Mad Miss Mimic

by Sarah Henstra

  Daisy. Not the Daisy of my invention, that theatrical ghost girl with whom I’d frightened Curtis into letting me escape. The real Daisy. The sick one, languishing in the surgery at Hastings House. Withered, hollow-eyed, flayed from the inside with craving for Daniel’s drug. I remembered leaning over her body in that bed, wincing at the smell and thinking how easily our fates might be reversed. Perhaps, I considered now, it was not a question of reversal, exactly. Perhaps there was only a downward force, a greedy, hungering force in the world like a vacuum. It would grasp anyone it could and drag her into its vortex and suck her life away. Perhaps anyone who strayed from the story of her life even by a single page—or a single word—could be caught like this and dragged down.

  Paradoxically there had been real pleasure in Daisy’s eyes that day at the surgery. I remembered feeling uncomfortable at the soaring, sensual pleasure the girl evidently felt with Dr. Dewhurst’s medicine in her blood. I wondered if perhaps I had felt moments of such pleasure—perhaps under Mr. Thornfax’s gaze, under his touch? At the opera, maybe, or at Whitehall. The joy of dissolution.

  I leaned closer to the mirror, thinking that the greatest strangeness in my new appearance was my eyes. I imagined at first that the irises had changed colour. But it was less tangible than that: a depth, I thought, a darkness. A drowning. Could a drowning reveal itself in one’s eyes?

  Nearly nine weeks had passed since I was rescued from the Thames. Only at that moment, gazing at my reflection, was I able to take the full measure of how that night had changed me. I decided I was glad of my ravaged appearance. It mirrored the state of my mind, of my heart. At least I was not wearing a mask.

  The ride to the Kew railway station in Aunt Emma’s open carriage was a sustained assault on my enfeebled senses. The road was hot, dusty, and pitted, jarring my bones. My bonnet offered scant protection from the bright sunlight, and the driver’s shouts to spur the horses set off a dull throbbing in my head. To stave off the headache I pretended not to be me. I envisioned myself a girl new to England, excited to travel, to gaze for the first time on the iron daisies and domed glass at the ticket-house, to sip my sweet tea from a paper cup on the platform. I conjured a fear of wasps, and begged my aunt to wave them away from me with her hat. I laughed when she knocked one of the creatures to the floor and stomped it, valiantly, under her shoe.

  Ever since Mimic had come under my wing—since the moment I’d confessed my true feelings to my aunt, the moment I had begun to speak as Mimic, and she as me—I’d found it a simple thing to adopt a “character” in this way when it suited me. I chose close to my own age, sex, and upbringing, so as not to be obvious.

  In my new role I was terribly proud to be seen in the Lady Hastings’s company. The train cars had been coupled incorrectly, and we had to walk partway down the platform for First Class. The porters leapt down and swarmed to transport our luggage behind us, and many faces pressed against the windows to gawk at us. Aunt Emma’s London driver, Provis, met us at Addison Road and brushed the coal-smuts off our cases before lifting them onto the trap. And how people stared! I supposed Londoners had always turned their faces toward the well-to-do and watched us go past. But now I noticed their fascination; I felt it as though I were performing on a stage. “Swells,” I heard a woman call us, murmuring to her son, and I asked my aunt for a coin to give the boy.

  Enjoying the sunshine now, I scanned the lawns and walks of Kensington Gardens as we rode, fascinated by the promenading ladies with their Brussels lace parasols and the gentlemen in their fine linen suits. A new fad had struck during my convalescence. Many of the ladies carried a straw with a little wire loop at the end; this they dipped into a cup and raised to their lips to send streams of shining bubbles into the air. I looked at them, and they looked at us in our carriage, and a crowd of passersby watched us watching each other. A man along the Ring Road selling iced lemonade at a stand carried a live ferret on his shoulder. In my excitement I pointed at it and laughed before remembering myself and pressing my hand to my lap.

  My aunt laughed, too. She leaned over and kissed my cheek. If during the past weeks at Kew she had ever noticed the occasional slight changes in my manner and speech, she had not commented. But now she said, “You are a wonderful actress, my dear.”

