by Jasmine Walt
Brigitte Black hid behind the door and listened, her heart beating hard against her chest. With every shout and scream and smash, silent sobs escaped her, the salty tears blurring her vision. After a while, Alison ceased to scream, but still the tirade raged on.
Finally, the King ran out of plates. But he did not leave Alison. Brigitte pressed herself against the door, struggling to hear what was going on. She could just make out a light sound, like a sucking or … lapping of liquid, before the King let out one final bellow and stormed off to his chambers. Brigitte waved to Cassandra, who tiptoed down the hall to check the way was clear. When Cassandra waved back that the King had gone, Brigitte nudged open the heavy door, and bit back a scream.
Alison lay facedown in a pool of her own blood, her pressed white uniform now stained bright pink. Her arms were spread at either side, the bare skin crisscrossed with weeping gashes, as though she had reached out to embrace the King while he thrust the crockery into her. Ceramic shards stuck out at odd angles from her skin and her matted, tangled hair. Beside her head, a teacup – the only piece of china in the room still intact – sat upright on its saucer, holding a few drops of her blood.
Cassandra let out a great sob, clamping her hands over her mouth as though she might be sick. Brigitte reached out with trembling fingers to touch the girl's shoulder.
"Don't—" Cassandra sobbed. Brigitte didn't blame her. She didn't want to see, either.
As Brigitte’s fingers brushed the raw skin beneath the torn dress, Alison groaned. Perhaps she's still alive. Perhaps we're not too late, after all.
"Alison?" she said, trying to keep her voice even.
Alison groaned again, fainter this time. Brigitte clasped her hand around Alison's shoulder and pulled her back, trying to get her to turn onto her side. Alison's head lolled back, causing some of the shards to fall out and fresh blood to pool from the wounds. Blood dribbled over Brigitte's apron.
But Brigitte barely registered the stain, transfixed as she was by the girl's face. Alison's eyes were half-closed, glassy, and unseeing. The skin on her cheeks hung in torn strips, slivers of Staffordshire sticking out like porcupine quills. Long gashes crisscrossed her neck, as though he’d tried to behead her with the dinnerware. Blood dribbled from cracks in her lips.
Brigitte recoiled in horror. She dropped Alison’s shoulder, and fled to Cassandra’s arms. The two girls met each other's eyes. "Miss Julie," they said in unison.
Brigitte gestured for Cassandra to grab Alison’s legs, and she dug her hands under the girl's shoulders. Shards tinkled on the marble floor. Together, they heaved her off the ground and hobbled into the hall. Between Brigitte's legs, Alison's head flailed back and forth, spraying blood all over the French carpets. Luckily, the maids’ staircase was only down the adjacent hall.
Brigitte held the door open with her back while they manoeuvred Alison's limp body inside. Cassandra bent down to wipe the blood dribbling down her stockings. "This is horrible!" she sobbed.
"He is horrible." Brigitte grunted as she lifted Alison again and started backing down the staircase. "The sickness is making him positively cruel."
"I hoped this time Banks had cured him for good." Cassandra lifted Alison's legs over the corner balustrade. "Do you remember this time last year, when they had to chain him to his chair? Or when he babbled incoherently in the drawing room for fifty-two hours straight? I’d give anything to go back to the babbling. Just last week I overheard two ministers in the drawing room discussing his deplorable behaviour at the Royal Society. Apparently, he sent three Whigs to the Tower for pronouncing the God Morpheus’ name wrong. They fear he won't recover his sanity again."
"As right they should," Brigitte winced as Alison's head knocked against the wall. "At least now maybe they'll talk about a regency, even if the princesses aren't yet old enough. May we all survive long enough to see the end of him."
"May we all." Cassandra looked down at Alison. "Quickly now. Miss Julie will know what to do."
Brigitte kicked open the door at the foot of the stairs, and they dragged Alison's body into the kitchen. A plump, sour-faced woman looked up from the kneading to scold them, but then she saw the blood.
"Out of my way!" She flung the rolling pin over her shoulder, scooped up the unfortunate Alison in one beefy arm, grabbed a wool blanket in the other, and dashed into the sleeping quarters. Brigitte and Cassandra sprinted after her.
