by Dan Vyleta
At the mention of Julius, Charlie throws the fourth glove. The throw is wild and it hits the picture frame by the side of the wardrobe, dislodges it, brings it crashing down. They pick the print out of the shower of broken glass. Renfrew grins at them, chin tucked, fists raised, itching for a fight.
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They don’t pick up the conversation again until they are back in their room. They have each taken a bath and dressed in fresh shirts; their hair damp and frizzy from being toweled dry. A game board is between them, lined with ivory figurines. Chess. It’s Thomas’s turn. He picks up his queen, twirls her in his hand.
“I still can’t believe I am related to him.”
Charlie waits with his answer until the move is complete.
“Why not? Amongst the old families, almost everyone’s related to everyone. I am sure I have some Spencers in the family tree. There may even be an Argyle somewhere.” He pauses. “Anyway, I asked around. How come Julius does not live with her, his own mother? I tried Thorpe first, but he merely frowned. Disapproving of my curiosity. So I spoke to the coachman, the one who drove us here. He says Lady Naylor married very young. A political marriage, apparently, not a love match. Her husband died less than a year after the wedding, somewhere abroad, in the colonies. When Julius was born, his father was five months dead, and she was living with his parents. He made it sound as though she was kept almost like a prisoner there. You know how it is with some of the more old-fashioned families, the women don’t really have much freedom and when there is a son involved, an heir…In any case, when Baron Naylor began to court her, they would only consent to the match if she left the child to be raised within the Spencer household.” Charlie pulls a face. “Imagine being faced with that choice. She must have really wanted to get away.”
“Poor Julius.” There is, to Thomas’s voice, not a hint of sympathy. “You are telling me this is why he is such a turd.”
Charlie colours, nods, moves a pawn.
“Yes. Maybe.”
“And why he skulks around with a bloodhound and a valet that looks like a cutthroat.”
“Ah. About that valet. Mr. Price is his name. Here’s something else I heard, also from the coachman, though this one comes via his wife. God knows how she would know, it’s straight from the Spencer family vault. In any case, the coachman says that his wife says that the valet used to be Julius’s rook, his bond servant, back when he was a child.”
“So?”
“So? Did you have a bond servant when you were small, Thomas?”
“No. My parents didn’t bother.”
“You know what they are, though.”
“Of course. They get hired to watch over you when you are ten. It’s a ritual position. For the final year before you are held to be responsible for your Smoke.”
“Oh, it’s not so ritual as all that. They watch over you, day and night. If an accident should befall you, the same injury will befall them. It’s a holy oath: they have to take it in church. My rook, he was my first proper friend. Taught me half the things I know. For a year and a bit he was there, around me, for every breath I took. Slept right outside my room, on a sort of pallet. Picked me up when I fell off my horse. And then he was gone. On to the next job. It rips a hole in your life.” Charlie’s voice has grown hard. It is a tone so unusual in him that Thomas is startled.
“Did you ever see him again?”
“Once. A year or so ago.”
“And?”
“And nothing. We hardly spoke. He seemed coarse and stupid and overbearing. Riddled with sin. Reeking of old Smoke.” Charlie shakes his head at the memory. “The fact is, they spend their lives around children. Undisciplined, smoking, silly, ten-year-old children. It rubs off, I suppose. And at the same time, they are bodyguards. Strongmen. Mine, I remember him beating a servant girl who was teasing me. He just took her by the hair and started hitting her, laughing at me over his joke. I had to beg him to stop.”
“You are saying he wasn’t valet material.”
“No. He was a professional brute.”
“Well, it seems Mr. Price is both.”
They finish the game. Charlie wins. He mostly does with games of strategy. Thomas is better at cards: games where your strength is hidden and subject to your opponent’s speculation. He does not particularly like what this says about him.
Thomas says, “I too learned something about Julius. Something you don’t know. Last night, I followed the maid when she was fetching his hot water.” He smiles. “I know where he lives, Charlie. And guess what. His door is just like ours.” He gets up, pushes on the handle, swings it open. “It has no lock.”
