Star Locket

by Natalie Jane Prior

  Upstairs in the adjacent building lights were burning. A woman’s face looked out from behind lace curtains. Aware she was being watched, Estée tightened her shawls and stepped out into the rain. As she crossed the street, she glanced sideways and saw something that in all her visits to Quay Street she had never noticed. Despite the wintry season, the pink and crimson roses in the perfumerie window boxes were fresh ones. And the shop’s name, written in neat gold script above the door, was Astrid.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was raining at the opera house too.

  Under its massive portico, a fashionable crowd was arriving for the evening’s performance. The women smelled of eau de toilette and the expensive perfume based on attar of roses that was so popular among the upper classes, the men of tobacco from the last cigar smoked before their departure, for Ostermarkans, backward in this as in other things, had not yet caught on to the fashion for cigarettes. There was a stink of gaslight, of horses, of human breaths heavy with wine and garlic from rich local cooking. The noise was frightful. Everybody was trying to get out of their carriages and into the theatre as quickly as possible.

  Self-conscious in her evening cloak, Sally stood with her parents, Melhuish and the Fakenhams on the steps of the opera house. They had travelled to the Old City in three of the uncomfortable four-wheeled carriages that served in Starberg for cabs, and the last vehicle had somehow become lost on the journey westward. It now pulled up across the street and disgorged the remainder of the party—the Pritchards, Francis Sinclair and Stephen Melhuish, the latter looking rather dishevelled, for the cab was low-roofed and he was a tall young man. To Sally’s distaste, George Melhuish raised his hand above the crowd like a Cook’s tour guide, waving the elegant bit of pasteboard that was their ticket to catch the newcomers’ attention. Her immediate thought, a disappointing echo of the things her mother had said, was that he was slightly vulgar.

  The British Minister was a fleshy man, dark and bearded, with clothes that were just a little too well tailored and manners just a shade too unctuous. None of the diplomats Sally had met in any of her father’s previous postings had been anything like him, and, if appearance and bearing were anything to go by, she thought she could understand why her parents mistrusted him. The rest she could only guess at. No doubt jealousy played some part, for Melhuish’s career had certainly been successful. When Clive had left Starberg for St Petersburg fourteen years ago, his rival had been only a lowly attaché. But where Clive Taverner’s career had stalled, Melhuish had been promoted swiftly through the ranks to First Secretary of the Ostermark Legation at the age of twenty-eight, and finally to the position of British Minister at thirty. His climb had been so unprecedented that many people had assumed he had contacts in high places who intended him for even greater things. The fact that ten years later he was still in Starberg must have been scant consolation for Sally’s father.

  The party shuffled into the building and across the red and gold foyer carpet. Sally’s interest in Melhuish fled before the unfamiliar necessity of having to manage her skirts on the stairs; she did not know whether to pick them up or pretend they were not there, and the sheer weight of hair on the back of her head felt like it must spring out of its pins at any moment. When they reached their box—which, since Ostermark was a country famed for its insularity towards foreigners, was small and in the very back corner of the very top tier—they discovered there were not enough chairs. While they waited for Francis Sinclair and Stephen Melhuish to find more, Sally glanced across and intercepted a muttered exchange between her parents. She could not hear what was said, but the expression on her father’s face was unmistakably a warning.

  She inched across to Emily. ‘Mama. Are you quite well?’

  ‘I have a headache,’ said Emily in a low voice. And to Sally’s surprise she reached for her hand and squeezed it. ‘It started soon after we left. Don’t worry. I will be better when we are sitting down and they turn out the lights.’

  The box door opened and the young men reappeared with chairs from the adjoining supper room. With some difficulty these were arranged in rows, but it was impossible to set them out so everyone could see properly—it turned out that some of the men had been expected to stand, thus saving floor space. Sally’s sightline to the stage was interrupted by the balcony and a pilaster. Her view of the audience was not much better. She had barely settled herself when a man in evening dress came out and started to address the audience. Sally could not speak Ostermarkan, but it was clear that something was very wrong for the conversation in the theatre died down briefly, then quickly peaked again, drowning out the speaker’s voice.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘La Violette will not be singing tonight,’ whispered Francis Sinclair from the seat behind her. He added, by way of explanation, ‘She’s the diva of the moment, Miss Taverner. They feel themselves cheated. I feel sorry for the understudy; she’ll have to sing like an angel to pacify that mob.’

