Arachnodactyl (21 page)

I
key let
himself in to Cross’s house through the backdoor. He called out for Rose.

“Ikey?” Rose responded. Her voice was muffled. Upstairs.

“Rose?” Ikey asked again as he made his way to the base of the stairs. He extended his hand. His palm landed on the newell post as if he was at home.

“What’s the matter?” Rose called. Her voice was clearer. She was in the hall.

Ikey climbed the stairs. At the top, the sharp scent of lye soap tackled his nose.

“You want honesty?” Ikey asked.

Rose didn’t respond immediately. As Ikey parted his lips to continue, Rose said, “I do.”

She stood before him, several feet down the hall, near the entrance to the water closet.

“Then be honest with me—”

“I always have.”

“What do you know about Cross and Admiral Daughton?”

“What about them?”

“Something rotten is going on between them. Cross doesn’t want the job. That’s why he wouldn’t take me up when I offered to refuse the position. He wants off the project. And you knew that, because you weren’t the least bit concerned to hear of it. But what I want to know is why. Why didn’t he just quit? Why this whole farce of putting me in charge?”

“That is quite the claim,” Rose said.

“Do you know anything about it?”

“No, I do not. I knew nothing of it until you told me.”

Ikey stood in the hall and listened to his breath pass through him. Once again, her response had differed from what he had anticipated.

Ikey ran a hand through his hair. “All right. Then why wasn’t Cross sore about losing his job?” Ikey asked.

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I can’t get a straight answer out of him.”

“So you’ve come to me for the straight answer?”

Ikey took a deep breath. “I drew up fake plans. For an engine. I plan to give them to Admiral Daughton. Instead of the real ones. I want him to put me back in the position I was. He can either take Cross back or put Wendy in charge. I don’t care.”

“Why would you do that?” Rose asked.

“It’s not enough, though,” Ikey continued on. “If Admiral Daughton flat out fires me, then I have to go back to the farm and face my dad. But if I knew what Cross and Admiral Daughton were up to, then I could use that as leverage. If I knew what both of them were up to, then I could make them put things back the way they were. Him at the ship, and me as his apprentice.”

Rose stood in silence again. Her absence of words added to the blackness surrounding them.

“Is that all right?” Ikey asked. “With you?” He swallowed, and the sound of his muscles moving filled his head so much that he expected the music boxes to stir in response.

“Can I trust you with a secret?” Rose asked.

Ikey straightened his back. “About what?”

“Cross. Cross and me. But you can’t tell anyone. Especially Cross.”

Ikey took a small step forward. The floor creaked under his weight. “What is it?”

“Cross doesn’t need to work. He has no real need of money at all. He lives with my family’s money. My father pays him a stipend for my care.”

“For
your
care?”

“Ironic, isn’t it? But I’ve been a constant burden and source of shame to my family since I was a young girl. I was born like this. Blind. And as I grew up, it became evident that something more about me that wasn’t quite right. A malady. My family tried to hide me away. They threatened me with an institution, but my father is a public figure, and he feared what it might do to his image.

“Eventually, in secret, I convinced a young garden keeper to propose to me. In return, my father agreed to pay him a monthly stipend to keep me hidden away, out of sight. Cross hasn’t needed to work a day in his life since.”

“I’m sorry,” Ikey said.

“Your pity was not sought,” Rose snapped. “I told you this to explain why Cross places no value in work. He is motivated chiefly by boredom. And loneliness. He is actually a talented tinkerer. He developed a knack for it in his abundance of idle time. But he has paid a high cost to be freed of the want of a daily wage. Being married to me is no easy task. So he spends his time out of the house, away from his shackles, and spends his money and takes odd jobs in order to pretend he has a future as well as control over his fate. He would work rather than sit around here and feel like a prisoner.”

“Does Cross make you stay in here with the curtains drawn?”

“What use have I for light or anything else outside?”

“But Cross could still be conspiring with Admiral Daughton.”

Rose did not respond right away. “Frankly, I would be surprised to find that Cross was involved in anything untoward. He desires only to be left alone with his thoughts, his loneliness, his drink, and these cursed little music boxes.”

Ikey started. “You don’t like the music boxes?”

