The Hidden Goddess (22 page)

“He’s told me everything.”

“You believe that?”

“Yes,” Emily said.

The sincerity in Emily’s voice made Mrs. Blotgate smile again—a soft queer smile that reminded Emily of the underside of a rotten mushroom.

“Then perhaps you will make a good credomancer’s wife after all,” she said. “As credulous and self-immolating as Dreadnought could desire.” She paused. “On the other hand, you must have something rattling around in that pretty skull to entrap him as cleverly as you did. You’re a pretty little puzzle, Miss Edwards. How I would love to take you apart.”

Emily imagined herself a block of ice, and her breath fairly congealed white as she spoke. “I didn’t entrap anyone. And you could not take me apart if you tried.”

Mrs. Blotgate’s eyes glinted like hard gemstones and she flexed her long fingers.

“Why, I can take you apart just as we stand here. I know every low grimy inch of you. I know you’re no cattle baron’s daughter—you’re just a climbing little tramp, a skycladdische dirt Witch who fuels Dreadnought’s fantasies of having
integrity
.”

Heat rose up Emily’s throat, but she said nothing. Mrs. Blotgate continued, her voice calm.

“Of course, fantasies should be paid for by the hour, not married, so Dreadnought tried to call things off gently, in a civilized fashion. But you chased after him until there was nothing he could do but propose.”

“I didn’t …” Emily began, her voice shaking despite her best efforts to steady it. Then she drew a deep breath. “You are a horrible person. I wish to have nothing more to do with you.”

“Don’t try to play that prim little card with me,” Mrs. Blotgate snarled. “You never had it in your hand to begin with. I’m only applauding you for a trick well turned.”

“There’s no trick here.”

“Of course there’s a trick. There’s always a trick. From what I hear, you have the habit of throwing love spells at any man who looks at you sideways. Why shouldn’t you use a little magical encouragement on our dear Dreadnought? Catch yourself a senator’s son to lift you up out of the mud and dress you in diamonds?” She eyed Emily’s ringed hand meaningfully.

“That’s a lie,” Emily spat, quickly hiding the hand behind her back. “I would never—”

Mrs. Blotgate, who had opened her silk reticule to dig for something within, cut Emily’s words short with a crisply proffered card.

“Well, delightful as this has been, I do have a train to catch.” She slid the card down the front of Emily’s dress. “Call on me when you’re back in town.” She leaned close, put her mouth by Emily’s ear. “I can tell you everything he likes.”

At this, Emily brought her hand out of hiding and was lifting it to slap the woman across the face. But then, Miss Jesczenka returned with tickets.

“The train is on platform twenty-two, Miss Edwards …”

Emily let her hand fall quickly. She stepped back, flushed with rage.

Miss Jesczenka stopped when she saw Mrs. Blotgate. She stared at the woman for a long time. Her eyes narrowed. A quizzical look stole over her face, replaced quickly by cool reserve.

“I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced.” Miss Jesczenka stretched a hand. “I am Miss Edwards’ companion, Miss—”

“Yes, I know who you are.” Mrs. Blotgate looked at the proffered hand as if it were covered in excrement. “Tiza Jesczenka. An immigrant from Prague. A rabbi’s daughter.” She turned to Emily as if Miss Jesczenka weren’t there. “This is your companion? A dowdy old Jewess?” She shook her head ruefully. “I suppose this shows what the Institute really thinks of you.”

Miss Jesczenka looked at the woman for a moment. There was a sense of her marshaling some terrible force within herself. She lifted a hand, murmured something softly under her breath, and then said, in a very loud voice:
“Duze!”

And then, just like that, Miss Jesczenka was gone, replaced by someone else entirely. Someone like Miss Jesczenka, but as utterly unlike her as Emily could imagine. Her neatly tailored clothes sagged into ratty unfashionability, her neat hair wisped carelessly, her eyes brightened with strange madness, and her cheeks reddened as if she were drunk.

“Oh, Duze, it’s you! How long it has been!”

Mrs. Blotgate looked around herself in alarm.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she snarled.

But Miss Jesczenka did not answer her. Instead she broke into a maudlin flood of loud Polish. She rushed forward, gathered Mrs. Blotgate into her arms and sobbed theatrically. “Duze! My dear! Don’t you remember me? The
Bierstube
in
Praha
, the Golden Tiger,
U Zlateho tygra
 … do you not recall? The boys, they used to call us their little flowers!”

