The Bastards' Paradise

by Kathe Koja

  Their puppets, too, had many names along the way: the renowned Van of “Save it for Skipjack!” was also called Pan Loudermilk, with an even earlier history as the dancing street-player Marco. Mr. Castor and Mr. Pollux were also known as Puck and Feste; Greene states that those names were a play-maker’s tribute to Shakespeare, but he is not correct. Israfel and Faustus had fine and continued use at the Mercury Theatre until it finally closed, and are now on permanent display in the Lyon Puppetorium (alongside the famous Pimm’s Singing Baby, and three of the four original Tabletop Princes).

  Samuel Ridley’s photographs of these puppets caused a real sensation at their first exhibit, alongside the unsettling pictures of Mr. Jinks, or Jinx, whose disposition is unknown, having gone missing after being held as evidence for a criminal trial. Those photographs are included here alongside the Ridley portraits of all but one of the players, just as they themselves would have wished, considering themselves one single troupe, a family.

  It is Samuel Ridley who brings the news to Haden, along with the folded script—“It’s you he’d meant it for”—met not at the Mercury after all, but at Cockrill’s Palace: decamped there stealthily two by two by daylight, Istvan trig in businessman’s coat and Vigilist to scout the route and lead the way, Rupert at the rear with workman’s hat and barrow, the others between like beads on a string to carry all that could be carried, through streets uneasy with all the other commingling processions: a gaggle of beggars; countryside pilgrims, in shuffling awe of the Cathedral’s great stone angels; tight lines of fresh-conscripted soldiers, old stoic men and sullen youths among them, Libbys and Savvys made comrades at last; and the passersby who stop a moment, staring down at the sluggish river, or up into the envelope of sky, as if awaiting a better message or a valid reason to go on.

  Once arrived, the new venue was found gasless and unheated, frost scrawled on the windows inside and out, the empty rows of seats draped in canvas browned by mold. But Alban Cockrill now bustles about with armfuls of scavenged wood, brooming up the dust, slopping water on to boil as “It’s not so bad,” says Lucy, attempting to make space on the cluttered worktable, mice pellets and bent nails and dried-out paint pots, no wonder the Gawdys are a mess! “’Twas worse at the Poppy, almost, there was a war then, too…. Didn’t you say you had some girls to help you?”

  “My hands are numb,” says Mick without complaint, trying to work the brittle catgut, glancing once more at Tilde, whose fingers reach again and again for the locket at her throat. “Will you help me spool this up, Miss Tilde?”

  “No.”

  Ru is first to hear the careful knocking, little watchdog to look at once to Haden who looks to Rupert who rises from his box-seat beside the stage, scarf at his throat, truncheon in his belt; there is now a calmness to him, a great ease no matter what befalls, so “We’ll see who’s calling,” he says as easily. “Ru, get back from the door.”

  So it is Rupert whom Samuel Ridley sees first, and, beard or not, recognizes with a start so immense it is comic, even Tilde nearly smiles as “By the Virgin!” his crow, rearing back then peering forward, as if Rupert’s appearance must be some sort of superior trick. “Why—it’s Mr. Bok, sir! Why, I thought for certain you were dead!”

  “Not in here,” shaking hands as Samuel Ridley shakes his head, then laughs aloud: “Ah, I knew that ‘Wheel’ show was something special! Very well-met, sir! But I’ll wish I came on a happier errand—It’s you he’d meant it for, Herr St.-Mary,” offering the script to Haden along with a florid version of events, from Frédéric freezing in the park to Frédéric’s arrest, embellishing from admiring ignorance the particulars of the Abram fight. No one speaks when Ridley has finished; Haden’s gaze never leaves the pages, his scar caught white between his teeth until “Mundy,” says Rupert quietly; the yellow eyes rise to meet his. “It’s now?”

  “Now,” says Haden. “Right now,” as “Mr. Ridley,” says Istvan smoothly, “Mme Pimm, my dear, may I present this fine associate,” who feels as if he has crossed into fairyland or Bedlam or some sideways mating of the two, between rusting Roman helmets and stained petticoats in a pile, the wagon wheel bowl, several lads buffing paste jewelry so well-constructed it looks more real than real ever could; those lads capped up in black like the hats the Virgo girls used to wear, like the lad who had whistled him aside by the doors of the Mercury, closed now for true, chain-locked from the outside and plastered with Protectorate seals, NO ENTRY UNDER PAIN OF ARREST: all to do, it seems, with that lordship who was chopped, and who anyway was the fellow? He asked that lad, who only shrugged, sending a wink of zinc from the silver pin worn beside the red; these lads wear them too, everyone here bears some glint or flash of silver, even the littlest boy, a fleur-de-lys pinned to his cavalier’s coat. The puppets as well have silver about them, that congress of wooden men and leather women so decorously posed and poised that the human element seem rather motley in comparison, especially old Alban Cockrill, who stumps about in tieback apron and silver sarabande like some glad Don Quixote of the boards.

