chapter VIII

J UST KNOWING ABOUT LUCIUS PERRY AND HIS LADYLOVE made life more enjoyable. Whenever the duke got highhanded with us, implying that we were young and what did we know? we had to bite the inside of our cheeks to keep from laughing over the things we knew now that he did not.

Marcus and I speculated endlessly on what we had witnessed. I thought the lady was very wise, knowing Perry’s proclivities, to refuse to yield to his advances, since clearly he’d lose interest the moment she did. Marcus, though, claimed she must be ignorant of his other lives, or she’d never let him in the door. His colorful theories included the possibility that the woman was really Perry’s sister, so a little kissing was all she would allow. “He’s steeped in vice,” he said; “why shouldn’t it run in the family?”

I pointed out stiffly that these things did not always run in families.

We should have been trying to find out who owned her house. It would have been fairly easy to go up to the door with a misdelivered message and use that as an excuse to grill the maid, or the neighbors’ maids…. We talked about it, but we never did anything. That wasn’t the game, really. It was more of a challenge to try and catch both Lucius and his lady out together, see what they would betray to our inquisitiveness. What did they mean to each other? What were they hiding, and why? We wanted the secrets of their hearts, something no one else had, something they would be reluctant to yield to anyone else. We would hold it for them, and keep it safe, our treasure, whole and unique. Besides, the maid had a walleye.

It is possible, though, that lurking in late winter gardens was bad for the health. A few days later, Marcus caught a serious cold. While Marcus was in bed, my uncle sent for me. The duke was in his study with his friend Flavia, the unmercifully homely woman he kept around so they could make fun of people and do mathematical puzzles or something—at least, that’s what they always seemed to be doing when I saw them together. Today they were constructing some kind of a model—a tower, or maybe a clock, I couldn’t quite tell, and I didn’t want to ask and be lectured. I was wearing my splendid new cloak, because the day was finally warm enough that I could sling it back by the tassel and not have to worry about puddles.

Flavia looked up at me when I came in and said, “I’ve got it: You could have a career on the stage.”

“As what?” my uncle asked. “She can’t memorize anything, none of us can. Dates of crowns and battles leave her hapless.”

“I know poetry,” I said, but they ignored me.

“Well,” Flavia told him, “in case you haven’t noticed, the demand for female swordfighters is pretty much limited to Tremontaine House and the theatre, where they are enjoying a certain vogue.”

“They can’t really fight,” he said crossly. “They just know a few moves, and they leap about showing their legs. Whereas Katherine is an excellent duelist—and always very modestly dressed,” he added primly.

“Three yards of silk velvet isn’t what I’d call modest,” she said, but I knew he meant I didn’t flash my legs around.

“Look,” said my uncle, “speaking of theatre, how would you like to see a play?”

“Me?” I squeaked.

“Why not? I’ve got a box at the Hart, you may as well use it. They’re playing this afternoon. You should go. Enjoy yourself.” I waited. As a benevolent uncle, he wasn’t very convincing. “And when it’s done, you might like to go backstage and meet one of the actresses.”

“The swordfighter?” Did he want me to give her a few tips? I’d die.

“No, the romantic lead. She’s called the Black Rose. I’ve got something I’d like you to give her.” He handed me a brocade pouch with something heavy slinking inside it. “It’s a gold chain,” he said, “and I’m trusting you not to run off with it. Just give it to her. She’ll know who it’s from, and what it means. But if anyone asks, it’s a tribute from you to her, in admiration of her fine performance.”

“Is she really that good?”

My uncle smiled creamily. “The best.”

“Dear one, cease the salacious thoughts and hand me that piece—no, the little one. Butterfingers.”

“Butterfingers, yourself.”

S O THAT WAS HOW I WENT TO THE THEATRE FOR THE first time. I would have thought it was a temple, with its painted columns and bright facade, but the banners proclaimed it the LEAPING HART THEATRE, HENRY STERLING, ACTOR/MANAGER. At the last minute the duke had realized that if the chain was not to be seen coming from him, I shouldn’t sit in his box. So he gave me money for a good seat in the stalls across from the stage, and money to tip the seatman, and more for snacks and incidentals. A girl in a lowcut bodice was selling nuts; I bought some but forgot to eat them, I was so excited to be there.

I felt a bit like an actress myself, in my gorgeous cloak and a new hat with a plume that Betty had produced at the last minute. The ticket-taker called me “sir,” and I didn’t bother to correct him; why not pass for a boy and enjoy the freedom of one? All things were permitted here, it seemed. I couldn’t wait to see the actress with the sword.

Candles were lit on the stage, although it was still broad daylight. There was a bed on it, a big one with curtains. There were also curtains at the windows at the back of the stage, which were very tall, and a dressing table and a carpet. It looked like a lady’s bedroom.

To the side of the stage, a consort started to play, and the audience quieted. Then a woman entered. There was a little sigh, because she was so very beautiful, deep bosomed and dark haired, gorgeously dressed in a rose-colored gown with many flounces, but her white throat was decked with simple pearls.

