The Resurrectionist of Caligo

by Wendy Trimboli

  “I understand.”

  Angeline scrutinized Sibylla’s body, dress, and posture. Thankfully her discerning eye could not read minds. “Have you no dowry? Is your father destitute from playing the ponies? Or have you perhaps suffered a compromising situation with a low-class lover?”

  How many unfortunate girls came to this woman because they hadn’t the means to go elsewhere? Sibylla forced a smile. “I’m the youngest of seven, mistress, and but one of my sisters is married. I no longer wish to be a burden on my family.”

  Angeline nodded. “A thoughtful sentiment. I can tell you if you pass the physical exam – and very few do – you’ll need to work on that posture. With your crooked shoulders and sagging back, you’d be booted from the royal court in an instant. In my salon, the girls must give the impression of royalty. They must convince each client he is entertained by – no, in love with and hopefully marrying – nothing less than a princess. Although I will say, your imitation of a North Caligoan parlance is nearly passable. Did someone tutor you?”

  Sibylla nodded in the direction of Lieutenant Calloway.

  “Ah, of course. Now I’d like a moment alone with Isla. There may follow some discussion of delicate matters.”

  Lieutenant Calloway glanced questioningly at Sibylla. Hiding a hand behind her back so Angeline wouldn’t see, she shooed him off. “I shall be quite all right,” she said. “But don’t go too far.”

  After the lieutenant had left, Angeline closed the door to the parlor. She circled Sibylla, raking her with her eyes. Still, her examination proved bearable. Sibylla had endured far worse under the queen’s gaze.

  “Do you know what makes my salon girls so special?” Angeline lifted a tress of Sibylla’s hair to inspect its texture and weight.

  This was probably a bad time to bring up the deaths of Claudine and Margalotte. She shook her head no.

  Angeline moved behind Sibylla to clasp her waist with both hands. A strong centifolia perfume filled the air. “My girls promote sophisticated conversation and diversions among educated gentlemen and ladies.” Her fingers crept up Sibylla’s stomach. “That is no small part of it, but we cater to gentlemen, not ladies, and men crave the exotic and rare.” With a quick, practiced movement she squeezed Sibylla’s breasts. “Good, good.”

  Sibylla jumped, then caught her breath. This wasn’t entirely new – seamstresses and lady’s maids had done no better, in her experience. Now Angeline took her hand and pried her fist open. She should mention Claudine now lest this farce go further.

  Before she could make up her mind, Angeline whipped the hatpin from her hair and pricked the pad of Sibylla’s finger. Sibylla cried out more from shock than pain as a red bead appeared on her skin.

  Angeline wrapped Sibylla’s bleeding finger in white raw silk, then replaced her hat and pin. After a moment, Angeline removed the silk and rolled it into a small fabric scroll. She retrieved a vial of clear liquid from an apothecary cabinet, then slid the silk inside the vial. After placing it on the table, she settled herself gracefully on the divan.

  “Please come sit, my dear.” Angeline patted the cushion. “You have somewhat more potential about you than I first surmised, though that posture of yours makes me wince. However, I warn you that nothing is promised. Your wit and talent count for little here if you don’t have the right blood in your veins.”

  Sibylla studied the vial on the table. “What are you looking for?” If all Angeline’s girls had passed this test, then so had Claudine. What was so special about them that they’d attracted the attention of the strangler?

  The liquid in the vial turned a powder blue, and the corners of Angeline’s mouth curled into a smile. “A hundred girls may walk through that door, but rarely is more than one of them asked to remain. You, my dear Isla, are the exception. There is magic in your veins.”

  Sibylla laughed. “Some charlatan must have taken you in. Only the church understands the intricacies of divine bloodlines. There is no test for magical gifts. And there never has been.” Which was why male bastards with half a mind could hide their talents and not be thrown down the well.

  Angeline snapped her fingers. “You misunderstand. I’m not saying you are a princess. Conventional wisdom holds that either one is or is not magicked, and you’d catch the royal eye if you had any talent to produce sparklers or rust. Should that happen, you’d soon find you might not have a head. That is true for men. But with us, you see, there’s a third type: outwardly mundane, yet magicked within. Girls like you.” Dame Angeline lifted the vial off the table. “And this tells me you’re unlike most.”

