Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
S imeon was inside their drawing room, standing in the center of the floor while the Frugises looked at him. Crow stood slightly behind him and to his right. Simeon had a general impression of several pieces of ornate furniture as well as cabinets stuffed with bric-a-brac, but he wasn’t able to take in the details. Not with two pairs of oil-black eyes fixed on him.
Finally he managed to find his tongue. “I can repay you for the things I nicked. I’m not a thief anymore. Usually.”
Mr. Frugis was smoothing his moustache, very much as a bird might preen its feathers, but Mrs. Frugis was as unmoving as a statue. She was the one who spoke. “Is that why you’ve come here?”
“No,” he admitted. “I found…. Well, erm, I have questions, you see, and I hoped?—”
“Who is this person?” She pointed her chin in Crow’s direction.
“This is my mate, Crow Rapp.”
“Do you mean ‘mate’ in the rather vulgar sense of a platonic companion, or in the proper sense as a lifelong romantic partner?”
Let them throw him in Newgate; Simeon wasn’t going to lie about this. He lifted his head. “The second one. I love him. I’d give my life for him.”
Although he steeled himself for condemnation, it didn’t come. If anything, the Frugises merely looked at Crow with increased interest. Crow came a bit closer to Simeon and settled a hand between his shoulder blades. Simeon couldn’t see his face but had the impression that Crow was pleased to be acknowledged in this way.
“Crow Rapp is an intriguing name,” said Mr. Frugis.
“It’s the one my mother gave me, sir.”
“An American!”
Apparently this was more surprising than the fact that Crow was Simeon’s lover. Both of the Frugises tilted their heads quizzically and then Mrs. Frugis made a small sound. “Crow Rapp, you are not human.”
“Ma’am, I hate to be rude, but we came here to talk about Simeon, not me.”
She surprised Simeon with a small smile. “Indeed. But this is a fortunate pairing. Well done, Simeon Bell.”
This response was so unexpected that at first all Simeon could do was blink. Eventually, however, he remembered why he was here. “I apologize for the theft. I used to make my living that way. If it makes you feel any better, I reread that book a dozen times or more before I sold it. That and the money from the spoon kept me fed and bought me a place to sleep for nearly a fortnight. And as I said, I can repay you now.”
“But that is not why you have come here,” she said.
“No, ma’am. I want to know who—or what—I am, and where I come from, and I expect you might have that information. ”
“We might.”
They stared at each other after that, Simeon uncertain whether she was expecting something from him or simply considering his request. Mr. Frugis returned to his moustache, this time more vigorously.
Then Mrs. Frugis clearly reached a decision. “Very well. You have many questions, and I suspect you also have a tale to tell. I should quite like to hear how you and Mr. Rapp became acquainted. The hour is growing late, however, and we are early risers. Have you a place to stay the night?”
“Reckoned we’d find a hotel. But?—”
“You may stay here.”
Without waiting for him to accept—and he wasn’t sure he would have—she strode to the nearby mantel and tugged a tapestry bell pull hanging to one side. Within minutes, Simeon and Crow had been ushered to a first-floor bedroom by a young maid who said she’d return shortly with refreshments. This room was considerably bigger than the previous garret, with two windows looking down over the street, and a large bed with ornately carved headboard. When Simeon surreptitiously checked, the door remained unlocked.
Crow sat on the mattress. “Well. Your weird relatives are a lot more welcoming than mine were.”
“Aunt Helen and her family were lovely.”
“Yeah, but I was referring to the angels in Bayaq. They didn’t exactly greet me with open arms, and they were outright rude to you.”
Simeon snorted. “Oh, that lot. Too high and mighty for the likes of us, I expect.” Then he frowned as a thought occurred to him. “But we don’t know that the Frugises are related to me.”
“They look just like you. They figured out that I’m something strange. And they didn’t toss us out on our asses. I’d say the odds are pretty good, Sim. ”
Crow almost never called him by anything other than his given name, which was fine. But when he did use a nickname or pet name, Simeon’s heart gave a silly little flutter, like a puppy wagging its tail after being praised by its master. He sighed and sat beside Crow. “I wish they weren’t making us wait until morning.”
“You’ve waited— How old are you, anyway?”
Simeon had to think about this. “Depends how you calculate it. I was born in 1857 and now it’s 1883. But I spent a couple years in your time and also with the carnival, so….”
“So you’ve waited at least twenty-six years, give or take a century. You can wait one more night.”
Before Simeon could argue, the young maid returned with a heavily laden tray, which she placed on the small round table near the corner of the room. “Ring if you need anything,” she instructed. “The WC is just down the hall. I’ll bring you breakfast at eight.”
