In the midst of death, life never stopped. Or rather, the jobs that needed doing never stopped. I wondered if Heaven employed domestics to keep everything running smoothly. Or was that Hell, where you found yourself a housemaid for all of eternity to the toffs residing upstairs?
For one day, at least, Alice and I had managed to escape outside, enjoying the sunshine and gentle breezes. With our skin protected by thick gauze and gloves, we tackled the beehives. I wielded the smoker and kept the bees dreaming while Alice removed the frames and used a scraper to pry the honey free.
Alice kept up a steady chatter about her intensifying romance with Frank. I could see the appeal. Tall and handsome like Seth, but Frank seemed quicker to laugh and more comfortable in his skin. From Alice's waffling, it seemed he was handy in all manner of things. There were even scandalously delicious details she would need to confess under cover of dark, once the rest of the house was asleep. I had to know exactly what he was doing with his hands, because whenever I asked, Alice always dropped whatever she was holding, and turned red as the motorcar.
I had watched them together, and quite apart from the fact that they made a handsome couple, I approved of how he courted my friend. However, I wondered if I should wave my sword at him and threaten to severe a limb if he ever hurt her.
A bee approached the slumbering hive on an erratic path. He circled several times before landing and starting his complicated dance routine. A few woozy workers looped around over his head and then, one by one, the little squadron flew away, off on some unseen task. Funny little creatures, controlled by their queen. Yet each and every insect had a role to play to ensure the survival of the hive. Their master plan was invisible to the casual observer who saw only each bee in isolation. Yet if you stepped back and saw the hive as a whole, one entity with a myriad of individual parts?"Bees!" I yelled and dropped the smoker.
Alice yelped and jumped, assuming I had them under my veil. She stared at me, a frown just visible under her netting. "What is it? Did you get stung? Where?"
"No. No." I waved her away. "It's the bees. We keep thinking of them as vermin, but what if they aren't like rats at all? What if they're actually like bees?"
Ideas swooped and dived in my mind like elephant-sized insects. I pulled at the thick gloves on my hands as I walked back to the house. My skin itched as though what I held on the inside was too big to be contained, and I was in danger of exploding all over the countryside.
What I needed was to blurt the rampaging thoughts out to someone who would understand?Seth.
"You've completely lost me. What do vermin have in common with bees?" Alice tipped her hat back, following me away from the hives.
I tossed the protective layers to the ground as I walked, heedless that they would need to be retrieved. Excitement blasted through my body as I grasped at the idea. It all made sense. How could we have been so stupid to miss it?
"We look at them singularly. But what if they are drones, or workers? All a part of a hive?" It could explain so much, like why they were leaving the cities. Perhaps we saw the advance scouts, looking for a new home or food source? "I need to tell Seth. This could be pivotal."
"Of course you do." Alice laughed. "Off you go. I'll cover your absence. Somehow."
I waved and tore off across the field. My feet pounded all the way back to the house and I skidded around the side, my hand landing on the brick wall for balance as I raced around back.
Henry stood by the motorcycle, my sword in his hand.
"Oh, you are magnificent." I kissed his cheek and dropped the strap over my head and stuck my arm through so it settled against my back.
The faintest blush crept up from under Henry's collar, and he stared at his feet. A quick kick and the bike coughed, signalling it was ready. I shot away so fast, I sprayed gravel over the side of the house. Elizabeth would probably ask about the commotion, but in that moment, I didn't care. My sole focus was on racing down the road to Serenity House. At least today I wore clean clothes, mercifully kept that way by the apiary gear.
The bike skidded through the loose lime chip as I stopped by the grand entrance. Only now did I consider that this might not be my smartest move. What if word got back to Step-mother? She would want to know where I disappeared to in such a hurry. Alice said she would cover for me, and someone needing my sword was always a convenient excuse. But there were too many eyes and mouths feasting on Seth's every move.
