The Honey and the Sting

by E C Fremantle

  What is it they say about the devil – that he wears the finest clothes?

  I jump, startled, as a crash shudders through the house, and a whoof of air makes the flames in the hearth gutter.

  Hope

  Hope scrambles from the bed, dragging her nephew with her.

  The room is filled with a thick cloud of white dust, and rubble cascades from a vast hole where the ceiling has collapsed.

  They fall out of the door into Hester’s arms, just as another large section of ceiling cracks and plummets, fragmenting, sending out a new billow of dust.

  Cowering in the doorway, they wait in silence for the cloud to settle. Shock is making Hope shake uncontrollably. The old bowed ceiling was already cracked, she reminds herself. But she begins to become aware of something, a dense shadow moving about the room, making shapes, mutating in and out of different forms, now a bird, now a wolf, now a horse, now a cat.

  ‘What is it?’ Dread roots her, her body becoming dense, legs leaden.

  She can’t find her voice.

  She wants to speak, to say the man’s a demon, that he has brought the devil here, invited him in. She is thinking now of how they were drawn in circles in the forest, as if something was pulling them back to the house against their will, and then, half gagging on the memory, her mind running off. ‘He is raising the dead. I saw it, coming up from the earth, a human hand.’

  She attempts to slam the door, to imprison that infernal ever-moving thing, whatever it is. But Hester is holding on fast, white knuckles tightly gripped around the handle, watching, entranced, eyes like plates following the demonic shape as it flits about the room.

  With a sickening twist at her core, Hope understands: the lieutenant has bewitched her sister. She glances down towards Rafe, who is sitting on the floor on the landing coated with white dust, knees tucked up, hands over his ears, eyes tightly shut, while the unholy shadow continues to fly round the room, shape-shifting interminably.

  Alarmingly, Hester begins to laugh as she follows the thing with her eyes. ‘Melis,’ she is saying, between gasps, ‘Oh, Melis!’

  Hope’s head spins, her body feeling detached, as if it belongs to someone else. She wants to shake some sense into Hester, drag her away, tell her Melis is dead, force her to see that they must escape before the house bewitches them all.

  But Hester is possessed already.

  ‘Look.’ She is pointing, entranced, eyes wild, following the circulating shape, still laughing. ‘It’s Melis, forcing me to listen to her.’

  ‘Come away. Shut the door, I beg you.’ Hope tries to prise Hester’s fingers from the latch but her sister has been invested with a monster’s strength and will not be moved.

  ‘No. No. Can’t you see?’ She bends for a scrap of paper on the floor, reading something from it – a rhyme, a spell.

  Hester

  I take in the scene – the collapsed ceiling, the air dense with white dust, and the shadow droning as it travels about the room, its shape forming, un-forming, re-forming, now sinuous, now dense, in a state of constant alteration. Hope is in a frenzy, trying to pull me away, saying we must escape.

  I shake her off.

  A light touch brushes over my cheek, vague as a current of cool air. Melis? If she had wanted my attention, she has it now. It is as if she drove her will into the very fabric of the building and burst forth from it to make me listen.

  I still have the fragment of paper in my hand. It is covered with a spider scrawl of words. I don’t need to read them. I wrote them myself, to remember Melis’s parting words. The bees know it – honey and sting. Sweetness and sharpness. That is what you need. You must make it happen.

  The dust settles slowly in the room, air clearing, everything frosted in white. As I step inside sound fills my head, the hum of the house amplified a thousand-fold, obliterating all other sounds, a dirge for her.

  In the corner, where the rubble of plaster is deepest, amber tears ooze down the wall, forming a glossy pool on the floor. The house weeps for her too. A beam of sun strikes the liquid, casting it gold. I crouch, dipping the tip of my finger into it. It clings to my skin, oozing as I lift my hand to my lips, viscous threads dangling in thin air. Golden tears for Melis.

  ‘No!’ Hope is shrill with fear. ‘Don’t!’