“Every time I move, it’s like those things are a chorus of tiny, chirping voices directing blame at me for sentencing Cross to this bleak existence. If it were up to me, I would place every one in a great sack and pay the grocery boy to toss it in the River Eck after his very next visit.”

Ikey’s jaw dropped. He fished for something to say, but came up with nothing more than a gaping mouth.

“I assure you,” Rose said, “Cross has nothing to do with fraud.” The floor creaked under her boot heels as she took a few steps forward. “Furthermore, I am going to ask you to keep your theories to yourself. If such theories reached a gossiping ear, it would cause hardship for Cross and myself.”

Rose took another step forward. “One of my father’s stipulations bade we stay out of the public’s attention. If Cross becomes embroiled in a scandal, I daresay that stipulation will be in forfeit, and we will lose our stipend.”

With nothing to sit on in the hall, Ikey reached out until he found the wall. He turned his back to it and leaned against it.

“Ikey?” Rose asked.

“I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Nothing here is what one expects, is it?”

Ikey chuckled and shook his head. “It sure as hell is not.”

Rose stepped forward again. Her hand bumped against his arm. She laid her fingers across his shoulder.

“I’m asking you. As a favor.”

“Admiral Daughton threatened me. When he first came to the farm and asked me to join him, and my dad refused, he threatened to send me to the front lines.”

“Men tend to make threats that exceed their capabilities. And promising to send a young man off to the war these days is a bit like threatening one with a rainy day—it’s bound to happen.”

Ikey shook his head. “There’s more to it. He threatened to fire me. Cross stood up to him, forced him to keep me. And now I’m in charge. It doesn’t make sense.”

“If wise men were in charge of this nation, would we be in this situation in the first place?”

Ikey smirked. “Indeed. But maybe I don’t have to know the whole story. If I threaten to go to the papers, speak to a few reporters…”

Rose stepped closer. Her skirts brushed at the legs of his trousers. Her forehead rested against the side of his crown and her veil fell against the side of his face.

Ikey closed his eyes and gripped the leg of his trousers to keep from reaching up and resting his fingers along her cheek, or whatever was there.

“Think of this,” Rose said, her voice hardly greater than a whisper, “your actions affect the lives of others whether they are just or not. Whether you are right or wrong is irrelevant. There is no difference to this world. The best you can do is carve out what little moments of peace and contentment you can.”

Her hands enclosed Ikey’s.

“You’re asking for pity,” Ikey said.

Rose dropped his hand. The veil wicked past his face and tickled his cheek as she stood erect.

“I am not,” Rose said.

Ikey pushed himself away from the wall and turned towards her. “You are. You want me to take pity on you and keep my mouth shut.”

“I’m asking you to think of the consequences of your actions,” Rose said, her voice up and strong with all the snap of a windblown flag. “I’m asking you to not be reckless with baseless accusations.”

“What if Admiral Daughton
is
up to something? You’re asking me to be complicit, to look the other way. You’re asking me to be no better than Admiral Daughton.”

“Are you?” Rose asked. “Are you better than the man who would turn a blind eye? Perhaps you are better than one who would blackmail a man into accepting you back into an apprenticeship?”

Ikey crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s different. That’s putting things back the way they were supposed to be.”

“A convenient distinction.”

“For you. But if you’re correct and Cross is not involved, then I don’t want to be involved either. I’m being set up somehow, and I don’t want to go to jail, or worse. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Do as many men do. Look the other way and feign ignorance.”

“I would still be complicit. I’d still be no better than Admiral Daughton.”

“If silence in the face of a crime truly bothers you, then why have you told no one of your father’s deed?”

The fire vanished from his belly as if it never was.

“If a valiant man stands up for what is right, then you should have turned your father in for what he has done to your uncle. But unless you’ve neglected that part of the story, you haven’t told anyone else, have you?”

“My mum—”

“Exactly.”

Ikey quivered. His muscles shook and rippled like the surface of a pond shattered with a huge stone.

Rose cleared her throat. “What good would be served by your father in prison? Will it bring back your uncle’s ability to walk?”

