Ironskin

Chapter 10 The Edge of the Forest

Jane’s knees shook. Plain Miss Ingel. Beautiful Miss Ingel. And—“the Varee chirurgiens can’t compare to him,” Nina had said, but didn’t chirurgien mean surgeon?

“Miss Ingel…,” Jane whispered. “She used to look like that sculpture.”

Nina looked where Jane’s eyes were fixed. “Oh, Blanche,” she said derisively. “I saw her yesterday, and she tried to pretend that the hot springs were restorative. As if she could fix that face and not have it be obvious.” Nina’s eyes fell to Jane, still holding her plum silk wrap. “I’ll take that. Now, if you wouldn’t mind…?”

Jane wanted to collapse to the floor right there, but she obeyed Nina, wobbled through the foyer, and sank out of sight behind the forest green curtains. She wrapped her arms around her knees, where goose bumps speckled her skirt.

It was plain as day, now that Nina had said it. Rochart-as-artist was a pretty little fiction, a cover story that certain wealthy elite knew the truth of. No artist—a surgeon. A secret surgeon, unless maybe everyone knew—everyone but Jane, who was apparently as naïve as Alistair had painted her.

No, she reminded herself, she would not beat herself up over ignorance. She had been wrapped up in her own work with Dorie; why should she see through a mystery that she didn’t know existed?

Not to mention that facial surgery was so uncommon that Jane had only seen it once before, and that was to fix a boy in her town who had had his face mauled by a wild boar. She had seen the city surgeon’s work, and it was obvious. It was noticeable; there were scars, and stretches. It was definitely an improvement over no work, but the boy would never look quite normal, let alone handsome.

She had heard that back when the cinemas were still running, there were actresses who went voluntarily for such surgery, that noses and chins could be tweaked. But she had never seen the result, and she had never heard that it could look like this.

But that was what it was. Edward the surgeon, Edward the artist in flesh and bone. Tweaking those like the Prime Minister’s wife so they merely looked refreshed, doing major work on those like Blanche Ingel. And either way making the woman into the most dazzling version of herself. Fey beauty, the old woman at the party had called it, and that’s what it would’ve been called before the Great War, for it was inhuman to be that perfect, that symmetrical, that flawless.

She stayed there until she heard the soft front door click of Nina leaving, and then she crossed the foyer, went to the small red room to see the faces again.

Yes, there was Miss Ingel, the stretched and exaggerated sculpture of her original face. His mockups, perhaps, his befores and afters. She thought back to something he had said about them the first time she’d seen his studio. “A reminder,” he’d said. A reminder of the worst of us, extracted and displayed.

She could only guess that the sorrows in his life drove him to the extreme of making these grotesque images—perhaps he was not altogether comfortable with what he did. It was shrouded in secrecy after all, presumably because the women wanted to pretend they’d always been this beautiful—would rather pretend they’d had affairs or been on holiday than let the truth be known.

And secrecy like that had to weigh on him.

Had to cause—moodiness, as Cook had said.

Jane reached up to touch the ugly Blanche Ingel mask. The clay was smooth, the painted surface slick, almost elastic. One above and to the left caught her eye—was that the Prime Minister’s wife, with the heavy jowls? The caricature was so extreme, it was hard to tell. If that Nina person had been friendlier, perhaps she could have told Jane what name went with each piece of artwork.

Slowly Jane turned, looking at the rows and rows of masks with a new eye. Each one represented a person, somewhere. Rows of people who had jumped ship on their old lives for the chance to be someone new. She might have met them, seen them in the city, and she thought of the beautiful people at Helen’s wedding.

Thought of all the splendidly attired guests, whirling in their gauzy gowns of apricot and ruby in the gaslight, each holding to their faces a mask made of their worst self.

Jane did not sleep well Thursday night. There was a windstorm in the early morning that shook the house, woke Jane from her nightmare of the battlefield. She woke with the echo of her mother ringing in her ears, one heart-wrenching word: Jane.

