Mansfield Gothic
Blurb: The Bertram family has no idea their meek, impoverished cousin is actually a demon hunter.
Chapter 1: in which I am sent to Northamptonshire and kill a demon
I am a Price by birth but my father always calls me "Priceless." Perhaps that is why I am so surprised when my parents announce they are getting rid of me.
"But why must I go away?" I wail. "Give me one good reason." Even as a child, I argue and disagree with my parents when I suspect they are wrong.
"There are many reasons," says my mother. "Not the least of which is: because we said so."
"Priceless," adds my father, "it is getting dangerous in Portsmouth."
"All the more reason for me to stay! I can fight, better than anyone else in the family. It'd be smarter to send Mary or Susan." That piece of insolence earns me a smack, deservedly so.
"My family asked for you, Frankie," says my mother. "It is you we are sending. You are ready to leave home; the younger girls are not. And you are encouraging them to take stupidly daring risks."
That is a lie. "I do not!"
"Susan nearly died chasing after you!"
"That's not my fault!" I counter. "I told her to stay at home! It's not my fault she followed me."
"And we told you to stay home!" my father roars. "Whose fault is it that you were wandering the streets, hunting trouble? You know how much the younger ones look up to you. If we keep you in Portsmouth, you will lure them to their doom. Your mother and I fear for all our children, and it will be safest and simplest to send you to Northamptonshire."
"But there are no demons in Northamptonshire," I protest. Sending me to an untouched backwater is a waste of my talents.
"And how do you know that, Frankie?" asks Mamma. "We've never met a demon-hunter who's been there. The countryside might be teeming with them, for all you know."
That is a tempting picture: all those beasts, and only me to hunt them down. Before I can punch a hole in her logic, she continues. "You and William are the only two who have completed the rudiments of your training. All that remains is a lifetime of practice and execution which you can accomplish anywhere. Your little brothers and sisters must remain with us a little longer while we protect and prepare them for the lot of a Price. You are going, Frankie, and that is the end of it."
I pout and sulk. It does me no good.
"And another thing, Priceless," my father adds. "They cannot know what we really are. They cannot know the true state of things. If the general public found out that there really were demons running amuck, they would panic. And who knows what the demons would do in the chaos?”
That is a restraining thought.
“How am I supposed to act if not like me?” I wonder.
“Be quiet,” my mother tells me. “Don’t attract attention. Be forgettable. So long as my family doesn’t suspect what you really are, you can still devote time to our normal activities.”
I have no choice but to accept my parents’ decision. I am leaving Portsmouth. I spend the remaining time in preparation for the various aspects of my exile. I practice sitting quietly and keeping my head down. I practice my routines. I prepare to take leave of my family.
One evening, about a week from my departure, my father makes a show of presenting me with a going away gift. I open the case and my breath catches in my throat.
I pull a blade out and let the light catch along its length. The rest of the family
ohs and
ahs accordingly. It is long for me, but not by much, and I will grow into it. The blade falls straight from the handle for half of its length before curving, like a lazy question mark. The shape and edges are ideal for decapitating demons.
“Go ahead,” my father coaxes me. “Try it out.”
My brothers and sisters follow me out of the room to the back courtyard where we go through our daily routines. I run through some of the simpler forms. It is heavy, but it is supposed to be. I’ll grow accustomed to the weight.
“What are you going to name it?” asks my mother after Susan’s applause dies down.
“Name it!” The thought hadn’t occurred to me. I watch the light crawl along the blade as I turn it in my hand again.
In my moment of indecision, others offer up suggestions: Bede the Beheader, Declan the Decapitator, Siobhan the Scythe. The last one is the best of the lot but it comes from William who immediately claps a hand over his mouth. He regrets sharing with me, expecting that Father will give him his own blade soon enough.
I decide to take it easy on him. “He’s Guillaume,” I say. Guillaume the Guillotine, because I plan to behead more than my share.
Guillaume is to go into the bottom of my trunk, beneath the false bottom, with some throwing knives and my small hand-written book of demon knowledge. Mamma superintends my packing, choosing only clothes and shoes to fit the demure, impoverished persona decided for me. My tattoos, Mamma is quite sure, will be scandalous enough, and we don't want to shock the Bertrams past their ability to bear by having them come across an outfit suitable for nightly patrols. I will wear a long black cloak but everything else I will need to scavenge from forgotten trunks in dusty garretts or to steal from the local poor box.
