The Don't Girls

by Octavia Cade

  “Anne,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “Be careful.”

  “Me?” said Anne. “Me be careful? I left my baby with her. Our baby. Oh, no,” she said softly, and for all Bluebeard’s wife had at times been frightened for Anne, she had never before been frightened of her. “I’m not the one who has to be careful.”

  Bluebeard’s wife could hear her as she stumbled through the stacks, for Anne was singing. She had a strong, clear voice, and if it was not flawless it carried through the book-roads with calm confidence, and when she had finished she began again, a perfect ringing round.

  Gay go up and gay go down,

  To ring the bells of London town.

  It was the nursery rhyme she had sung to Sibylle the day that Bluebeard’s wife had searched for silicon and memory. Anne drew attention to herself, making herself a mark, and Bluebeard’s wife could tell from direction and sound where it was she walked. When Anne stopped singing, she would know where Whitechapel was as well.

  Bull’s eyes and targets,

  Say the bells of Saint Margaret’s.

  The books were mazed in ragged rows radiating out from the cradle where Sibby slept, and Bluebeard’s wife was not nearly as familiar with the roads as their creator. Instead, she ran past strange streets and blind alleys, half tripping over her own feet and aching, her head pounding and vision still blurred, trusting to general direction and to luck.

  She wept as she ran, silently, so that she would not give way to sobs and choke herself. And as she ran, she felt as if she were falling, a dizzy backwards spiral from more than concussion, through memory and truth and chance and choice, and how it felt to be shackled to a malice not your own, to a shadow in the doorway. How it must have felt to be unable to escape it. Bluebeard’s wife was so confused and sorry and angry altogether, and her eyes were smarting such that she almost missed the mouth of Buck’s Row, the first place she had visited in Whitechapel’s London. The place she had been set on the road to the flint cabinet, with its axes and fire starters like rods, and Pandora beside her with her sweet red mouth that smelled of fruit.

  Two sticks and an apple,

  Say the bells of Whitechapel.

  And she knew where she was, then, and the hospital only a few minutes away. She was at the outer walls, almost, when she heard a coughing not unlike her own, a stunned, wretched hobbling that came from head wounds and hard determination, and Bluebeard’s wife knew then that Whitechapel had not been distracted by Anne of Cleves after all, but had come, as Bluebeard’s wife had come, for axe and endings.

  She peered around the corner of the wall, the books stacked high against her cheek, and saw Whitechapel with flint in one hand and silver in another, with her back against a far corner and Anne’s voice echoing in the distance.

  When will you pay me,

  Say the bells of Old Bailey.

  There was no way that she could get closer without being seen, and Bluebeard’s wife sank against the books in defeat, feeling them shift slightly against her weight. She recoiled then, not wanting to demolish the wall and alert Whitechapel to her position, when the slight swaying caught her attention for more than concealment. “Books is roads,” Whitechapel had said, and piled them up on either side as high as her head, but books were not really roads, or not only roads, and if Whitechapel had forgotten that then Anne of Cleves had not, and Bluebeard’s wife would learn from her example.

  Quietly, she moved behind the books, moved until there was but a thin layer of them between her and Whitechapel, and then Bluebeard’s wife burst through the wall, using the weight of her own self to collapse the stacked books onto Whitechapel’s waiting body, to knock them all down together in a tangle of textbooks that told of zygotes and reproductive biology and two bodies coming together to create a third, of Jack and Ada Wilson together, of Bluebeard’s wife and Whitechapel. She was able to slap away the silver, to wrench the axe from the other’s fingers, roll her weight on top of her, and then the flint was at Whitechapel’s throat, the still-sharp edge cutting through the scar tissue of one knife blow, then another, and Bluebeard’s wife froze, her blade deep in the other’s throat but not yet deep enough, and the other woman was pressing back, catching the axe with red hands and trying to throw its weight off her.

