15.
IN WHICH I PROBABLY DON’T
IMPROVE THE SITUATION

Myself, spiralling onwards

A slick raincoat – a sodden hat – kid-gloves, soaked through –

“It is you! That nervous little creature from the Division! Gracious, I thought I wasn’t all the way to madness yet!”

The cravat. That silver pin, shining brighter and sharper as the lamplighter approached us. Above it – the starched collar, the deep olive skin, the dark brushstroke eyebrows, the swoop of cropped ebony hair, the whiskey-coloured eyes with their sardonic bemusement.

“Property,” I gasped, quite devoid of anything remotely civil.

Pip Property flicked up their free hand, touched their dripping fedora to me. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong house, sweet youth. That was the Nettleblack residence, in all its ghastly green glory – my abode is round the corner. Ferns in the window boxes. You can’t miss it. Though what sweet Septimus hopes to achieve by sending such a poor shivering thing to spy on me in a rainstorm, I can only dread to imagine.”

Plums, let them think it! As they were currently stood, they blocked any sightline from my sisters’ drawing-room window – an unexpected perk that was fast becoming a desperate imperative, with that reaper-robed lamplighter drawing nearer. Although – if they suspected Septimus had sent me, there was the horrendous possibility that they’d march me back across the market square to make that threatened complaint – still with the ferret about my neck – straight to my dismissal, when I needed the Division more than I’d ever yet done –

“You seem to have acquired a fur collar,” they added lightly. Their hand swept from their hat to my throat, brushed against Mordred’s coat – then leapt back, astonished, the moment he snarled. “And it’s alive!”

I pinched myself into a nervous smile. It was all I could think of: composure, politeness, the sort of behaviour that would leave them resoundingly disinclined to drag me off in disgrace. “I – erm – yes – this is Mordred – ”

“Mordred!” They grinned. “And every bit as ferocious, I’m sure. But – look, sweet Hylas, this is insanity, to stand here and chat until the storm makes ribbons of us. I insist that you either go home or come to my house, at least until the rain stops.”

It was such a giddying whiplash that my jaw quite dropped. “I – what?”

“Gracious, I’d no idea the prospect was such a repulsive one!” A sharp serif of a laugh. “There is no obligation, I assure you. If the Division beckons, I’ll simply bid you a damp good night.”

I swallowed. My mind was tipped on a bewildered diagonal, but I knew full well what was expected of me. Calm agreement, decorous farewells, a swift retreat. Words, then – there had to be words – they were watching me, smirking with such offhand ease –

But I couldn’t go back yet. Not with Mordred. And nothing in the known and conscious world could have induced me to take him anywhere near the Nettleblack house a second time.

Scalding, impertinent, insane, the solution toppled into my head.

“Well – actually – you – you wouldn’t be inclined to – erm – adopt a ferret – would you?”

I could only surmise that, in some flabbergasting fashion, my madness struck home. Property didn’t respond – not in words, at any rate – just spun me round, one hand on my shoulder, and walked me away. I didn’t dare glance back to watch Catfish Crescent vanish into the downpour. It was a remarkably short distance round the corner to their house. Figs, to think that it had always been here, ferns and all, and I had never even noticed it!

Past the slick sodden fern-cases and up the steps, and – plums. Property’s – well, property – was quite as astonishing as I expected. Granted, it wasn’t as lavish as ours, or even Mr. Adelstein’s. The corridors were much narrower, the staircase banisters more brittle, the structure devoid of a sprawling back window. Every scrap of furnishing was at least a decade out of date; even the lights were just a cluster of tapers backed by mirrors, much the same as those in the Division’s dormitory. Even so – every wall, every ceiling, every crevice wide enough to hold a pattern – peaches, everything of the entire entrance-hall! – was slathered in a dizzying forest of mock-up design sketches, powdery chalks and stiff-papered watercolours, glinting as Property struck more and more of the hallway candles. Rococo flower-trails, like a flattened-out fan. Wide-eyed birds, cousins to Rosamond’s Morris fabric, squabbling over chalked-in blackberries. Curt revolutionary stripes on a jaunty diagonal. A burst of green carnations, scattered across the page like crumpled handkerchiefs. Diamonds of red and yellow, their colours set with perfect seams. Heavy-skirted figures in dark top hats, striding through a roiling landscape in porcelain blue and white. Flouncing acanthus and swirling string foliage, whirling about tiny snails with their horns spread wide. Drops of paisley – the very paisley they were wearing – though their current cravat was bright with new colours, heady purple and bronze.