“No, thank you,” she said to someone we couldn’t see offstage, her maid, I guess. “I will put myself to bed.” Somebody chuckled and was shushed. The woman unclasped her cloak and laid it on a chair. She did it with such an air of sweet weariness that you somehow knew that she had been out late, and enjoyed herself, too, but was more than ready for the day to be over. Languidly she reached up to her hair, and pulled two pins out. A fall of dark tresses released itself down her back, like an animal let loose. She reached for the clasp at her throat. It was then, when we were admiring her private moment of grace and release, thinking it was only for us, that a man stepped out from behind one of her long bedroom curtains. He was devastatingly handsome and carried a sword. His voice, when he spoke, was warm and rich like poured chocolate—but it was not that which made me catch my breath.

“Lady Stella,” he said. “Allow me.”

I had to dig my nails into my palms to keep from squeaking out loud. As it was, I began moving my lips along with the lines. I knew them all, from the opening chapter of my favorite book.

Fabian snuffed the candles, one by one. On the dusky stage he drew Stella to him, and they disappeared together within the bedcurtains. A woman behind me squeaked happily. The curtains didn’t stir, but the consort began to play a slow and lovely air. When it was done, her maid came in and pulled back the draperies, first the high ones at the window, and then the bedcurtains.

Stella was revealed alone in the bed, her dark hair falling over her white ruffled nightdress. She rose and went to the window, and we saw that it was open a little, as though someone had left without quite closing it behind him. She turned and looked out over the audience, one hand stroking her hair.

“I was a girl before tonight. I am a woman now.”

It was the oddest feeling in the world, seeing something that had belonged so utterly to me alone being made to happen up on the stage with living people doing it, and others watching it. (I’d lent Marcus the book once. When I finally asked for it back he never said anything, so either he hadn’t liked it or he hadn’t bothered to read it.)

When they got to the fight in the clocktower between Mangrove and Fabian, the swords finally came out in earnest. Henry Sterling’s swordplay was not bad—he certainly had the flair and the spirit of Fabian—but whoever played Mangrove really knew what he was doing with his wrist. It was almost a surprise when he dropped his sword and fled in confusion.

Mangrove was all wrong, of course—too short, for one thing, because he’s supposed to be much taller than Fabian, and Henry Sterling was a truly magnificent Fabian, especially when he tells Stella (wrongly) that he’s glad it’s Tyrian’s child because Mangrove is right and his own seed is cursed—but it must have been hard to find an actor taller than Sterling. And Mangrove should have had a mustache, because in the scene where he kisses Stella, she is repelled by it, but of course they left that out. The gorgeous actress playing Stella, who was surely the Black Rose, did a wonderful job of looking repelled just the same: she did a little thing with curling her fingers behind her back that meant she was filled with disgust, you could tell.

Tyrian. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Tyrian. You could tell it was a woman, if you looked hard and thought about it. But everyone onstage referred to her as “he” and treated her like a man, so you sort of had to go along with it. She did take big swaggering steps like a man, and held her head a certain way, and she had cut all her hair right off, so that it stood in fair little curls all over her head. Even in the book there is a certain softness to Tyrian, a gentleness that makes you like him and think it would not be so bad if Stella chose him over his friend. The actress was very good at that, the way she looked at Stella when Stella wasn’t looking, and the way she stepped back when Stella was thinking and all. Maybe they just couldn’t find a man to play Tyrian that well. She did look very dashing with her sword at her side; I could hardly wait to see her use it later.

Tyrian made his vow to Fabian, and the two of them left, and everyone applauded. I waited eagerly, but nothing happened. The stage was empty, the consort was playing, and the audience started talking and getting up. I worried that something had gone wrong, but no one else seemed concerned. Vendors came back selling bags of nuts and bunches of flowers. Some had little black silk rosettes and tiny silver swords for people to pin in their hats or on their sleeves as tokens of the two lead actresses to show which they liked best. The actress playing Tyrian was called Viola Fine. Her little sword appealed to me, but I thought I should buy a rose if I was going to see the Black Rose. In the end I did neither, but I did get a printed picture of the actor Henry Sterling in the role of Fabian, his arm raised to his brow in an attitude of anguish. They had colored ones, too, for more money, but I thought I could color it myself when I got home. I would ask my uncle to give me watercolors.

Then they blew trumpets, and we all found our seats again.

The second half wasn’t as good as the first, because they had to cut too much out, like Stella’s horse race and the terror of the hunting cats. Instead the actors made long speeches about love which were never in the book, and weren’t as good. I watched Tyrian more closely. Viola Fine was supposed to be an actual man, not a woman swordsman, but if you thought about it realistically, that’s what she was. Like me. Only not for real: my uncle was right, her swordplay was just for show. That huge disengage of hers would get her killed in a real fight. I wondered if she liked playing a man. When Viola Fine first went on the stage, had she chosen roles where she could stride about, her cloak swirling around her, or had she really been hoping to play Stella or someone with gorgeous gowns and luxurious curls and jewels that couldn’t have been real but glittered fantastically, and men saying they would die for her?

