The Little Shadows

by Marina Endicott

  Penny-dreadful

  Mayhew had watched the singer and her little sister, the two of them reminding him forcibly of the penny-dreadful play The Two Orphans: Henriette the orphan girl and her blind sister who sang in the streets of Paris and were, naturally, discovered to be aristocrats. Maybe the play could be adapted … His agile mind trotted the idea through its paces and discarded it. Unless he had a pretty pair of sisters, one a singer.

  The singer’s face—open planes, flat eyelids over lustrous dark orbs, the pearly skin illumined even in this dark place, drawing the lantern-light—was as much a part of her charm as the abundant floss of golden hair. Delicate line of cheek and chin. He calculated her value.

  But it was difficult to stick to the task; the heart kept attempting to fly out of his breast as he listened. A young swan, looking up to catch back bright tears; the odd, thin bird behind her playing a borrowed fiddle. Not the usual run of artiste at Leary’s roadhouse.

  When the song was over the little sister left their table, going out with Victor Saborsky; that was interesting. Victor was famous for his reserve; held himself aloof, as Mayhew knew to his slight pain. For him to single out one of the sisters, that suggested a higher value than he’d tallied himself.

  A space vacant beside the beauty. (The line of her neck taut as she looked towards the door; a little aloofness of her own in her bearing.) Mayhew made his way across the room, shedding his jolly party as he went, like drops of rain from an astrakhan collar.

  Sham Pain

  ‘Champagne for my true friends,’ Mayhew told Julius, saluting him, ‘and true pain for my sham friends.’

  Aurora laughed as her ear leaped to his joke. As if champagne were available at this out-of-the-way place. But a tray was coming, one of Mayhew’s minions balancing glasses and two bottles with foil-wrapped necks. Aurora had never yet had champagne.

  ‘Brought it out from Butte,’ Mayhew murmured in her ear, as the others exclaimed. He took the first bottle, ripped off the foil and untwisted a little metal trap, and very efficiently swirled the bottle while holding the cork—which promptly exploded out of the neck of the bottle, foam spilling in a rush over the table and onto Aurora’s dark skirt.

  ‘Damn it all!’ he cried. ‘You’ve shaken the bottle, Bert.’ He let champagne flow into glasses as he dabbed at Aurora’s skirt with the napkin from the bottle, until they were both generally damped, except for their spirits. The champagne was sharp, sweet; Aurora did not let herself gulp it.

  It Is Spring

  Victor and Clover walked in the winter woods, Clover thinking, It is spring, it is spring. Victor led her away from the buildings and noise, out along a deer path cut through a stand of pale birch, winding off into the darkness.

  ‘Is it true that your mother is a Fabian?’ Clover asked.

  ‘Everything I ever say is true,’ Victor answered. ‘Someday I will tell you all about her adventures with the movement, and about her teacher, Galichen the moon-mad.’

  The white-paper bark of birch trees caught the moon as they went farther into the woods. It was a paler version of Victor’s empty forest backdrop.

  She said, when he asked, that her father had taught her to play the violin.

  ‘My own father is dead,’ he told her. ‘A year ago. Long enough that I am resigned.’

  ‘My father, too,’ she said. ‘Two years ago. And my little brother, before that.’

  ‘Yes, Sybil told me. I am sorry.’

  ‘It set us off on our travels,’ she said. Without those deaths, they would still be in Paddockwood together, cozy in the teacherage but dreaming still, not yet awakened into the world. Papa reading to them in the evenings, Mama trying to keep cheerful in her long exile. Impossible to say that was better.

  But Clover’s breath stuttered anyway at the thought of Harry walking beside her, as he always used to. ‘He did not talk much, my brother. We all understood him, so he had no need. I cannot remember his voice. I think it was … a little croaking.’ She remembered the feel of Harry’s small fingers, delicate on her closed eyelids in the morning, seeing if she was awake. ‘He was not yet four,’ Clover said to Victor, as if to apologize for sadness at such an ordinary death.

  Victor took her hand. A plain handclasp, restful and ordinary. ‘There is no going back,’ he said. ‘So we keep our eyes open and go forward.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are a dear thing, Clover.’

