chapter IV
I N THE MORNING, THERE WAS CHOCOLATE.
Betty seemed recovered from the previous day’s excesses. She must not have been working the party. The tray barely rattled as she set it down by the bed, and a heavenly rich scent filled the room.
I got up at once to engage with the little pot of bitter chocolate, set out with an entire jug of hot cream, as much sugar as I should care to put into it and, oh, the loveliest china cup to mix it in! I wished my mother were there to share it with me. I poured slowly, watching the cream swirl in the cup. It made the confusions and indignities of last night seem a little more worth it; I felt even better when Betty said, “And your new clothes have come, too.”
The chocolate was marvelous, but I gulped it down, assuring myself, There will be more again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and again the day after that. I was eager to get to the brown paper parcels piled at the foot of the bed. I unknotted the string myself, being careful to put it by to be used again. Fine white linen, some heavier blue; a little lace, good…no silk, no velvet, but maybe I would be fitted for ballgowns later. I shook out the blue: it was a tight, short linen jacket. Not a fashion I’d seen before; maybe a riding coat? It had a skirt to match—no, it was breeches. Breeches that buttoned up on either side, with a flap in the front.
I frowned. “Betty, are you sure these are for me?”
“Oh, yes, my lady. The duke sent them.”
“But they’re men’s clothes. I can’t put these on.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that.” She chuckled. “I’ve helped a few fellows in and out of those, to be sure. I can dress you up all right and tight.”
“But—but I can’t wear these!”
“Why not, dearie?”
“They’re not—they’ve got—”
She unrolled stockings, white neck-cloths still in need of ironing, vests and jackets with heavy buttons and shirts with loose sleeves.
“See? They’re made specially to your measure sent beforehand, my dear; they’ll fit a treat.”
I could hardly bear to touch them. It wasn’t that I’d never handled men’s things before; I’ve mended my brothers’ often enough. But these were for me. I was to dress myself in what men wear. Stockings, neck-cloths, vests and jackets, with heavy buttons and loose sleeves—they were all wrong.
I said as calmly as I could, “They’re very nice things. But I will not wear them today. Please take out my blue flowered gown, and the yellow petticoat—”
“Oh, no, my lady. You’re to put these on right away, and go to your lesson.”
“Lesson?” I said sharply, remembering things like sketching and arithmetic, the lessons I’d had at home until we had to let my governess go, but doubting that was what she meant.
“Yes, that’s right; a proper swordmaster coming all the way to Tremontaine House, just to teach you.”
I felt my bargain closing in on me, tighter than neck-cloths and hard-buttoned jackets.
“Not today—surely not today, not yet—”
But of course it was today. He had told me it was. The duke owned me now, and I had agreed to it, weeks ago.
“I shall wear them in the house,” I said firmly, “if it pleases him. For my lessons.” But that, I secretly promised myself, was all.
So I let her pull the shirt over my head—clean, crisp linen that would have made the loveliest chemise!—and then the breeches—the buttons pulling closed flaps that were all that stood between me and the world, and nothing to hide my legs from anyone’s eyes but the short hang of the jacket and the coarse stockings that revealed in outline everything they covered. The jacket buttoned tightly; it was well tailored, flattening my breasts and clinging around my arms. Men’s clothing gripped me in places I did not want, showed me in ways I could not like, claimed me with strange bindings and unbindings.
I stood trembling, like a young horse being broken to saddle, as Betty’s fingers did the final buttons up. I would not look in the mirror. I couldn’t bear to see myself transformed into something neither boy nor girl. Was this what my uncle wanted? I hoped he would be satisfied, then!
Betty drew out a blue velvet ribbon, smiling conspiratorially as if it were a sugar cake. It was for my hair, to tie it back in a queue. I let her do it: wearing my hair unbound was not going to change me back.
“Now you’re all ready for your lesson. I’ll show you the practice-room, and by the time you’re done, I’ll have all these nice things tidied up and put away.”
