Rooks and Romanticide (36 page)

The rector stood with his neighbors and other brave civilians as the flames licked the dark sky. Authorities rushed to the scene, but it mattered not.

St. Mikael's was ablaze. Parish members cried and wailed at such a sight, tragic and jarring of faith. Others stood frozen in unease. The sight of a burning chapel was not a comforting one.

They found the remains just after daybreak, when they'd finally put out the flames.

Religious icons and artifacts were gone, irreparably charred or nonexistent as the last embers popped and sizzled. It was like the aftermath of holy warfare, a glimpse of hell—items of faith and sanctity, destroyed and defeated by fire.

Some of the most faithful were hoping for miracles, but what was discovered were not bleeding statues or shining paintings that had somehow survived the flames, but a blackened faceless crucifix, scorched woodwork, bullet casings, and the burned bodies of two of the most pivotal faces in New London.

Bradley Dietrich was named temporary Earl. The aristocrat Reginald Williams's son proposed to Emily Kelley, and Lady Kelley accepted for her.

Lord Ruslaniv suffered an apoplexy. He did not awake from it.

Lady Ruslaniv donned black immediately. Newspaper clippings speaking of her youngest son's death joined the clippings speaking of Quinton Ruslaniv's admission to the sanitarium in Yekaterinburg, all kept tied together in the rosewood box with the angels carved on it. Her sons' first pairs of shoes were there too, and a poem Levi had written her when he was very small, and a daguerreotype of Quinton in Ruslaniv regalia.

Gloom settled over New London.

Not even the Queen's visit on the day of the interments, coach rattling through on the cobbles as New London civilians gathered in their best fashion, could lift the sense of calamity that had fallen like the funereal shrouds over Ruslaniv and Dietrich faces.

The Earl Cain Dietrich and the Honourable Lawrence Levi Ruslaniv were laid to rest on the same day, at opposite ends of the same cemetery, a fenced-in place of elaborate gothic tombs, draped urns, and weeping angels.

“Peace?” the undertaker cackled as he rattled his way through Lovers' Lane, slushy and quiet as most of New London gathered in High-hill Cemetery for the joint funeral, which was rather lavish for an event of such morbid circumstances—ah, the graces of nobility.

The undertaker cocked his head back. His ratty muffler fell from his shoulders and into a murky puddle.

“There is no peace!” he howled, so tickled he could hardly stand it. “There is no peace for anyone, and I told him so! I told him not to misunderstand the value of each and every soul!”

He paused, hoisting the stiff body of an orphan up off the broken cobblestones of Lovers' Lane and into the back of his cart. He hummed to himself, crouching down and grinning at the orphan in his cart. He brushed hair from the dead child's eyes and sang to her, whether she heard his off-key lilts as they echoed off the walls of Lovers' Lane and sprayed spittle on her limp, dirty hands or not.

Overhead, rooks scattered from their roost above Lovers' Lane.

Eliott watched them, the way their dark wings rustled and flapped against the mother-of-pearl sky. Beneath his funeral black, he felt light without his guns. He'd left them at home, on his bed, in the Ruslaniv manor. But there was a weight on his chest that made it hard to breathe.

He stood on the rooftop at the north end of Lovers' Lane, eyes following the undertaker as he made his way out with his ghastly little cart. None of this seemed real. Running from St. Mikael's that night, the fire, too many funerals. BLACK was no more. At least, for now. Its leader was gone; so was the head of its house.

Down below, in Lovers' Lane, two children huddled under a crooked fire escape, watching the undertaker rattle away and around the corner. The children were dirty, scraped up, and scowling with the wide-eyed caution of every street urchin. The dead girl in the undertaker's cart must have been a friend of theirs, maybe a sister.

Eliott smiled faintly, brow knotting. He remembered being that age—twelve, thirteen. Full of hope for growing up and having the whole wide world to wrestle with. Responsibilities and misfortune had been part of the allure; having those things meant finally being more than a child.

“Hey,” Eliott called down to the children. They looked up, distrustful. He shrugged, digging through his pockets. “Don't be sad. ‘We learn little from victory, but much from defeat.'”

“What's that supposed to mean?” the braver of the orphans snapped from the alley.

Eliott's smile deepened nostalgically. A knot jumped to his throat, but it was all right. He was getting used to it. He'd rather ache for his friends and loved ones forever than feel nothing at all. He drew a few coins from his pocket and flipped them down at the children, who caught them deftly, without hesitation.

“I don't know,” Eliott sighed, tossing hair out of his eyes. “A friend of mine read that to me from a book when we were about your age. I can't say I remember who said it first.”

The children frowned up at him, lingering there in the shadows of Lovers' Lane, though they had every right to leave without listening, coin in hand.

Eliott nodded curtly, waving a hand to bid them adieu as he turned away. “What it means, though… well, the curtain's closed on this particular saga.”

Yes, the curtain had closed. But a new one would rise tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

As Eliott made his way down from the rooftops over Lovers' Lane, he heard the undertaker from just up the block, the creak of his cart, and the chortle in his voice.

“
Go hence
!
Have more talk of these sad things
!
Some will be pardoned and some will be punished
,
but never was there a story so tragic as this
,
the terrible
,
terrible death of Cain Dietrich and the heir of Ruslaniv
!”

 

 

CURTAIN CLOSED

J.I. R
ADKE
goes by a variety of handles and pseudonyms, most commonly “themissinglenk” and/or “white silver and mercury.”

Once upon a time he wanted to be a marine biologist because of sharks. That lasted a year or so. A Seattlite at heart, Radke is currently studying English/history, Classics, and Russian studies at USF in Tampa.

Radke writes ghost stories, romance novels, transgressive fiction, and fanfic that's sometimes all of that in one. He loves passionate speeches and tangent-studded discussions, strong coffee, rainy days, swimming in coves with bioluminescent algae, sushi and pad thai, and pizza. He specializes in Victorian-era English and Russian history, and loves folklore, classical music, parapsychology, Greek mythology, and true crime/forensics shows—to keep things brief.

E-mail: [email protected]

 

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