A Circus of Brass and Bone

by Abra SW

  “They’re just ordinary folks, and we’ll be treating them as such,” Ginger said firmly.

  “Certainly, but—”

  “I can’t stomach this,” the knife-thrower interrupted harshly, standing up and stalking away.

  Dr. Janzen made a mental note to keep an eye on the knife-thrower. His reaction must be due to delayed shock from the attack yesterday. If it persisted, it might be a cause for concern.

  “Is anyone going into Seppanen Town?” the midget’s wife asked. “I need a couple of things from the dry goods store, but I don’t trust myself to act all nice.”

  Female troubles, Dr. Janzen diagnosed but didn’t say. Women were touchy about such things. “I’d be happy to make your purchases for you,” he said. “I’m planning on walking into town to consult with Mrs. Della Rocca, as a fellow medicine practitioner.” He hoped nobody would ask about what; he didn’t wish to alarm them unnecessarily.

  Her lip curled. “Voluntarily? You doctors are cold-blooded.”

  Dr. Janzen looked around and found disapprobation on every face except for Ginger’s.

  “Did you skip supper?” Ginger asked.

  Dr. Janzen blinked at the non sequitur. “Why, yes. I was—working.”

  Understanding dawned on the faces around him.

  “I thought that must be it, since you’re eating your eggs so heartily!” Ginger said. “Cook’s pork and beans didn’t ruin your appetite. You sure missed something.”

  “I’m sorry for snarling,” the female midget said. “I—” She cast about for the right words.

  Dr. Janzen held his hand out before she resorted to indelicacy. “Don’t worry about it, dear lady. I understand your condition entirely.” He lowered his voice and murmured, “If it’s particularly bad, I may be able to prescribe a dose of laudanum.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Thank you,” she said in a constricted voice.

  “Come to think of it, Doctor,” Ginger said, “you may be the best man to discuss trading for supplies with Mrs. Della Rocca. Nothing in Seppanen Town happens without her say-so, and since you hope to speak with her anyway …”

  “But I’ve never—”

  “The supply master’s still recovering from being hit in the head,” Ginger said. “He’s subject to spells of confusion.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “You’ll have more of a friendly relationship with her than the rest of us could. Collegial. And you won’t actually be trading, just finding out who’s willing to trade what and for how much.”

  ~ * ~

  Dr. Janzen found himself in front of Mrs. Della Rocca’s boarding house still not entirely sure exactly when he’d agreed to act as the circus’ emissary. Still, he did need to speak with her. It made sense to talk trade at the same time.

  Mrs. Della Rocca answered his knock wearing a fresh apron and a harried smile. “Good morning!” She squinted. “Are you with the circus?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m the circus doctor, actually, and I was hoping that—”

  “You must have come to retrieve your sleepwalker! Sleepwalkers. I confess I was afraid that my little flock was going to grow even larger!”

  “Your flock? Sleepwalkers? I don’t—”

  A child’s shout interrupted him. “It’s bubbling over!”

  “Oh, dear!” Mrs. Della Rocca said. “Come in, come in—I have to take care of this!” She dashed kitchenward.

  Dr. Janzen followed at a more dignified pace. When he entered the kitchen, he found her lifting a massive pot of bubbling porridge off the stove, her apron skirt wrapped around the hot handle. Pop! went the porridge, and an oatmeal splat landed on her pristine apron.

  “Drat,” she said, looking down. The children giggled.

  The children. Almost a dozen children perched in her kitchen, sitting on stools, leaning against the counter, or sitting on the floor. Dr. Janzen studied Mrs. Della Rocca’s “flock.” They ranged in age from toddlers to youths almost old enough to strike out on their own. Their faces glowed with fresh-scrubbed health and their eyes were bright. Some of their clothing was thin to the point of translucency, but hand-stitched patches covered any holes. A couple of the children were on the scrawny side, but their faces weren’t hollow with need.

  Every child held a thin sliver of pumpkin pie. He noticed that Mrs. Della Rocca was not having a piece of pie herself; it was all for the children. A treat. A row of porridge bowls on the kitchen table would hold the main course. The bandages and medical supplies had vanished overnight.

