by Ian Garbutt
But not everyone had gone.
She ducks behind the hall table and scrabbles through the litter in the drawers. What a rat’s nest. Rolls of parchment and piles of old calling cards tumble onto the floor. How did the Abbess ever make sense of this mess?
‘Ah, here it is.’ Her hand closes around a polished wooden stock.
So the stories are true.
A Confrontation
Wasp scurries up the front steps of the House. ‘Go straight upstairs and don’t talk to anyone,’ Hummingbird had instructed. ‘Wait in your bedchamber until I join you.’
She claimed she could get a message to Richard but wouldn’t be pressed as to how. ‘I have my methods. Give me half an hour to return the carriage.’
‘Can’t we use it to get away? Richard could meet us in Portsmouth.’
‘Pox it, Wasp, you are such a dreamer. I doubt whisking Moth out of the House is illegal but stealing a coach will put us on a prison barge. Just wait in your bedchamber and don’t do anything impulsive.’
‘Hummingbird, thank you.’
‘Just go.’
A quiet and empty hall. No lingering girls. Only half the candles in the overhead chandelier are lit. Jaundiced light throws pale shadows over the walls.
Unnerved by the silence, Wasp checks the dining room. Crumpled napkins, greasy plates lying in cracked piles, a tipped-up bottle of port bleeding red onto the carpet. At the top table, a chair lies on its side.
Where are the maids? Why has no one cleared this up?
On impulse she crosses the hall to the Scarlet Parlour. Inside, the room resembles a deserted battleground. Playing cards are scattered across the rugs and a fug of pipe smoke clings to the tapestries. Wasp’s foot catches an empty brandy decanter. It skitters across the carpet and fetches up against the wainscoting. ‘Where are you all?’ she whispers, plucking a silk neckcloth from the back of the sofa.
Abandoning the parlour, Wasp removes her shoes and pads up the thick stair carpet. Not a sound anywhere. She slips into her own room. Dark, the curtains drawn, the hearth dead and full of ashes. She sparks her tinderbox and puts a sputtering flame to the bedside candle. A soft glow fills the room, though the cold air has a musty smell to it. Her bed is still rumpled from this morning, the coverlet lying half on the floor.
Wasp pulls off one of the pillowcases and twists it between her hands. It was a trick she learned in the Comfort Home. Someone with an eye on her footwear once hit her across the side of the head with a knotted shawl. The blow sent her reeling. Fortunately a wild kick caught her assailant in the face. She lost two rotten teeth and Wasp kept her shoes.
The knotted pillowcase dangles from her fingers. In the tick-tock quiet the crude weapon makes her feel better. A half hour passes. She judges the time from the doleful chiming of the clock down the hall.
The door breezes open. Wasp’s fingers tighten on the linen club, but it’s only Hummingbird.
‘Do you mean to brain me with that thing?’ she remarks, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Wasp drops the pillowcase onto the mattress. ‘Of course not. I’m just anxious.’
Hummingbird takes her hand. ‘Well, I’ve sent a message to Richard. I’ve no guarantee he’ll act on it though.’
‘What shall we do in the meantime?’
‘You were the one with the big plan, Wasp. I suppose we’d better go and find Moth.’
‘You do know where she is, then?’
‘In the Mirror Room?’
‘How shall I slip her out? Do you have an idea about that too?’
‘Some distraction or other. We’ll think of something. Now, let’s go and hunt out your friend.’
‘Hummingbird, there’s something else.’
‘What now? Hasn’t enough happened already?’
‘Someone has been writing notes at the bottom of my Assignments. Warnings about Moth. At first I wondered if it might be you, but the last one killed that notion.’
‘I’m certainly not the type to leave clandestine messages. Why don’t you show me these notes. I might recognise the handwriting.’
‘They were etched onto the scrolls.’
‘And you burned them after reading?’
‘As I was taught.’
‘What convinced you I wasn’t the mystery author?’
‘The final one said I should ask you about the baby.’
