by Karin Cox
“A chamber pot would be nice,” Trudie’s deep rumble spoke up.
“You can eat out of a chamber pot if you like, Madame Porcine.” Sinbad again. “I prefer to eat real food.”
“What do you know about food, Sinbad?” The fat lady’s tone was vicious. “You don’t even have a stomach.”
“I don’t have a working hand either but I’ll stick a knife in your gullet when I get out of here just the same, you tub of lard.”
“Is there never to be any end of bickering?” Theron’s voice, I determined.
“Not until Provins,” Sabine said calmly from the cart behind me. “Then I’ll silence the lot of you, and the entire miserable crowd if I ever spring free from this cage.”
“What about you, Feathers? Any threats you’d like to make for us poor disabled circus performers?” Seamus said.
“Only one. I’ll have Gandler’s head.”
“Tis an ugly old head indeed. I shouldn’t think you’d be pleased with it.”
“Mayhaps you can figure out how to graft it onto a tiger. Give your friend here a little playmate.”
“I’ve have your heads too, if you insult her again.”
“That’s more like it, Feathers. Now you’re learning. We all love each other in Gandler’s Circus of Curiosities. You’ll come to learn that. We especially love Kettle and that fecking hulk Karl what does all the boss’s bidding. You be sure to love them specially well too now, if you ever get close to either of their heads, or their pricks.”
“Thank you for your advice.”
“We freaks got to stick together, don’t we?”
The carts stopped again briefly at Joy-le-Chatel, little long enough for Kettle to shove some mashed grains and dry bread through the cages, and then the convoy of wagons was set in motion again, pushing on towards Provins. The gray, fortified walls could be seen in the distance just before the sunrise. Already, gaily colored banners fluttered from the battlements and the gates were busy with traders. Sabine’s wagon had drawn up beside mine, and when she appeared as the sun sank, I could tell from her worried frown that she, like me, was wondering what the town held in store for us.
“A show, Theron says,” I told her, and her curls bounced as she nodded.
“Let’s hope it is not gladiatorial. And that it is quick.”
“It will have to be at night. Gandler must know that.” I tried to stretch my muscles. Days of stooping in the cage had given me a crooked neck.
Sabine sighed. “Yes. With luck, he means for the show to begin tonight. It might spare me another night of his perversions.”
I wished again that I might touch her, stroke her hair just for moment. “I miss you,” I said. “By day, when you are gone.”
Sabine smiled, but her eyes remained sad. “What if ... what if he separates us, by day? I could return to find you gone. Or ...” Her eyes rested on my still sparsely feathered wings.
I knew what she was thinking.
“I couldn’t bear to lose you again, Ame. Not now, when I have only just found you.” She pushed her Leonine face up to the bars.
“We need a place to meet. A place to go and wait if we should be separated again.”
She smiled. “I know a place on the Rue Saint-Antoine, outside the Hotel du Sully.”
I was curious about the choice, until she followed with, “There are two Sphinx statuettes outside.”
She must have heard my sharp intake of breath because she looked up at me with a frown. I wondered how I had missed that in my searches for her on the night I was released from the tower.
“No,” she answered, before I even asked the question. “I will not tell you where my anchorstone is. It is safer that way. Besides, you will know it when you find it.”
My face must have betrayed my skepticism, because she added in barely a whisper, “You will know it with a kiss. But know this also: it is not in Paris.”
“What is not in Paris?”
We both jumped, so stealthy was the dwarf’s approach.
“Come on, time to plan our little event for tonight.” He ran a wooden baton down the sides of the cage. “Everybody up! Gandler’s paying you a visit. Look lively now.”
“Is he bringing more to eat?” called Trudie. “I’m famished.”
“No more’n these poor horses who’ve had to haul you here.” Kettle was unsympathetic as he set about unharnessing the horses and hobbling them to enable them to graze. “And no funny business, not from any of you. It’s been a while since I had to kneecap anyone.” He swung the bat wildly. “But I’m still a dab hand at it.”
