CHAPTER 21
LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER
❝ I am the knife which will slaughter heaven.
Heaven is full of blood. Soon it will snow. ❞
Rose had always loved the snow. She loved how it would fall in small, delicate flakes at first, barely touching her skin before melting into cold water, only to then turn into full flurries that covered the roads and roofs in an eternal blanket that put the village to sleep. The world looked prettier that way, more even. She loved the snow not for the snow, but for the angels and laughter she and her sisters carved into it, the one home that felt the closest to heaven.
She loved the snow because it turned the cold into something beautiful, something people could admire; but that morning her footprints on the white were rushed, not tender.
Cool knuckles knocked on the door; Thomas opened it before she could knock a second time, arctic stare setting on her heated cheeks. She bit her bottom lip, almost until it drew blood. She was wrong about the snow. Other things were far colder, and far more beautiful.
"Rose... everything alright?"
"So far."
His shoulders loosened and his jaw slackened, the state of disquiet he was in dissolving upon hearing she was fine. Her heart ached. His eyes were thawed ice pouring over her, the most heavenly hell she had ever seen.
"Come on in." He opened the door but didn't step aside. When she strode forward, their faces on the verge of collision, his crisp, woodsy scent rearranged the atoms inside her.
Her mouth spoke before her mind could form a coherent thought.
"Can you see my thorns from this close?" Her breath fell on his lips, and Thomas chose that precise moment to inhale, like she was the tenuous smoke from the first cigarette he had ever smoked, or the last he ever would. "Or just my petals?"
He leaned to her, back slightly hunched, eyebrows arched like two stone arcs in an ancient temple. "Aren't they the same?"
Her spine jolted. She strolled into the house, dark and silent like all spaces he inhabited. She eddied around the room, fingertips skimming over the pocket watch that laid on his desk. The previous night had ended with him telling her about the soldier's minute, how in a battle, that's all they got; one minute of everything at once. And anything before or after was nothing. Nothing in comparison to that one minute.
Rose could only vaguely imagine it; the only time she had felt every ounce of time in a minute was when Steaphan's bullet stopped her mother's heart.
"Whiskey?" He was staring at her still, a glass nestled in his hand as if born there. It was nine in the morning. She tilted her head and smiled.
"Why not?"
He poured them both Irish, and she sighed in relief. Maybe she was still Atlas, sustaining the world on her shoulders, but this time, Thomas was holding it with her.
"I was wondering... the Blinders in my apartment, will they stay there?"
"Yeah." Thomas slouched on the leather couch, lips of velour parting upon the molten flames. Her throat burned when he swallowed. "Unless you want somebody else there."
Her cherry-colored lips caught a fraction of a smile, fragments of a sun that sneaks up from behind the clouds after the rain.
"You'll never give up, will you?"
"Nope." He threw the cigarette case onto the table; his stare gave her back all the parts of her she'd forgotten she had. "You can change what you do, but you can't change what you want."
She gulped, glanced away from his eyes; they fell into silence, which felt like the prelude, perhaps the postlude, to the loudest feeling ever heard.
"What if what you want is just going to destroy you more than save you?" She looked down at the glass in her hands, as fragile as her heart, with less scratches still. "Would you want it still?"
He stirred the dark amber drink, and Rose was pulled back to the time when she'd learned to skate, to those first instants when she finally slid across the lake after too many falls. That moment when she didn't know if she was going to fly or fall harder.
When he spoke, she hit the ground, and then below.
"I'd want it even more."
"Is that what you are doing now?" She asked. There was a lethargy to the way he slumped against the couch, like the mere act of thinking – or feeling – exhausted him beyond life. But the energy was acute and clear when he looked at her, like he was demanding all of her into his stare. Like he wanted her; even her broken parts. Most of all those. Like her heart wasn't glass and shattered pieces but blazing fire and steel. Like even if it was made of glass he wouldn't mind getting cut in the pieces. "Moving fast in life so you'll catch up to all the minutes you lost in the war?"
