Needs Must When the Devil Drives

Mr Marwood’s tools were all in assembly. His instruments lay in perfect order; razor scalpels sharpened that very morning against his leather strop. Hooks of varying sizes intended to hold open delicate incisions far too fragile for forceps. A fine-toothed saw for cutting through bone matter.

It was everything that he would need for the dissection. He had been waiting for this day for months, the money he had spent, the plans he had devised, all to secure himself a human body with which to dissect. The secrets of human anatomy were mere minutes away, and he had done it all within his own means, without throwing himself to the mercy of the Company of Barber-Surgeons or the Royal College of Physicians.

His faithful man, Shiver Tom was as good as his word, an ingenious fellow, wasted at the docks. Although Marwood could sincerely understand how many compromising individuals would be uncomfortable commissioning a man without a surname, orphaned from the African continent.

Shiver Tom alone had succeeded where so many other ruffians and ne’er-do-wells had failed, stealing away the body of a young murderess from the gallows, freshly dead. Stolen from both the Company and the Royal College, an almost impossible task, and yet it was done.

The deceased murderess laid before him upon a table in the expansive space offered by his wine cellar. She had been dressed very simply for the gallows, but now she lay naked and cold. He could still see the dark ring the rope had made around her neck, the tissue bruised and purple with the pressure the cord made as it snapped her spine. It was rare enough to be offered the body of a dead man, but female cadavers were far rarer.

Helena Penbrooke, the daughter of a seasoned groundsman with no previous convictions had killed a nobleman and pleaded guilty when caught. She had little to say at her trial and had also remained silent at her execution. Her motives had died with her.

Eager to begin the long and fascinating process, Marwood approached his dissection table. He was unabashed by the nudity of his subject, having seen plenty of anatomical diagrams of women both with their skin and without. His studies had quite eliminated any impure thoughts of the unclothed human form.

He selected an appropriate scalpel, one that would be large enough to open the chest of his subject but small enough not to sever the pectoralis or serratus muscle fibre of the torso, which he intended to map in detail. The blade edge met with the skin and Marwood pressed in, with steady force.

The next few moments were some of the most viscerally terrifying instants of William Marwood’s life.

Marwood screamed as the corpse came alive on his table, blue eyes snapping open and crushing his hand around the scalpel’s handle as the blade was twisted out of his grip to be thrown across the room. The corpse sat up and grabbed at Marwood as he struggled against the grip of the dead, consumed with a profound degree of horror. The corpse spun him around and held him by the neck in a painful headlock. Marwood tried to cry for help, but the arm of his subject had closed swiftly around his neck, cutting off his shrieks.

“Where am I?” Marwood heard at his ear, a low, painful croaking that had come straight from the gallows, followed by agonised coughing. Not a corpse, then. But back from the dead all the same.

The arm restraining him allowed him the breath to speak. “You are in the cellar of my estate! I- I am William Marwood, aspiring surgeon,” he answered, fighting his fear to answer the revenant.

“Why?” growled the woman. She seemed to prefer to speak with as few words as possible. Given her condition, Marwood could not blame her.

“You were sentenced to death at the Tyburn gallows, I took possession of your body to dissect it. F-for the sake of British medicine!” Marwood explained, working hard to be as co-operative as possible.

“Not dead,” the voice snarled. “Clothes.” A demand, and a reasonable one. She must have been freezing in the cellar, Marwood himself had been shivering under a respectable set of woollen layers!

After being released, Marwood jumped away from the woman, careful to avoid any eye contact. While observing a naked corpse was the duty of a doctor, to stare at a living lady uncovered as he had been was not gentlemanly.

He threw her a large cloth, intended to soak up the blood of the dissection after his work was done. It was all that could serve as a blanket whilst he gathered whatever clothes he could find.

He scurried out of the cellar and upstairs to begin digging through his sister’s wardrobe – the sister in question currently touring Turkey – in search of clothes, shaking all the while.

He wondered if he would return to the woman in the basement to find her dead from the cold. It was not unheard of for victims of the gallows to avoid death after they had been hung, although the great majority of these poor souls ended up dying in the hours that followed, what with their body being treated as a cold lifeless corpse.

He didn’t begrudge the woman for being alive, but at the same time, he had been sorely disappointed by the fact. Marwood began to hope at the possibility of the woman’s belated death but heard himself audibly gasp at his own inhuman detachment, revolted by the prospect.

As he jumbled through clothes in his sister’s bedroom, feeling like a mad fool, he heard someone step into the room behind him. Marwood experienced another moment of abject terror at the sudden reappearance of the woman, looking as pale as the grave. She really ought to be lying down, it was not at all good for a woman who had spent the last few hours dead to be up and walking.

