There Will Be Phlogiston (34 page)

Nowt to be sorry over. I’m sorry there was times
when you was sad, but that ain’t the same as being sorry to know
about ’em. And, anyway, being sad ain’t no crime neither. ’Tis like
that play what they was doing in Trinity. “She loved me for the
dangers I had passed” and what ’ave ye.

“And I loved her that she did pity them.” We . . .
um . . . we didn’t catch the end of that play, did we?

Mebbe we can sometime. I reckon that tricksy Italian
cove had the hots for wossname too.

Well . . . it’s . . . um . . .

Or mebbe he stays with the gentry mort what loved
him for his stories, and the other fella goes with the Florentine.
Cos sounded like he liked him when he kept going on about what a
proper gent he was, and trying to get him sozzled so they could
bang.

I’m not quite sure it ends that way.

Well, don’t you go spoiling it.

I sincerely hope nobody spoils
Othello
for
you, Dil. And please don’t think my life has always been loneliness
and misery. It has had compensations that so many lack: comfort,
safety, access to the trappings of wealth and power. Had my father
not been Lord Wolfram, I don’t know what would have happened to me
in Canton. I can’t imagine my mother’s family, whoever they were,
would have looked kindly on a half-caste child. Perhaps I would be
working for the Hong. Perhaps I would not even have survived.

My time in Gaslight was more circumscribed than it
had been in Hong Kong. There were many lessons and many corrections
of various kinds. But I soon discovered Lord Wolfram had an
extensive library. When I am feeling ungenerous, as I sometimes am,
I think it must have been a vanity project. I was the only one to
use it. I had never seen so many books, all of them untouched,
bound in the same dark-red leather, their pages edged in gold. At
first it confused me that my father would possess something he had
no interest in or care for. Then it did not.

I suppose I could have devoted myself to the study
of improving literature—I recall he had all eight volumes of
Gibbon’s
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire
—and grown into a moral, worthy, and scholarly person,
but I’m afraid I much preferred poetry.

You’re a bad ’un.

Oh yes, quite wicked— What . . . what are you
laughing at? Don’t laugh at my iniquity. In case you’ve forgotten,
I am a pirate. Well, a buccaneer. But anyway, as you see, I was not
so very wretched at Wolfram Hall.

Didn’t you have no friends, or sommat?

My time was mostly Claverslick’s, and my father’s
occasionally. His son was away taking the grand tour, his daughter
was at a finishing school in Switzerland, and Lady Wolfram kept to
her chambers. Her health was delicate, her disposition the same.
She was beautiful, I think, like a woman from a painting. I only
usually saw her on social occasions, exquisite on Lord Wolfram’s
arm. The rose gardens had been his wedding gift to her. In the
summer months, there would be vases full of them in the entrance
hall and the state rooms.

The redness of them used to make my eyes sting. And
I hated the way they smelled, sweet and heavy and sour, like
perfume, sweat, and death.

Once I came upon her while she was arranging them. I
tried to slip away, but it was too late, and she summoned me with a
crook of her finger. She was pale, in pale taffeta. I could have
spanned my hands about her waist. Her fingers flitted among the
roses, restless as wings.

I waited, but she said nothing. I was frightened she
was going to scream again.

Eventually she pulled one of the flowers free from
its fellows. It was the biggest, the most brazen, and the most
sickeningly bright.

I didn’t want it, but I couldn’t see how to refuse.
I reached out to take it.

In Canton and Hong Kong, opium was an expected
hospitality in upper-class households, so I had some familiarity
with its effects. Lady Wolfram’s eyes were almost entirely pupil
but for a blurry rim of washed-out blue. “‘The invisible worm,’”
she murmured, “‘that flies in the night in the howling storm: has
found out thy bed of crimson joy.’”

She twisted her hand away from mine, and a thorn
ripped open the skin between my thumb and forefinger. Look, I still
have the scar. It’s only a little one.

Aw, mebbe I should, y’know, kiss it better.

You can’t kiss a scar bet— Oh. Um. Well. Perhaps you
can.

As I hurried away, clutching the rose and trying to
quell the blood before it splashed upon the pristine marble floor,
I heard her whisper, “Whore’s get.”

