Daily Times

Duke Williams was a stocky, balding man. He had two wives and several mistresses. He had fathered three sons and four daughters from his two wives. His mistresses usually accompanied him to his foreign visits only. However, for all the local visits and parties, his wives would host others or accompany him. The duke and his grown up sons had a lust for women.

One unfortunate night when Stephanie was cleaning the palace with other staff members after a grand party at the palace, she was called for by the duke. He wanted her to clean the top attic room in the palace for some unexpected guest. She was asked to personally go and clean the room. When she was busy cleaning the room all alone, Duke Williams walked in and locked the door and sexually assaulted her. The large rooms of the palace had thick walls that were enough to muffle anyone’s voice. Even if someone would have listened to her, no one could have done anything to the duke. When finally the duke walked out of the room early in the morning, Stephanie stumbled back to her servant quarter. She was alone and single and didn’t have any shoulder to cry on except her close friend Christine. Though she wanted to leave the palace afterwards, the duke forced her to stay or face a miserable death.

Soon enough, Stephanie bore the duke’s child. No one knew whose child it was except Christine. After a while, Stephanie was raped again, this time by the eldest son of the Duke. This rape too resulted in childbirth. She was a helpless soul because she was never allowed to leave the palace. A year after the birth of the second girl, Stephanie confided about the rapes to one of the wives of the Duke, that wife in turn revealed this to the Duke to please him and strengthen her own marriage. The Duke then permanently placed Stephanie in confinement where his other sons raped her. After the age of 32, Stephanie was the mother of two baby girls and one baby boy, all three of them were born because of the rapes. The baby boy died prematurely.

After the Duke Williams was convinced that he was no more interested in Stephanie, she was sent to a brothel along with the children. Christine somehow managed to leave the job without angering the Duke. A very large mole on her face passed her for an ugly maid thus spared her the agony of sexual abuse at the hands of the royals. For a few years, Stephanie worked as a prostitute against her will. However, soon she accepted her fate and became a very popular, earning handsome amount of money on a daily basis. Whereas her friend of good and bad times Christine took care of her children whilst living outside the brothel. At one point when Stephanie was nursing her eldest illegitimate daughter Elle, Christine had asked her to not feed her and let her die. However, Stephanie didn’t want to punish the children for someone else’s misdeeds. Christine moved with Stephanie’s children to Newcastle upon Tyne. She started pig farming for living and cultivated the land bought from the money she and Stephanie were able to rack upon from their royal duty salaries and later from Stephanie’s job as a prostitute.

After a few years, Stephanie opened her own brothel in London. For years, she ran it with the help of some of most hard-pressed girls who came into this profession out of bad luck and destitution. She was a motherly figure to all the girls working at the brothel. Christine raised the two girls of Stephanie alone as the latter decided not to visit them anymore so as to keep the girls away from the reality of her business.

When Elle grew 17 and Rebecca grew 15-and-a-half, Elle posed the inevitable question to Christine – where is our real mother? Elle remembered Stephanie because the latter stopped visiting them only when Elle was five-years-old. Elle vividly remembered her mother but was perplexed about where she went. Although Elle asked about her many a time after Stephanie stopped coming, however, after a while she stopped asking about her. However on her seventeenth birthday, Elle asked about the whereabouts of her real mother; both Elle and Rebecca had decided a night ago that they would seek the answer to their common question the next day from Christine. After much deliberation, Christine told everything about Stephanie and the circumstances in which Elle and Rebecca were born. Christine also broke to them that Elle and Rebecca’s mother Stephanie had passed away when they were only 11-years-old. The brothel that had paid for their house and the cultivation land is now run by none other than Christine herself, although she normally visits it only few times a month.

The house they were living in was near a large field half of which was owned by Stephanie. There were no real neighbours. In the cold of November, the field remained covered with thick snow. The temperature in the room was below10 degree Celsius, and the temperature outside was probably below zero degrees. However, both Elle and Rebecca were so infuriated by their reality that they were not feeling cold anymore. Elle ran into the field without her coat and Rebecca followed her. Christine didn’t try to stop them. She knew that they must cry and get it over with.

Both Elle and Rebecca came hours afterwards and both wept on the shoulders of Christine for hours more. That night no one slept. There was complete silence in the room although all three of them were there. In the next few days, Rebecca started insisting on visiting their mother’s grave, later she demanded visiting the brothel they owned, and finally meeting the Duke and his sons who were Elle and Rebecca’s biological fathers – yet were father and son to each other. Christine only agreed to let them visit their mother’s grave and didn’t accept the other two demands. She then left for London to look at the business.

Upon her return, she faced the same demands; the girls were adamant to know about their fathers. Finally giving in to their demands, Christine took them with herself to London to stay in their brothel for a few days. That night when almost all girls of the brothel were already retired to their beds, a loud and thunderous bang on the brothel’s door woke Elle, Rebecca and Christine up; they were sleeping in the room next to the main entrance door. The thunderous knocks were persistent so much so that Christine had to answer it.

