by Mackenzi Lee
We find the bank on the high street. It’s a classical building with a marbled interior and rows of wooden-barred windows lining the perimeter, a wigged clerk behind each. The sounds of red heels and brass-tipped canes click like dice against the stone.
“If we don’t act soon, they’re going to think we’re scouting the place for a robbery,” Felicity says after we’ve spent a half of an hour in the lobby, doing what can only be termed lurking.
“We could tell them the truth,” Percy suggests.
“Yes, but we’ve only one chance,” she replies, “and the truth is a bit too preposterous to be convincing. Alchemical puzzle boxes and all that.”
I’m hardly listening to them—I’ve spent most of the while we’ve been loitering watching the clerk at the window nearest to the door, and after close scrutiny of his last few interactions, I’m fairly certain he and I have a big thing in common.
When you are a lad who enjoys getting other lads in bed, you have to develop a rather fastidious sense for who plays the same instrument or there’s a chance you’ll find yourself at the business end of a hangman’s knot. And if this fellow and I had met at a bar, I would have already bought him a drink and put his fingers in my mouth. It’s a great risk—I’m not so much jumping to a conclusion as vaulting haphazardly to it—but, somehow, I know.
“Stay here,” I say.
“What are you doing?” Felicity hisses at me as I start across the lobby.
“Helping.” I check myself in one of the mirrors lining the hall, ruffle my hair for good measure, then stride from the atrium and straight up to the man’s window. Not even a man, he’s just a boy—apprenticeship age, even younger than me. He looks up when I approach, and I give him a big eyeful of the dimples that have launched a thousand ships. “Um, bonjour. Parlez-vous anglais?”
“Oui,” he replies. “May I help you?”
“I’ve a bit of an unorthodox query.” I let out a shy laugh, flit my eyes down to the floor, then back to him through my lashes. His neck goes a little red. Fan-bloody-tastic. “You see, I’m touring.”
“I assumed.”
“Oh, am I so obvious?”
“Well, the English.”
“Of course.” I laugh again. “The English. God, I’m so awful at French. I can only say about three things. When is supper? Can you help me? and You have lovely eyes—Tes yeux sont magnifiques. Was that right?”
“Very well done. Is the last one to impress all the French girls?”
“Well, I was saying it to you just then. They’re quite something.”
I give him a moment of intense eye contact with my head tipped a little to the side. The corners of his mouth turn up and he shuffles the papers in front of him. “You had a question.”
“Oh, yes. Sorry, you’re . . .” Shy smile. Telling pause. “Distracting.” Now he’s really blushing. Poor, sweet thing, I think as I lean forward on the counter and he looks very directly at my lips. Wait until you fall for the boy who can’t love you back. “So I’m on my tour and . . . Sorry, it’s so queer. On the way down from Paris, we were robbed.”
“Good heavens.”
“Yes, it was rather harrowing. We didn’t have much on us, thank God, but they took all the letters of credit my father sent with me. I know this is his bank, but I haven’t got the actual papers.”
He gets ahead of me a moment before I explain it. “You want to make a withdrawal against your father’s name without a letter of credit.”
“I told you it was an unorthodox question.”
“I was expecting much worse.” He cracks a shy smile. “I thought you were going to ask me to dinner.”
“I still might. Though you’d have to pay.” He laughs and I bring the dimples out to play again.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t—”
I know that as soon as the word no makes its appearance, I will have lost irreclaimable ground, so, in what can only be described as a Hannibalistic maneuver, I cut him off at the pass. “I’ll give you my father’s name, and his address in England. He should be in your ledgers, but if there’s a problem, you can write to him and he’ll send funds, I know it. I’m so sorry, but I’m in such a tight spot and I’m a long way from home and it’ll take months before my parents can send any money and I’ve nowhere to go. I hardly even speak French.” I pitch my voice a little, not quite pathetic, but sympathetic, and his whole face melts like butter. I am not good at much, but what I do, I do well. “Sorry, this all sounds strange.”