  Now the tea is laced with what smells like gin to keep it drinkable, and all drink a share, the grim young miss to keep the pot boiling, while Istvan entertains the table with a tale of a certain letterbox, aide-mémoires of a man “As dead as Monsieur Pigeon, here,” flicking with his silver glove the feathers on his brim, Istvan who wears the jaunty hat of Titus Tithewell, Istvan bundled in an old violet doublet plucked from a hook, his knife working at a blackened scrap of Cockrill’s scrap wood. “But like the scorpion, such men still carry a sting—witness Sir Smalls, you see how he’s shut our doors, and we as innocent as spring lambs in whatever grief befell him! Yet happily,” touching his teacup’s rim to Rupert’s, “we have a ready remedy…. Are you, Mr. Ridley, game to make the play with us?”

  “If you let me photograph that play!”

  Istvan turns his gaze upon them all, he shows his teeth, feral and playful and “What a picture we’ll make, yeah?” the company in situ, like one of Mab’s fierce cards: the lads to ring kingly Mouse and the young king kit; Cockrill to play Falstaff; and Lucy herself again, the Widow Pimm become true Puss to whom, at this unfamiliar table, he had flashed the old, old mirror from the trunk, her gift of cracked silver, their shared smile enclosed by its frame and They used to say, her nod, that it wards off evil. The evil eye, why I hung it at your door in the first place.

  And evils enough abound, it’s why we’re in this tramp-house now, yeah? Why you closed up your Blackbird, too.

  Death’s no evil, not that way. Not like we left the Poppy! But without Pimm, it’s that empty, you can’t guess how empty—

  I can, as she took his hand, fingers laced to press as he pressed back and I’d have sold it flat, her murmur, if not for Mickey’s counsel.

  His own nod then of approval—Far-seeing lad—and noting, now, how closely he sits, Mick, to their little Madame Sand trussed up in her boy’s boots and trousers, Queen Mab whose small hard hand grips the locket at her throat, a silver paper ribbon twined up in its chain, while her other hand smoothes Ru’s elflocks, that tough thistle of a child who seems to thrive in harsh conditions, as “What is needful,” says Istvan, “is the tale told, not extra effort in the telling. And the curtain kept from falling for as long as may be,” with a glance to Rupert, who, as at a cue, picks up the empty letterbox, polished teakwood and mother-of-pearl, to set before the child—“Here. It’s yours now, youngster”—while “Kit,” Istvan’s wink, “do you recall a fine lady who once called us to her opera box?” fanning through the freight of letters and ciphers, all myths begin in a truth retold. “And a list we kept in hand, whilst we were helping at the church? Yes,” as Haden’s eyes brighten just a notch: “You had ’em all along, then. A double bluff,” taking from Istvan those letters, reading through the names on the envelopes, some unknown to him, others who raise his brows high: “Christ! They’d be worth a plenty—”

  “Less expensive,” says Rupert dryly, “just to—” his thumb
miming a blade across the throat and “This assemblage,” says Istvan, “is not to be on offer, and anyway we’ve enough in the larder already.” No one looks to the tumble of jewels. “No, what this is for is to make mischief, and make merry. But our Marquis is the one to lead that charge. Though you say,” to Samuel Ridley, “he’s fairly pinched?”

  “Deep pinched.”

  “So—” but Rupert stands, with a headshake imperceptible to all but Istvan and attentive Ru, and “If you’ll help,” Rupert says to Haden, “I’ll move that plank, up there, and make some room to roost,” pointing not to a catwalk but a listing platform nearly as high, adjacent to nothing, a crow’s nest without a ship. Together they climb the ancient pipe-ladder, Haden quick and first, Rupert slower to follow as Istvan continues, “We’ll make our adjustments, then, essayages, players—Puss?” as Lucy nods gravely, eyeing that teakwood box, dark wrack washed up from the past, from a room that smelled of fresh-dried blood and laudanum, that opened to the open road. “You’ll play La Mère for us, yes? La Mère Gigogne—”

