Wasp (47 page)

Wasp stares aghast. ‘You had a child. A
child
.’

‘Yes, Wasp, and I’m hardly alone in that. Many a busy womb has found refuge under this roof. Not all so-called crimes women commit involve theft or murder
 . . . 
So there you have it. Any more questions?’

‘No.’

‘Then let’s go.’

They hurry downstairs in a flurry of skirts. The candles flickering in the sconces appear subdued, as if the air in the passage is sucking the life from them. Tapestries seem limp and washed out. Everything has lost its gloss.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ Wasp whispers.

‘These walls swallow up sound. They’re at least four feet thick.’

‘The Mirror Room door — it’s open.’

A crack, nothing more. Wasp hesitates, straining to sense any movement, beyond. ‘I still can’t hear—’

Hummingbird pushes the door wide and steps through. Taken aback, Wasp follows her into the Mirror Room. She regards the polished floor, the light globe with its flame turned low, the circle of mirrors reflecting eternity.

‘Empty.’

‘Really?’ says Hummingbird.

‘I don’t understand. I thought you said
 . . . 
What are you doing?’

Hummingbird nudges off her slippers. They fall onto the floorboards with a muted thump. White-stockinged feet whisper on the varnished oak, pirouetting like a pair of collared doves in some bizarre love dance. She pulls the pins from her hair and lets it tumble in a soft curtain over her shoulders. Both arms rise, hands poised. Skirts rustle as she dances from mirror to mirror. ‘Your plot seems to have turned sour, Wasp. Where are you going to run to now?’

A sick feeling spreads from Wasp’s belly into her throat. ‘You knew this room would be empty.’

‘Empty?’ Hummingbird chuckles like a mischievous child. ‘It’s far from empty. Take a look around you. Rooms, passages, nooks and crannies. Chambers within other chambers. A labyrinth.’ She pauses in front of one of the tall mirrors and raps it with her knuckles. ‘They reflect the world back at you while hiding another world of their own.’

‘You’re talking in riddles. I don’t like it.’

‘I’m simply answering your question.’ She raps the glass again. ‘People can disappear, become lost, be forgotten.’ She moves to another mirror and runs her hand, almost lovingly, over the smooth glass.

‘Where’s the Abbess?’

‘Abbess?’ Hummingbird’s hair swings about her cheeks in a dark spray. ‘The Abbess’s crown is as wooden as the desk she sits behind.’

She moves to another mirror, flicks some unseen catch and swings it open. Lamps hanging from the ceiling light the passage beyond. A short, whispered walk and they come to another, smaller, round chamber. The walls and floor are covered in frippery. Sagging bookcases, dusty trunks, yellowed books and papers piled high. Hats, hundreds of them, are heaped in a disordered mess amongst odd shoes and the other remnants of long-ago fashions. In the middle of it all is a dressing table with a looking-glass so old it reflects the world with an unsettling greenish hue. A figure sits ghostlike in a cotton nightshift, stroking her face and peering at her reflection.

Wasp’s voice catches in her throat. ‘Abbess?’

The figure doesn’t stir. ‘Am I still beautiful?’ she whispers. Her skin is pink and bare. All her paper tattoos are piled on the dresser before her like autumn leaves.

Hummingbird runs her hand along the back of the chair. ‘I don’t know what the concoction is, exactly. It keeps her quiet in the evenings and lets her live out her fantasy during the day.’

Wasp takes in the Abbess’s wide, glassy eyes. ‘The dream makers. You stole them from Nightingale.’

‘Age has bent this woman’s body into the ground and is taking her mind with it. At first the changes were so slight no one noticed. Then there was an incident. Then another, and another. The Abbess knew what was happening. She asked me to help her. Instead I’ve sent her somewhere else. Somewhere better than her rotting mind could go on its own.’

‘And you let her sit here, alone in this sty?’

‘All these things,’ Hummingbird gestures around the room, ‘are from her past. She brought them here herself. Every kerchief, every curled scrap of paper holds meaning. Yes, she eats with us from porcelain with a silver fork, and holds audience in a room as fine as any palace. But in the end she comes here to remember where she came from and the things she had to fight for. That’s what she told me once, that the sum of a person’s life is their memories.’

