She is in the back of a car, lying across the seats, her stomach lurching every time it takes a corner too quickly.
She is vomiting in the car, her sick splattering across the leather upholstery.
“Where do we go? Where do I take you?”
“St Anne’s, Limehouse.”
“Right. Right, yes, a church. The demon can’t get you in a church.”
The door opens and someone grabs her under the arms and drags her into the street. Her feet smack hard against the road and the grip on her is tight enough that it will leave bruises.
A voice. Footsteps.
Shouting.
She can smell her mother.
She is safe.
She awoke on a soft settee and glanced at the unfamiliar surroundings. Plastered stone walls, unpainted but hung with amateur art in cheap frames. Mass produced religious images; she saw one of a bearded figure, crowned with thorns and carrying a lantern, knocking on a door that weeds had grown up in front of. There was a poster for a teetotal soiree, the annual St Anne’s tea party on the 18th of June, and another that stated God is love in ornate writing. A wall calendar with dates marked off; the Havenstock christening, the Berlini wedding, the Dagenham funeral had been four days ago.
There was a desk that looked like it had once been expensive. The wood was good English oak, old and thick, but a corner had been snapped off, sanded smooth, and painted. Two of the legs were pine. The desk was strewn with papers and flyers, and a clock that told her it was a quarter to three.
Two armchairs, neither of which matched the settee, or each other. One was the most hideous shade of green she had ever seen on furnishings. Or on anything else, for that matter. Even vomit had a better hue. The other armchair was brown and hairy, as if someone had covered it with a shag carpet.
The settee she was on was a light blue, and someone had draped a red blanket over her. She understood others would think it garish, but for Stella comfort outweighed aesthetics, and the room was peaceful. She felt at ease there.
A small table beside her held a glass of water, a cup of tea, and a plate of hard sandwiches. She sat up and reached for the water, the blanket falling to her waist. Someone had removed her jacket and mask, but she still wore the rest of her clothes. There were bloodstains on the silk, and it was going to be difficult to remove them. She might have to burn the lot, if it even could burn. Oh, that was a good idea, burn the bloody silk and get an idea of how the pyroguard flameslow skill worked.
“Estás despierta.”
“Oh, wonderful, the Spanish have me,” Stella muttered, then glanced at the dark-skinned, blue-eyed girl who stared anxiously back. Stella could not remember her name, but she knew her power. Healing. There was no pain, and she could easily roll her shoulders. Stella wanted to ask in Spanish if Maria had healed her, but didn’t know the Spanish word for healed. “You made me fixed?” she asked instead. “Thank you.”
“A shattered hip bone, a powdered clavícula, escápula, and the top of your húmero. A severe conmoción. Five ribs, fracturadas. Multiple strained muscles. Extensive bruising. It looked like you fell down a flight of stairs, as well as being in a fight, and possibly an explosion,” the healer said in Spanish. She was using a lot of medical terms Stella didn’t understand, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear an entire list of her injuries in that flat, dead tone. Wasn’t her brother the one whose skin had become bark? They had spoken at the warehouse, three days ago, but it felt like it had been weeks.
“No explosion,” she replied. “I was thrown around a lot, that’s all. I fell down some stairs, too.”
“A black eye, a swollen jaw. Three of your teeth were loose. Cuts on your nudillos and your face. Internal swelling around several of your organs,” she continued listing the injuries Stella had arrived with. She wondered if nudillos had anything to do with being nude. Then wondered if it was something like cuts on her bare ass, and had to keep the grin off her face. “You likely would have died after a few agonizantes days.”
“Then, thank you, thank you for saving my life. I owe you.”
The Spanish girl shook her head. “You saved me, I saved you. The debt was mine, and is repaid.”
“But…”
The Spanish girl, Analia? No, that wasn’t her name, but Stella was sure it began with an A. The Spanish girl cut her off. “If you insist on owing something, try to think a little more kindly of Spaniards in the future.”
Stella sighed. “It’s hard. They killed my father.”
“Yes, they killed mine, too. The cabrón deserved to die. He was an officer in the Inquisition, an evil man. He deserved what they did to him. They did not have to kill my mother, though. They did not have to kill my little brother. What sin has a five-year-old committed, what sin of his father has he heredado? My people, we have done great evil, and now we do more. I do not think we can forgive ourselves, and no one else wants to forgive us either, but some of us are innocent five-year-olds. Think better of them, please.”
Stella stared at Maria… that was her name, Maria something Rubble or something like rubble that was Spanish. Maria Escombres? No… Stella stared at Maria for a long moment, unsure exactly how to respond to all that. The healer didn’t move, waiting silently by the wall, watching Stella with eyes like glacial ice, waiting to judge. “I’ll think better of innocent five year olds,” Stella said.
