[Version 0.9—by JASC]
[Version 1.5—proofread and formatted by braven]
HE sat before a window that stood slightly ajar and read by starlight. There had been a time when he’d preferred the warm light of day, but in the decades since the passing of his centenary, he’d become more inclined toward the cool illumination of the stars or even the moon. He studied the stars, of course, and one could hardly do that by daylight, but even so, he found the pale light so much more restful. Or perhaps he had just seen enough of the world.
Recently there had been a particular wandering star that he’d been observing nightly, using his improved telescope—an invention of Skye’s, ironically. This star had a strange halo about it and a fiery tail. Things even the ancients did not know.
But more than anything he felt its passing. Felt it pull on all the heavenly bodies and, in turn, the effect this had elsewhere. Here, in the house of Eldrich, for instance.
The mage marked his place with a feather and closed the ancient book with care, placing it on a small table. He rose and walked out onto the terrace, looking up at the heavens. Eldrich had been reading Lucklow’s treatise on augury—its practice and its perils. Especially its perils. The chapter on interpretation particularly fascinated him. Interpretation was the key, and it was the least certain aspect of the art.
The wandering star, for instance. It meant something—he was utterly sure of that—but try as he might, he could not understand what. And there was no one else whom he might ask.
“Do I feel lonely, being the last?” he asked the stars. He waited a moment and then decided that they could not reply. Only he knew . . . and would not say.
From beyond the garden wall he heard a wolf raise up its voice, the howl reverberating in his own breast. His familiar, off in the hills and wood, hunting as it must.
A spring night . . . still, awaiting the voices of the frogs and insects. Only the choral stars singing their ancient melodies.
He looked up and found the wandering star. “Perhaps we have roamed long enough,” he whispered.
Augury tempted him. He could feel it. Perhaps this time he would have a vision that was absolutely clear, and his course of action would be obvious. Obvious beyond all doubt.
“A fool’s hope,” he said aloud. Certainly he was too old for those.
The world was in motion. There was no doubt of that. Everyone poised to play their part, to make their sacrifice, if that was what was required. After all these many years he could not have a mistake. Not the smallest error.
Eldrich tilted back his head and gazed at the stars, wondering again if he had calculated correctly. If he could make an end of it soon.
It is, perhaps, less than true to say it all began in a brothel, but I found Samual Hayes hiding in such an establishment and this marked the turning point if not an actual beginning. How Samual Hayes had become misfortune’s whipping boy, I will never understand.
—The journal of Erasmus Flattery
Hayes thought it particularly appropriate that the streets of the poor lacked public lighting of any kind. One passed out of the light of the better areas into near darkness, only dull candlelight filtering through dirty panes and casting faint shimmering rectangles on the cobbles. At night one often saw dark feet and legs passing through these rectangles of light, or if the passerby walked closer to the window, one would see a silhouetted head and shoulders floating oddly above the street. Hayes had sat in his window often enough to mark this strange anatomical parade passing by—incomplete men and women flitting into existence before each dull little window, then ceasing to be, then coming to meager life again.
Paradise Street—he wondered if the man who named it had foreseen its future—lay near the boundary between the light and darkness, an area of perpetual twilight, perhaps. Almost a border town where few seemed to make their homes permanently. Most were on their way into darkness—a handful were moving toward the light. It was a place where a young man might end up if his family had sacrificed their fortune to foolishness and keeping up appearances, as was the case with Samual Hayes.
For him Paradise Street was also a place to hide from one’s creditors, as astonishing as that seemed to him—a young man who, for most of his life, had never given money a second thought.
He passed through a candlelit square of light and looked down at his hands. There he was, not gone yet. Still more or less substantial. Perhaps there was hope.
“His High and Mightiness is still among us, I see,” came an old man’s voice out of the shadows. Hayes stiffened, but walked on, feeling his resolve harden as well.
