The Bastards' Paradise
Date: 2015-11-13 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Fiction; Fantasy
Description: How many lives they have lived, if only for a night! Puppets and peril, lonely streets and glittering salons—Rupert and Istvan have played through it all, and sought to make the road their lasting home. But that road winds through the past—including the brothel called the Rose and Poppy—while threats and invitations abound: a scheming social climber, a lovesick exile, the Mercury Theatre closed . . . or is it? Old friends from afar join comrades in the here-and-now, as power, love, and fate combine to play out the final chapter of the story of a lifetime. The curtains rose with UNDER THE POPPY

THE BASTARDS’ PARADISE

a novel

Kathe Koja

Published by

Roadswell Editions

127 W. 83rd St. #56

New York, NY 10024-0056

First Edition

November 2015

ISBN: 978-1-938263-23-1

Copyright © 2015 by Kathe Koja

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including posting text or links to text online, printing, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher.

˚"Cover art & design © Rick Lieder • Dreampool.com"

Many thanks to Rick Lieder, Aaron Mustamaa, Christopher Schelling,
Carter Scholz, Sarah Miller, Diane Cheklich, and Maryse Meijer, for aid
and encouragement along the long road.

To CRS

And all who play for love

His nerve electrifies the air.

His message is his being there.

From “Mercury Dressing,” J. D. McClatchy

Act One

The Plague Doctor

In the last of a clouded sunset, in an autumn of frosts and fog, an omnibus rattles through a city square hung black with bunting, its buildings plastered with bills for competing political confraternities, as if those walls were a municipal missal blown to pieces by the wind. Beneath more bunting a somewhat shabby café, once Die Welt and now the Cornucopia, shuts its doors against the darkness as ringed pigeons rise to roost above a shoe-repair shop, a near-beer tavern, and a theatre unmarked and unnamed; no one queues at that theatre’s little box office, itself curtained in violet like a bruised and veiled eye. A pair of men who might be thugs but for the uniforms they wear—stiff-necked brown, with conspicuous badges—patrol the avenue by driving from their path any who still loiter: a cringing, grinning beggar in coat and trailing apron, a stoic bill-sticker with his glue pot and bag, an apparently intoxicated foreigner—what else but a foreigner, gabbling in spats and a foreign-type hat, turned-up brim and “Feathers like a peacock,” scoffs one of the thug-patrolmen, while the other cuffs the man—“On your knees, pin-picker”—into the muck and muddied song sheets at the curb, held there until his pockets are empty, kept there by a kick between the legs that leaves him curled and weeping as the constables walk on.

“Enough of that today already,” says one, the other nodding in assent, then blinking as a clot of what appears to be mud but reveals itself as dog shit hits his face, makes him sputter and gag as his fellow bellows in vain for the tosser to show himself: that tosser silent to watch from above, clandestine in the third-story window of the theatre building, a young man in black drawing back into the room where a round-eyed child sits observing, solemn in a mended nightshirt on the edge of the rosewood bed.

“And that’s how a body cleans his boots, Ru,” he says, wiping his hands with a rag of worsted then hoisting the child to his shoulder, to the stairs, down to the playing space where players as clandestine have gathered, rough-looking youths in beaver hats and frowsy courtiers’ ruffs, paring their nails with flick knives, leaning one on another, all waiting until a small figure in paste gold and grey woolen, her abundant hair wound and wrapped like a sultana’s, emerges from behind the drawn curtains to announce with a shrug that “The funeral was show enough for them, looks like. No one has come.”

“No one has come yet,” corrects another young man, himself in lavish if raveling silk, a dandy’s pink silk and feathered hat, holding an elongated bundle that on closer look is shown to be a puppet, small pointed horns and golden eyes shielded for now behind a blindfold, a character he carries as the other carries the child, pausing to transfer him to his mother’s arms as, turning on his heel, he turns away from the puppet-handler in the silken shirt: “It was show enough for me, too. I’m for off.”

“Haden, we’ve a show. All’s ready, the lads are ready—”

“Ready to be pinched, an’t they? Alek missed it this time by half a whore’s hair.” The tallest youth smiles, half-uneasy, half-proud. “And for what? He’s a dodger, not a hymn singer.”

“He’s an actor!”

“How much acting will he do in the coop? And no one even heard them in all that caterwaul—”

“Must we have this again?” They stare at one another, an unhappy silence that grows unhappily long, the lads shifting foot to foot, Tilde pursing her lips until “Anyway my angel’s broken,” Haden’s shrug that tries for carelessness, that fools no one, that brings Frédéric’s sharp remonstrating breath—

—arrested then by noises, a furtive rapping at the alleyside door, until at last a brave audience of half a dozen—a former Literary Leopard, a defrocked professor from the Academy Scientific, two comrades in matching trousers and hangman’s ties, and Samuel Ridley the photographer with a young woman in a dowdy blue cape—clusters in the seats to note the stage-side placard—“The Bridge of Sighs: A Greedy Fish-tale”—and, after perusing the somewhat overlong playbill and its Latin allusions, settle itself for a playlet of fiery moral instruction lit by the banked coal of scorn.

Now the youths arrange themselves in a bankers’ Greek chorus, as Frédéric sets the puppet to declaim lines unbawdy but made to rouse, to stir and stir up as his comrade in black pulls on with a sigh a black mask that covers nearly all his head, only his yellow eyes, like the puppet’s, left to blink in the dimness, climbing into the flies to swing the angel Israfel—strings sadly twisted, wings still intact—as backdrop to the sung Faustus declamation that

“Upon a bridge made of money, an angler let down his pole

To catch the thin unwary fish, and stuff them in his bowl—”

—as the youths in their hats enact that angling and stuffing amidst clouds of paper money tossed one to the other, blue like the city’s own tender, this version inked with the Mayor’s name and a scowling skull-and-crossbones: an effect much labored-over but in the end unconvincing, as the recalcitrant bills fall limp as wet leaves, stick to the placard and the curtain and the soles of the boys’ boots, go everywhere but where they should —

“—for when the bowl is empty, the Mayor’s got naught to eat

Except what the widows scatter at the bones of their children’s feet—”

—as an empty wooden bowl the size of a wagon wheel is produced and rolled across the stage, pelted as it goes with dried-out chicken bones, the angel swinging lower still, a holy metronome, while as if in compensation for the failure of effects the puppet and Frédéric raise their volume, so loud now that Tilde frowns in warning, constables still patrolling must surely hear that illegal noise; do they? and is that their noise already, come to the alley door? She deposits Ru beneath the tableskirt and slips a hand into her pocket, past the kidskin card case to the blade, no more paring knife —

“Since who’s to care for orphans of the lowly and the poor?

Not our Fishmonger Mayor, the city’s foremost whore!

So let him bait his evil hook—”

—as that door opens, turned by a key, to admit in silence a figure of such strange opulence that he becomes the show just by entering, a man with a case in one bandaged hand and a black cigarette in the other, its acrid smoke to set the boys’ noses twitching as he takes a seat politely near the back. His advent seems in some way to have upset the angel, who nearly flies straight into Frederic’s head, Frédéric who must duck and then squint past the stage lights, and repeat the line about the evil hook—

“So let him bait his evil hook, we’ll gather up the lost

And make this city pay for once the tears that it has cost!”

—which seems to end this segment of the show at least, or at least there is no more singing, only the angel yanked up into the flies, the lads stranded in tableau with their bowl and useless money, Tilde swift and eager to the alley door to look out, look again as “Bravo,” says the man with the cigarette, dropping it to crush beneath a cracked boot heel; as he rises, something white winks at his ear, a pearl earring swinging as he opens his case and mounts the little stage as easily as if he has done so a thousand times before, accompanied now by a dark scrapwood creature, one-armed, one-eyed, who turns that singular stare upon the Faustus, so much larger yet demonstrably at a loss and “Pour faire changement,” says the man to his puppet. “Gentlemen and ladies, fellow players, I give you Mr. Loup.”

Mr. Ridley applauds at once, the others in slower echo; the lads, confused, look to Frédéric for their cue, but he seems transfixed by this new puppet as “Watch,” says Mr. Loup—and in what a tone, so thin yet so fierce, as if a voice might be a lockpick, turning like a key in the fortress of the mind, admitting what insists on admittance, what will not be denied. “And learn…. For,” asks his master of the room at large, “there is, is there not, gentlemen and ladies, always the opportunity to learn? No matter who we are, where we are, how old we are, no matter how dark the darkness or tardy the dawn, there is one true lesson only and that lesson is to—”

“Keep your eyes open!” cries Mr. Loup, leaping sideways to strip the blindfold from the devil, a snatch so violent that that worthy is almost dropped by Frédéric, as stunned as if Mr. Loup has assaulted him, too. From the flies Haden then descends, to tug off his mask, wait in the wings as the puppeteer favors him with a glance—unreadable past welcome, ringed and smudged with kohl—while addressing his changeling companion: “Why, keep your hands—your hand—to yourself, messire, one needn’t be so rude! For haven’t we come to share the good news, the gospel of the road? One plays his way back to Eden, or Valhalla, whichever, song to song, show to show like stepping-stones—”

“Caliban and sawdust,” Mr. Loup interrupts, jerking himself sideways, as though in his indignation he will abandon the stage entirely. “Play how, stay how? All the theatres here have closed!”

“Well, yes, that is so. Why is that so?” as if only to Mr. Loup, though his gaze seems to gather like clues the meager audience, the dimmed stage lights, Fortune’s Wheel draped dark as death in a corner, and make all one with the smell of smoldering fire-bins and the sluggishness of the trains, the lugubrious accommodations, discarded song sheets and poor lost foreigner, if any could hear him, still moaning from his beating at the curb. “Is it because there is no more lard left to thin out the greasepaint? Or no more brandy for lubrication? Oh, surely not!” as Mr. Loup clutches his throat and the audience laughs, avid now, held fully by this apparition with his piecemeal accomplice, his kohl and sharp fashionable goatee, in gaycoat so graceless it makes a mockery of its obvious expense, as if in knowing parody of an actor and a fop. “Is it because the gods have quite deserted their acolytes upon the boards, and left them to the mercy of the burghers? Or because those burghers, naughty fellows, worry only for who butters their bread, and not for who tickles their—Never mind,” soothingly to the puppet, to the ones on stage and in the seats. “This theatre is open for business—and,” toeing the bills on the floor, “with lucre aplenty, so business must be good! And already you’ve made a friend,” nodding to the mute and unmoving Faustus, “who’s a friend of his own,” somewhat louder to Haden, who responds gamely to the cue, steps forward bearing the angel between the lads who part to flank him and “We’ll make you something to watch!” grunts Mr. Loup, his handler nodding again and more emphatically until Frédéric at last finds his voice, rises to his feet to affirm that “Indeed, the show will go on! And many welcomes to this fine entertainer, who once graced this very stage, the very talented and renowned Monsieur Hil—”

“Marcus,” Istvan stepping in front of him, one planted, booted foot to make a courtesy. “Stephanos Marcus, lately of the Bosporus,” as Mr. Loup bows, too, and the audience applauds, Mr. Ridley loudest of all, for with a professional’s acuity he has recognized at once this man, that face! while he nudges his assistant in the cape: “See, Nella, it’s that fellow from before! Remember I told you of him and his fellow, back when this place was the Mercury? Oh, those were some shows, those wild puppets and—”

“I know,” says Nella without enthusiasm, recalling the plates secreted behind the counter, those strange and silly puppet-pictures, and that carte-de-visite of this one and his dead friend, the two dressed up like gentlemen, but very plainly not; any more than is Mr. St. Vitus, there, who puts on these dangerous plays that no one anyway understands, or his stuck-up gypsy of a wife and their silent brat. And about that yellow-eyed bumfellow with his snuff-spitting hooligans, the less said the better —

—as Haden beckons those lads to draw the curtain, himself toting Faustus and the angel to their backstage perch, as Frédéric extends the welcome along with his hand—“What a surprise, what an entrance! Whatever brings you back to us?”—but it is Tilde who commands “Come sit,” making plain by her iron absence of notice that Mr. Ridley and Nella, poking heads beyond the drapery, are patently uninvited, so that Istvan shrugs in politesse—“Bonsoir, another time”—and then they too are gone and Frédéric is fastening the door, is shooing the lads to the stairs past Haden, who nods them upward—“Stay till I call you. And no fucking peeping”—as “Where is Sir?” Tilde pouring oily tea as Istvan reboxes Mr. Loup, his glance for the familiar space as if seeing all anew: those stairs, that wallpaper, that half-unsteady pile of flats, the splintered lance of a broom and shield of burnished tin, this backstage table and “Why,” he says, “it’s the little lord,” to Ru still sequestered beneath, making marks on a folded newspaper with Frédéric’s old Scout pen. “Just the size of a good-sized puppet now, isn’t he? And sturdy, too. Hello, Rupert.”

The child says nothing. Tilde adds a plate to the cup, chipped china and “Plum charlot,” she says. “There isn’t any brandy. Where is—”

“And Marquis,” with a half-salute, “apologies for the intrusion—from outside, the place looked empty!—and even more for my associate’s behavior,” as he produces from a pocket the Faustus blindfold, lets it curl and drop, dark as ink to the tabletop. “It was the homily, I think, that set him off—is it homilies you’re selling, now? No more blood and thunder?” with an eyebrow raised to Frédéric in his motley, still wearing the feathered hat; flustered, he sets it to one side as “Plenty blood and thunder already,” says Haden, one thumb to the alley door. “May be you noticed, Mister, what’s it now, Marcus? Lately of the Bosporus?” measuring him with half a smile, the other half returned by Istvan while measuring with his own gaze the distance between Frédéric and Haden, who neither stand nor sit together, these two when last seen whose hands were always one upon the other and “I notice,” he says, “that you’re done with pretty plaids,” and grown much more menacing as a result, no more the half-clownish grifter. “A bit funereal, but it suits. Though one did like you dashing.”

“A man adapts. You’ve changed some, too, an’t you, with that goat’s beard and—”

The spoon strikes the teapot like a furious small gong, everyone jumps as “Where is Sir?” Tilde’s stare so excruciatingly blue, fixed on Istvan as if she might strike him next and “Softly,” he says, while Ru climbs his mother’s skirts to hunker on her lap and stare as well at the stranger. “Remembering, don’t we, what happened here, that awful loss,” reaching past the teapot with his unhurt hand, a ring upon it, intaglio, slightly too large for him; he covers her fingers, gives them an encouraging pat. “Someone misses your chocolat greatly! And wishes as greatly that that show had not to go so far. Or himself, either.” He takes up the teaspoon to make it bow to Ru, a funny little bob; Tilde nearly smiles; the child looks away.

“Any show at all goes too far, now,” says Frédéric with a frown. “But you’re still playing, you and—Or were you caught up in the war?” cautiously, for even in his gaudy attire the marks of hard travel are plain upon Istvan: the bandaged hand, the battered case, lines at his eyes that the kohl only half disguises, though his shrug is all insouciance as “Next time,” he says. “I’m due elsewhere just now, but we’ll have a good and proper gossip, won’t we. And I’ll bring along some brandy,” as Tilde wraps the plum pastry in a whorl of butcher’s paper, tucks the ends tight and “For Sir,” her murmur as Istvan thanks her with a kiss on the cheek, takes up that case with a wince nearly successfully concealed; only Haden accompanies him to the door, the alley door and “We don’t use the other any longer, good thing you kept the key…. Watch your step, now, that fucking funeral’s got the whole place a-flutter, I had to rearrange some fellow’s nuts just to get home.”

“Well, it’s not every day one kills a king. Or a duke, whichsoever.” On the threshold, the alley’s deepened darkness like a different sort of curtain drawn, Haden leans closer as Istvan pauses to light another black cigarette, Turkish tang and in the flare of the match “What’s your game here, uncle?” he asks softly. “Do you stay? And where’s—your friend?”

“Just a stone’s throw. But it’s been some while since we saw this fine establishment, one needed to be sure of things. Especially in a city this divided. Only have patience, kit,” and with a little wink, a highly improper grasp that leaves Haden startled and tingling, he is gone, swift from the alley to the boulevard, swift to palm a folded bill to one last prowling patrolman, passing thus unimpeded to hail a cab and ride through emptied streets half-remembered, past the hulking and populous Cathedral and the rows of shuttered shops, past Carousel Park, its weather-worn chestnut booths and paths without strollers, past the newsvendors shouting the day’s last editions—“The Vigilist knows! The Vigilist knows!” and “Listen to the Fanfare!”—not at all in the direction of the last best hotel in the city, the Hotel Baron St. Williams with its guarded doors and twice-draped windows, its nervous staff and banks of flowers never entirely fresh: where in a large suite adjoining another, larger, empty suite, reserved in his name, Sir Roland Smalls in shirtsleeves and silk slippers lays out a hand of patience with cheap cards purchased on the train, while a round-bellied pug dog sleeps beneath a tufted chair, and Portia del Azore takes from a little pearlized tin a licorice drop, Swiss licorice black as opium as “The ribbons don’t mask the provenance,” says Roland Smalls, a remark ignored by her as she adds one last fillip to an already overdressed package, a jade-and-ebony quellazaire bought as another in a series of coaxing gifts, destined to be discarded like all the others—

—by Istvan, who now leaves the urinous cab for a bus, then his own two feet to carry him more swiftly through the narrowing hen’s-foot streets, hat tugged low, wary to watch those who watch him as warily—why such a plumy pigeon in such a drab part of town?—as he reaches at last his destination: a humble door to a humbler dwelling, four floors of a workingman’s hostel, day laborers and broken soldiers and men one purse away from the poorhouse, several dozing right there on the stairs as he climbs to the fourth-floor garret, one room with one washstand and one bed, where by the bare window, in a wooden chair to watch the hidden stars, Rupert turns his head to greet him, smelling of good whiskey, drowsy to ask “Did you find them?” and “I did,” shrugging off the jester’s jacket, wedging the second chair beneath the door’s rude knob. “And I brought you a sweety,” taking from the case the pastry, “from Mab, of course. She sends her love, they all do.”

“Just the three of them, still?”

“And the boys, fewer than before; one or two I knew. Oh, and the child,” lighting one last cigarette. “Strapping youngster, he’s got a chest like a bull’s.”

“Blue eyes, like hers?”

“I didn’t notice.” Istvan sets down his case to sit atop it, beside Rupert’s chair, sharing the cigarette in careful puffs; their hands link. “The place isn’t half what it should be—and the puppets, Christ!—but one gathers times are hard.”

“Very hard, looks like. And we’re foxed, messire, the papers here say playing’s no longer allowed—”

“Really?” with a little smile; someone curses, down the stairs; someone else begins to sing, a drunken, circular song with no words and no end. Finally Rupert rises, to journey to the mattress and its coarse blanket, where in moments he falls to sleep, while Istvan douses the lamp and lies wakeful beside, as his wounded hand throbs and the stars retreat, until dawn strikes the window to show the mingled etchings of dust and frost, and he too at last crosses over into dream. Mr. Loup waits, eye closed or open it is impossible to say, there in the case with its wee fit-up and teakwood freight, the only luggage in the room beyond a heavy leathern bag and cane, a fine gentleman’s cane topped by a griffin’s head worked in silver; as in the corner, on drab hooks meant for hat and coat, Misters Castor and Pollux hang silked in silent tandem, returned in reprise to this city once their home, past a journey still unfurling in the twinned shadows of war and the god of the train station, his theatre now nameless, yet an outpost of paradise all the same.

A tale tells itself to itself, as any actor worth his salt and dash makes the play for the pure sake of playing, love in one hand and the black slapstick in the other, a truth learned long ago by these men who lie back, now, bare and damp and satisfied, in a field of winter wheat beat down from recent threshing, their coats combined to make a cot against the shorn and stabbing stalks of shocks, the tickling chaff. Above is a sky of sun and clouds and wheeling birds, what sort of birds? and See those crows! says Istvan, pointing up but Those aren’t crows, Rupert offering the wineskin, sharp wine as black as the birds’ feathers, sole payment for the afternoon’s playing.

They’re rooks.

Past a swallow, How do you know?

The monks taught so: “If it’s more than one crow it’s rooks, if a rook’s alone it’s a crow.” And the rooks wear trousers, like—

Like you don’t, reaching to squeeze him, to make him blush, even after the love just past: taken just as they used to, trousers shucked as the heat rises, like boys again on the road, though silver streaks temples and beards that no barbering can now conceal, and muscles ache that never did before, while the evening’s cold is harder to shake, especially from Istvan’s scarred shoulder, and the weight of the cases more a trial for Rupert to bear. Yet if that road seems more rutted and woeful than once it was, even here amongst the farmers and sheep-grazers, the women in dirndls their mothers might have worn and likely did; if their audience some days is barely greater than those grazing sheep, and the old men who have seen too many wars, and the shoeless children who screech at the puppets or sometimes cry, still the journey curls like a ribbon around the daily gift of gaiety, the sharing that makes hardship just another sort of play as Scholar Mouse! Istvan’s teasing smile. You learned aplenty from your old monks, but you didn’t learn that, yeah?

I even learned Latin, Rupert’s shrug, though I couldn’t say you any now. There was a lad there, dark like me, who could give the Pater Noster backways and front, the monks liked that. May be he grew to be a monk himself. “Frater maior,” he used to call me.

Not truly your brother? You never told me such.

I never knew such, as Rupert roots through their tumbled clothing for a leathern bag from which he extracts a bent cheroot, the tobacco dreadful, he coughs more than he smokes until Istvan passes him the wineskin for a recuperative draught. I barely had a mother. She was dark, too…. Decca said, once, that your mother favored you best.

The name sits Istvan straighter, lowers an eyebrow and How not, with her as the other choice? as he too reaches into the bag, to bring forth a knife and a knobby little creature, nascent face carved with one eyehole and no smile at all, unsmiling himself as he sets to work. And why keep resurrecting her? I’ve no wish to think or talk of Ag, you know that.

Forgiveness is a virtue.

Save it for the monks.

Overhead the rooks exchange opinions, raucous as a grog-shop band, as a man in a vegetable wagon pauses his horse at the noise; does he glimpse the men beyond the shocks, will he think to harry or abuse them, call them names as others have and do, threaten to have their sausages on a plate? Lately there has been more than the usual share of such trouble, as if the disputatious world must seek war on every front, even in the fields and little eating-houses, even past the threshold of welcome: their play for Vater the knife man, now a kind of semi-squire at his sister’s Black Sea village, nearly ended in such disaster, as the sister’s hymn-singing husband, himself no cosmopolitan, had to be schooled in the proper duties of a host by the knife man himself —

Shut your mouth, Taras, don’t be as stupid as you are!

You let them in here! You let them dirty bungers into my house—

—as the wife and sister wept and bundled together the clothing her husband had flung and trod, Istvan’s last best vest with a sad new hole that she insisted on mending, a poor job if a heartfelt one; it was for the vest as much as the disrespect that Rupert punched the husband numb, the knife man’s dog fastened blind and growling to an ankle, as the knife man shook his head and Istvan watched. As they then departed, Vater by way of apology slipped into the leathern bag a pint of slivovitsa, last store of a long-held cellar, and a droll chip of steel on a twist of black cord: a right-sized weapon for the puppets, whose safety too has sometimes been in doubt on these travels, travails repeated that very afternoon, some shouter with a grudge at the edge of the crowd, thrusting up afterward to “see the workings” and handle the puppets, barely dissuaded by Istvan’s soothing insults and Rupert’s stare over the concertina. The whole comedy recalls the near-demise of Marco, Istvan to tell that tale once again, in the scent of new splinters and shavings as It took some work to make him whole, after those curbside bullies finished pounding us both—and still he broke apart, his hands in mine, in some grande dame’s boudoir. What a rout! Even the butler laughed, damn him.

Rupert, dozy now in the chaff, opens an eye. The laughing butler…. How many of those stories do I know, messire?

How many would you know? as that too is a gift of this road, all the stories spun of all the times spent apart, sad or harrowing, darkly hilarious, and which are fully factual or not, who could fully say? as that road unites the present and the past, yesterdays summoned by sights seen today—a pair of linden trees beside a greenish pond, a swampy harbor busy with tramp ships, a riotous Byzantine courthouse, all curlicues and staring eyes of Justice, Like the, what was it? That gingerbread jail, you remember and Istvan’s nod, Je me souviens—as if they travel in two worlds at once; perhaps they do; or perhaps it is three, that third sphere the stage that surmounts all time, being itself timeless and eternally new, bits from one show bobbing up inside another, a sally begun in one story finding its laugh in the next, or the next—

—as the knife man’s village is left behind, a blowsy posy plucked to hide the scar on Istvan’s vest, and their walk resumed to everywhere and nowhere, seemingly without a map, though the larger cities must be avoided, the places where two men and their puppets might be recognized by friends or enemies, even though it makes the way more difficult, and the wallet Rupert carries grows lighter with each brief hamlet that pays only in a sack of pears or an evening’s supper, a roof in the chilly morning, a bottle to wet the throat along the way. Still the ongoing wisdom of this course is underscored one night in a crowded rathskeller near Hamburg, a half-drunken actor fresh from a tent show Richard III, one of the Tower murderers insisting tableside to Istvan that You, you’re that Poppy fellow, hey! What’s your name again?

M. Marcus, gaze cast beneath his lashes, Rupert glancing up from his newspaper and foamy bock but No, no, says the actor, that’s not it—you’re the fellow from the whorehouse, and you, too, sir, I remember you both! One on the stage, one on the door! Tell me true, is that place still open?

I’ve been in more than one whorehouse, Istvan’s silken, iron smile, as Rupert leans back in the chair, one hand on his knee, the other closer to his pocket. Perhaps you have, too, for you’re quite mistaken.

Oh, no mistake—you’re the puppetman from Under the Poppy! There was a girl there could suck the seeds from a sour apple, she surely did the job on me. And I recall that wooden horse she rode, while you dragged it round the stage, the one with the carved-up pecker. And the other one, the singing one—louder and louder, heads turning in interest now mild, now sharpening as May be, says Istvan, you could tell us more outside, an arm companionable around the actor’s shoulders, that same arm to choke his air to frantic sips past the door’s dark threshold, Rupert’s voice in his ear to advise immediate amnesia, leaving him wobbly on the cobbles with wet trousers and a new appreciation for life, though his tongue wags ever faster of the Poppy men who popped up one night with a bag of puppets and almost slew him for no reason, and never said, did they, if the place was still open or not.

The road grows rougher still as they pass through zones of conflict, of men who look askance at other men who wear no uniform, who carry no visible weapon beyond wit and a repertoire of tunes; Rupert’s fists must stay ready, though the fighting has long become less a lark and more a chore, as Istvan keeps a sharper eye than ever upon the venue door, to avoid as much as they may the hubbub and the blood. And that road, with its wet and cold and wet again, rouses up again in Rupert the cough that rumbles maddeningly, so he has to squeeze the squeezebox harder than ever to drown himself out. Some foolproof cures have been suggested—boiled potato water drunk through cheesecloth, a night’s slumber taken standing up—and one beetling beldame even paid for their playful take on a local legend (“The Bear and the Bishop,” a tale much beloved by the clergy-haters in town, ending as it did with one devouring the other all the way to his popey paper hat) by offering a fresh-made batch of The Queen’s Asthmaticum, see? My old papa used to drink it all the time, it did him wonders.

Wonders indeed, Istvan sniffing the brew, and visions too, no doubt. What’s in it, Madame, if it’s not too impertinent to ask? to bring forth a complicated list of aniseed and tartar, oil of camphor, oil of benjamin and Spirits, just a drop or two. You drink that, young man, and see if it doesn’t help!

Many thanks, says Rupert with a bow.

Oil of Benjamin, says Istvan, squeezing back the cork.

The bottle is stowed away in the traps, as Rupert keeps the less perishable gift of “The Bear and the Bishop,” its playing leading his concertina on another sort of journey, back to the old tunes and fables: some rousing, some wistful, all simple as a folktale is simple, as grand opera is simple, as the spun tale of the spinning world is a simple one really, the story of Cain and Abel and the snake watching from a branch on the tree. And the simplicity itself adapts the stories: “The Maiden’s Prayer” for her lover’s return becomes a knockabout dance between the wooden misters; “The Knight and His Knave” recalls the knight and his trickster, with fine heroic results; and the raucous “Thumb-Your-Nose” needs no updating, with its cheering, jeering chorus and its exhortation to treat all men as brothers, that is, with the same helpful disregard, enacted to hoots and stamping boots nearly every place they play it. In one town, that playing even sparks a minor revolution, as the puppets insert, via Istvan’s ear for dice-game gossip, the names of two locals much disliked, and suggest that instead of paying medieval tithes to this mayor and his crony, the people of the town ought “Thumb your nose! Thumb your nose! At Walter and Grigor/Thumb your nose and tell them that of coin they’ll get no more!” those coins tossed instead to the puppeteer and his musician, not much and most of it spent in the town’s one decent café; but the song’s effects linger, the puppets are remembered, and when several of the town’s young men are punished for their singing, and that punishment leads to an even greater insurrection, “Thumb your nose!” becomes a rousing battle cry.

To Istvan, the baiting of Walter and Grigor seemed, or seemed to seem, merely a pleasant small divertissement, a joke played on locals by locals with the help of the twins, brothers, lovers, with no stake in the matter themselves; their own path, as always, lay elsewhere and onward. But Rupert was moved to ponder, in the villages they visit and the cities they skirt, the ways this world now tells itself that ancient tale, as so much is lost from the past to the past, and so much of the new—the glittering Expositions and cinemas fantastique, balloon flights and sleek phaetons and ubiquitous bicycles, even the women ride them now, trussed in bloomers and helmeted in hats—and the increasing and furious speed at which all moves, is just fresh gut for old strings, while the tears and the struggles never lessen or end. The bishop’s bear and the knightly knave, at least, have seen that world spin times enough to make them wiser, and it is not nothing to remind a man he must thumb his nose from time to time, even if it ends in a beating or worse.

Now Istvan bundles back the puppet and knife, reaching again for the wineskin as A dry throat’s no good for stories, while Rupert, sleepy from the sunlight, lies back half-dreaming: of a tall green hill and a knight atop it, another lesson from those long-ago monks, who taught a God severe and disinclined to love or gaiety, the monks he left after he learned to cipher and counted all the beatings he received. It was a brave story, though, that saintly knight, what was his name? who helped where help was needed, who halved his fine cloak to give to the poor and naked beggar—

—as a naked body lies suddenly warm atop his own, the smile an inch from his lips and You can sleep, Istvan says, when it’s nighttime—as the vegetable cart trundles off down the road, as the rooks and the sun and the kisses make a glory of the moment unmatched even by the saints in heaven above, even by the martial saint Martin, in some vernaculars Marco, namesake to Marco the puppet, whose own name will change again and again in the hands of his handlers, as his first handler’s does and has and will again, as necessity requires and circumstances suggest; though his companion keeps his name the way a knight keeps his shield, a constant blazon against the world, with only the boy turned man beside him to glimpse the shy watchful heart of the mouse.

That their own names have, in some quarters, turned themselves into a kind of fable, sticks and songs and the moral depending on the venue—if you were to ask the late Mr. Entwhistle, say, or the piano player Jonathan Shopsine, the versions would differ so greatly that neither could seemingly have credit, for how could the same men be so perfidious and so kind?—that fable is a fact with its own momentum, quite independent of the men and their wooden brothers-in-arms. And if there are those who know more of the tale than others, themselves already deep in its telling—Mrs. Lucy Pimm, tatting a pretty mask for a lady puppet as she sits by her husband’s bed; the widow Mattison, counting out another evening’s tally; Tilde Bok, sometimes called Mrs. St. Vitus, turning over her sapient cards—their versions await a fuller amalgamation, as lines of verse become a poem, or strung sentences a letter, or saved letters a packet to address both the future and the past.

From a letter, JAVIER ARROWSMITH, Esq., to DUSAN

Marked as “Private”

…and if you recall me, let it be as one who honored your skill and your invention, for the world you made upon the stage so often and so fully trumped the world beyond the theatre doors.

Those worlds are much upon my mind, now, as a man in my position—most frequently supine; hors de combat, you might say—has a great deal of time in which to reflect upon his own part in such affairs, the storms of war that continue, in some avenues, to this very day. Whether those dark clouds will ever part, to shine the light of truth upon the men who hold and govern those avenues, is a question for philosophers or priests—several of whom now come regularly to my couch, with their somewhat parochial taste in spirits. But none, alas, have answers.

Perhaps those answers lie instead in the mutable lessons of myth? All myths begin in a truth retold, Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur is the maxim. And les mecs would surely say the same, those changeable little actors, for in play lies hope, perhaps the only hope; and the hope for righteousness, too.

“You have grown poetical,” our old friend the General once accused me, and surely it is so; and verbose in my correspondence—so many letters in the writing-box, will they ever be read? I shall close this one now by wishing yourself and M. Bok the greatest success in your work and travels, and with the further wish that you will one day tender in person my regards to your estimable sister. Her hospitality was unforgettable, and a part of me still dwells beneath her roof.

With respect and sincerity, I remain,

Your servant,

Javier James Arrowsmith

“He’s late,” says Portia del Azore, glancing again at her cloisonné watch: en suite at the luncheon table set for three, sparkling china, drooping foxglove in a vase; she drops a crust of toast to the whining pug beneath her chair. “Hush, Bijou! —And Frau Ezterhaus is so particular about time—”

“He keeps his own timetable,” says Roland Smalls, “you must have noticed that. In Paris, say?”

She ignores this, takes a licorice drop from her tin, takes the cork from a bottle of mineral water, pours half a glass without offering the same to Roland Smalls. No one would call her beautiful, her features too sharp, eyes too deeply set under brows too strong, but she takes the eye and holds it, as a salon painting might, or a railway poster, an advertisement for the modern world itself: black silk bands at her wrists, black silk tie, daringly, at her throat, the yellow silk fluted, the skirt columnar; one copper-toed boot taps with irritation, a nearly constant tattoo. “The fountain boat races begin promptly at two-fifteen, and afterward we are to stay for tea, and speak of a possible engagement. —Why do you look so? Need I explain how important an appointment like this can be?”

“Not to me,” with a pleasant shrug; nearly all he does includes a shrug, Sir Roland Smalls, baronet and eldest son, whose ancestral home has gone unseen by him since childhood, a separation begun at school, reinforced at university, and refined into perpetual self-exile, to visit and revisit those cities and towns meant for gentlemen of leisure, gentlemen with certain tastes for certain pleasures: the reading of classic poetry, the investigation of Grecian ruins, the sunlight through the leaves of an orange grove, a young street Arab at one’s side…. It has been a pleasant journey, interrupted only by a matrimonial foray with an Italian conte’s daughter, brokered and undone within a six-month span, the annulment’s original charge of “conjugal fraud” altered to the more vaguely tragic “no infants can be produced alive.” His family’s response was as if to a great catastrophe, his younger brother pacing the hotel suite in Cologne—

How do you mean to conduct yourself, then? No heir, no wife, no life—

I have a life. The rest I leave to you, Ronald, and your mania for duty. You’re lord of the manor now, you ought to thank me.

Thank you? For disgracing our family, with your—purchased amours—

I tried to purchase a wife, and see how that turned out. Would it ease your mind if I bought a lady friend?

—but in no evident way is Roland Smalls a catastrophic man: fair hair, a close-clipped mustache cleanly waxed, he might be thirty, he might be fifty, an ageless smiling figure in clean white linen and cuffs, spats the color of fresh celery, reaching past Portia del Azore for the still-warm pot of tea, stout Darjeeling beside her own tisane chamomile. “You’ll do as you mean to, of course. What else?”

“Then why do you look so?” The boot tap-taps. “It’s why he is here.”

“Is it?”

“If you won’t help, I beg you don’t hinder. If he—” as a knock is heard at the door, both turning in their chairs, the pug snorting a bark: but it is a young hotel runner, not Istvan, no matter that a place has been set for him, a new gift—silver cufflinks, a pair of cunningly coiled snakes—purchased and wrapped for him, an agenda created, the whole day and stay and pilgrimage to revolve around his performances. The servant’s note, addressed to the Marchioness del Azore, bears the crest of another society madam, a former Van Symans daughter: We shall hope to see you and your “find” at charades tonight, if the world does not end in the meantime! and “Is the world ending?” asks Roland as the servant departs. “The weather seems tolerable, not a drop of rain, they say, today. Biblically, I suppose, it’s to end in fire and brimstone—”

“The papers call it a war,” turning over the only paper that can matter, this note with its blue ink and boundless implications, this next entrée to a world she has kept hard pace beside for so long: clever girl, Polly the striver, she and her younger sister renamed—I’ll be Portia, you can be Feodora. That’s the Queen’s own sister’s name—and relocated from the servants’ quarters, learning there besides decorum—Face your ladyship, answer when she talks to you, keep silent when she doesn’t. And keep your distance!—how a fine lady speaks, how she dresses, what she reads, how often she locks her bedroom door, so his lordship must in relief go elsewhere; it is a full curriculum. And if the sisters’ paths have since diverged—

I’m called an adventuress, Polly. “Une grande horizontale.”

Call it what you please, Feo, but as long as you’re whoring, I don’t know you.

—the lessons learned have stayed with Portia, updated with the times as they change, and she with them: a fine lady who lacquers her fingernails, who reads the latest novels or at least leafs through them, who travels in the genteel company of a man not her husband, a lavender friend From one of our best families; and keeps an eye open, always, for the next step up, the next handhold on the precipice. It is why she is here, it is why she looks again at her watch, it is why, when the door next opens, she prepares to dispatch the runner with a carefully worded reply, half regret at their tardiness, half intimation of better things in store, since such things, of course, take their own time—

—but instead “Bonjour, groundlings,” Istvan nodding past the brim of a old brown homburg, pinched just that hour at the train station from a distracted traveler left even more distracted, pointing back with two fingers to direct “Next door,” to the lanky young servant wheeling an old leather trunk, as Roland rises with a smile: “You’re to stay here, then,” with undisguised pleasure and “See?” to Portia who has risen as well. “The world’s not a bit ending, with news like that.”

“The end of the world?” as Istvan reaches to the table for a raisin cruller; in mufti today, the pearl earring tucked to a pocket, a plain coat and loose trousers such as a workingman might wear; only the goatee still speaks of the exotic. “I could have left the trunk, then, couldn’t I.”

“Quickly,” snaps Portia to the servant, “a cab. There’s still time, the fountain races don’t start until—Frau Ezterhaus,” to Istvan’s questioning gaze above the pastry. “She’s especially invited you, invited us to—”

“Fountain races?”

“It’s boats,” says Roland helpfully; he pours a glass of mineral water for Istvan, pulls out the third chair at the table. “Little boats, no bigger than a man’s palm, sent round and round a fountain with paddles. Some people find it very entertaining.”

“Alas. I’ve business.”

“But Frau Ezterhaus most especially—What business? And why are you dressed—”

“What business could that be of yours, Baroness?” nipping two more crullers from the tray, barking back at Bijou who barks at him as Roland trails him to the door, wondering aloud if he would care for company on the way, could he be lured into an early drink at “The Drooping Lily? I hear it’s quite delightfully recherché,” but “It’s closed,” with a shrug, as “Charades!” Portia calls, the creamy note tight in her fist. “Will you at least take part in the charades?”

“Oh, without a doubt. Enjoy the flotilla,” with a cheery wink, as he closes the door on Roland’s hopeful smile, turning then to the loitering servant in hotel livery gay as any theatre costume, a youth he recognizes as a former ruffian of Haden’s, a youth he tips, then waggles by the chin as “You’re off the boards, then, youngster? The last time I saw you, you were wearing a pointy little mask.”

“What, down at the playhouse, you mean? Oh I never, sir! And if I did I wouldn’t now, they’ll pop you in the coop as quick as—Hang on, an’t you—”

—as Istvan heads past him down the stairs, eschewing the brassy, newly installed lift; something about lifts, their chains and rattling doors, speaks to him of the trap. Strange, usually it is Rupert who dislikes such conveniences, himself who seeks the new—such as their visit to the Exposition, a giant spectacle de lantern magique: the whirling sky-wheel and the Mareorama, the Ethiopian rug dancers and mermaids who splashed in a wheeled and bubbling tank, the phonograph mania to blare “Paris My Paradise” seemingly from every corner, the cunning metal automata of the wine-drinking clown and naughty nun and priest, made, it was said, by that fellow on the rue Saulnier, or was it down by the waxwork museum? One forgets, the figures themselves forgettable beyond their novelty, their ability to play only one trick. The opposite of puppets…. But other novelties were more congenial: recall that poudre de riz shared out by some apache boys in a doorway, one sharp sniff enough to open the eyes and keep them wide open all night!

He had not brought that back to Mouse, holed up above the two-room boîte, Rupert at the rain-washed window irritable and pent—We should be miles from here by now—tossing down the newspaper, yesterday’s papers read unto the columns of adverts, the personal notices but Tomorrow we will be, Istvan tying and retying an almost-new cravat, adding a false gold stickpin to cover the unfortunate scar on his vest. Or the next day at the latest. In the meantime—

In the meantime I sit stuck in this fucking box.

Your last stroll did us no favors, did it? a foray for kaffee crème, the dim buvette with just a few tables but one of them seating—who could have foreseen?—M. Denis de Mercy, tubby now as a wobbly-toy, his stare over spectacles one of confusion, his brother beside with a hand half-raised in surprise—Why, it’s —Isn’t it? and it was all they could do to get lost again, hats abandoned and collars yanked up, Istvan fashioning an eye patch from a snatched-up serviette, Rupert with a livery cap jammed down on his head and “No one searches for a dead man,” you said, “it’s quite safe—”

Who killed me in the first place? And made us into everlasting dodgers? Go. Go play your God damned dice, or cards, or whatever it is you’re truly about. As always I’ll be the last to know, refusing the offered kiss, chin turned stubborn and away but then, more softly, You’ve a knife? glancing up to see Istvan glancing down and The sword of my wit, as always, rousing a smile of exasperation, of love unmatched and You never change, messire. Do you.

Nor you.

The gushing rain was not enough to deter those determined to seek pleasure, that pleasure-palace sparkling with electric lights, bored and vampish dancing girls in costumes made of owl feathers, respectful stagehands to draw the curtains to a compact back room—M. Boilfast says you’re to have all you need, sir—and admit to that private show a group select in its tastes and stiffly charged for the tasting: among them a fluttery viscount, a famous English novelist and his half-soused wife, twin daughters of a questionable saddle-soap magnate, and the woman and man seated first and front, she in gold waffled silk and a hat like a beekeeper’s, he in ascot and white eelskin trousers, both in a manner of speaking aristocracy, both staring at the entering player as if they had never seen anything like him before; and nor they had, as well-traveled as they were and are: Istvan all in black, from boots to the kohl on his eyelids, sore hand wrapped in velvet, rain-damp and combative to create a performance as rich with mockery as the wallet behind it was flat—distressingly flat, the last of their funds gone into that two-room, and the way still to pay for the road ahead; it is expensive, nowadays, to be a vagabond!—to bait and chant and sing with the freshly-made Mr. Loup: No gospels, gentlemen and ladies, no morals-of-the-story! offering instead a selection of songs ranging from the risqué to the scabrous, ending with a tune dredged straight from the alleys, “The Tale of Stinky Peters,” with Mr. Loup pointedly holding his nose with his one hand, raising instead of disgusted gasps a chorus of knowing laughter, as if at a most sophisticated jest, and none more knowing, or more encouraging, than from the two seated in front, neither of whom could tear their gazes from him.

Finally the song made its end, the puppet made a yawn and It’s time we were abed. Who cares to join us? with more titters roused, applause muffled by gloves so What, no takers? Then we’ll pass the fucking hat, and be on our way, Mr. Loup with his tiny crooked hat to roost inside Istvan’s and pass into the audience, and stand before each, half-farce, half-menace, until some tithe should be paid, leaving for last Portia del Azore to wet her lips and tuck into the hat banknotes enough to stuff it full, notes immediately trumped and doubled by the single one folded and dropped atop by Roland Smalls; his knock come first to the backstage door, a room with a dressing table nearly as large as the stage just employed, two chairs and a chaise and Istvan already reclined and extracting a cigarette from a left-behind packet of Ravens, as if waiting for that knock, for them to enter, she the first to speak and to pull a chair beside the chaise, to admit that she had not been, till now, wholly familiar with his great artistry, though certainly she had heard of him, heard his name in various top salons—

You frequent such? past a lazy stream of smoke. What name? —Sit down, butterfly, to Roland, who smiled brightly and continuously, saying little but looking much, until I’ll order some refreshments, his murmur as Portia continued to offer her bona fides, her many enviable if still-unspecified connections, inquiring if Istvan would play this theatre again, or travel elsewhere; if he employed an assistant, someone to aid him on his path—

No need, madame, or it is mademoiselle? I buckle my own boots, I’ve been doing it for quite some time now.

But someone said—That is, I understood that you once had a helper, in your shows? A man who played the music?

A coy chuckle from inside the case, Mr. Loup insinuant to ask You’d be my helper? a reply in tandem with the gaze through the smoke, given as if in challenge, leavened by humor, an icy private humor at an old and arid jest and Believe me, monsieur, more urgently still, I could be of real assistance to you. I’m well-acquainted with the theatrical world, in London I was—

A toast! Roland Smalls reentering beside a servant with tray and glasses, a nicely chilled bottle of Roger—no, it’s Pol Roger now, isn’t it? I hope this will suffice? and Quite, Istvan brisk to reach and stick the bottle in his case, a discourtesy that did nothing to take the smile from Roland Smalls, murmuring then of performances seen at the Opéra, at the Parthenon, in Covent Garden, Your own artistry is much the same! a statement that, given the show just past, must be only a lie or buffoonery but was neither, was something else entirely, something noted by Portia del Azore stiffly smiling on her chair, gazing at the men as Istvan deliberately tugged off his midnight tie: You’ll excuse us now, mademoiselle. Unless you’d like to see me naked.

I’d very much like to see you—That is, to talk to you of business, mutually advantageous business. We’re at the Hôtel Alan, offering the finely engraved carte-de-visite with a perspiring hand—she sweats like a docker, does Portia del Azore, or whatever her true name might be—as the door closed and A marchioness, is she? Istvan’s raised eyebrow. And what is she to you?

Nothing really. A useful amusement, like a monkey one picks up at the fairgrounds, Roland Smalls with hands clasped tight to watch him strip his shirt, then toss both it and the tie into the case, make a beautiful smile—and within the hour, wounded vest and jacket resumed, share out with Rupert, along with the cigarettes and a fresh copy of the Paris Herald, the champagne, delicious as a cool kiss to the lips though Rupert was startled and annoyed by the drink’s expense: You spent what we’ve got on this? Or did you win it in some game? but No game, Istvan’s shrug. Just a gift from the groundlings, met not the next day but the next, in a restaurant with marble floors and polished brass stands of ferns, where over Dover sole and Spanish brandy a bargain was proposed and a payment accepted, though it was called neither a payment nor a bargain—

—as now, still, those pennies must feign to be pinched, it will not do for Mouse to know these funds, or their source…. Now Istvan sails past the doubled doormen, into streets so changed from the streets they had been that it is itself a kind of magic lantern show, played for no one’s benefit except the makers of gunpowder and bunting, the sellers of candles, the newspapers—there seems to be a new post on every corner, and a new fellow to bawl of it, Herr Seraphim must have his pick! though not the drinkers of milky tea and bitter gin, both those last in evidence as he passes through old quarters, by the locked doors of the Garden of Eden, a dusty sidewise placard still advertising the final tale told—“The Magistrate’s Daughter: A Saga of Redemption”—and the empty Cleopatra, its doors stuck with competing bills of political slogans, Cockrill’s Palace just the same; though it seems there might be a bit of light on somewhere inside that last, since a puppet, gaudy or not, so often finds a way…. Past barricades and heaps of bricks from breakage or too-hasty rebuilding, past Crescent Bridge with its lurking swans and whores so discreet they can barely be told from the palm-swingers, past tired strivers in tight collars and their female twins in platter hats, and little packs of glum-looking students, some of whom mark the curious freedom of this figure who passes in but not of the crowds, one or two pausing to watch as he cuts through the Park denuded of its gypsies and its wine and lemonade booths, the Panorama Ride—“Journey to the Great Cities of the Earth!”—and the Wheel become a roost for shitting pigeons, the carousel still extant but without riders or an attendant to turn the crank, so the chariots and steeds sit stranded, their painted eyes running as it begins, again, inevitably, to rain.

At the shoe shop off Rottermond Square, itself renamed in honor of Liberty, he stops to have a boot heel examined, the lumpish proprietress doubtful of its repair: “Did you walk to the moon and back in these, sir? We can replace the heel and sole, and have it done by Thursday, Friday the latest. But I don’t see that it can be fixed.”

“No?” Istvan glancing over her shoulder, through the window with its stout half-shutters half shut. “There’s less than no sun today, madame, why keep it so dark in here?” but “It’s not the sunshine that worries me,” going on as she brushes and blacks the boots (and truly, they are in a sorry state, one will need to replace them very soon) to inform this stranger of the daily and ongoing darkness: the anxious crowds crowding the Cathedral, the outrageous displays of the rich, with their turn-the-clock parties and “Indian” entertainments, the papers are full of such stories! while all else must suffer a constant stream of fears and shortages, the winter’s coal is sure to be rationed, apples are spoiled before one can buy them, the mayor’s speeches seem only to rile the men and boys, who then take to the streets, smashing each other and anything else they can reach until the constables make order with their batons and foot-cannon, oh it is a terrible time in the city! but “What of that tavern, there?” pointing to what was once the Heads or Tails. “Do they still sell brandy, are there games of dice?” to narrow her eyes, no, no, there is nothing of the kind available any longer, all vice has been purged from this avenue and good riddance, good riddance to that theatre too, where once were played “Quite nasty shows,” lips prim as she wipes her hands on her canvas apron. “I can’t say what they did, I never went there! But it might have been a—a brothel, for all the filthiness that went on, until the night they all got what was coming to them, and truly. God is not mocked.”

“Is that so.”

“It is so. The place burned half to the ground, and two men died in the fire—dreadful men, foreigners, and worse,” as Istvan pays for the blacking with several coins and a fresh blue bill. “It’s a writer fellow and his wife live there now, and if they aren’t the nicest people, still they’re peaceful, and peace is what we need here.”

“Yet didn’t Our Lord himself say he came not for peace, but the sword?” with an eloquent shrug, pushing out again into the rain to step past that silent tavern—is that a glimpse of a pale ghost, a ghost’s ghost mute and lovely in the doorway?—and into the alley where the key admits him at once to a scene of conflict, a doubled scene in fact as several lads crouch on the wagon wheel now become a sort of bowl, or cup, perhaps the Marquis is hungry since all his shows revolve around food? though “You’re Ixion, Pipper,” calls Frédéric, “remember? It hurts, we need to hear you groaning,” as “I need a climber, when’s he done?” Haden in greatcoat and a face so expressionless that it shouts itself like the crudest mask, a face that finds brief relief in scowling at Tilde who scowls back, reaching to take from Ru a tinker’s hammer—“Don’t, Baba, that’s not for playing. If you’re going, hayrick, why not go?”—as “Hello,” says Istvan mildly, “it’s Uncle Reynard. Don’t stop on my account, chickens, I’ll just perch and watch,” as the youths stare and Ru retreats to his mother’s skirts, Istvan noting the maternal mien, Tilde much more a woman now, if still slender and steely, her girlhood gone for good perhaps into that little boy; whose eyes, yes, are nearly as blue as hers. “Milady, have I mentioned yet that mothering becomes you? You look extremely well, unlike everything else in this town. And our mutual friend sends his love, he says the plum cake was delicious.”

“The fruit here’s no good,” although she is pleased, very pleased, and much relieved; last evening’s testing query to the cards of Sir brought such a fearsome jumble of signs and countersigns, the cards as if quarreling or confused, that she has been reluctant to ask anew: the Wanderer again, and the Lord of Flowers, against the crossed staves of the Knave of Crowns, and the heavy clouds of the Whirlwind reversed…. As Istvan sets to the tabletop the promised brandy, the hotel crullers, and a gin bottle filled with milk—“For milord”—“Fresh or not,” she says, “we take what we can get,” and then, sniffing the milk with approval, “Wherever did you get this?”

“From a goat. This, too,” a little puppet made of twigs and twisty wool, a little animal to prance across the table top, to dance for Ru, who instead takes and shakes a small red ball, painted wood filled with dried beans, a wooden cup attached by a string as “He doesn’t play the puppets,” Tilde says.

“Not much like his namesake, then?”

“I’d ask your aid in that matter,” Frédéric calls, “if you’re willing,” setting aside the curled and much-marked script—“The Turning Wheel, or Fortune’s Favorite”—to reach instead for the angel puppet, snarled strings, spotted shift and vestments and “He’s been somewhat out of commission,” Frédéric says, glancing to Haden, who glances away. “And left a bit to molder, I’m afraid.”

“Molder indeed,” Istvan taking up the wooden body with a sniff at the wings, the feathers replaced with those of doves, or is it geese? and neither properly cleaned before insertion, the whole job at one with the still-leaking roof, thrice-daubed paint and cracks in the walls, the general air of siege and make-do. “Poor Corydon.”

“His name,” says Frédéric, forehead pinkening, shifting on the chair as the accused might in the dock, “is Israfel,” himself changed from last evening’s silks to today’s humbler woolens, a striped scarf at his neck to ward the chill; his beard is a poet’s, short and somewhat ragged, the brownish rings beneath his eyes speaking of the poet as well, the anxiety of creation, or destruction, or both. “The name comes from a sestina by—”

“He an’t here to wipe our noses,” Haden stepping nearer, stuffing gloves into one pocket—stiff leather gloves, not at all what a gentleman wears, more like a workman’s or a strangler’s—and taking from the other a flask, a hard swig, nudging Istvan who swigs himself, lips turned down and “That’s some sour milk and no mistake. Here,” with a little shudder, offering the brandy bottle. “Wash your mouth out with this.”

“Sorry my doss isn’t up to your standards,” as Haden repockets the flask, and folds his arms. “We’re fucking pinched here, we’ve done the best we may with what we’ve got.”

“No one says you haven’t, kit…. I’ve missed this place,” with a smile to that moody golden gaze, to the puppet laid out like a small corpse upon the table, his own fingers already busy at the strings. “Though one can’t say why, it’s in worse shape than Monsieur Co—Israfel, here. In Paris they have the boulevards, here it’s still a rat warren—orphans all over the train station, and hymn-shouters, and one can’t take a straight piss without spraying a soldier—Beg pardon,” to Tilde taking from him the bottle to pour four teacups, a doubled splash in each. “And quite a spate of suicides, it said so in all the papers. Is that why you’re playing such a moral reveille? Is it working?”

“Drink,” says Tilde, her nod less invitation than command; each takes a cup, even she and “For Sir,” she explains to their gazes, then tosses back the brandy like an expert: “Salut! And this is for you, Baba,” handing Ru one of the crullers. “And you,” a stern pointing finger to Pipper, “watch he doesn’t get where he oughtn’t,” as Pipper climbs out of the wooden bowl, his look unsure between Haden and Frédéric, finally inspired to say “I’ll take him to the Park then, an’t I, ma’am? We’ll go throw rocks at the statues. Come on, Ru,” popping onto the child’s head a kepi cap much too large, as the other lads decamp with them, leaving the four alone at the table: Haden to shrug off the greatcoat and sit opposite Istvan, Frédéric to his left, Tilde across and “The cards saw you coming,” she says: the Lord of Hares leaping down the road, and beside him the Wanderer, both so often in the spread these last few months that she had begun to wonder if her own wants put them there, her dreams; sometimes that happens. “But not alone. Say where Sir is, now.”

“In one of those canal hostels—I believe it’s called the Augean Stables,” to bring from Frédéric a scholar’s appreciative nod. “When I left he was eating black bread and reading the Scriptures, of all things, it’s the only book we could put hands on here. You’ll send me back with some lighter fare, Marquis? or should I say Herr St. Vitus?” as he pours more brandy in his own cup and Haden’s without asking, the bottle held clumsy in his bandaged grasp, not so nimble as with the puppet so “Give it,” Tilde says, reaching back to the worktable for a pair of snips, wicked little points that she deploys like a surgeon upon the soiled bandage; Istvan lets her do so, lets her cut away the fastening as “Hold still,” Tilde says. “This will hurt,” pulling off the last windings to expose purpled skin and an unwholesome smell; Frédéric blinks, Haden wrinkles his nose and “I had the fucking thing doctored,” Istvan says, “in Paris, you see what sort of doctors they have there. Ah! Give a fellow something to bite on, yeah?” as Tilde probes with the tip of the snips, Frédéric hasty to distract with a tale of their doings, “since you and Herr Bok rolled away in the carriage that night, what a night that was! And he’s quite well, isn’t he?”

“Especially for a dead man. Though your cobbler neighbor has me dead, too.”

“We had a letter of your travels, from Mrs. Pimm, several letters I think?” looking to Tilde, who nods, intent on the sore flesh. “After the fire there was plenty of talk, some even from the Protectorate—the Morals Commission, it was called then—it seemed as if they might give trouble. And now, there’s plenty of trouble from the factions,” the municipal parties and subparties, all devoted to liberty and the law, all at each others’ necks, Frédéric’s explanation running lengthy and curling back in upon itself, as tangled a saga as any on Olympus; as Haden tops off his cup again and Istvan’s too, Istvan sipping through tightened lips as Tilde fetches a bowl, not of water, and continues to dig away. “The papers keep shouting war, war, war—since the funeral, the Standard’s counting off the days! But all the fighting’s amongst the League of Patriots and the Savoys, the Savvys—though some people call them the Sanitaries, since most of the clergy is behind them.”

“The honest men,” Haden sneers, still in black like the angel of doom, those dark weeds rhyming, if he had known or Istvan remarked, with the same garb of that singular Paris show; Roland Smalls would have marked the rough-shaven jaw, the champagne hair sheared harsh and military, that piquant scar at the generous lip that he sucks, now, a tension to him Istvan has not seen before. “Parlor soldiers, with their little strings around their wrists—the Adjunct-general’s got one now, have you seen? It’s gold, I’d pinch it from him in a wink if I could—”

“And bring disaster home with you—”

“You’ve got that ass-to-front, you’re the one who’s—”

“Christ, Mab!” and “Enough for now,” Tilde says equably, laying aside the snips to dab from a squat and sticky jar something numbing and warm, wrap his wound in neat strips of what used to be nightshirt, and over that slip on a glove, one of Haden’s old gloves, a faded harlequin silver worn nearly through at the fingertips. “How did you do such? With a meat fork?”

“Just misplaced love,” Istvan draining the last of his cup past a testing shake of the bottle; the kit must be famished for good liquor, famished for other joys, too, he and his Frédéric so at odds, both honest men so “Your plays,” he says to Frédéric, “are meant to poke those fellows in the eye, both sides?” and “Indeed,” says Frédéric; he puts a finger to the angel’s wing, he strokes a feather. “But all plays now, all theatres—the Cleo’s been dark for ages, since ‘Queen of Sheba,’ and Fairgrieve had to close down the Garden. And Edgar Rue was driven out of town for singing lieder. Lieder! From ’Winterreise’! Only Alban Cockrill still plays sometimes, little shows for kiddies in the Park. To try to do otherwise—”

“Means the coop,” says Haden. “So why fucking bother? When five people might see it of a night, and two of them just to get in from the wet—”

“Because,” hands flat on the table, “it ‘bothers’ me!” with such passion that everyone is still, Tilde with her jar, Istvan looking through his lashes, Haden staring at the floor until Frédéric says, more quietly, “We’ve had this talk before, M. Marcus—Stephanos—with Herr Bok, too. At this very table! It’s my vocation, my duty to write what I know is true—”

—as Haden shoves back in his chair, hard scrape against the floorboards: “Well, I’m for off, to do my duty, if I had a fucking lad to do it with me,” while Tilde rises, snips and fouled bowl in hand and “Directly,” to Istvan, “I’ll come see to Sir. With chocolat, tell him so.”

“It’s a fine idea, Milady, but you see that hostel’s only for fellows, the whole street is apparently. No ladies allowed, what with the moral turpitude and such,” to bring only her shrug—“Tell him”—as she turns away, to climb to the rooms she shares with Ru, outgrown cradle and the rosewood bed with its fine old-fashioned hangings, the silver stands emptied of greenery used now to dry laundry, the great desk her province and cupboard, where, beside some other items—a delicate glass thimble, cunningly painted with roses; an old tin of cocoa; a cache of clippings from the defunct Daily Solon, Seraphim’s interview with the two men of the Mercury, and others that tell of the fire; missives from the Blackbird Theatre and several from farther afield—sits a jeweler’s pouch that once held the locket she removes, now, to slip carefully inside, and tuck all behind the framed photograph of Ru in his christening gown, and the carte-de-visite of Rupert and Istvan, whose health and prospects have so plainly suffered since they left; never mind, they are here, he is here, she is here, and she can help. She reaches into the mahogany wardrobe for the boy’s breeches and vest, she takes the windings from her hair, to braid it up tight will take some time—

—as downstairs Frédéric helps Istvan with a makeshift sling to carry the former Corydon, a makeshift smile as “My very best regards to Herr Bok, of course. And please give him this,” slipping inside the sling a stout little leather-backed tome. “It’s Pushkin, I’m sure he’ll enjoy it, though the translation’s not as fine as it might be.”

“Well nor you, yeah?” with a kindly smile; poor young men, they make their lives so much harder than they need be; it is an uncle’s province to chide, perhaps, or to chivvy and “I don’t wish to ‘wear the halo,’ as you once said,” Frédéric’s shrug that tries for equanimity, that succeeds only in looking sad. “But a man’s no man at all, is he, if he can’t do as his conscience bids him?”

“Our hero’s got a conscience too. Why so at odds?”

“Ask him. Ask him why he’s still dealing cards, when that’s illegal, too! He’ll say it’s for the money, and yes, we haven’t much, but—This,” tapping the papers on the table, starred headlines and long columns of sternly-shouting type, the Civic Guardian, the Patriot, the Messenger-Herald redundant and resolute, “it’s not the way—I can’t write under my own name, no one will print it or pay. But there’s a gentleman called Felix Krystof, who’s offering a commission, a very fine commission that—”

—abruptly silent to turn away as Haden hoves back into view, a book in his hand too, a poetry book, live with me and be my Love and “Keep it,” he says to Istvan with false carelessness, as at the alley door comes a thump that could be thunder or a constable but is instead Pipper in skid and gallop, Ru in tow, both splashed from necks to knees and “There’s a mighty old ruckus,” Pipper pants, “in the Park—some Libbys tried to burn up a hanged man made of paper, and some Savvys said they an’t—can’t say what it was about truly, and the thing wouldn’t burn anyway in the rain. We split up when they started in tussling, and the foot-cannon come out. But don’t tell her,” in sudden apprehension, far worse than any roused by effigy-murder or riots. “She’ll slap my fucking ears off for gettin’ Ru within a mile of it.”

