poem: Red Spot

If I dwelt forever on the red spot
I would be washing twenty three and a half hours
Sobbing for a half.
If I broke forever at your belt
I would not have survived a month under your thumb,
let alone a day.
If there were no bird songs in the dawn light
I would have remained in the twilight counting shadows
and my waking dreams.
If it were not for the stories told
I would have spent every waking minute in Hell
sleeping on a cold floor.
If I refused to cover bruises
And wore them before others, their eyes would be
Mirrors to the past.

ODE TO JOY: Part 1- Table of Contents with Links!

If any of these links are broken it is because I either found the chapter too atrociously written for human eye and am revising it, or because Izzy stole the chapter and hasn't returned it to me yet. Pooki can be quite mischievous, after all. More Ode to Joy is coming. This is not the end. Izzy still has much trouble to stir up.
 
PART 1
1. Preface
2. Infant Sorrow
3. Madness in the Blood
4. Brigid's Corset
5. Family so Odd
6. Lucy
7. Charles
8. Doctor Felix Knottingson
9. Complications
10. Breakdown
11. Treating the Earl
12. Two Things
13. Test Subjects
14. First Drop
15. Maids Seem to Run
16. Izzy

Ode to Joy-10.3: Izzy

10. Teatime Travesty

ii. Izzy

“WHERE IS THE BEAUTIOUS QUEEN OF DENMARK!”

The voice woke the earl from his sleep.

The first horror that struck him was the thought of his mother ranting and raving.

He saw that the sun was quite down and lit a lamp to navigate the halls. That voice had come from downstairs.

“Mother!” he called out.

The royal red of the hallway revealed itself as his lamp light chased the shadows. His deep voice carried through the mansion.

He reached the spiraling staircase but halfway down a shaky singing voice raced up. This is when Orion slowed his step and his voice sped slightly. A maid?

No, the maids were quiet. They went about unseen. And this voice was clear and certainly not modest.

“Oh, what an unquiet grave!

What an unquiet grave!

Unquiet grave!

Unquiet!

Grave!

Grave!

Grave!”

At last his lantern showed him the person ascending the stairs as he descended.

The words to his own poem-- stashed away in private, vowed never to be published—sung to him by a strange voice. The light revealed the face of a woman. They met at the middle of the stairs. When the light revealed her in the full he saw that she was wearing a pair of rat ears on her head, her hair flaxen white. Her body was donned in a fur suit that lessened at the chest to  peak at her cleavage. Her arms bare and her legs in long pink stockings. And in her hand she held a giant rat tail that trailed from her bottom.

“My favorite poem I read!” she exclaimed in a clear voice. “You are quite a poet. But a tad depressing. Perhaps a sarcastic ode to one of your abusers would be nice.”

Orion blinked at the woman. Her eyes looked almost red in the darkness.

“Can I help you, miss? Perhaps if we work this out I won’t even ask why you’re dressed as a giant rat.”

She gave a small squeak, “I am a rat! It’s me! Izzy.”

She did not look like anyone he knew. “Is this a silly joke of Brigid’s?”

“I am not a joke, my lord. I’ll have you note I am very sensitive. Just like you. So you best not make jokes at my expense.”

There was even that garish pink bow on her head.

“I see the beauteous queen of Denmark looks sleepy. So I put your mother to bed for you.”

“What?” Orion jumped into action, pushing past the strange woman.

He was on the ground floor and rushing to his mother’s room. The door opened easily and the image of his mother sleeping peacefully in her bed was the only thing that kept Orion from reacting violently to the strange girl on the stairs. Deanna lay with her black hair obscuring her face. The gray at the roots were hardly clear in Orion’s lamp light. He swiped the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. The earl leaned down and kissed his sleeping mother’s forehead.

When he returned to the stairs the girl had her long nails in her own teeth, biting, shaking. “I did good?”

“Izzy?”

“Yes,” she answered, batting her eyes.

“Go back to the pet room and in the morning you will not be five feet tall. This is one of my fits…Goddamn it.” He pushed past her and stomped up the stairs.

“Why don’t you love me!” Izzy called after him.

“Because you are a figment of a deranged mind.”