I was not the only person in the audience holding her breath when Tyrian approached Stella for the kiss. “You have done tonight,” she said, “what ten thousand men could not.”

“Now,” the Black Rose murmured low, but we could all hear it, somehow, “let me show you what one woman alone can do.”

She leaned towards Viola. Viola’s eyes closed languidly. The Black Rose came closer—and then her eyes opened wide, following the entrance of Mangrove’s minions on the roof (instead of the hunting cats).

It might be nice to be an actress, after all. I was a better swordsman than Viola Fine already, wasn’t I? Maybe someone would write a play just for me, one where a real woman could fight with her sword, and had many fine adventures and changes of costume. Maybe Henry Sterling would play a man who loves me madly but thinks I love only the sword, while really I am smoldering with passion for him. Or maybe Viola could play the hero, and I could play a woman who disguises herself as a man in order to get close to her and—what? We could have a terrific fight at the end, maybe, and kill each other, and the audience would be sobbing, the way they do at the end of the play when Tyrian cradles Stella’s head in his arms, rocking her and letting her think he’s Fabian, who’s already taken the potion, but Stella doesn’t know it.

I can make myself cry just thinking of it. And the way Viola rose to her feet, looking for someone to fight but there is no one left—there was such a look of desolation there. I wondered if she was lonely, too.

All around me, people were jumping to their feet and clapping and yelling and throwing things—flowers, nuts, handkerchiefs stained with kisses—and wiping their eyes, as well. A girl behind me said to her friend, “I’ve seen it eleven times now, and I always say I won’t cry, and then I do.”

“I know,” her friend said. “I keep wanting it to end differently, but it never does. Oh, there she is!”

The Black Rose swept back onstage, glowing with a tragic dignity. Her magnificent bosom swelled as she took a deep breath and bowed low to the crowd. The girl behind me started gasping, “I’ll die, I’ll die…Oh, just hold me! Isn’t she fine? I’ve written her a dozen letters, but she never answers.”

I thought smugly of the chain in my pocket that would gain me access to her dressing room.

But it turned out not to be that simple. There was a porter guarding the back door to the stage, and quite a few other people who were trying to get in, as well. Most of them had brought bunches of flowers, some very nice indeed. A couple of the biggest were carried by liveried servants, whose masters waited behind in their carriages, watching through the doors to see what transpired.

It was too late to go back for flowers, I thought; best get this over with. I shoved myself to the front of the crowd, right up against a woman with a necklace of silver swords strung around a turban on her head. She pulled away as though I had bitten her. “How dare you, fellow!”

“I’m sorry,” I stammered, horribly flustered, for if I had been a man it would of course have been unspeakable for me to brush up against a woman like that. “I’m not—It’s all right, really it is. I’m a lady—like Tyrian, I mean Viola.”

“Rea-ally?” She looked me up and down. “Is it a new fad?”

“I wish I had the legs for it,” said the well-dressed older woman next to her, who wore a black velvet neck ribbon with a silver sword depending from it. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Katherine.”

“Is that a real sword you’ve got?”

“Do you like swords, Katherine?”

The people behind us were pushing forward, so that the ladies were very nearly on top of me. They smelled of powder and expensive perfume. Their only blades may have been finger-length, but I fell back before them as if they carried real ones, and I defenseless.

I stepped on the porter’s toe. “Oi!” he said. “None of that here. What do you think you’re doing?”

I turned around and looked up into his solid face. “My name is Katherine Talbert. I’m here to see the Black Rose.”

“You and half the city,” he grumbled. “Listen, kiddo, nice try, but the part of Tyrian is already booked. You want to act, you come back another time. Master Sterling don’t see new actresses but on Tuesday mornings.”

“Oh, please,” I said. “I’ll only be a moment. I’ve just got to give her this—” and I held up the chain in its sack, letting him hear the chink of metal.

“Nice for her,” he said gruffly. An aggressive servant shoved a huge hothouse bouquet in his face—as the porter tried to defend against it, I reached for his hand, stuck a coin in it, and, with the slippery little sideways wriggle that always worked when I needed to grab something from the kitchen table when the cooks were all busy, slipped past him and through the back door of the theatre.

It was a different world: quiet and frantic, real and imaginary, all at once. It smelt of oil and wax and sweat and fresh wood shavings. There were raw beams and intricately painted canvases, yards of dusty air overhead and people appearing and disappearing below.

“I’m sick to death of it!” One of Fabian’s friends strode past me with another, still wearing the top half of his costume. “He does it every time, on purpose, just to make me look cheap.”

“Of course he does, my dear; you threaten him.”

Against the wall I recognized props from scenes in the play: Stella’s bedroom candelabra, Mangrove’s velvet chair, the trunk from the sea voyage and halberds from the guards. A workman held one in his hand, shouting, “You’re mad if you think I can make another horse before tomorrow! What do I look like, a brood mare? Just nail the damned thing back together, and tell him I’m working on it!”

