Sera Ch. 27

"Eleonore, by the way, had no idea about the gun. Had she, she might not have been so agreeable to Dolanna visiting the sites, as she would often run into Finn Gallagher whilst she was there, not that the gun ended up making any difference beyond maybe being some indicator, or symbol of her mindset.

"You know... I think she was reasonable enough to see that Gallagher was as much victimized by Eleonore as she was, but that still wouldn't make him okay in her mind. ... If you think about it from her position, the very fact that Eleonore would keep him on after using him to violate her would have been... unreal. The man came and went at least twice per day and would have thought nothing of it or any different about Dolanna while Eleonore raised her daughter. It's almost no surprise at all that he got crushed by a falling tree one day whilst she was visiting."

"No surprise to me," Sheila toned before she sipped from her glass.

"Nobody saw it," Auntie detailed, "not even the guy who cut the tree and yelled timber. 'A curious and unfortunate fatality' is how Dolanna described it."

"They happen," Auntie Kathleen almost mumbled with a knowing, raised brow.

After a brief gaze at her youngest sister with an expression I couldn't quite identify, Auntie went on with, "Eleonore accused her of being complicit right away, told her she was going to interview the man who'd cut the tree and get to the bottom of the affair, even if the police never would.

"Dolanna basically tells her, "Mum, I told you it was an accident. I accidently pushed Finn and he accidently got killed. After that, the guy who cut the tree accidently forgot he saw anything, so I shouldn't waste my time interviewing him, because even you won't get him to accidently remember again."

"She was quite upset, or at least as upset as Eleonore ever got, and this shows us that she did have some affection for Gallagher. I doubt it was possible for Dolanna to give a shit about that, but one can't blame her any more than Eleonore can be blamed for doing what she had to do in order to bring Odette about.

"So she had to go out and hire a replacement, not just for business, but for bedroom as well. Had it been me, I'd have at least gotten rid of Finn after using him for... in any case, it was now clear that Dolanna was beyond her control. She forbade her daughter from going near her cutting sites ever again, but she often visited anyway, sometimes on the very days she knew her mother would be there. Just to show her, y'know? Apart from that, Dolanna was quite happy to spend her time practicing with her pistol, or riding through the woods, probably pretending she was fighting Indians or something. I suppose Eleonore was just glad things with Dolanna weren't even worse than they were. God knows I'd have been considering locking her up like Coby if I were her mother.

"Luckily, Dolanna's use of influence seemed strictly for the purpose of temporarily rerouting unwary young ladies to her mother's house in Queen Square, or sometimes just sexually accosting them where she found them. In fact, she tells of one day in June, eighteen seventy-seven, when she was twenty-nine and helping herself to a young lady in a private alleyway. She said she was distracted by something that burned her back and, when she looked around, saw glowing cinders and sparks carried on the breeze and coming down the alley. From the street came the sudden smell of smoke, sounds of excited bustle, and she explained that she'd missed all this in the excitement of her sexual exploit and a lot of wine. Heh, crazy dame.

"Now, she said she'd heard the fire alarm earlier, but it was in a place called York Point and fires there were supposedly commonplace and usually put out quickly. Thanks to a stiff breeze on that particular day and some city mismanagement, this fire had spread fast and, by the time she was able to 'adjust' herself, as she said, and get out to the street, a wall of flames was already practically upon the uptown area with Queen Square standing in its path after that.

"So, it's off home for her. Of course, having been watching the growing clouds of wood smoke from over the roof topped horizon, Eleonore was already on the alert. She, Cary and Dolanna grabbed up as many carry along valuables and wealth as they could, such as jewelry and that type thing, but also Eleonore's strongbox.

With a smile, Auntie explained, "Eleonore didn't believe in banks and only dealt with them, as with the rest of society, as she had to. Therefore, she had a strongbox where she stored the brunt of her wealth and documentation beneath the root cellar floor. They loaded this along with some food, water, and other necessities into Eleonore's carriage. She, Cary and Odette climbed inside, and the pride of Eleonore's stable carried them away even as their neighbours had to abandon a huge desk halfway out their front door to the all consuming flames.

"With Dolanna astride her own powerful mount, they moved right into the Square along with about a thousand others displaced from their homes with all they could carry or haul with them. As you can imagine, it would have been utter chaos with the flames all around, the smoke and all, but apparently not enough so for some unscrupulous characters. Looters and other types of lowlife opportunists were also roaming the square, grabbing people's last valuables at a time when they were most vulnerable, robbing them, violating women and such. See, the law was understandably distracted and, by the time the De la Garde group arrived, the Square wasn't a very safe place.

"Almost right away, a group of five men approached the carriage because it's obvious that they must have money, and there's only one man on a horse guarding it. Once they get close enough to see that the lone rider is actually a woman dressed in a man's clothes, they get a lot bolder. One of them tries to grab the reigns and that's when Dolanna draws the colt and guns him down from the saddle.

