The Creggan White Hare

by phantomwriter05

PROLOGUE - in 1935, Haunted by a tragedy of which he was blamed, a young adventurer searches an abandoned Gilded Age Manor in Newport, Rhode Island for a precious heirloom of the once Levinson family. But danger lurks around every corner as he is hunted by Mercenaries hired by a former Ottoman Noblewoman to avenge her son who died long ago in Lady Mary's bed. COMPLETE!

17. Rebels - Part II

Wetting a towel, the dark-haired woman had wiped clean the oozy creamy mess from her sensitive womanhood in the Princess Royal's bathroom.

Despite the opulent setting, the shadows in contrast with the harsh metallic blues of the winter light through the frosted window had given the marble and gilding a muted affect. The strips of de-saturated light that fell upon her ivory freckled countenance were like the dungeon bars of her prison in the dark bleakness of the midnight hour. The forlorn and empty atmosphere filled her with a deep crushing existential despair in the gaze of the hideous monster that looked back at her. Sweat from sexual escapades glinted in the cold reflection of the sparse visibility within the impenetrable darkness that engulfed the other details of the private bathroom. Her hair was frayed and tangled from where her elegant hairdo for the Royal Yule Ball had been pulled free with all its ornaments in carnal passion.

Now, an hour later, the woman found herself stark nude, smelling of debouchment, with a mouthful of water to wash out the taste of cigarette flavored kisses. The reflection of red tinted amber eyes examined the sweaty ravished creature with a broken resignation of a deep disgusted hatred. But it was not the sexual acts nor the baseness of degeneracy of which tormented her. Indeed, such humiliation, such deviancy, seemed fitting to her in recompence, in punishment, for the true sin of which she repented bitterly. It was the words that she spoke in fear and rage, in despair and hatred, within the halls of her most sacred home that marred her very soul, now and forever. She was scarred by that day, that hateful hour. And in the silence of the isolated opulence of the washroom did she still hear the cruelty, the evil, of the things she had said to her child, things that she didn't and couldn't have meant - not ever. Yet, still, had she said them with such passion and thespian sincerity as to have been believed. The memories haunted her, the vileness of their cutting venom weighted deathly upon her.

To have hurt anyone so gravely and with such malice would trouble her greatly. But when she said such things to one of whom she loved above all things in the world and universe, she thought death too quick and easy a path. So, instead, she had simply surrendered, let go the pretenses, to give up the struggle day after day. Within the memories of her son's fallen countenance, the dark-haired woman saw herself, believed herself, evil, corrupted, and wholly without a heart.

She would no longer pretend of something she wasn't. This debauched sex addled temptress of shameful lustful wickedness fit rather well to such a despicable creature that ruined good and innocent children of whom she loved. It was then, thinking of it all again, the woman couldn't stand it any longer, the isolation, the quiet, in the exclusive company of someone she hated so deeply that judged her with such bitter loathing. Yet, when she had exited the bathroom, giving a click of the door closing behind her, the pristine beauty of her elegant countenance betrayed not a tick of these flaws and faults that were eating her from the inside.

There was a pleasant amenable air to the woman that gave a soft smirk the moment her eyes met the queen's. The light of the new cigarette highlighted the creases on the sovereign's aged face. When she caught sight of the nude slender woman again, the pleasantness of her new shared lover was not returned. There remained a stern and strict decorum of a silent contemplation to the Queen. She turned up her chin in study, examining every lurid detail of the beautiful woman's perfect ivory body.

The desire she had for her had not manifested from any late sapphic tendencies like many societal matrons had for beautiful young women after years of unhappy marriages and fear of damaged reputations with male companionship. It was, instead, born from a deep resentful greed. For many years, in an unhappy life with an unhappy marriage that bore children that she did not love, a cruel pettiness was born within the unwitting and forced Queen of England. In weregild of everything that she viewed had been stolen from her – her autonomy, her agency, and her happiness – she had visited her revenge on this foreign society of which she was sold into through engagement to Albert and marriage to George.

They were small things: sundries, little crafted items of some worth, even the odd heirloom from some ancient dowery. They all knew she did it, and she wanted them to know that she did it. She took what she wanted from their great houses without hindrance or remorse. They pulled her away from her home to come to this cold miserable island, forced her into marriage with such a dull tyrannical bully, and they made her a Queen-Empress. And she'd not let them forget it. She'd slap all of them in the face over and over again and they could do nothing while she took from them but a miniscule trifle of what they had taken from her. And with every item, with every brazen theft, had she become comfortable in her power, till she did not hide it any longer – all her prejudices and petty squabbles.

Of her hatred for her cousin Alexandra, the years of being compared to her … and falling short, did she have much influence in the decision in abandoning her and her children, along with poor Nicky, to their fates. When Bertie had been stricken in love with Elizabeth, she promised to intervene on her son's behalf when that foolish girl rejected the Duke of York twice for some lowly Scottish Laird. There was a thrill of absolute power wielded in the icy cold tone when she spoke to the laird's mother at their contrived meeting at a societal garden party. The Queen had so casually impressed upon the Scottish Dowager that her son could either take the job that the Royal House had offered and leave Lady Elizabeth, or, well … accidents do happen in the Scottish Highlands, don't they? Later, when Bertie had written to her that Elizabeth had finally said yes to his latest proposal, Queen Mary only smirked smugly, fingering the cupid box she had taken from her future daughter-in-law's childhood home.

Yet, of the naked beauty before her, had she become a true obsession. Queen Mary of Teck had seen her, known her even, for most of her life. She had been there when she was presented to society, standing by the throne of her late mother-in-law at Buckingham Palace as the teenage girl's granny, the Dowager Countess, had presented her. She had sat across from her at Court dinners and watched her dance at balls since the woman was eighteen years old. Yet, it was at Downton Abbey, on the Royal Tour of Yorkshire after the strike and riots, that something about the now matured woman – mother of young children - that enchanted the Queen like a sudden arrow to the heart.

There was something about her that night, with her sleek chocolate hair in a fringe bob, the slender lines of her elegant posture, and the soft silken glamour of her dark blue Delphos Gown and silver ornaments of her Great House's colors. She was truly a Grecian Goddess of antiquity and remained the most rarely exquisite and admirable works of art that the Queen had ever seen. Of the small pieces and sundries that she had her dress maker take for her were they but trinkets, mere trinkets, compared to the real prize of Downton Abbey. Yet, Earl's daughters, grown mothers, were not craftsmanship that one could easily pocket and abscond with. And so, the entire night she would not allow the imperious faerie queen of Northern Yorkshire to leave her side.

It was not love, but naked and unadulterated lust. Though not in a sexual manner. It was a greed of desire to possess something of such rare beauty and perfection as one covets diamonds and jewels. And for a year after that night, had the queen been so terribly haunted by the vision of the woman's loveliness that she was nearly driven mad by the inability to sate her compulsive nature and petty vice. The queen's desire for the singular daughter of an Earl grew into an obsession. Quiet as it had been at first, through contrivances and invites just to glance at her fair elegant form, had the many months since made her more and more possessive and jealous.

She was tormented with an insatiable need to have such perfect refinement at her grasp in want. Thus, when news came of her obsession's exile from her home and estate from some piddling affair to do with her heir, the opportunity presented itself to make the vulnerable and grieving great lady the queen's own. Yet, all of her invites to palatial lodgings and royal courtesy were rejected by either guilt or foolishness of humility by the Earl's daughter. Then, the Queen was at the cusp of unreasonable. All her adult life she had been given or took remorselessly whatever her heart had desired. Thus, it was in the withholding and denial of this one thing of which she wanted more than anything else that she was lit aflame with a perilous avarice till she was willing to make a deal, any deal, to have that beautiful woman for herself.

Thus, when "M" promised to gift the queen her sumptuous prize, she didn't care what schemes or villainy was being hatched in the backrooms of the halls of state … nor her role in helping them.

Of the customs of the adopted home of which she ruled, the queen had been abreast but not fully convinced. The 'fellowship' and 'teaching' of young girls by their older matrons of sexuality and love making had not been part of her own girlhood in Germany, and she had always found it rather unnatural. Yet, it had been so baked into the culture of English High Society, among both sexes, that she could hardly ignore it, even if she did not partake in it. And even in the want and need of her elegant paragon, the queen did not feel entirely comfortable in all aspects of what it was to have her prize completely at her mercy.

Despite being the aggressor, the predator - finding a darkened stairway and forcing her against its railing and devouring her exposed supple neck as she made her perfect little sensitive faces - when she drank of her lips … it was not entirely a pleasant experience. The wet cherry taste, the forcing of her tongue into the younger woman's mouth, and the submissive surrender of her conquered conquest in her arms, it was a bit too much too fast. To kiss another woman hadn't felt natural, nor had it ever been to the queen – she would always fancy men. Instead, she had resolved to savor her victory, to enjoy her long sought prize, slowly.

And she found, instead, that she rather liked to watch more than participate.

