Garth Nix - Newt’s Emerald

The final piece of disguise was provided by Lady Badgery, who set a powerful glamour upon Truthful, so onlookers would see her as a man. Because the spell would have to be taken on and off frequently, it was decided to place it upon a very real-looking artificial moustache, which Truthful fixed to her upper lip with gum. In her full rig-out and with the ensorcelled moustache in place, Parkins and Lady Badgery assured her she looked very much the young gentleman, even under the full glare of the sun. But her great-aunt warned her that without the moustache and the glamour it held, her costume alone would probably only serve in dim light, or at a distance.

All callers were turned away in this time, with the news that Lady Badgery was indisposed, and her great-niece still wearied by the journey and an unfortunate coach accident, though the cause of that accident was not mentioned.

Truthful, studying the cards the callers left, and listening to Dworkin recite their verbal messages, was pleasantly surprised to find a large number of highly eligible young men asking after her health and general well-being. But she was soon disabused of any notion of their gallantry or her own allure by Lady Badgery, who looked over their names and sniffed.

“Fortune hunters. They know you’re worth at least ten thousand a year from your mother, even without your father’s estates. Not to mention heiress to the Newington Emerald, which they must not know is missing … which is curious, now that I think on it.”

“It is very odd,” said Truthful, her brow troubled. “Lady Troutbridge did call upon Father that afternoon, and he was . . . awake, if still wandering in his wits. I am sure he would have spoken of its disappearance and blamed the Newington-Lacys. I wonder why she hasn’t spread the tale?”

“The only reason she would not, is because she is ill, or if the story would somehow reflect badly on herself.” replied Lady Ermintrude. “Otherwise, Portia Troutbridge has never been known to keep a scandal to herself.”

“Oh, I do hope she is ill!” exclaimed Truthful. “I mean, only just ill enough to keep the news quiet for a little longer. Is that too dreadful of me?”

“Not at all,” announced Lady Badgery. “It is a very reasonable desire. In the case of Portia Troutbridge I myself would wish for something much more severe. Scarlet fever, perhaps. Or the plague.”

At last, on the evening of the fifth day after Truthful’s arrival, it was time to put their plan into action. Truthful, her moustache glued on, donned a low-crowned beaver and travelling clothes of a very plain cut, covered them with an old and very unfashionable single-caped driving coat that had belonged to the late Lord Badgery, crept out of the servant’s entrance at midnight, and walked around the corner to Charles Street, taking care that no-one observed her. There, she waited a few minutes, till the hackney cab the Countess’s intermediaries had ordered approached. Its driver, seeing a single gentleman standing on the corner, drew up, and leaned down.

“You the gent who’s to go across to Park Lane and then back to the Square?” he asked hoarsely.

“Yes,” she muttered, keeping her voice low, and hat well down, shading her face.

“Right. Well, jump up, sir.”

Truthful, who had been waiting to be handed up, started, then jumped in as best she could. There was straw on the floor of the cab, and she brushed her boots down automatically, thinking of how awful it would be to arrive anywhere with the tell-tale straw of a hackney on one’s costume.

The drive to Park Lane, and then along it, was a nervous one for Truthful, who had never thought to be alone in a cab at midnight, in the middle of London … and dressed as a man!

But the drive was uneventful. They passed several other carriages, a group of lantern-bearing street-keepers gathered at the Grosvenor Gate into Hyde Park, and a number of tipsy young gentlemen who were trying to walk backwards along the full length of Park Lane, apparently for a bet, as they were urged on by a number of others who were walking the normal way beside them.

Ten minutes later, the hackney pulled up outside Lady Badgery’s house and Truthful jumped down. She turned back for a moment to hand the driver a guinea, a massive overpayment were it not for the added gruff instruction: “Forget you came here this evening.”

Then she was knocking on the door — a firm, but polite knock, that she felt might reflect the character of a religious-minded young gentleman.

After five minutes had produced no discernible effect on the other side of the door, she knocked again. The door opened, presenting the cautious visage of the elder footman, with the second footman behind him holding a stout cudgel. Before they could speak, Truthful gruffly proclaimed her new identity.

