The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

The American took the unfortunately vacant seat across from her and announced, in a voice loud enough that they probably heard him at the base of M. Eiffel’s ridiculous and majestic mooring tower, that he was Enoch J. Drebber of Salt Lake City, Deseret, and he was very pleased to make her acquaintance. The emphasis he put on “very” was obscene. “And I to make yours,” she said with the cold politeness that was only one step removed from How dare you.

“Oh, splendid!” said Crow. He was clearly sincere, his wings half spreading before he caught himself, and although I knew his enthusiasm was more likely for my expertise than my companionship, I could not help being warmed.

I always said “thank you” to the Angel of the Baker Street Station when he extended his wings (sparrow wings, brown and barred) to clear me a path; the shock on his face was worth the irritation of his help.

Names, of course, are of the most desperate importance to angels; they don’t properly exist without them.

“It’s a bit like a cremation urn. This was an angel, once. I certainly don’t like the idea of it being mucked about by a bunch of ham-handed constables. But it’s mostly, I don’t know, symbolic.”

Crow was in an odd way an infinitely undemanding, and thus restful, companion. If I wanted to say My leg hurts like a bonfire, Crow would not judge me as a whiner or a malingerer; he had no expectations about maintaining a decent reticence, nor any experience of the stoicism I had been raised to expect of myself.

I did the only thing I could and rescued the teapot from certain destruction.

There isn’t a medical doctor alive who can restrain his curiosity, which I think is the true lesson of both Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I had known many young soldiers in love with the Angel of Scutari, but this was the first suggestion I had ever heard that an angel could love back.

When Stangerson was unfellowshipped — it’s like excommunication, but not as bad — not long after, I knew he was the one who had destroyed Lucy. Not even Brigham Young could stomach destroying an angel.”

“I like that,” Crow said. “An angel of the res publica. That practically sounds respectable. I shan’t worry about your galoshes, then.” “Thank you,” I said, and I meant it from the bottom of my heart.

Crow proceeded with lively curiosity to ask her about being a governess, and she found, as I had, that he was extremely easy to talk to, not in the slightest judgmental, and eager for details by which most people were bored.

Crow and Miss Morstan continued talking like old friends. I thought about what Crow had said, that you never met the same Nameless twice. The idea was both eerie and sad. I wondered if the memories were truly lost or if there

I thought “prospered” was a nice choice of word, vague and agencyless and so much better than words like “despoiled” or “plundered.”

“If. . .” He broke off. I was halfway down the casualty lists when he blurted, “If you have sexual congress with me, will you stop being mad?”

“I don’t want you to be mad at me,” Crow explained unhappily. “I thought maybe — ” “That is not what sexual congress is for!” “It isn’t?” “No! Who gave you that horrible idea?”

“My orderly saved me,” I said and realized I no longer resented him for it.

I had scarcely closed the street door behind me when Crow came barreling down the stairs and enveloped me in a hug that seemed like a combination of entanglement in a deck chair and assault by a pack of feather-dusters.

“In Moscow,” Madame Silvanova said to me, “the political prisoners are given to the vampires.”

“No!” I said. “No, that’s not it. Mary, I am. . . ​I am my father’s only daughter. My Christian names are Joanna Henrietta.”

“Saint Augustine,” I said, recognizing the quote. “If you don’t feel sexual desire and someone coerces you into having sexual relations with them, I don’t see how it’s anything other than rape.”

“You know,” I said, “the worst thing about pretending to be a man is that my name has to be a secret.”

“When you guessed that the H stood for a variant of Henry. It’s for Henrietta.” He was looking at me shyly, sidelong. “What does the J stand for?” “Joanna,” I said, and I felt something vague, foolish, but undeniably heavy roll off my shoulders. “My name is Joanna.” “Thank you,” he said softly, and I knew that he, of all people, understood.

But Crow said, very seriously, “Did she tell you not to give your full name to anyone you don’t trust?” “Yes, sir,” said Lucy, turning her head enough to regard him with one wary eye. “Good,” said Crow. “Your grandmother is right. Your real name has power. I promise I will give the envelope back to you if you let me look at it.”

“And that makes no sense, either,” said Hebron. “If Effie wanted to leave me, she would tell me to my face, and she would never go back to her father. He didn’t even send Lucy a christening present.” “I wouldn’t have wanted it,” the little girl said firmly, and made her father laugh.

There was a red rose pinned to her jacket, and for some reason that and the packet of lozenges clutched in her left hand stayed with me more vividly than anything else.

“It’s. . . ​complicated,” Crow said. I said, “Most things involving families are.”

“I missed you,” Crow said, almost indignantly. I startled myself by saying, “I missed you, too,” and it was worth it for his smile.

“I know. I. . . ​oh, it doesn’t matter. But to be alone and friendless as a man is still far better than to be alone and friendless as a woman.”

“Well,” I said when our visitor was gone, “I guess you’re stuck with me.” “I think you’ve got that backward, too,” Crow said, and smiled like sunrise after the nightmare-dark.