The Last Earl

by Lara Blunte

  Edmund stopped speaking and looked sad and distressed at once. She began to feel as though she might weep after all.

  “Say what you need to say,” she told him.

  He took a deep breath. “Lady Catherine, your maternal feelings will certainly make you put your child before anything, but I must tell you that such care is even more crucial considering that his birth…” He looked away for a moment and almost blushed, then said quickly, “His birth may have left you unable to conceive another child.”

  “Give me my child,” she said in a low voice after a moment, watching him with dry eyes. “Release me to Adrian. You will not be followed anymore.”

  Tap, tap. "I am afraid I can't just take your word. I need his!”

  "You cannot be so monstrous as to keep a mother from her son," Catherine said, her emotion finally rising.

  He seemed to almost plead with her, "My dear Lady Catherine, I understand the suffering this brings you, and now that the baby is born, I have let my cousin know that he has a son, and I await his word. I can't imagine that he will take long in arranging for your release, and you shall be reunited with him and with your boy. I beg your patience for only a while longer." He tilted his head to look at her and added persuasively. "We are not going to lose our friendship over a matter of days, are we?"

  Catherine returned to her room knowing that Edmund would not let her go, or bring her the child until he felt he had accomplished some purpose of his own. She was sure now that he would have been able to find Adrian if he had wanted to. It was obvious that everything he had said was a lie.

  Perhaps it was a damnable lie too that she would not be able to conceive another child, a lie meant to make her even more desperate to get her baby back. Yet she was no more desperate than she had been; whatever happened in future was of no consequence to her at that moment. Whether she could have ten children or none, she must recover the little boy that Edmund had taken away, her poor little son.

  Tentacles of fear gripped her head until it felt numb, but she dared not think that Edmund was the monster Adrian had described, a devil without a soul who might harm a child just to amuse himself. She could not think this and be effective in what she must now do.

  Edmund was playing some sort of game, she knew, and she must find a way to escape, no matter what it took. But the room was similar to the one in Constantinople: a heavy shutter covered the window and she was probably going to be locked in at night by the master of keys, whom she had seen in the hall already.

  Fatima and the older Turkish woman came to her room that night to bring her some warm milk and almond pastries. Catherine waved the tray away, saying she wasn't hungry.

  The Turkish woman took the glass and offered it to her. "Drink the milk, at least."

  Behind her Fatima shook her head almost imperceptibly, and then stared at the ground. Catherine said, "I don't want milk, it makes me sick at night."

  The woman set her chin and said in bad English. "Drink to be strong."

  Catherine eyed her calmly. "I am strong."

  The woman pushed the glass closer to her and Catherine knocked it from her hand. It flew against the wall, shattering.

  "Look!" the woman cried, pointing at the mess on the floor.

  "Well," said Catherine with as much haughtiness as she could muster. "Why are you standing there? Clean it up!"

  The woman could imagine what she had said and swept out of the room in a fury, taking Fatima with her. The door was shut and locked from the outside.

  They are poisoning me, Catherine thought. She remembered with sudden horror that she had been given a strange tasting tea right before she had started having contractions: Edmund must have wanted the child to be born more quickly than it had been meant to, for some purpose of his own.

  The purpose behind risking the life of a mother and baby could not be good. Adrian must be hot on their heels, but why, instead of negotiating for her release, would Edmund need the child to be born?

  Why, if not to separate them?

  It couldn’t be true. Her eyes fell on the spilt milk and she got up, kneeling with some difficulty to sniff at it. She thought she could smell the same bitter liquid she had been given during all the weeks she had been sleeping.

  Laudanum. They keep putting me to sleep.

  IV. Seven. Escape

  Two things happened soon after this night, which made it clear that Catherine needed to escape on her own, and immediately.

  The first was that Fatima disappeared. The girl, who had been at her side the whole two months she had spent as a captive, never came back after she warned her discreetly not to drink the milk.

  Catherine kept all her suspicions to herself regarding the different drinks she had been given to speed up the birth of her son, and to keep her asleep for long stretches of time. She asked Edmund about Fatima in what she hoped was a light tone, and was told she had returned to Egypt, and that Catherine now would be very well attended by Yagmur, the older Turkish woman.

  "I thought no one was allowed to see me and then leave, "Catherine said.

  "She is in Egypt now, and could never find her way back here," Edmund said. "And besides, I am absolutely sure that even if she tried, everything would be resolved by then."

  Catherine paled, wondering if he had done sweet Fatima any harm, but could not ask. She could not let him know everything that she suspected now, but neither could she bring herself to play his game and inquire about the imminent resolution to which he had alluded. So she only said, "Yagmur is an unpleasant woman."

  "Is she? In what way? You must tell me, and I shall speak to her at once!"

  She noticed that he didn't offer to replace Yagmur, as she was certain he would have done only a month before.

  The second thing was that as she woke up the next morning, Catherine heard the sound of a baby crying.

  Her heart racing, she jumped out of bed and ran to the door. The sound seemed to stop, then started again. She started knocking on the door with all her strength but no one came. They can hear me, she thought. They're doing this on purpose.