“My mum and my sister,” Ikey said, his voice leaking small from him. “My brothers and me. He…” Ikey imagined the cart, the wood and the iron. And when that wasn’t enough, he imagined iron bands wrapped around himself. Inch thick. Coiled around him and constricting to keep himself from both exploding and falling apart. “He beat them. He beat them something awful. They looked… so…” Ikey peered into the dark, into the direction of Rose and tried to wash their bruised and swollen faces from his mind. Not now.

Ikey took a deep breath. “And I wanted to turn him in. To tell someone. But if he was sent off to prison…”

“It’s not fair, is it?” Rose asked.

Ikey shook his head, unable to speak, unable to do what he needed to do in order to communicate with Rose.

“So you live with it. You carry that around inside. Some great, festering burden so hot you can hardly keep your hands on it. And you did so because you loved your mum and sister. Your brothers and your uncle.”

“If I told—”

“A woman has no rights here, Ikey. We are not allowed to own property. We are not allowed a voice. We are not allowed to even work outside of home in a dignified fashion, aside from toiling for a pittance at what men refuse to do. Your mother had no choice. No options. If she had had a way out, she would have taken it. Of that I am sure.”

“They’ve been dead a couple of years now,” Ikey said. His words shrunk to nothing as they fell from his mouth. “I thought it’d get easier with them gone. They’d be at peace. And that would make me feel better. But it gets worse. Not telling anyone. The things I saw. I heard. What happened to Uncle Michael. I know that as soon as Uncle Michael, my dad, and I are gone, it’ll be like none of it ever happened at all.”

Ikey clenched his fists and pressed them against his brow. “And then it will be for nothing. Nothing. All of that for nothing. But there’s so little I can do about it now. Except take it with me when I go. It’s all inside me.”

He held his hands out before him, felt the muscles and tendons stretch out as he splayed his fingers. But there was nothing there in the dark.

Rose’s hand appeared on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault. You did what you could do.”

“No,” Ikey said as he stared out into the darkness, out past his hands, his fingers, the bones and muscles and blood of him. “I can do more. I carry this with me, and I’ll hustle it to the grave, I will. But it gets so tiring. And lonely. I can’t share this with anyone because I have to make it like it never was because it’s the last thing I can do. But here,” Ikey said as he swept his hand out into the dark, “it’s like the burden becomes weightless. Like I’m weightless. I can’t see my hands. I can’t see my dad in my hands. Here, I can hide everything. And you, you’re part of it. You’re the dark.”

Rose’s grip tightened on Ikey’s shoulder. “It is pointless to carry such a burden through this world, Ikey. This world is cruel, mean, and heartless. It is a vicious, vicious place that has no use for wrong or right. It is concerned only with survival, and with no thought to the costs. It won’t pay the least bit of attention to your struggle, and it will award you no absolution for your sacrifices. Your father did what he felt he had to do to survive. And so did your mother. And your uncle. And Cross. And Admiral Daughton. Even you and me. And none of it is right. None of it is wrong. And most of all, none of it is the least bit fair.”

Ikey choked back a sob, clamped down on it with his teeth and filled his mind with the image of iron bands wrapping tighter and tighter around him until his elbows ached and his ribs throbbed.

Rose drew Ikey against herself. As his face touched the satin of her dress, the sob escaped. He clutched at Rose and the bands of iron dropped away, clanging to the ground. Rose pulled him tight and threaded her fingers through his hair and rocked Ikey until his knees gave out.

Together, the two of them sank to the floor of the hall as the walls towered over them and looked the other way.

I
key pushed
himself out of Rose’s lap. His head hung heavy, as if full of wet cotton. His body felt frail and thin, wrung out to the point of snapping, then let go of. He took a deep breath and wondered how much time had passed.

“Are you all right?” Rose asked.

“I’m sorry.” His voice came out in a croak.

“Don’t apologize. I didn’t mean to hurt you like that.”

“No,” Ikey said as he placed his hand on her knee. “It wasn’t you.”

“I know. But I certainly rubbed your face in it.”

Ikey sat up and found the wall. He placed his back against it and stretched his legs across the hall. His knees popped.

“I should get back to the ship. I was supposed to meet with Admiral Daughton and go over the plans.”

Rose sat in silence.

“I won’t tell,” Ikey said.

“Thank you,” Rose said. She laid a hand on Ikey’s thigh.