  She smiled, shielded by the dark.

  ‘I ought to tell you what I already know,’ he said. ‘That you are she, for me.’

  She could not help but laugh.

  ‘You only saw me yesterday—how can you know?’

  ‘My eyes are open.’

  There was no snow left under their feet. The leaves had faded, winter-cured to a thick, soft carpet. Clover put out a hand to a young birch, to touch something, as if it were a lightning rod.

  Perhaps a Dead Mouse

  From the back of the room, Bella had stared after Clover walking out into the night with the tired-faced genius. Her arms goose-prickled again, thinking of his number. Aurora must have let Clover go out.

  Humph! They’d sung without her, and Bella had not decided yet whether to be cross or let it go. Very likely they’d only had a moment’s notice, and had not been able to see her. But she still hadn’t found a way to join the card game, and this was dull stuff, stuck watching all night long.

  ‘Need some air,’ the Tussler beside her said, suddenly. ‘Want a walk?’

  Bella was surprised.

  ‘Or don’t you dare to walk in the darkness?’

  Bella laughed. She was never frightened of the dark. And why not go for a walk? Clover could. So could she.

  Black-velvet country darkness made the roadhouse clearing seem like the entrance to a fairy tale. The woods that swallow Snow White when she runs away, Bella thought. Clover and Victor had disappeared up a trail into the birch woods, so Bella made the Tussler walk the other way, towards the dark hill. She had not been told his name and it felt a bit foolish to ask.

  ‘Ought to be a still-room out here somewhere,’ he said. ‘Could find us a beer, you’d like that.’

  She would not, she did not like beer. But a search for treasure was always to her taste. He took the lantern hanging above the chopping block, and she took one sitting by an empty wagon and lit it from his with a tuft of straw.

  The straw flared up and almost singed his eyebrows, and he dodged backwards, making her laugh. He did not like that, she saw. She stopped.

  They set off, the Tussler looking for some telltale smoke or a lit door, but there was none to be seen. The huge darkness of the night was shoved back by the light from the oil lanterns. They could not see the stars for the jangling, swinging light around them.

  Bella caught a glimpse, a gleam of metal—there—it was a handle. A door cut into the hill. She pointed. ‘A root cellar!’

  ‘Might be good in there,’ he agreed.

  He must think of nothing but his stomach. But sometimes neither did she. He was a gangly boy, and not very bright, she thought. His bottom lip hung sulky and loose. She’d almost rather be back inside watching the card-play with East and Verrall. But it would be good fun to explore the root cellar.

  It was nothing but a cave dug into the hillside, a tiny wooden door making it look like a fairy house, where the moth-girls might live. The door stuck a little, then gave way, leather hinges letting it fall askew after she dragged it open over the snow.

  Bella loved dark places—nothing to be afraid of in the darkness. It was people you had to fear. Shadows shifted around thin pillars, like inside a mine—perhaps there were jewels down there, or a dragon’s hoard of gold. The Tussler crowded behind her, so she stepped forward into the low space. Once her eyes had adjusted she saw straggling shelves lining the dirt walls, some with dull jars, some empty, furred with dust. Trays of carrots and apples in sand, jars of beets, pickles, jam, crocks of preserved eggs in isinglass. It was a treasure trov
e, but only of food.

  ‘We ought not to be in here,’ she said, sadly, and turned to go.

  But he was in her way, blocking the passage to the door. He had set his lantern on a shelf and he fumbled with something she could not see beneath his coat. He took her hand and pulled it towards him, and she thought he was going to put something in it—an egg, or perhaps a dead mouse.

  Instead he yanked her hand between his legs where he had something bulging. His manhood, she supposed. She had only seen down there in quite small boys, who went swimming in the slough behind the schoolhouse in Paddockwood and jumped into the air, little front-tails waggling; it was a surprise to feel how springy and hard his was.

  She felt it jump under her hand and then he pulled her harder and hurt her wrist and at the same time he smeared her mouth with his flabby lip. She had not minded Nando kissing her, she had liked it very much, but this was a different thing. It—She wanted to stop.

