Notes: Inspired by and best paired with Florence + the Machine's "Seven Devils".
"We lie best when we lie to ourselves."
—Stephen King, IT
It is the smile that breaks him. The smile that Jizabel never gave to him in life which lies unmistakably on his thin lips, as Cassandra's sword leaves his chest with a river of blood. Spilling and soiling the grey wool of Jizabel's vest. (It had been another malicious gift from the Cardmaster, that Cassandra remembered.) But it's the smile he cannot move, the smile that mocks him for being yet another piece in his plans. It infuriates Cassandra to no end, how easily Jizabel schemes and lies and uses. Played him like the besotted fool he was.
The sword—a family heirloom handed down with the manor and the blows and all that goes unspoken behind heavy doors—tumbles out of his hand. Cassandra, with all his knowledge of Jizabel's past, had thought himself master of the man he could never have. But this, this was a dreadful mistake. A slip of his hand, a hasty expression of his anger.
He wrenches Jizabel, dying, from the floor to force a kiss. Blood stained his ruffled shirt, speckling his cuffs, but still Cassandra grasps at him, forcing him to return a love that never existed. Jizabel's ivory hair drapes like a shroud over Cassandra's hands. Another clumsy kiss, far from his usual, careful ones.
"You're mine," Cassandra pants. "I was the only one—the only one, Jizabel!—who loved you, and you used it against me!"
He can see it clearly now—the gasping hole in Jizabel's chest, pulsing blood with the steady regularity of a clock. And just like a clock, beyond the torn fabric tremble his wet, inner cogs. Although Cassandra does not count himself a stranger to the less cultured aspects of life, revulsion still burns his throat at the sight.
"You're mine. Don't you forget it."
Desperation tinges his words, but Jizabel's dying smile, the only response he can manage with his fading breath, speaks only of freedom. And before Cassandra can summon the anger to strike him, the focus leaves his eyes, and his limbs slacken, his hands dragging against the floor. The ticking of his exposed heart lessens, until there is no movement, save the relentless advance of his blood. His head lolls, as if all his bones have turned to ashes.
And Cassandra holds what remains of someone he has never caught.
Jizabel's body falls to the floor, when Cassandra regains his senses. He must cover this up, but how? His thoughts briefly fly to Zoe: yes, yes, leave it all to Zoe, and change into some clean clothes. The blood can be washed out—it always can—and if Zoe refuses to comply, then a bullet through her whore head will remedy that. For all his grandeur, Cassandra holds no delusions about the trustworthiness of his staff; anyone can be bought, and past obedience is no guarantee of future behavior.
Cassandra pauses at the sight of Jizabel's prone body, and he softens, his anger dissipating as he casts the careful eye of an art collector over the corpse. Without the light of being in them, his eyes are more akin to watercolors than amethysts, yet Jizabel still remains a magnificent work of art, even in death. The richness of his blood against the grey wool, the way the light catches his hair, why the sight could almost be from a tragic painting: a crucifixion scene, the last moments of a martyr. Perhaps, he could bring down the photographer, to preserve such an uncommon beauty, before the worms take their due. There is no process yet to replicate the hues of life, but the painter's brush can provide a meager substitute. Why, if he is careful about it, he'll have plenty of time to decide how to dispose of the body. He just needs to conceal the body—in a spare room or the icebox, or even his own chambers, if necessary. No one will come looking for Jizabel.
That's why he chose him, after all.
Self-assurance begins to allay his fears, as he reasons out how to rescue his good name from the debacle at the opera. He cannot be bested by a second-rate Sherlock Holmes! Pacing, he quickly devises a plan to portion out blame. The letters he can chalk up to a clever forger, out to destroy the Gladstones' reputation of charity and benevolence. After all, what a ludicrous notion that someone so involved with public welfare could plan such an attack.
Cassandra fumbles with the pipe, craving the quietening fumes of tobacco. (Imported from Virginia, of course.) A few shuddering exhalations of smoke, and his mind eases. His gaze falls to the corpse, still bleeding out, and something comes over him. Not quite a paternal feeling, not quite loss. And certainly not guilt. The sadness of a child who has broken a favorite doll and now cannot mend it.
