A burning brand of a woman, she scampers up her makeshift ladder, and scrambles onto the deck, which is beginning to tilt. The flames on her shoulder are eating, eating, eating at the rose tattoo that was put there to show her as a thief, a sneak, a convict, a murderer for all they said “accessory.” It scorches like the acid used to etch the design there in the first place. She bats at the tiny, deadly flashes as her eyes take in the swaying masts, the last of the dirty canvas sails, that are orange then black, then crumble in the wind. She wheels and turns like a dancing doll, out of control, turning in a decaying spiral that finally sees her at the rails. She hits the strakes, loses her balance, and pitches headfirst over the side.
For moments she is free, she flies, the fire seems to pull away from her and her skin does not know that it’s been hurt, then the waters of Rosebery Bay meet her, hard black glass. At first she is against it, then she is through it, and finally she is lost, travelling a’down, a’down, a’down, farther and farther from the dark sky and its starry teeth. Farther and farther, to where dreams no longer live.
A’down, a’down, a’down, and Cordelia Parsifal, wife, mother, sister, tallow-wife, lets go of all that she is, of all that she has been. She is free, suddenly light, spinning away as if a great pressure had been released . . . yet in a moment there is a change, vital and irresistible. She hears the voice of the woman in the prison coach, her sly dig that The rich ones got no backbone, not strong enough to live through loss. Something finds her, pulls at her, drags her back to her body, insists her spirit remain.
She does not have the energy to fight life anymore than she did death. The impulse will not let her go, it takes possession of her limbs, her aching arms and legs, and makes them move, kick and stroke, kick and stroke, kick and stroke.
Up and up and up. Above her the surface of the water is silver and midnight blue, where the moon sits and waits for her return. Waits for her to make herself anew.
What Shines Brightest Burns Most Fiercely
Mr Isambard Farringdale knew he was being followed by someone well-versed in the art of not being seen.
He’d had the sense of it for some days now; it began as a kind of low-level itch at the back of his neck and grown as time passed, creeping across his scalp like a spider, slithering down his thin spine until it coiled at the base like a loving snake he couldn’t shake. Yet every time he looked over his shoulder as he travelled the streets of Lodellan, either crowded or empty, there was nothing and no one in sight. He thought to become cleverer, more cunning, slipping swiftly around corners then peeking out to catch any pursuer unawares, but it never worked. All he managed was to frighten several servant girls on their way to the Busynothings Markets, to startle a costermonger who was understanding, and an ironmonger who was not.
This evening, though, the gentleman in question has shrugged off his disquiet and attended at his favourite private club for entertainment few folk would enjoy, or admit to, or even countenance. Mr Farringdale knows full well that his pastimes would draw, at the very least, opprobrium from upstanding citizens and he is careful to ensure the truest nature of his pleasures is kept under wraps. The kind of people who share his predilections are equally circumspect; and the objects of their intense interest . . . well, they are given no opportunity to complain.
Puffed with indulgence and warmed by copious cups of mulled cherry wine and blackberry port, Mr Farringdale steps from the unprepossessing doorway which hides Madame Arkady’s House of Curiosities (a name unknown to all but its clientele) and into the cobbled back street that runs off Half-moon Lane. He draws himself up to his full height, all five feet two, does his best to stride in a dignified manner in the direction of his home. But the alcohol gets the better of him and the best he manages is a sort of strange listing canter, the heels of his buckled boots making a tap-tap-clack on the stones under his feet. He giggles. He giggles quite loudly and for quite some time, until the sense of being watched again starts to haunt him, and the spider-snake twitches awake. Isambard sobers a little, quickens his step, tripping more than he would like, until at last he is at his own door, fumbling the keys, forgetting to lift the latch so he panics, thinking himself shut out . . . then calms and does what needs doing.
Inside, he turns the lock with shaking fingers, shivers. He allows no servants to live in, so the hearths have been set but not lit in anticipation of his return. Mr Farringdale presses his forehead to the polished oak of the entrance and waits for his heartbeat to slow, for his pulse to stop thrusting against his skin; he swears he can see the thud and thump of it at his wrists where the veins are terribly blue.
