Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 31 Read online

  Hamlet sniffs out good things to eat and he himself will make good eating. She has eaten her other winter coats, all of them larger, fatter dogs she stole from unattended yards or tied up outside shops. Dogs long in loin and rump. Feel for fat where bone lives under skin. The spine, the ribs. Feel for muscle with two hands around the thigh. Fat is soft and pressable, muscle firm and round, bone is hard.

  They never growl or bite or slink away. She runs at them on all four paws, the nape hair bristling. She makes a noise high-pitched and krawz, called Doomsday Dog that makes them shiver and pee on their own feet. She bites their tender jowls sharp there under the jaw. They know she can and will rip out their throats. Her mouth smells of blood. Wolf-killer. She is not she, to them. In the denim pockets of her apron she keeps raw liver.

  Soile examines Lena’s ears in the kitchen of the furthest house and pushes her back against the counter. She bites Lena’s lip hard and draws blood. There is a leaf that can stop bleeding. It’s cottony inside. Crushed mullein takes away the itch of nettles. Lena uncertain. Wipes the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. Tries to stand. Sweating. The fire is much too hot.

  “Whose house is this?” she asks, but Soile leans in and sucks the wound, sucks her lip, fumbles with Lena’s zipper. Small flakes of burning paper escape from the stove and rise to the ceiling.

  “Stop!” Lena says, not stopping.

  Bitten on her neck, her arm, her breast, Lena bleeds into the dish drainer. Her bra all bug-eyed in the sink. The single glass left winking there from the summer, splattered and lustrous with blood.

  “Ouch,” she says, pulling away when her tongue is bitten. Feet have smeared the fallen droplets. Outside, the dog, Hamlet, bays. Let him in, for godsakes, Lena says. So very hot now in the cabin, brilliant brilliant heat. No dog needed. Not just yet.

  Oh, polite and socially responsible owners of this place. Oh, neat and kempt girl from the main land. Blood swarms with existence. Blood sausage. Blood pancakes on Fridays. Blood soup. Raw meat slurking through brown paper bags on the train, staining the laps of commuters. The dog, sniffing out something good, bellows at the door. Lena twists upon Soile’s hand. Malaria in blood and worms swim down the rosy tubes and merry corkscrews twirl and dance, happy to bring their little surprises your way, and there is always always AIDS. Those needles in the dumpsters. She’s not one to make the living suffer.

  How fine and warm is Soile now. How beautiful. “What are you?” she asks Lena again. She smiles. Her teeth. She bends down and puts her lips on the white forehead.

  The hair is long, Swedish yellow-white, good hair to stuff your boots with. She cuts with scissors first, schwick, schwick, but then with knives, Lena now so silent. There was a cap, a knitted one, red wool and pompom, near the fishing poles. On it goes, to keep that little head warm while dinner is prepared. Such big eyes she has. Will you have some cake and wine with me, my darling? Some liver? Naked but for your sweet red cap. Come. Hold my hand now. I am warm with all this joy. You will love me soon.

  The summer village empty. All the people gone to places other. Dreaming dreams of toast and cheese and granny nodding in her bed. This colour red, the winking glass, the dripping tongue not part of dreaming. The second step is always damp in summer. The foot pulls back from all that cold. By lunchtime, though, the wood is dry.

  Skull and Hyssop

  Kathleen Jennings

  “Get out of here!” shouted Captain Moon from the door of the Helmsman’s Help. “Go on, clear off!”

  As the captain’s thin, dark form lurched into the Port Fury street, several urchins fled, leaving their victim—a young woman in a blue weatherfinder jacket—to stagger in confusion. At the corner, they turned back to shout imprecations at the captain, but he ignored them. Instead, he caught the woman by the sleeve of her jacket and towed her out of the drizzling rain. In the brown tobacco-fog of the Help, he propped her up on one of the tall stools at the high table where Eliza Blancrose, with whom he had been enjoying a quiet rum and a discreet bet, waited.

