In the Flesh

by Portia Da Costa

  “Smith? Who is Smith?” Beatrice had her suspicions, too. There was one far less than angelic individual who wished them both harm.

  Ritchie shrugged at her, his face a mask of raw frustration.

  “Eustace! That despicable weevil! How can he be so hateful?” Betrayal and anger surged through Beatrice’s chest like bile.

  “Indeed, and it seems he’s simply deposited my wife here and retreated, leaving chaos in his wake.”

  “Is she…is she?”

  “Raving? Yes, it seems so. I must go down. Mrs. Brewer and Agatha managed to coax her into the parlor and Agatha is sitting with her, but it’s me she’s calling for.” Ritchie reached for his waistcoat and shrugged into it as he stepped into his carpet slippers. He seemed dazed, still trying to bring order to his wits.

  “Can I help? Perhaps I could speak to her?” Fear of what Ritchie’s wife had done and could do was very real, but Beatrice felt helpless and compelled to offer. Her own feelings were a maelstrom, just as his must be, but perhaps together they could deal with this completely unexpected event.

  “Bless you, my love, for offering.” Pausing, he hugged her fiercely. “But I have a feeling that the sight of you might inflame her even further.”

  Even as he held her, a cacophony seemed to erupt somewhere in the house, from a lower floor. General shouting, crashes, a woman’s voice eerie and high, shrieking.

  “I’d better go, Bea. I think she’s too much for any servant to cope with. I’ll have to try and calm her and send one of the others round to my doctor’s house to fetch him.” With a last squeeze of her hand, he dashed to the door and turned briefly at the last moment. “Stay here, my love…please… I’d never forgive myself if she should attack you too.”

  Then he was gone, pounding across the landing and down the stairs, even as the sound of more shouts and crashes came floating up.

  What to do? Beatrice felt powerless, completely at a loss. Sitting up in a bed, in a room, in a house she was completely unfamiliar with, while a murdering madwoman raged downstairs, with the Lord alone knew what intent in mind. If, indeed, she even had a mind.

  Unable to remain inactive, Beatrice sprang out of bed and began to dress, pulling on her drawers and her chemise, and a single petticoat. Her costume was out of the question, as it would take a while to wrangle herself into her corset single-handed, so she pulled on Ritchie’s luxurious dressing gown and belted it tight around her, then pushed her bare feet into her boots and buttoned them up.

  More noises echoed through the house as she dressed. Other voices now, in panic. More crashing, and a sudden strange roaring sound. And crackling.

  What in heaven was going on?

  Despite Ritchie’s instructions, Beatrice dashed out onto the landing, and immediately realized that something terrible and dangerous was occurring.

  Smoke was pothering up through the stairwell, and a voice was screaming in stark fright on the floor below.

  Oh dear Lord in heaven, Margarita had somehow managed to start another fire.

  Ritchie’s voice, harsh but in control, echoed up the stairs.

  “Mrs. Brewer, Agatha, get out, get out now! Shout for a bobby as loud as you can…get someone to summon the fire cart… . You, Oliver, run to 34 South Mulberry Street and bring Jamie here. Hurry! Go now, all of you!”

  Footsteps thudded, and as a great cracking sound echoed through the house, as if wood were already shattering in the flame, two voices rang out. One Ritchie’s loud, filled with anxiety, yet broken as if he were struggling with something, the other high, queer, almost musical, almost floating above the bedlam.

  “Beatrice! Beatrice! Are you decent? Come down…you must get out of the house!”

  “Ah yes…my dear, dear seducer…you send them away so you can do it to me. Put it in me, the way you did…and hurt me!”

  Beatrice’s eyes prickled from smoke rising up. She bent over the banister, trying to see the shrieking woman who had suddenly become her nemesis.

  As she looked down, two faces looked up. Ritchie and his wife, locked in a struggle, he trying to restrain her, and she kicking and flailing and jerking with a strength that seemed to exceed the human norms.

  “Ritchie!” Beatrice cried out in alarm. He was already smeared with soot, and she could see blood on his shirt. Oh dear Lord, what was happening? The same again as before, in some kind of horrific déjà vu?

