by Kathe Koja
But “You’ll be playing soon,” she says to Lucy, considering that tabletop display, the Mater and the Queen of Hares there side by side, Hangs-a-man dependant to the left, but in this spread he is a bringer of news, not the news itself, and the news here is mainly to the good: happy increase, an old ache finally settled, and that playing, yes, in some flamboyant, even inflammatory way: “The Jackal’s a strange one, he almost never comes, but when he does he is always laughing. The gypsies used to say the only thing to do with him is dance. —Oh, and look,” at the benign King of Flowers, offering his full-blown rose of plenty and peace. “Snugged up tight to the Mater, usually that calls a wedding,” with a little frown, for madame, so sadly and recently a widow, surely has no fellow on her mind—
—but “A wedding?” from Rupert, descending. “I’d better spruce up then, hadn’t I,” with a funny little twirl of the old striped scarf, a jaunty fillip such as Istvan might have done; he is smiling; he has the copybook in hand. Ru hops to the foot of the stairs, hoping to scribble there again, but “Not this time, little man,” says Rupert, for Istvan’s hands must take it first, this true and weighty history, that yet weighs only the paper and ink it takes to tell the story—all up to date, now, “The Bear and the Bishop” finally scribed, the last of the journey that has brought them safely home; whoever would have thought so, whoever could have guessed such a sweet addendum to their tale! A deeper wonder even than that their curtain has not already fallen: so many perils, some great, most not, but a splinter can kill as well as a knife, even the cold can kill two shivering boys on a rooftop, heads buried in each other’s necks, only an old greatcoat between them and the night…. Made from memory, this tale is larger than memories, it is a kind of testament, his tribute to Istvan—six pennies and a scrap of velvet, a reaching wooden hand, that teasing, passionate, infinite smile: We are two, we need none other—a record of their play that is the record of their love; and how pleased he shall be, and proud too, to present this to its one and only reader, this gift no one else in the world can ever give.
So “Where’s our maestro?” he asks, looking to the stage, the door, the quiet kitchen, the women at the table with their cups and cards; then, noting the room’s larger emptiness, “What’s in play, then? Where is everyone?”
“Mick’s on errands,” Lucy offers, glancing to Tilde, and “The hayrick’s off,” Tilde glancing back, “with Pipper and them. And Frédéric’s not come back yet,” that last news to make Rupert shake his head: more hazard grown from that hazardous stunt, slippery bunk through the roof, whatever can the young fellow be thinking? And the silence from his fellow once he learned of it, St.-Mary’s black stillness that Rupert recognized with a comrade’s frown, though Istvan’s shrug had been nearly merry: There was no body in the snow, was there, so the Marquis must still be at large. An exit worthy of a player! Who would have thought the young man to have had so much blood in him!
“And M Stefan”—Tilde looking to Lucy, whose own look is back to Miss Lucinda, both plainly thinking of what Cockrill had reported, that kitchen-stoop rumor of Istvan playing some strange and glossy Roman show, though whatever it could augur, with all such things worse than illegal, Cockrill could not say, unable to hide his own surprise that they were surprised to learn of it; and somehow neither of these women know how to share this news with Rupert, for it may not even be true, and if it is—“M Stefan, he’s off. So you should sit, and have some soup,” Tilde up to ladle out a fresh bowl, cut more bread, thin slices sour and warm as “Well then,” says Rupert to Ru, the copybook set carefully aside, “that leaves us two as the men of the house. Will you help me to nail up that roof hatch? Can you hold a hammer tight?” bringing Ru’s stout nod, Ru to sit beside him at table as Rupert demonstrates how to dip a black crust into the honey pot so “Not a drop will fall,” thrifty as the boy he must have been, a boy without much honey for his bread, and “Not a drop fall,” Ru’s small hand reaching in tandem for the chipped pot of gold —
—while Lucy turns from the puzzle of the cards to pour more tea, her own share laced with a fairly large, surreptitious tip of gin: for there are other auguries, the streets’ echo of shouts and ruination that recalls the Poppy in grimmer ways; how the world brews recipes for heartache, all the same thick bitter draught! With a stiff swallow of her cup, pouring straight gin this time and “You’ve not got the headache so much these days, have you?” she asks Rupert. “How’s that cough?”
