The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree: Stoker & Bash, #2

by Selina Kray

  Tim felt pinned into his seat by a lodestone at this revelation.

  “He... he never shares anything with me.”

  Han sighed. “He wears the coat of the enigma too well. Wraps himself in it until there’s nothing but silk and mist. But this freedom—to be mysterious—is hard won. So many have deceived and manipulated us. To be able to mirror them is our small victory.”

  “And I am glad of it. But I am not one of those men.”

  “Anyone can see that.”

  Tim scoffed. “Not everyone.”

  “If you think his liaison with Apollo Pankhurst was one of equals, you are mistaken.” Han twisted the reins in his hands until the leather chafed. “Pankhurst gave him a long leash, but Hiero was still tethered to him.”

  “But Hiero loved him.”

  “He took the collar willingly. Out of love? Perhaps. Pankhurst courted him a long time before Hiero agreed to be his consort. Made him many promises, which grew more and more elaborate as the months wore on. One in particular Hiero couldn’t refuse.”

  “His freedom?”

  “When you’ve lived as we have, was it really a choice? Or the best of bad options?” Han exhaled a long breath. “I believe he came to love him. Pankhurst was a sweet man. And Hiero, or rather Horace Beastly, could have continued on without his patronage. But to rid himself of his past forever? Pankhurst was his only choice.”

  The stone sank farther into Tim’s chest, choking him. “So I have no hope of ever knowing him completely.”

  “I cannot say. He’s in constant metamorphosis.” Han chuckled to himself, his fondness for his longtime friend writ bold across his face. “But you are the first lover he chose for himself. Think on that.”

  Tim hugged his arms around his middle, more for need of comfort than the cold. He suddenly felt as if he were in another country than Hiero, rather than across the garden wall. Perhaps they had always been two solitudes, sharing a border but not much else.

  “Until this case came our way, he was all I could think on.” He attempted to sort the matter, struggling to make Han’s words and Hiero’s actions match, a jigsaw of ideas Tim couldn’t fit into a unified image. His ever-curious mind required more pieces to distract from his worry and his longing. Because while the detective side of him wanted to plug the holes in the puzzle, the human side fretted over his friends’ well-being. And if he was honest, that Hiero would somehow find a way to further complicate things. “How did you come to know him?”

  Another snort-cough. “Very deft maneuver. You must know I would never betray his confidence.”

  Tim did know, but a gamble was a gamble—it didn’t always pay off.

  “Ah, but is it a confidence if it’s your own tale?” Tim affected his most innocent smile. “You must have one.”

  “As most do.”

  “And here we are, with hours of time to fill.”

  Han shook his head. “Very well. But you will hear nothing of Hiero.”

  “Why do you think I am any less intrigued by you?”

  He had no answer for this. Instead Han reached into the basket the inn’s cooks had made up for them, pulled out a bottle of cheap whiskey, and poured them both a teacupful.

  “On a night such as this, I sometimes imagine I hear the knock of the boats that used to lull me to sleep. Though I’ve lived on this island for more than fifteen years, I still feel the rock of the waves. I was born on the water, lived on it, named for it. Tak Hai means ‘To reach the ocean.’ I am one of the Tanka boat people of Macau.” He glanced over as if to check if Tim was bored. To his disappointment, he hung on every word. “My uncle was a fisherman, and Mae sold our wares at our market stall in the Inner Harbor. We lived together, Mae and me, on a green junker, Měirényú—mermaid—with a fish scale pattern on one side. My grandmother would always complain it was too colorful, but Mae... She loved to paint. If she could not be an artist, she would decorate her world. Her greatest wish was for me to travel where she could not, sail the oceans.”

  “And so you did.”

  Han exhaled a long breath. “Not by choice. I was a half-breed. My father was a Portuguese sailor who was shipwrecked before I was born. Though there were many of us half-breeds around, we were never accepted by mainland society. Mae’s dream was for me to roam far and wide, but I wanted her dream.”

  “To be a sculptor?”