"You could have been my pet, love. Like Zoe. A nice life, with a man who knew you. Who understood you and that frightful heart of yours." He exhales another cloud of smoke. "But you've made a mess of things now."
He lapses into silence, as his mind slides into its familiar, careful calculations: Cain's little spectacle can be hand waved aside as the boyish dealings of a bored aristocrat. Cain's reputation as the Hargreaves' black sheep can be used against him easily, as can the more unsavory rumors surrounding the boy's birth. Rumors that Cassandra suspects to be true, given what he knows about the Cardmaster.
The death warrant, on the other hand, proves more difficult to overcome. He is a marked man. Nothing short of fleeing the country can assure his survival now. Reporting Delilah to the Scotland Yard is, of course, out of the question: not for any newfound morals nor loyalty, but for the simple fact that his claims of a secret organization led by a man publicly known to be dead would not be taken well; he might find himself in Bedlam with such a story. However, if he has learned anything from his time with Delilah, it is how to hide in plain sight. A trip to America—to the more refined parts, New York or San Francisco, perhaps—for a few years to overlook his business interests might be all he needs to have Delilah forget about him. And given the Cardmaster's preoccupation with whatever ghastly experiments were being carried out in the lower levels, that might come sooner than expected.
His breath has finally calmed when the groans of the door catches his attention: it opens slightly. Just enough for a mouse—or a filthy street urchin. Cassandra curses himself for being so inattentive. Of course, the circus rat wouldn't listen to his superiors. Cassian's eternally unkempt hair marks his presence just before Cassandra can catch sight of those insolent eyes. Those dark eyes that follow the splatters of blood and widen as connections are made.
Horror blanches Cassian's face, and wild despair tugs at his mouth. His fists grasp empty air, as their owner attempts to make sense out of horror. That was Cassian's flaw, of course. Trying to weave sense out of madness. No one, save the Devil, could make any sense out of what Jizabel did. Certainly not Cassandra.
(No, no, that was wrong, somehow. He did know. He always knew.)
"What did you do to—You son of a bitch!" Cassian lunges at him, knife drawn.
Time slows, and in the space between the incoming knife and Cassandra's desperate dodge, Cassian's show of fidelity bewilders him—bewilders and amuses. A mutt yapping for its dead master.
The knife barely misses its mark; only the shaking of Cassian's hand has spared him, against its master's will. But for all Cassian's skill, Cassandra is the one in possession of an adult body, and his retaliatory blow easily winds Cassian. He gasps on the floor, choking and sputtering blood. More blood on his floors.
"He made me." Half a plea, and half a denial. Cassandra's blood runs cold as the desperation in his voice makes itself known. Before his fears can claim him again, his boot crunches Cassian's neck, pushing him down, down into the dirt that birthed such a filthy mutt. The act thrills him, even as the hatred on Cassian's face promises him a painful death should he finds some semblance of mercy.
"He made me," Cassandra repeats, more collected now. "It's Jizabel's fault. All of it." A coldness comes over him, now that he has regained the upper hand. "You'd never understand, you uncouth circus rat."
And before awareness returns to him, the added pressure of his boot causes the bones in Cassian's neck to break. It's like breaking ice. A strangled, wide-eyed gasp and then nothing. In the distance, London carries on, as another clock stops.
From that vacant expression, a pleasant sensation of power comes over Cassandra: nothing, it seems, can lift a man's spirits so high as being the instrument of death. He has never felt more alive than after having taken a life. Such a perverse, yet exhilarating exchange. He kicks the corpse aside, partially out of spite and partially out of fear, as he summons the help. Orders them to prepare him a travel bag, take away the bodies—well perhaps not Jizabel's. That can go in the cellar.
If he can just make it to a port city, undetected by either Scotland Yard or Delilah, then he can meticulously plan his return. His resurrection. True, it would be faster to take a ship out of the London docks, but the authorities would no doubt be waiting for him there. His best bet is the Isle of Wight; close enough to travel to, far enough that the authorities might not think to patrol it.