Haden frowns, reaching down to pull off the crooked kepi, ruffling the damp brown curls as Ru looks up at him, the first smile from the child Istvan has seen, and a very sweet one: what a strange and charming tableau, les enfants perdus as “Ah, Madame Non,” Istvan’s own smile, “no one can best her. Or stop her. Better not even to try…. Now, kit, where are you bound with those ugly old gloves?”

“Come see, if you’re game, and not too stiff to climb,” nodding to the door, greatcoat resumed and one unearthed for Istvan too, an old costume cloak that once was Rupert’s, to tinge his smile with a certain nostalgia, to hide the sling across his back and “Where’s your beaky mask?” Haden over his shoulder as they cross the threshold and “Do you fancy charades at all?” Istvan’s question in answer as the door closes on them and the puppet, the rain worsening to true thunder as Frédéric sighs and resumes his pen, nodding Pipper back onto the wheel, while Ru climbs atop the table to make hats of the newspapers there, soldiers’ hats—

—as that cough of thunder rattles the windows of the workmen’s hostel, Rupert annoyed and careful in the dulled light of the room’s one lamp to set aside his pen, blot with his cuff the runny ink in the copybook, a schoolboy’s copybook carried as carefully and private since, was it Hamburg? or someplace earlier, and does it matter where this record was begun since it will continue until the writing is accomplished, this gathering of all their plays, all written down in one place; strange that it should come to be finished in this place, where playing is no longer allowed…. Whether or not they might roost, in that Mercury now shuttered to a shade of itself, certainly they must not, no matter what Istvan says, or had planned. Yet if ever there could be a home for them, there is where it would be.

The urge to make the book has been on him since they started in tramping, stronger as they passed from place to place, from the wheat fields and taverns to the Blackbird and the Poppy, what did Istvan call such once? “Jolly Tales of the Backstreet Whorehouse,” yes, the joy and the death alongside all those other tales of laughing butlers and helpful motherly whores and balconies seen only in the dark, and the puppets whose ribald honesty concealed so many things—Pan Loudermilk and his attendants and ancestors, some with names and some not, foot soldiers in a war not of their making or concern. And all the other, so many other sights! He has only to close his eyes to see them again—a fountain splashing silver in an empty city square; Istvan asleep like a cat in a hay cart, Marco tucked up beside; the barren winter garden, made of longing, heat, and ice; the sea seen in misery from the rim of a bucking boat, ship, whatsoever the fuck one was supposed to name it, the sailors so particular—and the moon on the rooftops, from every rooftop it looks different, yet still is always the same. He will see such here if these rains ever stop, there will be some sort of trapdoor, there is nearly always some sort of trapdoor…. From the window he studies the roofs opposite, that landscape of chipped tile and shingle and stoic pigeons, then looks down to the men who crisscross the flooding curbs and corners, those men cautious to skirt the gaze and thus the truncheons of the constables in their shields and muddy brown; it seems if a man is cautious, those gazes can safely be avoided, and a way made into the streets for a drink of something besides water or whiskey, and a smoke beyond these tame little cigarettes—as Rupert slips the copybook beneath the cot, takes from the leathern bag his own ancient truncheon and folded wallet, assumes Istvan’s left-behind bowler, and heads down the dingy stairs into the rain.

That rain runs like tears down other windows as well, stately casements that face the Park, where the fairly far-sighted may glimpse the orderless scrum and scuffle of the mob beside what was once a fine fountain of Naiads, their graceful bodies pitted now by stones, Diana’s face effaced with black marks such as a barbarous child might scribble in a book; they are all barbarous children really, reflects the man at that window, a gray-eyed specimen in gray striped vest and Windsor tie, neither tall nor short, handsome nor unhandsome, unremarkable in nearly every way but for the acquisitive mind that ticks like a mechanism behind those eyes; reflected as well in the walls of books around him, a stout gilt battlement flanked by framed letters from the great, statesmen and churchmen and authors, collected throughout months and years from a world’s worth of antiquarians and dealers in correspondence: letters from Talleyrand and Disraeli and Sayle-Carruthers, a half-torn missive from Shelley, an unsigned notation believed to be from one of the lesser popes. It is a meticulous hobby for a meticulous man, Felix Krystof who reaches now for his pen—a priceless silver-nibbed Malchat, very few have survived, though it tends to spatter in this weather—to make a meticulous note concerning a meeting to be convened this very day, a meeting its sole guest will be surprised to find so private; but that is the way with a poet, Felix Krystof has learned, one must manage them as carefully as tropic flowers, to cull and graft such flowers into one’s own window box, especially a dung heap bud like this fellow St. Vitus, calling himself so quaintly for the patron saint of Bohemia, of theatre-folk and dancers. Before that he was Seraphim, but his true name is Blum, a fact duly noted in the file on the desk—a copied file, once the property of the Protectorate, but that body has long since lost interest in this flower that seems to have withered in the shade, behind locked doors; so much the better. What collector fails to prize the coup, the costly objet sold mistakenly as dross! And this young man will hold his value, that is sure; he is the pure quill, as the saying goes. The tales he tells now in his little showroom, beside the girl they call his wife, who is not his wife, nor the child his child, and the man who is his man—those tales hold the hot spark of art, a spark to be caught and protected “In all this rain,” says Felix Krystof, with a mannerly nod to the man now entering, ecclesiastic suit and head beneath his hat early balding, almost a monk’s tonsure. “Did you arrive by ark?”

“It’s a flood for sure,” nods the chipper monsignor, Alfred Elfred, a pleasant and pleasantly ignorant bishop who wonders each time he enters this room why any man alive would need so many books—has he read them all, Herr Krystof? Even to scan through the titles would take a week! The monsignor’s own reading material is generally confined to the sermons of his august predecessor—he reuses them religiously, they are much admired—and the least-serious of the morning newspapers, the Daily Regulator left beside his breakfast plate by his butler; today’s edition had a lengthy piece about the growing cult of spiritualism, was it a hoax or a worry or a sin, this business of crowding into darkened rooms to call to the souls of the departed, and what ought a churchman to think about it all? If there had been more sugar for the tea he might have finished the article, but as it was —“Refresh yourself,” Herr Krystof offers, as his manservant brings in a tray with cups and pot and yes, a small stout sugar bowl filled to the rim with sturdy brown lumps since “You always know what a fellow likes,” says the monsignor happily, reaching for the gilted spoon.

“I’ve had an idea,” says Felix Krystof, “that I believe you will like, as well,” in that quiet voice with its hint of gravel, as if a river ran in its depths with secret silt; taking his chair and leaving the deluge to drown itself, the shouters in the Park and their foolish scribbles that write nothing of merit, nothing that will last; always, it is eternity’s vote that matters. “And a writer in mind to do it full justice. He’s a very devout young man, from a good provincial family, his mother is a pillar in her local Sodality—”

—that mother who, in fact, stands at her own parlor window beneath a sky dry and dun, turning over with moist eyes the latest letter from her estranged son, one per month now—they used to come weekly!—carried to her on the sly by Dolly the maid, concealed from Mr. Blum, who still will not relent —

What poor Frédéric has done, so many other young men have done—that city is to blame, and who sent him there to be tempted? You! You said he must go, must “sow his oats” so far away from home!

How many times will you remind me? looking up from his desk with an anger doubled by her persistence, trebled by the business reversals that he will hint at, but never discuss; which is quite proper, business is not a woman’s province, no matter what those “new women” say, who want to act like men, dress like men in their hideous costumes, no woman can look feminine in a suffrage bonnet! But if he is the master of business, she is, or should be, the authority in her own sphere, the home, the place where her son, soiled or not, belongs, and the grandchild she has never seen, whose name she does not even know. Frédéric never writes about that child, or the scheming girl who entrapped him, as he never wrote about the wedding, conjured by herself as some unhappy, barren, civic office affair, for what church would marry such a couple? His letters ask only after her health and his father’s, and offer information about local politics, which she skims, and about his work: no more tracts or newspapers, he is involved in giving edifying lectures of some sort, or public declamations—he is such a gifted writer one can barely understand what he says! But she understands the affection with which he signs the letters, the loneliness of a young man stranded and engulfed by some city-bred adventuress. Though Marie Mariette was an unsuitable creature (a blessing in disguise, the connection unmade with that family: What can one say of a young woman who marries a train-sweeper?), she was still sharp-eyed in her assessment, down to the dirty boots and apron that girl wore, as well as her foreigner’s accent to match her lax and filthy foreign morals.

Thus she knows, does Mrs. Blum, as she slips the dutiful letter back into her sleeve, that the right thing, the only moral thing to do, is to bring her dear Frédéric home for good. No matter what her husband says, should he again see Frédéric, see their grandchild with his own eyes—here hers begin, again, to fill—why even if that child is tainted, love can hardly fail to find the way! And since it shall not be here, in their own home—despite her fervent reveries of Frédéric on the doorstep, babe in arms, despised adventuress nowhere to be seen—then it must be in that hateful city, where they must venture once more, she and Mr. Blum, to let love carry the day.

Wiping her eyes, she sinks onto the piano stool, a sadly quiet instrument; how long has it been since she heard her Frédéric sing? He used to thrill all the ladies at the services, he used to chant Latin in the choir…. Eyes closed, she offers up a prayer to the Mother whose own debated pregnancy and unmarried status Mrs. Blum has never considered, then leaves the piano for her desk; Mr. Blum still entrenched at his own pays no notice, he has other notices with which to deal, growing more dire every week: from his solicitor, from the bank, from the suppliers in Jamaica, from the makers of an ill-considered contraption meant to speed production, urging him to consider it “a worthy experiment”—with nearly a year’s worth of profits lost! And everywhere one turns there is war and rumors of war, which make shipping difficult if not at times impossible. What is he to do? If only he had his son at his side, honest Frédéric, clever Frédéric, to help him shoulder this miserable burden, if only Frédéric had not been so hasty to dip his damned wick in some damnable curbside slut, he would be at the warehouse where he belongs!—Mr. Blum never marking, as he marks another red check in his account book, that his wife has reached for her own stationery, and begun determinedly to write.

Other stationery is in play as well, a long sheet of foolscap folded on the knee, Lucy Pimm with a pen and squinting in the dimness of the sickroom, the window half-draped; let him sleep, poor Pimm, as long as he may, while he sleeps he does not feel how ill he is. Awake, he tries to keep cheerful, he acts as if another hour or at most another day will see him back on his feet for good: I’ve never lay so long abed unless it was with you, sweetheart, making a feeble smiling grab for her bottom that she checks with a smile of her own—You rest now, saucepot! I’ve got a bit to do and more than a bit, everything at the Blackbird hers to manage since this illness came upon him, thank Heaven for sturdy Mick beside her! What a fine fellow he has grown to be, both on and off the boards: smart as paint, and filled with dash, that special player’s dash, energetic as the boy he was and with a man’s strong heart, a man himself now, she must stop calling him “Mickey”! though he never seems to mind it. May be he sees her as a sort of mother, as she holds him special as a son, her only child besides the line of little actors who come and go, not so many now as other pastimes take their fancy, choosing something more genteel, or less old-fashioned, than to sport about with puppets.

Never once has Pimm reproached her for not giving him a child of their own, never once said a word, though there were nights—not many, Lucy has never been a brooder, but for year on year to see so many babies being prammed about the streets, to hear their coos and cries, to wonder, sadder every time, if it was the whoring that fixed her innards so she could not, could never quicken—still he held her tight on those few nights that she wept, That’s all the baby we’ll ever have, try as we might! pointing to the ancient puppet, the Singing Baby who shits and cries, silent in its yellowed christening gown but It’s the trying that matters, his robust joke to make her smile, and once she smiled Nothing could make me gladder than you do, Lucy, ever did or ever could. And whatever we mayn’t got, we’ve got each other, and that’s enough: to bring, again, her tears, sweet ones this time, each one her gift to him. And then to have him flip her skirts and say she was still as juicy as a lass, Kept your girlish figure, haven’t you, my Bella-Bell?—well, had any woman ever a finer man than her dear Pimm?

What Pimm’s illness might be—come upon him slowly, then like a charging army, knocking him reeling and her heart with him—no doctor has been able to say: a malady of the liver, an acute form of chlorosis, it’s merely compressed digestion! with packets of pills to swallow or purges that turn him green, yet nothing helps restore his appetite, he is practically a shadow, Pimm who used to like so well his chops and gravies, his bean-and-rooster pie; she can barely get him to take a full glass of lager now. And all the while the fever eats him…. Things here could be better, she writes in the letter, her penmanship still a careful girl’s, but we go on as best we may. While Pimm’s abed, he has gone back to making the little theatres, to sell after the shows to the kiddies, “Pimm’s Palaces” with the jack-in-the-box inside, the eiderdown princess, the brave little prince and his matchstick sword. He’s not lost the touch, they look a treat! I shall have Mick box one and send it along to your youngster, that little one called Rupert, called for him who never had a child, either, the child of this girl, this Tilde called, now, somehow, for him too.

What a startlement it had been, that first letter, the answer to her own bland note, her careful sidewise way to say that the Blackbird was a likely stop for those two and their puppets, and that she would keep the folk left behind in the know, if they should like: to bring at once the touching, stiff devotion of the reply, quaint spelling and handwriting so scrawly that she could barely make it out, calling Mick to help her parse out a phrase here and there and Who’s this? Mick’s quizzical finger at the signature, “Mlle Tilde Bok” and A friend of Rupert’s, she told him, a sort of daughter, looks like. She says he helped her greatly, there at that Mercury.

And Mick nodded—Mr. Rupert was always a good jake. Hope he’ll come back this way again—but made no mention of Istvan. Mick never speaks of Istvan, though he used to trail him like a puppy, dogsbody eager to run his errands, always keen for his attention—See me, Mister Istvan!—and watching everything he did onstage and off; yet when she gave him that little tool half a knife and half a hook, Mister Istvan left it special for you! he took it without any thanks or smile. Yet he uses it still nearly daily, used it earlier in fact to plane a little splinter from Van’s knee, that puppet his other, much greater gift received—and how did Istvan know, to mark him so for little Mickey? who took to him like a long-lost twin as soon as he could lift him proper, off into corners with that stumpy black-haired body, working with him night and day until You’re that fond of wicked old Pan, aren’t you? Pimm’s joshing smile to bring Mickey’s firm headshake: He’s Van now, as firmly said. He’s mine.

The last-made Pimm’s Palace will go to Tilde, then, along with this letter Lucy now brings to a close, her pen turning hasty as Pimm begins to mutter and stir: Think of us when you see that little showplace. Pimm and I had always hoped to visit, and may be play a bit onstage if you would have us. When he is well again, we’ll surely make the journey—I have traveled in wartime before, it’s not so difficult it can’t be done. And I will be that glad to meet you face to face, my dear, for I feel that I know you so well already. Until then, believe me ever your friend and faithful —

—as Pimm’s face goes wheyish-gray with pain that, half awake, he tries to stifle; her own face twists to see it, she steps at once from chair to bedside where for hours she wipes his forehead, swabs the trickling vomit, pen and paper left where they fell until Mick, come with sinking heart and a half-bottle of port—“Take a little glass, I can sit awhile by him”—sees and folds and tucks the letter inside the little toy theatre, itself packed into a fruit crate, and sent hurriedly on its way—

—neither knowing that within the week another, larger box will be readied for a longer, more final journey, Pimm inside and dreamless in his wedding suit, sunken cheeks patted with fresh rosewater, thinned hair brushed neat and flat with quince-seed jelly, king of this last and supremely sad chateau; and Mick with silent tears to use the sharp and ancient little blade, carving a farewell message on a piece of smooth black ash—HERE LIES TIMOTHY PIMM BELOVD OF MRS LUCY & FRIEND TO ALL PLAYERS—past Lucy slumped at the lip of the stage, surrounded by the tools and toys and joys of half a lifetime, waiting to drape a purple crêpe across the coffin, and follow it out beneath bunting silky-black as a blackbird’s wings.

The next story told is the thrilling tale of the spy Miss Lucinda, related to a most exclusive audience in the workroom-parlor of the Blackbird Theatre: a finer establishment than when last the travelers saw its doors, with golden scrolls affixed above the flying namesake, and a freshly painted poster boasting “Puppets, Varieties, and Pleasures for All!” below. The streets around the place have grown more hectic and congested, busy with splashing cabs and trams and foot traffic, even in such bad weather and such unsettled times; here too, as everywhere, one sees soldiers. Between the oyster house and its false marble columns, and a bustling tavern called the Roman Coliseum, only the alley still retains its former lack of glamour, as pocked with rocks and grimy with weeds as it was before; and it is thus unsurprising that two mendicants in oilcloth might stealthily seek the same, to knock with their muddy cases on the theatre’s side door and ask Alms for poor beggars, ma’am? Istvan’s wink beneath his dripping hat, Rupert’s smile to watch her eyes go wide, Mrs. Pimm whom they have not seen since she gained that appellation, Lucy who laughs joyous as a girl and throws open the door and her arms.

Now they lean forward, Lucy and Pinky rapt as children, to hear how the lovely puppet once bore between her silk-skinned breasts some bit of espionage meant to start a war, or end one, and how those who watched and tittered and applauded knew nothing beyond the play performed, a saucy farrago ending with “We are two,” Istvan’s glance for Rupert lounging on the grand settee, striped silk as green as new apples, and then off they went no wiser, as the courier I was to meet slipped right in through the pantry way. It was my thought to play it out so—

Naturally, Rupert’s wry murmur; he himself has never heard this tale before.

—but I’ll give the General his due, the old fuck, he did have a sense of humor. Even if in the end, the joke was all on him. Terrible thing, though, his murder…. Do you have her still, that lady? We called her “Lizsette” awhile, didn’t we, as the packed-away beauty is restored to an evening’s life, flaxen hair and dress once so stylish now passé: fashions change, even for puppets, and We don’t use her much, Lucy says, tidying the curls that have flattened, nor the Bishop, either. It’s all Mick’s Van in the evenings—would you like a sport with him? No?—and the Singing Baby for matinees. Folks can’t get enough of those, can they, Pinky?

Indeed no, that Baby’s more beloved than the mayor himself. Even looks a bit like the mayor, in certain lights.

And we still use the Tabletop Princes, for “The Dragon and the George.” Though our George has lost a bit of his bounce, may be you’ll have a look while you’re stopping, leading the way to the worktable, that familiar landscape of clutter and gut, tins of wax and scraps of new leather all Lucy’s province and charge, Lucy’s hand on Istvan’s shoulder a sister’s pressure to ask softly, Are you sure you can’t stay on a bit longer? You’ve been sorely missed, you two.

This place—not your digs, Puss, this city—is not hospitable for us; we’d never have stopped here at all but for you. And we surely never thought to see that captain of industry, with a watchful frown that might have been worn by Rupert; it is curious, though remarked upon by neither, that on this journey each has begun somewhat to play the other’s rôle. Of all the visitors you might have had tonight!

He stepped in to keep me company, it’s that lonely with Pimm away, and he’s in and out anyroad as he can. But you know he knows how to keep a secret, this well-burnished gentleman reaching for the whiskey, Achille the august president of the Bank Guerlain, director of other men’s fortunes—and a devilish business it is at times, the yes-and-no and the worlds that lie between, the partnerships made with men whom one would wish otherwise never to meet, devoutly wish at times!—all of it engendering a certain rueful sympathy for his paternal predecessor, the old stick Honoré long passed and gone. And yet he is Pinky still, still with the taste for playing, the hours snatched from business to spend here at the theatre he funds, and the merry air he wore as a youth if no longer the outlandish gear, a bark-brown suit from Savile Row, the red hair now matched by a curling beard above the ivory four-in-hand. Hoisting the bottle—A bit more of the Irish, sir?—he pours for himself and M. Bok, taking a seat on the settee to mention quietly that I’d heard, you know, from Christobel, about that Garden of Eden—a hard business, sounds like.

Yes.

These days he’s well, at least he looks well, and traveling a fair bit as he always does; he’s in London just now, I believe. And she’s at Chatiens with Isidore, of course. You’ve not seen him, the boy?

No.

He’s his mother’s pride and joy, though Pinky does not mention the last visit he made to that family, he and Benjamin with their day’s business concluded, ready to share a glass, many glasses—it is amazing, and worrying, how much his friend can consume, still, perpetually—until Belle! with irritation. Stop that whining! from Isidore at the piano with his mother, Isidore grown taller and less obviously ill but still so milky and mingy, Isidore refusing the scales to play instead with a soldier on a stick, its wooden limbs loose as a puppet’s and You’ve a true nose for trash, Benjamin crossing the room to take and toss the toy aside, Isidore’s cry of defraudment swiftly stilled by a slap, his pale blue eyes—his lost aunt’s gaze, his late grandfather’s—wet yet narrowing as Christobel made a little sound not quite distress, or no distress she wished to demonstrate before a guest; Christobel in cinnamon silk and queen’s fierce jewels not lovely, never lovely, but ageless and stately, as a statue is stately, her steady hand on her husband’s arm—Benny, please—to be met with a look nearly as cold as the blow had been: He’s de Metz, he must learn. Isidore, stop sniffling like a woman. Achille, you ought rejoice that Adele’s whelped you only daughters, a son is nothing but a trial.

Now Rupert nods, drinks, drinks again, a shadow at his eyes as My hope’s been for him to have a settled life, always. It’s why I did as I did, both here and after, to bring Pinky’s own solemn nod, Pinky’s solemn promise never to say whom he had met in this cozy parlor on this rainy night, a promise never to be broken, for whom would it serve, that sort of truth? Surely not Benjamin! nor M. Bok either, or M. Dieudonne, or his own very dear Lucy Pimm, who might end with the brunt of any punishment; Benjamin is rightly feared for his punishments…. If he reflects at all on this act of duplicity, that is at its heart an act of love, it is side by side with a temperate relief that such turgid deeps have never been his to swim, this relentless passion that leads only to and past the lip of tragedy. How much better to keep the tragedy for the stage, with music and puppets, and gin and laughter afterward at the backstage table! Yes, silence here is the right thing to do for all of them, himself not excluded.

So when Istvan rises from the worktable, the George refurbished for a new multitude of dragons, asking Shall we have a bit of a jaunt, then? And will you squeeze the squeezebox for us, M. le Directeur? there is no shadow on the evening’s ending, just Pinky’s squawks and hoots as Istvan and Lucy and Miss Lucinda-Lizsette play a slightly less scandalous version of one of the old Poppy numbers, while Rupert beats time on the marble side table and joins with Pinky on the encore’s rousing chorus of “Thumb-Your-Nose.” And when, after a stirrup-cup and many handshakes, M. Guerlain makes his way home, from one hired cab to a supper club, to another cab, just to be safe—he remembers the General, too—his wakened wife’s question as he enters their bedchamber—The Palais, again? Those silly girls!—brings his own guileless kiss—Ah, that would be telling, my angel! But none of them is half as lovely as you—eliciting in its turn Adele Guerlain’s complacent smile; they understand each other very well, these two, their marriage is the envy of all their social set.

After Pinky departs, still more, and more private, tales are told, intertwine like vines still growing, as old friends’ talk will do. Outside the hail spits and clatters, driven by a cold rain so intense that it halts the homeward journey, miles away, of Pimm and Mick gone to observe another theatre’s vaunted fit-up (“Magicum’s Marionettes & Marvels” turning out to be a trunk of creaky English Pierrots, two spinsters, and an albino with a set of wooden masks), themselves stranded at a mealy pub-and-rooms, their absence bringing Lucy’s only frown—Oh, Mickey’ll be rare put out to miss you! And Pimm will, too—the three of them stepped from parlor to the homier kitchen, the stove’s hot crackle a counterpoint voice as Lucy pours gin and roots contentedly through their cases, Castor and Pollux and the strange one-handed creature who is growing into Mr. Loup—she would handle him more, but Istvan gently takes that puppet from her—examining the costumes and the little knife from Vater, asking of their shows and future, their life past that fierce grand finale at the Mercury—

Weren’t you brave, to play so? And foolish, too, a little.

Foolish how? not Istvan’s frown but Rupert’s, Istvan’s shrug its mirror. And “brave”—we’ve played shows where the blood was real, remember?

That’s long ago. How will you get on now?

Why, we’ll just tramp it, Puss, as we’ve been doing. Playing for whomever we can gather, and keeping back from the cities, from those who might know us—

Or pay us.

Passing the hat and sleeping rough? At your age? to make Istvan raise his brows and Rupert laugh, spectacles pushed down his nose: Old dogs enough, that’s sure—and I could do with a bit less sleight-of-hand, myself, and a bit better lodgings. But this rascal’s the one who charts our course, with a look for Istvan that Lucy recognizes, that brings in turn her tribute smile: for these men whose life together so completely changed her own, and gave her so much of what she loves, a look that brings to mind other glimpses glimpsed in other times and places, candelabra stage and mucky stable, backroom, drawing room, brothel so Will you stop at the Poppy, too? she asks, as if that were the natural question, Rupert quiet to light a cheroot, Istvan cool to shrug once more and It’s marvelous to me, he says, how Ag seems to occur to everyone but me. You sent on her last letter, before?

The last I ever had from her.

“Mrs. Mattison” and her pleasant entertainments, I don’t believe I’d find them to be either. And there’s still so much of the world we haven’t seen, moodily downing his gin as Rupert and Lucy share a look and change the subject, Rupert telling instead of their latest performances, “The Bear and the Bishop” and We mixed it up a bit, made the bear a pair of jolly beggars, and his worship here, with a playful nudge to Istvan, you ought to see him in his Pope’s hat! But the story’s just the same, a tale of power met and overmatched by play, and the “bishop” any master that the audience selects, Who’s your bogey in this town, who brings you low? to bring their shouts, and shouts of pleasure when that day’s bishop is devoured, with “Thumb-Your-Nose” offered as the encore As we did tonight—it’s a good tune, isn’t it? Rupert’s little whistle through the smoke. A rouser.

He does not go on to relate its last performance, escaping past its singing half a step ahead of chaos: a concatenation of cracked windows, broken bottles, women’s shrieks and men’s oaths, one black-hatted soldier wildly swinging a stick that felled another, more soldiers charging into the tavern—and Rupert sturdy to kick and elbow out a path, one-armed and dragging the traps, they could have made the door if Mr. Castor had not then been flung to the planks, bringing Istvan’s own furied leap into the fray, the puppet plucked back to safety yet his handler still whacking and battering until Rupert hauled him to the street behind a shielding wagon, RYKER’S BEST DELIVERY and Why’d you swing that stool, messire! panting, his spectacles half torn from his face, I had us out! but I will be fucked, Istvan’s angry glee, if I’ll watch a mec of mine be splintered again—you say so, yeah? I yanked the bastard’s strings for him, didn’t I, careful to straighten Mr. Castor’s jacket, and secure him caseward, before mopping the stranger’s blood from his own face.

The tale begun in the hamlet of Walter and Grigor feeds fat on this sort of meat, repeated and embellished by men who fancy their masters bitten, though without teeth enough to do the biting on their own; and by those masters, who must consider such activity a form of latent insurrection, even if only in play, a dangerous play for such unhappy times, made by men whose motives must be assumed to be dangerous as well. And add the insult of irreligion, a holy bishop made to be the dupe—! That these tales may echo other tales, and other insurrectionist puppeteers, is another kind of trouble, one that a spectacular headfirst death was meant to fix; but that, like every other death, cannot be altered now.

Nothing of this is mentioned to Lucy, who at last, yawning and reluctant, packs back the travelers’ props to light the way to their old chamber tidy with disuse, the musty hangings hastily aired, the bed cold but warming as Rupert brings forth the final story of this evening now nearly morning, a brief if meaningful playlet that took place in this very room: a dead man’s letter in one hand and matches in the other, ready to strike as Benjamin called from the doorway, a key strung secret around his neck and It was so near a thing, Rupert’s headshake on the pillow as if still amazed, it all could have played out another way and It always can, Istvan’s murmur, that’s what makes it play. And did you and the Happy Prince, then, here…. No? with a private smile, drawing up the coverlet. Well, aren’t we glad that fucking foolishness is past. I’d rather eat beans for the rest of my life, I’d rather be hanged than dance for the quality again.

On the morrow, newly kitted in dark coats and a pair of left-behind bowlers, their road-weary weeds Mostly fit for the ragbag, really, Lucy’s critical shrug, you’ll do better in these. Otherwise they’ll tax you for vagrants…. Do you still have that mirror I gave you? and as Rupert turns to bundle the provisions she provides—a good set-up of loaf and dried meats, a dash of gin, a half-dozen pippin apples—See this, she says, reaching from its hiding place behind a pile of kindling a cane, an expensively worked gentleman’s cane, the wood lustrous with old polish, a cold silver griffin for its head. It was left here, with no note nor word from a sender, both recognizing its provenance, neither saying aloud the name of Arrowsmith as Istvan weights it in his hand; is he remembering the man who so valued his own artistry, is he recalling lies told by and to other men and a woman, two women, and truths offered up by puppets as if they might be, must be, lies? Lies are their own kinds of truth, depending on who tells them, lies can make a road and a path and a way to walk, they can make a show, or ruin one, make a man or ruin him, too. The only ones who cannot be ruined by such are the puppets themselves, which is a joke and a blessing both; suitable, perhaps, for a bishop…. A dozen times I thought to burn the thing, Lucy’s face stern with her own memories. To this day we hear stories—none of ’em true! I should know—where they call you Steven and him Ruprecht, they’ve got you robbing the toffs and dueling on the rooftops, and Fancy that, Istvan over his shoulder to Rupert, who has taken in every word, seen the cane and recognized it too. Not every man becomes a myth, eh, Ruprecht? But it would be a shame to waste a nice jabber like this.

He tucks the cane beneath his arm as Lucy bites her lip—Be careful, then—and I always am, and Mouse is too, so the safety’s doubled. Now give us a kiss, noting as he bends the gleaming goldfish brooch affixed to her quilted wrapper—old dog or not, still he misses nothing—as embraces are exchanged, and Istvan teases to forestall her tears and keep his own bittersweet smile, for who can say when next they will meet, and who they shall be when they do? Herself so changed, though he would never speak of it nor she own it, seeing it still in his eyes, Lucy-Belle now become so entirely the respectable and settled Mrs. Pimm—Sure you don’t wish to scarper with us, darling, as you used to? And let your Mr. Pimm follow as he may? but If you should ever need us, Rupert’s two fingers to tilt up her chin, as he might have done to Tilde, as he once did to Decca, his one-eyed gaze a father’s, a brother’s, a protector’s, send word to those fellows at the Mercury.

They leave as they arrived, sidewise through the alley door, two salesmen perhaps with sample cases of the goods on offer, one of them looking back over his shoulder, the other raising the griffin in salute as they reach the building’s corner, check the traffic, and blend inside it as easily as the tears slip down her cheeks; trouper to the last, she has them dried before Pimm and Mick return, one swearing lustily at the perfidy of trainmen who charge full price for tickets on a train delayed by mud, the other silent and stunned to hear Lucy’s report that You missed them by an hour, no more, you must have passed them in the road! as Mick passes her to see, at the worktable, the tools that have been moved or sharpened, the masterly disorder, the disorder too of the room upstairs where once he sat all night to guard a door, a reward promised then of a special trip to the Golden Calf; does he remember that too, Monsieur Etienne Dieudonne? though He never picked you up, his murmur to himself, to Van left in his own rooms just where he was situated, Van in his string tie and brocade cap, this puppet entertainer so well-known throughout the city that they stand in line for him, call out his catch-line—“Save it for Skipjack!”—and clap like thunder in the encores…. It is shaming to admit, but how many times has he taken the stage—even still! when he sees a certain angle of hat, a jaunty shadow—lit by the secret hope that Etienne Dieudonne, Mister Istvan who spun the sun and hung the moon, yes, to little Mickey with his clowning and posturing, his antic attempts to catch and hold the man’s eye, this man whose praise is more to be valued than anyone’s, will somehow be in the audience watching, will come up afterward to shake his hand and approve the antics of Van, his own Pan Loudermilk left behind especially for little Mickey, why else would be do so unless he approved? If only he had seen a show, just one show! If only he had stayed this time, God damn it, was he chased by the hounds of hell that he could not have spared a pair of nights?—this man, whom little Mickey grown to Mick, to this day, this very hour of angry disappointment, has never ceased to emulate and long to be.

Van is the only witness to his turmoil, as Pimm is the only confidant of Lucy’s worries—Silly to go on so, up and down the roads for tuppence, the world has changed. And they’re years too old for such didoes! And Istvan’s thin as a whippet, and Rupert’s got a cough!—noting as well without comment her enormous pride in their players’ stubborn dash; Pimm is a man who knows his wife, and if Lucy does not notice his own lack of distress at missing out on this marvelous encounter, Pimm also knows when to keep his opinions and preferences to himself. It is only to Mick that he later complains They spun her up like a top, didn’t they, and left her alone to wobble. But say one word against them and she’ll pop down your neck, with a philosophical sharing-out of yesterday’s gin, there in the kitchen with its new air of emptiness, the passing of something quicksilver and essential, the feel of a stage when one special show has opened, closed, and gone.

It is Mick alone who finds beneath the table the tarnished little bell, silver spark of jester’s motley, a remnant surely of some costume, though for man or puppet there is no way to say. To sew it then to Van’s costume, as he does, metal boutonnière at the lapel, has a meaning itself not wholly possible to parse, other than to note that, every time it jingles, Van seems somehow to hear it, though his handler never blinks or turns a hair.

From a personal letter, MRS. DECCA MATTISON to MR. EDWIN WOOSTER

…for the Christian Ladies’ Auxiliary is a very worthy and wholesome charity, and it is a privilege to contribute to their annual Orphans’ Appeal.

I understand that, unlike the Mercantile Association and the Municipal Betterment Society, the Auxiliary is unwilling to publicly receive money that might be thought of as dishonorably earned, though my establishment is a necessary and valuable part of our community, as you yourself have always acknowledged—I am honored by your continued patronage, and the doors of the Rose and Poppy are forever open to you. But to aid the poor orphan girls I am more than willing to do so in private, leaving yourself and your partners at the bank as sole witnesses to the gift. If you will draw up the draft in the designated amount, I shall sign it promptly.

I close with the hope that Mrs. Wooster’s duties as Auxiliary president do not prove too taxing for her; and that Master Wooster continues well. Please thank him for the China lovebird pair—their song is very sweet, my Prudence is quite charmed by them.

With great sincerity I remain,

MRS. DECCA MATTISON

“She met him at the Femmes et Bêtes,” says the duke’s second cousin, perched tipsy on the tufted seat of peach-colored velvet, nibbling on a square of cake soaked in Jamaica rum. “She says he was quite the brute himself, and the moment they left off waltzing, he—But oh, I mustn’t say it, it’s much too naughty!” as Roland Smalls leans forward to pat her freckled hand: “Certainly you must, dear. Confession is good for the soul,” ignoring his own square of cake for a glass of bitters; he likes bitters; those sugary desserts always upset his digestion. And tonight of all nights must be sweet…. Without checking his timepiece he can discern that it is half past seven, for what passes for an overture has already begun in the orchestra pit, the horns’ tootle and shiver of cymbals for this “Evening of Ind,” another excuse to send from the stage to the balcony loges an army of young ladies no better than they should be, to undulate in spangled scarves that, for a pittance, they will remove; at least at the “Romulus & Remus” affairs, one can also see handsome young men! And then on to supper and the foolish guessing-games, in this city the mania is for charades, itself a charade to cloak what they all have come for: femmes et bêtes, yes, and in the morning back to sacred motherhood and war heroes once again. And all in clouds of that cedars-of-Lebanon incense, the greenish fire in the onstage brazier to make it smoke—M. Marcus says it is powdered resin, that fire, M. Marcus says that more than one theatre has been burnt to the ground by such but What’s play without a spark of danger? with one of his careless little smiles; oh, those smiles. One could well write a poem to those smiles, their mingled promise and infinite indifference, that beautifully maddening trick of looking through the lashes —

“—because if her husband were to learn of it! The last thing one wants is another suicide, I’m such a fright in funeral black.”

“That simply can’t be so.”

—as he looked when he was leaving the hotel, off on another of his private forays; poor old Portia was completely livid, though a jaunty-enough lickspittle at the boat races, telling lies to the iron-stayed hostess (who still can wear, or bear, those old-fashioned things?), lies housed in the neighborhood of truth: He’s a real artist, Mme Ezterhaus, he must go where his art insists. But you’ll be at Lucilla’s charades, tonight? Yes, and so will he.

Portia now seems to be having an excellent time, moving through the loge’s maze of seats and tiny tables, ormolu vases of wilting lilies-of-the-valley, third-rate duchesses and lieutenants whose closest proximity to actual war seems limited to pictures in the newspapers: talking to this one and that one, sipping her watered wine—she is always careful with liquor, he has noticed; he wonders why—and concealing her impatience and terror that M. Marcus will not appear at all, again, will make of her a fool and worse; only the quiet, frantic shoe against carpet betrays her real feelings. If he himself were a less compassionate man he might laugh at such a display: she has a tiger by the tail, does Portia, and no matter how deft her pretense (and she pretends very well, she ought to have taken to the stage herself), still she can no more predict or control what M. Marcus will do than she could fly. He is not predictable. He is not controllable. He does what he pleases, and oh, what a pleasure it would be, to be able to please him oneself!

“—by Crescent Bridge, you know, the hyssop parlor— ‘Holy water,’ have you heard of that?”

“No, I can’t say I have.”

“You must try it, it’s completely divine,” as the duke’s second cousin hiccups over her cake and the music swells to drown all conversation, Roland leaning forward in his seat to pretend great interest in the false maharanis below, drinking bitters with one hand while the other slips into his jacket pocket to pat the jeweler’s case discreet inside, the case itself so finely made it is half a work of art, as the gift it holds—a silver cigarette case that, when opened, reveals inside its lid a butterfly, wings accented with diamonds, rubies for the eyes—is simple but quite stunning. M. Marcus wears no real jewelry beyond that pirate’s pearl at his ear, and a rose-gold ring with a Greek god intaglio, somewhat too large for him; a gift, from someone who did not know him well? Yet still he wears it, so the giver must be dear…. Gifts seem to mean little to him, or at least Portia’s have done so, but her choices—those gaudy cigarette holders, cravats a Cheapside juggler might wear! Nothing at all like this tasteful and useful present, that every time it is opened will display the constant shine of that butterfly—

—as below, past the guarded doors of the Music Ministry that, legally, no longer exists, the music continues, the gasping horns and forced laughter of dancing girls in liquor-stained veils, most of whom had better ambitions than to flash their tits at men who write editorials decrying the depravity of the hyssop-sellers and the bounce houses and the dirty little taverns who still wedge open their doors, as they deny the existence of these parties they themselves attend whenever invited; but those dancing girls, like the watching men, need every day to eat.

The city is home now to many such contradictions, like the mingling of the penitential incense of St. Mary of Dolors with the cigar smoke of the trysting clubs, the Babel, the Sheik’s Tent or Caesar’s Court, the same play of forgetfulness enacted night after night in this city growing darker by the day and more hysteric, fear’s cruelty that tramples headlong anything that strays into its path. There is fear everywhere, in the Cathedral as well as the clubs, the townhouses of the aristocracy themselves decimated by prudent flight; so many live entirely at their country homes now, or in another country altogether, seeking to create by their massed presence some private state immune to war. In those manor houses time is something to hold at bay—Use lamps, instead of electricity! Ignore that vulgar iron finger that Eiffel has erected, and the gawping crowds who saluted its birth!—as though that contest is possible, as if one might climb to the clock tower and wrestle the mechanical figures inside, stop them from moving the timepiece hands, that timepiece and those figures the unfortunately timed gift of some minor nobleman wishing to make his name in the city: the Festus Clock, called Faustus by some, with a small dark shudder each time the inexorable figures emerge: What time is the devil due, and what will he carry when he comes?

The Church, as always, meets all fears with certainty, the iron certainty of absolute truth, any mercy of dissent disallowed. The constables keep fear at heel by punishing the Libbys and Sanitaries and anyone else who seems to require it, sparing only those with money enough to keep the truncheons stilled. The men at the Protectorate, who direct the constables, focus on identity, insisting that all exists exactly as it appears: a woman alone on the streets at night is a prostitute; a man with an empty bottle in hand a drunkard; a wandering child an orphan in need of workhouse protection, and if the parents who allowed such wandering wish to be reunited with that child, a hefty ransom will be required, and the family fortunate to escape further prosecution. Students, barristers, ’bus drivers, egg-sellers, all must submit to a moral examination, and carry at all times their citizens’ certificates; the former rooms of inquiry have become laboratories of justice, those halls of gray walls and locked doors now augmented by the dynamometer, and encaustic casts, and Bertillon’s anthropometrics, to discover who would do harm, and punish proactively; thus is science employed, to keep fear further at bay.

And the men who direct the directors, men like Richter and Ezterhaus and Konstantin, men who report through channels to other men like Chamsaur and Mevsky and de Metz, have their own private collections of dreads, mainly one of another, and of the failure of war to achieve the most profitable future possible; and at the back of the minds of the most thoughtful, some greatest dread, some unacknowledged image of what that future might hold for all of them, some figure as inexorable as the mechanicals on the clock tower, as empire develops finally into machine.

Insofar as puppets can be considered machines, half-organic actors with the eternal glint of anarchy at their center, any such operator must walk a particularly narrow span, as Alban Cockrill, toiling over Gawdy and Mrs. Gawdy at his grubby worktable, one’s missing wig and the other’s rusting wires, would be the first to avow. The plays he still mounts seem silly even to him, bland funfair stories of Mrs. Gawdy’s lost soup pot or Gawdy’s failure to snatch a paper apple from a paper tree, but even those are performed in a shadow so deep he feels its chill every time he trundles his barrow to the Park; still, who would ever have guessed that his own Palace would outlast Fairgrieve and Shakespeare Cowtan both? It goes to show, the closer to the ground the less far to fall—though if the competition is unmissed, the comradeship is surely not. He used to stop from time to time at the Mercury, even though its master puppeteers had long gone—one feet-first, and what a shame that was!—but now that door is locked to him, the young Missis staring him down in the alley: Your jaw’s never shut, you’ll say what you see even if there’s nothing to see at all—no puppets here, no shows. Go away before I make you.

If Cockrill knew that M. Hilaire had returned to town, bearing with him a brand-new puppet, he might have tried to defy that edict, but—rubbing a thumbful of grease onto the recalcitrant wire, raising Gawdy’s cockeyed gaze to meet his own—he does not know, does not see both Istvan and Haden passing his own establishment on their return from Haden’s errand: an ascent to the roof of a councilman’s house, the smaller of two mansard peaks, Haden crouched to deploy the eggbeater drill while Istvan stood lookout in the avenue below, whistling a Te Deum to indicate that all was well; then repairing together down the avenue, past the Park and its motionless panorama, Istvan nodding that way —

“That’s what it means to stay put, yeah? —same streets, same sights. However do you manage?”

“I traveled some as a lad. I never liked it.”

—as they stop at last at a nameless café, four booths behind close-drawn drapes, wooden bowls of walnuts and lukewarm vin ordinaire, Haden with an eyebrow cocked to ask “So will you say why you’ve come, ever? Or just keep on whistling?”

“Why, I came to see you, kit,” that teasing smile to mask a certain truth in what he says, a smile that Haden cannot help but return, a look not often seen on his face these days: it makes him younger, gives him back his feral buccaneer cheer to say “May be I’ll take you on as a helper, then, you did all right today. Though I an’t do the business I used to—”

“Volume, you mean? Or profession?”

“Both,” deftly smashing a walnut into meat and scatters. “The Protectorate does its own spying now—though not Eig; recall Eig? He wouldn’t soil his gentleman’s gloves, old Costello’s on the street selling pen wipers—but I make a little here and there to keep us eating. That councilman’s got meetings that he means to keep secret, even though,” with a professional’s contempt, “they’re nothing much, smuggling in treadle wheels like they were bally gold! But I convinced him it would be good to keep a second eye on things, just in case.”

“Hired to mend the wall you tumbled?”

“Something like.”

“Because there’s not enough work on the boards?” tipping his flask to their cups beside the other wary drinkers reading contraband newspapers, scandal sheets like the Brawl and the Echo, political screeds like the Stentor, those drinkers eyeing with a certain sideways trepidation that damp sling on the floor, the puppet inside like a little murder victim, the draped shape of an arm clear to see; and Haden’s own shrug a quick sharp jerk as if worked too hard by clumsy strings: “You heard him—the mayor and chicken bones and what-all, putting the lads where they oughtn’t be—it’s ‘vocation,’ it’s all over the head of an alley cat like me. He used to be happy, now he’s not. Fini.” He lifts his cup to drink to the dregs, plainly unwilling to say more. “What’s Herr Bok doing, while you’re out paying calls?”

“Blistering with boredom, mainly, it makes him—unwieldy. Though when we were about on the roads,” whistling softly as if to himself the chorus of “Thumb-Your-Nose,” “we had a bit of fun. Even more than a bit…. But I can’t take him with me to charades, now, can I,” telling that chapter of the day’s tale, Portia del Azore and Roland Smalls, the hotel and the fountain boat races, asking while he answers as Haden listens, then slowly shakes his head: “I’ve never been, those parties an’t for the likes of us in the gully, and there’s no real coin to be made there unless you’re casting for big fish. Do you hazard, still?” with a teasing grin of his own, doused at once in surprise at Istvan’s bitter little twist of the lips: “I once thought to make my way as a broadsman—may be I should have. But times have changed. No more Heads or Tails, is there nowhere a man can dice in this fucking nunnery! Charades!”

They sit in silence, Istvan’s silence that lengthens; outside a ’bus passes, then running feet, a constable shouting “Over here! Over here, you!” as the drinkers sit up straighter, one or two look ready to bolt and “You’ll need papers,” says Haden. “I can get them for you, both, if you’ll tell me what name to put on his.”

“Use Lazarus,” with a flicker of better cheer, nodding to one of the discarded broadsheets: SPIRIT PARTY ENDS IN GRIEF AND MADNESS! “WE SAW OUR DEAR MOTHER’S GHOST!” “Papers, yes, I suppose we do. Though that sort of thing used to be Mouse’s province, that is, Rupert’s, to arrange—you’d not believe it, what a broody hen I’m turning out to be.”

“I don’t much like it either,” crushing another walnut with somewhat excessive force, “but it’s either me or that harebrained bitch, she’d rule us all with her cards if I’d let her. It’s why I put a hand in with Ru,” pulling from his coat a little sheaf of pretty drawings, fairy stories, Happy Poems for Virtuous Children stolen from a street stall; Ru likes those sorts of things, will sit in a corner for hours puzzling them out. “The little jack’s got no proper father, does he.”

“Can that matter so much? He has kin,” drinking off the last of his own cup, some subtle grief like a shadow’s shadow in his shrug, some shade, though Haden cannot know it, of the boy born on St. John’s Eve, a bastard wandering in the rain, singing and jigging and bare as a sardine in the squats and back rooms for the men in shiny vests and dangling watch chains, who do as they wish with a jigging little boy, then send him back to the streets with a handful of pennies and a laugh, that boy whom some good angel or sympathizing god steered at last toward the dripping viaduct, the dark beloved, the stick of wood carved into weapon and endless friend; yes, it is all a near thing, and every step is hazard and play as “Kin and home,” Haden’s own shrug of agreement. “And anytime you mean to, you can come home, too,” with a northward nod to indicate the nameless Mercury, to call from Istvan a gaze so warm—“You’d take me underneath your roof?”—that Haden feels that heat rise, a blush to his cheeks as Istvan leans to place his hand, still gloved in faulty silver, atop Haden’s for a moment, a charged moment as their gazes meet and hold: mìse-en-abîme, mirror to the very heart of mirror, a rich and singular alchemy neither will ever feel for any other, of greed and lust and deep affection, comradeship, above all gamesmanship and “We’d have to play it prettily,” Istvan’s murmur, “for the mecs must play. And Mouse forgets he’s deceased, it could be disruptive—”

“All’s already disrupted. And it would make her less a trial. Missus Landlady! Why’d he do so anyway?”

“A man’s got a soft spot for his daughter,” as they rise together, Istvan resuming the sling and cape while those around them turn their gazes away, down to the scuffed floor, up to the draped windows, noticeable the lack of notice and “Before your party,” Haden’s conspirator’s wink, “why not a hand or two of faro? There’s a place around the way that’s sometimes open, from the outside it’s an ironwork shop,” as they exit the dim café for the darkened streets, two men amongst many, the unescorted females having disappeared with sundown to their homes or other places of presumed safety, even the prowling youths pairing off into twos and threes—

—though around another corner, in another and still bleaker neighborhood, furious and disappointed trudges solo Tilde: head ducked beneath her boy’s cap, a scanty costume mustache stuck on with spirit gum, the poke bag across her shoulder packed with cocoa, a precious nib of clean butter, and the brown bottle of serum of elm. For hours she has walked, from one end of the city nearly to the other, asking and asking from stable to stable, but found nearby no “Augean” hostel or hotel or lodging, was the name somehow misremembered? She cannot keep on, must turn back now for home, though may be past this one last bend in the canal—

—as a clammy hand clamps unseen onto her shoulder, a man’s hand in the smell of cheapest lager and “Here,” hauling her into a muddy nook between buildings, “give it here, sonny,” Tilde kicking like fury backward at his shins, but his boots are thick clodhoppers, his grip tighter still as he discards the useless poke bag to dig inside her coat, a rapid rummage for wallet or valuables until “Ah!” as his hand finds something surprising, a young woman’s soft breasts beneath a boy’s stiff shirt. The man makes a sound like laughter as he swivels her, pins her one-handed to the bricks—“Won’t take a minute, jenny, just you hold still”—as with the other he pulls at his trousers—

—barely feeling, in that first moment, the blade stick into his leg, slice into his thigh as Tilde brings up her knife with all the force she can muster, its handle slippery with sudden blood as the man shouts in pain and shoves her sideways, he sags backward, she is freed—

—to stick him again, this time in the belly, the breath high and airless in her throat, making a sound she does not hear or recognize as the man sits down hard in the alley, face blank, nearly comical the shock: and Tilde grabs up the poke and runs, knife jammed to her pocket, the telltale blood begun to stain through as someone cries out after her—“Thief! Thief!”—and heads turn, a fruit-stall keeper’s and a pair of constables extorting figs, as she hurtles past, the constables immediate in pursuit. A sidewalk shouter tries to seize her but she wrenches off, running for her life now, crying without knowing she does, the poke bag swinging as she skids toward a trio of still-lighted doorways: a shabby dry goods already closed, a hat shop whose latch falls tight at the sight of her, a windowless tobacconist’s—

—busy with the evening’s last customer, the shopkeeper alarmed at this staggering urchin, gasps and tears and, is that blood? so “No,” scrambling from behind the counter, “no no no, out of here! Out of here!” with broom held high as if to rout vermin, the customer sharp to say “Jesu, stop! The lad can’t breathe,” one hard and kindly hand to catch at her elbow as her vision blurs, her knees nearly give way —

—and her heart leaps, she makes a wild cry and hurls herself into the man’s arms, Rupert’s arms, Rupert rearing back till he sees the boy’s eyes, blue eyes, no one else in all this city, all the world has eyes so blue—and he sees the blood, too, shucks his coat and “Here’s for the smoke,” he says, hand hasty to his pocket—

—as the tobacconist flinches, staring now at them both as if he has fallen into some evil charade, none of which is his fault, all of which will be blamed on him if someone should see such in his shop, if constables should see so “Out!” he cries. “You too, miscreant!” raising the broom again with a shaking hand, Rupert contemptuous to take and toss it to the floor, with a look that sends the man cowering back behind the counter, as he pivots Tilde on her heel and “Your hair,” urgent, “where’s your hair?” but she is already ripping at the cap, tearing her braids to fall Medusa-like about her face—

—so when the constables come around that corner, aided by citizens swept along by a pack’s alacrity—“There! He went in there!”—all they see is a man shepherding his weeping daughter, his coat draping her to the heels, Tilde’s hands to her face to hide the spirit gum mustache, Rupert shouting at those constables “Down that way! He tried to stick my girl, go after him!” and they do, they go, followed by several of the braver gawkers, while the rest disperse back into the city’s darkness and their own—

—while Rupert steers Tilde into the first friendly alley, where at once he enfolds her, and she clings with all her might, arms tight around his neck, to the passing dismay of an aged burgher couple, the man shielding his wife from the sight of this foreigner in braces and the boy-whore with the mustache and hair halfway to his knees—“What is it?” the wife asks, but the husband only shakes his head, this cursed city is growing more repugnant by the day!—as “Sir,” the boy sobs, while the tall man slowly strokes the tangled braids. “Sir, oh Sir, I found you.”

While this impromptu street play reaches its unusually felicitous conclusion, another is being plotted, though “plotted” is not the word chosen by Frédéric, teapot gone cold at the backstage table: he has his play-book open, he has been paging through and making notes. No, what Herr Krystof proposes is both a story and a manner of tract, an edifying manifesto—which makes him smile, an unhappy little smile as he recalls his origins in this city, the lies he told to seek and find and follow what he thought to be his better angel, and fall in love—helplessly, utterly in love—with that other angel, his Hadrian, Haden who has gone so far from him, now, that they barely inhabit the same roof. How does one pass from stern poetry and shared rigors and the passionate play that turns both to joys, turns a man into an angel and a devil and a mayor and a king, whatever he decides to be, everything he has ever dreamed of—what sorrow’s alchemy sours all such down into the kind of niggling, nagging, pinprick arguments that drive a man to distraction and worse? One moment it is those nauseous candies—

How can you bear to chew such?

What, the horehounds? They’re good for the toothache. And anyway what difference?

The difference is I won’t kiss you whilst you eat them.

—the next it is the songs, those chansons réaliste, hooting and chanting and though he is no prude—demonstrably no prude! Would a provincial prude write the fiery tales that he does?—still is it necessary to teach not only Pipper and Alek and the others that “poetry of the pavement,” but little Ru as well? And everyone smiling while the child parrots the trash, even Miss Tilde, who as his mother should know better, and especially Haden, who is coolly unrepentant—

Don’t be a prig, he knows all those words already.

It’s not—artful.

Time enough for art when he grows a set.

—though these and every other irritation are only a kind of masking, a camouflage upon a deep divide, made even deeper by the madness of the city that seems to Haden to be just another variant of, what is the phrase? “business as usual,” yes, endless the plague and ferocity and nothing to do for it but drink and read poems and—and find solace, yes, there never was or could be any solace any sweeter than the moments, hours, nights spent entwined and breathless, Haden like flung silk across the bed, his beauty a pageant and panoply, hard-muscled legs and soft scarred lips, those eyes half-mast with bliss given and taken, closing at last to sleep in the murmur of a wordless song…. There is heaven, and haven, and if he lives as long as Methuselah still he knows that he will never, ever be happier than he has been with Haden in that bed.

But no one can stay in Paradise forever. And even as they rise, and dress—

That shirt’s as stinky-pink as a girl’s basket, must you wear it? Bad enough on the stage.

Must you be so vulgar? Not all of us wish to dress as if we’re soldiers.

La-di-da, milord. And I’m not a fucking soldier.

—the felicity is ruined; yet to preserve it, what could he do that is different, except betray what he knows must be his duty on this earth, to shout the truth of this city’s wrongs? And he cannot play such shows alone, cannot write and stage and wear all the costumes, so the lads—is it not better for them to learn this way to read and declaim, swing a hammer or sing on cue, keep out of the gutter, and keep Haden from it, too? This writing he means to do for Felix Krystof—and here he turns a page, notes a note, recasting in his mind that interview: not secret, no, there is no real need for secrecy. And yet when he learned he was the only writer so summoned, into that study like a bank vault of letters and books, its stolid unfriendly manservant to serve the tea and gebackene Mäuse —

Why, this is a surprise! I’ve not seen this treat since before the war.

It’s a favorite of yours, I believe, Herr Blum.

—it seemed odd, somehow, to sit so with the gleaming fork while the manservant stood in the corner by the window and watched, as Herr Krystof spoke of the newspapers’ scrum and confusion, how much has changed since the time of the Visionary, and before that the Muse and That editor, Hebert, you remember him?

And Herr Konrad, yes, of course. You’re very well-informed, sir, feeling again that uneasiness, echoed in the manservant’s stare, black eyes encircled with sleepless brown, dispelled somewhat when Herr Krystof went on to detail the offered commission—

It’s a—goodly sum. Yet you’ve asked only me?

For a fearless moral examination of the city? Already you do so in your plays, with those young actors, and your friend—oh, have no fear on my account, I’m a great admirer of your work. But tell me, how many come to see those plays?

Very few, admittedly. The law—

“The letter killeth—!” But I can provide you with a wider pulpit. Not those papers meant for telegraph boys and washerwomen, or the ones whose editorial minds are set in stone—we needn’t mention names, you and I both know who these editors are, none of them will print a word you write. But if what you write is a tale, say—like M. Poe, or M. de Maupassant, you have read both of those authors? I have a letter, there, from de Maupassant to his cousin Bernard…. Although their work, fine as it is, seems to lack an essential, what’s the word? Not a religious view so much as—godliness, a quality of—

The spiritual, you mean?

—and from there it was easy to see that Herr Krystof and he were in full agreement: of the form the work should take, its eventual performance and then publication. And if he himself grew a bit too passionate—once or twice he heard the manservant grunt—it seemed to confirm to Herr Krystof that he had made The right choice, shaking hands before the manservant handed him the envelope, Herr Krystof’s avuncular smile to indicate that John Abram, here, is available for you, whatever aid you might need beyond this first installment—

—that envelope whisked back into his pocket as the key turns, rousing sleepy Pipper from the bowl of the wheel and Ru from his contented nest, costume rags and newsprint hats, both of them rising for Haden, Haden who of course must be told about this new venture; and is it not better for Haden, too, this shared bearing of their monetary burden, to wean him from the danger he courts at the card tables? Let alone scrambling up and down on slippery roofs?

But Frédéric sees at once that Haden is not alone, is accompanied by the photographer fellow Ridley, though not by his assistant, what is that young lady’s name? Miss Tilde always sniffs at her (and where is Miss Tilde? She has been gone for hours, the child is long past his supper) as “I can’t deny myself a moment longer,” says Mr. Ridley; he wears a flat top derby that looks brand new and an old stained duster of a coat, chemicals splashed and burned into its weave, he tugs at his mustache in emphasis until it points like two small brown fangs. “And you won’t deny me, will you, gents—I did just as I said I would with the puppets, didn’t I, those fancy little devils?” with a nod toward their silent stage. “Now I swear I won’t show a soul, I’ll print them in purest secrecy, but I must take some photographs of Monsieur Hilaire, or Marcus, the name doesn’t matter, but the attitudes he takes—nothing like it! Is he here?” as if Frédéric might be concealing Istvan alongside Ru beneath the draping tablecloth. “Gents, you can’t tell me no.”

“We’re not his keepers,” Haden says, though with a friendly shrug. “Find him yourself, ask him yourself.”

“He’s not staying here?” a question Frédéric answers by a headshake, though Haden’s silence seems to mean the opposite, they look to one another then as “In Paris,” Mr. Ridley taking a seat uninvited, “there’s a cabaret called the Pied Pony, they do plays there—not like yours, Herr Blum, popular plays, with circus dancers and marionettes. One was called ‘A Fugitive from Bohemia,’ it quite made the eyes pop! Such as when that other fellow was here, that play he and M. Marcus did, of the volcano—”

“It was a mountain,” says Frédéric, as Ru trots to Haden, to be given the pictures from Haden’s left pocket and a nearly fresh pear from his right; Pipper yawns and takes out his knife to peel the pear, Pipper who in some lights has the same drooping lip and magnificent nose of a former city commissioner, retired to the country now, what was his name? Mr. Ridley considers with half an eye as he goes on about the volcano, and that other show, what was it called, the wolf who ate up the king, and of course their final performance—“So tragic,” although the part of Mr. Ridley that is mostly, mainly, entirely an eye recalls the great black spectacle of it, like a carnival of damnation, the flashing Wheel and the youths in their devil-masks and the lurid flames, and that body falling like Lucifer—terrible, of course, but still, what a sight to see!

—as the key turns again, this time admitting Tilde, herself such a spectacle—hair half-braided and half-loose, trousers bloodied, wearing a man’s greatcoat and a fierce and private smile—that everyone must stop to stare, even Ru, whom she seizes in an embrace so all-embracing that he wriggles back in alarm, Ru whom she kisses on both cheeks, a hard Parisian-style smack, then releases as she calls to Pipper, “Is the kettle on? Quick it, now,” bustling past the men and up the stairs, both flights, they can hear her boot heels busily crossing and recrossing the third floor chamber —

—as in another, much finer chamber, the overheated loge still moist with the sweat of desperate dancing girls and the smell of dying flowers, packed by an avid audience of several dozen, Stephanos Marcus reaches the climax of his evening’s entertainment: working the ragged angel produced from his shoulder sack, like a louche Père Noël in his own weeds nearly as ragged, though with the mocking ornament of a cravat borrowed from the audience and the black wink of kohl, that angel singing a song that Haden or his lads would have recognized, a dirty little ditty picked up an hour past at the faro game—such an excellent outing! Win after effortless win, if he had not known absolutely better he would have suspected the kit of throwing the cards his way—as Portia’s boots beat excited time on the Aubusson and Roland sits, chin on fist, his face a pleasant mask, his heart hot in his eyes. The angel lights now on this shoulder, now that, now right in the lap of the former van Symans daughter who thinks—is it? No. But could it possibly be?—that she recognizes this man from long ago, when he or someone very much like him played in the squares of Brussels, in her family’s salon, much younger of course and more handsome, though when he looks at her, locks eyes with her—“And you, lovely Madame,” the angel’s croak, “where is your heaven, whose charades will you wager there?”—she feels that look in her fluttering heart and several regions more recondite, and when that angel pecks her cheek, she nearly swoons.

