Fires of Delight

by Vanessa Royall

  Bonwit mulled whatever moral transgressions he might have committed in life. They were sufficient to sway him. “All right,” he said nervously, glancing anxiously up the corridor, making certain that this small lapse of discipline was not being observed. “I reckon I could give ye a moment wi’ ’er. But no funny business, ye hear? I’ll be just outside the cell.”

  “Bless you, my son,” Penrod said, bowing.

  The corporal unlocked Selena’s door and Penrod entered. She wanted to embrace him, to feel friendly arms around her, but that was impossible. Bonwit, clutching the handle of his sword as if at any moment he might be attacked, took up a position beneath the torch at the opposite side of the corridor. Jittery about this breach of prison rules, he was not entirely out of earshot. Both Selena and Penrod realized that a true conversation was impossible.

  “Please kneel, my child,” Penrod said.

  Selena felt the dampness of the stone floor invading her knees. There had to be a way to communicate with the merchant. But how? Even now, Corporal Bonwit leaned forward, prepared to catch an earful of her sins.

  “Ask our Lord’s forgiveness for your transgressions in this vale of tears,” Penrod intoned, rather authoritatively under the circumstances. “Unburden your soul to me.”

  Selena shifted her weight from knee to knee and looked helplessly up at him. They were both trying to think of a way to talk without being overheard by Bonwit. Selena reached up and touched Penrod’s hand, taking what comfort she could from his presence. He was holding the cross he’d taken from Ward’s neck, and she looked at it. The design she’d seen on it earlier, when Ward had been dragged past her, was clear now: the letters of three words followed the shape of the cross itself.

  She knew a bit of French, of course. Those of her station usually did. But the words on the little cross meant nothing to her.

  “I have sinned against God and my fellow man,” she began.

  “In what manner?” prodded Penrod dolefully.

  At that moment, Selena shifted her weight again—the cold from the stones was creeping up her thighs—and steadied herself by bracing a hand against the oozing stone wall. Her handprint remained there for a moment, before the dewy dampness swallowed it up.

  “I have committed sins of the heart—” she said, in a tone she hoped to sound penitent, meanwhile grasping Penrod’s hand and pressing it against the wall where this print too became visible for a second.

  “—and sins of the flesh—”

  Bonwit was all ears now, but he could not see clearly, his view blocked as it was by Penrod’s flowing cassock.

  “—and sins of the spirit—”

  Gilbertus Penrod watched his handprint disappear in the seeping moisture. His eyes widened as he understood.

  “The Lord forgives you, my child,” he said. “Now, recite with me the Creed.”

  “‘I believe in God the Father…’” they began, while Penrod, using a forefinger, traced a message on the stone, word by word.

  Royce

  Midnight

  Pier

  “‘—forever and ever. Amen.’”

  Royce Campbell would be waiting on the pier, across the water from this fortress, at midnight. There was no way that he could reach Selena; she would have to devise a strategy by which to get to him.

  Penrod traced one final mark on the sweating stone as he helped Selena to her feet.

  By this he meant: Can you do it? Can you get out of here?

  She steeled her eyes and set her mouth and nodded.

  “As God is my witness!” she vowed, not inappropriately.

  “No, no…” moaned Erasmus Ward, across the way. It sounded like a warning. Selena shivered.

  “God be with you, my child,” said Penrod, pressing the cross into her hand, as if it were a talisman of safety and Godspeed.

  “Ye be done now?” inquired Bonwit suspiciously, stepping forward.

  “It is fortunate that I learned of Mr. Ward’s arrest,” Penrod told the guard as he edged out of the cell and watched the door close again on Selena. “A man’s soul is his most prized possession. And a woman’s too. Perhaps you will let me comfort the other prisoners?”

  “No, sir! Reverend, I mean. I bent the rules fer ye too much already. Y’ asked t’ see Ward an’ y’ seen ’im. Be on yer way now.”

  “Pray, what is the time?” asked Selena, before the corporal escorted Penrod from the dungeon.

  “’Bout ’alf pa’ ten,” came the response. Bonwit thought she was telling him to make haste and return to her. That, in a way, was true, but he had no way of reading her real intentions.

