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January 27th, 1880
Your family is dead. This is to be expected.
From your study of adventuresses, explorers and naturalists, blessed few of them possess loving families. Possibly, postcards from your mum letting you know that our Arthur got engaged and to dress up warm in darkest Siberia quite ruined the atmosphere.
Nevertheless, it is troubling. There is a plague in the smoky city your family--mother, small brothers, nicked-eared cat--lives. Lived. Fortunately, the gray, cold, intimidating castle on the wild moors where your boarding school is located is far from the stench of malady. [1]
[1] This is a very common setting for boarding schools, on the basis that being cold Builds Character, roaming moors is Romantic, and dashing young men are few and far between.
This is what your Aunt Eunice informs you as she dabs her eyes with a silk hanky in a practiced motion. She is in black mourning with a wimple and veil. You are in the blue uniform of your school, with your prefect’s badge pinned eskew and a tea-stain on your skirt. This is not an ideal costume to be informed of the passing of the remainder of your family.
Of course, Aunt Eunice is not in mourning for your family, as her connection--your father, her much-younger brother--was lost at sea years ago. Aunt Eunice put on deep mourning for the death of her first husband, and has kept up the habit thirty years and four consecutive husbands later. [2]
[2] Uncharitable people often intimated that she hastened their passing. Braver uncharitables pointed out that Eunice looked well in black and had a knack for planning a good funeral.
The notion of your family’s death is filtering into consciousness in small, congealed chunks. It is unpleasant, like missing hundreds of stairs on a staircase and yet still expecting a stair to appear. The Christmas decorations are probably still up. The house is empty. Probably nobody remembered to set out the bottles for the milkman. You wonder what has become of the cat. [3] Your brothers will no longer shut him in the cedar cabinet.
[3] The cat’s name is Whiskers, a curious diminutive of his full name, Whiskey. Your mother disliked others believing that your family were souses.
Your head aches. You attempt the same practised dab with your hanky and fail miserably. You settle for blowing your nose loudly. As far as origin stories of heroines went, yours is not a pleasant one.
January 28th, 1880
Your Aunt Eunice stays for another few days as you get your mourning clothing made up. You are withdrawn from the school, or possibly you graduate. It is difficult to be sure. This is the type of institution where women usually graduate with an engagement ring, or else become teachers who are very friendly and affectionate with their roommates.
At any rate, sudden orphanage exempts you from classwork. Your Aunt Eunice would like you to take a position as a governess, the ideal employment for a young woman with a credible education and a trunk of dark clothing. You don’t mind children--they’re rather like pets that slowly learn how to walk and talk, and they molt less often than parrots--but you’re rather tired of gloomy castles and moors [4].
[4] The laws of narrative causality would cause you to be placed in a lonely gothic castle with deep secrets and a dark, inscrutable host. Seaside manor placements with cheerful couples were right out.
You’d maybe like to travel, you tell your Aunt Eunice, and she sighs. Your father was a traveller, a cartographer for a major tea trading company. [5] Before the shipwreck, he spent most of his time at sea or dreaming of sea. He told you many stories of the monsters--men or beast--that he saw on his travels, and you drew them for him. The walls of your childhood room were papered with crayon drawings of creatures morbid and strange. You always wore down your red crayons first.
[5] Your mother was always careful to say that he was not a sailor, as he drank but did not quaff and never swore on Sundays.
“It runs in the blood,” your Aunt says gloomily. She does not push. Aunt Eunice greatly believes in Women Who Look After Themselves, but she asks you to reconsider the lovely castle down the way, with it’s carved gargoyles and a melancholy owner with a taste for marzipan and a young ward needing a governess. You promise to take a few days to work out your future. You rather wish yourself in the past, instead, when your family was living.
January 29th, 1880
Miss Chambers’ Guide to Etiquette has a section for Young Ladies Who Regrettably Find Themselves Parentless [6].
[6] Actually, several sections, being 14. Orphan (Penniless), 17. Orphan (Commonplace), and 21. Orphan (Hidden Heir to Crown). You read 17, but skim 21, just to be safe.