The house—new, purchased with his ill-gotten Parsifal gains—is silent, so quiet. There is no noise at all. Nothing, no sound of drawn breath as a warning, nothing except the words, “Good evening, Isambard.”
Mr Farringdale takes one great dancing, twisting leap to face his visitor. His eyes seek the shadows in vain until there is the scratch and spit of a vesta and a tiny light throws a halo on a round face. Soon illumination spreads through the rich front parlour where no one spends much time at all, the caller lighting lamps and candelabrum as he finds them, then finally touches the spark to the kindling in the hearth. Mr Farringdale’s dark eyes follow his movements.
The guest is neither tall nor short, but somewhere in between. His hair is a mop of golden curls; someone has gone to great lengths to make their arrangement seem artless. His face is a series of soft circles, the rosy cheeks, the eyes, the mouth, even the tip of the nose, but not in a clownish way. All are well-formed, perfectly proportioned and pleasing, as if the features are constructed not to excite the least fear or concern: a visage with no angles, no edges, is far less threatening. Or Mr Farringdale suspects he is meant to find it so, although he doesn’t know where that thought comes from.
“Good evening, Isambard,” repeats the young boy—youth? man?—and gives his unwilling host a smile meant to allay fears.
Mr Farringdale’s fears remain firmly unallayed.
The boy’s outfit says “affluence”: the trews are a dark velvet (midnight blue? hard to tell in this light), his cream shirt sporting a frilled collar trimmed with golden thread, and his frock coat cerulean, velvet again, embroidery creeping across the lapels: leaves in green, cherries or apples in red, things that begin as birds but flow into beasts, all picked out in silver. His footwear, however, tells a different story. Although well-made, the boots are dusty and worn, the toes scuffed; they whisper of a life hard-lived, of steps taken on rough paths, many under trying circumstances. These boots give lie to the dandy’s indolent air.
Then the youth’s smile widens and he bends into a flourishing bow, his left arm sweeping back like a wing, the hand at the end of his right executing a detailed sort of dance. For a moment, he is a grandee of some great and mysterious court. Then he straightens and once more he’s a misplaced jester or ringmaster, Isambard can’t quite choose.
“My name is Jacopo,” says the boy, “and I am come to offer you an exchange that will benefit us both.”
Mr Farringdale raises a brow, feeling the sweat break from his sloping forehead, the tell-tale itch begin at the tip of his beaky nose, the surest sign that his fear has peaked and now he is planning for his own advantage. He relaxes slightly, his curiosity piqued at the thought of a bargain. Feeling less endangered, his bartering instinct rouses. He does not wish to be won over too quickly, appear too easily placated, but work has been thin on the ground since the unpleasantness. No one blamed him outright, but the people with money wonder how it was he allowed so much of Edvard Parsifal’s to slip away, and no one has been willing to employ him since. Fortunately, he has reserves, many of them skimmed off the top of the Antiphon profits, but it won’t hurt, he thinks, to have more.
“Were you following me? Was it you?” His voice is pitched higher than he would like, but the question is out, too late to change his mind.
The youth’s face falls, his expression a pretty mix of shame and regret.
His body moves, a tremor that transmits itself down through his torso, thence to arms and legs, hands and feet. As if a current has passed through him. Isambard is fascinated, although part of him wonders if it’s an act designed to distract, to charm and disarm him. If Isambard’s interest ran to boys, it might work.
“It was indeed, and I offer my humblest apologies if my observations caused you some distress. But as a man of intellect, not given to rash actions, you will understand my desire to make sure you were whom I sought. My employer bid me be circumspect. It would not be wise to approach the wrong individual with what I am offering—and I do feel now that you are precisely the man with whom I wish to deal.”
In spite of himself, Mr Farringdale is flattered. “Your employer?”
The lad continues. “I’m aware that what I ask for is valuable—as is your time, which is also rare and irreplaceable—so I am prepared to offer something equally valuable, rare and irreplaceable. A one-of-a-kind objet in return.”
The youth produces from his pocket a strange item: a chrysalis of a thing, translucent, transparent. It starts out the size of a pellet, then grows before Isambard’s astonished gaze. An egg—chicken, goose, turkey, eagle—until it is an ovoid a foot high, about eight inches in circumference and takes up all the space between Jacopo’s palms and threatens to overflow. Mr Farringdale shuffles closer and the boy turns so he might better regard what is being offered. The shell is glowing, pellucid: through it can be seen what lies inside.
