The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee

  Dante beams.

  The bookstore is not library-sized, which is disappointing, but it boasts a good selection. Crowded shelves are packed into rambling rows, excess inventory stacked at random intervals along the floor. Behind the counter, a headmastery-looking man with majestic jowls glowers. He looks like a bit of a traditionalist, the sort that wouldn’t take queries from a lady or a Negro boy, nor think either of them has any place in a bookshop, so I sally forth alone.

  I opt for a daft-but-earnest approach—lead with a smile and a stumble and my shoulders pushed up to make me look smaller and less threatening. Though I’m not particularly large or threatening to begin with.

  “Good morning,” I say in French.

  The bookseller tips his bridge specs from his nose and tucks them into his pocket. “May I help you?”

  “Yes, actually I was wondering—it’s a bit of a slim chance—but if you happened to know what a Lazarus Key is? Or if you have any books on it?”

  The bookseller blinks. “Are you making a Biblical reference?”

  “Am I?” I laugh. He does not. “I don’t know.”

  “Lazarus is the man Christ raises from the dead, detailed in the eleventh chapter of John in the New Testament.”

  “Oh.” That hadn’t occurred to me. I’ve never been an attentive scholar of the Bible, my father being a deist and my mother being of an anxious disposition that manifests most prominently before disagreeable church services. “Yes, perhaps I am.”

  “Then I suggest you study the Bible.”

  He looks ready to tuck back into the demanding occupation of scowling, but I press on. “What about Baseggio puzzle boxes?” I show him the dimples. “Do you know about those?”

  He is—tragically—immune. “No.”

  “Do you know what they are?”

  “Young man, do I bear resemblance to an encyclopedia?”

  “No. Sorry.” I duck my head in surrender. “Thank you for your help.”

  I start to walk away, but then he calls, “We do have a small section on Venetian history.”

  I turn back. “Venetian history?”

  “It’s a Venetian name—Baseggio. A patronymic from a Venetian diminutive of the surname Basile. Perhaps you might begin your search there.”

  “A patronymic diminutive of . . . that, yes.” I understand less than half the words in that sentence, but God bless the book people for their boundless knowledge absorbed from having words instead of friends. “Yes, thank you. I’ll try that.”

  “Young man,” he calls, and I turn back again. He gives me a nod, head bobbing though his jowls all hold their formation. “Good luck.”

  So perhaps not entirely immune to the dimples after all.

  “Anything?” Percy asks as I return to where he and Felicity are waiting.

  “Baseggio is a Venetian name,” I reply. “And Lazarus might be from the Bible.”

  Felicity claps a hand to her forehead. “I should have thought of that.”

  “So I suppose we can each take one of those,” I say. “Bible and Venice and then the alchemy book, and see what we can find.”

  “I’ve the alchemy,” Felicity says.

  “Venice,” Percy says quickly.

  I moan. “Please don’t make me read the Bible.”

  Percy gives me a wide smile and touches one finger to the tip of my nose. “Should have spoken faster.”

  We spend the afternoon in our respective corners of the bookshop. I read John 11 twice, then do a skim of the surrounding pages to see if any further mention is given to that Lazarus character, though it devolves quickly into less of me reading and more me trying to stay awake—the bookstore is warm and the chair comfortable and exhaustion is a houseguest that has rather overstayed its welcome.

  When a bell tower down the way chimes the hour, I stand, stretch my arms over my head, then go to find Percy, first casting a quick glance around for the jowly book minder, who might be less than keen on the fact that I left my readings scattered across the floor instead of shelving them again, but he’s still holding court behind the counter.

  Percy’s at a table by the window, bent over a book with his palms clamped over his ears, the green glass panes casting a jeweled sheen upon his face. He doesn’t look up when I sit down across the table, until I nudge his shin with my foot and he starts rather spectacularly. “You scared me.”

  “Very engrossed in your reading. Did you find anything useful?”

  “Abso-bloody-lutely nothing.” He tips the cover shut with a dusty slap. “Not even a mention of the name or a family. Perhaps Baseggio isn’t Venetian after all. You?”