He shook his head. He was staring into nothing now; staring at the war, or the absence of it. The armistice might have been signed in 1918, but Thomas scarcely ever felt it. When he was with her, he almost felt it too much.
"Those minutes are gone."
Rose nodded, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat to grow some resistance against the gnawing cold. She frowned when her fingers grazed a piece of paper; she took it out, and the ice cracked under her feet. She was drowning when she read the note. She'd be drowning ever since.
"When the lamb is taken to the slaughter..."
Her hands trembled; his brows came together over his eyes.
"Who's the lamb?"
Rose got up abruptly. "Maybe all of us."
His frown deepened. Last night he had told her about the soldier's minute, and then the telephone rang, and the minute started.
"Frances?" Hard lines unfolded on his forehead when fast words and ragged breaths greeted him on the other side. "Frances, oi, Frances! Where's me son? Is he hurt?"
Rose dashed to him, placed a hand on his shoulder. Thomas' serene posture had morphed, from Michelangelo's David to Edvard Munch's Scream. He slammed the telephone down and yanked open the drawer of his desk. When he looked up, there were cracks amidst his ice too.
"Tavish was at me house."
Her heart dropped from her chest to her stomach. The lamb had been raised among wolves. It had no protection against lions. Their hands met when Rose leaned over the desk and snatched two guns from the drawer.
"Let's go."
***
Frances was at the doorstep, so fragile and thin a stronger gust of wind could have carried her away. She shrank against the door when Thomas stomped towards her.
"Where is he?" His voice boomed in the silence of the Arrow House like a thunder that carried a lightning of its own. "Where the fuck is he?"
"Charlie is upstairs, sir." Frozen in her place, rigid, as if the bolt had fallen straight upon her, Frances relaxed only when she spotted Rose behind him. "The man... the man is gone. I'm so sorry, sir, I had no idea who he was. He held me at gunpoint and—"
Thomas dove into the house and Rose followed suit, stopping only to give Frances' shoulder a soothing squeeze. They stormed up the stairs, leaning away from the sudden light that came from the ceiling; a bullet hole smiled down on them. Her heart beat so heavily against its cage it could have cracked it. It hurt as if Charlie was her son.
Then Thomas opened a door, and Charles looked up from his circle of toys and giggled. He tried getting up but Thomas was faster, crossing the room like a hurricane that turns soft once it has what it needs in its eye. His arms engulfed his son, arms that were a prison to others, a home to him.
Rose stopped by the threshold, fighting with the breath in her throat.
"Rosie!" Charlie stretched out his hands to her. Over his shoulder, her stare met Thomas'. Not even lying in the hospital, wounded and about to be grabbed by death's indifferent hands, had he looked so vulnerable. His feelings for the world were buried deep down; his feelings for his son simmered just beneath the surface, and now, like an erupting volcano, they gushed out from the soil in quiet tears.
"I heard we had a guest coming over, aye?" Thomas asked, covering Charlie's small fist with his, as if he could prevent him from ever getting hands as calloused from work and as bloodied from life as his. "Was he nice to ya?"
"Yeah!" Charlie bounced his head up and down. "He gave me a new toy! Look!"
He pointed to a plush lamb hanging around a fallen horse and leaned over to catch it, but Rose was quicker.
"Rose—"
She picked up the toy, keeping it out of Charlie's reach, clinging to the foolish hope that if there was a bomb inside, her body would raise a wall between it and the family behind her.
"It's not a bomb." With her back turned, she fished the knife from her garter and cut through the stuffing. "Tavish is a hunter. He likes the fucking hunt more than the prize."
When the lamb fell apart in her hands, a second note flew from it, the first raindrop in a storm. Her tongue roamed over her mouth in search of a place that wasn't parched; she found none. She mumbled out the words, her voice a snowflake in the wind Tavish grabbed and crushed.
When the lamb is taken to the slaughter,
a garden of roses will burn in its honor
"Merde." She crumpled the papers and turned around, the urgency in her eyes crawling into Thomas'. "This was a distraction. Charlie isn't the lamb."
Her fingers tightened around the handle of the knife.
"It's someone in my house."