“Excuse me.” I tugged at his sleeve. “I’ve come to see the Black Rose.”

He nodded at a door across the way. “In there.” He raised the halberd again. “And tell them to be careful next time! It’s not a real horse!

The door was not fully closed. I stood for a moment, trying to breathe normally, to get the feel for where I was and what I was doing.

I heard a woman’s voice inside. “God, you are the biggest tease in the world. I’ll have that kiss now, Rose, if you please.”

There was a low, throaty chuckle. I recognized it from Stella’s ball scene. “Why not? You worked hard for it.”

Stiff cloth rustled. Someone hummed. Then the voice that was not Rose’s spoke a line from the play, mockingly, romantically: “I was a girl before tonight.

I put my head very carefully inside the door. A black head and a fair one with short, close-cropped curls were pressed together.

It was the missing kiss from The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death, the kiss Tyrian wanted but never got. Stella was giving it to Tyrian now, at last, as I watched them. I lifted my fingers to my own mouth, barely breathing. Viola was still wearing her costume; the Black Rose had changed into a loose gown over her chemise. Viola’s fingers were pressed into the Rose’s hair, pulling her head even closer. She moaned softly, and I think I did, too.

I felt a strange glowing in my body, right at the fork of my breeches. It was like nothing on earth I’d ever felt before, and it was right there where a man keeps his tool. Oh, dear god. Heat and cold touched me all at once. Was all this dressing up and swordfighting turning me into a man? Had it happened to the actress already, with her sword and her breeches and her cropped hair? No one had warned me. What could I do? I would die, I would die if I was growing one. Slowly, cautiously, I put my hand down there to see. I didn’t feel anything through my breeches that hadn’t been there before. I squeezed a little harder to be sure, and caught my breath at the sense that shot through me. It was indescribably, undeniably good. Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter what was down there. So what if I was growing one? Men never complained of it, did they? In fact, if this was the pleasure they were always crowing about, I wasn’t sure I didn’t want one after all. I thought of Marcus. He had one, too, didn’t he? He could show me how to use it. I wouldn’t mind if he did. I squeezed a little harder.

My eyes were closed. I saw Tyrian kissing the Black Rose, and Viola kissing Stella. I thought about curling up in bed with my curtains drawn and reading the book again, but this time seeing the two of them kissing, kissing, kissing after the play was over and the real story began.

I squeezed harder still, and then I didn’t think anything at all except how I wished what was happening wouldn’t stop, only it did, rather suddenly, and I had to put my hand on the doorpost. The kiss had finished; they were looking into each other’s eyes.

“You’re a girl still,” the Black Rose told her. “Don’t let that sword deceive you.”

Viola laughed huskily. “Thanks for nothing. I know exactly what it’s good for.”

“Be careful,” Rose said. “Don’t let it go to your head. They come on strong, but they can leave you with nothing.”

“Speak for yourself, sweetness.” Viola straightened her jacket. “I know how to handle them.”

Rose shook her head. “You really don’t mind, do you?”

“Mind what?”

“The way they want you to be him for them.”

“Why not? I love acting. Don’t you?”

“In a well-crafted play, of course. But I don’t do private theatricals.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing.” As she turned to the door, I gathered myself together and knocked. “Adoring Public, Rose!” Viola cried jauntily as she passed me.

My face was still flushed, my breathing shallow. “Come in!” the Black Rose sang out melodiously, but when she saw me in my boy’s clothes she said, “Oh, dear.”

“It’s not what you think,” I said. “I’m real.”

She said, “Oh,” and then she said, “Oh,” again, in a different tone. “I know. You’re the duke’s girl.”

“He sent you this.” I fumbled the brocade pouch out of my pocket with my sweaty hand, and held it out to her. I couldn’t meet her eyes.

The Black Rose was very tall. She looked at me, and then she went and closed the door, and came back and sat down. She took the chain out. It was heavy, made of several links braided together, and very long.

“That’s worth a lot,” she said. She bent her neck and pulled her hair up out of the way. “Would you like to put it on me?”

She must have known my face would be in her hair. She smelled like nothing else on earth. I kissed her hair, and put my hand on her white hand that held it above her neck. She turned, and tilted her head up to me, and I kissed her on the lips.

Her lips were very soft and warm and full. I felt them curve in a smile under mine. I couldn’t help smiling back.

“I see,” she said. She lowered her hair and turned around, and reached up and kissed me again, a mother’s kiss. “What’s your name, sweetness?”

“Katherine. Katherine Talbert.”

“Well, Katherine Talbert, thank you for the gift.”

“It’s from my—”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Oh.” I felt my face color up, but I stood my ground. She must have liked the kiss, after all. I was sure I’d done it all wrong.

She weighed a length of chain in her hand. “He’s a kind man, your uncle. Thoughtful. Please tell him—since we are alone here—please tell him that I will have something for him soon.”

