“He has a rather . . . casual attitude toward sex,” I said.
“Oh God, you’re joking.”
“No, I’m sorry, it’s perfectly true.”
His face worked for a moment; then he said, “Thank you for the information, Mehitabel. I’ve got to go.” He left, quite rapidly. It was only some time later, in the middle of a heated discussion with Corinna about what one ought to wear as the guest of the Lord Protector, that I realized he’d forgotten to call me Cressida.
Mildmay
The little resurrectionist’s name was George Tuillery. Simon asked a question as we got in the fiacre and got him launched on the subject of Laceshroud, saving me from having to talk and Mr. Tuillery from his own nerves. Nobody knew exactly when the cemetery had been founded, although there were references to it as far back as the reign of Maxim Thestonarius, the second Thestonarian king, who’d ruled almost twenty-five Great Septads ago. Mr. Tuillery told us about the catacombs beneath the little church of St. Osprey, where skeletons had labeled pigeonholes, and about the ghosts that were supposed to haunt the cemetery gates. Then he told us about the funeral of Paul Raphenius, and that lasted us all the way to the cemetery itself.
“It didn’t used to be in the middle of the city, of course,” Mr. Tuillery said as he got out of the fiacre. The cabbie wasn’t no happier about Gilgamesh and a cemetery than he’d been about Ruthven and a guildhall, so Simon was up in front arguing with him again. “But cities grow if you let ’em, even cities of the dead. I read a book about a city in the south where it floods every year, so they have to build all the tombs above ground, the city on one side of the river and the cemetery on the other, so you can’t hardly tell which is which.”
When Simon came back, he gave Gideon a funny look and said to me, “Gideon says the Necropolis of Nimuë.”
“Thanks,” I said to Gideon.
Mr. Tuillery had gone up ahead to look at the gates, and we joined him. They were locked, of course—Boneprince is the only cemetery in the city that don’t keep its gates locked—but Mr. Tuillery said, “I took the liberty of borrowing the correct, um, tools from a friend, but I’m afraid I haven’t the foggiest how to use them.”
He knew who I was, all right, or one of the other resurrectionists had told him. “Hand ’em here,” I said. The other three clumped around in front of me in a kind of nonchalant way that would have had any Dog worth his salt licking his chops. Kethe, spare me from flats. But this wasn’t either the time or the place for a lesson in how not to look like you’re doing something illegal, so I just hurried. That lock had been picked so many times that it wasn’t no bother, not stiff or dirty or nothing like that. And lock picking is more about whether or not you understand what the lock’s doing and what you want it to do. I wouldn’t have backed myself to do an in-and-out, not with a crippled leg and not going on three indictions out of practice, but the lock clicked open for me in only about twice the time it would take a good crack-man like Sempronias Teach. I pulled the right-hand gate a little ways open, and we slid in.
I could remember once—I guess I was maybe at my first septad, maybe a little older—coming here with Keeper to see a funeral. I don’t know anymore whose it was, if I ever did, but I remember the way she had us kids, the five of us she brought, line up along the fence, and the way she said that we weren’t to move and we weren’t to make noise. I guess she picked us ’cause we were the five most frightened of her. None of us even dreamed of not doing what she wanted, and we stood there, shivering a little in the cold, and watched all the people in black, the way they were standing around one of the graves, the way the priest’s movements made little ripples in the big pool of black bodies, the way every so often, somebody’d turn a pale blotch of a face in our direction. But nobody came over to ask what we wanted, and nobody sent for the cemetery guard to do the same. Probably they were afraid Keeper would tell them. When the priest was done, we stood and watched him leave, and then we stood and watched all the people in black leave and try to pretend they couldn’t see us, and then we stood and watched the sextons fill in the grave. Keeper stood watching, too, and I think she’d forgotten about us. I think she was crying, but we argued about that for decads among ourselves, me and Christobel saying we were sure she’d been crying, and Devie and Jean-Souris and Nero saying Keeper couldn’t cry, that she was a witch like in the stories Nikah told. So I don’t know about that, any more than I know who the stiff was or what Keeper was trying to prove. Or to who.
But I was a little prepared for Laceshroud. It ain’t just the oldest cemetery in the city. Even though it’s in Gilgamesh, it’s the rich people’s cemetery. Poor people don’t get buried there. They get stuck in Tammas Yard, down in Scaffelgreen, or in the Ivorene outside the city walls. People living in Gilgamesh are always the first to know when somebody important dies, because the Dogs come down and bust heads.
There’s a lot of marble in Laceshroud, a lot of granite. During the Protectorates of Malory and Helen there was this craze for obsidian, so there’s a lot of that around, too. The granite’s mostly in slabs and the obsidian mostly in these tall skinny sort of towers. The marble’s in statues, some of ’em representing the stiff—though I don’t know why, since flashies can read—most showing Phi-Kethetin’s daughter, Phi-Lazary, since she’s supposed to be merciful and loving and sympathetic to the needs of dead folk, being dead herself. We followed Mr. Tuillery up one tidy little gravel path and down the next, me and Simon and Gideon kind of in a clump and Mr. Tuillery trotting ahead like a hunting dog, yipping and muttering to himself.
