Chapter 33 #3
The usual foodstuffs were gone. Instead, there were oak casks like those used for Madeiras and brandies, dozens of them, the wooden exteriors streaked with glistening crystals as if they had leaked and dried.
The smaller ones, those a strong man might lift alone, were stacked in upright pairs.
Others were large, as tall as my waist. Those lay on their sides, some resting on curved wooden braces so they would not roll, others half buried.
The large ones had oval wooden lids on the top side, curved to fit the barrel.
Two of the half-buried barrels were massive, longer than baths, almost boat hulls. The lids on those would admit a cow.
Pungent, sweet-sick odors of rot hung in the air, stinging my eyes. The flame of the lamp sparked and fluttered, casting fleeting halos of green and blue.
“What is in the air?” I asked. The bitter odor persisted, but something new hung, a choking blanket so thick I fancied it blurred my sight.
“Alcohol,” Mr. Knightley muttered, “and some noxious ether. Also, fumes from the pitch.” He pointed to the lid on a nearby barrel. It was sealed with sloppy smears of an oily, black substance. “One does not use pitch on barrels of brandy. It would make the spirits inedible.”
“I do not think these contain spirits,” I said softly.
“Nor do I.” He shifted his grip on the ax and used the head to sift through a pile of wood from a smashed barrel. He hooked something and lifted a carapace from a large crawler. It was empty, like a discarded shell, and as long as my arm.
“Now what?” he asked.
The beating heat at my breast quickened. The fiery gleams on Yuánchi’s scale were brighter. They rippled faster.
“Do you see these lights?” I asked, touching the setting.
Mr. Knightley, after a moment, said doubtfully, “I see the amulet.”
So it was illusion, or rather my other sense, the one that saw bindings. But bindings were real. This was, too.
Most of the rotted, black bindings had retreated when I entered the cellar, but a thick one flickered reluctantly in and out of view. It came from one of the boat-sized barrels.
Carefully, I approached it, holding the lamp high, Mr. Knightley at my side with the ax. As we drew near, there was a dull slosh. The wooden frame shifted.
“If this is one of those monsters the slavers use in battle, we should not open it,” Mr. Knightley whispered. “They have only been killed by trapping them and having troops of men shoot. Or cannons.”
My senses were filling with awareness of life inside that wood, like how I sensed draca’s bindings at a distance but… this was diseased and hurt and helpless. “We will be safe. It is not… ready.”
“Not ready?”
“I cannot explain, but I am certain. The barrel is not well sealed anyway.” When it sloshed, a brackish liquid had spilled from under the wooden lid. It was puddling slowly on the earth below. “If it could get out, it would.”
“Although I am enjoying my tour of Hartfield,” Mr. Knightley noted politely, “I am not sure the cellar casts it in the best light.”
“I show guests my framed embroideries. You are not a guest.”
Gingerly, he tapped the blunt side of the ax against the long, oval lid.
Nothing moved. He bumped it harder, and the lid shifted slightly, stretching the sealing pitch.
He gave a resigned sigh, stepped back, and swung.
The hatch broke loose and fell off the far side, revealing a roughly sawn hole two feet across and longer than I was tall.
Inside, viscous liquid rolled in glutinous ripples around a humped, unnatural shape. I moved the lamp to see better.
It was unmistakably a huge crawler. There were the jointed, sharp legs and the heavy, lobster-like rings of shell.
But crawlers had their own insectile grace, lethal and swift and flexible.
This body was bloated, much thicker than any crawler I had seen, and distorted, composed of many thick lumps or masses, all wrapped inside a single translucent, organic sheath.
“Look,” I said, “It is more than one. They have put many crawlers together. They are… merging, somehow.”
“Is it how they make those giants?” Mr. Knightley asked, revolted.
“This is unnatural, even for crawlers. There is cord tying them together. The shells have been cracked so their flesh meets. It is some gruesome experiment.”
“Perhaps they are dying,” Mr. Knightley said hopefully.
I removed my gloves and crammed them into my dress pocket, took a bracing breath, then, ignoring Mr. Knightley’s warning, dipped my fingers into the liquid to touch the translucent sheath.
Agonizing pain. Fear. Primal, pounding life in transformation.
I wiped my damp fingers on my dress. “It is a metamorphosis. A miracle of natural life that has been wickedly distorted.”
“You cannot be sorry for these vermin.”
“I am,” I said simply. “They have been brutalized. They are not dying, though. They are full of life. They will emerge as something new.”
