by Ellen Datlow
They arrived in London at the end of April. Mrs. Breen did not make an appearance at the Royal Academy’s Exhibition the next week, preferring instead the privacy of their home on Eaton Place. The Season—no, her life—stretched away before her, illimitable as the Saharan wasteland, and as empty of oasis. She did not ride on Rotten Row. She made no calls, and received none. A new governess, Miss Bell, was hired and Mrs. Breen did not so often have the consolation of her daughter. In the mornings, she slept late; in the evenings, she retreated to her chamber early. And in the afternoons, while Sophie was at her lessons, she wept.
She could see no future. She wanted to die.
The messenger arrived two weeks before First Feast, on Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Breen was in the parlor with Sophie, looking at a picture book, when the footman handed her the envelope. At the sight of the crest stamped into the wax seal, she felt rise up the ghost of her humiliation in Grosvenor Square. Worse yet, she felt the faintest wisp of hope—and that she could not afford. She would expect nothing, she told herself. Most of all, she would not hope.
“Please take Sophie away, Miss Bell,” she said to the governess, and when Sophie protested, Mrs. Breen said, “Mama is busy now, darling.” Her tone brooked no opposition. Miss Bell whisked the child out of the room, leaving Mrs. Breen to unseal the envelope with trembling fingers. She read the note inside in disbelief, then read it again.
“Is the messenger still here?” she asked the footman.
“Yes, madam.”
At her desk, Mrs. Breen wrote a hasty reply, sealed the envelope, and handed it to the footman. “Please have him return this to Lady Donner. And please inform Mr. Breen that I wish to see him.”
“Of course,” the footman said.
Alone, Mrs. Breen read—and re-read—the note yet again. She felt much as she had felt that afternoon in Grosvenor Square: as though reality had shifted in some fundamental and unexpected way, as though everything she had known and believed had to be calibrated anew.
Mr. Breen had been right.
Lady Donner had with a stroke of her pen restored them.
Mr. Breen also had to read the missive twice:
Lord and Lady Donner request the pleasure of the company of Mr. and Mrs.
Breen at First Feast on Saturday, May 29th, 18—, 7:30 P.M. RSVP
Below that, in beautiful script, Lady Donner had inscribed a personal note: Please join us, Alice. We so missed your company last spring. And do bring Sophie.
Mr. Breen slipped the note into the envelope and placed it upon Mrs. Breen’s desk.
“Have you replied?”
“By Lady Donner’s messenger.”
“I trust you have acted with more wisdom this year.”
She turned her face away from him. “Of course.”
“Very well, then. You shall require a new dress, I suppose.”
“Sophie as well.”
“Can it be done in two weeks?”
“I do not know. Perhaps with sufficient inducement.”
“I shall see that the dressmaker calls in the morning. Is there anything else?”
“The milliner, I should think,” she said. “And the tailor for yourself.”
Mr. Breen nodded.
The next morning, the dressmaker arrived as promised. Two dresses! he exclaimed, pronouncing the schedule impossible. His emolument was increased. Perhaps it could be done, he conceded, but it would be very difficult. When presented with still further inducement, he acceded that with Herculean effort he would certainly be able to complete the task. It would require additional seamstresses, of course—
Further terms were agreed to.
The dressmaker made his measurements, clucking in satisfaction. The milliner called, the tailor and the haberdasher. It was all impossible, of course. Such a thing could not be done. Yet each was finally persuaded to view the matter in a different light, and each afterward departed in secret satisfaction, congratulating himself on having negotiated such a generous fee.
The days whirled by. Consultations over fabrics and colors followed. Additional measurements and fittings were required. Mrs. Breen rejoiced in the attention of the couturiers. Her spirits lifted and her beauty, much attenuated by despair, returned almost overnight. Mr. Breen, who had little interest in bespoke clothing and less patience with it, endured the attentions of his tailor. Sophie shook her petticoats in fury and stood upon the dressmaker’s stool, protesting that she did not want to lift her arms or turn around or (most of all) hold still. Miss Bell was reprimanded and told to take a sterner line with the child.
Despite all this, Mrs. Breen was occasionally stricken with anxiety. What if the dresses weren’t ready or proved in some way unsatisfactory?