  “I’ve always wondered how this particular establishment is so remarkably popular with the gentlemen, when there are plenty of others like it in neighboring streets. But even if this… test is true, one cannot bottle magic in a vial. What good would it be locked away inside of a girl?”

  “We Myrcnian women must play the social game. We must be married. And, with the right credentials, we might even gain class, rank, or wealth. A girl like yourself with latent talent, should she marry a gifted man, may produce gifted children. But such women are difficult to find, and genealogy lists are not as accurate as one might like. Magic travels in the blood. Latent or not, it is now detectable. The nobleman bachelor need no longer chance an unmagical pairing, and subsequent loss of title, as here exists a marketplace where he might find a lovely, accomplished wife to bear the offspring he desires. These days even the professional class of men desires quality women like ourselves, though they hardly benefit. We are quite the fad.”

  Now Sibylla realized what made Claudine special; a nobleman with magic, should he take a wife here, could be assured of magicked offspring. Harrod’s mother, a palace chambermaid, must have been like these Angeline girls. Her son Harrod had inherited his father’s magic, while Roger, the son of a cook, had none.

  Sibylla pointed to the vial in her hand. “And you use that to see which mares to breed.”

  Angeline tsked. “Really, what Highspits cheese farm did you spring from? You poor thing. Yes. Isn’t it wonderful? Aren’t we blessed to live in such modern times?”

  Sibylla didn’t think this miracle test originated from modern times so much as a singular modern man. Her jaw clenched. “Does the queen know you perform these tests?”

  “Her royal majesty would lump us in with those unfortunate women who only ply the trade between their legs.” Angeline’s face tightened. “She’s an old biddy, but a formidable one. Fortunately, we have our own supporters in the royal family, the least of whom are the young princes you might have seen downstairs.”

  “What other supporters? Lady Esther? Crown Prince Elfred?” Sibylla asked. Then so as not to sound too obvious, she added, “Lady Brigitte?”

  Angeline gave a deep, throaty laugh. “When you’ve earned your place, perhaps I might tell. Really, are all country girls as suspicious as you? Or have you heard one too many tales of the Greyanchor Strangler?” She stood up to ring the bell. “I’ll have one of my grisettes prepare a contract…”

  Sibylla had played her part long enough. She needed to confirm if her suspicions were correct on who had provided Angeline with her liquid concoctions, and which of her family members knew of its existence.

  As Angeline reached for the calling bell, Sibylla grabbed Angeline’s wrist. “I must confess that I’ve met you once before.”

  Angeline tilted her head in displeasure. “Well, I can’t say I remember your face… love.” Angeline glared at Sibylla’s hand to indicate she expected its removal. When Sibylla didn’t let go, she added, “I must have made quite the impression.”

  Sibylla smiled. “You signed my autograph book after your debut in The Housewench of the Haunted Hearth. You wore the most beautiful costume and a pendant much like that one. I expect this one is real, isn’t it?”

  Angeline’s face darkened. “Perhaps I should reconsider my offer. I signed only two autographs that night, one to the owner of the theatre, Sir Lyle, and the other–” />
  “Looked like this?” Sibylla’s fingernails blackened as she flexed her fingers, and ink appeared as though Angeline was signing the air: To my dearest highness, the sweetest drama critic I’ve ever met, Humbly yours with affection, Angeline Lareine.

  Angeline gaped. “Why this farce? Wait… You’ve come to elope!” she exclaimed with more animation than her performance of the haunted hearth’s demonic fire dance.

  Apparently, everyone thought Sibylla intended to cause one scandal or another. She may have kissed a kitchen boy once or twice, but she hadn’t run off with him. Who did Angeline think she’d come here to run away with?

  “Lieutenant Calloway?”

  Angeline clasped Sibylla’s hand and squeezed. “I know a man who can arrange safe sea passage to Lipthveria. I can conceal your highness here until preparations are made.” She sighed. “Ah! To be young and in love with a beautiful boy.”

  If Sibylla continued letting Angeline helm the conversation, she’d soon find herself sailing the milky seas of Andorna. She interrupted whatever fanciful fiction the salon owner might say next. “Does Dr Lundfrigg provide you with these vials?”

