I stand and walk to a window, feel the thick frost that covers it. I spell out HESTER GRAYSON, hoping the ice won’t melt before Anna reads my name.
“Your writing is better than mine!” she says, laughter in her voice. “Hester’s a right pretty name, too. But where have I heard Grayson before?”
A large part of me resents any association with my father, and I wait on tenterhooks, dreading the moment Anna makes the connection.
“There’s a family lives yonder, in Stonehenge. You belong to them?”
I nod, wishing I didn’t. She sobers quickly, and I feel her turning and surveying the area before scrubbing the words from the window.
“What are you doing in Ironwood? Your father’s rich as Croesus. He could buy this place ten times over.”
I write on the opposite corner of the window. ASHAMED OF ME.
Anna makes a huffing sound, her expelled breath hitting my neck. “Keep that last name to yourself,” she mutters. “You don’t want anyone thinking they could sell you for ransom.”
A lot of good it would do. Father wouldn’t pay them a cent.
The old woman is quiet for a while and then she takes something from her pocket and presses it into my palm. Feels like a pencil.
“Hide it in your shoe, Hester. Paper’s hard to come by around here, but my son sends me letters each month. I’ll give you the envelopes and you can write on them—to visit or just to tell me if you need something.”
Thank you, I sign, a huge smile on my face.
She adjusts her shawl, pulling it tighter against the wind. “We’d better get back to work before Titus notices we’re happy.”
Miracle of miracles, I have found an ally in this hellhole. And maybe even a friend.
The following night, I’m given supper with the general population as a reward for working well. I learn to avoid the west side of the dining room, the section assigned to the especially violent or demented inmates.
“Stay away from Harry,” Anna whispers. “He’s killed people, I’d swear to it. That’s him talking now.”
I turn toward the voice and listen. Harry repeats five female names without ceasing, and there’s something familiar about them. I bite my lip and think. Yes, I remember Cordelia reading an article to me out of the newspaper. It detailed the fate of five prostitutes killed in London. Exhaling slowly, I try to calm myself. Harry’s women have the same names as those killed by Jack-the-Ripper.
The Butcher of Whitechapel? Here in Colorado?
Harry continues his incantation, and a chill runs up my spine. If this fellow isn’t Saucy Jack then he’s doing a fine impression of him. And isn’t a sick, violent man as bad as the actual criminal himself—if he truly believes he’s the Ripper? I squeeze Anna’s arm and point in Harry’s direction.
“What’s that?” she asks, still puzzled by my gestures. “Oh! How long has Harry been here?”
Isabelle puts her cup down and burps daintily. “Just a week. He attacked a soiled dove in Ironwood City and pulled a knife. Crazy enough to scare the town jailer so they brought him to the asylum after hours.”
Anna clears her throat. “Don’t be afraid, Hester. Between the two of us, we’ll keep you safe.”
“That we will,” Isabelle agrees.
The meal is strangely tense after this exchange, and I understand why. No one can keep that sort of promise. Not in Ironwood.
After considering all the staff at the asylum, I finally select Hershel Watts as the perfect candidate for bribery. A night watchman, he is unpopular among the other guards with his rotund figure, slowness of speech, and fondness for chewing tobacco. Anna says that he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn when he’s ready to spit. Best of all, he’s fallen on hard times financially. Hershel might end up in debtor’s prison if his creditors have anything to say about it. Hence, he’s primed for a good palm-greasing, and I couldn’t be more delighted. Mama’s jewelry should pay for my freedom with sufficient left over for Anna and Isabelle.
At supper, Anna and I ponder how to go about enlisting Hershel Watts. “I could deliver the message,” she says. “I’ll leave it for him when I clean the guard’s rooms.”
I unfold the paper and wonder if Titus or Roy are watching me. Careful, Hester. Keep your head down.
The envelope smells like tapioca, like Anna. GOOD IDEA, I write.
She erases the message after reading it, saying nothing more for several minutes. I touch her arm, and feel her muscles tense. Taking the paper and pencil back, I write again.
IT WILL WORK, ANNA.
She swivels around, glances across the dining room briefly, and erases my words. “Let’s see what Isabelle thinks.”