I said, “He likes other men, you know.”

“So do I.” The Black Rose smiled. She reached up her hand again and pushed back my hair. “You’re a pretty girl, Katherine. Did you like the play?”

“Yes. Very much.”

“Come again, then. I’ll do better next time on the ‘I am a woman’ speech. I don’t think I quite nailed it tonight. Though the bit with Mangrove on the stairs went rather well, I thought….” There was a sharp knock on the door. “My dresser,” she told me. “You’d better go before the hordes descend.”

I went out the door. I felt as if I had no body, I was so light. It was not an entirely pleasant feeling; I had gotten used to knowing exactly where I was. I leaned against the wall and watched as the dresser opened the door to some well-dressed men with flowers. I heard the actress crowing, “My dear! It’s been ages! What hole have you been hiding in?”

I left the theatre. I walked for a long time, and not home to Riverside. When I stopped, I was standing in front of the house of the china painter, Lucius Perry’s mistress. The last time we were there, I had wanted to leave when they started kissing on the couch. But now I wished that I could see it, very much. I wanted to bang on her door until she came out with brushes in her hair, and make her invite me in for tea so I could ask her whether she really liked it, and if she’d done it with anyone besides Lucius Perry, if she even had, and why? But I didn’t dare. I was wearing my best clothes; I could not go up over the wall, either. And if I did, all I’d probably see was her painting china, anyway.

T ERESA LAY ON THE COUCH IN HER STUDIO, AND CRIED and cried. She was pretty much done when Lucius came in, pink and disheveled from a quick nap in her room and a long night before that. He blinked at her and said, “I have to go. I’m expected at my cousins’ for a card party, and I’ve cried off too many times before.”

“Off you go, then,” Teresa said, but her voice sounded strange, even to her. She jammed the letter into her pocket.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing. Another bill, that’s all.”

“You’ve been crying.”

“Rubbing my eyes, that’s all. I got paint in them or something.”

“Do you need money?” He sat on the couch, on a shawl still damp and wrinkled from her weeping, and held out his hand to her, asking, “What is it, what’s the matter?”

She stared at the hand as if it might bite her. But she answered him. “It’s Roddy—my husband’s family, I mean. They send me these horrible letters. I shouldn’t read them, really, they’re always the same. It all comes down to the same stupid thing: they won’t return my dowry, what remains of it, anyway, because I left him. That’s all.”

There was a table between them, cluttered with art supplies. Still, he went down on his knees, self-consciously theatrical, and held out his arms to her.

“Marry me,” he said. “I know I’m not much of a prize, but I can offer you the protection of my name, and all the true devotion you can stand.”

She stared at him. “Oh, Lucius.” She was laughing, but the tears refused to stop. “Oh, Lucius, no. I can’t.”

“Am I too loose for you? I could reform, you know.”

“I don’t want you to reform. You’re even worse than I am. I like that.”

“Then marry me, and we’ll be bad together all the time.”

“I can’t.” He looked so silly down there. She was laughing; the tears were just left over, that’s all.

“Come on, Teresa, please?”

“I just can’t, that’s all. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t marry you.”

“Why not?”

“Because my husband’s still alive.”

He dropped his arms. From his knees, he looked up at her. “Your husband is dead.”

“No, he isn’t. I wish he were, but he is not.”

“You told me he was dead.”

“I never said so. I just let you think it.”

“And you think I didn’t inquire elsewhere? No one’s seen Roderick Trevelyn for years.”

She jammed her hand in her pocket. “Then how is he writing me letters?”

Her lover took the paper from her. She let him unfold it and watched him scan the words, his face wrinkling in disgust. “This is insane,” Lucius said. “It’s revolting. He doesn’t—this is insane.”

“Yes. They’ve got him nicely locked away, but he still writes.”

“Who lets him send them?”

“His family, of course. They won’t give me a divorce. They want me back.”

“For landsake, why?”

She wiped her eyes, took a breath. “To punish me, I suppose. I didn’t give them what they wanted. It got worse, after I left, they tell me. They say if I came back, he would get better.”

“No one who writes like this is going to get better. Why didn’t you try to divorce him before you left? There would have been witnesses, you could have—”

She seized the paper back from him. “Do you think I wanted witnesses?” she flared. “Do you think I wanted the world to know what he was doing to me? I had no family, no money of my own—do you think anyone would even have believed me if I’d taken my stories to court against my husband and all his family?”

He watched her blaze across the room, back and forth like a comet in its course.

“I’m sorry,” he said. She flew at him as if she would attack him, but he stood his ground, arms at his side, and she flung hers around him and clung to Lucius Perry for dear life.

I T WAS COLD IN THE SHADOW OF THE HOUSES. I FELT lightheaded; it was hours since I’d eaten anything. I reached in my pocket for the nuts I’d bought at the theatre, and ate them, and felt a little better. I unfolded the paper they came in. It was a playbill from the theatre.


