by Viola Carr
Bewildered, Eliza staggered up. The fire was black and cold, her rain-dampened dress clammy. She reeled, dizzy from that awful dream. “What happened? Did I fall asleep?”
“You was yowling fit to wake the dead.” Lizzie shoved her scornfully. “Don’t think you can get out of it by faking you’re off your rocker.”
Eliza shivered, that dream-man’s voice echoing. A burr of Lancashire. She’s wakin’ oop . . .
Warm relief swamped her. Of course. The mind played strange games. Somehow her unexpected encounter with Byron Starling had stuck with her, recycling itself into fitful dark fantasy. Yes. That was it.
But Starling’s odd remarks this morning stung like half-healed burns. When you were so ill. Doctor’s orders. When she’d quizzed him, he’d denied everything—and Marcellus had told a clumsy lie. Her tongue burned, itching to ask Lizzie what she knew, but she swallowed the question unformed. A nightmare, brought on by fatigue and Lizzie’s mind games. Nothing more.
But she couldn’t shake the memory of Starling’s expression, in the split second before he’d first smiled at her in Finch’s shop. Not confusion, exactly.
More like terror.
“Leave me out of it, whatever ’twas. Elixir time for you.” Lizzie grabbed the bag containing the fresh elixir and frog-marched Eliza upstairs.
Warm darkness shrouded her bedroom. Firelit shadows tugged at the curtained bed, her washstand, her wardrobe. The carriage clock on the mantel ticked crookedly, a monster’s limping footsteps. Click-CLOCK, click-CLOCK . . . By the draped window stood a tailor’s mannequin, swathed in pale dream-like fabric, a sinister fairy-woman shape in the dark.
Her unfinished wedding dress. It seemed a foolish conceit, the hollow shell of some other woman’s life. She’d as well have married in secret. A Fleet wedding, if such things still existed, or an elopement to Gretna Green, as was done in days of old by defiant heiresses with unsuitable beaux. But Remy’s mother had insisted, and to keep peace with that formidable matriarch, Eliza had agreed—and that meant a new dress. She’d only one suitable piece, and that was tainted with too many unpleasant memories.
Dr. Eliza Lafayette. It rang strange discord in her ears. False, like a carnival mirror’s warped reflection of reality. Truth was, she didn’t want a wedding. She wanted Remy—but to have one without the other? She recalled nosy, judgmental Mrs. Bistlethwaite, and shuddered. It’d be scandalous. Impossible. Unforgivable.
Fatigue clawed at her. She longed for nothing more than to creep under the covers and sleep forever, free of dreams.
But this was Lizzie’s time. Eight o’clock until dawn, four nights a week. She’d promised.
Fumbling, she yanked on the sconce above the fire, and with a seductive click! Lizzie’s cabinet door swung open.
What a mess. Lizzie’s red dresses scattered the place, one draped over the mirror, another tossed over the shelves holding Eliza’s most secret and unorthodox books. Lizzie’s swordstick leaned against the wall, its silver-plated dragon head leering, next to a man’s lime-green frock coat stuffed into a shelf.
Beside it, a rolled canvas poked out, its end unfurling. A half-finished oil painting. Her gaze kept slipping back to it, compelled by those startling, corrosive colors. Velvet skirts the color of dark blood tumbled from a green velvet chaise, unfinished edges blurring to empty canvas. A smooth cheek, a fall of pale hair shining like an angel’s.
Eliza shoved the picture out of sight. A toxic love letter, the exquisite ravings of a lunatic. An excruciating reminder of how close her vanity had dragged her to ruin.
So why don’t you throw it away?
She didn’t answer.
The black bottle of fresh elixir hissed, glowing with its own secret warmth. She thumbed the cork—darkly reminiscent of her dream, that sour-tasting tube filling her with poison—and gulped the dreaded brew down.
A DEAL TOO ARTFUL
I SCREECH, AND SLITHER OUT LIKE A SNAKE. OUR bones crackle, bright agony. Our reflection in the mirror contorts, our eyes darkening, me-her-me-her-me. Our cheekbones jut, my chin sharpens, our lips swell in a saucy cherry pout. My hair bursts from its pins, no longer blond but rich dark mahogany.
“Why, hello, Miss Lizzie!” I wastes no time in tossing away her stupid spectacles—I can see just fine, thanks—and wriggling out of Eliza’s wet clothes. I kick her dull gray dress aside, break out of her corset with its stupid flat chest. Even her chemise is wet and moldy-smelling. My set’s much more accommodating, and thank bleeding Christ for that. A woman’s allowed to have boobs. I push ’em up real nice and yank the laces tight.