  “Nothing about a key, though there’s quite a lot about that Lazarus chap. One of Christ’s showier miracles, apparently.”

  Percy laughs. “Oh, please do tell me your version of this story.”

  I lean forward on my elbows, and Percy mirrors me, hands knotted before him. “So Jesus and Lazarus are chums, right? And while Jesus is off preaching, He gets a shout from Lazarus’s two sisters, Mary and Martha, letting Him know that Lazarus is not long for this world—”

  “Mary and Martha?” Percy repeats. “I don’t remember that.”

  “Should have paid more attention in your Sunday services. So Jesus doesn’t come, and Lazarus dies, and he’s been decaying for days when the man himself finally shows up at the tomb—”

  “There’s an island,” Percy interrupts.

  “No it’s not, it’s a tomb.”

  “Not in the Bible—in Venice. I read about it in one of the books—an island off the coast with a chapel on it called Sante Maria e Marta.”

  The room seems to hush around us, the soft flutter of pages suddenly shivering and ghostly. “Mary and Martha,” I say.

  “Lazarus’s sisters.”

  “Probably a coincidence.”

  “Probably,” he says, though neither of us sounds as though we really believe that.

  We both let that seep into us for a moment like ink into blotting paper. Outside the window, the sun shifts behind a cloud, casting the room into shadow. Then, under the table, Percy nudges my shin with his foot. “So. Tell me the end.”

  “The end of what?”

  “After Christ shows up at Lazarus’s tomb.”

  “Oh! So the man Himself shows up at Lazarus’s tomb, and the sisters and their friends are all wondering what He’s doing there, for Lazarus is very dead by then. And Jesus asks the sisters if they believe in Him and God and life after death and all that and they say, ‘Yes, fine, but it would have been brilliant if You’d come when we first called because then our brother might still be alive.’ And then Jesus says, ‘Well, watch this’—”

  “Really? Well, watch this?”

  “That’s biblical language.”

  “If your Bible is written by Henry Montague.” He’s grinning at me, and I open my mouth to reply, but realize suddenly that beneath the table he’s still got his foot on my leg—it’s such a light touch I don’t notice it until he shifts, toe hooking around the back of my calf, which knocks me straight off course, thoughts dashed to pieces against his touch.

  “Ah, it’s something like that.” His foot slides down my leg, pulling my sock out of place and dear God it is stirring in me every sinful desire that I’m rather sure the Bible frowns upon. “It’s ‘Take away the stone’ or something like that, but my version is a bit better.”

  “Did you say your version is a bit better than the Bible?”

  “Well, the Bible’s stale.”

  “Not sure what God’s going to make of that assessment.”

  I swallow as his foot shifts against my leg again. I’m starting to sweat from the effort of keeping still. “I think I’m going to have worse than revising scripture to answer for when He and I meet.”

  He laughs, closemouthed and breathy. “So Lazarus comes back from the dead? Is that how it ends?”

  “Walks out of the tomb as though nothing was ever wrong.”

  We look at each other across
the table. Our faces feel closer than they did when I first sat down, both of us with our hands clasped before us like we’re praying over supper. Percy’s got such fine hands—larger than mine, with thin, graceful fingers and round knuckles a bit too big for him, like a puppy still growing into its paws. For a delirious moment, I am possessed by the insanity the poets hath called love, and it makes me want to reach forward and take both those hands in mine—he has got his foot making its torturous ascent upward, after all, which feels like an invitation—but before I can, he frowns suddenly and peers under the table. “Has that been your leg all this while?”

  “What?”

  He unhooks his foot from around my calf. “I thought it was the chair. Sorry about that. Dear Lord, why didn’t you say something?”

  Before I can reply, there’s a flump at the end of the table and we both start. Felicity has slammed her alchemy book down between us and is standing over it with her palms flat on the cover and her elbows straight.

  “Did you finish already?” Percy asks her. In the second I looked away from him, he’s gone and tucked those fine hands out of sight.

