The Kingdom of Bones

by Stephen Gallagher

  She said, “Tom Sayers stopped to hear your song.”

  “Yes,” Louise said absently. “Isn’t he sweet.” She might share jokes with Sayers about service and devotion. But the truth of it was that the acting manager usually went from her thoughts in the same moment that he left her sight.

  “Last night, Mister Caspar did the same.”

  Louise stopped. She put her head out from behind the screen.

  “Did he really?” she said.

  The sewing woman made a face of assent as, tongs in one hand and tray in the other, she let cards and flower all slide into the flames together before replacing the stove lid with a clank.

  “Well,” said Louise.

  She drew back behind the screen. But she mused on the thought for a moment before she continued to undress.

  Well, indeed.

  Members of the company were now starting to gather around the stage doorkeeper’s office, where Sayers had posted the movement order and from where the cabs would pick them up. Whitlock had stepped inside with the doorman and was still keeping a tight hold upon his cashbox. Usually the Silent Man was at his side, shaven of head and bony of skull, a forbidding presence and a deterrent to all.

  When Whitlock saw Sayers through the glass, he beckoned him in. Like all doorkeepers’ offices it was a cramped and cozy space, and the doorman was unhappy to share it.

  Whitlock said, “What do I hear about Caspar?”

  “He didn’t wait for the carriages,” Sayers told him.

  “Does he know where to go?”

  Sayers made a helpless gesture. “If he read the order. Who can say?”

  Whitlock glanced away for a moment, thinking hard and none too pleased.

  “I’ll speak to him on the train,” he decided.

  “Assuming he catches it,” Sayers said. “I don’t know where he’s gone.”

  When Sayers came out of the doorkeeper’s office he was collared by the Low Comedian. The man’s true name was Gulliford, but in the profession he went as Billy Danson (a Baggy Suit and a Big Smile). He had his traveling bag in his hand, and he’d been reading the movement order over the heads of the others.

  He said, “The train list says you’re in with me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You always get a private compartment.”

  “Not tonight,” Sayers said, and went off to make sure that the scenery and props were on their way.

  FIVE

  About a mile from the playhouse stood an arena of a different kind, the town’s cattle auction with its adjoining slaughterhouse. Local farmers drove in their herds at one end, and local butchers carried off dressed carcasses from the other. In between stood a yard like a parade ground with a drain across the middle of it, an auction hall with covered pens and a bidding ring, and an abattoir with two killing floors and a cesspool. Few houses were to be found nearby, but a soap works and a tannery took water from the same river and returned their noxious wastes to it after. The river then flowed through the town, foaming at every bend and weir.

  James Caspar had walked here alone. The rain had continued to fall, quickly clearing the streets of departing theatergoers and leaving him unobserved. Now it was driving harder, and it glistened on the cobbles as he looked out across the yard. He was under cover. Behind him, several dozen animals moved uneasily in the pens. They read their own mortality in the scent of the air, but did not understand its meaning.

  A high brick wall surrounded the yard and buildings. The main gates were open and a single lamp hung from the center of the archway above them. By tilting his pocket watch, Caspar could just about read the time by its light. This was later than he’d intended.

  Someone was coming through the gate. Two figures, running. Crouched against the rain, coats flapping; and there, because he’d missed it at first, a smaller figure in between them. The Silent Man was holding out one side of his unbuttoned greatcoat like a bat’s wing, sheltering whoever ran by his side. A few strides back from them came the Mute Woman, his wife, hurrying to keep up.

  Caspar flipped down the cover on his pocket watch and drew himself up. It would not do to let his impatience show; but nor would it do to conceal his displeasure. A tricky call.

  The Silent Man arrived in front of him. His wife came no farther than she needed to get herself out of the rain. The Silent Man lifted his coat aside to reveal his sheltered companion.

  “Well,” said Caspar, “let’s see what we have here.” He came around for a better look in the poor light, and the Silent Man turned with him.

