Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen

by Dexter Palmer

  Anne turned around to face Zachary and Laurence, breathing heavily, cheeks glowing red as she grinned at them both. “I suppose we could have taken side streets and gone the long way around instead of pushing right down the center of Haymarket,” she said, “but you wouldn’t have seen. Wasn’t it wonderful? Didn’t you get so angry for a moment?”

  “Inconvenienced, severely,” said Laurence, straightening his wig. “But angry: no.”

  “Liar,” said Anne. “You felt the rage, the same as the rest of us! Your blood boiled and you loved it.” She giggled.

  They had left the throng of opera fanatics behind them, and Zachary gave them one last look. The chants of the sopranos’ names had now become so fast and frenetic that the words began to overlap and echo. Suddenly, a man’s wail cut through the crowd’s strange music, high and tortured and surprised at itself, making Zachary’s hair stand on end. And silence fell.

  Unexpectedly, Zachary felt someone gripping his forearm, hard, and looked down expecting to see Laurence’s hand, searching for a panicked reassurance. But it was Anne’s, clutching at him with a man’s strength.

  “Wait for it,” hissed Anne. “Wait.”

  The quiet stretched out, second by second, as the tips of Anne’s fingers dug into the muscles of his arm—that night, when he removed his shirt he would find five faint bruises—and Zachary dared to believe for a moment that the whole thing might be over, that these temporarily crazed people might drift back to their homes and places of work as the dark magnetic bonds that held them all together weakened and disappeared. But the scream was followed by a sound that was an unsettling cross between a yelp and a gulping cough, and the mob of red-badged people began to first walk and then run away from Anne, Laurence, and Zachary, rushing pell-mell toward their green-badged enemies, colliding with them, punching and kicking, shoving thumbs into eyes, sinking teeth into flesh.

  Anne let go of Zachary’s arm, and he resisted the impulse to rub the sore spot where she’d grabbed it. “Enough of that,” she said. “You’ve seen one riot, you’ve seen them all, and there are more interesting sights in store. The venue’s just ahead. Down this alley. The afternoon’s entertainment is not entirely aboveboard, though remember what I said: Everything that is not forbidden is allowed. Nonetheless, to witness it we must step into a space that is not on London’s maps. Come.”

  * * *

  *

  She walked down the nearly empty stretch of street, indifferent to the rising din of the riot they’d left behind. Then she came to a halt between two theaters, the pair of three-story buildings separated by a space not more than fifteen inches wide. There was no sign that the gap between the structures was special in any way, but “here we are,” Anne said. “I hope you don’t have a fear of tight spaces—if you do, it’ll be over soon enough.” She turned sideways, and, clasping her skirts close, she slipped nimbly into the dark space and disappeared into shadow. Laurence followed, with Zachary taking up the rear.

  Zachary edged along the narrow path, the wooden panels of one of the theater walls sliding past just before his eyes, the other wall brushing against his back. The sharp ammoniac smell of cat piss filled the air and made his eyes water, and he heard a nasty squelch at his heel as he stepped on something unpleasant—he reasoned that looking down to see what it had been would probably be harder to bear than his present ignorance. Not for the first time did Zachary think that God had never intended so many living creatures to make their homes together in such a space. He thought about the conversation he’d had with the stagecoach driver who’d brought him to the city. If his prediction of the future was accurate—that London was an enormous living thing that would someday grow to cover all the world—then clear skies and clean streets would someday only be a memory, and only a fantasy once those people old enough to remember passed into history. This would be a world of ash.

  He continued to move. The passageway seemed as if it was never going to come to an end, that he would be sidling down it and becoming increasingly filthy until he was brought down by the colony of feral cats that most likely made its home here, until all at once it opened onto a wide space exposed to the gloomy, overcast sky. Here, dead in the middle of a city block, with the mostly windowless backs of buildings looming over it, was a sort of amphitheater. The ground was covered with a mix of sand and gravel (and, alarmingly, Zachary saw one or two dark brown spots that appeared to be dried blood, a day or two old and diluted by light rain, but surely his gin-clouded imagination was running away with itself). A sturdy platform made of wooden planks, about ten feet on each side, was attached to a pulley and suspended above a hole in the middle of the performance space by thick, hempen ropes, rigged so that it could descend and ascend. This platform had a few more dark brown spots that probably were not spilled blood either—it was not really important, Zachary suddenly decided, to speculate on what they were.