Miss Julie flung the blanket over Alison's bed, laid the bleeding girl out upon it, and began picking out the ceramic shards. "Bring me water, a cloth, and the vinegar!" she barked. Cassandra raced off. Brigitte stayed in the doorway, unable to move, her teeth biting down on her fingernails while she watched Miss Julie work.
Cassandra returned with a tub of water, a stack of rags and the bottle of vinegar. Miss Julie soaked one of the rags in the water, rubbed a little vinegar on it, and started mopping up the blood. Alison's eyes fluttered open, and she moaned a little before disappearing again. "It's all right, child," Miss Julie said. "We’ll have that pretty face of yours back in no time."
To Brigitte she said, "most of the cuts are quite shallow, but on her face and neck – these are serious. Tear those rags into bandages."
Her hands numb and shaking, Brigitte picked up one of the rags in the pile and tore jagged, clumsy strips, which Miss Julie soaked in the water and vinegar and wrapped around Alison's head. Alison moaned, lolling her head from side to side. Brigitte knelt beside her, stroked her hand, and whispered her name, but Alison didn’t seem to be aware of her presence.
When Miss Julie had finished, she stood up and wiped her hands on her apron. "I've done all I can, the rest is up to the Gods. Now, what happened?"
"It wasn't her fault, Miss!" Brigitte burst out. "She was dusting the china cabinet, and she slipped from her ladder and dropped a plate. She even managed to rescue it before it smashed on the ground. His Majesty was sleeping in his chair in the corner and she must have startled him awake. He tore from the wheeled chair, tipped the cabinet upside down, and threw all the plates at poor Alison's head, howling all the while. He … he … he—"
"He assailed her even when she was no longer screaming," said Cassandra. "We heard the whole thing from the hall. Oh, Miss Julie, it was horrible!"
Brigitte thought of the strange noises she'd heard, and the blood sloshing at the bottom of that one pristine teacup, and she wondered if she and Cassandra had even grasped the true horror. She hugged her knees to her chest.
"You girls have had a terrible fright." Miss Julie stroked Brigitte’s hair. "And you know what cures the willies – a good run at the wringing machine. There's a load of bedclothes a mile high that needs wringing and hanging, and we’ll be covering Alison’s chores ‘till she recovers, so we’ll need to look lively."
Cassandra sobbed, but Miss Julie would hear none of it. With one last, lingering look at Alison, her head covered in bandages and her tiny body punctured with wounds, Brigitte left the room and returned to her chores.
When she collapsed into her bed that evening, Brigitte leaned over to watch Alison. Miss Julie had obviously been in to change her bandages, for now only a thin layer covered most of her face. One of her eyes had swollen shut, puffed up like the casing on a mince pie, and the other stared, wide and unblinking, at some spot beyond Brigitte's shoulder.
"Alison?" she whispered.
The eye met hers, wide and frightened. Alison tried to say something, but all that came out was a strangled, hoarse sob. She was the third new maid in as many months, the other two disappearing from the castle in the night, their beds found empty in the morning, and their meagre belongings still stuffed into the pillowcase.
"Hush, it's all right now. You don't have to be afraid. He can't hurt you here—"
Alison screamed, the sound hollow and hoarse, as though she had not the energy to make a sound. But her one eye screwed shut and she opened her mouth again in a gaping, silent screech. Horrified, Brigitte turned away, buried her head under her pi
llow, and tried to forget.
For days Alison remained in a state of flux: catatonic one minute, screaming the next. It was as if she lived inside a permanent nightmare, flailing herself against the sheets in a desperate attempt to wake herself up.
Miss Julie had cleaned up the blood and crockery on the third floor. The King hadn’t left his chambers since that horrible morning, though Banks had been attending him night and day. Brigitte hoped he stayed there forever.
After a week, Alison's condition had not changed. Miss Julie took some money from the jar under her bed, and went into the village. She returned with a man in a dark suit, carrying a leather case. They shut the bedroom door while they examined her, so Brigitte could not watch, but she listened through the door and could hear Alison sobbing. Ten minutes later Miss Julie and the man emerged. The housekeeper's usually ruddy complexion had become drawn and white.
