Who: Zipporah Bakst, Biddie, Archie(NPC) What: Zipporah has a request Where: A Turkish Teahouse in Whitechapel When: 8 February, 1889 Rating: PG
When Zipporah sent the request for a meeting Biddie’s way, she honestly wasn’t sure if the woman would come.
She’d been more than a little frustrated of late with her fellow witch, and while they’d been dancing around one another about the Russians and their mutual acquaintance, Mr Eden, they hadn’t talked directly since the masquerade, and now that the Russian business was apparently (hopefully) over and done with -- mostly -- she was wondering whether Biddie would respond favorably to a request.
She felt as though she was owed that much (although she doubted Biddie would see it that way, which rankled). Nevertheless, it was worth a try.
Gabriel had a few other notions of what could follow if their conversation proved to be spectacularly unfruitful.
On the off-chance that it would get… uncivil, she requested a public space on her home turf, to provide a slight buffer. One with plenty of desserts on the menu.
She was wearing a new winter dress and hat - the Baksts had been doing well for themselves of late, and she was proud of their successes, as hard fought as they had been. Mrs Linden might be powerful (and beyond wealthy, to boot), but Zipporah was trying her best to not be intimidated, to present herself as a fellow witch in her own right -- a negotiator, not a supplicant (in spite of how rankled she’d been with Kathy, and the wretched Russian, and Archie’s demands -- prettily worded, and kindly said, but demands nonetheless).
Biddie liked to think she was a cynic by choice, a pessimist by experience, and a damn hard sell by the virtue of old age. This made it perfectly reasonable to stare at the little vedma's invitation and think, very firmly, I'm not going to like this.
Which didn't meant for a second that she wasn't going to go.
(It just meant that Archie was safely out of town when she did.)
Being near the witch was - biting. Like walking into a swarm of Louisiana gnats. Unsurprisingly, it made Biddie want to swat something. She made do with digging her hatpin a little deeper into her hair. It wasn't nearly as satisfying.
Ah, well. At least, there'd be dessert.
“Is this the same shop where we first talked?” Biddie said in lieu of hello. She sat down with a similar lack of fuss. “That spot had marvelous cakes.”
“It is,” Zipporah replied, raising an eyebrow. “Although you made quite the show of not knowing what to order, if I recall,” she added, with a small, quick smile. The notion that she’d been so thoroughly taken in by ‘Miss Carver’ was a minor annoyance, and a bit embarrassing, but at the very least, that particular fiction had been dismissed with relatively quickly.
Ach was placid, although he did shift a fraction in his seat (he’d been tucked into a corner) -- but it was hard to tell whether he was simply keyed into her own anticipation of the possibility of everything going pear shaped, or actually responding to a true menace (and Biddie could ooze menace without much effort).
They placed their order -- Mrs Linden’s was significantly more extravagant, extensive, and sure-footed than Miss Carver’s had been -- and settled into their respective chairs.
It was very nearly civilized.
“I hope your recent business has been concluded to your satisfaction,” she said, folding her gloved hands neatly in her lap. “Quite an extensive undertaking.”
The hour was early enough, the shop was just busy enough, and their table was far enough from other customers, that they could have a private conversation...provided everybody spoke with quiet politeness.
"I suppose that makes me something of an undertaker then," Biddie said mildly. She didn't look bothered by the label or its implications. Instead, she looked - well. Healthy. Pale but bright, clear-eyed, her hair coiled elegantly under a modishly burgundy hat.
Biddie looked, a stranger might say, well rested. The more familiar would say well fed.
"It was a laborious business, the race," Biddie said. "Some minor details remain, perhaps, but the heavy lifting is done. I'm as satisfied as my conscience allows." She drummed her knuckles briefly against the tabletop. "But I don't think you invited me out for congratulations, Zipporah...no?"
Zipporah worked to prevent her lip from curling, and was mostly successful.
“My conscience,” she replied, carefully, “has been sorely challenged by your business. But you already knew that, I’m sure.”
Whether she cared about it was another matter entirely.
“I am here,” she added, brushing her skirts, “because of concerns I have regarding a mutual acquaintance. A Mr Eden.” She frowned. “He has been through a significant ordeal, thanks to you, and your business, and it is not yet finished with. Not by half.”
At the mention of Eden, Biddie's face went wholly and amazingly blank. She could've been, in that moment, a figure made out of cream and paper, or floss and chalk: a bloodless rendering.
Life returned quickly in a burning surge of annoyance. And Russian.
"Chert vozmi," she said flatly. "Is there nobody in this entire city who isn't waiting to hold that skinny mutt's pecker while he pisses on my doorstep? Is there a club? I'm honestly asking."
Biddie frowned at the younger woman, looking highly put upon. "All right, lets have this out then." She took a breath, then let it out. Slowly.
