Splendors and Glooms

by Laura Amy Schlitz

  Cassandra uttered a snort of disbelief. “Is she a pickpocket, too?”

  “Not a pickpocket, no. When you first meet her, you will be struck by her air of innocence. It is misleading. She’s a deceitful little puss, in spite of her pious airs. You must not let her deceive you.”

  “I am not easily deceived.”

  Grisini was greatly tempted to laugh. He closed his eyes as if the conversation wearied him. “Write to them. Invite them here. Tempt them. One or the other will steal the phoenix-stone from you.”

  And whichever it is, he thought, will be my puppet and my slave. If Parsefall steals it, he will use it according to my commands. And if it is Lizzie Rose . . . She has not yet learned fear, not as the boy has, but I shall enjoy teaching her.

  “Very well, then. Write to the children and invite them here.”

  “It will be better if you write to them. They’re ungrateful little beggars and dislike my society. You may have to lure them here — and you’ll have to address your letter to the girl. The boy can’t read.”

  “You have taught him nothing?”

  “On the contrary, I have taught him everything. How to animate the puppets, how to ease a purse out of a waistcoat pocket . . . But reading, no. That is not one of his accomplishments. The girl can read. Invite them both.”

  “Or perhaps all three,” Cassandra said shrewdly. “Remember, Gaspare, I have sat by your bedside. You have dreamed and raved in your sleep. Tell me, if you please: who is Clara Wintermute, and what is all this about a ransom of ten thousand pounds?”

  Parsefall was washing his hands. Lizzie Rose, who knew how seldom he washed, would have rejoiced over this, but Lizzie Rose was out, and the only witness to this unusual event was Clara. Clara lay on the mantelpiece, facing a streaked and spotty mirror. From this vantage point, she could see most of the room, a thing for which she was grateful.

  Clara had spent the last week on the mantelpiece. It was one place, Lizzie Rose reasoned, where Ruby could not reach her. Lizzie Rose might have doubts as to whether it was possible that anyone could be changed into a puppet, but she took care to keep Clara out of harm’s way. Clara was not sorry to be safe from the dog, but she was weary of lying in the same place for days on end. She felt stranded. She found herself listening for noises in the street below: the sounds of hoofbeats and carriage wheels, the tolling of the bells, and the battle cries of the cats. She looked forward to the hours when the children were at home and she could hear their conversations.

  The mantelshelf was cluttered. In the past few days, Lizzie Rose had taken to cleaning the lodgings. Whenever she found something of value, she placed it next to Clara. Gazing into the glass, Clara could see three snuffboxes, a pair of opera glasses, and a photograph in a silver frame. The frame looked oddly familiar, but it faced outward: Clara could see only the back of it.

  Parsefall’s splashings ceased. He wiped his palms against his filthy trousers, walked directly to the mantel, and picked up Clara. He carried her to the puppet gallows and laid her on the floor. Then he hunkered down next to her. From his jacket pocket, he took a reel of black thread, a lump of beeswax, and a needle.

  He’s going to string me, thought Clara. She wanted to stretch her painted lips and shout for joy.

  Parsefall bit off a piece of thread, sucked one end, and inserted it into his needle. He knotted a string close to her left temple — Clara realized that there must be a screw there — and pulled the string through the perch that hung from the gallows. Clara rose in the air, neck bent, body dangling. Parsefall lowered her until her left foot was flat against the floor. He knelt back down and threaded the string through the screw on the other side of her head. It’s not right, Clara wanted to tell him, my right knee is sagging. As if he heard her, he reached up to adjust the string.

  Clara thrilled to his touch. As the strings passed through her limbs, she felt as if her bones were full of air. She longed for Parsefall to lift the crutch off the gallows. She imagined herself dancing on the tips of her toes, light and supple and free. She wondered if Parsefall were thinking the same thing. She seemed to hear the sound of coins dropping into a tin box and the patter of applause.

  A door slammed downstairs. “It’s broken!” the parrot cried triumphantly. There was a fanfare of barking. Clara heard Lizzie Rose’s footsteps on the staircase and the skittering sound of Ruby’s toenails. The door opened, and the dog rushed in, circling the room at top speed.

  Parsefall yelped and yanked Clara into his arms. For a moment, Clara’s head rested against his chest, and she could hear his heartbeat. It was fast and strong. She felt him lift her; the spaniel was jumping at his knees. Lizzie Rose said, “Ruby! Come here!” as she set off in pursuit. Ruby eluded her, making a wide circle around the carpet. After another lap of the room, she settled down by the hearth, her black lips open in laughter and her pink tongue showing.