  “I know her,” pipes Cockrill, wide-eyed and silent all this while, feeling as though he flounders in water far over his head, knowing he does, yet thrilled even to drown in company like this: the young foreigner with his magnificent Van, and his mother who knows twice the plays that he does—and see the way M Marcus holds his knife, now, and what comes to life between that blade and his palm! And all from a husk that he, Cockrill, would have tossed upon the fire without thinking once, let alone twice! “She smokes a black briar, and tells fortunes for the marks—”

  “La Reine will do that job,” says Istvan, nodding to Tilde, who looks flat-eyed back as Mick continues to look to her, oh the fine clear longing of youth! “And Pipper will give Festus a spin…. Can you follow our play?” to Samuel Ridley, who makes a plucky shrug, mystified and feeling all the more in Bedlam by the minute, as if this life he has taken for granted has been, all along, just a scrim upon a deeper world, as if the puppets might be real and the real men and women some manner of toys; well, is it not so in his own photographs? What looks like a stainless young beauty is a pot of rouge and three lengths back from the making lens, floating clouds are slut-wool backdrops, and pictures from antiquity are the fruit of patient hours of chemicals and paint. And to men like Felix Krystof, a man to whom these letters—letters that Samuel Ridley is very careful not to examine too closely—would be a different sort of treasure altogether, a place like this, its poverty, dirt, and artifice, would be considered a half step or less away from the dunghill; and to those lords of business and of blood, to whom those letters are addressed, it is as invisible as the workings of grace…. That last thought surprises him, its oddity and depth, as if someone, that good-angel puppet? had whispered it into his ear. The fancy makes him smile, the smile makes him nod and “No one’s to see, sir, what you think to show, or not the whole of it anyway. Am I right? Like that Wheel you all spun, before,” as Istvan makes the puppet’s compact body bow, fold in half like a flick knife and “This fellow,” he says, “will have a bit to say, more than a bit, of how we tell the tale. He hasn’t got his name yet, but—”

  “Šotek,” says Tilde; Ru looks up, as if surprised; Istvan smiles: “Oh may be, milady—he’s devil enough, and small enough, too. And eternal enough, like the Almighty. Or Punch! In Petronius, I believe—the Marquis will doubtless know—there’s a doll made all of silver, who walks and talks, and fucks, as if it were quite alive. And like those Roman fantoccini this fellow shall swoop in from the very air, if I do as I should. Un enfant ogre,” with an affection the nascent toy does not apparently share; in fact the knife strikes a rotten spot, then, it slivers not the wood but Istvan’s thumb, he curses softly, he laughs again. “And he fucking bites! A little devil truly. But we must feed him the angels’ part all the same.”

  It is Mick who names that actor, without meaning to or knowing that he does, while watching neither the puppet nor Istvan, but gazing up into the high shadows where Haden and Rupert hunch on the stage they have made, sharing the intelligence of generals, men of the streets who know that the street is everywhere, and that sometimes the old ways are best: the two of them so close that a viewer might mistake them for one large, crouched, dangerous beast, two-headed and armed, until they part and start to descend, but “Careful,” Mick calls, half rising to point. “That handhold there is jinxed—”

  —and Istvan blinks, as “’Why do you seek the living amongst the dead?’” says the puppet, seemingly to no one, to the air, as Rupert from above whistles a little tune, the tune from “Thumb-Your-Nose.” Haden swings from the ladder to drop the last length, boots emphatic to the floor, his air far more cheerful, checking his pockets before the campaign—and finding there amongst other useful items a pair of red militia pins, one of which he promptly affixes to affronted Mick: “Wait, now. What’s this about?”

  “Means we’re betrothed. You can be the wife…. It’s to keep you from getting pinched, yokel. Don’t you read the fucking papers?”

  “But visitors aren’t meant to wear ’em.”

  “If you’re only visiting, why not leave?”

  “Why not climb up your own arsehole, and see if it’s dark?”

  “Gentlemen, please,” as Istvan folds his knife, makes to doff the Titus hat but “You stay here,” says Rupert, one quelling hand to his shoulder. “Mundy and I will sort this out.”

