Chapter Ten

Helia watched as their carriage passed the Hoop and Toy and hoped their visit with Lady Thanatou would end civilly. She wouldn’t mind stopping later at the pub for a rump-steak pudding. She turned to look at Ellie, who sat before her, hands resting on her blackthorn, and chin raised, as if regarding the carriage ceiling. The veil she’d insisted her friend wear lay piled at the ready atop her hat’s brim. Though Ellie grinned like one who found life pleasant or even amusing, Helia knew it was her way of deflecting attention while she waited, patient as a cobra, for the right moment to strike.

“That Stavros,” Ellie suddenly said. “I’m certain he’ll try for Lady Thanatou again. When he’s ready. His wife’s turned to rock, I do understand, but I still didn’t like the make of ’im. His anger was hot enough for me to measure.”

“Well, Ellie, I will admit, I was glad to confront him in a public place. I might have been battered otherwise.”

“I’m glad as well, Helia. Had he battered you, it would be more than ’is knuckles I’d be rappin’. That man will see ’imself stuck upon a vengeful shiv one night.”

“Such anger, it is like from a man who has lost everything.”

“Him, lose everything? That paralysis that possessed you and Helene when Art first died. That is loss, Helia.”

Helia nodded, sober.

“No, instead of grievin’, Stravros kicks things. He has quite the dislike of our monocled lady, and it seems with good reason, considering ’ow many women have gone on to their everlasting, stony eternity thanks to ’er. I might be made a wee bit angry were I to fail Elvie. And that would not be inspired by my loss, Helia, as much by my ’umiliation.”

Helia nodded again, wondering if Ellie had ever pursued someone with the purpose of killing them. The injuries Ellie meted out with her stick were effective enough to end men long after an encounter with her.

“You would be more patient,” Helia said.

“Well, I’d just be quieter in going about it.”

***

The horse clopped, the carriage rolled, and Ellie sensed nature as far as she could reach in the fluid world. It wasn’t like being in a park or arboretum. Homes, gardens, nurseries, and other structures merged and emerged from the greenery that Ellie did not know as “green” but as living things. Southwark was pleasant to live in, relatively safe and peaceful, but Brompton was another sort of peace. It was prettier, at times untidier, and still wild enough to hide satyrs and elves. She recalled a fitting word.

“Bucolic,” she said.

“Very,” Helia agreed. “And most umbrageous.”

“Humph,” Ellie said.

She heard the whir of wheels and sensed female cyclists, pedalling like mad, coming abreast of the carriage. In single file, they sped past and down the avenue.

“Women racers,” Helia scoffed. “Rude of them to ban me from the Wheel Club. As the superior cyclist, I can’t help but win their silly competitions.”

“This Brompton hamlet,” Ellie said. “I’ve never had reason to visit. It’s very quiet. Very sleepy.”

“Not a bit of trouble to be found here, I’m certain,” Helia said drily. Their carriage turned. “Here’s our address. Oh my! That must be Lady Thanatou’s, that lovely horseless phaeton.”

Ellie cast her reading of the fluid world beyond their slowing carriage and witnessed the humming phaeton Helia spoke of. As it accelerated by them on the drive, she marked the facial surfaces of the passenger within that distinctly identified Elvie, her face upturned and smiling.

“Why that li’l minx!” Ellie said.

“Ellie?”

“Our Lady of the Monocle moves swiftly in ’er courtin’,” Ellie muttered. “She sent a conveyance for Elvie again, and of course she accepted!”

“The blind girl in the phaeton, of course. Miss Chaisty didn’t look harmed, Ellie.”

“Neither was Eve when speakin’ to ’er serpent in the garden,” Ellie replied, and once the carriage came to a stop, promptly disembarked while Helia instructed their driver to wait.

The first things Ellie noted upon approaching the home of Lady Thanatou were the presence of another waiting carriage, the locations of the entrance and windows, how many storeys the house had, and the lone, living presence within the scope of her reading: a large footman at the portico. She tapped her blackthorn as she and Helia walked and narrowed her awareness upon the man, searching him for the shapes of concealed weapons. He suddenly turned, entered the house, and shut the doors behind him. She and Helia came to a stop at the bottom of the portico steps.

“Hm,” Ellie said.

“Ellie, did you smile most menacingly again?”

“I did not, Helia. It were yer mad grin that scared ’im.”

The doors opened. A woman stood at the entrance and looked down coldly.