I thought I hated her a little, at first. For those
three seemingly unnecessary hurts. But I . . . I couldn’t sustain
it. I do not suppose my . . . residence, for lack of a better term
. . . in her home could have been pleasant for her. Perhaps she had
thought Lord Wolfram a different kind of man. Or that she lived a
different sort of life. I must have been a constant reminder of her
powerlessness and his nature. She never had visitors of her own,
and with her children far away, perhaps she was as lonely as I was.
And whereas I had poetry and memories of kindness to bring me
consolation when I needed it, she had only her roses and a dose of
laudanum.

You see, whenever the walls seemed too high or the
sky too grey, I dreamed of airships. The week-long journey from
Hong Kong to Gaslight had been perhaps the happiest time of my
life. My father must have paid the captain well for his services,
for I travelled in luxury. I didn’t realise at the time, but I
think I even slept in his cabin. And the crew treated me well, but
more than that, they accepted me without question. Spoke with me
and laughed with me, answered all my questions, taught me how to
sing their songs. I was terrified, in some respects. So many people
essentially living in a confined space. But I was giddy as well, on
the closeness and the freedom.

Life is . . . People are . . . It’s different in the
skies.

I met women who were not wives, foreigners who were
not servants. It was not always harmonious, and there were
rivalries and vendettas and plain old human dislike, but there was
something deeper to hold us together. A sense of community, I
suppose, forged on the edges of things. There wasn’t much privacy,
so I caught glimpses of things . . . I mean, not those sort of
things, though there were plenty of them. It’s hard to explain.
Connections between people, friends laughing together, intimacies
as simple as two matelots holding hands by starlight.

The ship was called the
Valiant
. Her captain
was Edward Rackham.

The same Rackham what—

Yes.

I was a little frightened of him at first. He wasn’t
like the Celestials, or the
fang-qi
I had encountered at
Headquarters House: stern military men mostly, harassed
administrators, or cold-eyed representatives of the East India
Company. Captain Rackham was tall, sable haired, and swarthy, not
handsome precisely, but he had strong hands, a devilish smile, and
a decided air of command—all of which rendered him extraordinarily
compelling to someone who could recite
The Corsair
from
memory.

I was stricken with shyness, of course. And so full
of juvenile longings it felt as though my whole body had turned
traitor to itself. He could have taken any advantage he wished of
me, and I would have welcomed it. But instead he gave me . . . he
gave me his friendship. I don’t know how he had the patience, or
what I did to deserve it, but it was a gift beyond price or
imagining.

I was so awkward, so uncertain, so entirely the
inhabitant of a world I had built for myself from scraps and
whispers, but Edward . . . Captain Rackham, I mean—

You were friends, I reckon I’m awake to the notion
you was probably on first name terms.

Actually, the time came that I called him Ned, but
it was later, quite a bit later. He was the first person to care
about my world, and to want to show me his. And I loved his world,
Dil. I loved it. The sky is a harsh mistress, but she’s wild and
boundless and beautiful. There was little Edward did not know about
airships and about flying, and he would teach me everything, though
not that first journey.

That journey he simply taught me happiness.

When we made slip at Gaslight, I truly did not wish
to leave the
Valiant
. But Edward is . . . was . . . a man
who lived by his code, and I would not have asked him to compromise
his honour or endanger his crew for my sake. Later I would
inadvertently lead him to do both, but standing there on the docks
that day, already chilled from the drizzle, my throat clogged with
dust, I was determined to be brave and selfless and make this
rough-gentle man proud of me.

We’d spoken sometimes about the future that was
waiting for me in England, but neither of us really knew what it
might entail. Only that I’d be part of a noble family, and that it
would surely bring me benefit.

“But what if I don’t want to be?” I’d asked.

He’d turned his face into the horizon. “Some things
you don’t get to choose.”

Lord Wolfram had sent his carriage to collect me, as
his letter had indicated he would. I recognised it by the crest.
But as I approached it, I heard boot heels clatter on the boards,
and I turned, and Edward was behind me, and his arms came round me,
and he hugged me tight. He was warm and strong, and he smelled of
sweat and the sky, and it was the first time anyone had touched me
like that. It was only for a moment or two, but I felt so safe, so
completely held. An enclosure that did not limit or restrict me,
but was spun around me, for me. Such simple sorcery, affection.

