Infamous by Lex Croucher (Excerpt)

Chapter One

 

When the bell rang for supper up at the house, Eddie and Rose were practicing kissing.

 

“Your mouth is too slack,” Eddie said, slightly muffled against Rose’s lips.

 

“What?” said Rose, pulling away, her face very flushed despite the fact that they were sitting in a rather half-hearted tree house on the first chilly evening of a London September.

 

“Your mouth. It’s just sitting there, a bit wet. Sort of akin to a mollusk. I don’t mean to dictate, but as you were the one who wanted to get in the practice, I thought you ought to know.”

 

“Oh,” said Rose. She had one hand on Eddie’s shoulder, and her fingers tightened on it as if she were reluctant to let go. “Sorry.”

 

“Put your hand on the back of my neck again,” Eddie instructed, pleased to be in charge of the operation, where she felt she belonged. “Yes, like that. It was nice before, when you were really digging your nails in.”

 

“You are so odd,” said Rose, but her mouth was already very close to Eddie’s, which softened her words somewhat. Her fingers were tentatively exploring the hair at the nape of Eddie’s neck, and it eased the transition from talking to kissing; Eddie leaned in first and felt Rose’s lips part at once. Whatever deficiencies Eddie may have noticed during their previous attempt had already been vastly improved upon, because she found herself relaxing into this kiss, with a warmth not unlike the burn of purloined whiskey spreading slowly through her chest.

 

“Well, that’s more like it. I think it’s working this time,” Eddie said. “You should try with your tongue. Just to see if you’re any good at it.”

 

Her friend sighed as if she were going to protest, but after a few seconds Eddie felt Rose’s tongue ghost hesitantly against her bottom lip, her eyelashes fluttering against Eddie’s cheek like moth’s wings against the glass of a lamp.

 

They had been sitting apart, leaning across the space between them, but it suddenly occurred to Eddie that it might make more sense, logistically speaking, to press her body closer to Rose’s—so she did. That certainly improved matters even more. She could feel the swell of Rose’s chest pressing into hers now, smell the faint scent of lilac in her hair. It all seemed to be going swimmingly until Rose shifted against her and let slip a breathy, half-restrained gasp into her mouth.

 

Eddie broke away and stared at her. “What the hell was that?”

 

“The … what? What was what? I don’t know,” Rose said, flushed and red-lipped and looking mortally embarrassed.

 

“Well, I suppose it’s a good job we’re practicing. When it comes to the real thing, you might want to keep that sort of thing in check. Oh—hang on.” Eddie cocked her head to listen as the bell rang out, interrupting the velveteen quiet. “That’s supper.”

 

The bell was ringing quite insistently already, with the sort of urgency that indicated an imminent fire or that the French might be coming. Eddie disentangled herself from Rose, got to her feet, and held out a hand; Rose hesitated, looking dazed, and then took it and allowed herself to be hauled upright. There was the matter of the lantern to be dealt with, but Eddie had recently innovated a particularly ingenious method of scaling the ladder with it swinging festively from her mouth. Rose, who seemed very concerned with telling Eddie which materials were and were not flammable, did not approve.

 

Once they had alighted safely on the ground, it was just a quick sprint across the lawn to reach the house, skirts flying up behind them as they cast long, ungainly shadows in the lamplight. All four floors of the narrow house were lit up from within, the glow spilling out onto the patio as Eddie reached the back door and flung it open.

 

A few steps into the hallway, a small girl with her dark hair gathered on top of her head so that she resembled a very angry pineapple was focusing too determinedly on her task to notice that they had entered.

 

“You can stop ringing the bell now, Trix,” Eddie said, ruffling her youngest sister’s alarming hair as she walked past her in the direction of the dining room.

 

“Father said I’m doing a damn good job of it!” Beatrice shouted, over the sound of the ongoing peals. She was seven, and enthusiastic to a fault about any task she was delegated.

 

“Oh, you are,” Eddie heard Rose say. “It’s just that … Well, we’re here now, aren’t we? I’ll follow your lead, of course, but … I’m quite hungry.”

 

“All right,” said Beatrice magnanimously, followed a second later by the loud metallic thud of something heavy hitting the floor. “You look very red in the face. Were you and Eddie having a fight?”

 

There was a short silence.

 

“Yes,” Rose said eventually, and then Eddie heard her hurrying to catch up.

 

The large dining room already seemed rather full. Mr. and Mrs. Miller sat at either end of the table, and between them in varying states of patience sat their three middle children. Simon, who was twelve and perpetually disappointed, was staring morosely down at the table as if he suspected supper might never come. Amelia, who had just recently celebrated her fourteenth birthday by campaigning for her own horse and crying for an impressive six days when she only received one made of wood, was humming under her breath. Lucy-Anne, who fancied herself the eldest and most mature of them all, even though she decidedly was not on either count, was glaring openly at Eddie from across the room.

 

“You’re really very late,” she said, as Caroline the housemaid appeared with the roast duck. “We shouldn’t have to ring a bell to fetch you in, like you’re livestock.”

 

Eddie ignored her and took a seat next to her father; Rose sat down next to Simon, who solemnly offered her his hand to shake.

