A Pretty Mouth Read online

During our trip upstairs to my guardian’s chambers I had noticed the same disrepair and neglect throughout Calipash Manor as had been evident in the foyer. The banisters were unpolished and slick with moisture; the carpet felt damp beneath my feet. Even the portrait-frames looked strangely aged. The gold leaf had flaked away and, curiously, the people in the pictures appeared older than I remembered them. The Calipash family has always been an attractive one, though just as the gentleman on the train mentioned, bizarrely alike in aspect, and with frequent incidences of twins. Long did I study their thin, aristocratic faces as a girl, making up silly stories about their lives—but today, instead of looking like an ancient and noble line, all seemed to carry in their eyes a hateful and sinister expression I had never before noticed. It made me shiver.

  Yet the dilapidation of the house was most evident when Lizzie turned the brass knob of the door into my lord’s chambers and pushed through the decaying portal into the interior. The horrible smell of warm putrefaction hit me first, and then, through the gloom—for the thick window-dressings blocked most of the already-dim light—I could see more of the awful dust that coated every surface. Soiled garments were piled upon the floor, and his desk was messy with papers and spilled candle-wax.

  This place had always been so fastidiously-kept when I was a child! Nauseated, shocked, I looked to my left and saw my guardian in his bed, the curtains of which were stained and the linens unclean. And then there was my lord himself … I remembered him as a vigorous older man, with thick white hair swept back from his temples and a ruddy, narrow, pleasant face, but the person I saw gave me no hint as to his former appearance. He was swollen, bloated even; his hair was thinner, and his face drooped horribly on the left side from the palsy that struck him some weeks back. His skin was as brown as a walnut, and had a patchy, unwholesome appearance.

  I was glad Bill had prepared me for the sight, I do not know if I could have kept from crying out had I gone to see him unaware.

  Lizzie bustled into the room saying, “Well, well, my lord, what may I fetch you?”

  The series of sounds that came from my guardian’s mouth could not be called speech, yet Lizzie seemed to understand them well enough.

  “Such a fuss and for what? Only the want of a cup of Darjeeling!” she exclaimed.

  “My God, is that all?” cried Mr. Vincent, giving me quite a fright—I had not noticed him lurking like a spider on the other side of my lord’s bed.

  “I’ll have it for you before you can say Jack Robinson,” said Lizzie, “but while you wait, here’s something for you, my lord—your guest is here!”

  More wet grunting and smacking. Lizzie’s face fell.

  “Well, surely you will be pleased when you see who it is—come closer, my dear, don’t hang in the doorway like some sort of apparition!”

  With not a little trepidation I took a few faltering steps toward the bed. He really looked as miserable as the house itself; indeed, the only thing bright or beautiful about him was a curious jade pendant he wore on a chain upon his breast, just visible where his nightshirt was unbuttoned. Carved in the shape of a winged tortoise, it had a face more lupine than reptilian, and great clawed monkey-paw hands that gave the impression that the ornament was clinging to his skin. The craftsmanship looked almost Egyptian, and it glowed faintly in the gloaming. I thought I recognized the image … but I know not where, for surely he never wore it while I lived in this house.

  Something about it captivated me, made me long to look upon it further, to hold it in my hand and run my fingertips over the smoothness of the stone.

  “What a lovely necklace,” I blurted, unable to help myself.

  A grunt that sounded like agreement came from him—and then his bleary eyes focused on my face.

  “Whooo?” he said, like a tubercular owl.

  “Your letter bid me come,” said I, remembering myself at last. I took his hand in mine, but almost dropped it in surprise. It felt leathery and chitinous at once; I could not feel the bones beneath the skin. “It is I, Chelone Burchell, your ward. I had not expected to see you again. I am so glad—”

  There was more I was going to say, but, unexpectedly, my greeting induced a sort of apoplexy in the Lord Calipash. He began to cry out and wheeze and make such a ruckus I let go his hand immediately.

  “Never!” I managed to understand through it all, and also, “Begone!”