Quite the most unnerving part of it was that I had seen some of these patterns before. It was like staring out my own cravat drawer! But I’d never heard of Pip Property the androgynous designer, not before the Division. The cravats came with no name attached, only a small storm-grey label studded with a single paisley. Perhaps Rosamond had stripped the details from them – every one had been a present from her, the only affectionate England-bound gestures she had seen fit to extend until the dregs of last night –

“See anything you like?”

I started. Property strode into my reverie with a smirk, shelling their raingear onto a coat-stand as well-carved as it was antiquated. Pomegranates – and here I was, unshelled, dripping storm onto their plum carpet!

“I – erm – well – it’s very striking – ”

They laughed. “There is a logic to it, I promise. Nothing but order and harmony in the world of Pip Property – oh, gracious, I’ve trampled the post.”

They pivoted past me, pinching their gloves off, snatched up a rain-mottled envelope from its crumpled sprawl on the doormat. I had half a second’s glimpse before they tipped their scrutiny to it. The stationery was thick and shiny as butter, far finer than anything I’d seen even Edwina receive, and the blotched lettering was elegant as a certificate. Even so – for all the exquisite penmanship, the name was wrong – I quite couldn’t imagine Property ever wishing to call themselves Signorina Properzia –

Then I gasped. Their smirk had tightened to a stiff grimace, and they were tearing the unopened letter to fingernail squares, until all that was left of it lay heaped on their palms like salt. When there were no more rips to make in the fragments, they stalked down the hallway and vanished through a door – though they returned, empty-handed, a moment later, with the hisses and snaps of a newly-lit fire echoing at their back. They closed their eyes, sliding through a long steadying breath, then met my stare with a thin smile.

“With apologies to the parchmentier,” they declared. Their every word was a rung, clutched at and clung to until their voice was back at its usual ironical drawl. “Now. You. Did I mishear that porcelain voice of yours, or did you just express a charmingly desperate desire to bequeath me that ferret?”

If any string of sentiments could thwack me back to the present disaster –

“Yes! I – well – I didn’t – I – it turns out that – that – pets aren’t permitted – at the Division – and I – I wasn’t entirely sure – ”

They sketched out the rest of my sentence for me, with the same sure-tipped skill as the designs on the walls. “You weren’t entirely sure what to do with the poor creature, besides drown it in the distinctly unpoetical River Angle?”

“Well – erm – quite – ”

They nodded, mock-serious. “And we can’t have you leaning over any bodies of water, not when the nymphs would spirit you away. Very well! If you wish to make me this staggeringly generous gift, what can I do but – ” – and their olive hand glanced across their cravat, nudged them into a wry bow – “ – humbly accept?”

I flushed, warm under my eyes. I’d not the faintest what to do with my face, besides gape at them – and try not to let myself smile – and smile, regardless.

“And now,” they added, with a sudden grin, “I’m obliged to give you something in return. Fear not – I’ve the very thing!”

This knocked my smile quite off. “Oh – I – I don’t – I – ”

“No, I insist!” Their fingers slipped through mine, swiftly enough to gasp the last of my objections away. “Close your eyes and follow me. It’ll be a delightful surprise.”

For one terrifying breath, I could barely move. Septimus would be horrified – or expect considerably more caution – from someone who wasn’t her, at any rate. She clearly hadn’t wavered in her convictions about the dangers Property might wield access to – and there were evidently secrets in their life, things that merited immediate paper-tearing destruction – and I’d already entered their home and proffered them my ferret, I quite had to draw the line –

They squeezed my hand. And – I don’t know! – I’ve no idea what it was that crawled up my neck and settled my nerve – but I tipped my eyes shut, and they led me onwards.

