A Village outside Brasov, Romania, Late Spring, 1972
A few years earlier, Marigold Ashford had learned that she had a strong resistance to toxins. It had been an incidental discovery, one that could be filed away for later while she dealt with the bastard at hand.
Now, it seemed like deliverance. As the tremors began to set in, Marigold looked from her glass to the old woman across the table with a sense of detached horror, and hoped that it would be enough.
Three days earlier, she had arrived in Brasov.
And, oh, it had an Old World beauty that London had lost in the bombardment of the Second World War. London's charm had a sleeker veneer of modernity associated with it. Geneva had been more like this, but even then, Brasov's antiquity held tangible weight.
Meeting her at the Romanian airport was one Luca Bogdhan, along with a small retinue of bureaucrats. They had escorted her directly from the terminal (apologetically explaining that her movements in Brasov would be strictly monitored- something she had been told to expect in the Eastern Bloc country). The trade office was happy to work with British investors, after all, and Umbrella was becoming a growing force on the European market.
The next morning had been all business- a pickup from the charming little hotel downtown to the Trade Ministry office. Umbrella had proposed a friendship with a small village in the mountains with whom the company's founder had a fondness for, and wished to open a channel. Easier said than done; the village in question had an old and evil reputation. It had rather actively and successfully repelled modernization as oil repelled water.
But…the Cold War wouldn't last forever. Or else, the definition of forever would be significantly foreshortened, at any rate. Business and life went on, here and everywhere else.
Umbrella's offer also meant opening up regional offices within the country. The offer that Marigold carried to them was a rising tide, and all could benefit- that is, if they could steel their nerves and take the offer to one backward little village.
On the second day, Luca showed up at her door and offered to escort her on a tour of his fair city. Tourists who came here were often after the Gothic allure that Bram Stoker had built up for the world in his famous vampire novel. "I'm not sure the man ever actually left Ireland," Luca joked, as he tucked Marigold's hand at his elbow. "But the local tourists don't seem to care much."
The tour, and subsequent lunch in a darling little bistro by the trade office, left the mood going into the afternoon's meeting relaxed and mellow. It was a sound strategy, Marigold thought. The bureaucrats handling the file were eager to accommodate, although the caveat of Lord Spencer's specific request to place a regional headquarters there- to open a channel with a specific, village with an evil reputation - was odd. It wasn't until an older aide, with a penchant for regional history, took a hard look at the paperwork that the light went on behind his eyes. He tilted the forms she had brought along with her. "Ah." He had said, having worked out a particularly trying riddle. "Your…umbrelă. This company. They use their heraldry, I think. Omagiu? Sorry, madame. This is homage?"
Marigold let her face remain neutral, filing away the new information. It made sense. It also seemed like Spencer was playing games with her in sending her here. She was lacking information that seemed rather important. "Mm. Our founder spent some time there before coming back to the wider world. He- we - hope they will accept a gift in gratitude." She recited Spencer's line verbatim.
Luca, young, lean, and full of ambition, nodded along with enthusiasm. "Well, we'll take a car out, come early tomorrow. I believe we should arrive just after noon, and we can bring this news to the village elder in person."
What Marigold did know was that Spencer had apprenticed to a doctor in the far mountains of this region. He had been gone for a large part of her early childhood, but could still recall the unease with which her father had received the shift in his personality on his return, back in the late fifties. She had overheard her father discussing it with Alexander years later, in early 1967. "He'd always been serious," he'd said, with an air of bewilderment, "but it's like all a part of him was burned away. Take care with what you say to him."
They had gone as a family to Spencer's estate when news of his return reached him. Marigold had been no older than eight years old at the time- Mrs Kettleby had called her "precocious" to her parents, and "bossy little creature" to the other staff when she thought no one else was around. When she had met her 'Uncle' for the first time in her own memory, she had boldly asked why he had gone off for such a long time.
Uncle Spencer had laughed- even then, it no longer reached his eyes- telling both her and a flustered Edward that he had been studying under a brilliant wise doctor -Miranda, her name was- who was creating marvelous gifts for her community, and he was inspired to learn all he could. To use all he had learned of biology and use it to make a better world.
Marigold had gone on this assignment knowing that much. On the telephone, earlier that month, Spencer had started to tell her something when requesting she set this up about the village, then decided against it. "Keep your eyes open and keep a steady nerve," he had said instead, "and once you return, perhaps we'll talk more about expanding your team to a proper division."
That meant diplomatic access. A Vice President position. It meant access, mobility, and real power.
If this were a test, she'd see it through. She and Alexander had been keeping her secret for three years now, but Alexander was going oddly silent of late. Next time she spoke with her brother, she'd raise the subject of sharing her condition with Uncle Spencer. It only seemed right, with the trust Uncle Spencer was showing them.
One way, or another, she'd see this through.
The drive was long, though peaceful. Fields and forests, with a smattering of small villages as they approached the mountains.
A sullen-faced man in his forties was waiting at an old petrol station by the prescribed exit to the village. "You won't be able to take that thing in," he announced in a hoarse voice. A sort of vindictive glee played over the man's face: city people from the government, having no idea what they were in for. People avoided the region beyond this pass for a good reason. "You'll need to walk a-ways, but the local merchant agreed to give you a lift in his cart, to get through the pass."
