A Pretty Mouth

by Molly Tanzer

  A week later Basil was not to be found within his chambers, and a note in his own hand lay upon his unmade bed. His maid found it, but, being illiterate, she gave it over to Lady Calipash while the lady and her daughter were just sitting down to table. Scanning the missive brought on such a fit of histrionics in Lady Calipash that Mr. Villein came down to see what was the matter. He could not get any sense out of the Lady, and Rosemary had quit the breakfasting room before he even arrived, too private a creature to show anyone the depth of her distress, so Mr. Villein snatched the letter away from the wailing Lady Calipash and read it himself. He was as alarmed by its contents as she, for it said only that Basil had found his confinement intolerable, and had left home to seek his fortune apart from those who would keep him imprisoned.

  The author has heard it said that certain birds, like the canary or the nightingale, cannot sing without their mate, and suffer a decline when isolated. Similarly, upon Basil’s unexpected flight from Calipash Manor, did Rosemary enter a period of great melancholy, where no one and nothing could lift her spirits. She could not account for Basil’s behavior—not his moodiness, nor his failure to take her with him—and so she believed him cross with her for her part in his quarantine, or, worse still, indifferent to her entirely. Seasons passed without her smiling over the misfortunes of others or raising up a single spirit of the damned to haunt the living, and so, upon the year’s anniversary of Basil’s absence, Mr. Villein sat down with Lady Calipash and made a proposal.

  “My lady,” he said, “Rosemary has grown to a pretty age, and I believe her state of mind would be much improved by matrimony and, God willing, motherhood. To this end, I appeal to you to allow me to marry her, whereupon I shall endeavor to provide for her as the most doting of husbands.”

  Lady Calipash was at first disturbed by this request, as she had long assumed that Mr. Villein’s affections were settled upon her and not her daughter, but when Mr. Villein mentioned offhandedly that, with Basil absent, he was the only known male heir to the Calipash estate, and should he marry outside the family, neither Lady Calipash nor Rosemary would have any claim to the land or money beyond their annuities, the Lady found it prudent to accept Mr. Villein’s suit on Rosemary’s behalf.

  Mr. Villein expected, and, (it must be admitted) rather ghoulishly anticipated Rosemary’s disinclination to form such an alliance, but to the surprise of all, she accepted her fate with a degree of insouciance that might have worried a mother less invested in her own continued state of affluence. Without a single flicker of interest Rosemary agreed to the union, took the requisite journey into town to buy her wedding clothes, said her vows, and laid down upon the marriage bed in order that Mr. Villein could defile her body with all manner of terrible perversions, a description of which will not be found in these pages, lest it inspire others to sink to such depths. The author will only say that Rosemary found herself subjected to iterations of Mr. Villein’s profane attentions every night thereafter. If any good came out of these acts of wickedness performed upon her person, it was that it roused her out of her dysthymia and inspired her to once again care about her situation.

  Not unexpectedly, Rosemary’s emotional rejuvenation compelled her to journey down paths more corrupt than any the Twins had yet trod. Her nightly, nightmarish trysts with Mr. Villein had driven her slightly mad, as well as made her violently aware that not all lovers are interested in their partner’s pleasure. Remembering with fondness those occasions when her brother had conjured up from the depths of her body all manner of rapturous sensations, in her deep misery Rosemary concocted a theory drawn as much from her own experience as from the works of the ancient physician Galen of Pergamon. As she accurately recalled, Galen had claimed that male and female reproductive systems are perfect inversions of one another, and thus, she deduced, the ecstasy she felt whilst coupling with her brother was likely due to their being twins and the mirror-image of one another.