For – well, as long as that corridor must have lasted – all of my world was faltering footsteps, and the heady scents of pomade and cologne, and the slippery press of carpet under my boots (carpet was a strange luxury, of late!). It was so quiet, the same country hush of my own house, soft and strange on the ears after so many days cheek by goose with the market. There was something startlingly soothing in it all, I must confess. I’d not entirely shaken the thought that they were about to unleash something ominous – but I was already in their house, in their hands, far too helpless to fight. The horrible impetus of decision, of panic, of staggering one step ahead of the rest of Dallyangle – it was gone, just for that moment. The next move, whatever it was, wouldn’t have to be mine. Let the pen – just for a paragraph or so – fall into the hands of this elegant enigma, and give me the instant to slacken and breathe!

“And emerge,” they murmured. Under my feet, the carpet gave out.

I hadn’t managed any fixed expectations, but – a bathroom? A claw-foot tub, with a monogrammed towel swooning over the side? A floor of veiny marble, and walls painted to match, and naked candles flickering in bronze holders? Venetian blinds, slim and antique and lowered over the window, twitching with the slap of rain on the other side of the panes?

I admit, rather ashamedly, that the spectacle rendered me hysterical.

“Sweet – merciful – plentiful – ”

Property laughed, slipped out of my hand and sauntered past. One insouciant wrist-flick – that was it – and then – taps – running water – hot water –

“I do hope you don’t think I mean to insult you,” they remarked, “but you really are in terrible need of a bath.”

Dignity? A fig for it!

“You – you really – and you don’t – I mean – erm – I don’t want to impose – ”

“Of course it isn’t an imposition! I spent not wisely but too well on this room, and I shan’t have it go to waste! Now, you must do as you wish – under those candles, that’s a cabinet, you’ll find all manner of apothecary delights in there – and I’ll take your ferret through to the drawing-room. We’ll be bosom compatriots on the hour, if I don’t lose limbs to him first. Come along, you little beast!”

They sprang off the bath and plucked Mordred from my neck. Astonishingly, he didn’t even snarl, but hung limp in their hands, their brazen confidence having over-mastered him to an unprecedented degree. Property draped him round their collar like a second cravat, flicked his head gently to settle him in place, and glanced back to me with a jubilant smirk.

“Just hurl the clothes into the corridor. The carpet will manage. Andiamo!”

Sweet persimmons.

The moment they sauntered off with the ferret, it was all I could do not to pirouette a spontaneous gigue around the steaming bathtub. I dashed for the cabinet, and only beamed the more: the fragrant concoctions in their cut-glass bottles would quite have out-jewelled a jewel-box. Red – blue – purple – yellow! No – they’re not words enough – scarlet, then – carmine – ultramarine – teal – violet – amethyst – gold – saffron – and absolutely none of them even slightly resembled Nettleblack’s Tincture! And the labels had been dyed to match, recipe incantations written close in sloping hands, in more languages and penmanships than I entirely recognised. In the end, I chose on colour, picked out the yellow bottles (per Maria Giuditta, dal tuo caro padre jostled close with Persia 1880s, probably) and lined them up on the bath-side like a row of autumnal shrubs – then snatched the towels with a yelp before the rising water soaked them through. A drop from the nearest jewel under the taps, and I had froth in abundance. The lavish madness of it actually made me giggle, as the bubbles skittered up to catch on my fringe.

Possessed as I was, it wasn’t as uncomfortable as I would have expected to shed my clothes in that strange room. I thought only of getting them out into the corridor before the bath overflowed. The wretched chemise, more a spider’s-web than a functioning garment, went last. I didn’t dare look down; my scrawniness and bruises would only have shattered the incongruous idyll.

I’ve not the faintest how long I stayed in that bath. By the time I emerged, the rain outside had stopped, and I rivalled the floor for sheer pale cleanness, my finger-ends crumpled like weak paper, my hair dripping some delightful yellow scent down my neck. I’d left nothing of my clothes to crawl back into, but there was a dressing-gown swinging on the door, glorious burgundy silk. Retrospectively, I’m astounded by my audacity, but I’d no qualms about plucking it down and appropriating it.

