by Jerico Lenk
I was sad, but I was not unhappy. Zelda and Daphne were in Paris, and I was with the Cross.
“I’ll write them,” I said to Mary Ann, though she was nowhere to be seen. “Perhaps I’ll even visit them one day when I’m not so required here and I’ve saved up enough for the trip. For now, we’re all safe and free, and that’s something to be thankful for a thousand times over. Wouldn’t you agree, Mary Ann?”
***
Winter finally sank its teeth into the world, bringing out the deepest darkest greens in the trees as the usual fog settled permanently over London. But it was warm inside Fleet Street’s Stygian Society, where Mr. Zayne and his men had begun Christmas decorating early. A Saint Nicholas hat crowned a jar of formaldehyde … somethings; sprigs of holly were tacked above the front door. Round the necks of two stuffed mice fencing each other in Shakespearean costume, which was Mr. Zayne’s favourite taxidermy display of all his bizarre taxidermy displays, were tied tiny red velvet ribbons.
“ … yes,” Quinn was saying, soft leather coat whispering as he crossed his arms, “it’ll be a great report, won’t it?”
“ ‘Suspected poltergeist.’ ” Clement scoffed. “Winchester’s first hoax case, too. Some public medium—the thief—she and her husband really believed we wouldn’t catch them sneaking around the place stirring up ‘activity.’”
“The lengths to which schemers will go!” A fruit-flavoured hard candy clicked against Mr. Zayne’s teeth as he rolled it cheek to cheek with his tongue. “Ah, right—Winchester, what says you?” he asked eagerly, veering the talk a new direction. “You seem like a real party animal. Are you coming along with us to Cheyne Walk or are you retiring for the night?”
I stood up straight, blushing faintly to have been caught fiddling with the hare-headed mannequin hanging in the corner. Everyone else stared, awaiting reply—Mr. Zayne, Quinn, Cain, Clement with the candlelight sparking off that quartz at his throat, all of us here rather early for an inspection night due to the fraudulent case. Party animal. That was, positively, a joke. A party down on Cheyne Walk, in West London’s bohemian hub. Invitation extended by Mr. Zayne Lissie the bone-snatcher.
“Um,” I said.
“It will be fun!” Cain insisted.
I nodded. If he was going, I would, too. “Yes, okay. Why not?”
Clement rolled his eyes dramatically. “All right, then, it’s decided.”
It was a romping get-together, a writer’s party in some elegant brick-faced and ivy-covered townhouse facing the Thames. The young mustached host seemed to know even Mr. Zayne quite personally, greeting him with a firm embrace and calling to the rest of his guests, “All my Spiritualists have arrived, never mind your theories on the erotica of antiquity, Gregory, we shall talk some real fun things now!”
The place was softly aglow, full of idealists and Pre-Raphaelites and other quirky, artistic souls—and, this side of London, certainly not the sort of place where anyone stopped to question the presence of almost-adults like Cain and myself.
It was vaguely nostalgic, but in a refreshing way, an utterly unpretentious gathering of friends and acquaintances who simply wished to talk literature and debate philosophy, or play silly parlour games, smoke cheroots or a small pipe of opium and dance lazily to the music from the phonograph. All Mr. Zayne’s men were there, Marius being the scrawny one and Jasper the rude brute and Henry the one I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting until then. Even Inspector d’Pelletier was in attendance, and Miss Jessica, which surprised me for all her insistence on propriety. Apparently privilege and pedigree vindicated hypocrisy. As did wearing a gown cut low enough on the bosom to leave little room for imagination.
Typical and terrible, how a lady could turn men into such little boys. Pitiful waltz of eyes, a handful of men chasing Miss Jessica’s attention, and Miss Jessica wanting my attention for some reason while I desperately avoided her foxlike glances. Did she imagine our few moments of peace together at Starlight Theater some sort of surrender to her acquaintance?
“Here,” Clement said on his way to the decanter for a second glass of brandy, pressing his cigarette case to my chest as if delivering a secret missive. He paused, squinting briefly at my collar. “What’s this? Fancy, hmm?”
I looked down, perplexed. Ah, right. I’d decided to wear Daphne’s hair cameo like a pin, peeking out of my breast pocket. A sheepish heat arose in my face.