“Ah, madam!” Marwood began, assuming an air of professionalism with his arms full of day dresses and petticoats “Please, wear whatever you would like, as long as it’s thick and warm, I apologise, the intricacies of lady’s garments quite elude me! Then lie down in my sister’s bed. You must warm yourself as quickly as humanly able.” The woman had no response, although did disagree with Marwood’s suggestion.

He darted out of the bedroom as quickly as he could, embarrassed for a great many reasons. For the unchivalrous act of undressing an unconscious lady, but also for his inability as a physician to determine a living human body. Never before had he been so completely humiliated. His mind danced with solutions to this indignity. If the Company or Royal College ever heard of this, his reputation would be forfeit!

He waited a great while, cursing himself over and over, wondering what he could possibly do next. Of course, he must make sure the woman was alright firstly, as was his role as a gentleman. Her status as a criminal was irrelevant, as a man of the civilised world, he was determined to provide every comfort.

The fact that the woman would likely be hung again, if indeed she did not expire, was an afterthought. He considered again if she had died in his sister’s bed, hearing no noise from inside the room, he knocked and called to no answer. Gingerly, opened the door, providing rambling descriptions of his every action for fear he would witness the woman unclothed again.

He found her sitting upright in the bed, now dressed in his sister’s clothes, which fit the woman poorly, the murderess being markedly taller and, as Marwood had discovered from personal experience, stronger than his dainty sister. She said nothing as Marwood edged closer to the bed, giving nothing but a stare as cold as her flesh.

“Are you comfortable madam? My sister has been away in Constantinople with friends for the past few months and so the bed has been unused, kept in good clean sheets. Warm enough, I trust?” Marwood blathered, doing all he could to appear polite and hospitable despite the morbidity of the situation they were both in.

“Paper,” the woman said in that same crumpled voice. Whatever could she want with paper? Had she letters to send? Affairs to put in order? No! Marwood cursed his own incompetence, she wanted to communicate in pen and ink as her voice was so painful.

Nodding quickly, Marwood Hurried out of the room once more to his study in search of the paper his subject desired, No! Not subject! She was alive now, not a mere object. Breathing and talking, well, croaking. She had a name! What was it? Helena Penbrooke!

Marwood brought Miss Penbrooke paper, quill, inkwell and a board to write on while she remained abed. When the stationary was gathered before her, Miss Penbrooke began to write, scribbling furiously without a word of thanks.

Marwood was impressed that a common criminal had the knowledge to read and write, although, as he had repeatedly discovered, Miss Penbrooke was a woman of exceptions. As she wrote, Marwood enquired as kindly as he could if there was anything to be done about the surgical incision he had made in her chest. He couldn’t see the wound under her clothes, but Miss Penbrooke did not react to his question, and so he reassumed his silence.

When she was finally finished writing, Miss Penbrooke offered Marwood her page which read as such: 

You are a surgeon in the trade of bodies, yet you have been denied mine. I have heard of your ilk in the news. I am a capable and principled agent, despite the circumstances of my death. Spare me from the justice of the magistrates and their second hanging and I shall operate as your hood, procuring you bodies from the noose or the grave as you deem appropriate, without fee, until I have repaid you for your hospitality and discretion. Upon this agreement, any offence in the treatment of my corpse shall be forgot.

Marwood read the text aloud as Miss Penbrooke continued to stare at him in grim expectation. Despite her proposition, she seemed eerily unconcerned about her circumstances.

“I…see.” Marwood said, re-reading choice passages from the note to himself as he weighed his options.

Bodies from the grave, the note read. He shuddered to consider the possibility of stooping as low as the Surgeons and Physicians in his pursuit of medical science, but it seemed his hand was being forced in the matter, and Shiver Tom would need a trustworthy and capable aid in such an unscrupulous task.

Marwood knew almost nothing of Helena Penbrooke other than that she had been so extraordinarily durable that she had survived a death sentence, and she was swift and strong to the extent that she had risen from unconsciousness to disarm her own autopsist and seize him with remarkable quickness and force.

The other thing he knew was that she was a criminal wanted for murder and was condemned to be hung from the neck until dead, meaning if her survival became known by the magistrates she would instantly be apprehended to face the gallows once more, and he apprehended for stealing, molesting, assaulting, and finally harbouring her.

It seemed to Marwood that both he and Miss Penbrooke were engaging themselves in a form of mutual blackmail rather than the death or destitution they were faced with otherwise. It was a risky gamble for them both, however, they also stood to simultaneously benefit.