I had left my last night’s party gown spread out upon the chair. Before she could collect it, I snatched from its pocket the pasteboard card my friend had given me, and stowed it well away in my jacket, a little piece of comfort nestling there.
When I moved, no swing of petticoats surrounded me. I had lost the protection of full skirts, the support of boned bodice. There was nothing for my hands to hide in. I felt the air on my legs as I moved. Cloth covered my skin, but still I was naked, exposed. Anyone could look at me, and see almost all of me!
A plum-colored cape peeked out of the brown paper; in desperation, I seized it and wrapped it around myself. At least it covered my knees.
“No, no, my lady, you won’t need to be going out of doors, His Grace has had a whole room made over, just for your practice.”
But I clutched the cape tight around myself. And so we ventured through the halls of Tremontaine House, Betty uncertain, as always, of where we were going, and I doing all I could to keep from looking in mirrors. It wasn’t easy. Frames were all over the gilded corridors, startling on walls and sudden turns; sometimes the frames contained still, painted pictures, and sometimes glass reflecting a window, a staircase or my own pale face. But even when I didn’t look, I knew. I was dressed as a man. I was wearing men’s clothes. They were like men’s eyes looking at me; like men’s eyes touching me. The cape came to just below my knees; if I’d let go of it, it would have swirled very nicely; it was well cut and full. But I held it tightly, like a blanket wrapped against the cold.
Betty kept up a frantic babble which I barely took in: she was grateful to the duke, unworthy of the position, knew a thing or two about ladies and never would mess with their husbands now, no, not if you forced her at swordspoint—
“Here.” At last she stopped. “It’s the double-doors with the wet rabbits on them.” Well, it was a reasonable description of the artfully painted woodland storm scene. Before she could fling them open, I knocked.
“Yes!” a man shouted. “Hurry up!”
He was standing in the middle of the huge, sunlit room. A thickset, muscled man, half-clothed, wearing only breeches and an open-collared shirt. He had a full black beard and bristling mustaches, like nothing I’d ever seen.
“How? How?” he demanded. “You are cold, you wear your bed-blanket?”
My fingers unclenched from the folds of the cloak. I let it fall to the floor. The man nodded curtly at me, and then at a rack of real swords.
“Pick one up. And I will show you how you do it wrong.”
His voice was so strange; I could barely recognize the words, the way they trilled and sang high and low in unexpected ways. “Come! Come! Venturus does not like to keep him waiting. Venturus have many many students are beg him for instruction. He must tell them, ‘No, no, I am not for you, I must be for the Mad Duke whose little boy does not even know to pick up the sword!’”
“I’m not a boy,” I said.
He shot me a look. “No? You are a rabbit? You have furry paws? Then pick me a sword!”
I grabbed the closest one.
He stood to one side, hands on his hips. “Good.” He nodded. “Oh, very good.” I began to feel a little less cold. “Very good—if you are chopping up chicken!” he thundered. “How you think you are defend yourself when you are need to change lines, eh?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. And I was too afraid to tell him that this was not the way you hold a knife to chop up chickens.
“Lines, change lines—shift the tip by you shift the wrist!”
I tried to, but the sword’s weight pulled against me until I turned the hilt in my hand; then I could move my fingers to direct the point better. He wouldn’t like that. I stared at the tip, refusing to look at him.
“Yes,” Venturus said. “Now you are see. You see—but you do not see!” With a sword in his hand, he suddenly struck my own blade so hard that my hand stung. My sword went flying.
“Ha!” he shouted triumphantly. I didn’t see that disarming a beginner was such a triumph. “Don’t grip so tight like you mama’s tit. Hold gentle, gentle—like you are hold a baby child, or a dog that bite.”
I tried not to laugh at the picture. When I held the sword more loosely, it flexed in my hand. “Ye-e-es,” he hissed contentedly. “Now you see.”
I smiled and, feeling not quite foolish, struck a swordsman’s pose.