Urgent claws rip at me, desperate for pleasure. This new elixir’s got a punch, all right. Everything’s louder, stronger, brighter, and I’m thirsty for flavor, famished for every dark sensation. But despite my craving, bright relief staggers me. I can’t breathe in your uptight body, Eliza. Like Newgate’s foul cells in there, it is, rusted bars and stenches and ugly darkness. If I lose my marbles, like you’re always saying—mad like Eddie Hyde, Lizzie, and you’ll be the end of us, boo hoo!—it’ll be no one to blame but yourself.
I shake out a gown of magenta satin, all fancy-like, and pull it on, buttoning down the side and hooking up the frillage at my thighs. Stockings, aye, and little black garters, and button boots with pointed toes. I coil an ostrich feather into my hair. Hmm. Blade or umbrella? Better wet than dead. I grab my dragon swordstick, throw that fairy-lime frock coat around my shoulders, and I’m ready.
Hell, Lizzie’s always ready. Ha ha! And I’ve business at the Rats’ Castle tonight. Sultry gin-soaked business, if I gets my way, and I’ve a fine fey-fingered gent down at Seven Dials who’ll gladly oblige me. This is my life, this tiny glimmer in the gloom, and I intend on living it to the full. But first, I need to see my father. He’s been acting odd lately.
Down my twisting back stair, out to the narrow lane. I spear a baleful glare up at her domain. So safe and sheltered, hiding her stubborn face from my concerns. What about me, eh? Where am I to go, once she marries her fancy captain? We’ve always shared, she and I, and it’s worked well enough, a few famous hiccups notwithstanding. But soon this cozy love nest will be ours no more, for since his elder brother passed, Remy Lafayette is lucred to the hilt with Froggie blood money and has villas and grand houses to burn.
I inhale fresh frosty air and stalk out onto Southampton Row, splashing up mud and horse dung. Storm clouds scoot across coal-smoked stars, chill wind a-stinging, and my nose tingles with the vibrant scent of thunder. A wild night ahead, ha ha!
Only a loping clockwork servant’s abroad, a box tucked under its arm. “How do, brassbrain!” cries I, and skip a stone in its direction, ping! It jumps and lurches on, its white plaster face emotionless. Like Eliza’s face, showing naught but politeness while we’re seething inside.
I kick at rotting leaves. Don’t take me wrong, I like Remy well enough. A more dashing, able, god-rotted honest devil you never did meet, and for the longest time, I wanted what Eliza had.
But no longer. He’s hers, not mine, and a life designed for Captain and Missus Lafayette (ha! Imagine it, Eliza giving up her own self) leaves precious little room for me.
Besides, I tried to steal him and he wouldn’t have it. Never say Miss Lizzie don’t take the initiative.
Swinging my cane, I stride onto New Oxford Street, where electric lights glimmer and intrepid shoppers and late-running commuters huddle in the rain. A hairy-nosed Welsh boy waving a late-edition broadsheet dances a jig, his puppy ears flopping. “Crowds riot at Duke of Wellington’s funeral!” he shouts in his sing-song accent. “Last week of general election polls, Tory majority tipped to rise!”
I flip him a penny, take a copy, toss it into the mud and stomp on it. Good riddance to the crusty old bastard, by all accounts a living corpse in his electric breathing machine for years before now. And screw the election, too, for women and working men can’t vote, and not the late duke nor the lords nor them inbred land-owning goat-fuckers in the Com
mons ever gave a flingin’ shit for ordinary folk like me.
The shops are still open, their windows spattered with dirt. In the drapers, a shopman’s team of lackeys offer roll after roll to a cross-eyed lady in a ribboned crinoline, bowing as if she’s the Queen of friggin’ Sheba. My silver dragon hisses, resentment burning. As if I’d want Eliza’s prissy life anyway. Never saying what you please, forever acting like your turds don’t stink and knowing your goddamn place, Miss Lizzie, just who do you think you are?
Her scolded child, that’s who. Her meek and obedient pet. Her prisoner, behind rusted bars of fear.
But tonight, I’ll go to hell by my own road. “Fuck it,” mutters I, to the consternation of a lady and her gentleman companion. I wave my dragon on high as they hurry by. “Fuck it!”
