2
It was the nox before Saturnalia, and we were about to raise the curtain of the Vittorina Royale for the first time. The Lord had told us we could open the doors to the general public from tomorrow, so Benny and I had been out pasting posters just like at home, except there were vigiles patrolling the streets here who’d give us a whack if they caught us pasting on public buildings. We’d been as far as the Forum — a jaw-dropping place full of every kind of temple and building imaginable. Our posters were merry and bright and called us the Mermaid Revue, making us sound like some exotic troupe from the far south. But this show — the first show — was open to no one but his Lordship and his guests.
We peeped through the side of the curtain, watching them enter.
Lord Saturn wore that high hat of his, and a long coat that shone green and violet. He led his crew through to the dress circle — a gang of demmes and seigneurs all dolled up to the nines. Liv and Ruby-Red giggled, laying bets on whether they were real aristos, or another theatre troupe, or something a lot more scandalous. They always talked like that around me, assuming I was too little to know what they were on about.
I watched them, Lord Saturn’s crowd. They were finely dressed, but only some of them knew how to wear the clothes. They weren’t aristos, that was for sure. They were all gathered around this golden demme with short curling hair and a frock more daring than anything the columbines would wear on stage. Her arms were bare and you could see that she had taut muscles, like she knew how to haul scenery. That was no lady.
She was Saturn’s, though. You could see it in the way she moved, the way she laid her hand on his, the look on his face as he presented her with … us.
We were a trinket to please his lady. The worst of it was, she wasn’t impressed. The whole time the saints-and-angel play went on, Saturn’s lady looked bored, like she was waiting for the real show to start. Some of her retinue applauded at the closing song, but she shrugged one golden shoulder and they stopped.
Madalena had sung her heart out, and almost convinced me (who knew her better than anyone) that she was a real angel made of sugar and steam. When that half-applause stopped, she looked like she was going to slit her wrists.
The harlequinade was next — columbines dancing and Larius swanning about as Harlequinus in the middle of it all. Madalena was supposed to be changing costume for the pantomime, but instead she shut herself in her dressing room and refused to come out. The stagemaster shouted at her through the door, and finally sent me up to talk sense into her. She said not a word, no matter what I cajoled through the keyhole.
The harlequinade ended and we sent on the tumblers, though they only had so many turns to run through and it would become obvious soon enough that we had no pantomime to follow.
The stagemaster sucked in a breath finally and called for Adriane to find a frock so she could cover Madalena’s songs. Adriane burst into tears, for Madalena had six separate numbers in the pantomime and she didn’t know the words.
When all seemed lost, Lord Saturn himself strode backstage and demanded that Madalena open the door for him.
When she heard his voice, she did open it and he took her face in his hands and kissed her, a grand finale kind of kiss that left her cosmetick smeared across his face. ‘Sing for me,’ he commanded, and Madalena turned as if hypnotised, fumbling for her costume.
We managed to get through the rest of the show. Madalena performed the comic turns of the pantomime perfectly and then vanished backstage again as the lambs trooped out for the cabaret of monsters.
Here’s the funny thing: Saturn’s golden lady, who had looked openly bored through the whole proceedings, sat up and paid attention to us lambs in our animal costumes. I could feel her eyes on us — on me — as we went through our paces. When we took our bows, she stood and left without a word. A bunch of the young seigneurs followed her, chorus to her stellar.
Lord Saturn stayed. I don’t know if I loved or hated him for that. He applauded in the empty musette. He showed up later at Madalena’s door with an armful of flowers. Her cosmetick was streaked and she was tired as hell, but he told her she was beautiful, and meant it.
Madalena’s smile, her real smile, not the one for the stage, was always something to see.
‘Put these in water for me, will you, Baby?’ she said, dumping the flowers on me as she strolled off with her new fancy man, arm in arm with him.
It was the last time I saw her alive.
There was an itch in my skin when I awoke. Nothing big, just a niggle, making me jig about impatiently as I went down to breakfast.
‘What’s up with you?’ asked Ruby-Red with her mouth full.
‘Naught,’ I muttered.
It was Saturnalia, and we were opening for real this nox. The stagemaster spent half the day convincing us that the golden bitch knew nothing about theatre and we shouldn’t take her rudeness to mean three beans about how good our show was. We almost believed him.
There was enough to do that no one noticed until the afternoon that Madalena wasn’t there. Not in her dressing room, not sleeping late, not anywhere in the Vittorina Royale. Gone.
The itch grew fiercer.
By the time we raised the curtain, Adriane was cinched into Madalena’s angel costume and the stagemaster was red-faced and spitting.
We had a full house. It was Saturnalia, and nothing draws the crowds like a festival. Half of them were locals, I reckoned, out to see who had taken on the Vittorina after so long without a performance in the old dame. It was the biggest audience we’d ever played for and Madalena wasn’t there.
