Circus of Wonders

by Elizabeth Macneal

  ‘Help me,’ Nell cries. ‘Please.’

  Stella turns to him, and he has never seen such disgust on her face. He takes a step back. ‘What are you doing, Jasper?’

  He cannot look at her, cannot meet her eye. He thinks of the early days when Stella was the star of his show, the moments of quietness that they shared together, something approaching love. Something approaching what Dash had enjoyed and he had wanted.

  ‘Get away from her,’ Jasper says, circling the whip.

  Peggy steps forwards, forcing herself between Nell and a labourer. The women will not move, but they do not raise their fists either. Perhaps they know that battle is futile, that their bodies are too soft and small and easily outflanked. Stella dabs Nell’s cut lip, whispers to her. When Nell tries to buck free, Stella grips her cheeks, says something that Jasper cannot hear. Hands on her back, murmured comfort. Love, he thinks, and there is a catch in his voice again.

  And then Toby is there, back sooner than Jasper expected, elbowing his way through the crowd, and Jasper curses under his breath. ‘Toby,’ he stammers. His brother’s shoulders are drawn back, fury and determination written on his face. Jasper feels his grip loosening, the thread of power slipping away. He has the curious sensation that he is playing a part badly, that this is somehow not him at all.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Toby demands. ‘What are you doing to her?’ He collars a labourer, hurls him on to the grass.

  Jasper moves his weight from one foot to the other, his chest tight. His brother seems larger than ever before – those trunk-like legs, those arms that hang like butcher’s meat.

  ‘Pearl,’ Nell says, clutching at Toby’s shirt. ‘He’s taken Pearl.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Toby demands.

  ‘How heroic,’ Jasper sneers.

  ‘Look at what you’ve become.’

  There it is, laid between them, as clean and horrifying as a body on a slab. Toby’s disdain. How long has it been since his brother looked at him with admiration, with awe?

  ‘What I’ve become?’ He tries to steady his voice, to add grit to it.

  ‘Let her go,’ Toby demands, and the labourers shift back. He is strong, Jasper realizes, his chest as hard as a ship’s hull; he could scatter these men like a flock of fine-boned birds. Jasper has never witnessed Toby’s fury before, has only ever discovered its aftermath. The shattered microscope, the broken man. His brother’s neck is pink, a vein trembling in his temple.

  Jasper lets out a small laugh to indicate he does not care. He is having trouble focusing. He can taste blood. He touches his nose to check if he is bleeding. The pistol is cold against his hip. He struggles to keep his mind clear. ‘Nell is to leave this show, and if she returns, I will kill her.’

  The threat feels too big, like that of a floundering child; so mighty it is empty of any meaning.

  ‘If she leaves, I leave,’ Toby says.

  Jasper stares at him. Toby’s eyes are dark, wet with fury, like staring into a looking glass. ‘What?’ he stammers.

  ‘If she leaves, I leave too,’ Toby says. ‘You’re nothing without me.’

  Jasper’s mouth opens with a snide retort, but the words are not there.

  He watches as his brother takes a step towards Nell. He pulls her to him. The women link arms, as if in a chain against him. Stella is whispering to her, squeezing her hand, nodding assurances.

  When they were children and Toby couldn’t sleep, he would sneak into Jasper’s room and lie down on the mattress beside him. Jasper would wake in the morning and see his brother’s curls spread on the pillow, his chest rising and falling. It was enough to send him into a second slumber, their hands joined in a tiny fist. They were everything to each other.

  We’re brothers, linked together.

  ‘Get out,’ he says, quietly. He raises his whip, cracks it down. ‘Get out!’ he bellows. ‘Get out, both of you!’

  He is the wolf, he tells himself, the wolf; he thinks of the neat bones he found in the ‘Happy Families’ cage, polished clean of meat. The wolf, licking its paws.

  Toby turns to leave, Nell pressed against him. Jasper stares at his brother. He cannot be leaving; he cannot possibly be leaving. After all he has given Toby – his fist moves as if he has no command over it. It lands on his brother’s ribs with a sharp smack. Pain flowers up his arm, an electricity seizing hold of him. He pummels harder, sweat stinging his eyes, his shirt damp with it. The irresistible urge to hurt, to make another person suffer as he does, to exert his mastery over the situation. And then, Jasper stumbles back, the world swinging down to meet him. What has happened? He is sprawled on the ground, the taste of coins in his mouth, Toby standing above him, rubbing his knuckles.