Clement shrugged, tapping the cigarette case as he brushed by. “For the social ineptitude.”
“The … ?” I popped the silver case open just enough to see his prescription powder inside. With a click of the tongue, I took his advice anyway while everyone was in uproarious delight over Cain’s attempts to teach that brute Jasper how to waltz like a proper gentleman. I wasn’t against help with social ineptitude. But even with a little sniff, I still skirted around on the fringes of the comfortable crowd, reverting to old wallflower ways.
At a mirror, I slowed to a stop, eyes lingering on Daphne’s cameo while the party swirled on in the reflection behind me. Cameos were so ethereal and pretty—Daphne’s hair pin, that pink cameo from Miss Maude’s memories and Miss Hughling’s murder in the theater.
Wait a moment.
Miss Hughling. Flash of soft pink conch shell as a hand flew around to her face, tossed her from the vanity stool. Miss Ophie’s Parlour, the hand curled in the syringe rings, black leather and …
A cameo ring.
It was so clear to me, so perfectly and ornately carved. White against pink, profile of a Greek figure. Catching the light, nested in gold, flashing on a fat gloved thumb. So clear, it was like I’d held it in my hands before.
The whole world seemed far away as I wandered towards the balcony, through all the music and voices and lights as far away myself as if I weren’t even there.
Was it … the same cameo ring?
I couldn’t trust I remembered it clearly enough. My mind ran in circles with it, but they weren’t even my memories to begin with. Perhaps they’d blurred.
If it was the same, why?
“You look exhausted,” Miss Jessica said.
I jumped. She’d snuck up on me, outside in the biting night and deeply confounded by the damn ring. Trapped, I plastered on the obligatory smile. “Do I?”
Miss Jessica’s lashes fluttered as she smiled in a way she’d never smiled at me before. “Do you always answer questions with questions?”
“Perhaps?”
She drifted closer until she stood beside me, shoulder grazing mine. “I heard from a little birdy,” she murmured, lacing her fingers idly and dropping her voice low so only I could hear over the echo of the party inside, “that you’ve really proved Chesley and his doubts wrong.”
My smile soured a bit. “Is that so, Inspector?”
“Miss Jessica,” she corrected. “I’ve also heard that you and Clement are quite the pair.”
“We work very well together, but not as well as he and Quinn.”
“I mean that you’re friends,” she said.
I cut her a glance, suspicious of the patronising tone.
“We are,” I confirmed.
Miss Jessica tipped her head to one side with a thoughtful sigh. “You’d be wise to stay cautious around him. His worst curse is he has too much talent. He forgets how to function in society, and I just fear you’re so new and impressionable, he might infect you with his lack of manners. And then you’ll be staring at me brazenly, too.” She paused, not without a flush of pink to her cheeks and a heavy sidelong glance. “There are only two types of men who don’t stare brazenly. Men who are not interested in ladies, and men to whom it is worth speaking. You’re the latter. I admire that you don’t stare.”
Oh God, was she … being coy with me after being so horrid at first? “Surely your uncle and your father don’t stare,” I said, flustered and taking personal offence for Clement. She stayed silent, looking at me hard as I fumbled for something else to say. “Do you have brothers? If you do, I’m certain t
hey don’t, either. It’s just—you make it so easy to stare.”
I didn’t mean it unkindly, but in all truth, she should have taken it as an insult. She didn’t. She just puffed up proudly, smiling at me in adoration, and I stood there dumbly wondering what sort of life created a girl like her. Then again, I was my own case to study, wasn’t I?
“Unless, of course,” Miss Jessica hummed, far too close to me now, “you’re of the former persuasion, and that is why you stare at Clement while he stares at me.”
My face flushed, faintly. With a little twist of a frown, I uttered a sound of frustration from the back of my throat, and rolled my eyes around to meet hers. What was it now with all the comments on my romantic predisposition?
