A Golden Fury

by Samantha Cohoe

  “Ah, Theo-see-bee-ya,” she said, pronouncing it carefully and wrong. “I have been reading. Berit, you may go.”

  The older woman rose silently from the piano bench and slipped out of the room through an inner door. Martin turned toward the door we’d entered through, but Rahel stopped him.

  “No, Martin,” she said. “You will stay.”

  I didn’t look at him. I didn’t have to, to picture the look on his face.

  “So, as I said, I have been reading,” Rahel said. “And I came across a passage that reminded me of you.”

  She lifted the book so I could just make out the cover. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

  “Women are everywhere in this deplorable state,” she read in English. “Men have various employments and pursuits which engage their attention; but women, confined to one—that is, the art of pleasing men—seldom extend their views beyond the triumph of the hour. But was their understanding once emancipated from the slavery to which the sensuality of man and their short-sighted desire has subjected them, we should probably read of their weakness with surprise…”

  Rahel trailed off, gazing meditatively at me.

  “It made me think of you, Theo-see-bee-ya,” she said, reverting to German. “I thought to myself, I have an example of such a woman as Miss Wollstonecraft would like to see. You were not raised with a view to pleasing men. You were given employments, pursuits beyond the cultivation of your beauty, even if those pursuits were … well … of questionable value. And I should indeed be surprised to hear you called ‘weak.’ And yet…” She shook her head sadly.

  “And yet what?” I snapped. My patience was frayed. Had I been brought here, subjected to abuse and threats, just to listen to Rahel express her disappointment in my character?

  “And yet you fall victim to a worthless man with a handsome face just as easily as any other girl,” she said. “I should not like to think Miss Wollstonecraft is wrong. Yet here you are, forced into servitude out of nothing but misplaced devotion.”

  “I am sorry to have disappointed you,” I said coldly.

  “Help me understand, Theosebeia,” she said. “How does a young woman such as yourself choose to throw herself away on a man? If you were not raised to it, then are we as a sex simply doomed to this foolishness? Perhaps Rousseau is right, and we should accept it as our nature. Fashion ourselves into pleasing playthings.”

  “I do not think so.”

  “Something must have gone wrong,” said Rahel. “You were lonely, perhaps? Or simply so sheltered and innocent that you did not recognize a scoundrel when you saw one.”

  “Will is not a scoundrel,” I said.

  “If it was that, there is no easy cure,” said Rahel. “Except, I suppose, more experience with scoundrels.”

  She glanced to the door, where Martin stood. I sat straighter in my chair and gripped the arms.

  “That isn’t necessary,” I said. “I am perfectly aware of the failings of men.”

  “My dear, you misunderstand me,” said Rahel.

  “I understand that you are threatening me,” I said. “Though I do not understand why.”

  “I do not threaten you,” said Rahel with a dismissive flick of her fingers.

  “If you dislike scoundrels so much, why do you employ him?” I didn’t need to point to Martin. Rahel knew who I meant. Her eyes lit up as though I had asked exactly the question she had hoped for.

  “Because I know the use of scoundrels,” she said, bending toward me. “They are to be employed, as you say, channeled. If you had some purpose for Will, I could not fault you for your association with him. But instead, he makes use of you. You suffer for him. And you will get nothing for it. Nothing.”

  Her voice was rising, and so was my pulse. I did not have to understand her anger to know it was dangerous.

  “So what use is it to threaten you? You submit to worse than what Martin could do to you, and yet you submit to it willingly.”

  “Tell me, then.” My knuckles whitened against the arms of the chair, but I kept my voice calm. “You bring me in here to chide or punish me for believing in Will, but you won’t tell me why I shouldn’t. Tell me—stop me, if you can. Or don’t tell me, and let me be.”

  Rahel’s hot look turned cold. She placed a hand on top of her splayed-open book and curled her fingers against it.

  “I want only to understand you, Theosebeia,” she said. “But it seems you don’t wish to understand yourself.”

