Everbright

by Ken Altabef

  “Why don’t you run? We’ll get along without you.”

  He didn’t say anything. She knew the answer. How many times did he have to say it? No more.

  “It’s just no use Clari—I mean Theodora—”

  “No, that’s right. Call me Clarimonde. I’m a faery, not some prissy Englishwoman and it’s about damn time I started acting like one.”

  She stood up, balanced precariously, and stepped onto his branch. It sagged a little, throwing her further off-balance, but held. She lowered herself atop him, straddling his lap.

  She was amazed by how shy and embarrassed he suddenly looked. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  She unbuttoned his trousers. “I want to be with you, too.”

  Theodora worked one hand down his pants and with the other lifted his head to accept her kiss. They kissed long and hard and when they came up for air Meadowlark tore the spidersilk blouse from her shoulders. Their eyes met and Meadowlark opened himself immediately as if he could not wait. Theodora held back, working herself against him until she was ready. Only after she’d guided him inside did she open her mind and soul to meet him.

  It is not an easy thing to make love in a tree, but Theodora found it to be gloriously worth the effort. She deployed her wings and stretched them for balance as she thrust against him. Little flower buds, closed like pearls among the feathery leaves, squished between them leaving sticky, wet, pearl-silk streamers trailing like spiderwebs from the pale green fronds.

  Their minds met and dissolved into one another. Meadowlark wanted no secrets and his enthusiasm was contagious. Theodora vaguely knew there were things she would prefer not to show, but as his passion washed over her she could not think of any.

  Theodora experienced their entire shared history, all at once. She remembered the time, at the age of ten, when they had run naked and laughing across the fields above Barrow Downes, the very same field that stretched below them now. She saw the first time they had made love as viewed through Meadowlark’s eyes. To his recollection he had cared deeply for her as they fumbled and experimented through the brief encounter. She remembered it as a shallow and meaningless experience. Had she been so wrong about it, or had Meadowlark convinced himself of a revised version of the truth? Did it matter? Theodora felt mildly embarrassed as she knew he had just seen the event through her eyes and must now know how meaningless she had regarded it. Embarrassed, she threw herself at him with renewed passion, driving down on him with such urgency it shook the whole tree. He pulled back. He didn’t want it over so fast. Neither did she.

  They paused to kiss some more as their lovemaking reached the next level where memories were cast aside and the two of them descended together into a plane of pure soul sharing. Emotional scars ran deep. She had been hurt by Eric—there was no disguising that fact—but she also saw Meadowlark’s pain at being used by Dresdemona. They struggled through, arriving finally to the last stage, where both souls blended into one.

  Theodora lost herself in the wonder that was Meadowlark. His carefree spirit, now released from the overbearing melancholy that had possessed him of late, was completely enchanting. His love of jokes and jests, his devil-may-care attitude, his fiery rebellious streak. But among all the lunatic clutter and bramble, his feelings for her shone strong and true. This was a faery, like most, unused to the constricts of the concept of love, but he had embraced it. Theodora fell into him as she surrounded him and they came together in a shuddering climax.

  Vicar Desmos touched his fingertips to the dead man’s forehead.

  “Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world. In the Name of God the Father Almighty who created you, in the Name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you, in the Name of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you. May your rest be this day in peace, and your dwelling place in—”

  He stopped abruptly and leaned closer over the body. Captain Abercrombie had been laid out on the cot in his quarters in an attitude of appropriate repose. Hands crossed over his chest, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. A faint odor drifted up from the corpse’s mouth. Desmos sniffed again. He remembered that smell from somewhere—a distinctive scent—just a trace. If only he could place it. A dewy fleshiness with notes of lemon, bergamot and jasmine. Where had he encountered that odor before? Years ago, somewhere during his botanical studies...

  He turned to Lieutenant Simms. “How was the body found?”

  “I found him myself. I usually report at change of shift—”

  “No, not that. How was he lying? What were the details?”

