by Octavia Cade
“But what is it for?” said Bluebeard’s wife, wandering the aisles between stacked trays. She could not keep herself from touching them, could not help but be fascinated with what she saw when she did.
(Operas and films and fairy tales, eggs and enraged mothers, pantomimes and potato barns.)
“What is any knowledge for?” said Priya.
“Power,” said Bluebeard’s wife, definitive. “If you don’t know what you’re getting into, you can make bad decisions and people will fault you for it.” She turned to Priya, speculative. “It works for you, this power. Aren’t people worried that you have it and they don’t?”
“If I listened whenever anyone told me don’t, I’d never get anything done,” said Priya, and Bluebeard’s wife was forcibly reminded that Pandora’s box had not brought her to the other woman by chance. “It’s only that they’re afraid,” Priya continued. “One day this machine will learn so well it will be hard to say that it’s not alive. And if so—”
“If so, it could be a life stronger than yours,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “Stronger than anybody’s. It could be as a god. You’d be nothing next to it. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“As long as we are remembered, we are never nothing,” said Priya. “I’ll live on in it. Part of you will live on too, you know. From what you’ve done here today. The machine won’t ever forget you. Hundreds of years from now, it will still remember this moment.”
“Will it remember it couldn’t tell me my name?” said Bluebeard’s wife.
“It can’t forget it,” said Priya. “But it will work and work, and one day, perhaps, it will find a way to learn it. Think of the stories a god could tell,” she said. “No inconsistencies, no gaps, no lack.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun to me,” said Bluebeard’s wife.
“Then you don’t really need a name, do you?” said Priya. “Live on in ignorance and be happy.”
There was a brief silence. Then, “Tell me how it works again,” said Bluebeard’s wife, leaning close.
“I don’t know,” said Bluebeard’s wife, staring into the case of silicon. “I thought that the axe I chose for the hospital was small, but this is ridiculous.”
There were tiny skeletons of radiolaria, looking as if they’d been carefully carved into a bestiary of beautiful shapes, and phytoliths and diatoms, silaceous sponges with spicules like stars. Bluebeard’s wife had to use a microscope to look at them, and the tiny silicon chip she had chosen wasn’t much better. “No one’s even going to be able to see it, in that giant square of books,” she complained. “They cut out half the light. What if someone steps on it?”
“You don’t have to just dump it on the floor, darling,” said Pandora, who was examining a flexible set of cupcake molds with great interest. “You put the necklace on a stand, remember?”
“I suppose I could use that baking tray,” said Bluebeard’s wife, indicating a corner of the cabinet filled with objects that could be seen without the use of visual aids.
Whitechapel was not impressed. “D’you mean the tray, or that little thing?” she said.
“What’s baking got to do with bells?” said Bluebeard’s wife. “The chip’s the thing you want. I just want you to be able to find the silly thing. Anyway, I thought you didn’t mind small.”
“Small is fine,” said Whitechapel. “Confusing isn’t. If that chippie’s the thing, don’t mix it up with something else. Just stick it on top of a book and be done with it.”
“I thought books were roads,” said Bluebeard’s wife.
“Infrastructure, then,” said Whitechapel, rolling her eyes. “Happy now?”
Sighing, Bluebeard’s wife scavenged a book from one of the walls around the bell factory and placed it in the very center of the open space. “The Zombie Apocalypse: Myth and Movement,” she read. “What on earth is a zombie, anyway?”
Sibylle toddled toward her with arms outstretched. “Brains,” she lisped. “Braiiiins.” Then, still clumsy on unsteady feet, she toppled over onto her well-padded backside and began to sniffle.
“There, there, Sibby,” crooned Bluebeard’s wife, scooping her up and tickling the pudgy sides to make the baby giggle. “No need to cry. It’s just a little fall, you didn’t hurt yourself really now, did you?” Over the child’s head, she mouthed at Whitechapel, “Brains?”
