by Sahara Kelly
There was a moment of silence as most everyone carefully considered their next words. It never would have occurred to Alwynne that just about all the members of her staff were well aware of her nocturnal activities.
“And Mr. Waring’s gone too. Cleared out. Can’t find His Lordship neither.” The younger maid was clearly terrified. And the thought of Lord Harbury running free around the estate was enough to send a shudder through the assembled throng.
“Right.” Mr. ‘Enry pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll get word to Robert and Arthur if I can find ‘em. You two—“ he pointed at two of the ablest lab assistants, “take a couple of the maids with you and get over to the Dower House. She had it all cleaned out. Mebbe she’s decided to move there with that Waring chap.” He turned to Portia. “Mary, go with ‘em. You’ve got a sharp eye. See if anything’s gone missin’. If nobody’s there, then mebbe that Waring stole summat and took off wi’ it. You’ll know what to look for.”
He was upset, realized Portia. His accent was getting thicker. “Of course, Mr. ‘Enry. I’ll do that.”
He nodded and turned away. “Janet, take Moira and do the floors today. Just do down to Level Three. I don’t want you goin’ no further, you hear me?”
“Yes, Mr. ‘Enry.” The two young maids bobbed a nervous curtsey. They were little more than kitchen girls, so Portia understood their apprehension.
However, with all the goings-on, it wasn’t likely that much would be happening here in the laboratories. She struggled back into her heavy coat as she prepared for the short hike to the Dower House.
And wondered what she’d find there.
*~~*~~*
“Check.”
The fire crackled in the elegant suite, but neither man noticed, since the chessboard between them demanded their full attention.
“Well played, mein Freund.” The rich voice with a touch of the Bavarian mountains belonged to Baron Gerolf von Landau who was, at this moment, about to lose a rousing game of chess to his host, Lord Randall Harbury. Not that he minded, of course, since losing was the least he could do to express his thanks for such hospitality.
Lord Harbury was in the best of humors, of course. Late though it was, he’d chosen to visiti his friend the Baron in the guest rooms allotted to him. Fortunately the Baron had arrived very late and was amenable to the company.
“It is good to see you again, Gerolf.” Harbury accepted the praise.
“And it is good to be here.” There was a slight hint of his homeland in his speech, but the Baron’s English was fluent. “It is winter and yet here I am warm and content.”
His host nodded. “I will confess I’ve missed the conversations we used to have. As you can see, I’m not very good company for most people these days.” He made a brief gesture toward the ruins of his visage.
Von Landau leaned back and reached for the snifter of brandy next to his chair. “I am saddened by that, Randall. Indeed I wish there was something within my power that would assist you at this time.”
“Your presence helps. The medicine my wife procured for me helps. And if your experiments succeed, then I shall never have to worry again.”
“Agreed.”
“You have had chance to continue your work?” Harbury’s tones were eager, a fact not lost on his guest.
“I did complete two phases in Leipzig. But, as you know, I had to relocate and some of my most valuable equipment was lost. I still have my notes, of course. But rebuilding will take a little time.”
“Whatever you need, Gerolf. Our facilities are at your disposal.”
“And nobody knows of our previous association?” The Baron watched Harbury across the table.
“Nobody. I didn’t even tell Alwynne. Not that she’d give a fuck.”
“Your wife is most beautiful. I met her on the way here.”
“You can have her if you want her.” Harbury shrugged. “I don’t really care anymore.”
Von Landau nodded somberly. “It is a sad thing, this disease. This terrible deformity eating at you, Randall. We must make haste to develop our project and end this torture.”
“I still won’t want Alwynne, you know. Whore that she is. I’m so tired of her luring everything in breeches into her bed. Makes me sick.”
“My sympathies.”
Harbury looked sly for a moment and then gave a high-pitched little giggle. “No need, my friend. I think that situation is under control. For a while anyway. And if you can achieve success with your project, then my goals will become reality. I will take command of Alwynne, of Harbury…of everything.”
He raised his glass and the Baron politely tapped it with his, a toast to future accomplishments.
It was a dangerous road to walk, he knew. As soon as the communication from Randall Harbury had arrived at the small Leipzig rooming house, Gerolf realized it was both a blessing and a potential curse.
He had accepted with alacrity. His presence in Germany was becoming problematic, given the unusually high number of missing persons reported to the authorities. There had been rumors of officials from Dresden being summoned to investigate.
The missive from England, from Harbury, had come at a propitious moment, and here he was, safe and sound, and with a madman ready to fund his continuing experiments.
It was an ironic and warped situation that delighted his orderly Germanic soul.
So he drank with his host, laughed with him and ignored the undercurrent of darkness. He would, with luck, be able to recreate his work in Leipzig. And then…well, only time would tell.
Chapter 17
The Dower House looked picturesque beneath its coat of fresh snow. At least it seemed that way to Portia. Great mounds of the white stuff were piled against the many gables, and all but covered the front steps.
She frowned as she watched one of the maids sweep it away. Hadn’t anyone thought to clear it for the guests?
