Remembered

by Caroline Hanson

  He used his thumb to wipe a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth. Then wiped his hands on the dead woman’s dress as if it were a rag. I was shaking, trembling in fear and something else, but I didn’t know if it was anger or shame or both.

  “My sister is a bored and vengeful bitch. If you tell her I sent you a book, if you tell her I so much as know your name, she will gut you open from sternum to bowel and send me your entrails as a present.”

  He waited until I nodded and then turned, walked slowly and quietly to stand before a mirror on the wall. He adjusted the collar of his shirt, combed his hair with his fingers.

  I didn’t understand this. At all. “Please…please tell me what I said when you were here before.” I heard a quaver in my voice.

  His jaw hardened, his lips flattening into a perfect line. His gaze flicked to mine, meeting my eyes in the mirror and then back again, as he continued to make himself presentable. I thought he wouldn’t answer. “It’s irrelevant. The ramblings of a child. I couldn’t remember even if I tried,” he said, as he walked out the door.

  He left the island the very next day.

  6

  It was a few months later and mid-afternoon when a maid wearing the Marchant colors of red and black came bursting through the front door, followed by two men, also in Marchant livery and carrying a stretcher behind them that held a body covered with a sheet.

  The sheet was red. Once upon a time it had been a crisp white sheet, but now it looked like someone had coated the sheet in the deepest, darkest paint. Blood dripped onto the floor as Hetty directed them to a table. Without being told, I grabbed a rag and cleaner and began to clean up the drips. The stone floor became slippery when wet.

  I had been grinding herbs with a mortar and pestle, my nose filled with sharp green scents. The smell of death blotted it out, and I blinked watering eyes. “I smell burned flesh,” I said, looking over to Hetty who was peering underneath the sheet.

  Her nostrils flared, and she dropped the sheet hastily. “Miss Cassandra must be frightfully angry,” Hetty said, voice strained.

  The two men who’d brought the dead woman were pale with fright, and I noticed that one man’s hand was shaking, while the other sat down on a chair with a hard thump, as if his legs gave out on him. The man whose hand trembled had a red armband on his right bicep that proclaimed that he’d been with the House Marchant for over ten years. “I should go back,” he said, but it was clear he didn’t want to.

  “Is it safe to return?” I asked, and all eyes jerked to me in surprise. As if they hadn’t realized I was in the room.

  “Oh no. But there are others in the room with her. She called in all of the maids and staff and….” He swallowed.

  “What set her off?”

  “Do you think she needs a reason for murder, then?” Hetty snapped at me.

  I felt a flush creep up my cheeks. “No, I don’t, but she doesn’t kill her maids every day, either. So what triggered her anger?”

  The two guards looked at each other and then away. “I’m afraid I couldn’t say,” he said. There was the sound of running footsteps outside the door, and a small boy exploded into the room, face flushed from his mad dash from the Marchant estate. He pulled at the collar of his black shirt. “Lady Cassandra has asked for a healer!”

  Hetty frowned and mumbled something under her breath.

  “Please, ma’am, please! She’s got my mother and my sister in there with her and she’s not letting anyone out. My brother went for Lord Dalmaine, but we need a healer too!”

  “Did Miss Cassandra really ask for a healer?” Hetty demanded. “In the decades I’ve been doing this job, she’s never asked for one before.”

  The boy’s lower lip trembled in answer. “Please, ma’am. Just to be ready for when she’s not so mad…” Hetty’s gaze found mine, burned into me, and I could feel the accusation there, the resentment she felt towards the Infinite and I felt my cheeks burn hotter.

  “Get your things together and go with the boy,” Hetty commanded. Then she turned her back on me and went into the back room to get the body ready for the relatives’ viewing.

  Something in my brain shut down as I walked towards the storeroom and grabbed my large medical kit. Which, rather ridiculously, just happened to be in the black zippered bag that Lord Marchant had left with us the last time he’d been here. I followed the boy out and down the path, the two men also traipsing along behind us.

