Who: Bertram Eden & Bedelia “Biddie” Linden (NPC!Cameo: Archie Curtis) What: Bertie begins his private “tutoring” with Biddie. When: March 20, 1889 [backdated] Where: Linden Residence Rating: PG-13
"...the damnable agent of necromancers and sorcerers. It is well to abstain from chocolate in order to avoid the familiarity and company of a nation so suspected of sorcery (Spain)." - French cleric (1620)
For her first...lesson...collaboration...agh…session...with Eden, Biddie considered several options. Half of these she dismissed as wishful thinking (he looked too young and skinny for a truly definite heart attack), the remaining third were ridiculous (a fit of vapors on her or Eden’s part would only temporarily stave off the inevitable) and the handful lingering after that were woefully illegal - and inconveniently traceable.
Thus she was left with chocolate.
Biddie didn’t hold the same unreserved love for hot desserts as she did for ices or even creams, but she had a stalwart respect for a proper cup of chocolate. The sort that had some soul in it. In this, she shared the opinion of Brillat-Savarin: correctly prepared, the dark stuff was as healthful a food as it was pleasant.
Tonight recipe went a little bit further than simply healthful.
The silky scent of jasmine and vanilla flowers lingered over the colorful chocolate pot; underneath the flowers lingered a softer, muskier scent of something that recalled warm skin and late rising. Darkly tinted pistachio wafers and bitter Seville meringues ringed the pot.
It was, Biddie reflected with satisfaction, a wonderfully suspicious cup of chocolate. Additionally she’d dressed to match it in blackberry silk and lace gloves, bloody garnets in her hair and ears. After all, just because she had to teach the boy, didn’t mean she couldn’t have a peck of fun spookin--energizing him in the process. For scholastic reasons, of course.
You had to collect these little pleasures when you could, she decided.
It was a fine plan until a familiar blond head poked into the room. “Good God, what are you -- mémère, you look like something out of a morality play. Or a penny dreadful. Oh, is that chocolate ambre? I’d love a cuppa, thanks. Pistachio wafers too? Capital!”
Things quickly devolved from there.
“Garnets? You hate garnets. Remember, you told Mrs. Mitford they look like rashes. Where are your pearls? You love pearls. Mrs. Jakov, where are the pearls?"
"I don't need pear - hey! Hey, let go of my ear, you miserable - "
" - all this funeral dress, Christ. Like a wraith fished out of an ink well. Where's the whatnot, thing with the fringe bits - "
"That's my hair, you're in my hair, blast it - "
" - shawl, that's the thing! Get a bright - ah, thank you, Mrs. Yakov. Here tie this about - "
"I do not need a shawl - ugh, iss's in mah mouff, mah mouff!"
"Oops, watch the teeth, sorry about that. But just another loop - there."
The combatant broke apart, one smiling (and slightly breathless) and the other glaring fit to scald.
“You look lovely,” Archie said. His coat had two less buttons than he’d arrived with, but he still had all of his limbs.
Biddie, now draped with a tropical shawl that heartilly defanged the drama of her dark dress, took a moment to throw the coat buttons at her godson. After a moment, she threw the pearls at him too. Archie ducked both good cheer and much practice.
“You,” Biddie told her bane and heir, “are pie.” She straightened and started rebraiding her hair. “Lard and cinnamon, then straight into the oven with you, brat.”
Which was, of course, when Eden was ushered into the room.
Bertie's eyes darted from one inhabitant of the room to the other. The heavy blonde braid tickled at him with eerie familiarity, though he couldn't place quite why it unsettled him. The woman, likewise, unsettled him, but he knew very well the reason for that. Captain Curtis was all smiles and dimpled charm, and while long habit moved Bertie to be likewise friendly, he didn't trust smiles here.
Bertie was armored only in a dark suit, his Sunday best, though he rarely had cause to wear it on a Sunday. Easter, and Christmas, and very occasionally some other day, though Bertie hadn't had much incentive to test his luck since he'd begun feeding a demon and tainting his soul with the dead. Church these days had even less appeal than it had previously held.
He bowed, stiff but correct, to the company in the room. "Mrs Linden," he said, after only the slightest pause to wonder if that was really her name. "Captain Curtis."
Typical, Biddie thought sourly. Before she could share the opinion out loud, however, Archie stepped towards Eden with a welcoming smile.