"No way." I hissed, quite engrossed.

"Yes way," Auntie assured, "and ya know what she did after that? While the other four are just standing there stunned?"

"What?" I breathlessly asked.

"Why, our girl shoots another. So, then the other three are running, but that's not gonna save them because she's on a horse and it's not like this in an even tempered law enforcement official. Oh no, nothing like that. She shoots two of them in the back while they're fleeing and, when the other turns and tries to surrender..."

"She shot him too," I finished, a grim smile that I somehow couldn't stop spreading over my face.

I swear I saw approval in Auntie Ashleigh's eyes when she nodded, confirming, "Shot him right in the head. And it didn't stop there, either. She said- 'bragged', to use Odette's descriptive- that she killed twelve more men before the next morning's light. It probably wasn't an empty boast, as there are some eyewitness accounts.

"One is told by a woman who was almost raped when her assailant was distracted by a yell. He looked up and then ran off when he saw the horse coming. Well, the horse kept coming and ran him right down. According to the young woman, the hooves of Dolanna's Arabian caused no small amount of injury, but a bullet in the head afterward was the end of him. The young woman was probably freaked out enough by all this, imagine when she saw that her rather shockingly violent savior was a woman? More so, she reported that this woman was smiling and excited, that she'd very much enjoyed the act of killing that man and, when their eyes met, she said she knew it was the devil that had just saved her.

"One anonymous source described "a young woman darting gleefully through the smoke and impossible heat on a powerful black horse, shooting and running down the hooligans as though each one had a thousand Dollar bounty".

"Most interestingly, another anonymous account: "Her eyes reflected the terrible blaze of our homes burning around us, and I was more afraid of her than the looters".

"I suppose the local scum eventually got the message that there was stiff security in the Square as the threats eventually fell off. When all was said and done, the authorities did look into the matter of the dead men the next afternoon but, once they spoke to the occupant of the black Carriage, there was no more need for concern. The issue was dropped and that was that. It's not on official record, nor are the deaths of those men, and the entire incident is widely unknown."

"Eleonore influenced them?" I asked, quite impressed with that.

"Sure. Even if Dolanna got away with it legally, Eleonore wouldn't have wanted any bigger deal made of it than what those in the Square would spread around. It had to go away because it drew more attention, something that Dolanna had become all too good at. Luckily for them, the authorities had a lot more to worry about than some vigilantism run amok anyway.

"Half the city was gone, the business center of North America's most prosperous city reduced to heaps of smoldering ashes. Apart from Dolanna's work, eighteen people had lost their lives as a result of the fire itself and thirteen-hundred more were left homeless. The tide was out at the time and fifteen schooners burnt at their moorings before it could come back in. Damage was estimated at twenty-seven million in eighteen-seventy-seven Dollars. By and large, I doubt Eleonore would have had to use much influence to make the officials see reason, but the inside story of the witnesses, the ones who saw Dolanna's utter lack of mercy and how she enjoyed gunning them down like vermin... Once again, Eleonore wasn't best pleased with Dolanna.

"The problem was that Eleonore suffered from mostly the same problem as the rest of the city, that being the devastation around them, and concentrating on her gun toting, apparently bloodthirsty daughter alone would have been hard when the main decision right then would have been the question of where they'd be sleeping that night.

"One fortunate part of the whole disaster was that Eleonore, while fully insured, also chose to keep her money in that strongbox. Those who'd rushed their money to the Bank of New Brunswick, thinking it'd be safe in the stone structure, were quite dismayed to find that it burnt to the ground anyway.

"The forestry business had been flagging at the time of the fire and, though the city would require more during the rebuilding process, their home and everything in it was gone and starting over there would have looked pretty daunting to Eleonore.

"On top of all her other public antics, Dolanna's community killing spree the night before wouldn't have made the prospect much more attractive and, with what was good for Odette to also think about, I can once again understand her thinking as she made her next decisions."

Auntie Ashleigh yawned and I noticed the blackness beyond the open window was now a dark gray. As though it was infectious, Sheila yawned too and I shifted position as Auntie Kathleen voiced what we were all thinking anyway.

"Ash, as entertaining, informative... disturbing, violent and stressing as it's been, I'm afraid it's going to be hard to keep my eyes open much longer."

"I know," Auntie replied, looking at her youngest sister's boobies. "Mine are pretty heavy too. Should we adjourn until tomorrow night? Same time, no fighting?"

As engrossing as the story was, especially when heroic Dolanna was running down and shooting all the looters and rapists, we all agreed to continue that next evening at midnight with no promises made concerning the fighting.

And without saying a single word, Stevie got up and simply left, brushing the doorjamb with his shoulder on his way out in a slight, drunken stagger.

Of Auntie Kathleen, Auntie Ashleigh demanded, "God dammit, what is wrong with that kid?"