He would have thought his fall from grace into this world would have made him one of them, perhaps even engendered some sympathy, but for some few it made him an object of enormous disdain. How could anyone born to privilege have fallen so far as to land in Paradise Street? That is what they thought. Only a fool or a weakling could take such a fall. And there were moments when Hayes feared they were right. It made him all the more grateful for the kind treatment he received from some of his other neighbors.
As he came up to his rooming house, he realized that there were perhaps a dozen people gathered in the shadows across the street, but they were uncommonly quiet.
“Mr. Hayes!” said a woman who was one of the local busybodies. “There’s men taking your rooms apart. Look, sir.” She pointed up at his windows.
Shadows were moving in his room, though Hayes knew he’d left no lamp burning.
“Flames!” he heard himself say. He realized that everyone stood looking up, but no one made a move to interfere.
Someone laid a hand on his arm as he went to run for his door. It was an old soldier who lived down the street. “Them’s navy men, Mr. Hayes,” he said with distaste. “Mark my words. Navy men, whether they wear their fine uniforms or no. You’d be best to give them a wide berth, sir. That’s my advice, for what it’s worth.”
“Navy men?” Hayes’ rally to save his possessions was stopped short. “Agents of the Admiralty?” There was clearly some mistake.
“And they aren’t the only ones, Mr. Hayes,” the woman said. “When they arrived, they surprised others already in your rooms. Those’ns jumped out the window. My Tom saw ‘em, didn’t you, Tom?” she said to a boy who clutched her hand.
The boy nodded and took his fingers from his mouth. “They floated down, landin’ soft as pigeons, if you please. Soft as birdies.” The woman looked back to Hayes, as though awaiting an explanation.
“But who were they?” Hayes said, asking a question instead. “Robbers? I—I have so little to steal.”
“If they were robbers, Mr. Hayes, they were uncommonly well-dressed ones. ‘Gentlemen,’ Tom said, and the old blacksmith saw them, too. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said as well. I don’t know what you’ve been up to, Mr. Hayes, but there are men around asking after you—navy men. You’d best be on your way before someone turns you in for the few coins they’ll get. There are enough around that would do it, too, I’m sorry to say.”
“I’ll talk to them. There’s some explanation, I’m sure . . .”
The old soldier touched his arm again. “I’m sure you didn’t do whatever it was they think you done, sir, but you’d best go. When authorities come bustin’ down your door, they don’t want to hear no explanations. The gaol is no place for the likes of you, Mr. Hayes. Find the most well-placed friend you have, sir, and go to him. That’s your best hope—that and a good barrister. Be off now, before some’un turns you in, as Mrs. Osbourn said. Good luck to you, Mr. Hayes.”
A group of burly men appeared around the nearby corner and in the light from a window Hayes saw someone pointing toward him, and he was sure the men he was leading weren’t residents of Paradise Street.
Hayes slipped back into the shadow, making his way along the fronts of the buildings, hugging the wall. He pulled up the collar of his frock coat quickly to hide the white of his shirt and neckcloth. Fifty feet farther he broke into a lope, as quiet as he could, passing ghostlike through the rectangles of stained light.
He dodged down an alley, slowing now for lack of light, feeling his way, his heart pounding and his breath short, though he’d hardly run at all. Fear, he realized. I am running in fear from the authorities. This was how men disappeared into the darkness of the poor quarter.
There were shouts behind him and the sound of men running, then suddenly slowing. A lantern swung into the alley at his back, but it was too far away for the light to touch him.
In a hundred feet he came out into another street and turned left. His instinct was to head for the lighted streets—the safe streets—but the men chasing him were not cutthroats who kept to the dark, and in the streetlights he would be seen more easily.
But still he found himself gravitating that way, moth-like. It was the habit of a lifetime; a desire to escape, to not disappear entirely. He continued to hear the men shouting. Hayes pushed himself on, fighting to catch his breath, not even sure if they were still following him—afraid to look back.
He was heading toward Brinsley Park, and Spring Street—the beginning of the lighted boulevards. This is madness, he told himself. The darkness was his ally now. The place he thought constantly of escaping, and now it sheltered him. He should cling to it, wrap it around himself, for it was all that protected him.