All will be well, Mr. Breen assured her.
She envied his cool certainty.
The clothes arrived the Friday morning prior to the feast: a simple white dress with sapphire accents for Sophie; a striking gown of midnight blue, lightly bustled, for Mrs. Breen.
Secretly pleased, Mrs. Breen modeled it for her husband—though not without trepidation. Perhaps it was insufficiently modest for such a sober occasion.
All will be well, Mr. Breen assured her.
And then it was Saturday.
Mrs. Breen woke to a late breakfast and afterward bathed and dressed at her leisure. Her maid pinned up her hair in an elaborate coiffure and helped her into her corset. It was late in the afternoon when she at last donned her gown, and later still—they were on the verge of departing—when Miss Bell presented Sophie for her approval.
They stood in the foyer of the great house, Mr. and Mrs. Breen, and Miss Bell, and the child herself—the latter looking, Mr. Breen said with unaccustomed tenderness, as lovely as a star fallen to the Earth. Sophie giggled with delight at this fancy. Yet there was some missing touch to perfect the child’s appearance, Mrs. Breen thought, studying Sophie’s white habiliments with their sapphire accents.
“Shall we go, then?” Mr. Breen said.
“Not quite yet,” Mrs. Breen said.
“My dear—”
Mrs. Breen ignored him. She studied the child’s blonde ringlets. A moment came to her: Lady Donner tying up Sophie’s hair with a deep blue ribbon of embroidered mulberry silk. With excuses to her husband, who made a show of removing his watch from its pocket and checking the time, Mrs. Breen returned to her chamber. She opened her carven wooden box of keepsakes. She found the ribbon folded carefully away among the other treasures she had been unable to look at in the era of her exile: a program from her first opera and a single dried rose from her wedding bouquet, which she had once reckoned the happiest day of her life—before Lady Breen’s First Feast invitation (also present) and the taste of human flesh that it had occasioned. She smoothed the luxuriant silk between her fingers, recalling Lady Donner’s words while the child had admired herself in the gilt mirror.
She partakes of her mother’s beauty.
Mrs. Breen blinked back tears—it would not do to cry—and hastened downstairs, where she tied the ribbon into Sophie’s hair. Mr. Breen paced impatiently as she perfected the bow.
“There,” Mrs. Breen said, with a final adjustment. “Don’t you look lovely?”
Sophie smiled, dimpling her checks, and took her mother’s hand.
“Shall we?” Mr. Breen said, ushering them out the door to the street, where the coachman awaited.
They arrived promptly at seven-thirty.
Sophie spilled out of the carriage the moment the footman opened the door.
“Wait, Sophie,” Mrs. Breen said. “Slowly. Comport yourself as a lady.” She knelt to rub an imaginary speck from the child’s forehead and once again adjusted the bow. “There you go. Perfect. You are the very picture of beauty. Can you promise to be very good for Mama?”
Sophie giggled. “Promise,” she said.
Mr. Breen smiled and caressed the child’s cheek, and then, to Mrs. Breen’s growing anxiety—what if something should go wrong?—Mr. Breen rang the bel
l. He reached down and squeezed her hand, and then the butler was admitting them into the great foyer, and soon afterward, before she had time to fully compose herself, announcing them into the drawing room.
Lady Donner turned to meet them, smiling, and it was as if the incident in Grosvenor Square had never happened. She took Mrs. Breen’s hand. “I am glad you were able to come,” she said. “I have so missed you.” And then, kneeling, so that she could look Sophie in the eye: “Do you remember me, Sophie?”
Sophie, intimidated by the blazing drawing room and the crowd of strangers and this smiling apparition before her, promptly inserted a knuckle between her teeth. She remembered nothing, of course. Lady Donner laughed. She ran her finger lightly over the ribbon and conjured up a sweet, which Sophie was persuaded after some negotiation to take. Then—“We shall talk again soon, darling,” Lady Donner promised—a housemaid ushered the child off to join the other children at the children’s feast. Lady Donner escorted the Breens deeper into the room and made introductions.