“Mr. Eden, how good to see. You didn’t have any trouble finding the address, I hope? It’s a bit of an odd one - “
Biddie gave a look of insulted disbelief at that, but the filthy rascal was immune.
“- but here you, then. Please call me Archie.” Six foot and change of muscle and militant good cheer beamed down at Bertie. “May I call you Bertram? No, wait, you prefer Bertie, yes? I like it, had a gunner mate went by the same. Excellent fellow.”
Resigned to her godson’s antics - how in the world had the boy ever managed to survive the Army? - Biddie sank into a chair and began pouring chocolate. Clearly, that was the only means of victory she was to be allowed today.
Bertie's eyes skipped to Mrs Linden, and then back to the unaccountably cheerful and welcoming Captain Curtis. He felt outnumbered, and wished - as he had so often as late, a near-constant throb of something missing - for Jamie's reliable presence at his side, but Jamie had counseled Bertie against his company, reminding him they knew very little of what Bertie would actually be doing and what Mrs Linden might be able to sense regarding ghosts.
"No, it was fine, thank you." Very fine indeed--the Modern Prometheus Company was doing very well for itself, which showed in the tasteful and exotic furnishings. These were world travelers with influence in trade, and Bertie felt himself rather sealed into the lion's den.
"Will you be joining us for the lesson, Captain Curtis? ...Archie?" Bertie paused and returned his attention to Mrs Linden, trying not to let his wariness show too obviously. "Or is this more of a consultation...?"
"Captain Curtis," said the soft, cool voice from the shadow of the chair, "has a meeting he's dangerously close to being late for.
"Archie." The young man paused, his smile momentarily arrested by the soft, cool tone. "You're going to be late for your meeting with Haentzler."
"Hardly," Archie said. "Haentzler has the speed of a slab of beef. The man's been twenty minutes every time this month."
"All the more reason for you to shine by comparison," Biddie said. She raised her brows. "Shoo."
"Thus spake Zarathustra…" Archie added, scooping his lost buttons off the floor on his way towards the door. He put a warm hand on the other man's shoulder and squeezed briefly in passing: friendly, reassuring. "Be bold, old man." His voice dropped to a near whisper. "Gabriel took care of things, trust him."
The next moment his tone was back at a familiar volume. "Well, best leave you pair to it then, shall I? Biddie, don't forget about dinner tomorrow. Again, it was smashing to meet you, Bertie. Afternoon."
The door closed with a smooth, definite click behind him. Silence carpeted the room, pricked only by the slightly ring of pearl spoon against a china cup.
"My cousin is an acquired taste," Biddie said finally. "Sadly, Mr. Eden, most have little choice in the acquisition. I think he sees himself like something of a guardian in Mr. Allen's absence. One of many in your case." Her tone turned conspicuously mild. "How is Lord Black?"
"Very well, thank you, as is the pack." Bertie had written Matthew not long ago with his concerns about this meeting, and was assured of that. He didn't know whether Mrs Linden's casual mention of Lord Black meant that Matthew had passed on Bertie's concerns, or was simply a reference to seeing him at the London House.
The reminders of the pack and the threat to Gabriel stiffened Bertie's spine, cooling his nerves as he focused on the single remaining - and by far greatest - threat in the room. "Are they right to think I need guarding, Mrs Linden? They might appreciate some clarification on that point."
"Oh, I would've been happy to completely spare you my presence completely forevermore," Biddie said. "Let alone whatever risk that holds. But your keeper insisted. Strongly."
The last word carried a king's ransom worth of implication.
...well, someone's ransom anyway.
"Chocolate?" She began to pour without waiting for a reply. "There's a rosewood box on the cabinet by the window; you may deposit whatever warding trinket is on your person there, please."
Nobody would've mistaken it for a request. For one thing, the please was highly pointed.
Bertie's thumb rubbed the simple tin band of the ring on his finger. He didn't usually wear it, obvious and out-of-place as it was given his usual clothes, but he'd taken it out of his pocket and slipped it on before entering the house.
