The Stoddart Residence
Boston
Massachusetts
"You were right, Grace." Gideon Palmer told his daughter, his face filling her monitor as he confirmed her worst fears. "The device doesn't have a huge range, and it is designed for the police to find individuals, not collect data on crowds of people, but it does show on screen every woman in range who has working equipment. It is going to take the agents a while to list the individuals, because there are thousands of them...especially in Beacon Hill, Seaport and South End?"
"Three of the most affluent suburbs?" Grace murmured, feeling rather pleased that her own instincts had been proved right, but also sickened that so many women were being illegally disciplined right under their noses.
"Obviously, we did not search for earpieces or retinal lenses, because they can be legally prescribed for medical reasons, and most people in this country have microchip health and identity passports inside them, so we concentrated on the punishment functionality on the chips and the vocal cord clips, which are both completely banned...and this map is of your neighbourhood in Beacon Hill, love?"
"Good grief?" Grace gasped, leaning forwards as far as she could, feeling her collar tighten at her throat, as she peered at the details. Her father had not mentioned the collar. No doubt her mother had warned him, and he knew that she was working. Her desire to be involved with the Rosen Foundation in the field, and her decision to marry Brett Stoddart, meant that she was bound to spend some of her life pretending to be pious, simply because of her gender and Brett's role. It had advantages, because she could go places her husband could not, but it had its drawbacks too, which her father had warned her all about, many times. "There are dozens of them? Even in this road?"
"Once we have a list, we will try and match it against people who have visited Britain, but my gut feeling here is that there are too many for that to be the only cause? Only a few BIB executives go to London every year, so I really do think that this is something else." Palmer continued, leaving the map on the screen for his shocked daughter to examine. "So...we are also going to try and match them to local doctors as well, because I think that we must have some illegal procedures being conducted?"
"You think they are being equipped here?"
"Well, it's not hard...as I said, the vast majority of Americans are already chipped as per the demands of their health insurance...the punishment functionality is actually a software update...you wouldn't even need to see a doctor for that...and I would bet that every one of those dots have a medical prescription for the eyes and the ears...so the only thing that needs a medical practitioner is the cord clips...a fairly simple procedure, I believe?"
"Has Uncle Sean seen this?" Grace asked as the map disappeared and her father's face was back on her screen.
"Yes...and he is not happy. He has asked the team to continue taking readings in Boston to get the full picture and then to have a go in Washington and some other large Reformist communities."
"But he still won't intervene because of Mr Reece Cartwright?" Grace sighed, sitting back again, thinking about Candice.
"Not immediately...we really do need the full picture before diving in...but Norman asked me to tell you that he will do something before his term ends, because Bateman would stop the investigation in a heartbeat?" Palmer stopped to take a sip of his water and watched Grace intently whilst he did so. "That's just a few months, Grace?"
"Boston is becoming more and more British every day...it's like an invasion?"
"I agree...and the first hospital convent is to be built in Boston...where you already have a Reformist mayor and city council, Reformist Senators, Reformist judges and Reformist police commissioners." Palmer point out, as Grace looked away from the screen and nodded to someone. "Maybe a takeover, rather than an invasion?"
"I've got to go, Dad?"
"Okay darling...talk soon?" He said, and the screen went blank.
"Hands please, Grace?" Miss Klein said and Grace obeyed, holding up her hands for her mittens. "Olivia is already dressed and ready to go?"
"She can't wait to see those girls, Miss Klein?"
Moments later, Grace was walking next to Olivia, wearing a light cape over her blue plaid gown, responding automatically to Miss Klein's gentle tugs on her leash. She was getting so used to it, she thought, after just weeks of training with her keeper. Olivia, as Mena, had been trained to behave like that for over thirty years, and Grace could finally understand why she was happier in Boston, and apparently happy to submit to a keeper. Her mother, after only four years in Britain, still felt compelled to do certain things, and behave in a certain way, so that training obviously reached deep inside her. Brianna Palmer had told her daughter about her argument with Miss Smart, and her subsequent discussion with Richard Montague, and that had got Grace thinking about contentment and acceptance. Mr Montague had insisted that his wife was perfectly content with her life as a Daughter of Eve and was actually fond of her keeper. She knew no other way to live, of course, but the fine gentlewomen of Boston did, and many of them seemed content too. Her own mother-in-law was one of them, and Mary was quite possibly more devout that her husband, whilst clearly loving her position in the community and the sport of socialising. But there were also thousands of women in the city whose husbands or fathers were using British methods to control them. That did not really suggest contentment and acceptance to her.
