The Fox and the Hare Dream of an Island of Flowers

The situation was untenable.

Agatha, who aspired to a career in law, knew that the harbouring of a fugitive was an offence against the Queen’s grace. Additionally, it would have been difficult to explain why the fugitive’s corpse was in their living room; yes, the autopsy would have revealed that he had died by poison, but could it show that he had willingly drank the poison himself?

In that respect, Saimon and Agatha were in a terrible position, and she, despite her tender years, was able to grasp this immediately. It wasn’t as though Mags had any ill will towards the pair; if anything, she probably thought that the outsider had misrepresented his identity and was taking advantage of Saimon’s hospitality.

Somehow, that made the whole thing even worse.

In any case, as the Constable and Mags hovered over the corpse, Agatha grabbed her betrothed by the hand and began to run; and they did not stop until they arrived at the door of the one person in East Meadow who could possibly help them.

“That does sound like a predicament,” Harys Lane said, after the tale was recounted to him. “Any prosecutor would think they had a good chance of sending you both away, and they’d do it too. The public love stories of redemption via suicide, but the Queen’s Bench want to ensure that nobody can administer Her Majesty’s justice but the courts. To do so is a serious crime against the crown.”

“Even though we didn’t do it?” Agatha sulked.

“Especially if you didn’t do it,” Harys said, strangely cheerful; perhaps he was excited by this opportunity to act like an advocate. Saimon, personally, could not see the funny side.

The country solicitor gazed at the pair in front of him before speaking. It seemed as though he had been thinking of a plan. “Saimon, you weren’t born in the Queen’s Realm, were you?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Agatha began stormily, but Saimon calmed her down by cupping her hand, quivering either with anger or anxiety, in his.

“I was born in the Great Hanshi,” he answered impassively. “Why?”

“That complicates things,” Harys sighed. “The Great Hanshi, huh? That’d really be like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire…”

“Are you saying you want us to flee the country?” Agatha’s eyes lit up, and it wasn’t entirely obvious to Harys why.

“Yes,” he replied. “Unless you’d like to be live your life on the run here in the realm. It would be a temporary thing, of course, a few years maybe until I can clear your names. Wait!”

He ran to the other end of his study and began pulling at some drawers, before returning to the couch where they sat with a pamphlet in his hand. “This is Flower Island; the one kingdom in the realm that isn’t subject to the Queen’s justice. They have their own legal system there, you know. A collection of codes and an adversarial trial system left over from ancient times,” he explained, handing it to them.

They both took turns looking over the pamphlet, a concerted effort by the government to encourage industrialists who lived in the more urban parts of the realm to Flower Island, an inconvenient rock with its own established traditions and a contrary way of life. In truth, it didn’t sound particularly attractive to either of them, but it was certainly preferable to life in a gaol cell.

They looked at each other uncertainly.

“It could be a new start for the both of us. I could write,” Saimon said.

“Okay,” Agatha replied. “Anywhere with you.”

She didn’t sound like the girl from just the previous night; the one that just wanted to leave East Meadow and didn’t seem to care how she did it. Harys watched this scene approvingly and because he did not want to interrupt, suddenly stood up and sauntered over to his window. He pulled back the blind slightly and looked out at the scene outside, illuminated by the midday sun.

“It’s still too early,” he declared. “We’ll have to wait for nightfall. We’ll all pack into my automobile, drive up to Angler’s Port and get you two on a ship towards Flower Island. The grunts at the port might not even bother looking at your faces, you know, since they’re so desperate to get people to go there.”

The plan seemed like a good one, but there was still the problem of what to do while they waited. Harys’ wife had been brought into the loop, and being the kindly soul that she was, had agreed to keep the presence of the lovers as a secret. Harys himself seemed more than eager to help the pair, although it wasn’t until later that Saimon would find out why.

“He said you knew him,” Agatha pointed out. “The Doctor of Death, I mean.”

“We were in the same university. Different departments, of course, but we were similar enough in personality and hung around in the same circle.”

“Why was he so obsessed with finding the cure for Lambert’s fever? He was even wiling to use himself in his experiments…” Agatha’s words trailed off.

“He had a fiancée. I remember he introduced her to us,” Saimon was reminiscing now; Harys had settled down nearby to hear the backstory of the tragedy, and even his wife had scooted in at some point and sat alongside him. Their ears were primed, and their bright eyes belied their anticipation.

“Her name was Elsa Malone; a beautiful girl although some of us questioned the match. They were intellectually incompatible, we thought,” he began to laugh, as one does when recounting the good times. “You see, she was from Oxlade University!”

For those who are not in the know, Oxlade University and Camford University are the two preeminent educational institutions in the Queen’s Realm; although both had claims to superiority over the other – for example, Oxlade University was almost two hundred years older, but Camford University had produced more prime ministers, they were equally distinguished and prestigious in the eyes of anyone not associated with either school.

As such, Agatha, Harys and his wife, the aptly named Tulip, were able to laugh at the jape, a well needed one too considering the tension of their situation.

Saimon wiped a tear from his eye, and he now looked solemn. “They were supposed to be married, but it never happened. She got sick, you see. Lambert’s fever, as you might have guessed, and he did everything he could to save her. It didn’t work, but he continued working on a cure even after she passed. I suppose he felt guilty about not being able to save her. I don’t know when or where he got the idea about dreamvine…”

The room was silent as they processed this information – in the short time she had known him, Agatha had been vitriolic in her disposition to Walther Greaves, having written him off as a common murderer, but the conflicted look on her features now seemed to suggest regret. Harys and Tulip wore the expressions one would expect from people who had just finished a particularly tearjerking dime novel – watery eyes, and a barely perceptible quivering of the lower lip.

“This Downing that you mentioned…” it was Harys who broke the silence. “I’m guessing he lost a loved one to Lambert’s fever as well, then? After all, he also willingly took that poisonous concoction.”

Saimon looked uncertain. “I did meet Downing once,” he admitted. “A thoroughly brilliant man, but that brilliance almost guaranteed that he would be a lifelong bachelor. He did lose a sister to Lambert’s fever, though, a young girl called Annette. He was cut up about it, but not to the extent that Walther had been…” he trailed off dubiously.

“It sounds like you’re saying he wouldn’t have willingly participated in Walther’s experiments, dearest,” Agatha pointed out; the fact that she referred to him by his given name and not the moniker assigned to him by the papers indicated a softening of her attitude towards his memory.

“He certainly would have wanted to look for a cure,” Saimon replied. “Even if he hadn’t lost his sister to that damned disease, he might have ended up going down that path anyways. He wanted to do something big, to be a famous scientist like Swyft or Godfrey. No, he definitely would have participated in Walther’s research; but only God knows if he would have given his life for it.”

“I can’t tell if we should be sympathetic towards Walther or not,” she lowered her eyes.

“He was a complicated man, Agatha,” Saimon said. “And losing Elsa changed him terribly. You’ve never met the real Walther, you know, and if you had you wouldn’t think so badly of him. I was unkind to him too, back there, but only because I knew that that wasn’t my friend. Just a shadow, if even that.”

The room fell into silence once again, but it was broken again before it could become unbearable and from the strangest of sources. Unbeknownst to them, not even Harys, the mistress of the household had left the study at some point but had just reappeared; her sprightly form stood firmly by the door, a wooden spoon in her hands.

“I’m sure you’re all hungry. Come into the kitchen then, I’ve prepared a little supper.”