A Pretty Mouth (13 page)

Basil clutched the fetish and nodded his deep thanks, too moved by Mr. Villein’s words to notice the agitated tone in which the last sentiment was expressed. That he was the embodiment of a deity came as little surprise to Basil—from an early age, he had sensed he was destined for greatness—but he found it curious that Mr. Villein should have failed to tell him this until now.

The ivory figurine occupied his thoughts all during the day, and late that same night, after a few hours spent in his sister’s chambers, during which time they successfully collaborated on a matter of urgent business, Basil unwrapped the icon and touched it with his fingertips. To his great frustration, nothing at all happened, not even after he held it in his palm for a full quarter of an hour. Bitterly disappointed, Basil went unhappily to bed, only to experience strange dreams during the night.

He saw a city of grand marble edifices, fathoms below the surface of the sea and immemorially ancient, and he saw that it was peopled by a shining dolphin-headed race, whose only profession seemed to be conducting the hierophantic rites of a radiant god. He walked unseen among those people, and touched with his hands the columns of the temple which housed the god, carved richly with scenes of worship. A voice called to him over and over in the language he had known since his birth, and he walked into the interior of the fane to see the god for himself, only to realize the face was already known to him, for it was the exact likeness of the ivory idol! Then the eyes of the god, though wrought of a glowing stone, seemed to turn in their sockets and meet his gaze, and with that look Basil understood many things beyond human comprehension that both terrified and delighted him.

The future Lord Calipash awoke the next morning bleary-eyed and stupid, to the alarm of both his sister and mother. He was irritable and shrewish when interrogated as to the nature of his indisposition, and his condition did not improve the following day, nor the following, for his sleep was every night disturbed by his seeking that which called to him. He would not speak to any body of his troubles, and when his ill humor still persisted after a week, Rosemary and Lady Calipash agreed on the prudence of summoning the doctor to attend the future Lord. Basil, however, turned away the physician, claiming that he was merely tired, and, annoyed, left to take a long walk in the woods that comprised a large part of the Calipash estate.

Let it be noted here that it was Mr. Villein who suggested that Basil’s room be searched in his absence. There, to the family’s collective horror, a ball of opium and a pipe were discovered among Basil’s personal effects. The doctor was quite alarmed by this, for, he said, while tincture of opium is a well-regarded remedy, smoking it in its raw state was a foul practice only undertaken by degenerates and Orientals, and so it was decided that Basil should be confined to his room for as long as it took to rid him of the habit. Upon the lad’s return there was a sort of ambush, comprised of stern words from the doctor, disappointed head-shakes from Mr. Villein, tears from Lady Calipash, and, for Rosemary’s part, anger (she was, frankly, rather hurt that he hadn’t invited her to partake of the drug). Basil insisted he had no knowledge of how the paraphernalia came to be in his room, but no rational person would much heed the ravings of an opium-addict, and so he was locked in and all his meals were sent up to his room.

A week later Basil was not to be found within his chambers, and a note in his own hand lay upon his unmade bed. His maid found it, but, being illiterate, she gave it over to Lady Calipash while the lady and her daughter were just sitting down to table. Scanning the missive brought on such a fit of histrionics in Lady Calipash that Mr. Villein came down to see what was the matter. He could not get any sense out of the Lady, and Rosemary had quit the breakfasting room before he even arrived, too private a creature to show anyone the depth of her distress, so Mr. Villein snatched the letter away from the wailing Lady Calipash and read it himself. He was as alarmed by its contents as she, for it said only that Basil had found his confinement intolerable, and had left home to seek his fortune apart from those who would keep him imprisoned.