Afterward, when the last song is sung and the puppet folded back into the sack, the champagne is opened and the guests come rustling closer, silk skirts, damp hands, throaty chatter as they dwell still in the private spell of this man, whose conversation is as titillating as his performance, as the glances he gives, the little insinuating shrugs: “I had thought the theaters here were all shut down—? But this is not a theatre, is it, and so remains open.”

“Not a theatre? What else could it be?” asks the husband of the van Symans daughter, a wiry half-German financier and “Why,” says Istvan suavely, “it’s a brothel. I should know, I’ve been in plenty,” as the joke that is not a joke brings laughter that is more than laughter, as a councilman’s wife puts a supplicating hand to Portia’s arm—Arrangements must be made at once for a performance in her loge, this guest for her game!—Portia whose smile is all triumph and cream, whose gaze flicks again and again to Istvan so that he seems to feel it like an insect landing, an unpleasant crawl to send him balconyside to smoke, Roland there at once with the match-light, with the discreet and lovely, perfect gift—

“For me?” Istvan says. “I see,” taking without opening the box, slipping it into his own pocket without demonstrable interest, causing a pang in the heart of Roland Smalls, who has never felt anything like such a pang before—it is amazing, really, just to stand this way with M. Marcus, Stephanos, the two of them lightly screened by the smoke, is a mingling of ache and pleasure so consumingly vital that he understands with, almost, an inner smile—See the still waters boiling! See the man who never loved, in love at last!—though the smile on his lips is half a tremble, if he does not quickly speak of nothing he will say everything, so “That’s a bit of a strange adornment,” he murmurs, indicating the silver glove. “It looks quite antique.”

“What, this? This is the hand I twist my strings with,” with a look both so intimate and so cold that Roland’s face goes instantly red, a telltale and unappetizing flush as Istvan turns back to the watching group, makes a bow with a flourish of the cigarette and “This angel is due home to paradise, now,” he says, plucking up his cloak and jerking his chin at Portia, a flat commanding gesture lost on no one, Portia who hoves at once to his side, hisses urgently in his ear—

“Charades—she’s just about to start! And she wrote one specially for the two of you to play!”

“Give it.”

“But she—”

“Give it,” brutally brusque and pitched a notch louder, they both know that next will come the shout: so into his gloved palm she presses the folded payment, a fairly thick fold, will he shame her further by counting it here? For a moment it seems he means to, he weights in his hand—then slips it beneath his vest, puts his lips to her ear—“You smell like a granny, with that eau de toilette”—before giving her a very courtly bow, another to the assembled, and a little wink to Roland, who has remained by the balcony’s edge, striving for calm, as “Good evening, then, gentlemen and ladies. And don’t forget to say your prayers,” rousing one last collective chuckle, the van Syman’s daughter’s defrauded yip as he steps out of the loge and lets the door slam to, lets his shoulders drop and his face relax, takes a deep puff on the cigarette, then throws it down without bothering to crush the coal. The carpet on the stairway is old but sturdy, it only smolders until a passing servant sees and quickly douses the fire, but a mark is already left there, a burn as black as the mask on the face of a little demon, as indelible as Armageddon—

—as Istvan exits into the larger dark, whistling softly, alone with the city and the parting clouds like hurrying ghosts, the smell of the river fecund with flung garbage and clumped newspapers and the cold sturgeon that sleep in its depths, crossing Crescent Bridge past one lone brave pickpocket, cutting down avenues and up alleys, to reach the dreary hostel and slip inside—

—and find Rupert on the bed, half bent and coughing into a soiled handkerchief, in the smell of whiskey, the Queen’s Asthmaticum and “Cigars,” Istvan throwing the glimpsed packet to the floor, “for Christ’s sake, Mouse!” but “I’m not a child,” finally, dry and breathless, “or—an invalid, messire. I have—a God damned cough. Let me be.”

Istvan in silence passes over his own handkerchief, then turns away to the puppet sack, to free the angel and extract the two books, tossing down the wadded money as Rupert, still breathless, sees and asks “Did you rob a bank?” but “The saints were with me,” Istvan taking from the sack one last surprise: a bottle of champagne from a friendly maid at the loge. He pours for them both, drinks as Rupert sips, sips again, then “She came here,” Rupert says, breathing easier now, though his face is pale. “Tilde did—she wants us at the theatre again.”

“Yes. She’s right. We ought.”

“How so? To play? That’s dangerous here, it’s—”

“Dangerous?” with a fleeting smile for Rupert in the lamplight, half-haloed, half-shadowed, the twin Misters hung against the wall, mortal and immortal and “Life is dangerous,” reaching to unfasten Rupert’s shirt, to slowly strip him and then himself, to take in tenderness what only love can give, this body his joy, this man his bulwark, that gift of flesh in the darkness no other light can reach, grown so much darker now—

—until the moon finds its way to the window, its cast radiance on their bodies entwined, as slowly Istvan rises, to plump the sorry horsehair pillow, draw up the coverlet and “Rest,” he says to Rupert. “Sleep awhile,” as he carries the last of the champagne and the fitful lamp to sit in its dimming circle, leathern bag at his knee, calmly restringing the crippled angel puppet, working wit and skill and love against decay and dissolution, determined to meet that darkness with every weapon he can find.

The next tale opens in the tinkling of birdcage bells, tiny copper bells that the nervous, pretty little lovebirds strike and jingle beneath the roof of their bamboo cage that somewhat resembles a theatre, with its fringed red drape for evening and a long center perch for a stage. Prudence Mattison, her curls nearly as copper, her round face more her father’s with every passing year—dead Omar, whose parentage she will never know; some stories find no audience at all—carefully fills the glass cups with water and seed, for “Miranda and Prospero,” Pru says, softly so as not to startle them; she named the birds herself, after pictures she saw in a storybook, the plucky girl and the wonderful magician on the shore of an unknown sea.

Her mother does not like those names, does not particularly like the birds, except that Walter Wooster sent them for a birthday gift. Pru does not like Walter Wooster—he breathes through his mouth, and stares at her Sundays in church—but her mother has made it sternly clear that she must be pleasant to him, and anyway there are the birds, bright as the jewels in her mother’s jewelry box; one day, her mother has promised, those will be hers as well. Their value does not reach her, as ever it is the colors she enjoys, the vibrant false ruby and moonlike opal, much as she dislikes the colors in this room, ugly ivory lace swagged at every window, the mold-green antimacassars, her mother’s perpetual black dresses and coal scuttle bonnets—and there is her mother now, back early from her business, footsteps heading briskly down the hall—

—but instead it is Velma Byrd, with her fingers like kitchen snips and her face blank as a sheet of old paper, that face somewhat unfolding now to announce Missus isn’t in, but you can wait if you want. Her daughter’s in here—Miss Prudence, as two men step into the parlor, both so strange and dark and darkly alive they might themselves have stepped out of a storybook, and Pru brightens at the very sight of them, the one with the bag especially. He notices the lovebirds first, touches a careful finger to their cage as they flutter back in terror, then turns his smile to her, a speculative smile she is far too young to read, nor the look in his eyes as Miss Prudence! he says, as if they are old friends. What a pretty surprise, as his friend looks around and around the room, that one tall and silent and dressed like an undertaker, Prudence taking an instant dislike to him, flinching back as he puts out his hand and Why, be easy, Miss Prudence, says the other, the handsomer one with the pointy little beard, the pearl at his ear like Prospero’s dangling gold coin. This is Mr. Rupert, dear, and I’m—

Your uncle, says Rupert, with a certain private humor; the two men look at one another and Yes, says the magician, that’s so. Uncle Reynard, offering a droll little bow, while avid Velma Byrd—These two again! who should by rights have perished years ago; they bring no good with them, that much is certain—hurries in with tea that no one drinks, Rupert examining the room and its contents, the set of Shakespeare and the African violets, glass-beaded tapestry and ponderous clock, while Istvan enchants Pru with a lamp and its shadows, teaching her to make birds of her joined hands, black birds that flutter and fly to the ceiling: It’s called Schattenspiel, shadow-theatre, he is saying as the door opens again, Decca entering so quietly that no one notices, Mrs. Mattison whose meeting with the Mercantile Society had gone very well indeed, each brick mortared securely to the next, her castle nearly built: the Rose and Poppy is near true propriety, true safety, at last. About to lift a glass with the deputy mayor, who keeps claret in his office for just such occasions, when the note came from Velma, scrawled urgent on a scrap—You are needed—and she hasty to follow it home, to see those whom she had thought never to see again, her face goes the same mottled ivory as the lace hangings but Hello, firm from the doorway: and they all turn, Pru startled, Istvan veiled, Rupert to cross to her, to put out his hand that she takes, and holds, feeling the cold of it, the steady grip, her heart pounding an old unwonted rhythm as Decca, he says, and bends to kiss her cheek. Hello.

Her brother does not approach her, his hand still on her daughter’s, his gaze such a commingling—of dislike, distrust, nostalgia, frank appraisal—that she does not know which to first address, and so instead calls to Prudence, in such a tone that the child stands up straighter, hands clasped as if in a schoolroom, as if she might be punished for any answer gone wrong. Prudence, these are your uncles. This is Uncle Rupert—

And Uncle Reynard, says Prudence. He’s showing me the way shadows work, Mamma.

Shadows indeed, Istvan with his arms crossed, surveying this sister whom he had promised himself he would not see again; consider her then half-sister, no sister, only a stolid stranger, Ag whom he used to gift when she was this one’s age and younger, with paper dolls and ribbons and shiny trinkets picked up along the way, Ag whose own gift was for silent cunning, who thought to take what was his and keep it, hold it, how had she ever thought to do so, how ever believed that she could? And what a perishing fright she looks now! Is she running a joy-house or a ladies’ sodality in that shapeless black nightgown, steely pins in her hair, jet brooch at her throat, the Widow Mattison, yes, of the apparently virgin birth and You’re closed tonight, one gathers, nodding to the hallway, the noiseless rooms below through which they had passed, he and Rupert, as if walking sidewise through time: the lobby, the empty stage of the theatre, the piano once Jonathan’s and its fine candelabra, wax candles now, no more sweaty tallow, the old chaise recovered—yet like the chaise everything once bloodied or scorched has been smoothed over, every wall genteel with flocking and flowers, the stairs covered in thick carpet, the whores apparently all mute as that Jonathan since one can hear no rustling, no quarreling, smell nothing like frolic or fun; Pan Loudermilk would weep to see it, if a mec would even be allowed upon such premises. Can a man still buy a drink?

Velma, sharp, bring some whiskey, Decca looking then to Rupert who is looking at the wall, the ivy-twined picture of a man who might be the man he remembers, old Mattison, or might not; does it matter? His idea to come here, then; and now, and for many reasons, most shared with Istvan, one resolutely not, urging him to make some sort of peace with his sister, ease the grudge that flares every time her name is mentioned—

What could she truly take from us? All was well in the end, is well. You and I—

Missed years together, Mouse, fucking years. And time is precious, doesn’t it say so in some holy book or other? sullen as a boy to turn his own face away, fingering the griffin’s head on the cane, never changing his mind so much as allowing himself to be led along the road that took them back to Victoria, Gottsburgh, Archenberg, the knife to his hand in every stray moment to carve and parse the dark length of Mr. Loup, as the other Misters, Castor and Pollux, kept busy as bees with their bear-baiting and bishopry, Rupert handling the concertina with whiskey on his breath, more whiskey nowadays, less use of fists if the truncheon will do—as they do in a crabbed little hamlet just outside Victoria, where a hang-bellied tailor mocks them in his shop, taking coin and then refusing Istvan’s trade: Whistle for that money, and your tawdry old vest, it’s a rag to wipe my arse with now. I’ll not sew a stitch for a coward—stop, put that down! as Istvan snatches for his own topper. I fought the war here, against those cabbage eaters! though his fighting skills have apparently atrophied since then, swinging at Istvan, blocked by Rupert, whose swing back cracks a tooth and sends it flying, sending Rupert himself straight into the town’s little jail cell, Istvan hilarious to play the barrister, go the bail, stern-faced in the tailor’s stolen hat to push freed Rupert against the very wall of the courthouse for a ravishing, gratified kiss—My hero! I thought that awful man would needle me sure—as passers-by gaped in disgust and surprise, one raising a voice—Hey there, you men! Stop that!—to be met by a doubled stare so calmly violent that the shouter hurried off, head ducked, as if fleeing his own crime.

Yet if there were many reasons, plain and cloven, for following that road into this town, to this Poppy now augmented by a sentimental Rose, this tidy civic-minded whorehouse once a place of treachery and bloodshed, of passionate reunion, every step taken was considered, if not aloud or together, as a step not so much into the past as that past’s advance into the present, a story whose ending had not yet been spun, or if spun needing still a proper staging to bring the curtains to a close; proving, if further proof were needed, that even the storytellers, expert as they might be, or furious, bemused or unwilling, are never in full command of the tale told.

Now the whiskey arrives, Velma Byrd elated as she has not been for some time—life here is very dull, for beyond the few foreign strangers who come and go, it is always the same round, men who all know one another, so no blackmail can be possible; the whores themselves are a tiresome bunch, all “Yes, Missus” and “No, Missus,” and cringing whenever Decca’s shadow falls their way, the little Miss is nearly as bad; but if these two firebrands should stay on—! She snatches another glance at her employer’s stony face—Shall I open up the west guest room, Missus?—though Istvan is quick to shake his head: Don’t bother, we’ll find our own roost for the night. But if you have anything made from grapes, bring that, as Rupert takes a glass from the silver tray—heavy silver, worked in swirls and inscribed You are a stranger here but once! At The Rose & Poppy—reflecting that Decca has done well for herself, just as Istvan had predicted: it suits her to give orders, yes. Though prosperity does not seem to have eased her burdens, at least it brings no smile to her face; nor does that child. And whosever child might she be?

Now Pru is beckoned over in the manner of a shield, Decca’s hands tight on her plump little shoulders, Pru trying to grasp the currents running between Mamma and this man, her new and wondrous uncle—and the other uncle who sits and drinks and says nothing, so tall and fearsome-looking in the little chair, as if he were a statue, or— The strongman, Pru blurts, just like in your stories, Mamma! And Uncle Reynard is the jongleur, isn’t he?

Decca gives no reply, but her hands tighten further as Istvan smiles, a foxy smile mostly teeth as he asks Do you like stories, Miss Prudence? For I know several, one of them in fact about a girl, not much older than you—

Is her name Miranda?

No, but we can call her so if it suits you. Come here, dear, to draw her back to his side as he sits opposite Rupert, the two of them making of the fusty room a strange and intimate sort of theatre, Decca the only and unwilling audience as Velma brings from the serving bar an unopened bottle of yellow brandy, as Rupert lights a small black cigarette, as Pru sits at Istvan’s feet, nearly as open-mouthed as Walter Wooster, to hear stories of a resourceful girl who could make a loaf from a crumb of bread, construct clothing from lint and moonbeams, climb like a monkey into and out of the high windows of an orphanage: Did the bars on the windows stop her? No. Did the beatings from the wicked priest stop her? No, and she never cried, not once, Miranda was a girl without tears—no matter what she did, no matter how dreadful, she never cried.

What else did she do, Uncle? as the tale continues, spun straw into false gold, that girl whose name was not Miranda watching, fingers clenched against palms, seeing the strain of him beside the sparkle: the worn-out boots, the top hat a size too small with a twist of red ribbon hung behind like a backwards noose; yet still he is matchless, her first love, her brother, still the boy who appeared at the window like an angel of the dark, promising to spirit her away with him some night, someday; the peacock prince, the one whom the watchers always gladly paid to see. Yet where are his tools, his puppets, surely he does not travel without them? the jongleur, the showman and his terrible toys? Perhaps that will be the only mercy, that they have somehow left off playing, that they have come only to offer their inscrutable regards, and go.

And Rupert—she can barely look at Rupert, the girl who never cries feeling the weight of tears in her throat, old, sad, heavy drops of salt for the shabbiness of him, the scratched spectacles and boots as ruined, one finger broken, it had to be, and never doctored, look at the way it crooks off to one side. And that cough…. Did the money she sent give no aid at all, did they lose their theatre, what has befallen? His gaze has changed as well, become if not less powerful then more abstracted, or perhaps it is being here again, in this place, this room where they once had sat together, he and she in the chairs, there, that he now shares with Istvan, the dainty duchess chairs she has had repaired, recovered in pea green velvet; everything here is different since they left, different and vastly better, she is different, she is not “Miranda” though every tale Istvan tells is of her, she knows it and he knows it though Pru of course knows nothing, Pru who is gazing at him as if she has waited all her life for just that sight, Istvan raising his own gaze just that moment to look Decca in the eye, to smile again as he says But Miranda had one failing, Miss Prudence, can you guess what it was? No? She had a covetous heart. You don’t know “covetous”? —why plainly, then, dear, she was a thief. And not to say that a little—a very little!—larceny is not sometimes a good thing, to steal a loaf of bread when one is hungry, that’s not wrong, is it? looking down again to the child whose knitted brow means her little brain is busy with this information, he is teaching her something, she is learning. But what Miranda wanted most belonged to someone else, to a boy who—

Enough, Decca’s voice without inflection, as flat as ice or the blade of a knife. No more stories, it’s time Prudence was abed, Pru knowing better than to protest though her gaze is newly mutinous as she trudges to the door, out past listening Velma who does not even bother to pinch her as she often likes to do; there is too much else to occupy Velma, at least until Istvan steps to that threshold to say I never liked you, and now I like you even less. Get the fuck back to the kitchen, or wherever spider hole you bide, closing the parlor door in her face as Rupert asks Decca for her news, a careful question, gauging the enmity between the siblings, Istvan prowling the room as Decca speaks steadily of her own and the town’s prosperity, the many visitors who come for the racing course and the band-shell concerts, the well-regarded presentations in the lecture hall, then stay in her comfortable rooming houses —

And stop in here to have their pricks pulled, after? What’s the going rate these days, Missus Pinchbeck?

It varies.

—until a nervous knock briefly suspends the tension, a pallid little whore seeking her mistress, Decca swift to leave them, Rupert’s murmur in her wake: We can pass one night here, messire, what harm? Unless you want to go back to Vidor’s old hotel? to bring Istvan’s briefest smile, his sharpest shrug and I’ve still got the scars from last time, don’t I. I’ll go down to that Theatre Guillame, then, and see if I can’t raise up Puggy’s ghost.

Other ghosts are in play as well, Decca sitting wakeful throughout the night, just as she used to in the bad old days, listening to the noises from the stage, Istvan with, yes, his boxed familiars, and Rupert’s faint smoke drifting from the bedchamber, their old bedchamber, she should have had Velma put them elsewhere. When she sleeps at last it is to wake too late, Pru already busy stirring molasses into Istvan’s tea, the checkerboard set up between them and Miss Prudence, says Istvan genially, have a peek into my traps, see what dainties you can find. May be some French silk ribbons…. Who got the little dumpling on you? as genial to Decca, as Pru skips happily away. Or did she pop from your forehead, like your friend, there? indicating the painted plaster statue of Athena, she still has it, still scents herself with that arid verbena, nothing here has really changed. “Prudence,” though—why not “Temperance”? Or “Chastity”? If it had been a lad you might have done “Rupert,” although there’s one such namesake already—

Namesake—what do you mean? Whose child?

You don’t know her.

A pause; she takes a long breath; he sips the molasses-sweet tea. Then I have something for you, careful to close the door before offering the object kept hidden for so long, the elegant old writing case of teakwood and mother-of-pearl: surprised to see that he is not surprised at all, though she cannot know it is half the reason he is here, an intelligence unshared even with Mouse of this cache, this astonishingly dangerous ordnance sent to an obscure hidey-hole, the cane sent on to Lucy, oh what a merry scavenger’s hunt! Like assembling from splinters the one true Cross—though I haven’t read them, Decca dry to watch him sift impassive through the contents, onionskin envelopes and couriers’ dispatches, wax seals and German ciphers, seeing in his disbelieving shrug—You make a good lockbox, then—that nothing she says can ever be trustworthy to him; very well.

Thus she does not speak to him of Rupert, Rupert who had found no way to reach once more his old vantage point upon the rooftop, that door secured to immobility by a long row of tenpenny nails; and so was found by Decca in the quiet hallway, the house asleep around them, Decca who past all tears shed and unshed approached to deliver a little pouch of clean-bleached muslin, the antique and opulent lover’s eye wrapped inside and Take this, quietly, and sell it—it’s worth a great deal. And let the money buy you some ease.

Is that what yours buys? though not unkindly, looking down into her face as she looks up into his: and if in that face so ferociously composed lives any vestige of the silent child at the orphanage windows, the stricken girl in the alley, dirty skirts and gripping hands, the partner at the table with her account book and scratching nib, the woman in the shawl, who offered one formal kiss then watched as he guarded wounded Istvan and the rest from the broken town, that vestige is fully overlaid by what he sees now—in this prim hallway once so dismal with rot and cold, and she as cold in his arms to say Mine, and I’ll not leave it—this life she has made for herself, the supremely orderly building, the cadre of whores and cowed servants, even the child is entirely her own! So there is no more need to wonder or worry for the prospects or safety or life of the widow Mattison, Decca, Agatha, nor ever to visit this place again; Istvan shall be pleased by that, “Uncle Reynard,” yes, and the child looking at him just as her mother used to, that hungry little gaze, Istvan who still will not forgive…. Don’t worry for us. We’re fine.

You may not always be, as one hand closes his around the pouch, while the other reaches to stroke his shirtsleeve, fix his cuff: just that: it is the last. Whatever love still lingers, whatever impossible dream of a life unlived—the two of them at that table, he sound and prosperous in a finely tailored suit, she to pour the tea and discuss the business, share the burdens, offer the love—she will neither admit nor acknowledge, will place without further handling into the casket of her heart, like an old chain of silver paper laid away in a jewelry box. And when her daughter asks later, as she will, whatever happened to those uncles, that jongleur and strongman, where they went and where they bide, she will say with truth that she does not know; she has reached at last the end of that tale.

But believing that its end lay in that hallway and at that table, in the midnight quiet and the sickish smell of molasses, the white stacked against black on the game board, she is incorrect: a fact shortly made manifest by Istvan and this new puppet, this angular Mr. Loup with his hollow eye and dangling arm, who seems instantly to have acclimated to the atmosphere, who shrugs as Istvan does to Rupert’s packing of the traps—

What, are you so ready to sleep out in the rain again? And leave behind your dear old home?

You and she—there’s no point in staying longer, is there. Unless you want to find the father of her child. Who do you think it could be? Mr. Loup shrugs again. And this was never my home.

It was ours for a while—this very bed, if she hasn’t changed out the mattress, yeah? Let’s hope she changed the linen…. My knife works better where it’s dry, cross-legged on that bed, carving as swiftly as if their lives depended on it, and with a boy’s fine recklessness, as if his knife cannot make a mistake. And this fellow’s primed, Mouse, he won’t take no for an answer. There must be a bit of play.

Already an audience is present, there in the room that has somehow and overnight become the new secret center of the brothel, as if something dormant and alluring has sprung once more to life: the curious whores in their decorous lace and old-fashioned leg-of-mutton gowns, a sorority seemingly more suited to pouring tea than taking down trousers, and the lone young man among them, dark hair, dark eyes, a Spaniard perhaps in his high collar and spandy new vest, a vest he gladly trades for a pair of gleaming cufflinks—Not real gold, of course, but your gentlemen won’t know that—the young man affixing them admiringly to his shirt cuffs, as Istvan slips on that vest of black brocade, winking as he does so to one of the hallway watchers—What’s your name, darling? Don’t tell me it’s Pearl!—while pop-eyed Mary, who calls herself Marie, murmurs to another of the girls He’s a regular stunner, that one! loud enough, she hopes, to be overheard by the man on the bed.

Even Miss Prudence has found a way into that room, Pru excited and defiant to evade her mother’s edict, even more excited to watch the puppet’s final making, to help costume him in his pointed boots, sewn strips of old black serge, a smooth spiral of new black silk—

May I hold him, Uncle Reynard?

No, dear. But you may tie the ribbon, so.

Shall he wear this, too? It’s called opal, from Mamma’s jewelry box—look! eager to offer the purloined brooch, thrust pin-out and with a point so sharp that Uncle Reynard gives a sudden curse, shakes his hand in pain then stanches it upon the sheet, leaving there a blot as bright as the counterfeit ruby: as if this birth, like every birth, requires a tithe of blood.

As the sun sets, its own red smear shielded by the clouds, by the bank and the lecture hall and the mercantile’s Grecian façade, the Rose and Poppy’s front-of-the-house man, a strapping blond buck not overly encumbered by brains, is set to watch for the first of the gentlemen—it is Gentlemen’s Wednesday, half price for certain popular services and thus a weekly favorite in town; banker Wooster and his colleagues, including the deputy mayor, will as ever be in full attendance—as Decca finally girds herself to climb up to that room, to stand arms-folded in the doorway, confronting her brother fox to fox and You have what you came for, she says without preamble, so you ought be on your way. I’ll gladly pay for the train tickets, anywhere you wish to go—

A very generous offer, he says, or is it Mr. Loup who answers? But we’ll leave when we’re ready, as we did before.

I see. You think to play your puppets here. To spoil all I’ve built, as you did before—

“Spoil”? You still owe me a bit of sport, Missus, among other things…. Mouse told me you came to him, exposing like a conjuror the lover’s eye from beneath the pillow, the puppet on his lap to stare at her with one eye as dry as a hard-carved nutshell, becoming in that stare every puppet he has ever made, every avatar and lieutenant, accomplice all the way back to Marco, and this one perhaps the most feral of all, that gaze as meaningful as the blue bejeweled in his reddened palm as Spare your care, tossing down the ornament. We don’t need such.

He needs someone to care for him. He’s ailing.

He is not. He only needs rest, and rest is what he’ll have, just as soon as—

Rest how? Sleeping in a ditch, or in some filthy barn? Or a coffin! If he had stayed here—

What, in this mausoleum? Oh, don’t dare to fucking puddle up, Ag, you never wept before to think us parted—

You parted from me a hundred times without one tear, her head turned as if without volition to the window, his own gaze flickering then, as if he looks through some other portal, some moment’s older lens. Now go. I want you out of my house, away from my daughter—

Miss Prudence likes me.

Go!

—as Mr. Loup chuckles, one hand to his mouth, Istvan poker-faced above, the doubled effect as fey and menacing as their entrance into the hush and half-dark of the Theatre Guillame, Istvan in the whore’s brocade vest and tailor’s stolen top hat, Mr. Loup sans brooch whistling a nasal “Thumb-Your-Nose” in the direction of the whores peeping from the wings where Pru sits, too, her fingers laced with French silk ribbons, red and pink and slippery blue, while Rupert stands silent at the bar, the trunk and traps beside him, his face unreadable, nursing a glass of beer—

—as in the hazy blaze of the candelabra, on a humble stool taken from the kitchen, Istvan takes his seat with Mr. Loup, one arm beating time, to look out into that darkness, all the darkness past the candles and the memories and the years, and sing a different song, a croon almost, eerie beyond measure yet beautiful as bones are beautiful, as the listening whores clutch themselves and Pru shivers and stares and Decca halts in her martial advance up the aisle, held by the tune already old when they were all three young together, the wild street boys and the fierce little girl who loved them, stole for them, lied to them, lost them—Mr. Loup singing in farewell and, is it? a kind of absolution, “Lady Angela Takes the Air,” that lady named this time, one last time, as Agatha.

And when he has finished, when the last cracked treble note has faded entirely into the darkness, Istvan rises, to doff his hat and bow to the still-empty house, kiss his fist to watching Rupert, whose gaze behind his spectacles is very bright; and nod once to his sister, who stands still in the shadowed aisle, arms crossed before her breast while her daughter applauds with all her might, the whores applauding too, the puppet offering one last salute to all before he is whisked beneath the coat —

—so that when the brothel doors are opened and the gentlemen enter, past their rigidly smiling hostess, all they find are the whores in a rare and excitable humor, and nothing on the stage beyond the still-burning candelabra: while outside, on the corner opposite, a driver loads an old leather trunk into his cab, Istvan and Rupert already waiting inside, the rising wind like a swazzle-voice calling to them down the street. Had they chosen to look back, which they did not, their last sight of the Rose and Poppy would have been its well-lit and busy doorway, more cabs and gentlemen arriving for Gentleman’s Wednesday, and Pru forlorn in the parlor window, lace drapes dragged hastily to one side, her small hands waving and fluttering like the wings of a captive bird.

A letter, MLLE TILDE BOK to MME LUCY PIMM

To Mme Lucy,

I hope this finds yr husband much recovered and you very well.

I write to give you the knowledge that they are back now, you knowing of the ones I mean. One was like to lose his hand, the other has got the catarrh. How they come to be here they do not say, one says The road is long and yokels don’t tip but when I asked did he wager up all their money he said There’s a lady you should meet, Missus Decca of the iron fist, then laughed. Do you know who is Missus Decca? There was another lady, a great Lady Isabella, do you know her also? I have asked the cards but I can not read it out yet.

I will be very glad to read the cards for you, when you visit. Will you come? Before the new year would be best, the new year is a bad time to travel, all yr luck can travel away from you then.

Many thanks for the Pimm’s Palace tho’ Ru does not play with it. He used to like to ride on the Pégase, but the carousel is closed. There was to be a fireworks for St Michael’s Day, but the bishop spoke so long it rained and put out all the bonfires, and then there was fighting. I have a boy costume that I wear in the Park now, it is like being on the stage, also it is much safer to go about so.

I close with many good wishes and regards, and hoping you will visit us before the new year, you have traveled in war before you say, do not wait too long.

Yrs most faithfully,

Mlle Tilde

The cards, those old waxed squares of colored paper like leaves unbound from a book, sit in a careful stack upon the desk, two drawn and set sideways atop, their faces not yet consulted. Beside them sit the chocolate tin, the newspaper cuttings and letters (though none have arrived, recently, from Mme Lucy; why is that?), and the frail glass thimble with its painted roses; Sir has used this desk once, and will no doubt wish to do so again: like the room, it must be made ready.

Brisk in boy’s trousers and long apron, hair twisted into a heavy coil, Tilde adds the precious carte-de-visite and Ru’s photograph to the pile. She has already moved Ru’s things to the second floor, across from the hayrick and Frédéric; Frédéric is in there now, on the bed with a letter, so engrossed he barely glanced up as she passed by…. Sweeping vigorously from the corners to the windows, thick purple drapes hooked back, what sun there is falls on the dreary demonstration below, the Widows’ Regiment pleading, with their sad pennywhistles and pictures of the dead, for the return of peace to the streets. Yesterday they were marching on Crescent Bridge when she tried to take Ru for some air, pressing their creased-up pictures into the stones with candle wax, so thick that Ru was wedged between a pair of weeping Widows and a ragged soldier with one arm, and could barely throw his crumbs to the swans—

Think of what you want most, Baba, and throw the bread—see there, she took it, that pretty one! Now you will have your wish!

Be damned to wishes, the soldier’s gloom. This whole city is just raven’s bait now—Ow! that soldier corrected to silence by her sharp-jabbing elbow: Don’t speak so to a child, you turd!

And he was a liar anyway, that soldier, for her own wish is very soon to be granted, as soon as Sir and M. Stefan, or Istvan—so called by that picture-maker, Mr. Ridley as persistent as a buzzing fly, Is he here, M. Marcus, or Marek, oh the name doesn’t matter, he can call himself the Pope if he likes!—will come to roost; it may even be today. She and Sir have had another visit together, another talk: How can you stop in a place like this, look, the rain comes right in through the window! And it stinks in here, the musty mushroom air of rotten wood, merde spattered half down the stairway, to clean it up one would have to burn it down. She made sure he ate the honey and brown bread she carried, as she mended his threadbare cuffs, would have buffed his boots until he took her by the hands and You mustn’t do so, you’re not a servant anymore. You’re Mrs. St. Vitus, his smile inviting her own, her own wry little joke to note that See? Some boys do like me better in a vest.

This time when she left he walked her farther, past the loiterers on the corners, past the canals, nearly all the way back to the square, the tall man in the greatcoat and the youth in the lumpy cap keeping an eye for constables or former friends, as they tracked through the Park all mud and sodden leaves, huddled beggars and lean pigeons, drunken Savvys throwing stones at the Libbys’ painted placards—TRUE PATRIOTS MEET HERE!—Sir steering her safely past the loudest of them, pausing when a stone struck close by: Why an’t that boy in uniform, or you neither, grandfather! We’re in a hole, we need all the men we can get! And stupid girls there with them too, jeering even louder, girls the left-hand sisters of the departed Virgos, Frédéric calls them Viragos so Put this in your hole, Tilde advised, hurling back the stone with fine accuracy, close but not close enough to start them running, those girls with their ugly dresses a la Liberté, and sharpened nail files stuck in their boots…. She picks up the little thimble, now, with its delicate yellow roses, to wonder with familiar pain if Tanti is caught up with girls like those, little Tanti très jolie and lost to the streets, lost forever by their mother—there are letters from her in that pile, Annabell who was once Annotchka; it was Frédéric, sympathetic, diligent, who finally tracked her down.

At first Annabell praised the Virgin that her dear Mathilde was hale and whole, she sent pages covered with crosses, kisses, a letter Tilde read again and again, heart pounding; now the thought of those pages scalds her, that she had believed for a single moment a single word. Annabell wrote that she had been deserted by her former lover (that much was true), and that to support herself she ran a sort of workshop, a decoration school, les petites mains where the girls learned lacework and beading and china painting, the thimble enclosed to show their handiwork, and would her dear Mathilde not wish to come and work beside her mother and those busy girls? She might not work for very long, for there were always many gentlemen about to buy the gloves and handkerchiefs and embroidered boudoir pillows, and a clever girl, which Mathilde had always been, and a pretty girl—I know you must be beautiful, you are my daughter after all—could find a well-off husband quick as anything! Or a protector, even better than a husband!

But once she understood her elder daughter’s situation—the city building, the presence of Frédéric (though not of Ru; somehow Tilde had not written of Ru, some maternal impulse of protective silence)—she advanced other plans, larger plans, for her school needed so many things, so many of the pupils came to her so very poor, those poor girls! And surely Mathilde would want to help her mother, as a good daughter should? Tilde put this letter beside the first, fitting one to the other like a picture-puzzle until Frédéric, red-faced, brought her the puzzle’s final piece: a page from a Lyon newspaper, a backstreet madam arrested for brawling, Mme Pomme, Mrs. Apple with the face of Annabell, whose house of loose morals was a scandal in the town.

The last letter to arrive was a long one, half a snarl and half a sob: Could Mathilde be so cruel as to desert her own mother, at a time of such piteous need? Had she, the mother, not rescued her from that drunken fool of a father, taken her to Paris, tried her best to feed and clothe her and, yes, Tanti too, is it her fault that the man who swore to do the feeding and the clothing turned out not to like little Tanti after all, to send her and then her mother packing, the swine? How can she know where Tanti is now, or help her if she did—just another girl to feed and clothe, and if Mathilde had any love or Christian charity in her heart she would send for her poor afflicted mother, let her live in that fine building beside the fine husband, and together they could look for Tanti, perhaps, or perhaps open another school, or another sort of business, there must be all sorts of businesses in that city! If Mathilde was not entirely heartless, she would at once send on a train ticket, or at least some money to pay the jailer’s bill!

That letter Tilde read twice, then with shaking hands boxed up the old unworn memento, flat-faced cameo on blue tulle faded white, along with a reply of such ferocity that Mme Pomme, in her shuttered one-room with the gin bottles lined on the windowsill, did not even read it through to the end before throwing it onto the grate, that letter explaining in a few short sentences the correct way for a mother to treat her child, and promising that If ever I find Tanti I will tell her you are dead. And if you write to me again you will wish you were, signing it “Mme St. Vitus” above a cold black blot, spitting on the curb after it was safely posted, and making the sign against the evil eye; there will come a judgment on her, Annabell, the judgment of Paris, but that is not for Tilde to enact. Now those letters are tied in a separate pile, laced tight with bitter twine to keep them sealed; the thimble she keeps as a reminder, to keep one’s eyes open, and not let what is wished for blind what is there to be seen.

Her mood lightens as she airs out the bedding, polishes the heavy desk chair—perhaps Sir will sit here with Ru and tell him stories, or help him with his letters; Ru is good with letters, even the hayrick sees that, always bringing him those little picture-papers, teaching him songs—he loves the rhymes, the way the words link up together. He can say the words of the church songs, too, that Latin of Gloria patri, et filio, et spiritu sancto, Frédéric has taught him such—

—Frédéric who looks up this time as she approaches with her freight, his face so dire that she must stop in the doorway to ask “What ails you?” but he shakes his head, points instead to the cards she holds: “What news?” so she uncovers one with one hand and one with the other—the solemn Patriarch, the swift and leaping ace of hares—and “Sir is coming,” she says, as if that might be the cards’ full import. “What news to you?”

“Bad news,” says Frédéric drily, though he does not detail these dozen pages arrived from his mother, spotty with fallen tears, that tell in great detail how she has prayed for him, prayed so fervently at the Virgin’s altar that his father had to come and carry her away, Frédéric recasting the scene in his mind—the father mortified to find the mother weeping in public, conveying her home to be scolded: and he is quite correct, though his vision does not go so far as his father’s real shame and anger, Have you entirely lost your sense? If you howl like that, everyone will know how dire things are for us! but The Virgin knows already, the mother surprisingly sturdy above her sopping handkerchief. And the only recourse is to mend this sinful rift, and bring him home—yet he sees enough to know that next must come a visit; how soon, one cannot say, the trains are so uncertain, but it is certain that they will come…. With a start, Frédéric sees that Tilde still is gazing at him, that blue stare so acute that he must look away, tossing the letter onto the rumpled bedclothes and “It will be good to have them here,” he says, “again.”

“That Ridley asked me again—”

“I know. He asked me, too,” as Haden is similarly buttonholed in the square just outside, past the dregs of the dispersing Widows’ Regiment: importunate Mr. Ridley and Nella silent beside him in her sacklike capelet, the purity cape they call it, required fashion in the city though Ridley says it makes her look like Jocasta, whoever that is; Ridley all giddy these days with smuggled-in boxes of prints, old pictures of the circus and dancers and acrobats, ladies in gauze and spangles that would never be allowed, now, even such pictures are not allowed! And all of it stirred up by that strange puppet fellow, when the studio has trouble enough already—who but the weeping Widows and the grim police even want pictures made nowadays? And if they do, do they pay? And if they pay, whose task is it to make half a dollar go for five, and somehow keep the pot hot and the lights burning? But one might as well be talking to a picture as to Ridley when he gets artistical.

Now “I’ve been angling to take part in that pageant,” Ridley says, “the Cathedral pageant,” as Haden in his greatcoat stares distracted and nonplused; the wind is rising, the river’s dampness mingling with the bonfires in the Park, the smell of fog and burning, as if the city itself is a pyre. “It’s to be something big and gaudy, they say, to take people’s minds off, well, everything. You two,” with a wink, “St. Vitus and St.-Mary, there’s a couple of saints right there, you’d do a cracking job, eh? And there’s money in it, too, I hear, the monsignor’s flung open the coffers. —Your other friend, now, when might he be arriving, and when shall I come to—”

—but Haden is already turning away, key to lock, his mood as black as his coat, black as his own bad news: Alek the best and wiliest of his lads, Alek the thief and dodger, has been fairly pinched at last. Caught in the dawn outside a faro den, the cards still in his pocket, and no papers to show; stuck behind the cloudy window of a grey Protectorate room, pale with fear and shrugging in faith—I knew you’d come to spring me! I said so to that Mr. Pinch, I knew—though Haden’s protestations went first for nothing, there at the end of that hallway, leaning hard on the registrar’s grate: Here’s his certificate right here, Alek St.-Mary. Let him loose.

Says you’re his father, there? Young, to be the father.

What the fuck difference? Let him loose.

I’ll have to ask the official, a stupid brute recognized at once from the old days baiting Costello, but Costello was a bally Socrates compared to this sack of guts: made even more stupid and brutish by authority, crimping the paperwork in his fat fingers, seeming more and more pleased by balked Haden’s yellow glare, Haden finally forced to toss down like a trump card the name of Martin Eig—

Herr Commissioner Eig? Get off, you don’t know him!

He knows me. Go ask him yourself, tell him Haden St.-Mary sends regards.

—though what Eig would have answered is anyone’s guess, Eig the lofty and punitive, whose contact with the streets now is only through faraway windows, off-limits to the rogues and interlopers he used to solicit and pay—but in the end the bluff was enough, neither the registrar nor the official wishing to disturb the Commissioner for such a matter, Alek freed past a final threat—If we catch your boy again, you’ll go ask for yourself!—and hustled at once by Haden into the street, a corner past the sidewalk traffic, stuffing into Alek’s pockets all the bills he had in his own and Burn those citizen papers, brusque, then go get yourself lost. As far as you can, as fast as you can.

Haden, no—I’m that sorry they pinched me, I an’t pay good enough attention! But now I will, I swear I—

No. Go. And don’t come back.

Haden!

You’ll do fine. Just stay out of the army, with a swift paternal embrace that surprised them both, Haden’s arm rough about his neck, Alek’s eyes filling with tears: the last Haden saw of him or ever will, the tall youth on the corner beneath the Festus Clock, glassy-eyed as an orphan to watch Haden walk off swiftly through the crowd—

—all the way back to Liberty Square and Ridley and the alley, and Frédéric on the stairs in shirtsleeves and scarf, carrying the angel puppet now repaired, wing feathers ruffled by the breeze of his motion, as if Israfel is about to fly away: he might be a prophet coming down from the mountain, he might be one of Haden’s lads himself, he looks so young. And so dear…. How is it, even past the gulf that lies between them, as if scripted in some unhappy play, that to see Frédéric is so thoroughly to want him, in the veins, the prick, the heart, everywhere, as consumed as consuming? That very dawn—hair tousled on the pillow, Christopher medal bright about his throat, murmuring in his dreams like the boy he must have been, good boy, loyal son to his parents, those stiff-necked bourgeois to whom he sends his dutiful letters; why keep sending those letters, why waste the time or the ink? But to say so would wound him, everything wounds Frédéric these days, his skin is thinner than his script-paper. Even an idle question after waking, after love—

“Seraphim” …You’ve never told why you’re called such.

My mother named me in thanksgiving. She was—it was very difficult for her to conceive.

The stuffed shirt was a limper, eh?

Must you be so vulgar?

Yes, nettled himself, I must, up from bed and thus not seeing Frédéric take a breath to frame a softer answer, Frédéric’s hand reaching out to draw him back, hold him close beneath the coverlet—but then the frantic knocking, Pipper bringing word of Alek, Haden hasty to depart and now “Alek’s gone,” he says, taking up the brandy bottle, the yellow brandy Istvan supplies, winkled from those hotel bluebloods; and what a story that is, chapter and verse and more to come—though not a whisper yet to be said, kept between the two of them for now. “And I had to climb all the way to Eig to get him out. No, don’t fret,” to the sudden fear in Frédéric’s eyes. “It was shamming, he never saw me.”

“Alek—poor boy, he was going to play Titus Tithewell, and break Pipper on the Wheel. He said he was looking forward to that.”

“Well, you’ll have to write something else then. Why not try for the church pageant?” a harsh joke through the sadness—Alek one of his very first recruits, will he find work worthy of him, will he keep out of the fucking army?—looking up in surprise at Frédéric’s eyes, his telltale blush and “Don’t say,” even more harsh, “that you’ve thrown in on such ballocks! What, having them sing hymns in the street an’t bad enough?”

“How did—Are you spying on me, now?”

“Spying!” flinging down his cup to clatter and crack, staring at one another as Ru climbs silent down the stairs, hunkering on the last step as “Haden,” Frédéric the first to put out his hand, to be the better man, “you’ve said yourself that our shows are—”

“Your shows.”

“Our shows! Our theatre! And our empty pockets,” pulling his own inside out, the effect somewhat spoiled when a rain of coins falls and scatters to the floor, it is in fact rather comical but neither can see that now; Frédéric’s face is very red, Haden sucks hard at his scar, Haden whose own pockets are more empty still, the faro games already so chancy will feel Alek’s pinch, will shut their doors this week for certain, may be for even longer. “And I didn’t solicit the commission, he approached me—”

“Who approached you?” to bring a version of the story—leaving out only the gebackene Mäuse and the strange John Abram, who after conveying him to the door asked, as if already certain, Blum, that’s a Hebrew name, isn’t it—that even though abridged darkens Haden’s gaze to glittering gold, that folds his arms and “I forbid it,” flat. “You’ve got no business with that Cathedral crowd, even if your name is Seraphim. And that Krystof, he’s a paper-man, a forger—”

“He’s a man of letters—he studied at the Sorbonne. He has a letter of Shelley’s on his wall! And he’s offering me an opportunity—”

“To be fucked.”

“You are impossible! How can you say—”

“Because I know. Because I can read the street. Anyone but you could see it—Ru could see it,” as the child, summoned by his name, scrambles up to hang upon Haden’s trouser leg, tug two-handed at the hem of his coat. “If you weren’t so soft-hearted—”

“Soft-headed is what you mean,” reaching in anger and confusion for his hat, grabbing instead Alek’s peaked costume cap, Titus Tithewell’s blue brim and pigeon feathers; he drops it as if it scalds him; Ru picks it up. “But I’ll do as I think best, and make money for us honestly, not scrap about in the gutter for—”

“So I’m dishonest now?”

“You always were!”

“Only a bumpkin could be fooled by that fraudster!”

—as Frédéric at last snatches up the right hat, then his playbook and gypsy sack to exit furious past the alley door, though he does not slam it: never a door-slammer, Frédéric, no, he is too correct for that, the good boy, he could never be pinched for dealing cards nor being out without his papers, who got those papers for him in the first place? and “Damnation to them all,” Haden’s mutter to the angel who lies on the table, arms flung out as if in supplication, kyrie eleison, and where is his friend Faustus? Shall they both play in that holy pageant, march about with priests and upright merchants and whited sepulchers, or are dishonest devils not allowed? Frédéric’s father is an upright merchant, cocoa and coffee beans, and may be some fucking salt-bags on the side—becoming aware that his chewed lip pains him and that Ru is still tugging, Ru whose unknown father is surely damned, a thorough darkside masher, yet how wish it had not happened, that sin, when the fruit of it peeks up smiling at him now, blue hat sliding down over one eye and “Come see, Hay,” says Ru in his hoarse little voice, pointing up the stairs—

—to proudly show his little traps and toys and nest of papers in the room right across from Haden’s own, the room with the bed on which lies a letter sent to Frédéric, a good boy would not read someone else’s letter—especially with Tilde right there in the doorway, herself half a boy already in those trousers she fancies, may be she can spin Pipper on the fucking wheel! as “What happened to Alek?” she asks; she is sucking a stick of chicory, an oddly comforting smell. “I heard he got pinched.”

“Pinched right into the coop. But I got him out, and sent him off.”

“Good on you, for once, and the farther the better, for him. But we’ll miss the extra hands…. You two,” nodding to the letter, the bed, the empty room. “Quarreled, again.”

“Full marks for figuring that out. Now tell me what the fuck business it is of yours.”

Unperturbed, she bends to take from the floor a curled cravat, hang it neatly on a chairback and “He’s lost without you,” with no undue emphasis, she means just what she says but the words can have many meanings: and Haden gives her a look not without gratitude, a look that reminds Tilde of the cats she used to see in the village, the hunting cats come down from the hills, never to be held or even touched, but who might take meat from your fingers, or sleep awhile in the sun on the steps; Vasily used to say they were the souls of thieves who had died in those hills, come back to earth to hunt again. And what she says is only true, it is the hayrick and herself who keep this house in one piece and not a dozen, with Frédéric’s head in the heavens, and never learning yet when to stick the strainer in the tea.

Now “Baba,” she says, “time for your letters,” as Ru is led unwilling away and Haden turns back to his letter, to read and parse as if it were a novel that world of the bourgeoisie, a supremely safe world of rules and regulations from which Frédéric escaped, to come here, to do what? Accept a “commission,” an “opportunity”? And here so long, yet still so blind to the dangers, more at risk than any of the lads—

—those boys who prowl the streets still in twos and threes, a pair in the square right now, pretending to shine each other’s shoes while watching who comes and goes; but Haden’s army has lessened considerably, so many of the lads run off by the fighting or gone into a new kind of service, indentured in the townhouses where they used to peep through keyholes, pass pills, or kneel upon the beds. Now they carry packages, or attempt to groom horses, or escort through the streets the nervous matrons and their daughters, proving by their paid presence—some even wear an unofficial livery, a certain style of leather-billed cap—that those females are not prey or wanton strays, and may thus pass unaccosted by constables or sidewalk men. Frédéric in passing skirts just such a trio, two timid ladies with a hard-looking youth between them, a youth who eyes Frédéric with a covert invitation that he, head down, still furious, does not mark, that youth with an internal shrug to keep the ladies moving, conducting them to their afternoon’s engagement at a spirit party, wherein the great-uncle of the first woman is beseeched to appear with benisons from the world beyond, via a cloudy mirror and a series of shading scarves—the spirits, one is advised, cannot tolerate the glare of electric light—and a vial of holy water taken directly from the font of St. Mary of Dolors, to circumvent any devilish roamers in the air. The ladies’ own possible dolors are soothed proactively by the tray of primrose wine, offered to strengthen the nerves before those beseechments begin, and if there is more in the cups than mere wine—some rowdier spirits, say, masked by the sickly sweet syrup—the ladies never know it; though the escort youth must endure many hiccups and veerings on the way home, and no tip at all, since the ladies have already given all the funds they carried to the spirits’ corporeal guide.

The spirit parties are discussed in many other venues, from the dry skeptics’ to the passionate believers’: surely such antics are a bogey; surely such faith must prove their truth! One discussion in particular takes place in the shadow of the Cathedral itself, though no wine is distributed nor holy water either, at the residence of Alfred Elfred, stiff in new cassock and biretta, cowed unto stupidity by the presence of his own superior, the chill immaculate cardinal on his way to Rome, stopping specifically to consult about these affronts to both canon law and the Holy Spirit: “Such affairs have the whiff of hell about them,” says the cardinal, his accent strengthened by emotion, his noticeably walleyed gaze tracking from Alfred Elfred to the mayor to Prefect Konstantin to Felix Krystof, whose own trustworthy man, the convert John Abram, stands at the doors to prevent any secular interruptions. “And they dilute the awe in which the world of the spirit must be held. If any simonistic charlatan can conjure the blessed in Paradise—! You must do more to combat this,” coldly, as Alfred Elfred nods like a duncecapped schoolboy, and the mayor hurries to note that Herr Krystof, here, is assisting in the creation of an event that will edify the believers and overcome the dissenters, a great pageant of order and faith—

“And right on time,” says the Prefect, “before the conscriptions begin. The people have been unsettled since that funeral, they’re in need of comfort and direction, and this will give them both—many thanks to you, Herr Krystof, for your efforts. All you gentlemen shall be kept fully advised as events move forward, and yourself of course as well, Your Holiness,” a form of address more elevated than the red hat actually merits, but M le Cardinal does not correct him; pride is a sin, but it is human to sin, and even the saints are human.

If the city’s own spirit were to be conjured, that genius loci of the squares and mercantile avenues, the cafés and workrooms and classrooms and Park, it might show itself a mute and tired, fugitive figure, holding in place of the customary drinking vessel a train ticket, perhaps, or a blindfold such as a man requests before meeting the firing squad. Or it might wear beneath that blindfold the half-crazed gaze of the student of pleasure, just before all pleasures end; or the frown of the studious surgeon, as the city splits like rotten fruit halved by a hatchet, blighted entrails offered that no right-thinking god could accept; or perhaps it would wear the face of the businessman, the calm receiver of telephone calls and the maker of same, the habitué of the office and the officers’ room at the bank, having transmuted in fear and hard self-preservation from flitting spirit to the breathing air of commerce itself. If no one visits a fane, it dries and dies, or so antiquity teaches; conversely, if an entity is fed it must grow greater, and all the sustenance to be found in this city is based in money and steel—excepting only a small vagabond miscellany of faro cards, Taroc cards, trickled liquor, shat-upon Wheel, iris blossoms—the iris being the symbol of the loose woman or light-footed man—and wood shavings collected, perhaps, from the making of puppets or the construction of fine falsities meant to pass for what is true, holding in themselves a verity that no money can purchase nor steel puncture and destroy: for the true gods, whether they are named or nameless, name their own modes of sacrifice, and have always the final laugh and the final say.

A different and more muted laughter echoes, now, from a group exiting a restaurant, the blue-draped Metropolitan in which they were the only patrons, the luncheon arranged by their hostess in feathered toque and marten fur, very vocally annoyed: “I should never have chosen this place, that champagne was undrinkable. And the chops were dry as dirt,” though “Bijou adored them,” says Portia del Azore, bringing a chuckle from the diners, Bijou in fact half asleep in the arms of Roland Smalls, the last guest to exit, whose own laughter is a noise as rote as the moving hands on the restaurant’s clock, as he stops to watch another minute tick by: nearly half-past four, in a bare hour they shall be together…. He and Stephanos, Stephan, may I call you Stephan? to bring the half-smiling reply—Why certainly, call me whatever you’d like—taking, at last, the silver cigarette case from his jacket, extracting a smoke lit at once by the serving boy who had been waiting, it seemed, for just this moment, to lean in very close to that face. Pure chance even to have seen him at all, on another of Portia’s calculated rounds, slumming in the half-empty café: Stephan who has not returned to the hotel, the suite that waits for him so Will you come? he had asked finally, boldly, ridiculously, unable not to, the smoke stinging his watering eyes (such cigarettes! Are they made out of tree bark and iron sulfur?). Tomorrow? I must speak to you.

We’re speaking now.

Alone.

A theatrical glance over his shoulder, that little smile, and As you like. But it will have to be early, I’ve another engagement, though one unbrokered by Portia, Portia turning several interesting colors when afterward informed—Did he say where? Or for whom?—having watched them together, straining forward in the wobbly metal chair the way Bijou strains after squirrels in the Park, that rundown Park with its hooligans who have not even the decency to be picaresque, its roaming packs of bully-constables—

—one of whom has suddenly appeared now in his path, a young specimen, stiff collar rubbing a sore spot on the pudgy jaw and “Hold up, pin-picker,” loudly, rudely. “Let’s see your papers.”

“I beg your pardon,” as another constable steps to his side, this one grinning with contempt at Bijou, awake now and trembling in Roland’s arms. “I don’t need such credentials, I’m a visitor—”

“Puppy dog,” says the second constable, jabbing a finger into Bijou’s side. “Can it swim?” nodding toward the river as he grabs for the yelping dog’s collar, as the first constable loosens his truncheon: “I said papers! Now!”

—and “What is this idiocy?” the hostess even more annoyed, she and Portia to flank him, Portia claiming her dog, the hostess cold to the suddenly sullen constables: “I am Frau Theo Richter, this man is with me,” as she takes Roland by the arm, the constables’ snickers as “Oh dear,” says Frau Richter peevishly, stepping back, Roland’s shirtfront wet and odorous from frightened Bijou but “There are worse anointings,” says Roland; his voice is even, he is proud of that. “But what a churlish pair! Is it always this way?” to bring Frau Richter’s headshake, embarrassed now by her city’s crudity: “It’s only because of the war. But how they had the audacity to approach you—” as a cab is summoned at once to the sidewalk, the group climbing safely inside, rolling off in the direction of the Hotel Baron St. Williams while the constables watch them go; constables it seems on every corner, even the corners of the august avenue on which Frau Richter will alight, the high-gated townhouse where her husband sits reading through a flurry of new dispatches, half listening to her complaints until he lifts his gaze above steel half-glasses: It’s well things went no further, Madeline. Now is not the time to antagonize—

“Antagonize”? I did nothing! We did nothing—

It’s what you appear to be doing, and whom you do it with, that matters. Have your luncheons at the club from now on. Or here, nodding to the hallway where the house servants stand, a pair at the top of the stairs, a pair at the foot. They are there night and day, those men, in rotating shifts from inside to outside, each of them fully armed; some used to be constables themselves, until opportunity beckoned their way; a few others were mercenaries. None of them respect any man who is not some manner of soldier, whose hands lift only pens or liquor glasses, they have their own ways of punishing such men—

—though that punishing encounter has now become just a wry anecdote, offered, past the pop of another champagne cork, to amuse Istvan, in the safety and privacy of the hotel suite, Stephan busy sorting through his old leather trunk. He is dressed again in curious motley, heavy workmen’s boots but a shirt of impeccable linen, the coiled-snake cufflinks (a wounding detail, paired with the presence of the cigarette case, but never mind), a fine cane and hard-crowned bowler that he removes to reveal, tucked inside, a deck of faro cards, a cunning little sleeve fashioned to hold them so, for “If one is searched on the street, say,” with a nod in his direction, “the hat’s checked last of all, if at all. —If you plan on leaving this fortress much, you might want to start taking notes.”

“However do you know such things?” gold bubbles pouring, cascading into crystal: Novy Svet, not the best, but at least not the sorry domestic. He has changed his own soiled shirt of course, has spiffed and spruced with an ardor that would do a young romeo proud, his mustache hastily clipped and waxed, his scent of Barbados palm. “Such outré things…. You’ve been everywhere, yet you share so little of your most interesting past.”

“The past,” beckoning past the glass for the bottle, “is only a story,” as this room could be any or every room he has ever made sport in, boudoir and drawing room and jail cell, windows that lock and the rent paid by someone else; toujours perdrix, this stifling fucking repertory! yet again the stage is dressed, the bottle is in his hand so “Can you care so much for what I was?” tipping that bottle’s lip against his own, his tongue to regulate the flow, watching Roland through his lashes until “I care,” says Roland, through a tightened throat, “profoundly,” reaching at last to place his hands on those strong lean shoulders, as that story, or one story of that story, is performed: a kind of passion play of boxy anterooms and beckoning doorways, lies told and pleasures squandered, the whole a farrago far more satisfying than mere fucking ever could be to such a specimen as this, this man almost in tears of joy at the removal of a shirt, linen sliding past old aches and scars—

“Oh my dear—whatever happened, there? May I—”

“You may not,” backhanded to knock those hands away, to tell instead another story, a tale of that wounding that has less than nothing to do with its truth, that brings the stars to Roland’s eyes, imagining foul brigands and bright derring-do, like something out of Ivanhoe or the penny papers, Christ! can the man really be such a fool? Or has he spent his life, this hothouse flower, with his petals pressed up against the glass? Yet glass keeps out the elements, keeps a room warm, and flowers fresh, or almost so, that outside would die in an hour’s cold…. “The pretty little whore was a dab hand with a needle, but alas, I had to ride so hard her sewing popped, every stitch of it. It was the Russian margrave laced me up again,” forgetting as soon as the words fall what was said; he is watching the clock now, gauging its motion past the man’s ragged breath, like timing a masher to a carriage ride—

—but then Roland does something surprising: he stops, to perch again on the settee, his body trembling but his voice very steady as “Stephan—I know quite well that I’m nothing you could want, but that doesn’t stop me wanting you. We agreed that you would come here, and stay—not for long, perhaps, but—I would ask that it be longer. I’ve made my life to my own choosing, its circumstances and its comforts, and now I offer the same to you,” though what he offers most truly, this man, whether he knows it or not, is the great calm temptation of ease: the stateless, thoughtless ease that lucre always brings, champagne when one is thirsty, a curtain to draw against the darkness of the road, of night, death, suffering, the certainty once offered in Eden or Olympus, that one can live as the gods do. Would that it were true, and that one could share it as easily as opening a pocketbook, stealing a pocketbook, a little lad in a backroom might once have thought so but “Many thanks,” looking through his lashes as if from very far away, a distance never to be bridged. “But I have all that I need.”

“Can you think so? You deserve so much better than those cramped townhouse affairs—I would gladly, gladly undertake to finance a proper showcase for you. A theatre, say—” confused and wounded then by Istvan’s unpleasant smile, a baring of the teeth swift and ironical, nothing he could ever understand, nor Istvan’s laugh: “Il Paradiso! Butterfly, don’t try to buy me—”

“Never say such, never! It—it insults us both, dreadfully.”

“And yet it’s so.”

“It is not so! How can you think such a thing? I only mean to give,” proffering the envelope to add to the envelopes set aside, the fat folded hoard in the teakwood box, money to line a fine nest for Mouse, a cushion on which to lay his head, there in the room that once was theirs; has Milady kept it for them as Puss did, the rosewood landscape? This room is warm but his shoulder aches like fury, Roland’s hand gropes moistly for his own—

—as a knock comes to the door, brisk and sharp to still that hand, to knot the quilted dressing gown as Roland rises in frustration, trepidation, while Istvan at once tucks the money away, in case some foolishness should be in the offing; resuming his own shirt and cravat, a quick subtraction from the trunk as “I won’t quash your little party,” hatted head thrust halfway past the threshold, “but if you know where he is, then you must—Oh!” as a cold droll mazurka then ensues, Portia stepping forward and Roland stepping back, each aiming glances at the other, suspicion and dislike as Istvan considers them both, as if they are the show and he the audience: one can learn a great deal just by watching, that observation has been made before. So “Our business here is already concluded,” Istvan hat in hand with a bow to Roland, “so I’ll say bonjour. Or more properly bonsoir, for the sun’s set, hasn’t it—”

“Not quite yet,” lips thinned beneath the trim mustache, a scrim across the eyes. “Au revoir, Stephan.”

“—and you’ve business for me, Baroness, I can smell it,” one hand to the door of her suite now, separate rooms for separate plays, this room’s yellow draperies still open to frame the cityscape: that sepia cast like antiquity, the grandeur that was Rome, how much longer will these buildings stand? as “Business,” she says, “yes, very much so, and very good news,” rustling past in her narrow silks the color of cornstalks, the foolish hat set carefully upon a mahogany stand. “Frau Richter—Frau Theo Richter! Surely you know who she is—has invited us to an evening at Caesar’s Court.”

“Live and learn,” bending to pat Bijou, who, understandably still nervous, nips sideways at the reaching hand. “I was certain that the fellow was dead.”

“Caesar’s Court is a supper club, the most exclusive in the city,” jabbering on about chaise-reclining diners and marble baths, details to which Istvan pays no attention, attending instead to the look on her face, the way she pulls and tugs the lovelock, that absurd curl, the avid shine in her eyes when she talks of the quality, what they have, what they buy, what they might provide, past the gleam of the bed’s lemon-silk hangings, the smell of licorice in the air and “Why do you eat those?” he interrupts, pointing to the tin she holds. “Bellyache?”