Mamma's conviction that they will see my tattoos nearly causes an argument. Or perhaps "a larger argument" is more truthful. My markings are a few years old now, discretely placed on my thighs, chest and back, where no one but God and maybe my future husband will ever see them. They are prayers and incantations against evil, in a language I cannot speak and can barely write, and they protect me from my foes. The scandal would not be that I have tattoos, any more than if I had a curiously shaped birthmark. The scandal would be that the Bertrams learn of them, because what kind of perverted spying is needed to catch a glimpse of them? But Mamma points out I may need to share a room, or a maid may be needed to help me dress one day. I do not wish to imagine a life where my garments are so restrictive that I cannot dress myself. What kind of prison am I going to?
I practice being quiet and submissive. It starts as just a quarter-hour at a time, but by my final days at home, I can be completely passive for hours together. I approach it the same way I do the rest of my training and it pays off. The younger boys who like to giggle and poke fun at me find that they had no reason to laugh anymore. The youngest instead curls up in my lap and pats my cheek, begging me to come back from behind the wall I have erected between my mind and the world.
I smile down at him, the light back in my eyes. The transformation back to my own self startles him again. “Frankie!” he scolds me. “Don’t do that. I thought you were Possessed. I thought we would have to kill you.”
I laugh at the thought of him trying. Perhaps it is for the best that I am going away, but I will miss my family terribly.
The last night with my family is festive. Neighbors are in and out of the house, wishing me well. William pulls me aside for a private talk. He isn’t leaving for another month and now has great hopes that he too will get a sword like Guillaume for the bottom of his chest.
“I’m going to miss you, Frankie,” he tells me, and I tell him the same.
“Do you think we’ll ever see each other again?” he asks.
I had not really thought of it before. Why wouldn’t we see each other again? But then possibilities and probabilities enter my head. Northamptonshire is no doubt worlds away from wherever William will be. The Navy is not a profession that guarantees a long life to go with a sailor's pension, and we know of plenty of demon hunters who have gone on before us, so to speak.
"You'll write to me," I say uncertainly. "It will be very dull for you aboard ship when you leave the shore with nothing much to do. You'll have loads of time for letters."
"What about you?" asks William. "There's even less to do where you're going."
I roll my eyes. "Yes, but I'm supposed to do absolutely nothing while anyone is watching, and I plan on spending my free time hunting. I won't have time to write."
Now it is William's turn to make a face. "Well, I'll write the first letter, but I won't write again until you write me back."
We strike the deal and then discuss how we are going to communicate all the things we are forbidden from putting on paper. Eventually Mother splits us up and sends me to my cot. Morning is coming whether I am rested or not.
The post hack leaves before first light from a large inn near the harbour. My father sees me off, carrying my chest and throwing sideways glances at me during our walk from home as I try to stride naturally.
In a last moment's idiocy I have strapped Guillaume to my right leg, as if I'm going to need him before I am out of Portsmouth. It is silly, really, and I know it, but I have kept him by my side during my waking hours ever since Father gave him to me. My gait is stiff but I try to make it even so no one can guess which leg has Guillaume and which does not.
At the inn, the guard informs the passengers that any weapons must be packed away for the safety of himself and the driver. My father questions this immediately although he isn't traveling with me. The guard spins a story of how another driver traveling a similar route was attacked by a passenger just a fortnight ago. I want to ask him if it was a demon but a glare from my father keeps me silent.
Even if one knows demons exist, even if one knows what to look for, they are incredibly hard to spot. When a demon Impersonates a human, they are virtually indistinguishable from a real person; they look, sound, and smell perfectly human. My father who has been hunting his entire life has developed something of a sixth sense when it comes to identifying them. He says he can feel it in his tattoos but even he can be misled and so he must be careful, and cautions his children to be the same. Ideally, we must wait for a demon to reveal himself directly by attacking a soul or attempting a curse; speaking in the Demonic tongue or having a cursed item is insufficient proof. But if we are pressed for time or fairly confident there is a simple test for it, and blood will out as my father always says.
It is clear from the look on my father's face that I am not to speak about demons. And if I am not to speak about demons, then I am not going to volunteer Guillaume because showing my blade is bound to provoke all sorts of talk which would only lead to demons.
The exchange, however, leaves me excited and hopeful. As I watch my father grow slowly smaller through the window, I imagine myself coming to the aid of my fellow riders, beating off a highwayman or lopping the head off some spawn of Satan. Perhaps even one of them in the carriage will be dead by my hand.