***
The abrupt sound of tires screeching on the gravel woke the Salvage's property of its slumber. Rose stumbled out of the car even before it came to a halt; the ground was slippery under her shoes, and the snow she used to love made her slip several times on her run to the door.
She burst into the house with her sisters' names rolling off her tongue, but only the echo of her voice heard her, the wind gushing against the windows in lost whispers of woe.
She turned around, to the obscured figure cut out against the threshold. Thomas' black coat fluttered in the breeze. Others could have mistaken him for death. But had he not been there, Rose would not have known she was alive.
Even from a distance, he saw the swamp in her eyes, how she was being dragged down by her fears, so he went to her, he stopped at the shore and gave her something, everything, to hold on to.
"You told them to wait at different hideouts, aye?" His hands pressed against her arms, a small gesture that gave her comfort like she hadn't had in years. "Perhaps that's where they are."
"I'd believe that if they often did what I ask, but—"
More cars pulling up to her house sewed her mouth shut. His hands left her in the bat of an eye and he rushed outside, taking all the solace with him. Rose ran after him with a Luger in hand. They parted ways at the fountain in the front garden, but before any of them could take another step, Tavish jumped out of the Cadillac and fired once.
The bullet cut the air in two, ringing in Rose's ears like the first shell exploding in the Somme. It hit the Rodin statue between them, opening up a hole in his chest right where a heart would have been. Another shot and his head rolled down and now the Thinker was thinking on the floor. A volley of splinters rained upon them, slicing their skin.
Deep from inside the forest, horses neighed. Blood and rage, metallic and acre, mingled in her mouth. Gunpowder and chunks of bronze tarnished the snow underneath her feet, and her eyes stung with the dust.
Still, her stare locked with Thomas', and the guns in their hands became one as they shot against the cars and sucked the air out of the tires.
Amidst grunts, Tavish's shoes clattered on the limestone, stopping right where the dust started.
"Not the reception I was expecting, Rose." He clicked his tongue; the sound was enough to make her stomach churn, her nerves burn. His voice had some of Steaphan's melodic tunes, but none of its melody. "I could've been your brother-in-law, ye know."
Her fingers itched; if only all the cyanide pills she had used were on her mouth so she could spit them all to his face.
"Luckily, Steaphan was too much of a coward to propose."
Callan lunged forward; instantly, Thomas' pistol flew in his direction.
"Where's my family?" Rose asked. Spitting down, Tavish marched ahead, strolling down the cobbled path like he owned it, like he owned her mansion and her fate and everything that belonged to her. He stopped inches away from the Thinker's head, kicking it aside.
"How's yer neck?"
Beside her, Thomas released the safety. Tavish let out a low hiss; the fountain in front of him seemed to gurgle the same cynical sneers.
"Thomas Shelby. Me brother was an admirer. I'm still deciding." His voice was enough to unscrew the world from its latches; slow and poisonous, like the bite of a viper that takes a long time to kill. "Charming son ye have. Did he like my toy?"
The hawk inside Thomas broke free; he plunged towards Tavish, the barrel of the gun mere inches away from his left temple.
"You fookin' come close to me boy again, it'll be your head rolling on the ground."
Tavish didn't blink.
"It's decided then. I'm an admirer." He leaned forward, the venom dripping past his lips enough to poison the whole of Eden. "Put the gun down, didikai. Unless you want me cousin there to blow the brains out of your rose."
Callan shifted the revolver to Rose. Thomas' stare burned below zero; Tavish's would be enough to freeze over hell. Then, slowly and for the first time, England retreated against Scotland, and Thomas let his arm fall.
As soon as he did, Rose adjusted her grip on the Luger.
"Where's my fucking family?"
Tavish's eyes, blue and vindictive, flourished to her. One side of his lips curled up, tearing through her skin deeper than a scorpion tail. The turmoil unraveling inside her would be enough to wake up the ghosts. Of this house and all others.
"Shouldn't ye know that?" He took his hand to his inside pocket, the scar on his finger gleaming, the last scrap of sun taken captive by his signet ring. "I'm not here to fight, Rose. I came to offer ye a gift. Since ye both seem so cursed..."