Hummingbird caresses the Abbess’s shoulder with her forefinger. ‘I clean her teeth, brush the snaggles out of her hair and empty her pot, just like a loving daughter. She was always a strong woman. The Abbess never suffered a day’s illness in all the time I’ve known her. She was a little too fond of gin, yes, and perhaps smoked richer things than a pipe from time to time, but her constitution was as solid as the stones of this house. Without me she wouldn’t have a life at all.’

‘But Nightingale? The Harlequins?’

‘Give a vain woman a title and a better dress than anyone else and it keeps her in her place. The Harlequins are a bunch of pampered Kittens, even more obedient to the Abbess than the best behaved of Masques. Cellar whores have twice their wits.’

Wasp squints in the muddied light. ‘Who are you, Hummingbird? Who are you really?’

‘A lost soul, like you. We’ve not been put here by chance, Wasp, but by a catalogue of lies, broken promises and male indifference. What can be stolen from a woman in a moment is seldom regained in a lifetime. Nothing has changed over the centuries. We are closeted, robbed of power, reduced to menials and brood mares. Except for the true courtesans. In ancient Greece they were the
hetaerae,
publicly displaying their wealth while turning the heads, hearts and minds of the men who supposedly governed. They had no official social status, and it was that which freed them. We are the dispossessed. The cast-offs. Because we’re not a part of society we can’t sin against it. No Masque has ever entered the Royal Court. We’re always kept on the margins — admired, esteemed, but never admitted. This is one apple that needs to be cut to the core. Our nets are cast wide and carefully baited. The big fish will gleefully bite. We shall catch them all. We’ll slip in through the back door and lodge for life in their gilded halls.’

Hummingbird glances at the figure in front of the mirror. ‘Despite everything, in the end she’s just another bawdy-house keeper. But enough of that. I don’t wish to spoil the coming charade.’

Back in the Mirror Room the lamp has been turned high, burning shadows behind the dozen or so figures now encircling it. Most are strangers but one or two Wasp recognises. The man who held the party on the river barge, and there at the back
 . . .

Oh dear heaven.

‘I want our Emblems to be seen in high places,’ Hummingbird says. ‘Every lord, duke or Member of Parliament must crave a Masque on his arm. Is that not so, Richard?’

He swaggers up. Who would have thought that boyish body was capable of such a thing, yet his feet are surprisingly gentle on the floorboards. He leans towards Wasp. She tries to back off, but Richard shakes his head and whispers ‘No, no’ like a father cooing at a swaddled babe. He takes Wasp’s head in his hands and she shivers because they feel like cold fish against her cheeks. Before she can utter a squeak his lips press against her own. Dry, hard lips, that she reckons haven’t known a tender kiss in all their years. A sour taste fills her mouth. She tries to push him off but he goes on making those stupid cooing noises. Now his hand strokes Wasp’s forehead. She supposes her own face must have turned a shade of blue, she’s that close to choking.

Finally a release. ‘Now, Wasp,’ he says, ‘be a clever girl.’

She backs towards the passage to the Abbess’s room, but Hummingbird’s blocking the door. A knife slides from her cuff and hovers at the other girl’s throat. Wasp recognises it as the blade from Hummingbird’s hairbrush. ‘I’m sorry about this, Wasp, I really am.’

‘You said you were my friend.’

‘I
am
your friend. Don’t you understand? You can hold the world in your hands, consort with princes and kings. The House is a tool to crack open the juiciest treasures. It can’t be allowed to go blunt. Just one more step and everything is yours.’

She brushes Wasp’s cheek with the backs of her fingers. Wasp flinches.

Hummingbird’s grin is like broken glass. ‘Don’t be hard on Richard. He hasn’t been the same since meeting you, my little mad girl. Oh, he dreams about you, Wasp. Dreams of doing things that even your battered mind could never conjure up. I understand how you could turn his head. Tonight will prove a test of loyalty in many ways.’

A mirror door on the far side of the chamber swings open and Moth is pushed into the room. She’s clad in a white shift, not a linen day gown but something much finer — silk perhaps. Her hair has been bundled up into a knot behind her skull. She is barefoot.

Now the trick is complete. Wasp could weep over her own stupidity.

Richard hauls Moth to the middle of the room and forces her to her knees. The lantern throws her shadow in a hundred different directions. ‘Get me a parson,’ she whimpers. ‘Please fetch a parson.’

Anticipation shivers through Hummingbird’s cohorts. They’re like hungry dogs about to be thrown a shank of bloodied meat.

