Wicked Women

by Gaie Sebold

  The physician was usually a man of frosty, detached manner. Right now, he seemed positively grim, as though the next corpse on the slab would be his own.

  ‘Get out,’ he told his man, and then nodded sharply to Ralpe. ‘Thank you for coming at such short notice, my lord. This is a matter that needs urgent attention at the highest level.’

  Ralpe gave him a crooked look. ‘Then you have the wrong brother. Malmer’s the duke, remember?’ A sudden thought struck him and he recoiled from the shrouded cadaver. ‘Or…?’

  ‘No, not that,’ although the physician sounded strained enough that it might have been. ‘But it’s hard to hold your brother’s attention these days. He is often… preoccupied.’

  Ralpe had to concede that point. And who would have thought the duchy would be such a brighter place now that Malmer is not obsessing about growing its influence? Or his own influence… His brother made so much more congenial a groom than he had a bachelor. ‘So tell me, doctor. What’s worth getting the duke’s brother up past midnight? Have you learned how to raise the dead?’

  His jovial tone fell into the physician’s expression and sank without a ripple. ‘Lord Sae fell from his horse while hunting. His horse came down atop him. His injuries were severe. All they could think of was to bring him to me, of course.’

  Ralpe winced at the thought of the dying nobleman spending his last hours jolting across the countryside in a cart at the hands of panicking servants. Sae was the army’s third most senior officer, and he had been out hunting, no doubt, because abruptly the duchy seemed to need far less input from men like him. ‘I take it he’s dead, then.’

  The physician nodded at the laden table with a single nervous jerk of his head.

  Ralpe put a hand to his brow. ‘Then he would be just as dead in the morning, doctor. This could have waited-’

  ‘No, my lord, it could not,’ the physician snapped at him. ‘I need to show you the body.’

  Ralpe wanted to walk out, then. He would very much like to have left, thinking only that the man’s personal hobbies had at last grown beyond his ability to keep them private. There was a dreadful intensity to the physician, though; a tension that gripped every line of him.

  ‘Show me.’ Even saying the words, Ralpe knew that he would be happier remaining ignorant, but here he was, being the responsible brother in Malmer’s absence. ‘What’s so important?’

  The physician stripped the cloth back from the corpse’s face, revealing the bluish, pallid features of Lord Sae. So far, so dead, but the shroud was pulled further and further down, showing flesh that was mottled black with bruising, an arm that had been shattered when the horse came down on it.

  Sae’s chest and stomach were mutilated, but Ralpe had been a spectator at the doctor’s demonstrations before. What looked like the excesses of a knife-wielding maniac were just the man’s professional ministrations.

  ‘So, with Lord Sae dead of his injuries, you decided to do a little prying,’ he observed.

  A defensive gleam flickered in the physician’s eyes. ‘A perfectly serviceable cadaver…’ he started.

  ‘Save it. Show me.’ Ralpe steeled himself for the glistening horror that was the truth within all men. Obligingly, the doctor folded back the flaps of Sae’s skin, opening him up like a window. It was a window on a different world, though, a horror quite unlike the one Ralpe had expected.

  Some parts of the tableau were still moving, albeit sluggishly. There was a lot of clutter in there, but not the right clutter, not Sae’s expected innards. Right then, all those slimy tubes and lumps and sacs that were the common plumbing of humanity would have been a welcome sight. But it was gone, it was all gone. What filled Sae up was a riotous growth of bile yellow and faintly luminous green, a flourishing tangle of fronds and gills and fruiting bodies amidst which were the feebly twitching bodies of round-shelled, crablike insects. The bugs clustered like festering sores under the ribcage or clung to the exposed inner membranes of Sae’s skin. Most were still and dead, and some had already sprouted out into little fungal florets of their own, little budding fingers prying their way between the creatures’ chitin to unfurl into the air. And in the bugs, the worms; and in the worms, the spores…

  ‘Where’s the…’ Ralpe got out hoarsely. ‘Where’s the rest of him?’ There was no sign of all the organs that made up a man, just this fecund, seething mass of growth.