My death, Marwood read aloud from the note. Miss Penbrooke seemed to believe she had truly been killed rather than asphyxiated unconscious, and had simply risen from the grave.

For all his medical and theological knowledge, Marwood was truly unsure which of these unlikelihoods had occurred. Although looking at her now, her ghostly face stoic and infallible, he sincerely doubted she was the sort to be blessed.

He concluded that he could hardly turn Miss Penbrooke over to the authorities when she had so empyreally evaded them, it seemed unsportsmanlike.

“Very well, Miss Penbrooke. I will harbour you as per your terms. I shall have you meet my man, Shiver Tom, whom you shall be assisting very soon. If circumstances permit, within the week.” Marwood explained.

Once more the woman did not nod as she stared back. “Helena,” she corrected, her sandpaper voice sounding less hostile by the most marginal degree.

---

“They’ll call you ‘arf ‘anged ‘Elena” Tom remarked as he helped to manoeuvre the small cart into Bunhill fields, London’s Islington cemetery.

“Assumin’ they see the kiss of the rope, that is. You’re right to wear a high collar.” He admired her discretion. Helena had chosen to dress in men’s clothes and cut her hair away under a cap, as all-female crooks did; attire that evaded attention, and allowed the flexibility to run from the authorities.

The dock foreman and discerning charlatan Shiver Tom had found Helena’s condition quite amusing, a woman from the dead, leaving only her voice in the grave she had cheated, imagine that.

Tom had always preferred to work alone, less risk that way. Although if you were fortunate enough to work with someone sufficiently gullible, or sufficiently intelligent, the company was appreciated, as it reduced the risk of the job, an uncommon happenstance as the scum of London were very rarely either.

Helena was certainly the latter to have achieved what she had, and Shiver Tom was left fascinated. It was true that Helena seemed to know what she was doing, a vagabond of a judicious temperament much like himself, with the advantage that, unlike himself, she barely ever spoke.

Usually, the clever ones were in love with the sound of their own voice, as Tom was. The combination of competence and silence had made him like her on the spot and agree to work with her when normally he would have flat out refused.

She was a closed book, and not just because she was a woman of few words. Even her motions betrayed little. She was a mystery Tom amused himself in attempting to solve. She did not seem to be listening to him, although when asked questions she would respond with simple nods or shakes of the head, even if the question did not incur a yes or no. She appeared most absorbed in the task at hand, ferrying their cart to the fresh grave they were set to unearth, and raising no suspicion in the process.

Finally arriving at their destination, a fresh grave, only recently fitted with a headstone. Instead of hefting a shovel, Tom took a step towards it, feeling bold. It had in fact been Helena who had suggested tonight’s mark, a recent corpse of a man who had been murdered, and he wondered at the precise relationship between the silent woman and the deceased, if such a thing existed.

Tom read the inscription aloud. “Matthew Rawls, beloved son, lovin’ husband. To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another.”

He turned to look up at Helena, her face shadowed in the lingering dusk, but Tom’s well-adjusted eyes could pick out the small scowl on her brow as if she disagreed with the divine sentiment chiselled in stone.

“Friend of yours?” Tom asked, chasing the emotion of the silent woman. She regarded him briefly before tossing him a shovel and began to dig into the grave dirt herself without a word.

Mr. Rawls was an innocent and a devout Christian soul, and therefore protected from the surgeon’s knife and the damnable practice of post-mortem dissection, but his body would only go to waste rotting in the earth. The illegal defilement of a Christian burial and the mutilation of the corpse of a guiltless man was a small price to pay if it was in the interest of medicine, or so Tom had been told by Mr. Marwood. Tom merely knew it to be a lucrative trick, with less risk to it than the average con.

The most fascinating detail in this affair, that Tom had as yet chosen not to mention, was that Mr Rawls had been murdered by Helena Penbrooke herself. His murder was the charge that put Helena on the gallows in the first place. The question of the evening was why.

Normally, digging into an accomplice’s past wasn’t advisable during a job, and Tom preferred to goad and manipulate his associates outside of work, but he saw no harm in the attempt to break Helena’s silent streak.

“I’ve solved it,” Tom announced as he began to dig. “You were business partners attempting to establish goldmines in the new world. When the names were signed and the contracts drawn up, you murdered poor Rawls to horde the earnings for yourself.”

Helena exhaled with exhaustion, already tired of Tom’s guessing game.

“No? Then p’rhaps he was to purchase your father’s family home and demolish it to construct a Greco roman amphitheatre in its place, and you sought to undo the plot?”

Helena ignored Tom, which he found even worse than silence.

