The Midnight Charter

by David Whitley

  The boy led her past an open doorway lit by guttering torches. Through it, Lily could see a dormitory. It was even sparser than she remembered, little more than shelves, with a few mats and blankets. On one of the shelves, a girl lay coughing. She couldn’t have been more than five. Lily looked away. She had always thought that it was only the ill who disappeared in the night. Until it had happened to her and she had woken up sold, in a building she had never seen before. One of the most important nights of her life, the night she had finally left the misery of the orphanage, and she had slept right through it, without a glimpse of the city she had longed to see.

  Lost in her thoughts, Lily took a moment to notice that the boy had stopped. He knocked on a large wooden door and, before Lily could thank him, he had scurried away down the corridor.

  ‘Come in, do!’ a voice called from behind the door.

  Lily paused. The voice sounded far lighter and younger than she remembered – it had been years, but the matron was burned into her memory as a formidable lady, her hair pulled back tightly and her expression severe.

  ‘Well? It’s rude to keep your hostess waiting,’ the voice complained.

  Hurriedly, Lily pushed open the door and entered another world.

  For a few seconds, she squinted at the sudden light, which streamed from the windows and reflected off a hundred glittering ornaments. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she saw her hostess. The face and shape marked her out as three or four years older than Lily, but the dress was too young for her, all bows and satin, and her hair was a mass of blonde girlish ringlets. For one strange instant, Lily thought that she had picked her clothes to match the room, where it seemed there was barely an inch of space not covered in frills or knick-knacks. In one hand, the hostess held an ornate, silver teapot.

  ‘Tea?’ she asked, pouring out a cup for herself. ‘Not the best, I’m afraid. Mummy will insist on that being used only on important occasions. Sit down, do. You must be Lily.’

  ‘Yes…’ Lily said warily, looking around for a chair.

  The hostess was sitting at a round table in the middle of which was a handsome cake-stand full of cakes. Each place was already set with a cup and plate, and each seat was occupied by a large doll with glassy eyes. Unsure what to do, Lily picked up the doll on the seat nearest to her, meaning to put it to one side. Out of curiosity, she turned the doll’s face towards her and immediately froze. The resemblance was slight, the doll was not particularly lifelike, but the thick, midnight-black hair and soulful expression were unmistakable – in her hands, she held a replica of herself neatly dressed in a white linen smock.

  The hostess giggled in glee. ‘It’s a hobby of mine. Mummy lets me play with some of the healthy babies and after she takes them away I add to my collection.’ She beamed as she poured Lily a cup of tea. ‘I made her myself, and called her Lily, of course, after you. Say hello.’

  Gingerly, Lily put the doll down beside her, turning its gaze to the wall. Something about the glass eyes unnerved her. Distractedly, she picked up the teacup, and took a sip, grimacing as the liquid burned her tongue.

  The hostess tittered. ‘Milk?’ she said, with a look of amusement.

  Lily smiled thinly.

  ‘No, thank you, Miss…’

  ‘Cherubina,’ she said, putting down her own tea. ‘Mummy… that is, Matron Angelina, is busy today, preparing for the Grand Festival next week. She runs several other orphanages all over the city and they want a choir this year. She said I’d be able to answer any of your questions.’

  ‘Did she?’ Lily murmured, trying to keep the scepticism out of her voice.

  She noticed a vast and complex doll’s house on the other side of the room, its small occupants spread throughout its richly furnished rooms in elegant poses. In the attic, she even noticed a toy maid, rosy, plump and as flawless as her toy masters. She was dressed in a silk replica of a working dress, unpatched and pristine, pressing sheets of satin with a miniature iron of solid silver. She made quite a contrast to the ragged boy who had met her at the door, and the hollow-faced girls she had known when she had been here.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve been looking through the files,’ Cherubina said with a grandiose air, and then added, with a giggle, ‘I think I put it in one of the jewellery boxes. Just a moment…’

  She rose with a rustle of skirts and began to pull drawers out of a wooden bureau. Lily watched her, oddly fascinated. Try as she might, she could not remember Cherubina. She hadn’t even known that the matron had a daughter. Then again, looking around her at the crowds of baby dolls, she doubted whether Cherubina’s interest would last beyond the point when the children could talk back.

