The Ripper Affair

Chapter Eleven Complete His Cowardice

“Dear heavens,” Clare repeated, vainly trying to smooth his wild, greying hair down. His blue eyes were blood-shot–he knew as much–and he was in no fit state to be before royalty. “I had no–mum, I mean, Your Majesty—”

“Sit down.” Miss Bannon was at his elbow. She all but dragged him across the drawing room and pushed him firmly into his wonted chair, a walnut affair with high curved arms he tapped thoughtfully when a complex case had his undivided attention.

“In front of the Queen?” He sounded genuinely horrified, even to himself.

“I care little who is present, sir, sit down before you collapse.”

She held an empty glass, and his sensitive nose discerned the odour of rum.

Her nerves must be frayed, indeed.

The remarkable fact that the Queen of the Isles was on the settee, without a guard or a minister anywhere in evidence, impinged upon his consciousness as well. It did not bode well at all, and thankfully gave him something new to busy his faculties with. “What dire news is it this time? The dynamitards, have they struck again?”

“No, indeed.” Victrix essayed a pale smile. “It is quite a different danger, and I am begging our redoubtable sorceress’s aid with it.”

“Begging? Nonsense. Miss Bannon is always more than happy to…” He blinked up at the lady in question, whose expression had shifted a few critical degrees. “I say, Emma, I am well enough. Do tell me, how may I be of service?”

“You may sit where I place you, and cease being ridiculous. Mikal–yes, thank you.” She pressed a snifter of brandy into Clare’s willing hands, and the amber liquid suddenly seemed the best remedy in the world for his pounding head. “And–yes, very good.” She lifted her replenished glass of rum, and tapped it against his. “Come now, sir. Chin up, buckle down.”

“And devil take the hindmost.” The familiar refrain, usually uttered when an affair they were pursuing had reached a breaking point of urgency and strain, comforted him. “I am sorry, Emma. I was dashed brutal about Valen—”

“Let us not speak of that.” She eyed him for a long moment before straightening and glancing at Mikal. The Shield’s face was a bland, closed book; he did not even spare a moment’s worth of attention on Clare. “Now, stay there.” She turned, regarding the Queen with a level, dark-eyed gaze.

It was odd to see such a childlike face so set and pale, the tiny diamonds on the crêpe band about her slim throat ringing with sorcerous light. The Queen, round and stiff in her mourning–the Widow of Windsor’s sorrow was rather a mark, Clare thought, of a certain calcification of character–wore more jewels, and certainly more costly, but they did not seem as expressive as Miss Bannon’s oddly matched adornments.

He noted the tremor in Queen Victrix, the hectic colour of her cheeks and a fresh scratch on the outside edge of her laced boot. Gravel, meaning she had hurried into a carriage, most likely on a wide walkway. And there, behind the careful mask of a middle-aged matron’s face, was a flash of Feeling.

He peered more closely, disregarding the rudeness of staring, to verify the extraordinary evidence of his senses. Yes, he was certain he could identify that flash.

Fear.

“I shall investigate these occurrences,” Miss Bannon said, formally. “If possible, I shall remove the danger to Britannia. I shall require every scrap of information there is to date; running after every murder in Whitchapel will only muddy the issue.”

Whitchapel? Murder? Clare’s faculties seized upon the extraordinary words with quite unseemly relief.

Victrix’s mouth compressed. “The first body was buried a-pottersfeld, the second is at Chanselmorgue. Her name was Nickol, I am told. More I cannot speak upon here.”

How very odd. It galls her to request Miss Bannon’s services. Miss Bannon has not stepped forth on the Crown’s business for… quite a long while now, really. He had become accustomed to such a state of affairs, he supposed; Accustomed was a set of blinders where Logic and Reason were concerned. Just as befogging as Assumption and Comfort, and just as dangerous.

The tastes of bile and brandy commingled were not pleasant, and his head still ached abominably. But the storm seemed to have passed for the moment, and Clare had a rich vista of distracting new deduction before him to embark upon.

It would serve quite handily to push the distressing news, distressing events, firmly away.

“Did you view the bodies yourself, Your Majesty?”

Miss Bannon… was that a flicker of a smile hiding behind her steely expression? Had he not been so thoroughly acquainted with her features, he most certainly would have missed it.

She was enjoying Victrix’s discomfiture, it seemed. Highly unusual. His estimation of the relationship between queen and the sorceress was incorrect. Perhaps said relationship had shifted by degrees, and he had missed it? For Miss Bannon did not speak upon the Queen much, if at all. Especially since the Red affair.

How very intriguing.

“We did, witchling.” Soft and cold. “And now you shall. Do not fail Us.” The Queen rose on a whisper of black silk and colourless anger, and Clare scrambled to his feet. Neither woman acknowledged him. Victrix stalked through the drawing-room door, which opened itself silently to accommodate her passage. Miss Bannon’s fingers did not twitch, but Clare was suddenly very sure that she had invisibly caused the door to swing itself wide. Mikal slid through after the Queen’s black-skirted, sailing bulk.

The sound of the front door, shut with a thunderous snap, was a whip’s cracking over a clockhorse’s heaving back.

Miss Bannon turned to the mentath, and she wore a most peculiar smile. Tight and unamused, her dark eyes wide and sparkling, colour rising in her soft cheeks.

He downed the remainder of his brandy in one fell gulp, and grimaced. Medicinal it might have been, but it mixed afresh with the bile to remind him that he was not quite himself at the moment.

That is ridiculous. Who else would you be?

“Emma.” He wet his lips, swallowed harshly. “I am sorry. I should thank you for your pains, and apologise for my behaviour.”

The sorceress shook her head, and her little fingers came up, loosened her veil. “It is of little account, Clare. I expected you would be angry. But you are alive to feel such anger, which is what I wished.”

“And Ludo?”

“Do you think he would have thanked me for such a gift?” Another shake, settling the veil firmly. Her features blurred behind its weave, yet Clare’s quick eye discerned the tremor that passed through her. Only one: a ripple as subtle and dangerous as the shifting of rocks heralding an ice-freighted avalanche. “No. Death was Ludovico’s only love, Clare; he would not have been happy to have her snatched away.”

Yours was the name he spoke when she came calling, Miss Bannon.

There was no purpose in telling her so. If a sorceress could keep secrets, so could a mentath. Were he a lesser creature, he might feel a certain satisfaction in the act of doing so. As it was, well… “I deduce your torpor has been shaken, Miss Bannon.”

“Certainly my leisure has been disrupted. Would you care to accompany me? I am to view a body, it seems, for our liege.”

What was the sudden loosening in his chest? He decided not to enquire too closely. “Certainly. Do I have a moment to change my cloth? I am a trifle disarranged.”

“Yes.” She paused. “I rather require another glove, I should think.”

“I shall make haste, then.” And, to complete his cowardice, Clare escaped while he could.