Circus of Wonders

by Elizabeth Macneal

  Air squeals so loudly that Peggy’s latest hired baby begins to bawl, and the basket lifts. She has practised this, Nell tells herself, and each evening has run smoothly. She has soared and soared until the wings have made small cuts in her shoulder blades. But still – her stomach lurches as she is wrenched up, feet pedalling air, rope swinging from the underbelly of the balloon. She tries to find that steady balance where her body is held flat. Above her, Toby is in the basket and he nudges her ropes with his hands, sets her rocking. It is a careful operation; she must not tangle herself on the lines that tether the balloon to the ground.

  ‘Here she is! The Queen of the Moon and Stars is appearing – her very skin speckled with the constellations that exist within her command –’

  An ache in her shoulders, the dig of metal in her armpit. Her ears sing. And then, a jolt, as the ropes holding the balloon stretch taut. What would happen if the stakes weakened, if the balloon floated loose? She pictures strings snapping, air rushing about her, landing in a tangle of bone and metal. She pictures herself borne into the night sky, over a whole city, swinging beneath the basket.

  A gasp. She can see them now – rows of faces turning to watch her, hands paused halfway to mouths. Some stand on the benches to see her more easily. They make her evanescent, just by looking. There: she has pulled herself flat, her stomach held taut, legs kicking, an illusion of effortlessness. She pulls on the lever and her wings creak, flip-flapping on her back. Toby pushes her rope further, and then she is soaring in widening arcs, swimming back and forth. She smiles. She cannot help it. A gurgle breaks from her. As wind rushes about her, it reminds her of the pull of the current, how she let herself be sucked along with it. She flies wider, terror in her gut. The crowd shrinks until she can believe it is just her and Charlie, how she’d lark about in the water to make him laugh. ‘Look at me,’ she’d say, turning a handstand, wriggling her toes. The figures she’d cut, the way she’d kick her legs, how she’d stop and check that he was still enjoying her little show. Sometimes she’d jump from the high rocks just to scare him.

  My father sold me –

  Her gut clenches and she swallows bile. Her brother was in on the money, she thinks, he is in America now –

  ‘Nellie Moon,’ a woman shouts.

  It is a name she has never heard before.

  Someone echoes it, and soon the crowd is chanting it, cheering it.

  ‘Nellie Moon, Nellie Moon, Nellie Moon!’

  They pull themselves to their feet, hands slapping like seals. She keeps her toes pointed. If she squints, she can see the Thames behind them, the lanterns of night boats and fishermen, church steeples like a hundred masts at harbour.

  London lives below her, around her. London: a fairy-tale place, a location she scarcely believed in, and now its great arms cradle her. She wakes each morning to find it shining through her wagon.

  It is time for her to speak the lines from The Tempest which close the show, and she hurls them into the night, words which she doesn’t fully understand but which are now as familiar as her own name.

  ‘Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

  As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

  Are melted into air, into thin air:

  And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

  The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,

  The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

  Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

  Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

  As dreams are made on; and our little life

  Is rounded with a sleep.’

  Applause, thundering. Someone throws flowers into the sky. A bouquet dips and falls. She watches these people, grown fat on wonder. They have seen a giant juggle, a bearded woman chirrup like a blackbird, a dwarf ride a miniature pony, tumblers and contortionists, a fire-eater and dancing poodles, and she is the finale. They admire her, want to be her. All her life, she has held herself like a bud, so small and tight and voiceless. She has not realized the potential that lies within her, the possibility that she might unfurl, arms thrown wide, and take up space in the world.

  As the labourers pull her and the balloon down, she has the giddying sensation that, for her whole life, the earth has been turning while she stayed still. Now she is in the midst of things. Now her life is beginning.

  It is only when her feet are on the ground that she notices the pain, blooming across her shoulders, under her arms. There is blood on her doublet from the cut of the wings.

  ‘You did it again,’ Stella says, and they link hands, laugh. The clown Huffen Black pats her on the shoulder.

  ‘You should have seen it! The way you rose up there!’ Brunette says, her neck held forwards as if to shrink herself.

  ‘There’s a pig roasting,’ Violante says, ‘and sausages and ale.’

