The Dastardly Miss Lizzie

by Viola Carr

  He groans, helpless not to want. “Don’t do that . . . Shit. You trying to kill me, woman? Don’t you have to go?”

  He knows.

  My heart flips, and I glance up.

  But he just strokes my hair, breathing hard. “You’re always leaving me, Lizzie.”

  “Not this time.” I push him back onto the cushions, in a fall of rich black hair and luminous fey skin. Such a sight, Johnny. I devour him, lips and hands and body, his scent tingling all over me, an irresistible fairy spell, and as I slide him into me, he sighs and whispers some rot-brained tripe about love and forever, and my tears sting and I whisper it back and I don’t care.

  Johnny’s ten quid in silver clinks to the floorboards as we make love. Mine, Eliza. Mine, and to moldy green hell with you and yours. The rain outside can’t touch us. The chill can’t harm us. There’s only him and me, and Jacky murmuring sleepy nonsense by the dying fire—Atishoo, he whispers in a scratchy voice like dry leaves, we all fall down—but before long, morning creeps in like a bright-cloaked thief to steal it all.

  HYPOTHESES NON FINGO

  WITH A START OF PURE DISMAY, ELIZA LURCHED awake.

  She was trapped. Immobile. A hot smothering prison, no light, no air . . .

  Gasping, she forced sticky eyes open. Gray daylight leaked in the window of a small wooden room. Cushions hugged her body, and a coarse quilt exuded the sweet fey scent of flowers. She was in bed. Warm and safe, wrapped in strong arms.

  A man’s arms. Naked.

  Oh, Lizzie. Eliza’s skin burned. She held her breath. Didn’t dare move.

  No reaction. So far, so good. Now what?

  Carefully, she extricated herself. Unclasped a set of fingers—uncommonly long ones, with one too many knuckles, and how was that possible?—and inch by inch, eased the man’s arm from her body.

  He just murmured, contented. Didn’t move. Didn’t awaken.

  She exhaled and sat up, sliding her bare legs from beneath the quilt. Lizzie’s gentleman friend—Jonathan, she remembered, a crooked-eyed fellow who seemed a pleasant sort, when he wasn’t housebreaking or picking pockets—just snuggled deeper, black hair spilling over the pillow.

  She crept to her feet in a shaft of light, and wobbled, dizzy. Dark-mirror images swirled and shattered, shards of a lurid nightmare. A knife cold in her hand, stabbing down, the squelch of popping flesh, a scream . . . Her stomach felt as if it had been scoured out with sandpaper—drinking again, Lizzie?—and her skin broke out in bumps where moments ago she’d cradled that warm body. Something sticky bothered her between her thighs, and she spared a moment’s thanks for whatever magic lurked in the elixir that undid such things.

  The coal fire had died, and the chill soaked rapidly into her bones. Weariness washed her thin. It was long past dawn. She’d be late to the Palace. Worse, she’d be forced to walk the street in Lizzie’s clothes again. Exposed. Nowhere to hide.

  Coins littered the floor. The place smelled of breath, sweat, and intimacy, and that flowery scent clung to her loose hair. At least she still wore stockings. Lizzie’s corset lay tossed over a chair, her chemise on the floor. Shivering, Eliza struggled into first one and then the other, fumbling with clips and laces. At least Lizzie’s larger, um, dimensions made it easy . . .

  Breathless, she halted in mid-pull.

  A scraggy lad in dirty unmentionables gaped at her from his mat before the cold grate. Ashes crusted his white hair. “Pretty,” he whispered, wide-eyed. “Pretty lady.”

  Carefully, Eliza lifted a finger to her lips. Shh!

  The lad giggled and copied her. “Shh!”

  She smiled and made a show of tiptoeing to the door, where Lizzie’s satin skirts lay discarded.

  “Shh,” whispered the lad, entranced, “Jacky shh,” and started to sing under his breath. “Ring-a-ring o’ roses . . .”

  Hurriedly, Eliza fastened her bodice, skipping buttons in her haste. Her hair was a disaster, the dress creased. Her mouth tasted foul, of gin and this strong new elixir and stale saliva that didn’t belong to her.

  She swallowed a curse. Lizzie, why today? She couldn’t meet the Philosopher like this. She’d need to go home and clean up. At her earliest, indeed. It’d be midday before she arrived.