The author has heard it said that certain birds, like the canary or the nightingale, cannot sing without their mate, and suffer a decline when isolated. Similarly, upon Basil’s unexpected flight from Calipash Manor, did Rosemary enter a period of great melancholy, where no one and nothing could lift her spirits. She could not account for Basil’s behavior—not his moodiness, nor his failure to take her with him—and so she believed him cross with her for her part in his quarantine, or, worse still, indifferent to her entirely. Seasons passed without her smiling over the misfortunes of others or raising up a single spirit of the damned to haunt the living, and so, upon the year’s anniversary of Basil’s absence, Mr. Villein sat down with Lady Calipash and made a proposal.

“My lady,” he said, “Rosemary has grown to a pretty age, and I believe her state of mind would be much improved by matrimony and, God willing, motherhood. To this end, I appeal to you to allow me to marry her, whereupon I shall endeavor to provide for her as the most doting of husbands.”

Lady Calipash was at first disturbed by this request, as she had long assumed that Mr. Villein’s affections were settled upon her and not her daughter, but when Mr. Villein mentioned offhandedly that, with Basil absent, he was the only known male heir to the Calipash estate, and should he marry outside the family, neither Lady Calipash nor Rosemary would have any claim to the land or money beyond their annuities, the Lady found it prudent to accept Mr. Villein’s suit on Rosemary’s behalf.

Mr. Villein expected, and, (it must be admitted) rather ghoulishly anticipated Rosemary’s disinclination to form such an alliance, but to the surprise of all, she accepted her fate with a degree of insouciance that might have worried a mother less invested in her own continued state of affluence. Without a single flicker of interest Rosemary agreed to the union, took the requisite journey into town to buy her wedding clothes, said her vows, and laid down upon the marriage bed in order that Mr. Villein could defile her body with all manner of terrible perversions, a description of which will not be found in these pages, lest it inspire others to sink to such depths. The author will only say that Rosemary found herself subjected to iterations of Mr. Villein’s profane attentions every night thereafter. If any good came out of these acts of wickedness performed upon her person, it was that it roused her out of her dysthymia and inspired her to once again care about her situation.

Not unexpectedly, Rosemary’s emotional rejuvenation compelled her to journey down paths more corrupt than any the Twins had yet trod. Her nightly, nightmarish trysts with Mr. Villein had driven her slightly mad, as well as made her violently aware that not all lovers are interested in their partner’s pleasure. Remembering with fondness those occasions when her brother had conjured up from the depths of her body all manner of rapturous sensations, in her deep misery Rosemary concocted a theory drawn as much from her own experience as from the works of the ancient physician Galen of Pergamon. As she accurately recalled, Galen had claimed that male and female reproductive systems are perfect inversions of one another, and thus, she deduced, the ecstasy she felt whilst coupling with her brother was likely due to their being twins and the mirror-image of one another.

To once again achieve satisfactory companionship Rosemary therefore resolved upon creating a companion for herself out of the remains housed in the Calipash family crypt. By means of the necromancies learned in her youth, she stitched together a pleasure-golem made of the best-preserved parts of her ancestors, thanking whatever foul gods she was accustomed to petitioning for the unusually gelid temperature of that tomb. Taking a nose that looked like Basil’s from this corpse, a pair of hands from that one, and her father’s genitalia, she neatly managed the feat, and, dressing the creature in Basil’s clothing, slipped often into that frigid darkness to lie with it. Sadly, her newfound happiness with her ersatz brother was, for two reasons, imperfect. The first was that none of the vocal chords she could obtain were capable of reproducing Basil’s distinctively nasal snarl, and thus the
doppelgänger
remained mute, lest an unfamiliar moan ruin Rosemary’s obscene delights. The second trouble was more pernicious: she realized too late she had been unable to entirely excise the putrefaction wrought by death upon the limbs of her relations, and thus she contracted a form of gangrene that began to slowly rot her once-pristine limbs.

For another year did this unhappy
status quo
persist, until one dreary afternoon when Rosemary, returning from a long walk about the grounds, noticed a disreputable, slouching individual taking in the fine prospect offered by the approach to Calipash Manor. Rosemary advanced on him, unafraid, though she noticed the burliness of the man’s figure, the darkness of his skin, and the shabby state of his long overcoat.

