We are three days on the road, sleeping in sheltered groves and hitching rides on farmers’ carts through fields of close-fisted sunflowers and blooming lavender. We reach Marseilles in the late evening—the linkboys are already out trimming the lantern wicks. It’s a sprawling, shining city, cleaner and brighter than Paris. Notre-Dame de la Garde sits high on the hill above the sea, its white stone reflecting back the sunset as it caramelizes across the breakers, turning the waves gold. The streets of the Panier are narrow and high, wet washing strung between the windows catching the sunlight and flashing like glass.
The banks are all shut up for the day, and as our plan was to find Father’s bank and see if a message from Lockwood or Sinclair has been left for us, we’re rather foiled. It seems we’re condemned to spend another night exposed to the elements unless we go knocking on doors at random, which makes me want to throw myself into the sea. I’m sore head to toe from the walking and the sleeping on hard ground, and my stomach is scratching against my spine. We’ve been eating a mixture of thieved and charitable scraps for days, and the meager breakfast swapped for Felicity’s earrings this morning left me long ago.
As we wander down the main road, toward the fort guarding the harbor, we stumble upon a fair set up along the water, red-and-white-striped tents with ribbons knotted to their ropes and fluttering in the breeze. Paper garlands are strung over the walkways, and the air smells of boiling oil and the mealy tang of beer. Carts of food are lined up between the tents, piled with cheeses rolled in wax, greased turkey legs, skillets filled with candied almonds, and sweet rolls domed with liquefied sugar and berry coulis. It seems the most nickable supper we are going to find.
Felicity takes charge of the thievery, so Percy and I find a table on the pier to wait for her, looking out across the syrupy water and the flocks of ships moored there, gulls flailing between them like snowflakes riding the wind. We sit on either side, Percy’s fiddle case between us. The wood grain is rough and weathered by years of being chewed at by the spray kicked up from the sea.
I’m so tired I put my head down and close my eyes. “Never thought I’d say this, but I’ll be glad to see Lockwood.”
Percy laughs wearily. “Are you getting sentimental?”
“God no—he’s got our banknotes. I want a real drink and a real bed and real food—I could ravish a plate of cakes right now.” When Percy doesn’t reply, I sit up. He’s got his head balanced on his fists, and he looks weary. More than weary, verging on ill—clammy and absent, though I’m likely in an equally sorry state. “You look poorly.”
He doesn’t answer for a moment, then glances up, like he only just realized I spoke. “What?”
“You don’t look well.”
He shakes his head a few times to rouse himself. “I’m tired.”
“So am I. We should be stronger than this. Though I suppose we did just walk across France.”
“We didn’t walk across France,” Felicity says as she flops down on the bench beside me. She’s got a gibassier bun in each hand, fine grains of aniseed from the filling dusting her fingers.
We eat with the sound of the sea and the tinkling melody of fair music underscoring our silence. I finish much faster than Percy or Felicity, who both seem to be trying to savor theirs while I opted for the method of gentlemanly inhalation. I suck the flakes of pastry off my fingers, then wipe my hands on my coattails, leaving oily tracks behind. My wrist knocks against the box in my pocket, and I pull it out and spin the dials.
Felicity watches me, a thin strand of candied orange peel pinched between her thumb and forefinger. “Describe for us what brilliant logic it was that led you to think stealing from the French king was a good idea.”
“It wasn’t the king. It was his minister.”
“I believe stealing from a minister to the king is still a capital offense. You’re going to have to return it, you know.”
“Why? It’s just a trinket box.”
“Because firstly, we are being pursued for it.”
“Allegedly.”
She rolls her eyes. “Secondly, because it is not yours. And thirdly, because it was an incredibly childish thing to do.”
“You’re going to make a very fine governess someday with that enthusiasm for rule following,” I say, with a scowl. “That finishing school will have nothing to teach you.”
She sticks the pad of her thumb in her mouth and sucks at a spot of glaze. “Perhaps I don’t want to go to school.”
“Course you do. You’ve been whining for years about how badly you want schooling, and now you can stop being obnoxious because you’re finally going.”
Her mouth puckers. “You know, saying things like that might be the reason most people find you insufferable.”
“People find me insufferable?”
“When you use that sort of phraseology, yes, it’s a word I’d use.”