“Only jokin’ ‘Elena. It’s clear this affair has nothin’ to do with business.” Tom smirked, looking away from Helena for a moment, acting innocuous. “But it does bear thinkin’ about, doesn’t it? How does a wealthy London gentleman, heir to a noble family with a country estate and a printing business find himself murdered by a common hoodlum in ‘is own home?”

Tom had taken the liberty of acquainting himself with the details of the murder case from an unscrupulous constable he knew from the pub. Helena had no answer for him, as she continued to dig. They had already begun to make good progress, if they kept this pace, they could be away with the body before midnight.

“Forgive me miss, but you don’t seem like the type to kill and snatch like some fools around London. And Mr Rawls didn’t seem like the type to let himself be. Murdered in his bedroom, I hear. Quite scandalous, if I do say so myself.”

Helena gave Tom a withering look in between shovelling. Tom considered holding his tongue before remembering himself and finishing his line of thought.

“So if it’s not business or blind foolishness, it’s a matter of pleasure. He’s your noble sweetheart you offed for sampling delights other than your own.”

Helena flashed him a warning look, this one more severe and dark than any expression he had seen in her previously. Tom was a man of many risks, but his success depended upon knowing when not to take them, and he knew instantly that this was one of those times.

“Or p’raps it was the old natural causes, eh? Nothin’ to nose about, there.” Tom offered with a smile.

For the rest of the evening, he kept his observations and manner light and agreeable, hoping to bring himself back into his accomplice’s good graces after his cheek, and he left his curiosity hungry.

He dared not cross a mystery like Helena Penbrooke, a woman who could restrain a fully grown man with one arm after returning from the noose, and hound a man she’d murdered after death. Rare was it that Tom sacrificed his interest for his safety, and yet here he was.

He’d made some small progress in his deductions, however. He’d learned precisely two things, in fact.

The first was that the incident was still raw. There was something about the crime that drew a rise out of her, where before she had been all calmness, the kind of rise you see in desperate sorts who invest themselves in higher things.

The second thing was what he had already presumed, and had now proven. Helena hated Mr. Rawls, and always had, there was no broken friendship between them, only a burning hatred that appeared to surpass the fires of hell

---

Rawls corpse was in fantastic condition, with no significant decay. Tom considered the size and stature of the man. He looked to be over six foot and of an athletic disposition with decent muscle in his arms and thighs.

If Tom had to face a sod like that, he’d charm him into revelry, then slit the man’s throat when he was too merry to bite back. To topple a man like that with his wiry frame, Tom would have to be quick and traitorous, but judging from the scars sunk into his flesh Helena had taken him head-on.

The man had several stab wounds at the arms and chest, the kind that meant a tussle, and a few deeper ones in the neck, one of which he deduced was the deathblow. He was spotted with black blood after the body had been loaded into the cart after the undertaker’s needlework had burst open. Though drained of blood, and possessing a cold dead heart, Tom knew they would not leave enough of man’s fluids behind to leave a trail.

Rawls was covered with a generously large cloth, and the cart loaded with innocuous cargo, a crate of empty beer bottles, and discarded sailing ropes he had reclaimed from the harbour.

With their ghastly quarry disguised, Tom took to navigating Helena through the streets of London so as to minimise the attention they would receive, without seeming to do so. It was a dangerous thing to parade dangerous items through the middle of London at night, but it was even more dangerous to be seen looking like you had something to hide. It was a balancing act that took a cool head and light temperament.

Graverobbing was a booming business in London and had begun to catch the scorn of the god-fearing folk of the city, no doubt uninterested both in entrepreneurship and the favour of the rising medical practitioners of Britain, whose ambition Tom quite admired, for being so deeply unrestrained by their dignity.

They soon arrived at Marwood’s estate to find the man awaiting their return, presumably worrying about whether a fresh corpse would arrive, or the constabulary. Helena hoised the man over her shoulder, carrying his weight without Tom’s assistance.

He spotted the muscles in her arms contract under her garb as they took the weight of a fully grown man of great stature without complaint. The sight of the indomitable woman heft the weight of the man she had slaughtered into the cellar for dissection, like an ox to the abattoir, robbed Tom of his warmth.

After she’d disaffectionately dropped the corpse onto Marwood’s would-be operating table, he pounced upon it, checking his new specimen for signs of rigor mortis. “The condition is outstanding!” he announced. “As usual Tom, you do not fail to provide excellence.”

“Beg your pard’n sir, but it would have been a fool’s errand without your new haunt. She named the mark, worked as quick as you like, and kept her ‘ead down. I couldn’t have asked for more.” Tom replied, turning to see Helena ignore the praise, as if Tom were recounting facts, not flatteries.

