Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5)

by Dean C. Moore

  Ferrero landed just shy of the forest perimeter—one of twelve forested atolls on the estate—in his flower garden, figuring the brightness of the flowers would conceal the dragon-kite design of his ultra-light. He sprinted into the trees before the girl could see him.

  Tackling her to the ground, he said, “Who are you and why are you here?”

  She defiantly glared at him.

  “Let me tell you how this is going to go. You’ll be brought up on charges for trespassing and thievery. And we won’t have trouble making any charges stick, as Lady Harding’s reach is long.”

  Her fierce gaze held a while longer before caving.

  “I’m Verily. We’re gathering intel for Ermies, so he knows what and how to sell to you when he launches his all-out campaign on the Harding estate.” The girl suddenly couldn’t spill her guts fast enough; it was as if she had some truth-telling disease, as if she’d fallen back on a cactus that stuck her with a hundred needles worth of organically-growing truth serum. “The data is inscribed on these recorders,” she said, showing him hers. Bespellion does an in-depth profile of the customers back at the warehouse for fine-tuning sales pitches still further. And we have a professional troupe of actors that can use this information to shapeshift themselves into anybody they need to be to penetrate the interiors.”

  “MI6 has nothing on you guys,” Ferrero said. He rolled off her and collapsed to the ground, dizzy from the data dump.

  “And—”

  “Stop, already. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to lie to your elders?”

  Verily clammed up tighter than an abalone. She was on the verge of tears.

  “Just give me some quiet, so I can think,” Ferrero said a little more softly.

  He jumped up and paced. After a bit, he gestured in the fashion of his Italian ancestors, and said, “The instant Lady Harding finds out about this, she’s going to want me to teach you how to live off the estate. Bloody bleeding heart. Ah hell, there’s no fighting it.” He slapped his cap against his thigh with equal parts desperation and resignation. “I will show you which forest to stick to so there’s no clashing with the workers. Even so, you’ll need an angle. Sort of a Lord of the Flies thing. A bunch of kids living in the woods that, in the absence of parental guidance, go feral, attack people in the middle of the night like wild savage dogs, and eat their flesh. It can be a dangerous part of the estate everyone is afraid to go into. Lady Harding loves free press. You think you can manage that?”

  Verily nodded curtly. Tears flowed copiously.

  “Once the government has been properly alerted, they’ll probably up their quota of deadly prisoners they can’t afford to keep locked up for you to dispose of. It’s a big responsibility, kid, you think you can handle it?”

  She nodded, tight-lipped as ever.

  He paced. “Can we do Robin Hood and his merry men?” Verily said hopefully.

  “No, no. The workers have cornered the market on that one. I suppose if you’re willing to do some of the dirty work for the older illegals in the gardens, or the stuff the younger ones no longer want to do, they’ll let you play Robin Hood from time to time.” Verily brightened. “Probably the only real way to keep the peace, come to think of it, if you’re going to be decimating my gardens like locusts for food. They do all the planting; it’ll be their handiwork you’re ravaging.”

  He tromped the forest seedlings some more to clear his head. “I guess you better make up a list of trades you all want to go into. I’ll see what I can do to get the rest of the staff to assist in your training. But I just want the spillover, hear me? All the ones this fellow Ermies casts off. He can bloody well handle the rest. Besides, sounds like he’s better at teaching survival in this henpecked economy than we are.” He looked up when he didn’t hear anything from her. “Are we agreed?”

  She nodded ardently.

  “Lesson one. You all have to learn how to rove over the estate like the wind, trammel nothing, as invisible as ghosts, and as light on the land as morning dew. I’ll show you.”

  “How do you know how to do that?” Verily asked testily.

  “I lived on this land for three years before anyone discovered me. I assisted the old head gardener, covered for him as his health failed and he couldn’t fulfill his duties anymore. He told them I was his apprentice. It’s a common way in around here.”

  “How can you afford to keep helping people?”

  “Lady Harding marries well. Of course, oil has taken a dip. Could spell hell around here, if the sheikh doesn’t diversify.”

  “If that happens, can’t we just go deeper into hiding?”

  “That’s definitely a time-tested solution. We know the hidden passageways of the castle and the tunnels snaking the grounds better than anybody. But it’s like fumigating a roach infestation when things get too out of hand. They could just throw a tent around the whole place and let the National Guard come in shooting.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  That night, Aggie followed her nose into Thornton’s private suite in the servant’s quarters. She felt bad sneaking into his room, but couldn’t resist. The perfumes had her entranced; they were calling out to her.

  She found him luxuriating in his Victorian bathtub, surrounded by quirky looking antique bottles of various colors. She had removed the caps from several to sniff inside before Thornton sensed her presence, and opened his eyes.

  “What’s with the flower essences?” she asked.

  “I’ll be rich someday. This is me practicing for the part, in the one place I can afford to.”

  “This is more lavish than what Lady Harding has in her bathroom.”

  He slid back into the tub, closed his eyes, evidently figuring she could find her way out the way she found her way in.