“Thank you. I will get your mother.”
The girl darted out of the room, and Stella sat back to wait. She might have been healed but she was exhausted. The fight, the injuries, the stress of investigating, had all taken their toll on her, and the sleep had not been enough to recover from it.
She noticed a copy of the London Eye under the sandwich plate and pulled it free. The main headline was about suffragettes chaining themselves together and to a fence, then lying across the road in Oxford Square. It halted traffic for an hour; the chains needed to be hacksawed off. The police had called it a foolish idea and took them home to their husbands or fathers.
This weekend there would be a two-day special on the woman who won’t be silenced, with exclusive interviews and rare photographs of the leaders of the suffragette movement. The Siberian exposé was now onto the women of the wastes and there was a picture of a Siberian woman on the cover.
A milk float had overturned in Beaufort Street. Gun shots, shattered windows, furrowed grass, broken walls and cracks across the road, screams and lion-like roars, and the authorities were trying to claim a motorised milk float from Express Dairies had toppled over? No one would believe that, would they?
Of course they would, she thought with a sigh. It was in the newspaper. If they weren’t near the street, they would believe what was printed. Some journalists, like Hildy Johnson, would break amazing, well-researched investigations. Others, like this Thomas Smy, would print the official police statement and never ask questions. Thankfully, most of the Eye’s reporters were like Hildy Johnson.
Stella was wondering if she should write to the editor regarding Mr. Smy’s bias when her mother walked into the room, arguing with an older man she had never met before. “I understand your concerns, Mr Hargreaves, but your parish is not in danger, and we will be gone before your next Sunday service.”
“It is more than just the Sunday service, Mrs Maris. The annual tea party has already required rearranging. The curates have not run any of their Bible classes since you arrived.”
“Two of them have been doing permanent house calls, visiting the sick and expectant mothers, and other community work since we arrived. The church has also been paid for the service provided.”
Mr Hargreaves reared back as if he had been slapped. “This is not about the money, Mrs Maris.”
“Then do not make it about money, Mr Hargreaves. The church has been paid in information. Now the Church knows something is happening with children worldwide. Already, letters have been sent to missions in far-away countries to watch for anything unusual. The Church is ahead of many governments, for once.”
“But the danger-”
“Is not here, nor for you, Mr Hargreaves. It is out there, for those poor children huddled below us. I have set in place protection for them as best I am able. Are you truly so callous as to set them on the street before my protection can be manoeuvred into place?”
“Do not put this on me, Mrs Maris. You will have your three days, ensure that it takes you no longer.”
“Very well, now do please excuse me. I require a moment with my daughter, if you would be so kind.”
He looked extremely unhappy, but he stepped outside and her mother closed the door.
“Was that the vicar, mama?”
“No, the verger. The vicar is this delightful, tiny old man who insists we call him Allan. He must be eighty if he is a day.” She turned away from the door, looking Stella over. “You are looking much better, Stella. I had no notion your errands would be so dangerous.”
“Mama, I-”
“No, Stella Harmony Catherine Maris, do not try to excuse this. You willingly placed yourself within harm’s reach without support and almost died for that decision.”
“Yes, mama.”
Selene sat in the armchair on the left. “Now, give me your report, Stella. Leave nothing out.”
Stella gave her report concisely and mostly in the relevant order. The clinic. The bad fish. The factory. Stop, go back, she had to report on breaking into the Land Registry and finding the addresses and uncovering Doctor Jekyll’s identity.
“It’s a false name,” her mother said.
“You’re certain?”
“Very. It’s fairly famous from a popular book.”
Stella frowned. That clerk had been laughing at her. Are you a good journalist? Well read? Knowledgeable about modern culture?
“Continue, Stella.”
Stella continued. The house that turned out to be a brothel. The encounter with Ronnie Staunton. Her mother quizzed her on every aspect of the fight, so that it felt like she was describing every second three times. “And then you showed up and dragged me out of there,” she finished.
“I did not.”
“Bi-da, then?”
“We found you outside, on the stairs of the church, this morning, Stella. We have no idea how you arrived, nor why you told anyone to bring you here. You endangered everyone inside this building with that action.”
Stella gasped. “Mama, I didn’t. I was unconscious the whole time.”
Selene blinked. It was a subtle sign, but Stella had sixteen years of reading the tiny facial cues her mother sometimes let slip. That blink could have been a scream of distress in someone less controlled. “Indeed. Then this is even more worrisome. An external party knows enough about you to pick you up and bring you to this church. Oh, one more thing, Stella, and do try to take this calmly. The fish was most likely fine; it seems the baron has the power to induce illness. It must have happened during the altercation yesterday. Maria expunged all traces from your system.”