  “A boy,” said Caspar.

  The Silent Man watched him, dark eyes staring from his skull of a face. He was both apprehensive and submissive. The boy just stood there.

  It was impossible to tell his exact age, but he was young. Malnutrition probably made him seem even younger than he really was. He was thin, he was awkward, and he was ragged. His ginger hair had been recently cut as if by a novice shearer, leaving bare patches and scabs. His mouth hung open. Only his eyes seemed alive, and they were wide with terror.

  “Oh, well,” Caspar said. “Time’s limited, I suppose. What’s your name?”

  Not a flicker in response.

  “No name,” said Caspar. “What’s this?” He touched his white-gloved hand to the back of the boy’s head and then inspected the stain on his fingertips. The light here was too poor to be certain of the shade, but it might have been purple.

  “Some kind of paint,” Caspar said. “What’s it for? Ringworm?”

  Still nothing. Caspar took the boy by the shoulder and started to walk him farther into the building, where candles had been lit. “Someone cares a little for you, then,” he said. The Silent Man and his wife hung back, their part in the entertainment done. Caspar’s grip on the child was firm, not enough to cause him pain, but enough to hold him fast should he try to run.

  Caspar said, “How would you like to feel clean for once in your life, boy? How would you like to be cleaner than you’ve ever been before? Because that’s something I can do for you. It’s an art that I’ve practiced. Here.”

  Steering with his hand, he made the boy turn. The boy swayed and staggered, going wherever he was directed but without much grace or elegance. A ramp led to the upper floor of the building. It was long and shallow and scattered with dirty straw. Trapdoors linked the two levels of the slaughterhouse and chains hung straight down through them. As they ascended, the candlelight grew brighter.

  Caspar’s grip on the boy tightened as they reached the top of the ramp and the open part of the upper floor came into view. Pennies jangled in the boy’s pocket. Caspar made a mental note to have the Silent Man retrieve them afterward.

  “See, boy,” he said. “Here’s what I can do for you.”

  The boy looked, and for the first time gave some sign of awareness and understanding. He started to whimper. The whimper turned into a scream.

  “Now, now,” said Caspar. Down below, the Silent Man and his wife started to beat with sticks on the sides of the cattle pens so that the animals started to shift and low, drowning out any sounds that might come from above.

  “Shouting won’t help,” said Caspar. “But I’m sure I can show you something that will.”

  SIX

  It was a close-run thing but they were on the station concourse by twenty minutes to midnight, leaving just enough time to get their freight loaded into the goods van and their people into the sleeping cars. The railway’s theater man had opened up the goods-yard gates so that the carriages could draw in alongside the platform. The stage crew transferred the flats, properties, and costume hampers with maximum efficiency. The actors fussed and argued and took rather longer.

  Whitlock traveled with four heavy cases, a steamer trunk, and a lapdog named Gussie. He was prepared to carry the lapdog, but Sayers had to organize the transfer of his employer’s luggage in the absence of the Silent Man. The actors hung out of the windows and watched.

  As Whitlock exercised Gussie on th
e platform, the railway’s theater man caught up with him. He was a slight man with a mustache, a long brown overcoat, and a bowler hat. “Mister Whitlock?” he said. “Mister Edmund Whitlock?”

  “Here,” Whitlock said with his usual conscious grandeur.

  “Cooper, sir. Theatrical representative for the Midland Railway. I’m sorry about your missing people, sir, but I can’t hold the train any longer.”

  With one hand, Whitlock scooped up Gussie from the platform; the other he held up for silence.

  “Don’t say another word, Mister Cooper,” he said. “There is only so much spare capacity in any man’s head, and I reserve all of mine for the classics.”

  With that, he swept himself and his dog onto the train leaving Cooper for someone else to deal with. If he thought that Sayers would step into his place, he was wrong. Sayers had already tried his best with the theater man, and at that moment was elsewhere in the station.

