Reserved for the Cat em-6

by Mercedes Lackey

  I know. I told you I was waiting for something. This was it. The storm. Now come on!

  Maybe if she hadn’t been half-muzzy with sleep, or if she wasn’t more than half convinced this was just a surreal dream, she might have protested more. Instead, she did as she was told, and stole down the stairs, letting herself out at the kitchen door, following the silent cat.

  Of course, the face full of wind and cold rain that she got woke her up thoroughly, but by then it was too late. And the cat was pushing against her ankles, herding her down into the street.

  “What is this all about?” she gasped.

  You are about to become the victim of a dreadful shipwreck. Can it be a shipwreck if it is only a yacht? A yacht-wreck doesn’t sound quite right. The cat ran on ahead, pausing in a circle of lamplight to look back at her.

  “A what?”

  A shipwreck. Remember I told you that we were going to borrow someone else’s reputation? You will be Nina Tchereslavsky, Russian prima donna. She has never performed further west than Berlin. You look enough like her photographs to pass. She speaks French almost exclusively outside of Russia, although she does know some English, and I will arrange for you to learn Russian in the same way I arranged for you to learn English.

  “But how does this—”

  Let me finish. You—that is, Nina—decided to come to England on holiday, possibly to arrange a tour as well. Possibly to stay. You are certain there is no dancer half so good as you here. A friend with a yacht arranged to bring you. In last night’s storm, the boat was wrecked, your friend is presumably drowned, and you have lost all of your possessions.

  “But I cannot see—”

  I will arrange the rest. You have only to remember your name and the storm and the wreck and act dazed. Speak French. I will take care of the rest. The cat herded her quickly down the street to the seashore. By that time, her hair was soaked, the rags of her gown and her cloak were soaked, and with her hair straggling into her eyes she was certainly going to present a convincing imitation of a shipwreck victim. As she staggered along the sand, the sky was just starting to lighten in the east, and the piers of the boardwalk loomed darkly above her head. She had not yet been down to the boardwalk, although she gathered that there were all manner of places of amusement built on it. Out of the holiday season though, most of them were fairly desolate.

  Here, the cat said, finally. Wait here. Try and keep warm. When you hear me tell you to, lie face-down on the sand. Remember, you are Nina Tchereslavsky. Nothing else is of consequence.

  And then the cat whisked away, leaving her at the foot of the piers, shivering, in the dark.

  Was this scheme mad enough to actually work? Well she had no choice now.

  The automobile chugged and rattled, the headlights doing little to illuminate the cobblestone-paved street ahead. Fortunately the streetlamps were still well lit, extravagant electrical things that they were. Nigel Barrett gripped the steering wheel and was grateful that this was an enclosed auto. And cursed the fact that the storm had chosen last night to break over their heads.

  “Why you insisted on dragging us out this early in the morning, Nigel, I do not know.” Since this was roughly the tenth time Nigel Barrett’s traveling companion Wolf had voiced this particular complaint, Nigel did not bother to repeat his answer.

  But his other traveling companion, Arthur Gilbert, did so for him. “Because if we are going to get to Manchester in time to see this singer at the matinee, we have to leave now, Wolf. Nigel’s only told you so a dozen times.”

  “Nine,” Wolf replied, with immense dignity, from the rear seat of the enclosed motorcar. “And I don’t know why I had to come along.”

  “Because you are the one writing the music for this extravaganza,” Nigel replied, carefully negotiating the narrow street in the semi-darkness. Once again, he asked himself why he lived in this part of Blackpool, where every time he wanted to take the motorcar out, he had to negotiate a maze of medieval lanes. “You have the final word on whether I hire her or not.”

  “Arthur knows what I like,” Wolf said tartly.

  “Arthur is only the conductor of the orchestra,” Arthur himself replied. “And you know your best work comes when you’re inspired by a particular singer or dancer. I can’t possibly tell whether or not you’d be inspired.” He reached around over the seat and gave the wool-shrouded cage a pat. “Don’t worry, we won’t let you get into a draft.”

