The Strangely Beautiful Tale Of Miss Percy Parker (13 page)

Alexi furrowed his brow. “I’m supposed to love her, Rebecca.”

His friend’s eyes flashed. “For the last time, Alexi, love has nothing to do with the prophecy!”

“Goodness, Rebecca, it’s nothing to be upset about.”

“Of course it’s something to be upset about! The fate of many lives hangs in the balance! Love will only complicate matters, don’t you see?” She rose from her chair and went to the window. After a long moment she turned, her expression pinched. “Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love. If you’re avoiding Miss Linden…Don’t tell me
Miss Parker
has your interest. That simply cannot be—”

“I’m not in love with anyone, Rebecca,” Alexi replied. “Other than the goddess, my intended, the only woman I felt I was ever allowed to—”

“Bloody parasites is all they are, commandeering our futures without a care for
our
hearts,
our
needs!” Rebecca cried out. “Your goddess isn’t coming, Alexi! And she didn’t love you. She loved what was taking up residence inside you.”

Alexi froze, his friend’s words touching down violently in a vulnerable place like a flash of lightning. He hadn’t re
ally thought of that. He’d never wanted to think that his goddess never loved
him;
but, truly, what did she know of Alexi Rychman? What could she know? He was just a vessel, after all.

Slowly he rose from his chair and turned to the door. He wanted nothing to do with this, any of this, anymore. “To hell with Prophecy, Rebecca. Let the war come. I’ll just teach mathematics and we’ll all die alone.”

As he flung the door open and exited, Rebecca cried out, “Alexi, no! Don’t take it in such a manner! Come back and sit with me…”

The door shut.

Pounding her fist on her desk, Rebecca collapsed into her chair with a string of curses.

Alexi went home to his cold, empty estate, which represented everything he was. Throwing himself into his leather throne of a library chair, seizing a snifter of brandy and seeking to lose himself in volumes of scientific journals, he felt an irrepressible anger begin to boil up. “If you won’t help me, Goddess, if you’ve no care for me, then you can’t ask me to suffer your cryptic riddles,” he hissed. “No more. Prophecy be damned.”

It wasn’t until he caught a whiff of smoke that he realized his anger had set the room on fire. Actual fire. He had sway over candles and the occasional gas lamp but inadvertent arson hadn’t previously been in his repertoire. He raised his hands and the flames went out, and then he cradled his head and fell into a wretched sleep.

Having transported himself a full continent south of his previous travails, the Groundskeeper grunted, wiping sweat from his furrowed brow with the sleeve of his long grey coat. The ash caked on his cuff smeared dark lines across his forehead.

“So much work, my lady! If you’ve gone before to help,
seems your work’s been undone. The seals hold fast. Damn those mortals!”

He brought his chisel down hard, its metal singing against the glassy base of a lava flow. The surrounding rock seemed to shudder, almost to belch, and a fresh, thin layer of dust began to settle over his skin and begrimed clothes.

“Ah…” He pressed thin lips into a smirk. “Loosening, loosening, for chaos to come.” His song was like the voice of a strangled bird.

His eyes burned as Alexi read the letter to his sister he’d toolong failed to write. “Dear Lord, Alexandra, what more can I do?” he murmured bitterly. “I’ll visit when I can.”

There was a knock at his door. He didn’t want to see or speak with anyone, but it was time for Miss Parker’s tutorial, and of all the people in his life she was the one he least minded. “Come!”

Nodding with her usual deference, she entered, and Alexi noticed a lightness to Miss Parker’s step. As she sat in her chair, he held out an expectant hand. She produced her assignment, though the fingers of her left hand danced busily out of sight. Alexi signed his letter, sealed it hastily and abruptly began a lecture.

To Percy it seemed as if Professor Rychman would rather be anywhere else. It troubled her that she should be so attuned to his energy, to the key changes in the music of his presence. As his lesson came to a close, she leaned forward to gather her things. “Are you well, sir?” she asked, daring to look up at him.

He waved a dismissive hand.

“Truly?” she pressed.

The professor raised an eyebrow. “You know, for a meek young lady you can be dreadfully persistent. My life outside of this campus, Miss Parker, is trying. Not that it’s any of your business. Also, someone close to me is not well.”

“Ah. Miss Thompson,” Percy guessed.

“What? No. Why her?” The professor narrowed his eyes.

Percy shrugged, staring into her lap. “Well, sir, I thought perhaps you and she—”

“She and I? Nonsense, whatever it is you’re insinuating,” he barked. “My sister is ill.”

Percy wished she had remained silent, and yet she suddenly felt overjoyed. Was her professor actually free from attachments after all? It seemed that neither the Frenchwoman named Josephine nor Headmistress Thompson laid claim to him. “My prayers shall be for your sister,” she murmured, rising to her feet. “And for your life here and outside.”

