Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirty Nine: Yes

In late April 1881--just a couple of weeks before Ellini was to arrive in Oxford--Jack saw a book called Helen of Camden on display at a railway book-stall.

He picked it up with innocent curiosity, almost dropped it when he realized what it was about, flicked impatiently to the end to see if the author knew any more than he did, and then, when the strangling anxiety had eased its grip, he ended up laughing.

It turned out to be a very amusing book, and well worth the sixpence he paid for it. Robin had been turned into a kind of Byronic hero. The number of times he took his shirt off in the course of the narrative – or even tore it off, in a fit of passion – was incompatible with both climate and common-sense. When he finally abducted Ellini from the convent, he threw her over his horse and galloped off into the moonlight--in Camden, where there were people on the streets at all hours of the night! How far could you get on horseback with a screaming girl thrown over your lap? And this had been written by a Cambridge Professor!

And Ellini swooned a lot – both over his shirtlessness and over the murder of her family-members. If this Professor had only taken the trouble to meet Ellini, she would have seen – because it was apparent from every move she made – that she had been excruciatingly conscious the whole time.

But the author had got one thing right about Ellini, if only by accident: her infuriating interiority. For all the swooning, her lack of tears seemed to have convinced the author that she was a conniving schemer.

The argument – and it wasn't a bad one, if you didn't know her – was that she had deliberately used her ability to fascinate men, in the hopes that one of them would kill Robin and get her revenge – while loving him passionately all the time, due to the aforementioned shirtlessness.

Jack came into the story as just one of these manipulated men – who had not only failed to kill Robin, but failed to take Ellini's mind off him. It was the only part of the book that wasn't funny.

Still, by early May, the furore caused by Helen of Camden had died down. The rumours that Miss Syal had come out of hiding in order to sue the author had been disproved, and Oxford life had returned to normal for Jack. 

Only his own battered copy – stashed away in his bedroom, and hidden with as much care as Lily Hamilton's last letter – served to remind him of the brief, bittersweet interlude.

This was why he felt a panicky lurch in his stomach when Sergei glanced up from his paper one morning over breakfast and said, "Tell me, how well do you remember Ellini Syal?"

Jack hadn't been prepared for it. He raised his head so quickly that he felt something jar in his neck, and said, "What? Why? What's happened?"

"She sent us a letter."

"No, she didn't." It was a stupid, knee-jerk thing to say, but he was feeling rattled.

Sergei gave him a polite frown. "Could we go back a little? You know my brain doesn't work as quickly as yours. It works much better, of course, but not as quickly. Ellini Syal – former inhabitant of Pandemonium, erstwhile paramour of Robin Cr--"

"I know who she is," said Jack, doing his best to shout down that last sentence. "She did not send you a letter!"

"Why does it seem so unlikely?"

"Show it to me," he said, holding out a hand.

Jack was in no mood to wait patiently downstairs while Sergei ambled to his office and back again, so he followed him up the staircase and fidgeted about, while Sergei fumbled in his desk-drawer for the letter.

"Here," he said, proffering it to Jack. "It's not very gallant to offer up a young lady's correspondence for general inspection, but, as she talks mainly about chemistry, I expect the rules of propriety can be relaxed in this case."

Jack snatched it. And then, without taking his eyes off the paper, he sank into a chair.

His first impulse, for some unknown reason, was to laugh. "Oh my god. You have no idea how strange it is to see that writing saying ordinary things – like 'dear Sir' or 'yours faithfully'."

"What does it usually say?"

"It usually says 'You don't need sleep – stay up with me until your eyes stop working'." He turned over the letter, still chuckling with shock. "Where's she been all this time?"

"Cherry Hinton gaol."

"Is that a women's prison?" Jack asked, before he could stop himself. He saw Sergei's expression and waved a hand dismissively. "I'm sorry, that's not really relevant – I just – you know--"

"I'm afraid not," said Sergei, smiling with genial bewilderment. "Any grip I had on the conversation has long since disintegrated. However, I daresay most of it is none of my business. The only thing I would like to know from you is whether it would be advisable to receive her here. Is she dangerous?"

Jack stared at him. What could he say? She's beautiful and evil and gentle and gorgeous and pitiless, and she killed me – she literally killed me. I might still be walking around and talking, but she killed me. Whatever this is, with its daily pills, nightly girls, and constant, aching boredom, it's nothing like life as I lived it in India – or before India, when there was still hope.

But he couldn't say that because, if he did, Sergei wouldn't let her come, and he had to see her again, didn't he? There were all kinds of very good reasons why he shouldn't, but none of them carried much weight at the moment.

She might hurt him, of course. But right now, in the midst of all this boredom, pain seemed like a wonderful, exotic luxury. 

He might hurt her – that was an argument that still meant something. He might lose control and... well, he didn't like to think about it in too much detail – and, even if he didn't get violent, he might still harass her. He might hang around outside her door and make her feel hunted. That would be bad enough.

But he wasn't angry anymore – he wasn't. Robin was dead, so there was nobody to be angry with. He couldn't exactly like her after what she'd done, but the world was full of people he couldn't wholeheartedly like. There had been some objectionable things about Joel and Alim – there were some more-than-objectionable things about Alice – and he got on with them well enough.

Jack was a practical man. He had long since come to the conclusion that, even though he could no longer idealize Ellini the way he used to, he would never stop loving her. She was like life – it was cruel and exhausting, but you went on living anyway, because it was you and you were it, and you'd never get a chance to be yourself otherwise.

"No," he said at last. "She's not dangerous."

"Then we should tell her to come to Oxford?"

"Yes," said Jack, shaking his head.

"Yes?"

"Yes."

"Only, you're shaking your head as you say it – you do realize that, I suppose?"

"No, I'm not," said Jack, nodding.

Sergei made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. He passed a weary hand over his forehead. "I'm going to ask you one more time," he said, "and I should warn you that I'm going to take your spoken reply in preference to any gestures. Should we tell her to come here?"

Jack made an effort, and held his head steady as he spoke. "Yes," he said. 

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