The Prince

by Katharine Ashe

  With only the binding around her breasts and the eyes of everyone in the hall on her, using an oiled cloth, she peeled the whiskers from her face and wiped the cosmetics from her brows, and shoved the hair back from her brow.

  Then she unbound her breasts.

  “As you see, gentlemen,” she said in Elizabeth Shaw’s voice—her voice—the voice that Ziyaeddin had said he could listen to forever. “I am a woman.”

  Below, Dr. Jones was staring at her with eyes full of shock.

  The hall had gone silent.

  “Won’t anybody say anything?” She swept the hall with her gaze. “Or would you like me to drop my drawers too, so that you haven’t any doubt of it?”

  Archie leaped up and threw a coat over her chest.

  “O’ course we dinna doubt it, lad—lass.” He was holding the garment around her and grinning like a fool. “Lord almighty, I shoulda known it. Joe—Joséphine—whoever you are—Well done, lass!” He made a whooping sound. “Lads,” he shouted across the theater that was finally erupting in chatter. “I’ll have you recall that she chose me for her mate! That is, no’ her mate. That is to say—her—” He choked on laughter.

  Pincushion pounded him on the back, his grin shining. “Wait till George learns of this. He’ll split his breeches.” Shaking his head, he thrust out a hand to her.

  Libby shook it, then the hands of half a dozen other students. Most of her classmates cast her glares.

  “Mr. Smart,” Dr. Jones’s voice cut through the chaos. “At once.” He strode from the chamber.

  She clutched the coat to her, accepted her belongings that Archie had gathered up, and followed her professor from the hall.

  She could hardly sit still.

  Arrayed across the table from her were the Lord Provost, the president of the college, the president of the infirmary, several members of the University Senate, Dr. Jones, and Mr. Bridges.

  “The ignominy you have cast on this university, the Royal Infirmary, and the college is unforgivable,” the Lord Provost continued his speech that had already gone on for a quarter of an hour. “Never before has this ancient, august city harbored such a brash, willful, disrespectful mockery of morality.”

  Given Robert Plath, this was patently untrue.

  “How do you know that?” she said.

  Dr. Jones’s lips flattened.

  Mr. Bridges’s cheek twitched.

  “I beg your pardon?” the Lord Provost snapped.

  “How do you know that no other woman has done this before? You didn’t know I was a woman, and I only revealed it to exonerate an innocent man. How do you know there haven’t been other women that have fooled you too, only never revealed themselves?”

  “Elizabeth,” her father said beside her.

  She swallowed her next words. Within minutes of this harangue it had become clear that these inestimably moral scions of this community were far more upset that a woman had succeeded in studying medicine at the highest levels than the fact that a gently reared maiden had been living with a bachelor for months. They were positively hypocritical. But she did not wish to shame her father any further.

  “Be grateful, Miss Shaw,” the Lord Provost said, “that none of us are taking more severe measures against you for perpetrating this heinous farce. Transportation has been suggested.”

  Her father jerked forward. “My lord—”

  “Your influential noble connections have, however, pleaded in your defense,” the Lord Provost said tightly. “Your indenture fee is forfeit, but this council will not remit you to the magistrates. You are a fortunate young woman to have such friends.”

  “Mr. Bridges has requested that you call at the infirmary to bid your patients good-bye,” the president of the infirmary said. “I however am concerned that, given the circumstances of the baths in which you have treated patients, if the male patients discover the truth of this”—he gestured in the general direction of her torso—“it will distress them. I give you permission to complete your responsibilities at the infirmary today as you are.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Dr. Shaw,” the Lord Provost said gravely, “you have long been an esteemed colleague and friend to this university. Yet you, sir, have contributed to this travesty. I trust that you will impress upon your daughter the gravity of her insupportable charade, and keep her well in hand forthwith.”

  “My father is generous and wise, and does not deserve your censure.” She reached over and grasped his hand. “Thank you for never clipping my wings, Papa.” Releasing him, she stood up.