 

“They were wrestling in the tree house,” Beatrice said helpfully, scrambling into her own seat, which had been pre-cushioned to ensure maximum height and a greater sense of authority over proceedings.

 

“Oh, Edith,” said Mrs. Miller, sounding tired but unsurprised. “You are a woman of two-and-twenty. Don’t you think you’re a little old for that sort of thing?”

 

“I wish you’d told me you were going to wrestle,” added Simon. “If I’m really not to have any brothers, you ought to think of me and extend an invitation to any horseplay, don’t you agree? Think next time, Ed.”

 

“Did you get in any good right hooks?” said Mr. Miller, sounding interested. “Are you keeping your thumbs out, like I showed you?”

 

Eddie looked up and surveyed them. For some reason they were all looking at her expectantly. She glanced at Rose, bemused, and then picked up her fork and pointed at the spread in front of them.

 

“If you’re quite finished with the interrogation,” she said, “this bird is not going to eat itself.”

 

After supper they gathered in the drawing room, as was customary, although their approach to the whole ceremony was noticeably lax. In other houses across London, men would be huddling to discuss war, finances, or recent sporting endeavors, and ladies would be laughing from behind their fans or preparing to entertain with a jaunty tune on the pianoforte; at the Millers’, Beatrice was clinging on to Simon’s leg like a limpet as he walked, and Eddie was holding a piece of cake in her mouth, shedding crumbs as she led them into the room.

 

“What’s the latest story about?” Rose asked Eddie once they were settled.

 

The heavy blue drapes were closed, the smell of her father’s pipe smoke filling the air, and Lucy-Anne had started playing her harp with a sense of grandiosity and an excess of flourishes that did not quite match the occasion. She kept shooting them all furious, narrow-eyed looks every time they were too loud; juxtaposed with the angelic piece she was playing, it was starting to feel like a very surreal performance about the duality of man.

 

Eddie unfolded the rather ink-stained and crumpled wad of paper from her pocket and smoothed it out on the polished walnut table between them.

 

“Do not get ink on my polished walnut table,” Mrs. Miller said from her customary chair in the corner. Eddie rolled her eyes.

 

“This one,” she said, leaning in close to Rose with a dangerous grin, “is about lady pirates.”

 

“They don’t let ladies be pirates,” Simon said from underneath the table. “They are bad luck, and bad omens, and their arms are too small to put hooks on the end. Imagine how silly it would look, to have a spindly little arm and a big great hook at the end of it.”

 

“Simon!” Beatrice shouted. “They’d just get smaller hooks. There isn’t just one size of hook, you ninny!”

 

“I am having a private conversation,” Eddie said, although she knew it was futile. Their house was generously proportioned and should have been more than big enough for all seven of them—eight, if Rose was to be included, as she almost always was—but no matter which room she entered in search of some much-needed privacy, there always seemed to be at least one sibling in there, ricocheting off the walls or demanding help with their dress or asking if she thought their fingernails had grown a suspicious amount since last inspected.

 

“Go on,” Rose said, nudging Eddie’s foot with hers underneath the table, and narrowly avoiding kicking Simon in the ear.

 

“These were real lady pirates,” Eddie said loudly, mostly for Simon’s benefit, but also to encourage Beatrice, should she have aspirations of a piratical nature. “From just a hundred years ago. Anne Bonny and Mary Read. They dressed as men and they pillaged the Seven Seas and then, when the time came for them to face the noose, they pleaded their bellies so they wouldn’t swing.”

 

“God,” said Rose, looking fascinated and a bit sick. “Is that what your story is about, then?”

 

“No,” said Eddie. “My version imagines them as young academics, disguised as men so they can study at university. They meet for the first time in a teahouse, both reaching for the last piece of gingerbread. A tense argument ensues.”

 

“Which one of them gets it on their hook first?” said Beatrice, already entranced, if slightly confused. Amelia, who had been lying facedown much too close to the fireplace, flopped gracelessly onto her back. Even their father had lowered his book and was waiting expectantly for Eddie to speak.

 

“You’d all better be quiet if you want me to read it,” she said sternly. There were general noises of assent, except from Lucy-Anne, who only played the harp more loudly.

 

“All right. It was a cold, misty morning in March when Anne Bonny opened the door to the Jelly Roger Tea House—for all intents and purposes a morning like any other, although the events that were about to transpire were to change the course of her life forever…”

 

Chapter Two

 

When Eddie first met Rose Li, the latter had been standing in the Millers’ garden clutching one of their kitchen cat’s two-week-old kittens. Rose had been black-haired, pink-cheeked, and pleasantly chubby; after she had deposited the kitten back into its box with its harried mother, she had wiped her furry palm on her dress and solemnly stuck out a hand to be shaken. Eddie had been immediately fascinated, and had announced that Rose was staying for supper.

 

It had been pointed out to her that as she was eight years old, she had no business announcing exactly who was staying for supper, even if they were children of her father’s business associates; luckily the Li family had already been planning to join them for their meal, and Eddie had ushered Rose to the seat next to her as if she were the owner of a fine dining establishment seating her most important customer.

