(Re)Visions: Alice ((Re)Visions)

by Kaye Chazan

  The Duke laughs, low and strange, and sits on a nearby chair while Aelister arranges the cards. He is carrying a newspaper, mostly wet, the headline smeared black all over his gloves, Grisly Murder in Whitechapel, Prostitute Slain. “You’re keeping up with the times, you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Kill her?”

  “No, I didn’t know, your Grace. I’m only playing. Jack here stands accused of the murder of the queen of—diamonds, I think. No, that’s his own barrister. Which is left? None of the queens.”

  “Why should it be a woman?”

  “I’m not saying it should. But queens are the next rank up. Why would a jack kill someone worse off than he?”

  “He could kill a king.”

  “He could, but I’ve called the kings for judges. The judge has to have more power than the barrister, otherwise the court doesn’t work.”

  “And the queens are barristers?”

  “Yes, your Grace.”

  “That does pose a problem.”

  “There should be more cards,” Aelister says. “At least one more rank on top. Something like lords. And the Dukes and Duchesses and Earls and everyone.”

  “So you’d want a fifty-six card deck?”

  “Does anyone play with a fifty-six card deck?”

  “Everyone used to,” the Duke says. “Fortune-tellers play with seventy-eight.”

  “Yes, but that’s a different game.”

  “It didn’t used to be,” the Duke says. “They played with their own suits in the Orient, first. Then the Italians introduced the triumph cards—the trump cards—to change the game. They played trick-taking games like bridge and gambling games like baccarat, under different names. Tarocchini, partita, jeu de tarot. But no one plays these games anymore, save those fortune-tellers, because it is easier to print a suit of spades than a suit of swords, and because the French called the numbers ten and three—ten pips, and three faces.”

  “But what happened to all those other cards?”

  “What happens to anything when it is discarded?” the Duke asks.

  “Still,” Aelister says. “I would like to play with a larger deck, at least now. I suppose it’s better than just adding a second deck like this one to fill it out, as then I wouldn’t be able to tell the plaintiff and the victim apart. Or the baccarat game last night—if you really want twenty-four of each card, why not just make a deck of three hundred and twelve?”

  “Could you come up with that many suits?”

  “I think so.”

  “But would they be balanced?”

  “Balanced?”

  The Duke smiles, and reaches into the scattered pip cards, and hands Aelister the six of hearts. “Here is your victim. I will explain later. Tell me how the trial works out, boy.” He ruffles Aelister’s hair, and leaves him to the trial—which proceeds splendidly for everyone but the six, who is dead.

  Over time, which Aelister has rather lost track of, he stops thinking about his house and his mother and his money in the country at all. He’s certainly not thinking about school: It’s not as if he sees any other children, in the company the Duke keeps, and besides, Aelister has taken to not thinking of himself as a child any longer. The matter of Aelister’s education comes up in conversation, of course—there is, after all, so much he does not know—but the Duke says, nearly every time, “I never thought fondly of school myself, when I was there. It behooves me to get you a tutor rather than inflict that on you.”

  “You’d be a monster if you did,” Aelister agrees.

  “A hypocrite at least,” the Duke says, “though not a monster as such. So many people in this world live by do as I say, not as I do. It’s confusing at best and dastardly at worst.”

  It is as close as anyone has ever come to summing everything up for Aelister; as close as giving the world and the headache and the strange quiet madness a name. He stares at the Duke and smiles happily—or deals the cards of his attention, as he has come to think of it, puts everything into the Duke’s hand.

  “Do you play chess?” the Duke asks, and if it sounds abrupt, Aelister does not think so when he answers.

  “Yes, a little.”

  “Excellent. Come, then,” he says, and gets up from the table, and even if Aelister had somewhere else to be, he would follow the Duke at this moment.

  Of course, they only go to the library, and the Duke produces a box from a locked drawer, and opens one of the tables like a door or a well. There’s a chessboard engraved on the underside, and chesspieces in the box, red and white stone.

  “Arrange them with me,” the Duke says, taking one pawn into each hand and hiding them behind his back. “Call left or right.”

  “Left.”

  The Duke uncurls that hand and places a red pawn on one of the squares on Aelister’s side. “Take heart,” he says, smiling, “there are advantages to moving second.”

  Aelister nods, and sets up his side. The set is fairly large, the king and queen as tall as Aelister’s longest finger and the rooks as wide as two. Veins of blue and silver stand out in the red marble, but the white side is pristine, like the statues in the corner. Looking over the Duke’s side, Aelister finds that he has misplaced the bishops and knights, and quickly reverses them—and also his queen and king are on the wrong squares.

  “Queen takes her color, king stands opposed,” the Duke reminds him. “Mirror my side, boy, it’s not like cards.”

  “Yes, your Grace.”

  “Shall we make a wager?”

