Chapter V: The Teamaker of Turnbuckle Street
CONTENT WARNING: This story references sexual assault, domestic abuse, unwanted pregnancy, the use of abortifacients, some very bad men and one extremely pissed off woman who takes matters into her own hands. Take care of yourselves, friends.
Yarrow flower, Shepherd's Purse, Eelskin, Lacewort
Ease the pain and calm the thoughts,
Pennyroyal, Silverwillow, Hemlock, Clover,
Remedies from the Empire over.
- Old midwife's song, origin unknown
Let me tell you a story.
It's not a nice one, I'm afraid. Not every story has a happy ending. But you should know that better than anyone.
Long ago, decades before your mother took the throne, at the corner of Gooseneck Way and Turnbuckle Street was a tea shop. It was shabby, and easily overlooked, its name unreadable on the battered sign over the door. Inside, dusty cabinets crammed with dried herbs and flowers turned the air heavy. The owner was from Morley, widowed early, but with some coin left from her husband's estate and a head filled with herb lore, enough to survive on. Her name isn't important, and it wouldn't do you any good to know it. You won't find it in any of your history books. She went by other names, though, whispered by the women who bought her infusions and tisanes. The Teamaker. The Doctor. The Midwife. She made teas to dull pain, ease swollen joints, soothe anxious minds - and for other, more secretive purposes.
You don't understand, do you? I'll explain.
In those days, the natural philosophers had not yet discovered the comforts that you take for granted. They were unrefined, not like Joplin, or your precious Sokolov. Dentistry, surgery, midwifery - these were all in their infancy, and more often than not, would bring about a miserable death instead of relief. So who can blame the women who found themselves with child, who sought out the Morley woman with the gentle hands, and a shop full of herbs with pretty names?
You see now, don't you? Even after all these years, you remember the rhyme that was always on the lips of the girls at the Golden Cat. Herbs for prevention, herbs to ease the agony of childbirth, and herbs to end what has already begun. The Teamaker knew them all and many more besides. Women came to her from across Dunwall, some desperate, some hopeful. She gave each what they needed, without judgement, and they paid what they could afford. Countless tins and paper bags changed hands in the back room, or in alley mouths, or the parlours of noble estates, with carefully written instructions and murmured thanks.
But Dunwall has a way of breaking everyone, in the end.
Late one night, The Teamaker had just returned to her rooms above the shop after attending a birth, when she was startled by a pounding on the front door. On her doorstep were two women, one shaking and sobbing in the other's arms. It took her a moment to realise the second woman was holding up the first.
"What happened?" she demanded, stepping aside to let them in.
"Whalers," spat the crying woman's companion. "Fresh off the gangplank, Void take the lot of 'em."
They lay the woman down gently, and The Teamaker slipped into the brisk efficiency she always wore when she worked. She set about gathering ingredients; to ease the woman's pain, to reduce swelling, to purge what would take root inside her. Pennyroyal, Silverwillow, Hemlock, Clover...
She brewed the tea strong, and gathered the leaves into a poultice. She rolled up her sleeves and gently went to work while the other woman pressed the cup to her friend's lips. Much later, when she had done all she could, and both women had settled down for an uneasy hour of sleep, she retreated to the privy to scrub her hands. Her haggard reflection blinked at her in the mirror over the sink.
"Bastards," she hissed, her throat scratchy with lack of water. "If I ever find them…"
She had no end to that sentence. How could she? She was an herbalist, a tea maker. Insignificant and powerless as a pebble on the shore. She could mix herbs and mend torn flesh, but she couldn't excise the seam of filth that ran through the heart of Dunwall. But a shadow had risen in her that hadn't been there before, and that interested me.
From that night onwards, I watched the horrors pile up one by one behind The Teamaker's eyes. The women who had only their dowries to offer as payment. The hollow-eyed girl with a ring of purple bruises around her throat. Pale hands trembling around a teacup. Screams stifled with rags. Bloody handprints on the wainscoting. With each new glimpse of cruelty, The Teamaker's plan slowly formed.
She began to exchange her services for information; snippets of rumour and half-remembered names. She traced these threads to a riverside tenement in the Drapers' Ward. She exchanged coin and a tin of her strongest fennel tea, and found herself following a hunched stranger down a series of grubby halls to an abandoned apartment. It was bare of furniture, and the shuttered windows shrouded it in darkness.