  ‘Stop,’ she said, her voice too soft. She could not make it louder, the wind had gone out of her. She hated her own weakness.

  After three thudding heartbeats she wrenched her face away, but he found it again and twisted it back to his mouth, thick fingers like a vise on her cheek. She still held the lantern, and if she dropped it, it would break and the wooden shelves would catch fire. The dirt wall behind her and the roof above them seemed to be moving, the earth closing in around them, and he was still pulling her, his rough jacket scratching her face and the button at the top digging into her neck painfully and all the time he was trying to tuck her hand into his pants, unbuttoning them with one hand and panting—that was maybe the worst of it, the snuffling noise he was making. She was pushed backwards into the shelves and the jars were going to shake together and the crocks on the bottom shelves would break, there would be beet juice and isinglass from the eggs all over her new boots, but she could not make her hands do anything but push vaguely at him. She had forgotten about breathing, even.

  Then Verrall, outside in the clearing, called, ‘Bella? East?’

  The Tussler was still, his mouth open and the bottom lip hanging purplish. She could not think why she had ever found him handsome.

  ‘Cunny-cunny fucking cunny,’ he said in her ear. ‘That’s all you are.’ The air of him speaking was hot inside her head.

  ‘Bugger you,’ she said, and with her free hand slapped his face with all her strength. It made a mighty noise. Her hand stung and her forearm ached.

  He slammed her back against the wall. She gasped at the pain, at the shock of it, how strong he was, and his fist came at her—she jerked her head and he almost missed, catching only her cheek instead of her nose and eyes.

  She had never been hit before. Her whole skull tingled and rang. He ground her hand into the hard-packed earth-wall for good measure, and shoved out of the cellar past Verrall, cursing him on the way.

  Bella took her one hand in the other and rubbed it. She did not want to touch her face and feel that pain from the outside. Her face felt broken.

  ‘He was bothering you?’ Verrall asked.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. She ought not to have come in here with him. She had taken him for a weak sister. That was stupid.

  ‘I could fetch Miss Aurora—let me—’

  ‘No! No, no, no,’ she said, shaking her head too many times, to stop him.

  ‘What were you doing out here anyway?’ East said roughly, coming behind Verrall. He held a fist-full of snow up to Bella’s cheek and pressed. The cold scorched her face. ‘You are like a bad kitten. You must learn to look after yourself better! And not to lead men on.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, more pitifully. ‘I did not—I only meant—’

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s the usual,’ East said, clearly disgusted. ‘You only meant to have some fun and next you found him excited.’

  ‘Let me get your sister,’ said Verrall, in some agitation. His delicate hands flapped.

  ‘Oh no, no!’ she cried, quite desperate. ‘You must not—she will be angry, she will say it is because I am too young. Please do not tell her.’

  ‘Well, you are only a little thing—how were you to know how he might be?’

  East snorted. ‘She is a woman, ain’t she? Born to be one, born knowing.’

  ‘You are too hard on her, East. It’s only a baby still.’

  ‘I am not,’ Bella said stoutly. She brushed down her front and tried to sweep the dirt off the back of her skirt. ‘And I did not get beet juice on my boots, so you need not tell.’

  ‘Well, come with us,’ East said, long-suffering. ‘We will look after you. And no more going off into corners or you will get what comes to you.’

  Bella opened her eyes wider and the tears welling there did not fall. She shut her teeth together and refused.

  Joy of the Moment

  Side by side with Mayhew, who had commandeered the stool next to hers, Aurora sat watching a dancer—the one Mayhew told them he’d come to see. He was looking for a bit of flash for his next venture, he said, and a quick man could find treasures in these dark woods that the slower-moving producers in Boston and New York might give their ears to book.

  ‘Elvira of the Regiment,’ the band captain called, and Elvira came prancing on, in a tight military jacket with a soldier’s cap, long plaited tails dangling down her back; her small worn boots had brass heels that clicked prettily to the music. Now she seemed only lazily beating time; now she rushed along as if seized by the joy of the moment. Those little brass heels! They gave a tantalizing syncopation to the dancing. Aurora looked round for her sisters. But Clover was still off with Victor Saborsky—and Bella? She could not crane her neck far enough to see Bella at the card tables.