  This cut me to the quick. It was not as though I had forgotten what was supposed to be my permanent banishment when I received his missive! How could I fail to recall the day I was turned out of the house and sent alone in a coach to attend Miss Redcombe’s School for Girls of Quality? I was not even allowed to pack, my things were sent after me. All I had were the clothes on my back, a few shillings in my pocket, and a letter of explanation in my hand that stated, among other things, that payment would soon arrive to cover my education until I came of age; that I should stay at the school for all holidays unless invited to a friend’s house, and that every effort must be taken to keep me away from young men!

  And yet I had always hoped we would be reconciled, despite his returning every letter I ever sent him, unopened; that he would come to regret punishing me so severely for such a trifling youthful indiscretion.

  “I’m—sorry, the letter, it must have, I don’t know,” I stammered, backing away from the bed. The old man had begun to twitch and froth at the mouth, looking wildly back and forth between myself and Mr. Vincent.

  “Begone!” he cried again, and then he fell back on the pillows—stone dead!

  Lizzie, Mr. Vincent, and I stood still for some minutes, all shocked by what had transpired.

  I was the first to speak.

  “I brought the letter,” I heard myself saying, protesting this awful scene and my part in it. “You can see it for yourselves!”

  Mr. Vincent—or rather, Lord Calipash, as I should start to call him, checked for the old man’s pulse.

  “Well,” he sighed. “That’s that. There is nothing to be done but prepare ourselves for the funeral and legal expenses. A damned nuisance, I’ll warrant, but it shall be soon done with.”

  “My lord,” said Lizzie, in her how shameful voice that I knew too well. “How can you say such things? And at a time like this?”

  “I barely knew the man,” said the new Lord Calipash with a dismissive wave of his pale hand. “He sent me away to live with strangers as soon as I could walk, and called me home only so he could instruct me as to the management of this estate. He cared nothing for me, nor I for him. Now get thee to the kitchen to make my supper, and have Bill dress the body and put it in the crypt to keep it cool until the official burial. Oh—and have him go into the village to send a telegram to our lawyer in London, too.”

  And he left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  I jumped—and then jumped again. The skies had made good on the storm promised since I arrived at the station; thunder crashed, a sudden spatter of thick raindrops hit the glass window. The room lit up with lightning, then fell dark again.

  “For goodness’ sake, it’s only rain,” said Lizzie, reprimanding me for my jumpiness. I detected a note of bitterness in her voice. “You’d better go settle in. You will not want to try to return to London tonight.”

  “Of course,” I heard myself say. “I—I am sorry …”

  “And what good does that do anybody?” she said, not looking at me. She looked wracked, grief-stricken, bereft even. “You’ve ruined so much this day, girl.”

  Then she said what I had been feeling since my arrival:

  “You should never have come back to this house, Chelone Burchell. Not for love or money.”

  ***

  Night. In my room—I thought I should not to go down to supper, but hunger drove me from my chambers. Out of respect I dressed in my most somber gown—but I found the new Lord Calipash tipsy as a lord in his father’s chair at the head of the table, cravat untied, his meal unfinished before him. A cold collation awaited me on the dirt
y sideboard; apparently Lizzie was too occupied to cook something hot. At least the platters looked clean.

  “My lord,” I said, entering the shabby dining room. “You must allow me to apologize—I had no notion my presence would so upset your late father. If I had known—”

  “If I had known, I should have invited you myself, and weeks ago,” he slurred, looking at me half-lidded. “Have some wine, cousin? And some salad, and meat? The cold boiled is particularly good.”

  I was surprised to hear him address me as cousin, for while that is certainly true, I was taught from a young age that my illegitimate origins prevented me from claiming such a connection with the Calipash family.

  I could not bring myself to be so informal with him.

  “Thank you, my lord. I am thirsty,” I said, and he poured me a large glass out of the crystal decanter by his elbow. The claret was blood-red, and sparkled as it flowed. I knew just by looking at it that it was of a better vintage than I had ever before tasted.