  “An artist, but yes. When I grew old enough, I saved to buy a stall of my own, for my paintings and sculptures. But the high-class patrons don’t go to the market, let alone buy their art there. But navy captains do.”

  “They do love their portraits.”

  “One in particular gave me many commissions, enough that when he offered me passage to England on his vessel, with the promise to introduce me to all his Admiralty friends...”

  “Your mae must have been beside herself.”

  Han sighed. “If not for her urging, I would not have gone. She wanted so much for me.” A few telltale blinks encouraged Tim to look away from his face. “So I left her, left everyone... only to be press-ganged onto a slaver ship at the next port. The captain’s keen eye for art was no match for his gambling debts, and the commander of the slaver needed someone strong and intimidating to keep his cargo in line. I fled as soon as we docked—being strong and intimidating means you can turn the tables on your captors—and made my way to Portsmouth, thinking I could find more naval patrons and eventually earn enough to return to Macau.”

  “But you remained.”

  A terse nod. “I wrote home as soon as I had settled in London. It was almost a year before I heard back that... there was no home to return to.”

  Tim resisted the impulse to reach out and squeeze his arm, afraid it would be refused.

  “What happened?”

  “The details don’t matter. Or so I tell myself.”

  Tim attempted to comfort him with words. “The last thing she knew of you, you were following the dream she had for you. You continue to serve her memory through your art. That must be some consolation.”

  “I’ve made my peace. Like Hiero, like all of us at Berkeley Square, the life we live is our own. Servant to no master but the family we choose. Fate led me to this place, these people, a life I cannot regret.” He looked up as if contemplating the moon, which had reemerged. “But perhaps your place is not with us. Perhaps that is why you are so unsettled.”

  “We were travelers. Four cities in fifteen years. I’ve never known a stable home.”

  “Except your fellows at the Yard.”

  “Even there...” Tim rubbed this knuckles along his jaw, feeling restless. “The crumbs of work I have to share don’t attract many pigeons.”

  “So you befriend your cases.” A final decisive snort-cough. “A lonely life.”

  “Not lately.”

  Han spared him a pointed glance, then turned back to the moon. “No.”

  Chapter 10

  “Good morning, Father.”

  Hiero ceased overstirring his tea at the sound of that familiar voice. Which he then remembered ought not to be so familiar to a priest late of Italy. With the control of a longtime performer, he schooled his face before looking up at his Kip. And so very Kip-like he was in his sensible gray-green suit, boring-patterned waistcoat, and mud-tramping boots, his will-o’-the-wisp mustache the only remnant of yesterday’s disguise. Today DI Timothy Stoker reported for duty, rumpled and red eyed but revved with energy. Hiero could almost see sparks flying off of him.

  He repressed the urge to kiss him, to sneak him into a forgotten corner and seize his mouth. How long had it been since they’d enjoyed a moment alone together? Days? Weeks? Too long. Lying on that torture device of a bed last night, becoming intimately acquainted with the beams across the ceiling when not chased out of sleep by nightmares, Hiero longed for Kip in a way he had never before wanted anyone: for comfort. The sag of the mattress that signaled his presence. The stretch of his arm across Hiero’s back. His quick, breezy inhalations—the sound of
his mind working, even in slumber. His firm chest to hug against when the creepers shrieked the walls down.

  Hiero rose to greet his too-perceptive eyes, limned with concern.

  “Are you quite well, Father?” Kip asked, struggling to keep his distance. A natural dissimulator his Kip was not. “It can be a challenge to quiet one’s mind after such events as you witnessed yesterday.”

  “Someone of my vocation is well acquainted with suffering in all its forms, Mister, er...”

  A curl to Kip’s top lip. “Stoker. Detective Inspector.”

  “Ah, si. Forgive me.” Hiero only then awoke to the bustle about him. Forced to break his fast alone in the conservatory due to the threat of his masculinity, he had not yet seen Callie or Miss Kala. Or much of anything save four cups of tea, two thick slabs of bread with butter and jam, and an ancient Daughter with eyes so fogged he wondered how she avoided the furniture. Though not blind, which she proved once she looked at him, her wrinkles spelled out foreigner in bold alarm. Strange since the novitiates came in most colors of the rainbow. “Where shall we begin?”