Charlie is appalled. “You didn’t!”
“No. Not yet. But I think he must be speaking to Lady Naylor now. And the servants will be having their tea in half an hour. As for the dog, it’s kennelled. I checked.”
“But you can’t—”
“Can’t I, Charlie? He is my enemy. And I want to know why he came.”
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The room is in the west wing. If their own room is witness to sunrise and a view of the gardens, Julius’s catches the evening light spilling over woodlands and a rain-swollen brook. Like much of the house, the corridor that leads to his room stands empty and silent. Thomas wonders whether all great houses are like this: stone deserts, traversed by servants in livery at set times of the day. Within these deserts there are small islands of habitation. In their week here, he has only ever seen Lady Naylor in the context of three rooms.
They walk up to the door already feeling like thieves. Though their gait is no different than usual—or is it?—Thomas feels as if their intention is written on their skin. He sniffs the air, studies his breath, to make sure he isn’t smoking. But it isn’t Smoke that’s troubling his blood, it’s a self-consciousness bordering on shame. All the same, he feels no doubt concerning what he is about to do. Julius coming here is an act of aggression, like a move on the chessboard they have just abandoned. It requires a counter.
They arrive at the door. Thomas knocks, loudly, boldly. Charlie winces at the sound. The knock receives no answer.
“You can wait here. At the end of the corridor. Whistle if someone comes.”
Thomas can see Charlie is tempted. He is uncomfortable with this. Not from want of courage. It simply appears wrong to him, not so much a crime as ungentlemanly, against the rules of civilised conduct. Thomas wonders if Charlie would have fewer qualms if Thomas had suggested searching the valet’s room.
“Let’s go,” Charlie says at last. “If they catch us, we are in it together.”
The room is much bigger than the one they share, and more opulently furnished. There is a four-poster bed, a bureau, and several couches; a dozen artful models of sailing ships from the Royal Navy, displayed on shelving that is built into the wall panelling. Julius’s travelling trunk has been unpacked and stored at the top of the heavy chestnut wardrobe. A painting of a fox stalking a chicken graces one wall, an old map of England covers another. The washstand is lined with bottles of scent and silver-handed brushes. It isn’t what Thomas expected—a bunk and an open trunk; a pile of belongings that could be sifted in a few minutes—and for a moment he is unsure what to do. If he has fought the knowledge until now, the room puts an end to his denials. Julius is Lady Naylor’s son. He may not have grown up with her, but this is his space, has been from childhood, each sailing ship a birthday perhaps, until he tired of models and graduated to hunting dogs and rifles and cricket pads hand-tailored to his legs.
Charlie looks at Thomas and recognises his confusion. “Where do we start?”
What he is really saying is: We shouldn’t be here.
“The wardrobe,” Thomas says, walking over.
He does not expect Charlie to do any searching himself.
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There isn’t much that would be of any use. No diary hidden under the pillow; no papers or letters on top of the bureau, nor in its shelves, nor in the wastebasket. There is a surprising nu
mber of shirts, more than thirty in all, each freshly pressed and of such radiant crispness as to appear unworn. Thomas also finds three pairs of leather gloves; a toy foil and a real sword stick, both carelessly thrown into the back of the wardrobe; an ivory fountain pen with a gold nib. Spurs, a riding crop, a slender horn-handled penknife with a four-inch blade. But no clue, no explanation of why Julius has come there, no secret about his character revealed.
There is one thing though: a wooden box. Thomas notices it because it has the air of something that does not want to be noticed. It is kept on the night table in plain enough sight, but is stacked amidst a pile of books. Almost as though by chance. But somehow too neatly all the same.
The box is quite small and made from a curious varnished wood that shines red in the evening sunlight. It is not light enough to be empty but neither is it particularly heavy; has the wrong sort of dimensions to comfortably hold letters or papers; and emits an ever so slight smell, not unlike that of old leather. That, and it is locked. There is a small silver keyhole, and no key.
