by Mackenzi Lee
Sim manifested another dress from the modiste in Stuttgart, this one with a far more appropriate waistline for my square torso but made from a shiny black crepe that strongly suggests it was meant for a funeral. That, and its ready-made nature. Death is even more unpredictable than sitting in a cake at a party.
It’s not on the appointed theme of fish and fowl, but I could make a good argument for the entomological nature of my outfit, for I feel like a beetle in this skirt, the material made stiff and wide by panniers and thin ribbons dangling off the waist like antennae. “I think you tied it wrong,” I said at least five times to Sim while she helped me dress, and each time she replied, “I have not tied it wrong.”
I am still contemplating as I stand alone in my room, teetering before the mirror, trying not to be self-conscious about the fact that my hair is up off my neck and that I have several very large spots on my chin and also absolutely maddened by the fact that I care about these things when Dr. Platt is waiting for me downstairs. Your beauty is not a tax you are required to pay to take up space in this world, I remind myself, and my hand flits unconsciously to my pocket where my list is still tucked. You deserve to be here.
Someone knocks on my bedroom door, a frantic rap that’s certainly not Sim’s tap of warning before she lets herself in each time. “Felicity?” comes hissed over the knock. “Felicity, are you there?”
“Johanna?”
The door flies open, and she comes scampering into the room without invitation, Max bounding at her heels like they’re about to have a romp. She’s dressed for the party—white powder, perfect pink cheeks, and a heart-shaped mouche placed with surgical precision on her left cheek. Tiny pearls drip down her neck, spilling over the elegant slope of her shoulders and in between her breasts.
She slams the door behind her, Max perching himself at her feet with his tail thumping the floor hard enough to rattle the windowpanes. “I need your help,” she says, breathless, and I realize that the color in her cheeks isn’t from rouge.
“My help?” I’m still shocked she didn’t throw me out of her home after my scene at the party. “What do you need my help with?”
“I ruined my dress.” She turns around, trying to see her own back like a dog chasing its tail, and Max mimics with foamy delight. “Look.”
It’s a tent’s worth of material, and so adorned I can’t see anything amiss at first. I peer at her, trying to find the rip or tear or the big spot of drool from the dog.
“On the back,” she says, and I fight my way around the skirt as she keeps turning, and there it is—a small, but very noticeable against the blue, spot of blood.
“I didn’t realize I had started until I put the dress on,” Johanna moans. Max lets out a low yowl in solidarity.
It’s impossible to have an interest in medicine without picking up several methods for removing bloodstains along the way. It is also impossible to be a woman without that knowledge, though Johanna is limited by its location. “I think I can get this out,” I say.
“Can you really?”
“Stay here.” I dash into my dressing room and fish out a fingerful of talc from its silver casing, then mix it with a few drops of water from the washbasin before returning to her. I press the salve carefully into the stain, then fan it with my hand. “It has to dry,” I explain when she casts me a quizzical glance over her shoulder. And who can blame her? I’m currently waving at her backside while Max dances delightedly between us like this is some sort of fantastic game, his jowls swinging.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Johanna asks, her hands pressed to either side of her neck.
“Then I’ll throw a glass of wine at you to cover it up and you can tell everyone the stain was my fault. I had quite a lot of practice the other night.”
I thought I did a rather good job of making light of the incident, but Johanna doesn’t laugh. She puts her chin to her shoulder, eyes downcast. “You could have just told me you were miserable instead of destroying the dessert table.”
I stop flapping. “In my defense, I didn’t mean to do that. And also in my defense . . . I have no other defense. I’m sorry I ruined your party.”
“Oh, you hardly ruined it. One can still have a marvelous party without desserts. Though they certainly help.”
It is exceedingly odd to converse with someone while standing behind them, but facing Johanna, looking her in the eyes, still feels too daunting. Too easy to see the way she has settled into herself like an impression in the sand, while I have just grown stranger. I stare at the clasp of her necklace and the fine hairs that curl along the back of her neck. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Why? Because you’ve never been to a party?”
