“Oh, Fool,” Lumiel said quietly, and Pira somehow knew that more tears were freezing.
Pira touched Festo’s cheek. He opened his eyes, full of pain. “I pushed you again, Lady.” His fingers fumbled. “Take back the Heart.”
“I might—I could use it to—”
“No. Take it to the king. Even healed, I should still be Festo.”
Behind them, Sha’bbat began to laugh. “I will not,” Pira said under her breath, “I will not let them have your soul.”
“There is no way—”
“There is one way. The chasm. Fire purifies.”
Pira lifted him. Festo had only his own weight, hardly more than a boy’s. Beside the chasm she kissed him once; and then she let him fall. Demon Sha’bbat roared again, this time in anger, as a blossom of fire welled up. A hot wind whipped Pira’s hair, urging her toward the tunnel; and in the wind she thought she heard the fool’s soft voice: “Now! Go now!”
The Star glimmered and guttered. Pira dashed for the opening, saw Sha’bbat’s huge leg moving, dived under it—
There was not even an echo. She lay in utter darkness, utter soundlessness, without sword, without helmet, but with a treasure clutched to her chest. She stretched there exhausted, thought of the stricken king, and dragged herself up toward the light of her own world.
Pira frightened the peasants on the ride back, for she carried about her a fell look. At the palace the physicians refused to let her see Athon, but took the heart from her and bade her wait in her own chamber. She paced the floor nervously, waiting for word. When at last she heard a step up the stair, she turned to question the messenger—and instead found herself facing Athon himself, blond, hale, and strong.
“My love,” murmured the bearded king, taking a step toward her.
Pira shrank back. “You—you are well, my Lord?”
Athon smiled, his teeth white and even. “By miracle. Thanks to you.”
“And to Festo.”
Athon’s blue eyes narrowed. “Yes, of course, the fool as well. What happened to him?”
“You did.”
“What?”
“You—you pushed him. When you were children. You pushed him, and he fell from the parapet.”
Athon’s face reddened. “He told you, did he? Damn him! But I rewarded him well enough, I made amends, I gave him a position—”
“You made him a fool.”
Athon shrugged. “And is that such a hard life, to be a fool? No battles to fight, no peasants to rule, no quarreling barons to reconcile. Festo should have thanked me. Now come, love. Victory sits on my banners, all the land is at peace, and at last we may celebrate our wedding.”
Pira walked to the casement. The summer land lay gold and green in the long light of afternoon. “First,” she said, “I think I’d better tell you exactly how I came to possess the Heart of Healing.”
“If you wish.”
She told him. Everything.
She turned when she had finished, and Athon would not meet her eyes. “I hardly know what to say, Pira. This changes things.”
“Does it?”
Athon essays a hollow chuckle. “Well, yes. A queen, Pira, after all—a queen can’t have had, you know, a … demon lover.”
“I didn’t know that rule.”
“My position—the trust of my people—”
“Yes, I understand.”
“But Pira, a woman, though she be not the queen—a woman who has the, ah, favor of the king—I mean, though I may not make you my queen, you could yet be dear to me, you could be a—”
“A sort of female fool? No, thank you, Athon. I think we had better leave it at that.” Pira closed her eyes, then opened them again. “I will demand payment, though, for your cure.”
Suspicion straightened Athon’s back. “Payment?”
“Come, it’s less than any leech would ask. Give me my choice of a suit of armor and of a sword from your armory; let me take my pick of the steeds in your stables; and set me free to wander where I will. That is all.”
Athon could not hide the relief that flooded his face. “It is little enough. Granted, Pira.”
Pira’s smile was wry. “Thank you, my lor—Your Majesty.”
After that, Pira rode for many years, and many were the tales told of her, some stranger than others. One was that she traveled with the shade of a gallant young man who sometimes sang ghostly songs to her in the twilit forest. Another tale often repeated was that she had gained somewhere the gift of double sight, and that when she looked at a person, she saw not the body only, but the soul also. Sometimes the one fitted the other as a hand a glove; but as often, a weak, unprepossessing body would house the spirit of a hero; and again, a stalwart man had within him a shriveled, ugly, brutish little soul.