  “This is Eliza, journalist and travel writer for the Poorfortune Exclamation,” said Moon, beaming. Eliza, arrested in mid-sentence by the captain’s abrupt departure, doubtfully studied the new arrival before looking back at Moon. He was already a tall man—taller than Eliza—but altitude, adventure and (in Eliza’s expressed opinion) lack of feeding had attenuated him. Under Eliza’s gaze he became suddenly aware that he loomed like a crane above the stranger, and backed away. Eliza patted the woman’s hand, beneath the blue cuff of the rain-spattered jacket. “There, there,” she said, as if she doubted anything would be all right.

  Moon called to the barman for buttered rum.

  “My luck’s turning,” he said, as he returned to a tall stool. He hitched one leg through its bars and put a pipe, which he did not light, between his teeth. “It’s not every day I get to help a weatherfinder. I’m sure you’re much obliged, you needn’t mention it. Those gutter-rats would have had every coin out of your pockets, wouldn’t they, Eliza? Well, gutter-mice. Assuming you had coins to begin with. Safer aloft, you know. Above the clouds.” He nodded upward with all the wisdom his thin, incautious features could display, but a touch of yearning had crept in with those last words.

  “You’re a terrible liar, Moon,” said Eliza affectionately. “Port Fury isn’t large enough to sustain a criminal element.”

  The young woman had a long jaw which made her look both familiar and pugnacious, but she kept her gaze lowered and her chin tucked in below her raised collar. “Thank you for your assistance,” she said firmly, “but I shouldn’t be in here.”

  “It’s an airman’s pub,” said Moon, “And there’s no man more truly an airman than a weatherfinder, is there Eliza?” The journalist raised one eyebrow, a feat Moon had never achieved although he had practised since childhood. He turned back to the other woman. She looked promisingly hungry.

  “Do you need a job?” he asked.

  “No. I’m here searching for my brother.”

  “Can’t say I’ve seen him,” said Moon briskly, without pausing for a name or description. “Look here—I’ve got a fine ship headed for Poorfortune, that jewel of the seas,” (“Jewel of the sewers,” put in Eliza with the loyalty of a true native of that city), “and I could do with a weatherfinder. In fact,” he added, his eagerness to be in the air again soured by the recollection, “I have a passenger who insists on it.”

  “If I can find my brother, he could assist you,” said the woman. Her speech suggested education, and a good one, but it had not eradicated her accent—an inland drawl from the country regions beyond Port Fury where the towns were too small to merit dock-towers. “This is his coat, not mine.” She rolled up the sleeves of the regulation Academy jacket to show her lower arms. They were bare of the tattoos in which weatherfinders, for all their arrogance, gloried as much as any common salt or breezy. “His name is—he went by the name of Evan Arden—” she began.

  “Not a bell,” said Moon. “I don’t run with weatherfinders as a rule.”

  “He calls them glorified windsocks,” put in Eliza.

  “No offence meant. Cally—he’s steersman—and I get on just fine. My passenger, however, is very insistent, and he can pay.”

  The woman who wasn’t a weatherfinder slipped down from the wooden stool and folded the collar of her jacket up further. “I’ll brave your gutter rats, captain. I haven’t anything they can steal. But thank you again.”

  She’d made it to the door before Moon had an idea. “Wait!” he called.

  The woman glanced back. When he met her gaze, she looked older, but her eyes were lit with a flicker of hope.

  “I’ll buy that jacket,” offered Moon.

  When he returned to the table, Eliza said, “Well?”

  “In luck,” said Moon, bundling up the jacket.

  “Th
e trick with luck,” said Eliza, lifting her glass, “is holding onto it.”

  Mr Fuille was a Level 7 State Scientist (according to his papers, his card, the labels on his luggage and his self-introduction). Grey-suited and featured, he stood on the platform of the middle docks and regarded the Hyssop closely. After a morning of being loaded with crates labelled FRAGILE, LIVE BEWARE and BIOLOGICAL SPECIMENS, the Hyssop hung heavy from her supports, trapped in the sluggish shadows of the docks and out of the high crisp winds. Her holds were pungent with crowded boxes, and Port Fury sparrows and the odd raven perched and flew from spar to strut to gangplank.

