The White Forest

by Adam McOmber

  The palace was a marvel of human invention, composed entirely of glass—some three hundred thousand panes, suspended across a scant metal skeleton that encompassed a great expanse of the park. Many viewers attested that being inside the structure was initially disturbing. The structure produced a dizzying sensation, as sunlight was amplified by the glass panes, and some said they feared being “crushed” by all that dazzling light.

  The queen herself visited the Crystal Palace, showing particular interest in the great aviary that was filled with fifteen hundred canaries. It was well known that Victoria was a lover of birds, and this particular display was said to provide a marvelous and disorienting rush of color and noise. Despite her enthusiasm for visiting the birds, Victoria reportedly was melancholy upon leaving. When asked privately about her change in mood, the queen attributed it to a fleeting vision caused by the canaries. “We realize we are little match for God’s empire,” she said. “That such a thing as birds can be frightening is a testament to God’s supremacy over any kingdom of Man.”

  I did not fear the birds in the palace nor the supremacy of Victoria’s God. I didn’t even really fear the prophecy from Dr. Lot’s Psychomatic Dispensary, though admittedly the memory of it still lingered. Instead, I feared the machines themselves inside the Crystal Palace.

  In its various industrial courtyards, the palace was said to collect and display every manner of modern invention—most of which were being newly unveiled to the general public. The prospect of all these inventions gathered into one place disturbed me. I had no idea how my body would react to them. Would my heightened senses be affected adversely by these new machines, especially since some of them were powered neither by steam nor water, but by electricity?

  I’d once attended a lecture with my father that demonstrated Luigi Galvani’s work on “bioelectricity.” Galvani posited that the human body was animated not by a spirit but by electrical currents running through its nerves. If the machines inside the palace were likewise electrified, did they not become more akin to living organisms? Inanimate would become animate, and I worried this could have the effect of amplifying the machines’ souls, which I already perceived full well. I could be driven mad in the presence of these living objects. It was all vague conjecture, of course, but I didn’t feel the need to experiment by visiting the palace myself. Thank God I’d never told Nathan about these concerns. Upon hearing them, he would have immediately taken me to the Crystal Palace, and if I protested, he would have likely tied me to the back of his coach and dragged me.

  I’d read that the palace contained electric French sewing machines, a calculating machine, and an electric submarine that surfaced and dived in an internal lake. There was even a daydreamer’s chair in which electrified magnets were affixed to the sitter’s scalp, and it was said doctors could manipulate the dreams of the sitter to produce any variety of effect. If one man wanted to swim the Aegean, such an effect could be achieved. If another would rather walk on the red surface of Mars, so be it.

  “Isn’t it a wonderment, Jane?” Maddy said, looking down on the palace from the hill where we stood waiting for Judith Ulster.

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose it is, but I don’t—”

  My thought was left unfinished, as we were interrupted by a female voice saying, “Is one of you lot Madeline Lee?”

  The voice belonged to Judith Ulster. She was a few years younger than Maddy and me, and she was stronger looking than any woman I’d ever seen. Judith was carrying her archery bow and dressed in sporting clothes—a pair of plum-colored bloomers with a white blouse that she’d modified so her arms were bare up to her shoulders. It looked as though she was wearing a men’s swimming vest. Another set of eyes might have found her appearance quite indecent, but I’d learned from Maddy to accept all manner of things.

  The horsehair string of Judith Ulster’s bow glistened in the sun, and I thought she looked every bit like the strong, hard goddess Diana from my father’s folly.

  Maddy was in the process of introducing us when Judith Ulster extended her hand as a man would do. Maddy shook the hand, and before I knew what was happening, Judith seized my own hand as well. For a moment, her expression became vaguely fogged.

  “Now, what was that?” she asked, looking down at her bow.

  “What, dear?” Maddy said. She’d learned to play naive when it came to others experiencing my power.

  “The strangest thing,” Judith replied. “I thought my bow was mumbling something to me.”

  Maddy laughed lightly. “That would be Jane’s fault, Miss Ulster. She’s pursued by vengeful spirits. The feeling will go away once you’ve left her presence, much like indigestion dissipates when the offending meal has been passed.”

