Jane Steele

by Lyndsay Faye

  “I think you may have tipped Jack Ghosh as well,” I mused, “but I’m not entirely certain of that. Did you?”

  “Yes.” She had recovered her poise, though the sunken pits of her pupils were glassy. “I contacted him through Clements—he was staying in the village. I waited until Sardar and Charles were guaranteed to be absent, and then I sent him word they were away from home.”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  “To be rid of him. I could have finished him for us. And to be rid of you.”

  “I don’t …” I faltered. “God in heaven. Why should—”

  “I removed the jewels from Sardar and Charles’s keeping, yes, having heartily approved their taking them.” Her voice was as smooth as a river stone and twice as cold. “They were keeping it unguarded, in a child’s trunk. I was on my way to meet Sardar when I glimpsed Sack leaving the house in a sort of ecstasy. Sahjara confirmed she had shown him her dolls—I was forced to act quickly. I buried the trunk in the depths of the warehouse the Thornfields shared with Sardar, wedged between cracked jades and silks from poor dye lots, where no one would ever look. When Ghosh took Sahjara …” She directed a series of guttural curses in an unidentifiable tongue at the sloped ceiling. “They ran off like puppies, did not tell me what was troubling them, or I could have given them the trunk. Her mind was forever altered, and I love that little girl as if she were mine. How could I not vow to kill Jack Ghosh? I waited for years, until the perfect opportunity arose. I meant to do it with my own blade—after he had finished you, of course, but that did not go as planned.”

  “Yes, but as for myself—”

  “I said, I love that little girl as if she were mine!” she screamed.

  The air turned to ash between us—thick and hot in our throats, as if a volcano had erupted.

  “Oh,” I breathed, comprehending.

  She laughed miserably, the scar across her brow raised in disbelief. “In an English way, you are quite clever, Miss Stone; but in an English way, you are also very stupid. When Sahjara was sent away, my heart broke—she was all I had left of my friend Karman, and oh, Karman was like a shaft of God’s light striking earth. Lavell wasn’t fit to clean her boots with his spit, and the instant I heard of her demise, I slaughtered him in Amritsar and was back in Lahore before anyone there so much as knew he was dead. He would have alternately ignored and bullied Sahjara, that precious girl.”

  “Her father would have mistreated her. But not Sardar Singh,” I murmured, understanding still more.

  “Not Sardar—Sardar is a good man. When she was sent to England, he used to tell me to have patience, tell me that we would all be together again soon. For a while, Miss Stone, I thanked God for my new home here at Highgate House. I was teaching Sahjara Turkish, Pashto, how to sharpen a sword and how to balance accounts. Then Charles hatched a truly foul idea with Sardar—and in English, no less, though they did not know I minded them.”

  “He wanted an English governess. I’m so sorry.”

  “No, you aren’t,” she growled, gesturing with the knife’s tip. “You adore the pair of them, and they love you back, they … they can see you.”

  A sob escaped her, and she panted, clutching the knife’s handle so hard I thought her fingers must break.

  “It was bad enough not to work with Sardar any longer—passing the time with him on long journeys, going over inventory, dining with his sister,” she seethed. “As his confidential secretary, I negotiated for him, flattered for him, foresaw every difficulty and prevented it happening at all. Here I was sent to the servants’ wing, none of my efforts with Sahjara were given more than passing praise, Sardar lost all interest in my company, there was no meaningful work to distract me, and then they determined to advertise for a white governess. I wrote to Mr. Sack the next day.”

  “How could you do such a thing if you truly loved Sahjara?”

  “To remind them of who we really are.” Her death mask’s face tilted up, challenging. “I was wasting away, misery robbing me of flesh by the pound, and they didn’t even notice. They needed something to fight for, Miss Stone. We all did—it’s in our blood. My friend Karman was eighteen years old when she had her first Khalsa cavalry uniform tailored—we were born to fight, destined by God, and she would have despaired at seeing them so emasculated.”