I glanced around, house or outside? Would he be in his study? Just then, movement caught my eye from across the lawn?Seth, with a handful of men clustered around him. He raised a hand to me and smiled. My stomach dropped to my toes before slamming right to the top of my head, where it plummeted back to the right spot. I didn't need Alice to tell me I had it bad; I knew it from the wobbles in my knees that had nothing to do with the horrid suspension on Trusty.
"Ella, we saw you tearing along the lane." He turned to one of the men at his side. "We'll continue this later."
Brims of caps were touched as the men melted away. I bounced on my toes. I couldn't hold it in any longer.
"Bees," the word flew from my lips.
His smile widened and he raised an eyebrow. "Bees?"
Oh heck. He would think I was simple minded, racing here to tell him about bees. When I really needed him to show me about the birds and the bees. Concentrate, Ella. One monumental breakthrough at a time. I shook myself and threw my hands in the air. "Argh!"
Seth laughed as I spun round and round to dispel the excess energy, so that I might have a coherent conversation with him.
"We've been looking at the vermin, the turned, all wrong. We see them as individuals, but what if they are bees?" I needed him to see what formed in my mind.
His frown deepened. "You think the turned are bees? That they will turn brown and furry or that they sting?"
This was not going well. "No. Think of their behaviour and how they act, not as hundreds of single entities but as one."
He took my hand and drew me down toward the river to the old oak tree. He paced for a moment as he considered my idea. "The turned have left the cities, but attacks continue in the countryside. Do you think they follow some unseen purpose then, like bees?"
"Yes." Blissful relief warmed me, for he seemed to have grasped the thread in my ramblings. I leaned against the bark of the ancient tree to feel something solid at my back, while my mind soared with possibilities. "What if we are seeing scouts, looking for a new hive? What if there is a queen that directs their actions?"
"A queen?" His eyes widened and then he fell silent, mulling over the implications.
Far-fetched, I know, but was it really? The virus came from nowhere and animated the dead. If that was possible, then anything could be possible. More ideas cascaded through me. "To us they seemed senseless with no minds. But what if each was a tiny part of a much larger whole? What if each vermin is but a single brain cell to a larger entity?"
He blew out a whistle. "This could be an enormous discovery, Ella. I've been charting your sightings. If they're acting like bees, we must look for a deeper pattern. They may be radiating from a central hive. This is an absolutely brilliant deduction."
He caged me with his arms, one on either side of my head under the ancient tree. I basked in the heat of his praise. It really was quite a genius leap, especially if it were true.
"Clever, clever girl," he murmured before claiming my lips.
He kissed me with a thorough languidness, exploring every inch of my lips, tongue, and mouth. His calm blunted the edge of my manic mood, and my body followed his lead. I could kiss him until the edge of forever, if there were such a thing.
There was one idea gnawing at my insides that wouldn't keep quiet, as much as I sought to silence it with Seth's touch. I pulled back to regain my breath, meeting his steady gaze. "What do you think would be a queen vermin's purpose?"
He drew a hand down my cheek. "The War Office says the turned want to perpetuate the virus. So, following your theory, the bees would be looking for a better field of flowers to pollinate."
It sounded poetic when you thought of bees and fields full of flowers, rather than the horror of people torn and devoured by rotten corpses. "I thought the cities would be easier, with a higher concentration of people."
"But they are also better protected, and the turned are found and dealt with quicker. Out here, it takes more time to locate them. They couldn't congregate in large numbers in the cities without risking discovery."
Silence dropped as we both thought of the empty cottage and a missing family, except for a little girl wearing daisies.
"Come on, I'll show you what I have done with the information in your notebook." He held out his hand, and we walked back to the house.
In his study, the topographical map now had numerous coloured pins over the surface.
Seth explained. "Green pins are those who died in the initial pandemic. I have marked the place they died, rather than where they were buried."
The land behind the manse would have been a green minefield if he had; most were buried there in the mass graves or individual plots.
His finger moved to a different coloured pin. "Then I marked those who were turned, yellow for locals, blue for unidentified. Red is where you dispatched one of the turned."