To see her abed was a privilege. The way that she threw herself into the filth, into the passion, was like watching the most skilled and impressive equestrian navigating and taking jumps with unsurpassed elegance and poise. There was a demure submissiveness of which she offered herself freely to be taken, captured, by a dominant lover. Yet, despite giving herself up – hands always placed above or behind her head - there was an imperious air of control over everything. She might be taken from behind; she might even be tied and bound – as was her preference – but it escaped everyone's notice but the queen that nothing happened abed or in a dark stairwell that wasn't steered and controlled deftly by the woman. And, in that way, Queen Mary couldn't help salivating at the idea that all of it was an act, a show, put on by her prize for the exclusive royal audience of one. And of the night's performance had the queen transcended from being a simple patron, a fan, to being a devotee, an evangelist, of what she knew now would be her most cherished possession.

She was but one more item - the centerpiece – in a collection of beautiful objects stolen away from their rightful owners to be admired and fingered by the Queen of England.

"Here …"

The Queen blew out a ring of smoke after staring deeply at the sculpted and beautiful ivory bare bottom of the dark-haired woman while she poured herself a glass of water.

The younger's amber eyes followed as the old queen put out her cigarette and swung her legs over the edge of her daughter's bed. The woman turned back to her glass, hearing the sound of the nightstand drawer being opened and then closed. In the meantime, she took a deep draft of the water, savoring the coolness spreading through her marble sweaty belly. When she turned back around the queen was coming toward her with something in hand. Before the woman could see what, she was motioned to the Princess's vanity. To be fair, she felt a bit guilty about sitting naked on Princess Mary's vanity chair when it was pulled out for her by the woman's own mother. The silk cushion was smooth on her bum when the tall woman sat with immaculate posture, staring at the reflection of the queen who stood behind her, fiddling with something obscured by her sweat glossy ivory shoulder.

"I want to see you wear it."

Pulling aside her sticky matted fallen curls, the woman shuttered in a sudden chill when she felt something cold and hard settle on her collar bone, before she felt the sheer weight fall upon her neck when it was clasped in place. But despite the discomfort of the bloody heavy ornament that was placed onto her, her amber eyes were stricken when the glimmered sparkle was captured in her gaze. Her hands reached out and touched the opulence of the ancient necklace with awestruck reverence.

Passed down for centuries, perhaps even a millennium, by the princes of a great and hidden Raj in the arid countries of the western areas of the Indian subcontinent, no one knew or now remembered where such finery - religious and enchanted - had come from. Yet, after nearly a century of endless bloodshed with Muslim and British invaders, that hidden race had finally fallen at the hands of the East India Trading Company through subterfuge and treason within the courts of their prince. To commemorate the important and historic victory – and to share in the spoils of the campaign backed and financed by the Crown – the director of the East India Trading Company presented to Queen Charolette of Mecklenburg the very necklace that had now been the jewel of every Queen of England's treasure room for over a century.

On a fine braided chain of interlocking emeralds and rubies that netted about the neck, were three large diamonds cut and smoothed into an interlocking pattern to represent the three levels of the Universe – The Tri-loka - as was told in the ancient Hindu mythology. To the left was a sparkling white diamond that represented Heaven. To the right was a dim and cloudy yellow canary diamond that represented the mysterious and unknown Netherworld. And at its center, shimmering brightly and fiercely, was a blue diamond centered at the chest to represent Earth. When the dark-haired woman moved or shifted, she could hear the three diamonds give distinct humming vibrances that came together to concentrate into a single transcendent ethereal song.

The music, the otherworldly craftsmanship that could not be replicated by even the most master of jeweler, robbed the porcelain skinned great lady of words. She was captive of the magnificent, majestic, piece of jewelry that could not be rivaled anywhere else in the world. It was truly a spiritual experience to wear such an item, for the ancient necklace could surely not be of this world nor even this plain of existence. As was the habit she had never truly grown out of since she was but a girl, the dark-haired woman reached up and played with the marvel, running her fingers over each diamond, pressing them with amazement. With each tap, the vibrating hum gave a dominating crescendo in the harmony of the three together. It was exquisite, ethereal, and the most beautiful thing that the great lady had ever worn.

Her awestruck wonder was interrupted by her eyes fluttering closed when she felt lips and teeth suckle and nibble at the cleft of her long pale neck, while hands explored with deep massaging thumbs the taut abdominal muscles that sent wanton warmth down into her groin. Slowly, she involuntarily began opening her long slender white legs to accommodate the direction the massaging hands were sliding toward. But, instead, she let out a soundless moan when those same hands slid back up her slickened belly to pinch and tweak her firm pink nipples.

There was a perfect mixture of painful pleasure when the queen gave a passionate bite of the nape of her lover's neck, causing her to give a small high-pitched cry. For a moment, the sweaty woman at the princess's vanity was overwhelmed by sensation. The stimulation of her nipples, the attacking of her erogenous sensitivity in her neck, and the humming vibrance of the necklace. It all almost sent her into a trance like state when the world nearly fell away. But just when she was about to reach the pure bliss of transcendence, it was all cut-off.

The sudden stop caused the woman to glance in the mirror in front of her to see that the queen had moved off her just when she was reaching ecstasy. When she turned about in the vanity chair, the old queen was shuffling back to her daughter's bed where she sat at the foot with a groan of age escaping her unintendedly. With winded but wicked smile, the old woman caught her lover's eye and crooked her thin and long finger with the most erotic and suggestive look one could've imagined.

It was then that the woman realized that she wasn't given to wear this necklace just to admire herself in the vanity mirror. The queen wanted to see the necklace on her … and nothing else. When she was ready to finally have her, to bed her, to experiment sexually with her prize … she wanted to make love to the peak of feminine perfection. The prized possession of the Royal Family being worn by the centerpiece of their treasure room. It was to be a spoil of riches that could give a man gout.

Yet, it was at that moment, in the erotic smile and suggestive motion, that the great lady in the vanity chair was suddenly transported elsewhere. She was sixteen years old again, standing in her granny's bedroom. She was just as nude, preening in the mirror as she wore all of her grandmother's jewels as if she were the Countess of Grantham. She posed, trying on different faces, different looks. All at once was she trying to match the alluring air of sweet innocence that her mamma was so adept at playing, the imperious furrowed brow of Granny at her mastering height, or even perhaps the unreadable sphynx like eyes of her Aunt Rosamund in the drawing room. She couldn't decide which face, which woman, what kind of Countess, she would be. But then he said her name, the way he would always say her name when he was close.

Then, the girl would look over her shoulder and see him there. The Old Earl, her grandfather. He always watched her, gave her whatever her heart desired for just these moments. Her, naked, in her grandmother's jewels, as he pleasured himself while watching her. Then, she would kneel, close her eyes, and strain through the climactic eruption that brought grunting proclamations of love that cascaded from him as violently as his seed had onto her face and breasts. He had told her it was not a love that Edith nor Sybil would ever know. It was a secret love, a true love, a love that was soul deep that was exclusive only to them. She wasn't just his granddaughter, the woman he loved, they were the same person in two bodies. They shared a single soul. If it was wrong, if it was wicked, then they both must be.

Decades later, she was once more standing in front of a mirror, watching one more deviant touch themselves at the sight of her naked body in opulent jewelry. And once more her response wasn't disgust or revulsion at the sight of it – though she felt it to her very core. Instead, it was to smirk suggestively, to drink in adoration, the admiration, of her figure, her naked beauty. In New York where they took her and her sisters after grandfather and she were found out, Grandmamma and Mamma impressed upon her in no uncertain terms that Grandfather was evil. That whatever he did to her, even if he did not claim her virginity, was wrong and wicked. And for a great deal of her life did the woman wrestle and struggle with the question of if she was evil for having participated in the erotic adventures. That her enjoyment of the attention and the gifts he gave her – if not the humiliating way she had earned them - and the proclamations of his deep romantic love, had tainted her.

Now, after everything she said to her child in the small library of Downton Abbey, she had come to the unequivocal conclusion that her grandfather was right. They were but a single entity occupying two bodies. For if he was evil and wicked, then surely, after what she has done to George's life, what she said to her beloved, was far more wicked than anything that vile man had ever done to her. Thus, when the Queen of England crooked her finger at her, calling her over to continue the deviancy of licentious behaviors unfit for even animals, the dark-haired woman thought it only a part of her true nature as an abomination, a villain. For she surely was not fit for any other role but this one.

Once more, seeing her afresh, in the blue hue of the darkened bedroom of the Princess Royal, Queen Mary had become besotted by a wild want and need. The sleek beauty of her slender taut body with wide feminine hips, the proportionate white breasts with thick formed pink nipples, and the dark silky curls between her legs that curtained the most beautiful womanhood she had ever seen. But now, with addition of the sacred ancient necklace, she was no longer a woman, a mere mortal. She was perfect in every possible way. Thus, the clash of desire and the discomfort of sapphic eroticism, found compromise by the shallow and petty nature of the German born queen. For she wouldn't be making love to a woman …

She would be making love to a goddess.

