by Eris Adderly
“Are you pleased with the sense of direction you’ve provided for me? Butcher?”
With that last word on her lips, she twisted the dagger sideways, blade parallel to the floor, ending the conversation for good.
Her fingers still gripped the hilt and her terrible anger blazed like the sun as she watched him thrash to an end with a sick satisfaction. The final hot pulses of vitality flowed over her clenched fist and Hannah saw the wretched life drain out over the twitching body and onto the wood beneath their feet. The atrocity known as Rowland Graves was at an end.
The crunch of boots approaching from the alley grew louder, and she spat a low curse at the idea of anyone finding her this way.
But a part of her no longer cared. It was done.
When she yanked the dagger free from his neck, it seemed to give permission for the damnable soul to depart for whatever hells had borne it. Graves’s eyes lost their focus in this world, seeming for a final instant to catch on something invisible over her shoulder. She could swear he wore a smile then, but his face went slack a heartbeat later.
His corpse thumped, knees first, to the floor amid the growing pool of blood before falling backward. The dead man’s glassy eyes stared at the ceiling and at nothing, both at once. Hannah stood, stiff and righteous.
And then she was no longer alone.
Ploughing through the open doorway was a pale and speechless Edmund, cutlass drawn, mouth coming open in disbelief as he nearly tumbled to a halt at the impossible scene before him. Crashing in behind him a moment later, out of breath from running, was her uncle, under no coercion from the captain for all she could see, and looking as though he might be ill at the sight of the mess decorating his floor.
“Hannah!” Edmund appeared ready to burst in relief. He made to rush to her, but stopped partway across the room when he saw the incriminating dagger still clutched in her fist.
“Edmund.” She said his name with judgement in her voice. She was not yet certain his return was a welcome one, change of heart on his part or no. Hannah looked from him to her panting uncle. There would be much for them to discuss. And she would be having her say this time, pirates and threats be damned.
* * * *
“Hannah, what have you done?” Her uncle leaned with wincing caution in the direction of the body, eyes wide with horror, as though he both wanted and didn’t want a better look. “Blackburn, is this … is this Graves?”
So he’d told her uncle about the surgeon. Interesting.
“It is. Or was, it would seem,” the captain said, collecting himself as the shock of the scene before him began to abate.
Hannah’s fingers flexed and loosened on the hilt of the dagger, her sense of reality seeping back in with the movement and presence of the two men. She lowered her eyes to the blade, a violent red now along with her hand. With a barely audible grunt of acknowledgement for the act she’d just committed, she released the weapon, tossing it onto the dead man’s chest.
At first, she thought it was a discreet cough, but as she brought her gaze up, she watched a convulsion of laughter bubble up from her uncle, building in strength until he had to remove his hat and wipe at his eyes.
“I thought you said”—he cackled between breaths—“he was a danger to her! Doesn’t look that way now, Blackburn!”
The man was likely laughing this way out of pure shock. She’d done it herself, and knew it could happen. The captain looked flustered and sheathed his cutlass at last, stepping in her direction.
“Hannah, are you all right?” He moved around the lifeless surgeon, offering a hand to help her step over. “Did he hurt you?”
She accepted his hand, thoughts numb, any implication in the act irrelevant to her at the moment while she manoeuvred around the corpse.
“Only with his breath,” her dry answer came. It surprised her that she could speak so casually after such an ordeal. Shock, it must be.
But Hannah noted how easy it had been to plunge that steel into living flesh, to end a life. It was done in mere moments, and she was not as upset as she would have expected. Perhaps all that would come later. Or perhaps, because it was a worm like Graves, she felt no remorse.
Now on the same side of the room as her uncle, she dropped the captain’s hand and held her palms up for her own inspection. Her uncle passed a handkerchief over, and she took it up and began wiping at the blood. The scrap of cloth would never be useful as anything but a rag again.