From a distance it was pretty, the colours swirling around each other. Then my eye focused on the red; the final death brought by my sword. The map bled in response to the path I had cut. Bees still hummed through my mind. I took a step backwards, and then another, until I hit the opposite wall.
"What are you doing?" Seth asked.
"I want to ignore the individual detail and look at them as a whole. Imagine each pin represents a worker in a hive, heading out each morning in search of flowers. How would you find the location of the hive?"
He leaned on the wall next to me and crossed his arms, the two of us staring at the blobs of colour. "Bees would spread out in all directions from their hive. I would look for a circular concentration."
I let my mind wander, ignoring the blight of red, and concentrated on blue and yellow, like scattered daisies in the grass. One area drew my attention. Yellow and blue overlaid with drops of blood when I crossed their path and found, and then destroyed, their bodies.
"There." I crossed the distance and laid my hand over the map. One area to the east had a loose circle of pins with an empty spot in the middle. The rest appeared random, scattered like confetti. It was still an enormous area, easily some two hundred square acres, but we could narrow our hunt.
Seth stared at the spot with its concentric circles of hills and valleys. "It will still take some time to search, but we have a starting point. You are a genius." He dropped a kiss on my head.
I shrugged, but inside I glowed. "It's only a theory. We have yet to prove it."
"I need to notify London. This could be the breakthrough we have been searching for."
"Seth." I met his grey gaze. "What if there is a queen?" I chewed my bottom lip. The idea both intrigued and repulsed me. A queen bee was larger, fed by her attendants, and rarely left the hive. Would a queen vermin be similar? Would we find a woman running a Somerset hive, or a mother?
He held my gaze. "London will want such a creature captured."
Not quite what I meant. I really had no interest in rounding up vermin for the War Office to study. I was more concerned with what might drive a queen vermin. Were they all part of a hive intelligence, perhaps each diminished to a mere single spark in a collective conscious? Did they likewise share a single soul? Was that how they continued functioning, and why severing the head made them fall ?did the wound sever their connection to the hive? So many ideas and theories.
I looked back to the map, where the rings of colour now took on a different meaning. We just had to prove it, and somewhere in that area, we might find an answer.
There were days when I felt like a Clydesdale, pulling the plough and tilling an endless field. The harness weighed heavy around my neck and shoulders, but I had no way to remove it on my own. The leather bit into my skin, as I strained against the weight I must drag behind me.
Today is most certainly one of those days.
We started extra early. With the ball that night, our workload seemed to quadruple. They all wanted special baths and their hair washed, which meant lugging hot water up to their rooms because we had no money to plumb in the bathroom. Father had planned one before the war. The room was built and tiled and held a divine claw-foot bath, but the pipes were never connected. Now it seemed like an extravagant luxury. I was quite happy with the tin bath in the kitchen; it was closer to both the water source and the range to heat it. But no, they had to bathe upstairs in the fancy, useless room.
I was nearly done for the evening. The horses munched on their feed in the barn as I walked back to the house. My feet were killing me, and all I wanted was to lie down. Then I remembered that Seth had made me promise to go tonight. Silly to even contemplate it when I didn't have an evening gown, though Charlotte's hand me down might suffice. Sometimes, the way he looked at me, I don't know if he even noticed what I was wearing.
Oh. Shouldn't have thought that. The very idea of being naked with Seth made something hot uncurl and slither around my insides.
I snorted, wrestling my thoughts back in reality. How could I contemplate a night of dancing when my toes were numb? Maybe it would be bearable if he held me close to keep me upright. A giggle, most unlike me, shot from my throat as I pushed through the back door.
Elizabeth sat at the kitchen table, rapping one long fingernail on the waxed surface. Louise and Charlotte sat on the opposite side. Charlotte stared at her folded hands in her lap. Louise filed her nails and tried to appear disinterested, but her head shot up and pure venom filled her eyes. Magda stood at the range, her face drained and pale. Her gaze flew to me and she shook her head. Step-mother fixed me with her steel gaze; the ice blue pierced me and held me to the spot before I could heed Magda's warning and turn tail.