She lay in bed till the last of the storm had beat itself out, dashed its brains on Silver Birch Hall. When she looked from her window, she saw the forest had been rent by winds that covered the bottom of the back lawn in dead black branches.

Jane dressed and went to Dorie’s room, mesh gloves in hand. Prior to the gloves, Dorie had been awake well before Jane’s arrival each morning, but no more. Jane sat down on the bed and said, “There are going to be a lot of people in the house today. And longer—a fortnight.”

Dorie opened her eyes and looked at Jane, but made no move to get out of bed. Her curls looked like they hadn’t been brushed in days, though Jane had helped her wash and comb them just last night. Dorie’s eyelids were smeared with sticky sleep and her cheeks were pale.

“How are you feeling?” Jane said. She laid the back of her hand against Dorie’s head, but the girl did not feel hot, or damp, or anything unusual. She didn’t have any physical signs of sickness—it was just this listlessness, as if she was worn out by their work of eating from spoons, as if she was depressed from not being allowed to make blue lights flicker in the air.

Dorie’s shoulder shrugged. She rolled over and stared out the window into the blue of an after-storm sky.

Frustrated, Jane rose and went to the window. She would have to keep Dorie well hidden from the guests if this continued—the girl looked like a lost war orphan. Jane stared into the woods, wondering what trick to try. Maybe she should admit the task was too hard for her—maybe she should bend her pride and get advice from Mr. Rochart. Mr. Rochart the surgeon. If she ever saw him of course, and where was he, with the party starting today?

“Father,” said Dorie from the bed.

Impossible sightline for Dorie, but the instant she said that Jane saw him standing, just inside the forest, as if Jane’s wishes and Dorie’s words had conjured him. He was clutching a tree branch with one hand and his side with another, and she saw him take a step toward the back lawn that made it look as though he were swimming through molasses. He bent, clutching his side, as if in pain.

Concern coalesced into action. “Out of bed and wash your face,” she said firmly to Dorie, and she hurried for the stairs, whirling down them as fast as her feet would go. She emerged onto the back lawn, blinking in the clear sunlight till she saw him, immobile next to a thorny locust, his hand outstretched toward the house. “Mr. Rochart,” she shouted, running for the trees. “Edward!”

Slowly his head tilted up. His amber eyes took a while to focus on her, as if traveling back from a great distance. “Jane,” he said wonderingly. “Jane.”

She slipped in past the first tree, barely thinking that this was the forest in her rush to get to him. “I am here, sir,” she said. “Lean on me.”

He clasped her forearm. “Yes, you are flesh and blood, are you not? Not a pale mist of blue masquerading as a live girl. Say you are real, Jane.”

“I am,” she said. His hand still clutched her arm. “You look unsteady. Do you need assistance? Shall I find Poule?”

He shook his head, his eyes vague again. “Did you hear the windstorm last night?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. A shudder rippled across her shoulders. “You must get out of the forest.”

“My foot,” he said faintly.

She looked and saw how his leg stretched awkwardly behind him, saw that thin scarves of blue seemed to wind around his ankle, pinioning him. His right hand held a satchel to his ribs, and blue weaved from his fingers, around it.

Sharp anger, born of fear. It rose up in Jane, and she felt the hot orange of her curse lash at the iron, so hot she thought her face might literally burn. No time for thoughts of water—she had to pull it off to find relief. She clutched at the chin of her mask, lifting it an infinitesimal bit to get air, said desperately to distract him: “Look up at the window; do you see Dorie?”

“My little one,” he said, turning that way, and lurched another half-step toward the house.

Jane scrabbled at the leather straps, pulling them aside, and then the mask was suddenly off, cooling her face. The orange tongues of anger lashed out, raging at the idea that he was stolen from her, would be taken from her. He must not be caught, and she tore at his ankle with her bare hands, as if fingers alone could melt the blue shackles of air.

“No,” she whispered to it, “no no no no no…,” and above her she felt him lurch another half-step, and another, and the blue seemed less all the time as she told it no, peeling off, crackling away. “You can make it,” she told Edward, while simultaneously willing the blue: no no no.

