Confessions of the Fox

by Jordy Rosenberg

  Bellon was pronounced dead at 10:36 A.M., and the body was hurried to the prison hospital. There on an operating table lay the aged convict. The body of Bellon was lifted to an adjoining table and his interstitial glands were removed.

  Then the glands were transferred to the other’s body. Unable to feel pain, because of anaesthetic injected into the spine, he talked with the doctors as they cut and sewed. The surgeons believe that new strength, mental as well as physical, will follow the operation. Similar results, it is said, have come from such operations previously performed at the prison.

  Think of it this way: There is the medical history that purports to linearity (a kind of endochronology—a so-called progress narrative of the alignment of sex hormones and subjectivity, if you will). And then there is our history—fragmented and fugitive. (On which topic, see Kadji Amin, “Glands, Eugenics, and Rejuvenation in Man into Woman: A Biopolitical Genealogy of Transsexuality,” Transgender Studies Quarterly 5, no. 3, 2018.)

  11.

  Applebee’s Weekly Journal, RUSH EDITION

  To the Citizens of London and Westminster

  16 November 1724

  THE CAPTURE OF JACK SHEPPARD AND THE BURNING OF THE SHIP THE POOR MARIA

  Let it be known, citizens of London, that the arch-devil Jack Sheppard had been captured by the Thief-Catcher General whilst pilfering the Plague Ship, the Poor Maria. Sheppard was discovered on Board with his accomplices Bess Khan and Another Woman. Khan escap’d into the Thames and is likely to be found swum ashore at Whitehall or Blackfriars. All other souls on board on the ship, save the Thief-Catcher General and Sheppard, perish’d in the blast.

  Sheppard is to be brought direct to Tyburn at four o’clock this afternoon, where he will be hanged for burglary, pilfering, accessory to arson, and ape-mutilation. In the blast, one of the King’s prized menagerie, The Lion-Man, was consum’d by flames. The loss of such a rare specimen is Incalculable.

  12.

  1: TYBURN TREE, THE PROCESSION

  Wild’s men brought Jack to the Tree straightaway.

  Thousands of common folk throng’d the streets to watch the execution-cart pass. The City Marshal attended the cart, mount’d on a fine steed of pied color with a high, shiny haunch just visible out of the corner of Jack’s eye under the hood. Some Histories will say it was a carnival that day.

  But it was a Rebellion.

  The people screamed bloody Murder for Jack’s release, and the Marshal on his steed was unmoved, though they threw rotted fruit at him and spat with all their might.

  2: ALL THIS YOU KNOW

  Jack begg’d in his heart that Aurie would rush the stage and steal his body back from the hangman once the deed was done, as they had discuss’d he would do in this eventuality over ales so many nights when they play’d Aurie’s favorite game (and in truth it was no game to him; it was the very meat of his worrying mind): What if.

  Jack was on his knees and the hangman’s hand was on his whip.

  3: HE DIED ON THE TREE

  And, Reader, he died.

  Because he was of slight build, it took fifteen minutes, and in that time, he saw the Mob glisten and turn sap-thick underwater green as the breath left his body and he was seiz’d then with the surety of his Arc; he would not die of the supposed Plague, or of a slip and fall off an eave, or of throwing himself from the walls of the Tower, or of Drowning, or of the pain of Bess-less-ness, or even of the Pleasure of Bess’s muff making his heart skip beats. He would die of the executioner. Of the hand whipping the horse, of the horse yanking the cart.

  For moments they all thought his Body would not be weighted enough to die. But die he did.

  He died on the Tree like Bailey the Highwayman and Brooks the Shop-Lifter and Nayler the Preacher of Freedom and Equality. He died at the hands of the profiteers like all the rebels, and freedom fighters rotting under the water of the fens.

  4: THE MOB RUSHED THE STAGE

  The mob rushed the stage so quickly that Aurie Blake was swallow’d up in a sea of clamoring ordinary Folk. He did not reach Jack. The mob got to him first.