It recommended several things. Firstly, hanging on to any token, jewelry or weapon that you might have inherited or received from a mysterious benefactor. At any rate, do not pawn them. Secondly, check with a small hand mirror and note any suspicious moles or birthmarks, especially those that are shaped like crowns. And thirdly, Miss Chambers suggests the establishment of a Proper Place in Society, whether as a governess or music teacher or naturalist and adventuress. You circle the last two words and check out every travel book in the small library of your school and settle down with a cup of tea.
January 30th, 1880
Your Aunt leaves, rather disappointed, but with a promise to tidy up your parents’ affairs. You would like to attend your family’s burials, but mother and brothers are buried in a mass grave with bundles of cleansing herbs with other plague victims. This is for the best, but it is still distressing. You wander the moors in a lost and desolate fashion for a time [7]. It is bracing, if a bit chilly.
[7] As recommended by Miss Chambers.
That evening you find yourself down to a singular book: a small white volume, quite stained and battered, detailing A Missionary’s Voyage to London.
You expect it to be quite dry.
January 31st, 1880
Your head is pounding. Your mind is racing! Your mouth is very dry.
You’ve been reading all night, not stopping even when dawn peeked over the horizon. You haven’t even stopped for tea! Your cup is quite cold.
What wonders! Men with the faces of cod, an embassy of hell, an endless sea in an endless night in a endless cave beneath the earth. You are horrified. You are awestruck.
You would very much like to go.
February 3rd, 1880
Your bags are packed. You’ve said goodbye to your schoolfellows. The schoolmistresses are sad to see you go, if a bit relieved. You might have grown out of your childish habit of asking endless questions, but they have not forgotten it.
Your questions are still endless. Now you seek answers. Mistress Hephzibah, who runs the library with an iron pen, presses a blank book upon you. If you fill it, you are to send it back to the library, to increase its’ collection. You are grateful.
You step into the stagecoach with your heart full of purpose.
February 7th, 1880
Four very bumpy days later, you exit the stagecoach at the town of ---ton. It is a dismal scene this time of year, but your Aunt Eunice always said it was the nicest town she’d buried a husband in, so she’d settled there. Best of all, it has a train station, and the train to London passes through.
A tower like a vast rookery looms on the hills above the town. You wonder which girl is governess there in your stead.
It looks difficult to heat. You hope she has thick socks.
Your aunt receives you in her drawing room. Portraits of all five of her husbands peer down at you. They are very well painted, the type with the eyes that follow you not just around the room, but up the stairs and into the darkness of your bed. They all wear the same expression of distinguished agony. Aunt Eunice had a gift for picking them out.
Your Aunt is quietly dismayed at your decision to travel to London. She wished it were somewhere more genteel, like Indian leper colonies or the tombs of Egypt. Egyptology, she informs you, is a fine place to meet a man, and very warm, too. [8] You promise to write.
[8] Certainly you would never lack for firewood.
She hands you some of your parents’ things--your mother’s sketchbooks and your father’s battered sea-journals. Your throat hurts rather a lot, and no amount of tea can soothe it.
You rise. Your train to London leaves at noon. You aunt has a whispered conversation with her man-of-all-work. It seems she has one last surprise waiting. Her man comes back with a large wicker basket. It is heavy and warm. A small nicked-eared head rubs up against your hand through the wicker.
You hug your aunt as her man loads your trunk onto the wagon. She is the warmest of souls, the kindest of hearts. No rumor could tarnish her reputation. She was simply was misfortunate in her choices of spouse.
She slips something in your pocket as you climb aboard the wagon. You pull it out as the wagon rumbles down the lane. It’s a small glass bottle, stoppered and waxed, with the label:
For the Discerning: To Ease Their Way
WARNING:
Wash hands after handling.
You slip the bottle back into your pocket and wipe your hands very carefully on your skirt.