He threw it at them; their curses, giving them away like blessings. The spent, all too familiar edition of Macbeth fell at her feet. The necklace with the blue stone fell at Thomas'.
She stayed where she was, but Thomas took a step back, his features charged with something that didn't fit his DNA. Her heart sunk. She knew what that sapphire meant to him, the lengths he had gone to get rid of it.
"Where did you get this?" Staring at the stone like Grace could be found in it, he clenched his jaw to the point of breakage. "Where did you fookin' get this?"
"I passed through Wales on me way here. Some Welsh had it. Apparently he bought it from a gypsy woman. Bethany Boswell, was her name? Ah dinnae ken. They're both lying in the gutter now."
"Ya fookin'—" Thomas charged over Tavish, and Callan fired right before his feet. The bullet bounced off the cobbles and pierced through the sapphire, shattering it into thousands of pieces that glinted in the snow.
Thomas halted, and Rose grasped his wrist, reminding him that whatever he saw in the gemstone wasn't real. She was.
"How did you know about this?" She gestured to the Shakespeare play, the tragedy that had turned her life into one.
"Remember I have shadows where you only see light."
He aimed at her heart. But then leaves rustled against leaves, and another voice spoke.
"You're not the only one."
Nicolas' eyes, as obscure as the night in its darkest hour, appeared at the tree line. His revolver was in direct line to Tavish's forehead, so Callan moved his to Nicolas, making Thomas aim at him in turn. It was a domino of violence; one pull of the trigger and the bloodshed would paint the forest red.
But Tavish had a way of pulling triggers with mere words.
"Remember your worker Joseph?" He cocked his head to Rose. "The one who betrayed you for the Germans? He never left London. Instead he got a bullet in his head."
All the words left her mouth at once. Nicolas' stare swarmed over her like a wave afraid to break against the shore for it will never come back.
"Is this true?" Her grasp on the gun faltered when he kept quiet. "Nicolas, is this true?"
"Rose—"
A loud bang drowned out her name; beneath their feet the soil quaked enough to break the Earth in two. Flares of ashy smoke rose from the treetops, and birds flew around in circles. For a minute there was no sound in the world other than the calls of crows. Then the neighing of the horses made Rose's ears bleed. A heavy smell of anise and fennel swirled in the air.
"Non... the distillery—"
"... is gone." Tavish sneered. "I do hope there were no workers there today."
With a curse, she let the knife in her sleeve sneak to her hand just in time to pierce through his wrist. His gun dropped to the ground, and the first piece of the domino tipped over; Callan shot at Rose, the bullet winging over her ear, and both Nicolas and Thomas shot at him.
Two other Saurets tried shooting back, but Rose was faster; she fired twice. The men fell back, carving demons in the white, lifeless eyes facing a sky they would never reach.
Tavish turned to Rose. His eyes spoke down her spine. You're going to regret this.
"Go." One word and his men surged forward, shoving a wounded Callan inside the car; Nicolas and Thomas shot at the tires, but the Bentley still managed to pull out and disappear down the road. "If there are no lambs, we'll send horses to the slaughter."
"Non, non—" She tried to run past him, but Tavish clutched her arm in a grip of steel. Instantly, Thomas rested the barrel against the back of his head. But Rose was looking at Nicolas, who gave her a nod and dove towards the stables. "Thomas..."
Hair ruffled by the wind, blood trickling down his jaw, Thomas didn't move.
"I'm not leaving ya."
"Thomas, go." Her tone was imperious; his teeth gritted. He seemed torn between his love for horses and his love for something else. "They're my horses."
"Fuck!" His curse muffled the caw of crows. He kept his pistol pointed at Tavish as he retreated into the forest. "You fookin' hurt her, I fookin' kill ya."
"Noted." Tavish sniggered. When Thomas disappeared, his clasp on her skin hardened.
"I know what you're doing," Rose said before his vicious mouth could take another bite out of her tired heart. "You want me alone so you can plant seeds of doubt all over my mind. But Nicolas is not the fucking traitor."
