A Pretty Mouth

by Molly Tanzer

  “All right. But before you go …”

  “Yes?”

  Henry withdrew the spectacles from his pocket. St John startled at the sight of them, and snatched them away rudely.

  “Do not take my things!” he said, his voice higher and louder than Henry had yet heard.

  “I didn’t mean to. I put them on, I’m sorry, I … what on earth are they?”

  St John looked like he might strike Henry, but then he relaxed. “They … are a device of my own invention.”

  “Oh?”

  St John nodded. “Earlier I mentioned the psychoscope …”

  “Yes?”

  St John grinned. “I managed to construct my own from a set of diagrams designed by the philosopher Leonardo da Vinci, from materials, let us say borrowed from this university … and another. Psychology—the study of souls—is more advanced at Christ Church, given that the discipline originated from within the clergy.”

  “And so those jars are full of … souls.” Where, Henry wondered, had he gotten all of them?

  As if anticipating this question, St John said, “The jars are full of plant souls, vegetative essences, as Aristotle would say. Do not worry.”

  “I’m not, my lord. But—”

  “Eh?”

  “What do you do with them?”

  St John looked frustrated. He blew his breath out through the side of his mouth, then quoted:

  “Indeed I must confess,

  When souls mix ‘tis an happiness;

  But not complete till bodies too do combine,

  And closely as our minds together join:

  But half of heaven the souls in glory taste,

  Till by love in heaven, at last,

  Their bodies too are plac’d.”

  Henry was unimpressed by St John’s love of quoting poetry instead of answering questions. “So you’re … combining essences?”

  “Not … exactly, but—”

  “Then what?”

  “Whatever I am doing, I assure you, is my business alone,” said St John shortly. Henry took a step back, and St John relented. “I’m sorry, Henry—I have a lot on my mind. I promise I shall explain everything to you in time, but I must run—and you must, too. Your work will take several hours, I think, but shouldn’t be too difficult for you.”

  Henry wasn’t so sure about that when he actually began on the task. Perhaps it was his curiosity over St John’s strange quotes and stranger jars full of ‘souls’ or ‘essences’ or whatever (he’d thrown a cloth over those on his desk; they gave him the heebie-jeebies now that he knew what they held), perhaps it was St John’s demand that he take notes on what he could not understand, but his homework took him far longer than he’d anticipated. He felt mentally exhausted when he opened the leather-bound Apologia. He yawned, the clock struck ten—

  Chapter Nine: The Learned are the Least Devout

  —and Henry heard it in the middle of striking quarter-till the hour when someone shook him awake.

  “Come on, Henry,” St John was saying, as Henry groggily opened his eyes and hastily wiped a puddle of cold drool from his cheek.

  “Mwhaa?”

  “Oh, Henry. You are such a mess. We’re to meet in the Common Room at eleven, and here you are, napping.” St John looked mightily annoyed. “And where is your bat?”

  “Haven’t got one,” said Henry, that fact having slipped his mind earlier.

  St John sighed. “You’ll have to borrow Thomas’s. Thomas—go and get your cricketing bat. Mr. Milliner must have the use of it tonight.”

  Thomas was hovering behind St John and with such an anxious, hangdog look on his face that Henry almost felt bad for the servant, even after his rudeness earlier that afternoon; with a bow, Thomas acknowledged his master’s request and scampered down the stairs. Sounds of thumping and scraping drifted up to the second story, as if someone were searching frantically for something.

  “Thomas is an excellent cricketer,” commented St John, as Henry went over to his mirror, weaving in among the bulky instruments, and attempted to make himself more presentable. The hair on the left side of his head had flattened during his nap. When he was satisfied—and St John did not sneer when Henry turned round to face him, as he had the first two times—they descended and found Thomas awaiting them, cricket bat in hand.

  “Let us away, then,” said St John grandly. “Mr. Jones is in need of a visit.”

  “My Lord—” Thomas’s voice was halting, apologetic.

  “What is it?”

  “You told Mr. Fitzroy to meet you here, my lord.”

