The Golden Butterfly

by Sharon Gosling

  “Yeah,” said Charley, finding his voice. He waved his hand at Morrell’s black suit and tails. “I’ve got one. Why?”

  Adeline put her hands on her hips and laughed. “A question only a lad could ask.” She looked at Luciana. “I’ll let you answer that one, my dear.”

  “Because women aren’t allowed to do magic,” Luciana said quietly. “They’re only allowed to be assistants.”

  “Exactly right.” Morrell looked down at herself. “And to be honest, a sharp suit has always seemed far more stylish to me than a corset and a cumbersome gown. It’s so much easier to move in, for one thing. But I could never get the voice right, so I decided to forego it entirely.”

  “There’s the eyes too,” said Luciana. “You couldn’t hide your eyes. How did no one else recognize them?”

  Morrell was amused. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, my child, that men rarely pay much attention to a woman’s eyes. Besides, no one ever really notices the assistant. They’re dazzled by how pretty she is, but they don’t really see her. Fans of the Magnificent Marko might have remembered that he had an assistant – might even have remembered my name, if they’d been really pressed – but few of them would actually have been able to describe my face.”

  “And you wanted to perform,” Luciana said, feeling a grudging kind of awe for the audacity of it all. “So you dressed as a man.”

  “It’s not nearly as complicated as one might think. Now. I need a drink.”

  Morrell turned away, leaning heavily on her cane as she headed for the small table in the corner that held several glasses and a crystal decanter.

  “The walking stick – it’s not part of the act?” Luciana asked.

  Morrell poured a drink and took a mouthful before turning back to Luciana again. She gave a grim smile. “If I didn’t need it, I wouldn’t be using dear Clara here as my assistant. I’d be doing the hard work myself, just like the old days.”

  Luciana shook her head. “I don’t remember you having one when I saw you on stage.”

  Morrell sighed. “It was the Golden Butterfly,” she said. “That trick was dangerous. I was still rehearsing, even on the morning of that fateful performance, and I messed it up. I missed my cue and fell straight into the orchestra pit. Your grandfather wanted me to see a doctor, but I refused because I wanted to perform that night. I did and it was perfect.” She swallowed the last of her drink and clunked the glass back down on to the table. “But the irony is that even if Thursby hadn’t put the cat among the pigeons, that trick – and me – were both done for. I’ve not walked properly since. I would never have been able to do it again.”

  “I can’t believe my grandfather would ever ask you to perform a trick that dangerous.”

  Morrell turned to her, another amused look on her face. “He didn’t ask me,” she said. “It was never his trick. It was mine. Half the tricks we performed were. That was the deal we had. Marko needed an assistant and I needed a magician who would let me perform – really perform. Not just do as he said, but actually come up with the illusions myself. Your grandfather never believed in the Grand Society’s rules. He knew I was as good as he was. He saw that the first time I auditioned for him and he never once resented me for it. But he also knew I’d never be able to perform as myself, alone. We built his show together. I could never take the credit for what was rightfully mine, but at least I was working at my own illusions. At least I was doing what I loved, the way I wanted. I wasn’t just some shill for a man who thought I was half what he was.”

  Luciana stared at her, too astonished to speak.

  “When … when you say you came up with the illusions yourself,” Charley ventured. “What do you mean, exactly?”

  Morrell regarded him for a moment and then jerked her chin at Luciana’s bag. “The rig you found. Give it back to me a moment.”

  Charley did as he was told. Morrell took the wing that still had most of the metal ribbon attached. She examined it for a moment.

  “Let’s see how good my workmanship is, shall we?” she asked with a wry smile.

  With her free hand she gave the metal filament a hard tug. There was a click and a narrow metal arm sprung from either end of the outer edges of the triangle. Morrell held it up as more clicks sounded in the quiet room. The arm folded out, then folded out again, joint after joint snapping open and extending one after the other, click-click-click-click-click. In seconds, the golden wing had expanded far beyond its original size. Now the shape looked even more like a butterfly’s wing. Inside the outer frame was a striation of thin, jointed golden metal struts that held the flimsy-looking apparatus rigid in Adeline Morrell’s hand.

