Attendence at the Kendal Ball (Part XI)

Kendal Palace, Grosvenor Square, London, Great Britain: January 1886

Lady Penelope, after making sure, that her willful niece was attending to her duties as hostess, turned back to Sir Leo and subtly but firmly guided him away from Ursula and Sir Thomas, so as to have a moment alone to talk. The two walked through the throng of assembled guests cluttering the great hall, made the necessary polite but friendly conversation and finally ended up in an side alcove gallery which at that moment was quiet empty of guests or family servants.

As soon as Lady Penelope was sure the two of them were alone, she suddenly sighed feelingly while fanning herself briskly with her lace fan. Less, Sir Leo noted, because she felt hot but to give herself time to collect herself and think.

"I really, really do despair of that, girl, sometimes."

Sir Leo, merely arched an eyebrow in bemused silence, if Lady Penelope had something to say, she would say it presently once she had made her own particular way to it. Lady Penelope noticed, Sir Leo's watchful silence, and flipped her fan up to cover her face, leaving only her dark brown eyes clearly visible. She looked back at him coyly.

Sir Leo flatly refused to be drawn, he knew Lady Penelope all too well. She for her part realized that Sir Leo was not going to play the game, tossed her head in a mix of frustration at something she evidently did not want to bring up but thought she should and amused exasperation at her sparing partner's all too typical lapses into wry humoured silence.

"Baron Landseer is coming to the Ball this evening." Lady Penelope finally said with an irritated sigh. That got Sir Leo's attention, both he and Sir Regis Augustus Crossley, 11th Baron of Landseer had been school mates at the Brookfield Grammar School and Barchester College and good friends. Regis was a man of a good natured, suave and tactful sort. One of nature's born diplomats, and well regarded within foreign diplomatic circles and the British Foreign Office. He was also an old friend of the Wraithdales, which only made it natural for him to be invited to the Ball, what set Sir Leo on his guard was, what Lady Penelope had not just said.

"Lord Landseer did not just happen to invite his younger brother to join him, did he?" Sir Leo said with eyes narrowing behind his monocle. Lady Penelope grimaced feelingly and nodded, Sir Leo sighed softly his monocle falling out of his eye as he did so. The Honourable Lord Roderick Octavius Crossley was not amougst either his or Lady Penelope's favourite people for a number of reasons, Ursula or rather Roderick's past attempts to alternatively insult or court her being the chief amoung them. Ursula for her part absolutely despised him to the depths of her heart and soul.

"Neither of them know about, Ursula and Sir Thomas's engagement yet, do they." Sir Leo remarked wryly. His lips quirked into what might almost be charitably called a sardonic half-smile as he looked at Lady Penelope's expression.

"My God, when he finds out,  Roderick with have a bloody fit!" Sir Leo remarked with something like a chuckle of amusement.

The servant automaton stationed unobtrustively at the entrance to the alcove, made a warning sound of softy but audible clicking gears accented by a musical tone, which caused Sir Leo to turn and look sharply at the entrance, a figure appeared in the soft light streaming through the doorway from the great hall.

"Ah Lady Penelope, just who I was looking for. I believe you wanted a quiet word with the rest of the Wraithdale Trustees, before there were any fireworks tonight?"

Dame Daphne Cosgrave, Q.C. remarked as she crossed the threshold and approached both Lady Penelope and Sir Leo. Cosgrave was an accomplished barrister and acted as the Wraithdale family's primary legal counsel and agent before the Queen's Bench when required. She wore an elegant dress of black cloth decorated with black silk ribbons and white lace. Daphne looked beguilingly splendid, Sir Leo had to admit. Her long white hair was set off by sparkling jewelry at her neck, ears and brow, though they did not sparkle half as enchantingly as her witch green eyes.

"Yes, actually." Lady Penelope returned, Sir Leo noticed from the corner of his eye the way, Penelope schooled her face into a demure expression. Dame Daphne noticed it to, a wicked smile played across her lips as she looked at her friend.

"And keeping the desirable Sir Leo as near to your self as possible I see." Dame Daphne remarked teasingly. Sir Leo smothered the impulse to laugh by replacing his monocle in his left eye, and schooling his face into immobility to keep it there. The fact that he and Lady Penelope had once courted each other quite seriously was old news in London Society, as was abrupt end to it when his mother the Dowager Duchess had put her foot down against it. Not that the Wraithdales had objected to his potential suite at the time, although they did rather object to his mother as a potential in-law!

Dame Daphne did rather enjoy twitting people about everyday things, particularly their society affairs or love lives. She was never vicious about it but she did enjoy having a dig at people. Penelope refused to give her long time friend the satisfaction of a remark, and just fanned herself with her lace fan languidly. Which did absolutely nothing to still the raising colour stealing its way into her cheeks, Sir Leo noticed.

