Under the Poppy (27 page)

—though Lucy goes privately to Rupert, out in the stables, up to his shins in shit and slush, did those bastards never once muck out the stalls? and “It’s angried, now,” she says, “his arm and shoulder. Swelling to match the fever.” Shivering, half-gloved hands tucked into her armpits, though her distress is not from the cold. “I can do what I can do, but a doctor’s what we’ll want, before—”

“I know.” Should he have let Arrowsmith send for the military physician? But would Essenhigh have obeyed? or dragged his feet? Already so much, too much, delay, Istvan ought safely to be gone…. One hand to rub numb at his forehead, his wretchedness so sudden and so bare that on comforting impulse Lucy goes tiptoe to kiss his cold cheek, a sister’s warming kiss, a comrade’s, and “Not to worry,” she says. “Whatever it asks, we’ll keep him,” with such stout assurance that Rupert has to smile, takes her hand in both his own: “And is he worth all the effort, that vagabond?” to bring her smile in return: “
’Course he is. He’s our shining star. Yours, too,” with a certain daring, watching his gaze become for that instant a boy’s abashed, his heart’s secret revealed; secret, good Lord!—as he drops her hand, turns again to the tack and “Shortly,” his back to her, “very shortly we’ll be gone. Hold on.”

As she tramps back across the yard, the wind lifts, cold and scorched, yet with a sudden scent of, what is it? evergreen, something fresh and living, and Lucy feels an odd and unexpected glee: not everything is lost, after all, and they will soon be on the road, traveling. Traveling! to Archenberg, and Victoria, and who knows where else besides? Remembering Istvan’s litany,
the Capitalia, and the Phoenix, the Theta Grande
—what a long time ago that seems, there beside him on the narrow bed: she had not touched the mecs yet, restrung the Bishop nor dressed Miss Lucinda—which reminds her, she needs to check with Puggy on the tallow, Istvan so particular about the lights onstage—

—as she steps into the lobby, wrinkling her nose, just like the jakes compared to the air outside—and almost stumbles over Decca, crouched and scraping at, what, some foulness on the floor, like scrubbing a stain in a building on fire but “Pardon,” Lucy says, nimble to step back as Decca rises to her feet. In the dimness they stand for that moment face-to-face, not madam and whore but two women, still nearly girls, to whom the world has shown itself uncaring; and Lucy wonders briefly if, had they met elsewhere, they might have been allies of a kind. Thinking back to the Palais, the girls there, Josey her friend, where is Josey now? and her sister Katy, gone so long before so “To bide here all alone,” she says softly to Decca, “isn’t that folly? Come with us. You can always go your own road in Victoria.”

And Decca surveys her, curiously noncombative, as if her true focus is fixed elsewhere: “Never mind that. I know what I’m about.” Who does she see, Decca, as she looks at Lucy? The girls at Mrs. Segunda’s, fighting for scraps? The girls at the Rose and Poppy, their snickers, their sneers:
The Lady, the Widow Mattison
…. Lucy shrugs, is halfway across the lobby before Decca beckons her back: “It’s yours to look after them, mind. And it’s needed. Mr. Rupert is much too fond of smoking. And he suffers greatly from the headache—”

“I know.”

“Coffee sometimes helps it. Or fucking. Though that’s another’s business, now.” Despite herself, Lucy smiles. “And—” Decca does not say his name. “That other—you’ll be wanting the rest of the laudanum,” leading the way in silence up the stairs to her room, its disorder banished, all trig and tidy, she makes Lucy wait outside as she retrieves the blue tin box: “Here,” handing over the remaining bottles. “Make sure Omar doesn’t drink it on the sly. And give that other this,” a calfskin coin-pouch, the lover’s eye wrapped up in wool,
my eye is on you
no more. “But wait until you reach Archenberg…. When do you go?”

“I don’t know,” says Lucy. She looks around at the familiar hallway, the opened doors, the emptied rooms: all the tricks who passed through these rooms, through her own Blue Room, can she remember even one of their faces? Six minutes, an eternity; suddenly she is even gladder to be going. “That’s for Mr. Rupert to say. Though it can’t be soon enough for all of me.”

“Where is Mr. Rupert?”

“The stables,” as Lucy marches off, bottles and pouch; she will do well enough, Decca thinks, watching her go, perhaps quite well as she does not love Istvan or Rupert, or if she does, it is much leavened with a greed of her own; she always did angle to be onstage, become part of the show. Well, she will have her fill of playing now, and welcome to it. Wrapping her shawl more tightly, Decca descends again, heading for the yard and the stables—

—but Rupert is no longer there, has gone upstairs to Istvan, who lies disheveled across the rumpled bed and “Laddie,” flushed and dizzy. “Shared his smoke. It makes a jolly dose, with the laudanum…. See,” with a nod, the Erl-King whisked sideways from his bedclothes’ hiding place, “doesn’t he look a treat?” One-handed to make him bow, that mouth carved open, destined never to be filled. “Puggy can work the Chevalier, and Omar tote the Bishop. But I’ll need Lucy-Belle for a right arm. Left arm, I mean.” He yawns.

