A Marvellous Light

He could breathe into the knots in the back of his neck. And he could feel out the edges of the aching, yearning space in his life that no amount of quiet and no number of words had yet been able to fill.
Edwin had no idea what he ached for, no real sense of the shape of his ideal future. He only knew that if every day he made himself a little bit better—if he worked harder, if he learned more, more than anyone else—he might find it.

He came here as other men went to gaming-rooms or brothels, orchestral performances or opium dens. Everyone had their own vice of relaxation. Edwin’s was just considered duller than most.

“Tell me the truth,” Robin said. “Is my fork going to take it upon itself to deliver my peas to my mouth?”

“Only if Belinda’s still feeling playful,” said Edwin. He led the way down the corridor, his own guidelight bobbing along with him, before Robin could decide if he was joking.

This light is spying on me,” Robin said.

“It’s a guidelight. It’s a charm tied to the room, and now to you. It’ll light your way if you want to go somewhere after dark.”

“Even if it’s only to dinner?”

“You might be glad of it on the way back.”

“Seems as though it’d make some of the after-dark activities of your typical house party rather more difficult to carry out in stealth, if everyone has one,” said Robin before he could seize control of his tongue.

There was a pause. Edwin glanced at his feet, then back up. No smile had appeared, but the irony was dancing in the blue of his eyes now.

“Tell it to stay, and it will stay,” he said.

Feeling utterly foolish, Robin turned to his guidelight. “Stay,” he ordered, and took an experimental step. The light began to drift back to the position just outside the room’s door, where it had been when Robin emerged. “Come to heel?” Robin suggested, to the light’s utter disinterest.

Robin shoved it all aside and straightened up. A second light had appeared, this one hovering over Edwin’s shoulder.

“I’m still not entirely sure I won’t trip over my feet, bang my head, and wake up to find it’s all been a dream,” Robin said. “But I suppose if pain was going to shake me out of it, it’d have done it by now.”

An ironic look widened Edwin’s eyes. “Endure the dream for a few days. I’ll have you back to your life as soon as I can.”

Of course he would. Robin was an off note—a book that had been thrown to the ground. Edwin wanted to tidy him back to where he belonged. That had been clear all along.

A fist-sized ball of creamy light like one of van Gogh’s stars hovered at the level of Robin’s eyes, helpfully off to one side so as not to blind him. When Robin stepped forward, it moved forward. When he halted, it halted.

Something larger than laughter and emptier than pain lodged between Robin’s ribs, a feeling that was new but felt, in an indefinable way, mundane. Human. He looked again at the ball of light—magic, magic—then screwed his eyes shut, leaned his arm against the wall and his head on his arm, and breathed like he was learning how.

“Is it the curse?” Edwin asked, behind him.

Robin flinched; he hadn’t heard Edwin’s door open or close. But he couldn’t dredge up any shame. His dignity had flown out the window somewhere between the attack of pain in the train carriage and rolling around in the dirt under the influence of Belinda’s arrow. And none of it was his own fault. He refused to feel bad about it.

He shook his head.

The arrow graze on his leg had already stopped bleeding. There was no time to have anything ironed. Most of the creases of Robin’s shirt were hidden by the black waistcoat and dinner jacket.

Which was what Robin was meant to be doing, he realised. Country hours and all that.

“Thank you, ah . . .”

“Peggy, sir.”

“Peggy.

In the room assigned to him, Robin ignored the bustling of the upstairs maid who was clearly doing her best to prepare a room on five minutes’ notice, and went to run his hands over the wallpaper.

Robin was following Edwin up the stairs and so had a perfect view of the way Edwin’s knuckles paled in a fist by his side, quickly released.

“Of course” was all Edwin said.

“Win,” said Robin, after a moment. His theory held: the knuckles whitened again. “Or not,” said Robin easily, “if you don’t care for it.”

A pause. “No, I don’t.”

“I’m surprised it’s not Eddie.”

They’d reached a landing; the footsteps of the servants transporting their bags were already receding down the corridor on the next level. Robin admired an Oriental-style vase in blue-and-white porcelain set atop a wooden display stand. He added, “Charlie, Trudie, Miggsy, and Billy. I’ll be lucky to escape the weekend without being Robbied or Bobbyed.”

“I did warn you.”