by Emma Newman
Cathy parked the hire car a short walk away from the house where Miss Rainer worked and twisted round to check on Sophia.
“She’s fast asleep,” Lucy said.
“Thanks for coming to help,” Cathy said, smiling, and felt the nerves catch her breath. “I’ll be as quick as I can, then afterwards we’ll go to Kew Gardens and wake her up. She won’t even know we’ve been here.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her, don’t worry,” Lucy replied. “Go, and good luck!”
Cathy closed the car door as quietly as she could and looked up and down the mundane suburban street. It was lined with trees still clinging to the last of their autumnal leaves and parked cars ready for the daily commute. Bathed in the grey light of the pre-dawn, the silent street made Cathy long for Manchester again and the fresh potential that filled every early morning there.
The painting Charm had arrived late the previous evening, locked in a box, and delivered to the house by a young boy. The key had arrived by Letterboxer soon afterward. Inside the box was a beautiful turquoise bottle made of Venetian glass—she knew the Shopkeeper only used it for the most expensive Charms—with a flame-shaped stopper, along with a tiny sable brush. An accompanying note read;
Catherine,
You are officially the first customer to receive such a rare and expensive Charm without having paid for it first. I trust you will come to see me to discuss the price at your earliest convenience.
Should you have need of the Charm before then, you should know this: its effects will last anywhere between twenty-four hours and twenty-four days, depending on how much affinity your own abilities have with one of the critical ingredients. Side-effects include insomnia, mania, depression, hallucinations—auditory and visual—and becoming a bore. I beg you to arrange for private time away from guests and social obligations before you use it.
When you have your materials to hand and are ready to create, simply dip the brush into the bottle and paint its contents onto your eyelids, the skin above your heart, the palms of your hands and lastly your fingertips. You may experience the customary tingling associated with powerful magic.
I hope it is sufficient for your needs, and look forward to seeing you at the Emporium forthwith.
Yours sincerely,
S.
Cathy was eager to use it but, fearful the side-effects would render her useless in the search for Miss Rainer, she decided to wait until the day was over. Early morning would be the best time to find her. As a scullery maid it would be Rainer’s responsibility to draw the water for the household’s morning routine. In the past that would have involved carrying buckets to a hand pump but now that Mundanus had entered the modern age it meant Miss Rainer would be filling buckets in the anchor property’s kitchen to take through into the Nether reflection of the house.
The thought of her tutor’s brilliant mind being squandered on menial tasks infuriated Cathy. There was no way she would let the Agency continue to treat her this way and if they proved to be a problem then Cathy planned to help Rainer escape into Mundanus too.
The house was a detached Victorian villa on three storeys and was a rather modest anchor property. Cathy didn’t know anyone from the Ranunculus family personally but she knew they weren’t the most successful of the Great Families and were often overlooked. They hadn’t made Dame Iris’s list of important people to know in Londinium and Cathy envied their anonymity.
After one last glance up the street Cathy hurried up the sloped driveway and darted down the side of the house. The kitchen would be at the rear, overlooking the back garden, and out of sight of the neighbours. The side gate was locked but not too high to be climbed over and Cathy dropped onto the other side feeling like an amateur burglar.
There were French doors that led onto the garden but the curtains were still drawn so she couldn’t see into the house. Cathy tiptoed across to crouch beneath the kitchen window and listen for any noises within. Just as she was about to peep over the windowsill there was the muffled clank of a metal bucket being put into the sink and the sound of water splashing into it.
Cathy slowly curled her fingertips over the windowsill and raised herself up to peep over the edge of the window frame, just in case Miss Rainer wasn’t the one drawing the water that morning.
But it was her! Her hair was different, now tied back in a tight bun, and she looked more pale and tired than Cathy remembered but it was definitely Miss Rainer. Cathy straightened up and tapped on the window excitedly. Miss Rainer jumped but didn’t drop the empty bucket she was holding.
Cathy searched for the flash of recognition and the smile she’d imagined receiving upon their reunion but there was nothing of the sort on Rainer’s face. Perhaps it was hard for her to see out into the murky dawn with the lights on inside. Cathy pointed at the back door and Miss Rainer nodded, setting down the bucket to go over and unlock it.
“Miss Rainer!” Cathy whispered as soon as the door opened.
“Can I help you?”
Cathy’s exuberance imploded. “It’s me, Catherine. Your student.”
Miss Rainer’s eyes narrowed and looked up in the way they used to when she was considering the best way to explain a difficult concept. “Catherine? That name’s familiar…did we work at the same house once?”
Cathy struggled to speak as her chest tightened. “You were my governess for over ten years!”
“I’m a scullery maid, Miss Catherine. Do you want me to fetch the governess for you?”
“No! You were mine, don’t you remember?” Cathy wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her until Miss Rainer looked and spoke like her old self again. It was like speaking to nothing but a physical copy of her and it was terrifying. “I was called Catherine Rhoeas-Papaver then, we lived in Bath—in Aquae Sulis—don’t you remember?”