  Finally, she yanked on Lizzie’s boots, grabbed the first coat to hand (a voluminous thief’s frock in mustard yellow) and crept out onto the dirty landing, closing the door on Jacky’s rambling melody. “We all fall down . . .”

  Out in the street, the rain had thinned to a drizzling mist that rinsed everything gray, as if overnight all the color had leached from the world. Dull-eyed folk hurried by in grim apparel, splashing drab mud. Even the electric coils of passing carts seemed subdued, their bright purple dimmed by the fog.

  Eliza splashed across the road, huddling in her yellow coat. She felt wrung out, exhausted. Her throat burned, as if she’d swallowed too much gin or spent the night shouting—probably both—and her lips felt chapped from ill use. But that was impossible. The change healed all wounds, didn’t it? Still, in this gloom no one would see anyone. She’d remain anonymous.

  For now.

  Frustration bit at her fingers. She’d kept her end of the bargain, but Lizzie wasn’t honoring hers. We can’t go on like this, Lizzie. How can I trust you?

  But no sharp retort came. Just silence. As if Lizzie slumbered, sated after her night’s exertions, that bright new elixir drained away, leaving her soul empty.

  Where was this? Soho, she supposed, or Seven Dials, though she recognized nothing. It could be Spitalfields or Bethnal Green. Her memory clogged like a scab, and every time she tried to peel back the surface, it stung and bled.

  A ragged costermonger couple dragged their sodden vegetable cart through squelching mud. In the gutter, dirty children shivered. Under a darkened gin palace’s window slept an old woman, her soaked dress dripping. Boarded-up shops moped, forlorn.

  She reached a tiny crossroads. Courts and lanes led off every which way into a maze of dark passages that looked identical. The gray sky gave no hint of the sun’s angle. Soon, she’d be lost. Her impatience prickled. She’d no time for this.

  A filthy-dressed woman stumbled by, rolling her eyes and tearing at seaweed-like hair. Eliza approached her. “Excuse me, can you tell me which way to Oxford Street?”

  The woman cackled, pointing—but towards what?

  She’d no choice. Gathering her skirts, Eliza set off. The street narrowed. Drunken buildings lurched, ready to fall. No electrics or gaslight here, nothing that smacked of prosperity, only rotting wood and mud and starved groans. Misery like ale, and starvation into cakes. The dimming light threatened, its shadowy hands coveting her.

  Eliza hurried on. Stinking mud sucked at her boots. A sweaty fellow in a faded pink coat chortled unpleasantly, baring rotted teeth. “A-hee-hee! Topsy tart! A-hee-hee-hee!”

  Shivering, she broke into a trot. Taunting voices followed her. Run, you topsy tart. Where’s your sister? You don’t belong here. She stumbled, caught herself with stinging palms. Splink! Splink! Footsteps approached. She flung a glance over her shoulder. Just a shadow, a crazed giggle.

  A House of Correction loomed, its brick wall topped with electrified wire. Frightful wails echoed from within. A hound snarled, guarding a lump of gristle. Down some steps, through a darkened court, around a bend. A whore spat at her. Hungry children fought in the mud. Another dog—or was it the same?

  Panic clawed her throat. She was going in circles. She’d never get out of here.

  “Lost, my lady? Let me guide you.” That chortling fellow lurched at her from nowhere. His breath slimed her cheek, and sharp metal pricked her waistline. “The Dodger says how-do. A-hee-hee!”

  She swung her boot hard at his shins, and ran.

  Whoosh! A carriage thundered by three feet away, drenching her with freezing puddle slop. She skidded to a stop, heart galloping. Rain-spattered windows, rushing vehicles, scurrying pedestrians huddled beneath umbrellas. Oxford Street.
/>   And the laughing fellow was gone.

  Shaken, Eliza hurried home. It took an hour to wash, dress, and choke down a cup of tea, and by the time she arrived at the electrified gate to Buckingham Palace, armed with doctor’s bag and umbrella—and dosed to the gills with her remedy to keep Lizzie at bay—she was soaked, her head was pounding, and it was a quarter of eleven o’clock.

  A pair of armed Enforcers confronted her beneath the gilded iron archway. Hulking brass brutes with grotesque flesh-and-plaster faces, electric eyes glinting red. One had a dead gray human hand grafted onto one arm. These machines weren’t made for beauty or grace. Rather, to engender fear and obedience, and they performed their purpose pitilessly.