He could hear swift footsteps following him. Izzy slipped in front of his path and held out her hands. “Is this about the pellets? I could not find any other place to go. I know it’s very unbecoming,” she gestured daintily and pulled at her own tail in anxiety. “Will you forgive me?”

“You are a rat. You make pellets. There is no need for apology. Now kindly let me alone.”

“But you will need me soon…” she gave a soft sigh as he walked past.

“I’m not entertaining this. Tomorrow the new medicine goes.”

“She hasn’t much time, Orion…” Izzy gave a sad noise. “Deanna…”

When Orion turned he saw that there were tears in the woman’s eyes.

“She has wished a guardian for you.”

“…How dare you speak of her so simply and…” he stopped himself. He needed to stop speaking to a figment of his imagination.

“I am your puca,” Izzy giggled.

Orion turned away. His studies in University had leaned heavily on Demonology. He needed no definition of a puca. When he turned around to see the woman again there was darkness where she had stood. A large white rat crawled over his shoe and scurried off into the hall.

“A new way to lose my mind…” he spoke to the empty hallway.

Ode to Joy-10.2: Maids Seem to Run

10. Teatime Travesty

ii.     Maids Seem to Run

Orion seated himself across from the maid and his wife. He was this once willing to hire a woman on the spot simply because he dreaded meeting a stranger’s eyes. After the fiasco with Amadeus surely the whole county was talking. Though the virtue of the maid who ran away, Bri reminded him, was fair and she would likely not gossip of her last employer’s home for this would ruin chances employment elsewhere.

Bri always showed him the practical side of things.

Another practical reason to live with her.

But Bri was aloof in the conversation, allowing Orion to interview the new woman with improvised questions.

“Of course we trust you with the baby. We would just prefer she remain in Julia’s watch most of the time. She is still so tiny. I do not even joke. Her head is about this big.” He picked up a tea cup.

That was when he saw it.

The tiny white creature crawling on the floor, standing up like a person to stare at them. Instead of screaming, Orion nudged Bri.

She gave her sudden laugh and this made the maid jump.

Orion felt his insides coil into a knot. They would not flex even as Bri’s words repeated to him in his head.

“She laughs at everything,” he told the maid.

Lately Bri and Orion had become more forthcoming to their staff, especially about Bri’s bizarre laugh.

“Oh yes. I apologize. It’s quite strange but sometimes I laugh for no reason at all, dear.”

Orion folded the napkin on the table into origami as the women spoke and the large rat ran about the room as though it were her own. Her little pink bow was her crown. He saw tiny pellets left in Isolde’s trail. Orion flicked his origami rat under Bri’s nose.

“That’s adorable, muffin. You’re very talented. Isn’t he just darling?” Bri asked the maid.

To Orion’s surprise the young woman seemed charmed. “It’s a mouse, isn’t it?”

“A rat,” Orion corrected with purpose. “We get them in these parts. The size of cats. Legend has it they can grow to be the size of a baby horse in Dartmoor.”

“Yes, Dartmoor is frightfully haunted,” the maid fueled the fire without knowing.

At last Bri’s large eyes widened and she seemed to see the rat at the door as it scurried out.

“Pardon me, dears.”

Orion watched his wife exit. She did seem rushed and so he made an excuse for her, “Probably maternal instinct.”

The maid nodded, a pleasant smile on her face.

Orion liked her. He gave her a smile back. At this moment his stomach had coiled and knotted and his heart was speeding from the earlier panic he felt but with no more purpose. The thoughts had left and yet his body was reeling from the unpleasant experience. “Well, Miss Summers. I am pleased to welcome you on board here. We like to communicate with our staff and we do prefer you to be comfortable. And…”

He felt the tension reach its peak.

“Excuse me.”

He lifted his tea cup, pinky up and lost the contents of his stomach in it. When he thought it was finished he closed his eyes. But another wave hit him and the water and tea of the day spilled into the tea cup.

Orion picked up a napkin and cleaned as best he could.

“I apologize, miss. It’s not contagious.”

He lifted the whole tray from the table. “My wife will get you a fresh tray.”

