Devil In Blackmoor Castle

1

Prince Frederick

Frederick

Ialways hated when mother dragged me to the ballet. When we came, there was always pomp and circumstance. I’d have to say goodbye to the Corgis and to afternoons with my Latin governess, and have a servant stuff me into a wool suit and she’d comment on my red hair and call me young master as I scowled. Maybe I just hated leaving Blackmoor.

My strong opinions weakened against the view I had from our new special seats, roped off with guards seated around us, some surreptitiously and others in plainclothes to diffuse any potential threats that might be lurking in London theater.

I was wrong about the ballet anyway. I’d hated it before I knew that there were women in it. And these women, although common born, were dazzling enough to catch my eye, even throughout the overdramatic Dracula performance, which I’d watched every October without fail for years.

I didn’t care for the plot. I cared for the dancers, with their lithe bodies and their delicate movements which concealed their immense physical strength.

One moment, they’d stand croise dévant and the next, a creature as small as a bird with bones that only appeared twice as brittle, would fling her body across the stage and land with precision that could only be attributed to her strength.

The star of today’s performance was breathtaking. Up on her toes, then down, her face twisted into pain and pleasure as she flung her body off the ground, wrapping her legs around the torso of the overly-muscled nub of a man who held onto her. Her hair, loose and wild, like Dracula’s prisoner, draped over him, a thick sea of luscious black curls.

He set her down. She craned her back, hair touching the ground as he gripped the small of her waist and then lifted her off the ground, over his shoulders where she landed on the tips of her toes and her feet fluttered and flattened, fluttered and flattened, until she was lifted off the ground again, balanced by the indelicate creature that dared hold her.

Jamie leaned over and plucked me out of the reverie of watching her.

Haven’t you seen Dracula enough times? I can’t believe you’re actually watching this garbage.

His wife sat at his other shoulder with their two young children. Alice, the poor duchess, had her hands full with the children, Jane and Richard. Alice wasn’t speaking to Jamie because she found out about his mistress in Edinburgh.

Still, she smiled as she’d been trained to do, the way my wife would be trained to do.

Mina. She’s beautiful, I breathed.

Jamie smiled, but didn’t risk talking throughout the performance again. If we said too much, the BBC would have lip-readers dissecting every movement just to speculate at what we were talking about. They hung onto our every word.

I lived for the pas-de-deux which continued before me. The tortured dance of lovers was the only thing dripping with enough raw sensuality to make ballet delightful.

My Mina slipped down Dracula’s back, butter sliding off a waffle.

I’d never seen a dancer like this one. Her skin the perfect shade of sepia, her hair long and thick, loose down her back to represent Mina’s untamed fate. I could imagine running my hands through her hair, a shadow of the fire in her dark brown eyes.

The dance continued. The brute, the Dracula who I’d come to despise profoundly in a matter of seconds, held her close to his chest, heaving like a drunken pigeon and then he set her down. She frittered away, toes clicking across the floor as she acted torn and morose. When she was just out of reach, Mina’s love for Dracula yanked her back and she fluttered back into his arms while he lifted her over his head, her body stiff and lifeless, like a corpse.

She slipped him back into his coffin, her leg extended out and the dress falling delicately forward as she fluttered off stage.

I couldn’t wait for the show to be finished. Every minute I watched when she wasn’t on the stage was torture. If I stood up and ordered the whole thing done, I could have had it, just to see her. But granny would have been furious if I’d made a scene. At her age, I wanted to avoid spoiling her mood.

The final act was finished. Before the dancers finished bowing and received their applause, I caught my guard’s attention and stalked out the side door towards the backstage.

Your majesty! An usher squeaked as she caught sight of me, lowering her knee in a strange low bow. I ignored her, fixated solely on my mission — my Mina.

Your highness, where are you headed? My guard asked. Milton Shepherd was accustomed to my whims and fancies.

Backstage. I need you to find that Mina and bring her to me.

The lead ballerina?

You’ve seen Dracula as many times as I have and with better seats than your own money could ever buy. Yes, the lead ballerina. Now bring her to me. I’ll be in the car.

What am I to tell her?

Order to her to come. You’re the Prince of England’s personal driver and bodyguard. Don’t you think that will be some motivation?

