Rebel Angels

by Libba Bray

  The trees, stripped of all leaves and ugly as gnomes, grimace in response.

  “There is a certain elegance to them, I suppose,” he answers.

  This is not going well at all.

  “I do hate to trouble you, Mr. Middleton . . . ,” Grandmama says. "I’m afraid it’s the damp in my bones.” She limps for effect.

  Simon takes the bait, offering her his arm. “Not at all, Mrs. Doyle.”

  I have never been more grateful for an interruption in my life. Grandmama is in heaven, walking arm in arm with a viscount’s son through Hyde Park, where all can watch from their windows, feeling envious. As Grandmama prattles on about her health, the trouble with servants today, and other matters that make me feel as if I shall lose my mind, Simon gives me a sly sideways glance, and I’m smiling broadly. He has a way of making even a walk with Grandmama into an adventure.

  “Do you like the opera, Mrs. Doyle?” Lady Denby asks.

  “Not the Italians. I do like our Gilbert and Sullivan, though. Delightful.”

  I am embarrassed by her lack of taste.

  “What a happy coincidence. The Mikado is to be performed Saturday evening at the Royal Opera House. We have a box. Would you care to join us?”

  Grandmama falls silent, and at first, I am afraid she’s on the verge of becoming catatonic. But then I realize that she is actually excited. Happy. It is such a rare occurrence she is undone by it.

  “Why, we’d be delighted!” she answers at last.

  The opera! I’ve never been. Hello, beautifully ugly trees! Have you heard? I am to attend the opera with Simon Middleton. The wind rustles through their empty branches, making it sound like the distant din of applause. Dried husks of leaves skitter across our path and stick to the wet cobblestones, where they are trod underfoot.

  A shiny black carriage approaches slowly, drawn by two powerful steeds that gleam as if polished. The coachman wears his tall hat low on his brow. When the carriage pulls even with us, its occupant peers out from the shadows within, giving me a cruel smile. A scar marks his left cheek. It is the man I saw at the train station my first day in London, the one who followed me. There can be no mistake. As the coach passes, he tips his hat to me with a wicked smile. The carriage takes a bump in the road and wobbles on its giant wheels. A woman’s gloved hand emerges, gripping the side of the door. I cannot see her face. The sleeve of her cloak catches the wind. It flutters there like a warning—a rich, dark green.

  “Miss Doyle?” It’s Simon.

  “Yes?” I say, when I find my voice again.

  “Are you quite all right? You seemed ill for a moment.”

  “I fear Miss Doyle has a chill. She should return home and sit by the fire at once,” Simon’s mother insists.

  The road is quiet now. Even the wind has stopped blustering. But inside, my heart clamors so loudly it is a wonder it cannot be heard by all. For that green cloak was very like the one in my visions, the one I’m certain belongs to Circe, and it was fluttering from the window of a carriage carrying a member of the Rakshana.

  Once Simon and Lady Denby have gone, Grandmama has Emily draw me a hot bath. When I sink into the deep tub, water sluices along the sides and comes to settle in tiny waves beneath my chin. Lovely. I close my eyes and let my arms float upon the surface of the water.

  The sharp pain comes swiftly, nearly pulling me under. My body goes rigid, out of my control. Water rushes into my mouth till I’m coughing and sputtering. Panic has me gripping the side of the bathtub, desperate to get out. I hear the dreaded whisper, like a swarm of insects.

  “Come with us. . . .”

  The pain subsides, and now my body is light as a snowflake, as if I were in a dream. I do not want to open my eyes. I do not want to see them. But they may have answers to my questions, so I turn my head slowly. There they are, ghoulish and haunting, with their ragged white dresses and dark circles beneath soulless eyes.

  “What do you want?” I ask. I’m still coughing up water.

  “Follow us,” they say, and they slip through the closed door as if it were nothing.

  Hurriedly, I reach for my dressing gown and open the door, searching for sign of them. They hover just outside my bedroom, casting a false light at the end of the darkened hall. They motion for me to follow as they slip into my room.

  I’m shaking and wet, but I follow them, working up the courage to speak. “Who are you? Can you tell me anything about the Temple?”