  ‘If she can’t sing like angel, she shouldn’t be on the stage,’ said Stephen Melhuish. ‘Music is a profession of excellence. There’s no place in it for mediocrities.’

  He picked up his programme and opened it aggressively. Francis Sinclair flashed Sally an apologetic smile. He placed a pair of mother-of-pearl opera glasses on the floor at her feet. ‘Please use my glasses if you want to, Miss Taverner,’ he whispered. As Sally smiled back, the conductor stepped onto the stage. Francis Sinclair lifted his hands and began to clap.

  The opera was Cinderella. It was a harmless tale with pretty, old-fashioned music, which reminded everybody present that Starberg’s days as one of Europe’s lesser musical capitals were long gone. The audience was inattentive, the orchestra ragged, and Sally felt painfully sorry for the understudy, a mouse of a girl who looked as if she had been selected from the chorus as the person least likely to threaten the reigning diva, and who was clearly terrified. During the entr’acte (a juggler with skittles and kitchen knives), the legation party retreated to the adjoining supper room for refreshments. These, at least, were excellent, for Melhuish had ordered them from Alexander’s Hotel in the New City, which was famous for having the best kitchen in Starberg. Two waiters were ready to serve them. They poured glasses of hock and seltzer water for Fakenham, who was never known to drink anything else, and lemonade for Sally, who knew better than to push her luck and ask for anything stronger. The rest received chilled glasses of champagne. Even the food was richer than Sally was used to, all pastry and forcemeat, with cream-based wine sauces; there was a soup made of cabbage with swirls of cream; tiny deep-fried fish, with roe and oysters, which her father whispered to her not to eat (‘too far inland,’ he said, briefly); and for dessert, chocolate ices, a layered confection with glacé icing, and, greatest extravagance of all, fresh strawberries in December. Between courses more drinks were handed around and Melhuish made a speech. It purported to welcome Sally’s father to his new position as Secretary of Legation, but in reality drew subtle attention to the fact that Clive, formerly Melhuish’s superior, was now his subordinate. Sally, who loved and was loyal to her father, felt a prickle of anger. For the first time she had an inkling of how her parents might feel.

  A bell sounded, signalling the performance was about to recommence. The party rose and headed back towards the box. Mrs Fakenham, who had evidently realised Melhuish had overstepped the mark, hung back a little to let Sally’s parents pass. As they entered the box, she turned and saw Sally standing behind her.

  ‘Here, my dear,’ she whispered, ‘you take my place, beside your mother. You’ll be able to see better.’ She gave her a push, steering her gently but firmly forward. Suddenly Sally found herself in the very front of the box, crammed up against the padded railing and looking vertiginously down into the stalls.

  ‘Oh!’ A great white and gold pit opened up below her, seething with human beings like ants on a gilded nest. People were talking, laughing and greeting each other, expertly sidling through the ranks of velv
et covered chairs until they found their places. Here and there, faces turned upwards to seek out friends and acquaintances and opera glasses scanned the serried ranks of the boxes. By chance, Sally’s eyes fell on a woman who was seated almost directly below them. She had blonde hair and was wearing a dark red, heavily beaded gown; at a guess, she looked to be in her early thirties. It was hard to be certain what made her stand out from the crowd, but the attraction was evidently mutual. The woman was looking up. As Sally watched, she picked up a pair of opera glasses and deliberately adjusted the focus.

  Suddenly, Emily leaned forward.

  ‘Sally, I’m not feeling very well. Would you help me outside, please.’

