Secrets and sacrifices, p.11
Secrets & Sacrifices, page 11
part #1 of Call of Cthulhu Regency Series
No. He was never mine, poor thing. She went to wipe her cheeks dry, then hissed in pain.
“What is it?” Thomas asked immediately.
“My arm,” Cassandra said. Now that the terror had ebbed, the aches and pains of her body were making themselves known. She was sore from riding, but the sharpest pain by far came from her upper arm. She inspected it and, sure enough, there was a gash in the cloth there.
When had that happened? Had she grazed a rock when she first fell to the ground? Had she done it to herself with the branch? Had… had the monster made contact with her somehow?
“We must get you back to the inn,” Thomas said immediately.
“No, surely Cassie will be more comfortable at the house,” Gilbert objected. “I can send for a doctor to treat her there.”
She could think of few places she would be less comfortable at right now than the hall. “The inn, please,” she whispered in Thomas’s ear.
“You tend to the other ladies,” Thomas said, sheathing his sword and gently taking her good arm in his hands. “I daresay they’re in need of it. I will ensure Cassandra gets help at the inn. And someone needs to track down the rest of the dogs,” he added with a grimace. “I do not think it would be worth it at this point to go in after Merlin.”
It was at that moment, after holding herself together through what Cassandra would objectively call the third-worst day of her life after the respective deaths of her parents, that her control finally shattered. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over, flooding her cheeks with heat. She covered her mouth with her hand to keep any noise in, but the heaviness of her breathing certainly gave her away, because a second later Thomas swept her up in an embrace, letting her tuck her face against his shoulder to hide it.
“May we leave?” she whispered as best she was able to under the circumstances. “I want to leave.” She didn’t want to be on display like this, a “weak woman” breaking apart in the face of adversity.
“Of course.” He made just enough space between them to lead her over to his horse, then helped her up onto it. Cassandra stared down at the animal’s neck for a moment before her stomach lurched alarmingly, imprinting the image of her sweet mount’s bloody neck on top of this one. She closed her eyes and turned her head away, and a moment later Thomas was behind her, one arm secure around her waist as the other reached for the reins.
Cassandra wasn’t looking, but she heard another of the party approach them. “Ride carefully,” Colonel Cross – his voice was the deepest among them, easy to identify – said with an air of gravity. “And do not stray into any shadows along the way.”
“I will,” Thomas said. “And I will be sure to warn the people of Tarryford as well, once I have seen to Cassandra’s comfort.”
“Good man.” The colonel looked like he wanted to say something else, but whatever it was never made it beyond his throat. A moment later, Thomas turned his horse and took them from a brisk walk to a canter so fast that Cassandra barely bounced with the transition. She kept her eyes firmly closed, and made shameless use of Thomas’s strength to keep herself upright as well.
Shameless indeed. Ridiculous. You have spent five years doing everything for yourself, with no need of anyone else to support you. Now, less than a week in his presence, and you’re already allowing yourself to fall back into old habits. He is not yours! You are not his! To give in to sentiment would be the greatest of follies.
Cassandra hated when her conscience was right. She sighed a shuddering sigh, then forced her eyes open. Heavens, they were already back in town! People were staring, whispering about them behind their hands; what a sight she must make.
Thomas stopped in front of The Four Feathers and dismounted quickly, then helped Cassandra down. She just barely kept herself from leaning into him once more, but stiffened her spine and her knees at the last moment.
“Innkeep! Ah, Garrett, you–”
“God Almighty, milord, what happened to Miss Wright? Did the beast get her? Did you kill it? Did you–”
“Get me hot water and clean cloths,” Thomas said with authority. “Her injury needs tending.”
“I’ll fetch Dr Parsons,” someone said.
“I am perfectly capable of–”
“Sir.” This was Mrs Copeland, speaking in a gentle but firm voice. “I understand that you two are engaged, but as you are not yet married, it would be… inappropriate for you to tend to her injury.”
Ah, yes. The wound was high on her upper arm. She would have to pull her dress down, exposing the bare skin of her upper back. She would have to be handled quite intimately, and, no, this was not a thing she could ask of Thomas, no matter how badly she desired to, no matter that she’d rather submit to his ministrations than someone else’s, especially Dr Parsons’s. She hadn’t forgotten how the older man had been determined to think the worst of her the moment she stepped through the door of The Four Feathers.
“I can tend to it myself,” Cassandra said, forcing herself to pull back from Thomas. He looked pained, his hand still extended towards her like he wished to reel her in once more.
Mrs Copeland looked searchingly at Cassandra before smiling in understanding. “Garrett, fetch Ma Hughes instead,” she called out. “She’s our local midwife,” she said as explanation, “and a dab hand at fixin’ up little things like this. I am quite sure everything will be all right,” she added for Thomas’s sake. “Come with me, miss, and we’ll get you ready for her.”
Cassandra nodded and followed Mrs Copeland into the inn, turning back only once to see Thomas staring after her. She willed herself to smile at him, but whatever expression crossed her face, it only seemed to make him glower harder. A question from one of the thronging men drew his attention, however, and a moment later he was replaying the events of that afternoon to a captive audience.
