A Murderous Relation

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “I will show you. Come,” he ordered, leading the way towards the dressing room.

  I said nothing, but a keen rebellious edge had sharpened itself on the whetstone of my resentment. He really was the most impossibly naïve creature, I decided. He had confided a scandalous secret on little more than the strength of my kindness in wiping away a little lip rouge. He had no real reason to trust us other than the fact that he knew of Stoker’s family. Perched as he was on the top of the pyramid of privilege, he simply could not imagine that another soul from that world would harbor republican tendencies. Moreover, he had no notion that I was more closely connected to him than Stoker would ever be.

  He passed me and I felt the brush of his lush pink skirts against mine, the whisper of a fragrance. Did he feel no strange kinship with me? No pull of blood to blood?

  “Veronica,” Stoker called softly from the doorway to Madame Aurore’s sanctum. “Are you coming?”

  “Of course,” I said, hurrying to join them. The door was unlocked and Stoker pushed it wide. For an instant, we stood, grouped like a tableau, and no one spoke.

  “It is not what I expected,” I said quietly. It was as far from the luxurious elegance of the rest of the house as possible. Here no silk hung on the walls; no velvet upholstered the furniture. In fact, there was no furniture at all save a narrow bed made with a plain white linen coverlet. The only decoration was a simple painting of the Virgin Mary worked in heavy Renaissance oils. The room was curiously shaped, an imperfect octagon, and another door opened off of it.

  “Its simplicity surprised me the first time she invited me here,” the prince said. He nodded towards the closed doors. “That is her private exit,” he explained. “It leads to the mews, so she can come and go with complete discretion. It is how I sometimes depart.”

  Stoker glanced at the small, nondescript room. “It’s as tidy as a monk’s cell,” he observed.

  “She was brought up in an orphanage outside Dieppe,” the prince told him. “At least I think she was. She can be a trifle vague about her past.”

  We advanced towards the picture of the Virgin Mary. Beneath it were a candle, marked with the hours, and a small vase of flowers. None of the hothouse beauties from the public rooms; these were delphiniums and pinks, the blooms of a humble cottage garden. I was conscious then of a foul smell and wondered how long it had been since the water in the flowers had been changed. Apparently Madame Aurore had greater trouble with her domestic staff than an insolent porter, I reflected.

  “I am no churchman, but it seems a desecration to touch it,” Stoker told me with a nod towards the makeshift altar.

  I paused, considering. “It is supposed to. Most people are religious to some degree or another. They would hesitate to disturb something sacred.”

  “You, I presume, have no such qualms?” he challenged.

  I pulled a face. “Neither do you. And if we are wrong, we can make God an apology.”

  I thrust the vase of flowers into the prince’s startled hands, and Stoker removed the picture from its nail. Behind, set neatly into the wall, was a small safe.

  “I say, what the devil do you think you are doing?” the prince demanded.

  “Saving you from having a hand in your own destruction,” I said, rounding on him in frustration. “If you are wrong about Madame Aurore, she can wreck your happy future with Alix of Hesse with her own two hands.”

  He seemed to settle at the mention of his beloved. “How do you know about Alix?”

  “Your Motherdear told us,” I snapped. “Now, do you happen to be in possession of the combination?” I inquired.

  He blinked those wide, watery blue eyes at me. “You are the most impertinent young woman I have ever met. No, I certainly do not have the combination.”

  I turned to Stoker. “Can you manage it?”

  He grinned and bent to the task at hand. “Father always kept us short of pocket money. By the time I was eleven I learnt how to break into his safe.”

  “A dubious talent,” the prince remarked doubtfully.

  “Wait and see,” he replied. He leant towards the safe and began to spin the knob, listening intently. After a few minutes’ effort, he made a series of swift motions and the safe responded with soft clicks. He pulled the narrow lever and the door slid open.

  His Royal Highness gaped at Stoker. “You did it. You actually did it.”

  “My father’s safe was twice as good as this bit of gimcrackery. I’ll wager Madame Aurore has a proper bank vault and this is just to keep the servants from a bit of petty larceny,” Stoker replied. “I could have opened it with a dessert spoon.”