  Simms recoiled slightly from the question, wondering what bearing this information could possibly have on the delivery of last rites. “He was on the floor. He’d fallen off his chair…”

  “Curled up?” Desmos asked. “Like a baby?”

  “Well, sort of. His hands was on his belly like, and… well… maybe I shouldn’t say but… he’d messed himself.”

  Desmos reached for the Captain’s mouth and peeled back the lower lip. There it was!

  “See this here?” he said. “That faint blue discoloration under the lip, along his gums? This man did not die a natural death. He suffered poisoning of a particular and rare type. He was killed by bluebell poisoning. This is murder!”

  Chapter 41

  Threadneedle and Nora hurried along Warwick Lane, under a darkening sky.

  The bulk of the block was taken up by the imposing gray stone façade of St. Ephraim’s workhouse. Out front, a pair of raggedy cinder-women bent low, searching the ash piles for anything still worth burning. An alley to the side held a pack of young children left to mull about and scavenge while their parents labored within.

  A throng of people—tinkers, peddlers and other itinerant citizens—hurried by in two opposite streams. For the most part they were absorbed in their own affairs, while expertly dodging passing wagons and clopping horse carts. Nora just barely stepped out of the way as a run-down merchant’s wagon passed by, all manner of clanking pots and iron wares hanging from its sides. She slipped on the wet pavement and one foot went into the drainage ditch at the side of the road, sinking ankle deep in the greasy slop contained therein. The carter leaned out from his seat and hissed a curse at Nora. She fired one back.

  Ahhh Threadneedle thought, the heart of my dear London.

  “Damn it all,” she sighed. “Will you look at the state of my shoe.” He found her spirited pout utterly adorable.

  “I’ve been a spy for a long time,” he said. “Never had such a cute sidekick before.”

  “Sidekick?” she returned. “I beg your pardon. I’m the headliner!”

  Thunder rumbled above, as if Nora’s anger had transferred itself to the heavens, and the rain began in earnest. They dashed under a low archway for a moment’s shelter from the sudden downpour. No glamour could protect them from the rain, so Threadneedle added a wet and bedraggled look to his hair. Nora had a more efficient solution. She conjured the illusion of an umbrella and left her disguise looking neat and dry. Of course, in reality, she was as drenched as Threadneedle.

  The gloomy weather further soured Threadneedle’s mood. With such important events transpiring in Everbright, he felt guilty taking time out for a visit with Nora. But their current endeavor, a mission of mercy at Newgate prison, was far more important than a simple meeting with his lover. It was a matter of life or death. So why then did he feel so damned guilty? A vision of Dresdemona flashed through his mind.

  He was a man of many secrets but never had they weighted so heavily upon him as they did just now. I wonder what Nora would think if she knew I once was king of the Winter Court. Or that Dresdemona and I had once been madly in love.

  Once? Or still?

  Dresdemona’s betrayal still hurt, even after the better part of a century. No love burns as fiercely as first love, I suppose. And no cure for it either. There had been many women since then, and a few men as well, but as exciting as each new affair had been, each of those pairings fizzled o
ut in time. How could he be sure Nora wouldn’t go the same way? She was so young and inexperienced and he her first faery lover. Her first lover at all. How soon before the bloom would go off the rose, leaving him an old man helpless to watch her walk away? It was easy to pretend that Nora was different from all those others, that she was more important or her love more passionate, but in reality that wasn’t true. He’d lived long enough to know they were basically all the same. A different flavor, a different perfume, nothing more.

  But Dresdemona had been truly unique. An enticing mixture of vulnerability and immense strength. Beauty and power. The purity of the Effranil deep inside, wrapped in a package of exquisite elegance and unbelievable cruelty. She was like no other. When they’d merged souls in lovemaking he had tasted the sweet ambrosia of Avalon itself. At least that was the way he remembered it, and time had not diminished that feeling. He had loved her with all his heart. They had both loved each other that way. Until the betrayal.

  “Halfpenny for your thoughts?”

  “Just planning ahead,” he remarked. “You know what to say when we get there?”