And there had been guests. There was a lighted lamp still visible through one of the ground floor windows, so someone had been there last night. She glanced around looking for footprints, but there were none. Nor were there any hoof prints, although there must have been horses sheltering somewhere.
She silently did a little mental calculation, estimating that the snow had probably stopped around midnight. So whoever had been to the Dower House had come and gone before then.
A familiarly shaped mound on one corner of the small front lawn caught her eye. A pile of horse manure, warm enough to melt most of the snow. So there had been mounted guests.
She tallied up her observations as the servant with the keys opened the front door. Then she followed him inside.
And all of them froze in the front hall as the hellish chaos before them revealed itself.
“Oh my God.”
Portia rushed to the first of the bodies, heedless of the terrible mess coating various parts of the floor. She avoided the worst of the blood, didn’t even consider with the other muck might be, and crouched low, finding a wrist and vainly attempting to locate a pulse.
She shook her head as she failed. “This gentleman’s passed.” She put the cold limb back down and wondered what had killed him. He was naked but for what looked like a colorful drape wrapped around his hips.
His body was spattered with drops of blood, but she could see no wound. What she could see, was his face.
His eyes were wide, his pupils glassy and huge. His tongue had swelled, forcing his jaw wide, giving him a terrifying appearance of someone who might well be choking with fright.
To say it was unsettling would be an understatement.
She rose, and then realized his wasn’t the only body in the hall.
There was one naked man crumpled and broken at the bottom of the stairs. A servant was already checking for any signs of life, but he too shook his head silently.
Another body lay prone on the first landing, an arm dangling through the banisters. It was stained with trails of blood, and Portia knew the worst of it might well be ups
tairs.
Since the others were either struck dumb or scared out of their wits, she led the way upward, followed closely by the two men. The maids were, apparently, either going to vomit, scream or run like frightened rabbits.
Portia didn’t blame them. She had a few moments where she’d wanted to do all three.
But this was a horror beyond belief and a portion of her mind that demanded information and reason assumed dominance over the part that said this was the worst thing she’d ever seen and she should go away to somewhere else. Very quickly.
The third body was lifeless, which came as no surprise. She doubted anyone in this nightmare had survived. It was another man. They were young, clean…the sort of gentleman one might expect to see at a club or at the races. She’d seen their like visiting her parents.
Their fingernails were perfect and it was quite obvious these were not workers, but members of the gentry.
“Oh Sweet Mother…”
An exclamation caught her attention and drew her thoughts away from the bodies. “What is it, Michael?”
The lad looked at her as he gestured to the floor, his hand shaking. “I knows ‘im. He’s—he was—one of the spiffs from Level Three.”
Portia made her way past broken glass and empty bottles to where he was standing. Just behind a large chair in the main hallway was a body. Or what once had been a body.
It now looked as though some wild animal had fed on it, not to mention the dagger protruding from the chest. Michael was white as a sheet and she pushed him away, roughly, distracting him. “Go. Leave this. Go back and get all the help you can. Have Mr. ‘Enry send a message to the main house. Get Inspector Burke too, if you can.” She grabbed the lad, shaking him. “Go now, Michael. You hear me?”
He nodded, choked and turned, walking then running down the stairs and yelling to the others to follow him.
Which left Portia alone in the silence that fell after the front door slammed.
Summoning all the courage she had left, she walked down the hallway to where there were doors opened wide. The tang of blood was bitter on the back of her throat, and her hand went to her Jallai in an instinctive move of caution. But the rooms were empty of life. More bodies, yes, but life…no.
In the largest bedroom, the pattern repeated itself and she started to wonder just how many victims of this mass slaughter there were. For the first time, she saw women. Girls, actually, two of them, lying sprawled in unnatural positions on the bed.
Nobody’s limbs could move like that.
They had been broken like dolls. And worse. There was blood matted in their women’s hair and smeared over other parts of their body. One of them had dreadful marks around her wrists and ankles, like rope burns, and mottled bruises marked their thighs.
Portia was afraid she knew why. She was a virgin and still innocent about many things. But her reading had been extensive and she could recognize the signs of violent rape when she saw them.
Wishing she knew more about how to identify the variety of materials littered throughout the house, she left everything as she’d found it and moved on to the next bedroom.
Which was, to her stunned amazement, even worse.
Portia walked carefully around the bodies on the floor, noting that here there were wounds, possibly sword slashes or something sharp enough to do a lot of damage.
But it was the woman hanging in the center of the room that brought the sickness up from her stomach to the back of her throat.
She gulped, a liquid sound in the awful hush of that death chamber.
Red hair hid most of the woman’s face. She was naked, her breasts soft and pendulous, her hips large above thick thighs.
The rest of her legs were probably somewhere, but they weren’t attached to her.
Neither were her hands.
It was butchery, sheer butchery, and it drove Portia to back away from that room, careful to avoid blood and other things.
She didn’t realize she was sobbing until the tears ran over her lips. The horror was seeping into the dark corners of her consciousness and she knew she couldn’t take much more.
A door squealed below. Help had arrived.
“Up here. Please. There’s nobody alive…” Even as she called out the words, she heard a very faint whimper and froze, waiting for it to come once more.