  I coloured and stammered an apology.

  “No, I am in earnest,” she said, squeezing my hand. “I have always said your mimicry would serve you well, have I not?”

  “But ’tis not sincere,” I reminded her. “It is a lie.”

  She pursed her lips. “Sincerity is a myth, and a dangerous one, in my opinion. We are taught to be sincere in order to keep us from saying what we think. And what sort of sincerity is that?” She leaned in to whisper in my ear: “When you are weak, you can seem strong. When you are strong, you can seem weak. In this way you shall outwit those who would dominate you.”

  “Is that why you took to the stage?” I said. “All those years ago, before I came to you at Kew. Did you learn to act in order to … avoid domination?”

  Aunt Emma looked out over the pond with its gliding swans. “I was a widow—young, fair, and obscenely rich. I had to do something, or be swallowed up by my suitors.”

  “I am young, fair, and obscenely rich. Mightn’t I take acting lessons?” It was a joke. But the moment I said it I knew it was exactly what I wanted to do.

  “You hardly need lessons!” my aunt said. “But I do know some gifted instructors.” She stroked a lock of my hair from my cheek. “I am glad to see you make up your mind for something, Leonora. I’ve worried you’ve been at loose ends since your illness.”

  “Only take care to know your own mind, before you make it up,” I reminded her, parroting her voice.

  She laughed again, a carefree sound that rang out over the path and drew even more looks our way. I memorized the sound, tucking it away for future use.

  Aunt Emma spoke to Provis, and the carriage wound its way along the rose gardens and over the stream and out through Victoria Gate. I didn’t feel quite up to seeing Hastings House, so we chose a roundabout route through Cambridge Square and went clip-clopping past a public lecture taking place outside the Mesmeric Infirmary. MEDICAL AND DENTISTRY NO PAIN HYPNOTISM, pro-claimed the banners. A white-coated man with a woolly, pointed beard was bleating at the crowd: “Opiates are enslaving the souls of our countrymen!” I heard, and, “Morphine is an unnatural answer to a natural problem!”

  The carriage slowed to a crawl in the High Street, the walks swarming with afternoon window-shoppers. A gentleman stood outside of Pierce & Co. in a sky-blue top hat asking passersby for their opinions on his purchase. “Very fine indeed!” Aunt Emma called to him as we passed, and those on the ground broke into applause at her approval. Another gentleman waved at us, and we stopped to greet a Mr. Brewster and his wife, both enormously fat and sweating through their clothes. They were old friends of my aunt from the Adelphi, and she introduced me and told them I would one day be an actress too. Mr. Brewster reached obligingly for my hand but said, “She’s too frail for it, Countess. I can tell you at this moment, just setting eyes on her. You forget, I believe, the sheer hard labour of undertaking a stage role.”

  “Ah, but my dear fellow,” said Aunt Emma, sitting up in her seat, “you forget, I believe, the first rule of the theatre: Never judge an actress by her appearance!”

  He laughed and touched his hat, and his wife laughed, too, and we called our goodbyes and drove on.

  Provis pulled up in front of a narrow shop in Mayfield Street. The shingle above the window was decorated with carved clockworks and the words DECLAN FITZHUGH, MASTER WATCHMAKER. Aunt Emma reached down and drew from her travelling bag my broken music box. “Take it in,” she ordered gently. “I know Fitzhugh. He is skilled enough to fix it. I will wait for you there”—she pointed to an alehouse several doors down—“and order your tea.”

  I stroked the music box, wondering if I didn’t prefer it damaged. Surely with Tom gone, the tinkling tune would
sound like a dirge to me. And even if the single remaining bird could be reanimated, wouldn’t it look horrifically lonely pecking at its seed?

  But my aunt nodded encouragement, and I knew how badly she wanted me to get over my heartsickness, so I gathered my skirts and allowed the driver to hand me down.

  A red-cheeked, whiskered man in a brown suit looked over his glasses and greeted me in a broad Scottish brogue. I said hello and handed him the music box. He turned the box over, peered at it through his glasses, and chuckled. “’Tisn’t me area of expertise, but I’ve an idea who may help ye,” he said. Setting it on the counter he pointed to the back of the shop, to another man bent over a work desk. “A lass here for your assistance,” he called.