  I imagine what we must have looked like, this odd procession of a small boy in his sweltering black-and-red page clothes, me in a light-brown work dress, and the two men behind us in black and red with heads hung low. Anyone who saw us would know there was death around us. And yet it was a beautiful day, almost too hot, the ocean visible behind us, blindingly bright from where the sun struck the water and the flowers, God! Flowers were everywhere on this part of the island, as if they would reconquer the land by stealth.

  We took the most direct path, the one that led along the cliffs to the largest house on the island. It was almost a small castle, with turrets and formal gardens behind the back of the home as well as access to a private beach. For some reason, the beach had black sand, even though the surrounding ones were white. The sand was impossibly fine. Every year the Marchants had an open house, where the public was allowed to tour the ground floor of the home and the gardens and have access to the beach. They provided food, drinks, music. A propaganda attempt to improve the image of Lady Cassandra.

  At the top of the path was a large stone archway surrounded by blooming jasmine, the smell cloyingly floral up close. A guard stood by the front door, his eyes wide. “A healer?” he asked. “She’s not calmed down enough yet for anyone to go in, as far as I know.”

  “What set her off?” I asked, readjusting my heavy bag on my shoulder.

  The guard leaned closer, speaking softly to us as though he were afraid of being overheard.

  “It used to be that you knew when the storm clouds were coming, and everyone did their best to stay out of her way. Vanish-from-the-rooms-as-she-enters sort of thing. But something has happened recently, I don’t know what, and she won’t leave the house. Doesn’t go to Council meetings, turns away visitors. Even Lord Dalmaine gets turned away these last few weeks.”

  “What about Lord Marchant? Has he been told?” But before the man could answer, a shrill, desperate scream came from within the house.

  My heart thundered in fear, and I thought about going home. Shamefully, I did think it. But then the little pageboy took my hand, his eyes overflowing with tears as he tried to tug me into the house where his mama and sister were. The guard pulled the boy back and yet I remained on the threshold.

  My calling was to go into situations people typically ran from. Whenever there was sickness or a dead body, I had to push aside my personal hesitations and do it. This was no different. At least that’s what I tried to tell myself as I set one foot in front of the other and walked into the Marchant house. In theory I should have been safe; the punishment for harming a healer was steep, even for the Infinite. But Cassandra Marchant wasn’t the sort to let a little pragmatism interfere with her bloody whims.

  The door was open. I imagined it had been thrown open by people fleeing, and there was no one left to close it. Gloomy, dark silence greeted me in the entryway, punctuated by the faintest sound of sobbing which floated down the hallway. There was always crying when Cassandra Marchant was involved.

  Dark paneling and lack of lighting had me squinting as I moved quietly down the hall. The sobbing paused, there was a choking sound, and then the sobbing continued, interspersed with a cough and then some pleading. I heard Lady Cassandra crooning softly from inside the library. She had the crispest vowels I had ever heard, more cut than even her brother, and I wasn’t the only one who could recognize her voice from a distance. Self-preservation, really. Her voice was a touch above a whisper, like a mother speaking to her baby, but wrong.

  “It’s you, isn’t it? Tell me, just
tell me you did it and then I can kill you. I can make all of this stop,” she said, as if she had a present to deliver if only she could get the recipient to accept it.

  A wail of despair.

  The door was slightly ajar and inside were five servants, all of them cowering near a table, knees drawn up to their chests as they waited in fear. Lady Cassandra was blocking a young woman against a wall of dusty old books. She held a knife in her hand, the handle mother-of-pearl, the blade shining, a giant diamond encrusted at the hilt. “I feel as though you want me to hurt you,” Lady Cassandra said, calmly. “I can’t think of any other reason why you won’t tell me what I want to know.” She was a petite woman, something that always seemed surprising because she was so frightening and intimidating that she should have been at least six feet tall.

  Her complexion was peaches and cream, her cheeks rounded as if she were a girl just on the cusp of womanhood. She didn’t look a day over eighteen, and she was so innocent-looking, with her wide blue eyes and little bow of a mouth, that it made her even more terrifying.

