That Inevitable Victorian Thing

by E. K. Johnston

  Margaret smashed the last three eggs against the bottom of the pan and went to the sink to wash her hands. Helena looked at the picture again. It was uncredited, which meant the newspaper either stole it from a public site or had received it anonymously after the Windsor Guard had destroyed all the photographer’s own pictures. Helena suspected the former. There hadn’t been enough time for anyone outside of the Callaghans to hear about Margaret’s true identity, and she trusted everyone in that house implicitly.

  SECRET PRINCESS COURTS CANADIAN SUITOR, the headline declared, and the picture was of August and Margaret, dancing the Log Driver’s Waltz. It was impossible to tell the song from the photo, of course, but the caption helpfully provided the information, along with the not-incorrect tidbit that the dance was usually done by couples with a certain amount of intention towards each other.

  Below, the article detailed Margaret’s location and perceived romance with August. There was no mention of piracy and little more than a brief nod to Helena’s existence. The only truly disturbing part, in Helena’s mind, was that the newspaper, or perhaps the photographer himself, had been able to hack the communication between Margaret’s –gnet identity, Lizzie, and Helena’s own Henry, though the Henry persona was attributed to August. The –gnet was supposed to be better than that.

  Margaret seemed to be taking the wider view, and raged at everything with equal fervour. She had managed to hold herself in check while the carpenter was present, but once he had fixed the window and gone, she had unleashed all of her feelings, swearing in both Chinese and Zulu when she ran out of English words she felt sufficient to describe her emotions.

  At last, she seemed to have vented everything she could, but when she would have slouched into the chair next to Helena’s, Helena stood up, instead, and dragged her into the living room.

  They were quiet for a while. Helena took a seat on the chesterfield, but Margaret perched on one of the benches at the dining table, too on edge for cushions. She fidgeted with a deck of cards from the pile of games, shuffling over and over, as though she could order them and her life if she tried hard enough.

  The Marcus cottage, like any respectable lake house, was a museum of board and card games. The Marcuses kept their collection in a trunk behind the chesterfield. The top layer was mostly newer party games, the ones whose batteries invariably failed at the worst times. Beneath those were boxes containing older games—ones that had been popular with Helena’s parents and even farther back. Like her father, Helena always preferred card games like crib and Rummoli, but she had been more than happy the previous evening to watch Margaret go through the whole collection. Eventually, they’d found another diversion, so the stack of games remained in a pile next to the recliner.

  “So tell me the fairy tale, then,” Margaret said. She left the bench and came to sit beside Helena, leaning in. “Preferably before my parents materialize on the doorstep.”

  “You don’t think they will?” Helena asked. She had more or less grown used to Margaret, but the Queen and Prince Consort in her living room would be another matter. Especially if either of them sat on the chesterfield.

  “No,” Margaret said. “But they’ll call eventually. I’d like to have something figured out by then.”

  “Well,” said Helena slowly. “I only meant that the story that got printed reads like something you would find in a book. A princess comes to Canada, in disguise, and happens to meet a good Irish–Hong Kong Chinese boy, who happens to be a genetic match. In addition to that, he has connections up and down the Saint Lawrence, and his family has connections all the way to Hong Kong. You have a summer romance, and then take him home with you to get married in Westminster. You get a happily-ever-after, and you get a best friend as a bonus.”

  “You are not a bonus!” Margaret said.

  “I know that,” Helena said. “But they don’t.”

  “It’s just a story,” Margaret said. She put her hands in her lap and did her best to hold them still. Helena reached over and twined her fingers with hers, their shoulders pressing close.

  “It would take a lot of work,” Helena said.

  Margaret looked up at her, surprised. “Do you mean it?” she said.

  “It does cover pretty much everything,” Helena said. “But it’s also very selfish of me. I would get both of you.”

  “I have to marry someone, eventually,” Margaret said thoughtfully. “The Empire is far more enlightened than it once was, but not so much that they would let me marry a woman. They need to know where the heir is coming from, such as it is. In this, my body is not my own.”

  She shuddered, just a bit, when she said it. Helena wrapped an arm around her.

  “Would it be easier with a stranger?” she asked.

  “I’ve spoken with my godfather about it, a little bit,” Margaret said. “When I realized that I didn’t particularly like the idea of sex with . . . well, I thought it was sex at all, but it turns out that I rather like sex with you.”

  Helena turned pink. At about two in the morning, while Margaret dozed, she’d read the Archbishop’s letter in its entirety, including the earthier parts of it. Needless to say, the second round had been much more fun.

  “Anyway,” Margaret continued, a fond smile on her lips, “he told me that he’s reasonably sure the rules allow for IVF, and that if they didn’t, he’d be willing to break them for me.”

  “Can he do that?” Helena asked.

  Margaret shrugged. “There hasn’t been a true schism in the Church of the Empire since they expanded the Council to include non-Anglicans in 1927. They’re probably due, if they can’t suffer themselves to be open-minded about things.”

