Page 1 of Confounding Oaths
Prologue
Introductions, gentle reader, remain in order.
Although I’m really not sure why. I assumed I would only have to write one of these damnable things, after which I fully anticipated that my lord Oberon, having accepted that whatever misunderstandings may recently have passed between us are surely as nothing compared to a timeless, ouroboran eternity of loyal and mirthful service, would welcome me back to his court with open arms.
Spoiler. He didn’t. Frankly I expected to be jesting in the invisible palace at the end of the middling road sometime last February and do not know what is taking him so long.
Instead I remain here, trapped in the dreary, damp, culinarily moribund country you recently (well, recently-ish; what’s a millennium or so between friends?) started callingEnglandand forced to make my living by recounting for the mass market some of those stories I originally compiled for my master’s delight alone.
This is the second of those stories I have chosen to share. If you have not read the first, why not? Do you personally dislike me? Are you determined to see me suffer, interminably and without even the comforts of a scribbler’s income to lighten my exile?
I swear, just when I thought my contempt for your species could not sink any deeper.
If youhave,like the discerning mortal creature I am sure you are, read my previously published work then you will know that the story in question took place in the year 1814, beginning shortly after the exile of Napoleon to Elba. This new narrative takes place just after his escape a little under a year later, in the March of 1815.
In the few months between my visits, the British burned Washington as part of the confusingly named War of 1812, eight Londoners died in a flood of beer, and a great white serpent arose in the north of England and devoured several villages. What will follow is a tale of beauty, blood sacrifice, and the wonderfully cruel business of granting wishes.
You are, I hope, hereprimarilyfor the cruelty. That’s my specialty, after all, and if you are not you have chosen a very peculiar era to read about.
Chapter One
I first encountered Mr. Caesar duringthe unfortunate business with his cousin that had begun with her losing her clothes at a ball and ended with her sacrificing a British peer to an ancient goddess, fucking a disgraced noblewoman, and developing a lifelong aversion to marchpane, not necessarily in that order.
In the near year that had followed, I had been observing that lady’s friends and family closely in case they should prove likewise diverting, but, thus far, they had not. Mr. Caesar in particular had proven deeply tedious. His studies for the bar had languished somewhat (and were about to begin languishing rather more for reasons you will soon discover), and he was spending the majority of his time at various London institutions that catered to a certain sort of gentleman with a certain sort of interest.
This latter point you may think would grab my attention, but I am not mortal and I am not so prurient in my outlook that mere sodomy arrests me.
Indeed I would probably have given up on Mr. Caesar as aprospect entirely had he not, at a ball hosted by the Vicomte de Loux, punched a fellow guest in the jaw.
The blow in question would not land until later in the evening, but I mention it now in case you, like me, find balls in general rather dull unless something unexpected is happening and might, therefore, put the book down in disgust were it not for the reassurance that in a few short pages you will be able to watch an irritating man get smacked in the teeth by a slightly less irritating man whose teeth-smacking skills—if we are honest between ourselves—leave a great deal to be desired.
I begin my tale in earnest, then, clinging in the shape of a woodlouse to the ceiling of a carriage whose occupants, in descending order of age, were Mr. Caesar, his friend Miss Bickle, and his two sisters, Miss Caesar and Miss Anne. We are starting early partly to build tension ahead of the much-anticipated teeth-punching, and partly because I am given to understand that you mortals find it more enjoyable to watch other people’s misfortunes if you learn a little about them first.
And on the subject of learning a little about people, there is some context surrounding the Caesars which will, over the course of the narrative, prove pertinent. Their mother, Lady Mary, had been born the youngest daughter of the Earl of Elmsley but had defied the conventions of the ton by marrying a freedman of Senegalese birth whom she had met through her work with the abolition. And whereas in the enlightened twenty-first century the marriage of a British aristocrat to a Person of Colour is a wholly unremarkable thing that results in no hostility whatsoever, in the bad old days of the 1800s it caused quite a scandal.
Isn’t it wonderful to know how far your species has come?
At any rate, those are the inhabitants of the carriage and this, as best I recall it, was their conversation.
“I was wondering,” Miss Bickle—a fair-haired, doe-eyed creature who stubbornly remained an ingenue despite being some way into her nineteenth year—was asking the group at large, “if after the ball is over, or if the ball becomes wearisome, any of you would be interested in reading myction.”
“What’s action?” asked Miss Caesar, who, at sixteen years of age, was now formally out in society and thus learning the fine art of pretending to care about things other people cared about. Of all her siblings, she was the one who most favoured her father, her eyes and her complexion both a deep brown that almost glowed in the waning sunlight.
Mr. Caesar—immaculately presented and patrician as ever—gave his sister a warning look. “Please don’t encourage her, Mary.”
“Ction,” Miss Bickle explained, ignoring her friend’s admonition, “is an abbreviation ofavrection.”
Unable to quite help himself, Mr. Caesar disregarded his own advice and offered the obvious question. “And what isavrection?”
“Ah”—Miss Bickle’s face lit up—“well, you see, that is itself an abbreviation ofavid reader fiction.I am an avid reader of the works of the anonymous lady author ofSense and Sensibilityand I, along with some lady friends, have formed what we call anavidreaderdomdevoted to the wider anonymousladyauthorverse.”
Miss Anne gave a thrilled gasp and tossed her fashionable ringlets. Though she was by far the youngest in the carriage, her grasp of the mortal art of flattery was greater than any of her companions. “How fascinating.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” admitted Miss Caesar. “What do you actually do in this … this …”
“Avidreaderdom,” Miss Bickle reminded her. “We meet, and we discuss the works of the anonymous lady author—”
Mr. Caesar, growing increasingly aware that he was the onlygentleman in the carriage and beginning to wonder if this was hampering his ability to follow the conversation, continued to look sceptical. “These works you insist upon calling theanonymousladyauthorverse?”