  “I would be much more inspired if you’d let me write an opera,” Wolfgang Amadeus said fretfully. “I am tired of those ridiculous tinkly ballads you like so much. Sweep! Scale! A challenge! That’s what I need!” The African Grey Parrot pulled the wool covering of his cage aside with his beak, and one beady black eye peered out at them accusingly.

  “And opera isn’t going to fill the seats, Wolf, you know that,” Nigel responded without taking his eyes off the street. “And with these moving pictures coming on, pretty soon variety won’t either. Don’t worry, you’ll get spectacle and sweep to fill with music. I’ve seen the future of the stage, and its name is The Ziegfield Follies. Shows with a theme, a regular bill of stars you can count on seeing, that’s what will keep the seats full, even when motion pictures take over the music halls.”

  “I know you keep saying that, Nigel, but you haven’t really explained yourself.” Arthur Gilbert, a slight, fair-haired man with the build of a whippet and nerves of steel, raised an eyebrow at his employer. “I should think people would get tired of seeing the same thing night after night.”

  “Do people get tired of seeing William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes?” Nigel demanded. “Or Henry Irving as Hamlet? Or Ellen Terry as Portia? And what about Maude Adams as Peter Pan?”

  “Well . . . but those are plays!” Arthur replied, tucking the woolen blanket in around the cage again. “And that’s in London!”

  Wolf snorted. Or made a sound like a snort.

  “And that’s the genius of the thing,” Nigel said with enthusiasm. “We take everything that people like best about a play—that is, a nice, light story—we add in the kind of music they like, which is where Wolf comes in, but without turning the damned thing into an opera, because last of all, we fit in the best sorts of acts from music hall. We rehearse it all and open it in the slow season, and that’s when all the locals will come. When they get tired of it, we’ll be in holidays, and the holiday-makers will pack the hall. By the time they leave, the locals will be ready to see it again, and when they’re gone, it will be time for the Christmas pantos. That’s when we put together the next show, start rehearsals, and open again after the end of panto season. It’s brilliant!”

  “I don’t know, Nigel—” Arthur began doubtfully, when something dark and fast and seemingly as big as a panther dashed into the street in front of them.

  Arthur swore, Nigel swore and jerked the steering wheel, narrowly missing the animal, and Wolf swore in German as he was knocked to the bottom of his cage. The brakes shrieked as the motorcar slid to a stop. And the thing leapt onto the hood of the car, every hair bristling, eyes like saucers full of fire.

  Help! Help! the creature “shouted” into their minds. My mistress is dying! You must come save her!

  Which Nigel, because he was an Elemental Master, Arthur, because he was an Elemental Magician, and Wolfgang, because he was Wolfgang, all heard with perfect clarity.

  “Where?” Nigel shouted across the windscreen.

  The shore! Follow me! replied the cat. It leapt down to the ground again, and raced down the street. Nigel fed gas to the motor, which fortunately had not stalled, and raced after it.

  They broke out of the maze of streets to the broader roads and followed the cat at last to the Promenade that paralleled the seashore as the sun rose dimly behind the clouds and the rain slacked off to a thin drizzle. The cat dashed across the Promenade and down one of the wooden staircases that led from the boardwalk to the sands. Nigel slid the motorcar roughly to a halt and threw open the door, dashing after it,
with Arthur closely behind him.

  Hurry! the cat screamed into their minds. For a moment, Nigel couldn’t see where the creature was. But then he caught sight of a dark shape just under the pier at the waterline and he raced towards it, grateful that the sand was wet and packed solid enough to run on. The closer he got, the clearer that shape became—a woman, hair down and dark with seawater, sprawled under what was left of a cloak as if she had crawled up on the sand, exhausted, a rough piece of broken timber a little way away from her.

  He dropped down beside her and turned her over; she was as cold as ice, pale, and her eyes fluttered open and looked at him, dazedly.

  “Miss! Can you speak?” he asked urgently, patting her cheek with one hand to revive her a little.

