Mrs. Blotgate

The next morning, Miss Jesczenka came to Emily’s room early, looking fresh and composed despite the fact that she must have been up all night in close deliberations with Stanton and the other magisters. She stepped over the frothy white remnants of Emily’s hastily discarded dress, then opened the curtains to let light into the room.

“See now, the sun did not fail to rise,” she said cheerfully. “After all, the troubles of a bunch of credomancers don’t matter one whit to it. Time to get up. We have a train to catch.”

“Then we are going to Boston?” Emily said. “Aren’t you needed here?”

“Mr. Stanton asked that I accompany you, and I am glad to obey the will of my Sophos.” Miss Jesczenka retrieved a stray hairpin that dangled from Emily’s ruined curls. She stared at Emily long enough to make Emily look down at herself. She was filthy, streaked with dirt and mud from the night before.

“I’m afraid there’s no time for a bath, but there’s hot water in the basin,” was all Miss Jesczenka said, as she turned and discreetly cracked open a window to air out the smell of loam and leaf mold.

Moving to the basin, Emily was surprised to discover that her twisted ankle didn’t hurt at all anymore. She balanced on it experimentally as she wiped streaks of dirt from her arm. It was as if the injury had never happened. Ososolyeh had healed her once before, the time she’d been shot in Dutch Flat. It was nice to have something working in her favor.

“How about you do something about the hand next time?” she muttered to Ososolyeh as she squeezed dirty water out of the cloth.

She thought about the images Ososolyeh had showed her. Last night they’d seemed so terrifying, but in the clear light of morning, they were just puzzling. A knife-edged woman made of black glass? Twelve men flayed into strips, leaving a lump of meat that glowed orange? What a useless jumble of nonsense. It certainly didn’t help with the puzzle of what had happened to Zeno and Komé. She hoped Stanton and his credomancers were having better luck.

“How did everything go last night?” Emily asked as she began to get dressed. Miss Jesczenka bustled about the room, picking up the discarded white satin gown and laying it carefully over a chair.

“As well as could be expected,” Miss Jesczenka said. “The other magisters are worried, of course, but Mr. Stanton is approaching the situation with a level head. He shared the information you provided him. We will be contacting the Sini Mira immediately to open negotiations for Emeritus Zeno’s return.”

“And Fortissimus?” Emily fairly spat the name.

“He will try to stir up trouble however he can,” Miss Jesczenka said. “But leave Fortissimus to Mr. Stanton. It’s his first challenge, and I have no doubt he’ll be equal to it.”

Her words made Emily feel a little better. But what did not make her feel better was the fact that Miss Jesczenka had pulled out a huge leather steamer trunk and was packing all of Emily’s belongings into it.

“But we’re only going to be in Boston for a day or two, right?” Emily asked, as Miss Jesczenka knelt over the trunk, folding chemises.

“Better safe than sorry,” Miss Jesczenka said. “Who knows what you might discover in Boston? If we do find your grandparents, they might wish you to stay longer. You wouldn’t want to have to send back for your things, would you?”

Emily said nothing, but went to her dresser to retrieve the slate Stanton had given her. She wished suddenly that she hadn’t rubbed out the last words he’d written on it. It would have been comforting just to see them. She tucked it carefully into the trunk, beneath some folded petticoats.

“Tell me honestly,” Emily said. “Will I be coming back to the Institute?”

Miss Jesczenka rolled back on her heels and looked at Emily in astonishment. “Why, Miss Edwards, what a question! You make it sound like we’re on the run. How grim. We’re just taking a brief trip to Boston. There is nothing at all to be concerned about.”

Not for the first time, Emily noticed the way credomancers had of giving an answer that was not an answer at all.

The Grand Central Depot at Forty-second and Fourth was a tangle of tracks and steam and people. As the city boomed, the station had to keep expanding to accommodate it, and thus it existed in a state of constant enlargement and revision, like a schoolboy’s novel written in pencil. And like a schoolboy’s novel, it boasted a variety of odd quirks. Trains could exit only in reverse. At Fifty-seventh Street, the tracks went under a tunnel and didn’t emerge until Ninety-sixth Street. And at the moment, a current project of construction made the ticket windows inaccessible except through a narrow causeway along which a long single-file line stretched.