  A familiar light laugh brought his attention to the corner of the room. A redheaded boy of about thirteen, who must be in the middle of a growth spurt, blocked his view. Dr. Janzen leaned forward. Two familiar faces smiled back at him: the conjoined sisters, Roxane and Betty Murray. One was blonde, the other brunette. Both were pretty enough, setting aside the jointure that left the freak show as their best option for supporting themselves in life. They gave their age as sixteen, but their small stature made them seem closer to twelve. Their act played that up, and so they wore the ruffles and braids of younger girls. He understood why Mrs. Della Rocca thought them children.

  Roxane Murray ate her piece of pie daintily but with every evidence of pleasure. Betty took a bite and then set hers down on the counter she leaned against. The redheaded boy eyed the pie and sidled a bit closer.

  “Sleepwalkers?” Dr. Janzen asked Mrs. Della Rocca.

  She shrugged. “I came downstairs this morning to find them in my kitchen. Both of them were genuinely asleep. I’m certain of that.”

  “Thank you for finding them, but I came here to discuss—” he glanced around, “—medical matters not for tender ears. And to gain your advice on acquiring supplies,” he added, as an afterthought.

  “Hey!” the redheaded boy complained. “Where did that piece of pie go?”

  Roxane turned to him. “It wasn’t your pie!”

  In the lull that followed, the only sound was the happy smacking of lips.

  “And no, they’re not all my children,” Mrs. Della Rocca said. “I’m sure you were wondering. Some of their parents were townsfolk who died in the storm. Some of them wandered in on the road. They were half-starved! They stay in my boarding house now, and I take care of them. We must protect the children and make sure they have enough food,” she said fiercely. “No matter what it takes. Without the children, we have no future.”

  “Commendable. Er, the circus has children to take care of, too. Who would you recommend we talk to about buying food supplies?” Dr. Janzen asked awkwardly. “We have money enough.”

  “Paper money? You might as well use it like the Sears catalog. Some farmers might sell you supplies in exchange for hard coin. Try Farmer Johnson. He’s got a lot of good windfall apples but not enough hands to gather them.” She shook her head. “Food is tight, though. We need enough to last us through the winter and to feed our children. But we don’t have hands enough to bring in the harvest.” She sighed. “If there even is a crop to harvest.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our crops are dying. Unpredictably. We just started harvesting potatoes, but many of the plants are hardly edible. They’re shriveled, twisted things. We can’t tell which are ruined until we dig them all up. Sometimes just the leaves are shriveled, sometimes the whole plant.”

  “And some are normal,” Dr. Janzen continued. “And some—are some unusually large?”

  “Yes!” She smiled. “They don’t make up for the bad ones, but they help.”

  He glanced around. “That’s what I wanted to speak with you about. Not in front of the children, though.” He gave her a meaningful look.

  “Once they’ve had their breakfast, I’ll send them out. As far as buying food goes,” she shook her head, “you’re on your own. The dry goods store doesn’t have much. Mostly we barter food with each other. A bushel of apples for six pumpkins. Like that. I make sure that even those who don’t have anything worth bartering still get a little food. Nobody in Seppa
nen Town will starve if I can help it.” She squared her shoulders. “But the circus isn’t part of Seppanen Town.”

  “The children must come first,” Dr. Janzen murmured. The town was lucky to have such a determined champion. That didn’t get food in the bellies of circusfolk, though. “More food than you can harvest,” he said musingly. “Wasting food in these times is a sin. Can we harvest what would otherwise go to waste?”

  Her eyes sharpened with interest. “That doesn’t benefit us if you keep everything you gather. We might yet be able to bring in the harvest ourselves, if we can get more labor from travelers passing through.”

  “So we only keep part of our take. What’s a fair percentage?”

  A tow-headed little boy tugged on Mrs. Della Rocca’s skirt, holding up an empty bowl. “Please, ma’am, may I have some more?”

  “Just a little bit, Oliver. We have to share.” She dolloped out another ladle of porridge. Then she tilted her head, considering Dr. Janzen. “I understand that sharecroppers would usually keep half,” she said dubiously.

  “Done!”

