The Amazing, Astonishing, Prodigious Adventures of Curiosity Blade:
From Asia with Love
1865 was considered by some to be the dawn of the luxury steamship voyage. Lady Curiosity Blade and her cousin, Lord Katzu Ono made quite the striking entrance to the grand dining hall of the maiden voyage of the Soaring Orient steamship on her way to San Francisco from Hong Kong.
Katzu was arrayed in full samurai dinner dress, complete with his navy blue kimono, with sash, swords, and coiffed long black hair. He had serious black eyes that missed nothing. He had a deceptively modest frame that belied the well trained, taut muscles beneath. Katsu was patient as sage, deadly as a cobra and twice as fast. It was rumored that Katsu once killed a man over a matter of honor. Those who witnessed the event watched his opponent’s head roll in the dust without ever having seen the blade, until it was pointed towards the ground, dripping blood, and the swordsman cleaned his blade to return it to its black and blue scabbard.
Since his cousin, Curiosity, was determined to make a grand traveling tour of the world, he had chosen to be the chaperone by her side. In all honesty, he did not believe she needed physical protection as much as to help maintain her already strained reputation. Curiosity had trained since they were both children, and she had beaten him more than once in martial arts close quarters. However, Katzu was taller and had a longer reach. Outside that small inner circle, Curiosity was more vulnerable. In addition to his expertise with the sword, Katzu could hit a locust on a blade of grass or graze a man’s top hat off kilter with an arrow. Katzu also possessed a photographic memory, which came in handy from time to time. Almost a mirror image of his cousin, Katzu was as quiet as Curiosity was, well, curious. Her hunger for knowledge was almost as insatiable as her desire for justice. On this last point, the two were in complete agreement, so Katzu was probably the best possible companion for the kind of adventures Curiosity had in mind.
Curiosity was as flamboyant as Katzu was reserved. She appeared in the dining room a vision in peacock turquoise silk. The lower half of the dress was intricately embroidered with colors and seed pearls that resembled a single, three foot peacock feather with dew on its delicate filaments. The bodice of her gown was a less flamboyant collection of peacock feathers that framed her modest cleavage and drooped gently from her pale shoulders. Her exotic heart shaped face was framed by golden hair set in the simple European braids of the time. The simplicity might have left a lesser beauty plain, but Curiosity’s black eyes sparkled from under a thin turquoise lace veil with a tiny matching pin adornment that held her hair in place.
Katzu took her lifted, small gloved hand and led Curiosity to the captain’s table.
The room sparkled with glitter from crystal chandeliers, candlelit tables, with their gold rimmed plates, silver utensils, and brilliant white table cloths. The mirrors and windows were all made with etched and beveled glass, and the mahogany chairs and railings were polished to a gleam you could see your reflection in as you passed.
As she approached, the captain and the other officers at the table rose from their seats. The rest of the men in the first class dining room did the same. There were also a few dignitaries in the lot, but Curiosity was the only lady in the room, as it happened. Women did not often travel from the Orient to the colonies, at least not in first class.
And Lady Curiosity Blade belonged nowhere else. For a few passing moments, every man in the room seemed to hold his breath, until she seated herself atop the proffered chair, and the rest of the men allowed themselves to return their attention to their own tables.
A young, blonde English Captain could not take his bright blue eyes off Lady Blade. Lord Ono cleared his throat and woke Captain Maddock out of the trance Curiosity mischievously held over him. She knew well the effect she could have on men, and used it to her advantage when it suited her.
“Uh, Right!” Maddock stuttered “Captain Christian Maddock at your service, my Lady. My will is yours to command.” He said with a slight bow and what he hoped sounded like chivalry.
“Well,” winked Curi, “I shall have to be careful not to test your restraint beyond your capacity then, shouldn’t I?”
“I beg your pardon?” Maddock blushed, utterly undone.
“Precisely,” replied Curi with a smug grin of putting the man in a 3 move social checkmate, neatly establishing herself at the top of the table’s hierarchy for the evening.
As the evening wore on for hours, Curiosity sparkled. Her laughter elicited more secrets from these captains of military and industry than a small army of spies in as many months.
Lord Ono was content to watch her work, listen intently, and read the unspoken characters of these gentlemen with their naked faces and easy responses.
At last, after lamps were low and conversation trailed to fatigue, Lord Ono rose and lifted Curiosity from the perch among her admirers. Much as they coveted her, only Ono knew that not one of them was a match for her. He grinned briefly looking down as they left the room.