As soon as she was gone, Crow looked at Simeon. “WC. Please tell me that means you guys have actual bathrooms.”
“I had nothing of the kind, but toffs like these have sinks and toilets, I reckon. Don’t expect a nice hot shower, though.”
“Okay, well, at least that’s something. My grandfather didn’t install indoor plumbing until a year or so before he married Gram. He used to remind me that when he was a boy, he had to use a pump and an outhouse. And it gets cold in Chinkapin Grove in winter.” Crow shivered although the room was quite warm.
They sat down to enjoy a nice meal of beef-and-vegetable stew with buttered bread, and as they ate, Simeon regaled Crow with tales of the Great Stink of 1858, when the Thames smelled terrible enough that Parliament was finally inspired to modernize the city’s sewage system. “When I was small, people were still dying of cholera in the East End because the system hadn’t been finished there yet. I remember the adults in the foundling home fretting over it.”
Perhaps because he grew up on a farm, Crow wasn’t put off by this particular topic during dinner. “I’m glad you didn’t get sick.”
“I did, though. Not cholera but consumption. I was coughing blood when Mr. Ame found me and invited me to work at the carnival.”
Crow looked stricken. “Shit. You told me that once but I forgot.”
“I don’t often think about it myself.” It did mean, however, that he considered every minute of his life since then a bonus.
“Jesus, what if Mr. Ame hadn’t found you? Then you and I never would have?—”
“What-ifs like that will only tie you up in knots, love. He did find me, I didn’t die, and here we are now.”
Some of the tension in Crow’s body eased and he gifted Simeon with a smile. “Here we are now.”
After they finished eating, each used the promised WC, which Crow pronounced acceptable. Then they stripped and climbed into the big bed with the lavender-scented sheets, and Simeon shared funny little stories about his youth until they both fell asleep.
When Simeon awoke the next morning, Crow was already up and dressed and gazing through one of the windows. Simeon remained in bed, unmoving, staring at his lover’s tall, lean body and pale blond hair. With weak sunlight silhouetting him, Crow looked ethereal, a figure that had briefly escaped the boundaries of dream and was wandering the sordid real world. But when he turned to look at Simeon and broke into a smile, he became human again.
“The street’s busy,” he observed.
“It’s a busy city. Do you wish you were seeing more of it?”
“Maybe I will—after we’re done here.”
And maybe they’d both be stuck in this time period permanently, in which case Crow could see his fill of the place. It occurred to Simeon, though, that they didn’t have to stay in London. They had enough money to tide them over until they found employment somewhere. They could live in another city or in the countryside. They could even leave England altogether. They’d eventually need to find work of some kind, but they were both strong. Something would turn up.
Assuming nothing awful happened today.
But, Simeon reminded himself, look where they were now. He’d found the Frugises, they’d had a good dinner, he’d slept soundly in a good bed with Crow beside him, and they’d been promised breakfast as well. If someone tried to push him off the roof, he’d be able to fly to safety. And if he was very fortunate, today might bring the answers to questions he’d been asking his entire life.
“Oh, you foolish Simeon! How can you learn lessons in here ? ” Laughing at himself, he hopped out of bed and hurried over to kiss Crow’s cheek.
“You’re scolding yourself now?” Crow quirked his mouth.
“It’s from the book, innit? Alice . Wouldn’t have solved anything if she’d remained in the hall, growing and shrinking.”
Crow gave Simeon’s bare ass a fond squeeze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But maybe you want to get dressed before the maid arrives with food.”
That seemed like reasonable advice. Simeon had just returned from the WC and was combing his hair when someone knocked. This time there were two maids, both of them young, and they spent a few minutes gathering up the dinner dishes and setting out the breakfast things. “Will you be wanting anything else, sirs?” asked one of them.
“When can I see the Frugises?”
“They haven’t said. But if you like, you can wait in the garden. It’s a lovely day.”
Simeon glanced at Crow, who nodded. “All right,” said Simeon. “We’ll be down after we eat.”
“I reckon you can find the way, sir, but ring if you require assistance.”
There was a lot of food—bacon, ham, fish, eggs, and toast—along with strong coffee, and Simeon and Crow did the meal justice. They didn’t speak much as they ate, but that was all right. Simeon had learned to enjoy silence in Crow’s presence.