Venturus screamed as if he had been lashed. “Wha-a-at you think you do with you legs? You arms? Do I give you permission to do that thing? I would not. I could not! No student of Venturus ever look like this.” His imitation of my pose looked like a rag doll strung with wires.
In a small voice I said, “I’m sorry.” I hate being made fun of.
“You know you sorry! Stupid duke-boy! Now you practice: practice holding, only holding. You like you kill someone now—maybe you kill Venturus, yes—but first, you hold! Ha!”
The weird foreigner flung a cloak around his shoulders.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I go see other students, students know how to listen to Venturus. You study to hold. Maybe tomorrow, I show how not to stand. Ha!”
And with a swirl of his cloak, he was gone.
I held the sword. Even after the door closed, I was not at all sure Master Venturus would not suddenly reappear through it, his mustaches bristling.
In my hand the sword looked solid and workmanlike, like a rolling pin, or the handle of a hoe. Then I looked down the entire length of it and saw how narrow the steel was, how shiny. It had no purpose but distance and death.
I wondered what my mother would say, and found no answer. For the first time in my life, I wished I could be holding a sewing needle instead; suddenly that instrument of torture seemed small and comfortable and harmless. My arm ached, no matter how I turned the sword. I decided to put it away, and go back to my room and change into the sort of girl who might ask a housekeeper if she needed help with the mending.
In the wardrobe, my new clothes were neatly hung and folded. I looked behind them for my old gowns, and found nothing. Nothing in the chest, nothing hung out to air; nothing remained of all my skirts and bodices and petticoats and stockings, carefully chosen and mended and packed a few days before.
I did not bother trying to find Betty. I knew what had happened. I knew, and I was not having it. This was one contest the Mad Duke would not win.
The card in my pocket read: ARTEMISIA FITZ-LEVI, BLACKBURN HOUSE. I would be seen on the street in these ridiculous clothes once only. Grimly clutching my cloak around me, I set out through the gates of Tremontaine House to find my friend.
I T WAS NOT LONG BEFORE LADY ARTEMISIA FITZ-LEVI BEGAN to tire of the antics of her new pet. The parrot was a bit too clever—she had expected a sort of colorful talking doll, not something with a mind of its own. The parrot preferred fruit to cakes, earlobes to fingers and velvet to the bottom of its cage. It liked women better than men; when her cousin Lucius Perry came to call, it flew at him, and she had to get her maid to take it downstairs, where, no doubt, it would amuse the house staff far more than it did her, though it had not been acquired for that purpose.
“You look decorative,” she approved her cousin Lucius. Artemisia thought that the right amount of lace always complimented a man’s appearance. Of course, with his slender build, dark hair and blue eyes, Lucius had good material to work with.
“And you look exhausted.” Lord Lucius Perry, lounging in her windowseat, gazed longingly at the fragile cinnamon wafers that lay just at the edge of his reach on an equally fragile painted table. “Out dancing your slippers to ribbons again, coz? What gallant has caught your eye this time?”
In strictest confidence she was perishing to tell him about the duke’s party last night, but he went on without waiting for an answer, “And where is your reprobate brother? Robert promised me a bout of tennis today; is he out already paying court to his last night’s conquests, or still sleeping them off?”
Artemisia smiled patiently at him. He was a cousin, so not worth much more, and a younger son at that. “Do I look awful, Lucius? Have I got rings under my eyes? I bathed them in cucumber water, but I’m not sure it’s done any good—and I particularly don’t want Mama to know what I’ve been doing,” she hinted broadly.
Lucius did not even pretend to be interested. “Nothing awful, I hope. You don’t want to get yourself talked about, Artemisia, not when your prospects are so good this year.”
“Of course nothing awful! What do you take me for? You’re a fine one to lecture me, Lucius, indeed you are. I understand you were once up to all sorts of mischief Mama won’t even tell me about.”
“That’s just it,” he drawled; “I’ve reformed.”
“Well, it’s made you uncommon dull.”