Another knock, and Patterson arrives, his arms heavy with a selection of Cassandra's finery. His face carefully composed. Good. He doesn't pay him to judge his lifestyle, let alone harbor the thought that he, a lowly butler, might find the sheer arrogance to judge his superiors.
They ride into the night.
Even the best sheets of the village inn do not compare to the finely woven linen that adorns his abandoned bed, but the glow of the morning, the soft light that announces a disgruntled sky, reminds him that he is still alive. And he wants nothing more than to remain alive.
"Done sleeping?"
He half bolts when he sees just who stands before him. Jizabel, bloodied and yet, seemingly alive, leans nonchalantly against the window, arms crossed.
"You're the devil," Cassandra manages, fear electrifying his skin as he reaches for his revolver. "How? I watched you die!"
"So it would seem."
"Answer me!" Cassandra points the revolver at him, half wondering if bullets can end what swords could not.
"That would appear," Jizabel begins, scalpel to his lips, "to be an excellent way to get yourself discovered. Do you understand how much noise your gun makes? You'll wake dear Mr. Clyde with that unmistakable sound, and then there will be questions you don't want."
Reluctantly, Cassandra lowers his gun. Hesitant to get the innkeeper involved. "Why are you here? What does Delilah want with me?"
"We had a deal, did we not?" Jizabel moves slowly, deliberately toward him, a bit of madness in his step. "Everything you own belongs to me now. Your house, your servants, your possessions." He is so close now that Cassandra can see pattern of blood left on his clothes: a branching halo of red around the wound. "Your body." A lingering hand taunts him with its closeness to his cheek. He pulls abruptly away, crossing his arms again. His eyes alight with some scheme.
Cassandra has half an urge to strike him, to remind him just who is in command here, but his inability to reconcile recent events with his understanding of the known world stills his hand. Surely, the only explanation is that Jizabel is one of those things, those monstrosities that never last outside of hell. He watched him die. And what ghost could have such a presence? No, Jizabel must be one of them now.
Jizabel seems to sense his fear. "Are you afraid that hell is empty and all the devils are here?" A ghost of a smirk on his bloodless lips. "Like the time you almost drowned at Eton? Fell right through the ice, and the water just weighed you down, and yet you couldn't mo—"
"How? How do you know about that!" Fear and anger combine to thicken Cassandra's blood, and he aims his revolver again at Jizabel, who only shakes his head dismissively. "How!"
"Does it frighten you, that I know everything about you now?" Jizabel's smile does not reach his eyes. "What a pair we are."
"We are not anything alike! I'm alive, and you're, well, you're—"
"Dead?" Jizabel offers.
Cassandra cannot keep himself from blanching. "Yes," he manages. "Yes, you're dead."
"But I'm here."
Cassandra only shakes his head in reply. "I know that! But how? No one knows I'm here."
"You're not the first to try to flee the country. Especially under an assumed name." Jizabel frowns in thought. "What was yours again? Basil? Henry?"
Cassandra remembers fumbling for a name, anything but his own. "Dorian."
"Amusing." Jizabel crosses his arms. "I didn't know you had such a close connection to Wilde's hedonist."
This deliberate meandering annoys Cassandra. If his location has already been determined, then time is a critical factor. "What does Delilah want with me? If they sent you, then they already know my whereabouts."
Jizabel gives him a small smile. "Perhaps."
"If I am a dead man, then why take your time? Mercy has never been one of your virtues, love."
In response, Jizabel merely strolls to the door of the room. "Shall we take a look around?"
Cassandra narrows his eyes in suspicion. "Since when have you ever cared about that. You're leading me into a trap, are you not?"
"Perhaps." The scalpel returns to Jizabel's lips. "Humor me. If it is as you suspect, the longer you humor me, the longer you live."
Reluctantly, Cassandra acquiesces. "As you wish, love."
They leave the inn, Jizabel always ahead, but never leading. Just watching and maintaining his distance. They walk through the dingy town, whose inhabitants have begun their infinitesimally unimportant lives of drudgery. Cassandra wrinkles his nose in distaste at the human refuse on display. An ill-kept boy, all dirt and grins, runs past them, a dead rabbit swinging from his hand. A woman drags her squalling brat, kicking and sobbing; another unclasps her clothing—petticoats and garters and drawers all hung up for every roaming eye—from the line that extends to her window. What a whore. What a pity Jack the Ripper had not found her, when he was cleansing London of its human filth. How typical of the lower classes, to display such crude, uncouth behavior.