“Quite tolerable,” carefully, reaching to tug the raveled scarf tighter at his throat, as if this might ward more questions, one question in particular whose answer must be kept to himself alone. “We could all do with a bit more heat in here, and a bit less damp—”
—as Mick enters accompanied by alley slush and splashed parcels, addressing Lucy but looking to Tilde as “I got your necessaries,” he says, stamping his boots, one hand still on the door. “But they hadn’t got dentifrice powder, or the Regin’s Tonic either. And there wasn’t any trunk—I asked the stationmaster, he bid ’em look all about the cloakroom, but there was nothing marked like you said. I’ll try again, Miss Tilde, if you wish me to—”
“Shut the door,” Tilde says.
“What trunk?” Rupert asks.
“I wonder if I know,” says a new voice, a man’s voice slurred but still cultured and pleasant, the man himself stepping in from the alley as if entering an elegant reception, his trousers black to the shins with water, the pointed toes of his shoes sleeved in muck. “If it’s a very old trunk with a dent in one side, and full of silly hats and such, it’s sitting in a suite at the Hotel Baron St. Williams, next to my own wardrobe. And I’m very glad to have found egress—I’ve been knocking at that blasted box office door for an age! Though it’s a fine example of trompe l’oeil, it certainly fooled me…. Sir Roland Smalls,” bowing, not offering his hand; his stare touches them all, one by one, until with hunger’s intuition it comes to rest on Rupert alone. “Is he currently about, here? Stephan?”
“No,” says Mick and “He isn’t,” says Lucy, both in one breath, like liars, or clumsy actors; Tilde holds the ladle as if it were a lance, looking to Rupert, who as he rises recalls again to Lucy that first time she saw him, worn black coat and smoldering cheroot; he has that fighter’s walk still, that calm economy of motion as he steps toward the waiting lord and “The doors are kept locked,” he says, “because the theatre’s closed. But I can speak for—Stephan.”
“Can you? He’s never spoken of you,” Roland Smalls beginning to see what a fool he has been played for, what a fool he has been to think himself anything but: no lone player at all, the wily Stephanos Marcus, but the captain of a proper menagerie, ingénue and Jack Wild and a youngish Mother Shipton, there, with a jack-in-the-box at her knee—and the cavalier too, this aging gallant before him, stiff shoulders and big hands, is he the source of that rose gold warrior’s ring? “It was my understanding that he was, shall we say, a widower? Or widow? Un faux ami certainly, un équivoque—pardon, ought I use English?”
“Use any language you like to say good-bye,” Mick’s bristling but “Stop,” Rupert with one hand up, his stare on Roland Smalls. “Either you’re drunk or wandering in your wits—I’ll ask for your business, or give you the door,” his tone so absolutely quiet now that Mick goes still; everyone can smell the danger, except perhaps that lordship who still is talking, stepping past the backstage table to poke and finger the unused props, tip a shield from the pile—“So Greek!”—and eye the Misters on their hooks, Miss Lucinda sprawled in a somewhat unladylike pose: he reaches to her skirts to draw her knees together, sotto voce to note that “Only a peasant needs to shock, dear. A true lady is indifferent to the opinions of others. And the mark of the true cosmopolitan,” Roland Smalls raising his voice, Roland Smalls who with each second that passes feels greater and greater pain that turns, like gold to lead, to curdling bile, “is to find a home anywhere. But had he no ambitions to play something better than such provincial stages? Oh, naught
y Stephan! Or was it you, who led him from the heights—or was it the one who died, the organ grinder or whatever he was? One must have an acrobat’s heart, to play such games—”
“What do you want of him.”
“I wanted to take him to supper! But instead we shall have to tryst at that bloody club—oh excuse me, ladies, madame, mademoiselle,” bowing in their general direction, it seems he cannot take his gaze from Rupert’s, Rupert who sees in this lean fastidious man a lifetime of men whose advent into the copybook story darkened every page they touched, faceless, faithless men, always reaching out their hands to Istvan like buyers in a penny shop…. He feels his own hands open at his side, feels the creamy wool of the man’s lapels before he knows he has seized him, as if his hands have operated on their own, that lifetime’s agility and force and “You need to go,” he says to Roland Smalls, even more quietly, a wolf’s murmuring growl. “Go now.”
