Mari Lloyd's appearance was pleasing, and Ellini wondered if it was supposed to be. Her face was like a sunrise – round and rosy, with rays of red-gold hair that sprouted out in all directions without regard for gravity or convention. It looked as though the hair's owner had long-since given up trying to tame it. There was a pencil and a stick of chalk lodged behind her ears.
It was difficult to say whether she expected violence from Ellini and Robin. She didn't flinch when she met them at the gates, although there was a certain amount of chilliness – and definitely no handshake – for Robin. Her Welsh accent made her seem friendly and homely. But if you could use knowledge to threaten, then the very first words out of her lips were aggressive:
"Ah, Helen of Troy and the Kraken," she said, without a cloud on her sunshine face. "What a cheerful, incongruous mix of mythologies! Mind you, I'm sure Odysseus met something like the Kraken on his way back from Troy, so perhaps Helen too passed within a whisker of it on her way to Sparta with Menelaus."
She held her hand out to Ellini, and added, "I'm very pleased to meet you, my dear. I've heard so much about you, both from our mutual friend, and from my own researches."
Ellini couldn't help wincing. "The Helen of Camden book?" she said.
Mari Lloyd gave a dismissive wave of her hand. "Rather sensationalized, I daresay, but I'm afraid it's impossible for someone of my interests to walk past a book entitled Helen of anything without reading it."
She showed them around the school first, and there was no escaping its quiet gentility. Ellini saw well-scrubbed desks and well-dressed school mistresses – all wearing those elegant new dresses with bustle skirts and bodices as tight as corsets.
And then there were the beautiful grounds – as seductive to Ellini as Pemberley to Elizabeth Bennett! There was an oriental garden, a garden of the senses, and a more prosaic kitchen garden, in which carrots, peas, and marrows were grown. Mari Lloyd said she encouraged her girls to be in the gardens as much as possible. She said it was good for them to nurture something – in place, presumably, of the children they would never have now. And they read a different novel every week, from Jane Austen to George Eliot to Mrs Gaskell, and met up in the evenings to discuss it.
The whole experience was surreal. Ellini felt as though she was meeting the kind of person she had always admired, touring the kind of establishment she had always approved of, and she had to keep reminding herself that this was a woman who parted young lovers and ruined lives.
When they finally reached Mari Lloyd's office, she showed Ellini a long glass case in which fragments of a scroll had been painstakingly reassembled. It was covered in lovely, blocky ancient Greek script. Ellini recognized some of the names from The Iliad.
"This is the earliest known copy of Homer's epic," said Mari Lloyd. She leaned over Ellini's shoulder and placed her finger on the glass just above a certain word. "You may be interested in this name here." It was Helen's. "That's my area of expertise, actually. I translate ancient Greek poetry."
"Sappho?" asked Robin with a smirk.
Mari Lloyd ignored him. "Let me tell you a story about Helen of Troy that isn't widely known," she said, moving soundlessly to stand beside Ellini at the glass case. "I daresay you know it, my dear, but your 'husband' may not."
You could hear the inverted commas every time she referred to Robin as Ellini's husband. It wasn't just to suggest that she knew the truth of the matter, Ellini thought. It was to put a disdainful, ironic stress on the whole concept of husbandhood.
"In Helen's youth, Theseus, the great hero of the Cretan labyrinth, saw Helen playing with her friends by the river Eurotas, and desired her. The ancients tell us that, even with all his many blessings – for he was a great king of Athens by that point – he felt his life wasn't worth living if he couldn't enjoy her. It sounds romantic, doesn't it? Until you come to understand that Helen was a girl, and Theseus a man of seventy. Ancient sources disagree on her precise age. Hellanicus of Lesbos says seven years old, and Diodorus ten. Either way, you get the picture. He abducted and raped her. Repeatedly. She was only returned when her twin brothers, Castor and Pollux, came to Athens to rescue her. That's how she began her career of romantic fascination. Being raped by a seventy-year-old."
There was a silence, in which Ellini got the feeling that the back of her head was being inspected minutely.
"If you'd had that effect of men all your life," Mari Lloyd went on, "wouldn't you be glad to be rejected by at least one of them?"
Ellini turned to face her. She knew perfectly well what the woman was referring to, and all the layers of delicacy and suggestiveness were getting on her nerves. "He stabbed me through the chest," she said coldly.
"Ah," breathed Mari Lloyd. "Catachresis!"
"I'm sorry?"
"The literalization of a metaphor," she explained. "He stabbed you through the chest. Of course, he probably didn't realize he was doing anything clever."
"Actually, madam, I was under the impression that he was doing something extremely stupid."
Mari Lloyd beamed at her, as if she had passed some sort of test. "Let's have coffee, shall we? I much prefer that to tea. Somehow, it seems more purposeful."
