Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
A child. I did all I could to hold in my laughter, but in truth I didn’t know whether or not this was a laughing affair. To
all, here in the crimson drawing room, it was unthinkable—the Queen had been driven so into madness since her husband’s death
that she was now seeking spiritual clarity from a thirteen-year-old boy.
But here he was, being ushered to the circular table in a crimson drawing room by guards. Queen Victoria’s invited and esteemed
guest of honor: Robert James Lees. Even dressed in his little suit and tie, he was knobby-kneed and lanky, his light brown
hair cut like any other schoolboy his age. Did his parents know he was here?
“I really can’t even fathom this,” Bertie muttered as he took his seat at the mahogany table. It only seated eight. The rest
would have to watch from behind.
Someone dimmed the lights in the room. As John Brown sat Queen Victoria at the table and took his seat next to her, attendants
brought candles and plunked them upon the surface in their silver candelabras. Once each candle was lit, they moved to leave.
“No, that is not all,” the boy said, and I was shocked by the deep crevices hidden in his boyish tone. “Bring the bust.”
Made of white clay, it was not your typical bust of Prince Albert. It had two faces, one looking north, the other south.
“Like Janus,” Captain Davies whispered to me as he sat on my left at the table. “The two-faced Roman god of doorways.”
The god of transitions standing between life and death. Bertie pulled out his chair roughly and plopped down next to me, throwing
Davies a dirty look before leaning on the table. He stealthily placed the envelope into the inside pocket of his jacket. I
suppose he cared more about his rivalry with Captain Davies than the supposed murderous nature of the man who nearly shot
me the other day. Some great “love” he had for me.
“The Roman god of doorways, yes. Well, we all knew that,” Bertie mumbled with a childish sneer. Both of his father’s two heads looked as disappointed in him as his mother
did.
As the candlelight flickered across her husband’s faces, the Queen was mesmerized, her hollow eyes wide and sharp like a hawk’s.
“Ladies. Gentlemen. You will remove your gloves,” said Lees with the grim wisdom of an adult thrice his age. “And then you
will join hands.”
“He sounds just like the Prince Consort,” someone whispered amongst the crowd and tried to take a seat, but she was cut off
at the knees. Mrs. Phipps moved fast to grab seats for herself and her daughter, who sheepishly remained steadfast in her
inability to look at me. Along with Bertie, Captain Davies, John Brown, the Queen, myself, and the medium, the table’s central
party was complete.
“What fun this all is, isn’t it, Inspector Wilkes?” said Dalton behind me, and I instinctively hunched over. When had he snuck
his way through the crowd?
“I’m more excited for what may transpire after the party.” They were close enough that I could hear them amidst the crowd’s chatter. By design. How foolish. I wouldn’t
be so easily intimidated.
“To commune with the spirits, you must have patience,” said this little boy, Lees, who despite his little, lanky frame had taken complete control of the room. “You must suspend your disbelief. You must shake off the coils of every rule that tethers you to the known world.”
“You must count backwards from ten and relieve yourself on cue,” Bertie muttered. If only the room hadn’t suddenly become
so quiet. Everyone heard him.
“Bertie! How dare you! Silence! ” Queen Victoria’s shriek echoed off the high ceiling, shocking all in the room, especially her son, who sat up straight and
stared back at his mother, terrified.
Awkward tension filled the silent room. In one moment, the prince crumpled where he sat and said nothing more.
The medium was undeterred. “Please, hold each other’s hands,” Lees said again.
Still bristling from the uncomfortable energy that lingered in the air, I took Captain Davies’s hand, hesitating at his touch.
He gave me an encouraging smile, which drooped into a frown when Bertie grabbed my other hand with a yank, still red with
anger.
“You must understand that the spirit realm is not a place you can enter without the utmost serenity. Clear your minds. Imagine
yourself swimming in the void of nothingness. Free yourselves from the material world. Breathe and enter a world where space
and time hold no meaning.”
But when I cleansed my mind of all thought, faces still remained. Dalton Sass and his mother. Bellamy, his neck twisted in
a pile of his own booze. The two Captain Forbes wailing and screaming in the night of my treachery.