  And the mob carried Jack on their shoulders through the Town to keep him safe from the Dissectors and the Wardens and Wild and all who wished to profit from his Body. They took him down Chipping Street, misty with the grains of glass-dust from Walton’s Glass-Blowers. They took him down Wapping, high on their shoulders through the blighted moldy air of the Slaughterhouses. On to the Strand with the husky tailors hunch’d over their spinning machines, concoctin’ a strike for better wages. And the tailors stepp’d out into the street and whistled salutations and Love as he passed by. They took him to the Stone Castle Inn, where they propp’d him on couches and drank many toasts of good whiskey to his Honor. Then they carry’d him lovingly to St. Martin-in-the-Fields and dug a grave with small shovels and spoons and with their fingernails even, for those who lacked a tool. And they laid him there, and dusted themselves off, and they left him with a battalion of Commoners to guard him, and the rest went home and changed into their Leveller Green Dress clothes—their mutinous green colors in honor of Winstanley and the Family of Love, long-lost Dreamers of these common lands. Planters of seed, grazers of cows, feeders of the people.

  And, dressed now all in green, they return’d.

  And Aurie Blake was there, dressed in green, and Bess—and Bill Field’s son, too; Aurie’s love—Tommy—was holding Aurie’s hand. Holding him up. And they threw dirt on Jack’s head and chest and bury’d him that night with the red poppies just opened and the cherry plum came to Budding just that day.

  5: ST. MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELDS

  But when the mob had dispers’d, singing together into the Night—their voices floated out acrid and hoarse on the salt-scratched air—Aurie Blake stepp’d from behind the big oak at the end of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The oak at the foot of which he had been sitting and breathing calm and steady ’til the sound of the mob was far and tiny down the lane, each of them tumbl’d off into a pub, or their bed, or settlin’ down for the night wedged against a cobbled wall. He stepped out and approach’d the grave and took his hands to the cold wet dirt. And he dug.

  He didn’t have to dig for long. The mob hadn’t done the most fastidious burying job. To be fair, most of ’em were enormously soused. No matter. ’Twas easier for Aurie this way. He felt Jack’s arm before he saw it, and then he start’d brushing.

  Jack lay shallow in the dirt, his skin enameled against the dark. His eyes half-opened, slitted in that deadlike way. A sliver of Tooth glinted in the moonlight.

  “Brother,” Aurie whisper’d. And that would be the only word he spoke for the next long while, as he unearth’d Jack and—as delicately as Aurie could—placed him over his shoulder and proceeded down Charing Cross to meet Tommy, who was waiting outside the Pig and Thistle and simply nodded at Aurie and fell in beside him, and they walked together to Hampstead Heath.

  6: THE CHIRURGEON

  The chirurgeon was a sour man. A thin, wasted rind dressed in a white jumper and surrounded by rusty tools. He cough’d a “C’min” from his stool when Aurie and Tommy knocked, and they open’d the door into the rank basement office.

  “Here’s yer 50p,” scoffed Tommy, who felt that anyone with any sympathy at all would do this for free. He tossed some grubby coin on the metal table.

  The chirurgeon swiped the coin off the operating table and gestured for Aurie to lay Jack down.

  “Wipe it first,” Aurie said, holding Jack tight against his shoulder. He strok’d Jack’s stockinged leg, something he’d not ordinarily allow himself. Now that they were in the light, Tommy saw the dried chalky tear-streams down Aurie’s face and pool’d in his beard scruff.

  The chirurgeon grumblingly rubbed a Rag over the surface, which left a gummy film on top of the metal. Aurie laid Jack down, arranging his arms and legs in a jaunty akimbo postur
e—nothing like the knotted ball Jack actually slept in, but a Pantomime of something like the dreamy gaolbreaker Aurie always saw him as. Supernatural and Free. He stepped back.

  “So you’ll bring ’im around again?” query’d Tommy. Aurie was too choked up to talk. The few sentences he’d said that night had already practically done him in—Tommy could see that. Saw Aurie’s throat bobbing up and down while he was looking at Jack. So Tommy would be the one to secure the Transaction.

  “You’ll bring ’im ’round? That’s what we’re here for.”