Unexpectedly, there was the Duke’s eldest son at the door. He was heavily drunk and just wanted to get any prostitute for spending the night with. When Christine opened the door, he literally fell inside the brothel and at the feet of Christine. The chauffer of the horse buggy in which he came stood outside. The son of the Duke didn’t remember Christine and as he was too drunk, therefore, it was not possible for him to recognise her by her big black mole on the cheek. He was constantly using various slurs and was demanding that he should be placed in any prostitute’s room. He vomited several times too. All the while, Elle and Rebecca were hiding behind the door of the room they were staying in. Just when Rebecca’s head emerged from behind the door to check the matters, the Duke’s son who caught sight of her lunged in her direction. However, Elle slammed the door in his face and Christine too pushed her outside the door of the brothel.

The Duke’s son fell from the stairs badly and into the open street; he landed near the manure of the buggy’s horses. The chauffer still didn’t move a bit. Only then Christine pulled Rebecca out in the open and asked her to look at the drunken man’s face. “You wanted to meet your father didn’t you? He is your father.” Christine growled at Rebecca and pushed her towards the drunken man. Rebecca protested and went back up the stairs and in the arms of Elle. Soon the chauffer had driven away the Duke’s drunken son – the father of Rebecca. The chauffer was an old man and he was working at the royal palace since the time when Christine and Stephanie were working there. He knew ever since that the brothel is owned and operated by Stephanie and Christine. The next morning all three of them – Elle, Rebecca and Christine – travelled back to their house in Newcastle. Rebecca wanted never to return to London again. After few weeks, Elle made an unexpected request. He wanted to go to London to attend dance classes to become a professional ballerina dancer. Since the last few weeks were already too tough on the girls, therefore Christine agreed to this. Elle started going to London regularly. In the beginning, Christine was too much concerned about Elle and she use to accompany her to London. Elle would stay in a small hotel situated near the brothel that Christine owned after Stephanie’s death. However gradually Christine became confident that Elle could look after herself very well. She hoped that during one of these classes Elle may find her life partner.

Elle started going to London alone more often. She was now performing all over London. She was getting invited to small and large parties, thrown by small to large businessmen and sometimes by the royals. Whenever Elle was back she would confine herself in her room and meet Rebecca and Christine only a few times in a day. Christine had noticed her behaviour. However she was worried that if she pried too much then it might upset Elle and she may choose to stay in London longer then required.

One evening when Elle came back after her three week stay in London, she not only stayed with Christine and Rebecca longer than ever, but she also hugged and kissed her younger sister more than usual. Rebecca was very happy for getting this affection. However this was not settling with Christine; she interpreted this as if Elle may have found a good partner and that has made her mood better. But she wanted to hear this from Elle. With this thought, million more thoughts about Elle leaving her and Rebecca also started coming to her mind. Since Christine had never married and had Elle and Rebecca as her daughters therefore she was concerned that when the two will be gone, who she will look forward to meeting every day. But she knew that this was inevitable. Elle will get married one day. She must have children and Christine can then invest her time and money in raising Elle’s children.

That very night Christine went to London to check on her business, since Elle was back home and she could look after the fields, the pigs and Rebecca in Christine’s absence. In the morning, when Christine reached London, she heard the news that the elderly Duke Williams who was confined to his palace’s attic room for too long because of some strange illness, is found murdered. The Duke was killed in the most barbaric manner. He was brutally beaten only between the groins and exactly on his private parts. This must have been a slow and painful death. The Duke’ head was turned backwards with such force that the bones of the throat and neck had prodded out of the neck’s skin. It was a very sick killing. Christine thought that it was an inside job. Either his sons or someone close to him who have had plenty of time to spare might have killed the Duke. Since the Duke was confined to one attic room which happens to be the same where he had raped Stephanie years ago; due to the distance of the room from other parts of the palace no one was able to come to his rescue him in much the same way as no one could have come to the rescue of Stephanie when she was raped years ago.

Christine, however, also learned that the night when the Duke was killed, Elle’s ballerina group had also performed in the palace. Though this detail was worrying her, however, she knew that she had never revealed to Elle or to Rebecca, the exact palace where Elle’s biological father – the rapist of Elle’s mother – lived. In her three-day stay in London, Christine heard that Elle’s ballerina group is performing again. However she questioned why Elle didn’t join them. Elle was still in Newcastle with her sister. Ever since the Duke’s brutal killing, the investigators were keeping an eye on this ballerina group. In the next few weeks, Christine heard that the Duke’s murder is attributed to one of his grandsons who was psychologically unstable and that he was moved to a mental asylum. Elle was already back with the ballerina group and was again performing all over the city. Christine too pushed the death of the Duke to the back of his mind.

