Pantomime (12 page)

  Cyril held my hand for the rest of the train ride. I rested my head against his shoulder. Several hours later, Sicion appeared on the horizon, a dark smear backed by the grey of the sea. The bright cobalt of the ridge of Penglass that ran through the city center was muted in the fog of the early evening, and the sandstone buildings blurred about the edges. It looked thoroughly depressing after the lush green of the countryside.

  Home.

 

As soon the door closed behind me in the claustrophobic examination room, my chest tightened and I wanted to flee.

  Doctor Ambrose towered above me and was at least twice as wide as my father, and my father was not the smallest of men. He wore round, wire-rimmed glasses and had a bushy grey-tinged moustache and beard. Between that and his long, straggly hair, Doctor Ambrose appeared to have no face.

  "Humph," Doctor Ambrose grunted through his facial hair. "You must be the young person I've read so much about."

  I said nothing, but noted the gender-neutral word.

  "Sit on the table, please."

  I did. I gripped the edges of the table hard and gritted my teeth.

  Doctor Ambrose put his fingers to my neck and shone a light in my eyes, as if it were a routine doctor's visit.

  "Who else have you been seen by?"

  I rattled off a list of names. There were about seven by now. I hated them all.

  "What do you do?" he said, opening a tablet. His practice was successful, for him to afford a functioning one.

  "Pardon me?"

  "Your hobbies. Your interests. What are they?" He looked at me from under his bushy eyebrows, stylus still held at the ready over the tablet.

  It was odd that he was not asking me about my physiology. I sensed a trap and was not sure if he would tell my mother or not. You can never trust doctors. "I enjoy dancing and music," I began cautiously. That was true. "And I like, um, sewing." A lie.

  He scribbled. "Do you cavort more with male or females?"

  I fought down a snigger. Cavort? "My best friend is Anna Yew." I did get on well enough with Anna, but my best friend was Cyril.

  He scribbled again.

  "Last menstrual period?"

  I tried not to choke. Surely that information was somewhere in my medical file. "Never."

  Another scribble.

  He asked questions that seemed to have no correlation to each other or to anything relating to my condition – how many hours a day did I study? Or exercise? How often did I visit the toilets? How much had I grown last year? What size slippers did I wear? He took measurements of my head, my neck, my shoulders, my chest, my waist, my hips, my legs, my wrists, and my ankles. I kept my limbs lax, trying to think of other things as he prodded and peered at me.

  He asked all of these questions from behind his beard, and always there was the scribble over the tablet. When he had finished a page, he would tap the stylus three times against the side.

  "Right," he said after what seemed like hours, setting the tablet aside. He went to the door and called for the female nurse. "Please remove your clothing," he said. The nurse entered and stood in the corner, looking menacing – the guardian of my virtue.

  I sighed and turned around so that the nurse could undo the line of buttons down my back. The doctor was like all the others after all, and once I presented myself for inspection, he would
hmm
and
hah,
write his article, have his name published in a prestigious medical journal, and then send me on my way without offering further assistance.

 

The afternoon at the doctor's left me feeling invaded and despondent. I did not want to face Cyril's sympathetic looks; the only other person who had any idea of what I was going through. So I went to visit Anna Yew.

  I took the carriage to her apartments and told the coachman to tell my mother where I was. Mother was always delighted when I went to see Anna. Anna's elder brother was hopelessly dim, but he was a potential suitor in my mother's eyes.

  Marrying George would be like taking a cat or some other sort of pet as a husband. He would be happy enough to sit in the corner and blink at you, smiling slightly and staring off into the distance. He would not know the first thing about female anatomy. He would do what he was told and no more. At least he was sweet, if not much else.

  "Genie! So lovely for you to come calling," Anna said, taking my hand and leading me up the stairs to her room. "How was the countryside? Mother and Father haven't taken me yet and my eyes are starving to see green!"

  "My eyes are already withering from all of the grey and brown," I said, laughing. "But it was lovely, yes. I wish we could spend more time there. I think I would happily spend all of my time there."

  "Oh, I don't think I could go that far," Anna said. "I would miss the bustle of the city after a time."

  Anna's room was very girlish. A garden of printed primroses grew on her bedding, twined up the curtains and dotted the circular rug that covered most of the hardwood floor. More flowers were etched into the vanity and the ornate framed mirror hanging over the fireplace. Even the wallpaper was flowery, though at least the pattern was subtle, in pinks only a few shades apart.

  Anna, in many ways, was my opposite. She cared for propriety, for proper girlish things. Yet she had a wicked wit hidden under the lacy layers of femininity, though of late, it had not appeared as often. We did not used to be so different. She had once climbed trees.

  We sat on the bed. Anna tucked her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. "Were any boys in the countryside when you went?" she asked.

  "Oswin Hawthorne and Damien Hornbeam," I said.

  "Damien Hornbeam!" Anna said. "He's so handsome. Those shoulders!"

  "He is," I agreed.

  "Would you marry him?" she asked. She was always talking about marriage of late. I supposed it made sense, since this year or next she would become betrothed.

  I remembered the look on his face when his hand had brushed between my legs. How he had refused to glance at me the rest of the day. "No, he's not the one for me."

  "You say that about
everyone,"
Anna said, exasperated and not noticing the strained tone of my voice.

  "And you would happily marry most of the boys in Sicion and Imachara, so we balance out," I said, more sharply than I intended.

  She made an affronted squeak and blushed.

  "Apologies, Anna," I said, rubbing between my eyes. "Mother's trying to matchmake again. It's setting me on edge."

  She sighed. "I don't see why you're so against it. It has to happen at some point. Don't you dream of a wedding?"

  "No."

  "But you don't want to become a spinster in your parents' household. That would be awful."

