A Golden Fury

by Samantha Cohoe

  He lunged for me, but I was quicker than he was. I charged on Rahel, flipped her around, my arm across her chest, and put my knife to her neck.

  “HALT!” I screamed. Martin swung his knife at Will. I screamed again in wordless horror, but Will dodged the blow. He threw himself to the side, lost his balance, and sprawled on the floor in front of the fire.

  “HALT ODER SIE STIRBT!”

  Stop or she dies. Martin stopped. If my howl of rage hadn’t convinced him, then Rahel’s strangled groan must have. I stood a head taller than her. From the corner of my eye, I saw a thin trickle of red on her neck. The knife I held was very sharp.

  “Thea,” said Valentin, holding his hands out as though approaching a wild horse. “Be careful, Thea. I know you do not want to hurt her.”

  “You’re right.” My breath came quickly, but I kept my voice steady. “But if any of you touch Will, I’ll do it anyway.”

  There was a moment of tense silence, broken by Will, coughing from the floor. Karl, the big, slow man whose knife I held, whose throat I had slashed, was frantically and wordlessly wrapping cloth from his shirt around his neck. A small part of me was relieved to see that I hadn’t cut deep enough to sever his windpipe or hit an artery. Rahel squirmed under my arm, and I sank my knife just a little deeper into her skin. She went suddenly and completely still, but this time she made no sound.

  “Don’t,” gasped Valentin. “Be careful! You’re close to the vein!”

  I knew that. I had to be, to keep her frightened and still. I fought to keep my hand steady. I was as afraid of what I might have to do as Valentin was.

  “You leave. You and the other men with you.” He hesitated. “Now!” I screamed.

  “Yes, yes, we’re going,” he said. “Karl, Martin—lass uns gehen.”

  The men obeyed without hesitation. Valentin backed toward the door, then paused for a moment at the threshold.

  “What will you do?” he asked me.

  “What I earned,” I spat. “Get out.”

  With a last, worried look at Rahel, he backed out the door and shut it behind him.

  “Lock it,” I said to Will. He pulled himself to his feet, coughing into his arm, and did as I said. Then he pulled over a chair and tilted it under the doorknob. When that was done, I lowered the knife and pushed Rahel toward the armchair in the corner. She staggered, then sank into it, pulling out a handkerchief and pressing it to her neck.

  I put a hand over my heart, where the Stone still throbbed. It wasn’t finished. It had paused during the fighting, somehow knowing I could not attend. But now that my pulse was slowing, fingers of warmth started to spread through me again.

  “What’s the plan, Bee?” said Will. “We can’t hold them back forever.”

  “It’s almost finished,” I said, my voice coming out a whisper. “Then I cure you, cure Dominic, and we leave.”

  Will nodded slowly. He coughed into his arm again, and brought it away bloody.

  “Sounds good to me,” he said. “Though I don’t see how the last part is going to work. We’re dead the minute you let her go.”

  “You’re dead,” Rahel snapped at Will. “I have no quarrel with her.”

  “A quarrel with Will is a quarrel with me,” I said.

  “Then you are much stupider than you look. Why would an intelligent young woman want to take all the quarrels of a worthless rogue? Why claim so many enemies you need not have? For him?”

  Rahel spat toward Will. He was standing warily, far enough away that it did not reach him.

  The Stone had paused again, and I felt the warmth begin to retract.

  “Be quiet,” I said to Rahel. I needed my mind clear for this to work, I could tell. And Rahel’s venom toward Will distracted me. It started a buzz of worry in the back of my mind that I couldn’t easily push aside.

  “I thought you must not have known what he did, but Valentin told me that you do, that you choose him anyway.” She winced slightly and pressed the handkerchief harder against her neck. “Even when you read the letters. How you could forgive such treachery, I do not know.”

  “Letters?” I asked, in spite of myself. My pulse began to speed up. “What are you talking about? What letters?”

  “We don’t have time for this, Bee,” said Will.