  “It’s clockwork,” she said, once it was clear that the mechanism had finished opening. “My greatest achievement. My grandfather was a watchmaker, you see, and so was my father. He had no sons, so he taught me. But when they had both passed on, even the men whose timepieces I had fixed while my father was alive decided that I was not capable on my own. A woman’s brain can’t possibly understand the intricacies in a watch, they said. And besides, a woman can’t run a business alone. The work dwindled. So I built other things instead.” She moved the solitary wing through the air. “I wore these under my costume. When they expanded beneath the fabric, they created the wings of the butterfly, as if they had grown out of my back, right there on stage. I am the heart of the trick. I am the Golden Butterfly.”

  “There,” said Morrell. “Now you know at least two of my secrets. What are you going to do with them?”

  Luciana shook her head. “It wasn’t true, was it? What my grandfather was accused of? That he had taught you magic?”

  “No,” Morrell agreed. “It wasn’t. Though only because there was nothing he really needed to teach me. I always had a knack for it. I pick things up quickly, often just by watching, and more than that I can usually see a way to make it work better. Just the way my brain is, I suppose.”

  “He couldn’t tell them the truth,” Luciana realized. “Not without getting you into trouble. So he gave up his own career instead.”

  Adeline sighed. “He was a good man, your grandfather. One of the best. I miss him. I am sorry I was not at his funeral. Not that your grandmother would have welcomed me there.”

  “She didn’t approve?” Luciana asked.

  Morrell smiled faintly. “She is of a different generation,” she said mildly. “One where women of her class sit and embroider in a safe corner so that they won’t crease the silk of their skirts. Difference is not always easy to accept. I always respected her, but we never understood each other’s viewpoint. So I simply tried to stay out of her way and she tried to stay out of mine. She never, at least, threatened to expose me, though Marko was always keen that she knew all his truths. That was the key to a happy marriage, he said.” Morrell reached for the decanter again. “And anyway – I had much to be grateful to her for, despite our differences.”

  “Did Thursby know?” Charley asked. “That the trick was really yours, not Mr Cattaneo’s?”

  Adeline gave a short laugh. “Of course not. He would never have believed that a woman was capable of devising such a trick. Anyway, he just wanted the secret. He thought he could blackmail Marko into giving it to him, but it didn’t work. I told Marko he should let it go. I broke the wings in two and gave him both pieces – I told him to give them to Thursby and let him work out the rest for himself, and good luck to him if he managed it. But Marko wouldn’t. He maintained that the trick wasn’t his to give, and that in any case, Thursby didn’t deserve to have it. I had promised him I wouldn’t go to Thursby with the truth, but I told myself that if he ever came to me and asked, I would tell him and it wouldn’t be breaking my promise. But Thursby never bothered to come after me. I was only the assistant, after all. I assumed that Marko had destroyed them,” she said, waving a dismissive finger at the open wing. “I never thought I’d see them again.”

  “Now that you have,” Luciana said, “now that the wings have come b
ack to you – why don’t you use them again? No one’s ever bettered that trick or even managed to replicate it. Thursby obviously never could. Recreate it and you’d be the greatest magician in the world. Everyone would want to see the Golden Butterfly! It would start a whole new age of magic!”

  Adeline shook her head. “Never. That trick caused nothing but trouble. I wish I had never thought of it in the first place. There are too many reasons to leave it be. For one, this wing rig is broken, and making the mechanism again is just too difficult. Besides, the minute it appeared on my stage, Thursby would know I was more than I say I am. And I can’t perform it myself – it would have to be Clara. She’s afraid of heights and I would never put her through that just for the sake of bruising Thursby’s pride. No, the Golden Butterfly will never take to the air again, and good riddance. I should take the pieces of it and throw them in the Thames. Let the mudlarks find them and puzzle at what they are. I will never understand why Marko kept them in the first place. What good did it do?”