“What now, Captain Blackburn?” She put the question to him while trying to work bits of red from under her nails with the cloth. “Do you still intend to put to sea with my uncle?” The calm authority in her own voice was new.
“No. He’s free to go as he pleases. I’ve made my choice.”
There was a hint of a question beneath his words, but Hannah was in no mood for games. If he wished to ask, he could do so. Still, it was curious to hear him say at last that he’d chosen as she’d asked.
The square of fabric in her hands was limp and stained now, but Hannah folded it as best she could to find a dry corner. She started in on her neck and chest, wrinkling her nose at the need to rid even the space between her breasts of traces of red.
“Will you come with us now, Hannah?”
Ah. There it was.
“I don’t know what I will do just yet, Captain,” she said, tucking the ruined handkerchief into her sleeve. Her uncle wouldn’t be wanting it back.
She stepped near the fallen surgeon again and bent over the body.
The man you killed.
“But you told me if I—”
“I don’t have answers for you, Edmund.” Her words became more pointed as she found Graves’s purse and snatched it away before standing upright again. “I’m not going to have this debate while I’m covered in blood, and I won’t be going far looking like this.” She gestured to the gruesome stains down the front of her dress.
Hannah brandished the purse at the captain, clinking the coins inside together. “I need to have something else to wear, and there was a dressmaker on the corner.”
“I’ll go with you,” he offered, taking a step toward her.
“Something needs to be done about this body,” her uncle said. “I can’t have Kettle returning and seeing this.” Hannah and the captain looked at him, drawn out of their own conflict for a moment.
“I usually throw them overboard.” Blackburn snorted in dark amusement. “That won’t help us here. Have any suggestions, Mr Symes?”
Her uncle moved to the far side of the room and rapped the side of his shoe against a hollow-sounding barrel. “I may have, Blackburn, I just may,” he considered, with a hint of a grin in his voice.
“Do what you must,” she said to the men. “I’m not interested in standing in the same room with it any longer,” she said, gesturing to Graves’s body.
“Hannah, wait!” The captain stretched out a hand toward her as she turned for the door, already moving to go after her.
“Say!” her uncle piped up, irritation growing in his voice. “Help me shift this dead man, Captain—it was you who brought him here in the first place. Don’t make me reinjure my arm already, hm?”
The captain looked from her back to her uncle, features pinched but struggling toward something more rash. She saw he wanted to follow her, but also knew it would be much easier for two men to deal with the dead weight.
“I’ll only be going to the corner, Captain,” she said, her words brusque. “Catch me up when you’re finished here, if you must. I’m sure I’ll manage to survive a seamstress.”
* * * *
Hannah moved back the way she’d come through the alley with swift steps, her intention to emerge onto the street only when she reached the last building on the corner, where she’d seen the dressmaker’s shop. It was better to be seen by as few people as possible in this state; she was in no mood to answer questions or to fabricate excuses for her appearance. She was unescorted, but at the moment she didn’t care. In fact, she susp
ected it would be very difficult for her to worry about such customs ever again.
The captain wanted answers from her she was not prepared to give. She needed to breathe, for Heaven’s sake. Too many traumatic events had been wedged together, one after the other, for her to revert on the spot to the way she’d felt on the ship, weeks ago, before matters had gone so terribly awry. First, she would have some measure of sanity.
She popped out onto the street between the dressmaker’s and the neighbouring building. The sky was already lavender in the west, and a darkening blue in the east. Shops would be closing soon, and she hoped to find what she needed in this one, otherwise her evening would grow even more complicated.
Lamps burned in the modest ground floor front room of the shop, and when Hannah pushed her way through the door she heard a jangle of bells. There was no proprietor in immediate sight, but the tinkling noise would bring one out.
Hannah took in the space while she waited for the shopkeep. Paper dress patterns hung near the front windows. Stays dangled from a line above the wide counter, and a variety of ladies’ hats, in silk and other less costly fabrics presented the promise of other women’s envy, for a price, on shelves along the far wall.
