13
The house was not full on the last night, but every seat in the stalls was taken. Latecomers were moved to the upper circle. Word of mouth about the show was positive and people were curious to see Thom’s act.
In the afternoon he and Rullebet rehearsed the illusion once more, adding small flourishes wherever possible to enhance the effect.
Just before the show began Rullebet told him that her father was going to be present. He had been determined to find a seat as close as possible to the stage. Thom experienced a feeling of disquiet – for a performer the belief that an audience is anonymous can enhance the illusion of rapport. Knowing people in the audience could be a distraction.
When the show began Thom watched the early acts from the wings, trying to get a feel for the audience. They were responsive to the performers, which had a mixed effect on Thom. Prachoits made undemanding spectators, but their generous laughter at the comedian’s unfunny wisecracks was disappointing. Thom had worked hard on his act and wanted to feel that any applause he received was properly earned.
Then it was his turn. His sequence of tricks to close the first part of the show went without a hitch. When Rullebet appeared unexpectedly inside the Pejman cabinet the audience clapped loudly – he saw Rullebet’s father standing to applaud them. Thom then escaped dramatically from his deadly cage of knives, and that was the end of the first part. The applause continued after the main tab had come down, signalling the interval.
During the break Thom noticed that two of the tech crew were working on one of the junction boxes – this sent power to the winch that raised and lowered the main curtain. The two men were making hasty repairs. One of them rushed away, returning a few moments later with a roll of insulating tape.
Thom wandered over.
‘Anything wrong?’ he said.
‘Nothing that affects you.’ The man was struggling to get the tape around a section of exposed cable. ‘Leave it to us. We had to lower the main curtain manually at the finale, but we’ve fixed it now. Is that all right with you? We know you’re the expert.’
Feelings between him and the tech crew were already strained by his earlier criticisms, so Thom backed off. He went to his dressing room, sat alone and thought for a while, then started to apply the heavy sorcerer make-up for his big illusion. He knew that Rullebet would also be preparing, along the passage in her own dressing room.
At last it was time. While a close-harmony quartet sang before the front curtain, he made sure that his basket was positioned correctly on the stage, that it was secured properly and that the mechanism for the rope stabilizer was working. He went about the stage and placed the explosive caps which would be detonated remotely for effect. Then he helped Rullebet lower herself into the cramped space inside the basket and made sure she was safely in position before the trick began.
The music swelled up, the curtains swept back, the lights picked him out. He launched into his sorcerous speech more confidently than ever before, being sure every now and then to address the more distant faces he could dimly see in the upper circle.
He brought out the rope, handled it expressively to show that it was as flexible as any normal rope. The volunteers from the audience were found, they came on stage, they convinced themselves of the rope’s conventional type, they returned to their seats. Thom made the first attempt, deliberately bungled, to throw the rope into a vertical position. It collapsed down on the stage around him.
When he picked it up, coiling it around his arm, he was disconcerted to feel the faint irritant of a static electrical charge. He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. He glided across the stage from side to side, declaiming about wizards and necromancers of the past who had tried and failed to make this illusion work, how dangerous it could be as well as difficult. The faint tingling sensation continued whenever he touched certain parts of the rope.
He threw it up a second time – again it fell back to the stage. He tried again, this time intending to make it work, but his luck was out. The rope fell alarmingly around him.
When he collected up the rope he felt the burr of static electricity once more. It seemed harmless, because the only electricity used in the illusion was in the rope stabilizer and he had wired that himself, double-checking its insulation. He braced himself, concentrated on the broad swing necessary to elevate the rope to its full height, but also into such a position above the basket that the dozens of tiny rigidifying relays buried inside the fibres would click into place and hold the rope stiffly.
It was his fourth attempt and this time it worked. The musicians in the pit picked up the cue with a triumphant chord.
The rope stood stiffly vertical, swaying slightly from side to side. Applause broke out spontaneously from the audience. With sorcerous arrogance, Thom ignored this reaction and instead strode disdainfully about the stage, throwing violent gestures towards the pyrotechnic capsules he had placed. Each one exploded as designed: bright orange and white and yellow bursts of sparkling flame, loud bangs and plenty of smoke.
Within this swirl of smoke and diffused lights he went to the basket and raised Rullebet magically from within. Another exultant chord from the pit orchestra. The spotlights found her and her dazzling costume sparkled brightly. She ran prettily around him and acknowledged the audience.
Adopting his most fearsome and villainous look, Thom placed Rullebet in a trance. Soon the young woman was standing before him with her head leaning forward, her arms dangling limply at her sides. Thom mimed an instruction for her to climb the rope. Rullebet turned, clambered up on to the lip of the basket’s opening, then with her familiar easy grace shinned slowly towards the top.
She paused twice during her climb. Holding on to the rope with a hand and an entwining lower leg she allowed herself to turn around the rope, her free hand waving aloft, slowly slipping down just a little. Two thirds of the way to the top she repeated this – both times the audience applauded her loudly for her skill and poise.
At last she reached the top and once again she balanced herself away from the rope as the audience applauded her.