I follow her toward the counter where the dishes are piled up after meals and deposit my plate. Another inmate shoves his way between us and I stumble, pitching into a stout male figure. Did it have to be Titus? He laughs and shoves me in the opposite direction, toward the side of the room I’ve been instructed to avoid. Someone else passes me further along, and I feel an assortment of groping hands making free with my person. I slam my knee into the male groin at my right and rip out a chunk of hair belonging to the fellow on the left. Bloody perverts.
“No!” Anna screams. “Let her alone!”
A distinctive voice cuts through the noise, and I identify the man standing a few feet away. He shakes the chains girding him to the table, and the other men release me.
“Tell me yer name, luvvie,” Harry Swinton asks, a true East Londoner.
The smell of his rotting teeth makes me want to retch so I turn my face away. Harry reaches out, caresses my cheek, and screams bloody murder a second later. I feel a strange fatigue creep over me, as though our connection is siphoning strength from my body. He jumps back and drops to the floor. I hear him writhing there, bucking against the wood, chains clattering loudly.
My head pounds with the noise, but no vision is prompted by our physical contact, just an overwhelming sense of evil. Calculating, highly-intelligent, possessing a hatred of all things feminine, Harry is more deadly than the crazed Faust because, unlike the doctor, he is compos mentis. Or at least more sane than many of the patients here. To him, killing is an exercise, a game.
“Damn witch!” he rages in Cockney. “Burned me fingers!”
Everyone in the room is yelling now. I try to remain calm and decide what I should do next when a huge form steps up. Turning in fear, I measure its height in my head. Seven feet? Seven? I must be wrong, but I know I am not. The walking mountain puts his body between Harry Swinton and me.
“Nuffink to do wiv you, Lazarus,” Harry sputters, standing up. “Move on.”
My shield stands his ground. “You move first.”
“What ’appens if I don’t?”
“I’ll snap your neck, and you’ll be dead,” says the deep voice.
“Thee can always try, Frankenstein. ’Ave a go.”
“Hester!” Anna calls, and I turn my face in her direction.
Harry laughs in triumph at the sound of my name. He recites the list of murder victims again, adding me in at the last as a future casualty. “Put ‘er to the knife, lads, and she’ll wear red ribbons like the rest.”
Then Lazarus picks me up, his hands big as serving bowls. My feet dangle above the ground as the behemoth carries me away, and I am pinioned against his massive chest. Reaching up, I touch him, knowing his entire life in a flash.
Originally named after the archangel Gabriel, he is now called Lazarus. His glorious cerulean eyes are the only reminder of his ruined beauty, although his intelligence remains intact. Deep scars run across his forehead and down both cheeks to the strong chin and lips. One side of his face hangs lower than the other, a result of shoddy reconstructive surgery. I see the carriage accident that caused his wounds. He was a magnificent fellow, barely out of law school, when the vehicle rolled, tossing him to the ground in time for the spinning wheel to grind his flawless features into pulp. His appearance became the stuff of legend in the litt
le hamlet where he lived. Even his parents couldn’t bear the sight of him, and he lashed out in frustration, becoming the creature they all feared.
Deep down, you aren’t Frankenstein though, are you? Or Lazarus. Inside, you’re still Gabriel the archangel.
I reach around his neck and embrace him. I know what it’s like to be unloved by a parent, to feel so alone in the world. He’s experienced nothing but cruelty for decades, and, somehow, I care for this person, even if he does frighten the hell out of me. Placing my palm on one of his shoulders, I notice that it feels horribly twisted. A sudden surge of warmth transfers from my body to his. It does not harm Gabriel, as it did Harry Swinton a moment ago. Instead, the power seems to heal.
The giant puts me down. “What did you do?” he murmurs, a note of wonder in his voice. “Where has the pain gone?”
I’m as surprised as he. My world’s turned helter-skelter within the asylum, and I have no idea what I’m capable of anymore. Mary Arden did tell me of evolving powers, how they grow with suffering. Perhaps that’s what is happening now. I smile at Gabriel, bone tired, and then Titus blows his whistle, disrupting any further communication between us. The guards begin herding the inmates back to their wards. Anna arrives at my elbow and pulls me way.
