Jane Steele

by Lyndsay Faye

  “Nothing you’ve said implies you were gravely at fault in any way.”

  “Then I have not helped so much as I ought to have done.”

  “Why should you help me?”

  “Why should I not? Help Charles is what I meant, however.” He sighed. “His life, his body—I have told you already such sacrifices occur in the Guru, but this is a needlessly raised shield after the battle has already left one bloody.”

  “You’ve plenty to fear yet, it seems,” I reminded him, feeling Jack Ghosh’s fingers crushing my soft throat.

  “That is a new battle,” he corrected, frowning. “I never dreamt of the old battle haunting us here save in ways you have already mentioned—our own. It’s most peculiar, if you ask me. This trunk business must have an end put to it, for Sahjara’s sake if not ours.”

  And I shall help in any way I can, I vowed to myself.

  Mr. Singh’s face took on the quality of a death mask. “Did Charles tell you whom he murdered, if neither how nor when?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do not believe him, then, when he claims to be a murderer,” he said hoarsely. “Unless he has been killing other people than the one I am thinking of, he is not to be trusted on the subject.”

  “I don’t know how many subjects he is to be trusted upon—he said he should never miss exile from the Punjab, for instance.”

  “He and I are agreed.” His voice scraped now, a blade being sharpened upon a stone. “I loved Lahore, but to watch an empire sabotage itself so? We were all meant to be lions, but some of us proved unshorn dogs. Why do you suppose we are warriors, Miss Stone? It is because our Gurus have been sat upon red-hot iron plates and covered with scorching sand, sewn into raw hides which shrank and broke their bones, had pegs thrust in their heads and their brains removed when yet alive. My people have been slaughtered like animals, our cities sacked, children’s bellies slit, our sacred pool filled with our hacked-apart bodies, and for what? So we might throw away the richest land in all of Asia?” His hands spasmed into fists. “I was not exaggerating when I said my sister should have been maharani—instead, the Company butchered us like cattle. There is too much blood in the sands of the Punjab, Miss Stone.”

  I did not know what to say. We watched the inching progression of a sweet-faced crone on the arm of her grandson, listened as the church’s bell sang salutations to the heavens, marked the stares slitting towards us in charcoal shadows of doubt and disgust.

  “Mr. Thornfield implied that as long as you and Sahjara are here, he has all the home he requires.”

  A smile barely brushed the corners of his lips. “He does us honour, then.”

  Nodding bleakly, I checked the inn’s entrance. The carriage had clattered into the manure-strewn yard and I rose, indicating it to Mr. Singh with my eyes; he stood, looking appalled.

  “But—now? Where is your trunk, where your farewell to the household, why—”

  “I can’t.” I forced back the tears which newly threatened. “Please tell Sahjara I love her, and ask her forgiveness. If—when I see her again, I’ll be glad of it. Mr. Thornfield gave me a hundred pounds. I’ll be fine. I still have my knife to protect me from badmashes.”

  I did not achieve a second smile, but the set of his lips did grow a shade less alarmed.

  Clasping my hand, he said, “In that case, farewell, Miss Jane Stone, and send us word of your whereabouts at once. Should you ever wish to trade the name Jane Stone for Jane Kaur, however, you should make a wise and courageous Sikh princess, and must return to us immediately. I beg you to consider it—the return, at least, if not the new moniker.”

  Walking towards the coach was like pulling my own skin off, but Mr. Singh helped by stepping back courteously.

  “Keep them safe,” I called when I reached the tall step. “Parting from you, from Sahjara, from Mr. Thornfield—well, the poets are liars. It isn’t sweet sorrow at all, it’s like dying a little.”

  Mr. Singh turned towards the half-timbered hostelry and Mr. Thornfield’s waiting carriage. “So often the way,” he agreed sombrely, “with partings.”

  • • •

  My journey to London was a clanking, frigid stretch of dull farms and weathered church spires during which none of the other passengers so much as snored in my direction. When I at last arrived in the city, still shaking from the road’s vibrations as well as nerves, I knew myself too sensible simply to crawl to a low lodging-house in Drury Lane and forget the sour bedclothes with the help of a pint of rum; so I walked for a few miles, stopping before the door of a seedy theatre for a ham sandwich with mustard and a tin cup of coffee.

