He held himself as stiffly as a bronze temple statue. “Nothing short of resubmitting the paperwork and giving me time to process it.”
Bertie channeled every Southern Belle that ever was; all she lacked was a parasol and hoop skirt. “These gentlemen were just trying to help me. There’s so much to be done yet, you see, and I’m starting to fret.”
His nostrils flared. “Badinage, Bertie?”
“And persiflage,” she said. “Your idea, remember?”
“It was, wasn’t it?” The anger leaked out of him, and his shoulders resumed their usual hunched position.
“One of your better ones,” Bertie said. “Now, what can I do to set the situation to rights?”
Mr. Hastings sorted through the papers, muttering things like “I can fill this one out myself” and “I don’t know why we still even use this form, it’s clearly recapitulatory” every so often. In the end, Bertie had to initial the pink one and sign the green.
“I’ll waive the one-week waiting period,” he said as he straightened the pile. “But don’t let anyone know, or they’ll all want it waived.”
Bertie nodded, not wanting to remind him that if the new production failed to impress the audience, she wouldn’t be around to let the secret slip. “Now, if you would be so kind as to rearm everyone? I can’t have them pretending to stab each other with their fingers, can I?”
Mr. Hastings smiled, the first friendly expression he’d bestowed on her since the incident with Marie Antoinette’s chaise. He even managed an eye twitch that might have been a wink. “Right away, Bertie.”
“And Mr. Hastings?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Mr. Tibbs is on the warpath about the necropolis.”
Mr. Hastings held up a sheaf of papers. “The nerve! I have the paperwork right here for that!” He departed, muttering about signatures and inventory.
“Excuse me, dear,” Mrs. Edith said. “I hate to trouble you with so much going on.”
“No worries, it’s your turn. What’s wrong with Wardrobe?” Bertie waited to hear a complaint about the Chorus Girls wanting to wear high heels or the lack of beads and bracelets for Gertrude.
Instead, Mrs. Edith lowered her voice. “I wanted to speak with you in private for a moment.”
“What about?”
“About how you arrived here.”
The words jolted Bertie out of her caffeine-fueled stupor. “I thought you’d told me all you knew?”
“I gave my word to the Theater Manager that I wouldn’t say more.” Lines cut deep around Mrs. Edith’s mouth, each word uttered as though it was a battle won. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“And now?” It hurt to breathe; with the hammering and shouting amongst the crew members, it even hurt to think.
Mrs. Edith’s thin-rimmed glasses reflected the stage lights, and Bertie couldn’t see her eyes. “I realize what a mistake that was.” The Wardrobe Mistress leaned closer and lowered her voice. “That man is not as he appears. Please be careful. He—”
“Bertie?” The Theater Manager strode down the red-carpeted aisle. He’d loosened his tie, and the top button of his shirt was undone. “How’s the repair of The Book going?”
Bertie cleared her throat and tried to look blasé. “We’re making progress.”
“Brilliant,” he said. “I knew you could do it.”
Bertie twitched, trying to reconcile the relief in his words with the idea that he was keeping secrets from her. “Mrs. Edith was just telling me—”
“That I’m having difficulty with Gertrude,” Mrs. Edith interrupted. “She won’t wear her new costume. In fact, she’s refusing to go on in it, and I need our Director to speak with her.”
Bertie nodded slowly. “Of course. Right away.”
The Wardrobe Mistress pointed. “She’s in the temporary Wardrobe. The costume you’re looking for is in the trunk in the corner.”
Bertie made her escape, threading her way through sawdust and ladders to the silk-swathed changing area Mrs. Edith’s minions had constructed in the back of the auditorium.
“Gertrude?” Bertie ducked inside the tent. “I’ve come to sort out the misunderstanding about your costume. Mrs. Edith says you don’t approve?”