  She looked a bit regretful, as if she should have named a lower amount. To distract her, Dr. Janzen said, “Not much sharecropping up here. Have you lived in the South?”

  “I worked as a nurse in Fredericksburg, during the War and a bit after. I met my husband there.” Her eyes softened. “But it wasn’t to be. And you? Where were you during the war?”

  “Chattanooga.”

  “Did you know Dr. Mary Walker? An eccentric, to be sure, but also a fine doctor and a gallant lady.”

  “I—mostly dealt with the dead,” he temporized, remembering the terrible softening of the limbs that occurred as the dead settled into their new state. It was worse, somehow, when he didn’t have to fight to strip the corpses of their soiled clothes. The yielding flesh was too lifelike, so that he almost believed he bathed and wrapped and boarded living men into coffins. When he had nightmares of the dead, he woke with the imprint of that feeling still lingering on his fingertips.

  “Can our people start harvesting today?” he asked, pushing away the memory. “We’ll trade for what we can, but from what you say, I doubt that will be enough.”

  She answered with a quickness that hinted she had nightmares of her own to banish. “Yes. We need more hands in the potato field to bring the crop in. You can start there.”

  He waited in silence while the children finished scraping the last bit of porridge out of their bowls. As soon as they were done, Mrs. Della Rocca shooed them outside to go help in the fields.

  Dr. Janzen tilted his head to indicate that the conjoined sisters should wait outside too. Betty blinked at him, but Roxane nodded and whispered in her sister’s ear. As they passed, Dr. Janzen noticed a smear of pumpkin pie on the back of their dress, but it didn’t seem to be the moment to comment.

  “I apologize for making you wait,” Mrs. Della Rocca said to him, once the last child had stacked its bowl in her washing basin and left, “but a few of these children went hungry for so long that, if I don’t watch them, they’ll bolt their food and then get sick later.”

  “Your concern is admirable.”

  “I do what I can, and the devil take the hindmost.” She drew in a deep breath and let it out again. “What did you want to talk to me about that couldn’t be discussed in front of the children?” she asked, as she began to tidy up the kitchen.

  “We were attacked before we reached your town.”

  “Oh?” She moved over to the stove.

  “One of the men died during the attack. When I performed the autopsy, I discovered some disturbing signs that may explain why they attacked us.”

  She lifted a heavy cast iron skillet from the stove top and walked toward him. “Did you tell anyone else about it before you came here?”

  He shook his head. “No. I didn’t want to alarm them unnecessarily. But you have a medical background, and even more importantly, you were on the front lines during the War.”

  She stopped in front of him. “What does that have to do with it?” she asked, running one hand over the curve of the frying pan.

  “Did you ever treat any of the Confederacy’s Grey Steel regiment? The ones who had been taking bone aether for too long, or in too high of a dose?”

  She paled. “Yes. But that can’t have anything to do with the—bandits. The Union banned the military use of bone aether and destroyed the war harnesses.”

  “Surely they missed a few. Something so valuable, so dangerous—people would keep it in case of need. Bury it in the back yard. Or maybe a clever person could jury-rig something similar up from an old slave harness. Those are still legal, even if slavery isn’t.”

  “I don’t think it would be that simple.”

  “Are you certain you didn’t bring home a souvenir from your time in the South? Something you thought you’d never use, but now, with everything so unsettled and a town to protect—”

  “I would never! Those things are abominations.” Her chest heaved as she glared at him. Her knuckles whitened on the skillet handle.

  Dr. Janzen looked at her with grave eyes. “I wish you had. When I performed the autopsy, I found symptoms of an overabundance of bone aether that, given time, would have led to full manifestation.”

  “But a war harness—”

  “I don’t think he had access to a war harness. I suspect the freak storm excited his bone aether.” He paused. “I’ve observed early symptoms in other people. Muscle aches, nervous energy in one or more limbs, spasms.”

  The cast iron skillet slipped from numb fingers and crashed to the floor. “Oh, merciful God,” she whispered.

  ~ * ~

  “Good day, Doctor-sahib. And Missies,” the Indian mahout greeted them as they returned. He sat cross-legged on the ground at the edge of camp. “Missies are going for walk? I did not see you leave.”