“I’m just being honest!”
“Be a little less honest and a little more tactful.”
“You’ve put up such a fuss—”
“Yes, for education. An actual education, not finishing school—they’re going to squeeze me into corsets and bully me into silence.”
It’s true—Felicity’s not a broken horse. A finishing school will kick the spirit straight out of her, and while I’ve never been particularly fond of my sister, the thought of a quiet, simpering, cross-stitching, tea-sipping Felicity feels like a slash through a painting.
I almost begin to feel a bit sorry for her, but then she wrecks that with a sour “Do you know how horrid it feels to watch my brother get tossed out of the best boarding school in England, then get to travel the Continent as a reward, while I’m stuck behind, not permitted to study the same things or read the same books or even visit the same places while we’re abroad, just because I had the bad luck to be born a girl?”
“Reward?” My temper is starting to rise to match hers. “You think this tour is a reward? This is a last meal before my execution.”
“Oh, how tragic, you have to run an estate and be a lord and have a good, rich, cozy life on your own terms.”
I gape at her—mostly because I thought we had developed some understanding between us, after what I had confessed to her the night of the highwaymen’s attack, that there is nothing cozy about the life I’ll be walking back to at the end of this year, but here she is spitting in my face like a mouthful of melon seeds.
“Leave him alone, Felicity,” Percy says quietly.
Felicity flicks a pastry flake from her thumb with the tip of her finger, then says, with an upturned nose, “How lucky we would all be to have the problems of Henry Montague.”
I stand up, because Felicity learned to be mean from our father, and with each snide comment the shade of him is filtering through darker and darker.
“Where are you going?” Percy calls.
“To wash all this damn sap off my hands,” I say, though it’s fairly transparent I’m storming off because of my sister.
I walk for a minute, directionless, my head fuzzy with anger and also a lot of wanting for a drink, before I realize I have no clue where I’m going and I’ve got to be able to find my way back to Percy and Felicity. I stop. A group of children skate by me, their hands linked and their hair flying behind them, angling toward a man setting up a projector for a magic lantern show. A woman outside a viciously green tent shouts in my direction, “Look into my eye for a sight of your own death! Only a sou for a glance!” A pair of acrobats balance on their hands over the edge of the pier, to applause from a sparse audience.
“Vos pieds sont douloureux,” someone says behind me, and I turn.
A wooden stand with a purple awning is set up against the edge of the pier, the word Apothicaire stenciled over a slop of red paint on the front. A man with coarse graying hair, a leather apron thrown over his patchy coat, is behind the counter, leaning against it on his elbows. Behind him, shelves are stuffed with an assortment of bottles and vials, labels peeling away like dead skin and the monikers of their tinctures sketched in spidery handwriting across them. A gallery of maladies.
“Pardon?” I say when I realize he’s addressing me. “Sorry?”
“Vos pieds. Your feet. You have sore feet.”
“How do you know that?”
“You’re walking on them strangely, like they’re hurting you. You need an ointment.”
“Bet you say that to everyone who passes.”
“I don’t always mean it. You—I’m worried for your feet.”
“I’m walking fine.”
“Then something else. You’re too stiff to be without pain. A mistake of the young, maybe? A venereal pox?”
“What? No. Definitely not that.”
He waggles a finger at me. “You’re not well. I can tell it.”
I try to edge away, but he keeps talking, his voice getting louder the farther I go, and I don’t want some randy medicine man shouting across the pier that I’ve got something festering on my bits, so I snap at him, more peevish than I intend, “I’m not unwell, I’m unhappy.”
He seems unmoved. “Is there much of a difference? I have tonics for your feet, and metrical charms my grandmothers can concoct for your ill humor.” He taps his finger at a row of witch bottles on a low shelf, their contents tarlike and frothing.
“Well, I’m not interested. Even if I had coins to spare, they wouldn’t be spent on you and your daft charms.” I start to walk away again before he can say anything more about whatever I’ve got wrong with my head or my feet or my bits, so hasty I sideswipe a cart of oranges behind me, sending a tower of them collapsing in all directions. The cart man starts to shout at me, and I’m so flustered that I immediately forget every word I know in French.