  “Bloody ’orrible dog,” said Parsefall.

  “She isn’t,” said Lizzie Rose indignantly. Her eyes fell on Clara. “Oh, Parsefall! What are you doing with Clara?”

  “I ’aven’t ’urt her,” Parsefall said defensively. “All I done was string ’er a little. She likes it.”

  “She can’t like it. She isn’t —” Lizzie Rose began. She shook her head, dismissing the subject. “Never mind that now. I have to talk to you.”

  Parsefall turned his back on her. He replaced Clara’s perch on the gallows and said automatically, “I ain’t done nuffink.”

  “‘I haven’t done anything,’” Lizzie Rose corrected him. She unbuttoned her coat and threw it over the arm of a chair. Then she reached into her muff and brought out a lady’s purse made of gray silk. “I found this today. Have you ever seen it before?”

  “No. Where woz it?”

  “In Grisini’s room, stuffed inside the mattress.” Lizzie Rose wedged her fingers into the mouth of the purse. She brought out a handful of glittering objects. “Look, Parsefall! There was a man’s gold watch — not Grisini’s, with the wolf and the swan, but a different one, very large and heavy — and these two bracelets, one set with sparkling stones and the other one with pearls. I think they’re real pearls, not fish scales and glass. I took the gold watch to the pawnbroker, and oh, Parse! Mr. Grimes gave me ten quid for it!”

  “Ten quid?” echoed Parsefall disbelievingly.

  “Ten quid,” Lizzie Rose repeated. “It was real gold — a gold repeater, Mr. Grimes said. Perhaps I shouldn’t have parted with it — it must be worth a fortune if he gave me that — but I was so flustered, I couldn’t think. I took the ten quid, but all the way home I kept thinking how strange it is that Grisini should have had such things! He always said we were so poor. But he must have known what was in the mattress — it was horribly lumpy; I don’t know how he slept on it — and then I looked at the purse, and —” She held it out to him. “Parse, see how the purse strings are cut? They aren’t worn or frayed; they’re sharp at the ends. I think a lady must have been wearing this purse and someone cut the strings with a pair of scissors — and I think the someone was Grisini. I think he was a cutpurse — and a pickpocket — and I think he stole these things, all these things!”

  She paused, allowing Parsefall time to respond.

  “A gold watch worth ten quid,” Lizzie Rose repeated. “And bracelets set with jewels.” Her voice grew hard. “There were nights when we went to bed hungry because he said there was no money. Parse, you must tell me. Did you know Grisini was a thief?”

  Parsefall hesitated. Clara wished she could see his face. “What’re you doin’, pryin’ through Grisini’s things?”

  “I have to,” Lizzie Rose said flatly. “Mrs. Pinchbeck told me to clear out Grisini’s bedchamber. She’s invited young Mr. Pinchbeck to stay with us at Christmastime, and she wants him to have Grisini’s bed.”

  “Old Fitzmorris?” Parsefall repeated incredulously. “What’s she want wiv ’im?”

  “He’s her stepson,” Lizzie Rose said, so bleakly that Clara understoo
d that Lizzie Rose disliked Fitzmorris Pinchbeck even more than Parsefall did.

  “’E almost twisted my ear off last year,” Parsefall complained, “just for ’aving a pick at the pudding.”

  “It was worse for me,” Lizzie Rose flared. “He kissed me under the mistletoe. Twice. And he has a horrid wet mouth.”

  There was a brief silence. It seemed to Clara that Lizzie Rose had the better claim to be pitied. But Parsefall’s mind had left Fitzmorris Pinchbeck. “What’re you going to do wiv the ten quid?”

  Lizzie Rose sighed. She sank down beside the fire, wrapping her skirt around her hands to warm them. Ruby trotted over and flopped down next to her. “You haven’t answered my question,” pointed out Lizzie Rose. “Did you know Grisini was a thief? And if you did”— her voice grew stern —“why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because he’d a killed me!” Parsefall shot back, exasperated. “You saw wot ’e did when you peached on him! He’d a killed me if I told you!”

  Lizzie Rose bent her head over Ruby. She fondled the spaniel’s ears and dropped a kiss on her head. Then: “Parse —?”

