The Crimson Shard

by Teresa Flavin

  “You told us he died in 1791,” said Sunni.

  “That is also true.”

  Blaise said, “Jeremiah Starling can’t be alive and dead at the same time.”

  “He is for us. You have traveled back to the time when Jeremiah Starling was twenty-nine years old,” said Throgmorton. “You are in the year 1752.”

  1752 — where had she seen that date before? Sunni couldn’t keep her hands still in her lap. “The painted door. It’s the crossing point, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is an astonishing door,” said Livia, sipping delicately from her cup. “It connects our time and yours by the slenderest sliver of space and time.”

  “But why us? Why bring us?” Blaise nearly shouted.

  “To show you the Academy,” said Throgmorton. “You agreed to it.”

  “We didn’t agree to go back to 1752!”

  Throgmorton shrugged. “That is what one must do to see the Academy. And you have not even left Phoenix Square. We are still in the same location. Starling House is not the only house that has ever sat on this land. Other houses were here before it, including this one. We have stretched a little hole in the skin of time and crawled through to it.”

  “You can’t just make an opening in time!” Blaise interrupted.

  “How do you think you got here then?”

  Blaise murmured, “I don’t know.”

  “You control the painted door,” said Sunni. “How?”

  “It is just an ability I have. Far too complex for you to understand,” replied Throgmorton.

  “W-what are you?” asked Sunni.

  “An ordinary man.” Throgmorton’s mouth twitched. “A mere mortal.”

  Silence fell over the tea party, but Sunni’s and Blaise’s eyes didn’t leave Throgmorton’s face.

  “So,” Sunni said at last, “we’re sitting here in this room, but somewhere right around us, right now, across a closed-up hole in time, is the other Starling House with all the murals, on the date we left it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the only way back is through that painted door.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll take us back through it now, since we’ve seen the Academy,” said Blaise.

  The words hung there while Sunni and Blaise waited for his answer. When it came, Throgmorton delivered it without a flicker of doubt.

  “No.”

  The air crackled with Sunni and Blaise’s outrage.

  “You have to!” Sunni cried.

  “My father is waiting for us.” Blaise leaped to his feet. “You can’t stop us from going home.”

  “I can.” Throgmorton strolled about the parlor with his hands clasped behind his back. “And I will. The door is now closed.”

  “I don’t understand why!”

  “Because I wish it.” Their captor said this as if it were the only explanation anyone could require.

  Sunni fidgeted on the hard sofa. “You can’t keep us here!”

  “My father has never brought anyone else across to our time. Only you,” said Livia. “It is a great honor, so do not be angry!”

  “Honor!”

  “You have met Jeremiah Starling,” said her father. “And seen his Academy, full of the most astounding boy-artists in this century or any other. This is what you wished for.”

  “No. We didn’t wish to be kept here!” said Sunni, shaking with fury.

  “You have no choice,” said Throgmorton. “I have decided you will stay and be pupils at the Academy. You are highly qualified applicants.”

  Blaise’s hands were clenched into fists. “You can’t force us to do anything! I’m not going to be your trained monkey.”

  Livia appealed to him with wide eyes. “Do not be this way, Blaise! Please.”

  “How am I supposed to be then? Your father is keeping us here against our will.”

  “You will like it here. I promise,” she said. “You want to be an artist, don’t you? Now you will be.”

  “Trade our freedom so we can draw better?” Sunni jumped in. “No chance.”

  “You do have a choice,” said Throgmorton. “Accept what I offer you, or I will have you sent to prison for thieving from this house.”

  “You’d do that to us?” Sunni could barely get the words out. “Why, what’s the point? Why not just send us back where we came from?”

  Throgmorton’s mouth was pinched. “You will stay here with us as well-behaved pupils or go to prison.”

  “That’s no choice. We’re in prison either way.” Blaise thumped the arm of his chair.

  Livia nestled her teacup close and bit her lip. “This is not a prison.”

  Sunni scowled at her and Blaise just turned away.

