The Ripper Affair

Chapter Five Quite Possibly Your Regard

There was a sense of motion, and jolting.

A carriage? For a moment the protective blankness his faculties were swathed in threatened to thin–or worse, shatter completely.

So he withdrew, and for a long while there was nothing, until he heard her voice again. Cultured and soft, and yet brisk as ever. “Yes, there… Carry him to his room. Mr Finch, there are arrangements to be made. Alice, please tell Madame Noyon I require her–I shall be wearing mourning. Horace, fetch wax and parlieu, I shall be sealing a room. Mikal–oh, yes, thank you. Quite.”

More motion, outside the cotton-muffling. Sadly, his flesh would not allow him to retreat much longer. Certain pressures were building, not the least the urge to avail himself of a commode or its equivalent. Even a stinking alley would do.

Memory rose–Valentinelli, his eyes a-glimmer in the dark of a filthy dockside lane, amused at Clare’s distaste for such quarters. When you are done pissing, mentale, there is work to be done.

The choking sensation must have been leftover smoke. For a moment his brain shivered inside its hard bone casing and the edifice of Logic a mentath built to house the constant influx of perception and deduction threatened to crumble. If it failed him, he would be lost–his fine faculties a useless mix of porridge and ash, the irrelevance every mentath feared even more than the loss of mental acuity descending upon him.

Mentaths did not go mad, but they could retreat into phantasies of logic, building a rational inward castle that bore no relevance to the outside world at all. A comfortable room in some asylum would be the rotting end of such an event. He would no doubt have every manner of care–she would do no less–but still, it was a fate to be feared.

Softness about his frame, and familiar smells. Leather, dust scorched away by cleansing-charms; linen and paper, and a breath of Londinium’s acrid yellow fog. His body was demanding to be heard. He turned away, into the blackness. It was his friend, that mothering dark, and something in him shivered once more.

Impossible. It is impossible, irrational, miraculous—

On that road, however, lay something very close to madness.

“Archibald?” Quite unwontedly tender, now. Miss Bannon sounded weary, and breathless. “If you can hear me… I am attending to matters. You are quite safe. I…”

Tell me it is a dream. A nightmare.

But mentaths did not dream. There was no room for it in their capacious skulls. Or if they did, such a thing was not remembered. It seemed a small price to pay for a rational, orderly world that performed as expected.

You suspect the world is not rational at all, Clare. Therein lies your greatest fear.

A rustle of silk, a breath of spiced pear. She had worn this particular perfume for quite some time now, and it suited her well. The smoky indefinable odour of sorcery, adding complexity. Another scent, too–the mix of flesh and breath that was a living woman.

Living. As he was.

Everyone about me was injured fatally. Perhaps I am grievously hurt and I cannot tell? Shock?

Yet he could feel his fingers and toes, the flesh he was doing his best to ignore. There were cases of those who had lost a limb reporting phantom pain; were there also other sensations? A ghost-limb… perhaps the nerves, enduring a shock, struggled to re-create the lost wholeness?

The horrible bubbling of Valentinelli’s tortured body struggling against the inevitable refused to recede into memory. Paired with the utter gruesome silence of death, the two set up an echo that threatened to tear him asunder.

“I am attending to everything,” she finally repeated. Had she paused, or had he simply lost track of Time, that great semi-fluid that could stretch at will? No matter how a clock sought to cage it, that flow did as it pleased.

“Mum?” A discreet cough, and printed on the back of Clare’s eyelids came the cavernous face of Mr Finch, the indentured butler’s balding pate reflecting mellow light from the sorcerous globe depending from the ceiling. He could tell from the slight lift at the end of the word that Finch considered the situation rather uncomfortable but certainly not dire. “Carriage, from Windsor. Requesting the honour of your presence.”

A short, crackling silence. There was a soft touch to the back of Clare’s hand–he shut it away, Feeling warring with Logic again. If he allowed any quarter in that battle, he would be defeated into sludge-brained uselessness in short order.

Her reply, measured and thoughtful. “Give the coachman a dram and send him on his way. Say that I am indisposed.”

“Yesmum?” It was all the question Finch would allow himself.

“Thank you, Finch.” In other words, she was quite sure she did not wish to be transported to Windsor. Inferences began to tick under the surface of Clare’s faculties, but he did not dare give them free rein. “Archibald, if you can hear me… simply rest. You are safe.”

A whisper of silk, the sound of bustling, and no doubt one of the footmen would be sent to sit with him and make certain of his continued breathing. Murmurs and hurrying feet, and Clare finally let himself face the unavoidable conclusion.

Miss Bannon performed some miracle long ago, while I was ill with the Red and expected to die. She has not spoken of it since, and neither have I. But now…

Now I rather think we must.

As a means of wrenching his attention from the memory of blood and dying, it was not enough. The tide of Feeling arose again, and this time he could not contain it. His body locked against itself, and a scream was caught in his stone-blocked throat.

Nobody heard. For he did not let it loose.

He woke to dim light, and for a long while stared at the ceiling. Dark wood, familiar stains and carven scroll-work. He heard the breath moving, in, and out. In, and out, the sough of respiration less than a cricket’s whisper. Just one pair of lungs, small and dainty as the rest of her.

Her Shield was not standing inside his door, which was not normal but by no means completely unusual. It could mean she was cautious, or disposed to privacy.