“Papaver…” Rainer whispered and Cathy thought she could see something of her governess in her features, just for a moment. “That is familiar…”
“You gave me The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and we talked about it for hours. You taught me about Emmeline Pankhurst and Virginia Woolf and Aphra Behn! Don’t you remember any of it?”
Miss Rainer’s brow creased. “You’re upset.”
“Of course I am!” Cathy croaked. “You were everything to me. You made me what I am!”
“Catherine Rhoeas-Papaver…” Miss Rainer said again and looked down. “The floor.” She pointed at a patio flagstone. “Something important in the floor.”
“What do you mean?” Cathy felt a glimmer of hope again. The Agency had done something terrible to her, but something remained, she was sure of it. Perhaps she’d been drugged. If she could get her away from the house and somewhere safe—
“Something important,” Miss Rainer said and bent down to take off her shoe.
Cathy felt sick as she watched the broken shadow of her hero fumble with a stocking and peel it off her leg. She wanted to find Bennet and smash his face into a wall until he confessed what they did to make her this way. She wanted to go to Elizabeth and dangle her out of a window by her hair until she really understood how much hurt she’d caused by telling Father about Miss Rainer’s unorthodox lessons.
“Catherine.” Miss Rainer’s voice pulled her out of her rage. Rainer was now sitting on the back step with one foot bare, her skirt hitched above her knee. She was pointing at a scar on her thigh in the rough shape of a diamond. “Something important in the floor.”
“What does that mean?” Cathy crouched down. “Who did that to you?”
“Me,” Rainer replied. “To remember.”
“Remember what?” The vacant shrug of Rainer’s shoulders made her want to cry.
Cathy pulled the hem of the skirt down to cover the scar and restore Miss Rainer’s modesty. She threw her arms around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry. I’ll find out what they did to you and I’ll make you better, I promise. I swear it, Miss Rainer, I swear I will.” She wept.
“Shhh.” Miss Rainer patted her back awkwardly. �
��Don’t cry. I’m fit as a fiddle. But I do have to go, otherwise I’ll get into trouble.”
Cathy released her and helped Miss Rainer to stand after she’d put her stocking back on. “Do you remember me at all?”
“You’re…familiar,” Miss Rainer finally replied but Cathy wasn’t sure if she only said that to make her feel better. “But it doesn’t matter, not as much as you think.”
“What does matter?”
Miss Rainer looked up at the sky again. “The work,” she finally replied and, after an uncertain smile, went back into the house and locked the door.
Cathy stumbled out of the garden and over the side gate. She walked a little way down the road before she had to sit on the kerb with her head in her hands. She let the grief take her, unable to hold it inside any more.
Cars drove past and a woman out walking her dog stopped to ask if she was all right. Cathy mumbled a lie to evade any further attention and dried her eyes as the woman carried on. Cathy watched the dog snuffling at the kerb and breathed in the morning air, steadying herself. She couldn’t run away, not now, not knowing what she did. Then she was grieving for a life she knew she could never have again.
Eventually, Cathy stood and blew her nose. “Time to stop pissing about,” she whispered to herself and went back to the car as her thoughts settled around a different plan of action. Sophia was still asleep and Lucy was supposedly reading a guide to flower arranging.
“How’d it go?” Lucy asked as Cathy got in and put her seatbelt on. “Did you find her?”
“No,” Cathy replied. “But I found something important.” She looked over her shoulder at Lucy. “You were right about me. I thought I was the only woman who doesn’t fit in. I think I liked that, because I thought I was better than everyone for seeing through it all. I was so obsessed with getting out that I didn’t give a sod about anyone else. That was selfish; I see that now. I’ve been a childish idiot.”
Lucy reached forward to squeeze her shoulder gently. “You thought you were alone, but you’re not, do you see?”
“Oh, I see all right. I’m not going to run away again.” Even as she said the words they caught in her throat. “I can’t, there’s too much to be done in the Nether. It’s not just the way women are treated—the Agency is dodgy as fuck and they’re doing terrible things to people and I’ve just ignored it all. We shouldn’t be treating people that way, not in the twenty-first century.”
Lucy grinned. “You said it.”
Cathy tried to smile back but the thought of staying in the Nether to fight the patriarchy and unearth the secrets of the Agency made her feel sick to the stomach. She wasn’t cut out for this, she wasn’t a great thinker or a great writer. She was just an angry woman who read weird books and couldn’t handle life in Society. How could she make a difference?
But maybe that’s what all of those women before her had thought before they went on to fight the system. They had found the strength and the courage to speak up and challenge the establishment despite the impact on their own lives. Rainer had taken a terrible risk to teach her things she wasn’t supposed to know and had lost everything as a result. Cathy knew that if she gave in to her own fear it would make Miss Rainer’s suffering worthless.
She just had to be brave and work hard. “The work” as Rainer had said it echoed in Cathy’s mind. Yes, she thought, that is the most important thing. The work.
22
The potion tasted faintly of onions. It burned Cathy’s throat as it went down like the rough whisky she’d tried at an awful student party in Manchester. The canvas and paints were laid out before her and she’d told Morgan to bring her tea every hour, on the hour, until she retired. She had no idea how long it would take to paint the picture for Lord Poppy, nor any idea where to start. She’d only just managed to stop crying about the state Miss Rainer was in now. She had to satisfy Poppy if she wanted a chance to help her.
