Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Keriah handed out spare sedative knives to everyone.
Then she left the satchel she had been carrying at the base of the stairs and followed Mr. Drydale and the butler as they searched for more servants.
On the first floor, they found an upper housemaid curled up under a table in a guest bedroom as the sounds of fighting thundered on the floor above.
“Violet,” the butler said curtly, his voice sharpened by his own fear at the bang! of a body slamming into a wall, “get to your feet, girl. Come on, now.”
But Violet’s wide eyes simply stared at him, her entire body trembling violently.
Keriah knew what she felt. She was so terrified that she was frozen. Her mind was screaming, but her body wouldn’t respond.
Yes, Keriah knew very well what Violet was feeling. She had felt it as she watched her sister bleed and die.
Keriah knelt in front of the maid, who only huddled deeper under the table and closer to the wall.
“Violet.” Keriah made her voice kind but firm, and she reached out, stretching in order to reach the maid’s clenched fist. Her palm closed over the taut knuckles, and she was forced to exert some strength to draw the shaking hand close enough that she could enclose it with her other hand.
Violet kept her fingers clenched into a fist, which was as cold as ice.
Keriah softly kneaded the icy rock in her hands, rubbing warmth back into Violet’s body.
“Violet,” Keriah repeated.
The maid’s panicked eyes finally rested on Keriah’s face and focused upon her, seeing her for the first time.
“Come with me.” Keriah tugged at Violet’s fist, but the woman resisted her, frantically shaking her head.
“We will take you to safety.” Mr. Drydale tried to sound soothing, but there was an urgency to his voice that made his words harsh.
“These men will protect you,” Keriah said. “The other servants are waiting for you.”
Violet simply shook her head again, but she did not try to pull her hand away from Keriah’s grip.
She kept rubbing the woman’s fist, and even as she forced the stiff fingers open, she inserted her hand into Violet’s. “You must come with us, Violet. It isn’t safe here.”
The maid didn’t respond, her breaths coming short and fast.
“I know it is difficult, but you must force yourself to move. I will be here to help you.” Keriah gripped the maid’s hand firmly, willing her strength into the woman through their connection. “Come, Violet.”
She tugged at the maid’s hand, and it moved—just an inch, but it moved.
“We shall not allow anything to happen to you.” Keriah pulled harder, and slowly, as if the woman weighed forty stone, she eased her out from under the table and helped her to stand. She put her arm around the maid, rubbing her arms to warm her cold limbs.
“The only servants remaining are two footmen and Nunn, Mrs. Coulton-Jones’s lady’s maid,” the butler said.
Mr. Drydale glanced up at the ceiling. “She would be upstairs with the mistress of the house?”
Henderson nodded.
“We shall take Violet downstairs,” Mr. Drydale said. “Then Mr. Benjamin and I will go up to aid in the fighting.”
His eyes roved around as they descended the stairs, watching for any other intruders, but they encountered no one until they reached the entrance hall. The two footmen were there with Mr. Verling, who was attempting to convince them to leave through the front door, but the servants were reluctant.
“We cannot leave the mistress alone in the house,” one of the footmen was saying.
“You must leave,” Henderson said as firmly as he could, although his voice trembled. “There is fighting on the second floor.”
“Is the mistress in danger?” the other footman asked, alarmed.
“Mr. Benjamin and I will go upstairs to help your mistress,” Mr. Drydale said.
“We shall come to assist you,” one of the footmen said.
Mr. Drydale shook his head. “These men are dangerous. Even trained Bow Street runners have difficulty fighting them.”
“We also need you to protect the other servants,” Mr. Verling said to them when they looked like they were about to continue protesting. “They will not heed strangers, and we could not protect them. But their trust in the two of you is absolute.”
They looked at him suspiciously, wondering if he were laying it on rather thick, but then Henderson said, “Listen to him, both of you. Mr. Thorne has placed his full confidence in them.”
At Mr. Rosmont’s name, the men ceased their protests and reluctantly nodded. They headed out the front door.
Keriah was about to follow them, her arm wrapped around Violet, when there came a sudden thump from below stairs.
The sound must be thunderous if they could hear it even from the entrance hall. Everyone stiffened.