  ‘So,’ Cherubina continued as she rummaged, ‘Mummy said you wanted to know about your past.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lily said, watching as the pile of necklaces, bracelets and earrings began to mount on the table. ‘I want to know if I had any family.’

  ‘If you did, you don’t any more.’ Cherubina’s voice was muffled. ‘They would have sold you, or they could have died, I suppose.’

  ‘Even so,’ Lily said, biting the inside of her lip, ‘I want to know.’

  Cherubina’s face rose out of a drawer, turned sideways in puzzlement.

  ‘How odd,’ she said, with a petulant frown. ‘Then again, you were an odd baby. I remember you, even though I was only tiny. You never cried, just sat there in your little white smock, watching us.’

  Cherubina gave a grin of triumph as she extracted a folded piece of paper from the bottom drawer.

  ‘That’s why I called you Lily.’

  Lily managed to keep her expression steady.

  ‘You named me… But surely you were too young?’

  ‘I was really, but Mummy could never deny me anything.’ Cherubina beamed. ‘I was so set on calling you Lily… I can’t remember why, I had only seen four summers at the time. Maybe because it was my favourite flower when I was little, and you looked like one, dressed all in white! Of course, I prefer hyacinths now, they’re all the rage…’ Cherubina paused, casting a critical eye over Lily’s patched working dress. ‘A pity you couldn’t keep it up. You hardly look like one now… but of course that’s not your fault.’

  She patted Lily’s hand with a simper and slipped the paper into it.

  ‘There you are. Your report. Lucky for you Mummy is so organized.’

  Lily stared down at the piece of paper between her fingers. Then slowly, carefully, she unfolded it and began to read.

  Name: Lily

  Assumed date of birth: 1st Libra, year 129

  Origin: Unknown. Left as a baby of approximately one year old in our porch on Agora Day, beginning the 130th year of the Golden Age. Due to lack of other information, and for the sake of convenience, we have recorded her first birthday on this date.

  Abilities: Few. As of current age – six years – she has developed some skill with sewing.

  Possible troubles: Has a stubborn nature, which should be corrected.

  Additional information: Left without details about parentage, but with a pouch of unusual gemstones. Baby blankets also of good quality, but marred by having the child’s name – Lilith – embroidered on them. After this name was picked off, the blankets were more easily traded for initial care.

  There was nothing more. Lily read it over twice, trying to see if there was anything else to learn, any hidden messages, or speculation on where the gemstones or the wraps might have come from. Cherubina draped herself over the back of Lily’s chair, her blonde curls dangling on to the paper.

  ‘Slow reader, aren’t you?’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Oh, I remember those gemstones! We kept a couple up until quite recently. You should have seen them. Beautiful, smoky crystals, until you held them up to the light. Then they seemed to shine from within, like they had a tiny fire inside… I think Mummy should have let you keep one, but she said that we had to trade them all.’

  Lily got up from the chair, unable to gather her thoughts. She went over to lean on
the doll’s house.

  ‘Lilith,’ she muttered to herself, rolling the unfamiliar name, her name, around her mouth and tongue.

  Cherubina, who was now scooping jewellery back into the drawers, looked up.

  ‘Oh yes, that was Mummy’s idea. Said that Lilith was too grand a name for an orphan girl, and it did sound awfully stuffy, like some dreadful old governess.’ She laughed. ‘I knew that there had to be another reason that I settled on Lily. Funny, I’d forgotten that. Lily… Lilith… it’s not that important really.’

  ‘Not important?’ Lily said, her voice deathly calm. She picked up one of the dolls from the house, looking into its dull glass eyes. ‘Isn’t it important for me to know my own name?’

  ‘What’s in a name?’ Cherubina replied, seating herself back at the table and pouring another cup of tea. ‘Do you like that? It’s terribly profound… it’s from a play I was reading last week.’