  Restored, I recalled a guesthouse called the Weathercock in Orchard Street, Westminster, where I had lived for a few weeks high on the hog with the best-paid and best-educated literary patterers. As I was already near Marylebone, travelling there by foot would be easy as blinking, so I thanked the sandwich man and set off.

  All was as I remembered it, a pretty white-painted building with gas lamps aglow at either side of the broad front steps, and men of letters guffawing over politics in the lobby. When I rang the bell, the clerk expressed dismay at my lack of luggage; however, as I had the commodities of both tears and money at the ready, pleading railway thieves, I had soon obtained his sympathies, and he vowed to send the boots round for toiletries, laudanum (my pate ached something terrible, as did my heart), and a packet of tooth powder.

  The Weathercock had a lending library for the consideration of 1d. per week, to be paid upon Sundays, but I further endeared myself to the establishment by paying for this privilege immediately, made a selection based upon the volume having slipped down against its cohorts in a defeated diagonal posture, and took a glass of hot brandy and lemon to my room.

  After a desolate time spent nursing that toddy—though no tears, for the rest of them had taken up residence in Mr. Singh’s coat—I had produced a plan of action. This was three-pronged, and intended the following goals be achieved:

  —Remove all threat from the lives endangered by Augustus P. Sack

  —Ascertain whether you are the heiress of Highgate House

  —Escape the clutches of Mr. Sam Quillfeather and avoid the noose

  Penning this last, I shivered. Inspector Quillfeather may well have forgot everything, may well have indulged his friend Charles Thornfield, may well even have wanted to see the corpse before leaping to conclusions; but I had witnessed his absolute recognition of me, had heard him suggest I must have been a widow in a polite effort to explain why he was addressing a Stone and not a Steele. Sam Quillfeather was decorous and might even be kind; Sam Quillfeather was not stupid, however, and he had just examined the body of yet another chap slaughtered by my hands.

  By my calculation, knowing where I stood upon these matters now that I had vanished would take me no more than a fortnight; resolving them, no more than a few months. I had enough money to live for some two years with only the hundred pounds Mr. Thornfield bestowed, provided I practised economy, and meanwhile the boots had delivered a fresh evening edition to my room with my other requests, and the paper was chock-full of executions. With hard work added to the formula, it would be enough; I might linger here, and so bury myself in projects that no one should see I was transparent by daylight, a ghost with a soul of smoke and secrets.

  Once resolved, I picked up the edition I had selected upon a whim, and began the novel.

  There was no possibility of taking a walk that day… .

  • • •

  It will seem peculiar to the reader, doubtless, but I awoke to my exile feeling much refreshed the next morning.

  After all, I had a set of purposes; the frenzy of fright I had been driven into by the reappearance of Sam Quillfeather was quite dampened here in the world’s greatest cesspool; and the daily agony of seeing Charles Thornfield as if through a glass case in a museum display had ended. Additionally, London crackles and buzzes; it spits and it decays and it shines. I had missed it without knowing, s
o engrossed had I been by my new companions, but now I felt afresh the energy a metropolis can infuse into its strivers.

  The first thing to be done was to purchase new—by which I mean secondhand, but far more opulent—togs, which would further two out of my three schemes.

  I obtained a glass of porter and a good penny plate of bread and fried haddock at a pub first, and then took a crowded omnibus towards Aldgate. Far from Highgate House, my abandoned frocks were recalled as spinsterish and depressing rather than merely dull, for I had never dressed so in the city; I had sometimes been destitute and never wealthy, but it must have been my French half insisting upon the richest plaid capes despite their threadbare edges, the daintiest buttoned boots.

  Aldgate was a veritable sea of plate glass, a thousand welcoming eyes reflecting happy glints from the gas jets. Even in the wet grey mire of winter, the countless shops were a cheery sight—but I had no intention of making purchases on the main thoroughfare. Instead I veered towards St. Paul’s by way of Fenchurch Street, and after traversing salt-strewn cobbles for a few blocks, I found the haven I had sought: a nondescript window gleaming citron and edged with holly branches, with no sign posted save for PRIVATE ALTERATIONS UNDERTAKEN. I rang the bell.