What a waste of resources that could be better diverted to the worthy.
"All filth," he says, just low enough that only Jizabel can hear him. "To think that I spent so much to help such dregs. They don't even recognize their savior."
Jizabel, eternally self-possessed, strides up to one of the newspaper stands. "That's not what the papers are reporting." The shopkeeper pays Jizabel no heed as he studies the headlines with a vague interest. "You're ruined," he states, with a little mocking smile. "Quite ruined, I must say. Criminal charges and all."
Cassandra quickly purchases a copy, and bile rises in his throat at the accusations. After all he had done for the lazy, shiftless poor, how unfair that he is to be crucified in the press!
"Slander," he mutters under his breath. "I could take them all to court for slander."
"Slander is only for falsehoods, Cassandra. As you well know."
Cassandra says nothing, as outrage tightens his chest. Outrage and fear. if the public opinion has already turned against him, then his resurrection will be difficult to orchestrate. The groans of a buggy momentarily stops his breath from fear; if Jizabel has already found him, then Scotland Yard cannot be too far behind. And yet, the weathered sides indicate that for now, at least, Cassandra has eluded the law. Its portly driver tips his cap, faintly amused at Cassandra's state, before riding past. The clacking of the horses fades long before Cassandra's fear does.
Jizabel watches him, with a curious anticipation.
The shopkeeper's eyes, however, linger a bit too long on him, no doubt wondering what a lord was doing in this hovel of a city. Stuck by a sudden fear, Cassandra retreats to the inn again. Lord Gladstone, the envy of London and beloved philanthropist, retreats, wondering if he has made a grave error in showing himself. Just yesterday, such a thought would have not been considered, but now, circumstances have changed, and he is the hunted now. Everywhere, he is watched and mocked—and judged. It's unbearable, this sense of persecution! Eyes everywhere, words everywhere. Everywhere, a Judas. Waiting to turn him in for thirty pieces of silver. Oh, how just a bit of coin would speak to these rats, these degenerates best put to work as the beasts they are.
Cassandra unclenches his fists, and smooths his hair. He must remain calm—should he give into haste, he will find his plans ruined. As he turns the corner, something falls, just out of sight. Ash? Rubble from the ceiling? Cassandra frowns. Of course, such a hovel would be at the point of decay. Just his luck too. He sighs, and another a drifting piece of white catches his eye.
No, a letter.
And as he stares at it, a certain horror rising in his blood at the familiar handwriting, more lazily cascade down from the ceilings. Yet so dense that he cannot see their origins. He snatches one, and reads it quickly. (April 6th—Have you acquired the necessary material for the "festivities"? Remember that I am not a patient man, nor am I one to be kept waiting. —Lord Gladstone.) Crumpling it, he grabs at another. (March 19th—I hear you are a man of numerous talents. Perhaps such talents can be of use to me. Do meet me at my mansion to discuss the details. —Lord Gladstone.) All his letters. He seizes the immaculate letters, but more always take their places. More and more letters, until his sins are laid bare for the world to read. Overcome, he abandons his efforts in the hall, and panting from exertion, slams the door on the evidence of his crimes. Returning to his cold room.
The now familiar sight of Jizabel greets him. Fury sparks within Cassandra, and he strikes the wall near Jizabel. Although the cheap wood breaks from his show of force, Jizabel only stares coldly at his display. Cassandra decides on a new tactic. He slams his hands on either side of Jizabel, preventing his escape.
"Why? Why! Why torment me so! You wanted me to kill you!" It is nearly a scream, but Jizabel remains unmoved. "What have you done to me!" Cassandra draws back his hand, ready to strike the answers out of him. "Answer me! You whore! Did you give me some ghastly drug? Something to make me hallucinate for your amusement? Tell me!"