"Ever since that night at Downton Abbey, I've wanted nothing more."

The voice the queen spoke with was one that someone might have thought would be used in sight of a steak dinner placed in front of her. She ran her hand up and down the silky slick skin of her prize's wide hips, savoring the creamy feel of them. Like the deep breath before the plunge, the queen gave one last glance up at the woman standing in front of her. She was met with a coldness, a dispassionate anticipation of someone that was seeking refuge in the pleasures. The queen obliged, taking it slowly, step-by-step in dismantling the rigidness of her palate.

Bony aged hands slipped back over the woman's hips and settled on the ivory cheeks of her sculpted bum, pushing her toward the queen. The popping and smacking noises of planted deep kisses on the sweaty canvas of the great lady's slender tight bare belly echoed in the room. They were ministrations that were rewarded with a soft moaning sigh of pleasure as her goddess's eyes fluttered shut again. Open to oblivion and numbness, the great lady placed both her hands onto the back of her own head submissively. She allowed the worshipful devouring of her belly and navel, the greedy hands squeezing her bum, and the hum of the sacred necklace, lull her into a thoughtless, mindless, malaise of pleasure. With devotion did she heartily imbibe the forgetfulness of all her greatest failures and mightier evils in the submission of being devoured whole.

SSSHHWWHIIICCCRRAAKK!

It was like a gunshot had gone off right behind her. The air was sharp and rented sending a stinging sensation against the sensitive ivory cheeks of her bum in its disturbance. At her groin, she heard the queen give an ugly and high-pitched noise of which she ate with heaving breaths that were hot on her younger lover's pubic hair. The hard firm grip upon the woman's bum came off as if it had scolded her. When her amber eyes snapped open, the queen's wrinkled countenance was in absolute agony. And when her prized possession looked down, she was taken aback.

Starting at her knuckle and winding down across her left forearm was a long bloody gash that ate into Queen Mary's flesh, going deep down into the very muscle. Blood, dark and crimson, oozed from the ink vine wound that dominated her hand and arm. The German constitution of the Queen of England was in full display as she bit down, betraying not a curse in the deepest of languish. She simply made mulling shuddered noises, her breath drawn shortly, her eyes wide as saucers while she rocked back and forth, cradling her damaged appendage while damming up any emotion.

When Lady Mary Crawley whirled about, she was confronted with not just a nightmare … but the worst of them all.

The tendril of the gilded flecked leather bullwhip lay limply in the cold colorless reflection of the winter's night upon the floor. Its icy hard leather was stained with the Queen Consort's blood. From its coiled heap, like a sated serpent, the handle was held by a familiar rust colored padded fingerless gauntlet that belonged to a hooded and cloaked figure that stood barely visible in the nightshade. But Lady Mary Crawley did not need to see him, not a face, not a cerulean eye, to know who it was that stood in the shadows as if he were born from them – for she had been the very reason that they had become his ally. A look of shock, of mortification, came over her countenance as she stared at the dark avenging figure that said not a word and gave not a flinch in sight of her.

She immediately fell back, abandoning the queen, the moment that he stepped out of the shadows and into the light's reflection from the windowpanes of the Princess's balcony French doors. There, framed in the rectangular angles of the cold blue hued winter lighting, she saw a look of fey and feral madness in the eyes under cowled hood. The rage, the violence, wafted off him in a tremor that shook the ether with a dark vibrance that was felt at Lady Mary Crawley's very core. It was then that it immediately occurred to her what it must have looked like, what it would seem, and even perhaps what it truly was. And with all her heart had she wished to dispel it, to scream that it wasn't true, that it wasn't what it looked like.

But she was daunted terribly by his eyes. For they had no face under cowl. His gaze, the hate of his rage that tormented him with such suffering, were naked and undimmed. And with every step toward her she fled from them, from him, for she had never seen anyone look upon her as he had that night. And she realized that he could never look upon anyone else as he had her, as she knew that no one else could ever gaze upon her with such wild hate. Fore, it remained that only such soul killing suffering could come from a love so deep that it was fundamental to the very core of who they were. And it was then that Lady Mary Crawley found in such hatred, such languishment, how truly – despite everything she had done and said to him – he had still loved her. That alone had torn her asunder above anything else that would happen that night and the tragedies that would follow it.

She had lain with the very people that had driven him from his home, their home. They had asked him to lie, to never again speak of an injustice done to a girl of which he and Mary loved to the very soul. A girl who had been raped and molested for months by someone of whom her safety had been entrusted. She was not violated in some wood, a deserted moor, or far-off glen away from prying eyes. She had her innocence stolen, her girlhood lost, and her virginity taken, in the home, the very bedroom, of her own aunt. It had happened while Marigold played in the next room, while she slept in the same bed. Sybbie had been voiceless, silent in her trauma, ever afraid that her molester would turn her vile desires upon the golden haired and innocent little girl that had been her sister since she came to live with them from the Drewe Farm.

Now, after all that befell Sybbie, everything that the boy she loved did to free her, to avenge her, the very woman whose advocacy for the girl pitted her against him, the woman who called him bastard, who swore he was not her son, and whom had wished him dead in the stead of her lost husband and daughter, was now participating in the very deviant degeneracy that Sybbie had been forcibly subjected! An act of sin that had ruined not just Sybbie's life but the very young avenger's that was named outlaw for rescuing her. Worst of all, she was committing it with the very people that tried to imprison him for having saved her! There were no words nor emotions in any of the many languages that the youth had learned and knew that could articulate the shock, betrayal, and hate that he felt upon seeing her abed with his enemies.

His cerulean eyes flashed with the rage of an unconquerable tempest that was blown to shore by the betrayal of the night and the memories of many evils that he should've been too young to have known and seen of the world. There were so many things that Mary wished to tell him, to comfort him. But she could not defend the indefensible, for she could not think of one thing to say that could be gainsaid of her actions tonight. Instead, she continued to back away from the encroaching shadow that stalked toward her in menacing intimidation.

Yet, the compounding of what seemed the very crossroads of her sins continued to pile up in the eyes of the youth of whom had always owned her heart - even as she broke his. For as she stepped into an outcropping of light from a window's reflection, the diamonds of the sacred and ancient necklace gleamed with a betraying wink in the refraction of the desaturated illumination. Their concentrated hum reverberated within the room with a waxing chiming ethereal music while they bent the air in the aggressive retreat of the woman that wore them. And it was in sight of the necklace, in absorbing the beauty of the music, that cerulean eyes were incensed impossibly further.

Unlike Queen Mary who was besotted by the sumptuous sight of the beautiful naked woman wearing the otherworldly necklace that fueled her carnal desires. The sight of the diamonds upon his mamma was beheld as the very word of sacrilege to the youth. For it was, unlike both Queen and Lady Mary, the young avenger was very familiar with the sacred necklace, where it came from, and who had been its rightful owner. For he knew whose elegant and regal neck it had been snatched from after her brutal rape and monstrous murder. Over a century had passed since such grotesquery, but in the consuming recesses and shadowed quarters of the Nautilus had its master brooded with a madman's obsession.

Over and over again had his music told the tale, the saga, of the destruction of his kingdom, his people. The ominous curls in the lilting sentimental felicity of lost days foreshadow the savage cruelty in the murder of his daughters, and the inhumanity of his beloved princess's fate at the hands of the corporate private soldiers of the East India Trading Company. Long into the gloom of that vast darkness within the cavernous silence of the ocean depths did mountain sunsets and walks through colored gardens mingle with the memories of fire and the smell of death in the sinister tones of the high romantism upon a towering organ of which was his only friend and true intimate.

And ever upon the observation deck of the clockwork underwater vessel, the cries of his rage, the screams of his wife, and the death rasps of his daughters possessed the fervor of his wild and exertive playing. The mingling of deathless love with the loss of it, the purity of the tiny babes in her arms with the sight of their young and lovely bodies burning in a heap with their suitors, came together in a torrent of a terrifying crescendo of the manic torturous genius of the powerful fortissimo music. Its thunder of rageful sentiment was felt in vibration through every steam valve and gilded gear that expelled into the pitch black nothing of the abyss that swallowed the beauty, pain, and madness. And of these compositions that spoke to the very depths of brooding languishing beauty of both great love and incomprehensible loss had they been left indelibly seared into the mind and heart of his apprentice - of whom alone, of those who walk the surface, had ever heard them ... and would never again forget.

Lady Mary flinched when the sight of her wearing his master's saintly soul mate's necklace, like a whore's trinket, caused the loud and perilous ring of silvery steel being drawn from its scabbard.

However, both girl-toy and avenger of the night suddenly paused. Against the ban on his nature, he glanced into his mother's eyes which looked down at his sword with sudden wonder and amazement that mingled with her fear. It occurred to him that it wasn't from the shock of him drawing his blade upon her – for he had done it before and would do it again before the end. In her expression was a surprise to see something she had never gazed upon before. It was only in her look and that of the queen beside them that he glanced down at his sword. His heart suddenly leapt into his throat at what they were looking at.

