Corpse & Crown

by Alisa Kwitney

  “Just nipping home to get my flag,” she said with a smile, and he let her pass.

  She tried not to think about what would happen if the kaiser arrived before she got back. Shiercliffe had done so much for her, but this transgression was one that would not, could not be forgiven. Am I doing what my mother warned me against? Am I throwing my career away for a boy?

  “I’m going to need to get back before it gets late,” she reminded Dodger.

  “Back by midnight,” he promised.

  Midnight had to be safe, she reasoned. There was no way Shiercliffe could spare the time to check on her room tonight.

  Still, things were not going according to plan. She and Dodger had barely covered more than a few yards when they found their way blocked by a line of wheelbarrows heaped with ready-to-eat meals for sale. The patriotic tunes here were intermingled with the costermonger’s chants of “fresh cockles, alive, alive-o” and “pies, pies, savory or sweet, best in town and can’t be beat!”

  Children, mostly barefoot, darted in and out of clusters of people, playing tag and begging and making up dirty limericks about Victoria’s lapdog.

  Suddenly, an old woman in a ragged kerchief and shawl pushed herself between them. “Posy of violets, to match yer sweetheart’s eyes?” She thrust the little bouquet at Aggie.

  “Sorry, Granny, but my eyes aren’t violet,” she said, but Dodger surprised her by releasing his grip on her arm to grab the old woman and pull her into a fierce hug.

  “Faygie, you mad, lovely thing! What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been looking for Nancy,” said the old woman in a surprisingly youthful voice. “The barman at the Three Vultures says Twist and some posh Percy brought her here.” It was only then that Aggie put the voice and the name together. Underneath the stage makeup and powder, this old peddler woman was the young girl in the gray dress she had met the night she was blinded.

  Oh, Lord, thought Aggie, should she tell Faygie and Dodger about Nancy? She couldn’t decide what to do, since Nancy’s fate was now bound up with Justine’s.

  Best to say nothing, she decided.

  “Where are you lot off to?” asked Faygie.

  “Never you mind,” said Dodger. “You find Nancy, and when you do... Here, give her one of these for me.” He pulled Faygie into his arms and held her for a moment.

  Faygie pulled back and gave Dodger an assessing look. “What’s all this? You going soft on me?” Not realizing that she was unlikely to see her friend again, she gave him a little push. “Go on, I’ll catch you up at the Three Vultures tomorrow?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Dodger, taking Aggie’s arm. As they walked away, she slipped her hand into his, and he squeezed it.

  She felt a pang of regret. If everything went according to plan, she would never see him again after tonight. She didn’t want to think about how that would feel.

  More than that, though, she didn’t care to think about how she would feel if it all went badly.

  32

  There was an engraved brass sign outside Henry Clerval’s door that read Surgery, but once the door was opened, it certainly didn’t look like a proper doctor’s office. The faint, musty odor of dead rodent still lingered on the air, despite the application of carbolic acid, and an old-fashioned paraffin lamp could not quite dispel the gloom—although it did make it possible to make out the peeling remnants of green floral wallpaper, a rusted cast-iron sink and a wooden bed that still bore the stains of previous operations.

  There was a tray of surgical implements—scalpels, a retractor, needles of various thickness and length and fine catgut ligatures. There was a glass bottle of ichor and a length of rubber tubing suspended from an adjustable metal stand, all ready for transfusing. At least, Aggie assumed that the substance in the bottle was ichor. It might have been the gold glow from the paraffin lamp—electrical light was cooler in tone—but the contents of the glass bottle appeared a darker, muddier shade of green than the ichor she was used to seeing.

  In the far corner of the room, a Tesla coil stood like an enormous metal mushroom beside a contraption that resembled a cobbled-together version of the school’s galvanic magnetometer. The metal helmet had clearly started out life as someone’s cooking pan, while the crank that turned a handle seemed to have been borrowed from a bicycle. The electrical leads had been wrapped in odd bits of frayed and tattered rags, giving them a slightly raffish look. There were clear glass bulbs containing bits of filament, attached to a wand not unlike Lizzie’s etheric magnetometer, but not exactly like it, either.