Sabine answered with a snarl from deep in her chest, which elicited a ringing thwack of the baton against the bars of her cage. “Oh, he especially wants to speak to you.”
“Well, tell him he better be quick.” She extended her claws.
“Here he comes now.”
The old man’s black robe had been replaced by one of crimson, lined with cloth of gold. A top hat embroidered with a sun and moon sat atop his head. His eyes were as black and cruel as ever behind gold spectacles.
He approached and rapped at the bars of Sabine’s cage with an ivory-tipped cane.
“Listen up, every one of you. Tonight will be an important occasion. I require each of you to be on your best behavior. Provins is a grand city, an old city, and a city where people relish the unusual.” He paused. “I think you will all agree that you are, indeed, that.” His obsidian eyes stared at each of us in turn, and I noticed that Theron’s topaz ones were barely able to conceal his hatred of the man.
“Tonight, we have a pavilion outside the Grange aux Dîmes for a gala opening,” Gandler went on. “The two-headed man will start the show.”
“We’re two men with one body,” grumbled Seamus. “Will you tell them that?”
“Of course not! Trudie, most magnificently fat of women, you shall have a room of your own. It seems my ... research ... is becoming costlier of late, so I have decided to, how shall we say, hire you out. Although I am sure you shall have many admirers but quite a few taking me up on my offer.”
A gasp came from Trudie’s wagon, and the axels shook as she wobbled herself up to a sitting position. “I won’t do it.”
“My dear woman, the question is not whether you will, but how you won’t? What will you do? Run away?” Dr. Gandler’s smile was truly cruel. “The rest of the act shall be more melodramatic. I shan’t spoil the excitement for you, but know this, Wolfman, She-cat and Angel, should any one of you fail to obey my orders, my ... entertainments ... shall become increasingly inventive. I’m sure my audience will not be bothered should my she-lion lack tits and a tail, or my angel or wolfman, a prick.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Theron started, but Gandler held up one wrinkled hand.
“Try me. Karl will come at sunset, and the dwarf will bring your costumes.”
“And Angel…”
I stared at him, not bothering to conceal my disgust.
“You shall fly.”
The long day without Sabine was broken only by the distraction of watching Gandler’s henchmen prepare for the circus. A young man, his face a mosaic of ugly scars, was mending a net, another polishing a helm. Somewhere, another employed a hammer and nails.
“So, Feathers.” Theron had adopted the twins’ nickname for me, and it stung. I had thought him more civilized.
“Wolfman,” I responded coldly.
“I hope you two intend to play by the rules tonight, since both of our pricks are at stake.”
“There are rules?”
Theron laughed. “Only one.”
“Escape.”
“No. The opposite. How do you think he has Karl and Kettle do his bidding? I assure you it is not love alone. Hate is a more formidable master.”
“Yes, and I am beginning to hate the two of them near as much as I hate Gandler.”
“Don’t.” Theron padded over and took a drink from a bowl in the corner of his wagon, holding the bowl up to his mouth li
ke a man, rather than lapping at it like a dog. “They do his bidding because he threatens them.”
“How so?”
“Gandler has Karl’s eighty-five-year-old mother locked in cell somewhere. Should Karl disobey him, or even displease him, he beats her.”
“And Kettle?”
“Children.”
“Kettle has children?”
“Yes. He was once an exhibit, like you and I, as was his wife, Kira—a tattooed lady the likes of which you have never seen. They tried to escape when the first babe was born, but Gandler caught them. He took the babe as punishment. The boy is already twice the height of his father. He travels with the camp, acts as Kettle’s whipping boy should the dwarf step out of line. You may have noticed the scars.”
“And the other children?”
“A girl. Born a dwarf like Kettle. Poor wee thing. Gandler threatened to use her in his acts unless Kettle does what is required of him, or to sell her to a brothel when she comes of age. But he also has her help him on occasion, when he operates.”
“And Kira?”
Theron dragged one hairy hand across his throat. “Gandler cut her throat. Some say she was pregnant with their third child.”
“He is serious then, about the repercussions should Sabine or I try to escape.”
“Deadly.”
“Then I suppose the net is for me.”
