The Crimson Shard

by Teresa Flavin

  The huge room was covered from eye level to ceiling with paintings, large and small. They were hung so close to each other, it was almost hard to make out where one ended and the next began. Landscapes were next to saints, and portraits were stacked above still lifes.

  The rain-soaked light from the tall windows barely lit many of the paintings, and some were completely in shadow.

  “There are so many,” said Sunni, turning in a circle, trying to take them all in.

  “The light is too poor,” said Amelia, moving to the door after a few minutes. “Come and look at them properly when there is sunshine.”

  She and Sunni stopped when Blaise did not follow.

  “Come on, Blaise,” called Sunni.

  Reluctantly, he followed, but he kept looking back over one shoulder.

  Blaise sat sketching by the cluster of candles in his room. It was late, and the house was utterly silent.

  He and Sunni had stayed up after dinner, learning a card game from Amelia, while Henry attended to business with farmers on the estate.

  “Amelia must be bored out of her skull,” said Blaise to Sunni as they climbed up to their bedrooms. “Knocking around this mausoleum all on her own.”

  “She told me how happy she is that we’re here,” said Sunni.

  “That’s good —” he started to say, but noticed her doleful expression. “Oh, right, maybe not.”

  “We’re not supposed to be here. We have got to get home,” she whispered as she entered her bedroom. “’Night, Blaise.”

  “’Night.” Blaise hadn’t told her what was bugging him about the picture gallery. He didn’t want to say anything till he’d checked it out himself — and he must be wrong, anyway.

  At some point he told himself he ought to go to bed, but once he was under the covers, his mind went over and over everything that had happened. When he finally dragged his thoughts away from the painful subject of being lost in the wrong century, they strayed to another place he couldn’t avoid for much longer: the gallery.

  He threw the covers off and, candlestick in hand, ventured into the corridor. Its oppressive blackness made him reconsider for a second, but the itch in his brain was too insistent. He set off for the grand double staircase, trying not to think of the portraits staring down at him in the dark.

  On the third step, he heard something. A knock, a rattle, it was hard to tell where it came from. He waited for more, but nothing came, so he continued to the ground floor. Padding carefully in his stockinged feet, Blaise headed for the central door that led toward the picture gallery. With a click, it was open and another black corridor was ahead of him.

  A sigh of air blew toward him and made the candle flicker.

  He tiptoed to the second door on the right. It opened soundlessly, and he padded forward, relieved that he had found the right room.

  As he moved around, the candle picked out details in the shadowy paintings: a saint’s hand, a pomegranate bursting open, a hunting dog running in a forest.

  The painting he needed to see was in a far corner, near the ceiling. He held the candle up as high as he could, but even standing on a chair, he could not make its light reach far enough.

  He stepped down and sighed at his own stupidity for not waiting till morning.

  Another breath of air came from behind him, sending his flame dancing wildly. Blaise turned around, but before he could see anything, the candle went out and a hand was clamped hard over his mouth.

  A tremendous explosion blasted through Sunni’s head, and she jerked awake. Lights were flickering past her door, visible though the gaps, and one stopped outside.

  “Sunniva?” Amelia knocked frantically, then pushed inside. “Are you there?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I do not know! Stay in here and lock your door.” Amelia slammed the door shut and vanished down the corridor.

  “Wait, where’s Blaise? Is he all right?” Sunni felt in the dark for her shawl, wrapped it around her shoulders, and moved carefully to the door.

  Slipping outside, she joined Anne, who was passing with a lantern, and they hurried downstairs together. Loud voices and lights emanated from the gallery, where a man’s voice was yelling something about a “villainous snake.”

  Everyone in the household was gathered in a semicircle, candles aloft, looking at something on the ground. Sunni pushed toward the front and gaped at the sight of Henry Featherstone, in a dressing gown, aiming a musket at Blaise and a strange man, who were crouched together against the wall like cornered spiders.