‘The baby?’ A mongrel expression flits across Hummingbird’s face, half surprise, half anger. ‘Now there’s a question, Wasp. Of all the things you could’ve asked me it had to be about that. Tell me, do you know what brought me to the House?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘I once saw a “gentleman” beat a harlot to death because he hadn’t the coin in his purse to pay her. Nobody took him to task for it. That’s the power men can wield over us if you let them.’
‘So? My village had its share of wife beaters and tricksters.’
‘But have you ever been violated? Ever had a man take you when you didn’t want to be taken? Must be so if you spent time in a madhouse. How did you feel when their tongues were squirming inside your mouth? When they were poking you with their disease-ridden pintles? Ever seen someone die of the pox?’
Wasp grimaces. ‘Stop it, please.’
‘Do you want to know what my crime was? A simple coach journey. I was travelling with my uncle in his chaise. We pulled into an inn for the night, but it was busy. One room left, so Uncle told the landlady I was his wife, see? “’Tis separate beds, child,” Uncle explained. “You trust me, do you not?”
‘So there I was, all tucked up and my head full of dreams. But some time in the night a black urge got a hold of Uncle. I woke to find him pulling my shift up over my head. I tried to scream, but his hand was firm over my mouth and all my thrashing and squirming counted for naught. I lay rigid, staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t stop him taking his pleasure, but I could dampen his wick. Afterwards he beat me for going cold. I held my fat, bloody lip, even when I got home. When my mother remarked on my bruises, Uncle laughed and put it down to an attack of the vapours. “She went for a stroll through the woods behind the inn without telling me,” he said over his roast beef dinner. “Foolish girl managed to lose her way and plummeted headlong into some thick undergrowth. That’s where I found her. A bit the worse for wear but no real harm done.”
‘That was me, you see? Always prone to hysteria. Always fanciful and liable to burst into tears. I once saw a cat kill a mouse and bawled the whole day. I was put to bed, with some laudanum mixed with brandy, while Uncle stayed downstairs laughing and sipping port.
‘That could have been the end of it. But when my blood stopped and I felt the first stirrings inside me I knew I’d be accused of other things. So I poisoned Uncle’s breakfast. It was simple. Our local apothecary was so blind and befuddled he’d give you anything. Uncle sat, as smart as a dandy, eating the death I’d mixed into his soup. Some time later the maid, who’d gone to town with my parents, found him dead on the dining-room floor. Poor girl fainted clean away, so I heard. I was already halfway to London courtesy of Uncle’s gold pocket watch and a side of ham from the larder.’
‘And your unborn child?’
‘I gave birth screaming on the floor of a flophouse with a gypsy hag for a midwife. She wanted to buy the child. I said no. The house was owned by a man who liked to fight dogs in a pit cut out of the floor of an old coach house. I’d been thieving for him to meet the rent. Very nimble-fingered, I was, but I couldn’t do it any more because I refused to leave the baby I wouldn’t whore for him either. I said if he threw me out I’d snitch to the first constable I found. They wouldn’t hang me if I turned informant. Transported to Parts Beyond the Seas, maybe, but I could live with that.
‘I forgot about the dogs. I’d grown so used to the sound of snarling, the smell of blood and shit wafting out of the door of that coach house. The animals were kept starving to make them fight better. When I was asleep he let them out of their pens an
d threw my newborn into the pit. That’s what he told me, though I know now he was likely lying and the hag took the baby after all. But I went to tell the magistrates. I was in such a state I could hardly talk. The owner, when called in for questioning, said I must have done it. He was tupping the gypsy and she backed up his story. They said I’d tried to get a Wise Woman to kill the baby because I couldn’t live with the shame of its being a bastard, and ended up murdering it myself out of spite.’
Wasp stares aghast. ‘You had a child. A child.’
‘Yes, Wasp, and I’m hardly alone in that. Many a busy womb has found refuge under this roof. Not all so-called crimes women commit involve theft or murder . . . So there you have it. Any more questions?’
‘No.’
‘Then let’s go.’
They hurry downstairs in a flurry of skirts. The candles flickering in the sconces appear subdued, as if the air in the passage is sucking the life from them. Tapestries seem limp and washed out. Everything has lost its gloss.
‘I can’t hear anything,’ Wasp whispers.
‘These walls swallow up sound. They’re at least four feet thick.’