When it was over and we were sweating cosmetick, dizzy with applause, already figuring out what bits we’d have to change for tomorrow, the stagemaster grabbed me by the collar. ‘Tell Madame when she shows her face that she’s fired,’ he growled. ‘We don’t need her. We’re going places.’
Madalena had never missed a performance. Not once. I checked her dressing room after, just in case. His Lordship’s flowers were already starting to fade.
The itch had spread to my feet. I went walking, trying to shake out the bad feeling, but all that did was remind me how big this city was, how none of us belonged here.
It wasn’t me who found Madalena’s body. That would tie the story up nicely, wouldn’t it? If I sniffed out a trail of blood or used the devastating intellectual abilities of a seven year old to track her down. Instead, it was one of the columbines who found her in the alley behind the Vittorina Royale. She was still wearing the bright scarlet and purple milkmaid’s frock from the pantomime. Her body had been ripped apart, as if by animals. Blood everywhere.
They didn’t let me see. Of course they didn’t. They tried to keep the facts of it from me, because I was a lamb and the only one in the whole damn troupe who really loved her. But I heard the stories, each of them getting badder and bloodier.
Wild animals. How the frig do you get yourself torn up by wild animals in the middle of a city?
But you know the answer to that question, or you wouldn’t be here.
The audiences kept coming. Even with Adriane’s reedy pipes. Apparently our kind of revue had been out of favour for years in the big city and the crowds were hungry for it now. They lined up to buy a shillein’s worth of nostalgia — a nice way of saying we were old-fashioned but they liked us anyway.
No one spoke Madalena’s name aloud. That’s the way it is backstage. There’s no one like masks for superstitions. Once you’re gone, you’re gone. They were as silent about her now as they had been about my mam all my life.
I snuck into the stellar’s dressing room before they gave it to Adriane and stole the old poster Madalena had kept all these years of her and my mam, beaded up and laughing. Come to the Mermaid and See the Pearls Beyond Price.
I’d never asked her my mam’s name, waiting for the right time to get her brandy-sozzled and softened up about it. Too late now.
After the twelve days of Saturnalia, the audiences trailed off. The stagemaster was beginning to talk about heading home, eager to spend his Lordship’s gold, to be the big man in Oyster when he hired on for the refurbishments of the Mermaid. We’d be famous too: the lambs who went to the big city.
The day to return kept getting put off, though. There was talk of sticking around through Venturis. Some of the columbines had been sneaking off to audition in other musettes — wouldn’t be many of them coming back with us.
I wanted to go back so bad, but not without Madalena. The stagemaster had her burnt at some temple outside the city bounds and set in a stone without even her name on it, because that cost too much. No one had said a word about calling the vigiles — musette folk don’t invite the law to pay attention to them. Last thing we wanted was the city thinking we were making trouble, maybe blaming us for other crimes. I wanted to know, though. I couldn’t go home without knowing who had killed her and why.
I tried asking in the Forum if anyone knew of a Lord Saturn, but they just laughed at me. Turned out there were no Lords in the city. A flower-seller took pity on me and said if he wasn’t a Baronne or a Comte or even a Duc, then he was spinning a yarn.
‘Some chancer with a bean crown making a fool of you,’ she said sympathetically, and gave me a cake because she thought I was some scraggy street-orphan who had need of feeding. The cake was dry, but I still remember the taste of it.
As I was heading back, I caught sight of a trio of seigneurs laughing and gaming in a corner of the Forum, by the Basilica. I knew them. They weren’t dressed as fancy now, but they’d been in our audience on the eve of Saturnalia — the golden lady’s chorus boys.
I followed them. When they split up near the main road, I followed the one with red hair because he’d be easier to track in a crowd. That, and he wore a bright green cravat tied badly, like he didn’t know how. I’d spent enough time picking up pins for the wardrobe mistress that I could feel a bit superior. I could have done a better job of it.
Bad Cravat led me up and down the Lucretine before he turned and caught me, one hand grasping my collar like the stagemaster did. ‘What are you, little rat?’
I should have been scared, right? He was bigger than me, though no older than Matthias, barely old enough to play leading man. But I wasn’t scared, I was angry, and I fair spat the words at him: ‘I want to see Lord Saturn. Take me to Saturn.’
His eyes flickered a bit, looking me over. I still had posters tucked into my belt — I’d been gathering them so we could re-use the backs for the new performances.
‘You’re one of those theatre pups,’ he said quietly. ‘Cabaret of monsters, aye? You were the ferax.’
It was uncanny that he knew me from that one performance, and me in a sweaty leather mask.
‘Take me to Saturn,’ I said again, brash and far too confident.
‘Oh, you don’t want that. Run back to your theatre.’
He released my collar and turned to leave, but I grabbed onto his belt. ‘Did he set them animals on her? Were they his?’
Bad Cravat’s face was all pale, sort of sick-looking, as he looked me over again. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘They were hers. Scurry home, ratling.’
With that, he prised my fingers from him and walked away. I tried to follow him again, but he turned into an alley and when I caught up he had vanished, like a stage trick.