Renegade

by Amy Carol Reeves

  Simon turned back to look at me. “He wrote to us often. I listened eagerly to my mother read us his letters. This uncle, to my young mind, seemed to be living life the right way, not living in ease like myself and our other relatives. Rather, he was living a life abroad, a life of simplicity, serving others. Then suddenly his letters stopped. We assumed he was still at his missionary post, but my mother fretted occasionally. Then suddenly, a year later, when I was seventeen, we received a brief note telling us that everything at the post had gone well. He said that he was living in perfect community with the Congolese.”

  He looked at me hard. “I was young. The idea of that life seemed so inspiring. I had felt certain of my belief in God then—that God had purposes for men. I requested, from my mother, the funds to travel to Africa to meet with my uncle. She reluctantly agreed. Europe was just beginning to colonize in Africa, and the journey was very dangerous. But I was determined.”

  He paused, swallowed as if his throat were parched. I saw him look down at his long, pale, slender fingers in the dim coach light. “The journey was difficult and arduous. I became sick with ague for one week during it, but recovered quickly. Once I reached Port Francqui, I inquired about my uncle, asking many if they knew the whereabouts of Father Fitzwilliam St. John. What I learned from the local merchants in the area was that they had not seen him in three years. Apparently he’d gone off into the jungle and never returned.

  “I found this odd, particularly since he had only recently written to us. I won’t tire you with the details, but I remained at the Port Francqui post for a month. I realized that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with the Europeans, even if I did speak Dutch moderately well. I studied and learned enough of the local Bantu to communicate with the native Congolese.”

  Hugo raised his head and growled as a dog barked somewhere in the distance. When he relaxed, Simon began speaking again. “We talk about imperialism like it is a noble concept, as if we are helping other nations. But we are not. I saw such terrible atrocities in the name of imperialism, and, I have heard that it has only become worse now that the area is completely controlled by King Leopold. Imperialism is an excuse for exploitation. It was only through communicating with the natives that I learned that there was talk of another post, somewhere deep in the interior of the jungle. I had difficulty getting information because few Congolese would talk of the place. Eventually, with extra money, I secured two guides to take me to this secluded post. It was a three-week journey, and I became covered in mosquito bites from head to foot. My leg was infected by a snake bite. Nonetheless, we eventually reached the post.”

  He stopped talking and stared at me as the carriage lurched violently. We were ascending a hill, and the road seemed to be extremely rocky. Still, Simon’s face remained immobile, statuesque, and I felt as if he were far from me.

  “And then?” I whispered. A dread set in upon my heart. “When you reached it … ”

  I saw the weighted, anxious look in his eyes, the same look I had seen when my hypnosis session had gone terribly wrong and he’d kissed me, saving me from becoming lost in my psyche.

  “We smelled the place before we saw it. It reeked of rotting flesh. My guides and I had had to put cloths around our faces to keep from fainting. And then we saw the spikes, on the walls surrounding the post. The spikes had heads: Men’s heads. Women’s heads.” Simon paused. “Children’s heads. Even the heads of infants. Many of the heads were no more than skulls. But some heads appeared to have been from recent deaths.”

  I put my hand over my mouth. Unable to speak, I thought I might vomit. I had never heard of anything so awful. I did not want him to continue, and yet I knew that he had to. I knew the weight of memories, and I knew that for his own sake, Simon could not carry his own in solitude forever.

  “As we passed through the broken front gates, I saw that this ‘missionary post’ was merely a small village. It seemed empty. Isolated. The only thing greeting us was that smell of rotting flesh. The flies in that area were intolerable. I saw a few, very few, half-starved people—they had a distracted, fearful look in their eyes. Many were missing fingers, arms. I saw a five-year-old boy missing a leg. It was easy to locate my uncle, as he was in a large mud hut in the center of the village. When I entered the hut, I saw that he was nothing like the handsome, youngish man I had seen in Mother’s photographs. He was thin, dreadfully thin. He wore a turban over his head and had markings upon his face. Crucifixes covered every inch of the wall behind his bed. Silver, golden, carved wood crucifixes. I saw a platter of raw meat in the corner of the hut.