He didn't like the idea of parting from it. Zipporah had told him it would anchor his soul to his body, and if there was a time to keep himself from wandering off, it would be now, while there was a wolf in sheep's clothing - or tropical fringed shawl - watching with sharp eyes for him to slip up. If Bertie did himself in, Mrs Linden wouldn't have to lift a finger herself. Just sip her chocolate and wait to see if he killed himself, or left his body a vegetable with no mind inside.
Then again, he reminded himself, if he did that, she wasn't wrong about the wrath that he suspected would rain down on her head. And while he was certain she could handle herself, and that none of it would actually help him, it was still reason enough for her to keep him alive and well.
Relatively well. He'd seen already that her definition of 'unharmed' could be flexible.
"I was told it would keep me from wandering," Bertie said, removing the ring but not locking it away just yet, rolling it between thumb and forefinger as he tarried for a moment. "Is that true? Would it interfere with whatever you're teaching me today?"
“Did Ms. Bakst make that...accoutrement?” Biddie asked. She could only slightly perceive the ward - a pesky buzz of sleeping magic - but even so Biddie imagined she could identify the familiar nip of Zipporah’s work.
She set the copy of chocolate on the opposite side of the table (by the pointedly empty chair) and reclined more firmly back in her own seat. Her expression was speculative.
“I think we should settle something before we try to proceed any further,” Biddie said. A trick of room’s shadows made her brown eyes seem very dark in the very white face. The tempering influence of the colorful shawl, after all, could only do much. “Neither of us is here by choice, but rather by threat. In my case, a matter of reputation - “ And being hounded by the blasted Night Watch, thank you, Gabe. “ - and in yours, well.” Biddie’s pale mouth pursed. “Lets keep it simple and say ‘self-preservation’, yes?”
She raised the cup to her mouth, then paused. “Gabriel did clarify that to you? That without training you’re amazingly likely to end up mad, dead, or stashed in cellar like a barrel of salted mackerel? All three even, if the necromancer who catches you is skilled enough. And likes mackerel.”
"He believes as much, yes." There was fresh tension in Bertie's voice, born of both the mention of Gabriel and the threat to himself. "Apparently I've become more...appealing...since the masquerade."
That it was her doing was implied, although Bertie had to admit that she had found him before that, so presumably others could as well. That was a question he would like to have settled as well. "How did you use me, as you did? Would training with you prevent others from recognizing what I can do, or simply from using me without...coercion?"
He was committed to this endeavor at least as far as the conversation, so Bertie did as Mrs Linden had requested and set Zipporah's ring into the wooden box she'd indicated. "Miss Bakst did the ensorcellment, yes," he added into the pause. "She was very generous and helpful, after I began having...difficulties."
"I acted mainly out of convenience - and curiosity," Biddie added unapologetically. "Frankly, it only half occured me you'd be that unguarded. Don't think to view my actions as a baseline, Mr. Eden; while others may have difficulty in accessing you quite so easily as I did at the masquerade, they'll also be drastically more motivated in doing so."
"I can teach you to hide whatever you are, Mr. Eden," she said. "I can even - hopefully - teach to take action with your abilities rather than spill them about with good intentions." Sarcasm slathered the 'good' like butter on a fat man's toast. "Lord only knows how that's worked long as it has. If nothing else I can at least teach you to protect your dead."
She pressed her lips against the rim of the cup, considering. "How well you take to the training is whole different bag of cats, of course. Our arrangement won't be without its own difficulties."
In the privacy of her mind, Biddie asked: do you know the difference between sharpening and honing, Eden? You sharpen a knife by removing material from the blade to make a new edge; you hone it by pushing the edge back into alignment. Sharpen a knife too often and it whittles down, turns off the balance. Makes a bloody mess.
Bertie became hung up on one particular phrase within all the rest, and his lips parted in surprise as he stared at Mrs Linden. "Whatever I am?" he echoed. "Aren't I like you?"
The thought of 'his dead' made Bertie shudder with new horror. Could someone really get to Jamie, or any other ghost, through him?
Of course they could. Wasn't that what had happened to the ghosts in the fae artefact, in some way? They had been killed by the weapon, but also imprisoned by it, souls tormented in their afterlife. Surely there were those who could gather up ghosts in the same way.
Bertie wondered if Mrs Linden was one of them.
Biddie smiled slightly at Eden's question. With a different audience, she'd have smiled wide enough to show her teeth.
