Steadfast

by Mercedes Lackey

  She saw that there were three bottles on the table now, not two; two empty and one full. So he’d been out, and he’d found out the price for himself—

  And the stormy look on his face cleared, as if by magic. “Sixpence!” he exclaimed. “That’s—”

  She nodded eagerly. “It’s a great bargain. It’s cheaper than beer. Can I take him sixpence a night, then?”

  “Aye!” Dick actually patted her on the top of her head, as if she was a dog that had pleased him. “Aye! Fer once’t, yer thinkin’ sharp!” He barked a laugh. “Yer kin cook, an yer thunk ’o thet! Yer some use arter all!”

  He shoved her inside. “Clean up!” he ordered. “Roight ’n toight. Oi’ll be back.” He closed the door and locked it, leaving her momentarily alone.

  She leaned against the closed door for a long, stolen moment. She was alone. There was no one watching her.

  Then she cleaned as quickly as she could, immediately discovering what it was he had done for himself for dinner and tea when the sandwiches were gone, for there were greasy newspapers from a fish and chips shop scattered around the bed. At least that meant there were no dishes to wash.

  Had he slept most of the day? Probably.

  She also discovered that he hadn’t been entirely idle while she’d been gone. He’d replaced the iron grating over the rear window. Whether he’d done so out of fear the landlord would find the damage, or to prevent her from escaping, she couldn’t have said. Probably both.

  She swept up the ashes and the butts from the cigarettes he’d smoked, and put them in the dustbin. She cleaned up the teakettle and the mugs he’d used, though a sniff proved he’d used them more for gin than tea. She set the milk and cream bottles out, and left money for the milkman. Then she poured herself the last of the milk—doing without tea, for that would take too long to make—set out food and the gin as she had last night, made herself a sandwich for supper, and took the mug of milk and the sandwich up into the loft. This time she had taken the precaution of leaving the windows open so it wasn’t so hot in here, and she shoved one of the trundle beds as far from the edge of the loft as she could get it. Once up there, though there was barely enough room to kneel on the floor and not hit her head, she got out of her dress, into a night dress, and ate her supper. Then she lay down on the bed in a curl so that she fit—it really was a child’s bed after all—and waited.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated with all her might. She wouldn’t call her Elementals, but Lionel had said that wanting something badly enough was enough to make it happen, sometimes. She wouldn’t pray for this—praying for her husband to find a whore was so utterly wrong that even considering it must make Jesus weep. But she could wish for it, and think hard about it. Just like last night, she thought feverishly. Let him find women just like last night.

  This ploy of getting women, of course, was not going to work forever. It might rain, and he would refuse to go out. Eventually, he would discover that word about him had spread, and only a truly desperate woman would come with him. Or none at all. This was holiday time, and the women of the streets had plenty of customers at this season. But for now, he was good looking, in that brutish way, and he had money. He should—

  There was only the drunken laughter of a single woman at the front of the cottage this time. The key turned in the lock, and the two of them stumbled inside.

  She stuffed the waxed cotton into her ears and gritted her teeth, and pulled the pillow over her head to further block out the sounds.

  At some point she fell asleep, worn out by the past two days. When she woke, it was dark.

  She eased herself out of the trundle, pulled out one of the earplugs, and looked over the edge. There was only the sound of one person snoring, and there was only the shape of one person in the bed below her. Dick had learned his lesson that if he let a whore “sleep” with him, she was likely to get up while he was sleeping and steal; he must have sent the whore on her way as soon as he was finished with her.

  She crept back up into bed and lay there, staring up into the darkness.

  So . . . this was how life was going to be. Terror that Dick would murder people she cared for, if she somehow put a foot wrong. Knowing that if he ever found out how she felt about Jack, he would kill Jack without thinking twice about it. Working to exhaustion to have him steal her money and drink and whore it away. Slaving to his every whim, every waking moment. Being beaten if she didn’t satisfy him. Being beaten if she did, but not well enough. Being beaten if something made him out of sorts.

  How was this life at all?

  • • •

  Dick only growled at her a little in the morning, and when she tried an experiment and brought him the teacup full of gin instead of tea, he drank it and didn’t chuck it back at her. He demanded tea with his breakfast, however, and she made it for him. Then she took two pennies and sixpence from the dresser, and escaped.

  How Lionel managed to get the bottle into her dressing room, she had no idea, but there it was, after the last show, in a cloth bag. She knotted the sixpence into the end of a scarf that she draped casually across the chair, took her sponge bath, and hurried away to catch the bus with the bottle in the cloth bag at her side.

  Dick didn’t seem in quite as much of a hurry to leave tonight, which filled her with dread. He waited while she made him some sausages, and sampled the gin, smacking his lips over it. She was careful with the cleaning, internally begging him to leave while he drank his liquor.

  “Oi don’ see wy ye din’ act like this all along,” he finally said. “Oi’m yer ’usband. Oi make sure ye don’ get mucked about by yer boss’r other fellers. Oi got roights. Oi married yer, even though yer look loike a skinny goat an’ yer Traveler get. Oi married yer, when nubuddy else would’a. Oi take care’a ye, yeah? Oi got roights, an’ ye niver show no respect fer ’em.”