This gift, it is said, warned her away from the bed of King Athon, he of ignoble and detested memory and—blessedly—short reign.
The Cure
Caren Gussoff
Like any proper lady, Olive well knew the sensation of fainting. Usually, she welcomed the swoon, as befit her station. But tonight, Olive knew if she succumbed she wouldn’t awaken again. There were stories of women who went into treatment and never returned. But they weren’t women like her. They were wanton, wild women. Uncontrollable and savage.
Olive tried to scream; she fought for air. But the weight on her chest drove the breath from her lungs and terror into her heart.
She kicked and clawed, but the abominable treatments this asylum had forced upon her these many weeks weakened her—and even in the best of circumstances, she required a hand up; her middle was soft, the muscles ductile and limp from years of tight-laced corsets.
Olive managed a few long, ugly gasps. Blood beat in her ears and she had the funny sensation that her thoughts were being spoken aloud by someone else. You are going to die here. This is hell.
She had tried to love her husband or to crave a family. But she could not. The fact that she did not consider that sick was part of why Caleb finally acquiesced to all the urgings and placed her under the care of Doctor Cole.
Doctor Cole tried all manner of cures, but she still did not feel love for her husband or any sense of the maternal. She was incurable.
Tonight, her vision failed from the edges inward. Olive told herself before her breath stilled that death was a kind of cure.
Yet Olive woke up alive.
A nurse manipulated her roughly, disentangling Olive from her twisted bed sheets and clothes. The nurse’s hands were dry and cracked, and scraped on the linens.
A ring of pain throbbed across Olive’s brow. She yawned so widely, she thought her face would crack and she would black out from the discomfort.
“Madam didn’t sleep well?” the nurse asked.
“How could I?” Olive’s throat felt sore from gasping for air and coughing.
The nurse ignored the comment, and propped her up with pillows. “It’s time for Madam to breakfast.”
Olive shook her head. “Just water.”
“Madam needs nourishment for healing,” the nurse said.
“Healing?” Olive’s tone grew vicious, but she did not despair of it. “Like the sort of healing I endured last night?” Olive coughed again, the strain of too many words.
Her lungs would fight the air for a while; she had felt similarly after her wedding. After nine hours in her staunchest corset—grain-cut silk, steel stays, a solid whalebone busk—she would pant throughout the night even after it was unlaced, which prevented Caleb from immediately consummating the marriage. They had to wait until her delicate lungs and middle had recovered into regular binding before he mounted her.
She could wait for eternity before consummating anything else with that man. He’d left her here to be killed.
“Madam?”
Olive frowned at the nurse. “The attempt on my life,” she rasped.
“The attempt … ?” the nurse began. But then she smiled: the smile one gives to the very old or the very small,
the insane or the infirm. “Madam is in a fit. She must calm herself.”
“She will not calm herself.” Olive wanted to slap the nurse. “I escaped death by a fraction.” But even had she strength to strike out, there would be no pleasure in it, and might only force another attempt on her life. Olive closed her eyes, resigned.
When she opened them again, the nurse was holding her clothing and stretching that idiotic smile into a grin. “Madam will dress. After breakfast, she is to meet with the doctor and her husband in the dayroom.”
Olive allowed the nurse to dress her, though her awful hands rasped against the fine weave of Olive’s shift. The nurse brushed out Olive’s hair, and once she was presentable enough, signaled for breakfast to be wheeled in.
Though she’d initially refused breakfast, Olive ravenously downed the whole serving of beef tea and the raisin porridge. The nurse practically beamed at Olive’s empty dishes, but Olive had no time to react before the attendant materialized to lift her into her wheeled chair.
Olive had never seen this attendant—not that she paid mind to attendants in general. But this one placed himself directly within her line of vision.