  “Allow me to apologize for the rude hello I gave you earlier,” he said. “I was flustered and not myself.”

  “It has already been forgotten,” I said, accepting the glass he handed me. I took nothing else, I found I did not wish to eat just then, during our first real encounter. “I understand. Meeting each other—now! It is a queer thing.”

  “What, that a strumpet’s whelp should have lived here, in this house, while the son of the lord was exiled? Yes, that is a queer thing,” he said. His eyes finally focused on me. “A queer thing indeed.”

  I knew not what to make of his mood, so I said nothing. I do not enjoy verbal fencing with mercurial gentlemen, that is for sharp-tongued spinsters with many cats and well-thumbed copies of Emma.

  “Well, let bygones be bygones,” he said at last. “’Twas not your fault, my situation, and it would make me unreasonable to blame you. Tell me about yourself, Miss Burchell. What do you do?”

  “I am—a writer,” I said. “I live in London, where I work for a ladies’ periodical.”

  “Which?”

  “You would not have heard of it,” I said demurely. Experience has taught me not to divulge my status as pornographer too readily, I have found it is better to let people form an opinion of me before revealing how disreputable I am.

  “You might be surprised,” he said. “I read all sorts of things.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Things that would make you blush, I’ll warrant.”

  I thought this a sorry attempt at rakishness. “My lord?”

  “I should show you my collection sometime … even though you are but a distant, and to be truthful, unwanted relation, you have Calipash blood in you, and thus should appreciate certain genres considered outré by the masses. It is really too bad the Private Library was burned to ashes—”

  A clap of thunder from outside, where the storm still raged, silenced him, but I did not mind. I needed a moment to recover myself: He had mentioned the Private Library! That was what had been written on each bookplate: This Book Belongs to the Private Library of the Calipash Family.

  “Perhaps you are referring to the collection of infamous volumes that used to be housed on the leftmost bookcase of the library? The one that required spinning about to find what it really contained?”

  It was my turn to surprise him! He sat up in his chair and looked at me keenly. I began to doubt he had drunk as much wine as I had first thought.

  “Yes—yes I do! Ach, how can it be that such a lowly urchin has sampled the legendary delights of the Calipash Private Library, and yet I have never done so?”

  “I could not say, my lord.”

  “Perhaps—do you then know why it was burned? I could not understand what my father said regarding the matter. His speech was too far gone when I asked.”

  I was happy to have something to hold over him, so instead of answering him directly, I stood and began to fill a plate from the contents of the sideboard—salmon salad, cold chicken, succulent orange-slices, tongue in aspic. I avoided the cold boiled.

  As I selected the last elements of my repast, over my shoulder I said, “Your father did not share your opinions, my lord.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “He burned the collection after finding me perusing an illustrated copy of Fanny Hill—or, at least, what I know now was a … let us say variant edition of that classic pornography, rewritten to emphasize more deviant black magics than matters carnal. He was so very horrified that he whipped me out the door and into his coach, to be taken directly to school, never permitted to return.”

  I did not add that he had discovered me with my hand under my own skirts, frigging myself furiously whilst looking at the naughty pictures, strange though some surely were.

  It had been a humid summer day, and I had just that year discovered the delights of that revolving bookcase. Actually, I do not believe my guardian knew of the Private Library before that day, as when the old Lord Calipash walked in on me, he snatched the book away, and, eyes wide, had demanded to know where I found such a thing; after seeing what else the collection held he had shouted that he would burn the lot of it, that such titles could do nothing but induce evil in women and men alike.

