"I've a little looking-glass on my parlour shelf,
If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself."
―"The Spider and the Fly"
"Here," said he, "are the keys of the two great wardrobes, wherein I have my best furniture; these are of my silver and gold plate, which is not every day in use; these open my strong boxes, which hold my money, both gold and silver; these my caskets of jewels; and this is the master-key to all my apartments. But for this little one here, it is the key of the closet at the end of the great gallery on the ground floor. Open them all; go into all and every one of them, except that little closet, which I forbid you, and forbid it in such a manner that, if you happen to open it, there's nothing but what you may expect from my just anger and resentment."
― "Bluebeard," from The Blue Fairy Book
He's six, and his nursemaid reads to him a ghastly story about a lord named Bluebeard who murdered all his wives, one after another. Chop. Chop. Chop. All because they couldn't obey, couldn't stay away from the locked room with all the hanging corpses.
"Then, what did the first wife find,'" he wonders aloud.
Martha laughs a little. "You'll find out when you're older, Cassandra. Just wait."
He goes to bed, wondering what Bluebeard's secret must have been. In stolen candle light, he questions his favorite stuffed rabbit, Robert, about the whole mystery. Clearly, it had been something terrible, for it had been hidden. Did Bluebeard do something wrong?
Robert just stares at him in the candle light, with his fathomless button eyes.
He's eight, and he attends boarding school for the first time. For the first time in his short life, he's acutely aware of being alone and afraid. The shadows climbing the walls at night loom larger than they do at his room; the food tastes more pleasant when Martha is serving it, and not Madame Alden who strikes him across the face whenever he fails to address him as 'matron.' The schoolbooks his upperclassmen force him to carry tires out his arms, so that at night, he rubs the sore muscles to ease the stiffness that inevitably follows. The first time he is slammed into the railing, he stares blankly; the second time, a constant, pervasive fear introduces itself into his life. Every morning when he passes that railing on his way to mathematics, he flinches.
Fear takes the place of Robert, who by now has been locked away in a trunk, awaiting the return of his master like a sentinel.
He is thirteen, and he has become filthy. He hurts so badly from that invaded place inside him that he fears he will die. What was done permeates every cell in his body, as inescapable as smoke. When he returns home for the break, he rips Robert into pieces with a hunting knife. Better the doll than him. Looking down at the disemboweled doll, he admires the knife; it promises him safety and power, both equally alluring.
He returns to the boarding school with a grim determination. That night, screams echo in the dormitory, and Clyde shakes and sobs, most ungentlemanly, holding his insides together. In the bright moonlight falling in the patterns prescribed by the window, Cassandra can see them, moist and slippery. Cassandra smiles at his pain, smiles at how the blood pools from the gaping gash.
He plays it off as a prank, and is transferred to another boarding school. But the knowledge that he has been made different haunts the back of his mind, and he begins to see himself as apart from humanity.
He's eighteen, and the most eligible bachelor of the London season. Women—no, girls really—make small talk with him, testing their conversational skills learnt in finishing school, and he finds himself bored by the entire trivial charade. He doubts Lady Edith has ever seen the insides of a man before, nor Lady Mary, the fear in a man's eyes when he makes use of him. (Better to make use of, than be used, he thinks. Power's all that matters in the end.)
A sleek man approaches him, his malachite eyes full of promises. Lord Hargreaves. He has a select club, dedicated to the pursuit of science and the like, and wouldn't Cassandra consider joining him? He could use a man with ambition and a healthy admiration for power. Lord Hargreaves slips him a calling card before sliding away to mingle with the others, effortless yet haunting. Cassandra waits until the party has concluded to investigate it.
An immaculate tarot card, with roses spiraling around a scrawled address. Carelessly, he flips it over.
The Hierophant.
He's twenty-one, and he watches Lord Hargreaves bring in a boy, with hair like moonlight. (Jezabel.) The slender, sickly boy clings to Lord Hargreaves's hand around all these strange adults garbed in black and hovering over him like ravens. Cassandra cannot take his eyes off him. He reminds him of the lambs Martha had shown him a lifetime ago. A creature surely without sin. The boy's here for an operation. As an integral part of Lord Hargreaves's plan, he cannot be allowed to die until it is time. Truly an unaware lamb.
He touches Cassandra's hand when it's time to administer the sedative. It's a light touch, as though a moth had fluttered down to rest on his hand, and for a moment, Casandra is unnerved by the trust this boy has in him. Doesn't he know what the world is like? The feelings of shock quickly turn to a strange satisfaction: he can use this boy's trust against him, surely.