Thomas carries it over to the bureau, opens the penknife, inserts its tip into the lock. It takes some fiddling, but the lock is a simple one and turns under pressure. He can feel Charlie frowning at his back, bending forward to see. Thomas opens the box with a flourish and finds (his stomach lurches with the disappointment): cigarettes. Neat rows of them, perhaps as many as six dozen, looking pale and fragile against the lustre of the wood.
“Damn,” he whispers and closes the box.
But Charlie stops him. “Reopen it. Smell them.”
Thomas does so, pushes his nose right up to the cigarettes, then takes one out, runs it under his nose. He has never smoked a cigarette and, come to think of it, has never held one. Even so he recognises the smell of tobacco, can imagine its aroma when lit. Underneath it, though, there is another smell. Darker, tarter, hard to place. Charlie, hanging over his shoulder, has his eyes closed; is rooting through his memory for a trace of this smell.
“Like your undershirt,” he says at last, “when it came back from the laundry. When we were children, I mean. Before Discipline started. The smell of lye, there, at the centre of the chest, and between the shoulder blades, the places where the maid had rubbed away your Soot. But underneath the lye, something else—not Smoke, not sweat, a smell all its own. This smell.”
Charlie’s words take Thomas back to his childhood room and a scene precisely like this one: him sitting on the bed, naked to the waist, taking his undershirt from the clean laundry pile; sitting there, sniffing it before putting it on, sorting the flavours; a vase with flowers in the open window and birdsong. It’s a smell like mushrooms, and ashes, and rain-moistened dirt. A dangerous smell.
“These aren’t cigarettes,” he says, and immediately stuffs four or five in his jacket pocket. Charlie does not object. It is thieving, but there are so many here, a few cigarettes won’t be missed. It’s unlikely Julius keeps a precise count.
This thought catches Thomas short. He hesitates, reaches into the box for one more cigarette and breaks it in half. Some tobacco flutters out, and something other than tobacco, also brown but darker and grainy like salt crystals. He lays the broken cigarette crosswise over the neat rows underneath, closes the box lid, fiddles the lock until it snaps shut. Then he returns the box to the night table, stacks it in between the books. Charlie observes all this, the setting sun bright on his face and narrowing his eyes into dark slits.
“You want him to know.”
Thomas shrugs. “You were right all along. Breaking in here, it’s wrong. A violation. Let’s see what he does about it.”
He imagines the chessboard again, moving his king out from behind a wall of pawns.
Perhaps there is a type of chess where it pays to bluff.
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They take the stolen cigarettes back to their room, line them up on one of the starched pillowcases. Sit on the other bed, staring at them. After some minutes, Thomas gets up, searches his pockets, digs out a box of matches. He fetches one of the cigarettes and sits, holding it under his nose. Smelling it. His stomach cramps. It takes him a while to admit it is from fear. Thomas does not understand it. His body is rebelling against this smell. He wonders if it would be the same if you held a poison mushroom under your nose. If smelling it, your body would scream at you not to take a bite. Charlie is watching this silent struggle. It should be frightening, the fact that someone can read you like this, simply, like a book. But it isn’t. Not when Charlie does it.
He reaches over, takes the cigarette away from Thomas.
“I’ll do it. Light me a match.”
Thomas does, then sits motionless, the flame burning brightly, curling the spent wood. When he lights the second match, Charlie quickly reaches over and takes it from him, but the speed of the motion extinguishes the flame halfway to his mouth. Thomas strikes a third match, then pinches the flame dead before the cigarette is lit.
“Don’t, Charlie. It does not feel right. There must be another way of finding out what they do.”
“What other way?”
“I will ask Lady Naylor.”
Charlie nods, then frowns.
“Ask Livia,” he says. “She knew about sweets. She may know about these.”
“The little nun?”
“She’ll help us.”
Thomas repeats the question Charlie asked him earlier, concerning Livia’s mother.