“No, I have.”
“I know.”
“I meant—”
“Caring about things like parties is beneath a woman like you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, not just now, no.” She turns. Makes me look at her. “But you did. Once.”
She’s speaking gently—not a thorn could grow from that spritely voice. But something about it makes me want to snap back at her. “And you said I was an ugly shrew and would die alone.”
She takes a step backward. “I didn’t.”
“It may not have been exactly those words,” I say. “But you made it very clear you thought me less of a woman because I don’t care about balls and card parties and boys and ridiculous blue dresses.”
She folds her arms. “Well, you seemed to think I was less of a person because I did.”
“Well, you’re certainly a less interesting person now than you were.”
I want to take it back as soon as I say it. Or better yet, want to go back and try this conversation again and not say it at all. Or maybe go back even further and never fight with her. Because I used to know Johanna like she was another version of myself—I had forgotten just how intimate our friendship was until I saw her again. The hollow spaces in my shadow, the second set of footsteps beside mine. I could have listed her favorite foods, animals, plants, books in preferential order like I had memorized them out of an encyclopedia. We made up a song about the four humors before I stopped taking Galen seriously as a medical writer. We got poison oak from hiking along the River Dee looking for sea monsters and didn’t tell anyone for fear of being kept apart. But standing beside her now, it doesn’t feel the same. It likely never will. Returning to a place you once knew as well as your own shadow isn’t the same as never leaving at all.
“I’m sorry,” I start, “I shouldn’t have said—”
“It’s not a blue dress; it’s indigo,” she interrupts. “I chose this shade because it comes from Persicaria tinctoria, which is a flower like buckwheat that my mother collected while she was in Japan and brought back to Amsterdam for cultivation.”
We stare at each other, the silence between us thick and fragile. Hearing that Latin classification from her lips is like a melody from childhood, half-remembered and suddenly played in full. Things I did not know had been askew fall back into place inside me.
I miss you, I want to say.
“I think the talc is dry,” I say instead.
The talc has turned a faint brown, and it crumbles like plaster when I scrape it off with my fingernail. Max pushes his nose into the discarded chunks until Johanna hisses at him that he is a filthy creature and absolutely should not eat that. He does not seem particularly deterred.
“Did it work?” she asks, hands pressed over her eyes.
I heft the not inconsiderable amount of material into my arms and stretch the offending patch between my hands for an examination. “It’s not entirely gone, but if you don’t know it’s there you can’t hardly tell.”
“Promise? I’m trusting you because I can’t see it.”
“You can trust me.” I falter. The fabric of her dress suddenly feels slick as buttered glass between my hands. “I didn’t know your mother was in Japan.”
Johanna tugs on her necklace, pull
ing the clasp back into place. “She was quite a lot of places. When she died—”
“She died?” I interrupt, the words coming out in a sharp breath. “When?”
“Last year. Near Algiers.”
“Johanna, I’m so sorry.”
She shrugs. “I never really knew her.”
The lie of that hums behind the words like a hive. I did not know much of Johanna’s mother—I never met her—except that she had left an abysmal marriage and was away (in Japan, apparently), and when Johanna’s father died, her mother would not or could not come home for her daughter. That had been the story that had been passed down the church pews and through tea parties and over card games until it finally reached me, because she was gone from my life by then, sent away to a relation in Bavaria because her mother didn’t want her.
“Would you like a hug?” I ask.
She frowns at me. “You hate hugs.”
“Right, but I could make an exception. If it would help you.”
“How about instead . . .” She offers me a hand and when I take it, squeezes gently, the same way we used to when we helped each other up rocks and fallen trees, so we knew the other had a grip. We knew we had a hold of each other. We could step more boldly than we would without a mooring.
Then Max, ever the jealous lover, sticks his nose between our hands until we use them instead to scratch his head.