“No,” he says quickly. “I’m so sorry you’re having a hard time.”
I run my thumb along my bottom lip. “I’ve been standing in the lobby for the last half of an hour trying to get up my courage to come in and ask, I was so afraid I’d be turned down. Honestly, I came to you because you looked the nicest. I mean the kindest. I mean, not that you’re not . . . You’re very nice looking. I promise, I’m not a scoundrel. I just don’t know what else there is to be done. I’ve nothing else left.”
He sucks in his cheeks, then glances down the row of clerks. “Give me your father’s name and address,” he says quietly. “I can’t give you much, but I’ll do what I can.”
I could have kissed him for that. Were we not in distinctly upright society, I would have. He disappears behind the counter, then returns with a small stack of bills. “There was a note with the account,” he says as I sign the receipt, then slides a scrap of paper across the counter to me. At the top is written an address, then below it, in a hasty scrawl:
We have secured lodging at this location and, God willing, you will meet us here.
Beneath is Lockwood’s signature.
As sour as I am on our bear-leader, it’s a relief to know that he survived the highwaymen’s attack. Not only that, but he’s here—we could find him by the afternoon and be back on schedule. Might not even be made to go home, if Felicity’s theory is correct. Instead I’m looking at weeks of rough travel with little money and none of the comforts to which I’m accustomed, and an unknown destination waiting for us at the end of it.
But also maybe something that could keep Percy from an asylum.
The clerk stamps the receipt, then asks, “Is everything all right?”
“Fine.” I fold the note in half and slide it back across the counter. “Could you dispose of that for me, please?” I give him another smile, and when he hands me the bills, I let our fingers overlap on purpose. He looks ready to burst with pleasure.
“How did you do that?” Felicity asks as I rejoin them on the other side of the lobby and show off my spoils.
“Simple,” I reply, and flash her my most roguish smile. “You have your skills and I have mine.”
13
We hire horses from a man in Marseilles and start along the seaside toward Spain. I am somehow stuck with an obstinate mount that resembles less a horse and more a leggy sausage, and seems fond of ingesting my commands and then ignoring them in their entirety. He’s also the hungriest horse for miles—he’s far more interested in pulling up leaves along the road than walking it.
I’m a good rider, but I’m not accustomed to being on a horse for much longer than the length of a hunting trip, and the roads are rough, often nothing but thin paths winding through the scrub. By our third day, I’m so bow-legged and sore that I can hardly get up at night to piss. Percy’s as bad off as I, though his legs are a fair amount longer, which I’m convinced makes a difference.
Felicity rides sidesaddle, so she’s spared some of the pain, though having her with us limits our lodging options. The number of public houses and inns along the road thins the closer we get to the border, and most take only male lodgers. One night we’re so desperate that we sneak her into the room after everyone else is abed. And while I’m not a particularly attentive elder brother, that has even me concerned for my sister’s modesty. But she sleeps soundly between Percy and me, the blanket all the way over her head, and I’m grateful for something to fill the space that would have been there anyway.
/> The heat is brutal, especially up against the coast, where the sunlight sits on the ocean and festers into a haze. Felicity soaks her petticoats in the sea to keep cool, and Percy and I do the same to our shirts, though they dry before we’re properly chilled. I try to wet my hair once as well, but I have never in my life liked putting my head all the way under and Percy knows it, so as soon as I get as far into the water as I intend to, he takes it upon himself to dunk me the rest of the way. When I surface, spluttering and indignant and far more put out than a nearly grown man should be over being made to go under the water, Percy’s laughing like a fool. He also seems braced for retaliation, for, as soon as I’m back on my feet, he bolts, kicking up the sea as he runs. I’m ready to chase him down and shove him in, but I stop. Percy stops too, when he realizes I’m not after him, and looks back at me—a gaze that feels partly like a challenge and partly like a question, and I wish I had a better answer. I can tell it’s writ all over me—the way that, the week previous, I would have tackled him straight into the sea for a laugh and had no concern. Percy must know what I’m thinking, because he gives me a sad smile and turns for the shore, and I know I’ve just proved he was right for not telling me he was ill.