“Do you think so?” He smiled just a little; his eyelashes fluttered over his cheeks as he extended one languid finger toward the plate—but his cousin was impervious to that particular sort of innuendo.
“Honestly, Lucius, you are the laziest man I ever met! Lean over and take your own biscuit, don’t expect me to get up and pass them to you when you’re this close to the table!”
Lucius Perry leaned back, instead, bathing his fine-boned face in a slanting patch of sun. All he could see through his eyelids was a rich, comforting red; if his cousin stopped talking for a minute, he might fall asleep.
No, he wouldn’t: a knocking on the front door and a flurry of feet below heralded the approach of another visitor. “Artemisia,” he said, not bothering to open his eyes, “you want to be careful. You’re pretty, the family’s good, your father’s generous and you’ve got a nice voice. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone offered for you before the year turns. Just don’t compete with Robert in daring: city ballrooms are not exactly the same as climbing trees and jumping out of haylofts back home.”
She drew herself up proudly. “Thank you for the advice, cousin. As if I don’t know how to behave in town! I like it here, a great deal better than in the country. As far as I’m concerned, I’d be happy to call this home for the rest of my life, and I hope I marry a man who thinks so, too: someone with style and a bit of dash like Robert, not a dullard like you, who thinks an exciting day is playing tennis and calling on relatives, and an exciting evening is staying home and reading a book or whatever it is you do with yourself—anyhow, I didn’t see you at Tremontaine House last night!”
“Tremontaine House?” Lucius Perry abandoned his lassitude. “You don’t want anything to do with those people, cousin.”
She tossed her head, and her curls bounced. “And why not, pray? I am not the Country Filly you seem to think me, cousin. I know how to handle myself in Society.”
“Do you?” He was leaning forward, his blue eyes dark and full on her.
She squelched the humiliating recollection of her host putting her to flight. “Certainly. There’s nothing so terrifying at Tremontaine House”—she laughed brightly—“except perhaps for the Mad Duke himself, of course. He’s quite rude, isn’t he? I don’t know what all those people see in him, really.”
“No, you wouldn’t. That is why he’s dangerous.” His smile was now consciously charming. “Of course you understand Society, cousin: you are one of its brightest ornaments. But the Duke Tremontaine is outside Society. Even he agrees that that is where he belongs. And he encourages others—not, of course, that you could be so encouraged—but those around him, to, ah, to explore those outposts as well.”
“Well, they all seemed perfectly normal to me: the usual sort of Ball and Salon types, just both in one place, that’s all. It’s hardly—”
Her curls splashed her neck as she turned her head toward the commotion downstairs: a clatter in the marble hall of booted feet, a shrill cry.
“Perhaps it’s Robert,” Lucius drawled, “with a new conquest.”
Someone was running upstairs—two someones. The first was the footman, who opened the door to the sitting room just wide enough to announce breathlessly, “A—female, my lady, who will see you, she says, though I did—”
“From the party,” a girl’s voice insisted shrilly. “Tell her Katherine, Lady Katherine Talbert—only I don’t have a card—from Tremontaine House.”
Lucius dealt his cousin a jaded look.
The footman threw open the door. “Lady Katherine.”
There stood the oddest figure Lady Artemisia had ever seen outside the theatre; worse than the theatre, really, because there the actresses in boys’ roles at least made some attempt to trim their hair, hide their figures and adopt a manly bearing. This was so clearly a girl, small and round, her long hair messily escaping from a ribbon in frizzy tendrils. Only her clothes were a perfect copy of a man’s, in every detail.
Artemisia Fitz-Levi put a hand over her mouth. She knew it was rude, but she couldn’t help it, the laughter just came squeezing out. The girl stared at her. Her face went pale, then red.
“From Tremontaine House,” said Lucius smugly. “Well: you see my point.”
Katherine Talbert spun on the heel of her ridiculous boots, and ran clattering out the hall and down the stairs.