“She’s just looking forward to her din-dins, I expect,” said Whitechapel. “Got them nice and fresh today, while you were wandering. In a lovely butter sauce, they are, with parsley. And mummy’s staying on for dinner too, isn’t she, precious?”
“Aren’t you a lucky girl, then?” said Bluebeard’s wife, jiggling the baby on her hip, one-armed. Carefully, with her other hand, she transferred the tiny chip from her pocket and onto the red cover at her feet. “There we are,” she said. “The bell foundry of Messieurs Mears and Stainbanks.”
“Thank you,” said Whitechapel. “There’s enough for you and Pandora, too, if you’d like to stay,” she offered.
“Sounds wonderful,” said Bluebeard’s wife.
ADA WILSON
Bluebeard’s wife was far out into the museum, toward the very edge of the streets Whitechapel had recreated, when she heard humming from around a wall, an undertone of crooning, old street songs and nursery rhymes. “There you are,” she said, rounding the corner, and was surprised to see that, within the corridor of books, a door had been set—a door with singing behind it, a door in a paper maze where buildings were represented, if at all, by geology and symbols.
The door was ajar, for the latch had fallen open, and Bluebeard’s wife took it as an invitation to enter. “I thought you said we were going out—” she began, but the words died in her throat, for behind the door was a small room. Inside were sparse, shabby sticks of furniture, bed and drawers and a dresser with a mirror cracked through, and Whitechapel, sitting on the floor and surrounded by glass jars, seven of them, plain little jars gleaming pink and purple and an old, dull red. Peering closer, Bluebeard’s wife could see shapes inside, shapes that reminded her almost of offal. Yet although she had been raised on a farm and could identify without difficulty or disgust a kidney and some livers, lungs, an awkward heavy heart, they were not such as she had seen coming out of pigs or cows or geese. And Whitechapel—discovered among them, sharpening that silver knife—was too suddenly still for it to be ordinary meat; her eyes too watchful and too calculating.
There was disgust then, welling up and coming from a place separate from farmyards and dungeons, for in the first was familiarity and in the second a suspicion that was deeply buried but had grown regardless under the cumulative weight of silks, of satins, of the soft, empty stockings of the women who had gone before. But Bluebeard’s wife, not now in farmyard or dungeon, was in a place where familiarity had been quite untainted by suspicion, and in the little jars her world was overturned.
“Whitechapel,” said Bluebeard’s wife, her gorge rising in her throat, remembering brown paper packages and broken knives and skirts spattered with blood, “are those human?”
“You could call them that,” said Whitechapel, rising slowly to her feet, as if to avoid startlement. “Once upon a time, at least, but they were gone monstrous by the time I got to them.”
“Are they from the man who . . . the man who hurt you?” said Bluebeard’s wife, wanting to back away but keeping her place with effort, knowing as she asked that the answer would be No. There were too many livers for the little jars to have come from one person.
“Not only him,” said Whitechapel. “But close enough. All the same, they are. Oh, he was the worst, but he weren’t the only one. I’d see girls all the time, coming back of a night holding their ribs and their faces all bruised, walking funny when they walked home at all. It wasn’t fair. Something had to be done, so I did it.
“I’ve been visiting my friends,” said Whitechapel. “While you were out looking for stone. That’s what I’ve been doing. And do you know what I found, where they were
? People poking about, like sightseers. Always staring at my neck.” She tilted her chin at Bluebeard’s wife, exposing the large swathe of scarring on her throat. “Even the young ones, the little lads, offering up their pennies to have a feel. Making jokes and fingering their pocket knives, trying to make me jump. And I thought, you wouldn’t find it so entertaining if he’d been after you.”
“So you thought you’d just recreate him?” said Bluebeard’s wife. “Bring it all back to life, leave your own bloody trail through the streets? How is that supposed to make things better?”
“You said yourself someone needed to clean up the place,” said Whitechapel.
“Not like this!” cried Bluebeard’s wife. “Not like this!
