Smoke and Mirrors

by Casey Daniels

  I didn’t know if I should feel gratitude or disappointment or relief that I had chanced an encounter with a man who might have wanted me dead and come through it unscathed. I turned to Frederick. ‘I must apologize, sir. I thought—’

  ‘Your apology isn’t necessary,’ he told me. ‘I see that you are a sincere and serious young woman, and you seek to learn the truth. You surely cannot be faulted for that.’ He glanced toward the door Father William had gone to open so as to allow the people in the hallway in. ‘We’ll be serving luncheon soon. If you’d care to join us, you are most welcome.’

  I declined. Not because I was uneasy sharing a meal with those who found nourishment at St John’s but because I did not wish to take away a portion of their food. When I told Frederick as much and pressed a few coins into his hand to help defray the cost of the next meal, he thanked me for the kindness and walked me to the door.

  We were almost there, our paths crossing with those who were eager for a place at St John’s table, and just at the stairway I’d seen when I walked into the building, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of red streak down the steps. The next thing I knew, the air filled with a high-pitched scream like the wail of a lost soul and a woman – short and thin and with her mouth twisted in fury – darted in front of me and punched me in the stomach.

  The air rushed out of me along with a gurgle of pain, but that did not stop the woman. ‘Took her! Took her!’ she screamed, all the while she battered me about the head and body with her fists.

  Caught off guard, I reacted reflexively, covering my face with my arms. I staggered backward and lost my footing and, before I could right myself, I tumbled to the floor and the screaming, wailing woman saw her advantage and jumped on top of me.

  She was rail-thin with hair the color of carrots, and it flowed over her shoulders like lava from a volcano. Her eyes were wild.

  I squirmed, and when her knee connected with the wound on my side I let out a yelp, all the while slapping at her, scrambling to fight back as much as I was able. She was remarkably strong. The woman grasped a white handkerchief in one hand, and the fabric trailed from her clenched fist. It fluttered against my face as soft as a butterfly’s kiss, in strange counterpoint to the clap of her knuckles when they connected with my nose.

  I kicked and twisted and, over the woman’s shoulders, I saw Frederick Withnower and the ever-faithful Mercer wrestle to get a good hold of her so they might pull her away from me.

  ‘No! Lucine, no!’ Frederick did his best to overpower the woman but whatever madness fueled her also gave her impossible strength. He called for more help and one of the men who’d been waiting for a meal rushed to his side. Mercer caught Lucine around the waist, but she had her knees on either side of my ribs and did not budge when he pulled at her, and when she stopped punching and wrapped her hands around my neck, the other man did his best to release them. For his troubles, Lucine snapped at him and bit his arm and when she turned her full attention to me, her mouth twisted and her eyes wild, there was blood on her lips.

  ‘Beer. Beer and the horse and mare. The green door. The green door!’ Lucine tightened her hold, slowly cutting off the air to my windpipe, and I struggled to pry her fingers away. My heart raced and then I swear it stopped altogether and Lucine’s pale face faded in and out of my vision. Stars burst behind my eyes and—

  ‘Lucine!’ Frederick’s voice boomed through the hallway and brought me again to awareness just in time to see him catch up a handful of Lucine’s crimson hair and yank as hard as he could. She screamed and thrashed and loosened her hold on me, and with Mercer’s help, Frederick dragged her off me.

  I cannot say how long I laid there fighting for air, my own rough breaths nothing compared to Lucine’s vicious curses.

  While Frederick struggled to keep his hold on her, Father Axtel raced into the hallway, his face red. Mercer was already at my side, his face creased with worry and his cheeks stained with tears, and the priest knelt beside him and took my hand.

  ‘Breathe,’ Father Axtel instructed, and I did not have the strength to tell him that though I was trying it was mightily painful. He called for water and duly administered it and, though it felt like fire going down my throat, I forced myself to drink then raised myself on my elbows and pushed over to the wall so I could prop myself against it.

