chapter FORTY-FOUR
BLUEBEARD
No. Troisclerq’s labyrinth could not catch Jacob. Fox wished him far, far away; and she was so happy to see him. So happy.
Jacob was not alone. Fox recognised Donnersmarck only at second glance. She always thought his sister had been a fool for getting seduced by a Bluebeard.
Troisclerq’s servant dragged her away from the window. She bit his furry hand, even though her human teeth were so much blunter than the vixen’s, and tore herself free. The pitcher was already half full. Fox pushed it over before the servant could stop her. He grabbed her hair and shook her so hard that she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t care. Her fear was trickling white across the table. Jacob was here, and they were both still alive.
‘So it’s just like everyone says. Not that I would have doubted it.’ Troisclerq was standing in the doorway. He went to the table and caught the dripping liquid in the hollow of his hand.
He didn’t seem alarmed that Jacob had escaped his labyrinth.
‘You cannot kill him!’ What was she thinking? That if she spoke the words loudly enough, they would become the truth? Fox felt her fear return.
Troisclerq touched the white liquid in his hand. ‘We shall see.’ He nodded at his servant. ‘Take her to the others.’
Fox kept screaming Jacob’s name while the servant dragged her down the corridor. What for? To warn him, to call him, to wrap herself in his name, the way she would wrap herself in the fur the Bluebeard had stolen from her. Don’t call him, Fox.
The servant stopped.
Take her to the others.
The door was no different from the other doors, but Fox could smell the death behind it as clearly as if there was blood actually seeping through the dark wood.
‘You forgot something.’ Troisclerq was standing behind her. He was holding the bunch of keys he’d put next to her plate. Maybe he wanted to see her hands tremble as she tried to put the golden key into the lock.
Jacob hadn’t let her inside the house where the Bluebeard had killed Donnersmarck’s sister. Fox had mocked him for it. The vixen had herself killed too often to be shocked by death, yet the sight awaiting her behind the door still filled her with dread.
This hunter never let go of his prey.
Nine women. They hung, held up by golden chains, like string puppets killed by their own fear. Their eyes were empty, but the terror was for ever written on their pale faces. Their killer kept them in his red chamber like jewels in a casket. Frozen remnants of the pleasure they’d given him, of the life they’d fed him, of the love that had lured them to him.
The servant wrapped the golden chain around Fox’s neck and wrists as though he wanted to adorn her one last time for Troisclerq. There wasn’t much space left in his horrible doll’s house. Her elbow touched the arm of the dead girl next to her. So cold and still so beautiful.
‘They won’t let me go.’ Troisclerq put the empty pitcher on a table by one of the shrouded windows. ‘They become part of me. Maybe that’s part of why I kill them – to free myself from them. But they remain, silent and still, and they remind me. Of their voices. Of the warmth their skin once had.’
The gaslights that illuminated the chamber cast the shadows of the dead on the red wall. Fox could see her own among them. She was already one of them.
Troisclerq approached her. ‘You’re still afraid more of his death than of your own?’
‘No.’ Fox didn’t care whether Troisclerq knew that was a lie. ‘He will kill you. For me. And for the others.’
‘Many have tried.’ Troisclerq nodded at his servant. ‘Bring him to me,’ he said. ‘But only him.’
Then he leant against the silk-covered wall that gave the room the colour of the insides of an animal. Troisclerq waited.
And Fox saw her fear trickling into the pitcher.