by Selina Kray
He waited until they departed until emptiness shrouded the room. Then he drank the last of his coffee and set out on a late-afternoon call.
Callie woke to a living nightmare. With no light to focus on and no sound to sharpen her, she slogged through the slurry of consciousness until something stuck. Distant whimpering, the thread on which her mind could tug before it unraveled. With lugubrious purpose, she dragged herself out of the pit of medicated slumber.
The treacle stench of laudanum assaulted her first, spilled on her shirt as they’d fought to drug her. A mouthful of rust as a fat metal bar suppressed her tongue, violating her ability to speak. Her filmy, woozy eyes searched for light but couldn’t see beyond the edges of the iron bars that crushed her head and cheeks, caging her face. Her heart too sluggish to pound, her lungs too pacified to pant, Callie drifted in the fathomless dark, unable to think beyond her fear.
Unable to scream.
The whimpering howled into a wail. Finally the clouds parted. A flurry of blinks and she made out several figures in the gaslit room. Some sat, some lay on scratchy straw mattresses. She reached to feel for her own, startled at the bite of a shackle into her wrist. Unlike the others, she’d been chained to the floor on both sides for her lock-picking sins.
Callie craned her neck around, found Miss Kala beside her in similar straits. Her head rocked from side to side, possibly an unconscious motion. Callie prayed the drug had no ill effects on the babe she carried. She doubted the Daughters would dole out any punishment that threatened the potential future messiah, but then, she also hadn’t expected to be chained and gagged when she surrendered to them.
Scold’s bridles encased their heads and silenced their tongues, robbing them of the ability to protest. But not of sound. In this damp, sulfurous underworld where the most rebellious novitiates were enclosed, they were permitted the company of their terror. Callie and Miss Kala had, at long last, found the cellar.
Her throat tightened, spasmed. Pinpricks of pain swarmed her eyes. Wheezing in frantic breaths, Callie chomped down on the bit, desperate to stave off the tide of emotion, of despair. She hadn’t wept when word came her father had died, or when they were thrown out of their draughty little cottage in Portsmouth. Not when she broke her leg as a girl, or when one of her early governesses beat her for speaking out of turn. Not even on the day they laid her sweet uncle, her savior, in the ground.
But the wailing stabbed at something within her, hidden deep but tender. On and on it went, crying for them all. For why had these women been locked down here? Because they had questioned the delusional Daughters? Because they had succumbed to the temptations no man similarly inclined had ever been punished for? Because no matter where they went or what they did, they could never escape the strictures of their sex. Because they were owned.
Tears streamed down Callie’s face, pooling in the grooves of the metal bars. She coughed around the bit till it choked her. A surge of bile scorched her throat, but she swallowed it back, scared it would drown her. She let out a sob to suck in a vital breath—then she couldn’t stop. She lent her voice, her sorrow to the wailing woman until her throat had been scraped raw and her eyes squinted from swelling.
Numbed by defeat, Callie stared at the root-gnarled ceiling and attempted to steady her breaths. The woman wailed on, her grief indefatigable.
Annoyance poked at the back of Callie’s mind. Why couldn’t she give them a respite? Didn’t she know her agony would go unanswered? That the more she pleaded, the more the Daughters would deny her? Unless...
Callie stilled, attuned all her senses to the woman’s voice. Shame filled her as she realized how familiar the timber was, how similar the tenor to one that had haunted the corridors of Berkeley Square for the better part of a decade. So familiar, so provoking, Callie had long ago learned to tune it out. Until Miss Kala had come and killed it with kindness.
Mother, Callie cried, but only inside herself. Brittle relief suffused her, cracking at the thought of how torturous the past days must have been for her mother, trapped there in the slithering dark with her ghosts and demons. And now her daughter-rescuer just as trapped, just as helpless, just as foolish in thinking she could outwit the maniacal Sister Juliet and her alluring prophecies. It was as you’ve always said, Mother. My head was held so high I tripped over my shoes.
