Bad Blood

Chapter 10 - Champions of the Just

The freshly poured milk whirled in the steaming coffee. Alistair thoughtfully watched as the whiteness merged with the blackness into a velvety brown. The aroma filled the stuffy room. There was a long time he was in that little maid's room attached to the kitchen. Maybe the last time before the night he sailed out to the war. When he came back and promised the stars from the sky to a gullible girl just for a pastor hour on the worn-out linens ingrained with the greasy stink. He had no idea what to do with the naked body the maid's black dress hid. But he knew as they scattered on the stone floor piece by piece there was no turning back. He had to fight that battle unknowingly of the horrors of the others waiting for him. At that moment that girl looked more frightening than a regiment of soldiers charging at him through the no man's land between the two lines of trenches.

She still had the same sheets after all these years. Something has never changed.

A cheap wooden ashtray landed on the dingy table before the ash from his cigarette could fall. He looked up and met the disapproving blue glare staring at him.

"Ain't no puffing here, Toff," she grumped, her grating accent hasn't smoothed any through the years, even so, it became coarser.

Grudgingly, Alistair stubbed his cigarette. "As Lady Kaily requests," he jeered.

The sallow girl grimaced as she took away the ashtray, and dusted the table with a cloth, attached to her white apron. Her hands were wrinkled covered with liver spots. The hard work stole their youthfulness. This house took away decades from the girl, the silky and tight skin, the nice figure, the naughty smile. The siren whose singing filled his lonely hours in the trenches had scattered in the wind of time and only a woman stayed with a bent back and dangling breasts.

"Don't cha have anything to do just pester me here?" she grumbled. "Others weeping in the cemetery."

Alistair sipped from his cup. A satisfied hum escaped from his lips. It was a long time since he had drunk a decent coffee. Not that watered horse piss they had at the Yard or at that filthy, rugged place he usually ate a few bites to shift yesterday's unsavory taste to the recent day's unsavory taste. "I didn't want to disappoint Isolde."

"You can only disappoint her, Toff."

"Well, at least something never changes," Kaily looked at him and a small smile curled at the corner of her mouth. Something remained in her from the kitchen maid with two braids she was once, much before everything.

Alistair's eyes wandered on the bundle and a piece of luggage at her legs, ready for a journey, stuffed with all the trinkets and treasures a maid could or hoped to possess.

"She released me from duty, ya know," she answered his unsaid question, impassively as they talked about the weather. Alistair snapped his glance at the girl as she accurately folded the clean linen. "She won't give me a recommendation. Lurchers and whores ain't deserve it."

"Lurchers and whores?" Alistair raised his eyebrows.

"I wanted to give her back, ya know. But the Master snuffed it." The girl wiped some gathering tears from her eyes. "I didn't need it after all."

Astonishment must've settled on Alistair's face since the maid put the clean linen in the basket then went to a small cabinet beside the wobbly bed taking out a bottle of amber liquid from it. She rushed out to the kitchen bringing in two glasses. Two fingers for both of them.

Schnapps. Alistair always hated it, still, he drowned. Only that felt appropriate.

"The bracelet. with red gems," she said, her voice weak from the burning of the shot. "The redhead strumpet said it should be enough to buy a doctor or a midwife," she poured another one for herself but didn't drink. "She said I need it more than her."