  “Be seated, young woman,” the Lord Provost said. “We are not finished with you.”

  “But I am finished with you. Unfortunately. For I would have liked to complete my studies and become a fellow of the college and a practicing surgeon. But you will not allow it despite my accomplishments, and for that I have little respect for you.” She looked at her teachers. “Dr. Jones, Mr. Bridges, I am deeply grateful for the superlative education you have given me, and I am sincerely regretful to have caused you embarrassment. But I hope that my successes have planted a seed of doubt in your excellent minds about the exclusion of women from the highest ranks of the medical profession. If I have done that, at least in a very small manner I have succeeded. Good day, gentlemen.”

  Her father followed her out. When the door closed she took both of his hands.

  “Thank you for standing with me, Papa. You will be ostracized here now.”

  “By none that deserve my respect.”

  Leaving him, she went out of the building. She had spent hours awaiting the gathering of her chastisers and then being chastised—hours during which she had heard the news that the charges against Ziyaeddin had been withdrawn. Now late afternoon had settled over the streets in the busy press of traffic. Taking extra-long strides as she walked with graceless speed to the infirmary, she reveled in these final moments of freedom from the constraints of skirts and stays, her heart at once aching and magnificently light.

  At the hospital, only one of her patients mentioned her scraggly whiskers—the remnants of her attempt at removing them in the lecture hall. The nurses watched her carefully and she suspected they had already heard the rumors. News traveled swiftly in the medical community, and in less than a sennight Joseph Smart had been at the center of two scandals.

  As she was setting her examining tools back in their rightful place in the preparation chamber, one of the nurses passed by.

  “I knew it all along,” the woman whispered. “The Lord bless you, lass, an’ bless your sainted father an’ that fine Mr. Kent.” Then she was gone and Libby was staring at the empty doorway.

  How many people had known? How many women? How many had suspected it but never said a word? How many had simply reveled in knowing that one of their own was secretly accomplishing what none of them were permitted to even attempt?

  Awe and gratitude filled her as she walked across the infirmary courtyard and toward home.

  For the first time since she had moved into his house, as she lifted her hand to the bell ringer, anxious tingles beset her belly.

  Mr. Gibbs answered the door.

  “Evenin’, miss,” he said, beckoning her inside. “Heard you’d been found out.”

  “Mr. Gibbs, have you always known I was a woman?”

  “Naw, miss! Anly heard it from the master an hour aby. Will you be wantin’ a fresh neck cloth? That one you’ve got on there’s in a fine tangle.”

  “No, thank you.” She swallowed back her laughter. “Is he in?”

  He shook his grizzled head. “Went out like cannon shot after the police left, must’ve been twenty minutes aby or so. Said he’d to see a dug about a bone.”

  The Dug’s Bone.

  “The prodigal daughter!” Mrs. Coutts exclaimed, bustling forward. “Mr. Gibbs, we’ve a celebrity in the house.”

  “Actually, leaving it,” Libby said, the nerves dancing in her stomach like little mice around a block of cheese.

&n
bsp; “No’ with that tangle o’ fuzz on those pretty cheeks! Mr. Gibbs, fetch the oil.”

  Minutes later, free of whiskers, Libby pushed open the pub’s door.

  “She’s here!” Pincushion was shouting as the door flew wide.

  And there Ziyaeddin was, meeting her gaze, and all of the wicked nerves in her belly melted into brilliant happiness.

  She flew at him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. She thought she heard cheering, but his mouth and the strength of his hands holding her were all she cared about.

  “You should not have done it,” he said to her as the whoops and whistles and applause continued. She heard Archie call for ale for everybody, and the place erupted in yet more cheering.

  “The Lord Advocate agreed to delay matters until I am gone,” Ziyaeddin said beneath the cheering. He took both of her hands and spoke close to her. “Elizabeth, I am leaving. Very soon.”