  “My uncle said nothing, but rather stared at me through deep hollow eyes, eyes that resembled so many of the skulls upon the village walls—expressionless, empty. He said nothing for so very long that I wondered if perhaps he had forgotten how to speak English. I hardly knew what to say, except to tell him who I was.

  “But Uncle Fitzwilliam had not forgotten about our family. He suddenly spoke of how marvelous his post was, of how happy he was that I had decided to join him. He said he would send a servant with me to my quarters to make certain that I was comfortable after my long journey.

  “I remember feeling speechless. It was as if he was ignorant of all the grotesquery surrounding us, of the almost empty village with its hollow-eyed, mutilated inhabitants.

  “A native woman escorted us from the hut. She had all of her limbs and I suspected that she was my uncle’s mistress. Something terrible was quickly becoming clear to me. The story behind this place was becoming clearer. As I walked beside her, with my guides at my side, I asked her in Bantu who God was. She pointed into the hut and explained that my uncle was God. As one of my guides questioned her further, I realized that my uncle had told them he was God—that he was the true God. I learned that my uncle had taught them heresies, twisted the notions of communion and sacrifice to create a cannibalistic ritual system. The villagers I saw were the few natives who had stayed, who believed that my uncle was who he said he was, and they gladly gave up their limbs, their children even, for his cannibalistic appetites. He had told them that this was the only way to heaven. The eyes of that small boy haunted me. As I began to understand the situation, I found myself shaking, trembling violently. I was only eighteen then; I had grown up so sheltered—this sort of cruelty was catastrophic to me.”

  Simon paused again for several minutes before going on. This time I did not urge him on; I felt a tear slide down my cheek in the darkness. I had considered sharing the trauma of Mother’s death, of losing Roddy, but I knew that my story paled in comparison to this. Another tear slid down my cheek. How could he keep this to himself for all of these years?

  “I went into his hut again, and he was eating the meat from the platter. He ate it raw, and I still remember shuddering, knowing and believing that it was human flesh he consumed. But I had to be certain.

  “‘Who are you?’ I asked him. ‘God,’ he replied, barely pausing as he chewed. I wondered how he could stay so thin if he ate human flesh so frequently. I knew that what I feared was true. He was delusional.

  “‘And who are these people to you?’ I asked him. ‘They are my followers. Gladly giving up their flesh for me.’

  “I don’t know what I was thinking, but I was terribly shocked, beyond belief, to hear him say it. I pulled out my revolver.” Simon turned his gaze away from me. “And I shot him in the head.

  “The mistress ran into the hut, wailing. She dropped to her knees. I took my guides around the village; we took account of all the huts and found that there were even fewer people there than I’d thought. Only twenty. I thought they might kill me for murdering their god, but they seemed too weary, too starved. The boy was the only living child. I took him with me when I left with my guides. I left a murderer.”

  I couldn’t speak, yet I knew that I had to say something. I knew the anguish he felt, and I knew the powerlessness of words to comfort in such a situation. I ha
d so little to offer him.

  “You had no choice, Simon. He was killing, torturing people. That boy would have lost more limbs. Died.”

  Simon’s face darkened. “I couldn’t even save him. An infection had started in his leg. He died before we even reached Port Francqui.”

  Dawn was just breaking over the cliffs outside the window. I remembered that odd conversation we’d had on my first visit to the Conclave’s home, as we stared at those cases of weaponry, of human hair. Simon had enigmatically mentioned his “search for God”—an odd comment for a theologian, I’d thought, but now I wondered if Simon believed in God at all.

  “As you suspected, I have never told anyone what I just told you. Not even Rosamund. Upon returning, I simply told my mother that her brother-in-law had died from a fever—that he’d died before I arrived. She has no idea that I killed him. It has haunted me over the years. He did terrible things … ”

  “He was a madman,” I said.