  Haden shoulders past Mick, gives a little wink to Istvan to mimic his own—“Fortune favors the bold, uncle”—and ruffles Ru’s hair in passing, Ru absorbed now in the fascinating box with its locks and cubbies, its minuscule spring-shot drawers. As Haden and Rupert turn for the door, Cockrill trails helpful and important to show how to work the sticking, trebled locks: “It’s clockwise clockwise widdershins, see? And no one then to get in or out!—except for that broken bit, there, I should have had that fixed. And the handle, there. Much here could use fixing—”

  “Not your hospitality,” says Rupert, his nod of grave thanks to make Cockrill flush, then nod in return, a host’s gracious nod, as Istvan watches the two heroes depart, Mouse in the lead, his new boots carefully shined, silver buckles and fine leather, the Caesar’s Court tailor has a cobbler brother…. He then calls to the worktable Mick and the lads, Cockrill to follow, to tutor them with tales of street play and “Holy oils,” tipping the gin bottle, splashed baptism of juniper upon Pipper sitting closest, who laughs and licks the drippings from his wrist as “Don’t they always,” Istvan’s gentle scorn, “at those spirit plays? Pour some drinks for the ladies to sup whilst their pockets are being picked? You saw that more than once, eh, Benzy? But we’re to give something, lads, not take away this time.”

  “Give them what?” asks Cockrill, while Ridley climbs past the boxed clutter onto the landscape of the stage, where the ghosts of saucy girls and shouting men still linger like a bright faint whiff, already framing the photographic portraits in his mind: the light in here is vile, absolutely vile, better vision to be had in a gutterside puddle—but never mind, he shall make do! and “Knowledge of the world,” says Istvan, tapping the wooden forehead his own knife had once accomplished, beneath the barbered chestnut fringe. He reaches to jingle Van’s lapel, then to the lads, looking eye to eye to eye, making sure all understand, “The thing to listen for will be the bells. Monsieur Mick will be your general, along with these fellows,” nodding as Mick takes up, first one and then the other, the Faustus and Israfel. Bedazzled Cockrill must be drawn back to Mrs. Gawdy from his investigation of the Misters Pollux and Castor, especially that last—“A compartment, look, carved right in at the heart! What’s in there, a bone?”—and “Her mister made it so,” says Istvan, pocketing the little white knife, smiling to Lucy, who smiles in return, as if that hidden heart is a wink from Pimm—

  —then turns her smile to Tilde, who now prods and stabs at the wavering fire, one shoulder hunched high as if warding an ongoing blow. Lucy reaches for that shoulder with the hand that wears the pearl,
her precious wedding ring retrieved from Miss Lucinda’s bosom, another sweet wink from Pimm and “See this,” she says to Tilde, pulling from the depths of her own bodice a wrap of muslin, opened to show the cunning little goldfish brooch: the tiny golden scales, how cleverly the tail moves and “Isn’t it the pretty thing? He gave it to me,” nodding fondly to Istvan. “Ages ago, before you were born.”

  “Yesterday,” softly, “Sir gave me this,” Tilde taking from her trouser pocket a trinket similarly wrapped, a little pouch of bleached muslin: Lucy starts when she sees inside the antique stare of the lover’s eye. “He said it must have been made for me, because of the blue. He said, ‘Don’t forget whose girl you are,’” as the frozen gaze spills over, lids fluttering like a shivering wind upon the deeps, clutching the eye as Lucy opens her arms and “I saw it,” Tilde mumbles into Lucy’s shoulder. “Blood on his shirt, and on all the handkerchiefs, too…. Consumption is for beggars! Sir is a gentleman!”

  “There now,” Lucy’s assurance firm as her embrace, “nothing’s so bad it can’t be bettered. And I’ve seen a deal of illness, I’ve sewn up wounds that looked fatal for sure, and the fellow’s up and walking to this very day,” wiping Tilde’s face as briskly and tenderly as a mother might, the rag plucked for that use once a dancer’s costume kerchief; it leaves behind a sharp little spangle, like a star, beside one eye. “Ask Istvan, he’ll tell you true.”

  “Ask me what? Ask me anything, ladies,” Istvan stepping back from the worktable, approaching with a breath of a smile; he knows why Tilde cries; he will not speak of that, not even with Lucy, who is reaching her own conclusions. “Or I’ll ask you. Do you ever tell the cards for yourself, Mab?”

  “No! Not now.”

  “Well then,” still nearly smiling, “tell them for me. Or shall I deal out a hand for myself, like lansquenet?” to tease her, to slow the tears if not rouse a smile; but Tilde does smile then, bleak and small and “Sit,” she says, making space on an upended ale barrel while Mick totes over a stool, taking out the kidskin case as the others gather, curious to watch: for here is another sort of play, mysterious, prosaic and “This spread,” she says, “is called the Turn of the World.”