Another step and he was past her. Another, and he was to the last tree, then out, out of the woods, onto the back lawn.

“Jane,” he said, that wonder sharp in his voice. “Jane!”

“Coming, sir,” she said, and there was a tremble in her voice. She shoved the mask into place, buckling it firm against her now-tangled hair. A blue flash zipped along the ground, back into the woods, and vanished out of sight.

She stumbled from the woods, shivering, and suddenly his arms were around her, holding her close.

“I should never have put you in danger, oh, Jane.…”

“I am fine”—gulp—“I am fine.” The sharp adrenaline and rage were draining now, lessening until she was very aware of his arm around her shoulders, his hand holding her upper arm tight.

Perhaps he realized it at the same moment, for he released her.

He shook his head as if grounding himself in the present, and some of the old color returned to his face. His face closed off, became the familiar sardonic mask. He ran a hand unconsciously over his side where the blue had been and no longer was, tucked the thick satchel under his arm. From a distance he said, “I owe you a rather sizable debt, Jane, do I not?”

“Sir?”

He cast around for something to do, reached to pick up one dry branch blown free from the forest by the windstorm. He turned it to study the thorns, then tossed it into the undergrowth. “I frequently walk here to throw back the branches,” he said, and there was a self-mocking note to his voice that suggested he was trying to lighten the situation. “If I let them, the trees would come right up to the house.”

“Sir, how is your ankle?” said Jane.

“It is well; never mind it.” He picked up more branches and hurled them into the forest. “It is the trees that must concern you. This is Birnam Wood, and as in Shakspyr’s tale of madness, it is creeping toward me. But this wood is alive; it will catch me before my time is through.” He was retreating again—closing himself off behind archaic, formal ways of speaking and dark thoughts.

Then he turned and saw her expression, and his mouth twisted in a sort of smile. “Forgive me,” he said. “It is but a wild fancy. For aught I know this stretch of yard has the same measurements as when it was laid two centuries ago. But you did not come out here to let me lean on your arm like an old man and hear me talk of moving trees. No, there is something of far greater import on your slim shoulders. Speak, Jane, what would you have me do? Now and forever, you must see I am in your service.”

She shivered at his talk of moving forests, and said, “I could almost agree with you that the trees move, sir.”

“Edward,” he said. “I could almost believe in your ridiculous fancies, Edward. If you were not so clearly a raving lunatic, Edward.”

“You’re not!” she said. “I saw the blue on your ankle!” She startled at her own outburst and stopped herself, though deep inside ran the frightened thought: five years, they had been gone five years. They were gone for good, weren’t they, weren’t they…? She could feel her boots sinking into the mud in the silence.

“I’m not mad, eh?” He scoffed at himself. “It is gone now, Jane. Just a passing madness of a madder wood. What proof have you that I am not a lunatic, or worse?”

She was silent another moment, and then suddenly all her thoughts seemed to burst forth and off her tongue and she said, “I think you carry a dark burden, sir—Edward.”

“I do?” His tone mocked her worry, but she pressed on, her brain making previously half-formed ideas into connections on the spot. It was not just the burden of his craft; no, there was more.

“I think you blame yourself for Dorie’s manner of birth,” she said. “And further … and further I think you go—you went—into the woods secretly, to try to find the fey, so they will undo what they’ve done to her.”

“Isn’t that rather dangerous of me? To seek out the fey? Besides, what could one little fey do to help me, even if I found them?” The dry branch broke in half under his grip. He tossed half aside and his hands closed around the remaining piece, his fingers weaving through the black thorns.

She thought back to the stories. “The Queen, then. She can make bargains. You’re looking for the Queen.”

“A lofty ambition,” he mocked. “And when I find her?”

“You’ll bargain for Dorie’s soul,” she said.

But this guess seemed to fall short.

