Wilde was in the dining room of his Tite Street home, cracking the top off a soft-boiled egg with a butter knife (a physical effort that made him wince) when the boys marched in, Cyril banging his drum and Vyvyan blowing his trumpet. The playwright was still dressed in his silk pajamas and dressing gown having only recently staggered from his bed.
“Boys! Boys! Boys!” he remonstrated as they began their third circuit of the breakfast table. “Please, march in another room at a greater remove. Papa is feeling particularly delicate this morning.”
Constance Wilde appeared at the open doorway, her eternal shadow, Robert Sheridan, lurking behind. Both wore hats and coats and were muffled up to go outside.
“Oscar!” Constance exclaimed, surprised to see him. “You did not spend the night at your club, after all?”
It was a remark he was expected to rise to, but Wilde felt as buoyant as an iron skillet. Rising was the last thing he was going to do. “Last evening I had a swimming lesson followed by a pleasure cruise down the Thames. I am still somewhat waterlogged.”
His wife’s expression betrayed her puzzlement, but she responded with an ironic laugh and said, “Robert and I are taking the boys to the park.”
“Excellent,” Wilde replied. “I suggest Hyde Park or St. James’s park.”
“Hyde Park? But that’s miles away.”
“Yes,” Wilde said. “Far out of earshot, I would wager.”
As he lifted his teacup, Constance noticed his bruised and gashed knuckles. “Oscar! Whatever happened to your hands? You look as if you’ve been fighting.”
Wilde paused a moment in sipping his tea and said, “My new ingénue refuses to learn her lines. I’m afraid it came down to fisticuffs.”
A stunned look swept Sheridan’s face, but Constance merely laughed and said, “He is joking, Robert. One of the many joys of being married to Oscar is that I get to enjoy the Wildean wit all day long.”
Constance and Sheridan left Wilde to his breakfast and went about the chore of squeezing two wriggling boys into winter woolens. The maid entered the breakfast room bearing the newspaper and the morning’s correspondence on a silver tray. The Irish wit’s digestion was not helped when he snatched up the paper and read the headline: “Anarchists to March upon London!”
The article was a catch-your-breath stream of hysteria detailing a planned mass march of socialists and their sympathizers scheduled to take place the very next day. He read as far as the second paragraph before tossing the paper down. He knew far more than the scattershot speculation of the Times reporter. A cream-yellow envelope caught his attention. It was addressed to him with no return address. When he slashed it open with a letter knife, a small photograph fluttered out and landed faceup on the table. It was the crinkled photograph of Vicente’s sister. Inside the envelope, he found a note scribbled in a crazed hand:
I cannot fathom how you are still alive. I warned you to stay away. Now I must make you unhappy.
The note was written in red ink and scrawled with a pentagram.
Wilde’s stomach churned with queasy dread. The note did not require a signature: he knew DeVayne’s mark when he saw it.
Constance, Sheridan, and the two boys were halfway out the front door when Wilde dashed from the breakfast room into the hallway.
“Stop!” he demanded.
“Whatever is it, Oscar?”
“You and the boys are to stay home.”
Constance was accustomed to Wilde’s role as casual, just-passing-through husband and father. Now, his adamant tone astonished her.
“Oh, you are joking again, Oscar—”
“I assure you I am in deadly earnest, Constance. You and the boys are to remain home. I forbid you to leave this house.” He glared at Robert Sheridan, who was hovering in the open door. “And you, Robert, must go home.”
“But, Constance and I—” Sheridan started to protest.
“Go home!” Wilde said and propelled him roughly across the threshold with a violent shove and banged the door shut in his face.
“Oscar! Are you mad? What is wrong? Have you forgot yourself?”
Wilde showed her a face she had never seen before in all their years of marriage. “No,” he said in a voice pitched to a low rumble. “I had forgot, but now it seems I have finally remembered myself.” He gripped his wife’s hand with frightening force. “Things are happening, Constance. It is not safe to go out.”
“Is this about last night?”
“I will not distress you by sharing the horrid details, but know this: there is a darkness descending upon this country. For once you must do as I bid and keep the children and yourself at home. I have never demanded anything from you in this marriage.” His eyes blazed with intent. “But now I am demanding this.”
Constance Wilde’s eyes grew wide. Her lips quivered. “Yes, Oscar,” she replied in a torn voice.
Wilde turned to the waiting boys, recomposing his face into a fatherly smile. “But as you boys are all dressed up, Papa will take you into the garden and play cricket. And then we shall come inside, drink hot cocoa, and I will compose a new fairy story for you.”
The boys cheered and jumped up and down with glee. “Smashing!” Cyril cried. “What will our story be about, Papa?”
“Yes,” Vyvyan echoed. “What kind of story?”
Wilde considered a moment. “It will be a story about a beautiful young man who sins against nature… and becomes a monster.”
When Conan Doyle stumbled into the drawing room, still struggling to fasten the studs of his collar, his wife was propped stiffly in the corner of an armchair. Miss Jean Leckie perched upon the Doyles’ excruciatingly uncomfortable horsehair couch. Both women had teacups sitting in their laps, but neither seemed to be drinking. Or chatting. Or making eye contact.
Or giving any indication they both occupied the same room.
“Arthur,” his wife said. “You have finally bestirred yourself. I have been entertaining your city friend, Miss Leckie. I am afraid to say your description did her a great injustice, she is in no way a rather plain, or spinsterly type.”
His wife drowned a cruel smile in her teacup. Jean Leckie fixed him with a look that pleaded help me.
Conan Doyle shifted his feet, dithering. Rather than take the unoccupied seat on the couch next to Miss Leckie, he drew up a hard-back chair and sat in the no-man’s-land between the two. “Oh, I don’t think I said any such thing, Touie.”
“Yes, you did, Arthur. I remember it distinctly. Plain. Spinsterly. Those were your exact words. So when Miss Leckie showed up at our front door unannounced, bag in hand like a homeless vagrant, I could not imagine who this striking beauty was.”
Conan Doyle colored. His wife was making them both squirm. Jean Leckie dropped her eyes to the rug, face burning with shame. The teacup in her trembling hand chinked against its saucer.
He could see where the situation was likely to lead and decided that candor was the only path. He rose and stood with one hand on the chair back. “I must explain why I asked Miss Leckie here. It is not for the reason you imagine. Nor could ever hope to imagine. I urged her to join us here because it is no longer safe in London. For her. For myself. For no one.”
“Whatever do you mean, Arthur?” Louise Doyle asked.
“I mean that our nation teeters on the brink of revolution. Even as I speak, there is a secret struggle between opposing factions to assassinate the queen and replace our government with a new regime.”