Dreadfully Ever After (16 page)

It was then that Mary knew the secret of the city’s walls. They were as much for locking this horror in as keeping the dreadfuls out. And not only was she supposed to stay on the right side of the stones, she wasn’t even meant to know how very,
very
wrong the wrong side really was.

A true lady would turn and flee.

Mary straightened her spine and started up the street.

As she weaved around the largest mounds of muck, the men loading the dray paused to gape at her, the stiff carcass of a woman stretched between them, its severed head resting on its stomach.

“You’ve picked a poor time to come sightseeing,” one of them said. “Unless you want a dose of cholera to go with the bad memories.”

Mary could think of no reply, and so made none. She did, however, give the bodies lining the streets a wider berth.

Even with her map, navigating Twelve Central proved difficult, for the street signs (where any existed) were so blackened with soot they were unreadable, and what passersby Mary encountered answered her queries with snorts or shakes of the head or, most frequently, some variation on “Bedlam, eh? That’s certainly where you belong when you chose to wander around
here
.” Eventually, however, a sandy-haired, apple-cheeked boy in tattered clothes offered to lead her to Bethlem Hospital for two farthings.

“That seems quite reasonable,” Mary said, and she fished out the coins and handed them over. “You will receive four more if we’re there within a quarter hour.”

“A whole penny?” the boy exclaimed. “God blind me, let’s go!”

Mary followed him up the street, around the first corner, and then into a narrow darkened alley—both ends of which were quickly blocked off by grime-smeared men wielding Zed rods and knives.

“ ’Allo ’allo, fancy lady,” said the burliest, dirtiest of them. “Are you a reformer, then? Come to improve our miserable lot? Well, me friends and I can make some suggestions as to how you might start.”

Mary sighed. Kitty had gone on and on about the way Lady Catherine’s ninjas had ambushed her and Papa in an alley a few days before, and now she’d walked right into the same sort of trap. Certain details would have to be omitted when she told her sister about all this. And she was certain—for it didn’t occur to her that there might be reason to think otherwise—that she would be telling her sister about all this at the end of the day. That the end of her
life
might be at hand never crossed her mind.

“You have sacrificed your gratuity, young man,” she said to her guide.

The boy just grinned as two of the men moved past him, closing in on Mary.

“Oh, he’ll get ’is. I reckon we all will.” The big ruffian looked Mary up and down. “Ten bob for the dress, five for the shoes, maybe a tanner for the purse—not to mention whatever’s in it—and then thruppence for dragging another bogey to the furnace. Yeah, there’ll be plenty to go ’round by the time we’re through.”

For the first time in her life, Mary found herself envying her sister Elizabeth’s wit. She racked her brain, but the gang was nearly on her—two from the front, three from behind. All she could think to say was, “Yes, well, perhaps, perhaps not.”

She whipped out her pistol and shot the first thug through the forehead. As he toppled over, she quickly clubbed the stunned man beside him with the smoking barrel while kicking backward. She felt her foot crush half a ribcage, and when she spun around she found, quite incongruously, that the other two hooligans behind her were being attacked by mongrel dogs. As the men kicked at them, screaming, Mary turned again and hurled her pistol end over end at the ringleader. The stock thunked into the man’s thick skull, sending him reeling.

The two footpads still on their feet fled toward the street, the dogs at their heels, while the little boy darted off down the alleyway.

Mary strolled over to the gang’s leader, who was on his knees, head in hands, and flattened him with a casual snap kick.

“Less expenses,” she said.

The man blinked up at her, barely conscious. “Huh?”

“That’s what I should have said before. When you were calculating what you might earn from robbing ... never mind.” She put her foot on his throat. “Tell me how to get to Bethlem Royal Hospital—
truthfully—
or my first step away from here will be through your esophagus.”

He told her.

“Thank you,” Mary said, and she pivoted crisply and went on her way.

“Miss? Oh, Miss?” the thug called after her.

She stopped and turned.

“You wouldn’t want to come work for me, would you?” the man wheezed.

A strange sensation came over Mary’s face. Her lips tightened. Her eyes crinkled.

It took her a moment to realize she was smiling.

“I am flattered by your offer,” she said. “But no, thank you. I find myself quite gainfully employed already.”

It was about time, too.

Less than five minutes later, she was at the gates of Bedlam.

No matter how many times Darcy asked, Anne wouldn’t tell him where she’d learned the tree trick.

“Actually, I had no idea any dreadfuls were even in that cave,” she said as they walked back to the house. “I just thought you’d look smashing with branches.”

“Anne,
please
. I really would like to know.”

“Oh, it’s simply a parlor trick some friends taught me. And that is all I care to say about it at present.”

“Fine. If you feel you don’t owe me a serious explanation after what we’ve just been through….”

“I am being serious. Or don’t you think I could have friends?”

“No, no!” Darcy said. “That is, yes, yes! Of course, you could. That’s not what I meant.”

Anne finally lost the smile she’d been wearing for the last ten minutes. “I didn’t, you know. Have friends of my own. Not for the longest time. All I had was Lady Catherine. Do you think that should have been enough?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Good. So it wasn’t just me.”

Darcy looked into his cousin’s eyes as the two of them kept walking side by side. Night had fallen, yet he could see Anne more clearly—and pick his way through the forest with more ease, it seemed—than when the sun had been shining down through the trees.

Before he could speak again, a loud thumping sound drew Anne’s attention, and he followed her gaze to find a hazy radiance moving toward them. As it neared, it grew sharper, gained definition, until Darcy could see his aunt riding toward them on one of her enormous Scottish-bred chargers. To his eyes, both glowed with a dull light that cast no shadow, and he found himself wishing to bask in it, bathe in it, wallow in a warmth that wasn’t even there.