There are few people waiting for the train to London. The ticketmaster gives you a pitying look as you ask for a one-way ticket. It is well known that those who Fall are the lost, the bereft and the forsaken. You are none of those, you think. You think.
There is a very pretty woman in the ladies’ waiting area. She smiles when you come in. Her teeth are very sharp and her eyes are very bright. Whiskey yowls in his carrier.
“You will think differently of him, I think, when you arrive,” she says unexpectedly.
“Pardon?” you say, confused. She inclines her head at the cat-basket in your lap and gives you another small, sharp, inscrutable smile. Then she pulls out a small bound volume written in symbols you cannot understand and begins to read.
The train arrives in a hoarse whistle and cloud of acrid smoke. No time for puzzlement--you scoop up carpetbag and cat-basket and head for the rather dilapidated engine.
Soon you must fall asleep. Whiskey is as good a watch as any dog. There are few people in the ladies’ compartment. The pretty woman (deviless? Surely not.) is nowhere to be seen. There are small flickering oil-lamps now dangling from the ceiling on hooks, casting dim light and monstrous shadows on the walls. There are two women, in missionaries’ plain skirts. One is holding a book absently, as if she wasn’t really reading, the other is staring out the window into the hills, more absently still. At the other end of the compartment, an elderly woman with so many layers of colorful scarves as to be completely shapeless chomps on a cigar and shuffles a deck of cards as you’ve seen snake-trainers dance with snakes.
“Your fortune read, dearie?” she asks. You mutely shake your head. You’re here to seek your fortune. Shortcuts were unbecoming.
A woman with a cart comes in. She is selling simple things: apples, mulled wine [9].
[9] Though what the h--- were lu-umps?
“Last taste of real grapes,” she hisses, grinning with no teeth. “I hope you like mushrooms.” You buy an apple, feeling foolish--you’d have to watch your money until you could find a job in London! You eat the bread and cheese from the packet of sandwiches Aunt Eunice’s maid had slipped you and pass little pieces of ham to Whiskey through the wicker.
The train whistle blows and then you are swallowed by a tunnel. The whistle echos and resonates in your skull. The darkness outside has transformed from dim to velvety and complete. You can see your face reflected back. You look young. A wave of homesickness washes over you, but it is too late to back out now.
February 8th, 1880
The train makes several switchbacks through the night. The oil lamps dim, you fellow passengers fall asleep. There is a feeling of being adrift, like being in the middle of the sea. You wonder if your father had ever felt like this.
In what you assume is early morning, you wake up to a bath of orange light. Confused, you mistake it for sunrise, then you remember.
It is the gleam of candles, more than you’ve ever seen. This must be the station. The train stops.
The elderly woman grins at you as she steps off with surprising agility, sidestepping the doorman.
“Best of luck in the Neath, girlie,” she says. “For you’ve got eyes that aren’t likely to see true sun again.”
You try not to shiver. You do.
You set your carpetbag and Whiskey’s basket down for a second, a spare second to retrieve your trunk, but when you turn back, the basket’s empty.
“A cat, eh,” says the trunk check man. He seems caught between amusement and pity. “Never bovvered keeping cats. Awd gossips, they are. Donna worry about your beastie, no harm will come to him, for the Duchess doesn’t like it.” In the distance, there is a flash of tabby and amber eyes.
Whiskey winks at you, and is gone in a sea of legs.
The trunk check man whistles, and a fleet of rats in uniform pick up your trunk and deposit it on a hansom-cab, hitched to an elderly nag. You hope it won’t start talking or tap-dancing or otherwise behaving in a way you’re not used to. It’s rather tiring.
The lead rat looks at you, whiskers twitching, obviously expectant. You think for a moment then pull the uneaten apple from a pocket. In London's gold candlelight, it looks oddly gaudy, like a wax imitation. The rat sniffs it for a second and then gives you a sudden ratty grin. He flicks his tail and his fleet of rats are gone, like mercury rolling downhill.