  Sayers had spotted someone across the platforms. Could it be? It surely was. Leaving the train and the company, he dashed to the iron bridge that crossed the tracks. It took him up close to the roof beams where all the steam and the smoke drifted. “Bram!” he started calling out even before he was safely within earshot. “Bram Stoker!”

  The big Irishman on Platform Five turned at the sound of his name. He’d been easy to identify, even at night and at a distance. A man in his early forties, well over six feet tall and solidly built, he was brown-haired and auburn-bearded. He waited with a look of polite uncertainty as Sayers descended to the platform and crossed toward him.

  “Forgive me, Bram,” Sayers said, getting his breath under control as he reached his opposite number. In the same way that Sayers was Whitlock’s man, Stoker was Henry Irving’s. Sayers might be hooked up with a modest little touring dog-and-pony show and Stoker with the mighty Lyceum company, but they surely were brothers under the skin.

  Or perhaps not. Sayers saw the searching look in the Irishman’s eyes as Stoker gave him a moment of study.

  “You do not know me,” Sayers said.

  Stoker took one moment longer and then said, “You’re Tom Sayers. The prizefighter. You wrote and played in…”

  “A Fight to the Finish.”

  “You took out the number one touring company in ’eighty-three.”

  “I serve as acting manager for Edmund Whitlock now.”

  “As penance for what?” Stoker said wryly.

  “I beg a favor, Bram,” Sayers said, without rising to the implied slight on his employer. “My company’s three short, and I don’t know where they are. Have you any influence with the railway’s theater man?”

  “To hold back your train?”

  “By any amount of time at all.”

  Stoker checked his watch against the station clock and promised to see what could be done. As they crossed the iron bridge, he told Sayers that he was on his way to Scotland to join the rest of the Lyceum people in researching settings for a new production of Macbeth. He had broken his journey here to discuss arrangements for the provincial tour of Faust that was to precede it.

  Researching settings! Sayers marveled at the very thought. Sets for The Purple Diamond had been picked up cheaply from the Theatre Royal at Bilston, whose scene dock was filled with the props and scenery of companies that had gone bust there.

  Whitlock might not be the easiest of managers. He might not play the best houses, or be received by royalty, or be honored by any major institution. But he led a working company in an uncertain field of endeavor. He kept his dates and gave a living to others. Stoker might have the good fortune to be working for an actor at the very top of his profession. But it was thanks to Edmund Whitlock, and the hundreds like him, that the profession existed at all; and had he not been in such pressing need, Sayers would probably have stopped to argue the case.

  While Stoker sought out Cooper, Sayers boarded the waiting train. He had to stride over bags and a birdcage in the corridor. As he was making his way down toward Whitlock’s compartment, Louise stepped out to intercept him.

  “Tom,” she said. “Where is Mister Caspar?”

  “Nobody knows,” Sayers said, perhaps a little tersely.

  “Could he have come to any harm?”

  “Him? I don’t imagine so.”

  “Something like this has happened before, has it not?”

  It had, in Sunderland, and in Sayers’ opinion Caspar should have been dismissed for his offense there and then.

  But he said, “I really don’t think it’s right for us to be discussing this. Will you please excuse me, Miss Porter?”

  She withdrew into her compartment—the one that should have been his own, and that he had given up for her—and he tapped on Whitlock’s door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Tom Sayers, sir.”

  There was a pause and then, after a moment, he heard the door being unlocked. When Whitlock let him in, he saw that all the blinds had been drawn and the cashbox was open. Sayers was the company’s bookkeeper, but Whitlock always liked to count the take for himself.

  He closed the compartment door behind Sayers and secured it again, and then said, “Well?”

  “Bram Stoker’s on the station,” Sayers told him. “He’ll speak to the railway company for us. I think they’ll hold the train awhile longer.”

  “So you’re telling me that Henry Irving’s man carries more influence than Edmund Whitlock’s?”