N O ONE WOULD HAVE LOOKED TWICE AT THE BOY IF he had not been running frantically through a very sedate section of the Hill, where running generally meant some kind of trouble.
“Hey, there!” A hand shot out, bringing the figure to a skittering stop. Philibert, Lord Davenant, was not an observing sort of man; he saw a boy’s face because he expected to see a boy’s face, and the estimable Lord Davenant was one who liked the world to be compassed by order and decorum. This boy’s long hair, therefore, meant University, and few scholars belonged on the Hill. Furthermore, the boy had been crying and seemed terrified at being apprehended.
“Aha,” said Lord Davenant. “What’s your hurry? Something in your pockets, maybe?” He thrust a hand into one of them, keeping a grip on the boy’s wrist.
“Help!” shrilled the boy. “Let go of me!” He tried to wriggle out of the older man’s grasp. “How dare you?”
“Little rat!” Davenant surveyed him, half-amused. “Shall I call the Watch, or just thrash you myself?”
The boy wiped his nose with his free arm. “If you were a gentleman,” he said suddenly, “you would escort me back to Tremontaine House.”
“Oh.” Abruptly Lord Davenant dropped the wrist as if afraid of contagion. “So you’re that kind of rat, are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Go on, get off with you.” Davenant’s views on Tremontaine were well known in Council. The last thing he wanted was to be seen accosting one of the Mad Duke’s fancy boys on the open street. “There’s your direction, go on.”
The boy drew himself up and walked away shakily.
I HAD FORGOTTEN THE WAY AND HAD ONLY A DIM RECOLLECTION of what Tremontaine House looked like from the street. All the walls of all the great houses looked the same, and all their black and gold-tipped gates. I tried to walk as if I knew where I was going.
“Hello, Lady Katherine.”
Standing before me was a boy about my age. He was plainly dressed, with a plain, ordinary face. It took me a moment to recognize the duke’s servant, the valuable Marcus, the boy who knew where everything was. He said, “I’m heading back to Tremontaine House, if you’d like to come with me.”
I followed him in silence. He had never introduced himself, and he didn’t do so now, just talked to me as if we had always known each other.
“It’s a nice day, isn’t it? Betty thought you’d run away, but I guessed you might just have gone for a walk; you wouldn’t want to get her in trouble by disappearing or something. You should try exploring the House gardens,” he chatted amicably, “they’re very interesting. Paths, and statues and fountains and things, though I think they’ve turned the fountains off for the season. The gardeners dig up the flowers all the time and put new ones in. They grow them in a big glass house. It’s quite a production. You can have flowers put in your room, if you like. Want me to order them for you?”
The front hall of Tremontaine House was cool and white and empty. Gone the bustle and striving of last night; in their place was a spooky sweet serenity.
“Where is the duke?” I asked.
“Gone. Everyone’s gone to the Riverside house.”
“Everyone? But I—”
“Oh, not you. You’re staying here.”
“Alone?” Panic sharpened my voice.
“Not really. There’s a whole staff lives here. He comes and goes, you see. He likes to have things ready for him always, here. They’ll take care of you. Just tell Betty what you need.”
“Are—are you staying here?” I hated myself for wanting a particular answer, but at least he was a friendly face.
“No. I go where he goes.”
“When will you—will he—be back?”
“Whenever he feels like it. The Riverside house is warmer in winter; this one’s better in summer. In between, like now…” Marcus shrugged.
“Is it far out in the country?”
“Is what far?”
“Riverside.”
The boy laughed, as if I’d told him a joke on purpose. Then he shook his head. “Riverside? It’s right here in the city. The other end of the city, the old bit, near the docks. Riverside’s an island in the river. It’s nothing special, really. I wouldn’t live there. But he likes it.”
“Is it a nice house?”
“It’s an odd house.” Again, the shrug. “He likes it.”
“Well,” I said, and something struck me. “Then, while he is there, I am the mistress of this house?”
“Why would you be?”