The woman’s face was frozen, unable to give a reaction.

“Make sure my mother gets put to bed on time,” Orion reminded Bri.

He was lying in bed while his wife felt his forehead.

“Teatime Sick. Orion’s own recipe. If you were feeling ill, why did you not tell me?” Bri grumbled.

“I certainly did not know I was going to vomit into my tea cup, dear.”

“You need to rest. Take your sleep aid.”

“I cannot. The new doctor told me to avoid anything that wakes me or sedates me.”

Bri blinked at her husband for a long time. “That makes no sense. Half the time the problem is you cannot rest. Without those things, what control do you have?”

“I do not know. Did you catch that horrid monster?”

“No,” Bri spoke tearfully. “Poor Izzy. She’s going to be smashed by someone’s foot or eaten by a cat. She’s a pure blood domestic. Imported from Scotland. Never been wild in her life. Little princess.”

“Princess Rat. I remember that tale. The Brothers Grimm told it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. She gets eaten.”

Bri frowned and swatted at Orion with a wet rag that she set on his head. “In a few hours you should eat if you can. Settle your stomach. I will make sure Deanna is taken care of, do not worry.”

“Sometimes she hides in places they cannot find her…” Orion called to his wife as she left the room.

He lay back down in bed and looked to the opium pipe Bri had left on the nightstand. After five days of purging it felt as though he would be trashing his suffering simply to go back to the opiate. But his addiction called to him. And he had been chasing sleep off and on for the past few days. Such purging had made little difference.

And so Orion gave in to his oldest enemy and friend.

intermission: Orion's Poem "Unquiet Grave"

What an unquiet grave

A tomb so un-still

Howls rising in the night

The souls so dark and ill.

Now sing “Rest in Peace.”

You sing “Rest in Peace.”

What an unquiet grave,

We hear your foot falls pass.

Whilst we rant and rave

Your hands, they point, you laugh.

Laughing “rest in peace.”

“Poor fools, rest in peace.”

God’s cast-offs,

Live behind iron bars

God’s last thoughts

Were of earthly black scars.

For the lunatics need

These irons ‘bout their wrists.

For we lunatics plead

For death’s noble kiss.

Hell unsheathes in our eyes

The eyes of the weak

Wicked and then tragic

Avert yours when we speak.

You will rest in peace.

You know Rest and Peace.

Heretical writings

Ask you to touch the madman’s sick bare hand

Without your gloves.

Contagions damned!

Heretical writings

Ask that you visit this restless old grave

Out of your love

Even touch the mud

Leaving flowers with cards “from…”

What an unquiet grave.

ODE TO JOY: Part 1-4: Brigid's Corset Strings

4.     Brigid’s Corset Strings

MY WIFE has always pulled her corset strings so tightly it will make an onlooker hold his breath. And it is not as though she is trying to accentuate an hourglass figure. She is shaped with a small waist, with or without a corset, and needs no enhancement to bring this out. From all I know about women’s clothing—which is quite more than the average man—a lady can use skirt padding to create the illusion of a smaller waist with much more effectiveness than pulling a corset on too tight.

It troubles me that Brigid does this but not for the reasons one might suspect.

It is only that I know things…they color her actions. As I watch her pull the strings so tightly around herself in a squeezing embrace I can picture a heart hugged in the same way. Some kind of perverse armor around the heart itself, something I myself can relate to on a daily basis. Mine are airs. Smoke or mist set around a heart that has only a fortress of sand.

But my wife has a different heart. It is steady and strong and when I hear it I envy it.

She has confided in me what happened to her in India all those years ago. A young waif with no family to speak of, serving the British soldiers brought in to cool conflict.

When one of those men chose to harm a girl, a mere child, in a way that we can never erase.

I always imagine that was when Bri began to pull her corset strings too tightly.

My poor darling.

BRIGID

“You’re pulling it too tightly, darling.”

Bri cocked her head, her eyes meeting Orion’s in the full-body mirror as she tied her corset strings.

“Oh good. A husband who knows corsets better than I.”

“I am sorry,” he lowered his head. He was not looking well. Nearly a month after Drusilla’s birth and Bri could not recall her husband sleeping. Yet he had the energy to correct the way she dressed.