"You say that because he shot Callan, but Callan had a bulletproof vest. Courtesy of an American gang we're friends with."
"He's in several of the photos, he wouldn't incriminate himself on purpose."
"Wouldn't he? People do crazy things for the causes they believe in. And maybe you're a cause he stopped believing in long ago. Maybe mine fits him best."
Her finger almost pushed down on the trigger. "You don't have a cause."
"I do, it's chaos. Ye don't think it can be him, but who other than him had direct access to evidence and crime scenes, aye? Who buried the bodies? Who do ye think told me I should beat up Thomas Shelby if I wanted to get to ye? I know you sent men to search for my offices in Scotland. They didn't go. Nicolas ordered against it."
The acrid scent of smoke and Scotch and possible treason charred her nostrils.
"It hurts to have a back with scars, doesn't it? When Steaphan left Scotland for England, he became my Judas. We didn't talk much, but he still sent letters. Do you know why he killed your mother? He was obsessed with having you. In his mind, only him could. And your family and friends, they all had too much of you for his liking. He was planning on killing them all. But he was a wuss, and only killed one. Granted, the most important one, but still—"
"Stop talking. I'll be very pleased to send you to hell so you can visit him."
"Don't ye get it, love? Yer making the same mistake again. That gypsy... you've only just met him but you trust him with your life. Most people who do that get a nice tombstone, others not even that."
He pursed his lips as if he could chomp on the entire world with his teeth.
"And yer friends? That redhead that talks too much and always has her lips around a bottle? I've been to her brothel a few times, she never told ye that, did she? Think about it. Has Arwen been in the same place as me at the same time?"
Rose didn't want to think, but it was true. That day at the café, Arwen left right before Rose met Tavish. She bumped into Rose; she could have easily taken the key out of her pocket and slid the cinema ticket and the rose inside her car.
"Everyone ye meet is a lamb on the way to slaughter, Rose. It's only natural that some of them will want to bite off the hands of those who pushed them inside."
His nails dug on her skin. He inched closer, fingers brushing through her curls to get to her neck. But before he could, another car halted in the pathway, and the light she had been searching for in the dark of his eyes took form in a trinity.
"Take your fucking hands off my sister." Renée was the first to jump out, steady gun pointed at his back. Slowly, Tavish let go of Rose, but then he spun around and snatched his pistol out.
Rose's finger pressed on the trigger faster than he could draw another breath; the bullet grazed him in the shoulder, and he stumbled forward. Kaya struck him in the head, and the hooves of a horse too wild to be restrained stirred the forest; Noir and the Bentley arrived at the yard at the same time.
Then Callan fired over Rose, and Kaya whirled around and shot the car window into a million pieces. It stopped abruptly, and Tavish sprinted to it as Renée and Kaya shielded Rose and the stallion from the shower of Scottish bullets.
The horse's legs moved frantically, tail wagging in the wind, and the shards from the sapphire skidded over the snow, piling up between Renée and Élodie.
More bullets and rain made from powder and the car drove away. An arm sneaked out of the broken window; one single shot and Noir reared up in the air, his paws nearly crushing Rose. A black hole punctured his head. He fell over the grass like the first and last leaf of fall. Rose fell with him.
"Non! Noir... non..." She cried over him, salty tears fusing with black mane. His eyes were open, as if even in death he would watch over her.
"Rose, Rose..." Renée tugged at her shoulder. Her voice was in tears too. Every time the abysm called for her, Renée pulled her back. "There's nothing you can do."
"What happened here?" Élodie asked, looking around. Her trigger was the only one without a finger on it. "We were at the hideout nearby but we heard the explosion... was it the absinthe—?"
"Yes." Rose stood up and froze. Thomas was dashing through the trees.
"What—" His shoes sank into the soil when he saw the fallen horse. The color of the world was washed away in his eyes. His hand tightened around the gun, then relaxed. He bent down and rolled Noir's eyelids down.
Rose trudged to him. They were both there. Back in the trenches. Sniffing death in the air and hoping it would spare them, just this once. The soldier's fucking minute.
