by Rose Lerner
The morphine made her nervous. She knew that without it or the laudanum she’d get very sick. Perhaps too sick to ride a horse.
But that too was a problem she had to solve later.
The problem she had to solve now was Guy outside her door.
And Charles sitting behind her in a spindly-legged chair.
I’ll break the spotted glass of the dressing table mirror. I’ll use one of the shards to slit Charles’s throat, to stab out his eyes. I will ease open the door and before Guy knows what is happening, I’ll slide another shard through his ribs until I find his heart and split it wide open. And I will take the case with the morphine and the syringe from the inside pocket of his coat.
Oh, that was good. An excellent plan.
I will take his gun too and shoot anyone who tries to stop me.
There, she thought with no small amount of glee and bloodlust. Problems solved.
“Helen?” Charles asked, intruding on her plans for his bloody death. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she said, not turning to face him. Not lifting her eyes to meet his in that spotted glass.
“No time to wool-gather,” he said.
She lifted the necklace of paste gems, that in the candlelight looked enough like diamonds and sapphires to fool all the drunks downstairs, and attempted to clasp it around her neck.
But her fingers were shaking.
And that was the problem she could not solve.
She could not murder Charles with a shard of glass. She’d be unable to hold it. She was so weak now, there was a good chance she wouldn’t be able to break the glass in the first place.
And there was no way she was quicker than Guy. Once upon a time, perhaps, when she was as lethal as he was.
Now, she was useless. Shaky and weak and useless.
“Do you need help?” Charles asked eagerly, like he couldn’t wait to put his hands on her.
“I’ve got it,” she said and willed her fingers—thick and shaking—to work the clasp.
“Where is Guy with your medicine?”
“I’m fine, Charles.” She turned her head and smiled, adding what weight she could to her lie. The laudanum and the morphine were the real problem. They shoved it down her throat and into her veins twice a day. “I don’t need the laudanum. Not yet.”
He sucked his teeth and shrugged.
But his eyes…his eyes narrowed, and she could imagine him fashioning some fresh torment for her. Some new hell.
Do your worst, she wanted to snarl at him. But instead she turned back to her dressing table. Bile in her throat.
To her great shame, to her awful despair, part of her craved the drug. Part of her wanted the oblivion, was grateful for the way it softened the horrid sharp edges of this world of hers.
It was a dark and complete curtain, and she feared that, more often than not… she relished its embrace.
And that was more terrifying than Guy. Than the threat of returning to the asylum.
She was losing herself.
Fear had a taste. Part the coppery tang of blood, part the bitter white pith of oranges. It sat in the back of Helen’s throat making every breath taste like disaster. Like a life-or-death decision.
During the war, before the parties and the dinners, the teas and soirees, Helen and her mother would eat lemon candies to hide the taste of their fear. There were days, weeks even, that those lemon candies were all they ate. The only thing they could keep down. The empty tins stacked beside her mother’s dressing table mirror were evidence of things they could not admit out loud.
Helen wished she had one of her mother’s lemon candies now, but she doubted it would clear the taste of terror. And anger. And hate.
Only the morphine could do that.
But the reminder of her mother would be welcome.
The gown she wore was velvet that looked blue in one light and purple in another. It was tight and scandalously short and even lower cut.
After the jewels were in place, she tucked the peacock feather into her hair. The feather was real, shabby and falling apart but she would get one more show out of it.
There, she thought and looked at her reflection in the spotty mirror at the crooked dressing table.
The person looking back at Helen Rivers was stunning. She was, in matters of aesthetics, nearly perfect. She gave the impression of an elegant world that the men, if they didn’t remember, would have dreamt of at some point.
But it was all undercut by a ready carnality. An availability heightened by the fact that she would be literally out of their reach. Suspended from the ceiling in a gilt birdcage.
As far as staging went, her mother, at the peak of her talents, could not have done better.
She pinched the inside of her elbow, at the needle mark, sore and purple, just to feel something. Just to be sure she was real.
She knew the future waiting for her body if they kept on this way. She’d lose her teeth. Her hair. She’d grow gaunt and frail. Ash-faced and vacant.
“I don’t want this anymore.”
“Pardon?” Charles asked from his seat behind her, impeccable in his black suit with the forest-green brocade vest.
If I am to get free of him, I need to be smart. I need to plan. I cannot simply fling myself onto the mercy of strangers. No matter how kind or noble they might seem.
“What would you like me to sing?” she asked, picking up the powder and brushing it over the insides of her arms. She would sweat in the cage, so close to the candles, and the powder would vanish in muddy rivers within minutes, but for the moment it gave her something to do so she didn’t have to look at him.
“You know the war songs are my favorite.”
“It makes the boys fight.”
Charles sighed and she froze. Knowing without having to look that he was getting up from the chair. That he was crossing the room to stand at her shoulder. She forced herself, when he touched her, not to flinch.
“You look like your mother,” he said, his hand cupping the side of her neck. She could feel her heartbeat pounding against his hand.