  This account of Karman’s uniform rang like bells; but before I could comprehend why the detail was important, I was being given my marching orders.

  “Now, come here, slowly—and walk down the stairs, slowly. If you fail to do exactly as I say, this knife will be in your kidney.”

  The slowly portion was easily managed, for I dreaded accompanying her. My limbs moved stiltedly, as if they belonged to Sahjara’s long-lost dolls, but my senses were keenly attuned to the familiar creak of the staircase, the velvety wood of the aged bannister. The only thing to do was to keep her talking—but I could not for my life imagine what to say to a woman who wished I had never been born.

  “Why didn’t you tell them about Karman’s fortune after Sahjara was rescued?” I asked.

  “At the start of another war?” she sneered from behind me.

  “After that war, then?”

  “In the midst of transporting an entire household across the continent?”

  I stopped, hands visibly limp at my sides, and turned.

  “You knew it was wrong,” said I. “You don’t want to find out what Sardar will think.”

  “He stole those jewels in the first place, you fool,” she spat, but her lip trembled. “Go on, out the back door and head for the forest.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. I am curious, though, how after all you have seen and discovered, that you could dream you mean me no harm.”

  I stepped outside. The fresh air was like a slap across the cheek; it warned that, unless I was very fortunate, I was about to die. I would not, I had already determined, fall to my knees and allow the guillotine to fall. If this was to be the end, I would fight with tooth and claw at the edge of the woods; but before those methods were employed, I elected to try persuasion.

  “We could invent a story,” I said, and it was not a lie: it was a possibility. “Do you wonder how I came to go armed?”

  “No.” The tip of her knife caressed the edge of my cloak. “I was listening outside the dining room. Faster now, towards that copse.”

  The woods loomed before me, the thicket from which Edwin and I had burst, all the starkly bare-limbed beeches and the forbidding pines near to the edge of the ravine, and I did not want to die where Edwin had, could not stop my skin from crawling when I felt his unmoving stare pinned to my face.

  “Then you know I have faced hardship,” I insisted. “I will tell you more, something I have never deliberately told anyone: I am your equal in infamy. I have murdered—more than once. I can lie for you, only tell me what your reasons were.”

  “You suppose a false confession will save you?”

  This, of all strokes, was surely deliberately arranged by God to needle me.

  “It isn’t fal—”

  “Never mind. I will tell you anyhow what my motives were,” Garima Kaur added, and I could sense the gathering snow as the avalanche gained speed, hurtling towards the ravine. “I killed David Lavell because had he never existed, we should all be at peace. I maintained ties with John Clements because thereby I kept my finger on the pulse of the activities of Augustus Sack and Jack Ghosh. I killed John Clements because, imbecile though he was, he knew enough about my movements to grow suspicious after I forged the letter. And I forged the letter because—”

  “Garima! And can that possibly be Miss Stone?”

  I could have collapsed at the sound of that voice—indeed, I staggered, and Garima Kaur gasped.

  We turned as one animal to see Sardar Singh. He seemed puzzled but delighted at the sight of me and said something in Punjabi to Garima Kaur, who had clearly masked the knife in the fold of her skirts upon t
he instant she heard him call from behind us.

  She answered readily enough; but I, much closer to her, could see that her hands shook, and knew that what had previously been a perilous situation was now absolutely a deadly one.

  “Miss Stone!” Mr. Singh exclaimed. “What a happy moment I seem to have chosen for a long winter’s walk. I have passed many a frank hour in Charles’s company since you departed, but had hardly hoped you would return after you sent no forwarding address. Welcome home—or so I hope you think of it.”

  Garima Kaur aimed a painted puppet’s smile at him even as her eyes flooded with tears.

  Not long after my mother’s death I had a nightmare I actually remembered, the screaming sort which led Taylor to single me out in the Reckoning: a creature came to the doorstep of our cottage, and I knew without seeing, as one does in dreams, that it was a rabbit, and I picked up the small animal thinking to pet its fur. Only after I had lifted it did I realise that it had already been skinned by a hunter, and begun to be butchered as well; deep knife marks were scored along the spine, and only half its head remained, as if the brains had been reserved to tan the pelt. Though it moved as if alive, nuzzling my chest, I knew it must be in unfathomable pain, and I awoke shrieking about needing to kill something because in the dream I had no proper weapon.