  To Captain Moon, fidgeting beside his passenger and willing the ravens away, Fuille’s patient inspection seemed malevolent.

  “I must be satisfied, sir,” continued Fuille, “that all codes and authorities are, have been, and will continue to be complied with. Especially as we are to make the crossing in a single stage, in such a diminutive vessel.”

  Moon was anxious to be away from Port Fury, with its codes and laws and Imperial interests, and had hoped that his passenger shared that eagerness. Now, choking down his impatience, the captain forced himself to conduct Mr Fuille once more around the ship, directing the scientist’s attention to orderly preparations and regulation outfitting—rubberised equipment to prevent sparks, correct ice insulation and sighting-glass—and steering the man deftly away from the freshest paintwork.

  “I saw three deckhands,” said Mr Fuille at last.

  “Two,” said Moon, as he watched the scientist’s ashen fingers tap a beat on the railing. “Cally is steersman. Tomasch and Alban are more—everything-hands.”

  “A very small crew for a vessel of these specifications. Possibly the minimum required for compliance with the Poorfortune People’s Aviation and Elevation Cargo and Vessel Handling Code, which being declared by the port of destination is, I must accept, the applicable document. But I observed no weatherfinder. It specifically says in the Imperial and Transcontinental Standards and Accord that—”

  “—and this is where we keep him,” said Moon, pointing to his showpiece. In truth the storeroom was the size of a coffin, but the blue regulation-issue weatherfinder jacket was artistically draped over a hook on the door. “I’m afraid he is somewhat, er, under the weather. As they say. Landsickness. He’ll return to us shortly. You said you were anxious to make good time?” He shepherded Fuille back to the single passenger cabin at the rear of the Hyssop, already crowded with Fuille’s luggage (elegant and extensive luggage, viewed beside the canvas ditty bags and matildas the crew had slung across from the docks). Having installed his passenger there, Moon stepped onto the dock to sign, with Cally, the last forms standing between the Hyssop and freedom.

  From this spot, he surveyed his little ship. The canvas and rubber of her gas cushions was striped red and yellow. He had painted the hull garish black and red, with long blue luck-eyes on the sides. The figurehead, which held a heavy lantern suspended by chains from her hands, was picked out in mercilessly lifelike colours.

  Moon looked at her with love. Underneath the paint and canvas, for those who had eyes to see, she had the bones of an elegant and venerable vessel, the soul of a more romantic age. Only the knowledge of the passenger sitting like a canker in the cabin dulled his pride in the Hyssop.

  “If you ever gaze at a woman like that, dear Captain, I’ll eat my hat,” said a merry voice from above.

  “That would be a shame, Eliza,” said Moon. He looked up. She was leaning over a railing, on her way to the highest level of the docks. From where he stood Moon could see the sleek curve of the Orient, the long, swift cruise-ship on which she had a berth. “It is a very smart hat.”

  “And that,” conceded Eliza, touching one gloved hand to her hair, “is a particularly stylish paint job. Your taste is remarkable, the more so considering your, ah—finances, my poor Captain. You should have been a pirate.”

  “There is time yet,” said Moon. “Besides, ‘no man is poor or alone who owns a ship.’”

  “Or otherwise acquires one.”

  Moon added as an afterthought, “You, of course, are always welcome aboard. The boys took a liking to you. We’re taking the direct route—I will arrange a thrilling voyage for your readers.”

  “The colours would clash with my dress,” said Eliza. “Besides—” she broke off with pointed tact.

  “I told you, the Hyssop can make the voyage, easily. She was flying before they ever thought of making your fine cruise ships. I’ll wage we’ll have a smoother trip.”

  Eliza tossed her head. “I was going to say, you couldn’t afford me.”

  “You take payment for favourable reviews?” he asked.

  “It would take payment to get a favourable review of that tub,” said Eliza. “It’s no pleasure-craft. Get me a good story one day, Captain Moon, and a ship that’s steadier on the stomach, and maybe I’ll fly with you. Till then, find me in Poorfortune, for I have news to tell you when you get there.”

  “I’ll race you,” said Moon rashly.

