Renegade (5 page)

Still, in spite of all this, my heart felt as if it bled.

The hunger continued to rise inside of her; it was becoming unbearable. She thought perhaps vigorous swimming would ease it, so after feeding the animals one evening, she went into the water. But instead of swimming out to sea, she felt drawn toward shore, where villagers and fishermen would be. She knew that she should not do this, particularly in her hungry state, but she could not help herself. She was a hunter, drawn to prey—and there was flesh, beating hearts, on the shore. Perhaps if she could see these humans, hear their beating hearts, her appetite would be satisfied a bit, and she could return to her island home and feed on her normal meal of fish, bread, and vegetables.

She pulsed through the salty sea into shallower waters. The air was foggy, dusty, the waters gray, but her vision remained sharp and clear. She saw the stingrays, some small, some beautifully large, gliding along the bottoms below her. She saw pieces of old fishing boats covered in moss and barnacles, pieces of paddles. Old torn fishing nets pulsing in the depths.

When she broke the surface, in a small lagoon shrouded by mossy rocks, she heard voices nearby.

“Are ye insane, man?” a youth’s voice shouted. She eased up against the hard rock. Two young men, no more than eighteen years old, swam along the shores nearby.

“Only as insane as ye! Gie out haur wi’ me!”

Through the foggy blanket, she could barely make out their figures, splashing each other, wrestling in the surf.

She pulled herself under again, watching them from beneath the shallow surface. The youths had stripped all their clothes off, and she saw their pale naked bodies swimming and diving in the cold shallow waters just offshore, the depth no greater than ten feet.

She felt almost proud of herself, lingering here, not rushing forward to kill them. Perhaps this was all that she needed to ease her cravings for a bit.

But even as she watched the boys swimming, she remembered being a child and stealing gingerbread one afternoon. The spicy, sweet aroma had beckoned her to the kitchen—where she was normally not allowed to go. It had been close to dinnertime and she knew that she would receive a slap on her wrist from the cook for even trying to eat the bread. She still remembered how watching the bread had done no good; as the cook stirred a stew over the fire on the far side of the kitchen, she had pulled a large hunk from the bread and run to her room.

Even as this thought crossed her mind, a scarlet cloud burst out from the leg of one of the boys.

The venom flowed in her mouth, and her stomach growled.

No.

No.

She could not let this happen.

She clutched at the rocky wall behind her, trying to hold herself back, until her own clawed fingers bled.

The boy broke the surface, shouted in pain.

“Well, haury up mate, ye don’ want to bring th’ sharks.”

The other boy moaned in pain as they headed quickly toward shore.

She couldn’t hold her hunger anymore. In a frenzy, she swam toward them, suddenly regaining control just as they stepped onto the rocky shore. Her hesitation, and their speed, was what saved them.

Quickly, before she could pursue them onto land, she turned away and swam back to her island. The venom still flowed heavily in her mouth; she knew that her appetite for humans was intensifying even more.

When I reached my room, I locked the door behind me. Hearing no footsteps on the stairs, I gave a silent prayer of thanks that Grandmother had not followed me. My legs wobbled and I leaned against the door, sliding down until I sat on the floor. It was then that I gave myself free reign to cry.

As I sat there, in the darkness of my room, I felt too weak to even go to my bed. Wiping my face with my sleeve, I leaned my head back against the door and let myself think of Roddy—of that terrible day when he had died and I had almost drowned. Only now could I allow the pieces of that day, like driftwood, to fit together in my mind. Mother’s death, and the truth behind her death, had been difficult enough for me to face …

When Mother and I had moved to the outskirts of Dublin for her governess position on the Edgeworths’ estate, Roddy had quickly established himself as my best friend. I squinted through tears in the shadows of my bedroom, remembering his face so vividly. I could almost see him, like it was a photograph in my mind. He was tanned, freckled, the son of a blacksmith. He’d had taken pity on me the first time I had been ruthlessly bullied by the local children; I was only ten years old at the time, and Mother and I had only recently moved into our small house on the estate. Because Roddy had an uncle who was a boxer in Stepney, even at ten years old he harbored a fierce obsession with fighting, particularly bare-knuckle boxing. It had been Roddy who had taught me how to fight and knife throw. I was never as skilled at fighting as he was, but within a year I surpassed him at knife-throwing.

I wiped a tear from my eyes. Seven years. Seven years he had been my friend. We were so close. Then Mother’s seizures—which I now knew were her psychic visions—intensified.

“Can you tell me, honestly, that you have not withheld anything about your past life from me?”

William’s words stung me now.

There was no possible way I could tell William about Roddy. I had barely allowed myself to think of Roddy during these past months. I wiped the tears from my eyes and took a deep breath as I remembered how our friendship evolved after we both turned sixteen. Something almost imperceptible had grown between us, and neither of us knew how to accommodate its presence. Our friendly touches had become awkward. Part of me wanted to embrace these feelings, and part of me wanted to ignore them; a large part of me wished for our old endearing relationship where we were nothing more than friends.