But if he stayed here, in the twilight quarter, someone would give him away—for he would never be anything but an outsider, here. Not safe in the darkness or the light. Better the light, then. Too many disappeared in the darkness.
Hayes took the risk of pausing before he went out onto the lit street that bordered Brinsley Park. For a moment he stood listening to the sounds down the darkened alley he was about to leave. His pursuers were likely not far behind.
Almost more than hear, Hayes sensed noise down the street, not on top of him but too close. Composing himself, he stepped out onto the lamp-lit street, monitoring his pace so that he would not stand out, yet making the best time he could.
Couples walked at their leisure, especially on the street’s far side, which is where he wanted to be, as far from his tormentors as he could be. Weaving between carriages and tradesmen’s carts, Hayes strode quickly to the opposite side, realizing that this was a mistake—because of the size of the park there were no streets leading off from that side of the avenue for a distance equal to several blocks. More than anything, he needed to make as many turns as he could to confound his hunters, and now that wasn’t possible. They might think he’d scrambled over the iron fence into the park, keeping to darkness like any criminal would, but the fence was so high . . .
He pressed on, fighting the urge to look back—a man who appeared to have pursuers would be noticed, no question of that.
Men and women passed, arm in arm, chatting and laughing. A coach clattered by, a young man leaning out its window, toasting the passersby theatrically; his drunken companions laughed and as one of them tried to fill his glass, a crimson stream of wine splashed over the cobbles.
“Hayes?” someone called.
Hayes looked about wildly. Bloody blood and flames, someone was announcing his name to everyone on the avenue!
“Samual Hayes?” the voice came again; from the carriage, he realized. “Driver! Heave to, man.”
Slowing, the carriage veered toward the curb, frightening pedestrians, clearly not in perfect control. Hayes was not sure who had called to him, but he took one look back and made a dash for the still-moving carriage. As he approached, the driver set it off again, laughing inanely, for it was another young gentleman with the reins in hand. Hayes forced himself to sprint, and as the door swung open, he reached out and grabbed the carriage, feeling hands take hold of him and drag him in where he sprawled on the floor.
Half a dozen men his own age looked down at him, grinning. “Why, Samual Hayes,” one of them said, “have a drink,” and proceeded to pour wine all over Hayes’ face.
“Hume!” Hayes managed, almost choking. He pushed himself up, fending off the bottle.
The young gentlemen were laughing madly.
“Aye, have another drink, Hayes.” Hume began tilting another bottle toward Hayes, but he managed to push this one away, too.
“Flames, Hume, but you came just in time. I was being chased by footpads.”
“On Spring Street?” someone said, clearly certain he was joking.
“You’d have been better off with the footpads, I’ll wager,” someone laughed. “We’re celebrating Hume’s impending demise. Marriage, that is.”
Hayes struggled up into a crouch and stared out the rear window. He could see them now, a group of men at the run, but too far back to be distinguished. Too far back to catch them, that was certain.
“Blood and flames,” Hume said, twisting around to look out. “You were serious.”
“Let’s go back and give them what-for,” someone called out. “I’ve a rapier in here somewhere.”
“No!” Hayes said quickly. “Drive on.”
“Hah! Out of the frying pan into the fire, Hayesy. You’re with us now and our intent is far more wicked than any footpads. Driver,” the young man called “The brothel!”
“The brothel!”
“The brothel!” the others took up the cry, and the carriage careened off down the street, only the fragile common sense of horses keeping the gentlemen from disaster.
———«»———«»———«»———
The anemic light of coach lamps smeared across rain-oiled cobbles and lit the moving flanks of horses without having a noticeable effect on the overwhelming darkness. Avonel of an evening in early spring.
Erasmus Flattery stepped down from the hired coach and, with barely a nod, shook some coins out of his pocket for the driver. This was the address, he was sure. A doorman held an umbrella for him, interrupting a drizzle so fine it seemed more like a cool, falling dew, or the actual substance of darkness dribbling down from the heavens.
