“Who is it?” I ask him.
“What we’ve been waiting for,” he says briskly. “Get dressed.”
As always I am allowed behind a folding screen to dress, with a maid at attendance. The woman scurries to help me into flushing pearl skirts, embroidered with the faintest sage green flowers, tugging in my corset, matching bodice, and sleeves. I feel that with each passing day he gives me bodices that expose more of my flesh. The cream space beneath my throat is on constant parade, and I feel that he relishes this as any man would. Of course, just as with any man, I am a possession, easily only desirable because of my body, entertaining because of my looks. My voice is never wanted.
I have gathered that Claire and the Captain have escaped into the jungle. I doubt they’ve escaped, still, I like to imagine them blissfully harangued by comfort and freedom.
Benjamin leads us from his rooms, and I am helped into a cart. I feel pity for the poor sweltering horses and the flies that peck at their eyes. Glancing back at the manor I swear that I see Claire’s ghostly face looking out over the tropical roundabout, laden with stones that eventually taper off the nearer we get to the village. The road becomes perilous as we wheel down the hills towards the barge.
I watch the huge ship lay its anchor and become secured to the dock. There are tiny people working in unison to do these things. Ahead, Benjamin rides an Arabian bay with his back straight and hands gripping the reins. His hair is unkempt and as it flops with each bounce. His beard is a bit denser than when I’d first arrived, and he looks a bit more haggard, grim almost, as we make our way below. He does not look like a Benjamin, but rather some foreign rogue with a harsh name. I suppose Brother Death fits. Something in his expression tells me that he is reluctant to greet whoever is on the ship.
He glances back and sees me watching him. This produces a ripple of a smirk on his lips, and I return to him a fierce glower. Though it is hard not to stare at his neatly built, angular body. His muscles are fully on display in such a position.
As we draw nearer to the docks the din of the working world blocks out my rampant thoughts. This is a dirty little village of pestilential men and women with a niche for drinking, killing, and taking. I had heard of the evils in the world but never thought I’d experience it firsthand. Simply knowing how these people have come to such a standing in life confuses me. What brought them here, of all places? Why? I do not meet their eyes, and I feel myself sink in the cart so that no one will see me. I am embarrassed of my pet-like status.
A man in French uniform approaches, walking down the dockside with great imperious strides. Benjamin dismounts his horse and greets him.
“Leurette,” he inclines his head a fraction.
“Monsieur Chardones,” the man bows low and comes close to him so that they speak in confidence.
I lean forth so that I might catch their low tones but the nearby ocean covers them. I see that there are still many men aboard the ship. They act as soldiers, walking up and down the planks keeping watch. The lackeys that watch me are listening as well. I see that this moment between these two men is of obvious importance. It is in their hushed tones, the exchange of determined expressions, the bated breath of those who listen.
Benjamin gives a curt nod to this man and he backtracks to the ship, signaling with a sharp finger to the onlooking men and then a swarm of them begin to move in the same mechanical unison. From the hidden decks below, I hear groaning and shouted commands. Then, I see the first person and then another, all of them shackled, all of them blinking against the sunlight as if it were the first time they’d seen it in months. They are all scraggly and spent, wasting away in their tattered clothes and withering bodies. These are more prisoners, about a hundred of them, being filed off the ship in rows contained by the pirates who hold them.
My mouth widens to a horrified gape. Benjamin lays a brisk pat on Leurette’s shoulder as he passes, and he says: “To the jailhouse.”
Sickness comes to me once again, a feeling that I have become accustomed to with my time here. First I think, why on earth? How? For what purpose? Something inside me sings with hairsplitting fear that this has to do with the woman and what she’d said before, that she had come to collect. I wonder if these people, if they are what he plans to give her. The pit in my stomach deepens, and I put a hand over my mouth. The thought comes like a tendril of smoke, reluctantly pushing up and into my consciousness: he deals in humans.
As we make our way back to the manor, through the thick leafy trees and brush on the coarse trail, I stare at him. I eye him with contempt. He doesn’t look back at me. It’s as if he does not want to. Is he to return to his business as usual, not thinking a dash about the dying men that he is going to hold in the dank jail cells, bruised and beaten by malnutrition and terrible conditions? I think of him recumbent in his cushy life, eating the finest cuts of meat, enjoying the most decadent foods and baths, comfortable lodgings and finery. I now see the proof that I need to call him what he is; evil. Pirate. It disgusts me.
He slides from his Arabian and one of his men takes the horse to the stables. He draws near to the cart, his head hanging low with a grim line of mouth. Shanks of disheveled hair have fallen over his eyes as he tilts his head back to survey me. He does not avoid my gaze now but meets mine with a chilling blankness.
“Mademoiselle,” he extends an arm to help me out of the cart.
What can I do but follow him? What can I do but obey? I will myself to stand and find that my legs are shaking. I touch his hand lightly and release myself as soon as I can, stepping ahead of him so that I may breathe again. The slightest touch of him has turned my hands clammy. I think upon this as I am flushed along with his men, following him to his grand library.
“Leave us,” he tells his men, voice gruff.
