21 MURDER

 Jonathan could not adequately judge his wife's reaction to that statement. Revulsion, fear, anger, awe and horror. Her body tensed like she was reacting to being stabbed. She was stone-faced and unblinking, yet her lips quivered as she made a slight guttural sound from the back of her throat. Her face grew in colour, a deep rouge tint spreading from her cheeks, and then that tone suddenly paled to a pallor, and she collapsed onto the floor.

She awoke hours later, lying in her bed in her sleeping clothes. The heavy drapes of the room were drawn, and the only light was from an abundance of candles. Her head spun as she regained consciousness.

Jonathan sat silently in a high-back leather chair in one corner of the room, his eyes fixed upon her.

She sat up, looked around, and reached for a water pitcher and a glass. Her hands trembled, almost spilling more water onto the bed and floor than into the glass. After taking two or three mouthfuls, she glared back at Jonathan.

A resignation mask fell across her face, and she summoned the courage and asked. “Is it hard to do?”

“Yes and no. That may not be the answer you want to hear, but I will be there with you if you wish.”

She laughed, turned silent, and again broke out in louder laughter. “If I want? If I want.? No, I thought I would stroll to an afternoon tea and use a fish scaler to maul the hostess and her guests. Then, I would cover myself in their entails and waltz down the Rua do Carmo while singing lullabies. Coming home to a nice roast of lamb.”

The room spun, and she fell again into the void of darkness.

Jonathan instinctively reached down to feel for the bottle of laudanum in his pocket. Speaking to himself, “She will sleep another ten hours until morning.”

Jonathan left the house and walked to one of the lesser-quality tabernas the city had to offer. He sat in a corner, mulling a glass of port, observing the patrons' interactions. The working class and the ne’er do well on one side in the more spacious areas, sitting at small, more intimate tables. But he was paying more attention to the poorer people seated at the larger tables in the less-lit parts of the room. Among them were grifters, drifters, petty thieves, prostitutes and the anonymous. He picked up his port and walked over to join them.

Sitting beside the bed when Evelyn awoke—he immediately offered her a cup of tea.

Her face was lined with creases from the blankets, showing that she had a sound sleep.

“I am to murder someone? Someone of youth and fortune, am I to steal all hope from them? Why is this true, Jonathan?”

“It is our way, now. Years before, it was not the case. Perhaps we have evolved or perhaps regressed. I do not recall my actions in this rite of passage, but I was a warrior, so perhaps I accomplished it on a battlefield. Once done, it is never spoken of again. It is a stigma and a stain upon our race. Our greatest shame.”

“I have come to accept that if I must, you risked yourself for me and your love for me, so how can I not take a step beyond the pale?”

“Thank you.”

“But how shall I, and when and most importantly, who? Who Jonathan shall I pick or select to kill?”

“Last evening, I visited a tavern of questionable repute, and I believe that one of the patrons there may be your, or excuse me, our best course of action.” 

By the end of the first week of June, Evelyn had steeled herself to the end of the task. Jonathan would encounter a young woman on the street near the tavern, offering her more than a single night's wages to accompany him to his home to transact the business of her profession.

She was impressed by his leading her to a carriage for the ride to his home. In the carriage, he offered her a drink. When she took it, she enquired as to why he was not drinking as well. He replied that alcohol often impeded his “duties of a man.”    

He used just a tiny amount of the laudanum that he had used on Evelyn, and this girl became disorientated. One moment, she was sitting quietly with her eyes closed and then suddenly bursting into giggling.

Anibal stopped the carriage in front of the house as Jonathan and his companion entered, and then he took the carriage to the rear.

“A lady, what is this lady doing here?” What is she doing here?”

“This is my wife; she had encouraged me to find you and bring you to our home.”

“Senhor, you did not say that your wife would join us… I do not know…”

“I will again double your fee for the night. If that suits your needs, Isadora?”

“My head is spinning, and I do not know why, but yes, indeed, she may join us for twice the fee, " she said as she thrust a greedy hand out to Jonathan.

Jonathan lay naked on the bed, and their guest stood naked by the bed beside him; he was watching Evelyn pick up a long, thin, black leather strap.

She smiled, saying, “He likes this, you know.” As she slapped the belt across his thighs.

With a flick of the wrist, she swiped the belt across the woman’s buttocks. “Now, you get up on him and straddle yourself across his chest.”

As she had done that, Evelyn moved onto the bed behind her, wrapping one end of the belt around the breadth of her hand. Leaning forward, she gathered the young woman’s thick black hair to one side with her other hand, brushing her lips on her neck and whispering how beautiful she thought her to be. She slowly wrapped the other end of the belt around her other hand.

“Jonathan, tell me you love me and will love me forever.”

“You, my love Evelyn, I will love you forever.”

“And you, sweet girl, want to become part of our love?”

The young woman hesitated for a moment as Evelyn ran her tongue across the back of her neck and then, with a soft moan, “Yes, I want to be part of your love.”