Lady Catherine stopped her horse before them. Her mount seemed nervous, stamping its heavy hooves and dancing in a semicircle. As its great haunches turned, Darcy could see a cluster of oval shapes strung to its side like an enormous bunch of grapes.

Anne stiffened beside him.

The shapes were freshly severed heads. Darcy recognized among them the puffy black face of the putrid unmentionable that had tried a taste of him not a quarter hour before.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Lady Catherine snapped. “You know it’s dangerous out here this time of year.”

She was looking at her daughter.

“Oh, there was nothing to worry about. We were perfectly safe. Weren’t we, Fitzwilliam?”

She wrapped her arm around Darcy’s.

“Yes,” he heard himself say. “Perfectly.”

Her Ladyship kept her gaze on Anne. “Your cousin is not well. It is foolish to take him so far from the house.”

“
DARCY
COULD
SEE
A
CLUSTER
OF
OVAL
SHAPES
STRUNG
TO
ITS
SIDE
LIKE
AN
ENORMOUS
BUNCH
OF
GRAPES
.
THE
SHAPES
WERE
FRESHLY
SEVERED
HEADS
.”

So far from me
, Darcy suspected she really meant.

“It seems to me,” Anne replied, “that Fitzwilliam will end up going further faster if he is not limited to the confines—and the close company—of Rosings. A little more fresh air and freedom, and who knows how quickly he might come ’round as we’d like?”

Lady Catherine narrowed her eyes and jutted out her jaw and flared her nostrils. It was a look Darcy knew well. He’d seen battle-hardened soldiers wither under it like an ant burned by the hot focused light of a magnifying glass. He’d only been its locus a few unhappy times in his life; he’d never seen it pointed at Anne. To his surprise, she withstood it without blinking or looking away.

“I will see you back at the house for supper,” Lady Catherine said. “Don’t dawdle. Kochi is laying out eel from the Great Stour, and you know how much better that is when it’s fresh.”

She wheeled her stallion around and galloped off, the heads tied to the horse’s flank clunking against each other like muffled castanets.

“I’ve never stood up to her before,” Anne said. “Not about anything.” She squeezed Darcy’s arm. “I think
I’m
the one growing stronger now ... thanks to you. You’re the only one of us who ever dared defy her.”

“It was not something I took pleasure in doing.”

“Yet you did it all the same, because you felt you had to. I wonder if I would have passed the test as you did.” Anne stared off into the shadows that had quickly swallowed up her mother. “Perhaps someday we will find out.”

She looked back up into Darcy’s eyes and smiled in a way that was somehow warm and cold at the same time, like a sip of chilled sake. Then she started toward the house, still latched to his side.

In the dining room, they found Lady Catherine already sitting stiffly at the head of the table while Kochi, her favorite sushi chef (for the moment), stood ready at his work table nearby. At the man’s feet was a bucket of churning water. Kochi greeted the newcomers with a bow and then plunged a hand into the bucket, plucking out a furiously squirming black eel. Within seconds, it was slapped onto a cutting board, beheaded, sliced into slivers, and presented to the dinner party on small mounds of white rice.

Kochi stood stiffly beside Her Ladyship as she took her first bite. The man did his best not to look like he was bracing for an elbow to what was once known—before the term was appropriated for something deemed even more horrifying—as his unmentionables. If his sashimi didn’t rise to the heights his mistress demanded, he would know quickly. And painfully.

“The unagi is ...,” Lady Catherine began in Japanese.

Kochi fought to keep his hands at his sides, but Darcy could see them inching together involuntarily, creeping toward those appendages he might soon be clutching in agony.

“... acceptable.”

Kochi let out a deep breath, bowed again, and scurried back to his work station.

Darcy already had a piece of glistening red eel meat pinched in his chopsticks, and now that his aunt had pronounced judgment, he was free to take a bite.

He’d never eaten sawdust, but now he felt he might as well have. He could barely keep himself from retching on the glob of flavorless paste he found himself chewing.

And then, an explosion of not just flavor but warmth radiated from his mouth to the whole of his being. It was the accursed rice! It had blunted the taste of the fish. Now the juices were reaching his tongue, and the little brick of fresh thick-cut flesh was tearing apart between his teeth. With each bite, he could taste more of not just the fish but its strength, its drive to hunt and kill and spread its seed, the riverbed it had been slithering along not long before. Its very life.

Darcy felt almost woozy with pleasure, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He became aware of a guttural groaning that grew louder with each chew.

Then he realized it was coming from
him
.

He blinked and swallowed and peeped over at his aunt and cousin to see if they’d noticed. He found them staring back, Lady Catherine looking revolted, Anne seemingly stifling a laugh.

“Don’t worry,” Darcy said, dabbing at his face with a napkin. A thin trickle—he could only hope it wasn’t drool—had escaped his mouth and run down his chin. “I shan’t be yanking fish from Kochi’s bucket and gobbling them down whole.”

“You may if you like,” Anne said. She turned to her mother, grinning. “Isn’t that right?”

Lady Catherine was not amused.

“On second thought,” the old woman said gravely, “there is a mealiness to this eel. You must be more careful when cutting against the grain, Kochi. I can only hope the next piece is more satisfying.”

Kochi went as white as his spotless chef’s smock.

Darcy picked up another piece of sashimi with his chopsticks but set it back down again. The next time he took a bite, he wanted to be ready. He distracted himself from the thwarted rumbling of his stomach with the question he asked his aunt every night around this time.

“Any word from Derbyshire?”

He got the same answer as always: “No” and a quick change of subject. (“I can taste the vinegar in the rice, Kochi. You know I don’t like that. Come here.”)