Then, mother and son shared an exact matching expression to the sight of the fierce glow of pale light emanating from his silvery blade.

The saber of Sikh design was etched upon with runes from the high days of the fathers of men and forged in the manner of the Atlantean blades of that age of Westernesse. It's technique and method being rediscovered by Captain Nemo long ago in his first voyages after the fall of his kingdom. Of its bestowing was one of privilege that is earned through great deed and valiantry in the face of the enemy. As part of his training, the boy had to forge his own sword of whose blade he would rely upon for survival – for only then would he be able to solve "The Riddle of Steel". And as was the power of those blades of pre-history made in the high tide of the glory of Men, did they glow in the nearness of dark magic, black sorcery, or the very nearness of a mighty evil.

There were very few times throughout the boy's adventures that his saber had ever glowed, much less as fierce as it had that night. Both at the tomb of Thoth-Amon at the headwaters of the Nile and within Castle Dracula in the mountains of Wallachia, his sword never stopped glowing – Allan Quartermain had thought it more useful than a torch. In the presence of Alexander Grayson in both their duels in the Stygian Sorcerer's tomb and in his Wallachian castle, the boy's saber had glowed so brightly in the presence of the undead medieval prince that it nearly hummed.

Yet, the last time that it had glowed with such severity was in the sunken ruins of Westernesse, in the Temple of the Dark Lord. There, upon the altar of the black cathedral, a demon of the ancient world attempted to sacrifice Mina Murray to reawaken its dark powers. The youth and his companions had tried to rescue her but, in the end, all of the company had lain dead about him – even Captain Quartermain - till the solitary boy, their apprentice, was left standing guard of the helpless undead beauty bound and chained. Then, his sword was ablaze like a pale flame as the poltergeist of an age undreamed trapped in an ancient tribal mask answered the boy's challenge personally and came down from his sunken throne.

THUD

THUD

THUND

In a collection of hammering noises from outside the balcony of the bedchamber, the occupants were suddenly assailed by bright and intrusive white lights. Their searing power did not simply push away the dark but obliterated it completely till everything inside was as visible as the noon hour of an Easter spring. Not even the ancient Medjay cloak of the Old Kingdom of Egypt could shield the young avenger from the purifying candle power of the glare. Of his saber had it become so invisible in the matching light that it seemed to Queen Mary that the lad was simply holding a silver handguard without a blade. Both mother and son reacted with a matching mimicking synchronized hand to shield their besieged gaze.

"Comet!"

There was a loud imperious voice with a deep gravelly posh accent that called through a blowhorn that perforated clearly through the Princess Royal's bedchamber.

"By the authority of his Majesty the King and his Government, you are hereby placed under arrest for treason, privateering, and other unlawful acts that threaten the interest of the Crown! You are to surrender immediately all weapons and effects and turn yourself in to our custody! Be known that if you do not comply or attempt to resist, we are authorized to shoot you dead!"

Still, shielding his eyes, the youth sprang to the windows and looked out with amazement. Lined upon the front yard of Harewood's grounds were an ordered formation of Imperial guardsman and soldiers kneeling and standing with rifles drawn and aimed at the windows and French doors of Princess Mary's bedroom. Behind them were three large, modified, searchlights that hummed from the power and heat they were exuding. As he studied their battle set, he saw both heavy weaponry and body armor that was designed exclusively to repel blades such as sword and dagger. The magnitude of the searchlights' wat output had been thrice that of the standard bulbs that they were built for. The result was a powerful and purifying light in which no shadow could be thrown, and no darkness could be found. It occurred immediately to the young avenger, with just a customary glance of their gear and harness, that they had been kitted up exclusively to fight and deal with him and him alone.

Slowly, his teeth clenched and the grip on his whip grew tight enough to cause an audible squeak of the leather in his padded gauntleted hand. With an angry snap of his head over his shoulder he shot a daggered glare of deep vicious accusation toward Lady Mary that still stood naked and confused. But when she caught her boy's dark glance, she immediately strode forward fearlessly, conviction and passion suddenly awoken in both indignation and anger of her own.

"Darling …!"

"You don't get to call me that!"

"I had nothing to do-!"

"I don't want to hear-!"

"I didn't know!"

"I don't believe you!"

Mother and son talked over and then shouted over one another in guttural snarling argument till Mary was dominated by the savageness of the youth's outburst of rage that quieted her in shock. The boy paced toward her for a few steps as if to confront her, to fight her. But, instead, swallowing a box of explosives that was shown in a shudder of his body, he paced away. Out of anxiety than necessity, the youth coiled his whip tightly, if only to give himself something to do before he placed it back on his hip. In the frantic action, he seemed lost and panicked, and the nude woman was suddenly aware of the instinct to rush to him and take him in her arms. She wished to assure him that it was alright and that nothing would harm him … that she wouldn't let it. But instead, it was all conveyed with a helpless outstretched hand that reached out unnoticed while the youth paced in anxiety.

"I should've known …" He muttered to himself angrily. "I should've seen this coming." He whispered as he paced back and forth on the Princess's rug, his eyes shifting over the patterns on the material as if organizing them would unveil the mysteries of the universe.

"King …" He glanced at the open door to the Earl's dressing room.

"Queen …" He looked up and stared at the agonized German royal that was studying him with deep seeded hatred.

"Whore …" There was a great deal of resentment when he glanced at his mother who took the insult like a slap to the face with a wet leather glove. With sudden insecurity the woman responded by covering her bare breasts with folded arms.

"What is it? What is it? What am I missing?" He asked quietly to himself. "Almonds, Documents, Royal Ball, Lady Mary Crawley, and me." He listed off hurriedly. "But who gains …" he continued, racking his racing mind. "Who. Gains." He repeated poignantly to himself.

His mother could hear the fear in his voice, and it was tormenting her. It suddenly came into her heart of all the times that he must have felt this way on the fringes and frontiers of the Imperium and how she was never there to comfort him. Now, she was here, right beside him. And it wasn't even a question that she would do everything in her power – and some things that were not – to make sure that he was protected, that much like Tom, Bates, and Anna, that they'd find a way to get him out of this.

Meanwhile, it was all starting to become clear, things moving into place, the pieces of a conspiracy starting to coagulate in the youth's mind. The documents – SPECTRE – was the catalyst. The young avenger was the weapon. Lady Mary was the bait and the motive. The almonds were the insurance. But the question remained the same, the fundamental question that any good detective asks: who gains?

Who gains from the murder of the King of England?

The youth sheathed his blade and strode over to the Queen. Then, like a misbehaving school child, he snatched the old woman by the ear. With a painful twist, the German Queen surrendered, her face twisted in agony from ear, arm, and hand, as the youth pulled the elder woman to her feet. Frisking her with his other hand, the hooded avenger checked the queen's dressing gown pockets. It was there that he reached into the left side of the silken robe and removed something metallic. Mary saw clearly that it had been the Queen's lighter, the emblazoned crest of the Royal House of Windsor on its chrome casing was darkened in the night. Pocketing the lighter, the youth yanked the old monarch by her ear and led her painfully past his mamma and out into the Earl's dressing room. The violent and angry action was only paused briefly to – strangely – grab up a bottle of wine in passing that she had been sharing with the King and Queen in prelude to their deviant carnal diversions.

The sight of the violent and strange reversal of the child leading the elder by ear shocked Lady Mary. The monarchist part that ever lived in her, the part that acquiesced so easily to the Queen's advances, who would not fight nor contest both King and Queen's desires to have her in their bed, found the sight of Queen Mary – any royal – being led by the ear, alarming. There was an existential and sudden fear of chaos to see the unshakable and immortal institution of the English Monarchy being led as if to get a beating from the headmaster for playing truant instead of going to class.

Sitting on the toilet, the soft middled old man with groomed luxurious beard and gray close-cropped curls had an uncomfortable and pained look to his stern face as he turned the page of the newspaper. But his bowels only tightened more agonizingly when there was a sudden explosion of crunching wood as the door to Lord Lascelle's watering closet was kicked open with an angry and aggressive foot. The old King-Emperor only watched on with muted wonder as he saw a hooded and cloaked figure sweep into the small room with his wife for over forty unhappy years of a forced marriage by the ear. And he would not admit that though confusing as it seemed … it was not an unpleasant sight. The King said not a word as he wordlessly sat upon his porcelain throne watching from above his open newspaper.

"Get in there!" The youth snarled at Queen Mary, heaving her with unlooked for strength to the floor. "Get back! All the way back!" He commanded with a gravelly, almost demonic, boom of his voice. With a kick, the youth sent a boot right up the momentarily defiant queen's hind end, causing her to scramble all the way to the far corner of the watering closet, till she was congregating with the plunger. There she stayed, glowering hatefully, but not moving an inch.

