The Stockholm Octavo

by Karen Engelmann

  I bowed to him and kissed Margot’s small warm hand, trying not to show my eagerness to escape. I was struggling to stay afloat in this great tide of events beyond my knowledge, experience, or desire. I stumbled down the stairs in a rush and out onto the street, hoping to find a sleigh to spirit me to Baggens Street where I could fuck myself into forgetfulness.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Opera Box 3

  Source: J. Bloom

  “GUSTAV IS STILL NOT HERE, Madame, and the royal box remains empty,” said Johanna, lowering the opera glasses.

  The Uzanne rapped her fan shut on the arm of her chair. The orchestra began tuning up. The audience drifted back to their seats, revived by the conversation and refreshments of the interval. “No one of any merit has come tonight. No one comes but commoners now,” hissed The Uzanne.

  “If only commoners attend, then why have you come, Madame?” Anna Maria asked.

  “Even the most bitter tart will attract the attention of a hungry man, Miss Plomgren. I had hoped to catch His Majesty’s eye. He would see my presence as an offering of reconciliation, and become even hungrier.”

  “A horrible thought,” Anna Maria said, leaning forward from the shadow of her second-row seat. “Must we stay for the final act?”

  “The final act is always the most dramatic. And if Gustav does appear he will make note of you as well. Lesser beauties have found their way into his favor.”

  “I have no desire for his favor, only for his demise,” Anna Maria whispered.

  “Miss Plomgren, you must learn that engagement is a crucial stage in any battle. If you draw close and are at your most enticing, you can extract your husband’s pension before your revenge.”

  “Revenge against whom?” Johanna asked. There was an uncomfortable silence. “It is said that His Majesty has overwhelming charm,” Johanna said finally.

  “Charm is for snakes. I have been bitten before.” Anna Maria reached between the chairs, grasping the free hand of The Uzanne.

  “Miss Bloom is correct to make note of Gustav’s skill. You must be aware of your opponent’s advantage at all times, and charm is a crucial component of any arsenal, snakes and women especially. Now let go, Miss Plomgren; you are hurting me.”

  Johanna placed her hand gently on the arm of The Uzanne’s chair, careful not to touch her. “Madame promised to refrain from politics tonight. You know that it disturbs your slumber.” Johanna scanned the audience through the opera glasses. “Here is something more amusing, Madame, down on the parquet—an old woman dressed in a robe à la française, as though it were 1772!” Johanna handed the binoculars to The Uzanne. “She is looking up at us like she knows you.”

  Liveried footmen doused the candles of the house chandeliers and turned the wicks up on the footlights. The audience was cast in shadow. The Uzanne studied Mrs. Sparrow’s dark silhouette for what seemed a full minute. “An aging French émigré, no doubt, here to beg for sanctuary. Pathétique,” she said, then slowly lowered the opera glasses to her lap. “But that old woman could be a vision of my future: the aristocracy lost, displaced by mob rule.”

  The darkened chandelier creaked its way up to the ceiling, hoisted by white-gloved hands pulling thick gold ropes. The audience settled into their seats, whispering and wrestling with gowns and stiff coats, waiting for the drama to begin.

  “We cannot wait for the masked ball,” The Uzanne continued. “We will act at Gefle when Gustav convenes his Parliament.”

  “Act how?” Johanna asked softly.

  The Uzanne trained the opera glasses on the empty royal box. “The snake must be charmed and locked safely away.”

  “I would do it,” Anna Maria whispered.

  The opera glasses came away from her eyes, and The Uzanne twisted around in her chair to gaze at Anna Maria. “Would you?”

  “You know I would. With pleasure.”

  “That is the best way,” The Uzanne said. She reached over and touched Johanna, her warm white fingers barely brushing her wrist. “Did you prepare the False Blusher as I asked?” Johanna nodded; she had gone to the Lion and ground the dried mushrooms to a fine dust. “Excellent. And have you tested it?”

  “Not yet, Madame.”

  “You must.”

  “Is it . . . General Pechlin you wish to subdue?” Johanna asked, sensing this was not the case but hoping she was mistaken.

