The opera is Friday evening—Helena reminds us over breakfast that morning. Dante nearly faints. I have a strong sense both that this is his first time out of the house in a long while, and that he’s not going willingly.
We haven’t clothes fit for the outing, so Dante lends Percy a wine-colored suit—noticeably too short in the sleeves, but they’re built similar enough that it’s passable. I get black silk breeches and an emerald coat that swallows me, but it’s the only thing that fits in the tails and the cuffs, after I roll them. Twice. “It’s my father’s,” Dante says, with seemingly no understanding of how disconcerting it is to be wearing a dead man’s clothes.
When I come into the bedroom, all attempts to convince my shoulders to fill out a smidge abandoned, Percy’s perched upon the bed, still not dressed. He’s got one leg pulled under him and his violin clenched between his chin and his shoulder. A set of weathered sheet music is spread before him.
“Is that the music Dante picked?” I ask.
He nods, the violin bobbing. “It doesn’t translate as well as I hoped—it’s all written for the glasses. Well old-fashioned, too.”
“Let me hear.”
He twists the end of his bow, arranges his fingers, then plays the first line of the song. It’s got a formal sound to it, swallowed and courtly, until Percy confuses his fingering and the strings squeak. He whips the violin out from beneath his chin with a frown, then tries the measure again, plucking out the strings instead of bowing them, with no real mind for the timing.
“That was beautiful,” I say.
Percy jabs me with his bow, right to the stomach, and I flinch with a laugh. “You are a menace.”
“What’s that one called?”
He squints at the title. “The ‘Vanitas Vanitatum.’ Oh.” His brow creases. “This is the song.”
“What song?”
“The one Dante mentioned. The summoning song, for the spirits of the dead.”
“Trying to call the soul of Mateu Robles? He might be the only one in this damn house willing to tell us about his work.”
Percy sets his violin on the bed, then reaches for the clean shirt laid over the headboard, already pulling his arm through his own sleeve. “How soon are we leaving?”
“Ah, not sure,” I reply, forcing myself to avert my eyes as he pulls the shirt over his head. “I’ll meet you below, shall I?” I snatch up my shoes from beside the door and flee. I’ll not torment myself with a half-naked Percy any more than is absolutely necessary. Entirely clothed Percy is almost more than I can bear.
Dante seemed to be hoping that if he sulked above-stairs for long enough, he might be accidentally left behind, and I can’t imagine Helena is very quick in dressing without a maid, so I assume I’ll be the first one down. The study door is shut, and I pause beside it, tempted to try the handle.
My fingers brush the latch when, from behind the door, I hear Dante’s voice, pitched in a whine. I nearly jump out of my skin.
“Why does it matter if we keep them here?”
“We need to wait . . . ,” I hear Helena say, but the rest of her sentence is drowned out by Percy starting up with the violin again from above. I wish dearly I could throw something at him through the floorboards. I lean in to the door, pressing my ear flat against it.
“Perhaps they can—they can be persuaded. Into silence. Or they aren’t interested.”
“They’re obviously interested.”
“But they seem so reasonable.”
“Haven’t you learned yet that many seemingly reasonable people are far from it?” There’s a shuffling click, like pearls sliding against each other as a strand is tugged. “You’ll see him tonight. We’re running out of time.”
“What if he isn’t—”
“I’m certain he’ll be there—he always goes to play with the magistrates.”
“Then you—”
“He won’t speak to me anymore. I’ve pestered him too often. It has to be you.”
“But . . . I don’t . . .”
“Please, Dante. If he could only come home . . .”
A shuffling. Dante mumbles something I can’t make out.
“You’d let him rot away without trying everything?” Helena hisses. “We keep them here until—” The door opens suddenly and I about go face-first into Helena’s breasts, an impropriety so grand it might distract from my being caught eavesdropping. I catch myself on the door frame and straighten, making a fruitless attempt at playing casual. Helena and Dante are both at the threshold of the study, Helena with one hand down the front of her dress, adjusting the tucker. Her sacque gown is pale pink, the color of rose quartz, with a pannier beneath and her waist pulled so narrow that everything else is pushed upward. Suddenly, nosing into her breasts doesn’t seem like such a terrible fate.
“I thought you were above,” she says.
“No, just . . . waiting.” We stare at each other for a moment longer. I adopt my best I was certainly not eavesdropping smile. Helena’s eyes narrow.
“Coach,” Dante murmurs, and darts down the hallway. The front door slams so hard the vials in the study cabinet tremble.
Thank God Percy appears on the stairs behind me at that moment, his violin case under one arm. “I think I’ve—Oh, where’s Dante gone? I thought I heard him.”
“Hailing a coach,” Helena replies, shouldering past me and into the hallway. “We need to go.”
“Yes.” Percy sets his violin inside the study door. “Felicity should be down soon.”
Helena is still staring at me. “That coat,” she says suddenly.
Fashion was the last thing I expected her to remark upon. I shift in the shoulders, and the whole thing settles upon me like a snowdrift. “Bit big.”
“It’s my father’s.”
“Oh, Dante said I could—”
“I know,” she says, turning down the hallway before I can see her face. “Just a statement of fact.”
We arrive at the opera too early to be fashionably late. The singing hasn’t begun, but the footlights are being trimmed. The opera house is bright and chaotic, far less gaudy than the one in Paris but twice as loud. The chandeliers glimmer like sunlight on water. The footman’s gallery is stuffed, aisles crowded with young men coasting up and down for company. In the boxes, women play cards and eat cream-filled pastries brought to them on silver trays. Men are discussing politics. When the singing begins, the noise is amplified as everyone raises their voices to be heard over it. The standing crowd on the stage kick their legs and shuffle from foot to foot, already weary.