There is a silence so stiff through the airy hall that I feel if I move even one muscle that I might break against it. He rakes a hand through his mane.
“You have questions,” he speaks evenly.
“You are a monster,” I choke out the words as they are rippling with anguish.
He sneers and leans against his large oaken desk, “I suppose I deserve that.”
“Who are they?” my question is hardly audible.
“Prisoners,” he says coolly.
“Innocent people?” I burn.
“They were prisoners before they were brought here. Thieves and killers,” he looks at me as if I am being dramatic. “As good as dead already.”
“You know it is wrong,” I blanch. “And yet you continue. Why? What is the purpose?”
He seems as if there is a great weight upon him, something that is dragging his mind into a blackness that he will not soon surface from. He succumbs to it, and his face becomes weary and bitter.
“You should know nothing of it,” he tells me. “You’ll be gone soon. You will live a good life and be free of this place.”
I am utterly confused by his saying this. It sounds as if he wants this freedom for me.
“You want me gone, then?” I utter incredulously.
“In a few days time, yes,” he nods. “You were not meant for this place.”
I shake my head in disbelief. This man is a riddle and he speaks in poetics that do not make sense to me. I want to scream, but I must stay strong. It would take far too much energy to fall apart now. In fact, the act of sorrow, breaking down because of it, sounds entirely horrid. I’d rather remain stone.
“Is it the woman?” I press, taking a step towards him. “She wants them for some reason? The one you called Bone Woman?”
His eyes flash up at me, and I know that I have spoken right.
“Eighteen years I’ve lived this way. I’ve done what I had to in order to survive…to wait for…” he sighs as if letting go of a far-off memory. “And then fate spills you out of the sea.”
“Why does my opinion of you matter in the least?” I snap. “By all means Sir, don’t feel sorry because of me. Without me, you’ll do as you’ve
always done. I should make no difference.”
“Oh, but you do,” his voice curls slyly.
I huff in objection, going towards the wide window so that I might not look into his face. A face of so much poison. He follows me to the window, and we stand side by side, staring off into the bright brilliant world below. It is so vividly green below us, so cerulean above. He’s chosen this life. He will continue this forever, never doing as his conscience tells him. Even if he forced me to stay, even with a person that instills him with the guilt he should properly feel, he will never do differently. He is far too indebted to his world; too submerged. He’ll drown in his choices.
“Why is that?” I whisper my question, disoriented now by the craze of it all.
“It is better that you know nothing,” he grunts. “You will be safe, and that’s all that matters.”
Claire
I lie awake, my body cradled in the earth. Alphonse’s body sticks to mine. We are tired and aching. I stare up at the vivid blue sky, through the slats between twisting tree branches, watching birds flutter through the higher places. The trees form a sort of canopy overhead, bright green and lush. The air is hot and smells of earth. Like dirt and briny sea air.
My thin dress clings to my skin, new drops of sweat forming always.
“We have to go,” I swing myself upright, feeling vertigo from dehydration. “We have to find better cover.”
Alphonse jerks upright and brings a finger to his mouth, as if to quiet me.
“What?” I demand.
“I thought I heard something,” he utters, rising in one swift movement.
His chestnut hair is plastered to his forehead. He looks thin in his shoddy getup, and only for a second, I imagine him in France, his loose clean hair, his slightly built frame, his white ruffled shirt. I imagine him in his chambers in Paris, when I played my games with him. A soft thrill whisks through me as I remember that life, so far from me now. When all I had to care for were advancing myself until fate changed the course of our lives. Now I know more than some of the greatest imaginers, the greatest artists…they can postulate all they want. They’ll never know about the magic and the blood that could redefine humanity.
“Claire!” he snaps. “You’re staring off.”
I sigh, letting my hands settle on my hips.
“What did Benjamin mean, Alphonse?” I ask.
He feigns ignorance, and it pricks me to vexation, watching his response. The way he shrugs.
“How would I know Claire? He is trying to mess with us. Destroy our alliance. He didn’t want us to leave. That’s why he said it.”
“You think?” I lay a finger on my lip, pressing the nail into the flesh. “Something about the way he said it. It made me almost believe him.”
“Why would you believe him? He killed Giselle. He’s been working against us all along. He’s a pirate. Made his living from lies and deceit,” he casts his hand out angrily.
We hear twigs snap. Perhaps it is only an animal, but we do not want to discover if it is not so.
“We have to find weapons. Rations,” I whisper as we run to hide behind a covering of bushes.
“I know,” Alphonse responds bitterly. “It would help if we knew where we were on this rotting clump of earth.”
I settle my back against the brush, “I’d take the Alps to this any day.”
He smirks, crouching before me, and I see him remembering the years we’d trekked across Europe in search of the original haunting of the Cabal. There had been many good times. We are so close that I feel we are kin of some kind. Spending the years with someone does that to you, and I feel that he has grown more handsome with time.
“Climb a tree,” I say. “Maybe you could see where we are then.”
“I don’t want to climb a tree. I’d fall off and die before we’ve even done anything we set out to do,” he mutters, glancing up.
I make a noise of irritation.
“It’s not as if you have to drink the sea,” I utter.
