Nettleblack, page 30
She clears her throat. That ain’t right either. I always start, after she’s gestured me to, and I never have to think for my first sentence.
But she ain’t even talking to me.
“Cassandra. Would you care to explain what Matthew meant by his remark?”
All the stiffness gives. Cassandra’s at a desperate gabble, heaping words on words.
“I was going to tell you, Mother – I just hadn’t worked out how to explain it – but there’s no need to fret, the novel’s anonymous – it won’t undermine you, or any of your projects, it was just – is just – ”
The Director nods curtly. “Is it Life and Limbs?”
Cassandra winces. The name sounds a curse, the way her mother murmurs it. “I – yes, but as I said – ”
“I told you.”
“I know, I – ”
“I told you when you were Johannes’s age that such poisonous pursuits were not worth your time – and yet you deliberately chose not only to continue writing frivolous novels, but to publish them for all the world to laugh at. Do you wish to humiliate the Division out of credibility, with your ridiculous narrative about gangrenous hands and romance in the medical school? Are you pleased with yourself, now that your stupid tale of missing limbs seems to have found a counterpart in the very case that is threatening to unhinge us? Everything you do has a consequence – has the potential for change, for betterment – but I can see no potential in this. It’s a waste of your talents, and I did not expect it of you.”
I’ve never heard Cassandra so measly-voiced, when she finally replies. All her words shrivelled down to a shaky stammer. She can’t stand me, and I’m no better with her, but – I can’t not pity her, listening to this.
“My name isn’t on it. And there’s nothing about the Division in it. It isn’t even set in Dallyangle. I – I’m sorry I didn’t – I just thought – and how could I know the Head-Hider would – ?”
Her mother lifts a sharp hand, cuts her off. “Not a word of it leaves this room. That goes for all three of you. No one is to discover the book’s authorship, and nothing more is to be said about it. Now, Cassandra, to today’s behaviour – the way you spoke to Matthew – ”
Cassandra gapes. “I was defending you!”
“I do not require defending,” the Director snaps, steepling her fingers again. “If I require anything, it is an end to this constant and disruptive battling amongst my Divisioners. And you, Division Sergeant Septimus – ” – and she won’t even look at me – “ – am I to believe that you have spent your time instructing Miss Hyssop in the ways of the Division, and yet have somehow remained ignorant of her – her pet?”
Her pet. Henry said as much, didn’t she, when we first met? And I’d thought she meant a sweetheart. Last night, I’d been giddy with guilty relief, when she told me she didn’t have a sweetheart.
I want to strangle myself.
“How much have you been attending to your assignment?” the Director demands. “I didn’t arrange it simply for Cassandra’s amusement – you do realise that? I wanted to give you a chance to prove yourself again. I wanted to see how capable you were at inspiring new recruits.”
Henry’s stammering something gallant. “Please – I – I have been – erm – inspired – Septimus – she’s done a marvellous job – I – ”
“If I wanted your opinion, Miss Hyssop, I would have asked for it.”
’Course Henry flinches. Something in it sparks me at the throat.
“Look – Henry’s better positioned than anyone to tell you what – ”
“Not than anyone,” the Director corrects tersely. Her fingers crumple in on themselves, a steeple collapsed. “I am best positioned to assess your capabilities, Septimus – because, unlike your assistant, I have invested considerable time and energy into discerning what best serves Dallyangle and its Division.”
I flare. “And I haven’t? I’ve been here from the start – I – ”
“You have derived your ideals from me! I gave them to you, and I cannot lay the blame for them anywhere other than on myself! Do you mean to insult me by telling me that you have no idea – that you have never even thought about – how much I have had to risk in this enterprise?”
It knocks the retorts out of me like a blow. I’m so used to her self-control, to glossy spectacles and careful sentences and smiles that keep everything back. Everything. Not just irritation, but anger – and hurt – and danger – and even fear – all that’s smarting in her words now.