  The perimeter of the arena was bounded by three tiers of wooden benches, on which about twenty people were seated, lounging easily and engaging in idle chatter in low voices. Most of them, Zachary found, looked rich—they had the same fine clothing, and the same ease in their environment, as some of the visitors to Mary Toft’s room in Dr. Lacey’s Bagnio. In fact, there in the front row, waving cheerfully at Zachary and Laurence, was the elderly Lord M—— himself, the first of those moneyed gentlemen to pay a call on Mary Toft a few days before.

  Once noticed, Zachary felt obligated to join Lord M——, and so he crossed the arena and sat down next to him; Anne seated herself on his other side with Laurence just beyond them, on the end of the bench. “I would not expect someone like yourselves to find your way here,” Lord M—— said, the statement half observation, half question. “To even know that this is a place where one could come. But my bold young friend Zachary here is full of surprises.” Zachary recalled that first time a few days before when Lord M—— had looked into his eyes, taking his measure—deciding, Zachary thought, whether he was human.

  “Nicholas Fox is my father,” said Anne. “These two are friends of mine. I wanted them to see.”

  “Ah,” said Lord M——. “In that case: welcome, to all of you—excuse me, one moment.” He’d seen someone entering into the amphitheater through that space that, from here, seemed so narrow that a human being would not be able to fit through it at all, and yet this fellow, as well dressed as Lord M——, had strode into the space with a smile as his arms swung jauntily, as if the dirty, cramped passageway had the dimensions of the widest city street. Gaily, the man approached Lord M—— and they shook hands (and Zachary observed that they had the same demeanor, as if two young and energetic adolescents had somehow contrived to occupy the bodies of old men). “I want you all to meet Lord S——,” said Lord M——, and Zachary and Laurence nodded their greetings while Anne briefly rose to give the suggestion of a curtsy, one that somehow seemed intended to ridicule the very custom of curtsies. Lord S—— responded to Anne with a comically deep bow that a person half his age would have been hard pressed to execute, the locks of his wig tumbling down to veil his face, though the wig itself remained moored to his head. Anne burst out laughing, clapping her hands with glee.

  “How much have you contributed to the pool today?” said Lord S—— as he rose, his smile turned sly.

  “Fifty pounds,” Lord M—— replied.

  Lord S——’s mouth formed an exaggerated O of surprise. “You think the man will win today?”

  “The cat will always win,” said Lord M——, “but we must continue to behave as if it could be otherwise. And perhaps this day I shall be surprised—at our age, opportunities to be proven wrong grow rarer with each passing year, and I have learned to cherish them when they arrive.”

  Lord S—— threw back his head and let loose with a gut-busting chortle. “Most excellent,” he said. “Most excellent. I could not agree more. Perhaps it’s not too late for me to throw in
fifty pounds myself. One ought to pretend that there is still hope, in this late season, for astonishment.

  “I’ll leave you to your young friends, then,” Lord S—— said, still chuckling. Bidding the four of them farewell, he went over to a few of the men on the benches on the opposite side of the arena, who greeted him in unison with a joyous shout of his name.

  “What was that about the cat?” whispered Zachary.

  “You’ll see soon enough,” said Anne.

  * * *

  *

  Eventually, the amphitheater filled up about two-thirds of its seats. There was no one taking tickets, and it was not clear how money was being exchanged for this performance, though it clearly was—money, or some unspecified good or service, or the promise to fulfill a future favor; or perhaps people like Lord M—— and Lord S—— were of such a rarefied breed that their mere presence in the audience of a show was payment enough for whatever entertainment they might gain from it. Most of the audience were men, with a very few women among them. Other than Anne, Zachary, and Laurence, the youngest of them seemed to be in his forties; certainly, the three of them were the only ones in attendance who had not reached adulthood.