  Aelister hangs his head. “I haven’t anything that isn’t yours,” he says, with a measure of shame, since all his own inheritance back home is likely gone, or passed into the care of his mother.

  “Not money, then,” the Duke says, smiling, “I wouldn’t take that from you. How is this: For every piece you or I capture, we may ask each other one question, and be compelled to answer truthfully. If you do not wish to answer at all, then one of us has the option of performing a task for the other.”

  “Any task?”

  “Well, yes, if any truth.”

  There is so much Aelister has not told the Duke, in however many weeks he has been living in this house, trapped by rain and luck and endless curiosity. There are always other, better things to talk about, like the books and statues, the food on the table, the news of the world outside. Why, Aelister would rather discuss the interminable rain in the gutter than tell the Duke anything about himself or where he comes from, and considering how little the Duke has said of his own past, Aelister assumes his case is the same.

  The stakes are even higher than they would be, if they played for money.

  “Your curiosity has always been encouraging, boy,” the Duke says, already setting a small notebook beside the chessboard to record their moves. “I do understand I will be at an advantage, but I hold myself to the same terms. Didn’t you come to my house in the first place because you wanted to learn from me? And remember, you can always take a task, if you don’t wish to tell me the truth.”

  There is very little in that for Aelister to argue with.

  “Go first,” Aelister says. “White plays first.”

  The Duke smiles, and moves his king’s bishop’s pawn out two spaces. Well, that bungles up what would have been Aelister’s usual first move, since, sensibly, he’s always been taught to start with his king’s pawn, and he knows he wants to get as many of his pieces out into the open as possible. He starts with the knight on the far side of the board, leaps him out over all the pawns. The Duke quickly writes those moves down and sends his own king’s pawn out into the fray, and Aelister brings out his other knight.

  “Interesting,” the Duke says, and advances his king’s pawn another square. Aelister lets that knight keep charging forward, never mind the pawns that threaten it, until he puts the Duke’s queen and rook in check.

  “You know, that only works if you have something to support your attack.” The Duke records those moves, then takes the knight with his king. �
��Though if your aim was to stop me castling, I suppose the sacrifice was valiant.”

  “I thought so,” Aelister says.

  The Duke’s thumb taps on the side of his pen as he sets it down. “And now you owe me a truthful answer, boy. Where in this country did you come here from?”

  It is not the very worst question he could ask Aelister. And for that matter, he has spent enough time with Aelister that he could place the general region by Aelister’s accent alone, or by the references to what he’s done—what he’s learned in school and what trees he’s climbed.

  “Warwickshire,” Aelister answers, “Leamington,” and moves a pawn into place. The Duke moves another pawn, right into the path of Aelister’s remaining knight, and Aelister takes it without a second thought. “Where do you go when you’re not here?”

  The Duke leans his lips onto his glove and laughs. “All manner of places. The House of Lords, of course. The Opera House, though I suppose it’s out of season these days. Such a vague question, with so much truth to it. Ask a better one next time.”

  His queen takes Aelister’s other knight.

  “What is your name, boy?”

  Aelister freezes.

  “It’s an awfully strange thing to keep from me,” the Duke goes on, “I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t give me something to call you. It’s charming, but you’ve built up quite a mystery, much larger than your head.”

  “You can keep the mystery,” Aelister says. “I’ll take the task, your Grace.”

  The Duke records the capture, and sets the pen down. “Very well. I hope you don’t mind braving Covent Garden again.”

  “I do. But I’d rather that than tell you.”

  Rain makes Covent Garden considerably worse. It adds a third layer of sound, the rush of water through gutters and tiles and rough stone, and even if the orchestra in the opera house skips in and out like one half of a conversation and the people’s chatter swells and dims, the rain is a constant drone. Aelister thinks his errand is as much a punishment as a task, since the Duke must hate it evenly.

  Not even the hundreds of umbrellas, so many of them the same shade of funereal black, can keep the streets dry, and water runs off everything in sheets. Aelister wraps his jacket tighter around his shoulders and the envelope he’s carrying in his sling, nestled next to the cast. The Duke has told him enough about this errand that he knows it’s not the sort of thing that should arrive wet, regardless of the condition of Aelister’s hat and shoes and socks.

  He lives in a garret above Larkspur’s flower shop, the Duke said, and Aelister here repeats the instructions in his head. Arrive between the hours of two and five in the afternoon, otherwise it’s extremely unlikely he’ll be there, and this envelope must be delivered directly into his hands. He may read this in front of you, in which case I should consider you very lucky indeed, and you may ask him any questions you like, though I can’t speak for his truthfulness. He might or might not give you something for your trouble, but don’t dally no matter the weather, and don’t let him touch your skin, not even the tip of your nose.

  And the sooner you get this done, boy, the sooner we can resume our game.