It was then that Lady Mary strode inside the watering closet while trying to hook a silver glossy silk brassier. She had lagged in her pursuit, taking time to put back on her tight satin knickers before closing the rich velvet curtains of the Princess Royal's bedchamber. Upon reflection it occurred to her that the excellent taste of drapery was not going to stop one bullet, much less hundreds, but she convinced herself in the silly impracticality of the action that she was obscuring the imperial riflemen's aim if they chose to assail her boy. But when she arrived, she was halted in her tracks. For there he was, the god-like figure that was revered by her and her family as the center of their government and church, the divine connection between God and his subjects … and he was sitting slack jawed on the toilet during a bowel movement.

Still confused and unresponsive, The King-Emperor, with a long look of sardonic wonder and bewilderment, matched eyes with the frightened and shocked woman of whom he had the most amazing sex with only a few moments ago. There was a kinship from the most erotic moment of his life that was not shared by the woman of whom his wife would've killed him to have for herself – not that she needed such desperate motivation after all these years of loathing. But any dialogue that might have come from the exchange was scrambled by the youth.

"Hold this."

Lady Mary Crawley flinched when her son tossed the wine at her the moment that she entered the small, cramped room. With fumble, the woman caught the green glass and golden labeled bottle with her pale sweaty chest. For a pause of shocked indignation at the flippant and disrespectful action, she watched her only child crouch and throw open the doors under the sink and begin to root around.

"What do you think you're doing?!" she snapped in chastisement of puzzled disbelief. All sense of shame and humility were lost in annoyance and burnt pride of so suddenly becoming a tiresome lacky who gets things tossed at her.

"Just checking the tidy …" The youth grunted behind scarf, reading labels on bottles of cleaning materials. "You know, making sure that the Princess can pass muster for the Royal Inspection …" The youth replied with biting condescendence.

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit." There was an imperious voice in her haughty demeanor of speaking.

"Yeah? And who do you think that says more about, you or me?" he asked rhetorically with a distracted dryness.

There was an intrinsic and easily tormented nerve that came with an irritated anger at having a child of whom had the cheek of the devil to always have an answer and reply to everything Lady Mary Crawley ever said or thought.

"You're wasting time!" Mary went right back at him with her most petulant and haughtiest tone of snobbery in a defensive tick of maintaining a sense of superiority among her family.

"Hah! Coming from the expert with a PHD in frivolous and Doctorate in nonsense - I'll take it under advisement." He returned his mamma's serve with an insulting snarl.

An annoyed quirk of a perfect eyebrow met the counter with narrowed amber eyes.

"There's an entire elite corps out there willing to kill you, and you're in here playing the maid!"

"What can I say … I clean when I'm stressed."

"Oh, I'm sure it does wonders for Isobel and Dickie's wage bill!"

"Yeah, well, dealing with your horseshit all the time goes a hell of a long way in housekeeping!"

"Ugh, really!"

"Excuse me …"

Both mother and son halted the raising decibels of their shouting match and snapped around when the elderly voice of the King of England spoke inquiringly from his porcelain throne. It was then that the King was overwhelmed by a sense of confusion. For, as it seemed to him, both their beautiful new plaything and their captor had lost all sense of propriety and occasion. In a time in which a strange mysterious fellow in costume comes bursting into the King of England's privy movement - leading the queen-empress by the ear none the less – it seemed hardly the moment for the dangerous lad and the sumptuous girl-toy to be bickering with one another as if the royal sovereign had stumbled into them mid-argument of an eternal struggle.

"Is there something that I'm missing here?" He asked in genuine confusion – the newspaper still open as he sat on the toilet, eyes shifting back and forth between the two combatants from over the Society Page.

"I don't know, Fats …" The young avenger replied flippantly. "How would you like me to answer that? By Section or Appendix? Cause, we're not exactly set up in here for the slide show." The hostility in the youth's voice was dripping with disdain.

"There's a bit of a situation outside, sir." Mary rolled her eyes at her child, covering for his sacrilegious impertinence.

"Situation, what situation?" The King inquired.

"Do the 'Ides of March' mean anything to you?" The hooded figure asked.

"Shakespeare? The assassination of Caesar? Roughly …"

"Good, then you're all caught up."

"Wait … what?" The King looked to Mary for a translation but suddenly grew very pale at the look of shock in her own eyes.

"What do you mean?" She asked her boy fearfully.

"What you mean, what do I mean?"

"Stop being clever and answer me!" Mary snapped with all the maternal steel that a thoroughly worn-out mother of a trying child she loved with all her heart could muster.

"They're not after me ..." The boy didn't flinch, though he complied without compunction in a Pavlovian response to his mother's raised voice. "They're after him." He motioned his head back over his shoulder at the King.

"Him?" Mary turned back to the just as puzzled King-Emperor who had no idea, could not fathom, how many guns were trained on his daughter's very bedroom at that moment.

"Yeah, him …" the kid answered with an irritated busy briskness. "He's supposed to die tonight, and I'm supposed to take the fall for it." The easiness of which the youth laid it out worried his mamma, making her ponder if he had spent perhaps too much time in situations as desperate as this.

"In what way?" she found herself speaking for the speechless old man on the toilet and the old woman on the floor next to the plunger.

"The whole thing has been a set-up from the very start."

"What has?"

"Boy, nothing gets past you, does it?"

"What. Has."

"How far back do you want to go?"

"To the beginning!"

Though 'The Great Mouse Detective' had been used as a derogatory nickname by the foes of the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" – and Mr. Hyde – it was not entirely an inaccurate observation of the boy. Though young and small – hence the mouse – the youth's contribution to his companions, beyond carrying Ms. Murray's medical bag and Allan Quartermain's hunting rifle, remained in his talent in deduction and observation. Of his raw intellect of which was inherited from Matthew Crawley, had it manifested in his unrivaled aptitude in deductive science. Though he did not and could not rival his predecessor and personal hero, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, in his singular brilliance, "The Comet" would earn a legendary legacy of being a first-rate Great Detective in his own right, of which experience of years would only sharpen. And it is so here marked that in the century that has past, the mastery of detection would remain a hallmark trait that has passed from father to son of the unbroken line of exiled heirs of the fallen House of Grantham.

Thus, it was with ease that the young great detective began to layout the entire plot of which he solved somewhere between taking the wine bottle and kicking in the watering closet's door. In the meanwhile, as he spoke, the youth identified each chemical under an anxious breath before sorting them quickly between those he set next to him and those he put back under the sink.

"They got him out of Sandringham cause it's too isolated and secure to be infiltrated. If they killed him there, there would be too many suspects and too many questions for the assassination to ever be clean. So, they moved him over to Harewood, because it was the most plausible location that he'd visit before Christmas. Plus, the Earl and the Princess were in the middle of renovating. When the assassination is investigated, the official enquiry will report that all sorts of strangers could move in and out of Harewood without drawing a blink, The Royal guard, construction workmen, footmen, unidentified Mercs. They lured me in with the official request for a safe -"

"Safe? What safe?"

"You're not fooling anyone, old man!"

"I don't know what you mean! I don't know what safe you speak of!"

"…"

"…"

"You're telling me that you don't know about the safe in Lascelle's dressing room?"

"No."

"All this time and you couldn't smell the fresh paint out there?"

"After touring for eighteen-years? Every manor house from Scotland to Derbyshire smells of it!"

For a long moment after the King's proclamation of innocence, the cowled cerulean eyes flicked to the injured and wounded Queen Mary that cradled her gashed arm in silence. She tried to match his gaze with a hateful gleam of pure loathing. But when caught under the piercing scrutiny of the inherited heavy stare of the mamma that she worshiped as her erotic goddess of love and beauty, she could not withstand it. Instead, she gave a tell, turning away, feigning haughtily as if the youth had neither blood nor standing for her to give him a second glance. But she could not fool him, and she misliked the knowing look that came over his hardened countenance under the cover of hood and Ms. Mina Murray's scarf.

"Why would they lure you here?" Mary asked, more interested in what cruelty would possess someone to set up this most nightmarish of scenarios – not guns nor traps but subjecting her own child to the full and unadulterated depths of her despairing wickedness.

"Cause, they were banking on me killing him. They knew that I would come for the documents in the safe and so they dangled you in front of the old Glacier Monkeys over there, hoping that you'd be you and that I'd catch you in the act with them." The anger, the rage, in the implication that he made toward Mary and her character hung over their heads, their relationship, like the sword of Damocles. Neither needing to clarify of what he meant.

"And you didn't disappoint."

There was a rude and aggressive snatching away of the wine bottle from Lady Mary's hands when her son snarled in her face with clenched teeth. When he stalked back to the sink, there came a deep shame that spread through her till she wanted to die in her mortification. With a revulsion of disgust, she looked away as if the very memory of the boy's countenance in that darkened room had slapped her. Now with the knowledge that it had all been a set-up, a trap, to frame her child, and that she helped, made her want to scream in self-hatred. Even when she thought she was only harming herself, she was still hurting him more.

