Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [88]
31
THE RAPTURES AND ROSES OF VICE
Don’t s’pose we done ’im in, does yer?’ Nell asked, squatting on the bed, prodding the naked man with a long finger. He was face-down in a pillow, wrists and ankles loosely tied with scarves to brass bedposts. The nice white cotton sheets were spotted and stained.
Mary Jane was preoccupied with dressing. It was hard to set a bonnet without a mirror.
‘Mary Jane?’
‘Marie Jeanette,’ she corrected, loving the sound like music. She had tried to be rid of her brogue, until she realised men found it pleasing. ‘I’ve been tellin’ you for close on a year. ’Tis Marie Jeanette. Marie Jeanette Kelly.’
‘Yer Kelly don’t go with yer “Marie Jeanette”, Duchess.’
‘Tish-tush. And pish-posh too.’
‘That bloke what took yer to Paree didn’t do the rest of us no favours.’
‘Any favours.’
‘Pardon me fer suckin’, Duchess.’
‘And don’t you be talkin’ unkindly of my “Uncle Henry”. He was very distinguished. Probably still is very distinguished.’
‘Unless ’e’s a-rottin’ from the pox yer give ’im,’ Nell said, without real meanness.
‘Be away with the cheek of you, now.’
Mary Jane was finally happy with her hat. She was careful about her appearance. She might have turned vampire and she might be a cocotte, but she wasn’t going to let herself go and become a fox-face horror like Nell Coles.
The other woman sat on the bed, and felt around the poet’s neck, still sticky with his own blood.
‘We done ’im, Mary Jane. ’E’s bleedin’ dead, an’ ’e’ll turn for certain.’
‘Marie Jeanette.’
‘Yeah, an’ I’m Contessa Eleanora Francesca Muckety-Muck. Come ’ave a butchers.’
Mary Jane looked Algernon up and down. There were tiny bites, old and new, all over his body. His back and bottom were striped with purple welts. He had provided his own rods and encouraged them to put their backs into the whipping.
‘He’s an old hand at this, Nell. It’d take more than a flogging and a few love-bites to finish off this old cocker.’
Nell dipped a finger into the blood pooling in the small of Algernon’s back and touched her rough lips. She got hairier with every moonrise. She had to brush her cheeks and forehead now, sweeping her thick red hair back into a flaring mane. She stood out in a crowd, which had been good for business. Customers were peculiar. She wrinkled her wide nose as she tasted the blood. Nell was one of those who got ‘feelings’ with her food. Mary Jane was glad that didn’t happen to her.
Nell made a face. ‘That’s bitter,’ she said. ‘Who is the cove, anyway?’
‘His friend said he was a poet.’
A square-rigged gent had sought them out, and paid for a carriage from Whitechapel to Putney. The house was almost in the country. Mary Jane understood Algernon had been sick and was taking the air for his health.
‘Got enough books, ain’t ’e?’
Nell couldn’t read or write, but Mary Jane had her letters. The small bedroom was lined with bookshelves.
‘Did ’e write ’em all?’
Mary Jane took a beautifully bound book down from a shelf, and let it fall open.
‘“Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath,”’ she read aloud. ‘“We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.”’
‘Sounds lovely. Yer reckon it’s about us?’
‘Doubt it. I think ’tis about Our Lord Jesus.’
Nell made a face. She cringed if someone showed her a crucifix, and couldn’t bear to hear the name of Christ. Mary Jane still went to church when she could. She had been told God was forgiving. After all, the Lord returned from the grave and encouraged folk to drink His blood. Just like Miss Lucy.
Mary Jane put the book back. Algernon started gulping and Mary Jane held his head up. There was something in his throat. She burped him like a baby and let his head drop. A reddish stain seeped into his pillow.
‘Come down and relieve us from virtue, Our Lady of Pain,’ he said, clearly. Then he slumped insensible again, and started snoring.
‘Don’t sound dead, does he?’
Nell laughed. ‘Garn, yer Irish cow.’
‘Silver and stake my heart will break, but names’ll never hurt me.’
The other woman fastened her chemise over furry