  She answered him in French, which he spoke tolerably well. “Where—”

  “Blackpool. England. Who are you?” Arthur asked, as he pulled off his coat to wrap around her. Her velvet gown was in tatters.

  “Nina. Nina Tchereslavsky,” she murmured. “The yacht—my friend—” Then her eyelids fluttered closed again.

  She is a dancer. A great dancer. A genius, the cat said, dancing with anxiety. She wanted to emigrate to England; I tried to dissuade her, but she thought she could be a greater star than she already is once she performed on your stage. She sold everything and persuaded a friend with a yacht to bring her here. You must save her! Her father was an Elemental Master, he charged me with protecting her when he died—

  Ah, that explained it then. This was no cat, it was an Elemental Spirit in feline form. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of her,” Nigel said, lifting the slight girl in his arms. Well, she was certainly built like a dancer. She weighed hardly anything. A dancer. And Russian. . . .

  She was cold, certainly, and exhausted, and probably everything she owned had gone down with that ship . . . but if he was any judge of such things, and as an Air Master he was rather good at telling how healthy someone was, she was in no danger of dying any time soon. Dancers in his experience were robust, hardy. They had to be; life for a dancer was anything but easy. As he carried her to the motorcar, already his mind was racing.

  Russian dancers were very much in vogue ever since Diaghilev had brought them to London in his Ballet Russes troupe. This young woman would certainly be grateful to her rescuers. And now she was stranded here with nothing. . . .

  “What’s happening?” Wolf was shouting from the back seat as he approached the motorcar with his burden. “What’s happening?”

  “We seem to have rescued a young dancer, Wolfgang,” Arthur replied, pulling a warm lap-robe out of the boot and wrapping it around the girl in place of his coat as Nigel set her carefully down on the back seat, and the cat jumped in beside her. “And I think that we won’t need to go to Manchester today after all.”

  Ninette had not needed to feign confusion and weakness. She had lain so long on the sand that all of the heat had leeched out of her body. At first she had shivered and shook and her teeth had chattered so hard she thought they were going to break, but then a kind of lethargy overtook her and she actually started to feel warm. And sleepy.

  Dimly she knew that this was a bad sign, but she just couldn’t bring herself to care at that point. Fortunately that was the moment when she felt herself being turned over and something warm being wrapped around her. When she managed to open her eyes, she saw a blurred face, a man’s face, looming over her. She had just enough wit to remember her story and her new name, to gasp out that name and a few more words, and then the effort just became too much and she let her eyes fall shut again.

  When she next came to herself, she was in a huge bed, engulfed in it, in fact, lying on what must have been a feather mattress and covered in eiderdowns, with hot bricks all around her and the cat sitting smugly on a pillow next to her.

  “Ah, she is awake,” said a voice in English, and another man, this one an old one, in a dark suit, with a full white beard and moustache, loomed over her. “Drink this,” he ordered, putting a glass to her lips as he raised her head with the other hand.

  It proved to be hot brandy rather than some nasty medicine; she sipped it cautiously, then blinked at him as it went almost straight to her head. “You’ll do,” the man said with satisfaction, and looked off to a part of the room she could not see without sitting up. “It is a good thing she is a dancer,” he said in that direction. “They may look fragile, but in my experience, they’re strong as horses. I doubt anyone without that kind of strength could have survived a wreck in that storm last night. But with some rest and good food, she’ll be as right as rain in a few days.”

  “Glad to hear it, Doctor Lambert,” said the voice she remembered from the sand. And a moment later, the man who owned the voice, face no longer a blur, came to the side of the bed. “Do you know where you are?” he asked in French.

  “Somewhere in England?” she replied.

  “You said your name was Nina,” he prompted.

  “Nina Tchereslavsky, yes. I am a dancer, a ballet dancer. So many Russian dancers have had great success in the West, and I am tired of the snow of St. Petersburg. I asked my friend Nikolas—” it was the only Russian name she could think of “—if he would take me on his pretty little boat to England. I thought I could find a good company here. My reputation—” here she raised her chin a little, in haughty imitation of La Augustine “—should more than suffice.” Now she faltered. “But there was a terrible storm. A terrible storm. The boat began to break apart. We went into the water and I lost Nikolas—”

  Unbidden, the memory of her Maman lying, slowly dying, wasting away with fever in the cold of the garret came to her mind, and she burst into tears.