“I am Adara, keeper of this house. What business have you at the house of Thanatou?” she demanded.

Helia stepped near, smiling, and presented her card. Ellie fished in her pocket and then offered one of her own.

“Might I introduce myself and my colleague? I am Helia Skycourt, journalist for the Times, and this is Miss Ellie Hench. We must speak to your mistress, Lady Thanatou, on a concern of the utmost importance.”

“Shatterer!” Adara accused. “Destroyer! Nuisance!”

Ellie stood stock-still in surprise. She studied the direction of the woman’s regard and decided Adara was addressing her and not Helia.

“Miss, I don’t even know you,” Ellie said.

Helia succeeded in getting Adara to accept her card, then straightened with a smile.

“How very astute, madame! She is correct, Ellie,” Helia said. “You do like to break things.”

“I ’aven’t broken one sculpted object. Ask the British Museum,” Ellie said, offended.

“You are referring to her stick, I believe?” Helia asked Adara. “What if she were to leave it with you?”

“Come,” Adara merely said and turned to move back inside the house. Helia looked at Ellie with a raised eyebrow, walked quickly up the steps, and entered. Ellie squared her shoulders and followed.

“Lovely statue. Lovely urn,” Ellie said, referring to the antiquities sitting within hall niches as they walked. She could not sense the large footman anywhere, but heard tinkling wind chimes and became aware of an open-air courtyard, at hall’s end, beyond whose columns lay greenery. Before Ellie could measure the scope of the fluid-entirety before her, the housekeeper paused before an airy sitting room, its veranda doors flung open. Within, two female servants were laying tea.

“You may come with me,” Adara said to Helia. She turned to Ellie and held out her hand for her stick. “But Miss Hench must stay here.”

“I, stay ’ere?” Ellie said, disbelieving. “You don’t know who yer lettin’ in, miss.”

“Ellie,” Helia hissed.

“We know,” Adara said. She waited. Ellie sighed and handed her blackthorn over. The tea, at least, with its tiers of sweets, cakes, and savoury sandwiches, appeared quite delectable, and Ellie didn’t mind investigating it.

“Remember my concern, Helia,” Ellie said as she sauntered in. “Don’t get distracted.”

“I won’t, Ellie,” Helia assured, and Ellie sat in the chair a servant pulled out for her.

***

The housekeeper gave Ellie’s stick to another servant who stood by, then turned to Helia.

“Follow me, please.”

Helia did, peering into sunlit cubiculums with blue-and-red wall frescos, colourful floor mosaics, and elegant, modern furnishings. Birds twittered in the distance, accompanied by the soft ringing of wind chimes. Somewhere, a fountain flowed. Above, she saw the red arches of galleys within the vestibulum and the blue-rimmed skylights, allowing sunlight in. Her breath caught; were it possible to step back into a time two thousand years past, her present surroundings might be evidence of such a way of life, no longer known. Adara led her out of the vestibulum and past Ionic columns surrounding a central, open-air courtyard—the peristylium—in which a marble garden lay. Helia stepped within the sunlit place and marvelled at the figures, thinking them not just beautiful in form and shape but striking in their sensuality.

“I thought one was meant to be blindfolded to visit here,” Helia said.

Adara said nothing and brought her before a nude, female marble that stood in the garden’s centre. Chiselled manacles hung from the statue’s wrists.

“The Slave,” Helia whispered.

“Wait here, please,” Adara said and departed.

Helia looked upon the marble maiden’s face, its shadowed visage touched by sorrow.

“Dear Rose,” she said.

A man’s angry voice broke the quiet. Helia stepped away from the marble of Rose Batts and saw Tiberius Teegan emerge from the portico and into the garden’s end, his tall form belligerent. Helia stepped again to look around another marble, wondering whom he addressed. Lady Thanatou stood in purple and black, head cocked and golden mask gleaming in the sunlight. The lady regarded Teegan through her monocle as if he were a small, yapping dog.

“What is this about a cure, that—that you are a pharmakon?” he shouted. “Is it true you could have saved my Dolly?”

Both Adara and the large footman approached him. But Teegan started away and moved for Lady Thanatou.

“Answer me!” he cried.

What happened next seemed a blur to Helia; he grabbed for Lady Thanatou, yet stumbled, and in the moment of the lady catching him, he managed to connect the palm of his hand with her face. Her golden mask fell aside.

Adara turned and covered her eyes. The footman did the same. Helia spun around and pressed against the statue at her back.