  Obediently, Sally stood up and followed her mother out. In the supper room the ruins of their elegant meal still sat on the table, the champagne bottles upended in the buckets of half-melted ice. The waiters were clearing away the mess. Emily spoke to them sharply in their native language. They bowed stiffly, and left the room. As soon as they had gone, she let herself down onto a sofa. Her face was white and haggard, but when Sally soaked a napkin in one of the ice buckets and offered to press it against her forehead, Emily waved it away.

  ‘No. I just want to be still. A vapourish female would resort to sal volatile, but that was never one of my tricks and I shan’t ask for it now.’ She lay back against the brocaded upholstery with her fingers pressed over the bridge of her nose. Sally sat helplessly beside her. Beyond the baize door leading to the box she could hear faint strains of music and from time to time the audience’s laughter, most likely directed at the hapless understudy, whose distress on stage Sally was becoming increasingly grateful to have escaped watching. Some kind of commotion also seemed to have started up outside the building. But she could not have said what it was, nor did she particularly care, until a sharp crack like a pistol shot sounded clearly inside the building.

  ‘Good God, what was that?’ Emily sat upright. Her heavy train slipped off the chaise, pooling like ink on the crimson carpet. She and Sally looked at each other.

  A few footsteps sounded in the corridor. Voices spoke indistinctly, but with some urgency. Sally stood and went softly to the door.

  ‘Can you hear what they’re saying?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’re speaking Ostermarkan.’

  Sally opened the door. A long passage led along the back of the boxes to the main staircase; it was filled with an acrid scent that might have been bad drains, a burning rubbish heap, or even leaking gas. She sniffed, but the smell was already dissipating. A moment later an usher came hurrying towards her and she lost all interest in it.

  ‘Excuse me. Excuse me! Can you tell me what’s happening? Excusez-moi! Excusez-moi, monsieur, que se passe-t-il?’

  The man snapped something at her in Ostermarkan and hurried off. A couple of other box doors opened and a few people emerged hastily, draping furs and wraps around their shoulders. Someone hissed behind her. Emily was beckoning furiously from the supper room door.

  ‘Sally. Sally!

  ‘Mama? Did you understand what he said?’

  ‘Yes. There’s been a labour riot in the Watermen’s Quarter.’ Emily opened the cupboard that contained their outdoor clothes. ‘Here. Put your things on, quickly. I must tell your father; we need to get out of here as fast as we can.’

  She disappeared through the baize door into the box, leaving Sally to pull on her evening cloak. A moment later Emily re-emerged with Clive and Melhuish, the other members of the party behind them. Word that something was amiss was rapidly spreading. Through the open door Sally could see the boxes emptying; the accompaniment was falling apart as members of the orchestra bolted and ran, and in the middle of the stage the young understudy stood in her glittering costume, tears streaming down her face as she struggled heroically to keep going. Then she too gave up and ran from the stage, and the fire curtain came down in a rush that gave the signal for a general stampede.

  The legation party, at the back of the auditorium and close to the main staircase, was among the first wave down the stairs into the foyer. Sally’s father put his arm protectively around her as they negotiated angry bottlenecks; behind them, the Fakenhams and Stephen Melhuish were caught in the crush on the stairs and dragged away from the rest of the party. The sheer force of people at their backs drove them out through the foyer and under the portico. Here, those theatregoers who had private vehicles and had brought servants were at some small advantage to the others. A few even had carriages waiting at the front of the building, into which they scrambled and set off at a rapid pace. But there were no cabs in sight, and although people were spilling into the street and milling about, no one seemed to be going anywhere. It took Sally a few moments to realise why. Several hundred yards away at the end of the street, a makeshift barricade had been erected. On the other side of it a mass of angry people shouted and waved their fists, held back by a thin grey line of military uniforms.

  Pritchard gaped. ‘My God, look at them. They’re like animals. They must be insane.’

  ‘They’ll need more troops than that if they want to hold back a mob,’ observed Melhuish laconically. ‘Someone’s been caught sleeping this time, well and truly.’

  ‘What are they shouting?’ asked Emily.