The cabbie examines you carefully. She wears a faded uniform with the stripes of a lieutenant. She has a rat as well: a scruffy affair with a bayonet slung across his back. Or possibly, the rat has her. The seem to regard each other as partners. You ask to be taken to a boarding house of fair-to-middling repute. [10]
[10] Miss Chambers would have insisted on average-to-decent, but you are a woman of coarser nature.
You look around as you pull out of the station. It’s obviously in a more posh area of town, with with real cobbles in the street, real glass in the windows, and quite nearly real gilt in the gaslamps, which are being lit by terrifyingly acrobatic troupes of urchins. Your gaze does not go unnoticed by the cabbie, who watches you with amusement, or possibly suspicion. The gaslamps pick up the glow of sweat on her temples and hands, even though there’s a pervasive chill that settles into your bones.
The rat watches his cabbie, and twitches his whiskers. He shifts his bayonet, catching the glow, and too fast to see, there’s an answering gleam of knives from the cabbie.
“Run!” screams the rat, shrill and screeching in the still air. “She’s a Jack! She’s a Jack!”
There is general mayhem and horror as pedestrians react to this. You take the opportunity to tumble ungracefully out of the cab. There is rather a lot of blood and the gleam of knives. You would like to be far from it.
Two houses away, you duck into a quiet alley to catch your breath. You’ve no idea what just happened, but it seemed unpleasant.
The untrustworthy silence is shattered by the sound of a window, also shattering. Someone in dark clothing falls through. They shove a surprisingly heavy roll of velvet into your hands and round a corner. You catch a glint of a grin as they depart. A second later, footsteps round the corner and a constable hands you roughly into a wall.
February 9th, 1880
The velvet roll, as it turns out, contained the instruments needed to quietly break into a residence and to relieve the resident therein of his life. You cannot fathom how they work [11]. You wonder which is which. They are all very sharp and dangerous-looking.
[11] Which is far more terrifying than knowing.
The Jack is gone. Someone is dead. You were nearby, out-of-breath, holding murder weapons. Your situation is very difficult to explain.
February 15th, 1880
You are in gaol, or possibly prison. You wonder what the difference is.
You didn’t expect this. You expected excitement in the form of crowds, lights, and questionably sanitary street food. Possibly even murder, but in a well-bred way involving garottes or very sharp, thin knives. Though you could be on the lam, or even a fugitive, being committed was neither romantic nor elegant.
Miss Chambers, that formidable lady who was so knowledgeable in areas of dinner emergencies such as oversalted soups [12] or incidental poisonings [13] remained remarkably silent on the etiquette of imprisonment.
[12] Drop a raw, peeled potato into simmering soup, request that a footman break the pinky finger of your chef, remove potato.
[13] Remove victim and current course. Bring out finger bowls. Continue with next course.
No matter. You are an orphan and an adventuress, and a watchful and spirited young woman besides. This is the beginning, and far from the end.
February 20th, 1880
Whilst Escaping From Prison has never been a course taught at any boarding school of your knowledge [14], it is nevertheless a part of the main curriculum. You barely break a sweat. You land in a back alley in Veilgarden, blending in as part of a deeply ironic costume party where prison chic is the rage.
[15] It is taught at the Dark School for the Little Child, but you won't know this until later.
You wonder where you’d go. The cobbles are rather cold.
You’ve sat on a doorstep for twenty minutes, give or take, when a small tabby cat walks up. He spits a diamond necklace onto your lap. You remember it as a favor from a schoolgirl intimacy. Whiskey smiles a cat smile, only slightly tinged with malice.
“About time you got out,” he says in a voice laced with purrs. “It’s time you did something around here instead of lounging around your jail cell.”
“Thank you,” you say, touched. You are not quite so alone, after all. The cat formerly known as Whiskey says nothing, twitches his tail, and disappears into the night.
March 5th, 1880
You have a small apartment now, furnished with odds and ends from street corners, dumps, and the occasional petty theft. It only leaks when it rains and the whistle of wind through it is quite melodic, at nights. You are enjoying being a Free and Willful Woman very much, and have written to tell your aunt so, leaving out details of arrest, imprisonment, burglary and the fact that you don’t own a single black hanky. She would have a conniption.
