Page 21 of Confounding Oaths
That raised a laugh from the room and allowed Mr. Caesar to feel, for a moment at least, at ease.
“And what sort of gentleman are you?” asked Captain James, not serious exactly, but the kind of playful that meant business.
It had been a long day. A very long day. And Mr. Caesar felt he had earned himself a little levity. Besides, he would need to come back here to continue preparing for the duel. Was it not easier to stay regardless? “I think,” he replied, sipping the kind of beer he would have turned his nose up at in any other company, “that I am probably the same sort of gentleman as you are an officer.”
You may, gentle reader, be disappointed that I have not gone into detail about that first assignation between the good Mr. Caesar and the, if I am honest, somewhat better Captain James. This is what we are here for, you might be saying, why are you skipping the good stuff?
And yes, yes, they were both terribly aesthetically pleasing gentlemen, Mr. Caesar with the taut figure of a man who is determined to wear the tightest breeches and the slimmest-fitting waistcoat fashion will allow without any untoward bulging or pouching, and the captain with the lean, battle-scarred muscle of a man whose body is a tool devoted wholly to preserving its own integrity at the expense of the bodies of its adversaries.
They also both had very fine cocks. Or so I imagine, not havingmade extensive comparison. As I think I have established, the vagaries of mortal physicality mean little to me. I am a creature of passions from a world of whims, and sex interests me only when there is love or hate or chaos behind it. This, as fascinating as both gentlemen will become in the following pages, was just two men fucking in a dark room in a slum. It was to sex what a loaf of stolen bread is to a starving man. Not strictly of the highest quality, but with a savour born of hunger and a worth weighed at least partly in the knowledge that you could be hanged for it. A thousand similar encounters were taking place even then, all over London, albeit with more malnourished participants.
I, for my part, left them to it and returned to the Caesar residence. And on the way there I saw a pale blue twinkle in the distant sky and—in concert with my other suspicions and observations—I felt a sudden need to hurry.
Driven, I should emphasise, purely by my duties as a chronicler and not at all by concern for the well-being of any living human, I went at once to Miss Caesar’s chambers. I found her sitting at her dresser, staring at herself in the mirror and tallying all the ways in which her society found her deficient. As somebody who findsallmortals deficient, I thought it a foolish exercise. Why fret, after all, over the tone of one’s skin or the shape of one’s nose when the entire human body is an absurd one-way trip to the grave?
Taking up a well-used brush, she began slowly to work on her hair. Fond as she was of literature, she had seen in her mind’s eye a hundred heroines sitting as she was now, brushing their luxurious tresses in the moonlight. In a quiet way, it was the quintessential image of girlhood, at least as she had learned it.
In real life, it did not work that way. In real life her tresses fought her at every step. If she was gentle with them, they sprang back to their natural shape with a stubbornness that I personallyappreciated even if she did not. If she was rough—and she grew increasingly rough as time went on—then far from attaining the lustre that all the ladies’ journals promised, either they grew brittle and snapped or the brush snagged and became immobile. She had once broken one, and not quite known how to explain it. Indeed there was much she found hard to explain; her mother she was sure meant well but they were so different in so many ways, and it was not done for a young lady to bother her father with such concerns.
I have told you, readers, that I am a student of mortal hearts, and what I saw in Miss Caesar’s heart that evening was a still, simple sadness so private that even I felt a little uncomfortable chronicling it.
But that was, perhaps, an un-fairy-like weakness. In general it is when you mortals are at your most vulnerable that we come to you and offer our services.
So it was this evening. For when Miss Caesar turned from her glass to her window, tears still pricking her eyes I watched her watch the star streak across the heavens. And to think, she believed it only a beautiful celestial phenomenon.
But I am of the Other Court. I saw the wheels of the carriage, I saw the train of its rider streaming behind her.
She has no name save what she wears in the moment, but then neither do any of my kind. Her colour is blue, her stock in trade is wishes and hearts’ desires. She goes simply byLadywhen she goes by anything at all, and on this night she rode a beam of moonlight, all invisible, into Miss Caesar’s bedchamber.
“Oh,” she said on seeing me. “It’s you.”
“And I would be very grateful if you wouldleave,” I told her.
She looked from me to Miss Caesar, and back again. “Whyever would you want that? I’m about to make this girl’s lifemuchmore entertaining.”
“It interferes with my plans.”
The Lady smiled at me in a way I intensely misliked. “Say that twice more.”
“I could, but I choose not to.”
For some reason, she reached a conclusion from this. “Does Lord Oberon know how badly you’re slipping?”
This was outrageous slander. “I am as loyal a partisan for my court as ever,” I told her with absolute and unimpeachable honesty, “which is why I will not tolerate Titania’s interference with mortals in whom my lord has a declared interest.”
And again she smiled. Her smile was ethereal, and to mortals entirely enchanting. It gave me chills. “Then stop me, wanderer.”
I did not.
Motes of stardust gathered around her, a sound of chimes filled the air, and she materialised.
Miss Caesar looked up, eyes wide and glistening.
“Why do you weep, child?” asked the Lady. There were forms to this kind of bargain, and this was how it had to begin.
“Because I am alone,” the girl replied, “because gentlemen scorn me, because ladies mock me. Because I have neither wealth nor beauty. My sister has the favour of an officer, even mybrotherhas gentlemen running to his protection. And what have I?”
“You,” the Lady replied, “have a patron.”