Within, against a wall scrawled with entreaties and declarations of devotion, lay a shrine of improbable angles. Swathed in silk, it was hung with gleaming shards of Whale bone that whispered of magic. The Teamaker had brought an offering of a different kind. Shiny Belladonna berries, dried Oleander, velvet-skinned amanita heads... and a promise. I won't tell you what she said. But she needn't have debased herself so. I had already seen what was in her heart, and my interest was piqued.
"So," I said, as she knelt at the shrine. "This is where your path has led you. And now it's time for you to make a choice." Her head shot up, startled, and her eyes widened when she saw me standing there, a childhood nightmare come to life. "You've seen into the rotten core of this city, and now you want revenge."
"Aye, but not for myself," said The Teamaker, pulling herself together. "For the girls whose lives have been ruined. All these years I have done what I can to ease their burdens, but why should they have to pay for the greed of men?"
"And why should you, Teamaker?" the woman's expression was still, but I sensed her rage rippling beneath the surface.
"Someone has to," she said. "I don't expect you to understand," she added bitterly, "being a man yourself."
"I don't remember the feel of soil beneath my feet, or the taste of anything other than the ash of dead worlds, or the warmth of the sun on my face," I told her, drawing closer. "So no, I don't understand. But I'll offer you a gift nonetheless. You may use it how you see fit." She barely hesitated, only steeled herself and nodded.
"You're wrong about one thing." I said, as I took her wrist and pressed my palm to the back of her hand.
"What's that?" She raised her head to meet my gaze, tamping down her fear with the determined jut of her chin.
"I'm not a man." The Teamaker gasped and snatched her hand away, my mark still glowing on her skin. "Do what you will. How your story ends is up to you."
I left her kneeling on the dusty apartment floor. She wrapped her hand in her scarf and hurried back to her shop, feeling the Void's power fizzing in her veins. And from that moment on, any man who had caused a woman ill was no longer safe.
I don't suppose you can appreciate the beauty of her craft. Or perhaps you can; after all, your father tore this city apart to find you. The Teamaker was not strong, nor was she quick-footed. Instead, she used my gift to scurry about the city unnoticed, seeing it all through the eyes of the rats. She followed the drunks, the bored whalers, the petty aristocrats with more money than decency. She heard them boast of their conquests, of the women they had used, and of the reputations they had left in tatters. She listened, and she remembered everything.
Wrapping shadows about her like a cloak, she stole up behind them as they strutted fearlessly about the city each night. Safe in the knowledge they were more dangerous than anything else wandering the streets, they never noticed the glint of her poisoned knife until she buried it between their ribs. After a few weeks, the stories had spread; it was no longer safe to look for an easy catch on Dunwall's streets. They stopped hunting for women to abuse, turning their sights closer to home.
But there was no safety to be found, not for The Teamaker's quarry. She distilled deadly concoctions into syringes and crawled into bedchambers, leaving cold bodies in her wake. She left notes behind too, exposing their shame to the world. Here was the man who beat his mistress until she miscarried. Here was the man who abandoned his pregnant lover. Here was the man who drank himself into a stupor as his wife died in childbirth.
As news spread of the trail of bloody vengeance being carved across Dunwall, The Abbey of the Everyman reared its head. They could smell the taint of the Void on the wind. Even as I watched it all unfold, I knew they would not stop until they had their witch. And I was right. Like any hunter, they laid a trap, and like the rats she used for her dark work, The Teamaker stumbled right into it.
Around the docks, ugly rumours passed from tavern to brothel and back again. A ship moored in port, waiting to deliver a dozen shamed, unwed daughters from Morley into the hands of madams and noble houses. Their babies had been torn from them, the girls cloistered with the Blind Sisters, the boys given away. The horror of it drew the Teamaker like a moth to a flame. But when she made her way down to the docks in the dead of night and crept aboard, there was no greedy captain to punish, as she had hoped. The brig was not full of frightened girls, but a squad of Overseers.
Later, they found her shop filled with poisons, and my mark seared into the flesh of her hand. There was no need for a trial. At dawn they burnt her on a witch's pyre, and even as the smoke lingered over the Abbey they dumped her ashes in the Wrenhaven.
The tea shop was gutted, and changed hands many times before the rat plague arrived and swept through the district. Now it is boarded up, home only to weepers and rats. But, as short as the memories of humans are, some still remember the parts of Dunwall where women could, for a time, walk the streets after sundown without fear. Perhaps those days will come again, but that is a tale for another time.
I must leave you now, for there is another story unfolding, far from these shores, and I'm sure it will prove most entertaining. Perhaps you will remember me when you wake, or perhaps you won't. Either way, we will meet again, soon.
Sweet dreams, Lady Emily.