Milton’s flat expression belayed his usual unhappiness with my orders. The crown didn’t pay him to be unhappy. I stormed off toward the car, hoping to beat the press or worse, another icy standoff between Jamie and his wife. My other guards escorted me back to the car.

I slid into the back of a white Rolls-Royce. Today, we traveled with five of them to avoid detection. If some would-be assassin was hell-bent on killing some powerless heirs to a country, I suppose this was meant to throw him off the trail.

I was just glad not to be in a car with Alice who would be chewing Jamie’s ear off. He could be such a cock sometimes cheating on her like that. Alice already knew about one of his mistresses and she’d cried for weeks, nearly refusing to go out until granny had forced her to make an appearance for an interview with the BBC.

Alice knew what she was getting into marrying a Prince, Granny said, You make sacrifices when you’re the kind of woman who will do anything to be the center of attention.

Ouch. But that was Gran. I leaned back in the car, enjoying the privacy tinted windows afforded against the hoi poloi. Milton would bring her back.

I didn’t know her real name, so for now, she was Mina. My Mina.

2

Temperance Willis

Temperance Willis

B ravo! Bravo, you guys, that was incredible!

Heat rushed to my face, my dark-brown skin nearly looking red in the mirror. Maxim rushed to me and wrapped me in a hug.

Mina! Mina! Mina! You were beautiful.

He lifted me off the ground in the way only a male ballerina can. Once he set me down, I firmly rest my hands on Maxim’s shoulders.

Maxim, my beloved teacher, once I am off the stage, I am no longer Mina. Please. Remember that. I’m tired enough.

Nonsense. You could go all night, Temperance.

He took my hand and kissed it.

Tempe, please, I corrected him.

The longer form of my name sounded unnatural coming from Maxim. We knew each other far too well. Brittany, who’d danced as Lucy tonight, hated when I spoke to Maxim alone. She sidled up to our conversation with a straightened back, edging closer to hear what we were saying. 

What are you two gossiping about? Secretly picking the cast for the next show?

We are talking about how Temperance has such amazing stamina as a dancer, actually, Maxim said.

He always had a smooth answer when Brittany sidled over with her snide observations. Brittany’s expression dampened, the thrill of the hunt sapped out by Maxim’s confession to mundanity. 

Oh. Well. Did you notice the Royal Family in the front row? The little princess was so cute. 

I thought it might be a bad time to point out that I had been dancing too much to notice anyone in the front row. I certainly wouldn’t have noticed anyone in the monarchy. 

Brittany wrapped her arms around Maxim’s shoulders, draping over him.

Maxim, when are you announcing our roles for Cinderella?

We’d already started rehearsals for The Nutcracker. I was sitting that play out for my true favorite — the spring show, and the most romantic ballet of the year. Cinderella. Everyone knows the story. I enjoyed dancing it. 

I enjoyed pretending I could cast off my £20k salary, my tiny flat in East London, and the perpetual aching in my feet in exchange for magic and wonder.

I will announce rehearsals when I’m good and ready, Brittany. You must be patient, along with the other dancers.

She’s just worried she won’t get to be second to the lead again, Isabel chimed in.

Isabel, like most of us, was just happy to be in the company. But she was younger and less established. Brittany and I were on the older side. Few dancers stay in this cutthroat industry past 30. 

Brittany ignored Isabel’s snide comment.

Despite all of it, we were closer to each other than we were to the Eastern European girls in the company. They kept to themselves, muttering in Latvian. 

They all lived together in South London and they were too competitive to bother trying to make friends with the English dancers. They mostly whispered about us in Latvian and complained that I was too curvy to be a dancer. Microaggression received and understood… 

Brittany, Isabel, and Maxim, our coach, who wasn’t English either, were the closest to friends I had at the company.

Maxim refused to reveal the casting announcements early. We still had so much time before we all started the first rehearsals again and began to tear each other’s hair out. Now, it was time to celebrate what little we could. The show had been well received. And everyone was making a fuss because the Royal Family attended.

Whether we were performing for the homeless or the royal family, I couldn’t have cared less. I didn’t perform for them. I performed for myself. I performed to break down the barriers between my body and the air, the stage, everything around me. I danced for freedom, not the pomp and circumstance.

