She ignores me and instead says to Percy, “Are you sure this would be a good idea for you?”
“I think it’s—” I start, but she snaps, “I wasn’t addressing you, Henry.” Then, again to Percy, she says, “Are you well enough to travel?”
And I feel like an insensitive rake again for not thinking of that from the start.
But Percy nods. “I’m all right.”
Felicity sighs so hard her nostrils flair, like his wellness has ruined her plans. “Can we all agree that if we can’t secure some funds, we shouldn’t go? It’s already an absurd journey, but to undertake it with nothing is downright foolish. We’ll hardly be able to get out of the city unless we have coinage.”
“Agreed,” Percy says, then looks at me. I was hoping the question of money might be something we three could collaborate on rather than a condition of our departure, but I nod.
Felicity stretches her arms behind her head, then stands. “I want you to both know that in spite of the fact that I am going along, I think this is a terrible idea.”
“Don’t pretend you aren’t interested in all this,” I say. “Alchemy seems right up your street.”
“Medicine and alchemy are unrelated fields,” she says, thought she doesn’t do a particularly good job of concealing said interest.
“Fine. Then consider your opinion noted.”
“Fine.” She winds her hair into a knot. “I’m going to get some sleep before we go. Percy, do you want a hand?”
“No, I think I’ll stay out,” he says.
“Good night, then. Let me know if you need anything.”
As Felicity disappears, picking her way across the narrow deck to the cabin, I look over at Percy again. He’s still looking up at the stars, the silvery light from the moon slithering across the water and stitching his skin. In the glow of it, he looks pearled and fine, a boy fashioned from precious stones and the insides of seashells.
“I think we’re doing the right thing,” I say, sort of to Percy and sort of to myself.
“At least we’ll know what’s in the box,” he says with a half smile. “Felicity’s right about Lockwood, though. If we go to Spain, he’ll probably send us packing as soon as we’re reunited.”
“But maybe Mateu Robles will have something to help you and you can come home.”
“And maybe he won’t. You might be giving up your Tour for me.”
“Worth it, that.” I scrub my hands through my hair. “Though I think . . . it’s mostly my fault we were being sent home early. So . . . I’m sorry. For that. Sorry about the box as well. That I picked it up.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I’m ill.”
“I really wish you had.”
He nods. I take another drink.
“You’re my best mate, Monty,” he says suddenly. “And I don’t want to ruin that. Especially not now. I didn’t tell you I was ill because I didn’t want to scare you away, and if I didn’t have you—if I hadn’t had you for these past few years, I think I’d have lost my mind. So if things can’t be the same between us, can they at least not be terrible? You’re not permitted to be strange and uncomfortable around me now.”
“So long as you don’t go falling in love with me.”
I don’t know why I say it. Call it battlements around my helpless heart. Percy looks away from me fast, shoulders curling up. It almost looks like a flinch. But then he says, “I’ll try my best.”
He seems like he wants to touch me, but we’ve both lost any sense of how men who haven’t kissed each other do that. He finally taps my knee, open-palmed and short, the way we used to try and hold our hands to candle flames without being burned when we were boys, and I wonder if there will ever again be a day when it doesn’t feel as though he might fly to pieces between my hands.
12
We part ways with Pascal and the grandmothers the next morning as the sun rises. Their fair has disappeared from the pier, and the first of the boats have already kicked off from their moorings and are drifting up the river, a flock of colored swans riding the current.
Percy, Felicity, and I wander the city, searching for the French partner institution to the Bank of England. It’s hardly morning but the sun is already beginning to cook the stones. The heat rises from them in shimmering waves. Shops have their signs flipped and their fronts open onto the pavement, displays of produce and flowers and tailored clothes spreading out. A sharp gunpowder smell rolls from a blacksmith shop, along with the bell-clang of the hammer. A shoeblack with a stained rag stuffed into his breeches and a ball of sticky polish rolling between his palms wolf-whistles at Felicity from his perch on a coffeehouse stoop. I extend a tasteful finger to him as we pass.
We find the bank on the high street. It’s a classical building with a marbled interior and rows of wooden-barred windows lining the perimeter, a wigged clerk behind each. The sounds of red heels and brass-tipped canes click like dice against the stone.
“If we don’t act soon, they’re going to think we’re scouting the place for a robbery,” Felicity says after we’ve spent a half of an hour in the lobby, doing what can only be termed lurking.
“We could tell them the truth,” Percy suggests.
“Yes, but we’ve only one chance,” she replies, “and the truth is a bit too preposterous to be convincing. Alchemical puzzle boxes and all that.”
I’m hardly listening to them—I’ve spent most of the while we’ve been loitering watching the clerk at the window nearest to the door, and after close scrutiny of his last few interactions, I’m fairly certain he and I have a big thing in common.
When you are a lad who enjoys getting other lads in bed, you have to develop a rather fastidious sense for who plays the same instrument or there’s a chance you’ll find yourself at the business end of a hangman’s knot. And if this fellow and I had met at a bar, I would have already bought him a drink and put his fingers in my mouth. It’s a great risk—I’m not so much jumping to a conclusion as vaulting haphazardly to it—but, somehow, I know.
“Stay here,” I say.
“What are you doing?” Felicity hisses at me as I start across the lobby.
“Helping.” I check myself in one of the mirrors lining the hall, ruffle my hair for good measure, then stride from the atrium and straight up to the man’s window. Not even a man, he’s just a boy—apprenticeship age, even younger than me. He looks up when I approach, and I give him a big eyeful of the dimples that have launched a thousand ships. “Um, bonjour. Parlez-vous anglais?”
“Oui,” he replies. “May I help you?”
“I’ve a bit of an unorthodox query.” I let out a shy laugh, flit my eyes down to the floor, then back to him through my lashes. His neck goes a little red. Fan-bloody-tastic. “You see, I’m touring.”
“I assumed.”
“Oh, am I so obvious?”
“Well, the English.”
“Of course.” I laugh again. “The English. God, I’m so awful at French. I can only say about three things. When is supper? Can you help me? and You have lovely eyes—Tes yeux sont magnifiques. Was that right?”