Silk darted back around the corner. The others followed.
‘I’m not coming!’ she said. ‘I’ll go on to the Bowery.’
‘No!’ said Arkady. ‘The police won’t recognise you – it’s not the same man. And we have to stick together. Anyway, don’t you want to see the emerald?’
They came round the corner together: lake-stained, travel-stained, exhausted. There was a heartbeat pause – and then a fox-like call rang through the air, and Julia Marlowe came sprinting up the street.
She lifted Vita clean off the ground, pulling her against her chest as if she would bond them into one.
‘Where have you been? Are you hurt? You’re bleeding! What happened? What have you done?’
Vita buried her face in her mother’s shoulder, and smelt her perfume. She wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck. Even when her mother loosened her grip to wipe her eyes, Vita did not let go.
The policeman left, muttering under his breath, and for a few moments there was just-barely-restrained chaos. Arkady was simultaneously cuffed and embraced by his mother, while his father stood by, ramrod with fury. Samuel stood utterly still in front of his uncle, who spoke at him in a low voice in Shona, his whole body shaking with emotion. Silk stood apart, her eyes on the ground.
‘We should go inside, into the warmth.’ Mr Lazarenko spoke with a strong Russian accent, and his voice was full of barely controlled ire. ‘You all better have a very good excuse for the night you just put us through.’
They crossed into the great marble hall. The two dogs followed Arkady.
‘Come to the main stage,’ said Mrs Lazarenko. ‘They’ll already be heating it for the matinee. And there’s someone waiting.’
They filed in. The German Shepherds climbed on to two of the velvet seats and fell asleep. Vita, though, saw nothing but the figure sitting on a wooden chair in the centre of the stage. A voice rang through the great hall.
‘Rapscallion. An explanation, please.’
Vita’s grandfather rose to his feet. He stood, leaning on his stick, looking down at her. His face was cross-hatched with anger. He did not smile.
Vita’s mother pushed her forwards. ‘Go to him. He’s been so afraid for you, and so angry. I thought he might have a heart attack.’
It is so rarely we are given the opportunity to prove ourselves by laying treasure at the feet of those we love. The space seemed to grow as Vita crossed it; it felt like she had traversed several miles as she climbed the steps to the stage and stood in front of him.
She unbuttoned her outer shirt and reached into her undervest. She pulled out the parcel. She unwrapped the oilcloth, still damp to the touch. She lifted out the wooden box and put it in her grandfather’s hand.
The old man began to shake.
Grandpa’s eyes sought Vita’s. ‘Rapscallion – how have you done this? What have you done?’
‘We couldn’t unlock it,’ whispered Vita. ‘We couldn’t find a lock – we wondered if it was welded shut. It was in the tower.’
‘In Hudson Castle? You went to the Castle?’ He stared from Vita to Samuel to Silk and Arkady, who had followed, and who now stood in a corner of the main stage.
‘Yes. We thought … it had to be the one. It is, isn’t it?’
He turned the box over. For one terrible moment, Vita was afraid he would not recognise it – that it was the wrong one, that she’d fought her way across a foreign land to bring back a box of nothing.
But his fingers slid over the wood, seeking something. He pressed, and the base of the front of the box slipped outwards, revealing a keyhole no bigger than Vita’s little fingernail.
He reached for his watch chain. ‘I kept the key strung here,’ he said. ‘I thought it was all I had left. I thought the box was gone. I thought the key was my all. I tried to tell myself it was enough.’
The key was miniature, and he fumbled with it in his arthritic hands. It clicked into the keyhole as if it had been last used only the hour before.
Vita thrust her hands into her pockets and crossed every finger she had.
Grandpa sat back down and set the box on his lap. His hands, which quivered daily, shook so hard it took him three tries to prise open the lid.
It opened with a creak of aged wood; the polish cracked along the top. Inside, untouched by the time it had spent in the lake, was a wadding of black velvet.
Grandpa had stopped breathing. He lifted one corner of the velvet, and his eyes welled with tears. His face, usually so white, flushed like a child’s.
He pulled aside the velvet, and let out a soft cry of love and longing such as Vita had never heard before.