"It won't hurt, will it?" Fear polishes Jezabel's amethyst eyes to a pleasing sparkle.
"Of course not," Cassandra reassures him, not meaning a syllable of it.
He takes pride in the knowledge that he controls for how long the boy slips into unconsciousness.
He's twenty-eight, and well adjusted to life in Delilah. His mansion is his castle, nearly engulfed by the dregs of humanity polluting it. He takes women, delicate dolls, to bed, and they bore him with their sweet sighs under him. All except for Lady Clara Fairchild, a petite brunette with eyes that look though him. She amuses him with her wit, and her hand in his promises the final piece to complete the lifestyle he's always aspired to. An elegant woman by his side to complete his fairy tale life and, most importantly, to bear him heirs. She's not intolerable. One night at a party, he sweeps her away to a side room. Her eyes shine brightly in the dark.
"Is this a proposal, Lord Gladstone?"
His hand cups her face, while the other rests on her elegant silk gown. "I love the beautiful things in life, Lady Fairchild." And it was true: he had spent the last ten years engulfing himself in excess pleasures and beauty. Exquisite paintings for his private gallery. Wine imported from France and Russia. Operas and plays and theatre. He has a lifestyle that would make even Bluebeard envious.
She smiles and leans into a kiss. Clasps him tightly to her, and he panics for a moment. She doesn't notice, but continues her movements, a hand sliding under his shirt collar to caress his neck. Presses her body against him, as she straddles him. He can no longer breathe: he's thirteen again and the burning sensation of being violated is too much to bear; the blood won't stop flowing from between his thighs.
Pushing her off him, he seizes her neck; it's not a contest of strength, really. She gasps in shock, and her face registers confusion as he slams her head against the wall. He doesn't stop when blood splatters across the windows, doesn't stop when she goes limp, doesn't stop when white flecks fall against his face, like disturbingly soft snowflakes.
Looking at her broken form, he decides, panting from exhaustion and fear, that the next person he beds will not—can not—pull such a stunt.
The murder is just barely concealed.
He's thirty-four, and this moonlight sliver of a man that Jezabel has become intrigues him. Delicate and ethereal, but oh, so cruel. Cassandra wants for nothing more to destroy him slowly. Every touch becomes bolder as Cassandra becomes more secure in the knowledge that no one will prevent him from doing so. No one but Cassian, and Cassian is easily dealt with.
Jezabel's thighs are as cold as ivory, and he cannot keep himself from kissing them. Worshiping the momentary fear that such actions provoke in Jezabel. His hands dart upwards, like spiders, to burrow under Jezabel's opened collar—onto his neck. Holds him so tightly that he can feel the allegro tempo of the blood in Jezabel's arteries. The entire scene plays out like an exquisite opera. The one-two, one-two of Jezabel's heart beat, as the tempo increases to allegrissimo. The furious violins of his lashes, as he desperately struggles to remain conscious. The gentle receding of the flutes, as his body slackens. And then silence. (Rallentando.)
One of his favorite fantasies is to take him unconscious, an enticement second only to his usual violent habits of whips and the Scavenger's Daughter. Cassandra spends time admiring the fine pre-Raphaelite beauty of his parted lips, and way his hair falls identical to the Sleeping Beauty's. Yes, he's the Sleeping Beauty from Martha's fairy stories, slumbering in his father's curse: Cassandra has come to awaken him from it all. Crawling over his delicate, petal-strewn form, Cassandra hovers over Jezabel; the lace from his shirt cuffs against the porcelain of Jezabel's skin inflames his blood. Cassandra tenderly wipes away a bit of blood from Jezabel's bottom lip, where he tore it in fear, and reacquaints himself with the carnal knowledge of Jezabel's limp body. He finishes, shuddering and undone in the clean March air, and catches the sight in a mirror.
It pleases him to no end.
(Where beauty and pain collide, he finds ecstasy.)
Jezabel awakens, some time later, groggy from the ordeal. Dressed, Cassandra watches him examine a petal numbly; he tries to move, and his little staccato gasp of pain endears him to Cassandra. (He can be tender when he feels it.) Murmuring reassurances into Jezabel's hair, partly bloodied from when he had provoked him, Cassandra holds him, as he shivers from pain or fear. Any maid peering in would only see an image of benevolence. (He knows the other man cannot separate illusions from reality, particularly when illusions are sweet and mild.) He draws a bath for him, much less from a desire to tend to him, than a calculated attempt to keep him in the present: he always feels beaten at his own game whenever Jezabel willingly slips away from the world into his fog.
