Changelings at Court

by Ken Altabef

  The Royal Chapel was a marvel. A blaze of lights lined every pew and balustrade, with hundreds of candles suspended from the ceiling of the hall as well. The richest notaries, all in their best dress, stood lining the benches and pews, and crowded shoulder to shoulder in the upper galleries. The interior facades and balconies were adorned with reams of black velvet and brilliant crimson damask. The ceiling had been painted with a sumptuous mural depicting the marriage of King Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves. Wasn’t she the wife who had survived annulment from Henry, Dresdemona wondered, or had she been executed as well? The Dark Queen was not as well versed on British history as she might have been. Never matter. This marriage of state would turn out quite differently. She’d make certain of that.

  She took her place beneath the canopy beside the altar, her ears ringing with all the clatter—trumpets and drumbeats, organ music blasting, silver bells tinkling and the chattering, chattering, chattering of the masses. The Archbishop of Canterbury performed the service, as obese and gouty a man as Dresdemona had ever seen. King George’s drunken uncle William, Duke of Cumberland, gave the bride away, his sweaty paw leaving a stain on the sleeve of her gown.

  As the King slid the ring on her finger, a rocket was let fly from the top of the chapel and the Tower guns roared in response. Dresdemona experienced a splitting headache, the first of many, she supposed.

  And now, on her wedding night, the headache was still with her.

  As the King continued his grunting, sweaty, exhortations, spending his passions against the empty mattress, Dresdemona relaxed her own personal glamour, changing back to her natural self. She still maintained the illusion of Charlotte on the bed, but she needn’t be bothered with two illusions simultaneously. She sighed with relief at letting herself go. Following her cue, Meadowlark and Bekla began to drop their human illusions as well.

  “No,” she instructed them. “Stay as you are. Tonight you are my two little human handmaids, nothing else.”

  Bekla giggled, warming to the notion immediately. She wriggled out of her clothes and let them drop to the floor.

  Aldebaran, in his role of her brother, could not be allowed within the royal bedchamber. But no one questioned the duty of Johanna and Juliana, who had both been added to her ladies of the bedchamber, to rush about making sure that their charge was properly primped and perfumed to meet the king’s needs. The Dark Queen wondered what her beastly consort was doing at this moment? Was he stalking the corridors of the palace, pacing angrily up and down and stewing in a fit of red-hot jealousy? Or was he charming the petticoat off some horny landowner’s wife or scullery maid?

  With a whispered “My Lady” and a lascivious “Oh, Your Highness” interspersed with her giggles, Bekla showered kisses on Dresdemona’s cheeks and neck. “It wouldn’t be proper,” she asserted with another giggle, “to kiss the Queen on her mouth.”

  “Not to worry,” the Dark Queen replied, “There are other, more interesting places.”

  Meadowlark seemed uncertain what to do. Though he maintained the illusion of Johanna Hagerdorn he still possessed the equipment of a man.

  Dresdemona noted his hesitation. “Just play your role, sweet pea. But I’m warning you, if I feel anything rubbing against me tonight except your tongue, I will tear it off.”

  Meadowlark decided to leave the dress on.

  “My pleasure,” he retorted, “but why shouldn’t we have use of the bed?”

  “I think you’re right,” said the Queen. “It’s my wedding night after all.” She turned her full attention to George for a moment and the King rolled off of the bed and flopped onto the floor. He roared in lusty abandon and then began working himself feverishly against the plush Oriental carpet.

  “He’s going to give himself a nasty rug burn, there,” laughed Meadowlark.

  “And he’ll love it!” said Dresdemona. She stepped out of her nightgown and lay down fully naked in the center of the feather bed. “Come on,” she said, “Love me!”

  Meadowlark stepped dutifully to the task. Given his current restraints, he decided he’d better start at the bottom. He stuck out his tongue and went to work on the royal feet.