"This teasing party a private affair or one with an open invitation?" Duncan Foster remarked from the entrance, the Wraithdale Family's chief solicitor looked on with an amused expression. Beside him stood Alastair Wycliffe Scattergood, a Wraithdale family friend of long standing, bon vivant, fashionable dandy and gentleman of leisure. Just behind the two of them, Sir Leo could see the two remaining members of the Wraithdale Estate Trustees approaching the alcove, Sir Samuel Thistlewood, one of London's most notable businessmen and self-taught inventors and the Lady Philipa Fieldhouse, one of the rising stars of the London banking and financing institutions.

The next few minutes discussion promised to be more then usually interesting, Sir Leo, thought absently.

A Hidden Past (Part VI)

The examination was as tedious as Sir Nigel had warned her, it lasted for hours, although it was not uninteresting. Josephine answered the various questions to the best of her ability and as truthfully as she could were they touched on the personal. Sir Nigel and Millicent Carmichael handled much of the questioning, while Althorpe stayed in the background and monitored the apparatus that controlled the special monitoring chair she sat in.

At some point in the interview, Josephine lost consciousness and lapsed into a trance like state as the systems of the monitor chair worked softly away on her mind via various means. Sir Nigel, Carmichael and Althorpe were surprised that it had taken so long, most people went into the deep examination trance within an hour or two, she had stayed alert an awake for more then four hours, although the time prior had not been wasted. Josephine had answered a lot of the questions, and her reactions had been instructive and not a little confusing. They would have to examine the transcripts with care with the rest of the team and make some careful evaluations.

Sir Nigel thought carefully then asked the first of the real questions he wanted answers too.

"What is your first memory?"

The question slipped slowly into the tranced stillness of Josephine's mind, slowly her unconscious grasped it and began to answer it, not in words but in fragments of memory.

She stood stock still in a darkness shrouded, derelict cobble stoned street, choked with debris, soot and fog. The abandoned buildings and decrepit houses towered up around her blocking out the moon and stars. The sound and feel of falling rain engulfed her senses, which felt curiously dull and disconnected.

She felt terribly cold, lifeless, soulless and utterly alone. No breath filled her lungs, no blood circulated through her body, no spark of life animated her. She was a bedraggled and blood stained corpse dressed in dirty, torn and much patched clothes.

Other figures moved with disjoined motions around her in the shadows, fog and heavily falling rain. They were no more alive then she was, though they moved. A fierce, unnatural raving hunger drove them forward to seek the living. But today something else drove them, something that they could not comprehend, although when living themselves they might have been able to give name to it. The name was... Fear. They source of that fear was close by, she could sense it's steady, unhurried approach.

Oddly, she felt strangely comforted by that ominous presence and longed to move towards it even as the other dead around her moved instinctively away from it. A pair of white eyes glowed suddenly and sharply through the night and fog, the body they belonged to was a dark shadow enveloped in the night and rain. The eyes looked neither left nor to the right but straight ahead, seemingly untroubled by the walking dead around them. They stopped directly in front of her.

A darkly gloved hand reached out and touched her dead face, ever so gently. A voice echoed suddenly in her mind. Well, Well little seamstress, I have found you at last.

Josephine had not made any sound though it was obvious to her questioner that even unconscious her mind was dwelling on the first question, though it had not formed an answer that she could voice. Sir Nigel decided to try another tack, and so asked his second question.

"Who made you?"

"Schreck." Came the almost unearthly response from her barely parted lips. "He is my master. He called me back from Death's Abyss, from the mindless dead which I was before he came to me." Sir Nigel raised his white eyebrows in surprise, Althorpe flinched violently at the mere mention of the name. Well he should, Sir Nigel thought grimly.

Karl Magnus Schreck, to give the man his full name, was believed to be the oldest known practitioner of necromancy still drawing breath upon the face of the world. Revered and feared in equal measure by all practitioners of white and dark magic alike. They called him the Master of Fear, a play upon what his surname meant in German, meaning roughly fear or terror. Reliable and authenticated accounts of him went back as far as the days of ancient antiquity.

Sir Nigel forced himself to slowly sit back in his chair and think. Why had Schreck been in London? There had been absolutely no word of his coming. The Devil's Courtyard would of course be natural territory for him, the combination of death and vice there would have attracted both his professional interest and readily supplied him with test subjects for his necromantic researches. While at the same time the nature of the place would make hiding said necromantic experiments from the prying eyes of the local or national authorities that much more easy. The periodic plagues and epidemics that hit the area due to the ludicrous and dangerously stupid human overcrowding and the deplorably unsanitary conditions that reigned within the walled off area that was the Devil's Courtyard would also have come to his notice. Had Schreck caused the zombie plague that had decimated the place five years ago?

