Circus of Wonders

by Elizabeth Macneal

  That girl is her. She has often felt that her life merely drifts along paths set by other people. Everywhere she turns, she is confronted by the dreams of others. Jasper’s for a great circus, her brother’s for a farmstead in America, Stella’s for her own troupe. Nell’s own desires have felt trapped, her mind fogged with uncertainty about what she wants and who she is. But as she stares at that picture, her blonde hair sailing behind her, the determined arrow of her toes, she is struck by the idea that she is in control of her own life. A wanting for Toby eats away at her, makes her long for his body against hers, a desire so precise and needling.

  Toby’s wagon is unlit, and yet she has the feeling that he too is awake and waiting for something to happen. She hurries to it, raps gently and whispers, ‘Are you awake?’ He murmurs and she pushes open the door.

  It smells of his photography chemicals. She knocks against a jar, snags herself on the line of hanging images, and curses. Sheets rustle below her.

  It is a surprise how fast it happens, how one moment she is her own person, and then she is tangled with another, pulled down beside him, so much touch it is almost unbearable. Hands sliding against her, the rough texture of his back, the muscles rising from each side of his spine. The improbable force of his lips on hers. The power of it; the size of him, a waist so wide she can barely span it with her arms. Her hands nestle in the soft dip above his hips. He winces, as if hurt.

  ‘Nell,’ he murmurs. ‘This can’t happen – it –’

  But he doesn’t stop, doesn’t pull himself away from her. The clumsiness of him, palms as hard as horn. His cheek, rough against her own. The shock of his hands on her body, slipping between her legs. Her world is shrunk to texture, to the nip of his lip, his answering cry. She pulls him on top of her, pins herself down.

  ‘Nell,’ he says.

  There they are, on the floor of his wagon, the glass bottles rattling. She digs her nails into him as if she is conquering him, testing her power, a fledgling bird assessing the sinews of its new wings. Salt on her tongue, his naked body, his earlobe in her mouth. It is too quick, too fast: time beaten out in swift seconds. She would like to slow each moment to months and years, find a way to live in it.

  When Toby stills, she lies beside him, head resting in the crook of his armpit. They are damp with sweat, alive with the knowledge of what they have done.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ Toby says.

  She hears the rattle of matches.

  ‘Please don’t,’ she says.

  ‘It isn’t you,’ Toby says. ‘I want you to see me.’

  She blinks in the sudden glare. She gasps, hand to her mouth. His skin is alive. Flowers, vines, fruits, tiny birds with their beaks dipped into peaches. She runs her fingers over him, shocked by its secret, that she has imagined him so differently. He flinches. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Only here, where it’s fresh.’

  He shows her the most tender patches, where the wound is raised and pink. Violets, like those she used to pick, are pressed into his skin. A whole garden she can trace.

  ‘Has Jasper seen it?’ she asks.

  A pause. ‘No.’

  He cups her chin in his hands and kisses her, and a single tear rolls down his cheek. Outside, the wind twists between the wagons, a shrill whistle.

  ‘Toby?’ she says, and he doesn’t answer. The sight of his hand, resting on her waist.

  At last, there is a finality to the way he holds her, and she knows that she must leave, that it is late and they cannot risk Jasper finding them. There is a small commotion outside, and it is a surprise to remember that the world exists apart from them. She closes the door behind her. Smoke from the yard fills her lungs and she breathes in that dark, damp air. A noise, a cart arriving.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she asks a labourer. It is difficult to see, the moon choked by fog.

  ‘New performer,’ the man says, nodding at the cart. ‘Jasper’s newest purchase.’

  Many new acts have arrived in the last weeks, the camp swelling with fresh wagons and the litter of juggling apples. She squints to see the latest addition. A tiny girl clambers from the back of the cart, her feet feeling the ground. When the labourer swings a lantern closer to her face, Nell sees that her skin is as pale as the underbelly of a fish. The girl cowers at the sudden light, her grey eyes skittering from side to side. She bites on her lip, the toes of her shoes turned inwards.

  ‘She’s half-blind,’ the labourer says.