During the day, you are a watcher, whatever that even entails. Lots of skulking, it turns out, and even occasional flim-flamming [15]. You are an exceptional flim-flammer.
[15] The act of speaking very quickly and making distracting hand gestures in order to draw the attention of the person you are speaking to from noticing, say, that you are stealing several of her teaspoons.
It’s a far cry from being a plain yet clever governess. Everything is alive in London! There are dangerous street-foods galore, though most of them are distressingly agaric. You like mushrooms in their place; ie: in a stew or even in pastry, for the adventurous, but mushroom wines and mushroom sausage take some getting used to. You can’t believe you ever worried that the Neath would feel small, or enclosed. The ceiling is so high that your eyes cannot believe it, which means it’s higher than the sky, which your eyes always know the height of. Occasionally there are stars. You try not to think over-hard about this.
There is a lot of religion. You were never religious Above, which is to say, you accepted God as something that exists, like lunch or Tuesday or the Parliament. Priests occasionally stopped by your school on their way to pilgrimage and would espouse complex opinions at congregation on Sundays, but in your heart-of-hearts you always believed that they’re rather overcomplicating things.
Down here, it’s a different matter. You see bandaged dead men and women wander the streets. Your egg-lady claims to have sold her soul for her wedding dress. [16] Your friend, the Loquacious Vicar, goes on tangents on the nature of soul that you nod at and sip tea through. Devils, impeccably dressed and charming, wander around smoky veilgarden pubs and do not drink. There is a train station. It goes to Hell. Wonder of wonders.
[16] She has a rather happy marriage--as her nine children will attest to--in spite, or possibly because, of this.
March 30th, 1880
You are helping a deviless who claims to have a spy in Hell. Religion, it turns out, is more politics than anything. You can’t help but be rather disappointed at this revelation. You’d expected more brimstone and smiting and Beasts with Seven Heads and Ten Horns [17].
[17] As a child, you’d always wondered how they divided those ten horns out among the seven heads.
The deviless shrugs. She’s drinking a whiskey sour and tapping her black nails against the bar. You think she paints them, but you’re not sure.
“I think if anyone could invent bureaucracy, it would be devils.”
You can’t argue with that.
April 3rd, 1880
Your sleep has become uneasy. This is fairly common in the Neath, as it turns out. Few things work in normal ways. Landanum is popular. You haven’t resorted to that yet, but a few nights of wine drags you down to sleep where you at least cannot remember your dreams. You buy a little goldfish that dances about his bowl.
Your deviless’ spy didn’t come through, but you’re earning quite the reputation as someone with good eyes and an ear to the ground [18]. You act as lookout for increasingly successful groups of thieves, who invite you drinking and share their haul. You have better rooms now, drafty as they are, but the view is unparalleled.
[18] Thankfully, a figure of speech, as doing that literally in London is a surefire way to develop interesting and medically impossible infections.
May 10th, 1880
You are at a rather nice party when you spot her. You are supposed to be gathering secrets to one faction of a revolutionary group at the behest of the other faction of a revolutionary group, though you’ve plans for a bidding war. You’ve been eyeing a new pair of boots. One leader of the revolutionary group is the son of rather wealthy parents, and therefore the party sees enough honey dealing, expensive liquors and adultery to merit several thick volumes of secrets. You note most of them, liberating a glass of Morelways 1872 from a passing waitress in the act.
Then you see her. You’d know that grin anywhere.
You make your way through the crush of people to the assassin who framed you for her crime. She is in a dark velvet dress that you can’t help but notice makes the most of her assets. You also can’t help but notice that the way the dress is cut allows her to hide any number of weapons upon her person. [19]
[19] Ruffles hide a multitude of sins, and not just those of the figure.
You catch her gaze. The dark-eyed assassin throws back her head and laughs.