  It rings around my mouth, taste-buds pinging with sweetness. I am tempted to get on my hands and knees, lick it from the floor, every last sticky golden drop.

  Among the broken splinters of wood and great slabs of plaster I can see the great form, rent in two, splayed open to reveal the mystery of its inner workings, its exquisite geometrical chambers. It is miraculous in its perfection.

  I hear Melis whisper, It is nearly time, and I know I must find a way to make it happen. My conscience is vanishing.

  Hope is frozen in the doorway, horror etched over her features. Her mouth opens but she is unable to speak, her gaze following the ever-changing shape.

  I unlatch the window, pushing it wide. The shape slips out, leaving only the echo of silence.

  ‘Bees,’ I say. ‘A beehive in the attic. The weight of it’s made the ceiling cave in.’ I can see now how the fall of the balcony has weakened the fabric of the house, set in motion a series of collapses. I point to the sticky pool. ‘Honey.’

  Hope is still cowering on the landing, bewilderment breaking over her features. Understanding dawns slowly until she coughs out a small laugh of relief. ‘A swarm. I thought – I thought –’ She expels a new spate of laughter. ‘I thought he’d bewitched you, the lieutenant. You were behaving so strangely. The paper. I thought you were making a spell.’

  ‘Oh, Hope! It’s not a spell. I wrote down what Melis said to me on her deathbed and left the paper beside the bed. She saw George’s death.’

  Hope gives me a sideways look and, if anything, appears more confused than before. ‘How was it she could see the future?’

  ‘Time doesn’t necessarily behave as we expect.’ I notice her crumple, as if I have said something truly awful when I meant to comfort her. Some things resist explanation.

  I glance at the paper, still between my fingers, trying to comprehend what Melis wanted by telling me my kindness is my failing. I have scrawled a date there: the twenty-third day of August.

  ‘What day is it today?’ I ask.

  She is counting on her fingers. ‘It is the seventeenth day of August. Why?’

  Less than a week until the date on which Melis envisaged George’s death. What do you want me to do? I ask my dead sister silently.

  Hope is harbouring a glut of questions but I have no answers for her and send her and Rafe downstairs to Margie, while I return to tend the fire in the blue room.

  Melis’s whisper is in the flames. It’s nearly time. You must make it happen. George has a world of enemies. Surely someone will do the deed, some discreet assassin, some disaffected soldier, a political act. Melis’s seed has been planted in me. I have never truly wished someone dead, but now I do: I wish George dead.

  To have admitted it, even unspoken in my mind, feels like a dangerous transgression, a chip off my soul. But it is not enough to wish it: someone must act on it. My whole life I have wanted to be good but now Melis’s words clarify, like butter, and I begin to sense the power of my sting.

  Felton

  The fire cracks and spits in the coffin-sized space, consuming him in its blistering jaws. The iron plate, the thickness of a thumb, is the only barrier between him and the flames. He burns his wrist brushing against it, shrinking back as far as he can, the smell of singed hair invading his nostrils. Dark presses tight around him. There is no room to move. His body begins to seize up, his joints complaining, the fizz of pins and needles running up and down his legs. The agonizing throb has returned to his arm.

  He has a new grudging respect for Hester: she, too, has been entombed in this place more than once, and without apparent complaint. The boy also. He is his father’s son, after all. Felton had dismissed the woman, so diminutive, be
lieved her to be weak, but the fortitude and ingenuity that led her to confine him in this hole has made him see he misunderstood her. She is a formidable adversary.

  She held that gun to his back without a tremor. He wonders, with growing dread, whether her ruthlessness will stretch to leaving him to starve to death. How long would it take? A week – ten days? He hasn’t even the means to end his own life, has no idea, even, of the passing of time. Perhaps he is dead and this is Hell.

  He clings to a small residue of hope that Worley, awaiting word from him at Ludlow, will take it upon himself to set out for the lodge. But why would he? A desperate sense of futility assails him in the dark and he longs for his opium tincture to quell it. He thinks of George and the dead sister’s prophecy. He might have been able to warn George, at least, but he can do nothing now, not even save himself.