 

“Our cook is very dreadful,” she said to Rose in an undertone. “Mama says we mustn’t take it personally, and that if she really meant to kill us, she’d have done it years ago.”

 

“Can I please have a kitten, if you have one to spare?” Rose had replied, apparently unbothered by the quality of the upcoming victuals.

 

Eddie had struck a bargain—a kitten in exchange for Rose returning the next day to continue their friendship. She hadn’t factored Lucy-Anne into this particular negotiation, who had screamed as if she had given birth to the kitten herself when she saw it being borne away in the arms of a stranger. She had never particularly warmed to Rose, and Eddie suspected it was entirely due to that kitten, who had disappointed them anyway by ignoring their plans to take him marauding and include him in various criminal activities and deciding to become a prissy little lap cat instead.

 

Rose lived only two streets away, in one of the more modest terraces, and was present at dinner at least three times a week for the next fourteen years. At one point she and Eddie had attempted to calculate how many dinners that added up to, but they had given up on the mathematics after five minutes and had to open a bottle of wine to recover. Over the years their interests had matured from exploring the wilderness of the small garden to swapping horror stories and snatches of poetry by candlelight in the attic; from standing at the window, throwing stones at passing boys to see how many they could hit, to lurking in the corner of their parents’ dinner parties, throwing grapes at passing boys to see how many they could hit.

 

At thirteen Rose had had the better arm, but Eddie was entirely unafraid of being caught.

 

Eddie had always loved to invent stories, lengthy plays for her siblings to perform and short dramatic tales of daring starring herself and Rose in the main roles, but it was in her early teens that she started to write what she thought of as proper stories—all of them written exclusively for the entertainment and delight of her best friend. She was relentlessly prolific; there was an entire trunk full of her work at the foot of her bed, a treasure trove of great loves and gruesome deaths that she would dip into regularly so that she could present Rose with a story as one might give a bouquet of flowers.

 

“I am going to be a famous writer one day,” she told Rose once, when they had spent the evening giggling over her latest. She had decided that this was to be her fate only moments before.

 

“I know,” said Rose, immediately and without an ounce of doubt.

 

Eddie had become accustomed to feeling as if she and Rose weren’t really two separate people at all, but some many-limbed creature with a shared neural center. They didn’t exactly look alike, but they weren’t unalike, either; Eddie was tall and Rose of average height, Eddie all sharp angles and gangle where Rose was soft, Eddie pale and hollowed-out next to Rose’s light gold skin. They both had dark hair—Rose’s was very long and straight and black, Eddie’s shorter, wavy, darkest brown—and when they sat ensconced somewhere together at the end of an evening, their heads meeting in the middle, the differences fell away. Rose was certainly friendlier and far less impudent, but otherwise they were so alike in humor and temperament—so aligned on almost everything they encountered in their shared existence—that it was an enormous shock when sixteen-year-old Eddie had called round to Rose’s house, flopped onto a chaise and started complaining about the evils of being forced to come out into society, and found herself alone in her misery.

 

“Oh, I don’t know. I think it’ll be nice,” Rose had offered, her face pink. “Don’t you like parties, really?”

 

“No,” Eddie said, sitting up very straight and staring at Rose in genuine horror. “They’re terrible! They’re monstrous! The only absolutely minuscule shred of joy to be found in them is that I can attend them with you, and as I can attend anything with you, that leaves them with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.”

 

“Well, I’m looking forward to it,” said Rose. “And besides—my parents are so proud. Not everybody is guaranteed a grand coming out, Ed. It’s a privilege. If you do anything to ruin it for me, or them, I’ll throw you overarm into the Thames.”

 

It was the very first sign that Rose did not in fact coinhabit Eddie’s brain, and it was extremely jarring.

 

Their coming out itself had gone mostly without incident. They did not have to present themselves to the Queen herself due to her ill health, which Rose said was a blessing, as “Eddie would have undoubtedly done something so heinous and inappropriate that she’d have been executed right then and there in the middle of the ballroom.”

 

Rose had been asked to dance many, many times, and Eddie only a few; she hadn’t minded that at all, although she had resented the fact that she had to watch Rose line up again and again, her painstakingly fashioned ringlets flying as she was whirled and courted by all manner of eager, pink-faced gentlemen.

 

Toward midnight, they escaped up some stairs and out onto a balcony to be alone, crashing through the doors in a rush of silk and lace. London spread out before them, an intricate puzzle of rooftops partially obscured by chimney smoke.

 

“If I were queen, I’d abolish all this. Balls. Coming out. Suitors.”

 

Rose snorted into her ivory glove. “If you were queen, everything would be burning down around us. It would be the sequel to the Great Fire of London—the even greater fire of London. And anyway, mad genius, you’d have had to marry the King to become queen.”

 

“Hmph.”

 

“I’m sorry you sat out some of the dances.”

 

“Dear God, not at all—I’m sorry you sat in them.”

 

Rose laughed and leaned her elbows on the stone balcony, her eyes drifting across the horizon.

 

Copyright © 2023 by Lex Croucher