No one answered, though dozens of servitor costumes in various stages of completion swayed gently on a metal garment rack. Bertie slipped past a padded step stool and a full-length mirror. She peered up, impressed by the swagged draperies, the cream-papered Japanese lanterns that illuminated the various work stations, the dress form modeling a flowing robe of darkest blue, the hatboxes stacked at regular intervals.
But Gertrude wasn’t there.
Whatever are you playing at, Mrs. Edith?
Bertie crossed to the trunk in the corner and pushed the lid back, expecting to find golden gauze or pleated silver tissue, light layers suited to the scorching hot Egyptian sun. Instead, her fingertips met the heaviest of silk: emerald and black, embroidered with golden moons. The dress rustled like the gown of a duchess or the kimono of a Japanese geisha, and underneath its folds glimmered a belt of shining disks.
All that was missing was the woman with hair and eyes like bits of the night sky. The woman who had brought Bertie to the Théâtre.
“I was right,” she breathed. “There was a Mistress of Revels.”
Bertie lifted the dress up, smelling only mothballs and the cedar lining of the trunk in place of perfume, Mrs. Edith’s lavender water instead of campfire smoke. She checked inside the neckline, but there was no label of muslin tape, which the Wardrobe Mistress would have sewn into a costume before writing the Player’s name upon it with permanent marker.
“Who do you belong to, then?” Bertie held the shimmering fall of fabric against her chest.
“What are you doing in here?” Peaseblossom said, appearing as though summoned. “You look as pale as … well, Hamlet’s Father’s sheet.”
Bertie swayed her hips; the heavy skirts hit her legs in an uncomfortable reminder of the dream-dress summoned by the “Drink Me” bottle and the tango music. “Pease, does this look at all familiar to you?”
The fairy peered from the layers of silk to Bertie. “Is this a trick question?”
“Not at all. Just trying to make sure I haven’t gone stark, raving mad, because it looks like Verena’s dress. Only it’s not a costume. It’s the real thing.”
Peaseblossom’s wings paused mid-flutter, and she fell nearly a foot before recovering. “What does that mean?”
Bertie reluctantly replaced her discovery in the trunk and closed the lid with a bang. “I’m trying to puzzle that out myself, but I think it means I was right.” She ducked out of the tent, searching for Mrs. Edith in the throng.
The fairy followed her, trying to catch up physically as well as mentally. “About what?”
“About the Mistress of Revels bringing me to the Théâtre.”
Peaseblossom’s eyes had gone huge and round. “Part of How Bertie Came to the Theater was true? But why would Mrs. Edith have her clothes?”
“Maybe,” Bertie said, hardly daring to draw a breath, “Verena is still here.”
“Bertie,” Peaseblossom whispered, “she’d know who your mother is! And where to find her.”
“Not just my mother, Pease.”
Sedna couldn’t touch me because I am “his child.” But who is this mysterious father, and what’s he got to do with my medallion? Was it uncanny luck that Nate chose it for me, of all the things in the Properties Department, or did he know more than he let on?
Bertie fell into one of the auditorium chairs and put her aching head between her knees. “I can’t think about all this now!”
Peaseblossom patted her on the shoulder. “Do you want me to gather the boys and look for your Mistress of Revels?”
“One thing at a time, Pease. We have to finish fixing The Book first.”
“Oh!” The fairy straightened up and put her fingers to her mouth, letting loose an ea
r-piercing whistle. The group of Players onstage halted what they were doing. The lights on them cross-faded to a single golden spotlight that came up on The Book.
“What’s happened?” Bertie asked.
“That’s what I came to tell you! The last of the pages are back in, Bertie. Well, all except Nate’s.” Peaseblossom’s voice faded, disheartened, then rebounded. “I have dozens of Players still saying his line.”
Bertie paused, completely motionless for the first time since the retreating ocean had left her broken and sodden on the red-carpeted aisle. Since Nate was taken from me. “Keep it that way.”
“Of course.”
Guided by the spotlight, Bertie made her way to the front of the stage, up the side stairs, and to the pedestal that held The Book. Ariel sat with his back against the slim column, assigned to sentry duty but pretending to sleep.
