Chapter 5:
The Story of the Flower-Girl
It was the spring of 1879, though one could be forgiven for assuming it was still winter. Ever since the October of the previous year, the atmosphere had retained a mantle of chill so that even now, in April, it was no more than 5.7∘ celsius.
(quick author's note, this is for real. Look up "1879, Weather History". The whole year was cold up until 1880.)
For all that the weather was inclement, Miss d'Iacon did not intend to spend the morning inside as it was a rare occasion indeed when she had no work to complete. The woman took her time as she wandered slowly from shop front to shop front, every now and again making some comment to her companion. At her side walked Nurse Darby in a mauve half-mourning gown, murmuring over a very unusual arrangement of monkshood and anemones on the front of a corner store. The woman and her son had become semi-permanent fixtures in Prime Manor, though for a few months they had lived with the Foiche family, as their home was more equipped for the care and keeping of young people. Arcee had found in Mrs. Darby a kind of kindred spirit, a woman who understood the difficulty of making one's own way in the world and the grief of losing those closest to you. If there was one soul whose heart could speak to hers unashamedly of the loss of Heathcliff, still fresh in her heart, it was June.
Her husband had been a soldier, a good and honorable but unimaginative man who obeyed orders without question. When he was sent to the Shimonoseki Straights on the HMS Euryalus in 1864, he was entirely unaware that his wife was with child, as was she. She did not realize the truth until a few months later, by which time her husband had long since departed, never to return.
"My dear Miss d'Iacon," said she, "Did you mark this wreath?" Arcee replied that she hadn't paid it any particular mind, should she have? "Well I think perhaps it warrants closer inspection, at least. Do try to remember the sorts of letters you must have sent in your girlhood, my friend."
The typist's confusion was only momentary as she soon realized what the older woman was referring to. She, like many other girls her age, had occasionally indulged in the sending of coded messages via the language of flowers, and it was true that she hadn't suspected the late Heathcliff Foiche of being in love with her until he began to leave red camellia and arbutus on her doorstep, signifying flame in my heart and thee only do I love.
Bearing such memories with combined fondness and sorrow, Arcee bent to examine the wreath that had been placed upon the door of the shop. "I shouldn't have thought these flowers would have bloomed in this weather, but then, I'm no gardener," she remarked brightly, but it was a gaiety that was assumed, like a mask donned at a party. Miss d'Iacon had deciphered the message of the anemone and monkshood, and feared for the one who had set it upon the door. Forsaken, the anemones declared, while the monkshood warned, Beware, a deadly foe is near.
"Well, my dear, shall we go in and ask about them?" the widow asked, and noted that there were some lovely old books in the window that she intended to have a closer look at. It was, after all, altogether too cold to stay out upon the street all day. As the two women made for the door, Mrs. Darby chanced to look behind her. Just barely at the corner of her vision, she saw a young girl.
She was a slight, elfin creature who had obscured her facial features with a large, ugly hat. The girl had come up from between two shops across the road, a bundle of groceries clutched to her chest. When she caught sight of the wreath upon the shop door, she turned without a moment's hesitation and fled, dropping one of her bags as she went.
How very mysterious! Mrs. Darby thought, I think I shall have to investigate! However, once within the little store, she lost sight of the young woman.
The shop was small and cozy, with a great many odds and ends sitting on two great big cabinets that stood along one wall. Behind the counter was a wall of preserves and dried goods, as well as several small works of art. The shelves themselves were made of the same thick, black wood that criss-crossed the walls and ceiling in supporting beams, and on the edges of the shelf, someone had carved many intricate lines. Upon closer inspection, June realized that the designs were actually Chinese characters - a language she was unfamiliar with. She could only make out, 22:21 不可亏负寄居的，也不可欺压他，因为你们在埃及地也作过寄居的。 on one part of the beam before bits of hanging cloth and goods covered over it.
At the counter, an elderly woman self-consciously straightened a painting on the wall before offering her guests a pale smile. It looked a bit stretched, as though she had been expecting someone else to walk in, rather than two well-dressed women from another part of town.
Well good afternoon, said she; and was there anything she could do to help them this fine day? Straightaway, Widow Darby took to asking about the old leatherbound book of common cures that she had seen in the window, and Miss d'Iacon walked back and forth and pretended she was taken with a little china figure of some shepherdess girl wearing an enormous bonnet.
"What a sweet little poppet!" said she, although she really thought it rather gaudy, "And isn't that a cat beside her? Oh. No, I see that it isn't." Rather hurriedly, Arcee drew her hand away. "It's a spider."