  Nell thinks of the wagon, the hands that grappled her, and she touches her cheekbone where her father hit her. She wept and railed, clawed at the doors, her sobs coming so fast she could barely breathe. And yet this girl is so still and so calm. She merely stands and waits, as if this is what she expects from life – to be bought, haggled over and sold.

  ‘She can bed in with the triplets,’ the labourer says.

  ‘Wait.’

  Nell doesn’t know why she does it. She steps forwards and takes the child’s hand. She assumes she will pull away, but instead the girl reaches up her arms. Nell lifts her. She is as light as a pail of milk. She nestles against her, wraps her fists around one of Nell’s plaits. Her breath is fast and rasping.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asks.

  The girl is silent.

  ‘I called her Pearl,’ a woman says, and Nell notices her for the first time. She wears a tatty badger hat, the tail falling down her back like matted hair. ‘Here’s her clothes. Her feathers.’ The woman moves forwards and Pearl shrinks into Nell’s chest. ‘Ain’t you going to say goodbye to your own mother?’

  The child’s breath quickens, her fingers clutching tighter at Nell’s hair.

  Nell walks past the woman as if she does not see her.

  ‘A very nice farewell,’ the woman shouts after her. ‘Very nice indeed.’

  Nell nudges open her wagon door. The child has attached herself like a limpet and can barely be prised free. ‘There,’ Nell says, propping her on the bed. What is she supposed to do with an infant?

  ‘You’re only sleeping here tonight,’ she warns, but the girl is already settled on her mattress, pale grey eyes blinking back at her.

  Jasper

  What is he supposed to do with her? A timid little child? He hears the iron clatter of the cart, the old crone croaking, A very nice farewell. Very nice indeed. He shuts his eyes, winces at the memory of that gallery. Those thick, soiled notes, the agent’s toothy smile, the cooling in his belly as he knew, even then, that he shouldn’t have bought the girl. What could Winston have been planning for her? A cygnet, a moon-gazer, with wings like Nell’s? A spirit – the mystic at a seance? But the child, he knows, would weep if attached to pulleys, would stammer and cower if placed in a small dark room with a glass ball and a wall of ectoplasm. Perhaps he could seat her on a podium near the caged animals – but he shakes his head, frowns. His show marries human wonders with the skill of performance; he might as well give it all up and own a tattered shopfront in Whitechapel!

  He rasps a hand over his chin, tries to silence the worries that snap at him.

  A mistake, the voice murmurs. Buying the child was a mistake –

  Or is his mistake that he has no plan for her, that he cannot see her potential? Winston had a plan for her; Winston saw a way to raise his own name with hers.

  A day of gin has left his throat dry and tender, his stomach roiling with bad meat. It’s only a thousand pounds, he tells himself, but he knows it is more than that, that one poor decision might lead to another. He knows, too, that his payment is a day late, and his coffers are almost empty. Should he write to the Jackal, appear at his door, beg? If he showed him the letter from the Queen, then surely the man would understand, would see he was a fine prospect?

  He stretches, joints clicking, laughs at himself with a short bark. He will decide what to do with the child in a week; until then, he has greater things to concern him. The Queen is coming to his show, and he is wasting his time worrying over a few lost pound
s, over a foolish little girl. He touches his heart as if to unknot the strings which tighten around it. A month ago, he would have sought out Stella, laughed with her. He taps his pocket, the ring inside. When she saw it that night, she must only have glimpsed it in the half-light; could she have known for certain it was Dash’s? Perhaps she lies on her mattress each evening and wonders why he no longer visits her. He will seek her out now, spend himself. It has been too long since he felt that heady relief.

  He pulls on a cloak and hurries down the rows of wagons. A groom presses himself out of Jasper’s way. A child drops his juggling balls in alarm.

  He does not knock on Stella’s door but pushes it open. Silence.

  ‘Who’s that?’ She rolls over, blinks. A candle is still burning in its bracket.

  ‘It’s me,’ he says. He waits for a look of pleased recognition to pass across her face; for her hand on his, pulling him down to her. But she twists the coverlet tighter about her chin and sits up. Her beard catches the light.

  ‘I missed you,’ he says, taking a step towards her.