Somehow nothing’s changed, and everything has.
The coastal road turns so rough and mountainous that we reach Spain without realizing it until we come upon the same sort of packed customs house we fought our way through in Calais. This one is considerably more of a pain in the arse, since none of us speaks any helpful language or has a passport, which isn’t a dead end, but it’s certainly a hindrance. In addition, we’re fairly vagrant looking, closing in on two weeks unwashed, unshaven, and in the same clothes as when we were ambushed outside Marseilles. We’ve made a few feeble attempts to clean up as we went, but we’re still ripe.
It will be days before we can get new documents issued, so we take up residence at a border inn for travelers waiting to cross into Catalonia. The wealthy have rooms abovestairs, and since we, with our few remaining sous and no Spanish coinage, are not among that number, we sleep on straw bedrolls on the common room floor. It’s crowded and noisy, mostly men but a few families with children screaming their bloody lungs out. I hope sincerely that when we make it home—if we make it home—the Goblin will have grown out of his wailing years.
Percy and I leave Felicity in the common room with a book borrowed from a spinster she’s befriended and together climb up onto the roof of the livery stable in the yard. The shingles have a good slant to them, and I have to wedge my feet into the gutter and pull my knees up to my chest to sit straight. Percy lies down flat, his legs dangling over the edge as he stares up at the sky. Beneath us, on the other side of the slate, I can hear the horses nickering at each other, the fresh post mares keening to be off.
We don’t speak for a while. Percy seems lost in his thoughts and I’m busy trying to roll tobacco in a scrap of Bible page torn from a manhandled copy I dug up in the common room. I could snort it straight, but to my great shame, I’ve never been able to take snuff without sneezing, and as futile as this effort is beginning to seem, I’d rather smoke. Once my makeshift cigar is assembled, I have to lean a rather dangerous distance over the edge of the roof to catch the tip in the grease lamp hanging above the livery door. Percy grabs the tail of my coat to keep me from falling.
“What happened to your pipe?” he asks as I take the first drag and the whole damn thing nearly collapses between my fingers.
I tip my head back and blow out the smoke in a long, precious stream before I answer. “Somewhere with Lockwood and our carriage back in France. Ah, look here, I can read the scripture as I go.”
“Let it never be said that you aren’t resourceful.”
I hold out the rolled tobacco to him. “Careful—it’s a bit fragile.” Instead of taking it, Percy puts his mouth to my fingers and takes a pull. His lips brush my skin, and a tremor goes through me, like a shadow passed over the moon, so absolute I almost shiver. Instead of doing the foolish thing it makes me want to do, which is lean in until those selfsame lips are upon mine, I catch his chin in my hand and scrub at the stubble starting to pebble it. “You’re getting rather scruffy, darling.”
Percy blows the smoke straight into my face and I reel back, coughing. He laughs. “And you’re well freckled.”
“No! Really? God. That’ll wreck my complexion.”
It’s a petty complaint, considering how roughed up we’ve become over the last few weeks. We’re all of us sunburnt and wind-scraped, and I know I’ve lost weight—my waistcoat sat snug against me when we I got it tailored in Paris and now I have to fold an inch of material to make it tight. I’ve got fleabites from our dodgy lodgings up and down my back, and I’m beginning to suspect some lice have taken up residence as well. The dust from traveling is starting to feel like a second skin.
I hold out the tobacco again, but Percy shakes his head. “Have some more.”
“I don’t want any.”
“Go on. Tobacco’s good for your health.”
It’s not the worst thing I could have said to him, but it’s certainly a contender, and I feel like an ass the moment it leaves my mouth.
Percy sucks in his cheeks and looks back up at the sky. “And you’re worried for my health, are you?”
“Should I not be?”