“Are you well, Miss Parker?” the professor asked. “You’ve been fiddling with something all evening that has nearly driven me to distraction.” He looked pointedly at her left hand.

“My apologies, Professor. I haven’t been able to part with it all day. I just received it,” she confessed, holding up an ornate little cross, “for my birthday, along with my favourite book of fairy tales. Reverend Mother is so thoughtful.”

“Fairy tales?” When Percy cringed, the professor spoke with less disdain. “Which is your favourite?”

It never failed to surprise her when he asked questions that bred familiarity. “Well…” She hesitated, looking away. “Beauty and the Beast,” she said finally. “I identify with the characters.”

“Because you think yourself the Beast.”

Percy bit her lip and tried to stare through the floor so as not to cry.

“Foolish girl,” the professor said, and Percy could not tell if his intent was gentle, condescending or both.

Feeling both ugly and childish, Percy put on her glasses to hide her tears and drew her scarf tight about her head and neck. At the same time she reassured herself that his words were meant as an encouragement.

“Have I rattled you so very much?” he pressed, his voice like faraway thunder.

She paused. Then, in a moment of fleeting bravery she removed her glasses and stared into his eyes. “Always.”

The professor almost smiled. “Finally, you are honest with me.”

She was quick to reply. “I’ve never been dishonest.”

“Be of good cheer, faint heart, you are too easily hurt,” he chided.

“My heart is fortified with passions, Professor; it is my confidence that is too easily undone.”

The professor just pursed his lips. Percy lingered a moment in the power of his stoicism. She reminded herself she’d been treated no differently than any other here, beast or no, and she would be forever grateful to him for that fact alone.

“Until next time,” he stated, releasing her from the bondage of his stare with the wave of a finger. But as Percy opened the door, feeling she would breathe easier once she reached the hallway, he called, “Miss Parker?”

“Yes, Professor?” She turned, a hitch in her breath.

“Happy birthday. Which is it?”

“Nineteen,” she replied.

“Nineteen,” he repeated, evaluating the number with a slight grimace. “Well, Miss Parker, may your birthday wish come true.”

Percy felt a bright smile cross her face and she curtseyed. “Thank you, Professor!” But recalling the particulars of her birthday wish, Percy disappeared out the door before her professor could note her guilty blush.

As she exited Apollo Hall, dreaming what her professor’s birthday embrace might feel like, a dozen pink roses suddenly appeared from behind a courtyard pillar. Percy leaped back. The boy she recognized from her literature class, Edward, peered out from around the pillar, his eyes aglow. Percy blushed and put gloved hands over her cheeks to hide.

“Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!”
Marianna cried, jumping out on the other side of Edward. “Happy birthday!”

“Marianna, Edward—thank you both! How sweet you are!” Percy giggled. Edward mimed taking her hand and kissing it chivalrously, not quite daring the wrath of the school should he actually do so.

“Merry natal day!” he cried, bowing with an exaggerated flourish. The walking stick he carried made him look the youthful, endearing dandy.

The three strolled to the fountain, where Edward begged leave to attend his studies. He leaned in to mime kissing Marianna’s hand. The German girl’s face turned pink, but her eyes were bright and gay. A courtship of stares must have been building between the two in their class, Percy assumed, but this connection was a bold new step.

As Edward backed away from the fountain, still staring at the hand he had imagined kissing, he stumbled. He spun upon the culpable stone with mock fury, trouncing it soundly with his walking stick while the girls laughed. Marianna’s cheeks grew increasingly flushed, and Percy wondered if her friend just might swoon right then and there into the fountain.

“How was your lesson today, alone in that room with your dear professor?” the German girl whispered airily, abruptly turning the tables.

Percy replied calmly, refusing to betray herself with giggles. “It was professional and uneventful. He said he hoped my birthday wish came true.”

“If only he knew,” Marianna murmured.

Percy turned and clapped a hand over her friend’s mouth. The German girl squealed with glee, but the sound was stifled.

“You will be my undoing, Marianna. I swear, that talk of yours will get me expelled!”

“No, I promise, Percy, your fascination remains our secret alone!”

In some ways, Marianna’s friendship with Edward could not have come at a better time. At dinner in the ladies’ dining hall, as Percy and her friend sat sipping a bland soup, a few chattering girls brought in a length of paper. In a matter of moments a banner posted above the dining room doorway proclaimed:

IF YOU WILL PATIENTLY DANCE IN OUR ROUND AND SEE OUR MOONLIGHT REVELS, GO WITH US! AUTUMNAL GALA OF
1888 S
ATURDAY
, 8
P.M.

A girlish cheer went up about the room, and the usual topic of conversation—young men—changed to something new: dancing. The anxieties over Jack the Ripper, whose name had been ceaseless in its flow through the dining hall for the past month, especially with all the newspaper coverage, vanished in the excitement. For the first time all year, the girls of Athens would actually be able to touch the opposite sex without reprimand. How else could they dance?