  ‘Gone,’ the physician said hollowly. ‘Eaten away. This was all that was inside him. My lord, what do we do? Sae was walking, talking, everything like a living man, with this within him. Anyone else could be infected with the same contagion.’

  For a long, long while, Ralpe forced himself to stare at the festering excrescence that had consumed Lord Sae from within. He let every detail of it assault his senses, seeing it slowly evolving, decomposing and recomposing even as he watched.

  He thought about the way the duchy had changed since the wedding. He thought about the dark heart of the forest, and what Candide had said there. He thought about the future that had been slowly growing within the duchy, and what it promised.

  And Ralpe was a man who dearly loved his peace and quiet.

  ‘You’re right, something must be done,’ he told the physician. ‘And it is true my brother has been… distracted of late. But this must be raised at the highest level.’ He looked the doctor in the eye; he owed the man that. ‘You must bring this to the duchess immediately. Go straight to her; tell no-one else. She will be very interested to know what you have discovered.’

  Later, he stood with her upon a balcony, overlooking the grounds of the ducal palace. If he squinted, he could imagine that he saw a branching network spreading out from them, hidden invisibly in the air, the earth, the people.

  ‘Will you take everyone, in the end?’ Ralpe asked quietly.

  ‘Why should we need to?’ Candide gave him that mischievous smile – despite all he knew about her, he still felt that expression was something truly of hers, that outer skin of her that was human. ‘The spores influence the worms, the worms influence the bugs, the bugs influence the leaders, those men and women whom we have touched and loved. And those leaders shall guide the rest. We do not need to reach into the heart of every farmer and herdsman.’

  He could not stop himself from shuddering slightly, at the thought of how very literal she was being. ‘And… how long will they last, like that?’ He thought of his brother, surely rotten to the core with Candide’s love by now. But then there had never been much fraternal affection between Ralpe and Malmer, before.

  ‘As long as any fleeting human life would last,’ Candide told him carelessly. ‘Longer, most likely. I am a jealous lover. I will not permit my darlings to share their affections with the cancers and frailties that human life is subject to. And they do not know. They think they are themselves, and free. They cannot know what agents tweak the thoughts within their minds.’ Only with him did she speak like this. Only he had understood the truth, and yet was trusted enough to remain free. He thought, sometimes, that was the sole reason for her forbearance: she valued having someone to talk to who was not simply another her. With Malmer, with the rest, it would be as though she spoke to her reflection in a glass.

  ‘We have watched you for so long, as you ate into our forest,’ she said softly. ‘As your need for war tore up our trees for bow staves, burned them for charcoal. We have watched all your little duchies fight and fight, every state, every lord out for himself. You place such emphasis on individual destiny and greed and ambition, and so you are divided, and proud of your division, no matter the cost. But enough is enough, Lord Ralpe. The forest has had enough. We will make a union of you all; we shall bind you all together. There shall be balance and harmony at last. There shall be peace.’

  THE BOOK OF THE GODS

  Sam Stone

  Lady Arabella Hutchinson lifted the skirt of her wide ball gown and pulled out the gun that was holstered against her thigh. The weapon had been made to her personal specificat
ion. Adapted from the old style duelling pistol, the gun now featured a small steam-powered engine linked to several copper tubes, which wrapped around the long thin barrel and connected with the bullet chamber. It was semi-automatic; meaning that the mere squeeze of the trigger instantly loaded a new shot and powered it from the muzzle, saving time, and Arabella’s neck, on many occasions.

  Arabella shrank back against a large crate as the first mate, closely followed by the Captain came into the gloomy warehouse. The situation had deteriorated far faster than she had expected.

  ‘What’s all the commotion about?’ demanded the Captain, pulling the first mate up short.

  ‘The crew say the woman cheated at cards and stole their money,’ he replied, casting his eyes around the storage area.