Quietly, Mr. Knightley said, “We must kill them.”
I did not answer.
“Emma, those girls will be brought here. Shackled and—”
“I know you are right. I am just sad to be among such suffering. These creatures are victims too, in their own way. But we must save the girls.”
“Should I just…” Mr. Knightley mimed chopping with the ax.
“Step away!” a man’s voice ordered behind us. I turned.
Mr. Elton stood on the cellar stairs, his pistol pointing at us, Augusta trapped under his other arm with his hand over her mouth. His eyes were fevered, his hair mussed. Fresh fingernail scratches bled on his cheek.
“Emma!” he exclaimed delightedly. “How considerate of you to return. The French have soured on Woodhouse witches, but I kept faith you would prove useful. Even though you cast spells with your… pert lips and bright eyes…”
“Angry eyes,” I corrected. “You are in my house without my permission. And I would rather be a witch than a hypocrite and false clergyman and traitor.”
Mr. Knightley had turned with me. He was dangerously still, the ax clenched in both hands.
Mr. Elton adjusted his aim to the center of Mr. Knightley’s vest.
“I would not fire that,” Mr. Knightley said, “if I were you.” Mr. Elton grinned dismissively.
Mr. Knightley carefully removed a hand from the ax and pointed to the lamp I held.
“See how the flame spreads inside the glass? Like firedamp. Whatever foul mixture you poured into these vats has rendered the air combustible. It needs only an open spark.”
Was that true? I had read about a catastrophic explosion in Felling that killed ninety miners. Or was this a bluff?
Mr. Elton seemed concerned. He backed up the cellar steps, pulling Augusta. He reached the top, bending to keep us in view, and waved the pistol threateningly at Mr. Knightley.
“Come out, then. You first. Or I will shoot you from here, and we shall see what happens.”
I was suddenly, profoundly unwilling to cower while Mr. Elton threatened my husband, so I walked to the exit and climbed the stairs.
Mr. Elton scrabbled back to the cooking table.
He seized a handful of Augusta’s hair, and she yelped as he shoved her into a seat.
He moved the lamp to one side, then pressed her wrist into an iron shackle. It locked with a clack.
All that time the pistol pointed at me, lowered to the floor, rose back, wobbled aside, came back…
I placed my lamp on a shelf beside the sugar. Better to have my hands free. Then I watched him with distaste. “Do you really need a pistol to control a woman?” Perhaps he would set it down.
“It does not hurt,” he said, after a moment.
The pistol swung to Mr. Knightley as he came up from the cellar. The aim became far steadier.
Mr. Knightley still carried the ax.
Mr. Elton said, “Throw it in the cellar.”
“You have one shot,” Mr. Knightley replied. He did not put down the ax.
“What of it? You think Miss Woodhouse will overpower me while you lie dying?”
“She is Mrs. Knightley.”
Mr. Elton’s lips twisted through shock, then disbelief, then fury. “Proud Emma Woodhouse is rutting with some bastard born on a slave?” He barked a laugh. “She once accused me of having fond thoughts of a Negress. I had the good sense to be offended.”
“Perhaps you could shoot me?” I suggested. “That would be less painful than your nonsense.”
Mr. Knightley waved a do-not-be-brave signal at me, but I was not being brave. Mr. Elton would never shoot me. That would leave him facing Mr. Knightley with an ax.
“Where are the slavers?” I asked.
“The soldiers will be here soon enough,” Mr. Elton answered.
“I am to open casks for the celebration. I fear it will put quite a dent in Hartfield’s cellar.
Your brother-in-law was to meet me—it is his stock, really—but it seems he has run away.
” He sighted the pistol carefully at Mr. Knightley. “I will not ask again.”
This time, it was I who signaled desperately at Mr. Knightley. His face hardened, but he tossed the ax down the cellar stairs.
“Better,” Mr. Elton said. Augusta began moaning. One handed, he grabbed her neck and pressed down, shoving her cheek against the table. His gaze continued to flicker between Mr. Knightley and me, back and forth, then settled on me. “I begin to understand. What choice had you? A ruined woman…”
“I was never ruined,” I said. “I was never even affected. You are a petty, pathetic man who will rot in hell.”
Mr. Elton, though, switched to addressing Mr. Knightley. “Did you know? Could you tell? Or are you not sophisticated enough to judge?”
I realized, suddenly, what was being revealed to my husband.