I watched, frozen. Although the air was stuff’d with screams, shouts, the crack of Fen-axes on Surveyor-bone, and the heartless snap and suck of Surveyor-gunshot meeting Fen-flesh, there was also a terrible silence. A dense, cold cloud pulsing in my ears. The water calmed around the spot where my father and mother fell. All around, Overseers and some Inmates and Fen-Tigers, too, were falling. But the place where my parents went down was a glassy emerald, the hard gray sky shining a Mirror across the fen’s face.
It was as if a dream—I tried to move my arms and legs— I didn’t care if the Surveyors saw me now, didn’t care if they shot me too with their bullets— I tried to move, to run to where my parents had been— My mind was moving but my body was not— There was a loop of thought—stand up stand up—and no response from my shaking limbs.
Then the air got colder, darker— A Shadow pass’d above me— I kept my head down— If a Surveyor was about to shoot me dead then I would at least not allow him the pleasure of seeing that knowledge reflected in my eyes— They could shoot me like an already Dead thing—like a tree stump or dirt— I would not look up at him— I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing me see my own death coming— I waited for the impact.
It did not come.
* * *
—
A girl stood above me. She was wearing a white tunic and nice leather shoes, spattered in mud. She had dark hair, like me. She look’d my age. She look’d like me. I did not know if she was an Emanation or a sprite. I wasn’t sure if she was me. Some part of myself. Is there another lascar girl in the fens I don’t know? I couldn’t make out her face. She was wearing veils and layers of lace.
The girl mov’d a little closer through the grass.
I mov’d closer too.
I kept expecting my parents to break through the surface, gasping for air, filling their lungs with hard gulps. The water did not move.
The girl was saying something. She was saying the same thing over and over but I couldn’t discern it. The fighting continued all around us, the horrible screaming and falling and cracking. Then the Roar parted for a split second and a sound bubbl’d through, dropping from this girl’s mouth to my ears.
The girl was saying, Dig.
Behind the girl, Surveyors advanced towards us. But the girl stood in front of me, hiding me. In that moment, I believ’d she was some kind of fen-angel. The angel was whispering Dig. Her eyes widen’d urgently.
Bereft of any other method, I dug.
I burrow’d behind the stand of whorl grass. The fen-soil was soft, but it was so cold. There was a fen legend that Corpsepirates inhabited the deep earth. That when a fenman died, he became a pirate of the soil and the deepwater, and fed on the bodies of the Surveyors and the merchants and all the other money-men who stole from us. For the Corpsepirates—or so it was told—these Bodies were a great reward, a solace to the earth and a hallowed gift.
I loved tales of the Corpsepirates. At night, I’d beg my mother for stories. Beg her to tell me of how the earth would be nourished by each fallen Surveyor. Even if there was one Surveyor dead to tens or hundreds of fenfolk killed at their hands or starv’d, each Surveyor death was a cause for joy and Celebration. I would rock myself to sleep on my pallet, the damp air whistling through the hut like a ruckus of hands; and I would think of the carnival of Corpsepirates rejoicing underground.
But as I dug, I remember’d the Corpsepirates and felt, now, a flash of fear. I didn’t know how far you could dig and not be taken away. And I didn’t know if the Corpsepirates would know that I was a live Body, and a fen-friend, not a foe. I shiver’d as I thought of them tunneling through the loam, blist’ring it like a cauldron on boil, rippling through the dirt with their blackiron heads and long metal teeth. I dug and dug. I dug until I could lie in the dark Hollow and pour soil back over myself without making a hump, and I pray’d that the Corpsepirates would know I was alive and a Daughter of the fens, and wouldn’t feed on me. And I lay there and listened to the sound of my heart pounding against the packed freezing ground. Listened to the Thud of Surveyor boots above me.
And then the soil rumbl’d. Someone or something was rummaging in it. My mouth went dry in terror as dirt rained down on my face. I clos’d my eyes and shut my lips and squinched my face up tight. I begg’d God for a bargain. That they would bury me in the water with my parents. I didn’t even pray to live. Just to moulder together with them.
Then there was a Warmth on top of me. The surprisingly light, gentle pressure of a Body lying down. It was the girl. Her hair fell over her face. Cool lips were against my neck. The girl’s parts were press’d into—all over—my own. Breasts, nethers, stomach, thighs. I found my body reaching up to meet the girl’s body: do not ask if it was Terror or Desire.
I bury’d my nose into the girl’s neck.
“You didn’t cover yourself well,” the girl whisper’d. “The dirt was all hectic ’round your hole. They would have seen.”
“Then you could have covered me better.”
“I could have.”
Our warm parts burn’d against each other and our faces held tight to each other’s necks and we breath’d together while the stomping and Thudding and shooting continued above.
There was a recurring low Echo in the soil. The reverberations of the Fen-Tigers and the Scottish inmates falling and splashing into the water.
I held tight to the girl.
The shooting stopped. Then the falling stopped. Then the stomping stopped. And there was only one sound—louder and louder. It was the Surveyors braying as they chanted in victory, clapping each other on their backs. Then the Stamp of boots became distant as they tumbl’d off screeching with pride, headed no doubt to the pubs. Then that too stopp’d and it was silent.