He lifted in his hands a single green pendant, as large as a lion’s eye. His fingers fumbled at it, and found a clasp, and it sprang open on a hinge to reveal two photographs. One was of Grandpa, younger, but with the same long nose and broad brow.
Opposite him, in the other photograph, a woman looked out at the world with large and generous eyes. She was fine-boned, and her hair was turning grey at the temples. She smiled, and the smile was Vita’s. And around her throat there was the emerald necklace.
Grandpa pressed his fingernail under the photograph, lifted it from the locket and brought it to his lips. The necklace slipped on to the floor, forgotten.
‘Lizzy,’ whispered her grandfather. Tears dropped down his face, catching and halting in the wrinkles in his cheeks and nose. ‘Oh, Lizzy. Oh my girl. My shining girl.’
Vita’s mother rose to her feet.
‘When she died,’ said Grandpa, ‘I put it in the tower and destroyed the lock. I vowed I’d never look at it again. I was so angry at her for leaving. For leaving me in the dead embers of the world. But you’ve returned her to me.’
Vita bent to pick up the necklace and put it in his lap.
He smiled at it. ‘This old thing. Would you like it?’ And he held it up to her, as if to set it on her neck.
‘What do you mean?’ A panic rose in Vita’s heart. ‘No! We have to sell it!’
‘Sell it? What for?’
‘That’s how we’re going to get a lawyer – we’re going to sell it, and we’re going to get Hudson Castle back. That’s what all this was for!’
He understood and felt the pain of it at the same time. ‘Oh, Rapscallion. It’s not an emerald. It’s coloured glass. Even the silver setting is plate.’
Vita’s heart lurched. ‘No! They were famous. The family jewels were famous!’
‘They were, until they were all lost or sold. The emerald was the last to go. We sold it to pay for the roof.’
‘But it looks—’
‘So real? I know. I made a replica of the real thing, before we sent it off to the auction house. Lizzy loved it as much as if it was real. She’d put it on and say, “Buckle up your dancing shoes, Jack,” and we’d go out and dine on the cheapest soups in the grandest restaurants. Ah, they were our glory days! But it’s barely worth five dollars.’
The threat of tears caught in her throat. ‘But,’ she whispered, too low for him to hear, ‘your home – I was going to get you back the Castle.’
Vita’s whole body went suddenly limp, and she sat down with a thump on the floor. She had wanted so much. She had wanted to fight for him, and to win.
Try as she might, she could not stop a single tear running down her cheek.
But her grandfather was alight with happiness, and she tried to shake herself: he mustn’t see her cry. She felt about for her handkerchief. She pulled out something from under her waistband, half dry, and was about to drag it across her nose when she halted. Two words at the top caught her eye: ‘Hudson Castle’.
They were the papers from the safe, half drenched and delicate as tissue paper, but the printed ink had not run.
‘I found these, too,’ she said. Grandpa was still holding the photograph in both hands, so she passed them to her mother. ‘Here, Mama – these were in the safe. In the chimney.’
Her mother stared at her, wide-eyed, her fury
rushing back. ‘In the chimney safe? Vita, what on this earth have you been—’ But then her eye caught the printed lettering, and she stopped talking as suddenly as if she had been slapped. She took the papers with great care from Vita’s hands and spread them out on the floor of the stage.
‘What are they?’ asked Vita.
‘The title deeds to Hudson Castle,’ said Vita’s mother. ‘Sorrotore didn’t have them.’ And her face flooded with sudden light. ‘He never had them.’
*
It took some time for the riotous exclaiming to die down. Mama and Grandpa sat together, talking swiftly in whispers, his hands shaking with the shock and joy of it. The Lazarenkos and Morgan Kawadza still looked bewildered. There was still scepticism and anger in their eyes.
‘We need the story from the beginning,’ said Mrs Lazarenko.
‘Now,’ said Mr Lazarenko.
Samuel and Arkady looked at Vita. Silk looked at her hands.
‘You tell it,’ said Arkady. ‘It’s yours.’
‘Begin with why,’ said Mrs Lazarenko.
Vita found herself lost for words. It should be obvious, she thought. It was what you did: you fought for the people you love. She shook her head.