  ‘What’s in a name?’ Lily repeated, feeling the crunch as her hand tightened round the old paper. ‘I’ll tell you what. My name is all I have. It’s all I’ve ever had.’

  Lily felt her heart beating faster as her voice grew louder.

  ‘It’s the one thing I could call my own when I was stuffed into storage with a hundred other girls, huddled together for warmth. It was the way I remembered who I was as your mother taught us to submit, to be no different from any other drudge.’ She threw the doll to the floor. ‘It was all that kept me from despair when I woke up and found myself sold in my sleep, tossed into the back room of a bookbinder’s, stitching leather by candlelight for the right to eat. It was the name I signed on the bottom of the letter to the Count. The letter that saved me from being left in the streets when my fingers grew too large for the tiny stitches.’

  Lily came forward now, her face flushing. She felt like grabbing Cherubina by the shoulders, to shake the stupid girl until her blue eyes rattled and her golden ringlets fell from her head. Instead, she stood there, quivering with fury.

  ‘It’s the only thing anyone has a right to in this city. Not family, not compassion, just a single word to call your own. And you and your mother took half of it away from me and didn’t even notice.’

  Cherubina stared at her for a moment. Then she gave a sniff.

  ‘I think I liked you better when you were a baby.’ Icily, she turned her back on Lily and began to sip her tea. ‘You can see yourself out.’

  Lily stalked down the corridors, seething within. She barely noticed the boy open the front door once again; she didn’t feel the crowds jostle her as she forced her way through to return to the Central Plaza. Even the decorations that were being put up for next week’s festival, adorning the already elaborate stalls, did not get a second glance. It was only when she arrived home, opening the side door with a clatter, that her hands unclenched and the piece of paper fluttered to the ground. She slammed the door behind her and leaned back against it, breathing in the calming air of the former temple.

  ‘Lily? Is that you?’

  Dr Theophilus’s voice drifted up from the cellar. Lily grimaced. Was it her? Before she had seen that note she’d thought she knew who she was – just another street orphan, probably with parents already turned to dust that blew through the endless streets. But now, with a head filled with strange gemstones and her new grand, mysterious name, she felt like she knew less about herself than she had that morning.

  ‘Hello?’

  The voice sounded more concerned and Lily raised her own in reply.

  ‘Yes, Theo, it’s me.’

  It still felt odd calling him Theo. Using the shorter version of another’s name was always a sign of friendship, and he had insisted upon it. She was his apprentice now and, while she still felt a shudder during operations, he relied on her to mix his medicines. He always insisted that they were a partnership, not a master and servant. Thinking about that made her jaw relax a little.

  ‘That’s a relief,’ the doctor replied, his long, thin form emerging from the cellar door. ‘Miss Devine is getting a little prickly over the rent again. I tell her it’s all a matter of time but…’ He stopped, his face filling with concern. ‘Are you all right, Lily? You look dreadful.’

  Lily gave a wan smile.

  ‘I’m fine, Theo. I just… didn’t have a good time at the orphanage.’

  He sighed.

  ‘I did try to warn you. There’s nothing to be gained by raking over the past.’

  Lily nodded distractedly, moving over to the former altar, which had been converted to a workbench. She picked up her pestle and mortar.

  ‘I need to get on with grinding these ingredients,’ she said, her mind still lingering in Cherubina’s room, hovering over those dolls who had better clothes than the children just a few rooms away.

  Dr Theophilus stroked his moustache, frowning.

  ‘Only one patient today, Lily, and he’s still sleeping. I have some time if –’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Lily pulled the mortar towards her, adding minerals and herbs from the boxes beside her, and then she began to grind. The pestle pounded, each strike becoming louder than the last. She found her breathing rising again and cursed silently. Why was she so angry? Had she really been expecting anything else? And yet…

  ‘I just thought that maybe,’ she began, grinding the pestle against the side of the mortar, ‘if you ran an orphanage, you might occasionally, once in a while, notice the children. Maybe be a little bit interested in who they were or where they came from.’ Lily heard her voice turn bitterly sarcastic. ‘Not care, of course. It’s too much to expect that a place dedicated to looking after abandoned babies would care about anything other than how much profit they could make from their living goods.’ She threw in some more roots angrily. ‘But I thought they might at least pay some attention…’

  ‘Speaking of paying attention,’ Dr Theophilus said gently, pointing.