A second voice entered the fray, fought to be heard above the wailing. Lush and lilting, singing a tune Callie couldn’t quite place. A lullaby.
The wailing gradually tempered. Instead her mother harmonized her voice to the song. Callie hardly needed to look over to know it was Miss Kala who comforted her charge, as she had every night since her arrival. Though the guilt of being unable to help her mother in the most basic of ways cut deep, she nevertheless sang along with them.
Some of the other women joined in, forming a choir of resilience that pricked Callie’s eyes anew. The Daughters may have shackled her body and stolen her words, but they could not cow her spirit. As Callie gave herself over to the rush of their music, she began to devise a plan.
Chapter 16
Sister Nora met them at the gates to the compound. The twin pearls of her eyes glared at them from behind a mask of iron filigree. Tim could just discern the outline of her heart-shaped face beyond the dense metal mesh of the gate door, her white uniform disappearing the rest of her body at the neck. This floating-head effect ratcheted his already taut-strung nerves all the tighter. He pressed his arm to his side to remind himself of the presence of his truncheon, hidden in the inseam of his coat. Tim couldn’t imagine any scenario that would prompt him to strike a woman, but if he’d learnt anything in his seven months with the Berkeley Square team, it was to be prepared for anything.
If only the Daughters themselves weren’t still such unknown quantities. Tim felt the pinch of his limited resources as he searched the unrelenting stare locked with his for a sign of... what? Humanity? Hesitation? He’d curried no favor with Sister Nora from the start, and now that he’d been identified as an enemy to the cause, her bashful discipline had turned into righteous rage. Another unintended consequence of Hiero’s little disappearing act—the box’s theft had radicalized her.
“Good day to you, Daughter.”
She blinked, unmoved. “Do you have it?”
Not even a foot in the door, Tim thought as he raised the black rectangle into view.
“And its contents?”
“Intact.” Tim assayed a baleful chuckle. “We haven’t been able to open it.”
He got the distinct impression she’d raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
“Go to the visitors’ chapel.” She disappeared from view.
Tim cursed under his breath, waited until the brick wall hid him before consulting Han, who lurked there.
“Can it still be done?” Tim asked.
“Perhaps under cover of night. In the light of day, even in such gloomy climes...” Han shook his head. “I’d chance it if there was a window.”
“Blocked.” They’d planned to relieve Sister Nora of her set of keys with the old trip-and-pick routine on the way to Sister Juliet’s office. The change of venue concerned Tim for more reasons than one, but he’d admit to being a little relieved. His touch was not nearly as light-fingered as that of Han or Hiero. “There’s nothing for it. We’ll have to return to fight another day.”
“You won’t meet with them?”
“Certainly I will. Though I fear they have no intention of surrendering Callie or Miss Kala.”
A pinch to the center of his chest reminded him of Hiero’s warning from the other day about the Daughters’ infinite reserve of patience. And of Hiero himself, who, now Tim’s anger had cooled, he wished had accompanied them. They could, if nothing else, have used his gift of persuasion.
“So we’re left with an impossible choice.” Han pressed the flat of his knuckles against the brick as a concession to his need to punch something. “If I sneak onto the compound to search for them, I leave you at risk. If I
accompany you, we lose our only chance to rescue them.”
Tim chuckled mirthlessly. “I am quite capable of handling myself, I assure you.”
“We’re blind to their numbers. Enough of them could overwhelm you.”
“I’m as proud as any man, but I’m not above fleeing.”
Han scoffed, dragged his knuckles down the wall. “He’ll never forgive me if any harm comes to you.”
“Then perhaps he should have thought twice before abandoning his charges and running riot over our plans.”
Han sighed in what Tim pretended was reluctant agreement.
“Find them. That’s an order.”
Han nodded, clapping him on the back in solidarity before jogging off around to the far side of the compound. Tim whistled Angus over, apprising him of their changed plans and conferring him the box for safekeeping. He’d wait to see what stakes the Daughters raised before betting the only chip he had. He watched as Angus shifted the carriage into getaway position. His ever-busy mind assessed and recalculated the dangers to them all. The unknown variables burrowed under his skin, an itch he could never find to scratch.