  “The letters between them. My poor little fool of a sister and your precious Will,” said Rahel. “All his lies, his broken promises. I left them in the letter box in Ada’s room and instructed Valentin to keep you there. But … don’t tell me!” She peered at me, her mouth half open. “You did not read them! But you must have seen the letter box! I left it there in the vanity!”

  Of course I had seen it, and some part of me had recognized it for the trap it was.

  “I am not in the habit of invading the private correspondence of others,” I said.

  But I couldn’t stop myself now. I looked at Will, and I couldn’t pretend he didn’t look frightened.

  “Bee.” There was an edge of desperation in his voice. “She is a liar. I don’t know what she thinks she has. She must have written the letters, forged my handwriting—”

  Rahel leaned toward me, her full, parted lips curving into a malicious smile.

  “You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know he seduced her?”

  “I know you believe that.” I meant to sound defiant, but I didn’t fool any of us.

  “Ah, let me guess his story. He scorned her advances, and she lied to us all? Turned my father against him?” My expression betrayed me, and she laughed. “Tell me, then, how did he explain the baby?”

  “Baby?” asked Will, with an attempt at scorn. “What baby?”

  “Yours, you spineless creature.” Rahel’s joyless smile disappeared, and her face burned with rage again.

  Will’s pale face paled even more, but he turned to me. He reached for my hand, and when I pulled it back he met my eyes and held them instead. “She’s lying, Bee. If Ada is with child, it isn’t mine. It can’t be. I swear it.”

  Rahel laughed scornfully. “And you believe that?”

  I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to. I searched his beautiful eyes and saw the same man I had always seen, the one who loved me, the one who knew me. The only one I could trust.

  There is only one way to keep a man from betraying your trust, said my mother’s voice. Don’t give it to him.

  I tore my eyes from Will’s. “I want to see the letters,” I said to Rahel.

  “Clever girl,” she said.

  “Bee!” cried Will. I steeled myself against the hurt in his voice. If he had told the truth, he would forgive me for wanting proof. But if he had lied to me, I might not be able to forgive myself.

  “Get up,” I said to Rahel. She obeyed. I went to the door.

  “Valentin,” I called. “I know you’re there.”

  There was a short silence. Then, Valentin’s voice. “Yes?”

  “You and your men, go outside to the gate. I must be able to see each of you from the window in five minutes, or I’ll start cutting off the Fräulein’s fingers.”

  Quick, hard bootsteps echoed down the hall, and at a glance from me Will went to the window to look.

  “I see Valentin,” he said. “The two who were up here. And more … three more.”

  I tried to make a mental tally of the men I knew Valentin had here. I was certain I had never seen more than six together, including Valentin. I couldn’t be certain there were not more, but this would have to do.

  I took Rahel by the arm and held my knife to her throat again, then nodded at Will.

  “They could have left someone,” he said. “They could run back in the moment we leave this room.”

  “I know.” I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m sorry. I have to know.”

  “You do know,” he said. “You know me.”

  “I think I do. I have to be sure.”

  His shoulders sank, and without looking at his face I could picture the pain there. He moved the chair and opened the door.


  We went down the hall and stairway as quickly as we could. No one jumped out at us. We heard no pounding of soldiers’ feet as we went. Once inside Ada’s room, I shoved Rahel toward the bed and Will and I pushed the wardrobe in front of the door with great effort. There was no lock from the inside, so the heaviest furniture would have to do.

  “They could lock us in,” Will observed.

  “With Rahel?” I shook my head. “I doubt it.”

  Still, the idea made me feel sick. I’d hated this room before, and now that my mind swam with nauseous images of Will and Ada embracing, I wanted to tear it apart, make kindling of the furniture. Rahel sat primly on the edge of her sister’s bed, and from the sour, sucked-in look on her face I suspected she was fighting the same mental pictures. She tilted her head at me and nodded to the vanity. I went toward it. Dread slowed my movements, turning my feet to lead.