“Sir . . . ?” the doorman said expectantly, and Erasmus realized he was standing there as though unsure he would enter—like a young man who’d lost his nerve. In truth he had always avoided such places, though not on moral grounds. He was not a prude. But brothels were the haunts of foolish young men, and the old attempting to deny the truth of time. Either way it was a house of delusions, and, as such, repugnant to Erasmus. But then, Erasmus had come out of perverse curiosity.
Only the Marchioness of Wicklow could ever have brought off such an event, for who could refuse an invitation from Avonel’s principal hostess? Only a prude or a man who had much to hide, clearly. Any woman who did not attend would unquestionably be admitting that her husband frequented such establishments and that therefore she could not bear to even enter the place herself. No, the Marchioness had weighed things out with a kind of ruthless precision and cruel irony that Erasmus thought had to be admired. Of course, as a bachelor, he was in no danger here. His wife would not be watching, wondering if any of the matron’s comely employees seemed to treat him with just a bit too much familiarity.
So here gathered the cream of Avonel society, pretending to be engaged in something exciting, risqué, and watching each other like predators. Erasmus thought that the Marchioness had gone a long way to expose the truth of Avonel society this evening. He, for one, was almost certain he could smell the sweat.
Erasmus was escorted quickly up the short walk and into a well-lit lobby. Smiling young women relieved him of cloak and hat, gloves and cane.
“Lady Wicklow’s party,” he said, and one young woman turned to the matron who approached and, still smiling, repeated his disclaimer.
The matron was a cheerful-looking woman whose age could not be disguised behind even the layers of makeup she had applied. Erasmus thought that if you took away the makeup, she would look far more like the competent wife of a particularly boring, country squire than the proprietress of such an establishment. She should have been serving tea and exaggerating the accomplishments of her children.
“Mrs. Trocket at your service. And you are . . . ?” she asked as she curtsied, surprising Erasmus with a bright look of both intelligence and humor.
“Erasmus Flattery, ma’am.”
Her face changed as she heard the name, and though she held a list of guests, it was immediately forgotten. “Ah, Mr. Flattery. It is a great pleasure, I’m sure.”
She motioned for him to escort her, clearly pleased to have a member of such an important family visit her establishment. The name, Erasmus thought, did occasionally prove useful—when it wasn’t a curse.
“Well, you’ll find we’ve created a place of refined entertainments for the discerning gentlemen—and lady—for we do not cater to gentlemen alone. Not at all.”
All of the “ladies” Erasmus could see were clearly in the employ of the able Mrs. Trocket, and they smiled at him less than coyly as he passed. One blew him a kiss. They wore gowns that one would not see in most Avonel homes, that was certain, and several seemed to have forgotten their gowns and wore only the most exotic Entonne lingerie. He tried not to stare, but they really were the most fetching creatures. And they laughed with the gentlemen present, flirting in the most open manner. Erasmus thought suddenly that the place was a bit too warm.
The air was redolent with the smell of perfumes which did not quite mask a musky odor that pervaded the rooms. Erasmus did not have to wonder what that scent was, his body reacted to it of its own accord, and likely would have had he never encountered it before. Love had its own scent.
They passed into another room, not so different from the first, though perhaps not so well lit. Here musicians played, and the men had shed their coats or loosened neckcloths. The women seemed to have joined in the spirit, and were less encumbered by clothing as well. Some couples—or even threesomes—were dancing drunkenly, pressed close while others were locked in more passionate embraces, too drunk or too aroused to care that they were in public. On either end of a divan a naval officer sprawled, like tumbledown bookends, insensible with drink. So much for their evening with the ladies, Erasmus thought, though it would not likely stop them from boasting, all the same.
A woman put her hand on Erasmus’ arm as he passed, and she did it with such familiarity, meeting his eyes so calmly, that for a moment he thought he knew her, and he was sure he looked at her with the greatest surprise. Mrs. Trocket led him through the next door.
They entered a hallway with large rooms to either side, and through the open doors he could see that several “refined entertainments” were underway. He glimpsed near-naked dancers through one set of doors, and heard singing from another. A farce, played out in elaborate and outrageous costumes, was in progress in yet another room.