  “Forgive them. They do not understand yet, my dear, but they soon will.” Throgmorton squeezed his daughter’s shoulder and said softly, “There is sleeping room for two more pupils in the Academy, but it is difficult to hide a girl amongst boys. People will ask questions.”

  “What you are talking about?” Sunni asked.

  “You will need to disguise yourself as a boy, Sunniva. Sometimes visitors come to see the workshop, and they will notice a girl pupil.”

  “What!”

  “Father, I think there are some cast-off breeches that will fit her,” said Livia. “They are men’s but can be tied tighter around her waist.”

  “Will you see to it, my dear?”

  Livia shook her platinum curls. “Yes, Father. This will be most amusing, Sunniva, like dressing for a masquerade!”

  “No way —” Sunni began.

  “You would prefer to spend time in Newgate Prison? For that is where burglars end up,” Livia said gaily.

  Sunni mumbled something and shot a look at Blaise.

  “You said something, Sunniva?” Throgmorton’s face was impassive.

  “I said you have no right to do this.”

  “I have all the rights in this house,” said Throgmorton. “Livia, my dear, take Sunniva to your chamber.”

  “Come with me!” Livia pulled Sunni up and frogmarched her out of the parlor.

  “Walk properly, Blaise! You are not a wild animal.” Throgmorton steered him up the stairs and into the Academy workshop.

  Blaise’s rage continued to come out with every footstep. He kicked against the stairs and shrugged off his kidnapper’s hand.

  Throgmorton pulled him to a halt outside the workshop door. “Leave your childishness outside the Academy. It does not suit you.”

  Blaise snorted.

  “Stop your work, gentlemen,” said Throgmorton as he entered the workshop with the sullen boy in his grip. “Blaise is to join you as a fellow pupil.”

  “Is he?” Jeremiah looked puzzled.

  “May I have a word, sir?” Throgmorton let go of Blaise and strode into the corridor. Jeremiah grumbled and followed, with a gesture to the group to continue working.

  Blaise dodged candles and easels as he ran to the painted door. His hands trembled as he worked his fingers over the illusion of a door handle and along the door’s false edges, looking for an indentation. There were some barely visible curved scratches in the paintwork, but otherwise all he could feel was the flat coolness of plaster.

  Desperate, he implored the boys, “How do I get out through this door?”

  Six heads shook from side to side. No one answered.

  “But you saw us come in! How did Throgmorton make the door open?”

  One of the younger boys, Jacob, said, “The door comes alive when he wills it to.”

  The others shushed him and glanced toward the corridor to make sure the two men were nowhere near.

  “Jacob!” Toby shook the boy by the shoulder. “Do not speak of that, now or ever.”

  “Why can’t he speak about it?” Blaise growled.

  “Do not ask. The less you ask, the better for you.”

  Raised voices and a clattering of shoes pulled their attention away.

  “Strewth!” cursed Jeremiah. He burst angrily into
the workshop and flung his arms in the air. “Blaise, you are one of us for now. I shall not pollute the air with any useful advice except this. Keep your mouth and ears closed to anything but artistic instruction. Draw when I say, eat when I say, sleep when I say, and not before.”

  He stormed out again. There was banging and scraping from next door.

  “The Master is making you a sleeping place with us,” Toby murmured, clearing broken bits of charcoal and chalks away with his arm. “Here, this will be your table and stool.”

  Jeremiah blustered back into the workshop. “Follow me, Blaise.”

  The room next door was a maze of small, narrow cots with little space between them. Jeremiah yanked a wooden chest from under one bed and pulled its contents out. Two rough white shirts, two pairs of breeches, and a few pairs of dirty, once-white stockings lay there, along with a nightshirt and three scrunched-up undergarments.

  “Wear these clothes. They belonged to a boy who is gone away now,” said Jeremiah. “And do not pass judgment upon their fit or fashion. We have no use for such nonsense.”

  “Mr. Starling, I am not supposed to be here,” Blaise pleaded. “I need to get home.”

  “It is not for me to say.”

  “You must realize we don’t belong here! Throgmorton’s put us in your Academy against our will.”