  Judith enjoyed this bit of toilet humor made at my expense, enough to forget her temporarily haunted bow. “Call me Judith, and Jane doesn’t look anything like a piece of meat gone bad.”

  “Looks can be deceiving, dear,” Maddy said.

  “I left my quiver of arrows at the archery field,” Judith told us. “Will you both walk with me?”

  “Jane and I adore walking,” Maddy replied.

  • • •

  The archery field was part of the garden that sprawled beyond the confines of the palace proper. Brightly dressed men and women drew bows, training the feathered arrows on a variety of straw-filled targets. A marquee for the rental of bows and quivers also sold lemonade, and Judith bought the three of us drinks, which we then sipped as we walked. In the valley below the archery ground was a tree-lined lake, which acted as a reservoir for the palace’s variety of animated fountains. Gunshots rang out in the distance from what Judith said was a men’s shooting range.

  “Clearly only men should learn to use pistols, right, girls?” Judith said.

  “Despicable,” Maddy replied.

  I was slightly unnerved at the connection they were forming. I wasn’t used to sharing Maddy with anyone other than Nathan.

  “It’s good to meet you both, but I really don’t know why you’ve asked to speak with me,” Judith said. She took a long sip of her lemonade, looking toward the glittering lake. “I sympathize with your troubles, Madeline, but they aren’t so very different from my own troubles, which I have yet to solve.”

  “The similarity of our situations is exactly why we want to speak with you,” Maddy said. “I was told by a mutual acquaintance that you’ve actually been inside the Theater of Provocation.”

  Judith burst into laughter at this. “Our mutual acquaintance must have been taking a nip,” she said. “I’ve been as far as the front door.”

  “That’s farther than we’ve gotten,” Maddy replied. “We’re gathering information to understand Nathan Ashe’s experience prior to his disappearance. Telling us what you learned might help us.”

  Judith shrugged. “If Nathan’s experience is anything like my brother Corydon’s, your boy is lost, Madeline, and that’s the truth. That theater isn’t a theater at all. Ariston Day isn’t a showman, he’s a thief. Corydon hasn’t been the same since being indoctrinated. He and I are twins, you know. Terribly close when we were younger; we did everything together. My hair was cut short when we were children, and people said they could hardly tell me from Corydon. I love him more than I love anyone, but that wasn’t enough to wrestle him from Ariston Day.”

  “Yes,” Maddy said. “Love isn’t enough.”

  “Our father owns the Bainbridge store,” Judith said. Bainbridge’s was a well-known feature of London—a grand emporium that was being referred to popularly as a “department store.” All manner of things could be purchased under one roof—from hats to stationery to riding gear. It was unlike anything else the city offered, and shoppers were drawn to it in droves. “Corydon hates commerce,” Judith said. “Hates our father’s business. That’s what sent him to that theater in the first place. His friend Seamus Holt told him there were other boys down there who hated their fathers’ enterprises, and that they’d all found something bette
r than a father in Ariston Day—they’d found a leader. Corydon went to his first provocation as a lark. I couldn’t go, of course, because I wasn’t the right sex. It made me so angry, but Corydon assured me that nothing would come of his visit. Nothing could come of it because the only thing he hated more than commerce was the theater. I laughed at his joke, and he kissed my cheek.” Judith put her hand gently on her cheek, as if remembering the feeling of him. She continued, “That night when he came home, he was already changed. There was a new light in his eyes, and after that he went once a week to the theater, sometimes spending the night in Southwark, doing God knows what. And so I did what any loving sister would do.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  Judith looked at us grimly. “I bought myself a red coat and a hat, the rounded sort the young men are wearing these days. Then I filthied them up, as if I didn’t know how to do a proper wash, and I made my way to Southwark.”

  “You posed as a Fetch?” Maddy asked. “Judith, that was terribly bold.”

