The Great Ellini (Book One of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Fifty One: Somebodies

It was a small tent. From inside, you could see the lights of the fireflies glowing through the canvas.

Ellini had turned the place into a gallery devoted to Eve. She had started off with the eagle-shaped lectern from the Anglican church, which now held an icon of a gold-haired woman that had once belonged to Doctor Faustus.

Brandt had brought in more lecterns as her collection of books and Eve-memorabilia grew—and where lecterns had been lacking, music stands had been employed. They were all at different heights, all holding open a book or supporting a painting.

Ellini wandered from one to the other, lost in thought, while the new maid, Violet, followed her around, unpinning her hair, slipping off her bangles and anklets and rings.

She liked the new maid, although probably for all the wrong reasons. Violet had mousy-brown hair and a scowl that had dug deep into her features, giving her a suspicious look even in her expressionless moments.

And she was unkind—sometimes impressively so. She could make the most ordinary of comments sound sulky and resentful. She could ask you the time in a way that suggested you were tedious, and comment on the weather in a way which implied you didn't deserve anything but rain.

Violet grabbed a handful of Ellini's skirts and tried to shake the dust out of them, muttering darkly about the filthy conditions in those bazaars.

"Do you have any idea what Jack would say to me if he found you covered in dust like this?" she demanded, picking up a beaded veil that Ellini had shrugged off as soon as she'd entered the tent. "You know, he was looking for you last night before he went to bed. When I said you'd fallen asleep over your books and asked whether I should have you woken up and brought to his tent, all he did was come in here and put a blanket over you! You don't deserve the way he treats you. It'd serve you right if he went to bed with some other woman tonight."

"Hmm," said Ellini, who hadn't really been paying attention. She was still nursing the Book of Woe on her hip, as though it was a restive child.

Violet shook out the veil with a long-suffering sigh. "Mistress, he's a man. It doesn't matter that he's a good man. They only keep us around as long as we please them."

"Are you worried about me?" said Ellini, still not looking at her.

"No!"

"I didn't think you were," she said, with a small smile. "Anyway, this is all for him." She indicated the books on their lecterns and music stands. "It's all so we can cure my curse and lead a normal life together."

"Oh really?" said Violet, folding her arms. "And when you lock yourself away with a novel every time you get in a bad mood? That's for him too, is it?"

"Yes, in a way," said Ellini reasonably. "It's so I can go on living long enough to finish my work here."

"He deserves better."

"You'll get no argument from me." Ellini placed the Book of Woe on an empty lectern. An astute observer—which Violet was not—might have noticed a slight straightening of her back as she did so, as though she'd been relieved of a great weight. She opened it, turned over a few pages, and then looked up. "Anyway, how come he's allowed to try and change the world and I'm not? Is it because he's a man?"

"No," said Violet, folding up the veil. "It's because he has a chance of succeeding."

Ellini couldn't help smiling, although the smile quickly faded as she riffled through the pages of the Book of Woe. She had fallen asleep on its open pages last night, and dreamed colourful—mainly red—dreams, about marble steps, and extremely familiar-looking dead women.