  “I suspected that,” she said, gripping his hands too tightly. “You told me as much. I wanted you to be able to leave without fear of this rumor chasing you, and to return without fear of the noose—if you should ever find occasion to return.”

  His eyes smiled.

  “Come,” she said, circling her fingers about his arm. “I wish to have my likeness drawn at once, and I am willing to pay a fairly respectable price for it.”

  “Fairly respectable?”

  “That will depend on the quality of the likeness, of course.”

  He never finished the picture. Every few minutes her curiosity impelled her to leap up from the chair and inspect his progress. Each time she had to touch him and sometimes kiss him.

  On the tenth such interruption he pulled her onto his lap and made love to her there, she tearing off his coat and shirt even as she rode him, laughing and crying and generally making such a ruckus that it was a very good thing he did not hire round-the-clock servants.

  Later, twisted in the bedclothes, their limbs thoroughly entangled, as she drifted off to sleep she heard him whisper, “Thank you.” But she had not done it for his thanks. She had done it because she was finished with living a lie and finished with bending to irrational rules. She snuggled closer into his heat and slept soundly.

  In darkness permeated by the first suggestion of dawn she sensed when he rose. Drowsily she felt his fingertips stroke along her jaw and then over her lips, slowly, tenderly, as though he sought to memorize the texture and shape of them. Then his lips pressed against her brow.

  She heard the echo of his wooden footstep across the studio floor, and she smiled with closed eyes. Turkish coffee or English tea: either would do for breakfast. She drifted back into slumber.

  When she awoke bright sunlight glimmered through the crack in the draperies. Rising, she wrapped his dressing gown around her and went to the kitchen. On the table beside a pot of tea that had long since gone cold were a large folio and a thick packet of papers.

  The folio was the drawing of her from the night before, now finished, a young woman wearing only an oversized satin dressing gown, her face radiant. As she read the words he had written beneath it, her lungs would not fill.

  Be well, extraordinary one. I will not forget you.

  —Z.

  The packet contained the deed to the house, written over into her name, and signed and stamped by a notary. There was another document too, that indicated all moveable property within the house likewise now belonged to Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of Dr. John Shaw of Edinburgh. The contents of his bank account were now hers as well.

  She wandered the house. Her bedchamber was as she had left it. The parlor too. In the studio he had left everything: brushes, oils, pigments, and finished paintings. She did not find the portraits of her.

  Returning to the master bedchamber she cocooned her body in blankets and allowed herself finally to weep.

  Chapter 31

  The Champion

  When the afternoon was advancing Libby arose, cleaned her face, dressed in one of Mrs. Coutts’s gowns, and hailed a hackney coach to the Duke and Duchess of Loch Irvine’s house.

  After speaking with her father, Alice, and the duke and duchess, and informing them that she intended to remove to her own residence immediately, she was standing in the bedchamber she had used for the past sennight and staring blankly at the array of hair ribbons Iris had given her to console her for having to become a woman again.

  Beside them on the dressing table was his watch that she had worn for months.

  Caliphs and kings.

  He was a world away.

  The morning broadsheets had printed the shocking news that Mr. Kent had done all in order to protect Miss Elizabeth Shaw’s reputation. He was exonerated for the hangable crime but castigated for dishonesty and his immoral influence on an innocent maiden.

  All foolishness.

  “Miss,” a maidservant said from the doorway, “there be a Mr. Chedham here to see you.”

  Dropping the ribbons, she descended the grand staircase to the drawing room. Chedham stood rigidly by a bookcase.

  “What do you want now?” she said.

  “I suppose I should not have expected any other greeting from you.”

  “Of course you shouldn’t have. And I should not have agreed to speak with you, but here you are and I have a curious nature. So? What do you want?”

  “To apologize.”

  She folded her arms. “This is unexpected. And far too late.”

  “I was wrong not to retract my accusation after you called on me,” he said as though it required every muscle in his body to force the words over his tongue. “It was the worst sort of ungentlemanly behavior.”

  “You could pass a bladder stone now with the pressure you are putting on your diaphragm.”