  Delirium begins to claim his mind, people from the past, shadows drifting in the dark. George floats by, jewels glinting. He is dazzled, as he was on their first meeting, his heart erupting. There had been other men since, strings of meaningless encounters, but George had always been the only one. He can feel the sting of his jealousy, ugly and mean-spirited. You cannot claim a man like George. He has to be shared with the world. He never minded the women but the men – he loathed George’s male lovers. He cleaves to the knowledge that he was the first. He had claimed the unknown territory, set his banner there. Felton whispers to him, warning him he has failed in his mission, ‘I love you still,’ but George dissolves into the air.

  The past taunts. The beating that killed the boy in that grubby back alley … Young, so young, too young to lose his life. He squats in the corner, face caved in, flesh rotting and green. He counts all those he has killed, unable to calculate the number, most in battle. They are all in here, crowding the space. Here is Dr Cotton, laughing at his failure, blood spewing from his mouth, Lieutenant Bloor, innards spilling, and Melis, bones poking through parchment skin. ‘We will never leave you,’ they chant over and over again. And here is Hywel now, a hole blown through his guts, joining in the chorus.

  Bridget arrives, blinding him with her brightness, hovering on a pair of swan’s wings. ‘See what you have done,’ she whispers. ‘Sinner. Sinner. Sinner. This will give you a taste of Hell …’ Her words are swallowed by the crackle of the flames. All those dead and yet the woman, the mother, who would see George brought to his knees, refuses to die, like some devilish cat with nine lives.

  Hester

  The lieutenant’s room is gloomy but cool, with its shuttered window. The bed is unmade, the linens still streaked with ash from yesterday’s fire, exactly as they were when I last came in here.

  I flick through the pages of his books, search the pockets of his coat and look under his mattress, not knowing yet what I am seeking. My mind thrashes around for an idea, and I hope I might find something in this room to give me power over my prisoner.

  Searching the contents of his chest, I pull out the journal, then a mess of bills and letters, inspecting each in turn. From what I can gather, he is deep in debt, but I suppose George intended to pay him well. At the bottom of the box I find a packet addressed to a Lieutenant Felton. This must be his true name. It is secured by several unbroken seals, one depicting a set of scales, suggesting the contents must be legal documents.

  I rip it open. Inside is a sheaf of papers. The Last Will and Testament of Elanor Felton, née Wright. Scanning the first page, with references to a son being her sole surviving relative, I assume it is his mother’s. It is dated only a few weeks ago, and I wonder why it was unopened, but as I take in the paltry list of effects it becomes clear. He must have been aware that his mother had nothing to leave him.

  Flicking through the pages, something falls out from between them. It is a letter, yellowed and pocked with age. For my own dear brother is written in faded ink on the front and scrawled above, in another, more recent, hand, is: Found among Mistress Felton’s effects. It, too, is unopened. I carefully pick away the seal. The paper is brittle, coming almost apart at the crease when I unfold it.

  When you read this, beloved brother, I will be gone to another place. Whether it will be a better place I do not know. But this earthly life has become a world of unbearable pain and shame, so better to risk eternal damnation in the taking of my own life. It is possible I will be shriven for my sin. Our Father is a forgiving God. I must grasp that thought, even as I fade away.

  But mine is not the only life I take. It is my unborn child’s also. Damning proof of my first, and lesser, sin of fornication. Though the truth is I was given no choice in the participation of that act. I beg of you, beloved brother, to ensure, should they discover my condition after my death, that my yet unformed child’s father shall never know I murdered his flesh. I tried to tell him of my state, but my letters were all returned unopened. I held on to the hope he would return and make me an honest woman even as I felt his infant grow in my belly, but my hope has slipped away, now, to despair.