  As she exited the bathroom, she noticed his clothes spread out on the ironing board. “You want me to finish ironing these for you?”

  He opened his eyes, looked annoyed rather than grateful. “No, thank you,” he said, after spitting out water. “I used to work for a dry cleaner. No one presses clothes as well as me.”

  “I suppose if you can’t dress better than royalty, you can still look better put together.”

  “You’re catching on.”

  “Why do I find it so easy and so hard at the same time to empathize with you?” she mused out loud.

  “I hope you’ll survive the paradox,” he said dryly, his eyes closed. This time he submerged his ears in the tub’s soapy water to help with blotting her out.

  “Such an endearing asshole. A sweet and sour dish of a man.” She toyed with the contradictions in her head, straining her face into a pensive state. “No, not so hard to entertain the paradox.”

  She let herself out.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The next morning, Aggie stepped into Rumfeld’s equipment room, placed her hand just below her neck, as if something had stuck in her throat, and gasped. She quickly composed herself, stuffed herself back into her body, and repeated to herself, “It’s no big thing, Aggie. It’s no big thing, really.”

  She sauntered boldly past Muriel hanging from a hangman’s rope. “Love the shoes, Muriel!” The French maid shoes with the thick heels were at eye level courtesy of the high ceiling from which Muriel was hanging.

  ***

  Irene witnessed the exchange between Aggie and Muriel from the kitchen. She indignantly glared at Muriel as she chopped onions, and fumed over the fact the ammonia reaching her eyes was making her cry, thus feeding into Muriel’s histrionic behavior.

  “Why is it I’m the one who has to witness everything that goes on around here?” Aggie said.

  “Because you’re so excitable. God is very big on everyone getting over themselves in this household.” Irene reprised her glare, hoping Muriel could no longer bear the weight of her contempt.

  “You may as well come down, Muriel,” Irene shouted, after throwing a glance at the clock. “There’s no one else in for at least another ten minutes. You can rest your neck, and I ca
n give you a couple tea saucers you can drain your slit wrists into for the morning crowd.”

  Muriel, evidently swayed by the rhetoric, swung herself at the end of the rope to the counter Rumfeld used to repair the broken kitchen apparatuses. She slipped the noose over her head, and climbed down to the floor with the aid of the stool. Once on the floor, she admired the red ring the rope had left around her neck in the magnifying side of Rumfeld’s hand mirror, evidently very pleased it would likely still be there when the rest of the morning staff came in.

  “Why does she keep killing herself?” Aggie asked, flustered. “I mean, it’s three, four times a day.”

  Irene didn’t dignify the question with an answer. “Get the flour out of the pantry, dearie, and start in on the pies. I need thirty-two pies,” Irene said, crying from all the onion chopping.

  “Thirty-two pies!” Aggie blurted.

  “It’s not easy catering to a sweet tooth on such a large scale. Personally, I prefer the alcoholics. A hell of a lot easier to serve them. Just open the damn bottle and pour.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Thornton said as he entered and hung his overcoat on the coatrack. “You don’t have to stand like a damn mime frozen in place, with a stupid smile on your face for hours on end, waiting to pour. Sometimes I wish they would replace me with a wind-up version of myself. I can join the bloody homeless doing fine living in the yard.”

  Irene laughed from under tears. “You, away from a steam-bath and your flower essences and colognes? Your twice-pressed suits? Not likely.”

  “I suppose I could live in the fountain,” Thornton parried. They all had a good laugh at his expense, Thornton included.

  Muriel plopped herself down at the table in front of him, slit her wrists over the tea saucers, and proceeded to bleed out.

  “Damn kind of you to grace me with a private performance, Muriel,” Thornton said. “Likely the only show of respect I’ll receive today.”

  “Got that right, you narcissistic wanker,” Irene said. “If you take a seat, I’ll slide these chopped onions in front of you so you can be weeping hysterically over Muriel’s fate when the others enter.”

  “Suppose it’s the least I can do,” Thornton said. Hearing footsteps approaching, he slid into place at the table, and airbrushed the fumes rising from the plate of onions towards his eyes to rush the tearing-up process along. He was sobbing dramatically when Frumpley walked in.

  Frumpley froze in the middle of hanging up his overcoat at the sight of Thornton and Muriel. He was still standing as if in the middle of a game of Simon Says when Rumford sauntered in to catch a glimpse of the scene at the table.

  Rumford brayed, “I’m glad I just have to fix broken appliances and not broken people. Hell of a lot easier.” He hung up his overcoat and ducked into the equipment room where the kitchen dramas were out of sight and out of mind.

  Frumpley finished hanging up his coat. “Really, Irene? How the hell am I supposed to eat my breakfast over these two?”

  “Don’t burden me with your problems. I have enough of my own.” Irene rotated the wrist on the hand holding the knife, having aggravated her carpal tunnel on all the veggie mincing. “Aggie, how are you coming with those pies?”

  “Oh dear. Plum forgot all about them,” Aggie said, sounding harried. She rushed through the cabinets to collect up everything she needed, and laid the elements out on the table.

