Nine
Danse Macabre
Five hundred pounds was a pathetic amount, Percy knew. No doubt this foul-mouthed, inebriated man drank more than that in a fortnight. But it was not stinginess that kept Percy from offering more for the release of the abused performers. It was the fact that he could spare no more. On his way backstage, he had quickly calculated the cost of necessities and come up with a remainder of four hundred and fifty seven pounds. He decided to make it an even five hundred – he was certain Simmons would not mind a bit of his salary being donated toward this worthy expense.
As was expected, the sum was thrown back in his face riding a torrent of regurgitated ale. The troupe master motioned for the scarred trainer to continue beating the performers. Panicking at the sight of the blood coursing down the youth’s body, Percy reached out and grabbed the drunken man’s arm.
“A thousand pounds!” Where he would get a thousand pounds he had no idea, but in that moment, between the shrieks of the djinn and the girl and the crack of the whip thong, such a technical triviality was easily lost.
“Listen, you stinking do-gooder,” snarled the troupe master, yanking his arm away and brandishing his horsewhip. “If you don’t take yer velvet-covered arse and git out o’ here, I’ll not hesitate to take this horsewhip to yer miserable, do-gooder hide.”
“I’ll . . . I’ll have you reported,” Percy tried one last time, shying away from the flailing whip.
“Don’t bother,” snapped the master, dealing a stinging slap with the thong across Percy’s chest. “Lord D’Tevlin has more’n enough friends to keep me out o’ the gaol. Besides, no one cares ‘bout monsters.”
There was a piercing shriek as the virgin was dragged by the hair from behind the boy and was dealt a sharp, cracking blow with the whip. The boy bellowed in anger at the scarred man, but a kick to his chin sent him reeling backwards in a limp heap, effectively silenced.
“They are human,” cried Percy frantically, once again reaching for the troupe master’s arm. “Good God, don’t you see this? That is a woman! You have no right . . .”
Another stinging slap was dealt to Percy, this one just above the wrist on the sliver of pale flesh between his glove and his sleeve. “Git out o’ here, now, a’fore I tie you to the post and have Master Thom lay the lash to yer bare back. Or . . .” He raise a hand in a strange gesture. “I could just curse you.”
Sir Perceforest Calworthy had ventured out far beyond his depth; the threat of being bespelled was the undercurrent that tugged at his feet and threatened to jerk him away from the shoreline altogether. In light of this, Percy did the only thing he could do – retreat.
As the troupe master laughed in his face and the whip fell again and again to the hysterical cries of the young girl, Percy turned and ran, his hat flying off. He did not go back to retrieve it. His only thought was to get away from this place of nightmares as fast as was possible, back to his own house where – he fervently hoped and prayed – the horrors he had experienced this night would dissipate in the familiarity of warm, well-lit surroundings.
~~~
Simmons opened the door. The butler was dressed in a pinstriped nightshirt, and the house was dark except for the soft glow surrounding the candlestick the servant held in one hand. At the sight of his employer, Simmons became instantly concerned. Sir Calworthy was an implicitly neat person, and would never be seen outside his house in anything less than a well-groomed and elegant state.
Percy’s face was shimmering with sweat. His hair was windblown from his less than leisurely return from the fairground. His hat was completely gone, and one gloveless hand was cradled against his chest. An angry welt was rising on his wrist.
“Good heavens, sir, what on earth happened?” Simmons demanded as his employer pushed past him.
“Lights,” choked Percy as he stumbled in the near darkness of the large foyer. “Lights, Simmons, for heaven’s sake.”
“Which room, sir?”
“All of them.”
“Sir?”
“Blast it all, Simmons, you heard me, just . . . light all the lamps and cease these infernal redundant questions!”
Simmons, trying not to reveal that he was injured at the sharpness with which his employer had spoken, retreated to do as he was commanded. Percy staggered toward the stairs, his breathing hitching awkwardly in his chest.
Once in his room, Percy dropped his walking stick on the floor and lunged for the chamber pot, throwing up into it. He was shaking, the night’s plethora of new experiences taking their toll on his lax, scholar’s body. Never before had he been so angry, so frightened, so helpless. Never before had he witnessed such horrors, seen so much blood, or run so fast from anything in his life. Never before had he been whipped.