"No, I haven't," Jizabel replies, as if he has not taken notice of Cassandra's disheveled state. Again the cold, knowing stare. "But you, you already know. A mind cannot hold out against—"
"I'm leaving." Cassandra pulls away, infuriated that he cannot intimidate the answers out of Jizabel. "Follow me again, and I will ensure that you will never do such a thing again."
"You won't leave," Jizabel coldly refutes. "You will never leave this room alive."
"You're quite wrong, love." Cassandra fumbles with the door latch, but it won't budge. From outside, the ruckus of party-goers and violins—and a series of explosions. The shaving mirror rattles on the dresser, and the porcelain shudders. As Cassandra throws back the curtains in a sickly curiosity, only splatters of red greet him. He nearly vomits from the unsightly display.
Cassandra reaches again for his revolver, consequences be damned, and moves to pull the trigger. Perhaps, it is a trick of the light, but in the moment of resistance before the bullet flies, released, he knows—he sees, somehow. Oh, it flies and ricochets off the mirror. But it flies true—right into its master's throat. And in the mirror, he watches himself convulse in the throes of a certain fate. His hands on the wound cannot sway fate, and as his mouth fills with blood and words he will never speak, Jizabel crouches before him, darkly satisfied.
Heaving, Cassandra tears himself away from the vision?—madness?—and nearly collapses onto the floor. "What was that?" he manages. "What did you do to me?" A chilling thought occurs to him: perhaps he was taken to be experimented on. Perhaps these are all fabricated memories. Perhaps it is he, and not Jizabel, who is now one of them—the rotting corpses with the gifts God cannot account for. "What am I?" It's less a question than a whispered confession.
'You think I'm here to hold up a looking glass?" Jizabel folds his arms, leaning against the wall. His smirk long faded into a look of disdain. "To the man without a conscience?"
'You're as much a monster as I," Cassandra counters. "I know what you've done. Men have been hanged for far less."
"Do they torment you," Jizabel mocks. "Do the screams and pleas of my test subjects keep you awake at night?" He laughs unkindly at Cassandra's look of distaste. "I did what I needed to. For progress. For science. For Father." His smile fades. "But you tormented others for your pleasure. That's quite different."
Sprawled on the bed, eyes open but not seeing, Latisha—no, Leroy—clasps the Scavenger's Daughter to his chest. The broken collar hangs around his thin throat, peeking under the jacquard and ruffles that disguised it. His skirt hiked up in a lurid fashion to reveal those pale legs and the bruises that Cassandra readily gave out. One for insolence and one for soiling the moral fabric of society. And if he is honest, still more for the knowledge that there was only room in Jizabel's ugly, violent heart for one man—and that was not him. Would never be him. And yet, he kept it up, like the fool he was, because it was a pleasant diversion to make Jizabel afraid. To torment him with words and actions, in exchange for this all-consuming infatuation Jizabel had cursed him with. To set the scales to right.
"I just wanted you!" Cassandra tears at his embroidered sleeve, acutely aware of being hunted. The hounds are closing—only this he is certain of. "Just you, love! Birds learn to love their cage! And what better than a cage to keep you safe from the outside world! From the Cardmaster!"
And in his desperation, he does the only thing he can think of. He clasps his hands together, in supplication to a god he does not believe in and has never believed in. A single prayer in his head. Anything to end this ceaseless nightmare.
"That won't suffice," Jizabel interrupts. "You can't be made anew. No one can."
"Then what?"
Jizabel shrugs. "How should I know?"
And something breaks inside Cassandra, surrounded by the blood and fear. "I can love you properly," he begins, horrified by the weakness in his voice. "I can."
Those lovely eyes, pale as glass, search his face, and Cassandra seizes his only chance at escaping this hell. He extends a trembling hand, but it's not enough— he cannot reach Jizabel. "Forget the Cardmaster. We can leave this place, and I can make everything right. Just give me that frightful heart of yours, and I will treat it well. I'll put it under lock and key. Gently."