  To once again achieve satisfactory companionship Rosemary therefore resolved upon creating a companion for herself out of the remains housed in the Calipash family crypt. By means of the necromancies learned in her youth, she stitched together a pleasure-golem made of the best-preserved parts of her ancestors, thanking whatever foul gods she was accustomed to petitioning for the unusually gelid temperature of that tomb. Taking a nose that looked like Basil’s from this corpse, a pair of hands from that one, and her father’s genitalia, she neatly managed the feat, and, dressing the creature in Basil’s clothing, slipped often into that frigid darkness to lie with it. Sadly, her newfound happiness with her ersatz brother was, for two reasons, imperfect. The first was that none of the vocal chords she could obtain were capable of reproducing Basil’s distinctively nasal snarl, and thus the doppelgänger remained mute, lest an unfamiliar moan ruin Rosemary’s obscene delights. The second trouble was more pernicious: she realized too late she had been unable to entirely excise the putrefaction wrought by death upon the limbs of her relations, and thus she contracted a form of gangrene that began to slowly rot her once-pristine limbs.

  For another year did this unhappy status quo persist, until one dreary afternoon when Rosemary, returning from a long walk about the grounds, noticed a disreputable, slouching individual taking in the fine prospect offered by the approach to Calipash Manor. Rosemary advanced on him, unafraid, though she noticed the burliness of the man’s figure, the darkness of his skin, and the shabby state of his long overcoat.

  “Are you in want of something?” she called to the stranger, and he looked up at her, his face shaded by a mildewing tricorn. “There is scant comfort to be found here at Calipash Manor, but if you require any thing, it will be given to you.”

  “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” queried he in the rasping accent of a white Creole, all the while stealing polite glances of her slightly moldy countenance.

  “I am the daughter of the lady of this house,” answered Rosemary.

  “Then thank you, my lady,” said the man. “My name is Valentine, and I have only just returned from Jamaica to find my family dead and my house occupied by those with no obligation to provide for me.”

  “Have you no friends?”

  “None, not being the sort of man who either makes or keeps them easily.”

  “Come with me, then,” said Rosemary, admiring his honesty. She led Valentine up to the house and settled them in her private parlor, whereupon she bid the servants bring him meat and drink. As he ate, he seemed to revive. Rosemary saw a nasty flicker in his eyes that she quite liked, and bid him tell her more of himself. He laughed dryly, and Rosemary had his tale:

  “I’m afraid, my Lady, that I owe you an apology, for I know one so fine as yourself would never let me into such a house knowing my true history. I was born into the world nothing more than the seventh son of a drunk cottar, and we were always in want as there was never enough work to be had for all of us. I killed my own brother over a bite of mutton, but given that we were all starving, the magistrate saw it fitting that I should not be hanged, but impressed to work as a common hand aboard a naval ship bound for the West Indies. I won’t distress you by relating the conditions I endured, suffice it to say I survived.

  “When I arrived at our destination, however, I found that it was not my fate to remain in the navy, for my sea-captain promptly clapped me in irons and sold me as a white slave, likely due to my being an indifferent sailor and more likely to start riots among the men than help to settle them. I was bought by a plantation-owner who went by the name of Thistlewood, and this man got what labor he could out of me for several years, until I managed to escape to Port Royal with only the clothes on my back and a bit of food I’d stolen. There I lived in a manner I shan’t alarm you by describing, and only say that having done one murder, it was easy to repeat the crime for hire until I had enough coin to buy passage back to England—but as I said earlier, when I returned home, I found every living person known to me dead or gone, except those with long memories who recalled
enough of my character to kick me away from their doorsteps like a dog.”

  Rosemary could not but be profoundly moved by such a tale, and she felt her dormant heart begin to warm anew with sympathy for this stranger. She assured him that he should have some work on her estate, and Valentine was so overcome that he took Rosemary’s hand in his—but their mutual felicity was interrupted by Mr. Villein, who chose that inopportune moment to enter Rosemary’s chambers uninvited.

  “What is the meaning of this treachery?” cried Mr. Villein, for though he often engaged in infidelities, the notion that his bride might do the same did not sit well with him, being that he was a jealous man by nature. “Release my wife, foul vagabond!”

  “Wife!” exclaimed Valentine, his yellowish complexion turning grey. “How is it that I return home, only to find myself betrayed by one whom I thought harbored love for me?”

