Blackfin’s promised reward was a six-year-old girl-child cowering in the corner of the room into which I was carried. This one was in the basement next to the wine cellars and must have been used to store coal at one time. Black dust covered everything although everything was a misnomer. There was a blanket on the floor, a privy bucket and a set of old chains which they attached to my ankles. After that, he stripped me to my underwear. A tiny window no bigger than the bucket let in some light, right on top of me. I could move away but in the small room, some part of me would be in sunlight at least part of the day.
The child was filthy, an obvious street urchin and yet if she had been clean, she would have been pretty. Blonde hair with a reddish tint, blue eyes and a tiny, delicate neck where her pulse beat like a frightened rabbit.
I rolled over and looked at her. She wore only a thin linen shift that barely covered her scabrous knees. She was thin, too. Hollow-cheeked yet the smell of her blood made me swallow in fear.
“What’s your name?” I asked softly and she looked at me in surprise. “Did they tell you I’m a monster? Well, I am but I won’t hurt you. You look like a Peony. I have a very nice horse named Peony.” I rambled on and finally heard her speak.
“I’m not a horse.”
“Well, of course you’re not. You’re a little girl,” I returned. “I’ll tell you a secret. The real monsters are the ones on the other side of the door. We’re safe in here from them.”
“The jimsey said you’re the real monster,” she added.
“Jimsey?”
“You know. The woman/man. The man who thinks he’s a woman. They call him a ‘jimsey’. It’s best not to get noticed by it. You disappear if it sees you.”
“He’s a bad man,” I agreed. “My name is Toby.” I waited and finally, she answered me.
“Sally. Sally Mitford. Me da sold me to the jimsey last week.”
“Do you think you can squeeze through the window, Sally? If I put you up there?”
“Thems soldiers outside in the yard. It looks out on the Commons yard–where the fancy coats practice.”
“Best we wait until dark, then.”
“You got any food on you? I ain’t ate in two days,” she admitted grudgingly. I looked down at my state of undress, clad only in my underthings. I hadn’t even been able to pry loose a stone from the diamonds. I had planned on using it for a bribe.
“It said you would eat me,” she said it accusingly and I swallowed.
“No, Sally. I don’t eat little girls or boys. Or big ones, either. I am sick, though. The only thing I can eat or drink is blood. Anything else makes me very ill.”
Her eyes widened in sheer terror and she screamed until the guards came to see what the ruckus was about. They were disappointed when they saw me sitting on the floor as far away from her as I could get. The hunger pangs started and I forced myself to ignore them. The guards mocked me yet I noticed with wry amusement that they did not come close to the bars.
After she had screamed herself hoarse and to the point of unconsciousness, Blackfin ordered one of the guards to enter my space and slit the child’s throat. That roused me and I scooped her close to my body, shielding her. But it did me no good, Blackfin merely hit me with his cane and each blow paralyzed the limb he struck. It was hawthorn wood topped by a silver wolf’s head.
Once I was down and immobile, the guard murdered her as if she were no more than an unwanted cur dog and to the wizard’s instructions, held her upside down by an ankle and over my face. Warm blood and urine spattered me and to my utter horror, I drank crying even as I did so.
She did not have much in her little body, just enough to make me ravenous for more. When that ‘more’ word exited my clenched teeth, Blackfin looked ecstatic. He glanced at the soldiers who stirred uneasily, not sure of what was happening. Their blades and guns came up.
“Are there prisoners in the cells?” he asked and at their nods, “They are condemned? None will be missed?”
“Four are to be executed this evening,” the Sergeant said.
“Get up, Toby,” he told me and I found I could move. Slowly, sluggishly as if my limbs were under another’s control.
“Follow us. To those lucky men who will not meet the executioner’s ax,” he said sardonically. Our little troop left the wine cellar/coal bin into a high barrel-vaulted corridor well lit with strange blue lights hanging from wires. It led down three more levels to the bedrock of the land where small 6 X 6 cells had been carved into the very rock of the earth. Gated by ordinary two-inch thick steel bars with locks that a hand waved over would open.
The first one we stopped at held a tall, thin man with apple like knots of muscles in his arms and jaw. Lank brown hair and deep-set black olive eyes. He cursed when he saw Blackfin, vile words that made me cringe. He was more beastlike than the beast.
“Poland,” the Wizard said. “I’ve brought you this boy…subdue him and you go free.”
The man called Poland sneered and called him a liar, that it was a trick. Blackfin held up a key to the jail cell, tied it around my neck and pushed me forward.
“He is yours, take him, take the key, we will make no attempt to stop you once you are outside the gate.”
“This is another of your sick games, jimsey,” the man snarled.
Blackfin pushed me forward, unlocked the bars and shoved me inside. I stood, unsure of what he wanted or what the man would do. With a roar he lunged for me, a hidden blade appearing in his hand as he swiped it for my belly. In shock, I leaned to the side as a hot burning flicked across my stomach and my hand reached for his arm. Pulled him around in a circle as he struggled to let go but my fingers gripped so hard that they left deep dents in his tissues. I could feel bones cracking underneath mine. I snugged him up close to my body and my face settled unerringly into the junction of his shoulder and neck. I bit deep, felt the throb of his veins and heart as my teeth found the source of that elixir that I craved and sustained me. My belly which had been hurting, stopped.
The more I drew upon, the weaker he became until all I was holding was the empty remains of an envelope of flesh. It no longer enticed me and I dropped it. Looked at them as cattle in the darkness.
“More,” I said and my voice held a power that made them all step forward in fascination, faces blank, their weapons forgotten. Until the Wizard stopped them.
“Not these,” he said in satisfaction. “There are others you may freely feed upon.” He named them and they watched with curious, detached fascination as I slid through the steel bars, into the cells and ate until I was gorged. When I checked my belly later where the first man had knifed me, all I found was a thin healed slice.
He brought me back to the coal room and I lay down in a corner out of the sun to sleep. It was days before I was to wake and in the dark of the night.
Sometime during that unconscious interval, I had been transported back to my Tower cell, bathed and dressed, put to bed like a great pasha. They had even placed my hands atop my chest as if I were laid in state.
I yawned, stretched and sat bolt upright as the memories of the last few days surfaced.
Was appalled that I had killed and was responsible for the deaths of four people, one a child. I tried to justify it by saying that they had been condemned to die anyway but somehow, that made it worse. I had murdered them, not Blackfin, I had taken their lives and life’s blood. I had enjoyed and reveled in it.
I sobbed in my hands and resolved to try and kill myself. I could no longer endure what I was becoming. I could not throw myself off the roof, I had no access to that part of the tower. I had no weapons and neither my body nor the wizard would allow me to starve myself.
I would have to fashion a weapon of sorts and I looked up to see if I could access the rafters and perhaps fashion a rope from torn sheets to hang myself. I could break one of the posts off the bed and beat myself to death but my easiest option was hanging. Could I reach a rafter? There wasn’t enough furniture in the room to stack high enough to climb to the roof, it stopped short some twenty feet below.
To occupy my time, I ripped the sheets and covers into thin strips and braided them into a hundred foot line which I stored around my waist. That done, I had nothing left to divert my mind so I waited. Waited for whatever Fate had next in store for me.