Dabbing his chin with his handkerchief, Percy went around the room turning on the lights. Once the shadows had been banished to skulking corners by the warm kerosene glow from rose-colored glass shades, he pulled out his reading spectacles and examined his wrist; it was quite an ugly wound, but –he reminded himself – nothing compared to what those two children had sustained, were sustaining at this instant. Percy sat on his bed and imagined he could hear the virgin girl’s shrieks seeping through the window’s casing and running along the walls to enter his still-ringing ears.
Sir Perceforest Calworthy felt tears burning in his long nose, fogging up his cut-quartz spectacles. He whipped them off and rubbed them on his pant leg. “You’re a great coward,” he muttered to himself. “A great bloody coward, that’s all.”
But what could he have done? Nothing, absolutely nothing, save be cursed or lashed himself – and what good would that have done the performers? None whatsoever, except perhaps prove to those abused beings that there were, perhaps, one or two people who cared about their plight.
One or two people . . . Percy sat up straighter, eyes drying as an idea sparked in his brain. Springing up, he began pacing the room, composing the letter in his head. There was someone besides him who cared, someone who’s opinion held clout in authoritative circles.
“Paper,” he muttered, going to his door and wrenching it open. Simmons was there, his hand poised to knock. “Paper!” Percy exclaimed again, glancing up at his butler. He pushed past the startled servant and rushed down the stairs to the library, which was obligingly blazing with light.
Rifling through his desk, he brushed previous writings to the floor and pulled out a piece of his most elegant stationary, rumpling it in his eager hands. Grasping at a pen, he inserted the nib crookedly and it fell into the inkwell. “Damn it all,” he muttered behind clenched teeth, fishing for another nib in a side drawer.
Simmons entered the library. “Sir Calworthy, what are you doing?”
“Writing a letter to Lady Faustine Briary,” his employer answered as he scribbled fervently, standing bent nearly double over his desk. He had not bothered to pull up his chair and sit at it. “She’ll have something to say about this. She’ll write a scathing letter demanding their release, firing up her entire literary following. Soon there will be no more traveling freak shows displaying the horrors of abused creatures for the morbid public eye. Then – ha, ha – then that damned drunken troupe master can take his horsewhip and . . . and . . .” Percy looked up, shamefaced. “But I’m being foolish, an idiotic old recluse who spends his days in his library, a world where ‘happily ever after’ is only a few hours away from ‘once upon a time’.”
“What happened?”
Percy sank into his chair, resting one elbow on the desk and putting his forehead in his hand. “You have never seen such morbidity. It was the living, breathing resurrection of the danse macabre, Simmons. 1400s, you know. Pictures of skeletons and figures of death living side by side with peasantry . . . no one the wiser, no one knowing what goes on when the grim reaper gets the milkmaid alone in the orchard . . .” He trailed off, staring into the light of his desk lamp.
“Sir?” Poor Simmons was at this point desperately confused. “Were there refreshments at the fairground, sir, if I might inquire?”
Percy laughed bitterly, tossing his pen down, a blot of ink spreading across the paper. He threw himself back to slouch in his seat. “I am not drunk, Simmons. I am upset. I have been to hell and back tonight, and I don’t care to discuss it further.”
“Very well.”
“This isn’t going to help,” Percy looked at the letter and the growing blot of ink. “Simply wishful thinking on my part. I’ve been deluding myself into thinking I could pass the responsibility of this onto someone else, someone more equipped to deal with such things. But even my writing at its most proficient could not begin to describe in adequate detail what I’ve witnessed.” He crumpled the letter and threw it across the room, turning afterwards with a small, sad smile to his butler. “Do you know they cut the tongue out of a fairy’s mouth? They bled a virgin to demonstrate the healing properties of a unicorn’s horn?”
Simmons shook his head. “No good comes of fiddling with magic, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so. It is my firm belief that we should not meddle in the lives of the magical. Let them live out their lives in quiet, and let us be none the wiser.”
“Indeed,” Percy said, fiddling with his pen and deflating slightly. “It is either exploitation or oblivion. No peaceful co-existence. I suppose that’s too much to hope for.”
“One does not put a wolf in a sheep’s pen and pray for assimilation, sir,” Simmons offered.
“But who is to say who is the wolf and who is the sheep?” Percy frowned. “I’m going to bed, Simmons. Douse the lamps and get some sleep.”
“Yes, sir. Goodnight, sir,” said Simmons, who was still not altogether convinced his employer was not inebriated.