  They do not answer. Instead, they float to the cupboard and wait.

  “My cupboard? There’s nothing in there. Just my clothing and shoes.”

  They shake their pale heads. “The answers you seek are here.”

  In my cupboard? They’re as mad as Nell Hawkins. Carefully as I can, I step around them and begin pushing aside dresses and coats, tearing through hatboxes and shoes, looking for what it is I’m supposed to find, though what that is I can’t begin to imagine. Finally, I explode in frustration.

  “I told you, there’s nothing here!”

  It’s the horrible sound of those pointed boots scraping my floors that has me scrambling backward. Oh, God, I’ve done it now, made them angry. They advance, arms out, coming for me. I can move no farther; I’m trapped by the bed.

  “No, please,” I whisper, curling into a ball, shutting my eyes tight.

  Those fingers of ice are on my shoulders and here it comes, a vision of such fury I can scarcely breathe, let alone think of crying for help. A field of green leading from the old stone ruins to the cliffs by the sea. In their white dresses, the girls run and laugh. One snatches the hair ribbon from another.

  “Will she give us the power today?” the girl with the ribbon asks. "And will we at last see the realms that are so beautiful?”

  “I hope so, for I should like to play with magic,” another says.

  The girl whose hair has fallen free of her ribbon calls, “Eleanor, did she promise that it would be today?”

  “Yes,” the girl answers in a tight, high voice. “She will come soon. We shall enter the realms and have it all, everything we’ve ever wished for.”

  “And she thinks this time you can take us in?”

  “She says so.”

  “Oh, Nell, that is wonderful!”

  Eleanor. Nell. The name pushes the air from my lungs. For the first time, I see her, walking toward the others. She is heavier, and her hair is curled and shining, the face untroubled, but I recognize her instantly: It is Nell Hawkins, before she was touched by madness.

  There is the coarse sound of insect wings near my ear. “Watch. . . .”

  It is like being pulled by a fast train, everything moving so quickly past the windows of my eyes. The girls on the rocks. The woman in green, face hidden. The hand taking Nell’s. The sea rising like the terror in their eyes.

  It stops. I’m panting on my floor. They point to the cupboard. What could it possibly be? I’ve been through it all, and there’s nothing . . . My mother’s red diary peeks out from a pocket of a coat. I reach for it.

  “This?” I ask, but they are already fading into a mist that disappears completely. The room comes back to itself. The vision has ended. I’ve no idea what they could mean. I’ve been through this diary again and again, looking for clues, and there is nothing. I turn each page till I reach the place where I’ve saved my mother’s creased newspaper clippings. When I read the first line this time, I do not find it to be a melodramatic story badly told. No, this time it chills me through and through.

  A trio of girls in Wales went out walking and were never heard from again. . . .

  I read on, feeling my blood run fast as I do.

  Young ladies who were the angels of Saint Victoria’s School for Girls . . . fair, shining daughters of the Crown . . . loved by all . . . walked gaily to the cli fs by the sea, never knowing the tragic fate that awaited them . . . lone survivor . . . went mad as a hatter . . . bears some resemblance to the story of a bonnie lass from the MacKenzie School for Girls . . . Scotland
. . . the tragic dagger of suicide . . . claimed to see visions, frightening the other girls . . . fell to her death . . . other disquieting tales . . . Miss Farrow’s Academy for Girls . . . Royal College of Bath. . . .

  The names of these schools are familiar. I know them. Where have I heard them before? And then it comes to me with a cold, hard chill: Miss McCleethy. I saw them on the list she kept inside her case beneath the bed. She’d marked through them all. Only Spence remained.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  NELL HAWKINS AND I TAKE A STROLL THROUGH Bethlem’s cheerless airing yards. The day is brisk, but if Nell wants to walk, then I shall walk. I shall do anything to try to unlock this mystery, for I’m sure that somewhere inside Nell’s tortured mind lie the answers I need.

  Only a few of the bravest souls have come out today. Nell’s refusing to wear her gloves. Her tiny hands blotch purple in the cold but she doesn’t seem to mind. When we are a safe distance from Bethlem’s doors, I give Nell the scrap of newspaper.