“That went well, cousin.” He said. “Did you get the information you needed?”
“A start,” she said. “We have almost two months to unwind them completely. Better not to show our hand by being overly eager.”
“Well,” he nodded, “you have clearly had practice mastering their egos. Was there a one among them not wrapped around your fingers like schoolgirls’ yarn?”
“Not that I noticed,” she laughed.
But, in the shadows, even where Lord Ono did not glance, there was one man who was not taken in. Not at all.
He was a hunter.
And she was his prey.
***
Dressed as “Lord Blade”, Curiosity rode her magnificent black stallion into the valley being cut into the mountain pass by coolie laborers who had blasted a trail just wide enough for a single rider on a single horse and suddenly stopped working. They could not be tempted, bribed, brutalized or forced. They refused to go and Curiosity Blade and her cousin Katzu Ono had been hired by the Six Chinese companies to investigate what was so bad that men would rather die than face.
Dressed as a common laborer, Lord Ono passed among the coolies learning the stories of the terror that kept them awake at night. They told him stories of men, chained together, forced to drag pallets of dynamite because if there was an unstable explosion, men were cheaper than horses. As they slowly carved a path through the mountains, the laborers were sent up the hill to gather the limbs of their fallen friends. They were instructed to drop the limbs into a deep, mineshaft of rotting flesh. Clouds of flies, the befouled water carried illness downstream, demons stole the breath of the living in the night.
The workers refused to return.
Once into the pass, Lord Ono silently crept up into scaffolding for setting the charges. They were poorly constructed. Cheap wood was tied to cross beams with thin rope. Ono could see how a handful of sparks could bring the structure down entirely on the workers below. He found the mineshaft hidden behind a blind of trees and overgrown brush. The sound alone had the evil hiss of lightning before it cracks.
A black wave of flies rushed towards him with a swoop of black bats not far behind. He grabbed the scaffolding for balance and it rocked with the weight of him, which was slight. He didn’t need to look into the shaft to confirm what he had been told. Choosing to spare his stomach, he also decided to trust the workers on the number of those who had been sacrificed to this unholy enterprise.
In the west there was a phrase for bad luck. “Not a Chinaman’s chance in hell!” was the language coined by the white men who watched the Chinese workers who got blown up transporting and setting dynamite to blast out the wide path for the railway. They died blasting through mountains and cutting tunnels through rock with explosives.
Interestingly enough, most of the photos of that era did not reflect the tens of thousands of Chinese workers who laid 700 miles of track for the transcontinental railroad. They also endured abuse at the hands of other “white” immigrants because they worked longer hours for less pay and ate little. Many of them simply worked to death from the sheer effort of it.
As Blade rode into the work camp, she found the foreman whipping a Chinese worker for refusing to go up into the pass. The small man was bloody, sweating, almost dead when “Lord” Blade caught the hand of the foreman before he could administer one more lash.
“What!? I have a contract with these laborers and am allowed to discipline them as I wish. Certainly the law doesn’t object. I have a right to run this operation as I see fit!”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Let me introduce myself. I am Lord Curi Blade, and my family has a substantial interest in this endeavor. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“Jack McCallahan. I am the foreman of this camp. Laying this track on time is my responsibility and now these lazy coolies are refusing to work!”
“Well, Jack,” Blade said, “as it happens, I have come to inspect and if necessary protect our investment. Do you find that whipping a man motivates him to work harder?”
“Maybe not,” the cocky foreman said.”But it motivates the others.”
“Let’s test that theory, shall we,” Blade said. “Technically, as an investor, I am your superior. So let’s see how well your management techniques truly work. Take that man down, and hoist the foreman onto the post in his place.”
The workers looked at each other, afraid and unsure what to do. Blade, however, spoke with such authority that they were swift to then carry out her commands.
“NOW!”
Jack McCallahan was lashed to the post after the bloody worker was gently let down and carried away.
Dressed sharply, all in black, Blade went to her horse and pulled a Kusari-fundo out of the pack. It was a four foot metal chain with a handle on one end, and a weighted barb at the other. This weapon had been forged especially for her by Daisuke Masamune, great grandson of the finest swordmaker in all Japanese history. The barb was sharp as a razor, but not so heavy as to be cumbersome.
“Move away from him!” Blade yelled at the workers, in Mandarin and Cantonese. Badly as he had treated them, they feared for Jack McCallahan’s life. They had an idea what Blade was capable of with this weapon. Blade ripped off the man’s coat and split his shirt in two with her side knife.
