by Bee Ridgway
He had survived yesterday’s ignominious ceremony by remembering Julia crammed into a chair with him, sending paper airplanes into the fire. He was able to keep a private smile on his face all through the parading and hat doffing and bobbing up and down. The smile slipped when he had to get down on his knees to present his Writ of Summons to the Lord High Chancellor, but he had soldiered on, reading the oath of allegiance and signing the test rolls. Finally he was conducted by Black Rod to his seat among the other marquesses. They had welcomed him with a collective “woof,” much like the simultaneous sneezing of a row of bulldogs.
He had been allowed out of his ceremonial robes after that, but the day was just beginning.
The corn bill would clearly pass; nearly everyone was in support. And yet it was as if they knew that history would prove them wrong. Each peer wanted to go on record explaining himself, and for each the explanation was nearly identical: I must keep hold of my wealth, yes—but in addition and more important, England must remain the same. The future threatens. The past is safe.
It had all sounded uncannily familiar.
Kirklaw, sitting with the other dukes, kept staring at him, willing him to get up and make his speech. Nick turned in his seat so that he couldn’t see him. But there was Delbun with the earls, and Blessing with the barons. Nick stopped looking at faces and began counting types of knots in neck cloths.
Just when he had thought he would slide from his seat and expire from boredom, Baronet Burdett had presented the House with forty thousand and more signatures from Westminster in opposition to the bill. England, Burdett had argued, must meet the future by making everyone free and equal, without restriction. His speech was met with jeers, and really, Nick thought with sympathy for the poor, kindly-looking man, it was like asking a pack of hyenas to voluntarily knock out their own teeth. Burdett’s speech so enraged one viscount that he had leapt to his feet, declaring that he wanted to strangle the baron right there in front of everyone. The viscount said they might as well roll England up like a scroll, and go home and wait for the mob to level the city. This was good stuff, and Nick leaned forward, hoping that something energizing might happen now, but it all simmered down again and an old earl got up and began to speak in a particularly soporific drone about how the poor like to be hungry.
He had looked away, and then he felt the river rushing all around him, all around them all—rushing at full flood. And he the only living man, afloat on a broken spar, among the drowned.
Nick stood up at the next opportunity, bowed to the men seated near him, and then he left. Arkady was right. This was no place for a man who knew the future.
Kirklaw had leapt to his feet and scurried after him, catching up with him just outside the door. “You didn’t give your speech.”
“No.”
“Will you yet? The vote won’t come for several more days.”
Nick had thrust his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat and found the acorn there. “I don’t think so, Your Grace.”
Kirklaw nodded, once. “Well, then.”
“Indeed.”
They had bowed coldly to each other and gone their separate ways, Nick out into the world, the duke back into the chamber.
Nick had sent the carriage home with his robes, and then he strolled alone up Whitehall in the light of a spectacular sunset, tossing the little acorn from hand to hand. He couldn’t feel the river now. The spring evening was alive with birdsong and breezes, which, for this half hour anyway, blew the scent of meadow grasses in from the surrounding farmland and carried away the stink of human strife and struggle.
Nick tossed the acorn high and caught it low.
* * *
Now he stood beside the decrepit statue of Charles II in the center of Soho Square. Two boys and a dog were driving a lowing herd of cattle along the east side, past what had been, in the eighteenth century, the notorious White House brothel. It was probably still a brothel, Nick thought, then saw a man in fine but decidedly rumpled clothing open the door and slip out into the morning sunlight. He stood on the step yelling at the cows that blocked him from entering the street. So it was a brothel—but the “skeleton room” and sinking sofa and other contraptions for which the White House had been famous in the last century—Nick didn’t think they would be in the style of calm, elegant Alva Blomgren. Nick looked around the square at the other houses. Which was Alva’s? He would simply have to wait and hope that Alva emerged sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, it was a pleasure to stand here beside the slightly bilious-looking marble monarch who presided over Soho Square and watch all of society scampering past. Horses and carriages, men and women, everyone busy, full of life, chattering to one another like magpies. All the different accents, the cant, the half-loving insults flying from everyone’s lips; Nick found himself listening intently to the snatches of conversation that passed him by, his brain spinning with all the old information he had forcefully buried after his jump.