  “Mother wondered what he’s been working up to with his latest round of meditations,” Helena said.

  “He’s usually more subtle,” Margaret admitted, “but I think he feels like he should have begun this work a decade ago, at least, right after his appointment.”

  Before Helena could come up with a response to that, Margaret’s tablet began to chime. It was a strident tone that Helena hadn’t heard before, and so she guessed who it was that wanted Margaret’s attention.

  “That will be Father,” Margaret said, confirming Helena’s suspicions. “If I’m lucky, Mother won’t be hovering over his shoulder.”

  “Take it upstairs, if you like,” Helena suggested. “You should talk to them alone.”

  Margaret pressed a light kiss to the corner of her mouth, and went to fetch the screen. Helena waited until she heard steps going upstairs, and then she started to put the games back in the trunk.

  She’d almost finished when there was a knock at the back door. Fanny would have just come in, and Helena suspected that the Windsor Guard would have done the same thing, so she was unsurprised to find August on the step when she opened the door.

  “Come in,” she said, backing up to make space.

  He followed her and stood in the middle of the kitchen wringing his hands.

  “Helena, I don’t know what happened,” he said.

  “It was that photographer,” she said. She was surprised how calm she felt about the whole thing. Either it would work, or it wouldn’t, but she would have Margaret in both cases. That gave her courage.

  “No, I mean, with me and with Margaret,” August said. “I’d only just got used to the idea that I’d waltzed with a princess, and then this . . .”

  “It’s all right,” Helena said. “I understand. I’m the one who told you to dance with her, anyway, and you’ll notice the article doesn’t mention how we danced the Rover, which is a far more scandalous sort of thing to do.”

  She was trying to lighten the mood, but it wasn’t working.

  “My sisters are furious, and so is half the staff. Not at us, not really, but at the paper,” August said. “The rest, of course, are just perplexed. Addie read the whole thing before her mothers c
ame down for breakfast, and then she stomped on my foot so hard I think she broke it.”

  Helena couldn’t help laughing at that, though she did her best to stifle it. The result was a somewhat undignified noise that, at least, made August smile a little bit.

  “What I don’t understand is the part about the –gnet chat,” August said. “That couldn’t have been me.”

  “I can explain that, at least in part,” Helena said. “I’m sure your mother is already working on the firewall?” He nodded. “Well, come in and sit down. Margaret is upstairs talking with her parents.”

  “Oh my God,” August said.

  “I’m sure she’s saying nice things about you,” Helena reassured him. She took his hand and led him into the living room. “She’ll be down in a bit. I’d rather wait until she’s here, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Of course.” August sat in the recliner, one finger absently tracing the weave of the upholstery.

  Helena went back to her place on the chesterfield and looked at the mantelpiece.

  “Do you remember the summer we learned to swim?” August said. “You were so angry that I could do it and you couldn’t, even though you were younger than I was.”

  “I remember,” Helena said.

  “You insisted that you were old enough, even though Harriet refused. She wouldn’t even let you put on your bathing suit.” August’s middle sister could be something of an autocrat. “And then you just jumped right in. Pink overalls and sun hat and your sandals and everything. Evie screamed so loudly they probably heard her in Bala, and you just paddled over to the ladder and climbed out on your own.”

  Helena’s memories of the event were mostly Evie’s scream and Harriet’s scolding after the fact, along with the satisfaction she’d felt at knowing she had done something no one thought she could do.

  “I don’t think I could love you more if you were my sister,” August said. “But something has changed this summer, hasn’t it. We’ve both changed.”

  Before Helena could come up with an answer, Margaret came down the stairs and saw them. August stood, out of habit, and remained on his feet until Margaret sat in the chair facing his.

  “Your parents?” Helena asked, when they were settled.

  “They’re angry, of course,” Margaret said. “Not at me, but there’s nothing they can do, anyway. I imagine the paper will have to apologize and run some terribly flattering story about me in the next few weeks, but aside from that . . .” She shrugged and looked at August. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” she said.

  “I’m all right if you are,” August said. “But I don’t have quite the public face that you do.”

  Margaret and Helena exchanged a look.

  “About that,” Helena said. “August, the reason there was a male participant in Margaret’s chat log is, well, me.”

  August stared at her.

  “But you’re a girl,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I am.”

  Unaccountably, she was frozen. But Margaret wasn’t. She leaned forward, and Helena didn’t stop her.

  “Helena is the person she has always been, of course,” Margaret said. “But when she logged into the Computer, she learned that her genetic code is not as commonplace as she might have thought. She has a Y chromosome.”

  “But you’re a girl,” August repeated. Helena felt panic bubbling up in her. She hadn’t realized how much she needed him to understand.

  “Yes,” Margaret said. “She is. The technical term for her particular genetic profile is intersex. Helena’s been a girl her whole life. The Computer isn’t going to change that.”

  “You logged in weeks ago,” August said, turning to her. Concern was written all over his face.

  “I’m sorry,” Helena said. “I couldn’t think of how to tell you.”