He tried a couple different places before he hit pay dirt, a place where somebody’d clearly been digging and somebody else had clearly not been at much trouble to fix things up. It was down in the southwest corner of the cemetery, near the iron fence, and the grave markers down here were a lot tamer and low-key than the ones around the gates.
“Well, she certainly wasn’t after anybody important,” Mr. Tuillery said with a sniff, like he’d’ve liked her better if she had been. “This is the servants’ quarter.”
“The what?” I said.
He shrugged. He didn’t like it neither, but it was how things were. “Faithful servants, devoted retainers. If you were very good, your employer might have you buried here, near him.”
“Were? Isn’t it done anymore?” Simon said.
“Not very much. Although . . .” Mr. Tuillery checked a new-looking granite block. “This poor fellow was only buried an indiction and a half ago, so the custom’s got life in it yet, so to speak.”
“What about the guy Jenny was after?”
Mr. Tuillery looked at the block at the head of the disturbed piece of ground. He made little tut-tutting noises. “Dear me, I see why the City Guard are distressed.”
“Well?” I said, since he didn’t seem like he was going to go on by himself.
“This grave belongs to a woman named Ismene Culpepper, and she died, oh, about ten Great Septads ago.”
“Well, that don’t make no sense at all.”
“No,” Mr. Tuillery said thoughtfully. “I think I see what happened. I had been wondering how your friend had managed with the coffin.”
“Well?”
“It’s hard to get buried in Laceshroud anymore. There’s not much room left, and most of it belongs to the nobles and the burghers. So if there are reasons you’ve got to bury somebody here—and there can be—you, um, borrow somebody else’s grave.”
“What sorts of reasons?” Simon asked before I could say anything, though I ain’t sure what I would’ve said.
“Oh, well,” Mr. Tuillery shifted from foot to foot, “I imagine your lordship would know more about that sort of thing than I do.”
“I thought as much,” Simon said.
“So how do we figure out who this guy was?” I said.
“He was a servant somebody wanted buried in Laceshroud who didn’t have access to a plot,” Mr. Tuillery said. He spread his hands in a sort of shrug, like tha
t was the best he could do. He was looking nervous again, but this time I didn’t think it was about me or Simon. And then I thought about the sort of person who would want or need to break into Laceshroud to bury a body, and I could see his point.
“Thanks, Mr. Tuillery,” I said, letting him off the hook, and he sagged a little with relief. “So, my friend not being a resurrectionist, what would she want with this guy?”
“Is your friend perhaps a necromancer?”
“Jenny? Not hardly. Is there any way to find out if a necromancer might’ve hired her?”
“We don’t have anything to do with the necromancers,” Mr. Tuillery said. That was a lie, and we both knew it, but I also knew what he meant. The resurrectionists ain’t crazy. They try hard not to know anything more about the necromancers than what bits of corpse they’ll pay most for.
“There are other ways to find out,” Simon said. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to Mr. Tuillery or me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks, Mr. Tuillery, you been a lot of help.”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
At the gates, Mr. Tuillery refused to let us take him back to Ruthven. “My sister lives in Gilgamesh,” he said, “and I haven’t seen her in a long time.” I thought he was lying, but I couldn’t say so, and the last we saw of him he was walking south along the fence of Laceshroud, almost trotting, like he was afraid we’d call him back.
Mehitabel
It was Cinquième; Jean-Soleil brooded like the wrath of God over a rehearsal of Edith Pelpheria, then asked me to come talk to him in his office.
I knew he wasn’t firing me, so I settled myself and gave him a brightly inquiring look, an ingenue’s look.
Jean-Soleil sank into his own chair and said, “I’m wondering if you’d do me a favor, Belle.”
“What kind of favor?” I said.
“It’s the new boy. Bartholmew’s replacement.”
I remembered he had told me not to worry about the second principal. “What about him?”
“It’s like this. I expect you know there’s a boy’s choir over in Shatterglass?”
“I’ve heard it mentioned, I think. The prior of St. Kemplegate runs it, doesn’t he?”
“Exactly. It’s a school as well, the idea being that the boys St. Kemplegate trains will go on to the Academy, or go to Ervenzia to sing opera, or something like that, and make their entrée into the polite world.”
“Right. So?”
“It doesn’t work all the time, now does it? There are boys who don’t want to go on, which happens with any kind of training, ” and I knew he was thinking of his own children, none of whom showed the slightest desire to follow in his footsteps, “and there are boys who don’t have the money to go on. And then there are the boys whose voices lose their beauty when they become men.”
“Which is why the Ervenze practice castration.”
“Well, yes. I don’t think St. Kemplegate has gotten that desperate yet. And by the time their voices change, most of their boys have been trained in some other musical instrument, or have found an aptitude for something else, or the like.”
“But not all of them?”