"Alison will be going away," she said. Brigitte demanded to know why, but Miss Julie rapped her across the knuckles for insolence. She was sick, Miss Julie said. The man would take her somewhere she could get better.
But Brigitte's mother had gone away with a pale-faced man with a leather case too, and she'd never got better and she'd never come back. Brigitte sobbed and screamed and cursed at Miss Julie, who didn’t scold her this time, but took her in her arms and said it really was for the best. The man returned to the bedroom, bundled the sobbing girl in her sodden sheets, and carried her outside to his waiting carriage. As Brigitte watched through the barred windows, the carriage sped out of the gates and along the castle wall, ‘till it finally disappeared from sight.
Brigitte knew she would never feel safe in the palace again. She and Cassandra cleaned as a pair, one manning the mop or broom or polishing cloth, while the other walked behind, eyes nervously darting into every hall and alcove, checking for signs of the King. Whenever they heard the creaking of the wheeled chair on the bright marble floor they would hide in the nearest room, holding each other and praying to their Gods that he would not find them. Neither wanted to end up as the next victim of the King's rages. Neither wanted her cheeks flayed off like poor Alison.
"He doesn't want to see no one."
"He'll want to see me." Nicholas stooped down to look through the slot in the door. Peter's face scowled back at him.
"I know it's you, Nicholas. He doesn't want to see you, neither. You could go down if you want, but he's chained an' padlocked the door. Working on something top secret, he is."
"Fine. I'll wait in the church."
Nicholas didn't understand. We have only four months to get the Wall and railway completed. Isambard said we needed to begin immediately, and here I am, ready to work, and Isambard has locked himself away on some whim?
He didn't really know what to do with himself. He had no desire to return to the guesthouse – the compies in the walls were louder than ever – so he lay down on one of the pews at the back of the church, and fell into a dreamless sleep.
He awoke later, to the uneasy feeling of someone standing over his body. The dark shape stood in the shadows just out of view, tall and thin, like a rake leaned against the wall by some careful gardener.
"There you are. I've been waiting for you for hours. What are you messing around with down there? We have a Wall to build—"
"Hello, Nicholas."
It wasn't Brunel. The man stepped out of the shadows and loomed over him, his priestly robes sweeping along the floor and his bulk blocking the light from the gas lamps above. Nicholas sat up and met the man's gaze. The man didn't speak, but simply stared back – his expression hard, his eyes blazing.
Finally, Nicholas said. "And you are—"
"I am Oswald, the eldest son of Henry Williams, Senior. I believe you went to school with my brother."
"However much you blame me for Henry's death," Nicholas said, uneasiness creeping into his head, "I cannot bring him back."
"I'm here to talk about Aaron," Oswald said. "I want you to stay away from him."
"Why?"
"You're not a Stoker, Nicholas, so I don't expect you to understand. Aaron is young, and you—" he gave a sinister smile, "you have not exactly sailed under cover of darkness. Once I heard you had returned I had to know everything there was to know about Nicholas Thorne. You had a brother once, didn't you? But he died in very mysterious circumstances. Very mysterious indeed. And then you came to London, and my brother died, and you conveniently shipped out the very next day. So I looked up the Navy records, and what did I find? You killed a superior officer, and fled into Spain to escape your punishment. But you're in London now, so you've crossed the border illegally, and that can only mean you've left an even bigger mess behind in France than a murdered lieutenant."
He leaned in so close Nicholas could see every lump and furrow of his pock-marked skin. "We're simple folk, us Stokers, but we have our own rules, and we care about our families, Nicholas Thorne. I've already lost one brother because of your presence—"
"Henry's death was an accident—"
"And accidents seem to follow you everywhere, don't they? I won't have Aaron caught up in whatever clandestine dealings you and Brunel have dreamed up." He swept his arm around, indicating the Nave, the Chimney, the flickering lamps, and Brunel's whole operation. "He believes that because I work for him I'm blind to his ambition, but I've seen things, Nicholas Thorne. I've seen. You're planning something, the two of you, and it’s un-Stoker-like, and Aaron will have no part in it."