Then, stepping back just enough, Blade cocked her arm to send the first vicious lash out like catching a fly in midair. Except the fly Blade struck had landed on McCallahan’s back. Blood pooled at the first razor barb slice. Lord Ono stepped forward in his coolie costume and whispered in her ear.
“The discarded bodies of the dead and injured are dumped down into a mine shaft,” said Lord Ono. “Arms and limbs. They are rotting and their friends couldn’t even give them a proper burial or cremation. There was nowhere to pay their respects. No place where their children could come and ask for blessings at their graves. These customs are sacred to the Chinese, no matter how poor. These conditions are not just inhumane, for these people they are sacrilegious. Curiosity, we must shut this down.”
“I agree,” she replied. And she would do so.
“You are not protected by a noble status, McCallahan. In ancient Japan you might be boiled to death, or sliced one cut at a time until you died. Chinese Confucian law can be a little more compassionate. You would be given an opportunity to learn right from wrong with the application of 100 lashes. If you have no remorse at that point, capital punishment should apply to a man like you who has treated human life as tissue paper.”
“Personally,” she continued, “I doubt you can last 10 strokes on that delicate pink skin of yours. There is no muscle beneath. I doubt you have done a day’s hard labor in your life, unlike your chargers here with their bent backs and blistered hands.”
“What do you think, McCallahan? Can you be reformed? Are you capable of remorse?” She asked him.
“I’m sorry,” McCallahan squealed.
“You certainly will be,” said Blade. “Let’s see if you can take your punishment, what is the American phrase? Like a man?”
“Please,” McCallahan begged. “No more. You’ve made your point.”
“No,” she said firmly. “You are still standing.”
She gestured as the bloodied man in the dirt. “He is not. I think certainly a white man is as tough as a ‘lazy coolie!’ Don’t you?”
The punishment took the better part of the afternoon in the hot sun. Blade took off her coat and sweated through her clothes from the effort. Crack. Snap. Scream. Over and over for a couple of hours. When she got to 42 lashes, her cousin laid his hand on her arm and staid her fury. The workers were gathered around, bowing their heads in the dirt, begging her to spare the foreman’s life, in broken English in broken to perfect Mandarin.
“Well,” said Blade to McCallahan. “It seems they want me to spare your life, though I can’t say why. They have herbal medicine to treat your wounds so they won’t get infected and kill you more slowly. If you are too arrogant to accept the help of mere ‘coolies’ then so be it. Your life is now in their hands. If I were you, I would not forget that you owe that miserable life to the people you so mistreated.”
“It’s never the master that stoops to help, is it? But the poor have to care for each other because they have no one else. They are offering to care for you. You can let them or not. Frankly, I don’t care and won’t give you a second thought. But you are probably right. Do you think this lesson might motivate you to be more careful with the lives of others?”
“Yes,” McCallahan whimpered.
Lord Blade then cleaned her weapon, returned it to her pack, and swung up on her steed in one graceful motion. She was an adept horsewoman.
Thus, the legend of Lord Justice remained behind with the folk in the camp, whispered like the name of a boogie man to conjure hope in the night. They all suspected that a little word on the asian grapevine might bring him back to finish the job if necessary. Certainly McCallahan thought so. For the rest of his life McCallahan had nightmares about this strange lord of many cultures. And, for the rest of his life, he paused and considered before he acted out his inner cruelty. She couldn’t soften his heart, but at their core, all bullies are cowards. Jack McCallahan was at the end of the day, just another straw boss, to be knocked over by the first sign of opposition. This helped the workers stand up to him more often. When they did, McCallahan backed down, remembering the scarred back he now hid from the world.
The bodies were exhumed, burned, and their ashes sent home in porcelain jars, even though it was impossible to separate one person’s ashes from another. They made the effort.
Work resumed under safer conditions. The Chinese Six Companies, also known as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, were quite pleased and began sending more laborers to work on the rails for many years to come.
Curiosity Blade rode back to San Francisco, and Lord Katsu Ono joined her quietly that evening on the trail.
Next was a visit to the railroad baron who owned this particular line.
To be continued…
High Tea on a Sunny Charleston Afternoon
Lord Curi Blade met Archibald Fairchilde on the old school, hand-trimmed lawn of his southern estate grounds. It was February, in 1878, the eve of a new century and all of its technological wonders.
Blade stepped out of the carriage, and Fairchilde shook his hands warmly.