THE SWORDSMAN WHOSE NAME WAS NOT DEATH,

A NEW DRAMA

BY A LADY OF QUALITY

NOW PLAYING

AT THE LEAPING HART THEATRE ON WEST BANK,

HENRY STERLING, ACTOR & MANAGER

WITH THE ADDITIONAL TALENTS OF

THE INCOMPARABLE BLACK ROSE,

THE FIERCE MASTER PINCUS FURY,

AND INTRODUCING

THE BOLD & DASHING YOUNG MISTRESS VIOLA FINE AND

DIVERSE OTHER TALENTS

CERTAIN TO ENRAPTURE & ENTERTAIN

A NEW DRAMA never before played before the PUBLIC!

UNLIMITED ENGAGEMENT OPEN TO THE VAGARIES OF PUBLIC TASTE.

IF YOU APPEAR, WE WILL PLAY!


“By a Lady of Quality.” Was it the same one who had written the novel? Maybe it was someone younger, someone who had read the book as a girl and loved it and wanted to see it on the stage. “A Lady of Quality”—that meant a noblewoman. Could it be someone I knew? Someone who had been to one of the duke’s parties? The duke’s ugly friend Flavia had been speaking of the theatre. She was clever, but I didn’t think she was noble. I tried to see her as the mysterious author, but I could barely imagine her reading the book, much less writing about it.

Did the Lady of Quality ever come to see her own play onstage? What did she think of the way the actors played their roles? And did she ever go backstage to visit them after?

T ERESA DREW A HARSH BREATH, AND THEN ANOTHER. HE let her try to find control in the safety of his arms.

“I understand,” he said. “It’s all right. It’s not your fault. You couldn’t know.”

“I didn’t know,” she whimpered like a child. “I really didn’t know. How could I? No one told me.”

She didn’t realize how tightly she held the letter in her hand. “Oh, Lucius, he was so beautiful once. He was like a young forest god, all dappled golden. It made it harder to believe what he was capable of. Even when I was all bloody and aching, I’d look at that face, that perfect face, and wonder if I could be mistaken, if somehow I really had done something so terrible that he was perfectly justified in what he did.

“But he never said he was sorry. That’s how I knew. The other girls—I knew women married to men who merely drank, or had bad tempers. They never tell you before the wedding—maybe your mother is supposed to know—but theirs must not have, and of course I didn’t have one. Afterwards, though, it all comes out. We’d sit together over our sewing and our chocolate, and one would flinch or try to hide a bruise…and so we knew. And sometimes, though not often, one or the other would say, It’s all my fault, I know it is. I should try harder. I make him angry. He cries, you know, he cries and tells me how sorry he is, and begs me not to make him so angry…. And she’d show us the jewel he’d bought her, to prove how much he really loved her after all.

“Roderick never said he was sorry. He would just look at me as if I weren’t really there, as if my weeping were some pointless annoyance. So maybe I was lucky; at least I knew the truth.” She laughed, an old, brittle echo of the drawing room. “I tried to kill him once.”

“Why didn’t you do it?” Lucius Perry asked harshly.

“I’m not sure.” Teresa walked away from him, across the room. If she was going to speak of these things, she did not want to be held or touched by anyone. “I stood over him with the poker while he slept in a chair by the fire. We’d both been reading there, very quiet and companionable, and Roddy fell asleep. I didn’t know, when he woke up, whether he would be—agreeable, or the other way. You never knew with him. I stood there with the poker, knowing I had only a few minutes and that I would have to beat his brains out. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to spoil his beauty, although I didn’t, really. It was just a—a ridiculous moment of clarity, when I realized that putting an end to his life would ruin mine; that it would be simple now and simple afterwards because it would all be over, but that wasn’t what I really wanted. I realized I had another choice, which was much less simple but much more attractive.”

She put her hand up against the windowpane, looking out at the empty winter garden. “I knew in that moment that I would leave, that it was only a matter of time. It made the waiting bearable as things got worse. I had it all thought out—what I would take, how I would get out—not where I would go, though; there didn’t seem to be anything more important than getting out the door, and I was afraid to tell anyone beforehand. So one day I went upstairs, put some things in a bag, and walked out the door and into a great many complications. But at least I had something I wanted. And I have it still.”

He stood waiting, listening.

“They never forgave me, the ones who stayed.” Her breath misted the glass. “Ladies who’d wept on my bosom, as I wept on theirs—girls I shared secrets with of how to layer powder so the bruises wouldn’t show. They are not the ones who buy my work, or send me flowers left over from their parties. They are the ones who castigate me loudly in public for leaving my poor husband when he needed me most. They are the women who won’t receive me in their houses, and turn their heads away when they see me on the street.”

“I won’t let them hurt you anymore.”

She shook her head, smiling mirthlessly. “Now you sound like one of my heroes. Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”

“Love me,” he insisted.

“I may. I probably do. But I’ve tried that word before, and those feelings, and look where it got me.”