She said: "I admit to having made use of Mr. Eden's abilities. I even admit to doing so once - only once - without his consent, after which I promised not to interfere with him again. I haven't; he has. If young Mr. Eden stumbles into my business, accidentally or out of suicidal civil impulse, then the consequences are on him. That's how it works. Eden's not a child or a simpleton, or Gabriel Allen's pet monkey. Nobody gets to blame me for the mess he makes on the carpet.
"He reaches the dead, Zipporah. We both know how singular that is, especially in someone without witch blood. Yet what's he done about it besides run errands like good boy in a picture book? He knows you're a witch, he's relied on you for charms and wards, but has Eden ever asked for training? Has he ever shown any inclination in education or control? Of course not, that's not how it works in stories. Instead the wee lad is visited by a smiling pixie in a glass hat or a witch taps his pink knuckles with a cinnamon wand. Oh, what a good deed you've done, young lad, here's a sweetie.
"You know what happens to the late bloomers, Zipporah. Fish in a barrel. The lucky end up undiscovered in a madhouse - and he’s too shiny to hide there now. Hang as many protective baubles on the boy as you like, it won't stop the pot from boiling.
"Eden is fodder," Biddie said. "All I've to offer is this: don't get attached."
“He came for to see me a few days after the masquerade,” Zipporah replied flatly, the flush high in her cheeks. “As a friend. Because I am a healer. He’d been having waking nightmares full of flame, his chest rotting, his mouth full of ash, and his soul was torn. I pulled the rot from him myself, and it made me vomit.”
She frowned. “He came to me again a few weeks ago, and you know the circumstances, I’d imagine,” she added. “My protective measure was burned clean away, and he was pulled into the land of the dead -- pulled because of what you did. He saw Cathy. He saw the captain. He saw the ship, and the table where they also sat. Do you think he wandered there by happenstance? His energies are different now, they are… they are brighter than they were, far brighter, and you and I both know why. If he is fodder, you have made him so.”
The cakes and tea arrived, which gave her the opportunity to settle her blood (which was running hot), and take a deep, centering breath.
The last thing they both needed was for Ach to become a proverbial bull in a china shop.
“I work on behalf of the living,” she said. “I heal. I banish malicious spirits, and know how for to protect against them. I have told him from the start that I am no necromancer, that there are limits for what I can do. I did my best for to patch the wounds you gave him, but they did not heal, not fully, and while I can help for to remind his soul to stay here, it is a half-measure. I cannot give him the training he would need.”
Biddie ate three bites of cake before setting it down.
"My magic isn't so generous as to grant passage to strangers," Biddie said. "If - and this is sizable if, devushka - sensing my abilities heightened his own, then it was merely speeding up the inevitable. Nothing of what's inside of him is there because of me or you or anybody else Eden's blundered into. It doesn't work like that. You know it doesn't work like that, Zipporah."
"Do you even know what you're trying to save him from?" Biddie said tiredly. The prospect of this conversation suddenly had the aftertaste of ash. Healers were exhausting. "What exactly do you think I'd be able to do for him? He's not a necromancer. Good grief, he's not even a witch. He's just - a spark. An errant. Maybe if we were having this conversation when he was four or even fourteen, but now…"
She shook her head.
"When Archie was eleven years old, Grandmother put him in a well. A dry one, of course. But it was deep enough and far away enough that nobody would find it - or him - without being told. He was dressed warmly, received food and water, and was even allowed some visitors. My aunt came out to read to him. But nobody was to help him out of the well, he had to do that himself. As I said, it was deep and the stones didn't allow for climbing. Magic was his only option." Biddie picked up a fork and stabbed another bite of cake. "My cousin came into his abilities somewhat later than he should've due to some...setbacks in his early childhood. Nonetheless he had power and he was ambitious in the way that strong children are. Reckless. His tutors had trouble keeping up with his daring. And he was a very daring boy. A gawky riot of potential. He eviscerated garden paths when he sneezed, turned the lawn into quicksand, concussed the cat - an Earth mage's facility for destruction is breathtaking. Much like their chances of accidentally suffocating themselves in mud."
"Thus the well," Biddie said. "It took Archie four days to gather enough control over the stones to get out. Four days to learn what his tutors couldn't accomplish in the course of a year. Are you asking me to do try a similar approach with Eden? Do you think he'd react gladly to that - to me? Zipporah, he doesn't trust me. I trust him even less. If I ask him to go into the well, into the dark for his own good…"
Biddie shook her head again. "Enough. This isn't an option."
Zipporah shuddered, frowning unhappily at the image of Archie in the well. “Mr Eden’s powers have only recently shifted,” she said, stubbornly. “He did not have any potential beyond a simple knack until I saw him last.”