  Finding Larkspur’s is difficult enough in the rain, and worse when no one passing seems to be able to hear Aelister’s voice over the din. He takes to storefront after storefront, until the columns of the opera house are as thin as Aelister’s arms and the iron gates are more like pencil-lines on a desk. There aren’t any flower shops on this street, just ladies with dripping scarves selling them by the bunch out of baskets. Too much of a good thing, Aelister thinks, as far as the flowers are concerned, at any rate.

  —But the ladies with the flowers have to get them from somewhere, after all.

  “Miss?” Aelister asks, and tugs on the shawl of the lady nearest him.

  “Ma’am, to you,” the flower-seller says, and then a few colloquialisms that Aelister doesn’t understand, but at least she’s paying him heed. “You oughtn’t be out alone on a day like this, not with that madman on the loose.”

  He reaches into his pocket for a few pence. “Ma’am, is there a shop here called Larkspur’s?”

  ‘There is if you aren’t buying from the likes of her.”

  “I’m not, ma’am, I’m visiting the man who lives above it.”

  “Oh, that one, are you? I’ll point the way, then.” When she does—up the side-street by a block and a half at least, and well-hidden behind the swinging sign of a public house—and Aelister gives her the money, she pish-poshes him and gives him a little bundle of pale purple flowers with spiny petals fanned out in a double-cross. “His favorite,” she says, “though you didn’t hear it from me. Poor dear, keep these dry if you can, tuck ’em in there with the sling, there’s a good thing—” and before she can ask him about it, Aelister sets off down the street, minding as many puddles as he can.

  Finding the door takes an effort, but not a considerable one, and Aelister swings it open with such force as to nearly upend a table of late roses, and shuts it to drown out the proprietor’s yelling. For a moment, it’s almost quiet, and Aelister sighs just to hear himself breathe. He takes off his glove with his teeth (as he is only wearing a glove on the hand of his good arm), wipes his hand off on the driest part of his trousers, and proceeds up the stairs until he finds another door. It can’t be after five o’clock yet, he decides, however long it has taken him to get here, and so he knocks.

  The voice that asks “Who are you, then?” is familiar, with a light Scottish accent, but when the door opens on the face of a fair-haired and somewhat jaunty man in shirtsleeves, Aelister isn’t certain why he would think it so. “—ah, so now you want work, lad.”

  Oh. Aelister mentally draws thick lines of makeup on the man’s face, and imagines a bright pink wig. The wicked stepmother, he’d called himself in the alleyway, and Aelister blushes to recall it. “Sir,” he says, and extends the envelope. “His Grace sent me.”

  The Actor takes the envelope out of Aelister’s hand. “I thought I told you I’m no one’s laird.”

  “I don’t know what else to call you, sir.”

  “Call me whatever you like, lad, so long as you expect me to be it.” He turns the letter around in his fingers, and gives it another glance. “Come in, dry off.”

  “Thank you,” Aelister says, and does.

  Summer or none, the garret has a fire going, and the sparse furniture and scattered glass bottles glow with the light from the hearth. It is all one room, with a hard wood floor and no rug, but the Actor isn’t wearing any shoes. Between the heat in here and the wet air out there, Aelister can understand the Actor being only half-dressed, and he wouldn’t mind undoing his own collar as well. In fact, he’s about to, and has a hand at his throat before he remembers that the Duke said, quite clearly, Don’t let him touch your skin.

  By now, the Actor has sat down—there are only two chairs at his board, and he hasn’t offered Aelister the other one—and opened the envelope. He takes out the first of its content, a long card, the kind that Aelister has seen fortune-tellers use. For some reason (which Aelister would like to know, a great deal), the Actor bursts out laughing, tilts his head back and bares his throat. “So that’s why you’re here,” he says, as if Aelister knows.

  “I’m here because the Duke captured my knights,” Aelister corrects.

  “Both of them already?” The Actor puts down the enclosed letter, which he has begun to read. “How many moves are you in?”

  “Seven.”

  “It serves you right for using a Scottish opening.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but unless I’m hearing you wrong, you are a Scot.”

  “I’m no more Scots than you’re from Warwickshire, lad.”

  “Then why speak like one?”

  “Cannae help where I come from any more than you can.”

  “But I do come from Warwickshire.”

  “No, you did come from Warwickshire. Or at least you came here.” The Actor laughs a
gain, and stretches out, as if he could take the table over with just his arms. “But you had to come there from somewhere, didn’t you?”

  “No, I was born there.”

  “Oh were you?”

  “In my mother’s bed.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  “Of course not, I was just born.”

  “Then you cannae prove it, so you shouldnae rule it out.” The Actor smiles and folds the letter back up, sets it on the table under the card. His teeth gleam. “Do you have aught else for me, lad?”

  Aelister remembers the flowers, and reaches into his sling. “From the woman who pointed me here,” he says, and extends them toward the Actor—and only after the Actor is reaching to take them does Aelister realize that there is no way the man can take the flowers without touching Aelister’s knuckles.