“Why don’t you wait with the baggage?” Miss Jesczenka suggested. “I’ll get the tickets and meet you back here.”

“Why aren’t we taking a Haälbeck door?” As Emily was feeling cross, she said this more snappishly than she had intended. She gestured with her eyes to a line of commercial Haälbeck doors, where businessmen were lined up with bags and briefcases. Traveling by Haälbeck was not cheap, but since the doors were operated by the Institute, Emily supposed that they might at least get a discount. “There are Haälbeck doors that terminate in Boston, right?”

Miss Jesczenka opened her mouth, then closed it. She shook her head, obviously deciding not to favor Emily with an explanation.

“I’ll get the tickets, Miss Edwards,” she repeated, then melted into the crowd.

Emily sat down on the edge of her trunk, fanning herself. Even though it was early, it was already stifling. Paperboys were crying their wares, their voices echoing against the white-tiled walls of the station. One of them thrust a paper under Emily’s nose.

“Paper, miss?”

Emily could see only part of the headline—the words “Dreadnought Stanton” and “Unprecedented Debacle.” She dug into her purse for a dime and handed it to the boy. It was one of the seedier metropolitan tabloids, replete with red ink and tawdry engravings. As Emily read through the article, dismay as heavy as a lead shawl slumped her shoulders. She was no expert in credomancy, but even she knew that bad press was damaging. And this was disastrous. It was written in a bombastic style, a sharp, clever satire of the pulp novels in which Dreadnought Stanton had been celebrated as a mythic hero. Suspiciously well done—too good for the paper it appeared in, certainly—it bore the stamp of a professional hand. Fortissimus? Had he left the Institute, gone straight back to his Agency, and had someone write it up? Or worse, had he had it written beforehand?

Emily thought about what Miss Jesczenka had said about Fortissimus having the perfect opportunity to plant a Sini Mira technology during his arrangements for the Investment. But why would he do such a thing? It seemed clear that the Sini Mira had kidnapped Zeno to get at Komé and what she knew about the poison. But if that was the case, why would Fortissimus help them? Why would anyone who made a career of magic want to help the Sini Mira eradicate it?

Emily folded the newspaper—offending headline inward—and mulled it all over as she watched the throng of travelers pass by. What Fortissimus had said the night before made sense. If he’d wanted to get his hands on the Institute, there were surely better ways than tearing it apart.

A woman in a black silk dress glided by, and Emily shuddered as she remembered the woman from last night’s séance, the woman made of black glass with knives for fingers. The more she thought about it, the more the strange vision disquieted her. What could it mean? Ososolyeh had meant to show her something, but what? She suddenly felt very annoyed with the ancient consciousness of the earth for being so all-fired obtuse. One would think that an ancient consciousness might be a bit more obliging, but apparently not. Apparently it had its own concerns, which had nothing to do with Komé and the Sini Mira.

Poor Komé. For Zeno, strangely enough, Emily felt only a kind of vague dismay. She remembered the snow-white man sitting in his office, calmly smoking a cigarette. Zeno had played with fire, and got his fingers burned. But Komé hadn’t asked for such troubles. Once again, she’d been drawn into someone else’s machinations.

What would the Russians do to Komé? What kind of horrible methods could they employ to extract the information from her if she would not give it to them willingly? And what was to say that the old Holy Woman would not give it to them willingly? Komé had told her to go with the Sini Mira in Chicago. If they’d found some way to make her trust them then, what was to say that they could not do it again?

Too many questions. Emily’s head swam with them. She hardly noticed the woman standing before her until it was too late.

“Miss Edwards, isn’t it?” The voice had a smirk in it.

Of all the people she’d met last night, Alcmene Blotgate was the only one branded upon her memory. To her disappointment, Emily found that the woman was even more beautiful by the light of day. Exquisitely dressed in a rustling dress of iridescent taffeta that shifted colors from blackish purple to saffron, she looked like an elegant bruise. Her husband was nowhere to be seen.

Emily stood, straightened. She tried to look dignified and imposing, but the look of disdain on the woman’s face made her feel certain that she wasn’t succeeding.

“Mrs. Blotgate,” Emily said, not extending a hand.

“Leaving New York? I can see why you’d want to, after that bizarre event last night.” Mrs. Blotgate’s eyes touched on the newspaper Emily held under her arm; Emily squeezed her arm down over it tightly.