  “Beatrice! Listen carefully,” called Ritchie, struggling for his words as he grappled with the woman writhing and jerking in his arms. “Go to the back stairs…see if they are clear…and get out of the house as fast as you can! Please go, my love…get to safety, for the love of God.”

  Before Beatrice could answer, Margarita let out a fierce screech, her face, which under normal circumstance would have been exquisitely beautiful, a mask of fury. Her features were contorted and her hair—which was golden blond and far paler that Ritchie’s, already appeared to be frazzled and a little scorched in places.

  “Whore! Filthy strumpet! Whore!” she bellowed up the stairs, redoubling her enraged struggles. She seemed to be clad in some kind of simple day dress and a shawl, but both were soot smeared and also a little singed. What on earth had she been doing, while she was left? Had she injured the servant bidden to watch her?

  “Beatrice, please! Look for a safe way out, as quick as you can!” Ritchie cried, then he gasped in pain.

  To her horror, Beatrice saw the flash of something in Margarita’s hand. A small knife? Scissors? Something she’d concealed about her person? Whatever it was, she’d managed in her twisting to jam it into Ritchie’s restraining arm, and in the moment of shock, he loosened his grip and she sprang free and darted away from him.

  Heading up the staircase for Beatrice!

  Ritchie followed, thundering after his wife, blood dripping thickly from his arm. The two of them reached Beatrice’s landing almost together and Ritchie grabbed for Margarita, reestablishing his hold.

  “Whore! Whore! Whore!” howled the blonde woman, tossing her head, kicking back against her husband, her slipper-clad feet hitting his shins.

  “Beatrice, check the back stairs. We may be able to get down that way,” cried Ritchie, between struggles, nodding vaguely in the direction of the wall at the far end of the landing. Beatrice darted toward it, just avoiding the flying feet and fists of the still defiant Margarita, and found a discreet concealed door that must lead to the servants’ stairs.

  But it was no good—thick black smoke was already billowing up. How the dickens had Margarita managed to create so much havoc, so fast? The cunning of the insane, no doubt, and now they were all paying for that infernal guile.

  “I don’t think we can get out that way, Edmund,” she called, then had to stop and cough violently. Rushing back to the banister, she peered down, blinking at more smoke, only to see what she’d worst feared, down below.

  The main staircase was on fire, and the cracking sound had been parts of it collapsing.

  “The flames will cleanse you, dirty strumpet. Destroy your filth…and his,” chanted Margarita, her eyes wild.

  “Into the bedroom, Bea…now…” gasped Ritchie, his voice sounding odd, almost weak. “We’ll have to try and get down by means of the window somehow. But we’re very high.”

  Beatrice dashed into the bedroom, the scene of so much beauty, and now perhaps their path to safety. Flinging open the curtains, she looked down, and saw a sheer drop, many yards to the street below. A crowd had gathered and someone pointed up at her.

  “Can anyone get a ladder?” she shouted out once she’d hauled up the sash. The night air was chilly, but blessedly fresh after the gathering smoke. “Please look for one. We can’t get down. We’re trapped.”

  “Trapped in sin and filth,” screamed Margarita from behind her.<
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  “Oh, for pity’s sake, shut up!” shouted Beatrice, whirling around, horrified at the paper whiteness of Ritchie’s skin as he hung on to his still fighting wife for dear life. The whole of his arm was a mass of red, blood trickling down from his wound. She wanted to run to him, help him hold Margarita, but the ferocious expression on the latter’s face was truly terrifying. Beatrice sensed that if she went any closer it would incense the madwoman even more.

  A commotion in the street drew her back to the window, and to her relief she saw the fire cart clattering along the cobbles, horses at a pell-mell gallop, bell jangling furiously for people to get out of their way. Uniformed firemen leaped down from the contraption almost before it pulled to a halt, their keen eyes sizing up the situation. Almost immediately they began maneuvering their long ladder into position and priming their pump.

  “We’re saved,” Beatrice called out to Ritchie, turning to him. “They’re putting up a ladder.”