  Though I have never had any reason to doubt my lord’s having followed through on the threat, it made me sad to hear he had really done so. It was, after all, an impressive collection of very rare, decadent, and often shockingly corrupt tomes. Those on the subject of fornication were my favorite, of course, but those were fewer and farther between than I liked. Far more of the collection was made up of rather moldy books on performing dark sorceries and profane rituals to honor a pack of heathen gods who sounded rather rum compared to Zeus or Thor. There was one I recall that had loads of filthy pictures—a translation of some sort of foreign sex and murder manual, it seemed to me. I can’t recall the title but I know an Englishman named Dee saw fit to have the book available in our tongue, but I question his decision there. It was a far cry from Burton’s Kama Sutra; I can’t imagine anyone would find those positions or actions pleasurable, but there’s no accounting for taste, I suppose. But that wasn’t all: there were books on horrid-sounding cannibal cults of the ancient world—Nameless Cults, I think the title was—and I recall there was even a treatise on the delights of necromancy by a young woman of the family, Rosemary Vincent, whose portrait still hangs in the gallery! Though a stilted homage—or, funny, it must have been a precursor, for she lived during the eighteenth century—to Shelley’s Frankenstein, my ancestor’s manual, Resurrecting the Dead for Work and Pleasure was entertaining reading at the very least, as it detailed how one might create some sort of composite creature from dead bodies using common household items and magic spells, many drawn from some of the other books in the Private Library. I had even cross-referenced a few, bored creature that I was … I wonder if Shelley had a copy of her work? It seems the sort of thing Byron would have had lying about.

  It occurs to me as I write this that it was in that strange sex-manual where I had once before seen the chimerical tortoise-image my guardian had been wearing. There had been two creatures hand-drawn upon the page, one very like my guardian’s pendant, and another in the same style, of a winged, hound-faced sphinx. I saw the same image in a few books, come to think of it, though those had Latin titles and were indecipherable to me.

  “Well well well, Fanny Hill,” said Orlando Vincent, interrupting my thoughts as he poured himself another tipple from the decanter. “Variant or not, it seems the adage is true—what is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. The slut’s pup is a slut herself!”

  “Then you must be as illegitimate as I, for you are no gentleman!” I said hotly.

  “Mind that temper, cousin,” he said, and slurped his wine at me lewdly.

  “And you mind your manners!” said I. “I shall not be calumniated by a messy-haired stripling, drunk on his father’s wine. Good night, sir!” Thus I rose, and took my leave of him.

  I wasn’t really th
at offended, I just wanted to make it clear to him that he could not speak to me like that. But upon reaching my rooms I regretted my decision; I was not yet tired. The strange day had enlivened me rather than the reverse.

  Remembering that when I was a girl and wakeful in the night I used to sit at my window and brush my hair until I was sleepy, I changed into my night-clothes and blew out the candle. Yet while I thought the ritual would settle my mind, when I saw how ill-tended the storm-lit grounds of Calipash Manor were, instead of relaxing me, looking upon them brought back my earlier feelings of gloom, horror, and ruination.

  Especially when I saw that the woods were not so overgrown as to prevent me from seeing the Calipash family crypt through the pine-boughs!

  I felt a shock when I saw the crumbling Doric structure, quite as if I had been struck by a bolt of the lightning still occasionally illuminating the night sky—how had I forgotten the nightmarish sepulcher until that very moment? Not that there was anything actually frightening about the place, of course. I had merely scared myself nearly out of my wits in there as a child.

  What it is about graveyards that so captivate children I know not, but I would venture there often as a girl. It was far from the house proper, which made it exciting, and overgrown, which put me in mind of fairy-circles or some such nonsense. The day I found enough bravery in myself to push open the door—and found it unlocked—I made my one and only exploration of its interior. There I had fancied I saw a ghost, or perhaps it was the Ghast, a puerile notion I know … though I confess, looking out upon that temple in miniature again, the little hairs on the back of my neck rose quivering.

  A sudden movement tore my eyes away from the loathsome mausoleum. A lone figure ran across the grounds. It was, of all people, Orlando Vincent! Pell-mell he pelted over the grass and through the dregs of the rainstorm, and he was headed toward the graveyard, curiously enough. I wondered on what errand he went; it must be something so urgent it could not wait until morning, so I watched him dash to the crypt and duck inside its carven doorway.