  Blaise’s nightshirt and awkward bare legs were bright against the man’s dark clothing, but brighter still was the glint of the dagger at her friend’s throat.

  Sunni cowered behind the others, her heart in her mouth.

  “Villainous snake!” Henry shouted again. “No housebreaker shall walk free from here!”

  The man scraped the blade against Blaise’s skin and rasped, “That is what I offer. I leaves with this boy in a carriage, or I gives him a bloody necklace.”

  Henry did not seem to be breathing. Only a fly sitting on the barrel of the musket would have noticed it lining up with the burglar’s right shoulder. Three seconds later, it blasted a shilling’s width of flesh off the man and the picture gallery had a crater in its wall. A dusting of plaster bits covered the floor where Henry had already fired into the ceiling.

  The housebreaker dropped his dagger and groaned. Blaise broke away, and the assembled household descended upon them. Two footmen dragged the bleeding man into a corner, while Sunni and Amelia helped Blaise to his feet.

  Slowly, Henry lowered the musket, but the fire didn’t leave his eyes. “Where is the other snake?”

  “He got away, sir,” said one of the footmen. “Across the fields at the back.”

  The housebreaker let out a wheezing laugh that chilled Sunni to the bone.

  Henry slung the musket over his shoulder and retrieved the dagger from the floor. With it, he set about digging the spent musket ball from the wall. “Get rope, Rowley, and secure this miscreant. Bind the wound and carry him to the library. I shall want him alive long enough to tell his tale.” He curled his lip. “And to die on the gallows.”

  The maidservants drew in their breath. Henry spun around and said, “Enough gawking. Back to your beds and lock yourselves in. And not a word about this to another soul! If I hear of anyone talking, he or she shall be chased out of this house.”

  He nodded at wide-eyed Amelia. “Take yourself off to bed, Sister, and I shall check your door before I retire. Make certain you have locked it well. Sunniva, Blaise, you come with me.”

  A short time later, Henry sat in his wingback chair with the musket balanced across his knees, candles illuminating the statues around him. Hodge was stationed at the library door with a pistol in case the injured criminal made a run for it, but the man was tied to a wooden chair, a red bloom spreading over the cloth that bound his shoulder. His head lolled back as he stared at Blaise and Sunni with bloodshot eyes.

  Sunni could barely stop shivering under his gaze.

  “Nearly had you,” the housebreaker croaked. “But others shall succeed.”

  “I gave you no permission to speak,” Henry thundered.

  “It matters not. I am as good as dead now.”

  “Do you recognize this man?” Henry asked Sunni and Blaise.

  “No, sir,” said Blaise. Sunni could only shake her head.

  “I knows you both,” the housebreaker said. “You was pointed out at Smythe’s theater. There’s a reward on your heads.”

  “Offered by whom?” Henry demanded.

  “The man that wants them.”

  “Throgmorton?”

  “Aye.” The burglar aimed a black-toothed grimace at Sunni and Blaise. “What has you told him? The truth?”

  Henry glanced curiously at them, and Sunni’s stomach lurched.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  The man went on, spittle gathering at the sides of his
mouth. “That you run away from the Academy?” He leaned forward as much as the ropes would allow. “With them two nightsneaks? Where are they now, eh? Abandoned you, did they? They will be hunted down as well!”

  Sunni couldn’t breathe. She recoiled even though the man was several feet away from her.

  “They ain’t saying much,” the housebreaker hissed at Henry.

  “You have said enough — and none of it new to me. Rowley!” Henry shouted. The coachman hurried into the room. “You and Hodge take this scoundrel out to the stables and keep armed watch over him till morning, when I shall turn him in myself.”

  The housebreaker gasped in pain as the two men untied his restraints and marched him into the passageway.

  “I shall see you out,” said Henry, following them.

  The housebreaker could be heard puffing, “I ain’t alone. Others will take the boy and girl. Tonight. Or tomorrow.” His voice faded down the corridor. “Who knows?”