“I am the Chevalier Henri de Vienne, cousin to Lady Badgery. I believe I am expected.”

The next few days passed in a rush of activity for both Truthful’s personas. As Lady Truthful Newington, she drove out to Hyde Park with Lady Badgery in her barouche at the fashionable hour between five and six, thereupon meeting many of the Dowager’s friends and not a few young gallants; she visited the Dowager’s modiste and ordered several gowns of the latest fashion; made two morning visits to family friends; attended one very modest, well-bred and yawn-inducing evening card-party; and received a great number of callers.

The Chevalier de Vienne ostensibly spent most of his time secluded in one of the upper bedchambers, in silent contemplation and prayer. But when Lady Truthful was resting between excursions or guests, the Chevalier rode out to call upon the jewellers of London. The servants, noticing the care he took to avoid “meeting” Truthful, thought him very shy. The grooms, noting his unsteady seat when riding astride put it down to him being French. Truthful was a fine horsewoman, but she was used to a side-saddle.

Armed with explanatory letters from Lady Truthful and Lady Badgery, the elegant young Frenchman was met with unvarying politeness and differing degrees of unctuousness by the jewellers, but none proved of any help. The matter was not made easier because Truthful could not come straight out and talk about the Newington Emerald, but only enquire about any particularly large and sorcerous stones they might have heard were suddenly for sale. But apart from the relatively regular re-appearance of the cursed Calendula Diamond, no large and sorcerous jewels had surfaced among the more reputable jewellers, and the less respectable (who hinted at underworld connections) were no more use. Nearly all the jewellers tried to sell the young Frenchman something from their own stock, and indeed she was tempted by a number of items that were not only beautiful, but imbued with minor charms.

Truthful was riding back from just such a meeting when she took a wrong turning, and then another. Fortunately a watchman came up behind her, and seeing a young, foreign-looking gentlemen gazing about in consternation, directed her attention to the dome of St Paul’s as a useful landmark, and told her to take the next road on the left.

But this turning brought her to a lane that was crowded with the business of paper and books. Men were carrying quires of paper, loading them onto carts; others transporting paper-wrapped packages of what could only be books. Here and there, men of a more scholarly look moved through doorways, or down sunken steps.

It was very much a scene of industry, and Truthful felt certain that her immaculate coat of blue superfine, buckskin pantaloons and black hessian top-boots would not survive passage unmarked. Nervously, she began to wheel her horse around, still gazing back at the workmen, some of whom returned her gaze in what she thought was a threatening manner.

She had almost brought the horse around when it suddenly shied, and she looked back to her front in horror, as a man leapt away from under the horse’s forefeet, dropping paper everywhere and cursing.

“Damn it, man!” he cried, staring up at Truthful as she leaned forward to calm her mount, muttering soothing words in French. As always, the horse responded more to her innate sorcery than any words, and quietened immediately.

“Sir!” exclaimed the man again, in a voice loud with anger. “I ask you to look at me when I am speaking to you!”

Truthful leaned back in the saddle, her mount now calm and steady. Closing her eyes for an instant, she thought of what her cousins would do in a similar circumstance. Then she opened her eyes and looked down.

The man was staring furiously up at her, brandishing a wad of papers in his hand and gesturing at the others lying ruined on the street — churned into the mud, or cut by the horse’s hooves. He was coatless, and Truthful saw that his shirt was both crumpled and ink-stained, and his breeches and boots deserved better care. He looked to be some six or seven years older than herself, and his features, if not set in anger, could be described as handsome. He had a particularly fine shock of jet-black hair.

Truthful saw him like a picture for a moment, then the sound and anger washed back over her, and she thought of her cousin’s tales of similar encounters.

“I am looking at you, sir,” she said, in her deepest and most French-sounding voice. “And I am sorry I have ruined your papers. Would a guinea cover the damage?”

She reached in her waistcoat pocket for the coin, but this mollifying action only seemed to enrage the man still further.

“It would be a sorry day if I let a Frenchman trammel my ‘Badajoz Diary’ into the road,” he said coldly. “Dismount, sir, and I’ll teach you a lesson in manners, if not horsemanship!”