Katrin’s wails switched to gasping sobs. The sobs went on and on, punctuated by despairing howls that twisted in his heart. He had never heard Katrin cry like that, not from the moment she had been born.
Menders rose to his feet.
Katrin was hungry, sick or in pain, and Madame Holz was doing nothing about it.
The nursery night lamp was burning low, but there was no sign of Madame Holz. The fire was dead, something that was never permitted to happen. Nights were cold at The Shadows, even at the height of summer. Menders moved across the room swiftly and looked down at Katrin.
Tears, a red crumpled face, sobs. No blanket in the crib at all, the fire gone out, the room cold, and the reek of a very foul diaper, something that had never been permitted. Katrin was always kept clean and fresh smelling. Forgive me, little one, for letting this happen to you but it’s the only way I can keep you safe, he thought as he picked her up.
“So, Lord Stettan, what are you doing here?” Madame Holz had come out of her room, at last.
“Why is this baby in this condition?” he asked, keeping his voice cool.
“It teaches her, sir, to endure discomfort.” She was swaying drunkenly. A miasma of soured wine surrounded her.
He took Katrin to the changing table.
“Oh, you’re going to rescue her yourself, young man?” Madame Holz said, drunken jollity deepening her voice. “This should be amusing.” She lurched closer.
Menders ignored her, and bent over Katrin.
“All right, Little Princess, I’m here,” he murmured and was gratified when she turned her head toward his voice, though she wasn’t ready to stop wailing. At least she knows someone is going to help her, he thought, pushing up her little nightgown and opening her filthy, saturated diaper, closing his mind off to the stench. He peeled the vile garment from her and flung it into the bucket nearby.
He clenched his teeth when he saw her reddened and chapped skin. Forcing himself to remain calm, he concentrated on removing the filth from Katrin, drying and powdering her before wrapping her in a clean diaper and fastening it.
“What a clever young man,” Madame Holz said sarcastically. “Perhaps you’d be better suited to a position as under-nurserymaid instead of a trumped up little freak who thinks he’s a gentleman.”
Menders lifted Katrin and held her against him, pressing his lips to her downy little head for a moment. She’d stopped wailing. Her crying was that of a tired baby who was ready to sleep.
“You have not abided by the agreement we made this afternoon and you have neglected your charge. You’re also intoxicated while on duty. You’re dismissed,” he said to Madame Holz, keeping his voice down so that Katrin didn’t startle. “You are to leave tomorrow.”
“Very well, sir,” she smiled. “I will be glad to let Her Majesty know just why I have returned to Court. I’m sure that you will also be leaving here very soon after that.”
She went back to the nurse’s room, and a moment later he heard the clink of a bottle against the rim of a glass. Can’t leave it alone, he thought with satisfaction.
Katrin was dozing off. He put her back in her crib, found her blanket and covered her. There was no further sign of Madame Holz. After lighting the fire, Menders hurried to his office, stripped off his coat and collar and unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt before rolling up his sleeves to show his forearms. He untied his hair and raked a comb through it until it was loose and flowing over his shoulders. Then he rapidly traversed the hallway to the kitchen. He uncorked a bottle of wine and rinsed his mouth with it, spitting it into the kitchen basin. Taking two wineglasses, he started upstairs toward the nursery.
The light was burning in Madame Holz’s room. Menders replaced his dark spectacles with clear ones and arranged his features into an expression of anxiety and mildly drunken petulance, positioning himself in her doorway.
Madame Holz was very intent on her drinking, and didn’t notice him until he carefully clinked one of the glasses against the wine bottle.
“Ah, you’re back, young man,” she said, looking up at him with a drunkenly sly expression. Her eyes slid to the bottle greedily.
“I thought we might have a talk,” Menders said, pitching his voice low, so that the seductive husk in his lower register was very apparent.
“Do sit down, little night owl,” the woman said expansively, waving her hand vaguely toward the chair opposite hers. “Been having a few drinks yourself? Thinking about what will become of you when I tell the Queen about how you dismissed me against her orders?”