  “I am so fond of you, my Upland naïf.” The Uzanne smiled and turned her attention to the curtain rising on the final act. “But that will not be necessary. Pechlin will hang himself when I am done.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Baggens Street

  Sources: E. L., Tall Hans., Captain H.

  WHEN I CAME OUT from the Nordéns’, Cook’s Alley was deserted but for a lonely straggler huddled in a doorway, sheltering from the squall of sharp, stinging hail. It would be a miserable walk of at least half an hour to get to Baggens Street. I pulled my scarf up around my face and held on to my hat. The bell tower at Jakob’s Church was chiming half past nine o’clock. I must have given courage to the straggler, for he followed as far as the bridge, its planks slick and black over the ice below. I bent into the gale, closed my eyes, and held the railing as a guide. I rounded the palace on the quay and turned on Castle Hill to the Coin Cabinet, then cut through Ball House Alley to Merchant’s Square and finally turned on Baggens Street. The most famous house on the narrow lane was well disguised, a sober, squat, three-story stucco building with a brown tile roof, painted a rusty orange.

  It was here Auntie von Platen ran a house of Freia with the loveliest whores in all of Scandinavia. The plain wooden door had a bronze knocker in the form of a putto peeking over its shoulder, its round bottom arched up for the visitor to grab—the only indication of the heaven that lay within. I took hold of this angel, gave three solid knocks, and waited. The peephole cover rasped as it slid back; I was being sized up for signs of wealth, weapons, and syphilis. Although the evening was early, and Auntie was not in full operation until late, a good business is always ready to do custom, and the door swung open. “Sekretaire! I almost did not recognize you. What has become of your scarlet cloak?” I took one step back in surprise; I was not such a regular of Auntie’s as to be recognized, and it took me a moment to place this sentry. Captain Hinken leaned out of the doorway and looked up and down the street, then something caught his eye. I followed his glance to see a figure disappearing into German School Alley. “It’s a dark night, but you have a shadow nonetheless.”

  “I haven’t enough pith for such a shadow, Hinken, even on the brightest day.”

  He laughed and gestured for me to come inside. The foyer had the feel of a Turkish palace, with smooth white walls hung with miniatures depicting various pleasures. The floor was blue-and-gold-figured tiles, and the chandelier and wall fittings were hammered brass from Arabia. There was a hookah pipe and a tooled leather hassock, upon which Auntie would sit the youngest of her whores draped in veils, during the busiest hours of the evening. The air was heavy with the drowsy scent of jasmine.

  “I have not seen you since The Pig! I was sure you would come for payment before now,” Hinken said.

  I glanced at the vacant hassock. “I have only come now for . . .”

  “Unfinished business, and a drink between friends!” He took hold of my arm with a firm grip, but instead of going through the curtained doorway to bliss he pushed open a panel on the back wall of the hallway. “Step inside my office, sir.” Just inside stood a chair and a pitcher of water, a broom, a polished wooden bat, and an iron bar. Hinken led me down an unlit hallway where we came upon a steep, uneven stair. Three floors up, the stairwell finally spilled us into a hallway barely lit by an oil sconce and two dormers. Hinken took a ring of keys from his belt, unlocked the farthest room, and lit a waiting candle. “This is the royal suite, though few royals would come here. All the same, I have to be ready to vacate at a moment’s notice,” Hinken said, gesturing to his trunk and packed canvas duffle standing
in one corner. The room was spacious but the ceilings pitched at uncomfortable angles. Its emptiness reminded me of my own. Hinken gestured for me to sit in a large, shabby armchair.

  “You have more spacious quarters than the whores,” I noted.

  He poured two neat glasses of akvavit. “Auntie feels that the grottoes of Venus should be as intimate as possible,” Hinken said, “and splitting the rooms into twos and threes . . . well, do the calculations yourself. I followed her example with the bunks onboard the Henry for the spring sailing; there is such demand that the crew will sleep in shifts and none will be the worse for it either.”

  “Where to, Captain? The Land of Cockaigne?”

