The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

by Mackenzi Lee

  A few men turn in my direction when I’m shoved in. Someone wolf-whistles. I stand by the door for what is probably at least a full minute, trying to remember how to breathe, and far more of a wreck than I’d hoped to be at the pinnacle of a plan of my own devising. I am so far from heroic it’s pitiful. I’m not gentlemanly or brave. I feel small and cowardly, frozen near the door and shaking like mad because I got slapped.

  Pathetic, says a voice in my head that sounds like my father’s.

  Find Mateu Robles. I shove that thought to the forefront of my mind and focus on it. You’re running out of time.

  I force myself to raise my head and look around, taking an inventory of the men. Most of them are thickly bearded, but a good number look too young to be father to the Robles siblings, and they’re mostly five-fingered, except for one of the dice players with half a pinky, and another man asleep on his back who has no arms.

  Then I notice the man sitting on a ratty blanket in the corner, his thin clothes swallowing him and a gaunt, clemming look about his face. And two missing fingers—he’s got his hands knotted in his lap, like a gentleman, and I can see the gaps.

  Courage, I tell myself, and I think of Percy. Then I go sit beside the man. He looks up when I approach, and I’m about to ask him if he’s who I hope he is, but he speaks first. “Your nose is bleeding.”

  Which scrambles up the speech I had planned for him. “I . . . Is it?” I swipe at it with the back of my hand and return with a stripe of blood across my knuckles. “Damnation.” I give a rather fantastic snuffle that does me no favors.

  “Your jaw as well.” He raises his hand—the one with two empty spaces where his ring and pinkie fingers should be—and I throw my arms up over my face before I can stop myself—such a violent motion it must have looked as though he’d drawn a knife on me. A few of the men nearby glance at us.

  His arm drops. “They hurt you.”

  “Not much.”

  “Someone did, then.” He stays very still, like he’s worried I might spook again, then asks, “What have you been arrested for?”

  “Just a theft.”

  “Keep your head down—you’ll be fined and freed before the week is out. The guards here are devils, all of them.” He speaks with the same cadence as Helena, words sifting and sliding into each other like cream swirled into coffee. He gives me a slow up-and-down, taking in the odd combination of finery and filth I have become. His eyes linger upon my lapels, and I almost look down to see if I’ve dripped blood upon them. “You know,” he says slowly, “that looks very much like a coat I used to own.”

  Which is about as good a lead-in as I’m going to get. “You’re Mateu Robles,” I blurt.

  His eyes fly to my face. “Who are you?”

  I had planned this moment in my head—rehearsed it all morning, even practiced aloud to Percy, Felicity, and Dante on our walk to the market, my convincing, friendly argument that would win him over into surrendering his cipher. But instead it all tumbles out of me in a glob. “I’m Henry Montague. I mean, I’m a friend of Dante’s. My name’s Henry Montague. Well, not a friend, we just met him last week. I’m touring—myself and a friend—and my sister, because—not important. We’re touring, and I did something daft and stole something—not the thing that got me here, some other stealing—and that something was your box with your Lazarus Key and now we’re wrapped up in the mess that came with it.”

  Mateu blinks at me, like he’s a few words behind. “You stole the Lazarus Key . . . from Dante?”

  “Oh, no, we returned it to Dante. I stole it from the Duke of Bourbon.”

  “Why did he have it?”

  “Your children gave it to him.”

  His face hardens, then he tips his head backward against the stone wall and lets out a long sigh. “Goddammit, Helena.”

  “Yes, I get the sense it was mostly her.”

  “Never have strong-willed children, Montague. Or at least don’t allow them to adore you. Don’t turn them against their mother because you think you need an ally.”

  “I’ll remember that, sir.”

  “Sir? You’re a gentleman.”

  “Not always.” I snuffle again—I can taste blood all up and down the back of my throat. “Helena made a deal with the Duke of Bourbon.”

  “My release for the box, is that right?” I nod. “So if they gave it to him, why aren’t I free to chastise them myself?”

