Renegade (2 page)

She took a sip of tea.

I stood, wiped my mouth, and started to walk out of the dining room.

“Do you have anything else to tell me? Anything else that will further shock my system?” She asked this shrilly, without even looking at me.

As I left the dining room, I saw our very patient butler, Richard, waiting in the corridor with my coat.

I felt prickled at Grandmother’s tone of voice; a thread of mischievousness coursed through my veins. Oh, why couldn’t I keep my bloody mouth shut?

“Yes, in fact, I do have something else to tell you,” I said as I buttoned my coat. “William Siddal and I are dining at William Morris’s house on Thursday evening.” William Morris and his wife, Jane Burden Morris, were Pre-Raphaelites—eccentric artists and, essentially, Grandmother’s most dreaded nightmare. William had become close to them through Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his adoptive father. Gabriel had rescued William, a four-year-old orphan, from the streets and raised him as his own.

I heard the sound of her teacup smashing on the floor.

“What?” Grandmother appeared in the hallway, her eyes blazing, her back ramrod-straight. She approached me, and I saw then that she was more recovered, much healthier, than I had thought.

“You are aware that Jane Morris was William’s father’s mistress, are you not?” she snapped. “I had hoped, rather than believed, that you had forgotten about the Siddal boy, but now I see that I was devastatingly wrong. How can William dine with Rossetti’s mistress?”

“Yes, Grandmother. I have listened to your lectures many times these past months. But you know that I am, and will continue to be, friends with William Siddal as well as with his aunt. Christina Rossetti is a dear person, and both she and William have been so kind to me. William’s father’s scandals are all past history, Grandmother. The family has moved on, forgotten about them. And William has told me that Jane Morris was such a mentor to him after his father’s death. I have looked forward to meeting her.”

Quickly, very quickly, before she could say anything else, I hurried out the door, but not before seeing a small, almost imperceptible wry smile on Richard’s wrinkled face.

As she returned to her island home, she sighed angrily, frustrated at herself for her unquenchable longings, for her hunger. She hated when it arose. She had so much to keep her comfortable, and none of the daily worries, busy routines, or petty concerns that plagued the rest of the human race.

She descended the stone steps into her home in her hu-
man form, salt water dripping from her naked legs and puddling onto the cool marble floor. She passed the library. She passed the treasure room. She passed all of her half-finished portraits, which hung on the walls. She might finish one of them someday, but thus far, none seemed worth completing. She thought vaguely about how she would have to tend to the animals in the menagerie before the evening ended. Tending to the animals was perhaps her greatest duty for the Conclave. Her keeper, when he visited her island home, often brought animals to her and took others back to Robert Buck for his hothouses or experiments. As her keeper had explained, the Conclave moved their headquarters often—so often that her island menagerie was their main menagerie, the permanent home for all of Dr. Buck’s animals, serpents, and birds.

Robert Buck, the great scientist
, she thought wryly.

Still clutching the skull fragment, she walked the entire length of the long great hall, the center of her small but luxurious underground home. She stopped when she came to a door that opened into a narrow set of damp stone steps spiraling upward—a shortcut to another part of her small island. This staircase was merely functional—practically a cave passage up from her underground world. Outside, her island was rocky and not easy to walk upon, particularly when she was in her human form. Thus her home offered several of these hidden stairs, leading to different parts of the island, so that she did not have to walk too far to get where she wanted. Her keeper had been so thoughtful when the home was constructed.

After ascending the steps, she slid through a narrow crevice and out into the blustery evening. As she stood outside, she surveyed some small mounds of dirt. The brown spots dimpled the sandy grass that stretched the short distance between herself and the sea. The mounds would disappear eventually, when they became absorbed into the sea, spurting the bleached bones into the ocean waters.

She opened the mound nearest to her and patted the skull fragment into it. She heard it crunch against the other pieces of bone. Many of the mounds held more complete corpses, in deeper graves. She had found these dead ones in the ocean. Three infant bodies. Several women’s bodies. Many men’s bodies.

Hidden rocks in the area snagged so many boats.

Whenever she swam in the sea following a wreck, she felt fascinated by the faces of the drowned. She contemplated their aborted hopes. Often she found herself drawn to the dead, so she took them back with her to this place.

Almost
all were dead.

Some, the stronger ones, swam to the safety of the nearby Orkney Islands’ shores. She would watch their tiny forms struggle on the water’s surface from the depths below.

None of them ever found her island. Not even the dead. The tides swept mostly away from where she lived; her shores and home remained shrouded under massive rocks and fog. Her keeper had picked her island well. If visible at all, it would seem to be only a jumble of sharp rock peaks, a place to be avoided. And if anyone arrived alive … she frowned.

It was just better that they did not.

She contemplated the setting sun—golden, achingly glorious. Then she descended back into her home.

She would take a bath, a hot one. She hoped that the warmth would take away her resurgent cravings for flesh and blood.

These feelings had not arisen in so long. In the early years of her immortality, almost eighty years ago, it had been hard not to kill struggling shipwrecked victims, hapless fishermen. But she had gained better control after her first decade on this island. In fact, she hadn’t killed in almost twenty years, and her keeper had warned her often that she could not—it would be devastating if she exposed herself, or them.