  “You are the seventh wonder of the world,” I told him, gripping his arm ecstatically.

  He reeled backwards under the onslaught of praise. “Well, I don’t know about that—”

  “I do,” I told him firmly. “Now, let us retrieve what we have come for and be on our way.” I reached into the safe and extracted a series of leather boxes. The first two were blue but the third was scarlet kid. I opened it and was instantly dazzled by the brilliant glitter of diamonds. I almost could not bear to touch it, so luminous was its beauty. I turned it over and the engraving was exactly right: the initials AVCE and the mark of Garrard.

  “This is the one,” I breathed, cradling the blazing jewel in my palm. The diamonds sparkled even in the dim light. “It is the correct one, is it not, sir?” I asked the prince.

  He regarded the jewel sullenly. “It is.”

  “Extraordinary,” Stoker murmured as the diamonds sent a play of light across his face.

  “And very nearly priceless,” I reminded him. Stoker wrapped the star carefully in one of his handkerchiefs and tucked it into his pocket, the jewel making a rather obscene bulge in his trousers.

  The prince raised himself to his full height. “I do believe that is my property, Templeton-Vane,” he said, putting out a hand.

  Stoker regarded him levelly. “We were asked by Her Royal Highness to retrieve the jewel and it is to the princess that it will be given.”

  “I really must insist upon having it,” the prince said. A touch of frost edged his manner now, a tautness that betrayed his irritation at being thwarted.

  “You shall not,” I told him.

  “Of all the cheeky nonsense,” the prince protested. “Who the devil do you think you are to defy your future king?”

  “Who the devil am I?” Four simple words would have revealed all. They trembled on my lips, but no sooner had I managed, “I am your—” than Vespertine appeared in the doorway, whimpering as he edged towards the bed. He bared his teeth, a growl rising from low in his throat. The dog had begun to tremble, badly, his warm brown gaze fixed upon the prince.

  “Vespertine,” the prince said, “whatever is the matter? We’re old friends.” Suddenly, Vespertine crept forwards, head low to the ground, the rasping growl turning from a threat to a sound of mourning.

  “What the devil is wrong with him?” the prince demanded, looking up at us. “Is he ill?”

  But I had followed the dog’s attention, and I realized he was not looking at the prince at all; he was fixed upon the space beneath the bed. He stopped just short of the narrow cot, throwing himself to the floor and tipping up his great shaggy head to deliver a sound of such ululating sorrow that it pierced me to the marrow.

  I knelt beside him, gathering my courage to peer beneath the bed because I knew only too well what I would find. Shoved beneath the mattress, barely visible behind the prince’s billowing pink taffeta skirts, was the body of Madame Aurore.

  CHAPTER

  12

  The prince gave a low groan and covered his face with his hands.

  “Is there any chance—” I began, but Stoker, who had bent to see for himself, shook his head. “Cyanosis is setting in. She is quite dead. Her throat has been slashed.” He did not
mention the acrid odor of loosened bowels and bladder that attended death and which I had ascribed to stagnant water. That was an indignity too far for his sensibilities to remark upon.

  The prince groaned again and I took his wrists in my hands, none too gently, a gross act of lèse-majesté that I did not pause to consider. “Your Royal Highness, this is not the time. We must get you quite away from here,” I told him.

  He lowered his hands, blinking furiously at me. “What?”

  “You must not be found here,” Stoker put in. “We have the star. For the love of Christ, let us go.”

  The prince nodded slowly. “We cannot simply leave her,” he said, and I liked him better in that instant than I had yet. “She was my friend and we must see her properly attended to.”

  “And we will come back to make certain that happens,” I assured him. “But Stoker is quite right, you must not be found here, particularly not in your present state,” I added with a glance at his gown.

  “Of course,” he murmured. He gripped my hands suddenly. “You will come back? You will not let her remain there like, like . . .” His voice broke and I put my hand over his.

  “I give you my word.”