“When one’s hungry, licorice keeps the—innards from rumbling. I learned that as a girl.”

“And the tin’s easy to palm from a sweet shop—you learned that as a girl, too, didn’t you,” to bring a different sort of smile from Portia del Azore, as if a well-worn mask might be suddenly peeled aside at one tight corner, an admission to rouse something nearer to his own authentic grin—“Ah, Baroness, I knew we had something in common! And I’d bet you can bunk like anything if you need to”—that in turn calls from her a tale familiar to Istvan, who seats himself at the table, the audience again, hands clasped at his knee to display the silver cufflinks, a display she eyes with gratified pride as the changing light from the window changes her face from brittle striver’s to a chambermaid’s on the make, Portia once Polly to chew her licorice and note that “Life’s hard, you’ve got to drink your share of the vinegar. But you can drink from a chipped cup or a goblet just the same, and I’d rather it be a goblet. Carried to me by a servant! As soon as I knew there were places like this,” one hand to indicate the draperies’ dangling tassels, the scarlet carpets, the lace that veils the coming of the dark, “I knew I wanted to spend my life there. Who wouldn’t? Dresses from Worth, traveling as you please, bijoux—” The dog’s ears flick. “There are paste jewels on his collar—Mme Ezterhaus has a leash all over pearls…. Once, in London, I saw a whole dressing table covered with pearls, and the bedding to match the walls, pea green and ochre, and pink Venetian lace. And a statue of Venus from Rome, holding a bunch of grapes made of gold, solid gold! Who wouldn’t want such things!”

“Some wouldn’t. Some don’t give a brass-assed farthing.”

“Don’t you? Were you born in a place like this?” knowing he was not, and he knowing that she knows, flashing then his own gutter breeding, presenting another little play: call this one perhaps “Dusan in Paris” as he makes a puppet of a butter spreader plucked up from the table set for tea, its handle ornate with raised silver roses, the design making it difficult to manipulate with dexterity, but he manages, since his wounded hand has healed so well; soon there will only be a scar, just another of many. And what a spot-on choice, a knife for this Portia!—for who can say when she herself might have turned the knife on someone, in someone, on the way from cup to goblet…. The knife dances from hand to hand to tabletop to teacup to a bottle of port, left there from yesterday’s supper, untouched as the tea gone cold but “Have a tot?” asks the knife in whining Cockney; she shakes her head but the knife insists, it dings and tings along the bottle’s rim as Istvan with his other hand splashes the wine into two cups, china as thin as the skinned ice on the puddles outside though “No,” says Portia, trying not to mar the mood, the odd playful malice as the knife and cup execute a small gavotte, Istvan’s face calm and almost pleased above, as if for just this moment he has lost himself in play, a trusted respite from heartache, from the dark’s devouring edge until “No,” Portia again and more strongly, sharp to turn her chin as if she truly is assaulted, the butter spreader pressed hard to her throat as Istvan holds the cup to her lips, his touch there very gentle, almost a lover’s; he can feel her heart pounding.

“No,” she says again, then “Please.”

“In vino veritas,” with a shrug, Istvan or Stephanos or whomever he might be at this moment; perhaps he is a young man with a broken heart on a bed, gazing at a middle-aged whore with bounteous tits; as Portia is both Portia and Polly, and a mink tensely watching a fox. He balances the knife upon his palm, as if he plays a different game now, with gravity, with certain loss; picks up the other teacup, drinks it empty; then smiles at her, a smile of a certain weight, or invitation; she is still trembling; Bijou begins to bark. “But can you imagine, Baroness, that a leash makes you a lady? Tell me now,” sipping at his cup. “Why do you do this?”

“Do what?”

“Work for them. Play for them.”

“You play. For years! I’ve heard all the stories, there’s nowhere you haven’t been. And if you’d let me, I’d be right there beside you,” both knowing that she does not reference desire, or if desire not one that leaps from a woman to a man and back again, but a yearning instead to possess, a small gift eyeing a greater, lusting for it, hungry to use it for weapon and whip: to hold that leash, that power that comes from controlling the more powerful still. “You can make them do things, do just as you wish! That faun in there,” nodding sidewise to Roland’s rooms, “he’d jump off a bridge if you said he ought! And we could go it even better, play for kings and queens—”

“You think so.”

“I do. I know so! How else to get on? There is no other way.”

“You think not,” says the knife, which is then tossed down to the tablecloth, just a knife again, a tool for spreading butter on crumpets. “When and where is this Caesar’s supper?” Istvan now so indifferent it is as if they have shared nothing at all, and so she is unsurprised when he prises off the cufflinks and drops them to the tabletop, watching her watch him do so as “Where I go,” he says, “such delightful ornaments might be taken from me. Think how desolate I’d be then…. Cheerio,” in Cockney with hat resumed, with the griffin-headed cane, with pent energy like a trail of gunpowder to trail him down the stairs, into the half-emptied lobby, into the cold twilit street where the first person he sees is one of Haden’s boys, grimy vest and cigarette cupped in a grimier paw and “He says come to the church,” the boy’s nod as soon as he spots Istvan, who nods back and flips a tip that is taken from the boy a moment later by a constable—“Pay your rent, rat, or move along”—whose fellow watches Istvan disappear, through a little knot of Widows weeping their way along the street; it is a sin to hit a woman, so the constable only shoves their leader in the back, to send the bunch scurrying homeward, where women belong.

The Cathedral with its stairstep saints is even busier than the avenue, with a constant parade of those who pray or wish to be observed doing so, and those for whom the mammoth edifice, its iron-barred doors and golden tableware, gives a solace nothing else can provide. Even Frédéric is there, feeling both at home and a fugitive, on his way back from a talk with Felix Krystof: in a dim strange anteroom of a club called Caesar’s Court, martial stands of saw-toothed ferns and statues draped and undraped, they took their cooling kaffee beneath a pair of marble men posed naked and arm in arm—Hadrian, said Felix Krystof, and Antinous. Quite an artistic example—as Frédéric pretended he did not blush, and Felix Krystof pretended the same, pretending as well an interest in Frédéric’s ideas for the pageant, his earnest explanations: I see it as a pasquinata, wherein the statues of the Cathedral might be used to show citizens the truth of our city’s situation. That vast statue of the angel on the north stairway, say—

Very different from fellows like these.

Yes…. It’s an old, truly a classical, way to offer a political truth, as Felix Krystof nodded and asked questions, apparently germane, and shook hands cordially as they parted; his unfriendly majordomo nowhere to be seen this time, which was a comfort; though the candles Frédéric has just dedicated, two thin and oily-burning stalks set before the pale Virgin, brought less comfort than he had hoped they might: one for his own mother, to keep her where she ought to be, and one for Haden, to open his eyes…. Frédéric does not know that Haden is, at that very moment, open-eyed and not twenty steps away from him, watching from the bustle of the nave, his gaze a brooding mingle of ferocity and tenderness, following Frédéric to the doors and then the steps where he stops to tug on his gypsy cap—thinking himself disguised that way, when it only makes him stand out more! And this is the man who believes he can navigate Krystof!—then heads down, pausing halfway to nod to Mr. Ridley waiting there in his disreputable duster, Mr. Ridley who continues to pace and check his watch, and pass a bare two steps from Istvan, whom neither Frédéric nor Mr. Ridley see nor notice at all, that once-a-gent in work boots and cloudy brown spectacles, tapping his cane against the pavement, soliciting alms from the crowd—“Mutilé de guerre! Help an old feller out!”—until “May be you need a better corner,” Haden biting his lip to chase the laugh. “Were you blind already, when you pinched those glasses? You look like a penny-handler on the Bridge.”

“It was either those or this,” showing in his coat, like a hidden weapon, the plague mask, its whiteness soiled somewhat by the years, like a soul stranded in Limbo. “And either way, one must play, yeah? It’s time and fucking past time.—You’ve got Mouse’s papers?”

“Yours, too,” taking from his own coat the citizens’ certificates, all seemingly officially stamped and signed. “And I did as you said, but I’ll say again, uncle, it’s bally mad to use that name,” the man’s own name, Rupert Bok but “Why not tell the truth for once?” Istvan slipping the certificates safely beside the mask, near to his heart; he almost smiles. “Who’d ever suspect it? Now, we’re to steal from the church, is that the game?”

“Almost. I want to see what’s in their pageant box,” plucking up a stray pebble to shy at Mr. Ridley: who starts, peering all around the crowd, finally spotting them to sail over with a crow of “Gentlemen!” so loud that Haden wishes for another stone and larger, and Istvan frowns—“He’s not part of our charades?”—but still is all smiles when Mr. Ridley arrives, Mr. Ridley himself a walking smile of triumph for “I thought I’d never pin you down, sir!” as the three leave the stairs to cross the avenue, past a newspaper bawler assuring that “The Vigilist knows!” to a narrow stand selling the day’s last tea and cross buns, the repast grandly hosted by Mr. Ridley, as somewhere, scribbling and re-scribbling a mounting column of figures, Nella shudders without knowing why. “I thought you might already be on your way elsewhere, M Marcus, and understandably so. This city is a deal too small for you, and the foolish prohibitions on plays—”

“Shut it,” Haden says, “or be softer. Right there’s a pair of fucking Sanitaries,” come to the booth beside the tea stand, its sagging awning still touting FINE LADIES’ BOUQUETS & CORSAGES, its slatted counter piled with weedy blossoms meant solely to lay at the feet of the Cathedral statues. One Sanitary argues over some Michaelmas daisies—plucked in what was once the Lady’s Garden, now a growing wilderness of wild chrysanthemums, bent rose canes, unclipped yew and spurge—while the other peers more closely at Istvan, who has shed the shielding glasses, tugs the pearl at his ear as Mr. Ridley continues to extol his possible prospects elsewhere, in Paris, or London, or even “America, sir, have you been? No? Oh, you really ought to go.”

“And do what there?”

“Why, be a sensation, sir!”

Even Haden must smile at that earnestness; Istvan laughs; and thus emboldened, Mr. Ridley reaches into the duster’s vast pockets for a few representative photographs, both strange and risqué: a statuesque young lady on a kind of rocking horse, a man on stilts who seems to manipulate a puppet, who is himself a man without stilts and trussed in strings and “That one’s jolly,” Istvan says, hand behind his back to dump out the watery tea. “Did you make that picture?”

“No. But I would make even better ones, if you’ll consent. In my studio— That little monster of a puppet you showed, he looks quite the spirit! And Nella in a gown, say, or better without—she’s got a figure to make a man’s mouth water—”

“Softer, I said!” for the Sanitaries are frankly listening, the tea-stand man is listening, all those cocked ears and shared glances, Istvan’s calming wink to Haden as he lights a cigarette, tosses the spent match at one of the Sanitaries, and begins to lead them back toward the Cathedral, seemingly only strolling, explaining his philosophy of performance as they go: “Pictures or playing, it’s all the same—the groundlings want to see the word made flesh. And they need one to be what they wish to be, not a man as they are,” but “You’re not as they are. Not a bit of it,” says Mr. Ridley, a compliment that Istvan accepts as such: with a little bow, a smoke ring puffed into the air, a ghostly dissipating halo. “But how can you perform, sir, when all the show-houses are shut up tight as a tick on a horse’s backend? That’s the conundrum! My own studio—you’ve been to my studio, recall? You and your fellow—oh, and my sympathies, sir. It was a real tragedy, that fire.”

“Yes,” says Istvan briefly; for a moment his gaze is gone from them, gone back to a broken puppet and a body falling through darkness, screams and flames and the Wheel whirling; that Wheel spun again in his dreams last night, his own hands straining to drag it to a stop, Mouse watching from some corner with a book closed upon his knee—was it a journal, Benjamin de Metz’s old journal? The cover was black, the pages bright red…. And waking again to the smell of sour damp, a spatter—is it? of red on the bedclothes tugged to ward the growing cold, and Mouse in the chair, busy over some writing he thinks he conceals: hiding his copybook as a boy would, a schoolboy, spectacles pushed down his nose the better to see. Before sleep they had wrangled, Rupert stubborn as a boy, yes, folding his arms at the mere mention of a physician, shifting his gaze to the dark-paned window, what did he see in all that night? as We had the doctor for my eye, didn’t we, and all’s still shadow. And you too, that surgeon in Paris—

That doesn’t count, the fellow was a fool.

And neither one did fuck-all.

So do what instead? Drink that silly potion, and— You could at least stay out of the God damned rain!

All it does here is rain, until it snows. And I’m not so ailing that I need to keep indoors and abed, like some old granny—

You could keep abed with me. And let me read your little book, but he did not say that last; let there be some sweet secrets still between them, as he keeps his own secrets if never so sweet: the money in the letterbox is quite a sum now, and there will be even more past that Caesar’s frolic, if the Baroness stays true. This frolic, now, the kit’s foray into the shadow of the Church—

—as his gaze returns as if from a lifetime’s distance, coming to bear on that backdrop, its blind angels and black marble and “The best way to honor a showman,” he says, “is with a show, n’est-ce pas? Perhaps,” with another halo’s puff, “something with a whiff of the miraculous. For the moment, we have only the notion of such—and my little monster, did you call him so?” taking off his hat to slip out the deck of faro cards, take two between his fingers, a flash of yellow and a wink of blue and “L’une pour l’autre,” making the cards bow to each other, to Haden, to Mr. Ridley, who says “My studio, sir—it’s just a ’bus ride away—”

—but Istvan is bowing now to a pair of students in ascension, perhaps come to pray that the school doors be kept open and the army from its halls, two very young men in slouch caps and satchels who stand right where he stops them, half-wondering, half-afraid, as if the world they walked in only a moment before has vanished, and this smiling man has abducted them into another: as Istvan makes the cards to flutter at their peach-fuzz cheeks and whisper in their ears, comic things, improper things to rouse their giggles, their glances each to the other—

“Have you ever done such?” the blue card murmurs.

“With a lady?!” the yellow card squeaks.

—as Mr. Ridley watches, his chuckling attention the seed of a growing crowd, Haden watchful and impatient to nudge Istvan as a priest approaches, and “Good evening, Reverend,” says Istvan with a bow, the small impromptu puppets palmed flat, the students his accomplices now to bow beside. “We were just about to offer a prayer for the safety of the city.”

“You— Yes,” looking Istvan up and down, this pudgy clergyman in coat and peaked hat, smelling of incense, of rubber and potted meat. “Yes, certainly, a very good thing to do. But you should do so inside, my sons, not out on the public steps.”

“But the Spirit is everywhere,” says a little voice, the blue card’s voice, one of the students laughs and “Isn’t that what Scripture teaches?” the yellow card adds as the priest, flummoxed, looks from Istvan to the students both laughing now, unable not to, believing them the source of the comments. Someone in the crowd says “It’s the tall gent, Reverend,” and “It’s spirits,” cries a young lady in black, a young Widow with a gaunt eye and great improbable bosom. “The spirits of the dead, they come back! They always come back—”

“That’s heresy,” snaps the priest to the Widow, “that’s a sin,” and then “Disperse,” he says sternly to the students, to Istvan, Istvan whose face wears a look of innocent inquiry, of burlesque contrition, of perfect concentration, this Stephanos more reckless now and less accountable, as if all smaller stakes are behind him, as “’The Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,’” ostensibly in answer, “good King James made sure we knew it so. Have things changed so much since those days, that God must hide in a box?” as a balding man behind the young Widow suddenly finds courage to aver that “I saw my old brother plain as day, right there at the Wounded Lion. He was smiling at me, he had both his legs again,” and “I saw St. Uriel,” calls a woman in a faded platter hat, “at a spirit party! He told me himself he was St. Uriel, he had eyes just as shiny as a cat’s—”

“It was not St. Uriel! That is heresy, those parties are heresy!” the priest beginning to grow frantic, as if he flounders in the depths of a rising wave, other people calling out their own sightings or debunkings, arguments flaring, the young Widow starting to weep in loud gulping sobs: as Haden shoves hand to pocket, nodding hard with his chin to send Mr. Ridley up the steps, Mr. Ridley in a swivet of dismay and elation—if only he had his camera rig! for the pure chiaroscuro, the dying light on these faces, the darkness making of them living masks, just eyes and moving mouths—yet there are soldiers now too, no crowd can come together without soldiers, a pair already on the steps with truncheons out as “If we pray,” Istvan calls, the cards having prudently vanished, “let’s pray that when we meet the spirit we’ll know him, and know to tip him, too. It’s a bally long way from Heaven to here, wouldn’t you say so, junior?” to the nearest constable, who seems to deem him the source of all the trouble, who puts hands on him and then abruptly draws back, as if having thought better of it, who sinks to his knees as if in prayer though his cupping hands are now at his trousers, in the wake of the griffin-headed cane—

—as Haden’s hands are propelling Istvan up the steps, into that seemingly safer dark that winks its dozens of candles, the faint scent of cut roses, a bride’s bouquet left as tribute by a virgin to the Virgin and “For fuck’s sake, uncle,” Haden’s harsh whisper, “I thought you came to help,” and “Apologies, kit,” apologetically, switching hats with Haden, his hair tucked inside that short-billed cap, coat pulled tight, a proper workman now, as Mr. Ridley, an eager shadow, beckons them at the end of the aisle. “It was just that he reminded so much of that shako priest, the one that Mouse sent packing. He used to roost at the Heads or Tails, remember—Good evening, Reverend,” reverently as another priest pauses at the foot of the choir loft, this one turning to gaze back at Haden, then again as if in greater recognition, bringing Istvan’s murmur—“Shall I give you a moment?”—as Haden seizes his arm, seized with the sudden hilarity one feels wherever laughter is forbidden: “Come on,” while above them the choir rehearsal begins, Schubert’s Agnus Dei accompanied by the noises echoing from the steps outside, that disturbance well on its way to becoming a riot—

—that sends its ripples down the avenue, then lesser avenues, propelling the nervous more swiftly off the streets, perking the ears of those who still care to hazard when the sun goes down; but not so far as to be heard at the quiet Cornucopia, where several customers sit paging through the evening newspapers, primarily the Civic Guardian although one or two prefer the Fanfare, these men no more burghers and drapers but of less certain or remunerative employments, men who keep their gazes to themselves as they nurse their tea, or beverages somewhat stronger, among them a specialty of the house named the “O-be-joyful,” though it does not seem to be living up to its name; nor does the so-called cocoa that, to Rupert’s disgust, tastes mainly of indeterminate grit.

He pushes the half-emptied cup past his copybook, and takes a swig from the bottle in his pocket, a mixture of the beldame’s syrup and whiskey, a workable potion that calms the cough if not entirely quells it, and quiets the dry red murmur of the pain. Once or twice he has tried other things: laudanum, and a folded paper of greenish powder picked up on the road, the barroom healer insisting that he take it gratis—I won’t have a cent for it, it’s a gift from the Lord is what it is, they can saw off yer arm and yer’ll never even know it! Go on, try—and he had tried, and had felt that, yes, that powder might have come from another world, but it was a world he had no desire to visit, pain or no pain: that night Istvan had thought him drunk, had been amused and a little puzzled—Why so jolly, Mouse? Are we celebrating?—and worried, too, enough to wake him when he thrashed about in his dreams; they were not good dreams, as if Hell itself were tugging at him, cold hands in stifling darkness, the General’s flat unblinking eyes…. The monks had been quite descriptive of Hell, highest on the roster of punishments justly meted out to sluggards, though less so on Heaven, it being, like the old cook’s sweety-bag, something rarely deployed in the case of orphan boys. Still the saints were there, like knightly St. Martin, men who had done well on earth and were rewarded like good soldiers for the doing; if there were women saints they were less discussed, except for the Virgin and those who died as virgins, the highest possible honor for a girl. Several of the boys made lewd jokes upon this topic, chiefly on the waste of it, and were punished by being made to stand barefoot on the icy cobbles, shouting Pater Nosters till they cried; and Rupert to watch those tears having not joined in the joking, knowing even then that girls and their virginity were not for him.

A youth now passes the café windows, quick-stepping, then stops as if seized, rocking back on his heels, and enters: a quaint-looking youngster in long coat and cap, leading a much smaller boy whom he aims at once at Rupert, that solitary fellow at the table with his book and pen, sitting as he used to when this café was called Die Welt, when he came each day for his “Chocolat, chocolade,” says the blue-eyed youth, lips fighting a lovely smile, “Šálek čokolady,” Tilde pulling up a chair to seat herself across the table, Ru at her side and “Don’t drink that,” she adds, knuckling the cocoa cup aside. “I’ll make you something much better. —You’re here, then. You’ve come.”

“To see,” Rupert says, nodding to the half-shuttered window, the Mercury, that sanctuary once chosen with such care; how long ago that all seems, and yet to see it now it is as if only a moment has passed, though the building itself needs serious attention with a hammer, needs window glazing, and paint; surely things are neater inside, Tilde would never allow such alarming shabbiness to stand…. A part of him wants nothing better than to pass again through those doors, take Istvan to those rooms that once were theirs, look out that window and drink whiskey and let his eyes close; they have been traveling so long, a lifetime, surely both of them have earned some rest. If he had had his way, before —But his promise given was a promise kept, if Istvan would have no home but the one they made each night, then very well.

And in some ways it has been very well, in shouldering the load Istvan has been more than helpful, he has been masterful, not only in his playing—and such playing! Like watching a man not just walk but dance on water, agile on the surface of enormous deeps, giving glee as he takes it himself: in those deeps, in the roll of Mr. Castor’s eyes, in the exhortation to “Thumb your nose!” loud enough for the heavens to hear—but in the plain before-and-after too, keeping the course plotted and an eye on the door, doing as he has not done before yet doing all well; there is no end to this man’s surprises.

And for himself the surprise of a lightness of heart at the heart of such simplicity, in keeping nothing beyond what one can carry, the traps and the bag, and every dawn still to offer its ancient novelty, the world renewed once more like a show when the curtains part, even through war and weariness and roads made primarily of mud, backaches and frozen toes and bellies tired of dried apples and hard bread: a world whose fine avenues and dire alleys, noisy taverns and velvet-draped townhouses have all been theirs, to take up and hold, then toss down careless as a pair of dice; how many lives they have lived, if only for a night! There have been nights upon that road when, his arms around sleeping Istvan, his own gaze half-open to track the queenly moon, he had felt—foolish to say so, perhaps, but it is true—he had felt immortal, as if the puppets and the concertina and even the truncheon had bestowed upon them some sweet form of everlasting life. For if That tramping is for boys, and so it is, so it has made them in some strange, kind way to be young again, grey as their beards might be, and scoured up with illness and scars: as if the fountain of eternal youth is a spring trickling under a lonely bridge, a clean cistern in an empty courtyard, a tin cup drunk beneath a canvas awning, waiting for the rain to clear and the journey to resume.

Now the boy is looking at him, Tilde’s boy with Tilde’s eyes; and he not so much older himself when he found himself alone at the door of the monks’ house. Well, no such worries for this little fellow, with his mother and family and home, this boy to whom he offers not a smile—he knows at once that this is not a smiling child—but a nod, a half-grave salutation that the child returns as gravely, and “Baba,” says Tilde; Rupert sees all at once that she is very close to tears. “Tell the gentleman your name.”

“Rupert,” says the child; he has a hoarse voice, like a sturdy small crow’s. “My name is Rupert Bok.”

“That’s my name too,” says Rupert, reaching to shake his hand, the little paw disappearing into his own clasp, that hard hand with its twisted finger that has made music and made a fist, held a knife to send life spilling from men’s throats, held Tilde when she wept that yes, she was to have a child, this child; he glances then to her throat, expecting somehow to see the locket there with the little curl of hair, as she, guessing his gaze, minutely shakes her head: “Not dressed like this,” one hand to indicate her street youth’s weeds, the other swiping quickly at her eyes. “I keep it safe at home.”

“Is it safe, there? For you? —Will he drink some milk?” nodding to the boy, who is now inspecting his pen, curious fingers to prod the nib, to make a dark line on the folded newspaper left behind by some other customer—the Patriots’ Intelligence, stiff headlines like marching soldiers, solemn men pictured on the steps of a bank—but “They get their milk from dogs here, it’s worse than when that skinflint was in charge. Quick it, tea,” Tilde snapping fingers for the server, peremptory and gruff, talking from a corner of her mouth like a cornerside tough to Rupert’s suppressed amusement, what an actress she can be when she likes! And then with shame he recalls another rôle she played, at that theatre across the way, the smoke and shatterings, her scream, that terrible scream and “I’m sorry we had to fool you,” he says quietly, holding her gaze since he cannot hold her hand, not here as they are, two fellows at a table. “There was no other way, but if I could have it back again, I’d try to find one.”

“I wouldn’t. It worked. —Baba, don’t,” as Ru now investigates the copybook, looking over one shoulder to gauge what the tall gentleman will do, that other Rupert Bok, who nods then hoists him upon his lap to more easily reach the pages as “Go on,” that Rupert says, “write away,” so Ru carefully scrawls onto a blank page the letters that he sees, the question mark like the curly tail of a pig, as his mother and the stranger talk across the table, over his head, his mother who wears trousers sometimes and sometimes a dress, his mother whom he is cautioned not to call “Mama” when she wears those trousers, but “Garçon” instead. This does not confuse or distress him, since everything in his world is always changing its clothing and its face, while remaining inside just the same: Pipper is a burglar or a barking beast, the other boys are other things, Frédéric giving them hats to wear and things to say, even his adored Hay is sometimes someone else entirely, when he wears the mask and makes the angel fly. If Ru had words for such phenomena, which at his age he does not nor needs them either, he might consider it all a kind of transubstantiation, the being’s true essence shining through whether it is cloaked in felted fur, painted wood, newspaper, or hung from strings, and in fact might be better off disguised in such things, and more entertaining, too.

The talk now is not entertaining in the sense that pleasantries are offered or happy news exchanged, in fact all they seem to speak of is soldiers and fighting, Rupert blowing on the tea which is only marginally more acceptable than the cocoa and “I hear men talking,” he says quietly, “in the hostel, on the corners—I stay back from the arcades and the quality cafés, those sorts of places, but everywhere else all I hear is fear. These,” tapping the discarded Intelligence, “seem to say so, too, except for the ones who insist that all’s well no matter what. So how do you fare, all of you, when things are so dark?”

“We keep the doors locked. Most of the time,” telling him then of Frédéric and the shows, a tale he has heard differently from Istvan—Alas, our boys have forgotten the lessons we schooled them, it’s all Judy and no Punch—a tale that Tilde augments with the companion tale of those companions’ estrangement, Frédéric embroiled in some unknown foolishness with the pageant, Haden up in arms and in the streets “But with not so many lads as before, they’re mostly gone, or run away—Alek ran away, remember Alek? Sometimes they find work in the hotels or the hospitals, or just beg, or rob. Grown fellows do so, too, not just the boys—”

“Like that cut-throat you cut,” his gaze gone flat, an anger that warms Tilde like a hearth fire. “We’ve seen it too, on the way here. Times are bad everywhere, ‘modern men’ or not.”

“And soon to be even worse,” with a stoic’s shrug. “That’s why you’re back home to stay. Aren’t you?” in sudden doubt, the little mustache drooping damply as a frown but “It isn’t safe here,” says Rupert softly. “Laws or no laws he’ll play, he can’t help himself, and then what will happen to all of you? Once,” the memory in flower, as fresh as if it happened just that day, “once as lads we walked a townhouse wall, a brick wall nearly high as a tree,” picking their way like mountain goats, himself sure-footed in the lead, Istvan behind through the lock-snapped window with pinched gewgaws and a bottle plucked in passing, some apricot concoction that made them both sick, afterward. “They never would have seen us, the guards, but he had to stop and make the fountain statue talk,” Istvan’s eyes sparkling in the twilight, Listen, Mouse! as the half-draped naiad called out plaintively My pretty cunny’s cold! to spook the burghers who whistled up those guards, who chased the gutter boys and almost caught them, the escape then no doing of their own but a gift of what they used to call Krampus luck: the satyr’s wink, the purest chance to send a wagon across the avenue, its axle cracking, the horses shied then wild, tossing the load. “They had sticks as stout as tree branches, may be they were tree branches, if they’d laid hold of us we would have been in a sorry state! And our pockets were sagging full of—Never mind,” glancing down at the child on his lap, feeling the laugh in his chest, side by side with the cough that he manages to stifle; Ru looks up as his body shakes. “So that’s twice the chance for trouble: he’ll be on the stage come Hell or worse, and of all the places I ought be, that’s the last, the spot where I di—”

“Don’t,” sharp, so sharp that Ru drops the pen, climbs down from the gentleman’s knee to stand beside Mama Garçon. “Don’t say it. And trouble—if we’re safe at all we could be safer, the hayrick’s passable, but—we need you. I need you—”

—as Ru twists and tugs his fingers free from Mama, she squeezes so hard it is like having them stuck in a door! Once he was stuck so, in the pantry where he ought not have been, taking licks from the molasses jar, the door hinge hurt like fire. But then Hay came and popped his hand free, poured cool wine across the red-and-white marks and Quick it, Hay had said, suck your fingers, it will drown the hurt. And it had, right away, though the taste was very sour…. Hay knows everything.

Now Mama is pushing back her chair, the gentleman has put away the pen, it seems as if they might be done talking so Ru puts on his cap and marches past the table, one-two-three-turn, as he has seen the soldiers do on the Bridge. One-two-three-turn, one-two-three—and then is nearly knocked sidewise by the door, by men entering, not soldiers but constables marching up to the counter, pushing the tea man out of the way. Hay hates constables, so Ru hates them too, so he reaches down to his little boot heel, that has stamped through every muck puddle on the way across the square, to take a fat clump of the same and fling it at one of the constables, a very accurate throw for such a little lad—

—as the covertly watching café crowd stiffens as one, the men hiding their brief mirth or consternation behind their newspapers, Tilde quick to snatch at her son and “Little bastard,” snarls the constable, wiping at his neck, “think you’re funny? Let’s see some papers. Yours, too,” to the tall man at the table with his book, he is too old for a scholar so why would he have a book? “Who’re you, oldster? Their father?”

Everyone is watching now, the patrons and the servers, everything is quiet as “Yes,” says Rupert, rising, “I am. And the child meant no harm, his—brother will give him a good sound hiding as soon as we get him home. So—”

“Shut it, no one asked you for a speech. Papers, or else!” so Rupert slips his spectacles into his pocket, seems to rummage there for his citizen’s certificate—

—then two-handed tips the table to use it as a shield, advancing at once on the constable and his fellow, driving them back toward the counter from behind which the serving boy leaps like a frightened stag, holding them at bay so Tilde and Ru may escape —

—but Tilde does not escape, instead she too leaps the counter to grab up one of the steaming hot pots, hurling the boiling water to drench the second constable, he roars and sags and “Go!” she shouts to Ru, “go home!” as the child struggles to open the café door, Rupert swinging the table by its legs to take down the first constable, fold him in half like a page in a book: and then he and Ru and Tilde and every man at every table exit en masse, leaving behind only fallen newspapers, half-filled cups, and a clay pipe smoldering in a saucer, as if the café has been the site of a magic trick, where all were made at once to disappear—

—while Rupert, Ru scooped to his arms, cuts across the square and around the corner, doubling back for the alley where Tilde with coat and copybook races to turn the lock, and fling open the doors of the Mercury: on dimness and the smell of old solvents, the warped floors and new flaws and singed familiar curtains, the strange glad feeling of homecoming as Rupert, half-breathless, stops to take it all in: while Frédéric, alarmed, halts on the staircase to watch Tilde tearing off her mustache and throwing on a handy skirt, a cape from “The Turning Wheel” show, fortune’s favorite sprinkled with stars, while Ru regards this man—his father! He did not know he had a father—with a mixture of awe and much interest, wondering if his father might take out the fine pen once more, and may be that writing-book, too—

—as Frédéric reaches the bottom of the stairs, reaches for the brandy Istvan has left, reaches to extend his hand: “Welcome back, Herr Bok!” and “Rupert,” says Rupert, as he and Frédéric share a drink and Tilde drinks, too, all of them straight from the bottle, washing away for later any questions that could be asked. Then “Baba,” Tilde calls, “come with me,” to the kitchen washtub, to scrub his hands with the detestable lye soap, while Mamma instructs him sternly that he must never, ever throw things at constables, not when the constables can plainly see who does the throwing—

—as on the table the cards, Tilde’s cards she never carries as a lad, lie jostled from their kidskin sack into a jumbled spread of hare and Scribe, the king of crowns and the king of doves and the Jongleur facedown between them, the Whirlwind and the Harlot and old Hangs-a-man above, as if whatever deity controls such paper destinies thought it helpful to display them, to remove all uncertainties sorrowful or otherwise, and make straight the way to the conclusion of the tale. If there are certainties displayed, and there are, having to do with the lives and deaths of the members of the household old and new, their equerries and acolytes, no one reads them, for Frédéric is busy telling Rupert a condensed version of what has passed here since their fiery parting, and Tilde is busy stirring soup and giving the bedchamber one last airing, and Ru is busy charging about with a stool, pretending to knock down the ninepins-made-constables, who once were brigands to menace a knight upon the road, as everyone in the theatre must double rôles from time to time. The cards are swept back to their sack without consultation, as spoons are deployed, and onion soup and a form of chocolat accomplished though “No mineral water,” says Tilde regretfully, “or cigars,” but “I oughtn’t smoke them anyway,” Rupert says, thinking of Istvan; word must be sent to that canal side hostel, to bundle up the puppets and traps, and bring the show back home —

—but as if he has already received that word, or foreseen it, when the key next turns Istvan is there, Haden beside him, with a pocketful of pictures and a censer made of gold, a folded sheet of scribbled names, a shriveled pippin apple and a pear and “Mouse,” says Istvan with a nod, as if his presence at the table makes perfect sense. “I brought you something,” taking from his coat the citizens’ papers and the plague mask, dropping both beside the deck and the teacups and clean-scraped bowls, the rind of black bread, the little china tub of roasted beets. Rupert leans back in the chair to reach for Istvan’s hand, kiss and set it to his shoulder, Istvan who gives a look meant only for Rupert, its depth unguessable by any other, and then a smile for those others, playful and measuring and “Hoopla,” he says. “The Mercury’s reopened!” as Ru trots to Haden who looks to Frédéric who gazes back at him, as Tilde uncorks the brandy again, and the flammable homemade beer; as Pipper and the confrères shrug one to another, and rise from roost or nest as if they could choose to be nowhere else, in the shadow of the shrouded Wheel and bodiless hung masks, broomsticks, and discarded false money, the dozen’s dozen bits of business and bric-a-brac that in the right hand, or hands, become whatever might be needful, whatever vision suggests or suggestion demands, what the gods decree or even the godlings, for power resides not only in the great, but is found everywhere that any magic, black or white, is made: and the smaller and more decrepit the better, for who suspects the decrepit, or the dead, or the wooden man with only one arm and one eye? “For one can’t have a theatre without a name, and the old name was the right one, don’t you think? Let the groundlings cry the Mercury, then! And let us play.”

In the city that night, perhaps any city anywhere, there is no more satisfying homecoming, although mainly a quiet one, nothing untoward to rouse the interest of any passing constables or informers, or even the unfriendly shoemaking neighbor; no one hears the celebration, sees the Faustus and Israfel twirl to the music of whistles and tapping sticks and the lads’ laughter and applause, watches Ru tumble to sleep in the depths of Ixion’s fierce wheel as Frédéric, unusually tipsy, tugs Haden up the stairs for a most dramatic enactment requiring neither dialogue nor costumes; sees Tilde light the way on those stairs to the rosewood landscape, to be rewarded by kisses from both the room’s inhabitants, and a great and gentle embrace from Rupert, to whom she clings with a heart so light she feels herself to be a bottle of champagne, full and bubbling, as if she could not hold another drop. It is Istvan’s task at last to draw the purple drapes and bring the evening to a close, as Rupert drops to sleep in dreamless warm content, not after all on the catafalque bed so well-remembered, but the narrow, loving confines of the cot, the copybook beneath, as the muted tympani of the street begins outside, the dawn a guest arrived too late to join the fun.

It is a dull dawn as well as a tardy one, with rain in its train, and much grumbling from the denizens of the square, the already-wet conductors surly to the ’buses with their surlier passengers. The grey snake of the river is pocked and bubbled by that rain, pleasing the swans and the sturgeon, splashing the passersby on the Bridge, who unfurl umbrellas with shiny spearlike tips, or use newspapers to ward its dripping, the faces in those papers’ pictures smeared and clouded as if by grief, their headlines—CITIZENS ASKED TO SHOULDER THEIR CITY’S BURDENS! “ANY MAN NOT A SOLDIER IS A SPY”—another sort of grief long in the making, its mending nothing any here will live to see.

At the spattered hotel window, Portia del Azore, in a wrapper of burnt-orange silk and lime green lace, brushes her hair the requisite hundred strokes—a lady always does so, especially one without a lady’s maid to do it for her—then sits to mend a minute tear in the wristlet she plans to wear today, as Bijou barks at the servants padding down the halls with breakfast trays, one left quietly before her own door, another at the door of Roland Smalls, whose dreams have been lurid if not especially erotic, and whose day will not dawn until much after noon. Felix Krystof takes his morning tea at his desk with many letters, some authentic, some not, all sold or on offer, while John Abram, once Abraham Joachim, who has spent the night in vigil, plates his master’s toast and boiled figs, and struggles to hold back the yawns.

Alban Cockrill has also spent the night in vigil, in martyrdom to his belly that yearns for the pot-brewed liquor at the cardsharps’ hideaway, only to reject it, always, after not a few hours have passed; but his morning is a pleasanter one, as he reflects with growing certainty that the men he glimpsed wagering faro, the one with the goat’s eyes and the other with the goatee, were no matter their other disguises the once-upon-a-time spy St.-Mary and, yes, the great puppeteer M Hilaire—though some rumors had him half a world away, and others in twain with his old fellow, which cannot be so, it only goes to show what rumors are…. Alban Cockrill felt his fingers twitch to watch the man’s own as he manipulated his cigarette and cards, there is no mistaking that kind of artistry, no! so “He’s back,” says Cockrill, “our prodigal son,” to Gawdy, who sits, or slumps, sidewise against the eyes-closed hunk of Mrs. Gawdy, whose rounded leather bosom has suffered for attention in these lean times, but who is soon to undertake a mission that would astonish those who have seen her in action before.

Cockrill nearly shares his exciting news with the young lady in line before him at the tea stand, that Nella who takes in sewing, she has done so more than once for him; today she must have a plenty, for she hoists a bag, and a grip, and what looks like a folded blanket, Cockrill offers some help in its toting but “Ridley’s the one who needs help,” says Nella with fine bright bitterness; has he read her farewell note yet? will he even see it, the fool, before he notices that the fire is out and there is no bread nor tea, no hard-working, devoted assistant beside him at the counter, or in the bed the ticking of which is so old that even the fleas refuse to infest it? Does he see anything beyond his dodgy and perilous pictures?—well, she will never know, for she will never see his studio again, or Crossways Street or the hair-selling barber or the toothless tobacconist whom she touched not half an hour past for a loan, a loan she never will repay, for she is leaving this city, she has a cousin three stops down the train line who has offered more than once to take her in. And not a minute too soon, with tea four times the price it was last winter, and spirits roaming in the darkness: the tobacconist’s assistant swore she had seen one on the night just past, eyes blinking in a ceiling corner where no eyes should ever be. Let Ridley look to himself, he can bunk in the Cathedral if he wishes, and worm his way deeper into that pageant—though the priests should not even hire someone so heartless and neglectful, or pay him anything if they do! so “I said, no thank you,” with a brittle nod to Cockrill. “You’d better go see Ridley, Samuel Ridley the photographer. He’s the one who needs help!”

Ridley himself has not in fact registered the loss of Nella: he is back at the Cathedral, hat in hand consulting with the bishop’s third curate, a young man with brown teeth and a trusting nature; and if last night that trust was somewhat—“abused” is too strong a word, say instead “jostled,” then Ridley has surely made up for it by a moment’s honest prayer and a handful of coin jangled into the poor box, the extra-meritorious widow’s mite and “It’s an honor to make your sister’s wedding pictures,” says Mr. Ridley, “and I’ll not charge a penny more than it costs me, with expenses. A shame she can’t be married here,” pointing overhead to the church itself, themselves now crossing through the catacomb hallways below, wherein all the vestments, incense, lock boxes, church records, baptismal candles, and other holy incidentals are stored, but “It’s what Mother dreamed of,” says the third curate unhappily, “but the wedding’s too close to the date of the pageant. Did you get all the properties and such you needed, yesterday?” Ridley and the third curate busily rummaging for portrait materials while the two helpful workmen moved crates and held doors and toted this or that candle stand or dunking stool or whatever was necessary, reverent to remove their caps when the small bright bells rang out above, and to receive the third curate’s blessing when their evening’s duties had come to a dutiful end.

The morning’s services are ending now as Ridley and the third curate again ascend the chipped and winding stairs, stone stairs very old, narrow to pass, easy to hold in a battle; the usual attendees, ladies and Widows and stout devout washerwomen, restless infants and stooping old pensioners, disperse through the much wider doors, their thoughts overtaken once again by this day’s freshly burgeoning cares. If the carried whiff of incense or a heartfelt moment’s prayer should shield them from the worst of those cares, then religion has fulfilled its function; if those prayers moved one or two to imagine the cares of their brothers and see them as one with their own, then the spirit has done its work as well; though which have received these benisons and which have exited infested by seven fresh devils, there is no way for the casual watcher to tell.

Other churches in other places similarly send their worshipers into the world, the broad avenues of the city or the smaller, more constricted streets of smaller, more constricted towns, one the town in which Frédéric’s mother marches home to inform her husband that she has written both to Frédéric and to a moderately priced hotel in the terrible city, to announce her intention to stay at one until the other is ready to escort her home for good: “You may come along or not, as you please,” says Mrs. Blum to Mr. Blum, who has not slept all night, whose pile of duties becomes daily more hellish: the Jamaican suppliers stating outright that they will offer no more merchandise on credit, the leak in the warehouse boiler requiring parts made in England, to double if not triple the cost of repairs. Mr. Blum rubs his eyes, drinks the last of the tea, then informs his wife that a trip to the city is an idea worth considering; he has already written to a few hotels himself, but it will not do to let the woman think she has swayed or changed his mind. But he knows without further argument that he needs his son here, and if the price he must pay is to have the boy’s whorish wife and woods-colt underfoot, well, the child is half-Blum at any rate, and the girl can doubtless be put to some use; perhaps she can do the mending, or cleaning, and they can let Dolly go…. There is a train timetable on his desk that Mrs. Blum does not see, busy as she is with her maternal oratory; he slips it underneath some past-due accounts—

—as a similar timetable is consulted by the Widow Pimm and her sturdy traveling companion, Mick, who, after Pimm’s passing, has taken that surname as his own: A Pimm’s got to make the Pimm’s Palaces, right? to Lucy whose tears then had been of assent and joy in the tribute, this young man her son more than ever now, and for good. It was he she consulted before putting into action her plans, born on a sleepless pillow, confirmed by the daily silence—I can’t bear to see that stage now, all I see there is poor Pimm—though Mick had persuaded her to shutter the Blackbird, not sell it outright: A roost is a roost, and you might change your mind. And even if you don’t, you can always sell it later.

And in the meantime have some play, and some heart’s ease. You’re right, with a grateful nod, Mick’s nod in echo as he echoes her feelings, if not quite so sharp nor so deep: the Blackbird is a hall of silence, its dragon one more powerful than any George can ever master, so why not take to the road, pack up stout-hearted Van and the lady puppet—though Mick argued on that one and lost: she is unwieldy, she is old-fashioned, but Mrs. Lucy would have her, so: build the box to carry her and strap atop it Van’s own elaborate fit-up, and wheel them both with their bags and Noah’s-ark trunk to the train station where “What’s the freight?” the baggage master asks, ticking off a list.

“Puppets,” says Mick, very much the gentleman in his costume bowler and trig new suit, the vest finished by Mrs. Lucy only the night before, perhaps just a notch or two too tight in the armpits—but “Puppets?” asks the baggage master, eyebrows raised and “Poppets,” corrects Lucy firmly, her own dress impeccable and very wisely on the plain side, not to say dull, no ornaments beyond the little ermine muff with its dangling silver chain, no earrings nor goldfish brooch nor, even, her precious pearl wedding ring, packed away for the duration between the safekeeping tits of Miss Lucinda; poor old girl, she is ready for some frolic again, after all these years! “Dressmaker’s poppets, for sewing and fitting and such. Mind the handles on that big one, she’s antique,” and, as they board and settle in their seats, noting in careful murmur to Mick that “Not all places let a body play in peace these days. Tilde’s sent me cuttings,” tales from the more lugubrious of the penny papers, several tucked into the last letter tucked into her bag, the one advising her arrival sooner rather than later, seeming to mean more than Tilde could bring herself to write; she had read that letter again and again, seeing as she did Istvan’s gaze when they parted, its balm and challenge both…. If even half those tales are true they will want to be careful indeed when they come to that Mercury Theatre, and the best time to start to take care is right now, though “Don’t worry a minute,” Mick says firmly. “I’ll watch out for you,” to bring her own smile, thinking of the little pistol slipped into the muff: not so many of the girls of the Gaiety District had such any longer, but one did, an old one with a pearlized grip and a Shot like thunder, the girl assured Lucy, pocketing her payment. They’ll hear it when you squeeze that trigger, ma’am!

So “We’ll watch out for each other,” Lucy says. “But remember, we’re just haberdashers,” tugging a tiny loose thread on his collar, then settling herself for the long ride with her hoop and embroidery needle, the thread bag an Eden of gorgeous greens and peacock blues, rose red and silver, with a duller silver tucked below, the flat pewter flask that used to be Pimm’s, its gin a friend on the nights that the grief keeps her from sleeping.

If Mick has his own sleepless dawns, they have only increased as the prospect of this trip has gone from idea and talk to tickets and motion: fussing unto midnights over Van, his cap and costumes, his internals, this fellow Mick’s own passport and weapon, honor guard into the halls of the Mercury Theatre—which, Mick imagines, must be a place of much marble and many seats and, may be, ushers and other players who will look askance at a fellow come from a smaller sort of palais, even if he does wear a fine new suit and have a history with the owners, one of the owners in particular, whose old carving tool is part of the fit-up, and the very old nesting puppets too, devil and girl and “’Save it for Skipjack,’” Mick murmurs, to assure himself that he is no longer the boy tugging at Mister Istvan’s coattails, that Istvan who will at last see his show, see Van in action, the skipjack prince who has changed with the times but not so much as not to recognize his maker, no, nor the other way around. But what routine shall they offer, he and Van, to announce their arrival, to demonstrate their fitness to play on that marble stage, with that man? as Mick leans his head against the smeary window, seeing nothing past the stage behind his eyes—

—as the busy platform now begins to recede, the station and its porters, the city’s backdrop, the trees an arch and then no arch, the open sky become bluer and bluer still as if in benediction for this trip and its travelers, who seem to feel that sanction strengthen as the miles between themselves and their destination decrease. If Lucy finds herself humming a bawdy old song from the Poppy, and she does, and Mick’s fingers execute a complicated dance, and they do, their fellow passengers withhold all commentary, as there is something different about these two, this bourgeois lady and her grown son who are not, somehow, son and mother, nor bourgeoisie, in some way that the watchers find impossible to parse; although most never notice the two at all, being caught up in their own worlds, their own news—

—that is the same news as always, of desire and distress, black comedy, wars and rumors of wars, rehearsal for Armageddon, and the threat of conscription passing at last from rumor to hard reality: any man over fourteen years of age will now be eligible for the militia rolls, to offer to God and country his service in the current emergency, and whatever weapons he may currently possess. Possessing none is an offense in itself, and places a man under suspicion, perhaps in league with those legions of foreign spies already in the streets—another of those rumors that spread less like the wind than like oil, or blood, seeping here and there, sucked up by the porous imaginations of the fearful and credulous, many of whom hold positions of not-inconsiderable power or notoriety, several of whom have committed mostly quiet self-murder the night before the conscription notices are published. One is a banker, an old friend of Morris Robb’s, who seemed to have gotten religion rather violently; another is the primary doorkeeper of the ostensibly shuttered Music Ministry; a third is a prominent author, whose last essay, printed in many newspapers and discussed in many more, seemed to conflate the sellers of contraband and the denizens of the bounce houses with lambs being led to the slaughter, or possibly Judas goats, the metaphors being somewhat mixed and the imagery unclear; the author’s brains having punctuated the papers atop his desk, he is unfortunately no longer available for explanation. A half-dozen more suicides are recorded by the Protectorate, but these—men and women tumbling from Crescent Bridge, drinking prussic acid, knotting the noose in the midnight kitchen—are of little notice and no moment; war always brings out the cowards, and no one mourns a coward, at least not in public.

What all this will mean to the hastily armed man in the street is still to be determined, but the crude recruiting signs for Libbys and Savvys pop up anew on buildings and fences, like advertisements for an entertainment no citizen dare miss, and booths blood-red with bunting appear across from the Cathedral, for every patriot needs his special sash and holy cross: “Lace that on your mister’s bonnet, and bring ’im home safe,” advises one seller to a weepy-eyed young lady who is quick to purchase two, one for her fiancé, another for the man she loves; and she is neither the first nor last to do so. If there have actually been no relevant, or even demonstrable, attacks upon the city, only the frantic snapping that a dog might give its own hindquarters, that fact is as invisible as the smile beneath the grime on the statue of Mercury, his winged feet still poised between Olympus and the train terminus, and as unlikely of discovery in the current climate, where a petition even now circulates to replace that heathenish statue with a more correct and edifying representation of “Liberty Repelling Her Foes,” a petition gravely notated in an office where the hind end of Minerva, herself notably unchristian in both outlook and behavior, continues to present itself—which may be an Olympian joke as well as a backhand blessing, for this unhappy city needs all the humor it can muster, and all the gods, and goddesses, it can get.

A joke may also be considered a manner of tale, though truncated, especially one told by M Boilfast: a comfortable and now fully bald M Boilfast in his comfortably appointed theatre office, papered with posters and playbills of the popular and the evergreen, three warm stories above the chilly tumble of a wet Parisian street, years removed from the pocket stage and cheap cheroots and endless intrigues of the Fin du Monde; a joke offered with a dry little smile as he leans forward to light the cigarette of his old friend M Dieudonne, himself appeared at the backstage door three nights before, as if he had never left: Why is a street corner whore like an old boot? They both have round heels. —You’d not believe how loud they laughed at that chestnut, last night.

I can believe anything just now, as Istvan sits at a moment’s ease, his festering hand doused with cologne to mask the odor, legs extended toward the grate so his own round-heeled boots may begin, a bit, to dry. And I’ll thank you once again for the chance to play. Here, sliding across the desk a knotted handkerchief, give this to your lads, the helpful stagehands but Not a bit of it, says Boilfast, sliding it back; he has taken in the surprising austerity, not to say dilapidation, of this princely entertainer, and knows there is a tale to it that he has not heard and likely never will, likely several highly interesting and possibly felonious tales, but M Dieudonne plays every card so close to the vest that sometimes one cannot see the cards at all. They don’t need tips, I pay ’em plenty…. So, where do you go, monsieur, from here? to call forth the offhand smile—Elsewhere—that brings his own, shading then into a neutral nod as You travel a bit of a hard road, it seems. And solo these days, since the fire at that place you owned, with—

Heard of that, did you? Yet I can’t believe that you believe everything you hear, that simply isn’t like you. But yes, times are hard, as he looks past Boilfast’s blue serge shoulder, his impresario’s chair, to the window beyond which, if he could see so far, Rupert also considers the rain from the much smaller window of the two-room above the boîte, considering as well its ill effects upon the venerable concertina, sticking keys and a decidedly off-key honk. And yes, we have still a ways to go—

—to a destination held for no little time in mind, his mind, confirmed firmly in mind by watching Rupert struggle with that damp unmusical instrument, in the confines of yet another sad little room; by the sight of Rupert bedding down in their last accommodation, the cold crack-windowed pantry—A softer floor than last time, eh, messire?—bundled like a tramp beneath that window, the dew fallen on his face like tears. They had walked miles even to arrive there, not coin enough for a berth on a cargo train, then after only a night in the tavern’s cramped playhouse came a former chambermaid of Isobel de Metz who recognized them at once, asking after the folk at the townhouse, so We’d best not linger, Rupert’s shrug in the dawn, shouldering up the traps to resume the walk and its endless dodging, a show playing night after lockstep night, This rascal’s the one who charts our course, your wheel to spin though all he had ever asked of Istvan was a roost, domestic bliss, A moment’s fucking peace before I die—yet he had died already, had he not, and still there was no peace…. How noble he looks, when he sleeps, no matter where he sleeps: like a knight in a painting, the silvered hair and forehead carved to lines of care relieved, and how like a boy when he is wakened by kisses, by a puppet’s joking hand, that shy and stalwart, unchanging smile that only Mouse can offer, smiling even past the hardships and the chilblains and the cough—Istvan had quizzed the surgeon on that cough, in the half-apothecary, half-barber’s den where he had ostensibly trekked to get his own hand doctored, that really rather vile-smelling wound made by Miss Prudence’s stab with the opal, a puncture that had refused so far to heal; opals are unlucky, after all. The surgeon had squeezed and fumbled, rubbed in something like kerosene, counted his payment as Istvan bound up the bandage again and It might be consumption, he had said to Istvan’s questioning, his full and worried list of symptoms. Or just a cough-o’-the-lung from sleeping with the windows open. Does he sleep with the windows open? Fresh air is very bad in such cases.

Will it worsen, then? What should he do?

It’s blood you need to look out for, the surgeon said, blood that doesn’t stop, but would say no more without a visit from the ailing man himself, and of course more payment, though Istvan’s white knife to his ear did result in a free bottle of laudanum for The pain, gasped the surgeon, as Istvan tucked away the bottle and knife and stepped into the street, his fears roiled and unrelieved, his mind made up—

—to rendezvous at that restaurant with the marble floors and polished brass stands of ferns, to nibble the sole and down the brandy, flirt brazenly with Sir Roland Smalls and—when that man had stepped from the table, a moment’s pleasantry with some friends across the room, no doubt crowing of his conquest-to-be—as brazenly seduce Portia del Azore with a tossed-off litany of names, those names she claimed already to know, titled men he had known too well, and all their women, all of it grist to that young woman with the fixed gaze of a rat terrier down a hole, sniffing after money; so be it. Money is what he needs, a dependable, stationary source so Mouse need never pass another God damned night in some fucking filthy backroom nor barroom nor barn: he will have peace, he will have good whiskey and new boots and friends about him in the place he chose for them himself, he will go home and there be made well, no matter what war or turmoil or even tedium might bloom around them, what difference? Have they not overcome the same before, many times before? It’s blood you need to look out for, yes, and Roland Smalls’s fervent handshake, both hands tight around his own, Portia del Azore claiming the pledge of his services when they should meet again, after Istvan’s unnamed travels were concluded: travels more lavishly enabled, now, some silly box abandoned on the table in its ribbons but in his pockets money enough to buy the two best sleeping compartments on a very decent train, a bottle of Irish whiskey, a flask of quite passable chocolat, several packets of Ravens although no cigars, they seem to make the coughing worse—

—and realizing with a blink that Boilfast still is speaking, is mentioning in an offhand way, to mask the seriousness of the offer, his offer to give Istvan the second stage on a nightly basis: We can try for a month or so, see if it suits—this lot is used to flash, all that modern hurdy-gurdy, but I believe they’d relish the novelty of the puppeting, and you. Board and lodging’s included, of course, for yourself and any other. What do you say, monsieur? Will you elevate our bill of fare?

You’re too kind, with a smile acknowledging that kindness, a graceful shrug of gratitude and refusal. But you know me, I can’t walk the same street twice, no matter how enticing the view. And now I’d best be going, rising to pull on the still-wet greatcoat, to shake hands with Boilfast, who says The offer stands as long as I’m above ground, so if you ever do walk this street again…. And that new fellow of yours, that one-eyed jack—he’s a comer, monsieur, truly. You were inspired when you put knife to wood on that one.

Merci. He surely made the most of his time here. I too, with the farewell bow of a friend, a player, an arch-player, supple and brief and then gone: as if, to Boilfast’s fancy—and he not a man much given to fancy, not despite but because of his profession—this M Dieudonne, like all players but to a degree perhaps unmatched, moves through a kind of gateway life, the way a dreamer partakes of sleep and action, belonging fully to neither and to both, leaving footsteps that vanish like foam on the sea—

—as Istvan passes down the hallway, down the stairs, down the street to hail the first cab coming and ride with half-closed eyes, turning the rose gold ring about his finger, calling for Rupert as soon as he alights at the boîte and Mouse, plucking and tossing the bent cigar end out the window, to Rupert’s startlement, don’t smoke those foul fucking things, I brought you some Ravens instead. And we’re going out to have a lovely meal—no, you mustn’t frown so, it makes you look like Job. Come on, we’ve one nice shirt and one good cravat between us, you take one and I’ll have the other, and—

What’s got into you? but with half a smile, letting the newspaper fall to the floor. We can’t afford those Ravens, let alone a fine meal. But there might still be some of that champagne you toted home—

Home? taking up a mingy cloth to rub his hair, feeling his jaw to see if a shave is required before they dine: in a workmen’s club that from the outside resembles a hovel, but inside might be some fond maman’s own kitchen, the bread is so fresh and the beef pie so tender, the old fireplace still in use so wood smoke wafts about the dining room, a familiar and cozy bouquet. To the owner Istvan praises the place to the skies, jokes with the serving girl who keeps the red wine flowing, plays a cheerful impromptu with the owner’s uncle that ends in a duet of “La Marseillaise” and several songs much less patriotic, during which the serving girl laughs so hard she cries, then gasps when she sees Istvan’s lavish tip, she throws her arms about his neck and What’s got into you? Rupert asks again when they finally depart; the streets are puddled still but the rain has stopped, and a brassy moon hurries to the sky, as if she has only the barest moments to make her evening’s play. And where did you get all that lucre? as Istvan waves over a cab, as they climb inside and It’s time we were on our way, Mouse, taking Rupert’s hand in his own. I’ve had the traps sent ahead while we dined, so all we need do is take the Misters and our bag—

“Ahead” where, now?

Why, home, spinning then a story meant only for this exclusive audience, this one man who is all the world and more: a story of simple yet ravishing pleasures, pleasant theatrical ease that Rupert answers with a deeply searching look, a question—Why even you, fox, come to want a den? Is that it?—answered by Istvan with a shrug: Well, why not? There are only so many roads. And I’m an old fox enough, as Puss was rude enough to note, noting too the look in Rupert’s eyes as the idea takes hold, the memory, the Mercury, but Of all the places we might go—! uncertain still through the longing; Istvan will remember that longing. I’m meant to be dead there, recall?

Naturellement, it’s the last place they’ll ever look. Now come here, into the deeper shadows of the cab, those strong and loving arms, that murmur of pleasures yet untried as We’ll be squires, Istvan’s whisper, cocks of the walk, we’ll have the whole city for our stage and What’s got into you, no longer a question, no longer resisting, half laughing as Hold up, knocking to halt the driver before the boîte, Rupert to wait below as Istvan ascends to gather up the last of their belongings, the leathern bag, the fit-up with the puppets and the teakwood box, leaving behind only a half-scornful glance for the emptied champagne bottle, a casting gaze for the omen of the moon, and yesterday’s issue of the Herald, in which wars are forecast and demure dancing girls are pictured, themselves omens of one kind and another, but none that seem to signify just yet. He checks to make sure that Rupert’s copybook is safely stowed inside the bag—it is—and then exits nimbly down the stairs, off to the station where they board the nearly empty train as strangers, one to one compartment, the other to the next—

—though once embarked Istvan slips across the passageway, slides the door to lock behind: a stout little door, a plump sleeper-bed as Rupert hangs his coat on a silvery hook, turns in shirtsleeves to ask once more and with real gravity Tell me now, where did you get the lucre? Even you don’t win so much at dice but What matters is how you spend it, yeah? Look here, these kingly hangings, this is pure China silk, or nearly—Oh why that look! Isn’t this better than sleeping in the fucking muck? Don’t you trust me?

Or you me? Don’t play, messire, give me the truth for once—

Mouth to his mouth: This is the truth—

Stop. Tell me, a last entreaty and command but then there are no words, only a grappling, a rough half-angry coupling, Rupert’s grip as fierce as a man’s much younger, there will be bruises in its wake but Istvan’s gasp is nearly laughter, his own grasp in return as reckless and sure: and if those few passing in the passageway wonder at the noise, the stifled groans and batterings, soon all is still again, and only the sound of the train remains, like a great beast’s breathing in its sleep and It will be good to see a roof over your head again, Rupert’s murmur at last, the window’s moving moonlight across his half-closed eyes. Our own roof.

And you to sit atop it, with a sphinx’s smile, quiet to watch until Rupert dozes, then slip again into the passageway to stand in the sway and thrum of the wheels, the soothing, rocking, mocking music of motion: as if every road he has ever traveled, walked, played, glimpsed as promise and bright beckoning were all receding from him at once, bidding him a distant good-bye; like a hill-hunting cat caught at last behind a curtained window, a dangling puppet closed forever in a case, to play for love can mean so many things—

Beg pardon, sir, a young porter pausing at his elbow, was you requiring some assistance? In answer Istvan takes out his flask, brandy as yellow and hot as fire, offers it to the porter, who casts a quick gaze right, left, drinks then squeaks Holy Mother! in a voice somewhat higher than previous. I never tasted such like that before!

It’s a form of chartreuse, “elixir of long life.” It comes from far away, offering the flask again; the young man shakes his head. As do I. But no show lasts forever, does it.

Well no, sir, it doesn’t. Where you bound, sir?

Not so far. To the house of the god.

You’re—why, I’d not have called you for a churchman, sir, the young porter bowing in polite confusion, feeling the liquor’s hard tingle, watching the older man drink again as if it is merely water, a draught he thirsts for; then with an answering bow all elegance, he turns away—

—back to his own compartment, to play a brief and solo, very private show, punctuated by a cigarette and pulls at the flask, by the landscape at the window whose shade has been rattled to the top, Mr. Loup freed to skitter and jerk in cold sympathy and jest and The kit’ll be glad to see us, yeah? Istvan’s whisper to the eyeless side of the face, his breath a mingle of brandy and smoke as his hands do what they have always done, as they must, as they will, manipulated as they manipulate, Mr. Loup swinging that one little clublike arm, every plague its doctor until Avaunt, his master says, and hangs him neatly on the pewter gibbet meant for a gentleman’s coat, reaching then into his bag for a writing case sent by another gentleman who knew precisely how a joke should operate, Mr. Loup the only witness as he opens that letter-box and extracts the topmost document, to read it once and then again as the train rolls stolidly on.