“No,” Jean-Soleil said, his mobile, habitually cheerful face for once still and rather sad. “Not all of them.” He shook it off and went on. “I don’t believe the prior actually likes me very much, but he recognizes that the Empyrean and the Cockatrice are places where boys like that can go. We have an arrangement of mutual convenience. When I need a young actor, I send a letter to the prior, and if he’s got some boy he thinks will suit, he sends him over. Jermyn does the same. Mostly they don’t stay more than a season before some other thing opens up that’s more to their liking, but they’re always grateful, and they’re always perfectly adequate for second principal.”
“So you sent a letter to the prior, and he’s sending a boy over.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Jean-Soleil chewed on the ends of his mustache for a moment. It was a terrible habit—he said it drove his wife to distraction—but he could never seem to break himself of it. “This boy’s situation is a bit different.”
“Different how?”
“Well,” said Jean-Soleil. “Er.”
“What? He’s got two heads?”
“No. He’s the bastard of Lord Philip Lemerius.”
“God damn,” I said, because Jean-Soleil seemed to want some astonishment. “I didn’t think that Lord Philip had any baseborn get.” From what Antony had told me about his father, Lord Philip wasn’t the sort of man even to admit he had animal instincts, much less act on them.
“Only the one,” Jean-Soleil said, “and to do him justice, he seems to have tried to do his best by the boy. He got him into St. Kemplegate, after all.”
“That was kind of him.”
“Yes, and from what the prior says, it was working out splendidly. The boy was radiantly happy, had a marvelous voice, worked hard, was charming, and all the rest of it. And then his voice changed, and his singing voice was gone. The prior says he has a perfectly nice and utterly mediocre baritone.”
“Oh dear,” I said.
“Yes,” Jean-Soleil said. “Apparently he’s been moping around St. Kemplegate for most of an indiction. I don’t know that the prior really believes Semper will be happy here, but he can’t think of anything else to try.”
“And what do you want from me?”
“He’s coming tonight, and I want to give him a chance to get used to the theater before we pitchfork him in among the wolves. Would you take him to see Mardette? Corinna and Jabez decided they could use a run-through, you know. Answer his questions, hold his hand, be gracious and reassuring, and all that?”
“Of course,” I said. There wasn’t anything else I could say.
Semper Philipson did not look like a Lemerius. They were dark, with brilliant eyes. He was tall, not as tall as Felix— almost no one was—but two or three inches taller than Mildmay. His hair was brown, his eyes hazel, his complexion, like mine, rather sallow. His beauty was in his bones. If he took after his mother, I could see why Lord Philip had lost his head.
Semper was younger even than I had expected—just barely seventeen—and shy and nervous. I thought he was also unhappy, but he clearly didn’t want to talk about himself. I occupied the time before the play by telling him about the Empyrean and the troupe and about acting. He listened attentively and politely, but I couldn’t hazard a guess whether any of it pleased or excited him, which made it a relief when the curtain went up on The Misadventures of Mardette.
They’d opened the same day we hired Gordeny, so this was the theatrical equivalent of oiling the machinery to keep it in good working order. Considering the frenetic pace of the thing, I could see why you’d want to. The play was stylized nonsense. Mardette (Corinna) climbs into her trousers to escape from the importunities of a rich, ugly suitor (Jabez), only to fall madly in love with a handsome young man (Levry), who, thinking she is a boy, keeps trying to get her interested in her ugly suitor, who, it turns out, is a moll and only wants to marry Mardette because he needs an heir. Naturally, he’s even more importunate, in an inept, grotesque, and comical way, toward Mardette-as-boy than he was toward Mardette-as-girl. And, of course, the handsome young man has been madly in love with Mardette for months, and he finally tells her so, trying to get her, in her persona as a boy, to leave him alone. She dares him into asking Mardette to marry him the next time he sees her, races back into her dress, and the play ends happily. Except of course for the ugly, molly suitor, who is left out in the cold.
It was vulgar and hysterically funny, except that every time Mardette repulsed her ugly suitor, I heard Mildmay saying, Got a taste for freaks? and every time she came up with a new ploy to captivate the handsome young man, I saw myself going calculatedly through Corinna’s treasure trove, looking for a dress that would turn Stephen’s head. By the end of the play I hated both Mardette and myself and wanted nothing more than to shut myself in
my dressing room and break something.
But the boy was there beside me, looking worried. “Did you not like the play, Madame Parr?”
“Please call me Mehitabel,” I said. “Or Tabby, if you’d rather. The play was fine. Did you like it?” It registered on me as I asked that his face had changed, that the inward, shuttered look was gone and the hazel eyes were full of light.
“Oh yes,” he said. “If I join your troupe, will I get to meet them?”
“Them? Oh! Jabez and Levry and Corinna? You’ll be working with them.”
“Oh,” he said, in a sort of a gasp. “You mean . . . there isn’t . . .”
“Isn’t what?”
He twisted his hands together, looking unhappy again. “At St. Kemplegate, new boys were in one choir and the good singers were in another. And you didn’t get to be in the Astrophiel Choir unless you were even better than that. I thought maybe . . .”
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