“
Eine Tanz,
Percy! I must send home for my gowns!”

“‘If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts,’” Percy murmured.

“What?”

“Titania’s next line is more appropriate for me.”

Marianna sighed. “Ah. Is that your poetic way of declining the invitation?”

“Why attend? I was never taught to dance.” Percy’s at
tempt at disinterest failed, however, for fantasy had got the better of her and she imagined elegant couples aglow with cheer, chandeliers, music…

“You must attend,” Marianna said gently. “For such nights are the stuff dreams are made of.”

“What could I expect other than cruel whispers and derision? No, I cannot go,” Percy replied. She tried to return to her soup, but a sudden vision of a bloody dog’s muzzle appeared and ruined her appetite.

Many blocks away, The Guard sat by their usual window at La Belle et La Bête. The circle was not complete, to be honest, for Alexi and Jane were again missing, but their party included a beautiful new face.

Alexi hadn’t spent time in the café for a number of days, and Rebecca was quieter than usual, her shoulders tight and her words clipped. Jane had visited earlier for a cup of tea, but upon hearing news of Miss Linden’s arrival she excused herself, stating that she simply didn’t have a use or inclination for any more friends.

A candle at the center of the table dripped onto the tablecloth, and Elijah was absently gathering wax on his fingertips into a ball. Josephine hovered nearby, pouring more tea.

“What a shame, Miss Linden, that you’ve come to London during a spate of such horror,” Michael remarked.

Lucille agreed softly. “But it would always be daunting, to be a lone woman in London, would it not?”

“That is why we make friends, Miss Linden,” Rebecca replied.

None of them had inquired further regarding Miss Linden’s past, and she hadn’t volunteered. It was not proper to pry. But they took her warmth toward them as evidence of her goodwill and gratitude.

“Never worry, Miss Linden. I am here for your protection,” Elijah assured her with a wide smile.

Josephine, standing over him and pouring tea, stepped on
his toes and said, “Fear’s never been so prevalent.” She took a seat.

Rebecca hummed, her brow furrowed, her eyes pained. “Even Alexi is affected. I’ve never seen a look on his face like I did when…” She halted herself and began again, “I’d never seen such a face when he heard the latest news.”

“Ah, Alexi. Why haven’t I seen that professor of yours?” Lucille asked.

Rebecca replied through clenched teeth. “I cannot answer for him, Miss Linden.” Then, struck by an idea, she exclaimed, “The gala! That would be the perfect opportunity. Our academy is about to have its annual soiree. It will be so good for the poor dears, as our students are not accustomed to guards at their doors; they must feel like they’re imprisoned. Professor Rychman thinks the festivity stuff and nonsense…so I’ll arrange the chaperone list to include his name.” Rebecca smirked. “Elijah, if Miss Linden cares to attend, would you escort her?”

“I’d be honoured,” Elijah replied—a bit too eagerly for Josephine, who surreptitiously picked up her dinner knife and held it near his fingertips. But when below the table he placed a tiny object atop the many folds of fabric over her thigh, Josephine glanced down to see he had fashioned his little ball of wax into a tiny heart. Her immaculate olive cheek gained a hint of colour.

“You once told us you hail from Bath, Miss Linden,” Elijah remarked. “You must be no stranger to a fine soiree.”

“Belle of the ball, I’m sure,” Michael declared, raising his glass.

Miss Linden’s eyes sparkled. “You flatter me, Mr. Carroll. Lord Withersby, indeed you are correct—I’m no stranger to a ball. There were so many, you’d think Bath had nothing else to do. All the faces, eager eyes, the flitting fans of young ladies in tense clusters or tucked on a divan, vying so desperately for a glance or a dance…”

Rebecca snickered. “Well, then, you’ll love gala night at
Athens. It’s the only time students are allowed even the slightest fraternization, and it’s the very picture of ineptitude.”

“I most heartily look forward to it,” Lucille exclaimed. Her eyes grew misty as she suggested, “A dance where no one would find me. I might finally feel free, be part of society once again.” She glanced away as her voice faltered. The Guard, embarrassed for her, found fascination in their steaming teacups.

After a moment Josephine asked an almost inaudible question. “Do you think the Ripper is finally finished? There has been no recent violence,
seulement les fous
in the paper, and…well, I was hoping it might be done.” Below the tablecloth, Elijah placed his hand over the little wax heart he’d given her, and the pressure of it through the fabric of her dress was a tiny comfort.

“Something is searching for an answer,” Lucille remarked. “And I pray it has something to do with us.” When everyone stared at her, surprised, she smiled graciously and explained, “I personally comfort myself with the idea that truly terrible things are only omens of better days to come.”

The Guard glanced at one another and looked around for a door.