I’d never met such a rude servant. But then, this wasn’t a normal household. I explained carefully to him, “Well, most houses have a master and a mistress. If the lord is unmarried, it’s a sister, or a daughter, most often, who takes over the duty. So it stands to reason—” Marcus continued to look at me patiently, waiting for me to begin making sense. It put me off. “It stands to reason that, as the duke’s niece, I would—In his absence I would be—”
“He left no instructions about that,” Marcus told me gravely. “I could ask him, if you like, but…”
He didn’t have to complete the thought. I had had quite enough of the Mad Duke’s notice already. “Well, then,” I said airily, looking around the huge front hall, “with no duties, I shall be a lady of leisure.”
“If you’re all right,” he said, “I’d better be getting back.”
Marcus did not bow as he left me. Only after he was gone did I realize that he had not seemed to notice the strangeness of my clothing, and that, while I was with him, neither had I.
I N MY BEAUTIFUL ROOM OVER THE RIVER, I SAT IN A delicate armchair working out just how miserable I could be. My visit to Artemisia’s had been a disappointment. But then, probably she hadn’t recognized me without my gown, and that terrible man with her had started being snide before I could explain. I’d just have to watch and wait for another chance. Artemisia had spoken last night of eternal friendship. Surely, once she knew what my uncle had done to me, my friend would help me to find some decent clothes and make sure I met decent people. I could not escape Tremontaine House entirely. I must do what I had to do to please the duke; after all, my family’s fortune depended on it. But surely I wasn’t meant to be a prisoner here!
I took a deep breath, and comforted myself opening a pretty box that contained beautifully ironed handkerchiefs. It wasn’t going to be so bad, was it? Alone in one of the loveliest houses in the city, with no Mad Duke popping out from behind doors to torment me. No onerous duties, no housework whatsoever, as far as I could tell. Stupid clothes and pointless lessons, of course. But Master Venturus hadn’t said anything about my killing people; he seemed to just want me to look nice with a sword. Like dance lessons; I could do that.
I looked in the charming gilded writing desk to see if it contained notepaper. There was none. I would have to tell Betty to get me some so that I could write to Artemisia, and to my mother. No, wait, that was in the bargain, too: no family letters for six months, and no visits, either. My brother Gregory had lodgings somewhere in the city, but he was not permitted anywhere near me. It was probably just as well. Gregory is very earnest, like our father; although he had been in the city for several months, the Mad Duke had never invited him to visit, and I could see why, now. Gregory believes in rules, so he would probably not try to sneak around and find me, even though my mother probably wished he would. I could write to her, anyway…but the thought of page after page of letters piling up unread over the weeks just made me feel worse.
How was she getting on without me? I worried. She was probably doing everything wrong, even though I’d left her a list—forgetting to air the winter linens, not keeping the tables waxed, letting the kitchen maids fight over the boot boy…. And who was going to comb her hair out so it didn’t hurt, and match her embroidery silks, and remind her to take her tonic?
The house was doubtless going to wrack and ruin in my absence, and here I was, a useless creature being asked to take up useless skills I wasn’t even any good at and never would be! And all for some mad whim of my mad uncle, who couldn’t even be bothered to say good-bye to me when he left me alone in a strange house.
My boots made a satisfying thump as I stomped downstairs to look for a library where there might be paper. Or maybe I could find a genealogy that would tell me all of my stupid uncle’s mysterious names, so I could impress him if ever I saw him again. At last I found it, a grand room laced floor to ceiling with more books than I’d ever seen in my life. They looked very dull: On the Causes of Nature, The Tyrant’s Dialogue, that sort of thing. Most of the bindings were chased and stamped with gold, making the outsides far more appealing than the insides. Lost in the wealth of volumes, at last I found a lavish book called Geographical Exotica and settled into a window seat to examine pictures and descriptions of distant places I only half-believed existed. In the margin of a page about the island of Kyros, someone had written, Where the honey comes from! The book said it was an island of thyme, in which the bees sang all day.