  A retort sprung to my lips, and then another one, but I kept them both back. I knew what she wanted to hear, but I would not tell her that I believed Will a scoundrel, that he was not worthy of my love. And she would not, perhaps could not, tell me why she wished me to believe it.

  There was a loud knock at the door. Martin opened it, revealing Valentin.

  “Excuse me, Fräulein, but I must take Miss Hope back to her work. The composition is smoking.”

  I bolted up from my chair and went to the door. Martin stepped forward and placed a hand against my shoulder to halt me. I flinched away.

  “The Fräulein has not dismissed you,” he said.

  “Oh, let her go,” said Rahel. “We wouldn’t want her precious composition to catch fire. It might burn up the library.”

  I pushed past Martin and hurried out of the room. When Valentin shut the door behind us, I allowed myself to shudder.

  I walked quickly, Valentin following after me.

  “What did you do to the composition?” I asked sharply. “It shouldn’t be smoking.”

  “It isn’t,” said Valentin.

  I stopped, glancing at him in question. “You lied to Rahel?”

  “I thought it was time to collect you,” he said simply.

  Once we returned to the library, I resumed my place by the fire, and Valentin his chair. He looked at me with a carefully blank expression.

  “What did she want?” Valentin asked.

  I considered this. “To inspire me to discover whatever it is that neither of you will tell me,” I said, and then sighed. “Or perhaps merely to toy with me.”

  Valentin frowned and said nothing. I went back to work, pushing this new fear to the back of my mind, where it joined the others.

  I worked as long and as attentively as I could, until I was wrung out, exhausted, and slightly sick. Valentin left to bring me food and I sank into the tall armchair where Will had sat, tortured and trembling. I tried to push that image away as I pushed away Mother’s voice, and to remember him as he’d been in France, hale and handsome and happy. Full of dreams and plans and ideas. There had always been so much to talk about. Not just alchemy, but what alchemy could be for. He had read all the scientific texts, and other books my mother never bothered with. Philosophy, politics, literature. I didn’t know, until Will showed me, that I would love reading Rousseau and Voltaire, dissecting their arguments, debating their merits with him. He understood my world completely. But more than that, he expanded it. I tried to remember that feeling of horizons widening. Of finding that the world was bigger than I knew, and that I wasn’t alone in it.

  Will had given me that once. But here in this room, it was contracting again. All I could find in myself was fear and anger and suspicion.

  I didn’t want to suspect him. It felt like giving Rahel a victory, to let her hatred plant seeds of doubt in my heart. And yet something had caused her hatred. Will had, somehow.

  I had to know. Even if it meant admitting my doubts. Even if it meant doing what Rahel certainly wanted me to do.

  Valentin brought me a tray of food and examined the slowly melting mixture in the brazier.

  “Is this how it is meant to look?” he asked.

  I nodded, then examined my dinner with distaste. The tray contained several boiled eggs sliced and slathered with mustard, some sort of pickled cabbage, two pieces of rye bread, and a cup of tea.

  “Somehow I do not imagine this is what Rahel had for dinner,” I said.

  “Fräulein Rahel did not
dine in this evening,” said Valentin. “I assure you the rest of us ate no better than you.”

  The sour scent of the cabbage turned my already sour stomach. I had gone too long without eating, but for a moment I considered refusing the tray. Valentin heaved a sigh and leaned over me. He picked up a fork and scraped some of the cabbage onto the bread, then placed the slices of egg on top. He set the fork back down on my plate. I looked at it.

  You could pick it up, said my mother’s voice. Stab him in the eye.

  “Here,” he said. “It’s best like this.”

  I looked from the fork to Valentin, pictured myself striking. He would be so surprised.

  I shook myself. It was a pointless thing to do, and anyway, the food did look a little more appetizing now that he had piled it up. I took a tentative bite, and was surprised to find that I enjoyed it.