“Don’t go near Lazarus again, Hester,” the old woman says. “Everyone’s afraid of him—the patients, staff, even Faust himself.”
Isabelle steps around to my other side. “You know why they call him Lazarus, don’t you? It’s an old Ironwood myth.”
“No,” Anna interrupts testily. “I don’t care and neither should you.”
“They say he’s been touched by God, Hester,” Izzie whispers. “Even death can’t hold him.”
I have no time to learn anything more from the women. Titus makes his way through the crowd, takes my arm, and walks me back to the Pit, thoughts of archangels and miracles dancing in my head.
As I’d hoped, Hershel Watts takes the bribery bait like a hungry sturgeon. The night guard quickly seals the deal with me—his unknown, unnamed partner-in-crime—using a clumsy code of sorts.
Anna reads the message again. “I will take your sister to the dance, as you suggested. Plan on it.”
Watts isn’t exactly a sonneteer, but his words stick with one. Especially the last three—plan on it. I’ve been singing them in my head for at least five minutes to the tune of Jingle Bells.
Anna folds the paper and stuffs it into her pocket for safekeeping. We are in the laundry room today, surrounded by steam and soap flakes, using our dolly sticks to beat tub after tub of soiled linen.
“A wagon goes into Ironwood City once a week,” Anna says softly, working her dolly stick. “We could hide in the back. Escape that way.”
I smile at her, adrift in my own dreams of leaving the asylum, until I hear a familiar voice arguing with Dr. Faust upstairs.
O di immortales. Noah Kelly has come to Ironwood!
Relief surges through me, and I give Anna a hug, despite her protests. The smile fades from my lips when I recognize an odiferous blend of stale onions and unwashed hair, coming from the person walking through the laundry room door.
Roy’s back.
24
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
I will either find a way or make one.
Anna lets out a cry of alarm when Roy takes the dolly stick from my hand and pulls me toward the door. “She has a visitor,” he says. “I’m to bring her up.”
When we reach the top of the second flight of stairs, Roy shoves me into a strange room. It smells musty and unused, forgotten for generations. I fall to the floor and dirt rises in the air, coating my skin.
“I’ve thought about this for weeks!”
I actually haven’t. I guess my schedule has been busier than his.
Roy brags of the vile things that he intends for me. I do not smell lust on him, but rather fear and anger. Roy’s working himself up to perform, requiring verbal reassurance of his potency to fulfill his dreadful promises. Look skeptical, Hester! Keep him talking. My brain hurtles ahead, whirring through the information I have on this man from the moment I became aware of his existence.
Ah, here’s something I can use.
During our journey to Ironwood, Roy told Titus that he feared his next birthday. The fifth of June. He’s superstitious, worried he’ll die at thirty-nine years of age, just as his father and two uncles did.
Roy’s voice grows louder and more confident with each description of degradation and abuse. “And I won’t stop. Not until I’ve had my fill… ” He’s almost ready to attack.
I quickly choose a course of action. My eyes have an iridescent quality that disturb some people. Cordelia’s told me more than once that they remind her of a cat at night, the pupils reflecting light in the darkness. Lifting my face, I use my strange appearance to my advantage and gaze at Roy, as though I am a seer with a deadly premonition.
“Afraid?” he asks with some pride. “You should be. I said I’d kill you after—”
Eyes wide, I go rigid and pretend to be in a trance. I crawl toward Roy and write in the dust on the floor. I’m counting on his irrational fear and innate stupidity at this point. Which he exhibits on the grandest of scales.
“What’s that you’ve written?” Roy asks, leaning over me. “Why, it’s the number thirty-nine.”
His physical proximity unleashes a rage so thick I could choke on it. Unfettered, white-hot. Who is this reprobate? That he can prey upon the weak? Violate the innocent? The heat grows until I fear my very flesh will be consumed.
Vindicta.
Vengeance.
