by Kathe Koja
—and cueing Frédéric, who does not neglect to leave his letter at the feet of the angel on the north stairway, before tugging on a black cap and legging off down the slushy avenue, heading toward the Festus Clock. It is there that the other actors are reunited, though briefly and in passing: Lucy whistling by with Ru, her tote sack empty, the lads gone on ahead; Cockrill with Mrs. Gawdy similarly emptied, though neither he nor Lucy can bear to stop and watch along with the gawping crowd as the regal Miss Lucinda is sacrificed to the gnashing gears of Festus, who crush her to velvet and splinters as they at last grind back into life and the clock hands move once more, their time now permanently askew: while Pipper makes his leap and lands in an acrobat’s roll to dash off with Mick and Haden, each carrying a puppet from the barrow, each making a quick circuit through the city to sing out with those puppets—Mick with Van at a black-scrawled fountain; Pipper with the Faustus on an ironwork balcony; Haden with Israfel before the long-locked doors of the Opera house—the taunting tune of the post, serenading that city that feels already as if it has been infiltrated by an army of players, of gypsy fortunes and jingling puppets and whistles as peculiar as the picture-cards, some bent or tarnished by mold, left tucked over lintels or stuck in the wax of Crescent Bridge, on windowsills facing in, as if the tiny grinning figures plot to enter, the maid Consolata considering hers with fearful wonder, then hiding it away again, for what can it all mean? these performances all one, strange herald of civic disaster, too dreamlike to stop or flee…. And to cap the fête, just past Cockrill’s Palace a pack of stealthy lads douses the wagon wheel bowl with several jugs of rancid oil, Tomik-Tilde there to strike the match that starts it burning, and like a boy with a hoop, send it rolling, wobbling, flaming down the avenue—
—while, solo or accompanied, the players return to that stage, past the widdershins lock, to wet their whistles and have their portraits made, Samuel Ridley asking each upon arrival “Have you seen them?” though only Frédéric can say “I did. Or rather heard—it was quite a tumult,” and “Uncle’s happy, then,” says Haden, setting Israfel to hang while Cockrill presents to Madame Pimm Mrs. Gawdy, with kind and clumsy ceremony, in reparation for her own lady’s untimely and violent end. Lucy in thanks for that generosity performs a fine impromptu with the lady’s husband, much to Cockrill’s satisfaction, a play that grows as bawdy as anything at the Poppy might have; they are all screaming with laughter now, the day’s risk and tensions evaporating into frolic, gulped beer and a shared pipeful of hashish, as they posture for Ridley’s camera, pretending to be blinded by its burning light.
Even Ru is moved to sit upon the knee of the Mick-man, while Mamma, still half garçon, sits beside him, as Van the puppet gives her flower after flower, one of them holding at its heart a silver chain and depending from its shine “A moonstone,” says Mick, his cheeks gone eloquently pink. “I picked it up that day, when you sent me out for the trunk. It turns purely blue in the moonlight, the fellow said—just like your eyes. Not even half so pretty! But—”
“It’s opal,” says Tilde, “not moonstone,” and opals are known to be unlucky; but she clasps on the little pendant just the same, to hang beside her precious locket, for some luck can be changed. And if he insists on being a friend to her, this fellow, of whom Mme Lucy can say nothing but good—Mick is industrious! Thrifty! Stalwart! Kind!—then she will be a friend to him; for a true friend is worth the having. And for Ru’s sake, too, Ru seeming to have warmed to him, head cocked now to hear his story of a fairy cave, a place Mick swears is not so far from the place where he lives, that large, well-appointed, well-heated theatre, though it’s “No cave, really, more like an alley. And these city-fairies are loud as alley cats,” making a yowl, making the lads laugh, Van to shake his bells and wriggle, pretending a cat has run up his coat sleeves and “I learned that bit,” he says, aside to Tilde, “from Mister Istvan—”
“Where are they? The church— Pipper could run up and see,” but “Don’t fret,” says Lucy stoutly. “They know what they’re about, and our job’s to stay put. Have a drink,” pouring a jot of gin into a cup as clean as it ever will be, passing it to Tilde as Cockrill shouts for “A round of applause! For all us players!” the accomplished moneybag in one hand and a bronze bell in the other, shaking both to make a noise in which all join, slapping palms and knees, battering boots against the floorboards and cups to the table, Haden nudging Frédéric in the caterwaul: “Author, let’s hear it for the author! Speech, speech!”