  The clocks studding the walls filled the narrow shop with a muted cacophony of ticking. The seated man was surrounded by towers of miniature wooden drawers; I wondered how on earth he remembered what was in any of them. He wore a cap turned backward and, over it, a leather strap with a heavy magnifying lens masking one eye.

  I approached slowly, reluctant to trouble his concentration. His work surface was scattered with minuscule screws, dials, gears, and wires, some of which were sorted into rows by size. He was attempting to set a spring into a tiny brass mechanism. The long, fine-boned fingers handled the tools so deftly that in spite of the lens he wore, I had the impression he was feeling how it should fit together more than seeing it.

  All at once my blood pounded in my ears. My vision swam. I sagged against the counter, gripping my hands into fists, screwing my eyes shut against the sudden assault of memory—the feeling, as though it were only yesterday, of fingers like those stroking my cheek, caressing my neck, brushing my lips. I couldn’t breathe.

  This had been a mistake. Coming to town today, pretending to be well. Acting as if life could go on for me. As if my world hadn’t ground to a halt the moment I lost my grasp on Tom Rampling’s collar in the black water of the Thames.

  I wheeled round and, stumbling blindly, made for the shop door.

  “Milady?”

  I turned. The man was on his feet, tearing the lens and the cap from his head, dropping them to the floor.

  It was Tom.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Itook a step toward him, and my legs gave out under me. My knees hit the floorboards. I caught myself on my palms.

  Tom rushed forward and sank to the floor before me. His fingers traced a trembling shape in the air before settling on my shoulder. “Miss Somerville?” he said. “Are you … well?”

  “Tom,” was all I could manage.

  “For a moment I thought you were a ghost!” he said.

  “I am,” I said. “I have been.” His soft, musical voice, his hands on me—he was real. He was alive. A sob burst from my throat, and I lunged forward and buried my face in his chest.

  “Is’t all right, then, Mr. Rampling? Is the lass taken ill?” Mr. Fitzhugh hovered beside us, but some gesture from Tom must have put his worry to rest, for his steps retreated again.

  Tom cradled me a minute there on the worn wooden floor. Then, very gently, he set me back from him. He helped me to my feet. He straightened my bonnet and smoothed my hair. “Did the Lady Hastings send you to me?” he said.

  “The Lady Hastings?”

  A beat, and then we spoke together:

  “Do you know my aunt Emmaline?”

  “Did she send you here to see me?”

  I gave a weak laugh. So she’d known Tom Rampling was employed here. Of course, she must have known. She must have found him for me. She must have engineered this whole journey. “I’ve been ill,” I told him. “I think my aunt wanted to spare me the shock.”

  He smiled then, finally. “She seems to have failed at that.” He pulled a stool over to the counter and nodded at me to take it; for himself he fetched his workman’s stool from the desk.

  Shaken, still shaking internally, I held my arms crossed tight. I was half afraid my ribs would fly apart at the violence of my heartbeat. The racket of ticking clocks seemed louder and more urgent than before. “Tom, tell me,” I said. “Tell me what happened to you after the river.”

  He cleared his throat. “Firstly, milady, I owe you my thanks.”

  I shook my head. “I needed fishing from the water myself. If you weren’t already drowned, I would have drowned us both.”

  “The police did me the favour of resuscitating me before shutting me up at Newgate.”

  “Newgate … Prison?” I gasped.

  “For nearly a month—until the countess and your cousin, that reporter fellow, found me. They had Dr. Dewhurst send a letter from France. Even though he’s implicated in the matter, too, his testimony was enough to see me released.” Tom paused, looking at me through his lashes as if to measure my reaction.

  My head spun. I found I could not react, could not speak. There are Tom’s grey eyes, I thought, with their lavish fringes. There is that still, solemn face with its depth of hidden feeling I had only begun to fathom—Tom Rampling could have been hanged! Even if Curtis’s testimony had been question-able, London was so eager for a villain, so desperate to put a face to the Black Glove—Tom could have been condemned on suspicion alone.

