"We look at them singularly. But what if they are drones, or workers? All a part of a hive?" It could explain so much, like why they were leaving the cities. Perhaps we saw the advance workers, looking for a new home or food source? "I need to tell Seth, this could be pivotal."
"Of course you do." Alice laughed. "Off you go, I'll cover your absence. Somehow."
I waved and tore off across the field. My feet pounded all the way back to the house and I skidded around the side, my hand landing on the brick wall for balance as I raced around back.
Henry stood by the motorcycle, my sword in his hand.
"Oh, you are magnificent." I kissed his cheek and settled the katana on my back.
The faintest blush crept up from under Henry's collar, and he stared at his feet. A quick kick and the bike coughed, signalling it was ready. I shot away so fast, I sprayed gravel over the side of the house. Elizabeth would probably ask about the commotion, but I didn't care. My sole focus was on racing down the road to Serenity House. At least today I wore clean clothes, mercifully kept that way by the apiary gear.
The bike skidded through the loose lime chip as I stopped by the grand entrance. Only now did I consider that this might not be my smartest move. What if word got back to step-mother? She would want to know where I disappeared to in such a hurry. Alice said she would cover for me, and someone needing my sword was always a convenient excuse. But there were too many eyes and mouths feasting on Seth's every move.
I glanced around, house or outside? Would he be in his study? Just then, movement across the lawn caught my eye — Seth, with a handful of men clustered around him. He raised a hand at me and smiled. My stomach dropped to my toes before slamming right to the top of my head, where it plummeted back to the right spot. I didn't need Alice to tell me I had it bad; I knew it from the wobbles in my knees that had nothing to do with the horrid suspension on Trusty.
"Ella, we saw you tearing along the lane." He turned to one of the men at his side. "We'll continue this later."
Brims of caps were touched as the men melted away. I bounced on my toes, I couldn't hold it in any longer.
"Bees," the word flew from my lips.
His smile widened and he raised an eyebrow. "Bees?"
Oh heck. Now he would think I was simple minded, racing here to tell him about bees. When I really needed him to show me about the birds and the bees. Concentrate, Ella. One monumental breakthrough at a time. I shook myself and threw my hands in the air. "Argh!"
Seth laughed as I worked to dispel the excess energy, so that I might have a conversation with him.
"We've been looking at the vermin, the turned, all wrong. We see them as individuals, but what if they are bees?" I needed him to see what formed in my mind.
His frown deepened. "You think the turned are bees? That they will turn brown and furry?"
This was not going well. "No. Think of their behaviour and how they act."
He took my hand and drew me down toward the river to the old oak tree. He paced for a moment as he considered my idea. "The turned have left the cities, but attacks continue in the countryside. Do you think they follow some unseen purpose then, like bees?"
"Yes." Blissful relief warmed me for he seemed to have grasped the thread in my ramblings. I leaned against the bark of the ancient tree to feel something solid at my back, while my mind soared with possibilities. "What if they are looking for a new hive? What if there is a queen that directs their actions?"
"A queen?" His eyes widened and then he fell silent, mulling over the implications.
Far-fetched I know, but was it really? The virus came from nowhere and animated the dead. If that was possible, then anything could be possible. More ideas cascaded through me. "To us they seemed senseless with no minds. But what if each was a tiny part of a much larger whole? What if each vermin was a single brain cell to a larger entity?"
He blew out a whistle. "This could be an enormous discovery, Ella. I've been charting your sightings. If they're acting like bees, we must look for a deeper pattern. They may be radiating from a central hive. This is an absolutely brilliant deduction."
He caged me with his arms, one on either side of my head under the old oak tree. I basked in the heat of his praise. It really was quite a genius leap, especially if it were true.
"Clever, clever girl," he murmured before claiming my lips.
He kissed me with a thorough languidness, exploring every inch of my lips, tongue, and mouth. His calm blunted the edge of my manic mood, and my body followed his lead. I could kiss him until the edge of forever, if there were such a thing.
There was one idea gnawing at my insides which wouldn't keep quiet, as much as I sought to silence it with Seth's touch. I pulled back to regain my breath, meeting his steady gaze. "What do you think would be a queen vermin's purpose?"
He drew a hand down my cheek. "The War Office says the turned want to perpetuate the virus. So, following your theory, the bees would be looking for a better field of flowers to pollenate."
It sounded poetic when you thought of bees and fields full of flowers, rather than the horror of people torn and devoured by rotten corpses. "I thought the cities would be easier, with a higher concentration of people."
"But they are also better protected, and the turned are found and dealt with quicker. Out here, it takes more time to discover them."
Silence dropped as we both thought of the empty cottage and a missing family, except for a little girl wearing daisies.
"Come on, I'll show you what I have done with the information in your notebook." He held out his hand, and we walked back to the house.
In his study, the topographical map now had numerous coloured pins over the surface.
Seth explained. "Green pins are those who died in the initial pandemic. I have marked the place they died, rather than where they were buried."
The land behind the manse would have been a green minefield if he had, most were buried there in the mass graves or individual plots.
His finger moved to a different coloured pin. "Then I marked those who were turned, yellow for locals, blue for unidentified. Red is where you dispatched someone."
From a distance it was pretty, the colours swirling around each other. Then my eye focused on the red; the final death dispatched by my sword. The map bled in response to the pestilence I spread. Bees still hummed through my mind. I took a step backward, and then another, until I hit the opposite wall.
"What are you doing?" Seth asked.
"I want to ignore the individual detail and look at them as a whole. Imagine each pin represents a worker in a hive. How would you find the location of the hive?"