  He imagines her arms rising to meet him, the warmth of her. She will remind him of his brilliance and hold him as she once held his friend. She will calm him, soothe him.

  ‘Stella?’ he whispers.

  Her voice is so low he cannot catch her words.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, what did you do to Dash?’

  ‘To Dash?’

  His friend’s name, in their mouths.

  ‘You have his ring.’

  He has thought about his answer carefully, and the words are as sweet and easy as every story he has ever spun. ‘Oh, the ring. We gambled the night before Sevastopol fell, and I won it off him.’

  ‘Liar,’ Stella says, and her voice is quiet and laced with venom. ‘Liar. He’d never have given it away.’

  He blinks. He cannot stand here and argue with her. And what is he to tell her? The truth is, there is no simple answer; he could not say for certain if Dash fell or was killed. He could not say. He opens and closes his mouth, feels a weakening within himself, as if his bones are soft and easily bruised.

  So often, he has asked himself what he could have done to stop what happened, if he could have predicted it and intervened. For as long as he can remember, he has secretly provoked his brother’s envy. If Toby is jealous of him, then his life is worth something. There were times in the Crimea when he felt so aimless, so cold and empty, when he was haunted by the cut and slump of bodies. But his life brightened when he saw it through Toby’s eyes. His growing fame in battle, his gleaming uniform, his friend. Perhaps he teased Toby with Dash; perhaps he needed his brother to be jealous of him. And this is what it has always come back to, every night he has pondered it: Jasper should have known how far Toby would go to make his voice heard, to make himself seen. If he’d thought more carefully, he’d have remembered a different day, finding his microscope missing, a small shard of glass glinting between the floorboards. He was confused at first, could not believe that his gentle brother could exert such violence, that he could wreck what was not his.

  ‘I want you to leave,’ Stella says, each word a quiet stab.

  There is nothing for it. Jasper stumbles back down the steps, back between the rows of wagons. Ahead, there is a scuffling, two labourers beside his wagon.

  ‘What is it?’ he barks. ‘What are you looking at?’

  They hold out their hands to stop him, but it is too late. He trips on something hard and sticky, rears back. A stench assaults him. How could this happen when he has been gone for only five minutes – how is this possible? The pig’s head glints in the lamplight. He steps closer. It is rotten, maggots pulsing through grey flesh. A gold coin is wedged between its teeth.

  The next morning, he is determined that things will be different. He will issue commands, repaint the wagons, instruct Brunette to stitch new costumes. He will order in great tubs of macassar oil to brush into the camels and zebras. He will have a bigger curtain made up, stitched from the same stars and moons that dapple Nell’s doublet. Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders, it will read, and each letter will be the height of Brunette. Yesterday was a momentary lapse, a mere slip; after all, he is not an automaton. He bashes a drum and walks between the caravans. ‘Up, up, up!’ he shouts.

  Performers stumble from their wagons, stretch. He stalks up and down. Every eye is on him. He can do this, he tells himself; he can do it. But the world feels ragged-edged, as if his lips are forming bubbles not words, as if his feet are floating on the ground and nobody can see him.

  He makes them rehearse the show from the beginning, even though they are tired, even though they will perform before the crowds in only six hours. ‘In four days, the Queen will see our show. It must be perfect. It must be pristine. Not a duff note, not a dropped ball – this is my moment, our moment. The Queen must be spellbound, astonished, stunned with wonder!’

  He notices, briefly, that Pearl is not there, that somebody must be keeping her out of sight, and he is glad of it. He makes Stella warble on the trapeze until her voice croaks, and he does not care if she stares at him sullenly. The lobster girl sculls in her tank with her breathing tube, underwater for so long that her skin crinkles. Through it all, he narrows his eyes, asks himself, Is this any good? He worries that he is too close to his show, that he has lost any ability to judge it. The hot-air girl. If anyone can discern true novelty, it is the Queen, the freak-fancier herself.

  He does not care if they complain or cry or wince. He has given them enough. He thinks of all the wonders that have ever lived before, over hundreds and hundreds of years – the giants, skulls split by their growing bones; the dwarves, kept in birdcages in royal menageries; the bear-children, bated and stoned in their villages. So many babies just left out in the cold to die. He has given all of these people a home, board, pay. He has given them a platform, a means to raise themselves from a life of ridicule and exclusion. He has taught them skills so they don’t just rot on podiums as mere spectacles.

