would creep away to the river Naucratis and dance and sing for the fish and the birds and shake the ashes from her hair and wash the soot from her skin. The animals loved her and wanted her to be happy. But they knew not how to help her. Then an eagle flew down while she bathed and stole one of her slippers. He flew with it to the Pharaoh, who was driving his chariot through the desert. The Pharaoh trusted that the eagle had presented him with the slipper for a reason, and he vowed to test it on every woman in the land until he found its owner. Rhodopis was found and brought to the Pharaoh at Memphis, and though his advisors cried out that she was only a slave and worse, a Greek, no fit queen, he swore that none other would be his wife. He married her at the river Naucratis with the fish and the birds and the eagle in attendance.”

  “And she was happy?” Ella stirred, and he took his hand from her head, clasped her again around the middle.

  “Ever after,” he said. “So the story goes.”

  “Cinderella.” Her eyes had closed, and she could not open them. Her tremors were getting worse not better.

  “The first Cinderella,” he said. “The earliest known tale. The third pyramid was built for her.”

 
; “Did you go there?” She wanted him to keep talking, to keep telling her stories. He could be whimsical. She already knew that about him. He had alluded to Arthurian legend. To Hansel and Gretel and their trail of crumbs. This demon viscount—so tall, so broad, so strong, so harsh and unbending—he reminded her of the heroes she’d read of in books. He did not seem like a man who would stroke her hair and murmur fairy tales into her ear. But he was full of contradictions. He loved myths as much as she did. How odd that they had this in common. Imagination for her had been a refuge. Imagination was for the weak.

  She lifted her lids partway and peered down at his hands, one folded atop the other on the greatcoat. They were large, brutal, the knobs and hollows of the wrists pronounced, roped by veins, but the fingers were long, sensitive, just the slightest bit tapered. When she’d first seen them she’d been struck by their menace. Their beauty. The hands of a strangler or a sculptor. She was beginning to think it wasn’t one or the other; he had proclivities for both, destruction and creation.

  “I went there.” He nodded, the roughness of his cheek abrasive. She wanted him to nod again. Anything to make her know her skin was living, connected to sensation. Not wax. Not clay. “I climbed the pyramid at sunrise. I could see in front of me the Nile valley, white mist parting above green plains and black soil, and behind me the desert, vast as the ocean. The sands looked purple. Inside, the chambers are filled with bats.”

  “What else?” She used the excuse of speech to move her face ever so slightly against his. His voice lulled her, rising and falling, as he painted pictures in the air.

  “What else?” He paused. “I met a party of Frenchmen and rode with them to their camp. They’d raised a tent in the shade of a palm grove. But most of them had passed the night like the Arabs, wrapped in blankets, burrowed in the sand. They were proud to tell me that. We drank coffee and smoked pipes. They showed me their booty, collected from the tombs and caves. I remember one had a mummified child, an infant really, curled up. He wanted me to hold it. Feel how light it was. They invited me to go with them to watch a beheading in a nearby village. I made it to the courtyard and turned around.”