  When they were alone, Sunni put her head down between her knees and tried to breathe normally.

  Blaise laid a quaking hand on her back. “Are you going to be sick?”

  “I don’t know,” she whimpered. “H-he nearly cut your throat. I don’t know what I would’ve done if —”

  Blaise quickly withdrew his hand when Henry strode back in.

  He shook the library shutters and said, “How did these culprits enter? The windows and doors were locked.”

  “Maybe they had a skeleton key,” Blaise said.

  “Perhaps.” Henry checked the shutters again and said, “There is a weakness somewhere in this house, and I will root it out. This house will be fortified against their cunning.”

  “Did the thief say anything else to you, sir?” Blaise asked.

  “Nothing you had not already told us.”

  He caught sight of Sunni’s drawn face when she sat up and wiped her clammy brow. “Are you ill, Sunniva?”

  “Just a bit dizzy,” she said. “Must be the shock . . .”

  “Yes, ’twas a shock.” Henry glared at Blaise. “What, pray tell, possessed you to wander about in the small hours of the night?”

  Blaise crossed his arms tight over his nightshirt. “I couldn’t sleep. So I thought I would go downstairs and look at the paintings in the gallery.”

  “By the light of a single flame?”

  “I didn’t see much,” Blaise admitted. “He jumped me as soon as I got there.”

  “You are extremely fortunate that I heard the commotion,” Henry said. “Barton, Kelley, and I will take it in turns to watch for intruders. Return to your beds now and lock your chamber doors.”

  He escorted them upstairs, musket at his shoulder. Sunni locked her door and collapsed on her bed. As sleep took over, a fading image of the painted door floated above all the worries in her fuzzy brain, farther and farther from reach.

  She was still dozing when someone began hammering on her door. She pulled on her shawl and tiptoed close to it. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me!” hissed Blaise.

  As soon as she unlocked the door, he burst in.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Morning.”

  “What’s so urgent that you have to batter the door down?”

  “Sorry. My head’s all over the place.” He looked around her room, agitated. “Are you all right? Did you get any sleep?”

  “Some.”

  “Okay, good. Me, too.” He scratched his head with a rapid movement. “Come downstairs. You’ve got to help me look at something.”

  “What?”

  “Just come on, Sunni. It’s doing my head in.”

  “What is? I’m not even dressed. . . .”

  Blaise threw his hands up. “Then get dressed. Will you just come on?”

  “Give me a few minutes then.” She began pushing him out of the door. “Go on. Wait outside.”

  Sunni struggled into her stays and gown as best she could without Anne’s help. She slipped her shoes on, locked the door behind her, and followed Blaise down the hall.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s up or just keep on commanding me?” she said with a sniff.

  “You’ll see what’s up in a minute,” he answered. “And you can tell me if I’m nuts or seeing things or what.”

  Morning light poured through the windows of the empty gallery. Yesterday’s rain had given way to sun and the room was washed clean of the previous night’s shadows.

  The servants had finished sweeping up fragments of plaster from the floor and were nowhere in sight, but they had left a ladder propped against the wall.

  “Help me move this ladder over there,” said Blaise, tugging at it. “To that corner.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Maybe.” He began inching the ladder across the room. “Help me, will you? It’s heavy!”

  “You’re out of your mind, Blaise. If this falls over, it’ll bring those pictures crashing down!”

  “It won’t fall. Grab hold here!”

  Somehow, in fits and starts, they pulled the ladder along and leaned it against the wall, nearly nicking the topmost painting’s gilded frame.

  “I am not moving that again,” Sunni said. “So don’t ask.”

  “You won’t have to.” Blaise began climbing. “Hold on tight.”

  He went as high as he could and leaned his whole torso toward a canvas hanging in the corner.

  “You’re going to fall if you lean any farther, Blaise!” she shrieked, throwing all her weight onto the ladder’s bottom rung.

  “I’ll be all right,” he gasped.