His mouth puckers, and I feel like I’ve said the wrong thing yet again for no reason.
I shuffle my knees on the slate, casting about for something to say that won’t do any further damage to us. Percy closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, hands folded over his stomach. His black eye is starting to fade. In the darkness, it’s no more than a shadow. Nothing’s different, I tell myself, but I can’t quite believe it. We feel like changeling versions of ourselves lying here, brittle likenesses doing a mimic of the way they have seen us behave before.
What if it happens again? It rises through my thoughts like shipwreck flotsam when I look at him. What if it happens right now?
“Are you feeling well?” I ask him before I really think it through.
He doesn’t open his eyes. “Don’t ask if you don’t care.”
“God, Perce, of course I care.”
“If you want me to say I’m fine so you’ll feel better—”
“I—” Definitely was hoping that would happen, I realize, and my stomach twists. I take another long pull, then say as the smoke slips out, “Give me a chance.”
Percy scrubs his hands along his breeches. “Fine. I feel horrid. I’m tired and I’m sore all over and the riding is making it worse, but if I say something, Felicity will get protective and we won’t be moving for days. I’m mortified you both had to see me like that. I haven’t been sleeping well, and sometimes when I don’t sleep it brings on fits, so I’m worried it’s going to happen again and every time I feel the least bit odd I get panicked it’s coming on and then we’ll have to hold everything on my account.” He turns to me, his chin tipped up. “That’s how I’m feeling. Aren’t you glad you asked?”
I can feel him shoving me away, but I hold my ground. “Yes.”
Percy’s face softens, then he turns away from me, his fingers working over his knuckles until they crack. “Sorry.”
I draw another lungful of smoke, so deep I feel like my ribs are about to pop. “Does it hurt? When it happens.”
“I don’t know. I never remember it. Thank God. It’s awful afterward, though. And the head examinations and cold baths and the bloodletting and whatever else the doctors feel the need to do. God, it’s miserable. My uncle hired a man to drill holes in my head to let the demons out, though that got squashed when he showed up to the house drunk.”
“Christ. And none of it’s helped?”
“Not a thing.” He laughs, then nudges me with his elbow. “Here, you’ll enjoy this—my uncle’s physician told us I was having convulsive fits because I was playing with myself. That was an uncomfortable conversation.” When I don’t reply, he says, “You can laugh. I t
hought it was amusing.”
“Please don’t go to Holland,” I say.
His mouth tightens, and he turns away from me again. Against the sky, the stars crown him, marking the edges of his silhouette like he is a constellation of himself. “What am I supposed to do, Monty?”
“Just . . . just don’t! Go back home and tell your aunt and uncle you won’t. Or run away—stay abroad or go to university and get a town house in Manchester and forget them.”
“That wouldn’t—”
“Why wouldn’t that work? Why can’t you just go?”
“Well, think it through. My uncle won’t fund a life beyond an institution. And the way I look, most places won’t employ me without his reference. And I can’t live alone for . . . obvious reasons. Running isn’t an option. Not alone, anyway.” He looks over at me quickly, then away again.
The smoldering end of my cigar crumbles, a fleet of falling stars between my fingers before they’re extinguished against the slate. “I think Mateu Robles is going to have something that will help stop your . . . You just haven’t found it yet! But we will, and then you’ll be better, and then you won’t have to leave. Don’t you want that?”
“I’d rather it didn’t matter. It’s not good, being ill, but I live with it. I wish my family cared for me enough to love me still. Not in spite of it. Or only if it went away. Maybe if they hadn’t already had to deal with me being dark-skinned . . .” He presses his fingers into his chin, then shakes his head a few times. “I don’t know, doesn’t matter. Can’t change it. Any of it.”
“I could say something to your uncle.”
“No.”
“Why not? If he won’t listen to you—”
“I know you think you’re being helpful when you say things like that, and when you defend me, and I appreciate it, I really do, but please, don’t. I don’t need you to stand up for me—I can do that.”