  ‘Oh, dear.’ In the scuffle, my cloak had fallen open and Mercer’s gaze went to my torso. When I looked there, too, I saw a stain of blood upon my blue gown. ‘She has a knife!’ His face paled and he called out to Frederick. ‘Be careful! Lucine has a knife!’

  ‘No. No!’ The words rasped out of me and I held out a hand and waved it back and forth to try to better communicate. ‘It is … an old wound.’ I pressed a hand to my midsection. There was blood but not much. ‘I’m …’ I would have liked to tell him I was fine but that seemed a fantasy. Instead, I pulled myself to my feet and somehow stood, though my knees felt as if they were made of wet plaster. I braced a hand against the stairway bannister and looked over to where Frederick still had his arms around Lucine.

  Though held fast, she still spat and kicked. She somehow managed to free an arm from Frederick’s grip and, when she did, she pointed a trembling finger at me.

  ‘Took her! You took her!’ she screamed, and that handkerchief dangled from her fingers like a signal to all the world of my supposed guilt. ‘The hell-bitch took her in the night. Wants to take me, too. No! No! Damn her to hell, she will not. She cannot make me go.’

  Though I knew she could no longer harm me, I kept my distance. ‘Who is she?’ I asked Father Axtel. ‘And why—’

  A woeful shake of his head spoke volumes and, when Father William joined us in the hallway carrying a small, dark vial and a glass of water, Father Axtel nodded. Father William poured from the vial and took the cup to Lucine.

  She cursed him and threw her head side to side, doing all she could to keep the cup from her lips, but Father William persisted, and though she surely spit out more of the concoction than she swallowed, swallow she did, and after a minute some of the stiffness went out of Lucine. Another few sips and her screams melted into low grunts.

  ‘Horse and mare,’ she mumbled. ‘Mare and the green door.’ Her gaze caught mine and her eyes flared. ‘Beer and the green door!’ she wailed then went limp in Frederick’s arms.

  I knew the danger was over, yet when Frederick scooped her into his arms and carried her up the stairs, I kept far back. That is, until that handkerchief fell from her limp hand and fluttered to the floor.

  I bent to retrieve it.

  ‘Sticky,’ I mumbled to myself, my fingers playing over the fabric, sticky with something that felt and looked like honey.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘She must have thought you were someone else.’

  Frederick Withnower set a cup of tea on the small table he pulled between the two chairs in the office where I’d conducted my interview of him a mere hour earlier. My head still muddled by the unexpected attack in the passageway, I stared into the depths of the steaming liquid while he went to the other chair and sat down.

  ‘It’s the only thing that might explain why it happened,’ he said. ‘Lucine must have thought you were someone else.’

  Still too upended by all that had transpired to think my way through the incident, I took a careful sip of tea. The heat of the liquid felt heavenly on my injured throat.

  ‘Unless you know our Lulu and you are for some reason her mortal enemy!’

  Surprised by the comment, I looked up to find Frederick with a smile on his face that transformed his features from fierce to ruggedly handsome. His brown eyes brimmed with so much kindness, I could not help myself, I smiled back.

  ‘You are teasing,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I am.’ He drank from his own cup. ‘I thought to relieve some of your worry.’

  ‘I am not …’ I twitched away the sensation that made me feel as if there were cold hands against my back and slipped my cloak from the bac
k of the chair and over my shoulders. ‘I am not so much worried as I am grateful,’ I told him. ‘If you weren’t there—’

  ‘But I was and so was your brave carriage driver, Mr Mercer. It was the Lord’s plan.’

  Luncheon was being served, and the hallway outside the office was empty, but I cast a glance in that direction nonetheless, thinking of all that just happened. Try as I might, I could not banish the image of Lucine’s wild eyes from my mind.

  ‘Is it the Lord’s plan to allow people to suffer so inside their heads that they act the way that poor woman does?’ I asked him.

  Frederick shook his head. ‘I do not understand it. No one does. There are so many poor unfortunates.’