“Up you get, Miss Wright,” Mrs Copeland said firmly, ignoring the shouts and excitement from outside. Cassandra nodded and made her way upstairs to her room, where Mrs Copeland took the liberty of unlocking the door and letting her in.
“Ma should be here soon,” she said, opening the shutters to let in some light as Cassandra gratefully sat down on the end of the bed. “Till then, let me help clean up some of this mess.” Her hands were firm and dispassionate, just what Cassandra needed to give herself the space to regain her composure. If it had been Thomas helping her, she knew full well she would have dissolved into tears by now.
“Miss Wright,” Mrs Copeland said once she was done helping prepare her for the midwife’s attentions. It was the first time she’d sounded uncertain since taking Cassandra in hand. “Is it true, what your betrothed is saying about the beast attacking you?”
He is not my man. No matter how she wanted him to be. “It’s true,” Cassandra replied. “It happened in Ferris Woods, not two miles from the edge of town.”
Mrs Copeland crossed herself, her face a greyish white colour. “Oh, God help us all, not again,” she whispered.
“Again?”
But the lady was already gone, leaving Cassandra alone with the pain of her undressed shoulder and far too many questions. The beast, the reactions of the townsfolk, God, the beast…
“’Ello there!” The door opened again, this time to reveal an older, heavyset woman who somehow managed to wear a smile that didn’t seem out of place despite the circumstances. “You’re the lady that got a bit roughed up today, hmm?”
“Yes,” Cassandra said. “But I don’t think it’s bad.”
“Well, let me take a look, eh?”
In the time it took her to cluck over Cassandra’s wound – not much more than a scratch, but deep enough to merit bandaging after she washed it out with the hot water – and put her back together again, Cassandra had made up her mind. Today had proven that there were dark things going on in the vicinity of Tarryford. Given what Mrs Cross had alluded to earlier, it was even possible that Mr Fraser was the source of this darkness. Whether such mysteries came from Mr Fraser or not, however, she could not in good conscience leave them unsolved.
Talk to Thomas about it. He would help you figure it out. He is clever and brave and loves a challenge.
And perhaps… perhaps she would. Perhaps the time had come to do more than let him assist her in little things – although saving her life, as fortuitous rather than planned as it had been, was no little thing. Perhaps he would help her figure out the provenance of the beast that had nearly ended her life today, and–
Her heartbeat picked up speed, and Cassandra resolutely pinched herself hard on the thigh. She needed to think about something else, something that did not frighten her out of her wits. She needed to focus on her good fortune – that she was still alive – and leave the fear behind for now.
She knew there was no use in trying to avoid confronting her fear forever; that sort of thing led to a terrible dependence on alcohol, from what she’d seen of the uncle of the children she’d tended in Northumberland. But for now… for now, she had an afternoon to herself, and an old mystery to attend to.
It was time to delve back into her father’s journal. She hoped it contained the information she needed.
Chapter Twelve
Opening the journal up felt like shaking the hand of an old friend. Better than that, even. If she leaned in close enough, Cassandra could still detect the faintest whiff of her father’s pipe smoke, a horribly strong tobacco that lingered in the air for hours. She had chided him about it as a girl, disliking how the smell permeated the books, but now the scent brought tears to her eyes. New cover or not, this journal was a piece of home.
Cassandra stared down at the symbols drawn inside with a little smile on her face. Her father’s earliest interest had been history, not law; he had been a great fan of runes and hieroglyphics, and fancied himself something of an artist as well. The letter system he had personally created was a curious blend of the two, cryptic enough to baffle those who hadn’t been introduced to it, but then on top of that he had instituted a transposition cipher in all his personal writings. Cassandra remembered her mother asking him once why he bothered.
“Because it amuses me,” he’d replied with a huge grin. “I do not write what I do for posterity, dear heart; I write it because these are things that I do not wish to forget.”
Cassandra didn’t wish to forget it either, but it had still been quite a long while since she’d tried to decode any of it. She’d begged as a child to learn her father’s “secret language” and he had, after making sure she was in earnest, taught her the cipher. It had been fun to write each other notes that puzzled the rest of the family; it was something they alone shared and held a special place in her heart.
Let’s see… This symbol is always a double letter, and when laid next to this symbol, those letters are always the same… This symbol means that I must reverse the order of the two following it, but have no need to move around the letters themselves… The first page was painstaking work that eventually required her to get out a clean sheet of paper and her ink in an attempt to rewrite it.
It took three tries to create something legible, but once she had that, it was far easier to write out the next few pages, and once that was done, she was able to translate the following three without having to write anything down at all.
She was glad she did not need to write those pages down.
The first page was dated almost exactly a year before her father’s death. It all began so innocuously, with the sort of grand philosophising that her father had been prone to.
There comes a time in every man’s life when he must weigh the comforts of his current existence against the necessity of discomfort in creating a better future for the ones he loves. No human eye can cut through the dark and impenetrable veil of what is yet to be, but I am assured by my dear friend James that, with the aid of devices newly come to light in the battle against France, that restriction is potentially one of the past.