  For a moment, Bluebeard’s wife locked gazes with Whitechapel and saw the fear in her eyes that must have been there when she had opened the door to a man with a knife, a man who had gone on to rip open the women of the East End and leave each of their bodies a ragged shell. For a moment, she saw herself as she could have been, with no Pandora and no help, and her husband coming toward her with an axe held in his hands as she held one now.

  Whitechapel, she was sure, saw no axe. Whitechapel saw a blade of a different kind. “It’s like a knife,” she had said, when Bluebeard’s wife had first given it to her, and Pandora has disagreed. “It’s like a scalpel,” she had said, of the blade that had come to represent London Hospital, a blade made for saving and excision where knives and axes were not.

  Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

  Here comes a chopper to chop off your—

  “Let it be a scalpel,” said Bluebeard’s wife, closing her eyes and pressing down with all her strength, her tears dropping onto Whitechapel’s face, so close to her own. “Please, this once, let it be a scalpel.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said afterwards, and there wasn’t enough breath in her body to express the horror of what she had done, of what she had had to do. Great, gasping sobs tore from her, and, too dizzy to stand, she sank back to her knees and vomited, strands of sticky saliva pouring from her mouth. And then Pandora was there—come back safe—holding her hair back and crooning, and Bluebeard’s wife gave herself up to misery.

  “I don’t understand,” she said again, when her stomach was empty and she was curled on the floor, her head in Pandora’s lap.

  “I know,” said Pandora, soothing, stroking. “I know, darling.”

  “But what happened?” cried Bluebeard’s wife, her voice rising to a wail and breaking at height. There was a brief check as the strokes on her hair, on her back, stopped and then started again, the same measured strokes, and Bluebeard’s wife twisted in Pandora’s lap, twisted until she could look up at that beautiful, sorrowful face. “Pandora?”

  “What happened is what had to happen,” said Pandora. “What happened was you couldn’t let it go on. I love you,” she said. “I love that you’re good and kind and brave, and I love that you’re not perfect and that you don’t listen. What happened is that when your husband said, ‘Don’t go there,’ you didn’t listen to him, and what happened is when Whitechapel said she got her revenge and one death wasn’t justice enough, you didn’t listen to her either.”

  “You knew,” said Bluebeard’s wife, disbelieving. “Pandora, you knew! How could you!” she cried, throwing herself out of the comforting lap until her back was against books and she could see Pandora looking at her with such pity and such sadness, while Whitechapel lay in her own blood beyond.

  “I didn’t know,” said Pandora. “I suspected, but —”

  “How could you let this happen to me?” Bluebeard’s wife interrupted, nearly vomiting again at the thought of the little jars. “How could you let it happen to them?”

  “But I told you,” said Pandora, holding her gaze, refusing to look away. “Right from the very beginning, I told you. I am Pandora of the box, and I come to even the odds.

  “Oh my darling,” she said, and her voice was very, very gentle. “Did you think I meant to even them just for you?”

  Bluebeard’s wife had run away then, run to the case filled with silver, run back to the coins and the spoons and the shining shallow bowls, to earrings and candlesticks and old photographic plates, to bright bullets and the space where a knife should be, and it was there that she again took up the hand mirror. That’s where Pandora found her for the second time, sitting propped against the cabinet, her legs tucked under her and staring into t
he mirror, her expression terribly blank and her hands still stained with blood.

  “You might be a manipulative bitch sometimes, but I was the one that killed her,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “What did I do? What did I do?”

  “You did what you had to,” said Pandora, coming to sit beside her. “We both did.” Gently, carefully, she took hold of the mirror, tried to pry it out of the fingers of Bluebeard’s wife. “You’re not the same,” she said. “You’re not going to end up like she did.”

  “Mab warned me,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “She said I dreamed of axes, and I did. I did!” She sobbed, briefly, before the spasm of her face smoothed once more into blankness. “I was so angry at him, Pandora. I’ve never been angry like that before. And I thought . . . I thought why should he be the one to have all the power? Why does he get to have the axe? And I wanted to know what it felt like. I wanted to know so badly. I even thought about getting my own . . . just to see what it felt like in my hand. Just to know what power felt like.”

  “How does it feel?” said Pandora, stroking her hair.

