The members of the Fraternitus were assembled. The members of the Fraternitus were boxing. Or at least, one of its members was boxing. The other was trying to catch her breath.
“This is a terrible idea,” I said. Or rather, I tried to say it but mostly, I panted. “Bad boys should only ever fight predictable fights.”
“Unpredictable fights take a lot of practice,” said Eldric. “You’re doing very well.”
“Liar!”
Eldric laughed. I wiped the sweat from my eyes. “And the worst of it is, you’re fresh as a daisy.”
One daisy petal: I love him. Another daisy petal: I love him not. Shut up, Briony!
The October evening was chilly, but the longer we fought, the more clothes I shed. An unpredictable fight is terrifically warming. I now wore the fewest garments consistent with modesty, a pair of trousers and a sort of shirt with no sleeves that looked more than anything like an undergarment. Tiddy Rex had lent them to me.
Darling Tiddy Rex!
In an unpredictable fight, a person’s always darting about. She punches at a person, but it turns out he’s no longer there. She blocks a kick from the right, but she’s surprised by an uppercut from the left. She thought she was a wolfgirl who could run forever. But the wolfgirl has never darted and dodged. The wolfgirl is ready to give up after five minutes. But she’s proud and carries on, and now she thinks she may need to be carried home.
The person of whom we speak is Briony Larkin. The other person, Eldric Clayborne, merely lounges about and ruminates on the mysteries of life, and every so often, he delivers a little joke of a punch.
“I’ve never seen you so pink,” said Eldric. “Should we knock off for the evening? You’ve been going at it very hard.”
“But you haven’t,” I said. “I’ve been punching you hard as I can, but you’ve been doling out those silly butterfly punches. I’d think you were cheating, except that the members of the Fraternitus Bad-Boyificus are sworn never to cheat.”
“No, we never cheat,” said Eldric. “Which means I’m honor-bound to admit I should have given myself a handicap. I have two working hands, and you’ve just the one right now.”
This particular member of the Fraternitus had to breach the code of honor. She couldn’t admit that her left hand was very spry indeed and that her right hand had never been useful. All at once, I felt the chill sink into my bones. I wrapped my arms about my middle.
“I shouldn’t have let you stop moving,” said Eldric. “Let’s get you warm.”
“Let me?” I said. “That’s rather bossy.”
“A boxing coach is always bossy. That’s one of the sad facts of life. Now, wrap up.”
I paused. I was wearing Tiddy Rex’s peculiar shirt and beneath, a little bit of hardly anything. They were damp with sweat, horrible in the October chill.
The Strangers were lolly-bobbling all about, murmuring about stories and mushrooms and mud. Murmuring about the cemetery and the Unquiet Spirit who tosses in her winding sheet. “The cold worms lie with her and she be shrilling out a name.”
I bent over the clothes I’d shed. They too were damp.
“It be tha’ name, mistress,” said the Strangers. “It be tha’ name she be shrilling.”
“Your lips are blue,” said Eldric. “You do know the rules, don’t you? A person who doesn’t mind her coach must be expelled from the Fraternitus.”
“But these clothes are too wet.”
Eldric went all lion, pouncing at his coat and then at me, holding the coat between us as a sort of curtain. “As one member of the Fraternitus to another, it goes without saying that I will protect your privacy against any and all who might seek to invade our fightibus space.”
He meant himself, of course, but he couldn’t say so. How raw to say, I promise not to look.
It was awkward, struggling out of my wet things, feeling entirely exposed, which I was, to the whole half of the world on the east side of the curtain-coat, including the Strangers. And on the west side, to a boy-man who could peer over at any time, except that members of the Fraternitus never lied or cheated. I scrambled into my blouse, which was the only thing that wasn’t wet. It wasn’t worse than nothing, but it was not much better.
“Done?” said Eldric.
“How did you know?” I said.
“I have ears.”
How could a boy-man hear when a girl was dressed?
“Done,” I said.
He turned, wrapped the coat around me. But his fidgety fingers made sure not to touch me, not even through the thickness of the coat. It had been all ruined by Blackberry Night.
“Come along, blue lips,” he said, thinking perhaps that a bit of silliness might smooth over the awkwardness.
“If you were to write me a poem,” I said, “you could rhyme it with tulips.”
But silliness was not a smoother-over. Not for the two of us as we made our way back to the village. Not on this particular October evening, when Eldric’s long fingers had just taken such care to avoid any bit of Briony Larkin.
We walked in silence past the pumping station, toward the fields of rye. We’d had no time to revisit awkward memories on the outward journey: We’d loped and laughed through the fields to the Scars; it had been too long since our last fighting lesson. But now—well, if only the rye were already harvested and the fields looked like Tiddy Rex after a haircut. It wouldn’t be so awkward then. But we had to walk through a field of awkward memories, through the rye, tall and bronze and smelling of kisses.