  ‘They’re calling for Nordernay,’ replied Melhuish.

  Pritchard said, ‘In that case, why doesn’t the fool show himself?’

  ‘I don’t think the procurator was here tonight,’ put in Francis Sinclair. ‘His box was empty. And La Violette was not singing.’ He glanced at Sally, as if he should not have mentioned this fact, but she was jammed up against a pillar and too busy trying to hold on to wonder what he meant. Dozens of people were making a dash for it across the street and down the side alleys that had already been closed off by troops, the men’s cloaks streaming behind them, the women picking up long skirts to expose high-heeled kid boots and silk stockings as they ran. Soldiers stopped them almost immediately and herded them back like sheep when they tried to remonstrate, adding to the confusion under the portico. The rumble of discontent began to swell into open rebellion.

  ‘This was a mistake. I think we had better get back inside,’ said Clive. But the crush of people leaving after them had filled the portico and foyer of the opera house and it was impossible to retreat. Then a shot went off along the street, followed by another. The crowd surged suddenly in panic.

  ‘Sally! Hold onto the pillar!’ shouted Clive, and Sally flung her arms around a column and clung to it like a tree. All around the name ‘Nordenay’ was being shouted, ‘La Violette!’, and then something that sounded like a dialect version of the German word, tot, dead. At this, a mighty roar broke forth from the crowd at the barricade. A rough hand shoved Sally sideways. She stumbled on a step and lost her balance. At that exact moment, the great mass of people broke through the barricade at the end of the street and surged forward.

  Some of the carriages that had tried to get away at the beginning were trapped by the onrush; Sally saw one of the drivers beating down hands with his whip and the white faces of the occupants looking out in terror. Then she was torn away from the pillar and her parents, and the rest of the legation party disappeared from view. The sheer momentum of the crowd pushed her along; somebody trod on her foot, crushing it; she lost her cloak, and felt the train of her long skirt rip from her waist. Sally reeled, then went down hard on her knees. The crowd closed over her like water above the head of a drowning swimmer and she was dragged and kicked across the cobbles for several yards. I’m going to be trampled! she thought, and an overwhelming sensation of suffocating powerlessness and terror came upon her. Then someone grabbed her arm and she clung to him in return. The crowd shifted slightly around her. After a horrible moment when she felt like she was being torn in two, she regained her balance and burst upwards, gasping for air.

  A man in evening dress clung grimly onto her, his fingers digging tightly into her flesh. Sally scarcely registered who he was, for all at once her
attention was focussed in a different direction. A girl from the crowd had scrambled onto the top of a nearby carriage and was smashing at the hands that grabbed at her booted ankles. A soldier had hold of her skirts and was trying to pull her down; she was shrieking abuse at him in Ostermarkan. At that moment the scarf tied around her head came away and a long mass of light wavy hair came tumbling down her back. She looked up, straight at Sally, and Sally looked at her. Their brown eyes locked for an instant, and even in the confusion and the uncertain light Sally saw the girl’s face turn stark white.

  She’s me, Sally thought, and then she remembered something she had read once: that to see your double was the sign of your own death. In the instant the thought crossed her mind, the soldier grabbed the other girl’s skirts. She fell with a scream and disappeared into the crush.

  ‘Hold on!’ Melhuish had hold of Sally by the wrist. His gloved fingers were hard and surprisingly firm for such a fleshy man, and she fastened her own onto him in a frantic monkey grip. Melhuish pulled her slowly towards him. Suddenly, Sally broke through the press that separated them and shot into his arms.

  ‘Hold on. We’re going to get out of this. You’re going to be all right.’ Sally could barely hear what he said. She merely understood his meaning, and clung to him in a way that would have been embarrassing if their situation had been any less desperate. Melhuish’s eyes scanned the crowd, as if he were seeking a way out. At that moment, a great shout went up and a troop of soldiers emerged at a run from the other end of the street. Rifles were fired into the air and two or three people fell to the ground. The mob broke up and people began running back in the direction from which they had marched.