"Do take a seat, Eleanor." She lifted a foot and kicked a chair out from the table. It scraped along the floor. Never had an inanimate piece of furniture looked more foreboding.
Louise smirked, while Charlotte still avoided looking at me. They rarely ventured into the kitchen, to the servant's territory. For all three of them to be here, I was in trouble so deep I might spot the Titanic.
I sat and waited for the iceberg to hit. The only question racing through my mind was did I try and cling to the wreckage, or jump clear and take my chances in the frigid waters? I could only think of one incredibly handsome and charming reason that would bring her rage down on my head.
I laid my palms on the table, hoping to hide the quiver starting in my fingertips. Elizabeth could cut me to the core with a few choice words. While I could slay vermin, this demon defeated me in every single encounter.
"I have a very dear friend who happens to be a companion to Queen Alexandra," Elizabeth said, her gaze drilling through me. "And today she relayed a very interesting piece of gossip. Did you know that a duke, being so close to the throne, requires the permission of the monarch to marry?"
I stared at my hands, the tremor visible and creeping up my arm. "No ma'am. I did not know that."
She laughed, a cold sharp thing. If a noise could take physical shape, this would be my iceberg, bearing down on me and ready to rip my side open.
"Of course not. You are merely a servant, such matters are far above your head." The fingernail kept rapping on the table. "The Duke of Leithfield has sought the king and consort's opinion for his choice of bride. Apparently, he has his eye on a local Somerset girl."
Ice seeped through my veins, and I gritted my jaw to stop my teeth from rattling. "This is excellent news, is it not? Surely this mean he intends to propose to Louise? Perhaps he will ask her tonight, at the ball?"
Her fist slammed on the table and she pushed out from her chair. "He seeks permission to marry Miss Eleanor Cowie."
"Trollop!" Louise spat the word, dropped her nail file on the table, and half rose from her chair. Her face flushed red with anger that she held contained. Even she knew better than to take on her mother. "You underhanded, devious, conniving dollymop."
I was the captain on this sinking vessel as the first wave crashed over the bow. I glanced from Louise to Elizabeth, not sure which would strike first. Louise was more unstable, but Elizabeth had years of practice at beating me down. Charlotte drew in on herself, trying to disappear from the argument.
"A mistake, surely? What had I done? I should never have let his misconception linger for so long. I never intentionally deceived Seth. I thought we enjoyed a summer romance, and that his feelings would turn just as the trees did with the coming autumn. I thought to cherish his kisses as memories, like a flower pressed in a book long after winter has taken hold and the warmth of the sun has cooled.
Elizabeth rose and walked behind me, each step measured and deliberate. "I heard talk that your father never married your servant mother, but fooled the imbecile by waving a piece of paper at her, so I can understand you using her surname. But really, to deceive the duke into thinking you had more breeding than the pigs wallowing in mud? How could he mistake you for anything but a cheap whore?"
There was at least some of her statement I could rebut. "I assure you, I made no such assertion to him about my origins. It is only in the course of protecting our district from vermin, that I have had need to talk to Seth."
From across the table, Louise spluttered. She leaned on her knuckles. "His name should never pass your common lips."
"Quite, dearest." Elizabeth said. "You would dare call his grace by his given name? You, a mere scullery maid?"
In that fraught moment, I was the gazelle surrounded by hyenas. I dared not turn my head to face Step-mother and leave myself exposed to Louise and Charlotte.
Elizabeth pointed a finger at Magda. "Get out."
The cook froze and her gaze darted to my face. I had forgotten she was even there until now. "Go," I mouthed. I would not endanger my friends through my folly. She nodded and rushed out the door. I only hoped she would bring back the others, and Elizabeth would stay her hand Or would an audience provoke her further?
"Hold her," Elizabeth said to her daughters.
Charlotte looked up. "I really don't think this is necessary."
Elizabeth glared at her youngest child. "Excuse me? Am I sadly mistaken? Did I harbour a traitorous viper to my bosom all these years?"
"No," Charlotte spluttered. "I just think?