It is while Frédéric is speaking—very briefly, to his own mind; too much time wasted, for Ridley’s taste, and far too much Latin for Cockrill’s—that Lucy sets aside her own gin cup and moves swift as a girl to the door, responding to a sound no one but she has heard, Tilde’s attention all for Ru who has suddenly thrown an arm about Van, not as a toy but as a brother, frater minor. It is Lucy who slips the locks to glimpse them, two figures arm-in-arm through the dusk, approaching not swiftly but with purpose, one singing—it is Istvan—“Thumb-Your-Nose,” the words are different but the tune is the same—
—and watching too the sudden dark convergence, the taunt —“Hold up, pin-pickers!” as the sidewalk tax collectors pounce, three men who might be young or old, it is hard to say; one has a weapon surely, Lucy sees its momentary thrust as she hears their grunts, Istvan’s curse as one of the men falls like a ninepin, Rupert’s doing, Rupert grappling with the other as Istvan deals with the third, more cursing as she wheels on her heel to cry to the gathering inside—“Help out, Mickey! Mick!”—then yanks out her muff pistol, squeezing off one shot, two, amazing the noise! Yet when that sound draws a tardy, wary constable down the avenue—for no one pays bribes on this street, no one cares—no one is there to be seen, only a pair of men very obviously dead, one neck-broken, the other sliced, and a hasty third who staggers off swearing that he saw nothing, for there was nothing at all to see. He is as anxious to go as the constable is to allow it, so both depart without seeing the trail, black as blood-glycerin, that leads to the abandoned theatre, that palace of snow-swollen placards and fled frolicsome ghosts, the mucked and crusted ice so recently disturbed about its doorstep, the revelers inside gone quiet enough to have turned into ghosts themselves.
It is Istvan who starts the celebration again, insisting that “It’s nothing, barely a kitten scratch,” handing off Mr. Loup to Mick, as Rupert sits down heavily on the nearest chair, accepting a hasty glass of ale, Tilde’s offering, Tilde’s eyes wide to him then wider to Lucy, Lucy who puts her arms about Istvan, as if in welcome: her palms come back red, but “Not a whisper,” Istvan’s murmur, they have done this dance before. “Only tie it tight, Puss,” with a length of red, some once-gaudy sash around Istvan’s waist, Istvan’s wound, that bleeding stanched at least. Ridley waves happily, impatiently from the stage, his camera more than ready but “Give a moment,” Lucy calls back, brisk, white-faced. “Let them breathe!” Haden, frowning deeply, makes as if to step forward, but is warded back by paling Frédéric’s hand, by Istvan’s shake of the head, all his gaze for Rupert now, Rupert sitting hands-clasped, ale spilled, unmoving in the chair—
—Rupert who finally turns away from them all, from the room, speaking only to Istvan as if it is only Istvan he sees: “Messire,” in rough murmur; his eyes are unnaturally bright. “I’d see our home again,” so “Puss,” Istvan’s beckon back to Lucy. “Give me,” the leathern puppet sack with its freight of Mr. Castor, adding too the concertina, for there must be music for their show—
—to be played alone together, two men slowly through the streets leaning one on another, not gentlemen, not brigands, unmolested as they cross the square once Rottermond, now Liberty, soon to bear another name and then another, this municipal stage that frames their stage still thick with locks and Protectorate seals but “Just a tick,” says Istvan. “Wait here,” as like the boy he always will be, he climbs and crawls to the roof and its unlatched hatch, to drop, half falling, into dust and sifted snow: knowing as he does
the way no light is needed, to take both flights down to the alley door, batter it half open, and admit once more the master of the house.
Upstairs again, in ascent slowly gained, there is a candle or two, the remembered warmth of the rosewood landscape, even “Champagne?” Rupert says; it is hard for him to stand now, he sinks to the coverlet. “How’d you winkle that?” but “A dry throat’s no good for playing,” Istvan working the cork with the tip of his knife, the white knife that in his hand feels as necessary as the puppets, that gift of safety he has carried nearly all his life. “And we ought have a toast—to you, who makes the stage, and the reason to play it.”
“No man ever played like you. To us, messire,” and they pass the bottle back and forth, the froth as cold as the room around them; Istvan’s gaze never leaves Rupert, Rupert wipes again and again at his mouth; both are smiling. The champagne is chased by the ginny dregs of the drug bottle, then both are set aside in favor of “A song,” Istvan handing Rupert the concertina. “Play for me, Mouse, and I’ll play for you.”