Probably not, on reflection, it did not fit his previously known modus operandi which was to generally remain quiet, reclusive and as much as possible totally unobserved. Josephine Rumbleton or whatever her name had been before, she had died and been reanimated, had been some sort of experiment for Schreck. Somehow he had found her and he had brought her back fully to life after she had died in the zombie outbreak. Schreck had done something hitherto regarded as absolutely impossible by all serious, respected and eminently established medical practitioners, scientists and magical practitioners alike! Then again, as Charles Babbage had once observed to him, anything can and will happen statistically at least once at any given time or place.

was the fire that had virtually destroyed the Devil's Courtyard, Schreck's design as well? It would have been extremely useful to cover his tracks if he had been prepared to shift his operations to somewhere else. I t would also have dealt with any last elements of the zombie plague still resident in the Devil's Courtyard. Schreck was not one to leave dangerous or inconvenient loose ends unattended too, especially if he had been moving to his own timetable. Too many questions, with no answers, Sir Nigel thought wryly.

Josephine without uttering another word, abruptly slumped forward in the restraints of the chair, like a puppet with it's strings cut. The mechanical monitoring devices built into the chair suddenly, spectacularly shorted out or went inexplicably dark and dead like the occupant of the chair seemed to. The temperature in the room began to drop several degrees each second,  frost began to form both upon the chair and Josephine, the lightening in the room began to bizarrely flicker on and off as if the power supply had suddenly become unstable.

"What on earth...?!" Sir Nigel began to say, puzzlement and a trace of rising suspicion written clearly on his face. He began to rise from his chair not altogether sure what was happening, his instincts and experience warned him whatever was occurring was both out of the ordinary and not at all good.

Suddenly with a bone and tendon snapping crack, Josephine's head came up with an unnatural jerk. Her eyes were wide and staring, her once brown irises had gone an eerie milkly white. A strange death like pallor had seized hold of her skin. The devices in the chair sparkled wildly to life, alarms screamed to life throwing off sudden lights and flashes that weirdly illuminated the darkened room.

With a manic strength not at all native to a human body, Josephine suddenly snapped free of the chair's heavily constructed restraints. Carmichael flung herself at the side table grabbing for her long barreled revolver with blinding speed, swinging the muzzle up, then jerking herself around and levelling the weapon towards the occupant of the chair.

Althorpe nearly froze in place with terrified alarm, that same bone chilling smile that so rattled him before reappeared on Josephine's face. Before either he or Sir Nigel could make a move, she stood up from the chair, scattering broken parts and restraints in crazy parabolic arcs and flew at Carmichael like a rocket, trailing disturbed particles of frost as if they were spider webs.

Carmichael found herself gasping in shock, as icy cold hands tightly clasped her throat and wrist of the hand that held the gun. She felt her airways constrict under the steady, savage pressure even as the bones in her immobilized wrist groaned in protest. Chilling grey white eyes locked gaze with her own sparkling blue eyes. Millicent felt her vision begin to blur and darken, a terrible gasping sound emerged from her throat as her feebly twitching fingers involuntarily loosened their grip on the revolver butt and trigger. All the while, those grey white eyes were inches from her own glittered with an increased cold, harsh brilliance. The terrible frozen smile seemed to widen by increments with an unholy amusement as the life was slowly and smoothly squeezed out of her.

Carmichael frantically felt her consciousness slipping away, the revolver dropped from her nerveless fingers striking the hard stone floor unnoticed disputed it's harsh metallic clang echoing throughout the room. A detached part of Carmichael's mind found time to be surprising that the cocked, hair trigger weapon had not gone off when it struck the floor. She struggled increasingly and desperately to draw a life sustaining breath. A heavy chair abruptly appeared to Millicent's left and came crashing down on Josephine Rumbleton's head and shoulder. The well furnished and reassuringly solid English Oak chair exploded into fragments as it struck, Sir Nigel staggered backwards cursing profusely still grasping the splintered remains in his hands, the shock of the impact had painfully jarred his hands, wrists and arms. Sir Nigel felt liked he had just clubbed a tombstone or a mausoleum wall!

The stunning and bone shattering blow, which by all rights would have felled a normal man or woman and likely left them in a semi-coma, left Josephine absolutely unmoved. Althorpe suddenly recovered himself and muttered an incantation, struck his walking stick to the ground once then twice. The ornate handled stick suddenly glowed with magical power and lengthened in the twinkling of an eye into an ornate staff, sigils and runes blazed along it's entire length. An ornate gemstone, framed by a spearhead shaped lattice work of writhing snakes, in the shape of an opened eye topped the staff. The gem smoked with an unnatural emerald fire like a piece of metal freshly emerged from a forge at white heat.

"Move. The woman dies. Painfully." The flat, harsh voice warning that emerged from Josephine's mouth belonged to no living thing, it seethed with a deadly and frighteningly ancient power and a sheer malevolence that went beyond any trifling concept of mere human malice. Neither man moved an inch but stood their ground in silent defiance.