“I need you to understand,” she gasps out. “All of you. If the Division falls – a silly novelist here, a poisonous letter there, a detective walking out with two cases still unsolved – I fall with it. Septimus – you can find other employment. Miss Hyssop could return to Girton. Cassandra – well, you have your novel, don’t you? You can all do as my fellow-students did, and say that I misled you, with my radical ways and my utopian thinking and whatever other platitudes you wish to deploy. But I can’t – don’t you see? – I can’t say that I misled myself!”
“The Division won’t fall,” Cassandra blurts. She’s frightened as I am, and she sounds it. “You won’t let it – and we won’t let it! And Adelstein will come back, once he realises what he’s – ”
The Director slaps her hands together, knots her fingers furiously. “I am not infallible, Cassandra! I cannot wish these outcomes into being! I need your support – all of you – I thought I had it!”
We’re all struck out of words now. The Director’s snatching steadying breaths, her knuckles stark and trembling. Cassandra won’t look anywhere but her feet, shoulders taut, swallowing hard. Henry’s a terrified ghost, clutching the ferret in her arms. I – I don’t know what I am –
But the Director ain’t finished.
“You are, at least, right in one respect. Matthew will come back – but only if he thinks there has been suitable recompense for today’s events, which can be easily arranged. Miss Hyssop, as soon as this meeting is concluded, you will get rid of that ferret. If I ever see it – or any more dead mice – in this Division again, you will be out of your job.”
Henry ducks her head, fumbles a shivering nod.
“Cassandra – the case is yours.”
What?
Cassandra glances up, shocked as me. “Mother?”
“The Head-Hider,” the Director clarifies coldly. All that composure’s flooding back, draping her like a cloak. “If there is the slightest chance that your ill-advised fiction played a part in inspiring this lunatic, it is your responsibility to put it right. From now on, you will be leading the investigation. Septimus – if you discover anything relating to this case, you are to pass it directly to Cassandra. You will continue with your pursuit of the Sweetings – on foot.”
I’m spluttering before I can stop. “But – I can’t just ignore evidence! If you want the case solved you won’t even think about it – ”
I can hardly hear my words for Cassandra, stammering panic at the same time. Not that she’s got anything to panic about. Ain’t she always out for some way to impress? Why wouldn’t she grab this chance both-handed as well?
“Mother, I didn’t mean I should – I mean, obviously I want – but not this case – please – give me the Sweetings, give me anything else, but not the Head-Hider – ”
The cloak drops.
“How many times,” the Director yells – really yells, ’til the room’s made of nothing but her voice, and that voice’s cracked and smarting more than she’s ever shown it under this roof – “do I have to tell you both that I know how to run my Division?”
I – I – don’t dare a word. I can barely move. Her voice seeps down my throat, chokes me. From the frozen silence, Cassandra and Henry must be the same.
“Out,” the Director hisses. Her eyes tumble back to her hands. I don’t wait.
It’s hushed as the morning again. The whole Div must have heard us. Cassandra don’t linger to make sure. When we’re all in the corridor, she’s only got half a second to catch my gaze – and not a single word to offer, any more than I have – before she shoulders past and sprints away. You can hear her sobs between every crashing footstep, right across reception. The double doors slam.
If she’s got the Head-Hider case and a mort of things to prove – or make up for – or both – what’s to stop her following the only lead we’ve got? What’s to stop her chasing Lorrie?
Lorrie, who wasn’t at his post this morning. Lorrie, who might as well be missing. I didn’t go back to check on him. Anything could’ve happened to him. Worse may well happen now.
I should’ve gone to him. Warned him. I had the choice, and I went running after Henry’s cause like an idiot. An idiot who’d never been besotted with a dangerous schemer. An idiot who’d never learned.
“Septimus?”
Henry’s followed me down the corridor. Hovering at my office door, too polite to chase me in. The ferret’s another shade of pale to set her off. Terrified eyes, green as a thicket. All her apology, all her concern, glittering in ’em.