Bertie had spent the last two days avoiding his pleading gaze and his angry silences, but now she nudged him with her foot. “Move, Ariel.”
He affected a snore, cut short when she kicked him smartly in the thigh. He rubbed his new bruise and moved to one side. “Milady’s clogs are verily pointy and sharp.”
“They’re Mary Janes, and you should have moved when I asked you to.” Bertie ran a tentative hand over The Book’s cover, tracing the edge with a fingertip. “How can we be certain all the pages are back inside?”
She’d addressed Peaseblossom, but Ariel answered. “They’re all there, save one.”
Bertie threatened him again with her foot. “How do you know?”
“You should trust me over anyone else in this accursed place. You have better cause.” Ariel tapped a finger to the collar around his neck; the metal hummed when he touched it. “This got heavier with every Player who returned.”
Bertie looked from the purple smudges under his eyes to the lackluster fall of his hair over his shoulders. Everyone was tired, dirty, and disoriented, but the droop of Ariel’s shoulders was caused by more than fatigue. “You look awful.”
“That’s because your collar is killing me.”
Bertie’s stomach, already unsettled by her run-in with Mrs. Edith and the sudden confirmation of the Mistress of Revels story line, gave another lurch. “You’re lying.”
“I speak the truth. Please take it off.”
The lump of guilt lodged just below her solar plexus shuddered and turned over. She could make out her reflection in the collar, twisted and distorted by the metal. “I can’t take it off, but I can at least relieve you of sentry duty for a few hours. Peaseblossom?”
“Yes?”
“I need a few armed guards to stand watch over The Book.”
“Right away.” The fairy disappeared into the crowd.
Ariel got up, his movements stiff. “Why are we guarding it at all?”
“If you could destroy it, it means someone else could try the same thing. There are others not overjoyed to be back. It seems the taste of freedom is sweet on their tongues.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Bertie didn’t have any answer for that, but when she turned around to leave, she smacked directly into the Stage Manager. A physically quicker man would have sidestepped her. A mentally quicker man would have skipped the glower.
“I need to know what you want done with these announcements,” he said without precursor.
Bertie stared in horror at the sheaf of hand-addressed and gold-sealed envelopes in his arms. “Those should have been delivered days ago!” She snatched one off the top and examined it. “The Theater Manager said he would ask you!”
The Stage Manager made a startled noise, his mouth falling open in an unbecoming gape. “He didn’t say anything to me.”
Bertie clutched the scrimshaw, but there was no artifice to strip away from him this time, no foul trace of trickery to his words. “He must have forgotten.”
“Of course,” the Stage Manager said. “So many things going on, the commotion, the chaos … it must have slipped his mind.”
“It couldn’t have been sabotage.” Bertie shook her head. “The Theater Manager wouldn’t do that to me.”
Just as he wouldn’t have put live asps in the basket?
She looked at the half-finished sets, the open cans of paint, and the characters in various stages of costuming. “No one will come. No audience, no performance, no chance to stay.”
“As much as it pains me to say this, fixing The Book might be considered an invaluable contribution.” The words were tiny stones, caught in his throat and forced past his lips grudgingly.
Startled, Bertie could barely manage, “Thank you. But I didn’t even do that right. There’s still a page missing.” She eyed the announcements with a fresh burst of incredulity. “I have been thwarted at every turn by bits of paper.”
Ariel appeared and took the parchment-and-gold-ink burden from the Stage Manager. “I’ll deliver them.”
“Absolutely not. It’s out of the question.” Bertie tried to take the announcements away from him, but he only turned to the side and blocked her with his shoulder.
“Why?”
Bertie shook her head until she was dizzy. “You’re the one who wanted freedom so badly that you nearly destroyed everything.”
“You imprisoned me because you feared for The Book and the Théâtre,” he countered. “You don’t need my page to safeguard this place any longer.”
Bertie turned her back on him and his insane suggestions. “It’s over, Ariel. The Theater Manager got his way. I might as well start packing.”