I opened the door – imagining that the corridor would be empty – but Property had returned, lounging in shirtsleeves, tossing up a delighted cackle when they saw me. The heaps of my uniform were resoundingly absent.

“Rosy-cheeked and halfway to a Fragonard already! Do forgive my intrusion, Hylas, I’ve recalled the other half of my gift to you. The ferret’s content, the clothes are drying, the snail’s on the thorn – and I’m going to fix your hair!”

Rosy-cheeked quite didn’t cover it. I glimpsed, in their chivalrous amusement, precisely how much of an abominable Rosamondian decadent I must have looked – impertinent enough to flaunt their own dressing-gown at them! – and flushed right down to my collarbone. It was all I could do to manage some flailing stammer –

“I – but – I – what?”

They strolled past me, eased the plug out of the bath, swept up the towels where they’d tumbled – then dropped, cross-legged, to a dry corner of the floor, patted the marble beside them. They were twirling a pair of silver scissors, wrought into metal ivy at the top of the handles, catching the flickers of the candlelight.

“Your hair. It maddens all my aesthetic sensibilities. Who the devil did you employ to cut it like that? The finish is completely uneven, the concessions to your fringe sporadic at best – ”

Their gentle scorn hooked it out of me, too fast and too truthful to stop. “It wasn’t – erm – I didn’t – it was never properly cut – the Sweetings just stole it – ”

“Stole it?” Their eyebrows soared up, two perfect pen-flourishes. “You? Oh, my sweet creature, I’m so very sorry. Look – I shall make it up to you forthwith – let me at least neaten it out for you? I won’t crop you as short as me, I promise. Unless you want me to.”

One trembling step – then another – then I was on my knees at their side, my hands pinching creases into their dressing-gown, my nerves fluttering on my tongue, some sour mixture of fear and – guilt, though for what I couldn’t say – smarting in my throat. “Oh – I – well – erm – if – just – ”

Property watched me flounder, something curiously akin to concern creasing between their calligraphic eyebrows. “What is it?”

And their voice was so soft, cupping my spluttering words – and their eyes still struck in that blend of irony and goodwill – that for a moment I saw Rosamond, crouching beside me on the cliffs, come to tease out my panic and put all to rights. For one frightening instant, I could have tumbled into their arms and wept.

I swallowed hard. “Oh – erm – nothing – please continue – ”

They darted me a quick smile. “As you wish, Hylas.”

I summoned a shaky nod, and they raised the scissors, the sudden chill of the blades glancing at my forehead. “So – I take it the bath was a success! Excellent choice of poisons you’ve lined it with. Quite right of you to gravitate towards the grandfatherly stuff!”

I blinked at them. I couldn’t let myself speak yet, but I confess I was grateful. If the conversation hadn’t tipped back into lighter topics, I’m not entirely sure my resolve not to cry would have held out much longer.

“I stole all of it,” they continued airily, scissors flashing at the corner of my eye, “from my mother. Dio mio, the crime of the century – take heed, Dallyangle Division! But she has the ca’ in Venice, and the globetrotting padre, which makes it infinitely easier for her to replenish her supplies. Besides, that woman has an awful lot to answer for – Properzia, for a start! – and delectable bath concoctions are the only benevolent answer I’m likely to get.”

They poured such simmering revulsion into the name that I felt myself wincing in sympathy. Had they not been acutely conscious of my having seen that letter prior to its destruction, I highly doubt they would have mentioned the appellation at all. It was at my teeth to tell them I’d changed my name too, but I quite couldn’t risk it – not when any hint that Henry originated as an abbreviation might summon a vengeful Mr. Adelstein.

“Oh – erm – yes – well – I – I much prefer Pip – ”

“Of course you do.” They rolled their eyes. “As did Father. My family name being Property, and my Christian name Properzia – thanks to the twisted humour of mamma carissima – my infant tongue decidedly didn’t want to make very much of either of them, and to shorten the lot to Prop would only have brought indisputable mockery down on my head. So I borrowed Pip, and came to be called Pip. Dallyangle’s unsolicited answer to the Public Universal Friend, but with fewer sermons and more cravats.”