“I do not want you to faint,” he reasoned. “There’s no need to restrict your breathing in your state.”

“I am not in a ‘state.’ I feel well. I feel happy. Can’t a woman dress herself?”

“Very well,” Orion straightened his own suit from behind her and stepped over to the bed.

Bri would be lying if she said she minded his presence while she dressed. She quite liked him near her at such moments. For all her bickering she found his tips on apparel useful. Her first husband had been so strict in the rules of men and women’s differences that she floundered when she tried to please him. He was not there to point out that she wore a hat backwards or pulled her corset too tightly. Orion may have known more than the average man about female dress. But that was something she found fascinating in him. He did not want to be a woman and yet he could become one when he pleased. Though that height…

Orion towered over everyone. The woman he became stood out as well, as freakishly tall. But not beside Amadeus Frunberg, the tallest person Bri had ever met.

“Why do you do it?” Orion’s voice traveled to her, interrupting her thoughts on his lover Amadeus. She shook her head.

She was patting down her hair as it rested in a bun on top of her head. She glanced at him again through the reflection. He had a book at hand but she knew he was not reading it. She knew his attention span was dead when he was like this.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “To make myself look younger. I’m old in case you don’t remember.”

She had not begun to gray yet but she was aging and she knew it.

“You make it sound like you are a century old. I mean, why pull it that extra inch?”

“No reason. Now are you ready?”

He nodded to her, the dark around his eyes warning that this may be a long evening. They were green eyes, alert and sharp. When Drusilla opened her eyes they were the same.

“It is going to be alright,” Bri assured him.

Seeing Charles and Lucy again promised good luck but there were loose ends between Charles and Orion that needed to be tied and that might be troublesome. In any case Bri was prepared to stand by her husband’s side.

“Then let us go!” she reached a hand out to her husband. He stood and took it. Their gloves covered most but their fingers touched.

ODE TO JOY: Part 1-3: Madness in the Blood

3.     Madness in the Blood

Hiring a wetnurse had been an interview left to the earl. Something he would have felt deadly afraid of doing were it not for his apathy toward breasts. Yet every woman who he interviewed seemed uncomfortable that it was a man who rushed these questions out. Bri had written the questions on the back of a calling card, in the tiniest finest print Orion had ever seen.

To hell if he could read it.

“You should not corn…” he spoke to one of the women in a calm voice, hiding the fact that he was reading off of this card religiously.

“Corn?” the young woman bit her lip.

Where was her child? If she was producing milk then surely the baby should be near her. Orion did not know, nor did he understand the instruction that his wife had written out.

“I am not sure I understand your meaning, my lord.”

Orion laughed suddenly, covering his face.

Shame and guilt flowered in his stomach.

Fantastic. Now I’ve scared this one off.

The laugh had been so sudden and manic that the woman stiffened in her chair. He shook his head. “I apologize. It is my wife’s handwriting. I am unsure what it means myself.”

He gambled to show the woman the back of the card. She leaned forward in a stiff and demur way.

“Scorn…” she read off. “I believe she means ‘scold.’ As in, don’t fuss the baby…”

Orion blinked at the young woman and then nodded, his demeanor smoothed into the cold and stoic front he usually wore for strangers. “Quite. Don’t do that. That is a no in her book. It is a no in mine too but…I’m a man. I will not tell a woman how to raise her children. Though, if you scolded the child, you would most likely be fired. What was your name again?” he stopped himself from rambling.

His thoughts were speeding to the point of being useless, his eyes circled darkly by his fatigue. That fatigue that would not relieve itself by letting him rest.

“I do not believe in punishing babies, my lord…” the tough young woman replied.

Orion offered a sincere smile. “That is good. There is really no need for that. Life  becomes hard the moment we are conscience of our actions.”

The woman nodded in a way that told Orion the tables had turned. Now she was inspecting him.

She knows! She knows I am mad and now she will spread that rumor all about town. The mad earl’s son is his father’s boy for sure!

“You’ve done very well, dear. Next!” he announced with his baritone.