  Angeline frowned. “I couldn’t say.”

  Sibylla had suffered Angeline’s opinions, her prodding and fondling, and finally her lies. Now she’d reached the end of her patience. She twisted her fingers from the woman’s grasp. “Do you know what really makes royal blood so special?”

  Angeline took a step back.

  “It’s the spark, you see,” Sibylla said. “My great-grandfather once shattered a man’s spine with nothing more than his whistle. And we all know the tale of King Roderick’s electric globes that caused fried geese to plummet from the sky. Do you suppose inking and glowing are my only gifts? Or do you refuse to answer my question because you’re curious to see what else I can do?”

  Angeline seemed to weigh the risk of Sibylla igniting her dress in some oily inferno versus whatever alliances she hid in the wings. Nervously, she adjusted her gown. “Dr Lundfrigg brings me the vials to test the girls, but there’s nothing illegal in them.”

  “And how did you come by this interesting arrangement?” Sibylla prompted. “With the royal physician, no less.”

  Angeline gave a weary smile. “That’s where you’re mistaken. He was no royal physician when we met. I first glimpsed him sodden with dew in a field, netting butterflies and foraging for chanterelles. He was merely Finchy then, and I a young girl with an ambition.”

  Sibylla attempted to imagine Dr Lundfrigg in such a state, but could not. She knew he’d been knighted somewhat recently, after providing some private medical service to the queen. “So he helped you open a salon?”

  “He did, and with the science to vouch for my girls,” said Angeline proudly. “Only after Lady Esther came looking for him did he become the royal physician. Why she needed him, I know not, nor do I care to learn. He continues to supply me with the means to test my girls, and I’m able to assure the gentlemen who walk through my doors of their premium quality.”

  Whatever bargain Lady Esther had brought to Dr Lundfrigg had earned his loyalty.

  This thoughtless woman before Sibylla showed no concern for the welfare of her wares. Angeline was nothing more than a merchant, trading on the commodity of poor women whose blood happened to turn a clear liquid powder blue. How could she be so callous? Sibylla’s jaw tightened. “Lately, their premium quality hasn’t brought them old age.”

  “If your highness is speaking of Margalotte, Dr Lundfrigg did all he could for her. He may be the royal physician, but he still sees to our care. He even asked for a list to check on those who’d left the salon.”

  So Angeline had given her list to Dr Lundfrigg and thought about it no further. How that led to those women being strangled Sibylla had yet to discover. “I want to see one of those vials,” Sibylla said, crossing her arms. As Angeline moved to the apothecary cabinet, she added, “Perhaps two more.”

  Angeline handed over the vials with a bitter twist to her mouth, then insisted on escorting Sibylla out.

  They found Lieutenant Calloway ensconced in a settee with an Angeline girl trying to sit in his lap while the princes plied him with drinks. Sibylla averted her eyes. The thought of sharing a bloodline with those two ninnies made her seethe.

  Edmund and Edward squinted up at Sibylla, until Edmund erupted in a fit of giggles.

  “You’ve done it at last, Dame!” Edmund declared. “The spitting image of Weed-eyes.”

  “Come here, lass,” Edward slurred. “I want to see what it’s like to kiss my cousin.”

  “I knew it. I knew you were jealous of Edgar.”

  “Edgar? That fop wouldn’t know the backside of a gilt, let alone our Sibylla.”

  “Dear me,” Angeline cooed. “You boys are fiery today.” She seemed to enjoy how Sibylla, unwilling to reveal herself, cringed.

  A sudden curiosity struck Sibylla. “Do you ever test the gentlemen?” she whispered to Angeline.

  Angeline looked aghast. “Certainly not. They’re our clientele. Naturally, we accept men of modest birth with the means to afford our services, but true gentlemen are particularly welcome here.”

  “But you could. For example, my cousins – you could test them.” “What good would that do? Your blood is as blue as theirs. And furthermore, they are my guests… your highness.”

  Her cousins pulled at Lieutenant Calloway’s sleeve to hold him back when he tried to rejoin her. She needed those two idiots’ blood to prove her suspicion. “I understand your salon has a reputation for its thrilling rounds of tallycracker. They say nowhere else compares.”

