31 Plays in 31 Days, #21 - "Alexander Wept"

[breakinglight11]

Every time Bernie comes to visit in August, it throws me off my rhythm. I need to catch up, and unfortunately there's basically nothing left of part VI I feel comfortable posting due to spoilers. That means I'll have to write some filler scenes, which I'm not jazzed about, given the other things I need to be focusing on.

This piece leads directly into Day #7 - "She Could Be Everything," with some more of the verbal sparring between Hawking and Frost. This incorporates a meme/phrase that is very personally significant to me, the actual translation of Plutarch's famous line about Alexander the Great— not the wrong version as quoted in Die Hard.

If I were ever to get a tattoo, "Alexander wept" would probably be it, in a monument to toxic ambition.



Day #21 - "Alexander Wept"
From Mrs. Hawking VI
By Phoebe Roberts
~~~

London, England, 1888

VICTORIA HAWKING, lady's society avenger, late forties
ELIZABETH FROST, former criminal mastermind, now institutionalized, early fifties
~~~

MRS. FROST:

Well, it’s a solid lead if the information’s reliable. A shame you couldn’t dig up a better class of witness.

MRS. HAWKING:

Drunks and whores are vulnerable; that’s why he chooses them.

MRS. FROST:

So what do you make of this mysterious Savin fellow?

MRS. HAWKING:

I expect it’s a pseudonym. Someone running a side venture under the cover of the workhouse infirmary.

MRS. FROST:

And you think that’s your man? Must be busy, ministering to unfortunates during the day while butchering them at night.

MRS. HAWKING:

Whoever it is, it seems he had the same exposure to the previous four victims that the nurse did. And that’s the only lead we have so far.

MRS. FROST:

How lovely it must be to have a real problem again. After me, I can only image how dull your cases must seem by comparison.

MRS. HAWKING:

Four murders is too interesting even for me.

MRS. FROST:

Only because it still confounds you. And Alexander wept, that among infinite worlds he was not yet master of one.

MRS. HAWKING:

Your empire crumbled much the same as his did. Without you, none of your remaining lieutenants could hold it.

MRS. FROST:

And I’m sure you had your fun hastening it along. Do you know how long I worked to build it all? Have you any idea what I had to do?

MRS. HAWKING:

I know what it takes to break out of one’s cage.

MRS. FROST:

Indeed. So, dear boss, what’s your next move? How shall you be hunting down this so-called Dr. Savin?

MRS. HAWKING:

Mary is looking into records of who served in the workhouses in a medical capacity at the same times Miss Strallan did.

MRS. FROST:

Hm. Why don’t you tell me about this girl of yours? Miss Mary Stone.

MRS. HAWKING:

Why? So you can lock her in a room and torment her too?

MRS. FROST:

No, I leave that to you these days. But it's a rare maid that means so much to a solitary goblin like you. Your nephew's history I read like a newspaper, but that girl's name was hardly known in her own church.

(Pause.)

MRS. FROST:

I told you. Only the first time was free.