Menders pretended to be embarrassed by her sagacity and sat, setting out the glasses and pouring them full of wine. She glommed onto hers ravenously, draining half of it in a gulp. He poured it full again and gave her a smile.
“Well now, you’re a pretty young man when you’re loosened up and have those blasted black spectacles off,” she said. “The eyes take some getting used to, but they’re exotic. You’re Old Mordanian, I see.”
“Indeed,” Menders answered, pretending to sip his wine. She was far ahead of him in drunkenness, and he wanted to keep it that way.
“I can tell by the slanted eyes,” she informed him. “Same as with the baby in there. You mustn’t think that I’m a cruel woman. The toughening regimen has come down through the Royal Family and the finest Old Mordanian nobility from the days of Morghenna the Wise, after weakness led to the execution of Queen Clearheart and the occupation of Mordania by the Surelians.” She sounded like she was reciting something that had been pounded into her brain by rote. “I have my orders. By the time I’m done, this one will be toughened to the point where she can endure anything.”
“It seems a hard thing to leave a tiny baby in a foul diaper while she screams,” Menders said, setting his tone to sound as if he wasn’t exactly sure of such a surety.
“I’m sure it does to a sensitive young man like you,” she replied, leaning forward, blatantly letting her dressing gown gape open. “It’s obvious that you’re fond of the child. But learning that she has to tolerate discomfort is an important part of her training. It’s groundwork for what she has ahead of her.”
Menders nodded as though she was giving him pearls of wisdom while his mind played briefly over the sorts of things this woman would consider tormenting a baby groundwork for – beatings, hunger, inadequate bedding in a cold nursery during the winter, no time to play, endless memorization and recitation, repression of natural talent, harsh discipline, vicious criticism, lack of love.
“Now that I understand why you raise the royal children in the way you do, I’m confused as to just why the Queen has sent you away from Princess Aidelia,” he said earnestly.
“She is… angry with me. I had some wine and fell asleep. Anyone might have done it. The Princess got out of the nursery, was playing on the stairs. She fell and broke her arm. Just a childhood accident, I tried to tell Her Majesty, but she sent me up here. Took me away from the Heiress and sent me to the end of the world. It isn’t as if the Queen isn’t fond of wine herself.”
She pouted and tried to refill her glass. Menders took the bottle away before she poured it all over the table, filling the glass himself. She drained it instantly.
“That’s the sort of thing that could happen to anyone,” he said soothingly. “I hear Princess Aidelia is a handful.”
“Oh, she’s a wretched, wretched child. But she’ll be a strong Queen. It’s taken harsh discipline to break her, but I know my job. You think all this pampering and loving is good for the little Princess, but it isn’t. Mordania needs strong Queens and I know how to make them. Toughening is the only way.”
Menders suppressed nausea as he saw that the thought of inflicting cruelty on children was arousing the wretched woman. She was beginning to pant and had a lustful light in her eyes.
“Perhaps I was hasty in telling you that you’re dismissed,” Menders murmured, letting his voice resonate sensuously, pouring more wine into her glass. “I have to admire a woman who,
for the sake of Mordania, will deny the natural impulse to care for a baby in distress. I misunderstood your motives.”
“Oh, entirely. I can be very tender, under the right circumstances.” She flicked her tongue out and licked the rim of her wineglass, looking into his eyes. “With the right person,” she added.
Menders took a sip of wine, swallowed, and leaned his chin on his hand as he replaced his wineglass on the table, the image of a young man who was definitely feeling what he was drinking and starting to respond to the advances of a woman.
“What sort of person would that be?” he asked, slowing his words just enough to create the illusion that the wine was affecting his head.
“Oh… young. Like you. How old are you, little night owl?”
“Twenty.” He picked up the wineglass again but didn’t drink, holding it at a level to draw her gaze to his eyes.