  St John swore creatively. “I did, and Godfrey is always late—well, why don’t you go ahead, Thomas, and tell the boys we are delayed?”

  Thomas bowed, but when he opened the door to obey, there was a person standing there, his hand raised, knuckles poised as if to rap them upon wood.

  “Godfrey!” cried St John. “Welcome to our humble abode once again.”

  “Hush,” said the stranger, tipping his hat at Thomas as he stepped inside. “Don’t shout my name so, I just made it over the wall. Had a deuce of a time coming up here without being seen. Everyone’s running hither and yon with wild rumors about the king.”

  Henry was impressed—who was this man to speak to St John so? And St John seemed not to mind his teasing. Perhaps they had been childhood friends, or even relatives—Godfrey was of a similar height to St John, and he looked as though he had been built from the same plans. He was also slender, and had a narrow, almost effeminate face with lovely features, but there was a mischief about his eyes and mouth where St John usually seemed melancholic—or disturbingly feral, as was the case now.

  “We were just leaving anyhow. Ready to have some fun?”

  “Always.” Godfrey finally noticed Henry—and a look came into his eye that made Henry tremble, though he did not know why. “Ooh, who is this? You didn’t tell me you were opening a bakery, yet here you have as pretty a petit four as I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “This is our cousin, Godfrey Fitzroy,” said St John, stepping between Henry and Godfrey. “He is at school in Oxford, at Christ Church. Godfrey, meet Mr. Milliner, who has rented our garret.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” said Godfrey, taking off his cap to bow; upon rising, he eyed Henry up and down. “I live for this sort of thing, don’t you?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Education was all Father’s idea, he sent me hither after catching me doing good works with a footman and two of the stable-lads back at home in Devon. Perhaps he thought I should be well-suited to ministering to the masses.” Godfrey stuck out his very red tongue and licked his upper lip. “I had no objection. Far easier to do the Lord’s work among the better element when you’re all in such close quarters, don’t you think?”

  Henry did not know what to say, and so just stood there, mouth slightly ajar. Not only was Godfrey alarming in his manners, Henry realized he might very possibly be the person he had seen taking that queer dog away from Wadham the night he and Rochester had come back from the meeting at the Horse and Hat. Henry remembered thinking the man had looked much like St John, and here was someone with dark hair and the same general appearance …

  “The plump pretty one doesn’t speak much, does he?” giggled Godfrey. “Mr. Milliner, you’re silent as a glazed ham—and just as appetizing. Cat got your tongue? Ooh, that reminds me—how is Lady Franco?”

  “She’s fine,” said St John, waving toward the screen behind which the calico cat perpetually lurked.

  “May I—”

  “You mustn’t disturb her, Mr. Fitzroy,” said Thomas anxiously. “She’s nesting, and possessed of a delicate temperament, but the happy event should be any day now. Do you still want one of the litter as a companion for Pietra Poodle, sir?”

  So Godfrey had a poodle!

  “I suppose we’ll see. Don’t want her to get, er, territorial.”

  “As you say, sir.”

  “Enough,” said St John. “Shall
we adjourn and meet our brethren?”

  Thomas coughed, and after St John acknowledged him, he handed his master a glass phial. “You had promised your friends, my lord.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you, Thomas. Well, hold down the fort—and wait up for us. I shall need your help when I am finished tonight, I daresay.”

  “Hmmmm,” said Godfrey, putting a fingertip to his lower lip and then lewdly sucking on it with a loud slurp. “And I daresay—”

  “Hush,” said St John.

  There was no more talk among the three of them as they went quietly over the gravel quad and through the hallways of the college towards the library. Henry was excited—more excited, even, than the night he had snuck out to the Horse. He had never before seen the Fellow’s Common Room, but had desperately wished to have the use of it as the wealthier students did. For the status of it, of course—not, he admitted readily enough, for the access to the books and quiet working spaces it allegedly provided. Rumor had it that the Common Room saw more silliness than study, and was, late at night, used as a bazaar for black-market goods.

  “Here we are,” murmured St John, and knocked in a pattern before opening the door.