  “Maybe he hoped that one day things would be different,” suggested Luciana. “Maybe he thought that one day you might be able to perform the trick again, as yourself. But hiding things away won’t change the way they are, will it? Perhaps he realized that after you’d broken them, and that’s why he taught me what I needed to follow the trail.”

  Adeline Morrell frowned at that, as if contemplating the truth of Luciana’s words. “What do you mean, he left a trail?”

  “He put the first wing somewhere he knew only I could find it,” Luciana told her. “The second clue we found in your room at the Peacock. That took us to Philpot Danvers. I don’t know why he had one of Grandfather’s puzzle boxes, especially since it was another one with a key that only I would know. That led us to the second part of the device.”

  “Philpot Danvers?” Morrell asked. She glanced at Clara, who had paled a little.

  “We know he’s one of Thursby’s spies,” Luciana said. “My grandfather knew that too. That’s why I can’t understand how he had one of his puzzle boxes. Danvers said it was a gift, but I don’t believe him.”

  “You’re right not to,” said Morrell. “Marko would never have given Thursby’s lapdog anything willingly. He must have stolen it.”

  “Maybe it was in the box that Thursby took from your grandfather’s dressing room,” Charley suggested. “Didn’t Mr Hibberd say there was someone else with him when he searched it? It could have been Danvers, couldn’t it?”

  Luciana nodded. “I bet that’s exactly where he got it from!”

  “Didn’t you say that you found the clue that lead you to him in my old room?” Adeline asked. “Where did you find it?”

  “It was in the hidden space behind the cupboard in your dressing room,” Luciana explained. “It was inside another puzzle box.”

  Morrell looked away, a faint smile on her face. “Well, well. Marko, that cunning old magician. I put that box there myself after it had all happened. He sent it to me, asking me to return it to the Peacock, where it belonged, and hide it somewhere no one would find it. I thought he was just being sentimental – that he wanted to leave a piece of our show in the fabric of the theatre forever more. So I put it in that secret little hiding place.”

  Luciana watched her carefully. “It was a box I remember playing with when I was very young,” she said. “And I also think I remember being inside that hidden space, but I don’t know why I would have been there.”

  “I probably showed it to you at some point,” Morrell said, busying herself with the golden wings instead of meeting Luciana’s eye. “Sometimes I would look after you when you were very small, if both of your grandparents were busy.” She pushed back the metal ribbon she had used to activate the wing. The clockwork arms folded into themselves and then back into the metal casing. Then she handed both pieces to Luciana, who slipped them into her bag.

  “I learned a lot from my grandfather,” Luciana went on. “Some things he taught me deliberately. How to handle a deck of cards or how to pull a coin from someone’s ear, for example. But other things he didn’t have to teach me directly, because I pick things up quickly. Just by watching.”

  Adeline’s face took on a guarded look. “Marko was so proud of you,” she said quietly. “He loved you very much. You were so lucky that they took you in.”

  “I never knew my parents,” said Luciana, still watching the magician’s face. “I’ve never even seen a photograph. Grandmother never liked to talk about them.”

  Morrell smiled. “Sometimes, after all, that’s for the best.”

  “Is it?” Luciana asked. “Better for whom?”

  “For everyone,” Adeline said softly. “Because the answers we get aren’t always the ones we want to hear.”

  There was a brief silence, which was broken by Clara.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, still leaning against the door. “We have a performance tonight. Are we going to go through with it, or—”

  Adeline Morrell threw back her shoulders, raised her chin and took a deep breath. “But of course! The show must go on, isn’t that right? Unless Miss Cattaneo here has some objection, I shall replace the nose of dear Adolphus and carry on as planned.”

  “I just wish we could stay and watch,” Luciana said quietly.