‘You know what to do,’ Hummingbird says in Wasp’s ear. ‘Take that step.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘You’re one of us.’

‘One of whom? These brave souls slobbering over the life of a girl? You’ve been tormenting her all this time, haven’t you? Making hissing noises outside her bedchamber door, filling her ears full of terrors about the Cellar and the bad things that happen to disobedient girls. Did you remain silent when she stole that piece of ribbon because you knew I’d tell, that I’d be punished by the Sisters and likely foul any chance of friendship I’d had with Moth? What a cursed toad you are, and I hate myself for not seeing it. I’ll never be like you.’

‘You’ve been groomed for this moment, Sister, ever since I dropped that nest of wasps on your bed. Now you must choose between lives. Hers or yours.’ Hummingbird offers the blade. Wasp stares at it.

‘You can’t really mean this.’

‘Why not? Moth is dead anyway. She would’ve been executed for her persistent thieving, or starved in some ditch. We are all dead. That’s the first thing the Abbess tells us. Besides, why should you care? Richard told me about your adventures at Russell Hall. You were quite the talk of the district. How many hearts and souls have you already broken? Your mother’s? Your employer? His son? And the children you were supposed to care for? Kingfisher betrayed his own people. The Fixer let a woman die birthing his bastard. Now they’ve fled into the dark. Are you going to run? And keep running? We are the broken and the damned. Admit it. You’re not capable of friendship. Or love. You are the perfect Masque.’

Wasp takes the knife and steps forward. Moth’s face is like a cake someone has tipped onto the floor. One sweep of the knife and the task would be done.

‘Do it,’ Hummingbird urges. ‘Do it and join the circle. This is your real initiation. You dealt with that worthless cully, Cole. I saw this strength in you from the beginning, Sister.’

‘If I refuse will she go free?’

‘Refuse? You consider that a choice?’

Moth’s bruised lips ripple open. ‘You can’t save me this time, Bethany. Honestly, I’d rather die than go back to the Cellar.’

‘Forgive me,’ Wasp whispers, but something has already broken inside the other girl’s eyes.

‘Damn you, witch. Leave them alone
!’

A new voice. Nightingale has burst into the chamber. Her eyes are insanely bright, her face flushed. An undersized pistol is clutched in one hand. Where has that come from? Did she conjure it out of the air?

A sigh ripples around the lamplit faces. The circle wafts forward then ebbs again. Thoughts gallop through Wasp’s mind. Is this part of the game? Is the evening about to take another perverse twist?

‘We seem to have another guest.’ Amusement flickers on Hummingbird’s lips. ‘Never mind, I like surprises. Would you care to tell me where you got that weapon? I doubt it would kill a rabbit.’

‘Don’t be dim. You heard the rumours about Kingfisher keeping a pistol in case of serious trouble at the door. You’ve gossiped about it often enough.’

Hummingbird plucks something out of her sleeve. Nestled in her palm is a cluster of the brown crystals. ‘Is this what you want? I’ve no further use for it. Take it, return to your room and put your head back in the clouds.’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure? Look at yourself, Nightingale. Have you seen your face, listened to your breathing? That look in your eyes could turn a wolf to stone. You
need
this.’

‘Don’t bring that poison anywhere near me.’

‘Then would you mind telling me what you do want?’

‘Let Moth go. Wasp too.’

‘Why?’

‘I have my reasons.’ She cocks the hammer on the pistol. ‘You’re in no position to argue.’

Hummingbird laughs. ‘Are you planning to shoot us all?’

‘A splendid notion.’

‘Do you have a dozen other guns tucked inside your gown? Both your guardians have flown the coop. Why not go after them? Perhaps you’ll find your child, since you think yourself such a willing mother. Your time at the House is finished. Put that plaything away and leave. Now.’

‘Who are you to speak of motherhood? You killed your own child.’

‘Nightingale?’ Wasp’s voice is hoarse with fright.

‘That’s right, Wasp. Did you ask her about the baby?’

‘You left me those notes?’

‘Yes, I did, and I have no doubt she spun you some fantasy about gypsy hags and violations by evil men with eyes full of lust for her sweet young body. She’s a liar. She has been from the very beginning. The baby was real enough, but she murdered it. She blamed her lover and he was hanged, but his family knew what was in her heart. That’s why she fled here. She’s had her eye on the House from the start and, by God, she’s a patient little whore. Such a creature is capable of anything.’