‘Then begin with how,’ said Morgan Kawadza. ‘And what.’
Vita nodded. She looked only at Grandpa as she spoke, and that made it easier. His eyes alone shone like emeralds.
‘It began, I guess, with the red book. It began with my plan.’
‘That doesn’t sound like the beginning, Rapscallion. The real beginning.’
So Vita went back – all the way back. Back to her great-great-great-grandfather, and his castle; back to Grandpa at her hospital bed, and on to Sorrotore and the lies that it had not occurred to anyone he would tell.
She described Silk’s swift-fingered thieving, and Silk shook her head a quarter of an inch and stared fixedly at the wall, her face dark with embarrassment, or shame, or anger, or all three. Mr Lazarenko narrowed his eyes.
Vita described Arkady’s mastery of birds and dogs and horses, and the way living things seemed to smell the hidden gentleness on his skin. She told them about finding Arkady riding Moscow through the streets, and Morgan Kawadza pulled his mouth tight at the corners.
She described Samuel’s scramble up the wall of the Castle. She described the flight from the chandelier; the way he had cut through gravity as if it were optional, not for the likes of him. Samuel caught his uncle’s eye, and he too ducked to face the wall.
‘Swinging on the chandelier!’ said Grandpa. ‘What a thing, what a glorious thing!’
When at last she came to an end, there was a stunned silence.
Then Mr Lazarenko turned to Silk. ‘You, girl.’ He spoke brusquely. ‘Show me what you can do. Show me if it’s true.’
‘Do you promise not to arrest me?’ said Silk. ‘It’s illegal, what I do.’
Mr Lazarenko nodded, but his eyes were unbelieving and unimpressed.
Silk spoke softly. She turned to Julia. ‘Would you have a coin that I might borrow?’
Julia fished in her pocket and handed over a dime.
‘Would you,’ said Silk, ‘please go and sit in the front row? It’s easier that way.’
The adults glanced at each other. Then Mr Lazarenko grunted, and they all filed past Silk, down on to the front row seats of the vast hall. Silk straightened her dress and combed the tail of her plait roughly with her fingers. The children followed the adults, and Silk stood alone, at the very edge of the stage.
Silk held up the dime. She clasped her hands together, then opened them, showing that the coin was gone. The adults politely applauded, but there was no great admiration in their eyes. Vita suppressed her grin. She bit her lip in anticipation.
Silk shrugged. ‘It’s just in my sleeve,’ she said. ‘You probably guessed.’ She smiled shyly at Vita’s mother. ‘Mrs Marlowe, would you help me? Could you write something down for me?’
Vita’s mother reached for the pen in her breast pocket, uncapped it. And then she stared at it, her whole body suddenly rigid.
‘She’s taken the ink cartridge out of my pen,’ she said.
Silk smiled an almost invisible smile. ‘Mr Lazarenko, if you look inside your right boot,’ she said, ‘there’s a silk scarf that belongs to Vita’s grandpa.’
Mr Lazarenko bent, staring at his boot, and pulled the bright red scarf out from his shoe. Grandpa stared down at his collar in shock.
‘But – that’s not possible—’
‘Mr Marlowe,’ said Silk softly, ‘would you look in your left-hand pocket?’
Grandpa drew out a gold ring, and stared at it, open mouthed.
‘That’s mine!’ said Morgan Kawadza. ‘That’s my signet ring!’
‘O Bozhe,’ breathed Mr Lazarenko. He turned to the children, and his face was transformed. He looked, suddenly, very much like Arkady. ‘What else have you been hiding?’
The Gold Ballroom was empty when Arkady led his audience to it; empty, except for Moscow and Cork, who both came over to lick the boy in greeting. Arkady ignored Mr Lazarenko’s startled exclamations about his dog, threw open the windows, leaned out, and whistled his sharp, longing whistle.
The birds descended like a thunderstorm; they came crowding in through every window, filling the air with feathers and clattering song.
Rasko looped around Arkady’s head and came to rest on his shoulder. Rimsky came, croaking and laughing her throaty chuckle, from a nearby tree, and landed on Grandpa’s arm. Grandpa gave a great shout of pleasure.