Lord Blade wore a dove grey suit, with matching gloves, and wide silver bracelets on each wrist. Blade wore a modestly flamboyant cravat embroidered in the distinctive style of the orient. His fair hair, and dark almond eyes implied a noble yet eccentric background. Lord Blade carried a bronze cane with a finely carved dragon face in its wooden handle. He was a small man, to be sure, barely over five feet tall, but as Fairchilde took the measure of the diminutive man, he reassured himself this dandy could not pose a dangerous degree of business acumen.
“What do you think of my new home, Lord Blade? It was recently designed and built by one of those northern architects. The design is based on the Stoneleigh Manor in New Canaan, Long Island. Those northerners do not have a monopoly on style and status anymore, you know. It cost me an even $5 million, and was worth every penny,” said Fairchilde.
As Faichilde gestured to the home’s features with pride, Blade thought it was a bit gaudy for his tastes, but that was to be expected from Americans, after all. The colonies had always been a bit predisposed to presentations of conspicuous consumption, as status and wealth were synonymous in the United States.
“The Fairchildes have lived on this land since a time when the Carolinas were still colonies. My family owned significant cotton plantations of course, but since the unpleasantness of the war, labor shortages have been a bit of a concern. So, in keeping with the times, I tore down the old Antebellum house, and commissioned this one to be built. It is high time that the new southern gentleman stepped into the challenges of the 19th century and industrialized with the times, don’t you think?” Fairchilde asked, rhetorically. Fairchilde was the type of man who liked the sound of his own voice.
“A stroke of luck for us, building cotton mills just as England’s cotton manufacturing is in decline.”
Lord Blade looked up at the newly built brick home, which boasted a gourmet kitchen, seven bedrooms, servants quarters and stables, of course. To Blade’s mind the home looked not unlike an attempt to build a poor imitation of a small Tudor castle. It was in Blade’s opinion, a bit garish. And, like everything else about Fairchilde, a facade of unearned sophistication.
The gentlemen settled at a shaded table, cooled by a back porch awning, and a sea breeze coming from the coastal beach Blade could see from the edge of the estate.
“I was born here, of course, as my father before me and his father before that. However, these days we maintain this residence here in South Carolina, but we like to spend summers in our home along the Newport coast. Keeping up with society, and all that. In matters of business, we have found that socializing with the Astors and their lot gives us access to opportunities we might not otherwise be included in.”
As they sat, Fairchilde’s fair haired daughter, Amelia, laughed and waved as she rode a gentle caramel colored pony, with a braided mane. The pony was led on with pink ribbons by a servant girl, dressed in a household pinafore uniform that matched their balmy, coastal sky. As a gentleman of the “new south”, to the outside observer, Fairchilde had secured her future by modernizing his fortunes, and building factories for textiles.
Fairchilde wore a lightweight black suit, with an embroidered blue waistcoat, glancing absently at his gold watch before returning it to his pocket. It was a lovely afternoon. Fairchilde was a strong, healthy man, looking forward to enjoying the fruits of his prosperity by spending more time with his daughter Amelia, and less on business. Towards that end, he had agreed to a potential business prospect with the young industrialist sitting with him across the table.
Fairchilde had accepted this meeting primarily to humor his wife, who maintained a broad social calendar that sometimes included eccentric specimens, however wealthy. Still, since Fairchilde was in the tiniest bit of a tight spot, so he may as well hear the man out.
A second maid in another sky blue house pinafore poured tea and gracefully retreated behind a curtain, within earshot should she be needed, but careful to not even give the appearance of eavesdropping.
“Would you care for a pastry, Lord Blade? We have a French chef on staff and I can assure you they are as good as you will find on this coast,” said Fairchilde proudly, smiling broadly and padding his generous belly.
“I do so appreciate your hospitality, Fairchilde,” said Blade, waving a delicate hand, “But I am sure you understand that a man of my stature should not attempt to compete with the appetites of great men. No, thank you sir. I eat but little. Thank you for the lovely tea, however.”
“Would you care for cream, Blade? A bit of sugar or lemon?” asked Fairchilde, courteous as ever.
“Thank you, this is quite fine,” said Blade, not wincing at the awful brew.
“I hope this is not indelicate of me, Fairchilde, but I came to inquire because I’d heard you’ve had some bad press over one of your cotton mills recently. My family has a bit of textile trade in India, and I wondered if I might offer a spot of help.”
“Ah. It’s early in the day to discuss business, which I usually conduct at my office, but it’s a Saturday, so why not,” said Fairchilde as his attention wandered to his lovely daughter riding on the lawn.