  He nodded then. “Very well. We should take the back stairs, to the mews,” he added, pointing towards the door opposite the one we had used. He held tightly to his veil, clasping it to his chest as a child will cling to a beloved blanket. Stoker tugged a little at the white linen coverlet, pulling it out just enough that it would touch the floor, shielding the sight of Madame Aurore’s dead body from view. Vespertine settled near the corpse of his mistress, his long nose resting on his forepaws, his eyes deeply sad.

  “We will return soon,” I told the hound, patting him once.

  “Come, quickly,” Stoker ordered. He paused with his hand on the doorknob, and in that moment, pandemonium broke loose. The door opened, slamming hard into his face. He reeled back, blood pouring from his nose as he let loose a stream of profanity so filthy he could only have learnt it from an exclusive boys’ school.

  A hand, enormous and grasping, was reaching around the door, but Stoker flung himself forward, using his body weight to pin the arm into place as a howl of anguish filled the air. The arm was withdrawn just long enough for Stoker to slam the door closed, throwing the bolt.

  “The other way,” he ordered, shoving us towards the sitting room. We crossed it at a dead run. I led our little band, dragging the prince as Stoker brought up the rear. I eased open the door to Madame Aurore’s rooms, expecting to see the aged porter sitting guard, but the corridor was deserted. I beckoned to the others and motioned for them to resume their masks, as I did mine. We hurried silently down the stairs. Just as my slippered foot touched the last step, I heard a cry.

  “There!” A man dressed in one of the page’s costumes pointed and two more dressed exactly the same looked our way. They made directly for us, and I realized we were now in flight, from whom I had not the faintest notion. But it was imperative that we remove the prince from the vicinity as quickly as possible. I slipped my dagger from my girdle, prepared to fight our way out, if necessary, but just then the house was plunged into darkness.

  “They’ve dimmed the lights early!” a giggling voice proclaimed, and there was a responding moan of pleasure.

  I would have said it was a happy coincidence that the lights should have been extinguished just as we required an escape, but I do not believe in coincidence. Still, I am not one to quibble when a rescue is in order, and Stoker and I were determined to see the prince got safely away. I linked one of the prince’s arms with mine; Stoker took the other. In the pitch black of the hall, I relied upon Stoker to guide us. He had a cat’s sense for darkness, and navigated us swiftly along. Our progress was inelegant. We bumped into furniture, got ourselves tangled in draperies and tassels more than once, and tripped over a hassock that seemed to be providing support to three people engaged in languorous lovemaking. I fell into one receptive pair of arms, shoving myself free at the cost of the Templeton-Vane tiara, which toppled off as I fled. I cursed, wondering how on earth I would explain its loss to Tiberius, but we had more urgent business to attend.

  We descended the stairs, twisting and turning through various rooms and corridors. I became quite disoriented until I caught a sudden whiff of chestnut and stopped, causing the prince to slam into me, protesting.

  “I do say—” he began.

  I prodded him to silence just as I heard a delighted voice from a few feet away. “Yes, twist it just like that, only hard.”

  “Stoker, not that direction,” I muttered, shoving him away from the direction of Mr. Hilliard and his latest inamorata.

  “Through the gardens,” he whispered back, tugging us forwards. We moved then in a peculiar little crocodile, Stoker in the lead, me in the rear, and the prince tucked snugly between. We crossed the ballroom, dark as it was and echoing with the occasional groan of some well-timed caress. The door to the gardens was unlocked, and we passed through quickly. The gardens themselves were chilly, illuminated only by starlight and the thinnest waning crescent of a moon surrounded by a scattering of stars, Madame Aurore’s emblems blazing out like the tiniest of diamonds on a bolt of black velvet. A faint breeze stirred the trees, making menace of their withering branches. In the summer, this would be a fair place for disporting oneself in a handy bower. Now, with autumn creeping onwards, it was full of shadows and a faint air of peril.

  Stoker led on, never slackening his pace, until we reached a wall.

  “What now?” I demanded.