  “Don’t you worry about me. I improvise lines every night on stage opposite the whirlwind of strutting madness that is Pinky Longbottom. You could hardly be a worse partner for an afternoon’s caper.”

  “Oho! Hardly. Silly me. Let’s just get on with it then.”

  They turned the corner into Newgate street, and walked past the Old Bailey. At the butt end of the block stood the imposing figure of Newgate prison. Faceless red brick walls, lofty pediments, a gloomy portcullis with row upon row of soot-stained casement windows. As they approached, Threadneedle observed the faces of the people that passed its doors. Either on the way in or out, their expressions were all the same—sad and hopeless and dulled by a wretched misery devoid of any ray of encouragement whatsoever. Ahhh, London!

  Threadneedle and Nora fixed the same attitude on their faces as they entered the front gate. The broad entryway led directly to the Keeper’s house. Nora strode confidently to the day clerk’s desk.

  “Doctor De Clercq,” she said. “Henri De Clercq.” She extended a hand. Her glamour was perfect—a rumpled man dressed in a well-worn summer suit roughly ten years out of date. Accurate to the tiniest detail, including frayed embroidery on the cuffs, the mis-matching cravat, the water stains on white silk stockings. “And this is my nurse,” she added curtly, “Marie Renard.”

  Threadneedle curtsied slightly.

  Aside from a half-leer aimed at the lovely Miss Renard, the clerk showed no sign of being impressed at the introduction.

  “We’ve come from the Belgian Ministry,” Nora explained. “Here to see the prisoner Leopold Rákóczi. I understand the prisoner is to be transferred tomorrow. What state of health is he in?”

  “I don’t know. He seems fine to me.”

  “And what discipline of medicine do you practice?”

  The clerk scoffed. “I’m no doctor.”

  “You certainly are not, sir! Please arrange for our examination immediately.”

  The clerk cringed from her incisive tone. He looked as if well-used to suffering the biting rebuke of authority as a response to his incompetence, or perhaps something far worse.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll send for the turnkey for the ward.

  Nora smirked at Threadneedle and he offered another little curtsey in return.

  The Turnkey was a gruff man of very short stature, nearly a dwarf, with distastefully protuberant eyes and wet, flabby lips. His face, which had not been shaved in several days, had coarse features with an uneven growth of beard that made the lower half seem blurry and indistinct. Only his eyes were sharp.

  “What’s all this about, then?” he asked.

  The clerk snapped to attention. “They’re from the French Ministry—”

  “Ministère Belge de la santé,” corrected Nora.

  The blank stares of the clerk and the fish-eyed Turnkey indicated they did not know any French.

  “Belgian,” snapped Nora. She spoke slowly, as if taking into account that she was addressing a pair of idiots. “The Belgian Ministry of Health. If we are to accept your prisoner as a transfer tomorrow, he must have an examination today.”

  “I dunno anything about it.”

  Nora babbled something nonsensical but French-sounding to her sidekick. Threadneedle’s eyes opened wide as if his demure mademoiselle had been shocked.

  “We have papers,” Nora said. She unfolded and dangled a sheet of white paper before the dwarf’s bulging eyes. It was in fact a leaflet that some libelist had stuffed in her hand earlier in the day as she and Threadneedle had crossed Fleet Street. It contained a crudely drawn political cartoon. The drawing showed a British General pumping water from a fountain topped with the head of George III. The foul-looking water spilled across the prostrate bodies of figures representing Britannia and an Indian native of America. Several ministers and judges looked on approvingly, while two raised their arms in protest. Threadneedle had placed a glamour on the page so that it read appropriately as official orders, or something close enough.

  The Turnkey snorted derisively at the page, as he might do to any official document. It was not clear that he had actually read it, or was even capable of doing so.

  “My time is not yours to waste, sir,” Nora stated, “We can not accept any prisoner who shows evidence of consumptive disease, or might be infested by vermin.” She twisted the last word as if it were French for ‘Turnkey’. She then turned to Mademoiselle Renard and babbled something else in French. Mademoiselle Renard giggled.