  Chapter 36

  Number Twelve Pennington Street was a three-story building on the west side of Bloomsbury Place. It was set squarely amid several similar brick-faced buildings, all advertising rooms for rent. The street was well-traveled by horse-carriage and ox-cart alike. Just a few doors down, the British Museum had opened in January of the previous year. Nora had always wanted to visit, but never found the time. She spied a young boy squatting behind the steps of the museum. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t be sure. His head bent low as he pushed a glass marble back and forth across the pavement.

  The façade of number Twelve held no pretensions to elegance; it was as soot-stained and ugly as any of the others. Its windows were bordered by wrought iron guttering with flaking paint. There were no shutters or window-boxes and no draperies, inside or out. Nora took out the street door key Threadneedle had given her. She felt unaccountably guilty turning the lock, though she had every permission to do so.

  Stop being so silly, she told herself. All of this cloak-and-dagger stuff is fraying your nerves.

  No one would question her entering the building. Threadneedle rented out the rooms to various people. Strangers must often pass its doorstep. Still, she glanced up and down the street as if she were about to burgle the place. When she looked back toward the museum steps, the boy had gone.

  The front hallway was poorly lit, its paneling moldy and worm-eaten three inches up from the floor. A row of flats lined the corridor on either side, all with their doors closed. It seemed forebodingly quiet here. As Threadneedle lived on the uppermost floor, Nora ascended the creaky stairs. She crossed paths with an old woman coming the other way on the narrow second floor landing, and they nearly bumped heads. The woman carried something, a tarp-wrapped bundle of some sort, but kept it to the side where it could not be easily seen. The old woman said nothing but cast a suspicious look at Nora, making her feel even worse. Her heart was racing.

  She climbed slowly upward, waiting for the old woman to be gone. It just wouldn’t do to be seen entering the landlord’s apartments. Pausing at the door, Nora realized she hadn’t the slightest idea of what she might find. Well, she thought, I’ll soon find out.

  She opened the door and stepped in. The apartment was quite large, taking up all of the top floor, in a space that might have held four apartments on any of the floors below. The main room was open and spacious. A series of three windows on the far wall gave an impressive view of Bloomsbury. Amid the splendid squares and spacious streets laid out below, all vestiges of the rural depravity and wickedness that had marked Cromwell’s England, including such atrocities as haystacks and farm fields, had been rubbed out, replaced by the trappings of modern, polished society. From the shops and businesses that lined the streets, to the parish church at St. George’s with its oddly shaped steeple and brass statue of George I at the top, to the fashionable apartments along Southampton Row, and onward to her beloved Covent Garden. This was Threadneedle’s domain. She imagined him standing here for hours on end, surveying the intricate workings of the capital city stretched out below.

  The apartment had been very well appointed. All of the furnishings were of high quality, rosewood and crushed velvet, with cut glass and brass fittings. But one thought struck her from the first. It was an old man’s apartment. Every stick of furniture was old and careworn as if it had been used for many years. The carpets, the lampshades, the etchings on the walls. The place even smelled like an old man. What was she getting into? The whole thing served as a painful reminder that Threadneedle was over a hundred years old. How long had he lived here? Fifty years at least. Nothing was new. She couldn’t help but be repulsed at the idea.

  A woman’s touch could freshen the place up, she told herself. It wouldn’t be so hard. But all would still be illusion. Cosmetic improvements to the rooms asid
e, Threadneedle would still be an old man, wouldn’t he? She decided not to linger. She did not feel curious. Just get the damn thing and go.

  She passed into the next room, which was laid out as a sort of home office. On the desk she found the only houseplant in the entire place, a little dried-out aloe plant that had died of neglect during the past few months. She would have thought Threadneedle’s home would have more plants and growing things about, but then realized that he must entertain human guests here from time to time and exotic orchids and Moonflowers from Barrow Downes would have seemed suspicious and out of place. She approached the desk. There was an old corn-cob pipe on top, spilling tobacco onto the blotter. Old tobacco. Threadneedle hadn’t been home in a long time but the crushed leaves were even older than that, as if he had given up smoking many years ago. And yet the pipe and its crumbling brown leaf remained on his desk. A very curious man indeed.