  “Well, I think your freedom was contingent upon the duke having access to the key. So take heart in that—he doesn’t have it yet.”

  “Are you making a joke?”

  “What?”

  “Take heart?”

  “Oh. No. Not intentionally.”

  “Your nose is bleeding again.” I swipe at it. Mateu stares down at the blood across the back of my hand. “Did Dante tell you about his mother?”

  “She’s the panacea. In the tomb.”

  Pain darts across his features, clear as glass and sharp as flint. “I was not good to my wife, Montague. We were not good to each other.”

  “Then why does it matter what happens to her now? You could give the duke her heart and be free.”

  “If I give that heart to a man who did not count the cost, it would not be long before yet another business would spring up in this world around the barter and sale of human life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, tell me this: Who would decide which life was worth taking so that someone else could be cured? The duke and his men want political leverage—keep their people alive, keep them in power, keep their hold on that power. And if one house has it, how long before the others want it too? With this heart in the wrong hands, imagine how many men will have to die for their kings.”

  “So, why didn’t you destroy it? If you knew it was a dangerous thing.”

  “I was foolish to shut her away rather than be through with it. But it was my wife and my work, and she existed, even though she didn’t really exist any longer. I can’t give her to any man—noble-hearted or not—because she’s my wife. That’s her life.” He rubs the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Now there’s nothing I can do about it.” He laughs, humorless.

  “But it worked?” I ask. “Her heart is truly a panacea? It will cure anything?”

  “If it’s consumed.”

  “You mean you have to eat it?” That’s a sour thought, though I suppose one unsavory meal for a lifetime of health isn’t a bad trade.

  Mateu cocks his head at me. “What is your intention with my Lazarus Key, Montague? If you’re just a thief doing a good turn, why are you here?”

  Which seems as good a time as any to make my offer. “If you tell me how to open the box, we’ll go to Venice for you.”

  His eyes narrow in a very Helena-like way. “So they’ve sent you to work on me.”

  “No, I swear to it.”

  “Was it Helena, or the duke himself? Or has Dante been dragged in now as well?”

  “Neither. None of them, I swear to it. We want to help you. The island where you’ve kept her—it’s sinking.”

  He blinks. “It’s what?”

  “The whole thing is collapsing. If you don’t get to her soon, she’s going to be sleeping at the bottom of the sea forever. You’re not going anywhere for a while, but we could bring her to Barcelona, if you want. Or at least take her somewhere else where she’d be protected until you could get to her. Or destroy the panacea. Whatever you want, but you’re running out of time to make peace with this.”

  He must not have known about the sinking, for his face settles into a different sort of frown. A thinking one. “How do I know you aren’t lying?”

  “Look, I know what it’s like,” I say, “to feel you’ve failed someone completely, and that you need to make penance or peace or something for that but you can’t because you made a choice and now all that’s left is feeling guilty for it. And if I could make it right—even in a way that didn’t make it right at all—I’d take it. In a moment
. And if I can do that for you, I would. I will. Please. Let us help you.”

  That soliloquy was not part of my rehearsed script, and I’m not entirely certain where it came from or whether it makes any difference. Mateu is drawing in the dusty prison floor with his fingers, not looking at me. “That key,” he says, “and that heart, is a tremendous thing for any man to possess.”

  “And we know the duke will use it for ill—”

  “I’m not speaking of the duke,” he says. He’s still scratching at the dust, but then he looks up at me, and it’s a hard thing to hold his gaze. I’m feeling guiltier than I expected, because here I am clamped onto his weaknesses and twisting them up for my own intentions. But I don’t let go.

  I pull the cuffs of the coat over my hands, then take it off entirely and extend it to him. “Here.”

  He doesn’t take it. “What’s this for?”

  “It’s your coat. Sorry if I got . . . I don’t think there’s any blood on it.” When he still doesn’t move, I set it on the floor between us.