Percy and I don’t go to the Robleses’ box—instead I drag him to the gambling hall attached to one of the upper galleries, looking down over the audience, so we can have a private chat about what I overheard and conspire on what to do.
Felicity put up a fuss at being left behind, mostly in whispers as we climbed the stairs with her hand on my arm, so Dante and Helena prancing ahead wouldn’t overhear. “I want to come with you.”
“Well, you can’t. Ladies aren’t allowed.”
I nearly stepped on her train as she cut the corner of the landing in front of me. “If you are scheming about the alchemical cures, please do it where I can hear.”
“We aren’t scheming. We’re . . .” I didn’t get to a fib fast enough, and Felicity’s eyes narrowed. She darted up the step in front of me, cutting off my progress.
“You are scheming!”
“Just stay in the box and keep an eye on Dante, won’t you? See if he goes anywhere.”
“Don’t give me some nonsense task to make me feel included.”
“It’s not nonsense, just . . .” I didn’t know how to finish, so I just flapped a hand at her.
Felicity tore her fingers from my arm, straightened her dress, then stuck her nose in the air. “Fine. Don’t include me. Perhaps I’ll scheme on my own, then.”
“I look forward to it,” I said, then grabbed Percy by the hand and dragged him away.
The gambling hall is gauzy with smoke and hotter than the summer air outside. It’s a great effort not to loosen my cravat as soon as we enter. As we wait at the bar for whiskey, I recount to Percy what I overhead.
“From what I gather, they’re meeting someone here tonight,” I finish. “Do you think we could find out who it is? Maybe we should get back to the box and follow Dante if he goes anywhere. Bit conspicuous, though, I suppose. What if it’s the duke he’s rallying with? Maybe that letter I found was instructions for a meeting time. I’d bet it’s the duke—what if he followed us here from Marseilles?” I resist the urge to look around, as though he might suddenly materialize at our side.
I look to Percy, hoping he might lend some shears to my intellectual hedgerow, but he’s pulling at his coat, fanning the collar against his neck. “God, it’s hot in here.”
“Are you listening to me?”
“Course I am. But I think you’re getting excited over nothing.”
“Hardly nothing—”
“Just because you found one letter from Bourbon doesn’t mean they’re on familiar terms.”
“Then who else would they be meeting?”
“Perhaps it’s nothing to do with the alchemy. Or their father. Or us.”
“Helena stopped awfully short when she realized I was listening.”
“Well, you were being rude.”
“I wasn’t being rude!”
“You were eavesdropping.”
“No eaves were dropped, I was just standing about. It’s their fault they weren’t speaking softer. And that’s not the point! The point is, something is going on and I have a sense we’re being conspired against. We need to find what we can about Mateu Robles’s alchemical cures and then get away from here. Why aren’t you as worked up about this as I am?”
The bartender delivers our shot glasses, and Percy slides one down to me with a smile. “Because I don’t want to worry about that right now. I just want to be out with you. We’re here, aren’t we? In Barcelona. At the opera. Let’s enjoy it.” He traces the rim of his glass with a finger, and it hums at his touch. “We won’t have many more nights like this.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“No, it’s not, because we are going to find whatever secrets they have about alchemical cures and then you’ll be well again.” On the stage, the soprano starts in on a punishing first aria at a pitch that makes the air tremble. I wince. “Here then, let’s play a game where we drink every time someone sings something in Spanish.”
“Italian.”
“What?”
He tips his head toward the stage. “This is Handel—it’s in Italian.”
“Is it?”
“Definitely Italian.”
I decide not to mention how adorable I find it that he knows all that just by hearing a few bars. The soprano strikes another blistering note and I grimace. “Doesn’t matter, I hate it.” I tap the rim of my glass against his. “To beauty, youth, and happiness.”
He laughs. “Do we qualify for any of those of late?”
“Well, we are indisputably young. And I am happy—at least right now, because I haven’t had a proper drink in a fortnight and I’m quite excited about this. And you are . . .” I trail off, my neck starting to heat.
Percy turns to me quickly, his eyes catching the light and reflecting a mischievous glint. I’m suddenly aware of my body in a way I wasn’t a moment before, every twitch and blink, the way my shoulders sit inside this too-big coat, the bob of my throat as I swallow hard, every point of my silhouette that his gaze touches. Love may be a grand thing, but goddamn if it doesn’t take up more than its fair share of space inside a man.
I could tell him. Right here, right now, let it out in the light. Percy, I could say, I think you are the most beautiful creature on God’s green earth and I would very much like to find a hidden corner of this opera house and engage in some behavior that could only be termed sinful.
Percy, I could say, I am almost certain that I am in love with you.
But then I think about that kiss in Paris, the way he pushed me away once I let slip a hint that it might mean something more than a random romp. He’s been so fond with me since we reached Spain, in a way he hasn’t since before I put my mouth on his that disastrous night, and that feels fragile as spun sugar, too sweet and precious to risk its collapsing.
“I’m what?” Percy asks, mouth curling upward.
The singer breaks off, the orchestra lapsing into an interlude. Percy’s eyes flit away from me, toward the stage, and I slap him on the shoulder. “Yes, Percy, you’re very handsome,” I say as flippantly as I can muster, then toss back my whiskey in two quick swallows. It burns as it hits my throat.