A letter from JAVIER ARROWSMITH, Esq., to DUSAN

My dear friend Dusan:

One might expect a missive such as this one, meant to be read from beyond the grave, to be a grave affair to compose. On the contrary, I have rarely put pen to paper with more lightness of heart.

I have offered my trust in a very few instances, and in none did I find it misplaced: in you yourself, of course, more times than one; in my indomitable wife, whose passing I shall never cease to mourn; in my dear young Liserl, whose eyes I see, still, as I close my own; and in my brother (who once came to me filled with stories of a young man with whom he was much taken, a conjuror he had met by chance at a country house, and rode beside awhile; I wonder, do you remember that night at all?). Your own trust you have at times entrusted to me, to our shared benefit and the benefit of others; how fully that trust was given is a question for yourself and the angels to decide. I may meet them shortly, if anything exists beyond this arena of struggle and doubt; I do not think I shall see again your face in this world.

Hence the enclosed.

We both have been exceptionally fortunate in the women who have loved us. It is to those women that I owe both the impetus to do as I do now and the ability to accomplish it. My wife was most anxious that her brother be shielded from some of the possible consequences of their father’s decisions, for once the lion is gone, the dogs inevitably advance. My own opinion is more sanguine: if Isidore was a lion and his son is a hawk, his son will be a leech; yet all require their share of blood. Benjamin is blessed by the gods in many ways, but true discernment is a gift he lacks, for he will always see what he means to see before what is truly there: he believed he had denied me the means to communicate with you, par exemple. Well, he is a young man still.

But the world is growing old, and the time for feints is over—the cycle of war will continue, growing greater with every revolution, and I have come to understand that a man must owe only his kin and liberty his blood. The years given in service to other methods of advancement, of meeting and turning to one’s own uses the chaos of that world, as a miller uses a river to grind corn—do I regret them, now? No doubt many if not most would believe so, and that this box is meant as an instrument of revenge, especially those men whose letters are contained within, many if not most of whom believe themselves to be upright men. The lies we tell ourselves, to keep upright! Hunching here in this chair like a split sack of oats has sharpened my philosophic organs wonderfully, Dusan, it has made a prophet of me. You, as an artist, are a prophet already; how I rejoiced in, and envied you, that artistry! How I envy you still.

These letters are culled from my lifetime’s correspondence, and Isobel and I had a fine time in their selection, in some ways she even more than I—the female can be, as well as protective, very pleasurably cruel. Which is why I thought it prudent to entrust them to another protective woman, Miss Decca whose instinct to defend what was her own, even as a young lady, was formidable. I know through various means that, after your departure, Hector Georges sent a man to her, whom she rebuffed; I have no doubt whatsoever that whenever you ask her for these letters, they shall be waiting. She too has earned a portion of my trust, as has our mutual friend Mrs. Pimm.

I have included the necessary ciphers for the letters in code. Everything here is true: the figures, the dates, the activities, the names. Everything here is yours to use in any way you see fit, with one request: that you not turn that use directly upon Benjamin de Metz. Leave him standing, though you destroy all around him, for to do otherwise would be to dishonor Isobel, who was so kind to you, and so anxious for the welfare of M Bok. She loved him greatly, as I am sure you know, as you know that Benjamin, whatever his many shortcomings, does the same.

In providing you this—call it a tool box, or perhaps a properties box, such as one employs on the stage?—I repine only that, whatever uses you may devise for the matériel, I shall not be able to observe them. Seeing your mind at play through les mecs has been for me a mystery and a marvel; perhaps a puppet will be constructed to tell this epistolary tale, or perhaps you will make a puppet of me! It would make for a singular resurrection, and there is no one to whom I would more gladly entrust my immortality.

Farewell then, Dusan; health and prosperity to you and M Bok, to your sister, to your confederates and actors and friends. You are one of the very few whom I shall miss as I go—there is much in you that calls to mind my dear brother, who was also a man of wit and flexibility; as well as an accomplished duelist, though he preferred, to his final detriment, the épée to the pistol. I was not present when he died—our father was his second—but I saw the wound, and I saw his smile in the coffin, as if he had found amusement even in death itself. The lesson I took from this mortal loss was a very simple one: When life hands you a pistol, use it.

With respect and sincerity, I remain forever,

Your friend and servant,

Javier James Arrowsmith

Act Two

The Trump Hand

The snow’s arrival draws a line between the streets and the skies, as silver and cold as the ice that overnight has gripped the city, freezing the trash piles and hasty pails of wash water, coating wheels to useless spinning, slewing unwary pedestrians down to cracked elbows and knees. The sun itself shows silver through that snow, tarnished then absurdly bright; the pigeons seek it on the rooftop peaks, the cats of the Bridge disappear into the alleys, and the newspaper shouters cluster together on corners, all difference of opinions forgotten in the animal need for heat.

And each of those men wears like a shield—it is a shield—the metal pin, small as a pence-coin, red as a sore, to mark him as a registered militiaman, as the roll of conscription begins. That every pocket holds a useful weapon is debatable, but the bristling intent to protect the self while professing to protect the city is more than martial enough for these toy soldiers, Kinder der Bestie if the beast may be considered not the city but the fact of safety itself: and these the lean sucklings hidden beneath its hide, with their red pins and blue money, so much money now to buy so little for sale. There has been a concomitant rise in usury and petty burglaries, and the so-called beggars’ banquets, where a houseful of goods and furniture can be had for a pittance, as more townhouses and grand apartments stand empty, their owners fled, or jobless, or both. And still there are suicides, mute departures from the stage, or wild flurries of notes before the fall; occasionally they jump in pairs, like last night’s specimens from atop the Clothiers’ and Drapers’ Assembly, lying brained on the ice like codfish for the constables to find.

The churches continue crowded, with Advent’s advent and anticipation of the pageant: Monsignor Elfred preaches on it with vigor, inviting all to take part who may, and those who may not, to watch “The great parade of our faith!” in whose power to calm the city, and save himself from the Cardinal’s censure, his own faith continues sure. Daily business at the banks and offices is brisk, not to say hysterical, though the mercantile shelves are gapped and the restaurants faltering, their lines of diners thin. The hyssop parlors have closed, and the bounce houses are now peep-houses, where singular acts may be observed from behind wooden screens, there to keep the viewer from being viewed as much as to mask the depravity enacted within: more than one of Haden’s boys have taken to these temporary theatres for the extra coin, and several of the girls who used to sport with Gawdy and his Missus, and if the acts there enacted are less titillating than the bare act of stepping up to view them, the eye applied to the wood faintly warm from its last user, the payment stays the same.

Other avenues of criminal behavior are, if less easy to see, still available, such as the culs-de-sac that open like purse strings upon a covert bazaar, where smuggled goods are sold at sunrise, those hard-to-get items to be savored or swiftly resold at a profit in other anonymous alleys or back rooms—cherished liqueurs, twists of hashish and fat black cigars, frothy lace that lies so well upon a naked bosom—as well as humbler items like linen stockings and macassar oil, turnips without blight, sewing needles and fish knives and, sometimes, pistols to help a man or woman make a way where the way is hard. There are even books for sale, forbidden novels in French and Russian, scholars’ treatises in Latin, one in hand this very moment, the gloved hand of Haden St.-Mary, who turns its pages with a look so bereft that the seller, an old hussy in a red wool scarf, bids him take the thing for free: “That pisspot can’t read it anyway,” nodding to her helper at the table, her husband too busy bagging contraband sausage to take offense—“Finest pork in the city!”—though whether the bluish casing actually contains pig, or any mammal with a name, is a mystery that hunger must ignore. Haden buys a sack with only the briefest haggle, carrying it into the Cathedral to set at his feet throughout the morning Mass, and if his fellow churchgoers cast glances its way and his, and they do, their sin of covetousness is nicely offset by the virtue of prudence, as they nervously note Haden’s hard bearing and military jacket, this creature seemingly too dangerous to be perched amongst them in the pews.

Though when those wary worshipers depart and the curate approaches, Haden like a dutiful schoolboy offers up his book: “Remedia Amoris,” as if unsure of his pronunciation. “May be you could make out a page or two, Reverend?” a task the curate performs to the best of his ability even if “It’s not my usual reading,” both somewhat abashed by the content, those lurid cures for love, Haden pocketing Ovid again as the curate nods: “I’ve seen you before—you’re one of the pageant workmen, aren’t you?”

“Sometimes …. It’s a deal of work,” that stern and gaudy undertaking, staging Heaven, Earth, and Hell, though the curate sadly shakes his head: “Building that jailhouse pen for the ‘demons’! And so many extra choristers just for the ‘Dies Irae’—the ‘Day of Wrath,’” translating again, “it is a great pity. Hell’s uppermost in their minds, I suppose because of the war, but— The people need help, they are sheep without a shepherd, and this will only frighten them further. And already they’re afraid of everything, of shadows—”

“They should be,” Haden thinking of the red pins in his pocket, extras procured for insurance, one for Tilde too, her name on the rolls is Tomik Bok, though Istvan wrinkled his nose—Red doesn’t suit me—and Frédéric put his to the air—Just civic costuming!—so “My friend St. Vitus,” he says, voice lowered nearly to a whisper, so the curate must lean closer to hear. “You know him, he used to sing in the choir. Now he’s busy as a fu—as a bumblebee, with pageant scripts and such, so busy that sometimes he can’t tell black from white. So if you should see him getting into trouble,” with a frown itself so troubled that “Certainly I’ll aid him,” says the curate, adding kindly, “though he’s in safe hands already, with a good friend such as yourself.”

“Safe is as safe does,” a mutter mainly to himself as he proffers in payment the sausage sack—“Finest pork in the city”—that the curate gently turns back: “You needn’t purchase my help,” as he offers a blessing, a protective prophylaxis to carry Haden on his way, his footsteps firm in echo to the choir loft, as far off and shadowed as Heaven itself.

Hatless into the cold streets, he pauses for a breakfast of roasted chestnuts, half stale, but the heat feels fine in his hands: chewing straight from the bag, watching the passing ’buses and constables and scarved citizens hurrying to offices and shops and schools, a ragged boy in a yellow kerchief trying to steal from the chestnut vendor, like the boy he once was himself, not one of his boys…. Pipper was sporting just such a kerchief, some foolishness picked up in the Park, “The Yellow Brigade,” past Istvan’s near-smile—Ah, la résistance! Théâtre de la vie!—but Take that off, Haden’s order. I’ll tell you what to wear and what not to —

—as Frédéric caught his eye, then at once looked away; was he thinking of the Christopher medal? gone missing, then found hidden like those long-ago French letters, by Haden surprised and dismayed—Of all times for Frédéric to be without it! though it is just silver on a chain, still it will make you safe—asking gruffly, the burdened saint depending from his hand What, does it not suit anymore? Not grand enough for a pageant?

Don’t be silly, Frédéric snatching it back but not back around his neck, no, there is some reason that he will not speak, is it the pageant? or something else, something worse? Another subject neither will approach, since that morning after the night of the welcome celebration, Haden drowsy and blinking to see Frédéric watching him sleep, a smile half love and half yearning—My Hadrian, my hero—murmured kisses waking hungry hands, the relief of passion flaring once again, ardent and wild in the bucking bed against the noises of the busy house around them—Tilde’s quick footsteps, Ru’s crow, Istvan’s sharp little whistle—and Haden’s own shout of pleasure a cry of joy; with Frédéric’s smile afterward echoing that joy, lying damp in Haden’s arms, feeling the beat of his heart: Oh, we ought never be further apart than this…. And we’ll be able to do all sorts of shows with our Maître d’art, now, won’t we! Perhaps he has something in mind already, I wouldn’t be surprised —

Oh surely, uncle’s got his own play to make here—biting his lip too late to button it, Frédéric up on his elbows at once, elated: A new puppet play? In secret! But not a secret from me?

And himself pretending then to reach for the piled script draft, not the abandoned “Fortune’s Favorite” but the pageant pages Frédéric labors over and keeps so close—You’ve secrets in play, and plenty, all this you won’t let me read—meaning only to divert his attention—

—but Frédéric then half leaping from the bed, flushed and bare to jam those papers into the armoire drawer—I can’t —You mustn’t—as an envelope fell from that pile to the coverlet, yet another thick missive from Mrs. Salt Merchant, Haden taking that up to hand it slowly back: Here’s another play you keep writing. How many letters she sends a week?

Letters, oh what difference do letters make?

A difference to her—she’d have you back in a tick if she could, an’t she? as the flush stained Frédéric’s face, like a good child unjustly scolded: Don’t be ridiculous. I gave up all of that for you, Fortune’s favorite indeed, favored son born into a life bound tight as leaves in a book, a nice big house with someone else to strain out the tea, and no need there for protection, for mystic medals or theatre of the streets, so May be you oughtn’t have, Haden risen from that bed as if to leave all warmth behind, his gaze made distant—

—distant now too as he considers again that distance between the merchant’s sturdy mansion and the gutter, between true safety and a lonely guard, all the vigilance in the world worth less than a one-way train ticket—as he plucks by the scruff the clumsy little nut-thief, to drop into his hands the half-bag of chestnuts still half-steaming and “Here,” brusque. “Now get yourself home, if you’ve got one,” himself turning not for home but toward the better boulevards, the sentried streets where a man like him, red pin or no, is known at a glance for a stranger, a permanent outlier, beneath façades of marble and gilded iron where a Caesar might hold court, and does: so to make himself plausible he picks up another bag on the way, some half-gone leeks and gnomish carrots to go with the sausage, though “An’t you pretty big, for a grocer’s boy?” asks the maid at the door but “Times are hard,” Haden says, parting his jacket an inch or so to show the easements inside—a pinch of lace, a half-bottle of something to help a girl forget that she is in fact no longer a girl but on the dry side of thirty—that ease his way into the building to deliver his bundles to the cook, then wander slowly back through the echoing rooms, strange and empty in the daylight with their ghostly white statues and hard divans and odd draped hidey-holes, as any man might who has seemingly lost his way.

As he goes he passes a woman, a brisk young woman in tight black-and-white skirts and a hat tufted up like a beehive, whose hackles rise at his regard, haughtier than she need be so “Cheerio, missy,” says Haden with a particularly scurrilous wink. “What you got under that checkerboard skirt?”

“Sod off,” says Portia del Azore, her tone pure Polly, her boot heels brisk on the marble floors as she heads for the main hall where Stephanos shall play, Frau Richter to be in attendance and her husband too, all the civic royalty! and herself to be a Poppaea in a new gown from the last decent dressmaker in the city, plaster-white silk and shining emerald braid, if only she had some real emeralds to wear with it…. Downstairs she assures one last time that all is prepared for “My entertainer,” grandly, casting her gaze around the dressing room, horsehair bench and ancient commode, the branching hallway adjacent smelling of mold and cooked onions. “He needs space to stow his puppet-box, and costumes and such.”

“Yes, missus.”

“He’s used to far finer accommodations, but I shall instruct him to make do here. He always does as I say.”

“Yes, missus,” the house manager resigned, his feet already hurting as much as they will at midnight, and “Yes,” the maid recalcitrant, having had a quick nip from that bottle, knowing in her heart that she would look miles better in a skirt like that, and hat, than this puffed-up ladyship, who plain as she is is plainly well-set-up, a fact the maid notes bitterly to the house manager once Portia has gone: “Money can make anyone a beauty, even a crow-face like that,” as “Puppets,” says the house manager, shifting from foot to foot. “Last week it was those Indian fakirs. May be next week it’s clowns.”

In the rooms of Felix Krystof the odor is again of glue, a strong hot stench of bookbinders’ glue and the pot half-stuck to the worktable, Felix Krystof in a rare foul mood, for the work he does today must be assembled by tomorrow, and it is in nowise ready, this antique tome of antique sermons that took so much longer to write than he had planned—that fool of a scrivener down with what he said was the ague but was likely the French gout, and this substitute, Klaus, with his tardy copy unfit for “The penny papers,” Felix Krystof sharp and terse after half a cursory read. “I paid for a prophet’s treatise, and you give me twenty pages of dancing girls? ‘Salomy’!”

“You said write about the whores of Babylon, sir, beg your pardon but I’ve done just that, and in Latin besides! And I’ve not yet been paid a cent for—”

“Nor will you. You owe for this wasted parchment,” as John Abram steps up to speed Klaus on his way, to offer a kidney punch when he resists, a boot to the back to send him groaning over to the Cornucopia to use the last of his coin on some O-be-joyful and cadge “A pipeful?” hopeful to the restive young man at the next table, who stares at him as if without comprehension: another foreigner, the city is full of them! Whatever sort of pea brain tours a city under siege?

The young man in traveler’s coat and banded bowler, with his case set protected at his side, looks past Klaus and out the clouded windows, seeking once more and nervously the sight of Mrs. Lucy, who ought have been here by now: was she waylaid at the train station, did some other sort of harm befall? Her idea to send him on ahead, You’ll be easier alone to scout the place, and I can have the trunks stowed till we know what’s what, with Mick reluctant to agree, insisting on carrying Van himself—but can that sad hovel be the Mercury Theatre? Half stove-in on the roofside and without a sign to bless it, and dirty-looking purple curtains, they must somehow have bollocksed up the address —

—as Frédéric at the next table sighs a soft but mighty sigh, and rubs his smarting eyes: he barely slept a wink, cannot find rest beside this severe new Haden, an Ajax swathed up in the sheets as if preparing for some battle, what can it mean? He is tempted, almost, to give over that script, let Haden see, Hadrian whose name is on nearly every page…. And what a tale those pages have told him! The task taken up not truly for the coin—though Heaven knows they need it, and Herr Krystof is to give another payment today—but as the only way to pursue his own vocation, in this city, this hour so fragmented and so lost. Yet from the first he had found (and with such surprise that now, recalling it, he feels abashed: how not know it would be so, must be so?) that such pursuit would take him into the chambers of the heart, his own heart, to carry that moral tale: for gods and heroes are not only for the past, old books one reads with longing, they are for today, for every age.

And what joy he has had in these pages! his pen in no labor at all, it seems to fly as he writes this story that is their story—and his private gift and apology, too, for the sad lies told before, his own silence that kept them so long apart. There is a couplet the heroes sing together at the Opera, surely Haden will relish that bit—and in the end be glad for the surprise, the love and honor of it, worth all these cold weeks of disapproval and secrecy.

Though M Marcus, Stephanos, Istvan has intuited his play, or somehow guessed it outright: wrapped like a sibyl in a vicuna morning coat, silver glove and cigarette, sipping tea or something in a teacup beside the unused Wheel of Fortune, asking Where do you go so busily, Marquis? as if he already knew. Or should it be Mercutio? You’ve a very passionate air these days, to Frédéric flustered and shrugging: Well, the pageant, of course—and might you be taking some part in it, too? Haden said—then blushing, more flustered, Istvan leaning forward as if amused, as if pulling him out of a swamp: Why, I’ll do as circumstances suggest, as always. As does Herr St.-Mary. He’s quite the general now, isn’t he?

Yes, he is—and then they had talked, quite easily there in that quiet stage-side corner, that spiral of Turkish smoke, Frédéric’s one hand on the Wheel as if to spin it free of its shrouding cloth, Sum sine regno: but he did not spin it, only ran his hand up and down its curve as he spoke of his own ambitions for Haden—Wouldn’t he make a perfect Julius Caesar? Or Tamburlaine, ‘ye pampered jades of Asia,’ can’t you see it! He’s a secret to himself, you know, he barely knows his own gifts. If one only could persuade him—

Indeed I do know, considering Frédéric then with a regard that recalled Haden’s own golden stare, if keener, cooler, more permanently at ease, though ringed by the shadows that speak of sleeplessness or care; what could bring such worry to him, this man who seems fazed by nothing at all? Our kit’s got the whiskers for any role he chooses. Only keep at him, a hand to his shoulder, an encouraging little shake; Frédéric has seen him jostle the puppets so, like athletes before a bout. The old emperors had their portraits painted with a dagger in one hand and a rose in the other—you two are such, and both are both, yeah? And with a fond heart to spin the wheel, why, how shall it not be well?

Is that how you and Herr Rupert get on? with a diffident smile, remembering a night in this very space, a shared and stormy kiss that set his own wheel spinning, spun him straight into Haden’s arms and You’ll find it all grows easier, Istvan smiling back. Not that, out there, adding a shrug, but one’s own story—and oh, to what a quantity of stories that shrug attests! to bring his own suggestions, then, of all they must have seen “out there,” these men who together have played so many places, stages, rooms of high repute and doubtless danger, returning from Far afield, Istvan’s nod in agreement, that shadow in his voice now, though his smile was easy still. On the way to Elysium, as are we all. But there’s a deal to do yet with the puppets, isn’t there, Misters Castor and Pollux brought home from their temporary lodgings, their coats still smelling faintly of the canals, to lodge beside Israfel and Faustus and One other, or may be two, who’s to say? They do propagate, though their pricks are only pegs, les comédiens de bois…. Will you use mecs in your pageant show?

No. Unless —No, with a resolute frown, for this play must be accomplished on his own, keep the rest of them clear, no more Aleks to go missing! but If you should need assistance, Istvan placing that gloved hand upon his own upon the Wheel, you’ll call out, as if it were Frédéric’s own idea, Frédéric’s nod, Frédéric’s instruction as Pipper and the boys, with two new lads, arrived in his departure, fraying sheepskin collars and snowy caps, pointing them to where Istvan stood waiting in shadows and smoke: Go on—M Marcus, there, will show you what to do.

That the next hour involved some pleasant if hair-raising hazing with the irregularly rolling bowl and the laughing Faustus was not part of Frédéric’s purview, though at least one of the new boys enjoyed it and even Ru joined in the fun, shouting “Thumb your nose!” along with the others, Pipper the victor drawn aside by Istvan to ask, as if casually, whether or not the lad can properly tell time: “Surely can, sir,” Pipper’s vigorous nod and “A head for heights, too, I know that already,” Istvan giving him the light for his little gipsy smoke, itself containing no more hashish but something more like rabbit tobacco, a greenish perfume in the dimness as Ru romps off wearing a stiff-painted paper crown, and a cautious knock comes to the alley door—

—that knock unheard upstairs where Tilde, in woolen skirt with trousers beneath, bundled to her fingertips, frowns as she fans out the blue bills and farthings: No matter how she counts there is still not enough, but she must visit the butchers’ black market for bones to make stock—Sir greatly favored that soup before, and come from that swampy rooming-house, he must be fed better fare…. On the table before her are the cards, unconsulted today, this week, for nearly a fortnight, as one crosses the avenue to flee the bringer of unwanted news, what she does not or cannot yet hear. Next to the cards lies a rumpled pile of linen, meant to be cut into nightshirts, one for Ru and one for Sir—though he said he had another in his trunk, the traveling-trunk stuck somewhere at the train station, and why is that? Pipper should be sent to bring it home —

—as, a floor above, in those chambers once his own and now his own again, Rupert sits in another chamber entirely—a mind’s-eye view of the laughing costumed fox, the empty seats, the patient sound of the sweeping broom—busy over his copybook history, writing as much as he may whenever Istvan is busy elsewhere. There are many tales gathered to this greater tale now, they queue and crowd up to be told, grown into a quantity of pages, more pages even than that sheaf of letters bundled in the old letter box; Istvan has yet to show him that letter box, though he recognized it at first glance with tightened lips. Let bad news keep…. Istvan’s mood this day has been fey and decidedly martial, up unusually early to purchase and page through a stack of the daily papers, sliding the rose gold ring up and down his finger: Look here, Mouse, tapping at yet another story of the city’s spirit parties. They’re more jolly than that horse’s-ass pageant, and heaps more godly too. Don’t you think? as Rupert took that hectic hand to kiss the palm, his only comment past a smile, a smile Istvan returned, then pushed from the little table to stare past the draperies to the wintry blur of the street, then as abruptly turned for the hallway, to roust up Tilde for stiff thread and needle, and mend that silver glove he now affects. Silver glove, silver cigarette case, where did he pick up that toffy case? was it stolen goods, had it come from the Paris dice game, or some place nearer by? To ask outright will bring no answer, and now it seems to have disappeared—

—as Istvan’s own smile has disappeared, gaze gone from the tumble and play around him—the lads whacking each other with the broomstick lance, setting the painted soldier-pins tumbling, “Catch it, you croaker, come on!”—to the darkness of the catwalk and the cobwebbed ceiling, and regions perhaps even darker and further still, humming Schumann’s “Dichterliebe,” There once was a knight, woeful and silent—as the knocking comes again and more urgently to the alley door. Now they all hear it, all the lads look to him as one so “Open it,” his shrug, and Pipper turns the locks upon a stranger, a strong-shouldered young man, traveler’s case in hand, hesitating on the threshold—

—that stance echoed across the city in another room, much warmer and better lit, Frédéric hesitating in the hallway until Felix Krystof waves him in past the half-aired stench of glue, a smell Frédéric remarks upon with interest: “Have new books arrived?” though Felix Krystof does not answer, indicates a chair, opens his hand to ask without words for the pages from the gypsy sack, as Frédéric hesitates again: “I—they’ve not been copied out, yet. I thought I might read them aloud to you?”

“By all means,” says Felix Krystof, concealing his impatience behind a brisk nod, signaling to watching John Abram to leave the room. John Abram has taken a mysterious dislike to Herr St. Vitus, going so far as to importune his master—

Send him off, sir. He’s a Jew, I can smell it on him.

Whether he is or is not makes no difference to my efforts, it may even enhance them. And you were a Jew once, yet your work for me is exemplary, noting with some interest the struggle in his servant’s face, the dismay and distrust and A Christian medal belongs on a Christian, said John Abram finally. He wears it to sham, I saw it myself.

Saw what?

A holy medal, sir! Hung at his tie! And his wife is a dirty gypsy, even worse than a Jew—John Abram’s volume rising, John Abram’s rancor something to be bridled; better he go brew the tea, and leave Herr St. Vitus to sit bolt upright in the supplicant’s chair and read too hurriedly his quaint hodgepodge of Greek gods and pretty sentiments: how he could even for a moment believe that such a play could ever be performed in this city, let alone as part of the Cathedral pageant—on the Cathedral’s very steps!—does not speak well to his common sense. Though poets are not meant to be sensible, they are meant to be industrious, and St. Vitus easily passes that test. All those pages, how dog-eared and notated—they will make fine fodder one day, such artifacts have much value, but for now “I must say that I’m extremely disappointed,” says Felix Krystof, as the tea is carried in, Indian tea as black as fresh ink. “This play is regrettable. Not in its execution—as always, your writing is excellent—but in the crudity of its topic,” as Herr St. Vitus freezes, reaching for the cup; there is ink on his cuff; he lets his hand fall.

“‘Crudity’? Herr Krystof, I beg your pardon, but this is a story of the finest, highest sort of love—”

“A congress of pagans and gods? There are many who would call that worse than crude, call it unholy—especially in this city, and at a Christian pageant. And you are a Christian man, Herr St. Vitus, you wear a blessed medal,” as John Abram smiles grimly behind the tea pot, lemon rind crushed and twisted in the tongs, but “What are you saying?” Frédéric asks, knowing he was right to remove that precious medal, the man Abram always eyeing it as if he meant somehow to snatch it away. “It is precisely because I stand in opposition to our city’s moral climate—”

“Please lower your voice, Herr St. Vitus.”

“—that you commissioned me to write this play in the first place! When we spoke at the supper club— Is Ovid ‘crude’? Is Homer?”

“Is Petronius? —Why are you still here?” sharp to John Abram, whose smile instantly dies, who takes his tongs and animosity into the hallway, to stand listening at the door as “My admiration for your talent,” says Felix Krystof firmly, “urges me to warn you outright, as a patron and, I believe, a friend: what’s written here is dangerous, to myself if I should sponsor it, and to you. We agreed that you would compose a spiritual examination of the city, but these pages smell frankly of the gutter, nostalgie de la boue, as if you reminisce about the days of the Mercury Theatre, and the ways in which you—managed your hygiene, there? Yes,” as the color changes in Frédéric’s face, the flush dying into pallor, as if he has sustained a sudden wound. “But to reminisce is not a young man’s proper pastime. You ought be diligent for the future, for your career, your wife and child. What do you think would happen to them if I should let you parade this,” taking the pages from Frédéric’s hand as easily as from a child’s, “at the Cathedral? The crowd would tear it to pieces. And you with it.”

“Give me— Give that back, sir. At once.”

“Herr St. Vitus—”

“Give it back!” as the vibration in the young man’s voice, even though filtered through oak, poises John Abram for reentry, his face against the door, hand on the knob—and so he is flung back with it, hard into the wall as Felix Krystof slams out, Frédéric at his heels, a furious and desperate race to the casement window that Felix Krystof wrenches open, the icy air to rush inside like a spirit that means ill and “Leave it, Herr St. Vitus!” as Frédéric, panting, grips him by the shoulders, the arm that holds the pages thrust out past the glass into the river of wind and snow. “I would sooner see you thrown from this window than allow you to injure yourself in this way—leave it, I say, and leave my house!”

“That’s my work! That is my work, you have no right—”

“I paid for it,” Felix Krystof’s voice rising past the traffic outside, livery carts and lurching trams, the hallway itself is as silent as death—until Frédéric makes one last frantic grab, to be grabbed himself, wrenched by the collar then struck in the face, knocked to his knees by a recovered John Abram, thick boot raised to do still more damage but “Stop,” commands Felix Krystof. “Herr St. Vitus, go now,” as after a long moment Frédéric slowly rises, back into the gluey room for hat and bag, John Abram lifting a threatening hand as Frédéric stops to stare at Felix Krystof, his gaze opaque with shock, then silently limps away down the stairs—

—and when all sound of his passage has faded Felix Krystof lets out a little laugh, a dry chuckle so undisturbed that John Abram stares and “I paid for theatre,” says Felix Krystof, “didn’t I,” careful to bring the pages safely inside, not one letter lost to the winds, nodding then to John Abram to relatch the window, and brush the snow from his employer’s sleeve.

Across that other, humbler, no less snowy threshold of the Mercury a second figure has now passed, a well-made woman in a plain serge traveling coat and old-fashioned little muff, exquisite gloves a gift from another lady long gone and “It took a deal of trouble to get here,” Lucy says, past her first embrace of Istvan, Istvan who rose from the midst of the lads without a feint or bristle, only watching the young stranger enter, all their defense in his cool regard—but then Lucy appeared right behind, bags down and arms out, joyful though nettled by “All those grey-faced fellows, and not a one to answer a question or point the way! And the constables,” she marvels with a frown. “Asking every other step for papers, does a body need papers even to walk the streets of this place?”

“Well,” says Istvan, holding her off a moment to examine her, to let the smile tug at his lips, “in some places they tax you for vagrants, don’t they…. Puss, love, I see you took my advice, and let your mister mind the pot—good girl! But you should have written, we’d have met you at the station with bells on. Now,” turning back to the young man, his smile gone neutral, “who is this Merry Andrew?”

“Look closer,” Lucy’s own gaze keen from one to the other, as Mick takes a step forward, a tiny bell jingling unseen, half offering his hand—“You don’t remember?”—past the deep-sunk well of hurt, to Istvan who so clearly does not remember, whose gaze measures him as if he were a stranger: this strange fierce battered Istvan who looks like an animal of the road, and a king besides, and something else altogether that Mick cannot measure, as “I’ll be bound,” Istvan’s head to one side, his smile changing. “Can it be Mickey-Mick? Our little hallway corporal?” taking that hand in both his own, a warm clasp that to Mick seems still woefully lacking, his heart burning, the case set down with another little jingle to instantly draw Istvan’s eye. “And what’s inside there? Or should I ask who?”

“You know who,” gruffly, unwilling now to spring the locks, to bring forth Van in this unwelcoming place, his gaze turned away—to be caught at once by the young woman hurrying down the stairs, oddly dressed even for a theatre, hair wound and bound like a bread loaf, but her eyes! Like the country sky, so endlessly blue, narrowed then wide as “Is that Mademoiselle Tilde?” Lucy asks, with a smile that knows the answer and “Madame Lucy!” Tilde gasps, and the two embrace like old friends, the men beside become the audience for this moment: Lucy to see Tilde so much younger than those stern caretaking letters, a little sparrow flown up from the streets, and Tilde seeing the great settled strength of Lucy, the kindly creases at her eyes; they embrace again, this time like sisters, or mother and daughter and “How pretty you are!” Lucy says, to bring Tilde’s smile, a girl’s shy sudden smile—as over her shoulder Mick seems to have come to the same conclusion: So this is Tilde Bok? Not at all what he expected to see, a fellow could fit a bit of a girl like that right underneath his arm—while Istvan looks again to the case at Mick’s feet, it is the right size, might it possibly be—?

“And this is Ru,” Tilde beckoning her child into view, hair capped in tangles, a fold of scribbled papers tucked into his shirt-top: and Lucy nimble to drop at once to the little boy’s level, squatting eye to eye as “You like to play ninepins?” she asks with a wink. “I can knock down three with just one feather—I’ll teach you, if you like.”

Ru’s little forehead furrows, does he believe this claim? as Mamma smiles above, and the new lady, who smells of railway soot, something sour, and something sweet, takes him by the hand as if she has done so every day of his life, to lead him to the stage, the pins and Pipper and the boys, with Tilde at her side to carry the embroidery bag, so curiously heavy for its size.

Now Mick turns back to Istvan’s gaze upon him, merry and challenging, encouraging? so to forestall what his hero might say or might not, the sudden threat of a dream come true, Mick frames instead his own brusque questions, barely hearing his own words: “And Mr. Rupert’s well, then? And he’s about, hereabouts?”

“He’s upstairs.”

“You two came by our place, when Mr. Pimm and I were off traveling. But you don’t know about Mr. Pimm yet,” and “I can see,” Istvan nodding to the case again, its blued leather and careful locks, its blindingly polished brass hinges, “that there’s plenty you might tell me, about all sorts of things. Why don’t we sit down over a glass of something? Unless you’ve turned out a teetotaler? I think we’ve some Darjeeling—”

“I’ll have whatever’s clean,” brows raised to the backstage table, the smeared broadsheets and dented tin cigar-rest, a crusted-up cup that Ru has been using for some game, or perhaps it is Pipper’s abandoned breakfast of hot water and half-dunked bread. Istvan follows the censorious young stare, looks back bemused to measure Mickey once again—What a mastiff the young pup grew up to be! Puss must have doused his porridge with iron tonic—and “We’ll crack a bottle,” he says, “of my own private stock—I can fully vouch for its purity. And may be you can crack open that case, and—”

“Do you play, still?” meant to sound lordly, or possibly insulting, as if speaking from a professional’s height, a professional’s knowledge that true playing cannot possibly be accomplished in such a dusty and forlorn habitat; though the effect is fully spoiled by the open dismay of his gaze, plainly taken aback to see his old teacher in what seems such a sorry spot; time for another lesson so “As you might know,” Istvan pulling out a chair for him, setting the stage, “or have seen from the windows of your ’bus—”

“I walked.”

“Then you ought have seen it plainer still—this is a town sorely in need of frolic, no matter what the law might be. I haven’t studied up on it,” reaching to free Faustus from his hung perch beside the Misters, his little horns seeming to gleam in the uncertain light, now bright, now concealed beneath the yellow hair, his red vest augmented by a sharp red pin, “but one understands it’s somewhat punitive— ‘Caliban and sawdust,’ eh?” to the solemn Faustus stare, and Mick’s own behind it: willing or not he is caught, he is held as Istvan meant and knew he should be; there was no mistaking this one, from the very beginning one saw him for a member of the tribe. “Though what the fuck difference does that make to us, yeah? We’ve our own set of laws. Now you,” smoothly to Mick—

—as quietly, from above, another audience appears, there on the stairway as still as an actor awaiting a cue, or a traveler on a peak, paused to sight the horizon and gauge how far lies still to go: Rupert in shirtsleeves and one of Frédéric’s moth-riddled scarves—Tilde’s new edict, Wear this till springtime, Ru is draped in them too—gazing down to watch Istvan in action with a burly young fellow, who might he be? and Tilde there with, is it? yes! Lucy, romping with the lads, just as she used to with her boys and girls onstage. See Tilde beam like a child herself, and Lucy not so much older when she first came to the Poppy—it is a very fine thing, to see those two together, joined up like lines that rhyme in a story, or a song. He watches, one hand on the banister, and his smile considers them all, comes tenderly at last to rest on Istvan—

“—and whomever might be sequestered in that box—it’s not your long johns stuffed in there, is it? No, I didn’t expect so—you two might care to join in this playful insurrection, since you’re here,” the Faustus beckoning to Mick to open the case, Istvan’s smile beside that mournful red-painted mien, Istvan to add, when Mick still does not move—and what the devil ails the lad? He used to be ready to play on a pin-drop—“since you know the difference between a stick of wood that’s meant to beat a fellow down and one that’s made to raise a fellow up, or at least raise up himself,” the Faustus turning then his stare to Istvan, who, with a player’s courtesy, turns that one and his own away, leaning sideways to liberate the flask from his pocket, giving Mick the moment he needs to unbend, then, enough to reach down and slip the locks, to begin to raise the lid on that puppet case—

—as the alley door opens, a cold exhalation, another heavy dash of snow and “Uncle,” Haden calling, “we’ve a fucking lark and no mistake! It’s—Oh,” his gait arrested, gaze leaping from Istvan with the puppet to the sidestreet bruiser at the table, and Tilde too, cornered up with some woman, a saucy missus even if not so young, who is she? “I didn’t know we’d got visitors.”

Lucy for her part squints at Haden, squints again: the same tilt of the chin, the doubled dandy’s swagger and “Who’s that?” she asks softly of Tilde: “uncle” indeed, could this black-jacket sharpster somehow be Istvan’s get? as “That’s the hayrick,” Tilde as softly back. “He’s the one helps me here,” and “Hay,” Ru waving from the stage, improvised feather in hand, all ninepins vanquished. “See what I do!”

Haden swivels to smile at the child, the case beneath the table clicking firmly shut as he approaches to offer his hand—“Haden St.-Mary, a pleasure”—to Mick, who notes without pleasure the look this St.-Mary gives to Mister Istvan, the look Istvan gives him in return, and thus is very slow indeed to rise and take that hand, a brief cold shake past a colder stare that Haden, surprised and offended, returns as coldly, that testing lasting so long it turns alarming, like fighting cocks spurring up in a ring until “It’s Mickey?” Rupert calls: all look to him. “From the Blackbird?”

“Mr. Rupert,” Mick turning on his heel, as if Haden has disappeared, as if turning will make him disappear; his voice is unnecessarily, cheerily loud. “It’s fine to see you again, sir! Brings back all the old times.”

“And you as well,” as he descends, as they shake hands, Mick surprised to see Mr. Rupert all greyed up like an old wolf, though his back is still soldier-straight, Rupert noting that little Mickey now stands nearly eye-to-eye with him, who ever would have guessed it? with a rooster’s shock of hair, and a good strong grasp, no doubt from all the playing. “We missed you on our visit. And your Pimm,” to Lucy, who crosses then to claim her own welcoming embrace, who rests her cheek, eyes closed, against Rupert’s chest as “Our Mr. Pimm,” Mick says, “I’m that sorry to say that he’s passed on, sir. It’s why we’ve closed up the theatre, and come here.”

“Was it that sickness you wrote of?” Tilde asks, as Lucy’s tears begin, those tears drawing Istvan to set aside the Faustus, to stroke Lucy’s bent head as she weeps in Rupert’s arms: the trio in tableau for a long sad moment, Tilde’s gaze veiled with pity, Mick’s eyes to Tilde and his back still to Haden, Haden who watches without understanding—And who now is dead Mr. Pimm?—until “How I wish he could have seen you so!” says Lucy finally, handkerchief tugged from her sleeve to dry her eyes. “But Mick’s come in his stead, hasn’t he. And you,” to Istvan with resolute cheer, “you’ll be that pleased to see what he does with your old fellow, it’s the best turn-out in town. ‘Save it for Skipjack,’ right,” nodding encouragingly to Mick—

—who flushes as Tilde looks his way for the first time with any interest, those eyes! and “I took a bit here and there from the old routines, just like you taught us,” Mick says, speaking to Istvan but looking to the case, his reaching hands to the locks, every motion more rapid and sure, as if it is himself he unlocks now, makes ready to put on show. “Me and Didier, remember Didier? And those puppets you cut for us, the devil and girl and whatnot? And then I spun it up my own way…. It’s true to say that it’s been popular, quite popular,” Van rising like a well-spiffed stranger from the blue silk lining, all of them watching now but for Rupert, who watches Istvan only, resting his hand upon Istvan’s shoulder as “‘Save it for Skipjack,’ that’s his line,” as Van in his brocade cap nods to Mick in comrades’ agreement. “And don’t they bawl it out when he does! The henhouse and the peanut-slingers go wild,” making Van bow with a fluidity, a rude and graceful brio that recalls his origins and refines them, a révérence to his godfather, who nods, accepting the tribute, noting the neatly trimmed hair and gold-buttoned waistcoat of this mec, the lovingly crafted boots, better boots than Mickey’s! and far better than ever he wore before: boots that make a little skip, yes, there in the air, kicking out like a Russian dancer as “Save it for Skipjack,” Mick chants in a sudden jolly baritone, “give it to Skipjack, just like a dog with a bone!” Mick freed by the appearance of this Van who once was Pan, Pan Loudermilk and someone else besides in the long-ago, who has played more shows than Mick has himself, who is shy of no man and no crowd and certainly unafraid of this place, with its old-fashioned lamps and singed-up curtains and seats to fit barely fifty watchers, when the two of them are used to playing for three times that a night! And making the cash that kept the Blackbird flying, how many times did Pimm tell him so himself? man to man there in the kitchen and She likes to have those little ones about her, it eases her heart to teach ’em. But it’s you who cooks the bacon here, son, and that’s a fact. How glad would Pimm be, may be is in some all-seeing Heavenly hen’s roost, to look down on Mrs. Lucy smiling so again, reunited with her friends, and brought to it safely by himself, who will watch out for her in this dangerous city, until they may leave for home once more —

—so “Save it for Skipjack, it’s in his knapsack,” the boutonnière bell ringing, the jigging feet flying, a complicated polka as Mick taps his own foot in rapid rhythm, as Lucy claps her hands, Tilde clapping in time, Istvan watching with arms folded as Rupert murmurs in his ear to bring a sidewise smile—perhaps it is a memory of Marco that he shares, or of the Misters, perhaps some frolic still to be—Istvan brightening further as he murmurs back to Rupert, and “Let Skipjack carry it home!” Van flinging out his arms to toss a flowery tribute: not to Istvan after all, but the rosebud from his buttonhole, a wink of pink paper that arcs to drop at Tilde’s feet as neatly as if it were placed there and call from her the smile first seen in a rainy Paris park, when a flying horse was put through his paces for her pleasure, to the tune of another song that promised to lead its listeners home.

Past the applause, enthusiastic and augmented with stampings from the lads, applause in which Haden pointedly does not join, Tilde tucks away the little rose and sets the pot on to boiling, sits Lucy and Rupert at the table, Mick to settle Van back in his case and take the third chair, where he perches at the edge of boasting with tales of the Blackbird’s popularity: “They fill up, every seat of ’em, even on the quietest nights, everyone from the mayor on down. Don’t think you do so here, do you?” and “There’s a war on,” Tilde notes briefly, cutting black bread, Haden’s gaze cutting to Mick before Istvan beckons Haden toward the stage, their very quiet conversation overlaid by the gambols of the boys—

“Time to stake the stake, yeah? Parolet, or what’s it called here, cocking?”

“It’s a wonder no one’s tried it sooner—old Caesar’s riddled up like a rotten cheese, we can go in and out six different ways if we like.”

“We won’t need so many, but it’s good to know. Did you happen to mark where they keep that second moneybox?”

—until the alley door opens once more, snatched by the wind with a crash to startle the little audience, send hands to pockets and Lucy’s hurried for the muff—though it is only Frédéric, Frédéric limping inside as “What’s all this?” Haden’s gaze narrowing at once to note the torn shirt collar, the fresh-blooming bruises but “It’s nothing,” Frédéric hasty and trying to evade Haden’s approach, Haden’s hands on him roughly checking for other hurts. “Really, nothing at all—”

—but as he speaks his knee collapses, he almost falls, Haden seizing him upright in greater alarm—“Who did this!”—while the lads, no longer larky players but soldiers of the streets, drop their props to gather at Haden’s side, to ring them both while the yellow stare pins Frédéric’s own until “The play script,” Frédéric groans, as if confessing a crime. “I meant to copy it, I never thought— It was to be a surprise! But now—”

“What are you saying, are you knocked in the head? Who the fuck—”

“Tell what happened!” Tilde snaps, Ru scrambling to her skirts as “I do beg your pardon,” Frédéric suddenly seeing, suddenly startled by the presence of the strangers, neatening his coat in ragged parlor reflex but “They’re friends,” Rupert says, and “Players,” Istvan seconds. “Only say what’s happened—you promised to call out, recall?”

“Yes. Yes, I did. —There was a disagreement, an editorial disagreement. And Felix Krystof, or rather his servant— But you needn’t all involve yourselves, we shall get it back,” his look now for Haden alone, a gaze of such pure confidence that Haden feels his heart expand, chambers unto chambers, love and rage and the flare of memory, the ranting rentier, blood and amethyst and “Pipper,” he says, calmed now by the violence to be, “you and, what’s it, Jakob, ready up, we’ll go pin that fucking papermonger to the wall. You,” to the tallest boy, a new recruit, “can follow for a peeper—Not you,” as Frédéric girds himself, wipes his face with his scarf. “No need for you to take another beating.”

“But you won’t know, you won’t be able to find— My script,” the color struggling to his face, urgent past the pallor. “For the pageant! That’s what’s at stake here, that’s what we must retrieve—”

“Script? You can write fifty scripts, what does that matter? We’ll give that gamy bastard a role to play in— What?” at bay together and face to face, the twinned intensity of very different beasts as “Listen to me!” Frédéric’s shout nearly a cry. “Listen, you don’t understand!” but “Look at you,” Haden through his teeth, wrung anew by the smeared spectacle of the blood, the sluglike cheekbone swelling, and half kneecapped in the bargain! “What did I say about that fucking pageant? And Kristof? You an’t even be fooling with such, you don’t belong—”

“I belong where you are,” gone from shout to murmur, even Haden barely hears that last as Frédéric, his eyes enormous, turns away, and as Haden grasps again for him shoves back, a stiff two-handed thrust to Haden’s chest, nearly toppling himself from the force of it—

—and Haden turning up a face as white as bone, his lads scattering back wary as young wolves as with a curse less word than snarl he seizes at the fourth and empty chair, as though he will hurl it, smash it to bits but “Stop,” from Rupert hard and quiet, a lifetime’s command in his stare, fixing that stare on Haden, who glares back, teeth clamped to his lip —

—while Istvan calls out, inscrutable, glacial—“Marquis”—one gloved finger beckoning Frédéric, who veers crookedly toward the stage, as Haden slings the chair aside to storm to the alley door, Rupert instant to follow, put himself between Haden and that door and “Be wise,” forcefully, still quietly, careful not to put hands on Haden. “To stop now means now, not never. And there are better ways to take a man than by the throat—”

“You say it!”

“I do say it, I’ve done it, and seen worse harm come in its wake,” with a thumb jerked at Istvan, his gaze remembering a room, a knife, a letterbox, a quiet gentleman in a bedside chair; playing the puppets, yes. “I’d have done better to hit less, but harder! Only be wise,” again and in appeal, not an order, Haden’s gaze murky with wrath, but he is listening —

—as Istvan puts his mouth nearly to Frédéric’s ear, his breath there warm, rapid, oddly soothing as “No notes saved, or any such? Ah, it’s a great pity! But all can still be well, I never wrote a line and still we managed to play—”

“That play was for him,” says Frédéric, staring at the damp-warped floor, as if his next actions might somehow be written out there. “Herr Krystof paid me, he was to pay again today, but— It was to save us.”

“There can be many saviors, many mansions—sur l’pavé, yeah? And comedians, too, more all the time,” looking musingly over his shoulder to Mick as Frédéric looks to the lone Israfel on his hook, the still avenging angel and “Here, wash it all away,” Istvan proffering the flask, Frédéric drinking the yellow brandy in a gulp great enough to make even a seasoned tippler choke; he does not choke; the color settles warmer into his cheeks. “And tuck in your nuts, we’ll make a way to make your play,” as Frédéric nods, though less to Istvan than at him, limping off then to the stairway, with a rote bow to the ladies as he passes by.

It is Tilde who sets the Faustus to one side, his wooden head lolling back amongst the tea cups and mismatched spoons, as if he were a guest overcome by emotion or strong drink, as she shrugs darkly to Lucy—“You see how it is here”—before adding with urgent diffidence, “Ought I pick up a sticker for you to use, madame? There’s a Frenchman by the sewer gate sells all kinds, some just as small as a finger bone,” an offer that brings Lucy’s sharp little wink, passing to Tilde the silver-chained muff—“See how that fits”—watching as Tilde’s fingers find the pistol inside; she smiles; Lucy smiles too and “A lady needs to be prepared for anything,” says Lucy, pouring out the tea that has steeped brown as curbside mud—

—with a cup untouched for Mick, who sits in unaccustomed stillness, feeling as if he has entered some clockwork pageant in its middle, unsure of the story line or what role he ought to play. Though he has played at last, he and Van, before Mister Istvan! who clapped, he did clap, he knows what he saw, yet surely knows too that there is so much more to show? Mick’s gaze finds the hung Misters, that gaudy plaid cravat; then roams to the backstage, the flies and catwalk, taking the measure of the space: that pocket stage, there, might they play it some night together? while Mrs. Lucy starts up a tale of the old days, of the Lady de Metz—“Isobel, dear, you know”—and evil General Georges, all those strange and perilous events that took place beneath the Blackbird’s roof. Yet to him, and Didier and the rose-red sisters, those days were mainly playtime and scamper, whoever can guess what a child thinks or sees? See this little boy, now, tugging manfully at the chair flung by that cat-eyed fellow in his snit: Mick reaches to set it right, gives the boy a reassuring smile—

—that Ru ignores entirely, for the man is not a friend to Hay, this man who has brought with him another puppet, a stranger puppet with sad eyes and a bell, though he is not really sad, that puppet, not at all. Ru knows, has always known without another’s telling, that puppets have their own world, their own lives: he has seen it himself, the way the angel lightly flexes his wings when no one else is watching, or the devil creaks and twists in the sunlight, as if its heat feels pleasantly to him. And the others, the Castor-and-Pollux, when one moves the other moves too, always…. It is something like the brave horse with wings in the Park, who misses the air, with no one ever to ride him: high over the trees and the Bridge and the clock tower, all small below like pictures in a storybook, the stories that Hay sometimes brings him—

—Haden who nods angrily, grudgingly to Rupert, Rupert nodding back—“Wisdom for now. And when it’s time you’ll tell me, messire”—so “Come on,” Haden curt then to his lads. “We’ll go deal some fucking faro, hurt someone that way,” slamming the door behind hard enough to rattle the ninepins, as Mick watches with mystified contempt: Cards, what good can cards be! And this is Mister Istvan’s fine lieutenant? But he says nothing, only busies himself, as the ladies talk, with a bit of colored newsprint, fashioning another petite and cunning flower: Van already knows a pretty song or two, even a love song, though Mlle Tilde doubtless has a fellow—if neither of these new fellows, looks like—yet surely some man, that little lad has to have a father. But still…. His gaze rises as if pulled by a string, to note how fine she holds herself, shoulders up like a regular princess, even if she is wearing some manner of trouser-pants; and those eyes, Lord what eyes, just as blue as a bluebird’s wing.

Alone upstairs, past the cold and bloodied basin water, Frédéric slowly rummages for the arnica, tearing an already-ragged shirt to strips to bind his knee, so swollen now that he can barely tug up the trouser leg, itself marked black from John Abram’s thick-soled boot. Within the armoire lies a stack of neatly folded handkerchiefs, including the one wherein he has hidden the Christopher medal, which he now removes, to reverently kiss, then clasp around his neck; he will never be without it again. Piled beside those handkerchiefs are Haden’s abandoned cravats—such vivid things, all gold trim and gay garish patterns, here a sunburst plaid, there the azure one from the Opera—it is that cravat that he selects, tying it as carefully as if he is summoned to an audience at court. Then he adds more pen and paper to his gypsy bag, he adds a flimsy, rusty, horn-backed knife, he crosses himself three times: once for Haden’s safety, once for his own return, and once for the folk of the Mercury, including the visitors, whomever they may be. Then—forgetting to add to his change of coat the necessary, the essential red pin—he turns for the stairs, to go not down but up, as stealthy as a thief if never as nimble, to the third floor, the hatchway from which, if the climber is daring and cautious, he might quit the building entirely, and no one to know that he has gone.

The only one to observe this highly hazardous exit is Alban Cockrill, but the sight from below is so dim and improbable—a body on the icy rooftop, now crawling like a crab, now skidding like a panicked squirrel, now hanging like an acrobat from the fire ladder—that Cockrill puts it all down to the snow and his aging eyes, bad light and conditions worsening by the day; he is living off dried chestnuts and mincemeat, has not dared a show in the Park for weeks. Though today’s good news has him bold to make his way to the old Mercury, even if that little Missus there puts the boots to him: for the news is out, the great M Hilaire, now called Marcus, is to play a special show at that high-tone Roman club! Elsa, the maid who sits the door, told him so, in between complaining about Johan who runs the place and the dirty old lordship who stuck his finger in her stinkpot, Up to the knuckle, is that dirty, you tell me! but I’ll do anything, he had begged, and for a bag of paste jewelry that used to adorn his own girls but sits sadly out of place on Mrs. Gawdy, Elsa has promised that she will ease him into the building If you’ve got a nicer coat than that to show. And better boots! so at this very moment he steps into the shoe shop to have false gold buckles added to his clodhops and make himself look somewhat more like a livery man and somewhat less out of place.

The shoe-shop woman is always full of forebodings, but today she is even more dire, warning that the omnibus drivers are about to mutiny, Prussians have taken over all the tea stands, and some strange new tenants are roosting at that theatre-that-was, a fancy-type man who looks remarkably like another man who cheated her on a boot blacking, and this very day “Two others,” she reports. “Some lady—if she is a lady—and a younger, foreign fellow, Klaus Karel told me himself, can’t speak a word but gibble-gabble. Why must so many foreigners come here!”

And Alban Cockrill shrugs, wondering whom that foreign-type lady and fellow might be, as a ’bus whose driver still recognizes the authority of the state rolls slowly up the avenue, its exterior need of repairs felt keenly by those riding inside, where the cold wind penetrates along the cracked window seams, though not thoroughly enough to efface the odors of very cheap pipe tobacco, unwashed wool, runny newsprint ink and “Sardines?” offers the man jammed next to Mr. Blum, who is staring out the window with his jaw so tight it might crack—the indignity of it, an omnibus, not even a proper cab! To be pinched so in spending, at his time of life, it is well-nigh unbearable —

—past his wife, whose head is swimming from a mixture of fumes and excitement, her heart lifting as she sees the hallowed spires of the Cathedral of St. Mary of Dolors, where a great pageant is about to be presented, half the people on the train had talked of nothing else—and where her dear Frédéric may even now, this moment, be in its choir! It is a sign, this pageant, surely. At first she had been frightened that Frédéric’s failure to answer her last and all-important letter meant that something dire had occurred, but this city so rife with beggars and barricades must mean that he never received it, which will make this visit a true miracle to him. As for the strumpet wife —

“Bite of sardines, missus?”

“No! No indeed,” drawing back with alarm at the foul, dripping little fish, its smell like no sardine she has ever known, the man shrugging as he crunches down the salty little bones, as the omnibus creaks around a corner as slowly as the advancing figures on the Festus Clock, their mechanisms invisibly rusting, devoured from within by decay. When the sun’s transient light strikes their faces, they appear in that light to be smiling, though from the other side of the square they are seemingly in grief: it is hard to tell with people made of metal, it is hard to read expressions that nothing but fire can change. The white statues of Caesar’s Court show a similar impassivity, though their bold nakedness is its own form of expression, as is the implacable gaze of Mr. Loup’s single eye open on darkness, and the helplessness of the Faustus in the teapot desert, until he is replaced upon the hook beside his comrade and their elder brothers, the presence of their new comrade in the travel box unnoted, or if noted, no signal given that can usefully be parsed—

—by Mick who looks covertly to Istvan, Istvan who turns from the hooks to look at Rupert, Rupert whose gaze is inward, though he smiles briefly to Lucy and Tilde at the table, whose glances then, each to the other, are identically concerned. Yet the situation’s truest measure is perhaps reflected best by Ru, who has dressed himself in the paper crown to climb one stairway and then the next, drawn by the smell of snow, fallen clean and astringent through the unlatched hatchway to the dust of the hallway floor. In Mamma’s cards there is a picture—Ru has seen it—of a white square just like that one, a window like a fence around a cold white moon, with a gloved and reaching hand below it; that card is called the Hand of Glory, though Ru does not know it by that name, or that it signifies victory of a great or peculiar kind. As he stands, small face raised to the endless emptiness, a further glitter of snowflakes descends, and he smiles to feel them land again and again upon his lips and cheeks and forehead, like the claiming kisses of kobolds, or tiny melting stars.

From the introduction to The Strings of Memory

Upon the road, the turning road, the happy road they go

They walk the wide world up and down, they play a show of great renown!

One wears a hat, one wears a crown

As on the road they go.

from “Ruprecht & Steven,” anonymous, 1904

Reginald Greene’s well-respected volume The Strings of History means to be a full history of puppet theatre, from its ancient beginnings in India to its great popularity in the Victorian age. He knows a great deal, even including fine overlooked plays like Tomas Grieg’s “Ist Es Wahr?”, Alban Cockrill’s “Poor Willy & Missus Willing,” and Arthur Kummerman’s “Showman of the Strand.”

But Mr. Greene views this world only from the audience. He treats rumor as fact, and fact as rumor, and sees less than half of any show that is played. He even begins his book by imagining the Garden of Eden as a theatre for Adam, Eve, and a crafty character who uses a snake to speak his lines—a very harsh and unfair commentary on the way puppeteers are perceived!

Having watched first-hand the day-to-day workings of several such theatres, and their supremely skilled performers both onstage and off, I believe that I may speak with more knowledge than Mr. Greene has, learned though he is. And since these particular puppeteers bear the burden of so many stories, under so many names—and so many of them as false as Mr. Greene’s in the Garden!—how they lived, and died, and where and how they played, all of this I mean to address, and thus finally set the record to rights.

The perfume was terribly costly, and frustratingly hard to obtain, but as Portia del Azore takes the dabber from the bluish-black flaçon, her intoxication is complete: La rose fanée, like a living breath from a fabled palace, a delicious and subtle rot favored by both the young Empress and Frau Richter. It shall speak without words of her own worth, her worthiness to stand as co-hostess of this evening; and what an evening it shall be!

From first light the day has been auspicious: though there was a disturbance outside the townhouse, streetlamps cracked, constables and chanting men, and inside Herr Richter was distracted—And who is this, now? peering over his glasses, as though Portia might be some superior sort of messenger—Frau Richter was quite pleased by her prompt arrival at the breakfast table, and as eager to receive the morning’s gossip over stewed apricot turnovers, Sèvres china and butter-yellow rhododendrons—

Arnice Fairchild won’t be attending tonight, I’m afraid.

She’s indisposed?

She’s in mourning. They found Herr Fairchild at midnight, just under the Festus Clock.

What! Because of Albert and that silly duel? Exchanging public insults through the personal adverts—it’s really more vulgar than tragic, I think.

—and more than pleased to learn that Stephanos Marcus’s entertainment will not only surpass all others he has mounted so far in the city, but shall be Yours alone, in Portia’s confident promise. He’s assured me that he has never given this playlet before, and never will again.

Oh, that is really too marvelous! But no more than I expected from you, my dear, you are so clever. Isn’t she clever, Theo? And won’t Letty be annoyed! Frau Richter’s smile then unflattered by the casement windows’ hard sunlight, her skin resembles a hussar’s glove, but it made her morning gown glow like the vased flowers, as Portia glowed at the compliment, at the way the event is falling into place.

Even Stephanos has been—thankfully, unusually—prompt and diligent: in the daytime gloom of Caesar’s Court with a new cadre of limber young actors, positioning one here and one there, changing again and again those positions and his mind—Jakob, point your pretty nose up instead, up under the skylight, that’s right. Pipper, get yourself by the door—as an aide chewing chestnuts carted in the properties to be used: crates painted cunningly into “marble” for the youths to stand on, a censer that resembles real gold, tins of rice powder and a lady’s somewhat ragged puff, Stephanos inspecting these last items minutely—Haven’t we any more powder? Plain flour, then, from the kitchen—with a nod to that alert and silent helper, who to Portia’s eye seemed in some way familiar —

Do I know you, fellow?

Not at all, ma’am, no.

I believe I’ve seen you before. At one of his entertainments?

Beg pardon, ma’am, all us fellows look the same.

—though that last is certainly untrue, the young man’s golden gaze is quite a striking one. But no time then to search her memory, already well past noon and the appointment for her gown’s final fitting, and though she was somehow loath to leave Stephanos at the club alone—

I could have the dressmaker stop here, it’s no trouble—

Scamper off, now, Baroness, I know how to make a show.

—there are still so many details to attend beyond her dress, so many notes still to answer, a pile newly arrived on the silver letter tray begging for last-minute invitations, importuning for shows of their own; some have even sent bouquets, hyacinth and Kaffir lily, and a tempting box of sugared roses, all the way from the capital! The hotel’s manager has offered champagne along with his note, with thanks for bringing such fine notoriety to his establishment, and in hopes that she will stay on—gratis, of course—for as long as she might please. And, perhaps, have her entertainer perform a show in the ballroom one evening? Or two, or three?

The only sour note is Roland’s, and it is a very sour one indeed: Roland holed up in his dressing gown like a mole in a tumulus, Roland swilling his champagne from the bottle, Roland refusing to attend the event at all for “It’s your show, isn’t it?” sniffing the dabber after she sets the perfume bottle aside, wrinkling his nose in theatrical fashion. “A barnyard affair, judging from the smell. And with Stephan to be your stallion—in a manner of speaking, of course.”