Whatever she wished to say, she wanted no witnesses. It suited him as well.

Start with a bare fact. “I was untouched,” Archibald Clare heard himself state, dully. The ceiling did not move, and he did not look away from its curves and hollows. “I should have died.”

Her dress made a sweet silken sliding as she shifted. “That would distress me most awfully, Archibald.”

“And Valentinelli?”

A long silence, broken only by a single syllable. “Yes.”

It was, he decided, not quite an answer. Was he likely to receive more from her?

This room was part of the suite he used while availing himself of Miss Bannon’s hospitality. Dark wood wainscoting and worn red velvet, the shelves of books and the two heavy wooden tables littered with papers and glassware for small experiments, both like and unlike the larger tables in the workroom she made available for him.

It had taken him some time to enter that stone-walled rectangle again, though. After the affair with the Red, it had taken him a long while to look through a spæctroscope, too. Flesh remembering the nearness of its own mortality, despite Reason and Logic pointing out that at least he was still alive–the inward flinch when he heard a wracking cough, or the sick-sweet smell of some spun-sugar confections, were also troublesome.

He wrenched his attention away from that line of thought. This bed was as familiar as an old pair of slippers. Wide and comfortable, and his weary, aching body sank into it with little trouble.

Questions boiled up. He attempted to set them in some approximation of order, failed, tried again. When he had the most important one, he finally set it loose. “What did you do, Miss Bannon? What manner of miracle did you perform upon me?” Stated twice, so she could not possibly misunderstand.

“Are you certain you wish to know?” It was the first time he had ever heard her sound… well, sad. Not merely downcast, but weary and heart-wrung. She was altogether too brisk and practical at any other moment to sound so… female?

No, Archibald. The word you are seeking is human. Instead of sorceress.

“I think I have some small right. I should have died, and I have not so much as a scratch upon me.”

She did not demur. “And you have no doubt noticed you are far more vigorous than your age should permit. Even your hair is thicker than it was, though no less grey.” A slight sound–her curls moving, she had nodded. “I thought you would remark upon that. I am amazed you did not press for an explanation sooner.”

He held his tongue with difficulty. Long acquaintance with her had accustomed him to the fact that such was the best policy, and that she was on the verge of solving the mystery for him. She very much disliked being compelled, or harried. The best way of inducing her to speak was simply to be attentive and patient, no matter how time or need pressed.

“Do you remember when we met?” Her little fingers had crept upon his hand now, and the intimacy of the touch surprised him. They rested, those gentle fingertips, upon his palm, just below the wrist. “The affair with the mecha, and the dragon.”

How on earth could I forget? He permitted himself a slight nod. His scorched hair moved against the pillow, crisp white linen charm-washed and smelling of freshness. His throat moved as he swallowed, dryly.

Her words came slowly and with some difficulty. “There was… during that rather trying episode, a certain artefact came into my possession. I bore it for a while afterward, but when the plague… Archibald.” Her tone dropped to a whisper. “I could not bear to lose you. And the weight of the artefact… the method of its acquisition… it wore upon me. I sought to expiate a measure of my sins, such as they are, by ensuring your survival. You are proof against Time’s wearing now, and your faculties will suffer no diminishing. You are immune to disease, and to all but the most extraordinary violence.”

He waited, but apparently she had finished.

His most immediate objection was at once the most pressing and the most illogical. “You should have told me.”

“I said I would.”

“In twenty years’ time. Had I known, Miss Bannon, I would have taken better care with Ludovico’s slightly more tender person.”

“No doubt.” Her hand retreated from his, stealing away. A thief in the night. “It is my doing, Clare. Perhaps I all but murdered him.”

What must it cost her, to admit as much? The tide of Feeling still threatened to crack him in two. “You should have told me.” Querulous, a whining child.

“I feared your reception of such news.”

Rightly so, madam. “Can it be reversed?”

“Perhaps.”

“Would you reverse it?”

“No.” Quickly, definitively. “I am loath to lose you, Archibald.”

“But Ludovico is expendable?” For a moment he could not believe he had said such a thing. It was brutish, ill mannered, illogical.

“We are all expendable, sir. Have I not often remarked as much?” She stood, and it was the brisk Miss Bannon again. “No doubt you are quite angry.”

I am a mentath. I do not anger. He closed his lips over the words. His body informed him that it had been held passive long enough, and it had a rather large desire to attend to some of its eliminatory needs. Anger is Feeling, it is illogical. It is beneath me. “Your Shield performed a miracle upon you as well, Miss Bannon. You lost nothing in that transaction.”

She became so still even his sharp ears could not find the sound of her breathing.

There was no crackle of live sorcery, no shuddering in the walls of her house as he had sometimes witnessed, her domicile responding to her mood as a dog responds to its master’s tension.

Finally, she let the pent breath out. “Nothing but Ludovico.” Each word polished, precise. “And, I suspect, your regard. I shall leave you to your rest, sir.”

Hot salt fluid dripped down Clare’s temples, soaked into the pillow and his scorched hair. He lay until she closed the door with a small deadly click; he slowly pushed back the covers and shuffled to the incongruously modern privy. There was a mirror above the sink-stand, but he did not glance into its watery clarity.

He did not wish to see the wetness upon his cheeks.