It was an exalted company. In short order, Mrs. Breen found herself shaking hands with a florid, toad-like gentleman who turned out to be Lord Stanton, the Bishop of London, and a slim, dapper one whom Lady Donner introduced as the Right Honorable Mr. Daniel Williams, an MP from Oxford. Alone unwived was the radical novelist Charles Foster, whom Mrs. Breen found especially fascinating, having whiled away many an hour over his triple-deckers during her time in exile. The sole remaining guest was the aged Mrs. Murphy, a palsied widow in half-mourning. Mrs. Breen never did work out her precise rank, though she must have been among the lesser great since she and Mr. Breen were the penultimate guests to proceed down to dinner. Mrs. Breen followed, arm in arm with Mr. Foster, whose notoriety had earned him the invitation and whose common origin had determined his place in the procession. Mrs. Breen wished that her companion were of greater rank—that she, too, had not been consigned to the lowest position. Her distress was exacerbated by Mr. Foster’s brazen irreverence. “Fear not, Mrs. Breen,” he remarked in a whisper as they descended, “a time draws near when the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”
Mr. Foster’s reputation as a provocateur, it turned out, was well deserved. His method was the slaughter of sacred cows; his mode was outrage. By the end of the first course (white soup, boiled salmon, and dressed cucumber), he had broached the Woman question. “Take female apparel,” he said. “Entirely impractical except as an instrument of oppression. It enforces distaff reliance upon the male of the species. What can she do for herself in that garb?” he asked, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of an affronted Mrs. Breen.
By the end of the second course (roast fowls garnished with watercresses, boiled leg of lamb, and sea kale), he had launched into the Darwinian controversy. “We are all savage as apes at the core,” he was saying when the footman appeared at his elbow with the entrée. “Ah. What have we here? The pièce de résistance?
He eyed the modest portion on Mrs. Breen’s plate and served himself somewhat more generously. When the servant had moved on down the table, he shot Mrs. Breen a conspiratorial glance, picked up his menu card, and read off the entrée sotto voce: Lightly Braised Fillet of Stripling, garnished with Carrots and Mashed Turnips. “Have you had stripling before, Mrs. Breen?”
She had, she averred, taking in the intoxicating aroma of the dish. Two years ago, she continued, she had been fortunate enough to partake of ensouled flesh at this very table. “And you, Mr. Foster?”
“I have not.”
“It is a rare honor.”
“I think I prefer my honors well done, Mrs. Breen.” Mrs. Breen pursed her lips in disapproval. She did not reply. Undeterred, Mr. Foster said, “Have you an opinion on the Anthropophagic Crisis?”
“I do not think it a woman’s place to opine on political matters, Mr. Foster.”
“You would not, I imagine.”
“I can assure you the Anti-Anthropophagy Bill will never become law, Mr. Foster,” Mr. Williams said. “It is stalled in the Commons, and should it by chance be passed, the Peers will reject it. The eating of ensouled flesh is a tradition too long entrenched in this country.”
“Do you number yourself among the reformers, Mr. Williams?”
“I should think not.”
Mr. Foster helped himself to a bite of the stripling. It was indeed rare. A small trickle of blood ran into his whiskers. He dabbed at it absent-mindedly. The man was repulsive, Mrs. Breen thought, chewing delicately. The stripling tasted like manna from Heaven, ambrosia, though perhaps a little less tender—and somewhat more strongly flavored—than her last meal of ensouled flesh.
“It is good,” Mr. Foster said. “Tastes a bit like pork. What do shipwrecked sailors call it? Long pig?”
Lady Stanton gasped. “Such a vulgar term,” she said. “Common sailors have no right.”
“Even starving ones?”
“Are rightfully executed for their depravity,” Lord Donner pointed out.
“I hardly think the Anthropophagic Crisis is proper conversation for this table, Mr. Foster,” said Mr. Breen.
“I can think of no table at which it is more appropriate.” Another heaping bite. “It is a pretty word, anthropophagy. Let us call it what it is: cannibalism.”
“It is a sacred ritual,” Mrs. Murphy said.
“And cannibalism is such an ugly word, Mr. Foster,” Lord Donner said. “For an ugly practice,” Mr. Foster said.