Johanna and I leave my room together, Max prancing behind us like a show pony. The bow around his neck seems to make him feel very pretty. At the top of the stairs, we nearly smash into Johanna’s uncle, who is making a very dramatic ascent with a lot of huffing and muttered curses. “Johanna,” he snaps when he sees us. “Where have you been?”
Johanna halts, reaching out for Max’s head. “I was . . .”
“All of these insane festivities are for you”—and here he shakes his hands in the general direction of the still-unseen party—“and you can’t even be bothered to show up on time. Do you know how much I wasted on flowers alone? It’s the middle of the winter and you insist on lilies—”
“I had a problem with my dress,” I interrupt, for Johanna looks like she may start to cry, and I don’t want to add ruined cosmetics to the list of this evening’s fashion catastrophes. “Miss Hoffman was helping me.”
“You have a maid for such things.” The uncle takes Johanna’s arm with a grip that looks like it pinches and starts to drag her away, but then pivots back to me for a last word. “Miss Montague, is it? While we’re on the subject, you’d best keep a closer eye upon that maid. I chased her out of my study this morning.”
“What?” The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I didn’t see Sim much this morning, but I have also been so preoccupied with reviewing Alexander Platt’s treaties so that I could be best prepared for our conversation tonight. “What was she doing there?”
“Lord knows. I gave her a slap and a scold to stay where she was allowed.” Sim hadn’t mentioned that. She hadn’t given any sign of taking a hit. But then I suppose Monty never had either, and he was beaten by our father for years. Or perhaps it’s just easy not to see if you aren’t looking. Herr Hoffman adjusts his wig, the part down the middle a pale line like a surgical thread pulled taught. “I suggest you not employ negresses, madam. They’re slippery and treacherous.”
“That’s a very grand statement,” I reply.
“If you had worked with as many African sailors as I have, you’d be suspicious as well.” I start, thinking for a moment he knows Sim is a sailor before I realize he’s talking about his shipping company. “Come along, Johanna.”
Johanna casts me an apologetic look over her shoulder as her uncle drags her away. “What about Max?”
“I’ll put him in your room,” I say quickly, for her uncle looks ready to strike her as well were they not about to walk into polite company. I hook two fingers under the bow around Max’s neck, then realize that is hardly enough and instead use both my hands to tug him back to my side. He whines, claws pulling up the rug as Johanna and her uncle disappear down the stairs.
“Go with Felicity,” Johanna calls. Max only cries louder.
“Come on, you enormous wrinkle.” I heave so hard I hear my shoulder joint pop. Max responds by lying down, a dead weight made possible to drag only by the fact that his fur is very slippery upon the polished wood floor. But I am not dragging this reluctantly dragged behemoth anywhere, particularly because in the process, he is leaving enough hair behind that two other dogs could be fashioned from it.
“Max.” I let go of the bow and instead make a fist, which I hold out to him. “What if I told you I had a treat for you in this hand?”
He sits up at once, tail thumping and all abandonment forgotten, then stands and follows me as I back down the hallway. I lead him into Johanna’s room, then open my hand and let his nose, the size of my palm, make a thorough exploration to be certain there’s nothing there. The thought of food got him salivating, and when he snorts and pulls his snout away, my hands are thick with slimy drool. The whole affair is a bit like being lovingly caressed by a dead fish.
I’m about to go when Max lets out a low woof, more threat to it than I’ve heard from him before. I turn back from the doorway as Max growls again.
Sim is standing at Johanna’s writing desk, the drawers open and their contents strewn over the top. She has a ring of thin files looped around one thumb, the metal picks clinking against each other like coins. Her sleeves are pushed up past her elbows, and I get a flash of that pirate ink in the crook of her elbow, a dagger running parallel to her veins, capped by a crown.
I have interrupted a burglary.