It wasn’t that there weren’t things to worry about. Kirklaw’s insinuations and the marchioness’s unhappiness and how to find a way to be with Julia and who was Mr. Mibbs and whether to betray the Guild and the looming horror of the Pale—still hundreds of years away but coming closer, according to the Guild, every day. But London was big and brassy and noisome and rude—it was full of suffering and vice and folly—and Nick loved it. This—here and now—this was his city. It was going to be hard to leave and go back to cars and high-rise buildings and underground sewers. He cast an ironic glance at Charles II, who was holding his tummy and sneering down at it all from under his monstrous wig. “You loved it, too,” Nick told the statue. “Mr. Twelve Illegitimate Children.”
Here was a sight. Walking toward him along Frith Street, a countrified maiden in an old-fashioned homespun skirt and stiff bodice was carrying a huge basket over her arm. It was bulging with beets. She switched between bending uncomfortably forward to carry it and listing comically off to the right or the left. Beside her, an enormous mongrel dog the size of a Dartmoor pony kept pace with her quick, short steps, but it was whining and hopping along on three feet. As they turned the corner onto the square, Nick could see that the dog was harnessed to a cart; clearly this was the intended beet hauler, but the dog had sustained an injury somewhere along the way. The girl was chattering angrily at it, and it hung its heavy, jowly head in sorrow. Together, girl and dog looked like something out of a fairy tale. Nick was about to step forward and offer his help when she looked up, and he saw that she was Alva. He half raised his hand, but she shook her head ever so slightly. He carried his hand on up to his hair and tried to look as if it were the most natural thing in the world to stand in the street scratching one’s head.
Alva and her dog continued on their mutually uncomfortable journey on around the square, eventually coming to a stop on the corner of Carlisle Street, outside a dapper yellow house with white pilasters. Alva shook her finger at the dog, and it dropped onto its belly and put its head down on its paws. She put the basket of beets into the cart, then went up the steps. The door was opened, before she reached the top, by an old woman dressed in black, and Nick watched in some amusement as Alva harangued her with the tale of the dog’s failings. Every time she pointed down the steps at the dog, it lifted its head, only to drop it again as she continued her tirade. Finally Alva went in, and the old woman came creakily down the steps. She hoisted the basket of beets and led the dog and cart around into Carlisle Street, and presumably thence into the mews.
Nick stood considering the yellow house for a few minutes. Did Alva want him to go away and come back later? Go away and never come back? Or maybe she did not wish to be accosted by a fine gentleman while she was playing at being a beet-toting rustic. He was about to turn around and take himself to a coffee shop to consider the problem in more comfort when he saw a window on the third floor of the yellow house raise, and a white arm emerge and beckon him. He set out across the square to his first assignation with his Guild-p
roscribed mistress.
* * *
Alva received him in a green and silver salon on the ground floor of the house. He had no idea how she had managed to change so quickly from her strange street clothes into a fashionable pale pink muslin dress. The Norwich shawl draped over her elbows must have cost a fortune. Her hair was dressed elegantly but without flair; she looked like someone’s respectable wife or sister. The dog was with her but clearly still in disgrace, for it sat like a statue gazing at her, and she was refusing to meet its eye. It was a bitch, part mastiff and part Cerberus.
After initial greetings were over, Nick petitioned on behalf of the animal. “She can’t help being in pain,” he said. “Did she pick up a splinter on your walk?”
Alva put her nose in the air and glanced sidelong at her pet. The animal caught the glance and perked her ears, but Alva withdrew her attention immediately. “She’s a big baby,” she said. “We bought her on the promise that she would make a good watchdog, but she befriends everyone. Then I decided she could at least help me carry things home from the market, and instead she goes lame. I never liked dogs. She eats us out of house and home, she is ugly, she smells horrible. . . .”