  “I skimmed,” she replies. “And I knew some from the lecture. It’s scientifically sound, as far as I can tell, though I’d always heard alchemy was being disproved. Mostly his book is a summary of the principles—the purification of objects and returning them to their most perfect state. But then there’s a chapter at the end—hardly even a real chapter, it’s a practically a footnote—about artificial panaceas.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “One of the pillars of alchemy is creating a single item or compound that heals all ailments and restores the body to its perfect state,” she explains. “There’s no universal one in existence—mostly they’re plants and things that work as antidotes to a wide range of poisons.”

  “Like the chemicals in the study,” Percy offers.

  “Right. But it seems that when Mateu Robles died, his work was primarily focused upon the creation of a universal panacea that synthesized inside a human heart.”

  “How would that work?” I ask.

  “Well, his theory is that the component missing from previous attempts to create a panacea was life. He believed that were the correct alchemical reaction to occur within it, a beating heart could be turned into a sort of philosopher’s stone, and then the blood pumped from that heart would take on the same healing properties.”

  I scrub my hands through my hair, tearing a few strands from its queue. A beating heart and open veins is an altogether different thing than the chemicals in a vial I was expecting.

  “What if he succeeded?” Percy asks. “Maybe whatever’s in the box has something to do with finding the person with that heart—or making it. Perhaps that’s what the duke is after.”

  “It seems ill-advised for one man to have access to something like that—particularly one with his hands in so many political pies.” Felicity looks over at me and scowls. “What’s that face for?”

  “What face?”

  “You look put out.”

  “Just thinking about all that blood.” I nearly shudder. “Doesn’t it make you a bit squeamish?”

  “Ladies haven’t the luxury of being squeamish about blood,” she replies, and Percy and I go fantastically red in unison.

  18

  The opera is Friday evening—Helena reminds us over breakfast that morning. Dante nearly faints. I have a strong sense both that this is his first time out of the house in a long while, and that he’s not going willingly.

  We haven’t clothes fit for the outing, so Dante lends Percy a wine-colored suit—noticeably too short in the sleeves, but they’re built similar enough that it’s passable. I get black silk breeches and an emerald coat that swallows me, but it’s the only thing that fits in the tails and the cuffs, after I roll them. Twice. “It’s my father’s,” Dante says, with seemingly no understanding of how disconcerting it is to be wearing a dead man’s clothes.

  When I come into the bedroom, all attempts to convince my shoulders to fill out a smidge abandoned, Percy’s perched upon the bed, still not dressed. He’s got one leg pulled under him and his violin clenched between his chin and his shoulder. A set of weathered sheet music is spread before him.

  “Is that the music Dante picked?” I ask.

  He nods, the violin bobbing. “It doesn’t translate as well as I hoped—it’s all written for the glasses. Well old-fashioned, too.”

  “Let me hear.”

  He twists the end of his bow, arranges his fingers, then plays the first line of the song. It’s got a formal sound to it, swallowed and courtly, until Percy confuses his fingering and the strings squeak. He whips the violin out from beneath his chin with a frown, then tries the measure again, plucking out the strings instead of bowing them, with no real mind for the timing.

  “That was beautiful,” I say.

  Percy jabs me with his bow, right to the stomach, and I flinch with a laugh. “You are a menace.”

  “What’s that one called?”

  He squints at the title. “The ‘Vanitas Vanitatum.’ Oh.” His brow creases. “This is the song.”

  “What song?”

  “The one Dante mentioned. The summoning song, for the spirits of the dead.”

  “Trying to call the soul of Mateu Robles? He might be the only one in this damn house willing to tell us about his work.”

  Percy sets his violin on the bed, then reaches for the clean shirt laid over the headboard, already pulling his arm through his own sleeve. “How soon are we leaving?”

  “Ah, not sure,” I reply, forcing myself to avert my eyes as he pulls the shirt over his head. “I’ll meet you below, shall I?” I snatch up my shoes from beside the door and flee. I’ll not torment myself with a half-naked Percy any more than is absolutely necessary. Entirely clothed Percy is almost more than I can bear.