“I’ve no idea what you mean,” as the kneeling dressmaker takes out a stitch, slips in a pin; Portia was never lovely, not even as Polly, but she will be lovely in this gown; see the emerald trim gleam against the white, like jewels scattered in the snow! “You’d be sure to enjoy it, they’re serving Sicilian quail poached in Madeira, and bombe glacée. And of course it will quite disappoint the Richters—”

“What, your little townhouse gentry?” with a sneer so stark that the dressmaker’s head turns briefly up, then stoically back to the hem. “It’s to their advantage if I don’t appear, their dim light will shine all the brighter. An authentic lord at the table, even one who’s self-deposed—”

“Step into the hallway,” says Portia to the dressmaker, with the courtesy correct in a lady to her lessers; then the moment the door has closed “Are you drunk?” to Roland, in a tone that sends Bijou scrambling under the bed skirts. “Why else would you speak so? She visits all the best houses, she’ll have me tarred with your brush by sunset—”

“Oh, don’t fret, a tidy agnes is welcome everywhere. Just like a tidy whore. And on that topic—I’ve been meaning to mention it—you’ll be making your own arrangements for Salzburg, I won’t be assuming that expense. Or the one for this suite, either.”

“That’s quite acceptable to me,” with a frosty nod, a glance of gratitude toward the stand of hyacinths, the hotel manager’s note. “But you needn’t call names. I’ve made my way, but never that way—”

“Still there’s very little a real drab could teach you—”

“—and you’ve bought your share of pleasures, and wouldn’t I know it? Who found you Stephanos in the first place?”

“And what useless use you’ve made of him. I could teach you a thing or two he likes,” with a gesture so crude that Portia stiffens on the dressmaker’s pedestal— “You charmless ape!”—and “You look a proper statue now,” says Roland Smalls, pleased to have enraged her, pleased to share the pain. “I’ll send in the vendeuse, shall I,” stepping back into the hall, nodding as pleasantly to the dressmaker, who carries her sawdust cushion and sharp array of pins back into that suite that stinks, to Roland Smalls, of foolish perfume and ridiculous aspirations, there is no mixing the classes with ease, is there? No, nor ever will be. But love—love should exist beyond class, yet without the ability to create its nesting place, where shall it exist at all? If one is forced into the alleys, then the alley is where—“Ah!” his cry as a bare needle finds the side of his slippered foot, to leave behind blood, blood he swabs savagely with the first thing his hand finds, a cravat bought for Stephan, a marvelous thing of black silk and silver threading bright as mercury, that would have looked so well beneath that remote and ungrateful, irreplaceable face. And how fitting a gift it would have made, for was it not the Mercury Theatre where—who was it told him such? That gossip-mad van Symans cow?—the great Stephanos apparently once resided, having come from a career on the continent, a brilliant trail of stages and boudoirs, cut short by some domestic tragedy…. Could it be that he returns, like the dog to its vomit, to that theatre, closed though it might be? It would be like him. It would in fact be very like him—as he himself makes what feels like a smile, and kicks off his slippers as he rings for the maid, fresh towels and hot water for shaving—

—as in waning clouds of steam Tilde scrubs at grimacing Ru, standing shivering in the tin tub by the stove while aproned Lucy pours more water, and “Be brave,” Lucy says cheerfully to Ru. “Once you’re spandy clean, we’ll play some pins, won’t we?” and is as good as her word, spending the rest of the hour chasing the spinning ninepins, spinning stories of them as they fall—“That one was the king, and that one was his loyal prince. All kings have princes, that’s what they call their sons”—until Tilde bangs spoon to pot for “Bread and milk, now. And some bean soup,” though that soup has been strained very thin indeed, watered to make the pot stretch for two more, a fact noted by Lucy from her own first spoonful, she then tactful to announce that “We traveled as haberdashers, you know, and there’s always work for someone who can mend. I’ll sew buttons for true, and make sure to pay our freight while we stay—and Mick, why he can build or fix most anything, though he’d rather be playing the puppets. It’s a crying shame such can’t be done here in the open.”

“Thumb your nose,” says Ru.

“Cockrill was,” says Tilde, pouring more milk. “In the Park. If you can call that playing.”

“With that lady he talked of?” meaning Mrs. Gawdy, Cockrill come hat in hand to the alley door, humble as a begging hound, brightened at once by Lucy’s friendly nod—You’re a puppet man, too, eh? Not so many in this place!—and inside then to nurse a cup of tea for near onto an hour; admiring the Misters and the twin angels as Lucy took them down to work, each by each with an expert’s hand, though he saved his greatest praise for Miss Lucinda liberated from her traveling crate: This one’s a regular old beauty, you don’t see making like that any more! Cries tears, too, you say? Can you still get glycerin for that, I’ve not got glycerin for nigh a year—expansive then to tell of Cockrill’s Palace, the jigging shows he used to mount with the Gawdys and his girls, but “That bag of leather’s the only lady he’s got left,” Tilde says with a sniff. “All his girls ran off when things went ugly, and a good thing, too. The constables would’ve pinched him tight, those girls were always flipping up their skirts, and—Baba, drink your milk.”

“They always blame the whores,” says Lucy, “never the gents who come knocking,” her gaze gone to valiant old Miss Lucinda, whose eyes found reason to cry, yes, for dead girls like Spinning Jennie, dead friends like poor Puggy, burned to ashes on a wartime pyre. And here they are, back at war again, all the survivors…. She feels Tilde’s gaze upon her, no doubt a curious one—yet when she turns her head sees only a dry kindness; Tilde is observant, Tilde understands more than she shows, more than mere years could have taught her though “I’ve never done so,” with a stern little headshake, “whore myself, or ever will. My mother—” and then Tilde stops, up from the chair to stir hard at the pot that needs no stirring, her stiff back to Lucy, who understands some things as well: that little Ru has no father, that Tilde calls herself by various names, Bok being one of them, St. Vitus being another, same as that nice young fellow with the doe’s eyes, Frédéric—and where he has gotten off to, no one seems to know. Exits and entrances, just like at the Poppy! That puppetman Cockrill called Frédéric “Your mister” to Tilde, who did not correct him; the two are not wed, no, there is mystery here; but never mind. If it needs telling someone will tell her, if she needs to know she will ask.

Until then “My mother died,” she says to Tilde, “when I was just a tot,” dabbing a blot of bean from Ru’s cheek; what a handsome little sprout he is! And clever, too, pointing out words in the newspaper as well as if he could read them himself, any woman would be proud to have a child like that. “A shame it wasn’t my father. What he did to my sister Katy was miles worse than any whoring.”

“You have a sister? I do, too. Her name is Tanti,” eager to speak of that branch of the family instead, though the story ends by curling back to the mother again, loss again, for “I don’t know where she went,” Tilde downcast, soup spoon forgotten in hand, a pain she has learned to carry but not abide. “She would be a big girl, by now—I wish she could see my Baba! Once or twice I thought she passed by in the cards, but sometimes it is like that, to see a thing that never truly comes.”

“I’ve seen such cards as yours before,” Lucy nodding to the kidskin case, well-used and faintly soiled at its clasp, “but never had my fortune told. You wrote once that you’d read for me,” meaning only to distract and cheer: and gratified to see Tilde push aside her bowl so eagerly that the thin soup sloshes, fingers reaching for the case as if in more than conscious volition, as though the cards are just as eager for her touch; perhaps they are.

And perhaps that is why the spread for Lucy flows swift as wind or water, while Tilde, comforted by that waxed familiar feel, points out in a scholarly way how the world itself turns through the deck, four suits for the four seasons—“We are in Crowns now, the darkest time of the year”—and thirteen phases of the moon to match the thirteen trumps, all the queens and lords and jacks though “You needn’t explain the knaves,” says Lucy, peering down into the pictures, bright as old confetti against the table’s dun wood. “I knew a few, at the Blackbird. And plenty at the Poppy,” as Tilde’s turning fingers pause upon the Knave of Flowers, faced up to smirk at his own unwanted posies—“The poppy?”—to bring Lucy’s reminiscent nod: “I walked right in under that black-painted flower, and said I was a likely girl—to Mr. Rupert, I can see him still, up behind his desk with a cheroot,” forbidding, kindly Mr. Rupert in his worn black coat, younger then than she is now! “Rupert took me in, he took care of us all, in good times and bad. Even in wartime. Even Miss Decca—”

“Missus Decca? Of the iron fist?” calling forth Lucy’s laugh, yes indeed that Missus Decca! as the stories emerge, one by one, like players onto a stage: Decca with her pinchpenny heart, brave Puggy and sturdy Omar, Laddie, Jonathan and Pearl, the puppets too “When Istvan came,” Lucy glancing back as if for confirmation to demure Miss Lucinda, whose own life upon the stage began before her own, long before that particular venue. What stories might she tell, that peach-bosomed lady, augmented by her colleague Pan Loudermilk who was Marco and now is Van; what secrets they could all reveal, sights unseen by human eyes, pains endured by stoic wood made to weep only by wires and pulpy bulbs, this well-traveled confraternity though “You don’t ever play them, do you?” Lucy quizzical to Tilde, who thinks of the Wheel and the darkness, the lads in their masks, the frozen Youth on the mountaintop: and shakes her head, tapping at the cards as if to say These are my actors, and she their continuing stage.

But “You’ll be playing soon,” she says to Lucy, considering that tabletop display, the Mater and the Queen of Hares there side by side, Hangs-a-man dependant to the left, but in this spread he is a bringer of news, not the news itself, and the news here is mainly to the good: happy increase, an old ache finally settled, and that playing, yes, in some flamboyant, even inflammatory way: “The Jackal’s a strange one, he almost never comes, but when he does he is always laughing. The gypsies used to say the only thing to do with him is dance. —Oh, and look,” at the benign King of Flowers, offering his full-blown rose of plenty and peace. “Snugged up tight to the Mater, usually that calls a wedding,” with a little frown, for madame, so sadly and recently a widow, surely has no fellow on her mind—

—but “A wedding?” from Rupert, descending. “I’d better spruce up then, hadn’t I,” with a funny little twirl of the old striped scarf, a jaunty fillip such as Istvan might have done; he is smiling; he has the copybook in hand. Ru hops to the foot of the stairs, hoping to scribble there again, but “Not this time, little man,” says Rupert, for Istvan’s hands must take it first, this true and weighty history, that yet weighs only the paper and ink it takes to tell the story—all up to date, now, “The Bear and the Bishop” finally scribed, the last of the journey that has brought them safely home; whoever would have thought so, whoever could have guessed such a sweet addendum to their tale! A deeper wonder even than that their curtain has not already fallen: so many perils, some great, most not, but a splinter can kill as well as a knife, even the cold can kill two shivering boys on a rooftop, heads buried in each other’s necks, only an old greatcoat between them and the night…. Made from memory, this tale is larger than memories, it is a kind of testament, his tribute to Istvan—six pennies and a scrap of velvet, a reaching wooden hand, that teasing, passionate, infinite smile: We are two, we need none other—a record of their play that is the record of their love; and how pleased he shall be, and proud too, to present this to its one and only reader, this gift no one else in the world can ever give.

So “Where’s our maestro?” he asks, looking to the stage, the door, the quiet kitchen, the women at the table with their cups and cards; then, noting the room’s larger emptiness, “What’s in play, then? Where is everyone?”

“Mick’s on errands,” Lucy offers, glancing to Tilde, and “The hayrick’s off,” Tilde glancing back, “with Pipper and them. And Frédéric’s not come back yet,” that last news to make Rupert shake his head: more hazard grown from that hazardous stunt, slippery bunk through the roof, whatever can the young fellow be thinking? And the silence from his fellow once he learned of it, St.-Mary’s black stillness that Rupert recognized with a comrade’s frown, though Istvan’s shrug had been nearly merry: There was no body in the snow, was there, so the Marquis must still be at large. An exit worthy of a player! Who would have thought the young man to have had so much blood in him!

“And M Stefan”—Tilde looking to Lucy, whose own look is back to Miss Lucinda, both plainly thinking of what Cockrill had reported, that kitchen-stoop rumor of Istvan playing some strange and glossy Roman show, though whatever it could augur, with all such things worse than illegal, Cockrill could not say, unable to hide his own surprise that they were surprised to learn of it; and somehow neither of these women know how to share this news with Rupert, for it may not even be true, and if it is—“M Stefan, he’s off. So you should sit, and have some soup,” Tilde up to ladle out a fresh bowl, cut more bread, thin slices sour and warm as “Well then,” says Rupert to Ru, the copybook set carefully aside, “that leaves us two as the men of the house. Will you help me to nail up that roof hatch? Can you hold a hammer tight?” bringing Ru’s stout nod, Ru to sit beside him at table as Rupert demonstrates how to dip a black crust into the honey pot so “Not a drop will fall,” thrifty as the boy he must have been, a boy without much honey for his bread, and “Not a drop fall,” Ru’s small hand reaching in tandem for the chipped pot of gold —

—while Lucy turns from the puzzle of the cards to pour more tea, her own share laced with a fairly large, surreptitious tip of gin: for there are other auguries, the streets’ echo of shouts and ruination that recalls the Poppy in grimmer ways; how the world brews recipes for heartache, all the same thick bitter draught! With a stiff swallow of her cup, pouring straight gin this time and “You’ve not got the headache so much these days, have you?” she asks Rupert. “How’s that cough?”

“Quite tolerable,” carefully, reaching to tug the raveled scarf tighter at his throat, as if this might ward more questions, one question in particular whose answer must be kept to himself alone. “We could all do with a bit more heat in here, and a bit less damp—”

—as Mick enters accompanied by alley slush and splashed parcels, addressing Lucy but looking to Tilde as “I got your necessaries,” he says, stamping his boots, one hand still on the door. “But they hadn’t got dentifrice powder, or the Regin’s Tonic either. And there wasn’t any trunk—I asked the stationmaster, he bid ’em look all about the cloakroom, but there was nothing marked like you said. I’ll try again, Miss Tilde, if you wish me to—”

“Shut the door,” Tilde says.

“What trunk?” Rupert asks.

“I wonder if I know,” says a new voice, a man’s voice slurred but still cultured and pleasant, the man himself stepping in from the alley as if entering an elegant reception, his trousers black to the shins with water, the pointed toes of his shoes sleeved in muck. “If it’s a very old trunk with a dent in one side, and full of silly hats and such, it’s sitting in a suite at the Hotel Baron St. Williams, next to my own wardrobe. And I’m very glad to have found egress—I’ve been knocking at that blasted box office door for an age! Though it’s a fine example of trompe l’oeil, it certainly fooled me…. Sir Roland Smalls,” bowing, not offering his hand; his stare touches them all, one by one, until with hunger’s intuition it comes to rest on Rupert alone. “Is he currently about, here? Stephan?”

“No,” says Mick and “He isn’t,” says Lucy, both in one breath, like liars, or clumsy actors; Tilde holds the ladle as if it were a lance, looking to Rupert, who as he rises recalls again to Lucy that first time she saw him, worn black coat and smoldering cheroot; he has that fighter’s walk still, that calm economy of motion as he steps toward the waiting lord and “The doors are kept locked,” he says, “because the theatre’s closed. But I can speak for—Stephan.”

“Can you? He’s never spoken of you,” Roland Smalls beginning to see what a fool he has been played for, what a fool he has been to think himself anything but: no lone player at all, the wily Stephanos Marcus, but the captain of a proper menagerie, ingénue and Jack Wild and a youngish Mother Shipton, there, with a jack-in-the-box at her knee—and the cavalier too, this aging gallant before him, stiff shoulders and big hands, is he the source of that rose gold warrior’s ring? “It was my understanding that he was, shall we say, a widower? Or widow? Un faux ami certainly, un équivoque—pardon, ought I use English?”

“Use any language you like to say good-bye,” Mick’s bristling but “Stop,” Rupert with one hand up, his stare on Roland Smalls. “Either you’re drunk or wandering in your wits—I’ll ask for your business, or give you the door,” his tone so absolutely quiet now that Mick goes still; everyone can smell the danger, except perhaps that lordship who still is talking, stepping past the backstage table to poke and finger the unused props, tip a shield from the pile—“So Greek!”—and eye the Misters on their hooks, Miss Lucinda sprawled in a somewhat unladylike pose: he reaches to her skirts to draw her knees together, sotto voce to note that “Only a peasant needs to shock, dear. A true lady is indifferent to the opinions of others. And the mark of the true cosmopolitan,” Roland Smalls raising his voice, Roland Smalls who with each second that passes feels greater and greater pain that turns, like gold to lead, to curdling bile, “is to find a home anywhere. But had he no ambitions to play something better than such provincial stages? Oh, naughty Stephan! Or was it you, who led him from the heights—or was it the one who died, the organ grinder or whatever he was? One must have an acrobat’s heart, to play such games—”

“What do you want of him.”

“I wanted to take him to supper! But instead we shall have to tryst at that bloody club—oh excuse me, ladies, madame, mademoiselle,” bowing in their general direction, it seems he cannot take his gaze from Rupert’s, Rupert who sees in this lean fastidious man a lifetime of men whose advent into the copybook story darkened every page they touched, faceless, faithless men, always reaching out their hands to Istvan like buyers in a penny shop…. He feels his own hands open at his side, feels the creamy wool of the man’s lapels before he knows he has seized him, as if his hands have operated on their own, that lifetime’s agility and force and “You need to go,” he says to Roland Smalls, even more quietly, a wolf’s murmuring growl. “Go now.”

“This,” says Roland Smalls, “is not dignified,” so close to Rupert he can smell the heat of his body and breath, his own breath quickened, hung on those hard hands so his boot-tips barely graze the floor. “I shall summon a constable—”

“Your dignity or your head, which would you rather? I’ll take one, you keep the other,” released not with a blow or even a shove but Roland Smalls falls backward just the same, onto his back like a beetle, climbing to his feet as the others continue to watch: of the three of them Lucy is calmest, of the four of them only Ru smiles, eyes wide at the display, oh his father is a knight for true! “You’ll go now, you’ll summon no one, you’ll not come back. And if you tell anyone, your lordship friends, anyone, of—Stephan’s home here, I’ll come hunting for your heart, Mr. Smalls, with the smallest knife I can find,” Rupert like an iron statue, a watcher now too as Roland Smalls stumbles his way back to the door, looks back over his shoulder, turns his back on them all, and is gone.

Past that departure, no one speaks; Mick steps to turn the lock; Tilde covers the soup pot with a clang and “Who’s that?” Ru asks of Rupert, and “No one,” Rupert says. “No one we know.” From the table he takes the copybook, from the pantryside shelf the last of the precious Irish whiskey, then makes for the stairs, turning when halfway up to say “When he comes, send him to me,” in a voice so flat that no one dares to comment, no one speaks at all until the door of their room is heard to close, all knowing he means Istvan. Finally “Tilde,” says Lucy, the resolute and likely girl reaching for her cloak and muff, “do you think that, if we tried, we could find that toff hotel?”

Out in the street, a snowy shred of bunting clinging to his shoe, Roland Smalls does not seek to call a constable, in fact seeks to avoid them, looks instead for a cab to take him not to the Hotel Baron St. Williams but directly to Caesar’s Court, where there are bathing facilities available, hot water to stop this wretched trembling, and a tailor to do something with the befouled suit; where he might drink several glasses of brandy and several more of champagne, to efface the brutish whiff of the whiskey—but cabs are hard to come by on that snowy square, as the indifferent sun retreats behind afternoon clouds, and all the trundling omnibuses are full. In the end he is reduced to pure pedestrian, his coat’s pale wool whipping, hat down into the wind so he does not see the pair of young men, not constables, not well-dressed, one smiling, begin to follow him down the avenue.

He will not meet Istvan at Caesar’s Court, though Istvan still is there, enthroned on the horsehair bench, one hand companionable on Jakob’s smooth shoulder, absently stroking as he repeats one last time the youths’ instructions: “The pedestals, then prancing till you get the word. Your Caesar here,” nodding to Haden, “will pop the doors for you; I’ll be up the hall. Only scarper, and all will be well—it’s next time will be trickier, this one’s just a lark.”

“But will we still be bare-arsed?” Jakob’s whisper, and “It’s cold out there,” the beanpole boy mutters, “and worse in the dark,” but “Your share will buy all the woolies you want,” says Haden. “And everyone to get back safe as houses,” thinking, with a fresh wring of the heart, of Frédéric lost out there somewhere, Frédéric whom he cannot protect. “Pipper takes point, and Benzy,” to the beanpole, “at the rear guard—”

“And that hick at the theatre, to click us in?” asks Jakob, with a city youth’s condescension, to consider his city the only one on earth, Haden nearly smiles though “Remember,” Istvan says, “that fellow was playing onstage while you were still a-swim in some manjack’s rod,” himself considering that it would be better for all concerned if the kit and Mick did not dislike each other quite so heartily at this particular moment. Yet what a wink of luck to have crossed his path, there in the toffy district! busy about some unnamed duties for Puss, but I saw you and followed, Mick planting himself in the wet street before Istvan, just before the club’s doors, its grey columns and cold gold doorknock, its air of secrecy and bland abundance. You’re fitting up to play, in there? I can lend a hand but He’s already got two, Haden leaning over Istvan’s shoulder, flicking a chestnut hull from his teeth to the curb. And my two makes four, and then there’s the lads—

Salt your own meal, wasn’t speaking to you.

Well, I’m speaking to you. An’t your business anyway.

Up yours, cardsharp! —He’s not even a puppet man! half-accusation, half-plea to Istvan, much too loud for the passersby, more than several of whom glance their way with more than mere curiosity, the Caesar’s door guards too so There are all sorts of ways to make a play, Istvan swift to lead them around the corner, out of immediate sight, to halt below a curling placard imploring all to DEFEND YOUR DEAR HOMELAND: his odd army, chest pins and rags and bags of powder, not gunpowder but if all goes well, they shall make a mighty bang just the same. And all sorts of players—you’re just the man I had in mind to mind the store, for how well it will suit for Mick to mind that store, since Mouse must be kept clear of the business entirely: sturdy Mick like a gift from the heavens, and half the size of the Cathedral itself! Go on back, now, I’ll task you just as soon as I’ve finished here.

Still Haden could not forebear a parting shot—Pimm, if I stick mine up yours, you won’t walk for a fucking week—since the kit is understandably short of temper, frantic as he is for the absent Marquis. Now “You’ll supervise the toilette?” Istvan asks him, as the lads disperse down the long connecting hallway, dark parquet floor carved into a pattern of the rising sun, or is it setting? “Get that dog-faced maid to help you, she hasn’t had so much fun in years. And,” quietly, “be of good cheer, he’s fine. In fact more than fine, if this were lansquenet I’d call seven-and-it-goes.”

“It’s been three fucking days.”

“All the more ripe for resurrection. Kit, kit,” more quietly still, “he’s a player, yeah? ‘A play is more to us than is our fate!’ Let him make his play, the gods will keep him safe.”

Staring at the floor, the black sunburst repeating: “Easy for you to say.”

“Is it?” raising Haden’s hand to his own scarred shoulder, his gloved hand atop to press it tight; still Haden will not look up, so he needs must lean even closer, face to face, both unmasked and “I told you, didn’t I, that you’d bleed before you’re done.”

“Are we done, then, uncle?” Haden raising his gaze at last to show the yellow eyes so wide with pain that Istvan reaches to tilt that chin and brush those full lips with his own, the barest brush, the feel of the scar, Haden’s eyes closed again as if in benediction, he swallows hard and “Who’d call it easy?” Istvan softer than a sigh. “But you two shall do as we did, Mouse and me, with a lifetime left to play; never doubt it. And you and I,” eye to eye now, a smiling boy inviting another boy to mischief, “in the meantime, we’ll deal up a game of chance.”

“Straight?” says Haden, through his own smile’s beginnings, the hunting cat showing his teeth. “Or slanted?”

“Dealer’s choice,” as Haden clasps Istvan’s shoulder, quick and rough and with immeasurable affection, his step sure again as he turns to the archway, shouldering past a watching servant, a man with tape and shears strung about his neck, that man’s expression so neutral and flat that “È mio fratello,” Istvan says, to rouse a smile there too, the tailor’s instant nod of comprehension and approval—“Oh sí!”—in the noise of the boys, a maid’s giggle down the branched hallway, the smell of cooking quail and boiled linen and cleaning wax, the tailor turning dutiful down the stairs and Istvan up, through the anteroom of blind-eyed ivory statues, the gods and their chosen mortals, and outside into the day’s dying light.

As he walks back beneath the growing flicker of the streetlamps, the flutter of broadsheets like strange birds in aimless flight, Istvan considers with a small and pleasurable smile (though it is never wise to count the take before the taking, Mouse himself would never do so!) that very larcenous play to come: the kit as muscle and right hand, and the lads to be his little demons, scampering amongst the crowd to wiggle their goods, pluck and take their findings back so that those gleaming earbobs and brooches, cameos and cufflinks may shortly be fenced by a so-called postman or two; even in this city so sadly straitened there are several still in business who will do the job nicely—and will need to, for this evening’s frolic shall lock the doors to the great room entirely for himself and the mecs, for good. But “No loss,” he says aloud, pausing beneath a handy if holey awning to light a cigarette, smoke a moment and salute a hurrying Widow with the griffin-headed cane, that widow not quite so grief-struck as not to note the appreciative wink from this singular man in the shadows, a widow is still a woman after all…. As is Portia del Azore, that “marchioness” who shall herself be locked outside and truly, nor likely appreciate it either: well, one must be cruel to be kind, there will be ructions if all goes well, and far better she learn to make her life’s play without letting the gentry use her for a boot scrape.

So “No loss,” he says again, for both she and the palpitating Roland Smalls are no longer part of his troupe nor needed on his stage, they have served all their purposes and more. Between the two of them the letterbox is almost full, and with the Caesar’s money box as well Mouse shall be provisioned, well-provisioned…. And if they must hunker quietly behind the hidey-hole Mercury doors, why, there are a thousand other places where a pair of showmen might mount a show whose payment is to be the playing only, a cheery nose thumbed at the powers that be—one must start with the church, of course, but from there it is just a hop to other useful venues, like the Festus Clock, or this dried-up fountain, here, with its black-scrawled naiads and glum company of fellows one step away from the conscript’s line; or that ironwork balcony, where no Juliet has heaved a proper sigh for ages; or this tobacconist’s shop, where, as he purchases another packet of Ravens, the shopkeeper eyes him as nervously as if he were a thief, why he is a thief! a thief with a dozen hands, some of flesh, some of wood, and tonight’s accomplice-to-be, shall it be the Faustus? Or is it Mr. Pollux who shall serve? May be he ought consult with Mick—that will jolly the lad, and keep him on the threshold where he belongs, for this play is no place for his honest heart. The invincible ladies, now —

But those ladies are not at all in evidence when Istvan turns the key, only the unappetizing smell of burned soup, Ru napping beneath the worktable on a blue puddle of cloak, wearing the pigeon-feather hat, and Mick above with his Van, busy with a tool Istvan recognizes with a smile, an old, old instrument half a knife and half a kind of buttonhook, as “It’s useful still,” he says, coming to stand at Mick’s shoulder, and gaze down into the well-remembered face. “And I still owe you a toss at the Golden Calf. May be we’ll play a show there, one day…. It’s a shame we can’t put this stage to better use,” reaching to jingle, very lightly, the bell at Van’s natty lapel; he looks older, the lines sharp at his lips as he pulls at another cigarette. Mick remembers with a little pang that figure from his childhood, glamorous Mister Istvan, with his wicked Pan and his irresistible glee, who seemed to make of every moment a kind of play, so “You’ve got a stage tonight,” he says, his shrug no shield for his longing. “Why not use him there,” tapping Van, “and me, too? And not that St.-Mary thug, what’s he know of playing that I don’t? Or any other thing!”

“He knows this city far better than I. And I know him. Though never so long as we two have known each other, recall those ‘Angels on Horseback’?” leading him back to the Blackbird, to memories that give joy to Mick if less to himself; conflating then those times of play with this one, this night, this marshaling of the forces as he selects his night’s companion, the costume he shall wear, costumes for them both, all the ordnance neatly into the case for “You recall that General, who used to devil us? These toffs I feint with are only his shadows, but still I’d have—not a pound, I’m not greedy; call it an ounce of flesh, for an ounce will keep us nicely here, Mr. Rupert and me. Mr. Rupert’s to be no part of this, mind, not a word…. If I could, I’d take you and your gentleman with me into the lists—”

“I’m not no gent,” says Van, jingling his bell.

“—but here is where you’re most needed, to step up sharpish if anything should go wrong. You’re the strongest soldier we’ve got, except for—”

“Step up yourself,” from above, Rupert calling from the darkness of the second landing. Mick’s gaze cuts to Istvan with apprehension, thinking how best to frame the warning, but “Our general himself,” Istvan light from the worktable, easy up the stairs to where Rupert waits, cigar burning, following him into their rooms to shut the door firmly behind and “Our trunk,” Rupert says, folding his arms; the whiskey bottle sits empty; the copybook is nowhere to be seen. “Where is it? Mick went to the station to fetch it, but it’s gone.”

“Why,” Istvan still easy, fully alarmed and on guard, “there must be some confusion. I’ll go and check myself—”

“I’ll go with you.”

“—but not just now. I’m expected elsewhere.”

“For supper,” Rupert agrees with a nod. “But let’s have a smoke, first,” one hard hand reaching into Istvan’s coat, searching him roughly as a bailiff might until he finds the cigarette case, opens it to eye the rubied butterfly, hurls it at the wall so hard its mark will mar that wood forever and “Your trick was here,” as Istvan stiffens, the stillness of pure anger, though his voice is steady: “What, the butterfly? He’s not a trick, he’s the wheels on the omnibus, to get where one needs to go. And I never—”

“Stop.” The gaslight is feeble, then much too bright; the room swims with stale smoke; Rupert’s spectacles glitter. “Not the same old lie. In Paris I knew, but—You said you’d rather eat beans, you said you’d rather be hanged than—”

“I would rather. I don’t dance for him, or them, it’s all for—”

“Not for me, messire, I won’t have it or hear it! I’d go back to the road—”

“Oh no doubt! So you could leave me as you did before! You and your endless fucking scruples!” Istvan bends to gather up the fallen cigarettes, takes one and lets the others drop; as he lights it, the flame wavers visibly. “How do you think I’ve paid for our prospects all this time? And took such care for—”

“Prospects?” Rupert throws down his own cigar; his lips twist. “Once a whore, always a whore—I was a pimp, I should know. So now I’m to die, it’s natural you’d seek someone new to keep you—”

—as Istvan strikes so furiously that Rupert staggers, a great blow to the chest, Rupert crashing back into the desk, arm half raised as if to strike back—but instead he coughs, a dreadful ragged cough that sends Istvan instant to his side but “Get off!” Rupert cries, turning his back, wrenching out his stained handkerchief, coughing till the handkerchief blooms red, a hideous and brilliant color and “Be fucked, be fucked to all of it,” Istvan as white as if he bleeds himself, a ghost’s mutter, out from the room pursued by the sound of that cough, down the stairs for the puppet case as Mick and Van stand tensely watching, both as still as if both are wood as to both he says “Cry havoc,” in a voice as calm as a lunatic’s, then disappears past the alley door.

Unlike Roland Smalls, he is fortunate to find a cab at once, one just vacated by a cooing couple who, as they step foot into the public avenue, must pretend to be merely a devoted wife and the devoted friend of her husband; although it is telling that that wife, when she stumbles over a bag of wet rags that turns out to be the curled and plundered body of Roland Smalls, lets out a screech and hurls herself into that friend’s arms as if she fully belongs there. And Roland Smalls, if such consideration is possible in whatever kinder realm he now inhabits, might pardon her reaction, considering that though in death he is even smaller—missing wallet, watch, red jade cufflinks and his spats, as well as his immortal soul—he is also in a greater way at last enlarged and ennobled, for in the strictest, truest, most tragic sense he has died for love.

It is a tragic mask that Mr. Ridley presents to his landlord—“By Tuesday, I swear to you! I’ll have last month’s and this one’s too”—and though the landlord bellows for justice from whatever gods might be abroad on this cold evening, he does not immediately evict Samuel Ridley as threatened, nor force him to toss into the street “Your tenant,” that owl-eyed young fellow, dirty coat and scholar’s satchel on his arm, who follows Ridley into the building. “Now my tenant’s got a tenant! And neither one pays me a sou!”

“Tuesday, on my mother’s grave. —He’s not a bad sort, really,” says Mr. Ridley to Frédéric, as the landlord clumps upstairs. “Only lacking in imagination. No such lack here,” one proud hand to indicate the silent clutter of the studio, backdrops and portrait props, false garlands and chipped mahogany side tables, and columns just like “The ones at the Athenaeum. Or the Cathedral,” says Frédéric; he seats himself on a wicker stool; his knee aches abominably, though less so than his heart, what must Haden be thinking of him now? that he has run off, run away home? “St. Mary of Dolors…. You’re not to photograph the pageant, then?”

“No. They said they’d no further use for me, after they saw my portraits,” though less dismayed than he might be; Mr. Ridley is nothing if not resourceful. “But no one can stop a fellow from setting up in the street, can they? And documenting a public show?”

“Actually they can—there’s a law against ‘interfering with assembly.’ But what difference does that make? A man must do as he does,” Frédéric less reckless than purely resolute; after nearly falling several times from the vertiginous roof, and once more for good measure down the slippery fire ladder, then these last nights sleeping in the Park, harried by Savvys and furtive drunks, dodging the patrolling constables, he feels like Dante, more than at home in hell, though still no closer to his goal. It was Mr. Ridley who stumbled on him hunkered grey-faced on a bench, drew him inside a tired little café, bought him a bun and a hot cup his numb hands could barely hold, to speak ramblingly of various issues—deprivations, translations, the current state of journalism, half the papers being unreadable and the other half a joke, oh for the days of Herrs Hebert and Konrad! and encouraging him to tell his tale of current woe, so “I’ll thank you again for your offer, since what I mean to do is illegal, too, most of it. You’re very sure you want to take part?”

“Besides the Christian charity of helping a fellow artist in need, that Krystof still owes me,” as Mr. Ridley pulls a cork from a bottle of what seems to be gin, takes a swig, takes another, then passes it to Frédéric, who receives it like the nectar of the gods, his aching stomach expanding; the bun was his first meal today, and yesterday’s only a bowl of boiled eggs small enough to be songbirds’, and a mug of twiggy, questionable soup. “A fortnight’s worth of painting and retouching, and he snaps his fingers in my face, and sets his man-dog on me! No wonder he’s a fine townhouse and I’ve this dungeon, eh?” though with a certain cheer; there are natures that relish adversity, as some prefer to swim in chop and waves. “I’m not surprised he took your work without paying.”

“He did pay,” says Frédéric, honest even in his anger, “but for its writing only, and only half. And even though it shan’t be given at the pageant, now, I want—it must be played.”

“At the Mercury?” asks Mr. Ridley shrewdly, happily. “With those puppets, and—”

“Never the Mercury.”

“’Never’s as false as always,’” quotes Mr. Ridley, taking back the gin, affixing a lady’s curling hairpiece for a beard, mourning anew Nella’s absence for “It’s always best to have a woman at your side, especially when you’re onto something tricky—Nella dressed so prim, she’d have made a perfect lookout. Why can’t we partner up with your missus, eh? Or get M Marek to charm Krystof silly, while Herr St.-Mary knocks that lunkhead for a loop!” but “It’s easier just with two,” says Frédéric, neither a truthful nor a viable explanation, but in the end this is his play to make or botch. And though there are ongoing difficulties of conscience at involving Samuel Ridley, Ridley himself was quick to invoke quid pro quo and his own portrait ambitions, for he is determined to capture Istvan Marek before the man leaves town again!

So, beard in place, Mr. Ridley pauses at the door to make sure he wears his militia pin, noting with alarm that “You’ve not got yours?” but “Here,” Frédéric taking up a hard paper rosette, still bravely red, to tear and twist into a fine approximation; from a distance of several feet it is exact, though not as good as the one he had first fashioned from a dressmaker’s pin, plucked from an unsuspecting young lady’s hat on the ’bus. That one must have fallen off in the Park, or the street outside Krystof’s townhouse, as he paced behind a snowy half-wall, watching and waiting for the chance that never came; though John Abram left and entered with a noted regularity, and others entered, too, several of them dressed in clergy’s clothes, suggesting to Frédéric’s mind the Scripture verse about the den of thieves. To warm himself he repeated a different verse, a quote from his own opus—No woman born/Can bring your heart to stand, O Hadrian—imagining it sung out on a stage, a great stage somewhere with shining lights and a chanting chorus, and Haden there beside him, hand in hand to listen, and to smile.

Now Mr. Ridley checks to see that the landlord is not lurking in the stairwell, and that the street outside is “Clear and ready,” his conspirator’s nod to Frédéric beside, blue cravat his flag of honor, armed with his bag and the rusty-bladed knife, though the thought of using it on someone is more frightful than the thought of being cut himself. As he and his new ally exit, Frédéric asks if “You’re certain that sideway will be open?” and “To us, for certain,” says Mr. Ridley with a little chuckle. “One of the maids is sweet on me, Constance she is, or is it Consolata? Whichever, she’s a pretty one, biggest globes I’ve ever seen outside a fancy house, or at that Cockrill’s Palace. Remember Cockrill’s Palace?”

—as they step into a transient blizzard, a drift of rooftop snow blown down by the rising wind, up streets whose crowds thin or swell depending on the buildings beside: none for the barber who has closed entirely, more for the lecture parlor where moist-breathing warmth and, sometimes, thimbles of wine can be had, less again for the hotels like the Montblanc or the Baltic, that latter a cold haven indeed for two travelers who, had they looked down from their windows or Frédéric up, might have achieved a family reunion on the spot: Mr. and Mrs. Blum, whose attempts to make contact with their son have so far found no success, the address on the letters having proved to be a postal drop. Mr. Blum has begun to believe that this trip is the crowning tinklebell on the fool’s cap, but “Of course we shall find him,” says Mrs. Blum, writing a note for the hotel runner to take to the tailor down the block; Frédéric’s child will need a traveling suit, something presentable in wool or serge, all the children here seem to go about in tatters. “Why else did we arrive at the same time as the pageant?”

“What pageant?”

“You notice nothing that isn’t on a ledger! But the Blessed Virgin will answer my prayers. Even if he’s off about his business—”

“What business?” sourly.

“—his—that woman must still be here somewhere, she and the child. Where else would she be?”

In fact that young woman has herself very recently passed not far from those very windows, trousered and red-pinned Tomik Bok squiring Mrs. Pimm, whose quest too has met with failure: to find the toff hotel was easy, to enter it somewhat less so, the doors all guarded up like a bank! But to persuade the liveried young servant, even with the temptation of Lucy’s money, backed by Tilde’s threatening glower—

You know M Marcus, you played for him at the Mercury. And I fed you there. Plenty more than your share!

I can’t let you walk up into some lordship’s rooms! I’d lose my place here quick as quick—

It’s only for a moment, Lucy’s whispered wheedle, and what he’s got inside is ours anyroad. Just take this, and drop that skeleton key—

—proved in the end impossible, sending them back empty-handed to the street, the foreign-type lady and her guard with the little mustache, whose boyish affectations rouse Lucy’s player’s spirit anew, for “You’ve got the strut just right,” she says approvingly. “We’ll get you onstage yet!” Arm-in-arm across Liberty Square, skirting for prudence’s sake a little crowd gathered outside the shoe shop, the proprietress strident at its heart—“He was knocking there, knocking and knocking, that lordship! I saw him myself!”—and “Now who might that be?” Lucy peering toward their alley destination, two figures waiting by the Mercury door, a tubby man and a bare-headed woman who looks somewhat the worse for wear, sagging in his grasp, is the lady ill?

—but “Hold right there,” comes a voice from just behind them: a pair of very young men, just boys, greasy grins and hands-out. “Time to pay the sidewalk tax.”

“Keep walking, sonny,” Lucy shoving her muff pistol into the nearer one’s snout as Tilde flashes her knife at the other, the boys scrambling back to the avenue as “It’s Cockrill,” calls the visitor, Alban Cockrill betrayed and defrauded, brushed coat and gold-tinned boot buckles in the end not fine enough to give entry to the much-desired Roman soiree, Elsa there acting the great lady, as if she had never laid eyes on him before! So for solace he sought another lady’s company, Mrs. Gawdy on his arm as he enters the Mercury, brightened at once at the sight of Mick and Van; and Mick’s own defraudment soothed by the chance to instruct so eager and complimentary a pupil, and examine that doughty old lady-player, contrasting her yarn-sewn simplicities with Miss Lucinda’s sophisticated ways; as Lucy, with Ru drowsing on her lap, watches Tilde climb the stairs to the silent third floor, to knock, and knock, and be turned away.

At Caesar’s Court the mood is very different, very hectic and competitively gay: the ladies flaunting their Romanesque fashions, each more diaphanous and daring than the last—Frau Konstantin is nearly bare beneath her sapphires—while the men compare notes of the day’s battles and losses, mainly losses, some irreparable; it is clear the rate of conscription must increase. Other guests, like Felix Krystof, seem content to sip the rum-and-currant punch and enjoy the decorations, the deep green swags of frosted ivy, spruce, and braided asphodel, the heated drift of censered incense, the pedestaled gods draped here and there as if against an encroaching chill; while a table of visitors new to the city, M Edmund Gabriel and several comrades, arrived specifically to make merry with their old friend Roland Smalls, wonder aloud wherever the man can be—

“One can never trust the lovestruck, they’re so prone to sudden swerves. That’s his agnes right there, isn’t it? The Italian girl?”

“I thought she was Spanish. Perhaps he’s planning to arrive with his inamorato, that player fellow he’s so hard for—”

“Hard for? He’s over the moon, is Childe Rowland.”

“Remember him at the Pale Ophelia? ‘It’s all just bums and willies, isn’t it?’” the shared and knowing laugh until “Enough of business talk!” calls Frau Richter, imperial in pointed headdress, raising her punch glass high. “We’ll have a toast, then begin our evening’s entertainment,” with a nod to Portia del Azore radiant in green and white, her gaze as radiant: in the place of honor beside her patroness, this room her elevation, this night her peak. The tables are packed with gentry, Roland Smalls is not here to cast a pall, Stephanos is here and continues unusually amiable: to his white-suited helper in the black domino mask, who received for him the payment she was very careful to proffer first; to the simpering maid, the grinning tailor; even to sulking Letty van Syman’s sister, a plump young matron in ermine and red silks, rustling over to Portia with an earnest request —

Might I be presented to your entertainer, Marchioness, before the performance begins? We’ve met before, though I’m sure he won’t remember. I’d consider it a great favor—

—and that conversation as easy to broach as to broker, Stephanos gracious in the hallway’s shadows to recall with a bow The garden party, yes. Your mother had peacocks and You do remember! with a little flutter like the girl she had been, always the more romantic of the sisters. That was a wonderful fête, much the best of an unhappy time. My late father was having difficulties then, political difficulties—

I recall hearing of such. Very sad.

—but it was like magic, you and that little wooden man! Will you have him again tonight? her eager question to call from Stephanos a completely unreadable smile, a brief pat of her ruby-ringed hand and That comrade is engaged elsewhere, but he’d be pleased to know that he was of service to you. Tonight my associate is called Mr. Castor, and as we are shortly to begin—? looking then to Portia, his gaze swirled black with kohl, all in black but for his pearl earring and a golden cravat, poorly stitched and garish, like nothing he has worn before but You like my regalia? his murmur to her as the van Symans daughter happily departed. Jolly bright for a jolly night…. Where’s our friend the butterfly? as his helper lit for him a last cigarette, past Portia’s shrug of brisk relief—I don’t know, and I don’t care—which made Stephanos smile again, a curious smile and I’m glad to hear you speak so. He’s not the journeyman for you any longer, after tonight you’ll be walking a very different road. Single-minded, with a cloven soul—you’ll go far.

Thanks to you, her reply as heartfelt as her smile, the smile of a woman who knows the fates are with her; she even reached to squeeze his arm, surprised somewhat by the tension she found there, the rock-hard muscle beneath the black serge as Thank me later. Now it’s time for us to whistle up the gods, a little wink through a little cloud of smoke; forever after she will recall that smell, its harsh perfume, will associate it with loss, defeat, disgrace, as Stephanos turns with a half bow of final farewell to Portia del Azore, fraud herself and would-be trickster, clever Polly who will never guess how this trick shall be played—

—as Haden stands appalled by Istvan’s pallor: something has gone wrong, killing wrong, but his wary questions have had no answer, though his mutter now at the opening toasts—“She’s in for a harsh night, an’t she”—brings Istvan’s distant shrug: “One must be harsh to someone, and there she is. But she’ll weather it nicely, that young woman is cast iron all the way to her— Ah, not so tight, kit,” a wince as Haden laces on the plague mask as if looping a garrote, Haden having glimpsed in the crowd the face of Felix Krystof; as Istvan then does the same for Mr. Castor, that little mask still too large for Mr. Loup, Mr. Castor who holds in his heart the ancient white knife, his own heart the same, sharp-edged and bloody, a cause of pain no matter how it turns…. Head down, unpresent to all but unpresent Mouse, he kisses his fist, the old sweet gesture, for this last night belongs to Rupert whether he will have it or no, Haden bending close to whisper then from his own worry “Not to worry, uncle. Only play—”

—as Istvan lifts his head and his gaze along with Mr. Castor, in full command again, the general of the boards and “Aut Caesar aut nullus,” with a fox’s smile for Haden as they step out in tandem, silhouetted for a moment in the archway like messengers from some other, more elemental world, the whore’s black vest Istvan’s vestment, the frosted ivy a moment’s wreath for Haden’s pale hair and “Here’s a party, messieurs et mesdames, to rouse up your spirits! And make a snap of the great beyond!” Istvan snapping his fingers in the velvety applause, advancing to select a handy cup—it happens to be Edmund Gabriel’s—and “A toast indeed,” taking a sip, making a face, handing the cup away to another at the table, that man glimpsing what Roland Smalls must see in this exotic player, his devilish goatee, the black-rimmed sparkle of his eyes behind the mask. “To our charming hostess! Whose fortunes we salute, my associates and myself,” making Mr. Castor bow, Haden bowing beside, his gaze seeking Felix Krystof once again as a finger finds a sore. “We’re honored to play for you here, our very last night in this locale—alas, yes, we must depart, the muse calls elsewhere,” bringing from the guests a buzz, raised eyebrows from Frau Richter to Portia, whose glowing smile falters, then freezes entirely as “The Marchioness,” Istvan nodding her way, “or is it Baroness? Or empress? Whatever rôle, Fraulein Chambermaid, we’re jealous of our stage this last night. You must find another for your show.”

Frau Richter’s own smile flickers as she looks to Portia—“What does he mean? You’re part of the performance?” but “No longer of mine, madame,” Istvan’s stone-cold player’s wink, recalling a knife and a winey teacup, a plea to make them do things, do just as you wish: in Portia’s stare he sees that she remembers, too; one hand has taken hold of her skirt, a little strangling pleat. “She’s been mounting a play all her own, all this time, with those aped ballroom airs and graces—and the hats!” Mr. Castor tips his own, one shammer to another. “Quite the ladylike charade for a lowly chambermaid, eh? I never should have guessed it out myself, except—”

“What is he saying?” Frau Richter staring now at Portia, Frau Richter taking a pointed step back as “This is absurd,” says Portia into the sudden silence, her voice too loud, too harsh, a chambermaid’s caw; she is sweating, her white silk neckline has gone grey. “Absolutely absurd! Sir Roland can tell you precisely who I am, Sir Roland and I—” as the men at that table look to the empty place, Roland Smalls no doubt dismayed by this awkward discovery, no doubt the reason he has failed to attend. Herr and Frau Konstantin are staring, Frau Ezterhaus is staring, everyone is staring, Letty van Symans lets out a quick little, spiteful little laugh and “Take your bow, now, chambermaid,” says Istvan, boot-toe tapping, a brisk and heartless tattoo —

—until at last Portia turns and flees, a Cinderella whose midnight came early, La rose fanée up the stairs and through the portico past the doorway guards, one of whom wonders aloud if she is drunk, stumbling off like that without a cape into the cold, but “They’ll all be gargled shortly,” shrugs the other. “There’s a vat brewed of that rummy punch deep enough to swim in.”

Still the first guard is prescient in a sense, for within the hour Portia is well on her way to drunkenness, the hotel manager’s bottle of champagne poured down with the port past the tears she does not shed, tears in her throat like acid, grinding licorice drops as she strips off the sweat-ruined gown and rapidly jams her trunks with other gowns and shoes and, yes, hats, the beehive hat again upon her head as she yanks Bijou into the hall upon his false-pearl leash. The young liveried servant waits uneasily at the doors of the lift as Portia stops to hammer at the suite of Roland Smalls, a rageful cry to the silence inside, the would-be lady fully a scullery shrew—“He’s all yours now, you lavender Judas! You shit!”—before she lurches off in a cab rolling stolid in the direction of the train station, though whatever her true destination, no one in this city will ever know it, for none here will see Portia del Azore again. Yet if not every exit is a final one, nor is every stage a stage: if Polly can play Portia del Azore, Portia may also turn, say, to Priscilla Dell, amanuensis to a needy literary ladyship, or Primrose Dean, companion to a well-heeled elderly gent, aided in such enterprises by a sister found to be equally companionable; and Bijou may learn that romping off leash and chasing rabbits brings happiness greater than stiff satin cushions and little crusts of breakfast toast.

At the Roman rites, the evening’s zest has faltered past that exit, a long moment’s wavering petulance, a dark refusal to be amused: but this challenge proves a balm for Istvan, who must work to woo, to bully and seduce all back into the properly pliant state of play. Haden patrols the perimeter, gaze behind his mask in constant motion, as Mr. Castor’s entreaty to the gods who make all real—“From wood and stone/To flesh and bone”—causes several of the statues to suddenly smile and bow, sending a rippling frisson, a gasping laugh through the guests to see living flesh amongst the marble, so cunningly still for so long that none had noted their advent to the pedestals.

Frau Richter is delighted, now, as two youths flank her, a chest undraped, a muscled white thigh powdered whiter, these handsome statues fresh from some gutter Parthenon, as the others circulate amongst the guests to flirt and pout and refill the punch cups, watched by their genial interlocutor with the little wooden fellow as masked as he, reminding all present that all true pleasure “Comes to us from Heaven, does it not?” Istvan whistling a manner of Te Deum as Haden snuffs several candelabra and adds more incense to the censer, crumbled small nuggets that smell strongly of hashish; the smoke increases. “So it’s right that we ought to thank those gods, and how else shall one do so but by admiring their handiwork?” moving amongst the lads to strip them one by one as the little man tickles and prods, skin like a secret uncovered in that roomful of humid smiles—

—though Felix Krystof alone sits unmoved, notice drawn to him by Haden with a grim whistle of his own, sending Istvan sidling to Krystof’s side, to inquire with counterfeit solicitude if it is “Vulcan or Hades, who damps your spirits, sir? Too shy, or too damned—”

“Why, neither,” says Felix Krystof, with a smile as counterfeit. “‘Pygmalion’ is a fine tale of the unreal, and your puppet, there, is very nice—Ah!” as Mr. Castor boxes his ear, boxes it hard, Haden smiles and “Was that real?” asks Istvan sweetly. “These statues—and puppets—are closer kin to the gods than we, monsieur, they have more life, and will keep it longer. Yet while we live, let us live!” whistling more fiercely as Mr. Castor accompanies that whistling with a voice so dry—

“The ancient Greeks in theatre would dress their words in verse

But these are modern times now! And so we must rehearse

Our modern ways in modern days and live our modern lives

And pay the gods for what we want! And thus own Paradise!”

—it is as if the wood itself is speaking, encouraging a tithe, a love-offering, as Istvan strips an ornament of his own, the pearl earring then affixed with care to Mr. Castor’s lapel. The younger van Symans daughter is next to respond to the challenge—“Oh take this, please!”—tugging off the ruby ring, remembering her own sister’s frolic with two funny wooden fellows, their batting back and forth of a bauble on a golden chain. She offers the ring to Mr. Castor, Istvan bending to kiss her hand, kiss it again before handing her in return a single black cufflink with the head of Medusa, then handing off that ring to the nearest of the boys—it is Benzy—to make of it an adornment in a somewhat surprising place.

“Have this!” calls Edmund Gabriel, holding out a golden cigar case that Mr. Castor politely refuses, for “This will suit better,” Istvan slipping the rude cravat from his own throat to wrap around Edmund Gabriel’s, who fumbles off his vermilion silk scarf and its diamond rooster pin, to drape one lingeringly around Jakob and fix it in place with the other. Now everyone is clamoring for their jewels and trinkets to be exchanged for the honor of bits and bobs of Istvan’s costume: long black cuffs of stiffened paper, onyx collar studs, the whore’s vest from the Poppy framing Frau Ezterhaus’s décolletage —

—as Haden pockets the van Symans daughter’s ruby, she the only one of the evening who will suffer no lasting loss, while he nods up Elsa the maid—Elsa who had previewed Paradise in the hallway with Pipper, who passed a cup or three of punch to Johan the manager while sampling the same for herself—Elsa who now obediently ferries the boxes of rice powder back and forth from the kitchen. One box is heavier than the others but Elsa does not notice, so wide-eyed beguiled by the nude youths a-sparkle in the last of the candlelight, several of them frankly aroused—

—while “Who’d be a god?” Mr. Castor invites, the lads his conduits to anoint all the guests, even Felix Krystof, while the jewels are gathered for safekeeping on one slim body, that prancing, writhing, naked Pipper as “I give you our imperial goddess!” Istvan calls, Frau Richter puffed white as a ghost or a clown, powder thick on her neck, open-mouthed laughing as Benzy and Jakob hoist her to their shoulders, leading an unsteady snakes’ dance between the static statues and the stands of Jerusalem palm, in clouds of hashish and incense and cigar smoke, the sole candelabra to cast them as twisting shadows on the ivory walls as “Give tribute, mortals!” calls Mr. Castor, all the lads but Pipper surrounding Frau Richter, laughing, stroking, kissing, turning to offer the same treatment to the crowding guests. Letty van Symans shoulders Frau Ezterhaus aside, Frau Konstantin’s breasts tumble from her gown, Edmund Gabriel’s tablemate works himself spasmodically beneath the draping cloth—

—while Pipper dances past the saw-toothed ferns into the archway, to Haden, who swiftly relieves him of the jewels then recedes himself, two powder boxes’ booty transferred to one anonymous bag, several doors wedged firmly open—to the alley, to an unused storeroom and its unlocked windows, to the laundry and its handy, slippery chute—before he hurries back to his waiting-spot, waiting for Istvan—

—though it is Mr. Castor who brings the evening to its inevitable close, as behind that carven knight’s face, the trickster’s eyes are hooded, a spectator at his own parade, the crowing, capering, staggering toffs become less marks than markers on some ancient gaming board whose rules he has tired of long ago. All he wants, now, is Mouse hale and young, a dark boy on a rooftop, Take a breath, you’re all in and “Congé!” calls Mr. Castor abruptly, as if on the battlefield. “Permission to depart for Olympus!”

—that word the signal to send the lads instant from pack to scatter, barefoot skidding on the marble, galloping down the parquet hallway with Haden hustling behind to count heads and hand off trousers and make sure all safely depart: while Istvan passes straight through the fogged and reeling crowd to pause at the top of the stairway, a distance immense and unbreachable, Orpheus might have looked so as he headed off with his lyre and “Mesdames et messieurs,” with a bow he will never better, tipping his top hat, letting it drop to topple and bounce down the steps like a severed head, as Mr. Castor flings a last white puff into the air, stale rice and fairy dust, “groundlings, merci and adieu—”

—and as Istvan exits to applause, a quick brisk nod to the door guards—Another coatless one! Is it the fashion, now, to freeze?—to turn the snowy corner, strip free his mask, and bolt, joined several blocks beyond by sprinting Haden in a greatcoat with the puppet case and bag, it is Letty van Symans’s husband, cravat gone, weak eyes watering from the smoke, who suddenly recalls his wife’s pearl earbobs, heirloom pearls, completely priceless and “Here, now,” he says, looking around for the youths, finding only the empty scroll of a dropped draping, the censer guttering out. “Here, now!”

The curtain must be drawn on the guests’ collective and bewildered fury, on Frau Richter’s hysterics, on her husband’s ire—“You’ve been played for an utter fool, Madeline. Twice! On the same night!”—that will demand her banishment to the family’s country house before the week has ended. It is Herr Richter who has the telephone brought by the frightened manager, Herr Richter who places a private call, whose voice, unsteady with rum and anger, apprises Martin Eig of the evening’s distasteful events, for “The last thing we need is more scandal and suicides. Will you send someone, will you—What’s that?” as Roland Smalls’s name, Roland Smalls’s demise is communicated, the sparse and sordid details that, coupled with this farrago, seem to comprise an even more criminal tale. Two officers of the Protectorate shortly arrive, to question the dusty and hiccupping victims, while a pair of constables is dispatched to take into rough custody the shoemaking Cassandra, that upstanding citizen and friend of decency, who weeps and shudders like any villain in the grey-walled Protectorate room, as more constables search the street and square for the miscreants.

Meanwhile other censers of the same design send their smoky orisons to heaven, via the evening choir service at St. Mary of Dolors, itself hectic with the last of the pageant preparations, the triple stages built within the sanctuary, Heaven, Hell, and the earthly plain between. In the pewbound crowd a watcher might have spotted Samuel Ridley, his gaze appraising the statues’ eyes in the dimness—however are they made to shine so? Just painted glass, and yet they look so real—while beside him, Frédéric, script pages folded in his satchel, skinned knuckles folded in prayer, offers his humble thanksgiving for the dangerous job brought to this quick conclusion. He would never dare to foist such a farce upon the stage, but there it was: the maid Consolata so easily distracted, Ridley promising to make her his model—Look, see this picture? See how pretty the gown!—as Frédéric, heart thudding, edged past them into the well-polished hallway, its lights in cold electric burn, to climb the silent stairs, test then tease open the remembered, and unlocked, study door, and see upon the desk—beside basins of soaking tea and twists of paper, a spidery letter hung carefully to dry—his own neatly clipped script, set apart as if left there solely for the finding; truly, it was a miracle.

Thus if he had had a moment’s dark urge to appropriate more than his own work, to fling various pages, say, from a casement window, that urge was easily vanquished by his better angels; and so down the stairs again, nervous and exhilarated, breathing like a cat, half a step from the hallway from which the maid’s giggle and coo had disappeared along with the maid, picture still in her hand, for You? from startled John Abram appearing in suspenders and soft house shoes, no thick-soled boots this time. The Jew!

Like our Savior, sir, with a blow that surprised them both, an off-balance pistonlike punch to cleanly break John Abram’s nose, beginner’s luck and Fuck yourself standing, Frédéric had gasped, before colliding in the passageway with Samuel Ridley: the two rushing out into the snow, Frédéric shivering as much with a strange elation, a heady blend of anger and might, as from the sudden blast of the cold, as Samuel Ridley hurriedly kicked and flung sooty slush across their tracks, bounding off in a sideways gait As if it’s seven-leaguers they’re chasing! You do so too!

But this dissemble proved unnecessary, as they made their way unpursued back to the avenue, down frozen streets past trash-bin fires and two hopeful whores in Widows’ weeds, Frédéric towing Samuel Ridley onto, then off, the ’bus and up the saintly steps of the Cathedral, to disappear into the massing crowd of fervent worshipers, sanctuary and blessed warmth and chanted prayers, the hymns he has so missed—though the quality has sadly suffered since his own days in the choir, the organist is more than halfway out of tune. And the choristers, the choristers are —

“Herr St. Vitus?” and Frédéric jumps like a felon, Samuel Ridley jumps too though it is only the second curate, stopping pewside to ask after his health and prospects since “It’s been some time since I’ve seen you,” with a friendly hand on the young man’s shoulder, who indeed looks much the worse for wear. “Though your comrade was here, on your behalf—I don’t know his name, he’s a workman on the pageant? Kindly fellow, strong-looking young fellow with pale eyes—”

—as Frédéric’s own eyes widen, one hand without volition finds his heart as “His name,” he says, “is Hadrian”—and oh, if only he had seen that daring entry and stairway climb, that victorious battle with John Abram! to prove once and for all that Frédéric belongs in this place as he belongs at Haden’s side, for what danger cannot be faced down if faced together? And now the battle is part of the story, a story to be shared as soon as he can safely reach home; and share there as well the script, to demonstrate his honor along with his love to its subject and hero—

—Haden, who at that moment sits in earshot of a very different sort of choir, two red-nosed merchants strangling a patriotic hymn, at a three-legged table with Istvan beside, workman’s jacket shrugged over the showman’s shirt, pearl resumed and kohl wiped to a smear as “Salut, kit,” the serving man dealing down a half-bottle of Spanish port. “To blood and thunder. And our young actors, Pipper especially, Henry Irving himself would be green.”

“And you were mossed. Can you say why, now?”

“Faire de la mousse, why, not I. It’s you who ought stop fretting—better we were elsewhere just now, let the hounds chase themselves awhile, and Mick will keep good watch on the lads. The first rule of the general is to trust one’s lieutenant—”

“We’re not in the fucking army,” as a vagrant image of the long-ago corporal marches past his mind’s eye, the fleeting safety, there is no safety, even the corporal did a better job of taking care—

“—though he doesn’t trust me,” Istvan one-knee nudging the puppet case in which the jewels lie, the money from the Caesar’s money box, less than hoped for but still enough to count. “And yet all’s for him. ‘We are two,’” half in song, “Castor and Pollux, I’d share whatever immortality, I’d give him mine. We’d twinkle like the Gemini, up in the stars—”

“What’s that tune?” inquires one of the red-nosed caterwaulers. “Or are you drunk?”

“I mean to be,” past the port and this dive, then blunt brown rum in another dive and smaller, three tables, five chairs; then blackish brandy or what is sold as brandy in a smaller place still and even filthier, a saltbox room off the lowliest canals, a stoic tapster beneath candle sconces older than the deluge, a fat rat sitting boldly on an unmarked keg as “No more St.-Mary,” says Haden; they are both drunk, now, the peculiar steep drunkenness of sorrow, ostensibly playing cards, passing bent and folded paper back and forth across an ancient table. “I’ll be Mundy true, or whoever-soever, why not? Or let the road name me, since there’s no fucking use for me here—”

“Don’t be a fool. Stay put.”