  ‘A woman?’ asked the Captain.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘I don’t know Captain,’ said the first mate. ‘I left her on deck for just a second, then she was gone.’

  Arabella edged forward. She would have been long gone before the obvious dawned on one of the men but she had stayed behind to finalise the documents while the cargo was loaded on the carriage, and her partner in crime, Joseph, spirited it away. The Captain had been detained, which meant that Arabella had been left to her own devices for too long. While she waited she had explored the dock warehouse, hoping to find something of value that she might add to the haul, when she came across a small group of sailors playing poker. She couldn’t resist the opportunity to fleece the unsuspecting men. A mistake, she realised, she might not live to regret.

  It was their own fault. They shouldn’t have assumed I was just ‘a girl’, she thought. She knew this excuse wouldn’t wash if the crew found her stash of money and papers; some of which she had won, others she had taken. When the row started, she had slipped away, hiding right under their noses, even as the sailors scurried around shouting ‘thief’. It was not long before she realised that the cry had nothing to do with the small haul she had taken but rather with something else entirely: something large and more valuable.

  ‘Must be the girl,’ the boatswain had said to the first mate. ‘She’s taken my wallet.’

  ‘And mine,’ cried another man. After that they all realised they had lost something and so Arabella was also being accused for these other things too. The thought annoyed and intrigued her. She didn’t mind being accused for thefts she had committed but was somewhat outraged when the accusations were unfounded.

  Why didn’t I just leave with Joseph? she thought. My damn arrogance will be the death of me. She knew perfectly well why she had stayed. She had secretly been hoping to be discovered. The excitement of escape made the effort of deception so much more thrilling.

  The Captain and the first mate moved away from the crate and Arabella sighed softly.She glanced down at the ball gown. Crinoline wasn’t the quietest fabric to sneak around in and the large skirt made it difficult to run. Fortunately she had come prepared. She placed the gun down on the floor and, reaching behind her back, she began to unlace the tight corset.

  A rustling sound whispered across the warehouse; Arabella paused and listened. She heard the sound of feet running towards her and so she pressed back against the crate and reached for her gun. It would be unfortunate if she had to kill over some stolen cargo and a few pounds, but Arabella would do just that if it meant getting away in one piece. She felt the familiar rush of adrenaline coursing through her veins.

  A small group of crewmen ran past her hiding place, and Arabella held her breath a moment longer. She knew she was too well hidden and they could not know where she was. The space she had squeezed through was tiny, even though behind the crate there was lots of room.

  ‘Captain!’

  The Captain reappeared and the first mate ran back to meet him. The two men stopped close to the crate that Arabella was hiding behind.

  ‘The book is missing too, sir,’ said the first mate.

  ‘That damned woman!’ the Captain hissed. ‘Don’t let our passenger know until after we find her.’

  Interesting, thought Arabella. What book? And if they think I shouldn’t have it, then do I want it?

  Once the men had moved away, Arabella finished her transformation. She pushed the corset, dress and bustle back into the far corner behind one of the other crates. Then she rolled down the legs of the dinner suit trousers she had been wearing under the dress. She opened her carpet bag and pulled out a dinner jacket and shirt and shrugged herself into them. Next she placed a wig and hat on her head and glued on a fake moustache. Finally, she pulled free a bottle of gin, sloshing some of it on her clothes, and took a large swig directly from the bottle. Once the disguise was in place, Arabella squeezed back out from behind the crate and slipped away. She tucked the gun away in the inside pocket of the dinner jacket. She left the carpet bag behind with her dress, neither of these items contained anything that could lead the sailors back to her, and she walked out onto the dock and into the chaos.

  Sailors were running back and forth between the ship and the warehouses and few of them noticed the thin, drunken, aristocratic boy who stumbled around, holding a bottle of gin and singing bawdy songs rather badly. As the Captain walked down the gangplank, the boy fell across his path, breathing a blast of gin right into his face. The Captain was a member of the Temperance Society and active supporter of Lyman Beecher, God rest his soul, and he pushed the boy away in disgust.