  “I wasn’t afraid of Day,” she said. “I wasn’t afraid of anybody. But I know better now. I learned.” She paused. “I thought I could pass for a Fetch. I thought a little dirt and the dark alleys of Southwark would be enough to transform me and fool even Ariston Day. My costume worked fine in the tavern above the theater—the tavern’s known as the Temple of the Lamb, you know. The name reminds me of a sacrifice—gives me shudders thinking about it.” She paused again, as if reliving the memory. “Anyhow, I wasn’t called out in the tavern. One old man even said, ‘excuse me, sir,’ when he bumped against me.

  “As soon as I made my way down the stairs to the theater below, I knew something was wrong. There was an awful tension in the air, and the place smelled like a men’s arena. There were so many Fetches streaming down the stairs around me, some fifteen or twenty laughing boys in filthy red regalia. I couldn’t turn back. I thought I could make it through the open door. As soon as I was at its threshold, though, one of the guards, a tall Fetch with a rash of freckles across his cheeks, reached up and tipped off my hat. I looked at him, astonished, and saw that he was laughing at me, as was the other guard. They knew exactly what I was—an imposter in their midst, and worse yet, a woman. They’d watched me come down the stairs, all the while planning to apprehend me. ‘Your hat, sir,’ he said, handing the bowler to me. ‘And my, don’t you have pretty hair.’

  “I turned to run, but they quickly grabbed me by the arms. When I struggled, one of them knocked me against a stone wall and made a good gash on my face. They led me to a room outside the theater. I didn’t even get a glimpse of what was going on inside. Then they told me to sit down in a chair, and when I’d done so, one of them spit in my face.

  “Normally, I would have reacted with violence, but I was afraid of those boys. They had an air of vacancy, as if they could have done anything to me in that room and not lost a wink of sleep over it. I sat there, looking up at the two Fetches. And then the door behind them opened, and a third Fetch led my brother into the room. Corydon was terrified, and when he saw me he shook his head, as if to indicate that I should do nothing and say nothing. The Fetch who’d spit on me said, ‘You want to know what we do down here, Judith Ulster?’ I wanted to ask him how he knew my name but thought better of it because of the expression on Corydon’s face. Instead I whispered, ‘Yes.’ The boy said, ‘Well, we make dreams. Do you want to feel like you’re dreaming, Judith Ulster?’

  “I couldn’t speak. I only looked at him. He took a blade out of his pocket, a long thin blade, and while the other boy held Corydon in place, the spitting boy brought the blade to my brother’s face and sliced into his cheek. He sliced his cheek so deeply that a flap of Corydon’s skin fell back—like the cheek was nothing more than meat. And I could see the yellow of Corydon’s teeth under that piece of flesh.” Judith reported this calmly enough, but her hand was shaking as she reached up to brush a windblown piece of hair from her face.

  “My God,” said Maddy. “Oh, Judith, that’s so terrible.”

  I thought it was far worse than that. Judith’s story made me believe that Day and his Fetches were capable of anything.

  “And then another boy took something from behind his back, maybe it was a pipe, and he hit me in the head until I was unconscious. I woke up in an alley in Southwark with a vagrant standing over me, probably trying to decide if I was a boy or a girl and whether or not I should be robbed or violated. I’ve seen my brother since that night, but only from a distance. He acts like he doesn’t know me, and he travels with packs of Fetches. He had his face stitched up, but there’s still a scar. So while he hasn’t disappeared like your Nathan, he’s already gone from our family, you see. He’s one of them now.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Maddy said.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Judith replied. “I wish to God I could help you more, but I don’t think anyone can help the two of you. That’s my honest belief.”

  Maddy and I were both shaken by Judith Ulster’s tale of the theater, and as we took our leave of her and walked across the sunlit park, it seemed as though night was falling in the middle of the afternoon. Maddy said, “Jane, hold my hand.”

  “But the transference, Maddy.”