"You're not a necromancer, Mr. Eden. You're not even a witch by most definitions, otherwise the delightful Miss Bakst would be in charge of you," she said. "Instead you are, in view of the available evidence, a medium of a sort. A channel or perhaps a conduit. Some writings call specimens like yourself 'catalysts'. Rather melodramatic, those sort."
Biddie set down her now empty cup. "Ultimately you're more like me than you’re like Zipporah, but in terms of power application you’ve more in common with Mr. Allen's effect rather than a witch's ability to spellcast. Your nature is closer to that of a tool rather than a craftsman."
"It's not disparagement," she added in a surprisingly kinder tone. "Think of it this way: devices tend to outlast creators."
"Mr Allen," Bertie said in surprise, trying to imagine how he and Gabriel could be anything alike. Bertie only spoke to ghosts--Gabriel used and converted energy, sensing and manipulating...
...ah.
Bertie hadn't touched the chocolate--his hand crept out toward it now out of sheer absent-minded distraction before he pulled it back and laced his fingers together tightly. "So you, as a craftsman--craftswoman--have offered..." He made a pained face. "...as much as either of us were offered choices, you agreed to help me to become..."
What? A better tool? A tool with a protective sheath? "A tool at my own disposal, not at anyone else's." That seemed the best he could manage with the metaphor, and he was beginning to understand exactly why Gabriel and Zipporah feared for him.
Bertie's voice was subdued when he spoke again. "I didn't realize," he admitted. "I suppose I thought it was more like fish in a pond, where those larger would eat the smaller, and I was one of the smaller. I didn't realize that I wasn't one of the fish at all."
That made it sound as though he were disappointed, he noted, but he wasn’t at all, not really. He didn’t take the reclassification as disparagement--as little as he knew of necromancy and his own potential, he hadn’t had many preconceived notions to disappoint.
“I can see the difficulty,” Bertie said slowly, “in attempting to teach someone whose talents are not like yours, and who has no experience with anyone like you.”
"At the risk of treading poetry," Biddie offered dryly, "I'd say you have more in common with the current than the fish. If it helps you sleep, then please know that arrangements very much like ours have happened before. This is simply uncharted territory rather than completely unknown. Drink you chocolate."
She pointed at him with a gloved hand and a complete lack of manners. "I'm serious, Eden: drink. You're going to burning a lot of energy while we do this and you hardly look as if you've much to spare. Start indulging in larger dinners and second helpings. Third if you can stomach it. And another thing…"
Biddie tried to think of a polite way to phrase her next bit of advice. She gave up the attempt as a wash immediately.
"Regarding your relations with a certain uncanny partner? Lessen them. Severely. You can't afford to squander the energy, not until we know how hard training will be on your reserves," she said. "If you must indulge, then stick to humans.”
If I can't eat him, Gabe,, Biddie thought with dash of petty - but immensely gratifying - satisfaction, then you ain't either.
Bertie reached for his cup, sipping the now-cold chocolate, which was thick and rich, nearly too sweet and sticking in his throat as he swallowed. He suspected he would have savored it more had he not been given such an alarming directive.
Bertie cleared his throat of the thick chocolate, looking down briefly at his cup. He knew what she spoke of--Zipporah had warned him of the same, when he'd been depleted and worn from battling the haunting the had plagued his nights. That had been when Gabriel was with Caspian, however, and had looked as though he could afford to spare Bertie's energies. Bertie remembered well what Gabriel had been like the last time Bertie had offered himself--more hollow, more desperate, trembling when he'd accepted what Bertie finally insisted he take. Lovemaking had never been especially intense between them--that night had been an exception.
"I don't know that that will be possible at this time," Bertie said carefully, setting down his cup into the saucer with a soft clink. He didn't want to give away anything when it came to Gabriel that Mrs Linden might see as a weakness to exploit, or any details of their private affairs, but he could not in good conscience simply walk away.
"He'll hardly wither away without you," Biddie said. She delivered the pronoun without a blink of trepidation. "You, on the other hand, are beginning a highly strenuous regiment of physical and mental concentration. Don't underestimate the toll this will take on you, Mr. Eden."
She drummed her fingers against the arm rest: a brief staccato of impatience. "Once your training has reached some semblance of competence, I'll personally fly the pair of you to Paris, Rome, or blasted Xanadu, yes?"