"But we're not—"
"Also," he added, holding out a thick palm, "I see the bulge of a purse in your pocket. I'll have that, if you please."
"But—"
"If you please, Mr. Rose. I'd hate for the authorities to find out about your presence in this city, and your real name."
Nicholas pulled the purse from his jacket and threw it at the priest. Oswald caught it in midair, pulling it open with eager fingers, and feeling for the coins inside.
"That will do … for now."
"This is absurd. Isambard has done nothing but look out for Aaron. And I hardly intend to—"
But the priest had already turned away. "I trust," Oswald called over his shoulder as he descended the steps towards the priests' cloister, "you won't forget this little meeting."
"Your words, your Holiness, are forever etched into my memory."
"Good." And he was gone, his robes swishing against the stairs.
Nicholas' stomach growled. He thought of the two shillings he'd had in his purse – the last of his money ‘till Brunel could pay him. It will be another night with an empty stomach, another night kept awake with the threats of this new enemy hanging over me. I should have never returned to London.
James Holman's Memoirs – Unpublished
As declared, the first meeting of the Free-Thinking Men's Blasphemous Brandy and Supper Society took place in my cramped dormitory at Travers College, requiring the members to travel twenty-six miles from London to the grounds of Windsor Castle. I spent some of my meagre savings on a spread of fresh-cut meats and cheese and several varieties of tea, not to mention a fine bottle of brandy.
I raced back and forth between the common room and my quarters, arranging chairs, setting up bowls and spoons and polishing the tea settings. Every time I passed the oak writing desk opposite the door, my fingers brushed the letter that I had leaned against the inlaid drawers. Occasionally I picked it up and fingered it, brushing against the Duke's seal, imagining what it might say.
The letter had arrived that morning, and it could only be a response to my request for extended leave to undertake an adventure. At twenty-two, I was the youngest of the Naval Knights by a good forty years. Although we are only allowed to absent our duties on medical grounds, I had managed, with a recommendation from a doctor friend, to secure a previous extended period of leave to attend medical school in Edinburgh. My new application sought permission to travel extensively across England, though in reality I meant to escape our closed borders and pursue my drea
m to conduct a circuit of the world.
Of course, I couldn't read the letter, and I didn't want to ask one of the cantankerous Knights to read it for me. So I had been fidgeting in anticipation all afternoon, pacing across the floor and cracking my knuckles in a most un-gentlemanly manner.
Nicholas and Aaron arrived promptly at four, sharing a carriage. Both men handed me their coats – Nicholas' a fine woollen cape in the latest Parisian fashion, worn and thin around the edges; Aaron's the tough canvas of a workmen, reeking of soot – and settled into the mismatched chairs I had placed around the cramped room.
"No Isambard?" I asked, secretly relieved.
Aaron shook his head. "He's been most peculiar these past two days. He's locked himself in his chambers and has not emerged, not even to give orders to begin construction of the Wall. I've no idea what he plans, but he certainly does not wish to leave his workshop for any reason."
"Too bad, he's missing out on this." I presented the brandy to the gentlemen, and poured a glass each for Nicholas, Aaron, and Buckland, who had just arrived by carriage from Oxford.
"It's nothing like the Royal Society lays claim to," I observed, feeling each man's fingers brush mine as they took their glasses. "But I feel our club should enjoy the fineries of intellectual countenance."
"I'll drink to that," said Buckland, raising his glass to his lips. As requested, Buckland's wife had indeed baked a cheesecake, and Nicholas had stolen a box of hot chocolate from the kitchen at his guesthouse. He stirred his brandy into his hot drink and sipped, giving a sigh of contentment.
We exchanged pleasantries while we waited for the final two guests to arrive. When I could no longer contain myself, I slid the envelope across the desk toward Nicholas. "Please?" I said.
Images swam inside my head – images of things I could no longer see but might one day hear, and smell, and feel. Paths unwandered, specimens undiscovered, ingenious peoples whose fascinating customs yearned to be documented …