  “Wot?” demanded Parsefall.

  “Did you steal any of the things I found?” Lizzie Rose asked. “I know you stole the photograph from the Wintermute house —”

  What photograph? wondered Clara.

  Parsefall said unwillingly, “I mighta stole one of the bracelets.”

  “Oh, Parsefall!”

  “I ’ad to,” Parsefall said irritably. “You don’t know how it was. Grisini told me to steal things. I ’ad to do what he told me, didn’t I?”

  “Tell me.” After a moment: “Tell me. I’m not going to scold you, but you must tell me the truth.”

  Parsefall turned away from Lizzie Rose. He picked up his needle, knelt down before Clara, and passed the thread through her left shoulder. He said slowly, “When I was at the work’ouse —”

  As his fingers closed around the puppet’s torso, a picture came into Clara’s head: the interior of a grim brick building and two rows of trough-like beds. It was like no place that she had ever seen, and yet she had no doubt that it was a real place: the workhouse where Parsefall had lived when he was very small. For a moment it was as if she were there herself. She was shivering with cold, and one of the bigger boys had taken her blanket. The man in the bed next to hers was sick, coughing up gobbets of blood-streaked phlegm. . . . Clara wished she could shake her head from side to side. She wanted to dislodge the memories that entered into her mind as the strings passed through her limbs.

  “I think I woz five or six. An’ Grisini came and said he wanted a boy for ’is apprentice. So Grisini, he took three of us outside and we ’ad to play a game wiv ’im. He had a ’andful of little thin sticks, all alike, and he dropped ’em and we had to pick ’em up one at a time, wivout moving any of the other ones.”

  “Spillikins,” interrupted Lizzie Rose, voicing Clara’s thoughts.

  “What?”

  “It’s a game. It’s called spillikins. Go on.”

  “We played that game — spillikins — and I woz the best. ’E said I woz clever with me ’ands. So he took me away wiv ’im. And I was willin’, ’cos by that time, me muvver and all was dead, and I didn’t want to stay in the work’ouse no more.”

  “‘Anymore,’” Lizzie Rose corrected him. “Go on.”

  “So I went wiv ’im. And he showed me the puppets. He did the show by ’imself those days, and people would watch, an’ my job was to pick their pockets. It weren’t ’ard, because they woz watchin’ the show —”

  More pictures swam into Clara’s mind: a gold bracelet, studded with blue-green stones, and a stout lady in a large bonnet, who watched the puppet show as happily as a child of six. It was an easy matter to sidle up close to the woman, unclasp her bracelet, and catch it when it slipped off. Clara could almost feel the bracelet in her hands. The metal was still warm from the woman’s wrist.

  “An’ I wozn’t never caught. An’ if the takings woz good, then Grisini’d take me to the cookshop, and give me wotever I wanted for supper.” Parsefall’s voice was husky with gratitude. “I thought I was in ’eaven. I watched the shows, and he’d let me play wiv the puppets, and I learned how to work ’em. We went to fairs, an’ I saw the horse races and the jugglers and the swells. And then, after a while, Grisini started teaching me to work the puppets, and he could see I woz going to be good. So he ’ad me with him in the booth, an’ I didn’t steal so much. He liked the puppet theatre. He liked it as much as I do. The devil couldn’t hold a candle to Grisini in wickedness, but he woz good with the fantoccini. He liked ’em.”

  “Yes,” agreed Lizzie Rose, “he was good with the fantoccini. He might have made an honest living for himself. But he was a bad, disgraceful man, Parsefall, and it was very wrong of him to teach you to steal. You mustn’t do it anymore. Not ever.”

  “I won’t,” Parsefall said with a prompt willingness that Clara, at least, found unconvincing. “Only now that we’ve got ten quid, what’ll we do with it?”

  “I suppose,” Lizzie Rose said reluctantly, “we ought to pay rent to Mrs. Pinchbeck.”

  “That’s a waste,” Parsefall declared. “You’ve been working your fingers to the bone to pay Mrs. Pinchbeck. It ain’t right for ’er to have the money, too.”