  No, he thinks, this is not how it goes.

  He tries to stand, but the wagons are rocking like boats unloosed from their moorings. He can think of only one thing that will stop Toby, that will signal his triumph.

  ‘What did you do to Dash, Toby? Why don’t you tell everyone what happened to Dash?’

  His brother turns, his mouth open.

  He has him, he thinks. And with it a curious relief, that this secret no longer binds him, that he is free too.

  He expects Stella to turn on Toby, for that confrontation to bubble over at last. But she hasn’t heard him, his words lost to the wind. And Toby; he thought he would fall to his knees, would grovel, beg for pity, reminded of how Jasper protected him. But when he looks up, Toby is gone, vanished into the crowd.

  Part Five

  Altius egit iter.

  He drove his journey higher.

  OVID, ‘Daedalus and Icarus’ from Metamorphoses, Book VIII, AD 8

  Nell

  Nell sits in the corner at an inn, the table scarred with spilled wine and hundreds of little cutlery nicks. Opposite her, Toby splays his hand and stabs a blade between the gaps, faster and faster. Part of her longs for the knife to slip, to watch the frantic blossom of red. There should be blood, ripped flesh, the chaos of physicians and black-plumed horses. There should be mangled bones and screams and cries. Could her brother have sensed this coming; is this what he tried to warn her about?

  In the middle of the room, a woman laughs, and Nell digs her fingernails into her thighs.

  She wonders if Pearl is asleep, her thumb in her mouth. She wonders if she is frightened, if Stella has found her or if she is already with another showman, alone in an unfamiliar place. When Jasper threw Nell from the troupe, Stella whispered that she would find Pearl or discover where Jasper had sent her, that Nell should return tomorrow just before the show begins. Jasper will be distracted, Stella added, and she will bring the child to her if she can. Nell shuts her eyes, tries to imagine kissing the peach down of Pearl’s cheek, hearing her chatter about Benedict and the seeds he likes best.

  It is nearing midnight and the innkeeper yawns, clinks the glasses against each other in the hope they will understand his hint. Around them, chairs are upended. She thinks of the animals, shut in their cages. She thinks of Stella and Peggy and Brunette.

  Toby grips her hand to stop it tapping against the table. Her rage, so sharp it feels combustible. It tightens her jaw like a bolt. She has been bought and spat out. Turned into an outcast, taken away from everything that matters to her.

  ‘Come,’ Toby says, and she can do nothing but follow him.

  They didn’t have time to take anything with them. No money, no fresh clothes. The innkeeper has allowed them dinner and a bed with the horses if they clean the stables in the morning. As she leaves, Toby touches her arm in quiet protection, and she realizes that the woman was laughing at her.

  The stable is small and grimy, the hay soiled. She sits on an old horse-blanket and Toby rests his chin on her shoulder.

  ‘I won’t sleep,’ she whispers. Her heart pounds. ‘What if he’s already sold her? What if he hurts her?’

  Toby breathes out slowly. ‘You have to wait until tomorrow. There’s nothing you can do now.’

  She should
be finding a way to Pearl. She should be doing something, rocking the wagons, setting loose the animals. How can she just lie here? Horses shift nearby. Toby tucks his body around hers, and the comfort is fleeting. There was a time when this would have meant everything to her, when she wanted only for somebody to love her. Through the tiny window, she watches the moon sharpening itself like a polished scythe.

  A recollection rises. That first night after she was sold, hands ripping pages out of books. An anger which felt fresh and new. Spines cracking in her fist.

  ‘What would you think,’ Toby whispers, ‘if I told you I’d done something terrible?’

  She shuts her eyes. ‘Is it about Pearl?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Of course not.’ A pause. ‘Would you forgive me?’

  She pulls the blanket up to her chin. She doesn’t want to hear it. She wants to concentrate on Pearl, to will her into being until she becomes real again. She cannot be burdened with anything else, an incomplete story that she will be forced to make sense of. ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear it.’

