Chương 49: Part Five: The Gilded Cage

By the time the convoy left the highway, the sun was high in a pale sky. For the last hour, they had passed no place large enough to resemble a town. The road had flattened and narrowed. The men in the front seats spoke only to confirm turns and checkpoints. The lead car turned off the county road onto a private lane paved with crushed shell and dark gravel. A heavy iron gate stood open. Two men in dark work clothes waited beside it with their rifles held low.

They passed below live oaks arched over the lane, with gray moss hanging from their branches. The plantation house came into view when the lane straightened. It stood two stories high, with a broad front gallery, tall white columns, and a long facade facing a closely cut lawn. The house still displayed its old Southern grandeur, but everything added since had been built for control. The windows were reinforced. Small dark cameras were mounted beneath the eaves.

The side wings were newer, built of brick and steel, with narrow windows and secured doors. Two black vehicles were parked beneath the side porte-cochère, and two more were partly concealed beside the old carriage house. Angelique sat still beside Louis. Gladice, on his other side, exhaled through her nose.

"Somebody certainly likes their antiques," she said. The convoy rounded the final curve and stopped beneath the side entrance. Beside the door hung the Dixie flag, its red saltire and four crosses stark against the white field. A woman was waiting under the overhang. She stood apart from the armed men near the steps. She looked about fifty and wore a high-collared dark gray dress buttoned at the wrists, with a narrow silver cross at her throat. Her hair was pulled back neatly.

Behind her stood two younger women in plainer dresses and white aprons. Neither looked at the captives directly until the doors opened. Graves stepped out first. The armed men opened the doors of the middle vehicle. Louis's right knee nearly gave way when he stood. Marlow offered him the cane, and Louis took it. Angelique got out on her own. Gladice followed without help. She moved stiffly but kept her face blank. The woman in gray inclined her head.

"Mr. Collins. Miss Bourbon. Miss Simington." She spoke in a low, even voice.

"Welcome. You will be cleaned, properly dressed, and given breakfast. After that, you will wait until you are called." Louis looked past her toward the house and said nothing. She turned toward Graves.

"You're late."

"Unavoidable," he said.

"But they're here."

"Clearly." She looked back at the three of them.

"I am Mrs. Harlan. While you are in this house, the women will answer to me. Mr. Collins will answer to Mr. Wells. That distinction will become useful to you if you survive long enough to understand it." She looked over Angelique's loose hair, Gladice's mud-streaked hem, and Louis's splint and cane.

"You look like the road has argued with you. We will correct that." She turned toward the house. The two younger women stepped forward. They looked directly at the three of them now and kept their hands clasped before them. The interior was cooler than the morning outside. They followed Mrs. Harlan into a broad side hall paneled in old wood. Old family portraits hung above a long console table. Below them sat a bowl of white roses. Mrs. Harlan stopped at the foot of a split staircase.

"The women first," she said.

"Mr. Collins will be taken to the east bath." Angelique and Gladice did not immediately move.

"No one will lay hands on you unless you force us to use hands," Mrs. Harlan said.

"You may wash yourselves. The doors will remain closed. I suggest you take the offer. No one benefits from filth." Gladice said, "I think you and I have different ideas about who benefits from what." Mrs. Harlan gestured toward the stairs.

"Please, Miss Bourbon, Miss Simington." One of the younger women approached Angelique, and the other went to Gladice. Angelique looked at Louis, then followed the first woman upstairs without turning back. Gladice paused beside the stairs and looked directly at him. She nodded, then followed the second woman without another word. Louis watched them disappear around the corner. Two men stood beside the other staircase and waited for him. Louis followed them.

The cane clicked against the wooden floor, and pain returned each time he put weight on his right leg. The bathroom was tiled in faded cream and dark green, with a porcelain tub in the center. The bath had already been drawn, and steam rose from the water. The brass fixtures were polished. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Fresh clothes and folded towels had been placed on a chair beside the tub, along with soap, a comb, and a shaving kit.

The marble vanity held antiseptic, ointment, fresh bandages, pain tablets, and a glass of water. One of the men stopped in the doorway without entering.

"You have an hour," he said.

"Everything you need is there. Leave your old clothes on the floor when you are done. Someone will collect them." Louis said nothing. The man closed the door. He undressed slowly and left his clothes on the floor. He stopped in front of the mirror. It was the first clear view he had had of himself since he was taken. The bruise at his throat had begun to yellow. Fresh cuts marked his hairline and cheek, and one shoulder was darkening where it had struck the ground.

A compression bandage and splint covered his swollen right knee. He unfastened the splint and set it beside the basin, then unwound the bandage. He tested the water with one hand. It was warm. He lowered himself into the tub slowly, bracing one hand on the rim. For a while, the warmth was the only thing he noticed. It eased the ache in his hips and shoulders. He rubbed dirt from his arms and chest. The water clouded pink and brown as dried blood and dirt came off his skin.