  “Climb down, Beatrice. Go now!” he ordered. “For my sake. I’ll bring her.”

  Beatrice flew to the window.

  “Can you climb down, miss,” bellowed up a brawny fireman, “or shall we come up and carry you?”

  The ladder didn’t look strong. In fact it looked narrow and fragile. Beatrice swallowed. She had no particular fear of heights, but still the ladder looked perilous.

  And how the devil was Ritchie going to get the screaming, squirming, kicking and flailing Margarita down it? His wife seemed to have an inexhaustible well of demonic energy and she was still fighting him as hard as ever.

  “I can climb down,” Beatrice yelled down to the assembly of firemen, neighbors and passersby. Even as she quickly scanned the throng, she saw her brother racing up the street, with Jamie Brownlow and Polly, too. They were all three in their night attire, robes and shawls hastily thrown on.

  “Bea! Bea! Are you all right?” shouted Charlie, his voice sharp with anxiety. “Can you get down? Is Ritchie with you?”

  “Yes, I’m coming down now…Ritchie’s here…with…with someone else. We’re coming down.”

  Her head began to spin. It was the smoke. The fear. She snapped around to Ritchie and thought furiously. How in heaven’s name could he get this maenad down that rickety ladder? Should a fireman come up? Could even the sturdiest of them hold Margarita in her madness?

  Suddenly, an idea came. Also mad, in its own way. Before she could think twice, she leaped across the room toward her lover and his battling wife and, hauling back her arm, she aimed the first-ever punch of her life at Margarita’s pallid jaw.

  It connected with uncanny precision and force.

  Pain exploded in Beatrice’s knuckles and shock thudded up her arm, but almost like a miracle, Margarita slumped in Ritchie’s arms, not quite out cold, but clearly stunned and mercifully silenced.

  For a moment, Ritchie was silenced too, a look of pure astonishment on his soot-smeared face. Then he laughed, in shocked, wild way, as if he too were stunned. “Wonderful! You’re a genius, my love. Now we can get her out safely, and save ourselves too.” Lifting the limp, murmuring form of his wife fully in his arms, he carried her to the window. Beatrice trotted at his side, her bruised knuckles smarting furiously.

  “Can you climb?” demanded Ritchie again, his sharp eyes obviously noticing the way she was flexing her fingers. “Shall I carry you and then come back for her?” He nodded to Margarita, who he’d propped on the low seat by the window.

  A loud bang and a fresh plume of thick black smoke coming from the landing distracted Beatrice for a second, but stiffened her mettle. “Yes, I can climb perfectly well. But shouldn’t you carry your…your wife down first?”

  Ritchie grabbed her hand, the blood from his sticky on her skin. “No, you first, my precious love, you first…now go!”

  Plunging forward, Beatrice gave him a quick kiss, tasting smoke and blood, then, dragging in a great breath of the fresh air from the street, she readied herself, bundling her petticoats between her legs just as she’d done when wading in the stream at Westerlynne what seemed like a lifetime ago, and hauling up Ritchie’s dressing gown and tucking it around her waist so it wouldn’t interfere with her footing. She didn’t care a fig whether half of London saw her legs now. Goodness, plenty of folk had probably seem them bare anyway, in the photographs.

  “Hurry!” urged Ritchie, and Beatrice turned around and, with her heart in her mouth, and a wary foot, stepped backward onto the ladder.

  Oh, it felt so narrow, so insubstantial. Fear paralyzed her for a moment, then she steeled herself. The longer she shilly-shallied about, the longer Ritchie was in danger. Slowly but steadily, trying to watch her footing but without focusing on the pavement so far below, she began to descend.

  The next moments were unreal, as she stepped down and down, fearing for each step, descending through a world of noise and light, dangerously close to flame and whooshing water from the hose playing ineffectually on the lower part of the house. Once or twice, she nearly missed a rung and had to hang on tight, her heart thundering, but eventually, her foot connected with the solid ground of the pavement.

  Instantly, she was enveloped in not one but two pairs of arms. Charlie, hugging her and sobbing, and Polly too, doing exactly the same.