Apology! Yes! This is her fault! I was an idiot to defend her – but she’s just as bad, with her secrets – with everything that sent Adelstein after her in the first place! And even now – she don’t even look ashamed – just scared, always scared, too scared for anything else to leave much of a mark. She ain’t ashamed. Wasn’t it her who brought that ferret here in the first place? And she’s had chance upon chance to tell me – really tell me –
But obviously I ain’t to be trusted with anything! Not the truth of her – not even my own damned feelings for her!
“The hell were you thinking?” I snarl. “What – why – why is he after you? Why won’t he stop? What’ve you done?”
Her shock’s painful, her sudden flash of incredulity even more so. “I – what? I – I thought you – you said – I thought you believed me – ”
“I thought you’d explained!”
And I know – and I can’t say it – but how can I forget what’s in her journal? How’m I supposed to ignore the way she looks at Adelstein, like he’s the very apocalypse in herringbone? What do I do about the ferret – and all that’s just been wrenched off my shoulders – and everything I know – and everything I don’t – ?
I wish I’d not gone to the dormitory. I wish I’d never seen the damn journal. I wish I’d just – I don’t know, waited! Trusted! Call it what you like!
“I – I – I did!” she cries. “I told you – that he was wrong! I haven’t done anything! I – you – was my word quite not enough?”
She’s right. Oh, God, she’s right.
“Henry – ”
She tugs her shoulders taut. “Division Sergeant – I – I can’t apologise sufficiently – for – for everything – but now – ”
Now? She can’t. She can’t resign too. Please – please don’t let her resign –
“Now – I – I’m going – erm – to – to deal – with my ferret.”
“Wait – ”
But she runs, round on her heel and out down the corridor.
Now it’s just me, back in my office, back where I started. Except it ain’t. I don’t sit at the desk and pin my hair now. I press my forehead to the door and gasp for breath. It’s a nightmare, and if I breathe deep enough it’ll make it stop. Or it’ll push it away. Keep it beyond the door.
I can’t even leave my notebook sprawled open for Henry to find. Can’t swap our poses of this morning. My book might explain – if I dared explain – even in writing – especially now –
But it’s in my shorthand. And there’s too much of a risk someone else’ll find it, if I leave it beyond my office. And it’ll be a miracle if she ever sneaks into my office.
It’ll be a miracle if she ever comes back to the Div.
Well. There you go. Notebook or no notebook, journal or no journal, secrets or no secrets. She might’ve just been laughing at you before, but she’s got more than right to despise you now.
14.
OF FAMILIAL
COMPLICATIONS
The Director’s Record
November 2nd 1893 (Thursday)
MISSING HEAD. –– Nothing. I can earmark it as urgent, and it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference.
REPRIMANDS, &c. –– Where to begin?
Cassandra. I cannot reprimand her in a Divisionary capacity for her deceit, but that does not mean I cannot feel it. How could she be so thoughtless? I never raised her to callous flippancy, to flights of useless and unhelpful fancy – to become the sort of woman who would write a novel about idiotic young men making a mockery of a medical school! To glamourise that kind of unfeeling carelessness, the prejudices deep-set in a system – to joke, within the pages of a popular and insidiously influential work, about the barriers which keep her own sex – her own race – from the opportunities afforded to an endless string of privileged fools!
Have I not done enough to stop her from adopting such ideas? Has the Division itself not shown her that institutions should not be maintained if they are no longer useful – no – if they are actively harmful?
And it has had consequences! Dear God, it has had consequences! Am I to believe that the Head-Hider’s modus operandi is a matter of coincidence, a mere month after the thing’s publication?
The Division only holds together as long as we consciously reject the very world-order enshrined in Cassandra’s book. Why did she feel the need to channel her thoughts – her potential – into the ventriloquized thoughts and minds of rich white men? How could she pinch her own voice to nothing for the sake of someone else’s crude humour? How could my own child give a killer ideas?