“Abjuring love? Real people don’t do that. Now you’re the one who sounds like someone on a stage. That’s not the real world. Real people follow their hearts, wherever it takes them. Real people refuse to be put into a little tiny box. You can say you love me or you don’t love me, it doesn’t matter; I know you have forsworn nothing except an existence you found intolerable.”

She really did smile this time. “Now you’re making me sound like a heroine. Be honest, Lucius. For all that you go on about the real world with its real people, you don’t really want to live in it, either.”

“I like,” he said in a nobleman’s lazy drawl, “to have some choice of which world I inhabit, that’s all.”

“Yes. And so do I. Which is why I am perfectly content where I am, and as I am.” She went to the table, straightened some brushes there. “Really, I don’t know why I made such a scene. I must be spending too much time with the theatre. China is so much more restful. All those nice patterns. I’d better get back to it.”

“Well, then,” he said.

“Well, then.” She kissed him, long and hard. “And you have business of your own to attend to.” Teresa buttoned up his jacket. “Go to your card party. Come back when you can.”

I SAW HIM COME OUT THE DOOR IN A HOODED CLOAK, old-fashioned and concealing. But I knew who it was. Lord Lucius Perry walked off up the street, and I followed him. He was headed up toward the Hill, and never looked behind him.

The house he stopped at was one of the grand ones, guarded, with a wall. The gates were open, and the house was brightly lit. Not one of his secret visits, then. A party in a noble’s house. I thought about following him through the gates, trying to pass as a guest, and then I thought, What for? They wouldn’t want me. Nobody did. Alcuin had been right: I was a thing, a sword for folk to bet on, a toy for actresses to play with. Even the mysterious Lucius Perry, the duke’s pet, the Riverside prostitute, the painter’s secret visitor, even Lucius Perry had places he could go, where he could sit and talk and eat and drink like a normal person, but I was nothing.

I stood outside the gate, my velvet cloak drawn tight around me against the cold. It was getting dark. How was I going to get safely back to Riverside? I’d need to hire a torch. It was a long way, through a bad part of town, and I was tired.

“Out of the way, damn you!”

A chaise carried by two burly men nearly ran me down as they turned into the gate. My heart was pounding with shock and rage, now that they were gone by. But as they came out, I saw they bore no crest and might be for hire.

“Stop,” I said hoarsely. “Will you carry me to Riverside?”

“’S a long way. You want four men for that.”

“To the Bridge, then, will you do that?”

“Maybe. Cost you. Two in silver—and we’ll see your money, first.”

I dug in my pocket for the theatre change. Eight coppers and five minnows was all I had left. I remembered the weight of the gold chain I’d just carried, and suddenly I felt hot and angry. I wasn’t the duke’s messenger boy. If my uncle wanted me to do him favors, let him pay for them. The Duke Tremontaine didn’t think about these things? Well then, I would.

“To the duke’s house in Riverside,” I said. “The steward there will pay you—three silver.” He could afford it. “And if you won’t take it, I’ll find others who will.”

They were good chair men; it wasn’t too bumpy a ride. But even if it had been, I was too tired to mind much. I closed my eyes and saw the stage, the brightly costumed actors trying so hard to be Mangrove and Fabian, Tyrian and Stella for us all, and the men and women crowding around afterwards, with their little swords and roses. I didn’t want to think about the crop-haired, trousered Viola, but she was like a sore tooth I just had to poke at. Was I like her? Did I want to be?

The Black Rose had kissed her, and then kissed me. I thought of the way the actress’s hair had smelt, how soft it was under my hands, and I felt that warmth again at the cleft of my legs. It wasn’t quite as fierce this time, and I remembered that I had, in fact, felt something like it before.

When I was very small, my nurse had caught me sleeping with my blanket ruched up between my legs because it felt nice, the way swinging on a tree branch sometimes did. She said, “Don’t you be rubbing yourself there. Do you want to start growing a birdie, like your brothers’?”

When I asked her if she had rubbed their birdies to make them grow, she’d laughed so hard she could barely talk, and then she said, “Indeed I did; and when you’re married, you’ll rub your husband’s to make it grow, oh yes you will.”

When I was a little older, the cook’s daughter took me to help her feed the fowl in the yard and explained what the rooster was doing to the hens, and how I was to think nothing of it, for every creature on earth did the same. My mother said that wasn’t quite true, for men and women weren’t like the brute beasts; we had to be married first for it to work.

I’d never thought of all these things at once, never connected each story to the others, and as the chair bumped along, I unraveled and interwove them.

Of course I wasn’t growing a birdie now. I shook my head and snorted at my panic in the theatre. I wasn’t a baby. Women had pleasure down there. I just hadn’t known it could take you so suddenly like that, for no reason.

My grandmother—my mother’s mother, and the duke’s—had a special chapel in her house. It was because she was Reform, which seemed to mean she believed that everything wrong with the world was because the old kings had been especially evil and done things to displease the gods, and the nobles who overthrew them had been cleansing the land of impurities. She was very pious and always lit candles on the Feast of the Last King’s Fall, and told me about our heroic ancestor, who had killed him in a duel. She tried to get me to be Reform, too, but I was very young when she died, and I hadn’t met anyone Reform since then. I thought about the things she’d said that had not quite made sense, and realized that what she’d meant about the kings being so awful was not so much that the kings had not always been married, but that they had gone with other men.