  “Oh, Bea, thank God you’re safe!”

  “Oh, Miss Bea, you had me worried there, really you did!”

  But there was only a second to savor their relief, and her own. Shaking off the blanket that Polly tried to wrap her in, Beatrice returned her attention to the ladder, her heart screaming silently, Come down, my love, come down.

  Flames were belching through other windows now, and smoke was issuing from the opening through which Ritchie would emerge. It was hard to see. But at last, he appeared, with Margarita slung over his shoulder, her blond hair tumbling down around her face, and down his back. She looked mercifully inert as he began to work his way down the ladder, rung by rung, hampered by his burden.

  Beatrice gnawed her lip and clenched her fist, her damaged knuckles forgotten. She wanted to cry out to him to hurry, hurry, but she didn’t want to distract him at a crucial moment and cause a misstep. It felt as if she had a giant spring coiling and coiling inside her, agonizing tension gathering with every inch he traversed down the narrow ladder.

  Slowly, slowly he descended. All seemed well. Beatrice’s heart began to rise. They were still above the first floor, but surely it wouldn’t be long now.

  And then, in a blur of motion…disaster.

  With a great screech, Margarita came to life. Tossing her head, she shouted out, “No! You shall not have me! You shall not!” Then, twisting and kicking, she beat Ritchie’s back with her fists and wriggled furiously.

  He held on, even though the ladder was rocking and sliding, then, to Beatrice’s watching horror, more blood began to bloom on his shirt and trousers.

  She still clutched the little knife, or pair of scissors, or whatever it was.

  Ritchie held on, but letting out a great, broken cry of her own, Beatrice realized he was weakening. Loss of blood and shock were draining his strength, and, just as the firemen raised a second ladder, close to the first, in an attempt to aid him, Margarita screamed out, “No! Get away, whoremongers!” and with an immense shove of unnatural energy, she kicked out with her heels and dislodged both herself and Ritchie, still holding her, from the ladder.

  Beatrice screamed, too, but the sound was frozen in her throat. She could only watch in horror as the two figures tumbled through the air toward the hard, hard pavement. As they fell and twisted, time seemed to slow down and they appeared to float strangely as if suspended between life and death while several of the firemen and a number of the stronger-looking male passersby struggled to maneuver a huge blanket beneath, to catch them.

  With only partial success.r />
  As she fell, Margarita kicked still, flailing like a demented puppet, and neither she nor her husband landed fully on the blanket. She pitched to one side, her head striking the pavement, and Ritchie tumbled between two of the blanket holders, landing awkwardly a couple of feet away from his spouse.

  Shattering the column of ice that seemed to surround her, Beatrice flew to him.

  “Ritchie! Ritchie!” she cried, automatically reverting to the name she was most used to as she knelt beside him, staring down into his horrifyingly blank face. “Edmund, my love…please…wake up!”

  For several long seconds, his features remained masklike, then suddenly he grimaced, his mouth twisting as he blinked and blinked again. “Bea?” Then his eyes snapped open, and filled with joy as a ragged smile lit his soot-and-bloodstained features. Struggling to sit up, he winced hard, then bit his lip.

  “Thank heaven you’re safe, my love.”

  “Thank heaven you’re safe, my love.”

  Their words came out in a weird echo of each other, and they both laughed, hysterically and in shock. But Beatrice frowned an instant later at the expression of pain on his face.

  “You’re hurt. Where are you hurt?” She turned and called to the crowd. “Please, is there a doctor here?” As a tall gray-haired man with a distinguished yet compassionate face hurried forward she returned her attention to Ritchie. “My love, where are you hurt?”

  The muscles of Ritchie’s face seemed to be locked tight. He spoke through gritted teeth. “I fear I may have broken my leg, dearest.” He gasped with pain as the friendly doctor attempted to confirm his sudden patient’s diagnosis.

  Beatrice peered at Ritchie’s leg. The ankle looked a little odd. She grabbed his hand as he groaned under further examination.

  “It could be a break, but not too serious,” pronounced the gray-haired physician. “Stay very still a moment. I must look to the young woman too.”