  I thought back to what Father Axtel had told me earlier. ‘She’s the one who caused the disruption in your reading and writing lesson on the night Andrew Emerson was killed.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m afraid Lulu has caused many a disruption since she’s been here. I have tried to work with her, yet the poor woman …’ He finished his tea and set down his cup. ‘She came to us not long ago. If you can imagine it, she was even more anguished then than she is now.’

  I could not imagine it. I did not want to try. ‘What is her history?’ I asked him.

  ‘No one knows. I was walking late one night and heard a sound like mewling coming from an alleyway. I assumed it was a cat and thought to pass by, but something led me … I must say I do believe the hand of the Lord was in my actions. I knew I had to see for myself what was making the awful sound. In that, Miss Evangeline …’ His cheeks shot through with color. ‘I do believe we have something in common even if it just our curiosity.’

  I knew acknowledging the compliment would only embarrass Frederick further, so I asked, ‘It wasn’t a cat, was it?’

  ‘No. It was Lucine … Lulu as we call her. She had been in the alleyway foraging for food in the gutters, and when she heard my footfalls she folded herself behind a barrel so as not to be discovered. When I approached …’ He hauled in a breath and let it out slowly. ‘She was so frightened I thought the poor woman would die right before my eyes.’

  ‘You brought her here.’

  He nodded.

  ‘And the curses she threw at me?’

  His shoulders rose and fell. ‘Words she says over and over. The horse and mare. The beer. The green door. You heard her. And yet …’ Thinking, he cocked his head. ‘It is mighty odd. She said something to you I’ve never heard her say before. She said she didn’t want to be taken away as someone else was. As many hours as I’ve spent with Lulu, I’ve never heard her mention anything like that.’

  ‘Then why say it to me?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘And who was she talking about?’

  Another shrug. ‘If we knew, we might begin to understand the demons that plague poor Lulu day and night. And if we could only get her to stop worrying about this horse and the mare and the green door, perhaps we could get her to tell us more about herself. Then we might able to help her, or at least to help find her family, if she does, indeed, have one. The way it is, we do what we are able for her, but because she is so peculiar the other residents fear her. She has disrupted my reading and writing class. She’s raced into the refectory screaming and interrupted dinner. She’s even stood up and started dancing during Mass. You can imagine how that upset everyone! But she’s never been violent before. Not until …’ As if gauging how I might react, Frederick slid me a look. ‘Not until she saw you.’

  I did not know what to make of it, so I sloughed it off. ‘As you said, she must have thought I was someone else.’

  As if he was grateful I understood, he let go a long breath. ‘She has little hold on reality. And that handkerchief, she had it with her when I found her, and she clutches it as if it is her lifeblood.’

  It was the first I remembered I had scooped the handkerchief off the floor, and I offered it to Frederick. ‘Then she must surely have this back. It is …’ After I handed it to him, I scraped my hand against the skirt of my gown, but still, my fingers felt slightly sticky and it made me wonder. ‘Father William gave Lulu laudanum to calm her, didn’t he? I have had it myself recently because of an injury and I remember a sweetness on my lips after. Did he add honey to the dose as my physician did?’

  Frederick frowned. ‘No, I am sure of it. We use the concoction frequently here, for the people who come to us are sometimes injured and often ill. I have suggested we add honey to mask the bitter taste of the laudanum but Father William insists we should not make the dose so much a delicacy for those who need it as we must make it a reminder for them to curb their behaviors.’ He gave me a conspiratorial look, but not before he glanced toward the open door and the hallway to be sure no one was about. ‘I do not know about you, Miss Evangeline, but I do not believe Lulu is capable of curbing her behaviors.’

  I was afraid I had to agree. ‘It is a pity. But perhaps …’ I bit back my suggestion; Frederick and the priests there at St John’s surely knew more about the people who came to their door than I ever would.

  Frederick grinned. ‘There’s no need to be shy about your opinions. You are most obviously a woman who is intent on finding answers. What is your advice when it comes to Lulu? For I’ll admit, we have done everything we can think to do for the poor woman and nothing helps.’