  The maid’s blonde hair was a tangle around her face. “Please don’t hurt me, madam. Please, I have a—“

  With a snarl and a move that was faster than I could follow, Lady Cassandra brought the blade across the maid’s throat. Blood exploded out of her neck, and Lady Cassandra clamped her mouth tight on the woman’s neck, a small river of blood pouring onto the carpet as the maid gurgled and died.

  I stumbled backwards in shock and terror.

  I’d never seen it happen. I’d always shown up when people were dead or injured. After the event. And while I’d seen people die, been holding them even, as they faded away, I’d never actually seen one of the Infinite drain one of us. Not this violent, soulless attack.

  I made a sound of some kind, a reaction of fear, and Lady Cassandra pulled back, her face dripping with blood, chest heaving. She let go of the maid, her lifeless body toppling to the side, forgotten as Lady Cassandra rose with a bloody smile, and advanced towards me.

  “A latecomer.” She raised a blood-covered finger. “Run and I will catch you. It won’t be pretty and I’ll be ever so annoyed then.” Her voice was musical, like tinkling bells. Fear raised every hair on my body. “You don’t work for me, though. Do you? I’ve never seen you. I know them all now. Been learning.” Her gaze raked me over, the bag, my dress. Her eyes narrowed in knowledge. “Come in, healer. It’s good you’re here. It’s the first sensible thing any of you have done all day. Now we will know, we will ferret out the answer. Tell me, little healer, tell me what you know about poison.”

  “Madam?” I asked.

  With a snarl, she reached out for a servant and yanked him to her like a rag doll, as if it the man weighed nothing. A collective moan of fear rose from the others. The cook pressed her back into the wall as if she could wiggle through it and escape. “Is it you? What do you even do for me? What’s your job?” She demanded, with a shake that made the servant’s head snap back.

  “Groom, your Ladyship.”

  “I don’t ride horses,” she said, dangerously suspicious.

  “It’s for his Lordship. We are always ready for him if he needs a horse.”

  A hiss. “My brother. Leander, that worthless…Where is my brother? I want my brother.” Her voice rose with hysteria. “He will solve this, God damn him. He always does. I do the work, I keep things going, and then he shows up, says a few things, and then I’m irrelevant. Totally irrelevant until he goes away again,” she said, laughing unhappily. The laughter stopped, and her expression turned serious. “Get my damned brother!” she shouted in the groom’s face.

  “I can ask the Council, madam,” he said, voice so strained with fear that it took me a moment to decipher his words.

  She laughed. “Yes, you ask them. Go now and ask. And then, then you tell them that if they don’t call him I will go on a spree. A killing rampage. I’ll go into town and murder everyone I can find. Not even men, just women and children!” she said, pleased with the idea. I lowered my gaze as her attention returned to me. “That’s how you get noticed, healer.”

  She let the groom go, and he dashed past me to the door, his shoes slapping hard on the ground. Her attention turned back to the cowering staff. “Now I’m going to kill another one of you to show I’m serious. Who wants to die first?”

  I couldn’t stand to watch her kill someone else. At least I assume that’s why I spoke up, because it’s much harder to stand by while people die than one could ever imagine.

  And clearly self-preservation has never been my strong suit.

  “Can’t you contact him?” I asked.

  She went very still. Shoulders rigid. Slowly, she pivoted to face me.

  “That is an interesting thing to say. I should be able to contact him, shouldn’t I? But the wires are cut. Cut! Like their throats are going to be cut until I’m told who did this to me.” She turned back to her hostages.

  “I can contact him,” I volunteered, and I wanted to throw up, I was so frightened.

  She turned back to me, eyes narrowed. “What did you say, my dear?”

  “In the infirmary, we have a phone to reach him…for emergencies.”

  “Well, then you better get to it,” she said, pacing in agitation.

  “Can they go with me?” I asked, and she blinked.

  “Them? They might be traitors. Someone cut the cords. Someone is trying to isolate me. Ruin me. I’ve been poisoned!”

  “But…if the servants are alive, Lord Marchant can help you find out who it is.” I was thinking frantically.