With the speed of a cobra, Evelyn raised both arms over Isadora’s head, bringing the belt across her thin neck. She snapped her arms across each other, tightening the garrot on her victim.

Evelyn moved backwards across the bed, pulling Isadora by the neck. The girl’s hands pathetically clawing at the belt.

Stepping off the bed, Evelyn jerked up on the belt until she heard a loud, sharp crack.

Dragging the body off the bed and across the floor, then grabbed a weighted candlestick off of a table and swiftly smashed into the dead girl’s face. While crying and shouting, “I am sorry, I am sorry, I don’t know you,” repeatedly.

Before Jonathan could get to Evelyn, the candlestick had hit the woman’s face a dozen or more times.

As soon as he reached her, she collapsed onto the naked body of her victim.     

  Jonathan carried his wife to their bed and washed the blood off her body and out of her hair as Anibal carried the girl out to the carriage to dispose of her before sunrise. It would be best if the body were found quickly and on the other side of the city. 

“I felt violence that I had never known before and, at the same time, a sense of liberation. I recall hitting her, and I am not sure if that was a dream or why I felt that.”

“We call it The Burning. It is a mix of the guilt of taking a life and suppressing our civilized nature while being overwhelmed by a sense of the wave of a new life and longer life, a new being born within us. It is like opium, a drug once you use, you crave more over time, but The Burning is in an instant. You know that the first feeling you get, the joy and the ecstasy, is from the life you take, and you want more, and that is the cause of the violent urge.

Now, you will hear distant sounds even more, see further in the day and better at night, and all your senses will be further heightened. You can also feel people around you and sense another Devi. Over time, you will join the web where all female Devi can share and express ideas.

You must chart your development and skills now on your own. The body of the girl is gone, and for both our sakes, this matter is closed.”

“Did she have a name? What was her name?”

“I do not know.”

All things remained as they had been; nothing was ever brought to anyone’s attention by the finding of the lifeless body of a woman outside of mainstream society.

Evelyn learned that when encountering another Devi in the city, the correct course of action was to smile and nod with quiet recognition. In a social situation such as a woman’s salon or tea room, it was acceptable for one lady to invite another for conversation.

What Jonathan had failed to mention about being overwhelmed by sensual input was the heightened awareness of sensuous arousal.

Days stretched into weeks, weeks into months and months… years.

On Portugal Day, June 10, 1881, the nation celebrated or more correctly commemorated, the death date of poet and national literary icon Luis de Camoes (1580). Evelyn heard a carriage draw up before the house. Because of the holiday, they had given their staff a few days' leave, and Evelyn answered the door.

Her heart froze, and she tried to close the door on the guest.

“I do not want you in here. Get out. You are the bearer of ill-timing and doom. Let the gods damn you before I allow you into my house.”

“I apologize, Senhora, but my Portuguese is not fluent, if you could please curse me in French or English, or perhaps even Spanish…?”

Du Raymonde stood firmly with his foot in the door until either Evelyn calmed down or Jonathan came to the door. He did not hold out much hope for the former.

“Matheu, is that you? I cannot think of anyone else who could dislodge the reasonable sentiments of my beloved in such a short time.

Evelyn, be a dear and allow Raymonde inside. 

“Thank you, and good wishes to you, Sir, and to you, Ma’am, as well.” When he said the pleasantries to Evelyn, he smiled wide, which did little to calm her spirits.

Jonathan led Matheu into the study, and Evelyn followed at what she thought was a safe distance.

“Port”

“Please”

“I apologize for the lack of hospitality, but we have given the staff some day's leave.”

“That is very generous of you, my friend.”

“You will not think it generous when you realize there will be no witness to see me burying you in the garden.”

“Evelyn dear, if you are going to that, please do not disturb the roses.”

“Sometimes, Jonathan, I think I hate you,”

“What is the nature of your call? Perhaps we could go out onto the terrace

The three of them sat outside under an awning, and Matheu and Jonathan began to converse about politics in Europe and the world, ranging from the International Meridian Conference held in Washington, D.C., to determine the Prime Meridian to the ongoing Conference in Berlin, where the European powers would peacefully divide up the continent of Africa, agreeing that it would be peaceful for everyone but the Africans.

They further discussed the elections in America and the release of the second volume of the German economist Karl Marx's opinions on workers' rights.

They commented on the weather, each other's good fortune, the advancement in train service across Europe, and all things trite and disconcerting.

“Enough, you arrogant bastards, and I will direct that to both of you.

Why did you come here, and what do you want to tell us is less critical than train schedules in Paris?”

“Oh, yes, the message from the Authentic. Yes, I almost forgot.

You have been living in Lisbon for just more than twenty years, and despite your efforts to lighten your hair with ammonia, gain weight, and lose weight to change your appearance, the Authentic believes it is time for you to move to another area within a year or two.

I am sure this will please you. She would agree to your return to England, even perhaps London.”

In a manner unbecoming her earlier state, Evelyn ran to embrace du Raymonde.