“Thank you.” It wasn’t a compliment. What he said, it wasn’t…kind.
Instead of vomiting she smiled at him.
His fingers, for the tiniest moment, the briefest of seconds tightened around her throat. Not enough to stop her from breathing but enough to make her understand that he could. If he wanted.
It made her long with all her heart for the knife with the mother-of-pearl inlay she used to carry in a small holster just above her boot. Her father gave her the knife and the holster before he went off to serve Jefferson Davis.
If she had her knife, she would cut his throat.
But all weapons had been removed from her reach long ago. And those that fell into her hands she found she could not hold in her weak, shaking grasp.
As if he could feel her intentions in the air between them, Charles stepped back.
“The doctor said you were a virgin.”
The doctor.
She absolutely refused to think of him anymore. She slammed the door on the memory of his room. Dangerous. That had been…dangerous. Foolish.
Stupid.
The flirtation in the courtyard this morning had been an effort to get him to disregard her. Something she wouldn’t have thought would be so hard, considering how he’d begged her to leave his room. But in the clear light of day the doctor had been…different.
“Was he lying?” Charles asked, his face that hard mask she longed to smash with her fists.
“Of course not,” she said, pretending to be scandalized. “Why would you doubt him?”
“Because you are a lying bitch, Helen. Just like your mother.” She looked away, but he grabbed her chin in hard fingers, forcing her to look at him. To take his tirade and his bad breath and the spittle flying from his lips. “And you enchant men, you weave your spell over them and so they lie for you. They tell you all their secrets. All the things they shouldn’t because you have stol
en their will.”
She forced herself not to pull away, not to struggle. He liked that far too much for her to just give it to him.
“Do you know why I married your mother?” he asked. He was goading her, pushing her into reaction, and she bit her lip against the urge to give him the fight he wanted.
“To even the scales,” he whispered, his breath foul against her face. “To right, in whatever way I could, the wrongs the two of you committed. You lied to us, feigned affection while destroying us, freeing our slaves, killing our boys, burning our land-”
Do not crow , she told herself when the word yes! burned in her throat. Yes! I did that! And you were the fool taken in by a smile and a low-cut bodice.
“What happened with the doctor?” he asked. His voice insinuated all sorts of dark things.
“I was unconscious. I have no idea.”
“I think you’re lying to me.”
“You always think I’m lying.”
He grabbed her hair. Viciously he pulled back her head, breathing sour air all over her face. Into her skin. “I don’t like that tone,” he said. “I don’t like that tone at all.”
She cracked. The façade broke and she fought, pulling against his hold on her hair until she could feel strands tearing out at the scalp.
“Yes,” he hissed. “Fight me, bitch.”
“Fuck you,” she yelled and shoved at his stomach, punching him as hard as she could. Lifting her foot to kick him in the crotch.
He smacked her and used his hold in her hair to shove her face down on the dressing table.
Hard. Hard enough to make bottles rattle. To make her teeth cut into her lip and cheek.
“Why don’t you break?” he asked. “What do I have to do to break you?”
Instead of the answer he wanted, she let the blood pool in her mouth and then she spat it at him.
A crimson stain barely visible on the black brocade.
It made him furious, which made her laugh. Laugh to cover up her fear. Laugh so she wouldn’t weep.
His eyes lit afire with the challenge, and she braced herself for something awful. But the door to her bedroom opened and then shut again. And though she could not see him, she knew it was Guy.
Always Guy.
“The noise in here is drawing attention,” he said.
Charles lifted his hand away from her head, pulling hair as he went. “Give her the laudanum,” he spat. “And clean the bitch up.”
Charles left and she slowly lifted her head, running her tongue over her teeth. Her mouth hurt. Her head hurt. Her heart…oh, it hurt.
“Why do you fight him?” Guy asked.
“Because he’s here.”
Guy put the small blue bottle on the corner of the dressing table and she left it there. Untouched. As she cleaned up her face and her hair. She spat mouthfuls of blood into the wash basin.
In the mirror she could see the red mark along the left side of her face. She had enough experience to know that it would not bruise, or if it did it wouldn’t be bad. She winced as she brushed more powder over it.
The fat lip she covered with more paint.
And the whole time the laudanum sat there with its pain-free siren song of forgetfulness.
“It’s a full house down there tonight. And they are ready for you,” Guy said from his place by the door.
“Wonderful,” she snarled. “I am ready for them.”
She stood, shaking out her short skirts, putting her shoulders back as if there were no load upon them.
“Open the door,” she said, but Guy just stood at the door, wide and large and impassive.
“Drink the laudanum.” He pointed at the bottle as if she’d forgotten. As if every single cell of her body wasn’t aware of that little blue bottle and the escape therein.
“I dream of killing you,” she said, because she was reckless and wild inside of her skin. An animal bent on destruction. “I dream of your blood on my hands.”
He nodded like he understood. “It’s a half dose.”
Enough to take the pain away. The rage. But not so much that she’d be an insensate puddle in that cage.