Gaslights flicker as I sashay down to Drury Lane, where bright-lit theaters and gin palaces rise like mirages amidst a desert of darkness and filth. Music drags to and fro on the wind, rippling piano and twanging banjo accompanying drunken song. Gaily dressed whores and their fancy men promenade, and the dazzling colors water my eyes. I feel stronger, my blood sparkling, my skin a riot of sensation. The smells sting my nose harder, the sounds a raw delight. Oho! This new elixir’s a right bit of fun, and I can’t help but wonder exactly what sneaky Marcellus had in mind when he gave it to us. The last time he tried something new, it didn’t go well.
Exotic smoke drifts, opium mixed with stranger fey-struck delights. At my feet, a dwarf staggers, blind. A sly Ottoman with gold plaited into his luxuriant beard proffers a green-smoking pipe, dark eyes seductive beneath his hood. “A pleasure for the lady?”
“No thanks, handsome.” Tempting, but I wave it away. I need to see Eddie before I waste my night away. Beneath the bright sensations, strange foreboding plagues me, an itch I can’t scratch. As if I’ll need all my wits tonight.
I turn down the laneway towards the Rats’ Castle, that cracked doorway with the dim blue light, and bang on the door with my dragon. “Open up, warty-face!”
But it ain’t the usual door-keep. It’s some sweaty thug with a broken nose and greasy yellow hair. He leers, gin-soaked. “Whassaword?”
“How ’bout, who the fuck are you?” But my stomach twists. Something ain’t right.
“Nope, ain’t it. But giss a kiss, pretty.” He opens his arms, a flood of moldy stink. Jesus, how long since them armpits seen daylight?
I ram my knee into his nuts. He wilts, gasping, and I step over him and in.
I hurry along the black corridor, nerves firing like flintlocks. Fusty darkness mumbles and groans. Ordinarily, it smells of fairy dust and incense, a sparkling enchantment to lure you on. Tonight, all I smell is shit and dust.
I sweep aside the cracked leather curtain, and instinctively brace for noise, light, heat. Screams, howls, the stinking press of bodies, colors to boggle your wits.
Instead, I shiver in uncanny quiet. The atrium yawns, a cavernous hole, but the tiered balconies is usually crammed to bursting with fey folk, oddball creatures what don’t fit in nowhere else. Tonight, I barely need to turn sideways. Still a crowd, for sure. I’m jostled by a hairy-faced lady in an orange gossamer gown who’s chasing a greasy pig, fighting off a raw-boned bloke with green tentacles for hands. By the railing, a troupe of drunken dwarves form an unsteady pyramid, one atop the other. One passes out, and the whole thing tumbles, short blokes rolling like marbles and shouting curses.
But it’s like a circus big top where no punters turned up—and the air, usually rich with sweet-drugged haze, instead contorts in pain, groaning with evil dreams. No bonfires, no crackers to whistle and pop. Listless folk linger in shadow, dull eyes fearful, hands leaping to weapons at the slightest noise. Everyone’s sullen as a cheated whore.
No one’s having fun. And at that, my elixir-warm blood crackles cold.
My dragon snarls, his forked tongue spitting sparks. That’s right, handsome. Something’s rotten here. Where the hell’s my Johnny when I need him?
I fight my way down a ladder, through a troupe of drunken quadrille dancers, into a roped basket what lowers me down a few more floors, counterweight whistling. Something scaly—someone?—slithers by my ankles. A man with a hound’s drooping ears thrusts a goblet into my hand. My mouth waters for rich oblivion, but I hurl the bubbling black muck away. No time for debauchery now.
At last, I skid down a rusted slippery slide, and stumble out at the atrium’s bottom. Eddie’s carnival, gay and bright, light and music and strange electric joy—but the carousel spins drunkenly, its plaster creatures cracked, that broken melody tinkling off key. Acrobats stumble and slip, their cheap costumes rotting, and a stinking miasma of mold and decay palls at eye level. The hurdy-gurdy man’s face is green, weeping with sores, and on his shoulder, his monkey slumps, dead.
Distant lights swirl, an enchanted waltz luring me on, but somehow I know ’em for a sham. They’re candles in the windows of the tower of death, worthless paste jewels in a monstrous crown. You’re losing your mind, Lizzie, hisses Eliza in my ear, an unexpected challenge. Always said you would. Give up and let me back in . . .
I feel my way into dank gloom. “Johnny? You there?”
Dark eyes follow me dourly from the sidelines. A skinny cove picks his nose and wipes the snot on his trousers, tracking me with one rolling glass eye. A sweaty-faced prat in a pastel pink coat chews wet fingers and laughs, over and over, A-hee-hee! A-hee-hee-hee! like a cracked phonograph.
