The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee

  I want to run away right then but there’s just Percy in the cabin and water on either side, and the person I most want to run away from is me.

  Instead I say, “I’m glad you were there. For Percy. If it had been just me he probably would have died.”

  “He wouldn’t have died.”

  “You seem to be underestimating my incompetence.”

  “Epileptic fits aren’t fatal, unless some outside force comes into play. If he’d struck his head, or fallen into the sea—”

  “Please stop,” I say, and she lapses into silence.

  I muss my fingers through my hair again. For the first time in a long while, I feel compelled to do something about someone’s pain besides my own, but the press is blunted by knowing there’s not a damn thing to be done for him. Nor can I undo these past two years. He’s had no one, not even his family, on his side for this. I’d always thought it was Percy and me against the world, but the truth was, I marooned him long ago and never realized it.

  “How did you know what was happening to him?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “I didn’t, but I had a guess.”

  “And about . . . that school you were talking about.”

  “The Boerhaave School? It’s not a literal school. It’s a school of scientific thought. I’ve read about it some.”

  “I thought you read . . . What exactly is in those books of yours?”

  She crosses her arms and blows a tight sigh through her nose. “If I tell you something, you can’t mock me for it. And I don’t only mean now. You can’t whip this out and mock me for it at some later date when you’re feeling peevish.”

  “I’m not going to mock you.”

  She takes another huffy breath, nostrils flaring, then says, “I’ve been studying medicine.”

  “Medicine? Since when have you been interested in that?”

  “Since my whole life.”

  “Where do you learn about medicine?”

  “I read. I’ve been stripping the covers off amatory novels and swapping them with medical textbooks for years so Father wouldn’t find out. He’d rather I read those trampy Eliza Haywoods than study almanacs on surgery and anatomy.”

  I burst out laughing. “Feli, you glorious little shit. That’s the most devious thing I’ve ever heard.”

  She laughs too, and I remember suddenly we’ve got matching sets of dimples. It’s so rare that I see Felicity smile I’d forgotten we both inherited them from our father. “I’d rather study medicine than go to finishing school. That’s what I wanted. But they don’t let girls into universities. Girls go to finishing school and boys go to medical school.”

  “Not me. I’m supposed to run the estate.”

  I laugh, like it isn’t excruciating to be the punch line of your own joke, but Felicity’s face softens. “I didn’t know Father was so rough on you.”

  “Every father is rough on his sons. I’m not the only one.”

  “Doesn’t make it easier.”

  “I survived it, didn’t I?”

  “Did you?” She touches her forehead lightly to my shoulder, then sits up straight again. “What are you smiling at?”

  “Nothing,” I say, though said smile breaks into a sudden laugh. “Only, I think it’s quite amusing that our respectable parents raised two contrary children.”

  Felicity grins at me in return, and then she laughs as well—a loud and distinctly unladylike sound, and I love it all the more for that. “Two contrary children,” she repeats. “Our new little brother doesn’t have a chance.”

  Pascal finds Felicity and me for breakfast—a blissfully full and not-thieved meal, satisfying in spite of the fact that it contains a fair amount more rice and beans than I’m generally inclined to. We eat crouched on the deck of the canal boat around a smoking iron stove, tin plates cupped between our hands and no utensils but bread.

  The fair, Pascal tells us, is a traveling one. The merchants load their tents into boats and float up and down the Rhône, stopping in towns they come to and mixing with the local tradesmen until they’ve recruited enough to set up stalls.

  As the dawn breaks, muddy and pink across the water, women spread laundry along the rails and jump between the decks to speak to each other. Children run along the banks. Men play cards and smoke pipes, the gauzy threads that rise from their lips mingling with the early-morning mist off the water. They seem complete unto themselves, a small, floating kingdom along the fringes of the sea and, remarkably, ordinary to themselves. Perhaps this is what the Grand Tour is meant to do—show me the way other people live, in lives that are not like my own. It’s a strange feeling, realizing that other people you don’t know have their own full lives that don’t touch yours.