With his assortment of disparate cleaning chemicals set, the youth began emptying the wine bottle into the sink, stopping at half. Then, he knelt back on the floor and took a funnel used for draining cleaner and put it into the wine bottle. While he worked, he glanced briefly over his shoulder at the overwhelmed King-Emperor who suddenly realized how deeply in danger he was.

"Why so sour, Kraut?" he asked almost conversationally while opening a jug of cleaning bleach and pouring it carefully into the wine bottle through the funnel. "What exactly ails you?" He pressed, sensing his physical discomfort.

The King, after glancing Lady Mary and her sleek form in silken lingerie, cleared his throat.

"Couldn't say really …" He avoided his new lover's gaze in self-conscious awareness of what the King-Emperor, the godlike figure in her life, was actually doing … or attempting to do at any rate.

"Don't tell me …" The youth moved on to another bottle of a different cleaner. "Sharp pain in your lower gut, nausea, cramping, and it feels like someone is squeezing and knotting your bowels with their hands?" He listed off, carefully pouring the liquid into the funnel. His voice was steady, like a craftsman starting a delicate finish.

The King-Emperor rallied his sudden shock with a bit more dignity and decorum when he realized the most beautiful woman that he had ever had sex with was now becoming privy to his most vulgar moments … movements.

"I, uh, I dare say." He corrected with another clear of his throat.

The youth nodded, switching out cleaning fluids, but this time pouring just a touch. When he was done, the youth reached into a utility pouch on his belt under cloak and coat to produce an item. It was in a chemistry test tube under cork. Within the vial was a bubbling green substance that looked slippery and slimy as it sloshed with a viscus staining on the glass. For a moment both King and Lady Mary thought that the youth was going to pop open the cork and pour it into the bottle. Instead, he held it out to the King-Emperor without looking, offering it to him over his shoulder. The King, perhaps out of curiosity, took the vial from the avenger's rust colored gauntlet. For a time, he turned it over in his hand.

"What is it?" he asked distractedly.

"One of Doctor Jekyll's all-purpose antidotes …"

"Antidote? To what?"

"The poison you drank."

"Poison!" He exclaimed. "I think you are mistaken, sir -" He argued.

"That last bit of tea you had, taste funny?" The youth cut off. "A bit too flavorful – thought the blend mixed wrong?" he asked rhetorically. "Had a bitter aftertaste, kind of nutty? Like Almonds?" He pushed.

"…"

"Old Thuggee trick. Binary compound of nitril mixed in with powdered venom from a fruit spider indigenous to South Central India. The taste is almost undetected when mixed with herbal tea. It enters the blood stream through the gut and is activated by strenuous physical activity that pumps the poison right through the heart. In about an hour, your guard will find you with a toilet full of blood and an exploded heart - an insurance policy in case I didn't bite on the bait." The kid described.

The King looked horrified and pale at the description and the implication, suddenly beholding the strange green liquid in the vial with a longing like a thirsting man in the desert.

"Not that I wouldn't mind … it's about what you deserve." The kid continued looking over his shoulder. "I just would hate for people to think that when I kill you that it'll be with poison." The youth finished perilously with a deep hatred that was felt in the darkness of his words.

The only person shocked by this revelation was the King-Emperor himself. For he was the only one in the room who had no idea yet who it was that had intruded upon him in that hour. But for everyone else, there were very few questions about what possible reason the young avenger could have for wanting the King dead. The flippancy of his thoughtless persecution of the youth for saving the girl he loved for no other purpose than to avoid a public scandal of such destructive magnitude from the identity of the girl's rapist. With a royal decree signed between butter and jam scones at elevenses had he named the boy an outlaw. And with annoyed bluster just before his bath had he sanctioned the hunting down and eradication of his mentors, companions, and a woman he loved greatly.

But worse of all these offenses remained still the unspoken truth – even by the king himself – that if the youth were to throw back his hood and uncover his mouth and nose to reveal his face, the man who had made war upon him and his life would still not know who it was he was looking upon. For such magnitude of world-shaking decisions that had lasting consequences for many, had the King-Emperor bullishly muddled his way through with not a thought nor care. For it was within the gilded palaces and ivory towers of an empire in which the sun could not set upon that his subjects and soldiers were not people of flesh and blood, but mere numbers that were managed and balanced by others.

There was a harshness, an anger, to the way that the youth shook up the wine bottle, thumb corking the alcohol and cleaning chemicals together into an unknown mixture that was most certainly volatile. One did not need to have been taught advanced chemistry by Doctor Henry Jekyll - like the boy before them - to know that nobody wanted to be near whatever improvised alchemy was inside that bottle. But all the same, they watched as the youth snatched the newspaper out the King-Emperor's hand rudely. If it wasn't fate than it certainly seemed intentional that the Prince of Wales's face was front in center of the page that the youth crumpled and wadded up before stuffing halfway into the bottle. He was just as rude in returning the rest of the newspaper as he had taking it, shoving it into the King's chest.

"If you're hoping to get outta here anytime soon, I'd pack a lunch …" The youth warned.

"I'd imagine bullet's will be flying soon." There was a hint of gratitude in the man's voice. It had not escaped his notice that not only had the hooded avenger saved his life but had taken the queen to a place of safety. Once more, blinded by his position, he believed that all of this was done for his welfare from a loyal subject.

However, turning on a dime with pivot and follow-through, the youth swung for the fences with a heavy and hard haymaker. He caught King George V on the bearded jaw with the sound of something snapping. The toilet rattled as the King-Emperor of the British Empire's entire head turned. It was then that he learned, as many foes had – from Alexander Grayson to the "White Ape" of Kukuanaland – that the padding in those rust-colored fingerless gauntlets were metal weights for balance, training, and a nasty surprise for the arrogant antagonist that had made the poor decision of allowing a young boy a free shot.

His sight nearly blacked out while he lurched hard on his side, nearly falling off his porcelain throne and onto his shocked wife. Yet, still, he maintained his balance, absorbing the hit with his sheer size and girth. With a look of amazement and wonder in the pain and sudden trauma of being punched in the face for the very first time in his life, the king beheld the boy with the wine bottle in hand. It was clear then that any altruism found in the youth's actions that night was not out of any sense of being a loyal subject. There was a coldness in his glance, a hate in his demeanor, and look of regret … that he had not the time to continue the proscribed beating. If the king-Emperor did not know who stood before him or feign ignorance of this night, he'd always have the punch and broken jaw as a reminder the next time someone's life was put against his leisure time.

Yet, before he left, he put a period on their confrontation and meeting.

"I'd watch that one, Old Man." He motioned his head to Queen Mary. "If you want to live a bit longer, forget sleeping in different bedrooms. I'd sleep on completely different sides of the Imperium if I were you." With that he left the bleeding King-Emperor, never to set sight upon each other ever again.

Slowly, the old king turned and stared with searching eyes over the frame of his wife that lay beside him. There he found shock and dismay … but nothing resembling remorse. The decades of duty, cold tolerance, and familiar routine of an unhappy marriage at the heart of one of the last ruling monarchies of Europe had reached its inevitable conclusion in a glance, in a countenance, of pure unadulterated honesty from the woman before him.

They did not want to marry one another, they didn't know one another when they met at the altar, and they found rather quickly that they did not like either each other or the children they bore. But they had kept together a nation, an empire, for eighteen years as a premiere coupling that had been an example for a generation. They had staved off social changes, led a nation in a Great War, had survived a near referendum of their rule by jettisoning any claim to their exclusive German heritage and leaving their imperial cousins to their death at the hands of the Bolsheviks. But eighteen years was enough, the world was changing, and the days of their grandmother's imperial rule were at an end.

SPECTRE was the future. An empire of bankers, bureaucratic administration, and superfluous departments. It would be the compartmentalized governance of an entire population that would be managed by endless red tape and local councils. The lives of the common British citizen held in sway by petty kings of paperwork scrabbling to justify their jobs and squabbling to maintain their bit power. All of it, the managed decline of a civilization, designed to keep a population of an Imperium in permanent stasis while the elite, the true ruler of the new order, profited and maintained their opulence in the shadows. It was a world that did not need a head of state that made decisions. George V was the last of those German born pretender Kings of England with the power to have a position on politics, to place his finger on the scales. The new order, the new scheme, had no need for such men to wield supreme executive power of an imperator. There was only now the need for an illusion of power, a figurehead that could convince an imperium, the world, that nothing was amiss.

Such things would seem blasphemous to those past kings of the Houses of Hanover, Sax-Coburg-Gotha, and the newly minted House of Windsor of the past two centuries. But to Queen Mary of Teck, to David Windsor – Prince of Wales, and to Berite Windsor – Duke of York, and to all their children … it was exactly what they wanted. For in the generational torment of unloving and cold parenting of controlling mothers and bullying fathers it had robbed the seat of power of its duty and appeal. Thus, it was indeed with resentment and detest that the Royal Princes and Princess refused to honor their lineage and instead wished still to burn it all to the ground rather than let their loveless mumsy and tyrannical papa have an inch. The hubris, the frustrated misplacement of decades of a father's abuse visited upon children in an endless cycle of humiliating and belittling sons and daughter, had doomed the last great Monarchy.