‘The Mirror Room door — it’s open.’
A crack, nothing more. Wasp hesitates, straining to sense any movement, beyond. ‘I still can’t hear—’
Hummingbird pushes the door wide and steps through. Taken aback, Wasp follows her into the Mirror Room. She regards the polished floor, the light globe with its flame turned low, the circle of mirrors reflecting eternity.
‘Empty.’
‘Really?’ says Hummingbird.
‘I don’t understand. I thought you said . . . What are you doing?’
Hummingbird nudges off her slippers. They fall onto the floorboards with a muted thump. White-stockinged feet whisper on the varnished oak, pirouetting like a pair of collared doves in some bizarre love dance. She pulls the pins from her hair and lets it tumble in a soft curtain over her shoulders. Both arms rise, hands poised. Skirts rustle as she dances from mirror to mirror. ‘Your plot seems to have turned sour, Wasp. Where are you going to run to now?’
A sick feeling spreads from Wasp’s belly into her throat. ‘You knew this room would be empty.’
‘Empty?’ Hummingbird chuckles like a mischievous child. ‘It’s far from empty. Take a look around you. Rooms, passages, nooks and crannies. Chambers within other chambers. A labyrinth.’ She pauses in front of one of the tall mirrors and raps it with her knuckles. ‘They reflect the world back at you while hiding another world of their own.’
‘You’re talking in riddles. I don’t like it.’
‘I’m simply answering your question.’ She raps the glass again. ‘People can disappear, become lost, be forgotten.’ She moves to another mirror and runs her hand, almost lovingly, over the smooth glass.
‘Where’s the Abbess?’
‘Abbess?’ Hummingbird’s hair swings about her cheeks in a dark spray. ‘The Abbess’s crown is as wooden as the desk she sits behind.’
She moves to another mirror, flicks some unseen catch and swings it open. Lamps hanging from the ceiling light the passage beyond. A short, whispered walk and they come to another, smaller, round chamber. The walls and floor are covered in frippery. Sagging bookcases, dusty trunks, yellowed books and papers piled high. Hats, hundreds of them, are heaped in a disordered mess amongst odd shoes and the other remnants of long-ago fashions. In the middle of it all is a dressing table with a looking-glass so old it reflects the world with an unsettling greenish hue. A figure sits ghostlike in a cotton nightshift, stroking her face and peering at her reflection.
Wasp’s voice catches in her throat. ‘Abbess?’
The figure doesn’t stir. ‘Am I still beautiful?’ she whispers. Her skin is pink and bare. All her paper tattoos are piled on the dresser before her like autumn leaves.
Hummingbird runs her hand along the back of the chair. ‘I don’t know what the concoction is, exactly. It keeps her quiet in the evenings and lets her live out her fantasy during the day.’
Wasp takes in the Abbess’s wide, glassy eyes. ‘The dream makers. You stole them from Nightingale.’
‘Age has bent this woman’s body into the ground and is taking her mind with it. At first the changes were so slight no one noticed. Then there was an incident. Then another, and another. The Abbess knew what was happening. She asked me to help her. Instead I’ve sent her somewhere else. Somewhere better than her rotting mind could go on its own.’
‘And you let her sit here, alone in this sty?’
‘All these things,’ Hummingbird gestures around the room, ‘are from her past. She brought them here herself. Every kerchief, every curled scrap of paper holds meaning. Yes, she eats with us from porcelain with a silver fork, and holds audience in a room as fine as any palace. But in the end she comes here to remember where she came from and the things she had to fight for. That’s what she told me once, that the sum of a person’s life is their memories.’
Hummingbird caresses the Abbess’s shoulder with her forefinger. ‘I clean her teeth, brush the snaggles out of her hair and empty her pot, just like a loving daughter. She was always a strong woman. The Abbess never suffered a day’s illness in all the time I’ve known her. She was a little too fond of gin, yes, and perhaps smoked richer things than a pipe from time to time, but her constitution was as solid as the stones of this house. Without me she wouldn’t have a life at all.’
‘But Nightingale? The Harlequins?’