“Yes, yes of course! The both of you are to be commended, I intend to pay you both very well for your efforts!” Marwood squeaked as he produced two-pound coins, pressing the first into Tom’s palm. Helena, however, did not outstretch her hand.

“My lady you must accept payment for your work, you have taken a considerable risk in procuring the body of Mr. Rawls, I will not accept your charity in addition to your patience with my blundering errors!” Marwood exclaimed as he took Helena’s hand and pressed the coin into it.

Helena stared at him not unkindly but clearly battling her thoughts. “Paper.” She said.

Although she made some effort not to make the word sound like a demand, she had not posed it as a question, either.

“At once!” Marwood cried, leading her upstairs. Tom followed on, curious to hear his first sentence from the mind of Helena Penbrooke.

Marwood led Helena to a writing desk in a smaller room of the estate and supplied her with her stationary before awaiting her response. Helena sat and took the pen to begin to write before hesitating, and turning to Marwood.

She nodded to him as if to imply she had what she wanted and he was no longer needed. If she intended to minimise any offence in this gesture, she did so ineffectually.

“Oh, I see. Well I will return to my subject, thank you again, lady and gentleman, I shall undoubtedly be in touch with the both of you regarding further procurements in the future!” he explained before quickly darting out of the room, perhaps a little embarrassed to have been dismissed.

Tom watched him leave, entertained by the man’s witlessness. It never ceased to amuse Tom how many wealthy London inhabitants severely lacked the excellence of character to qualify their fortunes.

Tom’s eyes hunted down the valuables in the room out of curiosity. He did not intend to burglarise the house, knowing he could acquire safer money working for its owner, but enjoyed the notion of living like a king for a week on the wealth he would accrue within a single night of work.

Helena’s interests were similarly focussed on matters beyond devilry, devoted as she was to the paper in front of her, scribbling intensely. Tom felt a compulsion to leave, feeling uncomfortable staring at the strange woman as she wrote, and unwilling to further frustrate her.

“I’ll be takin’ my leave as well, then,” Tom said, before turning on his heel to make his way back to the stairs. Perhaps some mysteries were better left alone, especially when they possessed an undying quality.

Tom felt a wave of fear as he heard the scrape of the chair and felt Helena’s grip on his wrist, making an immense effort to hide his terror as he turned to her and managed a polite, quizzical smile. He knew it was far better to play dumb and amicable than try to run when you were already caught.

Helena seemed to reconsider the force of her grip and pointing into the room at the piece of paper, the message appeared to have been written for him.

Tom felt another wave of damnable curiosity, once again pulled into the fascinating plot of what motivated the woman who had eluded the reaper. His fear crept through him also, as he remembered the body of Rawls, peppered with wounds great and small, now being turned inside out by the good doctor below.

Tom swallowed hard, reminding himself Helena would likely be wanting something from him. He may not have any power over her physically, but if she were proposing a bargain, his guile was likely more than a match for a spook who couldn’t speak.

“Alright then. Let’s ‘ear it.” Tom remarked, returning to the room and waiting for Helena to finish her message, scratched in an unpractised hand on the valuable paper.

Finally finished with her scrivenery, Tom read the note in silence, sobered in Helena’s presence to the point that he found the prospect of giving a voice to her words an unsettling one, like a devil from a penny dreadful, whose name shouldn’t be said after the toll of six.

Shiver Tom, I have a proposition. I ask that you convey me unwitnessed into and out of Harston Hall in South Cambridgeshire, the Rawls country home. I mean to commit no crime by this action beyond trespass; however, my presence in the vicinity would cause significant alarm to its staff. For this service, I mean to pay you the pound I have received from our shared employer.

Tom glanced up at Helena between lines, trying to read her reaction which was currently difficult, given her vacant expression. When he lowered the note she produced the pound piece, as if to reassure him of her intentions, although her expression did impart hopefulness, as if she were committed to her quest with or without him.

Tom knew little of country homes and estates outside of London, and crude criminality such as burglary and infiltration were not his forte, although he had been known to dabble.

He knew that the job he was about to accept had nothing to do with practicality, and even less to do with his own persistence. He would risk his safety for far less than he should accept, for a job of such incredible ambiguity and danger.

It was simply foolhardy, and yet against his own logic, he knew he would end up assisting this impossible woman, for his own damnable interest. The story had come too far and had become too peculiar to walk away from it now.

---

  Forever a man of forethought and rationality, Tom knew he needed more information before he and Helena were to act, and so he had managed to use his silver tongue to hire himself onto a small delivery at a carpentry company that would be making a visit to Harston House.

During the long journey to Harston, he thoroughly questioned his status as a man of sanity as he recounted each foot he put wrong to get him into this mess.