“They’ll be looking for me,” said the girl, finally.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll come out too.”
“No. You should stay here. For a bit. One night. Until it is clear. Until you are safe.”
The girl pulled a handkerchief from her dress pocket and laid it over my face so that when she gingerly put her knees on either side of my hips and point’d herself upwards and dug up, the dirt fell on the Napkin and not in my eyes and mouth.
* * *
—
And then I was alone. Even now I don’t know who she was, or why she saved me. I cannot say with certainty whether she was real.
All I could do was lie there and lament. And be bitten and crawl’d upon by the undersoil life. Blind, wet worms wreath’d my fingers and between my toes—canny millipedes cleared out little domed arenas in a circle around me. My presence was an event in their dirt-World. They reposed in their domes, arching on their hindquarters like tiny cobras to watch me. From time to time they leapt out, striking with lightning Precision passing earwigs—swallowing them whole, pincers-first. Their legs fluttered as they ate in unconceal’d joy.
I had tried earwigs once—my father had given me one when he’d been unable to find even a small bream for supper. It had not been very bad. The carapace was tangy as salt.
Time passed. Just as I fell into sleep, I had the intolerable and yet necessary realization: I would have to leave the fens. Leave them forever. For no matter how much I loved that teeming, lush, subterranean, boggy, Blighted place, it was dying. How far had my parents had to wade for the crayfish? Neck-deep and our supper would consist of one, perhaps two, small creatures. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. An entire day’s Labor for two cray. And how long would that dwindling population last.
I had to leave just as I was. The Surveyors would be looting our huts, as I had heard they did in the other villages. I would have to leave wearing only my mother’s muslin shirt and my father’s breeches. To make my way to the only place left for a girl with no means to make any kind of a life or living.
London.*
* Reader, please
forgive the radio silence. I’m not in the habit of interrupting women when they are speaking.
11.
The next morning broke with a bright sliver at the edge of the horizon—the air was thin and dry after the storms. Jack pull’d on his breeches in the pre-dawn dark. Bess was still in a curl under blankets—the room had taken on a creeping Anonymity. It could hold them no longer.
They gather’d their things—though there was not much, truly—and sort’d through what was untorn and unbroken after the centinel-trampling. A few dresses and petticoats—some vases and bowls—Bess’s copy of Spinoza’s Ethics—the waning bottle of elixir from under the floorboard near the bed—some duds. Jack duck’d out to look for burlap sacks to transport their items. He headed for the refuse pile behind James’ Linen and Textile shop.
He rushed down the alleys quickly, the wind beating his ears Sore, and cooling the sweat at his temples and under his arms.
He pistoned along. Muscles and nerve fibers crisscrossed his chest, flexing and twanging. Jack spy’d some sacks behind the shop, then—unthinking—nick’d a handful of cherries from a cart. It was stupid to pull off any jilt at the moment, but force of habit and Hunger (and some still-Strange Boldness) puppet’d his arms.
He rounded the corner back to the bat house, slipped in with a fly*1 nod to the Lady Abbess, and chugg’d up the narrow stairs—two at a time, his topcoat emitting fumes of ash and coal from the street. When he opened the door, that warm, close scent he lov’d—Bess’s musty-violet-scented-breech—pour’d through the cracked doorway.
There was her valise by the door. The room was empty of all their things except the remnants of some meal—empty globes of wine, ruby-scummed and dried at the bottoms, and a shiny bit of thyme-roasted duck hardening on a plate.
He pulled the cherries from his pocket and added them to the plate.
Bess’s comportment had shifted. He hadn’t noticed in the busyness of the morning, but—she had a new, open look. One he’d never seen before. Is this to do with the History she gave? Her face had no extraneous architecture but what was there. Not that he would have noted extraneous architecture beforehand. It was the kind of thing one doesn’t recognize until it’s dissipated.
“It’s been sweet”—Bess’s voice was soft—“sharing this room with you. I mean, ’cept for when you say foolish things to beadles. But I was so truly lonely here before you came.”
Two chousers on the run are permitted questionable decisions based only in some miraculous syncopation of the affects.
Bess leaned back a bit on the bed. Regarded him out of the bottom of her eyes. “You’re a beautiful Something, Jack.”
He knew that meant he had that despairing, longing look in his eyes. The one with his sentiments just out there, splash’d all over his phiz for everyone to see. His eyes were bigger and more expressive than a man’s eyes ideally should be. With long dark lashes. He hated their soul-fullness.
But Bess loved it—for it was this somethingness that meant, in her complex lexicon of desire and permission, that he was the one who could touch her without pay.
Jack mov’d across the room—pushed up her slip and knelt between her legs on the dirt-gritted floors.
At the taste of her, his Monies*2 immediately set to boiling—
—He could have stay’d that way for some time, but she pulled him up onto the bed, dropping her legs open. He pushed his breeches down—reaching under the bed for the Horn. She stopped him with a hand on his chest, letting out a small hiccup.
He look’d down. He was straining towards her.*3
Certanly there are Things that defy Description in the languages we have at our disposal.