“Sorry,” I say in English. “Sorry. Désolé.” I start scooping oranges off the path before they get stepped on or kicked into the harbor. Two get away from me and plop into the water. I want to sit down where I stand and scream.
One of the oranges rolls down the planking, and a man stops it with the toe of his boot. I’m about to scramble forward and grab it when he reaches down and I catch the flash of a gold signet ring on his finger. The same ring the highwayman was wearing when he and his gang laid siege.
The highwaymen have found us. By some impossible coincidence, we’ve been Dick Turpined and then tracked down. Or perhaps there’s nothing coincidental about it—perhaps Felicity was right and they were looking for us after all. They’ve come for the box.
The man with the gold ring is moving to put the orange back on the cart from the other side, so I scramble out of the way before he can see me and hide in the only place available, which is behind the counter of the apothecary’s stall.
The apothecary doesn’t look down, but his lips pull into a taut smile. “Friends of yours?” he says, and though his eyes are elsewhere, it’s clear he’s addressing me.
“Please, don’t say anything to them,” I hiss.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” he calls. “That’s quite a bruise, sir. How did you come by it?”
“That’s not your concern.” It’s the same voice from the forest, confirmed when the man’s fingers curl over the counter—that ring is unmistakable. He’s leaning over, squinting at the labels on the bottles as the apothecary runs his fingers over them. Don’t look down, I think. Dear God, please don’t look down.
“If I knew the cause, I could better treat it,” the apothecary says. “A bleeding beneath the skin takes a different salve than a slip and fall—”
“I was struck in the head with a fiddle case,” the highwayman snaps, his disdain palpable. “Does that help your diagnosis, mountebank?”
Definitely our assailants, unless there is a rash of tourists using instruments to fend off toby-gills of late.
“Where’d that boy go?” I hear the man with the orange cart shout. My heart’s really sitting on my lungs—it’s getting hard to breathe around it.
“The balm of Gilead, then, applied twice daily, will take down the swelling.” The apothecary almost trips over me as he turns back to the counter. The tin lands a little harder than is natural, but the highwayman must not notice. I hear the chink of coins on the counter, then the men’s boots as they retreat.
The apothecary keeps his face up, but after a moment says to me, “They’ve gone around back toward the city. You’d best go the other way if you’re avoiding them.”
I pull myself up with one hand on the shelves. The bottles tremble against each other. “Thank you.”
The apothecary shrugs. “They look fierce and you look helpless. Do you owe them money?”
“They think I owe them something.” I check to make certain the highwaymen are truly gone—the man with the orange cart has been blessedly distracted by the start of the magic lantern show—then bolt in the other direction, my shoes slapping the damp planking with an empty thwack.
Percy and Felicity are, thank God, right where I left them, still at the table with Percy’s fiddle between them. Somehow Felicity still has a bite of her gibassier left gummed to her thumb and she’s nibbling at it. Percy’s got his head in his hands and is massaging his temples. He doesn’t raise his head, even when I skid up beside them and proclaim, “They found us.”
“Who?” Felicity asks. “Mr. Lockwood?”
“No, the highwaymen. The men who attacked us. They’re here.”
“How do you know it’s them?”
“I saw them. One of them has this ring—I remember it.”
Felicity is already on her feet. “Do you think they’re looking for us?”
“Why else would they be here? You think the group of bandits who attacked us just happen to be strolling through a fair at the same time we are?”
“We need to go, we need to see if Lockwood’s arrived and find where our company is.”
“No, we need to find out if they’re actually after this”—and here I snatch up the puzzle box from where it’s still sitting on the table between them—“and return it so they’ll let us alone.”
“You think we should go looking for the men who were ready to kill us?” Felicity asks. “They’re not going to let us walk away after we give them what they want. We need to get out of here. Percy, are you certain you’re well?”
Percy looks far less well than he did when I left. He keeps squinting, like the light is too bright, and he’s sweating and doesn’t look quite here. I can’t think of another way to describe it. But he stands up, shouldering his fiddle case. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
“How are we going to find Lockwood?” I ask as we weave through the crowd, Felicity in the lead.
“Do you know where he meant for us to stay?” she asks.
“No, he sent Sinclair.”
“Well, do you know Father’s bank here? We could ask them if they’ve accepted any letters in his name or if Sinclair left word about accommodation.”
“No. Maybe? It’s the Bank of England, I think.”