"The other horses...?"
"Safe."
She sighed and forced herself to look down. Noir was all the horses she had killed in the war. Her fists curled inside her pockets. A garden of roses would burn. But the rose garden behind the manor was intact. And so it hit her.
"Thomas, it's not here, it's the café... it's the café..."
"What?" Renée and Kaya frowned at once.
"Fuck." Rags of saliva sprang from his mouth as he plummeted to the car. Rose joined him, glancing back before he started the engine.
"Make sure everyone else is safe. And if you can... give Noir a proper burial."
As the Ford flew across England's countryside, Audrey's favorite quote came to her mind.
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
***
It was too late; the languish, reddish flames were visible at the head of the street, a large crowd surrounding them as useless jets of water tried to put out a fire that burned directly in her soul. La Vie en Rose was on fire, and with it all the dreams and memories that had built it.
Her legs wavered on her way out. She surged through the crowd, elbowing passersby and policemen alike, until she clasped the shoulder of one of them. "Victims?"
"Several injured, ma'am. One dead. A barmaid. Everyone else got out in time, but apparently, she went back to grab some documents and—"
Rose closed her eyes. London spun inside her head.
"Non, non, putain, non..." She ran, not caring about the fire, not caring about anything. The flames had thawed the snow, and the ground was more treacherous than ever. "Evelyn! Evelyn!"
The scream almost tore out her throat. The flowery sign at the entrance teetered and fell; the rose vines were burnt and withered, solitary petals fluttering aimlessly. Heat descended on her, a cloud straight from hell. She raced towards it, welcomed it.
But then strong arms grabbed her from behind, stopping her from venturing further, to fall into the hands of Hades. She got a whiff of the smoke and the whiskey before she saw him, and she struggled against his embrace so he would let her go.
Thomas didn't. He clung onto her like an anchor made by the Gods, for she was a ship he couldn't let sink.
"Rose, Rose... you can't. Aye? Listen to me." He grasped her shoulders, his grip somehow firmer and softer than any other. "You can't."
Her tears washed the dust from her eyes; she dropped against him, a wilted flower that can no longer stand on its own. His arms wrapped around her, a warm blanket that only took away a portion of the cold. His thumbs drew color back into her cheeks.
"No, she... Evelyn..." The flames would forever be printed in her eyes. She would close her eyelids and the world would be light on fire.
"We'll make them pay." His shirt was soaked with her tears. He took her head in his hand and kissed her temple, so gentle her skin missed it. So gentle it longed for more, for it too never feel anything else but the brush of his lips against her soul. "We'll fookin' make them pay."
Rose raised her head from his chest when a car came to its halt at the side of the road. Raphael leaped out of it, tripping and stopping upon the enormity of the fire. Upon her world, so easily reduced to cinders. But his features didn't change. Sadness was already harrowing at the edges of his eyes.
"Rose! Rose!" Hair in disarray, the blond boy who once resembled a Greek statue had cuts and bruises chiseling his body. She was one blow away from being swept off the face of the Earth, and like the boxer he was, Raphael delivered it. "They have her... Andrea... they took her. They fucking took her."
Inside her head, another fire started. Her fists curled on Thomas' shirt, body collapsing onto him. Rivers fell down her eyes now, rivers that would never stop, that had no spring or mouth, just rough waters and sharp canyons and a desperate need to drown.
And the notes finally made sense.
Andrea was the lamb.
Like an eerie score to a silent nightmare, Alfie's voice sealed her fate.
You're in this big field of flowers, right, and you're the only dead rose there. Then the wind comes and drags you away. And only the scorched petals stay.
Rose looked down, to the point where the white ended and the orange started. She had always loved the snow. But her life belonged to the fire.
And so did her death.
author's note.
this was Rose's breaking point so it can only get better from now on, right? :')
this chapter was so hard to write because I suck at writing action/fighting scenes, but I hope you liked it nonetheless! let me know what you think of it <3
Translations:
didikai (Romani) - someone who is not full-blooded Romani
Ah dinnae ken (Scottish slang) - I don't know