“What is it?” I inquired, catching a little of Mr. Pennybaker’s enthusiasm.
“The king’s ass!” he said in a delighted whisper.
“Indeed?” I managed.
He nodded, his spectacles bobbing on his face, the tufts of hair waving madly. “The king’s painted African ass!” he exclaimed.
Stoker wrenched the last board free and there it was. It was unlike any animal I had ever encountered. I peered at its plain hindquarters, its sturdy equine bones, the flourish of stripes upon its forequarters. “That is almost a zebra,” I observed.
Stoker smiled. “Almost.”
“It is a quagga,” Mr. Pennybaker pronounced in tones of rapture. His brows trembled a little, perhaps in ecstasy, I reflected.
“Equus quagga quagga,” Stoker said to me. “Related to but not precisely a zebra. From the plains of the southern part of Africa. The first in this country belonged to George III.”
“You see,” Mr. Pennybaker explained, “the king and his queen, Charlotte, were quite interested in natural history. The queen received as a wedding present her own painted ass, but that was a full zebra, a she-ass. The poor thing’s mate died en route from Africa,” he said mournfully. “Otherwise, we might have bred them here.”
“It was attempted,” Stoker told me. “The queen’s zebra was crossed with a donkey and something quite similar to a quagga was produced. But the king was given a proper quagga. It eventually died, and its remains were thought lost for decades.”
“Until I found them!” crowed Mr. Pennybaker. He moved around his specimen, peering into its eyes. “I do not know what to say, my good fellow. I look into his eyes and I would think she lives again,” he marveled.
Stoker said nothing, but I could feel the surge of satisfaction within him. He took tremendous gratification in his work, and this specimen was something of which he could be rightfully proud.
“What state was it in when you found it?” I asked Mr. Pennybaker.
His expression was aghast. “A ruin, my dear lady. A ruin. I cannot think how Mr. Templeton-Vane has resurrected him, but he is a veritable magician. I had only a hide to give him, and that a moth-eaten relic. Not a single bone, not an eyelash remained! And from that he has given me . . . this.” He broke off, admiring his trophy again.
I turned to Stoker. “When did you do this?”
He shrugged. “It was my primary commission whilst you were in Madeira. I took apart a few zebras and donkeys to assess the skeletal structures and build an armature. Then I sculpted the body, mounted it, and made the necessary repairs in the hide,” he said, as if it were as simple as making a cup of tea. “There was nothing left to do by the time you returned except finish the eyes.” One of the most interesting—and gruesome—parts of Stoker’s job was the creation of the eyeballs for his mounts. He trusted no one else with their painting, preferring to take a fine sable brush and finish the task himself. This particular specimen looked out with a watchful expression, her gaze fixed on a distant point on the horizon, as careful as one would expect a herd animal to be upon the grassy waves of the African plains.
“It is a marvel,” I told him.
“A marvel?” Mr. Pennybaker said, blinking furiously. “It is a miracle! My dear lady, do you realize that this creature is now extinct?”
“Is it really?”
Stoker shrugged. “There may be a few left in the African interior, but none in European captivity. The last one died a few years ago and the remains were not saved.”
“A tragedy!” Mr. Pennybaker said, his brows waving furiously, like the antennae of an angry beetle. “A crime!”
“Well, at least you have this one,” I soothed.
He nodded, turning once more to his prize. “This is far in excess of my imaginings,” he said solemnly. “And it calls for a celebration—a toast!”
* * *
• • •
When Mr. Pennybaker proposed marking the occasion of the quagga’s arrival with a toast, I expected a glass of sherry, sticky and sickly sweet, poured from a dusty bottle and offered up in a cordial glass of some antiquity.
Instead there was French champagne of a decidedly extravagant vintage, poured into the finest crystal and—at one point—my shoe. I will admit that Mr. Pennybaker’s high spirits were infectious, and although Stoker enjoyed a glass or two of the refreshing beverage, the rest of the bottles were consumed by Mr. Pennybaker and myself with giddy enthusiasm. We talked long into the night about the state of natural history, opera, the burgeoning threat of a unified Germany, and shoes.
“It takes a woman of great distinction to wear a shoe such as this,” he pronounced as he slid the black kidskin slipper from my foot. “It is nunlike in its simplicity. But note here the delicate curve of the heel, the austerity of the little strap across the instep. It is poetry! A sonnet in shoe leather,” he said, tipping the last of the champagne into it. He sipped and smacked his lips.
Stoker sighed, rising. “I think it is time we said good night,” he suggested. It took another two glasses before Mr. Pennybaker and I agreed, and we exchanged Continental kisses on both cheeks as we parted.
“What a darling little man!” I murmured into Stoker’s chest as we settled into the carriage for the ride home. “Pity about his stuffed kittens, though.”
Stoker’s chest rumbled under my cheek and it was a moment before I realized he was laughing. “Go to sleep, Veronica. I will wake you when we are home.”
* * *
• • •
In point of fact, he did not wake me when we arrived home. I woke alone and dressed in the clothes from the night before with a pounding headache and a taste in my mouth like a decaying wolverine. Having not reached my bed until the small hours of the morning, I rose much later than was my custom. I washed and dressed and made my way to the Belvedere, the enormous freestanding ballroom where the Rosemorran Collection was housed. It was both workspace and refuge for Stoker and for me. Amongst its riot of paintings, statues, specimens, and artifacts, we found occupation and joy. How happy I was to lose myself once more amid the splendid chaos! It was as if someone had looted a particularly erudite and accomplished city and carried home the spoils for us to explore. (Which, if I am honest, is not far from the facts. The previous Earls of Rosemorran had been devoted to the notions of empire and colonialism, which we must now find repugnant. It is a tribute to my own hypocrisy that I could simultaneously appreciate the collections and deplore the method of their assembly.)
It is my earnest belief that much physical affliction may be overcome by studiously ignoring it, and so—in spite of my headache and slightly sour stomach—I ate. As was my habit at breakfast, I took the meal at my desk. Food had been carried down by one of the maids and left atop a moldering sarcophagus—an imperfect specimen of the Greco-Roman period of Egyptian occupation. I consumed a hearty plate of the now tepid offerings and the morning edition of the Daily Harbinger. It was not the most elevated of London periodicals, to be sure. From its lurid headlines to its unnecessarily graphic illustrations, it was designed to appeal to the lowest of impulses. But I had good reason for reading it. The newspaper frequently displayed the byline of one J. J. Butterworth, a gifted and audacious reporter who had crossed our path during a particularly challenging investigation into an Egyptological curse.* I would have deplored Butterworth’s penchant for the purplest of prose, but I could not deny the arch wit, the unparalleled grasp of facts, and the ability to convey them in sharp, succinct fashion. The fact that Butterworth was a woman attempting to carve a career for herself in a distinctly masculine world appealed to me; I, too, had often published under my initials in order to preserve the incognita of my sex. My natural sympathies lay with her—so long as she kept her knife away from me and mine.