  “In a way, yes! Come spring I’m heading west, to the new republic of America. There is opportunity there. And so to our business: there is a bunk for you if you want it. I plan to leave the Town with a clean slate, because there will be no looking back. I see it as full repayment of your favor to me.”

  “I will never leave the Town, Captain, but let’s say the bunk is mine to barter. How much can I get for the passage west?”

  “For the likes of you? Five hundred riksdaler. For an able-bodied sailor or a good-looking woman, I would pay you the five hundred myself. And let me throw in some free advice, which is why we are here in the royal suite and not downstairs.” He leaned forward. “Don’t visit the whores,” he whispered. “There is a dreadful contagion taken two of them to the grave already and more will follow. Auntie doesn’t want the customers to know, but we are friends, Mr. Larsson, are we not?”

  “You know my name,” I said.

  “I learned it from a little bird—a Mrs. Sparrow sought me out, on your recommendation,” he said.

  I could not remember recommending Hinken for anything to anyone, even Mrs. Sparrow. “She likes to keep a fine store of spirits,” I said. “Best be honest, or she will send the darker ones after you. She is a Seer, you know.”

  “Indeed I do know, but she didn’t come to lay the cards or to buy contraband liquor. She came asking about passage north, to Gefle. I told her she would have to go by land this time of year. Your Sparrow made a very generous offer, though. Missing a card or two, perhaps, is she?” Hinken waited for my comment, but I did not offer one. “And how did it turn out for you?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Sparrow’s fortune-telling spread that was so urgent last summer? It was the Chinaman’s eight, was it not? You were to be married!” Hinken poured us each another glass.

  “It was the eight, yes, but Mrs. Sparrow calls it the Octavo. I am in the middle of it now,” I said, “but I am not married. Not yet.”

  “So that is the future you see in the Town! What is her name, so I might toast her?” he asked.

  “I am not at liberty to say; she has not agreed.” I could hardly believe my own words; there was no need for me to lie to Hinken, but this goal of love and connection had taken on a strange life of its own. “My Octavo is not complete.”

  “To your Octavo, then.” Hinken drained his glass. “Whatever it is.”

  “To the eight.” I swallowed the liquor, my throat aflame, set down the glass and then stood to leave, cracking my skull against the pitch of the roof.

  Hinken laughed. “Mind you don’t lose your head, Mr. Larsson!”

  I shook his hand and made my way down the stairs, the sounds of the house waking for business around me: a call for a washbasin, a quarrel over missing slippers, a love song. A young girl sat waiting in the foyer now, her sheer white gown falling from her shoulder to reveal one rounded breast, but the warning from Hinken had doused my lust; instead it inspired escape and the drunkenness that leads to blackness and forgetting.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sedition

  Sources: E. L., M. F. L., innkeeper at the Peacock

  I SETTLED IN AT THE PEACOCK, a tiny inn off German Hill run by an elderly widow with bad eyesight and worse hearing. It had been my refuge and hideout for a week, since Epiphany. My plan tonight, as it had been the last seven, was to drink until senseless and spend the morning in bed, sending word to Customs that I was ill. So far the Superior had not seen fit to sack me. I had barely ordered my second toddy when I peered through the smoky gloom to see Master Fredrik come through the door. “The devil’s weather, and I should be home with Mrs. Lind. She will be fretting,” he said with surprising plainness as he shook off his cloak and sat down at my table.

  I called for another hot toddy. “Master Fredrik, this is quite a surprise.”

  “Indeed, this is an uncharacteristic quarter for me.” He removed his gloves and mopped his hair back from his face. “But not for you of late.”

  I recalled the shadowy figure on the street outside the Nordéns’, and again on Baggens Street. In fact, I had felt eyes upon me for a week but dismissed it as an irrational fear, brought on by too much drink and politics. “You have been following me. You have been following me since Twelfth Night.”

  I could see in his face that I had hit the truth. He sipped his toddy and recovered himself. “You have had several shadows of late, and your constant state of drunkenness has made you an easy study.”

  “There is nothing of interest to uncover, Master Fredrik. And who would care?”