He was young, but she couldn’t tell how young. His face did not catch the eye, but once he was in front of Olive, she couldn’t turn away. There was something terrifying about his features, but a pleasant terrifying, an exhilarating terrifying, like going down a steep hill in a waxed toboggan. And he smiled at her—not the condescending smile of the nurse or the disingenuous one of the doctor—but a smile of two people who share a secret, or who are about to.
His grip on her was both practiced and peculiar. As he lowered her into the chair, she leaned into his neck and smelled him. His odor was surprisingly mature and pleasant on such a young man—like browned butter, leather, and salt.
It was distracting. She came to her senses as she was parked in the dayroom.
Caleb was already there. Olive looked at her husband with the judgment of a stranger.
He wore a high shirt collar of fine white linen and a peach silk cravat, but both, along with his tapered trousers, were limp and unkempt and hung on his thin frame. He resembled a flower in need of watering.
The blacking on his square-toed shoes was not fully buffed in, and even across the room Olive could see he’d missed shaving whole regions of his face. And then she felt them, like the nurse’s hands, catch on the fabric of her gown when he kneeled to embrace her.
He smelled of old milk, like a baby, from a spill on his shirt. Sour, but innocent.
And this assured her of several things. Firstly, she still did not feel any love for him. Secondly, Caleb was not answerable for the abuse she’d suffered in the night. And lastly, her husband was no more likely to save her than a great bird would swoop in and carry her away. The most effectual thing he’d ever accomplished was abandoning her here.
Doctor Cole thankfully interrupted them. “Welcome, Mr. Read,” he said with an extended hand.
Caleb stood up, embarrassed like he’d been caught with a fist full of cake. Caleb returned his hand, and Doctor Cole pumped it vigorously. Olive could feel milk-perfumed wind stir by her face.
“And Mrs. Read.” Doctor Cole spoke over her shoulder. He smiled; not the pitying one of the nurse, however. His was false and fixed, permanently present. “I was told you had quite a nightmare, but that you ate your breakfast, heartily and with relish.” He then turned back to Caleb. “Proper nourishment is a fundamental pillar of successful treatment. Your wife tends to, against my advisement, pick at her morning meals, much like a little nervous bird. But today, she finished her plate.”
At that, Caleb beamed at Olive as if she had invented the wheel.
Olive focused on the doctor. “It was not a nightmare, sir. I was nearly strangled.”
She saw Caleb’s expression change from the corner of an eye, but the doctor held his smile. “Quite impossible,” he said. “It was your imagination.”
“It was verily not my imagination,” Olive shot back, but the breath required to speak sharply choked her again, and she coughed and panted.
“Come,” Doctor Cole said. “Let us go into my office for some privacy.”
Doctor Cole led the way, Caleb behind him. Olive had very nearly forgotten the attendant until her chair began to move after them. She tried to remember his face, and found she could only imagine bits, parts: well-formed lips; bright, strange eyes—greenish, perhaps—the warmth of his hands and neck and shoulders.
Olive considered being ashamed, but she could not.
In the office, Doctor Cole settled behind his mahogany desk. “We should have some tea,” he said to the attendant. “And close the door behind you.”
He motioned for Caleb to sit in the winged chair beside Olive, and then he tented his fingers and considered his words—his smile, of course, never deviating from his lips. And when he spoke, he addressed Caleb only.
“It was the great doctor Galen who said ‘Passio hysteria unum nomen ist, varia tamamnet et innumera,’ ” Doctor Cole said. “Hysteria is the disease, and many are its symptoms. Your wife’s, I’m afraid, now encompass hallucinations.”
“What can be done?” Caleb asked.
As if Olive were not in the room, possessing ears and the capacity for language, the doctor spoke only to her husband: “My recommendation is not a happy one.”
And her idiot husband bobbed his head. He had no idea what the doctor said.
Doctor Cole continued. “I believe surgery is the next step.”
The door opened, and the attendant carried in a wooden tray laid with fine porcelain cups. He handed out the cups, his hand, Olive believed, lingering at hers, before retreating back against the wall until he was needed again.
