In a moment the woman could gasp again. “Cordelia didn’t… understand. She discovered…my husband’s interest in…the human body. She didn’t…understand. Wouldn’t…listen. He is brilliant. Lord Hargrave knows more…about…what a person can withstand and recover from…as do…the greatest surgeons…in the East. The organs…their functions. He should…been a master teacher. But he was chastised…hated…huntedfor his work.”
Caris raised the cup once more, and this time managed to swallow whatever liquid remained in the cup. When she looked again at Iris, her eyes streamed, the circles beneath them purpling. She gulped each breath now, as a fish coming to the surface of a pond.
“We knew…Cordelia was pregnant, stupid girl. If she would have stayed…silent, she could have…married weak little Thomas. But no. No, Cordelia was going to…tell about the stupid servant girl. Many girls…but all one girl. All the same. All eager to… seduce the lord and gain…his favor. He let them think…they’d won him. Stolen him away to…a secret place. Here.” Her words ended on a screech of breath.
“Cordelia freed her,” Iris whispered as she herself realized.
Caris nodded and leaned even closer, kissing Iris gently on her slack lips. “But the girl…couldn’t run. Mercy. What happened to Cordelia was…an accident. She fell. I had to…stop her screaming. She would have…suffered. Then I realized…my responsibility. Take care of…my girls before…they ended up here. I don’t like it when…he touches them—they’re…never the same afterward. Pieces…missing.”
Iris’s voice was barely audible. “Cordelia’s baby?”
Caris coughed into Iris’s face, and her tongue darted out, trying in vain to wet her lips. “I’d forgotten. But…my lord…is a skilled surgeon.” She leaned even closer. “Life…emerged…fromdeath-h-h.”
Iris moaned in horror, too weak to doanything more.
“I loved them,” Caris insisted, her voice nothing but a wheeze now, the sagging bodice of her gown revealing skin over heaving ribs, a living skeleton. “All my girls. And you. Could not…let them suffer so.”
Caris reached down to Iris’s hands, and she heard a faint rattling through the dizzy spinning of her head. Her forearms rocked free as the manacles around her wrists were released. Then her ankles.
“There,” Caris wheezed. “Go. Run.”
Iris tried to sit up as she swung her legs over the side of the table, but it was as though she no longer had command of her torso. The world spun as she tumbled to the cold stone floor, banging her suddenly heavy head and scraping her face on the supports as she fell. She strained to lift her head on her weak neck, looking at Lady Caris’s blurry slippers, tried to get her hands beneath her.
Her head jerked back and Caris squatted over her, grasping the top of her head by her hair. She saw the flash of the blade in the torchlight, but was thankful that she could not feel it against her throat.
“Just like them,” Caris wheezed. “You want to…leave me. I won’t let you…sweet Iris. You would…burn.”
Lady Caris suddenly wobbled on her feet, falling over to one elbow. Iris’s head jerked with the motion, and a white mass swept across her face.
Satin.
Lady Caris’s scream was a rusty puff. “Get it…away!” Her words were broken, rocky. She kicked out at Satin and he yowled pitifully as he skittered across the stones against Iris.
No!Iris’s mouth formed the word, but no sound came out. Her own lungs felt tight, frozen, in her chest.
“Away,” the woman gasped. “Can’t…” The blade rattled to the floor as Caris clawed at her throat, dragged her bodice down from her chest. Her mouth continued to move, but no sound at all issued forth.
Iris’s view was blocked as Satin walked between the women once more. He butted Iris’s cheekbone, her chin too, perhaps, then sat down. Iris saw the dark streak on hisfur. Her blood.
Satin, she mouthed.
Her eyes were closing. And she wasno longer cold.
* * * *
Padraig knew he’d been right the deeper he descended through the bends of the dark stone passage. The steps were impossibly old, worn smooth and slanted beneath the soles of his boots, the walls jagged under his left palm as he stepped carefully, his sword in his right hand. The stairs curved to the left in a semiregular pattern, and after what seemed like a quarter hour of creeping over the stones, a faint glow flickeredup the passage.
Light. Someonewas down there.
It took all Padraig’s will not to shout for Iris. If she was there she was likely not alone, and for all Padraig knew there could be another way into the subterranean depths. And so he crept on, at last coming out of the narrow channel into a low-ceilinged, wide room, it’s damp-striped walls ringed with benches and shelves, each of which were laden with crockery of all sizes, corked bottles in varying colors, leather-wrapped jugs sealed with wax.
And where no containers stood, tools and utensils and implements of unknown and terrible purpose hung on tidy hooks, all the supplies fitted together so perfectly as to have created a mosaic of sorts. All the tools weredark, stained…
And Padraig noticed the old, wide-shafted boots resting on the floor near the seam of wall—boots discolored with thick, dark grime that could only be grisly in origin. And above the boots, a pair of long, leather aprons, perhaps one time of light color but now splashed with what appeared to be drying blood.
Padraig’s heart stuttered in his chest. Had Hargrave already solved the problem ofIris Montague?
Was Padraig—and Caris Hargrave—too late to save her?