  “I’ll bring ’im ’round. To the best of my Capacity I will bring ’im ’round. I’ll need some Privacy for it, all right. It’s a bit of a procedure and I do need my concentration.”

  Aurie didn’t like the sound of that, but the room was small and dense and smelled sharply of chemicals and death. And he couldn’t bear looking at Jack like that for much longer. Holding him was better. Looking was causing a chasm to widen in his brain, hollowing the space between the real world and the wished-for one, the Maybe-gone one. He stepped backwards out and up the stairs and Tommy follow’d, promising that they would be back shortly to meet up with a revived Jack and be on their way.

  7: THE PIG AND THISTLE

  Aurie and Tommy headed to the Pig and Thistle. They didn’t talk. They ran their hands over their faces and quaff’d ale and didn’t even look at the other mollies as they might normally do, flirting and bantering. They drank several each and headed back out. The night was pinkening into morning and the sun stung their eyes.

  8: WHAT IF

  When Tommy and Aurie returned to the chirurgeon, the Office was empty. There was Blood and mess everywhere. They knocked and bang’d on the walls and howl’d for the doctor. Aurie was frantic, throwing bloodied tools about the room and stamping, slipping on Offal.

  Finally, a light came on behind a dirty glass Pane, and an interior door slipp’d open. The chirurgeon’s head pok’d out, his paltry black hairs greased to his shining pate.

  “Where is he?!” Aurie was screaming.

  “Calm, mate,” said the chirurgeon. “ ’E’s in the back.”

  Aurie crash’d through the operating Paraphernalia, throwing aside clamps, scissors, some frightening, bloodied black cord, and a small wooden stool. He lung’d for the door to the back room.

  “He was near gone for good,” the chirurgeon squeak’d.

  “Thank you,” muttered Tommy.

  * * *

  —

  There was dust kicked up against the chirurgeon’s basement windows by a horsecart. An ochre tide of dust with the sun burning bright behind it, spinning in the wake of a cart that was rolling now at a monstrous clip from St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where Wild had found Nothing but an empty grave.

  * * *

  —

  In the back room, Jack was lying on a filthy slab, blinking.

  “Suppose we needed all those games of what-if after all.” He smiled. “Had this in me throat.” He held up the sopping curl of parchment papers and the rod, soaked in phlegm and blood. “Protection from the rope.”

  Aurie crunch’d his forehead, looking at the sputum and gore.

  And there was something Wet bubbling up at the corner of his eye, which was the first time Jack had ever seen anything of that nature there.

  “Well done, mate,” croak’d Aurie. “Now,” he said, slinging Jack’s arm around his shoulder and helping him up. “Tommy’s arrang’d a coach.”

  13.

  When Jack open’d his eyes, his heart had been awake for some time—banging Hammers inside his chest. He breathed—tried to Focus— He was in the barn—Field’s stable where they often stashed their loot. Aurie was peering above him, a bundle of hay in his hand. And now Aurie press’d the bundle—toasted in the sun—to Jack’s neck wounds. His rough friend had become a gentle cur, practically licking his wounds and fussing over Jack’s bruises.

  He let Aurie lift the cloak off his legs.

  “They’re bad,” Aurie said, in his direct way.

  “I’m aware.” Jack had not moved for a reason. His calves were clumped and frozen, bloodcaked and throbbing.

  “You’ll have to move them about, I’m afraid,” Aurie assessed. “To get the humours flowing.”

  Aurie bent over to help him up, and Jack waved him off. “I can do it.” He winced as he dragged himself to his feet, crumpled, then righted himself. He did this several times until his shaking legs held him, but only just.

  * * *

  —

  All that day, Aurie and Jack slowly perambulated the high western moor. At first Jack had sobbed and screamed as the blood circulated again, flowed over broken skin, awakening the wounds.

  When Jack’s legs had numbed but steadied, in the low afternoon Light, with the turf coming to appear gold-gingered, he regarded his mate’s phiz against the setting sun—“You know those Confessions they’re always tryin’ get?”—

  * * *

  —

  That night and the next day, Jack and Aurie wrote down everything. In roguespeak. An Incantation.