“You think?”
“Yes, it is. Wait . . . yes.”
“Do you ever listen, Henry, or is everything just sweet nothings in your ear?”
I look up as we round a corner and catch a glimpse of exactly the troop of men we are trying to avoid, down the path ahead of us and coming our way. I grab Felicity’s arm and jerk her backward between two of the tents, nearly tripping myself when my shin catches one of the ropes tying them off. Percy dodges next to me, his fiddle case clutched to his chest. “They’re right there,” I hiss. Felicity peers out from between the tents, then ducks back to my side.
“You’re certain that’s them?”
“I’m certain that one of them is wearing the same ring as the man who attacked us.”
“That’s not a whole lot of certainty, is it?”
“He’s also got the imprint of Percy’s fiddle case carved into his forehead, so how much more would you like?”
Shadows stretch along the pier, preceding their casters, and we all sink back. I try to think small and invisible thoughts, willing them to not look at us, not see us, not turn as they pass. I’d gladly toss the puzzle box at their heads as they go by, but Felicity’s logic makes more sense than mine—they planned to kill us in the forest and I can’t imagine they’d let us go with a Thanks, chums and a pat on the back now. I haven’t yet a plan of what to do beyond don’t get murdered at a seaside fair, but for now, that requires staying out of sight.
The highwaymen file past us, the one with the gold ring in the lead. He’s got his hand over his face, rubbing his temples, but as it drops, I catch a glimpse of his profile and recognition dawns suddenly upon me.
I know him. And he’s most certainly not a highwayman—it’s the Duke of Bourbon.
He starts to turn his head toward us, livid bruise coming into view, and my heart nearly throws itself to its death. But at the same minute, a firework explodes overhead, turning the navy sky bright red. The highwaymen all look up, and Percy, Felicity, and I, seemingly of the same mind on the subject of not getting murdered, duck the rest of the way down the row, then around the corner and out of sight.
We stop between two tents, canvas shielding us on all sides from the crowds gathered along the pier. The ground is peppered with stakes wedged into the planks and straining against the ropes strung taut between them. It’s a narrow corridor to walk.
“I know him,” I hiss.
“What?” Felicity replies. She’s got one hand pressed to her chest, breathing hard.
“The man, the highwayman, I saw his face. I know him.”
“Monty,” Percy says from behind me.
I press on. I’m so sure of it and so desperate to finally be useful and right about something that I won’t be interrupted. “It’s the Duke of Bourbon, the French king’s prime minister. I met him at Versailles.”
“Monty.” Percy shifts to my side, his hand brushing my elbow.
“The box came from his apartments.”
“Monty.”
“What is it, Perce?”
“Take this.” He’s trying to press his violin case into my hands.
“Why?”
“Because I think I’m going to faint.”
And then he does.
God bless Percy for the warning, but I’m not as quick on my feet as that. I haven’t got a firm hold on the fiddle case when he collapses, and I sacrifice my grip on it to catch him before he hits the ground. It bounces along the boards, one of the latches popping open with a metallic ping.
Catching him sends me to my knees and we sink down together, my arms under his and his face pressed into my chest. I expect him to be limp as cloth but instead he’s gone rigid. His body’s twisted up and stiff, a contorted sculpture of himself, and it doesn’t look like he’s breathing. The muscles in his chest feel like they’re pulled up too tight to let in any air, and I can hear his teeth squeak as they grind together.
“Percy.” I lay him on the ground and shake him lightly. “Hey, Perce, come on, wake up.” I don’t know why I’m talking to him. It feels like the only thing I can do. His back arches, veins in his neck straining against his skin, and I think maybe he’s coming around, but then he starts to shake. Not just shake—convulse, frightening and out of control. His limbs look like they’re trying to pull away from his body, head kicking at the planking.
And I don’t know what do. I’ve never felt so stupid and helpless and afraid in my life. Do something, I think, because my best friend is writhing on the ground, in obvious pain, but I am absolutely stuck. I can’t think of a thing to do to help him. I can’t even move.
