Chapter 7 #3
Also, raging at him on that topic wouldn’t help, she understood.
Rattling her chain and insisting on her independent personhood, as anything other than a minor NPC in the Enderbough story, would probably meet with blank incomprehension on his part.
She was one of the poors. She was a Colonial upstart.
She was a peccadillo, a bit of fun for the favoured son to have on his years abroad, and now she was some dirty laundry he’d mistakenly brought home instead of leaving across the Atlantic for someone else to clean up.
And whilst she knew that wasn’t a fair finger to point at Ross, she also knew that was exactly what his family saw it as.
And when she disappeared, anybody back home who tried to work out what had actually happened, beyond whatever cover story the minions of the Enderboughs would put around, would meet a wall of family money proof against any investigation or accusation.
Because everyone who might want to know the truth was just Little People, to the Enderboughs.
Little people underfoot and beneath notice.
“When I was his age,” Jas croaked, “I thought I was going to just… break away. When I found out. And I wasn’t supposed to find out early, just like you weren’t. Like Ross and…” Melissa, but he wouldn’t say the name.
Elena watched him warily. It wasn’t what she’d have expected of him.
He’d been just another Jeffrey in her mind, and she reckoned that the only reason she was getting this now was that the walls of him were soluble with sufficient alcohol.
And because she wasn’t of the blood. She was someone safe to vent to.
Because it wasn’t as though she’d be around for long.
“I was going to do such things,” Jas said quietly. “Blow it all open. Tell… But who was there to tell, even? And I know I wasn’t the first. Every generation, probably, there’s someone who… wants to change things. Doesn’t want to accept it. I mean, it’s monstrous. Monstrous. What we are.”
“But then—” And she shouldn’t have spoken. His head snapped round to pin her with bleary, angry eyes. She thought she’d sent him back into the shell of familial duty, then, but apparently he was sufficiently afloat for the mood to survive the reminder of her presence.
“Why?” His tone was mocking, but she wasn’t sure who was being mocked.
“Why go along? Because do you think it’s just us?
Do you think there aren’t other families who’ve found what we’ve found?
” A pitying look that enraged her, robbed her of all sympathy.
“There are plenty over your side of the pond, don’t worry.
The malaise was brought over with the pilgrims, you can be sure.
Just as the Conqueror brought it here. It goes where the power is, because it is the power.
And now it’s my turn.” He took another deep draught from the flask, shook it for a measure of how much was left, and found it almost emptied.
“I’m the old guard now. I’m it. A custodian of the family honour.
” Family secrets. “And next time I see this place I’ll…
It’ll be my time to…” He made a sound, just a single noise.
It took Elena a moment to identify it as a sob.
Patrick’s exploded corpse—not torn into but torn out of. Godfrey splitting open as the thing burrowed its way into the open air. And that was it, really. Not Melissa’s murder, not the vanished staff, not any of it. His own fate. That was what so consumed James Enderbough Esquire.
She wanted to shout at him. She wanted to scream, at the top of her voice, that he’d had so many opportunities to turn aside from this moment.
But it wouldn’t have helped and, anyway, was she so very sure of that?
He was in a cage, and maybe he’d built the bars himself or maybe he’d simply not balked enough at stepping inside.
And it was such a cage, after all. The gilding was so fine, such craftsmanship, a real masterwork.
He sucked the last drops noisily from the flask and just sat there, consumed by his own drunken misery. After a while his chin sagged onto his broad chest and his breathing turned stentorian, like someone sawing wood.
Very quietly, wincing at every metal scrape, Elena examined the cuffs.
A big, solid clasp of metal about her wrist, the same about the metal frame of the bed.
No obvious weak points in the chain, even if she’d had a tool to give her sufficient leverage.
Whoever had designed these restraints, back in the days of Charles Dickens, had meant business.
Gritting her teeth, she tested the bed. It was just a light metal frame and, worst came to worst, she could probably drag or even carry it through the house, though that would likely sink any attempt at stealth even if she had a viable escape plan.
It was strong, though. She pulled until her wrist bled and the metal didn’t bend.
She began to plan how to get the bed, the whole bed, six feet long and thirty inches wide, past the snoring Uncle Jas and out.
Out into unknown rooms, in a wholly other part of this goddamn ridiculously convoluted house.
Rooms that might well not be designed for a single person to hump a whole bed through.
A bed that they were still chained to. Rooms that might be filled with breakables, or be occupied, or…
She actually physically kicked herself, wondering at the learned helplessness of the situation.
Wondering at the Enderboughs’ own blind assumptions.
They’d shackled her to the bed, of course they had.
The bed, which was some war surplus thing, hence designed to be portable.
But not portable as a single piece. It was made of tubular segments that twisted into each other.
It was the work of a moment and some silent swearing to force two of them apart and just slip the cuffs out of the resultant gap.
Now she still had the jingly bracelet, but it wasn’t restraining her anymore.
She took her shoes off, held them in one hand with the dangling cuff-end stowed conveniently in one. With infinite care she padded, stocking-footed, past Uncle Jas and out.
The thing forcing its way from the mouth had angel wings still half-trapped, was clutching at the lips with too many little clawed hands.
Its own face was gaping open, split wide below a caricature of a nose, and a smaller winged figure struggled to be free of it even as its own maw stretched around a miniature prisoner.
For a moment Elena was frozen with vertigo, unable to tell if this was a succession of escapes, or if each figure was devouring even as it was devoured.