“And do what? Play keep-home with that blue-eyed tartar, and watch the fucking roof hatch for a sign?”

“Your heart’s your home,” tapping the card just turned, the deuce of hearts. “See, there’s your sign…. He is my home,” very softly. “He’s my stage. Do you know,” another card turned, a sloe-eyed queen, a tale that even Rupert has never heard, “once at a ball, some high-hat affair in Brussels, some beribboned bitch put her eye on him, handsome as he was, as he is—she made for him to dance, or chat, but for her he’d do neither. So,” leaning closer, his hand on Haden’s with more than a drunk’s insistence, as if he must tell this story, in this room empty now but for them and the questing rat, “then she said to me, for she saw me watching, ‘What a waste, isn’t it! He’s a nancy, you know, an awful nancy.’ And I,” leaning even closer, cheek to cheek as if a great secret is being passed, “I kissed her, that bitch, like this,” his teeth sudden to Haden’s ear, not a bite but very nearly, “and ‘So am I,’ I told her. ‘And he’s mine.’”

And as Istvan draws back, triumphant, smiling, Haden sees the pain in his eyes, glazed and diamond-bright and “A toast to nancies,” their hands still linked, Istvan raising with the other the filmy beaker, to swallow then share with Haden, who swallows, too, his own pain, swift to recognize this other’s depth, unsure of its cause but the cause is the same and “He’s your man,” Haden murmurs. “Anyone who looks at him can see.”

“And a toast to performance! Love is a performance, it lasts forever, and then you part…. A moment,” levering himself up from the table, “a piss,” lurching half out the door for that moment, then another, then Haden up as well to peer past the jamb—“Did you fall in the canal?”—to see instead Istvan hunched hands to face, pressed into the damp stones of the wall, so “Inside,” Haden says with great rough kindness. “Come inside, uncle,” to sit at the table again, to finish the hand of cards, finish the fluid in the beaker, and doze together, a pair of knaves, two foxes in a makeshift den—and if, in his sleep, Istvan weeps, a lost boy crying in the darkness, only Haden ever knows it, head to that shoulder and its scars unseen, old red ropes faded pinkish by time, a thousand thousand’s heartbeats just a blink to the blank immortal glimmer of the stars.

The snow has stopped; the moon is on her way at last, a stalwart matron, waning into the dawn past the droop of the purple drapes. On the desk is the copybook, Rupert’s copybook, and the teakwood box of letters, its contents sorted into another sort of tale; so many letters, all to say the same thing. In wrapped scarf and shirtsleeves, Rupert sits on the rosewood bed, eyes closed between sleep and waking; he has drunk a deal of wine atop the whiskey, drunk the last of the little Queen’s bottle; his chest aches greatly; he is waiting.

Some hours ago there was a hubbub in the street, constables and commotion, a woman shrieking out like a crying bird. Then came beating on the door below, the locked and bolted theatre door: what had the gentry fellow called it, trompe l’oeil, fool-the-eye, yes. He had opened this door, had stood listening at the head of the stairs, but Mick and the others seemed to have managed whatever furor there was, for at last the pounding stopped, and the street grew still again, filling only with snow. It was Mick, with Tilde, who climbed at last to knock and knock and knock until he must open, not fully, the door kept ajar as Your trunk came, said Mick, looking once to him then pointedly away, Tilde beside with some unheard explanation—They were looting, Anders said, remember Anders? Looting that lordship’s room, since he is chopped—You need food, Sir! Please, let me bring you some food! But he had closed the door then, gently, inexorable as the snow still falling; he knew she had seen the blood on his shirt, Mick had seen it, too.

He should change his shirt, before Istvan comes; where is Istvan? How many years has he spent so, waiting, patiently impatient, for that light step on the stairs? And always to be worth the wait…. What heaven can heaven offer, that can ever better that sound? The monks had had their own ideas of paradise: those soldier-saints, the untouched Virgin on a cloud with her Son beside, somehow infant in her arms and scarred hero, too; is it blasphemous to own that in his mind the same is true of Istvan? The boy in the viaduct, his pennies and his smile, Jesu that smile! and the fierce and wily actor, oh, there never was a man could play like him. Scarred too, yes, the guilt for that wounding has lessened but never left—yet the wounds made Istvan only the more beautiful, and even more to be prized for the near-losing, on that terrible night so long ago, just a moment past…. When will he come?

He must have slept, then, head back against the pillows, woken by the rumble of the cough, the God damned cough, that adversary he cannot hope to best. One hand gropes for the bunched and sticky handkerchief, somehow his spectacles are gone—as a cleaner handkerchief is put into his hand, its odor of brandy, Istvan to offer it: the hand with the warrior’s ring, je reste avec vous—

—while Rupert blinks and half turns, as if somehow he might hide, but Istvan turns him back, so simply and with such simple pain that Rupert’s arms open, half-apology, half-command, to clasp then lock around him, they sit so on the bloodied bed until “I’d not meant you to know,” Rupert’s murmur, but “However think I didn’t?” with a kiss, the flavor of copper, blood on Istvan’s lips. They sit again until Istvan shivers—he wears no coat, where is his coat?—so Rupert wraps him in the old satin coverlet; it seems they might sleep, until “It’s not the going,” a murmur, a sorrow deeper than any tears, “it’s the leaving. Who’ll care for you, messire?” but “Hola, Mouse,” past what could be heartbreak, but a heart so strong cannot break, only suffer and suffer and smile; that smile. “It’s nothing we can’t play through.”

One sleeps, then, as the other watches; then both sleep, dreamlessly, spooned tight together on the cot. When they stir, past dawn, Istvan is first to rise, to share the last sips from his flask, to nod without surprise at the piled letters from the box—“Quite the cache, yeah? Here’s another,” opening the puppet case to show the white-powdered stones like the ghost of treasure, stickpins, brooches, a tiara, a cameo of some unremembered king and “That’s your play,” Rupert’s frown, “with that narrow little toff? He’s dead now, did you know that?”

“No. Dead how?”

“Ask Tilde,” staring at the jewels, the bound roll of bills, then with bleak and sudden passion “Why do you seek them, messire? Why did you ever! I took care for us, always, best as I could—”

“Why did you care, ever, if I had them or had not? Christ, Mouse! Whatever could be more urgent than you to me?”

Silence then, each man his own, until finally “Cur fox…. You might have fucking told me. Since Paris?”

“Since Paris, yes. There was a young lady in it, too,” bending to take the goods from the case, rolling all into a raveled linen scarf, the scarf into a poke sack thrust underneath the cot. “And I might have fucking told you—though there was no fucking involved, believe it—but my thought was you’d think to stop me. Or strike me—”

“I have thought to stop you. And strike you. Often.”

“—even though it’s over, now, hail and fucking farewell; those letters, too. And all of it meant only for—”

“This,” Rupert reaching for the copybook, “this is for you,” putting it into his hands, sealing that lifetime’s gift with a kiss as Istvan sits again, to turn the pages, the plays, the stories, the chain of memories burnished anew, turning up at last a smile of such sweet glee—“Why, you’ve made an epic of us!”—that Rupert’s eyes shine like a boy’s, the blind and the seeing, though “It took a deal of effort,” with a proud little shrug. “Since before Paris—and you never knew I was about it, did you? Never caught me writing a word.”

“No. Never…. It’s all of us, isn’t it. All the way back to Marco, to when we were lads.”

“All I can recall, every step of the way. I meant it to surprise you—” but then the cough returns to shake him, Istvan’s gaze unwavering, until “No surprise in this, is there?” Rupert hoarse and shrugging; he wipes his lips. “Even a lad knows he has to die. What I never guessed is that I’d have you. And this way,” reaching to press Istvan’s hand atop the copybook, “you’ll not forget our plays.”

“Forget?” says Mr. Castor from the opened case. Istvan closes the book with the ceremony proper to treasure, sets it to the desk, tugs open the drapes and “We,” with a half smile, determined as a knife to wood, “are not done playing. Keep your inkwell filled, yeah?”

Now the antique razor is freshly stropped, and a basin of hot water carried up by anxious Tilde—

“I can help. Is Sir—”

“Be easy, milady. We need sprucing, is all.”

—while Istvan slips off Rupert’s wrinkled, bloodied shirt to note, kiss, and bathe the bruising his own sad blow has left behind, then plants himself in the hard dazzle of the windows’ sun to scrape away first his stubble, and then the pointed goatee. Rupert, carefully puffing at a Raven, offers his own throat—“Me next”—but “I think we’ll keep that beard awhile. Gravitas becomes you, recall? —No,” toweling the last of the soap from his chin, “you needn’t dress just yet,” careless to leave the drapes undrawn as he takes Rupert by the hand, draws him back into the bed: let any watch who might, and see, then, what love looks like, waning only to wax anew as tender and invincible, broken and unquenchable, mouth and hands and a pillow for a prop, the little cigarette crushed out —

—as the sun glares on the crusted snow and the rooftops’ grey sward of ice, the pigeons and black sparrows skimming through its light, and below on the bricks one determined beggar is rewarded for his rooting in the alley’s detritus by a silk handkerchief only somewhat filthy, RMS the monogram bordered in black Greek keys. In the square, the newspaper shouters bawl out confident as actors—“Murder, cold-blooded murder! The Vigilist knows!”—for nothing sells papers like tragedy, especially tragedy on one’s very corner, involving a foreigner lord.

Inside, sleepless Haden and his lads make sure of every lock on every door and window, leaving only the roof hatch unnailed, before sharing out the shares from the evening’s performance, Pipper by unanimous vote to receive a doubled portion—“Even Alek an’t do it better,” Haden’s accolade as Pipper beams—while Mick and Lucy investigate the hostage trunk, Alban Cockrill beside and agog with Aladdin’s delight as this device and that trinket are brought forth for examination, it is like having a peep straight into the master’s mind! Tilde pours boiled goat’s milk into a bowl for Ru, keeping back with a wooden spoon the scummy skin, keeping back the black bubble of fear, the cards consulted lying still where they were left, their midnight spread on the lip of the stage: the flat sweep of the Shadow attended only by Justice and the knaves, death and loss and change without chance of resistance —

—as across town on Crossways Street, the frightened landlord peering from above, Samuel Ridley expostulates stridently, helplessly with a pair of constables, who add Frédéric—just emerged into the street, having for caution’s sake spent the night at the studio—to their midmorning’s tally of park dodgers and a Libby too soused to stand, all of them on the rolls but caught out without their pins. Frédéric shows his papers, Frédéric tries to dissemble—“The clasp broke? Not again!”— Frédéric thinks for a wild moment to flee, could he dart back inside the building, clamber away somehow from its roof? but instead, white-faced, stuffs swiftly into Samuel Ridley’s hands not the gypsy satchel but the script inside: “Here, sir. Take these valuables to St.-Mary’s—”

“Valuables?” one constable’s interest roused then doused by the curled and blotted pages, would even the church want such trash? as “Come on then,” the other irritable to harry Frédéric into a smelly black-doored van where one man lies moaning and shoeless, the others silent with cold, and all, to the constable’s way of thinking, better sent to the cannon than left clogging the streets like the rubbish they are. By the time the van arrives at the Protectorate lock-up, the moaner has joined the majority, that heavenly choir that sings just beyond hearing’s reach in a place, like the stage, where faith creates the vision of the blessed, and the God or gods as audience decide with their attention what tales are worth the making, which shall fade in the telling and which shall continue to be told: for myth is mutable until it is not, and not every striver makes his way into the stars. In myth, Pollux battles the demons with the help of Mercury; Orpheus wins back his love only to lose again; and the puppet—for neither hell nor death applies to puppets—opens its eyes upon the workaday world and, much like God, makes from what is, what is not: takes time from a clock, letters from a box, and worshipers from a church, shares hair ribbons and conspiracies from one constructed lady to another; and from the mating of the void and Mr. Loup creates a puppet’s puppet, small and humorous and terrible, Mr. Jinks whose performance history will be memorable if brief, and whose peculiar visage will command pages in a history yet unwritten, but already well-begun.

From the introduction to The Strings of Memory

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.”

“Appropriate, for a gambler.”

“If you talk, the cards will not,” so severely that Istvan meekly folds his hands, as her own go rapid, almost reckless to deal out a horseshoe circle, a spread as before hard with Justice and knaves but “This one,” tapping a card at the left, high waves and naked rock, the Woman Alone, “she is your good helper. Or was—she’s far from you now,” as in his mind’s eye rises the feminine tide, Portia del Azore far away if she is wise, or perhaps it is meant to be Isobel de Metz, gone farther still? Or Lucienne in Paris, a lighthouse in a very dark time…. Or perhaps it is one from the long nameless roll of toffy ladies, of whores and housemaids and theatre girls, a butcher’s wife, a friendly jailer’s sweetheart—or even Puss, though Puss is no longer far away. But “She brought you what you needed most,” says Tilde, half turned on the stool so the muddied light strikes the silver on her neckpiece, silver paper like a chain a boy once fashioned for his sister, the sudden memory so sharp that Istvan frowns, could it possibly be—no Ag, no Poppy; no Rupert?

“And here is Sir, right by her,” dry-eyed now, though her fingers touch that card with a care denied the others, Rupert cast as the Wanderer, “who leads you on the way. And this card, here—”

“Is I,” the Lord of Hares, of course, leaping ever at Mouse’s side but “No,” she corrects; it is strange, how much older Mab seems with her cards deployed, not so much a woman grown as a woman eternal; they are like the mecs in that way, those cards, drawing one up to their level. And they speak their own language as well, a Taroc of the theatre, why not? “That’s the hayrick, see?” as she nods to the triply locked door, the accomplished exit. “And he carries your luck along with him, for the Hares are lucky, almost always.”

“True enough,” thinking of those winning plays, dealt to him by chance or in disguise. “And who’s this wretch? Le pendu, I’ll hope we never meet,” knuckling aside the gloomy Hangs-a-man, Tilde sharp to snatch the card back into place: “Don’t touch! And that’s a bad hope, for here he’s good. Very good,” for plainly in the cards’ conjunction is a great strange goodness, unlooked-for, glimpsed without fully grasping how it shall be so, only that surely it is, for both M Stefan and Sir…. Seeing that, seeing Sir so placed soothes the rawest edge of the pain; she takes a breath to study that depending man, both dead and alive, she takes another.

Then she taps the card that rides the top of the horseshoe, the lean figure in black with book and keys, and “This one,” Tilde says, “this is you,” so that Istvan laughs aloud, a rudely tickled laugh, and Lucy smiles, for Tilde must be funning! with the Priest outlined by the sun behind, rising and setting in clouds of black birds, rooks and crows but “’After the dandy comes the saint,’” Tilde quotes unperturbed. “It is a saying that people have. These knaves,” nodding to the listening lads, as if this bit is too evident to waste breath upon, “they will carry out the Justice. And this,” as now she smiles her own private smile, the smile of the savant and the expert, as at a hidden answer revealed or a knotty problem suddenly solved, “this is that,” pointing from the worktable back to the Jackal, the second time he has shown his pointed head, comprehending it now as none of them can, nor Istvan either: Does she mean this new dark fellow, made to gorge the hook? this temporary jinx named by Mick, Mickey his distaff son, call it, like the kit is his right hand —

—while Samuel Ridley peers over Istvan’s shoulder at the pictures, the medieval illustration style, and “My word,” with a nod, “those cards are certainly old! But,” as Tilde shuffles the spread back into its case, the case into her pocket, “you can’t believe a word of it, surely? A modern man of reason like yourself?”

And Istvan shrugs, looking again to the worktable, but Cockrill with surprising sternness asks, “Do you think, sir, the world is one show only? I’ve stood on that very stage of a night, and seen things I can’t account for nohow,” as Istvan shrugs again and claps Cockrill’s back, one priest to another, however shabby the temple may be. So Ridley shrugs too, gamely changing the tune to suit the temper: “Then your next stop’s to be Rome, is it? To get your priestly garb?”

“No need to go so far,” for in the trunk sits the steepled paper hat, ale-splashed from its last go-round, somewhat dented but the fit will be unchanged: and he smiles, half admiring, toward Milady and her cards—

—exchanged now for the knife, as, still on the stool, she begins to pick the windings from her hair, its rippled braiding falling in coarse curls: Mick gazes, openly transfixed, as if watching Venus rising from the waves until “Be careful,” he says, his hand atop hers, arresting the knife’s sharp motion. “You almost cut it.”

“I mean to cut it.”

“Cut —Why? Whyever would you ruin something so beautiful?”

“Braids won’t fit inside the cap,” that black cap the lads wear, it takes him a moment to understand but when he does his dismay is instant and vast—“Oh, you’re not to act in this donnybrook, Miss, say it!”—as Tilde fixes him with a look as pointed as her blade, who is this fellow to say a word to her, one way or another? If his gaze is on her more often than not, if he runs her errands and totes her traps, if in the streets on the way to Cockrill’s he stationed himself right beside her, so any trouble must first make its way through him—if it seems, almost, that he is sweet on her, this puppeteer, well what of it? Love is not for her. And “It’s my play as much as anyone’s, the Mercury belongs to me. And to him, one day,” as Ru looks up from the letterbox into which he has already tucked a quantity of scraps, kin to the papers it once held, words from the past meant for the future —

—while Lucy smiles briefly at that close pairing of Tilde and Mick—How fine they look together! He so tall and strong, she so small and stronger—and then, as the lengths of hair begin to fall, Mick glum to gather and sweep, Lucy takes from the worktable a halfway-workable knife, to cut with it a briefer length of cord for a little chip of steel, a gift from a long-gone knifeman, found in the trunk but too small for all the others, until this Mr. Jinks should come to play. On her breast the little goldfish gleams; on Tilde’s, the lover’s eye looks calmly on. Istvan lights a cigarette. The lads jingle Van’s bell and others, testing the sounds upon the air, as Cockrill draws up Mrs. Gawdy, to neatly slit then sew again her stony heart.

Misery is cold, and fear is colder, and Frédéric now feels he understands the cold as he never has before; in this small gray room, the shudders come in waves, he jerks as if he is ill, or badly strung, though “No one asked you to dance,” snaps the Protectorate clerk, or is he a constable? The man in the corner chuckles, a happy-looking fellow in a stained uniform, armed with a pair of pincers, several bottles, and a long rod, a ratter’s rod such as one uses to crack the backs of vermin. “Only to answer truthfully. The question again, where is Herr Stephanos Marcus?”

“I have been truthful. I don’t know.”

“What of—” the clerk-constable glancing once more at the foolscap sheet, a long list, of names? Crimes? From the hallway someone howls, a dry wordless refutation; a door slams, the howl ceases. “Sir Roland Smalls. Who killed him?”

“I don’t know that name at all.”

“Jerry,” beckoning the man in the corner, who approaches, still smiling: he is an instrument of science, Jerry, for the Protectorate is much interested in modern science, in new ways to extract information and control men’s behavior with techniques more intelligent, and sanitary, than inflicting simple pain; though that method is always available, which is why this theatre fellow has two bent fingers and a black eye. He does not seem the type to stand up to pain, see the way he judders about there, like a doll on a stick! but the fact is that the man has steadfastly said nothing of any use. Privately the clerk-constable considers science very overrated: there is another fellow here like Jerry, who uses electricity in a special sort of box, but what real difference has it made? All those wires and sparks, yet half the men who go into that box never leave it speaking! Dead men answer no questions at all.

Now Jerry uses the pincers to remove the stopper in one of the bottles, and a stink emerges, a gassy stench like an opened grave’s: Frédéric thinks of the witches’ cauldron in the Scottish play; if only he could keep his hands still! He may not put them to his pockets, the rod has taught him that…. How glad he is that Haden cannot see him now, trembling like a child, caught by what Haden had foreseen, what he tried to warn against in Herr Krystof’s “commission,” fearless Haden for whom he must now be brave, whose face he keeps before his own mind’s eye, to stay so…. Now the man Jerry positions the bottle directly at Frédéric’s mouth, his lips to its opening, as if he will be forced to drink whatever unbearable foulness it contains. Jerry is not a large man, nor heavy, but he is immensely strong, and quite determined; and so happy! The more Frédéric breathes of the stink, the more he shakes, the harder he fights to distract himself with other things, shreds of poetry and plays, toil and trouble, ye pampered jades of Asia, upon a bridge made of money an angler let down his pole. “Pan’s Salvation,” how does that begin? He recalls Haden reading it, aloud and with brows raised —

You’ve got them lopping off a head in every other scene. And I used to worry I’d soil you!

It’s not real blood. Glycerin and paint, and a little something raw for the stink!

Finally, helplessly, Frédéric begins to retch, to buckle and choke and “Enough,” says the clerk-constable; he wears a leather mouth-mask now, doused thick with peppermint oil; the two smells make slow war on one another. Neither seems to affect Jerry the torturer, though he does not of course bear that title, any more than his true name is Jerry. When he hunkers across from his young wife at the Sunday supper table, and she peevishly complains—What do you do all day at that dungeon, do they set you to mucking out the drains?—he meekly notes that I’m a man of science, sweetheart, before rising to comb more rosewater into his hair and beard.

“Stand up, now,” the clerk-constable orders, list in hand, his voice somewhat muffled by the mask. “This says that Sir Roland Smalls went to the Mercury Theatre, and was killed there by persons still unknown. You live at that theatre. Who else lives there?”

“Playing’s illegal,” Frédéric gasps. “The Mercury is closed.”

“This says you live there.”

“Then blame only me.”

“Jerry.”

This time the clerk-constable steps out into the hallway, his own head swimming, aching from the stench, that toad Jerry must keep his nose cotton-wadded up to the brain! Or perhaps he somehow enjoys the odors? for certainly he never stops smiling, a disgusting detail to the clerk-constable’s private mind, which he is very careful to keep private. Sometimes at night he dreams of Jerry and his bottles, for there are at least a dozen different sorts, some large, some squat, one a fluted green tube carried always with a stick; how he fills them, and with what, is a subject the clerk-constable is anxious to avoid, even in dreams. When the clerk-constable steps again into the rooms, the theatre fellow is on all fours, struggling to rise; his blue silk cravat is tied clumsily around Jerry’s neck.

“Tried to bribe you, did he?”

“He an’t want it anymore,” says Jerry, clean of conscience for this is not a lie: the fellow did want it at first, and did try to get it back, but what was in the bubble-bottle put a stop to that wanting. And Jerry’s wife is very partial to blue! The fellow is wearing a neck chain, too —

“Stand up, now. Who killed Sir Roland Smalls?”

Frédéric can barely find air to speak, choked to his knees by the twisted silk, the only way to breathe was in sulfur, acid, fire—“I don’t know,” he says, and must say it again to be heard, his voice a small raw croak, a swazzle-voice, like a puppet’s. “I don’t know that name.”

“Where is Herr Hadden St.-Mary?”

“Be corked,” says Frédéric, surprising both himself and the clerk-constable, though not Jerry, who has witnessed so many and varied responses of men to distress that none can ever startle him again. Jerry is, however, surprised by the clerk-constable’s precipitous snatch of the rod from his hand, the clerk-constable feeling gravely ill at the belly, whatever lurks in that last bottle and thus in the air of this room ought itself to be illegal! It is Frédéric’s back that takes the force of that gravity, and he allows himself to collapse with the blow to the floor, his face to the cold, dry, odorless air of dust and ancient clay: he lies without moving, acting the part of the corpse, as above him bottles jostle, paper rattles, the clerk-constable irritably works to clear his throat until “Next time,” he snaps to Frédéric, “you’ll be civil. Next time it’ll be Jerry all alone.”

And then the clerk-constable is gone, and Jerry is gone, and the long tremors run down Frédéric’s back, his legs, he spits weakly and begins to murmur lines from the pageant play that, if Samuel Ridley was not arrested, if his guardian angel stayed true, Haden somehow now has in his hands; where is Haden now? The Mercury, oh please not the Mercury! past a whispered prayer to the Virgin intermingled with the jumbled lines, his lips moving against the stone, as his fingers find the Christopher medal, and close around it like a relic, or a key.

It is Frédéric’s own whereabouts that are at that moment under serious discussion, there in the library of Felix Krystof, Krystof whose prospects have dimmed disastrously, how Commissioner Eig learned that he had indentured the idiot Klaus there is no saying, how does Commissioner Eig know any of what he knows? There in his grand municipal office, barely a frown on his face but The pageant was to display a sermon book for the faithful to venerate, a sermon book from the Holy Land itself, the indictment plain despite his own impassioned blame of the perfidy of others —Commissioner, I would gladly have supplied it, very gladly, even gratis! But none were to be found, not in London, nor Wittenberg, and my sources in Jerusalem were—

You failed to supply it at all. We had to turn to others.

If I could have created it with my own hands, I would have! Gratis! But not being an artisan—

Not being an artisan, you hired a fool, and have thus made me, who suggested your use to the Cardinal, into a fool myself—

Never that, Commissioner!

—and yourself into a forger. The new penalties for forgery are quite strict, Herr Krystof, have you studied them? as from an inner door a high-collared assistant entered soundlessly, to present to the Commissioner a summation on the murder of Sir Roland Smalls, though Felix Krystof could not know this, believing instead that those pages must hold his own fate. The report’s actual conclusion was that the robbers, or “tax collectors” in street parlance, each blamed the other for the death of the lordship, whose ending in any case seemed more than half accidental, the man chased until he fell, the ice itself might have been his true killer. Smalls’s absence from Richter’s unsavory fête—itself technically illegal, with its drugs and puppetry and naked dancing—seems to have had nothing at all to do with the thievery that took place there, which must thus be laid at the feet of the man Hilaire, or whatever alias he wears these days, and his male assistant, the female dodger being exposed and sent packing prior to the event—and Richter’s fury at that deception seems greater than his ire at the theft; both drive his stiff pleas to keep the whole business out of the courts and thus the papers, not wanting to admit publicly to the humiliation of a doubled fleecing, while placing himself ever more deeply into the debt of Commissioner Eig…. The affair has provided Martin Eig with a glacial satisfaction, the lady’s maid brought in to fool the lady, the “quality” betrayed and abused by their own bad judgment just as surely as by Hilaire and his unnamed helper—and might that helper have been Haden St.-Mary, at the head as always of his gang of gutter boys? His assistant, the writer Blum, was himself being gulled by Krystof in another fashion (such a snaky, incestuous tangle it all is!), so having Blum already in custody made a useful opportunity for interrogation, though he apparently knows little more than what he himself has written; more might be learned later, using other means, but that prospect seems doubtful. For now, Felix Krystof must be chastised and sent on his way —

—in silent turmoil down to the snow-choked avenue, his otter skin gloves gone missing, unable to find a cab, unwilling to ride a ’bus, reduced to walking amongst the filthy idiots who chant and weep and wave their bedraggled maiden’s fir and Christmas lily, if it were not for them he would not be in this perilous condition at all! To have lost the Commissioner as a client is a terrible blow, but to hear accusations of forgery—! Arriving at the townhouse, his despair kept him blind to the blinkless, unnatural stillness of John Abram accepting his hat and coat, John Abram at whose shadowed back stood Rupert with his truncheon, John Abram who tried to give a warning from the cloakroom, as Haden reached around to slam the door.

Now in Felix Krytof’s study, “You’re saying,” says Haden, one muddy boot planted on a pile of parchment, one hand loose around his knife, “that it an’t you at all who had him pinched.” His gaze takes in the elegantly framed documents, the citations from the Sorbonne, a letter of Shelley’s on his wall! more than half of them surely ginned up by Krystof himself. “Is that the right of it?”

“It is,” says Felix Krystof in his chair; his hands are sweating, he moves them to his knees, then back again to the damp oaken armrests. “Though I could indeed have had him arrested, for his invasion of my home and theft of my property, that script is my legal property. But I— Ah! No!” as the knife buries itself deep into another pile of property, a folio collection from the previous century, quite valuable though suddenly considerably less so, and even less as Haden works the knife back and forth in the frangible pages. “Stop, stop! I did nothing to him!”

“You lied to him. And you stole his play. He meant only to do good with that play, try to put the world to rights a bit—”

“I agree! I fully agree! He’ll be an important author one day—”

“—and then you set that ape-faced drudge out there to beat on him, and drive him off like a cur. But he got his own back, an’t he? And did you think I wouldn’t come for you? Fucking paper man.”

“No! Stop!”

—as outside that door, Rupert schools John Abram in proper deference to superior force, John Abram who believed that, because Rupert’s beard is grey and he is coughing, Rupert must be weak, John Abram who tried to break away and rouse the other servants, but whose recently broken nose is now joined by several broken ribs and a collarbone that will never heal correctly, as “Heathens!” his bubbling groan, face mashed sideways into the hallway floor, the gleaming dark wood smirched by snow and fresh blots of his own blood. “But I won’t betray my master! I’d be killed first—”

“No one cares enough to kill you. And a good servant leaves a bad master,” as Rupert raises his boot for one more kick, another pair of ribs: old dog as he is, it is satisfying to know he can still crack bones when he needs to, though his chest aches with every breath he draws, that quick-time march across the city and up these stairs took a greater toll than he had expected. Inside the study, Mundy seems to have matters in hand, if marked by considerable guttery, judging from all the cries; at least he waited on his vengeance, he did all that anyone could ask—

—as now that door swings wide and “We’re for off,” Haden stepping over the collapsed John Abram, Rupert glancing past his shoulder to note Krystof draped over the desk—“Did you kill him?” and “Worse,” says Haden with a certain pride, and then they are hurrying down the stairs, passing the maid Consolata concealed behind the pantry doors, into the street where Rupert flags a ’cab, to Haden’s startlement—“Backways would be safer,” but “It’s unexpected,” Rupert says, and nearly smiles, for it is something Istvan would say, and approve, not so much for the stealth as to save the walk, save all he has for all that will be needed. For what a play there is in store, for them and for the city—

Why use a pistol, when a cannon’s to hand? We’ll make a fine confetti of these fucking things—see, this one’s addressed to Morris Robb, remember him? And this one’s to the mayor’s father, looks like. Hoopla!

He kept them, all those years. And then he gave them to you.

But first to Ag. Like a valse oubliée, a softly beat waltz-time with the tip of the griffin-headed cane, as if in salute to some laughing shadow, twinned shadows, two brothers in remote celestial applause. He’s one who would enjoy this play, he always fancied himself a manner of puppeteer: pull a string here, one jumps there, and nothing to be immortal save Art…. A few we’ll send on to Pinky, with a sideways glance for Rupert that Rupert did not answer, was he thinking of Benjamin, or Isobel? Or of Arrowsmith himself, the man’s nautilus mind, foe then friend to them so many times. And one or two to wrap the young lady’s ring, we’ve gelt enough without keeping hers. The rest shall be fodder. Oh, and one for the Marquis to play on—may be we ought call him the Minister of Justice, now. Or the Bishop—

Why mount this play at all, messire? Throw the fucking things in the river, let the swans have them.

Why, it’s another leaf to the book, Mouse. Our book, with a look so sweet he had then to look away, he alone to grasp the whole of it, what Istvan means, what he wishes and intends: their show, this show to show whose hands hold the strings, who drives the play that in the end drives the tale the world tells to itself. Castor and Pollux, yeah? They played amongst the gods and heroes, so shall we. And it will remind the kit and his dompteur how a play is made…. And make them feared a bit, may be, to make things safer.

You’re kind to them.

Our issue, with a shrug. It amuses me…. What a lark! And as villains, the one rôle we haven’t tried! You’re so bonny in black, with a kiss, and You’re the bishop, with the kiss returned. In your popey hat.

Now the shadow of the statue of Minerva falls upon the cab, dim-cast by a dimming sun peering past the clouds like a nervous householder through the drapes; the wind has quickened. As they disembark into crusted snow and sucking mud, Haden straightens his coat, tips his derby forward, and “Wait outside, right,” to Rupert. “But not too far. They know me in there.”

“I could wish they didn’t. Here if you need me,” positioning himself just past the foot of that statue, truncheon concealed in the folds of his greatcoat, old campaigner’s silver medal at the chest, his humbler slouch hat shielding him from both the weather and casual view, blending as best he may in the crowd of weary businessmen with leathers folders tight beneath their arms, who cross and recross and climb the stairs, who as they pass eye him with the instinctive disquiet felt by a carriage dog for the wolf past the stable doors. Gazing at that great façade, Rupert recalls that, last he saw this building, it was a jail for Istvan; and now it is a jail for Frédéric. Fresh gut for old strings…. He lights a Raven, its smoke drifting up into the snow, then coughs, and coughs, and pinches it out—

—as Haden passes through the heavy doors, recalling his own plans once upon a time, to make hay of the knowledge once gained here, which thought now—shadowed by marble and iron, newsprint and stamped documents, underlaid by blood—seems as foolish as throwing stones at a statue, pissing on an iron fence, foolish and hopeless but “I’m here to see Commissioner Eig,” he announces to the factotum at the desk, a young man, younger than he. “Say it’s Haden St.-Mary,” with a force so entirely ferocious that it is entirely calm, waiting to see if that name will open a door, two doors to the stairs to an office with a giant’s desk and brown drapes draping the statue’s arsehole view: Haden remembers that view and that desk, though Costello is long gone, and Bernd the secretary has been replaced by two secretaries with high collars and similar small mustaches, neither of whom can say when the Commissioner might return to his office, both of whom then consider Haden as one might a centipede wriggling up through the midnight drain, but “Give him my regards. Go on, I’ll wait,” Haden turning again to the window, turning his back like an actor poised for a cue, a swift and heartening glimpse of Rupert stationed below —

—until a quiet hand reaches for his elbow to aim him toward another door, another, much smaller, windowless office in which sits, behind a plain oaken table complete with telephone and files, Commissioner Martin Eig: the same neat beard and dull suit, though with vastly better barbering and tailoring, Eig who gives him a mild nod, who does not offer him a chair or any tea from the pot, an even more ornate silver pot, a single cup of Chinese porcelain, fluted and rimmed with gold and “Many thanks for your kind regards,” says Eig, his voice become even more even, as if he need never raise it again. He takes a sip of the steaming tea, examining Haden as if against some private measuring stick, feeling, though Haden cannot know it, a distant near-nostalgia for his own past, as a man might when looking through a school trunk, so much learned since those days! beside the nearer pleasure of the displeasure brought to the Richters, St.-Mary a manner of weapon still, whether he knows it or not. So “It’s been quite some time, hasn’t it, Mr. St.-Mary? You look tired,” though in fact he looks far worse than tired, the yellow stare half wretched, a gutter distress he never would have had to bear if he had stayed in the Commissioner’s employ; well. “Did you want something from me?”

“Just what the law allows.”

“The law?” That makes Eig smile; the same smile. “That’s a surprise. And I had thought to meet you next in those rooms downstairs, so you’ve surprised me twice. That doesn’t happen often, these days.” On one hand is a broad gold band, unmarked, undecorated, a wedding band; he wears no other jewelry, no ornament beyond his own red pin, he is all business, Eig, even more so than before, and giving off cold like a trench dug deep in winter dirt, a pauper’s grave on a lonely road; and still smiling. “But didn’t I warn you that, when next we met, I would not know you?”

“You know me in here,” warily, feeling that cold, the black thought in mind like a swimming whisper: How many men have stood where he stands now, before this table, worse than any of those rooms downstairs, and how many are still in the city? Or upon the earth? “And all’s I want is my friend let free. I’ve got his pin—”

“Actors are troublesome. I told you so before.”

“Acting’s illegal.”

“As are many acts. Did you think yourself forgotten, Mr. St.-Mary? The Protectorate keeps very accurate records. On you—it was criminal trespass and battery, I believe—and your ‘friend,’ all your friends, the ones who lived and the one who died. Now,” pausing for another sip of tea, “tell me why I should intervene to help a man caught without his pin, for the law on such is very clear. And there’s a matter of forgery as well, it seems, involving Herr Felix Krystof?”

Haden keeps his face calm, his voice pitched low; it is the greatest feat of acting he will ever accomplish, before an audience that neither cares for nor respects such artistry; if Istvan had seen it, he would have reddened his palms with applause. “It’s not for me to say a word about Krystof, who’s been passing false paper since before I came to this city, I’ve bought from him myself—once or twice for you, sir—like many do. Just like many make charges just as false, about people they’ve wronged themselves. But if you should ask him again, it’s my thought he’d recant those charges, since—”

“Have you read—as I recall, you’re a student of the classics—have you ever read of Autolycus? He made ‘black of white, and white of black,’ and no one could best him in trickery. His grandson was Odysseus…. It’s surprising, what one can learn from the Greeks. But you’re the fellow who knows all about that.”

“I know about some things,” with another step toward the trench; he can feel his muscles locking, smell his own sour sweat. “Things not many else know. Some things may be only you and I know.”

“What things.”

“You’d remember all that better than I. I’ve got the tendency to forget,” as the telephone on the table rings like doomsday’s bell, Eig making no move to answer it, until in mid-ring it stops, as if someone had choked it off. Haden stands in that cold regard and thinks of Frédéric, of his eyes when he wakes, his laugh, the warm clasp of his arms; his own arms are trembling. What Eig thinks cannot be known from his gaze.

Finally, an eternity, Eig sets down the tea and “I’ve very little time for the classics nowadays. Or for amusement. Your fellow must keep himself in better order from now on,” reaching one-handed for some papers on the table, Frédéric’s papers: he looks at every page, every stamp, can he tell they are more than half counterfeit? Can he possibly care? Taking up his pen to make a checkmark on one corner: “Show this to the official downstairs. If I hear from Krystof you’ll be informed. And Mr. St.-Mary,” as Haden takes those papers, backstepping toward the door, in animal instinct to keep Eig before his eyes, “be aware that you’ve now—what’s the phrase, turned in your chits?—with me. That’s a term you recognize, isn’t it?”

“I know—”

“Nothing you know can help you any longer. Don’t find yourself here again.—Go on,” dismissing him forever as the telephone begins again to ring, rattling trill like a metal scream as “Thank you, sir. Congratulations on your marriage, sir,” Haden’s bow to rouse a flicker in those expressionless eyes, like the membrane in the eyes of a gore crow—

—and then he is out and down the stairs like a boy fleeing carnage, like a fleet-footed god, Mercury himself could have sped no faster to the official’s grate, rattling that cage with a well-aimed fist—“See this!”—and in brief order, though still to Haden it feels unending, Frédéric is released: wounded and hatless, cravat gone so the Christopher medal shines pale in the bureaucratic light. He is handed his gypsy bag, he and Haden depart: saying nothing as they leave the hallway, the building, the outer stairs—

—where Rupert, seeing that exit, nearly smiles, takes hands from pockets in a salute of approbation and relief, then exits down the walkway between the mercantile exchange and the Drapers’ Guild, each building draped with fir boughs in a solemn nod to the holiday, each guarded by constables less curious for the business-bound pedestrians than the pageant parade beginning to make its noisy, gilded way into the square. Meanwhile Haden and Frédéric step quickly but not too quickly for the corner, around another corner—

—where Haden halts to seize Frédéric by the shoulders, tow him past an unlatched gate topped with iron ivy, the narrowed alley dividing an abandoned tea shop from a junk dealer’s, and half fall to the wall with the weight of his kiss, Frédéric gripping Haden as tightly, head back against the bricks, their rough and necessary strength—until Haden pulls back to examine the purpled eye and swollen fingers, Frédéric wincing through his smile and “Here, now,” pinning the red pin prominently to Frédéric’s coat, as if decorating a hero of the wars. “Safe, now.”

“You saved me.”

“Luck of the turn, I couldn’t do it twice. When they pinched you, how’d you winkle not having a weapon?”

“I have a weapon,” hand to the bag to bring forth the knife so rusted that it escaped confiscation, so useless that Haden has to smile, a smile he conceals by saying “You’ve got a sharper one, an’t you—your play,” but “Your play,” Frédéric corrects. “The script—Did Ridley—”

“He put it into my hands—and it’s good as bally Shakespeare, it’s the best I’ve ever read,” with such passion that Frédéric’s blush blooms like a winter rose, his smile as radiant, a kiss that lasts so long that they are panting when they part; and Frédéric is trembling, snow capping his bare head so Haden puts upon him his own derby, as if it were a laurel wreath and “Come on,” back to the street, to a solemn bright confusion of Latin chants and black-suited choristers, hyssop and burning frankincense, though Frédéric still can smell upon himself the Jerry-stench, that air of cheated graves so “Have you,” he asks Haden, “any horehound lozenges at all?”

They join that procession as far as the cathedral, where, inside, the third curate lights the last of an enormous line of tapers as the penitential bell begins to ring, and the crowd, sweating with devotion, rises to its feet as the black doors open to admit Monsignor Alfred Elfred, a phalanx of priests, and the first of the streetside processors beneath the jagged scaffolding that mimics Hell, the choir loft its distant, blue-silked Heaven, some of the lilies thereof already sadly begun to brown. On the street, Frédéric presses Haden’s arm to pause and watch them enter, perhaps recalling Istvan’s once-expressed opinion that Rome’s spectacle is unsurpassed, we ourselves might take a leaf from that gaudy book of stagecraft, the gold and smoke and tolling bells, the congregation the best audience possible in its determined willingness to believe. And yet the miracle—for surely there is one, at such times the world seems nothing but; feel its blessing hand upon himself freed again, Haden’s arm linked firmly through his own—is surely that belief itself, the presence of all these in the sight of what they cannot see, their longing and awe—

—but “My feet are freezing,” says Haden. “Come on,” that strong arm to tug him away, neither seeing one man amongst the many on the steps: one foot on St. Uriel, one on Josephus, Mr. Blum come outside a moment to take in some fresh air, Mrs. Blum has had him at the church since dawn! with her insistence that this pageant at last commenced will answer her prayers, that Frédéric shall be found—and all at once there he is, Frédéric! though he looks astonishingly shabby, like some filthy poet from the penny papers, and the bare-headed man who has his arm plainly a streetside brigand, is Frédéric in the very act of being robbed? Mr. Blum shouts, but his voice is swamped by the singing, Mr. Blum waves his arm, but the waving garlands obscure him; by the time he fights his way down the stairs he has lost all sight of his son—

—but the miracle continues, as miracles will, for there, across the square, is Frédéric again! Mr. Blum is able to jog within hailing distance, but keeps silent, watching and trying to understand, for now see Frédéric speak to the brigand-fellow, see the two of them laugh together, laugh! as Frédéric takes off his hat to pop it atop the brigand’s head, Frédéric a willing victim or—can it be? accomplice in some thuggery? See them now—as Mr. Blum hurries to follow, puffing as he goes—crossing swift into a district far more menacing than the streets around the Cathedral or hotel, and too neglected not to be completely criminal: some sort of city-within-the-city of abandoned kiosks and bricked-in windows, silent dancehalls and theatres, one is called the Garden of Eden though surely no angels ever graced those doors. Yet see, not all are closed, for Frédéric and the brigand now are knocking, and entering, at a door itself so thick with old, snow-wet, curling bills stuck one upon another as to appear a trash-pile or a tomb, beneath the faded sigil—“Cockrill’s Palace”—still scrawled above.

It takes grim Mr. Blum some time to reach the church again, and push his way back inside, back to Mrs. Blum, who notes his return first with distracted irritation and then real alarm, taking in the sweat on his face and the set of his jaw but “No need to worry,” as he leads her from the pew to the nave where, in whispers, he acquaints her with the situation, as she goes white then red with joy, mouth open to yowl a thanksgiving but “Quiet,” harshly whispers Mr. Blum. “It is no happiness to learn our son is involved in criminality, he looks a thorough criminal himself! We came in the nick of time—we must go and take him home, by force if needed.”

“Force? What do you mean?” Already the waterfall has begun, her eyes brimming but “I mean a constable,” says Mr. Blum. “If he is not amenable to leaving we shall involve a constable. Several if needed! Now we must ready ourselves directly, have the trunks packed to depart—”

“But the pageant—”

“We have a church at home! We are going home!” Mr. Blum so loud now that one of the beadle-ushers approaches to frowningly warn the gentleman of the noise, and what sort of gentleman is it, who shouts in a church during services, and abuses his wife so she cries? as like a constable himself, Mr. Blum hauls Mrs. Blum by the elbow out of the nave, past the black doors into the cold and wet, never has he seen such a damnable city, the only weather here is rain or snow!

If Mr. Blum had lingered longer in that dirty theatrical district, he might have seen another criminal knock at that same door and enter, a tall man in a slouch hat to join the general jubilation—Lucy applying arnica and a stiff wrap to Frédéric’s throbbing fingers, Tilde to pour tea laced with Istvan’s yellow brandy, Istvan to give entering Rupert a smile, “Hail the conquering hero!”—as the lost sheep returns to the fold and all the industry it shelters, for “What’s this play?” Frédéric happily bewildered, he has not been gone a week yet all has changed! like a set switched out between scenes, a wag from Van and busy Mick at the center of the lads, Mrs. Gawdy and Miss Lucinda in freshened finery, Ridley’s exuberant wave from beside the balanced bowl, Ru and Cockrill his assistants since “We’ve much to do and little time, the pageant’s already started—M le Cardinal, I give you your congregation. And another time,” Istvan’s arm brief about his shoulder, “you’ll detail for us your Protectorate engagement? I’ve been in those rooms, there’s very little frolic to be had there.”

With a wry smile, “I had to tuck in my—courage. As you suggested.”

“All you need do now is write our marching orders,” a task easier at times on paper than in the world, where not all the actors know that they are acting, and the villains are heroes and the heroes lads who can barely read, and puppets whose use must be exact as a thread through a needle, to join the fabric of artifice and make the unreal real: as real as the assembly’s awed laughter when Istvan explains the true freight of the play, for “We shall tug the world a bit, by its short hairs,” and “By its strings,” seconds Cockrill, as Rupert drinks down a new remedy offered him wordlessly by Tilde, something she and Lucy have concocted: the raw gin kills most of the taste and the brew nearly all of the pain, enabling him to take up the concertina and school them in the jolly chorus of “Thumb-Your-Nose,” as Frédéric composes new lyrics on the spot. It is not easy to hold a pen with broken fingers, nor climb to the top of the Festus Clock without being caught, nor lead the way through streets seen only once and in confusion, but all these things shall be accomplished: by Frédéric and Pipper and Mr. Blum, all guided by good angels, like Israfel and Faustus who watch now beside their lady friends, all of whom will look to Van to lead the dance. The Misters shall not take part, their part having been assigned to Mr. Loup, and the changeling Mr. Jinks—

—whose use is explained to no one but Rupert, in a quiet backstage nook so cold their breath can be seen, though “I’ll resurrect as best I may,” says Rupert with a frown; his breath smells oddly, faintly of flowers, his dark eyes behind the spectacles are darker still from the drug. “But one hand on you and I start in cutting—”

“Softly, now. Just the sight of you will twist some knickers—”

“—for I’ll have nothing harm you, messire. I’m not long for this play, and one of us must survive,” tugging off the silver glove, to clasp Istvan’s hand then kiss his palm, the faint little, fading little scar, and Istvan’s reply less whisper than exhalation, as if it were possible to share his breath as well: “’Like goodly brothers’…. Pass me that fucking bottle,” to take a swallow of the remedy, its bitter poppy taste —

—as “Come on,” Haden’s murmur, impatient and loving to Frédéric at the foolscap, “let it wait a tick, come have a go,” in another nook piled with curtains and friendly mess, the bare floor cushioned in a moment by their shed jackets and trousers: Haden gentle with all the bruising, Frédéric one-armed and ardent, giving all the pleasure he takes and more, then still more, Haden half gasping and “Never,” when they lie pressed and cupped together, when he has breath enough to speak, “never farther apart than this…. I thought you fell off the fucking roof! I thought you fell off the face of the earth, I was ready to jump myself.”

“I’m not a proper man of the streets, I know. But I tried—”

“You did as you did and you are as you are, and if I ever loved anyone it’s you.” Silence then, a sharp contented sigh, then Frédéric in near-whisper, “‘Better than Shakespeare’?”

“That Opera part, about ‘saints of the boards’—that’s choice,” with a decided nod, as Frédéric glows, giving those lines: “’Saints of the boards and ne’er-do-wells, we make our stand together/Regardless of the enemies in the reeds’—remember those reeds? ‘Cleopatra’s Rapsodia,’ your very first opera—”

“First of many things,” Haden’s smile recalling the taste of wine and helpless passion, Frédéric’s smile luminous in return: all so different, all, than anything he could have guessed or wished for! another miracle, that that longing and despair should turn to this, the two of them together, naked on the floor in the cold; as his own rapt reveries of pulpits and puppets are turning now, like a wheel, yes, into something whose shape he cannot yet see, though he can hear it already in motion past the flimsy door, in the brisk sounds of a hammer, the declamation of lines, Istvan’s voice to call the tune for all of them, while beside him Rupert works the concertina, its wheeze a hero’s taunt against the dark.

“Wait here,” says Mr. Blum to the hulking young constable; he has paid that constable (who fully refused to do his job without it! Yet another reason to flee this city) to accompany them into this hazardous district, though in the milder light of early morning it looks less threatening, if no less essentially foul. The cab thick with luggage waits at the end of the avenue, another ruinous expense, to carry them to the train station—another expense, they surely shall be beggars when they arrive! But at last they shall be home, with Frédéric ready to resume his duties at the warehouse, and with the child, for whom Mrs. Blum now carries, in place of the wished-for traveling suit (for no suitable tailor could be found), a dauphin’s straw hat with a sky-blue ribbon, perfect for a bourgeois boy.

“What do you think he is named?” asks Mrs. Blum; too nervous even to weep, all she can do is chatter. “Whatever it is, we shall change it at once to ‘Frédéric.’ Or perhaps ‘Alphonse Frédéric,’ after my own dear father—”

“Be quiet! —Wait here,” again to the constable, Mr. Blum still grim but brisk in his determination, his traveler’s coat fastened tight as armor, billfold safely deep inside his vest. “If I should need assistance, I’ll stand on the threshold and wave for you, like this,” jerking his arm back and forth as if he is churning butter, but the constable keeps his nod respectful, for this is a well-paid errand, an easy one too as long as no one tries to pinch the cab. And he has had a very busy night, what with that pageant stirring the populace into trancers and shouters, men gabbling of angels and dead household saints, and the women even worse, a pack of Widows screeching like crows outside the Protectorate building, one fat granddame even tore off her skirts to hop bare-legged into the Diana fountain, as if it were a baptizer’s bowl. And today is to be a greater festival still, his sergeant says, with even more singing and such in the streets, and Heaven and Hell staged up in the church…. Though according to several of his comrades, the singers who play the demons are just as sinful in real life—most temptingly the one called Jilly, whose sister used to flash her basket at one of these houses of fun, may be this Palace one right here. It is a raging shame that there are no more of them open, even the peep-houses are all shut down. The whole city might as well be a church —

—while past those doors, Ru, dressed in modest motley to match Lucy’s and the lads’, is now coaxed by Lucy to “Drink it all down, now, my little man. It’s a long day before we have a taste of food again,” offering him mlíko, milk mixed with a grainy porridge, a taste he detests but he spoons it for Hay, who gives him the nod to do so, Haden in mummer’s black and a breezy mood, as “You hare-brain,” he remarks to Tilde, adjusting her travelers’ scarves and lady’s wig, old yellow curls made from gilded wool. “You cut it all off, then plop it back on.”

“I think she looks capital.”

“We all know what you think. Got your trousers belted, there, missy?” flipping playfully at Tilde’s skirt; on another day she might have swatted back, but now she only shrugs; she is in a grateful state this morning, Tilde, for she and Madame Lucy had a talk last night, Tilde sitting sleepless, hunched close to the inadequate stove for warmth, Lucy approaching to say nothing, only share a nip of gin and sit beside until Tilde began haltingly to speak—first of Sir, then of Ru, then of Ru’s begetting, a story she has told no one but Sir: Harm made him, Tilde’s near-whisper, harm, and hurt. But from the first, he’s been my happiness. My little Baba.

Who wouldn’t want such a lad for a son! that strong hand with the pearl taking her smaller, colder, clenched one. And as for how he got here, well, we’ve none of us chosen all the men who’ve had us, have we.

He has Sir’s name.

It’s a fine one. Best you could have chosen, and they wept together then, but not solely from sorrow; and Tilde slept, her head on Lucy’s breast, deeply as a cherished child sleeps, as she never had with own mother.

Now “Be corked,” Tilde says half companionably to Haden as Mick adjusts Van’s suspenders and then his own, making Van’s bow a grand one to Ru, who eyes them both, a thin rim of porridge still warm around his mouth; he is coming to a new view of this Mick-man, for though Hay does not like him, Mamma clearly does—sometimes when she looks his way, she almost smiles. And Mick likes Mamma, too…. Mick is in charge of the puppets, for Istvan has gone already, Cockrill shuffling off in his wake escorting the freighted Mrs. Gawdy. Rupert, wrapped in several scarves, still consults with Samuel Ridley, whose camera was imported here through the icy midnight streets, a humble procession of two men and a tumbled wood-barrow; no constable stopped or even marked them amidst the general spirited melee.

Frédéric has had the busiest night of all, but he has been borne by joyful energy, drinking cup after cup of terrible tea, sucking horehounds to make his voicebox supple; he has not sung in months, of course he shall he terribly rusty in oration, no competition for those high-nosed Meistersingers…. That memory makes him smile a bit, his pen scratching as he substitutes three words for six, then two for three, less need in this tale for weight than dexterity—and what a tale, what enormous theatrical audacity! Only M Istvan would have conjured such, to infiltrate the city and spin it like a top, while exposing the cruelties and hypocrisies of its so-called fathers, with their very own words, written in their own hands! And Delivered like the post, yeah? Istvan’s genial wink, Istvan’s inspiration to use the pageant list to choose the names and places where the letters must be left, by the lads themselves delivered throughout those streets by Lucy, for Such hit-and-dash makes it harder to stop, and harder to gather—harder to refute, even, for who’s to know who’s next? Or who set the top spinning in the first place…. They’ll dig each other’s bellies out like alley cats.

It’s nothing less than genius.

I’ve played this sort of show before. And your own rôle’s a stiff one, isn’t it.

I’ve been preparing my whole life to play so, to stand and declaim on the very steps of the Cathedral, to tell the story of salvation, Pan’s salvation, but without the unnecessary blood. It is clear to him now why he could not play it before, that violent puppet-sermon, why every version he wrote seemed to tangle up upon itself: it was awaiting its proper setting and cast, Israfel and the Faustus missing their elders, gone off like prodigal sons. Which led then to the last question, and its worry: But what of Herr Rupert? He’s believed to have died, so when the authorities see— Or that Lord de Metz! What if he should learn of it?

What might he do, do you suppose? Sob into his silken pillows?

But there are penalties for such deceptions—

Penalties? Istvan’s look then neither a frown nor a smile, but something so immeasurably distant, so entirely private that Frédéric bit his lip. And dying, is it just to squeeze the soul from the skin, like pips from a rotten grape? Be fucked to such metaphysics! As if the gates of Paradise swung only one way.

Yes, from Frédéric slowly, for he begins to see that there is more to this play than what swirls about its eye: it is in some way that eye itself for which the play is being made, a vision shared between those two men alone, as he and Haden may, one day, that mode of sharing worth a lifetime’s work, a lifetime’s play, so Yes, again and more strongly. Herr Rupert, he’ll show them he’s alive, and stay so.

Indeed, with a brief smile in return, that gaze kept to Frédéric’s, the fresh lines of kohl drawn black about the unfathomable eyes. And they’ll remember, won’t they, who blessed them with such knowledge…. As for me, why, I’ll hope one day to leave a fine skull for some lucky digger. No doubt in some old ruin, all seeded up with traps and deadfalls, his smile changing from the man’s to the player’s, then back again as To you, Marquis, I’ll leave his book—you’ll read it, it will speak to you.

Then again the changing scene, the freshened mask, as he took from his vest pocket a thumb pot of coral salve to dab onto his lips, a pouting dab, lighted a cigarette and I’d try one of those, Frédéric asked, and they smoked together awhile, Frédéric savoring the murky taste of the Turkish tobacco, and coughing less than most amateurs might. Then M Istvan took himself away, hand-in-hand with the frightful Mr. Jinks, as Frédéric poured out the last of the tea, put the kettle back to boil, and kept writing—

—and now the script is done, all is in readiness, they are costumed to begin: all but Haden, Haden whose black cravat is not properly fixed, so “Hold up—just a cat’s lick,” Frédéric reaching to right it, and thus his hands are on his hero when the banging starts on the door.

It is Ridley, closest, who hurries to open it, to stop the dangerous noise— “Frédéric Blum, you are in there! Frédéric Blum, come out!”—and admit the Blums, Mr. Blum advancing into dimness, his stare taking in the disorder, the queer flummery and mess: crooked rows of draped chairs, the windows’ boarding painted as if to show some garden view, a lady’s blouson hung upon an ale keg, one can barely imagine what sort of rites take place here! And who are all these people, those rough-looking men, and pair of women—though the young one in the curls and flounces, he can guess what her function must be.

And at the center of it all stands his son, Frédéric, with that blond criminal still beside him, shoulders touching as if they are familiar comrades so “You,” says Mr. Blum firmly, “you’ll step away from my son at once. And you,” to Frédéric, “will explain yourself. At once!”

“You,” says Rupert, “might do the same,” already up, handkerchief in one hand, truncheon in the other, but “No,” Frédéric turning, his own hand raised to stay the martial advance. “It’s no harm, they— These are my parents.”

“Your family,” says Mrs. Blum, the dauphin hat clutched to her breast, gazing not at her prodigal son after all but at his son, her grandson, this stocky, rumpled child who looks so entirely an urchin, baggy striped trousers like some sort of mendicant’s, old tin spoon in hand so “What is your name?” she says to the child, who only stares at her, does he speak English? Or even speak at all? More slowly, and loudly, “What. Is your name.”

“Be corked,” says Ru, staring back at this strange lady, with her funny blue hat like Titus Tithewell’s, and skirt like a bushel basket, but “Don’t talk so to the lady,” Mamma shaking his shoulder in brief sharp correction and “His name is Rupert,” Tilde says, adding, “Ma’am,” for she sees that such is called for, sees too that the woman seems close to tears, or fainting, her face is red as a bladder—

—but “I’ll have no words from you,” says Mrs. Blum, disgusted even to be addressed by this little gutter Eve, so much thinner and, yes, less beautiful than she had imagined, how in the world could Frédéric have found room in his heart for such as this? Just look at that hair, even Marie Mariette made a better showing of herself! But plainly this girl is the mother, for her eyes and the child’s are the same, a deep and penetrating, almost unseemly blue; the blue hat was the right choice at least. “I leave you and your wiles to the Blessed Virgin. And you as well,” with the merest dip of the chin to include the older woman at the table, garbed in the same stripes as the boy, perhaps she is the little slattern’s mother? and those other ragged youths her children, too? “We are here only to collect Frédéric and his son—”

—which speech draws Lucy to her feet, arms folded, with a plainly affronted air: “You might think to trim your sails a bit, madame, and moderate your talk. And if you’re speaking of Ru, he’s going nowhere.”

“You,” from Mr. Blum still staring at Frédéric. “To be tracked to this—menagerie, you shall explain yourself!” as if nothing can proceed before such explanation, as if without such he will lay on punitive hands: and Haden’s hackles frankly rising, is there anyone in the fucking city who will not try to have a bash at Frédéric? but “I will explain myself,” says Frédéric, stilling Haden with a look, determined and very sweet: another and most personal declamation, to his father and mother, to the room, to the world, the lost fiancée and the angry music teacher and the Greek gods of the old book; to Haden, and to himself. “I’m not a cocoa merchant, or a salt merchant, or any sort of merchant at all—my vocation is to write for the stage. And I am sorry, very sorry to see you make such a trip, under what must have been very hard conditions, only to turn back—for I won’t travel with you, or live with you ever again. My home is here.”

For a moment there is silence: Mr. Blum seems torn between speech and action, between his own strength and the constable’s outside. But it is Mrs. Blum, understanding more fully than her husband ever will the import and final nature of this statement, who then erupts: “Your home is not here! No son of ours could ever live so, in such unwholesome conditions! Whatever sin you’ve done, you’ve done, but if you would rather live beside a—a common gutter harlot, than with your own dear mother—”

“She is not a harlot!” Lucy shouts, as “Holy wedlock means nothing to a type like you,” cries Mrs. Blum to Tilde, her eyes narrow and dry, as though she has never shed a tear in her life. “And no true church would wed you! But,” as a new and even more miraculous solution occurs, “perhaps you two were never wed at all, and my son is not the father of— Swear it! Swear to me,” turning on Frédéric, her hand up as if brandishing like a brick an invisible Scripture. “Swear this moment, to our Savior and Lord, that you are the father of her child!”

No one speaks. Frédéric’s cheeks begin to burn, his forehead reddens and “This is quite incredible,” says Mr. Blum, looking to Samuel Ridley in his bowler as the only possible point of connection in this immoral madhouse, Samuel Ridley who looks back thinking how much Mr. Blum resembles those upright mandarins of the brothel painted by that Frenchman, who is it? Lautrec? as “I’ll swear for him,” says Haden stepping forward, Haden whose motives for the lie would doubtless be approved by that Savior, with His penchant for the adulterous and dismay for those who so eagerly cast a stone. “And who’s anyone’s father anyway— God, an’t it? So how’s it matter?”

“You can’t swear,” Mick blurts, placing himself as a shield before Tilde, plucking up Ru as if he might on the instant be torn away. “I’m his father.”

“And now this ruffian? Do you,” cries Mrs. Blum, “even know the father’s name?” as Tilde’s face goes white, a pure and bloodless hue, but “Father!” Ru points emphatically to Rupert: for there is climbing and running and bell-ringing and thumb-your-nose to do today, Mamma has said so and Gran Lucy has said so, and best of all Hay has said so! So why must they all shout and waste time in talk? And his father, Sir the knight, is smiling at him, a very happy smile, Hay laughs out loud so Ru smiles too, glad the foolishness is over, ready to get on with the frolic—

—while Mr. Blum looks again to Haden, for there is something here he still does not comprehend, something that has nothing to do with the child or its crooked parentage, something unsavory and, yes, criminal, so “Who are you,” asks Mr. Blum of Haden, “what have you to do with my son? Be aware that there’s a constable just outside that door,” but “You ought go now,” says Frédéric to his father, man to man; the flush has gone from his cheeks, he is tempered and calm as a soldier. “Take Mamma, and go.”