The narrow dirt path through the trees was a short hike. Marigold could feel Luca tensing up next to her. He'd been the picture of a perfect gentleman earlier, but something about these woods clearly bothered him. When pressed, he gave a nervous laugh. "Ah, it's silly. There are lots of mundane things that could be dangerous out here, but there really are folktales of monsters in these hills. Modern medicine shows that that was mainly rabies victims, but," he swallowed hard. "It's hard to shake a culture, I suppose. It's nothing."
Marigold walked along with him in silence for a moment. "There are a lot of old pagan stories in the area where I grew up," she offered. "People don't go out at night in the countryside. They bend over backward to avoid building on a sacred hill or grove, because it will spoil their luck, sometimes to their own end. They aren't named aloud- anyone who speaks of them does it in hushed voices, calling them the 'good gentlefolk'." She gave a light laugh and shrugged. "It's a shame. On a clear night, the moors are quite lovely."
She could feel Luca relax next to her as she talked. "I suppose everything needed a good ghost story to it before science because involved."
The path ahead of them was opening up, with a slightly wider road ahead. She paused, with a hand on Luca's arm. Perhaps this trip would be benign, but this was Uncle Spencer's inspiration for a path that had led to her becoming something…else. Perhaps it would be best to take a precaution.
There was one measure she could take to manage her luck, if she did it now.
Licking her lips, she stepped in quickly to press a kiss to Luca's mouth. He froze at her forwardness, and she stepped back out of it before she could reciprocate. she smiled at him. "That's the fun part. Sometimes they turn out to be the same thing. Have courage," she said, and plunged on towards the road up ahead, leaving Luca gaping in her wake.
Courage was not quite the right word for what Marigold was feeling, as she watched the older woman's mouth twist into a cruel smile. Luca's brow creased at her reaction, the trembling in her hands- his own drink had been unadulterated. A closer word would have been indignation. Anger. And a thin thread of fear binding it all together.
They'd met In a small house overshadowed by a castle. The merchant- an impressively rotund man who went only by "the Duke"- had pointed the castle out as the holdings of the Lady Dimitrescu, who kept a winery nearby. The elder was a sour looking woman, apparently in her early sixties. She allowed them in and served them each a glass of wine as they arranged themselves, pulling out papers from a briefcase. Spencer had entrusted her with a sealed letter for Miranda, something full of vague apology and his proposal for her village. His gift, so to speak.
That was as far as the meeting got.
Clearly, this woman- Miranda- did not appreciate Spencer's presumption. The village existed in isolation for good reason, and she didn't appreciate the government being sent in, jeopardizing the work like this. He knew well enough the risks.
The woman's voice sounded strange and distant to Marigold as the toxins entered her system and attempted to do their inevitable work. Given her past reactions, the dose in the drink had been high enough to kill a normal human ten times over.
This wasn't something that could be handled in front of the bureaucracy. "Luca," she managed to choke out, aware of his growing alarm. "Go to sleep."
Luca's eye went wide for a moment before he slumped over, a marionette with his strings cut.
Miranda's smile froze. Marigold pressed her hands to the table. Trying to will away the numbness, the tremors creeping up her arms. She eyed the cup, and quirked a brow at Miranda. The woman's face seemed to slough away years by the seconds, until she settled into a face in her mid-thirties. Curiouser and curiouser, for execution by proxy.
After a moment, Miranda barked out a surprised laugh. "I had no indication from your Uncle's letters that his work had progressed so quickly!" At her glance, Miranda's face softened slightly. "Ah, I may have been rude. There are things the boy might have seen. Your Uncle had the disposition for the kind of sacrifices this sort of research requires, but the government certainly doesn't. That was hemlock, what you drank." Miranda sat back, observing. "Quite a large dose, I'm afraid. I wonder what the success rate is for his little virus if he felt safe sacrificing one of you?"
Marigold had broken into a sweat as she spoke. The virus had caused her pain before, but it was a trackable, predictable thing that she could attribute to "feminine troubles", or lingering chronic illness.
This…was worse.
This was her nerve endings going quiet, and them firing on all cylinders as the virus in her body surged to meet this incursion.
This was her liver clenching in pain as it was forced into overdrive to filter out the hemlock in her bloodstream. Rather than slowing, her heart had suddenly kicked into an adrenaline-fuelled overdrive.
Standing up so suddenly that her chair fell back, she ran to the door towards the cool mountain air. A few steps beyond it, she fell to her knees and began to wretch. Villagers passing by saw her fall, and hurried away with alarm. It was better not to see. The Prophet of the Black God had always seen to their protection, but she was rarely kind to outsiders.
A moment of wretching and heaving passed. A cool hand touched her head, pulling her hair back. Marigold shuddered. She wheeled hard into a crouch and caught Miranda by the wrist, not bothering to temper her strength. She knew she looked half feral in that moment.
A moment passed. The two women stared at each other, unsure how to proceed. Then Miranda straightened up, seemingly unfazed by the inhumanly iron grip - and Marigold released her.