No wonder my uncle wasn’t speaking to her when she died.

Was I really like him? Did it run in families, after all?

No. There was no way on earth I would ever take up with someone like the horrible Alcuin, let alone start getting drunk and inviting fifteen naked people into my bedroom. Not on this earth. I was not like that, and never would be. I pulled my cloak tight around me—and shivered at the memory that assailed me, the thing I’d almost managed to forget. Last Night, and the firelight at Highcombe, and the sense that my uncle belonged there, in that small room with me and the master. He belonged there as much as I did, because St Vier loved him the way the old kings were not supposed to love people, and whatever my uncle did with the others, he loved the man at Highcombe almost too much to bear.

Well, if I ever loved anyone that much, man or woman, I would never do what he did. I’d been happy at Highcombe; I knew where I was and what I was doing there. And the duke had come and ruined everything, and dragged me back here where I didn’t belong. He couldn’t stay at Highcombe with the person he loved best in the world, so I couldn’t either. He was a selfish crazy pig and I hated him utterly.

I cried then, because it was all so hopeless and I was so lonely and nothing and no one made any sense at all. This city was a terrible place. Look what had happened to Artemisia. When I first came to the city and met her, she had everything I thought I’d wanted, and look where she was now.

I wondered if she had seen the play, and what she would think of it, and what she would think of the Black Rose, and what she would think of me if she knew that Rose had kissed me. In her letters to me, Artemisia signed herself Lady Stella. Did she really think of me as Fabian, the peerless and righteous master swordsman? I was glad I had a sword to defend her; I liked being her champion. But what about the kiss that came after?

Would Artemisia kiss me, too, if I wanted her to? What if I killed Mangrove, and then stood over her and said, “Lady Stella, though your enemies sought your destruction, I have made them my own, and made them pay the price for it,” what then?

I would definitely kiss Lady Stella. I wasn’t sure about Artemisia, though. She was inclined to be a little silly, and not always reliable.

The chaise set down with a bump. I pulled back the curtain and found we were already at the Riverside house. I hadn’t even known we’d crossed the Bridge. The house’s torches were burning, and my friend Ralph was one of the guards at the door. I got out of the chaise as grandly as I could (considering my feet were so cold I could no longer feel them), gathering my cloak and my sword about me, and, “Ralph,” I said, “please see to it that these men are paid. Three silver, not a minnow more. Oh, and make sure they get something hot to drink. It was a long trip.”

I went inside the house. I felt as if I had been gone a hundred years, but it was just past dinnertime (the duke dined early and sometimes, when he got hungry, he dined twice). Betty was in the servants’ hall. I went and rousted her, and she took my hat and cloak up to my room with me.

“Feather’s ruined,” she said. “Good show, then, eh, my lady?”

“It was all right.”

“Never mind, we’ll get you another. Dinner’s past; I’ll bring you up a tray.”

“Take it to Marcus’s room, then; I want to go see how he is.”

“Sick is how he is,” Betty said firmly, “and Cora is nursing him. But I’ve been wanting to talk about that,” she continued ominously. My heart skipped a beat. Was Marcus sicker than we’d thought? Had his throat turned septic?

I grabbed Betty’s hand. “What? What is it?”

“Sit down,” she said, and I sat. “Don’t be in such a twitter, my lady. You know I’ve got some experience of the world…”

“What’s that to do with Marcus?”

“I’ve made some mistakes, we all have, and I don’t want to see you making the same ones.” She shook out my cloak, and started unbuttoning my jacket. “There, do you see?”

Not Marcus, then; only her usual rambling about her past. “I’m hungry, Betty; just get my dinner, will you?”

“You’re growing,” she said. “I’m going to have to start corseting you tighter. It’s a pity; I could push them up just so to make the most of what you’ve got…But it would ruin the line.”

“I don’t care about the line. Can I have my dressing gown? I want to go see Marcus.”

“Now that,” she said, “is what I’m talking about. You haven’t got a mother, and your uncle doesn’t care, but I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t be visiting that boy alone in his room, let alone half-dressed.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Anyhow, Cora’s there.”

“Cora’s there and he’s too sick to move. But what about afterwards, I ask you?”

“Afterwards what?”

My maid stood over me, shaking her head. “You may be the little innocent, but that boy never was—and he’s plenty old now to play the fool with you, my lady.”

For a moment I wanted to hit her. But then I looked at her red round little pudding face and remembered it was only Betty, after all.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Marcus is not like that, and neither am I. We talk, and we play shesh, and anyhow the duke keeps us too busy to get up to anything.” I felt a rush of warmth toward her. She might not be much, but she did care about me, in her way. And so did Marcus, of course. It was funny that, when I’d been so miserable in the chaise, I had forgotten all about him.