  It would be impossible to guess whether Rosemary or Mr. Villein was more confused by this ejaculation, but neither had time to linger in a state of wonder for very long. The man withdrew a veritable cannon of a flintlock, and cast off his wretched, threadbare overcoat to reveal that beneath it, he wore a rich emerald-green brocade vest threaded through with designs wrought in gold and silver, and his breeches were of the finest satin. When he looked down his nose at them like a lord instead of lowering his eyes like a cottar’s son, they saw he had all the bearing of a gentleman of high rank. Recognizing him at last, Rosemary shrieked, and Mr. Villein paled and took a step back. Though strangely altered by time, the man was unmistakably Basil Vincent, Lord Calipash, returned at last to reclaim by force what should have been his by right of birth!

  IV.

  The conclusion, detailing the reunion of the Ivybridge Twins—an account of the singular manner in which Rosemary defeated the gangrene that threatened her continued good health—what the author hopes the reader will take away from this Infernal History

  “You!” cried Mr. Villein in alarm. “How dare you? How can you? They said the navy would keep you at least a decade in the service of this country!”

  “They?” demanded Rosemary. “Who?”

  “The press gang!” blustered Mr. Villein. “For the sum I paid them, I’ll have them—”

  But the Infernal Twins never discovered what Mr. Villein’s intentions were regarding the unsatisfactory press gang, for Rosemary, overcome with grief and rage, snatched the flintlock pistol out of Basil’s grasp and shot Mr. Villein through the throat. A fountain of blood gushed forth from just above Mr. Villein’s cravat-pin, soaking his waistcoat and then the carpet as he gasped his surprise and fell down dead upon the ground.

  “Basil,” she said. “Basil, I’m so—I didn’t—”

  “You married him?”

  “It was all Mother’s doing,” said Rosemary, rather hurt by his tone.

  “But—”

  “You were gone,” she snapped, “and lest Mr. Villein marry some common slut and turn Mother and myself out of our house …”

  Even with such reasonable excuses, it was some time before Rosemary could adequately cajole Basil out of his peevish humor; indeed, only when Rosemary asked if Basil had lived as a monk during the years of their estrangement did he glower at her as he had used to do and embraced her. They sat companionably together then, and Basil gave her a truer account of his absence from Calipash Manor:

  “The carven ivory head which our loathsome former tutor bequeathed unto me on the sixteenth anniversary of my birth was the instrument, strangely, of both my undoing and my salvation,” said Basil. “Mr. Villein lied to me that I was the manifestation of the old god which it represents—indeed, I believe now that his intention was take me away from you so that he might have you for his own; that I, like my father before me, would be driven to suicide by the whispered secrets of that divine entity. Little did he know that while I am not some sort of fleshly incarnation of that deity, I was born with the capacity to understand His whispered will, and walk along the sacred paths that were more often trod when His worship was better known to our race.

  “I believe once Mr. Villein saw that I was only mildly troubled by these new visions, he concocted a plot to be rid of me in a less arcane manner. The night before you discovered my absence, he let himself into my chambers and put a spell upon me while I slept that made me subject to his diabolical will. I awoke a prisoner of his desire, and he bade me rise and do as he wished. Dearest sister, I tell you now that you did not detect a forgery in my note, for it was written by none other than myself. After I had penned the false missive, Mr. Villein bade me follow him down to Ivybridge, whereupon he put a pint of ale before me and compelled me, via his fell hold upon me, to act in the manner of a drunken commoner, brawling with the local boys until the constable was called and I was thrown in jail. Not recognizing me, due to my long isolation, my sentence was as I told you—that of forced conscription into the navy.