  “Your will has no importance here,” said Jeremiah gruffly. “You are to be a pupil of this Academy in accordance with Throgmorton’s wishes for as long as he requires it.”

  “But this is your art school!”

  “I instruct whomever is placed in front of me.” Jeremiah scooped up the clothes and thrust them into Blaise’s arms. “Unless they prove to be incompetent at learning and are taken back from whence they came.”

  “So if we’re terrible students, he might let us go.”

  “Do not contemplate it!” Jeremiah gave a short laugh. “Throgmorton wants you here for his own reasons and will not release you until he is satisfied.”

  Blaise picked up a stocking that had slipped to the floor. It was stretched into the shape of its previous owner’s foot, dark with grime at the heel and toe. “I’m supposed to wear this?”

  “The dirt will hardly be noticed once the shoe is upon your foot.” Jeremiah nudged a pair of worn shoes from under the bed. “Place your belongings in that trunk.”

  “Whose clothes were these?”

  “A boy who is no longer with us,” said Jeremiah, unable to look Blaise in the eye. “Or so I presume.”

  “You don’t know where he went?” Blaise was appalled that he could smell the departed boy on the clothing he held. “Was it because he was ‘incompetent at learning’?”

  “No on both counts,” muttered Jeremiah, growing visibly agitated. He dug around in his vest and coat pockets till he found a pewter snuffbox.

  “What do you mean?”

  Jeremiah gave the snuffbox’s lid a few taps, opened it, and sniffed a pinch of tobacco into both nostrils. His face relaxed somewhat. “Questions draw unwanted attention, Blaise. I have already given you my humble advice, but I think you have need of more. So hear this: do what you can in this house to extend your life rather than shorten it.”

  Sunni’s sundress and sandals lay in a pile on the floor of Livia’s bedroom.

  “I think you make an excellent boy, Sunni,” said Livia. “Your face has a plainness to it that works very well for this purpose. But what shall we name you?”

  A servant, Mary, was trying to tie a bit of fabric around Sunni’s waist to make the breeches fit better, but Sunni clawed at the fabric. “You think your father is right to keep us here? Why don’t you say something to him?”

  “I will not.” Livia reclined on her four-poster canopy bed. “He is my father.”

  “I wish I could see my father, but I can’t, because yours is keeping me here. Please, Livia, you must know how the door works. Help us go home.”

  Livia gazed at herself in a silver hand-mirror. “You will become used to it here.”

  Sunni cried out in frustration. “Don’t you have any feelings at all? Do you ever think about other people?”

  “Forgive me, Sunniva, but I am trying to help you.”

  “Really. How?”

  “By helping you to fit in. Did you not notice how the Master’s pupils stared at your bare shoulders and legs? It was not because your features are particularly good, but because they were on show for all to see. This cannot be the sort of attention a proper young lady would wish for.”

  Sunni’s mouth hung open. “Are you joking? You’re thinking of my clothes, and I’m thinking of my life!”

  “Clothes are important.” Livia pursed her lips. “Young ladies do not attend boys’ art academies. You must impersonate a boy so you do not call attention to yourself. Gossip might spread, and then what might happen?”

  Yeah, someone might realize your father has prisoners in his special Academy. Sunni glared down at her drooping stockings and scuffed shoes with one buckle missing. Mary had rolled up the sleeves of the man’s white linen shirt and tucked in its long tail, but it was still too big, especially after she had bound Sunni’s chest in a tightly wound piece of muslin to make her as flat as a boy. Angry tears filled Sunni’s eyes, but Livia took no notice and prattled on.

  “You must practice walking and talking like a boy. Your voice is already deep for a girl, but you should lower it even more,” said Livia. “A lady’s voice should be high and light, like a tinkling bell. Yours is neither, but it will be suitable for a boy’s voice.”

  Sunni wiped her eyes and said nothing. She would get nowhere with this girl, so what was the point of even trying? Better to find out how to open that painted door and get away from these people on her own.

  At last, Mary stopped fiddling with the breeches’ waistband and anchored Sunni’s wavy hair at the nape of her neck with a scraggly bit of ribbon.