‘Give a vain woman a title and a better dress than anyone else and it keeps her in her place. The Harlequins are a bunch of pampered Kittens, even more obedient to the Abbess than the best behaved of Masques. Cellar whores have twice their wits.’
Wasp squints in the muddied light. ‘Who are you, Hummingbird? Who are you really?’
‘A lost soul, like you. We’ve not been put here by chance, Wasp, but by a catalogue of lies, broken promises and male indifference. What can be stolen from a woman in a moment is seldom regained in a lifetime. Nothing has changed over the centuries. We are closeted, robbed of power, reduced to menials and brood mares. Except for the true courtesans. In ancient Greece they were the hetaerae, publicly displaying their wealth while turning the heads, hearts and minds of the men who supposedly governed. They had no official social status, and it was that which freed them. We are the dispossessed. The cast-offs. Because we’re not a part of society we can’t sin against it. No Masque has ever entered the Royal Court. We’re always kept on the margins — admired, esteemed, but never admitted. This is one apple that needs to be cut to the core. Our nets are cast wide and carefully baited. The big fish will gleefully bite. We shall catch them all. We’ll slip in through the back door and lodge for life in their gilded halls.’
Hummingbird glances at the figure in front of the mirror. ‘Despite everything, in the end she’s just another bawdy-house keeper. But enough of that. I don’t wish to spoil the coming charade.’
Back in the Mirror Room the lamp has been turned high, burning shadows behind the dozen or so figures now encircling it. Most are strangers but one or two Wasp recognises. The man who held the party on the river barge, and there at the back . . .
Oh dear heaven.
‘I want our Emblems to be seen in high places,’ Hummingbird says. ‘Every lord, duke or Member of Parliament must crave a Masque on his arm. Is that not so, Richard?’
He swaggers up. Who would have thought that boyish body was capable of such a thing, yet his feet are surprisingly gentle on the floorboards. He leans towards Wasp. She tries to back off, but Richard shakes his head and whispers ‘No, no’ like a father cooing at a swaddled babe. He takes Wasp’s head in his hands and she shivers because they feel like cold fish against her cheeks. Before she can utter a squeak his lips press against her own. Dry, hard lips, that she reckons haven’t known a tender kiss in all their years. A sour taste fills her mouth. She tries to push him off but he goes on making those stupid cooing noises. Now his hand st
rokes Wasp’s forehead. She supposes her own face must have turned a shade of blue, she’s that close to choking.
Finally a release. ‘Now, Wasp,’ he says, ‘be a clever girl.’
She backs towards the passage to the Abbess’s room, but Hummingbird’s blocking the door. A knife slides from her cuff and hovers at the other girl’s throat. Wasp recognises it as the blade from Hummingbird’s hairbrush. ‘I’m sorry about this, Wasp, I really am.’
‘You said you were my friend.’
‘I am your friend. Don’t you understand? You can hold the world in your hands, consort with princes and kings. The House is a tool to crack open the juiciest treasures. It can’t be allowed to go blunt. Just one more step and everything is yours.’
She brushes Wasp’s cheek with the backs of her fingers. Wasp flinches.
Hummingbird’s grin is like broken glass. ‘Don’t be hard on Richard. He hasn’t been the same since meeting you, my little mad girl. Oh, he dreams about you, Wasp. Dreams of doing things that even your battered mind could never conjure up. I understand how you could turn his head. Tonight will prove a test of loyalty in many ways.’
A mirror door on the far side of the chamber swings open and Moth is pushed into the room. She’s clad in a white shift, not a linen day gown but something much finer — silk perhaps. Her hair has been bundled up into a knot behind her skull. She is barefoot.
Now the trick is complete. Wasp could weep over her own stupidity.
Richard hauls Moth to the middle of the room and forces her to her knees. The lantern throws her shadow in a hundred different directions. ‘Get me a parson,’ she whimpers. ‘Please fetch a parson.’
Anticipation shivers through Hummingbird’s cohorts. They’re like hungry dogs about to be thrown a shank of bloodied meat.
‘You know what to do,’ Hummingbird says in Wasp’s ear. ‘Take that step.’
‘I can’t do it.’
‘You’re one of us.’