Although, as Mena had told her whilst they were still on Sanibel, she was not unhappy all the time as a Daughter of Eve. Her husband was a cruel man who liked hurting her and doing vile things to her, which she had never gone into details about, but when he left her alone for a while, she had her children, and friends, and a life. Just because a woman was equipped, it did not necessarily mean that she was being abused, all the time. But Grace also remembered what Candice had said about her equipment, and her arranged marriage. She could not resist it, because she could not escape her equipment.
"You have to remember that Christians mostly embrace the need to be punished for their sins...penance is necessary to receive forgiveness?" Olivia said as they stood waiting for the children to arrive. "Punishment chips were actually invented because it was seen as a more humane way to punish us...much better than a good thrashing? And the fact that the chips can be monitored stops abuse? I was thrashed several times by the nuns at my boarding school and I would have preferred the chips, I promise you?"
"Spare the rod, and spoil your Daughter of Eve?"
"People do believe that punishment is necessary, Grace? Lots of people, not just disciples of the Church of Christ the Reformer?"
"What would you think if Mr Procter equipped his daughters? Or even re-enabled your equipment?" Grace asked, seriously. She had looked at the map, and the first house that she had looked at had been Mr Procter's grand home. No equipment, she had been very relieved to see.
"I would not want him to do anything illegal...and I think I would want to understand his reasons for doing such a thing...but I would obey my husband?"
"Olivia? You really are still brainwashed?"
"It is all I know...all I believe?"
Miss Smythe arrived before Grace could say anything else and she lost Olivia to the twins after receiving her own hugs. So, she stood quietly, watching Boston pass her by, just another tethered gentlewoman behaving under discipline. Sometimes she just wanted to pinch herself and wake herself up from a bizarre nightmare. But whenever she had those little moments of doubt and disgust, she thought about her real motivations, her mother and her aunt, and all of the people who had been so indoctrinated that the sight of a young woman in a Victorian gown, covered from head to foot, tied to a set of iron railings, was perfectly normal. Boston was a safe, genteel city, but it had a growing sickness within, and very few people seemed to want to do much about it. Grace Palmer-Stoddart was one of the few.
"Good afternoon, Miss Tate." She said as she curtseyed to the Cartwright's keeper, whilst Candice was being tethered beside her.
"Some company for you, Grace dear...as I see Miss Olivia has abandoned you?"
"Not abandoned, exactly, Miss Tate."
"Behave, Candice?" Miss Tate said to her charge.
"Yes, Miss Tate." Candice said, curtseying herself.
"Your mother is not walking today, Miss Cartwright?" Grace asked once they were alone and free to converse.
"She is in disgrace, Mrs Palmer-Stoddart...Miss Tate left her tethered in the drawing room after our devotions to consider her future behaviour, Ma'am." Candice replied, surprisingly candid, Grace thought. But then again, Candice had told her that she was equipped.
"Switched off, I presume?" Grace muttered from behind her mantle.
"Yes, Ma'am...she let my father down in important company, Ma'am?" Candice admitted and Grace immediately wondered what company. She knew more than anyone that Pamela Cartwright had a sharp tongue and a very high opinion of herself, but she was an expert at the fine art of socialising.
"Not business, I hope...my husband is working on the same project as your father?"
"I don't know, Ma'am...it was a dinner last night and I was not invited...but I have never seen my father so angry? He says Mr Procter is really on his case again?"
"And Miss Tate is cracking the whip, Miss Cartwright?"
"Yes, Ma'am...she has full control over my mother now and I will be married soon...I am beginning the final preparations, Ma'am?"