“This,” says Roland Smalls, “is not dignified,” so close to Rupert he can smell the heat of his body and breath, his own breath quickened, hung on those hard hands so his boot-tips barely graze the floor. “I shall summon a constable—”
“Your dignity or your head, which would you rather? I’ll take one, you keep the other,” released not with a blow or even a shove but Roland Smalls falls backward just the same, onto his back like a beetle, climbing to his feet as the others continue to watch: of the three of them Lucy is calmest, of the four of them only Ru smiles, eyes wide at the display, oh his father is a knight for true! “You’ll go now, you’ll summon no one, you’ll not come back. And if you tell anyone, your lordship friends, anyone, of—Stephan’s home here, I’ll come hunting for your heart, Mr. Smalls, with the smallest knife I can find,” Rupert like an iron statue, a watcher now too as Roland Smalls stumbles his way back to the door, looks back over his shoulder, turns his back on them all, and is gone.
Past that departure, no one speaks; Mick steps to turn the lock; Tilde covers the soup pot with a clang and “Who’s that?” Ru asks of Rupert, and “No one,” Rupert says. “No one we know.” From the table he takes the copybook, from the pantryside shelf the last of the precious Irish whiskey, then makes for the stairs, turning when halfway up to say “When he comes, send him to me,” in a voice so flat that no one dares to comment, no one speaks at all until the door of their room is heard to close, all knowing he means Istvan. Finally “Tilde,” says Lucy, the resolute and likely girl reaching for her cloak and muff, “do you think that, if we tried, we could find that toff hotel?”
Out in the street, a snowy shred of bunting clinging to his shoe, Roland Smalls does not seek to call a constable, in fact seeks to avoid them, looks instead for a cab to take him not to the Hotel Baron St. Williams but directly to Caesar’s Court, where there are bathing facilities available, hot water to stop this wretched trembling, and a tailor to do something with the befouled suit; where he might drink several glasses of brandy and several more of champagne, to efface the brutish whiff of the whiskey—but cabs are hard to come by on that snowy square, as the indifferent sun retreats behind afternoon clouds, and all the trundling omnibuses are full. In the end he is reduced to pure pedestrian, his coat’s pale wool whipping, hat down into the wind so he does not see the pair of young men, not constables, not well-dressed, one smiling, begin to follow him down the avenue.
He will not meet Istvan at Caesar’s Court, though Istvan still is there, enthroned on the horsehair bench, one hand companionable on Jakob’s smooth shoulder, absently stroking as he repeats one last time the youths’ instructions: “The pedestals, then prancing till you get the word. Your Caesar here,” nodding to Haden, “will pop the doors for you; I’ll be up the hall. Only scarper, and all will be well—it’s next time will be trickier, this one’s just a lark.”
“But will we still be bare-arsed?” Jakob’s whisper, and “It’s cold out there,” the beanpole boy mutters, “and worse in the dark,” but “Your share will buy all the woolies you want,” says Haden. “And everyone to get back safe as houses,” thinking, with a fresh wring of the heart, of Frédéric lost out there somewhere, Frédéric whom he cannot protect. “Pipper takes point, and Benzy,” to the beanpole, “at the rear guard—”
“And that hick at the theatre, to click us in?” asks Jakob, with a city youth’s condescension, to consider his city the only one on earth, Haden nearly smiles though “Remember,” Istvan says, “that fellow was playing onstage while you were still a-swim in some manjack’s rod,” himself considering that it would be better for all concerned if the kit and Mick did not dislike each other quite so heartily at this particular moment. Yet what a wink of luck to have crossed his path, there in the toffy district! busy about some unnamed duties for Puss, but I saw you and followed, Mick planting himself in the wet street before Istvan, just before the club’s doors, its grey columns and cold gold doorknock, its air of secrecy and bland abundance. You’re fitting up to play, in there? I can lend a hand but He’s already got two, Haden leaning over Istvan’s shoulder, flicking a chestnut hull from his teeth to the curb. And my two makes four, and then there’s the lads—
Salt your own meal, wasn’t speaking to you.
Well, I’m speaking to you. An’t your business anyway.