It is a very simple show, with laughter in it, Mr. Castor courtly and fierce to jig a bit to “Paddy’s Lament,” “The ancient Greeks in theatre,” even a few bars of “Thumb-Your-Nose” for “We set them to boil, didn’t we,” Rupert murmurs; his fingers stray from the scarred little keys, his eyes are closing. So “Enough for now,” Istvan says, setting Mr. Castor aside alone, rising to take up the greatcoat still hung on the hook by the door.
It is difficult to reach the roof—the wound opens again at Istvan’s side, more red to redden the sash; Rupert can get no breath—but between them they finally gain the heights, this city’s sparse and flickering lights, the moon above it all, to sit wrapped together in that greatcoat as Istvan—it takes him several tries—lights a cigar, an extremely good cigar, draws till it catches then passes it forward to Rupert, who takes a tiny puff. “It’s nearly midnight, Herr Knight, we’ll have the dawn together in the hills…. Are you happy, Mouse?”
“Immensely.” Silence between them, the sound of the wind; Istvan smokes, he strokes Rupert’s hair; Rupert closes his eyes. Finally, “Do you recall those pears, messire? A tub—of yellow pears, with little pinprick flies…. You wanted one.”
”I remember. That old burgher’s townhouse, with the cockcrow weathervane—they hadn’t any apples.”
“Yes,” Rupert’s whisper; it is cold, very cold, both are shivering hard and “You climbed the wall,” Istvan’s lips to Rupert’s ear, “to get them for me. All the pears my hands could hold, yeah?” Rupert does not answer. The shivering is more pronounced; Istvan’s body trembles; he drops the cigar. In his arms, head back against his shoulder, Rupert is still.
There is no sleep that night in the grand townhouses, lights burn at the Protectorate until dawn arrives, ashen as a frightened subordinate—all the subordinates are frightened today, for some great punishing wave, unseen and resistless, has crashed upon their masters, receding to leave a landscape of rising panic and hard suspicion: long-held alliances are fracturing, fresh enemies have been created, the city’s banks and offices and municipal strongholds are not the strongholds that they were only the day before. Even the Festus Clock has been altered, its figures arriving too late to the hour, its gears gone audible, as if the machine is speaking to itself. And when one of the runners at the Drapers’ Guild hums, without even knowing that he does so, that tune that the whole city has learned overnight, he is sacked on the spot and sent off with a kick from his superior—“Shut that singing!”—that master overmastered by his own fear, the protection of his superior, and his own position at the Guild, about to crumble; the feeling of the fall is everywhere, worse even than the war.
The harm wrought by the “postal affair,” as it is called, will take weeks to reach full nadir, and years for its ripples to recede, years in which Commissioner, then Prefect, then Governor Eig will recall, with a certain arctic admiration, this coup de théâtre that did so much damage in such an efficient way and churned the waters so spectacularly that its perpetrators were able to fully sink below those waves. Though Morris Robb bangs his fist upon the great fortress desk—behavior quite anomalous for Morris Robb—to swear that “I saw the man plain as day, so did we all! It was surely Rupert Bok!”
“Rupert Bok is dead.”
“How can you say so? He may have changed his appearance, but it was Bok, I know him, he sat before my desk many times!” Morris Robb bangs the desk again. “A man back from the grave, what good comes of that? Can you do nothing?”
“What would you see done?”