I smiled. “Well – erm – you ought to – erm – entangle yourself with a convict post-haste – let them bequeath you a fortune – erm – that you can only take up as long as you always keep the name Pip – ”

Their laugh brushed my fringe back, sent the blunt edge of the scissors pinwheeling to the nape of my neck. It was the first time in my known recollection that I’d managed anything remotely akin to wit – certainly wit that someone else had acknowledged, and been amused by. If I was struck now, it was with pure astonished delight!

“And the Divisioner knows her Dickens! In all sincerity, though – if you do happen to know anyone willing and able to bequeath me a fortune, you must direct them to my doorstep forthwith.”

I gave them my shaky attempt at a wry grimace. All I could offer in that respect was my eldest sister, and Edwina didn’t even let her own siblings touch the fortune – they’d have quite no luck with her.

“Very well, Mona Lisa.” They sighed, snipped a few more curls from my jawline. “What a little mystery you are. I can’t decide whether poor Septimus would be more inclined to resent you or worship you.”

Septimus.

It snatched me up like a faint. Septimus – her smarting hurt, her desperation, her helpless bewildered stare. Her hand brushing at my cheek. Her fingers, fidgeting on her notebook – now I was imagining, inventing the whole sorry picture – as she hovered by the wood-burner and waited for me to come back.

Olives – what if she thought I wasn’t coming back?

“I suspect the latter,” Property added. They were smirking, rather more wickedly than before, their eyes glinting like a decanter. “You’re very charming, and the sweet sergeant is surprisingly susceptible to being charmed. I made a pretty good go of it myself, back before she decided I was a denizen of the most bucolic criminal underworld known to England.”

It was dizzying meeting them on their own ground, where strange scalding flirtations and slippery genders simply were, and had been, and could be – and could be talked about, in fond sardonic tones, without a shred of hesitation. The scissors brushed under my ear, a sudden glint of cold.

“You don’t think me villainous, do you?”

The abrupt query quite wrong-footed me. “I – what?”

“Me.” They swallowed, perched up their eyebrows, a little nervously. “I don’t know what Septimus plans to devise for me, or what deliciously sharp terms she may have eviscerated my character in, but I – I am not a villain, Hylas. Infuriating as the Division can be, I would like to help them. I just rather lack the means to do it in the way they expect.”

I nodded dazedly. “Oh – of course – yes – and – no – I – I mean – you’re not – villainous – you just – erm – talk very fast – ”

Mercifully, they laughed, eyes wide with bemused surprise. “Oddly enough, I have been told. But – thank you, all the same. And if I ever can do something to your advantage, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

They swept the scissors away with a flourish. “Done! Never mind a thousand ships – with that hair, Division Sergeants aplenty will throw over golden fleeces for you. Now, I would detain you longer, but I fear I have arrangements and ferrets to be getting on with. Let’s see if that uniform of yours is wearable again, shall we?”

They swirled up off the floor, caught my elbow and lifted me with them, spun me to face one of the marble-painted walls. Except – quinces – golden-seamed in the midst of the paint, there was a mirror, old and bruised and cloudy-edged from the steam – and blinking out from the centre of that mirror –

Was that me?

Fading bruises. Stark bones, staring eyes. Hair – short – shining with water – trimmed to frame a sharp jawline, a high pale forehead with a curling fringe to it. That figure looked like nothing so much as Burne-Jones’s Demophoon – like they ought to have a Phyllis, springing out of an almond tree to clasp hold of them. Unquestioningly, unequivocally, they would have sent my eldest sister into fits. But in that one startling moment, they didn’t in the least frighten me.

“Which reminds me,” Property remarked, disappearing out of the glass behind me, “I’m afraid I threw your chemise on the fire. Don’t squeak at me, Hylas, you know as well as I do that it was unsalvageable.”

And all my hubris quite fell off, as the mirror-face’s stare promptly spasmed into a grimace of appropriately unsalvageable horror.