  She unlocked the desk’s plaited tambour and rolled it up to reveal a set of three drawers on either side with a decorative arch in the middle. Four wooden half-columns adorned the front as well. These were a false face, merely fitted in place and not actually nailed in. Ignoring the drawers, Nora removed the four posts and set them aside. The section containing the central arch pulled free. It left a vacancy about a foot deep. At the base of this empty space was a thin wooden panel that lifted up, revealing a shallow rectangular opening below. A few gold coins lay inside. Nora brushed them aside. It took her a minute or two of probing blindly with her fingertips to find the hidden spring and trigger the catch. This released the little set of drawers on the right, which she pulled free and set aside.

  After removing these drawers, she found two more secret drawers. She pulled out the lower one. This little drawer was overflowing with trinkets. Among these mementos of Threadneedle’s adventures were several lady’s silk handkerchiefs, a single silver coin stamped with the head of some ancient Transylvanian monarch, a small derringer pistol. A locket of a woman’s hair. Faery hair? Nora gave it a quick sniff. It smelled like a summer day. What was the story behind that one? she wondered. Among a stack of old letters and correspondence she thought she saw her mother’s handwriting on an envelope. She had not been sent here to pry, but had to take a look. No, not her mother’s, but a woman’s handwriting to be sure, in elegant flowing curves that the faeries used. Love letters from some lost love? Now she really felt guilty for peeking. She must respect his privacy. He had sent her here in desperate need and she must not betray his trust by ransacking his most personal things.

  The contents of the drawer represented a find to satisfy the most thorough burglar to be sure. But she knew better. She pulled the little trinket door all the way out. In the vacant space beneath lay yet another tiny hidden drawer. A hidden drawer within a hidden drawer. Inside this one she found what she had been looking for, a little parcel of something, wrapped in a small piece of oiled canvas.

  She didn’t open it. She didn’t want to. She slipped the parcel into a secret pocket in the waistband at the back of her day dress.

  When she turned around William Cavendish was there. She let out a startled yelp.

  He smiled a greasy smile and doffed his feathered hat.

  Nora struggled to regain her composure. “You startled me, sir.”

  “Don’t play coy with me. You’re a poor actress. I can tell you know exactly who I am.”

  Nora flushed indignant. As Horace Wilde she was in fact one of the most celebrated actors in London. “I assure you I do not know you, sir. But I do know that this is a private residence—”

  “Where is Templeton?”

  With only a half-second’s hesitation, she replied, “He’s dead.”

  Cavendish stepped closer. “Don’t play me for a fool, woman. This place hasn’t been touched in months. And yet, the building has not been put up on the market for sale. There have been no creditors lurking around, no heirs nosing about for their piece of the pie. Templeton is not dead.”

  “You’re wrong, sir. I’m his heir, his only daughter. And that is all I care to say to you—”

  Cavendish cut her off again. He leapt forward and grabbed her wrist. He moved as quickly as a snake.

  “Oh, but you are a terrible actress! No. No actress at all. You work at the Menagerie. A costume girl. Isn’t that right?”

  There seemed no point in going on. Cavendish had an encyclopedic knowledge about everything and everyone who ran in his part of town. “That’s right.”

  “As I thought. And I don’t believe that your family name is Templeton, either. Don’t play with me! Templeton set me up. And I never forget a slight. Let me ask you one more time. Where is he?” He gave her wrist a nasty little twist.

  “He’s in France. You’ll never see him again.”

  “Ah, c’est bon!” smirked Cavendish. “I was sort of hoping you would say something like that. And since you are his heir, his only daughter, you will give me recompense for what I am owed.”

  “I can get you some money...”

  “He doesn’t owe me money.”