The thrill fades by the time we change horses. An hour into the next stage of my journey and I am jostled awake from an impromptu nap by the horses whinnying with fear as the driver yanks us to a halt. My fellow passengers are mostly as surprised as I, excepting one old woman who is convinced there is no reason for this, and that the driver is really out to rob us. I haven't enough to warrant thievery but one of the others might. Still, she is shrill and paranoid -- and dismissed. We feel the carriage bounce on its springs as the driver jumps down and walks to our door. He wrenches it open and points a pistol into the cab.
"Out! All of you!" he orders us.
This is not good. I move stiffly, masking Guillaume, trying to figure out if my enemy is the man with the gun or someone else traveling with me. Demons do not need guns, and it would be a bad omen to start my private career killing the wrong person.
Some time during my nap the guard disappeared. Before I can wonder at his fate, the situation in the carriage heats up. The old woman refuses to budge. If she's going to die today, it might as well be sitting in a carriage as standing beside the road.
"Just as you say, ma'am," the driver tells her and climbs into the carriage.
I cannot see around his cloak, but I hear her screams as I have heard screams before. The pain of an attack on one's soul cannot be borne quietly, even by a stoic. I know who is the demon now.
The men standing outside the carriage with me -- one young and one old -- sprint away like cowards, smack into an invisible wall erected by our murderer to pen us in while he slaughters us individually. They fall backward to the ground, out cold.
I spend the time lifting my skirt and freeing Guillaume from his sheath. Now comes the moment of decision: when do I killed the demon? It is fairly simple for me to nick him right where he is. For all the pomp and glory of a beheading, a simple cut is just as fatal if you can draw blood.
Demons, for all their unnatural powers and thick skin, are not made to exist in the mortal world. Their blood catches fire when exposed to air. The fire spreads quickly through their veins and they tend to ignite in a ball of blue flame in short order.
The tricky part is of course the flame. Sometimes everything around them catches fire while at other times nothing does, not even their clothes. My family has a few ideas to explain it, but nothing we can prove although, for all our interactions, there's never been a Price burned by demonfire.
If I nick him now, the carriage might catch fire, and the poor woman inside who, based on her screams, is still clinging to life. And if the carriage catches fire, what will the horses do? As grim as it looks, there is room for worse.
But one more cry from the victim spurs me to act. If I don't kill her attacker now, she's dead already. I swing Guillaume up and through the doorway, cutting him deeply on his leg. He rages but I can already see the fire starting to spread. He exits clumsily to fight me, nearly falling on me, but I dodge him, swinging Guillaume at his neck as he lands beside a rut.
He burns, and his clothes burn, but the carriage and the old woman do not. The horses, with their blinders and harnesses see nothing yet the stench of sulphur makes them jittery. They stamp nervously but the brake holds. The old woman, I see, is now motionless; a quick check determines she is merely unconscious.
I take in the scene to figure out what to do next, but no additional foes fly at me. The guard is truly gone. The time for fighting is past. It is just me, the hoses and carriage, and three fellow passengers all out cold.
Curses do not survive the demon who casts them, so the invisible wall surrounding me is gone and I am free to search for help. If I walk along the road until I meet with a sympathetic Samaritan, I could end up going in the wrong direction from which help actually comes. If I stand around waving Guillaume, that will only bring up questions to get me thrown into an asylum.
In the end, I restore Guillaume and lie down on the grass to act like I am as unconscious as the others. I think I fall asleep eventually. When we are found and questioned, I play dumb. Together with the two cowards, we paint a consistent picture of people too scared to understand what happened. The old woman's story is much longer, much more cogent, yet it is dismissed as hysterical rambling. She is upset and weak but not so much of either that she fails to notice the condescension of our savior. She resents it and grows more voluble in her attempts to impress on her listeners the truth. Another five minutes and the younger coward is barely checking his laughter while the older fellow, apparently her brother, discretely promises to get her to a doctor as soon as may be. She is in very real pain and has received very real injuries from the demon but the implication is that the old biddie has gone slightly mad.
Our savior is convinced we have been robbed. He keeps asking the woman over and over if she saw our attacker take anything. She keeps to her story that she saw nothing of the kind, but after a while her brother joins in the chorus. I get the impression that the woman is widowed and childless, and her brother is already forming plans on how to spend her money, provided he can get his hands on it before some highwayman does. The brother obviously is not behind the demon, but he is determined to profit from it and hassles his sister past the point of tolerance.
Eventually I pity her and quietly tell her that I believe her story.
"Don't patronize me, girl!" she spits and shoves me away from her.
I cannot but think that this reaction is why I must pretend to be something other than a demon hunter. We who believe are so often met with jests, incredulity, and attempts to belittle and silence us, that we react with doubtful scorn to any show of sympathy.
I think about that as my journey to Northamptonshire continues.