She rang a bell and spoke to one of her many genteel school-mistresses, leaving Ellini to stand by the glass case and try to talk herself down from the ledge of anger she'd climbed to. It wouldn't have been so bad if Mari Lloyd hadn't spoken about catachresis or ancient mythology. Ellini was used to rudeness, but rudeness in terms she admired really stung. Still, the scroll was right in front of her, beckoning beguilingly to her eyes, and by the time the coffee arrived, she was leaning over it so closely that her breath was misting up the glass.
They had Battenberg and black coffee, which increased her feeling that she was visiting a kind of utopia. Mari Lloyd asked Ellini how she liked her coffee, and then gave Robin the same as her. He was amused by her rudeness, but not as much as he usually was by Ellini's. She wondered whether that should make her feel special or victimized.
"Tell me how you first met Myrrha," said Ellini, as she peered into the dark, heady recesses of her cup.
"As you no doubt suspect, I was one of her contestants," said Mari Lloyd, "although I prefer to use the word 'beneficiary'. She was in Northaven when the town was first being built. It was a beautiful time. There were scaffolds and surveyors everywhere, beside a whole host of missionaries, teachers, and philanthropists, seeking to better the lot of the newly-enfranchized colonists. Nobody was sure of us, not even Gladstone. I think they were half-expecting to be murdered in their beds. But I was a pleasant surprise. I fell in with the Society for the Advancement of Ladies' Learning, and proved to be quite adept at my studies."
She beamed with her bright, brazen face. "Well, no point in being modest about it, I proved to be a prodigy. I went from being an illiterate savage in whose hair entire combs had been known to disappear, to the intellectual level of a Professor in three years. And then I met my fiancé. He was one of the engineers building the new bridge. It took me three years to amass my store of knowledge, but I threw it away in three minutes, so deliriously determined was I to be his wife. He didn't think women should study, so I gave my books away. He didn't think women should socialize, so I gave my friends away. It was a kind of madness. Nobody could reason with me. I gladly – gratefully – beggared myself for love."
She stirred her coffee reflectively for a moment. "And then Myrrha came along and showed me that it wasn't real love. Learning this was not a pleasant process, but the lesson was sound. You can't deny that she saved me, even if it wasn't what she was intending to do. The most interesting thing to me was that reason hadn't worked, but a painful, practical demonstration of my fiance's worthlessness had. I never would have realized who he really was if Myrrha hadn't caused him to reject me."
"Over the next three years, I watched my friends do exactly the same thing as I had done. They'd been so passionate about their studies at one time, but as soon as they married, a vocation dwindled to a hobby. And once they'd had children, a hobby dwindled to a mere memory. I knew a violinist who once declared that music was her entire life – and within two months of falling in love, she was pawning her violin to buy wedding clothes."
"Like a good friend, I reasoned with them – in some cases, patiently – but nothing could convince them not to throw away their gifts. And so, with some initial trepidation, I went back to Myrrha and asked her for the spell. She was quite accommodating. Now, when one of my friends falls in love and determines to forego her studies, I ask her, if she's so sure of the man's worth, to put him to the test. Nobody has passed it yet."
"But they can't know what the test is," Ellini spluttered. "What it will do, how it will feel, even if you explain it to them. There's no knowing until you've gone through it."
Mari Lloyd considered this. "Perhaps they're not fully cognizant of the consequences. But then you can't know how marriage and childbirth will feel until you've gone through them either."
"So you're making the choice for them," said Ellini flatly.
"My dear, there never was a choice, that's what I've been trying to tell you. Women are told by their parents, their society, and – not least – their bodies that they're made to marry and have children. I'm simply evening the unfairness in the other direction."
"I see," said Ellini. "Expose women to a double unfairness and you'll actually improve their situation? And what about the men? You only need the consent of one party for this spell to work, as I understand it. Do you give the men any choice?"
Mari Lloyd looked genuinely puzzled. "But men have everything in our society. What could possibly inconvenience them?"
Robin laughed at this. It was the first sound he'd made for some time, and Ellini was a little startled to realize he was still there.
"In any case," she said, trying to collect herself, "not all men are as undeserving and oppressive as your ex-fiance."
"I'm very careful," said Mari Lloyd. "I assess each couple individually. I only propose the test where there's not much affection in the case."
"And once again, you're to be the judge of that?"
"My dear, the spell is the judge. If I was mistaken, and there was indeed affection, then the man would kiss the woman and break the spell, wouldn't he?"
Ellini was so indignant that she almost got to her feet. She had to grip the tabletop to stop herself.
"And you believe that? Magic doesn't obey rules, it obeys personality!"
"And Myrrha's personality loves games," said Mari Lloyd patiently. "She has to obey the rules, or the game wouldn't be any fun." She gave Ellini a pitying smile, which only incensed her further. "I know it's difficult while the wounds are still fresh, but in time you'll come to realize that that man stabbing you through the chest was the best thing that ever happened to you. Tell me you're not a better woman because of it. Tell me you're not stronger and more independent."