Mr. Blum considers this statement and its bearing on the cocoa warehouse, the endless tasks of management, the dwindling inheritance, a life’s work to be handed on now to whom? as Frédéric looks back at him so steadily, with his blacked eye and fussy red cravat, like a tropic flower that chose somehow to bloom beneath his chin, what sort of man wears a rig like that? No businessman —

—as Mrs. Blum hurls down the dauphin hat, its bright twist of ribbon askew and “You are not our son! You cannot be our son!” and “Mister!” the constable’s bawl from the avenue. “Lend a hand, mister, they’re pinchin’ the cab!” to bring Mr. Blum and Samuel Ridley rushing to the door and the street, Mr. Blum and the constable defending the cab and its resigned driver from a trio of so-called stable men, Samuel Ridley to kindly assist Mrs. Blum in its eventual victorious boarding, even though she flings away his hand as if it will contaminate her indelibly—“Don’t touch me!”—as finally, painfully, the tears begin: her miracle in ruins, her plans in tatters, her heart so broken by this rejection from her once-beloved son that all she can do is weep, and press her wet cheek to the window—

—of the cab, then the chilly terminus with its unsavory begging orphans, then the train so slow to arrive and even slower to go, departing in stall and halting progress the station, the city, and the life of Frédéric Blum: observed in that departure by the statue of Mercury, wearing along with his usual grime a slippery mantle of ice, broad shoulders bare to the veiling snow begun again to fall as promised upon the righteous and unrighteous alike: the bourgeois merchants and the thieves, the defeated stablemen and the constable who pockets his illegal wage, the pretty chorister called Jilly in her monk’s-hood gown, who accepts a light from a friendly foreigner, his red mouth spilling nonsense just as pretty as he fires her smoke and then his own, so she might have a few fortifying puffs before descending into the jerry-built Hell. The snow accompanies the uniformed Prefect Konstantin as he climbs the Cathedral steps, one step behind the wall-eyed and magnificent Cardinal in gold and tasseled scarlet, the Monsignor in penitential purple, and the mayor with folded hands, followed by Commissioner Martin Eig, and Morris Robb, and Theo Richter sans his wife, leading the long procession of men who hold the frightened city’s welfare as closely as the chiseled marble Virgin holds the Babe, whose birth shall be celebrated not long after this roundelay of judgment and wry devilry, the mighty bells and soaring voices and the smell, beneath the snow, of something burning, something somewhere is always burning, as every fable is in some way punctuated by blood —

—as in the clang of those bells and all the mysteries they herald, not excluding those of the Pile ou Face and the bastards’ paradise, that mingling-board Eden of the broken and the never-alive, its current emissary smokes to the end of his cigarette, frees his jinx, and goes to work, steps timed to the deep ascending groans of the organ, pope’s hat and mask one shadow on the choir loft wall. In the street below a dark man is steadily approaching, his stride long and his breath puffing white, a concertina bagged beneath one arm; the slouch hat has been exchanged for a pecan-colored topper that hides his face from no one, nor his keen glance behind the spectacles, nor his slight, expectant smile.

If the hours of that pageant day may be viewed as a manner of medieval psalter, illuminated pictures arrayed to tell the story and sort out its deliberate obfuscations, the first might be of a young gypsy at an iron café table: strange, for all the gypsies have been long driven from the city, yet there she is with her scarves and cards, a mother and daughter in matching capelets sitting spellbound as the gypsy affirms that their dead father and grandfather watches benignly over them still: “He sees you,” says the gypsy, her wool curls itching. “He is smiling at you, he has great white mustachios.”

“But Grandpapa never—”

“He has them now. And he wants you to have this,” sliding across the table one of the cards, not a fortune telling card after all but a very odd picture of a man on stilts, leading with strings another costumed man and “Whatever can this mean?” asks the mystified mother but “He means for you to play,” says the gypsy, then pockets their tip and takes herself off: to another little half-empty café; to the straggled horsemeat line at a butcher’s shop; to the boatmen circling a trash bin fire at the Bridge—to them she gives a card showing what seems truly a mermaid! For the men are half certain such exist—seeding through the city Ridley’s old collection, those cartes-de-visite from another world, until all of the pictures are gone. Then she ducks behind a deserted barricade to pull off the gypsy’s weeds and irritating wig, and emerge frater minor in trousers and red pin and snug black cap, Tomik Bok at once accosted by a beggar who might also be a thief, but “Save it for Skipjack,” Tomik advises, kneeing that man briskly in the sack before trotting off, humming a certain tune—

—as through the bedraggled Park, past some Russian-mumbling monks and a baker’s apprentice throwing moldy bread to the crows, Alban Cockrill makes his way, towing along the refurbished Mrs. Gawdy. She bows to the constables when they halt her handler, to check his pin, then laugh and mock—“An’t you Cockcrow, who plays for the kiddies? Once you had that fancy showplace, but an’t much of a girl you got now,” and “You must like ’em quiet,” smirks the other, “when you stuff ’em!”—Cockrill smiling meekly to share in the joke against him and his puppet, whose bosom bears barely a loose thread, though she has been opened and closed at the heart twice already, with one more surgery yet to come: as her freight of jewels, those brooches and cameos and stickpins, is replaced by a growing lump of lucre, the wrinkled blue bills of the city, some francs and clinking sterling, a shekel or two of true gold. On one carved hand she wears what looks so much like a real ruby that it clearly cannot be; that ring, tucked inside an envelope (itself tucked with letters that the Magistrate van Symans, dead these many years, would have been greatly vindicated to read), is later received by his youngest daughter, whose astonishment at its arrival is amplified by that arrival’s mode, the ruby slipped again onto her finger as “You say,” searchingly to the door maid, who received the packet from the guard at the wrought-iron gate, “it was brought here by a man with a puppet? Was he— Was he a very handsome man?”

“The guard an’t say, madame,” says the door maid, whose imagination has been sorely tested in keeping up with this day’s realities: first some old beggar with a doll, if you please, who came not to beg at all but to deliver; then a Missus Do-good with a mob of orphans who never asked alms or stopped at their gate, choosing instead to cross the avenue to the Richters’s townhouse, la-di-da!—

—that do-good lady in her striped wrapper and dowdy wool bonnet, leading her pious cadre of lads up and down the city’s better avenues, the littlest lad at her side to grin adorably at those they pass, and blink his big blue eyes as “Poor boy, he’s an orphan,” says the lady; she shifts the modest tote sack she carries, with its bagged correspondence, beside her loaded muff. “All these young fellows are, isn’t it a sin and a shame? Oh no, madame, many thanks but we’re not asking coin. Only prayers,” stopping right there in the street to bow their heads with the lady of the moment, as one of the lads surreptitiously drops an envelope at an address across the avenue, while another scouts the way to the next address, and the next, whistling through his teeth as he goes, a song the whole city will come to know before this day has ended —

—as two young men, one burly and festively dressed, the other sober in beadle-black, cross together to halt below the clock tower, whose timepiece hands remain unstiffened by the cold, and “Situate here,” says the beadle. “I want you where both my eyes can see you…. See, there he comes,” as from the opposite direction a capped lad approaches, wheeling a faded red hand-barrow. The beadle recedes to become a curbside guard for the young man beneath the tower, who begins to sing in a fine strong voice, an old song with fresh lyrics—“In the post! In the post! You’ll open and you’ll read/In the post! In the post! It has all the news you need!”—while the first wooden man he produces from the barrow jingles his cheery lapel-bell to start this turn-the-clock party, as Pipper, who ferried that barrow, edges past the tower doorman distracted by the singing, to climb and climb: his ascent to startle, then stop, then frighten the passersby, that lean living figure—surely he is alive, for see him smile and wave! as he waltzes with a woman not alive, meeting face-to-face with the iron citizens of the clock, and for a short time force time to stand still—

—while in a building once devoted to heat and frivolity, now hushed with chill and disrepair, that same song is whistled off-key as the angle of light is debated and flash powders are prepared, Blitzlicht to show to best advantage those actors whose arrival is awaited with excitement by a man whose name shall be made along with these pictures, collected in his own, its own, psalter of puppets and puppeteers. Only one member of the current production shall not take his place in that portrait, that fact still unknown to its maker—

—that man the expedition’s general, also in beadle-black, concertina sheltered now by the hat he has removed. He wipes his mouth, then takes a drink, a long one, from the bottle in his coat, before making his way courteously through the hushed and crowded nave, the choir’s Latin recalling the memory of the monks, their harsh melodious chants; as he goes he murmurs inwardly a different Latin phrase, taught to him in private by the young man now mounting the steps outside: Dum spiro te amo, As I breathe I love you —

—that young man about to begin his task, bare-headed, light-headed with exhilaration, the first two fingers on one hand bandaged tight, like a little white baton to mark the rhythms of his oration, “Pan’s Salvation” offered to all. He thinks of the bell on the puppet’s jacket, the great bells in the towers high above, the sanctus bells at golden rest beside the marble altar: and he lifts his eyes to the hills made of buildings, feeling, before he plunges into the first lines, a sense of mystery enormous but so diffuse that it is as if this show is operating fully on its own, some great hilarious play taking place, taking shape beyond anyone’s direction, even M Istvan’s, playing out its own devices with himself, with them all, as its actors, to its own ends, and all that is required is surrender.

So when his declamation has ended and the reading of the letter has begun, and he is halted in that reading by an usher, then an angrier usher, then a pair of constables, he has no fear, he turns to those symbols of authority and says, quite mildly, to them and to all who have stopped to listen, to observe the actor fellow collared ignominiously on the saintly steps, “This letter was written by the mayor’s own father. Look for yourselves,” showing the signature, sowing confusion amongst those men: for if the mayor’s father wrote it, perhaps it is part of the pageant? and so is meant to be read out loud, and themselves in peril for the stopping of it? Though the writing seems to have nothing to do with anything beyond sending money to other men whose names the constables and ushers have never heard; yet those names are another kind of holy writ to many of the men inside the cathedral, including the Cardinal—

—who at this very moment has begun his own oration of the eternal hell that awaits the mocker and the disbeliever, the frequenter of spirit-parties, those who refuse to recognize the holiness of true authority. As he thunders, the demons in the pen begin to writhe on cue, to beat their hands against the wooden bars, their sad cries for mercy ignored by the angels in the blue and lilied heaven, several of whom now clandestinely sniff and look about: something is burning somewhere, the choirmaster smells it, too. None of them note the shadowed man whose sudden laugh disrupts and swivels the back row of singers, and whose aspect frightens them all, for what sort of apparition is this? in miter and mask, carrying some strange little, ugly little tool or doll, stepping to the very ledge of the loft and “If thine eye offend thee!” roars the puppet, Mr. Jinks’s sole and memorable, echoing line as he is swung like a censer on a chain, Mr. Jinks whose little body smokes from a tucked and burning cigarette, Mr. Jinks who, once the puppeteer has put his back into it, flies free, nearly as high as the great domed ceiling, the frescoes and round-eyed virgins, over the heads of the congregation and its civic royalty, over the head of Martin Eig—who will be the first to conflate that outlaw toy and the murderous freight of letters—as that small devil lands not far from the altar, to catch nearly at once the flammable hem of a kneeling server’s vestment. The poor acolyte leaps up screaming like a girl, his fellows rushing to douse the fire, stranding the Cardinal mid-oration—

—as “We have come,” calls a voice, midway between doom and paradise, “to judge the living and the dead,” rousing a rising spatter of shrieks, as a man approaches up one of the side aisles, outlandishly dressed, masked to hide his face but not his smile. “Who better than the old heroes? For we respect the mysteries more than you, who seek to tame Mystery itself, and call it like a finch to your finger! That’s a fine blasphemy, eh, monsieur?” to the rigid Cardinal, to whom he tips his hat as if in professional courtesy, his smile, Istvan’s smile widening as a strange and ragged, blithe little tune begins, cutting through the hubbub as the man who plays it advances up the great main aisle, chanting rather than singing, to save his breath— “In the post, in the post! You’ll open and you’ll read!”—his voice, Rupert’s hoarsened voice holding a lifetime of love, of pain, of humor, even, and cherishment and joy: and hearing it, Istvan must draw a breath, a secret, plunging breath of his own joy, his own wonder that such can still be so: Mouse still Mouse, after all these years! —giving a small and perfect bow, a public honor, as Rupert joins him there before the altar.

Now a stylish frau gasps and points from the foremost pew, a gaunt matron sways in the pew opposite, toppling into the Mayor beside, a half-dozen ushers already reaching for the twain but “Noli me tangere, or him either,” Istvan calls; he is laughing, dangerous, radiant, he raises Mr. Loup from his coat, that smaller celebrant sending a flinch through those ushers, as if he is a weapon in truth. “Worse than a spirit play, to stop the play of spirits! The story’s brief, and most you can read for yourself. And we’ll wager that you will,” Mr. Loup nodding with vigor, while Morris Robb, in the second pew, visibly blanches at the sight of Herr Bok, a man known to be deceased! yet plainly not deceased, unless it is not Herr Bok? But it is, for see him now give his nod to banker Robb, with a gravity proper to a resurrected man…. Rupert’s spectacles have fogged a bit in the building’s heat, Istvan in that glance all haloed, and Rupert’s heart beats with a passionate gratitude to stand again together this way, making their play in peril and pleasure, pain too as something new twists inside his chest, precipitous, ominous, though it does not prevent him punching the usher who grabs at Istvan’s elbow—“But a story’s only as true as its telling—” that usher crumpling right below the Cardinal’s pulpit, the squeezebox making an autumnal moan from the blow, the laughing puppet to shout above that noise “So we tell you true, this story’s ours! Here, there, and everywhere, even in the stars!”

—as the Cardinal’s cry, “Sang-dieu!” prompts Monsignor Elfred’s tardy scramble, Prefect Konstantin’s determined exit from his pew, as pandemonium rises in the hayish stink of burnt silk, that chaos superceding the one on the steps, thus drawing inside those ushers and constables —

—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 used 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 —

—and nearly there to do so, Puss’s silhouette seen in the doorway, himself nudging Rupert to look, neither seeing then the three who fell upon them, but They never cut him, as Lucy examined once more his own windings, that seeping, swelling wound he barely seems to notice; a jagged cut, Krampus luck that it did not go an inch deeper, two inches to the side, luck and force for He did for the one who tried for me, then he took the other, as if to reassure her that no man, brigand, thief, could ever have bested that great warrior. I nearly took the third…. They never cut him, as Lucy pressed his icy hand, and Tilde carried off the basin, to return with two thick needles and a linen winding sheet.

Sorrow is its own ceremony, individual, universal, and that ceremony commences anew as the sun sets again, the world having rolled through that strange and endless, empty day, its sadness given voice in the theatre’s silence as Frédéric leads them all in song, “No Victory for the Tomb” leading into the more singable “Off to the Gloaming” and “Paddy’s Lament,” leading into a show, yes, with Mick putting Van through his paces, Istvan the audience for once, wrapped in a soiled morning coat, wearing again the raveled silver glove. There are smiles, a bit of laughter; bottles are passed, the hair-raising ale and redoubtable gin, even Ru gets a sip or two in the manner of a baptism, from Haden, who sits the child close upon his knee, kisses his forehead once, then again—

—until “Will you?” Mick bowing to Istvan, his hand and Van’s outstretched in doubled, sympathetic invitation: and all of them—the women, the lads, Haden and Frédéric; Cockrill too, for he is part of the story now—applauding as Istvan rises, making his own truncated bow, taking Van from Mick in the manner of old friends meeting: the dark glimmer of Pan, the lingering shade of Marco. And if that puppet’s limbs and heft and motion, his eyes—especially the eyes—have gone different in the playing, changed forever and for the best, still they are comrades enough that a neat little dance is accomplished, a friendly tribute to “Save It for Skipjack,” Mick receiving his fellow back afterward with a flush of justified pleasure, of pride to carry forever as “He’s all yours,” says Istvan, reaching to take up Israfel instead. “And well-met, I knew it from the start. Now, shall we jig a bit together, Monsieur Pimm, as they used to do at the Golden Calf?”

That play—knockabout, bantering—brings real laughter, Lucy calling out through her tears the happy waystops of memory—“Oh, that’s one for the Brussels crowd, those old battleships!”—with Tilde sitting close beside her, Tilde wearing the opal, the locket, and the lover’s eye, Ru now at her knee; his little face is abstracted, as if he is puzzling out a problem or wrestling with a thought. When Istvan at last draws the dance to a close, Israfel fluttering his wings like a lady with her fan—“One needs refreshment!”—Haden is there at once with the flask, good strong Armagnac procured, who can say how, from the city’s blasted larder, the clandestine churchside bazaar. Istvan drinks as if he is truly thirsty, drinks again, then hands back the flask to turn away—“A moment”—and take the stairs alone as Haden watches, as Frédéric hangs Israfel beside his Faustus friend, as the music begins again, a whistled oratorio of “Thumb-Your-Nose”—

—until Tilde rises as well, to climb to the third floor and stand gazing at the latched roof hatch, fingers clutched to the cards in her skirt pocket; she weeps there, tears like ice, she does not know that she is weeping until “Milady,” from the stairwell, Istvan on the second floor, calling softly until she descends. Music continues below them, whistling and voices but no concertina, Istvan has the concertina and “He’s got the name, your youngster,” Istvan says, putting into her hands the bright and battered little instrument, heavier than it appears; its ivory keys are cold. “He ought have this as well.”

Then she does cry, Tilde, and knows it, a harsh shattering gust, gripping his sleeve with one hand and the concertina with the other, as if she is swept in some invisible sea, black waves no one can navigate; Istvan rests his cheek against the small shorn head, he closes his eyes. Finally, inadvertently, she clutches the concertina so it moans, a sound so fully grievous it is comic, they both must smile then and “Buck up, Mab,” Istvan murmurs. “Last time you thought he fell, well— He’s only gone behind the curtain.”

“There is no curtain,” she says, making him smile in a different way; he chucks her under the chin as Rupert would have; she swabs her face. Then he selects from among the items in his coat pocket a citizen’s certificate, Rupert Bok with its official stamps and seals, for “This is his, too,” putting it into her hands; and steps back a pace, a small, unmistakably formal distance so “I’ll keep it for him,” she says, carefully folding the paper, slipping it safe beside her cards. Though she does not add what the cards might have said, so many destinies foretold so long before: all of them together beneath this roof; none of them; only Haden and Frédéric; instead “Do you sleep here?” she asks. “Tonight?”

His answer is held by quiet footsteps, Haden pausing hand on banister to watch Tilde rise on tiptoe to kiss Istvan’s stubbled cheek, a comrade’s salute, perhaps a daughter’s. In descent she brushes past Haden, sharing a look so brief it barely catches, but says all it means to say, herself calling down, “See, Baba!” bearing the concertina before her as proudly as a hero’s shield. “See what you’re to have!”

—as “Step in a tick?” Haden stepping up to lead the way into the room he shares with Frédéric, a gaze past his shoulder half-diffident, half-keen: he offers the desk chair but Istvan takes a seat on the bed instead, the rumpled sheets and coverlet, waiting; he knows he is waiting.

Yet at first Haden does not speak, fiddling instead with Frédéric’s piled books, the inkwell, the chessboard, its ranks gone incomplete, Ru having made off with several pawns and a queen, until finally “He asked me once,” says Haden, “did I play,” one finger on the black king, the tiny carven scowl. “He said he’d never learned it.”

“No. Though he did take instruction.”

“He asked me to—look to you, if you should need it. To stand your friend,” as Istvan looks to him then, gaze unreadable past his lashes, and “You’ll stay, uncle,” in a rush, Haden stepping from the chessboard to the door, as if he will block the way, as if Istvan is already departing. “An’t you? Here’s as good as anyplace, and when they’ve gone off to their nest—”

“She told you?”

“She an’t need to, that Pimm’s already on her like a cloak on a granny. Wish him joy! And it’s for the better anyway, Ru needs a safer perch than this to grow on. But we,” that yellow gaze open in open appeal, “we can stay here, play here still, why not? The three of us, we’ll pop some eyes—”

“Ah,” but kindly, “three makes a crowd. And two showmen in a house is truly one too many—the Marquis would surely say the same.”

Haden says nothing; he looks suddenly younger, a boy left behind with only a token to keep between himself and harm; he sets aside the king, he chews his lip until it reddens. “Then—what’s your road?”

“‘Il faut hurler avec les loups,’” with a sketch of a shrug. “There’s a bit still to sort out—a pile upstairs, and some books lent to him,” all to be left but the Latin one, Remedia Amoris, its flyleaf inscription in Rupert’s careful hand, Dum spiro te amo, a comrade to the copybook. “Oh, and my papers,” the name upon them his own little joke, Herr Javier Fletcher. “You’ll deal with those—make some mischief with them, won’t you, if chance permits?”

“Don’t,” as Haden steps closer, then closer still, half kneeling on the chilly bed, “don’t go,” and they kiss, Haden’s kiss, insistent, beseeching; Istvan can feel the scar, feel Haden’s heart pounding as he rests his palm there, against the strong young chest, the hand with the glove and “Fox kit,” his murmur, the kiss reversing, his own rough and probing, ravishing kiss, one arm hooked hard around Haden’s neck, painfully hard, driving Haden back against the bed’s old headboard and “M Mundy,” Istvan whispers, brandy on his breath, favoring his wounded side. “We’ll not say good-bye, yeah?”

“No, fuck no…. You’re still to go?” but “Not just yet,” Istvan loosening his hold, then his shirt, Haden rising from the bed to close the door —

—the two denned together then until the moon rises, Haden stepping alone into the hallway to tuck his shirt, smooth back his hair, pinch the bridge of skin between those goat’s eyes, cat’s eyes, lover’s eyes, a stripe of blood fresh upon one trouser leg. Slowly down the stairs, he is watched by waiting Frédéric, who at once notes that stain but does not remark upon it, then or ever; nor the later sound of footsteps leaving their second floor room, nor the matching stain upon the bed where he half-murmurs, half-sings Haden into a fitful, mournful sleep.

As if by shared consent, all seek their rest or some other quiet business; all the lads but Pipper have departed, the street outside is still but for the last passing ’bus. Carrying slumbering Ru to bed, Mick and Tilde pause on the landing to note the light still burning on the third floor, Istvan’s quick footsteps back and forth—

—gathering what he needs, all he needs, so very little, now: tucking the Latin book into the puppet bag, pocketing the steely Swiss watch, slipping a fold of newsprint into his boot, the left one, at the hasp where the leather is thinnest. If he sleeps, it is briefly and on the narrow cot, one arm thrust out as if seeking, the windows stripped to hold him in moonlight, beautiful, indifferent, silver as the cracked little mirror he leaves tucked above that door, as he exits in the stillness just before dawn. Downstairs, Cockrill is stationed watchman, snoring softly as the knifeman’s dog used to snore in the alley; this city is full of such memories, Vater and the Heads or Tails, little Luc; their own choice and creation of this place, this Mercury, fortress to his heart now, though he shall be elsewhere, endlessly elsewhere —

“You’re looking damp, a bit,” Lucy’s voice to halt him, Lucy emergent in her wrapper with the gin bottle; she nods to Istvan’s shirt, the darkish blot half hidden by one of Haden’s vests. “Better let me fix it…. You could wait a day, you know. Or a week, let it truly start to mend.”

“Better for us all if I’m off, in case anyone should come a-knocking. And you’ll be gone soon enough, yeah? May be with some of the lads, too?”

“Some,” offering him the bottle, reaching as he drinks to straighten his collar, nip with her nails a loose thread from the greatcoat sleeve as he pulls it on. “That Pipper’s a rare one, like Mickey come again! But he’s that loyal, he means to stay on here with Frédéric.”

“Poaching, Puss? I am shocked…. Safe travels, then,” bottle down, bending to kiss her cheek, yet she surprising him, perhaps surprising them both by twining arms around his neck to kiss his mouth, a firm and most womanly kiss, the dollymop on the brothel bed and the fancy traveler from elsewhere: she sees that memory in his eyes, her own are filling as “Safe travels,” Istvan says again, lifting the puppets, the Misters and Mr. Loup, the leathern bag and cane, pausing a step to strip the Wheel of its shrouding black, and giving his wink to sleeping Cockrill at the alley door—“Lock it up tight, now!”—as on the stairs Ru, crept down wakeful as a little owl, earns a wink of his own, from beneath the brim of Rupert’s slouch hat. Then the door opens, and closes, and he is truly gone; none of them will ever see him here again.

In the days between this departure and that of the traveling troupe, Tilde hunts for the old carte-de-visite of Sir and M Istvan, hunts with great and baffled industry and urgency, but without success; it is Mick who reports its loss to Lucy, who shakes her head to hide a vagrant smile.

From the introduction to The Strings of Memory

On my desk as I write sit the artifacts of my childhood—an antique concertina, a “Pimm’s Palace” theatre, a tiny goat made of twigs and wool—for it was my great good fortune to be part of that players’ family: at the Mercury with my godfathers, the renowned dramatist Frédéric Blum, and his producer and lifelong friend Hadrian Mundy; then at the famous Blue Bird Theater of the Pimms, Michael and Mme Lucinda, my stepfather and grandmother, and my own dear mother Mme Mathilde. And my natural grandfather is the legendary Rupert Bok, whose own writing fills this book, his private memories of a lifetime spent in performance. If “all kings have princes,” I have tried my best to honor that lineage, and this record you now hold is, as far as diligence can make it, the whole story truthful and complete. As for that consummate showman who played beside Herr Bok, here he is called Istvan, for clarity’s sake, though a litany of names trails him like a comet’s tail.

I wish to thank James Lisle, of Lisle & Sons Publishers, for editorial assistance, and the estate of Samuel Ridley, for the use of his photographs. And I now dedicate this labor to those who taught me by their daily example how a life, and Life, should be played. If it does the same for its readers, I know that those players would be pleased.

RUPERT BOK PIMM, New York 19—

You’ll walk out of here without a penny, says the young man, flat brown soldier’s cap skewed sideways, though he is not a soldier, and increasingly belligerent at losing so many hands to this fellow with the raccoon eyes and bag of wooden dolls. But who has the upper hand now! fanning out the cards on the tin-topped table. Two pair—treys and Queens. Beat that, oldster!

The older man seems foxed at first, thoughtfully stubbing out his black cigarette, until he flips over his own cards to show a line of straight diamonds, with a murmur of Fortune who favors the bold, and a wish to take his winnings straightaway. The soldier seems as if he may dispute that exit, until the older man salutes with his cane, a hard rod with a curious silver topper, more than capable of cracking a skull. The young man subsides with a glower, as the taproom’s owner calls out Sure you don’t want to stay another night with us, Mr. Miracle? It’ll be twice the crowd, and all your drink’s on me—

—but no answer is given for he is already going, the money swept careless into an ancient leathern bag as he heads into the rainy evening, the dull and sullen outskirts of another no-man’s-land. His fit-up is a light one, no more mask or need for it—though he is still a manner of plague doctor, more so now than ever before—just that cane to aid the journey, the bag to hold the one-eyed, one-armed, deathless puppet, and the case the two friends Ruprecht and Steven, one of whom carries inside his sweetly carven heart a pair of very old, very scratched silver spectacles.

In the traveler’s own breast pocket, next to his heart, rests a carte-de-visite wherein two men consider the world from the fortress of their own regard, one nearly smiling, one with two fingers flirtatiously raised: Rupert the Mouse once Tacio, and Istvan, Dusan, Marcel, Hanzel, Etienne Dieudonne, Stefan Hilaire, Stephanos Marcus, Stepan the Miraculous kissing his fist to the moon as he turns toward the town and eternity. For Tilde, as always, spoke truly: there is no curtain. The play is everywhere, the show continues.

ENCORE

STEPAN THE MIRACULOUS

The rooks seem not to mind the rain, or not enough to slow their raucous flutter and dive, calling out to one another like actors throwing cues across a stage. Their choice of rookery is at first glance an unlikely one, this shabby building once a bank or some other institution of trust, its muddied ground floor now a busy combination of vendors’ booths—pamphlets and newspapers, braided shoelaces, penny sandwiches wrapped in brown paper—and an immigrants’ succor society, long lines of orphans and the weary with creased letters clutched in hand; the higher floors gone to locked doors and cracked windows, furtive tramps, and brazier fires lit from discarded financial documents and the stubs of cheap German cigarettes. A sharp eye might descry upon the building’s façade a pair of stone eagles weathered into wingless immobility, their noble heads decorated only by those rooks, ordure smeared and daubed like a bad paint job abandoned; there is more shit on the sidewalks, shit thus on the boots of the gentleman exiting onto that avenue, having descended from the vagrants’ rookery above, sidestepping a pair of sobbing girls and a glum-eyed grandpa, flicking down the smolder of a German execrable in favor of a long-cached Spanish cigar.

As he begins the long walk back to his lodgings, he savors that smoke, its taste heartening as brandy, with a biting hint of bitterness beneath. To passersby, or any watching eye, he looks a patchwork creation, much like his puppets in the case and leathern bag: gentleman’s boots and a traveler’s stride, mended greatcoat and elegant cane, lustrous pearl in one ear below the sober businessman’s homburg; it is difficult to say what his business might be. As he walks, he whistles softly, this prince of the boulevards, the lost and smiling boy in the rain; his song is a fine one, you may have heard it, or sung it yourself, if you have thumbed your nose a time or two at whatever seeks to contain you.

That rain finds its way down his collar, past the scarf knit by Mademoiselle Paola: gun-grey wool and lumpish, not at all to his taste, but the cold is so much more an enemy nowadays that he must have whatever protection can be mustered. Scarf or not, greatcoat or not, his shoulder pains him greatly nonetheless, those ancient scars aching, his arm gone past hurt to a queer new kind of numbness that no warmth can seem to dispel. Another strike on the tally, well, never mind; did he not make his small rude god disport with one good arm and a benignly mocking smile, the spare eloquence born precisely from that pain, and enlighten all those beggars with last night’s beggars’ opera? Yes. And did his audience not laugh and applaud till they risked discovery by the police—men’s risk, not the croaking wooden puppet’s, so antique and eternal that it may say anything, to anyone at all—then pay him in hilarious whispers a bounty from their hoard, the cigarettes, an only somewhat moldy twist of poudre de riz, a folder of pictures of ladies who were not at all ladies, showing parts of their persons that no man save a husband should see? Yes again.

And did he kiss his fist, this entertainer, taking his bows, smiling his smile that was meant for all and no one in the room, that spoke of rooms and vistas and plays so far removed (yet not always so far: just around that building’s corner is a room that he and Mouse once knew, neither to their pleasure, although they did get paid) that its radiance might have been the moon’s, distant yet friendly; for a third time, yes. And if in doing so he felt a rushing frisson, a nearness so acute that it echoed in both his heart and his trousers, well …The communion of saints, they call that in the cathedral.

As the rain becomes more insistent, it is into that cathedral that he steps, pausing to scuff his boot heels before entering, and carefully snuff his cigar. There is a service in process, perhaps penitential, a purple-stoled priest droning by the side Lady’s altar, a cluster of women offering responses; it is a restful, rhythmic sound, somewhat like the sea. In lieu of prayer, he carefully tears from one of the venerable hymnals a page—“From Paradise He Calls to All”—and fashions it into a peaked hat, small enough to be worn by his smallest partner in the bag.

He is not what could be considered a believer, but he visits when he may: it is tranquil in the pews, and sometimes warm; a pity one cannot smoke in here! The breathless old organ at vespers, the exquisite fall of the light—so artless and superior to any trick upon the stage—and the occasional sparring conversation offered by the reverend, or curate, whomever he may be, a youngish Alsatian with flawless English; not such a fool as the others, he seems to grasp how little one can know of life in general, let alone a deity. They have spoken of sin and of the war’s troubled aftermath, of current municipal events, of whatever may lie beyond the fleshly veil —

I’ve been to Paradise, Reverend, have I mentioned that before? It looks remarkably like a brothel.

I’ve never been to either, sir, but I’ll take you at your word.

—and of the church’s continuing duty to spread the news of salvation, rather a slog these modern days, so long past the age of miracles…. In the places he passed to arrive here, the barracks-rooms and backstreet parlors, the cabarets whose better days are far behind or before them, he is called Stepan, Stepan the Miraculous, a name that amuses him vastly—its virtu, its blunt expectation of blessings bestowed—though in this city he is mainly unknown, except to that curate, to the beggars and several others, and to the excellent Paola.

Her real name he knows, but has forgotten—it may be Ivy, which would suit her, that constant, unkillable vine, she even keeps a pot or two on the windowsill, hard green ropes that she cuts, and roots, and plants to grow anew; the singular tang of those cuttings, their scent, is hers now to him, as no doubt his cigarettes are to her, or the hair tonic with its odor of quinine; he keeps his hair much shorter now, a nearly monkish cut, has grown back the wicked goatee.

She says little, Paola, mainly sits and sews through her daily pile, sharp pins tucked to one side of her mouth; pores narrow-eyed over Elson’s Lady’s Journal and the Queen’s Fashion; executes her errands; and very rarely steps out to take a lemon beer or watch a panto—which was how she found him, though that chance conjunction explains none of the mystery on her side, her diffident yet forthright invitation, gloved hands clasped as she stood before his stage-side table, as if in some private audition. On his, it was as simple as the need for a roost, sleeping in the barroom’s backroom left one vulnerable to drafts and determined mice; and there was something to the tilt of her head, the quality of her silence, to indicate an ability to keep that silence on matters larger than a new lodger’s place of origin, or continuing lack of a legal name.

And such has proven true. She never has asked unanswerable questions, though at times she watches when he reads the rare letters that arrive poste restante; or when he stands half stripped at the washstand, the bared scars puckered like old silk at his neck and gut…. He recalls not at all the feel of that blade entering, remembers only Rupert’s fury at his side, the white knife in his own hand; and on the rooftop, the heat then chill of the seeping blood. He might have bled out there, if the sidewalk assassin had been somewhat more skillful, he and Mouse might have gone on together into the hills…. Paola does not ask where or how those scars originated, she only notes them, and the calluses upon his palms, the raw spots at his heels for which she offers a series of unguents, and clean Castile soap; she buys him cigarettes, and mends his stockings, boils the grounds for French coffee, heats the flat with a king’s ransom in coal.

And she has invented a story for him beyond his own stories, he has heard her tell it a time or two: with a touching and unwonted sparkle in the telling, chin raised as she offers it to her friends, that seamstress pair, thick pink wrists and felted hats —

Name a place, he’s been in it. London, and Prague, and Paris—even America. He toured through America once, he told me so —

Ooh, that sounds heavenly. And Paris, ooh, think of the heavenly frocks!

He’s lying. If he went to all those places, why would he ever come here?

He is not lying. Playbills from everywhere, he’s saved them, I’ve seen them. The Queen even gave him a sash to wear, a prizewinner’s sash, I’ve seen that, too—

—though she does not mention which queen that queen might be, and no one asks to see the sash. Or the playbills, either. Not even her brother, the ne’er-do-well Rémy, the puffy-eyed glue-sniffer who hustles at the backgammon tables, though apparently so poorly that he is at the flat more often than not, whining for money, for a place to stay, a place Paola continues to deny him: There’s no room here for a stray cat, there’s barely room enough for me and the sewing. Whatever happened to that woman from the Junction, Mrs. Whoever-she-was?

She made a stray of me, the bitch. Ugly old bitch. But you’ve got plenty room for that fancypants—why does he stay, still? Can’t be for romance, unless you’re dumb enough to think you’ll turn him…. You are! Look at her face, she thinks she’s going to climb into bed with a billygoat! And so on and on, until Paola gives in and gives her brother money; or his own waking, or arrival, puts a temporary end to the scene. If he meant to stay, himself, much longer, he would put young Rémy in better order, a brisk fist in a tender place. But as it is—

“Let us pray,” intones the priest, and the women do, in devoted susurration, as an altar boy with yellow hair brings forth a smoky censer. With a smile and sketched bow toward the assembled and the altar, he withdraws from the pew, pausing in the narthex to resume his hat and relight his cigar. Outside the rain has lessened, but the street feels colder still; soon it will snow.

He turns east, his long stride rhythmic as a heartbeat and fully as automatic, that endless traveler’s tramp down the boulevards, one and then another and another, all the same now, city after city after city, this city’s dull with red-striped dentist’s parlors and tea-and-sausage shops, a chemist’s, a locksmith’s, a sad dressmaker’s, that last shop window powdered by months of dust, its genteel boast—Step Out a Duchess!—lettered on a card left askew on the door locked tight. Though it is possible that that shop is not fully abandoned, there seems to be a light somewhere inside, a small electric flicker, and when he puts a hand to the knob it turns easily and at once.

“There you are,” says the man at the table beneath the light: well-tailored grey suit and grey-striped vest, the complexion that speaks of eventual dyspepsia, a thin if well-barbered brown beard. “It’s after six, I was growing concerned—”

“Apologies,” as he pulls out a chair at that table, gives a familiar’s flick to the undressed dressmaker’s mannequin standing legless and stoic just beyond it. Upon a faded bolt of butternut twill are piled newspapers, editions from all the major cities of the continent; a recent Patriot-Herald lies spread on the table itself. As he speaks, he begins to leaf through that last, spotting old haunts and familiar names, a face or two he knows as well, some very well—the Happy Prince, there, forever now the Erl-King, scowling over some honor or award presented to him by that policeman Eig, Prefect Eig, no bedfellow too strange for the quality; and a stiffly smiling younger man between them, a fresh and hungry comer, it never ends. “I had a bit of a late start. And a longish walk.”

“Monsieur— Why are you here?”

“Why, I thought you invited me.”

“Please don’t joke. You said weeks ago that you were going to Budapest.”

“The Black Sea, yes. I am.”

The man sighs, a weary sigh though the man is young, even younger than he looks. Perhaps it is because he has so many concerns, high finance can be a strenuous career, and he has nothing of his new father-in-law’s vitality or innate savoir vivre to buffer its demands, especially those offered by this most unbiddable charge. “All was prepared, you had traveling funds, and a clean passport—”

“I still do. The passport, at least.”

“It’s very dangerous for you here, monsieur, you know this.”

He does know it, has known it, plays his own game with and upon it, a hide-and-go-seek through the streets, though what he does here is in no way illegal, is nearly liturgical in fact; it is the fact of himself doing so that seemingly can no longer be tolerated. Two of the seekers he sees frequently, a burly one with reddish hair, and a tall, Arab-looking fellow; he knows there are more that he does not see, feels their nearness like the fox feels the trap’s iron rim beneath the innocent leaves. Yet joking still, to shrug and smile: “An old jester and his old-fashioned dolls? How can such a fellow’s doings matter?”

“Those who matter say you do—you saw M Guerlain’s letter! And the warrant—”

“Pure fiction.”

“It dates back to your—activity at that cathedral,” and indeed it does, the “postal affair” as it was called then: We set them to boil, didn’t we, Mouse correct on that point as on so many others. “And they hang new stories all the time, truthful or not. Some say you’ve a troupe always ready to be mustered, no matter that you travel alone—you’ve been alone for some time now, M Guerlain says,” pausing for the nod, yes, that is so. “And some swear Herr Bok’s still alive, that he was seen playing beside you in Victory Square,” which brings a different, more authentic smile. “And they all say that you carry messages, that you have intelligence—”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“—and that you go into the workingmen’s bars, talking of insurrection. Those songs you sing—”

“Not me. These fellows, perhaps,” nudging the case with one fond foot: is it insurrection? or the passing-on of, yes, intelligence, the knowledge that the wheel is meant for, made for, spinning, just as cards are made for turning and re-turning, and mecs for play; that joy is no man’s servant or dupe, and true play will trump and supersede all other dicta, even that of the player himself —

—as a sound comes to the outer door, perhaps a knock, perhaps not; both men go instantly still. A hard hand slips into a greatcoat pocket, to close around an antique knife; a nervous flush floods bewhiskered cheeks. The sound does not repeat. In the quiet renewed, the young man lowers his voice: “You won’t go to the Mole, monsieur, say that at least! All week there’s been talk, they’ll surely be waiting for you—”

“One goes where the play leads,” down the player’s road, the only way possible, but to this young fellow, already so steeped in safety, he may as well be baying at the moon so “You’ve been a good friend to me,” kindly, folding the Patriot-Herald prepatory to rising, “and I’d not burden you any longer with my safekeeping. I will go to Budapest, I’ll go tonight, yeah? Look,” opening the case, showing beside the puppets some articles of clothing, a trio of well-used books. “I’m nearly packed already…. Be sure to give Pinky my farewells,” with both hands around his, a warm and formal clasp; the young man will remember and detail that detail to his father-in-law, who will listen keenly but without comment, though the theatrical matron beside him, that old and dear friend of the family, will shed many tears in the hearing: Was he smiling, when he left you? as M Guerlain takes her hand tightly in his own.

The young man then watches his exit, not through the dressmaker’s door but instead into the narrow alleyway, stepping at once into a cloudy puddle that fully soaks his leaky left boot; with a little curse he wedges the newspaper more firmly into the greatcoat, that it might not suffer the same fate. The cold has indeed worsened, but several blocks away is a fine warm restaurant, the Red Lion almost too warm: shedding his coat though he wears his hat still, and adds a pair of small silver spectacles to aid his reading, very old and very scratched silver spectacles that sit rather crookedly on his nose.

“Tea, sir?”

“Coffee, s’il vous plaît. With a brandy side.”

Newspaper again in hand, the article he reads, with no little pride, details a most fantastic production: “The Roulette Wheel,” penned by the firebrand dramatist Frédéric-Seraphim Blum, in language now a scalpel, now a rose, now a Roman candle to shed fire across the dark mind of Man, or anyway the men and ladies who crowded the theatre for its premiere, crowd that theatre still, though there has been if not outright condemnation then an official and enduring frown pointed like a cocked pistol at this production; it is the crowds that prevent that pistol’s full deployment, and keep the playwright and his company somewhat safe. The tale details an angel who fell from love, not sin, to rise again beside his fellow, a pair dressed in motley and dun who fling the truth in song and caper, represented by puppets called Israfel and Faustus; though which is whom, the article does not say…. And how entirely satisfying it would be, to be part of that audience! Even for one night only, just to pop in and peep, perhaps wave benediction from the flies—though that, alas, is patently not possible, some journeys are truly irreversible. If such were not the case, he might have landed in the bluebird’s nest as well, to kiss the ladies and salute the gents, and play alongside his dear stout Puss one more time. Instead “Salut,” he says aloud, raising his brandy glass.

“Another, sir?” asks the serving girl, thinking herself summoned, summoning his nod in answer, spending the next to last of Pinky’s traveling purse to eat and drink like a lord, with a lord’s gustatory erudition: thick pea soup as salty as tears, a fat chop dressed with leek pâté, an apple tart whose topping cream, alas, is thinned detectably by goose grease; he sends back that last in favor of tarte au chocolat, Mouse would have relished that choice. Adjusting the spectacles, he peers again at the photograph illustrating the article, the handsome and studious owner, the Grecian cast to the new sign above the door, that Mercury Theatre and its Marquis who together grow more famous every day, more formidable and artistically resolute: Frédéric, who will understand best what he does now, though it is the kit who will mourn him most.

And what a lagniappe, to cross paths that way with the estimable M St.-Mary! that tony impresario there beneath the hotel awning, with his ivory walking stick and fashionable Van Dyke, flicking soot from a sleeve of sky-blue serge, only the eyes still a predator’s, scanning the street with a stare as keen as Rupert’s might have been—and that golden gaze become suddenly a joyful boy’s as Istvan placed himself before it, his own face changing at the kit’s first glimpse: a stranger might have seen it as a door swung wide in what seemed to be a solid wall, that and the smile they shared then, instant, brief, as intimate as everything that followed. Ushered by Haden into that hotel past its silently dubious doormen, into its gleaming barroom, the best available brandy at a table draped in damask and Making the Grand Tour? his own question to the question in Haden’s eyes and He keeps me hopping, Haden’s shrug in answer; his scent is of vetiver-water, he wears a dusky pearl on his left hand. There’s some singer here he says we must engage, some Swiss girl we can’t afford—

And yet, with a wink, you seem quite prosperous, toasting, the brandy on his lips like a kiss; a greater heart’s-ease even than he owned to himself, to see this young man once again. Time has been good to Haden, he is a true general now, worthy of everything offered by their tutelage; a general and a guardian, his angel is a lucky man indeed.

Drinking then, they spoke of this and that, of journeys and friends well-met: Ru grows like a weed, you ought to see him! And dead clever, too, he can read like a barrister. That blue-eyed bitch, now, she hasn’t changed a particle…. They asked me if I’d any news of you.

And what did you say?

I said wherever you were, you were stirring the pot, which made him laugh, which made Haden smile, a puckish smile and She said, “No one to tell him not to, with Sir away.”

Oh, milady, with another sort of smile, cherishing that word, “away.” And as always she speaks the truth: risks run, now, that Mouse never would have countenanced, yet how else? as he carries the flag, plays roles for both those gentlemen in the case, Ruprecht and Steven, must be the knight and the trickster together. Had her own cards not called it so? the Turn of the World, and the Wanderer who leads one on the way? And the book and keys of the Priest…. May be one ought notify the curate, in proper collegiality!

Brandy finished and news shared, repairing then together to a different, more earthy barroom, then a dicing room, then a black-walled café not far from the Mole itself, that Mole whose clientele were briefly parsed by Haden with a professional’s frown: Uncle, you know best your own business, you weren’t born yesterday—

And all anew tomorrow.

—and it’s not on me to school you—

No indeed.

—but there’s a bally bit of difference between the ones who clap and the ones who listen—half these bastards are in someone’s pocket, looks to me.

More than half. But what of it? Should the mecs worry for those broken-cheeked choirboys? leaning forward to let the kit light his cigar, a voluptuously fine cigar, a Kristos, he had not had such pleasure in a smoke for a very long time. And other pleasures, too, to follow, kissing those soft scarred lips is still like kissing a god’s…. Boys he has had, though never so many, now, not the taste declined so much as the interest; well, he is an old fox after all. But to lie on those gloriously tousled hotel sheets, watching Haden button up, and pull on his braces, smooth himself back into the gentleman he has become—there will be no pleasure as potent as that again, and that is fitting; one ought always go out on top.

Yet there was a general’s worry still, Haden questioning his travels, trying to insist on a last sortie: Let me see what I can do, I have a friend or two left at the Prefecture—

Like Eig?

That thick-backed beetle in his drain? C’est drôle, with a grim little smile, dissuaded with some difficulty from the plan; though he did deploy the ivory cane in a protective fashion on a pair of doorside roughnecks, popping one across the jaw with such efficient brutality that the fellow felled his own accomplice, that one summarily dispatched with another poke and I believe, his own judicious examination, this apache robbed me just last week, outside the Pigeon’s Coop. Yes, see, here’s my billfold—

You let them pinch you?

I don’t live for coin, continuing to rifle briskly through the robber’s own pockets, I don’t mean to die for it. Though when the second’s pocket yielded other booty, a cheap British revolver, he only shook his head: Not my weapon, kit, you know that.

Times are stark. A man needs all the weapons he can carry.

Not this time, with a smile and shrug, meaning to indicate without the tedium of discussion what might, indeed, be worth dying for, though death itself—that creaky fellow ever in the corner, that mournful fraud—is only just a ticket-taker, he and Time both lowly acolytes to the greatest player of all, Love, who smiles at both with such terrifying sweetness, who calls the play and always has…. Haden spoke no more of dangers, then, of municipal strings to pull (though in a different season, how he would have savored that show! the kit as puppeteer, watched through the lashes); only accompanying him a ways, then a ways more, so far then from his own fine hotel that Istvan finally stopped to turn and point him back: You’ll soil your suit, milord, if you travel much farther—it gets sticky, this side of the fence. And I have a show to play tonight.

What’s it now, “Stepan the Miraculous”? We’ve still a stage, you know, with a smile of such steep and sudden melancholy that Istvan must smile in return, love’s own faceted smile and There are many stages, yeah? And experience teaches one to hope for reunion. Now you’d best be on your way, you’re a busy gent, stepping back himself to speed that departure, bowing as Haden bowed to him, Haden passing a hand across that wounded mouth—and then gone, never looking back, Istvan watching for long moments in case he did so; then the sky-blue suit was swallowed in the twilight, and his own steps turned, more slowly, toward the Mole.

It is the Mole he will play once more this evening, that smoky little tumulus; though it is not an upright place by any standard, its denizens are surprisingly receptive, and occasionally even astute. Such as that bourgeois professor of whatever-it-was, some manner of mentalist, buying him a post-performance mug not to talk but to declaim: “The philosopher knows the stage is the audience,” and you, sir, are clearly a philosopher—as his lady-friend pestered to see the puppets, I like those two, they are brothers, non? And that dark creature, he gives one such a thrill! Oh a thrill indeed, to fling himself and Mr. Loup at the darkness itself, this fierce comedic business of the Jackal and the fool, what had he styled it once to the Marquis? a “moral reveille,” yes. For one must always play what the room requires. And who can say what that reveille might wake?

And if he is watched, if he is followed, if the truths he plays are construed as lies to some subterranean purpose—when the time for feints is clearly over, has been for some while!—well, let them do as they please about it all. He has little enough to hazard: the puppets they shall not have, his life is his own, so they might take this cane, here, with its grinning silver griffin, he had seen its twin once, recall? That lily-handed gentleman in the cabriolet, urging him to Come away with me, you can teach me more sleight-of-hand, with the walking stick wedged against the carriage door as if to fasten him more securely inside. My brother’s a wealthy man, much wealthier than that silly Ste.-Gilles, he could finance shows by the baker’s dozen—that brother to whom he owes that cane and the case he now carries, itself a marvel of concealment, they will have a pretty time forcing it to give up its secrets, when the best secret, and joke, is that there are none inside at all! But they will make of that very emptiness a prize, to justify the manner of its finding: they must, they always do…. To do good, or cause it somehow to be done, is a fine kind of game after all, and one that, in the end, Mouse surely must approve: I’ve told you before, leave those preachers be, had he not dreamed that scene to life again, just a few nights past? But this time the frown was a smile, Mouse there upon some sort of chair, or throne, book upon his knee, beckoning Istvan to come and see —

—and he will see, he and his fellow in the leathern bag, though by then the others will be on their way, the cards all gathered to hand; like the kit’s deal, Sudden Death, the seeming loss that seeds the victory. If it was not here, why, it must soon be elsewhere, and here is as good as anyplace, that grimy pocket stage become every stage he has ever played, the stage to mirror le monde, ape the world, spin that world, gone as far as risk and glory can take a player —

—and in doing so share that glory with his partner: not some memory of Rupert but Rupert himself, as alive as if turning on the pillow, turning in his arms, Rupert present in the play every time one of the Misters leaves the case, Mouse whom he feels so close at times it is as if he scents the very cigar or cheroot, feels the passing weight of a hand upon his shoulder, a whispered breath against his cheek; at night it is the worst, and the best. It is not pain, the pain has long been used up by the tramping; it is instead an eagerness for reunion so singular and driven, it might be held more fierce than any hurt. Resfeber, the Swiss call it, or is it the Swedes—travel-fever, the consuming longing to be gone, twin to Rupert’s own longing, Why even you, fox, come to want a den? Or a road that never ends, for his dreams have begun strongly to suggest that these are not the only boards, that may be a truer, larger stage lies still before him; them…. Rook’s progress, then. A short walk into the dark.

Now the rain has fully turned to sleet, the gutters to ice, no cabs to be had and the trolleys crammed to their foggy windows, so nothing to do but tuck away the spectacles and walk, hat soaked, scarf like lead at his neck, his gait as brisk as a man’s much younger, smiling inwardly to think of his pursuers, may they catch la grippe at least! Turning at last down a dead-end lane, past some street boys huddled in a locked doorway, to whom he tosses the last of Pinky’s money, glancing through their ranks as he does so—is the fiddler there with them, that chubby boy who can play anything, gladly if not well? No, and what a pity, it would have been a tonic to hear a certain song once more.

On the steepish stairs with their smell of sulfur paste and mildew his step is still jaunty, as if in rhythm to that unheard tune, up one flight and then another, past the landlord on the landing, fat Florion in hacking coat and carpet slippers—“What weather, eh? A man could catch his death”—then at Paola’s door where he can barely turn the key, now, his arm gone fully useless from the cold.

The mademoiselle herself is thankfully nowhere about, so he may strip and dry himself at leisure before the stovepipes without her moon-calf stare: what the chit can see in him, that way, one cannot fathom, he is old enough to be her uncle, and a flagrant nancy besides. Though it is true that some women do prefer such—recall that maidservant friend to Puss, or the lean marquesa, catching at his coat sleeve, begging for exploration: You are like an unknown land, to me, Señor! And me to you!

Yet whatever would one do, without the ladies? their devotions and ferocities, their far-seeing benevolence, how they have embroidered his life! Paola, now, wherever she may have got to, has left strong coffee hot in the pot, and starched his one fine shirt, hung neatly on the rack beside her seamstress’ seat, that bench where she bundles herself to sleep, having given over to him the room’s hard-stuffed settee. She does all she can to make a home of this cramped little bedsit: the cabbage rose curtains sewed in between her dressmaker’s toil, the braided rag rugs and finely mended table linen, if one squints a bit one cannot see the hotel laundry mark. Another redoubtable chambermaid, like Portia whom he sent upon the road—but this one without any dreams of the gentry, with few dreams at all, it seems, for she does not see the utility of them—

Dreams are meant for sleeping. Nights are for sleeping, not for sitting up at the window—

What, and miss the show? Look there, Paola, they call that the Gemini, its stars are Castor and Pollux. See them twinkle?

No.

—nor of his own shows, though he has played a few for her, or tried to—Watch and see, mistress minx—as the shadows writhed and scampered on the wall above the washstand, an elongated gentleman made from a fork, a slippery teaspoon courtesan—though she did blush in the watching, he saw it, an unattractive rashy splash; she is not generally attractive, Paola, but perhaps with some hair ribbons and a tight-drawn corset, and a smile— She was not smiling the night she tried to creep into his arms, her face as blank and stark as any dreamer’s, his own brusque refusal never referred to by either; again, what can the poor chit want from him, that way? Some second-best tenderness, the unknown land of a man who might care for her?

With his good arm, he sets the case before the stove, wipes and buffs until the scratched wood shines, then sorts through its contents: the shirt he tosses to the rag bag, the books he divides: one to be for Paola herself, the poetry book as gratitude’s souvenir, Come live with me and be my Love. The other two, Remedia Amoris and Mouse’s precious volume—how often has he thumbed that book!—are wrapped carefully and marked for Herr Blum; they will accompany the Misters, as a manner of passport. A few days before, he had procured the sturdy crate in which they will travel, paid its freight, indicated to Paola its destination—

You’ll see that this is sent on safely, mademoiselle.

You’re sending off your puppets? You— When?

I’ll tell you when.

—past her gaze then averted, she asked no other questions, so pointedly so that You’ll send it, he had said, when I say, yeah? to bring an unexpected flare of resistance: she does not see that he journeys, only that he leaves so If I don’t? but You will, with a look neither sharp nor punitive, just a look, but she had blushed that fever-blush again, and said nothing more; they both knew she would do as he bid her.

Now he takes up those Misters, his constructed comrades so affable and profane, to dandle them, be their handler one more time: tender, expert, comical, are there tears in his eyes? or do they glisten only from the dry heat of the room? warm enough now to soften the pain of his arm, make his motions easy, almost, as long ago, playing for the lads in the streets and the ladies in the boudoirs, the kings and bishops in their castles of commerce, playing for Mouse always and for himself: and for the mecs, too, all of them—why if he cocks an ear just so, he may hear the tinkle of Marco’s bell…. “Stepan the Miraculous,” yes, but they are the miracle and always have been, the way as well as the fellow-travelers: wood and gut and buttons, horsehair curls and painted nutshell eyes, how they ran riot, offered glee when glee was scarce, kept him from loneliness, thumbed a nose at certain loss…. His last regret is that he cannot carry them all, but he shall have Mr. Loup beside him, one eye, one arm, and unafraid—and is it not the players’ duty, and their charm, to always leave an audience wanting more?

A straightening tweak of a sleeve, quick adjustment of a wire; and into the depths of Mr. Castor, where the soul belongs, he places, with a kiss, the lightly creased carte-de-visite of Rupert Bok and Istvan Marek. Cloaking their faces in silk, mulberry blue for one, black for the other, he closes the crate for its journey, one hand hovering—a maestro’s moment, a benediction—before reaching to drive the fastening nails that will send the Misters home.

And then he must prepare himself, must wash and use the razor, sprinkle the quinine tonic, slip into that clean starched shirt, adding a new bat’s-wing tie of gold and purple paisley, garish enough to have pleased even the kit in his heyday. The wool scarf he will leave behind, still moistly steaming beside the stove, as into that stove he stuffs a few last papers, a traveling document, a false passport, lighting the end of the Spanish cigar from its slow smolder. To his coffee cup he adds a sizable tot of whiskey—Paola keeps a bottle for Rémy, hidden in the cupboard behind the oatmeal jar—for there will likely be little chance to drink, tonight, before whatever is to happen happens: All week there’s been talk, they’ll surely be waiting for you. Ah, but he is ready for them, too, will hold that stage as long as he may, his stage, and be fucked to them who think to commandeer it! If nothing is immortal save art, why, when love makes art, those ripples must surely reach the stars. And tonight is the night to make one last jolly splash.

So “What say you, my mec?” he asks of Mr. Loup. “Shall we pop some eyes?” crushing out the cigar as the key turns in the lock, Paola returning with, yes, Rémy, apparently fresh from the haberdasher’s: see what a fine topper the fellow wears, a brand-new trilby! so “I’ll have that,” he says, and takes it—somewhat too small, but more than wearable—and to the boiled flush that fills the young man’s face “She bought it for you, I’ll be bound, she won’t gainsay your generosity. Now, none of that,” as Rémy raises a threatening hand, a hand that Istvan seizes to bend and work as briskly as if it were carved from wood, there will be no lasting damage but the pain sets the young man whimpering, Paola beside in coat and rain-bonnet to watch without protest, only nibbling her lip as Rémy cries out, and when Istvan says “Be kinder to your sister, junior, or I’ll pop back and twist off your nuts,” he finally sees Paola smile.

Then Rémy takes himself away, left hand nursing the rapidly-swelling right, hatless and with a curse past the door slammed so hard it does not catch, swings back open till Istvan shuts it with a little push, then unlocks and leans halfway out the window, past the precipitous ivy pots, to call to those loitering boys “First one finds me a cab gets a tip!” and send them scattering avidly up the avenue.

Using a clean-bottomed pot for a mirror, he makes a careful line of kohl above and beneath each eyelid, then pulls on a dinner coat, the once-fine jacket that Paola has mended to fresh respectability, though it will never be in fashion again, as “You’re going out,” she says.

“Yes.”

“For a performance.”

“Yes…. And you’ll send my box,” nodding its way, nodding until she nods, too, and finally, tonelessly, “I will,” she says. “Tomorrow.”

“You will tonight. —Oh now, cheer up, mademoiselle,” his own smile suddenly bright enough to light the room, that showman’s smile leavened with a special sparkle just for her, the same smile that brought him here, that opened the door, the smile she will remember all her life as she keeps the book he left her, in pride of place on the false marble mantel. “We’ve work to do, so give us a kiss,” offering first the dark planed face of Mr. Loup and then his own, to her pale lips warm and faintly chapped; he can feel her tremble, the fear in the hand she places for just a moment upon his arm. “For good luck, yeah?”

“Good luck,” her echo as he takes up the case and bag, settles the trilby more firmly on his head, kissing his fist as he turns for the door—to pause for half a moment on its threshold, struck in that moment by a last glance at the room entire: the pink cabbage roses, the faint vagrant smoke of his cigar, the pained way Paola tilts her chin, every detail etched so perfectly it might have been cast in the cast glow of Eden: all of life held there in miniature, his own and the world’s, all the plays and their devisements, the notion makes him catch his breath —

—as he turns, completing the step into the hallway and its fitful economy of light, to glimpse in those friendly shadows a man there waiting for him, a man he knows, knows well, a man his heart leaps like a skyrocket in the seeing: a tall and handsome man in a greatcoat, hands in pockets, dark young Mouse smiling as he approaches, shadow into shadow, to lead from that turning world into eternity. The girl he calls Paola hears him laugh, the breathless sound of joy itself, then the clatter of his boot heels down the stairway, whistling gaily as he goes a tune she does not know, “We are two/We need none other—”

—as outside the snow descends like a scrim, and a hack cab rolls to a stop at the avenue’s corner, where its passenger hops inside as nimbly as a lad, street thief’s fare in hand, to make his way to that final performance: to the Mole and the crowd and the men already seeded within, a burly redhead and a tall Arab trading glances as he steps inside; to the gleeful and ferocious, raucous show, Mr. Loup in especially good form—“Thumb your nose! Thumb your nose/At those who do you wrong!/Thumb your nose and sing to them this larky little song!”—bringing much ardent if truncated applause, heads turning, mutters rising as the performer is hustled off, case and cane left where they fall at the stage-side table; to the alley, its emptied, studied stillness and wet consumptive cold, the men’s hands rough upon him—“Still smiling, you fucking traitor? We’ll wipe your face for you”—many hands and insistent, to fling the puppet to the trash and conduct him forcibly onward, to the brief harrow and plunge of the black sea —

—to emerge far outside the province of time, upon a road unguessed but profoundly familiar: in great and radiant reunion with that dark boy in the viaduct, in the stars like Castor and Pollux, in the green hills where it is always fair for a trickster and a knight, and only the legend left behind to make its play. Thus the passionate journey continues for Istvan and for Rupert, those players and lovers and heroes—

—and for us, too, who may watch and mark and, perhaps, find ourselves numbered among that company, on these intersecting roads of stage and page: one with the making for as long as that making holds us, its peril and humor and never-failing triumph, the puppets’ bright gambol and rude invitation, side by side and playing out the show that never ends.

Fin

Table of Contents

The Bastards' Paradise

Act 1

Act 2

Encore

Table of Contents

- The Bastards' Paradise_080115_final
- Copyright
- Thanks
- Dedication
- Quote
- Act 1
- Scene 1
- Scene 2
- Scene 3
- Scene 4
- Scene 5
- Scene 6
- Scene 7
- Scene 8
- Scene 9
- Scene 10
- Scene 11
- Scene 12
- Act 2
- Scene 1
- Scene 2
- Scene 3
- Scene 4
- Scene 5
- Scene 6
- Scene 7
- Scene 8
- Scene 9
- Encore
- Scene 1
- Table of Contents