I’ll do it then if he’s too fancy to get his pretty Captain hands dirty. I shirk my thin grey dress down so that I am now only in my simple undergarments, a loose chemise and a pair of crude linen trousers cut above the knee. These were once Alphonse’s, but I’d stolen them because they were more comfortable than my own stiff ruffled coverings. I throw my traveling boots to the side and Alphonse gives me a glare.
“Don’t,” his voice is clipped. “Claire. Don’t.”
But I have already matched myself with a low trunk that offers a perfect climbing point. The trunk is smooth and I grip it with my thighs, shimmying my way up the ascending curve. I glance down at Alphonse when I get a bit higher and laugh under my breath. I have never climbed a tree before. It seemed the obvious thing to do. As I get higher I find that I have to grab for branches because the incline is now upright.
“Claire!” Alphonse yells.
“Do you want them to find us? You’re doing a fine job of leading them right this way!” I say.
I thread myself higher and higher, dodging branches and feeling for the sturdiest holds. There’s a thrill when a gust of wind hits me, and I cling to the tree branches as if they are apart of me, the only thing giving me life. Everything seems to different from above. I find that I have gone high enough to see over some of the other tops of trees and further on into the jungle. To the west, I see ocean a few miles off. A few hills and cliffs lead down to the beach. East would lead us further into the jungle. But then I notice something ahead on the forest floor. An odd-looking square patch that seems to be different than the rest of the jungle floor. It is a defined square, covering the ground. I wonder what it could be and begin my descent.
When I reach the bottom, I head for the patch of ground that I saw.
“What did you see? Where are you going?” he asks.
“Something curious,” I rile.
We walk only a short time before coming close to the place, but I can hardly discern the square patch from the rest of the ground. I glance around, noting the change in color of the leaves as if it were covered purposefully but not very well. Then I walk forward and feel it. Wood beneath my boots. I kick the moss and leaves aside.
Alphonse and I exchange glances.
“Well this is new,” he says quietly.
“What do you think it could be?” I muse.
“We will find out, won’t we?” he chuckles. “Help me lift it.”
We combine our efforts to find the edge of the wood panel and pull it aside. It is vastly heavy and we struggle to lift it. But we manage to move it just enough aside to give ourselves an entryway into the ground.
“There’s a ladder,” Alphonse notes.
I see the rungs sticking off the side of the wall that leads into the ground, and we gather our breath before peering down. Alphonse lights a match and then brings it to our torch that he’s drawn out of our rucksack. I had gathered some things before we’d broken out. We’ve refrained from using it so that we could not be found. My heart hurts for John. He thought he’d be attending us, and with him, we may have had a better chance of defending ourselves. The thought of his death brings hot anger swelling in my chest again.
“What do you think is down there?” I ask to myself, mainly.
We glance down, and I raise a brow when he looks at me.
“Best find out, I’d say,” Alphonse is glib.
He turns himself around and grips the iron rungs, and I watch as he jerks himself down the bars, placing one foot below the other, until his mop of chestnut hair is lost in a void of flickering torch-light. My heart climbs in my chest, burning me so that my fingers and limbs move erratically. I shake as I grab for the grips, moving my dress so that it does not catch as I lower myself.
We reach the bottom and we stand in an orb of orange light. Light that leans with the flame and wherever Alphonse moves it. There is nothing but dirt and roots and blackness around us. But I can tell that this is a tunnel, and that it leads on further, deeper int
o the earth.
Alphonse makes a noise of exclamation, letting out his breath.
“Inspired, are you?” I say, and my voice carries far.
“I’ll be damned,” he whispers. “This island holds secrets aplenty.”
We begin to move forward in unison.
“Do you think this leads to…” I begin to say, but he shakes his head, batting down my thought.
But how could it not? I think that perhaps this leads to the Bone Woman’s cave dwelling. His instant dismissal of my words is aggravating, and I roll my eyes about.
“What?” he asks.
“You just seem to know everything. It’s quite impressive, is all,” I snap.
“If you have something to say, then say it,” he demands, fixing me in an expression of black turmoil.
I cock my head as I examine him. How to tell if he lies? Something about what Benjamin said. The way Alphonse made no movement to react. He simply walked on, ignored it. Naturally, someone would deflect a false accusation, would they not? Now I am unsure of him. This poisonous doubt cradles the trust I once had in him. This small thing. It appears as a phantom, and I am not sure that I am imagining it.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Alphonse?” my voice reverberates off the walls, strong. He will never know when I am afraid. He has never known. I am a good player and always have been.
He ignores me, steeling himself. Turning himself to the stone man he’s always been when faced with unwanted emotional interaction. He walks on, and I follow.
“Is this how it is to be, then?” I rage, flinging myself after him, following him closely. “You’re going to keep secrets from me?”
“I keep no secrets from you,” he keeps his vision straight ahead. “Benjamin is trying to put a wedge between us.”
“Look at me,” I am furious, jagged in my anger. The entire situation has brought me to the brink of insanity. “Did your Father kill Giselle?”
The Bones of Broken Songs: A Historical Mystery Romance (Mortalsong Trilogy Book 2) Page 9