Thom braced himself to make his magical gesture, to cause her to vanish, or at least to appear to vanish. He raised his arms, tilted his head back. He was immediately beneath her.
As the music became louder, more urgent, Rullebet raised her hand again, and in the instant of that moment disaster struck. There was a terrible blue-white flash and a hissing explosion. Rullebet’s body jerked in agony, her back straightening in an extreme reaction, her grip on the rope lost. In her spasm of involuntary motion she flung out her hand and another flashing discharge of electricity consumed her.
She fell.
Thom leapt back in panic as Rullebet landed violently on the stage beside him. He realized she must have touched something in the loft, most likely an uninsulated cable. She fell heavily on her head and shoulder, but other than the crash of her body against the stage boards she made no sound. What he could see of the skin on her hands, her arms, one leg, the back of her neck, flared an angry red. A thick miasma of smoke was about her. A panicky instinct made Thom look upwards.
A black spiral of smoke showed the trace of her horrific fall.
The music from the pit orchestra died. Many people in the audience had risen to their feet in shock. Thom glanced desperately towards them, then knelt beside Rullebet’s contorted body. He tore off the ridiculous head-dress he had been wearing, pushed the voluminous sleeves of his robe up his arms. The house lights came on, flickering. An alarm bell was ringing. Three men dashed on the stage, one carrying a chemical fire extinguisher. Everyone seemed to be shouting.
Thom leaned over Rullebet, laid a hand on her face, tried to turn her head so that he could see her. She had fallen so that her head was somehow too far over, curved at a horrible angle towards one side of her chest.
He felt no breath from her on his fingers. Her flesh was crisp, hot to the touch, charred. The men who had just arrived pulled him backwards and awa
y from her body, yelling at him to move out of the way, give her space to breathe. They struggled to resuscitate her. One of them rolled her forcefully on to her back, began palpating her chest. Her head lolled back, rolling as if it had become loose on her neck. Her eyes were opaque, unfocused.
One of the man’s legs, thrusting out behind him as he punched Rullebet’s chest with increasing force, caught the edge of the illusion’s basket. The rope above, still until that moment erect, swung to the side. The hidden relays relaxed. The heavy rope came tumbling down, fell across them all, an unyielding deadweight, an immobile black serpent.
Thom was struck hard on the back of his head by part of the rope. He half crawled, half staggered away, then fell forward, lying face-down next to Rullebet’s body.
14
‘It was an accident,’ Thom said, in desperation. ‘The theatre is responsible. There must be an uninsulated power cable above the stage. No one warned me about it. The building is not maintained properly. Ask the management to show you their safety certificates, their fire certificates.’
‘Be quiet. You’re under arrest.’
Thom was standing in the centre of the stage, facing the auditorium. The remains of his illusion apparatus lay on the stage behind him – the rope sprawled across the boards, partly covering the basket. Thom had removed the outer layers of his costume, the sorcerer’s gown with its huge sleeves and baggy trousers, and these lay on the floor in a heap. Thom stood in his stage underclothes: an off-white vest, pants held up by braces. His face still bore the vivid blue and bright-green flashes of the sorcerer’s make-up.
Most of the audience had hurried away out of the theatre after Rullebet’s body was removed, but more than a hundred people remained, clustering near the orchestra pit, close to the stage. Rullebet’s father was among them. He stood against the low, curtained wall of the pit, his face distorted by fury and pain. There were others Thom recognized too, but who in the urgency of his situation, and because of the waves of unhappiness and sorrow that were flooding through him, he could not properly identify. They were people from the town, his neighbours, others he must have seen from time to time, some perhaps he had spoken to during his years in Beathurn, or even longer ago, in his days as a traveller. They were anyway a blur on the edge of his ability to comprehend what was happening.
Two policier officers arrived with the ambulance that had been called to take away Rullebet’s body. One of them now stood beside Thom, handcuffed to him – their wrists hung together side by side in a perverse parody of companionship. The other officer was standing on the edge of the stage, his back to the people below, facing Thom and accusing him.
‘The law says that there are precautions that must be observed at every theatrical performance. Were you aware of them and did you abide by them?’
‘I was aware of them,’ Thom said weakly. ‘But the theatre apparently was not. Everything here is maintained badly.’
‘Are you claiming that you had no idea there were live electrical cables above the stage?’
‘They shouldn’t have been there. No one warned me.’
‘But you were seen in the rigging loft.’
‘I was checking the hemps, the ropes. The tech crew were responsible for the electrics.’
‘They say they told you there was a fault.’
‘They said there was a problem with the curtain winch.’
‘But they warned you there was a fault?’
‘No.’ Thom was struggling to remember exactly what had been said during that brief encounter in the interval. ‘I asked them what the trouble was, but they wouldn’t discuss it with me.’
‘They say you complained about their work.’
‘Yes. They are incompetent.’
‘You still went ahead with the show, though. You put your young assistant’s life in danger.’
‘No. It’s the theatre’s responsibility to provide a safe working environment.’
‘So you admit you didn’t make your own safety check. Is that because you didn’t know how to? Or couldn’t you be bothered?’