  He banged the cup down on the table, making her jump.

  “Lissen—” he said, harshly. “Oi’m yer ’usband. Wut’d thet Traveler yer mum say ’bout that? Yeah? ’Usband, ’e’s allus roight! ’Usband, yer give ’im wut ’e wants afore ’e asks fer it! ’Usband, ye smile an look noice fer! Yeah? Yer belong t’yer favver afore yer married, an’ yer ’usband arter! Yer belong. Same as a dog or a ’orse. Thet’s God’s Will!”

  He continued on in this vein for some time, occasionally refreshing his mug from the bottle. And . . . it began to wear her down, because she could remember her mother saying things like that. That the wife was to utterly depend on her husband. That she was never to disagree with anything he said or wanted. That the husband was to always be deferred to, waited on, and come first in the family.

  That all this was God’s will, and once God had put two people together, that was it. There was no leaving a marriage, ever.

  She had never thought her mother wrong in anything before . . . but here was Dick saying exactly what her mother had said.

  . . . was he, were they, right? Was she meant to be a possession? Were Dick’s beatings nothing but his right, to drive her back into the path God intended?

  Finally he got tired of lecturing her; she was afraid he was coming over to the sink to beat her again, but instead he just grabbed her chin and wrenched her head around, forcing her to look at him.

  “God’s will,” he said, and dropped the cup into the dishwater, turned, and lumbered out the door. “Yer mine. Ferever.”

  She escaped up into the loft, and lay curled on her side like a leaf made of misery.

  Did she deserve all of this?

  Had she actually been doing what he claimed, driving him to beat her for her own sake?

  Was this all her fault because she hadn’t been a good enough wife?

  Part of her still rebelled, but that part was getting crushed by the weight of Dick’s words and the law—for the law said the same thing. That a wife was a man’s po
ssession, as his daughter was until she became a wife. That a man could do whatever he cared to with his possession.

  So if the law of the land and God’s law were saying the same thing—

  How dared she even have thought about Jack?

  There was one way to end this—and end the threat to Jack, Lionel, and Suzie . . . because if she was dead, Dick would have no reason to go after them.

  She cried into the pillow so hard she exhausted herself, and was so drowning in bitter sleep that she never even heard when Dick and his conquest of the night came home.

  • • •

  Lionel opened the door to find Mrs. Buckthorn waiting for him. “This arrived by special post, for Master Jack,” she said, holding out a letter, “And I knew you would both want to see it immediately.”

  He snatched the letter from her hand, startled her by planting a kiss on her cheek, and turned on his heel to trot as quickly as the heat would allow to Jack’s flat. He actually caught Jack on the very doorstep, and sped up his pace, waving the letter over his head.

  Jack gaped at it, as the light from the streetlamp reflected from the white paper. “Almsley?” he asked, breathlessly.

  “Addressed to you, so I assume so,” Lionel replied. Jack unlocked the door and they both hurried inside. Jack lit the lamps, while Lionel poured a couple of brandies—just in case the news was bad—and placed the envelope on the table between them.

  Jack’s little sitting room was as tidy as his own would be messy if it wasn’t for Mrs. Buckthorn. Everything was arranged with military precision; the two worn leather wing chairs were placed on the hearthrug just so, the clock was square in the middle of the mantelpiece, there was a small table precisely beside each chair. There were magazines neatly stowed in a rack, newspapers neatly stacked on a table under the window, books precisely arranged in bookcases. The little writing desk was firmly closed, the chair tucked precisely beneath it. Not for the first time, it struck Lionel that this sitting room looked more like a display than some place someone actually lived.

  Jack lit the gaslights, then stumped over and took his seat, and stared at the letter for a moment. Then, with a shaking hand, he picked it up, lifted the seal with his penknife, and opened it.

  “My good Master Prescott,” Jack read aloud. “I remember you very well, though we were both scarcely more than boys, and I remember your father as well. You and your father did me and mine a very great service all those years ago, and I am eager to repay the debt I owe you.”

  “That sounds promising . . .” Lionel offered.

  “We do have some extreme difficulties to overcome, however. I am sure you have thought of them already, but indulge me, for I feel I would be remiss if I did not point them out. The first is, of course, that this young magician is another man’s wife. The man is a brute, he certainly does not deserve her, and he will almost certainly trigger the sort of event that none of us wishes to see if he keeps abusing her, but he is her husband, and in the eyes of the law, his rights are absolute over her.”

  Jack uttered a little moan, and started to put the letter down. Lionel, however, was having none of that. He snatched the letter out of Jack’s hand, and picked up where Jack had left off.

  “Another great difficulty lies with the man himself. I have known many such cunning brutes in my time; if we attempt to pay him off and send him elsewhere, like the beast that he is, he will smell blood, and open his jaws, and attempt to extract more rather than taking what he is offered and going away. We find ourselves on the horns of a great dilemma, for he will also keep coming back to the same well from which he got such satisfaction, and these days, not even being shipped off to Canada or Australia is likely to keep him from returning. And if we cease to pay, he can easily ruin us all. Society, when being told that one man is paying another man for that man’s wife, is likely to place the worst possible of conclusions on the situation.”