Well. She will no longer be able to do so now. I have appointed her as lead investigator on the Head-Hider case, a position which will not only demand all of her energies, but channel them back in a productive direction. She must be the one to fix this. It is far too much to hope that the novel be withdrawn from circulation, but we can at least ensure that Cassandra’s name is never publicly associated with it. Let the readers see what they will doubtless assume about its authorship, and let Cassandra find the Head-Hider, and let that be an end to the whole affair.
Next:
Septimus. Cautioned – or reprimanded – I fear I lost my temper too much to preserve the distinction – and sent back to the Sweetings’ case, now that Cassandra has control of the Head-Hider. I know that Septimus has struggled with the Sweetings before – but Cassandra will hardly do any better against them – and surely separating the two Divisioners, restricting their focuses to one case each, can only help to enhance their concentration and get both solved more quickly?
And Septimus will apply herself (and stop allowing her fancies about Pip Property to unhinge her) to the task of apprehending the Sweetings. I have lost my chance to extract an explanation from her for what happened two months ago – and that I must allow, for I chose not to dismiss her – but if she were only to stop them this time, her faltering abilities might finally settle themselves back to their original promise.
Is it me? Am I the problem? Why are they all constantly compelled to keep secrets from me?
Returning to official matters. Miss Hyssop – final reprimand – keeping a ferret in the building and permitting it to attack Matthew’s lodger. Possibly the only Divisionary problem accompanied by an easy solution. Miss Hyssop will remove the ferret, Matthew will be informed of it, and he can then be convinced to return.
Surely.
THE DEADLINE. –– Monday 6th November is almost upon us, and the Sweetings have not been found, but I will not start worrying yet. We still have the weekend.
RESIGNATIONS. –– Officially, Matthew, but I plan to persuade him otherwise. I will write to him tomorrow. At least he brought our ledgers back before launching into his pose of defiance.
And Miss Hyssop? She seems to have vanished. It has been hours, and she has left no word with anyone. It surely can’t take this long to get rid of a ferret. Does she intend to return? Have I lost her too?
Keturah St. Clare Ballestas, Director of the Dallyangle Division
My own wretched self
The rest of that day (what is that day? November? Figs, something cold and ominous)
Things have happened. And I don’t entirely know how to feel about them. But one thing, at least, has been made alarmingly clear tonight: I cannot let myself be found. Quite ever again. Quite.
I sprinted from the Division half-distracted, clutching my unrepentant ferret, a conversation abandoned in pieces at my back. I’ve not the faintest what possessed me to flee. The Director’s orders, and her truly withering expression. The thought that Septimus still harboured the ghastly suspicions Mr. Adelstein had laced her with. The fact that I had quite no way of defending myself against them. Eventually, just the realisation – as per my usual modus operandi – that all I could do was run.
Run – and banish the ferret. I could have cheerfully throttled Mordred for all he’d wrought, but he did defend me when I first faced the Sweetings, and I was hardly cold-blooded enough to throw him in the river. The only option left to me was to somehow return him to my sisters – without the Division ever discovering it, or Edwina and Rosamond discovering me. There wasn’t time to arrange a clandestine meeting, to get Rosamond on her own. There was only Catfish Crescent and the house – and, peaches, I hadn’t worked out the feasibilities of turning up on my threshold with short hair and a Divisioner’s uniform – but that was a matter for a mind far steadier than mine was at that moment!
The whole sprint was distinctly unpleasant. The market was closing up as I crashed through, empty boxes clattering together on every side, late buyers rolling their eyes and their taunts as one when they saw me dash past. The main street that splices Pole Place from the market was abristle with carts and carriages, the horses clinking and kicking like huge clockwork monsters, mud-splattered fetlocks making every effort to stamp my feet flat, drivers bellowing me out of their paths. My throat was tightening again, until I had to stagger to a halt in Pole Place, clutching at the nearest smooth-bricked housefront to keep myself upright. Mordred slung heavy on my shoulders, a strange shock of warmth around my collar. It was almost dark already, and coming on to rain, icy droplets spitting through my fringe. My face was far damper than the sky had yet managed – but that was my own wretched fault.