“And you thought that a good thing?” Cassandra murmured, dismayed by her father’s blatant naivete.
That I put myself in danger by assisting him in his arcane research, I am duly – even readily – resigned to. He has need of my philological expertise, which is something I am happy to share. The texts he has me read… they are quite mesmerising things, with runes so complex that at times they seem to dance across the page, defying even the sharpest eye to pin them down and hold them steady. Even in my recreations, inaccurate though I know them to be, they are oddly slippery characters.
Below this was a… rune? It seemed it could hardly be called a simple rune, more like some elaborate character that had been stamped onto the page, then stamped again slightly beside that, then again a bit up and to the left. It was not Eastern as far as she could tell, although Cassandra could claim no fluency in languages like Chinese. Nor was it from any other alphabet that she could readily name.
Cassandra had to tear her eyes away from the rune after a few moments; staring at it was making her feel a bit dizzy. She took a few deep breaths, then looked back down at the page, resolutely avoiding the strange sigil. Her father had more to say and she needed to know what it was, no matter how painful she found it.
This is but a small sample of the many symbols I have been tasked with mastering. Their use, in connection with certain artefacts and necessary actions, such as the use of his ancient obsidian knife, will create the opportunity we need to reach into another world. There are beings there, James assures me, that can truly tell the future – for a price. It is a price that we, the Brotherhood of the Black Goat, must find a way of paying if we are to maintain England’s sovereignty and power in this new and rapidly changing world.
Shub-Niggurath is this being’s name, and the price for her assistance is sacrifice. A single human sacrifice – the existence of one young woman of upright and gentle standing to be her vessel in the world. She will provide a conduit to the other realm that allows us to see into, and change, the future as it has been laid out. In this way, we will–
Cassandra could read no more. She had to stop. She pushed away from the table, stumbling in her haste to put some space between her and her father’s journal. She moved over to the window, desperate for fresh air to help rid her of the sick feeling that had lodged in her stomach after reading her father’s words.
How could he think such a thing? How could he possibly imagine that such dark activities would be of greater benefit than the cost asked for them? To sacrifice a young woman – and Cassandra knew she was not mistaken in thinking that such a sacrifice would result in that woman’s death, even if her body lived on – for access to such dark and evil power… it was sheer folly. A gross overestimation of the skills of the people who would wish to have it. It was un-Christian, it was against the natural order of the world, it was cruel in a way she had never imagined her father capable of being.
Was she wrong? Was it possible she was mistaken about the cause of her father’s death? Had he died as a result of his own arrogance, sacrificed to this awful Shub-Niggurath in an effort to enact some sort of material change on the world? Or had Mr Fraser taken that decision out of his hands and made do with the sacrifice of an old man instead of a young maiden? What about the coachman who had died, whose murder her father had taken the blame for? What had he been sacrificed for? Perhaps his death bought a beast like the one that had attacked her for its master. Had her father known it was going to happen?
You cannot judge him yet. Not fully. Not until you know the full story. But in her heart, Cassandra already knew that no matter what she read next, she would never be able to think of her father the same way again. The man who had cared so tenderly for her, who had taught her right from wrong and protected she and her siblings against the world… that man was no more than an illusion.
Byron Wright as Cassandra had imagined him, a pure-hearted, over-trusting victim of circumstance, was truly dead to her now.
Cassandra wanted to mourn him anew, wanted to lay out her grievances to a willing ear and a tender heart and seek reassurances that not everything in her life was a lie, and yet… there was no such person she could turn to.
I can never let my brother and sister know.
It would destroy them. Her brother idolised their father, holding him up as a model for how men should behave in the world, with care and righteousness, while her sister still thought of him with the easy affection of a young girl whose parent could do no wrong. She could not take that from them, but neither could she keep all her bitter disappointment locked in her chest. She could already feel it poisoning her veins, leaving her cold and disillusioned.
What was the point of being here, of humiliating herself in front of her former betrothed and his guests, of staring down a beast that might literally have come from another world, all for the sake of a man who had known what he was getting himself into? Should she risk herself for any more terrible truths involving him? Had any good come of her efforts at all?
Yes, there has been good. You have met with Thomas. You have his support, his understanding. You have his respect.
The thought, far from setting her nerves aflutter as it had every time she had entertained such notions so far, served to settle them instead. Yes, she did have Thomas. Moreover, aiding her had been his idea entirely, and he had acquitted himself of it admirably. And today… Cassandra let her eyes close, let herself relive the moment of sheer relief that she’d felt when Thomas appeared, gun in hand, to save her life. If he had arrived but seconds later, it would have been too late for her.
Could she abandon him now to this terrible place, this awful hunt, suspecting what she did – that Mr Fraser himself had brought the Beast of Avon Vale into existence? Could she leave, knowing that he would face something truly evil, without doing everything in her power to stop it? Could she abandon this town, filled with people who seemed regrettably familiar with such dark arts, when she might be able to help? No, it was impossible. She needed to see this through – if not for her father’s sake, then for Thomas.