  “Well, I for one am glad you cannot,” Morrell declared, stooping to sweep her discarded false nose from the floor. “It wouldn’t do to lose any of my tricks to a sharp-eyed youth, would it?” She rested the hand holding the nose on her hip, her other curled around the silver head of her cane. “Will you go home?”

  “If we haven’t missed the last train,” Charley said. “Yes, we will.”

  Morrell nodded. “Probably best not to mention me to your grandmother,” she said quietly.

  Luciana shook her head. “Neither of us will ever mention you to anyone. Not the real you, anyway.”

  The magician smiled rather sadly. “I believe you.”

  *

  Outside, it had started to snow again, but Luciana didn’t feel the cold as she and Charley made their way towards Charing Cross. She didn’t feel anything.

  “Are you all right?” Charley asked. “I thought you’d be happier.”

  “Why?” Luciana asked. “What do I have to be happy about?”

  “You solved the mystery,” Charley pointed out. “You worked out those puzzles when no one else could and now you know what the device is. You know what happened to your grandfather too, and why. Isn’t that a good thing?”

  Luciana stared at the lights that were blooming in the darkness falling over the city streets. “It hasn’t answered anything,” she said. “Not really. Am I supposed to feel clever now? What use is that?”

  “What else were you hoping for?” Charley asked. “Where did you think this would lead, Luciana?”

  She shook her head. “It just feels as if all this should change something. I feel changed. But Thursby will just carry on, bullying people and squashing anyone who might perform great magic, and the Magnificent Marko will still be forgotten – and so will Adeline Morrell. And I have to go back to Grandmother and that big empty house and sit there in a corner in a silk skirt, trying not to ruffle it, just like Adeline said.”

  “What are you talking about?” Charley asked. “Your grandmother isn’t like that.”

  “Yes she is!” Luciana said, stopping and turning to face Charley. “She wants me to have a safe life, and I don’t want that. Not any more.”

  “I don’t see what’s wrong with being safe,” Charley argued. “Especially not if ‘safe’ means never having to worry about having a roof over your head or food on the table. A lot of people would love to have that. And you’ve always loved Midford and your grandparents’ house, haven’t you?”

  “Of course I have,” Luciana said. “I still do. But now … there’s so much out here, Charley. So much I could do. I want what Adeline has – what Clara has. I want to be my own person, not stuck on a path someone else has laid o
ut for me.”

  “Do you really think Adeline is being her own person?” Charley asked. “She has to wear someone else’s face – someone else’s clothes – every single day.”

  “I don’t think she’s wearing someone else’s clothes,” said Luciana. “And if wearing someone else’s face means she can do what she wants – can be who she wants to be – then maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

  Charley sighed. “Ana, look. You are capable of being whatever you want to be. I know you are. But right now – right at this moment – we have to go home. Please.”

  “All right,” she said, feeling cold and defeated. “Let’s go.”

  They started to walk again, the cold slush washing up against their feet. Ahead of them a figure stepped out of an alleyway, the dark bulk of him blocking the light.

  “Well, well, well,” said Turner. “Just look what I’ve found.”

  “What do you want?” Charley asked.

  “Oh, I think you know.” Turner nodded at Luciana’s bag. “Hand it over.”

  Luciana backed away. “Leave us alone.”

  “I don’t think so,” Turner snarled. “You stole from Mr Danvers and now he wants recompense. Come on – give it up.”

  “He gave us that money!” Charley protested. “We didn’t steal anything.”

  “He gave it to you so that you could go home,” Turner pointed out. “From where Mr Danvers would have been able to come and retrieve the Golden Butterfly at his leisure on behalf of Mr Thursby. But no matter. Here you are and I can save them both the trouble.”

  Turner lunged at Luciana. She screamed and Charley tried to intervene. The three of them struggled in the darkness.

  “Oi,” said another voice. “What’s happening here then?”

  Luciana looked up to see a policeman coming towards them.

  “Oh!” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here – please—”