  Livia dismissed the servant with a wave and smirked. “What a fine fellow you are.”

  Disgusted, Sunni picked up her dress and sandals from the floor. She slung her bag across her chest and said, “I’m keeping my clothes because I will be going home.”

  Livia shrugged. “Let us go and see how handsome Blaise looks in proper boys’ clothing.”

  Blaise’s head was splitting. He couldn’t get enough air, and his skin was slick with sweat. How are we going to get out of here?

  He took a breath. You can handle it. You got out of Corvo’s painting when you never thought you would. You fought off plenty of enemies there and figured out the way home.

  But fighting Throgmorton won’t open the painted door. He cradled his head in his hands.

  Jeremiah Starling appeared at his side with a jar full of long goose feathers.

  “Choose one,” he said quietly. “They are all good.”

  Blaise stared, dull-eyed, at the feathers.

  “By doing something useful, you will chase melancholy away.” Jeremiah thrust the jar into Blaise’s face.

  He pulled a feather out and shrugged.

  “Very well,” said Jeremiah. “Now we strip off the barbs and shorten the shaft.” He laid the feather down on a wooden board, and with a small, sharp penknife, the Master sliced and nipped it into shape. A few deft cuts later, he had carved an angled drawing tip, ready to receive ink.

  “The goose’s loss is our gain,” he said. “Now choose another feather and make one yourself, as I have.”

  The pounding in Blaise’s head started to recede, and his panicky feelings moved out of focus. Somehow, watching Jeremiah work brought him a moment of calmness. He went at his own feather with care, teasing the downy feathers from the shaft and excising them with the knife.

  “Mr. Starling,” said Livia, standing with Sunni at the workshop door. “This is Jack, your new pupil.”

  Sunni’s face went pink at this. “What?”

  “Jack Sunniver.”

  Blaise’s small shoot of tranquillity withered. Seeing Sunni, rumpled in her sagging bre
eches, with her missing shoe buckle, made him curse himself for dragging her to Starling House and going through the painted door without question. Livia was gazing at him, approving of his eighteenth-century outfit, and he cursed himself again for following her.

  The Academy boys gaped at Sunni’s transformation. But none of them was bold enough to point or titter. Instead, they turned to see what the Master would make of this.

  “Jack Sunniver, you say?” Jeremiah crossed his arms over his chest. “A boy like yourself probably prefers to be called by his surname, eh? Shall we call you Sunniver then?”

  “He is called Jack,” Livia protested.

  “Madam, you may call him Jack when he is outside my domain,” said Jeremiah. “When he eats his gruel or sleeps in his quarters, you may feel free to interrupt him. By the way, where are his quarters? For there is no room with the others.”

  “The servant’s room by the kitchen, Mr. Starling.”

  “Lucky lad, Sunniver. Mistress Biggins shall look after you.” Jeremiah ushered Sunni toward the goose feathers. “And your friend Blaise shall now instruct you on how best to cut a quill pen.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Good-bye to you, miss.”

  With a toss of her head, Livia vanished downstairs.

  “Welcome, Blaise and Sunniver,” said Jeremiah. “You are Academicians now, and as far as it is any outsider’s business, you have both been with us for some time. You are orphans of the parish, found by Mr. Throgmorton, just like the other boys. No outsider shall know any other details but this.” He swiped the back of his hand across his nose. “Gentlemen, we make nine altogether. A fine number. Now let me hear the sound of nine at their work.”

  The boys settled down, and Jeremiah began sketching out a painting on a large easel in a corner.

  “Take a feather,” Blaise said to Sunni. “And watch what I do.”

  She plucked the first one she saw and sat down next to him, her back rigid. The feather fell from her grasp and landed on the floor, but she made no move to retrieve it.

  “I know, I don’t feel like doing this either.” Blaise picked up her feather and asked in a gentle voice, “Are you okay?”

  “Not really. I can’t see how we’re going to get out of here. Livia won’t help us. I pleaded, but she wouldn’t listen.”