Suddenly Felicity is kneeling beside me. “Get out of the way,” she snaps, and I come back to myself enough to follow orders. She takes my place, grabbing two fistfuls of Percy’s coat and hauling him onto his side so there’s less chance of him slamming into one of the tent stakes as he convulses. “Percy,” she says, leaning over him. “Percy, can you hear me?” He doesn’t respond—I’m not sure if he’d be able to even if he heard. Felicity puts one hand on his shoulder, like she’s keeping him steady on his side, and kicks the fiddle case out of his way. Then she sits back and does nothing but hold him in that place.
“What are you doing?” I cry. I’ve got my hands pressed to either side of my face—a farcical gesture of horror. “We’ve got to help him!”
“There’s nothing to be done,” she replies, and she sounds so calm it feeds my panic.
“He needs help!”
“It should be over in a minute. We have to wait.”
“You can’t—”
I start to crawl forward without any plan of what I’m about to do, but Felicity whips around and skewers me with a glare. “Unless you know what you’re talking about, please stay out of the way and keep quiet.”
I can’t watch it. I can’t watch Felicity being so calm and Percy’s body wrenching and distorted, and me sitting on the ground feeling so goddamn helpless.
It seems like it lasts forever, as though we’ve spent days here, waiting, spectators to what I’m certain is Percy dying slowly in intense agony. His breathing sounds labored and gravelly, and his lips are tinged faintly blue. When Felicity tips him farther on his side, spittle pinked with blood froths at the corner of his mouth. “He’s coming out of it,” she says quietly. She has one hand hovering near the back of his head, as a cushion between his arched neck and the iron tent stakes.
Percy’s body gives a final pull, knees coiling up to his chest; then he vomits. Felicity keeps a good hold on him so that when his muscles loosen, he stays on his side. His eyes are still closed.
Wake up, Perce, I think. Come on, wake up and be alive and be all right. Please be all right.
“We need to get him somewhere close by,” Felicity says, brushing his hair away from where it’s stuck to his lips with a soft touch. That’s either too subtle or I’m not thinking straight, because she looks over at me and snaps, “If you want to help, now would be the time for that.”
I stagger to my feet, so shaky I nearly keel straight back over, and stumble down the path between the tents. I don’t know where to go—there’s nothing nearby but the fair stands, and the highwaymen are probably still prowling, searching for us.
I look down into the slat of sea visible between the planks, just as an orange bobs past, its rind slick and glittering with beads of seawater.
I sprint back the way I went before, shouldering through the crowds all stopped and staring up at the fireworks, until I find the apothecary’s stand again. He’s stepped out from under its awning and is watching the show too, but he turns when he sees me coming. “You return.”
“My friend needs help,” I blurt.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Can you help him?”
“In what way?”
“You’re a doctor.”
“I’m an apothecary.”
“But you know . . . You can . . .” I’m so winded I can hardly get words out. My chest feels corked. “Please, I don’t know what’s wrong with him!”
The apothecary is sizing me up, all the mirth gone from his face. “I think you’re trouble.”
“We’re not trouble, we’re in trouble,” I say. “We’re travelers and we’ve nowhere to go and he needs help and . . . Please, he’s had some kind of fit and he was shaking and he won’t wake and I don’t know what’s wrong. Please.”
My voice gets properly pitchy on that last bit, which must make me sound sufficiently pathetic, or at least sincere, for he takes me by the elbow and says, “Show me where he is.”
I nearly throw my arms around him for that.
I want to run, but the apothecary seems insistent on a brisk walk and I’m forced to match it or else lose him in the crowd. As we clamber through the people with their faces turned to the sky, he asks me to recount what happened, and I give him a tongue-tied version that brings the panic in me back up to a boil. I’m such a wreck I can hardly remember where I’ve come from. All the tents look the same. I’m about to tell him I’m afraid I won’t be able to find Percy and Felicity again when I spot her silhouette, black against the brackish canvas. “Here,” I say, and I lead him between the tents. Another firework pops over our heads.
Percy’s still insensible, but he’s starting to stir. Felicity’s kneeling over him, one of his hands in hers, speaking to him though he doesn’t seem to hear. A watery ribbon of blood and spittle slips from the corner of his mouth and down his cheek. Felicity pulls her sleeve over her thumb and wipes it away. She looks up as we approach, casting a wary eye at the stranger.
“He’s an apothecary,” I explain. “He can help.”