“What if you didn’t need the stipend?” Ikey asked.

“You can’t,” Rose replied.

“I could take a job. A more honest one.”

“No,” Rose said. “I’ll take this favor and be grateful, but I still don’t want your pity.”

Ikey closed his eyes again and let his head fall against the wall with a thud. “It’s not pity.”

“You deserve a real woman, Ikey. One you can take out in public. One who can bear you children.”

“I don’t want a wife,” Ikey said. “I told you.”

“You say that now—”

“I don’t want to be my dad. I won’t take a wife. I won’t have children. I won’t be like him.” Ikey held his hands before him as if his dad’s blood in his veins would make the flesh glow a dim, dull red.

Rose tightened her grip on Ikey’s thigh. “It’s not a wife or children that makes your dad like—”

“It’s not like that,” Ikey said. “It’s that, what if I can’t
not
be like him no matter how hard I try, and I can’t figure that out until after I have a wife and children? I don’t want—Regardless, I’m not after… I’m not trying to take you… I’m not trying to replace Cross. Or whatever it is you and he share.” Ikey put a hand over Rose’s. “But you’ve been good to me. A friend when I’ve had no others. I would be happy to help free you from your dad’s stipend, if you’d like.”

“That’s very sweet of you. But I can’t take your offer. My father is bound to me by his shame and blood, and he will continue to be until the day he dies. He cannot grow weary of me and cast me aside. Furthermore, Cross, for all his cantankerous misery and drunken wallowing, is in the position he is in because he has done me a favor. He has been paid handsomely for it, but in return, he’s forfeited his chance at a family or a legacy. I cannot cast him aside either. He’s mine to care for and look after until the day one of us passes away.”

Ikey rubbed his forehead. “Where does that leave us?”

She squeezed his thigh. “That is something we should have probably discussed much earlier.”

“Cross doesn’t want me to stay here anymore.”

“I could talk to him, but I know Cross and I know it won’t do much good. You’re a threat to him.”

Ikey snickered. “Pray tell.”

“You remind him of himself as a young man. Clever. Mechanically inclined. You both see the world as the sum of its parts. Your future, however, is very much ahead of you, and it pains Cross to be reminded of the price at which he bartered his future away.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“Neither is it fair, but I am forbidden by law to own the house my father has paid for. It is Cross’s house, and that is part of the deal.”

Ikey’s right hand fell to the floor and his fingers curled, their tips brushing the cold, polished wood for a handhold to clutch as the world fell away.

“So what do we do?” Ikey asked.

Rose sat in silence a moment, and Ikey wished to hear her breath, to know she was breathing. Her hand laid sandwiched between his own and his thigh, but he still believed she was drifting away.

“I don’t know that there is anything we can do. The neighbors are keen practitioners of gossip. If you only visited while Cross was away, he’d hear about it. And feeding gossip mongers is not in keeping with my father’s dictates.”

“What do you want to do?” Ikey asked.

“What I want to do is irrelevant. No one is concerned with what I want.”

“I am.”

“If that’s true,” Rose said, “then I want you to respect my wishes. My wishes and my obligations. Respect my situation.”

Ikey curled his hand on the floor into a fist and clutched at the darkness and air, and it gave him no more purchase than it ever had.

“I can talk to Cross,” Ikey said, his voice like a fog. “Convince him to let me stay.”

“I thought you said you weren’t looking for a wife.”

“I’m not.”

“Then why is it so important that you stay? What is here that is worth throwing away your future as Cross has?”

Ikey’s hand tightened over Rose’s. “Safety.”

“Safety?”

“You’re nice to me. Kind. You treat me well. When I’m with you, I don’t feel… Everywhere I go, I always feel like I’m going to say the wrong thing or do something stupid and someone is going to yell and beat the hell out of me. And then I get so angry because people can do that. Because I couldn’t defend myself or my mum or sister or my uncle. And it’s so damned hard to be outside of here, around people. In here, you are kind. And I’m not scared. And I know no one is going to find me in here, in the dark, and you won’t make fun of me or yell at me because you know what it’s like. You know how it is to be hated for nothing more than being born.”

“Oh, Ikey,” Rose said. “A bird in a cage may be safe from the cat, but it’s still a bird in a cage.”