“Are you in want of something?” she called to the stranger, and he looked up at her, his face shaded by a mildewing tricorn. “There is scant comfort to be found here at Calipash Manor, but if you require any thing, it will be given to you.”

“To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” queried he in the rasping accent of a white Creole, all the while stealing polite glances of her slightly moldy countenance.

“I am the daughter of the lady of this house,” answered Rosemary.

“Then thank you, my lady,” said the man. “My name is Valentine, and I have only just returned from Jamaica to find my family dead and my house occupied by those with no obligation to provide for me.”

“Have you no friends?”

“None, not being the sort of man who either makes or keeps them easily.”

“Come with me, then,” said Rosemary, admiring his honesty. She led Valentine up to the house and settled them in her private parlor, whereupon she bid the servants bring him meat and drink. As he ate, he seemed to revive. Rosemary saw a nasty flicker in his eyes that she quite liked, and bid him tell her more of himself. He laughed dryly, and Rosemary had his tale:

“I’m afraid, my Lady, that I owe you an apology, for I know one so fine as yourself would never let me into such a house knowing my true history. I was born into the world nothing more than the seventh son of a drunk cottar, and we were always in want as there was never enough work to be had for all of us. I killed my own brother over a bite of mutton, but given that we were all starving, the magistrate saw it fitting that I should not be hanged, but impressed to work as a common hand aboard a naval ship bound for the West Indies. I won’t distress you by relating the conditions I endured, suffice it to say I survived.

“When I arrived at our destination, however, I found that it was not my fate to remain in the navy, for my sea-captain promptly clapped me in irons and sold me as a white slave, likely due to my being an indifferent sailor and more likely to start riots among the men than help to settle them. I was bought by a plantation-owner who went by the name of Thistlewood, and this man got what labor he could out of me for several years, until I managed to escape to Port Royal with only the clothes on my back and a bit of food I’d stolen. There I lived in a manner I shan’t alarm you by describing, and only say that having done one murder, it was easy to repeat the crime for hire until I had enough coin to buy passage back to England—but as I said earlier, when I returned home, I found every living person known to me dead or gone, except those with long memories who recalled enough of my character to kick me away from their doorsteps like a dog.”

Rosemary could not but be profoundly moved by such a tale, and she felt her dormant heart begin to warm anew with sympathy for this stranger. She assured him that he should have some work on her estate, and Valentine was so overcome that he took Rosemary’s hand in his—but their mutual felicity was interrupted by Mr. Villein, who chose that inopportune moment to enter Rosemary’s chambers uninvited.

“What is the meaning of this treachery?” cried Mr. Villein, for though he often engaged in infidelities, the notion that his bride might do the same did not sit well with him, being that he was a jealous man by nature. “Release my wife, foul vagabond!”

“Wife!” exclaimed Valentine, his yellowish complexion turning grey. “How is it that I return home, only to find myself betrayed by one whom I thought harbored love for me?”

It would be impossible to guess whether Rosemary or Mr. Villein was more confused by this ejaculation, but neither had time to linger in a state of wonder for very long. The man withdrew a veritable cannon of a flintlock, and cast off his wretched, threadbare overcoat to reveal that beneath it, he wore a rich emerald-green brocade vest threaded through with designs wrought in gold and silver, and his breeches were of the finest satin. When he looked down his nose at them like a lord instead of lowering his eyes like a cottar’s son, they saw he had all the bearing of a gentleman of high rank. Recognizing him at last, Rosemary shrieked, and Mr. Villein paled and took a step back. Though strangely altered by time, the man was unmistakably Basil Vincent, Lord Calipash, returned at last to reclaim by force what should have been his by right of birth!

IV.

The conclusion, detailing the reunion of the Ivybridge Twins—an account of the singular manner in which Rosemary defeated the gangrene that threatened her continued good health—what the author hopes the reader will take away from this Infernal History