I feel my face glowing, energy burning beneath my skin. I continue to write the number thirty-nine. In fact, I cannot stop. My hand flies in a frenzy, going faster and faster until I nearly collapse. Then I crawl to Roy’s feet and spell DEATH upon the floor in slashing letters. He stumbles back, landing hard on the wood. The pounding of his heart fills my head, and I savor the perfume of his fear. Rising to my feet, I tower over Roy as he lies on the floor. I lift my right hand, fingers dividing into the shape of a V—the symbol of a curse or blessing.
“Stop it,” Roy whimpers. “Put your hand down!”
Listening to the tattoo of his heart, I bore into him with my gaze and my body grows light. I raise my fingers higher, drawing the V across my throat. Truth makes my bones tremble, and I know Roy will not die on the fifth day of June. Sir Death will come for him in April. The heat inside flares and it feels as though everyone Roy has ever victimized is here, adding their strength to mine. Suddenly I lift upward, I leave the floor entirely, floating a short distance above it in the air. I hardly notice this as the rage courses through me.
“What the hell? How did you do that?” Roy screams and scrambles toward the door. “Take the curse back,” he begs. “I didn’t mean no harm.”
He dashes into the hall—the liar—and runs for the stairs, leaving me in the filthy room. Tired, weak, and afraid, I lose the power to levitate and drop down slowly. My feet touch the floor, and I fall in a heap. How did I do that, lift into the air and float? I have no idea—it’s never happened before. What started as playacting, in order to scare Roy away, became something different. Something terrifying.
Was it brought about by the victim’s wrath? I could swear they empowered me. Or was it a new gift, the kind Mary Arden said would develop over time?
I don’t know how long I cower there in the dust before Titus-of-the-squeaking-boot finds me. “Well, Roy’s upstairs hiding in the water closet. Won’t listen to nobody.”
He squats down. It sounds as though he’s eating an apple, and I smell the sweet/stale fragrance of cellar-stored fruit. Leaning forward, mouth slightly open, I yearn to taste it, but Titus pushes against my chest with the back of his apple-clutching fist. “Been asking myself, princess,” he says. “How’d a little thing, bones no bigger than a bird’s, scare a man so bad? Roy could crush you with two fingers.”
Titus finishes eating an
d throws the core away. My body turns in the general direction where it landed. I wish I could snatch up the remains of the apple and gobble any bits of left-over fruit. But before I can crawl after the core, Titus fastens a pair of irons around my wrists and yanks me close. “Tricks are over for today, you hear? I’m nowhere near as dumb as him—and lots meaner.”
It’s difficult to keep a straight face. Don’t flatter yourself, Titus. You are just as dumb as Roy, if not more so.
The worthless oaf does not read my mind, however. Instead he stands and rattles my chains. “Boo! Her Majesty’s a ghost.”
He continues this mockery for quite some time, and I plan his entire funeral and obituary as we walk to the reception hall. I imagine bagpipes playing on a hill at sunset, smoke billowing from a flaming pyre as his body turns to ash. It is a grand, hollow affair, sadly lacking in mourners.
For his wife has run off with the milkman, his children gone to their friends. And all their acquaintances are drinking a toast at the pub, using his obituary for privy paper, saying, “The lad’s gone forever. But not soon enough!”
I smile to myself as Titus leads me along. It’s a better service than he deserves.
Noah Kelly gasps aloud at the sight of me.
“You have thirty minutes,” Titus says, retreating to his place by the door. “No more than that.”
The doctor leads me to a chair, smelling of everything good and normal in the world. Cinnamon, chocolate, cold wintry air, dried lavender, pine needles, healthy horseflesh, and a male body kept clean with the daily application of warm water and soap. It’s an unbefitting thing to admit, but I could sit here and inhale Kelly for hours.
Tucking my shift around my knees, I wait for something from the doctor—swearing, dark humor, comfort of some kind—but there is only silence. I’ve thought of this visit, dreamed of it for weeks, and now that it’s finally here he’s at a loss for words? Using my gift of olfaction, I find Kelly’s in quite an emotional state. Anger, a desire for violence against those who hurt me, guilt over his absence and profound relief that I’m still alive. My mostly healed jaw gives me a twinge as I smile at Kelly. I’d like to beat Titus to a bloody pulp as well.
Veritas Page 20