When I turn back to him, that drowsy hint of a smile has vanished. He shifts so he’s propped backward against the bar on his elbows, tugging again at his coat collar to ward off the heat. Then he leans suddenly in to me and says, “Here, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. When we were in Paris . . .”
He halts, and my stomach drops. When I look over at him, his eyes are fixed on a point across the room. “What about Paris?” I say, trying to be dead casual about it, but he doesn’t seem to hear. “Percy?”
“Look, it’s Dante.”
“What?” I whip around and follow his gaze across the room. Amid the tables, there’s Dante, hands in his coat pockets and shoulders pulled up, like a turtle drawing into its shell. He’s talking to an older gent in a white wig and a fine gold coat, his fingers curled over a silver-handled cane. The man smiles kindly at Dante, who looks to be stuttering something, but then shakes his head.
Both Percy and I keep silent, though we’re too far away to hear anything being said. The man bends down, forcing Dante to meet his eyes, says something that makes Dante go red, then makes to clap him on the shoulder, but Dante steps out of the way and instead he ends up swatting the air between them. The man smiles, then starts off toward the gambling tables while Dante flees the other direction, through the doors and back out to the boxes.
“Do you think that’s—” Percy starts, but I’m ahead of him.
“We need to talk to him.”
“Who, Dante?”
“No, whoever that is.” I flail a hand at the white-wigged cove. He’s already settled himself at a hazard table across the room—for a man with a cane, he’s a speedy bastard. “Let’s have a game, get him talking, ask about the Robleses, see if he’ll tell us anything. Maybe he knows about their connection to the Bourbons or what their father was doing with his alchemy. Or anything about them.”
I start toward the table, but Percy catches me by the back of my coat. “Hold on, they’re not going to let you sit at a gambling table for a chat. We’re going to have to bet.”
“Oh . . .” I glance over—there are only three empty seats left at the man’s table, and one gets snagged almost as soon as I look.
“I’ll get chips,” Percy says. “You corner him.”
“Brilliant.” I start away again, but then double back to him. “You all right?”
“Fine,” he says, though he’s plucking at his shirt. “It’s so hot, is all.”
“We’ll make this the quickest card game of our lives. Meet at the table.”
I sidle through the crowd, trying not to look like I’m making a charge for those two empty seats. A pair of swains are standing behind them, talking, one of them with his hand resting on a seat back, but I dive in before they can and fall, a little less gracefully than I had hoped, into the chair beside the man Dante was conversing with.
He glances up from his chips and gives me a smile. I offer a big one in return. “Not too late, am I?” I say in French.
“Not at all,” he replies. “Welcome to Barcelona.”
“Sorry?”
“You sound foreign.”
“English. My friend and I are on our Tour—he’s gone for chips.”
“We don’t get many English tourists here. How did you make your way so far south?”
Oh, this is going splendidly. “We’re visiting friends. The Robles family.”
His eyebrows meet in the center of his forehead. “Oh, are you?”
“Wagers, please, gentlemen,” the caster interrupts. “We’re ready to begin.”
I resist the urge to glance around for Percy. “Do you know them? The Robleses.”
“In a professional capacity. I spoke with Dante earlier tonight, actually.”
I’m not what might be called accomplished at subtlety, but asking forthrightly And what did you two speak about? seems excessively bold, so instead I say, “What’s your profession?”
“I serve as warden of the city prison. Rather grim, I know.” That was not what I was expecting. He shuffles his chips between his thumb and forefinger, then tosses a few on the table for the caster. “Good for those poor children to have some company after all they’ve been through with their parents.”
I’d hardly call either of the Robleses a child, but I don’t correct him.
There’s a tap on the table in front of me, and I look up. The caster is frowning. “Your wager, sir.”
“Ah, just a moment.” I lean in to the warden. “I’m quite concerned about Dante, actually, I haven’t seen him since his father died, and he’s been so tight-lipped about it ever since—”
“Died?” the warden interrupts. “He hasn’t died.”
“But he’s . . . What?”
“Sir,” the caster says, “the wager.”
I try to swat him away. “My friend’s on his way—”
“Sir—”
“What do you mean, he isn’t dead?” I demand.
The warden looks rather alarmed by my vehemence, but says, “Mateu Robles is a Hapsburg sympathizer, jailed for refusing to aid the House of Bourbon when they took the crown.”
My heart is really going now. “You’re certain?”
“I’ve been charged with his care by the king. He’s housed in my prison.”
“Do his children—”
“Sir,” the caster says, “if you won’t be wagering, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“Fine, I’ll . . .” I stumble to my feet, searching for Percy. He’s a hard fellow to miss, but the crowd is thick and the air smoky and I am more than a bit flustered. “I’ll be right back,” I say, partly to the caster, but mostly to the warden, then shoulder into the crowd. He’s alive is thumping through me like a heartbeat, and I’m tripping myself trying to work out what this means. Mateu Robles is alive, though both Dante and Helena had assured us he was dead. Dead as Lazarus, and here he is, risen again.
I do two laps around the hall before the realization that I can’t find Percy kicks its way through my discovery. He’s not at the chips table, or at the bar where I left him. I can’t think where else he would have gone, and I’m starting to get frantic.
Where are you, Percy?
And then I spot him, slumped on the ground beside the door, his head between his knees and his hands shoved into his hair. My heart stands still for a moment, then begins to pound again for a new reason entirely.
I shove through the crowd, with no care whatsoever for who I’m smashing into, and drop to my knees beside Percy. I touch his arm and he starts more than I expected. When he looks up, his face is drawn, thin beads of sweat gathering along his hairline. “Sorry,” he murmurs.