  It is the summer solstice and the trees around the circus have been decorated to look like a hothouse. Pineapples and watermelons, artificial greenery draped from poles. Now it is dark, the papier-mâché seams are concealed, and the gentle light of candles and variegated lamps hides the trick.

  Her body is alive with excitement from the show, her stomach too knotted to be hungry. She follows Stella to the shade of the wagons and sits on the blanket Peggy lays out. Brunette begins to plait Nell’s hair, hands tugging at her scalp. She closes her eyes briefly, snaps them open to find three boys staring at them.

  ‘Want a brace of lead to go with that eyeful?’ Stella bellows, lifting her pistol, and they laugh as the boys run.

  ‘You must have been a fearsome sight in Varna,’ Peggy says.

  ‘I liked to be in the thick of it. To carry two pistols tucked in my belt.’ Stella mimes riding, firing her fingers. ‘I’d sit with the other women on Cathcart’s Hill and watch the fighting for days. Dash had this beautiful white charger. I loved watching him. I always sought him out, even before I’d met him. He was a favourite among us.’ She reaches to fill up Peggy’s glass, the barrel just out of the little woman’s reach.

  ‘I can do it myself,’ Peggy snaps.

  ‘I was only trying to help,’ Stella says.

  ‘I’m not a child,’ Peggy says, snatching her glass. She turns to Brunette. ‘Abel was searching for you earlier.’

  Brunette pulls too hard on the plait and Nell winces. ‘I know.’

  ‘What’s that look for?’ Stella asks. She begins to tickle Brunette. ‘You’ve got a secret. I can tell. What is it? What is it now?’

  Brunette wriggles free, swats at Stella. ‘Stop it,’ she gasps.

  ‘Tell me,’ Stella says.

  ‘Fine, fine.’ She smooths her dress where it has rumpled. ‘Promise you won’t mock me?’

  ‘I’d never mock you,’ Stella says with faux innocence. ‘It isn’t my concern if your lover is as tall as your armpit –’

  Brunette glares at her.

  ‘I promise, I promise,’ Stella says.

  ‘What is it?’ Peggy asks.

  Brunette takes a breath. ‘He wants to marry me.’

  Stella freezes, Peggy’s smile falling away. ‘What?’ she demands.

  ‘Lawks,’ Peggy whispers. ‘You won’t, will you?’

  ‘He only wants to show you,’ Stella says. ‘Turn you into the next Julia Pastrana.’

  ‘You’re just jealous that somebody loves me,’ Brunette says, her eyes narrowing.

  Stella scoffs. ‘I wouldn’t trade this life for anything. You should be careful, throwing away what you’ve built.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t want crowds of people staring at me all day. Maybe I just want a little place to live, a place where I can be.’

  ‘Are there fairies, too, in this dreamland? And a moon made of cheese? It’s easy to say you want a place to live, but who’ll pay for it? You think a factory or a fine house will hire you? Look at Peggy. The world decided she didn’t fit, that she wasn’t useful. This is a better life th
an anything she had before.’

  ‘Don’t speak for me –’ Peggy begins, but Stella talks over her.

  ‘You’ll be too tall, and they’ll have you out on your ear as soon as you’re sick, when your bones hurt –’

  ‘Who’s Julia Pastrana?’ Nell asks, partly to interrupt the argument.

  ‘The bear-woman,’ Stella says. She puts on a showman’s silky accent. ‘“The embalmed nondescript”.’

  ‘She had a beard, just like Stella,’ Brunette says.

  ‘Stop it,’ Peggy snaps. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘Who was she?’ Nell asks.

  Stella sighs. ‘I forget you used to live beneath a rock.’

  Nell listens as Stella explains that Julia was a woman with thick hair all over her face and body, whose husband showed her as the Baboon Lady and the Dog-Faced Woman. When she and her baby died in the days after childbirth, her husband saw a richer opportunity – a chance to tour her dead body. How, Nell wants to ask, but Stella keeps talking, in a voice so cool she might merely be saying Isn’t the day a pretty one? Julia was preserved, Stella explains: stuffed, dressed in her old red gown that she herself had sewn so carefully. Her tiny hairy baby was placed in a bell jar beside her, clothed in a little suit. They appeared all over Europe, in London too.