Stella was on her feet, her clothes shifting around her. Her hands clenched, her lips thinned, her eyes narrowed. “I am going to kill him.”
“Do sit down, Stella, that little shit is long gone. Toma arrived hours ago and I gave him the task of returning von Rautenberg to East Prussia almost immediately.”
Her mother was clearly upset about Stella being poisoned. She’d never have used foul language otherwise. Sending von Rautenberg away immediately protected him from both of them, and whilst Stella was angry, she also knew she wasn’t anyway near as dangerous as her mother.
Her mother said Stella had the passions of her father. He had been a great musician, once, before the world all went wrong. Her mother said his emotions could never be contained, and he had outbursts of joy, sadness, creativity, and anger. The anger especially would come out thick and fast and die away just as suddenly, like a summer thunderstorm. Her mother never said it, but it was clear when she spoke that he had loved her with every part of his soul.
Stella’s mother, on the other hand, never appeared to get angry. She felt the emotion, but it never seemed to alter her composure. She might tighten her shoulders a little, blink, or take a slight fraction of a second longer before she spoke, but only someone who knew her as well as Stella or her bibi-daj would ever notice.
Sometimes, however, her rage was an inferno too powerful to be contained, and when that happened, then she might actually swear. Baron von Rautenberg’s escape was the only reason he still lived.
“Thank you, mama,” Stella said, sinking back down onto the settee. “I do regret that I missed Uncle Toma, though.”
“He was sad to miss you, too. Now, the Romani have been arriving and leaving all day. Anna will be going with one of the groups. She will stay at least until tomorrow, in case your injuries return, but you must take it very easy for the next twenty-four hours to prevent that from happening.”
“Yes, mama. Has my bi-da left yet?”
“Not yet, but soon. She has a long way to travel today, yet still refused to leave until you were awake. Go to her now, so she can finally be about her journey, will you?”
Stella had been sleeping in a little sitting room the priest used to entertain guests or talk to concerned parishioners. It took her a few minutes to find her bibi-daj, who was in the crypt organising the teenagers into groups of eight for their journeys.
“You look so much better,” she said, seeing Stella. “Your mother was worried about you.” She pulled Stella into a hug. With the eight inch height difference and her bibi-daj’s unwillingness to bury her head in Stella’s chest, it was an awkward movement, but it still felt reassuring.
“I’m sorry I missed Uncle Toma,” she said.
“My little brother will be back, don’t you worry,” her bibi-daj replied, pulling out of the hug and grinning up at Stella.
“It’s been three years since I last saw him; I don’t want to wait another three. Mama just sent him to Europe.”
“Well, she certainly tried, but,” her voice turned harder, “o beshengro sapno did not rob you of time with our family, no more than a few days at least.” her bibi-daj’s smile widened, her voice softening again. “Toma’ll be back. He is merely taking that little toad to a ship. I doubt Toma will even leave London. We have to transport this lot in groups of eight. Toma called in every Romani family in the south of England, I think. It’s a huge operation, and that tikno kirmo has not derailed it. Once he drops that lot off, he’ll return in time to help us here.”
Stella smiled. “Good, I’m glad. But you are leaving today?”
“You and your mother will follow soon enough.” She reached up to rest her hand comfortably on Stella’s cheek. “Oh, one more thing, tikni stardi, if you ever, ever worry your mother again by walking into danger without backup, I will cripple you, and then you won’t be worrying your mother by walking anywhere. You understand, yes, miri chajori?”
Stella sighed. “Yes, bi-da, I understand.”
Previous Chapter: Chapter Fifteen
Next Chapter: Chapter Seventeen
Editor’s Note
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From: The London Eye Editorial Board
Subject: Language
Date: June 13, 1922
It has already been addressed why the narration uses bibi-daj to refer to Farnika, who is essentially a second mother to Stella, so now it’s time for the bi-da lore drop.
There are two reasons why Stella refers to Farnika as bi-da in dialogue, the in-universe reason and the meta-reason. In-universe, it’s a cute diminutive the same way she refers to her mother as mama.
Meta-reason, biba-daj is a Romani kinship term and Stella is a gadji. As the author is not Romani and is trying to write respectfully about a culture they are not part of, they won’t show gadji characters using Romani words. Bi-da is not a Romani word, but sounds like it could be a diminutive of bibi-daj.
Stella’s swearing isn’t Romani. She makes up her own swear words, as previously stated in the text.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.