Gin a body meet a body,
Comin’ thro’ the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?
I could feel Eldric struggling to contain that hollow whistle of his. How stupid it was, that we couldn’t talk about this. I couldn’t bear it if we went all silent, as Father and I were. Can a lifetime of silence begin with a kiss?
I couldn’t stand it; I had to say something. “Awkwardissimus?”
“Awkwardissimus!” said Eldric.
We laughed, which broke the silence. There was a bit of me, though, that stood outside myself, listening to us: We managed an impressive imitation of the way we’d used to talk, but I thought that any expert would spot the forgery.
The river ran olive brown, like paintbrush water. As we neared the bridge, Mad Tom’s voice broke into our counterfeit conversation. “Give ’em back! I needs ’em sore, I does.”
Silence now, except for the kingfishers gossiping in the reed beds.
“I does, pretty lady. Mad Tom, he mind on you. He mind on you fine by that black hair what you got.”
We crested the rise of the bridge. Mad Tom was hiding behind the black claw of his umbrella, just his shirttail and trouser legs showing beneath. “You got you your own proper wits, pretty lady.” He turned.
Leanne! The pretty lady was Leanne. The sight of her gave me a gray, cotton-woolish sort of feeling.
“Oh, my lilied liver! Oh, my turnip toes!” Mad Tom swung the umbrella from his shoulder, stirred the tip into the pebbles at the foot of the bridge. “I knows the pretty lady’s got some wits to spare for poor Mad Tom.”
Eldric’s face went all un-electric. Heavy eyelids at halfmast, lips tight as curling lips can be.
Is that what love looks like? If you’re a twenty-two-year-old man in love with a beautiful woman, and you see her and she sees you? But perhaps Eldric wanted to hide the look of love. A boy-man might not like to expose his tender feelings, especially in front of Blackberry-Night Briony Larkin.
She had a floaty sort of walk, Leanne did, and she’d trained her cloak to float along with her. The floatiness went with the color of her cloak and skirts, blues and greens that shifted as she moved.
She slowed as she neared us, setting Mad Tom to dancing about her, blessing his liver and spying his wits with his little eye. She called out to Eldric in her dusk-lined voice, but her gaze lingered on his coat, which hung about me like a sack.
“Lovely to see you again—Briony.” The pause before my name was brief, but effective. It said, So sorry, but I don’t have the name of this lovely child quite on the tip of my—ah, here it is.
Now back to Eldric. “How sweet of your father to write. I cannot tell you how relieved I was to hear of your recovery.” Her eyes roved all over him. “Are you completely well?”
“Completely,” said Eldric.
He hadn’t seen her since he’d recovered! Ten whole days. Wasn’t that a long absence for an ardent lover?
“I wonder,” she said, “if you could rid me of poor Mad Tom.” Her smile showed her sultan’s-harem teeth—beautiful, perhaps, but excessive in number. “I confess, he frightens me.”
“Them eyes you got, lady.” Mad Tom stepped close, too close for politeness. “They been haunting me, them eyes.”
Eldric took Mad Tom’s arm. “This way,” he said. “The pretty lady needs her privacy.” But he didn’t hurry Mad Tom. He eased Mad Tom down the bridge, letting Mad Tom set the pace. Eldric was a gentleman. I’d never thought of this before.
“I suppose you’re not afraid of the poor fellow?” Leanne leaned toward me, as though we were best friends. She whiffed of scent. I could have guessed she’d never choose something fresh and flowery. Instead, she smelled the way she looked, dark and peppery, with an undercurrent of wild animal.
“You’re accustomed to him, of course. I hear he’s really harmless, but I can’t like him drawing so close.”
But the dusk and pepper were merely surface smells. Beneath lay the smells of salt and seaweed and damp. They slipped into my mind like minnows, startling me into a scent memory of Stepmother. Not Stepmother as I’d last seen her, but the gay, laughing Stepmother who’d first come into our lives.
When Eldric turned back to join us, Mad Tom shuffle-trotted behind. “Here he comes again,” I said, which made Mad Tom address himself to me.
“I thinked I seen you afore, but it be t’other girl I seen.”
He lunged at Leanne with webbed umbrella fingers. “You be the real girl what stole my wits.”
Eldric grabbed the umbrella, pulled it from Mad Tom’s hands. “You want to be careful with that. You could hurt someone.”
“No,” said Mad Tom, quieter now. “I got me a prettier notion. You takes me back an’ works me till I falls. I were good feeding for you, weren’t I?”