A pair of dress forms stood behind the counter, one outfitted with a complete gown and petticoats in an icy pale blue taffeta trimmed in black. It was more formal than Hannah would have otherwise chosen for herself, and it might not be a perfect fit—though it looked close—but she wanted to be clean, with Graves’s blood off her now, and this was the most ready option.
Now it would be a matter of convincing the dressmaker to sell it to her. A finished outfit like this would only have been made for a paying customer: the dress would already be owed to someone else.
Like any good shopkeep, sensing the presence of coin even at a distance, a sturdy woman emerged from a back room, brushing her skirts into place as she approached from behind the counter.
“Good evening M—, uh … Madam.” The woman came to a halt at the sight of her dishevelled new customer, but after a quick swallow of the other questions Hannah could see she wanted to ask, she addressed her with a more typical shop owner’s greeting. “What do you buy?”
“I’m in need of a gown.” Hannah stated the obvious, her tone all business, the usual polite ‘good evening’ absent from her response. “That one will do.” She pointed to the blue and black affair on behind the counter.
“Oh, Madam, that dress was made for another customer.” The seamstress was apologetic. “I’m afraid I can’t sell you that one. If you’d like to see some fabrics, Madam? I can take your measurements; it will only be—”
“I need something else to wear now, tonight,” Hannah said. When had she become so impolite? Perhaps time spent aboard a pirate ship had eroded her sense of propriety. “I’ll give you double what you’ve been paid already.” She dangled the surgeon’s purse between thumb and forefinger, patting at its swinging contents with her other fingers.
The sound of coin and the word ‘double’ perked up the seamstress’s brows, but still she looked at Hannah and wrung her hands. Any respectable business owner would question making such a hasty, suspicious deal with a patron who looked as though she’d been involved in an unfortunate incident with a butcher.
I suppose I was, at that, Hannah smirked to herself.
“Mrs Atwood?” Another woman called out from the back room of the shop, turning the dressmaker’s head. Someone was entering from a rear door. The voice itched in Hannah’s ear. Where had she heard it?
“Oh, Mrs Atwood, I didn’t know you’d be with a customer this late in the day. I only came to drop off your candles, I—”
The steps of the young woman came to a halt as she passed through the doorway of the other room and into the shop proper. Pairs of wax tapers still joined by their long wicks hung doubled over her forearm, and they swayed as the chandler’s wife blinked in surprise.
“Mrs Collingwood?”
The inn, back at Bristol. You bought her tea.
“Good evening, Mrs Hadley.” Hannah greeted her with caution, not yet sure if it would be a help or a hindrance to meet someone here with whom she was already acquainted. How had she happened upon the only other person meant to sail on The Mourning Dove she knew?
The seamstress was nonplussed, looking from this odd potential customer to her candle supplier’s wife and back again. “The two of you know each other?”
Mrs Hadley nodded. “Oh yes. We were meant to travel from Bristol on the same ship,” she said as she turned her attention back to Hannah. “But what happened to you, Mrs Collingwood? I never saw you aboard. Mr Hadley and I were completely baffled!” The woman moved into the room now and laid the tapers down on a counter, unloading her arm.
“Baffled. Indeed.” The word could apply to Hannah’s reaction to the entire situation, but only as an egregious understatement. The woman had no idea. “It’s a very long story, Mrs Hadley, and one I suspect you wouldn’t like to hear.”
She turned to the dressmaker, wanting to move the exchange along. “I’m so sorry—Mrs Atwood, is it?—will you sell the gown or no?”
The plump woman stalled, her pale eyes assaying the gown, probably trying to decide if it would be worth it to take this stranger’s coin.
“Well,” she hedged, “I don’t think I can. I haven’t—”
“Come now, Mrs Atwood,” the eager chandler’s wife cut in, approaching the back side of the counter to join the two other women, “we both know Mr Needham’s daughter already rejected that one. You told me yourself she changed her mind about the blue, yes?”