  There was no apparent advertisement for the performance, either—the news of its existence, its time and its venue, seemed to have been relayed by word of mouth alone. Eventually, with no prior notice, the platform in the middle of the arena began to descend, the pulley’s wheel squeaking rhythmically as it was activated by an invisible hand, and at this signal the audience finished its conversations, becoming quiet in anticipation. Sitting next to Zachary, Anne bit her lip, her right knee bouncing nervously beneath her skirts.

  When the platform rose again, there was a man standing in its center, and it took a few seconds for Zachary to recognize him as Anne’s father, Nicholas Fox. When he’d first seen him months ago, in Godalming, he’d been dressed to dazzle country folk in a neatly tailored green suit of ditto; here, in London, his outfit was clearly chosen to openly ridicule his well-heeled audience. The wig he wore was comically tall, easily towering two feet above his head; a slender tree branch jutted sideways out of the dingy pile of once white locks, and perched on it was a bright yellow canary, dead, prepared, and stuffed. His suit was a mismatched riot of red, violet, and gray, the coat mis-buttoned so that it hung on him asymmetrically; as he turned his back to the audience, he revealed a flap that had been installed in the rear of his trousers, hanging down to reveal his pale and sagging bare arse.

  At this, the crowd applauded lustily, though Zachary, taken aback, kept his hands in his lap. What could Anne be thinking of this? She looked on with that same inscrutable nervousness, staring at her father unblinking, chewing her lip and digging the nails of her fingers into her palms. Laurence looked on stone-faced as Nicholas Fox bent over and wiggled his flat, naked behind at the cheering spectators; if he was not exactly entertained, he seemed at least unbothered.

  Fox spun around and squinted at the audience in pretended resentment. “How dare you laugh at the majesty of Lord Q——?” he said, his voice pitched higher than Zachary knew it to be in life, when he’d spoken to his master in private about a disease that needed his curing. “How dare you poke fun at Lord Q——, the Baron of Z——?” He stamped his tiny feet in impotent rage, and the audience laughed even harder. Lord M——, next to Zachary, was applauding fiercely. “Oh, goodness,” he said. “This man never fails to be such a tonic.”

  During this pantomime, Fox had stepped off the platform, which had lowered again and was now rising—this time it brought with it four dwarves, all of them men, all of them dressed in white. One of them, mugging at the audience, eyebrows raised, tiptoed over to Fox and buttoned the flap of his trousers as Fox, still playing at anger, pretended not to notice; the other three dispatched themselves to corners of the amphitheater, where stools and small tables had been prepared for them. They each carried mechanical contraptions that looked something like conventional oil lamps, except that the jittering flames of the lamps were placed between two plates of tinted glass, one red, one blue.

  It was the first time that Zachary had ever seen a dwarf, but, having previously seen a black person for the first time not two hours before, and having reasoned his way through the experience, he was somewhat at ease with the idea that dwarves might also be as comfortable in their own skins as he was in his own. And yet the dwarves seemed to have been selected by Fox with the expectation that those who looked on them would find them strange, and take pleasure in this—it was no coincidence that there were four, out of what must have been less than one hundred to be found in all London, and they were dressed alike. What would it be like to be seen as a signal of the strange if one was not strange to oneself?

  “I am so grateful,” Nicholas said in his normal voice, abandoning the comic persona of Lord Q——, “that you were able to find your way to this Cavalcade of Wonders. It would perhaps be unwise, perhaps unseemly, to openly advertise this place’s existence, but rest assured that if you are here, then you belong here. You are a person who has become jaded by all of the sights that even London has to offer, yes? You’ve seen everything there is to see beneath God’s sun, in this city at the center of the world. How long since all your riches have been able to buy you the shock of the new? Too long—”

  “Enough of your windy preamble! Bring us the cat!” Lord S—— shouted, on the other side of the arena: he had been drinking from a pewter flask that he and his companions had been passing back and forth, and they were all becoming increasingly garrulous.