  “The nursery and medical ward. It has been cleared this morning for our inspection”—Kip’s pinched jaw told Hiero just what he thought of that—“and Sister Zanna has made herself available for interview.”

  Hiero raised an eyebrow. Kip shook his head. Though none of the Daughters were in the immediate vicinity, they were being watched.

  “I am here to serve, Inspector. Lead on.”

  Kip reached out—to stall him, Hiero knew, but couldn’t help wishing his outstretched hand had made contact, however brief.

  “A moment.” As if to taunt him, Kip stepped closer. Though his stance remained respectable, the frisson of energy that blurred the very air around him tickled Hiero’s skin. “I wondered, Father, if you had observed anything of interest during your night here? I, as you may know, was banished from the compound.”

  “If I had known it was I who would be interrogated, Inspector, I would have been more vigilant.” Hiero noticed Kip’s eyes twitched in the effort not to roll them. He fought the sudden urge to lick his lids. “After my final visit with Mrs. Sandringham, I became the charge of Sister Merry and her brother Amos. We dined in their humble cottage, and then I retreated to my pallet to pray for the little one’s immortal soul.”

  Kip pretended to take this in.

  “How was their conversation?”

  “Bountiful.”

  With a soft grunt of frustration, Kip whispered, “And what did you reap from this harvest?”

  “Sister Juliet first joined the Daughters not to serve her aunt but because she required their particular services.”

  Hiero wished he could feel the smile that stretched Kip’s lips, the toothy glint of a hunter who scented fresh prey.

  “You’d make a fine sergeant, Father, with such observations.”

  “Pity I prefer to take the lead.” He inwardly cheered Kip’s blush.

  Sister Zanna proved to be Hiero’s least favorite kind of person: sensible, no-nonsense, and efficient, with the right opinions on everything and a brisk but aloof way about her. Nonsense being synonymous with fun in Hiero’s mind, he tuned out her conversation as soon as they entered the nursery.

  Five pudge-faced cherubs gurgled for his attention, each more adorable than the last. He drew signs of the cross on their foreheads as an excuse to pinch their cheeks. The Daughter on duty, taking pity on him, let him cradle the fussing one she held, little Felix, who couldn’t have been more than a day old. With his tuft of black hair and wrinkled brow, he looked more wise man than newborn. The babe relaxed when Hiero hugged him to his chest, entertaining thoughts of spiriting him away.

  Not even Mother Rebecca knew what would become of him otherwise.

  Hiero noticed Kip had turned his back to him, a maneuver he often deployed when he could not suppress his instincts. Sister Zanna smiled at him over Kip’s shoulder, her look soft—perhaps he had misjudged her. No other member of the Daughters of Eden, save for Sister Merry, displayed even the slightest warmth toward him. With a pang of remorse, Hiero eased Felix over to the duty Daughter and focused his attention on the conversation.

  “These will wean for a fortnight with a wet nurse,” Sister Zanna explained. “The novitiates are granted time to decide if they still want to follow their chosen course. Most do not waver—their circumstances being profoundly unjust and their choices limited—but some do find another way.”

  “Another way?” Kip inquired.

  “The women placed with us either have a patron they cannot defy, a job they cannot afford to lose, or a little money of their own squared away. Those savvy enough to fall into the latter category sometimes secure passage to the colonies to begin again or other such arrangements.”

  “So not all babes born here are doomed to abandonment?” Hiero asked, affecting an air of relief.

  Sister Zanna straightened her posture in what Hiero at first interpreted as defiance of their interview but came to understand was against her fellow Daughters. She nodded them into her small adjoining office, so devoid of character Hiero wondered if she ever spent any time there.