The Daughters had been quick to connect him to Hiero. Had Callie or Miss Kala been tortured into a confession? Or had they somehow given themselves away by Hiero insisting they be allowed to investigate together? Another black mark on his not altogether spotty record. An unexplored aspect of the case was Sister Juliet’s societal ties. She’d obtained Tim’s home address from somewhere. Could that source also have shown her the recent headlines trumpeting Hiero’s string of successes, which listed Tim as an associate? Could something as trivial as their growing renown cost Callie or Miss Kala her life?
Tim shoved those black thoughts out of his head, straightened his posture, and strode toward the chapel doors, determined to wrestle this investigation into submission no matter how monstrous it had grown.
In stark contrast to his first visit, with its inviting candle glow and trio of welcoming women, the empty chapel rung with the anticipatory silence of a pebble down a well. Tim’s footfalls echoed as he walked down the center aisle toward the abstract of the Messiah. As a backdrop to Sister Juliet’s preaching, the warm tones of the painting divinified her withy stature and water-sprite looks. Absent the otherworldly beams of sunlight from well-placed windows and the golden flicker of candle flames, its umbers and vermilions conjured a different image, more Dante’s inferno than paradise lost. Only by suffering the fires of hell was Eve reborn into heavenly light.
A deep sense of foreboding sank into Tim’s gut as the rear door cracked open.
Inch by inch
Bit by bit
Work your way
Out of it
The childhood poem had looped itself through Callie’s mind for so many hours she’d knit herself a mental scarf. Or perhaps a shield. Not that a woolen shield would prove useful as anything other than a tea cozy. Though in point of fact, anything woolen would have improved upon the thin white uniform the Daughters favored, a linen shroud that little withstood the dirty, frigid damp of being entombed in their cellar. They had found time to throw it over Callie’s shirt and trousers while she was unconscious, though whether for propriety’s sake or to safeguard against the other girls harboring such revolutionary thoughts, she could not say.
Regardless, it complicated the task of retrieving her MAS revolver, bound around her left calf. The fingertips of her left hand, if she pulled the shackle toward her body, just dusted the uniform’s fabric. And so she had been working, inch by inch, bit by bit, to drag her skirt up high enough to bend her leg back against her chest. A stupid twist of luck had prompted the Daughters to forget to cuff her ankles. If Callie could worm her way down far enough, she’d be able to reach her left leg with her right hand and unleash her revolver. Then came the chancy work of firing at the chain that restrained her opposite wrist. Likely as not to lose her a finger or two, but what was an escape plan without risk?
Once the singing had faded out, a tranquil hush had fallen over their cell. The distressed had been soothed, but the quiet spiked Callie’s blood. Though she normally treasured time to herself, this enforced solitude, this loneliness amidst a voiceless crowd, fired her rage. She’d quaked with too much unspent energy to succeed at any of her initial plans.
An attempt to communicate with Miss Kala via Morse code had resulted in a lot of indecipherable grunting. She’d tried to swing herself upright by wriggling her feet beneath her buttocks. That gave her pins and needles and a wrenched ankle. In a fit of needing to do something, she’d kicked wildly at her opposite wrist, never making contact. For five crazed minutes, she’d sought to break the rusty bridle apart by slamming her head against the back wall. That brilliant maneuver won her a blistering headache and possibly a cracked tooth.
So the revolver. Fingers numbed with cold barely registered the drag of the fabric. She lifted her head every so often to measure her progress, the weight of the scold’s bridle too much to maintain. The hem had just slunk above her knees. Callie considered making a fist to restore some sensation to her fingers, but there was no predicting when one of the Daughters might check on them and dash all of her efforts. Or worse, spot the abnormal bulge around her calf.
Fighting through her shivers, Callie resumed the meditative breathing Han had taught her. Wove the threads of her addled mind into a knot of purpose. Imagined what it would be like to palm her revolver—the bite of the steel, the click of the safety, the resistance of the trigger until...