  A long, long hour went by. Selena counted the seconds, trying to keep track of time, growing increasingly apprehensive. If the British were searching for Royce, his presence on the pier, waiting for her, was tremendously risky. What if Bonwit did not return to her cell? What if Royce were to be seized? Then both of them would be prisoners.

  At what she guessed must have been at least half past eleven, Erasmus Ward stirred suddenly on his bunk in the opposite cell. He lifted his arms jerkily into the air, flailing away at an unseen assailant. Frantically, as Selena flew to the bars of her own cell door, he beat the air, fighting, fighting. There was nothing Selena could do to quiet or comfort him, locked as he was in eerie struggle, but she understood that death had come for him. His terrible fit seemed to go on and on, although it could not have lasted more than a minute, and then he seemed to clutch at his own throat, as if trying to wrench free the talons of death that were choking his life away.

  “Sorbontay!” he gasped, or something that sounded like “sorbontay,” the bloody rasp of his cry sending a chill far colder than that of the stones through Selena’s body. She felt a strange pall, like invisible fog, pass along the corridor then, and disappear among the wavering tapers and the smoky gloom.

  Erasmus Ward was gone.

  A tear came to her left eye. She brushed it away, fingering the little cross that she had put around her neck.

  I shall remember you, she thought, or prayed really although not conscious of it. I will wear this little cross always in your name. Someday, our cause will triumph.

  “And I will avenge your death!” she vowed aloud, picturing Clay Oakley’s merciless eyes and grotesque, gleaming head.

  Yet that goal, that satisfaction, lay a long way off in a trackless future. Everything now depended on the doltish concupiscence of one lance corporal. Selena felt the minutes melting away. She tried to imagine Royce now, perhaps slipping out of some hiding place, hurrying through narrow, darkened streets toward the harbor. For a lambent, shimmering instant, she thought her mind touched his, believed that she saw her own image in his heart as he hurried along. The sensation was so striking, so truly physical, that she was thrilled by it. Such communications, Selena understood, really did occur: even over vast distances, minds could meld, hearts could speak, if only they beat as one in the awful intensity of desire. She had learned that truth during her time in India from Davi the Dravidian, a dark, sorrowful, doomed little man. Alone in the court of the Maharajah of Jabalpur, Davi had befriended her, had taught her clarity of mind, pureness of heart, even as the maharajah violated her body in quest of the fierce pleasure she had learned to give.

  “Things are never what they seem, ” he had told her, so often that she’d finally grasped the truth of it. “In each circumstance, in every situation no matter how hopeless or profane, there exists its opposite, by which those blessed with purity of heart may be redeemed and freed.”

  From his wisdom, she had taken the strength to avoid defilement.

  But now, with his wisdom, could she escape this prison? Could she, in the depths of bondage, discover the key to freedom?

  Perhaps the answer lay, more prosaically, in the big ring of keys on the belt of Phineas Bonwit, who managed to rattle the iron door only a little as he crept into the dungeon and hurried stealthily toward Selena’s cell, holding his sword tightly against his leg so it would not glint
and clatter on the stones. Selena imagined Bonwit growing up in some Yorkshire village, feeding the hogs, milking the cows, plowing the fields, not even dreaming that a larger world existed beyond the local churchyard, or beyond the graveyard fence where perhaps five-hundred years worth of Bonwits turned slowly into the English earth from which they had emerged. But great empires require cannon fodder, so Phineas had been plucked from roots and hearth, had been taken across the seas, where fate had brought him to Selena.

  She hoped that she would not have to kill him.

  “I managed t’ beg off the search party,” he whispered breathlessly. “I wouldna care i’ Royce Campbell ne’er get caught. An’ here, I brung ye a little bit o’ somethin’.”

  He handed Selena a pewter mug through the iron bars, which she sniffed as he clumsily wrestled with the lock on the cell door. Brandy? Yes. Well, good. She needed it, and drained the mug in a gulp.

  “Hey!” he said, grinning as he came into the cell. “Some o’ that grog was supposed to be for me.”