"You may still associate with each other in whatever manner you wish," Biddie said, striving for a reasonable attitude. "Nobody is asking you to forego - " - she waved her hand in a vague flap - " - affection. Only that you limit your...exchanges...to god-fearingly banal for a time. Think of Prinny or whatever it is you English resort to. Lord knows that worked for everyone else.”
Bertie's eyes flicked briefly to Mrs Linden's before he looked away again, then gave a small nod of agreement. Limit, she had said. If Gabriel were in need, truly, Bertie could still...although if he had only one coin to spend, so to speak, it wouldn't please Dex at all for Bertie to spend it on Gabriel.
Oh Lord, Dex.
Think of Prinny, Bertie reminded himself, before his mind could dwell too long on the intimacies of Dex's company, and all of the clandestine activities that were shortly to be forbidden until further notice.
"What about ghosts?" Bertie asked evenly, having accepted the first condition. "They take energy from me just to appear and speak, don't they? Will I need to try to avoid them, if I can, when I'm not attending lessons with you?"
"I think at this point in your development it'd take more energy to completely block you from ghosts - and vice versa - then it would to maintain the status quo," Biddie said. "We’ll need to establish best we can regarding how much your talent costs you on the regular."
She returned her elbow to the armrest and propped her chin on a lace wrapped fist. "How old were you the first time it happened? Do you remember?"
Bertie's lips parted, but he took a moment to formulate the right words. It wasn't the first time he'd been asked the question, but it was always something of a challenge to explain. "I remember the first time I knew it was a ghost. Before that...I didn't understand. Children behave in ways that adults may mistake or indulge, and I didn't realize there were differences in those I spoke with, who were alive and who were...not."
Bertie lifted the chocolate, more to give himself a moment than out of desire for it, though it was still quite sweet and creamy, with notes of vanilla and something else, strange and exotic. "I didn't do much exploring until boarding school. Until recently, as I'm sure you know..." He glanced up at her to catch any reaction he might provoke. "Ghosts in London stayed where they were. It wasn't until Cambridge that I had the freedom to seek them out, form relationships with them, distinguish the behaviors of one from another. I was recruited to the Night Watch from there, when they observed my habits. And I wasn't especially discreet."
Bertie blushed, but he hadn't known, at the time--hadn't dreamed. "I knew that I could see and hear ghosts, converse with them, but I didn't realize they were part of a larger world. Those not in the supernatural world believe in mediums and spirits as well--there was no cause for me to believe that vampires and werewolves were real as well, until the Night Watch asked me to be more circumspect in what I told others about seeing ghosts."
"What an adventure you must've been to your parents," Biddie said after a moment. She stirred her own cooling chocolate with a meditive air. "I take it none in the family showed a similar inclination to converse with empty rooms?"
It was slightly discomforting to think of Eden as the child he must've been: a big-eyed cricket - the slim ones always started knobby - with his bewildering habits. Biddie wondered if he'd been a lonely boy. The dead were third string company, even when still remembered their good intentions.
She pulled her attention back to task. "Was the Benny the first mobile ghost you've encountered?"
Bertie shook his head at the first question, thinking of his sisters, and stopped at the second. "Yes. And that was before whatever happened in London." Bertie frowned. "It would be foolish of me to think I'd seen everything and knew all there was to know, but I suppose I'd thought of that being a hard and fast rule. He seemed...not to entirely understand why he could move, and where. He was more coherent than many ghosts, but that seems at odds with him not having a tether to a place."
He looked up, breaking out of his musing. "Do you know why he could move that way?"
"I think we can forgive some confusion on his part. Most of us don't have that much experience being dead. At least those of us outside of Parliament," she added wryly. "When we took on Benny, I suspected there was a splash of witch blood in his family. That and the fact that he spent time around necromancy - although unaware of it - put a skip in his step. So to speak."
And then there was the fact that she'd made his mortal remains into fritters and hash, but Biddie wasn't putting that knowledge on Eden's syllabus.
It'd been excellent hash, though.
"Barring external interference, the strength with which a ghost manifests typically depends on what they lived as or how they died. Witches can be very potent haunts, and violent deaths breed wild strengths. The old die, but you've hardly found yourself plagued by spectral grannies. Again, these are all cases devoid of meddling."
Her tone lent an crotchety, disapproving cast to the last word.