He fixed his invisible shield as best he could. He needed that cold front. It was a necessary weapon on days like these. Bri was counting on him to find a suitable woman to nurse their child. What could be more important? Already little Drusilla had confined Bri to the nursery.

A sad older woman stepped into the room after the nervous girl, who seemed to literally run away from the strange earl.

“Good morning,” she spoke with a soft voice.

The voice was important to Orion. He noted it as a positive. She was gentle and had an air of sadness about her that he had yet to see in the other women.

“Good morning,” he greeted with a nod. “What is your name, miss?”

“Julia. Julia Frost.”

He noted with mild interest that she was surely lactating. Her breasts were swollen to a point of looking painful. Orion made a physical effort not to mention something so inappropriate. But how was that so inappropriate? She was interviewing to be a wetnurse. Her breast milk was the most important part, was it not?

“Lord Hookwell, Miss Julia. It is a pleasure. You have lovely eyes,” he told her in truth.

They were tired eyes but they shined with life. “Thank you, my lord.”

“Hm, well. I have my wife’s notes here. I will be perfectly honest…I think I have frightened the last few women. I know this is inappropriate. A man interviewing for a wetnurse but my wife is ill. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Not at all, my lord. I expected many.”

“Good. My wife was expecting too,” he let out a light laugh, somehow stopping it before it swelled into madness.

To his surprise Julia laughed. “Puns. Very good.”

“Hm, well,” he cleared his throat. “We try. Where is your little one?”

Orion wrote on the card of her gentleness and of her experience in being a mother. She had two children and was around Brigid’s age.

Following Julia’s departure, the butler handed him a stack of mail that made his heart race with anxiety.  He handed them back to the butler. “Are there any that aren’t bad news right now?”

“Well…let’s see…” the butler cleared his throat and thumbed through. “Ah, here we are.”

Orion took the envelope from the man with shifting eyes.

“This isn’t sarcasm, is it?”

“My lord, I would not be sarcastic with you. I would like to remain alive.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing, my lord.”

When Orion read the swirling handwriting on the envelope he recognized it so quickly that he choked on air.

The butler cleared his throat. “My lord, may I make a suggestion?”

“Confine myself to my room until this passes?”

“Precisely.”

“There are things to do. And this…” Orion shook the envelope. “This is troubling, by the way.”

“The Arteberrys are not lawyers or witch doctors. Nor are they mad-doctors.”

The earl eyed the man down, hurt by the bluntness of his words.

“I am sorry,” the older man apologized. “I only meant they are your friends…”

In the safety on his own room Orion tore the envelope open. A beautiful sketch of a bird began the congratulations letter. It was signed by Lucinda Arteberry, the lovely innkeeper in Dartmoor. To Orion’s surprise it was also signed by her husband Captain Charles Arteberry.

“So we speak again, Charles?” Orion spoke to the sailor who was not there. He put his face in his hands and took a deep breath.

When a hand landed on his shoulder he started.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” Bri’s voice announced her a few seconds too late.

“Brigid!” he raised his voice. “Don’t! Do! That!”

“I’m sorry, muffin. Who is it from?” she peaked over his shoulder.

Her hair was tumbling down free and she was in a nightgown. She showed little care for propriety when it came to being clothed in the house. Something Orion did not mind. However, he did mind being spooked as he had a tendency to jump higher than a startled cat.

“The Arteberrys. It’s from the Arteberrys.”

“Oh and Charles signed it? Good. I suppose he’s not angry at you anymore.”

“Or Lucy put a gun to his head. Probably the latter.”

“Muffin. You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?” he snapped.

“Assuming.”

“Brigid, I have a splitting headache.”

Brigid’s eyes narrowed and she stepped back. “Fine. Did you find a good wetnurse?”

“Yes. Her name is Julia. She’s very kind,” he rushed the words, almost stumbling over them.

“What is the matter?”

“I want to die!” he exclaimed, his voice broke into something like a scream.

Brigid grimaced and turned from him, stomping from the room.

“Brigid!” he called out instantly after. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”

“Sorry? You say that often, Rion,” she snapped back and slammed the door behind her.

Orion set his head on the desk and fought tears.