And Ade. I saw his face. I saw his sickly smile as we played together in a dingy cabin of the HMS Bonetta , both of us dressed in shabby old agbadas that the Forbeses draped us in despite the fact that they were too big and only worn by men. We played with shillings, not knowing what they were. We struck them with our fingers and watched as they rolled around the room, spun, and flopped to the floor. We ate the slime they called food because everything better went to the brothers and their crew. Who knew what was even in it. Rat? Did it contribute to Ade’s poor health? Would he have been fitter if they’d given him nutrients? Would he have survived?
The more these questions arose in the deep recesses of my mind, the angrier I became. And as my anger began to bubble over,
a deep groan erupted from Lees’s mouth. The crowd gasped as my own beating heart leaped into my throat.
“Oooh... Alexandrina...” Lees breathed in deep, swaying from side to side.
Breathless, Queen Victoria jerked in her seat. “Albert?” John Brown’s sturdy grip on her frail hand kept her seated. “Albert,
is that you?”
“Alexandrina Victoria...”
The crowd didn’t dare speak. They were all very impressed, but I couldn’t say the same. He was clearly a conman taking advantage
of the Queen’s bereavement. My thoughts turned instead to Dalton, whose reflection in the mirror on the wall I could see,
grinning at me. As my anger flared up once more, so too did the deep groan from Lee’s mouth. I wasn’t paying attention. I
was thinking of Sass’s cane marks on my back. Of my parents’ decimated bodies. Of Ade’s body in the Atlantic Ocean with so
many of my kin. Of my loss of freedom. My loss of self. How it was all torn away from me.
“Sally?” Captain Davies whispered because he must have noticed I was shaking. I answered by squeezing his hand so tightly,
it might have broken if it weren’t for his military strength. But I wanted to break something. I wanted to break someone.
Everyone.
“Alexandrina Victoria... Empress of a Broken World...”
It was then that Lees’s body was taken over entirely. The crowd screamed as the boy swayed and bent in angles that couldn’t have been possible for a human body. The boy gasped for air, as if he was drowning. He gripped his throat, clutching, scratching the bare pale skin, before falling flat upon the table, his cheek smashing against the wood.
Before anyone could move to help him, his head trembled upward, his unfocused eyes bloodied and dangerous, ready for battle.
I didn’t know what to think.
Empress of a Broken World,
You summon the spirits but you do not know us,
We speak for the dead,
The trail of bodies your legacy has left behind....
His voice didn’t sound like the Prince Consort’s anymore. It sounded ancient, from the depths of the earth. Hollow and furious.
Lees spoke with an accent very few in this room would have been able to understand if they weren’t used to it. It was the
accent I used to speak with.
The accent of my people.
Empress of the World You Broke,
You seek your husband,
It is our judgment you receive instead.
How many have died at your hands?
At the hands of your ancestors?
And Lees began singing—it was a song I recognized. A song Davies knew. We both looked at each other, lips parted in quiet
shock as we heard the little English boy sing a chant to Oshun, the river deity. He stopped. And after a time, he spoke again.
You pillage and kill, and then cry only for your own loss.
Do you think yourself mighty?
à ń pe gb??nàgb??nà ?y? àkókó ń y?jú.
You are nothing. The Queen of Ruin.
He began singing the chant to Oshun once more. But soon, the boy’s cackling broke through. It wasn’t the laughter of an ignorant
English boy. It was high, feminine, haughty, sensual and proud. The laughter of a queen mother. As if Oshun herself was challenging
the second queen dressed in black.
“Goddess of Rivers...,” I whispered, and thought of Ade’s drowned body. Tears began prickling my eyes.
Do not cry, child.
The voice wasn’t feminine anymore. No... it wasn’t one voice at all. I heard many jumbling together, old and young, bold
and shy, each furious and dripping with honey sweetness. They spoke to me as if they’d brought me into this world themselves.
I heard my mother’s voice. My father’s. I heard Ade’s voice. Young, weak, but rebellious.
Do not cry, for your retribution is close at hand,
And the freedom you seek will be yours,
The evil will reap their punishments,
You go with our blessing,
And a little bit of luck...
I couldn’t breathe. What was this? What was happening?
The weight of so many lives lost suddenly fell upon me at once, knocking the wind from my lungs. Lives crying out for justice. It was too much. My throat closed as I bit the inside of my mouth, trying and failing to calm myself.