  Lizzie Rose did not argue. Perhaps she agreed with Parsefall. She spoke in a low voice, as if confiding a secret to Ruby. “I wish I could have a new dress. This one is so tight and greasy — and it smells.” She lifted her head. “Only we ought to save, Parsefall — that is, if we don’t pay the rent to Mrs. Pinchbeck. And I suppose”— still more reluctantly —“we ought to take Grisini’s things to the police station because they’re stolen goods. Only that might get us into trouble, and I don’t see —”

  Parsefall interrupted her. “I’m ’ungry,” he said piteously. He sounded weak and almost babyish. “I’m ever so ’ungry,” he repeated, in case she had missed the point.

  “So’m I,” admitted Lizzie Rose. “It’d be lovely to go to the cookshop and order a proper feast, wouldn’t it? I suppose we could spend just a little. I could get a new dress for sixpence. Do you think it would be wrong to spend a whole sixpence on myself?”

  Parsefall was already on his feet. His pinched little face was bright with excitement. “We could go to the Egyptian ’All,” he said.

  “The Egyptian Hall?” echoed Lizzie Rose.

  “It costs a — a shillin’,” Parsefall said. He hesitated before the last word, and Clara understood why: for him and Lizzie Rose, the spending of a shilling was an enormity. “The Royal Marionettes — that’s what they call fantoccini — are playing there; they’re doing The Bottle Imp, same as we do. Only wiv pyrotechnics,” he added, “which is fireworks, and they ’ave over two ’undred puppets. I’ve ’eard about ’em. They say the puppets is life-size, and they’re all string, no wires to ’em, and they’ve got mouths that open and shut. We could go to a cookshop,” he suggested, warming to his theme, “and ’ave an ’ot dinner. And then we could go see the Royal Marionettes. They’re the best,” he added, and then added a word Clara had never heard him use. “Please.”

  There was a brief silence. “Is that what you want?” Lizzie Rose said in a bemused tone of voice. “If — if you had a shilling of your own, that’s how you’d spend it?”

  Parsefall jerked his head in an unqualified yes. “You could ’ave a shillin’ for your dress,” he said recklessly. “For a shilling, you ought to be able to get something bang-up to the mark. We could ’ave supper,” he added, and Clara caught his sense of exhilaration; he saw a radiant evening before him: a full belly first, and the splendors of the Royal Marionettes to follow. “We could ’ave supper and see the show. And we could do it tonight — if you put your togs on right away.” He swung Clara off the gallows, set her back on the mantel, and picked up Lizzie Rose’s muff. He shied it at her, and she caught it. “Come on, Foxy-Loxy. It starts at eight.”

  Lizzie Ros
e burst out laughing. She scooped Ruby off her lap and stood up. “Very well, then,” she said, and her cheeks were pink with excitement. “Why shouldn’t we? We’ll go. We’ll go tonight.”

  The evening began well.

  They did not take the dogs. As they strolled side by side, it dawned on Lizzie Rose that her hands were empty; there was no caravan to push and no dogs straining at the leash. She said in wonder, “I haven’t even a market basket,” and Parsefall, following her thoughts, favored her with one of his lopsided smiles.

  The traffic was heavy, making progress slow. Mingled with the stink of the river and the reek of horse manure were fainter, more appetizing smells: crumpets, fried fish, saveloys, and mutton pies. The children sniffed appreciatively but passed their favorite baked potato stall without a second glance. Tonight they would dine like lords and ladies, with meat and gravy, bread and butter, oysters, pudding, and table beer. Parsefall, whose flat little stomach was already growling, would have chosen a tavern at random, but Lizzie Rose had other plans. She announced that she would go nowhere where the table linen was unclean. “We don’t eat the cloth,” Parsefall protested, but Lizzie Rose paid no heed. The sovereign inside her muff was no ordinary coin; it was a magic amulet that was to provide them with an evening of splendor and enchantment. To Lizzie Rose, cleanliness was enchanting, and she meant to have it. Parsefall was mystified but fell in with her desires.

  After almost an hour of wandering, they entered the Royal Saxon, where the cloths were white, starched, and recently laundered. A waiter appeared, a swarthy giant with the battered nose of a prizefighter; when Lizzie Rose smiled at him, he bowed and led the children to their table. They ordered extravagantly, and he filled their plates with a benign dignity that seemed to applaud their appetites. For once, Lizzie Rose had all the roast beef she wanted and enough milk to turn her tea white; to her delight, her teacup had rosebuds on it. Parsefall devoured most of an eel pie, slurped innumerable oysters, and amused Lizzie Rose by making castanets of the shells. By the time the children left the Royal Saxon, their bellies were stuffed to the point of discomfort, but they did not complain.