by Selina Kray
“Rather I succeeded in preventing her from burning the house down.”
“What you’ve both succeeded in is making a hash of this entire investigation,” Sir Hugh proclaimed, his face simmering with choler. “Hear me now. I will chase down this madwoman myself. The pair of you are done. Stoker, you will retire to the infirmary. Mr. Bash, summon the Yard. Miss Hawfinch—”
“I will see this through!” Tim objected, raising his raspy voice to... a louder rasp. “Even if it kills me. Sir Hugh, you awarded me this case for a reason. Let me prove you right. Let me finish it.”
“By the look of you,” Sister Zanna interjected, “it very well may be your last.”
“Then so be it.” Tim ignored Hiero’s imploring eyes. “I am a man of honor and a capable officer of the Metropolitan Police. I will solve this case.”
Sir Hugh foisted his assessing stare upon him for so long Tim almost began to despair.
“Very well.” He surrendered the map. “I will proceed overground; you may investigate under. We will rendezvous at the tree in thirty minutes’ time.”
“Agreed,” Tim wheezed.
With a final nod, Sir Hugh set out with Sisters Nora and Zanna in close pursuit. Tim tested out the walking stick someone had fetched him but found he still needed support. Or perhaps he simply wanted to stay close to Hiero during their trip through the underworld.
Especially when Tim spared him a glance and discovered he’d gone gray.
“Have a coin handy for the ferryman?” Tim quipped, hoping to revivify his mood. “Otherwise we’ll have to swim.”
Hiero stared down the small corridor at the cellar door as if it had grown fangs and saw fit to devour them. He flinched away when Tim reached out for him. Then, realizing who beckoned, gave him his arm, only to tuck him in so close there was a question of who supported whom.
“What is it?”
“I... I cannot.”
Hiero bowed his head, which didn’t hide his shame from Tim’s lower vantage. Tim hugged him, fighting the urge to stroke his cheek.
“Rejoin the others.” Tim tried to appear more solid, to coax Hiero off so he didn’t have to abandon his part of the mission, though even he didn’t relish braving the tunnels alone. “Given what transpired before, I’m doubtful Sir Hugh will be able to handle the Daughters. He’ll require a man of your particular skills.”
That jolted Hiero back into himself.
“The madness is spreading if you think I’ll abandon you to the dark.” He shuddered. “The endless, writhing dark...”
Tim pressed a hand to his chest before he lost him to his private horrors.
“We must investigate that chamber. The murderer has used the chaos to cover their foul deeds and make their escape. They may be stealing the babe away through the tunnels as we speak.” He eased Hiero’s lantern out of his grasp. “Go to the farmhouse to see if Callie and Han have made progress before joining me at the potting shed. Find a weapon and, whatever you do, don’t allow anyone to leave the compound.” With a final squeeze, he pulled away from Hiero.
Only to find himself stalled by a crushing grip on his shoulder.
“You are in no state to confront a killer.”
“And I’ll not risk your sanity by dragging you into hell.” Tim shifted Hiero’s hand off his shoulder before continuing to hobble toward the cellar door.
“Kip...”
“There’s no time! We may already be too late.”
He almost cried out when Hiero latched a strong, if trembling, arm around him anew. The slinky surety of the man at his side saved him that indignity.
“Then we’d best make haste.” As Hiero snatched the lantern back, Tim felt him gird himself for the trial ahead. “Though I rather think it’s not my sanity that’s in question, Detective Daring.”
Tim hoped he was the right man to see him through.
A slanted door tacked to the back of the farmhouse proved to Callie they had been right in enlisting Sister Merry’s guidance. Even an experienced investigator might not have noticed the slip of space between the chimney and the woodpile, almost an optical illusion from the open side of the house, with the far side hedged in by vegetable marrows. She doubted many of the Daughters knew of its existence beyond Sister Juliet and a couple of the older sisters.
Sealed by intricate swaths of cobwebs and swollen to cracking by damp, the portal looked like a relic from another time, as weathered and insect ridden as Mother Rebecca in her grave. After lighting his lantern, Han set a match to the filaments that snared the door handle, but they proved too wet to burn away. Sister Merry snorted, shooed him away. The door peeled off with a thunderous crack. She threw a few logs down to prop it open, then dove into the dark.