A man dressed in black pushed in the door to the green room.

Miss Temperance Willis?

Yes, that’s me. 

Clutching my bouquet, the last remains of sweat dried on my face. My makeup was so caked on that my face could only remain plastered in a showy, ivory stage smile. I couldn’t understand why this man wanted to see me. I stared at him bewildered, not recognizing him from anywhere. 

I’ve been sent to request your company by a member of the royal family.

The Latvian girls muttered to themselves in hushed Latvian. Everyone gasped. Maxim stepped aside, lowering himself in a dramatic bow before me.

"Lady Temperance, he said, half-mockingly, his Parisian accent slowing down his R’s" considerably. 

I need to go to the locker room first and get this makeup off.

Everyone looked at me as if I were mad. The bodyguard only repeated, Miss Willis, the member of the royal family who requests your company would like it… now.

She eez getting to meet zee Queen! Olga hissed, so surprised that she forgot to speak in her private Latvian.

Blushing, and embarrassed by all the attention the company was giving me, I hurried out of the room, shutting the door behind me.

Where am I supposed to put these flowers? I huffed, offering the last ounce of resistance I could muster since my public shaming for daring to question a member of the royal family.

It’s like people forget that these people have no constitutional power or something. They’re just people like you or me, only a bit richer. 

Do you have a name, sir? You know mine.

Milton, he replied, his voice a bit Welsh.

Alright then. Do I get to meet the queen? I replied in a tone that was perhaps too mocking, presuming some working-class solidarity that dear Milton must have forgotten we had due to his proximity to the royals. 

Miss Willis, I’ll be taking you off the theater premises out a back door. You will be completely safe and more than adequately compensated for your time.

What’s next, you’ll tell me I’m a spy?

Milton did not find this funny. I was starting to get a bit nervous when he took me downstairs, through a long corridor I never knew existed despite performing in the building for years. I guess I’d have no reason to go into the basement and figured it was for maintenance.

Oi, I’m doing a good job of not getting spooked considering a strange man claiming to work for the royal family took me into a dark basement. Don’t you think?

Milton, deadpan, replied, You could probably strangle me with your legs, Miss Willis.

The back door took us to the opposite street. There would be no press crowding around waiting for a glimpse at Prince Henry James and his wife Alice, and their toddler’s first ballet in London. 

Without even trying, I knew every bloody moment of these people’s lives. The press kept us saturated with them. Only a few years ago everyone kept talking about precious Alice’s royal wedding and whether or not it mattered she was common. The girl wasn’t even common! She was rich enough and her parents had titles. When you’re dealing with the poshest of Britain, their standards aren’t just high — they’re impossible. 

Milton led me to the edge of the curb where four black Rolls Royces pulled up. 

Oi! I thought you said I was going to meet one of your royals not get kidnapped by an oil tycoon.

Perhaps he was threatening a racist joke by doing so, but finally, Milton smiled.

"You’re going to Blackmoor Castle, Miss Willis. I assure you, you will meet a member of the royal family, not a sheik. Do you know anyone else in London, perhaps in the company, who owns four Rolls-Royces?"

Point taken. And a nice sly dig at the dancers, as if we could help being poor. Didn’t this man realize he was no more than a hired hand? Proximity to the royal family didn’t make him rich. I sidled into the back of the Rolls Royce, considering that I might be making a mistake, but not caring. 

What choice did I have anyway? I’d be publicly shamed and humiliated for not carrying on like the royal family meant something to me. It was downright unpatriotic! 

Milton got into the front seat and we sped off. I hadn’t even said a proper goodbye to everyone or talked about the performance. Olga had been a bit off during our final number. I could hear her toes hitting the stage just out of time. 

What was even happening to me right now? I pinched myself, but the car didn’t fade away. This was very real. Despite it all, I couldn’t stop thinking of the dancers and how all of us needed to be in sync, especially Olga. Yes, I was the lead of the show, but a ballet wouldn’t be much fun if there was only one dancer. All of us mattered to create a beautiful finished product.

A pas-de-deux requires two. 

3

Blackmoor

Temperance

I’d never seen London from the back of a Rolls Royce. Staring at the familiar streets as we drove by, I hoped I