  Someone was trying to recreate instruments they had seen used, she thought. How well they had succeeded was a matter for debate.

  Feeling like Shiercliffe, Aggie ran her finger over the table where the surgical tools were displayed. Dust. “Perhaps we should just leave.” They had already been waiting for over an hour, and she was starting to worry that she wouldn’t get back to the Royal Victoria before midnight.

  “We haven’t even met the sawbones yet,” said Dodger. His voice betrayed nothing, but Aggie could feel the tension in him. She hadn’t considered it before, but now she wondered if the connection between them was growing stronger. Over time, Victor’s transplanted left arm had begun to influence his thoughts and feelings. At one point, a whole other personality had emerged and taken over. Now, Victor appeared to have integrated with the arm’s original owner. Was that what was going to happen to her and Dodger? Suddenly frightened, she turned to him, not sure what she wanted to say.

  “Listen,” he said, as if reading her mind, and then, in the back of the room, a door opened. A familiar figure emerged, wearing a white coat and a smugly superior expression.

  “My apologies for keeping you waiting. I’m Dr. Henry Clerval. Now, what brings you here today?”

  He didn’t recognize her, but she certainly remembered him. “Hello, Henry,” she said. “We’re here to ask you a few questions.”

  * * *

  Lots of people thought they knew what it was like to be poor, thought Aggie, but unless you knew what it was like to be truly destitute, you didn’t know what you might risk for a remedy.

  If you were just plain poor, your choices were still fairly straightforward. Meat was spoiled? Chuck it out. Fleas in your mattress? Wash it clean. Someone you trusted with your secrets sells you out and steals your eyes? Turn the tables and screw them over.

  But when you were desperately poor, you made compromises. You trimmed the rotten away and kept what still looked palatable, because there was no other food to be had. You couldn’t afford to wash out the fleas, so you rubbed oil of camphor all over yourself and hoped it offended the fleas as much as it did you.

  You asked a fake doctor to help and prayed the medicine he gave you was real.

  “I need your help with a little problem.” Dodger removed his spectacles and pushed down his collar, revealing the electrodes on either side of his neck.

  “Ah. I see.” Henry sounded taken aback. Most Bio-Mechanicals did not introduce themselves or their medical complaints, of course, but Aggie wondered if there was another, less savory reason for his reaction. Even in a place as desperate as this, Henry might not have had many patients—or any complaints he could not palm off with a bit of snake oil and a conjurer’s flickering of lights. Perhaps he did not feel up to the task of helping Dodger.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dodger, interpreting Clerval’s hesitation as a concern about payment. “I’ve got the funds.” He patted his pocket.

  “Of course.” Henry straightened his cravat, composing himself. “Not to worry, you’ve come to the right place, my friend. I have what you need.”

  Aggie shot him a dark look. “That remains to be seen,” she said. “Can you explain precisely where you obtain your ichor?”

  “That would be from me,” said a familiar voice. Aggie’s stomach twisted as Oliver Twist
walked through the door. “Stone the crows,” he said, removing his stovepipe. “What happened to your eyes, Dodger?”

  Looking at Twist’s gaunt, high-cheekboned face, Aggie saw the events of that awful day in February unreel in her mind: Twist’s clawlike hand, grabbing for her medical bag. Dodger and Twist, grappling and fighting. The glass bottle, shattering against the brick wall. Strangely enough, she could recall that she had been in pain, but not the pain itself. What was clear, though, was that looking directly at Twist made her feel sick to her stomach.

  Fighting back a wave of nausea, she turned to Clerval. “What is he doing here?”

  Clerval frowned. “Oliver Twist? He is my business associate.”

  Aggie lifted her chin. “I will not remain in the same room with this person. Either he leaves, or we do.”