  “Please don’t argue. Just do as I say,” she replied.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was several days after our visit with Judith Ulster that we were invited to tea by Nathan’s mother, Mary-Thomas Ashe. Lady Ashe extended such an invitation monthly and spent hours recounting for us her private adventures at various séances and ghost hunts. I remember being initially surprised at Mary-Thomas’s apparent warmth and grace. After all, neither Maddy nor I seemed a suitable match for the son of a lord. We were both outcasts in our own right. The fact that we spent so many hours alone with Nathan could have produced a certain animosity in Lady Ashe. We might have been viewed as a threat to her lineage. But instead, Nathan’s mother accepted us as unlikely confidantes. She was a good deal more eccentric than her practical husband, and she confessed to finding such topics as class and breeding a bore. I believe she also secretly thought Nathan would never dare choose one of us as his wife. Even if he did, Lord Ashe would put a stop to such a union. We likely seemed nothing more than playthings to her, and there was safety in that.

  • • •

  Our carriage ascended Parliament Hill, trundling toward Ashe High House, the bright manse that presided over the Heath from its aerie. Seeing it again made my heart feel like a stone. I was surprised that Lady Ashe was keeping up her invitations at all, considering the turmoil that had been caused by her son’s disappearance, and I wondered if she might have some ulterior motive in inviting us for tea now. I was glad for the chance to enter the house once more, though, as it might provide another opportunity to try an experiment on one of Nathan’s personal possessions.

  In the carriage, Maddy and I discussed the stories we’d heard from Paul Rafferty and Judith Ulster but came to few conclusions. “Our investigation doesn’t provide answers,” I said. “Rather, it’s putting us in danger.”

  Maddy studied me, eyes half-lidded. “No answers, Jane? We are now certain where Nathan spent his final hour. We also know that the Fetches are capable of extreme violence.”

  “But what good is that?” I asked.

  “It’s a step toward a solution. Honestly, at times I feel as though you don’t even want to find him.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Then show some initiative, Jane. Vidocq is proving more useless by the day. I read recently in the Athenaeum that he’s taken to drinking pints to while away his afternoons.”

  “Do we believe the newspapers now?” I asked.

  “My point is that discovering what happened to Nathan is up to us.”

  “I wouldn’t underestimate the inspector, Maddy. If he’s beginning to seem clouded, perhaps that’s because he wants us to perceive him so.” I knew for a fact that Vidocq was quite perceptive and resourceful, as could be seen in the resear
ch that I’d stolen from him.

  The carriage came to a halt, and the tall driver opened the door to help me out onto the stone drive. Nathan’s house, surrounded by oaks and cedars, had the honor of being the only inhabitance on the hill, as some antiquated law permitted the ancestors of Lord Ashe to build on the hallowed parkland. Before going to ring the bell, Maddy and I stood together on the lawn, looking toward the distant domes and towers of London. The tower bells of St. Paul’s chimed, and a yellow fog moved across the buildings of our city, seeming to dissolve spires and cupolas in its wake. “Do you think he’s really in that maze somewhere?” Maddy asked. “Is it possible that, at this moment, we’re looking at the place where he’s concealed?”

  “I don’t feel him there,” I said, honestly.

  “Nor do I,” she said. “But if not London, then where?”

  I looped my arm through hers, careful not to touch her skin. I didn’t want her to hear the way Ashe High House wept behind us. “Let’s go inside, dear,” I said, and she allowed me to lead her to the bell rope.

  Lord Ashe had retreated to his offices at Parliament, so we found Mary-Thomas alone, a shadow of her former self, sitting in her stiff parlor chair. Her hair, normally an architectural masterpiece, hung loose around her gaunt shoulders. Her skin was sallow, and her hand trembled when she lifted it in greeting.

  The tea table was set with egg and cress sandwiches; a variety of fruit scones with clotted cream; and a coral-colored tea set Lady Ashe’s cousin Manfred had brought back from China. The head girl, whose name I’d forgotten, poured tea and seemed unsteady, glancing from time to time at Lady Ashe, as if to check that her mistress was not about to have an outburst.

  “Every morning, I expect to see poor Nathan in the foyer,” Lady Ashe said, “carrying his bags as when he came back from war. At the very least, I thought I’d have a vision. Even if he looked dreadful, I’d know his soul persists. But there’s been nothing. I’ve tried to make contact with my spirit guide, the Golden Cloud, thinking perhaps it could help us with our search, but even the Cloud will not speak to me. I feel as though I’ve been made blind.”