“Twenty. So young,” she mused, gazing into his eyes just as he’d intended. “You must be very lonely here. So far away from everything, without a wife, without company.”
“The Shadows is very isolated,” he said, leaning forward slightly, as if mesmerized by her bloodshot orbs.
“I’m sure it is. You must feel deprived without the love of a woman,” she whispered, fingering her flabby cleavage.
“I have been very lonely,” Menders ventured, dropping his eyes long enough to seem uncertain. Then he looked up at her, making sure that he looked like a sad little puppy desperate for love.
“Poor little Head of Household,” she slurred, quaffing more wine. Then she leaned across the table, knocking the bottle over. She kissed him, thrusting her tongue into his mouth.
He forced himself to kiss back as if he was completely enamored, ignoring the sour taste of her lips and tongue, closing his nose to the reek of her unwashed armpits. The wine oozed across the table and began to drip on the floor.
Madame Holz sat back and stared at the spilled liquid.
“Oh no,” she mourned, looking at him coyly. “I’ve spilled your lovely bottle of wine. I am a bad girl.”
“I know where to get more,” he grinned, as if he was as drunk as she. He made a point of gulping down the contents of his wineglass. He could afford to at this point, and it would wash the nauseating taste of her out of his mouth.
“Where?” she asked eagerly, as if they were conspirators.
Menders leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair, fixing his gaze on her eyes while his other hand slipped his own wineglass into his pocket.
“In my room.”
“Why what a bold suggestion,” she smirked, scrambling up from her chair.
“My room is also much warmer and I have a much larger bed,” he tempted, taking her hand and drawing her to him. She began slobbering toward his mouth. He kissed her, several times. Then he glanced toward Katrin’s crib, visible in the nursery by the light of the dwindling fire. There was no time to build it up again, just now.
“Don’t bother about her, she’ll sleep for hours,” Madame Holz panted, trying to climb his leg, suddenly inflamed with desire. “Let’s do it here.”
“Oh no, I want more to drink,” Menders pretended to laugh “Don’t you want more wine, my dear? And perhaps I have a few tricks hidden away that might amuse you… but they’re in my room.”
She grunted and nearly smothered him with a repulsively slimy kiss, then pulled him eagerly toward the nursery door.
The cold of the hallway damped her ardor a bit and he squired her across the floorboards of the landing, smiling and holding her close as they descended the stairs to the first floor. The stairwell was flooded with the full moonlight of Ito, the smaller of Eirdon’s two moons.
Menders paused at the top of the stairs. He kissed Madame Holz several times and ran his hands up and down her doughy body before drawing her attention to the view of the moon through the stairwell window.
“Look how beautiful,” he murmured, standing behind her with his arms around her waist. He nuzzled her thick, sweaty neck.
“Oh, isn’t it,” she responded, looking, drunkenly swaying on her feet. “It’s so beautiful.”
“Not as beautiful as you are,” he whispered in her ear, following his words with an exhaled breath. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
He released her and stepped back.
He lashed out with a powerful kick, balancing himself to deliver maximum force to the small of her back.
The impact snapped her spine, launching her into the stairwell like an awkward sea bird. She arced through the moonlight with a faint fluttering of cloth that sounded like stunted wings trying to fly, too drunk to struggle, too surprised to cry out.
She hit the stairs where he’d calculated, about halfway down, tumbling with a sickening looseness to the bottom, making little noise on the thick wooden risers. She finally came to rest on the landing with a nearly inaudible thud.
Menders ran soundlessly down to her, pressing his fingers against her throat, feeling for a pulse. Not dead. He waited a moment, needing her blood to keep moving so that she would have bruises in case the Queen wanted the body returned.
He did not laugh or gloat over his triumph. Grimly silent, he took Madame Holz’s head in his hands. With a rapid motion, he twisted it round as if he was trying to screw it off. There were multiple snapping sounds, like a handful of dry twigs breaking. He felt for the pulse again.