  The room inside was handsomely furnished with comfortable chairs and heavy oaken tables, lined with bookcases on all sides, and well-lit with several lanterns and candles. Looking around, it seemed to Henry that most of the Blithe Company were already assembled. Anthony Neville and Aldous Clark were playing a hand of cards at a study-table; Nicholas Jay, Edwin Harris, Rowan Zwarteslang, and Matthew Fletcher were passing around a clay tavern pipe whose smoke had a strange odor to it. As Godfrey went over to take a puff, hailing the assembled throng, Richard Smith and Fitzroy Lowell knocked and entered behind Henry and St John, red-cheeked, and with the aroma of a distillery on their breath.

  “Hail, hail,” said Lowell, looking about. “Are we assembled?”

  “What’s to be the rumpus tonight?” Neville, distracted from his game, swore when Clark set down a card with a triumphant ‘Ha!’

  “Peace,” said St John, and his quiet voice, as always, immediately captured the attention of the room. “Does everyone have their bats?” After everyone nodded, he smiled a cruel smile that chilled Henry to the bone. “Excellent. Jones will know what hit him, I’ll warrant, but such a drubbing he will not have had before, when we’re done with him.”

  “I say!”

  Everyone turned to look at Henry after his outburst. He blushed.

  “Mr. Milliner has an objection?” St John said derisively.

  “No, not really,” said Henry quickly—with all eyes upon him and one hand of every pair holding a cricket bat, he wasn’t going to stick his neck out too far. “I just didn’t realize that was, you know. The plan.”

  “What did you think we were going to do, invite him out on the pitch to bowl a few overs? For honor’s sake?” Neville was looking at him with a skeptical, if friendly expression. “Oh yes,” he said, in a high, fruity voice, “I’m thoroughly satisfied now that Jones has been dismissed from the game!”

  Godfrey laughed. “Nay indeed! I aim to give him such a case of Wadham-bottom he won’t be able to sit for a week.”

  “Focus on your favorite part all you want,” said St John, blowing a kiss at his cousin. “Personally I’m going to work him over. All over.” Henry felt a hand come down on his shoulder, and he looked up into St John’s face. The lord’s expression was unreadable. “Only one caveat tonight, boys: Henry must start things off for us. And I hope he will not disappoint us, being so new to our Company. What do you say, Henry? Do you think you will disappoint us?”

  Henry shook his head and said no with as much casual ease as he could muster, hoping they wouldn’t notice that he’d begun to sweat. He hated to admit it, but maybe Rochester—and even Mr. Berry—had been right about these lads. Beating someone mercilessly with a cricket bat was a bit beyond anything he’d expected to be a party to in his daydreams of being a member of the Blithe Company. He’d thought they’d be more about wenching it up in style, drinking fine wine laced with Turkish poppy-juice. That sort of thing.

  “Good,” said St John, patting him on the back. “Well. Shall we get a bit lubricated before we set out? Don’t want to sprain an elbow being too tight and nervous, eh Henry?”

  “Did you bring us something from your laboratory?” asked Nicholas Jay.

  “No,” said St John, and produced the phial Thomas had earlier handed him. “Oh, don’t look so glum, my comrades. I have something, of course, but I didn’t manufacture these. They’re natural. Coca leaves from the Americas. I could only afford three, we’ll have to divvy them up. You chew them.”

  Jay led the group in a series of cheers that panicked Henry—what if they were heard, the crazy assholes—but the passing ‘round of the shredded leaves and subsequent gnawing quieted the Company quickly. Henry accepted his roughage, but took only a few small nibbles before spitting the remainder into his palm and putting it into his pocket. He wasn’t sure what coca was, but another treat from the Americas, cacao, had given him the trots the few times he’d tried it, so better safe than sorry.

  “Come with me, in the front,” said St John, as they made ready to leave. “I want you close. No welshing, right Henry? You’re brave enough?”

  Henry clutched his hands around the handle of the curved bat. His heart was pounding unusually fast, his hands were slick with sweat and linseed oil, and he felt nature calling to him, as she always did when he was nervous—but then, all of a sudden, he felt a rush of confidence and smiled at St John.