“What’s wrong? Is it . . . ? Are you about to . . . ?”
He pushes his face into the crook of his elbow. “I don’t know.”
“Right. Well . . . right. How about, maybe . . . maybe . . .” I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m fishing bare-handed in my stream of consciousness for some way to take charge of this situation and be what he needs, and I’m coming up empty. Do something, you imbecile. “Let’s go,” I say, which seems like a good place to start, and I help Percy to his feet. He sways unsteadily, though that might just be the crowd jostling us. I slide his hand around my arm and lead him out of the hall, the truth about the Robleses taking second place to Percy.
Everything will always be second to Percy.
I’m not certain if he’s about to fall into a fit, or how long we’ve got if he is, or if there’s anything I can do to stop it. He’s clutching my arm as I lead him down the stairs and through the lobby, into the courtyard, which—thank God—is cooler than inside and nearly deserted.
In one corner, a grove of lemon trees clings to the stone wall, branches bowing under the weight of ripe fruit. I walk Percy over, hoping there’ll be a bench or at least a hefty rock, but he doesn’t seem to give a whit about the seating, for he sits down on the grass, then falls backward with his knees up and his hands over his face. He’s breathing rather fast.
“Please, not now,” he murmurs, so soft I’m not certain he knows he spoke aloud.
I’m fighting the urge to go fetch Felicity because she’s so much better at this than me—probably would have if it didn’t mean leaving him on his own. I haven’t a clue what to do, so I clamp onto the first idea that arrives before I have a chance to really consider it: I crouch down at his side and put a hand upon his elbow. It is perhaps the least comforting place upon which a comforting touch can be bestowed, but I’m committed to it now, so I don’t move.
I am doing the wrong thing, I think. I am doing the wrong thing and I am going to do the wrong thing and I am never going to be what he needs.
For a time, we’re both silent. Above us, the canary-yellow lemons sparkle among the leaves, their rinds swollen and slick with starlight. Interwoven with the glittering chatter from inside the opera house, sounds of the city play from the other side of the courtyard wall—the clack of carriages and the soft shush of fountains emptying their throats. The thin peal of a watchman’s voice sings the hour. Barcelona is a handsome symphony all its own.
“Are people staring?” Percy asks. His breathing is evening out, but he still looks poorly.
“No.” I glance around the courtyard. A lady and a gent perched near the wall are giving us a glare that plainly implies we interrupted what was about to be his hands up her skirt. “Want me to lie down as well? It’s less strange if there’s the pair of us.”
“No, I think it’s passed.”
“Certain?”
“Yes. I just got a rather odd feeling and I thought it might be coming on.” He sits up, closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again, and I nearly collapse with relief. “You can go back inside.”
“Absolutely not, we should go.”
“I’m fine, I promise.”
“Come on.” I climb to my feet, brushing my hands off on my coattails. “Back to the house.”
“What about the others? Shouldn’t we tell them?”
“They’ll work it out.” I hold out a hand to him, and he lets me pull him to his feet, a little unsteady on the slippery grass.
We take a hired carriage back to the Robleses’. A few streets from the opera house, Percy nods off, his head slipping onto my shoulder, then down to my chest. When the hack stops, I sit for several minutes longer before I shrug, very lightly, so that he raises his head. “We’re here.”
Percy sits up, pushing his knuckles into his forehead. “Did I fall asleep?”
“A bit. Ah, look, you’ve gone and slobbered all over my jacket.” I take a swipe at my lapel.
“Dear Lord. Sorry.”
“You were only asleep five minutes. How’d you manage to drool that much?”
“Sorry!” He pulls his sleeve up over his thumb and tries to wipe it off and instead ends up smearing it into the silk. I bat him away and he covers his face with his hands, laughing. He doesn’t seem quite himself yet—I’m still braced for the fit to come on—but he looks less flimsy than he did in the gambling hall, and when we climb out of the cab his step is steady.
The house is stifling, but a window is open in the parlor and the lamps are still lit, so it’s there that I leave Percy curled up on the sofa, while I muck about in the kitchen—nearly lose a chunk of my hair and the skin off my palms trying to get water boiling and spill at least ten shillings’ worth of leaves from the jar.
When I return to the parlor, I am victory personified with kettle and teacup in hand. Percy raises his head as I approach and regards my offering with a peery eye. “What’s this?”
“Tea. I made you tea. I could get something else, if you want. There’s wine around somewhere.”
“What are you doing?”
“I dunno. Helping? Sorry, you don’t have to drink it.”
“No, that’s . . . Thank you.” He takes the cup from me and has a cautious sip, then coughs once and claps a fist sharply to his chest. “This is . . . tea?”
“Did I ruin it?”
“No, no, it’s—” He coughs again, which turns into a laugh, and then he’s laughing with his head tipped back. I kick the sofa leg and he’s nearly unseated. A bit of the vile tea sloshes onto the upholstery. I set the kettle on the side table and sink down on the other end of the sofa, mirroring his body so we are face-to-face, curled up like question marks with our feet off the floor and our knees together.
“You’re hopeless,” he says, and it is so strange and horrible and utterly lovely how the way that he’s looking at me makes me want to both back away and throw myself upon him. It hurts like a sudden light striking your eyes in the dead of night.
He wraps his hands around his teacup again, his shoulders hunched. “I’m all right now.”
“Oh.” My voice cracks, and I clear my throat. “Good.”
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You stayed.”
“That wasn’t much.”