  ‘Where’s Brunette?’ he demands, looking around him. ‘This is her cue.’ He pulls back the curtain. ‘I said, where is Brunette? She’d better not be lying in bed with a sore head again. Fetch her, somebody –’

  A shuffling, a rustling of papers, the women drawing themselves away. Nell, Stella, Peggy. He rubs at a patch of sunburn on his neck.

  ‘Is she asleep? Sick? Where is she?’

  Nobody will meet his eye. The whip is tight in his hand. A labourer moves forwards. It is Danny, the boy he once beat for escaping. ‘We couldn’t find her –’

  ‘Couldn’t find her? A seven-foot woman! She’s hardly invisible.’

  The man twists his cap. ‘I think she’s gone. Run.’

  Jasper stares at him. ‘How long have you known?’

  Nobody speaks. He hears only the squeal of carriage wheels on the streets outside, the creaking of the grandstand in the breeze.

  His voice, loud, shattering. ‘I said, how long have you known?’

  ‘Since this morning, when you summoned—’

  ‘This morning! She could be halfway to Southampton by now!’

  He seizes Danny, wrenches him forwards by the shirt. The man falls to the floor. The other labourers pull back, form a wide arc around him. He brings the whip down on the earth with a crack. The ground flinches, dust sent up like smoke. The horizon see-saws, his hands trembling with a violence he cannot swallow. His arm moves with the focus of an anvil, up and down, as smooth as if the whip is an extension of his own arm. The creak of flesh, a suppressed cry from the man, gasps around him. He longs to be back in the Crimea, where anything could happen, where men were killed with the ease of twitching a small nub of metal, where Dash patted him on the shoulder, and they set fire to houses and ran through the hillsides, bags of loot bouncing across their backs, and their kinship was life, breath, everything to him.

  Arms bind him, the whip torn from his hand. He writhes, turns, his mouth in a snarl, ready to raise
his fist to the man who has dared to intervene. His brother stares back at him. Jasper’s hand drops to his side. He cannot believe it. He staggers, rights himself. Sweat traces a path down his nose, along his spine, and he tries to regain his power, to locate his voice once more. He takes a breath.

  ‘Find her!’ he bellows. ‘Find her!’

  Nell

  They edge back, away from Jasper, his anger burning a fierce ring around him. Everyone moves with steady purpose: to wash the animals, to paint the wagons, to polish the wooden benches, readying the show for the Queen, keeping out of Jasper’s path.

  ‘Where did she go?’ Nell whispers to Peggy as they cross the yard.

  Peggy shrugs.

  ‘What will Jasper do if he finds her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Peggy says quietly. ‘Abel was from a small fishing village. Perhaps they’ll find a quiet place, out of the way. They might be lucky.’ The little woman reaches for a broomstick, dislodging it from its hook with a poker. She fills a bucket, begins sluicing down the paving slabs. ‘Do something,’ she hisses, kicking a chicken bone into the grass. ‘Look busy. When he’s in this temper –’

  Huffen Black hands Nell a brush and a pot of red pigment, and she begins to paint the yokes of the wagons, the window frames. She watches for Toby from the corner of her eye, sees him unrolling a new backdrop by his photography machine. Beneath that shirt, he has a whole garden painted across his body. Memories hit her like a kick between her legs. His hand on her thigh. The snag of his teeth against her lip. She does not dare look at him; what if he ignores her again? She cannot bear to feel that small ember of hope peter out for a second time. She tries to concentrate on the easy wash of paint, on Jasper’s shouting.

  ‘The giant hunt is beginning,’ he bellows, lurching between them, and Nell stoops over her work, eyes down. She wonders if he is drunk, or if it is just the excitement of fury. His voice has an edge that Nell does not recognize: a panic. ‘I’ll find her. I’ll haul her back like a dog. I’ll see to it that she never works for another showman again.’ He calls for advertisements, rewards, bounties; Nell sees him, stabbing his finger at his press agents, boasting of towering stacks of money.