  A pause. Nell swallows. Her husband did this.

  ‘I saw her,’ Stella says. ‘I went to see her and her baby. I don’t know why. At Regent Gallery four years ago. Dickens had visited, and Collins too.’ She lights a match and holds it against her leg, singeing the hair. ‘And don’t look like that. You asked. I could tell you stories just as terrible about masters and drudges in the factories.’ She shrugs. ‘We all chose this life, didn’t we, even if not at first?’ She turns to Brunette. ‘You left home for it. And Peggy sought out Jasper when she was barely twelve, begged him to make her the next Lavinia Warren. I’d do it all again. Where else can we be celebrated for who we are?’

  ‘For how we look, not who we are,’ Brunette says.

  ‘Rot. I was a hungry gutterling, not worth a gentleman’s spit. And because of this, the source of all my powers –’ she smiles and pulls on her beard – ‘I’ve been to Vienna and Paris and Moscow, and done as I please. I’ve made enough money to make my mother turn in her grave. I could give you a thousand names of wonders whose lives are richer, bigger, brighter, because of shows like this.’ She reaches for Nell’s arm, holds the lit match against it to singe the hairs. Nell watches the woman’s hand on her wrist, the white flame. She doesn’t flinch. A fizzing, her nostrils filled with sour smoke. ‘In America, some of the wonders earn five hundred dollars a week. A week!’

  ‘Stella can talk a brave talk,’ Brunette says, with a quick laugh. ‘But she’s frightened of naturalists and physicians. That’s why she mentions Julia all the time. She thinks they want her face. That they’ll flay it and float it in gin when she’s dead.’

  ‘Shut your trap,’ Stella snaps. ‘Abel’ll have your bones like the Giant Byrne’s.’

  They fall silent then, and Peggy hums. But despite the low fear that sits in her belly, and the story she’s just heard about Julia, Nell realizes she is happier than she’s ever been. Stella casts back an arm and rests it against Nell’s leg, and Brunette resumes plaiting her hair. Footsteps; Nell turns, expecting Abel, but it is Jasper, staggering towards them. He smiles, candlelight glancing off his teeth.

  ‘Nellie Moon,’ he says, holding out his arms. He is drunk, his words melting into each other. ‘What a show you put on. I’ve someone you must meet.’

  ‘But—’

  He grips her arms, and there’s no use resisting him. The women move back, watch her go. She smells gin on his breath when he ushers her into his wagon.

  ‘Mr Richards,’ Jasper slurs. There is a man inside, holding a notebook.

  Jasper’s caravan is bigger than hers, floors laid with Turkish rugs, his face looming from hundreds of handbills on the walls. He grins from a lamp, from a cigar box, even from a pipe.

  ‘Ah, Nellie Moon,’ the man says, putting down his pencil. His eyes take in her legs, her arms. ‘The eighth wonder of the world.’

  ‘Nellie Moon. I came up with that name, you know,’ Jasper says, and Nell frowns, thinks of exposing his lie. ‘What a spectacle I’ve turned her into. I knew it, the moment I saw her dance. Another man might not have realized it, but I’ve the knack.’

  ‘The whole country will soon be floored with a bad case of Nell-o-mania.’

  Jasper laughs, but his eyes do not smile. ‘Jasper-mania, I think you mean.’

  Nell backs towards the door, but Jasper places an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘This man,’ he says, ‘is going to turn you into a plaster figurine.’

  She can feel his breath on her neck. He holds her tighter.

  ‘But he needs to get the mark of you, to make you up in clay.’

  ‘I can see it,’ the man says, shaping an imaginary lump of plaster with his hands. He tells her about the celebrity figures his Stoke factory has churned out – little statuettes of the murderer Palmer, and Dickens, and the Queen herself, and Miss Nightingale holding her lamp, all of which now line the mantelpieces of the middle classes in Fulham and Battersea and Clapton.

  ‘I’m envious of any business which runs on machine power. No cursed labourers doing a bunk, or performers begging for more tin,’ Jasper says. ‘Oh, and make sure you add the wings, just as they were in the show. Without them, she’d just be another farthing leopard girl.’