“Monty, I have never once woken from a fit and found the people who were there when it began still with me. My aunt has quite literally run from the room when I said I was feeling unwell. And I know it didn’t happen now, but . . . no one stays.” He reaches out, almost as though he can’t help himself, and puts his thumb to my jawline. The tips of his fingers brush the hollow of my throat, and I feel the touch so deep I half expect that when he moves, I’ll be left with an imprint there, as though I am a thing fashioned from clay in a potter’s hands.
Percy drops his arm suddenly and lifts his chin, nose wrinkling. “Something’s burning.”
“I set a fire in the kitchen grate.”
“No, I think it’s here. Oh, Monty—the kettle.”
I look over at the side table. A thin strand of smoke is rising from where I set the kettle. I snatch it up, though the damage is done—a perfect circle in charred black on the wood. “Damnation.”
“Let’s not burn their father’s house down while they’re out,” Percy remarks.
“Is there a way to hide—” Their father’s house. I nearly drop the kettle. “Percy, their father isn’t dead.”
Percy looks up from fishing some floating thing out of his tea. “What?”
“Mateu Robles—their father. He isn’t dead, he’s a prisoner. The man Dante was talking to—he’s the warden at the city prison and he told me Robles is locked up.”
“He’s jailed? Did he say why?”
“Something about politics. I think he was on the wrong side of the war that the Bourbon family won.”
“Maybe that’s something to do with the duke’s letter—”
“The letters!” I leap to my feet and fly out of the parlor, still clutching the kettle. The study door is as we left it—propped and unlocked. I push it open, half expecting some trap to fall upon me from above.
“What are you doing?” Percy calls.
“The letters from the duke. There might be more.” I dash to the desk, nearly tripping on Percy’s fiddle case, which is still just inside the door, and begin to paw through the letters in the box, searching for any more with the Bourbon crest on the seal. Near the bottom, another fleur-de-lis winks up at me from green wax, and I snatch it up. “Here.”
Percy joins me at the desk, sifting through the papers strewn atop it. “Lucky they don’t seem to throw anything out.”
With Percy going through the drawers that aren’t locked and me working across the surface, we come up with almost a dozen letters with the Bourbon family crest set into the seal. “He’s not just writing to them, they’re corresponding,” I say, picking one at random and confirming the duke’s signature at the bottom before I scan the page.
On the other side of the desk, Percy holds up another. “This one’s dated nearly a year ago.”
“They’re all to Helena.”
“Not all.” He flaps one of the pages at me. “This one’s for Mateu.”
“‘Upon the execution of our arrangement,’” I read, a phrase picked at random from the middle of one. “What arrangement have they got?”
When I look up at Percy, his face is grave. The shadows from the firelight mottle his skin. “Monty, I think we should leave here. Tonight. Or as soon as we can.”
“And go where?”
“Anywhere. Back to Marseilles. Find Lockwood. At least find somewhere else to stay until he sends funds.”
“But . . .” But what about Holland and the asylum? I want to say. We came here to help you and instead we’d be leaving with nothing.
Before I can reply, the front latch clacks from the hallway, followed by a bang as the door hits the wall and bounces back. Percy and I both freeze, eyes locked, then in unison begin shoving the letters back where we found them. Percy shuts one of the drawers too forcefully, and a glass beaker rolls to the floor and shatters. We both go still again, listening hard. There are the sounds of a scuffle outside the door, and a clatter, like something’s been struck.
Then a voice that sounds distinctly like Felicity’s gives a smothered cry.
Which is enough to kick into motion a strange mechanism inside of me that has never before been triggered. I snatch up the closest thing to a weapon I can find—the kettle of hot tea, which I imagine will do a fair bit of damage if tossed in someone’s face. Percy, clearly of a similar mind, hefts a sword he finds wedged between two of the bookshelves, though it’s too firmly attached to its plaque to be convinced to part, so the plaque goes with him. Together, we inch toward the door, weapons raised.
Something strikes the wall from the other side. The canopic jars on the shelf jump. I fling open the study door and fly into the hallway, Percy on my heels.
It is apparent at once that we have made a grievous mistake. Even in the dim light, I can clearly see Felicity and Dante collapsed into the wall with their arms and hands and mouths and abso-bloody-lutely everything all over each other. Neither of them appears to quite have a handle on what it is they’re doing, but they’re nonetheless enthusiastic about it.
I’m not certain if I want to make a hasty retreat back into the study and pretend we saw nothing or throw the hot tea in his face anyway, but then my foot catches that damned loose floorcloth and I pitch into the wall. The kettle leaves a crater in the wainscoting with a resonant thud. Dante shrieks and flails into one of the armless statues beside the door. It falls with a crash. Felicity whips around, a long strand of her hair that’s collapsed from its arrangement whacking Dante in the face. “What are you doing?” she cries.
“What are we doing?” I return, my voice coming out at a much higher pitch than anticipated. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“We thought you were in danger!” I cry. Dante bolts for the stairs, but I thrust my kettle in his path. A few steaming drops spit onto the carpet. “Don’t you go anywhere. I’ve got very acidic tea and Percy’s got a sword with a stump, so keep your hands where I can see them.”
Felicity throws her head back. “For the love of God.”
“If I may—” Dante starts, but I cut him off.
“Oh no, you don’t get to say a thing. You and Helena are liars and thieves and now you’re trying to take advantage of us in every conceivable way.”
“Monty—” Felicity interrupts, but I’ve got too much momentum to halt. I am Sisyphus’s damned boulder rolling down that damned mountain and I intend to flatten the rogue Dante beneath me.