Um, if you tighten your legs much farther, I will be
too distracted to continue talking.

Sorry. I just . . . I guess I just wanted you to
know I got you.

You do, Dil, you do.

I wore that hug like armour round my heart all the
time I was at Wolfram Hall. Months slipped into years, and I did
eventually learn how to be who I was supposed to be, and do what I
was expected to do. It never felt right. I was ashamed to hate it
as I did, and to prove so unfit for a life that many, I’m sure,
would have thought a blessing. The years looked like bars to me,
and I started to wonder if Lord Wolfram was right after all—that I
was weak, and wrong, and ungrateful.

I think I was sixteen or seventeen, or thereabouts,
when Lord Wolfram’s daughter came home and prepared to make her
society debut. I did not think I would envy her the coming out
ball, but suddenly that cold and empty house was full of light and
laughter, even the stench of the roses was swept away on a rush of
night air. It was wondrous, Dil. And, oh my, the dresses. So many
colours and patterns, buttercup gold and sky blue for the younger
ladies, and for the married ones, scarlet and emerald and indigo
and burnished copper. I remember Lord Wolfram’s daughter was in
ivory and pink silk taffeta. I didn’t want to be her—she was stuck
greeting her guests until midnight—but I would have loved to dance,
held again in someone’s arms. A private world of skin and silk and
music, entire and perfect.

I watched the revelry from the garden, safe in the
shadows. But dreaming of impossibilities and remembering lost
things brought little comfort just then, and I was overwhelmed by a
grief to which I had thought myself grown accustomed. I retreated
from the terrace, and into one of the bowers in the rose gardens,
where all my father’s lessons unravelled, and I cried.

I tried to stop, but I hadn’t allowed myself to weep
in so long, I couldn’t. And perhaps because of that, it was ugly
crying, harsh and only half-stifled in the dark. The worst of it
was, it brought me little relief. I had just about run out of tears
when I heard a polite, English cough, and I realised I was not, as
I had thought, alone. Standing at a careful distance, somehow
between accident and imposition (though I have no notion how one
would manage such a thing in practice), was a tall,
broad-shouldered gentleman attired in stark, black evening
dress.

I cringed beneath his scrutiny, wishing for my
long-gone hair to hide behind, and then turned my head away for
what little privacy it could afford me. “Sir, it is not polite to .
. . to . . . intrude upon another’s distress.”

To my horror, the gentleman came a little closer. “I
would consider it infinitely worse to turn away. May I do anything
to alleviate your sorrow?”

’
Twas Ruben, weren’t it?

Of course it was. Though at the time, he was just
another stranger, and I told him to go away.

“At least take my handkerchief.”

A square of bright silk fluttered in front of me,
and I was in such a vile state, swollen-eyed and sticky-cheeked,
that I could not refuse it.

The gentleman gave a graceful bow of the sort I was
supposed to be able to perform myself and such as I’d seen the
dancers in the ballroom offer their partners. Then turned away.

Which was when an unbearable thought struck me.
“Please,” I called out, “please don’t tell my father you saw me
crying.”

He paused. “Of course not.” He hesitated a moment,
and then came back. “But, you know, there’s nothing wrong with
crying. Unless you do it so liberally without a handkerchief. Then
it’s rather ill-advised.”

“Crying isn’t manly.”

“Perhaps not, but it’s certainly human. I do it all
the time. My name is Ruben, by the way. My father is Lord
Iron.”

I blew my nose into the handkerchief, and feeling I
had already trespassed enough on his good will, tried to return the
now-rather-scrumpled ball of fabric to its owner.

He smiled, which made his eyes crinkle. “Keep it; I
insist.”

“If you cry so much, are you very sad?” I asked him.
I was feeling a little better now, and there was a warmth to this
stranger’s manner that made me want to like him. And trust him. He
wasn’t like the other guests, pristine in the glittering ballroom.
Oh, he was dressed like them, but he was careless somehow, in all
the exquisite tailoring that fit him perfectly, and not at all.