  “Bee, please.” The sadness in his voice wrung my heart. “Can’t you simply trust me?”

  I opened the vanity, took the box out and pulled it toward me with both hands, and stared at it. I hesitated a moment. I tried to measure my fear and dread against my hope—hope that whatever Rahel had cooked up would not convince me, that I would find a way to prove it a lie. The Stone’s pulsing ebbed low against my breast, waiting, I knew, until I had room for it in my heart.

  I opened the box and saw the first letter on the top. It had been folded backward so that the writing faced out instead of in. No doubt this was Rahel’s work, and no doubt she had left the letter she considered most damning on top. I hadn’t expected that. I had expected one final step, that of picking up the letter and opening it. One last chance to change my mind, to decide not to know. Too late now. I read, my vision blurring with tears.

  My dear Ada,

  I think of nothing but you. You said, when you left me alone in bed, that you were afraid I might forget you, now that I have had what I wanted from you. I do not remember what I said, but I know it was not enough, because I could never deny that falsehood enough. Sweet Ada, how can you think one night is all I want from you? How could one taste of your love be enough for me, when you are everything? You are my world now, a world as vast as the universe, but which contains only you and I. It is just the opposite of what you feared. I can never have enough of you.

  There was more, but I tore my eyes away.

  “Bee—it isn’t—”

  “Don’t,” I said quietly. I wiped away my tears. “I know your hand, Will, even in German. How could I not, after all the hours I spent poring over your letters? You write such beautiful letters.”

  I crushed the paper in my hand. I carefully closed the lid of the box.

  “You don’t want to read the rest?” Rahel asked. “There are plenty more, all of them just as lovely.”

  “Bee,” he said. A cold blankness carpeted my mind, and I forced myself to look at his face. I was almost curious what he might say.

  “It didn’t mean anything to me.”

  “You’re a liar, then. Clearly you made her believe that it did.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I lied to her. What else could I do? She threw herself at me, she was mad for me. I thought if I didn’t do as she wanted she would tell lies about me—”

  “Oh, stop,” I said. My curiosity was gone, overwhelmed by disgust. “Please stop. Is this what you think of me? This is what you think I want to hear? I would rather discover that you really did love her than believe you were such a craven, lying—”

  My voice caught. All I could feel was fury, and yet I seemed to be on the verge of sobbing.

  “Call back my men, Miss Hope,” said Rahel from the bed. “They will let you heal yourself and your apprentice friend. And I will make it so this worm can never ruin another innocent girl.”

  I shook my head slowly, but even as I did, I heard Valentin’s voice from the door.

  “Thea,” he said. “Let us in, please. We won’t hurt you. There’s someone at the gate. I think—I think it might be—”

  “Who?” demanded Rahel.

  “It’s Vellacott. He brought the police.”

  Rahel swore in German.

  More boot-falls. I took a step toward the window and saw the gate swinging wide. The police ran through, into the house.

  Will stepped toward me, then folded into a fit of coughing. It was a powerful one, shaking his whole body. He staggered, his arm out. On an instinct, I took his arm and he fell into me. His head and hands were on my shoulder and chest before I came to myself and pushed him back. He staggered toward the window. I reached for him, but shock had dulled my reflexes. He slipped out of my arms, clutching something in his hand. The window was open. He threw himself out of it.

  “Nein!” screamed Rahel. “Valentin!”

  I ran to the window. Will was climbing down the trellis underneath more quickly than I would have thought he could. His feet knew the places that held. Of course they did. He had climbed up and down that way before. He dropped to the bottom.

  Rahel pushed me out of her way and screamed from the window. I watched Will stagger to the gate and mount a horse tethered there. I was frozen in place. Broken. My chest was caved in, a cold sucking wound in the place where my heart had been.

  No—the cold, sucking wound was in the place where the Stone had been. Will had taken the Stone.

  The door splintered, caving over the wardrobe that no one had moved out of the way. Valentin climbed through and pulled Rahel away from the window, away from me.