“This is madness.” Wilkes’s terrified voice pierced through my thoughts. “Dalton, come with me. There’s something we need
to talk about.”
“Wait,” I called out, wanting to stop them, but Queen Victoria gave me a look so withering it chilled my very spirit.
“You will sit down and do as I say, child. You will not break the circle. I am Queen here.”
My mouth went dry. Ah, so this was her true face—the one behind all the false platitudes and niceties. The face of my savior.
But I couldn’t move. As the Queen turned back to the young boy, her cruelty willed me to stay in place. It made my heart crash
against my rib cage. In that moment, I did as I was told.
Ade was wrong. Her “love” for me wasn’t conditional. She had no love for me at all.
Wilkes and Sass disappeared through the crowd, but the séance wasn’t done. The Queen wouldn’t let it be done.
“Albert. Albert! Let me speak to my husband! Please!”
“Your Majesty!” John Brown tried to keep the Queen still, but she wrenched her hand out of his grip and began shaking the
poor boy, nearly breaking his neck. Brown managed to grab her around the stomach and pull her away, but the damage was done.
The boy fell down once more upon the table. The bust of Prince Albert rattled with the candles.
“Albert! Speak to me!”
The Queen continued to shriek until finally Robert Lees, only thirteen years old, sat up straight and looked at her curiously.
He tilted his head, his bright eyes empty.
“Gutes Weibchen?” Lees said in a perfect German accent.
His voice had changed again. It was that of a man in love. A husband lost. Queen Victoria hugged John Brown, whimpering, tears dripping down her cheeks.
“Albert! Albert, it’s really you....”
As the Queen sobbed John Brown reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a handkerchief. He lifted the Queen’s veil like
a bride on their wedding day, ready to wipe her chubby cheeks and her clear blue eyes....
Several gunshots rang out into the air. The crowd parted with screams, clearing a straight line to the table. The man in a
beige hooded robe couldn’t be seen in the dark, not with only a few candles to light the room. All eyes were on his gun, aimed
at John Brown and the Queen.
It cocked and shot. Brown tackled the Queen to the floor, the bullet missing them by a hair. As Captain Davies put out an
arm to shield me from danger, Bertie jumped out of his seat and approached his mother.
“Mother? Mother, are you hurt?”
The Queen shrugged him off with an almost-superhuman viciousness. “Oh, stop it, you stupid boy. Where is my husband? Where
is Albert?”
“Mother!”
Every guard in the vicinity must have entered the room, but in the darkness they bumbled and tripped over themselves. In the
ensuing chaos, the hooded man escaped the room; none of the wealthy elite at the séance were courageous enough to follow.
Mrs. Phipps shrieked at the top of her lungs. The other guests held on to her daughter for dear life as Harriet clutched her
braided hair.
With Bertie’s help, John Brown got the Queen back up on her feet.
“What in the blazes happened?” asked Brown to a screaming crowd. After checking for wounds, they helped her sit back down
in her chair—or more forced her into it.
“Who’s done this?” the Queen demanded. “Who broke the boy’s concentration?”
I wasn’t surprised she didn’t care much about the assassination attempt. It wasn’t her first and surely wouldn’t be her last. A part of me was disappointed the shooter had missed. The bullet seemed closer to grazing John Brown’s head instead....
A girl’s scream interrupted my thoughts. It had come from outside the drawing room.
“Murder!” the girl screamed. I recognized it—it was one of the Queen’s courtiers. “Murder! He’s been murdered!”
I wouldn’t let Captain Davies tie me down to my chair. I leaped to my feet and pushed through the crowd. I arrived with the
rest of them to find Inspector Wilkes shot dead on the floor. Blood was flowing from his head onto the pristine marble. The
only thing bloodier was Dalton Sass, draped in the beige hooded robe, his hands holding the murder weapon.
Seeing Wilkes dead made my body feel as heavy as stone. I couldn’t pry my eyes away, not from him, not from his wife running
to him, crying over his dead body. I didn’t know how to feel. The nerves underneath my skin gave a painful twinge as an electrical
current shuddered up my spine. What was this? Guilt? But I hadn’t killed him. It wasn’t my fault....