“It has nothing to do with that at all,” Emily said quickly. “I’m going to … see some family. You’re leaving New York, too, I hope?” She did not mean to add the last two words—at least not out loud.

Mrs. Blotgate did not answer, but just stared at her for a long time with those vast-pupiled gunmetal eyes. Emily felt quite nervous under the scrutiny. She felt like running away, but she stood her ground and stared back as best as she could, answering the challenge in the woman’s eyes with a challenge of her own. Finally, Mrs. Blotgate rippled a laugh.

“How charming. You’re a Witch, aren’t you?”

“I have been trained as an animancer.” Emily tried to make it sound impressive. Mrs. Blotgate lifted a derisive eyebrow; it was clear that she thought even less of animancers than she did of credomancers.

“Dirt magic,” Mrs. Blotgate said. She lifted a slender hand and brushed a speck of dried mud off of Emily’s face. “You really must be more careful to wash.”

Emily pulled away from the touch, anger thrilling through her. The woman licked her tongue over her lower lip, letting her hand drop back to her side.

“It was so lovely to see Dreadnought last night,” she said, each word carefully enunciated. “It has been such a long time. But he’s just as dull and humorless as I remember him.”

“In the days when you were desperately attached, you mean?” Emily said.

“Oh, that was all very long ago,” Mrs. Blotgate shrugged. “And humorless boys never hold my interest. It was merely a fleeting—if exceptionally pleasurable—liaison of youth.”

“It didn’t sound very … pleasurable,” Emily stumbled over the word. “You tried to kill him.”

Mrs. Blotgate frowned. “The coward deserved it. Running away to become a credomancer instead of claiming the power that should have been his. Death would have been a mercy for him.” A pause. “But that mercy will be granted him soon enough, won’t it?”

Emily opened her mouth to say something, but Mrs. Blotgate drove on.

“I’m absolutely fascinated by the fact that you haven’t seen the scar. Is it possible that you haven’t touched each other? If he hasn’t even told you the secrets of his skin—”

“He’s told me everything.”

“You believe that?”

“Yes,” Emily said.

The sincerity in Emily’s voice made Mrs. Blotgate smile again—a soft queer smile that reminded Emily of the underside of a rotten mushroom.

“Then perhaps you will make a good credomancer’s wife after all,” she said. “As credulous and self-immolating as Dreadnought could desire.” She paused. “On the other hand, you must have something rattling around in that pretty skull to entrap him as cleverly as you did. You’re a pretty little puzzle, Miss Edwards. How I would love to take you apart.”

Emily imagined herself a block of ice, and her breath fairly congealed white as she spoke. “I didn’t entrap anyone. And you could not take me apart if you tried.”

Mrs. Blotgate’s eyes glinted like hard gemstones and she flexed her long fingers.

“Why, I can take you apart just as we stand here. I know every low grimy inch of you. I know you’re no cattle baron’s daughter—you’re just a climbing little tramp, a skycladdische dirt Witch who fuels Dreadnought’s fantasies of having integrity.”

Heat rose up Emily’s throat, but she said nothing. Mrs. Blotgate continued, her voice calm.

“Of course, fantasies should be paid for by the hour, not married, so Dreadnought tried to call things off gently, in a civilized fashion. But you chased after him until there was nothing he could do but propose.”

“I didn’t …” Emily began, her voice shaking despite her best efforts to steady it. Then she drew a deep breath. “You are a horrible person. I wish to have nothing more to do with you.”

“Don’t try to play that prim little card with me,” Mrs. Blotgate snarled. “You never had it in your hand to begin with. I’m only applauding you for a trick well turned.”

“There’s no trick here.”

“Of course there’s a trick. There’s always a trick. From what I hear, you have the habit of throwing love spells at any man who looks at you sideways. Why shouldn’t you use a little magical encouragement on our dear Dreadnought? Catch yourself a senator’s son to lift you up out of the mud and dress you in diamonds?” She eyed Emily’s ringed hand meaningfully.

“That’s a lie,” Emily spat, quickly hiding the hand behind her back. “I would never—”

Mrs. Blotgate, who had opened her silk reticule to dig for something within, cut Emily’s words short with a crisply proffered card.

