New short story: Corona Civica

Okay, so this is a short story - in theory - that I was going to enter into a contest. But Markus getting sick derailed a number of plans, and I haven't had the chance - since it's a historical piece - to do the proper backing-up-my instincts research and editing. So I can't submit it - but I can share it with you! What I intended to be a standalone short ended up being the prologue of a historical romance novel. I know it's an old trope, woefully unoriginal, but I just really loved writing it, and hope to turn it into a full book at some point in the future. It was one of those projects that helped me to see how much my prose has grown in the past decade, and that's thrilling. 

It's about 3.5k words, set in London. I reuse some names from some of my other work (Charlie is one of my favorite names of all time, y'all), and I'll readily admit that it's editing neither for factual content, nor for typos. But otherwise, please enjoy.

Corona Civica

“Rex is stopping by tonight,” Tommy said over breakfast. “Or, supposed to be.” And Danny left the last of his toast uneaten, belly clenching with excitement for the first time in quite a long time. 

Up until recently, Danny had found little cause for excitement. Most of his energy had gone toward trying to keep from winding up dead in a gutter. He’d known this was the greatest risk of his short life nearly since birth; he recalled, perhaps with preternatural clarity, a moment when Bobby Nesbit from the downstairs flat had held him out the window and threatened to drop him to his death on the pavement below, saved at the last second by a furious, cursing Mrs. Nesbit. To no one’s surprise, once Mum died, he’d refused the Nesbits’ offer of a bed – such as it was – and struck out on his own, twelve-years-old, wearing all his clothes on his person, with only some stale biscuits and a few family heirlooms in his pockets.

He’d pawned Grandfather’s watch, but kept the locket, smoothing a thumb across the cool tin of its face on cold nights bundled into doorways. The reaper loomed around corners. But just as he’d grown hopeless, he’d met Devin, and in a moment of unbelievable good fortune, found himself employed.

“Alright, Danny my boy,” Devin said, pressing a stamp into the hot wax, sealing the envelope. He blew on it a moment, letting it dry, and fixed Danny with a look across the desk. “You’re to take this to White’s – you know where that is? Good lad. And give it to His Lordship Charles Prescott, Earl of Northam. Straight away.”

Danny took the envelope carefully; his fingers were still sticky from the jam tarts Ellen had put out for tea. “Yes, sir.”

The seal caught the light: a tiny oak wreath pressed into the red wax.

“Straight away, you understand,” Devin prompted, and Danny slid out of his chair and shrugged into his coat. It was a new coat, thick warm wool, a gift from the mysterious master of the house. “Wait for Lord Northam’s reply,” Devin continued, shuffling amongst his papers, “and bring it back to me. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

But Devin paused a moment, hands splayed across the desk, and studied him. A small, bookish man in his middle years, the light from the candles glinting off his spectacles, his most remarkable feature would have been his untidy gray hair, thin and flyaway, if not for the scar that streaked down the side of his face. Red, its edges puckered from a poor stitch job, it had been the first thing Danny noticed about him the day they met; long since used to ignoring things better left alone, he’d forced his eyes away from it, and made a point to never let his gaze wander over its wicked lines.

It was a reminder, though. Devin might dress well, and speak softly if anxiously; but there was a dark spot on his past. Same as every member of the Order.

“Anything else, sir?” Danny asked. His heart pounded, a mix of eagerness and nerves. He’d been running letters for two weeks now, but Devin had taken him on with the firm insistence that this was only a trial period, pending the approval of the Order’s leader, Rex. In those two weeks, he hadn’t glimpsed the man yet.

Devin looked at him a moment longer, then nodded to himself and turned back to his paperwork. “No, that’ll be all. Be sure to wait for his reply.”

“Yes, sir.” He escaped out into the vestibule, ducked under Peter’s arm – “Where are you off to at this late hour, eh?” – and into the street.

The Order, of which Danny hoped to someday become a member, occupied a handsome red-brick house in Grosvenor Square; the sort of house where Danny’s mother had worked as a governess before having him. Not ostentatious inside, but outfitted with thick carpets, comfortable furniture, and plenty of wood for the fires. Ellen cooked enough to feed an army – and very nearly did, what with all the comings and goings of the Order’s various members. Rex had bought the house, Peter had confided; Rex had bought the rugs, and chairs, and tables, and the plates they ate from and the beds they slept in. He’d said so in a hushed voice, gaze bright with admiration.

At this point, Danny had begun concocting wild, imaginary backstories for the illustrious Rex. He was a pirate captain, with gold hoops in his ears and a tri-corner hat; maybe a parrot. He was a foreign prince trying to undermine the British Empire. He was an honorable outlaw thief, a new Robin Hood, robbing the rich and giving to the poor. Each fantasy more outlandish and splendid than the last, until he vibrated with excitement every time the man’s name crossed someone’s lips. He wanted violently to be allowed into the Order…but he wanted to meet Rex even more.