  She proffered the Regent’s crumpled letter. Hippocrates swaggered alongside her, a clicking bundle of self-importance. She hadn’t had time to polish him, and dirt streaked his little face. “Entry,” he squeaked proudly. “Palace business. Make greater speed.”

  The Enforcer digested the letter’s contents, and pointed to her bag with its fleshy hand. The skin was rotting at the edges. It didn’t smell good.

  She clutched her bag close. She had medicines in there. Unorthodox ones. “I say, no need for that—”

  The machine’s hand snapped to its electric pistol, red eyes dilating black.

  “Fine.” She handed the bag over with ill grace, only partly feigned. “You can explain to your Philosopher why I’m late.”

  The Enforcer just walked its fingers through the bag—searching for what? Weapons? Aqua vitae? Mistakes in her arithmetic? Next time she’d hide an electric eel in there—and lingered over her phials, opening one to sniff the contents. Did Enforcers have a sense of smell? Some electrical sensor for explosives and noxious fumes? With anarchists and anti-sorcery vigilantes blowing up buildings and railway lines all over the city, the Palace couldn’t be too careful.

  Still, her nerves wriggled. Her private things. Her remedies. Alchemy. Good God, the thing would shoot her on the spot.

  But it handed the bag back, and waved her through.

  Breathless, she trotted across the wide gravel yard to the service door. A clockwork footman in black and gold livery admitted her, marching her through bustling corridors and busy stewards’ rooms, the preparations for the king’s birthday party in full swing.

  “I say,” she called, running to match its scything brass stride, “why am I summoned? Has His Majesty fallen ill?”

  But the impassive servant didn’t speak. She followed it up the back stairs, dodging equerries, liveried stewards, and hall boys, until they reached the exquisitely plastered piano nobile, where all was empty and silent.

  Eliza shivered under the towering painted ceiling, feeling like a miniature Eliza who’d strayed into a giant’s world. Hipp dashed ahead, raindrops flying. “Down, Hipp,” she snapped, and he skidded into a sheepish tiptoe.

  Portraits gazed sternly down, ladies in court finery and gentlemen in archaic military uniforms. Spotless red-and-gilt couches lined the corridor. Not a mote of dust invaded. The floorboards didn’t creak. No drapes flapped, no servants whispered. Even the electric lights kept their hum and crackle to a minimum. The only sounds were raindrops pattering on the curved glass clerestory, and the soft thud-thud of the footman’s brass feet on the carpet.

  His Majesty’s study door was shut. The footman knocked twice. No answer. It knocked again, louder.

  Inside, furniture crashed—a chair hurled across the floor?—and the door yanked open.

  “God’s blood, what is it?” Sharp colorless eyes stabbed her from a flurry of unkempt hair, and lit up. “Dr. Jekyll! Excellent! Come and look at this.” A thin hand shot out and dragged her inside, and the door slammed shut, leaving the hapless servant—and Hippocrates—languishing in the corridor.

  The room was dark, gilt-rich plaster receding into gloom. The fire had died, and the tall bay window was shrouded in velvet drapes. Somewhere two clocks ticked, an unsettling fraction out of phase. The only illumination remained a cardboard-covered electric lamp on the desk, from which emanated a steady, horizontal beam of white.

  “See here,” insisted the Philosopher, plonking down a flat triangular prism the size of a dinner plate and adjusting it with a twist of his wrist, so the light beam shot into the prism, turned about, and splashed back onto his ink-stained hand. “Total internal reflection,” he pronounced. “It’s in my Opticks. No doubt you read of it in school.”

  Eliza couldn’t help a smile. This was the Philosopher at his most endearing. His brocaded coat was missing, his shirtsleeves smudged, as if he hadn’t changed for a day or two. His long hair hung loose and unbrushed, his eyes glittering with excitement. One almost forgave him a hundred years of hypocrisy and lies. “The critical angle of incidence,” she recited, “beyond which all light is reflected and no light passes through—”

  “Yes, yes. But look! I position this like so.” He grabbed a convex lens and set it behind the prism, so they touched—and a second beam sprang out, slicing through the lens to stab into the curtains across the room. “And egad! Now light is passing through.” He shot her a sidelong glance. No cynicism. Just pure scientific excitement. “Fascinating, yes?”

  Eliza faltered. As per usual in his presence, she felt slow, stupid, the dullest girl in class. “I’m afraid I don’t see.”