  “But he might have been institutionalized, perhaps.” Simon rubbed his temples as if he had a headache.

  I knew Simon was back in that terrible place, that he saw the faces of the dead, that he remembered vividly as in a photograph what he had done to his uncle. I remembered losing Roddy; I hadn’t been able to save him, and, like Simon, I knew what it was to have killed. Our shared feelings of guilt, vinelike and strong, bound us together, and I felt them swell between us like a terrible energy as we prepared to face whatever was before us now. Tears fell down my cheeks, and I leaned forward across Hugo’s enormous body to take Simon’s hand.

  “Simon.”

  I waited until he focused upon me, surfaced from his haunting memories. “Simon, I too share this albatross.”

  He said nothing, but I knew he heard my words, for I saw a ripple in his expression. As we finished the ride in silence, I felt a powerful connection with this man who had previously been so enigmatic. Simon knew the terrible weight of having to kill someone—even a heinous, murderous person. And now I understood more of his nature. He was haunted by his past, by what he had seen and by what he had done. And while William, Simon, and Christina shared my horrific experience of the Conclave and knew what I had done, Simon, thus far, had shouldered his burden alone.

  Early morning light broke through cracks in the clouds outside the windows. I peered out, staring at the craggy beauty of the Highlands. I had never been north of Edinburgh before. Light fog stretched along the green pastures and rocky plains like an unyielding blanket. As the landscapes came into my view, their rose and periwinkle hues were resplendent in the morning mist.

  I felt Simon’s eyes on me, and I turned my head to meet his gaze. His expression no longer seemed veiled, but kind and open, which gave him an even more startling resemblance to a character in a Blake painting. I felt arrested and could not look away.

  “Thank you, Abbie.”

  Twenty-four

  When we stepped off the coach in Caithness, in the northernmost town of the county, we discovered that we would have to wait for several hours for our ferry. I groaned at this; William was just over the waters, and we were so close. Apparently a northern storm had blown in, and the ferry had been delayed for several hours as the waters were unusually choppy.

  Simon and I took lunch at a local tavern. I had no appetite—I felt an unbearable anxiety to reach William. But Simon reminded me that eating, like sleeping, was necessary to keep my strength up.

  “We’re husband and wife,” Simon said.

  “What?” I said, almost choking on my overcooked mutton.

  “The towns in this region are quite small. We cannot be seen traveling about unmarried. As I’ve already mentioned, we’ll be outsiders. If we are to gather information, we must appear as benign, as ordinary as possible.”

  I couldn’t believe that I had not considered this. I remembered all the times Mother and I had moved, how we sometimes had difficulty fitting into communities even larger than these.

  “So, then, what am I to be called? Abbie St. John? Or are you to be Simon Sharp?” I asked wryly. I found that I was stabbing at my meat particularly hard. I couldn’t wait for the storm clouds to roll away so that we could continue our journey. I hated this stall.

  Simon smiled and took a sip of water. As he did, his eyes glinted and he stared out the window behind me. Then he froze.

  “Abbie.” He spoke quietly, but I heard him even above the noise of the loud tavern crowd. “We are being followed.”

  “Is it the same blond man who was following us in London?” I asked quickly. “I thought I saw him in Edinburgh, at the train platform. But I wasn’t certain. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, after that experience with Ellen at the London station.”

  Simon’s eyes now turned to me. “He was walking down the street in front of this tavern, and he glanced through the window at us as he passed by. Of that I am certain. If you look quickly, I think you can still see him.”

  I turned and saw, just disappearing at the end of the street, the same straight ash-blond hair I’d seen before.

  “I think that’s him,” I said.

  “He must have followed us from London,” Simon said thoughtfully, his eyes still on the street. He took a long sip of water.

  “What could he want?”

  “I don’t know. We need to go about our business, but we must be watchful.”

  “I agree,” I said in what I hoped was a confident tone, but I felt as if I stood at the base of a mountain—a mountain far too large to climb.