“She came to me,” Rupert says. “She’s anxious about your fever.”

“Not I. It keeps me warm in this fucking tomb. Until I rise… What makes
me
anxious, Mouse, is that I’ve got no knife. Just lying here, all unarmed,” with a wheezy laugh, a breathy noise that reminds of Pan Loudermilk’s mirthless chuckle. Rupert reaches for his watch chain, the steel key and “Here,” turning from his desk, the narrow secret drawer, to place in Istvan’s hand the little white butterfly knife. “Your knife. Did you think it lost?”

“Ah,” past a moment’s sweet shared silence, Rupert’s faint smile, Istvan opening and closing the blade: such a satisfying feeling, very similar to working the mecs. “It can’t be lost, remember? Always it will find its way back…. What other treasures have you hidden in there?”

To please him, Rupert turns the locks, springs the drawers to display a sparse cache—the important documents already sealed for travel, others, as important, safely burned—some few spiked papers and tallied receipts, a jumbled handful of coins from several nations—“What gold we’ve got is in the safe, and precious little of it”—but “Here’s something funny,” Istvan plucking between finger and thumb a jeweled snake, gold fangs on a smooth black pearl and “I’d meant it for Laddie,” says Rupert, taking the stickpin from him, dropping it with loathing on the desk. “To pay for his—efforts. Well, it’s his now,” but “No,” says Istvan, “give it to me. Not to keep, just to use. The Questioning Serpent,” on a sigh; those bright and hectic eyes, all night he shivered in his sleep, shivered in the heat, fever can kill as surely as a wound. See him lean against the desk, now, as if standing upright too long is too much for him, his own weight too heavy to bear—

—as Rupert takes him, grasps him, a brief and bruising kiss as “Jesu,” in a mutter, Istvan’s head on his shoulder, “enough of these God damned maneuvers, I’ll make an end myself—” but “No,” Istvan’s murmur, eyes closed; it is so odd, this fever, like being at the bottom of a well, the events above seen wavering, yet crystal clear. “We both will.” Eyes open on a smile dreamy and vicious, the serpent golden in his hand. “We all will…. Send up Lucy, yeah? And tell Jonathan to limber up the keys.”

A nocturne floats upon the stillness: Jonathan, solemn-eyed, playing alone and softly on the stage. There is something strange about the music, like a child’s voice singing of tragedies, of sins and violations; the tune itself is not Istvan’s choice, but Jonathan’s—
My grandpapa taught it me. Music has charms to soothe the savage breast
—though he can say this to no one, too much to write out and no time for writing anyway. There was to have been rehearsal, at least of a kind, but no, Lucy sent to say they must prepare to perform this very night as best they may, Lucy herself pale with a chill anticipation that spreads to each of them, all of them with a role to play…. Tallow sputters, but on the piano, the last wax candles in the house shine bright and true in a crack-branched candelabrum, making plain the borderline between the light and the dark, throwing Jonathan’s shadow behind him, a dark accomplice waiting by the drapes.

Then Lucy’s voice—Lucy herself still unseen—begins to croon, as Jonathan, like that child lured to doom, follows with the music, a simple song about a path through the forest, the fairies above in the trees: “Watching out for you/And watching out for me,” as Pearl, all in pearly white, hair loose down her back, wanders across the stage, peering out into the blackness beyond, the faded Chinese screen a warding wall around a single table, a pair of watchers at that table, a ragged man-at-arms stationed off to the side: Jürgen Vidor, fawnskin waistcoat, blood-red cravat, and beside him Rupert, dark coat and white linen, one cold hand on the tabletop. A bottle of gin sits between them, with two glasses, one half-empty, one nearly full.

To Jürgen Vidor, it is akin to a dream, as all true theatre should be: the cellar darkness, the musical mute, that pretty voice fluting nonsense words about good fairies guarding good children, represented by the third-rate temptress in the raveling nightgown…. Theatre, yes, yet no stranger or more fantastic than this night itself, this suspended moment in a dying town, a dead building, his own pocket fattened by a wad of lucre that, when this little farce has finally ended, he will hand to Rupert to purchase the corpse: so little left to buy, yet this last so precious a commodity: Rupert’s freedom. It is entirely, almost touchingly, absurd and, were Rupert not so obdurate, a joke they might have pleasantly shared. Very well, he will bear humor’s weight alone until the transactional denouement, that he hopes will occur very soon: it is villainously cold in here, worse even than the hotel that he has quit tonight, thankfully, for the last time, the traveling wagon waiting outside obtained with a surplus pair of boots, its driver’s feet wrapped in rags and chilblains: that they wear nearly the same shoe size, he and the starveling local! A true farce, all of it.