A nightmarish figure craned over her, claws out. Callie shrieked.
Until she recognized the inky whorls of hair spilling out between the bars of the bridle. Miss Kala blew out a breath that would have shushed her, were it not for the metal tong suppressing her tongue. She petted Callie’s shoulder with bloody hands—blast, she’d somehow squeezed them out. It took Callie far too long to guess that she gestured for a hairpin. The relief that had flooded into her as soon as she recognized Miss Kala froze anew. The all-seeing Daughters had predicted they’d attempt just such an escape and loosed the pins from their hair.
Desperation choked her. Miss Kala’s hand signals grew frantic; the cage that imprisoned her head rattled around as she searched the room. With a commanding grunt, Callie seized her attention. Hissing a curse into the metal bit, she lifted her left leg. She couldn’t tell if Miss Kala’s squeak was of relief or intimidation as she grabbed for Callie’s revolver.
Callie wished she could call upon the Mother’s grace as Miss Kala tore the gun free.
Hiero mashed the last of his cigarette under his boot as he considered the ivy-strewn garden gate. Like the front entrance, it spanned the entire gap in the perimeter wall, with not a fissure of space to peek through. No outer lock marred its uniform surface. Given his former acolytes were stationed around the compound and might at that very moment be reporting his presence to Han, there wasn’t a second to waste.
However. He had misremembered the height and lack of footholds. And possibly his climbing abilities. He’d also never seen the gate from this side. His infiltration plan had seemed so clever and easy in the comfort of his study. On-site, Hiero became aware of its limitations. As well as his own.
Undaunted, he took a running leap at the door... only to crash into it and thump hard on the ground.
Sobering. After assessing the damage to his posterior, Hiero lurched back up to his feet. He confronted the gate anew. The seamless posts fanned in and out of an inner panel. Attempting to squeeze the toe of his shoe on the thin bottom edge, Hiero tested the balance with a little hop...
... and bashed his face into the door as he fell. Pressing the back of his fingers to his throbbing cheek, Hiero scowled at the latch-less gate, the frail filaments of ivy, his lack of foresight in not mentioning the box to Kip, at the preposterousness of the entire situation and his state of exile. His efforts had rattled the door such that any Daughters behind would be forgiven for expecting an angry mob of villagers. Hiero recalled the
comforts—and open bar—of the local inn. He had walked—walked!—from the train station, which was surely a credit in his favor.
With a shudder and a click, the gate creaked open. Amos Scaggs poked his head out, scanning the area until he saw Hiero. He cradled a tiny piglet in his hands, which he fed from a bottle of milk. Hiero steepled his hands as if in prayer and shined him his most beatific smile.
“’Ullo, Father. Where’s your dress?”
“Hmm? Oh, you mean my cassock.” Hiero wondered if he should dizzy him with a labyrinthine explanation or tell him a simple lie. Remembering Amos’s particular view of the world, he chose the latter. “It’s in the wash.”
“Merry says the creepers scared you away.”
Hiero didn’t care to admit how close he was to the truth.
“They did. But since they only come at night, I can be here during the day.”
“They scare me. I want to leave at night.”
“Then perhaps tonight you can come with me to the inn.”
“They have nice pies.” He pitched his voice to a loud whisper. “Better than Merry makes, but don’t say.”
“It’s my job to keep secrets.”
“Right!” Amos laughed with such force his breath billowed Hiero’s hair. He stopped abruptly, shot Hiero a quizzical look. “What you doing out there? Come in.”
Hiero hastened through the door into an empty garden. Not even the farm animals had been let out of their roost or barn. Even with the primordial stench of the compost heap befouling his senses, Hiero couldn’t help but be struck anew by its lush beauty. A dark sort of magic had cursed the place, but if they could break the spell... well, there was nothing but bounty here.
“Where is everyone?” Hiero asked, veering toward the main path until he realized Amos had not followed. He turned back in time to see how he worked the door lock mechanism, not such a simple feat when holding a small pig.