  A dark laugh. “Leander is going to help me? Leander will rip their chests open and find out their secrets? Oh no. He’s not capable. Where is Alistair? Alistair can do it,” she said. “Now go, leave!”

  I took a step backwards, then two, not daring to give her my back. I dropped down into a curtsy, having forgotten to do so in my haste to escape, and almost fell to the ground.

  “Wait, dear. Watch a moment. So that when he asks you what I’m doing, why he should hurry…” and the soft smile that spread across her face, making my knees knock together under my dress.

  She lunged forward, fast as a snake on a gopher, pulling a red-haired woman away from the wall and down to the ground between us. There was a terrible crack as the servant’s ribs broke, then a shriek of pain abruptly cut off. Lady Cassandra used one pale palm to hold the woman’s head to the floor, the column of the woman’s neck exposed as she struck with calculated fury.

  It took a moment for her to break the flesh, her teeth worrying through the woman’s skin to get to her blood. The Infinite don’t have fangs. That is a myth. They were once people, and getting through the skin is easiest with a blade. To simply gnaw on someone’s flesh until it gives is barbaric and simply not done. It shows a total disregard for those beneath them.

  The Infinite were better than us; “evolved” is what the Council told us in our Sunday meetings. Acting like a dog mauling a pheasant didn’t inspire feelings of inferiority in us mortals.

  Not like seeing them be graceful and poised, not like the staged fights or debates on science or recitation of poetry that they did to entertain us. They fostered a cult of celebrity, using it as a tool, a weapon even. In fact, it seems now that everything was a weapon to them, be it a sultry voice or impeccable manners. If it was something they could hone to improve themselves, they’d done it. Over the centuries and years, they were all sleek, impeccable, so refined that we couldn’t help but appear an almost inferior species next to them.

  Abruptly, the maid stopped screaming and all I could hear was swallowing as Lady Cassandra drank down her servant. The silence was profound, scary on its own. I think we were all holding our breath, staring transfixed at Lady Cassandra. A nightmare made flesh.

  Lady Cassandra moaned and arched, the silk of her dress rustling, like a secret whisper as she moved her leg between the maid’s thighs. A blush stole over me and I stared transfixed at the horrible wrongness of i
t all.

  Lady Cassandra let go of the woman’s face and slid her hand down the woman’s body, cupping the dying maid’s breast through her cotton uniform, searching for her nipple. Her hips began to move in tandem to her swallows, the two inextricably linked, sex and blood.

  Didn’t I already know that? Blood aroused the Infinite. But not like this, I thought, surely Lord Marchant would never….

  And then Lady Cassandra stilled herself and pushed away from her maid, rising to her feet faster than I could follow, swaying like a drunk as she took a step towards me. Should I run? Should I stay? I locked my legs so I wouldn’t take a step back, wouldn’t show fear. Her pupils were blown wide, her skin practically glowing with health, everything about her subtly changed and enhanced.

  Blood from the vein makes them stronger. But now I could see it: the clarity of her skin, the pink tinge to her cheeks, even her hair looked shinier. Her strength… She must be strong now, I thought with a shudder.

  “Go little healer, tell him...” Her words were slurred. “Tell him the bodies are staining the floors.”

  My medicine bag was at Lady Cassandra’s feet. Her attention was fixed on it, her perfectly shaped light-brown brows pulled together in a frown. I didn’t know why and I didn’t care. I was out the door, still backing up, and when my back hit the wall I whimper in fear. She looks at me and laughs, claps her hands once in pleasure like I’m a puppy that’s done something cute, and that’s when I broke, turning and running as fast as I can out the open door.

  She thought my terror was funny. Why did that upset me when I’d just seen her kill someone and get off on it? How could I have more space in my body and heart for fear?

  My feet flew over the path as I raced back to the infirmary. I had to leave a message. I had to call Lord Marchant, tell him to come home because his crazy sister was on a killing rampage that would ruin his floors. I bent over and vomited, retching so hard it came out my nose, the taste of acid stuck in my throat and mouth.