She held on to the delicate china cup as carefully as she could. “One of your spirits attacked me, in my home, and I sat on my hands and let a man who asked me for help go unaided, because I deferred to your business. Despite what it cost me. Do you have any notion what a violation…” her frown cut into her face deeply and shook her head. “I am asking for you to try. Because this? This is my business. He is. Roll your eyes if you must, insult him, claim his shift is a mere coincidence despite the evidence I have given, but it is a duty, one I take seriously. And if the choice is for to stand by and watch him die in suffering and madness as well, or to have him be formed by the crucible, to attempt it, I would rather the latter. Even if it means he must do it with you, of all peoples.” Her eyes snapped. “I will not sit on my hands this time.”
"No."
There was no malice or grit in the word, but nor was there any hesitation. Biddie set down her fork with the solemn finality of a judge. "Your sense of responsibility is admirable, dear. And I'm sorry for whatever pain our acquaintance causes your morals. But this is not a skazka. Heroines are promised nothing."
For all that youareVassilisa, Biddie thought. The bold and clever maid, braving the forest's teeth to make good out of mad dogs and hungry roads. Even Baba Yaya would be swayed.
Biddie set coins on the table and rose from her seat. The brim of her bright hat slid a shadow over her eyes, made them more black than brown. "Good day, Miss Bakst. Mr. Ach."
She left the shop without another word.
[two hours later]
Archie bounced up the staircase with his hat in one hand and beribboned box in the other. He paused at Zipporah's door to twitch the ribbons into a more aesthetically pleasing tangle, before knocking a jaunty beat onto the wood.
Zipporah answered, clearly in the middle of work of some sort -- her hair was braided and pinned up in a kerchief, her sleeves rolled up displaying recently hennaed prayers circling her forearms in swirls, her apron neatly tied, and when she saw who it was, she scowled.
She’d been easing the sting of her humiliation (and her concern over what would happen as a consequence of Mr Allen’s less subtle approach) by adding another layer of warding onto the house -- it was good practice, and while she very much hoped she wouldn’t need it, it gave her something to do that felt a little more proactive than simply sitting there and waiting.
“I will not be appeased, Archie,” she said, shortly. “She has given her answer, and I am sick of her using you to soothe her insults. You are far better than that. I am not in the mood for to be hospitable,” she added, bitterly, “even though it is not your fault. Please, not just now.”
Archie blinked. "I...was not aware appeasement was needed?" He cocked his head: curious. "I've been back in London for less than hour, Zipporah. I haven't even seen my cou--Biddie yet."
Clearly, that was a gross miscalculation on his part. (Or a deliberate tactic on Biddie's, Archie reflected.)
He stepped inside and carefully set down hat and gift. Then, moving slowly enough to be easily avoided, he reached out and collected Zipporah's hands.
"Tell me what's happened," he said, coaxing. "Please?" A germ of suspicion wiggled in. "Eden. He came to see you. And then you went to see Biddie in turn?”
Which would’ve been a Leviathan of a God awful idea, but Archie kept that thought off of his face.
Zipporah’s expression softened a fraction, and she bit her lip, letting Archie maneuver his way through the door (the door he’d broken down, and then replaced).
Once she’d resolved to tell him, the story spilled out easily enough -- her feelings of frustration and worry all too near the surface to keep her voice steady -- and she looked up at him after, already feeling wrung out from her earlier tea and her subsequent attempts to cleanse the house and purge her own feelings of hopelessness.
“I know she does not respect me,” she said, “I know she sees me as foolish, my calling as… as an inconvenience.” She exhaled. “It is not a matter of my pride,” she added, “it is a life of a friend, a friend who has been pulled into this by her, against his will, and I cannot…” she sucked in air. “I cannot sit down this time.”
She looked at him, bleakley. “And I am not the only one who thinks so, either.”
"She respects what you're capable of," Archie said honestly. He carefully avoided looking towards Ach when he said it. "But she has a way of...compartilizing priorities, especially regarding people. Most people. It's something of an us versus them mindset, I'm afraid." He added, a bit wistful: "Biddie's rather committed to it."
With a not-quite sigh, he let go of her hands and rubbed his own. Down to business, then. "I'm guessing Allen is on this, the teaching idea?" Archie nodded without waiting for an answer. "That'll put a difficult layer on this. She'd leave you alone if push comes to shove, but him - that's tricky. They've got less than an inch of trust between them."
"She never should've messed with Eden," Archie said. "Maybe at first when he came to her about Benny, that couldn't be helped. But otherwise we should've kept far away from each other."
At which point Eden's power could wither or flower on its own time, and leave him to rot with consequences afterward, Archie thought grimly. No point sobbing about it now, though.
"The thing is," Archie said, "you're the one I'm worried for. If Eden's truly some kind of catalyst then - well, some necromancers are perfectly decent folk. Very ordinary Sunday dinner types. Very mindful of their work. They rather have to be, you understand; the rule of three is heavy business with necromancy. You can imagine the sort of blowback some of the magics promise if one's careless."