  “They’d like you to think that, with their talk of adoption and the six they keep back,” she grumbled as she kicked the door shut. She only then realized there weren’t seats for two, let alone three, and hopped onto the edge of her desk. “I first came here for the ‘fallen’ women—though I despise that word with everything in me—and it’s for the women I remain. The children they bear are currency, which is a kind of power, but one they are not permitted to wield. One that can be wrenched away at any moment. The knowledge I hold close to my heart is we provide them with care and compassion they could not find elsewhere. That in itself is a kind of holiness. And a very few of their babes land softly. But those who do not fall into circumstances no better than those born in the workhouse.”

  “Local orphan asylums?”

  Hiero at first thought her eyes flickered to the door, but then traced their line to the cross over it.

  “Yes. Most are consigned there.”

  Kip sharpened, a hound who’d finally scented fox. “The boy. Do you recall him?”

  “I do not.” She sighed. Hiero could feel the weight of it on her, how she’d scoured her memory, how she wished she could give them a yes. “But I can confirm he was not among those held back. That I would remember.”

  “So he was sent to an orphan asylum?”

  “If he’s one of ours.”

  Kip nodded. “There’s the rub.”

  “Quite so. I don’t envy your task, Inspector, but I wish you well. I’ve long suspected something is rotten in our garden. But to be confronted with such proof...” For a flicker of an instant, she let her wariness show. “I hope you cut it out at the root.”

  Though not a very pious question, Hiero felt compelled to ask, “Why do you stay?”

  “How can I not? You of all people, Father, must understand. When you’re called to do God’s work, you cannot but answer.”

  “And bless you for it, child.”

  The stern cast to her face softened for the first time since Hiero made her acquaintance. He fought the urge to reach out to her but remembered this was Sister Juliet’s tactic. He bowed his head instead.

  Kip cleared his throat. “Have any of the mothers of these unfortunates ever had second thoughts? Returned, perhaps, once their circumstances had changed?”

  “Not to my knowledge. But of course it’s possible.” Sister Zanna shifted in her seat. “We try to discourage attachments. But the primal bond can be difficult to sever.”

  Hiero didn’t miss Kip’s quiet sigh. Even fourteen years after the fact, he knew firsthand how traumatic losing a parent could be. He suppressed another pang of longing for a private moment with his Kip, a chance to cocoon themselves away from the hard realities of this case.

  “The state of the boy...” For the first time, Sister Zanna appeared hesitant. “I want to reassure you, Ins
pector, he received no such treatment here.”

  Kip played coy. “How do you mean?”

  “The malnourishment. I can only imagine what conclusions you must have drawn.”

  “It is not my practice to draw conclusions until I have all the facts, Sister.”

  “Of course. I only meant to—”

  “Unless you have come to your own. Which I would encourage you to share.” With no reply forthcoming, Kip prompted, “Whether a spoonful of Godfrey’s Cordial ever finds its way into their milk, for instance.”

  “Absolutely not.” She bristled. “Inspector, I seek only to preserve life. Even the most misguided among us... that is our only goal.”

  Kip raised a conciliatory hand. “So I’ve observed. But you must have made observations at the tree. What were they?”

  She white knuckled the edges of the desk, firmed her jaw, resolved.

  “He looked as if he had been farmed. They shrivel, like a grape. His blue lips...”

  “You’ve seen such things before?”

  “Before I joined the Daughters, I volunteered with the Society for the Prevention of Child Starvation and the Poor Young Mothers’ Society.” She remained clear eyed as she elaborated on her work with these organizations, much to Hiero’s surprise. Not a woman easily rattled, which spoke volumes of her disquiet now. “By the time such cases were brought to us, there was little to be done. Milk by the spoonful, and most perished in their sleep.”

  Hiero recoiled. Was there no end to the horrors of the world?

  But Kip only prompted her with a nod. “And it is your opinion no one among the Daughters of Eden might be taking matters into her own hands?”

  “Secrets aplenty haunt these halls, Inspector. But none so dark.”

  Kip made to speak, but Hiero interrupted him. “And yet even the lightest shade of gray cannot shadow the hearts of the faithful if they are to be welcomed at the final judgment.”