  “Pulley told me that he saw you and Kent enter the alleyway. That is all he saw. In order to ruin you, I embellished it.”

  “You are an arrogant prick and if it weren’t for your extraordinary skills in medicine I would wish you banished from this earth. But I cannot wish that, Maxwell, for you have a gift for healing that has already helped many people. I have witnessed that. I only wish that the gift had been granted to you with a human heart as well. Even a fraction of Archie’s heart would do.”

  “Did he tell you that he challenged me?”

  “Challenged you? To a duel? Archie? Oh, no! Do not say that you—”

  “Not Armstrong,” he said. “Kent. He won, of course. We met this morning at Arthur’s Seat, at dawn. I haven’t any skill with either pistol or sword, so I chose pistols since I suspected it would be easier. I think he knew I was unprepared. He did nothing while I fumbled, didn’t even raise his weapon. I shot and missed him. Only then did he fire into the air. He told me it was for your sake that he had not killed me.”

  “You are sworn to heal others,” she said. “Yet you intended to shoot him?”

  His gaze shifted away uncomfortably, then he seemed to notice the room they were in, the subdued ducal elegance. “You are not the person I thought you were.”

  “People rarely are what others think of them.”

  “His Grace seconded Kent.” His lips tightened. “Pulley was so impressed to meet a duke, he nearly soiled himself.”

  “Your friends are idiots. You needn’t surround yourself with fools, Maxwell. You are brilliant. You must fulfill your potential. You owe me at least that.”

  “I should take my leave now,” he said stiffly.

  She walked to him and extended her hand. After a moment’s hesitation, he shook it.

  He left, and Libby returned to packing her belongings, the pain in her heart no lighter but for the first time in months her head entirely clear.

  The Royal Academy

  London, England

  Ziyaeddin watched as, in the crowded exhibition hall, a couple with a girl approached the painting.

  “Fine-looking lady,” the man said, trying not to peer too closely. Like his womenfolk he was dressed simply, his hands red and chapped from labor.r />
  “Look how she grasps the tools, Louisa,” the woman said to the girl. “Like she’d do battle rather than give them up.”

  “She is beautiful, Mama.” The girl stared without shame.

  “Yes,” her mother said. “Her eyes are full of fire and wisdom.”

  “She’s got the brawn of a lad,” the man said, frowning.

  “She is strong,” the mother said.

  “Is she a doctor?” the girl said, her eyes on the surgical instruments.

  “Must be one of those old-time goddesses,” the man said, “or she’d be wearing a proper dress.”

  “No, Mr. Dunnell,” his wife said. “She is merely a woman who has seized a gift from God.”

  The family wandered away.

  “The form of a woman and the mind of a man.” Charles Bell stood beside Ziyaeddin, studying the painting. “Yet still my foolish colleagues reject her.”

  Ziyaeddin nodded. But she did not have the mind of a man, rather of a woman. And the courage of a hero. None would know that she had accomplished far more than success in her medical studies. None would know that she had slain a dragon. None but he.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said.

  “Oh, you needn’t thank me. The directors were thrilled I was able to convince you to allow them to hang your work in this year’s exhibition.”

  “I thank you for your forgiveness for my lie, and for your promise.”

  “I would continue to support her even did you not request it. But I am honored that you have asked it, Mr. Kent. I only hope she does not weary of the fight.”

  She wouldn’t—not this warrior.

  Ziyaeddin bid the surgeon good-bye and went out from the exhibition hall onto the street. Joachim waited by the carriage, a conspicuous foreigner in even this cosmopolitan city.

  “You tarried too long,” Joachim said.

  “The foreign minister will wait.”

  “But a naval ship will not,” Joachim said as a footman opened the carriage door. “We must be aboard it in mere hours.” He climbed in behind Ziyaeddin and the carriage started forward. “Yet you would rather remain here in this building full of pictures and commoners. You have become attached to this land. Haven’t you?”