Han and Callie hastened to follow her down a rickety flight of stairs. Even sure-footed Han gripped the guardrail when it wobbled under their weight. Callie wondered how Amos Scaggs managed while carrying sacks of feed until she spotted a plank propped against the wall. Either the garden’s magic enhanced the industriousness of its spiders, or the Daughters took great care to keep these chambers a secret, because the feed stores had been added to, and recently. Or perhaps Sister Merry was too accustomed to notice the fresh muddy bootprints that descended the stairs alongside them.
“How did you come to discover these tunnels?”
Sister Merry’s laugh had a sinister quality that raised the hairs on Callie’s neck.
“Papist ancestor of Rebecca’s, or so she claimed. Built them for their rituals like the early Romans. My thinking is she had a rogue uncle—a smuggler or highwayman.”
Han nodded. “Who used them to store his ill-gotten gains.”
“Rumor has it there were a pair of them.” Sister Merry snickered. “Once was a second house behind the tree, sharing the park with Castleside. Split their booty up between the four spaces, so no matter who was invaded, they could always escape to the other.”
Callie chuckled. “A creditable plan.”
The chamber proved to be as ordinary as described, half the size of the cellar under the main house and glutted with sacks of feed. Callie worked her way through the burlap maze, checking every corner and crevice, but knew in her heart only one type of farming took place here. She tested the bags to be certain they contained grain and spotted a few holes in those crammed against the walls. Perhaps the creepers were of the four-legged variety after all.
“Some of the founding Daughters talked of booby traps and pirates and the like,” Sister Merry continued. “You know how girls like to gossip. You should’ve heard the tales we spun!”
“But Sister Juliet had some of the tunnels blocked when she took charge?” Callie guessed, remembering the red lines on the map.
Three black maws, offshoots that led to other chambers, spat their foul breath into the grain room. Consulting the map as she stood in the center, Callie marked the one to the main house on her left, the one to the tree to her right, and the one that led to an unknown location—linked with a red line—in front of her. She wound her way toward it, lantern raised high.
“No use for them, was there?”
“And costly to maintain, no doubt,” Han observed.
“Wasn’t a garden till Rebecca took charge,” Sister Merry said. “You’ve got to let things take root if they’re to grow. And once they do...”
“Woe betide those who try to stop them.” Callie peered down the forbidden tunnel, the air hazy with dust and her view obstructed by gnarls of roots. A fecund scent of rich but sooty soil overwhelmed her senses at first.
But then, lurking in its depths, came the smell of rot. Normal, perhaps: she had never been underneath a garden before. But unsettling all the same. A sense of wrongness prickled over her skin. She moved in a couple of paces, hoping to see around a bend in the passage. Or a portion that had caved in—impossible to tell. Just as she reached her lantern around the curve, she caught it on her tongue. A sweet treacle stench. Laudanum.
“Han,” Callie called, then heard
a hard thwack!
He’d recovered, hand to his head, crouched down by the plank that had fallen by his feet by the time she’d spun around. He pointed to the tunnel that led to the tree, down which Sister Merry had fled.
They had no choice but to follow her.
Hiero kept his eyes shut until he heard the hiss of the igniting gas lamps. He inhaled a deep, shaky breath, counted out an exhalation, preparing to give the greatest performance of his life. That of a man who could explore a subterranean labyrinth without losing what was left of his mind. Even in his frail state, Kip vibrated with excitement—an adventurer to the core. Hiero had to coax his skittish mind into thinking against the will of his instinct, which had long ago chosen “flight” as its preferred response to danger.
“Into the belly of the beast,” he murmured as they began their descent.
Unsurprisingly the stench had not improved. With lantern in hand and his other arm anchored around Kip, he could not even press a handkerchief to his mouth and nose. He gagged against the reek of human waste, wondering if he should recreate his tumble down the stairs, as that seemed to have inured him before. Instead he concentrated on each step so as not to upset the balance of lantern, lover, and light-headedness. Also to stop him screaming.