  “Bide your time,” Nicholas replied. “Trust that, as much as I would like to show you the novel, I would not deprive you of that which is loved and familiar; I would not stray too far from hallowed traditions.”

  “What is this about the cat?” Zachary whispered again.

  “Quiet!” hissed Anne.

  While the dwarf who had fastened the flap of Fox’s trousers had descended on the platform once again, the other three dwarves who had carried the strange lamps began to slowly turn cranks fastened to the lamps’ bottoms, which spun the glass plates in circles around the fires that flickered at their centers. The effect was beautiful, for the flames began to shift their colors from red to blue to red again, casting the ground in muted, multicolored lights as the sky darkened. Zachary began to feel as if he were watching one of his own dreams made real—he half expected to turn to Anne to see that she had grown a set of rabbit’s whiskers, and a twitching rabbit’s nose.

  “Before the cat,” Nicholas Fox announced as the platform in the middle of the amphitheater rose again, “comes the bull.”

  On the platform this time was the dwarf who’d descended before. In one hand he held a lit candle raised to the sky; in the other, one end of a rope. The rope’s other end was tied around the neck of a decrepit bull, its skin hanging loosely on its withered body. It was a pathetic, tired creature: both its horns had been sheared off to their blunt roots, and a brass ring, tarnished green, hung from its nose. Oddly, the trunk of his body was wrapped entirely in a strange coat that Zachary, at first, could make no sense of—it was composed of brightly painted pieces of paper, pink, red, and blue, that had been twisted into tubes, each about six inches long and an inch in diameter. The tubes themselves were linked together by thin cords of hemp, making a long chain that circled around and around the bull, over its back and under its belly; the tubes of paper had some substance contained in them, possibly sand or some kind or powder, but what it was exactly, Zachary could not tell.

  Another thin rope trailed behind the bull like a slender second tail, and as the dwarf led the lethargic animal off the platform by its leash, a recognition of what was about to happen swept through the audience, its sudden murmurs punctuated with a laughter that sounded somewhat bashful, or ashamed of itself. Nicholas, meanwhile, was saying nothing, merely looking at the audience members in expectation.

 
; Then Zachary understood—the rope being dragged behind the bull was a fuse, and the bull’s body was encased in fireworks.

  He was horrified—first by the realization of what he was about to see, and second by the reaction of those around him. Anne was, inexplicably, giggling; Laurence, on her other side, had his mouth discreetly covered, but the crinkling of his watery eyes and his occasional sputtering coughs seemed to indicate that he was stifling laughter as well.

  Lord M——, next to Zachary, felt no need to disguise his delight. “This will be good,” he said, patting Zachary’s knee. “This will be good! The best thing in months.”

  Anne looked past Zachary at Lord M——. “Since that poor fellow was run through?”

  “Yes! That was a wonder—brave of him to turn toward us, to let us watch him bleed. Pure despair in his eyes, wishing for a surgeon, but he stood still nonetheless so we could have our little pleasure. I wouldn’t have had the nerve, not for ten times as much as he got. He did survive, yes? Patched up before the life leaked out of him? Guts put back where they belonged?”

  “I believe so,” said Anne.

  “Oh, good,” said Lord M——.

  As Nicholas put his fingers in his ears and scurried toward the edge of the amphitheater, his face pulled into an exaggeration of panic, the stuffed canary bobbing crazily on the branch sticking out of his wig, the dwarf let go of the bull’s leash, picked up the fuse, and, with a grand sweeping gesture, lit it with the candle. Then he dropped the fuse and the candlestick, and ran.

  The tip of the wax-coated fuse sputtered into flame as the bull stood in place, tired and indifferent. The fire moved along the fuse with an agonizing slowness; the audience was so quiet that Zachary half believed he could hear, beneath Anne’s heavy breathing, the hiss of the flame as it consumed the wick. Laurence’s cheeks burned with two spots of bright red.