  Instinct took over her and she rushed to the window. She started pulling at the shutters with all her might. She could feel her nails breaking, but the wood remained undisturbed.

  The baby stopped weeping and she fell on the floor against the wall. What did she hope to gain, even if she managed to open the shutters? She wouldn't get very far, not in the light of day, not if she needed to break wood and glass.

  Yagmur soon arrived in the room with water for her to wash and some tea. Catherine did not mention the baby and wouldn't even look at her. When she was ready, she went downstairs and was ushered outside, to the garden where Edmund was sitting with a book.

  Spring had come during the weeks she had slept, and the days were almost hot. She could see the garden turning green and some early flowers appearing. It would be a lovely sight, if her heart were not full of dread.

  A servant poured her tea as Edmund ordered a silk umbrella to be set above her head so that the sun would not touch her directly.

  "Such a beautiful day, but God forbid your skin should be marred," he said.

  It wasn't like him to mention her skin, or any part of her. She sniffed at her tea before drinking it. She had been steadfastly refusing to drink anything Yagmur brought her and would only eat and drink what Edmund did. She thought she could see amusement in his eyes as he watched her.

  "But Lady Catherine, what happened to your hands?" he suddenly exclaimed in concern.

  She looked at her own fingers. The nails were broken and there was blood around some of them.

  "I must have hurt myself on the hooks of my dress because I cannot bear Yagmur to fasten them."

  "Oh!" he sounded chagrined. "I must do something about that."

  Catherine's head turned sharply towards the house. She could hear it again, the sound of a baby crying. She looked back at Edmund and he was sipping his tea, as if he had heard nothing at all. Her heart thundered and
she wondered if she could grab the fruit knife and stick it into his neck. But how would she get past the guards and the servants?

  Just then, as if to show her how hopeless her plans of escape were, a very tall and strong African appeared in the garden, walking straight towards Edmund. His face was handsome and expressionless and he loomed over them like a wall as he approached the table. He lifted his eyebrows at Edmund as if indicating that he had something private to convey.

  "This is my Abyssinian steward, Muammar. It seems he needs to speak to me about tedious business matters. Will you forgive us?"

  Edmund stood up, bowed and started limping away with the Abyssinian. He turned to look at her for a moment and smiled. He smiled as if he knew everything that she was thinking.

  But the baby had stopped crying.

  

  That night she heard the baby crying again. She cursed her weakness and longed for the power to demolish walls and turn people to stone with a stare like some mythological creature.

  Her child was under the same roof as she was; Edmund was lying, torturing and provoking her. But she wouldn't just bear it without doing anything. She knew she must just act, instead of thinking for too long. What was the worst that could happen? What was worse than what was happening now?

  Catherine said a prayer, asking God to help her. She had been aware, before, that there were too many people much more unfortunate than her in the world, and had always felt that it was shameful to ask for anything. But now she implored that she should find her child, and make it out of the house and back to Adrian.

  She put a pair of flat shoes in the pockets of her simple dress and waited barefoot for Yagmur to come up with her night tea and cake. The woman invariably did, though Catherine didn't eat or drink what she brought. Edmund must have forbidden her from trying to force Catherine to do anything, and Yagmur even showed her teeth in the forced smile of a crocodile every time she came into the room now.

  The keys rattled on the door in their nightly routine. The master of keys appeared briefly, holding the door open to Yagmur, then shutting it behind her. Catherine waited listlessly by the table as the woman laid the tea, the fruit and the cakes and said, as she always did, that the lady should try to eat. Yagmur turned around to make the motion of eating with her hand to her mouth and was met by a heavy pewter candlestick holder that struck her on the brow.

  The woman reeled backwards, surprised at first, and might have made a noise if Catherine didn't hit her again on the other side the head.

  Maybe I killed her, Catherine thought as she saw the woman fall sideways to the floor. She looked at the candlestick holder, and it was sticky with blood. Perhaps it was better that Fatima had left, she could never have brought herself to do this to her.

  She could not stop to check if the woman were dead or not. There was more that she must do.

  Standing behind the door, she knocked three times, as Yagmur usually did to be left out. The key rattled again, the door opened, and the master of keys waited; as no one came out, he stuck his head inside.

  Catherine brought the candlestick holder down on his head with both hands and all her strength. He was bigger and stronger than Yagmur, but he still crumpled on the floor at once. She could see the blood spurting out of the back of his head.

  It might have made her sick, if she hadn't had to find her child. She quickly took the keys from the door, the keys which she had coveted for so long and which might open some exit that would allow her to escape.

  She leapt over the inert man, running down the empty corridor.

  As she descended the cold stone stairs silently in her bare feet, she could hear the faint murmur of the men who guarded the front door, talking outside. And she could hear her child crying somewhere to the right of the drawing room.

  And then she heard something else: music. Someone was playing the piano and Edmund's voice was singing an eerie, ominous tune in German:

  Drüben hinterm Dorfe

  Steht ein Leiermann,

  Und mit starren Fingern

  Dreht er, was er kann.