  “Too much of it dulls the senses,” she replied, filling her voice with coquettish promise.

  Lurching forward, in a panic of arousal and want, the corporal wrapped his gangly arms around her, and Selena caught a very strong whiff of his breath.

  “Why, I think you’ve had a goodly share already, haven’t you?”

  “Oh, no! I’m fine!” he promised.

  To her disgust, he certainly seemed to be. He held her close to him and ground his body into hers. She felt his hardness against her belly and his thick sword against her leg. He was trying to kiss her, wirelike whiskers scraped her face.

  “Wait! Wait,” she chided. “What’s the hurry?”

  It must be almost midnight, she thought.

  “Ah! I get ye,” he chortled, easing his grip on her a little. “Ye’re right. We got all night. An’ it’s more fun if ye don’t rush right through with it, eh?”

  “Yes, that’s better,” Selena said soothingly, slipping from his all-too-eager embrace. “And can’t you take off that awful sword? It just terrifies me so!”

  Bonwit grinned and began to unbuckle his swordbelt. “Don’t ye be afeared, missy. This blade ain’t meant fer ye.”

  Then he began to unbuckle his breeches. “But here’s a blade tha’ is—”

  He’d let the sword fall to the stones and was dancing on one foot, trying to pull off the breeches. The big ring of keys slipped off his flopping belt and clanked down on the stones. Selena made her move.

  She bent down and grabbed his breeches, which were now around his ankles, yanked as hard as she could and sent him crashing to the floor.

  “Hey!” cried the corporal, stunned. “Ye don’t ’ave t’ be so eager—”

  Then he saw her reaching for his sword and understood. A pained look of betrayal and disappointment crossed his face, to be replaced almost at once by an awareness of danger. If she escaped, he would be in great trouble with his superiors…

  He tried to scramble to his feet, but she had taken up the sword. She swung it around, stepped forward, and held the point of the blade to his throat. He eased back down onto the floor, half-naked, bewildered, his arousal fading fast.

  “Ye tricked me,” Bonwit whined bleakly. “Why’d ye ’ave t’ do that?”

  Still, he lay between Selena and the cell door.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said quietly, trying to keep her mind off the trembling in her arms. She was poised at a pitch of tension, and the big sword was heavier than it looked. “Move aside. Slowly.”

  With the tip of the blade still at his Adam’s apple, Bonwit scuttled crablike in the direction of the plank bunk. Selena wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. Using his belt to tie him to bunk or bars occurred to her, but it was unlikely that he would hold still and allow that. Nor was she a match for him physically. The only thing to do was to slip out of the cell, lock it, and hope she got away before his yells brought aid.

  “Hand me your breeches,” she ordered.

  “No, ma’am.” He was offended at the suggestion.

  She pressed down on the sword. “Ow!” cried the corporal. A tiny bead of blood appeared on the taut skin of his neck. He kicked off the breeches.

  With a quick movement, Selena reached down, grabbed them, and thrust them between the bars of the cell and out into the corridor. So much for that.

  “An’ I thought ye was a lady,” said Bonwit accusingly, covering his privates with gnarled farmer’s hands.

  Selena reached down to pick up the ring of keys. Just another moment now and—

  She had to stretch in order to reach the keys. The blade of the sword moved slightly, giving Bonwit an inch. He took a mile, swatting the weapon aside, leaping to his feet. The sword flew from Selena’s grip and spun in the air. She managed to catch it at the hilt, blade down, but he grabbed her around the shoulders, pinioning her arms. The sword was flat between their jammed-together bodies.

  “Shoe’s on t’ other foot now, ain’t it?” he growled in rough anger. “Now I aim t’ get what I came for—”

  Selena tried to move the blade, attacking him where it would do her the most good, but he anticipated her ploy—which angered him all the more—grabbed the handle with one hand and reached for the collar of her prison garment, ready to rip it from her body.

  Then he saw the gold cross at her throat. He hesitated, staring at it for one precious second, wondering, Hey, didn’t the bloke in the other cell have this on before…?

  Selena used the second, mustering all her strength to yank the weapon upward as hard as she could. It shot straight and true, catching Bonwit squarely in the chin. Bonwit collapsed onto the stones like a pole-axed bull, unconscious. Selena stood over him, shaking.