“What... what the devil?” Kip rasped, gaping at the Daughters’ small dungeon.
Hiero didn’t dare glance in that direction. He’d committed the piss-soaked pallets and scold’s bridles to memory on his first visit.
“No time,” he reminded Kip, veering him toward the entrance to the tunnels. The seething dark beyond the glow of the gaslights.
“They hold the novitiates there?” Kip asked.
“Only if they’ve been naughty.”
“Whilst they’re with child? That’s...”
“Monstrous? Reprehensible? Deviant? Revolting? I can go on.”
“I thought if we found the bad seed, the other Daughters might have a chance. Most of the work they do here is admirable, if one forgets the mad prophecies. But this...” Hiero felt him shiver. “Rotten to the core.”
“And yet I wonder who might flourish if given the chance to emerge from the shadows.”
The ones surrounding them only darkened as they traversed the last pools of gaslight. Hiero paused them at the edge of the black, grateful Kip appeared to require some rest. The moisture and foulness in the air belabored his breathing, and he grew paler every passing minute. Hiero knew better than to force him to retreat, but the fear of Kip fainting—or worse—almost overwhelmed his other causes for panic.
They’d come to a crossroads, two distinct tunnels veering off from the cellar. With trembling hands, Kip unfurled the map.
“Left,” he instructed but made no move. He bowed his head, fighting exhaustion. “Not too late to turn back.”
“I’ll not let you murder yourself just yet.”
“Martyr, you mean?”
“Even you, my dear Kip, would be denied sainthood for such obstinate dedication to duty.”
“That and being a sodomite.”
A sharp laugh ripped from Hiero’s throat, scoring its delicate flesh. He’d admire Kip for attempting to lighten the mood if it didn’t render them mute.
They pressed on. The passage’s low ceiling forced Hiero to crouch, his insides wailing at the further constriction. His overstimulated nerves buzzed and blared like a child fed too much sugar. The scuttles and skitters of creatures lurking just beyond the light became the wailing moans of long-lost specters. The deeper they went, the tighter the fit until Hiero felt straightjacketed by something so welcome as Kip’s hold.
He chased his breath but couldn’t catch it, felt the world tilt though he could barely see. Reached out to steady himself, but his fingers sank into a crumbling wall. Spills of soil rained down from the root nest of the ceiling, smearing their faces and suffocating them with dust. They would be buried there, buried alive, food for the crops that let the Daughters lure others into their...
He collapsed, dropping Kip and the lantern.
“Baba,” he mewled. “Baba...”
“Here.” The tang of whiskey-laced metal parted Hiero’s lips. “Drink.”
Hiero moaned. Only a few blessed sips but enough to make him a believer. He emptied the flask.
“‘No friendly drop to help me after?’” Kip asked, stowing it back in Hiero’s inner pocket.
“Perhaps not the time to quote one of the tragedies.” Hiero counted two long breaths, then cursed himself. “Kip. I can’t go on.”
“Nearly there.” Kip sagged against him, his consciousness slipping. What a pair they made. “Too far along not to see it through.”
“But what awaits us?”
“Whatever it is, we’ll face it boldly. As you have done these past days, even when...” Kip exhaled a shaky breath, teetering on the edge of despair himself. “When I lost faith in you.” Hiero clutched the clammy hand Kip sought to twine with his. “But I see you now, how brave you are. I see your heart.”
Hiero lifted Kip’s hand to his lips, too overcome to speak. A weak tug at his waistcoat urged Hiero back to his knees, if not his feet just yet.
“Come along now,” Kip urged. “We’ve dragons to slay.”
They staggered up to a standing position. The tunnel broadened as they approached a fathomless gray in the distance. Only when they were a few paces away did Hiero realize this was due to a thin gauze of light strewn through the boards of what must be the floor of the potting shed. A charcoal outline of a chamber could be traced around the gauze, with the hollow of another tunnel leading farther into the maze.