  ‘Filthy rich,’ he muttered as the boy staggered on and away from the port.

  Arabella kept up the pretence until she was out of the dock and back onto the main road. She hailed a Hansom cab and made her way to the rendezvous point.

  Her partner, Joseph, resided in the rough part of town. He had a semi-respectable cover as the landlord of ‘The Sailor’s Rest’ and so Arabella arrived there with her disguise still firmly intact because a young man entering the premises would be less noticeable than a woman.

  The carriage pulled up, and Arabella paid the driver before making her way around the back of the Inn to the rear entrance. She gave the secret knock, three slow raps, and the heavy lock slid back from the door.

  ‘You took your time,’ Joseph said. ‘Poker game was it?’

  ‘You know me so well.’

  ‘You’ll be the death o’ me one day lass,’ Joseph laughed.

  He sat down at the fire and picked up his pipe. Arabella smiled at his grumpy bearded face and sat down opposite.

  ‘The strangest thing happened,’ she said.

  ‘They figured out you cheated, huh?’ Joseph grunted.

  ‘That’s what I thought at first, but something else went missing. It seems they had also lost a book, and they believed I’d taken it. I hadn’t. This does mean another thief was working the docks tonight.’

  ‘A book? Not really your style,’ Joseph commented.

  ‘Not unless it’s valuable,’ Arabella agreed. ‘That is the point I think. This book they wanted must be valuable. There was an awful amount of activity. The whole crew was out looking for me and it. They didn’t even realise that they had handed their cargo over to the wrong people. Or at least cared less about that than this book.’

  ‘I see you escaped despite it all,’ Joseph said. ‘Right enough. No one would believe that disguise hid a lady underneath.’

  Arabella smiled and preened. ‘That’s because they cannot conceive of a woman getting the better of them.’

  Joseph took a swig of ale and puffed his pipe. ‘Crate’s stowed in the usual place,’ he said finally. ‘Want to open it and have a look?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They went down into the tavern basement. Barrels of ale and wine were stowed under the feet of the clients, and so too was an underground escape tunnel into a storage area that smugglers had hollowed out some years before. Arabella led the way by first opening the doorway that was hidden in the front of one of the huge barrels. She and Joseph passed through the crawlspace and out into the tunne
l.

  The torches were already lit, and so they traversed the narrow passage to the storage room without difficulty. After a few moments Arabella came face to face with her haul for the first time.

  The crate dwarfed the small room. It stood taller than Arabella and she had not recalled it looking quite that big on the cart as it was loaded; but then she had been distracted. In fact it looked like the same crate she had hidden behind in the warehouse, although she knew this couldn’t be the case.

  ‘We brought it in through the sewers,’ Joseph said. ‘It was heavy. Damned thing. Took three men to pull it through.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Arabella said.

  She walked around the crate, excitement colouring her cheeks. She noted the lettering that covered the box was in a language that she had never seen before. There were several customs’ stamps too. This crate had been as far as Tasmania, and had passed through several European ports before finally reaching its destination in London.

  ‘Let’s open it then,’ Arabella said, removing the masculine dinner jacket, which she threw casually onto the floor.

  Joseph came forward with a crowbar and they eased the front off the crate. Straw and sawdust tumbled out and Arabella reached inside to brush the packing away from the statue. As she did so, her hand caught on a protruding nail and she yelped. The nail had torn a deep cut across the palm of her hand and blood already tarnished the straw. She took out a handkerchief and wrapped it around the wound and then, taking more care, she pulled back the straw to reveal the face of the statue.

  It was hideous. Joseph took a sharp breath behind her, ‘What is that thing?’

  ‘An ancient god,’ Arabella said. ‘Worshipped by the Aztecs I believe. The statue was found when it washed up in Australia. Luckily for us a Colonel in the British Army thought it would make a good trophy for the Queen.’