  Lily looked down. Most of the contents of the mortar were spread across the altar, having been sprayed out by her rough pounding. Embarrassed, she scooped the powdered medicine towards the edge, catching it in the bowl.

  ‘Lily, we can’t change the world. We do our best, healing the sick… Three more recovered from the grey plague last week, and there are fewer and fewer cases every day. We’re beginning to make a breakthrough –’

  ‘It’s not enough, Theo,’ Lily interrupted, feeling her anger mount again. ‘Why don’t we treat debtors? Why are those who need your cures most left to die on the streets? They spread the disease, Theo, it would make sense…’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve told you, Lily, we can’t afford to treat those who can’t trade for it. We’re barely getting by as it is, we ask for so little in return.’

  ‘There should be a way,’ Lily insisted.

  The doctor twisted his hands together, closing his eyes in exhaustion.

  ‘Suppose I treat one debtor for free. What hope is there for him? He’s still on the streets. He’ll be infected with something else within a week. And what about the others? What about the thousands of debtors we didn’t save? What about the hundreds who will suffer when we’re forced on to the streets ourselves?’ He spread his hands helplessly. ‘We can’t live on dreams, Lily.’

  Lily turned her back on him, fury catching at her throat. To her shame, she felt her eyes begin to heat up and prickle with tears.

  ‘What about Mark?’ she said, turning suddenly to face the doctor. ‘Why did you help him – trading for a boy who was as good as a corpse when his father sold him? Or are you going to pretend that he was nothing but an experiment?’

  Dr Theophilus stepped back, as if stung, and Lily instantly regretted it. She hated being angry with the doctor – he had been so kind to her over these past six months – but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

  ‘Why did you have to hide the urge to do something kind?’ She leaned forward on the old altar, her words coming in a stream: ‘Why did Benedicta never tell her mistress that she showed me the way
home for nothing? Why did I make Mark clean for me for reading lessons, when I so wanted to teach him? Why, Theo? Why? Shouldn’t we be able to do such things out in the open? Are we ashamed of doing something that has no profit?’

  Lily dropped her head and bit her lip, her hair falling forward to cover her face. Her throat began to constrict and she had to stop talking to avoid sobbing. She felt as though years of frustration were trying to escape from her, but the doctor did not deserve to bear the brunt of her fury.

  To her surprise, she felt the touch of his hands on her own, flat on the altar, and looked up into his eyes, which were full of concern. Lily swallowed hard.

  ‘If there was just one person who could show everyone there is another way, Theo,’ she said more steadily. ‘If someone stood up in the middle of the city, with everyone watching, and did something that brought them nothing in return, and happiness to others… it might start something that couldn’t be stopped. It might make people see and think… and change… and stop letting Agora be the sort of city where six-year-olds can be taken away in the middle of the night, all alone…’

  Lily trailed off. Dr Theophilus was looking at her oddly. For a moment, she thought she could see hope in his eyes. But when he spoke, his voice was sad.

  ‘I believe, once, I used to think like you. When I was younger.’ He paused, pursing his lips. ‘I forget sometimes how young you are. But believe me, Lily, this is all we can do. If we make things better in a little way, and for as long as possible…’

  His shoulders slumped and he suddenly seemed far older than his twenty-eight years.

  ‘That’s as good a life as you can lead. I’ve had to learn that, Lily.’ He sighed. ‘But don’t believe me, not yet. This city ages you far too quickly.’ He straightened up, keeping hold of her hands. ‘I’d better check on the patient. He’s paying in grain, so we’ll be eating this week.’

  He gave her a weak smile, but Lily did not return it. Quietly, deliberately, she pulled her hands away. She watched him walk over to the door, his step slower than ever, and listened as he descended the stairs. Then she closed her eyes, feeling a shudder pass through her.