He leaned on the wall next to me and crossed his arms, the two of us staring at the blobs of colour. "Bees would spread out in all directions from their hive. I would look for a circular concentration."
I let my mind wander, ignoring the blight of red, and concentrated on blue and yellow, like scattered daisies in grass. One area drew my attention. Yellow and blue overlaid with drops of blood when I crossed their path and found, and then destroyed, their bodies.
"There." I crossed the distance and laid my hand over the map. One area to the east had a loose circle of pins with an empty spot in the middle. The rest appeared random, scattered like confetti. It was still an enormous area, easily some two hundred square acres, but we had narrowed our hunt.
Seth stared at the spot with its concentric circles of hills and valleys. "It will still take some time to search, but we have a starting point. You are a genius." He dropped a kiss on my head.
I shrugged, but inside I glowed. "It's only a theory, we have yet to prove it."
"I need to notify London, this could be the breakthrough we have been searching for."
"Seth." I met his grey gaze. "What if there is a queen?" I chewed my bottom lip. The idea both intrigued and repulsed me. A queen bee was larger, fed by her attendants, and rarely left the hive. Would a queen vermin be similar? Would we find a woman running a Somerset hive, or a mother?
He held my gaze. "London will want such a creature captured."
Not quite what I meant. I really had no interest in rounding up vermin for the War Office to study. I was more concerned with what might drive a queen vermin. Were they all part of a hive intelligence, perhaps each diminished to a mere single spark in a collective conscious? Did they likewise share a single soul? Was that how they continued functioning, and why severing the head made them fall — did the wound sever their connection to the hive? So many ideas and theories.
I looked back to the map, where the rings of colour now took on a different meaning. We just had to prove it, and somewhere in that area, we might find an answer.
Chapter Seventeen
There were days I felt like a Clydesdale, pulling the plough and tilling an endless field. The harness weighed heavy around my neck and shoulders, but I had no way to remove it on my own. The leather bit into my skin as I strained against the weight I must drag behind me.
Today was most certainly one of those days.
We started extra early. With the ball tonight, our workload seemed to quadruple. They all wanted special baths and their hair washed, which meant lugging hot water up to their rooms because we had no money to plumb in the bathroom. Father had planned one before the war. The room was built and tiled and held a divine claw-foot bath, but the pipes were never connected. Now it seemed like an extravagant luxury. I was quite happy with the tin bath in the kitchen, at least it was closer to both the water source and the range to heat it. But no, they had to bathe upstairs in the fancy, useless room.
I was nearly done for the evening. The horses munched on their feed in the barn as I walked back to the house. My feet were killing me, and all I wanted was to lay down. Then I remembered that Seth had made me promise to go tonight. Silly to even contemplate it when I didn't have an evening gown, though Charlotte's hand me down might suffice. Sometimes, the way he looked at me, I don't know if he even saw what I was wearing in that moment.
Oh. Shouldn't have thought that. The very idea of being naked with Seth made something hot uncurl and slither around my insides.
I snorted, wrestling my thoughts back in reality. How could I contemplate a night of dancing when my toes were numb? Maybe it would be bearable if he held me close to keep me upright. A giggle shot from my throat, most unlike me, as I pushed through the back door.
Elizabeth sat at the kitchen table, rapping one long fingernail on the waxed surface. Louise and Charlotte sat on one side. Charlotte stared at her folded hands in her lap. Louise filed her nails and tried to appear disinterested, but her head shot up and pure venom filled her eyes. Magda stood at the range, her face drained and pale. Her gaze flew to me and she shook her head. Step-mother fixed me with her steel gaze; the ice blue pierced me and held me to the spot before I could heed Magda's warning and turn tail.
"Do take a seat, Eleanor." She lifted a foot and kicked a chair out from the table. It scraped along the floor. Never had an inanimate piece of furniture looked more foreboding.
Louise smirked, while Charlotte still avoided looking at me. They rarely ventured into the kitchen, to the servant's territory. For all three of them to be here, I was in trouble so deep I might spot the Titanic.
I sat and waited for the iceberg to hit. The only question racing through my mind was did I try and cling to the wreckage, or jump clear and take my chances in the frigid waters? I could only think of one incredibly handsome and charming thing that would bring her rage down on my head – Seth deMage.
I laid my palms on the table, hoping to hide the quiver starting in my fingertips. Elizabeth could cut me to the core with a few choice words. While I could slay vermin, this demon defeated me in every single encounter.
"I have a very dear friend who happens to be a companion to Queen Alexandra," Elizabeth said, her gaze drilling through me. "And today she relayed a very interesting piece of gossip. Did you know that a duke, being so close to the throne, requires the permission of the monarch to marry?"
I stared at my hands, the tremor visible and creeping up my arm. "No ma'am. I did not know that."
She laughed, a cold sharp thing. If a noise could take physical shape, this would be my iceberg, bearing down on me and ready to rip my side open.
"Of course not. You are merely a servant, such matters are far above your head." The fingernail kept rapping on the table. "The Duke of Leithfield has sought the king and consort's opinion for his choice of bride. Apparently, he has his eye on a local Somerset girl."
Ice seeped through my veins, and I gritted my jaw to stop my teeth from rattling. "This is excellent news is it not? Surely this mean he intends to propose to Louise? Perhaps he will ask her tonight, at the ball?"
Her fist slammed on the table and she pushed out from her chair. "He seeks permission to marry Miss Eleanor Cowie."
"Trollop!" Louise spat the word, slammed her file on the table, and half rose from her chair. Her face flushed red with anger that she held contained. Even she knew better than to take on her mother. "You underhanded, devious, conniving dollymop."