  I know George is beloved of you and you of him, and that in telling you this you will not only have lost a sister but also a friend. But George is not, was never, friend to anyone but himself. As I sense my breath shortening, I hold the hope, wish, dream that you will make him pay for his ruin of me, your only and most loving sister. I cannot demand you take revenge. What a black word that is. No, no, sorry, it is my anguish giving vent. Do not listen. You must do as you see fit but I wish that he would know what he has done to me.

  My love for you is infinite, dearest brother, and I pray, God willing, we will meet again in the world to come. I cannot bring myself to consider that I go to eternal damnation. I beg, humbly, miserably, your forgiveness for depriving you of your sister, Bridget. Pray for me, brother, with all your heart.

  The thought of Bridget and her letter, unread for so long, rends me apart with sadness. This girl, speaking from beyond the grave, is another me, her unborn child another Rafe. I am thrown back to the time when I discovered I was carrying George’s child, the crushing shame, the humiliation, the knowledge that my virtue was lost for ever, and he, the real sinner, remained untarnished, his dignity, position, everything, intact.

  ‘How am I even to know if the child is mine?’ he had said and, with that, marked me a whore. Like Bridget, I was so green, so unwise, and neither did I have any choice. I had the means, my father’s house, to take myself away and lead a quiet life with my sisters and my son, the life George has now stolen from us.

  On learning of Bridget’s tragic fate, I acknowledge my own strength. I think of all the young women, down the years, barely out of girlhood, who have fallen victim to the whims of glittering disingenuous men, only to be cast aside. Hope is one too.

  Together we are an army. Revenge. What a black word that is. Rage rises in me like bile, sharpening my sting. In my mind’s eye it is I who thrusts the blade into George’s breast, can see the horror on his face, can smell his fear. I am both appalled and thrilled. Was that what my sister envisaged when she used her final breath to exhale the word ‘justice’? But in doing it I sacrifice myself, my life, my soul, and leave my son an orphan, history repeating differently down the years.

  This will turn him. I look round, half expecting to see Melis behind me, but the room is empty.

  I recall the lieutenant, not long after his arrival here, talking about Bridget and how she died of an ague. It dawns on me then, the fickleness of chance. Had the lieutenant opened his mother’s will and discovered the letter between its pages, had he known the truth of his sister’s fate, he would not be here now, following George’s orders. Nothing would have changed my fate, though. George would have sent a different killer to my door.

  Unless – an idea emerges, half formed, scoring its way through the weft of my mind – the lieutenant had already taken his revenge on the man who as good as murdered his sister.

  The full realization of the power of this letter settles into me as a tentative plan begins to form.

  Hope

&n
bsp; Hope wheels the cart, with Lark, to the kitchen door so they can pack it, ready to leave as soon as Gifford returns. Her thoughts circulate like the swarm of bees. It is easy to see how the mundane can take on a disturbing significance when nerves are shredded as hers have been.

  It will be a great relief to get away from this blighted house and the monster hidden in the priest-hole.

  ‘What do you think will happen to him?’ she asks Lark. She doesn’t know what to call him. He is not Lieutenant Bloor – that is all she knows.

  Hester has been tight-lipped about any plans she may have. She had barely spoken, save to ask Hope to oversee the loading of the cart in preparation for their departure. She has been shut in the blue room keeping the fire going and reading ceaselessly – papers, letters, that man’s journal. Hope can’t understand why she wants to go over and over it. She will not explain. They have all become so choked with secrets.

  They have started to load, when Lark turns to her. ‘I’ll miss you, Hope.’

  ‘Aren’t you to come with us?’

  Lark shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You can’t be left here with …’ There is no need to name him. They fall to silence and Hope is left to consider that, whatever happens, she will eventually end up elsewhere and Lark here. It is her home, after all. Hope isn’t sure about anything, except that now she has found a true friend it will be a wrench to leave her. Lark seems so woven into the fabric of this place it is hard to imagine her anywhere else.

  ‘Is that everything?’ says Lark.

  It is not. Neither of them wants to mention Melis’s body.