“Does it make you feel better,” she said, “to see their faces as you stab them? That was you once. Don’t you remember how you felt? How scared you were, how much it hurt? And now you’re doing the same thing to other people—and not in self-defense! Does it really make you feel better about what happened to you?”
“Yes,” said Whitechapel. “Yes, it does. You know it does.” She stepped closer, her face friendly, but Bluebeard’s wife could see her hand grip tighter about the knife. “You could come with me,” she said. “You’d like it, you would. It makes you feel strong—not like before, not like when he came at you, when he came at those poor women whose clothes you took. Don’t you want to get your own back?”
“My husband is dead,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “I killed him. Him, not random people. Not people who had nothing to do with it. I killed him because he was a monster. I had to do it to save myself. That is getting my own back!”
“But all the ones who turned away, who let you go off to him by yourself, all the ones that didn’t warn you,” said Whitechapel. “They’re still alive. All the ones who didn’t help you. The ones who look the other way when a woman dies, by her husband or a stranger or a shadow in the streets. There’s a whole lot of looking away,” said Whitechapel.
“And you think people will look away from you?” said Bluebeard’s wife, edging back toward the road, toward the row of books that would take her out of that close little room, the terrible small jars.
“I make it easy for them,” said Whitechapel frankly. “No bloody letters, no scrawling on walls. I do my business and dump the bodies, weighted down and given to the river. No one misses ’em, no one notices. If they do, it’s blamed on fights or running away. Let them blame themselves, for once, if blame’s what they’re after.”
“It’s what you’re after,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “Killing people for turning away, for jokes and curiosity? You think I didn’t joke about my husband? It’s what people do when they’re scared, what they do to cope—it doesn’t make them guilty. It doesn’t make them monsters. It doesn’t mean you have to kill them!”
“I was like you once,” said Whitechapel. “Still young enough to think the best of people. Not that Ada was what you’d call a good woman, really. Oh, she was kind enough when it didn’t cost her nothing, and sometimes when it did, even, but she weren’t no one ladies like you would ever look to, had they the choice.”
“I’m not a lady,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “I never was. I grew up on a farm, scrubbing floors and feeding pigs like everyone else.”
“Moved up though, didn’t you?” said Whitechapel. “Some folks have all the luck. Oh, your man was a blow, but you got through him. All of you got through. Pandora, she got power, and you got love, and Sibby’s mummy got her freedom. No wonder you could still think well of folks, after. But me? When they let me out of that hospital, what did I get? Back to rent that still had to be paid and time on street corners to pay it, wondering each time if he was the one coming, until your lady came to give me work of a different kind.”
“Stop!” cried Bluebeard’s wife. “Just stop! It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to be this way. I can see that . . . that you’ve done terrible things, but you don’t have to do them anymore. You told me once you wanted justice. You and your friends—that’s six, isn’t it? And seven jars—one for him and six more. Those six didn’t deserve it any more than you and yours, but he’s been punished and it’s even now. It’s not right but it’s even. You can stop. Promise me you’ll stop.”
“I won’t,” said Whitechapel, drawing herself up. “How can you ask me? You, of all people! Had your husband lopped off your head, what would be happening now? Wife number eight would be on her way up to your Castle Femme, missy, and her father and her family and all the folks who knew would be doing nothing to stop her, nothing.”
“Perhaps they were frightened,” began Bluebeard’s wife, knowing that her own father at least would have been frightened only by the prospect of losing the gold her marriage gained him.
“We could make them more frightened,” said Whitechapel, coaxing, but Bluebeard’s wife was shaking her head, was backing away with her arms out.
“No,” she said. “I won’t. And I won’t let you either.”
“Are you telling me don’t, dearie?” said Whitechapel, chuckling. “Isn’t that a bit counter, considering? We’re all of us here because we didn’t listen to don’t. Isn’t that what Pandora calls us? The don’t girls, that’s what we are.”
“Sometimes don’t is reasonable,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “The only people who say ‘I won’t’ all the time are fools. Sometimes don’t should be obeyed. Don’t kill innocent people, for instance!”