Mirror, mirror! she thought, heart pounding. She pulled it out and in her shaky grasp, it flashed repeatedly in the sunlight. She held it up.

Teegan stood, mouth agape and his body off-kilter, as if frozen in midstruggle. He was no longer a man but all of white stone, his blank eyes staring. Helia adjusted her mirror to find Lady Thanatou and had a moment of fright.

No! Perseus used a polished surface! I won’t turn to stone, she reassured herself, even as her heartbeat sped. The unsteady reflection revealed a part of Lady Thanatou with her hand raised to her face, reaffixing her gleaming mask.

“Adara,” the lady said.

Adara turned and dropped her hands, and the footman did the same. Then Thanatou removed the metal syringe from its casing and stepped to the paralysed Teegan. She sank the needle into his neck and compressed the syringe. Helia moved her mirror again to watch Teegan.

Beneath the bright sunlight, colour crept back into Teegan’s surfaces: his silvered hair, the paled skin, the black of his mourning suit. His face, body, and clothes softened, and his eyelids shut. A sound escaped his parted lips, both a painful exhale and desperate moan. He collapsed and the footman caught him.

Helia turned her mirror and watched Lady Thanatou snap the syringe back into its case.

The syringe—it contains a restorative, Helia thought, amazed.

“Ahmet, see that he receives care,” Adara ordered. Ahmet placed the fainted Teegan on his shoulders and carried him away. Then Helia noticed that Lady Thanatou stared in her direction. Adara also stared into Helia’s mirror.

Helia put the mirror away. She tucked a stray curl into her hat, straightened her bodice, and then stepped away from the statue shielding her. Since neither Lady Thanatou nor Adara moved, Helia walked the length of the garden to where Lady Thanatou stood. Each step brought her closer to a bright, blue eye that glared behind the monocle. Helia came to a stop.

“The healer Asclepius was given two drops of the Gorgon’s blood,” she said, trying to still the nervous tremor in her voice. “One that heals and one that kills. You can bring people back to life.”

Lady Thanatou said nothing, and Helia felt she was speaking to a wall.

“I must repeat Teegan’s question,” she said. “Why did you choose to give Dolly death?”

“Have you ever stolen someone from their natural death?” Adara said. “Did you weigh the cost?”

Helia felt the question like a blow. Her face flushed, and she thought of Art. “My . . . I understand. But again, the question remains: why do you bestow death?”

“Our lady does not execute,” Adara answered coldly. “She grants what is asked.”

“Did Rose Batts also choose suicide?” Helia said. It was easier to address Adara than face Lady Thanatou’s piercing glare. “She, who could not envision herself beyond her humiliations and the outrages to her body . . . or perhaps it would not have suited your purpose to help her do so?”

Adara looked upon her, her gaze chilling. “You imply again that we favour death?”

“You have been called a ‘death cult,’” Helia countered.

“The countess was syphilitic,” Adara answered. “And Rose, made ill, desired her death to contribute to justice.”

Helia took a deep breath. She could not fault Rose her decision. “And the woman on the bridge?” she said.

“That one, our lady intended to save,” Adara said. “She was one who, when revived, might reconsider her intentions.”

“Yet the sergeant interrupted,” Helia said. “Was she restored?”

“Yes . . . she still chose to leap to her death. She was a poor woman, her children and husband lost to typhus. She too was ill, but our lady believed she would recover.”

“Because hers was a body strong enough to survive the disease. Only her spirit could not,” Helia said soberly. I’ve nothing, she thought. There is no pharmakos ritual here.

She then became aware that Adara had fallen silent and that Lady Thanatou stood nearer, still staring at Helia as if she were a bug meant to be squashed. “Why are you here?” she asked in a soft voice.

“I’m here to inquire as to your intentions, Lady Thanatou. You have been courting a young woman residing at the Institute of the Blind, or should I say, seducing that young woman. And—”

Lady Thanatou’s chin rose, and Helia saw her monocled eye flash. Helia’s heart thundered. Dread filled her stomach and panic bloomed in her chest. She could not tear her gaze from Lady Thanatou’s stare.

It’s terror! I’m terrified! Helia thought.

Her knees gave way. She landed on the ground and her trembling left hand fluttered up to her mask. Lady Thanatou touched her own.

“No-no-no, don’t!” Helia hissed to herself and grabbed her own left hand.