  He stares at it for a moment, then smiles. “I wore that coat to both my children’s christenings. It was in much better shape then.” He takes the sleeve between his fingers, running them over a patch where the ribbing has frayed to nothing. “Helena would always hold my hand in one of hers and my sleeve in the other, just here. Dante—you couldn’t make that child hold on to you. Never wanted to be touched or held or stood too close to. But Helena wanted to be as close to me as she could—if my hands were full, she’d clutch at my legs. Didn’t want to be alone. And she was always so afraid we’d leave her. She’d wake us in the middle of the night to be certain we hadn’t gone. Made her mother furious.”

  It is hard to imagine this Helena, with big eyes and baby teeth, weeping and lonely and sick with fear she might be left behind. But then I think of the way she’s handed her mother over to the duke—perhaps handed him the lives of hundreds of men, the fate of nations—all to have her father sleeping in the next room over again.

  So perhaps not hard to imagine at all.

  “We used to run a string,” Mateu says, fingers walking the stitchery upon the hem, “between her room and ours, one end knotted to her finger, and the other to mine. And in the night, she could give that string a tug, and I would tug back. And then she’d know I was still there.”

  Across the room, the prison door suddenly bangs open, and from the hallway a jailer barks, “Henry Montague.”

  Dear God, my time is already up. Felicity is nothing if not aggressively punctual.

  “Please,” I say to Mateu. “We can help you.”

  “Montague!” the jailer shouts again. He’s looking around for me. “Your bail has been posted.”

  Mateu looks up at me. “So help me,” he says, and when I look down, he’s drawn out six letters in the dust.

  A G C D A F

  “That’s it? That’s the cipher? It’s random.” I almost laugh. “It’s not even a word.”

  “It’s not random,” he says. “It’s notes.”

  “Notes?”

  “Musical notes—it’s a song. The first few notes of a melody to be played on the crystallophone. It’s the song to summon back the dead.”

  “The ‘Vanitas Vanitatum,’” I say.

  “Henry Montague!” the jailer shouts a third time.

  “I’ll be Henry Montague,” shouts one of the men over the dice, and someone else laughs.

  “They’re calling you,” Mateu says. As I stand up to go, he smudges out the letters on the floor with the heel of his hand, and they’re brushed back into dirt like they never existed at all.

  In the courtyard of the prison, Felicity is making a good show of exasperation, very little of which is likely put-on—I assume she’s channeling some of the sincere exasperation she always has for me in reserve. Dante and Percy are hovering nearby, Dante with his head down and Percy watching me approach with his face drawn. His eyes flit to my jaw, which feels tight and enormous.

  “He’s such a rakehell,” Felicity is saying to the clerk. “Ever since we were children, he’s always doing things like this. I’ve had to bail him out of jail more times since we arrived on the Continent— Henry, you imbecile, get along. We’ve a coach waiting. Thank you so much, gentleman, I’m so sorry for the trouble. You won’t hear from us again.” As I follow them out of the courtyard, the clerk’s eyes boring into our backs, Felicity says under her breath, “Well, that’s much more to my taste than seduction.”

  As soon as we’re out of the courtyard, Dante steps in front of me, blocking my path. “Did you meet him?” he asks, and I nod. I see the questions fly across his face, shuffled like the dials of the Baseggio Box. Was he well? Was he hurt? Did he mention me? Is he hungry? Is he sleeping? Is he thinner? Is he older?

  But instead he asks, “Did he tell you the cipher?”

  I’m not certain what I feel in that moment, but it isn’t the ironclad certainty I was nursing before I stepped into the prison that Percy needed to be made well and the heart was the way to do it, consequences be damned. My footing is starting to slide in my own foundations, perhaps because of the way Mateu Robles spoke of his wife, or because Helena was once a small girl with a string tied to her finger, or maybe because he trusted me with those six letters scraped into the dust and now I don’t have a clue what I’m meant to do with them. He gambled all he had on me—the slowest pony in the race.