“Does she have a name?”
“Solvig. It means ‘Strong House.’”
“Here, Solvig.” Nick snapped his fingers, and the dog limped to him. Nick knelt down and stroked her silky ears and rubbed her between her eyes until he felt that they were good friends. “I’m going to help you, Solvig,” he said, “but it won’t be comfortable. Are you ready? Give me your paw.” She gave him her good paw. It filled his whole hand. “Not that one. Paw.”
Solvig whimpered and tremblingly gave Nick her bad paw. “Good girl.” He pulled on her ear. “You are an ugly beast, aren’t you?” he said gently as he felt the tender pads. Solvig whined and made to pull away, but Nick held the paw firm. “Yes. Good girl.” He looked up at Alva, who was watching with a half smile on her face. “She has a stone lodged between her pads. I think . . .” He focused on what he was doing for a moment, and Solvig’s whine grew sharper. “Yes . . . oh, shit. Excuse my French.”
Blood spilled from the dog’s paw onto his white cuff. But he brought away a small, sharp flint. Solvig immediately set to licking her paw.
“Let her lick it for a while,” Nick said. “Then she’ll need a bandage.”
“Yes, doctor.” Alva sat down lightly in a little silver chair. “You will find a washstand behind the screen over there.”
As he passed it, Nick noticed that the embroidered screen depicted a mildly lascivious scene of ladies with their bosoms spilling out of their clothes, and gentlemen looking slightly startled; this was the only sign that the house was something other than a genteel home and really, it was such a ridiculous image that it hardly served to stir the senses.
Nick scrubbed his hands clean of the dog’s blood. He didn’t even attempt to wash his cuff; it was clearly ruined. Then he dried his hands, taking his time. He had every intention of betraying someone, and it wasn’t going to be Julia. It was going to be Mother Guild. He pulled his ring up to his knuckle to dry his finger. Life had certainly taken an interesting turn. He draped the towel over the edge of the washstand, twisted his ring into place, and stepped back around the screen.
Alva gestured for him to take a delicate chair that was the twin of her own. “Sit down, Nick. Thank you for helping poor Solvig. Look at her. She’s in love with you now. I might as well not exist.”
Indeed, devotion shone from the dog’s eyes. She lay on the floor, licking her huge paw and staring at Nick in a delirium of adoration. “Oh, dear,” he said, disposing himself in the stiff chair. “I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s wonderful. You will take her home with you and I will be free of the smell, the expense, the feeling that I am constantly being watched.”
“I’m not taking your dog. Besides, who will pull your beet cart for you?”
Alva seemed to consider the problem. “Perhaps I will buy a donkey.”
“I would like to see that. You in that ludicrous outfit, leading a donkey through the streets of London. But a donkey cannot guard a house. You said you needed a guard dog.”
“Yes, I do, and Solvig is useless.”
“You’re just a big cream puff, aren’t you?” Nick asked the dog.
Solvig lumbered to her feet and came over to Nick, leaving bloody paw prints on the parquet. Alva groaned and rang for a servant as Nick stroked Solvig’s powerful shoulders and murmured endearments into her ears: “Ugly baby. Smelly puppy.” Solvig blinked her red-rimmed eyes and panted hot breath happily in his face. “Turnip face.”
Solvig responded to this last sally with a soft woof.
“Do you approve of the nickname,” Nick asked her, “or disapprove? Shall we try again? Turnip face.” The dog blinked at him and curled her black lips back in a broad grin.
An elderly footman answered the bell. Alva told him to take the dog to the kitchens, bandage its foot, and have it ready to leave with Lord Blackdown.
“I am not taking your dog.”
“Oh, but I insist. Solvig is clearly your soul mate.” Alva turned to the servant and spoke quickly in what Nick assumed was Swedish.
Nick was transfixed by the vision of the old man wrestling the enormous dog from the room, managing to bow and close the door without losing control of the animal. Nick heard deep barks of protest descending into the basement.