  Nell lets it rest in her hands, which shake. "Saint Victoria’s . . .”

  “You were there, weren’t you?”

  She settles onto a bench like a balloon floating to earth, deflated. “Yes,” she says, as if remembering something. “I was there.”

  “What happened that day by the sea?”

  Nell’s eyes, full of pain, find mine as if they hold the answers. She closes hers tightly. “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,” she says. “Jack fell down and broke his crown, and . . .” She stops, frustrated. “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and . . .”

  She says it faster. “JackandJillwentupthehilltofetchapailof water Jackfell down and brokeh is crownand ... and . . .”

  I can’t bear it. “. . . Jill came tumbling after . . . ,” I finish for her.

  She opens her eyes again. They are teary with the cold. "Yes. Yes. But I didn’t tumble after.”

  “What are you saying? I don’t understand.”

  “We went up the hill . . . up the hill...” She rocks. “To fetch a pail of water. From the water. It came up from the water. She made it come.”

  “Circe?” I whisper.

  “She is a house of sweets waiting to devour us.”

  The odd Mrs. Sommers has been walking nearby, tearing at her eyebrows when no one watches her. She hovers closer and closer to us, trying to hear.

  “What did Circe want from you? What was she looking for?”

  “A way in.” Nell giggles in such a way that a chill races up my spine. Her eyes glance left and right, like those of a child with a naughty secret. “She wanted in. She did. She did. She said she’d make us her new Order. Queens. Queens with a crown. Jack fell down and broke his crown . . .”

  “Miss Hawkins, look at me, please. Can you tell me what happened?”

  She seems so sad, so far away. “I could not take her in after all. I could not enter. Not wholly. Only here.” She points to her head. “I could see things. Tell her things. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted in. She tired of us. She . . .” Mrs. Sommers moves closer. Nell turns on her suddenly, screaming till the woman, undone, races away. My heart beats wildly, unsettled by Nell’s outburst.

  “She’s looking for the one who can bring the magic back to its full glory. The one with the power to take her in, to take her to the Temple. That is what she has always wanted,” she whispers. "No, no, no, no!” she shouts to the air.

  “Miss Hawkins,” I ask, trying to lead her back to the subject at hand. "Was it Miss McCleethy? Was she there? Is she Circe? You can tell me.”

  Nell bends my head to hers till our foreheads touch, her tiny hand surprisingly strong on the back of my neck. The skin of her palm is rough as burlap. “Don’t let her in, Lady Hope.” Is that an answer? Nell continues in hushed tones. “The creatures will do anything to control you. Make you see things. Hear things. You must keep them out.”

  I want free of that tiny hand that frightens me with its hidden strength. But I am afraid to move. "Miss Hawkins, please, do you know where I can find the Temple?”

  “You must follow the true path.”

  Here we are again. “There are hundreds of paths. I don’t know which one you mean.”

  “It is where you least expect it. It hides in plain sight. You must look and you will see it, see it, see, sea, it came up from the sea, from the sea.” Her eyes widen. “I saw you! I’m sorry, sorry, sorry!”

  I’m losing her again. “What happened to the other girls, Nell?”

  She starts to whimper like a wounded animal. “It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault!”

  “Miss Hawkins . . . Nell, it is all right. I’ve seen them, in my visions. I’ve seen your friends. . . .”

  She snarls at me then, with such a fury I am afraid she might kill me. “They are not my friends! Not my friends at all!”

  “But they are trying to help.”

  She backs away from me, screaming. “What have you done? What have you done?”

  Alarmed, a nurse leaves her post by the door, making straight for us.

  “Miss Hawkins, please—I didn’t mean—”

  “Shhh! They’re listening at keyholes! They will hear us!” Nell says, running back and forth, arms folded over her chest.

  “There is no one, Miss Hawkins. It is just you and I. . . .”

  She doubles back, crouching low at my knees, a feral thing. “They will see into my mind!”

  “M-Miss Hawkins . . . N-Nell . . . ,” I stammer. But she is lost to me.

  “Little Miss Mu fet sat on a tu fet eating her curds and whey,” she shouts, looking around as if speaking to an unseen audience in the airing yards. “When along came a spider and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Mu fet away.”