“Well, delightful as this has been, I do have a train to catch.” She slid the card down the front of Emily’s dress. “Call on me when you’re back in town.” She leaned close, put her mouth by Emily’s ear. “I can tell you everything he likes.”

At this, Emily brought her hand out of hiding and was lifting it to slap the woman across the face. But then, Miss Jesczenka returned with tickets.

“The train is on platform twenty-two, Miss Edwards …”

Emily let her hand fall quickly. She stepped back, flushed with rage.

Miss Jesczenka stopped when she saw Mrs. Blotgate. She stared at the woman for a long time. Her eyes narrowed. A quizzical look stole over her face, replaced quickly by cool reserve.

“I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced.” Miss Jesczenka stretched a hand. “I am Miss Edwards’ companion, Miss—”

“Yes, I know who you are.” Mrs. Blotgate looked at the proffered hand as if it were covered in excrement. “Tiza Jesczenka. An immigrant from Prague. A rabbi’s daughter.” She turned to Emily as if Miss Jesczenka weren’t there. “This is your companion? A dowdy old Jewess?” She shook her head ruefully. “I suppose this shows what the Institute really thinks of you.”

Miss Jesczenka looked at the woman for a moment. There was a sense of her marshaling some terrible force within herself. She lifted a hand, murmured something softly under her breath, and then said, in a very loud voice: “Duze!”

And then, just like that, Miss Jesczenka was gone, replaced by someone else entirely. Someone like Miss Jesczenka, but as utterly unlike her as Emily could imagine. Her neatly tailored clothes sagged into ratty unfashionability, her neat hair wisped carelessly, her eyes brightened with strange madness, and her cheeks reddened as if she were drunk.

“Oh, Duze, it’s you! How long it has been!”

Mrs. Blotgate looked around herself in alarm.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she snarled.

But Miss Jesczenka did not answer her. Instead she broke into a maudlin flood of loud Polish. She rushed forward, gathered Mrs. Blotgate into her arms and sobbed theatrically. “Duze! My dear! Don’t you remember me? The Bierstube in Praha, the Golden Tiger, U Zlateho tygra … do you not recall? The boys, they used to call us their little flowers!”

“Don’t touch me,” Mrs. Blotgate said, her face a mask of horror as she pushed Miss Jesczenka away. Her eyes darted around herself at the passing pedestrians; embarrassment flushed her cheeks. But Miss Jesczenka wouldn’t be denied; she hung on Mrs. Blotgate’s hand, pawing at it.

“Duze! Duze, don’t play so. It’s me, your dear little Alme. Such times we had!”

Men were watching now, pausing in their hurried transits to take in the spectacle of the two women wrestling with each other. Mrs. Blotgate saw them watching, and her eyes traveled down to what they were looking at. Her face went from red to purple. Gone was the elegant taffeta gown, gone was the sneering polished veneer. Suddenly she looked a hundred years older. Her face was haglike, her cheeks sunken from missing teeth. Drab clothes hung from her in rags. She smelled like beer spilled in a bucket of cigar ash.

“Stop it!” Mrs. Blotgate screeched, pushing Miss Jesczenka back. “Get back from me, you lousy Jew, or you’ll wish you were never born!”

Still Miss Jesczenka held her tight. She put her face close to Mrs. Blotgate’s and Emily heard her whisper fiercely:

“Don’t struggle, Duze! Don’t you remember all the fun we had?”

With a shriek of hatred, Mrs. Blotgate shoved Miss Jesczenka back, knocking her to the ground. Miss Jesczenka just rolled on the floor as if it were a great joke and laughed up at her—the laugh of a drunken whore.

“Oh, Duze, you naughty thing, don’t be standoffish!”

But the words were shouted at Mrs. Blotgate’s back as the woman staggered away from them, pulling her cloak around her. As she got farther away, Emily could see her true form returning to her, her armor of silk and velvet, but that did not stop the gapers from staring after her, elbowing one another and laughing.

Heart pounding, Emily hurriedly helped Miss Jesczenka to her feet. The woman seemed completely unflustered. She stood calmly, smoothed back her hair, straightened her hat. She glared at the staring men with an old maid’s steely frigidity. Emily watched the looks on their faces mutate from amusement to puzzlement, as if they weren’t quite sure of what they were watching, or why. Soon, the audience for the little drama had dispersed and Emily and Miss Jesczenka were left utterly alone.