Mr. Rochart tossed away the stick and clasped her shoulder, steering her back toward the house. “The guests will arrive soon,” he said, as lightly as if they had been only talking about the weather. “For this tedious chore we call a ‘party.’ We pronounce mingling with uninspired souls ‘charming,’ and talking of unimportant topics ‘delightful.’ Oh, I despise it. Pity me, Jane, for I must smile and play the artist for all these women with their expectations.”

She shuddered. “I couldn’t do it.”

“And yet, Jane, if I bring this fortnight off perfectly it could be a great thing for us—for all of us.” Mr. Rochart shook his head and she saw the financial worries laid over him like a glove.

She remembered Miss Ingel in her aquamarines, Nina in her furs, and briefly she wondered why his situation was so dire. Surely the money was coming in—where was it going to? But merely she said, “I will do what I can to help, sir.”

“Will you?” He turned his strange amber eyes upon her. “Then you must bring Dorie down to mingle with the guests.”

Jane twisted away. “No,” she said immediately. “She’s not ready.”

“She’s not?” Edward stopped her in the middle of the mud-splashed lawn. His amber eyes shadowed and focused on hers. She felt caught, like prey. “You must. Every night, you must. Don’t think I don’t know what they say of my daughter. And of me—that I lock her in a garret like some madwoman, that I keep her hidden. She must come and be normal. You must come and make sure that she is.”

“But—”

“Please,” he said, and she was still. He studied her. “I see thoughts whirling behind your eyes,” he said. “You feel like a trapped animal; you are desperate for any excuse not to sit in a dark corner of my drawing room for a couple hours each night. Am I such an ogre?”

“No,” Jane said reluctantly.

“Then what are you frightened of?”

She did not answer.

Finally he said, more lightly, “I foresee one objection—you are going to tell me you and Dorie don’t have any dresses suitable for evening soirees. I have brought her a new one from town, and for you I have a new pair of dancing shoes.”

“You shouldn’t have,” she said, overwhelmed, but he held up a hand.

“No, do not thank me. I saw your sister in town and she sent them. She said specifically to tell you that they were commissioned for you—I gather she often sends hand-me-downs?”

“Very nice ones,” Jane said, but it was true, the thought of Helen having specifically made these for her was a spot of gladness in her heart. “Did she send a letter?”

“No,” he said. “But she spoke of doing so soon.” He hesitated. “Does she speak of being often alone?”

“No,” Jane said, surprised. “Her letters are endless descriptions of parties and compliments.”

“Oh.” He was silent for a moment, and then he took her arm and moved on, irrevocably leading her back to the house. “I have sent Martha to the attic to fetch one of Grace’s stored gowns and clean it for you. You do not have to wear them. I know how women like up-to-the-minute fashions”—with an ironic lift of his lips—“but perhaps having a choice will ease your mind.”

The only choice that would ease her mind would be the choice not to attend, but she could tell that this one was to be denied her.

And … he needed her. “We will come,” she said.

He inclined his head in thanks, and then they were at the house. He opened the back door for her and gestured her to precede him into the narrow hallway.

“I assure you, there is no one on earth who can bargain for a soul,” he said softly, as if there had been no break in the earlier conversation. The sunlight cut off as she stepped into the dark hallway, birdsong and cricket buzz, all gone inside that dim swallowing house. His eyes were lost in shadow as his fingers released their hold on her elbow, leaving five spots of cold in their place. “Bodies, however, are under earthly jurisdiction.”

Jane was all the way upstairs before she realized that she had not asked for his advice on Dorie’s listlessness. And yet he had inadvertently told her one thing that had to happen, for Dorie could not appear before everyone in metal-cloth gloves with sequins dangling from their backs.

Dorie was still in bed. “Father in forest,” she said. “Jane in forest.”

“Yes,” said Jane.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, smoothed out the white swiss-dotted coverlet as what to do straightened itself out in her head. Dorie stared through the wall as if she could see the black trees.

“Here’s the story,” Jane said finally. “Your father wants you to come down and meet these people tonight. You’ll like that, won’t you? All the ladies in their pretty dresses?”

Small voice. “Pretty dress?”