  “They sleepwalked,” Dr. Janzen answered. “Fortunately, they ended up safely in Mrs. Della Rocca’s kitchen.”

  “For the pumpkin pie, yes?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I hear one of them say, ‘Pie’ when we visit Mrs. Della Rocca’s kitchen. They are dreaming of it, yes?”

  “Er, yes, I suppose.” Dr. Janzen vaguely recalled seeing the mahout in the kitchen. He must have been standing way in the back.

  “And now missy has her pie.” The mahout smiled to himself. “Everybody dreams.”

  Dr. Janzen nodded, though his dreams were not ones he cared for.

  Roxane Murray said, “Goodbye, Doctor. We want to go rest in our wagon.”

  Betty added, “We’re tired after we sleepwalk.”

  “Do you sleepwalk often?” Dr. Janzen asked, concerned.

  “Hardly ever,” Roxane answered. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Not soon,” Betty said.

  “Are you alright?” Dr. Janzen asked.

  They nodded in unison, but they wouldn’t meet his eyes. He let them go.

  When Dr. Janzen knocked on the door of the supply wagon, the supply master poked his head out and blinked over his spectacles at him. “Yes? Why are you back so soon? I knew I should have gone to negotiate! How much money will it take for us to get supplied?”

  Dr. Janzen shook his head. “They won’t take fractional currency. How much do we have in coin?”

  The supply master scowled. “Enough. Barely.”

  “I heard that the equestrienne brought back money from her visit to the mayor of Boston. Was it all paper money?”

  “I think so. You’d have to ask her—she squirreled it away somewhere. To keep any of us from getting ideas, I suppose. Only gave me a count.” He scowled. “Heaven only knows if it’s right. Oh, I’m not saying she’d steal any! But untrained people …”

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to spend all our money here—”

  “Of course it’s not,” Madame Wershow interrupted, as she emerged from the shadows of the wagon.

  Dr. Janzen started, but controlled his r
eaction quickly. He should be used to the fortune teller’s habit of appearing out of thin air by now, though how she managed it with all her rings and brooches and necklaces was beyond him.

  “This is a small farming town that will survive the winter well if they can get the harvest in,” she said. “It will be worse in New York, much worse. You’re sure they won’t take paper?”

  Dr. Janzen shook his head. “According to Mrs. Della Rocca, only if they need paper for the outhouse. They’re short-handed, however, and so—”

  The supply master snorted with disgust. “I bet they are, those lousy—”

  “Let him finish,” Madame Wershow interrupted.

  Dr. Janzen cleared his throat. “Ah, because they’re short-handed, they’re willing to trade food for labor. Mrs. Della Rocca said that food would go unharvested, so I asked if we could gather the gleanings. Any hands we can spare are welcome, and they’ll let us keep half of what we reap from their fields.”

  “An excellent idea,” Madame Wershow said. “I’ll pass the word—and make sure everyone know that any food they bring home had better go directly to the supply master and not to their own wagon.”

  “They must be desperate!” the supply master said. “What if we talk to the folks they’ve kidnapped?”

  Dr. Janzen stopped cold. “What?”

  Madame Wershow sighed. “I suppose you won’t need to deal with Mrs. Della Rocca again, so there’s no need to keep you in ignorance. Seppanen Town has been kidnapping travelers and forcing them to work in the fields. One escaped last night and fled here.”

  “The men and the dogs,” Dr. Janzen said. “Last night. That’s what they were looking for. But—”

  “Mrs. Della Rocca welcomes visitors. Then she drugs them, and they wake up enslaved.”

  “She’s a good woman!” he protested. “She wouldn’t do that! She’s providing for a dozen orphans, herself …” He trailed off as he recalled her speech. “A dozen orphans she’d do anything to protect.”

  Madame Wershow nodded. He fancied he detected sympathy in the set of her shoulders, but the veil made it impossible to tell.

  “The bandages on her table,” he said slowly. “Those were there on our first visit, but not this morning. It doesn’t make sense to keep your medical supplies out like that. And—that basin of bloody water. That wasn’t from cleaning meat. She’d been seeing to the wounded. Those men who attacked the supply wagon, they weren’t bandits at all!”