  So close to Aldgate, secondhand shops kept as demure as middle-class whores, but this was the best of them, and soon I was prattling away with two familiar saleswomen who cooed and clucked over my present drab attire, waltzing about to find something of the sort I had used to like. When I explained money slipped easier through my fingers of late, and that I must dress more like a lady than my previous blithe showiness, our budding friendship was sealed—I suspect they imagined I had a dalliance with the master of the house where I tutored, a hypothesis only vexing because I had failed to do exactly that. I departed the shop with my arms full, promising to return for three more frocks they were altering to my shape.

  Next stop after another omnibus ride was the Soho Bazaar, where the rosy-cheeked craftswomen rent stalls inside the row houses at the northwest of Soho Square. By the time I quit this fairyland—equipped with new gloves and a stole and several hats—I was fagged enough to take a hansom back to the Weathercock, drawing a sly but amused stare from my new friend the clerk when he saw me dressed colourfully as a child’s top and laden with plunder.

  My room, after I had piled my twine-adorned parcels and beribboned hatboxes upon the bed, seemed much the barer for the additions. Mr. Thornfield may not have known my real nature, but he had spoken compass-true when he observed I sought companionship as bees do nectar.

  Restlessly, I pulled off my gloves and hung my new powder-blue hooded cloak, and surveyed the afternoon dress I wore in the long glass.

  It was the finest dress I had ever owned: dull silk, of a colour as much green as it was brown that made my eyes gleam like mahogany, painted asymmetrically with vines of delicate vermillion roses; along the bosom, the cinched waist, and the fully draped sleeves were barred pairs of emerald stripes. A single cascade of tiny buttons dripped from neck to waist, and it occurred to me, seeing the mischievous tilt to my lips, that I had never looked better.

  I am far too vain to even attempt the prevarication this brought me no foolish pleasure; but my eyes soon prickled because there was no one of importance to see me, and I turned hastily away to store my new belongings.

  That task accomplished, I sat down to write a pair of letters. The first need not be recounted as it was merely the request for an appointment with Mr. Cyrus Sneeves, eagerly informing him I was now in London; the second had required more imaginative plotting.

  Room 26,

  the Weathercock,

  Orchard Street,

  Westminster

  Dear Mr. Augustus Sack,

  I hope you will remember meeting the governess, one Miss Jane Stone, upon your dramatically terminated visit to Highgate House not two months previous. My note concerns matters confidential in nature, for I gather through your own curtailed speech and hints dropped by the always sinister Messrs. Charles Thornfield and Sardar Singh that acquaintances were renewed at Mr. John Clements’s funeral which rekindled old grievances.

  I hereby confess that I was so frightened by their display of weaponry that I embarked upon my own private investigation. As a governess, I was in no financial position to quit any master even if he should be a scoundrel—pray exercise your empathy, Mr. Sack, when I tell you I was determined to learn all I could in the interests of my own safety.

  Pausing, I poured myself a glass of the claret I had rung for, reading my lies back over. It should not do to lay it on too thick; however, Sack had seemed more of a vicious bully than a master criminal. I dipped my pen once more.

  The results of this amateur exploit have been most fruitful—indeed, I may well have learnt the whereabouts of a long-lost object.

  Letters to me can be sent to the above address under the name Miss Jane Smith, as bloody deeds were enacted which precipitated my flight from Highgate House. Speak to no one of Miss Stone, if you would be so kind; a Mr. Jack Ghosh, or so I have been told he was identified, broke in during the small hours and died of some misadventure. Singh and Thornfield give out to the police inspector that he cut his thigh upon a piece of window glass when entering, but I cannot believe this account, and when I made the discovery which enabled my departure, the devil himself could not have spirited me away quick enough.

  It is this matter of finances of which I wish to speak with you. Do not entertain the idea of coming to my lodgings, for I am not in immediate possession of the item in question; send me a summons for an appointment, however, and we may be able to assist each other.