I spent the better part of the trudge back to the Division simply holding myself together – quite literally! The loss of my corset had been bizarre, but the absence of the chemise was nothing short of perturbing. My shirt buttons were a freezing line of nails down my chest – nails, or crude metal stitches, as if Property had prised me open and botched the job of fastening me up again. Was this how it felt for Rosamond, lounging about in her Morris fabric? Was it noticeable, to the few scowling passersby I darted away from? Was it the provocation for the spitting, and the dark looks, and the sudden shove that knocked me breathless against the tincture-laden windowpanes of Mr. Ballestas’s apothecary?

I clung to the window until the pane almost warmed against my forehead, gasped my way to a more sensible rationale. It was far more likely that this was more of the general animosity towards anything in a Division uniform, the same sharpening mistrust that had heckled me and bruised Septimus and sent those civilians sprinting out of our reception. Peaches, but that felt infinitely worse than a gaggle of objections to my increasingly irrational dress.

The Director was at the desk when I stumbled through the doors, sickled awkwardly over the side to fish out a spare inkwell. She sprang upright, delved instinctively for her taut smile – then remembered, presumably, quite how much I’d disgraced myself, and simmered to a neutral stare instead.

“You’ve been gone for a while, Miss Hyssop.”

“I – erm – sorry – ”

“Some of us,” she added coolly, with the slightest twitch of her head to the corridor, “have been rather in doubt as to the question of your return.”

I gaped at her. I’d feared the same, but to have someone else eke it into words and fling it at my head was more alarming than my own hysterical speculations. “What? But – I – of course I – ”

“You left no word indicating as much.” She sighed, her voice dipping like a candle-flame. “After the events of earlier, you would not have been without precedent for an abrupt escape. With all of the cases still unsolved, and Matthew’s resignation – ”

“I’m quite not leaving!”

It was a giddyingly impossible promise for me to make, and I knew it – but not enough to keep it back. Not in that darkening room with its dimmed gaslights and dying wood-burner, and the wind plucking at the jagged glass in the broken window. Not with the Director too quietly wretched to conceal the danger of our situation. Not with Septimus shuttered in her office, thinking the building a sinking ship, and me already vanished into the night. Not with all the louche liveliness of Property’s patterned house still sprawled in my mind, striking a horrendous contrast with the drab desperation flickering before me now.

“I’ve – the ferret – he’s gone – and I’m – I can’t apologise copiously enough – and – and I’d very much like to stay – if you’ll still have me – and that’s quite that!”

The Director arched an eyebrow. She had evidently not been expecting words, least of all that many of them. I’d not had her scrutinise me so intently since the damp haze of my first arrival – since then, she had been more interested in my transcription than my face – and it smarted me crimson. I may have tidied my appearance more thoroughly than ever before, but would that matter to her? What was she looking for? Resolve? Trustworthiness? Or – ?

She pushed off the desk, slid towards me on two seamless strides, clamped my shoulder steady. “As you say. I’ll let Septimus know. And you have a place here, as long as you wish us well. It certainly wouldn’t hurt, if you wished us well. Remember that. After all – ”

– and – was that – a flash of a wink in one golden eye, close enough to blur at my temple? –

“ – Matthew hasn’t found you yet.”

Greengages.

She rolled her eyes to see my jaw drop, whisked about on her heel. “I do hope I shan’t end up regretting that. Good night, Miss Hyssop.”

To which I can only append with a feeble scrawl of – not even of how (for it was hardly an improbable deduction for someone of her capabilities to make), but simply – why? Why say that – and walk away? Why not collar me on the instant, and solve a case, and snatch back the attendant credibility?

Either she’s too kind, or she’s too clever, and there’s some elaborate forward-thinking I’m too frazzled and delirious to puzzle out. Or – or she’s both.

She wouldn’t tell Septimus – would she?

And – on that topic – what am I to tell Septimus – of my haircut, my absent ferret, my disappearance?

Oh, cranberries – tomorrow! If it were only possible to compel my thoughts into imitating the Director – and stepping back from the frenzy – and sauntering away into the shadows – and leaving me be!