  Eliza went on up, laughing.

  “News of what?” he shouted up, after a moment.

  “It will keep!” Eliza called back, and then the next platform of the dock tower hid her from his sight.

  On the second day out from Port Fury, and already well clear of the sea-ports and land, the Hyssop caught a bitterwind. Ice crackled on the rails and glass shieldings, and vanished again like smoke. The ship had been designed to sail with the wind, and refitted by previous owners to be propelled by modern power and manned by a very small crew, currently made up of Cally and his sons. Moon, who believed that sense, experience and attention would beat an academy-trained weatherfinder any day, and cost less, was standing at the tiller, planning further renovations and contentedly watching the sky through the glass dome of the steering deck when Mr Fuille flushed out the stowaway.

  The sounds of pursuit began below Moon’s feet, became accompanied by the cries of Tomasch and Alban, rose up through the bowels of the Hyssop and spilled onto the deck. The steersman remained carefully deaf, and there were no shouts of fire or leakage, so Moon waited until the tumult died. Then he tucked his unlit pipe into the pocket of his fur-lined coat, regretfully handed the tiller over to Cally, and wandered out to see what had caused the fuss.

  Mr Fuille, his face greyer than usual, his shoulders hunched against the cold, confronted Moon amidships. “I am a Level 7 Scientist,” he said. “Their Majesty’s Government will not be at all pleased to know that my cargo was being rifled through by ship’s rats!”

  “Rats?” said Moon.

  “Vile, vagabond—” said Fuille, beginning to sputter.

  “Ah,” said Moon.

  Tomasch was leaning over the side, a gloved hand raised against the swirl of ice-air which peeled around the wind shields. Moon joined him. For a moment his attention was caught and whipped away by the wind, the vast blue sphere of the empty world in which the ship hung suspended. Then he saw a flutter of cloth disappear around the curve of the hull.

  “Over the side!” Fuille choked. “The cowardice—Their Majesties’ Government—”

  “What Their Majesties’ Government doesn’t know won’t hurt it,” said Moon thoughtfully. He turned to Mr Fuille. The scientist did not improve the view. “Hazard of shipping. But the problem has gone. Disposed of itself. Short duration. Remarkably.”

  “Send your men after him!”

  “To what end?” said Moon, noting the alarm of Alban, who had not inherited his family’s head for heights.

  “There has been a violation of Government property!” said Mr Fuille, his grey eyes protruding. He shook with anger or cold, and his skin was chalky. “My experiments are delicate, carefully calibrated. If your crew has been nurturing a stowaway—”

  “Get something for Mr Fuille to drink,” Moon t
old Tomasch. “And get him a warmer coat.” When they had gone into Fuille’s cabin, Moon stood scratching his jaw. He looked at the clear sky (such a warm dark blue in spite of the ice) and the indicator flags all fluttering stiffly as they should, then went to his own small cabin, set at the front of the little ship. He opened the shutters over one round window. Through the uneven glass he could see sky, ropes, chains, billowing gas cushions, sky again and then the upswept arms of the figurehead, holding out the unlit lantern to where the endless blue arched into oblivion.

  Moon ran a careful calculation of time and infrastructure in his mind, then opened the next shutter along and forced open the window itself. It slammed against the timbers with a report like a gun, and the ice wind poured in.

  Moon, pleased, glimpsed the stowaway crouched behind the figurehead, clinging to the iced ropes and staring out into the void. He closed his own eyes against the blinding cold and, climbing half out the window in spite of his bad leg, reached down, seized a double handful of hair and shirt and hauled the stowaway back aboard.

  Someone hammered heavily on the cabin door, but Moon ignored the noise and frowned down at stowaway who sat on the bed, wrapped in Moon’s blankets. He suspected she was the young woman he had met in Port Fury, although the windburn was new, as was the ancient coat which had replaced her brother’s jacket.

  “That was a foolish thing to do,” he said, conversationally. He had succeeded in pouring a quarter of a bottle of brandy into her before she’d revived enough to protest, and he didn’t think she’d been out in the bitterwind long enough to lose any fingers.