The apothecary doesn’t say a word to Felicity as she shuffles out of his way and he adopts her place, taking Percy’s face in his hands and peering at it, then checking his pulse, then his eyes and inside his mouth. He too swipes his thumb at the blood.
“He’s bleeding,” I murmur, not realizing I’ve spoken aloud until Felicity replies, “He bit his tongue, that’s all.”
The apothecary takes a waxed envelope of smelling salts from the pocket of his coat and slips his finger under the flap, all the while speaking to Percy in a language I don’t recognize. His voice is very gentle. “Obre els ulls. Has passat una nit difícil, veritat? Em pots mirar? Mira’m. Look at me.”
Percy opens his eyes, and I let go a sigh of relief, even though it seems to take him a tremendous effort. His gaze is a long way off from us.
“Molt bé, molt bé,” the apothecary murmurs. “Do you know where you are?” Percy blinks twice, slowly, then his eyes slide closed again and his head tips sideways. The apothecary catches it before his face smacks the ground. “He needs rest.”
“We’ve nowhere to go,” Felicity replies.
“I have a boat moored in the canal where you may bring him. I’ll see what more can be done for him there.”
I nod, waiting for someone to do something useful, until Felicity snaps at me, “He’s not going to walk it off, Monty. You have to carry him.”
“Oh. Right.” The apothecary slides out of the way, and I hoist Percy over my shoulder. My feet stumble for purchase on the ground and I almost fall, but Felicity pushes me straight, and we follow the apothecary between the tents.
Beyond the pier, our guide leads us, sure-footed, down a thin, sandy path past the sailing ships and along the riverbank, until we reach a tar-caked dock where a fleet of brightly painted canal boats are moored, neat as harpsichord keys. My arms are starting to shake. My whole body feels like it’s shaking, inside and out.
The apothecary jumps aboard one of the boats, taking up a lantern from the prow before he grabs me by the arm and hauls me after him. Felicity follows with a light step.
The canal boat has a narrow deck with a covered cabin in the center, and I follow him into it. It’s a trick maneuvering both Percy and I through the small door without knocking either of us out cold, and once we’re inside, my head nearly brushes the ceiling. The apothecary leads me to a built-in box bed covered in pieced quilts and a handful of thin pillows. Hanging earthenware lanterns decorate the walls in diamond shards of light that bob and sway as the boat bounces in the water. “Here.” The apothecary pulls back the blankets on the bed, and I ease Percy down onto it.
I didn’t realize he had woken, but he grabs onto me, like he thinks he’s falling. “Monty!”
“Right here, Perce.” I’m trying to keep the shudder out of my voice, and failing. “I’m right here, it’s . . .” I’ve got no clue what I’m supposed to say. “It’s all right.” God, I sound so daft.
“It’s bright,” he murmurs. His voice is muzzy and slurred—he hardly sounds like himself—and his eyes still aren’t focused. Seems he’s having a hard time keeping them open at all—he keeps squinting like he’s looking into the sun. His hands are clamped around my coat, so tight his knuckles are blotched, and when I sit him upon the bed, he clutches me tighter, his voice pitching. “Don’t leave me!”
“I won’t.”
He seems so distressed that I don’t want to peel him off, so I stoop there, my hands around his, trying to convince him to lie down, with my voice shaking. His shoulders slump suddenly, head falling forward against my chest, and I think he’s going to let me go, but then his fingers go tight and he tries to stand again. “I need my violin. Where is it? Where’s my violin? I need it now.”
“I’ve got it, Percy.” Felicity appears at my side, prying Percy’s fingers off my coat and guiding him down onto the bed. “Try to relax, it’s all right. You’re safe now, relax.” On the other side of the cabin, the apothecary pulls a medicine chest from a shelf and begins rummaging through its drawers, bottles clinking together in a soft chorus from inside.
I can tell that I’m useless, so I slink backward, onto the deck and into the cool night air. Above the water, the stars are spread in smudgy handfuls across the twilight. I can still hear the music of the fair, and closer by a slow tune plucked out upon a mandolin, one lonely string at a time. On the bank, crickets are purring. I sit down with my back to the railing, turning my face to the sky and letting the shaky fatigue settle through me.
Turns out, panic is rather exhausting, and I fall asleep without meaning to, my head tipped back against the railing of the boat, before anyone has come out.