We discover a most unforewitted tragedy struck in Church-lane, St. Giles’s, shocking even the most hardened of that irascilacious realm. A comely lass of seventeen years was most untimely struck down by a delinquitorious scallywag, a blade thrust twixt her ribs some scores and dozens of times, and left to bleed. Whilst chances the scurrible fiend will be brought to justice are most uncertificable, the humble author prays that he will be left to dangle like the most inconseterial string of garlic.
Since two years previous, “Grizzlehurst’s Daily Report of Mayhem and Mischief” had trebled in sales as far afield as Southwark and Deptford, thanks to my style and to Hugh Grizzlehurst’s genuine talent for scouting out the rankest misdeeds imaginable; had it occurred to me to be proud of the fact, I should have tried it out. Still—I watched Bertha Grizzlehurst gather up scattered flour from her breadboard as if it were gold dust, listened monthly for the sound of the landlord’s hobnailed boots and his rat-a-tat, and understood her husband’s wheedling for “Just an extra three days, guv’nor, as yer a charititious Christian.” I worked as many hours at the “Daily Report” as he, longer if it sold quickly, and there were four of us in that dear, dingy house, Clarke helping with laundry and mending and mopping, so our hosts never asked us for rent even if they wanted to. At the time, however, I had little notion of what a drinking habit cost, nor did I realise that some landlords considered the worth of their tenants more relevant to pricing than the square footage of their lodgings.
Small wonder, not knowing how hard the world truly was, I sat so peaceably over my paper and nibs in those final hours; small wonder that I lost something when I never knew what I had in the first place.
I felt Clarke’s graceful steps entering. Her feet sounded satisfied, her gentle shutting of the door weary; she had passed a good day in the Rotherhithe marketplace, crooning sweet ballads and the occasional comedic patter song. Her forearms met my collarbone as she rested her chin upon my head; I was ludicrously smaller than she when seated, for where the younger Clarke had grown tall and willowy, I had remained a slight, sparrowlike creature.
“How bad is it?”
I shut my eyes since she could not see me, simply grateful for her; I thought us sisters, partners, the perfect duo save that I was unworthy of her affections. Tapping my pen against the word irascilacious, I nuzzled my head against her neck like an overgrown cat. She chuckled into my crown.
“That is almost too inventive to edit out.”
“You’re an evil temptress and I shun your wiles,” I returned in a passable impersonation of the late unlamented Vesalius Munt. It thrilled me to call Clarke evil when the reverse was true—as if every time she laughed, I knew my own secrets remained buried.
Of course, murder was not the only secret I kept from Clarke.
By the time I was eighteen, I had read her father’s publication The Garden of Forbidden Delights an indecorous number of times—always in the sleepy midmorning, when Clarke was out singing and I had spent half the night replacing gibberish with words, dependent upon Mr. Grizzlehurst’s voluminous lungs to sell our goods each morn. Unlike Mr. Munt’s letters, the erotica printed by Clarke’s family failed to sicken, only caused a joyous, clamorous sensation I could not help but mistrust, since it meant that Edwin was right about me.
I liked it.
The people in the slim red book thirsted for closeness, unfolded themselves in turgid metaphors like the petals of a spring rose. Everything they did, they did for wild love—women practically scooped out their hearts and passed them to one another, men discovered these Sapphic passions and assisted in their explorations, brothers-in-arms aided one another when the women were exhausted by pleasure. Even quarrels ended in a dizzy swell of bosoms and trouser fronts; I blame my superb memory on the fact that I had memorised entire chapters.
At age sixteen, it had been too much to take in, let alone tell Clarke about; at age eighteen, I had kept the secret for so long that I should no longer be presenting Clarke with a fresh discovery, a tomcat delivering a mouse—I should be informing her that I was perfectly capable of keeping mum. Though I could not be disgusted over their stock in trade, I could understand Clarke’s hurt over being snubbed by her parents, and this delicacy led to my complete failure to bring the subject up at all. As the reader has never faced a similar predicament, I warn the tempted: secrets decay, as corpses do, growing ranker over time.
“Mr. Grizzlehurst seemed disturbed,” Clarke reported. She passed a glass of port over my shoulder. “What did he print yesterday?”