“Do you trust her?”
Charlie does not hesitate. “Yes.”
“You like her?”
“She makes herself hard to like.”
Thomas accepts this. He remembers the letter that’s still sticking out of Charlie’s pocket and points to it now.
“What would your sister say about her? The one who is convinced that I am handsome.”
“Oh,” says Charlie, “she’d despise her from the bottom of her heart.”
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They find Livia in her own quarters. Thomas is not prepared for how playful her rooms seem, with their patterned rose wallpaper and china figurines, the rich burgundy curtains that frame the windows. Livia interprets his look and scowls. In one corner, a dark, heavy lectern stands, quite out of keeping with the rest of the furnishings. It’s a piece from a monastery dragged into a princess’s chambers. A copy of a book lies open upon it, the pages held down by a lead ruler. Thomas notes distractedly that Livia must read standing up.
She leads them to a group of sofas and chairs near the window and begs them sit down. It is as though she is about to serve tea. But her face is cold and hostile, her attention on Thomas. She is making him responsible for the intrusion.
“What can I do for you?”
Charlie speaks before Thomas can answer. “We broke into Julius’s room.” He says it like it was his idea; does not soften it or excuse it, simply presents her with the fact. “We found these.” He nods to Thomas to pass over one of the cigarettes. “They are not what they seem.”
Livia takes the cigarette from Thomas, smells it, then immediately returns it. It is clear that she has recognised them at once.
“And?”
“What are they?” Charlie asks.
“You didn’t try one?”
“No.”
“Nor you, Mr. Argyle?”
Thomas shakes his head, holds her eyes. “I was afraid.”
“Do it,” she says. “I understand the effect is not permanent.”
Again Thomas produces the box of matches, again he hesitates, his blood rebelling against the smell. Or is it? There is, mixed into his fear, the faintest thread of longing.
Again Charlie intervenes.
“I will try it,” he announces. “If Livia says they’re harmless, I will.”
She shakes her head, as though wishing to stop him, then thinks better of it.
“All right then, Mr. Cooper. Here, I will hold the match.”
Charlie takes the cigarette from Thomas’s hand; Livia reaches over and snatches up the matches. Her face, a
s she looks at Charlie, holds a peculiar expression. Renfrew looks like that, when he asks one of the clever boys a question that is particularly difficult. Hopeful. But expecting failure all the same. Between them, they have turned Thomas into a spectator. It sits ill with him, but he does not intervene as Charlie holds the tip of the cigarette into the flame. Charlie coughs a little, exhales the barest breath of grey, takes another drag.
“And—how do you feel?” Livia asks.
Charlie speaks very quickly.
“I feel normal,” he says. “Just the same as before.
“Good,” he says. “I feel really good.”
He gets up from the chair, starts pacing the room. Livia is not looking at him, speaks to her hands, folded in her lap as though in prayer. The words are so meek, it takes a while to digest their meaning.
“Mother says it makes boys ‘amorous.’ Girls too, but I think she is referring to something anatomical.”
Charlie frowns at this, turns away from them, paces.
Thomas, unnerved, walks over to him.
“Are you all right?”
When he places the hand on Charlie’s shoulder, his friend shakes it off with sudden violence, steps close to Thomas, presses his forehead into his.
“Am I all right?” His voice is joyous, but there is an edge to it Thomas does not like. “Never better.” Charlie leans his weight into him, pushes Thomas back a step. “You should take a drag.”
There is something to Charlie’s eyes as he turns his attention from Thomas to Livia. Something lewd, suggestive: so unlike Charlie that for a moment he is as though transformed.
“Or you should, little Miss Prim. It’d do you a world of good.”
Charlie moves the cigarette back up to his lips. Thomas slaps it out of his hand before he can inhale. Next he knows Charlie has pushed him into the wall. The strength of it surprises Thomas, knocks the wind out of him: an unfettered Charlie, his strong young body free of restraint. Three heartbeats they stand eye to eye.