Lady Donner offered him a wicked smile. She prided herself on having an interesting table. “And yet I notice that you do not hesitate to partake.”
“Curiosity provides the food the novelist feeds upon, Lady Donner. Even when the food is of an unsavory nature. Though this”—Mr. Foster held up his laden fork—“this is quite savory, I must admit. My compliments to your cook.”
“I shall be sure to relay them,” Lady Donner said.
“Yet, however savory it might be,” he continued, “we are eating a creature with a soul bestowed upon it by our common Creator. We acknowledge it with our very name for the flesh we partake of at this table.”
“Dinner?” Mrs. Williams said lightly, to a ripple of amusement.
Mr. Foster dipped his head and lifted his glass in silent toast. “I was thinking rather of ensouled flesh.”
Mrs. Breen looked up from her plate. “I should think First Feast would be meaningless absent ensouled flesh, Mr. Foster,” she said. “It would be a trivial occasion if we were eating boiled ham.”
The bishop laughed. “These are souls of a very low order.”
“He that has pity upon the poor lends unto the Lord,” Mr. Foster said.
“The Lord also commands us to eat of his body, yes? There is a scripture for every occasion, Mr. Foster. The Catholics believe in transubstantiation, as you know.” Lord Stanton helped himself to a morsel of stripling. “Ours is an anthropophagic faith.”
“My understanding is that the Church of England reads the verse metaphorically.”
“Call me High Church, then,” Lord Stanton said, stifling a belch. There was general laughter at this sally, a sense that the bishop had scored a point.
Mr. Foster was unperturbed. “Are you suggesting that our Savior enjoins us to eat our fellow men?”
“I would hardly call them our fellow men,” Lady Stanton said.
“They are human, are they not?” Mr. Foster objected.
“Given us, like the beasts of the field,” Lord Donner remarked, “for our use and stewardship. Surely an ardent evolutionist such as yourself must understand the relative ranks of all beings. The poor will always be with us, Mr. Foster. As Lord Stanton has said, they are of a lower order.”
“Though flesh of a somewhat higher order may be especially pleasing to the palate,” Lady Donner said.
Mr. Williams said, “This must be flesh of a very high order indeed, then.”
“It is of the highest, Mr. Williams. Let me assure you on that score.” Lady Donner smiled down the table at Mrs. Bre
en. “You have partaken of ensouled flesh at our table before, Mrs. Breen. I trust tonight’s meal is to your taste.”
“It is very good indeed, my lady,” Mrs. Breen said, looking down at her plate with regret. She would have to stop now. She had already eaten too much.
“And how would you compare it with your previous repast?”
Mrs. Breen put down her fork. “Somewhat more piquant, I think.”
“Gamy might be a better word,” Mr. Williams put in.
“As it should be,” Lady Donner said, looking squarely at Mrs. Breen. “It was taken wild.”
Mrs. Breen was quiet on the way home.
The hatbox sat on the shadowy bench beside her, intermittently visible in the fog-muted light of the passing streetlamps. Outside, a downpour churned the cobbled streets into torrents of feculent muck, but the First Day revels continued along the riverfront, fireworks blooming like iridescent flowers in the overcast sky. Mrs. Breen stared at the window, watching the rain sew intersecting threads upon the glass and thinking of her last such journey, the shattered window, the blood upon the cobbles. She wondered idly what such a debased creature’s flesh would have tasted like, and leaned into her husband’s comfortable bulk, his heat.
After the meal, the men had lingered at the table over port. In the drawing room, Lady Donner had been solicitous of Mrs. Breen’s comfort. “You must stay for a moment after the other guests have departed,” she’d said, settling her on a sofa and solemnly adjuring her to call within the week. “And you must join us in our carriage to the Ascot next month,” she said, squeezing Mrs. Breen’s hand. “I insist.”
There had been no need to open the hatbox she’d handed Mrs. Breen as the butler showed them out. It had been uncommonly heavy.
Mrs. Breen sighed, recalling her husband’s confidence in their restoration.
“This was your doing,” she said at last.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Letters,” he said. “A delicate negotiation, though one somewhat mitigated, I think, by Lady Donner’s fondness for you.”