  “Thank you,” I said to Valentin, and regretted it at once. I did not owe my captor gratitude for providing me with edible food, even if I did feel slightly guilty for thinking about blinding him. But he accepted the thanks before I could think how to retract them.

  “You’re welcome.” Valentin sat in a wooden chair across from me, watching blank-faced while I ate. Whatever discomfort it gave him to see me in the black-haired girl’s dress, he seemed to have overcome it. I took another bite, and then another before the last was swallowed. The bread had a rich, tangy flavor. I finished it quickly and started piling the remaining cabbage and eggs on the other piece of bread.

  “I have to see Will,” I said when I had swallowed my food. “You may bring him here, or bring me to him.”

  Valentin snorted.

  “Somehow you have become convinced that I do your bidding, when it is the other way around.”

  “If I can’t see Will, I’ll stop,” I said. It was not a threat, but a fact, and one outside my control. Valentin’s mouth twitched. He seemed to see it.

  “If you require persuasion, we could bring your other friend here. The one who still has fingernails that he does not need.”

  It was a bluff, but a chilling one.

  “Surely it would be easier to let me speak to Will than to torture Dominic,” I said. “Dominic owes no debt to your Burggraf. You have no right to hurt him.”

  Valentin’s eyes flashed their agreement even while the rest of him remained still.

  “Perhaps you would do it anyway, but you wouldn’t enjoy it,” I said, testing a theory. “Though you didn’t mind torturing Will at all.”

  No one but you would mind torturing Will, said my mother.

  I shook her out of my head again.

  One corner of Valentin’s mouth twitched up. Far from minding my attempt to pry into his mind, he approved it.

  “Not quite right,” he said. “I did not think I would mind torturing William Percy. But in the end I found there is no pleasure in hurting a defenseless man, no matter how much he may deserve it.”

  “You can’t help yourself, can you?” I asked. “Whatever it is you think Will has done, you want me to know what it is. And yet, you also don’t. You and Rahel both. Why?” He didn’t answer, so I continued, thinking out loud. “It’s because you want me to continue with the work, isn’t it? You were hired to find Will and make him fulfill his debt, and you feel obliged to do your duty. And you think whatever you are hiding might turn me against Will, don’t you? You think I would stop loving him, and leave him to his fate if I knew. If I knew … what?”

  His eyes flicked down, I thought, to my chest. But they continued moving down my bodice, over to the sleeves. He was looking at my dress. At the dark-haired girl’s dress.

  “The Burggraf has another daughter, doesn’t he?”

  Valentin sat quietly for a moment. Whatever struggle there might have been in his mind did not show on his face, except for a forced blankness there. Finally he stood.

  “You may speak with Percy,” he said.

  I stood as well. I set aside the tray and brushed my hands on the sprigged dress.

  “Tell me her name,” I said.

  Valentin held the door for me in silence, and we proceeded up yet another flight of stairs. These were at the back of the house, hidden behind a low door. The fourth floor was little more than an attic: cramped, low-ceilinged, and drafty. These were servants’ quarters, unadorned and markedly colder than the lower floors. We stopped in front of the narrowest door at the end of the corridor.

  “Ada,” said Valentin.

  I didn’t understand at first. I thought perhaps he had begun to say something in German, and stopped. Then I realized he was answering my question. Ada was a name. It was the dark-haired girl’s name.

  “Ada,” I said again, pronouncing it with a soft “A” sound, as he did. It sounded childish with that accent, like baby babble. One might think my own preposterous name would have taught me to be forgiving of the names of others, but no. I felt a stirring of entirely undeserved hostility. I did not like Ada. I did not like her silly name or her ribbons or her girlish, gilded bedroom. I did not like the reverent way that Valentin said her name, and I could not stand—would not stand—the thought that Will might have something to do with her.

  “Thank you,” I said to Valentin, and ducked into the room.