  “The Lady Hastings wrote me an introduction,” he continued. “She arranged this apprenticeship.”

  “The Lady Hastings,” I repeated, stupidly.

  “Yes. I owe her both my life and my living. And I know that of course she did it all at your behest.”

  “No.”

  “Miss Somerville. I must offer you my thanks—for your gift, also.”

  I was shaking my head.

  “Rosbury’s—your—necklace. The countess insisted that you wanted me to have it. After everything I’d done—putting you at such risk, your injuries. It was most generous of you. Most kind.”

  I burst into laughter. I couldn’t help it, though it sent colour into Tom’s cheeks. It was either laugh or weep. “I hope you sold it away at once,” I said, when I’d recovered.

  His colour deepened. “Yes. Milady, I never told you: my mother died in prison, years ago. Her husband—he was not my father. Well, he wasn’t really even her husband, to own the whole truth.” Tom inhaled, and squared his shoulders. I saw that he needed me to know this. “He’s been at Marshalsea these last five years.”

  “Debtor’s prison.” There was no threat of laughter now. He nodded. “He loved cards too well, and betting on horses. I saved my wages as best I could, but when I went to Newgate I needed nearly the whole sum to leave behind for the care of my grandmother. With your necklace I paid Father’s debt entire, and the interest as well, and—well, I didn’t want him living with Grandmamma and me, exactly”—Tom flushed again and rushed to finish—“so I paid a year’s rent on a room for him, too.”

  Did he feel so indebted to me for those loathed gems of Thornfax’s that he must offer this accounting of the sum? Was he so eager to clear himself of any obligation that he’d confess all the flaws of his birth and parentage? It wasn’t even a confession, exactly: the speech had been tight-jawed, nearly belligerent, as though intended to shock me or to send me away. “Tom. Did my aunt not tell you I have been at Kew all this time?”

  “When Hastings House was vacated I assumed you’d gone to France with the Dewhursts. Or you would go when you were well enough.”

  “Did you not think to visit me?”

  Solemn grey eyes searched my face. “No, milady,” he admitted.

  I stared back at him. I was still stunned by the notion that he might have been incarcerated forever, or executed—that he might have survived the drowning without my knowledge, only to be killed before I ever discovered him—and now it seemed to my stricken mind that if I took my eyes off him he would be gone again. If I looked away, if I even so much as blinked, Tom Rampling would dematerialize and I would awaken in my cold bed alone. I will wake, I thought, and my mouth dried with my fear of waking. I had suffered through this dream before.

  “Miss Somerville, are you we
ll?” he said, very softly, as if I might collapse again any moment.

  I forced myself to look away, to prove I was not asleep and not deluded. Tom was here, and Tom was … changed. Tom had a living now. A proper job, using his best skills, and a clear route to steady advancement in the craft. I looked around me at the cases of pocket watches and the shining clock faces on the walls. One shelf held several glass and metal sculptures that I recognized at once as siblings, or descendants, of my music box. Here Tom could make his beautiful devices without want of materials and sell them at fair value.

  Returning at last to his face I saw that he’d been watching me take it all in, and I saw that he was proud of his work here and wanted me to appreciate it. “This is where you belong,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, and his eyes shone with satisfaction.

  A contradictory feeling ranged through me: a broad happiness, a sharp yearning. “I love it here, too,” I said.

  Tom’s eyes darted away, and when they returned the satisfaction was cloaked. His face was perfectly still. He said, “Have you come to say goodbye, then, milady?”

  He didn’t want me here in this shop. I was invading the space he’d found for himself, for his future. He hoped for closure only, not friendship. After all he hadn’t sought me out, had he? He’d never troubled to visit me at Kew.

  “Miss Somerville. It’s all right,” he prompted, as if to reassure me of his feelings when I took my leave.

  I fought to keep my tears in check. “Leo. I asked you, once, to call me Leo.”

  “Leo.”

  Was that sadness in his voice? I could not tell, and my confusion made me suddenly angry. “I thought you drowned in that river, Tom. I thought you were dead. All this time I have been grieving you. I’ve been half-dead myself with grieving you!”