Ariel’s voice reached around her; cool and seductive, it was just the sort of voice that would convince reluctant patrons of the arts to venture to her performance on so little notice. “Trust in me.”
“I’d rather stick a hot poker somewhere vital.”
“As delightful as that sounds, you know that I’m the only one who can travel on the wind, the only one who can reach every house in time.”
“I don’t question that you can do it, Ariel. I question that you’ll come back.” Bertie’s real fear slipped out before she could stop it.
“Why would you worry about that?”
She turned around and searched his eyes for some hint he was lying, any excuse to deny him, but the scrimshaw showed her the truth: The collar had restrained his winds but not killed them. They uncoiled from behind the shadows, ready to surround her, to lift her up, to carry her away with only Ariel’s silk-clad arms wrapped about her to keep her from falling.
Spirare, they whispered to her like an incantation. Breathe us in.
Bertie didn’t mean to, but she inhaled, and everything inside her was a spring morning, a rose opening its petals to the sun, the light coming through the wavering glass of an old, diamond-paned window.
Tendrils of wind reached for Bertie with a coaxing hand. Release him, and he will love you.
“Bertie,” he said.
If Ariel says he loves me, I might just die. Right here, right now …
“I told you it would come to this.”
Her relief almost matched her disappointment, and she swallowed. “I know.”
Ariel tilted his head. His hair, stirred by a hint of wind, fell to one side so she could see the collar, smooth and cold against his skin.
Bertie reached out before she could change her mind. She touched the circlet, and the two halves of the collar hit the stage with hollow, metallic pings that echoed in the silence. She stepped over them to reach The Book and turned to the page where Ariel made his first entrance. Looking at him as she did so, she ripped the page out.
Ariel’s winds returned full force to gust around her, carrying the thousands of envelopes he’d promised to deliver. Caught in the eye of the storm, she thought for certain that he’d leave without so much as saying good-bye, but then Ariel’s lips were on hers.
“Thank you,” he said against her mouth.
She pulled back to look into his eyes, and there it was: the unspoken promise that he would be back.
“Thank you,” Ariel said again before he leapt into the winds and rode the storm away from her. The two butterflies deserted Bertie’s hair to give chase, the announcements swooping after them like so many fallen leaves.
When he returns, it will be for me.
Despite her misgivings, she felt a dark thrill that it was she who’d been his savior at last.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I Could a
Tale Unfold
Exhausted, Bertie curled up in an auditorium chair only to have Ophelia appear like a genie, bearing a dome-covered silver platter big enough to hold a Christmas goose.
“What on earth do you have in there?” Bertie asked, startled.
“Food,” Ophelia said. “The Green Room’s repaired itself, and you haven’t had a proper meal in days.”
Bertie’s stomach rumbled in anticipation.
“Proper?” Moth asked, appearing as though summoned.
“Meal?” Mustardseed joined them.
Ophelia took the cover off the tray. “Turkey, cranberries, mashed potatoes …”
“Gravy!” Cobweb said, swooning.
“Marshmallows!” Peaseblossom said with a happy squeak.
“What’s the orange stuff underneath the marshmallows?” Moth asked. “It’s not a vegetable, is it?”
“Yams are a starch, I think,” Ophelia said.
The scent of it was intoxicating, so Bertie didn’t even protest when the water-maiden tucked a napkin into her shirt like she was a child of three. Bertie started to eat as Ophelia fixed a stern gaze on the fairies.
“If you want food, go get your own. I won’t have you running through Bertie’s plate and eating all the pie.”
“There’s pie!” They disappeared with explosions of glitter, screams of excitement, and cries of “Dibs on the pecan!”
Bertie looked up from the mound of food. “You have to help me with all this.”
Ophelia shook her head. “Oh, no, I never eat before a performance. Drowning is bad enough without doing it on a full stomach.”
Eyes Like Stars: Theatre Illuminata, Act I Page 20