An uncomfortable finger prods my spine. Not fey, these malingerers. Not Rats’ Castle folk. Common thugs. Interlopers. They shouldn’t be here.
I flip ’em the finger and stride on, but my nerves crackle. Drunken dancers fight and lurch. The fire-eater’s flames roar like hellfire, and she laughs, her mouth full of rotting teeth. A clown staggers up, red nose bleeding black, waving a broken vanity mirror. Even the knuckle-fighting ring is brooding and watchful as the two big warty blokes duel grimly. Uncannily quiet, just the smack of flesh, rattling teeth, the dull ring of coin listlessly changing hands.
“Ring-a-ring o’ roses . . . a pocket full o’ posies . . .” A throaty song catches my ear. Behind the carousel, in the dark, lurks an iron cage, six-foot-square by four high. Inside, a chain clatters, dragging across stone. I smell rotting skin, the fleshy decay of madness. Eddie’s pet. He calls him Sunshine. Sort of a stray dog what followed him home one day, in a manner of speaking, and Sunshine has cooled his heels in that cage for a good couple of months now. He’s singing, his voice rasping, snatches of an old rhyme. “Atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down . . .”
I shiver, but his song is strange comfort in the clinging mist. A whisper of normality, sinister yet sweet. At least he’s still here.
Eddie’s twisted metal throne is empty, coated in a week’s worth of dust. Where the hell is everyone? Impatient, I stretch on tiptoes, and squish! I collide with a meaty body.
Grotesquely fat, this cove, his stretched suit splitting at the armpits and straining around thunderous thighs. Deep in his doughy face, his eyes glint, evil pinpricks buried like jewels.
“Lizzie Hyde, m’dear, as I live and breathe.” With sausage fingers, he doffs a dented black topper. Kinked, it is, as if a rampsman thwacked him over the noggin and he never beat it out.
A famous hat, that. Almost as famous as the name what wears it.
“Dodger,” announces I breezily, though the smell of his sin-soaked flesh makes my guts slime cold. If there’s one filthy fuck I never thought to lay eyes on in my father’s kingdom, it’s Jack friggin’ Dawkins. “Never heard the sewer overflowed today.”
“And what a pretty bird floated to the top.” The Dodger grins, showing blackened stumps. Jowls wobble under greasy brown elflocks what ain’t seen soap in my lifetime. This cove can barely move, let alone dip your hard-earned in fancy rig with the swellest of the swell mob, but sometimes a man’s name outlasts him. No one’s called this whale-man Artful in decades and meant it.
Behind him, his shit-witted dis
ciples line up. The nose-picker with the glass eye, whose name I forget. Charley Tee-Hee Bates in his faded pink coat, the one who laughs. Flash Toby, scraggly red hair around a shiny pate, a traitorous whore what’d ream his grandmother for thrippence and sell her bony carcass to the pie man for a few pennies more. Amongst others.
The Dodger’s gang. Never did see a sorrier lot of grimy ne’er-do-wells.
I back off, casting a side-eye. What in hell’s going on? Everyone knows Eddie and Jack Dawkins had a falling out, back when the Dodger’s name were still well-earned and Eddie were fresh and fiery, carving out his slice with no regard for reputation. Some tale about a stolen snuffbox and a sneaky tip-off and seven years in the black-rotting hell called Van Diemen’s Land. The finest thief in London, transported for a ten-penny trinket—after which the Dodger slinks back to Blighty a broken man, nerves shot and hands a-shaking, jumping at every shadow.
He’s harbored a grand cockstand for Eddie’s guts ever since. You ruined me, Eddie. All your doing, Eddie. Coulda been someone, Eddie, if it weren’t for you.
So where the fuck is Eddie?
I fix my face into a sneer. “Even dumber than you look, showing your carcass around here. If Eddie sees you first—”
“No need for hostility, m’dear.” The Dodger laughs, clutching his weighty belly as if he fears it might burst, and Charley Tee-Hee joins in. I can smell the Dodger’s breath, stale beer and vomit. “You’re a comely lass, notwithstanding your father’s grim outlook on my freedom. I understand you’ve a name yourself these days. Can’t we be chums?”
“Oh, aye?” I swagger closer, leaning on my cane to fling him an eyeful. Never hurts to distract your enemy. “Came all this way just to see me, did you?”
“Could’ve done,” says Dodger loftily, his beady gaze licking at my swelling chest. “Or maybe we was just passing through. Wasn’t we, Charley?”
The laughing one spurts his load again, his silly high voice squeaking like a greased rat. “A-hee-hee! That’s right, Artful. Passing through. A-hee-hee-hee!”