  Angeline eyed her shrewdly. “That is so.”

  “I wouldn’t mind viewing a match just once. It may even be worth an invitation to tomorrow’s royal ball – I assume you aren’t on the invitation list.”

  “I am not,” Angeline answered. Sibylla waited to see whether she would bite. Angeline snapped her fingers and the chrysanthemum appeared. “Anabelle, prepare the table.”

  Soon a four-legged oak table had been moved to the middle of the drawing room, its surface polished and slick, while one of the girls shuffled the special deck of cards. Lieutenant Calloway found his way to Sibylla’s side, eyeing the room as though any moment he’d be reprimanded.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I need you to make sure they bleed,” Sibylla whispered, handing him the scuffed wooden chase-puck.

  The lieutenant’s attention darted to the two youngest princes. “Your highness?” His cheeks colored.

  Sibylla grabbed ahold of his scarlet uniform. “Have at it. I’ll return your letter, cross my heart, and,” she added pointedly, “forget all I’ve seen here. Or will you let a pair of royal smolts beat you at a man’s game?”

  Lieutenant Calloway’s eyes darkened. “I always win.”

  31

  Roger donned his beaked physician’s mask and pulled up his hood against the freezing rain. He leapt the iron fence into the Tenderbone Internment Ground, and scraped at a patch of recently-filled earth where the newest stiffs were buried. What he’d give for the roof of a well-made crypt to protect him from the wind’s lash.

  A foot of dirt separated the uppermost stiffs from the night air. Tenderbone was not a cemetery so much as a series of trenches packed with corpses in nothing but gunnysack shrouds. The rain had churned the grounds to mud, and Roger’s spade revealed its newest additions – a row of small bundled children. He stayed in the trench just long enough to confirm the only adult buried that day was a soot-blackened chimney sweep.

  As he clambered out of the trench, he doubled over. No amount of garlic could keep him from retching into the bushes. He must have lost the steel lining in his resurrectionist’s stomach from lack of use.

  The bell of St Myrtle’s Cathedral tolled the hour – one in the morning. He’d promised to meet Ada at Sir Bentley Morris’ tomb at two, but so far his search of Tenderbone and Greyweight paupers’ grounds had come up empty.


  Even if Ada had seen her mother taken away alive, Celeste would not have survived into the night. But suppose someone had a reason for removing her from the hospital before her time? He’d seen one instance of premature burial before – Claudine Walston, another former salon girl from Dame Angeline’s. If Claudine hadn’t been a Smith, but ended up in a Smith crypt, then maybe Celeste, who wasn’t a Smith either, had joined her.

  The sunken Dolorous Avenue descended before him. If nothing else, the rain kept the watchmen at home. Down he went, the foliage above him smudging out the sky. The stony fortress of the Smith crypt loomed ahead, its stone queen in command.

  “Still the pretty biscuit, you are,” he murmured. “If I told you I were made a Straybound, would you give up your secrets?”

  The statue proved too coy to respond.

  Roger had left his good lockpick set at Harrod’s, but he’d scrounged an old torsion wrench and half-diamond pick from his garret. The second cracking of a lock always went easier than the first, and the crypt’s mechanism gave way in less than a minute under Roger’s expert manipulation.

  Fishing his last shriveled bit of garlic from his pocket, he placed the clove between his teeth. The crypt door swung outward. He held his hooded lamp aloft and peered into the dark, half-expecting to see Ghostofmary emerge, floured and coal-faced. The interior of the crypt appeared similar to his memory: dusty caskets stacked to the ceiling, the older embellished elm boxes toward the back and newer ones of cheap pine near the front. Claudine’s coffin was still sealed like he’d left it, but now an identical coffin lay stacked on its lid.

  A third new pine box sat next to it, open and with its lid propped upright against one of the stacks. Roger craned forward. Except for a thin layer of sawdust at the bottom, this coffin lay empty.

  He sunk his teeth through the clove of garlic. “May the were-bats that screech in the burial vaults fly to dust in the face of reason,” he whispered. The mask muffled his voice, which veered into falsetto when something brushed his hand. He jumped, nearly knocking over the propped-up lid.