The maid was correct—Simeon did know how to get to the garden, even though he’d been there only briefly, while escaping. It could have been just solid intuition. In any case, he led them quickly outside, where they spent a few minutes prowling around. The last time he’d been in this house, he’d seen the garden mostly through the window of the room where he was briefly imprisoned, and that had been several floors up. Back then, he’d thought the gardens untended. Either he’d been wrong or matters had improved over the years, because now everything looked quite nice, with exuberant flowers filling beds and tumbling from pots and with trees providing leafy shade over benches and little tables. A high wall separated the gardens from neighboring properties.
“There are a lot of birds and bugs here for a city,” observed Crow, gesturing at some butterflies.
“Aye.” Simeon had never seen some of them before, in fact, and they looked far too tropical for London. Not that he was an expert on such things. His neighborhood had been home to skinny dogs, slinking cats, and noxious vermin; there hadn’t been any gardens or green spaces.
“And this space seems bigger than it should be.”
Simeon touched a marble statue of a satyr, half expecting the thing to come to life, but it stubbornly remained stone. “The insides of your relative’s house in Bayaq were like that too, yeah? Didn’t look like much from the outside, but spacious in.”
“Well, if bending the space-time continuum is such a commonplace thing, I sure wish I knew how. Would’ve come in handy in some of the places I’ve lived.”
They eventually ran out of things to explore, but since the sun was shining brightly and the air was mercifully clear, they decided to remain outdoors for a while. They sat on a stone bench and watched a fountain trickle peacefully until the young maid appeared with one of her laden trays, which she put on a table.
“The mister and missus aren’t ready for you yet, so perhaps you’d enjoy some refreshments?”
It had been less than an hour since they’d finished breakfast, but Simeon and Crow thanked her and moved to chairs at the table. There were dishes with dry little biscuits, another pot of coffee, and more intriguingly, a stack of books.
Simeon picked up the topmost volume. “Do you expect this is a dig at me for nicking Alice ? Or a test to see if I’ll steal more?
“No idea.”
Well, if they were going to have to wait, he might as well read. His book, which had a blue cover with gold-embossed elephants on the front, was The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Crow selected a volume and snorted when he saw the title .
“What’s so funny, love?”
“It’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz .”
“What’s that?”
Crow shook his head. “Sometimes I forget how much you don’t know. I’ve never read the book, but the movie is a classic. Um, for my time, I mean. It’s about a kid—an orphaned girl, raised by relatives and living on a subsistence farm in Kansas. And then a tornado picks her up and carries her to a magic land where she kills witches.”
Simeon stared. “That’s a bit close to home for you, innit?”
“Only if you, Simeon, are a scarecrow. Or maybe a little dog.” Crow snickered, and even though Simeon didn’t understand, he chuckled anyway because his beloved so rarely joked about anything. Then they both opened their books.
Simeon’s turned out to be stories about a human child in India—Mowgli—who was adopted by wolves, as well as tales about animals who could talk. As in Alice , there were poems, although these contained less nonsense. He was particularly taken by one of them, in which Mowgli mourns because he fits in with neither people nor wolves.
“My heart is heavy with the things that I do not understand,” Simeon said out loud.
Frowning, Crow looked up from his book. “What’s the matter?”
“The bloke in this book, he killed his enemy, but he’s still not happy. He’s two sides to his nature and they’re in conflict. ‘These two things fight together in me as the snakes fight in the spring.’”
Crow thought about this for a bit. “Is that how you feel?”
“Dunno. It’s not fighting, and I’m not miserable, but….” He squinted as he tried to find the right words, which wasn’t usually a challenge for him. “I’m not exactly sure who I am.”
“Identity crisis,” Crow said, nodding. “I get that. I’ll love you whoever you are, Simeon. ”
Just as Crow didn’t often joke, he rarely made proclamations of love. That had never bothered Simeon, who saw Crow’s true feelings in his looks and actions. But still, it was nice to hear the words now and then. Nobody but Crow had ever loved him.
Simeon was about to suggest that a trip up to their bedroom—and the big, comfortable bed—might not be amiss, when the kitchen door opened and the Frugises emerged. Simeon and Crow scrambled to their feet to greet their hosts, who wore neutral expressions and were dressed in their usual black with a dash of white.
“I trust you’ve been made comfortable?” Mrs. Frugis asked.
Comfortable wasn’t exactly the right word, but Simeon nodded. “Very much so. Thank you for your hospitality. But ma’am, I’ve so many questions, and?—”
“And we shall answer them. In due time. But first we’d like to hear your tale. How is it that the two of you became mates?” She and her husband sat at the table and motioned for Crow and Simeon to do the same.
“Do you mind if we tell them, love?” Simeon asked Crow. “It’s your story more than mine.”
“It’s our story,” Crow insisted.
“Very well. It began, I reckon, with a carnival.”