“We try to have something for everyone,” Mrs. Trocket said, noting his interest. “And things change often—nothing stale at Mrs. Trocket’s. Amusement with wit and charm, that is our goal. A bit too . . .” she used an Entonne word that did not have an exact Farr equivalent, though its meaning lay somewhere between “racy” and “fashionable.”
“. . . for many of the worthies of Avonel. But for a young man such as yourself . . .” She smiled knowingly.
Erasmus was thirty—not so young by the standards of Farrland—and was, despite his name, no longer easy prey to flattery.
Up a broad flight of stairs and finally into the most eccentric library Erasmus had ever seen. It belonged in an ancient abbey or college for studies in the arcane. The room was polished oak from the floor to the very top of the shelves—some two stories up—and was all nooks and alcoves and stairways and carrels. Balconies were suspended precariously overhead, backed by cliffs of books. Sliding ladders, at odd angles to everything else, ran up to bronze railings.
People stood on these ladders, surveying the crowd or holding forth to groups who gathered about their feet.
Erasmus realized that Mrs. Trocket had left him alone. Perhaps she had even bid him farewell.
The room was crowded with people, and there was such a hum of conversation that he thought of his beehives in far-off Locfal. It was, to Erasmus’ eye, a typical gathering of the educated classes of Avonel, though to one well-versed in such things, it might have been a more fashionable group than was common. Erasmus did not much care for such distinctions.
He noticed that everyone seemed a bit more animated than usual, as though they were trying to hide their discomfort, or perhaps they were merely thrilled to find themselves in such a place, for certainly none of the ladies had been in a brothel before. Many of the men looked distinctly uncomfortable, and Erasmus was sure it wasn’t because this was their first visit—but they had unquestionably never been here in the company of their wives. They were likely terrified that some young woman was going to recognize them, though Erasmus knew that the able Mrs. Trocket would have advised her young ladies beforehand. Still, it was good sport to watch the husbands shying like nervous foals.
Scattered among the people attending the party were both servants and working girls and they talked and laughed with the guests and plied them with spirits and delicacies. The atmosphere here, in the center of the Marchioness’ circle, was less bawdy and brazen than Erasmus had seen in the other chambers. Passions were well under control where one’s reputation could actually suffer some damage. After all, the usual code—that one did not speak of who or what one saw in a brothel—would not be in effect this night. People would likely talk of nothing else for days.
Erasmus began searching the room for familiar faces, and though there were many that he knew by sight, he couldn’t find anyone he thought might offer interesting conversation, and he saw several he knew for a fact had never said an intriguing thing in their lives. He thought the rather intense-looking man across the room seemed vaguely familiar, and then realized that it was his own face in a looking glass, and this made him laugh.
Well, he certainly won’t have anything to say that I haven’t heard before, Erasmus thought.
He backed up against the wall of books, and thinking he would keep people at bay if he were engaged in some activity, he took a volume from the shelf and opened it. In two lines he realized that it was erotic fiction, and returned it to the shelf. What pleasure could such an activity provide if one could indulge it openly? All the books he could see were of the same variety, so he turned back to the gathering.
“Isn’t it divinely wicked?” a young woman said to him, and he realized he was looking at a daughter of the Shackleton family, though his memory would not cooperate by supplying a name. She waved a glass of wine expansively, the look of drunken delight not varying measurably. “Only the marchioness would dare such an evening.” She looked at him suddenly, her manner inquisitive if a little unfocused. “Don’t I know you?”
“Erasmus Flattery,” he said, and watched her expression change from drunken delight.
“Really?” she managed, remaining fairly collected. “You’ve been to our home, I think.”
Erasmus nodded.
“I so wanted to ask if the rumors were true, but I was too shy, and my mother warned me to mind my manners. But tonight I’ve had enough wine . . . Is it true you served Eldrich?”
He shook his head. “Vicious rumor. I once visited a school chum at Lord Eldrich’s home—he was a great-nephew or some such thing. But it was all very ordinary, and the legendary Eldrich never appeared. Not even to my school chum, if he’s to be believed.”