"Why yes, miss." the woman at the counter answered, "'Tis Little Miss Muffet, isn't it?"
Mrs. Darby noted that Miss d'Iacon had got quite an unusual color about her quite suddenly, and thought perhaps she ought to change the subject. "I confess, we really only came in because we were admiring your wreath upon the door. I was afraid I wouldn't see any blooms for months, but here they are! I wonder, would you be so good as to tell me what made you think of putting anemones and monkshood together? It's such an unusual mix, you know."
The woman laughed, a high, twittering sound. "Oh, pay no mind to that miss. 'Tis but an old woman's fancies and nought else. Pretty things, aren't they?"
"Oh they are indeed, ma'am," Miss d'Iacon moved away from the shelf and towards the counter. "Such a lovely arrangement! Who were you trying to warn?"
This last statement was said so very calmly and without change of tone that it seemed to catch the shopkeeper off-guard. She very nearly answered, in fact, beginning to say something about, "the wee lass", then stopping herself. "It's not my place to tell, miss," she said, quite stern. "And anyhow, who's to say I'm warning anyone?" She turned away and fussed about, tidying shelves and pretending that the two women from the House of Prime were not there.
Arcee only smiled and said that they were very sorry to have caused the woman distress. To make up for it, she bought two pieces of penny candy and led Mrs. Darby out onto the street. Miss d'Iacon offered one piece to the widow, who accepted it with a smile. When asked whether she was going to eat the other piece, the typist shook her head. "Oh no, I never touch the stuff between meals. This is for the Chinese girl."
Her companion drew back in surprise. "Surely you mean the slip of a girl I saw across the street? Then you saw her too?"
"Oh no, my dear Mrs. Darby, I did not see our young friend at all," replied Miss d'Iacon.
"Well I think you are being a trifle unfair, to imagine that I've some idea of what you're thinking," said Mrs. Darby, "I fear I'm not following your reasoning. If you did not see her, then how did you know the girl I saw and the girl the shopkeeper mentioned are the same? And how did you guess that she was Chinese?"
"Deduction, my dear. I could be wrong, naturally, but we'll pretend I'm right unless proven otherwise, shall we?" Arcee smiled as they marched across the street to where the girl had left her bag of groceries. A trail of rapidly disappearing footprints in the slush highlighted the route the escapee had taken. "You see, I noticed the Chinese script on the beams - a trifle simplified, perhaps, but not altogether dissimilar to the manuscripts I've studied - and it was, in fact, a passage from the book of Exodus. The twenty first and twenty second verses of the twenty second chapter, to be precise."
"Of course! Do not oppress a stranger and do not take advantage of the widow and orphan, correct?"
"Indeed. Adding this inscription - painstakingly carved with a great deal of sentiment, if the depth of the lines were anything to go by - to our shopkeeper's slip about the "wee lass", the varying curios on the shelves, and the warning wreath on the door, and I'd guess that the elderly lady has been in at least some contact with Chinese immigrants. Perhaps she's come across a young woman in danger, and has been helping her? I expect we'll know soon enough."
The by-street ended at a bleak courtyard, wholly unremarkable. A foul-smelling smoke rose from the several chimneys of the block of houses, and the shutters were all drawn quite tight. Overall, there was an air to the place that did not sit right with Miss d'Iacon; there were far too many places an enemy could be hiding in the structures around her, and she was quite certain that Widow Darby knew little or nothing at all about defending herself. In the chill of the air, the hubbub of the streets behind them seemed to die away, leaving an eerie feeling in its wake. Arcee shivered and drew her brocade cape a little tighter around her neck. She made a cautious motion to her companion, who set the bag of groceries down on the doorstep of one of the unfriendly buildings.
All at once, the door opened a crack and a thin arm snaked around the edge to grab at the sack.
"Hold on just a moment," Miss d'Iacon said imperiously, "Show yourself, my girl, this instant!" Her tone brooked no argument, and so after what appeared to be an internal debate, the door opened the rest of the way.
In the frame stood a young girl dressed in boys' clothes, and from her head to her foot there was not a speck of color to be seen. Even the roses had been leached from her cheeks, lending her a sickly pallor. For all that, the child carried herself with a brash and defiant air, and stared unblinking at the women with dark and angry eyes.
"What do you want?" she asked, her English only lightly accented by her native tongue.
"Why, only to see if you are well, my dear," Nurse Darby answered in lieu of Miss d'Iacon. "You see, we noticed the message in the flowers on the shopkeeper's door, and worried you might be in some sort of trouble."