As Cassandra tenderly begins to clean Jezabel's too-thin wrist from the encrusted blood of yesterday's enjoyment, he answers Jezabel's unasked question: "Can I not care for my possessions?" He doesn't stop touching Jezabel until tears of humiliation and fear freely slide down Jezabel's face.
"If you're going to be ungrateful, I'll leave you to bathe yourself," Cassandra scolds paternally, although the grin on his lips announces that he's won this round today. Part of him wants to provoke Jezabel into a state (he's heard rumors at Delilah of how entertaining he can be when provoked; one such occurrence had led to the Cardmaster's assigning of mandatory assistants for him, to keep him in check), but the more pragmatic part of him realizes that he has a dinner to host, and he cannot appear disheveled or bothered. Nor could his castle.
Appearances must be maintained.
He settles for a compromise. Gripping Jezabel's legs, he gently removes the spilled seed and blood, taking note of Jezabel's tightly shut eyes and wracking gasps of fear. Crying by now has lent his pale face some color, though blotchy. Cassandra sighs dramatically. "You're being terribly willful again. If you don't cease this behavior, I'll ring for a valet." He strokes Jezabel's face. "And seeing you like this, well, my valet might get ideas. Ideas any man might get."
He waits for the implication of his words to sink in. (If only Jezabel knew that he would never, ever share him with another. Jezabel belonged to him, and him alone.) Jezabel opens those beautiful eyes, highlighted by the smudges of chronic insomnia, and whispers something.
"Louder, my darling Jezabel."
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry, my darling, for what?"
Jezabel tries to collect himself. "I'm sorry for being willful," he stammers, eyes downcast.
"Good boy."
(Better to use than be used.)
He misses the look of cold, tear-stained hatred Jezabel gives him in response.
He is dying, and the lights of the surgical room are far brighter than he remembers them. A glance to his right reveals his darling Jezabel, preoccupied with the contents of a syringe. The stiff smell of disinfectant abounds. He struggles, yet cannot move. Fear dries his mouth, as he sees him, prepared for surgery with a shaven head.
Jezabel notices his feeble movements, a grin distorting his lovely face. He bends over to Cassandra's level, biting his lower lip in malicious glee. He taps the glass of the syringe for bubbles. "My dreams will be quite pleasant tonight, without your vile touch," he says so that only the two of them can hear. "Thank you for donating your body to science." There's a sparkle of suppressed anger in Jezabel's eyes that reminds him of Clyde a lifetime ago, but it's different somehow.
"Here comes a candle," Jezabel whispers, gripping Cassandra's forearm. "To light you to bed." A strand of hair brushes against Cassandra's cheek. How he wishes he could touch it one last time. Touch his Jezabel one last time, and indulge his fantasy of awakening him from his father's curse. Hadn't he promised to free him from his father? Isn't that what he had done?
It occurs to Cassandra far, far too late that he has finally discovered Bluebeard's secret: Bluebeard lived in a fantasy world of control and opulence to hide his loneliness. A loneliness that never ceased with every wife he took. His first wife glimpsed the searing misery that colored his life, and had paid the price in her blood. Cassandra had seen Jezabel's past, seen the way the Cardmaster had touched him over and over again, and thought him the perfect match for himself. He would save Jezabel in the way that he himself had never been saved. No, that wasn't true. Cassandra had wanted to hurt him irreparably, to leave another unwashable mark on him. His rescue was merely imprisonment by another name. Maybe it was both, a voice whispers in his mind. Maybe Jezabel was both an object to torment and a doll for his eyes only.
If only Bluebeard had been honest with himself.
The prick of the syringe, following the cold swish of surgical alcohol. As Cassandra's world blurs, he desperately focuses on Jezabel, who is tugging on a surgical mask now. And how did it end for Bluebeard?
"Here comes a chopper to chop off your head."
Chip.
Chop.
Chip.
Chop.
Notes:
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed my take on the events that might have lead to Cassandra's formation. Boarding schools were a common occurrence in the Victorian era, and I think it's likely that he might have attended one as a young boy. However, such schools were also notorious for sexual abuse and emotional harm caused by separation from the family.
Cassandra was, for me, a difficult character to write; I tried to balance a humanizing view of him with his very canon cruelty. This work would not have happened without Mystical Authoress's very intriguing fan fictions featuring Cassandra Gladstone. Go check them out if you haven't already. Her comments about wanting to portray a different side of Cassandra are what led to me trying to understand his character and ultimately, this fic.
Jezabel's last comments are taken from the nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons."
Let me know what you thought about it, okay? I value your comments and feedback.