“You’ve got the duke who wants to kill us writing your sister letters, and your father, turns out, isn’t dead, he’s in prison, so thanks for that lie—”
“Monty—”
“And now you’re, what, keeping us here until it’s convenient to slit our throats? But not before you played a bit of Saint George with my sister.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Henry Montague, for once in your life, be quiet!” Felicity snaps. “This wasn’t Dante’s idea, it was mine.”
Which is a bit of a cold slap to the face. The spout of my kettle droops. “Yours?” I repeat.
“Yes, mine. I thought we’d be alone here.”
“So did we. We came home because Percy was feeling poorly.”
Felicity looks to him. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine.” He’s got the sword hefted in both hands, but the tip is starting to sink. Blades are beastly heavy, with or without a dozen pounds of solid oak attached. “Where’s Helena?”
“Still at the opera, presumably,” Felicity replies. “Since we all four decided to flee without consulting the others.”
“Perhaps we should discuss this in the morning.” Dante has begun to creep again to the stairs, but I step in his path. Even if it was Felicity who dragged him here for a bit of tongue, I’d still like to slam him into the wall for going along with it.
“Stay where you are,” I say. “None of this changes the fact that you’ve been corresponding with the duke who you claimed stole the Baseggio Box from you.”
“You—you went through our things?” he stammers.
“It was right there on the desk!” I say, then remember it is not me on trial here and add, “You lied to us!”
“My—my sister was right, you came here to spy on us.”
“We weren’t spying—” I say at the same time Percy says, “Why did you tell us your father was dead?” And Dante lets out a whimper, hands thrown up in a Don’t shoot! gesture.
“All right, everyone into the study, now!” Felicity barks, in a tone that is essentially verbal castration, and not a one of us protests.
We shuffle in, single file, while she stands at the door like a headmistress, watching us with her arms folded and a glower in place. I set my kettle on the cold fireplace. Percy keeps the sword in hand, but Felicity snaps at him, “Put that down before you hurt yourself,” and he lowers it beneath the desk. Dante lets out a visible sigh of relief. “Sit,” she orders, and we three all sit, Dante and Percy in the matching chairs before the desk, me on the floor because Felicity’s glare is making me afeard for my life if I delay. She shuts the study door with a snap, then whirls to face us. “Now.” She points a finger at Dante. “You owe us some truth.”
Dante seems to wither in his chair. In spite of the fact that I’m still ready to wring his scrawny neck, I can’t help but feel a bit bad for the poor lad. One minute he’s working himself up to put his lily-white hands down a girl’s dress for likely the first time in his life, and the next he’s facing down an inquisition from said girl whose dress he was about to reach down. “Yes. Yes, I suppose.”
“Start with this,” I say. “What’s in the Baseggio Box?”
Dante does not look as though he was prepared to start there. “That’s . . . a very large question.”
“It’s a very small box, so it can’t be that large,” I reply.
“Is it a Lazarus Key?” Percy asks.
Dante’s head snaps up. “How do you know about that?”
“We saw it in”—Percy glances my way, a silent apology for coughing up the truth—“your sister’s correspondence.”
I snatch a letter off the desk and hold it up like evidence presented at trial. Felicity gives me a pronounced eye roll.
“The Lazarus Key is . . . I mean the . . . It’s not . . .” Dante rubs his temples with his fingers, then says, “You read my father’s book, so you know about his theories. Human panaceas—the beating heart as the only place in which a true cure-all can be created.”
“He was trying to make one,” Felicity says.
“Yes.” Dante coughs, then casts an eye at the fireplace. “I’ll take some of that tea, if you’re offering.”
“You don’t want any,” Percy says.
“Did it work?” Felicity asks.
“Um, it didn’t quite . . . He performed the experiment, but it didn’t . . . It went wrong. It was tried upon”—Dante swallows hard, his Adam’s apple making a great hurtle up his neck—“my mother. Our mother. She volunteered,” he adds. “They were both alchemists, and they wrote the book—it was hers, too. But she couldn’t put her name on it, as she’s . . . well, a woman.” He trips on that word, his eyes darting to Felicity, and I wonder if he’s considering whether or not bringing this deception into the light is going to ruin his chances of getting his tongue in her mouth again. I nearly upend the kettle over his head. “But the compound they created . . . it stopped her heart.”
“So she died?” Felicity asks.
“No,” he replies. “But she didn’t—she didn’t not die, either. She’s . . . stuck. Not living, not dead, with an alchemical panacea for a heart.”
Hope leaps like a flame inside me. “It worked?” I interrupt, a bit too keenly, for Felicity gives me a frown that suggests I have rather missed the point.
Dante nods. “The panacea was created, so . . . Well, yes.”
“So, why hasn’t it been used?” I ask. “Why didn’t he make more?”
“Because she had to give her life for it,” Dante replies, looking a bit shocked I had to ask. “It’s—it’s a horrid cost.”
“Where is she now?” Percy asks.
“She’s buried . . . or entombed, rather. My father, before he was arrested—he knew they were coming for him and he wouldn’t be able to protect her any longer. So he had her locked up where no one could get to the heart. The key . . .” He picks up the puzzle box from the desk and shakes it. The sound of something fly-light rattling around inside it whispers through the room. “It opens her vault.”
This is, without question, the spookiest thing I’ve ever heard. It sounds like the sort of scary story Percy and I used to tell each other when we were lads, just to see who could get the other worked up first.
“And where’s the vault?” I ask. I’m ready to leap to my feet and sprint to some cemetery on the other side of the city as soon as he names the place, even though it’s the dead of night and we don’t actually have the key we need to open her tomb. I’d pry the damn thing open with nothing but my bare hands and sheer determination.