  Quiet, just the rustle of straw, a horse kicking. The gap between their breaths seems to stretch, growing more and more distant. She scratches the birthmark on her wrist. The skin is thinner, and she can feel it beginning to break.

  ‘Nell?’ he asks.

  She doesn’t reply. She catches the trace of Jasper in his voice. Their noses, alike; their eyes, so similar. She puts her hands over her ears.

  Above her, she watches a spider sewing its careful web.

  Toby

  They work all morning in the stable. Nell flinches at the rustling of leaves, at the clatter of hooves. ‘We just have to wait,’ Toby tells her. ‘I’m sure we’ll find her.’ She pulls away when he tries to hold her, a coldness which is close to fury. That familiar feeling, of being unwanted. His mouth presses downwards and he turns back to scrubbing the tack, the leather grimed with dust and horsehair.

  ‘Let me clean the floor. You can rest,’ he says, and it is not kindness so much as a need to feel useful. ‘Please.’

  But Nell swats him away as easily as a donkey shakes off a fly. She works as if she is a storm unleashed. Her hair flies about her, mouth tight, a narrowing in her eyes. She hurls metal buckets at the wall, scrubs the cobbles until her trousers are torn and her knees bleeding. Foetid water clots the gutters. He can do nothing to comfort her.

  ‘Nell,’ he tries, but she doesn’t answer.

  Dullard, he thinks. Half-bear.

  He longs to please her, to make her smile. If he could, he would find Pearl, carry her on his back, return like a hero fulfilling a quest. Perhaps, then, she would love him with the same ferocity with which she loves the child.

  He bows his head, tries to lose himself in the brushing and rinsing. This is all he has ever been good for: his body not his own, but a mat to be trodden on, a scraper against which boots are cleaned. His life will always settle into the same grooves. He can escape it no more than the wolf could forget how to kill.

  ‘Nell,’ he tries again, and he finds he is close to tears.

  At noon, the innkeeper brings them a small pie of sour vegetables, and he chews each mouthful for minutes, can barely swallow. Nell doesn’t even pick at the pastry. The man returns, hands in his pockets.

  ‘Are you Nellie Moon?’

  Nell does not reply.

  ‘I saw you in Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders. We all did.’

  The man brushes the marks on her hand. She doesn’t flinch. Toby would like to push him away, but the moment passes and he takes another bite of the pie.

  ‘I bought a figurine of you. It’s on my mantelpiece, beside Chang and Eng Bunker. They were a marvellous sight too.’

  When neither of them speaks, he coughs, nods and retreats.

  Toby wants to say something to comfort her or make her smile, to induce any reaction in her. The chewed food sounds loud in his mouth, the wet crunch of his teeth. He picks at the crust, his knuckles swollen. He cannot remember the swing of his arm, the flash of impact. Just his brother floored, the look of disbelief on his face.

  It was the same with Dash; that instant of falling clouded. He has run over it so many times and he is still unsure what he intended, what happened.

  Nell links her fingers between his. She does not tell him to stop crying.

  ‘I did a terrible thing,’ he says. ‘A monstrous thing.’

  But she says only, ‘We have to find her.’

  He kisses her hair. ‘I know.’

  The day is scorching, as sharp as a needle. It is one of those late summer days when the world feels overripe and ready to burst. Dogs pant in the shade, their ribcages vibrating. Earthworms are baked to shoelaces. A candle, left in the sun, liquefies to milky fat. At least there is a breeze, sifting through the doors, unsettling the hay in the manger. When he is too hot, Toby pulls off his shirt. The colours ripple, gilding him. He sees Nell watching him.

  Their life could be an ordinary one. A farm, perhaps, with a field of corn that he tends each day. A cottage with a blue door. A happiness which is particularly his to give. He has never needed power like Jasper. Love, he thinks; that is all he has ever wanted. To matter to somebody. He steps closer to her. She is so near. He can feel the promise of her breath on his chest.

  She shuts her eyes.

  It happens whenever she stands close to him. A pulling within him, impossible to deny. He wants to possess her, to kiss every part of her, to tease moans from her throat.