“Would you care for a cigar, Lord Blade Cigarello? I have heard tell you might enjoy a clove blend,” said Fairchilde, offering an inlaid, silver box with promised tobacco offerings.
Blade chose a delicate clove cigarette from the box, placed it in a filter he kept in his pocket for the purpose and held it out for the older man to light as Blade inhaled.
“I see you have good information,” said Blade, appreciating the red glow before gently tapping ash into the crystal bowl provided for that exact purpose. It smelled like incense, Blade thought. It made him homesick.
“I have a good man,” said Fairchilde. “As I understand it, your father is a man of some breeding, with land and holdings in the East India Company. But he’s been currently stationed in Peking as an ambassador or some such for the last several years? Is that close? Frankly, British titles elude me, but stature does not. Your father is also a naturalist, I understand?”
“He dabbles in the sciences, as time allows,” smiled Blade. “You are well informed indeed.”
“And your mother was a poet in court in the Japans, I understand?” Fairchilde asked, eyes and any hint of his disapproval around race mixing were hidden under lowered eyelids, concentrating on lighting his cigar. Besides, the British Empire’s upper class operated by its own rules in such matters, lest they become too inbred. Under their blanket of civility, Fairchilde knew, lay the periodic Spanish Moore and Central Asian Prince.
“Is, not was, Fairchilde. My Samurai mother is very much alive,” Blade corrected. “Longevity can be a by-product of traditional training, you see.”
“Still, Blade,” Fairchilde said, blowing a ring of smoke not quite into Blade’s face, but close enough to smell as the two men danced the polite joust, sizing each other up. “I imagine it’s been years since you have been home. You must miss your family.”
Blade nodded, with deep respect and not a hint of irony in his answer to this man’s attempt at civility. “Indeed. As the master says ‘filial piety is our highest devotion’.”
“Master? I don’t remember that one from Sunday school,” said Fairchilde, bewildered.
“Forgive me,” said Blade, with a dismissive gesture, “Different master. Unimportant, especially as regards our current opportunity.”
“Well,” said Fairchilde, his cheesy grin expressing the opposite of what he truly believed, greasing the wheels of polite societal interactions as required by the modern man.“Live and let live I say. It’s a great wide world out there isn’t it.”
“Indeed,” said Blade, solemnly looking away towards the horizon. “And getting smaller all the time.”
For a time the two men smoked their tobacco and watched the golden curls bounce as Amelia ran towards them and jumped into her father’s lap. Blade pretended to sip his tea.
“What a lovely child,” Blade said, with gentle admiration. “I imagine you must love her very much.”
“Oh that I do,” said Fairchilde, looking into her eyes, smitten in only the way a father can be. “She is the love of my life, even more than my wife, though I would swear you to secrecy on that point.”
Blade grinned and made a locking motion at his pursed lips.
“Down you go, sweetpea,” Fairchilde then said abruptly. “The men have business to discuss.”
“Frankly,” continued Fairchilde, as he waved his arms expansively, “that is the number one reason I have been considering retirement for the first time in my life. What is more important than family?”
“Indeed,” replied Blade, dark eyes narrowed slightly. “What else is there for any of us?”
“I imagine you cherished her, even as a babe, holding her tiny, peach fuzz covered head in your hands as an infant. I can see how clearly you love her.”
“Indeed,” he smiled, disarmed by the unexpectedly gentle tone in Blade’s voice. Fairchilde felt himself falling, just a bit, into those dark almond eyes, as images of his baby stirred in the deepest memories of his heart. Almost imperceptibly, Blade laid two fingers against Fairchilde’s wrist.
Fairchilde didn’t even feel the tiny hair thin silver needle Blade placed in the nerve cluster nearest his pulse.
“But I imagine that is not the only reason you are interested in retiring, is it, Fairchilde?” Blade asked, still gentle, calm, unassuming.
Fairchilde would have been caught off guard, but there was something so soothing about the man’s voice. He began to remember the details of a story he had not meant to tell, but somehow did not mind the inquiry.
“Well, there was that unfortunate incident at the mill.”
“Yes, there was that,” continued Blade, encouraging Fairchilde to continue the story.
“I know there was some bad press, but nothing I am sure you cannot handle,” said Blade.
“Of course,” Fairchilde continued. “The papers know who pays their bills, and for most of their advertising. Besides, it’s a company town. People don’t like to complain about their fate in life.”
“It is a bit of a dice roll, isn’t it?” asked Blade.
“Of course it is. And can I help it if they show up with beer in their bellies too tired to pay attention to their machines?” asked Fairchilde.