  She dared not even breathe as she passed by the drawing room door. Edmund was alone in it, sitting at the piano and playing. Liar, liar! Never played another note? There he was, absorbed in the music, singing it, his fingers caressing the piano keys.

  Barfuß auf dem Eise

  Wankt er hin und her;

  Und sein kleiner Teller

  Bleibt ihm immer leer.

  It would have been good to smash his head in as well, but he was sitting sideways to the door and would see her and stop her before she went anywhere near him. It was much more important to find her son and a way out.

  Edmund kept singing and playing, unaware of her as she moved swiftly to the right. The baby still cried, perhaps alone and ignored by all.

  "Where are you?" she whispered as she opened a door. The room was completely dark and silent, and nothing stirred inside.

  She kept going down the corridor. Where are you, my little boy?

  Opening another door, she saw what seemed to be a flat square crib surrounded by candles. She saw a small blue blanket, and then realized that there was movement underneath.

  Catherine moved forward eagerly, hushing the child, and pulled the blanket off.

  A large snake reared its head, hissing. Catherine backed away, repressing a shriek and knocking one of the large candelabra to the floor with a loud metal clang. The snake hissed louder and then opened its mouth, showing its fangs. It seemed to dance to one side, then to the other and raised its body, about to strike.

  It was knocked backwards and to the floor with a stick. Catherine looked behind her and saw Edmund, who had thrown his cane at the reptile. The snake, unharmed and angrier than ever, sidled towards them. Edmund picked up a large iron candelabra and smashed it on its head, twice.

  "Lady Catherine!" he cried. "Are you all right?"

  She looked at him with enormous eyes that captured the light of the candles. All the horror she felt for him was reflected in them, a horror worse than she had felt for the snake.

  There was a flicker of pleasure in his pale eyes for the infinitesimal part of a second.

  IV. Eight. Promises

  Catherine sat unrepentant in the drawing room. Edmund stood before her, and she saw clearly that he was like an actor facing his audience at the most crucial moment of the play.

  When he finally spoke, he was relishing his role. "A bond of trust has been broken between us," he said.

  She shook her head at him in disbelief, "You dare speak of trust?"

  He held up his hand. "You hurt two of my servants; the woman might not even live."

  Catherine's blood was up and she couldn't mince words anymore. Where had it gotten her?

  "You're a liar and a coward," she told him. "You staged what just happened. Everything. You took Fatima away and left me with a woman I didn't like; you left me a heavy candlestick holder I could use to open her head, and that man's. You pretended to be absorbed in the music. Your playing is not so unremarkable, by the by ─ I think it did quite well to set the mood for me to find the snake that you put there."

  "Well, you see, this is what I mean," Edmund said regretfully. "How is it my fault if a reptile gets under a blanket? There is no trust now, on either side. There will be no pleasure in one another's company. I think it is time that we parted ways. Don't you?"

  Catherine said nothing, controlling the feeling of dread that started to rise from the bottom of her stomach. He moved to the chair across from her and sat down.

  "I think," he continued. "It's time we put Adrian to the test. He was always considered so brilliant, why can't he find you? Huh? Why hasn't he found me, for that matter?"

  Edmund looked at a plate of dried figs on the table and chose one. "I will tell you why: he has too much mercy. You should know because you have wanted your son desperately for weeks, you've had a heavy candlestick holder and yet you did not open Fatima's head because you cared for her.
>
  "It's this kind of fairness that keeps him from finding me: if he were ready to torture or kill anyone and let everyone perish as long as he got to me, why, he would have found me and killed me long ago. But he can't do it, not any more than you can. It's not in his nature, any more than it's in yours.

  He sat back with a smug smile. "I told you he was pure. If the roles were reversed, I would leave nothing standing until I got what I needed. That might not make me the better person, Lady Catherine, but it makes me the most effective one." He considered Catherine for a moment before adding, "Doesn't he love you enough? Doesn't he love his child?"

  Catherine tried to sweep this provocation aside and reminded herself that he wanted the money very badly. "Why won't you just do what you have said you would do: give us to Adrian and he will give you the money. You said you believed his word."

  He mused, "I wonder if I do... Would he not have become more cunning by now? It's not like him, that nobility of his makes him almost stupid ─but wouldn't he have learned from the world? In any case, I need to cause a diversion so that I can get away. That diversion is you."

  "What do you mean? What about my son?"

  "I am certain you understand that I must keep your child as a guarantee that Adrian will not harm me."

  Her breathing was shallow now. The world had slowed almost to a halt. "You can't keep my child! There must be something kind and honorable in you somewhere."

  His eyes were dead as glass now and yet, somehow, still amused. "I think I have been honorable. You haven't been outraged in any way, and you won't be."

  "Adrian will know you have taken our child, and he will kill you for it."

  Edmund smiled, "He will have to find me first."

  She stared at him and said almost dreamily, as if she had finally understood him fully just then, "This is some sort of sport for you, isn't it? You told me a story when I first met you, a story about how you would never harm him. But it was all the opposite... You did see someone better than you in every way, and it must have been so hard for you, who are so hideous and twisted. You understood that he was above you, and you just cannot live if you don't prove to yourself every day that you are superior to him."