As she stepped into the bath, settling her naked form into the tub, the candlelight illuminated her skin. A chalice had been tattooed across her entire back. It was not small and indiscrete, as the Conclave’s markings were, but large, spanning the space between her shoulders. The stem extended down her spine toward the words,
A Posse Ad Esse
.

It was her mark of Cain. She, the outcast, was a puzzling inconsistency in the modern world.

Two

I
was not certain what I expected to find at Whitechapel Hospital—which was now without Julian Bartlett’s and Robert Buck’s leadership—but upon arriving I found it running efficiently, with more patients and workers even than before. The overwhelming atmosphere of business and urgency, always particularly strong on the first floor, hung in the air.

“Delivery. Twins,” Sister Josephine snapped at me the moment I stepped into the first floor ward. I had forgotten her efficient and forceful personality, and I felt myself smile a bit as I followed her broad form to the delivery area at the back part of the ward. It was as if I had only missed one day’s work, as opposed to four months.

“I’m not terribly worried,” Josephine added quickly, the silver cross around her neck swinging ferociously as I hurried behind her to the curtained delivery area. “She delivered a large child last year with no difficulty. Still … twins can be complicated.” She bit her lip.

“Of course,” I replied as we went behind the curtain. I had only seen two sets of twins delivered at Whitechapel Hospital in which both infants emerged healthily and without incident. But upon observing the patient and seeing that she was of a proper age to deliver—thirty-one—and apparently physically healthy—of good weight, with most of her teeth—my fears abated a bit. Her name was Fanny Brunson. As I read through Simon’s neatly written notes on her medical history, I saw that Josephine was indeed correct—the woman’s last delivery had been an easy one, and her child healthy.

I felt warmed when William stepped behind the curtain to aid in the delivery. Not wanting to agitate Grandmother during her illness, I had not invited William to our house. I had only seen him at stolen moments. We had had brief conversations at agreed-upon times while I walked her pug, Jupe, around our Kensington neighborhood. I did get to visit him once, when I escaped Grandmother’s home long enough to call upon Christina. But as it was high time for Grandmother to accept him as part of my life, I’d told him to come to the house for tea, on Thursday, before we left for the Morris household.

“Back in the land of the living, Abbie?” William asked with an arched eyebrow.

As I talked to him, I felt struck, once again, by his dark handsomeness—despite having known him for months now and even saving his life. Yet I hadn’t seen him at the hospital in so long … and I couldn’t help but ponder, for a moment, how he looked like a portrait model rather than an overworked physician in an impoverished East End hospital.

As we talked, Simon entered the delivery area and I immediately felt a dull ache in my gut. Simon had visited Grandmother and me several times since Christmas, but he knew that I loved William. And I knew this was painful for him—particularly since he and William were far from friends. Even though they now directed Whitechapel Hospital together, I could sense the tension between them, and suspected that their working relationship was probably often difficult.

Josephine and the other nurses had left to locate supplies, leaving William, Simon, and me alone momentarily. William rinsed his hands in a lime chloride solution and began studying Simon’s notes from Fanny’s previous
delivery.

“I have this one, Simon. But I think the nursery might need a Sunday School teacher. Or perhaps an exorcist, if those infants don’t stop squalling.”

Simon’s lips remained in a thin, tight line. With his pale, handsome face, tall thin figure, and curly blond hair, he, like William, looked out of place. He seemed too ethereal, too lovely, to work in this place where we all smelled like carbolic acid, blood, and urine by the end of the day.

“This is a twin delivery, William. It would be wise to have two attending physicians.”

“Yes, yes,” William said irritably. “But you see, Miss … ” He peeked at the woman’s chart. “Fanny Brunson has delivered a ten-pound child last year with ease. Twins, I am convinced, will not be a problem. And I have the excellent Miss Arabella Sharp—the future physician, bare-knuckle boxer, and skilled knife thrower—here, so I think everything should go swimmingly."

I was about to come to Simon’s defense when a nurse entered with a tray of instruments.

Simon, his expression cool, nodded and left. The curtain rippled sharply behind him.

The infants came out with ease, but when Miss Brunson didn’t expel the placenta, I saw William’s brows furrow. He was a capable physician, but I’d worked with him long enough in deliveries and surgeries to know that he did not handle stress well. He grew impatient too quickly.

“Damn!” he cursed, then began to try to pull the placenta out himself. He should have known better than to try that.

“No, William,” I whispered, so that Fanny would not hear us. She was exhausted after all the pushing and seemed to pay no attention to us. Nonetheless, I did not want to alarm her. “We should be patient, even if it takes time. I don’t want her to bleed more, and there’s an increased risk for puerperal fever if you pull the placenta out.”

Fanny moaned as her contractions began again, and William’s agitation increased even more. I remembered how agitated and depressed he had become when a young girl died after the caesarean he had performed upon her.

After several minutes, I decided that Fanny Brunson should be checked. I cleaned my hands and stepped in front of William, feeling inside her.

Simon must have heard William’s loud cursing because he suddenly stepped into the curtained delivery area. “Aren’t things going
swimmingly
?”

Before William could retort, I felt something and smiled.

Both William and Simon quieted and stared at me.

“Triplets.”