  She hadn’t meant to nearly kill him. She didn’t want him dead. But she had forgotten how weak humans could be, and, well … he was barely breathing now. His face was pale, far too pale. It had been flushed with fever the past few days as the wounds oozed pus. The pus still seeped a bit, but the wounds were mostly dried and scabby. His body was wearying; he would not be able to fight the infection much longer. Seraphina surveyed all the dried blood on the mat surrounding him.

  She sighed.

  He had lost too much blood.

  “You must keep him alive,” Max had told her. “I need him.”

  That evening, almost three weeks ago, when she’d returned from devouring the young couple in the meadow near Bromwell, she’d felt her spirits rise at the sight of Max’s boat, at seeing that he had returned to her.

  “She turned us down,” he had said, simply, informatively, as he dumped the unconscious body of the young man onto the floor of the great hall. Seraphina had knelt over the body. She’d only just transformed back to her human form, and she felt water still sliding from her wet hair down her naked body. The boy her keeper had brought her was young and strikingly handsome, with dark wet curls on his head and flushed, vibrant skin. His breathing was even but shallow. Undoubtedly Max had drugged him.

  “You’ve wanted more responsibility in our Conclave, so we are offering you the task of killing her,” Max had said. “This is our bait, our lure.” He stared at the young man in the puddle of water on the floor and then shook his head vigorously, flinging the rain out of his curls. “Arabella Sharp deserves a cruel death.” Max’s eyes lingered upon Seraphina. “And I think that my lovely Effie will be up to the task.”

  Seraphina had felt herself blush at the compliment.

  “Who is he to her?” she asked. “Her brother?”

  “Unfortunately, her paramour,” Max said quietly, his lip crinkled upwards in a cruel grin. He looked down at the body, disdain in his voice. “He’s a hot-headed prig, daft and foolish, still … try not to kill him.”

  Seraphina felt a cruel pain. It was a stab of empathy for the young man, as he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. Furthermore, although he was more attractive than her fiancé had been, his face shared some physical similarities with her own paramour.

  “I brought feed for the animals, and then I have to leave.”

  “
Tonight?” Seraphina asked, her hopes dashed. She’d wished that Max would stay longer, particularly since he had been away for so long.

  “Yes, I have important business in London. Miss Sharp will soon be on her way here. Once everyone is certain that William here has not eloped and that he is not traveling abroad, they will suspect I have taken him. When Miss Sharp arrives here, kill her.” His eyes glinted and became distant. “And kill anyone who might come with her. She might have a friend, a pale-faced young man. He should be an easy kill—but be careful, my Effie. He’s smart. Very intelligent.”

  “And this one—William—I mean, what happens to him after I’ve finished with her?” Seraphina looked down at the young man’s body. She tasted the venom in her mouth and felt her stomach growl for human flesh. Odd. She was in her human form, and that had never happened before. The transformation seemed to haunt even her human form now.

  “No.” Max looked at her seriously, his eyes bright in the darkness. “As I said, keep William alive, and I’ll return later for him. He needs to know what I can do—he needs to see you kill Miss Sharp, to know what lovely monsters I have to do my bidding. I need him. I have a bit of a large project I am working on back in London, and it turns out that this young man, Dr. William Siddal, is rather important to me.”

  William had stirred a bit, the drugs wearing off. “And whatever you do, don’t let him escape. We shall secure him now.”

  After moving William to a mat on the floor of her bedroom, they locked shackles around his wrists and one around his neck. He was then secured to a column between her bed and the fireplace. Seraphina had wondered, then, what it was that Max needed from this young man, other than to serve as a lure for Arabella Sharp. She remembered the Conclave’s many experiments, their many projects, and bit her lip thinking of how she had been the unintended result of one of those projects. But she had learned not to ask too many questions; Max already shared so much with her, probably more than the Conclave ever intended. She always hoped that at some point her distracted lover would come around, would see how valuable she could be to him. That night, she’d hoped his disappointment with Arabella’s decision would prompt him to realize her own worth.