  Elvira smiled as she danced, with predatory, evenly spaced teeth. Off came her jacket and cap, revealing a scrap of bodice and a loose-laced cummerbund. Off flew her jaunty skirt, and she was dancing in what appeared to be her underthings, a red-dyed rag-bag with a wild gypsy air. Tapping-mad, she reeled and stamped and flew. At the conclusion of the dance she swirled the skirt up to make herself an officer’s cape, then trotted along the edge of the platform in an orderly fashion and took leave of her public with a right military salute. As she wove through the crowd there was no doubt that she was making a series of appointments with various of the men.

  Not that for us, Aurora thought. We don’t have to; we’re going to make money on our feet. And they had Mama, who knew the ropes and meant to keep them in the first flight, both in art and respectability.

  Mayhew had risen to clap hands for the little military dancer, but he did not leave Aurora’s table entirely, only reaching across to give the dancer a pasteboard card and hold her in a moment’s conversation.

  Mayhew’s acquaintance could not be wasted—Aurora knew she ought to sit with him, work the conversation round to their act, and invite him to see them at the Hippodrome. But while he was occupied with Elvira, she thought she’d run and check on Bella, whose absence was suddenly causing her a cramp of fright. She had forgotten how rough the men were, how green Bella was. She made her way among the tables.

  But Bella was nowhere to be seen—no East or Verrall, either. Bella must have gone outside. The air was thick with smoke back here, and the stink stronger. Aurora stood still for a moment, thinking; then sidestepped back through the crowded tables to get her wraps. Too cold to do without, if she had to search for long.

  She reached for Bella’s things on back of her chair, and told Sybil that she had to go. ‘Keep him entertained for me till we get back,’ she said, relying on Sybil’s good nature, Julius’s love of exalted company, and their pressing need to keep Mayhew’s interest aroused.

  The Girl in the Other Bed

  The door closed behind her and shut half the noise away with it. Aurora pulled on her wraps, and (after a pause to gather her courage) felt her way along the log wall, half blind in the darkness, heading like a moth for the glow of light from the wagon yard. She could hear strange noises, and felt someone pass a
few feet from her as she rounded the corner of the roadhouse. There were the rails of the corral fence. She made her way along by touching the poles every few feet—but there were fearful shapes in the darkness. She was never easy without light.

  A mound. What was that crumpled thing, lying there? Not Bella, it could not be …

  Aurora stood still, uncertain whether she could bring herself to touch the bundle on the ground. A lantern—she was turning back to get one when she saw a bobbing light coming through the trees, and then another beside it.

  ‘Miss Avery? Aurora?’

  It was Verrall, with Bella on his arm. Aurora ran stumbling over the packed snow to reach her sister quickly. ‘Are you—?’ She did not know what to ask.

  Bella had a hand filled with snow pressed to her cheek. Tears shone in her eyes but she only sounded angry: ‘I ran into a tree branch in the dark, I am so stupid!’

  ‘It will leave a miserable bruise,’ Verrall said.

  ‘But you should see the other fella,’ East said, irrepressible. From within Aurora’s warm clasp Bella punched East’s coat-sleeve.

  ‘It is too cold to stand here,’ Aurora said. ‘I must find Clover, too.’

  But then she remembered the bundle on the ground. Verrall was handing her his lantern already, courteous as always; she took it and went back to the corral fence, to the place where she had seen the fallen heap.

  It was a woman lying there. Aurora set the lantern down beside her and gently took the woman’s shoulder. ‘Are you in difficulty?’ she asked, feeling the inadequacy of the words. ‘Can we help you?’

  A shock-white face lolled towards them as Aurora turned the woman’s shoulder. Red hair like fox-fur springing from the girl’s forehead, blood coming from her nose. Her dress was torn, her skirt ripped away, and Aurora saw blood on the pallid, splaying legs.