  Expectantly,

  Miss Jane S——

  I addressed the envelope to Mr. Sack in care of the undersecretary at the Company’s headquarters, which was the intentionally imposing East India House in Leandenhall Street. Having passed it before, I realised it suited what I knew of the Company itself: opulent, powerful, and cold as marble.

  An equally frigid smile touched my lips at the thought I might soon enter its stone maw, a predator in the guise of a slender young woman.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself; or rather out of myself, as the French would say… .

  Days of preparation followed, reader, ones which left me in a strange daze of commingled purpose and despair. By now, I thought I might actually expire without Mr. Thornfield, sudden heartaches piercing with the lances of a hundred Khalsa cavalry; at others, I felt haler to know I served him still. I read my borrowed novel twice through, then bought a copy at a quaint bookstall—I have not yet got out of the habit of reading Jane Eyre, come to that—and idled, and schemed, and awaited answers to my letters.

  I had only to wait one day to hear from Mr. Sneeves; he was from home, the message having been forwarded, and so I must wait two more days to meet with him. Hastily agreeing to this via his clerk, I gnawed my thumb and hoped for a missive from Mr. Augustus Sack.

  I got one, too, on the very morning I was to meet with my solicitor, and it read as follows:

  East India House, Leadenhall Street

  My dear Miss Smith,

  Of course I recall the pleasure of your company, a boon which rendered bearable an otherwise profoundly distressing journey. I confess that, though I may have an inkling of the matter to which you refer, the less said in written form the better, for this is very much a Company affair, and therefore I propose you visit me in my office. My hours are from eight to seven, but a request from you could find me there at any time.

  Very sincerely &etc.,

  Mr. Augustus P. Sack

  My lips twisted into what resembled a smile, but may have invested the casual observer with more fear than mirth.

  Then I donned another of my new frocks in order to properly present myself to Mr. Sneeves. This costume was all of the same patternless fabric, a shimmering fawn colour, but the detailing was exquisite—ten deep pleats, a plain band of the same fabric at the w
aist, and then it blossomed into fold after fold, like a modern woman’s dream of a Renaissance belle.

  My eccentric looks did not quite do the workmanship justice; but next I added a calculated finishing touch, a demure but real set of necklace and earrings, the stones of which the jeweller assured me had travelled straight from the Punjab. I had sixty pounds of Mr. Thornfield’s advance remaining, and I assured myself that the rest of the money could not possibly have been better spent.

  • • •

  The first sense engaged upon entering Mr. Sneeves’s offices was that of smell; the reek of snuff greeted me long before the man himself did, though he was scrupulously prompt. Mr. Sneeves introduced himself in a reedy voice, hastened me into his consulting room, and shut the door.

  As soon as we were alone, he lifted a teak snuffbox. “You don’t mind, I hope?”

  “Not at all.”

  I must waste no time over describing the chamber—the usual maelstrom of ledgers, untidy bookshelves, and the like—for Mr. Sneeves had my passionate attention. He was a little man with a great round balding dome covered in freckles, as if his shoulders had sprouted a mushroom. Though of fine quality, his black coat was in no way ostentatious, and I realised that—apart from the almost dizzying aroma of snuff—Mr. Sneeves preferred his clients to forget they had ever required his services at all.

  “You are most accommodating. Thank you.” Mr. Sneeves set the snuffbox down and commenced staring at me with pale eyes beneath thistly brows.

  An interminable period passed, during which my sweat began to seep forth like morning dew.

  “Pardon, Miss Steele, but you stir up old memories,” Mr. Sneeves concluded at last, sitting back in his chair. “You resemble your mother, you know, save in colouring—that is entirely upon the paternal side. What should you prefer to drink?”

  I sat there, dumb; resembling my adored mother was enough news, leaving me hotly aglow, without the fact that I apparently took after my unremembered father as well. Meanwhile, Mr. Sneeves was already headed for the sideboard with a shuffling gait. I reminded myself of the role Jane Steele was to play today—a moderately interested but well-off woman, that she might get all answers not generally imparted to a beggar at the door.