My breath snagged in my throat. Such queer things he was saying. Until now, I’d thought Leanne an idiot to be afraid of Mad Tom. But for the first time ever, I was afraid.
“Lead him away again, will you?” said Leanne. “Perhaps I should accompany you this time. He’ll follow me, poor fellow. Perhaps the constable ought to know he’s developed an obsession for me. I feel we may call it that, an obsession.”
“I’ve news of the motorcar.” Eldric took Leanne’s arm. “But I’m promised to Briony for supper, so I’ll have to tell you about it some other time.”
He was? What a bouncer of an excuse! Did he not want to be with Leanne? How could you explain it otherwise?
He didn’t want to be with Leanne!
Leanne leaned in close again, and she frightened me too. “Might you excuse us, Briony?” It wasn’t merely that she pressed herself at me and that she was so tall and dark. “Thank you for sparing Eldric. He’ll be just a few minutes, I’m sure.” It was also that she was somehow bursting out of her skin, and her voice was too big, and she had so many teeth, and I was shrinking away in my skin, and I had no voice at all.
I shrank away from her. I, Florence Nightingale Larkin, actually shrank away, like any regular wilting violet of a girl.
“I swears, lady!” said Mad Tom. “I swears by marble an’ blade to work stone for you till I drops. Just don’t leave afore my time. Suck at my life, lady, till I be kilt.”
“Off we go.” Eldric eased Mad Tom down the bridge again, Leanne floating beside.
Eldric turned suddenly, called over his shoulder. “I’ll be back directly.”
I turned toward the river, set my forearms on the railing. Mad Tom’s scoldings and cajolings grew faint, fainter, then faded away. I stared into the paintbrush water. My mask was one great rumple; it would need hours of smoothing.
Shouldn’t I be happy? Eldric didn’t want to sup with Leanne. Of course I should be happy.
But how can I tell what happiness is? It’s not a thought, it’s a feeling. If happiness were a description from a soppy novel, it might read, She felt as though she were walking on air.
That was right: I felt as though I were walking on air. Clichés became clichés because they contained a nugget of truth.
Eldric did not return directly.
Eldric did not return indirectly.
The walking-on-air feeling evaporated. The paintbrush water was depressing. He did want to be with her after all.
He couldn’t expect me to wait on the bridge forever. I headed for the alley that leads into the square, stepped into the dusty-coal dimness. I blinked it away and there stood Eldric. Eldric and Leanne. Eldric, bent over Leanne, his lips on hers. I knew how they felt, those silk-and-butter lips. I knew how it felt when he held you, your body pressed along his, soft and heavy, never hard and crushing, that velvet-and-cream electricity—
I backed out of the alley. I returned to the crest of the bridge. I set my forearms on the railing. I stared into the paintbrush water.
The boy stood on the burning deck. He deserved to die, that boy. Waiting for someone who never came. But I was doing the same, waiting for Eldric, watching the water, the paintbrush water, which now that I was looking, had turned the color of liver.
It eddied, then boiled. I’d seen this before, the wave rising from the river, too tall, too straight, defying gravity. Now a face, taking shape beneath the cap of foam, whirlpool eyes, deep-sea mouth—
Mucky Face, poised to leap and crush.
His whirlpool eyes met mine. “Mistress! Tha’ needs must’mand me to stop!”
His belly was liver-gray. No schoolgirl paintbrush water for Mucky Face.
“Speak lively, mistress! Say, ‘As I be tha’ mistress . . .’ ”
I shouted into the roar and sputter. “As I am thy mistress, I command thee to stop. I command thee to return to the river.”
Mucky Face hovered. “More, mistress! It be such a mighty voice what calls, what ’mands me to collect my whole particular self nigh unto thee.”
“Return to the river, Mucky Face!”
“The voice, it be ’manding me to cast my whole particular self upon thee.”
“Dive into the clouds of minnows, Mucky Face! Return to the river—”
“’Manding me to slay thee!”
“Return to the river, push the river up the banks with thy two great hands, push—”
Foam-crested shoulders collapsed. “Tha’ be a canny mistress!” Mucky Face sank. Quickly as he’d risen, he poured himself back into his own element. Whitecaps boiled on the river. Mucky Face sank beneath. All at once, the river was as peaceful as a schoolgirl’s painting.
There was nothing to see anymore, save the river and my forearms resting on the railing.
Save the river, the railing, and my forearms, and Eldric’s forearms too, resting on the railing just beside mine. I stared at them, Eldric’s long forearms, shirtsleeves pushed back, despite the chill. My forearms, lost in the tweedy sleeves of his coat.
“My, my,” said Eldric. “You are full of surprises.”
I had to look at him then, but I didn’t see any of the Eldric faces I knew. His face was still. Only his eyes were alive.
“I’m waiting,” he said.