  It was colder than the hallway. I drew my arms across my chest and turned to berate Valentin for keeping Will in this frigid space, but he had shut the door behind me. Will lay on a narrow bunk under a small window, wrapped in blankets and facing the wall. The room was not much bigger than a closet, and I crossed it in two steps. I knelt beside Will and put my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t stir. I shook him, then without waiting touched his face—cold—and then in a panic began to feel at his throat. Before I could find a pulse, his eyes snapped open and his hand found mine. He turned toward me, stifling a cough that shuddered through his body.

  “They are trying to kill you, keeping you in here,” I said with fury. “I will tell Valentin that this is unacceptable.”

  Will pushed himself upright, and his eyes kindling with happiness to see me were the warmest things in the room. I pulled my hand away and seized the blankets that fell off him as he rose. I draped them over his shoulders and tucked them snugly around him, covering his tortured, bandaged hand. I didn’t want to see it.

  “I didn’t think they would let me see you,” he said, still smiling at me in a sleepy way. His eyes caught on my dress and flashed alarm. My stomach clenched.

  “What is that ridiculous thing you’re wearing?” he asked. “Why have they dressed you like this? Are they trying to freeze you to death, too? Here—”

  He took one of the blankets and clumsily wrapped it around me with his one good hand. He put his arm around me, pulling me close beside him on the bed. In spite of myself, I leaned my head against his chest. I closed my eyes for a moment. There was something indefinable about his scent that hadn’t changed, that still smelled like home. Like something to hold on to.

  “There’s no one like you, Bee,” he said. “No one in the world but you is brave enough, or brilliant enough to do this.”

  My breath came rough. I didn’t want to be brave. I wanted to be safe and happy with him. Away from here, away from all these ugly doubts.

  “I don’t feel brave,” I said instead.

  “You probably don’t feel brilliant, either. Or at least not as brilliant as you are.”

  If I were truly brilliant, I would have thought of a way out of this that didn’t involve losing my mind while Will tried not to die in this attic. But I didn’t say that, either.

  “It’s her fault, you know,” he said. The fingers of his good hand moved on my arm under the blanket. They were cold, but they were his. My skin pricked at the touch. I wasn’t sure who he meant. My mind flicked, unwillingly, to Ada. “I hated the way she would talk to you. I should have done more to contradict her. I thought about that constantly after she threw me out.”

  Ah. He meant my mother.

  “You did contradict her.” I’d been shocked th
e first time he stood up to her for me. No one else had ever done anything like it, not even the Comte. “That was the real reason she threw you out, in the end.”

  “I was afraid she might turn on you after I left, be even worse to you.”

  I was quiet. She had turned. Suddenly I had become a thing outside of her, someone whose mind and desires were different from her own. She said things I would never forget. She left memories that still seared at their touch.

  And you did not? she said. Do you think you hurt me any less than I hurt you?

  I closed my eyes tighter. I pushed down the panic that flared in me at the implications of hearing her voice. I heard Will’s heart beating fast, felt the faint warmth of his chest. I sank into it and stilled my mind.

  “You were too full of things for her. Too much life, too much love. Marguerite couldn’t stand for you to love anything but alchemy and her. She would have kept you her captive forever if she could have. And I can’t say I blame her.”

  “You can’t?”

  “Not for that,” said Will. “Not for wanting to keep you all to herself, or for being afraid to lose you. I might do the same if you let me. I missed you more than I would have believed, Bee.”

  “I think I missed you more,” I said.

  “Not possible.” His lips brushed my forehead.

  “I was alone with her.” I wanted to sound calm, but a slight tremor in my voice betrayed me. “You weren’t alone at all.”

  Will’s hand went still on my arm. His shallow breath caught in his chest.

  “Tell me about Ada,” I said.

  Will let out his breath in a long, slow sigh. He coughed, but not violently.

  “I wondered if they might say something about that,” he said. “I thought perhaps not, but that Prussian brute was always half mad where she was concerned.”

  He sounded calm. I let his calm wind its way into me. There was an explanation, of course. He would tell me, and we would both sigh at the unfairness and folly of other people.