  “Awful,” said Bluebeard’s wife, beginning to sob again. “Just awful. But Pandy, part of me liked it, liked being the one to win for once. And when it was over, and I knew I’d killed her, for a moment all I could think was—Good! What does that make me?”

  “It makes you glad to be alive,” said Pandora. “You can’t feel sorry for that.”

  “How do I know that’s all it is?” said Bluebeard’s wife, leaning into Pandora, and the mirror still held hard before her.

  “You remember,” said Pandora. “Remember the horror of it as well as the gladness. Remember that it made you sick and sad, and remember that this is how you’ll feel if you ever do it again. You’re not them. You don’t have to be either of them.”

  “I don’t want to remember,” said Bluebeard’s wife, letting herself be drawn to her feet, drawn away from the floor and toward the center of the museum. “No,” she said, as Pandora again tried to take the mirror from her, to place it back in the cabinet with the rest of the silver. “No. I want to keep it.” She glanced around her, at the sprawling streets of books, at the squares and the warrens and the small winding pathways, the dead ends. “I want to keep all of it…

  “It happened,” she said to Pandora, turning in her arms. “It happened and I wish it hadn’t but it did, so let’s not make everything tidy and forget about it.”

  “All right,” said Pandora. “I’m not going to argue with you, darling. I’ve gotten used to it anyway, and it’s all Sibby’s ever known. But I want you to come with me, now,” she said. “You shouldn’t be alone. Anne’s drawing you a hot bath, and the baby’s here all nice and safe, and you’re alive. So be alive.”

  “I will,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “I promise. But there’s one thing I’ve got to do first.”

  And she took the mirror, sticky as it was and bound to her hand with blood, and staggered through the book-lined streets of Whitechapel until she found the place where Ada Wilson had lived, once, and where she had opened the door in all innocence to a man who had ripped at her throat and ripped out her heart, who had shown her a dark path in a dark wood, cobbled with books like bricks and the memory of knives. In that dim, lonely place, she laid the silver mirror on the floor amidst the little red jars, laid it as she had laid silicon chips and marble statues, moonstones and iron, laid it as she had laid the axe in the place of London Hospital.

  Then Bluebeard’s wife left Maidman Street behind her and she never, ever went there again.

  BONE

  Pandora went with her to the dungeon. Anne had stayed above, to supervise the workmen hired to dig the graves on a quiet hill behind the castle, under shady trees. “Are you sure that you don’t want a mausoleum?” she had asked, but Bluebeard’s wife felt the women in the dungeon had spent too long confined in stone. “Let them lie in the warm earth,” she replied. “With the sun and the rain and little roots to tickle them.”

  She didn’t want to spend any more time in the dungeon than she had to. It gave her the creeps—not only the corpses and the instruments, but the strange, skewed proportions she had felt back when entering it with Whitechapel, when she had come to visit the place where her name began. Where all their names began.

  “Do you want to take them up first?” said Pandora.

  “No,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “For all Whitechapel was wrong about, she was right about this. We started here, the seven of us.”

  “We started here too,” said Pandora, squeezing her hand in comfort.

  “That might be the only reason I can bear to see this place again,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “When it’s done, I’m going to brick the damn thing up. No one should ever have to come down here again.”

  “What about him?” said Pandora of Bluebeard, who was lying where they had left him, nine-fingered and with the hairpin still protruding from one eye.

  “Leave him,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “He was the one who wanted it to begin with. Now he can stay forever, and I wish him joy of it.”

  “It’s not much of a resting place,” said Pandora, wrinkling her pretty nose at the dark walls and tucking her shawl more closely about her.

  “He should have thought of that before,” said Bluebeard’s wife. And she glanced at Whitechapel, sprawled beside her former husband on the floor of the dungeon. “She should have too.”

  The oldest corpse had a green handkerchief over her face. That is, Bluebeard’s wife assumed she was the oldest. The decomposition seemed furthest along, and what remained was tall enough to fit the oldest clothes—the ones at the back of all the wardrobes, the ones that were most out of fashion. Carefully, Pandora and Bluebeard’s wife wrapped her in green silk embroidered with lilies of the valley, bundling the limbs together, arranging them neatly.