Emily was flabbergasted. The sudden silence was deafening.

“What did you just do?” she managed.

“Miss Edwards, you must learn more about squinking,” Miss Jesczenka said, taking Emily’s arm with the utmost decorum. “The key is to find your opponent’s greatest fear and attack it. The greatest fear of a woman—particularly an evil woman—is that she be made trivial and insignificant.” Miss Jesczenka looked in the direction Mrs. Blotgate had gone. “A woman’s power is tenuous enough as it is. Having that power mocked is the most terrifying thing that woman who lives in the service of evil could face.”

“But what about you? You’re a woman, and you had to humiliate yourself …”

“Humiliate myself?” Miss Jesczenka clucked as they turned toward the archway that read Tracks 21–30. “It’s hardly humiliating if no one remembers. Anyone who saw that has already forgotten that the woman pawing Alcmene Blotgate was me; they will remember an inebriated harlot who has already ceased to exist. If they even thought to wonder what became of her, they would wonder only that she vanished so quickly and completely.”

Emily said nothing for a moment. Then she gave Miss Jesczenka a sidelong glance.

“Could you teach me to do that?” she asked. She found suddenly that she very much wished that she could have been the one to send the odious Mrs. Blotgate scurrying in such a satisfying, ugly way.

“I very much doubt it,” Miss Jesczenka said. “You haven’t a dissembling bone in your body. Unfortunately. Hurry now, or we’ll miss our train.”

On the train, they found their seats in a ladies’ car that bustled with late-morning activity. Emily watched New York recede into the distance as the train gathered speed, its wheels humming and clattering on the steel tracks. It wasn’t until they were well out of the city that Emily thought to reach down the front of her dress and pull out Mrs. Blotgate’s card. Without a word, Miss Jesczenka reached over and took the card from Emily’s hand. She tucked it away in her own bag.

“A very unpleasant couple, the Blotgates,” Miss Jesczenka said, as if the card had never existed. “They are mainstays of conservative Washington society. General Blotgate is the highest ranked practitioner in the military. He is first in line for the position of Secretary of War if Hayes gets the presidency.”

Hand on her chin, Emily stared out the window.

“Mrs. Blotgate comes from a very old and very feared family in the South, known for producing generations of sangrimancers.” Miss Jesczenka tilted her head. “The fact that she takes a new lover every year from among her husband’s cadets is widely known, but never mentioned for fear of reprisal.”

Emily pressed her lips together, stared out of the window harder.

“What was she bothering you about?”

“Nothing,” Emily said, hoping that the shortness of her reply would indicate her desire to stop talking about Alcmene Blotgate. The encounter with the woman had left her feeling greasy and unclean. Emily tried to sort out the confusing welter of feelings knotted beneath her breastbone. The images that kept flashing through her mind were those of the flayed man from last night’s séance, the man with the halo of feathers and the hand-shaped birthmark. The man with seams of blood on his skin.

Miss Jesczenka’s hand touched her knee, drawing her out of the morbid recollection.

“You mustn’t worry about it.” Emily looked up at her abruptly, into Miss Jesczenka’s mild eyes. “There’s an old saying: He that can’t endure the bad will not live to see the good.”

“That’s hardly comforting,” Emily said. Unbidden images of blade-edged fingers leaving blood trails on smooth brown skin flashed behind her eyes. “Especially when it’s all so bad.”

“Oh, it’s never as bad as you think it is,” Miss Jesczenka said.

The Institute is in a shambles, Komé has been kidnapped, the Sini Mira is on my trail, and the man I love is probably hiding something from me. Emily allowed herself a small, grim smile. Exactly how could it be worse?

As if intuiting the drift of Emily’s thoughts, Miss Jesczenka shrugged.

“Schisms of the type currently afflicting the Institute have always been part of credomancy,” she commented. “Sometimes they can even be beneficial, like dividing a plant. The separated halves may thrive better for the separation. The magisters who remain loyal to Mr. Stanton will be stronger and more focused for their loyalty. Those who defect to Fortissimus’ camp will always have the taint of treachery on their conscience. A credomancer with a guilty conscience is always at a disadvantage.”

Emily reddened, thinking of Mrs. Blotgate, and hoped that Stanton’s conscience was clear.