"He doesn't know," Marigold said softly. "It kills everyone it contacts, as far as he knows. He thinks that there was an inept attempt at infection. We told him that I caught a local illness." Secretive, cryptic Uncle Spencer, who had sent her here. He had spent years with this woman. Had he sent her here to die?
She paused. "My father - he wanted to wait to be sure- didn't live long enough to share the good news. The time never seemed right, after that….Luca won't remember anything if I make him of a mind not to."
Miranda considered her for a moment. Then, "I have been rude, haven't I. I had other plans for you - I won't pretend otherwise, not at this juncture. But, I think that for a blood sample, we could return to the conversation you meant to have. After all, I could use new equipment…and I'd like to know if that little virus of yours impacts the work I'm doing here."
Miranda had been keeping something in the back of the house, a little cadou of her own, as it were. The vial of blood Marigold provided disappeared with Miranda into the back while the younger woman kept to her feet, still panting and sweating in exertion.
A moment later, Miranda re-emerged with a grim expression. "It appears you are poisonous as well as venomous," she announced, eyeing the young man still slumbering at the table. How fortunate that I did not bring Alcina along for this meeting. You would have upset her digestion rather grievously, I fear."
"Not venom," Marigold said quietly. Her heart rate was going down, at least. "He's just sort of…mine, now. I had very little information about you, I understand now - it seemed prudent to maintain some form of discretion. And it protects him from information he really doesn't need to know, of course. It'll be easier for him once I leave the country." She coughed at the burning in her throat that was now fading to a persistent itch. "What does that? Might I ask, even?" She made a vague gesture to encompass Miranda's features.
"This is the Mold," Miranda said after a moment's consideration. "It holds…all who die here. All I wish is to call one back." It was safe enough to tell her that. After all, this little one had secrets of her own to keep. She had expected a disposable poppet to send back in pieces to her absent student. Spencer must have sensed that as well, given the little prior warning of a visit in his letters. He hadn't realized that the 'poppet' in his employ was another higher predator like herself.
This creature didn't want to 'fix the world', or whatever that vainglorious, brilliant little man had scuttled off to do. All she wanted to do was get out of this confrontation and back to her out territory.
Well, Spencer could mind his own house, as it were. If this girl had slipped his notice for this long, he could only blame himself. The girl would do nothing for her as a research specimen, but…the olive branch seemed to be valid. The Duke would happily take the expanded access to markets. And the post-war technologies out there seemed to have kept forward in a way she really ought to at least look into. Smugglers were a bothersome thing to manage these days.
And that little twitch of her eye when mentioning her father's foreshortened life, through the careful wording and even more careful poise. Someone who understood loss, and the cost of carving out a safe corner in a cruel world. A possible ally who truly understood where her priorities lay was a tempting prospect.
Miranda settled herself at the table, looking for the first time at the documents laid out by herself and Luca. "I can accept a restricted version of this. He knows not to needle me on taking samples- really, the nerve. He can negotiate any samples he wants to deal in himself without sending canaries in here to die. I would prefer to avoid that sort of attention." Miranda picked up a pen and a fresh sheet of paper. "I'll put my requisitions down, and we'll see how he fares. I think we can leave out our little misunderstanding, do you agree?"
Marigold blinked at her, her face closing to a mask. "To what end?"
"Viruses travel much faster than Mold when they're successful, and can slip out into the world far more easily. It seemed to me that it would be useful to leave a counterweight in place. It's rather hard to achieve a mutation that's stable. Statistically, incredibly unlikely."
Marigold nodded, slowly. "I can make the trade part work. He," she indicated Luca, "didn't seem to feel anyone really wanted to come here. They seem to think you have a nest of monsters in these hills." She gave a one-shouldered shrug. "The things that some people believe."
Luca came to slowly, with Marigold gently shaking his shoulder. The older woman- iron-gray, in her sixties, with a hint of mischief in her eyes- watched him closely as he blinked blearily, then startled the rest of the way awake. He felt…tired? No. More than that. Like he had worked outside at his father's house all day and had gone to bed without a meal.
"I fell asleep?" He was horrified. Was something wrong with him?
The older woman, Miranda, tutted at him. "I forget, sometimes that the wine isn't suited to outsiders- some sort of pastoral microbial issue, I was just telling your young friend. It was best to let you sleep through it. Although, it may be better for you to find room and board for the night in the next village if that's the case. Staying here will simply upset your digestion further if you're already sensitized."
Luca turned sharply to Marigold, who was watching him gravely. "Everything went fine. I can fill you in on details later, but they'll appoint a courier, that can liaise with your office, or Umbrella themselves."
He looked back to the table, with a letter and documents packed away into two tidy piles. "We're done?" He asked, bewildered. Marigold only smiled, a tight, uncomfortable expression, and helped him to his feet. "Yes, but we should get you into a bed to recover as soon as possible." She glanced back at Miranda. "The rest will sort itself out in due time."
Miranda smiled back, sincere this time. The girl was not yet so far removed from her humanity as of yet. It only seemed fair to give her a chance to grow into her own.
What a fantastically interesting world it would be when she finally brought her darling Eva back into it.