When they finally neared the village of Harston, he began to hear faint gunshots on the wind, his ears well trained to the smallest of sounds. He presumed he was hearing the sins of the noble elite, who found endless joy in the death of an animal by the wrath of a firearm. The shots grew in volume as he, and the other labourers he shared the carriage with passed through Harston and neared the estate itself.

Tom and his company were allowed entry into the estate through two thick hardwood doors, hinged onto high stone walls, which would likely prove difficult to assail. Tom took care to study and memorise the geography of the grounds, aware that he would not have the time or discretion to make notes, and under the light of the moon, he’d see less than half as much.

He stared at the windows of the Harston Hall, wondering where might be the most desirable avenue of infiltration, but was surprised to hear another shot, louder than before.

He turned to the sound, a woman near a copse of trees wearing a day dress, reloading a long bore flintlock rifle. The trees in front of her were splintered and scarred, oozing with sap from being the brunt of so many gunshots.

The carpenters knew better than to stare at the lady of the house, especially when exhibiting such strange behaviour, but Tom did not share their decorum. As they neared, he saw that the woman’s eyes were red ringed as she lined up another shot, glaring at the innocent line of trees as she held the heavy rifle with a practised, steady hand.

The Woman’s name was Valencia Rawls, previously Langdon, and she had only recently been married to her wealthy husband, far too early to have conceived children. The lady of the house had been left alone in the empty halls, with all that remained of her marriage being the responsibilities of her husband’s business. She had passed these to her late husband’s partners, no doubt too grieved and uninformed in affairs of mercantile to be of any use.

 She was exactly what Tom did not want to find when he came poking around, a violent someone, half-mad with grief and nothing left to lose, with a clear competence with firearms.

She was a woman of the upper classes, laden with unrealistic expectations for poise and dignity from birth, a sufferer of a thousand unspoken grievances and discomforts, silenced by the all-powerful British stiff upper lip, harsher on the fairer sex after mistaking its compassion for weakness.

She was the most dangerous variable he could imagine to the job.

He expected her to be committed to an asylum if her daily schedule continued to involve using the estate’s proud oaks for target practice with grapeshot, but doubted that Helena’s urgency would allow such a delay. He had only barely managed to convince her to allow him to reconnoitre their quarry today.

He had puzzled over Helena’s urgency for many hours. Did she wish to steal back something the Rawls’ had taken from her? Was there something important she sought to discover from Rawls’ documents? Or was she simply lying when she had said she meant to commit no further crime?

Perhaps the following morning, Harston Hall would be reduced to ash, and Tom would find himself dearly regretting he had ever met the deathless hellion Helena Penbrooke.

---

Valencia began to reload her rifle, a process she had become so practised at, she could perform it blindfold. Her hands felt numb around the firearm she had committed herself to mastering. It had one of her many hobbies, one unconventional for a lady, but amusing nonetheless.

Now it was nothing but a loud and brutish distraction. It felt better to hear the deafening bang of the gun and see bark rent from the trunk of a tree than lie still and sob in the dark.

Death had come to Harston Hall. Her family’s ancestral home had been one of her great loves in life. Now it’s corridors only held the pall of gruesome memory. She had hoped to welcome the love of her life into these halls when the time was right and her marriage assured, but fate had held other plans.

A nihilistic mood struck her, and her anger drained with the wind rushing against her dress. She let her rifle fall to her feet as a wave of emptiness cut to the bone with the chill.

There would be no more happy days ahead for her at Harston Hall, or perhaps anywhere upon the earth. Whether she chose to fill the trees with lead or while away the days supine and remembering brighter days, it would make no improvement on her mood.

She had considered taking her own life many times, believing the fires of hell would be a welcome distraction for her heartache, but as yet, she had lacked the courage.

Leaving the rifle where it lay in the grass, Valencia picked her way back to the house. She barely ate anymore but slept often, if only to escape the world. She did not dream for the obliviation of the laudanum she took nightly, and rarely found herself awakened by the memories of the dead, making the hush of sleep her favourite reprieve.

Carpenters were arriving from London, carrying inventory she did not care to identify. She supposed it must have been some purchase her late husband must have made, but did not care whether her suspicions were correct. The reminder of him was upsetting enough.

On her way to her room she saw a dark-skinned labourer carrying the very minimum that he could manage, who had lost his way, wandering the upper halls like a buffoon.

His repeated apologies and boorish tone were of no interest to her, and she ignored him as she continued to her room. She had never cared much for the empty pleasantries of civilised society, artificial and sickly sweet as they were, and so now she didn’t care at all for what people thought of her rudeness, whether they were a lord or a labourer.