Ikey shook his head. “It’s not a cage. It’s a harbor.”

“Take it from a bird: it’s a cage.”

“Then leave.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It can be. We just walk out the door. Right now. We walk out right now and I’ll find work somewhere and we can both be free of the cage.”

Rose squeezed his thigh. “And who will take care of Cross?”

“To hell with Cross. He can care for himself.”

“And what will happen when you find a young woman who also makes you feel safe? What happens if she is pretty and can see your face and tell you how handsome you are?”

“I don’t want a wife.”

Rose slipped her hand out from between Ikey’s and his thigh. “You don’t want a wife, but you want me? Am I to be your pet, then? A mechanical Turk to do your washing and cooking?”

“No—”

“This is what I meant the other night. Would you ask this of any other person, or simply me?”

“I wouldn’t want anyone else.”

“Be that as it may, if you truly see me as a person worthy of respect and care, then you will respect my situation.”

Ikey rubbed his palms across his thighs and smeared the pool of warmth created by his hand and Rose’s. “Is that it, then?” Ikey asked the dark.

“What more is there?” Rose said.

Ikey sat a moment more, adrift in the hall and waiting for something more. The machinations of the situation overwhelmed him—a riotous machine so loud and thunderous and continuous that it blotted out everything and became the air itself.

Ikey pushed himself to standing. His butt tingled with numbness and his shoulders ached.

“I should leave,” Ikey said. He swept small circles over the floor with the toe of his boot until it brushed against his satchel.

“If it was up to me,” Rose said, and her voice sounded so much different coming from below, sounded full of struggle and climb, “things would be different.”

Ikey crouched down, snatched up his satchel, and slipped it over his shoulder as he stood.

“It is up to you,” Ikey said. “I have offered to open the cage door. If you choose to remain inside, then you are complicit in your imprisonment.” A hot band of iron smoldered along the length of his spine. He wanted to tear the walls down now, rip through them like wet cardboard and struggle out into the light where something could be done.

“That’s not fair,” Rose said. “Things aren’t that simple.”

“Things aren’t that fair. Or so I have heard.”

“Ikey…”

“I’d give you a kiss farewell, but since you don’t respect me enough to trust me not to dribble pity all over you at the sight or touch of your face, I will refrain.”

Her dress rustled as Rose stood. Ikey’s heart fluttered. He hadn’t meant to goad her into casting aside the veil, but the thought of knowing what she hid from the world—what she would trust him with—quickened his blood and filled his head with the heat of wonder.

Something brushed against his chest.

Ikey reached up and found Rose’s hand before him. She presented him three fingers.

As he and his sister had done while aping the manners of the upper classes, Ikey half-bowed and took Rose’s hand, those long fingers in his own. He brushed his lips against her knuckles. The sharpness of lye smoldered from her hand.

“I wish you well,” Rose said.

“Thank you. For that. For your kindness. I won’t forget it.”

“And thank you. The last few days have been grand. I don’t think I’ve come closer to being treated like a normal person.”

“You deserve it, and more.”

Rose slipped her fingers from Ikey’s grasp. “We seldom get what we deserve in this life.”

“Agreed,” Ikey said as he hitched his strap over his shoulder. “I’m beginning to see that we only get what we take.”

“Then take care.”

Despite his desire to reach out and clutch Rose and pull her close, he turned away. He pounded down the steps, hearing each wooden slat crack in the dark under his weight. Music boxes sang their stupid and delicate songs to the rhythm of his steps.

The darkness removed the temptation to look back, to see Rose on the steps. But he did want to stop and listen, to hear Rose move and know whether she retreated back into the hall or traced his steps down the stairs. Instead, he moved onward, counting his steps, turning left to the top of the next flight. Down he went to the kitchen and out towards the front parlor where he extended a hand into the dark and it landed on the doorknob. Ikey undid the latch with a twist of his fingers and pulled the door open.

Light collided with him and stopped his momentum with the force of a blank wall. He stood and blinked at the street until the pain subsided from his eyes and the blobs and blurs resolved themselves into pedestrians, carriages, and carts.

Ikey hitched the strap over his shoulder again and took off for Turk’s Head. It was time to start taking more than care.