Ellini stood up so suddenly that she knocked into the table. She had a blurred impression of coffee sloshing around and spilling into fine-bone saucers.
"I would like some air," she said, in the haughtiest voice she could muster. "Please excuse me. I'll be back in a few minutes."
And without a glance at Robin, whose expression was sure to make her even angrier, she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.
Once she was out in the corridor, she drew long, shuddering breaths and stomped around, looking for a door into the gardens. Fresh air, that was the important thing. Somewhere quiet and cool – somewhere she couldn't see Robin's smirk or Mari Lloyd's bright, innocent sunrise of a face.
She was so angry! Glad it had happened? How could she be? Her one good memory, the only man she'd ever – no, no, she wouldn't think about that now. Open that Pandora's box of nastiness and she'd never go back. It already looked foolish to be excusing herself for some air, as though she were a delicate Duchess whose corset had been laced too tight.
But running parallel to these thoughts – and probably contributing to the anger – was the idea that Mari Lloyd had a point. She was more independent since Jack had stabbed her through the chest. She had become – well, not a better person, but a more assertive one. She had learned how to control the fires kindled by her hair, she had started practising the magic she had only read about, in a fever of escapism, before. She had discovered a love of being by herself, wandering the streets as an autonomous entity, not tied to anyone – all because Jack had stabbed her through the chest.
Of course, there had been nastier results. She would probably be finding the nasty results of that action for the rest of her life. She would presumably have difficulty trusting anyone ever again. She hadn't put it to the test yet. She didn't trust Robin, but he didn't count – nobody in their right mind would trust Robin anyway.
But if your focus was on reaching your true potential, perhaps it had been worth it...
She stopped and put a clammy hand to her forehead. In her anger, she had blundered out of the grounds entirely, and now she was in the foggy streets to the west of the town square. She hadn't been this way with Robin the night before, and she had no idea which turns she had made in order to get here. Everything behind her was a blur of fog and fury. She was lost.
Oh well. Perhaps that was for the best. At least she would have time to collect herself before she went back to that horrible, lovely school. The Wylies had been seducing her since she'd first started this – maybe even since she'd first heard of them – but she had never felt so seduced as she had in those well-scrubbed corridors. She hadn't longed to sink into that warm, dark pool outside Warwick as much as she longed to sink into Mari Lloyd's genteel, man-free den of academia.
She turned round, trying to retrace her steps, and picked up the thread of her furious thoughts where she'd left them. She needed to be reconciled to what Jack had done. It had been cruel and messy and painful, it had destroyed her faith in men, but it had made her who she was.
And the instant she'd realized this, her blundering footsteps brought her to the real reason Robin had persuaded the coachman to change course the other night. It loomed out of the fog like an iceberg. A cast-iron statue of a group of men – one with a ram-skull helmet, one with a bowler hat, and one with a scimitar strapped to each hip. But the one with no distinguishing features – unless you knew him well, in which case he was one big distinguishing feature – was Jack. He was standing at the front of the group, dressed in the kurta and churidars he was in the habit of wearing in India. The little bronze plaque on the pedestal read:
The Martyrs of the Delhi Cantonment.
On 8th May 1876, Jack Cade, Joel Parish, Alim Hussein, and Alexander Huth arrived at the British cantonment outside Delhi for peace-talks, and were massacred by their hosts. Only Jack Cade survived. By their sacrifice, these men ensured that the liberated inmates of the prison colonies were welcomed back to Britain as free men and women, and given this town as their home.
But to Ellini it said: You can't outrun the inevitable.
Any other time, she would have felt tearful over Joel and Alim. Any other time, she would have marvelled at the workmanship, and felt fleetingly guilty that she hadn't known Lord Huth's first name. But just at the moment, it was a statue of Jack, and no-one else. He was always there, and she couldn't escape it – around every corner, both mental and physical. She had to stop running from it. She would go back to Oxford and tell him she was alive. She would tell him... well, not that she forgave him, because she didn't, and he probably wouldn't care one way or the other in any case. He was probably once more pursuing Alice Darwin, or one of the slave-girls in his care...
But she was digressing. This wasn't helping. She would tell him that stabbing her in the chest had been a cruel and stupid thing to do, but she had turned it to some advantage. She would say he would always be a part of her, for better or worse.
You couldn't outrun the inevitable, and this point was reinforced by the figure standing beside her in the fog. He was looking up at the statue too, but she got the impression he was watching her out of the corner of his eye. And when she looked at him, he turned and removed his hat in greeting.
Ellini fell several miles in the space of a second, but she managed a nervous smile.
"I didn't recognize you without your piano," she said.