  I had not thought of that nightmare in years; but Garima Kaur’s expression brought it immediately to mind.

  “Mr. Singh,” said I, stepping two paces away from her.

  “Whatever is the matter?” he asked, frowning. “Have I interrupted you?” These questions were followed by what I assumed was the Punjabi equivalent.

  Garima Kaur waited to see what I would say, her attention flicking rapidly between us.

  For the first time in my life, I decided that truth was preferable.

  “She speaks English,” I announced. “Very well indeed, and she has the treasure—look in the garret of the cottage, under the false bottom in the crate of records.”

  Several expressions fought for supremacy on Mr. Singh’s face, the winner proving disbelief. “Miss Stone, I cannot imagine—”

  “You don’t have to; you can find it yourself. She wanted to protect your sister’s fortune, but now there are Company soldiers in the village, Mr. Quillfeather is keeping them at bay, and she killed David Lavell in Amritsar all those years ago. I know you won’t mourn him, but she’s the reason Sack was here—she sent him a letter in your name.”

  Garima Kaur’s fleshless face reacted not at all to my betraying her secrets, but she swayed slightly. I had told only a fraction of what I knew, and only what I thought Mr. Singh and Mr. Thornfield might forgive. Slanting my gaze, I willed her to understand me.

  I will never tell them you killed John Clements, nor that you sent Jack Ghosh—not if you and I can both survive this.

  Sardar Singh stood there motionless, taking in my words with eyes wide; I saw the exact moment when he believed me, for he flinched. Then I remembered that—unlike Mr. Thornfield, who seemed to expect trouble to find him magnetically—Mr. Singh had always known that the key to the conundrum lay in how Mr. Sack came to be at Highgate House in the first place.

  The fact of his being here was, I agree, the greatest mystery of all.

  “Garima, is what Miss Stone says accurate?”

  “Yes.” The tears spilled down her bony cheeks. “But it was all for you, for us. Why should I have told you I speak English? You would talk of your problems to Charles, and I solved them without your ever asking me to—I was your djinn, your secret granter of wishes. You used to need me. How can you think you don’t need me any longer?”

  “We all of us need one another,” he said softly, but she was a rudderless ship close to capsizing.

  “Sahjara and I were fine, we were all fine, until she came!” Garima Kaur may as well have been brandishing the knife, for her words slashed through the air between us. “So you didn’t seek me out any longer, banished me to the servants’ quarters, and never thought to visit—none of it mattered whilst I still had our sweet girl to tutor. But you took even that pittance and gave it to her, and never noticed I was fading away right in front of you.”

  Mr. Singh raised his hands, seeming as contrite as he was appalled. “We shall set all this right. Do you hear me, Garima? Please—I am to blame, you are correct, but as to Augustus Sack’s coming here—how could you even consider bringing such a plague upon us when he had thought Karman’s treasure lost in the Punjab?”

  “Because the only time you ever loved me was when I was fighting beside you!” she cried.

  A ghastly silence fell. I took in her terrible scar, her posture like prey caught in an iron trap. I did not blame Mr. Singh for being celibate, nor for being stupid, because I am apparently remarkably dim-witted myself where Clarke is concerned. Imagining the eternal desert Garima Kaur had walked through all her life, however—next to the man she loved but never near him—repelled me on her behalf. I had chosen to leave Charles Thornfield, and she had locked herself in a prison with a view of paradise through the window.

  Mr. Singh, meanwhile, seemed to have forgot his own mastery of our language—any language—regarding Garima Kaur as if he had never truly set eyes on her previous.