It was a warm spring night out on the street, the faint perfume of cherry blossoms sweetening the usual city stinks. Hackneys and private carriages clattered along the cobbles, and Danny passed smartly dressed groups on their way to dinner and to shows. He walked briskly, murmuring an “excuse me” as he went, trying not to trod on the long tail of a lady’s gown. He earned a few looks, but Devin – with Rex’s money – had outfitted him well enough that he didn’t look like a grubby street urchin anymore.

White’s appeared ahead, its windows lit, their buttery light washing over the pale façade so that it glowed. A curtain twitched in the bow window, and Danny hastened his step. The sooner he delivered his message to the earl, the sooner he could get back to the house and, hopefully, finally catch a glimpse of the illusive Rex.

A doorman loomed in the entryway, in black coat and spotless cravat; he looked all the way down the generous slope of his nose rather than tip his chin down to glance at Danny.

Danny presented his envelope. “I’ve a message for the Earl of Northam, sir. I’m to wait for his reply.”

The doorman made him stand a long moment; on principle, Danny thought. Then took the envelope with a sigh. “Wait here.” He stepped just inside to hand the note off to a footman, and then resumed his stance, stern gaze fixed on the street.

Danny shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and settled in to wait.

A moment later, though, the door opened, and the footman caught the doorman’s attention. A short, sharp exchange, and then the doorman turned to Danny, frowning. “His lordship requests your presence at his gaming table.” He looked terribly displeased by the idea, but opened the door, and gave an impatient wave.

Danny realized his mouth had fallen open, snapped it shut, and hurried to follow the liveried footman into the smoky din of the famous gentleman’s club.

The front hall, wider than any flat he’d ever lived in, with its polished floors and soaring ceiling, its paneled walls and its flickering sconces, threatened to grind him to a stunned, gaping halt. But the footman never slowed, inured to all the wonder around him, and Danny hastened after him, careful not to run, dragging his cap off his head and clasping it tight between suddenly-clammy palms. He wasn’t fit to breathe the air in this place, much less walk through it.

The footman led him up the grand, carpeted main staircase, down a hall that offered glimpses of a dining room fit for a king – gleaming chandeliers, white china, low murmur of masculine voices – and finally to the card room.

Tall bookcases lined each wall, framing the draperied windows. Gleaming sideboards boasted an array of decanters, heavy cut crystal full of wine, and whiskey, and brandy. Green baize tables took up much of the floor space, and around them, smoking, drinking, goading one another, cards fanned in manicured fingers, sat England’s noblest and most eligible.

The footman halted, and Danny barely avoided colliding with him. “He’s at the table by the window,” the footman said with a subtle tilt of his head. “The gentleman in black.” Then he left the room.

For a moment, feet rooted to the Persian carpet, Danny panicked. Was he to go over and introduce himself? Isn’t that what footmen did? Announced visitors and messengers? Should he wait by the door and hope that Northam found him? No, no, that was terribly rude, but he had no idea what to do. And “gentleman in black?” Half the men in the room wore black jackets – or had them draped over the backs of their chairs.

He took a few gasping breaths, crushing his hat in his hands…and then forced himself to still. His pulse hammered high in his throat, but he closed his mouth, and took slow breaths through his nose. Scanned the table, searching.

The gentleman in black. Oh.

Six men played cards, ranging in age from a portly, white-haired chap about to fall asleep into his wineglass, the faces of his cards plainly visible, to a wispy thing who couldn’t be older than eighteen.

Among them, unmistakable, was a gentleman wearing all black. Black neckcloth, black shirt, black waistcoat, and perfectly tailored black coat, nipped in at his wasp waist. His hair was black too, and severely pomaded, so that the angles of his brows, and his prominent nose drew the eye. He sat perfectly upright, cards held close and tight on the tabletop, mouth turned down at the corners. Pale. Severe. Possibly even hostile. In a room full of easy, laughing men at their leisure, the man who must be the Earl of Northam looked to be having a terrible time.

And he’d requested Danny come to his table. Wonderful.

Danny crept along, feet silent on the carpet, and skirted the table until he stood as near the man’s elbow as he dared.

One of the other gentlemen at the table noticed Danny first, a sandy-haired, smiling man in a green waistcoat, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. He had a friendly, sun-bronzed face, and he said, “Northam, there’s a boy for you,” after a brief glance in Danny’s direction.

Northam held still a moment – he didn’t even blink – and then he lifted his head, chin jutting forward at an imperious angle, and slowly turned to regard Danny, his gaze downcast, resting somewhere along Danny’s shins. A gaze that lifted, inch by inch, until he finally looked at Danny’s face from beneath half-lowered lids. Haughty. Harsh.