  With that, she jumps and runs to the waiting nurse, who ushers her inside, leaving me alone in the cold with more questions than before. Nell’s behavior, the sudden menace, has left me very troubled. I don’t understand what she means or what has upset her so. I had hoped Nell would provide knowledge about Circe and the Temple. But Nell Hawkins, I must remember, is also living at Bedlam. She is a girl whose mind has been frayed by guilt and trauma. I don’t know who or what to believe anymore.

  Mrs. Sommers returns and sits beside me on the bench, smiling in her uncomfortable way. In the bald patches of her sparse eyebrows, the skin glows red.

  “Is this all a dream?” she asks me.

  “No, Mrs. Sommers,” I answer, gathering my things.

  “She lies, you know.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  Those plucked brows give Mrs. Sommers a disturbing appearance, like some demon unleashed from a medieval painting. "I hear them. They talk to me, tell me things.”

  “Mrs. Sommers, who talks to you and tells you things?”

  “They do,” she says, as if I should understand. “They’ve told me. She’s not what she seems. Such wicked things she’s done. She’s in league with the bad ones, miss. I hear her in her room at night. Such wicked, wicked things. Watch yourself, miss. They’re coming for you. They’re all coming for you.”

  Mrs. Sommers grins, showing teeth too tiny for her mouth.

  Shoving the newspaper clippings into my handbag, I back away and bolt inside, walking briskly through the halls, past the sewing classes and the tuneless piano and the squawkings of Cassandra. I pick up speed till I am nearly in a run. By the time I reach the carriage and Kartik, I am completely out of breath.

  “Miss Doyle, what is the matter? Where is your brother?” he says, glancing nervously around.

  “He says . . . to come back . . . for him,” I say in bursts.

  “What’s the matter? You’re flushed. I’ll take you home.”

  “No. Not there. I need to speak with you. Alone.”

  Kartik takes in the spectacle of me, panting for breath and obviously shaken. “I know a place. I’ve never taken a young lady there, but it’s the best I can think of at the
moment. Do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” I say. He offers his hand, and I grasp it, climbing into the carriage, letting Kartik take the reins and my fate into his hands.

  We travel across Blackfriars Bridge into the grimy, dark heart of East London, and I begin to have second thoughts about letting Kartik lead the way. The streets are narrow and rough here. Vegetable sellers and butchers scream out from their wagons.

  “Potatoes, carrots, peas!” “Sweet cuts of lamb—no joint to speak of!”

  Children crowd about us, begging for anything—coins, food, scraps, work. They compete for my attention. “Miss, miss!” they cry, offering“help” of every variety for a coin or two. Kartik pulls the carriage to a stop in an alley behind a butcher’s shop. The children are on me, tugging at my coat.

  “Oi!” Kartik shouts, using a Cockney accent I’ve never heard. " ’Oo ’ere knows abou’ the skull-’n’-the-sword, eh?”

  The children’s eyes go wide at this mention of the Rakshana.

  “Righ’,” Kartik continues. “So you be’ah well clear ou’, if you know wha’ Oi mean.”

  Instantly, the children scatter. Only one boy remains, and Kartik flicks him a shilling.

  “Watch the coach, guv,” he says.

  “Right!” the boy answers, pocketing the coin.

  “That was impressive,” I say as we make our way over mucky streets.

  Kartik allows himself one small, triumphant smile. “Whatever it takes to survive.”

  Kartik stays a pace ahead of me. He has a hunter’s walk—all hunched shoulders and wary steps. We turn down one twisting street of dilapidated houses and then another. At last, we come into a short lane and stop before a small tavern sandwiched tightly between other buildings intent on crowding it out. We approach the heavy wooden door. Kartik knocks in a succession of short raps. A crude peephole in the door is opened from the inside, revealing an eye. The peephole closes, and we are let in. The place is dark and smells of the most delicious curry and incense. Big men sit at tables stooped over steaming plates of food, their dirt-stained hands wrapped around pints of ale as if they were the only possessions worth guarding. Now I see why Kartik has never brought a lady here before. From what I can tell, I am the only one here now.