Arkady whistled again. Five minutes went by, and with every second more birds arrived. They flocked to him, crowding on to his shoulders; pigeons along one arm like a sleeve, a robin on his shoulder, a blue tit perched on the crown of his head.
Mr Lazarenko watched. ‘What is this?’
Arkady grinned at his father, but the smile was uncertain at the edges. ‘This is what I want. Not just the poodles, Papa – not just horses – I want everything. Dogs and horses and pigeons, and squirrels and rats and crows – all of the animals that people ignore, all dancing together – I want people to see them: properly see them. I want to make something completely new. It would be like being in the heart of the woods, in the middle of a theatre. Can you imagine?’
Mr Lazarenko’s eyebrows had still not returned to their usual position on his face. Mrs Lazarenko, though, smiled, and in her smile there was pride enough to light a city.
‘There is something here.’ She spoke, not to the room, but to her husband. He met his wife’s look with the understanding that comes from many years together.
She cocked her head in a question. Slowly, so slowly he seemed almost to be bowing, he nodded.
‘What?’ said Arkady.
‘A troupe,’ said Mr Lazarenko.
Morgan Kawadza raised his hand. ‘Nikolai, no. Not Samuel.’
‘Morgan. Hold judgement,’ said Lazarenko, and he turned to Silk, who stood, one hand on Cork’s enormous head. ‘You. Girl. How would you feel about being asked to run away and join the circus?’
Silk stared at him, uncomprehending. ‘What?’
‘I’ll find someone to train you. I can make you the greatest sleight-of-hand artiste on this continent. You could learn escape artistry – you can already pick a padlock. People will queue up to have their pockets picked by you.’
Silk’s whole body seemed to sag and sway with shock. For the first time, Vita saw her lost for words.
‘I … don’t know. I’m not … I’m just not.’ Silk turned, helpless, to the three other children, and their faces gave her courage. Silk drew breath, pushed her chin high. Already tall, she grew, in that moment, three more inches. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I say yes.’
‘To whom should I go – who is responsible for you? Your parents?’ said Lazarenko.
Silk shook her head. ‘I don’t have a dad. My mother’s dead a long time ago.’
‘Any family at all?’
‘There’s no one,�
� said Silk. And she looked again at Arkady, at Samuel, at Vita, and there her eyes rested. ‘There’s never been anyone, until now.’
‘A troupe, then,’ said Lazarenko.
‘There’s prestige in a troupe, if you can make it fly,’ said Maiko.
‘An animal waltz,’ said Mrs Lazarenko, ‘a pickpocket … and a knife-thrower.’
Vita had been struggling with the impression that she was in a dream. The exhaustion of the night before was pulling at her, and the horse trying to eat her hair did not help with the general sense of unreality. But at this, her head snapped backwards, and she stared at Lazarenko.
‘Me?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Lazarenko. Already the shrewd business look was in his eyes. ‘The circus can be a good home. It will take time. It’s not easy. But you could be adequate, I think.’
Mrs Lazarenko gave a choke that was part laughter, part exasperation. ‘Kolya! She’s not a horse, to be haggled over. It sounds as though she could be more than adequate. It sounds as though she could be remarkable.’
‘She is more than remarkable,’ said Grandpa. ‘She is an army unto herself.’
Vita looked at her mother and grandfather.
‘Mama?’ said Vita.
Her mother’s look was complex. Dozens of expressions that Vita could not read played across her face, and a few that she could: pride, doubt, more than a dozen years’ worth of protective fear. The look settled on love. ‘Is it what you want?’
Vita looked around the stage; at the vast sweep and scale of it. She thought of Lady Lavinia, of the ferocious elegance and precision in her hands and eyes. She thought of her twisted foot, of her thin calf and uneven shoes, and the thousands who would see it if she stood upon a stage every night.
She straightened her back, and set her chin like a boxer’s.
‘Is it yes?’ said Lazarenko.
Vita felt her face split apart in a smile, and she was about to answer when Arkady scoffed.
‘Of course yes! It was decided long ago. We’re already a troupe.’
The Good Thieves Page 16