“Is it in Venice?” Percy asks. “There’s an island called Mary and Martha. Lazarus’s sisters in the Bible.”
Dante nods. “My father apprenticed with an alchemist there, as a boy. His teacher is long dead, but the men at the sanctuary . . . they still knew him. And they said they would hide her. That’s why he called it the Lazarus Key. It all seemed rather poetical at the time.”
“So his plan is to—what? Leave her there for the rest of time and waste his cure-all?” I ask. Felicity shoots me another think before you say inappropriate things look.
“Well, there’s a complication of late.” Dante reaches for his spectacles, remembers he’s not wearing them, and instead rubs his eyes. “The island is sinking.”
“It’s what?” Felicity and I say in unison.
“The tunnels under the sanctuary are collapsing. It’s all flooding. No one’s allowed there anymore. There isn’t much time left before the whole thing . . . it’s going to be at the bottom of the Lagoon.”
“So the one item on earth that can cure anything will be underwater in a few months if you don’t go fetch it?” I say. I want to smack my head against the hearth in frustration, because of course this couldn’t be as easy as it seemed for a brief, bright moment.
“That’s—that’s why the duke—why he came for us,” Dante says. “Collecting her has . . . it’s become more urgent.”
“So where does the duke come in, exactly?” Felicity asks. She’s taken one of his letters up from the desk and is examining it.
Dante rubs his hands together. “We had . . . When the experiment went wrong, my father destroyed his research before anyone could replicate it. But the duke—he wanted the panacea. He wanted the method more, but my father wouldn’t give it up—not any of it, not my mother or the work—so Bourbon had him locked up for his Hapsburg loyalty and came to Helena and me instead. So many people have come—come calling. Men who read my father’s book. They want the secrets to his work. That’s why—why we began to tell people he was dead and the work gone. Just so we’d be left alone.” He scrapes at his bottom lip with his teeth. “One Duke of Bourbon is—is bad enough.”
“Why didn’t your father destroy the heart, then?” Percy asks. “If he was so desperate to keep people from getting it.”
Dante shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Why does the duke need the panacea?” Felicity asks. “Is he ill?”
“The French king is,” I say, remembering suddenly a few scraps of information I was tossed at Versailles. They all look to me, and I scramble for more. “And the duke’s been dismissed as his prime minister.”
“Why would he want to give it to the king if they’ve parted ways?” Felicity asks.
I press at my temples with the tips of my fingers. “Maybe if he brought this cure-all to the king and kept him alive, he could get his position back. He could ask for anything he wanted, really.”
“Which secures the Bourbon family’s control of the French throne,” Percy finishes.
“And the Spanish,” Dante says.
“And Poland,” Felicity adds. “They’re everywhere.”
“So he’s going to blackmail the king in exchange for his health,” I say.
“Or, what if he took the heart and then found a way to duplicate it after a study?” Felicity says. “If the Bourbon family had that sort of knowledge—if anyone did . . .” She trails off, leaving each of us to spin his own end to that sentence.
Dante nods, looking suddenly miserable. “We know Bourbon has alchemists in the French court. They haven’t been able to copy my father’s work, but they’ve been trying, and if they had—had the heart to study . . .” He lapses into silence.
Felicity rounds on him, looking cross again. “So, why did you give him the box?”
“If he gets the heart, he’ll let our father out of prison. But it doesn’t matter.” He makes an attempt to laugh, but he’s so nervous it sounds a bit maniacal. “We don’t know the cipher. The duke took the box with him to Paris in hopes cryptographers in the court could crack it, but our father’s the only one who knows. And if he knew what we’d done . . .” He looks around at all of us, like he doesn’t quite know what the right course of action is and is hoping someone will offer it up for him. “He told us not to. Made us swear we wouldn’t hand her over.”
“And he won’t tell you the cipher?” I ask.
Dante shakes his head. “No, not Helena or me since she—she gave up the location of the tomb. To the duke. Father knows Helena would trade it for his freedom—I think that’s why he put the key in the box to begin with, to protect—to keep it from her. She’s devoted to—she and Mother fought, constantly, for . . . But Father was always her defender. And I think . . . now she wants to be his.” He rubs the back of his neck, then knits his fingers behind it, mouth pulling into a frown. “After our mother died, Father became obsessed—obsessed with trying to bring her back . . . or let her die. For good. Hence . . .” He waves a hand at the museum of funerary rites that decorates the walls. “Helena said . . . it was like losing both our parents to his obsession. And she—she blamed our mother for that . . . that too.”
“Well, if he won’t tell you,” I say, “do you think he’d tell me?”
Felicity actually laughs aloud at that pronouncement, which is rather hard not take personally. “Why would he tell you?”
“Because we could help him,” I say. “The island is sinking—if he doesn’t get her out soon, she’ll be gone forever, whether or not someone uses the panacea. If we can convince him of that, perhaps he’ll tell us the cipher and then you can fetch it.” It’s a great fight to keep my voice steady when all I’m spouting is rubbish—if we get the box open and get to that alchemical cure-all, there is only one thing I am going to do with it, but I can’t imagine Dante would be too keen if he knew our idea.
Or rather, my idea. Both Felicity and Percy are giving me a look that clearly conveys it is I alone taking a machete to this jungle.
Dante, in contrast, lights like a struck flint. “We—do you think—would he? What about Helena?”
“You needn’t tell her,” I say. “She can’t hand it over if she doesn’t know you’ve got it.”