"But that's the trouble," Archie continued. "One of the biggest struggles most of them have is simply amassing power. The deeper you go, the more power it takes. For many necromancers storing that power is nearly as hard as crafting the spell. And then here you have someone like Eden. No witchcraft in him, so he's free of any risk of blowback. He doesn't even summon the dead, does he? He's just there with them. Naturally. If you follow the idea that his ability can be converted somehow, that he can channel power…"
It almost made him sorry for the man.
"The last thing I want is for you to stand between Eden and those he attracts," Archie said. "And I don't mean ghosts. Or Allen.”
Zipporah shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. “I can be quite stubborn,” she said, with an unhappy twist to her mouth. “And I know. I know,” she said, frustrated, “the Ripper walked my streets, for God’s sake, and I have no doubt Mr Eden has become a lodestone, but I cannot walk away, and I cannot provide more than surface protection, protection that will no doubt hurt more than help in the long run.”
She looked over at him. “So. I am left with what little I can do, which is to try for to convince a person who does not wish to help, who is convinced it cannot work, whose motives are selfish at best and questionable at the very least, and notion of instruction cruel. She has done a great deal for to test my patience, and has maneuvered Mr Allen into a corner. I have done my best to be civil, and request assistance, and you can imagine how that went.”
She noticed a question on his face, and looked up at him, her mouth twisting. “She told me of your grandmother,” she said, quietly, reaching for a hand. “And your four days.”
"Did she now?" Archie said quietly. He picked up the box he'd brought and tugged open the ribbons. Inside, nestled in a storm of green tissue, was a flower. Its petals were perfectly transparent glass, the center picked out delicately in gold and green enamel.
"It's a reproduction of a Diphylleia Grayi," Archie said. "Also known as skeleton flowers. This is what the real ones look like when wet. Devil's own to grow sometimes, though my aunt never stopped trying. She was the second most stubborn woman I’ve ever met - until recently."
He carefully set the flower in Zipporah's hands.
"Biddie," he said, "has been lying about the well story since practically before it happened. Nobody put me anywhere, Zipporah. I read about some chap learning magic while trapped in a cave. Or was it a oak tree… Anyway, we didn't have any really cracking caves or oaks on the estate so I improvised. Nearly sprained my ankle going in, too. Grandmother found me, had terrible hysterics, and then tried to lure me out with the afternoon's buns. Didn't work, because I stole the lot of 'em before going in. She tried going in after me, at which point I had hysterics. Eventually everyone agreed it was best to let me camp out below until I got tired or Grandmother's nerves gave out. I was amazed as anyone when the original plot actually worked; I understood the stones."
He shook his head. "Take my cousin's anecdotes with a grain of salt. Especially the awful ones. She never sounds so wicked as when she's trying to hide something."
"This is important to you," Archie said after a moment. "Not just the fact that it's Eden but the helping itself. Doing your duty."
Zipporah laughed a little wetly at his re-framing of the well story, looking down at the delicate bit of glass in her hands. “Of course you went yourself.” She sighed. “I do not believe her monsterous. Maddening, yes. Even occasionally terrifying, if I were to be honest. But you… you love her,” she said, softly, looking up at him, “and she you. And she cares for her people, fiercely, even if she has chosen to place me and mine at cross-purposes. I would not have asked her for help if I believed her incapable.”
She swallowed, and nodded. “And it is important, yes. I am nothing and no-one without it.” She shook her head. “I am beyond sorry for to drag you into this. I know you have your loyalties, Archie, your own duties, and I cannot fault you for them.” She looked back down at the flower. “It is beautiful,” she added, her voice low. “Thank you.”
"You're very welcome," Archie said. His smile this time was slightly distracted, distant, as if directed at a moment outside of the room.
"I think," he said in that same tone of offhand kindness, "that we'll one day have a conversation during which you'll find quite a lot to fault me for. And you'll likely be right to do so. But I don't think we're having that conversation today. Or tomorrow."
Archie leaned in and rested the palm of his right hand against her cheek. He held it there as he leaned, slowly and patiently, to kiss the left corner of her mouth. It was a dry touch, but not a chaste one. When he pulled back, the distance in Archie's gaze had tempered into something cooler.
"I'll speak with Biddie," Archie said. "This all has the potential to be a truly heinous arrangement, but - I'll speak with her. She'll listen, though I can't promise she'll agree."
'Fore God help us all, he thought, if she does.
Zipporah could feel her heart hammering in her chest wildly, and she nodded, her fingers still loosely curled around the glass flower. “Come by on Wednesday evening, regardless,” she said. “I should like for to see your progress with meditations, and we can see how well you take to mantras.” She grinned, suddenly. “My auntie will make you dinner.”