Jizabel smiles at this, and relief crashes over Cassandra. Yes. Yes, this is what Jizabel wanted to hear. Finally, he has regained the upper hand, and with this victory, some of his old self-confidence (what his critics might term hubris) returns. "Yes, my Jizabel, you and I, we are cut from the same cloth." Something akin to tenderness comes over him. "You need a firm hand to shelter that heart. That trembling, violent heart."
Without taking his eyes off him, Jizabel loosens his tie and begins to undo the buttons of his shirt. Well, Cassandra's not about to offer a dissenting opinion on that matter. He chuckles at the prospect; somehow, it's all so easy now. If he had known Jizabel would be this easy to manipulate—with just a confession of love, no less, of the bonds that he loves to mock—he would have done this ages ago.
Perching on the edge of the bed, he tries to ignore the nagging unease. "Come here, dear Jizabel." He taps the covers. "You'll take all the fun away from me, love. I want to be the one to uncover you."
Obediently, Jizabel moves closer, still frustratingly out of reach, and still infuriatingly insisting on undressing himself. The fabric gives way to that lovely paleness of his body, the scar from the childhood surgery across his torso. Marking him forever. Oh, yes, Cassandra remembered the agonies that went along with that scar. The fitful bed rest, the endless trembling, the soft lies. He remembered it, with memories that were not his own.
"Come here, love," Cassandra insists. "You'll drive me mad if you keep that up." His deep, self-assured chuckles cease abruptly at the re-emergence of the scalpel. "Love, put that away," he orders. "I don't fancy any new scars."
The scalpel remains in Jizabel's hand, and before Cassandra can object, Jizabel places it against his own skin and presses down. The blade leaves behind a gasping river. Then it dives and dives into his flesh. It does not stop, and yet, for all the horrors of his display, Cassandra cannot look away, cannot help but feel as though the scalpel is descending into his own flesh. He gasps a little, as Jizabel retrieves that most celebrated organ, the seat of love and hatred; it shudders in his bloody hands. Even as Cassandra tries to retreat, Jizabel advances, impeccably collected, although something lurks below such a calm: anger? Resentment? Satisfaction?
"Get that away from me!" Blood stains; it cannot be washed out. Wasn't that how it always was? Jizabel's blood splatters onto his face. His exposed heart seizing and pulsing. Accusing.
"Liar," Jizabel breathlessly whispers. "Isn't this what you wanted? Then take it!"
"Get that away!" It never stops. He'll drown in this.
"Milord?" Patterson rattles the latch. "Do you require my assistance?"
"No," Cassandra nearly screams, as all the pieces finally fall into place. "No!"
But the lock gives out and the wood breaks—oh, how Cassandra resents the idea of having to compensate that dreadful Mr. Cycle for such a tacky, cheap door—and as Patterson barges in, revolver raised, Cassandra knows what will happen. "Patterson, no!"
The chaos of it all moves Patterson's trigger finger. An accidental tug of the metal ring, and a single sound of metal against metal, before a pain beyond anything Cassandra has ever felt erupts in his throat. Jizabel watches him, vindication on his features as he cradles his still-beating heart. Like Saint Lucia offering her eyes.
"You're quite right that Jezebel was a whore," Jizabel begins, "but do you remember Cassandra's fate?"
She went mad, Cassandra's mind fills in the absence that Jizabel leaves.
"Precisely." Jizabel smiles, pleased, as he sets aside his heart. As Patterson stammers out his regrets, hand clasped to his head, Jizabel, unseen, nonchalantly retrieves something from the bed. The Scavenger's Daughter, lovingly tailored to Cassandra's proportions. And the cold metal, unreal and yet so achingly real, tightens around Cassandra's neck.
"We had a bet, you know."
Notes:
This was supposed to be a redemption arc, but then I decided I actually wanted some surrealistic horror. Because, as you all probably know by now, I love surrealistic horror. The title of the piece is just a reflection of how I think Cassandra sees himself—as a martyr and savior of the lower classes, when he's anything but. I also want to point out that I do not share Cassandra's opinions on anything.
The revelation at the end is a play on names. Assuming Jizabel was named after the Biblical queen. I thought Cassandra might take his name from Cassandra of Troy, the prophetess who went mad.
As always, thank you for reading. Let me know what you thought, if you'd like.