“Yes, one for you, too,” said Jane. “Your father brought you one from the city. And.” She took a deep breath before offering Dorie the bargain. “You won’t be wearing your gloves the whole time his guests are here.”

Dorie rolled over and looked at her. The first spark of interest lit her blue eyes.

“But,” Jane said, forestalling. “That means you have to be very good on your own, without the gloves.” The blue eyes flickered and she pressed harder. “Dorie. Your father is counting on you to behave. I don’t know how to impress on you how important this is to him. If we leave the gloves off during the day, will you promise me that you won’t do anything with the lights or moving things without touching them?”

“Mother stuff.”

“Right. No mother stuff. Your father would get in so much trouble, I can’t even tell you. Can you promise me that you won’t get him in trouble?” Jane held her breath, used her tiny bit of leverage for all it was worth. Would the girl do for her beloved father what she wouldn’t do on her own? She hadn’t when Jane arrived, but now, maybe, maybe after their weeks of work and toil, the days of wearing the hated gloves…?

Slowly Dorie nodded. “I promise,” she said.

Mindful of her charge’s fragile self-discipline, Jane cranked the gramophone for Dorie for most of the morning, and she did not make her do any of the hand exercises that would persuade her that “mother stuff” was a good idea after all. Even with the door shut, she heard the entrances and chatter in the foyer below, as the house party guests arrived one by one. After lunch Dorie wanted to go outside, and Jane eagerly seized on that, glad Dorie seemed to be taking an interest in life again.

When they exited Dorie’s rooms, another guest was arriving. The servant’s footsteps were silenced by the carpet, but the door creaked as it opened. Dorie tugged to go see, but Jane clamped down on her hand, held her fast. She recognized that plum silk wrap, that drawling, amused voice.

Jane and Dorie went out the servants’ side door, wound their way past a coach and four, a shiny black steam-powered convertible, and the same reliable old Peter with his lurching motorcar who had dropped Jane here two months ago. He pulled out onto the road, looking shell-shocked by the passenger he’d just dropped off.

Jane and Dorie crossed the hard-packed road, walked out the opposite way from the forest, walked onto the open moor. It was the end of April, and wildflowers were beginning to bloom in the heath: purple heather and yellow cowslip and fringed blue-eyes like tiny daisies, no bigger than Dorie’s thumb. The fields around Jane’s childhood home had been covered in cowslip; it had been blooming early the year she and Charlie marched into battle. So she looked away from the butter yellow petals and envisioned the field in another month, when it would be covered with color, the cowslip lost in a sea of purple and blue.

The ground was damp. She leaned back on her hands, watched bits of white and grey after-storm clouds chase each other around the sky. The sky behind them was as blue as the daisies, which made the clouds the white petals, blown carelessly across it.

Dorie ran around the field as if she’d been let off a leash. There was already more pink in her cheeks and her curls were bouncing back to life. Amazing what a holiday from work could do. When Dorie tumbled on the grass in a clump of the tiny blue daisies, Jane watched her out of the corner of her eye.

Dorie stretched her palm over a yellow blotch of cowslip. Jane waited, dying inside, wondering what choice Dorie would make. Wondering what she could do if the girl refused to play along, if she refused to keep her extra abilities under wraps. It would look strange to have her in the mesh gloves, but there wasn’t another alternative if Dorie didn’t cooperate. And if her love of her father didn’t make her try for these two weeks, what else did Jane have to bargain with?

Slowly, slowly, Dorie withdrew her palm.

No flowers jumped to her hand, no blue lights sketched patterns on the moor.

She also did not lean over and pick the cowslip with her fingers, but Jane was all right with that. Dorie didn’t have to succeed in all her goals today, as long as she started to show some control.

Dorie looked over at Jane, who was careful not to show that she was studying Dorie’s behavior. She put her hand over the flowers one more time.

Then she jumped to her feet and started running down the moor again, running in circles, running with her curls streaming behind her.

Jane let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, and wiped a cheek she hadn’t known was wet.