Shutting the door to her room, and the merciless world outside didn’t give her the same sense of safety it once had. As predicted, being alone with her thoughts was almost as upsetting as distractions from them.

True to her character, Helena had always been quick to temper, and quicker to action. Valencia could never have predicted the chaos that that quality would inflict.

Miss Penbrooke had learned the grounds and their maintenance as a girl from her father, a hardy career for a woman, although it suited her constitution well. After her father’s death five years previous, Valencia had taken the girl into her employ, to fill the position her father left, although with the benefit of hindsight, she greatly wished she had reconsidered hiring her to the post.

Valencia cursed Helena Penbrooke’s bullheadedness, violence, and stupidity, although most of all she cursed herself, for she was chiefly to blame for the events of her husband’s ugly murder. If only she had considered her engagements more carefully.

---

Helena sighed deeply. The exchange of information between “Shiver” Tom and herself had been agonising. Although she was confident in her own abilities, Tom seemed intent on receiving every tiny detail of information before he agreed to assist Helena in her assault on Harston Hall.

She had filled the sheet of paper Marwood had given her with answers to Tom’s questions, many of which she’d initially refused to answer until his insistence, knowing full well most would become obvious during the act itself.

Finally, they had begun executing their plot.

The ground crunched with dead leaves as Helena’s boots hit the ground on the other side of the wall. She’d climbed one of many high trees which reached over the walls, allowing her to drop into the grounds with ease.

She had explained this weakness of security to Miss Langdon several times, although she had never considered it a problem worth her time. Helena couldn’t help but be grateful for Valencia’s lapse in judition when only weeks previously she had considered such things the bane of her existence.

Tom followed slowly. Despite weighing far less than her, he was a poor climber and an even worse aerialist. He dropped to the ground with an absence of poise, falling flat. If she had to guess, she would assume Tom’s athletic prime was far behind him. For not the first time since she’d started associating with him, he was lucky she didn’t have the voice to reprimand him.

Helena promptly picked Tom up from the ground, his heavy breathing in the dark, sounding like the panting of a hunting hound. She had learned enough about him to know that if he caught his breath, he would have another annoying comment ready, and so she didn’t give him the chance. Urging him toward the house where he would be forced to control his volume.

“This is the last time I get myself mired in this kind of nonsense,” he hissed between wheezing breaths as they reached the back door. “I’m older than I thought.”

And more irritating too, Helena thought. The doors and windows were locked, and Helena did not still possess her keys, and so Tom was necessary for his ability to pick a lock, but not much more.

“Never again,” he swore to himself. “I shan’t take another flight of fancy for as long as I live.”

Helena would’ve enjoyed telling him to shut up and save his breath for lowering his heart rate, instead of wasting it on prattling. She had hoped he understood her brevity of patience and disapproval of trifling without the benefit of her voice, but it seemed they had managed to escape him.

Instead, she made a warning growl and pointed to the lock on the back door. Tom’s response to this was to wave away Helena’s urgency as he caught his breath and retrieved his instruments, a set of sturdy iron lock picks.

Getting silent compliance out of Shiver Tom was like trying to get hot blood out of a stone.

The lock on the door didn’t take long to outfox, and once more Tom proved his best qualities lay in finer gesticulations. Once through the door, Helena moved quickly and quietly through the house with little care for the speed at which Tom kept up with her.

She still had business here, a deed that could wait no longer. The correction of a mistake she had made the week before, and the re-establishment of her peace of mind. Her target wasn’t far now and she felt her doubts toward this undertaking melt away as she drew close. Her quarry was so close she could follow her scent.

Inching open the door to the lady’s bed-chamber, Helena’s hand slipped to her hip to draw her own instrument. She wasn’t more than a step inside the room before she felt Tom’s cold grip on her arm.

In the dim light, she could just make out the horror on his face, no doubt fearing for his culpability in the second murder to her name. She twisted her arm out of his feeble grip with ease and drew from her pocket.

She cared not what he thought of her. He had spirited her into Harston house, and as far as Helena was concerned, his role was complete. She produced the pound piece Marwood had given her and placed it in his hand before continuing into the bedroom, hoping he would remember his slippery nature and flee the scene.

The sleeping form beneath the bedsheets barely stirred. Forever the heavy sleeper, Valencia was not a nocturnal creature and stirred very little during the night, not least for the imbibement of laudanum, a substance Helena had often endeavoured to keep away from her old employer. If the lady were to be woken, it would require an insistent hand.

Lighting a bedside candle, Helena chased away the shadows. She saw that Tom had not bolted with his money, and instead moved inside and shut the door so as to keep the light from arousing suspicion, lowering the lip of his hood in a meagre attempt at anonymity. His unwelcome presence would not keep her from her task.