  Thank God for that cross, she thought.

  Then she gathered up the keys, left the cell—which Bonwit, in his passion, had neglected to lock—found the right key, secured the door, and fled up the corridor with the keys and the sword.

  The big iron door opened easily. Now the hard part. Everything was dark. Remember. Twenty-four paces to the left. Flight of stairs? Yes, here. Up she went. A torch burned far above. A hundred paces, had it been? She found the second flight of stairs that Bonwit had used when taking her to Lieutenant Oakley. Now she smelled the sea air of the harbor, and paused at the top of the stairs. She was on the main level of the fortress. Torches flickered at regular intervals along its battlements. She stood in a stone gateway, peering around the corner. Two guards marched up and down, from one end of the prison to the other. They met briefly in the center, snappily saluted each other, reshouldered their muskets, about-faced, and marched in opposite directions once again.

  Beyond the torch-lit battlements, Selena saw the flickering lights in buildings along the water. There was no moon, and she could not tell if there was any activity along the pier.

  Then in the nether part of the prison, which she had just escaped, an excited voice cried: “Bonwit’s been attacked. There’s a prisoner missing. Everybody up above on the double!”

  The two sentries were now at the far ends of their circuit. Do it! You won’t have another chance!

  Dropping the sword and the keys, Selena dashed across cobblestones, nerved herself, leaped atop the battlement, and without thinking at all, dived toward the black water below.

  2

  Turn of the Screw

  Down she shot, through the cold crystal air of October and into the icy waters of New York harbor. Here—ages ago it seemed—she had disembarked upon American soil, having come from India with Sean Bloodwell, and all the world had seemed full of promise and light. Now there was only darkness and the prospect of disaster. The heavy woolen dress, instantly wet, grew heavier still, taking her down and down. Her lungs were bursting from the pressure, and the cold penetrated to the marrow of her bones. Thanking Bonwit for the brandy, she managed to wriggle out of the sodden, clinging garment, and claw her way back up to the surface.

  Soldiers were yelling a
nd waving torches atop the fortress walls.

  “There she be! There she be!”

  “Get into the boats!” somebody shouted.

  Selena heard the creaking of rope ladders under the weight of scrambling men. Fighting panic, she set out toward the pier, trying to keep her strokes steady and even. The sounds of her pursuers faded a bit, or seemed to, and she tried not to think of the frigid waters. Her chest felt as if it were encased in ice, and she was trying to remember if sudden drops in bodily temperature could stop the human heart. There were lights on the fortress behind her and flickering lights ahead of her, and all of a sudden there was darkness.

  Selena stopped, treading water. She was in the shadow of the pier. Weren’t there footsteps on the thick wooden planks above? She could not stay in the water; she’d freeze for sure. But except for the cross, she was naked, her hair matted and sodden.

  Gradually, her eyes adjusted to the gloom and she saw the massive tree-trunk-thick pilings upon which the pier was founded. Coated with barnacles, slivered and gouged, they would tear her flesh apart should she try to climb one of them.

  Selena knew that she was afraid, but slowly she became aware of another emotion as well. It took a little while to rise to the surface of her consciousness, but as she swam from piling to piling, the feeling got clearer and clearer: she felt outrage. To be hunted! To be quarry, like a pathetic rabbit or a terrified fox! There was nothing worse. Even in death one had at least the dignity of solitude. But this, this—

  The anger fueled her for a few more crucial moments, and as if in reward for perseverance, her hand closed on the slippery rungs of a ladder leading to the top of the pier. She climbed out of the water and clung to it, crouching in darkness. The air felt even colder than the water had and her whole bare body felt numb. She did not hear the footsteps now, but the screech of oarlocks on the water told her that the boats were getting closer. Somewhere, in a tavern along the waterfront, people were drinking and laughing. No shelter there. She turned, appraising her surroundings, and saw the dark outline of a large ship anchored a little way out on the harbor. Probably a British man-o’-war protecting the harbor and the city. No shelter there, either. Oh, God, where is Royce?