  “Whence that light, Doctor?” An impatient edge sliced his tone. “Have I created it from nothing? Total internal reflection, it appears, is no such thing—but only when I place this lens like so, creating a tiny air gap. Without it, I get nothing.”

  “Oh.” She frowned. “That does seem odd.”

  “It’s positively diverting.” His delighted smile subtracted years of cynicism from his face. “I’ve thought about this off and on for decades. Imagine your bedroom window at night, wherein no doubt you admire your pretty reflection in the candlelight.” A disconcerting chuckle, as if he’d observed her doing just that and was preparing to prosecute. “But an observer outside can still see in. Why do some corpuscles reflect, and some pass through? Why, Doctor? Do you imagine each corpuscle knows what to do? Is it even conceivable that these phenomena are based purely on chance?”

  “I—”

  “And even if,” he stressed, returning to his prism and lens without missing a beat, “light were acting as a waveform—and if there’s nothing but aether in that gap there . . .” He tapped his teeth with a thoughtful fingernail. “I built a larger-scale one of these down at Greenwich. I measured how long it takes the light to move from one end to the other. To the best of experimental error, of course. It’s quite a surprising result.”

  “I see.” She didn’t see at all. She fidgeted, that scrap of paper crumpled at the bottom of her bag suddenly wriggling to be noticed. If anyone could make sense of Miss de Percy’s fragmented equations—but what if the science were forbidden? She didn’t want Mr. Starling—or this Professor Crane, for that matter—in trouble with the Royal. Eliza’s credit with Sir Isaac took her only so far.

  He chuckled at her bewilderment. “Never mind. I merely make the observation. Whatever isn’t forbidden is inevitable. There is doubtless some fundamental law of the universe requiring light to behave in such bizarre fashion. But I do not hypothesize as to what it is.” He pulled on his charcoal tailcoat and heaved the curtain aside, squinting into wintery gray glare. “Morning, is it? How time flies when one’s having such excellent fun. You’re late, Dr. Jekyll,” he added sharply, and whirled on his heel.

  And to that, she had nothing to say as she meekly followed him through the door into the king’s inner audience chamber.

  A merry fire crackled in a marble hearth beneath a glittering electric chandelier. Somewhere, a multi-phonic music box tinkled, an aria from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. A silver tray of tea and cream cakes sat on a side table. In the corner, a liveried nurse bobbed a curtsey to the Philosopher. A low hubbub of conversation filtered in through the closed doors from the main chamber. Important people, no doubt, politi
cians and lords waiting to see the Regent and the king.

  The young man sat cross-legged on the floor, rolling his toy train over the thick red carpet. Someone—the nurse?—had dressed him painstakingly in a beautiful morning suit, white collar and cuffs and iron-gray coat. No mourning band for his mother, of course. One didn’t mention death and the sovereign in the same sentence. But cream splattered down his front, the clips torn from his cuffs. He nodded compulsively, fair hair bobbing, and drool slipped down his chin.

  Edward VII was seventeen with the mind of a six-year-old. He looked far too big to be playing with trains. Rumor whispered that the Philosopher addled his brain with poisons to keep him under control. But Eliza had examined the boy, and found no evidence of drugs, medical or alchemical. The king was simply absent, his mind locked away where no one, not even he, could find it.

  At his side bent a thin fellow in a drab suit, all knees and elbows like a stick insect. He wore iron-rimmed spectacles with a retractable metal magnifier attached. Sweat dampened his sparse gray hair. On the floor, his hinged leather bag held brass calipers, screws, bellows, and a vile-looking funnel.

  Eliza’s guts churned. That tube from her nightmare, wriggling down her throat with cold medicine spurting forth. This fellow was an alienist of the worst sort. Was she being fired?

  “Your Majesty.” Sir Isaac bowed curtly. “Dr. Jekyll is here.”

  Eliza did her best curtsey. The king made no sign. Just kept rolling his wooden train back and forth.

  “At last.” From the window seat rose a lady in a vivid blue brocade gown, hair pinned under a hat of curled white lace. Victoria, the Princess Royal, elder to the king by five years. A capable young woman, who would have been king if she’d been born a boy. She motioned Eliza aside, her face dark with concern. “His Majesty is worse, I’m afraid, since last you came. That medication you prescribed was promising, but it’s run out. Bertie, stop that, dear. You’re spilling it.”