It is a girl, like a smallish doll. Isambard makes out the dark golden hair, the high cheekbones, the rosebud mouth, the chin jutting forward, a little pugnacious and, when she opens her lids suddenly, the bright green of her eyes. He realises why she is so very familiar: it is Bethany Lawrence as she once was, so delicate and defenceless. Not his first, not by a long shot, but certainly his most desired, most earnestly yearned for, his most dangerous, and longest loved though she’s grown well beyond his preferred vintage. She lodged inside him, though, and refused to leave; he wonders if it was some revenge magic of her own, or if he has, somewhere deep down, a conscience, guilt for all the pain he caused her. In part, it’s why he could never refuse her anything, even the demands she at first couched as requests. To a certain extent, it is because he feared being exposed for what he was and what he’d done . . . and continued to do to others.
“She’ll grow, but only so much. She’ll never be any older than when she was yours, when you took her.” The boy’s voice trembles and Mr Farringdale looks at him, suspicious, but there is nothing in Jacopo’s face to say he disapproves, that he judges. There is only a strange brightness that Isambard realises provides more of the light in the room than the lamps. But the girl in the chrysalis takes his attention again, her gaze meeting his and holding. Mr Farringdale’s fingers stretch forth, almost touching the oval until, at the last moment, Jacopo pulls it away.
“She’ll be yours again, on one condition.”
Isambard is unsurprised but resentful to hear that this will not be free. Yet he knows himself well enough: he will have this thing. He will do whatever it takes to have her again as she lives still in his mind. His one love, did she but know it. No, he thinks, she knows it full well and uses it to her advantage; it’s that she doesn’t care. He doesn’t dwell on the irony of the girl he so injured and possessed so very young, now having a grip on his soul.
“How do you know?” asks Mr Farringdale, dread limning his very being. “How can you know?”
“Ah, Isambard, my ways and means are my secrets, and that’s how it shall stay. It’s sufficient that I—and my employer—know, don’t you think?” He waits until Isambard nods unwillingly. “So. You’ll have your heart’s desire on one simple condition. In exchange, Mr Farringdale, I ask for something that weighs nothing! Light as a feather, you’ll barely feel it go: information.”
Isambard shivers. He knows that substance is not light. It does not float. It is a thing to weigh one down. The right kind will drag a soul to the bottom of the sea and keep it there until flesh rots from the bones. Information, when it is known, comprehended, when it’s value becomes obvious to the holder, then it is knowledge, and that is the most dangerous thing of all. He says none of this however.
“I need to know two things. Firstly, what happened to the necklace, the Agnew Necklace? Secondly, I need an address for Mistress Bethany and the children. I know she no longer resides in this fair city.”
Isambard blinks; his mind darts from one thought to the other. He will tell one thing quite willingly, the other . . . he plays for time.
“The Princess Royal has the necklace.” He hurries on, seeing Jacopo’s disbelieving expression. “There was no one left, of the Agnews, you understand. The estate wound up in the royal coffers, as will happen when there are no heirs, and Armandine claimed the jewellery for her own.”
He does not mention rumours of the effect this had on the royal household, of the discontent it sowed between Princess Royal and lover. He does not think it will matter to the boy. After a long moment, Jacopo nods, accepts what he’s been told. Isambard can tell, though, that the lad is calculating some sort of odds.
“And the other matter, Isambard?”
“I cannot . . . You must understand: she put her trust in me.”
“You can and you will.” Jacopo holds the chrysalis in front of him so Mr Farringdale can better see the girl inside. She bats her lashes and smiles, pulls at his dark heart. The youth’s tone changes, becomes less friendly. “She left you, Isambard, she left you here all alone. After everything you’d done for her.”
The warning voice in Mr Farringdale’s head becomes smaller, quieter as the other voice, the one that tells him he is the injured party, that he deserved better, becomes louder, more strident. Angry not at him, no, but at her, she who caused his misery, who complicated his life, who demanded and took so much, then left him. Here. Alone.