  I had never been shy about stating my opinion, yet somehow offering it to Frederick caused heat to flare in my cheeks. ‘I thought perhaps we could talk to her. Now that she has had the laudanum she should be calmer and, if she is awake, if we could speak to Lulu, there might be a chance we can find the root of her fears. If she’s relieved of the burden of her worries, there is a chance she might be less of a problem.’

  ‘We have tried talking to her, of course. But now that you mention it …’ Frederick rose and waved me toward the door. ‘We have not had a woman talk to her. I wonder if that might make a difference.’

  We looked into the refractory and found Mercer just finishing up luncheon and regaling the residents there with talk of horses and carriages. I insisted he sit and enjoy, left my cloak with him so that I was unencumbered and followed behind Frederick to the second floor of St John’s where the men were housed and then on to the third floor where the women slept in two large and airy dormitory rooms. Lulu was not one of them and it was no mystery why. As Frederick had mentioned, she was as peculiar in her head as our oddities back at the museum were in their physical bodies; the others there at St John’s feared her and, as our oddities proved, fear often led to hatred and violence. Lulu was alone in a room at the end of the hallway, for the safety of the other residents as well as for her own.

  It was a tiny room with no windows and little light and Frederick must have known I was thinking just that when he opened the door to allow me inside and lowered his voice.

  ‘We would rather she was with the other women but the windows in the other rooms proved a danger. More than once, Lulu has tried to leave by way of them.’

  She was half-awake on a small bed pushed into the corner and could not have failed to hear. As I had told Frederick downstairs, I had no experience in these things, and yet I knew somehow that his comment provided me the opportunity to set my plan into action.

  Considering how recently the woman in the bed had attacked me and how my throat still ached from the pressure of her fingers around it, I am not certain how I found the courage to approach her bed. Perhaps it was because, in the feeble light of the single lamp next to the bed, Lulu looked so pale against the white blankets, so small and so forlorn. Indeed, the only color in the room seemed to be the splash of her fiery hair against the pillow and, looking at it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Madeline. Madeline, too, had flaming hair. Both women were slim and fine-boned with features that made for a face that wasn’t as pretty as it was delicate. Both … a stab of sadness ate at my insides … both Lulu and Madeline were lost souls, each in her own way.

  Considering it all made Lulu seem suddenly more
human to me and less a threat than a pity and, thinking it, the tightness in my chest eased and my quick, sharp breaths settled. When I crossed the room I found I was able to offer my attacker a soft smile.

  ‘Mr Withnower tells me you do not like it here, Lulu, and that you are anxious to leave.’

  Like an animal, as wary as it is cunning, she had watched us when we came into the room but now she closed her eyes and turned her head away. ‘Beer and the green door,’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes, that is exactly what I wish to speak to you about. Beer and the green door.’

  She turned again to look at me, a smile playing over her thin lips that had not so much to do with her mood or her thoughts as it did with the dose of laudanum she’d been forced to swallow. ‘They’ll take you, too,’ was all she said.

  ‘That is exactly what I’m afraid of.’ With a look at Frederick to make sure he thought it was all right, I sat on the edge of Lulu’s bed and, when Lulu did not come at me, when she did nothing more than lie there, the hatred in her eyes replaced by an empty stare, I relaxed even more. ‘Can you tell me, Lulu, how do you know they will take me?’

  ‘Will.’ She nodded and pushed herself up on her elbows, the better to face me as we talked and even that bit of exertion caused a hitch in her breath. She slid a glance toward Frederick, leaned forward and whispered, ‘They take them all.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘All the pretty maids. Taken in the night. Oh, yes. Si, si. Taken. Adios.’

  I had dealt with enough shippers and suppliers, with enough ships’ captains at the docks when I supervised the arrival of museum goods that I was familiar with the Spanish words, but it surprised me that Lulu was. A questioning look over my shoulder brought no answers from Frederick, so I returned my attention to the woman in the bed.

  ‘These pretty maids, where do they go?’ I asked her.

  Her besotted smile faded and a deep V creased her brow. ‘They don’t come back. They don’t come back.’ She slammed a fist against the bed. ‘They never come back. She didn’t. She told me she would stay, but she didn’t come back.’