  An icy fear crawled up Nora’s arm and across her shoulders, as if Cavendish’s touch was contagiously freezing. She was in deep trouble here. She was physically no match for this savage rogue. And then there was that sabre hanging at his belt.

  “I have money!” she insisted.

  “He owes me in treachery and humiliation.”

  He twisted her arm so painfully she had to bite back the urge to cry out.

  “You understand,” he said. “I will have satisfaction.”

  “I’ll scream.”

  “Yes, I believe you will.”

  He smacked her across the jaw. Her head flew to the side, her legs buckled beneath her and she went down on the lacquered oak floorboards. Cavendish threw himself on top of her, his forearm laid across her throat, cutting off her air. He pressed hard against her. Nora struggled but couldn’t cry out. The room began to spin from lack of air. Cavendish leaned down seductively and whispered in her ear, “This is going to hurt.”

  He removed his arm from her throat just long enough to grab her chin and pinch it roughly between his long fingers. She greedily sucked in a huge gasp of air. Her throat already felt so raw it made breathing painful. Nora felt a rising tide of panic. She didn’t want to be raped by this vile creature. She couldn’t stand the thought. She’d rather he just kill her and be done with it. But either way, she felt sure, he was going to have her.

  She felt a familiar burning sensation among the mix of frenzied anger and fear that indicated the change. She worried that she would transform right before his eyes. She could only imagine how such a sight would inflame his depravity even more—she couldn’t even imagine the horrible things he would want to do to a faery girl. She insisted on holding the change back, fighting for control. She was so flush with faery power from her long stay at Barrow Downes. But tricks and illusions would not help her now. He was too strong, too heavy. She tried to grab the sabre still hanging at his side but his hip was a moving target, grinding against her as he worked himself up.

  And in this moment of utter desperation she realized an essential truth of her existence. There was no point in holding back the change. She had been holding it back for a long time. Her faery appearance was in fact her natural state. She’d become adept at keeping it at bay, so well-practiced that disguising herself as a human had become second nature. But she was not really a human. She was, at her heart, a faery. What an inconvenient time for such a revelation!

  Cavendish slapped her face gain, bringing her back to the situation at hand. His fingers went from her chin to her throat, cutting off her air again. He leaned down and chomped on the skin at her neck, grinding his teeth back and forth. Slobbering all over her. She wanted to lash out, surprise him with some type of illusion as she had done at the park. But those little tricks weren’t going to work this time. At this point, he might not even notice. But there was something Threadneedle had told her, something she might be able to use.
Her only chance.

  She wriggled her face to the side. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  He looked up from ravaging her neckline.

  “I’ll play along,” she said. “It doesn’t have to—I mean…I don’t want it to… to hurt.” She tried to look seductively back at him. An actress playing the role.

  The bridge of his nose crinkled, his eyes widened slightly. He was clearly intrigued by the change in her demeanor, but did he believe it?

  “All right then,” he said, smiling his greasy smile once more. “Let me see what you can do.” There you go, she thought. A better actress than you imagined.

  She put her hand against the bulge in his trousers. It only took one moment of relaxation and trust. Just one moment. She fell into him, establishing the connection instantly, and just as quickly struck out. She sent all her fear and rage, focused by the faery power within her soul, directly at Cavendish in a white-hot surge. Everything she’d been holding back, released all at once. Right through the heart. The faery stroke.

  Cavendish gurgled, his eyes bulged, his pelvis spasmed with one final impotent thrust. And he fell down dead right on top of her.

  Nora’s heart was racing so fast she thought it might burst as well. She shoved his limp form aside, scrambled backward across the floor.

  My god, she thought. I’ve just killed a man.

  Never mind that he deserved every bit of it. Never mind what he had been trying to do to her. She was a faery, and she was a murderer. She had needed no weapon except for her faery soul, charged up with power stolen from Barrow Downes. She felt corrupted and repulsed, just the same as she had felt years ago, at the age of thirteen, when she had inadvertently turned into a faery for the first time. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Good Lord, look what I’ve become.