  She turns away from him and begins forking hay once more.

  Shame cools him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  She touches his arm in quiet forgiveness. Perhaps it will be fine again; perhaps they will find Pearl and a way back to where they were before.

  ‘Here they are!’

  The innkeeper is there with four ladies.

  ‘Do you want your horses?’ Toby asks, and Nell looks at him as if he is a fool.

  The ladies peer in, lifting their shoes from the swirling muck. They are looking at him, he realizes, at his patterned chest, at Nell with her rolled-up sleeves.

  ‘Quite something, aren’t they?’

  Laughter, beating round the stalls.

  ‘She used to be famous, didn’t she?’

  ‘Come here, girl,’ the innkeeper says, clicking his fingers.

  Toby moves closer to Nell, and perhaps they understand the threat, because the man scampers back. They walk away, laughing. ‘Finer freaks than you’d find in the Egyptian Hall. Just arrived here – we couldn’t believe our eyes!’

  ‘Nell –’ he begins, but she looks at the floor, kicks mud into a little pile.

  ‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘Don’t say anything.’

  All afternoon, the innkeeper brings small parties of guests to view them. Toby stares anywhere but at them: at the iron troughs, the wooden mangers, the hooks and ropes hanging from the walls. He is a beast, paraded about, put on display.

  He can hear a bell being rung in the street, a shouted patter. ‘Freaks of nature! Human wonders! A penny a peek –’

  You’ve turned yourself into one of them.

  He did not imagine that it would be like this. The burn of eyes, laughter held behind hands. Staring at him as a thing.

  At last, he hurls down his bucket. ‘I can’t bear it,’ he says.

  ‘Where will we go?’

  ‘We’ll wait in the trees by the lane, near the gates. Anywhere’s better than this.’

  The innkeeper tries to stop them, tries to wheedle them into standing on two tables in his upstairs room, offers them five shillings each. Toby pushes past him. They walk back to Southwark, through crowded streets, not touching. Their anger rubs against each other like flint. Clouds wound the sky. Crickets rasp and shiver. In an hour, his brother will begin his show. Perhaps, even now, he is preparing his mechanical creatures.

  Toby pats down a patch of weeds under an oak tree. Through the railings of the pleasure gardens, they can see the corner of the tent,
the wagons around it. He takes Nell’s hand. ‘We’ll find Pearl and then we’ll have a family,’ he says with a conviction he does not feel. ‘We’ll live in a cottage near a forest and we’ll only need each other.’

  She stares between the fronds of long grass, as if willing the child to appear.

  ‘A house with a blue door, and white roses. I could work in the fields. It would be a peaceful life, a quiet one.’

  ‘A quiet life,’ she says with a snort. ‘I had a quiet life once.’ Her eyes are bloodshot, her lip trembling. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. I’d rather be up on the stage than in the slagheap with the rest of the world. I’d rather be someone.’

  She fumbles in her pocket, pulls out a little object. It is a plaster figurine, wings on her back, toes pointed. ‘This is me.’

  ‘But you’ll always belong to someone else.’

  She says it dully as if she cannot believe it. ‘Stella and I will have a troupe –’

  ‘It won’t happen,’ he says. ‘You know it won’t.’

  She moves away from him. He has the mad notion that this is his punishment for what happened to Dash; that he might earn her love if he told her the truth about it.

  Coward. Dullard.

  He opens his mouth but he cannot find the words.

  Nell

  The sun has set fire to the clouds, their bellies smoking like braziers. The grass is scorched, leaves wilting on the trees. When Nell cannot wait in the copse any longer, she crosses the lane and grips the railings. There are crowds outside the tent already, smells of burning chestnuts and hot sugar. She can see Bonnie’s torches flickering as the girl juggles them higher and higher. There is a gasp, a roar of light. The spheres flare. Somewhere, among the scattered wagons and stalls and baying animals, Pearl might be waiting, if Jasper hasn’t yet sold her. Nell plucks a dandelion and twists it. In her village, they will be laying the violet runners for winter, heaping the beds with piles of manure, repairing any cracks in the stone walls.