  “I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage, miss.” Twist gave Aggie a disarmingly boyish smile. “I seem to have offended you in some way, but I can’t recall the occasion.”

  Dodger took a step forward, his jaw set and his fists clenched. “You must be joking. You don’t recall trying to steal Aggie’s medicines? You don’t recall the fight that bloody wound up blinding her?” He gave a hoarse laugh. “No, of course you don’t. And as for what happened to me, well, let’s just say I don’t seem to have your luck for coming out on top.”

  Twist flinched as though Dodger had struck him. “I don’t recall that night at all, Dodger. But I don’t doubt a word of it.” He turned to Aggie, and for the first time, she realized that he was not as haggard or ill-seeming as he had been the last time she had seen him. “Miss...Aggie, is it? I cannot express how deeply I regret my actions. I was out of my head. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  “You’re always sorry,” said Dodger. “Until you do it again.”

  “I’ve quit the drugs. Everything except the ichor, and that doesn’t addle my judgment. Please, you must believe me. I’m a changed man.”

  Dodger shook his head. “You must have me confused with a mark, Twist. Remember, I know you. I’ve heard this song and dance before.”

  Aggie grabbed Dodger’s arm. “Maybe we should leave.”

  He turned and looked at her. Without the tinted spectacles as a shield, she felt as if she were falling into a well. “I can’t go back, Aggie.”

  Still holding Dodger’s arm, Aggie turned to Henry Clerval and Twist. “There are plenty of snake-oil salesmen around Brick Lane who are all too willing to hand out bottles of laudanum and cocaine along with promises they can’t keep. Is your ichor the same as we use at the Royal Victoria?”

  Twist raised his right hand. “The very same. I take it myself.”

  Henry nodded, as well. “I can assure you that this ichor is the same high quality and possesses the same efficacy as what they have at the Royal Victoria.”

  In his head, Dodger could hear Faygie’s voice, warning him. Marks get conned because they want to be conned. They want to believe in the quick profit, the instant attraction, the miracle cure. They assume that they are cleverer than they are, or that they have a plan for beating the odds.

  But Faygie wasn’t here, and Dodger had never thought he was slated for a long life anyhow. Just a free one.

  “It’s up to you, Aggie. I won’t make you stay here. If you want to go straight back to the Royal Victoria, I’ll take you there.”

  She looked into his face and knew what he was really saying: If you want me to, I will trade my chance at freedom for you. No matter how uneasy she felt about all this, she could not make him do that.

  “I can wait an hour. Have your treatment.”

  For a long moment, he just stood there, looking at her. Then he leaned his forehead into hers so she could feel the tremble that passed through him. When he drew back, his strange new eyes were so close that she felt dizzy. I could fall into him, she thought. We could fall into each other.

  “So,” said Clerval, bringing their attention back to him. “Are we decided? Shall we proceed?”

  “Yeah,” said Dodger, giving Aggie a last, searching look before pulling off his jacket. “We’re in.”

  33

  Bill Sykes wasn’t sentimental. Sentiment was a luxury reserved for the pretty, the charming and the rich, and he was none of those things. In the craps game of life, he’d landed a face that provoked fights and a body that could win them, and no other advantages. No gift for disguise, no talent for misdirection, no ability to charm his way out of impossible scrapes. His dog, Bullseye, liked him for the same reason Nancy did—because he looked like a bit of security in a hostile world. Because he touched her with affection and didn’t cause her pain.

  Although he hadn’t touched Nancy. Not in ages. Funny thing was, he had thought that if he stopped the touching, he would stop her from thinking she was in love with him. She thought he was different from other blokes because, instead of pursuing her, he held her at arm’s length.

  He wasn’t different. He just couldn’t bring himself to take what she offered under false pretenses. He’d made that mistake once, and she’d cried afterward and told him he did love her, he just didn’t know it.

  But now she was gone, and he wondered if maybe she’d been right all along. The thought of her injured or dead was like a knife twisting in his gut. Was that guilt or affection or as much of love as a gargoyle like him was capable of feeling?