  I try to watch without staring, until Felicity kicks me. “You needn’t look at them like they’re on display.”

  “I’m interested.”

  “You’re gawking. Monty, we’re guests.”

  Pascal slides a piece of bread around the rim of his plate, two fingers propping the crust. “You should take some food to Mr. Newton.”

  “I don’t think he’ll eat,” Felicity replies. “I tried earlier but he couldn’t keep anything down.”

  Pascal chews for a moment, looking to the cabin where Percy’s lying, then says, “Where is it you come from?”

  “England,” I reply. “We’re touring.”

  “You seem to be running.”

  “Well, that’s what we’re currently doing, but we were once touring.”

  “The men you were running from—are they traveling with you?”

  “No, they attacked us on the road from Paris. We think they’re looking for . . .” I glance at Felicity. She gives me a little shrug, as if to say, Why not? I pull the puzzle box out of my pocket and hand it to Pascal. “We think they’re after this.”

  He turns it over in his hands, spinning the dials a few times. “A box.”

  “That’s the extent of what we know about it.”

  “Why do they want it?”

  “We don’t know,” Felicity says. “And we’re afraid if we hand it over, we’ll be killed for taking it.”

  “Ah, so you stole it?”

  “Yes, but not from them.” Then I remember the highwayman was the duke from Versailles, in whose apartments I was caught with a bare-breasted French girl. “Perhaps sort of from them.”

  “It looks quite old.” He hands the puzzle box back to me and I stash it in my coat. “There are two women who travel in our company who made their living in antiques. They deal mostly in trinkets now—little things that sell at carnivals. But they may know something about it, if you let me show them.”

  I look over at Felicity, like we might consult on this, but she says, “Yes, absolutely. If they could tell us anything, that would be so appreciated.”

  “They may be at the fair already. I’ll see if I can fetch them. Stay here.”

  As Pascal picks his way across the deck, I murmur to Felicity, “You think this is a good idea?”

  “I think I’d like to know why we’re being hunted,” she says. “And what we can do to stop it.” She pokes at the pocket of my coat harboring the puzzle box. “This is your fault, Henry. At least try to fix things.”

  I would like very much to punch her in the nose for saying that, even though she’s right.

  Pascal returns half an hour later with a woman on each arm, both old and bent and dressed head-to-toe in black, complete with thick veils like they’re in mourning. He climbs onto the boat first, then helps them each across. Felicity and I both stand.

  “Senyoretes Ernesta Herrera”—he inclines toward the taller of the two—“i Eva Davila. They are the grandmothers to our company—les nostres àvies.” He smiles fondly at the two when he says it. “I told them about your situation and they believe they might be able to help.”

  I start to pull the puzzle box out of my pocket, but the taller woman’s hand—Ernesta’s—shoots out much faster than her pace led me to believe it was capable of
and closes around my wrist. “Not here,” she hisses in accented French.

  “Why not here?”

  “If people are after it,” she says, “do not wave it around.”

  We follow the grandmothers into the cabin of the boat. Ernesta laughs softly when she sees Percy in bed and says over her shoulder to Pascal, “You have a menagerie of these unfortunates, mijo.”

  As we shuffle in, I try to look anywhere but at Percy, but that’s a bit of a trick in a room that’s barely eight foot square. I do manage to only do it out of the corner of my eye, not straight on, which is a bit coyer and conveys that I’m still mad as hell at him. He looks well pathetic, curled up on his side, face turned to the pillow as pale sunlight wafts through the cabin door. His hair is matted on one side where he’s been lying on it, and his skin looks slick and waxy.

  But I refuse to be moved.

  Pascal stays out on deck, while Ernesta and Eva settle themselves on cushions tossed across the floor. Felicity perches on the end of the box bed and says something to Percy, too quietly for me to hear. He shakes his head, face turned away from hers.