  Now it was Lionel’s turn to feel a little faint. Almsley was quite correct. And this was something he hadn’t even thought about. This was bad. This was—

  But there was still another page to the letter, and Lionel turned it over to read.

  “Nevertheless, I am determined to find a way to free this poor girl from the brute. It is not only mandated by real alarm over what she—and her Elementals—may become if she were to lose control. It is mandated by pure decency and honor. I shall be joining you in Brighton as soon as I am able to get away.”

  “What?” Jack exclaimed, his head snapping around, turning to stare at Lionel with wide, disbelieving eyes.

  “It says right here, he’s going to help us,” Lionel pointed out. But there was more.

  “You are a soldier, and your friend is a magician of the stage as well as of the Art. I suggest you put your talents together. There are other ways that may work to rid yourself of this troublesome brute. If, for instance, he was convinced that she was dead, he would have no reason to continue to remain in Brighton. Or, if you were to lure him into committing some act of violence in public, you could have him imprisoned. Neither of these things has to be real of course. Nor do they require the aid of your Elementals. They could easily be mere stage-illusion. I merely make these suggestions and leave it up to you two to see if you can think of an implementation. Yours very truly, Lord Peter.”

  15

  KATIE woke at dawn to the sound of a single bird singing right outside the window. Something had happened as she had slept; she had, as the saying went, struck bottom. It was enough to trigger rebellion in her. And she woke, filled not with terror and despair, but with determination.

  Last night, she had thought she wanted to die. She woke knowing that was a lie; she did not want to die. And just who was Dick Langford that he could actually make her think she did, at least for a little while? What was wrong with her? Hadn’t she learned anything in the months she’d been away from him? How could he so thoroughly have reversed everything she believed in to the point where she was actually thinking he was in the right and she was in the wrong?

  She had to wonder now if perhaps there wasn’t something about him that could not be explained by ordinary means. He’d always been persuasive with women—look at all the women he’d gotten into his bed for all these years in virtually every single town and village the circus went to! He was legendary for it. He even had a different sort of persuasion with men; he could make them think he was daring and bold, and make them secretly envy him, rather than thinking he was a filthy cad who took advantage of everyone he ran across.

  There were only a few that were immune to his peculiar charm. Andy Ball was one; her father had been another. Andy Ball had taken advantage of that charm for his own ends, however, and—well, at least according to her recollections—had been very well aware of it, if not personally affected by it.

  She lay quietly in the trundle, thinking very hard about this as the church clock struck six, indicating that she didn’t need to be up quite yet. Was it magic, this power that Dick had? Now that she knew magic existed, it seemed that this might be some sort of magic. She certainly couldn’t explain it any other way.

  Well, whatever it was, last night’s nadir of despair had changed something in her. She’d managed to shake off whatever persuasive power he’d had over her, and she had regained her own spirits.

  You’ve no more power over me, you right bastard, she thought angrily at the snoring hulk in her bed. You’ll never get it back again, neither.

  She was, somehow, going to find a way to be rid of him. For good, this time. Lionel had showed her at the theater that there were times when they could talk safely. Together the three of them were sure to find some way to thwart Dick. He’d never talk his way around police, for instance, if they found a way to lure him into trouble.

  And if Dick had a confederate watching her, well, she had her informants, too, except there was an entire group of them, not
just one. If it had been him, and not a confederate, she’d have been more worried, but there was no way he could work his magic through someone else. The chorus girls were all her friends, even the couple that didn’t get on well with most other girls, because despite her star status, she took care to never put on airs. And—be honest—because when the bounty of chocolates, trinkets, and flowers came in from would-be admirers hoping to get to know the “Russian Ballerina,” she shared them with the chorus girl’s dressing room, and generally shared the name of the admirer as well. Several of them had eaten well on the bounty of one of those disappointed fellows, and one was still doing so. She could ask the chorus girls quietly—and with obvious distaste—if one of the men working at the hall had been asking about her. She’d hint she’d found some disturbing notes in her dressing room. Every single one of them had experienced, or were experiencing, the attentions of someone they really did not care for or want anywhere about. They’d assume the fellow in question had an unsavory pash for her, and they’d tell her who it was.

  But she knew that she would have to be very careful not to betray her newly reawakened spirits to Dick. Any evidence of rebellion would bring a beating. Mind, being meek and cowed would not prevent a beating if he was sufficiently determined to find an excuse to give her one, but evidence of rebellion would bring more, and more often.

  She came down the ladder from the loft consciously assuming the hunched-over posture of someone suitably humiliated, spirit broken. She had never thought of herself as an actress, but now she would have to put on the best performance she’d ever done, and she might have to keep it up for weeks—months. At least it was a role she was familiar with; her body assumed the posture easily, and she knew she wouldn’t have to feign a wince if he looked as if he was about to raise his hand to her.