“Don’t touch me,” Mrs. Blotgate said, her face a mask of horror as she pushed Miss Jesczenka away. Her eyes darted around herself at the passing pedestrians; embarrassment flushed her cheeks. But Miss Jesczenka wouldn’t be denied; she hung on Mrs. Blotgate’s hand, pawing at it.

“Duze! Duze, don’t play so. It’s me, your dear little Alme. Such times we had!”

Men were watching now, pausing in their hurried transits to take in the spectacle of the two women wrestling with each other. Mrs. Blotgate saw them watching, and her eyes traveled down to what they were looking at. Her face went from red to purple. Gone was the elegant taffeta gown, gone was the sneering polished veneer. Suddenly she looked a hundred years older. Her face was haglike, her cheeks sunken from missing teeth. Drab clothes hung from her in rags. She smelled like beer spilled in a bucket of cigar ash.

“Stop it!” Mrs. Blotgate screeched, pushing Miss Jesczenka back. “Get back from me, you lousy Jew, or you’ll wish you were never born!”

Still Miss Jesczenka held her tight. She put her face close to Mrs. Blotgate’s and Emily heard her whisper fiercely:

“Don’t struggle, Duze! Don’t you remember all the fun we had?”

With a shriek of hatred, Mrs. Blotgate shoved Miss Jesczenka back, knocking her to the ground. Miss Jesczenka just rolled on the floor as if it were a great joke and laughed up at her—the laugh of a drunken whore.

“Oh, Duze, you naughty thing, don’t be standoffish!”

But the words were shouted at Mrs. Blotgate’s back as the woman staggered away from them, pulling her cloak around her. As she got farther away, Emily could see her true form returning to her, her armor of silk and velvet, but that did not stop the gapers from staring after her, elbowing one another and laughing.

Heart pounding, Emily hurriedly helped Miss Jesczenka to her feet. The woman seemed completely unflustered. She stood calmly, smoothed back her hair, straightened her hat. She glared at the staring men with an old maid’s steely frigidity. Emily watched the looks on their faces mutate from amusement to puzzlement, as if they weren’t quite sure of what they were watching, or why. Soon, the audience for the little drama had dispersed and Emily and Miss Jesczenka were left utterly alone.

Emily was flabbergasted. The sudden silence was deafening.

“What did you just
do
?” she managed.

“Miss Edwards, you must learn more about squinking,” Miss Jesczenka said, taking Emily’s arm with the utmost decorum. “The key is to find your opponent’s greatest fear and attack it. The greatest fear of a woman—particularly an evil woman—is that she be made trivial and insignificant.” Miss Jesczenka looked in the direction Mrs. Blotgate had gone. “A woman’s power is tenuous enough as it is. Having that power mocked is the most terrifying thing that woman who lives in the service of evil could face.”

“But what about you? You’re a woman, and you had to humiliate yourself …”

“Humiliate myself?” Miss Jesczenka clucked as they turned toward the archway that read
Tracks 21–30
. “It’s hardly humiliating if no one remembers. Anyone who saw that has already forgotten that the woman pawing Alcmene Blotgate was me; they will remember an inebriated harlot
who has already ceased to exist. If they even thought to wonder what became of her, they would wonder only that she vanished so quickly and completely.”

Emily said nothing for a moment. Then she gave Miss Jesczenka a sidelong glance.

“Could you teach me to do that?” she asked. She found suddenly that she very much wished that she could have been the one to send the odious Mrs. Blotgate scurrying in such a satisfying, ugly way.

“I very much doubt it,” Miss Jesczenka said. “You haven’t a dissembling bone in your body. Unfortunately. Hurry now, or we’ll miss our train.”

On the train, they found their seats in a ladies’ car that bustled with late-morning activity. Emily watched New York recede into the distance as the train gathered speed, its wheels humming and clattering on the steel tracks. It wasn’t until they were well out of the city that Emily thought to reach down the front of her dress and pull out Mrs. Blotgate’s card. Without a word, Miss Jesczenka reached over and took the card from Emily’s hand. She tucked it away in her own bag.

“A very unpleasant couple, the Blotgates,” Miss Jesczenka said, as if the card had never existed. “They are mainstays of conservative Washington society. General Blotgate is the highest ranked practitioner in the military. He is first in line for the position of Secretary of War if Hayes gets the presidency.”

Hand on her chin, Emily stared out the window.