  Sayers had no ready or diplomatic reply, but then realized that Whitlock was only making sport with him. Vain Whitlock might be. Stupid he was not.

  “Sir,” Sayers said. “May I speak openly?”

  Whitlock sat. Without the hair black that he wore onstage, his own hair was a fine shade of silver. His eyes were dark and his features were strong. His back was always straight…but that could have been due to the corset, which he seemed to imagine that no one was aware of.

  He said, “Is it about Caspar?”

  “I’ve held my peace for long enough,” Sayers said. “James Caspar is a growing problem for all of us. I think it neither wise nor desirable that we continue to put the company’s existence at risk for the appetites of one performer. We are men of the world, Edmund. If he wants to go whoring, that’s his concern. But now the women are starting to notice.”

  Whitlock considered. He seemed unusually drained and weary-looking tonight. Looking down on him, Sayers began to wonder for the first time whether there could be substance to some of the backstage whispers. That there might be more to the actor-manager’s lapses than an overfamiliarity with the play.

  “By the women, do you mean sweet little Louise?” Whitlock said. “An undisclosed affection there, wouldn’t you say?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For Caspar.”

  For Caspar? Sayers could not envision a less suitable attachment. Yet he could imagine how a man like Caspar might appear to one so young and impressionable. He felt a dismay that he took care not to show.

  He said, “All the more reason to bring it to an end.”

  “We need him.”

  “Not so. I can send a wire in the morning and have a replacement letter-perfect by Friday night.”

  “No, Tom.”

  “Why not?”

  “Please do not ask me to explain.”

  Sayers was about to reply, but at that moment there was some commotion outside in the corridor. Whitlock turned to stow the cashbox, and Sayers let himself out.

  The members of the company had emerged from their compartments and were standing at the open windows on the platform side. Ricks and the Low Comedian and most of the stage crew were whistling and cheering. A couple of people moved to make space for Sayers so that he could look out with the rest of them.

  Emerging from a cloud of steam at the far end of the platform were three strange shapes in lurching silhouette: a great winged figure like a flying Mephistopheles, buttressed on either side by supporting gargoyles, all three staggering this way and that as if
the earth shook beneath them. Then the steam cleared and detail emerged; it was Caspar, arms outstretched for support, coat flapping wide, with the Silent Man and the Mute Woman attempting to steer him toward the train while his legs pursued some erratic agenda of their own. The company cheered them on, and the Low Comedian opened a door to receive them.

  “Stop the noise!” Sayers shouted. “Please! Consider our reputation!”

  The Silent Man and his wife got Caspar to the train. Ricks and the Low Comedian reached out and hauled him in by his clothing. Sayers’ warning had come too late; they’d drawn the attention of strangers from other carriages. Railwaymen had stopped to watch from the bridge and one or two later travelers had emerged from the station’s waiting rooms, drawn by the disturbance.

  Landing in the train, Caspar bounced off the paneling and almost fell back out again. But the Silent Man and his wife were now blocking the way. A guard’s whistle sounded outside on the platform and the door was slammed from without.

  As the train began to move. Sayers spied Bram Stoker standing with the railway’s theater man. It was ten minutes after the hour. Sayers raised his hand in a wave of thanks as they went by, and saw it returned.

  Then he closed the window and turned to deal with James Caspar.

  Most of the others had returned to their berths. Caspar was clinging to a handrail while his silent companions were trying to detach him and get him into his own compartment. Sayers moved down the corridor toward them with mounting anger.

  But before he could reach the dissipated Juvenile, Louise stepped out ahead of him. Her back was turned and she did not see Sayers at all. Her attention was directed toward the young man who was now somehow managing to find his feet despite the motion of the train.

  “Mister Caspar!” she said. “Are you unwell?”

  She spoke without irony and with genuine concern. Caspar drew himself up to his full height, and then threw off the hands that would support him. He raised a finger, as if he’d just been struck by a brilliant idea that he was about to express.