Then, as the burning faded in her chest, she knew where to put the first line. Cathy picked up the pencil and began sketching out the Royal Crescent in Bath, barely looking at the book she’d obtained to guide her. By the time Morgan arrived with the first round of tea, the shape of the painting was described in faint graphite lines and she knew exactly what to do next.
“Morgan,” she said as she reached for the brush, “I'm going to need cake. Lots of cake.’
Amelia listened for footsteps on the stairs, knowing that Will was expected for another late morning meeting with Cornelius. She’d wasted days and lost sleep wondering why he’d snubbed her after his last meeting with her brother. Now she was busy at the dressing table trying to hide the shadows under her eyes with makeup.
Loud thuds sounded more like Cornelius in a rush. She sighed and applied her blusher, trying not to see it as painting her face like a whore.
He still managed to knock, but entered before she’d even called him in. “Cornelius!”
He shut the door. “Will’s on his way.”
She twisted round to frown at him. “I know.” His fist was clenched around a note. “What’s that?”
He strode over to the fire and threw the single piece of letter paper onto it. He didn’t answer until he was satisfied it was ash. “I’m not going to tell you what it said, only how it affects you. Darling, we must keep Will here today.”
“How long for?”
“As long as we can. I can occupy him for an hour or two easily. When I send for mid-morning refreshments you must come and join us and persuade him to spend some time with you.”
“He didn’t seem interested when he last visited.”
“There’s a lot to distract him, so you must be persuasive today.”
She stared at her reflection in the mirror. She did look like a whore.
“I’m sorry to ask, but it’s critical.” He came over and kissed the curls arranged to emphasise her slender neck. “Not long now, darling. We’ll look back on this time and marvel at how awful it was, and how it never will be like it again. I promise.”
She nodded as the sound of the bell downstairs made him dart to the door. “I won’t let you down, Cornelius.” She made herself smile at the kiss he blew to her and listened to him going back down the stairs more slowly. She heard him greet Will casually, like everything was normal.
Amelia looked down at her trembling hands. She knew why she had to keep him there: to keep him away from Catherine. It was the day everything would change for Will, for Cornelius and ultimately for her. She knew it would take time for Will to recover from the death of his wife, but not as long as someone in love would take. Amelia was used to playing the long game. She could wait.
As she checked her face in the mirror, she wondered what Thorn would do to Catherine. A frown creased the skin above her nose and she swiftly corrected it. She didn’t want Catherine to suffer. She hoped it would be quick and painless, like one would slaughter a beast for meat. She closed her eyes. What a perfectly despicable thing to think.
She thought back to the brief conversation she’d tried to have with Catherine on the night everything collapsed in Aquae Sulis. She only wanted to check that the glamours used to disguise the Lavandula décor had been done to perfection, simply to put her mind at rest.
There was also curiosity about Will’s fiancée and the need to check Catherine wasn’t going to be a problem. It was clear early in their conversation that she cared nothing for Will and seemed to be in a strange world of her own, incapable of having the most basic of conversations without tripping up. How the families could have decided she was the best match for Will still confounded Amelia. Will was evidently destined for great things—why pair him off with someone as plain and incapable as Catherine?
Satisfied she looked as good as possible, Amelia went to the cheval mirror and inspected her outfit. It wouldn’t do. It had been selected for an average day, not one when she’d have to use everything in her arsenal. She chose another and then rang for the maid, all the while worrying about the tiny amount of perfume lef
t in the bottle. Once she had more freedom it would be a trifling matter to obtain the Charm from the Shopkeeper again. She had no idea how long that would be and whether there would be another time she’d need it more before then. Having control over Will’s affections as he grieved would be critical.
The maid arrived and helped change her clothes and tidied her hair. Half an hour had passed already. “Would you be so kind as to let me know when Cornelius rings for elevenses? I’d like to join them instead of taking it in my room today.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The maid curtsied and left Amelia to pace the room and obsess about the perfume. Before long, she was informed of the request for tea and after one last check of her reflection she descended the stairs and went to the drawing room.
“I thought my friendship with Oli, not to mention my helping his family, would count for something.” Will sounded irritated. “I can only imagine Peonia has had his head filled with absurd promises by the Wisteria idiot.”
“May I join you?” Amelia asked as the tea and sandwiches were brought in.
Will stood; she offered her hand and he kissed it. It was the first time she’d been in a room with both her lover and her brother and she didn’t like the way it made her feel obliged to act in two different ways at once.
“Trouble with the Wisterias?” she asked, seating herself next to Cornelius so she could flirt with Will without her brother seeing every detail.
“And the Peonias,” Will said. “They’ve teamed up and are being perfectly odious.”
Amelia poured the tea, taking the opportunity to put herself at the centre of attention. It had worked so well in Aquae Sulis Will had positively slavered at the sight of her. But today he seemed distant and when she looked up from the teapot he wasn’t even looking at her. He looked very tired. Perhaps the strain was taking its toll.