“Or for Sabine.”
“Tell me”—I stared into his eyes, trying to gauge the measure of the man through the hair that covered his face—“what form do you think these entertainments tonight will take?”
“Mostly bad dramatics. Re-enactments from popular play or stories, or sections from scripture, but with a macabre or ridiculous bent. I lost count of the times I had to stalk and attack a contortionist who played Red Riding Hood.” He paused. “She is dead now too. Once, for a private showing for a wealthy man, he wanted me to rape her. When I did not, after the act, Gandler strangled her right before me. She was fourteen years old; I loved her like a sister.”
“This is why, isn’t it? Why you are all so hateful to each other?”
“Yes. It does not pay to show any affection.”
“Then I will not fail you. I will do as he bids in the pavilion.”
“And I. But what if what he bids is abhorrent.”
I shrugged. “Something tells me his retribution will be worse.”
“Easy. Easy now, girl.” Kettle coaxed the ring of thin wire into the cage, all the while talking to Sabine as if she were a beast he was trying to soothe.
I could tell by the gleam of her eyes that she wanted to leap from the cage and tear the dwarf’s head off, but she just lay in the far corner, her tail twitching and her luminous eyes following him intently.
Earlier that day, I had been awoken by the clanking of chains as several of the wagons departed for the city. The sun was huge and red, sinking into the muted green landscape by the time our wagons began to move off for the gatehouse set between the city’s enormous stone ramparts. Sabine had not yet appeared, and it worried me. What if something had happened to her? What if Gandler had found her stone? I wondered whether there had been any truth in her comment about the Hotel du Sully. What if her anchorstone were there and Kettle had told his master what he had overheard? Just as I thought it, Sabine reappeared, and our wagons passed through the gates and on to the grassed lawn inside the ramparts.
Each wagon had been assigned a teamstar. Mine was just a boy. Lee, his name was. Sabine’s was the other boy with the face full of scars.
“Has the circus come to Provins before?” I asked over the clop of the pony’s feet as the boy led the wagon through the gates. He ignored me and spat on the cobblestones.
Inside, a flood of people had filled the streets, some carrying produce or other goods for market, some even herding geese or pigs. Around us, the air had been fetid with a thousand scents: cinnamon and spices, flowers, the tang of citrus and of curry, and underneath, the fragrance of skin and sweat, of sex and shit, that I had come to associate with humans. Over them, I had smelled a closer scent, an older scent: the rank tang of fear. At first, I had thought it came from Sabine, but then I’d realized the scent was Trudie’s. Sabine was too proud to be afraid.
We had moved through the streets slowly, making for the grand pavilion. Lanterns illuminated the inside of a large black and orange tent and threw curious shadows on the outside that served to both elongate and obfuscate the acts inside. The rest of the wagons stood outside, all covered with canvas to hide the acts from prying eyes.
Even now, as Kettle did his best to loop the thin wire around her neck, Sabine remained calm. It struck me as odd. I had never seen her so subdued. She had no intention of making his job easy, but nor did she resist him, and when he finally slid the noose over her neck and jerked it tight, she stood and ambled over to him like a lamb. “Come, Kettle,” she said, with a final look at me that seemed almost wistful. “Let us get this over with.”
“Oh, this will never be over with,” Kettle said.
I remembered what Theron had told me and this time heard not malice but sadness in the diminutive man’s words.
“Not until we end it,” I added under my breath.
“Sit tight, Feathers.” All trace of sympathy vanished from Kettle’s face. “I’ll be back for you in a minute.”
When he led her away, I felt my throat tighten. “Sabine,” I called.
She turned her head to me but kept moving forward.
“I... I...” The words cooled on my tongue. Better to pretend I cared less.
She nodded, and I saw that she understood. With a curt nod, she said, “Amedeo,” and then vanished from sight.
Some time later, Kettle reappeared, this time with Karl. A pair of steel manacles swung from one of Karl’s gigantic forearms and on his shoulders rested a wooden cross.
“You’ll need to put this on.” Kettle tossed something in through the bars of my cage.