During those years, Roddy had stopped by our cottage at the edge of the Edgeworths’ estate nearly every day, most often in the late afternoons after he finished his work in his father’s shop. But after Mother was diagnosed with dysentery, I had to care for her, and I feared that he would catch the illness. At least we all
thought
she had had dysentery—I clenched my fists so tightly that my fingernails cut into my palms. Max, I now knew, had murdered her—most probably poisoned her.

The pain she had endured … I shut my mind against the thought.

I heard the grandfather clock strike eleven, but I could not even consider trying to sleep. I thought about how awful I had felt upon learning that the Conclave executed her, of how that knowledge had driven me to kill. That night at the Montgomery Street house, I became a different person … murderous. I wanted nothing more than to kill each and every one of them. And ever since that night last autumn, I had been forced to rewrite, reassess, my last days with my mother in Dublin. And now I was finally allowing myself to think of my last day with Roddy, of his fate and the mysterious circumstances under which my life had been saved.

The day Mother’s illness came upon her, she had been giving the Edgeworth children their lessons. One of Sir Edgeworth’s servants brought her back to our cottage and laid her in bed. Fear gripped me as throughout the day as her fever increased and she began vomiting. Then, by the late afternoon, her excrement became bloody. Roddy stayed with me until Sir Edgeworth’s physician arrived, and then he had to return to his work in the blacksmith shop.

“Dysentery,” the physician announced dryly after examining Mother. He stood, rubbed his nose, and put his stethoscope back in his bag. “I’ve recently seen a couple cases in the city. I will inform Sir Edgeworth that she should not be around his family for the time being. She is highly contagious.”

“But what about her? Will my mother recover?”

He had only shrugged wearily before leaving.

The moment he left, I felt a terrible worry and then the beginning of an aching loneliness.

I cursed quietly through my tears, unable to imagine life without her. I loved her and could not even begin to comprehend the possibility of her death. I had always wondered why she had fled London—why we never went back. She had told me essentially nothing about her previous life there; all I knew was that London was the place where her estranged mother lived. She rarely discussed Jacque Sharp, my father—at least, the man I had
thought
was my father.

The evening she fell ill, the storm winds and rains slammed loudly against the cottage’s shutters. Roddy had come that night; I still remember him standing on the doorstep, soaking wet, the strong lingering smells of metals and of smoke from the shop upon him.

“Roddy,” I said quickly. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s dysentery. She’s contagious.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “Yer know I never git sick anyway. How is she? How are ye?”

Unable to answer him, I had left him momentarily to check on her. When I reached her room, she lay amid the blankets, her face still flushed with fever, but she slept soundly. Quietly, I turned down the lamp and left the room, pulling the bedroom door almost closed.

Roddy and I talked late into the night. I still remembered how, when he took his cap off in the low light of our tiny, dim parlor, his blond curls were so bright against his dark tan; he was already burnt brown, although it was not even the middle point of summer.

In spite of our newfound awkwardness, I let my emotions go just before he left that night, embracing him and crying. I tried to keep the sound of my sobbing down, and I spoke in croaking whispers so that Mother would not hear me.

Now, I heard Ellen’s footsteps in the hallway outside my door, proceeding down the hall toward the servant stairs as she retired to bed for the night. All candles and lamplight were out in the house, and I was enshrouded in complete darkness. I rested my forehead upon my bent knees and put my hands against my now tear-swollen face.

That night, after Roddy left, I quietly pushed open the door to the bedroom and was surprised to see Mother out of bed, staring out the window toward Sir Edgeworth’s forest, which stretched beyond the back of our cottage. Her hand had been pressed hard and flat against the pane.

She didn’t hear me. It was as if she was in a trance. I began panicking, hoping that another of her seizures—psychic visions, I later discovered—wasn’t about to start. I led her back to bed and then, when I turned to shut the drapes, I froze, startled. Lightning cracked, illuminating the sky, and in that instant I thought I saw a figure at the edge of the woods, watching us. I blinked and the figure was gone.

I had always assumed that it must have been one of Sir Edgeworth’s servants, on some night errand. I had also wondered whether I might be mistaken—that there had been no one there at all. Now, I knew that it was most likely Max—he was waiting for Mother to die. Waiting for me. Watching me, even then …

Mother was no better the next morning.

I had been up throughout the night with her as her illness worsened. By dawn her lips were dry, cracked, and purple shadows stood out in deep half-moons under her eyes. Periods of sleep, and then violent illness, continued in cycles all day. I took brief naps and ate only a little. That night, as the night before, I didn’t sleep.

I must have fallen asleep at dawn sometime the next morning, because I awoke, startled, to find her sitting up in the bed beside me. Her face was still pale and hollow, but she seemed very conscious. Not at all delirious or trancelike.

“Mother!” I said, as I jolted myself from the bonds of my sleep.