  But the man does not lift his pencil. He stares at Nell. ‘Was your mother frightened by a leopard in her confinement?’

  She almost laughs. Of course, she thinks, it is the mothers who are blamed. ‘There are no leopards near Hastings, sir.’

  ‘A travelling show. She’ll have seen the beast there. Or perhaps a local sailor netted a frightful spotted fish.’ He nods, warming to his theme. ‘My father used to study teratology. The science of monsters, you know.’

  ‘My little monster is doing very well for me,’ Jasper says. ‘I scarcely have time for any other matters. Even today, I planned to visit my debtor to pay him off, but a broadsheet wanted to interview me instead.’

  A debtor, Nell thinks; that explains his sudden riches.

  ‘A debtor?’ the man asks.

  ‘He’s a marvellous man. Has a shop on Beak Street. He’s transformed my fortunes.’

  ‘I had a friend killed by a man who did business there. The Jackal, he liked to be called. Every so often, he’ll make an example of a man, when he knows the debt won’t be paid. You should be careful.’

  ‘Careful!’ Jasper cries. ‘I think the man can wait a day for his payment. I’ll have it with him tomorrow.’ He raps the notebook. ‘Shouldn’t you be drawing her? I really don’t know why you can’t work from her carte-de-visite.’

  ‘I can offer you matchboxes of her too. Cushion covers. Pianos, even. Umbrellas!’

  ‘On with the task at hand,’ Jasper growls.

  She has no choice but to stand there as the man draws long lines with his pencil, as his gaze cuts into her, as he drinks in her bare legs, her arms. The lamp is green-glassed and it gives her the curious sensation that she is trapped underwater. Jasper is the sea witch, she thinks, giving her a new way of existing in the world, which she both longs for and fears. Where she both fits and doesn’t.

  ‘There!’ the man says, slamming shut his notebook.

  When Jasper says she can leave, she stumbles outside. She can feel the ghost marks from where he pressed her arm, can still sense the whisper of his breath across her shoulder. She shivers. What a spectacle I’ve turned her into. My little monster. And yet, he has elevated her above all of his other acts. He has made her into somebody. She even caught Stella staring at the handbill with something close to sadness, a show to which she was once the main draw.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Violante asks, pausing as he rolls a great cask of mead.

  She shakes her head. ‘Nothing.’
/>
  The bushes are fragrant with sprayed scents, the trees hung with oil lamps like spidery chandeliers. Flowers lie in barrels, pulped for their perfume. Sights Nell would never have believed, as if the whole world is enchanted. A man on stilts, pies crammed with live starlings, a bear led by a leather muzzle. She feels tipsy, though she has drunk nothing. Someone sees her and points. ‘It’s her,’ she hears them say, ‘Nellie Moon.’

  The women have moved from their space by the wagon. She looks out for them, as they do her, to check she is safe. There is Stella, raising an arm in quiet salute. Peggy is riding a camel, Brunette talking to Abel by the trees. She knows a human wonder would make a fine prize for a drunken dandy; there are establishments, Stella told her, where gentlemen can go to be serviced by hunchbacks and giantesses, by girls with shrunken hands. All these other lives lurk in the shadows, clicking their teeth, casting out tentacled fingers to suck her in. Existences far worse than her village ever was. It would be so easy to fall. A slip from the ropes, and her life bled out on the sawdust. A slip from her life, and a soiled bed in a dingy street, a man guarding the door. A physician, measuring her skin with calipers. A man who calls himself a teratologist. All the while, Jasper holds her life in his palm, strolls through the wagons and knows the power he wields. He bought her, tore her from her brother. She touches her side as if to staunch a wound.

  She runs down a path, gravel spraying behind her. And then she sees Toby, his shoulders hunched forwards as though his brother has already occupied his space in the world. Her heart clenches. Toby. His blue-black eyes, his wild hair.

  Toby

  The pork skin cracks and blackens, and Toby cranks the spit, bastes the body with a tub of grease. He carves slices of meat on to a plate for a gentleman in a frock coat. The man looks through him, as if he has just plucked the meal from thin air, and the pig is rolling itself over. But Toby is used to being invisible; he merely shrugs and takes the man’s coins.