With a gentle hand, Helena woke Valencia, who roused slowly, as if intent on her unconsciousness and reluctant to the alternative.

Miss Langdon’s further actions were murderous, aware of the intruder awakening her in the deep of night and of the opinion that it was the single worst indignity she had ever suffered. Though she kicked and struck with the ferocity of the wildcat Helena knew, her assault made no purchase against her.

Then the lady’s eyes adjusted and took Helena in.

“It cannot be,” she uttered weakly. “Dear God, have I died?”

“No,” Helena murmured back.

Helena offered the letter she had brought with her but lost grip of it when Valencia reached up to embrace Helena as if she were driftwood, and Valencia adrift in a whirlpool amid a storm.

Helena found her face peppered with kisses, forceful and possessive as if the opportunity to do so was fleeting. Helena, usually the sober and stoic influence found herself attempting to restrain Miss Langdon’s attentions only weakly.

When she was quite finished, Valencia was crying quite uncontrollably, still locked in a stupor of disbelief, not helped by the strange man watching from the corner of the room.

“Pray, if I am dreaming let me stay in this happy delirium for good, Helena. Real or not, I will have you,” Valencia wailed softly.

Helena put a hand to Valencia’s cheek, hoping that her touch was argument enough to persuade Miss Langdon that she was not a phantom of sleep and opium, but flesh and blood.

She wished she could have said the words of her letter herself, and not with her deplorable handwriting, but this was the best she could provide. She retrieved her letter from amongst the bedsheets and presented it once more.

Confused and eager, Valencia took the note and read it aloud, quiet enough not to wake the house.

Dearest Valencia,

I have survived the gallows by some miracle, but the noose has claimed my voice. Speaking is of the utmost discomfort. I have entered into the service of an amateur surgeon as a graverobber in the city of London, and mean to continue to do so until a good deal of time has passed, I then intend to re-enter the service of your household by whatever means I may, under disguise. I have not the time to conceive of a more intricate plan, but then, you always were the clever one between us, perhaps we may be together again by a more ingenious plot devised by yourself. Whilst I may not be able to say it myself, I am very grateful to be able to see you again. I love you, utterly and completely.

Helly

By the time she had finished reading, Valencia was in even more of a state. Set upon clinging to Helena as her sobbing worsened.

Helena had known Valencia from a young age, the two having been fast friends for as long as they could remember. They had done almost everything together, from play as children to learning to read and write from the madam Mr. Langdon employed to teach his daughter manners.

At some point during this time as they grew into women, the two of them discovered a connection between them that neither could have foreseen, but that they had both found themselves quite committed to. Whether it had happened all at once, or slowly over the years of their life, Valencia and Helena had fallen in love with one another, as a man commonly loves a woman.

With the deaths of their fathers, and the threat of bankruptcy for the Langdon family looming, Valencia had aspired to marry an older gentleman for his fortune in an attempt to save their home from auction, but with the discovery of Matthew Rawls, her plans changed quite enormously.

When Valencia had first met Matthew, she had found herself fallen in love once more, this time with the man’s bank account, and the handsome printing business that fed it. Most attractive of all however was the man’s terrible character.

Despite being an athletic man, the mind inside the hulk of muscle was shrivelled and reprehensible. Whilst Valencia had met with moneyed men in the past, few of them were as easy to delude, and as impossible to like as Matthew Rawls. Valencia crafted a nefarious and ambitious plot, first as a joke and then with ever-continuing sincerity.

As was her way, Helena had advised caution. The marrying and subsequent poisoning of a man from a distinguished family would require extensive preparation, and was not a matter to approach carelessly. Although Helena had to admit the plan was inspired, fate intervened, and against all odds, Matthew discovered the plot after throwing part of his meal at his poor dog, who he treated quite brutally.

The animal died quickly, half-starved and grateful for the scraps, and Valencia’s plan was foiled. When Matthew turned upon Valencia, seeking to enact violent revenge, Helena came to her rescue, killing the man with a dinner knife, and facing the death penalty for her heroism.

Though Valencia had attempted to confess her plot to the constabulary in an attempt to spare Helena’s life, the sergeant she spoke to did not believe her, believing Valencia to be a delusional and overly emotional woman, incapable of such a plot and foolishly attempting to save her associate’s life with a threadbare, dreamed-up excuse.

With Helena’s survival, it appeared that one stroke of bad luck had owed another of good, allowing her to return to her beloved’s side. Helena knew not what cruel or happy twists of fate awaited her in the months ahead, but was happy to face them if they brought her any closer to her permanent return to Harston Hall.