“Helen-” He stepped forward as if to pour it down her throat. Which he would do. He had done it plenty in the past.
And still she resisted. He grabbed her arm in one hand and at his touch she capitulated.
“I’ll do it myself,” she said and shook free of his grasp.
To her great shame she was relieved to be forced. Relieved to not have to be strong in the face of the temptation of that little bottle.
She took the laudanum, downed it in one swallow, the burn of the alcohol promising comfort.
“Satisfied?” she snapped, and dropped the bottle on the floor for him to pick up.
She walked past him, out the door to the edge of the balcony. She stood there, looking down on the sea of men dotted by the white muslin and faded silks of the women who worked at Delilah’s.
It didn’t take long until they noticed her. Until one of them caught the glimmer of her necklace out of the corner of his eye, until they all turned one by one, tapping the man next to him so he would turn too and look up at her. Finally, when their faces were all tilted up to hers, like sunflowers in the afternoon, the room hushed and she smiled.
“Hello boys,” she said. “Can I sing for you?”
They roared and clapped, a ready audience primed by looking at the draped birdcage for a day.
Slowly, she went down the stairs, kicking out her skirts, making sure everyone got a good look at her legs. The ruffled petticoats. Guy, behind her, helped her into the cage, the seat where she would spend the next hour singing for her safety.
“Es-tu bien? ” he whispered.
“I’m fine,” she lied. Because he didn’t care. And she would still kill him the first chance she had.
He shut the door behind her and hoisted her into the air with the ropes. The cage swung in a wide arc and she gripped one of the bars, her stomach rolling.
Oh, she hated this part. She hated all of it, but this part … she was terrified of heights and Charles knew that.
There he was on the steps, watching her as she was lifted above the crowd. He smiled when he saw her death grip on the metal bar.
Behind him, down the hallway, she saw the doctor, in a handsome suit, nicer even than Charles’s—which would make Charles livid, so she was delighted. The doctor watched her with wide eyes.
His eyes were pretty. Not just brown, but a deep brown. A brown with depths and shades.
She never should have told him that, about his eyes, but it was true. The doctor had pretty eyes.
And at the moment they were taking in every piece of her. The feather and the fake jewels. Her tight bodice and short skirts.
Her grip on the bars.
The bruises and marks on the insides of her arms—that indeed the powder did not cover. His eyes widened at the site of the marks not with shock, but with knowledge.
And when his eyes met hers again she saw something so dangerous. So terrible and eroding.
Not pity.
Not sympathy.
Empathy.
I understand. I know and I do not judge.
She dropped her arms and looked away, casting him from her mind. As if he’d never existed. He was a man and therefore easily manipulated. If she’d done too fine a job attracting him, she'd find a way to repel him.
It was a simple science, perfected in the mansion in Charleston.
The cage thumped to a halt and she swung in a few small circles. She closed her eyes against the need to vomit.
That would be a show, she thought with an internal laugh. Instead of opening her mouth and singing all over their heads—she’d cast up her accounts.
It would be memorable.
Once the cage stopped swaying, she opened her eyes and saw Charles again.
There were so few rebellions available to her. And she had to be careful. He was already suspicious of the doctor.
&
nbsp; She would sing his war songs. “God Save the South” and “Battle Cry of Freedom” and “Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!” And if fights broke out—so be it.
Tomorrow night she’d sing all the Irish songs, and everyone would weep.
The third night she’d sing her bawdiest songs and wear the red dress with the black lace on her shoulders that made men think of sex.
And she would think of other things so as not to think of the morphine.
She would think of blood and murder.
And freedom.
Chapter 6
* * *
In the morning the entirety of the courtyard was iced over.
And much to Helen’s dismay—occupied.
The doctor, in a gray greatcoat, came to his feet beside the table when she stepped into the sunlight.
His ears were bright pink. He’d been waiting a long time.
“I was hoping you’d come out here this morning,” he said. His smile was lethal. It was rueful and charming and sage and sad. It was the kind of smile that made a mess of her. It made her want to sit at that table with him and learn all his secrets, find out what was making him so pensive. Find out what had made him so wise.
Her heart pounded in her chest, a wild bird that wanted to drink from the cheap flattery of his words. Stupid.
“Yes, well, the room they gave me is not that big.” She put just the smallest amount of entitled disdain in her voice, starting the work that would turn his attention away from her.
Damn it, she thought. She’d been looking forward to the sun on her face. The places she stayed very rarely had protected outside areas, and she was usually forced to remain in whatever room she’d been given.
This courtyard was a boon.
But she couldn’t sit here with him. Not again. Once perhaps, for the sake of alleviating his concern. Twice would be suspicious and unnecessary.
Charles often paid whores and kids to watch her, to follow and listen. For months she’d been duped by women pretending to be friends only to have the secrets she told them turned against her by Charles.
No. This was not safe. This courtyard was terribly dangerous.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize the courtyard was occupied. I will leave you to your thoughts.”