  There’s nowhere else to sit unless I want to cuddle up with Percy, so I stand sort of awkwardly in the center of it all, trying to get my sea legs and not knock my head on the hanging lamps.

  “Could we perhaps speak elsewhere?” Felicity says, but Percy opens his eyes and pushes himself up on an elbow. The neck of his shirt slips down over his shoulder, revealing the sharp course of his collarbone.

  “No, I want to hear this.”

  Ernesta holds out a hand to me. “Let us see.”

  I surrender the puzzle box. She turns it over in her hands, then passes it to Eva. “You have stolen this.”

  Felicity and Percy both look at me, and there’s no point denying it, so I nod.

  “You must return it.”

  “The men I took it from are trying to kill us,” I say.

  “Not to them.” She waves a hand. “It does not belong to them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “This is a Baseggio puzzle box. They are expensive and rare. And they are not used to hold things of worldly value, like money or jewelry or the wants of common thieves.” She spins one of the dials with the tip of her finger. It makes a soft ticking sound, like a clock winding. “These boxes were designed to carry alchemical compounds over long distances and keep them safe if stolen.”

  Eva taps the end of the box and says something in a language I don’t understand. Ernesta translates. “The name of the owner is carved here, on the rim.” She holds it up and points to the thin band of enameling along the hinge, inscribed with gold letters that I hadn’t noticed before. “Professor Mateu Robles.”

  “I know him,” Felicity says. Then she adds, when we all look to her, “Not personally. I attended a lecture on his work in Paris. He studies panaceas.”

  “What’s a panacea?” Percy asks.

  “A cure-all,” Felicity explains. “An item or a compound that is a remedy for mutiple ailments, like a bezoar or ginseng.”

  “Robles is well known in Spain,” Ernesta says. “One of the last great alchemists in the court before the crown changed hands, though of late better known for killing his wife.”

  Felicity lets out a small squeak at that.

  “He killed his wife?” Percy says hoarsely.

  “An experiment gone wrong,” Ernesta says. “An accident, but she died by his hand all the same.”

  “But the box didn’t come from Mateu Robles,” I say. “I stole it from the king of France.”

  “You stole it from the Duke of Bourbon,” Felicity corrects, though the detail seems a bit irrelevant—I think she just enjoys rubbing it in that I’m a thief. “He’s the one who’s after us.”

  “What’s in it?” Percy asks. He’s sitting up now, arms folded around his knees and leaning forward for a better look, like the box has changed since last he held it.

  “Something with alchemical properties most likely, which makes it valuable,” Ernesta replies. “Or dangerous. Or both.” She shakes the box lightly beside her ear, like it might announce its own name. “Not a compound, though. It sounds to be a single item.”

  “Couldn’t someone break the box open?” Felicity asks. “It doesn’t look very sturdy.”

  “The boxes are often lined with vials of acid, or some other corrosive substance. If the box is broken, the object inside is destroyed.” Eva says something, and Ernesta nods. “She says that it must be returned to its owner.”

  And then they both look at me.

  “By who?” I ask. “Us?”

  “You are the thieves.”

  “Monty’s the thief,” Felicity says.

  “No, I am the second thief. Which I think cancels out my thievery.”

  “This box carries cargo likely more precious than you can imagine. It must be returned to Mateu Robles.”

  “Then you take it. You know more about it than we do.”

  Ernesta shakes her head. “We have been expelled from Spain. We indulge in practices outlawed by the crown, and we cannot return without consequences.”

  “You’re Spanish?”

  I can feel Felicity resisting the urge to roll her eyes. She’s practically vibrating with the effort.

  Ernesta, for her part, does not roll her eyes at me. “We’re Catalonian,” she says.

  I’m not sure of the distinction, but for fear of outright mockery from my sister, I move forward like that makes sense. “And you think this professor is in Spain?”

  “The Robleses are an old Catalonian family. They were in the court at the same time as we were, but they were expelled when the House of Bourbon won the throne, and they returned to Barcelona.”