  I shuddered. "Yes, that would be awful." I shrugged. "Might not be anything for it. We all know I'm plainer than pudding. Who do you want to marry the most?"
For
this week, this day, this second,
I added in my head, unkindly.

  She looked up toward the ceiling and thought about it. Even the ceiling molding around the light fixture featured roses. "How about… your brother?" she grinned mischievously. "Then we could be sisters!"

  I made a face. "Eurgh!"

  She stuck her tongue out at me.

  "Is being my sister such a terrible option?"

  I stuck my tongue out at her in turn.

  "It would be perfect. Your family's star is on the rise, my mother says. You've gone up two titles in the past ten years! It's rare for families to move so quickly after being at the same level for so long." I lifted an eyebrow at her crass assessment of my family, but she did not notice.

  "And Cyril is handsome, and kind, athletic, and intelligent," she said, counting each quality on a finger as if she was ticking off a checklist. She probably did have checklists for every eligible boy in Ellada, balancing their strengths and weaknesses on an imaginary scale in her head. Sometimes Anna horrified me.

  She continued, "He's going to be a solicitor as well as sit in on the councils, and that is a respectable, important position. Combined with those big blue eyes and broad shoulders, he's one of the best prospects in Sicion. Certainly you must have realized that?"

  I made a face. "He's my brother. I'd never think of him in those terms. Would you ever think of George that way?"

  Now it was her turn to make a face. "That's different. George is a catch for nobody."

  For a moment, I was so tempted to tell her that Mother thought him a prospect for me, but it was too embarrassing.

  "Are you looking forward to the debutante ball next month? Have you gotten your dress for it yet?" I asked instead, steering her away from the unsettling topic of marriage to the safer area of clothing.

  Her face lit up. If there was one thing she liked more than marriage, it was clothes. Or best yet, it was the clothes she would wear when she married the boy of her dreams. The whole idea of a wedding to me seemed exhausting more than anything else.

  "Not yet, but mother and I are going to go look for a dress tomorrow. But I did get this the other week." Anna went to the wardrobe, opened it, and brought out a dark blue taffeta gown. It would go well with the pink undertones of her skin and bring out the red in her strawberry blonde hair. I told her so and her face split into a wide, genuine grin.

  "Why don't you try it on?" she said, eagerly. Anna loved to dress up.

  And so I did, taking care to keep my petticoats on as I changed, turning away from her so she did not see my tiny breasts. Anna was well-endowed in that department already.

  The dress looked silly on me. It was too short, as I was a head taller than Anna, the waist was too high, the bodice far too loose. Unsurprising, I supposed. The color was good for me, though.

  "Are you looking forward to the debutante ball?" Anna asked, noticing my somber face in the mirror.

  "Truthfully? No. But you know I'm not normally one for ball gowns and plaiting flowers in my hair."

  She giggled. "That's true. The only time I saw you willingly with flowers in your hair was when you'd crawled through a forsythia bush!"

  I smiled at the memory.

  "But I suppose I always thought you'd outgrow it." My smile faded at her words.

  "Maybe I'm just taking longer than most. I'll make an effort with the ball. Perhaps it won't be so bad."

  We spent the afternoon being young noblewomen, dressing up and applying cosmetics, eating cakes and tea and discussing plans for the upcoming autumn season. I made more of an effort this time than I usually did, trying to fit myself into the role of a girl to see if I could ever make it work, instead of convincing Anna to play board games or go for a carriage ride through the city. But the act was like the dresses – ill-fitting and not quite right.

 
 

VESTIGE, Professor Caed Cedar,

Royal Snakewood University

 

Drystan continued to perplex me.

  He would walk up to me, say or do something strange but not unkind, and then maintain his distance. I had no idea what he wanted or what he was doing. Was he taunting me? Was it some clownish game, or a bet among his fellows? I tried to return his banter and witticisms, but more often than not I was left tongue-tied and exasperated. Running underneath our exchanges was the niggling fear that he had gone through my pack when the clowns had taken it.

  Without his strange makeup, he was quite striking. Fair in complexion and fair to look upon, the girl in me felt a strange surge of excitement when I looked up and found him watching me, though it was also tinged with dread.

  Eventually, I decided that he was waiting for me to approach him. One morning, I found him shuffling a pack of cards by the blackened remains of the campfire.

  He would be unimpressed with a standard greeting. "Tell me a joke," I said without preamble.

  He raised an eyebrow, and scooted over ever so slightly on the log to make room for me. I perched on the edge.

  "Asking me to perform off-duty? It'll cost you."

  "What will it cost me?"

  He pressed a long, thin finger to his lips. "You'll have to answer one question about yourself, and you'll have to answer truly."

  "All right," I said easily, though I had no qualms with lying to him if he asked too pointed a question.

  "I'll tell you a joke I've been banned from telling during the show." He set down the cards. "Novices of the monks of the Order of the Sun Lord and Lady of the Moon must test that they are beyond temptation before they can be declared full monks.

  "Ten novices aiming to serve the Sun Lord stand in a line in the courtyard and are commanded to strip their robes and tie bells around their manly bits."

  I kept my expression blank. "Right."

  "A beautiful woman comes into the courtyard and dances in front of each novice in turn. She is glorious, naked as the day she was born, with full breasts like half globes, eyes of emeralds, hair like sunshine on a winter's morning, and all of that poetic balderdash. She dances past the first novice, undulating like an undine or a sylph. The bell is silent. She dances past the next novice, and the next, and the next, until she has danced in front of the first nine monks. All of the bells are silent. Finally, she dances in front of the last monk, and his bell jingles merrily. So merrily, in fact, that the bell falls off his tackle. Embarrassed and ashamed, he reaches down to retrieve the bell, and suddenly the bells of all the other monks behind him begin to tinkle!" His blue eyes glinted.