The proprietress chewed at her lip, arms crossed beneath a considerable bosom, the decision taking far longer than what seemed necessary. Mrs Hadley wasn’t discouraged.
“She won’t be taking the dress anyway. You could sell it to Mrs Collingwood here without any trouble.” She reassured the seamstress in a way that told Hannah the two women were already quite familiar.
“I suppose, perhaps …” The dressmaker’s face was softening, relenting. Hannah was all but ready to start tapping her foot with impatience.
“Oh please,” Mrs Hadley went on, imploring, “as a favour to me? She was so very kind to me when we met back in Bristol.” The woman favoured Hannah with a genuine smile, and she remembered handing over the package of tea at the inn.
“Oh, very well, Mrs Hadley.” The shopkeep yielded, before turning to Hannah. “But tell us what has happened to you, Madam—your dress is—”
Another jangle of bells and all three women turned to the door. The captain had finally caught up to her.
“Han—um, Mrs Collingwood,” he said, stepping into the shop.
“Captain Blackburn.” Her voice was laced with mild irritation.
This man needed to allow her ten minutes to breathe.
“Have you found what you need?” he asked, moving to her side. He was close enough now that the red stains on the front of her dress wouldn’t be the only source of gossip once she left.
“I was just about to purchase this gown from Mrs Atwood here.” She indicated the dress with a nod of her head.
“Madam.” Blackburn nodded in turn to the seamstress and removed his hat before his attention fell back to its original place. “Mrs Collingwood.” He leaned close to speak quietly near her ear, causing brows to raise behind the counter. “Hannah—have you decided? Will you come with me?”
She was slightly taken aback at his tone, the whisper urgent, earnest. He seemed quite desperate for an answer from her, and it suffused her with a strange feeling of power for an instant to have him dangle this way. Still, his insistence chafed. Had she not just killed a man? Could she not be spared a moment to recover her mind? To deal with practicalities?
“Will you allow me to complete this transaction, Captain?” The thread of warning in her words made him draw back with a subtle shake of his head as if to clear away fog from his eyes. She put just the edge of a command on her next request: “Wa
it for me outside, if you please.”
It was the captain’s turn now to look as though he’d seen the Devil on Sunday.
“As you wish, Mrs Collingwood,” he said, taking her in as though the two of them had never met. He excused himself with a murmur and an absent nod for the other women, stepping back out the door to wait in front of the shop window, disturbing the tiny bells again as he went.
Hannah was ready to be done with this business. She tossed the heavy purse onto the counter, and it slid several inches toward the seamstress.
“I trust the coin will be sufficient, Mrs Atwood.” It was not a question. There was enough weight in gold and silver to buy several such dresses. The shopkeep hefted it anyway and tugged open the strings to peer inside. The chandler’s wife leaned in as well, hoping to steal a look for herself.
“That it will, Madam.” The dressmaker confirmed what they already knew with a low noise of appreciation. The woman might be able to take a brief holiday with that sort of coin.
She stashed the purse somewhere Hannah couldn’t see beneath the counter, though it sounded as though it involved a container and a lock, and became the business woman once more. While Mrs Hadley looked on, the seamstress made short work of stripping the dress form of its garment, and folding the gown into a neat, if bulky, bundle. She then moved to fetch paper to wrap up the dress, but the under skirts were still on the form.
“The whole lot, if you will,” Hannah said. “Petticoats, all of it. Have you stockings as well?”
“I do, I do.” The woman took the addition in stride, adding the petticoats to the bundle before rummaging in a case to come out with a pair of dark stockings in fine wool. “Do you wish a hat, Madam?”
Hannah considered for a moment the array of hats and caps on the shelves, but decided against it. Her hair was a wild disaster, and she had no one to help her with pinning and putting it up. There would be no point placing a jewel atop a rat’s nest for the time being.