Bethany Hagen - Landry Park

“Traitor,” Father said through clenched teeth.

“As for Madeline,” Jack said, as if he hadn’t heard, “she will have a place at Landry Park for as long as she chooses. And she will have the right to choose.”

Father slumped, and I allowed worry to slice at me.

Father without Landry Park? Landry Park without Father?

“There is one last thing,” Jack added, voice thoughtful. “I have dispensed my justice, but I can’t speak for all the heartbreak you have caused these people. So your daughter and I are going to leave now, and within an hour, you will be delivered alive to Landry Park. But I can’t vouch for what will happen in that hour.”

The wind whipped Father’s white scarf around his face as he stared at his brother. “You can’t hurt me, Stephen.”

The Rootless tightened their grip on him, one of them clapping a sore-riddled hand over his mouth.

I stepped forward, but then caught sight of Charlie on the terrace, shivering in Jude’s coat, tears of terror still on his cheeks. I looked into the haunted eyes of an entire group of people who’d been robbed of loved ones, beaten, starved, made homeless, and arrested—all thanks to my father.

But hurting him now would make them no better than he was.

I ran forward and threw my arms around him. “I love you, Father.” I could feel the expensive silk of his scarf against my cheek and smell lingering traces of opium smoke.

“My Madeline,” was all he said. And then I felt myself pulled away—gently but firmly—and I looked up to see Ewan’s grim face.

“Please,” I asked Jack. “Please do not let them hurt him.”

“I don’t lead the Rootless like your father leads the gentry, Madeline. I’m not an autocrat. They have made it clear they want revenge and that they will take it, no matter what I say. All I could ask of them is to spare his life, and believe me, even that was hard won. It is out of my hands.”

He met my eyes and I shivered, for the knife-edge inside them was exactly like Father’s.

And then the crowd swallowed my father, like the ocean swallows a stone, like the snow swallows sound. Hands passed him on to hands, and backs turned, and as he thrashed, more took hold of him, pushing his body closer to the center of the crowd. I pushed forward after him, but the mob pushed me back, and soon even the distinctive red of his hair was gone. I stopped, my heart pounding.

“Come,” Jack said.

“I can’t leave,” I whispered.

“It is happening whether you leave or not,” Jack said. “Would you like to watch? Or leave, knowing that he will live and be with you in an hour?”

Then Ewan, Jude, and Charlie were there, and David, with his blood-soaked scarf and slightly swollen nose. They herded me toward the street, and reluctantly I went, sending silent prayers up to the stars, now hidden in the rosy glow of a winter morning.

Jamie joined us at Landry Park—fresh from his journey from England—and was astounded to find so many Rootless milling about the estate, and me tending to David’s nose. He quickly took charge of David’s and Charlie’s minor wounds and hypothermia, gathering blankets and warm tea while I explained what had happened since I’d last written. Jude helped where he could, mostly hovering over David, looking uncomfortable whenever a Rootless person passed by.

But before we could discuss anything at length, the front doors blew open in a storm of noise and January wind, and several men came through, carrying Father’s body like a sack of grain, his arms dragging to either side of him. Running out of the drawing room, I just was in time to see Father carried up the wide white stairs to his bedroom.

He made a cracked, viscous moan, and I wanted to rush to his side, to hug him and tell him I was sorry, so sorry , but I couldn’t make myself. I was afraid to see his face. I was afraid to see what the Rootless had done. I was afraid he’d open his eyes and all I would see was anger, and I would know that I had lost my father more certainly than if he had been killed.

Instead, I walked slowly over to the doors and pushed them closed, shutting out the snow and the cold. Enough snow had blown in that I could see faint footprints revealing the gleaming marble underneath. The snow looked like white ashes.

I looked around the foyer, lit as it was with winter daylight, and felt a cold fear that I would never see the house the way I wanted to again. I would never see it as simply beautiful, as simply ancient, as simply a part of me. And then I felt a fear about that fear—why, after all I had learned, was it so hard to let my perception of Landry Park go? Would I always be a gentry at heart, caring more about things than people?

I walked toward the stairs and climbed the first step. My fingertips brushed the cold marble of the banister and I found myself clutching the railing, feeling off balance, like everything was being ripped away from me. My father, my house, my life… .

In this light, the bust of Jacob Landry was almost shadowless, and so was the tiny atomic symbol underneath it, the symbol that comprised our family crest, that decorated our home, that reminded us that our power and wealth and legacy rested in the unseen forces of colliding and splitting matter.

It was a symbol that meant everything to Father, and I used to think it meant everything to me. But now I knew that it would haunt my dreams, possibly as it had haunted Jack’s, knowing all the misery that had stemmed from one man’s decision to misuse a gift of enormous power. Tears burned at my eyes, and I wasn’t sure who—or what—they were for. I stared at the bust for several minutes, my thoughts wandering from my father to Charlie to David, from Cherenkov lanterns to journals to the atoms themselves. Atoms that comprised the banister I was holding and the bust I was looking at and the air I breathed.

And then—on this sprawling estate, in this large house, on the brink of a revolution—I was reminded of the power of the small. Small ideas, small acts, small people. After all, it was the furious industry of those tiny atoms that fueled the stars, stars that then nourished planets, and planets that then nourished life. No matter how small I felt, how infinitesimal my feeble gestures seemed, I was part of a larger chain, a larger system, and so help me, I would bring order to this chaos.

I turned away from Jacob Landry and started up the stairs.

Jack was in Father’s room with Ewan, and Jamie was by the bed with his tablet, using it to take readings of Father’s breathing.

“Is he all right?” I asked Jack.

“He is alive, as I said he would be,” he said, and gestured to Father. I approached the sleigh bed, where Father had been dumped on top of the silk, hand-embroidered duvet. His coat, gloves, and shoes were missing, and the raw red of his feet and hands made me think they’d been stripped away shortly after I left. His eyes were closed, but he was writhing slowly, his hands grabbing and clutching at the duvet.

And his mouth—

“What happened to him?” I cried, going to the side of the bed and taking his hand. He clutched at my fingers with a steel grip.

“I will send for my doctor bag,” Jamie said, looking queasy. “We may need to call for a surgeon.”

Jack’s face was a statue’s, but there was a trace of sadness in his words. “I believe they chose to give him a taste of his own medicine, so to speak. They pinned him down and forced the gibbet food inside his mouth for several minutes. Not enough to kill him, but enough to burn his mouth. Enough to give him severe radiation poisoning and probably cancer.”

Father’s mouth was more than burned. The lower half of his face was unrecognizable—dark brown with blisters covering his lips and tongue. Bloody ulcers were beginning to form at the corners of his mouth, and smaller burns stretched down his chin and neck, as if he’d thrown up radioactive bile.