  The man, an earnest fellow with brown hair and eager eyes in a round face, patted her hand awkwardly. “Now don’t give up hope yet!” he said, even though his face told her that he didn’t have any hope at all that the imaginary Nikolas would have survived. “A tiny thing like you survived, there’s plenty of hope for him.”

  “But I am all alone!” she wailed. “All alone, and I have nothing and no one—”

  All of that was true enough, and gave force to her fear and grief. “That will be enough of that for now, Mr. Barrett,” the doctor said with authority. “Let her sleep. The powder I put into her brandy should be working any moment now.”

  And indeed, even as she raised her hand to wipe the tears away with a corner of the soft, soft sheet she lay under, the room did a kind of spin, and she found her eyes closing all by themselves.

  Nigel Barrett was in his element, reporters clustered about him, shouting questions at him. This was a good setting for him too, the opulent sitting room of his apartment, fitted out in the latest and most expensive style. He beamed at them all, impartially. Not only were reporters from the Blackpool, Liverpool, and Manchester papers here, there was even a man come up from London. London! There was nothing, nothing that he could have concocted that could have produced this windfall of publicity!

  Knowing a good yarn when he heard one, Nigel had rung up the papers once he knew the little dancer was going to be all right. The story of the wreck and its lovely survivor had spread rapidly thanks to the telegraph and the telephone. Everyone wanted to hear the story first hand. Nigel and Arthur had concocted something that they thought would suit—be romantic enough and plausible enough to pass muster. Because certainly they couldn’t tell the truth. . . .

  Instead, the cat, Thomas, had been, much to his disgust, imbued with all the qualities of the most devoted of dogs. Some of the reporters were even considering having their papers give him a lifesaving medal. At least one probably would.

  Now the story ran that the cat had run up to them as they paused the auto for a moment near the piers to wait for someone to cross the street. Never mind that their real route would have taken them nowhere near the piers; Nigel had conveniently not mentioned why they were out at that hour in the first place. The cat supposedly had jumped onto the hood of the motor, and when Nigel had got
ten out to chase him off, had jumped down and grabbed Nigel’s trouser-leg in his teeth. Then, doglike, he had tugged until Nigel followed them, leading them to the girl. No, the cat hadn’t then been the girl’s pet—all of them had reckoned that having a cat swim to shore from a sinking yacht would be rather too much to be believed. Yes, she was adopting her savior—that was to forestall any newspaper scheme of having the cat adopted by a reader lottery. Yes, he was watching over her now, it was immensely touching—that, of course, was to strike the proper note of sentiment. Yes, they intended to offer Miss Tchereslavsky their hospitality until she was well enough to decide what she wanted to do—true enough on all counts.

  Finally when he thought they had all heard enough, he ushered the reporters out with orders to his butler to make sure they all got a good brandy before they left “to ward off the cold.”

  Only then did he return to his sitting room where Arthur and Wolf were waiting for him.

  “Did it pass muster?” Arthur asked anxiously, as he closed the door behind him.

  “No reason why it shouldn’t,” Nigel replied, settling into his favorite armchair and propping his feet on the fire grate. He accepted a brandy from Arthur with a sigh of satisfaction. “Good gad, old man, Americans couldn’t have manufactured something this sensational! Wolf, do you think you can write music for a dancer instead of a singer?”

  The parrot snorted, and took a dainty bite out of a hothouse grape. “At least it will be slightly more of a challenge than writing music to fit: “Charlie, my Charlie, oh do tell me true / Am I still your sweetheart, your dear Alice Blue? / Will you take me to church, will you take me to town / In my dear little Alice-blue, Alice-blue gown?”

  “That was a hit!” Nigel reminded him, and the parrot groaned. “The costermongers and newsboys were whistling it in the street!” he continued. “You must have sold thousands of copies of the sheet music!”