  Concentrate on the job. He could still do right by his Nancy. Help her, if she was injured. And if she was dead...bring her body back, give her a decent burial. Mourn her. That’s what this mission was about. Going to the one place where you were likely to find the sick or the dead. He hoped to find Nancy among the ill, not in with the cadavers. But he was preparing himself for the worst.

  “Oi,” said Faygie, struggling to walk alongside him in her old woman’s getup. “Slow down. I’m meant to be ancient. I can’t go racing about like a bloody gazelle.”

  Bill forced himself to slow his pace, automatically listening for the clatter of Bullseye’s claws on the pavement before remembering that he had left her at Faygie’s pawnshop. It was strange, going somewhere without Bullseye padding along after him. You would think having a friend who could actually speak would more than make up for it, but Faygie’s presence kept reminding him of all the things that could go wrong.

  Well, get over it. A dog would be a hindrance in the Royal Victoria.

  Besides, he’d come to rely on the comfort of having Bullseye trotting along by his side. And he knew what happened when you got to needing someone or something.

  Safer to count on no one but yourself.

  Leaving the crowds gathered around the front gates, Bill and Faygie headed toward the side of the building. He took a running jump and caught at the ledge of a window, then hoisted himself up so he could break through the glass. It took moments, and then he had the door open for Faygie. They moved quickly until the sound of someone else’s footsteps made Faygie slow down so she was moving with an old woman’s heavy, trudging gait.

  Then they turned the corner and nearly ran into a tall, hard-faced woman dressed all in black.

  “You two. Where do you think you’re headed?”

  “I’m off to clean the wards,” said Faygie, in an old woman’s tremulous quaver.

  “You’re late,” the woman told Faygie. “Mind you make this the last time you don’t show up when you ought to.” She looked at Bill with a sharpness that prickled the hairs on the back of his neck. “I don’t know you.”

  “First week on the job.”

  “A porter? Where’s your uniform?”

  He shrugged. “They said I was to get mine today.”

  She sniffed. “Has no one told you to address me as Matron?” She sighed. “Very well, then. I’ll take you to the laundry to get a uniform. We can’t have you walking around here like that.”

  “As you like, Matron.” Bill tugged th
e brim of his cap and followed her toward the laundry.

  * * *

  Justine was going stir-crazy in Lizzie and Aggie’s small bedroom.

  At first, she had been content to laze around, marveling at her ability to breathe on her own. Lizzie and Aggie had barely spent any time with her, but they had brought her some food before rushing out again to prepare for the kaiser.

  After a while, she had decided to risk getting up and moving about the room. The first time she attempted to stand up, she crumpled to the ground. The second time, she managed to grab hold of a chair and haul herself up with her arms and then stood, trembling, almost giddy with pleasure and nerves.

  Walking took longer. She wasn’t sure whether it was because she hadn’t walked since she was a small child, or because Nancy had lost some strength in her muscles, but each small step exhausted her.

  Now that she had spent more than forty-eight hours in her new body, Justine thought she was getting the hang of it. Getting dressed in Lizzie’s second-best blouse and skirt had taken an hour, but she had managed it. Justine couldn’t quite manage the corset, which meant that everything hung wrong, but it was still amazing to see herself in the looking glass, wearing another woman’s face and body—looking like a typical, everyday sort of girl. With legs.

  She spun around, laughing, and then laughed some more when she toppled to the ground.

  She was aching for Lizzie and Aggie to come back so she could show them her progress. She was also getting peckish—and then, around six o’clock, she realized she was actually famished.

  Where on earth were the girls? For most of her seventeen years, Justine had cultivated patience. She had thought she had perfected the art of waiting, but perhaps she had used up all her self-control. Or perhaps what she had mistaken for philosophical equanimity had just been a side effect of her body’s weakened condition. All of a sudden, she felt strong and eager and restless and hungry enough to eat an entire roast pig. So why not do something about it?