  “And you want us to take it to them there?” I ask.

  “Absolutely not,” Felicity interrupts, shaking her head so vehemently her plait whips the bedpost behind her. “I’m sorry, but we can’t. We need to find our company and see that this is returned to the king of France.”

  “It doesn’t belong to him,” Ernesta says. “It must be returned to the professor alone—no one but him.”

  “But surely there’s a reason the king had it,” Felicity argues. “And we can’t travel! We’ve no money and our cicerone is waiting for us here and Percy’s been taken ill—we can’t go anywhere if he’s unwell.”

  Percy stares down at the quilts, tugging at a loose thread between the patches, and for a moment I think he’ll protest, but he keeps silent.

  Felicity opens her mouth, like she’s got more reasons we can’t ferry alchemical compounds south queued up, but she’s interrupted by a sharp rap at the cabin door, followed by Pascal flinging it open. He’s flush-faced and breathing hard, like he’s been running. “Soldiers,” he pants. “Marco ran down—they tore apart the fair and they’re headed this way.”

  My heartbeat stutters. It’s rather clear who in this room they’re after.

  The thought occurs to me that if they are the king’s men, and if they are truly after us, and if they are being led by the duke, this might all be resolved by giving them the box. Though there seems to be equal odds they’ll slit our throats and drop our bodies in the sea, and I’m not risking that. But more than that—alchemy and panaceas and cure-alls are knocking around in my mind. If there’s anyone who can help Percy—perhaps even keep him from the asylum—it may be this family and their mad little box. And I’m not handing that over.

  “We can’t give it to them,” I blurt out.

  Felicity and Percy both look to me. So do the grandmothers, Ernesta wearing an expression that conveys this was such an obvious statement it’s redundant.

  “They might kill us for stealing it,” I say quickly, “and if it doesn’t belong to the king and it contains something that could be dangerous in the wrong hands . . . I think we should wait.”

  “We’ll hide you,” Pascal says.

  Outside the cabin, I can hear the guards’ boots slapping the dock. “Come out, now!” a familiar
voice yells. The duke is definitely here. “All of you. Empty the boats.”

  “I think Monty’s right,” Percy says. “We don’t give them the box.”

  I turn to Felicity, who looks as though she thoroughly disagrees, but throws up her hands in surrender. “Fine!”

  Neither Ernesta nor Eva seems particularly troubled by the hordes of soldiers boarding the boat. Which is good because I’m short on a plan but have an abundance of panic.

  11

  The king’s guard boards our boat—I can hear their shouted instructions through the walls, and the floor pitches each time one of them climbs aboard. Pascal is out on the deck attempting reason, but it doesn’t sound like they’re particularly keen on hearing it. The word fugitives gets tossed around a few times, and harboring, which I have a strong sense is not in reference to the boats. I pray they’ll bypass the cabin altogether and we won’t have to test our disguise, but then I hear the stairs creak and a moment later the door is tossed open.

  “You were instructed to disembark.” The Duke of Bourbon strides in, decked in livery of the king’s guard, with a rapier at his side that looks like it could do a fair amount of damage if swung about. He’s distinctly more ruffled looking than he was when I saw him at the palace, his nose burnt by days in the sun and his head unwigged. His hair is a short, coarse gray that curls in the back.

  “Apologies, gentlemen.” Pascal darts through the soldiers to Bourbon’s side. “But these women are not permitted to go onto the deck.”

  Zounds, it is beastly hot under this veil. The air is smoky with the incense Ernesta lit, making it hard to see and harder to breathe, and the clothes we stripped off the bed were not meant to double as skirts—the fabric is slick, and I’ve got one hand on my back like I’m a hunched-over old woman when really I’m just trying to keep the damn rug swathed around my waist from becoming both indecent and incriminating.

  “Why?” Bourbon taps his foot in the direction of Felicity, who’s wrapped up in what a few moments ago was a wall hanging and has a cushion cover over her head like a veil. “Woman, show us your face.”