“Breakwater,” he says, his voice catching even as his heart thrills at the betrayal and the thought of the girl in the egg.
Jacopo nods as if it is something he suspected. “I will need proof, of course.”
For a moment, Isambard’s mind is blank, then he remembers the letter, the one and only communication. He rifles through a drawer in the corner bureau, until he finds it, pressed between the pages of an old diary, finger marks visible as are port stains; he imagines there are tears, too, their ghosts blotting the onion-thin paper. The tears are his. It is all business, this epistle, but it contains the address to which he was to send the last of the household goods, and details of her new bank accounts for a final transfer of funds. He holds the sheet with a traitor’s shaking hands, but the voice in his head assures that when he has the girl in the chrysalis, what need will he have of this cold folio?
His faltering steps bring him to within a few feet of the youth and he holds out the letter, which flutters only a little with his emotion. Jacopo takes it, barely glances at it and thrusts it into his pocket, crinkling it so that Mr Farringdale’s heart aches. Then the boy says, as if an afterthought, “And the children? She took them with her?”
Isambard shivers, swallows. The girl in the egg nods at him encouragingly. “She took the boys.”
“And Victoria?”
“Sent away some months before. To a cousin, Bethany said.” But he knew now just as he had known then, there were no cousins. “I don’t have an address, but I believe it was to Seaton St Mary.”
Mr Farringdale thinks the boy blanches, his glow dimming briefly, then Jacopo nods again.
“Thank you, Isambard. I do believe you’ve played fair with me. But I am no fool. I must ascertain what you’ve told me about the necklace—what good would I be to my employer if I were easily duped?” He smiles. “I’ll leave this here with you as a gesture of good faith, but be aware that she will not be freed—will not be yours—until I return and open this clever cage. If I do not find what I am looking for in the palace, I shall simply take her away. Do we understand each ot
her?”
Mr Farringdale nods. He has told his truth, his only fear is that the boy will fail to find the jewellery, will think him a liar and refuse his prize.
Jacopo snatches a knee rug from the back of an armchair no one ever uses, to make a nest before the fireplace, then carefully balances the egg on it. He stands, dusting off the knees of his trousers as if Mr Farringdale’s day-maid’s labours leave much to be desired, then he points at the chrysalis.
“Build a fire, Isambard, it will benefit the egg. But don’t touch it—the egg, I mean—it is not yours until I return and gift it to you, after I’ve tested the quality of your information.” He gives a smile, as if between friends sharing a great joke, but Mr Farringdale notices how Jacopo’s teeth show and how sharp they are.
There were other ways he could have taken what he needed from Mr Farringdale, but he didn’t fancy swimming around in the man’s memories. Didn’t want to carry that with him. Besides, she was very specific about how he was to deal with Isambard; she was quite intent that things be done in this manner.
Jacopo pushes all other thoughts from his mind and concentrates on finding his way to the square, the great square. He is not familiar with this city, having only been here once with the troupe, and despite the past few days of following his prey, mapping his habits. Jacopo likes to know his mark as well as he possibly can. He’s been in the house on more than one occasion, sometimes when its occupant was at home, sometimes not. He has flicked through the contents of wardrobes and dressers, walked around the special room with its rose-pink curtains and coverlets where the small visitors stay, however briefly, before they are inevitably found to be not quite right. Part of Jacopo understands Mr Farringdale’s wanting and dissatisfaction, but no part of him understands the man’s desires.
He steps out into the well-lit public space that flows around the cathedral like a moat. The building is huge, a vaunting spire, gothic towers and flying buttresses, yet all in a strange harmony. There are no guards, at least no human ones; around the portico of the cathedral he can see the smoky flashes of the wolf-hounds, the resurrected beasts who serve as ecclesiastical guardians of the structure. They are rare, these things, and old, the knowledge of their making lost to time. They harm only those with ill-intent, Theodora said when he was a little lad dandled on her knee. I’ve no ill-intent here, thinks Jacopo, and hopes his logic works; inside the palace things will change. He straightens his spine, stands tall and sturdy, and crosses the square, thinking determinedly of anything but what he plans to do.
A Feast of Sorrows, Stories Page 28