  “We climb,” he said shortly. Without waiting for a consensus, he levered himself onto the wall, fitting the toes of his boots and his fingertips into the little crevices between the crumbling bricks. In a matter of seconds he was sitting astride the top of the wall, reaching down.

  “Sir?” he urged.

  The prince turned back to me. “I am hardly dressed for this,” he started to protest.

  “Think of it as an adventure,” I instructed. “Now, take his hands and I will boost you from behind. Or we can leave you here and you may look to save yourself.”

  He gave a start—either at the notion of being discovered or the brazenness of being spoken to in such a fashion—and did as I ordered. Stoker grasped him around his long wrists and hauled him upwards. The prince scarcely had time to put his feet to the wall before Stoker had him up and over, rosy skirts billowing as he descended. I had already launched myself upwards, swinging nimbly to the top and over, dropping to the pavement below.

  “That was splendidly done,” the prince told me as he landed next to me. Stoker had dropped him none too gently, but he took it like a proper man of spirit. “What now?”

  Stoker landed next to him, his boots striking with a thud. “Did you come with a carriage?”

  “My good man, I hardly think so,” the prince told him with a touch of reproof. “I hired a hackney and sent it away when I arrived.”

  “Hell and damnation,” Stoker muttered. “We shall have to find another. Come on, then.”

  We hurried around the outside of the wall, skirting it until we came to the corner, where Stoker lifted his middle finger and thumb to his mouth, giving the sort of sharp, distinctive whistle known to drivers around the city. As we waited, Stoker stripped off his vast black cloak.

  “You cannot go abroad in that,” he advised the prince. His Royal Highness quickly removed the pink gown, thrusting it into my arms. He wore trousers underneath but no shirt. Its absence was quickly concealed by Stoker’s enveloping cloak. Somewhere in our flight, the prince had dropped his tiny paste crown, and now he flung away the earrings that matched it. He tugged off his blond wig and pitched it into the bushes, using the veil to wipe away the worst of the face paint.

  “Not respectable enough by half, but it will have to do,” I said. “At least now you are not likely to be arrested by any passing bo
bby.”

  A hackney clattered up to the curb with a driver perched atop, muffled to the cheeks against the rising chill.

  “Thank God,” I muttered.

  No sooner had the words left my mouth than I heard footsteps approaching, quickly, pounding hard on the pavement. They came at us from two sides. I half turned to look, and as I did so, my arm was clasped tightly. I felt a prick in the soft flesh inside my elbow. I cried out—more in rage than in pain—just as I saw another figure bring a hand to Stoker’s upraised arm, plunging a hypodermic into his shoulder. The prince gave a cry, but he crumpled at once as one of our assailants drove a needle into his arm. I saw the driver of the hackney leap down to open the door and shove the prince inside as my knees felt suddenly boneless, unable to hold me up, folding like paper.

  My eyes rolled heavenwards and darkness gathered at the edges of my vision, clouding closer until all I saw was a tiny pinprick of light and at the center several dark shapes.

  “At last,” a voice said. And that was the last I heard for many hours.

  * * *

  • • •

  I woke not with a start but with a gradual lightening of the darkness pressing against me. There was a sense of coming back into my own body, as if my consciousness had flown elsewhere whilst my body remained tethered to the earth, but try as I might, I could retrieve no memory, form no impressions of where I had been or what had been done to me.

  After several minutes, I was able to determine that I was sitting upright. There was an odd floating quality to my awareness, as though my head were only nominally attached to my body and might drift away if I let it. I could not yet open my eyes, so I merely sat, composing myself and stretching out my consciousness like the quivering antennae of an Atlas moth to learn about my surroundings.

  I felt a dampness in the air, the cold chill just before dawn, I thought. And I smelt something riparian, not the fresh river water of the countryside but the heavy, muddy musk of the Thames. I shifted slightly, scraping my slipper on the floor. It was stone, and cold through the satin of my shoe. The tiny noise echoed for a moment—a large room, then, situated not far from the waterside. A warehouse? There was no sense of anything near to my head, so I guessed the ceiling was high, the floor obviously uncovered, the damp stone giving off a particular scent of its own.