  Perhaps none of us needs it. Perhaps none of us deserves to know.

  But it’s me—hopeless, pathetic me—who does.

  “Sorry,” I say, “but he didn’t.”

  20

  None of us speaks much on the walk home. Percy stays close to my side, his pinched gaze darting to my face too often to be subtle.

  We arrive home late. Helena is in the kitchen, and Felicity stalks in to present her rehearsed story almost before she’s been asked. Monty was arrested, we’d better not stay, no, really, what a stunt, he’s such a child, it’s time for us to be moving along, so in the morning we’ll be off.

  A light touch brushes my elbow. “You want some supper?” It’s a moment before I realize it’s Percy speaking to me, though it’s just the two of us in the hallway—Dante’s already slunk away.

  For an odd moment, it feels like I’m standing beside myself, watching, divorced entirely from my own being. I see my arms pull up and around me. Percy’s hand falls away. “No, I’m going to bed,” I hear myself say.

  “You haven’t eaten all day. Come have something with me, you’ll feel better.”

  “Who says I’m feeling badly?” I snap, then turn on my heel and head up the stairs.

  Percy follows me into our room, closing the door behind him as I turn to the glass for a look at the damage done to my jaw. There’s a thin crust of blood dried around my nose, and a bruise starting to build to the left of my chin—red and swollen for now, but I know from experience that when I wake tomorrow morning, it’ll be a sunrise. The pain is a low, persistent throb like the rhythm of a song.

  “Are you all right?” Percy asks. I can see him reflected behind me, no more than a shadow beneath the gauzy layer time has left splattered across the glass.

  I scoop up a handful of water from the basin and scrub at the blood, leaving a faint trail through the water when it splashes back that turns from brown to red to pink before diffusing like a fist opening. “I’m fine.”

  “Let me see your face.”

  “No, don’t—”

  “I can’t believe how hard he hit you.”

  “Mmm.”

  “It scared me.”

  “I’m fine, Perce.”

  “Let me see it—” He reaches out, and I snap, “Don’t touch me.” I yank away from him so hard my wrist catches the basin and it rattles in the stand. Percy’s hand stays raised for a moment before he draws it to his chest and holds it in a loose fold over his heart. We stare at each other in the glass, and suddenly it feels like we’re at my dressing table back home, me smearing talc ov
er a black eye to mask it and Percy trying to coax me into telling him where it had come from.

  We’ve been here before. This is a silence we’ve shared.

  My hands are starting to shake, so I crumple them into fists at my sides before I face him. “Don’t you want to know?”

  “Know what?”

  “If Mateu Robles told me how to open the box.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t care? You damn well better care, because I’m doing this for you. We’re here for you, Percy, and we’re going to get to that damn tomb for you because you’re the one of us that needs a panacea, so maybe be a bit grateful for that.” My voice is rising and my jaw is throbbing, and I clap my hand over it, like that might stop it. “Goddamn, this hurts.”

  Silence. Then Percy says, “I care that you’re all right.”

  “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?” I slap another handful of water across my face, then wipe it on my sleeve, trying not to wince as the material scrapes at my raw skin. “I’m going to bed. Stay if you want or go have supper. I don’t care.” I kick my shoes off, letting them bounce at random across the floor and lie where they land before I slump down on the bed and curl onto my side, my face away from him.

  Part of me wants him to be stubborn and stay. More than a part of me—I want him to come lie down with me, fit his body around mine like spoons in a drawer and not ask a thing and not be bothered by the silence. I want him to know what I need him to do, even if I’m too proud to say it.

  But I hear Percy cross the room; then the door opens and latches softly behind him.

  I lie still for a long time, feeling scrambled and tense. The only thing that nearly gets me out of bed again is the idea of finding something to drink, but even that isn’t enough. After a time, I hear Dante’s and Percy’s voices drift up from the study; then Percy’s fiddle starts. I recite the cipher again in my head, same as I was doing the whole way home: A G C D A F.