“Yes,” he drawled. Deep voice, emotionless. “I see that.”

He finally made eye contact, fleeting – but long enough for Danny to see the size of the man’s pupils; wide and black with only a thin ring of blue around them. And his gaze: not just haughty, but glazed-over. Unfocused.

Something was very, very wrong.

“My lord?” Danny said, stepping closer, forgetting his nerves a moment. “Are you well?”

“Quite,” Northam said, and turned back to his cards. “A moment, if you please. And then you may accompany me.”

“Yes, my lord.” He folded his hands together behind his back and waited.

And watched.

The earl deliberated a long moment over his cards. The sandy-haired gentleman said, “Do you fold, Charlie?” with a smirk.

The old man gave a great snort, slopped wine onto the tablecloth, and came awake with a start.

The earl didn’t appear to move. He didn’t even blink. But Danny noticed, finally, that his cards shivered, just once; that the earl’s hands trembled, faintly.

“What’s happening?” the older gentleman asked, casting a bleary look around the table.

“I’m folding,” Northam said, with severity, and laid his cards down slowly. Stood – also slowly, hands pressed to the baize tabletop. “Boy,” he said, and Danny moved to his side straight away. “We are leaving.”

“Yes, my lord,” Danny said, heart pounding, and was surprised by the half-dead weight of the earl’s hand landing on his shoulder.

“Too much whiskey again, Charles?” the sandy-haired man asked with a laugh.

“No,” the earl said, drawing himself upright. He held his head high, his entire body tense, as he maneuvered out of his chair and gained his feet. “I’m simply weary of tonight’s company.”

The other man laughed, and a few of the others echoed it.

Northam plucked his black gloves from the edge of the table, and gave Danny a little push. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, grave and formal, and Danny started away from the table, leading him, wildly mindful of the grip on his shoulder.

They proceeded out of the card room that way, into the hall, the earl walking stiff and upright behind him. When they gained the hall, Danny half-turned.

“Keep going,” Northam said, a note of strain in his voice.

But Danny had seen, and his step faltered.

The earl had only one leg, the left merely a bit of polished dark wood below the knee, trousers tucked and pinned around the top carefully. Like Captain Ahab! Danny thought, wildly.

“Move, boy,” Northam said, roughly, and a glance at his face proved him pale and sweating, mouth set in a grim line.

Danny moved.

It seemed to take forever to leave: an arduous trip down the carpeted stairs, and then enduring the attentions of footmen who rushed to offer the earl his greatcoat, helping it onto him. Except for that moment, putting his hands into the sleeves with great care, Northam kept a tight grip on Danny’s shoulder.

“A pleasure having you this evening, my lord,” the doorman said on their way out.

“Yes, thank you,” Northam offered, and then it was out into the cool spring night, with the scent of horse manure and cherry blossoms and coal smoke.

Northam walked with a surprising smoothness for a man with a wooden leg, upright and straight-backed, gaze fixed ahead. But three blocks down from White’s, he let out a sound like a gasp, and his hand tightened on Danny’s shoulder. “Good God,” he said, voice flat. “I’m going to be sick.”

His hand peeled away, he turned, and, gloved palm braced on the brick façade of the building, vomited onto the pavement.

The Earl of Northam was spectacularly drunk.

Danny sighed.

When Northam finally subsided, he turned, awkwardly, and braced his back against the wall, limp, pale-faced, and shaking. “Christ,” he murmured, and pushed an escaped lock of black hair off his forehead. When he lifted his face, his eyes seemed to glow in the flare of the streetlamp on the curb, his cheekbones throwing long shadows down to his chin. Eyes still dilated, watery from the retching. “What’s your name?”

“Danny, my lord.”

“Devin sent you?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“A word of advice, Danny: never accept a drink from someone you don’t trust.” Then he turned and fell to another bout of heaves, this one fruitless.

Danny hadn’t a clue how to proceed. He shivered, and swallowed down his own gorge as the earl continued to retch. “My lord?” he ventured when the man finally stopped.

Northam rested his forehead against the bricks, and panted, open-mouthed. “Yes, Danny?” Voice hoarse from being sick.

“Shall – shall I take you somewhere, sir?”

Northam didn’t answer for a long moment, then finally straightened, steadying himself with one hand on the wall. Even sick, and one-legged, he lifted his head with a remarkable amount of poise. To have been this drunk, this ill, Danny thought, and to have seemed so buttoned up back in the club, took an admirable kind of fortitude. “Yes,” he said, rasping, “to the Corona House, if you will.”

Danny jolted like a spooked horse. The Corona House! The Order! “But…my lord,” he started, voice wavering. “That’s–”

“Just take me there.” Not unkindly, but with great authority.