  “Don’t you worry, my lord.” He hefted the bat. “I may be a rotten cricketer, but Jones’s arse is a larger target than any ball.”

  If only such wit would come to him always! Henry was hailed to the rafters by the Blithe Company, and then they sallied forth in silence, running across the quad and up the steps to the upper-floor dormitory, robes billowing, shhing one another when volleys of giggling burst out. Henry had never felt so good. This was the greatest night of his life he was pretty sure. He could do this!

  No, holy shit, what was he thinking? He couldn’t do this! Henry began to tremble and perspire again. Good Christ in heaven, he didn’t want to beat poor Lucas Jones with a cricket bat! What if—what if he hurt him? Who would do such a thing? Who would think it was a good idea?

  But it was far too late to back out now. They had reached Jones’ door, and St John pushed Henry to the front.

  “Here’s your chance to prove yourself,” he breathed down Henry’s neck. “When I left you earlier this night I visited him, and when he wasn’t watching, I drizzled some glue into the latch. It should have stuck by the time he went to bed, but he won’t have gotten it fixed yet, of course. So you can just push on the door and run at him, all right? Make some noise, yell or something. Scare him.”

  “I—”

  “You welshing?”

  Henry looked into St John’s eyes and found nothing there that let him think that running off would be all right, even just this once. Quite the reverse, actually. Henry took a deep breath, promised himself to strike Jones no more than twice—well, maybe three times—and swallowed.

  With a nod to his new friends, Henry pushed open the door with a battle cry, cricket bat raised like a Turkish scimitar. He was ready for this. He was ready for anything … except for Lucas Jones being awake when he barged into his room.

  Henry’s first thought was that St John had set him up, but the look on Jones’ face when the Blithe Company charged his room en masse, Henry howling at the forefront and all wielding bats … well, if Jones was acting, he was the best actor in the universe.

  The boy lying on his bed, a candle burning beside him on his nightstand, which gave all of them perfect clarity of vision. What they saw was Lucas Jones in just his shirt. He shrieked as he tried to cover himself, one hand grabbing for his bunched-up blanket, the other ineffectively cupped to shield his exposed, swollen prick.

  Lucas Jones was jerki
ng off!

  “Lucas Jones is jerking off!” cried Godfrey, pointing at Jones’ crotch with the tip of his bat. Every other member of the Blithe Company was struck still and dumb by the sight—whether due to a sense of propriety or good fortune, however, was anyone’s guess. “Look at him, lads! We can’t beat a man in the middle of beating off, it’s rude!”

  “Get the fuck out of here!” Jones had found his voice, and screeched this like a London laundress as he sat up and got the blanket over his lap, where it utterly failed to obscure the source of the general hilarity.

  Henry looked over at St John, who seemed dumbfounded—delighted—and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. It seemed he was off the proverbial hook … until St John stepped forward, his eyes glinting like diamonds.

  “We shall not, as you request, get ‘the fuck’ out of your room.” Henry again felt sort of terrified by the Lord Calipash. He had already learned to recognize certain of St John’s mercurial moods, and he sensed a shift towards the nasty. “We shall remain as long as we like, and do whatsoever to your person that pleases us.”

  “Why are you all carrying cricketing bats?” Jones was beginning to sense his peril. Godfrey and a few of the other boys sniggered. “What’s so funny? I swear, St John, if you—”

  “Did you just call me by my Christian name?” St John interrupted. If he had spoken any more quietly it would have been impossible to understand him.

  The room went silent. Jones looked momentarily alarmed, then decided to try to bluster through it.

  “I did,” he scoffed. “What, am I supposed to ‘m’lord’ every burglar? Rise and bow to you and your, your band of criminals? You shame me in front of our class, you ridicule me while I’m enjoying a private moment—”

  “You will rise and bow to me. Now.” St John’s face was contorted like a tragedian’s mask. Henry wouldn’t have refused him his last morsel of food during famine-time if he’d looked at him like that.