  “I’m sorry you ended up here,” said Bluebeard’s wife, when they were done. Gently, she slipped the wedding ring off the body’s broken, shriveled hand and dropped it onto the dungeon floor, discarding it. “I’m going to take you away, give you a proper burial. If I knew your real name, I’d put it on your headstone, but I don’t—and I don’t want to bury you without one.” She leaned over the body, kissed the ruined forehead, and felt no revulsion. “I name you Edith,” she said. “For death and choice and consequence, Edith.”

  Mary Ann, she thought she heard someone whisper, in a voice that seemed familiar to her, but when she began to ask Pandora if she had heard it too, Bluebeard’s wife saw the corpse’s eyes flutter and open.

  “I’m sorry too,” said Edith, and Bluebeard’s wife had never seen a more terrible sight than a corpse weeping, for Edith wept as if comfort was beyond her. “I was so, so sorry, but he didn’t care.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said Bluebeard’s wife.

  “I opened the door,” cried Edith, and tears dripped from her sunken eyes onto the ruined flesh of her face, the exposed bones of it. “I used the key.”

  “Even if you hadn’t, he would have killed you anyway,” said Bluebeard’s wife. “He was just looking for an excuse. But it wasn’t your fault, and you don’t have to stay.”

  “I . . . I can leave?” said Edith, and the broken jaw flexed as if trying to smile. “I can leave this place?”

  “Yes,” said Bluebeard’s wife firmly. “You can leave. That’s one of my consequences, it is.”

  “Then I must give you something in return,” said Edith, and though Bluebeard’s wife tried to demur, Edith reached down into her winding robe, reached down with her right hand and brought out the ring finger of her left—the bone shining and clean as it hadn’t been when Bluebeard’s wife freed it from the ring. “Please,” she said. “You must take it. It’s the only thing I can offer you for what you’ve done.”

  “You could tell me your name,” said Bluebeard’s wife, taking the finger and tucking it into her dress. “At least let me bury you with the right one.”

  “The name I had no longer fits,” said Edith. “Th
at girl didn’t survive this terrible, awful place, so I will take Edith in her stead, because you gave it to me.

  “I just wanted to live,” she said quietly, from a distance, as if she’d wept herself out. For a moment, Bluebeard’s wife saw her as she had been: pretty brown hair and a sweet mouth and long, long lashes over shy eyes. Then it was over, and Edith was still, so she covered the ruined face and carried her up into the sun.

  “I name you Mary,” said Bluebeard’s wife, kissing the broken forehead.

  (Annie, she heard, a bare whisper echoing through the dungeon.)

  “Mary,” said Bluebeard’s wife again, louder, as if she hadn’t noticed. “Because you belong to no one but yourself, no matter what they told you.”

  Again, the eyes of a dead woman opened. “He told me that no one would come,” said Mary. “He told me that no one would care. And I thought, surely someone must? But no one came, not even the servants.”

  “They didn’t help me either,” said Bluebeard’s wife.

  “He said I was his to do what he liked with,” said Mary. “He said that everyone agreed with him. And they must have, because nobody cared, and nobody came . . . ”

  The second wife was the one who loved red shoes. Bluebeard’s wife knew this, because she had taken a pair of the shoes from one of the castle dressing rooms where red shoes were stacked like cordwood, and tried them on each wife until she found the feet that fitted.

  “They’re beautiful shoes,” she said, buckling them on gently, the final touch after the second wife was wrapped in red silk, a perfect red to match the shoes, their leather still soft and supple as butter.

  “I bought them myself,” said Mary. “With the money I brought into the marriage, the money from my inheritance. But I didn’t buy the ring . . . that ring was the first thing he gave me, and I didn’t realize until I came here that it was the worst as well.”

  “Let me take it off,” said Bluebeard’s wife, and as she slipped the ring from Mary’s hand, the finger bone came loose as well.