There. Over the sounds of voices downstairs, she could hear it.
Cautiously she crept to the last room at the end of the hallway, and opened the door.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God…” The litany fell from her mouth involuntarily as she saw the figure hunched against a wall in the corner of the room.
It was a woman, or what was left of a woman. Her breasts had been savaged, her arms bore long bloody gashes and beneath the sheet she’d dragged around her naked body, one leg lay at a painfully agonizing angle. A piece of bone protruded, an ugly reminder of what lay beneath the skin.
Blonde hair was tangled and matted around her head, bare bloody patches showing where handfuls had been torn out. Her blue eyes were open but unfocused, and other than the little whimpers, no sound emerged.
Portia didn’t know what to do. She had recognized the mutilated bundle of shivering flesh.
It was Alwynne Harbury.
“Mein Gott.”
Portia jumped and spun around, confronting a stranger who looked as horrified as she felt. “It is the Lady Alwynne?” He whispered, an accent coloring his words. German, she thought, watching him approach the woman on the floor.
She nodded. “I believe so.”
“Ach, liebe Fraulien.” Tenderly he gathered her up and lifted her, careful not to disturb her broken leg too badly.
“Here. Put her here until we can get a door to lay her on.” She indicated the bed and grabbed the quilt, pulling it into a makeshift cushion.
“I have her. Thank you. Please go now. Others will be here shortly, tell them where we are.”
Uncertain, Portia looked at him. Then remembered who she was supposed to be. She curtseyed, a shaky version, but it would have to do. “Yes, sir.”
He barely acknowledged her, but kept tending to Lady Alwynne, murmuring reassurances, tucking the sheet carefully over her bare skin.
Portia gladly turned away. This was beyond anything she could deal with. As she hurried from the room, she took one last look. Lady Harbury’s back was still bare, but no longer smooth and white.
Someone had carefully carved a bloody word, the letters stretching from shoulder to shoulder and dripping gore over her spine. For the rest of her life, Alwynne Harbury would be branded as “whore”.
A choking sob rose up into Portia’s throat and she ran back into the hallway to see Burke hurrying up the stairs. Almost falling, she darted toward him, blindly seeking the safety of his arms. “Dear God, James…” The tears fell and with an overwhelming sense of relief she let him hold her and steer her away from the terrible stench of death.
He got her outside, quickly wrapping her up and almost smothering her with his heavy coat. She didn’t care about the coat, or the snow or the cold.
She didn’t care about anything at all right at that moment. Her strength had been exhausted and the truly dreadful sights she’d seen could no longer be shoved aside. She wailed and shook like a leaf. Everywhere she looked she imagined she saw blood.
“Hush, sweetheart. Breathe. Slowly. You’re in shock.”
“Can’t b-b-be…”
“Just breathe. In and out. Slowly, dear. Slowly.”
She did as she was bid, finding the cold clean air a relief as it hit her lungs. But the damage was done. She could not ever forget what she’d seen in the Dower House.
Angry and hating her weakness, she discovered she couldn’t stop weeping. But if asked, she’d not have been able to say who she was weeping for…
*~~*~~*
Von Landau was torn between fury and disgust.
Disgust that his host hadn’t bothered to mention that his wife had been brutally abused, and
then savaged by her husband. He’d played chess with the man, for Heaven’s sake.
Not once had Randall betrayed any compassion or mentioned Alwynne’s current condition. And yet nobody else would have cut that word on her back.
It had been a general alarm that had sent everyone scurrying early in the morning, and woken Gerolf.
Once he’d understood the situation, and the Dower House had been raised as a possibility for where her Ladyship might be, he’d hurried to dress and get there. Something had told him that he should be the one to find her if she was, indeed, hiding so close to Harbury.
When he did find her, he immediately recognized the symptoms of severe abuse. She was so far gone in shock, she tried to stand, oblivious of her terribly damaged leg.
There was very little expression in her eyes.
Part of her mind was either shut down or dead. He didn’t know which, but there was nothing he could do to help that situation until her physical needs were tended to.
The place was an abattoir for humans, with blood and bodies everywhere one looked, it seemed. A veteran of service to his country, Gerolf had seen terrible things.
To him, this was not dissimilar. Until he looked down at his feet and into the lifeless and cloudy eyes of a young man. Where the poor fellow’s body was, he didn’t know, but he had a pretty good idea of who would be strong and cunning enough to separate the two from each other.
He fought down vomit and walked away. He could do nothing here, nothing at all.
So he supervised the rescue staff, who were open-mouthed and stunned at their mistress’s condition Several maids burst into tears when she was brought back into Harbury and her personal maid fainted when she saw the injuries.
Malcolm, the butler, put a brave face on and soldiered his way through masterminding whatever needed to be done, but Gerolf noticed the older man’s hands shaking and a distinct lack of color in his cheeks.
Truly, this was an event that had shocked them all.
The Baron realized that they’d closed their eyes to Lord Harbury’s madness. He was not unaware of the rumors, of the persons who had never been seen again after encountering the disfigured master of the Hall.