Once his body began to relax, he thought of home. He thought of his father first. Constantine would already have turned half a continent inside out by now. Rooms full of screens. Men standing when he entered. Voices going quiet so he could hear the answer properly. He would not be sleeping. He would be hunting.

Louis could see him too clearly: one hand on the table, head slightly bent, fury held so tightly inside order that everyone around him would mistake the calm for control and not understand it was the form wrath took when it expected to win. Then he thought of Judith, not simply as his mother, but as herself. The way she would sit straighter the more frightened she became. The way she would refuse useless comfort from anyone in the room. He had never made her fear for him like this. That hurt more than the bruises.

After Judith, the others came quickly. He imagined Serana furious and refusing to be sent anywhere safe. She might still be in a hotel suite turned into a command post, or already moved with the rest of the party. Then Victoria. He had told her he would bring a horse back. Some stupid light promise made in the grammar of ordinary life. He leaned his head back against the porcelain rim and shut his eyes.

The water stayed warm around his neck and shoulders, and for a moment he understood how far away they all were: not miles or states, but an entire world. Louis got out of the bath and stepped onto the tiled floor. He dried himself and checked the label on the bottle before taking two tablets. Then he put on the clothes the house had chosen for him: dark trousers, a white shirt, black suspenders, and a charcoal waistcoat. Everything fit him.

He wrapped a fresh bandage around his knee, refastened the splint, and buttoned the waistcoat. He no longer looked like someone who had fled through the dark. He looked like a young man expected to be brought before elders. When he knocked, the door opened. The same two men stood there. One said, "Follow us." They brought him to a morning room near the center of the first floor, overlooking the rear gardens and a lawn shaded by old oaks. The shutters were partly open.

Pale sunlight fell across clipped grass and white gravel paths. Two armed men stood outside with rifles across their bodies. Breakfast had been laid out on white china, with a silver coffee service, preserves, linen-wrapped biscuits, sliced fruit, and a silver dome. Angelique was already there. She stood by the window with one hand on the back of a chair, her body turned away from the room. When she turned toward him, he saw what the house had done.

Her hair had been washed and brushed smooth, then pinned low at the nape. The ivory blouse was fine enough for a woman of her rank, but it buttoned to her throat and wrists. She wore a long dark skirt and a fitted gray morning jacket without ornament. She caught him looking.

"Louis." He crossed to her.

"Are you alright?" Angelique shrugged.

"As much as anyone is, I suppose." He wanted to reach for her hand and did not. Instead he said, "You look—""No," she interrupted quietly.

"Don't." He nodded. The door opened again before either could say more. Gladice entered with Mrs. Harlan beside her. They had dressed her according to the same rules: a high-necked dark blouse, a long skirt, a tailored morning jacket, and hair pinned low away from her face. The jacket was dark plum, making the bruise at the base of her throat more visible. Gladice caught them looking and smiled.

"Very nice," she said, touching the lapel of her jacket.

"I have never felt so appropriately dressed for imprisonment." Mrs. Harlan ignored that.

"You will sit and wait. You will not shout. You will not test the staff. When you are called, you will stand." She looked from one of them to the next.

"The Lord is gracious to give you a morning. Do not waste it." She left. The door shut. Gladice crossed to the table, lifted the linen from the biscuits, and said, "I'm eating. I suggest you both do the same." Angelique sat first. Louis followed. Gladice took the third chair. She filled three cups with coffee without asking and pushed one toward each of them. Then she lifted the silver cover, found ham beneath it, and served herself. The food was good.

The biscuits were fresh, the ham properly cured, and the butter real. The coffee was strong and hot, and after several sips Louis could think more clearly. He ate with his injured leg stretched beneath the table. The pain pills had helped, and he hated being grateful for them. At last Gladice set down her cup.

"Are we going to talk about what happens next?" she asked. Angelique looked up.

"What is there to talk about?"

"Oh, I don't know." Gladice gestured around them with one hand.

"This feels like a house where people usually go to a trial. Or a sermon. Or a room where they explain why your existence is an offense to God and this country." Angelique did not smile.

"You think that is what this is?"

"No. I think they would have done that already if they meant to. This is something else." Gladice looked at Louis.

"Do you have any idea who they are waiting for?" He shook his head.

"My father has enemies everywhere. But the way they move, it feels more like government than like a private grudge." Gladice nodded.

"I think so too." Angelique traced the rim of her coffee cup with one finger. When she spoke, her voice was quieter than usual.

"The man who brought us here. Graves. He didn't talk like a fanatic."

"No," Gladice agreed.

"He talked like a professional who has worked for fanatics long enough to sound like one when it is useful." Louis looked at her.

"You think he's government?"

"I think he is the kind of man the government keeps on hand to do work that needs to be clean and deniable. And I think the house is running him, not the other way around." She glanced toward the hall.

"There is someone else coming. Someone they all answer to." The three of them fell silent. A door opened farther down the hall and stayed open. Footsteps followed on the staircase, slow and even. Whoever was coming made no effort to hurry. Then the door at the far end of the morning room opened.