  By the next afternoon, they’d compil’d a thick stack of Confessions in the barn*1, and Aurie urg’d him out for another walk. But Jack was slower, even, this time—tired from the Exertions of the previous day. They’d not gotten far before evening came on fast, along with the portent of rain. The air ocean’d. Cool mist washed over their faces.

  “I’m heading back to rest.” Jack’s voice was unsteady. “You keep on with your constitutional.” He returned to the barn, slowly on his sad legs, through the gray-blue light and the settling Mist. Leaned against the threshold, wiped his face with his cloak sleeve.

  * * *

  —

  A sound from the interior—a cough.

  Bess was sitting on a bale of hay, surrounded by satchels.

  She was looking through the wadded, blood-smeared papers Tommy and Aurie had taken from the chirurgeon, uncrumpled now onto the bale.

  When she raised her head, her eyes were clotted with blue underneath, shot with red throughout.

  “Bess.” He could not manage more. She clearly had an ague—he knew it from the way her cheeks tended towards a dark magenta when she was Feverish. He went to her.

  Whatever Space they each might have hoped would open between them at this moment did not open. Not all the way. Not instantly. But he went to her, she stood, and they embrac’d. When they held each other, they were Dogs snared in each other’s fur, breathing in, holding hard to muscle, skin, bone.

  “I buried Jenny—what was left of her. In the grave they dug you out of.”

  Night streamed in cold and blue through the slats in the walls. Mice began their cottony scratches in the underbelly of the hay.

  Jack nodded. Touched her face. She let him.

  “Did you like what I nick’d for you?”

  She meant the papers he’d swallow’d.

  RECIPE FOR LUXURIATION

  J. EVANS

  The recipe is laborious, time-consuming, and necessitates a collective of skilled artisans.

  I draw my observations—at the behest of Mr. Wild—from interviews with a certain Lion-Man, who reports on his adventures with the Okoh mutineers—a band of Brigands, now happily long-dissolv’d and execut’d or transport’d to the Colonies but for the Lion-Man, who remains under London Municipal supervision.

  I regret to say that more research is needed, and must state at the outset that what I have managed to gather is both maddeningly complex and likely Incomplete:

  1. Firstly, you must provide swine a pastured area with heavy ground cover of the Amorphophallus plant, upon which they are very fond of rubbing their hindquarters as it appears to give them many hours of rude pleasure. From the deep pockets of this plant, gather stray urine. It is not recommended to extort the swine of their
urine by force (or cajoling), but rather to come by it naturally.

  2. Once “several” (we have no conception of quite how many) ounces have been achieved, gather 2–4 handfuls of white lily flowers, bruised.

  3. Add to this a “similar” (again, vague) Quantity of mallow leaf and twigs, broken between the hands into a chaotic jumble.

  4. Add several raisins that have been stoned and bruised for no less than three weeks’ time, allowing for Adequate dehydration of the fruit.

  5. Mash together 4 ounces (or thereabouts) liquorice and parsley root with all of the above, and place in a pot covered with swine milk harvested through a gentle coaxing that involves the adept Imitation of baby swinedom by the smallest Member of the community, mewling and crawling about. Some training in baby-swine Thespianship may be necessary.

  6. Let the pot sit Undisturb’d—with no air coming out or going in—for several weeks. Then place a large piece of turf over a wood fire, place the pot atop the fire, and distill the potion slowly. When it is distilled to the consistency of a thick Gravy or near-gelled state, remove the pot and spread the potion over similar turfey ground—soft, mossy, algal, cushioned ground is necessary and may be grown for the purpose—for several more weeks until the gel takes on a dried and hardened Aspect.

  7. At this point a complex Acrobatics of covering and exposing the gel must transpire. Cover the gel with a large net created from densely knitted dried fish tendon. On a night not entirely without clouds—a whisper of cloud cover is best, “streaky white against a deep black”—expose the gel to Starlight just at the moment when Hydrus overtakes Apus in Luminescence. Cover the gel after Hydrus fades again. Repeat this process over the course of anywhere from 2 to 16 nights. Or more.