Dead.
Bright eyes gleamed at Menders from a dark recess, then silently withdrew into shadow. He did not see.
Menders dashed for his office, closed the door, rebuttoned his shirt, refitted his collar, pulled on his coat, tied back his hair. He rinsed his mouth and face until he was sure that there was no trace of wine on his breath and that her slobber was off his moustache and beard. He removed the wineglass from his pocket and pushed it behind some books on a shelf, making a mental note to return it to the kitchen tomorrow. Then he walked back to Madame Holz’s body with a lantern.
Excellent. The bruises were already in evidence. For the sake of the others in the household, he would play the scene out to the end.
The Princess’ nurse, having drunk far too much despite being on duty in the nursery, had overturned her purloined bottle of wine. Further complicating her misdoings by neglecting her charge (as she had previously neglected Princess Aidelia), she lost her footing while going after yet another bottle, tumbling to her death down the stairs in the dark. The fall neatly broke her back and neck. Menders, awake later than the rest of the house as was his habit, had heard the noise of the fall, but it was too late to render any aid to the stricken woman. How unfortunate.
He shouted the house up. Everyone came running, pulling dressing gowns on over their nightclothes. Soon, a candlelit circle of people were staring down at the rapidly cooling body of Madame Holz. Doctor Franz attended her and pronounced her dead. He pointed out the bruises to the assembled group as evidence of her fall.
No-one was particularly heartbroken over the demise of Madame Holz. She had stepped on more than one set of toes. Menders saw Zelia and Cook exchanging relieved glances. He caught Mistress Trottenheim giving him a measured gaze that turned fearful when he met her eyes. She retreated to her room without a word. Franz promised to write the necessary letter and death certificate, and he and Lucen helped Menders carry the body down into the cellar, where it would lie until morning.
When the household had settled down, Menders climbed the stairs to the nursery. Eiren was there, building up the fire.
“It had almost gone out. This place was like an icehouse with that poor baby covered with only one blanket,” she said in a sharp whisper. “I’ve put some more covers on the little lamb. That woman left a shitty diaper sitting beside the crib in the bucket, the reek was sickening!”
“That’s all over now,” Menders said, bending over the crib and putting a hand under the blankets, rubbing Katrin’s little back as she slept. He felt her tiny feet. She was warm. She would be fine until the nursery heate
d up again.
Only a fool would think this episode would be the only threat to darken Katrin’s life. Living in Mordania, where plots and political intrigues swirled like windblown leaves, meant threats would always have to be faced.
When the inevitable dangers arose, Menders would be waiting.
“There’s wine spilled all over the room in there,” Eiren whispered in disgust. “She upended more than half a bottle. There are two other empty bottles as well.”
“I’ll write a letter tomorrow that will keep us from having any more head nurses sent out,” Menders replied, turning toward her. “I found out that she let Princess Aidelia fall down a flight of stairs, which broke her arm.”
“Funny that she managed to fall down the stairs and kill herself,” Eiren answered. “But good riddance.”
Menders bent over Katrin’s crib and saw that she was sleeping soundly.
“Everything is all right,” he whispered to her. “Sleep well, Little Princess.”
He knew sleep would elude him for the rest of the night. It would take some time for him to estimate all the Queen’s potential reactions to Madame Holz’s demise.
He would calculate a response to every possible repercussion. That alone would keep his mind active until sunrise.
(8)
Tightening the Web
Nothing happened.
Of all possible official responses to Madame Holz’s death, the one Menders hadn’t anticipated was silence. Routine correspondence between The Palace and The Shadows came and went, but nothing was said about the late head nurse or about providing a replacement.
It was as if Madame had disappeared like a puff of smoke one night. No-one missed her. No-one mourned her passing.
When it became apparent that there would be no inquest, Menders, Lucen and Doctor Franz took the body from the cellar coolroom late one night, dug a grave in a corner of the estate cemetery, and interred Madame Holz.
Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series Page 8