“There’s no innocence with knives,” said Whitechapel. “But I can see you’ve made your choice. No matter. I don’t need you. I just need the box.”
“I won’t let you have it,” said Bluebeard’s wife, parking herself in the doorway, books rising to either side of her, but Whitechapel came at her, shoving hard, and she was forced to fall away to avoid the knife, to scramble to put walls between them like roads. And then Whitechapel was running, running hard toward the center of the museum, to Anne at the cradle and Pandora with her box, and Bluebeard’s wife was after her in a flat mad chase over the reconstituted East End, built again in books and stone, until—
“She’s gone mad!” cried Bluebeard’s wife, tackling Whitechapel and sending them both crashing to the floor. “Get out! Take the baby and get out!” And then it was kicking and scratching and hitting as hard as she could, and Sibylle screaming in fright and suddenly cut off. It was rolling and fighting and knocking away the knife, and Whitechapel forcing her weight on top of her, her hard red hands about her neck, and she was slamming the head of Bluebeard’s wife into the floor, over and over again until she could no longer breathe.
The pressure on her throat was enormous, and her vision darkened at the edges. Whitechapel’s face was so close to hers that Bluebeard’s wife could feel her breath on her face, but though she clawed at the other woman’s hands, she couldn’t loosen her grip. Then there was a hollow thump and the pressure was gone, the weight slumping off, and Bluebeard’s wife opened her eyes to see Anne of Cleves standing over her and Whitechapel crumpled to one side, unconscious.
“I think I might have fractured her skull,” said Anne. “I’ve got a lot of weight to put behind it.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Bluebeard’s wife, taking great heaving breaths and shaking her head, trying to clear her vision. “What the hell did you hit her with, anyway?”
“A book,” said Anne, holding up a heavy tome. “It was the closest thing to hand. Some silly thing about chess.” She tossed it aside and helped Bluebeard’s wife to her feet. “I never could stand that game. It’s so humorless.”
“Not that I’m not grateful,” said Bluebeard’s wife, leaning on a cabinet, her head throbbing. “But I heard Sibylle crying, and then it stopped. I thought you’d left. I told you to leave!”
There was a long silence. Then, “Where would I go?” said Anne. “I can’t go back to Cleves and I don’t know how to live anywhere but Hever. I can’t take Sibylle back there. Not with that hair… she looks too much like her father, and I’ve
sacrificed enough to keep her away from him. Pandora could take her any number of places. She’ll keep her safe.”
“You could have gone with her,” said Bluebeard’s wife.
“I wanted to,” said Anne. “But you came for me once, and I couldn’t leave you alone without help.”
“I’m so glad you didn’t,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “Thank you. But now that we’ve got her, what are we supposed to do with her?” They turned to look at Whitechapel, expecting to see her sprawled where she had been left, and but for them the street was empty.
“Oh dear,” said Anne. “I should have hit her harder.”
“What are we going to do now?” said Bluebeard’s wife, spinning round to check about them, and making herself dizzier than ever. “She’s dangerous. She’s been killing people, Anne, killing innocent people.”
“Can she be allowed to live?” said Anne, and Bluebeard’s wife shook her head.
“I don’t think she’ll stop,” said Bluebeard’s wife, and saying so brought her more grief, almost, than when she had opened the doors she was not supposed to and seen her past and future both. “She has a knife.”
“And you have an axe,” said Anne. “Or you could have one. I don’t suppose I should be surprised. Your whole story is of axes.”
“She’ll be coming for us,” said Bluebeard’s wife, warning.
Anne shook her head. “She’ll be coming for mefirst. I’m going to draw her in, make her want to come to me. You’ll know when she does.”
“You don’t have to do this,” said Bluebeard’s wife.
“You can barely stand,” said Anne. “It’s a sad little bait you’d make.” She squared her shoulders and smiled. “I’ll weaken her as much as I can,” she said, graceful in her big healthy body that, unarmed, still outweighed Whitechapel by at least two to one.