That night, sitting upon a toilet, slowly dying of the poison fed to him by his own wife, King-Emperor George V realized that he had not an ally, not a friend. They all hated him. They all wanted him dead. His life saved not by love nor altruism but by chance of fate at the clairvoyance of his bitterest foe. Eighteen years of a strict and disciplined decorum of a conservative and unbending social fabric that guided the principles of an Empire that survived when so many fell … and there was nothing for it in the end. David with his drinking in the nightclubs with his married whores. Bertie with his shameful stuttering, wrapped around the finger of that Elizabeth woman – hiding on their estate. Mary doting on and spoiling her sons - more known at Downton Abbey's table than her own father's. All of them ingrates, all his worthless brood, ingrates who wouldn't blink if he refused to take the antidote and wouldn't shift when they find him bloodily murdered. And who was to blame for all this?

Paying into and joining SPECTRE, becoming a figure head monarch, it all might have been David's corrupt scheme – for it stank of his short sighted and pleasure minded foolishness – but The Prince of Wales always had his like-minded hatchet woman that did his dirty work. And his mamma had not an ounce of shame as she lay there brazenly looking into her husband's eyes. Like her eldest child, Queen Mary had outlived the routine of duty and fatigued under the attrition of tradition. When "M" and David came to her, they had been prepared to offer her more – so much more – yet it would not shock the King to know how little she asked from SPECTRE in return for turning against her husband. All she asked, all she wanted, was Lady Mary Crawley. She wanted just one morning to awaken with her beautiful prize abed in her arms, to open her windows and smell the fresh pine of the Black Forest that sat at the boundary of her family's secluded estate in Germany. She wanted to live the rest of her life free of the entrammeled chains of duty and tradition that she was bound within since she could remember. And for a madness of a moment, of longing to reclaim over forty years of a lost life, had she slipped the clear liquid in her husband's tea.

But with a drop in her breast had she watched but one more dream die at her very feet in the anger creased brow upon the stern countenance of King George V who knocked back the green antidote in one single motion in front of her.

Lady Mary followed her son out of the watering closet anxiously. For a long moment the youth stood in the center of the Princess's bedchamber, turning back and then forward in deep observation of the room, assessing, planning. Mary could see it in his eyes, she could almost hear the intricate and beautifully crafted gears of her boy's mind working into a plan, a stratagem, to use in achieving but one more daring victory against overwhelming odds – disproving the existence of the no-win scenario. If he knew that his mamma was there, he showed no sign, as he shut his eyes and seemed to be manifesting – dreaming on – what was going to happen. Yet, in his calming demeanor of quiet calculating at the peak of anxiety, Mary was outraged. A rash of anger and fear overcame the half-dressed woman standing in the hard blues of the bright contrasted lit room.

She suddenly begrudged her boy, remembering all the times since the day he could talk of how incredibly unserious he always seemed to take danger. He always toddled, shuffled, and walked about as if he was invincible, as if he were bullet proof. The arrogance of youth to believe that one was immortal. Now was not the time for it! Could he not see how deadly all of this was! That this was not a game! She wanted to ring his neck as much as she wanted to hold him so desperately tight to her breast, to assure him that there was nothing in this world nor from any other that she would allow to hurt him. Did he not know that anything was possible right now? Did he miss the part where swords glowed, and evil was afoot within this grand and beautiful house? How could he think of taking even one step without her there to take his hand, to shield him, to hold him in her arms in guard against the very shadows that might betray him? She was filled with the indignant and entitled anger of a mother who watches her young child run into a busy road.

Preying ever on her mind was the deep awareness that at any moment the shooting was going to start. Being of little patience, and abhorring the slow burn of anticipation, she couldn't fathom why the Guard was waiting so long. If they were to kill them – for if her son were to be slain than she would follow without question – why not now? Instead, they all seemed to be standing about in formation, guns aimed, but not making any move to apprehend the boy. It made Mary uneasy as she began to wonder if there was something more going on. Her mind suddenly fell upon the memory of the glowing blade of her young avenger's saber. She knew the stories, she read Edith's magazine, and Mary was fully aware of what it meant when her son's sword glowed. Her imagination teemed with rivulets of horror at a single thought …

If the soldiers outside were only there to keep her boy from escaping … then, what matter of evil were they sending after him?

Her heart hammered in her chest in the immersion of this new world she was stranded in from the moment she saw the saber blade become a pale torch. All the things, all the stories, that she had dismissed as wild embellishment of her son's adventures by her sister had now become true. And it was in this new reality that Lady Mary Crawley became fully aware of the vulnerability of not just herself but of her boy in a world where all of the ghosts, ghouls, and goblins, of nursery stories could be and were probably true.

Thus, it was her first instinct to take her child and run, run anywhere she could and lock them in a room, to huddle in the corner, and give her very life to protect her baby – her last baby – from the chaos and fear of a world she thought she understood. Mary knew not what courage was in her bones to fight all the monsters that Edith and Sybil once believed were under their beds – for she now knew herself to be the foolish one that never believed. But she could feel the inexhaustible surge of the most primal of love in her heart that permeated her mind and soul that was enough to hold to her boy's side no matter what came through that door to destroy him – both of them – utterly.

"Get off me!"

Mary nearly fell to the floor when the simplest of touch of comfort, of love, on her boy's shoulders triggered a sudden wrathful scalding of pure black rage. His padded gauntlets were cold, and the muted red fabric was coarse upon the silky skin of her marble ivory belly when he shoved the underwear clad woman away from him. He gave chase as she stumbled continuously as he shoved her again and again, like some feral wolverine who had been cornered. The youth was angry and abrasive, his voice venomous and snarled in hatred at the very touch of her hand upon him.

Then, it was there again, the moment that had introduced darkness and confusion into an already troubled relationship. The day, the hour, that a young boy playing hide-and-seek with his cousins had cracked open the door and looked inside for Sybbie's hiding place. There had he found Lady Mary on all fours, naked but for a pair of golden stockings, being taken from behind on the marriage bed. Confused, horrified, and hypnotized, he watched the lewd display. She had seen him in the mirror, standing there, his cerulean eyes enraptured upon her sweaty naked ivory beauty. She had met those eyes and locked to them. But she said nothing, did nothing. Henry was not commanded to stop, nor did she rush to cover herself. She simply continued and looked him in the eye as she did it. Then, she thought of Matthew, how the boy was the closest thing she had to the love of her life, the only part of him left in the world – the best part of him. And it was all she needed to push her over the edge, just by simply looking into his eyes.

When she screamed her boy's name in volcanic climax, their relationship would never be the same for as long as they lived. It had cost Mary her marriage to Henry, even before they lost Caroline. And ever afterward the sight of her in throes of carnal passion haunted the very boy of whom she loved with all of her soul. A sliver of darkness entered his heart in that hour, a trigger of violence from the confusion and fear of the emotions and biological reactions unknown in seeing her in that way. He thought her filthy and coarse, and for a while – to the very death of her – he was uncomfortable being alone with Mary. Ever since had he found comfort in Mamma, seeking the company of Edith in private. But alone with her, he would not even look her in the eye. For he would be reminded of when he did that afternoon and how it awoke something in her … in him. And he was afear of the woman he saw in private and the passion that his very presence had brought about within her.

Lady Mary Crawley wished every hour since then that he knew, was assured, that she would never touch him … the way Grandfather had touched her. It was not in her blood, it was not in her nature, to do such things to children – to her children! Her love for him and Sybbie had been pure and untainted! She loved the warmth of him against her ivory skin, she loved to lay in bed with him as the house slept, and there was nothing better in the world than to awaken with both him and Sybbie in her arms in the mornings. She would never do anything to jeopardize that, not ever. And yet, he would not go near her. The pain of seeing him memorize every exit door when alone with her was intolerable. For he had seen her private face, her erotic passions and loves, and he didn't understand them. He didn't understand the way it made him feel, how she made him feel, seeing what he shouldn't have seen. And it was carried like a scar, a wound, that never healed, even years later.

Tonight, that old wound had flared up till the pain brought back the old memories of confusion and an old childish fear that had given way to hateful anger at the sight of it. All the trauma from looking into her eyes as she cried his name in climax to a naked and violated Sybbie tied to Edith's headboard by Mirada Pelham, had all swirled together into one dark and violent torrent in which he only saw evil and violation in the act of licentiousness, and particularly in sapphic lusts.