  “You told her,” August said. His voice wasn’t angry. Only cold. Which was worse. “What does it mean for you, for us?”

  “You wanted a family, August,” Helena said. She wanted to curl into Margaret and disappear, but she couldn’t. She owed him this much, even if it hurt her. “I can’t give you that, ever.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said quickly, and leaned towards her. “Helena, are you—is there any danger? Medically, I mean?”

  The bubble burst, and warmth flooded her veins. They were going to be all right.

  “No,” she said. “I’m healthy as a horse.”

  “I’m happy to hear it,” he said, and he looked it.

  “That’s not the only secret,” Helena said, not wanting to lose momentum once she’d gotten it. “The next part is where it gets messy.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” August said.

  “Our chat personas, they talked a lot,” Helena said, now speaking very slowly. “Without realizing with whom we were talking. And then we found out, very suddenly.”

  “That’s the change.” August sounded defeated, but not entirely surprised. “You fell in love with a girl who turned out to be a princess.”

  “Yes,” Helena said. There was no point in lying, not anymore. It was time for truth, at least between the three of them. “I thought you would be angry.”

  “I might have been, a few weeks ago,” he admitted. “Frankly, it’s almost a relief to learn that your feelings are as complicated as mine.”

  “It’s a very strange fairy tale,” Margaret said. She spoke with her mother’s voice, and both Helena and August couldn’t help but be drawn to it. “And it’s not over yet, August Callaghan, if you would like to hear the next chapter.”

  “I think I would,” he said after a moment’s pause.

  And Margaret told him a story.

  PREAMBLE

  “Before we begin,” Margaret said, “Helena told me about the bribery. There was a photograph of the money. It has been destroyed. I am not here to judge you for that.”

  “Thank you,” August said. “It’s finished, anyway. My shares will go to Evie, and I am no longer in any way involved in the operations of Callaghan Limited.” August couldn’t quite suppress the shudder finally saying the words aloud triggered.

  “I’m truly sorry to hear that,” Helena said, and she was. “But I’m glad it’s over.”

  “It is in the past, then,” Margaret said. She was still speaking in her Princess voice. It was incredibly compelling. “We are concerned with our shared future.”

  August straightened. She wasn’t speaking in royal plural.

  “The story as it has been presented is a good one,” Margaret said. “Even though it isn’t exactly true. I did fall in love with a Canadian, and that Canadian does have a Y chromosome, but it’s Helena, not you.”

  Neither August nor Helena interrupted, even though Margaret paused for breath in such a way that they could have. She was giving them plenty of chances to argue, should they wish to. They did not.

  “My father has said that there is nothing required of me on account of the article,” Margaret continued. “My family and I will make no public comment, and we can all move on as though nothing had happened, should we wish to. There is the whole summer before us, and I don’t want to be the cause of its ruination.”

  She paused again, and again, neither Helena nor August spoke.

  “But we have changed, all of us,” Margaret—the real Margaret—said. “I don’t want to go back home in the fall and be alone.”

  August looked up, locking eyes with Margaret.

  Her expression was as neutral as she could manage, desperate not to overpower him with her years of training to do exactly that.

  His own thoughts teetered on the edge of comprehending the loneliness his own future might hold. He only just managed not to fall. “You want Helena to go with you,” he said. “You’re old enough to start up a court.”

  “I do and I am,” Margaret said.
“But I don’t want to separate you from each other, and if Helena came with me, her promises to the people of the Empire would outweigh any promise she could ever make to you.”

  “I don’t want that, August,” Helena said. “As messy and confusing as everything got, I still love you.”

  “I can’t marry anyone until I sort out my future,” August said. “And then you’d lose Margaret, mostly.”

  “I don’t want that either,” Helena said.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” August said after a moment’s silence. “I won’t hold you back or resent any choice you make, but I’m pretty sure you have to actually make a choice.” He was nervously punctuating his sentences by drumming on a board game box Helena hadn’t put away. “Someone has to lose here.” And then the quiet was back.

  Helena spoke first. “I don’t think any of us ever consented to playing this particular game, August. Just because we’re dealt a hand, doesn’t mean we have to pick it up.”

  “I don’t even know what game I’m playing anymore.” Margaret’s voice was softer now, less sure. “My whole life has had rules—always look neat and contained; never show your emotions; think first of the Empire. For eighteen years I’ve been preparing to do my duty . . .” Margaret trailed off, lost in a thought.

  “You’ve been preparing to be lonely,” Helena said.

  “And now you don’t have to be.” The defeat in August’s voice was palpable.

  All three were silent except for August, who was still tapping on the box.

  Then Helena spoke, suddenly pointing to the game. “August, do you remember when our parents used to play that after dinner?”

  Both August and Margaret looked a bit bewildered, but August said, “I do. Wasn’t it a popular game in general? We used to have the game at our house, too. And then they—our parents—stopped playing it right around the time we were finally old enough to play ourselves. I remember being annoyed. Though to be honest, I can’t quite remember why we wanted to play—other than that it was the game the adults played.”