Then Phoebe burst through the open front door, brushing past the two footmen. “The back door,” she said hoarsely.
Mr. Drydale reacted to her words first, Keriah only a heartbeat later. She shoved Violet into the arms of one of the footmen. “Take her outside.”
“The other servants are in the park square,” Phoebe said.
When the servants were motionless with confusion, Henderson stepped up to them and roughly shoved them out the door. “Hurry. I shall follow you directly.”
After they left, Keriah shut the door and locked it. It would be of little use against a man on the Root, but it would force them to take a few moments to break the lock, moments which she and the others may very well need later.
Phoebe, Mr. Drydale, and Mr. Verling had disappeared through the narrow door in the wall behind the stairs, heading down the steps to the half basement. Before following, Keriah picked up her leather satchel, which she had left at the base of the stairs.
She descended the steps more slowly than she would have liked, cursing her injured knee, her voluminous petticoats and evening gown, and the weight of the satchel slung over her shoulder.
She heard more thumping and realized it came from a door at the back of the house.
She followed the sound into the kitchen at the back of the passageway.
Phoebe was pushing against the barred back door in the scullery. Due to the cramped space, Mr. Drydale and Mr. Verling were waiting on either side of the open doorway into the kitchen.
Keriah fumbled in her satchel, then tossed Phoebe a bag of sedative powder. Her aim was off, but Phoebe’s reflexes snatched the bag out of the air.
During the weeks that Phoebe had been recovering from the knife wound that Apothecary Jack had dealt to her, Mr. Drydale had sat at her bedside along with Keriah and taught them a variety of fighting strategies.
Keriah suspected that it was the sort of training given to soldiers, for the lessons involved everything from invading a castle to sneaking into a cottage, with a few lessons on the broader theories of a larger battlefield.
Keriah recognized the positions of her three teammates, as did Phoebe, who would know what to do. They could not risk speaking their plans out loud, for the men outside the door would overhear.
The single hard thump against the door suddenly became a double staccato, and Phoebe strained against the might of two men attempting to break down the door.
There was a narrow wooden plank barring the door, set into hooks on the walls on either side. The wood creaked, but held. However, the metal hooks began to bend under the pressure.
Suddenly, splinters showered everywhere and one of the hooks began to come loose from the wall.
Phoebe stepped back, and the next blow dislodged the hook and unbarred the door.
To Keriah’s eyes, it seemed as if Phoebe were throwing the sedative powder at the closed door, but the white powder flew through the open crack as it was flung open.
She caught sight of two men, their faces colored white, hacking and coughing.
Phoebe backed out of the scullery and Mr. Drydale and Mr. Verling moved into the small room in her place.
The two ruffians in front had staggered inside, but the agents attacked, pinning the men against the wall. They opened a space for a third man to enter the scullery and move directly into the kitchen—where Phoebe was waiting.
While Phoebe fought the third man, Keriah slipped into the scullery with two sedative knives, one in each hand. Both of the attackers had been slowed by the sedative, and so despite their supernatural strength, Mr. Drydale and Mr. Verling were easily able to hold them against the walls.
Keriah stabbed each man with a sedative knife, targeting whatever muscle was easily accessible—a deltoid, a trapezius. The men continued to struggle, but hopefully in a few minutes, they would be unable to fight.
Keriah hurried out of the scullery to find Phoebe choking the third man from behind. Keriah stuck a sedative knife into the vastus externus muscle in his thigh, then went back to her satchel on the kitchen table in a corner of the kitchen to gather more knives.
Mr. Drydale and Mr. Verling raced into the kitchen, having dropped the two attackers onto the floor in the scullery to hinder any others coming through the back door.
It enabled them to set up their new formation—Mr. Drydale in the doorway to the kitchen, Phoebe and Mr. Verling on either side behind him, and Keriah circling around to their flank.
Finally, the next wave of attackers made their way through the scullery. Only one man could fit through the doorway at a time, forming a natural obstruction.
The first man aimed a punch at Mr. Drydale, who blocked it, but rather than striking back, he grabbed the man’s arm and slammed his entire body against the doorframe. Mr. Drydale used the man’s body as a shield against a knife attack from the second man behind him, causing him to stab his fellow.