Miss Jessica peered at me with such coy anticipation, flutter of lashes that preceded a kiss, and I would have laughed had I not been so frantic for escape. Ah, that was why she brought it up. But what would I do if she … ? How had I gotten myself in this dilemma? Captured her fancy? It wasn’t the idea of kissing a girl; it was the idea of kissing her, and if I stared at Clement, it was simply attention as his mentee, of course, as his friend, nothing more—
D’Pelletier was suddenly at the balcony door. “Jessie?”
Miss Jessica and I shot away from each other. D’Pelletier’s pinstriped trousers made him look longer and taller than usual. He didn’t even seem to notice the awful tension or the fact that Miss Jessica had been two breaths from boldly kissing me.
“May I speak with you?” he said to her, low and deliberate and thick with the sing-songy Frenchman’s lilt. He offered me an unrequited smile of apology. Miss Jessica sighed, rolling her eyes.
“Bonsoir!” she cried, before wandering off on d’Pelletier’s arm with a dainty staccato of heeled boots. “You’ll have to answer my question another time, won’t you?”
I decided not to wonder what I possibly could have done to deserve any of that, and grabbed another colourful drink from the table as I went back inside.
Clement was busy with Mr. Zayne and other acquaintances but, thankfully, I found Cain in a room with doors painted like an Oriental garden, alone and picking through the books on the shelf. Wild-eyed, I rushed to close the two of us in together.
“Miss Jessica tried to kiss me,” I blurted.
“Ugh!” Cain laughed despite the disgusted wince. “Did you do it?”
“No. I’m not—”
“A boy,” he answered. “I know.”
My heart plummeted; I stepped back defensively.
Well, this was certainly not something I had expected tonight.
“No,” I husked, voice thickening as a pall of dread fell over me. “I only meant to say I am far from interested in kissing her.”
Cain’s eyes widened. “Oh,” he said. He stared at a book on the shelf, the spine of which he fiddled with in awkward guilt, while I stared at my feet, face burning but insides cold with fear. Shock, to be found out. Violated by his unfair knowledge. Confused, and painfully self-conscious.
“But … yes, what you said, as well,” I conceded reluctantly, feeling as though I might choke on every word. “Somewhat.” I cleared my throat. “How long have you known?”
Cain’s gaze flashed around before settling on me again. He issued a limp shrug, eyeing me in one of those ways in which he seemed too harsh and brooding, darker inside even than Clement. He held my stare as if daring me to ask what he thought of it, any of it. I couldn’t. The words didn’t come.
Deeply apologetic, he finally murmured, “I’ve known a long time, Will. Not that you’re not clever or convincing—really, I think you’re a genius—but I’ve known.”
“How?” I demanded.
His eyes darted to the mirror, anything to avoid me it seemed. “I had a feeling.”
“Well, I am a boy.” I didn’t want to be angry with him; I wasn’t angry with him. I was just so caught off guard. Ashamed, a bit discouraged, and terrified he’d think differently of me. Honestly, I’d known this moment was inevitable. But I had to be grateful it came with Cain, of all people.
“But I’m a girl, as well.” I cleared my throat. “By anatomy, certainly, and otherwise, just as often.”
Cain’s brow knotted. “Like the Principal Boys.”
I laughed weakly. “No,” I said. “It’s not a costume, or a subterfuge.”
He sat down on the edge of an Etruscan sofa. “Explain it to me, then,” he implored, practically begged, remorseful and desperate to make it up to me, it seemed.
I wanted to. Because I trusted him. And I did not want him to distrust me, or—God, to think of me in the wrong way. I eased down on the arm of the chair opposite him and took a deep breath.
“It’s not that I don’t want to be a lady,” I said. “Only that some days, I do not orient as one, while other days I do. I don’t mind it. Really, I don’t. I hardly even think about it. That’s how simple it is to me. I suppose I’m fluid between the two, male and female. A mix of both. Intermediate. Queerly gendered.”
Cain squinted at me. In the awful pause, as the grand fun echoed beyond the closed doors, I feared he would not understand and think me mental. He’d be disgusted, appalled, disappointed. I prepared for everything good to be over. But the longer the quiet between us stretched, the more and more I resented resignation to that outcome.