Dante taps the tips of his fingers together. He’s practically bouncing in his chair. “We’d have to get you into the prison. They won’t let him have visitors. But—but he’s here, in Barcelona. They’ve all their political prisoners in one hold. Would you—could you do that? For me?”
“So we get the cipher and then we leave here,” Felicity interrupts. “At once. This is getting dangerous.”
“Yes,” Percy says, and I nod. If there’s an alchemical treatment in Venice—or better still, an honest-to-God cure that can rid him of this forever and knock Holland permanently off the docket—I want to be out of here and on the road as quick as possible.
From the street outside, there’s the clatter of a carriage pulling up to the walk. Felicity twitches the drapes open and peers out. “Helena,” she says.
Dante scrambles, his foot catching a pewter cross hanging from one of the drawers and wrenching it out of place. “You mustn’t tell her what I’ve said, or that we’re—that we’re going to see—see my father. She’d murder me.” I’m not sure if that’s literal murder or figurative; he looks terrified enough that it could be either.
The front door opens, and a moment later the study follows. Helena appears, a silhouette blacker than the hallway darkness, like ink poured into oil. There is just enough light on her face to see that the first thing her eyes go to is the Baseggio Box on the desk before she looks at each of us in turn. “You’re all here,” she says.
None of us seems keen to offer an explanation, so Percy steps up. “I was feeling ill,” he says, and I expect he’ll launch into a good lie as to why this mysterious affliction required the entirety of our party except for Helena to accompany him home, but that’s all he says. That straight-edged silence settles back into place.
“Did you enjoy the opera?” Felicity pipes up.
“Operas tire me,” Helena replies. She looks to the box again, then says, “Dante, may I have a word before bed?”
Which is our cue to depart. Dante gives me a pleading look as we shuffle by him, and I return a raised eyebrow that I hope is a vehement reminder not to spill our plot to Helena. As dedicated as he might be to seeing his mother’s heart stay out of the hands of the Bourbons, he’s already proved he’s not the sort to hold up well under pressure.
Percy goes straight into our bedroom, but Felicity calls me back before I can follow. She glances down the stairs to be certain Helena and Dante are still in the study, then says, “Tell me what you’re plotting.”
“Me? I never plot.”
“All you’ve been doing since we arrived is plot! Why did you offer to get the cipher from Mateu Robles? That was uncharacteristically benevolent.”
“How dare you. I’m the most benevolent person I know.”
“Monty.”
“The benevolentest.”
“Don’t play thick—you don’t fool me.”
Now it’s my turn to check for the Robles siblings approaching before I speak. “If we can get that box open and get the key, we can go to Venice and use the panacea for Percy so he can be cured of his falling sickness and then he won’t have to go into an asylum.”
“There are far better solutions for avoiding institutionalization than this. And solutions no one had to die for. And incidentally, none of them have to do with you.” She pokes me in the chest. “In fact, none of this has to do with you, it’s to do with Percy. Perhaps he doesn’t want this.”
“Why wouldn’t he want it? He’d be well. It’ll make his life . . .”
Felicity quirks an eyebrow at me. “Make his life what? Worth living? Is that what you were going to say?”
“Not exactly in those words.”
“Asylum aside, I think he seems quite fine as he is.”
“But he’s not—”
“But he is. He’s been ill for two years and you didn’t know because life goes on. He’s found a way.”
“But . . .” I’m floundering. But he’s going to Holland, but I don’t know how to help him if not for this, but perhaps he can handle it but I don’t think I can. “We should still speak to Mateu Robles. Even if we can’t . . . for Percy . . . I think . . . we could help. Someone.”
“Yes, someone.”
“So we’ll go see him tomorrow.”
“And then we need to leave here—whether to Venice or back to Marseilles to find our company, we need to go. We’re getting in too deep.”
She starts up the stairs, but I call after her, “So. You and Dante.”
She pivots back to me, and I give her what I know from experience is my most annoying smile. I expect her to flush, but instead she performs one of her spectacular eye rolls. “There is no me and Dante. Particularly if you’re being grammatical about it.”
“Do I sound like I’m interested in the grammar of the situation?”
“Whatever the case, you’re wrong. There is only Dante, full stop. And me, full stop.”
“So it wasn’t you who rubbed your foot up his leg in the box and got him to sneak away from the opera for a bit of a romp?”
“I would have stopped it long before any romping began. I had a plan until you burst in.”
“Plan? What plan?”
“Well, they both knew more than they were letting on—that was apparent—and Dante seemed more likely to crack. And since my usual strategies weren’t working, and he clearly seemed rather sweet on me—”
“Clearly, was he?”
“Oh, please. Men are so easy to read.”
“And here I thought you were a paragon of frail English womanhood. Turns out you’re a temptress.”
She tugs at a loose thread on her cuff and lets out such a violent sigh that it raises the fine hairs trailing down around her ears. “I was rather bad at it.”
“Seemed like you were doing fine to me.”
“I think I chipped his tooth.”
“Well, as with any fine art, practice is required. Rome wasn’t built in a day.” I hope that might make her laugh, but instead she frowns down at the floor. “Was it good, at least?”
“It was . . . wet.”
“Yes, it’s not the driest of activities.”
“And uncomfortable. I don’t think I’ll be trying it again.”
“Information by way of seduction? Or kissing in general?”
“Both.”
“Kissing gets better.”
“I don’t think it’s for me. Even if it’s better someday.”
“Perhaps not. But I think you’ve more in your favor than your skills as a jezebel.” I nudge my toe against hers until she consents to look up at me, then give her a smile—of the less-annoying variety this time. “Far, far better things.”