Olive felt a tingle where he had touched her, but she hid it by studying the cup. The oolong tea’s perfume covered the attendant’s musk. The design painted on the cups was fine, intricate violets and entwined greenery.
“Do you take cream?” Doctor Cole asked.
Caleb nodded; of course he took cream in his tea. And sugar. More of both than the actual brew.
Olive did not take cream, nor sugar. But without asking, Caleb snatched her cup and switched it with his, already dressed like candy. She started to protest, but the snatched cup was already cloudy and stirred with the sugar spoon.
Doctor Cole sipped his tea—plain, as tea should be—then said.,“We should remove the offending organ.”
The steam rose prettily from the beautiful cup. Decorations that delicate required tiny hands to paint them, probably a woman’s. Like her own.
But the vapors were more cloying than toilet water. Olive wrinkled her nose and breathed through her mouth.
“You mean take out her—” Caleb started.
But she could smell it. Taste it.
Doctor Cole nodded. “Indeed. As soon as possible.”
She could no longer take it. Any of it. Olive threw the cup and its contents at the doctor. Her aim and strength were poor, but the precious cup shattered across the reddish desktop.
She tried to yell, but it was all she could do to force out, “You filthy hoaxter.” She puffed and wheezed. “Damn you to hell.”
Doctor Cole slammed the desk as if she had yelled. “Mrs. Read, calm yourself. This is unacceptable.” He still smiled, but his eyes revealed fury. “This,” he said to Caleb, “is what I have spoken of. She shows little improvement. The issue is functional.”
Her husband was quiet at that. Olive considered her level of desperation. It was high. “Caleb,” she said. Her voice sounded more pitiful than sharp; the idea was to coax him as one would coax a child when one has exhausted all other disciplinary resources. Olive dropped her chin so she could look up at him; he always loved when she did that, he’d told her on many occasions. “I am being abused. If you have love for me, take me from here. Do not let them do this. I shan’t survive here.”
Before her words could take root, Doctor Cole rose from his chair. “Sir,�
�� he said to Caleb. “Manipulation is but another symptom of her ailment. As painful as it may seem, she shan’t survive with demons clouding her judgment.”
Her husband sagged as much as nodded. Olive’s eye filled with tears, but of rage, not sadness. She pounded the armrests of her chair until Doctor Cole called for the attendant to hold her arms still.
“And take her to her room. Request the duty nurse to prepare some laudanum,” Doctor Cole said.
The attendant seized her arms, but without force; it was more as if they had carefully choreographed a dance. When he placed them in her lap, she let him. Then he maneuvered the chair out of the doctor’s office, through the dayroom and down the hall. Before he took her into her room, however, he stopped the chair and came around to face her, a booted foot securing the wheel.
“There is nothing wrong with you, dear lady. Nothing that cannot be easily fixed.”
“Then fix me,” she said. She knew what it sounded like. And she was beyond caring. She’d become that sort of woman. She’d been driven to it.
“Are you a devil?” she asked.
“Not if the good doctor is the damned one.” Then he returned to behind her chair, pushed it through the doorway and drew her to the bedside. He lifted and placed her perfectly in the center of the mattress, and then leaned down, as if he would kiss her.
Olive was shocked to find that she wanted him to kiss her. Quite desperately, in fact.
“Do you wish me to return?” he asked her.
She felt his breath on her face. She nodded, a wild, wanton woman. Uncontrollable and savage.
He hovered there for a moment. Then he left.
Before Olive could compose herself, the afternoon nurse entered, carrying a small medical tray. “Madam,” the nurse said. “I have the doctor’s order to administer you some medication. It’s a nice medicine, madam. The dosing isn’t always so nice, but it’s a nice one.”
With that, she rolled Olive onto her side with smoother hands than the morning nurse. Olive felt her shift being arranged, and then cold liquid flushed into her hindquarters.
It was only a moment. The smooth-handed nurse grabbed Olive’s shoulder and rolled her again onto her back. “It’s a bit of a startle, yes?”
Handsome Devil: Stories of Sin and Seduction Page 8