And Danny was only a messenger. “Yes, my lord.” He wanted to be sick himself, now.

He approached the earl slowly, and the man held himself quite still, until, when only a few inches away, Northam lunged forward and took him by the shoulder. Overcompensated, and nearly pulled them both down. “Shit. Forgive me.” Northam took a shuddering breath. “Damn.”

“My lord?”

“Lead on, please.”

He did. And they made it three paces…before Northam lost his grip, said “damn” again, and fell face-first to the pavement.

“My lord?”

A weak hand lifted, and waved, while the face stayed pressed to the ground. “Fine. I’m fine.” The hand fell. “Or. Rather. Not very fine.” The hand lifted again, this time in supplication.

Danny grabbed it, braced himself, and pulled.

Northam staggered upright – and fell again. On top of Danny.

Northam was a slender man, but well-muscled, Danny realized, when he was crushed beneath him; the earl was heavier than he looked.

“My lord?” Danny squeaked.

“Damn,” the earl said again, with great feeling, and rolled gracelessly over onto his back.

Danny scrambled upright, face hot with embarrassment. No matter that the man was blind drunk – he’d just allowed an earl to fall. In public. A disabled earl at that. Doubtless Devin would pass word of this along to Rex, and then there’d be no hope of joining the Order.

“My lord.” His voice trembled. “Do you think you can stand?”

“Yes,” Northam said, his eyes closed. He swallowed like he might be sick again, skin waxy in the moonlight. “Though I supposed you’d better help me.”

Had he been observing the spectacle, rather than participating in it, Danny would have found the whole thing hilarious. As it was, fear dogged him the whole, arduous way back to the Corona House.

Thank God, he thought, when he tested the door handle and found it unlocked.

Northam let himself be helped across the threshold, then stepped away from Danny and lurched over toward the rosewood table below the mirror, bracing both hands on its edge, hanging his head over the big china vase of cut tulips there. “Danny,” he said, emotionless, “be a dear and take the flowers out, will you.”

Danny rushed to comply; the stems dripped water onto the checkered tile floors.

Northam stood a moment, trembling, real and false legs both threatening to give out, with his head bent over the mouth of the vase, shuddering and gulping.

Devin stepped out of his study and found them like that. “Good God!” he shouted, rushing forward. “What’s happened to him?” He directed the question to Danny, but Northam lifted a staying hand, and then his head.

With difficulty, he stood upright and turned to face the steward. His face was blanched white now, eyes still hugely dilated; hair clung to his sweaty temples and cheeks.

“Are you drunk?” Devin asked.

“Dosed,” Northam countered. “I was able to take a purgative. Hence…” He gestured to himself.

Devin stared at him, grow brows up to his hairline. “Dosed with what?”

“Opium. By Lord Ashby, I suspect.”

“Opi…Christ, Rex. We’ve talked of this!”

Rex. Rex.

Danny’s hands went slack; the tulips fell to the floor.

Both men looked at him; Northam with the exhaustion of illness, Devin with misplaced anger.

“You,” Danny said, forgetting his manners. “You said – you called him Rex.”

“Because that’s his name,” Devin snapped. He’d never looked like this before, furious, and harried, his eyes wild with worry. Worry for the earl – for Rex.

“But,” Danny said stupidly. “Hes…my lord, you’re…the Earl of Northam. Charles Prescott. You…”

The earl sighed, and though glazed, and feverish, his gaze was not unkind as it fixed unsteadily on Danny. “Charles Reginald Prescott. Rex is my nickname.”

“Then you’re…you’re…”

“Of course he is,” Devin said. He moved to the earl’s side and put a shoulder beneath his arm, on the side with the missing leg. “Did you think a private citizen paid for all this? For the clothes you’re wearing? Here now, Rex. Let’s get you to bed.”

Danny stood, dumbfounded, as they began a slow walk toward the staircase.

The mysterious Rex who was their leader, the master and financier of Corona House, and of the Order of the Corona Civica, was an earl. Charles Prescott, Earl of Northam.

Who had a wooden leg.

Who’d been doped with opium tonight.

He couldn’t think.

Northam’s – Rex’s – voice floated back to him, though, as the two men started laboriously up the stairs. “Oh, go easy on her, Dev.” Slurred with the drug, but still regal.

They paused a moment. “On him,” Devin said.

“No. Her. Your messenger boy’s a girl, can’t you tell?”

“What – how–?” Devin spluttered.

Danny – who’d been born Daphne, and not Daniel, and who’d sheared off all her copper locks to spare herself the troubles of growing up a homeless young woman in London – scrambled to take the tulips to the kitchen, face aflame, panic streaking through her like lightning. But on her way, she heard, from the stairs:

“You’ll have to hire her now.” Northam. Amused. “I’d say the Order just admitted its first female.”