—for Robb is plainly unmanned, like a fly struggling in honey, by the sheer chaos of it, all they have sought to overrule given life again in one mad day; and has not even begun to suspect the true role played by Bok and Hilaire, let alone grapple with its reach. For Eig the full complexities of the crime must be parsed, if it is a crime to distribute the letters of another, authentically buried, man; the lesser infraction, of shamming one’s own death, is indeed prosecutable, and several constables shall be dispatched later to hunt for Bok. But there are so many, far graver duties to be accomplished this day, and so much intelligence to gather: for no one can guess how many letters there were, or are, or who may have received them, what exigent destructions are already in play; first things must be dealt with first, one must create a place to stand so “The law will move as it always does, on its own terms, in its own time—if your testimony is required, be sure I will call for it,” rising, their handshake brief and tense as Morris Robb jams on his hat and departs, Morris Robb who in one of those letters is called “the future ambassador to Atlantis” by the man Arrowsmith, a man Commissioner Eig had never met, a man whose unthinkable caprice—or dark, well-planned reprisal—had enabled Hilaire to do as he had done, an enabling Hilaire had himself admitted, even boasted of once, in that grey room, Heaven’s more dangerous than Hell; if Eig himself had pursued the matter differently, that day, what a treasure trove he might have had, a dragon’s hoard! If he had the thing to do again…. There may still be, within that trove dispersed, information to somehow incriminate Benjamin de Metz, and if searching can find such, patient, pitiless searching, it shall be found. In the meantime, Hilaire’s own evidence lies in a canvas bag beneath Eig’s long plain table, the burned and stinking little body that, like the men’s appearance in the church, drew needful attention from the authentic conflagration set to burning in the city outside; another, and most effective, coup de théâtre—
—though the theatre from which that play had sprung sits empty, another sort of coup perhaps, or perhaps all have sensibly fled, even its owner, Alban Cockrill, so thoroughly departed as to leave the doors wide open when he left. In the air of that Palace is as well the smell of burning, of flash powders, the photographs made at last as Samuel Ridley had so hoped, particularly that of M Marek, or whatever his name shall be now, though What of Herr Bok? he had asked, knowing something momentous had passed, knowing he was not to be told what it was, learning only that M Bok’s indisposed, from M Marek, posing white and calm as a figure carved from marble, his red sash like a soldier’s, holding the puppet he calls Mr. Loup while the two, the Castor and Pollux, sat at his sides like comrades, silent and ready, an oddly thoughtful pose for a man so given to antic action. And the look in his eyes—if there is a word for such a look, in any language, Samuel Ridley could not have said what it was.
Afterwards he thanked them, wishing luck to all their future prospects—This war won’t last forever! We’ll be sure to meet again one day on a stage—trundling off with his camera and supplies into the darkness, a very busy darkness, the streets hectic with tales of wild players and wild pictures, though that is not a connection of which he can publicly boast. If Nella were only here! Each time the barrow struck curb and rut and mounded ice he wished anew for Nella, who had had, along with fellow-feeling, a strong young back; perhaps the friendly Consolata might prove a consolation? She would make an excellent model, and as a serving girl is us
ed to toting loads ….
Not long after Ridley’s departure, the troupe itself left as it had arrived, in clandestine twos and threes, reversing the journey from the Palace to the Mercury, its broken alley door canted back into place as if no one at all has entered; each arrival with a different task, though all to the same end. Alban Cockrill stood assistant to Mick Pimm in the construction of another kind of catafalque, castrum doloris of humble wood and purple drapings, Ru helping with the hammer, Haden and Frédéric to bear the pall; as the women ascended to prepare, Mme Pimm steadily weeping, the young Missus silent at her side, as if in some unthinkable dream, to pour the cold wash water, fold the strong quiet hands with the warrior’s rose-gold ring, smooth the clean shirt and much-mended coat and tuck inside one pocket a twist of tansy, a twig of birch, Tilde crooning as she did so, a very old song sung by the grandmothers’ grandmothers, its tune as old as “Volim Te” that then became another—“O follow, O follow, O follow my lead, let me lead you all the way home” until, abruptly, Where are his spectacles? Tilde’s question fierce and flat, as though this loss at least might be avenged, quelled by Lucy’s nod to Mr. Castor—Istvan has them—Lucy who drew Istvan to one side by those bare third floor windows to ask, wiping again at her eyes, It was those tax-bastards only? Not the church at all?
Yes, himself still entirely calm, lighting a smoke, a cheap cheroot as sour as half-molded leaves. We scarpered neat as anything, just as we used to, into the Cathedral bowels, evading chase by heading down, those narrow stairs indeed as twisty and good to hold in a tussle as he and Haden had once descried, an egress further bolstered by his own early arrival; and up again another way, the steel from Vater finally finding its use as a manner of lockpick, that and a series of judicious halts—in a cloistered backstairs hallway; behind a deliveryman’s door—enough to ensure their cautious exit, et missa est, concertina shoved under a coat, hats and mask discarded and kohl rubbed briskly away. Then He needed tea, so—those stands out front, not a man to man them, but he would leave a coin. Mouse and his monks’ training! passing the jug hand to hand to travel as quickly as they might, not past the Festus Clock—that would be telling—but down other avenues, smaller, darker, more deserted ways, past the crooked barricades to turn toward the Palace: and Ridley’s waiting camera, his own private tweak and joke to Mouse, the two of them meant to stand in the center of that portrait, arm in arm for all posterity —