  Frumpley watched the space on the table getting filled up. His face melted as if made of candlewax. “I guess we’re all eating standing up this morning.”

  Wilder trudged in, stamped his feet on the floor mat to get the mud off his boots from the early morning misting rain. He eyed the kitchen scene with the spotlight on Muriel. “This some Zen exercise, is it? On the importance of being unflappable.”

  “You should know nothing’s ever as simple as all that,” Frumpley said.

  ***

  In keeping with the status quo, Irene had several projects in the kitchen going at once. The approach allowed her easy access to her many hiding spots throughout the cooking area, where she could sneak a bonbon unnoticed even in a crowded room.

  She was struggling with Hidemi Sugino’s dessert book in an effort to expand her repertoire. The sheikh had a sweet tooth, as did most of his men. Lady Harding was intent on matching his hearty appetite for sweets, either out of respect, determination to share everything with her new husband, or possibly clamoring to find some new addiction she hadn’t yet tried.

  Irene followed Sugino’s recipes almost to a tee for the pistachio joconde—which sounded delicious, the bavarois-based pistachio mousse, and the framboise syrup—all works in progress on three different islands in the kitchen. However, she used a different recipe for the strawberry mousse—at island number four, at which she was currently perched. While the strawberries she had were frozen at their peak last summer, they were not as concentrated in flavor compared to wild strawberries. She added more strawberry puree to the mixture.

  Fretting over her strawberry mousse, she cashed in on her stress relievers hidden about the kitchen. She reached for a Bavarian chocolate mint in the shadows cast by the spice tins lined up against the tile wall at island one, featuring the pistachio joconde in progress. She stood over the dessert long enough to convey progress made on her recipe to wandering eyes, then made her way to island two’s fortifications.

  Attending to the bavarois-based pistachio mousse, she snuck a milk-chocolate almond cluster she kept in a small slot magnetized to the underside of the overhead cupboards. The secret stash was secured by a magnetic plate she had Brimley install for her for reasons she never specified.

  At island three, where the framboise syrup was coming along nicely, she reached for a chocolate-coconut cluster she let slip under the lid of the stove. It was close to a burner that was never used, and above an oven that was utilized solely to store extra cooking pans. The candy delight could only be exposed if the overhead plate was removed for cleaning, but could be ferreted out with some dexterous finger work.

  At island four, she returned to her strawberry mousse, feeling none of the earlier anxiety about its fate abated. So she reached under the counter and into the cupboard and took the “cheese” out of the rat trap. It was in truth a piece of white chocolate.

  Still, she couldn’t stop stressing over the future state of the strawberry mousse. But her anxiety was being relieved all the same by a growing light-headedness. She grabbed hold of the polished marble countertop to keep from keeling over.

  To her delight, the strawberry mousse turned out pretty much perfect. She had the strawberry flavor she was looking for and the gelatin was enough to hold the mousse together. It was really soft, the same melt-in-your-mouth texture as the pistachio mousse.

  She sighed with relief—then collapsed on the tile, and seized violently before passing out cold on the kitchen floor.

  ***

  Thornton shuffled in, reporting for work, a minute or so following Irene’s collapse on the kitchen floor. “Why am I the one to have to deal with everything going on around here? Never anyone else, just me.” His tone conveyed not one crumb of charity.

  He picked up the phone, one of the first models to ever be introduced, cranked the handle, and awaited the operator. They had several on staff inside the house whose job it was to place calls and do the holding necessary for the master and mistress of the house. But as this call was coming from the kitchen, they weren’t exactly sprinting to get to the phone. The inconsiderate bastards. When one of them finally picked up, he said, “Get an ambulance. It’s Irene and one of her diabetic comas.”

  “Again?” It was Annie.

  “What have you got to be indignant about? I’m the one who’s got to have his breakfast with a corpse lying in the room.”

  “Don’t be such a drama queen.”

  “She may as well be dead. They can’t keep performing miracles to bring her back. Even a cat has just nine lives.” He hung up on Annie.

  He flung op
en the door on the fridge to find it empty. “Damn it, Irene. You said the doctor cured you of the hoarding.”

  Frumpley walked in in time to see Thornton slamming the door on the empty fridge. He spied Irene on the floor, frozen in a tortured position as if rigor mortis had set in following the hit and run. “I see we get to go on safari to the far corners of the kitchen and pantries in search of where she’s stowed all the food again.”

  “Screw that. I’ll content myself with one of her desserts. She’s rather outdone herself.”

  Frumpley hung up his overcoat. “Don’t you lay a finger on those. The sheikh’s in town. He’ll have your hide. He buried the gardener up to his neck in a mound of ants for crossing his path en route to the house. We’re still trying to figure out what bad luck omen that is. Maybe if he’d crossed the path from the right. They’re not very good about things happening to the left of them.”

  Wilder walked in on the scene in the kitchen, made a sour face at Irene on the tile floor. “What are we supposed to do for breakfast?”