Bertie met and held Mrs Linden's eyes curiously. "Is it meddling if I'm not acting with any intention? I suppose you could argue it's negligence, but I haven't manipulated ghosts consciously. Until recently," he amended, thinking of Covent Garden, and the Goblin Market before that. "I don't deny I might be external interference, but do you believe I am causing ghosts to manifest on some level, unconsciously?"
Bertie sipped his chocolate, then picked up a biscuit to nibble. "Presumably once I've learned what you have to teach me - if I can learn it, as you say this might be difficult - I'll be better able to keep from...meddling?"
Biddie looked towards the young with man with surprise, which quick tempered to amusement. “Amazingly enough you weren’t the meddler I had in mind, Mr. Eden. I’ve been given to understand that your presence doesn’t actually compel the manifestations, but merely grants them a, hmm, shall we say sympathetic ear?”
She cocked her head at him. “But then our interactions have been staged more often than not, so perhaps I’m operating with muddy data. Do you inspire ghosts?”
Bertie shook his head. "No. I don't believe I change anything about them, although sometimes if I'm around for long enough, they can grow a bit stronger, more visible. To me," he amended, trying to be accurate. "And I've heard from a witch that sometimes my presence can make them aware of a ghost, as if I'm...amplifying their effect. I suppose that's just acting as a medium, though."
He paused for a moment, remembering the way Mrs Linden had seemed almost aware of ghosts in his presence, twice over. "Does it seem that way to you? Has my being around helped you to be more aware of ghosts in your vicinity?"
Bertie cleared his throat. "And if not me, may I ask what - or who - you mean by meddling?"
The full import of what Mrs Linden had said didn't hit him until a moment later, and then he felt it like a lead weight in his stomach. It was dangerous to ask, if she didn't realize what she'd let slip--but then it was foolish to think she hadn't noticed. Carefully setting the biscuit down onto his saucer, Bertie asked, "What do you mean 'staged', Mrs Linden? How so?"
Biddie was quiet for longer than she'd been at any point in their exchange, and then she stayed quiet for a little longer still. The silence which had made a brief appearance in the wake of Archie's departure now returned in luxurious, ominous abundance.
"I think," she said when the hush threatened to suffocate, "that there's something we should settle between before proceeding any further. A matter of potential...contention."
Biddie set her hands very precisely on the arms of her chair and looked at Bertie. The colors of her shawl looked bright as metal in the soft light of the room; none of the brightness seemed to reach the wearer.
"Are you afraid of me, Mr. Eden?"
The hairs on Bertie's arms and neck were raised, gooseflesh in no need of a chill. His hands tightened on his knees, where he kept them rigidly in his lap. He spoke with care, though perhaps not enough caution for true wisdom.
"You caused me to lose time, and to be haunted at night by a phantom whose presence stained my soul. Since then, I've gone wandering out of my own body, and witnessed terrible things among the dead. Some of those close to me doubt whether I can be trusted anymore, or whether I've been influenced by ghosts and spirits and will act without thought or conscience. In my place, Mrs Linden, wouldn't you be afraid?"
"No," Biddie said simply. The precision of her posture thawed, turned casual. She had the answer she wanted. "But then my first teacher was meaner than yours."
"Still I'm glad we haven't misread each other," she continued. "I'll teach you how to deal with the dead and not be damaged by the living. This will include close familiarity with the habits and practices of other necromancers. Note the word 'other', Mr. Eden. My own work - except in when it pertains directly to your lessons - won't be discussed. That's nonnegotiable. Cookie?"
She picked up the plate of wafers and meringues, and held it out in offer.
Bertie wanted to say no, but manners had been drilled into him from childhood, so he only nodded once, took a wafer to add to his saucer, and murmured, "Thank you."
She had given him more than she intended, he thought, but there was little he could do with the information right now. He would need to think through it with someone, talk aloud to Gabri--no, not to Gabriel. Dex, perhaps. Someone he trusted, and whose advice he could heed without qualm. Someone who wasn't already in danger from this affair, and who had risked his own life for Bertie's to see him here, receiving this tutelage.
"Is there anything else I should understand, before we begin?" Politeness could be a defense, and Bertie leaned on it now, retreating into respectful correctness. Everything else, he put aside. There would be time later on.