“Queerly gendered,” he echoed, a devious little hum riding the back of a sigh. “I’m jealous, Will. That’s quite unique. Bewitching and rebellious. Mystical, almost. Like some … ”
“I’m not a spectacle,” I said curtly. But I couldn’t be too insulted. He was a Kingsley, after all, and it was well known the Kingsleys gloried in the counterculture.
Yet he understood me not just as a Kingsley … but also as my friend.
“So, should I call you ‘Miss Will,’ then?” he asked.
I reared back, face twisting. “Oh. No. Please don’t. Nothing is different. It’s just that now you know.” Another concern struck me, and I looked to him in a wild way, like the social disaster I apparently was. “Please forgive me for scandalising you when I slept in your bed.”
Cain snorted, raising his brows. “You, scandalising me? Will, you’re too much. And anyway, I’ll scandalise myself as I please, thank you.” He glanced one final time at the mirror, quick enough I almost didn’t catch it.
“Don’t hate me for this,” I said, brow knotting. “Please don’t tell anyone. Not even Clement, or O’Brien, or Quinn.”
“Why should I hate you, or tell anyone?” Cain’s face pinched in a puzzled smile, and for the first time, the shyness of it did not seem a ruse. “As if I haven’t yet explored a more ‘earnest’ life, myself,” he murmured with a small smile, the beginnings of a bashful laugh. “We all do, whether we care to admit it or not. We all have our secrets.”
My heart fell past my stomach. Not in dread or guilt, but in a rush of immense relief. My curious ambigender was hardly beyond his idea of strange or unbelievable, it seemed; he was, after all, a forward and mischievous young nobleman. He really didn’t care, did he? He didn’t look at me any differently at all, just with a sad sort of patience as if he’d been waiting for me to offer my most vulnerable parts … as he already had, himself, that day in Hermes Hall, after the gossip about his family. Because he trusted me as I trusted him.
And here I’d feared he would not want to know me for this.
“How long would you have played unaware?” I asked.
Cain stood, stretched a little like a cat rising from a nap, and paced around between the chairs. “Unaware of what? That you’re a bit queer? For the most part, I don’t even remember that I know. I just thought that … that was what you meant to say earlier.”
I shook my head, somehow smiling and pouting at the same time.
“Haven’t I made a fool of myself, then?” He paused, eyes roaming me. “I’m guessing your tyrant father doesn’t know.”
I uttered a cross laugh much more like a scoff. “Oh, I’d never dream of telling him
. See … ” I stalled only a moment, because I wasn’t sure I wished to speak of it anymore. I’d come out and told him; I didn’t want to dwell on something that needn’t have been dwelled upon. After all, he’d apparently known for a long time. Now, what was there at risk of changing between us?
“After my mother left,” I said, “my father decided he’d rather raise a son than a daughter. Good thing, I think. Imagine if he hadn’t. I would never be as free to be myself as I am now. I can’t say why he did it, whether he was unequipped, or just unwilling, or perhaps hoped I wouldn’t turn out as my mother did.”
That was all I’d say on the matter. It wasn’t my father’s story, after all. It was mine. It was me. And my father could not—did not—own me anymore.
“As your mother?” Cain echoed.
I nodded and shrugged, looking away. I didn’t have to elaborate for him to understand.
He nodded slowly. “So, it’s a bloodline with you, as well,” he whispered, though it seemed more to himself. But then he livened again suddenly, giving my shoulder a squeeze as he breezed by to the painted doors. “All’s well, Will,” he said with the pleasant smile so characteristic of him. But it was a little wider and more enigmatic once there was liquor behind it.
“Good to know, Cain,” I replied, but I smiled, too—a real one, one which I could not suppress.
The sunrise is one of the world’s secret treasures.
I was starting to fear I’d see so many of them with the Black Cross that I’d grow immune to their silken, golden-veined calm. In the open-sided hansom cab on our way back to Portland Place, Cain, Clement, and I sat in the chilly air watching the world, still windless and full of ghostly shades, eerily lit in those moments before dawn broke. First that knowing grey light slithered through the world, as if springing from the very ground itself; the quiet surrounded us, caressed and swallowed us. And then the thickest of clouds would lighten, turn deep dark violet and blue, and very pale pink through the fog over rooftops and chimneypots, as rattling, sauntering morning life stirred in the streets.