“Too bad,” she said, her look of delight fading a little more. “Too many good stories end up that way. The truth is a bit of a bore, isn’t it?”
Erasmus shrugged.
“Well, that’s what I’ve found anyway,” she said resignedly, placed a hand on his chest rather clumsily, then backed away into the crowd, waving theatrically, as though she had lost all capacity for the unselfconscious gesture.
Dora, Erasmus thought as he watched her disappear into the crowd. Dora Shackleton, although “Simpleton” might be more appropriate.
Nearby a gathering of people swayed and bobbed, all trying to view the object of interest that lay at the very center of this movement. Drawn by what force Erasmus did not know—perhaps merely because the audience was almost entirely young ladies—he found himself looking over the heads of the watchers. Heads of lustrous swaying hair that fell to bare shoulders and beyond.
“But you see she is completely relaxed,” a man was saying. “In fact, she will wake from this refreshed, as though she had slept the night through and experienced only the sweetest of dreams.”
The man bent over a young woman seated in a chair. He sported both an ostentatious mustache and a monocle and looked too much like a player on the stage—the foreign count whom no one trusted, despite his charm. He laid a hand on the young woman’s shoulder, but she did not stir, and kept her eyes closed. Indeed, she seemed to be asleep sitting up.
“But what will she do?” a woman asked, a little embarrassed by her question.
“Or not do,” another added, and they all giggled at her boldness.
“Clara will do nothing in her present state that she would find objectionable while awake. She is mesmerized, but her morals are perfectly awake, let me assure you.”
“Can you cure illnesses, then?” someone asked. “Some make such a claim.”
“Some illnesses, yes. I have had encouraging results treating nervous dyspepsia, insomnia, dropsy, and brain fevers, to name but a few. Consumption, I regret to say, it will not affect, though it will take away some discomfort from the consumptive patient. Irrational fears I have treated with great success. Recurrent nightmares I have solved utterly.”
“Can people really remember back to their very childhood, Doctor? To their birth, even?”
“I have seen long-lost memories surface, often, but I cannot claim perfect success. I treated the great Lord Skye, who as you know can remember nothing that took place before his childhood accident, but we were unable to recover his past. It is lost, I believe. Lost when he suffered his terrible injury.”
“But his intellect was not affected . . . ?”
“Only his speech, slightly. But otherwise we do not know. Perhaps if he had not suffered his tragedy, he would have shown even greater genius. But what is a memory? Can it be weighed or measured? If one is forgotten, does the brain weight less? How is it that we hold so many in our minds? And where are they kept?” He looked around at the gathering as though expecting answers, but when none were forthcoming, he continued. “There are those who claim the mind and the brain are not one and the same, but clearly when the brain is injured, so also is the mind. Thus Skye lost his memories—as though they were destroyed when his brain was damaged. But in an undamaged brain I believe the memories are never truly lost, but only misplaced. Memories of every event and smell and taste and emotion, all there, like perfect novels in infinite numbers. The novels of our lives. It is one of the mysteries that empiricism has yet to explain.” He turned to the sleeping woman. “But let us see what Clara can remember. Perhaps she has some memories long forgotten. Clara? I want you to turn your mind to your childhood . . . Your very earliest memory.”
Erasmus drifted away. He had seen such displays before. Fascinating the first time or two, but largely quackery, he thought. This man had made more modest claims than most, who were milking the ignorant for their hard-earned coin with promises to cure all manner of illness and deformity, and much more. Which only made this man slightly less of a charlatan.
But what is memory?
Perhaps not an entirely foolish question, Erasmus thought, but he was more interested in knowing why one could not forget. Or how one could forget. For that he would hand over his own money, and gladly.
A young woman offered him a glass of champagne. She was wearing nothing but lingerie of black lace, sheer black stockings, and an astonishing tumble of dark curls.
“You look, sir, as though you might require some help erasing that troubled expression from your brow,” she said in a lovely warm voice. Erasmus was us...
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