  “There were five of them, and they came on us, thirsting for blood and spoils, and you’d no heart to take their wretched lives, but I was there, and so we lived,” she said brokenly. “We survived, Sardar, and for two terrible, magnificent minutes, I wasn’t invisible. And after it was over, after they’d marked me and my chances at marriage to anyone else had vanished, I disappeared again the same way my hopes did. So courteous you were, so distant—I may as well have been your shaving mirror.”

  Had she whipped the blade from her skirts and slit his belly, I do not think Mr. Singh’s expression would have differed.

  Then I did something entirely brainless, and thus set a number of dreadful events in motion. What I ought to have done was to bolt whilst her attention was fixed on the object of her affections; I ought to have sprinted to the main house shrieking for Charles Thornfield, and many ghastly consequences would have been avoided.

  Unfortunately, I scarcely ever scream when I am meant to.

  “I think we must—”

  The instant I opened my lips to offer an unsolicited opinion, Garima Kaur bellowed in rage and swung her knife at my throat.

  There was not enough time.

  Had there been enough time, I could have evaded her; had there been enough time, Mr. Singh could have drawn a weapon. Had there been enough time, Garima Kaur would not have been almost unhampered in her decision to send me to hell.

  I say almost unhampered.

  Sardar Singh emitted a wordless sound of protest and leapt, using what I only then realised was a final recourse when lacking other shields, and blocked her blade with his metal cuff. The knife slid with a horrid scraping noise down the sheath and then soundlessly sliced off his right hand.

  Garima Kaur emitted a despairing groan, dropped her weapon, and ran.

  Mr. Singh roared in pain and fell to his knees; I whipped off my cloak, bundled it, and I buried the gushing stump within. The hand with its severed tendons and its white gleam of bone lay to my left, pointing in the direction whence its butcher had fled.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I— You saved my life.”

  Mr. Singh’s lips were pressed so hard within his mouth that nothing save beard remained; he had not lost enough blood yet to faint, but the shock did battle with his consciousness nevertheless.

  “Please, you’ll be all right. You have to be. Please.”

  I think my uselessness roused him, for he ordered, “Help me to stand.”

  Between the two of us, we managed, though I nearly toppled under his weight; the instant he was upright, he was striding for the main house with his good arm about my shoulders, I pressing the ball of my cloak against his stump.

  “Can you make it?”

  “I don’t know, but I needn’t,”
he gasped. “Not if you fetch Charles to wherever I collapse.”

  The journey, I am sure, took less than three minutes; if ever three minutes were drenched with horror enough for three lifetimes, it was those. We burst through the front door like marauders, interrupting Charles Thornfield as he came from his study into the hall, dropping several pieces of mail on the table.

  “What in the name of the devil—” he began, and then paled. “Is this our Jane returned? Oh my God—Sardar, what has—”

  “We’ll talk about it later, Charles,” Mr. Singh said, breath heaving. “If you could stop me bleeding to death in the meanwhile …”

  Mr. Thornfield’s cry of dismay was the only signal I had that Mr. Singh was about to topple like a felled tree; I was dragged a bit by his bulk, but Mr. Thornfield caught him round the waist and together we made it into the parlour. Mr. Singh landed on the settee and lay back, all his limbs quivering.

  “Jane, whatever are you doing here?” the love of my life demanded. “Who dared to lay a finger on—”

  Mr. Thornfield tore off the makeshift bandage of my cloak and saw what had been done.

  “No.” He closed his eyes and shook his head as if the sight could be erased. “For Christ’s sake, no. Sardar—”

  “No!” I cried, lurching towards the window.

  Mr. Singh managed to raise his torso, and the three of us watched as Mrs. Garima Kaur, saddled on Nalin, galloped past the bay window with Sahjara seated between her knees and exited the estate through the gate where my forgotten horse was still tethered with its trap.

  THIRTY-TWO

  “I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence; as you, I am sure do.”

  What in hell is the meaning of all this?” Mr. Thornfield shouted as he tore off his coat and rolled his sleeves up, dropping to his knees. “Where is Garima off to with Sahjara?”