At once, suspicion arose in the girl's eyes and she made a move as if to shut the door. Quickly, Miss d'Iacon thrust her foot between the door and the jamb, so that it would not close. It was alright, she tried to reassure the girl, they were from the House of Prime, and would not allow her to be harmed. At the mention of the famous house, the Chinese girl seemed to lose a little of the half-wild and ready-to-flee appearance that so haunted her.
"I have heard tales of Lord Prime," said she, very cautiously, "But have never met him myself. Is it true that he harbors orphans and fugitives?"
"I myself was one, once upon a time," answered Arcee. "Are we to assume that you have no other place to go, my dear? Surely you realize that this is not a suitable environment for someone your age. Why, you cannot be more than ten, I am sure!" And very crossly, the girl informed her that she was, in fact, thirteen. "Of course, my mistake. But to be sure, my girl, you are far too young to be on your own. Aren't you parents with you?"
A black look came over the features of the girl and she stepped back into the shadows just as if she'd been a cat that, seeing strangers in its home, hisses and keeps out of sight. "And what if they're not?" she asked, affecting a careless tone, "Would it shock your fine English sensibilities to know I've run away from them?"
Nurse Darby rather dryly proclaimed that it shouldn't have surprised them at all. Now the full tale had to be told, but first the child motioned them inside and shut the door behind them.
The interior of the squat and slovenly chamber showed evidence of a great many other tenants, all passing here and there through the course of the day. What little furniture there was, was as colorless as the ragged child at the door. In the dismal gloom of the room, cold as the outdoors and never having been lit by candle nor lamp, Arcee and June found themselves seated upon musty cushions for a narrative of the most piteous hues. The girl clasped her hands behind her back and spoke quickly and clearly, like a schoolgirl reciting a lesson.
"My name is Liú Mo Li," she said, tossing her dark hair, "If you try to send me back, I will fight you and kill you. I can, you know. I am very strong: the shopkeeper says it is so!"
As it happened, she was the only child of an unscrupulous pair of merchants who, being in some trouble with the law in their own country, stowed away aboard a cargo ship bound for London, where they intended to sell opium to the desperate in Soho. By Mo Li's accounts, her mother had always borne a great dislike for her only child, as she had hoped for a son and had been granted a daughter instead. From her earliest memories, she was always being forced to beg for food or charity, or act the prop in some melodrama meant to distract the police, or climb in through someone's window to let her parents in. Finally, she grew tired of her thief's life and - just as the ship docked in the bay - up she'd jumped from the hold and called out to the captain that there were stowaways aboard.
Before either sailors or her parents could catch hold of her, she'd neatly skipped to the rail and dropped over, swimming to shore. It was there that Mo Li had met the shopkeeper, who helped immigrants to settle in, and the woman had agreed to keep watch for the girl's parents and warn her if they should come looking for her.
All the while that she narrated, the two women leaned forward and exchanged looks of surprise and unconcealed interest. Each made what she deemed to be an appropriate exclamation of pity or sympathy as the story called for it, and when Arcee heard how the girl had outsmarted her villainous progenitors, she threw back her head and laughed.
"Bravo!" she cried, "Bravo, my girl. I must say, you are very brave to have come through all that yourself. Do your parents still hunt for you? I cannot imagine why they should, if they dislike you so very much."
"It is for revenge, what else?" answered their young hostess, "I have caused them great trouble, and they wish to pay me out for it. I would not have thought they had even the slightest chance of catching me, but my father has begun selling to a powerful man, and now he has help." She crossed her thin arms and scowled, and a touch of color bloomed in her cheeks. "Always I see the bird, watching me. I would stamp upon its wings if I could catch it!"
Widow Darby thought this sounded far too much like an agent of the House of Kaon, though she did not say so. It was common knowledge that the houses of Prime and Kaon were rivals, but no one outside the houses truly knew how deep the uncharitable feelings ran. If it were to become known that each had assassins that roamed the city looking for opportunities to silence the other, there was no telling what chaos might erupt. And so, with a rustle of cloth, Mrs. Darby stood and tucked a stray wisp of black hair behind her ear.
"Well, my dear," said she, "I think perhaps you ought to come along with us. What you have told us may be of interest to Lord Prime, and I'm quite certain he would not approve of us just leaving you here, where you might be discovered."
Ignoring what few feeble protests the girl put up for politeness' sake, Miss d'Iacon and Mrs. Darby each took hold of one of her arms and escorted her out into the courtyard. At every moment, they found themselves nervously watching rooftops, or turning sharply to look into the alleys and by-streets as they made their way back to the row of shops. As Miss d'Iacon called for a cab, each felt within her that touch of terror that creeps upon the mind in the darkest, loneliest hours of the night, even as the sun broke free of a cloud and beamed down on the shoppers.