‘I signed a contract. A standard agreement. That agreement contains warranties about safety and public liability.’
‘You are not a member of the public when performing.’
‘No.’
The questioning went on, frequently going over the same ground as before.
The officer was a local man, a serjeant in the Seigniorial Policier, thought to be a reliable, community-oriented man, liked by Prachoits. Thom was a Prachoit too – he knew what was happening, what was likely to happen next. In his terror of this dangerous situation, and his inability to influence it in his favour, he felt total despair. Above all there was an aching sense of guilt and misery about the violently sudden way in which Rullebet had died. She was so young, so pretty, intelligent, full of life and fun, certain of what she wanted to do. Thom genuinely adored her. His incursion into her world was intended to be temporary. It was unnecessary to her, a brief distraction from whatever other plans she might have had, but it was he who had brought about her death. How could a young woman’s life end like that, so randomly, suddenly, definitively? None of it was her fault, nothing of it was anything to do with her real life.
‘Have you anything more to say?’
Thom looked up. He tried to see past the policier serjeant’s bulk to the group of people who stood beyond.
‘I’m sorry,’ Thom said. ‘Desperately sorry. It was an accident. I couldn’t have foreseen it happening. I took every care. Rullebet was a lovely girl – I would not wish her any harm. I did what I could.’
The officer standing beside him reached down and unlocked the handcuff on Thom’s wrist. He moved away, walked briskly across the stage and climbed down to the auditorium by way of the wooden steps at the side.
The serjeant said, ‘This is outside policier jurisdiction. It has become a civic matter.’ He turned towards the people clustered around the edge of the stage. He added, more quietly, ‘The law requires that no policier officers may be present during civic retribution.’
He followed the other officer, walking quickly down the steps. They marched together up the main aisle between the audience seats. Thom was left alone on the stage under the bleak, fitful lights, surrounded by the wretched debris of his magic act.
He saw the two policier officers disappear through the curtained door at the back of the auditorium, and moments later it closed with a loud thud.
The reaction in the crowd was instant.
Several people shouted, ‘He’s got to pay for this! Get him now!’
The crowd shoved forward, some of them, including Rullebet’s father, climbing over the low wall around the orchestra pit, coming directly towards the stage. Many more moved towards the short flight of wooden steps at each side. Terrified of what they were going to do to him Thom backed away, looking anxiously into the wings. Several of the backstage technicians were there, deliberately blocking his escape.
The first of the crowd reached the stage and started striding aggressively towards him. Thom raised his hands defensively, already knowing there was no hope, there was nothing he could do to the prevent them taking the traditional remedy, nothing he could say to plead or argue with them, reason with them, apologize to them again.
A young woman was the first to reach him, pushing her way quickly and determinedly in front of the others and rushing across to him. Thom instantly recognized her: it was the woman he had seen every morning in the café in the square, the one who was for some reason shadowing him.
She turned back to face the others, raising her arms as they pushed forward. She leaned back defensively against Thom.
‘Please!’ she cried. ‘Not now. Don’t go on with this!’
‘Get out of the way!’
‘No – listen! You saw what happened. It was a terrible accident!’
She could hardly be heard over the noise of everyone else. Thom could hear her, but he realized that few others could. They were
all around him now, pushing the woman against him. A man behind him barged Thom with his shoulder. Some had their fists raised. Everyone was shouting at once. They were working themselves up, the madness of a crowd.
‘Let’s hear what he has to say!’ the young woman shouted. ‘It’s only fair!’
‘We’ve heard his excuses!’
‘Kill him now!’
Someone else was pushing towards him, thrusting people aside with great force. It was another woman. She was strongly built, and her face had prominent features: high cheekbones, a wide brow. Thom had never seen her before. She was having an effect on the crowd, because she was pushing many of the people away from Thom. The crowd behind him were kicking at his legs, and one punch landed painfully on the back of his head.
‘Calm down!’ she shouted. ‘Leave him alone!’ She raised her right hand high, and for a moment Thom glimpsed a leather-bound sacred text. ‘The Word demands peace and forgiveness!’ she announced.
Now Thom and the first woman were rammed hard against each other by the pressure of bodies. Her face had been pushed against his chest. She seemed unable to turn away. Some of the men closest were jabbing their fists past her at his face. The woman with the scripture somehow managed to fend them off, partly by blocking them with her arms, but mostly by pulling Thom away from them. They were all shuffling in a shambles, backwards across the stage, towards the backdrop.
Thom shouted at the young woman pressed against him, ‘Why are you helping me? Who are you?’
‘I’m Kirstenya. I love you, Thom—’
Another hard blow to the side of his head dazed him. By some feat of strength the other woman had managed to force her way through the affray and was using her broad body to block attacks coming from one side. Some of the people she had pushed past had fallen to the floor, but were quick to regain their feet. Her face was directly in front of his. She wheeled around, knocked one of the men aside, but he was holding something metal and hard, and immediately struck her with great violence on the side of the head. She reeled sideways, blood flooding from her head and nose.
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