“Come on,” she says, placing her flute on a table. “We’ll get out of here.” Her grip is surprisingly firm for her size, if not her profession.
“I was in prison, you know,” you say pleasantly as you stroll outside the revolutionary leader’s flat. No sense in offense when you don’t know your position. Besides, a small vial of poison you have on your person lends a certain sense of bravery. Or possibly it is the wine.
“And now, you are not,” remarks your companion. “I must say, you look better for it. Is it the air?”
You nod. The air was rather clean, so high up.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I wouldn't have let you languish forever. But you needed no rescuing, at any rate.” She smiles, with teeth. Your heart skips a beat.
“I’m not a forgiving person,” you try.
“Who said anything about forgiveness? I’ll buy you a drink, though. And I won’t kill you. Not tonight.”
May 25th, 1880
Her name is Lisbet. You are not in love with her.
She is small and sharp, like a stiletto. Sometimes she asks you to tell her all the ways you can kill her before she lets you kiss her, slipping off small pieces of clothing all the while. Sometimes she stays for breakfast, and you make her eggs on your little brazier because it is the only thing you can make, and you watch her walk around your apartment in her shift and you’re content.
You do things the way you always have. There are always more jewel-thefts to plan. There are always secrets to know, and that knowledge burns deep and smooth as the best liquor.
You climb Watchmaker’s Hill one day after the job to watch the lights go on all over town, and it’s better than the sunrise ever was.
June 5th, 1880
The warmth of the year has set in. Sleeping isn’t easier, but it helps to have someone with you, if only because it is far more interesting, even when your skin sticks to hers and there’s hair in your mouth.
You ask her if she feels any regret about her profession. She laughs at you.
“Why? They’ll come back,” she says. “They’ll always come back.”
“Where do they go?” you ask.
“I’ll show you,” she says. “If you want.” She tips a finger under your chin to pull you to her. It’s a bite of a kiss, and you lean into the pain and not away.
“Yes,” you say, after she pulls away. “Yes.”
You watch with a detached fascination as she pulls out her tools. You’ve learned what they do now, and she pulls out her favourite knife. You’re touched. You lie in her tub--no sense in bleeding all over clean sheets--and Lisbet kisses your eyelids.
“Are you sure?” she asks. She has never asked that of anyone.
“You owe me,” you remind her. “I don’t forgive easily.”
You don’t tell her you will come back to her, but she holds your hand as your blood seeps out and you become cold, and it is a promise, of sorts.
Time beyond time, place beyond place.
There is a boat. Momentarily, you are confused. You dislike boats. They make you ill, and one time your brother pushed you off into the sea off your father's dinghy.
Your brother is dead. Your father is dead.
You are dead.
Ah.
The Neath, it turns out, also had strong ideas about Narrative Causality. For example, it had to be a barge, and it had to be a dark beach of black sand, and the oarman smiled as if you were a good friend. Would it really have killed them for a sail? It seemed like a lot of work.
"I hope I don't have to play you in chess," you say to him. "I can't ever remember how to little horse ones move." The oarman inclined his head, as if bemused. He was probably tired of chess. The water seems dark and still.
"I have to get back. I don't suppose you'll play Gin Rummy?" Nobody on the boat has a decent deck of cards, anyway. A strange dearth in dead gamblers in this load.
You sigh. This is going to be a long trip.
June 25th, 1880
There is some white light, and you are alive. It is a few hours before daybreak in the Neath, the dim night glow welcome to your eyes. Being dead was rather tiresome. You stretch. Bones pop and crack. It is good to hear them.
There's rather a lot of jesting and festive noises outside [20]. It is midsummer, you realize. The longest day of the year, though in the Neath there are no days. People celebrate anyway. It is a holiday without the trappings of other holidays--no religious guilt or needless card-buying or celebrations of another year growing older. It is a simple feast of being alive.
[20] Vomiting, singing at loud volume, both simultaneously.
Well, you've had enough sleep for a few days, certainly. You grab a coat and go out to rejoin the land of the living.