At last, the coach arrived, and Mrs. Darby stepped in first, followed by Liú Mo Li, who was followed by Miss d'Iacon. And all the while, the typist kept her hand upon her bag, for she was ready to pull her pistol from its hiding-place should an agent of Kaon or one of the treacherous parents make so bold as to try to snatch the girl in the broad daylight. She caught a glimpse of faces at a window as they passed: one narrow and pinched, all her vitriol and temper seeming to come out in her sharp cheekbones and pursed lips. The other had a heavily painted face, a mask polished many times over with glib lies and false kindness. Both stared down at the retreating cab and the women inside it with undisguised hatred.
"Well I think that you shall have to consider laying aside your petty vengeance for another day, Madam," said the first coldly, "For I have it on good authority that once the House of Prime has taken it upon themselves to scrape an urchin off the streets, they defend their bit of filth quite zealously."
"Perhaps the House of Kaon is not as powerful as it claims to be, if one little girl can so easily slip away from your spies," answered the second. To this, the first answered that the typist, Arcee d'Iacon, had become quite the thorn in the side of her operations, and that the brutish thugs of the lower ranks of Kaon were really very useless in trying to kill her, as they all balked at being given orders by a woman to begin with.
"Then perhaps," the second said smoothly, "you should not ask a man to do the job at all. There are stories, my friend, of someone else who could. You need only promise her blood and she shall come."
"I, too, have heard these stories," Miss Clamat sniffed, "And I should like to keep her as far from the House as possible, if I can. If Lord Megatron's men continue to be thoroughly useless, I shall consider it. Until then, however, I suggest you remain silent on the matter." With that, they lapsed into silence and glared out at the retreating shape of the coach.
When the three escapees arrived at last at Prime Manor, their young rescue's jaw fell slack in utter astonishment, for she had never seen a house quite like Lord Prime's. Equal parts brash enthusiasm and slight trepidation, she made her way up the marble staircase to the front door, all her thoughts eclipsed by a kind of nervous energy. Would they take her in? Have her parents arrested? What if they turned her out on the street? When the doors opened to reveal Winston - who raised both eyebrows comically and called out to the ostlers in the front hall that "another stray" had wandered in - her fears began to prove themselves unfounded. She was quickly ushered in, where Mrs. Darby began to explain to the young men - she learned that they were called Wheels and Brogan - their delicate situation.
"Ah, that's a shame lass," the one called Brogan said. He tugged his forelock in lieu of a cap and gave her a wide and sympathetic smile. "Why don't ye come away and get yerself some tea, like? The master's out at present, but you can be sure he'll say the same as any here: you're perfectly welcome, you are." He offered her his arm, and after moment's hesitation, she took it. Then she beamed, quite unexpectedly, and declared him to be a friend - her very first.
It was soon decided - and confirmed upon Lord Optimus's return - that they couldn't very well send Mo Li back to the place she had lived in, knowing it was being watched. "If it were not that the Foiche family has not the room, I would have asked them to make a place for you to stay," the impressive man admitted. He handed the girl a cup of tea and smiled at her, sending the last of her doubts away. "As it stands now, I'm afraid I cannot have you living here at the manor without a chaperone. It would be dreadfully improper." Until he could manage to make certain that the Liús could not harm anyone again, a safe and secreted place would have to be found to harbor her.
"Miss d'Iacon," said the nobleman, "Would you be so kind as to let this young woman stay with you? You have room in your flat, do you not?"
It was not difficult to convince Miss d'Iacon, for she was reminded somewhat of her own childhood in the defiant and self-reliant attitude of Mo Li, and so it was that she came to take the girl in. As she was still Lord Prime's secretary, Miss d'Iacon was at the Manor every day. She could not leave Mo Li alone, where she might be found, and so she brought her along with her. It did not take her long to meet the other children, and though she was slightly at odds with the Foiches'' two daughters, being of a rather more fiery temperament than they, she got along famously with Raphael and Jack, and they were quite inseparable.
There was, naturally, always the danger that she might be discovered, but Mo Li did not fear for her life as she once had. Upon her fourteenth birthday, papers were drawn up stating that Mo Li was Lord Prime's ward, alongside the Darby boy and the Foiche children - who each had the man as godfather - which offered her a greater degree of protection than before.
And for a time, all was peaceful.