  “To the contrary, there are diverse items of interest. Madame has instigated certain inquiries.” He stared at a knot in the table, then downed the contents of his mug. “Someone has uncovered your very close association with the gaming establishment of one Mrs. Sparrow, where a shameful incidence of thievery took place last summer. Frankly, I am surprised you did not reveal your familiarity with this birdhouse to me. We are lodge brothers, for one, and had formed an alliance of sorts, had we not?”

  “An omission of discomfiture, not guilt. It did not seem right to reveal my inner secrets to someone I was just learning to know. It might have turned you against me from the start.” I looked up, hoping he would swallow this oily confession. “We all have our weaknesses.”

  “Indeed.” Master Fredrik caught my eye then looked away. “And apparently you have a weakness for folding fans. You have been observed several times at the Nordén shop on Cook’s Alley.” He pulled a small jar of salve from his pocket and began massaging it into his hands, waiting for me to enlighten him further.

  My face went pink as a roast pig. “It was for a woman,” I mumbled.

  “Your interest only recommends you further.” He stood and put on his overcoat and scarf. “Come, Mr. Larsson. Let us walk a bit.”

  “Now?” I asked.

  He was already at the door, so I took on my wraps and we proceeded north along Little New Street at a leisurely pace. It was a calm night and a pleasant cold, bright with stars. A sled jingled across a distant square, the sound of the horses’ hooves muffled by the snow, then all was silence. “It seems I was the lesser of Madame’s spies; I have been given the job of courier. Miss Bloom is now invited to the Opera instead,” Master Fredrik said.

  “Miss Bloom!?” I felt my face warm. “She has been following me as well?”

  “She seems quite eager to delve into your life.”

  “I cannot imagine what Miss Bloom would want from me.” This protégée of my Companion, so pale and quiet, might be more dangerous that she appeared, and it occurred to me that she could have a place in my eight. “What does she say, the little magpie?”

  “You may query the lovely and clever Miss Bloom in person, for Madame Uzanne requires your presence at Gullenborg. January sixteenth. One o’clock. Her second lecture on the use of the fan. Madame indicated she would be most displeased, most displeased, if I failed to convince you of the . . . urgency she feels regarding your attendance.”

  “Urgency?” I asked, stopping short. “This is a strong word. I was planning to come already; she invited me herself.”

  “Madame has further use of your talents and wished to be assured of your participation.”

  “Am I to instruct the young ladies in the gaming arts?” I asked, perplexe
d by this sudden and unwelcome interest in my doings. “Teach sleight of hand?”

  “Indeed, sleight of hand is exactly what Madame requires, but not from her girls.” Master Fredrik took my arm and led me toward Friar’s Bridge. “Madame seeks a man who might enter Sparrow’s gaming rooms and make something disappear.”

  “What something would that be?” I asked, although I knew already.

  “A fan Madame calls Cassiopeia,” he said.

  “But the fan was lost months ago!” I said, withdrawing my arm.

  “Madame wants her fan. By whatever means necessary.”

  “I cannot understand why a woman who owns scores of fans—”

  “Hundreds of fans,” Master Fredrik corrected.

  “—why a woman with far too many fans would engage in such effort to regain one that she herself gambled away.”

  Master Fredrik clasped his hands behind his back, like a great philosopher out for an inspiring stroll. “Madame Uzanne is an artist, Mr. Larsson. The contents of the artist’s toolbox are hard to justify with any logic, but she needs her fan to do her work. Holding Cassiopeia gives her some mysterious confidence, some flow of energy. It does not make sense to those who do not have such a practice. But if someone were to take the tools of my trade, I would feel utterly violated, and seek their return by any means necessary, too. Madame has repeatedly made more than generous offers to Sparrow. She has written heartfelt letters, acknowledged the illogical nature of her attachment, hoping that Sparrow would be moved. She has threatened to engage higher authorities; in fact she has pleaded with Duke Karl and conferred with Bishop Celsius himself, but Mrs. Sparrow has been protected. In short, Madame has been totally rebuffed.”

  “Sooner or later, everyone loses at gaming,” I said.

  “Madame never loses. Never. If you cannot retrieve Cassiopeia by stealth, the bird’s wings are to be clipped. Madame will instruct you as to the specifics.”