  “To a certain point, my tale as I told it to you whilst in the character of the scoundrel Valentine was true—I suffered much on my voyage to Jamaica, and was subsequently sold as a slave. What I did not tell you was the astonishing manner of my escape from that abominable plantation. My master hated me, likely because he instinctively sensed his inferiority to my person. My manners mark me as a noble individual, even when clad in rags, and being that he was a low sort who was considered a gentleman due to his profession rather than his birth, my master gave to me the most dangerous and disgusting tasks. One of his favorite degradations was to station me at the small dock where the little coracles were tied up, so that I could be given the catches of fish to clean them, constantly subjected to wasp stings and cuts and other indignities of that sort.

  “Yet it was this task that liberated me, for one afternoon I arrived at the dock to see the fishermen in a tizzy, as one had the good fortune of catching a dolphin. The creature was still alive, incredibly, and I heard its voice in my mind as clearly as I heard their celebration. Save me, and I shall save you, it said unto me in that language that has always marked me as bacchant to the god of which I earlier spoke. I picked up a large stick to use as a cudgel and beat the fisherfolk away from their catch, telling them to get back to work as the cetacean was of no use to our master, he should want snapper or jackfish for his dinner rather than oily porpoise-flesh. They heeded me, for they were a little afraid of me—often, as you might imagine, dear sister, bad things would happen to those who chose to cross me in some way—and I heaved the dolphin back into the sea. At first I thought it swam away and that it had merely been sun-madness that had earlier made me hear its voice, but then, after the fishermen had paddled out of sight, the dolphin surfaced with a bulging leather satchel clutched in its beak. It contained gold and jewels that my new friend told me were gathered from shipwrecks on the ocean floor, and that I should use this wealth to outfit myself as a gentleman and buy passage back to England. The creature’s only caveat was that upon my arrival I must once again visit the sea, and return to one of its kin the ivory head, as our tutor had not, as it turns out, been given the object. Rather, it seems that Mr. Villein defiled an ancient holy place near Delphi during his travels in Greece by stealing the artifact away from its proper alcove.

  “I agreed to these terms and, after waiting at the docks for a little longer so I might poison the fish it was my duty to clean, and thus enact a paltry revenge upon my tyrannical master, hastened back to Devonshire, as I knew nothing of your situation, but feared much. Upon returning home I assumed the persona of Valentine as a way of ascertaining if, in my absence, your sentiments had changed toward your long-absent brother and the manner in which we were accustomed to living with one another. Seeing your heart go out to such a picaroon assured me of your constancy, and I regret very much that I earlier so impugned your honor. But sister, now that you know of my distresses, you must tell me of yours—pray, how did you come to be married to Mr. Villein and so afflicted by the disease that I see nibbles away at your perfect flesh?”

  Rosemary then r
ecounted what has already been recorded here, and she and Basil resolved upon a course of action that shall comprise the denoument of this chronicle. Both were determined that the gangrenous affliction should not claim Rosemary, but until Lady Calipash, wondering why her daughter did not come down to dinner, intruded into the parlor where the siblings colluded, they could not see how. The idea occurred to the Twins when Lady Calipash’s alarm at seeing Mr. Villein’s corpse upon the carpet was so tremendous that she began to scream. Basil, fearing they should be overheard and the murder discovered before they had concocted an adequate reason for his unfortunate death, caught Lady Calipash by the neck when she would not calm herself. As he wrapped his fingers about her throat, Basil noticed the softness of his mother’s skin, and, looking deeply into her fearful eyes, saw that she was still a handsome creature of not five-and-thirty.

  “Sister,” he began, but Rosemary had already anticipated his mind, and agreed that she should immediately switch her consciousness with Lady Calipash’s by means of witchcraft she and Basil had long ago learned (and once utilized in their youthful lovemaking) from the donkey-headed eel-creature they had conjured, and henceforth inhabit her own mother’s skin. This was done directly, and after securely locking Rosemary’s former body (now occupied by their terrified mother) into the family crypt, along with Mr. Villein’s corpse, mother and prodigal son, rather than brother and sister, had the carriage made ready, and they drove to the head of the River Plym, whereupon Basil summoned one of the aquatic priests of his god, and handed over the relic that has figured so prominently in their narrative.