  Carefully, he plucked the painting from the wall with both hands. He teetered with the unexpected weight of it, but managed to grab hold of the wire on the back with one hand, while the other grasped the ladder.

  Slowly he began descending, clutching the painting to his side.

  “You nearly dropped it!” She stood aside for him to jump down onto the floor. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  Blaise’s face was ashen.

  “Talk to me. You’re giving me a fright!”

  “Look at the painting,” he said shakily. “And tell me I’ve made a mistake. Please tell me I’ve made a mistake.”

  Sunni was studying the painting when suddenly the door flew open. “What are you doing?” Henry’s booming voice startled Blaise, and he nearly lost his grip on the painting. Luckily, Sunni grabbed hold of the other end.

  “So help me, if you two are stealing from us —”

  “No, sir!” Blaise called. “We took this down to show you and Miss Featherstone. It’s really important.”

  A letter dangled from Henry’s fingers. “And I have news,” he said, waving the sheet of paper at them. “Bring that painting to the library if you must.”

  Their host stalked out of the gallery. Sunni and Blaise hurried after him, gingerly carrying the painting through the halls. When they reached the library, Amelia was already waiting there. She managed a smile, but her brother’s expression was stern.

  Sunni and Blaise leaned the painting against a chair and sat down side by side.

  “I have just handed the housebreaker over to the local magistrate,” said Henry, sitting heavily into his chair. “But I do not think for a moment that our troubles are at an end. The criminal who escaped from my footmen last night will spread the word that you are here. Every scoundrel in London will be beating a path to this door.” His jaw was set. “I cannot risk my household’s safety, and I will not have my property attacked further.”

  Blaise half sensed what was coming next and held his breath.

  “I had thought this house to be the safest place for you, but in light of last night’s events, I think you will agree that you must move on.”

  “Brother,” Amelia started, but he held up his hand.

  “This has just come from Wheatley.” Henry opened the letter. “I am to bring Blaise and Sunniva to him as soon as possible.”

  Hope began flowering out of Blai
se’s anxiety. “Does he say why, sir?”

  “Wheatley seldom explains himself.” Henry raised one eyebrow. “But he will have very good reasons.”

  “Maybe he’s found a magician for us.”

  “Let us hope so,” said Henry.

  “But Throgmorton’s spies may catch sight of Blaise and Sunniva on the journey there!” said Amelia.

  “Not if they are dressed to go to the Jubilee Masquerade.”

  A smile spread over his sister’s face. “Of course! Leave it to me, Brother.”

  “You will need to work quickly,” said Henry, getting to his feet and nodding at Sunni and Blaise. “Gather your belongings. We leave as soon as my sister’s work is done.”

  “Will you come with us, Miss Featherstone?” asked Blaise.

  “I — I do not know.”

  “I think not.” Henry frowned. “After we see Wheatley, I shall be in Ranelagh Gardens for supper with the Club.”

  “But Miss Featherstone is part of this, too, sir.”

  “Brother?” she appealed to Henry, who was stuffing Wheatley’s letter into his coat pocket.

  “It is not the usual thing,” he said.

  “Sunniva and I aren’t ‘the usual thing’ either,” said Blaise. “I think Miss Featherstone should be allowed to come.”

  Sunni nodded vigorously at this.

  “Do you wish to, Sister?” Henry asked.

  “Oh, yes!”

  “It is not ideal. But as we are in extraordinary circumstances, I suppose you may come,” Henry said. “But this time only.”

  Sunni had been silent throughout, listening to everything, but now she could barely contain herself. She whispered to Blaise, “We have to show it to them!”

  “Mr. Featherstone,” he said, touching the gold frame leaning against his seat. “Miss Featherstone. Does this belong to you? I found it in the picture gallery.”

  He and Sunni shifted the painting around to face the Featherstones. It was a portrait of a young woman against a dark background, holding a jeweled silver hand mirror. A high, short ruff framed her chin and set off a blue dress with an impossibly slim bodice and puffed shoulders joined to stiff white sleeves.