  Dante seemed to be hoping that if he sulked above-stairs for long enough, he might be accidentally left behind, and I can’t imagine Helena is very quick in dressing without a maid, so I assume I’ll be the first one down. The study door is shut, and I pause beside it, tempted to try the handle.

  My fingers brush the latch when, from behind the door, I hear Dante’s voice, pitched in a whine. I nearly jump out of my skin.

  “Why does it matter if we keep them here?”

  “We need to wait . . . ,” I hear Helena say, but the rest of her sentence is drowned out by Percy starting up with the violin again from above. I wish dearly I could throw something at him through the floorboards. I lean in to the door, pressing my ear flat against it.

  “Perhaps they can—they can be persuaded. Into silence. Or they aren’t interested.”

  “They’re obviously interested.”

  “But they seem so reasonable.”

  “Haven’t you learned yet that many seemingly reasonable people are far from it?” There’s a shuffling click, like pearls sliding against each other as a strand is tugged. “You’ll see him tonight. We’re running out of time.”

  “What if he isn’t—”

  “I’m certain he’ll be there—he always goes to play with the magistrates.”

  “Then you—”

  “He won’t speak to me anymore. I’ve pestered him too often. It has to be you.”

  “But . . . I don’t . . .”

  “Please, Dante. If he could only come home . . .”

  A shuffling. Dante mumbles something I can’t make out.

  “You’d let him rot away without trying everything?” Helena hisses. “We keep them here until—” The door opens suddenly and I about go face-first into Helena’s breasts, an impropriety so grand it might distract from my being caught eavesdropping. I catch myself on the door frame and straighten, making a fruitless attempt at playing casual. Helena and Dante are both at the threshold of the study, Helena with one hand down the front of her dress, adjusting the tucker. Her sacque gown is pale pink, the color of rose quartz, with a pannier beneath and
her waist pulled so narrow that everything else is pushed upward. Suddenly, nosing into her breasts doesn’t seem like such a terrible fate.

  “I thought you were above,” she says.

  “No, just . . . waiting.” We stare at each other for a moment longer. I adopt my best I was certainly not eavesdropping smile. Helena’s eyes narrow.

  “Coach,” Dante murmurs, and darts down the hallway. The front door slams so hard the vials in the study cabinet tremble.

  Thank God Percy appears on the stairs behind me at that moment, his violin case under one arm. “I think I’ve—Oh, where’s Dante gone? I thought I heard him.”

  “Hailing a coach,” Helena replies, shouldering past me and into the hallway. “We need to go.”

  “Yes.” Percy sets his violin inside the study door. “Felicity should be down soon.”

  Helena is still staring at me. “That coat,” she says suddenly.

  Fashion was the last thing I expected her to remark upon. I shift in the shoulders, and the whole thing settles upon me like a snowdrift. “Bit big.”

  “It’s my father’s.”

  “Oh, Dante said I could—”

  “I know,” she says, turning down the hallway before I can see her face. “Just a statement of fact.”

  We arrive at the opera too early to be fashionably late. The singing hasn’t begun, but the footlights are being trimmed. The opera house is bright and chaotic, far less gaudy than the one in Paris but twice as loud. The chandeliers glimmer like sunlight on water. The footman’s gallery is stuffed, aisles crowded with young men coasting up and down for company. In the boxes, women play cards and eat cream-filled pastries brought to them on silver trays. Men are discussing politics. When the singing begins, the noise is amplified as everyone raises their voices to be heard over it. The standing crowd on the stage kick their legs and shuffle from foot to foot, already weary.

  Percy and I don’t go to the Robleses’ box—instead I drag him to the gambling hall attached to one of the upper galleries, looking down over the audience, so we can have a private chat about what I overheard and conspire on what to do.

  Felicity put up a fuss at being left behind, mostly in whispers as we climbed the stairs with her hand on my arm, so Dante and Helena prancing ahead wouldn’t overhear. “I want to come with you.”