They rode the New York Central out of the city, winding along the Hudson up toward Albany. At suppertime they transferred to the Boston & Albany Railroad, which cut across the belly of New York State and into Massachussets. They arrived in Boston well before nightfall, and checked into the American Hotel—a foursquare brick pile that commanded a view of the smooth green commons.

The rooms were comfortable and well appointed, but even in a room with a hundred feather beds, Emily would not have slept that night. Opening her trunk, she pulled out the slate Stanton had given her, regarding its smooth surface. She chewed on the end of the pencil, thinking of all the things she could possibly write. I miss you. I need you with me. I don’t want to be in Boston. I saw Alcmene Blotgate at the train station. None of the statements were brave or helpful, none could be adequately discussed via a slate with lambs on it, and at least one seemed dangerous to mention even at all. With a heavy sigh, she slid the pencil back into its slot.

In the morning, Emily dressed carefully in a solemn mauve twill, placed her mother’s amethyst earrings in her ears, and tucked her mother’s hair sticks into a reticule of knitted black silk. Certainly the Kendalls would want some proof of her claims. Then she went downstairs to meet Miss Jesczenka for breakfast.

“I’m going alone,” Emily said abruptly, over her eggs. Miss Jesczenka shook her head brusquely.

“Out of the question. It’s far too dangerous.”

“This is my family.” Emily paused. “I won’t have the Institute interfering with that, at least.”

Miss Jesczenka slowly removed the tortoiseshell glasses from her face. She looked at Emily, her eyes soft and sad.

“Miss Edwards, you must trust that the Institute wants only what’s best for you.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Emily said, meeting Miss Jesczenka’s gaze with all the firmness at her command. “I’m going to meet my family alone. If you want to stop me, you’ll have to tie me to a chair.”

Miss Jesczenka sighed heavily. “All right, then. I’ll wait for you here. As long as you take a cab directly there and ask it to stand for your return, I can’t imagine anyone will bother you. But you must promise me you will be careful. I won’t have you coming back to me covered in insect parts.”

Emily smiled slightly, but said nothing.

“Your grandparents’ neighborhood is no longer as desirable as it used to be,” Miss Jesczenka warned. “All the best families have moved to the Back Bay, and Beacon Hill has gone over to tenancy. So come back quickly. If your grandparents wish to get reacquainted, ask them to come and call on you here, where I can protect you. All right?”

“I’ll be fine,” Emily promised, but was sharply aware of having learned that it was a promise she should not make.

After breakfast, the concierge called Emily a cab, and Miss Jesczenka hovered protectively by the hotel’s front door as she climbed into it. Emily gave the driver the address they had found in the Boston Social Register, and he touched his cap smartly.

The cab took her to Pemberton Square. Tall redbrick houses rose high up on each side of the broad cobbled street. The street itself was bisected by fenced garden plots that probably used to contain neat flower beds, but now contained small kitchen gardens. Here and there, laundry was hung out over the black-enameled fencing that held the sidewalk at arm’s length from the homes. Children played on stoops. On one set of stairs sat a man in his shirtsleeves, apparently indifferent to the overcast sky, reading a paper. It seemed friendly and cozy to Emily.

The cab stopped before a large home. It was very evenly balanced in construction, with four windows on each side of the house and a large red-painted front door right in the middle. There was a fan window above the door, and stone urns that held nothing more than dirt and the twiggy remnants of dead geraniums.

Emily climbed the steps. The front door had a small iron-barred grille in its center that could be slid open from behind to judge prospective callers. On a scuffed and tarnished brass plate beside the door was engraved The Reverend James Kendall, with a simple cross shown beneath it. This was the right place.

Taking a deep breath, Emily rapped her knuckles against the wood. The sound hung in the air.

There was no answer for some time, though Emily could hear shufflings behind the door. The little sliding door behind the iron grille was jerked open, and two eyes peered out at her. They peered for quite a long time, Emily thought. Then, finally, the door cracked open slowly.

An elderly maid in limp black and white leaned against the edge of the door, her heavy face pale and slack. She stared at Emily, dumbfounded. The careful words Emily had prepared to introduce herself evaporated at the sight of the woman’s obvious shock; Emily half wondered if she’d have to catch her from a dead faint. But after a moment the old woman managed to force two whispered words past her leathery lips.

“Miss Catherine.”