Sim must have frozen when I opened the door, for we stare at each other from across the room. I wonder if she’s armed, that marlinespike or worse within her reach. I wonder if I should run. But I’ve seen her, and she’s seen me, and she knows where I sleep. Running won’t change any of that.
Max lets out another ominous woof from deep within his chest. If there is to be a fight, at least I have the heaviest thing in the room on my side.
“Sim. What are you doing?” I say, trying to keep my voice as low and even as I can, though I’m reaching for the doorknob behind my back.
She doesn’t answer. The hard line of her jaw pops as she grinds her teeth.
“Are you stealing from the Hoffmans? Is that why you came here? You fed me nonsense about that book so that I wouldn’t notice you were a thief?”
“Let me explain,” she says, but I don’t give her a chance. Behind my back, my hand finds the door latch, and I spin around, trying to throw it open and bolt, only to find Max’s not insignificant rump is entirely in my way. The door bounces straight off him and slams again.
Sim launches herself across the room and grabs me, trying to pull me back into the room and away from the door. I have no idea what she intends to do once she has me where she wants me, so I take an example from Max and throw my dead weight in opposition. Instead of trying to pull me up, she tackles me, launching me backward so that we both smash into the wardrobe hard enough that it rattles against the wall. Inside, I hear something fall off a shelf and shatter, and the noxious scent of spilled rose water blooms around us, so thick we both cough.
Sim’s scrabbling behind me, trying to keep me pinned and reach the desk as well, and I’m almost sure she’s groping for some sort of weapon. While I don’t know much about fighting, I do know how revolting drool is, so I reach up and clap her face between my hands, still thick with Max’s saliva.
She yanks away from me. “God, what is that? That’s disgusting.”
I take a great lungful of air, ready to shout thief, but Sim leaps again, this time toward the desk. She snatches a single letter off it, the seal cracked in half and its folds fluttering, then bolts for the door.
I seize her by the back of the dress and yank hard. There’s a ripping sound as her skirt tears away from her waistband. She seems willing to leave her modesty behind if it means escaping—she’
s still pulling for the door—so I adjust my grip and instead fasten my arms around her waist and we both crash to the ground again. There’s another ripping sound as we fall, this one from my dress, and I feel my mannish shoulders break through the stitching where the sleeves connect to the bodice.
Max is barking. He’s also dancing around us with his haunches in the air and his front paws upon the ground like this is a game, cementing his status as the least effective guard dog of all time.
“We had a deal,” I say to Sim, my words coming out in short, sharp gasps. “Nothing . . . stolen.”
“Let go of me.” Sim is trying to claw her way to the doorway on her stomach, but I’m still attached to her waist and doing my best to snatch that letter from her. I manage to get my hands around one end, and I pull, hoping it might come free, but instead it rips. I’m thrown backward, half the letter—including the seal—crumpled and slobbery in my hand. Sim’s chin cracks the ground hard, but she’s up so fast it seems like she bounced. I’m still dazed from the fall as she opens the bedroom door and slips out.
I sit up, immediately greeted by a hard butt on the forehead from Max, who still thinks this romp is for his entertainment. I push him off, struggling to my feet, and smooth the scrap of my letter out against my dress. Between my damp hands, violent grip, and the fact that I am in possession of only half of it, the letter is entirely unreadable, but the seal has held well enough that I can make out the words Kunstkammer Staub, Zurich.
I don’t know what else she would have taken had I not walked in on her. But she was taking things. She is a thief. I let a thief into Johanna’s house. Doesn’t matter what she’s after or what she wants; I brought her here. From the moment she pulled the marlinespike on the sailor in London—perhaps even sooner—a part of me suspected it. But the bigger part of me ignored that entirely. She could have told me from the first word that she was here to slit someone’s throat in the dead of night, and I likely would have gone along with it because I would have turned a blind eye to anything for the chance to meet Alexander Platt. Primum non nocere. First, do no harm, that’s the oath. I can’t start down a path with those words in hand knowing that I stepped on Johanna to get there.