“Mrs. Blotgate comes from a very old and very feared family in the South, known for producing generations of sangrimancers.” Miss Jesczenka tilted her head. “The fact that she takes a new lover every year from among her husband’s cadets is widely known, but never mentioned for fear of reprisal.”

Emily pressed her lips together, stared out of the window harder.

“What was she bothering you about?”

“Nothing,” Emily said, hoping that the shortness of her reply would indicate her desire to stop talking about Alcmene
Blotgate. The encounter with the woman had left her feeling greasy and unclean. Emily tried to sort out the confusing welter of feelings knotted beneath her breastbone. The images that kept flashing through her mind were those of the flayed man from last night’s séance, the man with the halo of feathers and the hand-shaped birthmark. The man with seams of blood on his skin.

Miss Jesczenka’s hand touched her knee, drawing her out of the morbid recollection.

“You mustn’t worry about it.” Emily looked up at her abruptly, into Miss Jesczenka’s mild eyes. “There’s an old saying:
He that can’t endure the bad will not live to see the good
.”

“That’s hardly comforting,” Emily said. Unbidden images of blade-edged fingers leaving blood trails on smooth brown skin flashed behind her eyes. “Especially when it’s all so bad.”

“Oh, it’s never as bad as you think it is,” Miss Jesczenka said.

The Institute is in a shambles, Komé has been kidnapped, the Sini Mira is on my trail, and the man I love is probably hiding something from me
. Emily allowed herself a small, grim smile. Exactly how could it be worse?

As if intuiting the drift of Emily’s thoughts, Miss Jesczenka shrugged.

“Schisms of the type currently afflicting the Institute have always been part of credomancy,” she commented. “Sometimes they can even be beneficial, like dividing a plant. The separated halves may thrive better for the separation. The magisters who remain loyal to Mr. Stanton will be stronger and more focused for their loyalty. Those who defect to Fortissimus’ camp will always have the taint of treachery on their conscience. A credomancer with a guilty conscience is always at a disadvantage.”

Emily reddened, thinking of Mrs. Blotgate, and hoped that Stanton’s conscience was clear.

They rode the New York Central out of the city, winding along the Hudson up toward Albany. At suppertime they
transferred to the Boston & Albany Railroad, which cut across the belly of New York State and into Massachussets. They arrived in Boston well before nightfall, and checked into the American Hotel—a foursquare brick pile that commanded a view of the smooth green commons.

The rooms were comfortable and well appointed, but even in a room with a hundred feather beds, Emily would not have slept that night. Opening her trunk, she pulled out the slate Stanton had given her, regarding its smooth surface. She chewed on the end of the pencil, thinking of all the things she could possibly write.
I miss you. I need you with me. I don’t want to be in Boston. I saw Alcmene Blotgate at the train station
. None of the statements were brave or helpful, none could be adequately discussed via a slate with lambs on it, and at least one seemed dangerous to mention even at all. With a heavy sigh, she slid the pencil back into its slot.

In the morning, Emily dressed carefully in a solemn mauve twill, placed her mother’s amethyst earrings in her ears, and tucked her mother’s hair sticks into a reticule of knitted black silk. Certainly the Kendalls would want some proof of her claims. Then she went downstairs to meet Miss Jesczenka for breakfast.

“I’m going alone,” Emily said abruptly, over her eggs. Miss Jesczenka shook her head brusquely.

“Out of the question. It’s far too dangerous.”

“This is my family.” Emily paused. “I won’t have the Institute interfering with that, at least.”

Miss Jesczenka slowly removed the tortoiseshell glasses from her face. She looked at Emily, her eyes soft and sad.

“Miss Edwards, you must trust that the Institute wants only what’s best for you.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Emily said, meeting Miss Jesczenka’s gaze with all the firmness at her command. “I’m going to meet my family alone. If you want to stop me, you’ll have to tie me to a chair.”

Miss Jesczenka sighed heavily. “All right, then. I’ll wait for you here. As long as you take a cab directly there and ask it to stand for your return, I can’t imagine anyone will bother you.
But you must promise me you will be careful. I won’t have you coming back to me covered in insect parts.”

Emily smiled slightly, but said nothing.

“Your grandparents’ neighborhood is no longer as desirable as it used to be,” Miss Jesczenka warned. “All the best families have moved to the Back Bay, and Beacon Hill has gone over to tenancy. So come back quickly. If your grandparents wish to get reacquainted, ask them to come and call on you here, where I can protect you. All right?”