"Family or the serving girl?" Elizabeth asked. Her voice dropped to a low tone. "Choose your side Charlotte, and think very carefully."
A tear trickled from Charlotte's tightly closed eyes. She shook her head, opened her eyes, and stared at me. I read the apology she could never voice in her damp gaze. There was no escape for her from her mother's tight grasp. If only I could think of a way to free us all from Elizabeth's reign, and revisit her foul deeds upon her.
"Enough. She needs to be punished for touching my fianc?" Louise said. She lunged, grabbed my hands, and pulled me across the table.
Louise caught me as I still stared at Charlotte, throwing me off balance. I slammed into the wood before I could catch my footing and escape. Charlotte threw in her lot with the enemy and seized my other hand. I fought and struggled, but they were standing, and I was stretched over the expanse of timber, my toes off the ground.
"He is mine," Louise said, her face low to glare at me. "And he will propose tonight and forget you ever existed."
I heard the switch the moment before it fell. It made an audible woosh as it cut through the air, seconds before it struck my back. I jerked, but kept my lips sealed. For once I was grateful for my rough linen shirt and waistcoat. Step-mother was in too much of a hurry to strip me bare, and the clothing offered a measure of protection from the blows.
"Slattern," Elizabeth said, dashing another blow to my body. Each strike was punctuated with an insult, either to me, or my mother. Over and over, the physical blow struck laced with a verbal one.
After ten, I lost count. Not long after that, I stopped struggling. Despite the layers of clothing, my skin became sensitised as my nerves screamed with each hit. My mind couldn't hold in the whimpers and count at the same time. I refused to cry out, but tears welled in my eyes. Never had I seen Step-mother this angry. Never had a beating lasted this long. I braced for the next strike, but it didn't come.
"Bring her to the stables."
I nearly sobbed in relief. I lay still; my back burned as though she had taken the iron resting on the range and pressed it to my naked skin. Louise and Charlotte pulled me to my feet, and I cried out as stiff muscles flexed and pain flared over me. I stumbled for a step or two on wobbly legs that refused to be a party to whatever else she planned.
Fight, Ella, fight. I commanded myself. I would not be her willing victim. We emerged into the early dusk; I drew a deep lungful of fresh air and sought to bring my body back under my control.
Then I struck.
My arm came free of Charlotte's grip, flew in an arc, and connected with Louise's face. There was a most satisfying smack as I punched her square in the nose. It was almost like Charlotte knew what was coming, and had deliberately let me go. Louise went down screaming, and Elizabeth turned on me.
"See to your sister," she ordered as she grabbed my hair and twisted, throwing me to the ground.
I had the satisfaction of seeing blood bloom between Louise's fingers as she clutched at her face. Please let her nose be broken. Elizabeth raised the switch and added an extra blow while I lay in the compacted dirt.
I swallowed the cry, but couldn't hide the wince.
Elizabeth breathed hard as she pointed the switch at me. "You either come with me, or Alice will take your place."
No. Not Alice. I would endure anything to protect my family. Between one breath and the next, I made a vow to do whatever it took to bring Elizabeth down. I would be the instrument of her destruction; I just needed to figure out how.
I rose on unsteady feet and followed her lead. Step by step, she pulled me to the stables and thrust me into an empty stall. I staggered back against the wood and metal jangled. Beside my head, hanging from the tie up ring, dangled chains and shackles. She had prepared in advance for my punishment.
She snapped the cuffs around my wrists and stood back.
"You will stay here while we attend the ball. I will deal with you in the morning." Her eyes narrowed and gleamed like a rodent's in the half-light. "But wouldn't it be most unfortunate if a vermin found you while you are chained to the wall."
The ice crashed through my body. God, no. Please don't tell me she planned to leave me vulnerable and open to attack? Was her core so rotten that she could commit such evil?
I pulled at the chain, but it slid through the ring and wouldn't come free. The shackles were too tight to wiggle my wrists from their prison. I was stuck. Pain and despair flowed over my limbs, and tears finally ran down my face.
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