“’Ere now,” Ellie exclaimed behind her. “Did you slip and fall, Helia? Should have known you’d tippled at luncheon.” Ellie pulled her to her feet. “Set yourself on this bench now.”

Ellie dragged her to the garden bench in question. With Ellie’s body between her and Lady Thanatou, Helia could no longer look upon that baleful eye. Yet inexplicable fear still shook her, and Helia wrapped arms around herself. Adara, she noticed, had stepped away from her mistress, as if she too felt the effects of the eye.

“I must apologise for my friend. She ’as her weaknesses,” Ellie said cheerfully to Lady Thanatou. “I’m Miss Hench. How d’ye do.”

Helia heard no response. She dared to glance at Ellie, who stood, as she sometimes did in conversation, facing away from Lady Thanatou, as if there were an invisible person next to the woman. Ellie continued to converse to the empty space.

“Now, Miss Thanatou, as my drunk associate was sayin’. I’ve a very good friend, and it appears she’s found a persistent admirer, that person being you. And even she suspects yer not a very ordinary suitor. But ordinary or not, what matters is whether you’ve good intentions.”

Lady Thanatou took a deep breath and Helia turned away. A new wave of terror washed over her.

“This is what I think,” Ellie continued. “You ’aven’t killed anyone without them wanting it so, them ruffians bein’ an unfortunate circumstance. As long as no one else dies, it would seem yer a respectable lady. Strange yet respectable, but London is filled with such strange ones, isn’t it?” She stepped closer to Lady Thanatou, her voice measured. “I only hope to not see Elvie hurt.”

“I do not wish her harmed, either,” Lady Thanatou answered.

Ellie stood by Lady Thanatou, and Helia thought minutes passed with neither speaking another word. Not once did Ellie falter in Lady Thanatou’s presence; her chin remained raised, her body at ease, and her odd grin was constant upon her lips. She finally cocked her head in Lady Thanatou’s direction and spoke to the air above her shoulder.

“Thank you for the tea,” she said and sauntered towards Helia, who stood shakily and took Ellie’s arm. They walked into the house and Adara followed.

“My stick, if you please,” Ellie called to no one in particular, and Adara hurried before them to disappear down the hall.

When they stepped out of the house and into the driveway, Helia let out a shaky gasp.

“You had quite the conversation with that ’ousekeeper; it was an ’elpful earful. But you failed miserably with ’er ladyship, Helia. ’Er magical eye got the best of you, I take it?” Ellie said, turning for their approaching carriage.

“‘Its horror and its beauty are divine,’” Helia ejected. “Oh, Ellie, that gaze! She purposefully worked it upon me.” Helia felt once more that her knees might collapse. They boarded, and she sank in gratitude against the seat. As the carriage pulled away from the house, the dread in her stomach finally lessened. “You’re fortunate that you are not affected.”

“Oh, I felt the effects. But it took some time,” Ellie said. “It was a chill that grew and grew. I’ve no idea how she did it, but if that’s ‘fascination,’ then it’ll be the first time I ever was entranced. Had I not bid good day when I did, I’d have been cryin’ and wettin’ myself, just like you.”

“I assure you I did not wet myself.”

“I’ll begrudge you the assertion that I can be paralysed,” Ellie said, her tone thoughtful. “Same as those ruffians. ’Ow she brought that Teegan back to the livin’ was quite the feat.”

“The restorative in the syringe must be her own blood,” Helia said. “Taken from her right side, the healing side. Truly, she is the pharmakon.”

“Certainly. Very farma-con. But as to ’er eye, Helia. Like you observed, it was an effect that needed to be worked, for I did not feel such in the museum. Nor did she ever try such a trick on Elvie, as far as I know. Elvie was only disturbed by that woman’s forwardness, and ’erself being shy at the time. It had nothing to do with magical eyes.”

“Yet,” Helia said, “to have one like Lady Thanatou as suitor—”

“For one thing, there’s somethin’ not proper about you, Helia, yet Art’s never been warned off from your taint.”

Helia closed her eyes. “You are correct, Ellie.”

“‘Medusa the Queen,’ you had said.”

“I did.”

“Well, she doesn’t see Elvie as beneath ’er, and for now, Elvie finds this queen makes ’er ’appy. And she deserves all the ’appiness she can get. With Elvie in no danger of bein’ dead sooner than she ought to be, upon this lady’s word, which, if I agree with you, is a goddess’s word, then I see no more reason to worry.”

Helia nodded. “I agree, Ellie. There is nothing more we need do.”