“Well.” He stretched his legs out and put his arms behind his head. “I came to set up a mistress, and I leave with one of the hounds of hell. Does the servant come with the dog? Because I’m sure I don’t know who in my household will be willing to deal with her.”
“You didn’t come to set up a mistress,” Alva said. “You came to learn about the Ofan.”
Nick stayed in his relaxed position, but every sense was on the alert. And so it was beginning.
Alva folded her hands in her lap. “What do you want to know?”
“You admit it, straight out? Don’t you understand that I am a member of the Guild? That they are out to uproot and perhaps even kill you?”
“I understand that very well, Nick. But do you understand it? Are you working for the Guild and against me?”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he straightened his cuffs. The gesture lost some of its brio when his fingers encountered the still-damp dog blood. “Damn.”
Alva took a handkerchief from her bodice and handed it to him. “This is all so hard to talk about,” she said as he wiped his fingers. “And I can’t even properly see your face. Do you mind if I put on my glasses? Since we’re discussing realities and not playing games?”
“Be my guest.”
Alva reached into her bosom again and extracted a pair of red plastic cat’s-eye glasses, wiped them unceremoniously with a fold of dress fabric, and propped them on her nose. She blinked at him a couple of times and then sighed. “That’s so much better.”
He had to laugh. “You are a woman of contradictions, Alva.”
“How?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The medieval peasant costume, the ridiculous dog, the beets, the quick change into demure fashion, the 1960s spectacles stored in your bodice . . . add to that your profession, your modern slang, and the mystery of your Ofanicness. . . .”
The violet eyes blinked. “I am not a contradiction to myself, Nick.”
“Why are you a courtesan?”
Alva’s smile turned upside down. It was not an unhappy or an offended frown, but it was thoughtful. “Why are you a womanizer?”
“I’m not a womanizer.”
“All right,” she said. “What do you call it?”
“Call what?”
“Your many lovers, Nick. Your trail of broken hearts.”
She wasn’t merely contradictory and remarkable—she was disconcerting in the extreme.
“I haven’t broken any hearts,” Nick said, sullen.
“Aren’t you a Casanova? A rake? A rogue? Come on,
Nick. Please. Can we not just speak candidly with each other?”
“Oh, for the love of God. First the Guild and now you. Why do you all seem to know everything about my sex life?”
Alva peeked at him over her glasses. She looked more like a librarian by the second. “The Guild knows about you because they researched you. You probably have quite the fat file in the archives in Milton Keynes. They needed to know you would be interested in an assignment with a sexual element. Namely, their cockamamie plan whereby you would become my lover in order to gain entrée into the Ofan.”
“Not so cockamamie . . . you seemed to be agreeable at their ball.”
“Well, yes. But as we both know, you have refused to fall into my willing, or at least purchasable, arms.” She tilted her head. “Which is curious.”
“I didn’t intend to offend you,” Nick said. “It isn’t that you aren’t desirable. . . .”
“I’m not offended.” She righted her head, then tipped it to the other side. “You have made things easier. Now I can go ahead and tell you everything without the added step of taking you to bed.”
Nick laughed. “And that’s it? You’re just going to spill. Upon no knowledge of me whatsoever.”
“But of course! Why else do you suppose I showed up at that ridiculous party?” She held out her hand to him. “Come. Wouldn’t you like to see my catacombs?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Alva led the way down to the cellars. An open door revealed the kitchens, where Solvig, her foot bandaged, lay sleeping, a sonorous snore rattling the pots and pans that hung in gleaming copper glory from the thick, smoke-blackened beams. Alva stooped, lifted a small stone slab from the floor, and extracted an ancient-looking key and a blue plastic flashlight from the hole beneath it. She replaced the stone, fitted the key into the lock of a smaller door opposite the kitchens, and pushed it open on creaking hinges into a black hole from which cool, clean-smelling air wafted. She ducked her head to enter. “The catacombs,” she said, motioning for Nick to follow. “Please close the door behind you and lock it.” She handed him the key.