So, to put it plainly, there was a—
—But language fails here—
—Perhaps a…
…Transfixing Shape?
—blooming thick at his nethers.*4
* * *
—
In any case, not the arborvitae of other coves—the ones possessed by childish glee. This was something else.
Less a—
or, rather, more a—
Well, one is driven into the arms of metaphor—
What was there was something of a creature—some partly mythical creature—or else an ordinary creature behaving mythically—a wolf emerging from the forest, dragging brambles, dripping fire from its teeth like blood. A wolf emerging from the forest bearing an expression never before known to wolf. Shame, strange Hopefulness, furious Hunger. A wolf emerging from the edge of the woods, breaking into the tiniest, most hesitant and yet utterly unchildlike Smile. Licking back fire along a dark wet muzzle. Wondering: Am I home?*5
And it wondered this in a Not-So-Nice Way.
The thing grew larger under Bess’s gaze and in her marvelous proximity.
Bess grabb’d him by the back of his head and they kiss’d deep and then he was—was—
He was inside her. Not—truth be told—all that Deep inside her, but he was inside her.*6 They made a hot Suture. A boiling Suture.
It was like with the Horn.
It was and it wasn’t like that.
Dear God.
* * *
—
Sometime later—
“And then you proceeded from the Red Chapel, through the stout door, into the dark passageway,” cried Bess, standing on the bed, gesticulating wildly with her arms in a pantomime of Jack’s most infamous gaolbreak. Whatever she hadn’t been able to fit into her two valises or the sacks, Jack had stuff’d into his coat pockets and wound ’round his waist.
They were now both drunk. And open and easy with each other again.
“Well, but you c-can’t attack a fillet that way,” corrected Jack, standing and stumbling on the tangled bedsheets. He guided her hand in a mimicry of gaolbreaking.
“It—it’s like this,” drawing her right hand back and then thrusting it up at a mock-fillet. “You strike it hard and precise at the front, and then it shatters—” Jack sprinkl’d his fingers through the air, conjuring falling shards of fillet.
Bess turn’d and they dropp’d to the bed again. Jack’s hands roam’d up and down her high tight bottom, her thighs—and they’d made it three-quarters of the way through a flask of brandy, when Bess look’d down at him, her dark hair messed across her eyes—and fell giggling on his chest. He liked her a bit soused—how Undone she’d become with liquor—his ice-queen, composed and Brilliant during the day, but unraveled and somewhat silly by night’s end.
“We will beat them, Jack,” she said into his chest. “We will.”
“I know,” he said, into her hair.
They should have left hours ago.
* * *
—
Fortunately the centinels were quiet that day.
They hired a hackney coach—and so, what was going to be a melancholic procession from their rooms was transform’d into a tumult of laughter, dragging sacks and suitcases, and then they were riding past Newgate with the windows down, screaming in joy at their freedom and youth and pleasure. They were too soused to find this Foolish—even Bess, who now had splashes of Red warming her cheeks on account of the quantity of brandy and clicketing.
They hung out the windows, calling for the warden, the Inmates, anyone to hear that they were free and ungaolable. It felt good to forget everything—to drown together in perfect Freedom, rolling side to side in the coach, feeling the able Irish Roans pulling them forward like Poseidon sporting the waves, immune to tide and currents.
The gargoyles outside Newgate appear’d even more immense from street level, and Jack was draped out the window of the coach backwards, looking up at them drunkenly, Bess with her face pressed into his breeches, her breath in some consummate syncopation with the cart’s rocking. His body blush’d all over with a sustained, unpeaking exquisite Pleasure, and he was l
ooking up at the huge gray flint faces, the scudding glowing clouds.
Sometimes—albeit rarely—but especially when one is young, Revelry is the verso face of misery and Terror.
* * *
—
When the coach pull’d up outside Dennison’s, the driver lash’d the horses to the post and stepp’d down to piss in the gutter. There was a broadside pasted to the horse post.
“King’s Menagerie tonight,” read Bess, idly.
Jack meandered over, scann’d the advertisement. “Eagles, a Sea-Bear, and a Lion-Man straight from Borneo.”
“A what?” She put his hand on his arm.
“A Lion-Man straight from Borneo.”
“Jack”—she tore off the advertisement, peered at it—“a Lion-Man.”
“Didn’t know you were interested in those blasted human zoos.”
“No, remember when Evans was dying—well, I mean, right before the dying part—and he said something about how this wasn’t his first operation?”
“Don’t remember much o’ that day.”
“The note we found?” She rustl’d through one of the bags. “See!” She point’d to it. “Met with Okoh and the Lion-Man.”
Bess had her look of unfettered Glee, the look she got when seemingly unrelated things began to connect. Her Spinozist look.
* * *
—
But first upstairs to Dennison’s to drop off their goods. A quick hello to the new Abbess—a wrinkled small woman hardly as well off as the other, but hopefully, Jack thought, less likely to turn them in to the magistrates. This bat house was Somber, quiet in the anterooms with an occasional down-at-the-heels cove shuffling through. At least no centinels would think to look for Bess at this sinking establishment.
Confessions of the Fox Page 21