  “Stop that!” growled the Turnkey.

  Nora forced herself to stop laughing. “The prisoner? Will you or will you not take us to him? Or is this whole installation so entirely overrun with vermin you dare not have us look? I can file my report either way.”

  “Touché,” whispered Mademoiselle Renard.

  “Alright, alright,” grumbled the Turnkey. “I can’t see any harm in it anyway. Come along. Step this way.”

  Nora jerked her head towards the physician’s medical bag which Threadneedle had placed on the floor. “Mind the bag now, sister. Don’t tarry.”

  The Turnkey led them through an arcade that passed under the chapel. Next came the male felon quadrangle—a large yard where squads of sad men puttered about or walked in a circle under warder supervision. Others clustered around the sides, crouched in the corners where individual rakes held sway, making low speeches against the order of things and generally organizing mischief.

  They descended one of the staircases on either side which led downstairs to the cellar. The condemned were kept belowground in rows of solitary cells.

  “Already condemned?” asked Nora. “Surely he hasn’t yet appeared before the Crown Court so quickly.”

  “No need,” replied the Turnkey. “No need. The trial was held years ago by the Belgian authorities in absentia. You know what that means? It means the gent wasn’t even there.” The turnkey seemed to find this rather funny. “Will you think of that? Heh! Sometimes they hang them, too. In absentia. They string up a straw man, as if that would do any good. Dunno if they did this one that turn but, sure as eggs is eggs, they’ll make a repeat effort, I’ll wager. And this time for real.”

  Having reached the appropriate chamber, the Turnkey turned the key. The door was fortified by a sheet of pounded iron and gave Threadneedle a nauseous jolt as he passed through. The cell was completely empty with the exception of some old hay strewn on the floor, a piss-pot in one corner, and a raggedy lump curled up in another.

  “Face front, Rákóczi. You’ve got visitors. A doctor come all the way from Brussels to fret over you.”

  The raggedy lump rolled over but did not sit up. Threadneedle barely recognized him as the man they had known as Trask. The alchemist seemed to have aged a decade in the span of only a week. He’d already grown a short beard of tawny hair with more than a little gray in it. His face was thin and drawn and his eyes
were dulled by the desolation of the damned.

  “Go away,” he groaned.

  “Don’t be so hasty,” replied Nora “for we have thread the needle to be here. It’s time for your examination.”

  Trask picked up on the reference and a dim light of hope colored his face. Chains rattled as he sat up. He was bound by his left wrist and ankle to loops of chain embedded into the mortar of the far wall.

  “How is your health, sir?” asked Nora.

  “I’ve no money to pay for exercise or use of the chapel, nor to compensate the keeper for letting off my chains for even a short time.”

  “Well, surely you don’t expect us to give you anything?” snapped Nora. “The Belgian Ministry is not in the habit of gifting murderers with alms.”

  “Of course not,” said Trask.

  “Now let’s have a look.” Nora began her examination of the patient, gazing into his mouth and inspecting round his ears, then running her fingers through his hair, as if checking for nits. “Any chance of aid from Transylvania?” she asked him in French, knowing the turnkey could not understand.

  “No hope,” replied Trask, in perfect French. “They don’t care about me. The reins of power have shifted and they’ve thrown my family to the wolves. Literally.”

  Nora bent his head forward and pretended to inspect his shoulders and the back of his neck, though what she might be looking for, even she didn’t know.

  “We’ve no help for these chains, and you’ll be under heavy guard all through the transfer,” she whispered. “We’ve come up with a solution but it’s a very odd thing and risky.”

  Trask indicated he was a man with nothing to lose.

  “Sister Renard, bring my bag.”

  Threadneedle approached, opening the leather satchel and bringing out the glass syringe. Nora showed it to Trask. He recognized its luminous silvery contents at once.

  “What’s that there?” asked the Turnkey.

  “Quicksilver,” Nora lied, holding up the syringe. “This man suffers milk fever. What have you been serving this prisoner? Hmm?”