He heaved a sigh of relief, only to choke on a syrupy-sweet smell in the air. A coughing fit overtook Kip, who did what Hiero could not and nabbed his handkerchief as a face cover.
“And to think I’d been rather partial to treacle tarts,” Hiero groused.
Kip stilled. “Laudanum. Must have dropped the bottle.”
“Odd to think they’d store it with the gardening tools. Though I do recall the very same smell on my first visit.”
“Your first...” He stared at Hiero. “You’ve been here before?”
“Mmm. Our first day.”
“And you smelled treacle?”
“This cloying sweetness, yes.” He watched a five-act tragedy play out in seconds on Kip’s face. “Why?”
Kip pinched the bridge of his nose, fingers trembling with more than fatigue.
“Can you remain here a moment?”
“Alone?” Even Hiero heard the quaver in his voice.
Kip nodded. “You’ve suffered enough in accompanying me. Let me spare you this.”
“But who will spare you?”
“That ship’s long sailed.” Kip hobbled off a few paces. “Remain here until I call for you.”
Hiero fumbled for his flask as Kip merged into the gray light, clutching it with both hands to center himself.
The instant Kip disappeared, quicksand darkness swallowed him, filling his nose and mouth and throat, choking off his whimpers. A belt of constriction crushed his lungs. The hissing voices crawled up his neck and around his ears, tiny, shiver-inducing centipedes. Hiero cowered into the corner, his mind conjuring a metal door with an iron-barred window in the blackness.
Never again, never again, never again...
“Hiero,” a broken voice beckoned, and he raced toward it. Kip caught him before he could blaze past him into the chamber. “No!”
Hiero froze. A patch of straw inside a wicker basket. A threadbare blanket tossed aside. A scrap of burlap. He could—but would not—imagine the rest.
And wee Felix still nowhere to be found.
“You have your evidence.”
“Of little worth without a name to charge it to.”
Rustling from above drew their attention. Scuttling footsteps, manic muttering. Bottles clinking, clattering—someone searching.
“Blast!” Kip whispered. He indicated a ladder which, when positioned right, led up to a small h
atch. Hiero helped him dock it into place against metal widgets on the ceiling and in the floor. “Can you see who it is?”
Hiero nodded. Repressing his eagerness to be aboveground, he crept up the rungs as quickly as he could, then peered through a wide seam in two of the floorboards. In time to lock on to Sister Juliet’s wild eyes as she knelt to unlock the hatch.
“Serpent.” Her giggles had the sharpness of a shriek. “Here to tempt me, are you? With what, I wonder? Given you’re the one slithering in the muck.”
Hiero’s gaze did not waver as he considered the forty-five ways this could go wrong for them. And the one way he might reach her.
“A taste of the forbidden, perhaps? A certain box you’ve been seeking.” He saw her hesitate, rushed on. “A reminder that I am the only one aware of its location.”
“And by yours, its contents are spoiled!” Sister Juliet dropped the lock, leapt to her feet. She threw open the lid of the poison box, gathered up several bottles. “Ruined, all of it ruined, a second Eden rotted to the core...”
“One bad apple, the bunch, et cetera.” Hiero baited another hook, praying it would catch her out. “You have no care to prevent the murder of one of your charges? The butchering of an innocent babe?”
“If it is Her will that another sacrifice be made in Her garden,” Sister Juliet declared, lifting the poisons to the heavens as if to sanctify them, “then so be it.”
With a vengeful cry, she cracked open the bottles and poured their corrosive contents all over the floor.
Hiero dove at Kip, lifting him off his feet as he ran from the poison rain. Shoved him against a tunnel wall and covered him with his body as his senses registered the striking of a match.
He pressed a final, fevered kiss to his lips as the world exploded.
Chapter 22
Callie could have been forgiven for thinking herself in Wonderland while chasing down a white-tailed Sister Merry rabbiting through tunnels two sizes too small. As she stumbled over the jutting rocks and hidden potholes, she mused that this Wonderland could use a bit more wonder and fewer mad hunts through cramped passages. Self-annoyance and frustration at letting Sister Merry dupe them churned within as they raced to the heart of the garden.