Exactly six months after the Duke’s death, when again Elle had recently returned home only a day ago and Christine had gone to London to look after the business upon the arrival of Elle to their family home, Christine learned that the son of the Duke – the man who had raped Stephanie and resulted in Rebecca’s birth – was found dead in much the same circumstances as the Duke was found dead.

Christine was fully alarmed at this. She checked if Elle’s ballerina group was performing at the palace of the Duke and the answer was no. She was slightly comforted, however, she asked herself how come the Duke and his that son got killed that had raped Stephanie. Why the Duke’s other sons were not the victims of some serial killer who was targeting the royal family. Clearly the insane grandson of the Duke was after all innocent and someone else was attacking the Duke’s family. Christine was very much concerned about all of this. She returned home that week early. She decided to keep a very close eye at Elle.

Christine told Elle that night over the dinner that she does not want Elle to continue learning and performing with ballerina group. She wanted her to stay home with her sister. Elle protested at this and left the dinner table with tears in her eyes. Within a week and with much protest Elle was back in London and was performing all over London again. One evening when both Christine and Elle were in London, a postman came to their family home in Newcastle and delivered a packet for Elle. Christine returned to Newcastle before Elle that week and found the packet on the table by the door. Since it was addressed to Elle therefore Rebecca had not opened it. When Christine opened it, she almost collapsed on the floor. Rebecca was nearby to catch her just in time. The letter was from the Duke’s palace staff; they had sent the remaining payment that was due for Elle’s dance lessons to a disabled granddaughter of the deceased Duke. Christine now knew beyond any doubt that Elle was not only at the palace the night the Duke’s eldest son i.e. Rebecca’s father was killed but Elle was also in the palace when the Duke himself was killed.

Upon completing this narration to the travelling historian, Christine looked at him knowingly; the historian was listening to her intently and with great interest. She knew that the travelling historian understood who was the killer of the final victim

She cried on Rebecca’s shoulder and her sobbing continued for hours. However, she didn’t tell Rebecca anything about the killings and Elle’s possible connection to them. Christine was also concerned that why the investigators were not questioning Elle although she was at the palace whenever there was a killing. She concluded that someone inside the palace not only knew who Elle is, but also helped her in these killings. She decided to follow Elle from now on without letting her know. Before the dawn would brake she was on her way back to London although she had only arrived that morning. Rebecca was sleeping. Christine kissed on her cheek and wrote her a note to not worry and that she was going back to London. In the dark of the night, the chauffer driven horse buggy was running on the dirt road leading to London. There was cold in the air. The nostrils of the horses were emitting white smoke in the cold air. The horses were running very fast. In the very little light of the moon, she saw another horse buggy running towards her that was probably going towards Newcastle. When the on-coming buggy passed by Christine she was shocked to see the same old chauffer who had brought the drunken son of the Duke to the brothel. She immediately knew that Elle is probably with him. She asked her chauffer to return to Newcastle and follow the buggy ahead of them.

Her assumptions were true and the old chauffeur’s buggy had Elle in it. When Elle was departing the buggy, Christine’s buggy too reached the house. Immediately after Christine descended from the buggy she grabbed the aged chauffeur of Elle’s buggy by his collar. “Aaron why are you here? How do you know Elle?” She demanded from the aged chauffeur of Elle’s buggy. Elle was quick to intervene. She pleaded to Christine to let Aaron go and that she will tell her everything. Once Aaron was gone and they were inside the house, Christine asked Elle if she was involved in the killings. Elle didn’t say anything but she didn’t deny it either. After this revelation Christine returned to brothel in London and didn’t go back for two weeks. During that time, Aaron visited Christine one night and confessed his love for Stephanie. He told Christine that due to his circumstances he was never able to leave his job at the palace even after knowing that the Duke and his son had raped Stephanie.

Several months passed away. Elle started to live near their Newcastle house more. No detective ever followed her and Aaron became a frequent visitor to the family. Rebecca, however, was never told about the killings at the palace and Elle’s involvement in them. After almost a year after these killings, one more person was killed at the palace. This time the victim was that wife of the deceased Duke who had reported Stephanie’s complaints to the Duke. The detectives only found that a young nun had visited the now dead wife of the Duke days before her death and the nun had asked her to keep the window of her room open to let her sins fly away. There was a word written on the walls of the room where the wife of the Duke was killed and it said, “Final”.

Upon completing this narration to the travelling historian, Christine looked at him knowingly; the historian was listening to her intently and with great interest. She knew that the travelling historian understood that who could be the killer of the final victim. At this stage, the historian stood up, gradually he started packing his stuff; he placed his pen in his breast pocket and the notebook in the backpack. He nicely stuffed everything in his backpack. Before finally leaving the brothel he stopped, looked around, looked at Christine and then looked directly into the reader’s eyes and said, “if only we were lust free!” g

This is the second and the concluding part of the short story. The first part appeared in the October 27 edition of the paper

The writer can be reached at m.khalid.shaikh@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, October 30^th 2017.