Mary fell flat onto the tossed about satin duvet and tangled silken sheets of the adulteress bed, her eyes widened in shock. The youth lunged forward and leapt onto the bed in pursuit. All Mary could do was put up a guard as the boy fell upon her like a wild animal, slapping and smacking, pulling at her silky satin bra, and her fallen long chocolate tresses. In his anger, in his anxiety, he simply attacked, snatching at and pulling anything he could. His breath was snarling and hissed as he battered his mamma in pure rage as Mary let out frightened and anxious noises trying to protect herself from a horrific explosion of bottled emotions set off by trauma and betrayal from the one person that was supposed to protect him from them. Later, Mary would remember it forever as the most painful experience of her life – though none of the agony came from being hit. The two wrestled on the bed as George fought to control Mary's wrist as he mounted her, their struggle slid them deep into the center of the bed. When, finally, he had mastered his mamma and pinned her arms above her head, a cold fear paralyzed her when she heard the sharp ring of steel being drawn and her boy let loose the most savagely anguished cry ever heard behind clenched teeth.

"UGGRRRAAAHH!"

Tears fell from red tinted amber eyes and down her freckled cheeks like condensation on ice while the point of a glowing saber touched her naked chest where her heart was. She could fell the sharpness of the end of the blade pricking her smooth marble skin where a last-minute restraint gave her a reprieve. Stinging hot breath from behind a long blue scarf warmed her face while she looked not to the drawn blade but into the madness of eyes illuminated in the pale glow - alone, afraid, and utterly betrayed. But the one thing that killed Mary most was the vulnerability in his searching gaze.

His father was dead, his friends were gone, and his mentors murdered. The boy felt isolated and deeply alone in the world. There had never been a time in which he needed her more. Yet, tonight, she had betrayed him in one of the worst ways she could've ever dreamed. And in those broken hearted and tear strewn eyes that looked down upon her, there was pain and torment of the most fundamental question that came over him then. Why? Why did Mary, his own mamma, do it? Why did she go to his very enemies and give herself to them so freely? Why did she say the things she said to him? Why did she wish him dead in the stead of his father and baby sister? Why did she look at him the way she had when Caroline died? Why did she hate him? But above all was the same question he had asked for so many years now that remained as allusive as it had fundamental to his insecurities and angst …

Why didn't she want him?

Yet, Mary couldn't bear to respond to the unspoken but unmissable question in his eyes. For she had not the heart to be so cruel. For the answer was not truly an answer that was ever acceptable to a child. And that was that his mother did not know either. The awful truth remained that Lady Mary Crawley did not understand nor know why she did the things she did. She did not know why she went about hurting him as she had. Of the shame that she felt in bearing him, of keeping her love for him her own private secret from the rest of the world … she didn't have an answer. As it had been for much of her life, Mary just … did things in the spur of the moment of emotional recklessness. The anger, the cruelty, it all swelled in her breast until she wanted to tear down the world as she did herself. She loved that boy so much, so fervently, that the pain of it made her hate so fierce that she could not control the malice in her actions toward him.

Every day that they were parted, that he was away from her arms, was a lifetime in the pits of Hell with all of its unbearable eternal torments. Yet, when he was with her, when her heart tendered to vulnerability in his nearness, Mary was overcome with fear, the fear of loss, the fear of ruining everything as she always had. Then, her husband was dead on the side of the road and the last part of him left was in danger of being squandered by the selfish and cold girl who let an old man ejaculate on her face and breasts for attention, and who let a monstrous Turk into her bed to spite her feelings of the truest love for a soulmate just because he was the man her parents wanted her to marry.

On other days she was afear of the worst aspects of herself that were flaunted pitilessly in front of her by the youth of whom she passed such hateful attributes unto. Then, her love for Matthew mingled in the self-hatred of the same weakness in her blood, the same shortcomings, that had torn her asunder that now threatened to tear her child – her last child – to pieces. It was but one more thing, one more perfect love, that Mary had ruined but at the most fundamental and core level, like a disease. A child so wanted and loved destroyed from within from its very conception within her, by being cursed with a dominance of her reckless and hateful spirit. And it filled her with loathing, with begrudging resentment, to see the mirror she had birthed placed to her, to see her failings made flesh and know that she had tainted him.

Mary had wanted her son with every part of her soul – perhaps she had wanted him too much – yet she couldn't bear the loss of him by fate or by the hand of her own destructive failings that they both shared.

But of all the struggle, conflict, and anguished longing in a very glance of him, the boy knew none of it. For Lady Mary Crawley would not betray these emotions nor the desperation of her private yearnings for him to neither the world nor him. To his gaze, to his heart, she remained as cold and implacable in her prejudice and discrimination toward him. Even at sword point, helpless and in his power, he saw nothing inside her. Her fearful amber eyes dared him to kill her, to cut her head off and put it on a pike. Yet, in her cool and unshakable look she told him that it wouldn't change a thing. She drew in a shaky breath with her belly expanding against his crotch while she fixed him with a dark arrogant eye. Her jaw was set hard, remorseless, daring the 'Wizard's Pupil' to strike her down. He gave an antagonized snarl in sight of the haughty face and icicle eyes that always touched a nerve in her son. He drew closer to her, jerking his arm as if he was about to push his sword through her frigid heart. But Mary didn't flinch under him, only lifting her head closer to meet him, till their faces were only inches apart.

For a long time, they had stared one another down, their breath stinging the others' faces like desert winds. Both waited for the other to do something, waited for some words or actions to respond against or challenge to meet. But it did not come. The intensity of their dueling gazes was amplified by the ethereal quartet of the three sacred diamonds about Lady Mary's neck and the enchanted hum of the naked glowing saber. Mother and child tried to dominate each other, intimidate one another, it became a battle of wills, a million-watt staring contest of different eyes with the same heavy piercing stare. It went on for hours, a lifetime, till Judgement Day itself – perhaps it still is happening even now. It was an emotional impasse of which two people were too alike in soul and spirit to ever admit they even had the same brow and jaw.

The boy shook with hatred and aggression, fighting every instinct to both spare a mamma and slay a treasonous monster. He was driven mad with indecision while Mary coldly did nothing but stare into his eyes, letting him make the decision – surrendering herself completely to his mercy. It was the height of both recompence for her acknowledged sin and arrogance in the belief that the boy didn't have it in him to cut her down. And all it did – her playing both sides of mamma and arch-enemy – only made him hate Mary Crawley more. His hand quaked violently, shaken by the flashing memory of every smile and warm touch of love that mingled in fencing duel with the hateful look outside the nursery and the unforgivable words said to him in Downton's small library. For she was both of them, the hateful woman, the monster, that had snuck into his room at night to hold him as he slept. A woman whose hatred for the youth and everything he stood for was born from a dark and obsessive love for him that dominated her cold and shattered heart.

She was everything he ever loathed and all he had ever wanted.

He made a wolf like snarl and withdrew his blade from her chest. With revulsion of her and himself, the youth dismounted Mary. With a sweep and flourish he leapt off the bed and sheathed his blade at his side. The beautiful woman in silky satin brassier and tight knickers propped herself up onto her elbows and stared at the back of the youth who refused to look at her. Her eyes lightened in a private heartbroken sympathy and confusion. He loved her. Even now, even after all of this, her boy still loved her more than he hated her. Tears fell from her eyes as a deep and pervasive disgust came over her at the very thought, the very existence, of Lady Mary Crawley – of herself alone. Both of them, George and Matthew, her beloveds, no matter what she did, they somehow could never hate her, could never stop loving her. Of what it was she had done to deserve such a purity of unconditional love, she knew nothing … only that she did not deserve it. And a part of her begrudged her boy for not killing her, for not ridding himself of the pervasive disease, this cancer, that was herself.

"Alright, Comet! You were warned! Time is up! So, I hope you're ready, Downton … cause there's no escape this time."

The way that the Duke of Connaught had said the word 'Downton' was dripping with a disdainful sarcasm carried by many Peers and Royal who felt tainted by the idea that the youth was one of them, that he was born from their own class.

It was, in the late hour of a night of betrayal and the world crumbling under his feet, that the cold and fierce look that overcame the boy brought to mind one last nickname that he was known only by the crew of the Nautilus. "The Fiddler on the Deck" was what they called him. For it was among grown men and heroes of great legend that it was the youngest of them that was the most valiant and fearless of their company. In the gales of a hurricane or in the rancor of losing battle, the youth would gain a terrible aspect to the eye and a darkness would overcome him. Rage, hate, regret, and shame would well up inside him into a tempest of madness that became a focus that melted walls. Then, he took risks to get to the next risk, dared feats that not the stoutest hearts would attempt, and fight with a passion that was unheard of in the ranks as touted as their own. They called him "The Fiddler on the Deck" because there was a demon living inside that boy, and when backed into a corner he'd give you a tour of Hell.

After grabbing back up the loaded wine bottle, George Crawley reached into his jacket pocket to flip and lite the Windsor crested lighter, revealing in the fire light a terrible aspect in shadowy cerulean eyes.

"I'll take that bet, Walrus."

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Entr'acte Music

"Fiddler on the Deck" – Santanio

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Editorial Note

The duel in the Temple of the Dark Lord between George and the 'Demon of the Ancient World' over Mina Murray is told in full in the prequel story "Medhel an Gwynes"