I strode over to it, curious. It was a crown of sticks, the ends sharpened to resemble thorns. It left me in little doubt as to the role I was to play.
“And these!” With a clank, the manacles Karl threw hit the floor of my cage. The rustle of silk followed them. “At least until we get you up on the cross.”
I attached the manacles to my ankles, donned the black silk robe, and put up the hood, and then I let Karl pull me from the cage.
Closer to the big top, I could hear a voice booming above the cries of the crowd. We passed into a pavilion through a smaller tent. To my left, a small crowd had gathered around an alcove where Seamus and Sinbad sat on a blue velvet cushion, feeding each other grapes with their one good arm. The alcove opposite was covered with a thin veil of silk curtain. A cloud of people spilled out from beyond it, all laughing and pointing. Beyond the crowd, I could make out Trudie’s ample bulk splayed out on cushions, and even through the curtain, I could tell she was naked short of the rouge that reddened her plump lips and cheeks. Wet gurgles occasionally broke through the laughter and leering. She was either sobbing or otherwise occupied. It seemed Gandler had underestimated her appeal. There were some men prepared to humiliate a woman like Trudie even further.
“Hurry.” Karl shoved me toward the big top, where the ringmaster drowned out Trudie’s mewling.
“Gambling, whoring, drinking,” the voice bellowed. “And look at humankind’s sins. Look what comes of a life of excess, of men fornicating with beasts. Behold the wolfman!” I heard the crowd gasp and hiss, and Karl pushed me up to stand behind a screen in the back of the arena.
Out front, I could make out Theron, crawling on hands and feet around the ring, snarling.
Karl stripped me of the silk robe and slashed at my chest with a small pruning knife. I flinched but it was not a deep gash, just designed to make me bleed. “Congratulations, Messiah. Tonight you get to play our Lord and savior. Listen to Gandler, and when he calls upon the savior of man, I’ll drag you out. Here.”
I collap
sed suddenly under the weight of the wooden cross Karl dumped across my shoulders. “You’ll need this.”
“An abomination,” Gandler’s voice boomed out. I searched the arena for him until I located him on the pulpit, dressed in the robes of an archdeacon. “You have seen already the wickedness of sloth and lust in fat lady Trudie. In the aberration of two heads on one body, you see the shame of incest, and now, you see the disgusting, filthy punishments meted out when man and beast sin together. The wolfman, whose mother fornicated with a vile animal, and this, the repugnant she-beast whose father’s repulsive sins created this monster.”
The crowd screamed in indignation as Gandler said, “Reveal ... the femme-feline, the disgusting she-lion.”
The crowd gasped again, and me along with them. How I wanted to tear Gandler’s heart out for that. How dare this man, this monster, this torturer, lecture others with lies while he spent his nights performing evil?
From the other side of the stage, Sabine leaped from a black curtain with a growl. Her head held high, she stalked the arena, eyes glaring.
“See,” Gandler started again. “See the evils committed in the world today. The horrors. The freaks. This I show to you in the name of order and of decency, so that we may weed out these vile sinners and tear them down. So that we, the good citizens of Provins, might send them down to hell.”
By this time, the crowd was rabid with evangelism, their eyes fixed on Theron and Sabine. Both prowled the front rows, baring their teeth and acting, for all the world, like bloodthirsty beasts.
Gandler’s voice dropped an octave. He spread his hands wide before him. “But, good people of Provins, there is salvation. There is repentance.” He bowed his head. “For God so loved his people, his honorable, good and righteous believers—although sinners every one of them—that he gave his only son to redeem them.”
I felt a prod in my ribs and felt the weight of Karl’s makeshift sycamore cross even more keenly. “Go,” he said, pointing toward the arena. “Carry it out there.”
“Naked?”
“As the day you were born, apart from this.” He shoved the crown of thorns down on my head. It tore at my forehead and sent a trickle of blood into my eyes. “That is, if you were born, Feathers. How are angel freaks made?” He picked up the helm I had seen the boy polishing earlier that afternoon and put it on, taking up a javelin from the back of stage.