All, that is, but Rupert, whom he has not seen since their last, somewhat disastrous meeting: for reasons unstated and unfathomable, he dislikes Paris and Prague; very well, they will make Italy their destination instead. They will drink black wine in the heart of Venice, they will watch the clouds scud and flutter from the Rialto Bridge, they will visit the tailors and the jewelers, China silks and Japanese pearls—and rings, yes, Rupert tapping his signet ring against the glass of gin, in unconscious time to the fairy song, fairytale onstage where now the white-robed whore confronts, or is confronted by, an eldritch apparition, a skeleton carried by, is it? the majordomo, Omar, clumsy as a bear, its strange bald head beside his own no longer smooth and “You must flee,” says the skeleton in a distant voice, not Omar’s, but the whore shakes her head and continues on, circling back as the fairy song repeats, as Jürgen Vidor tips the bottle, as Rupert’s ring chimes almost soundlessly against the cold lip of his glass.

At the back of the house, Decca watches, wrapped in her shawl, less audience than disinterested observer; they have told her nothing and nothing has she asked, has spoken to none of them since her talk at sundown with Rupert, up in her rooms, pouring him tea drunk standing, requesting, and receiving, all keys but the last, the key to the safe, her own safety then to be assured:
It’s already drafted,
handing him the document, her neat and tiny writing, pen and ink set out on the table beside.
You have only to sign it, so. A landhold lease, it’s called,
to hold the building in her name as long as she lives, and no one to take it from her, no sheriff or man of the law, even Mattison back from the dead could not wrest it, now, from her grasp.

And Rupert’s frown,
How do you know all this?
but she did not answer, he could read for himself the terms and conditions, all quite simple though his gaze on hers was troubled:
I’d meant to give you this
, half-sliding off the signet ring, bloodstone and gold,
to
sell if I needed,
she asked then, with a little smile,
or keep if I don’t?

You might do as you like, but my thought was you’d sell it. It’s all I’ve got of value but the gold, and half of that’s already yours.
His gaze returning to the paper, his question again as he signed—
How do you know to do this? but she gave him no answer, did not need to, this secretive Decca, Agatha, whoever she is now—perhaps she was always so, Rupert’s thought, though not to him? A secret within a secret, her truest resemblance to her brother, may be, her brother whose name she will not utter as he will not glance at her, as if she is already a ghost in this houseful of ghosts, Mattison, and Jennie, and all the girls before her, the dried phantoms of old lust and artifice—

—echoed by Pearl flitting up there onstage, the Bishop receding, replaced by Puggy bearing the Chevalier to tempt her again to flight, to love, Jürgen Vidor watching with mild interest this performance he himself had demanded with his note—
One last hurrah, before the deluge,
yet miming surprise when met earlier at the door:
Why, well-met, Rupert. I was unsure you would accept my invitation
—with his hill-man guard staring at Pearl as if hypnotized by the sight of a pair of tits…. And Rupert’s own gaze hooded and on edge, Jürgen Vidor feels it too, he knows, can see: O if there is a God who looks after devils, let him look after them now: one hand near his knife, the other on the glass, the
ting
of his ring as, the Chevalier’s rhythmic hoof beats fading, another approaches, black weeds, plague mask, bearing the Erl-King, can Jürgen Vidor spot the resemblance? Or the stickpin fastened to the little breast, gold fangs, black-festered stone as “Who are you?” asks Pearl, pausing in her song, hands clasped before her, as the piano dies to stutters, like a bird with only one song:
te-la-te, te-la-te
and “I am the Erl-King,” again the distant voice. “I take the good children, I take the bad children, I like the tang of youth,” the gape of the mouth a kind of smile, toothless, sexless, famished, pressing itself now on Pearl, aided by its nimble handler in the mask, Pearl half swooning to her knees as “Pleasure is pain,” says the Erl-King, or is it
pleasure in pain
? as the stickpin is applied, its bright point parting Pearl’s faded lace, scratching her breast so she moans,
te-la-te, te-la-te
—

—as Decca turns away, the dry whisper of her dress unheard, her passage marked only by Laddie, dark suit and half-clean linen, hair brushed neatly back, himself entering silently from the lobby door—

—as Jürgen Vidor turns unsmiling—“What is this?”—to Rupert, who makes a smile back, lips parted, leaning close to murmur in his ear: “A special tribute, messire—”

“Tribute? Or censure?”

“—to your unfailing patronage, all these difficult days. To one who fully honors his own desires,” still smiling, oh Jesu he is not a good dissembler, even in the dark, Istvan can do this kind of thing so much better than he—