  I started to sway and reached out to hold the window frame. I stared at the gate Will had vanished through, wondering where he could have gone. It seemed a long time before two of Valentin’s men ran into view, starting toward the gate, after Will. But they were stopped by two policemen. The Prussians shouted at them, pointing after Will, but it seemed the police did not speak German. They took the Prussians firmly by the arms and escorted them back into the house.

  Will was getting away. I felt the Stone’s distance from me growing, and as it grew so did a strange panic inside me. I wanted to jump out the window after him, but I could not move my limbs. Everything in me screamed for the Stone, like a mother might for a kidnapped child.

  “Thea!”

  My name rang up the stairs and through the hall. Someone was looking for me. I found I didn’t much care who. Still, I managed to pull my wits together and look around myself. The room was empty. Rahel and Valentin had left, perhaps to set after Will. I had to do the same. I put one foot in front of the other—a simple action that required a herculean effort—and immediately lost my balance. I staggered toward the bed and grabbed its post.

  “Thea!” It was my father’s voice, closer now. In another moment he appeared in the doorway.

  “Thea!” He ran to me and put his hand on my arm. “Are you hurt? Are you—?”

  Mad? Was I? I closed my eyes and tried to take stock of my body and mind. I was full of cold and panic, but not because the madness pulled at me. I couldn’t feel that chasm, the danger of falling. All I felt was the Stone—or rather the absence of it. And that feeling was stronger every moment. I opened my eyes. My vision blurred, but not with the yellow mist from before, only with tears. And at this moment, crying was the sanest thing for me to do.

  A sob escaped me.

  “Oh, my poor child,” said my father. The sympathy in his voice broke what was left of my control. I let him pull me into his arms, where I sobbed into his chest.

  17

  We left London. We left the house, the Germans, the mess Will had left behind. We spoke to the police before we went, but they did not hold us.

  We left Dominic.

  That had been the worst of it all. I watched as Valentin negotiated with the police for Dominic. They argued. Money changed hands. Graf Ludwig will want to study him, Valentin said as we watched Dominic writhing against the full-body restraints, screaming past the bit they had put in his mouth to keep him from biting off his own tongue. I had been where he was and felt what he
felt. If there was a hell, there could not be worse torments there than those he now suffered. And he had done it for me, expecting nothing in return.

  I could not thank him, where he had gone. I could not beg his forgiveness. I could do nothing for him at all.

  Will got away. He was no longer in London, I could feel it by now. The Stone was not as close to me as that. And so when my father said we should go home, I didn’t say what I felt—that I had no home. I went back with him.

  Now I was in Oxford, sitting in the dim parlor of my father’s rooms, nursing a long-cold cup of weak tea. I was like a beef cow that had been clubbed on the head to stun it before slaughter, except the slaughter itself had been left unfinished. I would not die, but without the Stone I was only half alive. And it was Will—my first friend, my only love, my ally against the world—my Will who had taken it from me.

  I set down my tea cup so hard the saucer underneath cracked in two. The thought of Will had been the only thing that could wake me from my stunned bovine state in the last few days. But I did not like the way it woke me. My rage frightened me. It was too strong to control, and under it was too great a pain. If I started to allow myself to feel it, I knew at once that I couldn’t bear it. Perhaps I chose these cowlike feelings.

  I put the cup aside and picked up the pieces of broken china. I felt the slightest pang of guilt; my father didn’t have many good dishes. At least I could clean up the mess.

  Unlike the one you left behind in London.

  I’d heard my mother’s voice often since we returned to Oxford, enough that I had begun to wonder if she really was speaking to me from the hell of her madness. Always, she urged me on, insisting I must find a way to get the Stone back. As if I didn’t already know that. As if there were a way.

  It wasn’t my fault. I did all I could.

  It was all you could do to let him snatch the Stone from you? To watch while he ran? When did you become this helpless, useless—

  I threw the china into the bin, making a loud enough crash to drive the voice, but not the thought, from my head.