“One could not expect it of you, could they. My family has a long history in textiles. I understand that books need to balance. And I am sure you can handle the press. That is part of the reason we are considering taking the mill off your hands for a fair price. That would get you out of the whole business. There is your standing to consider. Gossip and all,” continued Blade, still gentle, understanding.
“Gossip?” Fairchilde asked. The man was not astute, but he was clever. Like an animal realizing too late something unpredicted was about to happen.
“Well, obviously the foreman was at fault. A mill that large, that fast, using tiny girls to retrieve fallen spindles, oil hinges, to keep production on schedule,” Blade said. “We have been thinking we might retrofit the factory for weaving silks. Certainly the wealth of the age demands it, and we can’t let the Asians make all the profit now, can we?” Blade laughs.
Fairchilde mirrored Blade’s laugh. But as he tried to pull back his hand, he found he could not. Another hair fine needle appeared on his hand.
“Now, I do expect you to offer me a discount. Say ten cents on the dollar? That sounds fair to me,” said Blade, with the utmost professionalism.
“What?! Get out!” but Fairchilde found he could not raise his outraged voice between his clenched teeth.
“Oh Fairchilde, be reasonable. We will have to do clean up, and of course retrofit the factory for safety to avoid future…” Fairchilde was frozen, physically. His heart was beating too fast. He had started to sweat. Another needle appeared from nowhere.
“… unpleasantness.” Blade said, completing his sentence.
“Are you trying to ruin me?” Fairchilde whispered.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” said Blade. His eyes followed Amelia on her pony. “She loves you too, you know. Just before he died, your foreman confessed that in fact it was you who told him the safety measures the millers begged for were just too expensive for the business to support. So, if we can make a profit with a safer factory, what concern is it of yours?”
“My family? How will I — “
“I will leave you enough for that, Mr. Fairchilde, certainly. I would not wish Amelia to suffer poverty, destitution. But I am curious, what do you think she would feel, knowing that you knew?”
“Knew?” sputtered Fairchilde.
“Come now, sir, we are past the point of playing games, you and I. Gaze upon your child, remember the feel of her tiny body in your hands. Shall I show her the report? Would you like to recall what you read there?”
Unbidden, unwilling, Fairchilde began to recite the accident precisely as written.
“Though she was thought remarkably handsome when at the workhouse, the girl was not quite ten years of age.She attended to a drawing frame of the cotton mill, below which, and about a foot from the floor, was a horizontal shaft, by which the frames above were turned. When her apron was caught by the shaft, the poor girl was instantly drawn by an irresistible force and dashed on the floor. She uttered the most heart-rending shrieks.”
Another needle, and Fairchilde felt such fear as he never faced.
“They ran towards her, agonized and helpless beholders of a scene of horror. Some said they saw her whirling round and round with the shaft – they said they would never forget the sound of her cracking bones of her arms, legs, thighs.”
Another needle, Fairchilde was enveloped in agonizing pain, feeling the child – but also strangely – Amelia’s as well, as though the children were one in the same.
“As her bones successively snapped asunder, crushed to atoms, as the machinery whirled her round, and drew tighter and tighter her body within the works, her blood was scattered over the frame and streamed upon the floor, her head appeared dashed to pieces – at last, her mangled body was jammed in so fast, between the shafts and the floor, that the water being low and the wheels off the gear, it stopped the main shaft. When she was extricated, every bone was found broken – her head dreadfully crushed. She was carried off quite lifeless.”
“But, the other workers said, the smell was worse. A mix of burning machine and body fluids, tears and terror. They said it was unholy.”
Fairchilde stopped speaking. He was wooden with the horror trapped behind his eyes.
“They say her blood stained the cotton threads red. Because they could not shut down the machines quickly enough, red cloth was woven from the fibers of her body. Apparently it had a deep, rich, even exotic color.”
“Tell me,” said Lord Blade. “Did you sell the cloth? Were her relatives able to retrieve any of it?”
Blade looked at Fairchilde with that unblinking gaze, with the secret knowledge that the man would never again have the use of his now paralyzed right arm. He gave Fairchilde the faintest of wicked winks. The needles had disappeared with Fairchilde’s sanity.
“Because I did,” said Blade.
“It seemed thoughtful to provide a memento of Amelia’s inheritance.”
Lord Blade placed a folded, delicately embroidered red pinafore onto the table, just the right size for Amelia to grow into. It was neatly tied in a pale blue ribbon that matched the house uniforms.
“I shall expect the deed to the mill at my hotel in the morning…”