Up yours, cardsharp! —He’s not even a puppet man! half-accusation, half-plea to Istvan, much too loud for the passersby, more than several of whom glance their way with more than mere curiosity, the Caesar’s door guards too so There are all sorts of ways to make a play, Istvan swift to lead them around the corner, out of immediate sight, to halt below a curling placard imploring all to DEFEND YOUR DEAR HOMELAND: his odd army, chest pins and rags and bags of powder, not gunpowder but if all goes well, they shall make a mighty bang just the same. And all sorts of players—you’re just the man I had in mind to mind the store, for how well it will suit for Mick to mind that store, since Mouse must be kept clear of the business entirely: sturdy Mick like a gift from the heavens, and half the size of the Cathedral itself! Go on back, now, I’ll task you just as soon as I’ve finished here.
Still Haden could not forebear a parting shot—Pimm, if I stick mine up yours, you won’t walk for a fucking week—since the kit is understandably short of temper, frantic as he is for the absent Marquis. Now “You’ll supervise the toilette?” Istvan asks him, as the lads disperse down the long connecting hallway, dark parquet floor carved into a pattern of the rising sun, or is it setting? “Get that dog-faced maid to help you, she hasn’t had so much fun in years. And,” quietly, “be of good cheer, he’s fine. In fact more than fine, if this were lansquenet I’d call seven-and-it-goes.”
“It’s been three fucking days.”
“All the more ripe for resurrection. Kit, kit,” more quietly still, “he’s a player, yeah? ‘A play is more to us than is our fate!’ Let him make his play, the gods will keep him safe.”
Staring at the floor, the black sunburst repeating: “Easy for you to say.”
“Is it?” raising Haden’s hand to his own scarred shoulder, his gloved hand atop to press it tight; still Haden will not look up, so he needs must lean even closer, face to face, both unmasked and “I told you, didn’t I, that you’d bleed before you’re done.”
“Are we done, then, uncle?” Haden raising his gaze at last to show the yellow eyes so wide with pain that Istvan reaches to tilt that chin and brush those full lips with his own, the barest brush, the feel of the scar, Haden’s eyes closed again as if in benediction, he swallows hard and “Who’d call it easy?” Istvan softer than a sigh. “But you two shall do as we did, Mouse and me, with a lifetime left to play; never doubt it. And you and I,” eye to eye now, a smiling boy inviting another boy to mischief, “in the meantime, we’ll deal up a game of chance.”
“Straight?” says Haden, through his own smile’s beginnings, the hunting cat showing his teeth. “Or slanted?”
“Dealer’s choice,” as Haden clasps Istvan’s shoulder, quick and rough and with immeasurable affection, his step sure
again as he turns to the archway, shouldering past a watching servant, a man with tape and shears strung about his neck, that man’s expression so neutral and flat that “È mio fratello,” Istvan says, to rouse a smile there too, the tailor’s instant nod of comprehension and approval—“Oh sí!”—in the noise of the boys, a maid’s giggle down the branched hallway, the smell of cooking quail and boiled linen and cleaning wax, the tailor turning dutiful down the stairs and Istvan up, through the anteroom of blind-eyed ivory statues, the gods and their chosen mortals, and outside into the day’s dying light.
As he walks back beneath the growing flicker of the streetlamps, the flutter of broadsheets like strange birds in aimless flight, Istvan considers with a small and pleasurable smile (though it is never wise to count the take before the taking, Mouse himself would never do so!) that very larcenous play to come: the kit as muscle and right hand, and the lads to be his little demons, scampering amongst the crowd to wiggle their goods, pluck and take their findings back so that those gleaming earbobs and brooches, cameos and cufflinks may shortly be fenced by a so-called postman or two; even in this city so sadly straitened there are several still in business who will do the job nicely—and will need to, for this evening’s frolic shall lock the doors to the great room entirely for himself and the mecs, for good. But “No loss,” he says aloud, pausing beneath a handy if holey awning to light a cigarette, smoke a moment and salute a hurrying Widow with the griffin-headed cane, that widow not quite so grief-struck as not to note the appreciative wink from this singular man in the shadows, a widow is still a woman after all…. As is Portia del Azore, that “marchioness” who shall herself be locked outside and truly, nor likely appreciate it either: well, one must be cruel to be kind, there will be ructions if all goes well, and far better she learn to make her life’s play without letting the gentry use her for a boot scrape.