The crowd parted again for Bertie to step through, the click of his heels echoing across the ceiling.
“Sass...” Bertie looked as shocked as I felt. I knew the two had left the séance early. I assumed it was to plot their
revenge upon me. They were working together, weren’t they?
Finally snapping out of his stupor, Dalton dropped the gun. It clattered on the ground. “It wasn’t me,” he said hurriedly,
sliding the robe off his body. “The hooded man shoved it in my hands. He threw the robe onto me.... It wasn’t me!”
The strange thing is, I believed him, even if nobody else could in this situation. Dalton looked at the gun like he’d never seen it before. The look of terror on his face looked so completely alien to him. And he had no reason to kill Wilkes. No reason to stay here and wait to be caught.
But it didn’t matter the reason. A situation had fallen into my lap. As my mind began to work, I shoved away the strange emotions
welling up inside me. A plan materialized, and before I knew it, I was running to the prince’s side.
“He’s done it again! He’s mad, I tell you, mad!” I clutched my chest as any civilized English lady would after being so thoroughly
scandalized by wicked things too evil for her innocent eyes. Bertie held my shoulders. “It’s just like when he tried to shoot
me!”
“Yes...” Bertie looked at Dalton Sass, as if finally seeing him for the first time. “Dalton Sass is not what he seems.”
Dalton glared at the two of us wide-eyed as John Brown brought the Queen to the entrance of the door, guarding her from danger.
Bertie pulled the envelope out from the inside of his jacket pocket. “He has a history of violence. Stabbing animals. Setting
them on fire. Harming people from a young age. It’s all in these reports I gathered.”
Prince Bertie always had to play the hero even if it meant claiming deeds that weren’t his own. Prince Bertie’s machismo left
me out of the narrative—except as an innocent victim, of course.
Furious, Dalton stood. “That’s a lie!” Hardly convincing with so much of Wilkes’s blood dripping from his hands.
“And I do remember the hunt. I thought it strange that he would shoot at you, Sally.” His expression grew grim. “But I’m starting
to think it wasn’t such an accident after all, Sass.”
“Sass... ,” I heard the Queen mutter from the entrance, and while my blood chilled, I kept my focus where it needed to
be—on the fumbling Dalton Sass, whose world was crumbling around him.
“I swear to heaven I didn’t do this!” Dalton stretched out his hands, pleading with the guests. They backed away from him,
terrified.
“I saw him leaving with Wilkes during the séance,” said one woman, and others agreed.
“I’ve heard enough!” John Brown’s authoritative growl held not a hint of fear. One wouldn’t think he’d almost been killed
moments before. “Guards! Arrest this man!”
As Dalton tried to fight against the guards’ vise grip, Lord Ponsonby stared at us all from behind the doors, too scared to
make his way to the murder scene. His reddening cheeks and wobbling body told me he had much to say about Dalton Sass. But
telling everyone of his blackmail risked reminding everyone that he was the one who’d invited Dalton into the inner circle
weeks ago with my luncheon. That was how Sass had blackmailed him into keeping quiet about the—
—the letter!
“Wait,” I said quickly, “you must check his person! Make sure he doesn’t have any more weapons that could harm Her Majesty!”
“Good thinking, Sally.” Bertie nodded to the guards and they checked every nook and cranny of Dalton Sass’s body, but they
found nothing. No knives, no guns. No letters.
Damn it. He must have taken it somewhere else. If he really did have information that could endanger the Queen, I wanted to
see it. To use it. To wield it. But that damn Freetown boy had hidden it. For insurance?
Dalton Sass screamed and whined as he dragged away, his legs stumbling upon the floor. Bertie went to tend to his mother.
A pair of hands swiveled me around until I was staring at Captain Davies. I could barely feel his palms. My whole body was
numb.
“The barbarity of these people,” he said in a low voice. “I’m more convinced than ever that I need to take you away from this
place. Sally? Are you okay, Sally?”
I opened my mouth by instinct to say yes. Why wouldn’t I be okay? I’d finally gotten rid of the thorn in my side—two in one fell swoop. But Mrs. Wilkes’s cries as she followed the body of her husband out of the palace ricocheted against my skull. The truth is, I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay at all. I had won. So why didn’t I feel it?
Why didn’t I feel it?