Miss Klein's return prevented Grace from finding out anything more, but she had enough to be thinking about. Howard Procter was the senior partner overseeing the convent building project, which BIB was financing and providing various expertise to help their clients, such as Brett's legal advice and assistance. Brett had explained that senior partners would manage several projects at once, delegating day to day management responsibility to a partner, who would only do one project at a time. So, Brett was working for Cartwright, who reported to Procter. And Pamela's problems seemed to have started after she was horrible to both Olivia and Grace over dinner, the first time Olivia and Howard met.
"That's strange?" Olivia commented, once they were all back home. "Bailey said that her father was shouting on the phone this morning...quite early?"
"Giving Mr Cartwright a piece of his mind, maybe?" Grace suggested, trying to focus on her needlepoint.
"He is probably getting nervous about the wedding...I know I am? And if the twins get any more excited, they really will burst?" Olivia smiled, her own frame resting in her lap as her mind wandered. "But I suggested a quiet affair...I don't want a fuss?"
"A quiet society wedding in Boston?" Mary laughed, shaking her head at her friend. "Such a thing has never taken place...there will be so many people from BIB that he will simply have to invite, plus the Palmers and maybe even President Fletcher, and us...so it is not going to be a quiet wedding?"
"Mr Procter is delighted that you will be my matron of honour, Grace...with the twins as my bridesmaids...Emily keeps calling me Mama by mistake, the poor dear?"
"You are just besotted with those girls?" Grace said as Mary smiled at the anecdote.
"Guilty as charged...I can't wait to be with them all the time?"
Stuart Stoddart avoided the drawing room, and a pleasant hour with the ladies, to take yet another call in his study. The secrecy surrounding the goings on in Britain had made working from home sensible, if not essential, at times. No one wanted the story to leak, and his regular discussions with other world leaders would be hard to keep quiet. The British were a divisive issue in Washington at the best of times, and with Bill Bateman only a few months away from replacing Fletcher in the White House, barring a miracle, those that wanted a job in his administration could not be trusted with a secret like that one.
"Stuart...you must understand that this is impossible for us?" Quentin Robinson-Smith drawled in his lazy cut-glass accent, leaning back in his chair and waving an insistent finger at the screen. The British Foreign Secretary was also making a lot of calls, trying to limit the UN investigations and convince his peers to cease and desist. "Convents are sacrosanct here and nuns are protected by God...they are literally above the law...it is just impossible to give your man the access he seeks?"
"Change the law then, Quentin? You have done that many times before?"
"Our citizens will never stand for it...the Order is admired...well respected...and to violate their right to privacy would cause great offence?"
"Okay...then admit your guilt? Deacon is not my man, as you very well know, but I think I can speak on behalf of the UN Security Council on this one...the only reason to obstruct his investigation like this is because he is onto something? If you had nothing to hide, you would cooperate?"
"You know that the council do not all share your fervour for this witch hunt? If you would only call off your dogs, we could all get around the table and discuss a sensible way to move forwards? Symonds made a mistake...I personally wish that he had admitted it at the time as it would have made things much easier...but we want to make reasonable amends? It is just impossible to discuss anything positive when you persist on buying Montague's lies?"
"You think Charles Montague is lying?"
"Have you found any evidence to the contrary?" Robinson-Smith snapped back, gallingly smug as always. "Hard evidence...not the vague memories of a damaged woman talking to her dead husband ten years after the event, or the far-fetched stories of a bitter man, who is just trying to excuse his own role?"
"His evidence seems credible to the council..."
"I repeat...we want to make amends for the original mistake...we are prepared to discuss any proposals the UN has for reparations, or whatever? But you have to let this lie before it gets out and makes compromise impossible?"
"Give Deacon what he wants and it will be over before you know it?" Stoddart said, more and more sure that Deacon was onto something regarding the Order. And as he clicked off the screen, he laughed at himself, because one way or the other, he was spending a lot of his time talking about nuns and convents. He cared about Boston, and he was worried about the proposed convent hospital, because it was another lurch towards the harsher side of a doctrine that he largely supported, in moderation. Someone from outside, probably someone British if it was coming through BIB, was playing a very dangerous game.